The Rivian R1S is a new electric SUV that can go off-road and has four motors for better control and power. It's built for people who like outdoor adventures.
Horsepower is how we measure how strong an engine is. When a car has 1,000 horsepower, it means it can go really fast and perform well, especially off-road.
The BMW M3 E92 is a sporty two-door version of the M3, which is known for being fast and fun to drive. It's part of a special line of BMW cars designed for performance.
The Mazda MX-5 Miata is a small sports car that many people love because it's fun to drive and not too expensive. It's often used in racing by beginners.
The BMW M240i is a sporty car that has a strong engine, making it feel fast when you drive it. It's part of BMW's 2 Series and is designed for people who enjoy performance.
Rear-wheel drive means that the back wheels of the car get the power from the engine. This setup can help the car handle better and go faster, especially in sports cars.
The ZF eight-speed is a type of automatic transmission that helps cars shift gears smoothly. It's often found in fast and luxury cars, making them perform better while saving fuel.
A naturally aspirated engine gets air into it just by using the natural pressure from the atmosphere, without any help from turbochargers or superchargers. This means it can be very responsive when you press the gas pedal.
Slicks are special tires used in racing that don't have any grooves or patterns on them. This design helps them grip the road better, especially when it's dry.
iRacing is an online racing game where you can race against other players. It's known for being very realistic and has different racing events you can join.
Assetto Corsa is a racing game that lets you drive different cars on real-life tracks. It's designed to feel very realistic, making it popular among car enthusiasts.
Traction control helps your car stay on the road when it's slippery. It stops the wheels from spinning too much when you accelerate, making it safer to drive.
A stint is how long a driver drives the car during a race before switching with another driver. It's important to manage these times well to do well in the race.
A practice day is when drivers get to drive on the track before the race to practice and make sure their cars are ready. It's like a warm-up before the big event.
Qualifying is when drivers try to set the fastest lap times before the race. The better your time, the closer you start to the front when the race begins.
The Volvo V90 Cross Country is a type of car that looks like a station wagon but is built to handle rougher roads. It has a higher ride height and all-wheel drive, which helps it drive better in different weather conditions.
Car
Mercedes-Benz E450
The Mercedes-Benz E450 is a fancy car that combines speed and comfort. It's known for being very nice inside and has a lot of cool features.
Body control is how well a car handles turns and bumps without feeling wobbly. If a car has good body control, it feels stable and comfortable when driving.
Damper settings are how you adjust the shock absorbers in a car's suspension. They help control how bumpy or smooth the ride feels when driving over uneven roads.
Wheelbase is how far apart the front and back wheels are on a car. A shorter distance can make a car easier to turn but might make it less stable at high speeds.
Steering ratio is how much the wheels turn when you turn the steering wheel. A smaller number means the wheels turn more with less effort, making the car feel more responsive.
Stability control helps keep the car from sliding or losing control when you turn sharply or drive on slippery roads. It uses the brakes to help keep the car stable.
Wheel slip happens when a car's wheels spin faster than the car is moving forward, which can happen when you accelerate too quickly. It's useful for tricks like burnouts but not great for regular driving.
Car
Rivian Teen Wolf
The Rivian Teen Wolf is a new electric vehicle concept from Rivian, a company that makes electric trucks and SUVs. This vehicle is designed to be fun and adventurous.
Automatic wipers are windshield wipers that turn on by themselves when it starts to rain. This helps drivers see better without having to manually control the wipers.
What up, everybody? Welcome to the Smoking Tire podcast. Today's episode is brought to you
by Off the Record. This holiday season, if you are road tripping, road trip with confidence
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All right, folks, on this episode of the podcast, we review the Rivian R1S Quad motor and ask,
who needs a 1,000 horsepower off-roader? Also, I learned that I am freaking terrible
at the racing simulator and I frustrate myself into a passable lap time while
practicing for racing in Texas. Plus, Jaguar's design boss gets fired and Zach takes his first
Waymo. That's today on the Smoking Tire podcast. Let's go.
Okay, fine. Really? I see us. But can you hear us? Only if you really listen to yourself.
Am I clear to you? Hi, what's happening? Man, it feels like I'm passing through my own
life right now, meaning like six days in New York, vacation, Thanksgiving, home for two days.
And I'm like tomorrow morning, I'm leaving again at 6am. That is weird. It feels
like you're vacationing in your normal life. It feels like I'm just stopping by my normal life
on the way to some other shit. That's true. That's what you're doing. I gotta fucking stop
this trip. This was gonna be the last trip. I'm going to Texas tomorrow to go racing,
which should be awesome. It was supposed to be the last trip of the year. And then Delta
fucking got me, dude. Of course they got me. Why wouldn't they, why would Delta not
reality show tension this to the end of the year? What do I mean? I mean, I am literally
one more flight short of making diamond for next year. All the fucking flying I've done.
And it has come down to, well, guess what? You have to take one more. It's all come down
to Abu Dhabi. It's not even far. It's Vegas. It's America's Abu Dhabi.
Yeah, that's true. So yeah, I need to find an excuse to go anywhere now on Delta
for any reason for the rest of the year. The shortest flight they offer, basically.
Well, they said if I buy a round trip first class to Vegas, that'll do it.
Or I could go comfort to Utah, Colorado. I could go skiing for a day in Colorado.
The other problem is do you want to go somewhere that's then far from the airport
once you get there? You know what I mean? I kind of want to go somewhere that's
where I want to have to then rent a car and do a whole other thing.
Right, right, right. Because you're just checking this box. That's all. You just want to tick
the flight box. Yeah, but I'd rather not just fly somewhere, turn around. I'd rather like to do
something of interest. Someone said fly LAX to Burbank. I don't even think they offer that.
Sarah flew to Palm Springs from LA. Yeah, you can do that. It was somehow a one hour flight,
but the plane she was on goes 500 miles per hour, and it is 100 miles, basically.
We're all sitting there at dinner like, how did it take so long? You had to go fly west.
You take off west, turn around. Yeah, it's 100 miles direct, but the distance traveled is probably
more like 300. And I don't think if that plane peaks, can go 500, there's no way it's doing that.
Planes fly economy speed, by the way. That's why they can, if they're like a half hour late,
they can magically make that shit up. We're going to make some time. A little more,
Acceleracio. Yeah. Yeah, no, the LA to Palm Springs is that one's, that one's,
that one you only do if you're going to Palm Springs on a Friday afternoon,
other than that. That's way too short for that. But like, we could go to,
see what's a cool city that's like between an hour and two hours flying from here.
I was thinking Santa Fe, a night in Santa Fe. That's a nice place to spend a one-nighter.
Seattle. Seattle's all right, but I don't need to go that far. Seattle is a legit three-hour flight,
and I don't need all that. Right? There's kind of limited options, but like, I mean I could do,
San Francisco is an easy one. You like Santa Fe, though, right? Flagstaff, could you play there?
Flagstaff is nice for a night. That restaurant was so good in Flagstaff. Wow, I would eat there again.
I forget the name of it. Fuck me, was it good? Santa Fe, I haven't had enough time in. I think
Santa Fe could be one. If I could get a, you want to go to Sedona? I could do a night at
Sedona. We don't need to look this up now. Anyway, anyway, I thought this was going to
be the last flight, but nope. Nope. But anyway, but racing. Yeah. So get this,
our race car has been upgraded. We were going to be racing. I believe that we arrive in driving an
entire car. Sergio, Tato, Tommy, I think Justin is not coming, but Lieberman and me,
and it's arrived and drive, but apparently this M3 E92 that is the car, the expected car
is like, something's wrong with it, it's not running right. So they've upgraded us to the
factory, the M2 or M240 Club Sport, like the BMW turnkey race car. Cool. Wow. Which is,
that's going to be a nice handling car, like that'll be fucking. That'll be lighter in the front,
for sure. That'll be fake to drive. That's going to be, that'll be fabulous. That's BMW's Miata,
basically. Yeah, it's like when we went down to, remember we were down at Concourse Club
in Miami talking to Aaron, who's the guy down there, and he said, yeah, everybody who gets a
membership just gets one of these. Yeah. They all just get those. That's what everybody gets. It's
like, my first race car. My first. From Fisher Price. Yeah, because if you're like rich, you're
not, if you have real money, you look at a Miata and you just go, no. Yeah, that's true.
You don't have to be like, you know, like, we know Miatas are great. Like a Miata racing
is awesome. And if you're a 17-year-old hot shoe who really wants to be somebody, then you're racing
Miatas. But if you're 65 and joining a racetrack country club, you are not starting in Miatas.
But I bet you will at some point end up at Miata. Once you like, learn the benefits of
this stuff. But yeah, you're going to start with something that's more expensive, better
brand. Well, you want something that like, if you're going to get a, you want it something
that feels fast. Yeah. Like this, this, you floor it and it like, you know, it's, that's
a, it's like a 350 horsepower or so car. Oh, okay. Is it? It's the M240. Yeah. Yeah. It's
got to be like 380, was it 382 or 360 was like the stock car when we drove it?
