Talking NHRA with Fox Sports/Car Guy Brian Lohnes and a review of the Mini Cooper S convertible

WATD presents John Paul, The Car Doctor, All Things Automotive.

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Now, here's John Paul, The Car Doctor.

Good Sunday morning everyone and welcome to another edition of the Car Doctor program

where I know Talking Birds with Ray Brown is really Jesse Wilkins' favorite program.

But, you know, he makes me feel good when he says it, so.

Yeah, that's right.

We'll just go with that.

Hey, we have a great guest on today.

We have a guy that I've known for quite a few years, I guess now, Brian Lones.

And I'm reading something that says, it says, Brian Lones, plain and simple,

I love things with tires on them.

Brian, good morning and welcome back to the Car Doctor program.

Good morning, John.

Thanks for having me on, man.

Hope things are good.

Yeah, yeah.

Hope things are good, man.

Absolutely.

You know, you just came back from like a whirlwind tour.

What have you been up to?

Yeah, I've been running around.

It's a fairly hot and heavy drag racing season.

So, I've been kind of all over the country the last month from Boise, Idaho to Seattle

and Sonoma and was just in Indianapolis last week for the unveiling of the new

timing tower at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park.

We're heading this week for the U.S. Nationals.

Biggest drag race in the world.

And before we get on to that, you know, drag racing speeds now are crazy.

What was the latest record breaking speed?

Yeah.

So, Brittany Forrest went 343 miles an hour in Sonoma this year,

which was a reset.

It's the all-time speed record in the sport.

So, it's been pretty wild this year.

There's been a really kind of big escalation in speeds.

Funny cars repeatedly going over 340.

But Brittany 343 brought the house down out there in California.

It really was pretty stunning because we never see, especially this day and age,

we don't see speed records broken by multiple miles an hour anymore.

And she crushed it by two miles an hour out there at Sonoma.

So, it was wild.

I'm all over the place this morning, like Jesse is apparently.

So, tell us a little bit about your history and how you get into this.

I read something about you were sleeping in your car for a while,

kind of going back and forth between towers.

Not Jay Leno style, but yeah, I was back in the day.

I would go up for the weekend and, you know, my college, I went to UMass.

So, I was traveling a couple hours back and forth to the track.

So, I was just started to stay and sleep in the cabin of my truck overnight.

And then the track operator let me sleep inside the gate,

which was a big upgrade.

So, yeah, I started locally and, you know, like Mike Joy.

Mike Joy started down in Connecticut at Stafford Springs

and some of the other Connecticut tracks.

And he ultimately became the guy who's the lead broadcaster for NASCAR on Fox.

And it's kind of cool that we get two New England guys on the two big series.

Yeah, it really is.

And you dabbled in a little bit of drag racing too, right?

Yeah.

I raced with my dad back in the day and my dad still races.

He actually just, just a weekend or two weekends ago,

just wanted to race up in Canada.

So, he's still at it.

And I was so good at it, I started to drive a microphone.

So, that was my, I promoted myself right out of the driver's seat there.

But that was a lot of fun.

And I raced with him for several years when I was growing up.

And, you know, maybe reaction time killed you as a drag racer.

Certainly not reaction time, not reaction time on the microphone.

You are super quick on the mic.

Yeah, I think that's just, you know, it's like conditioned response.

I guess over the course of time, you know, I've watched this stuff now for half my life.

So, you know, you kind of get yourself mentally prepared for what's going on

and you try to give people a real time kind of analysis of what's happening.

So, it's one of the most fun parts of, I guess, the job is kind of being on my toes

and waiting for the unexpected to happen in front of us.

It's, you know, between stuff blowing up and being on fire.

And it's been a heck of a season and we've seen our fair share of craziness.

So, it always keeps me on my toes.

And you have some really good lines when stuff happens.

You know, like somebody's really, really fast or something blows up.

And, you know, and those, I assume just come out of the ether somewhere.

But you do it amazingly well.

Yeah, thank you.

You know, I love to read.

So, there's a lot of times I'll run across some interesting phraseology in a book

or something like that and make a note for myself.

But I never, you really can't crowbar that stuff in.

You kind of have it floating around in the back of your head.

So, if something does happen, you can use it.

