SSC Tuatara Review; No More Regs; Merc EVs
Annotations will appear as you listen
0:00
101:26
Car
SSC Tuatara
The SSC Tuatara is a super-fast sports car made by a company called SSC. It's designed to be one of the fastest cars in the world.
Term
fuel economy standards
Fuel economy standards are rules that tell car manufacturers how much gas their cars should use. These rules help make cars more efficient and better for the environment.
Car
Mercedes-Benz E55
The Mercedes-Benz E55 is a fast and luxurious car from the E-Class lineup, known for having a powerful engine that makes it exciting to drive.
Concept
hyper cars
Hyper cars are some of the fastest and most advanced cars in the world. They are very expensive and use the latest technology to go really fast.
Term
turbocharging
Turbocharging is a way to make an engine more powerful by forcing extra air into it. This lets the engine burn more fuel and produce more power without being bigger.
Term
direct injection
Direct injection is a way of getting fuel into an engine. Instead of mixing it with air before it goes in, the fuel goes straight into the engine, which can help it run better and use less gas.
Brand
Volkswagen
Volkswagen is a well-known car company from Germany that makes many popular cars. They have been in trouble before for not following environmental rules about car emissions.
Term
catalytic exhaust
A catalytic exhaust helps clean the air by changing harmful gases from the car's engine into safer ones before they come out of the exhaust pipe.
Term
horsepower
Horsepower tells you how powerful a car's engine is. More horsepower usually means the car can go faster or accelerate quicker.
Term
catalytic converter
A catalytic converter is a part of a car that helps clean up the exhaust gases before they leave the vehicle. It makes the car less polluting by changing harmful gases into safer ones.
Car
Ram TRX
Term
fuel crisis
The fuel crisis was a time in the 1970s when there was not enough gas, and prices went up a lot. This made people want smaller cars that used less gas.
Brand
Honda
Honda is a car company from Japan that makes cars known for being reliable and good on gas. They became popular when people wanted smaller cars during the fuel crisis.
Company
Shelby Supercars
Shelby Supercars is a company that makes very fast cars. They are famous for creating a car that was the fastest in the world for a time.
Car
SSC Ultimate Aero
The SSC Ultimate Aero is a very fast sports car made by Shelby Supercars. It was once the fastest car in the world, beating another famous car called the Bugatti Veyron.
Car
Bugatti Veyron
The Bugatti Veyron is a very expensive and fast car made by Bugatti. It was one of the fastest cars in the world and is known for its luxury and power.
Term
carbon tub
A carbon tub is a strong and lightweight frame made from a special material called carbon fiber. It helps cars go faster and handle better because it doesn't weigh much.
Company
Nelson Racing
Nelson Racing is a company that makes very powerful engines for fast cars. They are known for their quality and performance, especially in racing.
Part
carbon fiber
Carbon fiber is a strong and light material used in cars to make them faster and more efficient.
Company
Dallara
Dallara is a company from Italy that makes parts for race cars, especially using a lightweight material called carbon fiber.
Car
Venom F5
The Venom F5 is a super-fast car made by Hennessey. It's built to go really fast and has a lot of power.
Car
Koenigsegg CCR
The Koenigsegg CCR is a super-fast car that is very rare and expensive. It's made for people who want the ultimate in speed and performance.
Car
Koenigsegg CCXR
Term
drag race
In a drag race, two cars start from a stop and try to be the first to cross a finish line a short distance away. It's all about who can go the fastest in a straight line.
Term
oil temperature sensor
An oil temperature sensor checks how hot the engine oil is. This helps ensure the engine runs well and doesn't overheat.
Car
Lamborghini Kuntosh
The Lamborghini Countach is a famous sports car that looks really cool and goes fast. It needs time to warm up before it's ready to drive well.
Car
Porsche 911
The Porsche 911 is a famous sports car that many people admire for its unique shape and fast speed. It's been around for a long time and is often talked about because it's considered one of the best sports cars ever made.
Term
single clutch seven speed
A single clutch seven-speed transmission is a type of gearbox that can change gears quickly, but it might not be as smooth as other types. It uses one clutch to do this instead of two, which can make it faster but also a bit rougher when driving slowly.
Car
Chevrolet Corvette
The Chevrolet Corvette is a well-known sports car from America that many people love for its speed and cool looks. It's often compared to other high-end cars because it offers great performance at a relatively lower price.
Company
Pagani
Pagani is a brand that makes very fancy and expensive sports cars. They are known for their unique and artistic designs, often using lightweight materials.
Term
height adjustable
Height adjustable means you can change how high or low the car sits. This can help with how the car handles or just make it look different.
Car
Bentley GT Speed
The Bentley GT Speed is a very fancy and fast car. It's designed to be luxurious while also being able to go really fast.
Car
Porsche Panamera
Car
Porsche 911 Turbo S
The Porsche Panamera Turbo S is a fancy car that's really fast and comfortable. It's made for people who want a luxury experience while driving quickly.
Car
Lamborghini Urus
The Lamborghini Urus is a fancy SUV that is super fast and stylish. It's made by Lamborghini, a brand known for sports cars, and it's popular among people who want luxury and speed in an SUV.
Company
Brembo
Brembo is a company that makes really good brakes for cars. They are popular in fast cars because they help them stop quickly and safely.
Term
brakes
Brakes help cars slow down or stop. Bigger brakes are used in fast cars to handle the heat and pressure when stopping quickly.
Term
steering ratio
Steering ratio is how much you have to turn the steering wheel to make the car's wheels turn. A quick ratio means the wheels turn a lot with just a little turn of the wheel, which can make the car feel jumpy.
Car
Mclaren 570S
The McLaren 570S is a super-fast sports car that is really light, which helps it handle well on the road. It's popular among car enthusiasts who love driving and racing.
Car
Porsche 911 GT3
The Porsche 911 GT3 is a super-fast version of the 911 sports car, built for people who love racing and driving on tracks. It has special features that make it handle better and go even faster than the regular 911.
Car
Ford Mustang
Car
Shelby Cobra
The Shelby Cobra is a classic sports car that mixes British style with American power. It's famous for being very fast and is loved by car collectors and racing fans.
Car
BMW M5
The BMW M5 is a fancy car that can go really fast while still being comfortable to drive every day. It's popular because it combines luxury with sports car performance.
Car
Audi 100
The Audi 100 is an older luxury car that helped make Audi a well-known brand. It's remembered for its good quality and stylish design.
Car
Bmw M
The BMW M Coupe (E36) is a special version of a BMW that is known for being fast and having a unique look. It's a favorite among car collectors because it's not very common.
Car
BMW M3
Car
BMW M4
The BMW M4 is a sporty two-door car that is fun to drive and looks great. It's similar to the M3 but has a different body style, making it popular with people who like fast cars.
Car
Ford Thunderbird
The Ford Thunderbird is an old American car that was made to be stylish and comfortable. It's remembered for its unique design and is popular among classic car fans.
Car
Chevrolet Camaro
The Chevrolet Camaro is a cool-looking American car that is known for being fast and powerful. It's a favorite among people who love muscle cars and racing.
Car
Pontiac Firebird
The Pontiac Firebird is an old American muscle car that many people remember for its speed and cool looks. It's a favorite among car collectors and fans of classic cars.
Car
Suzuki X90
The Suzuki X-90 is a small SUV that has a funny look and is not very common. It's remembered for being different from other cars and is liked by some for its unique style.
Car
Cadillac El Dorado
The Cadillac El Dorado is an old luxury car that is known for being very comfortable and stylish. It's a favorite among people who appreciate classic American cars.
Car
Hyundai Ionic 5
The Hyundai Ioniq 5 is a new electric SUV that looks really modern and has lots of cool technology. It's popular because it's eco-friendly and offers a comfortable ride.
Car
Toyota Supra
The Toyota Supra is a popular sports car that many people love for its speed and style. It's known for being easy to modify and make even faster, which is why it's talked about a lot.
Car
BMW M2
The BMW M2 is a small, fast car that is really fun to drive. It's designed for people who love sporty cars and want something that feels exciting on the road.
Car
Rivian R1T
The Rivian R1T is a new electric truck that can go off-road and has lots of cool features. It's designed for people who want to use a truck for adventures while being environmentally friendly.
Car
Land Rover Range Rover
The Land Rover Range Rover is a fancy SUV that can drive on tough roads and also looks great in the city. It's popular for people who want a comfortable ride with the ability to go off-road.
Car
BMW E39
The BMW 5 Series is a nice car that is comfortable to drive and has lots of features. It's popular among people who want a luxury car that is also practical for daily use.
Car
Ford Mustang GT
The Ford Mustang GT is a powerful version of the Mustang sports car that many people love for its speed and classic look. It's a great choice for anyone who wants a fun car to drive.
LIVE
What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Smogentire Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you, as always, by off the record. You gotta have off the record. It's like saying you gotta have a lawyer, but it's saying that you're gonna have a lawyer for everywhere in the country. That's what's important, right? You have the right to defend yourself if you're accused of a moving violation, a big one or a small one. And in that case, you're not gonna do as good of a job.
As a qualified attorney, but where do you get one? That's where off the record comes in. Almost everywhere in the entire United States. If you get pulled over, you can go to offtherecord.com slash TST. And rather than pleading guilty to that moving violation, you can send it off the record. They'll set you up with an attorney who will fight that ticket, get those points off your record, maybe beat the thing entirely. And that way, you won't have increased insurance premiums,
you won't have potentially an issue with your employment if you drive for a living and on and on. Don't plead guilty, get off the record. Go to offtherecord.com slash TST to get 10% off all legal services booked through off the record, right? Great.
All right, guys, on this episode of the podcast, Zach and I have gone to Washington to review the SSC Twattara. Plus, my Myers-Manks has done. Mercedes has stopped selling EVs in California. And SEMA, the entire aftermarket and all the manufacturers are basically jumping for joy because America has decided that we aren't going to have fuel economy standards anymore.
Yay, it's the smoking tire podcast. Let's go.
I have been thinking about death and loneliness, like a little too much, a little too much. For someone who isn't likely to die and isn't particularly lonely, I've been having thoughts. And I think it's triggered by stuff.
It's triggered by seeing some fucking abandoned dog on Instagram or something. Oh, one of those you're out for them. Okay.
Well, because if you like, when they, like, when you get a, when you watch like pet videos, you get fed all the pet videos. And many of them are cute. And some of them have like happy endings, like they find a dog that's like about to die and save it.
But still, I'm spending too much time thinking about the person that left the dog to die. You know, that kind of thing. Yeah.
And it's like, that's just mixed in with my pet enthusiasm general. And it's, it's been affecting me. It has been affecting me.
My friend says that's because I'm becoming more emotionally mature and I should be happy that I'm being affected by that.
And I'm like, yeah, but like, it sucks.
Is that what that means? Oh, good. I'm emotionally maturing. I'm just, that's just mixed beats. I'm sad all the time now like more. Yeah, I don't know.
He's like, you know, you know, you need to learn to really appreciate things like that. It's like, you know, we've been doing therapy for like almost like 20 years.
Like you've actually finally fed back. This is a call of breaks. Something that we've done is actually sunk in. Yeah.
It's like the sign felt thing when he's like, what is this salty discharge when he's feeling emotions?
Oh, I went to a concert last week and I like started to well up during it and I was like, what is happening? Yeah, yeah.
So I was just and it was fantastic performance. Yeah. What is this salty discharge?
I think it's fucking lefty queer. Yeah.
Speaking of which, speaking of which, this one's funny. Was this like, I think it was just before we went to Texas and talked about this.