Yeah, it was pretty stout. Yeah. And that thing handled great. Yeah. It felt way lighter than the
the other cars we drove. Yeah. I mean, imagine that gutted with a cage. That'll be, that'll
be a great time. Oh, I'm, I was mixing this up with the little four banger thing. No, this is
going to be fast. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. This is going to be very fast. We drove the all the drive
one, right? Yeah. Yeah. The purple one, the eggplant one. Yeah. It was really fast. Yeah.
These are not all wheel drive. These are rear wheel drive, obviously, but I think this is
but they're the ZF eight speed. Yeah, that's it.
That is the car. It should be, it should be a, now what I don't know,
I don't know if it's the current one or the last gen one. Okay. So I actually have,
it doesn't really matter for our purposes. I mean, the current, the current one,
I don't think it's the current one. Something tells me that for this type of race,
they would be running a, running the last gen car. Either way, good time.
Race car is cool. Do you know, I mean, this is the cockpit of this new one and looks very,
I doubt it's that. Yeah. Oh my God. So weird that they've left this weird double,
the weird giant double screen in this race car. They chopped the top of the steering
wheel off so you could see the screen. That's so, it's so crazy. The only thing they've left from
the interior is the giant double screen. Sure. Yeah. And that's nothing left. The whole
of the interior is gone. It's just a screen now. I mean, there's probably, maybe there's
just too many computers involved with screen diagnostics and stuff. They just go, why,
why change it out? Yeah. Look, God, does it look terrible with that steering wheel though?
Yeah, it'd be fun. You know, I know I'm sure it drives fun. I'm sure it drives great.
Dude, that's cool. So we'll see how this goes now.
You want to talk about your training for this event?
Oh my God, dude. I went to the Sim up at Sergio's garage. They've got a nice Sim and
they didn't have, they got, it's not a motion Sim, but it's the three screens and the,
you know, it's pretty good. Eye racing and they were like, you know, I really,
I wanted to do some Sim training and Tato's really, really into the Sim because he's like a kid.
Yeah. Of course he is. And I am horrible at Sims. So fucking bad at them. Like folks,
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They just, they don't, I don't, I don't, I need to, I need to feel something to drive like I just
have to like and things happen in Sims that would never happen to me in cars such as what happened
yesterday, which is I was on the Sim for three hours. I was so frustrated and upset.
They didn't have, he couldn't build the exact car that the M3 that we're supposed to
so he found the closest power to weight and lap time that they had in iRacing is the Ford FR500
Mustang was the closest he could find. Okay. This is a car that does not handle. This is a solid
axle race car. Okay. This is what this is a car is a race car from like 12 years ago or something
like pre IRS. Okay. And this is a not, not a very good handling race car, but it is apparently
capable of running similar lap times to whatever this, this M3 was doing at Kota. So anyway, it
doesn't even matter. I for the first hour and Kota's like a long track for the first hour,
I am not able to complete a single lap without spinning out. And I'm spinning out in like
all different fucking places. So not the same corner. No, same whatever. No. And, and I'm just
like spin out like and my spin outs are like oversteering on the exit into some irrecoverable
slide that ends up in the wall. This car made like 370 naturally aspirated fucking horsepower.
Like, so I'm just like I keep spinning out and crashing. You're on slicks, I assume, like in the
sim. Yeah. Sticky tires, you're not overpowering them very easily in real life. But also like
the laps are long and every time you start over, you crash, you start over every time
you start on ice cold slicks. So you have to do either like a terrifyingly, like not terrifyingly,
frustratingly slow lap to like a warm up and then it's just another like 10 minutes waste.
Eventually, we he sort of set up like a little hot start hack. So if I crash, I could just like
hit a button and like be going full throttle like, you know, leading up to the front straight
and actually just because it just got too frustrating to do this again. But it was just
driving me insane because it was like shit that would never happen to me in a car.
Like I would just never get into any race car and just spin out every lap for 20 laps.
Like maybe I wouldn't maybe I'd be slow. Like I'm not saying I'm amazing. Like I'm
fucking real average. But like that just wouldn't happen. Like maybe I'd be 15 seconds off the pace
and then 12 seconds off the pace and then nine seconds off the pace. And eventually I'd settle
at something that was better than embarrassing, you know. And did Tato drive same car, same
sim, same everything? He's great at it. But he's great at the sim. Because someone asked like,
did you check like, are there settings? No, no, no, it wasn't settings. He was very
good at it. But like it's his sim and he is essentially, it's not like he can do it. Like he
he's good at racing driving and he's also good at the video game racing driving.
They're not exactly the same thing. They're related, but they're not exactly the same thing.
And like, is he going to be like faster than me in a real car? Fuck yeah, of course he is.
Obviously he is. Is Tommy, of course Tommy's going to set a time that everyone will be like,
what? Like he'll set some kind of fucking record half asleep probably. And it's amazing to watch.
But like just this, just the not the like, and let me just let me jump ahead because after three hours,
Tato said, I said, what what number are we looking for? For a lap? He said 235. I said,
okay, fine. And so at least that there's a goal. After three hours, I said, I'm not
leaving here until I run three laps in a row that are in the 235s. Like or or something like that.
Like I had three full like none of the spin outs. It's that that task took three hours. That's crazy.
And eventually I did 234. But like it was just it was so fucking frustrating because like
I mean just spinning out and spinning out and spinning out and spinning out and like
you don't feel when it's going to go like it's a butterfly steering wheel. So if you can't catch
you know a slide, it's just it's one and gone. I racing the I think I drove it like played it
once or twice and I was shocked at you know, none of the Sims like I've only been on one
two motion Sims, but I've played iracing, Assetto, you know, Forza, like all those I've played
on solid seats. Yeah. And I racing I was shocked at how little quote feel there was before
it let go. Yeah. It felt like the tires were plastic and on ice. Yeah. And I was like what
where did I go? Why am I going around in circles? It happened in Assetto. The other ones it's just
the way that the tire modeling let's go more progressively. And I know like iracing is now
this, I don't know, there's really there's competitions you can win money in and it's
kind of like the serious simulator for people to play or the serious game. Yeah. But I find
it much harder to drive in that game than any of the other ones, even if it's traction
off on all of them. Yeah. It's just way harder. But I was and you know, I should have been like,
hey, give me let me get five laps with the fucking traction control on to at least get to a certain
level and then we can turn it off or something like that. I didn't do that. I went full off
the whole time and maybe I shouldn't have and you know, whatever. I got there eventually,
but it was just it was way if you gave me three hours in a real car and a racetrack
bro. I'm in the hunt like not any reasonable car. You give me that much time in a real race track
were we're on pace. That's a ton of time. But like this was I don't want to say it was a waste
of time because you learn, you know, I learned where Tatos breaking points were. I watched
his line a bunch and like watching his line is helpful that you can take that to the real
track. You can take, okay, he's he's hitting the brakes at exactly this marker like great fucking
bank that and that's a repeatable thing. And so like it is helpful. But it was just like,
God damn it. Does this have to be this fucking frustrating? Like I probably would have gotten
all the benefit that I could have gotten from it just leaving the traction control on,
you know, or some or something. It was just like, I can't believe how fucking
frustrating I'm like anyone can have a bad day driving. It's like any other sort of sport.
But fuck. Well, it was repeated effort with no success for that long is going to bum anybody
out. And you don't like sim racing or sim driving anyway. So I think you're coming into it like,
you know, not having the best time. But then if you're working at it,
and you're seeing these, and you're not changing some things, but there's like,
all of a sudden you're spinning at this corner and then that corner like,
what am I doing different? That'd be really annoying. Ultimately, I found that
I the throttle like in this that there isn't like throttle feedback, you know, so much.
But like the throttle was like way more like sensitive than I thought it really was. And
you don't get that sense, right? You know, they don't you don't get that
when you're not sitting in the car. Yeah, when you don't feel the load being thrown to the
back. Yeah, you need to feel those things like I'm good at Sims. When it's like a track I've
driven a lot of or you know, like in in and I can take I can take the track knowledge backwards to
the sim better than I can like learn from the sim. You know, I see what you mean. Yeah.
Yeah.
Will the car have traction control?
Don't know. I mean, I shouldn't like need traction control and I'm I if I can drive a
fucking 750 around Kota without traction control, I can certainly drive a 240 BMW.
That it was just it wasn't it wasn't the traction control or no traction control. It was
just it was the lack of feel in that type of driving was like when you're when I'm trying
to like trying to push it to get a time like so frustrating. Yeah, definitely. And like in front
of like Tommy Kendall, I'm like, Oh my God, like I think he I'm pretty sure he knows I'm not this
bad. But like I don't want to start off this weekend like this in front of these guys, you
know, pretty tough. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be a bummer. I get it. It'd be really hard. I mean,
eventually got there. But like, whoa, the brutal three hours was my eyes hurt like
three hours in front of this like barely. I don't think I stood up for 10 minutes in those
three hours. Like it was tough. Anyway, how many stints do you guys get each during the race?
Is it just one each and I want to say it's two because I think it's four drivers and it's an
eight hour race. But it's it obviously depends on like, you know, what what happens. But I
think it's supposed to be to a race. Plus practice day. So there's a practice day Thursday. And
then qualifying is Friday. But Thursday is supposed to be like a fucking pissing rainstorm.
