OTOSOT 81

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I'm Richard Porter. I'm Johnny Smith. And this is On the Other Side of Things,

the Smith & Sniff spinoff in which we answer your questions.

Please may I start with a question from, let's do this one here from Jay. It was a very short and

simple question. He says, good morning gents. I'm pondering my next car and the Genesis

GV60 is looking good. Used ones are reasonably priced. Did either of you have experience

of the mark? It's very interesting you should say this because I really don't. I

should have driven several of them and for whatever boring reasons I haven't still managed to

get behind the wheel of one. Although there's a couple which I think look really good. My

favorite one is the the Estati one, the GV70. Oh yeah. Which I think is my favorite looking.

I mean the GV70 shooting brake and the GV70 and is the seven, is it different to the

shooting brake? I think it is. I can't remember. But well, this is the problem. Right. So for

people who don't know, and I suspect a lot of people don't, Genesis is basically

Hyundai's posh offshoot. So it is. It's the Lexus. Yeah, what Lexus is to Toyota.

I've driven the GV60. The GV60 is that quite stubby, interesting looking. Yes. EV. Yeah. It's

quite hard to get your head around what it is and what it might compete against because

it almost looks like a sort of medium sized hatchback. Yeah. But it's in fact a bit bigger than

that and it's meant to be, I suppose the closest thing it's meant to be like, it's almost like

a Jag I-Pace in that it's slightly raised up, but it's not really an SUV. They're just sort

of saying it is if you want it to be. Yeah. And it's, it's sort of meant to be a bit sporty,

maybe. Yeah. Got loads of room in it. Underneath, it's built from the same kit of parts as

the Kia EV6 and the IONIQ 5 and things, isn't it? Which is a good kit of parts, a very,

very good kit of parts. The interior is quite nice. It's one of those cars like particularly

early Lexuses is where you feel like they've chucked everything at it because they need this

to work. Yeah. And be successful. So yeah, it has a feeling that they've put a lot of effort in,

in quite an appealing way. I don't, I thought as a car, it's sort of, it's fine. It's all right.

I don't remember anything particularly stand out. But I did drive another Genesis, which was

their sort of medium sized saloon. And I think this is quite telling of the problem that perhaps

Genesis have that I can't remember the name of it. Because I started getting mixed up with, remember

Infinity, which is Nissan's posh offshoot. I was just about to say Infinity, which they were pushing

so hard in the UK, but just, but just didn't get any traction for whatever reason. It's like

people didn't care enough. The marketing angle perhaps wasn't quite, quite pointy enough. I don't

know. I just, they were okay. And certainly the quality was there and everything, but the

desirability just didn't go, oh yeah, I'm really fancy one of those. And actually, I've just

gone on Infiniti's, not Infiniti, in Genesis, Genesize website in the UK. And it's occurred

to me, I have driven a Genesis before. I think we're really touching on what Genesis has to face

here is that they're just not cutting through quite. I drove in Korea, the flagship, the G80,

but the previous version of the G80. And I absolutely loved it. You know, it's an all wheel drive,

huge S class Mercedes sized saloon. Yeah. And the interior was wonderful. But again,

it's that whole thing of like, just would you or would you just go, I'll buy a three year old S

class instead? I know it's a Bitcoin to Wilson to say that, but that's how I always think ago.

Would I have that over a thing that is trying to emulate or Alexis even?

I think what I drove was a G70.

Right, so again, you don't know.

The worst thing is, it was actually very good. I liked it a lot. And I did a lot of miles in it.

Now, I tell I can remember when I had it because it was when we did a live show at Lotus.

Oh, yeah. So I had to drive enjoyed that show across England. So I had quite a lot of time in

it on a whole range of roads. And I honestly thought it was a very, very pleasant car.

It did everything you'd want of it. It was comfortable, but you could actually chuck it around a bit.

It felt incredibly well made. Yeah, I liked it. I really did like it. I remember thinking,

I bet these depreciate like billio. Yeah. And one of these will be a used bargain at some

point. Now, I know this is not exactly what Jay's asking because he's looking at the GV

60, but he seems to have alighted on the same thing that the used ones are reasonably priced,

as he says. So I think he's probably barking up the right tree by buying a nearly new one.

One word of possible caution, I don't know, depends how much this matters to you.

