Rolling to the Future 416

Welcome everybody to No Driving Gloves, it's just John Solo.

We're going to cover some of that in part three of tonight's episode, a couple of ideas

and changes, listener input.

But thank you for joining us, been a rough couple of weeks, but I keep saying but, but,

guess I'm a butt man tonight, it's a little crazy.

Where do I want to begin?

Car news lately, this seemed off, $7,500 tax credit on EVs has gone away, and even the forward

and general motors manipulation of the market where they basically had their finance arm

by these thousands of EVs, so that their finance arm would get the credits and then

pass them back on to the consumers. I just recently read the forward pulled out of it,

general motors got caught by a senator doing that. And while I understand the intention

is right, some people have said, and which I've preached, and we've preached on no driving

gloves, EVs need to stand on their own. They need to, people need to want to buy them,

people need to use them. And if the market doesn't buy them, they will go away.

I mean, ICE cars, internal combustion engine cars,

do pollute, but they don't pollute nearly as bad as they used to.

Some are actually very, very clean. Dary and I had many episodes of no driving gloves where we

discussed that these EV tax credits are hindering technology and development of any other forms

of propulsion, whether it be turbines, whether it be hydrogen cars, whatever, when the government's

paying manufacturers to build these things and government's

mandating laws to require people to basically buy these things, and then the government's paying

the consumer to buy these things. I really don't want my tax dollars going to somebody else so

that they can buy a new EV or a used EV with a tax credit. But then again, as we all know,

I've been looking for a replacement to my Ford Fiesta, and it was really tempting. I really

want a Cadillac ELR. I've wanted a Cadillac ELR for years. You can go back other episodes,

and I've talked about Cadillac ELRs, which is the, when new, the $80,000 Chevrolet Volt.

And now it's really about the last time to buy one. CarMax will still warranty them up to 150,000

miles. They can do the 14s and 16s. They never did make a 15 ELR. The pricing is reasonable,

and on the used market, you could get up to $4,000 tax credit, which is very advantageous for me this

year. I even then, as September drew to a close and the right ELR wasn't popping up,

I started to look at just getting a Volt. I came really, really close to buying a Volt. I think it

was in 2014, and just a couple of things kept me away from it. But for what I need the car for,

a Volt would have been a very decent choice. And again, I could use the $4,000 tax credit. It would

really, really help me with this year's taxes. I'm probably going to end up only a fortune.

But then again, here I am, you're going to pay me to buy this

Volt, being a plug-in hybrid, or anything like that. A full electric won't work for my job.

If I was local all the time, then maybe, but then again, so would a classic Porsche.

So, I guess that what I'm basically saying, I'm glad to see these EV credits go away. Maybe we'll

get some new technology and some new developments. And a Porsche in the last week, week and a half,

since the last episode we did, has basically announced that there's going to be gasoline versions of

the Boxter and Caymans, where six months ago, absolutely not. Heck, even two months ago,

I think Porsche was saying absolutely not. And those cars will be available EV only.

Now, the rumor is, the gasoline motors will be in the GT cars. The Spyder RS, the Cayman GT4,

things like that, the very, very high-end cars. But they've kind of stepped back. I was watching,

might have been Doug DeMiro today, and he was talking about the new Maibach SL680 autograph.

A trucius-looking car. It's basically done like a Louis Vuitton bag with all the Maibach logos

everywhere on this car. Quarter million dollars. But twin-turbo V8. Now, I thought I remember a

year ago, Mercedes said, no more V8s. Well, careful what you wish for. Maybe it'll happen,

maybe it won't. I don't know. But we've got V8 Mercedes, and we've got powerful BMWs, and

everybody's rethinking this EV thing, especially when we're not paying you to buy the cars.

I'm going to slide on into, in the discussion, because it's always a big point here.

Don is now at number 54, being 53, because the plates on the Maverick are 53 at 53,

because it was my 53rd car. John now has his 54th car. He did find a replacement

for his Ford Fiesta. Really became an interesting scenario on how this came about,

because the car guy actually took advice from his TV producer brother.

