Rivian R2 îs the Perfect Car? New Ferrari Reveal and Ford in Trouble!

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Hello and welcome to this car pod!

I'm Filippo. I'm Nick.

And there's a lot to talk about this week.

A lot. Buckle up. Get started with the news. Ah, yes.

This is Ferrari.

The Ferrari Luce, which means light in Italian.

Here's what's in the news. We thought that we'd known for a while that Ferrari was going to make an EV.

We thought it was going to be called D'Electrica or Electric.

No, it's called light. Different.

But it's in the news because Joni Ive, who famously worked at Apple for a long time as their industrial designer,

designed the iPhone 4, the iPad, the Apple Watch, a bunch of older Mac computers.

His design firm designed the interior of this car.

And Ferrari's done like a whole PR thing about it.

And it's kind of interesting. It's obviously departure from their normal, from their prior language.

So I want to go to Ferrari's site to go through it.

So we can really understand what Joni Ive and his team did.

Okay.

They have a steering wheel input.

I want to start with that. I love how the steering wheel is.

I know. It's so cool.

It's like a really cool, like, vintage. You're going to go past it.

But it's a really cool vintage looking steering wheel.

I love the steering wheel. It reminds me of producer Sean's 360 in a lot of ways.

It's lighter. Even older, though.

It looks more like the old school wood wheels in the old school 60s stuff.

It's really cool.

And it's supposed to be incredibly light.

Apparently their use of CNC machined aluminum means that it's lighter than their prior steering wheels by a substantial margin.

You might be getting there, but one notable thing that I think is interesting.

There's zero carbon fiber anywhere.

They decided carbon fiber is dead. It's no longer cool.

So they use different materials throughout, but refuse to do decorative carbon fiber.

Yeah.

It's also interesting for the mount paddle shifters and an EV.

Also interesting.

Very interesting.

I've been in EVs that have shifted.

But in most EVs that have paddle shifters, they use it to control the region.

Yeah.

That's the case in this one.

It's not the Kia style fake shifters.

So what are you going to say? You're going to complain about it.

What are you going to say?

I'm not complaining about anything.

A lot of people online hate it.

Really?

I got to complain.

People think it looks too modern and not Ferrari.

I think it looks very Ferrari.

I don't love how the screen is integrated.

I don't think that there is a way to do it elegantly.

So I feel their pain.

And on an EV, you need a big screen.

But that, to me, if they could find a Bentley style treatment where it's heightable or could disappear into the dash.

Fun fact, but this turns.

It's on a swivel.

So you could face it towards the driver.

Which that Cadillac voyage I just reviewed had that.

And I was like, more people should do this.

There we are.

This looks like a Jeep Wrangler dashboard.

Does it not?

Or like some sort of mid tier?

Looks a little Ford GTE with the circle vents.

Yeah, but like the Ferrari is on circle vents.

But like just a simple plane of horizontal.

I'm into it.

Hopefully it's not body color painted in plastic.

To be honest, I'm surprised.

I've never seen this before where the car introduces the driving area and the dashboard before they've announced anything else.

And by the way, we're going to be calling it the loose.

Do you agree?

Of all the words that he said, I wouldn't have pronounced any of them the same.

Including Johnny Ive.

Johnny Ive, isn't that how he says it?

No, I'm sure you're correct.

But I phonetically do not say it that way.

A couple of things that are interesting.

A bunch of toggle switches and physical buttons.

Yeah.

Which is a good return after a lot of capacitive touch for everything.

The screens are kind of cool.

The gauge design, I think, to find it to be cool.

It's a couple of screens layered to give a 3D effect.

I think it's especially, a lot of the complaints I'm seeing, I think those people haven't been in modern ferroids, which are already screen dominated.

And I have to say, in a lot of modern ferroids, the screen setup isn't...

I don't know if you guys have spent time in brand new ferroids, but the screen setup isn't great.

You're doing it all in the steering wheel with these controls that aren't perfectly mirrored to what's actually going on.

A lot of the infotainment is in the gauge cluster screen rather than in some sort of center screen because it's all driver focused.

This is definitely a more traditional way to do it.

Like people are like, this isn't very Ferrari.

Well, I have a suspicion if the people who are complaining that got in an 812 or in an SF90, they would have the same complaint.

Also, that complaint, it's an EV.

We're already way past that this isn't a normal Ferrari.

The great irony of this is we're all debating this interior and the truth is the car's not going to be popular, successful, or desirable.

It's an EV Ferrari.

This is more sacrilegious than the SUV or I'm sorry, what are they called? The sports activity vehicle?

No, that was the X5.

The X5 was called the sports activity vehicle.

They did not want to call it an SUV.

I think BMW might still call it the X5, the sports activity vehicle.

The heavy veil.

Wow.

I think this is cool.

Obviously, Joni, his thing is all material and the reason that Apple is so popular is that it's very material, glass, metal, circled edges.

Yeah.

So this picture right here, that they nailed, that should be the new standard for all for all.

I agree.

And I think any complaints about it are not taking into account that this really is an improvement over brand new existence.

I think a lot of people who are complaining have only been in a 360 and so they don't like any screens in a Ferrari.

This is way better.

Yeah.

Go into an interior of a, see, the whole thing, the whole thing is this.

There is no center screen and all of it is controlled with little steering wheel pads.

It's a lot.

It's a lot to deal with.

It really is.

And I think that this new Joni Ives thing is a significant improvement.

I really do.

Joni was Steve Jobs' right-hand man too.

He's a big deal.

Like all of this, everything is controlled with switches like this.

It's on the steering wheel primarily, but it's all done with that kind of stuff.

Don't you think it's interesting that they're declaring the death of carbon fiber?

Like that is something Ferrari charges a hundred grand for various carbon fiber things.

And they're outright saying we think it's played out.

We're tired of it.

If it's decorative, we're not into it.

I think Ferrari would argue that all of the decisions they make are for purpose and function.

And in an electric car, we know we're not saving weight.

So we're just going to put aside the fiction that that's what carbon fiber is for.

I have a suspicion carbon fiber will retain its existence in other Ferraris.

I kind of agree with them that I think carbon fiber is a little played out, especially.

Yeah, but it's played out by the pretenders and Ferrari is one of the trendsetters.

But all carbon fiber and interior is pretty much pretenders.

There's a couple of times where they actually fab it.

It's usually an overlay.

Dude, I could argue.

I mean, black wheels.

Like that.

Those are all over every Ferrari's guy.

You know what I mean?

Like at the end of the day, like you can just keep doing carbon fiber.

I promise.

They make much money off the opera.

They have to as a publicly traded company.

They've been ripping their customers off with hundreds of grand of the stuff that does no functional benefit or minimum.

It's amazing.

We still get press cars.

But we do.

They're trendsetters.

They had to move on.

Apparently they've been working together for the last five years.

I think this looks cool.

I think it's great.

I think that it is absolutely irrelevant because much more interesting to everybody is going to be this car, how it looks, how it drives, what it is.

There's been speculation.

It's going to be a hatchback or a four door hatchback.

They have confirmed four doors.

If that's true, like, why are we talking about the interior?

We're on a four door electric car.

Maybe that's why they're introducing this.

That's exactly it.

It's the least offensive part of the car.

They want us to focus on this.

This is the only way they're going to get any attention on the car that's positive.

On the interior.

Right.

Yeah.

Because people would gloss over the benefit of this interior, which is OK compared to what is going to be significant drawbacks of the vehicle itself.

Enzo wouldn't take an elevator, and now they're making EVs.

That's true.

Enzo, in my opinion, was afraid of elevators.

I don't think this is teased out of reality, but I've made this point.

It's a Wikipedia.

If it isn't Wikipedia, it's because I've been saying it for so long.

It is fake.

I have this thing with CanonRide.

I told them that, of course, Ferrari's are old school because Enzo would see an elevator, and he'd hear the ding, and he'd freak out.

Enzo was famously pastoral, and he never traveled outside Italy.

He was famously of his era, if you will.

And so I have this thing that he was afraid of telephones and elevators.

But I don't think any of that was actually true.

Or maybe it is.

OK.

Move on to the next news story, which is the huge news, the Rivian R2.

I drove the Rivian R2.

Yeah.

I'm a select few.

One of like 10 at the most.

All right.

There's me.

There's Marquez.

Who we love.

Who's much more legit than I am.

There's Jerry Rigg everything.

Also, we love.

And then there's some fellow from Motor Trend.

Sure.

And Matt Watson also.

And this is going to be a fantastic car.

Are you worried that this car is going to be the only car because it's so good?

We are ready.

We live in Southern California, live in San Diego.

I see a lot of R1s.

Yeah, R1s are around.

This is going to be the only other car you see as many of is four runners.

And this seems like it combines a Rivian and a four runner.

Yeah.

It's like a Rivian and a four runner in one car.

And that's all there is in Southern California.

I totally think that.

And I made the point to them that I think it's going to, like no one is going to buy an R1

now.

No.

And they're like, no way.

You want third row?

You want to pick?

Tesla just canceled their third row.

There's a trim on the Model Y, I think.

They now just added a, but they had the third row on the Model Y before and nobody bought

a third row.

Huh?

You know where else they had a third row?

Mm.

Model last had a back face.

That's right.

This is based on what you said in your review, which I legitimately watched all of, which

is not always true.

Oh wow.

This is going to be an, it has the potential to be an incredibly well physical.

I am even more positive about this car now than I was when I was doing the video.

I just, I think it is, and by the way, since that time, between when I recorded the video

and now I have seen pricing, which is not revealed, not allowed to disclose pricing.

It could be a billion dollars.

But however it isn't, and it's actually quite compelling.

And that makes me like the car even more.

You know, it's funny because they, they spent a lot of time talking at this launch about

how it doesn't have some of the R1's cool suspension stuff like air suspension.

But by virtue of being a smaller and unibody vehicle, in my opinion, it drives just as

well, if not better.

Yeah.

This is a fantastic car, especially for the price point.

This is a fantastic car.

I truly think one of the very best EVs.

I think that probably the best EV I've ever been around.

Wow.

Better than the Luce?

Well done.

The Tesla's when they first came out were also unbelievable cars.

But this reminds me of that.

This is like a Tesla, but without the kind of weenie, played out styling.

Tesla's like hanging it up and saying we're just quietly exiting and going into robots

and Rivian's hitting their strats.

Which is good.

I mean, Rivian needs to, right?

Like financially.

Financially.

They very much need for this.

This car, it's very important that it succeeds.

And I hear from a lot of people that they're excited by the R3.

Mostly I hear that from enthusiasts.

I think that this car will sell to regular people in massive numbers.

It's like you're censor-reviewed at all the views on YouTube, even though us enthusiasts

could care less.

This is going to appeal to a lot of people and the R3 is all our buddies.

Imagine a forerunner, except like in the modern era, with better ride, the similar off-road

capabilities, much more power, better technology.

And the styling.

The styling, so many EVs, the styling is so bland or weird and polarizing.

This we're all used to.

It's not polarizing.