There aren't that many dealers. No. And because in fact, I said to someone a few weeks ago,

who was looking for sort of a well made low hassle car. And I said, Oh, there's another thing

there. So have you seen those Genesis cars? They might be worth looking at. And then this guy said,

I have heard of them. I looked into it. And my nearest dealer is so far away. I just can't

be bothered to go and check them out. And I was like, that's fair enough. Why would you when

there's lots of other car companies that have got dealerships nearby? Do you know,

can I recommend J on this one? You've said, would you recommend them over a Kia or a Hyundai?

I'm going to say if you're looking for used car in good condition, go and have a sniffy

around a Kia Stinger. Oh, yes. Because a Kia Stinger will be a depreciation monster, but

not because it's rubbish. It's a really good car and it looks great. It's seldom seen on the

road. So it's kind of interesting. It's a bit of an, if you know, you know car, especially the GTS,

which is a twin turbo V6, kind of an M3 rival. And I had one for a week and really enjoyed

blasting around in that car. And lots of complimentary remarks were had from it.

Yes, I like it. I wonder if Jay's set on pure electric by the end of him looking at the

GV60, but I don't know if it's not, then I guess things are great.

And if you are hell bent on electric instead of getting a GV60, just get a Hyundai IONIQ 5.

That's my microphone drop. Can you hear this? That's my microphone. Right, question from,

I'm going to go for one. I'm going to go for one from Michael Gardner from America.

Dear Itchy and Scratchy, my parents and Santa were always good. My parents and Santa were always

good about car themed presents for Christmas. I've had a metal pedal car, endless hot wheels,

corgi matchbox die casts, plastic models, airplanes and play sets for our micro car world to cruise

around on. Are there any cool car themed or toys you remember from your youth that really

stood out? Any favorite toys? Something we might not have gotten here in America? Like an

evil stunt bike perhaps? Surely Americans got the evil stunt bike? Or did you mean something like that

but British? Oh, I see. So like a Barry Sheen stunt bike or something. Yeah, is there anything that

you've seen on sale now that is a must have? Something cool for your kids perhaps? Insert

Shameless, Smith and Sniff or Late Break Show merch plug here if you wish. CMTM happy Christmas.

Michael, thanks for listening for a start. That's a good, I mean, I've actually got,

I've still got because I moved house fairly recently, which I mentioned a few times because

I'm still in that lots of boxes around me mode. In my bedroom right now, I have a box of

various toys that I've kept since I was a very small kid because I'm just a sad nostalgic

tragedy. And I've got something called a monster machine, which is a 16 wheeled fully articulated

monster truckie thing, which took, I don't know, about eight D batteries. My dad said it cost like

20 quid to buy the batteries for it. And I lusted after this thing because I saw the TV ads.

And I think it was made by Tomy. I'll just quickly look up Tomy monster machine.

The TV, yes, monster machine. It could go down the stairs in this sort of articulated way

and it could climb over all manner of obstacles that you lay in front of it.

And it had faux VA engines covers over the top of the D batteries, which said 454 on,

which I didn't know at the time. That's a big block Chevrolet. But when I was

about eight, when I got this, I didn't know. So to this day, I've still got it. And it

looked so massive when I when I when I first got it and it did arrive at Christmas time. And it was

one of those just totally exciting Christmases. I just was constantly looking for things. I think

I piled all my dad's smart shoes up and it climbed a pile of my dad's brogues once,

just because it could. So that's that's a highlight for me. Realistic brogue climbing

ability. But I mean, yeah, you've got to you can't talk about this sort of thing without

mentioning, I mean, I don't know about, yeah, in America, you guys got Tamiya stuff. So

all the Tamiya toys were American centric, I think, but

I was thinking the other week about this toy that I had as a kid. I'm pretty sure they

must have had these in the US. But but it was a it was called something like the air blaster.

Do you remember these? And it was like a had a clear tank on a sort of buggy chassis.

Yeah. And you pumped it up. You pumped the tank full of air until you could pump no more. And then

it used that that air to drive itself, you've then sort of did some kind of release and it

fired off. Oh, it shot across the floor. Yeah, do you remember these? Yes, I do. Yeah,

yeah, I do. It was it was one of those toys where I really, really coveted it. And then I got one

for my Christmas or birthday, I think. And it was great because of course, but then it does sort of

after a while, there's not so much you can do with it, you know, it's not as

versatile as a remote control car, because all it can do is fire in a straight line and then

you build some ramps for it and things like that. But I seem to remember on the one I had,

you could put a little bit of steering lock on it. Oh, that's actually no, it's no good because

then you release it and it just sort of immediately swerves to the left and that sort of it. It's

like, it doesn't help. You can't steer it once it's set off. It was brilliant, but sort of limited.

