Savage Geese, The Truck-Jeep Love Child, What Your Mechanic Buys | Episode 1,021

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Hello again. We were back. Happy Tuesday, everybody. It is Tuesday yet again.

It's only time we do these now. It's Tuesday. All right. So yeah, happy Tuesday.

It has come up quick. And this is a huge episode. You've probably seen from the thumbnail.

And we hope you're following along our friend Savage Geese Jack and Mark are with us.

It's coming up in a little bit excited to have it along. It's going to be really cool.

We're talking about their new monster piece, the three monster cars.

That's going to be really fun to just kind of hear some behind the scenes there.

I mean, maybe you should watch it. Maybe you should stop this. Go watch their piece and then come back and watch.

Maybe, but on the other hand, I'm excited to get the inside sort of scoop.

Yeah. I think a lot of people have seen that piece already. That's been a really big piece.

Also, thanks to all of you that have watched our light weights piece. It's the exact opposite of their piece.

They did the big heavy weights. That's true. We did the lightweight.

So that is the Alpha 4C, the Lotus Elise and the Alpine A110.

All of them actual modern mid engine cars under 300 horsepower under 3000 pounds.

Fantastic to drive and very illuminating.

We haven't seen that piece. We were surprised by some of the things we discovered.

We'd love you to watch that as well. But we have news.

We have that big interview, which is going to be a monster.

We have a couple of car debates. So it's a lot to cover already news up front.

Talking about what we all enthusiasts in North America.

Well, worldwide want with the BRZ and the GR86.

And that is what Subaru has now done and to announce the type RA, which stands for record attempt.

That's right. The car encouraging you to go out and get your personal best, your PB, your personal record.

But it also suggests we have an accomplished our goal, doesn't it?

Doesn't record attempt mean, I don't know if we'll get there.

Like record holder, like, maybe it's for you.

King of the personal record attempt. We'll see.

Giving you the problem. I'm overworking it. I'm sorry.

Do this. So it actually starts with the TS.

The type RA adopts that rear diff case with cooling fins from the cup car basic.

It benefits as well from the shift assist function developed in the super Takayu series

with revs sink for downshifting and flat shift for upshifting without lifting.

Really interesting and cool looking. So here is the prior version was the TS,

the primary was TS and this is that new.

The thing that we all want Subaru Toyota to do that they're only introducing for the Japan only market.

I just thought I'd put it out there because it exists.

Like I said, everything that we want out of this car would make it better.

No word on power increase. It could take more power.

But here's the factory doing and they realize they've got a great car.

So I'm just hoping for a third generation of this.

I'm hoping for that's a great one. I hope for a third generation as well.

I'm also really pleased with the fact that these cars are around and doing some well.

And I'm hoping that we start seeing more and more and more of these for the next decade

at hooked on driving. I hope these continue to be right there alongside the Miata's

as just the cars that drivers can get into and can drive at all levels.

We have in every level of hooked on driving from novices through the folks that are running

in the D group at just open passing. We're seeing Miata's.

We're seeing 86 as I hope that continues because these are such great cars.

And a third generation will be awesome.

But I'm very curious what it'll be. We also heard the other bit of news.

I don't think I have a photo for this, but just dawned on me.

There's news out there as well that Toyota is killing the three cylinder engine

in the GR Corolla and going to go to a two liter four with close to 400 horsepower in that car.

Appreciate the three cylinder. It sounds different. It's a different choice.

But more powers.

But this is Toyota thinking about engine changes in their cars.

What's coming here only only time will tell other bits of news.

Nissan has news. Once the last time I got to say Nissan has news.

Nissan has enthusiast news.

In the enthusiast news.

I know that this is not the actual photo.

I'm showing the red sport 400 because it's the closest we've got right now.

But Nissan is claiming that the skyline is going to come back.

Now the skyline is the historic lineup of what became the current GTR.

You say skyline to any enthusiast and they practically bow down.

Yes. The car that walks on concept is a sense.

For another better way to put it, we're talking about a CT4 blackwing competitor.

We're talking about a four door six cylinder rear wheel drive manual transmission.

They're claiming they're going to do all of the above for 2027.

This has come out publicly from Nissan. Will they do it?

The closest we've got are these photos of the red sport 400 right now which was not a manual.

But had a lot of the pieces.

Again, this is the engine.

Nissan has the history and they have the parts.

Do they have the development dollars and for lack of a way to put it just to sheer gumption?

That's right. I said gumption for them to actually do this.

I hope so because it's very cool.

Do you have the gumption?

Yeah, there's the new shirt from Nissan.

Do we have the gumption?

There it is ladies and gentlemen.

It's like the triple dog dare.

Can you do this?

Last piece of news from me is from Stellantis and the Vanta Jeep brand.

They are recalling 113,000 Wrangler 4xE's.

Primarily anything with that turbo 4, that 4-cylinder engine in the 4xE.

Because the recall covers whether the car is being parked or driven.

There's not another category.

So if you have one of these cars that you're possession, please do not do it either.

If it's parked or driven, you shouldn't use this car.

There's not another category for which we use cars.

They're either parked or driven.

But now because of bad sand casting and debris potentially being left in the engines

and Stellantis is now aware of at least 36 fires.

That's 36 too many by the way.

Other problems with the car.

113,000 are now being recalled.

So not only they're having the hybrid electrical issues.

They're having the engine sand casting engine issues.

It sounds bad.

That is a fantastic understatement.

36 fires and casting issues does sound bad.

I'll give that to you.

This sounds bad.

But Jeep is going to be Jeep.

And I think they will always sell.

They will always be attractive.

They actually just came out with the Moab edition.

And I think they will always be awesome off-road.

And they will always be sought after by off-road enthusiasts.

Yeah.

And since they've been doing that 392 V8 with 470 horsepower, 470 pound-feet of torque,

the six-pack challenger is out.

And everybody's saying the challenger is now fixed sort of.

But they've got a great engine there.

And they could now drop into the Jeep now.

Sure.

And put the four-by-e behind them, maybe the 392, maybe it still exists

because V8's sound really great.

And they're on their way back.

It's the land is yes, huh?

But you could now have a Jeep Wrangler with even more power because

550 horsepower out of the twin turbo.

True.

6-cylinder.

531 pound-feet of torque.

You could actually have a 6-cylinder that's probably a little bit lighter in the Jeep now.

Interesting point.

It's only a three-liter, but it sort of harkens back to that cool four-liter,

you know, the Bulletproof four-liter that was in the Jeep.

Straight six.

They've got the V6 now.

So maybe put the four-by-e behind them and put that 6-cylinder in the new Jeep.

And it makes even more power in torque.

And that's the way forward.

Because again, people all these bivies, they were experimenting.

The experiment didn't go so well.

So now they've got a good engine to fix things.

But here's a question that that raises though in my mind.

Is, okay, they're going to do this recall.

What are they actually going to do?

What is that going to do to resale values of these?

Because resale value is the four-by-e's are already terrible.

But hang on.

But post recall.

Are they going to be the kind of thing where they're going to run for a hundred thousand miles?

You don't have to think about it.

Is this going to become a huge bargain?

May as well get a four-by-e because for a time, the four-by-e was the most popular way to get a Rubicon

because there were so many discounts on the fact that it had an electric component.

You could get a Rubicon for like eight to ten grand less than you could in the other Rubicon

if you got the four-by-e.

So what is this due to resale?

What is this due to longevity?

We don't know yet.

But I'm curious.

But anytime a car company says don't use our product, whether it's parked or driven.

Yes.

It doesn't matter what you bought the car for.

True.

No, true.

Don't use it.

Yes.

It's the point it could explode or it'll catch on fire or the engine will grenade itself.

It's all bad.

I'm very curious to see what the fix is and what the longevity is because there is a possibility here that that might be a deal somewhere down the line.

Because it happened to bolts and lots of other things will be very curious what they do.

I mean, look, I'll go all the way to Porsche.

Porsche when they did the 991 GT3 and they replaced all of the engines.

That's true.

Those are a bad engine.

That is the bargain way to get a GT3 911 and there's still great cars post engine change.

So what happens here?

I just don't know.

Still, it takes all these four-by-e's, drops the six-cylinder in.

As a complimentary straight-six.

Woohoo!

Takes the four-by-e badging.

I'll leave it on and just leave it on.

Leave your blue hooks and call it a day.

The blue toe hook now means straight-six.

That's not bad, I like it.

All right, we've got to get the geese boys on video here.

We're going to talk to them.

I want to hear all about everything.

If you've got a debate, write to us every day.

Drive or TV at gmail.com.

And now we're going to talk to the geese.

So good, so good, so good.

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Hi guys, thanks for being with us.

It's great to have you here.

It's been too long.

Nice to see you guys.

Been too long.

Hello.

So nice to see you.

Do we call you Savage Geese plural?

How does this work?

Yeah, the geese is normally what people have called us from OEMs.

Just the geese at this point?

Yeah, I just was curious how you typically get referred to.

Because I mean, I hear people refer to you both as Savage Geese.

I'm like, isn't that kind of more Mark?

So then Jack's got that anyway.

But it's all good.

It's great to see you guys.

You guys have been killing it of late and everyone has seen.

I hope, I hope, everyone at this point has seen the big monster piece

that you did that everybody wants to do, which is of course the Mustang GTD,

the ZR1, and the GT3 RS with manufacturer support.

I mean, that's a huge throwdown.

I have so many questions for you guys.

Lots of questions.

A lot of them involved Nissan Moranos to start with.

That's the block of my questions.

Nothing says thanks for being here to an engineer like a convertible Nissan Morano.

I mean, that really just says thanks for coming, doesn't it?

What was the disappointment on everybody's face when you rolled that out?

Who does it belong to?

Where did you get it from?

I need to know, everybody needs to know where did the Morano come from.

I'll have you start.

Walk us through the how you want.

You know what, Jack, I'm going to spend 12,000 of my own dollars on a Morano cross-cabula.

This is yours.

It had been you own this.

Yeah, it is.

I own it.

On purpose.

I personally own it.

It's not a business.

It's a personal expense.

Are you a real turn?

I should be.

I'd probably make more money.

Probably.

Rolling around in that, there's nothing, no property, I couldn't move.

The story really is just we were joking around about this car for like five years.

And it was like COVID, I wanted to buy it, but it just the price has ballooned up to like 20,000.

You couldn't find one that was not like in junkyard condition for under 20K.

What?

So I waited.

$20,000.

But I love the fact that he's stalking them.

That's my favorite thing.

Not only is he one of my own, but he's got to stalk them until the prices are better.

Anyway, keep going, Mark.

I'm going to get this.

So, you know, I waited it out.

And, you know, to be fair, there's not a lot of them.

They didn't make a lot.

No.

Weird, huh?

Why didn't they make a lot?

Mark.

Well, it just, there is two reasons.

One, it was everybody.

They were two weeks.

Emotionally people couldn't handle what they were buying.

But the other part is it was very expensive.

I mean, it was like a $50,000 plus dollar car.

So, you know, nobody's buying that.

Sure.

Yeah.

So as it turns out later on, obviously it had a great production run for like two years.

And are like three years.

And now on the use market, they're either in the junkyard because the tops have no parts.

All the parts are discontinued that are specific to the cross-cab.

Of course.

Because dealerships can't fix it.

And if they do fix it, it takes too many book hours.

And it was a lost leader.

Sure.

Right.

So I found one later on.

This was like two years ago.

I drove or I flew to Tennessee in Nashville to meet this guy like in a parking lot.

And he didn't know who I was.

Thank God.

Because he was dead serious about it.

And he drove off Grand.

Basically, sight unseen and just showed up.

I was, I'm like, please put the top up and down.

He's like, oh, yeah, it's gold.

He put it up and down.

It went up and down twice.

And I'm like, okay, that's probably good enough.

And I drove it home from Tennessee.

And I was very, very nervous.

But the thing really is, it's a Nissan drivetrain.

Other than the CVT.

I'm getting away too in the weeds with this.

