Rant and Rave With Jack From Number 27!

This is the Thing About Cars, a podcast for Carl Enthusiast and the people who love them.

Hello and welcome to the Thing About Cars.

Ben, take it away.

Hey, well, first let me introduce the usual crew and then I'll bring the guest in.

And of course, Mickey, who just spoke.

Misty's here from the Netherlands and Dave and Trivizar Tim.

And our really special guest today is Jack from Number 27, which is a really cool automotive YouTube channel.

How are you doing, Jack?

Yeah, great. Really nice to be with you guys.

Can you hear me?

I just had a bit of trouble at the beginning with the camera and the mic, but I think it should all be working now.

Not only are you coming through loud and clear, your accent has made me slightly titillated.

Yeah, thanks so much for inviting me, guys.

I'm really looking forward to chatting with you and having a bit of fun this afternoon.

Yeah. Well, to launch things off before we forget, Tim, have you guys a trivia question?

I do. And Jack, this one's probably far too easy for you, but I know it confuses a lot of people.

So we're going to go with what is the difference between Land Rover and Range Rover?

So our choices are, and of course, we'll come back to the end of the show for the answer on this.

But our options are A, Land Rover is a brand or make, and the Range Rover is a Land Rover model.

B, Land Rovers are four-wheel drive SUVs and Range Rovers are high-performance sedans.

C, British Leyland Motors used Range Rover name for their SUVs until 1988 when Land Rover name had replaced it.

And there has not been a new Range Rover since 1987.

D, Land Rover and Range Rover were both divisions of the Rover group.

Would you like me to go through those again if we're not all thoroughly confused?

Confused is a consistent state of being for me.

Join the club.

Okay, one more time.

I founded the club.

All right, so our question again is what is the difference between Land Rover and Range Rover?

A, Land Rover is a brand or make, and the Range Rover is a Land Rover model.

B, Land Rovers are four-wheel drive SUVs and Range Rovers are high-performance sedans.

C, British Leyland Motors used the Range Rover name for their SUVs until 1988 when the Land Rover name replaced it.

And there's not been a new Range Rover since 1987.

Or D, Land Rover and Range Rover were both divisions of the Rover group.

So we'll come back at the end of the show for our exciting answer.

Cool.

Oh, well, that should be a real good one.

So, Jack, you're the host of the number 27 YouTube channel.

In your words, what is it?

I mean, it's changed a little bit over time.

It started out as a channel about the first car I had, which was a Porsche 964.

I was doing some work to that car and I had, you know, I'd written some articles about it and I wanted to do some video.

So I started to do a few videos to showcase that car.

And I enjoyed it so much.

This is about 12 years ago.

I enjoyed doing the video so much because you're sort of learning to edit.

You're creating something that I thought I wanted to do more of this.

And I then started a series called 12 Cars, which is basically I wanted in 12 months to buy and run 12 cars I'd always wanted to own.

So one a month.

You know, like Hero Cars, they were still quite cheap in those days.

Some of them.

So I went through a Lotus Esprit Turbo, for example, a Delta Intergrale, an R32 GT-R Nissan.

You know, all the cars I wanted to have growing up, I thought, I'm going to do that in 12 months.

I couldn't.

It took me two years and a half because if you do it month by month, buy, sell, and you have to do it, you're going to lose loads of money.

You know, so anyway, and then it became that, you know, I'd have a channel and I was doing some reviews of some cars.

I was also buying cars.

I bought a FrogEye Sprite, which belonged to a friend's mother and I started doing it up.

And it was a mixture of things like that.

And the channel remained relatively small until about five years ago when I was on about 14,000 subscribers and just before lockdown,

I was going to buy a Peugeot, a small Peugeot GTI car.

And I also saw a Ferrari 308 at this auction.

Really bad Ferrari 308.

And I thought, well, you know, I wonder what idiot's going to buy that thing.

And then the next day, for some reason, so I'd done no research or nothing because I wasn't planning to buy it.

And literally, you know, there was half an hour to go with this online auction going.

And I suddenly convinced myself it wouldn't be a bad idea to get it because I'd saved a bit of money for a house.

And I thought with COVID house prices would collapse.

So I'm not going to buy a house now.

Obviously the opposite happened.

But anyway, I had a little bit of cash and I thought I'll buy a Ferrari for a year,

fit all with it for YouTube, get my Ferrari thing out the way, sell it.

How much can I really lose?

And I ended up paying with the auction fees 34,000 for this Ferrari 308, which is cheap,

but it turns out not cheap enough because it turned out to be an absolute dog.

And I thought I'd get 10 videos out of it.

I think in the end it was 56 videos before I managed to fix it,

including having a cracked head or sorts of stuff.

And it would have bankrupted any normal person because of my circumstances.

I had this YouTube channel.

COVID had started.

Lockdowns were there.

People were captive.

And they didn't have much to do.

And plus it was just the perfect situation.

I was living in a small rented house.

I had a small, tiny European garage.

Not the stuff you guys all have.

You know, these tiny things.

I had dual citizenship.

I have a Dutch passport and an American passport.

And fun fact, before we go any further, everyone else is based in Georgia.

I'm based in the Netherlands.

I'm the only person that was actually born in Georgia.

Jack, were you sure her Dutch accent confused you?

Oh, I know.

It's fine.

But anyway, yeah, that worked really well.

