New AMG V8! Chevy Saves the Manual, Trouble at Honda, Spyker Returns, and More!
THIS CAR POD! with Doug DeMuro & Friends!
New AMG V8! Chevy Saves the Manual, Trouble at Honda, Spyker Returns, and More!
THIS CAR POD! with Doug DeMuro & Friends! · May 8, 2026
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100:18
Car
Honda Prologue
The Honda Prologue is an electric SUV, so it runs on electricity. The podcast is talking about it as part of Honda’s EV efforts and how those plans have affected costs. It’s mentioned because it’s one of the EV models Honda has introduced.
Car
Honda Odyssey
The Honda Odyssey is a minivan people buy for family use. The hosts are saying the Odyssey is at a disadvantage because the rival Sienna offers hybrid and all-wheel drive, which the Odyssey doesn’t in their comparison.
Car
Toyota Sienna
The Toyota Sienna is a minivan. Here, the point is that it was updated to be a hybrid and can be all-wheel drive, which makes it a tougher competitor for the Honda Odyssey.
Term
hybrid
A hybrid uses a gas engine plus an electric motor. The electric assist helps it use less fuel, and that’s why it matters in this minivan rivalry.
Term
all-wheel drive
All-wheel drive means the car can send power to all four wheels. It helps the car grip better on rain, snow, or rough roads.
Car
Kia Carnival
The Kia Carnival is a minivan that’s being expanded with a hybrid variant. The segment treats it as a new product direction, showing how more competitors are adding electrified powertrains to the minivan market.
Car
Honda Accord
The Honda Accord is a popular Honda sedan. They’re using it as an example of how long a model can stay basically the same before a redesign, and how that can affect sales.
Car
Honda Civic
The Honda Civic is Honda’s compact car. The hosts are mentioning it to make the point that when models get older, sales can start to decline unless the company refreshes or innovates.
Concept
product lifecycle
A product lifecycle is how long a car model stays basically the same before it gets updated or replaced. The longer it goes without changes, the harder it can be to keep sales strong.
Car
Honda Hrv
The Honda HR-V is a small crossover SUV. They’re saying changes (or lack of innovation) in Honda’s lineup can affect sales in this popular class too.
Car
Honda Pilot
The Honda Pilot is Honda’s bigger family SUV. The hosts are talking about how Honda might not redesign it for a long time, which can make it harder to compete.
Car
Acura MDX
The Acura MDX is Acura’s important family SUV. The hosts are saying it’s going to go a very long time without a redesign, which can leave it feeling outdated compared with rivals.
Car
Acura RDX
The Acura RDX is a smaller Acura SUV than the MDX. The hosts are saying Acura won’t keep selling the RDX, so it relies more on the MDX instead.
Car
Honda CR-V
The Honda CR-V is a very popular SUV model. Here, the hosts are saying it’s newer and can help Honda compete while they work on other products.
Term
EV
EV means electric vehicle. It’s a car that runs mainly on electricity from a battery, and the hosts are saying it could replace a gas-powered model like the Odyssey.
Car
Acura Integra
The Acura Integra is a smaller Acura model that’s meant to feel more like a fun car to drive. They’re saying its current generation is being kept around longer than usual, but it still isn’t selling as strongly as Acura would like.
Brand
AMG
AMG is Mercedes-Benz’s performance division. They’re known for making powerful V8 engines, and that’s why the hosts bring it up in a discussion about Mercedes doing V8s.
Car
Mercedes-Benz C63
The Mercedes-Benz C63 is an AMG performance version of the C-Class. Traditionally it was famous for big V8 power, but here they’re talking about the newer setup using a turbo four-cylinder instead.
Term
turbo four cylinders
A “turbo four-cylinder” is a smaller engine with four cylinders that uses a turbo to make more power. It’s one way manufacturers get strong acceleration without using a bigger engine.
Term
high-performance sedan
A “high-performance sedan” is a regular four-door car, but built to drive fast and handle well. Here they’re talking about whether there’s a good new one you can realistically buy or lease.
Car
BMW E63
The BMW 6 Series is a luxury car line meant for comfortable, longer-distance driving. The podcast is referencing an older generation code (“E63”), which is how BMW labels specific model generations. It comes up as part of a history or lineup discussion.
Car
Mercedes-Benz E63
The Mercedes-Benz E63 is the AMG “big performance” version of the E-Class. It’s a benchmark for fast Mercedes sedans/wagons, so the fact that it’s been a while since an E63 makes this new V8 plan feel like it could matter a lot.
Car
BMW M5
The BMW M5 is BMW’s top “fast sedan” model. It’s one of the main competitors in the same category as the AMG performance cars they’re discussing.
Car
Audi RS6
The Audi RS6 is Audi’s high-performance wagon/sedan variant. It’s a major competitor to other fast German performance cars, including the AMG models being discussed.
Car
Mercedes-Benz GLS
The Mercedes-Benz GLS is a big luxury SUV. They’re saying the new AMG V8 will debut there first, which hints at how Mercedes plans to roll out the engine across the lineup.
Car
Mercedes-Benz GLE
The Mercedes-Benz GLE is a luxury SUV. The hosts mention it as one of the first places the new AMG V8 will show up, which helps you understand Mercedes-AMG’s rollout plan.
Term
M177 Evo
M177 Evo is Mercedes-AMG’s internal name for a newer version of one of their V8 engine designs. Saying the new engine is based on it means it likely shares core parts or design ideas, not that it’s totally unrelated.
Car
Mercedes-Benz S-Class
The Mercedes-Benz S-Class is Mercedes’ top luxury car. If a new engine is connected to the new S-Class, it usually means Mercedes is rolling out major tech first in their flagship.
Term
flat-plane crank V8
This is a special way the V8 engine’s crankshaft is shaped. It affects how the engine revs and sounds, and it often feels more “eager” at higher RPM than other V8 designs.
Concept
powertrain
A powertrain is basically the “moving system” that makes the car go—like the engine/e-motors and the parts that send power to the wheels. They’re discussing which powertrain Mercedes-Benz will put into the C-Class and how that changes the lineup.
Car
Mercedes-Benz Cclass
The Mercedes-Benz C-Class is a luxury car that’s smaller than some of the brand’s bigger sedans. The podcast is saying Mercedes hasn’t decided on a specific kind of engine or power setup for the C-Class yet. That matters because it affects what future cars will be like.
Car
BMW E60
The BMW 5 Series is a luxury sedan that many people consider a main BMW model. The podcast is talking about how BMW handled a certain change for the US market using the E60 generation. It comes up because the 5 Series is important to BMW’s lineup.
Brand
BYD
BYD is a big Chinese company that makes electric cars. The hosts mention it to illustrate how EVs are spreading quickly in Asia-Pacific.
Concept
internal combustion engines
Internal combustion engines are the traditional gasoline/diesel engines that burn fuel to move the car. The hosts are saying EVs may take over in parts of Asia, but the US is still a strong market for gas engines.
Term
V8
A V8 is an engine with eight cylinders arranged in a V shape. More cylinders usually means a smoother, punchier feel and a distinctive sound.
Car
Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG
The Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG is a faster, performance version of the Mercedes E-Class. The podcast is listing it alongside other high-performance Mercedes cars. It’s mentioned because it’s a well-known performance model.
Car
Land Rover Range Rover
The Range Rover is a luxury SUV that’s built to be comfortable on-road but still capable off-road. Here it’s brought up because it can come with a V8 engine.
Car
Porsche Cayenne
The Porsche Cayenne is a luxury SUV that’s meant to drive more like a sports car than a typical SUV. Here it’s listed because it can be had with a V8 engine.
Car
Mercedes-Benz SLR
The Mercedes-Benz SLR is a high-end supercar. It’s included in the list because it’s one of the cars the speaker associates with big-cylinder engines.
Term
V10
A V10 is an engine with ten cylinders in a V layout. It’s less common than a V8 and can be tuned for a higher-revving, higher-performance feel.
Term
V12
A V12 is an engine with twelve cylinders in a V layout. It’s a “big” engine type often found in luxury or supercar-level performance, and it usually sounds amazing.
Car
Chevrolet Camaro
The Camaro is a popular Chevrolet sports car. Here they’re talking about rumors that the next Camaro might still be offered with a manual transmission.
Term
manual transmission
A manual transmission means you choose the gears yourself with a clutch pedal and a gear stick. It usually gives the driver more control than an automatic.
Car
Land Rover Freelander
The Land Rover Freelander is a compact SUV that can handle rougher roads than a typical car. The podcast is mentioning a specific version someone owned. It comes up as a personal story about that kind of SUV.
Term
EV strategy
“EV strategy” just means a car company’s plan for switching to electric cars. It includes what EV models they’ll make and how quickly they’ll change their factories and technology.
Term
emissions reasons
“Emissions reasons” means the government rules about how much pollution a car is allowed to make. If a car can’t meet the newer rules, the company may have to stop making it or change the engine.
Car
Volkswagen GTI
The Volkswagen GTI is a popular sporty compact hatchback. Here it’s mentioned because the speaker says the same basic engine design is used in the GTI and is still allowed under current rules.
Brand
Bugatti
Bugatti is the luxury supercar brand. The comment about selling it off suggests the company needed money or had financial trouble and had to get rid of part of the business.
Brand
McCann EV
“McCann EV” sounds like it’s referring to Porsche’s electric Macan. The discussion is about how well that electric model is selling in different markets.
Car
Porsche Taycan
The Porsche Taycan is an electric car, meaning it uses electricity instead of gasoline. The podcast is pointing out that it’s fully electric and part of Porsche’s EV lineup. It’s mentioned because it’s a significant modern performance model.
Term
fully electric
“Fully electric” means the car is powered only by electricity from a battery. It doesn’t have a gas engine.
Brand
Spyker
Spyker is a small, niche car brand. The hosts are talking about it coming back and about ownership of its car-related “ideas and designs.”
Term
intellectual property
Intellectual property is the legal “stuff” behind a product—like designs and brand rights. Buying it can let someone reuse those assets to make or sell cars.
Car
Audi R8
The Audi R8 is a high-performance supercar. The podcast is describing it as a fancy, performance-focused car underneath. It comes up because it’s a well-known example of Audi’s top-end performance.
Term
twin-turbo V8
A twin-turbo V8 is a V8 engine with two turbochargers. The turbos cram more air into the engine so it can make more power.
Term
bespoke
“Bespoke” means the car is made to order with custom choices. Instead of only one standard version, you can specify details to match what you want.
Term
hand-built
“Hand-built” means people assemble the car by hand more than using robots and mass-production equipment. That can help with quality and customization, especially on expensive cars.
Term
exposed linkage
Exposed linkage means you can see the moving mechanical parts instead of covering them up. It’s often done on purpose so the car looks more distinctive and “mechanical.”
Brand
Tesla
Tesla is a car company that’s famous for making frequent updates to its cars. Here, they’re using Tesla as an example of a company that ships cars and then improves them after launch.
Concept
development cycles
Development cycles are the timeline and process automakers use to design, test, and refine a car before it goes on sale. The hosts argue that “legacy automakers” tend to run longer cycles and try to have the car fully ready at launch, while newer brands may accept launching sooner and fixing problems afterward.
Concept
launch when it launches
They’re talking about whether a company should wait until a car is fully finished before selling it, or sell it quickly and fix things afterward. In their view, Tesla tends to do the second approach.
Brand
Fiskars
This name is likely a mis-heard brand in the transcript. They’re basically saying another company besides Tesla also ships cars and then fixes issues later.
Car
Acura TSX
The Acura TSX is a luxury sedan made by Acura. The podcast is mentioning it because someone said they used to drive one. It’s brought up as a personal car history detail.
Term
Formula One edition
A “Formula One edition” means the car is styled and branded to look like it’s connected to F1. It’s typically a special version for fans, not an actual race car.
Term
FIA badge
The FIA is the organization that runs and regulates major auto racing. If a car has an FIA badge, it’s usually showing an F1/racing connection, not necessarily making the car a real race car.
Concept
manual only
“Manual only” means you can only get the car with a stick shift. Fewer people want a stick, so sales can be slower even if the car is good.
Car
Aston Martin F1 edition
This is a special Aston Martin that’s made in limited numbers and uses Formula 1 branding. The point is that it looks and feels connected to F1, and the discussion here is about how limited it really is.
Car
Daihatsu Valera
The Daihatsu Valera is a car model name mentioned in the podcast. The episode notes it would have F1-style logos. There aren’t details here about how it drives—just that it’s part of a themed mention.
Car
Rivian R2
The Rivian R2 is an upcoming electric SUV model. The podcast is saying it will be the SUV option in Rivian’s newer lineup. It’s mentioned because it’s part of what Rivian plans to release next.
Car
Rivian R1T
The Rivian R1T is an electric pickup truck, so it uses electricity instead of gasoline. The podcast is talking about how Rivian has multiple models and versions. The R1T is the truck version of that lineup.
Car
Rivian R1S
The Rivian R1S is an electric SUV, meaning it runs on electricity instead of gasoline. The podcast is talking about how Rivian has different models and names for them. The R1S is the SUV version of that lineup.
Car
Ford Lobo
The Ford Lobo is being talked about as an idea for a special edition pickup. The podcast mentions wanting it lowered, which is a style change. It’s not presented as a normal, standard model in the excerpt.
Term
tariffs
Tariffs are taxes a government places on imported goods. In auto supply chains, tariffs can raise the cost of parts and finished vehicles, which can delay deals and affect pricing and production plans.
Car
Audi Q9
Audi Q9 is a rumored bigger SUV from Audi. The idea is that it would have three rows of seats, like many family-focused large SUVs.
Term
three-row
“Three-row” means the SUV has three rows of seats for more passengers. It usually makes the vehicle bigger and changes how much room you have for cargo.
Car
Audi Q7
Audi Q7 is an existing Audi SUV that’s big enough for families. It’s brought up here to show that Audi already has a large, three-row option.
Car
Ford Bronco
The Bronco is a Ford SUV name that’s known for off-roading. In this conversation, it’s mentioned as an example of a rumor that eventually became real.
Car
Toyota Land Cruiser
The Toyota Land Cruiser is a tough SUV built for off-roading and long-term durability. People often compare it to other SUVs and say it’s the more dependable choice.
Car
Range Rover Classic
The Range Rover Classic is an older Land Rover Range Rover model. People like it for its classic style and off-road ability, but older Land Rovers can require more attention to maintain.
Car
Porsche Career Gt
The Porsche Carrera GT is a very expensive, very high-performance sports car. The podcast is emphasizing that it’s technically complicated and built with a lot of precision. It’s the kind of car people talk about because it’s rare and special.