I'm getting too serious now.

We bought it as a joke for a video.

Was it last year of the year before?

I don't remember.

So he's probably two years ago now.

You're April Fools video, right?

Yeah, like a mockumentary on the creation of the Marano.

And I'm like, Mark, we got to get rid of this thing.

Now that the video is over, he's like, I can't.

I can't get rid of my baby.

I think, you know, it's one of those shit purchases that you make.

That now I have some affinity towards.

And I know I'm going to lose so much money on it.

I don't want to sell it.

We'll see, maybe not.

You might have parked your money if they were 20 grand.

You got it for a steal.

And it's been memorialized in this video

and your April's full videos.

Maybe not.

I, you know, I'm horrified at the prospect of parking your money

in a Nissan Marano.

Because we'll see.

People will say, this was Mark's.

This was the set.

This was the goose.

This was the goose movie.

This belonged to the geese.

Yes, yes.

Have you seen it?

Does your wife love it?

Oh, she hates it.

Okay.

I'm just curious.

Because you know, the story is that it was made

for what Carlos Gones wife, right?

That was the story on the car.

Yes.

There's absolutely nothing redeeming about the car, particularly.

I mean, I found the joy in it in the comedy aspect.

When we had, we had multi-medicine Ford out for the GTD video.

Oh, this is before the comparison.

And Jack's like, you know, talking cars with these guys.

And I'm like, well, let me show you my fleet next door.

So I pulled them in the other garage.

And these guys were most excited.

Not by anything else, but they wanted to see the Marano.

And that was the joy they got from that entire trip.

So it has this, this X factor of being the worst car ever,

but people get excited for it because it's so bad.

Well, the license plate is genuinely player.

Yeah.

Like that is the actual license plate on the car.

Oh, that's perfect.

Perfect.

So outside of a video, do you ever even drive it?

I did this year a couple times.

And I had to do the emissions testing on it,

like, which is, you know, BS.

It's just like OBD2.

And then I'm like, I can't let this thing sit.

So I had the diff changed or the trance, sorry,

the transfer case, fluid changed, the diff.

And then I did the oil again because I had sat for a year.

And all the mechanics were like, dude, this thing is clean.

Like, we've never seen a Nissan coming here so clean before.

See? And they're going to probably make you an offer.

Like, yeah, don't go keep their eye on you.

Whenever you bring them up.

So the reason we're talking about this so much is,

I'm hoping to use you as a way to boost the price of this.

So you get your money out of it.

I understand.

I totally understand.

If we can swing the cabriolay market,

that'll be quite an accomplishment.

That might have backfired.

That's pretty impressive.

I have to admit.

Yeah.

So needless to say, this big, this big comparison,

like getting all the manufacturers together and all this,

like this has been my, literally my baby because it's taken nine months

to put together legitimately.

I believe it.

Honestly, probably longer than that.

I think I first approached GM over a year ago when we did our first ZR1 piece.

Sure.

The engineers said yes, like right away.

And then it was about getting the PR folks to say yes.

Portia was the easiest yes in the world.

We just had this conversation today.

At least for us, our relationship with Portia now is that

because there's such a small PR team,

getting them to say yes.

It's like two checks.

It's one person says yes.

The second person says yes.

And the project's off the ground.

That's amazing.

With the big three, it's various levels of people have to say yes.

I said go all the way up to senior leadership.

They'reocracy jack.

That's weird.

The big three, that's so strange.

Yeah.

I don't understand.

So nine months and in the end,

really who pulled it through was the engineers.

Cool.

It really came down to the Corvette engineers

and folks like Steve and Greg Goodall,

the folks at Ford Racing,

and all the guys at Multimatic

on that side to bring the two American cars to this.

And they were all for it.

And the Marano came in because the intro

on all this video is so serious for like largely no reason.

But it's a million dollars worth of cars.

With two thousand horsepower worth of vehicles.

And it's so nauseatingly serious because the end of the day,

all these cars are just toys.

Of course.

Right.

You weren't curing cancer with any of them.

Like how can we make this stupid?

So we brought the Marano on day two or one of our three day shoot.

All the engineers are like wow.

And we always thank engineers and all our videos

for being in the PR folks.

I'm like how about we put all of you guys in this car

and get your credits that way?

And Steve Thompson from Ford Racing said this was the greatest thing

he'd ever done his entire career.

Not at least.

You know, he's had a career in Ford right up in that moment.

That's perfect.

I love it. Good.

Well, along those lines, I have to compliment you guys on the video.

You're right.

It is serious.

And you guys did such an incredible thorough job.

I really enjoyed it.

I think it's reflected in the view count.

People are really enjoying it.

People have, yeah, been incredibly complimentary.

You guys really did those cars justice.

The thought that came to my head was it's a well known fact.

Car companies buy examples of other competitive cars

in their studios, the engineering teams especially.

I'm willing to bet $5.

There is no chance any of these other companies were able to acquire

that other car for an engineering tear down or anything comparatively.

So my question to you guys is was this the first time any

of those other engineering teams had seen their competitor model

because all three of these cars are based on ring times.

Really?

That's all they all brag ring times.

Yeah, for sure.

Have any of the other teams were they were they covert?

Did they sort of I'm not really interested but secretly they were really interested.

And the Porsche guys went over to the Ford and the Ford guys went over the vet

and was it the first time they'd seen it?

Did they show interest?

Did they even get in it?

Did other teams allow that?

Is that even like allowed?

Can you do that?

So I'll cover the first half of it is the brands often times

will not want to say that they do it but they do buy the cars, right?

If they are available they will buy it for competitive analysis.

But in this case they were hard to obtain cars, were they not?

No, the ZR1 obviously they had a Z06.

Okay, so they've all driven Z06.

ZR1 and GTD know there was no like real cross comparison with that

because they were not available.

But the GT3 RS.

Ford bought one for a GTD development.

So they had experience in the 992.1 and .2 to a certain extent with cars.

So they knew the Porsche pretty well.

And I think that was a benchmark in certain ways.

Yeah.

Clearly in dynamics and like what it was bringing to the table and inputs.

But yeah, it was the Wild West for the other brands to look at these two new cars.

And I think getting them together, you know, again that was my goal in doing this.

Jack was very focused on like let's pull these teams together.

Let's see if we can get everybody together which proved to be the most difficult part about this by the way.

And then for me it was how do I make this about the people and trying to get, you know,

get not only viewers together but the engineers and the brands together where they're just talking.

You know, because everything's so behind closed doors and everybody's in silos.

Once as you, you're an engineer, you get to start working on these cars and you're working on this one project.

You're on to the next, on to the next.

And you don't get a chance to truly get excited by it because you're always working on something else.

And this was a moment in time where they could stop and just interact and appreciate what they were doing.

And that was the general consensus that I felt throughout this whole thing.

Even though they were all doing their own things and making sure the cars were set up.

They were very like human.

This was not like us versus them thing, you know.

That's cool.

We hosted basically our own mini press event.

We did three nights and days of lunches and dinners with these guys where we did everything we could to get all the teams to interact with one another.

I felt like putting some children on a play date.

You know, day one was a bit tense a little bit.

And then, honestly, the Corvette guys that showed up were our tremendous people.

And obviously the Porsche folks, so the folks that you know are really, really fun and they love cars.

And the guys at Multimatic and Ford who showed up also are some of our favorite people we've met.

So you put all these great people in a room and you get them to hang out.

It was pretty fun almost immediately.

They genuinely seem to enjoy each other's company.

It was fun to see how they all got to talk to one another about the different company cultures associated with it.

And the pros and cons associated with that.

Yeah, it was different than I thought.

I was also going into it result-wise.

GM was genuinely shocked that they did as well as they did.

Because this was the first time anyone had gotten a real pro driver behind the wheel of all three cars at the same time.

And the same conditions back-to-back-to-back-to-back.

They all had their own, you know, ring times or lap times.

But as you know, GM used their engineers.

Ford used a German pro, and obviously Porsche used your Bergmeister.

So, you know, we were both surprised to be honest as well by the results.

I expected them to be a lot closer.

Autobahn South is a track I know you guys drove like 10, 15 years ago at this point.

That's been a while. I keep watching the video.

I remember that corner, but I mean, you guys know it like the back of your hand, of course.

It's not a big track, right?

And a three second from the first to the last place spread is big.

Heck, a two second spread is large.

So the fact that there was that big of a gap between the cars.

And the engineers from the respective OEMs were like, yeah, that's about as fast as we can expect.

Our individual cars that run around here, given the conditions, right?

We set confines them along all the brands of, you get two sets of tires,

you get two full sessions, essentially, to set a lap with Britt.

And he's yours, Britt, from Britt's perspective, our pro driver, Britt Casey Jr.

All he cares about is going fast, right?

He has no brand biases. He just wants to, he's like a robot.

He wants to go quickly.

And I mean that in the best way possible.

All he cares about is going fast, and he did.

Those are some of the fastest times anyone's ever set around that track

in a non-erase car.

And I think Britt, the driver, we've worked with him for a while,

and he's unique in the fact that he really has to work for his job to be a race car driver.

This was not handed to him.

So every time he gets a seat, this is survival.

And him coming out there, he lives and breathes it.

It's not like, we get to joke around about it as journalists.

Like, we're very self-aware that we basically, we're not very important.

Yeah.

And Britt understands that he has to survive.

And I had never seen him drive and so focused as when he did this.

And I think he's had so much seat time in the Porsche.

He's had a ton of time in the Corvette, the 06, and the other iterations.

And then he just came off of a race weekend with the, was a GT3?

No, dark horse arc.

Dark horse arc.

So he had a really good blend of all of these cars coming into this

where it wasn't like he was coming in cold.

So he really knew how to drive all three of these cars.

And I think it was very, very representative of what the cars could do.

That's phenomenal.

That's great.

I didn't realize he had had kind of enough experience to extrapolate from prior and all three.

That's excellent.

That's really cool.

Well, I also noticed that he was able to articulate what he was feeling in a way that was easily understandable.

It was bite size, you know, Jack, when you were sitting with him, he was articulating.

Here's what this feels like and able to articulate those differences because I think that's a hallmark of a great driver really

because that's what they're asked to do when their team out of the field.

What changes do we need to make when we're coming back in, given the conditions, given the race, whatever that is.

And I found it really helpful because not every race car driver can do that, even though they're paid to be able to do that.

That is part of their job, too.

But I felt like that was, it was good to hear those sort of bite-sized chunks, if you know what I mean.

From him after every, you know, I noticed this.

It was faster here.

And, you know, I know this inherently, but when he said, the underbody arrow is a wear item.

Yeah.

But it was just fun to have that reinforced.

You know, it's like, right.

Yeah, there are everything's a wear item really on these cars.

And I think working with him, you know, the interesting part about working with a race driver to Jack's point is

where we step in because Britt doesn't come at it from, okay, what is it like to deal with this as a car that is not a race car?

We've helped each other to bridge the gap, right, because these cars are not race cars.

So, there's requirements that we expect kind of on the journalistic side of what should it do at the limit?

And what should it do as a street car?

And the more the feel conversation of how these cars deliver an experience to you as a driver,

whereas a race car driver, they are not concerned with those things.

They're relevant.

They want to know, is the car balanced?

Can I drive the wheels off of it?

Is it predictable as you get into degradation over the long term?

It doesn't really care about the nuances of how everything is perfected as a feel experience.

So, we're able to help each other understand, like, yes, the brakes work on the Corvette to make a great lap time.

But we also bring to the table, Britt, you can't feel anything.

He's like, oh, yeah, you're right. You really don't feel anything.

It's this balanced part that I've really got excited about in doing some of these comparison videos

that you can't really do any other way or you could do it another way.

But I think it's really helped to see multiple sides, not just our side, but the engineers side.

Like, why did they do it? How did they do it?

And then hearing on the back end, which we can't talk about,

but a lot of the stuff that we wish we could have done this, but this is the reality as a business.

So having all these pieces gives us a much better appreciation of how to tell the story in a respectful way

and also not just watering everything down.