And it's pretty attractive.

Pretty attractive.

I was truly astonished by just the overall level of competence that this reproduction

car that I was driving had.

And I can't imagine they don't sell a Zillion of these.

My point on the R1 is that like, Rivian's like, no, there's going to be people who want

the R1.

I don't think that the R1 is visually distinct enough and or distinct enough in other ways.

The reason that the full-size Range Rover still sells, even though they have other models,

is that the full-size Range Rover has this kind of boss look and presence.

To me, this looks just, and in fact, they had an R2 and an R1 next to each other and

the design student did a walk around.

It's hard to tell them apart.

Even though there are massive physical size differences, the appearance is so similar.

I don't think people are going to say I want an R1 for the cloud because I don't think

honestly there's going to be significant.

It'll be people that want the size.

I fall into that category.

It'll only be people who want the size.

But that's fine.

Yeah, but this is already doing zero to 60 and some incredibly quick.

I can't remember if I'm allowed to talk about it.

They may come out with a higher power version.

This is the hard part of being a small company.

A large manufacturer, if Ford built these, they would have a redesign of the R1S coming

in a year or two.

Rivian almost certainly can't.

They don't have the engineering resources.

They don't have the factory resources to do that.

And so they will probably have to accept that R1S sales and R1T sales probably go down

for a while till they can actually invest in, till R3 comes out, till whatever they want

to have come out before it.

Yep.

And then the other sunset.

I'm sure they modeled that out though and said, I will cannibalize a little internal

sales, but we will reach such a massive more audience between the price point and the

size that it doesn't matter.

You could have assumed this car is going to hit.

It's also global.

It's unlike the R1s, which are not really available for sale in other markets.

You don't think that matters?

Model Y is the best selling car in the world.

How is this not a Model Y, but better?

Explain that.

Explain that, Mr. Shrug.

Mr.

Tesla has had sales infrastructure across the world for 15 years now.

But there was a time when they didn't.

Sure, but I haven't seen Rivian make moves yet.

They're ready.

They really do that.

This thing will be the pride of Turkey.

This thing, when you go to Islamabad, they're going to be everywhere.

This thing will be the number one best selling car in Kuala Lumpur, second only to a rebadged

2009 Honda Accord.

Largest jump forward, if you will.

The normal Illinois factory better start producing a lot of cars.

Well, they're building a factory in Georgia.

Did you know that?

Yes.

They're building a factory in the United States, Georgia.

America.

They're sick at Union later in Illinois.

They've retooled the normal factory for the R2.

I don't know what's going on.

I didn't ask factory questions.

I didn't want to get into it.

One of the things they told me about the factory in normal is that it's hard to get to it.

I think this is why Mitsubishi failed.

This is a theory.

One of several, I'm going to pause it on today's podcast.

They're still an active automaker.

Not really.

And the reason is they had this factory in Illinois and when they wanted to visit it

and say, no, you got to make a different car, they had to go, they had to fly to Chicago

and then they had to take like a three hour bus ride to the factory.

And I think that that like nine hour experience, they were just like, you know what?

We're going to let them continue building the eclipse because it's just too hard to go down there.

And I think by building the factory in Georgia near the Atlanta airport, that's easy to get to.

You see my point?

The plan is for the R2 to shift production to Georgia in 2028.

Doug's the kind of guy that says before the podcast, we got to start taking this more seriously.

And then pauses a theory that Mitsubishi is dead because they were being convenient to his favorite airport.

Not my favorite airport.

Nobody's favorite airport.

I'll tell you that much.

Atlanta, you can fly to Atlanta.

You love Atlanta.

Normal Illinois, it is impossible to get to.

This is all real.

Okay.

Yes.

Remember, keep in mind, the normal Illinois factory has given us now several great products.

The Plymouth laser RS turbo.

That was the first.

Okay.

And the Eagle Talon Mitsubishi Eclipse.

And now Rivian.

Speaking of, on the last podcast, we asked what was the worst re-badge or re-launch eclipse.

Yeah.

We missed that.

Yeah.

Big mess.

That was a tough retro re-launch.

Re-launch of an old brand.

Are you worried that the Georgia factory in social circle Georgia is an hour away from

the Atlanta airport?

No, I'm not worried about it personally.

Legitimately though, I truly think this is a massive success car.

I hope so.

And if they actually follow this with R3 next year or maybe early the year after, Rivian,

like, yeah, even in the world where EVs are not as popular, not as successful, this is

such a great car.

It's interesting.

I distinctly remember your Lucid Air video where you were basically like, this is an

incredibly good car.

Because it is.

The Lucid Air reliability side is probably the best EV.

But it did always feel like that.

They didn't have the market fit.

This feels like incredibly good car from early impressions and also a real.

I think if the market was really looking for $120,000 luxury sedans, the Lucid Air would

have been a massive success, but ultimately it's not, nor is it looking for $100,000

minivans.

Right.

And more relevant, the gravity is a design flop that makes, will never reach this level

of success.

Like the gravity is a minivan.

This looks cool.

I don't necessarily consider it a design flop.

I think it's too expensive and I think the look is not great.

But to your point, this is, and more than even Model Y, people want boxy, look at Telluride,

look at G-Wagon.

These are global.

You know, look, there's a global design interest in these boxy vehicles that now Rivian has

come out.

Agreed.

They've nailed it.

It's going to sell in America.

It's going to sell in Canada and it's going to sell in Kuala Lumpur.

And the rest of the world's Kuala Lumpur included, maybe.

What is that rebodied Honda Accord?

You know what I'm talking about?

No.

Proton Perdana.

Oh, the Proton.

Yeah.

The Malaysian brand.

That's what I'm saying, Kuala Lumpur.

No, I know.

You think I'm making any of this up?

Move on.

The viewers to know that you were right.

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All right, speaking of, all right, something.

Here's the deal about this grand tour situation.

Nick, all right, what are you going to say?

Nothing.

I'm not going to say anything.

I have a lot of faith that it's going to work out.

They finally have confirmed after we already knew it that the grand tour, which was, okay,

so there was Top Gear and then they got kicked off the air for hitting somebody or something.

They went over to Amazon and did the grand tour.

This is Hammond, James, May, and Jeremy Clarkson.

Then eventually they retired because they got old and rich and rich and then the grand

tour stopped and now the grand tour has restarted except it's with three new people, James and

Thomas, who we know from Throttle House, delightful humans, delightful folks, great YouTube channel.

If you haven't already seen it, go watch it right now.

Literally stop watching the podcast or listening.

No, and then there's the other fellow, yeah.

François something, the train guy.

That's all I know.

He's in the train.

There's been a little anxiety in the automotive community that François Bourgeois, maybe isn't

like the person we were hoping for, right?

I think that they have really gone out of their way to try to pitch us to make sure that

we believe that he's right, right?

Even in Throttle House's opening announcement video, they had to be like, no, he's good,

but he might be.

He might be.

I don't want to say anything yet.

I think it's totally inappropriate to make those kinds of statements now.

I truly believe that, so I'm totally willing to let it happen and see what.

I just think it's odd because none of us, we don't have like a knowledge, but a lot

of people that you think would be good on cameras together aren't.

And the other people that you might not know that well, that might not like from the little

information you have feel like, yes, they'd fit well, do.

Yeah, I totally agree.

On this podcast, Filippo and I work really well together and we let her weird, quirky.

In real life.

Slightly.

You know, yeah, someone who's Nick, you know, on a spectrum, I'm not for what spectrum,

but everybody knows you're crazy.

No, Nick, they do.

Filippo and I are the James and Thomas and you are a train boy.

You collect license plates.

Nick, you're insane.

You're literally insane.

I've done nothing crazy.

Okay.

I'm just going to move on from that.

Do we know when it's coming out?

We don't yet, right?

I haven't paid attention yet.

No, I'm excited.

Do you think that any ill will I have towards the train fellow is because I might say, yeah,

is like I said, is because I myself am jealous that they didn't bring me on the show.

I think there should somebody tell you about their travel schedule because I think they'll

make you quickly un-jealous.

Do they go past the Hyundai building on a four or five?

I think they go past the Hyundai building on a four or five, at least weekly.

Yeah.

No, I thought about this, that I belong there in this picture next to a 350Z.

That is your kind of car.

And I'm upset.

You know, Ryan Lopez should have been the third.

Ryan Lopez.

He would have been a good pet.

I got a story for you, folks.

Ryan, he's one of our people.

He's in a lot of the content on the person.

He's in some of the content.

So he comes in today.

He's late.

Typical.

He says, do you know the story yet?

He comes in today.

He's late.

He's late for the show.

He comes in and he says, I'm sorry I'm late.

He says, my air conditioning broke at home and I couldn't sleep.

Now, it's February and even here in San Diego, we checked it last night.

It got down to 50 degrees.

That's what he said.

His air conditioning broke.

So anyway, that's a tough break for him.

That's a tough one.

Send, we're going to create a Gmail account.

Ryan needs help 12 at gmail.com.

Producer Sean doesn't even have air conditioning.

All he has is a bad colored G-Wag.

I am excited that they finally formally announced that they're the grand tour host.

Because that probably means that we're getting closer.

That we're closer to seeing some good content.

I am excited.

I'm legitimately excited to see this come back.

I have to be honest.

I had kind of stopped watching the grand tour with the guys.

It had kind of run its course by the end.

But I'm truly excited for the new cast to come back in.

I think most people I know feel the same way.

We don't know Francis, but we do legitimately love Thomas and James.

Yeah, no.

And I could see myself loving Francis.

I want some of this content.

I'm ready for it to happen.

You got any thoughts on the people?

No, that's it.

Okay.

I didn't watch Top Gear ever.

Oh yeah, that's right.

I didn't watch the grand tour.

Move on.

Move on to the next news.

Nick, any thoughts on this?

Nope.

No idea what's going on here.

Nope.

No, no.

My dad and I were talking about this a couple of days ago, really.

They have a new CEO.

Was it actually announced that Toyota is abdicating the throne

because he thinks that the fun path that he had set the company on

is not the right path?

No, he's just old.

He's retired.

He has not been the CEO for the last few years.

There was a guy who was the CEO for a bit.

Who's going to remain like the chief commerce officer.

We had been told that he had set a new direction for the company.

He is still the chairman.

He is still above the CEO, just not as involved day-to-day.

Koji Sato, who has been for the last three years,

is going to become the vice chairman and the chief industry officer.

And then the finance guy, Kentakon, will become the CEO.

The direction of Toyota in the last few years

has clearly been set on a more enthusiast-friendly, fun car pack.

It's going to be interesting to see what happens.

Clearly, it has become clear quickly.

There have been high-performance versions of a lot of cars.

When I was 16, Toyota was the most boring bland.

People laughed at how bad it had gotten brand.

It's going to be interesting.

In the press conference, I'm going to read you a couple quotes from Kentakon.

They include that his mission is to create a war chest

for the car company to take courageous challenges.

And he also said, I'm a guy that loves numbers.

I'm a guy that loves money.