Before we went to Texas, Zach joked about a study that was done.
The Kato Institute. The Kato Institute, which can be viewed at freedom in the 50 states.org.
And Texas at Zach had joked that Texas was, I believe, dead last 50 out of 50 in personal freedom.
Personal freedom. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, a couple of angry people suggested that we go check our lib selves.
And that California was 48 out of 50 in the same freedom study.
And I was like, well, that's odd. Is that right? So that we just went back and looked.
And it's in, you have to, I'm not saying that we read the chart wrong or that this person read the chart wrong.
And I don't remember the exact wording that you used the time, but I'm pretty sure you did say personal freedom.
I think I did and this person who commented is correct.
I had highlighted personal freedom because I was looking at things like, you know, marijuana,
like things that they've been banning recently in Texas. And I was like, oh, let's look at the personal
freedoms, but went to be fair to the commenter when you go to the economic freedom.
Then California is 48 and Texas is six.
But if you look at the economic freedom, if you just stay on that chart, basically,
they were saying, but look at this other completely different chart where California is at the bottom.
Like you were looking at one chart and they were saying, well, you're, you're selectively because,
because California, you said Texas is last 50th, but California is 48th, but that's on a different chart.
Well, I mean, to be fair to them, I did not, I did not mean to imply, like I wasn't trying to obscure data.
Like I focus on that part of it. And that's right. Look at that. So they get where they're coming from.
Economic freedom typically implies higher state taxes, building restrictions and stuff.
As you can see, the bottom of the list is New York, Oregon,
Washington, and California. Like those are places that have those things, right?
And so yeah, okay, but so if you look at overall, the overall freedom, which I guess chooses to
wait everything in a certain way. Yeah, I don't know how it waits it, but as you see, like California
remains 48th. So my guess is that this study somehow waits economic freedom more harshly than
personal freedom, right? I mean, it mathematically it must. It has to. If California goes from,
what was it? 7th? No, sorry. 6th. 11th? Yeah. If it's 11th, it's 48. If those were evenly weighted,
then the middle would be like 27 or something like that. But it stays 48th. So economic freedom is
so it created this particular study clearly waits economic freedom over personal freedom.
I, my values, I don't know about your values, but my values and granted it's as someone who's
never really grown up with with money struggles in that way, I value personal freedom over economic
freedom. I'd rather pay higher taxes and I'd rather personally deal with the hard, I don't
have a problem with harsh building codes. Someone who builds their problems with the California
building code process, but it's not that it's hard to build. That's not like my problem with it.
And I, I prefer personal freedoms where individuals are left alone and not fucking
person. You know, they also might be waiting, though, is stuff like, like business incentive,
you know, the film industry has basically left Los Angeles. Sure. Because a lot of other
states provide amazing tax breaks or kickbacks and kickbacks, like the legal kind, you know, whatever
in California doesn't. Yeah, California sucks that way. Right. So there's like, there's so many
industries that it's probably a lot easier to run in in other states, the tuning industry,
car tuning industry, a lot of them are moving out. Oh my god, I saw the stories this morning. I
wrote it down. One of the stories this morning is like, SEMA is having like an eyes wide shut style
orgy right now with because fucking because the fuel economy regulations have been killed. Like,
we, we, we have no more images. We don't have laws anymore. Like crimes are like legal now.
Some of them. Have you seen the, do you watch, you watch coffee zilla occasionally? I like,
I like coffee zilla. Have you seen his merch? I ordered a t-shirt. His merch, his t-shirts just say
crime is legal. Oh, yeah, which is, which is not an endorsement, by the way. That's just like
this is a guy who does deep dives on crypto scams and rug polls and influencer scams and like
just, just people who take advantage of other people using the digital economy. That's this guy's
entire stick and his merch, his conclusion is that crime is legal. That's how little these people
get in trouble for doing this kind of shit. Yeah. And now fuel economy standards don't exist anymore.
Like, that's so crazy. Fuel economy standards brought us hyper cars. Well, they brought us
direct injection turbocharging huge power. Yeah, yeah. Like, like, dude, when they, when they said
you have to do make all these cars turbocharged, they all gained 250 horsepower like one model
year later. Yeah, that's a, yeah, that's a good point. I mean, sometimes constraints,
nurture innovation, you know, if something is totally unrestrained, people can be less creative.
They just think whatever I'm doing works fine. Yeah. And so it does that. And I understand
there's people on the other side who think that some of the requirements were getting too strict.
I mean, some of the, the deadline set for car companies may have actually been impossible,
but I think getting rid of the, the pendulum has swung too far. Yeah, yeah, no. I mean, even you and
I said the, the all EV mandate was never going to happen. They were going to get a headline while
they could and they were going to back pedal when they realized it was totally untenable. And
that's like a realistic thing to say, even if you think fuel economy standards are probably a
good thing to have. And even if like, I mean, dude, come on, like, don't you like to fucking breathe?
Like don't like even if you think, even if you're the kind of person who's going to modify your car
in a way that won't pass emissions, even if you are that kind of person, I'm not saying you're a
horrible person. I'm just saying like, even if you're willing to break the rule, do you really want
that rule to not exist? Like you, you know what I mean? I think for the automakers, you don't,
you want the automakers to be able to sell the dirty shit to like everybody. Right. Let me look
at Volkswagen. They will do whatever the fuck they can get away with. Right. And if you tell them they
can get away with anything, that's that. Yeah. That's what you'd like to do. Even if you like
tuning your fucking car, if you're someone who sells tunes, okay, fine, you don't want rules. But
if you're just a person and you've got a modified car, you can't possibly think that what you're
doing should be legal across the board. I think of that a lot when I see people that run a
catalyst exhaust and we beat this horse to death will be quick. Like Steve, I didn't explain.
The horse power you lose by just running a high-flow CAD versus a catalyst is negligible. Yeah.
Literally negligible. But I think this myth has perpetuated for a long time. The people need
this open, open pipe thing. And if you're behind them, it smells like you just know that everything
is just going up into the atmosphere. And the picture is from the 70s in many cities. And like
have shown like it's smoggy at this buildup. And I understand that large industries are
contributing a lot more mathematically to all of the greenhouse gas if you believe in that stuff.
If you don't, then you could probably skip this part. But like the city of Los Angeles was
choked with shit. A lot of that because of cars because that was the local source of his emissions.
The whole argument against like the whole argument people use is like if they want to run like a
any car with like dirty emissions. Look, and I'm not a fucking saint in this regard. I'm not saying
I am. But all of our arguments are always like it's just me. It's not everybody. What if it was
everybody. That's very funny. Now we're in 1972. Like you know, like that's what we don't want.
That nobody wants that even the fuck. This is like this is like adding lanes. It's like to highway.
No, you know, even if you want to drive. Like having effective public transport will clear the
highways of the people who don't want to drive but have no other choice. Leaving the people who do
want to drive. Like traffic will be better for you if you give a whole bunch of those people
another option that works that isn't a car. You don't need to force people out of there.
Sorry, how is that related to the emissions thing? Because like, wait, I have to back it up.
It's just like the understanding of an issue. Like it's if it's just,
I related two things in terms of like the way that groups think about stuff but now I'm struggling
to go back and connect them. Maybe I shouldn't bother. Maybe I should just move on. I think the point
was made. Okay, that's fine. It doesn't happen often but I did lose myself first. I mean, look,
my wife's flight was delayed six hours. I went to bed at two thirty so my brain is not running.
I think it's going to be interesting to see what the car companies do and like, you know,
they've put a lot of money into this tech and also something we've talked about a lot is,
you know, the administrations, if they change every four years, if you've done a bunch of R&D and
you've done a bunch of tooling and stuff, you're going to reverse course totally and then it changes
again. Maybe the administrations move faster than the development of a single vehicle. Well put.
So now this means the catalytic converter manufacturer business goes to zero for three years
or six if they just extend the terms like El Salvador. Then that might be one thing but I don't
know if they'll start pulling like turbos and direct injection out of engines because all of the
factories are designed to make engines like that, right? I mean, look, I don't think that overnight,
it's going to be, you know, we're not selling cats anymore. That's not what it's going to be but
what you may find is in a fairly short development cycle, the emissions of vehicles become less
of a priority and an independent study may find that while, you know, tailpipe emissions have been
dropping, starting in mid 2025, they stopped dropping. Like, that's what you're going to see. It's not,
it's not going to be like the whole, it's not going to turn in 1972 by Christmas, you know,
but like, bro, they're going to bring back the hellcat in like five fucking minutes. I was going to
say the TRX is back. I think they're going to use what they have in the pantry. So if they have
the tooling and they can spin it back up or just un, you know, open some boxes again, they totally
will. Yeah. And if they have moved on, like we talked to at 9.11ST launch, when I asked how come
it's limited to this stuff, they were like, well, some of the things we make for this, like the tooling
breaks down and yeah, at a certain point, you cannot make more things. Yeah, yeah. So if it's that
situation, I don't know if they'll make a new, you know, reorder a machine to then make this
thing that used to burn a fuck ton of gas. But we got TRX engines laying around and I'm like,
open that door for sure. Um, I just, I don't, I can't see how even as a car enthusiast, you know,
stopping the progression of efficiency in cars is a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. Commenters made a good
point that unless fuel prices go down significantly, most consumers are not going to be drawn towards
inefficient cars because everything's more expensive. Yeah. And inefficient cars tend to be
expensive because they have a lot of horsepower and they sell them for more money. So people aren't
going to go, Oh, I'm going to stretch to buy this thing that burns way more gas than my current
car. I mean, I would hope so, but, you know, people in America buy the biggest fucking fastest thing
they can afford a lot of the time. But I don't know. I will say maybe the consumer, maybe the free
market will sort this out and consumer preference will, uh, will be for smaller, more, more efficient
cars. But when has that, the last time that happened was when America was left totally flatfooted by
the fuel crisis in the 70s and people, they're small economy cars were total shit boxes and people
were like, maybe I'll try a Honda, maybe I'll try a Toyota. And that bitch ran for 400,000 miles
with just tires and oil. Yep. And they were like, Oh, shit. And like never went back and called American
cars, shit boxes for the rest of their lives. And a lot of American cars were shitty back then
because they got real lazy. They were so lazy. And that like the competition nurtured
innovation from the US manufacturer side. But, you know, who's, who's going to do it? Who's,
who's going to be the company that comes in and, and all of a sudden sells this car that people want?
The lightweight, fuel-efficient car that people theoretically want. Toyota, Toyota. Probably.
I think them. Still them, not somebody new. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think, I don't think Chevy's
going to do it. Because if they, if they're going to, they would. I think, I think to make to sell
the lightweight car from a company that doesn't do that, you need a step change in material use
or in the features that are included in cars. Everyone who buys things wants too many things in
there, cars to weigh X with some exceptions. And just real quick, national price of gas right now,
the average is $3.15 as of today. Is there, what's the line look like? Is there, do you have a line,
like a graph? Oh, I don't, I don't watch the national price because I'm not typically buying gas
all over, but okay, wait, hang on. What was that say? Current average, yesterday average,
week ago, month ago, year. Okay, so it is, so it's down by 30 cents from a year ago,
but it's been inching its way down from 31, 78 to 31, 51 from a month ago.