People loved it.

The channel grew a lot.

And it allowed me to do what I'm doing today.

And bizarrely, I never thought it would happen.

But three years ago, I managed to go full time.

And, you know, my contract was with work was up.

I was depressed.

I thought I'm going to have to look for another job, update my CV, do interviews, all this stuff.

And I thought, do you know what?

By that stage, the channel had got up to about 50 or 60,000, maybe more, 70,000 subscribers.

So it had gone up a lot.

And I thought I could probably just about make a living out of this without getting into debt.

And so I threw myself into it.

And I haven't looked back.

I'm now literally by the end of this month, I'll be on 200,000 subscribers.

I get 1.5 million to 2 million views a month.

And it's great.

I review other people's cars.

It's a dream.

If you told me this five years ago, 10 years ago, I'd never have believed you.

Yeah, it's fabulous stuff.

I think I found the channel maybe a year ago or so.

And I leaned hard into it.

And I've watched, I believe, every one of the videos.

I remember how I found it.

I think because I'm a Lotus guy, I think I was looking for Lotus videos.

And I think one of the Urus Spree ones was the first one I saw.

I used to have an 86 Turbo Spree myself.

Yeah, fantastic car.

Now I've got an Alon Plus 2.

Amazing.

I'd love to see you do one of those.

But yeah, I leaned into it and I watched them.

So I believe I'm caught up now unless you snuck one in this morning.

Oh, man, you have.

Yeah, yeah.

The C70 is actually a bit more of a niche thing, I suppose.

So no, none snuck in this morning.

I release on Mondays and Thursdays, pretty much.

I try and do two videos a week.

But I really try and do that.

I'm a bit paranoid about skipping.

In the old days, YouTube used to punish you if you didn't regularly publish stuff.

But I'm kidding.

There was a publicized thing called Creative Burnout where people were literally freaking

out.

They couldn't take the pressure of always having to put out content.

So theoretically, in the last few years, YouTube has stopped putting that in the algorithm

that it will punish you if you don't regularly put out material.

But I don't believe it.

So I think maybe they loosened it a bit.

But I do believe that if you don't put out regular content, you'll get punished.

So occasionally, I might do one video a week, but that's as much as I've dared so far.

Is the occasional skip over Christmas for one week?

I only did one video.

But it's amazing.

I enjoy it.

I get to spend...

The owners come to bring me the cars here in Oxfordshire, beautiful area.

They're always my kind of people.

Generally, if I'm reviewing someone's car, we have the same interests.

I love the fact I get to drive.

I've driven cars that I dreamt about when I was a kid.

It's just brilliant.

Yeah.

So for listeners who may not be familiar, your main format then is you do reviews on other people's cars,

just whatever you find interesting.

And then interspersed in that are the ones about your own projects.

That's right.

So at the moment, I hope I'm not talking too much, guys, but I just...

I'll keep going.

You tell me if it's too much.

But I got the Ferrari and after two and a half years or whatever, three years,

I think I was in a position to sell it.

And although I like that 308, it was a GTS, which means convertible.

And it wasn't for me, really.

And in the meantime, I've reviewed a couple of Detamazzo Panterras.

They did really, really well in terms of my videos and I loved them.

And they have their...

It's an Italian supercar in Modena, same place as Ferrari,

but with an American Cleveland V8.

Brilliant cars.

And so I sold the Ferrari and I was on the lookout for one of those.

And I found one in Oklahoma.

So I flew over to Oklahoma two years ago now in October, had a look at this car.

It was a project car, partly sort of restored and mostly in bits.

And it was sold to me as you just need to assemble it.

You know, this guy, he's brilliant and he's finished it.

And then what actually happened is I turned up, saw it, the paintwork was new,

but had been done really badly, so needed a whole new paint job.

The engine he had rebuilt in theory.

So it was a case of okay, maybe a bit of paint.

Anyway, I got the car back here and like everything, it's turned into a much bigger project.

So I've had to have the engine completely rebuilt.

It's got completely repainted and the electrics were a nightmare.

So I'm gradually working my way through it.

But those videos, weirdly, those project car videos don't do as well as the car reviews.

What started out blew up the channel for me, which was the Ferrari.

In those days, I get 50, 60, 70, 80,000 views on those and that was great.

But nowadays, I easily get more than 100,000 reviews from doing the car stuff, the car reviews.

So that's kind of my bread and butter is that the other stuff I do because I want to do it anyway.

I have a question.

Ben, can I interrupt?

Yeah, go.

So what makes for a good episode?

So there's a few things and this is literally the crux of my experience with YouTube over 12 years.

It is crazy because a lot of people don't understand and you never really know.

Everyone talks about the algorithm, but ultimately what YouTube wants to do is keep you watching.

So you always have to bear in mind what do I have to do to get people to first of all click on this video

and secondly to keep watching this video.

Because if you just get people to click on it, the algorithm will know that if they leave after a minute,

that's not the kind of video they want to put in front of people.

So a good episode in my view is there's a lot of people doing car reviews, so you have to differentiate yourself a little bit.

So I always try to weave a story.

So it's not just here is a road test about an old car.

There's loads of road tests about cars about a lot of people have done them.

So I try and go dig much deeper into the background of the car, but some interesting aspects of the car.

So for example, if you're looking at a car that's really, really good, but it had dismal sales, which does happen.