I always think about money and creating a financial foundation

so that we can make good cars.

Nick, what do you think about the fact that he loves numbers and money?

I feel like letting the bean counters make the decisions

is often not the best path forward for innovation,

for certainly enthusiasts.

Sounds to me like we're going to enter another bland era.

Maybe.

I don't know. I don't know the guy.

It's interesting.

He was actually a Kyoto Yota personal secretary for a long time.

They're very close.

And so I do wonder if some of the passion for cars has been instilled in him

as a result of that.

It's also interesting.

Toyota owns a lot of things.

They own large stakes in Subaru.

To be sure, they own a lot of Subaru,

which we're seeing come play out in a lot of their EV decisions.

They have a bunch of other kind of development things.

And it's interesting how much of the actual running of the company

and how many of those decisions come to him versus will he be more focused on

the financial structure of things even SEO.

I think you got peacetime CEOs, wartime CEOs.

The automotive industry is heading through a lot of change, like EVs, hybrids.

Toyota has famously sort of leaned into hybrids and sort of shied away from EVs,

although new story coming soon to the contrary.

But it's going to be a tricky time where you do need someone who's a little bit more cautious

just to say, do we want to be like Ford and invest all this money in EVs

rather than write down $5 billion of losses?

Do we want to ignore them entirely and let BYD take our position?

It's a tough time, so I think you do need someone who's pretty rational and careful.

I don't know. It's really interesting all in all.

During the press cover, somebody else did ask him whether he is a car guy.

And he kind of said, eh.

And the former CEO said that he loves minivans.

Like the Voxy and then the Noah.

Does it bother you that this guy is like you?

I'm just jealous.

You're jealous.

Do you have better hair?

Thank you. Toyota has had a record year in a lot of ways.

They've pushed up their, yeah, thanks to the Sequoia CD Pro.

They've pushed up their targets for next year and the communications that they communicate out.

It's kind of a weird time to transition out CEOs when the last CEO has had a generally positive...

Well, sometimes people retire, but he's moving to a different role.

Sometimes people just want to spend time with their kids.

They just want to have fun.

Which takes me back to the Johnny Joni Ive thing.

This guy designed the iPad and the iPod and the iTouch.

And he's still working.

He also sold...

All these tech guys end up moving to Costa Rica.

Once they realize the havoc they've wreaked on the world from their tech jobs,

they all move off grid to Costa Rica.

That's like the usual path.

By the way, not only that, but he started a company called Love From alongside another designer.

An open AI purchased it last year for six and a half billion dollars.

This too could be just chilling.

He could be chilling, but I think he loves working for us.

All right.

This is the Toyota situation.

There's more Toyota coming momentarily.

There we go.

You want to talk about this?

Sure.

The new Highlander is going to be all EV.

Not a hybrid, not available with a ice motor or anything like that.

Hard to believe.

You could see the design language.

The Highlander has always been a little soft and rounded and kind of an offensive.

I wouldn't say that this is bold,

but it reminds me more of like the new Tell You Ride in terms of it's a little more edgy,

a little bit more angular.

No, I agree with that.

It's more aggressive.

Well, sure.

Compared to all the other, he's right.

All the other Islanders have been kind of swoopy except for the third gen Highlander,

which is the greatest designed vehicle in American history.

And you're calling that one not a swoopy?

It was harder.

It was more aggressive.

Pull up a third gen Highlander.

I want to see it.

But it is again, as we just talked about with Toyota,

they have sort of not done a lot of all EV ones.

And this is one of their most important vehicles.

It is the midsize SUV that a lot of families pick.

And I think that's why they've always been kind of vanilla with it is that they just,

they don't want to offend the soccer moms or the people that just want to point A to point B vehicle.

So this is by Toyota standards, a risky move.

It's super risky.

I think to go full.

Oh, you're not going to.

No, we looked at it long enough.

By the way, the third gen Highlander is still basically the Highlander.

No, the third gen Highlander is still basically the Highlander.

I agree.

No, no, like it is still the one for sale.

Pretty much.

No, there's a fourth gen.

It looks like that.

There's a Grand Highlander.

I am astonished that they go all electric with this.

Big rivals like the EV9 and the Ioniq 9,

which are actually selling in pretty good numbers,

but not like the Highlander.

I mean, this is taking one of the most popular products in going EV.

Now, Filippo's retort is going to be, wait a second.

They have come out in the last couple of years with the Grand Highlander gas powered.

And that car has been a massive success to the point where it now seems like what

they're really poised to do is have a gas and an electric Highlander.

One will be the Highlander, one will be the Grand Highlander,

but it sounds like they're going to be about the same size.

I also think the forerunner now has a third row and a lot of people got the Highlander

for the third row.

So you kind of already have a few and frankly, the Land Cruisers also in there.

They've got a lot of overlap.

So I think they can kind of risk the Highlander brand.

And then if people don't like it, that's fine.

You've got three other Toyota SUVs of the same size.

I am nonetheless a little bit surprised.

Land Cruiser does not offer a third by the way.

No, I know it doesn't.

But I mean, in terms of the, if you want a mid-sized Toyota SUV,

you got choices if you don't want to.

I am a little bit surprised though that Toyota who sat out the EV game for the last 20 years.

Tesla Model XS comes out in 12 volts 10.

These are the first EVs 20 years ago.

And Toyota has been taking a weight and sea approach.

And then they finally jump in.

They cancel their most popular vehicle in favor of a full electric.

It's like, damn, okay, that's pretty legit.

If you were going to risk a name plate, wouldn't it be the Crown Signia?

The Crown Signia.

I guess it's more recently redesigned.

That car's not selling.

No one's buying it.

Right.

So replace it.

I think what they're, I truly think what they're trying to do is create

an alternative electric Highlander, gas Highlander.

And what that's going to be is the electric Highlander and the Grand Highlander,

which probably has a stronger name plate now.

People think it's more luxurious, whatever.

And the wagon here did the opposite though.

Well, the wagon here is bad.

Yeah.

It's bad.

I know, but putting Grand in front of it, maybe it makes it sound less bad.

I think that putting Grand in front of it makes people think that it's bigger and more luxurious.

And so you could buy the Highlander, it's an EV, which is cool.

Or you can buy the Grand Highlander, which is grand and it's cool.

But either way, they'll have a car for you in this segment.

They're currently positioning the Grand Highlander, which I think doesn't,

the base one doesn't have a hybrid.

Maybe all Highlanders now are hybrid.

Who remembers?

It's cheaper than the regular Highlander.

Apparently.

There was a problem here already.

Clearly that they're trying to kind of fix it.

The Highlander, you'll remember, didn't, got a small facelift in 24,

but didn't get a full redesign.

The Grand Highlander was a whole new model.

I bet it's aging out.

Yeah.

Why replacing with a car that already exists?

The question was, do we replace it with a fairly similar sized vehicle

or do we do something a little bit more rather?

Especially when everybody else, the Telluride, the Palisade,

are a little bit bigger than the Highlander.

Yeah.

They're more Grand Highlanders.

I think they need to adjust to compete and they may as well reuse them.

The great irony, of course, is these two cars basically identical,

have them on sale.

These two cars basically identical.

And Toyota's like, yeah, that's no problem.

No big deal.

One interesting thing, you may recall that the BZ,

used to be called the ZB4X, not just the BZ,

has a twin called the Subaru Saltera.

The BZ Woodland, which is the wagon version, has a twin at Subaru called...

The Trailseeker.

I'm getting a BZ Woodland next week.

I cannot wait.

The CHR, which has just been announced,

has a twin at Subaru called the...

Does it?

Yes.

Oh yeah, I gave you this.

You didn't know this until I gave you it.

Of course it is.

What is it?

It's called the Uncharted.

Wow.

The Highlander EV will also have a twin at Subaru.

Really?

Which will mean that Subaru, for the first time ever,

has two three-row SUVs.

I can't believe that it...

You know, I thought we got rid of bad-engineering twins

in like 1996.

We're back.

Fully back.

Like the Saltera and the BZ4X is embarrassing.

How similar and bad they are.

Apparently they're better.

They are better.

They're like more affordable and the range is longer.

I truly can't wait for the BZ Woodland.

Same.

The Subaru ones tend to be cheaper.

Makes no sense.

Regardless, the new Highlander,

three rows, either six seats or seven,

only two seats in the third row,

320 miles of range.

Yeah.

And at least one of the trims.

It'll be interesting.

A little fun.

I think it makes sense.

It is amazing to me the number of people who asked me,

I want an electric three-row.

And the only thing that is available to them

is EV9 and the Ioniq 9.

EV...

Yep.

Yeah, 9 and Ioniq 9.

Which are popular.

I have a ton of friends who have bought these vehicles,

simply because it was kind of the only game in town.

And now Honda's entering it.

You don't like Toyota maybe even too.

That's what I meant.

You don't like how this looks, I assume, right?

No, I do.

Really?

Have you seen the back though?

You're going to end up with one, aren't you?

I'll talk about you getting some cool something.

We got to get my wife into something new this year.

EX90, they haven't sold many, but so they're around.

I love the EX90.

They've sold like 4,000 in the last two years.

It's tough.

What I'm going to do, if my wife doesn't make up her mind

in what she wants, I'm going to do one of those Christmas

things where you just show up with one on one.

I did that once.

How do we get a greener car beforehand?

We already knew.

No, no, no.

I want pure surprise.

I made a huge financial decision without your input.

That's a great SNL kit.

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Okay, next news story.

There's a car coming out of a parking garage in Asia.

This is Neo.

Neo is a Chinese EV manufacturer.

And they are the only ones that are doing battery swaps at scale.

So they've done over 100 million battery swaps.

100 million.

This is like real technology.

This is not, we've done a couple.

You drive into a Neo power building,

it takes about three minutes on average.

You leave with a fully charged battery pack.

It basically changes it from the battery pack

not really being yours in the same way.

The battery pack is no longer yours.

However, the benefit is that you get a swap

as quickly as a fuel.

So you show up with the depleted battery

and you come out with a fully charged battery

that they've been sitting there charging

and you're on your way in three minutes.

We've known that this technology existed.

It is stunning that it's actually been in use for enough

to get to a real number of swaps.

100 million.

I'll tell you something, this changes.

If I could do an R2 with a battery swap,

I'm there.

What vehicles can they do this on?

All of their Neo products, I think.

Okay, so they're the manufacturer of the car.

They have something like 3,800 swap stations

including some in Europe.

They're planning to build another 1,000 this year.

What's cool too is you could buy or use DV

and you don't have to care about the health of the battery.

What do they do about that?

Car will come in and the battery is at 60%

and then they replace it with, you know what I mean?

It changes it.

It changes it from the battery being something.

My recollection, which I might be slightly incorrect

is that you leased a vehicle and you leased a battery pack separately.

The battery pack is not part of the car.

I remember when Tesla talked about doing this,

one of the things they talked about was

you have to at some point eventually go back

and get your battery again.

Oh no, I think they're just straight up, you don't have the battery pack.