So down and dropping, diesel seems like it's up actually. There's a graph. Okay, so yeah,
where is that graph? That's the one year graph. One year is back there. Oh, so there's a really big
drop in August 5th of 24. And it basically 45 degree angle down to between August and the end of
the year. It really, it really took a steep drop and then it's been actually climbing a bit
since then. Yeah, slower with some peaks and stuff. Yeah, so it's, it's pretty far down from
its peaks, peaks, but what was the highest there? May of 22. It got up to five bucks for the,
for the national. Wow, that's pretty high. Yeah. Okay, speaking of burning a lot of gas,
we can talk about either the, the SSC or Mercedes has abandoning selling EVs in America.
They quietly stop selling electric cars in America. Sorry, Mercedes. Guys, we got to take a quick
break for today's sponsor, Rula. Listen, Rula, this one's about therapy, right? Therapy, mental
health therapy, talk therapy is been part of my entire adult life. I've been seeing a therapist
since I was in college. I've actually seen three different therapists over that 25 year period.
And here's, here's what's really interesting for me about therapy. It's really helped out.
It's really helped as my emotional intelligence. I feel it's helped me deal with, deal with my wife,
deal with my parents, deal with stress, deal with everything else that's going on.
But as I've had different careers and different employers, whether my health insurance covers
mental health care has been totally back and forth, which is crazy. It covers my physical health.
Why wouldn't it cover my mental health? And maybe you've found the same thing. Maybe your,
you've not been seeing a mental health professional because of insurance. Well, Rula is here and
make sure that your mental health is covered by insurances, right? Right. So how do you find one?
So all you have to do, right, is Rula's partner with over 100 insurance plans,
making the average co-pay just 15 bucks a session. We're talking about real therapy from licensed
professionals at a price that actually makes sense. And you think about it, your insurance benefits
should cover this, right? Already. Rula is not just affordable. The experience is tailored
around you. Other online therapy platforms might match you with the first available provider,
whether or not they're the right fit. Rula considers your goals, preferences, and background
to provide you a curated list of licensed in-network therapists who are actually aligned with what
you need. Because they know that finding the right therapist can make all the difference.
There's no wait list, no frustrating back and forth. Rula makes it easy to find a mental health
provider who is accepting new patients, appointments are available, and then Rula sticks with you
throughout your journey, checking in to make sure your care is helping you move forward. And then
there's that insurance thing in network covered care. That's super important. You pay as little as
15 bucks a person. Go to Rula.com slash tire to get started today. That's R-U-L-A.com slash tire
for quality therapy that's covered by insurance. And we are also brought to you today by
Delete Me. Delete Me makes it easy, quick, and safe to remove your personal data online at a time
when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everyone vulnerable. Data brokers
are out there making a profit off of your data. It's a commodity. Anyone on the web can buy your
private details, your address, your phone number, your employment records, things like that,
which can lead to phishing attempts, harassment, scams, etc. But now you can protect your privacy
with Delete Me. Data brokers are companies that literally buy your data from companies that
collect your data, and who collects your data, everybody. Social networks, Google, your shopping
history, Amazon, etc., etc. They collect your data. They sell it to data brokers for money.
And Delete Me comes in and scans all these data brokerage websites, finds the things that you
want deleted, gets them deleted. And it's not just a one-time thing. It's an ongoing service
every month. I get an email from Delete Me saying, here's what we found. Here's what we erased.
Here's what you need to be involved in because occasionally you have to hit some approvals yourself
when it finds stuff. But it's ongoing. It's not just one and done. I love Delete Me. Take control of
your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me. Now it's a special
discount for our listeners. Get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to joinDeleteMe.com slash
tire and use promo code tire at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to joinDeleteMe.com
slash tire and enter code tire at checkout. That's joinDeleteMe.com slash tire code tire. And now
back to the show. In fact, people didn't really like the EVs. People abandoned them too.
That's pretty much the whole story. They sort of just stopped selling EVs in America and didn't
didn't really announce it because why would they? And that's sort of really the entire story.
And based on what we just talked about, my guess is the supercharged five and a half liter engine
from the 2004 E55 is about to make a comeback. The EQ55 is coming in hot. I feel like Mercedes
is probably very excited when the EV mandate was taken away. They're like, oh, now we have
an excuse. Well, look, I mean, we've, as we said a million times, EV mandates benefit car
companies at the bottom end far more than they benefit once the top end because if they're,
if everything's an EV, like what is the difference between a Mercedes and a BMW anymore? I mean,
that's if your company's history is on precision crafting engines, boy, where you fucking host.
And yes, I understand that it being EVs would make economy cars more expensive as well. But I'm
talking about purely in terms of like refinement and perception and things like that and electric
Kia and electric Mercedes. If you close your eyes, you know, you close your eyes and ears and
someone drives you down the road, like not a whole lot of difference there, true? Yeah. Yeah.
So how about the complete opposite of that? Zach and I went to Washington, not Seattle, Washington,
the Eastern Washington, not East, Middle of Washington, Central, East, Southeast, Southeast,
Eastern Washington. You can just name the place. Richland. Richland, Washington, because everyone knows
where Richland Washington is. It was actually sort of like sort of like almost an oasis sort of town
along the Columbia River surrounded by desert, right? Like it was like actually kind of lush
in that one area by the river. And then and there's some wine and river boat and and water ski and
all that kind of stuff kind of kind of lovely actually. And it's a excuse me, the home of SSE,
Shelby supercars, unrelated to Carroll Shelby. And you probably know SSE for the reason that they
wish you didn't, which is that this is the company that had the fastest car in the world in 2007,
beat the Bugatti Veyron with the ultimate arrow. And then it took 10 years to develop their second
car and then had one of the craziest PR bongles of all time in a car history where they had a video
that claimed to say the car went 330 miles an hour. And and someone from their company came on
our show to talk about it to promote it, turned out to not be true. No one really thinks I don't
know. No one really thinks it was intentionally a scam. It was just like bad calibration. Yeah.
And then sort of a desire to believe in the instrumentation a little longer than they probably
should have. Yeah. Nevertheless, an enormous PR bongle that overshadowed the fact that the car
really does go like two hundred and ninety miles an hour. Yeah. They ran two ninety five in one
direction. And what shocked me the most in researching this is that they ran the 282 average
like four months after the bongle happened. And maybe I read about it when that was happened,
but like the PR damage from the big story overshadowed it forever. Yeah. You know, and then that's just
it's just an asterisk for them for a long time. It sucks. You know, and and and Jared Shelby,
you know, he really wants this car to go three hundred miles an hour. He believes it will go three
hundred miles an hour. It probably fucking will to be honest with you. You know, especially if they
had an error lesson, you know, it absolutely would go three hundred miles an hour. It's it's
more power than a Sharon. It's lighter. And it has a better coefficient of drag for driving in
a straight line. And it's already done two ninety five. And it was on what do you say it was like
on a three mile runway. Yeah. He ran in a room. He hit the shutdown. So he they had to like back
up and use fucking a few feet of the like return road to actually get it. And so if they had a
little more room, look, and and and you know, Zach and I are not here to apologize just to give
some context to the point that we went to Washington to actually drive this thing on the road. So it's
it's it's a carbon tub hypercar. It's two and a half million dollars. It's almost entirely built
it. Well, it is built entirely here in in Washington with almost entirely Washington sourced
source stuff where they where they can. And I'm pretty sure it's like over 90% American component
tree. I mean, engines made Nelson racing racing. Yeah, carbon. All their carbon stuff is made
in the Seattle area. There's a lot of aerospace there. But that was very cool to learn. It's not
shipped from Italy. Nothing wrong with that. But like Delara is they make carbon fiber for everyone.
Yeah, basically for like every car. So that was rad. Spension is like Penske brand. I don't know
who makes it. Yeah, in Ward, Peshrod, you know, Penske makes it. Oh, they manufacture it. Okay.
Yeah, that's that's it's like they it's like Daytona prototype level kind of stuff. It's the the
the engineering on it. It sort of resembles what like a Conexig CXXR kind of. Yeah, it's it's
sort of what those cars looked like and worked like, which makes sense because they started
development in this car in 2010. And it took them this long to get, you know, it took them until
2020 from 2010 to 2021 to get a production level car. They've sold a few of them. And so yeah,
it's it's 3,100 pounds wet. It's 1,750 horsepower on E85 or 1,300 horsepower on 91.
It has the seven speed sequential gearbox. It's the same one used in the Pagani Utopia.
F5 the Venom F5. It was also used in the older Conex. I go CCR or something. Yeah, CCXR.
Yeah, and you know, it's it's well, it's fucking crazy. I mean, it's real crazy. Yeah, it is.
There's not a so when they when you have a car like this with such horsepower,
the you can make it so it can creep around and you can make it so it can go really fast.
And the really hard part is this sort of in between. You know, it's like 50 percent throttle
up shifts and 50 percent break or coasty down shifts. Like that kind of stuff is incredibly
challenging to tune. And then to make a 1700 horsepower engine that won't over I mean, it was
over 90 degrees when we tested this thing. And there's different kinds of like stress tests.
There's like your track day. There's we as we were learning Jared was telling us doing one,
you know, 300 mile an hour pull. It's like 48 seconds on this engine.
Well, what he's explaining is when they did the run in Nevada, which is not a road.
Excuse me, not the runway run. So that they did a really long build up, which is very much like,
like, air lesson is an 11 mile track that Volkswagen uses and no one else can use. So they were
doing a similar approach. SSE was like long build up, get up to like 180 and then roll into it
and roll into it. And now with these runways, they have two and a half miles and it's more like a
drag race. You don't have to get on it. But to your point, that long roll up was now they're doing
60 seconds of like lots of throttle and a lot more heat build up. So they had to address those
types of cooling issues. That's so that's one challenge. When we're filming the car, it's actually
a different challenge. And one that like sometimes cars have problems with like it's short bursts
of acceleration combined with periods of idling and making U-turns and going into in and out of
reverse. If it's hot, the air conditioning might be on like full crank, stopping starting over
and over. It's a different type of harshness on a car. And one that like someone who's building a
car probably wouldn't take into account. It's funny because we've also done that people might be
laughing like of course a car can handle turning around and stuff. But you'd be surprised the number
of modified cars we've driven with far less horsepower than this, that sometimes struggle with
that stuff. With basic things like burst of speed, slow down, burst of speed, slow down all that
stuff. So I just want to provide that. Yeah, no, it's not entirely out of the ordinary for a car
to struggle with that. Particularly something where it's like this is a very boutique thing.
You would be forgiven if it didn't stay cool or the air conditioning didn't work. But like the
fact is, those things did actually work really good. Extremely well. We thought the oil temp
sensor was broken. I was like, there's no way the oil is under a hundred and they're like, yep,
that's right. And I was like, how? It's like it's hot. Look what we're doing. He's like,
it's just it's just an incredibly efficient system. He's like, it's designed to do runway racing
in the middle of the desert. Like doing this is not a problem. Yeah, he said that it takes an hour
of driving to get the oil to 160. Yeah, which is that's like my kuntosh. That's like what they told
me about my Lamborghini is like, like Donnie was like, yeah, yeah, you have to drive like I was like,
what is it? You know, what if I need to just, you know, get things moving and whatever. I was like,
he's like, yeah, 45 minutes to an hour. I was like, what? And for context, I remember this
specifically when we had the 911 T from flat six motor sports. Yeah, I drove it from my house
four miles, three miles to a grocery store. Mm-hmm. Went in the store. When we came out, the oil
was at about 165. And I was like, okay, now it's warmed up a little bit. But it took that long to
it. Sorry, took that short amount of time to get to that temperature. Yeah, a modern car can
do that quickly. I mean, this is a modern car. But like, this is it just has so much oil.