It just in a text chain, because I came within the skin of your teeth of buying a BMW 228M,

which kind of exists, kind of does it. The car had every single M option on it except the

six-cylinder, still stayed with the four-cylinder M suspension, et cetera. Great car. I love driving it.

Driving it out to the lake house, twisty back country roads, sunlight, it was wonderful.

Driving it home from the lake house, pitch black, dark, can't see the road. Headlights were wonderful

in the car. Probably some of the best headlights I've had in a car.

But it felt no more exciting than driving a Camry or my Fiesta. There was just no excitement

driving it at night on those roads at slow speeds or slower speeds. I mean, in the sunlight,

paddle shifters, bing, bing, bing, bing, right up and down, thing was great. But

that's not what this car is being bought for. This car is being bought just like the Fiesta was,

trying to buy a reasonably priced car to, in theory, drive into the ground. I probably won't

continue this job two or three more years. Hopefully, maybe I'll exit this job six months.

And I won't need to put the miles on the car. So that was part of the reason justifying the BMW,

but still wasn't the right car. And then when we threw in, as I said in the Fiesta episode,

when I was talking about buying a car, the aftermarket warranty was very important to me.

And I paid to ship this car in for CarMax. And this is the fifth car I've had shipped in from CarMax.

Now, while the car was perfect and ran, which only two cars out of the five have ever been

perfect and ran properly and everything worked,

they quoted me the extended warranty wrong. I was looking at a 2015 228 and I was looking at

a 2016 228 or 2014 228. And the one I was thinking about buying this M car, M-ish car,

was the 14. And they gave me the warranty prices, which were very in line with the warranty prices

that I had been given in person at the dealership for the 15 car. And I said, hmm,

okay, and I got mentally put it all together. I'll sacrifice a little bit of extra money and

I'll buy this car. Well, when it came time to quote the warranty, getting ready to buy the car,

no, that wasn't the 125,000 mile four year 125,000 mile warranty quote. That was the four year

100,000 mile warranty quote. And for five grand, basically, I'm not paying that much. I'm sorry,

I can't justify that on a, this was a 52,000 mile car. So five grand for 48,000 miles of warranty.

If I would have bought the 15 car, which I just got an email today that they dropped the price

of $1,000 because they've had it for so long, it would have been a 40,000 mile car without the M

stuff. And what was funny about this M car, M suspension, M brakes, M steering wheel, M arrow

kit. It did have M engine tuning, which supposedly bumped it up another 20 horsepower and changed

the speed limiter. Now, I'm not going to go 135, I'm not going to go 155. So that really didn't

matter to me. The other, but it didn't have touch locks, you actually had to get your keys out every

time to unlock the thing. It didn't have, it just didn't have a lot of decent creature comforts.

It would have been, as I said to when I turned it down, perfect track car. If you were spending

$18,000 to buy a track car, this would have been great, except for the lack of the six

cylinder because then you would have probably wanted the six, but it was, it was a good car.

I think it's still for sale on CarMax's site if you wanted to look it up.

But in looking at that, I finally said, well, I'll go ahead and probably just buy the focus

that you had that I had shipped into this dealership also. So they went and got it because it was

still at the dealership. And then there are three weeks or so. And the guy came around with it

and he didn't get out of the car and he didn't get out of the car. And I'm chatting with another

salesperson there. And I said, well, it had a infotainment system issue the last time I drove it,

which he said it was my doing. I didn't know how it worked, even though it was identical

to the infotainment system in my 2017 Taurus SHO. Well, guess what? It didn't work again.

Like I said, car comes in, you think they would test it, make sure everything works.

Infotainment system didn't work. I knew it wasn't me, me not knowing how to turn it on because

the backup camera didn't work either. So I drove the car and yeah, just that mundane thing felt

like driving the BMW at night, dropped it off, came back and said, yeah, let's go ahead and fix

that dash and fix the infotainment system. And then I'll probably buy this car. And like I said,

got talking to my TV producer brother. And he basically asked me to buy the BMW. And he is a

Miata, also like in GTI guy, he's had multiple of each and just absolutely loves it. Now he's in

West Palm Beach. Yeah, I think it is West Palm Beach, just outside of Fort Lauderdale.