That was the thing about, we can do the swap

and they did it in one of those Elon Musk presentations on camera.

They did it.

But it became out that you would have to eventually

go back and get your battery again.

My understanding is that just the battery

is something that you're renting, really.

You're renting it for a youth.

In theory, I think this would drive much more widespread EV adoption.

Totally.

I also wonder what will happen.

You don't need chargers anymore.

At homes, the apartment dwellers and the street parkers.

And will it mean that as technology improves,

maybe now you'll suddenly have a new battery pack

that has twice the range.

Because battery tech has improved or whatever.

It's interesting.

Yeah, it is.

Or it's like, you're kind of broke and you're like,

I can only put $5 a gas in.

Give me one of the crappy batteries.

I don't think that.

Maybe.

I think it's incredible.

It's insane.

Incredible, amazing technology.

Another Chinese innovation which brings us

to our next news story.

Ford had a tough Q4 slash last year.

They got hit with what they're calling a surprise tariff.

They were expecting what?

$400 million and it ended up being $900 million.

Here's what happened.

They expected that they would be able to apply credits

for the USMCA.

So basically for parts produced in Mexico,

the US or Canada, those are tariff exempt.

You'll get credits for them.

They thought this would apply going back to May,

but actually they apply going back to November,

something they're about.

And so it's much less tax savings for the year.

I thought the more interesting thing is they said they lost

$5.4 billion on EVs last year.

So those subsidies going away, which I'm sure is the point

you're about to make, makes it really difficult

for American auto manufacturers like Ford

to continue doing that.

Between the tariffs coming in and the subsidies going away,

it seems like we've hurt our own auto industry

more than any, more than whatever the hell the goal

was supposed to be for the tariffs

and the depletion of the subsidies.

I do have an interesting question.

Jim Farley, well liked in the car enthusiast community

because he's a car guy.

Is he a good CEO for Ford?

Well, I really don't know anything.

I don't think that Jim Farley made this,

this isn't a Jim Farley decision.

The EV, the EV write down is going on with every auto

manufacturer right now.

But you got to wonder, Jim doing better financially.

They've had been relatively on track with expressions

that they've set with, with Wall Street.

They've been producing by the number of cars,

by the number of cars, gross profits,

where do they want to be?

Ford has not been consistent.

And Ford made a big stand on electric cars

that was seemed like the right decision at the time.

They had two.

Yeah.

But they were spending a ton of money developing other stuff

and the lightning was a massive thing

that they had to deal with

that has now been completely diminished.

They also put in a huge amount of money into Rivian.

They exited that years ago.

Yeah.

But there were other EV investments that they made

that they like completely wrote down

and had massive paper losses.

They also did shift away from all lower price vehicles

and non SUVs.

They announced that that might come back.

We don't want sedans back.

Give us the Echo Sport with the EcoBoost.

Thanks.

Wow.

But yeah, tough little news cycle for Ford.

It is interesting, isn't it?

I thought the whole tariffs thing

was supposed to help the car, the Americans.

Yeah.

What happened with that?

It's going to be, one of the news stories

that's vaguely correlated

that's going to be interesting to watch

is there's a new bridge that's been built

connecting Detroit and Canada.

Detroit and Canada.

You can go from Detroit to Canada.

I recognize the phrasing that's weird,

but that is the best way to describe it.

It has been paid for entirely by the Canadian government

and a little bit by Michigan.

The president of the US has said

that he might block the opening of it.

But it's interesting because it's like a major shipping

port back and forth because the current bridge

is privately owned.

They're going to keep it, is my understanding.

But it's privately owned.

Are you aware of this?

No, that's interesting.

The Ambassador Bridge is privately owned

and also a major blockage to bringing things in and out.

10 years ago in the Bay Area,

they opened, they had the Bay Bridge.

They connected San Francisco and whatever's on the other side there.

And then they built a new Bay Bridge

and they called it the New Bay Bridge.

Clever.

They took away the old one.

And I think that what they should have done instead was

stop maintaining it,

but still allow people to drive on it

at a lower toll amount, sort of at their own risk.

Do you know what I'm saying?

And just after a while, that would become untenable.

But then you have two bridges.

Just let it happen, you know what I mean?

Just let the pores fall into the water.

I don't even think it would be poor people for a while.

I think it would be like whichever one is less traffic.

But then eventually, yeah, I think there would become...

Like the real life hunger games or beast games of the world.

Yeah, but it would save people a lot of time.

Imagine with these heavy EVs too.

That would get more interesting.

I'm talking about double the bridge traffic.

The output, the bridge traffic, instead of just one, you got two.

Like the upper-lower level of the George Washington.

Something like that.

But here there's an upper-lower on both bridges.

You know what I'm saying?

Can I legitimately recommend that you do a wikipedia deep dive on the Ambassador Bridge?

It's fascinating.

The bridge was publicly traded.

The corporation had only the bridge publicly traded.

And then a guy named Manuel Moran, who was like a billionaire from Gross Point,

slowly bought it.

So we could have just...

We could just own the only link between Detroit and Canada if we wanted to.

Not anymore, though.

Apparently, well, that went down with the other bridges and opened up.

The point of this is that Ford's in trouble and it's all going to hell.

And Neo is winning again.

What did I hear about Ford and BYD in terms of sales?

BYD overtook them in global sales.

That's interesting.

BYD...

There's also a conversation of a partnership between them.

BYD, a company that no one had heard of 16 months ago.

Which is not what it stands for, but nevertheless.

It's a background?

Yeah.

It's a company that no one had heard of 16 months ago is now selling more cars than Ford, people.

They have karaoke in their car.

Neo has done 100 million battery swaps.

Like, this is it.

Sean told me that Mexico, 20% of cars sold in Mexico are Chinese.

Yeah.

This is it.

They're selling in Canada.

This is it.

You're seeing it happen in real time.

It's something I've been screaming about on this podcast for now, 8, 10 episodes.

For the entire length of the time that BYD has been around.

Yeah, totally.

BYD didn't even exist when we started this podcast.

And I said that one day there will be a Chinese company that overtakes us all and now it has happened.

Next news story, please.

Established 2003, if you recall.

Yeah.

Slightly.

All right.

I don't think this is real.

I'm going to put my head in the sand about this news story.

All right.

The Mercedes has announced the GLC 53.

This is an E something, sorry, C something, but they've actually announced the GLC 53,

which is a six cylinder AMG car.

So the GLC 63, most recently, and the C63 have been four cylinder, turbocharged, twin

charged, nobody remembers, but it's that's going away.

The GLC 43 is going away and it's going to have a turbocharged three liter inland six.

Yeah.

And so we're back.

You believe this is a big news story because.

Because AMG made a big deal of going to four cylinder.

There's another going back to the six.

Yeah.

You were quite critical of that C 43, if I recall.

So you're not going to say the thing about you think the E 63 is canceled.

I didn't say.

The big news story here is that there is talk that there will not be another E 63.

Nick, you're an E class AMG man.

I am.

After I was first, why don't we, why don't we talk about what you want to talk about

here?

They still have not announced a new E 63.

The C 63 was a four cylinder or something or other that was bad.

Yep.

Do we think this E 63 with a V8 is gone?

Remember when it was gone for a couple of years anyway.

Yeah.

But that was some sketchy stuff that no one wanted to talk about.

Mercedes stopped selling.

And remember it did come back.

There was a final edition 2023 model year before the transition to the next E class.

But the new E class came out for 24 or 25.

It's been out for like two years and there is no E 63 on the horizon.

There's an RS6.

There's an M5.

We don't see any 63.

There's an E 53 now.

That's been out for a while.

I filmed a video with it.

Never posted it.

Interesting point.

You even filmed the video with the wagon.

Is that coming out?

Yeah.

But the E 63 still eludes us.

I mean wait and see kind of makes sense.

It's like, okay, one minute we were all going EV and then we were worried about cafe standards

and all that.

Yeah.

So they're just going to wait and see through the whole generation of cars.

They're like, yeah, we're not sure.

Probably the last E class.

Excuse you.

This is my beloved car.

I've owned every version of it.

Buy it now, buddy.

By the way, we're combining a bunch of things and talking about this primarily because

Mercedes owned numbering system and naming system is bad.

For example, there was already a CLE 53 that had this engine, but now it's going to replace

the C 63 and the GLC.

Basically, there's an inline six.

Mercedes Ben's naming has gotten tough.

I had that AMG GT four door E performance GC 63 S.

That wasn't quite right, but sure.

It was as close as anyone's going to get.

And they're just, you know, D.

Anyway, the sales training that I took says, you know, you don't want to call anything like

good, bad, ugly or small, medium, large because you're dissuading people.

Right.

So we say good, better or best.

Those are your options.

Kind of like large, extra large.

Like Mercedes is not conundrum.

They can't say, oh, this is the wimpy one.

I am legitimately interested in what happens with the E 63 53 situation.

I hope it comes back.

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Okay, we've got to move on to the talk cars segment.

The talk cars segment is brought to you by Hagerty.

Hagerty, which is the greatest automotive insurer in existence.

You insure yourself with Hagerty, right?

Sure do.

Me too.

Do you?

You don't have any enthusiast cars.

Yeah, that seems right.

What about that Porsche?

You don't have a Hagerty policy on that?

It's my daily.

I love Hagerty and they insure all my cars and I got to up my insurance policy on some of them.

Yep.

My dad actually sent me an article they wrote on the 63T bird.

Oh yeah.

So they've actually got some pretty good magazines, publications.

We love, we truly love Hagerty.

We are thrilled that they are our sponsor, including our sponsor for the Euro car road trip.

Which was so much fun.

There is one of the Euro cars behind me.

Do not buy this car.

It's for sale right now.

By the time people are watching this, it will already be ending or ending in like the next

hour.

Yep.

So that's your chance.

We have a couple of great videos.

We did.

We took the Euro cars on a road trip.

We imported me and Nick imported Euro cars, an Audi A2 and a Fiat Multiplot, which by

the way, yikes on that Multiplot.

It's such an incredible car.

Not saying that's an incredible example of it, but it's such an incredible car.

Whoever ends up with this, don't drive it home, even if you live in San Diego.

No.

Get that thing flatbed.

No, it's great.

He just said.

I've driven it thousands of miles for kilometers.

You have not.

I have.

Took it to LA multiple times.

I'm going to do a direct quote in the office from Nick a minute ago.

Flippa said, when you move it, there's no power steering fluid in it.

Nick goes, oh, there is power steering fluid in it.

It's just in a bottle in the passenger seat.

There's a small leak, which has been disclosed, but not fixed.

I don't want to top it up and leak on your floors here.

Thank you.

It has been a problem.

Yeah.

Anyway, bad car and the A2 is a good car and the 500 Abarth is a great car.

It won the drag race.

It was the fastest of the track.

The Euro car road trip was excellent.

We had a lot of fun doing it.

We drove these cars out somewhere.

We stayed in some desert hotel.

We went to, we managed to find the world's only farm to table restaurant in Lake Elsinore

or wherever the hell we were.