Then you weave the story around that and you plan it.

And the biggest difference from the videos I used to do say eight years ago and the videos I do now is that I do a huge amount more planning now.

I used to just rock up with a camera, talk to it, say what I thought, drive the car, say how it drove, and then worry about everything later.

Whereas now I already have and weave a plan in my head of the story I'm going to tell about that car.

The bits I do around the car where I'm going around talking and so on, I script to those before because I learned over time that I'm telling a story anyway.

So scripting isn't a problem, but it works a lot better.

It's snappier, it's logical, it's in sequence.

So if I just sit there and talk for five minutes out of my head, I go off on tangents, makes editing much harder.

So do that.

Then with the bits when I'm in the car driving, driving impression, that's ad lib.

But anyway, the key to me, what I think is the secret at the moment is that you weave a story much more preparation, much more planning on what I'm going to do before I do it.

Not just launch into it and then hope that it'll be an interesting video.

Of course, it helps massively if you have a car which has some interesting traits and that maybe hasn't already been covered to death on YouTube.

That's an increasing problem, right?

Because everybody's doing car reviews, everybody's doing car stuff, and I've done a large proportion of all the hero cars I've always wanted to do.

I do 100 cars a year.

So it's reaching sort of capacity at some point.

So I'm not counting on this being forever.

I'm just maximizing it while it works.

But that actually does bring a question I was going to ask you, Jack.

So stories of cool or classic cars, do you have a definition of what is and is not inside that boundary?

What cars you would drive, basically what qualifies as cool and what qualifies as classic?

Yeah, so for me, it's really one thing rather than either of those.

For me, it's interesting.

And unfortunately, the way I judge that is quite selfish.

It's whether I find it interesting or not.

That's what it's always been about.

And I assume that I have a lot of people, peers, that are equal to me and will have similar tastes.

So that means I'll give you some rough definitions.

Generally speaking, it's cars that start from the very late 50s up to the 2000s with some exceptions.

So really modern stuff.

It's very rare that I'd ever have any interest in it.

I don't cover them.

I don't know about them.

I've done not interested in them.

They're brilliant, but I find them boring.

They're too easy to drive.

They're characterless.

It's just not interested.

The old cars, but it may also because of their imperfections.

And then living in the UK, British cars, I'm Italian of heritage.

So I have a big choice of cars that have failed.

And that makes them even more interesting.

Because often, they had some genius bits of ideas, thinking and design and terrible execution.

So they could have been something incredible.

But that's how I pick them.

So they don't have to be cool.

They don't have to be brilliant.

They just have to be interesting.

So it could be a complete failure, but have a brilliant concept behind it.

For example, rotary engine car, the RU80, before it was ALD, Auto Union or whatever it was called, that kind of stuff.

They're big failures, but really good cars or a Lancia Vita, which I don't think you guys got in America.

No, we didn't.

Unfortunately, Mickey, that means your car is not going to make it on the channel.

Which car have you got, Mickey?

I was about to apply some forbidden adjectives there.

We have forbidden adjectives?

How did I miss that memo?

I've got a 2005 Honda Accord appliance.

It does not bring me joy.

Have you bought a new car yet?

No.

Don't you think I'd announced that?

I think if you actually ever buy a new car, you have to end the show.

We've been having this conversation for three years, I think, close to five.

Well, I've only been around for three years.

The problem is, Mickey gets mad at me because I have a 2016 Mazda MX-5 MD,

and my car gets better gas mileage than his does.

The appliance.

By the way, there are some exceptions to my new rules.

For example, the MX-5 is one of those cars that in every iteration pretty much,

even the modern ones, is still a great car.

I can keep you up from the airport.

I'm not going to bother covering it because it's being done to death anyway.

But it's ever been done to death with me driving around a roundabout.

That is the exception.

Well, the car's still watching the hood.

Damn it, Dave.

Keep dropping all the secrets.

Dude, let a girl retain a little bit of mystery.

Come on now.

I think he's right.

I think that the MX-5 is so well regarded that everybody's already sort of fanned over it.

Yeah, but Claudette's special.

Yes.

The mix of British and Italian cars I can relate to because when I was a child,

my father had some sunbeams and then after he'd moved on from those,

he had some Alfa Romeo's, 1970s models, of course, with the horrible electrics.

So I grew up learning to turn the spanners on all that stuff, so I dig it.

That brings me to one of your videos I thought I'd give a shout out to.

The one with your Italian father where the two of you teach us how to pronounce the Italian car names.

I loved that.

That was fantastic.

Nice.

Not the one that he loved it.

I think it actually brought a trivia question.

I believe it did.

I forget what the question was.

I remember because it was like you watched the video two days before we recorded the show.

Yeah, and I don't have a drop of Italian blood in me that I've been able to determine,

but I just love the sound of it.

I'm thinking maybe I should learn it just because it's a cool sounding language.

Yeah.

I spent like 12 years every summer going to Italy to a little village called Rosalina Mare at Bevan HCS.

So I can do food, beer, and bathroom, which by American standards, I'm an overachiever.

So there, go me.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to say.

So I mean, I'm a little jealous.

I think that living in America comes with a ton of limitations these days for other than the obvious reasons.

But, you know, for instance, we don't have a marketplace that's full of cool, exotic, foreign cars.

It's very difficult to find an exotic.