And so much cooling capacity that like, you know, whatever. So anyway, when you go full throttle
in this car, it is seriously violent. Yes. Among the most violent things I've ever driven,
um, it you, it does have traction, which is pretty amazing. It does actually once you're above
second gear, it has boost by gear. But if you're above second gear, it does put the power down
like pretty good actually. It is shocking. Yeah. But like, again, if you if you roll into third
and you do a three, four, five, like you hold the fuck on because what's there is now here and you
are approaching it at a speed you didn't expect. Yes. Um, and the sound is violent. The shifts
are violent. It's a single clutch seven speed. Yeah. Um, it basically power shifts. It's it yeah,
when you're slowing, when you're slowly cruising around, you can, you can say this at the speed
I'm saying it. Paddle clutch open clutch closed. That's how long it takes to do a shift.
Paddle clutch open clutch closed. Paddle clutch open clutch closed, which like,
that's shitty. That stinks. But when you're hugging on it and you shift within 1500 RPM to the
red line, uh, which is hard to be precise because it's going so fast. Yes. It, it just slams it as hard
as it can and it's fucking something. Well, there's a, there's a very small, not a pitch forward.
It's, uh, there's a pause in thrust, of course, because you don't have torque fill. And what is
this highlight the ability of torque filling if you want or something, but there's that little pause
and then when the clutch is slam shut, I mean, they slam shut and all of a sudden all the power
comes rushing out again and just hits you in the back. And in between those two things,
anything like fire comes out. A lot of fire comes out every shift fire comes out. Um, it's,
it's really, really, really violent. Um, I would, I would say that that that isn't experts only
level car. Yeah. Um, it is, it's not for fucking amateurs. It just, I mean, at two and a half
million dollars, of course, it's not for amateurs, but like, even by the standards of Pagani,
this is, this is like another level of, of violence. Now, it's not, I don't want to say it's
unrefined, but like the gearbox really does make it unrefined, but also,
from being honest, like the fit and finish, I mean, yeah, and it's not Pagani. It's a million dollars
less than a Pagani. And all million of those dollars go into built quality. Like, it's not this
sort of, it's not an ugly car at all. I think it's pretty clear. I mean, in fact, I think it's
generally an attractive car, but the, the, some of the details just are not there for this,
for seven figures. I agree with you. I agree with you. It's two thirds of the cost of the Pagani
and two thirds of the cost of a Sharon. And I think you said it very well. Like, there's a certain
amount of money that's required to develop hardware that does this. And this is much faster and more
powerful than a Pagani, but like, that's where the money went. This is literally the Corvette of
Pagani's. Yeah. Like, the actual Corvette is now, is now the, it's the Ferrari, the Corvette,
everyone sees what's happening now, right? You've, you took the four, the four XX series
and you value engineered it and made it even faster. That's the Corvette model. Always has been.
This is Corvette in a Pagani. It's not a bad thing is where it is, but like, where,
it's, but where, where does that sacrifice come from? Like, when we saw the bear tub,
the clear coat work on the bear tub was like, not fabulous. There was some little pittings.
And he said it was after it had been polished. Oh, really? Like, some of the areas where like,
the corner windows match up, like, a little bit, ah, little, it would, it would, I'd be okay with
it in a Morgan. I'm not okay with it at 200, two, two million dollars. I agree. There were places
where like two panels of carbon met, you know, there's a small gap. And the gap in some of
these was actually very even. I was impressed. Sorry. If you, you know, you run your finger along it.
The distance between the panels felt even, but if you look from the side, one was stepped up
slightly, you know, by like half a mill or something, which compared to Conex egg where they
match the weave and all that shit. Yeah. It's just, that's where those little touches show up.
Um, and, and, and the UI, like, like, it has these power hydraulic doors, which Jared
said that he, his opinion was that at this level, opening and closing your doors is an
uncouth gesture and a power is more luxurious. Now, one of the things when you're shooting a car
is you're in an out, in, in, out, in, out, open the door, close it over the door. And if you drive
this car once a month, okay, that might seem luxurious. If you're going in and out of this car
all the time, that's the power doors are far much more troubled than they're worth. Uh, that's true.
And there were a few times where they were properly. Yeah. So, which also, and then you just,
you open the door, you open the button, you open the door, you close the door and then you pull it
down. But, and also there were touchscreen window controls, which is, boy, we're there, which is
no good. I mean, it's very silly. It's because this member of this car, 2010, 2010. Yeah. So, like,
and, you know, I don't know, I don't remember what the original interior was in 2010. But by 2020,
fucking touchscreen, everything was all the rage, right? But now, now, now this, these people
want switches and knobs. I think, well, I think eight, yes, 100%. The, the interest has gone back
the other way. And, um, maybe they could pivot that. The other thing is, as we said before, about
OEMs, it's probably cheaper and simpler to have the more controls are in that screen. Yeah. Things
you have to make costs stay down, et cetera. But the window control and, you know, in my video,
there's a lot of in-car missing because I didn't know how to close the windows. That's on me for
not asking how. But there, it wasn't in, there was no like highlighted window thing or whatever.
You had to like tap. It's actually in a submen. It's a submen. So that's like a bad thing. And
the gauges look nice. They're just, they're from Aston Martin. They look pretty good. Um,
and the center screen, like, the graphics look nice and they're responsive. But I would like
a few more controls, hard controls. You know, I didn't actually have any issues with
how the screen worked. It actually, it responded. It took a freeze. It was fine. It just, uh, I want.
And, and the knobs that were there, the ones on the steering wheel for the, for the wiper and for
the headlights. Like that company can make a nice knob. Yeah. Like those were really nice to use.
Like, give me more of those. Give me solid click. Give me a bunch of them. Yeah. They're all right.
Yeah. Um, and I think overall the interior looked cool. Like you saw carbon. The, the seats were
pretty comfortable. The door cards are really nice. Yeah, ergonomically, it was like, it was
actually pretty nice. It's simple and they did a lot with what they had. I think they could just do a
tiny bit more to make it easier to use. Um, but so if Pagani is one side of the spectrum,
where the interior is so complicated, it's almost blinding. You know, Pagani is steampunk.
It is. It's Pagani is an exercise in how can I make this more. Yeah. Go sh and ridiculous,
which is cool. Like I, I love it. But like, that's what they're doing over there. This is a little,
this is more to the other side, where it's simple. Looks pretty nice. Um, does look exciting.
And you see the carbon, you go the cars made of this, but it's, it's a artistic utilitarian, I
say. Um, and beyond the speed, I thought for a non-adjustable, the suspension's adjustable,
but you need tools for it's not, it's not on a button. It's not adaptive. Right. It's height
adjustable to clear driveways and shit, which is cool. Well, also like in city mode, it's taller
than track mode. So it drops like an inch and a half. Right. I apologize. It's height adjustable.
It's not firmness adjustable. Um, the ride was decent. Actually, there you come firm, but,
but not bad by any means. Um, I never quite, I thought the brakes were nice. The brakes felt
similar to what a McLaren brake pedal feels like. Yeah. It's a very firm pedal that almost feels
manual, um, big brakes. I don't know if I've seen a carbon rotor that thick. I think they're the same.
What did I just drive that I think had those? I want to say they're the same ones either on
maybe the Panamera Turbo S or the Bentley. Uh, it might be the Bentley GT speed,
which is the same as the Urus brakes. They're fucking huge. Yeah. They're the biggest,
thickest brembo's that they make. Um, they're monsters. Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, if you have,
they had that same runway when they're stopping from, you know, between 280 and 300,
they have 0.7 miles to do that, which with no shoot. So like, yep, big fucking brakes. Not a
lot of space. Yeah. Normally, a break of this size for a car that weighs 3,100 pounds would be like
enormously overkill. Yeah. No, no, this is, you need this. I want to just beat all the heat.
Both you and I did note that, that the lack of like an air brake did make the rear end feel
the dynamics are, I think, where this suffers the most. And I think, you know, we can go back
to the price. The Bugatti is a million dollars more. It also comes from Volkswagen. It costs
way more to build. Like this, this is being built at a price that can sustain the company.
There's not huge investors behind it. Like, they need to make some money on it. Bugatti and
VW could have lost money on every, uh, every, uh, every Sharon. Yeah. And it's maybe not
sure. But it was a display. Yeah. It was a look what we can do. So, um, I think the dynamics of
this thing have two problems. One, the steering ratio is way too quick. That, like, it is twitchy
and not in a good way. I think that steering rack is 1.25 turns lock to lock. And Jared did say
that on the record setting cars, the top speed cars, they have a slower rack, which makes a lot
of sense. So yeah, this one, this one was called the striker, which is the one that has an
aerodynamic kit and is more set up for handling, but mechanically is the same as the other cars.
I just thought it was too quick. And the other thing as to your point is the lack of air brake,
when you get off the gas in this car, even at, like, barely extra legal speeds. I was shocked at
the amount of dive in it and then how unsettled it felt. Like it, when you get on the brakes,
it would track straight because I think it has a lot of toe in the car, but it was just a lot more
pitch forward than I was prepared for. And that's maybe what the air brakes do on McLaren's
and other cars. I think on the road, it becomes, when the front gets loaded, it becomes much more
affected by the camber and ruts in the road because we were on an open sweepers and you'll see
in the video. There is video, but on a public road that's used by a lot of trucks actually during
commuting hours. So there were some ruts. And so I found that when you stepped on the throttle and
it, you know, hunched back, then it was cool. But in that transition from, I found, I told you
twice, I said, be, get off the throttle slow. And then on the brakes slowed, it slowed that transition
down because it does get a little hairy. And the, like, we've said it about McLaren 570s. Also,
that's why those cars out, you know, the later cars all have fixed wings and like seven series
cars with air brakes and all, basically all the other hypercars have air brakes for that reason.
And, you know, hydraulic wings are really expensive. So I understand why you might not do it. And
a hydraulic wing won't help you accelerate to 300 miles an hour. But I told this to Jared
and to Jason Castro and I said it to everybody, like, I think if I had a full day and a racetrack
and one of these and a 750s, I'd, I'd be lapping consistently faster all day in the 750s with half
the horsepower because of the confidence in the braking and the steering not because of the power.
This would fucking smoke that in a drag race, which I can't believe I'd ever say about a car
that will fucking spin the tires at fourth gear. And that's, you know, we're talking about, you're
talking about batshit and, you know, hold the fuck on because this is going to really scare you.
This feels in a way like the American Veyron, not in terms of like interior fit and finish,
but the Veyron was a somewhat compromised handling machine. Like it was a pretty big,
pretty soft thing. The Sharon, they fixed that. And that is, we also only the pure sport,
which was the one that was forehandling. That's fair. So they're not going to all be that good,
but, but what you do get from the Veyron and Sharon is that feeling of this is built like a
fucking tank. Like, yeah, but also the knobs impress me in this. Yeah, yeah, that was really
incredible. The pure sport, particularly with the fucking, it's got the camber, the lightweight
wheels, and it's really set up to go around corners like that thing rips. That's awesome. Yeah.
But they're, but you do it a pure sport. It's five million bucks. Right. If you can get one,
which you can't. That's where the money goes twice as expensive. Yeah.