And so he just bought a new Miata, five, six speed, blah, blah, blah.

And I came close to buying one. I drove by one and it was white and red mirror caps. If it would

have had a red interior, I'd probably be driving a Miata too. Never mind all the aftermarket stuff

that I knew better than to buy the car because of. But he said, look at a BMW, look at Focus,

why not look at a Mazda 3? And then ironically, my Nemesis Podcaster buddy.

Oh, why am I forgetting his name? Smoking tire, Matt, Matt, Matt Farah. I had just done a review

on a Mazda 3 six speed and said, it's actually a fun little car. So I looked up on the CarMaxis site,

Mazda 3, Mazda CX3, which is the sport utility and went over and looked at them. Ironically,

car salesman, you need to work Fridays. I worked with this salesman for two and a half months.

And the Focus got fixed. He texted me on a Thursday afternoon, told me it was good.

I said, I can be there at 11 o'clock tomorrow morning or I can't be there till Sunday.

Well, I forgot he didn't work Fridays. I knew that in the back of my head. And when I walked

into the dealership, he had just texted me that how about Sunday at 11am or whatever. And I said,

yes, but I was already at the dealership. So I went in, talked to a guy and said, I want to look at

these two cars. I walked out, looked at the Mazda 3 sedan and this is too big. I don't want a car

this big. Well, I looked at the CX3, liked it, actually put a reservation on it to go drive it on

Sunday when my salesman would be back. But guess what? My salesman wasn't there. I was done by 1130.

I needed to be home by one. So I'm going to drive over and look at this Transit Connect at

a different dealership. And I'm going to wander. Well, that little dealership is right next to

the Mazda dealership. And I said, hmm, I'm going to drive through and see what they've got for CX3s

and Mazda 3s. They don't really have a Mazda 3 that floated my boat too many miles or too many

dollars. They got a CX3 that I liked. And I said, hmm, I wonder how much this costs. So I pulled

up their website. And the first car to pop up was a 2014 Mazda 6 with 50,000 miles on it

for dirt cheap. And I go, hmm. And then the next car was the CX3 at double the price.

Well, I said, I'm going to have to go talk to somebody. So I went talk to the salesman,

Ladida, Carfax. Cars had three side swipes on the left front corner,

owned by an elderly couple, I was told, very elderly couple. They did it. She didn't want to

get rid of the car. He thought they should have something newer. This went on with my

grandparents on my mother's side that my grandfather was certain he was going to pass

away before my grandmother and wanted to make sure she had a really good car after he passed.

And this was in the mid 90s. So he ended up getting her a Chrysler Fifth Avenue.

Talk about however you want. Well, life being what it is, my grandmother ended up passing

seven years before my grandfather. So I had heard this before. The gentleman,

the husband wanted to make sure the wife had a very good car. And we probably can even do that

because my stepfather passed away earlier this year, about three weeks after he had bought

a new car, saying it's probably the last car he's ever going to buy. And he might have been

the same thought process there too. I'm sure my mom was taken care of. Well,

the car had already been through new tires, new brakes, new serpentine belt, new wires, new plugs,

oil change, radiator flush, brake fluid flush, all that was done. Just basically waiting detail.

I drove the thing and said, yeah, I'm paying cash for this one. It's not a problem. The BMW

was going to finance a little bit. I could have paid cash, but I just have a tough time writing

that big of a check. I still had a tough time writing this big of a check for the Mazda 6.

But long story long, there's a 2014 Mazda 6 in the driveway, which I absolutely

enjoy driving because my brother said it never even crossed my mind to look at a Mazda.

And it gave me a lot of the comfort, the focus did, but it gives me a little bit of that rough

visceral edge. And it's probably more that the Mazda is a cheaper car. And they try to pretend

they're sporty. Now, don't get me wrong. The 6 has over-assisted power steering.