Oh boy. And so but it's supposed to be the only day of the whole weekend that it's raining. So
I've heard they're they're limiting how many cars can be on track and the wet and during
practice. And and so there's like, this is like the text thread as of an hour ago was like,
there's some kind of like lottery to get into Thursday practice. But if if if Thursday practice
is like fucked, then they're going to extend Friday qualifying into practice or something
like that. So they did say everybody will get at least some seat time in the car before the
race. So that's just 30 minutes in the car is enough. Yeah, just to get used to how just to be
even if the road's wet to feel how the car like what are your sight lines and all that stuff.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And Coda like and it like is there, you know, how obtrusive is the drivers
is the the net the window net? Because like Coda has a couple has two three one two three
left handers that in a regular car is no problem. But in a dry in at least in the fucking Sim,
it was really hard to see the apexes through the through the driver's nets. So you need to like
figure out other visual cues in some of those corners. But either way, like the real thing
should be a pretty good time. That's what we're race car race car race car big big fast
track, you know, big high speed track, which is pretty fun. You guys have to like
practice driver change stuff or I don't really I mean, we may yeah, we may I don't I guess you
have a crew right there's like, like you pull in and drivers are just helping each other get in
and out probably with belts and stuff and we may do fueling but they have like their mechanics
and stuff like it's it's a it's a it's a pretty legit organization from what I gather.
Cool. Do you have your helmet have speakers and microphone and shit?
No, I have the earbuds that have them. Yes, it does have it has it has comms,
the microphone thing built into it. And then I hear the earbuds, they're not like the over
ear ones, you need you want earbud ones in a race car. Well, I have those earbuds ones. I talked
about it after lemons, but I think I want both now because like, well, that car was so loud.
Yeah, this car probably not that loud. It'll be like, yeah, it'll probably be fine. But
you know, yes, there's worse things than a race car that's not that.
You totally agree. Yeah, I totally agree. First 10 minutes, I was like, this is the best. And
then the last two hours and the three days of tonight is afterwards. I was like, maybe we put
the inline six back in. Yeah, right. So that'll be fun. But cool. Yeah. In totally opposite
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when you head to Smalls.com-tire. And now back to the show. Tell me about the Volvo V90 cross.
Oh, I was going to save that for next year. Yeah, because I haven't done the homework on
the computers yet. Okay, fine. Overall, you know, some of the best seats I've sat in.
Yeah, they make great seats. The best. I think they're better than the car we drove
design. It's just not as firm. The shape is great and the foam is a little bit softer. But let's
say that because I want to look up the competitors. Everyone loves the Volvo. The competitors are like
Doug's car, the E450 Mercedes, the all-road kind of... Is there still an A6 all-road?
I think... Is that the only all-road? I don't know what the Audi's all-road lineup is, but
all right, we'll save it. We can talk more about the Rivian Quad. Oh, yeah, we've
touched on with Doug. I feel like I only touched on it in a negative way. I didn't say
very many nice things about it, which is unfair to Rivian because it's really nice.
It's expensive. I mean, it's kind of... I'm not sure who's going to buy into this because
you can't tell them apart, right? And so you can get a dual-motor Rivian that's still a huge
amount of horsepower for half the money of this. This thing is now like $150,000, $120,000.
They depreciate. They all have looked the same for a while. We're all sort of waiting for the R2
and the R3, right? And so this, I guess, is the last hurrah of the R1 line. I mean, they have
been steadily improving it. The body control on the suspension is so nice. It's really, really good
body control the way the height settings work, the way the damper settings are. Really nice,
just beautiful riding car. The build quality has been even ratcheted up from where it was before.
This is like a really nicely made thing. The materials are nice and the fit and finish was
really good. I thought the stereo sounded really good. The seats were really comfortable,
although they're not quite as adjustable as I'd like for a $100,000 car. It would be nice if
they had a little more... They're only like eight-way or something if they could do a little
more there, but a lot to like, really a lot to like. The short wheel, I wish it had a different
steer, slower steering ratio, because when they shorten the wheelbase from the truck,
it makes it drive like a car with a cut wheelbase, which is a very specific feel that you usually
only feel in rally cars and stuff. It's weird to feel it in a big truck. It almost feels
like the car has an overactive rear steer. Like the Mercedes used to.
Except it doesn't have rear steer. Whoa. Yeah, so it's like a Ferrari 812 steering ratio
in something with a shorter wheelbase. Right, 2.96 wheelbase or something like that.
And tall. And then tall. So it's like it does these motions that are odd that the truck doesn't
do. And specifically when you're when you're doing maneuvering at medium to higher speeds.
Well, because when we drove the R1T years ago in the Canyon, both of us were like,
it feels like an electric lifted GTR. The steering, I had no complaints about the
speed of the rack, but it felt very natural. The whole thing is set up for the truck.
Yeah. And then they leave it the same when they shorten the wheelbase,
and that makes it drive a little strange. You have to have a pretty finely tuned sense
of steering to be able to go at drive stage. Doesn't make us special, but like if you've driven
a whole lot of stuff, you know what happens when you change a thing. Well, and if someone
hasn't driven as many things as us, but if they got out of like,
you know, their ICE Mercedes SUV or BMW, if they got out of another comparably sized SUV,
would the steering feel too quick? Yeah. Is it like that Ferrari steering from 10 years ago?
It is. It's like sports car steering. Too fast compared to other sports cars.
Yeah. Right. This is that exact thing in a three-row SUV, which is with a thousand horsepower.
So it's like twitchy, twitchy handling and a huge amount of horsepower. It is uncomfortable
to launch this car. Like, and this one, this one had the knobbies on it. So like,
it'll just spin off four wheels, you know, like it's nuts. It's add the powers nuts.
I hit full throttle exactly two times and determined that that was way too much.
But it does have this rad tuner thing now, which allows you to really like dial it in if you are the
kind of person that likes to dial it in. It has a bunch of standard settings. And then if you
go to the next slide, there's photos on my Instagram, you can change like things like the
level of stability control, the amount of wheel slip you'll get. You can change how much brake
assist and steering assist and the ride height and the regen. They've hindered it. Yeah. They've
entuned it. But it's just one screen. That's... So it's all on one screen. It's easy to find.
Are there any other presets too, if you just like, I want sport mode? Yeah. There's like
comfort, sport and off-road. And it has presets and you can go back to, you know,
return to factory settings because you will almost certainly make it worse by messing with it.
The only ones I really... I liked to turn up the damping a little bit above their setting in
comfort. So the suspension was like somewhere between comfort and sport for the damping. It
was like a kind of a nice place to drive when cruising on the highway. So I like to mess with that
one. The wheel slip, some of them, the settings really make more sense when you're off-roading,
such as wheel slip, unless you want to do burnouts, which it does, it will spin off
four wheels if you do a launch, which is wild stuff. I don't know what that creature is.
There's a badge on the back with a creature. Is it Teen Wolf? Oh, it might be Teen Wolf.
It could be Teen Wolf. It looks like somewhere between like a yogi bear that's been through a rave.
And is that Teen Wolf? Well, it looks like Chewbacca, but the vest and the shorts and the headband
say Teen Wolf. Yeah, it's some kind of hairy monster in a Marty McFly vest.
I looked up the Rivian Teen Wolf. I mean, obviously they wouldn't buy the IP.
Not sure what the logo means, but it's cute. I mean, I like a cartoon.
Let's see. Is there anything else about it that I drove it in the rain? It was really
good in the rain. I mean, that's an excellent wet weather vehicle. The laser headlights,
the automatic wipers, all of those expert level. Awesome. The lights turn with you.
Not only do they turn, they're the European laser ones. So they black out the pixels. So
good. They're not blinding oncoming cars. Yes. That's fabulous. I think their nav system works
great. Even though their Sirius XM is the Sirius app, it's not actual satellite. I did think
it worked well. The cameras are great. The front and rear cameras. Hannah, when we drove it, and she
was mind blown, because the Taycan's camera sucks horribly. She was so blown away with the Rivian's
backup camera. That stuff matters. The Volvo's cameras look old. They look like the ones from
like six years ago compared to Sirius RAV4, which is a one-year-old car. It's much clearer.
The overhead shot is much clearer. Another thing you notice is newer ones will have better contrast.
The brighter picture at night or in the daytime is just clearer. Maybe I think also the screen is
nicer. So it's the camera and the screen. But Porsche, I think, won wonders. I legitimately
don't know the answer to this. I make absolutely no accusations of anything. But one wonders if
Porsche is using GM with the PDR camera, it's still like 1080. And it's like, why is it 1080?
It's like because we want it to work in Antarctica in 10 years. And so one wonders if Rivian doesn't
have those requirements and therefore uses a certain type of hardware, whatever, that Porsche
isn't willing to use or if Porsche is really just that far behind. So I don't know. It
would be fun to find the answer to that. I would genuinely, though, when I don't need a three-row
SUV, but if I did, this would be not the fucking, not the 1,000 horsepower one. But these are,
it's a nice thing. The steering is, I harp on it a lot, but you could get used to it
after a while. Did this ride, we rode in your friend's car down San Diego.