So we keep going around again. It's the, this is the Corvette of Paganis basically. It's,
you know, if the, if the, the Sharon is the Porsche of Paganis, if we're having a new, a new
index here, this is the Corvette. Yeah. It's fucking cool, man. Like, and people, people in the
comments on my Instagram are like calling it like an LS motor and shit, which I think is not really
fair to Nelson or SSC. It's a, it's a 5.9 liter billet block, billet crank, billet cams,
flat plain crank with a insane amount of technology in it that can easily make 1300 horsepower
on pump gas. Yeah. 91 octane. Yeah. 93. And you can't sell it in California, but you can sell
it in all 49 other states. And it, I mean, it's loud, but it has no muffler at all. And it
isn't that loud. It's not pretty. It's for a car with no muffler. It sounds amazing. It really
does some outside. It sounds incredible. And I think there are only tiny little moments, tiny little
moments where it sounds like anything in the LS family. I think most of the time, it does not really
sound like an LS motor, bass motor. Oh, I agree. Yeah. It never, to me, sounded like, you know,
LS Corvette firing up, which so many other cars do. It felt very special. I mean, the exhaust
they build is very, is beautiful and incredibly like complicated, like the bends and everything
and it are so cool. I think, look, I like their story. I like what they're trying to do. I think,
I know they had that big problem, but it seems like Jared's trying to do things the right way,
the way he explained how they set up the Guinness record and how like they want it, you know,
multiple types of verification. I think they fucked, I think someone fucked up in 2020. Yeah.
And as we talk around the video, it is so hard to convince the public like that you have reformed.
Sure. But I think this, it didn't seem like they were trying to do that intentionally to lie to people
and they're like, shit, we didn't, we're gonna go do it again. Yeah. They want to do it again
the right way. They want to get the two-way average of 300. It's just about finding, I guess, the place
in time and it's really expensive to do it. And, you know, they've got, they are building some
customer cars. What do we sell? Three, three cars being built while we were there. And one was in
there for updates, right? Yeah. And one, they're gonna have, what, two cars at the quail? Three.
Three, three. Our buddy, Nat Mundi, who runs HK Motor Cars, which is their dealer for the US,
is gonna have the one car at the entrance to the concourse on car week. So when we go
when you go from like the parking lots and the shuttle bus stop-offs and whatever and you go
under that main arch to get to the golf course, like, you're, it's right there. It's the first shit
you walk by. He also sells those chimera things, which he's got, you know, it's three of them.
All we have to do when he opens, you know, so he's opening, uh, it's K, K, K, I, K, isn't that right?
K, K, I mean, are you? I think it's K, I mean, are you? Yeah. The O3, the O3, is the O3 seven,
and then the O3 eight is the new one that he just got. But, uh, they're opening a showroom
like a mile from my parents house. HK is. Nice. So all we have to do is fucking go to
Greenwich for a weekend and fuck around and go play with these things. He's got three of them.
Let's go make a video. We can. Yeah. We just like need to do it. We should do it.
Maybe you want to go see Rise Against? Uh, I would do that. Yeah. You want to go meet Rise Against?
I think yes. And Papa Roach. There's also John's Beach. Funny and ironic about going to see Rise
Against and then also going to drive like a two million dollar car. I know. It was really fun.
The other funny thing was that because it's at John's Beach and, you know, we have the God Pass,
not just because of, um, shout out to Jerry Horton from Papa Roach, love him, but also from
Hannah's cousin, who's the general manager of John's Beach. So they have a doc at John's Beach.
The boat. Well, we don't have our boat anymore, but I could get a boat paddle board. I could get a
fucking boat. And it would be fun to do the gig. So I thought if taking a boat to see Rise Against
would be the busiest. I bet Nat has a boat. He does, but his boat is small. Uh, and that would be
a long way. Oh, okay. Yeah. To get from Greenwich to John's Beach by boat, um, you have to go
to. Pull up a map. How many hours is that, but probably two hours, but it's open ocean because
you have to go to the South Shore. So just pull up John's Beach theater. But if people don't know, uh,
in New York, the Jones Beach amphitheater is one of the greatest music venues in on the planet.
It's like an old school amphitheater that is where it uh, there north, north well joint Jones
Beach theater. Um, it's facing the water. Look at that. It's like, it's like New York's Red Rocks,
basically. And so if you have a boat, you can pull your boat up and just, and just drop anchor.
But also you can see on the, in this photo, actually, it's right where the mouse is. Yeah,
you see the dock. Oh, yeah. So you can, uh, if you have, if you're the artist and your friend
of the artist, you can fucking dock. So, um, anyway, we get the VIP maybe bring a boat.
Is it quicker to take a boat than drive a car? Oh, uh, it's like two hours. So go back to the map
and I'll show you where you have to, how you have to do it. It's a little crazy. So you have to
zoom way out further, further, further, further, further. Now go up. So see, see, see,
stand for there. Yeah. Granted just to the left of that. You got to go around. No, no, no,
that would take two days. Okay. But you go into New York City. If you can zoom in, you go down the
East River. Yep. Down the East River past Manhattan under the Verizano Bridge, head out past JFK
airport and then you go past Long Beach, which is where my wife is from and then you fucking tuck
in right there. It's, I know from Greenwich to the like Midtown Manhattan on the East River
is about an hour. So this is probably two and a half hours. And I've never taken a small boat
on that open ocean before. That would be a long, be a whole day ride back after, after a show
and you're like, you stay over. Oh, okay. Then show over on the dock and then you go back. Yeah,
otherwise you die. Oh, no, no, I'm not doing that bitch at night. Right. No, no, I'm just checking.
I could if I had to, but I wouldn't absolutely not want to. Yeah, that would suck balls.
But maybe we can drive a chimera while we're there. That'd be sick. Let's do that.
Taking that to a rise again show would be a little bit to wrap this up. Okay, SSE, I think
if you are a person that collects, you know, that has dozens of cars and you have all the money
because that's most of the people that buy these things, I, it is one of the most interesting
experiences I've ever had and the speed is insane and it'd be very fun to own for a while and go
to like a runway event or some kind to just experience that shit. Yeah, you have driven
a Conex egg and the Sherone and this and the Pagani. I haven't driven a Conex egg in the last
10 years. Well, Gera R was the last one I drove and that was 2014. So it was a lot like this.
Actually, I mean, it was, it was a little, I was the materials and the fit and finish were tighter,
but driving it was quite similar to this on the ride. That was very curious. Yeah, I mean,
it was like 1300 horsepower instead of 1700, but with 10 years difference, like, what's the
fucking difference? I don't know. They both went insanely fast. The Conex egg, they had me take my
hands off the wheel at 200 miles an hour and stand on the brakes, which I would not do in this car.
I don't think I would do that. I don't, I don't, I wouldn't really feel comfortable with that.
The Conex egg had a fucking air brake and one of the most sophisticated stability control
systems I've ever seen at that point. I don't think I'd do that in this car.
I'm not saying like this isn't like dangerous, dangerous. Like I don't think it like wants to do
something bad, but like you kind of got to look out a little bit. Yeah, but I think that's,
you know, the Bugatti is like you can kind of hand it to anybody and if they stay in it too long,
momentum is a thing. Sure. But you can drive around. It feels like an essay that has 1500 horsepower.
And I think to some people that could get boring because some people like, if you're a race car
driver, if you like flying interesting aircraft or stuff like people, there are people that want
this. There are people that want to drive, you know, a cater room with a V8 or an aerial atom or
something. Yeah. And that's what this is. Yeah. This is like psycho machine. Yeah. Yeah. If it is,
if a 765 LT isn't enough, this is like the next level of really, really insane acceleration.
And I haven't driven an F5. I've asked John a few times to try an F5. I've told him
I hate his yoke steering wheel. I don't like yoke steering wheels, but like, I'd love to try an F5
at some point, if I can. Of course. If and when, however, but like,
this was, it was at the same time better than I thought, you know, but also like, I could,
there's areas where they clearly just don't have the resources to take it to that next level.
And when you're selling a car for seven figures, like deep in the seven figures,
you need a very passionate customer who wants this specific thing. And in some cases, as he said,
when without naming names, it's been disillusioned by other cars that may have had, quote,
finer engineering, but ultimately weren't very reliable. He wants his car to be reliable.
I think it probably will be. I think the biggest risk for unreliability is the hydraulic doors.
Yeah. Honestly, right. Oh, that's, that'd be my biggest concern. But, you know, thank you to
SSC for having us out. It was, it was really lovely to meet them and, and hang out with them. And,
and, you know, that, that car, that car works good all day. Really did. It worked good all day.
You know, the heat better than we did. Fucking insane. I don't know if the, I hope the video
shows how fast it is because it's just, or show some fire at least. It'll definitely show fire.
Yeah. We definitely, you know, closed roads, professional drivers, all that stuff. But man, like,
I drove back from location with Jared. And he watched me like, I was shifting manual and he goes,
okay, he's like, now what you want me to do is roll into it in third. And when it gets to
red line, just let, just stay in it, let it shift itself. He's like, because it's revving so fast.
Yeah. That, I mean, this thing does not feel like the red line mechanically is 8200. It feels like
it'll rev to 10 first of all. And he's like, it's really hard to time that shift to nail it.
Otherwise, you know, you hit fuel cut and stuff. And when it shifted itself, good fucking god.
Matt Ferrer, like the first thing saying, I mean, you did it. The kick is very hard. And it just
squats. It, it sticks. I mean, the roads there are fantastic. And I was extremely awake and focused
in that moment and silent. Yeah. And wow. Yeah. It's wild. Yeah. It's a, I mean, for most people,
a McLaren is enough to go, what the fuck? This is what people are buying right now. But if that,
eventually you can get used to that. Yeah. I think it would be quite difficult to get used to this.
Well, remember back in the early days of tune, we were filming a lot of R35 G2. Yeah. And he will go,
I got the 800 horsepower kit. And you go, okay, how do you like it? And this, this, remember the
gentleman, he'd had it for two months. And he's like, I think I'm going to get the 1200 horsepower kit.
He was already bored of the power because in that car, it was so easy. Yeah. But also acceleration,
your body gets used to it eventually. Yeah. This is the far step of that. If you made a bunch of money,
I don't know if you'll, I don't know if you'd get used to this. Yeah. It would, because there's
so few places that you can really, really, you have to go to a standing mile event or something.
Yeah. I mean, you can drive this on the street like you, you could absolutely drive this on the street.
But you know, you can't get near the floor for, for very long. The next thing is already here,
whatever, whatever was there is already here. You're going 150. It leaps tens of miles per hour.
Yeah. Well, a little beyond. Yeah. Very wild. I mean, turns out Nelson Racing can build an engine.
Yeah, I know it was cool. It was, it was, it was really wild. The manks is finished. That's
very exciting to me. I'm going to, I think I'm going to get it on Wednesday or Thursday and take it
home, which is crazy. The top came out really good, exactly like, like we thought. And they just sent
me the photos, the coolers that Ali got us. He got us these awesome coolers that have like a
little vacuum sealer sort of thing on the lid. And, and they have this, this handle or a strap,
like a shoulder strap on the cooler. And the cooler is, it's aluminum. It's like anodized aluminum.
And it has the, these sort of like ridges in it that really look like the ridges on the inside
of the manks on the, the ECU and battery cover lid. And so Ali got us a pair of them. And it's got
these, these shoulder strap where the strap, like has these strap locks on it, almost like a guitar
strap. And we took the strap apart and Brenda made it into tie downs for the cooler. Oh, cool.
Right. So the coolers strapped down on either side of it. I don't, I don't have a photo of it yet,
but it's like pretty slick. Yeah. So we'll be able to, so I can like, for the quail,
I'm just going to like load the cooler up. Then I, it's all drinks, free drinks and food there.
But not as good as what I'll have. Okay. You can be celebrating with some blantons.