But it's impossible to try to script out something because it just sounds,

you know, it sounds really forced.

And every once in a while, you'll be watching sports and there'll be a,

you know, whether it's play by play guy or reporter that clearly has something

that they've wanted to say the whole time and whether the moment fits or not,

they're just going to say it anyway.

And it'll make you cringe if it's not, you know, it doesn't fit right.

It doesn't work.

So, yeah, I think for me, I just, I try to, I take a lot of notes between races

and stuff.

And if I run across things that are interesting, I just,

I try to commit them to some part of my memory where I can pull them up pretty quick.

Yeah, I know, you know, I've watched you do this before.

And, you know, and like you said, you know, sometimes you kind of wonder,

you're watching somebody talking or doing something and you kind of say,

well, how long you've been holding that one up to use, you know?

And it's great when it just comes out naturally and you seem to,

you seem to be really good at that.

Tell us, you know, you're in the booth with Tony Pedragan.

Who else are your sort of teammates?

So, you know, Tony's the, so if I'm the play by play guy,

Tony's the kind of color analyst and then, you know,

I work with guys like David Freiberger who's been a great friend of mine for

20 years, like one of the ultimate car guys in the country.

He's joined our broadcast team this year, working about half the schedule.

Bruno Massel is a guy that a lot of people know from shows like the

Rog Squad and Truck U.

He's a four time world champion drag racer in a class called

Competition Eliminator.

Nobody else has ever done that before.

So, he's a great friend, a great reporter.

Amanda Busek, if you watch, you know, sports car racing or you watch

the NASCAR Truck Series, you'll see her dabbling in that stuff as well.

And Jordan Vanagreff's a young top fuel driver that's between rides right now

and he's been working with us the last couple of seasons.

And it's a really, you know, it's a good group of people.

I mean, when you make these shows, there's 75 or 80 people involved

to make these things and, you know, people see three or four of us

over the course of the broadcast, but there's, you know,

literally dozens of people making these things happen.

It's a wild process.

Yeah, I remember you had a program on before.

You've had a couple of programs, right?

You had a kind of a, you know, run what you brung kind of race.

And you also had kind of, was it your version of like Two Guys

Garage or something like that?

Yeah, it was actually, yeah, really what it was was the,

it technically was Two Guys Garage as it kind of moved forward.

It was like Shade Tree mechanic back in the day with, you know,

Sam and Olo and those guys and I was on what would have been

the third or fourth kind of iteration of that same show.

I kind of came in after Sam retired and I did that show

for several years.

We shot it down in Johnson City, Tennessee.

I worked with a guy named John Gardner,

a super good guy, a great mechanic.

And yeah, it was that type of show.

We did, you know, parts installs.

We looked at new products and did all that type of stuff.

And yeah, the other show was called Put Up or Shut Up.

And you can still find it.

If you have Amazon Prime, you can look it up.

And we made a couple of seasons of that.

It was a racing show.

And the premise was that we would find two, you know,

we would either do interesting styles of racing like,

you know, big rig drag racing with these hot rod or big rigs

or, you know, we'd go out to circle tracks and pit,

you know, two different styles of cars against each other

that normally didn't race,

but ran about the same lap times.

And we had a lot of fun.

I mean, we did some pretty crazy stuff.

We drag raced pulling tractors on that show

with multiple engines on them side by side.

Nobody had ever done that before.

It was a lot of fun.

Yeah, it was.

And I remember talking to you about it.

You said, and you talk about crews,

I think you said your GoPro crew had like a dozen people in it.

Yeah.

We did a private organization show years ago for Facebook.

When Facebook, Facebook Watch first started,

they were doing all this original programming.

And we did a show, a series.

It was called the $3,000 Hoopty Challenge.

And we shot it at Tucson Dragway.

And we had a massive crew on that show.

We made four or five episodes all in the span of a couple of days.

And yeah, there were like 20 people GoPro and cars up and down.

I mean, it was a, it was a huge production.

And again, you can still,

you can find that on Facebook.

If you love like Jalopy style racing

and it was a very kind of fun irreverent show.

But yeah, the $3,000 Hoopty Challenge

Yeah.

Those kind of things always sort of appeal to me

because it seems like, you know,

that's the kind of stuff you can wrench in your driveway

and make it work.