And it was great.

It was a lot of fun.

Okay.

The episode that came out today, we're filming this on Wednesday, was us at a go-kart track.

Yeah.

That fiat is just so fun around a go-kart track.

It's the right size.

You don't need more speed than it has.

It was like just such, truly such a blast.

And then Sean went out and our camera guy went out just to do laughs in the fiat.

And the fiat held up beautifully.

Beautifully.

And I drove it home.

It was great.

Yeah.

No, the fiat's great.

It's a great car.

It's actually well-known and well-documented.

It's durability and quality is well-documented.

Let's talk about this.

I have not treated that fiat 500 Abarth cabriolet nicely.

Right.

It goes to red line often, gets an oil change once a year, gets nothing else.

None of this is news.

Yeah.

It hasn't complained ever.

Yeah.

And you can go around a go-kart track many, many, many times.

Did we leave in all the clips of you having to jump-start it?

That was the battery issue.

It's on the car's fault.

The battery was seven years old.

It has a new battery.

It starts right up.

It starts right up, folks.

And obviously with the jumper packet, it then started right up.

Does that multiply start right up?

Yeah.

Except for that one time.

Yeah.

Great.

I replaced the battery.

I like you.

And then I replaced the crankshaft position sensor, which was the part that was acting up.

And look at you now.

You can drive around in this car as long as power steering is not a priority.

You can drive around.

I mean, it works fine.

How often do you top up the oil?

I haven't ever.

Good.

Two questions for you.

One, I think the feedback was largely positive on the series, but the comments are overwhelmingly,

Doug gear, top gear, you guys want to be top gear, blah, blah, blah.

Is it possible to create content like this without being compared to top gear?

Thomas and James are figuring all that out right now.

Okay.

And the Francis bourgeois, they're going to figure all that out.

Me and you and Filippo, it was three guys in the desert with the producer giving us challenges.

Any comparison is unintentional.

Are we going to do another one of these?

No.

No?

No.

What if we all get E 55 wagons?

Then what's the challenge?

We'll figure it out.

We got to move on and talk about the E 55 wagons.

No way.

I guess I'll say one thing about the multiple.

He bought a car on the side.

I guess I'll say one thing about the multiple.

Okay.

We removed all the seats from the multiple and fit a full go cart into it.

That's all that's fine.

You could have still fit three adults in the front.

That's the best car in the world.

If it wasn't leaking more fluids than are contained in a fluid transporter, then it would be great.

That's the best car.

Not that one specifically.

The multiple is the best car in the world.

Honestly, a new multiple would be great.

If you go look for a used multiple in Europe, you will be surprised at how high percentile.

Because they were only one of the best.

They were reliable that JCD 105.

My dad had an ephemeria weekend.

That car is bad.

And if you buy it, you will regret it.

Doug, quit trying to alter the outcome of our bet.

I shall prevail.

I'm not even concerned anymore about the bet.

Especially now that I've seen that car run.

I think because this will come out, I can't say what the number is.

Later, we will reveal what our bet was.

I can't believe the A2 is the most mole.

I'm getting off like close to the lower threshold.

Aren't you shocked by this?

To me, all these cars are well beyond what they're worth.

Well, we did the picture of that one with the face away from the good headlight.

The headlight needs to be replaced.

That's nothing.

That is that car's only issue.

There was some air conditioning.

Oh, sometimes the AC will not blow as well.

Is that disclosed?

Ah, it's fine.

Can we make sure that's all good?

Every flaw that I'm aware of on the 500 bar is disclosed.

I have a really long comment.

The A2 is honestly a really clean car in really nice shape.

It's just dull, but if you just want to use a car as a car to drive around.

It's the life of it.

I hope, though, that all three of these cars have the same fate that happened to the A-class that I imported.

Which was that it gets destroyed while parked on the street in Oakland.

Okay, we got to move on.

Nick brought up the E55 wagon.

Nick, tell us what happened.

What happened?

I finally bought a car on the site.

Nick bought a car on the site.

I have sold six cars now, or five and a half since the multiple hasn't ended yet.

Yep.

I've never bought a car on the site.

Never bought a car on the site?

There were two auctions ending on Monday, a B5 RS4, which frankly is the car I wanted more,

but required a little bit more out of pocket than this.

Yes, and I think this E55 is interesting.

200,000 miles, which is high for this.

There was like 150 to 180 of these under 200 total made in terms of the wagon E55 W211.

Sold in the US.

Very rare car to begin with.

I've been looking for one for six months.

I think I've seen one or two pop up.

Wait, you were looking for six months, but you haven't brought it up to us.

Well, I've been looking since I got the SLR and decided my real goal here is I want to manual swap the SLR,

but I'm too afraid to do that on that expensive of car.

So I wanted to find a M113K, which is not the same motor, but close enough and manual swap that and see how I like it.

So finding another E55 motor AMG.

This was the ultimate one because it's a dad car.

It's cool.

It's rare.

I've never had a wagon, but they generally trade for 30 to 50, I would say.

This one's mild up.

It had an accident.

It has an active check engine light.

It has some other.

It's close to Nick.

It spoke to me as a value play, because if you're going to tear it apart and manual swap,

but you don't want like the most perfect nice one ever, which I also drove.

Yeah.

So this one came across and I thought, Hey, let's, let's see.

It also actually looks okay considering the mileage.

I personally think it's not terrible.

I personally think that Flint Gray is the best looking color.

I would only get silver because that was like the color and that's what I do.

Yeah.

But I think that Flint Gray looks baller on this car.

It looks so nice.

The silver one, I did find one in the matching, not exact, but close enough to my SLR.

But it was going to end up being probably double this price.

So you bought this car.

You're going to manual swap it.

So you're, you're not even going to bring it here.

I'm not even, I don't even want to drive it.

I'm sending it directly to DC motorworks in Atlanta.

They're going to swap it for me.

They think it'll take about a month.

And they do Mercedes Benz manual swaps.

What they've done like 10 or so on, on what cars?

They've done black series too.

They've done like R classes and random stuff.

They've done R class.

So they're not kind of a column shifter.

I think maybe not an R class.

They haven't done R classes.

They've done, they've done stuff.

They've done a CLK 55.

So they've done the motor.

Oh, really?

Um, they are not using the crossfire trans.

We're going to use one out of a, like an 06 plus Mercedes,

which presumably is actually the same transmission.

No, they make some improvements.

There's a lockout difference.

Cameron, Cameron over there was trying to bring me up to speed a little bit,

but I'm just trusting him that it's going to turn out good.

And if not, I think we'll be in it probably under 30 to have the first manual swapped

E55 wagon.

Someone will want it.

I think I'll want it.

I think I'll enjoy it.

Yeah, I think you'll love it.

You were skeptical if I can pull it off or not, but we'll find out.

No, no, I think you'll be able to pull it off.

For sure.

You just think it'll take a while?

I think that it'll take a while and then you'll tire of the car.

Um, but I'm thrilled, honestly.

I, you know, I had one of these.

A lot of the cars that Nick buys, I had first.

No.

I had one of, no.

You had the 63.

Yeah, but this body.

Much different.

Yeah.

Much different.

Yeah.

More power.

Yeah.

No, I always preferred this.

And when I was looking for my 63 back then in the days before cars and bids and bring

the trailer and all these things, the only way to find an AMG station wagon, I swear

to God, this is true.

There was a thread on MB world forums.

I dead serious.

And it was E 50.

It was in the E class AMG section and it was the wagons for sale thread.

And you would, if you wanted one, you would visit the thread 10 times a day.

And I did.

And one day one popped up and I was first.

And that's how I got mine.

I didn't want that car.

I got a pewter E 63 wagon.

I wanted honestly a silver 55 wagon, but it was what was available.

Well, if you're lucky, I'll let you take it for a spin.

Well, then I later had a 212, which is a significantly better car.

That would be called a manual swap.

Although that was also, no, no, that had the AMG's had a thing.

This is the best looking E class wagon.

Yeah.

I'm excited for it.

Wow.

The best looking E class.

No, the two thirteens and the two forties look best.

No, no, there's no question about that.

No, that's insane.

I agree.

There's no question about the statement, but certainly for, for 17, which interesting

is I test drove over the weekend and SRT 10 RAM, which I've wanted forever.

Yeah.

I was like, this one was a little rough, but I was pretty disappointed by it.

Cause you were asking for a four door automatic.

That is just a pickup truck.

Had you never driven one before?

I tried to and the sellers are always so sketchy that like half the time the car doesn't exist

or like it's being worked on or whatever.

So I've, I've seen a lot and I've never gotten C time.

I was underwhelmed and they wanted 17 five.

He dropped the price of 17 four, but it's like meant for the same money as a RAM pickup.

I got a super charged AMG wagon.

So I'm pretty thrilled with you know, I'm all about finding value, whether it's a pristine

Mercedes McLaren SLR roadster that might have had a small trunk fire or a free rangeover

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That's getacregold.com.

Now back to the car talk.

I want to take this time in the podcast since we're talking AMG wagon to tell everybody

that I am still on the hunt for a facelift W 210 E 55 AMG wagon with a third row.

I am desperately searching.

I will pay.

I will do whatever it takes.

Now I announced this last week and if you have one of these, they didn't sell them in

the US.

They have them in Europe and Asia and such.

Facelift.

Here's the here's the quality.

It's called a facelift.

That means 2000 and up and tell from the steering wheel.

If it has controls, it's a facelift.

You can't tell from literally anything.

That is complete.

The rocker panels, the front end treatment, the rear end treatment, there's this entire

interior.

You didn't say the rear end front end.

No, no, the treatment.

Well, the trim, the way it looks.

This is like the E 39 facelift that only Canon can tell.

The car also drives significantly better post facelift.

That's the real reason I want it.

So facelift.

So that's 2000 late 2000 and up facelift wagon, third row silver.

If you know of such a car, left hand drive, this is 2000, 2001, 2002, I would probably

consider right hand drive.

Are they right hand drive?

If you know of such a car, email us at Sean, that's S-E-A-N at carsandbids.com.

Sean at Cars and Bids.com.

Now last week, I announced that I was looking for this car and many people reached out with

the usual stuff.

And I forgot, I forgot that even though this is exactly how I found my 993, it also led

to an enormous amount of BS.

People are like, here's one and it's a pre-facelift.

Here's one, doesn't have a third row.

One guy sent us a long email, Sean, talking about how I should instead look at C-Class

AMG wagons and then sent pictures of all of them as if I have never heard of the C-Class

AMG wagons.

Thank you for your passion.

Dude, I know, I know it's there.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Thanks for watching.

Appreciate it.

Are you not?

Also, if you're a Mercedes expert, can you pull up this car?

Can you pull up this car?

No, we've, there are three rows.

Can you pull up S-210, if I want to picture the car on the thing, throughout my entire

rant, whoever's editing this, throughout my entire rant, I want a giant picture of the

car on the site.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This, this exact thing, this, that's a, see, that's a pre, okay, there you go.

That car.

Oh, that's.