And I just remember the ride of the longer wheelbase T is much better. If you sit in the
back seat of the one down San Diego, it's a little sporty. I didn't sit in the back seat of this one
while someone else drove. Maybe I should have. But I was surprised in the back seat of Brad's
car that it was notably worse than being in the front seat. It's in sport mode in the back.
It was driver optimized, the whole thing. Brad also had the one on the big rims and this one has the
adventure knobbies. It doesn't help. So these are, I think, these wheels are one inch smaller than
those street wheels. It's also kind of an LA complaint. Also, Brad's was recalled for suspension-related
issues. So that could have been something. Not recalled, excuse me. Lemon. They couldn't get
the alignment in spec, I believe. Unalignable. Yeah. No matter how many crystals, whatever.
Shockers could not get aligned. Yeah. Yeah. But I presume the R2, they're not going to start with
the pickup truck and then shorten the wheelbase so it should steer normally. But a 5-row version
of this exact car would be, excuse me, not a 5-row, excuse me, a 5-passenger version of this
car scaled down appropriately. Fuck, that's going to be great. Yeah. That's going to be really cool.
Delight. Yeah. So anyway, that's the Rivian quad. Nobody needs 1,000 horsepower. In a thing like
this, that's crazy. Why are you going to give a soccer mom 1,000 horsepower in a fucking
6,500-pound truck? That's like just fucking stop. That's crazy. I think it's marketing
probably more towards men that are looking at Cybertruck and other ones and they just have to
say it has this huge number because that brings us stupid boys to the yard. Yeah. But when you drive
it around, you don't need it. It's a waste. I do like that these are at least tend to be a lot
slipperier than the Hummer. So they both have tons of horsepower, but these are a lot more
efficient. Yeah. Like what's the range on this? A lot. It's like 300, and I have no reason
to doubt that. I only had to top this thing off once for a week and that was only by a little bit.
It's a big battery, but... 374 or 400 in... It's a lot. Yeah. It's like 400 miles if you're driving
in conserve mode. I did not. Yeah. And actually, in conserve mode, that's the funny thing about
this is I would... You could drive this car in conserve mode 100% of the time. It's not slow.
And now they've fixed it. So they used to back in the... When we did the Tee back in the day,
when you put it in conserve mode, it lowered it all the way. Right. So it was like sitting on the
bump stops and you didn't want to... I want the low power for driving in the city, but I need
some suspension, please. So in these, now you can do that. Nice. You can do... Put the
suspension anywhere you want in conserve mode, which is like, you would just drive in that
mode all the time. Yeah. You just eco mode, right? It's like 600 horsepower in conserve mode.
What do we do? I mean, I can't believe I'm the one saying this, but you have to understand
it doesn't have the brakes for that. It doesn't have the tires for that. A thousand
horsepower on all season... These are like... They're not even all season... Those are
kind of off-roading. They're like off-roading. Yeah. Yeah. Like with a fucking sharp-ass steering rack.
In a way, 6,000, 7,000 pounds. Yeah, like what are we doing? Yeah. Haven't you seen the video of
this thing blasting a K-Rail? Everybody's seen that video. Like, just because... This is like
all this fucking bullshit now. Just because you can doesn't mean you fucking should.
But I think to that point, just because they can build it, they don't have to.
But most people that buy these will never floor it. They might do it once and scare themselves.
And then just because they can, they don't have to and they won't. They're just gonna drive around
and they'll say it and they'll be excited. They'll say it has this. It's like people that buy AMGs
just to sit in traffic and idle around because they like the seats and they've got 700 and 800
and 600 horsepower and all they do is glub glub to the club. That's a fun phrase, isn't it?
Yeah, I know you're... I mean, you're right. And quad motor off-roading is really nice.
That is like... It's amazing wheel control. What you can do going up a thing with 4-mode...
It's crazy how good that is. How much it makes something like a land cruiser feel like a clunky
piece of shit. No disrespect to the land cruiser. It does what it does for its own
reasons but like these things are so nice off-road. Imagine 400 miles. I bet we could do like a BDR
in one. Oh, sure. I bet you could. If you find the charging, you know, in every other town or...
Jenny? Might be tough. Yeah. Putt-butt overnight. Well, some of those towns we went through
in Wike in Washington and this... That was 15 years ago, I guess. That's not really a
difference. I was gonna say, there's no level 2 charging in a town of 300 people.
I mean, you know who would know this is Rivian? Yeah. If I was like, hey, I want to drive across,
you know, a state, we could definitely do it. It could be fun. Yeah, electric off-roading is
so nice. That's the way to do it. If you've never done it, people,
I can't tell you how nice it is. It's like walking without using your feet. Yeah.
It's so quiet. You just have the windows down. You don't hear any strain from the car.
There's no... There's no jerkiness. It's just forward motion. You don't have to rev
and slip the clutch or anything or feel the torque converter lock up. I think,
mark my words, there will be a time where an electric vehicle will win King of Hammers and
will probably have to require hot swap technology. Yeah. But if they can get... Someone does it now.
No, they run them now. They run them now. But it's an EV class. Oh, yeah. And I think if someone
does hot swap tech and they have four-wheel controllers that are really, really good,
I think you put all that together and they'll probably win. Yeah. It's just so nice to do
it off-road. You're just so peaceful. It is, yeah, without revving of whatever engine,
but you just take all of that out of it. Yeah. It's great. I can't wait for the R2 and the R3.
That's what I'm really thinking about. That's probably not what they wanted me to say by giving
me an R1 for a week. Well, but I think their fit and finish is really nice. Yeah, I know.
Every Rivian I've gotten into from the beginning, I went, whoa, first effort. This is built well,
feels well. Nice choices, great design on the inside, looks really good. And I think
blends the luxury and kind of outdoorsy-ness perfectly. Yeah. It does do a good job of that.
It's, I don't know how many of them actually spend much time off-road. I certainly see them
running around LA a lot. Oh, of course. Yeah. Which is exactly what I would use it for 90%
of the time. Did you see this? Oh, shit, really? Yeah. They kicked out the guy at Jaguar who
designed the new Jaguar concept. Yeah. Oh, I guess it hasn't gone very well, huh?
That's too bad. Sorry for him. I guess he, boss, Jerry, I guess, Jerry McGovern. Jerry McGovern.
But he's been in charge of Land Rover Design since 2006 and JLR as a whole since 2020.
I mean, I gotta say Land Rover Design since 2006 has turned out some pretty decent looking
vehicles. Yeah. Is their entire design aesthetic between that year and now is pretty good. Yeah.
So I guess one week ago, a former Tata executive took over as JLR CEO. Oh, yeah. And he went in
and was like, out of here. And yeah, okay. He probably, maybe he just hates this thing.
He might just hate the, was it double zero design? Yeah. Concept. I mean, I think there's
aspects of that design of that thing that are really cool, that new Jaguar. I think the proportions
are cool. And if they soften the whole thing, I mean, it's a concept car, right? It's gonna look
insane. Yeah. What comes out of that would probably just look pretty cool and normal. But
the launch, I don't know, we are, everyone on the commentariat online are very fickle and
reactive bunch. And a lot of people were like, you know, look at this HVAC rear end on this
thing and stuff like that. Well, that's bad. No, the Motel rear end is bad. The Motel HVAC.
It was a weird, it seemed like a lazy choice for a clay car. But if he had a hint in this,
the new Defender, I think it looks great. Too bad for him. Yep. Our, you know, our other friend
whose name I can't say yet, but he worked at that same company who just left recently.
Oh, I just found out what he's doing, which is starting his own car company.
Really? Yeah, to make a car that is the kind of car that he has been talking about making for a
while. I got a press release, but I don't know if it was an NDA or anything like that. We're
definitely going to get him on the show to talk about it. But he, it looks very promising,
but I don't want to ruffle any feathers yet. So we're going to have to kick that one
next week. Cool. But yeah, there's a thing there that's happening. Red.
It's kind of exciting. He's a fun person. Yeah, if he is who I think he is. Yeah,
the man likes a good time. Yeah. Before we get to the patrons and there's a lot from you guys
today. I want to plug, we've just announced at Rodentrack the next event for over at
experiences.rodentrack.com. The next event in 2026. We've just announced and I have now
blanked on the name of it. They only told me the name today. Scroll down. We got,
oh, is it not up? It's not supposed to go up. Well, I'm just going to fucking,
I'm just going to tell you it's going to be the Pacific Northwest. It's going to be June
10th to 13th. It's going to be a race track, a very cool racetrack, as well as a day at
Dirtfish. It's going to be Mount Rainier, Olympic Park, all those beautiful roads,
the Mount Rainier roads. You know I consulted with to develop this route? A one Jason Fenske.
Oh, right. The expert in the area gave some expert advice for this particular route.
Haven't scouted it yet, but June in the Pacific Northwest, we've wanted to do this one for a really
long time. I've been pushing for Pacific Northwest. It's one of my favorite places to drive.
It's so beautiful. The tracks are really cool up there. Dirtfish is awesome. There's some
really, really cool hotels we're going to hit. Then, of course, April, 2026 is going to be Arizona,
Nevada. It's going to be the desert, what is it called? What have we called it? Desert 600?