That drives me nuts. It doesn't have touch-entry. I've got to pull my keys out to unlock the door,

but I don't need any keys to start the car like I do with my Maverick.

But like I said, it's just over-assisted power steering. It rides really well. It's exactly

what I needed for a work car. 50,000 miles. These things go 200, 220,000 miles if they're taken

care of. When I bought my Fiesta, I knew 170, 180 was life expectancy, and that's right where that

car got to and died. And I could have put just about $2,000 less in the Fiesta and got everything

fixed on it that was broken right now, or I could have got the Mazda 6. So I got the Mazda 6.

It was just over $10,000 with a five-year, 60,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty on it. So

it's warrantied to 110,000 miles. On the back of my head, I'm thinking maybe I'll go ahead and cancel

that warranty. I've put 1,000 miles on the car now, and been very happy with it with very few

issues, actually no issues. And I got my WeatherTech trunk liner in there, and I bought seat covers

for this car because the Fiesta was black with a tan interior. This is white with a tan interior,

and I just trashed that tan interior in the Fiesta. And maybe I'll take a little bit more

care of this, so I bought some seat covers, which are kind of cool, black with a little

tan leather stripe in them, so it matches the tan on the door panels or beige, whatever you want to

call it. So it integrates the seat covers in there, and got my fridge in the back and my desk on the

passenger seat, and I haven't decided whether or not cigars will be enjoyed in this car or not.

But for those that really cared, that was John's car buying experience and car buying

this time around. Who knows what'll be next? What I have learned, though,

I think I really made a mistake with my Maverick. I finally fessed up to

Brandy. Great truck, love the hybrid, love the gas mileage, love everything about it,

except hauling stuff, which is what I bought it for.

And it's not the bed size, it's not the tiny cover, it's not.

The Transit Connect, I almost bought, and literally I was taking the keys back to the

Ford dealership to say no to this Transit Connect, or no to the Maverick, and I was

driving to CarMax to buy a Transit Connect Titanium Edition car I had brought in for CarMax,

and I loved it, was going back to buy it. And they altered a few numbers on the Maverick,

and I said, I'm gonna buy the Maverick. Got the Maverick. I should have had a Transit Connect.

I love the van, who we've talked many times on the podcast, how practical minivans are,

loading things, unloading things, the size, having stuff in the back of it, and

there's been a couple instances that, yeah, I really would have liked to have had

the Transit Connect, I think it would really work well. And it kind of tipped its hat today,

because of Hustle and Heritage, which brings you no driving gloves now,

which is my men's oriented gift shop, you can check it out at hustleandheritage.com.

Or we have two locations now in Birmingham, one at the Painted Tree in the Target Shopping Center on

280, and one at the shops at Grand Prairie, excuse me, shops at Grand River, Grand Prairies from

the Oreo, where I'm from, but shops at Grand River at Grand River Pickers.

And Grand River Pickers is men's gifts with some antiques.

Painted Tree is all high-end men's gifts. There's the plug, there's the commercial.

But I bought the final display piece for Grand River, and it's heavy, it's like 350 pounds,

it's three and a half feet tall, it's three and a half feet in diameter, it's this big round

commercial display, I got a great deal on it. Loading it in and out of the Transit Connect

would have been so much easier with a two-foot lift as opposed to a four-foot lift, basically,

to get it into the back of the truck, getting it out. I don't have a clue how the heck I'm going

to get it out without paying somebody 20 bucks over at Grand River to help me unload this thing,

because it's just so heavy and it's a long drop where I could have potentially even rolled it

out of the Transit Connect, and it's in the driveway in the truck, but I don't have a topper

or shell, and I think actually it would be too tall if I had a shell. Tonu cover doesn't cover it,

so it's outside exposed to the elements tonight, which will get some dew and some humidity, it

won't destroy the table, but would don't like that idea. Another win for the minivan,

and it's really making me think that maybe I'll pick up a Transit Connect when it's time to get rid

of the Maverick here in about a year and a half. Maverick, great truck, does everything,

does trucky stuff, looks trucky. Many vans where it's at, many vans practical, many get

random practicality all all day long. So we're there, that's kind of the two little car topics