Oh, okay. Or maybe we'll have a little craft cocktail. Maybe we'll have a sell it,
well, maybe that's what we'll do. We could either bring the materials to make a craft cocktail,
and have like a celebratory cocktail. Or I could bring the materials to make shakerados.
Shakerados, right? The coffee line there was large. Yeah. Shakerados would be good.
The Conan sake had a great coffee stand, which is a weird thing to say, but,
we'll make a shakerado. Yeah, that'd be fun. Yeah. Either way, and plus we can have,
when we go down to Big Sur, on Thursday, we can have the sharkutes.
But don't, we go to a breakfast place. But we're that down there for a while.
I'm like, did I forget? We go there to place that makes great eggs.
Yeah, no, we're down there for a while. A couple hours.
Yeah, we're no traffic's bad. That's actually true.
Very, very exciting. It looks fantastic. Yeah.
Gonna bring it to King of Hamers. Oh, yeah, that'd be cool.
And do you want to do a...
Do you want it? Can we talk quickly about ZR1 river-grinced stuff?
Sure. The reason, first of all, we can celebrate
the Chevy ZR1 X did 649 at the ring. That's crazy.
Super fast. Yeah. Super-duper fast. How does that compare to the fastest Porsche?
That's where I'm headed. Yeah.
And I'm not... And it should be said that the Corvette team that did this,
and they also ran the Z06, they did it in the 7-11.
Sorry, okay, so ZR1 X did 659. ZR1 did 650,
649, and then Z06 did 7-11. They did it with... the engineers were driving.
Yeah. They weren't pros. These engineers are good drivers.
They've won like... A GM performance chassis engineer is a pro.
I don't want to fucking hear that shit. I think they're...
I would say they're pro-am. They're close.
Yeah. Because Porsche uses Yorg.
Sure. Yorg is... Sure.
But the difference between Yorg and a GM chassis engineer
is not 20 seconds a lap. It's just not.
I agree. It's maybe...
It's maybe... A couple, maybe.
Yeah. But go on.
So, Jesse Wooji, he put up a thing on Instagram, and I looked at it,
and it had all the times of recent cars, recent production cars.
And what surprised me about it was that the Porsche's
have run quicker. And some of them have the man...
You know, man-tee performance or man-the-high performance G2RS,
way faster. All right, let's just say that's man-tee.
Let's give that an asterisk.
But when you come up here to like a stock G2RS 647.
Yeah. Or a facelifted GT3 with Yorg.
651.
And those have half the power of this year.
It was a 500 horsepower car.
So that's... And I saw it, and I'm not...
I'm really not trying to make...
I'm not making fun of Corvette. I saw it and I was surprised.
And I went, wow, is that because
the Porsche lends itself to the ring much more
than a car with 1200 horsepower?
You know, it can't be deployed as much.
I mean, look, Yorg doesn't have the fastest GT car lap.
You know, Lars Kern has the fastest GT2RS man-the-high.
Lars Kern has quite a few in the top 20 as well.
So it's not just Yorg, right?
That's very true, but I mean, isn't Lars also...
Lars is a pro, Lars is a pro also.
Yeah. But either way, like the cars...
These are stock Porsche's 9.11s with half the power
that are running quicker times.
And I just... I saw that and I was like, why?
It's pretty impressive stuff.
Very impressive.
I want an engine here to say...
I'm very impressed.
Here's why.
I mean, it would be pretty wild if it was purely Yorg Bergmeister.
And if there was in the case, I would say,
I'm incredibly honored to have...
to like know him as a friend and to have been around
to track with him because holy fuck in that guy drive.
Unquestionably.
But I mean, the GM guys developing this car,
they're pro-level racing drivers.
At the Nürburgring, I might give them
a second or two versus, you know, versus...
What's really crazy is that
the Nürburgring really is a power track.
It's a top speed power track, right?
High speed, which demonstrate...
You know, it's demonstrated by how little gain they got
from the all-wheel drive X.
Very true.
Doesn't do much on that track.
I bet there'd be a much bigger difference
at the thermal club pulling out of these hair pins
than there are in the Nürburgring.
Yeah, but to that point,
the ZR1 has 1200 horsepower.
Yeah, no, it should probably be a lot faster.
I thought it'd be a lot faster.
Now maybe the Aero kits on the GT3RS
and the 2RS are just way more effective
than what they put on the ZR1.
Maybe I don't have the downforce numbers in front of me.
But I just saw that and I was like, oh, that's very curious.
Yeah, I mean, maybe their cornering speeds
are really that much higher,
which would be wild considering
I've driven a Z06
and the cornering speed on that was pretty insane.
Yeah, it seems amazing.
Yeah.
But it is funny that with that much extra power,
the times are really in the same kind of ballpark.
It's not, the rewards aren't that huge
although what's really surprising is that the Z06
is that far behind a stock GT3.
I mean, that's pretty wild.
Like that's 670 horsepower
and presumably that's the Z07 package car,
you know, ready for the track.
That's pretty far behind a GT3.
I wonder, it'd be cool to see sector times
because there are sections of the Nürburgring
that really reward power.
But there's also a lot of it that's
you know, the downhill tight stuff.
Yeah.
So maybe in those sectors,
the Porsche is a lot quicker and stickier
and then on the big big stuff,
you know, the Corvette catches up.
Yeah, someone out there will make
that cool like 3D graph thing
with showing the two cars driving.
It is kind of funny how quickly
they did beat the GTD though.
That's pretty funny.
Yeah, and then Ford, of course,
tweeted they're like, it's on.
So here's one for you.
I think I'm pretty sure that we'll have a ZR1
and a GTD at performance car of the year.
So you'll get to see a direct comparison
on a smaller track.
Which track are you guys going?
Thunder Hill.
Okay, yeah, be interesting.
Thunder Hill.
Cool, should we go to the people for a few minutes?
Let's go to them.
The patrons, we love them over at patreon.com slash
the smoking tire podcast.
That's where you ask us questions.
For the live show, it's where you
consume the live show.
It's where you get the show.
Before anybody else gets it,
the day it's recorded most times,
it's where you get the show without ads.
It's where you get exclusive access to
merch drops and collabs.
And it's also where you get to
help out your favorite podcast.
Let's get to them.
Black Sobbyth.
Great name.
That's pretty good.
Why do older cars from the 60s and 70s
seem to be able to get away with the patina look
while cars from the 90s just seem to look rough?
I have an 03 Mustang Cobra with beat ass paint
and my friends give me shit when I call it patina.
I go that's very funny.
I suspect it's because cars in the 60s and 70s
are made of metal and your Mustang is made of plastic.
Yeah, very possibly.
Like paint paint might have been mixed differently.
Yeah, like the chrome era, you know,
patinaing is a good different thing.
When those night curvy 90s cars look beat,
they just they just look tired and shitty.
I wonder if it's also just
we got used to seeing old muscle car things
that had paint coming off,
but we still like the car enough.
So everyone just like, you know,
gives it a pass and it just become a trend.
Huh, yeah.
This is funny.
The toking sire.
I like that.
When trying out different modes and press cars,
how long do you spend in each mode
before you find your favorite?
For instance, I know at least 1 OEM plays tricks
with their sport mode.
And this is an unproven accusation.
But I'd be very interested.
I would like to confidentially know person
in the DMs or however you want to send us
which OEM this is just so I can try it for myself
in their cars and see if this is fascinating.
So I know at least 1 OEM is playing tricks
with their sport mode.
As soon as you engage it,
the damper stiffness goes all the way to max,
but only for the first six seconds
after which this damper setting gradually returns
to a usable siftness which the test drivers signed off on.
This is to give the impression of a wide
adjustability range during a test drive
or to show off to your friends for a moment
besides despite the stiffness having zero handling benefit.
If you give sport mode enough time,
it will feel much closer to normal than you think.
My guess, M5 Toring, this is BMW in the M5 Toring
because I've found in M5 Toring 2.0
that putting the car from comfort into sport
makes the ride better in general.
Interesting.
Don't know why.
We'll talk next show about M5 Toring 2.0.
But I will just say that they did find a problem with the other car.
It wasn't a catastrophic problem,
but there was something not quite right about it.
My Aztec says I've got a 117,000 mile 2012 R8 V8 manual spider.
Fun fact, Audi made less than 100 of these.
Those are very rare and actually very cool.
Yeah, that's fucking cool.
My mag shocks are starting to leak and I can go
coil overs or get remanufactured Audi shocks from a reputable shop in Poland.
Costs are about the same.
What do you recommend I'm leaning towards stock?
I would say stock.
I think that car handles nicely.
I think in terms of you're talking about rarity.
Maybe you care about resale value.
If you liked how the car rode, go back to stock.
You'll get most of that.
You'll get more of your money back from that service
than if you did a coil over.
Yeah, I agree.
I don't think most r8 buyers eventually.
I mean, if you for some reason want an improvement in handling,
high quality coil over is cool.
Fine, but if you are happy with it now, go stock.
Nice cams says when it comes to the M light and half AMG vehicles,
referring to BMW M Sport and the C43 and all those 43s and stuff.
I'm considering an X3 M and GLC63, but it seems like the X3 M40 and GLC43 are enough
and less harsh, especially since on my wife we driving a lot.
I think you're right.
I think for daily driving, you would be happier with the M40 than you would with the M.
I don't think it would make any difference in day-to-day life at all.
Still a very, very quick car, very smooth power band,
the ride is going to be much better than the X3 M.
Yeah.
Sweet and low.
It seems to be a common trope for automotive journalists to bash
Detroit as a place to live and also a place to be a car enthusiast.
Just wondering why that is, have you had a bad experience?
I think you're misreading what we're bashing.
It's a bad place to write about cars because there are no fucking hills
and there are no good race tracks and the weather is bad a lot.
That's why I wouldn't want to live there if my job was to write about cars.
I've met so many great people in Detroit.
It's a fun place to visit.
It's a relatively affordable place to live a nice lifestyle.
There's young people doing cool shit there.
If you like boats, that lake life is fucking sick.
I love the lake life there.
And I know a lot of people that are very happy to live there.
Like, it's not a bad place to live for a lot of reasons,
but it's a garbage place to make content about cars
because there's nowhere pretty or fun to drive them.
Sorry.
Where's the nearest track to Detroit?
You have to go up to track.
Yeah, like road, where's Gingerman?
Gingerman's in South Haven.
So there's Gingerman, there's Road America.
You have Bel Isle once in a while.
That's not fully set up.
There's a, it's called M1 Concourse or something.
There's a private track club in Pontiac.
But there's just, I mean, it's, it's a flat grid.
Like, sorry, I have to go to a track.
There's no like, yeah, there's no roads.
Someone got defensive when I said this and the commision show
and sent me some photo that was supposed to represent a fucking good driving road
and it was dead straight.
It had like a mild elevation in it and I was like,
are you trolling or are you actually trying to describe this to me as being a hill?
Because like, this is a mild rise.
Yes.
Yeah, I love Detroit, though.
It's, it's, it's, it's fun for in its own way.
I've not had a bad experience in Detroit.
But yeah, the January auto show was dumb as fuck.
I think that's, I think that's a big change.
Optimus primus, would you consider charging for one take style videos
to cover the vehicles you're showing for auction?
No, I don't want to do that.
Doug owns the auction site.
So that's why he does that.
I'm, I, if they want to give me shares and fucking bring a trailer,
let's, let's talk, but I don't think they want to do that.
Chris from Colorado, be honest, has the front grill of the M3 and M4 grown on you guys?
It has on me.
No.
I'd say like 5% yes.
When I look at it, I go, oh, it's aggressive.