Well, that and there are so many that don't come to our market.

We're always hearing about some cool car being introduced somewhere and not coming to USA.

Not coming to USA.

It's our perpetual lament.

And, you know, through number 27, I get to see a lot of those cars.

I get to hear them.

I get to, you know, learn about them.

So thank you, Jack.

I'm glad you're doing what you're doing with all these cool cars.

So much stuff that we don't go ahead.

No, please you did.

Okay.

Yeah.

There's so much stuff that we didn't get because of, you know, especially from the 80s and 90s,

where our emission standards and crash standards were higher than what some manufacturers were producing overseas.

Who cares about that?

We don't need crash standards.

Right.

Yeah.

You know, you don't buy a car to crash it.

Yeah.

Jack, I was wondering the number, the name of your channel, the driver 27.

Is that an?

It's not an interesting story and I'll tell you in a second.

But before that, I just wanted to say, I know what you're saying and you're right, but there is a flip side.

So from Europe, I always watched you guys with some envy that there was a lot of like really cheap, big engine.

Oh, yeah.

And stuff.

And that it was always accessible.

So, you know, the engines, the cost of running it was low.

So, you know, the idea that you could get stuff from, you know, the early Corvettes.

Like, I know the last, forget the last 10 years when everything's gone crazy everywhere.

But back in the normal days, you know, like in the 90s, 2000s, whatever, that, you know,

you could get a big engine car and, you know, with a lovely VA, you know, the stuff that

in Europe, I ended up having it eventually, but a VA for a long time, if I may, was just

forget that, you know, massive, you know, and I love everything.

I'm not Mark specific, as you've seen from the channel.

And I love everything from, you know, the sort of land yachts of the 50s, 60s, you know,

those cars that a lot of people, some people say in Europe might have derided because they

didn't handle, they were big, you know, American cars for a long time.

It was thought they were, you know, they didn't handle, they were big, terrible gas mileage,

big yank, but really they were cars that for their own market were very good.

And, you know, they had some incredible interiors, some incredible.

I think I can't remember what year it was now.

I did a 59 Chevy or something like that or 61, which had a more modern engine in it.

But, you know, had like the, the, at the back of the fins, it starts off with two little

jets on the sides and then it goes down to the rear fins, which then, you know,

rocket-shaped stuff, the interior.

I mean, you know, those things are works of art.

You know, I love that.

I love American stuff.

I love it all.

It's hard for us here, though, with American stuff, just because it's so big.

So I love one of those old land yachts, but it's just not possible because you'd need

like a massive garage.

But I've got a bit of a mixture now, you know, because I have the Pantera.

I feel I have a bit of Europe and a bit of US.

And I love them.

You know, I don't know what it is.

I, for me, I mean, I like Ferraris.

I like to the 308 and I owe everything to it in many ways now, but it was the Pantera

for me as it's more exotic.

It's more interesting.

And, you know, a lot of Europeans used to dismiss the Ford V8s just because there was

a lot of them about, but they're brilliant engines.

They're lovely engines set up properly.

They're great things, you know, people dismiss them.

They're still pushrod.

They're brilliant.

Going back now to number 27, and I mentioned to you at the beginning of the show that

I started off doing videos about my first car, which was, well, the first car I did

a lot of work on my Porsche 96 wall.

And that car was cobalt blue in color.

And the atomic number of cobalt is 27.

So it's a bit of a let down as a story, but because originally the channel was about the

car, you know, and I, so I called that car number 27 and I had a little atomic symbol

on the side with 27 in the middle of it.

And so that's how the channel started.

And, you know, going back now, I might like to find something else, but to be honest, it's

distinctive enough.

It works.

And the channel has got so much presence now that I'd be mad to change the name now.

I don't think there's enough benefit in it.

You know, it's memorable enough.

Yeah.

And for those of us who don't know any better, we just assume it's an homage to Gilles Villeneuve.

Exactly.

That's what a lot of people think, which would have been so much cooler.

You know, that's what I should say.

Because other people have asked me, and if I said that, that would be so much better.

But I feel like I can't lie about it.

I have to tell you the boring truth.

It's after a Porsche 964, which I no longer even have.

So you could say it was subconsciously, it probably happened that way.

Yeah.

And quite probably.

And finally, you know, I only realized this later, but the house I was living at the time

in London was number 27.

It was the house was 27 as well.

I only realized later that it was the same thing.

But yeah, no.

So that's, that's, that's, that's the reason behind the name.

Fantastic.

Still cool.

Yes.

Makes perfect sense.

One thing I wanted to point out to listeners too about the Ferrari is that I've burst out

laughing, laughing the first time I heard you, the name you gave it because you bought

it during the lockdowns.

It was the Influenzo.

Oh, that was genius.

That's nice.

You know, when I was saying that everything worked, so I was lucky because I've been trying

to push YouTube for years on and off, you know, because I did have other jobs.

So it wasn't full time, but I wanted to do better at it.

And it's very hard work, you know, and I don't know if it was six years at that stage.

I got 14,000 subscribers.

It's hard to break through and then it was a perfect storm of goodness for me in a way

because I don't want to say the wrong thing, but I quite enjoyed lockdown, frankly, because

there was no traffic on the roads.

Right.

I could still go out because YouTube was a job that was paying tax on and earning me money.

I had this car.