Concept
design studio
A design studio is a dedicated workspace where a car’s styling and design direction are developed before engineering and production. This segment emphasizes the unusual origin story—design work happening in a non-traditional location—before being connected to Porsche’s GT design.
Company
Samsung
Samsung is a big tech company. In this story, they’re said to have started a car-design effort in California, then later handed the design studio over to Porsche.
Car
Toyota Corolla Cross
The Toyota Corolla Cross is a small SUV crossover. The podcast is just mentioning it as part of what’s in the background or lineup. It’s a practical Toyota SUV model.
Car
Cadillac Escalade
The Cadillac Escalade is a big luxury SUV. It’s designed to feel upscale and comfortable, especially for passengers. The podcast is just pointing out that an Escalade is the kind of vehicle people notice.
Term
carbon chassis
A carbon chassis means the car’s main structure uses carbon-fiber material. It’s often used because it can make the car lighter and more rigid, and here they’re pointing out how it shows up as part of the car’s look.
Car
Porsche Boxster
The Porsche Boxster is a sports car with the engine in the middle and a convertible-style driving feel. The podcast is talking about how the car’s shape can be adjusted to fit the engine. That’s why it comes up when comparing similar Porsche designs.
Car
Volkswagen Bora
The Volkswagen Bora is a sedan model name used by Volkswagen. In the podcast, it’s mentioned mostly as a reference point while talking about other car names. There isn’t much detail in the excerpt beyond the name itself.
Term
flying buttresses
The host is using “flying buttresses” to describe extra-looking parts sticking out from the car. They’re basically there to change how the car looks, not because they’re clearly doing something useful.
Term
Formula one engine
A Formula one engine is the kind of engine used in F1 race cars. It’s built for racing—very high performance and advanced tech—so it’s different from normal car engines.
Car
Alfa Romeo Giulia
The Alfa Romeo Giulia is a sporty sedan made by Alfa Romeo. The podcast is talking about a specific older version from 1964, the Giulia TZ, which is a special classic. It comes up because that particular car is historically important.
Car
Nissan R34 GTR
The Nissan R34 GTR is a legendary Japanese sports car from the late 1990s/early 2000s. It’s famous for being fast and for being a super desirable collector car today.
Car
Nissan Gtr
The Nissan GT-R is a fast sports car made for performance. The podcast is talking about a specific rare version, an R34, with very low miles. It comes up because that kind of GT-R is collectible and special.
Car
Mercedes-Benz E55
The Mercedes-Benz E55 is a fast, AMG-flavored version of the E-Class. Here it matters because the speaker says they finished converting it to a manual transmission.
Concept
manual swap
A manual swap means changing a car from an automatic to a stick shift. It’s a big conversion, not just swapping a lever—there’s a lot of parts and setup to make it work.
Car
Ferrari 456
The Ferrari 456 M GT is a high-end Ferrari designed for comfortable fast driving over longer distances. The podcast is mentioning it as part of a group of impressive cars at a museum. It comes up because it’s a notable Ferrari model.
Car
Audi RS4
The Audi RS4 is a fast, performance version of an Audi that’s meant to be more exciting than a normal car. The podcast is mentioning it as one of the cool performance models in a group. It’s brought up because it blends performance with a practical wagon-style body.
Term
limp mode
Limp mode is when the car intentionally limits power so it won’t get worse. It’s like the car saying, “I’m not going to push it until this problem is fixed.”
Term
misfire
A misfire is when the engine doesn’t burn fuel in one of its cylinders the way it should. That can make the car run rough and feel like it has less power.
Term
check engine light
The check engine light is a warning that the car’s computer noticed something wrong. It doesn’t always mean the engine is about to fail, but it usually means you should get it checked.
Term
fuel sending issue
A fuel sending issue means the car isn’t getting the correct information about the fuel system. The car may think something is wrong with fuel delivery or level, which can cause warning lights and reduced power.
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Hello and welcome to this car pod. I'm Felipe. I'm Nick.
Kenan is gone, but we do have Ryan Lopez over there. Time for the news.
Alright, most important news story first. The Honda Odyssey. Nothing's happening to it.
Yeah, pretty much. That is the story. Beloved by CPAs and people like Filippo everywhere. People like Filippo.
Responsible adults. The news story is this. Honda apparently spent so much money on their EVs, well, lost so much money on their EVs like the prologue to which there was it was a prologue to there never became a story.
That they had to deal. They're delaying the redesigns of a lot of their new core products for multiple years, including the Odyssey, which supposedly might be delayed now till 2030.
That car came out in 2017. The current Odyssey came out in 2017. I reviewed it in Rancho Santa Margarita. It was one of my favorite videos.
Did you review the vacuum? The whole thing. It was a big deal. And it's not just the Odyssey. It's maybe the new Accord. It's maybe the new Civic.
Correct. The MDX, the next generation MDX. This is a big deal. This is a big deal because Honda as a company pretty much relies on these core products to exist.
They only basically have six core products as a car and then they have Acura, which has maybe one core product or two.
And so the EV thing was such a massive loss for them that these cars, these big competitive cars that Honda relies on to bring them money and sales and profitability are going to just get older and older and older.
The Odyssey is highlighted because its chief rival was the Toyota Sienna was redesigned a couple years ago and went hybrid and went all-wheel drive, neither of which the Odyssey offers.
And the Carnival also hybrid. That has a hybrid version is a new product.
Everyone I know who has an Odyssey only did so because Sienna's weren't available, which is still true. There's so much demand for the Sienna that they're knocking down Toyota dealer doors.
And this is sort of like a second choice. And it's unusual because my entire life, Honda has never been a second choice.
It has been a brand that you actively seek out and buy. Nissan, if you can't qualify for a Honda or if you can't afford one, you go buy a Nissan.
Well, as these cars get older and older, the current Accord has also already been out for a few years. The Civic has already been out for a few years.
You run a 13-year product lifecycle on a minivan.
We'll see what happens to Honda's profitability and numbers as these cars start to get older and older and presumably sales continue to decline.
By the way, they're not the only ones, right? We'll talk about the McConn in a minute. That's been in one product lifecycle forever because they planned on having an EV replacement that is just not going to really come to fruition.
The Odyssey 2017 to 2030, the Accord came out in 2023. It will be at least 2030 before there's a redesign.
So we're four miles in a long lifecycle.
When I was a kid, four years was an Accord generation.
That's right.
Civic was what? Civic was even 21?
A couple of. Civic was 20.
When did the three also?
But regardless, if we're taking these things to 2030, these cars, this is heavy competition in these segments.
Is it though? There's four minivans available.
To your point, they can do nothing and still be a solid second place.
Which is why this is going to work and why it has worked already up until this point.
However, compact sedan is already not a particularly profitable segment with Civic.
If you can't create an innovative vehicle, you're going to have trouble.
Same with Accord.
You said it affects HRV, which is one of the really big segments right now.
CRV was just redesigned, so they have some space.
Sometimes, thankfully.
But you have to assume that if it pushes out all the other ones, you're not going to necessarily see some real development on CRV and Pilot.
That may also push out those.
And you're basically talking about an entire generation of cars that Honda will skip.
Like one life cycle that Honda is going to...
They can't be competitive to do that.
Especially because most of their products, the Accord and Civic aside, are not hybrid products.
The MDX, which came out in 22, will not be redesigned until 2031.
Crazy.
So that's an incredibly long life cycle in an ultra-competitive, luxury, mid-sized SUV segment
without real powertrain development, without real feature development,
with interiors that are dated to the early 2020s when everybody's on the screens.
By the way, Acura, which will not have the RDX anymore, will have a 10-year, 8-year-old, 9-year-old MDX as their other core product.
That's not a great situation to be at.
The SUVs would worry me.
I think even the sedans, that's also a dying segment.
I would coast on those and just win based on name, and then put everything in SUVs.
The CR-V is a new competitive product. They have some time.
As long as they...
The CR-V is pretty new.
It's already 25.
But still.
You remember there was a hybrid MDX for like an afternoon?
Of course.
There was briefly a hybrid MDX.
There was briefly a hybrid...
Four seat only.
Two cabins row only, so 60 max.
Really?
Fun fact.
Briefly, but then it went away.
But in Honda's defense...
It was prior to junior.
Yeah.
In Honda's defense, and I do want to defend them.
It was hard to see this coming because the Lexus RX400 hybrid came out in 2006.
And who the hell knew?
Who the hell knew?
It's been 20 years, but we had to wait and see.
It just makes me worried, especially in the light of Kia Honda, obviously on an immense product offensive.
Trying to get as many really competitive products out as they can.
Toyota is in the middle of a huge hybridization push where pretty much every Toyota that comes out is hybrid only.
Totally.
And it's selling well.
You had to assume that what the plan was, was that they were going to let Odyssey go until an EV could replace it.
They were going to cancel it entirely, by the way, this year.
Really?
They started thankfully not to.
Thankfully.
But that was probably their plan, because they didn't develop hybrid versions of these cars, even though other automakers were,
even including Mazda, who for years was like,
we're not going to do hybrids, we're just going to get better fuel economy out of gas engines.
Well, eventually everybody caved.
Honda still has it.
And when do you ever see Honda behind?
It used to be kind of always.
But then they cut off.
In a lot of segments, like off-road SUVs, but it's rare to see them behind with their core.
Those seven cars are so important to Honda.
They're so important that they've always done a great job of making sure they are the best products in their segment.
And when they came out, I truly think the New Civic and the New Accord were the best products in the segment.
Still great.
This was the best product in its segment when it came out.
2017.
Pilot's very competitive.
CRV's very competitive.
Just worry about it.
They've obviously stopped the drive towards EV.
Yeah.
Will the 2030 product offensive have hybrids, plug-in hybrids?
Things that the market is at this moment demanding.
Probably, but 2030 is four years from now.
I know.
Next man, Trump isn't going to be president anymore.
My man.
I think actually the wait-and-see strategy is not the craziest with all of the turmoil in the market between tariffs, EVs, et cetera.
But it's not a choice.
It's not a strategy.
They don't have any money to invest in products.
Maybe.
Maybe.
And other brands have newer products.
Honda gets all its buyers for the people that go to the newsstands and buy consumer reports and say,
hey, this is super reliable.
That's all they care about.
They don't need the bells and whistles.
Yeah.
They just want to know, is it going to break down?
The problem is though, no cars break down anymore.
And Honda is, those people who you're mentioning are generally older.
And I think Honda is going to get into a situation where they are not attracting as many new people as they are getting old people who are not holding onto cars forever or not buying cars as much.
And I think that if they don't sit here with something appealing, a sports car, a brand new whatever, you're going to just sort of have attrition.
What would stop someone from going and buying a brand new Hyundai with a giant screen?
Some of the tech in these cars is like, the Odyssey tech is like pretty insane.
Buddy of mine has a brand new Odyssey.
He says there's not a single USB-C. It's all USB-A.
Which is fine, except for the fact that USB-C ports became the norm in every new car three years ago.
Yeah.
Obviously, you still have a lot of record for every version.
Whatever.
That's just an example.
You should play with all the tech in New Hondas.
It's behind.
It's old.
It's not what it should be.
And at some point you worry about, is there driver safety stuff as good?
Is there safety in general as good if they have a 13-year-old product?
Yeah, totally.
For a family car.
And by the way, I want to reiterate the point.
Acura, which won't have the RDX, will have a nine-year-old MDX by then.
But Filippo there.
Filippo will have an Integra whose life cycle has been expanded by three years and still doesn't sell well, as is new.
You're forgetting, maybe intentionally.
Which car am I forgetting?
The ADX is going to save Acura.
The audience is watching and thinking, what the hell is the ADX?
I was next in ADX yesterday.
That's more than I've seen.
All right, next news story.
On the same topic, Mercedes-Benz is doing V8s.
I don't know if you know much, but AMG, big V8 company.
Big V8 company.
I got one, actually.
You should try it out.
They do V8s, although currently what they do is turbo four cylinders in the C63.
You loved it, right?
And then I saw one of those on the road.
What would have to happen for you to grab one of those?
Insanely still.
What number?
199 a month.
Really?
If it was 199, you'd pick one up?
Because charging these were.
Because then it's just a hybrid commuter car at that point.
That's slightly fun.
What?
Maybe 299.
299, that would be a deal.
I'll accept that.
You'd get one at 299?
I personally, there was nothing that could buy or lease a new high-performance sedan.
What do you mean?
Not a black wing?
Nothing.
Ooh.
Fine.
A good high-performance sedan.
Yeah.
With a V8.
It taught me to buy a mediocre one.
If we're going to get a performance sedan, you won a performance engine in it.
That is part of the definition.
AMG is saying they're doing a new V8 this year.
There's a lot of reasons why this is a big news story.
The fact that they're doing a new V8, apparently it's derived from an existing Mercedes-Benz powertrain.
The thing that's the most interesting about it to me is that for now it's been years since there's been an E63.
Yeah.
And we have the M5 and we have the RS6, which pretty much compete.
I don't want to say uncontested by Mercedes-Benz because there's an E53.
But uncontested by Mercedes-Benz.
Especially in the States, Mercedes-Benz created that segment with high-performance wagons.
And I'm curious if this powertrain will find its way into any class.
They've said that they're going to put these first in their SUV products.
Yeah.
So the GLS, GLE, maybe.
Yeah.
It's based on the M177 Evo and the new S-Class.
Yeah.
And it's going to be a flat-plane crank V8, apparently.
Yeah.
So yeah, GLE, GLS as the starting point and then some of the other cars, probably.
The current AMG Twin-Turbo V8 is a fantastic powertrain.
Great to see that they are doing it.
Yep.
They have not committed under any circumstances to doing this powertrain in a C-Class, which
I think is what the...
That's going to be their six-cylinder offering.
So they're saying they're going to do a C53 with a six-cylinder.
But that does leave room for a C63.
Especially in the US, right?
So I think some of their decision-making and why the 53 models will exist.
In some markets, that will be the top product for missions reasons.
You got to imagine the US, you can get away with it.
Wouldn't it be ironic after all this time if Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, who's kind of already
implied this, starts making products for the US market that aren't sold in Europe, starts
making performance products for the US market.
BMW did it with the E60.
Yeah.
But that was kind of a rare one-off weird thing.
Imagine if there are actual powertrains.
I mean, America's got the economy.
It's got the buyers.
Totally.
And EVs are going to kill it in APAC, right?
Like Z-Curs of the world and BYDs are taking over.
So then America is one of the best markets for internal combustion engines.
Especially big.
The only market.
We have the cheapest gas.
The only market because it used to be that there were parts of Europe where you could
sell these cars and still make money.
There were people in Switzerland.
There were people in Germany.
But now the government in Europe is kind of making sure that these vehicles still longer.
I mean, this is Chrysler's strategy or Dodge's strategy, right?