Oh yeah.

And you know, it was kind of a funny show to make

because the initial couple episodes were Fryberger and I

basically picking the cars that we're going to race.

And our job was to determine whether the thing was actually

worth $3,000 or if it was worth, you know, too much money,

which is kind of the opposite of every other show in the world

where you want to find the good cars.

We were looking for the worst junk we could find

to make sure it was, you know, kind of accurate.

So it was a blast to make that.

Yeah.

Do you have any thoughts on, you know,

the motor trend channel going away?

And I mean, is that just a sign of the times money wise

that, you know, they just couldn't, you know,

those kind of programs just couldn't keep going?

Yeah.

I mean, the Warner Brothers discovered a thing

that real difficult for motor trend.

And, you know, it's unfortunate.

They were a byproduct of a lot of, like,

media consolidation going on right now.

But I think the good thing that's happened here

is that Motor Trend Hot Rod, those brands got bought by Hearst.

And Hearst is a magazine media company.

They're not a television production, you know,

business or a movie production business

that owned a magazine or a couple of brands.

So you're going to start to see,

and I would not expect to see it back

on, you know, regular TV as its own channel,

you're going to start to see a load of new cool car shows

coming out of that Hearst side of things

as they get more into the video stuff.

And that's going to be like,

you're going to find all that stuff

on, like, the Motor Trend YouTube channel

and stuff like that.

And, you know, I know Mike Alimi

is the brand director for Hot Rod

was able to kind of navigate the company

and the brand through some tough times

that Warner Brothers discovered

and they have a way better future

in front of them now than they did

before they left that.

So, yeah, it stinks to lose the Motor Trend channel,

but at the same time, you know,

a lot of the people that made those shows

are doing their own thing on YouTube.

They're doing their own thing here and there.

So it's still out there.

You just got to go look for it.

Yeah, I know, I know personally,

you know, I think it was just this weekend,

you know, Freiberger had, you know,

I've been on YouTube for a year

and this is what I learned sort of thing.

Yeah.

And, you know, he hinted around that,

you know, coming up with the engine masters

type of show could come back again.

He likes, like you, he likes history.

And I think is there kind of a running race

of who's been to the most abandoned drag strips?

Yeah, he and I have a pretty good head-to-head battle going.

I still have them by just because of the nature of my job,

I still have them by a pretty wide margin,

but he's chipping away at them.

So my lead was once like 80 or 90 tracks

and I think it's down to 40 or 50 overall now.

So I need to get back on the horse there

and stretch it back out again.

But you're right, you kind of look around

and I guess I spend way too much time on YouTube,

but you kind of look around and, you know,

Freiberger's doing what he's doing with his channel,

Mike Finnegan's doing what he's doing with his channel.

There is, there's a lot of really good car content

out there for people.

They just have to look for it

and look in a little bit different place for it.

Yeah.

And you get to find what you like.

I mean, you know,

whether if you're into the traditional hot riding stuff,

those two guys are great.

I mean, there's so many guys out there

doing great content with, you know,

different styles of cars and whether it's the European stuff

or guys just building crazy things like, you know,

Cletus McFarland and all his antics.

It really is something out there for everybody.

And again, if you put in,

you put in the extra five minutes to jump on,

you know, the search thing and look up what you like,

you're going to find it.

Now did Cletus close his track for a month or so

to do some renovations to it?

Yeah.

They closed the drag ship because one,

it's the middle of summer in Florida

so it's reasonable down there anyway,

but they did a bunch of upgrades.

They paid a bunch of stuff,

upgraded a bunch of the infrastructure, bathrooms.

So yeah, he's, you know,

the great thing about that guy is he's the type of guy

that puts, you know, money,

his money goes where his mouth is.

So, you know, he, when he became a fully,

you know, vested partner in the drag strip,

he owned the circle track that's basically attached

to the drag strip.

But once he got in with the drag strip,

he made major investments there to improve it

for everybody.

So it's great.

And he's what, like 30 years old, right?

Basically, yeah, I think he's right around 30.

Yeah, 30 owns a bunch of helicopters,

owns the racetracks, owns an airport.

Yeah, he's done pretty well for himself.

Yeah.

Just like you.

Yeah.

I'm still waiting on that airport.

I'm going to buy at some point.