I did a bit of work remotely at home, but I had enough time to work on the Ferrari.

I had the Ferrari for the very first time in my life.

And what happened was when I got it, which was a complete surprise and there's the first

video where I'm there in my pajamas as I realized that I won the auction and I can't quite believe

it.

And it's all genuine and you can tell really because it just, you know, it's a weird reaction

that I have.

But the I then put it on social media and all to all my friends.

And there's a guy locally who actually it turns out lives locally to where I am now

in Oxfordshire, who's called Ian Ogilvy, who has I think the highest mileage Lotus Elise,

that's one in the world.

I think he's got 240,000 miles on it.

He uses it as a daily.

And I said, what should I call it?

And he is the one.

I can't take the credit with influenza, which is genius because it's so right for that time.

You know, Enzo influenza.

We're just going through it.

And so the name was awesome.

The car was a complete shit, which, you know, is someone to square on here.

But, you know, to say for me, it would have been a disaster.

Right.

For me, you know, and the beauty, the reason why it worked as well, I think rather better

in a way than this Pantera is this Pantera.

Yeah, I'm slowly reassembling it.

It's loads of problems, but it's not as interesting as having a car which runs very badly.

And I make it run worse progressively before I make it run better.

You know, or you can, you can start an episode by driving in it saying, look, it's only firing on six.

Take it home.

Make absolutely no progress.

Maybe break something else on it.

Take it out again and say, yeah, I haven't fixed it.

People seem to love that.

Whereas this, where you're just there in the garage all the time, the car doesn't move.

It's not quite as interesting, I think, you know.

The episode you just subscribed is a metaphor for my career.

It's a Winston Churchill quote about going through successive failures and pressing on regardless.

That's it.

Yeah.

Sounds like my marriage and my dating history today.

So how long does it take you to put together an episode top to bottom?

So it depends on the type of episode.

So as I said, I've changed from doing project episodes and now I mainly do car episodes.

So a car episode, the reason why I can make it work financially, because YouTube doesn't pay that well for a channel my size.

It's okay.

Like it's not terrible, but for a channel my size, the key is perfecting the system.

So that's why I plan so much ahead.

If you don't plan ahead, you end up spending five times as long editing afterwards because you're not saying the right things.

You have to cut, you know.

So if you get it right while you're being filmed, then it's much quicker afterwards and it's better, you know.

So planning is key.

So I would say the way it works is probably five to six hours of research, depending sometimes more, sometimes a little bit less.

The day before usually I do the car, depending if it's a car already know a bit, I might do a bit less or whatever.

That's when I try and get a story in my head of how I'm going to present this car, you know.

And that's the other key is, you know, you've got to think already about the thumbnail title and the title.

What are you trying to tell people, you know, before you go in and drive the car?

It's not as easy as most people think, yeah.

No, so that it flows in the video.

So you don't have to lie and use clickbait because what you're saying, which is interesting and draws people in is what you'll be talking about in the video.

Not something you think about afterwards.

That would have been a good angle.

You have to know that before.

So say five to six hours preparation the day before filming itself used to take under three hours.

It's now more like three to four hours because I do this planning and because I do a lot more around the car, like little 10, 15 second bursts at different angles around the car,

which I say I've scripted and I do that adds a bit.

Whereas I used to just get in the car with the go pros and walk around and talk and overlay images.

But I think it's more interesting to start off in the car.

Then I go to static stuff where I move around the car.

The car's not moving.

And then at that stage when that's becoming bit boring back in the car, so you have movement and so on.

So the key is a lot of different images, different angles, different things, always moving, always engaging.

Because I'm not quite charismatic enough to carry it off with just my face the whole time, right?

So I think there's three types of people who present or try and present.

There's people who can do it automatically and completely charismatic.

There's people who can do it if they work at it.

That's me.

There's people who can't do it no matter how much they work at it.

And basically in my case, I have to work to make it work.

And so over the years, I've changed how I do it.

I've perfected it.

Recently I added another thing, which is normally I have what I've described a go pros in the car,

angles of the go pros pointing outside, then me static around the car with the camera moving about,

front angle, side angle and so on.

And then I had where the driver drives the car on the road and I'm at the side of the road getting moving angles of the car as well,

which you use to overlay and so on.

And recently I added something else, which is tracking shots where I drive with my car,

or they drive with another car and I follow with another car.

So I'm adding bits, trying to add new shots, trying to keep it fresh.

But I think you have to.

And I think I have had some help in the past, but I've also, without naming names,

I also do know a couple of really well-known personalities in the automotive world.

And if they had chosen to, and I had asked for their help in the past, if they had chosen to help,

they could have easily raised my profile very quickly with just something on Twitter or a link on Twitter or anything like that.

And I didn't think it was very nice that I got no help, but I'm really glad of it now,

because what it meant is that over time I've constantly been asking myself,

what can I do to make it different?

You know, I thought a bit less now maybe sometimes, but I thought constantly.

I look at the statistics. What can I do? What can I do to improve it?

What can I do to make it better? How can it work better? What can it do?

And, you know, I learned lessons through my work as well, you know, about storytelling,

which I think is quite important and helps.

So, you know, you have to have a start. You have to tell people what you're going to tell them.

You have to have a middle, a discussion, and you have to have a conclusion.

And this is what I'm saying about planning and trying to do something, you know, interesting.