Like bring back the V8s.
Bring back the V8s.
I don't.
I'll do it.
Yeah.
I got you.
I got you.
How many V8s you got right now, Nick?
Let's see.
The Range Rover, the E55, the SLR, the Cayenne.
You got five.
So five out of six are V8s.
Wow.
I've only got two.
I only got one.
But I do have a V10 and a V12.
And we like our big, we like cylinders here on this podcast, folks.
We like cylinders.
And we hate the environment.
Well, there we go.
Well, I got 14 miles per gallon on the way here.
Not aligning myself with this.
That's probably the second best of my fleet.
The other day I went to fill up, how do you survive?
The other day I went to fill up the gas pump and it was 720 a gallon.
$7 US 20.
I have not seen that high.
720.
Are we at that turning point where you're going to start shopping for gas and like go
to the Costco and wait in line?
No, but I will tell you this.
I did do one thing, which I think that our users should do as well.
I saw the 720 and I said, nope.
And I pulled out my company credit card and I use that instead because I was coming home
from work and I figured, you know what?
If the company wanted me to go to work today, I had to get home for God's sake.
Luckily we get two points back.
That's not something.
All right.
Give us our next news story.
Boom.
Manual transmissions.
All right.
We talked a few weeks ago.
I think you were gone about there will be a next generation Camaro.
Hard to believe.
It has been rumored by the folks at Gem Insider that based on their sources, it will have
a manual transmission.
Manual and a new Camaro.
Yeah.
Again, American market needs.
Or Gem Authority.
I apologize.
Gem Authority.
That's pretty legit if it's real.
I trust their sourcing that they are indeed the authority.
How cool.
And then the question for both this and AMG is, all right, so if you've already developed
the power train, what else can you stick it in?
Yeah.
Yeah.
The chassis for the Camaro, there will also be building it alongside a Cadillac sedan
and some other product.
And so maybe there'll be a manual Cadillac sedan too.
By the way, the new Camaro, four door.
Are we sure about that?
We're pretty confident.
Hmm.
Not a Camaro.
Well, it's like a Mach-E, you know.
Well, don't forget though, the Camaro's got a long history.
There was a period of time where there were Camaros that were horrible.
And so.
But were they ever four doors?
No, but they were horrible.
Yeah.
And so what I would say to you is, what I would say to you is, if we get a four door
Camaro that's good, wouldn't that be preferable to a two door Camaro that's horrible like
we had at some points?
And I'm not specifically calling out the third gen.
I'm not calling out the third gen.
But there are people who might, is what I'm saying.
There are people who might.
I just don't know if a four door Camaro makes any sense.
You don't like the Chevy SS?
It better be good.
You don't like the Chevy SS?
You know the Chevy SS, man?
Yeah.
I did see one the other day actually.
And they recognized the wagon and we had a nice little chat outside of Carl Strauss.
Yeah.
Outside of Carl Strauss, you're talking to the Chevy SS guy.
Did politics come up, Nick?
Oh my God.
Why do we think it's even, Nick?
Why?
Why?
I'm just saying.
Please come back.
Kenan, for God's sake, please.
I'm just saying.
Kenan was it.
I looked at, we have all our other locations.
And I looked at Kenan's location today.
He's in Florence, Alabama.
Yeah, he's filming two V10 Lambos.
What the hell is Kenan doing in Alabama?
Filming two V10 Lambos.
Kenan doesn't belong in Alabama.
He's not correct.
It's not right.
I had to do Lambos and so it makes sense.
What the hell are those cars doing in Alabama?
I don't know.
But one of them is going to be at the Velocimitation.
Ryan Lopez is from Alabama.
Yeah.
Although I think he isn't because when I asked him about his license plate code for his
county, he didn't know it.
Oh.
You know who else is from Alabama?
47, by the way.
What's that?
Tim Cook.
Yeah, I know.
It's Ryan Lopez and Tim Cook are the only two non pro athletes slash politicians ever
to rise out of Alabama and make something of themselves.
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All right.
Give us our next news story.
Please.
Ah, yes.
This is Porsche McCann.
And Porsche announced on an earnings call this week that the gas Porsche McCann production
ends this summer.
How tragic.
And that they will not be replacing it with another gas McCann in for two years.
Heard this one before.
Yeah.
We've talked about it before, but it's why.
No, but I mean, they're confirming the timeline.
July will be the EOP as the Germans, I guarantee you were saying an SOP.
How much do you think inventory?
Probably some because it's not that.
I mean, it's an old car.
Yeah, it's been out forever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My neighbors had one like before COVID.
It's war.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And even before that, it was on sale.
I think it came out in 15, right?
That's why.
Talk about a long life cycle.
Yeah.
What are sorority girls going to buy once they graduate?
Q5 says they always did.
What sororities were you at that girls had McCann's?
You know, the north shore of Chicago, all right, was a little different.
There was a sorority girl when I was in college who had a Freelander SE3.
Oh, that's so cool.
The yellow convertible one.
Yeah.
And I remember that was the star of the sorority.
That is a great story.
My wife watches the podcast, so I got to be careful, but that sounds like marriage material.
I wonder what he would have said if his wife didn't watch the podcast.
Porsche, tough position to be in.
So having the guest McCann and then two years away from the new one going on sale obviously
means they will not have a guest McCann for a while.
Eventually, they will sell out, of course, of the gas ones.
This is another Honda story.
I mean, it's another example of the EV strategy has kind of changed things around.
And this is the situation that they're stuck with.
I'm actually surprised that they're stopping production.
When I reviewed McCann EV and chat about the portion of people at the time,
they told me point blank that they had the ability to kind of extend this car's production life.
They didn't do that.
I'm sure they have good reasons.
But I wonder, right?
So your first guess would be for emissions reasons, they can't use existing powertrains.
But the base engine in this is the same engine that Volkswagen uses in everything.
That's in my GTI, basically.
That is still compliant.
They're going to keep making that.
I don't know.
But it is interesting.
Porsche is in this kind of unusual situation where they're not making all that much money.
Profitability is down.
They had to sell off that Bugatti brand.
Yeah.
Tough day.
This car is going away.
They're obviously going to have to put an enormous amount of money into redeveloping vehicles
that they probably didn't think they would have to put money into redeveloping.
It's a kind of a tough transition.
Again, the Honda story.
Honda post their first quarterly loss in decades.
That's where Porsche is as well.
This whole EV shift has been weird.
Can I give you a fun fact?
All right.
We see a lot of McCanns.
Yeah.
Something's better.
Every day.
They sold 85,000 McCanns last year.
Globally.
You know how many Odyssey's sold last year?
88,000.
Just in the U.S.
I mean, it's the only market we've sold.
Odyssey's much better seller than the McCanns.
I've thought more than 88,000.
They're everywhere.
When I worked for Porsche, this is a real statistic.
When I worked for Porsche, Porsche Cars North America, I worked for there.
In 2012, I left in 13.
There were years where we would get outsold as a company nationally by the largest Toyota
dealership in the United States.
But I will say McCann is 30% of their sales last year.
Wow.
Yeah.
No, it's the best of my car.
It's a big deal.
It's tough.
This is a big deal.
I am curious, and we don't get these numbers, and we probably should do a little bit more
research before it comes to God, but I am curious how McCann EV sells globally.
And they probably would never say, but is it the success they were hoping for?
Is this mainly a U.S. story that the McCann is going away and Porsche is reaching everything?
Or has McCann EV actually been the competitive product they were hoping that it would be globally?
22% of Porsche sales were fully electric in 2025, which would have been Taycan and McCann.
Pretty significant number.
However, we also hear that sales in China are way down, et cetera, so the electric cars must
not be doing quite what they were hoping for.
Nonetheless, this is another interesting one.
On to our next news story.
Ah, yes.
It's Spiker.
Here's a photo.
I have no idea what this is a photo of.
So the gentleman that bought the intellectual property to it a year or two ago, I did do
some reading.
This was like, for those who don't know, this was a supercar company that was, they were
Dutch, right?
Yeah, Dutch, and they built some very beautiful cars.
I saw Ed Bolian's in person just a week ago, and just like, it's still the details, the
finishing touches, it is like true coach building level supercar.
It was kind of a fancy Audi R8 underneath.
Since you only did some of the reading, I should point out, the person that rebought
the intellectual property to Spiker is also the person that found the Spiker originally.
I was going there.
So it's not just like a random dude that bought the IP.
Victor Muller, and then also the Spiker enthusiast guy on Instagram, who's been literally flying
all over the globe servicing and keeping the existing Spikers running and serviced, which
is pretty cool.
Basically, they saw, hey, there's such a cult following for these cars still, we ought to
bring it back.
And I think the coolest part, because I did read the article, is that they're going to
be debuting the new model at the Quail this year, a venue in which I have been deemed
not cool enough or valid enough to even buy a ticket at.
So they are killing it.
They are getting into things that even Doug DeMiro's inner circle can't get into and
debuting their new car.
So I'm very happy for them and not at all bitter about it.
Our understanding is that it'll be a twin-turbo V8.
I thought you did get passes.
I meant to tell you this, but I hit them up for press pass saying that I'm a good friend
of yours.
So my name dropped a little bit, and they said they'll get back to me in a month.
I'm going to tell you, just so you know, three or four years ago, I tried to get press passes
and they said no.
Me, myself, not even a good friend of mine.
Myself.
Well, there's that.
But I thought in the end they offered you the ability to buy tickets.
I did eventually get pulled on the wait list, but that's $1,600.
Yeah.
You guys aren't paying me enough for this.
But $1,600, you get to see the new Spyker.
And you're an enthusiast.
That brings up the value of the event from about $350 to about $400.
Wow.
I'm sure you'll get those press passes now.
The event's worth a quarter of what they charge.
Let me go and report on it.
I think this is cool.
I think the Spikers were cool.
I think they're still undervalued.
I am sad at what is obviously going to happen,
which is that this new Spyker is going to be more expensive than I wish it was.
Oh, I'm sure.
800 horsepower, V8, supercar, hand-built, bespoke.
It's going to be gorgeous, but it's going to be money.
If they can get enough interest to make it.
Oh, no, I thought you were telling me.
No.
Because I didn't actually read the poll.
No, I'm curious.
They haven't confirmed.
So it also depends on if they get enough interest.
It makes sense.
The exposed linkage was sort of the trademark feature of the CD.
Yeah.
So it kind of has to, I think.
I think a manual, I think it'd be cool.
It's going to be a million bucks.
It's going to be way too different.
It's like that D-Temaso P72 that I fell in love with.
Yeah.
And I want one.
And then we found out that it was like 4000000
Yeah.
Like that's what all these cars are.
Good things cost money.
Yeah, but that didn't used to be true.
A Spyker back in the day, it's like 300 or less.
And they're so cool.
And they're so cool.
And they still are like 300.
But I guess my point is like everything's a million bucks.
Anytime a bespoke special, just assume you'll never afford it
and you'll never see one.
We'll see them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
At very special events on lawns.
Dude, there's like Goompert Apollo's everywhere now.
Goomper's are everywhere.
Never before.
All right.
Ford.
What this is.
So Ford, we've been talking about this car.
That is what they gave journalists.
A very high-res mock-up here.
No, no, no.
That is what they gave journalists.
So Ford is building a new EV.
And they hired children to design it.
With Play-Doh.
They're targeting a pickup truck.
Play with it.
It's four children.
That is around $30,000.
So they're targeting a pretty low-price electric pickup truck.
Yeah.
There's a bunch of stories out from a bunch of different outlets over the last week
because they have let people behind the scenes a little bit
to look at their facilities where they're doing this, where they're designing it.
They also gave out this literal sample.
It's like small.
It's like 3D printed.
It's cool.
I don't get this.
No.
Ford, you don't invite me to this?
Let's be honest.
They may have.
What are you suggesting?
It got lost with a bunch of Mark IV Supras that's www.SeanatCarsOfBits.com
This was in Long Beach, which is a little too far away.
I didn't go to this.
It was in Long Beach.
The reason I'm mentioning this is Ford has made a big deal in the stories that came out
about it, about the fact that this is a true Skunk Works project.
So basically, they hired some people from Apple and from Tesla and from other automakers
to lead up this project.
Yeah.
And they have said basically the CEO is not really involved.
He's not allowed in the building.
His key card, Jim Farley's key card doesn't allow him access to the building.
Jim Farley's not allowed.
Do you buy any of this?
Remember in Curb Your Enthusiasm when he was going to pitch a script to someone that
worked at Disney?
You know, you're like, oh yeah, the person worked at Apple.
Yeah, the Apple store.
Right.
Jim Farley's not allowed.
But he doesn't want to go.
They showed it off to journalists in Long Beach.
Hey, can I come to Long Beach?
Nope.
You're not allowed in Long Beach either, Jim Farley.
Farley's like Detroit's better than that.
Their point has been that they're keeping this very separate and very different from
how Ford otherwise built the product.
They're trying to be a very upstart manufacturer.
Ford, I'm going to tell you something because I know you're watching.
If you want to make this different from how you normally make a product, how about we
don't have an eight-year development cycle?
How about you get this thing to market in 18 months?
That's how you do it.
That's what Tesla does.
They are starting pre-production now, like factory production now.
I have some feedback too.
I haven't seen one.
We're invited.
It needs to be at least three times bigger than that.
This is a 132 scale.
It's interesting how much they're leaning into this was built in a different way.
We really let engineers loose, but not our normal engineers.
They couldn't be trusted.
We had to bring in people from the outside to bring fresh perspective, to build new
ideas, to make it an affordable, compelling, easy product.
I do think that one of the biggest problems that the legacy automakers have with competing
against the other, the upstart brands, is development cycles and current, the way that
they, I think the problem that legacy automakers still have is they think the car has to be
ready for launch when it launches.
I honestly think that is one of their biggest mistakes.
Teslas have never been ready for launch when they launch.
They're riddled with all these things that get corrected later.
Same with Fiskars.
Let's just launch the thing.
I think that's kind of what they're pushing towards.
Their goal really was get it up quickly, rethink some assembly line processes.
There were a bunch of interviews in these pieces with the folks that are at the actual
production line complaining about like, all right, well, they keep changing these parts.
They keep changing these things.
At some point we need to lock it in, but I think that's kind of the point.
You can kind of keep iterating and keep making it a little better and keep.
They got someone from the Apple store, dude.
Move fast and break things.
Move fast and break things.
That's not that.
It's actually the Facebook.
It doesn't matter.
Facebook?
Yeah.
Mark Zuckerberg.
Oh yeah, like in the early days.
Regardless, it is exciting.
This should be on 2027, by the way, the pickup truck.
I will say all the interviews make a big deal about Jim Farley not being allowed at the
facilities.