What's it called? Desert Run 600. It's going to be Vegas, Valley Fire, Las Vegas Motorsports
Park, Zion National Park, that beautiful road up and out all the way to Sedona,
and then ending in Scottsdale. That one's going to be super, super fun. You can sign up at
experiences.roadandtrack.com. Awesome. I am leading both, so when you sign up,
you're going to be hanging out with me for a whole week too. You can pay to hang out with me.
I don't actually see that money. Right. You can pay someone else a third party
to hang out with me. This is like a romance scam. You watched Coffee Zilla this week.
He debunked some crazy romance scam, but it was basically a scammer posing as this agency
that was going to set up fans with meeting their celebrities. They were trying to get fans of
these soap opera actors to pay into some subscription plan where they would get to
have a phone call or a chat or whatever with their actors. This poor lady gave a lot of money.
It's shady, but this isn't that. It's like that, but I'll really be there.
You'll be there. You're not AI. I'm not AI, and you're giving the money to Hearst.
You're not giving the money to me. It's more like if you buy a VIP pass to Mercedes F1
and Brad Pitt's there and he doesn't get the money. You can stand next to him and ask
him annoying questions. Exactly. It's exactly that. Also, the driving roads are going to be
really beautiful and the tracks are going to be fun. Desert in April, Pacific Northwest in June,
and there'll be two more after that in 2026 that we have not announced yet because they're not
finalized. So let's go to the people at patreon.com slash the smoking tire podcast. It's where you
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Most importantly, that. Better than listening to all the ads or doing YouTube premium or
doing any of those things. Not to say that you shouldn't listen to our wonderful advertisers,
you should. Well, I guess you probably want to talk about how the track,
you're going to track day tomorrow, streets of willow. Yes. But I guess I usually probably talk
about it after the drive. Yeah. Once it's over. Yeah. And then I'll tell you my funny BMW
morning light story later. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Fine. Later. That's later. I was
going to say I took my first waymo yesterday and asked you a question about it because you
have more experience. Oh, yeah. So my waymo to dinner last night drove great, aggressive at
times that surprised me, very meek at other times that also surprised me. But the one question I had
is a number of times it would be heading north on a really big, empty suburban road. We're heading
north towards Beverly Hills and it would turn right and then left. And I went, oh, maybe there's
traffic up ahead. I didn't see. Something was going on. But the next time it did it,
I started paying attention. And so it's heading up. So it was zigzagging? It was zigzagging
through Beverly Hills. Through kind of near the Fox lot area. And I just went,
okay, we're not gaining time. We're not avoiding anything. By the way, my waymo took basically
the same route. It was a good route. There was very little traffic. But I was just confused
why it was deviating. Do you know, have any insight? Okay. So you know how ways
used to do that? Yes. Right. And so neighbors complained. And they bitched and bitched
to both Google and Waze and to city governments saying that our neighborhood is now the shortcut
around this traffic every day, thanks to your shit. And they basically redlined, for lack of a better
word, blacklisted whatever black blackout certain neighborhoods. So like ways won't do that anymore.
Waze will take you on major arterial roads for all but you know, the worst traffic incidents,
right? Got it. Okay. Not so much waymo. Not yet. Yeah. Because there's just not enough of them
for people to complain, right? And they're all driving mad. They're driving, you know, by the
fucking book. They're not mobbing right angrily. So so waymos will still do the mad avoidance
through residential shit that Waze won't have you doing anymore. Okay. Yeah. It seemed
like it was adding steps. But someone else, I posted on Instagram and they said, oh, maybe it's like
still mapping streets. So I don't do this. Okay. I think it just, I think it has the good maps.
Got it. I think they want you, they want to find, they want you to find reasons to go, oh, the
waymo, it knows, it really knows better, better than my GPS, better than an Uber driver. This
waymo knows the better way to get there. Like, they want you to know that shit. I took, and I,
you know, we, I took, I took away my dinner also, and I took Sean, my trainer, who had never been in
one. It was actually pretty funny. My natural instinct when I get in a waymo is to get in the
back. What seat did you get in? First time I got in, I got in the back seat on the right.
And strangely, the front passenger seat was shoved way back. Yeah. Which I thought was weird
because every Uber or Lyft you get into, the front passenger seat is often moved forward. Right.
Because people get in from the curb. Yeah. This was the opposite. Yeah. So that was strange.
And then the second on the way home, I sat in the front seat. Yeah. So I could lean it back
because my back was bothering me after the bench we sat in. I think you should have,
you should have the controls in the back seat to move the front seat forward. Yeah. Yeah.
That they need that. You don't have that. But yeah. So funny thing is my instinct was to
get in the back seat. Sean right away front seat. Interesting. He was, he went right to it,
no hesitation. Because he wanted to watch how it worked. I guess. That's where he does. That's
where he went. Yeah. He was, he was like most people shocking like the amount of time it took
him to get to be totally comfortable without a driver being there was very short. Yeah.
I watched the radar. I like they have the radar display. I like that. It shows you
what it sees and it sees a lot. Yeah. And I was particularly impressed by its ability to see
people at long distance in the dark. Yeah. Well, that's LiDAR hundreds of feet. Yeah.
People there and the way back I watched a movie. I treat it like a plane. I watched this rock climbing
movie and I was like, all right. Well, what else am I going to do? I've seen these streets
before. So yeah. Spotify. Pretty wild stuff. So anyway. But the problem I realized is
that when I got into the second car on the way home, someone had left their coffee cup there.
There's no one to clean that out. Well, they go back to the base. Didn't I tell you when I got to
the restaurant that when I didn't notice it the whole time because I had gotten in back left
because the driver's seat was pretty far forward. So I got him back left. Sean was front right.
And and I got out curbside. So I called across because it was a fairly busy road. So I
crawled across. And as I crawled across, I kicked a beer can on the floor and I was like,
it feels weird when you're like, oh, you know, someone probably just forgot their coffee cup.
I think they forgot it because it was in the cup holder. The beer can was discarded. The beer can
was discarded. Yeah. This was someone's trash can. And that's just that's going to happen. Yeah.
Yeah. So anyway.
Um,
questions from the people. Murder, death, kill them all said my dad and I each picked up
a Boxster S 986 for 10 K. Can you think of any car that delivers a better experience on twisty
roads for less? No, while it's working, that's probably about as good as it gets. Yeah. There's
an argument for like, I mean, for less, there's an argument for like a Toyota MR2 maybe.
That's pretty good bargain. Yeah. It's a great bargain as long as it works. Right. The problem is
with a cheap Boxster, almost anything can total it. It's the most total car needs an oil change.
Sorry. Sorry, son. That's when I read this. The only benefit of like Miata is you know,
it's just going to work and repairs will be cheap and easy. Sure. But I mean, I think,
I think you have come out, come out ahead. Let's just say
Matatat Matatat says you often talk about how the for GT Silver No Stripe is a more valuable spec.
Any other examples of other options that have outsized effect on value? Sure.
Choosing a manual and a Ferrari. Ferrari manuals. Ferrari manuals were cheaper. Yep.
The Ferrari manuals were cheaper when they were new. That's a great one.
Outsized effect on value, had you gotten any Lamborghini in the 1990s painted a non-standard
color? Had you spent whatever it cost, what would have been a lot then, 25 grand to
paint it just any different color would probably return 200 grand today. Wow.
But I mean, there's no, there's no better one than manuals with Ferraris. I mean,
that's just, that's the most obvious one. Has any,
Well, a lot of times the option is connected to rarity. So that, that's so like, I could,
you could say the Ferrari Super America that was, that had the different roof mechanism and they
only made or whatever the Ferrari, the 550 bar Keta, you know, that's a same car, but different,
you know, roof, roof designs kind of thing. I would say, changing the roof design
and Aston Martin Zagato shooting break. Anytime there's a shooting break, anytime there's a speed
stir, you know, if you change the roof shape of a car, which also leads to rarity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
You're gonna have, you're gonna have a probably an outsized effect down the road. Yeah.
That's a good question though. Listen and sometimes watch. You've talked a lot about how
certain cars aren't worth their value in terms of driving experience. What are some cars whose
driving experience is higher than their value? Oh, that's going to be pretty easy. Okay. I would say
I would say, okay, hang on.
Driving experience, I should, I think the C8 Corvette Z06 is a great place to start.
Great place to start. Absolutely 100%. How about I will say a
Ferrari 348
GTS or GTB, which is 94. Most of the way to a 355. In fact, in some ways, it's better than a 355
for about 50% less money than a 355.
I know you, I know you don't like them, but I will say Kit Cobras and some other replicas
because the price of a real one, you can get real fucking close with a kit. I would say that about a
really good GT40 replica. Sure. Yeah. I personally like the like the GT40 is better than the Cobras,
mainly because for like ergonomic reasons. Yeah, and they also look awesome. Yeah,
they look great. You have to sell me on that. Driving experience higher than their value. I
think a Lancia, they're probably expensive now. How about like a non numbers matching Porsche
356 that's worth like 60 grand, but if the numbers matched, it would be worth 150 grand,
like that kind of thing. Non numbers matching, you know, muscle cars.
996 is for the most part, like they just don't command the same price for pretty much
very similar performance to the 997. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, that's a pretty good one. How about our, how about a Subaru R STI?