That car.

But in silver and with a third row.

And we got to have those wheels.

Yeah.

Well, those are OE wheels.

All fine.

Yeah, those are sick.

Yeah.

This car, this is what I want with a third row in silver.

I don't care where you are.

Even if you're in Kuala Lumpur and your primary daily driver is one of those parot was, protons

that I just mentioned.

You get me one of these?

I'll buy it.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Do you think that when you get this car, you will learn how to drive a manual transmission?

You know, I was wondering, you just wait to pull that out.

Maybe we could do a collaboration where I had a professional driving instructor kind

of give me some pointers.

I think that might be wise.

The problem was at the time I had the mercy and let's just say the clutch pedal felt a

little different between a multiple and a mercy logo.

Oh sure.

That's his, that's his, you know, I think he had sold the, I think so too.

That's what it has been driving as a manual for a while.

This man stalled whilst trying to start a drag race.

A drag race.

That happens actually, but the real surprise is he did it in a diesel, which has so much

low end torque and a light clutch that usually you could just kind of, he had stalled on

a Taco Bell drive through.

It was a whole problem.

I want one of these.

Flippo, are you doing anything to find it for me?

I'll give you a thousand dollars if you find me one.

Well, think about it.

I would like a Karajit T-jacket and I'll be free.

Two, I want to give another talk cars that I think you'll appreciate.

Oh please.

You remember back in the day when I would review a Tesla and if I'd said anything negative,

there would be thousands of people on Twitter who would lose their mind.

Absolutely.

Okay.

I haven't gone on Twitter in years.

Obviously it's a cesspool.

It's a complete disaster.

And so no one really goes on it anymore except crazy people.

It's called X now.

Yeah, whatever.

Okay.

So I'm on it.

The other day, I, for some reason or another, I had to go on it.

There was some.

Oh, did you want to respond to an emergency alert?

Did you want to see the emergency alert?

No.

It's a real problem where a lot of government, when they issue emergency, like state government

where they should emergency alert, that should just link to an X post.

To see the post, you need to have an X account.

And it's really a problem.

So I had to go, first I clicked on the Twitter link or X, whatever, for the first time in

probably a year, year and a half.

And we had, I clicked on it and it was just after we had put up some reel where we talked

negatively about Tesla like in the last pod.

I don't remember even when we said it was something.

And those people are still out there.

And they're all on it.

They're still out there and I was so here for it.

They are still, and I assume a lot of them are bots.

Like they, none of them have real people as profile pictures or none of them have real

locations.

Like I assume a lot of them are either bots or like paid.

Elon Musk doesn't accept bots.

Yeah.

Right.

There's no bots at all on that platform.

But those people are still there being like, Doug is paid by big auto, like Doug needs

gas cars to survive.

Like, and I don't even respond anymore.

So I'm looking at it and I'm realizing they're like spitting themselves up because I'm not

even responding to defend myself.

They're just getting each other like successively angry or something.

I love this.

It's turning into Facebook.

It's just like the...

The boomers.

And then it reminded me of something.

I'm going to tell a story here that I haven't told you guys.

Whoa.

Many years ago, when we launched Cars and Bits, there was a fellow, and I hope he sees this.

That's why I'm telling this story.

There was a fellow on the Twitter and he was in Western Pennsylvania and he was very critical

of Cars and Bits.

And later I determined who he was and his association with a competitor of ours.

And he would constantly be talking up the competitor and talking down Cars and Bits.

And eventually it just annoyed me so much that I spent an hour, went way back in his

post history and found some racist tweets that he had posted from 10 years ago.

As you did at the time.

And so then one day, the next time he talked badly about Cars and Bits, I had screen shot

it and linked the tweets and I was like, is this you?

And within 30 seconds, he had locked down his profile, blocked me, like he was scared

because he realized that I knew who he was and I found out that he'd done racist tweets.

And you know what?

I regret it.

I regret doing it because he was actually kind of fun to back and forth complain with.

And I went on the Twitter and he is still on there complaining about Cars and Bits.

And I'm like, you know what?

But he's unlocked his profile and I'm like, you know what?

I am not going to bring up your racist tweets anymore.

And I hope that someday we can have, again, very uncivil, inappropriately angry discourse.

And I regret the airing of the racism.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because I actually enjoyed the back and forth complain.

I really need the off camera version.

Sorry.

That's the whole story.

Fascinating.

Yeah.

I'm proud of...

No, I don't know if I'm proud of your growth on this or not.

Is that growth?

I'm not sure.

Like I think the correct thing to do would be like, hey, this guy is a racist, right?

But I think like...

That's acceptable now, I think.

In some ways.

Yeah.

And it was 15 years ago and all this stuff.

But most importantly, I just miss arguing with the fellow.

And now he's blocked me and all this stuff, which he should have because I know his race

was passed.

You know, like...

If somebody knows your race is passed, you block them.

But that was something that reminded me of your race.

What?

That was something that I was reminded about when I went on Twitter.

I was like, you know, I wonder what that guy is doing now because I hadn't looked at

his profile in like two years.

And sure enough, his most recent post was complaining about cars and bits.

Fascinating.

Yes.

Fascinating.

Anyway, deep regret.

I think it's great you outed him.

Have you?

Really?

Yeah.

I think the best thing you can do with people like that is just hold up a mirror and let

them just see how they look and sound.

Is that how you feel when we send you the clips we have to cut out of the podcast?

Sometimes.

No, I...

All right.

It is not uncommon that someone will say, here's how you behaved.

And I think on it and I say, I wish I hadn't done it that way.

And I hope this gentleman took that opportunity.

But I guess my point is I don't get in a lot of internet fights anymore.

Like back in the day when I was really fighting for my life, I was...

There was a part of me that really had fun.

You know what I mean?

You used to engage more.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Including with the haters.

And that was what hit me with the Tesla thing.

I signed on to Twitter.

I was like, oh my God, the haters are still here.

Holy crap.

I can't believe people are still doing this.

And then I was like, what about that guy, the racist, hater guy?

That's where this all...

The haters, a lot of them now, I think you can have those conversations on Reddit in

the way that Twitter used to be.

There's a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more intelligent, but like...

I got an alert on Reddit the other day for your slash Doug DeMiro.

Yeah.

And like, man, people say weirds about me, even I'm like nobody and they were like talking

smack on me.

The problem I have on Reddit is it's like all...

Reddit seems to me to be like a much smaller cross-section of reality.

I think X is becoming that.

A lot of the normies have left that.

But back when this guy was racist, I think it was a more broader...

Reddit is becoming one mainstream.

Reddit's like 13-year-old kind of basement kids.

I don't think so anymore.

23-year-old basement kids, but it's not like reality, unfortunately.

And keep in mind that Reddit has a billion people active every month.

Sure.

However, the people who post like in the cars area, I think it's different than people who

post like cooking tips.

And I think some of it is very useful and I think a lot of it is kind of sketch people,

which is a shame.

Like if you go and see some of the complaints about us or about any of the car YouTubers,

it's like...

What used to be really cool about Twitter was it was...

It used to be more intelligent people that had done like deep cuts and deep research

and unique insights.

Reddit does attract that kind of clientele where there are people that are like going

a little bit past the surface level and I do learn stuff from it versus...

I don't think that's true.

But I think that's not happening in like the general subreddits where you just...

Where like the whatever sounds right gets up voted and stuff.

I think that happens more in more specific ones where you find out more stuff.

The types of insults I get are like, I hope that guy has problems with his BECM module

on his pizza.

Like deep insults and rude, but like that is just like, oh, you're mom's bad or whatever.

Like it is like deeply specific.

Before we move on from talk cars, this plug is going to go way long.

I want to talk about your F-250.

Yes, me too.

My F-250 is still at my late father-in-law's Lord Dryway dirt lotter.

We were going to tow it home with a Bentley and a U-Haul.

Yeah, that didn't happen.

That didn't happen.

Shockingly, that didn't happen.

But a gentleman named Dave who runs Iconic Automotive in Northern Arizona reached out.

Actually, his wife, Stephanie, reached out to me on Instagram and said, hey, Dave runs

the shop.

He can go out and take a look.

Dave went out last Sunday, took a look at the truck, did a little bit of diagnostics,

and he's going to have a towed, we're going to have a towed next Monday to his shop to

do a little bit of work.

We got to maybe drop the fuel tanks, clear out some old gas.

That was one of the problems.

Flush out the car, maybe rebuild it, then do a little bit of other work, and then it

will be ready to be shipped down here to me.

Do you?

And it'll be ready to drive.

Tires aside.

I got to get new tires.

Yeah.

Like it's going to happen.

It's going to be here.

Dave has been incredibly helpful.

On President's Day.

They're getting it.

Yeah.

Do you think?

President's Day is in like a week.

Yeah, next Monday.

Oh, we're going to get it to the shop.

As you said, well, let me just ask this.

What do you think the chance is of any of this?

It's all good.

I don't think Dave's going to let you down.

Shout out if you can't get into a qualified mechanic.

Cars like this are not that complicated.

Parts are available.

Also, in Northern Arizona, like, what they've told me is that his shop mostly does like

diesels and a bunch of like fleet vehicles for the local government.

But he grew up working on carbureted old trucks.

What do you think?

We'll see this car.

Like then Flippo's got to get it here.

Honestly, I'll be in Phoenix this weekend through Tuesday, so I might pop up.

Go meet Dave.

Please do.

Dave's a great guy.

He races out at the race track outside of Phoenix.

Oh, cool.

Well, I'm pumped that it's now at least legitimately in the hands of a qualified human being.

I am too.

Flippo and an F-250.

That'll be a sight.

Yeah.

Who do you think will get their car back first?

Me with the manual E55 or you with an F-250?

You know what's funny, by the way?

The Super Bowl halftime show.

Bad Bunny had an F-250 out there on the field.

Yeah, the Super Bowl halftime show.

Not the alternative America one had an F-250, but the bad Bunny one had an F-250.

With Puerto Rican license plates on it.

This is right up Flippo's alley.

I want to give a quick shout out.

We had an event here.

I don't remember what it was for.

For Avon.

It was a great car community.

Avon's, which was awesome.

It was a great event.

It was fun.

We had a great time.

Anyway, fellow came up to me at this event from Dicastalk.

You go on Instagram, you follow him, Dicastalk.

And he got me this.

Wow.

Which is a Sequoia TRD Pro Dicast.

No way.

And it's my exact car, except there's a red interior, which I wanted.

And no mods.

What do you mean mods?

Or you removed the running board.

This car has the running board for wheels.

You changed the wheels.

I painted the wheels a lighter.

You also removed something else.

You just never had a roof rack.

No, you removed something else.

You extended the cold start to be longer because you just wanted to enjoy that.

Anyway, he gave me this.

And he said, he said, look, he says he makes these Dicast cars.

And he said, usually he does like super limited runs.

They sell it in like 10 minutes.

And I remember when the Sequoia came out, I had not known about it right away.

And it sold out immediately.

But he saved one for me.

And I haven't.