They originally pitched him an SUV and he said, no, it needs to be a mid-sized pickup
truck.
That's weird.
Yeah.
He wants to fight against Bezos for those slate customers, those six people interested.
Tello.
Speaking of Zuckerberg, you know what he drives?
He used to drive a TSX or Tio.
Oh no, go to the next news story.
What a pod.
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Now back to the pod.
He drives a black wing.
Does he really?
Yeah.
But he also had that cayenne stretch.
Yeah, if that was for his what?
Yeah.
Zuckerberg himself, that might be Zuckerberg.
It could be now.
Yeah.
He drives a black wing.
Cadillac's coming out with it.
He wants to, he's anxious because we skipped the news story.
Flipo's sitting there like, oh God.
No.
Oh God.
Oh God.
They're coming out with a Formula One edition of the black wing.
They've come up with several special editions of the black wing.
And there's now a Formula One edition.
And Nick, in the center console, there's an FIA badge.
It'd be a good safety car.
Yeah.
But yeah, only 25 is what I read, which is crazy low.
Well, they're manual only and honestly 25 is like two months of sales.
Yeah.
Truthfully.
The car is wonderful and it is finding the right buyers and is selling it sticker, but
their production is low and sales are slow.
You see a lot of the F1 edition Aston Martins around though.
Like Aston really cashed in on that.
And I think limiting it to 25, like Cadillac ought to be making it big.
Only because I care about accuracy.
They're making 26.
Okay.
Thank you.
As a nod to when they joined Formula One.
I'm sure two of them are going to Sergio Perez and Bottas over there.
That might be.
That's who they are.
Valera or Valtteri.
There'll be some F1 logos.
Great.
Yeah.
It's mostly a car with F1 logos.
There have been actually already several black wing special editions.
And as a person who always kind of thinks about dipping my toe into the black wing pool,
I'm not not into it.
I do wish it was a station wagon and I know that's stupid car enthusiast BS,
but I do own a station wagon, which I bought essentially new and I would think about it.
I would have a conversation.
Wouldn't you?
You don't think my wife would drive around a black wing?
She would if there was a third row.
I'll tell you that.
There wouldn't be options.
The experience matters.
Here's your black wing.
There will not be a third row under any circumstance.
You know, the third row is over.
Did you know that by the way?
My wagon is the last to have a third row.
I did not know that.
They don't offer it anymore.
Of any cars ever?
It's done.
There's no more rear facing third rows than any cars.
No, it's not a safety thing.
I think it's safer.
If you look at data, there's a reason little kids are rear facing as long as possible.
Yeah.
I think it's actually legitimately safer to be sitting rear facing.
That's good.
Including in the third row for a lot of reasons.
But one is that your legs are getting hit instead of your head.
But regardless, there are actual crash forces are better if you get hit when you're rear facing.
I suppose it's good if you are getting re-ended like you see it coming too.
Yeah, that's good.
It's good for your psyche.
That really helps.
You put your hands out to stop it.
Yeah, there's no more.
That's it.
You wagon 23 miles.
My kids will only sit in the third row now that I have one.
They love it.
It's so cool.
I want to go back to this.
This is an important story.
We all have three row Mercedes station wagon.
I know.
I know.
This Mercedes podcast.
I am disappointed we covered a Porsche story for no reason.
I'm in the McCann going away.
I agree.
We're certainly not Porsche people.
I have two quick stories because I refuse to not talk about the news.
Okay.
Rivian, CEO of RG Scurringe said in an interview that there will be other variants of the
R2.
The R2 we know is SUV that's going to come out.
He basically hinted at there will be an R2X.
Clearly, there could be an R2X as well as other variants that they have not yet enough.
I don't understand what it's an R2X.
It's like the performance version.
But the R3X is like an off-roading hatchback.
The R3 is like a little hatchback.
The R3X is like the performance off-roading.
I haven't seen an R3 that wasn't an R3X.
Is there such a thing?
Really?
I don't think they ever showed it because R3X looks cooler and we're three years away,
but yeah.
Well, you get my point.
Oh, I see.
There's like rendering.
Regular version.
The X will be the performance-y version, which I do think will be like an off-roader-y
performance version.
That would be cool.
I don't know why it's a two-door like a defender.
AI render.
It's also in the thunderstorm.
Yeah, producer shot.
But there will also maybe be other models, which is kind of interesting.
We wondered, right?
Other R2s.
Because the R1T and R1S exist.
This is just R2.
Can I tell you what Nick wants?
A three-row R2 rear-facing?
No.
He wants an R2 that's a pickup truck, like the Hummer H2SUT.
Ooh.
Yes.
Nick.
I also want that.
Nick, when he's driving to Trump rallies, he takes his H2SUT.
We gotta fly the flag.
Yeah.
And this coming from a guy that goes summers in Nantucket is calling someone else a Trump
rally attendee.
The Sequoia direction.
The Sequoia is there.
I want a Lobo edition.
Give me a lowered, maybe...
Maybe they will.
Laying frame.
I want suicide doors.
I want big wheels.
It doesn't matter.
It's unlikely.
You're talking about you want a literal low rider.
You want it to be on...
It doesn't have to lay frame.
I would go with just tucking tire.
RJ, if you're listening.
Crazy Nick edition.
I think that that's unlikely.
But it's not impossible.
There will be a performance version.
What's likely.
There will be an off-road version.
Maybe that's what this is.
There will be an off-road version.
This isn't made by...
This isn't real.
There will be an off-road version.
There will be a performance version.
And then the three will come.
And it's even smaller.
And it's like the golf country.
And then...
Yes, it is like the golf country.
100%.
And then...
And that'll be that.
Or the Delta Tigralis.
One of my greatest moments in life was actually on Nantucket last summer.
A man had a golf country.
We had a rally.
Love it.
Do you know this story?
Yeah.
And he was there at the little market in my town.
And he's parked there as a golf country.
And I walked up to him.
And I never walk up to people with cars.
Because then they were like,
Oh my God, it dug me up.
We get into a whole thing.
And I walk up to him.
And I say, cool car.
And he didn't recognize me at all.
I didn't know who I was.
What a dream.
And so I was able to have a real conversation with a person about a car without getting
into the whole...
Oh my God.
What a dream.
You know.
And it was incredible.
And he told me all about the golf country.
And I knew a lot of the stuff.
But I was cherishing the moment.
Yeah.
You know.
That novelty wears off as someone that frequently has conversations with people who don't know
who I am about cars.
One or two are great.
But after that, they're just strangers talking to you.
Yeah.
Prefer to keep to myself.
I see someone coming up.
I put the AirPods in.
Oh, hey Jim.
Joe.
No, I'm sorry.
The expense report.
You know.
You're too friendly for that.
Jesus.
The real shame.
Last story.
Last story.
Wait.
Okay.
Last week, the president announced that he was increasing tariffs on vehicles from Europe
from 15% to 25% because the EU in his mind did not sufficiently move quickly enough to
actually like finish the deal on tariffs.
It's been interesting to see the reaction.
BMW CEO in their earnings call said basically, I don't think this is real.
I'm not going to adjust my forecasts.
I don't.
I think this is just like a bluff.
Audi's leadership team has instead said, oh no.
This is going to really massively impact our ability to release the Q9, the large SUV,
which will be built in Bratislavia.
It's going to really impact our profits for 2026 and our forecast for 2026.
If it happens, we'll be interested.
I really want to take this strategy and apply it to other facets of my life.
I think you should try it.
This deal is taking too long to negotiate.
I'm raising my price on you.
I bet you really wanted to.
It might work.
You know the Audi Q9?
I've been hearing there's going to be three-row Audi and Porsche SUVs my entire life.
The Q7 exists, but yeah.
It's like the mid-engine Corvette.
Like my whole life, there had been rumors.
And then one day, it happened.
Yeah, the Bronco was forever.
Forever.
Yeah, tariffs bad.
We'll kill everybody.
Let's see if it happens.
I'm more of the opinion of the BMW CEO.
So it has not officially just the threat of it.
We should be this week.
On Monday, they said, yes, this is still for sure 100% happening.
It's going to increase to 25%.
Have you yet to see that happen?
Right.
And Trump's doing a lot of bluffing right now in general.
You're also got to be making the calculus.
If any company CEO is affected by tariffs, you're 18 months into the administration.
It's only 48 months long.
Trump is trying desperately to make everybody believe he's not a lame duck,
but you do wonder what happens at the midterms,
especially when you look at his approval ratings, which are unusually low.
And then he really becomes a lame duck if he loses Congress.
And so at that point, the automakers are probably sitting here like,
let's just, you think you're going to do, let's just see how this goes.
Let's extend the Odyssey a couple more years and just see how this plays out.
Well, that's built in Ohio by Union Labor.
Maryville.
Okay.
I want to move on to the talk cars segment.
The talk cars segment is of course brought to you by Nick's merch.
Nick has merch now.
It's a little generic.
We're going to work on it.
I like it.
We're going to work on it.
But I just don't like it because it's shade at you saying I'd rather drive a Land Rover
than I'd rather push a Land Rover than drive a Land Cruiser.
Some of us are real men that put up with Land Rovers.
Some of us drive Toyotas.
Nick, I have owned in my life.
Oh, here we go.
Here we go.
I have owned in my life a lot of Toyota trucks because you four reliability.
I've had four Land Rovers.
How many is that for you?
I have two right now.
How many do you have?
One of them you do have to fourth.
What's the fourth?
You tell me.
You had the L32.
Yeah.
You had a Range Rover Classic.
Yeah.
You had your Defender.
Uh-huh.
What's the fourth?
I had another Defender.
To D90.
Oh, I forgot about the green one.
I had the green one, $50,000.
The one that he claimed he was going to keep forever.
Yeah, I remember that.
They made a video recently saying he's never going to say that.
I cannot get that car to last.
My family, my big SUV family car, I cannot get it to last.
I've tried now three different cars that all of which I just wanted to keep for a long
time and all three of them just didn't last for various reasons.
The green Defender was not good enough for my purposes and wouldn't work anymore now
because they didn't have a third road.
The Land Cruiser, honestly, the 200 series Land Cruiser is disappointment.
Yeah.
And the Sequoia is just like, I'm doing it and I'm going to keep doing it.
And every time I sit on this podcast, talk about how I'm going to replace it with an
LX700H.
I am not going to do that because it is just not feasible with car seats the way I need
to use it.
But man, I just cannot get a car to last in that segment of my life.
Suburban, here we come.
I do want to talk about one car that's lasting in the talk car segment today.
Could you pull up the picture, please?
This is an event.
This is a recent event that happened in my life.
This is me and producer Sean.
And we went to 5761 McFadden Avenue in Huntington Beach, which is where the car
arid GT was designed.
Wow.
Me and Sean went there.
And, you know, a lot of people, the career GT is this very complex technical precision
instrument engineered.
And so a lot of people associated with Germans and the Germans and how it's so Porsche, I
was made in this new factory high tech.
It was designed in a strip mall in Huntington Beach in Orange County.
And me and Sean happened to be there for other business and we went by it.
And there's a picture of us in front of the career design studio.
The story of the career GT design is one of the all time greats.
Samsung, the technology company had decided they wanted to build a car.
And so they got this office and hired a team of designers.
And then they decided late in the process that they didn't want to build a car.
And so they sold the designers to Porsche.
No, but they sold the design studio to Porsche.
And so the career GT was designed by people who originally were hired by Samsung in California
to create a Samsung car.
This wasn't like done at the highest levels of Porsche to create this super.
It was done by guys who three weeks earlier were designing a car from a company that makes
handheld tablets.
And there's your career GT story for the day.
Me and Sean got to see at IRL.
What was there? Like a BP regional office or something?
Some gas company.
Yeah.
They were probably like, what the hell?
Why are these people taking a picture outside?
National security risk.
Now you know.
You don't have any thoughts on this?
This is a momentous thing.
Did you have, you've owned that car for a couple of years.
But a career GT has been a big part of your life.
Yeah.
For a decade.
Yeah.
You ever considered stopping there before?
No.
I would never go out of my way.
This was literally on our way somewhere.
And I was like, wait, I think we're going near this.
Like there is no chance in my life that I would have ever even diverted 10 minutes to
go and do this.
I'm so glad you had that experience.
Me too.
With an edge and a corolla cross in the background.
Yeah.
No.
It was a little, and I think that was, it was something nice.
That's an Escalade.
And no, no, no.
It wasn't an Escalade.
It was something good.
And it may be an odyssey.
Nope.
It does make you wonder that, that whole story you had about the Ford EV and they wouldn't
let Jim Farley.
And maybe it's in a strip mall somewhere.
And he doesn't want to go.
He doesn't want to go.
It is.
They said that they moved to a larger office space because they hired more people, but
it's in a suburban office.
It shares a wall with the Rubios.
You know, like Porsche just didn't have that good of storytelling to be like, oh, it's
Gunkworks, whatever.
It was just like in a random strip mall.
Of course, like, oh, I got it.
There are stories from the design team of designing crew of GT where like they'd be
hashing out something over lunch at a strip mall sushi restaurant at one of those wide
intersections at Huntington Beach.
And they're talking about like Carrera GT design.
Like this is real.
But a lot of automakers have had California design offices.
This unfortunately did not rise to that level.
No.
Porsche didn't use the office really after the Carrera GT.
And there was obviously a lot of design work that was done in Germany as well.
However, in my, the concept car was done here completely.
And in my opinion, that was it.
Like the concept car is the Carrera GT.
And then after that, the Germans and these guys kind of collaborated more, but yeah.
Do you consider the courage is here to be a beautiful design?
No.
However, design style, I don't think it's a beautiful style.
I think as a concept, as a, as a product of design, I think it is a fantastic one.
The way that it all works well, the way that the carbon chassis is part of the trim is
really cool.
I do not believe it is a well styled car.
No, I think it looks like an El Camino.
I think it looks really nice.
Like a good Tansum understated.
I like the subtlety of it.
Yeah, I like that it's subtle.
Yeah.
I think that the big mistake, there are a few mistakes.
It looks like a long Boxster.
Like in order to make the room for the engine, they had to add space and they just added
they added space like a limo company down the street from this office one.
That's right.
And then also to me, the biggest flaw was, was the rear where it should come from the
roof and kind of sweep all the way down the roof line, all the way down to the rear bumper.
That's what everyone does.
But they started it like lower, this sort of like rear haunch and it looks like a pickup
truck as a result, especially seen from the front quarter angle.
It's not really well done.
Oh, very poorly.
And this opinion is not, I mean, it wasn't successful when it came out.
So obviously they should have gone crazier with the design.
I don't think the style had anything.
This angle is the, it's worst angle and you can see it on, oh, I apologize.
And you can see exactly what I'm talking about from here.