But before I had one, my God, I really wanted one. It just looked so cool. I think there

were adverts on the TV that made them look incredibly cool. I'm going to look this up.

See, I always, I do think because this is one of the reasons why I wanted to work in the TV commercial

business. That was one of the things I wanted to do as a kid and I aspired to do because the

set dressing of all these children's toy adverts were always so key to hooking you in and making

you think that you could immerse yourself in this world. And I just thought of a model, a toy

we got. And again, I'm not sure if they were available in America, but they were called stompers,

little four by four pickup trucks and things like Hiluxes and Chevy Blazers. And they had

very chunky foam tires so they could climb things. And stompers, when we were at primary

school, everyone wanted a little stomper. We used to all have a stomper. And when we used to

go around to one of those houses to play, we'd all bring our stompers with us because they'd fit

pretty much in your pocket. I love the stompers. I remember those, but I don't remember them being

called stompers because I desperately, desperately wanted one that looked like the Fall Guy truck

and they didn't quite make that no accurate replica. So I just had, I think I had a Subaru

Brat one of those. Oh gosh, that sounds amazing. Oh, totally. They were hot. I don't know,

about 1982, I'm going to say. Yeah, they were early. They were definitely, I was a young primary

school kid. And I think they only took one AA battery. So they were a little bit thrifty on the

battery front, which is obviously popular when batteries used to cost a lot of money.

So yeah, I love the stomper, but I can't remember if that, I bet you could get those

in America, Michael. Oh yeah, I've just, I just looked up the thing I was talking about

was called the Air Blaster. It was made by Tomy and Palatoy. Brilliant. Apparently in some countries

it was called the Air Jammer. Oh, was it? Slightly less sensical name, but yeah. And there's one here

for sale on eBay for near as damn it, 70 quid. Do you remember, I don't know if you got a

Scale X trick in America because I think other slot racing sets were more popular, but the

Scale Electric sets that were very UK centric that we will have remembered from our childhood

will have been the Mighty Metro's, which I'm sure you saw it. The Argos catalogue was a thing,

Michael, I don't know if you get, I don't know what the equivalent of Argos is in the States.

That's a good question. But the Argos catalogue, and Argos is still a business now,

you'd get this very thick catalogue and you would pour over it for weeks and weeks

and weeks because it had every single brightly coloured toy available. And you'd often cut out,

or I did, cut out the ones I wanted and put them on my Christmas list with an arrow and maybe

a polite annotation. And it seemed to be something we did as 80s kids. So yeah, Argos was a thing.

And Scale Electric were great. And they did things like Capri racing and rally cars of the

80s. And that stuff was really cool. So Scale Electric still exists, of course. And yes it does.

And they do, you know, they release old old-style cars and they do collectible versions. I think

they're highly collectible now. So yeah, hopefully that answers your, that's like, we've answered

a question I feel, Rich. Well, sort of. Do you think?

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I move on to a question from a listener called Jake, who says,

morning, you pair of fish-botherers. I have a humble request for some sage car buying advice.

I've recently had to increase my commute a fair bit and my current Mini Cooper S,

despite bringing me youthful driving joy, isn't quite suited to the job. The seats are too small,

the ride quality is shocking and it's consuming oil in rather large quantities.

Oh, with a budget of five to seven thousand pounds, what would you buy if the only requirements

were comfort and cost of ownership? I will spend two hours a day sat mostly on dual carriageways,

so it needs to be good on fuel, comfortable seats, easy to live with.

Decent stereo is a must and not something to throw up a bunch of warning lights.

I keep ogling cheap XF jaguars, but I've been permanently disfigured financially by several

Land Rover's already. I'm swaying towards another F105 series, but I've had two in the past

and the market for these, they're either rough as a badge is arsed or overpriced minters.

I love a big saloon and I too have a Tokyo taxi but a turbo straight six and

under 20 miles per gallon rolls that out. Really, it's got a Tokyo taxi or a state would do?