I think in the early days of YouTube, you could just get in a car, tell a brief bit of history

and a little bit of how it drives, and that was enough.

But now it isn't. You know, you have to do more.

And I think storytelling, the quality has to be good enough.

So you have to have enough quality in terms of, you know, clear filming, especially good sound,

which is probably one of the harder things.

Oh, yeah.

But there's no point in getting, you know, TV quality standards of broadcasting with drone filming and all the rest of it.

People won't watch it. They watch for the story.

And the rest of it has to be good enough to match the story.

I've said that time and again, the story matters.

Yeah, I think that ties into what we're all about at the thing about cars,

because our sort of secret that drives us is that you can talk about cars all day long.

But to us, the thing is that cars are meaningless without people.

True.

That's absolutely right.

This is where I fly into a blind rage and commit senseless acts of violence,

because I think at some point people also want to see the cars.

Well, they do.

Yeah.

Why don't you just, why don't you just stand on tradition making and channel Madeleine Conn?

I don't think I can.

I don't think that's physically possible.

Oh, sweet mystery of life, a tossed iPhone.

Tired.

Oh, yes.

Yes.

Wheels are coming off.

Yeah.

The wheels.

I've kept it together as long as I could and I can't anymore.

An area reference to none beating or your breasts.

So, yeah, we have been buttoned up much longer and stronger than we ever have.

I have been really well behaved and I would like some credit for that.

Okay.

You've been flirting this entire time.

Come on, admit it.

I flirt with everybody.

It's true.

Mickey, don't think you're special.

I will never fault you for that, Misty.

It's very nice.

You do a lot for my ego.

Thank you very much.

But so, I mean, I would like to figure out, I mean, you know, again, the gang will tell

you that I've been wrestling in vain with the notion of how to turn the thing about cars

into a television show.

And it's just very hard for us to do because we all work.

We all have, you know, full-time jobs and it's very difficult to, you know, make the

time to even come up with a marketing reel that I might try to get in front of a television

producer.

And producing a podcast requires a certain amount of time that we all know about.

Producing a video is going to require a lot more time that none of us have.

So, that's the frustration that I end up with.

Besides, we all have great faces for podcasts.

Hey.

Oi.

Speak for yourself.

Most of us.

I think I'm sorry.

Your first question, I also realized I forgot to finish off how long it takes.

The filming itself is three to four hours.

And then the editing, I think probably six to ten hours if everything goes well.

But it can be a lot longer, especially if things don't go well and I need to do a lot

of work.

But then the other thing most people don't realize is how much time is then spent doing

thumbnails and titles.

This is the other interesting thing.

So, and again, this is something I learned over time.

You know, it probably, I learned it fairly early on, but not that quickly.

You know, certainly not within the first year of YouTube.

The title and the thumbnail are absolutely crucial.

You get an absolutely brilliant video.

So, if it has a chip thumbnail and a crap video and a crap title, it will not do well.

It's that simple.

So, I spend so much more time.

The beginning, all I do is try and screen grab something that looked okay from the video

once it was edited.

Try and find a bit where I'm next to the car talking, which was fine and do that.

Now, I think about that while I'm filming.

I try and get shots that will make good thumbnails.

And I spend a lot of time editing them afterwards, making them look good, color grading them,

cutting them at different angles.

And most important of all, getting a good snappy title, which is hard.

It has to be short on YouTube, but you have to put in your hook, which has to be real.

It can't be, you know, a fantasized crappy hook.

It has to be a real hook, but it has to be a hook.

And it has to work with the title that you're putting in the thumbnail.

That stuff is just critical.

Maybe that explains our problem, Mickey.

We shouldn't be using that thumbnail view in the leather speedup.

It's got a point.

I mean, we could always use...

No, we can't use that one either by like 60 Geneva Conventions.

Sorry.

Next up.

We kind of just can't keep Dave and I in the same room for very long.

We have this weird symbiosis and we feed off of each other.

You can't even keep us on the same continent.

I love it.

Can I just ask how you will know each other?

How did the group come together?

This is a chemical experiment from the pot gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Amen, brother.

So the condensed version of the story, if I can give it a shot.

Ben and I were out one day looking at a scrapyard trying to find something that we might wrench on, project on together.

And none of the cars there were in reasonable condition or the ones that were were simply too expensive.

But we kept talking about cars that particular day and conversation which lasted several hours like we actually went to lunch and just kept on talking.

At the end of that conversation, I said to Ben, you know, we should record these conversations, make a podcast or something.

And Ben said, I actually know what it should be called and there you have it.

So in the, and that's how the podcast gets started.

And over years, we've, you know, had people join us at the mic and then fade away.

It's been very important to me and to make sure we have a woman on mic with us at all times.

And so we're always looking for women who are in the cars and we're very lucky to know a good handful of them who are regular participants with us.

And then just through regular old networking, you know, I met Dave who said he was in the cars and like, hey, join us on mic.

And Tim, I've actually known for much longer than most people realize.

And it was just at some point, I'm like, you know, Tim needs to be on this show.

He, he, it's just a no brainer.

So yeah, friends of friends.

And then in our case, Donna introduced us.

I started out as a guest.

And then almost three years later, I'm having meltdowns about him and she sandwiches on the French highways and channeling Madeline Kahn.

Is that because the sandwiches on French highways are so disgusting, Missy?