It makes a 90 degree and basically an L shape.
And if you look at any other car, any other supercar, mid-engine car, they designed to
avoid that.
One of my favorites is the Maserati Marac, pull up one of those, Maserati Marac or Bora.
Either one, Bora is easier to type.
Go to images.
I'll show you.
This is one of the most bizarre things you're going to see.
So the Bora, no, the Marac, you have to go to the Marac.
The Bora is like that, but it's harder to tell.
Marac.
M-E-R-A-K.
Oh, sure, sure.
I thought the wrong thing.
Okay.
So click on this, this picture.
So this car had the same problem, an L shape.
And you know what they did?
They just stuck.
The flying buttresses.
These buttresses have no purpose, but they knew that they didn't want to make the car
have an L shape and look like a Lotus Europa or a pickup truck.
And so it actually completely changes the profile of the car.
But if you really look at what they are, they're just total BS.
They're just stuck on there after the fact looking stupid.
And the Carrera GT probably should have had something like that.
But the design of the Carrera GT was very conservative at every level.
And that included the humps, which should have been larger.
And there's my Carrera GT take of the day.
What a take.
A CGT take I actually enjoyed.
A first for this podcast.
Formula one engine.
Cars and Bids is coming live to Sonoma Raceway for Velocity Invitational.
We've curated an incredible selection of top tier options that will end live in the
Velocity Invitational Paddock.
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Already confirmed, we have a 1964 Alfa Romeo Giulia TZ courtesy of the Peterson
Automotive Museum, an incredibly low mile midnight purple R34 GTR, and many other
insane car surprises.
And the event itself is three days of car culture overload.
Historic race cars running wheel to wheel, open paddock access to the rarest machines
on earth.
Modern hypercars, concourse classics, drift cars, all set in Sonoma wine country.
Cars and Bids fans get 10% off general admission tickets, including family and couples bundles.
You can head to ViaVelocity.com, click Get Tickets and use code this, T-H-I-S.
Come say hi.
See you in Sonoma.
Nick, tell us about your talk cars experience.
I also had a nice lovely trip with a Cars and Bids staffer.
Oh yeah?
Me and Ryan Lopez.
I got the E55 back from Atlanta.
The manual swap is done.
Yeah.
Ryan showed up at my house, actually woke me up.
I was worried he was going to be late and I overslept.
And we drove to Los Angeles for Wagonfest.
It's two people who, the two of them trying to meet a time, a scheduled time.
It's amazing.
Literally the blind leading the blind.
But Wagonfest is the biggest gathering of station wagons I'm told in the U.S.
Shout out to the Vons and the Peterson.
We had everything from a Ferrari 456 Venice to a ton of like CTS V wagons,
a lot of AMG wagons, B5 S4, like really RS4 rather, really cool stuff.
And then the Peterson was open to all the attendees and saw the Fast and the Furious exhibit.
Like it was just really, really fun.
And like Ryan, I've never gotten to spend a lot of time with him.
We started out on the wrong foot because he guessed my age incorrectly by about 10 years.
I assume.
I was deeply offended.
Yeah.
Yes.
And then I realized he guessed you were 50, pushing 50 anyways.
And I was a little taken back.
I thought he was coming for my job as a fill in for the podcast.
Yeah.
But turns out he really liked you.
I love Ryan Lopez.
I've been telling people this forever because you meet Ryan Lopez and your initial impression
is, oh my God, this person's insane.
These guys hired this person.
But then you spend time with him and you're like, thank God there's Ryan Lopez in my life.
And Ryan was the hero of the day.
So drive up to LA, made great time.
I said, check out how fast it can go.
We had a little pull.
And then I got a check engine light, misfire, limp mode.
And Ryan fixes it with his bare hands.
No tools.
What was it?
It was a fuel sending issue.
Ryan Lopez went in there.
He fully diagnosed.
He replaced the fuel system actually right there on the side of the road.
It was a skunk work project.
Jim Farley was not invited.
It was not allowed.
Yes.
It was at a strip mall in Onington Beach.
That's probably true.
Yeah.
We fixed it.
And yeah, that'll be live by the time or I don't know, I'll post something about it.
But yeah, no, the E55 is fantastic.
We've been joking internally in our chat group here that the third row wagon, which I've
discovered, but apparently you guys already have is a game changer.
My daughter, both of my kids now only went to ride around in the backseat of the wagon.
I'm going to tell you something about Nick.
Nick has decided to buy all the cars I own.
This is an interesting thing that's happened here.
We're going to just air this publicly.
We're going to go with this again.
Nick has come in.
We're going to air this publicly.
The thing I like about it is because it was on this podcast that he said that I'm not
going to buy any more BS cars.
And he hasn't.
And then in the months after that, he's decided to buy all of my cars.
And so my presumption is that he's next going to buy a 993 twin turbo.
He'll buy a 4S.
Yeah.
He buys like a worse, but newer version.
He's like what he does.
Something a little off.
Yeah.
He's like a 964 turbo.
Can you imagine?
I will get the 996 turbo because that's the value play.
Tip.
Yeah.
Non-tip.
By the way, if you like Nick, like Ryan a lot, he has a bunch of videos on the key
channel.
So go check that out.
That one with the earth roamers, my favorite one so far.
It was so good, including when Ryan has the reaction to almost scraping the car and like
some dicey off road moments, but it's really good entertainment.
The key YouTube channel.
Go do it.
Go see Ryan Lopez in action.
He's never going to be here on this podcast.
He's sitting over there.
We just talk about him, but you can see him in real life.
I saw life.
I listened to the podcast last week and did not watch it.
And Ryan was on it last week.
You apparently walked off at the very end.
I think you see Ryan saying goodbye to people.
I walked off because Felipe wouldn't stop promoting stuff.
At the end, I was like, as a joke, I was like, you want to promote anything else?
It was like, actually two things.
First off, I was like, Christ, jeez, believe us.
I was just promoting Ryan.
Okay.
I want to move on to the, what else you got?
Can I say one thing?
Is it going to be a promotion for something?
No.
But although first I want to know, you have the word clarity and I hope you're talking
about a Honda.
Do you want to do that?
I do because I got to know what it is.
All right.
I got a sad, very sad story for you.
Sean knows what it is.
I got a very sad story for you.
This week, our editor, our video editor and helper to Sean during the podcast.
This is not about a Honda clarity.
Was hit.
He was driving his Kia Telluride.
Oh no.
And he was hit by a car changing lanes and that car was a Honda clarity.
What?
Pull up a picture of a Honda clarity.
I don't feel like the same.
And I thought to myself, no, pull it up.
This is part of the point.
I thought to myself, you know, when you're in an accident, your first response is stop,
pull over, like make sure that nothing else worse happens.
Yeah, put this picture right.
Yeah, yeah.
But if you're in an accident with a Honda clarity, I was thinking that that's the one time when
you should try to increase the damage because you really want one lesson.
You're like doing that.
You really like look at it, right?
It's really a bad situation.
It was unfortunate from day one.
And this was Nick's chance to destroy one to get one more off the road.
First of all, you know that any damage to the side is totally in that car.
And you can't assume they don't make parts.
I can't.
They broke the mold.
They're just like we're ashamed.
I click on this one.
I can't believe that this car ever came out looking like this.
I mean, do you remember that cross tour though?
That was even worse.
No, it was not worse than covering the rear wheel on.
Dude, I don't know.
I don't know if you see it.
Fuel economy or hydrogen economy.
It's funny because Honda has been trying to like beat the Prius since the Prius came out
and they've come up with all this crazy stuff.
Well, fuel cell, the Mirai also is.
Well, but this wasn't a fuel cell.
It was a plug-in hybrid.
There were fuel cell clarities, but not 99.9% of them, including the one that hit him,
was just a plug-in hybrid.
I assumed it was the fuel.
I was going to make a joke about if he was got thirsty while waiting for the police.
Oh, he could just drink.
Drink for the tilbac.
Go back to the overhang picture.
I mean, this is really one of the bad cars.
Pull up a cross tour.
No, we're good.
We're going to not go down this road.
It is worse.
Then the covered rear wheel arch.
Look at the rear of the cross tour.
It's not a bad looking car.
It's also probably the best Honda.
Anyway, I felt bad for next to everybody.
I especially felt bad for the Honda clarity person who now has to try to get this thing fixed.
And I'm sure all they were thinking was, this is my chance.
I can finally get out of this thing.
The Honda cross tours.
It's not worse at all.
In fact, this is what every EV.
No, go from the back view.
The front view is fine because it's just like a lift at a quarter.
This is what every EV looks like now.
This is what a Model Y looks like today.
There is no difference between this and a Q5 Sportback or an e-tron Sport.
No disagreement.
Four is actually worse.
There's one in my very progressive neighborhood that I walk by all of the time.
And I think I can't believe I have to live with this person.
It is funny because he complains and people complain, but that is what all EVs now look like.
I do want to say one thing.
I am going to Italy for a couple of weeks in June, which I'm really excited about.
We're going all around.
We're going south for the first time in years.
It's going to be exciting.
There are no good like rental cars in Europe have gone worse because all of them now are cars that I would like as a daily driver.
I guess like a hybrid or an EV or what?
They're not interesting.
Small SUV.
I purposely rent like the smaller hatchbacks because I want a manual transmission.
I refuse to drive in Italy without a manual transmission.
I have refused cars and made them give me a manual transmission car because I am who I am.
But there's so few and they're not great anymore.
You see that every car was that.
Turro doesn't exist in Italy.
No.
It doesn't exist in France.
It's in France.
And there's good stuff on Turro in France, like legit good stuff, but they're not in Italy.
You can rent a Miata, but it's like five X the price of everything else.
That's not worth it.
It doesn't have anything cool at insane prices.
Now, Pensa Avis last time I was there, they offered me a Giulia, which I'm sure was a one liter automatic 38 horsepower.
I don't do such things.
I turned it down and took a C Max instead.
Good car.
They're both bad.
I mean, the Giulia is good, but the one that they would have given me, which would have had hubcaps.
I will have an Opel Astra or equivalents or something.
Oh, what a shame.
Last time I had a Peugeot 208, which has a small steering wheel.
Yeah.
It was great.
Exceptional good car.
You should go for Volkswagen up or similar.
Too small.
Also, they don't make that up anymore.
Too small in what?
What?
They don't make that up anymore.
Too small in what?
I've got used to some amount of comfort for the...
Oh, my God.
We do a thousand mile.
Wow.
We literally do a thousand miles in a week.
Lifestyle creep.
You're watching lifestyle creep.
I went up to the Polo class.
This is bad behavior.
I said after earlier, but quite disappointed.
But if anybody knows of better options, let me know.
We don't.
Yeah, I know.
I don't mean you.
I think you should buy something that we want to buy anyways.
I've considered that, but we've learned that it is doable, haven't we?
I don't know.
We looked into this for you.
In Italy, to purchase a car, you need to be an Italian.
You need to have a time.
But you can buy one.
There's some paperwork you can do to drive a car there if you're not.
We looked into this.
Oh, wow.
We're not doing it again.
We're not doing it again.
I got asked about, you know what?
This is the thing about these cars, these bad European cars that Americans idolize.
It'd be like Europeans idolizing a Ford Taurus.
And I got interviewed, you know, my old A-Class.
My old A-Class got hit on the street six months ago and totaled.
Thank God.
And it's at co-part now.
The buyer of your old A-Class, the prior owner then bought your A2.
Well, it's a little complicated because, and that's part of the story.
The A-Class that I imported was so bad that I sold it.
I hated it.
I sold to a guy in Texas who hated it.
He sold it to a guy in Texas who hated it.
And then he sold it to a guy in California.
And that car had four owners in a year because everybody got into it thinking,
this will be cool.
And then it turned out to be utter ass.
And finally it got hit and got destroyed.
And so it's at co-part.
And Matt Hardigree called me, he works for the Autopian.
And he said, hey, you're old A-Class at co-part.
Do an article.
Do you want to say anything about it?
And I said, quote me, that car got what it deserved.
And that's the problem with the Evan team.
We do this.
And it's like, oh, it's so cool.
And then the car comes here and one month into the multiply, you were like, you know.
Yeah.
I suspect Tony Airlines might be ready to move on by the time I ship him his replacement hubcap.
Did he say that?
No, I just suspect because you've had it.
It's implied by the length of his ownership.
The fact that he has one at all.
If we got a Velsitis, it'd be different because I think that would give me some luxury.
It is more comfortable for sure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I should look into that.
I could buy a car in it.
Do it.
I won't, obviously, but I could.
What you're hoping is that some viewers like, hey, I'll give you a car for a month.
No, I don't want any kind of responsibility.
So I actually will just rent the car from whichever rental car company was cheapest when I booked it months ago.
If you don't want any kind of responsibility, you should do what I do and get the full insurance.
I've never been in any kind of motor vehicle altercation.
Yeah.
But if you get the full insurance, you will be.
That's the thing.
I would prefer to avoid that.
No, no.
This is one of the things I do.
Listen, I'm not wealthy to the point where I can just do whatever I want.
But I have enough money now where I can do stuff like buy the full insurance.
And when I do that,
Good for you.
I just treat it like a bumper car.
I'm dead serious.
You see a clarity?
You just.
I now, whenever I go to Europe now, I get full insurance and I, if it scrapes on something,
it scrapes on something, but they sold me the insurance.
Naturally, by virtue of who I am, I just will not scrape it on something.
That's how I felt for a long time, too.
Yeah.
And then this last time I was in Italy and I had this van and I had full insurance and
I was parking in a tight spot.
And there was, for some reason, a giant, a row of giant cement pillars next to the parking
spots, all of which had paint transfer.
And I just.
And then you'd think that you'd try to get out of there and park somewhere else.
No.
I went.
And then we were in the spot.
That poor B series Mercedes.
Oh, I can't do that to a car.
Well, enjoy Italy.
Thank you.
I will.
I'm excited.
There will be a couple of weeks that I'm not on this podcast.
Oh my God.
I'm sad about that.
Who's going to be instead?
Ryan Lopez and I are going to arm wrestle.
What time is this podcast?
You could do this podcast early evening.
It's true.
And then you could update us on the rental car thing.
Excellent plan.
Not a shot.
What about, did they not have little manual SUVs anymore?
There's a chance that that's what I get.
I could get a renegade with a manual.
Yeah.
That exists, but that would be a bad decision because it's a bad product.
Yeah.
Right.
I agree.
And so last year, the first car that I got was an Opel Grand Land.
Yeah.
Which is like a mid-sized SUV.
Yeah.
It had a manual and a diesel and it had a little bit of an oil leak issue.
So you gave it back?
I gave it back and I got a picture of it.
I would never have done that.