Yeah, says so here, so turbo straights, do they do turbo taxis? I didn't know, I feel like I need to

know a bit more about what Tokyo taxi it is. Well, that's no joke, but in the meantime he just

says it doesn't have to be modern, I'm comfortable doing a bit of work at it myself,

but it will get used all year round, so I don't want to be too precious about it.

If you could get a Euro spec diesel E387 series in right hand drive, I'd be all over it.

What did he say his budget was?

Five to seven thousand pounds. Okay, so if you're, if you look very carefully, you might get

a Tesla Model S with the old free-vendor supercharging like mine, and I only mentioned that

because it's very comfortable at motorway speeds, it's got an amazing stereo,

it's thrifty to own and tax and it does the job. If that, but you'd have to look

carefully for a seven grander. Yeah, they tend to be still sort of five figures and more, don't they?

Yeah, I think, yeah, like the one that your brothers bought, you know, you can get a good,

you can get a good one if you look really carefully for kind of 10 to 12, but you have to look carefully.

Yeah, okay, well that's, I mean, food for thought, I, when I read comfortable seats,

I sort of got stuck on that bit and my mind immediately went to Volvo.

Oh, the saloons that nobody wants because everyone wants the estates, what are they called?

S80? S80, yeah, S80. Gosh, I have the S80, it's so understated.

Tremendously good cruisers. And there's also a jet trail of old money about them,

isn't there? That's as well. Yeah, so just, I think obviously not a highly dynamic car,

not anything like a BMW even, but I think they have a certain sort of appeal just for

their sheer sort of easygoing comfortable nature. I'm not even sure that you could maybe just

squeak an S90, so slightly more modern, we'll have more modern features for budgets,

but definitely an S80 or an S60 for that matter. I'd love an S80, that sounds great. Seats and

stereo, tick and tick. Very much so. Well, I'm against the feeling of solidity and general

safety. Yeah, that's it, the ride will be nice. And he did a series of things going back,

if the only requirements were comfort and cost of ownership. Cost of ownership?

Fuel will be hideous probably, but hey. Well, I suppose there's still, you would get some diesel ones.

Yeah, that budget and age, because you're talking about cars that, well, what, six, seven years

old, something like that, maybe eight years old, or maybe even more, and then definitely from the

sort of era when people were buying new Zezels in more quantity. So I think you'd be all right there

if you got a Zezel one. Yeah, and I'd probably also add to that a diesel-engined V6 S-Class Mercedes

from about 2007, 2008, 2009 kind of era. They're a really good car and they're cheap right now.

Yeah, they started to step up the quality again at that point because they went through that low

patch, didn't they, when? Yeah, this is up on the quality. This is after the launch of the

brand new and fantastic C-Class, you know, when they really went to turn on the C-Class.

Yeah. And it showed a new era of Mercedes again. So I can't remember the W numbers,

I'm afraid, but the one you want is the 320, I think, CDI. Good engine.

So the W220 was the, I think, the one where the sort of everything just went off a bit,

the quality was off. They're the ones with the big headlights that go very milky and they

immediately look sad. And you always seem to see them and they've sunk on the air suspension,

they've got milky eyes and they just look sad. It's so true.

It's worse because that was the one that replaced the W140, the big slabby one that

of course was, you know, from the era of eight, 10-year development cycles at Mercedes and all

that sort of stuff. So I think you're probably talking about the 221, wouldn't it be the one

that replaced that, which was... Is that what it was, the W221? And it had the vertical

stack taillights. I think that is the one. That look that sort of evolved into the car we have

today and they definitely were better. That's the one. 2005, that car came out and it lasted till

2013, so it is that generation. And you could get it with that thrifty but also quite powerful

V6 diesel, which is a really good era for diesel cars. And you can get them in quite basic

spec if you want. So if you don't want it loaded with quite scary things, you don't have to.

I like them a lot. Plus, I suppose that if Jake's current job went south, he could always do a bit

of upmarket minicabbing. Oh, look, he could be Captain Uber but also he could do just eat,

so you could have your Biryani delivered in S-class. Why not? Why not?

I suppose, I suppose not. I mean, I suppose if you don't need that big a car, you could always

go E-class again so that they're a bit cabby but they're very comfortable. I don't know,

I'm not sure that you're getting sort of primo stuff in that price range but

worth a look. Yeah, please do it and let us know how you get on on that side of things.