And I'm so thrilled.

And also I am back on my Sequoia.

I am in love with my Sequoia again.

I have no interest in it.

I like Silver Trail anymore.

I am in love with the Sequoia.

That makes one of you.

It's so good.

The thing that you don't understand, you've never gone off-roading and you've never had a family.

And so, you know what the funny thing is?

He's making fun of me.

But in four years or whatever the usual timeline is, he's going to end up with a Sequoia.

But he's going to end up with a TRD offered.

Yeah.

Or like a Capstone or SR5, some BS Sequoia.

You know, I always like this thing.

You are correcting that I will get a newer, better version of what you currently have.

Oh, God.

We can't go down this road.

Nick only buys cars that I've already owned.

We can't go down this road.

He says the RIC owner.

I had an L32.

Lick my P38 boots.

All right.

Lick my BECM module.

It's probably broken.

All right.

It's raining out right now.

I suspect it's getting waterlogged.

I don't move on to the market report which is brought to you by Ryan's air conditioning.

Folks, it's broken.

And it's right now, it's 61 degrees here in San Diego.

I don't know if he's going to make it tonight.

He informed me he has both a fitted sheet and a duvet.

So I think one strategy Ryan might want to try is just the fitted sheet.

Just sort of take the duvet off.

No.

Sean meanwhile has never had air conditioning at all.

Ryan's, I couldn't sleep in the middle of winter.

Anyway, Mark reports brought to you by Ryan's air conditioning which, God, we hope,

a miracle will come and it'll get fixed before it gets up to 66.

We're really having about a bad weather here in San Diego.

We'll build some buffer into the filming schedule for air conditioning.

All right.

I want to talk about the 458.

Can you pull up the 458?

Yes.

We sold the 458 yesterday.

Big money.

This was a 458 which has become kind of a darling in the used Ferrari community.

For good reason.

The 458, the last NA Ferrari, the first Ferrari that adopted this design language which kind

of since permeated the entire lineup, we sold a 1,400 mile car.

That also was rare.

Ferraris used to have super low miles as kind of a matter of course, but they've become

so usable and so relatively reliable.

People are using them a lot more.

And just mass produced.

Yeah.

So this car had 1,400 miles on it.

Yeah.

One of them we sold with 48,000 miles, 30,000, et cetera.

But one we sold with 1,400 miles on it sold for $380,000.

Real money.

And our friend Sam, whose air conditioning works, he made the point that 458s are almost

more expensive than SF90s.

Yeah.

SF90, which is Ferrari's newest supposedly almost hypercar with 8,000 horsepower that

nobody wants and they can't find anybody to buy used ones, they're selling in the low

400s.

And this is a 380 number, not even a speciale or whatever, like just a regular 458 spider.

Yup.

A base like that is a low spec SF90 surely is less than this.

This further proves my continued theory that that mid-2000s to, I guess, whenever hybridization

took over, era is like the era and we're already starting to see cars from that era eclipse

later cars that are better, right, like the 4GTs and this and the SF90, which is laughable,

like the market, the used market, the enthusiast collector market certainly knows what it wants.

It is kind of addressing the 458 is getting this kind of recognition.

Obviously, it's a beautiful car.

The styling did set the tone for Ferrari for a decade after this car came out, but it's

also unlike the 4GT, the O5 4GT manual, raw, in a way that the new 4GT isn't, this is

an automatic car.

Yeah, the only real thing it has going for it was the last NA car, but it wasn't even

like the last gas car or even the last V8 car, but nonetheless, the market is really

coalesced around.

It is also weird that, imagine that you now bought this car with 1,400 miles.

You're afraid to put miles on it, maybe?

Probably.

But like it's a 458.

Yeah.

It's a car to drive.

It's not really a collector car.

Maybe, but I think that this sale proves that super low-mile 458s are going to continue

to be more and more valuable.

I have a suspicion that good low-mile 458s become really valuable someday as sort of

the end of an era.

If I were to have bet on this 10 years ago, I would have put my money on the 430.

It's more mechanical.

They've still made manuals, like it has sort of this last old school feel, whereas this

is a dual clutch car that was made in larger numbers, but that's not what the market has

shown.

The 430s continue to be shockingly cheap for what they are and 458s never got cheap, even

high-mile ones.

I do think it's a little bit of a ... The 458, I think, is a more beautiful car than

the 430.

I agree.

More striking, more modern looking.

The 430 looks ...

Totally.

Like an old car now.

Yeah.

Agreed.

But yeah, it's surprising.

Nonetheless, I'm like really shocked because it is kind of a more ... It's dual clutch on,

you know.

Yeah.

It's not quite ...

It's a little bit like, you buy a 430 if you want, a Ferrari from that era, and also

a Gated 430 is real money.

Yeah.

Like a factory Gated 430.

That's true.

It's real money.

Yeah.

But this, even if you're considering a new Ferrari or just barely used, this might feel

like the more analog, older version.

No, I think that's exactly it.

I think the NAV8, the sound, and yes, it probably feels more connected, et cetera, and no massive

screens like in 296, which is also an awesome car, but the market is making a decision here.

380 is real money.

You can go buy a lot of new cars, including new Ferraris, for either that or damn close

to it.

Yep.

And Barca loves 458.

And about 3C8 era.

You ever thought about a 458?

You rather have an SLR than a 458?

Yep.

That's all I got to say about that.

I like the 430, if anything, because it could manual swap it or buy a manual, but ...

Yeah.

And I mean, they're 60s.

They are really pretty cars.

A little better.

Yeah.

Get the next gen, the better one.

Yeah.

That's what you do.

I had an 06.

They're pretty cars.

380, well, you could buy a 4GT.

Yeah.

0506.

Can you?

Yeah.

A mild one, but not a bad car.

Like a bad car actually.

Not a 1,400 mile one, but ...

You could buy a driver 0505 4GT, a red one, for sure, for the 75.

But if you're super into Ferraris, you definitely want a Ferrari.

You want a DCT, and you want almost 600 horsepower.

I get it.

It's not me.

It is a very good sweet spot, this car, if the mechanical isn't quite your biggest priority,

but instead like performance and stuff without going too modern.

This car is a good sweet spot.

I do think for me, there's a lot of things I like more about the F430.

Most of which is the fact that it's still a sick, but also, it just, to me, it's more

of like an old-school type car.

But I still think this is awesome, and the market does too.

Clearly, the market is thinking about it as a long-term play.

If you want a driving career, or a Florida 8, also proven with speciale and speciale

apperative values, which are crazy.

Should we move on to questions?

Yes.

Okay.

I want to move on to questions.

The questions are brought to us by Nick Roshan and his YouTube channel.

Oh, thank you.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Go to Nick Roshan.

Pull it up, Nick Roshan.

Oh, yeah.

Pull it up, Nick.

Pull up the Nick YouTube channel.

Let's just leave it up there for a minute.

Is this?

This is a Cartham bits account on the homepage.

See what the Cartham bits account is.

This is the Nick Roshan YouTube channel.

It is excellent.

This video, a little underperformer.

A little bit.

I think people are tired of the multiply.

It's been a lot.

We're all tired of the multiply.

I want to be clear.

I do believe that I've watched each of these videos.

This is not my first one.

The next owner will be especially tired of the multiply within a couple of hours of

picking it up.

It's a great car.

The multiply, it's an incredible car.

Not bad.

I'm so happy that I did that for multiple reasons, much like the E-55.

The E-55.

Yeah, there you go.

The E-55 is my bellwether to manual swap an AMG.

The multiply was my bellwether to try importing a vehicle and understanding how the process

works.

I learned a lot.

I had a lot of fun.

It just, it checked all the boxes a little quicker than like a Mercilago might.

Okay.

Next, I'm going to, the questions are all really good this week.

And remember, you can ask us questions.

Go to carsandbids.com.

You click on the community tab and there's a post and it says, questions, ask us your

questions.

Oh, oh.

And then that's where you can.

Oh, I tried to slip in one for my sister.

Did you see that?

Yeah.

About your sister's trying to get a van or something from Ohio.

She's in Ohio.

What many vans should my sister get?

She wants a van.

They can handle Ohio winners.

The only four wheel drive mini van available today is the Sienna, which also happens to

be the best mini van.

So she's good.

Get that.

But a different option.

Chevy Astro.

Oh, pull up.

Have we sold out?

No.

Of course not.

Nick.

I don't know, man.

Do you think I'm shopping for vans?

25 years since they've made the Chevy Astro.

Oh, we have one live right now.

Right now.

I will send this to her.

With four wheel drive.

Where is it?

It must be in Ohio.

It's in Florida.

But actually, this has a camper package.

But it says those are seeds.

Those become seeds.

Wow.

Nick.

It looks new to me.

You got to get her to get one of the things that I think this wheel design really benefited

from.

I don't think she's trying to kidnap children.

If the center part.

No.

Call her around.

Quality van.

If the center part matches the other side, it looks like a modern vehicle.

You know, these were sold, I think, through 05.

I think that's correct.

Just crazy to think about.

All right.

The Ford GT was on sale.

Kristen and Scott.

It sounds like a Sienna or an Astro.

You got to find a Sienna.

It's hard.

All right.

Next.

First question for Baja GP.

Doug, your A140 is dead.

I owned it for six months in Texas.

Sold it on cars and bids.

It was told by an old lady in a minivan.

I mentioned this actually in one of my own videos a couple days ago.

My question is this.

You said you're not sentimental about your old cars.

However, do you go back and look them up to see your current state of existence, knowing

that you're one of one USA 140 dies by an old woman in a minivan on a parking street?

Are you at least a little sad?

No.

I am.

Thrilled.

You're sad.

I saw that car during car week because the current owner told me they got hit, lived

in the bay and they came brought down.

It was great to see it again.

Yeah.

I hadn't missed it.

Yeah.

Well, you're the one.

Next question from Cork Carson IG, Doug and background characters.

Harsh.

That's the two of you.

Oh, harsh.

That's as bad as bringing up the module.

Why have you not reviewed a Pajero evolution yet?

The same reason I don't review any car yet.

I haven't found the right one, but I will.

Don't worry.

We got a Z32 300ZX coming, which is a big deal.

I've been asked about that car for years and years.

We finally found the right one.

It's a nice one.

Now we're reviewing it.

When a great Pajero Evo comes that's being for sale on the site, we will pick it up.

I need a stick.

That's one of the big problems.

Yeah.

They're almost all automatics.

A lot of them were heinously modified.

We can find a nice clean stick and then we will get it here and I will review it and

Sean will pay to ship it here.

The market report on that one is interesting.

I want to buy one.

I've been looking for one for a while.

Yeah.

That'd be cool.

I've never had one before.

Initially, there was a lot of hype and they were selling for decent numbers.

Yeah, they're down.

They're down and out, down enough now that it doesn't really make sense to import, like

the multiple.

Oh, really?

If you import and then sell, maybe you get, there's certainly no profit arbitrage.

So there's like, we're capped on the number of Pajero Evo earlier.