I wanted to touch base with everybody tonight. I appreciate everybody listening. No driving

gloves was created in July of 2017. We're into the low 400s on episodes, we really don't count

episodes anymore, and we really appreciate everybody listening. Now over the eight and a quarter

years, no driving gloves existed, we've had various release dates, we've had various recording dates,

we've had various ways of live streaming and not live streaming, and doing audio only, and we

launched audio only. And that podcast, I'll be honest, was fun. That was Derek and Will,

you know, Derek with the National Corvette Museum at the time, and Will Posey of Big Oat Garage.

And as the podcast grew, and I don't know, it was probably in the COVID area, Will stuck it out for

three, three and a half years, and then just got too busy. And we got a little bit inconsistent

in the recordings, and I pushed him a little, and he pushed me a little, and he stepped away from

the podcast. I mean, Will and I are still friends, we still talk. Matter of fact, I tried to give him

a car, and he just needs to come pick it up. So Will, if you're listening, why don't you give me

a text, and let's get this car taken care of. But it's, like I said, his life grew. I mean,

he ended up with a TV show that just ate eight time. He's winning awards everywhere. He's got

Big Oat Garage awards. They're giving in a lot of the shows I see him attend.

He's got a massive car show he does. A couple months ago, he started construction of another

building. Those that listened to the podcast know he built a building while he was on the podcast,

late 19 to 2020. He built in another building. I mean, he's got it going on, and he stays busy.

He launched Grip Autocross, which I don't know, a autocrosser in really the Alabama, Georgia,

Tennessee, Mississippi area, doesn't respect what he put together. They started with a little

rough parking lot, which has now become a big parking lot and has been completely repaved.

And he's got himself a decent little racetrack and

got a pretty good social media following out a good old Grip Autocross. Probably need to get

Will on here or one of the guys from Grip to really talk about that. That was a good investment.

We had Sean Yoder fill in for a while. Sean and I are still friends. We just can't connect. He's

doing some writing for Dodge still, and he's doing some journalism for NASA now. So he's

staying pretty busy. This is what's happened to the driving gloves hosts. We had Ryan for a while,

and Ryan and I just kind of drifted a little bit apart. Nothing against Ryan.

It just didn't click like Will and I did, and Will, I and Derek did. And we really like that

person podcast thing, but it just wasn't clicking. Ryan's a great guy, 3000 GT fan,

had multiple 3000 GTs, and he just kind of drifted away. And then it was Derek and I for the longest

time. Derek did a couple of solo episodes. I did a couple of solo episodes. I enjoy doing these

solo episodes, but he brought up, we really need a third. And we were looking for a third and talking

to a few people, and Dave stepped up. And Dave used to write for Hemings Motor News and was

the time he started, we all knew, but we couldn't say it that Hemings was coming to an end. And

Dave wanted to stay in the car journalism world a little bit, returning to law, but he still wanted

to have his foot in the water. And that podcast was going really well. And to be honest, a couple

of the times I stepped away and just let those two guys do it, the numbers were better than when I was

on. And we started to have some conversations about breaking into two shows, breaking, you know,

me stepping back to just a producer role. I don't have to be on the microphone. I did the producer

role with smoking underground and the cigars sat off to the side would interject a comment or two

every now and then. But Dave and Derek just clicked. And to be honest, we finally agreed to

Dave and Derek, you do your show. They had brought on a guest. And unfortunately, I'm

forgetting his name. And that was one of our best shows in many years. Most views, most listens,

just a fabulous show. So we were going to let them roll and go. And I was going to go on my own

way and just conduct interviews. And I wouldn't lie, I would maybe produce, but I would produce their

show, edit their show, all of that, but they would be the faces. And I was going to step back and do

a second show that would be pretty much just me interviewing people in the car world and both

Dave and Derek would be able to come on if I was interviewing somebody they were very interested

in. Well, things were agreed upon. And within a couple of weeks, Derek had a very major life change.