Yes. Pick one up for like 25 grand, but that's a rowdy fucking experience. Yeah. Yeah.
Re-education through working on shit boxes. Wow. A rise against reference in the comments
A plus for the day. I will take all lefty punk music, please. Aside from good professional photos,
what are some of the best things one can do for a high mileage vehicle to bring as much
value as possible in a sale? I would say transparency. I mean, if you do the things
that people would pay for a PPI to do, if you do like compression test results,
tire, a paint meter readings, tire tread depth readings, I mean, just like a huge amount of
information that show really good underbody photos that show if the underside of the car is really
clean. Basically, if you address people's concerns, you know, with a higher mileage car,
there's maintenance you can do to keep it going for a long time. Compression is a great one
because someone's going to, a smart buyer would go, okay, they told me that the plugs
have been changed and the water, you know, thermostat's good and stuff, but how's the compression?
Am I going to have to deal with that? Or, you know, is there any sort of like oiling problem?
Also, it's a classic, but if you clean it really well and take good pictures, because,
again, it's about showing people here's exactly what it looks like in its best light clearly,
and also here's how good it can look, but you're not trying to get away with something.
Yeah, yeah. Tim A says, 24 hours later, can we have a temperature check on manual swapping
for our 599 as an NSX replacement? Have you started shopping?
The point is to go minus one. I have to go minus one for a while and sit on the money
and not do anything. We'll check back in like, we can check back in a few months,
four months. Yeah, but also, it sounds awesome. Wait, go back up.
I have a rage against the Mach-E. I have a manual conversion 612 Scalietti. It's actually
kind of awesome, but I want to sell it to downsize the collection, which is at eight.
612 values are really low, though. Do you see their values ever going up?
Man, they're not... They look weird.
They're not the prettiest Ferraris. They look a little strange to me.
And I think so many Ferraris have risen in value lately along with most other cars.
And we softened a little bit in the last year, but if they didn't move much,
then they remain a bargain option for someone who wants a front engine V12.
But I don't know what would cause them to rise unless we can wait a much longer time.
So if this person, I don't think they're willing to wait five years.
I think it's more like 20 years. Right.
It's until it's like a classic.
Until it would go, you know what?
Yeah. And also...
You know, that was actually...
Yeah, and that also requires all the other ones to be prohibitively expensive.
Which just happened to the Ferrari 400i. People my age, all of a sudden,
are deciding that the 400i is actually good.
I think it's because Nicolas Cage drove it in...
Leaving.
No. And what's that great movie he was in a couple years ago?
The Rock.
The unbearable weight of massive talent.
Oh, I did not see that.
You did?
It was great.
I mean, I happen to think the Ferrari 400 is a pretty nice looking car in the right color
at the right ride height.
Yeah, I don't want one.
I'd have to see it in person.
Because from here, the front all I think is like early 90s accord.
Late 80s accord.
And that's manufacturing at the time.
But, you know, if people are starting to like big minds of these...
It has some angles that are much better than others.
I think the rear three-quarter is pretty kick-ass.
Proportions, great.
Yeah, yeah.
And that one's at the right nice ride height there too.
I don't think that that last photo you looked at wasn't helped.
It was under acceleration and the nose was high.
It looked a little weird.
Oh, I wasn't looking at that at all.
I was just looking at the shape of the front to me.
This just, it reminds me of too many, I think, economy cars.
It looked really good in black.
In black, just Google a picture of a black Ferrari 400i.
And it is much, much better.
I love that light blue color in Ferraris.
But in black, look at that third, look at the...
Yeah, just pick a good one.
Yeah, that one looks nice.
I think black really does serve this shape very nicely.
I agree with you.
This...
That one looks like it might have been crashed.
It does, right?
I think we found it.
That sums up there.
I think we zoomed in on the wrong car.
I think this one might have been crashed.
It's not, it's unrestored, Matt.
Yeah.
But the rear three-quarter, that's the angle I love.
Of course.
The rear three-quarter.
These quad pipes angled up, forget about it.
It's great.
Yeah.
And if that thing, if this car was dropped like a half inch,
the one we had down at the South Bay store for a minute, remember that one?
Do you see it?
It was just a little bit lower than this.
It was awesome.
Looking.
I drove it once and it was terrible.
What are people paying for these now?
A shitter is probably like 60 grand and a really good one might be 140 or 150 restored.
I would not say this is a $140,000 driving experience.
At all, I drove it.
It was fine.
It's not what I would want to drive.
But I do think it looks cool.
Just as an example of something, back to the question.
The 612 could get better.
For 20 years, those were like shitters.
And now some people of style and taste,
like they're becoming ironically cool, right?
And they have to go through ironic cool to get to actual cool.
So you got to hang on.
I think the 612, you know, 456s right now are having a little bit of their day,
but they're still pretty cheap.
I think Manish Pandey, director of Senna, he bought one like a year ago and loves it.
Yeah.
And well, underneath it's a $5.50.
Right.
So you can get this cool experience.
But I think if you were looking to consolidate, I would just do it now.
And what do you mean?
Sorry, the guy with the 612, I would sell it now because I think you have to wait a long time.
Yeah.
And I think if you market it well and get good photos, and you know,
I think it would be a fun thing for somebody who wants to get with that kind of car.
Okay.
The Stiggs-Lautchen cousin drove the Prelude, the new Prelude,
and at no markup didn't find it good enough to trade in the GR Corolla.
Yeah.
This person had put a deposit on it and they were checking back because we talked about it
last week.
And so they think they pulled their deposit.
Oh, wait, hang on.
Oh.
Two clutches, one shift.
Now does the warheads trick, thanks about panic attacks.
I haven't had any panic attacks since I eliminated most of the caffeine and the sativa weed.
So it seems like we may have solved that problem.
I think so.
Yeah, yeah.
Two clutches, one shift says, best friend wants a 2008 G55 in the mid-30s,
trying to warn him about what he might be getting into.
I mean, these cars are so expensive to maintain.
Our friend, Sarah, was like,
oh yeah.
She bought one that looked so cool.
We featured it in the video.
And man, was she on fucking pins and needles every second driving this thing.
Because the most expensive things would go wrong.
And hers wasn't a fancy one.
It looked rad, it was tan, but it was a little scruffy in places.
But that doesn't mean it will be cheap to repair.
Yeah.
There's so many parts on G-Wagons that are only on G-Wagons.
And do they cost a fucking fortune to run?
There's a reason these things are pretty cheap.
But, you know.
Our friend, Armand, got one.
And so far, I think it's been good.
Yeah.
But it gets terrible.
It's their city car.
It's also that.
It's like terrible gas mileage fuel efficiency.
But yeah, like anything, if the car used to cost 120 to buy,
it'll cost proportionally correct to repair.
Yeah.
And this more so than most.
You know, a cheap G-Wagon is not a reliable thing.
I'm sorry to say.
Crouching Sunbeam Tiger hidden wagon.
Wow.
There's like two happening at once there.
Are you familiar with Mischief from the early 2000s?
Yes.
Yes.
I'm very familiar with Mischief.
Techedemics, dude.
Mischief 3000.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I met that guy a few times back in the day.
Yeah, he was around.
He was like, he was like, he was around New York.
Ferretti knew him.
Didn't one of the guys turn into like a tuner out here also?
I don't remember.
Sorry, I cut you off.
No, I don't know.
I just don't, I don't remember.
Baby.
I don't know what happened to them.
Yeah.
I have no idea.
But Ferretti was friends with one of them
because they were selling DVDs.
Ferretti was selling DVDs.
They were like in the fucking dirtbag DVD club.
Ferretti wore better clothes, but he was,
when he was younger, he was a proper dirtbag.
Yeah, if anyone knows Dustin.
I mean, that video got me stoked about E36s, modifying stuff,
S4 wagons, and the wheel came off, I think it was the S4,
and the wheel comes off and rolls at like 120 miles an hour,
and being a general dirtbag.
And it was a little bit of like a car skate video,
actually before Jim Connick, because it was like,
here's these people with a quote, cheap car,
and they're on this rally with people that are in
more expensive cars.
And they're doing burnouts and running with them and stuff,
so I was into it.
I think Alex Roy might have known Dustin, too.
Oh, I'm sure, yeah.
Yeah, I would be a fun podcast guest, actually.
Josh J says thoughts on the Pontiac GTOs,
the early 2000s ones.
On paper, a rear-wheel drive six-speed NAV8
should be sought after these days,
but it never comes up.
Was it dynamically unimpressive?
No, actually, they were pretty nice cars.
I thought it was silly they were called GTOs,
because if Pontiac had done what Ford and Chevy did,
if they had done a GTO that looked like a muscle,
I think it would have been enormously successful.
I really do.
I think they could have called that the fucking Pontiac Commodore.
Like, it's a hold-in, which is fine.
Like, they could have leaned into that,
but calling it a GTO was pretty lame.
The styling was pretty soft.
The interior was nice.
It was a better built muscle car than their own shit for most of that time.
When Pontiac was doing the F-body and GM was finishing out the Camaro SS,
and these guys and Pontiac had the GTO,
it was a much better made car.
Their timing, so yeah, GTO came out, the new one came out in 06.