Like, my thing is I told Britt the first time we had him drive a car,

I do not want you to be a parody. I don't want you to be a personality.

This is, I don't want you to be a social media meme of, like, cardboard race car driver

in a, like, the top gear shift.

I want you to be a person and I want you to be respected for your ability of how hard you worked

to get to this place of being able to drive a car and explain it.

And that's kind of our philosophy or, you know, my philosophy is

let's know what we're talking about. And that way you, over time,

you get to a place where people start to respect the work that you put in.

And that's what this video was. It just didn't come together.

The cars didn't just come together. They just didn't throw this together.

It's basically a lifetime of work to get to this place.

Because you guys are sort of our spiritual kids in this space

and that we're not owned by a large corporation.

We don't have unlimited budgets to do a $40,000 shoot, right?

You guys are like us and then it's, you know, you guys have a couple folks that help you like we do.

But it's really just the two of you doing everything all the time.

For the quick sidebar, we met you probably, or I met you probably five or six years ago

and you were easily some of the nicest people I've ever met doing this, this job.

So I just wanted to say that when we were way smaller, I told this to Mark the other day.

I'm like, I'm so happy that we got to meet you guys.

Because you're every bit as nice and as kind as we wanted you to be.

Or hope you'd be watching your videos from when you guys are sort of doing that.

Jack grew up watching you guys.

Like, I mean, he's younger, but he grew up watching you guys.

And then when he went to that press trip, you know, it was a pull you right, Mark.

Yeah, he had told you right. It was the first time like, you know, he went on this trip and he saw you guys.

And it was like weird for him to see somebody that he watched and respected.

And then, you know, like, there's that thing where you don't meet your heroes.

But you guys are actually genuinely nice people.

We try. But I mean, but we've talked about this.

Thank you. We've talked about this. Yeah.

This with you guys before. And that is it is very easy.

And I know you guys struggle with this and so do we. It is very easy after you get into another silver five-seat egg

to be like, oh my God, you've got to be kidding.

And just be over it. But then I have to always zoom out and be like, I can do this for a living.

I can't believe it. And I'd like to infuse that into the videos that we do and have that come out to the audience.

But then also, if you meet us, we're two guys to talk about cars.

There's nothing grand about who I am.

So if I can't be cool and excited about the fact that I get to talk about cars for a living,

I kind of missed it, I feel like. So I appreciate you saying that.

But I try really hard. And sometimes it is a conscious effort to be like,

this is a terrible car. I don't want to drive. But this is also my entire work day.

So, okay. All right. I'll buck up. You know what I mean?

But I'm glad. And you're right, Jack. We have been around long enough now that we have a lot of people like,

I grew up watching you. It's like, oh dear God. I have a little.

Sorry. No, it's valid. It's totally valid.

You are far from the first to say that. That's the thing.

Because it was 07. We put out our first YouTube video.

And we were invited into the beta program of YouTube's, hey, we should put ads in front of stuff.

We got the email from YouTube. But like, do you want to be a part of this?

It still hasn't benefited as that much. But hey, it's, you know, it's better than nothing.

So YouTube is certainly not the way any of us survive. And I know that I'm not telling you anything you guys don't know.

But, you know, I was thinking about this recently.

You know, there is that ongoing YouTube perception.

You know, and I actually want to hear from you guys at some point what your current garage is.

But I mean, you have a GT4. And I have an Amira.

Two cars that candidly we would not have if not for the show.

Yeah. But then unfortunately it also perpetuates that reality of YouTube.

Dude, I just make so much money.

And also you and I have compounded it because we live in Park City, Utah,

where the prices of our homes have skyrocketed so far that we couldn't begin to afford our own houses.

But it's just like, I live in Park City and I drive an Amira.

YouTube money is the impression and it's just not the case.

So I mean, you guys have got sponsors. We've got sponsors. That's the way it works and survives.

But you guys also have the distinction or the difficulty or the whatever of getting manufacturers to send you cars in Chicago to put on Autobahn.

And, you know, we are a little bit of an island as well because we're not that close to any press fleet.

But I just, I can't believe you guys got all three of those cars out front of everybody else.

Do you think of this as your biggest thing? Because you guys have done some big stuff.

Probably, that's hard. I always said the delegation of work from the back end.

We've talked about this before. Mark does all the editing and I probably do,

in our regular, regular videos, I do most of the filming at this point.

And then our big projects, Mark's the one dangling on the back of the car.

And I'm the one babysitting the OEMs and trying to make sure the production moves along.

Sure.

I think in work, this was not, in sheer hours of work, this was not the biggest project as far as filming and editing and travel.

But as far as logistics of balancing going back to the earlier part of managing relationships between the OEMs,

because we don't have a giant name associated with us, like you guys don't.

We're not a car driver, we're not a motor train, we're not a haggity.

It's a lot of managing the relationships with the OEMs, trying to build the trust over the years to get to this place.

Yeah, I mean, that becomes the hard part. And a lot of it too, now that,

because of our sort of auto approach, where it's like cars but more human centric and meaning like,

hey, here are the people responsible for it.

You realize that a lot of these people, this is sort of their life's work or their cool thing they get to do in their 35 year career.

So on their end too, I understand why they're so precious with these cars.

They don't want to give them to some asshole that doesn't know anything about them who's going to ball them up and shit all over their life's work,

which to be fair, we weren't necessarily positive about all three of these cars.

So building the trust with the engineers would be like, hey, I'm going to be negative about your car.

Here's why, and hopefully this improves your vehicle.

I know in our case, our criticisms, at least on the GM side, has had them reevaluate some things internally about how they approach development for their vehicles.

Back in E-Ray, it's a zero on X. They changed some of their SOC logic for their current car.

I know they're trying to figure out how to improve brake fuel, which is a problem actually across the industry with people who use electronic brake boosters.

So I think that's been the difficult part, but yes, it's sort of a culmination of everything has made it our biggest project, but the actual work part.

I still think the NSX documentary that nobody watched is by far the worst thing we've ever had to put together as far as work for this guy.

Yeah, tons of work.

Is that a fair statement, Mark?

Yeah, I mean, you asked what the biggest one is. I don't ever feel like there's a biggest one.

I don't look at it like that. I think about usually what I...

The biggest ones are the ones that I personally develop the most out of.

And that's how I view what I do, because I know I'm no longer interested in like the shiny object of new cars.

I'm interested in how things work and explaining that to a fault.

So for me, the more I can get out of a project personally in terms of meeting people and understanding their work and how things work, that's the best case scenario for me.

So I feel like this project, we didn't learn very much.

No, we didn't.

Did we already driven all three parts?

Yeah, sure.

It was more of the part of putting them together.

Because you had the individuality as well.

It was more about the challenge.

This one was because Jack had promised so much.

He worked on this to try to get this done for so long that it became a transition of like,

okay, it's happening. Now don't mess this up.

So it was on me to basically execute his promise to film, record, audio, everything, and then edit this thing together.

And I think you guys know this better than anybody else being independent.

I don't get to farm out the writing, the filming, the editing.

I mean, the lack of writing, the colorist, you know, like the colorization, all of the technical part,

I'm responsible for that.

And that's where the weight gets very heavy for me personally.

That's where this project was, it's complicated because of that.

I have to do all that.

But it wasn't the hardest one.

And I don't think it was the biggest.

Sorry, that's a very long answer to it.

I mean, I wanted to get your perspective because you're already saying.

I mean, we dive way into the post-production as well.

And a lot of people don't.

And so I'm just kind of curious.

And then all the pre the setup to get those cars together same day.

I mean, you've had the stories, we've had the stories of, oh, we have a shoot on Tuesday.

Nope, no, no, no, no more.

Not as a Monday night.

You know, I mean, so all that kind of stuff and managing all of that.

And as far as just curious to hear your perspectives, that leads me to two questions.

They're kind of stacked on top of each other.

And that is, for Mark, are you just a bad passenger generally?

Or Jack, is your purpose now to try to make Mark sick?

So the truth is, like, I think it's, some of it has to, it has to do with age and fatigue of this hamster wheel that we're on.

I don't get a recovery time and I was just complaining to Jack about this.

I always do that.

Complaining to Jack that there, I don't get a reset button that it's a seven day a week thing.

Yeah.

And that's, that's the life of this.

And that's fine.

But when we get out there to do some of these very fast car shoots, like we had Deb, Andy, the lab,

come out to help with B-roll, like gimbal stuff, because I just couldn't do everything myself.

And she was in the van while I was hanging out the van.

And she was just car sick being in the van while I was hanging out the back getting the car to car.

And it's a culmination of a day's worth of work of me having to do this.

We shot the drives last.

And the zero one despite being the first car in our video was the last car we drove.

So it's becoming cumulative over time over the course of your day.

Yeah, keep going.

Yeah.

So I'm, I'm car sick already at the first part of the day and I haven't even driven a car.

I'm just filming and hanging out of a car moving in reverse because I'm getting on and on.

And then, like, because we don't, I don't use remote rigs.

I just don't find the value of them and the price, the, the return of them and the setup.

And maybe when we have a, a cajillion dollars, I'll do that, but it's a manual labor.

So by the time we get into these cars and then mounting and then thinking about like,

what do we say?

How do I drive it safely?

I'm car sick after he drove the first time and then I got to go drive a GT3 RS back to back.

And I'm car sick driving car.

So I'm already done.

And then we're in the zero one, which was the fastest car.

And there's no fit there.

That car, there's no place to hold on to.

It's just, it's like nonstop and there's so much torque in the car.

It's the, you know, the breaking and all that.

And it just hit me like, I made it to the end.

And then Jack's like, well, we're going to talk about turning off the stability.

Like, I thought we were done.

And I held on to that point.

He's like, no, we're going to turn everything off.

And I knew he was going to go sideways.

And it instantly made me want to vomit.

And I'm like, I knew it was coming off.

But that was after a whole day.

It's just constantly being sick the whole day.

And I just, I thought I was going to puke in that car.

I was that close.

Honestly, I think the, that's the closest you've been.

And the funny part too is in the ZR1, I left things on.

Because I'm like, all right, Mark isn't feeling that well.

I'm going to go through this drive.

And drive quickly, but respectfully.

Like, no, no sideways shenanigans like in the GTD.

No, I don't think he's actually, I just resign myself on this in the passenger seat.

I'm like, you know, there's, it's like being on a roller coaster.

There's nothing you can do about it.

And as long as I mostly trust you, and this might be an age thing,

I'm like, all right, as long as we don't go into the wall,

I'll probably, this will probably be fine.

And that's like, I silent the engineer part of my brain.

Like, I won't get into a car with a stranger.

But if I get in it with like one of you guys, or like a pro driver, or Mark,

or somebody I've been in the car with before, I'm like, I'll probably be fine.

And I just, you know, I turn on like the 12 year old boy brain.

Like, oh, this is a great, grand old time.

But ever so often I do overdrive for the sake of seeing Mark squirm in the passenger seat.

That's what I've seen.

I feel like there's just this part of me that just wants to be like,

if I can make Mark uncomfortable, I'm going to start laughing.

And I can't control myself.

And it's awesome.

I just wanted to ask about how much that was the intention.

That's what Jack's laughing about.

Exactly.

He's getting sicker.

Anyway.

I do, gentlemen, I got out of the ZR1.

And I got out of the car.

And I just, the engineers were waiting as we pulled into the garage.

And they're just like, is everything okay?

I'm like, I fucking hate this.

That was like my first words to them.

Of like, it was just so miserable.

It's so miserable.

You know, like, it's not fun.

It's not a good thing.

Be drawn around, like, no place to hold on and try to have a serious conversation

about this.

While this guy's trying to make you car sick as much as possible.

No.

It's perfect.

It's not fun.

I love it.

But it's also funny, like, in the short drives.

Where Jack, we have one car to film.

And I'm not car sick, where he can throw you around

and you actually find the humor in it.

I had no humor in that at all.