Yeah. Right, well, let's dive into another one. This is from Emil Falck. I think that's how you

say it, Emil. You are from, I think you're from Sweden. Yes, in my country, Sweden,

we have had a TV show called Rostiga Roadtrips, Rusty Roadtrips, in which two comedians who

also happened to be genuine car nerds buy a car for under 10,000 Swedish crowns,

roughly 800 pounds, modify it to accommodate two sleeping grown men, and then drive it to where

it was produced. For example, a Skoda Felicia pickup driven to Milada Boleslau in the Czech

Republic, a Fold's escort to Valencia, Spain, or in Nissan Bluebird to Sunderland.

What? It's a great idea for a car TV show. Well, in fact, what the hell, you and I should do this.

Well, we were talking about this. Yeah, I don't know if we should say it, but

we sort of had, and this is really spooky that it's Sweden. We talked about doing this with

our free Saab. Well, it might still happen. Maybe we should hook up with the Rostiga Roadtrip,

guys. Well, I can't believe that they're from Sweden as well. And we were talking about

driving to Trollhattan, basically, salmoning our free Saab, making it go back to where it was born.

Yeah. Well, I forgot to say, he starts his letter with Dears Smith and Steve,

thank you for producing such a great podcast on Julio Iglesias.

So he's put what the question is, what would be your pick of cheap car and destination?

C-M-T-M-B. Spoiled the question by sort of answering it. Well, all right, let's do it fantasy,

then. We may yet do this with our real Saab for real, but if you're not going to do anything.

Offer for real. Gosh, that's a good question. It's a really good question.

Because I suppose in a way you want to ideally combine somewhere you'd love to go

with a car you'd love to drive for long distances. So these guys sleep in it as well?

Yeah, I don't like, if I'm honest, I don't like the idea of that because I love cars,

but we're tall men and sleeping in cars is just not great.

I don't like sleeping. No, I like camper vans, but then they're kind of designed for that.

But I would, I mean, logistically a complete car, but I would very much like to take my dodge back

to Detroit. I think it would be wonderful to drive it. If it was one of those long-winded BBC

shows of old where you had weeks to film it and you and I could stop off at lots of one-horse

towns and yeah, it would just be really cool. I'd really enjoy it.

I would not discount driving a Nissan S cargo across Japan back to the wherever those Nissan

Pike factory cars were made. Oh gosh, yeah. I don't think there was an actual Pike factory.

I think that was just a sort of mythical construct for all of those sort of retro cars.

But wherever the factory was, I don't know, but sort of set off from the other side of Japan.

I just think that would be probably quite slow because that's a, I mean, that's basically

an old micro underneath where they think of three speed auto. So that would be

quite a breathless. I think it would be one of those ones where you have to assume that it

stays at 50 miles an hour. Otherwise, everyone's death and stressed. And I don't want that.

I would put really tall front tyres on it, really tall, just for extra gearing.

Yeah. Okay. That might work. Where are I switching my look out? I don't know. I sort of euro stuff.

But I mean, another one, which would be a absolutely horrible journey

is, and also logistically impossible, certainly at the moment, would be taking

some kind of old Lada back to Togliatti. Of course. Because I've always wanted to see

Togliatti, if I'm honest. That would be really cool. Yeah, I agree. That would be Ace.

I would like that. Yeah, there's a lot of options here, isn't there?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think there's plenty of things you could do. But I mean,

I've only equally, these guys sound like they've got it covered. I've never heard of

rusty road trips. I'm fairly embarrassed to admit that I've never been to the

Porsche Museum in Stuttgart. So it'd be really nice to drive a Porsche from the UK just back

to Stuttgart, which many, many people that listen to this show will have already done,

but I just haven't done it yet. So the only time I've been to Stuttgart,

the Porsche Museum was closed. Oh, seriously? The only time we had free, it was closed.

They knew you were coming, and so they just hastily put a post-it on there, just went,

I'm sorry, someone did a big shit and it damaged the toys. Tell them we're not in.

Yeah, I think it was that. Well, gosh, we've come to the end of our half hour

near as damn it. So thank you for those excellent questions. If you do have a question for us,

it is hello at smithandsniff.com. The email address put Ottersot at the start of the subject

line if you've got a question. And that helps us to find it because we are pretty useless.

True. And we will be back answering more questions next Friday at Normal Show on Monday.

Until then, goodbye. Thanks everybody, goodbye.

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