And then if I look at it longer, I go, man, there's so many other cars
from today that have done a better job.
Looking at Eric's F80 sitting here for a couple of weeks,
like that has grown on me.
Yep.
That's, that's where that car was last pretty.
Yep.
Uh, misfit cyclone.
Best underrated T-top car for the summer.
You ever see a Foxbody T-top?
Very rare.
No, that's pretty cool.
Yeah, they made them for a couple of years
and they are very rare and very cool.
I go like Trans-Am or something like that.
Trans-Am is the traditional.
Yeah, I and I rock.
If you could fucking swing that, that's all right.
What other, what other cars had T-tops?
I mean, it was mostly those 80s era muscle cars that did a T-top.
I don't know.
Is there a complete list of T-tops?
I'm sure there is.
But I don't know a lot of T-top cars.
You're the 10 coolest ever.
Oh, wow.
You're 69 vet T-top?
Like, that's pretty cool.
That's pretty awesome.
Yeah, I would fuck with that.
That vet or an early C-3 vet, to me,
is like a car I regularly think about owning.
But even just sitting in one for five seconds,
I go nope.
Couldn't do it.
What else to do?
Oh, four of the 70s Thunderbird,
Camaro, yeah.
Okay, nothing.
Firebird, yeah.
Suzuki X90.
So that's a full Targer roof, not a T,
but yeah, Corvette.
I mean, weren't that many ago?
Yeah, I would say, I'd have to say,
that's not the Mustang 2 Yuck.
That's terrible.
Oh, those cars have been made.
Be a Ritz.
El Dorado.
Be a Ritz with a T-top.
What?
Holy chassis flex.
That's crazy.
All right.
What else they got?
I would probably have to go,
transam as well.
Is the first gen Audi TTRS any good compared to the new ones?
Well, there really aren't any new ones,
but you mean first gen compared to second gen?
The first gen TTRS is pretty cool because you came in a manual.
So that's the later ones only came in automatic.
So if you wanted to get a manual,
you had to get that one.
We drove a TTRS that was modified by APR
that was like over 600 horsepower
and was so fucking fast.
And it sounded like a Lamborghini.
It was really cool.
That was really cool.
But then we drove the one on drive,
you drove what year was that?
Stock TTRS.
Second gen.
Second gen?
Yeah.
That was a very impressive car.
Yeah, it was fast as hell.
It did really great.
It surprised everybody on the racetrack.
Yeah, but if you want,
you have to do the first gen if you want a manual.
Okay.
I am Dr. Rimulac says,
I've had three Rolexes,
current ones at GMT
and they all run slow maybe five minutes
over a couple of days.
Have you ever had that problem?
This is going to sound very douchey,
but I don't really wear
any one watch long enough to notice problems
that don't pop up in like two days.
You know, all bless you.
All watches should be like,
might be like a few seconds a day.
You know, but I don't know the exact specs
for what Rolex it should be.
But I'm sorry, I don't know the answer.
No, Michael, no.
With car companies fixing things
that aren't broken,
I'm looking at you, digital dipstick.
What feature do you wish caught on that didn't?
What feature caught on what didn't catch on?
I mean, the idea of a clutchless manual lever is awesome.
And then a couple of people,
different companies tried that and it didn't go anywhere.
Conan said it's a magical transmission.
I think the rate if that was everywhere.
Yeah.
What feature I wish.
I mean, I really like the Ionic 5
and the EV with gears.
I think this is a good job.
And I think if there's going to be fun,
still time on that one.
Bob Robb and the whistle tips,
they go, woo, woo.
I've never heard you mention a Subaru EV
a single time on the podcast.
Have you driven a soltera?
I have a very good friend that is a very high level
executive at a Subaru dealer
and got a soltera as his demo car.
And when I tell you the text that I get
about how fucking much he hates this.
I would not look to Subaru selling a rebadged Toyota EV
as a win for them.
I would not be buying Subaru's with those Subaru's.
The Snossberries taste like Stossberries.
That's a larger question.
That's a larger question.
Some of these I are not one juniors answer on the fly.
Do you?
I don't know what the, what?
Frozen Dingo Berry, Metallica says,
do you know of any watchmakers who sell legit modded sacos?
From what I've heard a lot of the Instagrams,
saco mod companies use fake parts.
Well, they're using aftermarket parts.
I'm not sure, like,
like I've had, I've seen there are saco
modders who build complete watches from aftermarket parts.
If that's what you mean, but like
normally you would know what you're getting.
Like I have a, I have that watch, that black pearl watch
that's, that's, there's not, it's not based on any saco.
It has a saco movement in it, but like
everything, it's a complete aftermarket part thing.
But like, I don't know if, if this,
if he's mean there's some Instagram company
that's like selling a watch with a saco movement
that doesn't have one or is selling a watch
that's advertised as having a genuine saco case
and doesn't have one, like, I've never seen that,
but like, I don't know, I wouldn't do that.
I mean, if that's what, if you want to make sure it's real,
buy a saco and then buy the parts that you want modded
and then go to a local independent watch store
and go put these hands in this bezel and this crystal
on this watch and now you know it's real.
If that's, if that's really a concern.
A second Jay Z has hit the Supra.
It's so funny.
That's really funny.
Yeah.
Given how bad the M5 Torings ride is already,
how much worse will the M5 CSB?
Probably a lot worse, but maybe better.
Maybe better.
It could be better.
The M2, it went M2 good soft, M2 comp to stiff, M2 CS great.
Rye Country Night School, shout out to him.
Did you see the saco Datsun watch collab?
I did.
Don't care about it.
I'm not old enough to give a shit about Datsun's.
Tim A, what would you rather have as a luxury winter ski truck,
Rivian R1T Quad or Porsche Cayenne Turbo?
Between those two, I'd, I wouldn't T Quad.
As long as I don't have to drive too far.
It would, yeah, I mean, it would depend on two things.
One, do you, you have a ski home where you can keep that thing plugged in,
you know, and two, what, if it needs something,
where is your house relative to what you'd have to do with a Rivian to get it fixed?
Sure. I was imagining a vacuum land where I live in the ski town,
the drive to the mountain isn't too far,
yeah, charging, et cetera.
Like from a pure driving perspective,
like having the tie-in turbo, I don't need the turbo.
I could just, I could go Cayenne.
That'd be fine with like a lift kit and something.
But I think the R1T Quad would be also over,
you don't need it to the Quad one.
Yeah, you don't need the Quad to do that.
Yeah, as long as you knew how you'd get it serviced and or fixed and that didn't,
that's what like, when I went to the Yellowstone Club,
these people are all billionaires.
And you know what I just saw?
Fucking tojos as far as the eye could see.
All tojos. Everybody's in a tojo.
Multi-billionaires, just rolling tojos.
Sam let me borrow his like old, his old Range Rover,
just because like that's what he has there,
just like a fucking 10 year old Range Rover.
And that was the only Range Rover I saw,
and I saw like no EVs up there.
But that's because the nearest dealership is a Chevy.
It's just, yeah, I mean, it's just because like that's what's easy for them.
Like they, you know, because they're in the middle of nowhere.
So like if your ski houses in the middle of nowhere,
that could be problematic.
Just get some bits.
In that case, I wouldn't have either one of these options.
Yeah, I don't want to find a Porsche shop either.
For sure.
Yeah.
Well, I know this big brown diesel manual wagon beater.
Is this just one person coming up with all these primus names?
I think it's the same person.
Is it less Claypool actually like a fan?
That would be awesome.
Um, we need to, I mean, here's the thing.
What car?
Oh, it's like a car if you drove a car.
I thought this was a real recommendation.
No.
What would you have to drive across the country
in order to get the most people putting pictures of your car on Instagram?
That's the question.
I think the Wiener Mobile.
I think too many people have seen Wiener Mobiles.
I think like what's that dude that fucking funny redneck guy,
Weston West, the guy, he's like a, he's almost like a,
he's almost like a Whistland diesel.
Okay, he's in that kind of a way,
but he never pivoted to lighting Ferraris on fire.
He stayed straight line redneck.
He just did a build where he flipped the body
on around 180 on a truck and is just driving that bitch around
like backwards and getting pulled over.
And like that's pretty funny.
That was pretty good.
Yeah, the back we're a truck that looks like it's going backwards.
Oh, like what's his face?
The backup pickup, like the Galpin backup.
Yeah, it's a one car exactly like a streetcar.
Yeah, that would work.
German Shepherd Transport E39.
Any tips for making a manual E39 530 as enjoyment,
as enjoyable as possible for mountain roads?
I understand the top of the line, KW suspension,
et cetera, would be awesome,
but I'm mostly interested in value return.
So, so basically the first thing you should do
is make sure that it's as good as it can be,
meaning it's, it's 20 years old, right?
Do you have, do you have good bushings?
That's, start there.
Start there.
Yeah, like first, the first, before you go,
like modify it with some suspension,
like you might find that like restoring it to 100% stock,
new bushings, new shocks, new fucking,
anything that can wear out, put it back to stock
and you might be like, oh, you know,
and have a fabulous handling car.
I think it'd be very comfortable.
I think if I was going to do this
and it sounds like you're open to spending a little money,
I would do all new bushings, keep them soft,
like restore those, and then do like an Olens rodent track
suspension kit, something that's soft
with just a more advanced damper
than what they had back in the day.
And I don't think you need a big break kit.
You could do lines and fluid.
Yeah.
I mean, unless you're driving this shit,
like this really hard, I would just,
the brakes will be fine.
Yeah, pads, fluid lines will get you there.
Yeah, I would just make sure it's as close to,
to the rubber and stuff, it's all doing the right thing.
Your engine and trans mounts, your suspension mounts,
all those connecting bits,
make sure those are all the way they're supposed to be.
Yeah.
Because you get a lot of slop in there.
Yeah, and that'll change.
That could change your alignment, mid cornering,
that could do so many things you don't want.
Yeah.
Three more, and then I have to pay.
Chris from Colorado Thoughts on Glock making watches.
If you seem cool, a lot looked tacky,
you couldn't fucking give me a Glock watch.
I did not know they did this.
I don't, I mean, they, I don't think you can wear
one of these without effectively making
like a political statement.
I mean, they're using a lot of attic movements.
I mean, just, it just, I don't know.
I don't care.
I wouldn't, I wouldn't wear this.
And actually, I really, I really like as far as firearms go.
I really like shooting a Glock.
I'm very accurate with a Glock 17 or a Glock 19.
And if I was going to buy a handgun,
a Glock would be at the top, my list.
I don't want this.
Just me.
I think this color is, it's actually,
it's not a bad color scheme or bad looking watch,
but I just don't want to like wear firearms all the time.
Yeah, yeah.
No, if you think you want this,
what you actually want is a Christopher Ward watch.
Christopher, I just saw them at another watch trade show
I went to.
They're fucking killing it right now.
Chris Ward's designs are sick.
I really am into a bunch of what they're doing.
And they have several watches that come in
that sort of orange, blue color scheme
that, that's called the Bel canto.
That's a chiming watch.
But normally those chiming watches are like $80,000.
And yeah, the C12 is pretty cool.
Go down.
They have a.
And this looks.
Nothing.
These are, like some of those are expensive.
Well, the C12s are, but yeah, but go down.
The ones with the crazy where you can see the movement
on the dial are very expensive or the skeleton ones.
But the ones that have more normal dials
have much more normal price points, $1,200, $1,500.
I mean, these look like fancy watches.
I think the clock watch is trying to be like.
A couple hundred bucks.