Nothing bad, nobody passed away. But

he decided he needed to step away from public. He closed his social medias.

He stepped away from the podcast and just decided to go away.

Exit a public social media existence, which to be honest, if we all would do that,

the world would be a better place. And Dave and I have talked a little bit, but

don't know if Dave's going to ever reappear on No Driving Gloves. He's more than welcome to,

but we really haven't. We touched base a couple of times after Derek told us what he would like to

do. Dave and I were very supportive of what Derek wants to do. Keep in mind why we'd love

for this podcast to generate a dollar or two and you can always, oops, that corner, where's my arm?

There. You can always click that QR code, buy us a coffee and send us a couple of bucks.

But by no means is this a money making endeavor. We might clear 20, 25 bucks a month

and that barely covers the hosting, doesn't cover anything else. And I'm not begging you to give

me money yet. But the Dave and Derek era of No Driving Gloves has passed. And unfortunately,

that means those two original co-hosts that I had, and I had selected them in my head,

because I started planning No Driving Gloves in about 2015. And I went through my social media feed

and my friends list and who would I really think would be good here? And I had met Derek at the

40th anniversary of the Mustang, or 45th anniversary of the Mustang, one of those. And

we had encountered each other at the Henry Ford and various times over the years.

And Will and I had went to school together. So everything I knew would click and that. And I

put it out to a few other people and it just still focused on those two original picks.

And never really found somebody to replace Will and never really found somebody to replace Derek.

And I'm doing the same thing right now. I'm going through my friends list, my knowledge base.

Unfortunately, I'm not in cars every single day. I work for a computer company during the week.

I have my own retail business now. I have my own podcast production company. So I've got all

these things going on. And as my driveway reflects with a Maverick, a Mazda 6, a Camry,

the only fun cars, the Mini, I'm not even the car person I used to be. Man, it's been tempting to

buy a Caterham lately. Really, they even talked about it on another one of my podcasts and that

is like the ultimate toy. And there's a couple of really good Caterham Birkins out there right

now at a price that I would be willing to pay. Not probably going to happen, but they do exist.

So I'm still going through that. I'm sorry. I can't hit regular episodes here because I'm

so busy with everything else. This month, things are calming down.

We will not be doing a show next week live. Maybe I'll pre-record one, but probably not.

Randy and I are headed off to the mountains. We're going to our mountain house,

and we're going to enjoy a few days of isolation. We're going up on Thursday, coming back on Sunday

with no intention of doing anything. Just trying to check out from the world.

When I come back, there's a couple people I might invite to come on the show,

and we're going to try those people on the show and see if there's chemistry, if it jives. I'm

looking at somebody I've never really met before on a national level, and I'm looking at somebody

that I casually met a few times on a local level. I think there's advantages to both national level,

a little bit more exposure, completely different friend bases, local level. We can get together

and we can go to events. We can record live. Will Derry and I never did. Will Derry and I

never were in the same place at the same time. Will and I were. Derry can I were. Derry can we'll

were, but never all three of us at once. That's tough. Maybe I'll put all these people together

and we'll come back with three and see how it goes. Maybe I'll step back into a producer role

and let them go at it. If you have an inkling that you want to step up and you would like to be here

every, probably Thursday night still, because right now I travel Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays,

and either have to be Wednesday night or Thursday night, probably.

We send me a message, producer at NoDrivingGloves.com, NoDrivingGloves.com,

send me a message and we'll bring you on the show. We'll bring you on as guests. We'll

like your dislikes and maybe that's the way the show will go. Maybe I'm just going to invite

different people on and maybe there'll be a celebrity interview or maybe it'll just be a

buddy that has cars and we did that a few times. I mean, I love having Philip Sohn on the podcast.