I would have just bought some oil.
You know what your problem is?
I also really didn't want the Opel Grand Land.
We showed up at an Airbnb and the guy legitimately yelled at me about why did I bring that big
of a car to his town.
And I decided that that wasn't something I was interested in doing.
And then you spoke to him in Italian and tried to explain yourself.
The last hot car segment thing I want to discuss is my search for an S210 E55.
Folks.
That's not what you have written down, buddy.
Sean, S-E-A-N at carsandbids.com.
S-E-A-N at carsandbids.com.
I want a 2000 or 2001 E55 wagon silver post-face lift.
I didn't even care if it was a third row anymore.
I don't care.
It doesn't matter to me.
That's what I want.
Thanks, Nick.
One of them came up on Facebook Marketplace in the Northwest.
I know about that car.
I declined to purchase it.
I'm not going to talk bad about it, but I would say that if you were interested in a
car that you maybe wouldn't want that one either.
But nonetheless, I'm still looking.
If you have one of these, find it.
Additionally, I am looking for a Supra.
I want a Mark IV red Mark IV turbo manual.
I'm ready to buy today.
S-E-A-N at carsandbids.com.
Don't send automatics.
We know about the automatics.
If the car is listed on the internet, assume that I've seen it.
Left hand drive.
Send me, yeah, I want LHD.
I want a USDM Supra Turbo.
Are you actually ready to do this?
Tomorrow.
What about a month from now?
Yeah, a month from now.
Two months from now.
Tomorrow.
I'm doing it.
Mark IV Super Turbo Renaissance red stick, not modified.
That car may not exist.
Not only gets narrower every time you talk.
Eventually, I'm going to have to compromise on color.
And I know I'm going to have to do that.
And mods.
Mods are reversible.
A lot of them anyway.
You'd accept light mods.
Actually, light.
I need to pass small.
Yeah.
And that E55.
That's what I'm looking for.
S-E-A-N at carsandbids.com.
Send Sean an email if you have those things.
Sean is paying top dollar.
You know what?
I'm going to just put it out there.
I'm going to create the alias right after this.
You can also email Sean with the other spelling at carsandbids.com.
We'll make sure it reaches him.
Yeah, of course.
We'll make sure it reaches him.
Any spelling of Sean at carsandbids.com.
Any realistic spelling that I'm going to think about in the next minute.
S-H-A-W-N.
Yeah, that's the only one.
S-H-A-U-N.
No.
I'm excited for you to follow in my footsteps.
Do Shane also.
On an E55 line.
That's true, Nick.
I'll be following your first steps.
Of course, I had two AMG wagons before you were,
while you were still MoneyShifting your TTRS.
Back when you were in the MoneyShifting days.
Yeah, you had a bad color E63 automatic.
That is true.
And then I had a good color E63 automatic.
Did you?
Yeah, I had a white one when I first moved here.
You knew me when I owned this car.
You think that's a good color?
Yeah, it was nice.
Okay, it's time to move on to the Marker Report.
Is the Marker Report brought to you by Carsandbids?
Yeah.
The Marker Report is brought to you by Nick's Merchline.
Yeah.
$22.58.
Really?
That's what that cost?
That's it.
Can you believe it?
That's with no profit margin?
Look, Whistlin' Diesel's charging like 50 bucks a shirt.
Can I get clarity?
That's what I, as a consumer, would pay?
Or that's what your break even is?
No, I make like $11.27 or whatever happens.
Wow.
Okay, in other words, the shirt will last three laundry cycles.
No, people.
Gilden makes it.
That feels right.
But it's a poly blend.
It's $7 per wear because after the third wear,
the shirt has destroyed itself.
You should watch this one already.
Or you can have a lifetime of happiness.
Just go to Carsandbids.com.
Or go to Carsandbids.com and get good merchandise.
Wait a minute.
Yeah, we're not trying to sell his.
We have merchandise.
I do.
My next job is going to be Doug DeMiro copies all of my cars.
Carsandbids.com.
So niche.
Where's our merchandise?
Merch.cardandbids.com.
I don't know how to get to it.
Merch.cardandbids.com.
For God's sake, I bet you can figure it out.
Merch.cardandbids.com.
I wanted 2001 e-mails on.
E-mails on with the instructions.
It's short with your shirt size.
All right.
It's like the old mail-in things you need to write down
hand-write like in the boxes.
The market report is brought to you by Carsandbids.com.
Carsandbids.com.
The web app or the mobile app.
Doug, what you got for us?
Okay.
I want to talk about pace cars.
Can you pull it up please?
You saw this yesterday?
I didn't.
All right.
We didn't sell or did sell.
I don't know.
But we had a Camaro pace car.
Folks, my guilty pleasure, like Nick's guilty pleasure is
watching Newsmax after his wife goes to bed.
My guilty pleasure.
I don't even know what that is.
San Diego Company.
He's local.
Yeah, exactly.
Local to North Carolina.
I don't.
My guilty pleasure is pace cars.
I love the indie pace car versions of all the cars.
To be clear, these were not cars that were literally pace cars.
The actual pace car needs to be preserved somewhere.
Yeah.
That fellow has a museum to him.
The fellow, Roger, what's his name?
You know, the Penske.
Yeah.
He's got all the, every time he won Indy, he's got the pace car
and the real car.
I don't want any part of that.
I want the BS version, the replica.
Yep.
This was, somebody, first off, bid to 9,100 bucks.
This is 900 bucks.
60,000 miles.
This is cool.
That's the other thing.
Some dude got the pleasure of driving this 60,000.
How cool would it be to drive around a pace car for 60,000 miles?
Yeah.
I want a fourth gen Camaro Firebird soap.
It would be so cool.
Anyway, what I'm at point is, pace cars are cool, even if you
don't think they are, and they are cheap.
They are.
Because they're always the worst version of that GM product.
No.
It's a Z28.
There were a lot of GM products.
With an automatic.
Very questionable.
You're missing the point.
Click on the seats.
Once you see this, look at the rest of it.
No, no, no.
Go back.
Go to the interior.
Dude.
Go to the interior.
Oh, wow.
I forgot about that.
Yeah.
All right.
Point taken.
I messed with that.
I grant you that.
Wait, go to the back seats.
The rest of them, we apparently struggle to sell pace cars.
Yeah.
No.
Well, it's hard to pay a premium for a car that looks like
that.
Everyone struggles to sell pace cars because they're very
limited, and they have this sort of special pizzazz around
them.
But ultimately, they are not that desirable, and they're
always really easy to find because they're kind of always
for sale because they were saved.
And they're well preserved, which is nice.
They're all well preserved.
Yeah.
Like if they made 500, all 500 are still exist and are like
socked away.
They're not valuable.
And yes, they were 90s cars mostly.
They're not only GM.
So here's an interesting fact to it.
Mostly.
Back in the day, the Indy 500 pace car, there used to be
like a fight between who would actually pay.
Was it Chrysler?
Would it be Ford?
Would it be GM?
And at some point that ended, and now GM has paced for
decades, and it's a stupid.
But there used to be a fight.
John Mellencamp's wife drove an Olds Milliel Bravada as an
Indy pace car in like 2002.
Needless to say, they didn't make a pace car edition of that.
Stabilitrack?
Stabilitrack.
Pretty cool actually.
Look at those seats.
9,100 bucks.
Now it didn't sell.
But that's what it was worth.
The O2, you said?
The final gen Bravada.
I prefer the up to 2000.
No, no.
No one else does.
No, no, not like as a car, but.
Pull up Bravadas.
No.
Nick, you know this car?
We actually hosted it.
And we had a gemmy of that.
I reviewed a really clean one.
You reviewed a, I do remember that.
Prior to that point, you reviewed a thousand.
I reviewed both of those.
I reviewed both of those cars.
Seriously.
I love this Bravada.
Not a good car.
The next gen was the one.
I was like the trailblazer gen.
But I'll tell you something.
A 4.3 V6, which is an engine I made fun of constantly when I was growing up, because
it had 190 horse out of 4.3 liters.
Over time, when your mindset shifts and reliability and longevity and durability become your interest,
the 4.3 liter V6 you start to really get into.
Yep.
Sounds like a Toyota owner.
Dude, that pace car for 9,100 bucks.
And the fact that somebody got to drive at 60,000 miles.
That dude was just daily in a V8 Camaro Pace car.
Filippo, that grand sport.
I know.
It looks so good.
Got a bed.
I want that car so bad.
I like my 90s GM.
Yep.
Who doesn't?
Like, deep down.
Sold for 23.
But that is 23.
The AMGT coupe was also on my list of like, man, every week those get more attractive.
I was not interested in that grand sport.
I think it was in Florida.
By the way, I think we have another grand sport that's live by the time you watch this.
Ooh.
Is it a nice coupe?
The blue, it is so cool.
I think I bought an equivalently nice coupe to this.
This car is so...
Legitimate question.
Is that the only car to pull up black wheels well?
If you think you pulled it off well, maybe.
I do.
It is part of the look.
Project 8.
Yeah.
Maybe.
It's the only car I've ever considered.
Project 8 could have any wheels when I still think it's cool.
Put Ronald Tandy Bears on it and I'm still into it.
Well, that's cool on anything.
Yeah, totally.
Paced cars are the bargain of the century.
Can I talk about C6s?
Of course.
Fully blown.
I was talking about Corvettes.
We are in there.
But, alright.
The other day, we sold this, which must be the single nicest C6-Z06 left.
It's in a color, has 8,500 miles.
Super late year.
Like, California owned pretty much the only modification was something minor.
Yep.
Sure.
Like LED light bulbs and fog lights to that.
And they pulled a fuse.
60 grand.
Yeah.
That is both a lot for a C6.
Yeah.
But such a bargain for a 7-liter V8, the nicest one of these.
Yeah.
I mean, it depends what you're looking for.
Like, I presume this is going to go to someone who's also going to use it primarily as a
show car like this owner must have.
That's a deal.
There are better C6-Z06 deals.
No, but the fact that the highest echelon.
Yeah.
Obviously, there's also like no mile cars.
It's a 30 to 60 car.
But like, that feels like a bargain for the top Corvette.
Here's a question for you.
For this same money, you could get a C8.
Yeah, I'd rather have a C6.
Z06.
I'd rather have a C8.
Can I, fine, I'll talk about C8s.
C8s are getting down to the, like, have retained their value, but are dropping.
Yeah.
Not spikers.
I did notice.
All right.
This is Z06 convertible.
Yeah.
I'd rather have a C8.
130.
It's a lot of money.
Yep.
Do you know what sticker was on this?
Z06 convertible, 3LZ, a lot of options.
195.
Yeah.
Something high.
182.
It's up there.
So C8s in general, we've said they're holding their value pretty well because they have
not dropped past high 50.
Yeah.
I'm like a 70 sticker for a thing.
The expensive ones are falling.
But the expensive ones are 50 grade off.
Z06, I think especially, because Z01 came out pretty quick after.
Yeah.
My buddy Brett, like, made an offer at a dealer on a new Z06 of like 10 under thinking that
they would be like, eh, eh.
So on the spot, we're like, yep.
Nope.
Let's do it.
Let's do the paperwork.
He was like, oh my God.
Brett, by the way, ended up with an M-Coupe.
An M-Coupe.
But he still talks about how he wants a Z06.
Don't we all?
They're amazing cars, but it's still big money.
I mean, I think that the story, the really desirable story with the C8 is value.
And so at 180, it's a tough car.
It starts to get to be a tough car at that point.
It's interesting how much the top end, like buy a base C8.
If you want to retain value, buy a base C8.
Yeah.
It turns out to be the answer.
For once being cheap pays off.
Hell yeah.
And honestly, a base C8 is such a thrill that it's like totally fine.
I thought that same way the C5, the base is plenty fun.
We'd all prefer the Z06.
Especially for 11.
For the majority of drivers, it has more power than you're going to know what to do with.
Absolutely.
On that subject, I want to talk about the Caprice.
Did you see this Caprice?
No.
We sold the Caprice PPV for more money than I was expecting.
Wow, 16?
But this is the dream Caprice PPV.
You know about this car?
Not this one.
I know Caprices in general.
This car was Australian built and it was only sold to government fleets.
Or fleets in general.
But this is a good one because a lot of them were converted into marked police cars and then used and then run over curbs.
This was a detective model.
This is the one.
So it doesn't have holes in it for light bars and things like that.
It still has hubcaps.
Didn't have many miles on it.
And you know what I realized?
That is that a Caprice PPV is kind of a backdoor way into owning like a Corvette or a Camaro sedan.
It's a six liter V8 with 400 horsepower.
That's a C6.
Yep.
And I mean, yeah.
But for 16 grand and it's four doors, it's not nice like the interior was government fleet.
Understatement.
But it's 16 grand and it's still a big old V8.
And this one wasn't really used much.
60,000 miles is a 15 year old car.
I should say it is not actually the V8 from the C6 Corvette.
It's a different motor.
It's a different motor entirely.
It has notably less power.
But it is a cool car.
What do you mean notably less power?
Go down.
How much power did this have?
350.
350.
What at the M384 pound feet?
I thought a base C6 had 400.
Yeah.
360 to 400.
15%.
The Giulia Quadrifoglio had 505 horse when the M3 had 425.
436.
Oh, this is a late one.
It is a late one.
Late one.
I mean, all of that is true, but you can get an S55 that meets all of that criteria.
AMG.
It's way nicer inside for half the price.
A grand buys you a nice S55 AMG.
Yeah, but Nick, that's for the point.
And you don't have a fleet sail interior.
You have more power.
You got to ask that.
It checks all the boxes.
For four grand less.
Do you not buy this?
Look at that.
It doesn't even have headlights.
Someone control X them and forgot the control V.
But like, that's the thing.
Like the Caprice is going to be relatively affordable to own.
Do you understand kind of where I'm headed with this?
TCO.
TCO is what I'm saying.
Yeah.
I know that this doesn't matter.
Guy, money shifts at TT.
Rebuilds a motor.
Doesn't care.
You got four grand left over for maintenance.
That's all you'll need.
That's all you'll need.
That's all you'll need.
This is also the grand for headlights right there.
The gray looks good.
Yeah.
It's a nice looking car.
This is a backdoor way into owning a nice G8 or a nice C6 Corvette or a C2.
A CTSV without making a big splash.
There's one other market report we got to talk about which is...
Oh, mine.
Wow.
SLS.
You guys have a very nice one that is not sold yet.
And I think that's the nicest one.
These cars still blow my mind because it came after the SLR and is arguably better in a
lot of ways.
They are much more affordable.
The roadsters in particular are like a significant discount over the fixed roof.
They're such a bargain.
But the roadsters aren't.
But they're just such a cool car.
And I think it blows people away in terms of how special it is.