And we're off.

I'll be back in 20 minutes because I've noticed that as well.

I don't know if that's what you meant, but one thing.

Yeah, that is exactly what I meant.

If you go to the episode, don't eat the ham and cheese in France.

There is a good five minute meltdown to where I just lose my complete and utter shit about this is a country that can produce cheese.

And this thing that I got from the gas station in France was the whitest white person food I've ever, ever witnessed.

And they were sorry, Dave.

I really enjoy it.

The first time around it was like the, it was like the climax of Les Miserables.

The reason why I know guys is because I used to go to drive to Italian of heritage, obviously my dad's over there.

And I used to drive to Italy every six months, more or less, because he worked for fear when I was in 19 or 20.

And we could have a third car that he would buy.

He bought me a car outright sort of, but it was like a weird lease.

So they, you buy a small car, but then you would have it replaced every six months for free.

So the, and it included insurance costs and all that.

So basically you paid for a car once with a 20% discount.

And as long as my dad worked for fear, it would always be new and always, you know, within six months and there would be no costs.

But because it was in Italy, I'd come back to the UK where I live with this car and I have to bring it back six months later.

So I used to go through France and I remember going through these petrol stations.

And the first time I was like, you know, this is a country with beautiful food.

How is it possible that sandwiches in the UK are way better than the crap that they have in these fridges?

Which you can tell is just there, you know, they put all this stuff in it to last six months.

It's so weird. I don't know why the French did that.

It's just because they wouldn't consider eating at a petrol station.

So they just put crap there for people that they think they're not going to be French anyway.

And that's it.

Well, yeah, well, I will say, God, we was last time we drove through France.

I've been divorced now for two years.

So five years ago, still the same story.

The only thing that ever actually sets me off quite as much is automatic transmissions,

which I think are an abomination unto Nuggan and should be illegal and Fords.

We want to have a user question.

Would you rather drive two of these Fords around 285 in Atlanta on rush hour traffic?

And I said, I'll walk. Thank you.

So Jack, Jack, there's a video here that you've posted 11 months ago.

The title is a symbol of everything wrong with cars today at 1997 Ford Puma,

which of course we never saw in the States.

But the thumbnail includes a caption of sorts that says absolute proof that humans are idiots.

And I don't know why that makes me laugh, but it makes me laugh.

And I haven't even watched the episode yet.

I love that too.

Yeah. So what happened?

I'll explain it to you quickly.

So essentially Ford used to make terrible cars in Europe up until the early 90s.

They were cars that were sold on the basis that there were lots of dealerships,

so they were accessible, they were cheap, and they were there and easy to fix.

But they never drove well.

They never bothered much with the engineering.

In the early 90s, they suddenly thought, hold on,

I think we're going to have to start changing what we produce

because it's not enough to do what we're doing.

And they started making cars that were shockingly good to drive.

And it started with the first facelift of the Fiesta,

which I call the face fist Fiesta at a little round sort of mouth on it.

It didn't look very nice.

It looked worse than the original.

But they had a new Z-Tec engine co-engineered and produced with Yamaha, I believe,

and which was Zingy lovely, the whole opposite of the previous Ford engines.

And they had a new chassis engineer whose name I've now forgotten, but it was just brilliant.

And even a lowly 1.2 Fiesta, you know, a tiny little economy car was a joy to drive.

I mean, brilliant, you know, brilliant.

So Ford completely changed.

And at that period, they also made a little coupe called a Puma, which was the Fiesta,

but it had a 1.7 variable valve timing version of that engine.

And it's a beautiful, small thing.

So it's not beautiful, I guess, because it's not that pretty,

but beautiful in the sense that it was small.

It was light.

It was an absolute joy to drive.

It's one of those cars where everything works in symphony.

So the weighing of the steering, all the controls, the way the chassis goes,

they've got just the right damping, the right springing, you know, the right rate.

The engine is perfectly matched to the car.

You can go with that car down any sort of twisty road.

You don't have to be doing crazy speeds and it rewards you and it works brilliantly.

And so with this film, I wanted to say that essentially you have that and it's perfect

because also it was small and light.

So it was efficient, which is something we've been banging on about incessantly

for the last 15 years, right?

How we have to save the planet.

But then what do we do?

Instead of making small, efficient cars, when makers try and make them,

it's the same with the Audi A2 or the BMW i3.

Clever cars with clever technology, which are light, have room and whatever.

We don't buy them.

What we buy are big crossover pieces of crap.

And I wanted to show the contrast between that car, which did okay to be honest,

but when they then didn't bother replacing it and when they did replace it years later,

they replaced it with another Puma, which was a crossover,

which is actually not a bad car for what it is.

But just imagine if instead of putting all that energy into making that stupid thing,

they'd made a new version of the original Puma with today's technology, right?

They couldn't make it so good if they wanted small light, save the environment,

do all that crap, still be fun to drive.

But no, you know, they don't do that.

They do something else.

So that's behind that.

That's why I'm saying people are stupid because we say we want something,

but it's certainly not true because when we're offered that, we don't buy it.

Well, we want everyone else to buy it.

Yeah, yeah.

So that was that.

And I did the same a few, a year later.

I did a video on the Audi A2, which I don't know if you guys have in America,

but it's a little, so it's a car which came out in 2000 and one version of it in 2000,

24 years ago, could do 100 miles to the gallon.