Fifth-gen Mustang was 05.
But the Camaro didn't come out until 2010.
They had it.
They had it.
No, no, but I was wondering, did Ford make the bet on retro design first,
and win, and then Pontiac realized, oh, we fucked up?
Well, no, first we had the PT Cruiser and the Prowler.
So that goes, the Prowler was 90, the concept car was 95,
the production car was 97.
You then had PT Cruiser, you then had HHR,
and then you had the Chevy, the SS, the pickup truck thing.
Retro was full fucking going.
So they were all ahead.
Ford was, the Mustang was like what kind of, it was a response really to that.
You know what's funny then?
I think that GM went too far, in my opinion, with HHR.
It was a little bit like cartoonish, bubbly, 1930s, 40 suburban wagon,
and it was like, some people liked it, but it didn't catch fire the way the Mustang did.
I mean it was literally just copying, how close can we copy the PT Cruiser?
Sure, which I also think was like-
Because so many people bought those fucking things dude.
We make fun of them.
So many people bought those things.
Yeah, that's true.
I don't know, maybe Ford just got it.
They just threaded the needle perfectly.
It was, I mean they caught a bit of a Volkswagen Beetle boomer nostalgia,
that's basically what that was.
Yeah, that's true.
And the PT Cruiser was an economy car that was a little more upright,
like halfway to being like a crossover, you know what I mean?
They sold over a million of those things.
Yeah, they sold so many goddamn PT Cruisers.
I ex-girlfriend had a crazy number of PT Cruisers.
Oh man, yeah, they messed up.
The GTO could have been the thing.
I've never driven one.
Do they drive well?
I've seen them at race tracks.
Do you ever drive a Neon?
No.
They drive exactly like a Neon.
Really?
Yeah.
But with the rural drive and the big V8 on-
A PT Cruiser?
Sorry, I meant GTO.
Oh, a GTO?
Oh, I'm so sorry.
No, the PT Cruiser I drove in it.
I was still on the PT Cruiser.
I know what GTO drives like a Neon.
No, you driven a Chevy SS or a G8, GX Pontiac G8?
They drive like that,
like an earlier, a little bit rar version of that,
but they're very pleasant to drive.
They're nice.
They are heavy.
They're good.
They make really good road trip cars.
You know who fucked?
Remember, ACP has his stunt car as one.
Oh, that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah.
They make a good stunt car, good drift car,
and a good road trip car.
It's they're nice.
Yeah, they are nice.
I think they're America's SC430.
Yeah, I don't mind them how that car looks as an Australian Holden.
Like, I don't legitimately don't mind it,
but something about it as a GTO is just so lame to me.
Yeah.
Isn't that a bummer?
Yeah.
What's in a name?
I agree.
It's just not a GTO.
I love GTOs, but yeah.
I don't think Pontiac had any money.
That's why they did that.
They didn't have the money for a Firebird replacement.
Obviously, they were like on their way out anyway,
and it was a whole like what's laying around kind of thing.
They had a budget to print three letters on plastic,
and Ford was like, we redesigned an entire car.
Yeah, and they've changed the bumpers on the Holden Commodore
and made it the G8.
Oh, yeah.
I forget what the two-door one was called.
It wasn't the Commodore, but it was basically
the two-door version of the same car.
Fuck, what was it called?
Damn it.
Someone's going to get real mad that I don't know that,
but who cares?
Kurt Bergstedt says, oh, can we have,
I mean, okay, that's just a request for a guest.
Nobody cares about my G70.
Straight up.
Do either of you still enjoy wrenching on your own cars,
or do you simply not have the time?
Yes, to both of those questions.
Do you enjoy wrenching on your car?
I enjoy it because it's the singular focus thing.
If I have the time and I can just go in there
and no email, no text, stuff like that,
and it just gives my hands and brain something to do,
I think it's like you playing guitar,
although playing guitar can't really go wrong
the way wrenching can.
That's true.
I do not enjoy wrenching on my own car.
I have to crawl into uncomfortable positions
that hurt my body,
and I don't trust myself to do it right,
and I want to drive my car fast on the side of a mountain.
So let me pay someone who knows what they're doing
to make sure that my car doesn't cause me to die.
Having said that, I'm not handy.
I can fix shit around my house a little bit.
I just rebuilt my pool robot.
It was so like, I'm not super not handy
or not willing to do shit,
but I need my car to work at a limit,
and I don't trust myself.
You don't want to wrench on your Taycan?
I mean, I'll change wheels and I'll do stuff.
I'll do basic little shit like that,
but I don't, I have other things to do
and I don't really care that much.
West Side Garage 419, there we go.
Why does it seem like nobody likes black wheels except me?
What am I missing?
I think black wheels make your wheels
generally look smaller than they are.
Until we can change the color of tires really well.
I just think it turns, unless it's a very clear picture
with the right light,
it makes your wheel well look like a black hole
and there's nothing in it.
And especially if your car is black,
like I just think it doesn't look good
unless it's a perfect picture.
Also, black is not a, black is a state of mind.
There's not one black.
Are we talking about the black that you would get
on the factory wheels of a Honda Civic
that are like fairly crappy aluminum wheels,
just painted, you know, painted.
Are they HREs with like a beautiful finish
that catches the light right?
You know, there's different ways to do black
and like how does the black of the wheel
interact with the black of the car?
Is it the same?
Is it different?
Is it, so I don't think all black wheels are bad.
I think black doesn't look good on certain colors.
I would never put black wheels on a blue car, for instance.
I don't think that looks good at all.
But there's instances where it can look good.
I just do think it makes the wheels look smaller.
Christian says, a long time ago,
you partnered with a dealership to review a 458 Speciale.
Would you partner with another dealer
to review special cars like the LFA?
Only if the driving opportunity was like appropriate.
Like in the case of that video you're referring to,
that wasn't like a real drive.
I like puttered around the fucking blog.
It was kind of bullshit, actually.
No, I'm not saying it wasn't nice of them to offer.
And I did it, but that's not what I would do.
If it was like we're going to meet you at a track
or something with this car, then I would say yes.
But outside of that, no.
Dealers are not who you want to work with when you're…
Because they need to sell that car.
They don't need to sell cars.
They need to sell that car.
And you then can't treat it like you need to treat it.
The Grumbler 500.
What do you think about the Rolex Datejust 2?
How will it age?
Meaning appreciate.
It will not appreciate.
No Datejust will appreciate unless it's like some great…
No, no.
No Datejust will appreciate.
Sorry.
That's not an appreciating asset.
If you…
A Datejust is a lovely thing for time telling.
It is.
It is.
It's a watch.
I know, but I've never heard you say that about a Rolex.
It's a very nice watch.
It is a very nice watch.
But like it's not an appreciating asset.
It's a treat yourself kind of watch.
So are there other watches to consider?
That's a passion purchase.
So I mean every other company makes a version of the Rolex Datejust.
We talked about this like two shows ago.
You have the Omega Aqua Terra.
You have pretty much every Grand Seiko makes 12 watches
that are interchangeable with the Datejust.
Oh, yeah.
But this is passion, right?
So I have a Datejust that I really like,
but I don't expect to ever see the money again that I paid for it.
I would definitely rather have a Grand Seiko.
I think they look nicer.
Well, they're certainly more interesting.
I'd probably rather I also have the Oyster Perpetual 41
with the colorful dial and I'd rather have that too.
The Stig's Non-Driving Cousin, a 169,000 mile 991 Carrera S Coupe,
just sold on cars and bids for just under 40 grand,
all driven by the original owner, which begs the question,
why are so many 9-11 owners afraid to put miles on their cars?
Well, I think first that makes an assumption that isn't necessarily true.
It's not been my experience that most 9-11 owners are afraid to put miles on their cars.
In fact, I find that California has a high concentration of 9-11's
and people tend to actually drive them a lot.
The clubs we see the most in the canyons are Porsche clubs.
Yeah.
So I think while, yes, you will find low mile, a lot of people who have Porsches
have cars that are better for daily driving.
A lot of people who have a 9-11, to 270,000 miles on a Porsche,
you probably don't have kids.
You probably have a lifestyle that suits driving that car and good for you.
That's cool.
But a lot of people who keep their cars with me,
they have a daily because they have kids or dogs or a life outside of driving their car
and they couldn't make that work.
I'm sure there's people.
By the way, if you're a capitalist ahead of a car guy, which is fine,
if that's what you want to be, there's a lot of, potentially,
if you buy the right car, there's a lot of profit in not driving it.
If you get an allocation for a GT3 at Sticker and you don't drive it,
you're going to make a lot of money.
That might be important to you.
But if that guy was like, I'm going to buy a 9-11 and fucking drive it into the ground and
okay, that's not a terrible investment either.
That car was probably, I don't know, $100,000 in 2013, $105,000 maybe,
and if he'd spent, drove it 170,000 miles and lost $60,000, $70,000 in that many miles,
like that's fucking great value.
So good.
It's a good time, but it takes real work to drive a sports car that much.
I've had my car nine years.
I've driven 60,000 miles in nine years.
Granted, press cars and stuff, but that's my only car.
And it still has taken me that long to do that.