I mean, to buy that for 83 or to buy a coupe for mid-100s.
Specialness for 83 is high.
For the roadster, I disagree.
Base 911s that have nothing interesting about them.
An AMG GT is faster than this car, more agile than this car.
This is a beautiful car.
Look at this.
That feels special.
AMG GT is beautiful and feels special.
You're going to win your small town...
Oh, come on.
They're going to win your small town concor in this.
And in AMG GT, they're going to think you're another dentist.
I totally disagree.
I think 99.99999% of people seeing those two cars driving on the road will think they
are exactly the same car.
I will think that's less is cooler.
And the AMG GT is faster and cheaper.
The coupe is a different story.
If you go back to the coupe that we're selling right now...
The doors.
That is cool.
Like the doors...
A lot of cars have doors that open like that, like up.
No cars have true gold wings, except for this and the gold wing.
And look at that.
I mean, maybe the photos are just really good.
But...
And funny enough, this guy said that he bought it and just liked his Porsche better, basically.
But look at that.
I would have that over a Porsche of the same price point every day of the week without thinking
twice.
It is not a car for Porsche people.
It is actually a surprisingly precise driving experience.
But it isn't...
It's definitely more of a V8 muscle car.
You can't get your stitching.
You can't get...
It's like...
It's not...
It doesn't have like the Porsche...
It's like a muscle car vibe.
Crowd too.
Yeah.
It's more of a muscle car vibe and it's more of like a, you know, kind of super car, maybe
even a bit more of a look at...
Which for 83 for a cab is...
I get your point, right?
It doesn't have the doors.
The doors have double.
But it looks better than AMG GT.
I think the AMG GT looks great.
This looks more classic.
Maybe you.
I think that...
The long hood...
Virtually everybody else...
The AMG GT has a long hood too.
This is longer.
Let's get a tape measure.
Let's get a bolt.
You see an SLS or you're like...
An SLS.
When I see an SLS coupe, I do say that, yeah.
No, not for a cab.
Roadster.
I'm like...
AMG GT is better than everyone.
I don't know.
I'm a Roadster fan personally.
I do love to be clear.
I've been talking about how great the AMG GT is constantly.
Because it is.
Exceptional.
This one is really cool.
Did you see this?
We got this four door on the side right now, but it has like not annoying wheels.
So many of the four doors, the wheels are like fifties and they're just like in your face.
Like I'm gonna...
Yeah.
Like it's...
I like these wheels.
But it's a lot.
This car is like the subtle.
And all the other subtle four doors are forty threes or fifty threes.
And this is a 63 but with the subtle wheels.
I feel like it looks like Filippo spectate.
This is the kind of car that a person of your interest level in things wouldn't want.
What is that supposed to mean?
Like, you know, like a showy fella who wants to maybe loudly and proudly talk about some of his political affiliations.
Maybe he wouldn't want one of these.
But a nice Swiss gentleman who wants to be under the radar, but still enjoys 600 horsepower.
That's what he does.
I'm definitely not a nice Swiss gentleman.
Have we ever auctioned a convertible in GT?
There's this, right?
Yeah.
Tons.
Many.
Look.
That is a pretty good car.
I thought it was better looking.
But it looks very similar.
Also cheap.
That's the thing.
These are a lot cheaper than SLS roads.
Somehow.
And they're faster and newer.
And I don't necessarily see a huge benefit to the SLS roadster.
This is a great motor.
Anybody who says that they want any motor more than the twin turbo AMG V8, it has never driven a twin turbo AMG V8.
I agree with that.
We have to move on to the questions.
The questions, of course, are brought to you by Nix Merch Line.
Amazing.
I'm going to get like two sales today.
For $22.88, you two can have this lovely shirt.
Do I get a kickback for just dealing around this?
I can send you a promotion.
A promo if you are willing to wear it.
No, they're brought to you by Ryan Lopez's mechanic skills.
Ryan Lopez, if you floor it and three warning lights come on while you're driving on a 4-0-1.
Ryan knows what to do.
Ryan Lopez will fix it on the side of the road.
He's been there.
Pure muscle.
He's been there.
It's very true.
Okay.
There's a lot of questions this week.
Remember, you too can ask questions.
Go to carsandbids.com.
Click on the community tab.
Yep.
And then there's a space that says podcast questions and ask it.
Folks, I was getting questions up until like five minutes ago.
If you're sitting here watching this thinking, oh, it's too late.
It is not too late.
Ask us questions.
And if you have a good red manual super turbo or a W210 S210 E55 wagon, send it to Sean.
S-E-A-N at carsandbids.com.
Or S-H-A-W at who cares?
Or S-H-A-U-N.
We're even going to do Shane.
Do that Ranger.
S-H-A-N-E.
Shane at carsandbids.com.
Pull up that Ranger.
Yeah.
Flatbed Ranger.
Stakeside.
I want that.
That is so cool.
I don't know what I'd do with it.
Man, you need it.
That is worth every penny of 600 bucks.
This is like the A-Class though.
Like, yeah, I totally agree.
For sure.
Like we go to the interior.
No, I would start a landscape in business.
I remember this interior, I can tell you everything.
I've been in so many of these and I just know that like six weeks into it, you're like,
well, back in the plastic.
Yep.
Yep.
No, I mean the Ford Explorer is the exact same dash.
And a lot of Fords, honestly.
A lot of Ford trucks.
Ben seat in the front.
Nice.
And then you have a long throw.
Front bench foot with a manual.
Yeah.
Don't put your foot there.
One time I was on a small plane and they sat me in the front and I had no leg room.
And I was sitting there like this and my knee over like it was an hour flight and my knee
over time like started to like move into a control and I just barely tapped it.
The pilot was like, don't touch that.
I was like, oh my God.
I could barely contort into the space.
That could be you sitting right next to me, arm around each other in our Ranger steak
side.
Wow.
Ranger danger, baby.
Oh, wow.
Felipe was going through the cars.
Okay.
Yep.
First question from JB86.
First question.
The Porsche Museum had a first gen, has a first gen Cayenne convertible prototype.
You ever seen a picture of this?
Mm-hmm.
Pull it up.
The one that looks like kind of a speedster.
Yeah.
I'm a bigger fan of the Newport convertible engineering version.
But yeah, that's so cool.
And Porsche made this.
I don't know.
Uh-oh.
We're in AI mode.
We're in AI mode.
And Porsche made this wood dugabout.
The thing I think is cool, pull up that picture.
The thing I think is cool that people don't realize because the pictures that they've shown
are from the side.
It does look like this because it was a design study.
They were trying to design two different rear ends.
And so they put them both on the car.
So the real one, this is a rendering, but the real one looks like that.
But they only ever show side photos because they don't want anybody to see it.
It's super cool.
So would Doug have bought that instead of the gen convertible?
No.
Next question.
Would you have bought it?
For sure.
You'd buy a two-door Cayenne convertible.
I would buy any Cayenne convertible.
Convertible SUVs are pinnacle.
One day you'll learn that.
Wait a second.
One day you should get one.
Wait a second.
You can talk about it.
You'd buy any Cayenne convertible?
So if one were to come up on cars and bids, would you buy it?
Trust me.
I've seen it.
I've heard of it.
I would have bought it had I acted on Facebook Marketplace Quicker.
Yeah, you should have.
I still think that is a very cool car.
You should have regrets.
And I kind of want to put wood paneling on my L405 just to pay tribute to it.
Next question from SebH9.
Hello, Doug.
Are there any more ideas on the pipeline for concept car reviews?
And if so, can we get small spoilers?
Maybe the Cadillac El Mirage.
I did actually, so I reviewed a concept car six months ago in Detroit.
It was a Cadillac, the Cadillac Voyage, the 80s concept car.
So I reviewed this Cadillac Voyage up in Detroit and I learned something on this shoot, which
is concept cars, though they look like cars.
They are not cars.
They are display pieces.
And I've always known this, but this really drove it home when the guy was like, listen,
he's like, we can only drive around the GM campus.
We can't go on the street and we can't go more than 12 miles an hour and you really
don't want to take any bumps.
So if you get to a bump, you got to go really, really, really, really slow.
And one time I got up to a bump and I went really, really slow and he said, that was too fast.
And so concept cars are rather difficult vehicles to review.
However, this is a spoiler.
Last week at the Peterson Museum, I reviewed a movie car, which honestly is basically a concept car.
Pull up the Jaguar that I reviewed.
Do you know what it is?
I don't know what it's called now.
XKR from Die Another Day.
Love this car.
This is one of my all time favorite movie cars.
I've got this die cast somewhere.
And there it is right there.
That's literally the car at the Peterson Museum.
It's like your grandpappy's Jag.
Yep.
Accept.
The gun.
It has a gun.
It's also one of their main difference from your grandpappy's Jag.
It's on a Ford Explorer chassis and it has four wheel drive.
Really?
And a Windsor 302.
Wow.
I went through a lot of effort.
Anyway, the video is coming and it's going to be quite a video.
Let me just tell you.
You reviewed a couple other things.
Yeah, but this was the highlight.
How cool.
They made eight and a couple of them were on Explorer Chases, including this one.
And it's quite something.
That is way more than I expected.
Driving this around LA.
I assume this was just a body kit on a Jag.
No.
It's real.
Because it had to like slide around and like really do stuff.
I guess.
And I guess in order to modify it to get the speeds they wanted or the capabilities they wanted,
it had to, I think four wheel drive was essential.
Yeah.
Because if you ever driven on ice, rear wheel drive is like very difficult to control anyway.
And so once they were doing that.
Did it look weird in person?
I mean, it looks fairly normal.
The only way you can tell the rear offset is wrong.
The rear wheel is out further than it should.
But the other way you can tell is the moment you start it.
It goes, you know how the Jag, you start up.
You know, this car, it goes like this.
So I drove around LA.
No exhaust, no muffler with a big old Ford V8 and medium sized Ford V8.
I was anxious about the police.
So I didn't drive it for long, but it was an unbelievable experience.
Also, when they gave me the keys, which was a set of house keys, they said,
it's only got a three gallon tank.
So don't go far.
And I said, all right.
And then I started it and it made that noise.
And I was thinking, well, that was about a half a gallon right there.
Were you worried the police would have concerns about the gun on the back?
Yeah, we were concerned about the gun.
But I was especially concerned about the exhaust note attracting attention to the gun.
People are like, what is that?
Oh, it's a car driving around with a gun.
We have some problems.
But I got it right back to the museum.
Shout out to the Peterson.
Unbelievable experience.
Anyway, I always wanted this movie car and I don't anymore.
But that was understandable.
Every time I'm around a concept car, a movie car that I've always wanted,
I come away thinking I don't want to even see this.
What about the Jurassic Park ML 320?
Yeah.
You were there, right?
I was there, but I wonder if it...
We wanted that.
I wonder if it would drive.
You know what I mean?
What motor does that have?
What other stuff did they do to that?
It certainly had some visibility impairment.
This is our favorite movie car.
I'm familiar.
This is Jurassic Park 2, which actually is set partially in San Diego.
The T-Rex gets loose here in San Diego and kills all sorts of stuff.
We're pretty close to the zoo.
Was it at the zoo?
No.
The T-Rex, what happened was they were bringing the dinosaur into the port of San Diego.
You never seen the movie?
No.
It's one of the great scenes.
You remember this?
The dinosaur, they lose contact with the ship.
Sure.
What happened?
The dinosaur is on the ship.
They've got the T-Rex.
He's sedated inside the ship.
They're like, oh, the ship.
It's coming.
It's coming.
They see it on the radar screen.
And then they look up and the ship is coming full speed into the port because it didn't
slow down because the T-Rex ate everybody on board.
And then the ship crashes into the port and then the T-Rex gets loose and starts terrorizing
San Diego.
And the ML320 by then was no longer part of the movie, but it was a great couple of scenes
that it was in.
Oh, I'm going to rewatch that.
It's a good film.
Next question from Foy Runa.
Dude Doug, are there any car YouTubers?
This is for all of us, especially you.
Car YouTubers that you haven't met but would like to meet, I would love to be a fly on
the wall for a Doug DeMiro and Scotty Kilmer conversation.
Sam.
I've got no interest in me and Scotty Kilmer.
Obviously my number one that I would like to meet is Whistlin.
Yeah.
Who do you want to meet?
I want to have a competition between me, Rich Rebuilds and Sam Crack on who can do the
most half-assed job at repairing a broken car.
You and Rich Rebuilds and Sam Crack.
But they're like good at this.
Yeah.
But like in a joking way, Rich Rebuilds is the all-time greatest automotive YouTuber.
I agree.
I agree.
You agree, right?
Yeah.
He just did an Audi S8 that I just like, I wanted to slow down time and just savor at
it.
There is absolutely the funniest person in the entire history of YouTube.
The joke is so good.
So good.
Yeah.
Wish I could be on that level, but I have to provide helpful advice.
Sean tells me I can't say things like that.
Not that I'm anywhere near as funny as Rich Rebuilds, the greatest automotive YouTuber.
So that's what you want to do.
Yeah.
I think that would be great.
I think it would be cool if you all started with roughly the same car and the same tools
and whatever, and you were given like six hours and you had whatever comes out of it
is what comes out of it.
It would be like Car Track, only the first person to escape Sam's farm wins.
Nice.
No one would win.
It would be a never-ending project and we would all just live on Sam's property the
And then Sam would kill them all and eat them.
But we would have the most shameless product integrations, no mankind to shove it full of
ass.
Is that what Sam does?
Sam, I admire Sam greatly, but let's just say Timu has approached both of us for some
heavy promo content.
Sam and I are the only two people in automotive YouTube saying yes.
Me because I got nothing to lose.
Sam, I'm not sure why.
He's got to pay for all this stuff.
I want to talk about Filippo and his car YouTubers.
I got nothing for you.
Come on.
There's nobody.
I watched not that much car YouTube.
I'm sorry everybody.
I have introduced you to so many wonderful people in our business over the years.
They're delightful.
You got nobody.
I mean, I've been a lot of delightful people.
You did have dinner with the folks from Throttle House and didn't invite me.
I'm still angry about that.
No, I had dinner with the straight pipes.
We didn't invite you.
Both happened.
I had breakfast with the folks from the Throttle House.
Right.
Brawl House also came to the office.
I have met them.
Okay.
I don't care.
You don't care?
They're great people.
You didn't care to meet these wonderful people?
No, they're delightful people.
So from a friendship perspective, I care.
From a celebrity perspective, I don't care.
A couple days ago, the Throttle House guys called me James.
They only speak to me through James.
Thomas and I...
Thomas, that is the smartest thing you've ever done.
You need an intermediary.
James is our intermediary.
I'm so jealous of Thomas.
He's like our differential.