Now, there's some electric cars now, like the Ford Capri,

only does 104 miles to the gallon electric thing, right?

Right.

So that A2 was a stroke of genius and it's fun to drive.

It looks like a little bubble.

Some people don't like it.

I think it looks cute.

But for what it is, it's fun to drive, incredibly efficient,

all aluminium construction, beautiful engineering thing.

And of course, nobody bought it, right?

So they didn't make it again, right?

But that's what we all want.

And imagine making the same car 20 years later, if they could do 100 miles to the gallon then,

they'd be able to match some electric cars there.

I'm not anti-electric.

I think there's a place for electric.

But it really pisses me off that everybody's, sorry, that everybody's going on about this stuff.

All right.

You know, maybe doing the recycling assiduously, but then they drive, you know,

3K ends for a two mile journey.

There's a place for KNs as well.

I don't want to tell people what they have to buy.

But I find the contrast between what people think and say and then do just abusing, right?

Nikki, I want to invite Jack back and have an episode of Jack and Misty talking about sandwiches and forts.

I agree.

You're reading my mind, Jack.

I'm afraid we're running out of time, but please absolutely, we must do this again.

I was actually going to table a motion that we bring back, we bring Jack back once a month for Jack's rant.

That's just, I mean, that was a poetic rant in the month club.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

I didn't spend too much like that.

I don't know how, what your guidelines are.

I should have.

No guidelines.

There are no guidelines.

No, no, no.

No guidelines are written on the back of a poster.

No.

Right.

Let's do this.

Yeah, let's wrap the episode and let's definitely make some plans to do this again, Jack.

Thank you for being our guest today.

But Tim, let's do the trivia thing and then Ben, take us out.

Okay.

All right.

We'll take it from the top.

So what is the difference between Land Rover and Range Rover?

A, Land Rover is a brand or make and the Range Rover is a Land Rover model.

B, Land Rovers are four wheel drive SUVs and Range Rovers are high performance sedans.

C, British Leyland Motors used the Range Rover name for their SUVs until 1988.

When the Land Rover name replaced it, there has not been a new Range Rover since 1987.

Or D, the Land Rover and Range Rover were both divisions of the Rover Group.

I'm, Jack, we have to hold off on you to the end because being a very car knowledgeable

Englishman, you may have more insight than most of the rest of us.

So, Misty will go ladies first.

I'm going for the D.

Yes, ma'am.

Ben?

Oh, goodness.

So conflicted between a couple of them because they both sound great, but I'm going to say

A, just for the hell of it.

Okay.

Dave?

You know what?

It's to go back to an old joke.

If you pull up Land Rover or Range Rover on your laptop, you need to put down newspaper

because it's going to start leaking oil.

Range Rover is a brand of Land Rover.

Okay.

Mickey?

This is one of the few trivia questions where I actually knew the answer before you finished

asking it.

It's A.

Okay.

And Jack?

Yeah, I agree it's A, but you stumped me slightly with something else that one of the others

that you said, which was quite interesting because there's been a little bit of a change

of the way they use the name Range Rover because I think Range Rover used to also be branded

a Land Rover, but not anymore.

Although it is part of the thing, there is some confusion there.

But yes, I think the original answer is A, which is just that a Range Rover was a model

of Land Rover company at the time.

Yes, that is correct.

It is A, Land Rover is the brand or make and the Range Rover is a Land Rover model.

And you do all know, I presume, that Land Rover was a sub-brand of Rover.

Right, yes.

Although they split off as companies very early on, but originally it was called a Land Rover

because it was a Rover that would go on the land.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yes.

And it was based on your Willy's Jeep.

I'm not supposed to know that.

So that is, they used that as the basis to make the original, the first Land Rover.

The designer here in the UK, he was using a Willy's Jeep on his farm and it was falling

to bits and stuff and he thought, you know, this would be great for the UK.

So they based it on the American design.

That's where it came from, one of the most iconic products in the UK from America.

I'm endangering my timeline here, but now if you want a Willy's Jeep, all you have to

do is go to India.

Mahindra is making a copy of the Willy's Jeep based on the original plans.

Of course, it's not street legal anymore, but yeah.

If you want actually an interesting other little bit of trivia that during World War

II, my mother was secretary to the CEO of Willy's Overland.

No, my goodness.

After World War II, they were brainstorming on how they were going to make a domestic

model for this.

And I have pictures of my mother driving Jeeps in the original Willy's advertisement

for that this is going to be a domestic product.

Interesting.

My grandparents bought one of those because after the war, you couldn't get a new car

and there was a lot of demand.

The CJ1 Jeep was the first thing out and my grandparents bought one long before I was

born, but I hear that my very pretty grandmother was quite a site driving to the grocery store,

you know, in her Jeep.

I'll find the picture of my mother and send it to everybody.

Let's do that.

Ben, let's close the episode.

Right.

Well, thank you, Jack, for being with us.

I can't believe I got to talk with you.

I'm such a huge fan.

I hope I didn't gush too much.

But everybody, thanks for listening.

It's been a fabulous, fabulous time and we will see you on the road.

See you, everybody.

Take care.

Hey, guys.

Hi, y'all.

Thanks for being here.

See you.

Thank you for listening.

This has been the Thing About Cars.

We'll see you on the road.

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