Unfortunately, Philip does not do visual social media. His face is never seen, so he can't become

live-streaming podcast host. I've worked on a couple ideas. Maybe we'll have a heck of a talk

of it in here and we can figure out a little AI head for him. I don't know, but if you would like

to participate in NoDrivingGloves, like I said, shoot me a note, NoDrivingGloves.com,

and we'll schedule you. We might talk beforehand. We might just jump in. I'll tell you how to get

on the show and if it goes crazy, I just hit the end stream button and it's over. But so far,

it's never went too bad. I'll sometimes get a little risque. Maybe it's time to do NoDrivingGloves

after dark and we sort of have a promiscuous car podcast doing it a little bit later in the evening.

Maybe we renamed the show. I don't know, but I'm going to still try to be here with you guys at

least every other week until we figure out a co-host or a way to go with the show. I'm going to

give you some car news. With me, it's going to be more modern stuff. I don't know how to talk

classic stuff that much. Maybe we can talk 50, 60s era sports cars, European sports cars,

and more modern technology is my wheelhouse. Unfortunately, while NoDrivingGloves is about

the collector car hobby, I really miss that element that Derek brought with the early,

obscure stuff. And I really miss what Dave brought with that mid-century stuff.

I miss what Will brought with the hot rod stuff. But as time goes on, we get busy, things change.

Podcasting is a big passion of mine. Podcasting is included even on my license plates on two

of my three cars. It's something I desire to do. It's something I try to do and not waste your

time. I know this was a very narcissistic episode where I talked about my cars, talked about podcasting,

talked about me not wanting my tax dollars to go to you with electric vehicles.

And I was supposed to talk to you about Legos because I was walking through,

I'm walking through stores doing audits and that. And I'm looking out of these Legos.

And it hit me the other day. I'm walking through an aisle at a Walmart. Both sides of the aisle,

front from where it started to the where it ended. Everything is a Lego set,

specifically designed Legos in certain shapes to create certain objects.

Nowhere on that aisle was a box of Legos to allow creative thinking.

You know, remember when we had Legos as kids? For those of us that are my age,

you know, I'm 50s, 40s, you know, back in the 80s and 90s, we had Legos. You bought Lego sets and

yeah, those sets were designed to make five or six different things, but all the blocks were the same.

Two by fours, two by threes, two by twos, two by ones, you know, one by ones and certain little

windshields and round things and a couple of smooth things and you could build lots and lots of things.

But now we've got these molded Lego pieces that look like car body panels or are so obscure and

chunky. It's really not the car or the flower or the Harry Potter house or the Smith Corona typewriter

or the Nintendo or the Atari 2600. There's no creativity. Part of the fun of Legos to me

was getting out there and enjoying the damn Lego, getting your creative mind to wrap around

something. For me, it led to wanting to be an entrepreneur to create a business. It led to my

3D printing with my 3D printers next to me, with my laser work, which lasers are in the garage,

with my wood turning, my woodworking, my pen turning, all of that. It's related, it's created

creativity. No driving gloves is different than other podcasts because I'm different. Derek's

different. Will was different. We're all creators. We all build things with our hands and our minds.

I'm a lot better doing it with my mind than I am with my hands some of the times. But

part of that core thing was Legos and erector sets and where you just took the pieces and you

created something. But you can't do that. I could go buy 10 Lego sets right now and I

probably can build 10 things, which are the pictures on the box. I can't take those 10 sets

and build one big massive things because half the parts aren't going to fit together.

But then maybe that's a challenge. I'm so disappointed and Legos are

just, like I said, production things. And when you're going down these aisles,

they're playing on my generation. Like I said, Polaroid One Step, a Smith Corona typewriter,

and Atari 2600. Things that we remember from our youth and ooh, they're Legos because we remember

Legos. How hard can it be to build an Atari 2600 out of parts that are specially molded to look

like an Atari 2600? Or you get the technique sets now that build Kona Sigs and Ferraris and

when I stopped drinking in the mid 90s, I celebrated every New Year's with a Lego set

or a Mega Block set. I kind of enjoyed the Mega Blocks a little bit more than Legos,

especially because they were cheaper. And my mother-in-law at the time would usually buy me a