We need an office, James.
We do need an office, James.
James texts me.
By the way, James only...
Here's another weird thing.
James only speaks to me through voice texts.
Oh, that's the worst.
How do you want doing that?
Please stop.
We're all begging you.
PSA.
So he texts me and he says, hey, we're doing a video.
I don't know.
I'm maybe blowing this up.
They probably shouldn't talk about this first.
Yeah, they probably should have talked about this.
He says, we're doing a video on the best car at each...
The best two-car garage at each price point.
And we've asked other car YouTubers to give their responses at various price points.
And we want to ask you to do the highest price point, the million-dollar price point.
You have to pick a two-car garage.
And I said, well, does it have to be a daily driver?
And he said, whatever you can think of.
And so I decided that I wanted to include a daily driver because he said,
whatever you can dream.
And in my dreams, my family's still there.
So I did an over-trail and a kum-tash.
But I'm curious what you think for a million bucks your dream two-car garage would be.
Bentley Dominator, which is what?
What price point are we putting on that?
The problem is, and they specifically said this, but the problem is...
Yeah, the Extant Oral.
They said that you have to have the price point has to be verifiable.
Okay.
That makes it trickier.
Yeah.
So I thought going the Dominator round.
Yeah, yeah.
LM002 for $400.
And then I got $600 left to play with.
And I would get the nicest Diablo I could buy with $600.
Well, what are you driving your children around in there?
The LM002.
That's fair.
Not frequently, though.
This is going to be a frequently broken-down garage.
Yeah.
Two-lambus.
Okay.
Thank you, Nick, for that.
I appreciate it.
I'm not even going to ask yours.
Thank you for not.
Appreciate it.
The best gift you ever gave us meeting automotive YouTubers is you will occasionally invite them
over and then invite all of your friends over and then ask them horribly uncomfortable
and deeply personal questions, like confronting Hoofy about his marriages in front of his
fiance at the time, which was one of the best dinners ever.
And I don't think Hoofy's ever forgiven you for that.
You know what?
They got married, I think, in part thanks to me.
Do you?
Or despite you?
I don't know.
Definitely despite.
For pushing them in that direction.
Is that your recollection of that?
Yeah.
That's not what happened.
I remember Hoofy leaving, like just bolting for the door.
Shout out to Hoofy and April, who we love.
It was great.
And yeah, there have been some interesting ones over the years.
Next question from Cavalieri.
Dear Doug, please tell us, what do you think people are using household style outlets for
in cars?
Blenders?
Hair dryers?
No.
We use it for charging laptops.
Yeah, pretty much it.
If you're on a long road trip, like I have worked and so you tether your phone and you plug
in your laptop and you can get stuff done while you're a passenger.
It's very useful.
You can get converters from the like cigarette style outlet, but it's really nice if you
don't need that.
Yeah.
And you can just plug it in.
And you also are pulling more power than the cigarette adapter does.
Right.
For anything real.
Yeah.
It's amazing.
Tandy, there's a reason that every minivan company has put in vacuum.
Sometimes you want to just vacuum out your car.
Life's easier.
The household outlets, there are so many benefits for it.
My camera equipment is another one.
My camera equipment is not necessarily you plug into a bolt to USBs.
I have the brick that plugs into an outlet.
Boom.
Just plug it in while I'm driving to a shoot.
It's very useful.
Also sometimes probably a blender.
Your dryer requires which power I suspect.
Sometimes you plug in a blade.
You ever blend while you drive?
No.
Not while you drive.
Unlike the Fiat 500L, you can't normally make espresso in your car.
Right.
He has never had a car with a power outlet.
Of course not.
Of course not.
I haven't even had one with USB-C.
You were looking down upon that earlier, but let me tell you what, that's a badge of
pride in my household.
Does this have a power outlet?
Yeah.
In the trunk.
Nice.
I prefer the power outlets be in the passenger area.
My E-Class station wagon has a power outlet.
Yes.
It's only a two-prong.
But it does.
That's okay.
That's going to be grounded.
Well, you can't plug in the laptop though.
It depends on which adapter you have.
It's okay.
I never thought about doing an adapter.
We'll talk about it separately.
It's all good.
But yeah, the E-Class in the second row has a two-prong.
Wow.
Yeah.
It's really nice.
It's really nice.
I'm not at that level of fancy.
Our three-row station wagons don't have that.
Yeah.
Don't need them.
Well, it'd be nice actually.
You know, by the way, I think my E-Class station wagon is faster than yours.
That is something we can test.
Let's go to Barona.
Well, let's see.
Barona's too short.
Well, actually, you know, Barona would probably be the one for me because you won't get a
good launch.
Right.
Also manual.
That will hurt this time.
Yeah.
I think, yeah, let's do Barona.
Well, I don't think there's a quarter mile anywhere nearby.
E-55, zero to 60 wagon, 4.4 to 4.5 seconds.
You got to be in the same ballpark.
Yeah.
2023 E-450 wagon, zero to 60, 4.4 seconds.
Yeah.
I can add a lot of power to mine really easily.
And he's a stick and it's him.
Undoubtedly, mine's faster.
Right.
So, AMG yourself.
Oh.
It's hard to, all right, to be faster.
Can I make a request?
Yeah.
We'll just be done.
No.
Well, we got two more questions.
Two more.
I got, we got time today.
We got time today.
Two more.
Time.
As tons of time.
The longest pod ever.
From just Josh and me.
Doug, what's with that empty spot in your garage on the wall of Colorado
Plates?
Don't tell him.
Make him figure it out.
Folks.
Make him figure it out.
My entire life has been devoted to finding a Colorado Denim license plate from every
county.
Pull up a picture of a Colorado that you have to.
Because what if they, what if they find it right here, Filippo?
This could be the moment.
I'm trying to find one from every county.
My entire life.
I grew up as a boy in Colorado.
This was on the road.
All the cars.
Any one of these.
Click on that one.
And I want to find one from every county and I'm missing two counties.
I've been searching.
I swear to God.
I've been for 20 years.
I've been looking for one of these.
I'm missing two counties.
Rio Blanco, which starts with Y1V.
Rio Blanco's way up there in the Northwest.
That one there.
And mineral, which is down here.
Creed.
And 20 years.
I would sell Nick to finish this run.
I'm surprised you're stopping there.
You should have sold you too.
I think you would have considered it.
Having had the displeasure of liquidating some of your previous holdings.
I can tell you people that collect license plates are very special breed.
And I think there's only room in your life for one of them.
And that is you.
And therefore I want nothing to do with the rest of the community.
Nick, I'll give anybody who can turn up for me a mineral denim or a Rio Blanco denim.
I'll give you a thousand dollars each.
That includes you.
Plus the value of the plate.
Now I want to tell you something.
Rio Blanco.
I got stuff to do.
There's 500 of them.
And they're pairs.
So there's a thousand plates.
There's a ton out there.
This could be a way for you to make some extra cash.
How many collectors have them all?
There's only one or two guys.
Wow.
Who have a full set.
And mineral is a story.
It's like very difficult.
So mineral is going to be hard.
I don't think you'll find that one.
But Rio Blanco is findable, Nick.
Why have you not found it?
You've got a beaker.
There's an old lady we know of who has one and she's unwilling.
She's not ready to let them go yet.
There's a thousand of them.
There's a thousand of them.
There's going to be many old ladies.
The last year they were made was December 31, 1999.
It's been 25 years.
And people didn't save this kind of stuff.
They don't realize how special it is.
It's in somebody's barn.
Yeah.
For sure.
Absolutely.
The mineral maybe not.
That's a different situation.
But the Rio Blanco is.
I'm off for a thousand bucks.
Filippo, this is a good opportunity.
Plus the value of the plate.
I assume that they're valuable.
Yeah.
So $1,006.
Filippo, this could be a chance for you to really...
And you could say, I did something.
If you...
I'll tell you this.
If you go to Meeker.
Yeah.
Is it a nice town Meeker?
It's a sort of a high plains town.
It's really a mountain community in a sense, but it's not in the mountains.
Oh, this looks beautiful.
Well, that's...
Yeah.
It's fine.
It's nice.
Meeker's nice.
And if you go there, I'll pay your airfare.
It's fine.
New town slogan.
It's fine.
I don't know what this is.
Oh, I see a B7.
It's a Maori license plate.
Yeah.
A nice B7 there.
A low FJ40.
Filippo, there's great cars in Meeker.
The Filippo standards are pretty decent.
This is a beautiful town.
It's a beautiful town.
Yeah.
So look, I'll pay your airfare and your travel to go to Meeker and find one.
Every once in a while, we just see people with the old California plates still roll
rocking them.
You could probably just go there with a Phillips head screwdriver, drive around enough.
No.
There's only like two or three pairs still on the road.
We know that.
Doug has considered driving.
I car faxed them at all at one point.
They started at Y1V like 0100 and I car faxed through 0500 one day.
Man.
Miss having that unlimited car fax.
It was a great day.
It was great.
It was great.
Filippo, if I'll pay your airfare and your travel to Meeker, the thousand bucks no longer
applies, but I'll pay your airfare and travel.
Producer Sean, but I'll, I'll trip.
Oh, this is a great, great video.
The next key video.
It's such a niche audience.
My buddy who finished his run with a mineral, which is the hardest by far, he found the
person and offered him 500 bucks and they were like, are you like a crazy person?
Are you a scammer?
And he was like, no, I will give you 500 bucks.
I will meet you in, in the town and, and he drove six hours with 500 bucks and he gave
him the 500 bucks and he got his play, but they didn't have to.
Wow.
There you go.
That's the story of the empty holes.
Do you have anything to add to that?
There's nothing that will make you more interesting.
Will you send Filippo to Meeker to get me, Sean's going to, this is going to work.
That would actually be an interesting documentary on license plate collectors.
Don't think it would.
I don't think there's much interesting there.
Also the collectors aren't in Meeker, they only go there to buy plates.
I want to be really clear.
My interest in license plates, I want to be clear, is limited to the following thing.
Colorado license plates from 1992 to 1999.
Nothing else.
All right.
This has gone on far too long.
Agreed.
Nick, absolute pleasure.
Thank you for coming.
Thanks for having me.
Loved everything about it.
Filippo, you want to promo anything while we finish up?
CarsonBeds.com is the best place.
Ryan's already standing.
He's ready.
Thank you all for watching.
Be on the lookout for a lot more information about velocity and rotational, where we'll
have 15 incredible cars there, really cool event at Sonoma Raceway with our first ever
like live auction situation.
I'm excited.
Okay.
Goodbye.
I'm excited.
About this episode
Hosts kick off with Honda’s EV-related losses and the resulting multi-year delay of redesigns—Odyssey talk even stretches to “till 2030.” They compare Honda’s long product lifecycles to rivals pushing hybrid/awd tech, then widen to brand strategy, tariffs, and whether reliability-focused buyers are aging out. The conversation pivots to Mercedes-AMG’s new flat-plane V8 and what it could replace, plus Camaro manual rumors. Later, they cover Spyker’s return, Porsche’s EV mix, and a bunch of enthusiast detours.
7-liter V8
all wheel drive
AMG
automatic
bespoke
Bugatti
BYD
carbon chassis
check engine light
concept car reviews
Acura Integra
Acura MDX
Acura RDX
Acura TSX
Alfa Romeo Giulia
Audi e-tron
Audi Q5
Audi Q7
Audi R8
Audi RS4
Audi RS 6
Audi S8
Audi TT RS
BMW 5 Series
BMW 6 Series
BMW M3
BMW M5
Cadillac CTS-V
Cadillac ELR
Cadillac Escalade
Chevrolet Camaro
Chevrolet Caprice
Chevrolet Corvette
Daihatsu Valera
Ferrari 456 M GT
Fiat 500L
Ford Bronco
Ford Explorer
Ford Lobo
Ford Ranger
Ford Taurus
Ford V8 Sedan
Holden Caprice
Honda Accord
Honda Civic
Honda Crosstour
Honda CR-V
Honda HR-V
Honda Odyssey
Honda Pilot
Honda Prologue
Jaguar XKR-S
Jeep Renegade
Kia Carnival/Sedona
Kia Telluride
Lamborghini Diablo
Lamborghini LM 002
Land Rover Freelander
Land Rover Range Rover
Mazda MX-5 / Miata
Mercedes-Benz A-Class
Mercedes-Benz C 63 T-Modell (S204)
Mercedes-Benz C-Class
Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG
Mercedes-Benz E-Class
Mercedes-Benz GLE
Mercedes-Benz GLS
Mercedes-Benz ML-Class
Mercedes-Benz S-Class
Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren
Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG
Nissan GT-R
Nissan Skyline
Oldsmobile Bravada
Opel Astra
Peugeot 208 GTI
Pontiac Firebird
Porsche 911
Porsche Boxster
Porsche Carrera GT
Porsche Cayenne
Porsche Taycan
Rivian R1S
Rivian R1T
Rivian R2
Tesla Model Y
Toyota Corolla Cross
Toyota Land Cruiser
Toyota Mirai
Toyota Prius
Toyota Sienna
Toyota Supra
Volkswagen Bora
Original notes
Have a question you want answered on the podcast next week? Ask HERE https://crsnbds.com/PODQUESTIONS
Welcome to THIS CAR POD! Doug DeMuro & Friends offers weekly expert insight and opinion on breaking automotive stories, the car market, and audience Q&A.
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Chapters:
00:00:00 THIS CAR POD!
00:00:15 Honda Is Not Updating Cars
00:08:38 AMG Brings Back V8s
00:13:13 The New Camaro Will Be Manual
00:17:06 Porsche Ending The Gas Macan
00:21:05 Spyker Making A Comeback
00:24:31 Ford's New EV
00:29:35 Cadillac Blackwing F1 Edition
00:32:23 Rivian To Bring More R2 Variants
00:35:40 Tariffs Increase
00:38:00 Talk Cars
00:39:44 Doug's Field Trip
00:46:45 Nick Went To Wagonfest
00:50:39 The Honda Clarity Accident
00:53:23 Filippo's Going To Italy
00:59:37 Doug's E55 Wagon Search
01:02:08 Market Report
01:03:25 Pace Cars
01:08:01 Chevrolet Corvette C6
01:10:34 Chevrolet Caprice PPV
01:13:06 Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG
01:16:57 Community Questions
01:19:16 Would Doug Buy The Cayenne Convertible Concept Car?
01:20:44 Will You Do More Concept Car Reviews?
01:25:32 What Automotive Youtubers Would You LIke To Meet?
01:30:35 What Do People Use 120v Outlets For In Cars?
01:33:34 Why Is There An Empty Spot On Doug's Plate Wall?
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THIS CAR POD! with Doug DeMuro & Friends!
Doug DeMuro
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