Well, I actually don't know it.
But it's definitely trying to be like tactical.
You know, it glows at night and that kind of stuff.
It's like a garbage watch.
You didn't like pull up the comparison
of the Chris Ward with the ones out.
Go back to dive, go go back to watches
and go to like dive watches.
OK, yeah.
I think you probably was.
I was an integrated.
See, yeah, see the Trident.
Trident reef there, 850 with the orange and blue.
That's kind of what I was talking about.
That does look very close.
Right.
It's got a white, a white sort of running track
around the outside, but you kind of get the idea.
Yeah.
So that's what I would, that's what I would get
if you wanted a watch that looked like that.
Sure, though.
So a lot of those, like, I mean, hopefully
the watch is as reliable as their firearm.
That's like essential.
Well, they're buying their movement from somebody.
No one's there.
That's a salita or some kind of movement.
I don't know.
This is our last page.
It's a piece of bat.
Tony Rodriguez, Salgado.
What would you rather?
OK, for fun, daily, weekend, or convertible for 50K,
new Mustang GT or a 991 911 911 911, if it was not
like a bazillion miles and beat up.
I just think the Mustang is a great looking car, the coupe.
I don't think it looks good.
Top up or down is a convertible.
And Sarah Turod won when she was shopping for cars.
And the fit and finish really starts to fall apart
when the top has to go up and down a lot.
That next question doesn't make any sense.
But we'll skip it.
It doesn't make sense.
Check engine light, anthem.
Pretty good.
With the Leno law seemingly about to pass,
is there anything else you'd like to see him
or another well-loved person of influence
put their weight behind in the world of automotive law?
From my understanding, that law was totally
fucking hollowed out and doesn't actually end up
helping really out.
It only helps cars before 1985 or something like that.
So it doesn't help.
And you have to run historic plates on it, I believe.
And I don't think that's, I mean, it's better than nothing,
but it's definitely not the kind of win
that I was hoping for.
I would like to have him or other people get back in there.
I mean, that's for cars that we like.
Yeah.
And I would also like to see, yeah, what else would I,
I mean, I don't know, I, I, I,
I'd love to fucking not have them gut cafe.
That's what I'd actually like.
I would like to have fuel economy standards
that, that fucking march towards a zero emissions future,
even if it's not realistic to get there in 10 years.
That's what I would like to have.
And I'll put my fucking weight behind that.
That's crazy.
Fucking fascists.
Hoopd157 says, what car item collab would you like to see
if the quality of the product was in line
with the quality of the car?
Example Lexus cooking knives with Japanese steel.
Car item collab where the quality would have to be there.
I'd like to see a Ferrari power drill
where the, it was powered by a tiny little Ferrari V8.
That's a good idea.
Yeah.
That's a fun idea.
That would be really fun.
You know, it would be rad, probably impossible,
whatever, Dreamland, like a Damascus steel wheel.
Like if it was a two piece and the spokes were to,
like actually hand hammered Damascus steel
if I take 18 years to make.
I would very much like to rip a Porsche tube, a bong.
What?
Like a Porsche makes that hookah, the Porsche design hookah.
Yeah.
They're like you can smoke weed out of,
but it's not optimized for it for that.
It's optimized for Shisha.
Like that, like you can smoke weed out of it
and should in fact, and like why else would you buy
a Porsche design bong?
But I'd like to see the Germans re-engineered.2,
bong.2, see what they can really do.
Yes, designed for the optimum THC delivery to the dome.
I feel like we get enough THC.
I feel like the weed has enough THC.
No, we do.
I just want to see what Porsche can do.
Gotcha.
Okay.
They improved the intake of the THC by 27%.
Maybe they'd get rid of like more of the carbon
that you ingest when smoking it.
Yeah, the smoke is actually clean as an air.
Right, exactly like TROS.
Yeah.
Last one, granny shifting, not double clutching like you should.
I think you remember joking a while back
that you're now a D-list celebrity.
Now that you're famous,
granted you access to A, B, and C-list celebrity
car enthusiasts, do you enjoy talking to famous people
or to regular people or is there no generalization
that could be made?
I hate regular people.
I can't stand their stories.
Um, I like talking to famous people
as long as there's something to talk about.
I don't want it to be an interview, you know,
but if you're hanging out, there's a good,
there's a buffer, you're in a small group,
three, four, and stories are flying,
and you know, that's, that's nice.
I've been fortunate enough that the famous people
that I've met in a lot of cases,
like sort of knew who I was
so I was like a little pre-approved maybe.
But like, no, interesting people are good.
You know, sometimes people are famous
cause they're interesting.
Exactly.
Sometimes they're famous for a different reason.
Sure.
Also, you know, the other way,
sometimes people you've never heard of
are the most interesting people ever.
I think some of the, a lot of the interesting people
are famous people like that you know
and I know sort of are like,
if they're comedians, they're famous for talking.
Yeah.
So they're good storytellers and there's like,
they love banter, they're like doing bits and joking around.
And so that makes it interesting.
But if someone was like,
someone could be the most famous guitar player in the world.
And if they are just super focused on that
and like, I'm not a musician,
we might not actually have a lot to talk about.
And so there could be this weird thing.
So I don't care that they're famous
because there needs to be a vibe
that we need to get along.
Well, and also like,
fame is really relative sometimes.
Like dude, Zach hangs out with these people
like you're a Burning Man friends.
Yeah.
Who they're nerdy famous.
They're nerdy famous.
But like the vast majority of the universe
probably couldn't pick these people out of a crowd.
And most people that are in tune with pop culture
have also never fucking heard of these people.
But you showed me they're on an arena tour right now.
They're selling out arenas to play...
Dungeons and Dragons, okay.
So like, you know, in the arena,
these are fucking, this is Keith Richards.
It's like my mind.
But like, have you hung out with them
anywhere but Burning Man?
Of course.
And mostly invisible, right?
Oh, I got in public.
Yeah, mostly we went to dinner.
I went to dinner with two of them.
And at the restaurant,
no one knew who they were except like,
but then one waiter really knew who they were.
And it was very nice and stuff.
So it's that's basically me.
Yeah, that's basically me.
Outside of a car show or anything,
absolutely nobody of consequence whatsoever.
But every once in a while,
a valet parker or a waiter is an enormous fan.
Kind of, right?
That's a nice level of famous, pretty much.
Sometimes it gets you sick.
And regarding normal people,
there was a guy at the Houston show
who was like a nuclear engineer in an AV
and then a nuclear engineer
and he downplayed all of it and his wife goes,
he's a nuclear engineer.
I was fascinated because he lived in a submarine
and then he built these things
and now he's got these cars
and he's the only person I've heard ever say
that Audi's don't require a lot of maintenance.
And then I was like, oh, that's because your brain
is used to building a nuclear reactor.
So the standards of the Eisenhower,
he said, he said he had a B5S4 once
and I went, oh man, they have so many problems.
He goes, no, you just have to do the maintenance.
And then he described the maintenance,
he was not referring to oil changes.
He's like, you just changed this timing chain
a couple of times, you do all these things
because his brain can handle that stuff.
So I was fascinated by talking to that guy
because I thought his life story was cool.
Sure.
And I'm not sure if the question is,
if we're talking about casual conversation
or if we're talking about on the podcast.
On the podcast, the enjoyment is always someone
who has something interesting to say, you know,
to teach us or whatever.
That's not necessarily in line
with what is successful for a podcast.
But it's definitely novel and fun
to sit down with a celebrity
that you've seen in something or a lot of things
and to learn that they're actually pretty cool
and like a mostly a regular person
which happens more often than it doesn't happen.
A lot of times in LA, there's people
that were like huge in the 90s
and now they're kind of like kind of nobody
and you can meet those people
and they're the fucking mellowest, coolest folks.
They're happy you remember them.
You know, anyway, that's our show folks.
Thank you very much.
I hope you have enjoyed this hour
in 40 minutes of radio, aiming to add Zach.
We'll be back next time.
We'll talk about the M5.2, M5 Review.2
and this G-Wagon thing from Arcade
that I'm driving over the weekend,
sort of a Resto-Moddy G-Wagon thing
from the 80s, from like rushers.
Yeah, kind of nuts.
And yeah, more smoke entire podcast soon.
See you guys, bye.
About this episode
Zach and Matt dive into their recent experiences with the SSC Tuatara, a hypercar aiming for the 300 mph mark, discussing its impressive specs and unique driving characteristics. They also touch on the recent suspension of fuel economy standards in the U.S., the implications for car manufacturers, and the surprising halt of Mercedes EV sales in California. The episode is filled with engaging debates on automotive regulations, personal freedoms, and the future of performance cars, all while sharing personal anecdotes and insights from their automotive journeys.
brakes
Brembo
carbon fiber
carbon tub
catalytic converter
catalytic exhaust
Dallara
direct injection
drag race
fuel crisis
Audi 100
BMW 5 Series
BMW M2
BMW M3
BMW M4
BMW M5
BMW M Coupe (E36)
Bugatti Veyron
Cadillac Eldorado
Chevrolet Camaro
Chevrolet Corvette
Ford Mustang
Ford Thunderbird
Hyundai Ioniq 5
Koenigsegg CCR
Koenigsegg CCXR
Lamborghini Countach
Lamborghini Urus
Land Rover Range Rover
McLaren 570S
Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG
Pontiac Firebird
Porsche 911
Porsche Panamera
Ram TRX
Rivian R1T
Shelby Cobra
SSC Tuatara
Suzuki X-90
Toyota Supra
Original notes
We drove the 1750HP SSC Tuatara! What a thing it was! How's it feel? Compare to a Bugatti or a Pagani or a Koenigsegg? Is it worth the money? And what about that record thing...
Plus, Mercedes stops selling EVs in CA; fuel economy standards end: what does it mean?; and we answer Patreon questions including:
- Why do old cars have "patina" and newer cars "look rough"?
- Should I replace my tired suspension with aftermarket or OEM?
- Are mild performance cars a good value?
- How do we feel about Detroit?
- Has the G80 M3 grown on us?
- Best T-tops for summer?
- Which generation of Audi TT RS is best?
- Why we haven't talked about Subaru EVs
- Glock watches
- Best snow super SUV
- And more!
Recorded Friday, August 1, 2025
Rula patients typically pay $15 per session when using insurance. Connect with quality therapists and mental health experts who specialize in you at https://www.rula.com/tire #rulapod
DeleteMe
Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/TIRE and use promo code TIRE at checkout.
New merch! Grab a shirt or hoodie and support us! https://thesmokingtireshop.com/
Use Off The Record! and ALWAYS fight your tickets! For a 10% discount on your first case go to https://www.offtherecord.com/TST
Want your question answered? Want to watch the live stream, get ad-free podcasts, or exclusive podcasts? Join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thesmokingtirepodcast
Instagram:
https://www.Instagram.com/thesmokingtire
https://www.Instagram.com/therealzackklapman
Want your question answered? Want to watch the live stream, get ad-free podcasts, or exclusive podcasts? Join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thesmokingtirepodcast
Use Off The Record! and ALWAYS fight your tickets! Enter code TST10 for a 10% discount on your first case on the Off The Record app, or go to http://www.offtherecord.com/TST.
Watch our car reviews: https://www.youtube.com/thesmokingtire
Tweet at us!
https://www.Twitter.com/thesmokingtire
https://www.Twitter.com/zackklapman
Instagram:
https://www.Instagram.com/thesmokingtire
https://www.Instagram.com/therealzackklapman
The Smoking Tire
Zack Klapman, Matt Farah
0:00
101:26