Lego set and that's what I did on New Year's. About 10 o'clock at night, I'd get up, get it out,

and start assembling it. And the goal was to get it assembled before I went to bed. I didn't make

it the year I put together a 1800 piece Mega Block space shuttle about five in the morning I gave up

and finished it the next day. But that's what I did when I quit drinking, what I

did to entertain myself. But they're here. These Lego sets are designed

kind of for us adults to think we're doing Legos. How about giving us a box of black and brown

and a couple of red Legos and we've got to make our own 2600 and figure out how to snap them together

and put them together. Don't pre-design stuff. And I've got a gorgeous Ford GT Lego, but the bonnet

and the bonnet and the boot or the hood and the clam shells are pre-molded, the doors are pre-molded.

The Legos inside are real Legos that build this chassis, but they don't show anything on the outside.

But there's my rant on Legos too. I know no driving gloves have been a little bit different

with me doing solo episodes. Some of my episodes are pretty good, but I'm trying not to keep you

keep you bored with numbers. Here's something here on the Lego sets.

I just asked chat GPT 10 reasons Legos not to buy Legos. One is ridiculously expensive now.

Two is nostalgia isn't cheap therapy. The adult Lego sets are so expensive.

You know, it's therapy.

They joke about the stepping on Lego pieces and how it hurts.

They're dust magnets because we've never tried and there's part of the problem with keeping my

Lego sets clean. They collect the dust, collect the dust.

Creativity is sold separately. That's what I was saying is once upon a time,

you built whatever your imagination dreamed up. Now every brick is tied to a licensed set.

Star Wars, Marvel, Harry Potter. Creativity is replaced by instructions and that's that's what

I really say. You'll never finish that set, which is kind of believable with some of the

technique sets. I even looked at putting a Titanic brick like set in my booth that was 8,000 pieces.

And then that would have been in the Hustle and Heritage store, but it 8,000 pieces.

Also $600 or $700 and it wasn't Lego. Lego did a Titanic set that was a couple thousand pieces

too and it was ridiculously expensive. Instructions are a commitment.

Storage, resale value is a myth, which is true. Very few Lego sets now recently produced Star

Wars money. Amanda, if any of you remember her, her nephew actually had the big Millennium Falcon

from the early 2000s or so, the huge still in the box. Kind of like having the aircraft carrier from

G.I. Joe from the early 80s. So I mean, there's my rant on Legos. So I've tied up a little bit

of your time. Hopefully it wasn't a complete waste. Yeah, just me babbling on, but maybe I

taught you a couple of car buying things. Maybe I taught your car dealers a lesson going back.

Don't take Friday off because if that salesman hadn't taken that Friday off and he would have

been there, I would probably be driving a Mazda CX-3 or a Ford Focus that he would have sold me.

I would have never swung by Med Center Mazda in Paloma, Alabama and bought me a Mazda 6

because the price was, it was so cheap. I couldn't pass it up. Even if certain things

were wrong with it, it was five or $6,000 cheaper than anything I could find that was comparable.

So don't take your little bits of wisdom. So was it faster pussycat used to do the song babbling

on? That's kind of what the night was. I'm sorry. I hope I didn't waste your time. I hope you did

some support. If you have ideas going forward, no driving gloves wants to exist. I want this podcast

to go on. We have lots of listeners and lots of fans and I don't want to abandon you

without giving it a full-hearted try. It's basically going to be a rebrand relaunch,

but we're going to get back to the collector cars. We're going to get back to the fun cars.

We're going to get back to the cars. Mixalot had a good song about cars. Final song you

ever released back in 2012. Cars, C-A-R-Z. I wish I could play you some, but this is podcasting

and they get mad at you and now we're on YouTube. They would demonetize me. Not that I'm monetized

anyway, but as you all know, this is John. So it's time to get off your ass, go burn some gas,

because the John is out.

Rolling to the Future 416

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