I do think one of my favorite drives we had done together,

and it was me trying to behave, was a long time ago,

we did the new GTS drive.

It was a boyhood moment for me.

I'm chasing my childhood here at York Bird Myster around the track.

And I'm somehow driving because York is not driving slowly.

He is driving fast, because we had chased him a couple of times

at a couple of different events.

I'm trying to keep up with him.

It's at the Ascari Circle, which is a wonderful track.

Oh, fantastic.

So flat out, I'm just watching Mark's life force,

as we have one take to do this.

Leave his body in real time.

And I remember him getting out of the car

and the head of PR and one of the lead engineers

looked at Mark and burst out laughing.

It is one of my life.

It is probably, it is a core memory for me.

Anyway, that's something I distinctly remember doing this.

To ask you guys a follow-up question,

sort of going back to the video,

was this what you guys were expecting?

I mean, I don't know if you've driven a ZR1 yet,

but you've driven a 3RS.

I know for a fact.

We have not driven the GTD or the ZR1 actually.

We've driven the Z06s, and that's the highs it's gone

at this point, but...

Is this what you were expecting or are you not?

I mean, I know you're a Porsche guy.

Knowing what you guys do and knowing how you break it down

and both your brains and how you approach it,

it absolutely was.

So in that sense, it felt satisfying.

I felt like I got what I need to understand the car more,

but I don't still have not driven it.

I don't have that feeling,

and that's what I'm looking for.

Okay, great that it's the fastest thing.

Do you like it?

Yeah, are you having fun?

Yeah.

Is it fun? Do you enjoy it?

And I think that's kind of why I mean,

spoiler alert, everyone.

That's why I was kind of surprised at your choice,

and I like that both of you actually put a stake in the ground

and weren't like,

all three of these cars are fast,

and they're all great,

and choose what you like,

and you know, good job.

You actually said,

no, I don't like that, or I do like this,

and I appreciated that from you,

but it was, yeah, so in that sense,

it felt satisfying.

I liked that you were seemingly,

Mark wasn't,

but Jack, you were enjoying yourself.

But I think so.

I think it was satisfying.

The thing that we always tell our audience,

and I think, I mean, you guys do too,

and that is despite all the numbers

and the stats and the spec sheet,

is it a good car?

Do you like it?

I mean, are we all looking forward to the day

when Mustang GTDs are $75,000?

Or are we not looking forward to that day?

Yeah, I think it's a good point.

Well, but you guys are,

I mean, and you're known for it,

and you grade that.

You guys are much more

meticulous engineering approach than we ever are.

So your driving impression thing of this

is exactly the kind of approach

that Paul and I would take,

because you've already done

your big engineering deep dives

in other individual videos,

and your pro driver has already gone around

and done back to back.

And I love the fact that you guys can put

same person, same day, same car stuff.

I mean, that's the stuff

that hardly ever gets done anymore.

And Jack, you and I talked about the fact

that the magazines that do the car

of the year and put up lap times,

the weird oddball there is,

not the fact that it's a different year,

but the fact that it's a different driver every year.

So you have a, you know,

here's our lap time,

but it's like, well,

but a different guy was driving next,

you know, last year,

or would be driving next year.

So that is really cool

that you had all three together doing that.

What we're going to do in all cases

is going to be the driving impressions thing.

And just which one do we like and why?

Because ultimately,

from the core of what we do as a brand,

it's just, are you having fun?

And that gets real subjective.

And we just had this piece that we dropped

that was the, right around the time you guys did it,

but it's older cars,

so it's, but we're excited about it.

It's the Elise, the 4C,

and the Alpine A110.

And it's been fascinating to read people's comments there,

especially owners,

because it goes right back into the core of,

are you having a good time?

And which one spoke to you the most?

And I appreciated that you guys gave those comments there.

And I guess,

I guess I wasn't surprised

that the ZR1 was fastest.

I was surprised by how much.

I kind of expect it going in

that it would be the one that would be like,

there it is.

It is the fastest.

And I expected the Mustang to be last,

but I expected the margin to be like,

oh, well, it's a good thing we timed it.

You know what I mean?

Because it's just fractions.

And that was the thing that really surprised me.

To clarify to the listeners,

if they haven't watched the video,

the ZR1 owns a lap record at Audubon Country Globe,

and it's legitimately as fast as a street car record.

As a street car.

Sorry, street car record.

It's faster than,

like an actual GT4 car to go around the track on selects.

It ran a 122,

three in change.

The next fastest car was the GT3RS,

it ran a 124,

and the GTD ran a 125 in some change.

Like a 125,

three or 125, four.

So there's a big spread between them.

You know, objectively,

we gave it to the ZR1,

because you have to.

Of course.

It's the cheapest car there.

It's the only car that you could reasonably,

I don't say afford,

but you'll be able to buy one one day.

They're going to go down and price.

Yeah.

You're going to be able to get one.

You can get as a convertible.

You can drive it year round.

You know,

the second place was for us,

the GT3RS,

objectively, with half the wheel horsepower,

it only was a little less than two seconds to lap slower,

which the engineers at GM

were thinking the GT3RS would be faster,

talking to them.

A lot of them expected the GT3RS to be quicker,

because it was faster around the ring

with your driving than it was with Brian driving the car.

I believe that's correct.

Brian driving the ZR1 on the ring.

I will say different times,

as we just talked about,

different drivers,

different days,

all make an enormous difference.

Audubon Country Club is how these track tests happen.

They're our partner track.

We love them to death for it,

but even running there,

different times of the same year,

on the same track,

ambient conditions,

how rubbered in a track,

they'll vastly change how fast the car is.

I'm not saying like,

10th to seconds,

seconds difference,

on the same track,

different conditions,

same driver can be made.

I'm not saying,

I'm not saying like,

wet or dry.

I'm saying,

just conditions of the track.

That was surprising for us,

but subjectively,

I gave it to the GTD

because it fits what I like in cars,

which is big, stupid animal,

in the best way possible.

It's just this huge house.

Yeah.

You're driving on a racetrack

with enormous amounts of

both mechanical and arrow grip,

and from a sound perspective,

all the other teams

said the same thing.

It sounds like the world

is coming to an end

when you're driving this car.

You have the full titanium exhausts

at the back.

You hear supercharger wine

from miles away.

You could be in the pits

on like the pit in and out

of Autobahn,

and on the back straight,

you can hear this loud wine.

On the other side of the racetrack,

it sounded like it was right there,

which was, you know,

going back to the 12-year-old

part of my brain,

I'm like,

yes, I want that.

And then the GT3RS

and the 0-1 were closer to me,

tied-wise.

I'd driven the 0-1,

and it's the other time I made

Mark sick,

but you kind of did it to yourself.

Like, oh, let's,

on this 100-degree day,

turn off all the cooling

in the 0-1 around Coda,

and then Jack drove flat out.

But I didn't say,

turn it off.

I said, turn the fan speed down.

Oh, what?

It was like fan speed was on one,

not to mess up the audio.

Yeah, I understand.

The car picked you.

But at Coda,

the 0-1 is more fun

than the 3RS,

because of the danger part.

But the AWABON,

because it's tight,

danger meaning the speed.

Yeah.

At AWABON,

just because of the 3RS,

it's just such a weapon,

as you guys know.

It's like,

it is a driving tool.

For sure.

No, not even an experience,

it is a tool.

Absolutely.

You use it to drive around a race track.

Did you say that GM

team had acquired GT3RS?

Did both...

Ford bought a 3RS,

that's surprising,

as I would do

if I worked for 4 racing,

developing this car.

I was just curious,

because...

I'm surprised that they were

surprised thinking the GT3RS

would have been faster.

I mean,

it's not all about power,

as you've just articulated.

But I find that really fascinating,

that they were sort of

genuinely shocked.

Different drivers,

different days.

Yeah.

The one thing I'd add about it is,

like, I know,

Jack was talking about these cars,

and I know you guys are

talking about the whole,

it doesn't make you happy,

or excited,

or does it deliver something.

Then to the day,

that's what's more

important to people,

because a lot of times

don't really mean anything to

anybody.

For somebody to go out

and hit the lap time

that Brett had,

is not going to happen,

really, for 99%.

The team set up the cars

for Brett to run the last time.

It's pointless.

It's just a metric

for the video.

But you guys do it right.

You always have done it right

by having so much discussion

about what that means to people.

And I think we've learned a lot

from your,

how you approached it.

When we started this stuff,

or at least I did.

You could do it as well.

Of course.

You could look more.

Like the benchmark stuff.

Like who are you looking at?

Not that we're copying you,

but there's ways that you've

approached what you do

that made it super accessible

to people where I learned

before I started doing it,

doing the video stuff.

But in terms of the

benchmarking part

of the cars they buy,

you know,

it's weird to find out

that a lot of these brands

despite them being able

to buy these cars,

not everybody gets the drive

them on the development team.

Yeah.

There's,

it's the corporate red tape

of like at least,

and I don't want to name the names

of the brands here.

But one of the brands,

there were people

that were in development

of the car that never got

to drive it.

Even when it was in production

and going to customers,

they still have to do it.

We drove before the engineer,

like some of the engineers

who actually worked on the car

did.

It's nuts.

And that's how it goes

because they have their

licensing structure internally

that allows them to certain people

to be able to drive certain cars

with a certain class

and they have to go through this.

And then it becomes a phobia

because it took so much

to get them to be able

to drive their own cars

that they're working on

that when they go

to do driving development,

they still are kind of on the,

I got to be careful here,

type thing.

Sure.

And that was something

surprising to learn.

And that also means

that not everybody in the development team

got to drive

the competitive benchmark cars,

either.

So we got to drive them flat out.

Like I know,

in the case of the,

like when Ford and GM buy,

like a GT3 RS

or GT2 RS,

because GM didn't have

a 3 RS,

they had a 2 RS,

which is still in their fleet,

that they've been

running around in that car

is obviously very, very fast.

Yes.

We're still impressed with them.

Yeah.

They, you know,

when they're going

out of PR mode

and going into human mode,

which is normally how

they are with us, thankfully,

they're like, you know,

could I extract,

as an engineer,

the lap time,

that, you know,

your code out of a 2 RS

or 3 RS?

No.

They're using it

when they buy these cars

in an idea of

what other brands do well,

what can we learn

from other brands,

more so than how fast

is this car compared to us?

Like GM

benches their own vehicles,

primarily,

like how much faster is this

than a C701?

Sure, of course.

Or a C806.

And for Ford,

I don't quite,

I'm being honest,

I don't want to speak for Steve

in the multi-matic

or Ford racing guys,

but I know they looked a lot of,

like that is a high-down-force

active arrow car,

what can we learn

from that,

that we can use

in our vehicle,

while also

taking a different approach,

where the 3 RS,

if you talk to

Holger Bartles,

is actually the,

sort of the brain

behind the V-Dine

at Porsche.

For that car,

AP is the,

obviously,

the face of GT

program,

but Holger is one

of the lead V-Dine guys

on how the car drives.

He's like,

I don't give a shit

about street dynamics.

It just needs

to be fast

in a perfect,

perfect car,

where,

Ford,

a perfect track car,

where Ford,

you know,

in their eyes,

the way the 3 RS

rides on the street

is unacceptable,

which,

to be fair,

it's a terrible street car,

if you guys

have driven them around,

or the GTD,

when you,

when you raise it

out of track mode,

it drives around,

honestly,

it's a big testament

how great the GT500 is,

minds you of a regular GT500,

when you roll around

on the street,

which is one of the cool things about that car.

Sort of,

why they buy benchmarks

is it entirely to see what's faster?

It's,

what can we learn

from these other

really talented engineers?

That's the part I find interesting.

Okay,

can you share anything

about any of the teams

and what they,

would have wanted to do?