The market's really shifted down.

Maybe it starts to stabilize, but I think it's slowing down the influx of new ones

for sale.

It is interesting.

I'll give you a little market report, which you were going to talk about at the RS4.

One thing that I've noticed now repeatedly is that if you really want a car that becomes

legal, if you can just wait 24 months, the market will be completely different.

The R34 GT-R is tipped after two years.

The B5 RS4s, which were 100 grand, are now nice ones, are like lucky to find the 60s.

Cheap ones are in the fourth.

The competitor site, who may or may not be involved with a Twitter poster, we don't know,

sold one for like 45.

Yeah.

I mean, we sold ones in the 90, around 90.

I bid on that one.

That went to 86.5.

Yeah.

I bid up to like 85.

Right.

Which that car later sold for 85.

Yeah.

There's a million examples.

Pajero Evo is a great example, but there's a million examples of once the car is legal,

there's a mad rush for people who've always wanted to get it, and then the market floods

with them and they absolutely crash.

So Pajero Evo, I think, we're at that 24 mark, where I'm eyeing them because I think

they're going to start to become values again.

What are they selling for?

20s?

Yeah.

I mean, I think if you want a manual and you're more picky about condition and rest

and stuff, you need to spend 30s to get a decent one, but they're available for 20s.

Yeah.

And I bet automatics are a lot of them were rough.

That's one of the things I learned about Pajero Evo's when I was thinking about doing

it, is that a lot of them were driven hard and they were off road easy.

Yeah.

There's that too.

Next question from auto autopsy, question for Sean, how much junk mail do you get when

the pod blasting your email?

I'll tell you the answer.

You want to know the answer?

You can find out.

You just sent him an email.

Sean at carsandbids.com.

That's S-E-A-N at carsandbids.com.

By the way, shout out to that guy.

We talked about sobs a lot when there's a lot.

Next question from Soho.

This is a great question.

Or maybe Sojo.

The Crere GT's shifter placement seems completely unique, not replicated by any other cars to

mind all of it.

Literally behind you.

And over there.

Geez.

The Fiat 500 bar and the multiple.

This is the, I'm reading the question, I didn't write the question.

That was going to be most of what I said.

And yet it's also considered one of the great driving characters are funded by this question.

What is the driving experience like with the shifter in that position?

Why is it good?

And why has it been replicated?

Okay.

The driving experience is fantastic with the shifter in that position because it is right

next to the steering wheel.

The multiple has a tube.

The huge benefit and the reason that every sports car should be like this is because

it's just less of a distance for you to take with your hands.

So you're boom, boom, boom, and you can do it a lot quicker.

And I really mean that.

I really think it's great.

The Crere GT, as these guys are pointing out, is not the only car like that.

The car actually that I most associate with that shifter placement is the Alpha Spider,

which used that shifter placement from the 1960s all the way through the mid 1990s.

Any Alpha Spider, any old Alpha Spider that we've had will have it.

And you can click on, yeah, like that.

The shifter is in the exact same thing.

It's mounted high.

I mean, you can see it's almost laughable how it's like mounted where the air conditioning,

you know, controls ought to be.

But they do that for the exact same reason.

These were driver's cars and you can see, yeah, right there.

Same exact thing, almost the exact same placement.

The reason I think most cars, and then there are others too, the Civic Si, the hatchback

Civic Si was like that.

The reason I think most cars don't do it is because it actually takes some real design

and engineering work to get a shifter placed where controls should be.

Like in this car, stuff had to happen to make this work.

They had to move stuff out of the way and all this crap.

In the Multipla, which is sort of like that, the shifter is higher, it's the same kind

of thing.

Like there's a lot of controls that ended up having to get pushed in a weird way up.

And so it's actually kind of a complicated thing.

But I think if you were to ask like, you know, car enthusiasts about their dream shifter

placement, it would be there, but it comes with some real sacrifices.

The Carrera GT's radio is mostly unreachable from the driver's seat as a result of that.

It's pushed so far into the dashboard.

The Fiat does it perfectly.

The 500 Abarth?

Yeah.

The shifter's there down in the way of it.

Show us.

I'll show you.

The shifter's pretty low.

It just happens to be in the middle thing.

It's not in the center.

That's not the same.

Do you think it is?

It's getting there.

It's quite high.

It's not similar at all.

It's incredibly similar.

It's just, no, the Carrera GT's is like literally here.

Oh, look at that poor RAV4 in the background.

Oh, our car.

Wow.

Solid hit.

I accuse our photographer.

I was like, just give me whatever you got in cash and we'll call it a day.

The photographer took it over by the RAV4 to make the Abarth look better.

I really accuse him.

I was trying to compare it to that RAV4, which looks tough.

Okay.

Question from FBMAT51.

Question for Nick.

Oh, wow.

Now that some time has passed, does Nick regret selling the Mercia Logo?

Sounds like a question you submitted.

I do.

Okay.

Next question.

No, there's much more nuance to it.

That car was very special.

I really had a lot of fun with it.

I know the new owners had a lot of fun with it too.

Mercies continue to rise.

So financially, I look at it and say like would be a good place to own and see the values

go up.

I think the manual experience, I do miss having an automatic and like the V12 in the

exhaust gave a sense of occasion, the SLR does not have.

That being said, the SLR for my season of life is so usable, like it is almost a daily

super car.

Like I could drive it to Arizona and back without having a headache or not having AC

or a functioning roof.

So like I think what I got is a good for me for my use case right now, but the Mercia

was so special.

And I do see friends getting Diabolo's or Kuntosh's and they look at it with a sort

of a lustful gaze, you know, and they're like,

Mercy.

Yeah.

Compared to, you know, like a Kuntosh.

I think that a lot of people are saying they kind of regret the Kuntosh, you know.

I definitely don't regret the Kuntosh, but I do wish I could add another Lambo without

being perceived as a Lambo guy.

What would you get?

Probably a gated pre-LP Mercy.

Oh, oh, yeah.

And Peter?

I think your color was an embarrassment to the car.

No.

I love that color.

And I think a lot of people did the craziest design car of all time and put the most subtle

no, that's that's that's why it worked for us that don't need.

Oh, look at me.

I'm a famous.

You're too far.

You're right.

I'll look at me.

You turn on that car.

The exhaust people upstairs would complain is there a bomb going off and if you're the

kind of guy that buys a Chrome Porsche Carrera GT jacket, then yes, maybe that color is

not for you.

For us subtle men of refined taste, the Grigio Antares is a lovely color for the car.

I do love that car.

I think one nuance that the audience, a lot of the audience kind of still doesn't get,

even though we've talked about it a little bit, is that like you're not a collector.

Like your goal wasn't to just accumulate stuff.

You want to accumulate experience.

If I had both space and money, I would have kept it easy.

We all would, right?

Like every one of us would keep every car.

But like at the end of the day, there becomes a constraint, whether it's me with four car

garage or Leno with a hundred, at some point, there is a constraint and you can't keep them

all, but you do want to have varied experience.

The other day, I heard one just move and I was like, I miss that sound.

There's just a lot of things that were really special about the car.

You can be back in Lambo.

I agree by the way that the market has moved on them, but not crazy.

Not crazy, but it's moving in the right direction.

If you're owning one every month that goes by, you're thinking, all right, I'm a little

bit better in terms of the investment in this car.

Speaking of next question is from Alex D. Question for Nick.

How do you have enough time in the day for a full-time job, YouTube, low-balling people

on Facebook Marketplace, working on broken cars and all the cars and bids filming?

That's a good question.

I saw this in advance.

If we need to cut this, we can.

I have a very supportive wife, first of all.

Like she picks up so much slack.

I think she puts up with a lot from me.

Occasionally, I way over-commit myself.

I think I burned the candle at both ends for a while.

I'm trying to pair that back a little bit.

As I just, like my YouTube channel, I'm no longer going to be like, oh, I need to post

weekly or I'm going to lose all my credit.

I don't care.

You all do all the hard work here.

I just show up and you turn the camera on and then we say things that may or may not

get cut.

But it is a lot, for sure.

Nick is, he's got a deal.

He's got a deal happening right now.

How ironic, huh?

Okay.

Last question.

This is an America question, so you'll like it.

This is from Sir Yamalot.

Oh, yeah.

I wrote down my own sleaze.

No, this is different than the one you wrote.

Last question.

This one's from Sir Yamalot.

We've gone way too far.

Filippo gets a 9-11 instead of a Corvette.

Filippo said he won a Corvette, got a 9-11.

Kennan gets a Mercedes instead of a Viper.

Well, that was a mistake.

My questions are, do you feel like there's a negative connotation of owning an American

car after a certain age?

And two, would you consider another special trip with a gang where everyone has an American

car?

For the record, we did that.

I had an American muscle car.

I won.

I want to tell you something.

And I'm dead serious about this.

Every time I drive my Ford GT, I am proud of the fact that it was designed in America,

by an American, and built in America, and is an American car for an American brand.

And I mean that with all seriousness.

I think that is the greatest American car ever built.

And so, whether Filippo has some embarrassment about driving an American vehicle, or whether

Nick drives a Ram SRT-10 and then decides in the end to buy an E-55 station wagon, there

are some of us who still wave the red, white, and blue.

I'm down to do an American adventure.

I have a focus.

I had a focus.

Yeah.

How come you guys don't support our nation?

You guys all, between you have like eight, nine cars.

I have become a German car guy.

Well, my cars are German.

Except for the C.A.

You've got three German cars.

Built in Mexico.

Built in Mexico, but going to be sold and not an American brand.

I have a Ford F-250.

Wait, what am I saying?

I'm good.

You don't have a Ford F-250.

Honey, until that car moves under its own power, how about we, or moves it all, honestly?

Take an adventure trip to Norma, Illinois.

Nick, why don't you have an American car.

You often come in the pod and say crazy stuff.

He does.

No way.

The Ford focuses on your wife.

Yeah, that's true.

I already disavowed it.

You disavowed it earlier.

You can either take credit for it or ...

I don't really care about this one.

You don't care.

You don't want an American car.

You don't believe in America.

I'm a citizen of the globe.

Oh my God.

Here we go.

Let's talk about the fact that in this video, you drove almost exclusively in one of these

videos in a C5 Corvette.

That's why I love that Corvette too.

I would love to do more adventure series.

I hope you all have both a budget and resources to do more of them.

I don't think we have the desire.

I think that's our primary issue is that ...

Let's go.

I've got a desire.

That's great.

You and I, let's go.

You guys have fun.

Meanwhile, I'm going to drive my actual American car that actually belongs to me.

The Sequoia.

And by the way, built in Texas, hard core.

It shows.

San Antonio, though.

San Antonio, best city in Texas.

Agreed.

Okay.

All right.

It's been an absolute pleasure.

Nick, do you have any parting thoughts for us here on the pod?

Bit on flipos.

Yeah.

Bit on my car.

I think he deserves it.

Thank you.

Best pod we ever did.

Go watch James and Thomas on the grand tour there with the other fellow.

Goodbye, everyone.

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