So imagine if you're, to your point, if you're a family person and you have a daily
and you drive it on the weekends or once a week to the office or whatever,
you've just reduced your annual mileage by 80%.
I think there's also people that would rather not commute in their 9-11 for one reason or
another.
I am not afraid of putting miles on my spider by any means.
I have no intention of ever selling that car and I don't give a fuck what the odometer
says.
Makes no difference to me, but that doesn't mean I wanted to drive it to dinner last night,
fucking zigzagging across.
That's not fun for me.
Nope.
So I leave it at home.
So you may, that person, if they live, if I lived in the woods in Connecticut,
like where my parents lived, hell yeah.
Give me an all-wheel drive 9-11 and that's, and two sets of wheels and that's my car.
No problem, but not here.
Different strokes for different folks.
She likes it in the ADAS.
I love this one.
It's potentially the best username I've ever read.
With the talk about what options have added value for collector cars,
can you think about any options that have directly hurt the value of cars?
Full show.
Three letters, SMG.
Yeah.
Yeah.
SMG, any convertibles?
Convertibles are more expensive on the front end and cheaper in the second-hand
market.
That's a good point.
I mean, to use my own answer from before in reverse, like paddle shift to transmission
versus manual transmission.
Yeah.
But I don't want the cheaper side of things.
Let's see.
With collector cars, I think when you get the base of something,
like, and I mean, like, if you get a C8 Corvette without the Z51 package,
then the enthusiasts are not drawn to it as much because it can't even handle,
like, basic track work and all the things the car in the platform can handle.
Yeah.
Now you don't have any of that cool stuff.
Yeah.
It's like, certainly transmissions because those paddle shifter ones are more expensive.
Options that hurt the value.
The biggest ones, it's got to be convertible tops, single, you know, semi-automated
gearboxes.
I mean, certainly colors.
I mean, you could spec a car that was hideous.
That's true.
And certain companies will let you.
I would add complicated suspension before the tech was really ready.
Like, you know, air suspension or height adjustable stuff when it's just known for
braking being incredibly expensive to fix or like twin-turbo V12 Mercedes versus
four-liter V8 or something like that.
We got like six.
Johnny Evie Gierberman says if a Nd1 C5 Corvette and a 986 Boxster S are the same price,
what are you picking?
What do you want to FMK it?
Oh, fuck Marykill.
All right, fine.
You marry the Miata, you fuck the Porsche, you kill the Corvette.
I would marry the Miata and I would fuck the Corvette and I would kill the Boxster.
Boxster would just die on its own.
Shabby says, have I thought of trading the Kuntosh into a Diablo or Mercy?
No.
Why would I do that?
Do people not?
Poster car, you don't upgrade your post.
The poster car exists in stasis.
There's no like, oh, let me upgrade this to whatever the newer version is.
That was the dream.
The dream is there.
The dream is real.
The dream is here.
The dream is to drive that car.
Not fucking rollover minutes.
Diablos are okay.
They're lovely.
They really are.
But they don't really do it for me.
I agree.
And I think the Kuntosh looks better.
Yeah, smaller.
Last four.
This is the funniest question ever.
John Hennessey, you next Tuesday, would you ever do a show stoned?
No.
Would you?
Absolutely not.
No.
I would absolutely not, never would I prepare for a podcast by smoking the wheat.
Never.
Yep.
That's the Quaker in you.
Why would I do that?
Sob's story says best, wait, what, okay, what is the best unused car model name that a manufacturer
should consider bringing back?
I'm sure probe is not the answer, but always thought Beretta was cool.
Beretta is cool.
Beretta is cool.
We had a bunch that we thought would work when Ford was bringing back like electric car,
when we were doing electric stuff like Galaxy.
Yeah, that's true.
Like their spacey names.
That was, you, I remember you said that and that would have been a great name.
Yeah, Galaxy would have been a good one.
For electric cars.
Yeah.
I like any of the snake names because I'm a second grader.
Any car that's ever been named after a snake.
I'm like, yeah, yeah, sure.
I never said I was the mature one in this building.
That's hilarious.
Yeah, I would like to see some good names.
The Bonneville, but only, it would only work if it was on a car that went 300 miles per hour.
It would have to be some speed setting, record setting thing.
Well, that was the, that's from the king of the bits that we would always do back in the day,
which was the least appropriately named vehicle.
Like where would you never see this?
And the Bonneville was right up there along with the Chrysler, New Yorker,
the Chevy Monte Carlo.
That's the Monte Carlo.
LL Cartier says, my dad's had some cool cars and it's fun.
Thinking about which one I'd like to have in the future to relive the childhood memories.
What memory should I relive?
A 2010 Viper ACR, 2008 V8 Vantage, an R8 V10 Spyder, C6 ZR1, Nissan GTR, AMG GTR,
or 997 Turbo Cab.
Your dad's cool.
Your dad's pretty cool, man.
I would like to own of those probably the R8 V10 Spyder.
The Vantage.
Or that the V8 Vantage, if it was a 4.7, I forget what year they changed over.
I think if it was a stick 4.7, then maybe that Vantage Black Camel, that sounds nice.
I'd probably want the R8 Spyder.
That's a good one.
Those are cool.
Um, Uli Kunkel's Autobahn.
Have you ever done a driving tour of the Natchez Trace Parkway?
It looks beautiful, but stretches of it are limited to 50 or 60 miles an hour.
That is not a problem.
I was going to say most roads are limited to some sort of miles per hour.
I don't know.
Let's take a look at it.
Where is it?
It's Mississippi to Tennessee.
Can we get a map of it?
Let's see how this looks.
That street certainly isn't it.
Um, wow.
It is it.
Well, it doesn't.
I mean, I'm saying it's not it in terms of like,
I mean, here's the thing.
Where like, who's going to pay good money to go like stay in like rural ass Mississippi,
dude.
No offense.
Go to Jackson.
But like, where are what fucking, what racetracks are we going to find?
Like, like, look, all right.
I'm sure sections of this are like a very beautiful road.
Like it looks like certain parts have some things resembling curves.
Looks, this is a road through dense woods.
Can't can't see.
Thermal quality is good, but it seems like by the shape, it's pretty.
It's just this side off the off of straight.
Yeah, like it's really big sweepers.
Yeah.
Those types of corners are not like tight and technical enough.
There's not fun.
It's going to feel like you're commuting on a back highway.
At car speed, like the little side roads around the like,
look at some of the side roads look way better.
Yeah.
I like where your head is at.
I appreciate the suggestion, but that doesn't seem like it.
And I don't know who the fuck is going to pay.
10 to 15 G's the vacation in Mississippi.
I just don't know who that is.
And where's the racetrack?
I don't know.
Quick correction, the GTO came out in 04, not 06.
So I misspoke.
Yeah, but in 06, it became a six-liter.
Yes, it did get better.
That's it.
Yep.
That's it.
Motherfucker.
I'm going to Texas.
Yeah, dude.
I'm going to Texas and I'm going racing and I hope it's all good.
It should be, it should at least be fun.
I mean, I only need to be faster than one person, Johnny.
As long as I'm faster, as long as I'm faster than him.
I think that's the person you will be faster than and the only person probably.
If I can get, I mean, if I can get anywhere close to the, to the fast guys, that would be.
Yes.
Because this car is about, like, if it was a 600 horsepower car, there's no way I'm
getting close to the fast guys.
This car, it could be the kind of car where I could get pretty close.
Yeah.
Especially, you know, after 20, 30 laps, good session.
Because you're used to these speeds where it's like, once the power gets,
gets real up there.
It's real crazy.
Tommy's got that experience of closing speeds with crazy K&M stuff.
Yeah.
That's a special skill.
No, thank you, sir.
So I don't know.
But it's, it's, it's fun.
This will be the fastest car I've ever wheel to wheel raced.
So that'll be, that'll be a lot of fun.
My money's on you.
Thank you to our patrons for such good questions on this one.
Thank you to everybody else for joining in and tuning in.
And we certainly appreciate your support.
And I'll see you guys next week when I'm back from Texas.
Bye.
About this episode
The Smoking Tire podcast dives into a review of the Rivian R1S Quad motor, questioning the need for a 1,000 horsepower off-roader. The hosts share their experiences with racing simulators, highlighting the challenges faced while practicing for an upcoming race in Texas. They also discuss the firing of Jaguar's design boss and Zach's first ride in a Waymo, touching on the unique quirks of autonomous driving. With a mix of humor and automotive insight, this episode offers a blend of car culture and personal anecdotes.
Matt Farah hates racing simulators; a review of the new Rivian R1S Quad motor; Zack Klapman rides in a Waymo for the first time (and has questions); Jaguar fires a very important person; and we answer Patreon questions including:
Is the 986 Boxster the best value for money?
Which options had an outsized effect on a car's value (for better or worse)?
Driving experiences worth MORE than they cost?
Best practices to sell a vehicle that has high miles
We disappoint a Ferrari 612 owner
Did we watch Mischief 3000?
Help my friend avoid a used G wagon
Thoughts on the 2000s Pontiac GTO
Do we enjoy wrenching?
Why doesn't anyone like black wheels?
Are 911 owners afraid of miles?
And MANY more
Recorded December 2, 2025
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