If only we would have been allowed

to not put an HVAC system

in a stereo

in the Mustang GTD,

it would have been,

just think a thousand pounds lighter,

would still be a heavy 34,

3,400 pound car,

wait,

sorry, not to open the

can of worms about wait,

but,

no, no,

are there any things

that you can share,

like they would have wanted to do,

but they're,

I mean, that's the hallmark

of a great engineer

and a great designer,

is you're not designing for yourself,

you're designing for a particular market,

and these aren't race cars,

even though,

the GT3RS,

you could say,

they're trying to be,

kind of right on the cusp,

and that's why it's not

so great a street car,

even though it makes you feel like one on the,

we can both answer the question,

you go first, Mark.

Yeah, I just have to be careful

because I don't,

this is behind the scene stuff.

I ask,

tongue in cheek,

and I ask,

at the lightest level.

Yeah, no,

there were stuff

that they wanted to do.

I think both,

it's less on the

Porsche side,

the Porsche side.

Yeah, I think,

they already got what they want.

They have the leadership

in place,

from top down,

to know what a GT car

program is,

their identity is locked

into place.

I know that those guys

would prefer

that they didn't have to deal

with all the other things,

like, you know,

trying to get GT car teams

to try to figure out

how the Macon works.

I know that's what

their biggest thing is,

is like, how do we take our engineers

and then spread them across the board?

They would rather just focus on

the cool stuff, right?

Sure,

but that's saving tents.

Right.

But in terms of their cars,

I think they're happy with them

as much as they can be.

And they had nothing to lose,

candidly, right?

The GT3 RS has been out for

three years.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The two RS is coming along the lines.

They're like, yeah,

if we lose,

yeah, we got a GT2 RS,

which is half a million dollars

instead with us

and we can go even faster.

Well, they're known

more to, yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, they just have

the confidence in knowing

their next car that's in the pipeline

is going to blow them all away anyway.

So it's just like, okay,

wait till this thing comes out.

But for Ford and Chevy,

you know, they are in a different place

because, you know,

their teams are spread out,

well, not so much Corvette,

but Ford, you know,

they have to do different things.

And that's why Ford is very interesting

because Ford performers

are now Ford racing.

They have some of the widest breath

of knowledge because they're

working on street car programs.

Trucks.

Like this massive discipline

of this wide range of products

that they can, you know,

work together on to get these things.

Well, they might not be as focused

as like the GT car program.

They definitely know a lot.

And I think that was what was most

surprising to us

is like just the wealth of knowledge.

And then bringing,

not being shy to bring in a,

like a brand like Multimatic

who's just bread and butter

is building race cars.

Like these guys,

this is what they do.

There's nobody

that's going to touch them

unless you go to some

other like boutique,

very boutique,

like race brand.

But they couldn't

build something like that at scale.

So they were smart

and the direction they

wanted to go.

But like every single car,

I think Ford,

and they didn't say,

say this directly.

But, you know,

you're starting with a

regular Mustang body and white.

Yep.

And they're, they've said it,

you know, it's part of the process

of the assembly.

And that's the biggest,

yeah, hindrance point of that car

is that it's at its core.

I mean,

what I mean is body and white.

It's literally the front subframe

and up to the sea pillar

of that car is S650.

But, you know,

it's hard to not state

that I'm sure,

just like they wish on a GT500

and on a F-150

that, you know,

for a Ford racing product,

they wish it was maybe

a more bespoke

platform to build on it.

I think they wanted

to be more race car.

I think they wanted that car

to be more GT3 race car,

where you had a bespoke engine,

a bespoke body,

but they told us,

like the design leader,

he's like,

this would be over a million-dollar car.

And we had to make a decision of,

comes to, you know,

their ability to convince leadership.

That's really what car design is.

No, that's what it is.

Do they want to build a million-dollar Mustang?

And the answer was,

no, it's too,

probably too big of a risk,

although they didn't say,

I don't want to put words on their mouth,

but they knew the confines they were working in.

And yes,

from the engineering mindset,

they would want a totally bespoke car

front to back,

which wasn't practical.

And the same thing,

I think,

more or less with the Corvette team,

because Corvette has to-

Within a box of what Corvette is always.

Yes.

They have to have a supply chain

of certain parts

that scale across the board.

So even though the C8 was designed

to be a stingray

all the way up to a ZR1-X

from day one,

they knew this.

They still had to buy a supply chain

that could scale across

these entire range of cars.

While it's still a Corvette,

they're vastly different.

And actually build them.

I think that,

they're a confine

of why Z06 and ZR1

have similar components.

Sure.

It's also from a supply chain perspective.

Of course.

The interesting thing is,

to Mark's point,

they have no delusion

when you talk to the engineers

of what brands they work for.

And I don't mean that in a negative way.

I mean that within the confines

what they have to do.

Porsche is unique in that,

if you have money,

you can make it happen in Porsche.

Sure.

Like if you're a customer

and you're willing to

break out the pocketbook,

you do whatever the hell you want,

as long as it says 9-11 at the end of it.

And that is incredibly impressive.

And I've had this conversation

with Andy and Holger

in multiple people internally

at Porsche,

like wearing my engineering cap

of like,

hey, you know,

I'm sure you guys realize

this is what a blessing it is

that your customers have

largely unlimited money

at a certain point,

at least in their eyes.

Like the average 9-11 buyer

makes something like $900,000 a year

of HHI.

Like that's their household income.

So at a certain point,

you know,

$50,000, $60,000 change,

if you want it,

isn't going to be a big deal.

So they can build whatever they want.

I told this to AP

and like,

you could literally put a Porsche badge

in a dumpster

and someone would buy it.

Like, you're in a lucky,

you know,

a lucky spot

where conversely,

you know, they look at someone

like GM

and I know of talking to people

like Holger.

They're like,

it is amazing they can build

as many cars as they can

for as little as they can, right?

Like,

that's something they look at them

and like,

holy hell,

how can you build a $225,000

or $1,000 horsepower car

with a warranty

and for it to work,

genuinely work is impressive.

But if you're a Corvette engineer,

you're like,

I wish I could do X, Y, and Z.

But within the confines of like,

a ZR1,

even with the ZTK package,

it's still got to be a streetable car, right?

Yeah.

You know,

in their mind,

their customer base,

thinking the people who buy Corvettes

over 55 years old,

you know,

a different socioeconomic bracket,

blah, blah, blah.

They're not going to roll around

in a car with no AC

that rattles at your teeth,

that has no trunk,

no frunk,

you know,

crazy buckets

that you can't get in and out of.

And then the Ford part for multi,

you know,

Ford Racing with Multimatic,

their buyer is someone

who's raising their hand

to buy this car

that is bought into

Multimatic and Ford Racing,

like one of our viewers who came

to our shoot,

Alex,

both the GT3RS and the GTD.

He, you know,

he's that person,

he bought into what they want,

what they're trying to accomplish.

And Ford Racing with Multimatic

is giving them that sort of, like,

truly, far more boutique

than even a 3RS.

Like,

you want anything to this car,

you know,

color interior,

well, interior,

but, you know,

what color you want

and you want a handmade vehicle,

they'll give it to you as well.

They just have the confines

of being forward,

having to use their supply chain as well.

Certainly.

Paul has said,

I don't know if that's a non-answer,

but it's sort of like,

you know,

I thought like you,

that the engineers wanted to build something,

you know,

build some car like we wanted.

Yeah.

You know, once they're in these teams

and they've been working with them,

they just want to build the best product they can

within the bubble of what their car is.

The confines.

I mean, Paul has said,

since the C8 first got introduced,

and we first drove it,

and of course we owned one for a couple of years,

he said it is the most compromised sports car

of all time,

and somehow still works,

because of all the things,

you know,

between the golf clubs

and the trunk for the huge back,

and has to have a front,

and at good AC,

and by the way,

to your point,

we've got to have a ZR1

that's also convertible.

What are we doing?

And has to have a warranty.

How are all three of those things going to work

on the same sheet?

I mean, that's just a crazy list of parameters

to work under.

But it's cool to hear

kind of what you guys are hearing behind the scenes,

and I have to applaud you

because the scale of something like this,

even though you're combining it to a racetrack geographically,

the fact that you could get all the pieces there,

it's because you guys do something

that nobody else really does,

and I just want to applaud you for that,

because I'm not,

I'm not staying in the shop ever,

talking about struts.

It's just not what I,

I'm like,

I don't do it well,

but you guys have nailed it,

which is awesome.

Yeah, to answer your question, Jack,

absolutely yes,

and again,

the addendum was,

you made it relatable still,

and you still had your opinions,

and kind of left it out there.

Agree? Disagree?

Here's why.

I still prefer the big dumbass.

There were just two assholes

with an opinion after all.

Right.

Yeah.

I'm only going to give you

your, you and your viewers,

one like follow-up

to kind of explain it,

because we,

I've had to do a lot of thinking

about exactly the question

you had about what

the engineers want to do,

and I think on the outside

as an enthusiast or somebody

that likes cars,

you don't think about this,

probably the most important part

about a modern car,

is to scale it out,

whether it's a Rev4,

a Camry,

they all have to buy

into a specific component,

like a brake system,

a steering box system,

a differential system,

they all have to buy

these common parts

to go across a certain line

up of cars.

And what it does is it

really locks you in

to the mechanical strengths

and weaknesses of that certain

part.

You can even go as far

as like a gearbox, for example,

like the shared gearbox stuff.

You can get in a car

that might have the same

identical family,

a gearbox,

and you get into another brand,

and it's the same thing,

essentially,

but it feels so much better

in another car.

A lot of the tuning

comes down to different

models now,

with the strength

of the engineers

in terms of their controls,

of how well they can

calibrate these things,

to feel good,

or bad, or different,

or in the case of,

like the Corvette,

their brake

by wire system,

is not,

it's great on a street car,

but it's not great

at the absolute extreme limit,

as the brake booster system,

in the GTD,

where they had a different

piece of hardware,

while...

Continental versus Bosch,

in this case.

Exactly,

in these two different pieces

they have a major

difference in how

you can calibrate them digitally.

Sure.

So the GTD,

really, still,

they both have electronic

systems,

but the way they were able

to tune the GTD

was far superior

than that of the Corvette.

And this is where the nuance

of newer cars

and sports cars,

get so different

from the engineering

of what can they do,

maxing out their controls

before they have to switch

hardware.

And that's my point,

is you can't,

like, let's say the Corvette,

they don't like the

brake feel at the end of

the day.

They've done everything they

can on the control side.

They literally cannot

change the hardware,

because it's in every single

car and they're not

going to do a one-off.

And that's where these

discussions of learning

how all this stuff works

get very interesting.

And that's where I think

the engineers feel like,

I wish we could do more,

like, we know we have a

problem,

but we can't switch

either a different model

or a different supplier

for this one car

to make it better,

because you're,

you're wrapped into

that five to ten,

your life cycle,

sometimes.

That's what a lot of

people don't understand

about these cars.

And to clarify,

when he says

braking hardware,

the GTD and the

ZR1,

now the ZR1 is moving

to a tempest and

Alcon,

but they are both

fundamentally using the

same caliper setup.

The carbon

ceramics are the same

kind of strand formula

in the disc,

and they're both

brembo-supplied.

He means the actual

brake pedal feel,

because a lot of modern

cars, like all,

all S650 Mustangs,

all modern M cars,

all non-GT-based

Porsche products,

all use an electronic

brake booster.

And there's,

because you have

the blend in region

in certain models

with hybrid-based cars,

some of it's due to

packaging as well,

not having a vacuum-based

brake system allows you

to have a tighter

packaging in the front.

In the case of the

Corvette,

that helps as well

with the front design.

So it is interesting.

Like a lot of it comes

down to how they

calibrate all these systems,

not just the hardware,

but the most power

or what the

braking system is,

the tires,

the controls

engineers,

a lot of how this stuff

actually drives now.

Yeah, and they're trying

to maximize what they

have out of the hardware,

right?

This is all we can get

out of the hardware

without switching.

And that's the stuff

that I didn't know.

Even like 10 years ago.

Well, the transmission

was a perfect example

when you were talking about

the Ford and the Corvette.

The transmission was,

yeah,

fascinating to know about,

you know?

And I'm going to

code the crap out

now.

I'm going to re-extract

what we need for our

program.

So I'm going to bring it

full circle.

We're talking about

forced into products

from certain manufacturers.

So Mark,

the question is,

does the Marano

get the driveline

from the Z-car

or the GT-R?

I mean, let's just,

if you're going to keep it,

let's just make it

the best Marano

cross-cabriolay ever.

Let's just do it, man.

Let's go lightning round.

Go.

You'd have to do it

with less torque

because of the body

rigidity.

So,

so whatever the

drivetrain is with less

torque would be

ID.

Got it.

Okay.

All right.

I was just trying to,

let's get it away from the

CVT.

Let's put a Nissan drivetrain

in there that's more fun

and let's make the world's

greatest Marano

convertible.

You're guaranteed

to keep your money.

I mean, you're not.

But anyway, it's, yeah.

There we are.

Yeah.

It was someone Mark's

homeless because he

bankrupts himself

over Marano.

It's definitely gonna

be a good

fire.

But anyway, I hear ya.

You guys did an incredible

job.

I mean, we've had

private cars on a lot of our

shoots.

And I think you guys

know this,

this sort of sentiment.

Well,

if people are watching

and they're watching our

stand-ups at the end,

our final thoughts.

Yeah, yeah.

And we don't choose their

car.

They're kind of

disappointment,

is leaving right now and he's gonna go off

be quiet for a bit.

So now, was there any of that as you did your wrap-ups

or are these teams just now finding out

about your sentiments?

And I would love to think they're back

in their Monday morning meetings going,

hey, just see that thing that four days over there,

we should think about, or Corvette did this.

I had no idea, what a great idea.

We should think about this.

Were they aware before they left?

I guess it's part of the question.

Yes.

Yeah.

We were very transparent with them the whole time.

It was like, obviously laptops

they knew immediately they were there for it.

But even our own like internal sentiments,

like they had seen our pieces on the other cars

going into this.

So they sort of knew what we were thinking.

I didn't think, to be honest,

my big surprise of the shoot to me is still

not just the speed part,

but how different the same car can feel

on two different tracks.

That's one of the things that I thought of.

We're like a Coda.

The Zero One is so well suited for that track.

And that it's like you never get an ABS.

So the brake field problem isn't a problem there.

Because you just never get an ABS

because the track is so smooth

and all the big high speed braking zones.

And it's not tight.

So any of it's sort of difficult to drive

and tight sections never pops up there.

And Autobahn, because it's so tight, you're like,

oh shit, that's legitimately the hardest

I've ever had to work to drive any car in my entire life.

So hard that you got Mark six.

I just, I love how we keep coming back.

It's awesome.

No guys, it's awesome to have.

Well, you asked the one thing, like, did they know?

And yes, they always know it's part of the,

the way that I look at modern media is it needs to evolve.

There's a big problem with transparency in modern media.

And I'm not saying that we're right.

We make a lot of mistakes.

And that's just part of being human.

And I own up to that all the time because you have to,

to try to be perfect is impossible,

but the transparency between the people you're working with,

I don't think a lot of media understands

the fallout of what you can do to certain people.

And I didn't always think this way.

But I think of it this way.

Now what I do can actually affect one of those engineers

that is helping us on the back end

and can have effect on not only his private life at work,

it can have effect on the PR people

that went to bat to do this.

And the last thing, especially in an economy like this

is you don't want to cause somebody to potentially,

yeah, or just have a problem.

And that's the one of the things

you have to be careful with because we're independent.

But I used to work in the corporate world.

I know how things roll downhill.

So I'm very careful with that compared to a lot of people

that we see in this industry.

There was one thing they asked to be removed.

Oddly enough, the funniest part that they did not want

in the video, and I'm not gonna say who it was,

but there was a shot in the Marano

where we had depends in the car with them.

And the depends went flying,

and knocked the car into neutral.

It hit the shifter and the engineer had to move the depends

and they thought that the car just the CVT blew up.

And it was started revving.

They're like, oh my God, is that supposed to do?

He's like, oh no, the depends hit the shifter.

And I wanted that in the video so bad.

I wanted it in there so bad

because you could hear them talking about the depends.

That's like seriously, but they were concerned

that it would make the engineers look bad

for like, you know, like talking about the depends.

So I had to cut it.

But I mean, it's just like,

that was the only thing they were concerned then.

I love it.

That's amazing.

I started a PR guy.

I'm like, we're really having this conversation

about engineers in a Marano and an adult diaper,

but I guess we are.

Well, that's, I mean, that's really why we spent time

with you were stories like that.

I mean, how would that have come out otherwise?

I love it.

That's amazing.

I have you guys on.

You have the distinction of being our first ever video guest

on the podcast, which is really cool.

As you guys are aware, if you watch Savage Geese at all,

they have such high quality that they are actually

probably going to look the best of any of our guests

because they've actually double shot this

versus just a zoom call, which gives us options,

which is awesome because you guys are one of the few

that care about production quality

and that resonates with me like crazy.

So I have to be hats off to you for that as well.

And it's just awesome to hang with you for a bit.

So thank you.

Great guys.

Thank you for coming on.

I love the stories.

We want more stories.

We talked about last time we had you on.

We had to have you back.

So this seemed like perfect timing

and really great to see you guys again.

So thanks guys.

Thank you.

And if you haven't seen this monster piece, you have to.

Yeah.

Now knowing the backstory and hearing it from them,

now when you're watching the piece

and all you're going to be thinking about

is depends when the Maranna convertible

driving around the track full of engineers.

And we are people.

And then at some point, we have to get in all these cars as well,

but we will not have the track element

or the race car driver or the definitiveness,

but it'll still be fun.

Engineering teams, but that's OK.

Let's still drive them.

We will.

Yes.

Guys, thank you so much.

Thank you for having us and all your viewers.

Thank you for taking the time to listen.

It was ramble.

It's good to have you guys as always.

Hope to see you soon.

Awesome to have those guys on.

It's been a long time.

And as Jack said, we see them, we don't go to a lot of launches,

but we see them, I would say, about every other time

we go to a launch, we get to see them and hang out with them.

And they're always, frankly, working way too hard.

They bring cases and cases of gear.

You and I, over the years, have steadily tried

to make the amount of casings we bring less.

It's still good quality.

Those guys are hanging on with lots of cases,

and they get great quality work days.

I mean, technology has changed the game for us

because the tech has fully changed all of our gear

and made it, obviously, a lot lighter.

Before we jump to car debates, I want to cover,

hooked on driving dates through the end of 2025 very quickly.

We have Saturday, November 29th.

And Sunday, November 30th, that is Thanksgiving weekend,

coming up fast, Virginia International Raceway,

VR with our mid-Atlantic region.

Devon and Ryan run a great event out there

along with assist from Heather.

So they are running incredible events,

and they've got great dates at VR Thanksgiving weekend.

Just a date from the family for just,

even just a day.

All right, we all know what Thanksgiving's like.

It's the perfect encapsulation of good and bad with family.

There's all the good, and there's all that I gotta get out of here.

So maybe that's where you get out of here.

You just got to VR, I love it.

Thunder Hill Raceway, three mile and five mile.

So Saturday, December 13th at Thunder Hill Raceway is three mile.

And Sunday, December 14th is the five mile configuration.

We would love to have you, as a matter of fact,

you and I are going to be in attendance.

And then coming up just to put a note out there

just so you know, 2026 pre-by nationwide begins December 15th,

and runs until January 15th.

So a month to get a discounted pre-by

for track days in 2026 with hooked on driving.

For hooked on driving nationwide,

it'll be the best discounts you can get for the calendar year

to pre-by your track days that way,

which is gonna be really, really good.

Also, we have our first of multiple Europe trips next year,

multiple adventures we're gonna do with both brands.

This is Spain and Portugal.

That is April 24th to 29th, 2026.

We're talking about middle of next year now, Paul.

But we're gonna be in Spain.

We're gonna be in Portemau, Portugal.

There's tracks by both of those.

The tracks are awesome.

This is a very spouse-friendly trip.

There's gonna be a walking tour of Seville.

The scenery's gonna be awesome.

This is the trip to come on and to bring the person in your life

that you love more than anything,

but doesn't love cars as much as they love you.

They just, they're like,

I don't know about the cars in the tracking.

This is the trip.

So we'd love to have you come there still space at that trip.

That'll be cool.

Also keep in mind, we are doing all of our normal Europe trips

with me, the pilgrimage trip is coming back.

Right now, we think it's gonna be August.

I can't give you official dates yet.

We think it's gonna be August.

We will give you official dates as soon as we happen.

That'll be a few weeks up.

That could change.

It could change.

That's what we're thinking right now.

So that's probably gonna happen in August.

There's gonna be other events domestically

where we're gonna have our typical road tours

probably connected to a hooked on driving track day as well.

Lots of cool stuff coming next year.

I can't wait to share some of it.

We're just not quite there yet.

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We've still got time for two car debates on this episode.

Thanks again to the geese guys for coming on.

It was so great to talk to them

and just hear the back stories and just hear

all about the engineers doing their thing

and how hard those guys fight to put those things together.

I mean, we resonated with them.

Because it is hard to get three cars on camera,

not to mention engineering teams

at a specific day, at a track.

The reality is, the most.

The reason that most people don't do comparisons on YouTube

is because just getting even two cars together is hard.

And we have fought about it,

and you've done the good fight for years for us.

We have fought through it since the beginning of this show

because we want to have that back-to-back comparison,

like the light weights piece,

like the other stuff that we have coming later this year.

It's hard to do.

And invariably, when we do it, cars are changing

and schedule is changing up to within 24, 48 hours

of when the cars show up.

We also end up driving to the location every single time,

going, well, I hope they all wind up here.

So it's a fight.

It's very different than it's like,

I got a car on camera.

Awesome.

You got three cars on camera, five cars on camera, big deal.

Not until it drops on YouTube.

Does it mean it's real?

That's true.

Because footage can be lost.

Oh, I know.

Things can be written over.

It's spied up back up.

It's a fight.

Yeah, I had a piece behind the scenes.

I had a thing recently where I deleted

the wrong camera at the wrong time.

Luckily, it was an angle we don't need much.

But I deleted it and then had this like pit in my stomach,

like, that was the master file.

And instead of copying it, I just deleted it, didn't I?

And then I was like, oh, thank God it was that angle

and not the other angle.

Anyway, it happens.

Stuff happens in spite of all the backups.

Anyway, thank you guys for being with us.

We're going to dive into the car debate.

The first one is for Kyle and he's writing in

and he wants to start with a roast of both Paul and I.

So I'm going to read the Paul roast real quick

and then you can read the one for me

and then we'll get into the actual debate.

He says his roast is, he's listing along

and listener number one, theoretical listener number one

says, I'm looking for a passenger van to get myself

and my nine children to church on Sunday.

And Paul comes through with, well,

have you considered a Porsche Cayman in nine separate trips

or maybe put some of the children up for adoption?

That'll solve it.

That seems like something you do

probably without a budget, either.

The budget's going to be like 30 grand

and you're going to do like 70 get a really nice Cayman, yeah.

Okay, theoretical debate number two.

Again with the roast, he's roasting Todd now.

Listener number two says, I need a new three quarter ton truck

to tow my 35 foot boat to the launch and back.

What do you suggest?

Todd would say, have you thought about selling the boat

buying two low tie and two large inflatable rubber duckies?

That could be fun.

I don't see the problem with that answer.

I really don't.

You know, Lake fun, Lake, sorry.

Boats and lakes are one of those things

where you see the like the first Instagram influencers.

Anytime you see somebody on a lake,

you're like, oh, that looks amazing.

But when you're up at 6 a.m.

and you're filling with 100 gallons of gas

and it's cold and you put in the boat in the water,

it feels pretty different.

I'm just saying.

Yeah, anyway, I agree.

Kyle, thank you for the roast.

Really appreciate it.

It's very good.

He poses his own real life daily driver debate.

He's considering a new daily

to replace his Jeep Gladiator.

Okay.

Like how I tied in the Jeep news.

No, no, no, no.

He caused a debate here.

The Gladiator has served Kyle incredibly well

for the last four years and 110,000 miles.

So that is close to 30,000 miles a year.

That's 27,000.

That's a great question.

But Kyle feels it's time to move on

to something more exciting and appropriate

for his current lifestyle.

He loves the ability to bomb that truck Jeep love child

around a corner over a curb

and not have to worry about it breaking a sweater

or a front splitter.

So in other words, he hits something and just kind of goes,

huh?

Did you feel that?

Nope.

I didn't.

It means it wasn't there.

He says the Gladiator's utility is unmatched

but it's qualifications in the speed

and acceleration department are subpar to put it nicely.

Unless you have the four by E or the 392

and it changes the world.

Well, the four by E would be parked

and not driven.

You would write it next.

It wasn't really good but now it's parked.

That's where we come in.

Kyle remembers a Chrysler 300S.

He had for a brief moment

if he says he remembers it through rose colored glasses.

He liked the power he had to reel in the long straightaways,

the Wanton Michigan freeway system

in near perfect silence.

He would like to recreate or improve on that experience.

Kyle's in the Detroit area.

Yeah, he doesn't have nice things to say about the road.

He says they are war torn.

So he likes having something that can handle the beating.

That's definitely key here.

He says the criteria he would like to meet as follows.

He wants all-wheel drive for the Michigan winters

to weed out the weak and people from Ohio.

Those are Kyle's words, not ours.

Those are fighting words.

Okay.

I didn't realize Michigan and Ohio had a rivalry.

Fairly there's a thing.

They're standing there with pitchforks in the middle.

I don't know.

He says Kyle needs enough power

to make his girlfriend ask about his life insurance policy.

That is a new way to put it.

I really like that Kyle.

Enough power for her to ask.

Oh my gosh, that's terrible.

So that leads more than 300 horsepower.

So the 86 is out.

Yeah.

Okay, fine, fine.

So here's the catch.

Kyle is a professional canine handler.

And his dog must go with him everywhere.

So there must be enough space

or a sizable dog kennel to fit in the back seat or trunk.

Currently fits in the back seat of his gladiator,

but barely that back seat's not very large.

It's not and makes me wonder and this keeps coming up

is in this conversation Kyle.

How big of a kennel are we talking about?

Because you're saying you're putting the dog kennel,

the crate essentially into the back seat

of your gladiator and it barely fits.

But that that takes so many things off the table instantly

and I also wonder and we're gonna get there

you may have to shop and take the crate with you.

Not the dog, maybe the dog too.

But the crate, some people taking their car seats

on our recommendation,

you're gonna have to take your dog crate

and be like, does this fit?

Anyway, onward.

What about a Honda Element?

Well, it's not the inner horsepower.

It's not all-wheel drive.

And not made anymore.

That's the dog car, right?

It is one of them, yeah, for sure.

Kyle doesn't care about the transmission

as long as he's got the ability to shift it

of his own accord.

He says an automatic is fine.

His budget is around $50,000

or a poll limiter of two carbon mountain bikes.

So what are we saying, a $7,000 mountain bike?

So you've got an extra 14 grand to work with.

Is that another decent guess?

Make more with that.

Five to seven grand per bike.

Two of them.

I'll give you a 10 to 14 grand.

It's seven to nine carbon mountain bikes.

But the carbon frames at the problem,

it's the fact that you get all the latest tech

including the wireless thing.

All right, you can get a carbon bike for five to seven grand.

Okay, so I'll give you seven.

So okay, you've got 14 grand to work with.

So 64 grand for you, Bob.

I can do that.

There you go, like it.

I can get that done.

Kyle's contenders include the Audi S5,

Kia Stinger, Dodge Durango, Hemi,

the new Dodge Charger Hurricane Four Door.

Get the six pack engine.

I guess.

And the Ford Explorer ST.

I'm not sure why that's on your list.

Do not get a Ford Explorer ST.

I would avoid that one.

I mean, it's, it look, it is a dynamic Ford SUV.

It is.

I just don't know that that's a top choice.

Right away here, Kyle.

I've got three choices for it.

We can definitely get it done for $64,000 or less.

I'm showing a 2018 Cayenne on screen.

But any Porsche Cayenne for $64,000 or under is your choice.

The kennel, the while the dog crate will fit right in the back.

It'll be great high mileage road trip car.

It'll be comfortable all-wheel drive, plenty of power.

I think it checks all of the boxes.

Interesting.

I think this is probably among my top choice for you, Kyle.

I see it.

It's actually on my list as well, yeah.

But you could consider the new Ford runner

because these are pretty awesome.

Okay.

I think the the kennel keeps in the kennel.

The crate.

It's the same thing.

It's the same thing, yeah.

Keep fitting in the back of this.

I see kind of an SUV in your future,

but the Cayenne will certainly drive better than the Ford runner.

But I also wanted to suggest the new RAV4 GR sports.

Really?

Because you said 300 horsepower or above,

there's this 320 horsepower.

All-wheel drive.

It's a plug in EV.

And Toyota is claiming at least about 48 miles

of EV range for the GR sport.

And they are adamant about making all of their new GR sport

nomenclature models to have some motorsports

enthusiast kind of feeling.

We drove one recently and we liked it.

It's still an SUV that is trying to be a sports car,

but any SUV that has performance parts on it

will always be inherently an SUV.

Yes, that will always be its problem.

But that's okay.

This has a nice EV range.

This has good power and it's got all the latest Toyota tech.

It's modern.

I think it's great looking.

I think this could be a consideration for you

and easily 64K and under I think you should have done.

All three of these.

I'm worried about these being 50 grand new,

but what I'm really curious about is I'm very curious

about putting this with some other performance SUVs

and having a real comparison.

That's coming up on our short list for 2026.

Yeah, I would like to do that.

So you've got three choices, Cayenne's way up there,

but you can't really ignore the GR sport nomenclature

because it's got a lot of power and it's got that EV range.

If you're going for a Cayenne of the similar kind of specs,

I don't know that you can get the same plug-in range

as the RAV4.

Because yours does work.

You can't.

Mine does 14 in best conditions.

Now, the newer ones will do more than that,

but where is the breakover?

Because again, I have a second gen,

not a third gen Cayenne, so there's that as well.

I'm going to jump right in as well.

And that is, I see your Kia Stinger.

I want to bring that up real quick

and talk about the Kia Stinger.

I think that the Kia Stinger is more interesting here

than the Audi S5.

I agree.

Now, what I wonder about the Kia Stinger

is what I don't know in all of these scenarios

is how big is this dog crate?

It's a great looking car.

Does the dog crate fit in the Kia Stinger?

I assume it will.

That creates some options there,

but I think the Kia Stinger is an interesting option.

We could, a part of me wants to suggest a Panamera,

but I think the slope of it is going to be too much

for the dog crate.

Backslap.

Yes, backslap.

I think the Kia Stinger is an interesting option,

but again, you're going to have to shop with the dog crate.

That's key here.

You mentioned the Durango, but the Durango to get

is the Hellcat Durango.

Come on now, you have, seriously,

the market for these dogs like stop, accelerate.

Seriously, you want to hear dog barf.

Actually, you know, here's the thing.

Nothing wakes you up out of a dead sleep

and gets you moving faster than the sound of a dog about to puke.

That is the world's greatest alarm.

I am telling you, you could go from dead sleep

to the most awake you've ever been

with the initial sound of the dog just go it.

I think something's happened.

It's the worst ever.

I say that as a multi-dog owner.

Anyway, no, but the Hellcat Durango, okay,

this is an old car, but in Hellcat form it's pretty compelling

and the market for these starts at 60 for used ones.

You can get them as high as a hundred

that are close to brand new, but starts at 60.

If we're talking 50 grand is where you want to be

plus the price of two carbon mountain bikes,

welcome to Hellcat Durango land.

I think that you're talking used, yeah?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is there still on sale?

There's still on sale for around 100 grand,

but I'm saying you can go get them right now used

starting at about $60,000 for a Hellcat Durango.

That is a lot of performance.

That's a lot of car.

It's really compelling.

It's got a lot of personality

because you already have a Stellantis product

that you like.

I really like this for you.

Okay, so throw out the EV range.

I mean, screw that when you can.

When Hellcat Durango gets.

I'm gonna also bring up the Stelvio.

My favorite Stelvio picture,

the Alpha-Romeo Stelvio, at the Stelvio pass,

the Stelvio QV.

Yeah, that's good.

I think this is compelling because this is,

you're talking about the war-torn Michigan streets.

This is still in SUV.

It this is all-wheel drive power that you get

from the Julia Quadrofolio, I like so much,

but now it's all-wheel drive.

That same really compelling engine.

You don't see these everywhere.

This is a really interesting alt for you.

I really like this.

Of course, the Cayenne is a contender.

You already brought it up.

But I think the Stelvio, the thing about the Stelvio

is that it is the alt here.

It is the one you're not gonna see as many of.

It's gonna be harder to find.

But I really do like the Stelvio.

You brought up the Cayenne.

I, as a Cayenne owner,

I'll just nod in agreement and we'll move on

to a couple of wild cars I have for you.

There's the Ram TRX.

Anything with the,

how can I engineer it?

Yes, with the Ram TRX.

Because look, you have a gladiator.

Okay, what is the step up from a gladiator?

You really want to get bad fuel mileage.

Seriously, if you haven't gotten enough bad gas mileage,

let me walk you right over here to the Ram TRX.

So that's an option.

But then how about a Rivian R1S?

I thought about this a lot.

Interesting.

Because you haven't told us like big road trips and stuff.

You said you want your girlfriend

to ask about your life insurance because it's so fast.

If you get a quad motor, one of these,

you're running sports car times.

How about almost triple your horsepower limit?

This is what, close to 900.

It's 850.

Ridiculous how much power this thing has.

So the Rivian R1S quad motor,

but here's the thing,

even the dual motor is quick.

Yeah, the dual motor.

This has tons of space.

They're very unique.

You can find them out there.

And the reality is because of what they are,

the used prices are in your benefit and terrible for resale.

$60,000, go find a Rivian R1S.

Just go find one.

I mean, these are $100,000 vehicles.

But with 50 to 60 grand in your pocket,

you can go Rivian shopping right now.

It's a wild card because you didn't bring up EVs.

But what you're wanting is completely accomplished here.

The worst roads on the worst day in Michigan.

Fine.

You've got liftable suspension if it gets really war torn.

There's going to be plenty of space for the dog either

in the full hatch of the back

or possibly in the back seat,

depending tons of power.

It feels luxurious.

We have a review of one of these coming up

in a comparison pretty soon.

And if for whatever reason you don't want the full back,

you can stay in gladiator style

and go electric and get the R1T.

Yeah.

So I'm in wild card land,

but I really think you should consider the Rivians.

So maybe leave the EV thing to Rivian

not so much to Lantis

because they haven't quite figured it out yet.

Not so much.

But in any of these,

you don't want dog barf in any of these,

especially the Rivian,

probably you don't want that in the back

like you don't want turducken juice

in the back of your Range Rover

because you'll never get the stank out.

So just know that.

Just check that in the back of your mind.

Tell him you want to motivate somebody

to do something the sound of a dog about the puke.

We'll motivate anybody to be like,

yes sir, I am paying attention.

What is it you need?

You know, in that last podcast

we were talking about SEMA builds,

I came up with a Rivian

and somebody doing something with the Rivian

and dropping a Hellcat engine in an R1S quad motor.

I mean, obviously all the motors,

okay, just plot the body on a, you know, a chassis on it.

Sure.

Body on frame.

There you go.

Rivian, take out the front.

Take out the front, put an LS motor in it.

I think it'd be awesome.

Yeah, well, I wasn't rich rebuilds on YouTube

that did that with a Tesla put a,

yeah, now it's time for the Rivian.

May as well for the Rivian.

There we go.

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Onto car debate number two from Gage also in Michigan.

He's out in Western Michigan.

He's a college student studying to be an automotive technician

but he has an issue.

Gage, thanks for writing, really appreciate it.

His 2014 Buick Regal Turbo has 140,000 miles on the clock

and he's starting to have transmission foibles.

If you drain the transmission fluid

and it is chocolate brown, it is time for a new transmission.

He probably knows that but here,

but I want to stop here real quick and say Gage,

that is an awesome car.

That Turbo Buick Regal was underappreciated.

It is an Opel from the Dynamics

and the handling quality and the interior materials.

It was so much better than it deserved to be

or you expected it to be when you got in it.

We have an old review of it at this point,

probably decade old at this point.

But that was a genuinely really good car to drive.

That was the Regal GS, yeah, the Turbo.

Like as soon as Jim gets it right,

like finally we did it, discontinued.

Yes, then they kill it.

So anyway, that's honestly kudos to you

for having one of those cars.

That is an excellent car actually.

Gage looked at a rebuilt transmission

with around 64,000 miles on it

and it was just under 1500 bucks

and labor would probably be close to that.

So all in Gage is estimating $3,000.

So should he get a newly refurbished transmission

for the car and keep driving it

or is it time for something completely different?

He says the Buick is in good condition,

otherwise, other than the little things

that would be easy to fix.

Although it doesn't seem like a driver's car

actually has some driving chops.

He says, yeah, we agree.

Absolutely.

Good power, great steering compared to the new cars

that he's driven lately.

He says a little loose in the body roll

but the control is decent.

He says the suspension is great over the rough Michigan roads

that he lives by.

The only real issue that he has with it

is it's really heavy for what it is.

Sure, yeah.

Same size wheelbase, only five inches longer

than a modern A Civic, but weighs about 3,700 pounds.

His is the front wheel drive model.

So that's about 500 pounds more than a fully loaded

Civic hybrid.

Now he's taking the car on track.

He says, if done right, you can use the weight

to slide around corners, but it's still obese.

Now hang on a second, Gage.

I don't disagree with anything you said about that car.

It's actually a great car.

I think it is a little on the heavy side.

I think when we originally drove it, we had that question.

But what's crazy is what 10 years have done to car weights?

Cause 3,700 pounds if you're shopping for a car right now

is about average.

That's about what everybody weighs.

And so many sports cars weigh more than your car.

That's what's not.

Anyway, Gage says if he got a different car

it would have to be an automatic

because his parents cannot operate manuals.

They need to be able to drive whatever car

that he's got as long as he's living with them.

Understood.

It would have to be reliable

because he doesn't want to be the mechanic

on the side of the road fixing his own car.

And not a customer's vehicle.

Not at work because he's fixing his own car

is a bad combination.

That's a bad, bad yeah.

He says he'd love it if it had paddles

for extra engagement behind the wheel.

His parents don't want him to have a rear-wheel drive vehicle yet

so that's unfortunately off the table

until he's living on his own.

Okay.

He would also love heated seats to endure the winter months.

He also says no to trucks and SUVs

because he likes sedans, hatches and wagons better.

If he had his preference, he'd have a hatch

but it needs to have some level of power

because he likes rocketing off the line

and out of his favorite back-road corners.

Budget is about 10 to $15,000

depending on what he could get out of the Buick

when he sells it.

I think you should sell it.

I mean, just by virtue of you writing to us,

the transmission issues, I think you're moving on

from the Buick already.

I think that's fair.

It could be a great learning experience

but then I feel like you'd feel obligated

to keep it longer than you really should

once you replace the transmission yourself.

Probably true.

I mean, once he gets that done, it's gonna be a good one.

I've got so much money in this now.

I should keep it and he probably shouldn't.

I hear that.

I do have choices for you.

Okay.

Gage, I'm jumping in here with first choice.

2014 Acura TL.

This has power, my friend.

The V6 has 280 horsepower.

Let's see here.

It's got the, you can find the technology package.

Heated seats, paddle shift, front wheel drive

and that great 3.5 liter V6

and super handling all wheel drive.

This would be a great luxury car.

Sure, yeah, yeah.

And they all, all the ones that I found on Autotempest

are all 10 to $15,000 depending on the miles,

depending on the year that is,

I think, something you should consider.

But I thought, what else comes with that great V6 from Honda?

And that is the Accord Coupe.

A little bit sportier, but it keeps you

in the Accord Camry kind of sedan land

that isn't too far out there, but it's the coupe

and we always really liked these.

It was sort of the missing element, the sleeper thing

and I wish Honda still built the Accord Coupe

but of course they've got better cars in the Civic now.

But this also 2017, so it moves you a little bit newer car.

The miles are still about the same,

depending 2016, 2017 is what I'm recommending.

In this car, it's that 3.5 liter V6

making 278 horsepower, 252 pound feet of torque.

They're rare, they're good looking, check this out.

The rear view, that's a sharp looking car.

It is a pretty good looking car.

It says a little bit sporty, but it adheres to all

of your requirements that you need.

Great power, but still front wheel drive, automatic,

fun to drive, paddles, heated seats and it's a Honda.

Things gonna run and you don't want to have

to be the mechanic constantly fixing your own car.

Welcome to a Honda Accord Coupe, my friend.

That is what I think you should get

and I think we're done there.

Okay, all right, I like that.

That's really good.

I had a similar dilemma because I started

with a car and I'm done and then I thought,

you know what, I should do better for Gage than that.

I'm gonna go more than one car.

So I'm gonna jump in with my,

this is the only car to look at.

The Hyundai Veloster Inn.

Are those 10 to 15,000?

Hang on, hang on, power, DCT, super fun to drive,

front wheel drive, hatch.

It's everything except they start at 20.

Okay, so if they were 10 to 15,000 dollars,

I was about to leave.

Let me get up and go buy one.

You might find a few that are like 18 or whatever

but the reality is you're gonna spend close to 20 grand

and Gage, you haven't been specific enough.

I don't know if you can but I think this is your answer.

Your full stop answer is the Veloster Inn DCT.

These are not hanging on to their value very well.

They are great to drive.

It's the same driveline as they're still making

the Alontera Inn.

So it's not like this was a one off

and they're not making parts for it anymore.

I think this is your answer.

I just don't know if you can swing it.

And so that's why I moved on.

Cause I was like, that is my sniper shot

and I'd love to just walk away.

Yes.

But I think I'm above the budget.

So that's why, if you can, yeah.

Forget everything I just said and just go buy one of these.

Just forget it all.

You see where my head was at?

I was like, that's the answer and it's just a little above

where he wants to be, I think.

So I'm gonna have to walk away.

So I have other options.

Like the third gen Mini Cooper.

This is the one starting at 2014.

Okay, now I have the, I have the first gen,

that's the one that I had spot the Mini was a first gen,

the R53, right?

And that in 2006.

The second gen, you notice this is 2014,

which means 07 to 2013.

Don't do that.

Those are, we're not reliable.

They just, they have consistent problems.

But starting here in 2014, they kind of get sorted.

And these with your budget are out there.

Are they really going to look hard?

But, but 15, around 15 or so,

find yourself a Mini Cooper S.

The parts are available.

They're known to be fairly reliable.

There's a few known issues,

but compared to the two gen's prior,

especially the second gen, this is the reliable one.

And also it's right before they got ugly.

I mean, sorry, but this one goes to 2024.

And now they've just got, they've just got ugly,

wiped on top of all of them.

The whole mini lineup, it's terrible.

So last time I drove one of these,

we had our friend Josh came down from Seattle

and we had him on one of our YouTube road trips.

And I drove it.

And it was awesome.

It's just really good.

I don't think it's not as chuckable

as the original R53 smaller ones,

but still really along the mini ethos.

So this is my option for you there.

While I'm here, howdy S3.

These are 10 to $15,000?

If you go far enough back.

He's got a 2014 regal, okay?

2016, 2018, that range.

This is, that's how cheap these are.

These are under 20.

What kind of months are we talking under 20?

I mean, over 60,000, 60 to 120.

That's the right time.

That's what I'm talking about.

Which one are you shopping after shop nationwide?

The reality is this is going to be more luxurious,

more fun, and feel more premium than your regal.

So I think this is a real option.

The interesting thing about the A class,

or this S in this case,

but the small, the three, if you will, from outie,

is they have so many GTI parts,

but they don't maintain their value like the GTIs.

The GTIs kind of have this slow descent,

and the threes and the outies just drop off a cliff.

There's just apparently no second buyer.

So, interesting.

S3s are a possibility,

but then trying to get you into something

where I was thinking about a little less hair on fire,

probably a little more reliable.

What about a Mazda 3?

That's great.

Now I don't know how new you're going to be able to get,

but Mazda 3s have always been really good to drive,

really reliable.

There's tons of them out there

because they sell them like crazy.

If you can get this current body style wagon,

this is a really solid car.

I like these the best.

If any of the Mazda 3s, the hatches,

I like these the best.

And if you can get all the way up

into the current turbo model,

it's all-wheel drive bonus.

I don't know if you can for your budget.

I don't think so, but Mazda 3 in any form is worthwhile,

but I am just going to go right back and say it,

push for the Veloster.

Holy cow, if you could get a Veloster in,

we said it all.

I think that is the answer,

but we'll see where you go, man,

but I hope that helps.

Gage, please write to us when you do buy

because everybody looks at mechanics cars.

Everybody, whatever your mechanic drives,

it either gives you confidence in like,

oh, I could have one of those.

Look, if you just keep it well maintained,

it runs forever.

My mechanic has one, so it must be good.

A mechanic chose one.

True, yeah.

That carries a lot of weight.

So you've got very careful decision-making to do here.

Because again, what you drive, that's a projection.

People are watching what you are doing.

So I think it's very interesting,

but obviously you still have to get something

that meets all your requirements

and you can obviously have multiple cars throughout your life.

So wishing you all the best with your hunt,

please let us know what you get.

And for all of you watching, listening,

write to us every day, drive a TV at gmail.com,

topic Tuesdays, car conclusions, savage geese, videos.

I love it all.

Thanks for watching.

Thanks for watching their stuff as well.

I want to send a real comment out here real quickly.

And that is we touched on a little bit in that interview.

And I want to touch on it again here.

YouTube, I know gives this impression

of just firehousing money at those of us

that work hard to be creators.

And I'm thankful for the platform.

And thank you guys for watching podcasts like this

and video comparisons like we do and like they do.

But the reality is across, we didn't get into this topic

because I do would be a black hole.

The last 18 months, everyone we know on YouTube

in the space of cars and everything else,

everyone is down.

Your ship is down, money is down,

and we are thankful to you guys

to be our audience and to pass it on.

But remember, you can hype us.

It's a whole thing you can do on the phone.

Some of you are doing it, but thank you for hyping us.

And actually what helps the hyping

is not even the podcast, it's the actual comparison videos.

But I just want to thank all of you

that are with us over time.

Those of you that are patrons that is hugely helpful.

And we love that community of our patrons

that are on also our discord

and they get early access to various things,

including all of our trips, early access from our patrons.

But I want you guys to know that these sponsors

that we align with and we talk about for you guys,

we curate that massively.

We get approached by so many brands that we turn down

because we want to respect you guys.

But it's those sponsors that keep us alive.

It's not the YouTube income.

YouTube income is helpful, please don't get me wrong.

But it's the sponsorships that move this forward

and you guys as our audience

are the reasons the sponsors are here.

So I want you guys to understand that ecosystem.

It's not just us, it's also savage geese.

It's whoever you like on YouTube

has felt this crunch this year.

And I want you guys to just know that's out there

and we thank, we're thankful for you.

We appreciate you as viewers

and we are very thankful to all of our sponsors

because that's just massive.

It keeps us alive.

It's great.

And that helps us keep looking forward to the next

which we do until next time.

Cheers everybody.

Savage Geese, The Truck-Jeep Love Child, What Your Mechanic Buys | Episode 1,021

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