Yeah.

But when you look at drag racing and,

you know, and I think with me,

I don't know, maybe it's my ADD or something.

I really enjoy drag racing because it's quick.

I, you know, it's, you know, for me to watch,

you know, you know, NASCAR, I get a little bit bored.

But for me to watch, me to watch,

and I still like, I still like NASCAR,

but I love the behind the scenes part of NASCAR

more than the actual racing part.

But for me, watching drag racing is,

it's just, it's, first off, in-person experience

can't, you know, you have to do it at least once

if you like it.

Exactly.

Fannie, I would tell people,

if you have just any passing interest in cars

and, you know, I'm not looking to make you

a lifelong fan here,

but if you have any interest in cars,

you owe it to yourself to just attend a,

attend a national drag race once

just to get the idea of what these things

sound and feel like

because it is a really unique experience.

Like I've been to a bunch of NASCAR races

and they are awesome,

but like you don't get the access to the pit area.

You don't see the guys rebuilding the engines.

And of course the noise is just beyond description.

So it does get every single one of your senses.

That's a fact.

Yeah.

And, you know, these drivers are crazy athletes, too.

To be able to absorb,

what is it, like nine Gs of deceleration or something?

Yeah, upwards of seven.

Yeah.

So they see in the middle of a really good run,

a driver will see like six and a half to seven Gs positive

and then really less than two seconds later,

there'll be six and a half to seven Gs negative

when the parachutes hit.

So that's why you see these very fit people get out of a car

that they've driven for really under acceleration

less than five seconds

and they're all winded and out of breath.

And these are, like you said, these are fit people.

They are trained.

They do all the stuff,

but it legitimately knocks the wind out of you

every single time you pull the chute.

Yeah.

And it's not just drag race.

I mean, you know, go back to NASCAR.

You know, the idea of anybody who's ever done anything

like I don't know, you know, down here in a couple of weeks

on Cape Cod, there's going to be a go-kart race for charity,

the sea side of the lines.

And great little races at Mashpee Commons.

It's a lot of fun to watch.

It's free to watch.

But, you know, you get in one of those go-karts

and do like 30 laps are exhausted when you get out.

Well, yeah.

Now, the endurance that it takes,

even, you know, in modern stock car racing,

those guys don't get enough credit because,

and you know, we've seen it over the last couple of years,

people getting out of the cars with heat stroke

and extreme dehydration and all that stuff.

I mean, the interior temperatures of those things

are way over 100 degrees and you're doing it for hours.

And yes, they have power steering,

but that doesn't take the G-load off your body

from constantly cornering.

And, you know, we've actually seen some drag racers

over the course of the last couple of years

have, you know, heat exhaustion issues

and stuff like that.

And it is a, it's a funny thing to say.

It's a very physically taxing thing.

And when we get to Indy this week,

it's, you know, longest race of the year.

We start racing at Indy on Wednesday

and we don't finish till the following Monday

and there'll be about a thousand cars there

of all the different classes.

And, you know, you see people bouncing around on Wednesday

when we get there and you see a lot of people

with drag and knuckles and drooping eyelids,

but as fast as we get finished on Monday afternoon.

Yeah, I was amazed and only because

I've known him for years and years

and I think you know Dale Quarterly, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

You know, he ran, he ran the Craftsman Truck Race

and then an hour later ran the Arca Race.

And I'm like, he's 62 years old.

How did he do that?

Yeah, some of these guys are just built different, man.

Just built different.

It is the Indy fatigueable.

Yeah.

Yeah, it really is.

Four wide.

What's your thoughts on that?

I happen to really like four wide.

Yeah, you know, it cuts both ways.

A lot of people dislike it for the first time ever

for this year.

We usually have our four wide races in the spring

one in Vegas, one in Charlotte.

Those are the only two wide, four wide tracks we have.

And normally when we go to Charlotte in the fall,

part of what we call the countdown of the championship,

which is the playoff season of NHRA drag racing.

Normally it's the two wide race

and for the first time ever,

we're going to have a four wide race

in this countdown portion of the year.

And listen, the reality of the situation is

when we went from two wide to four wide racing

in Vegas in the spring,

the crowd basically tripled.

So when we have the four wide race in Charlotte

in the spring, the crowd is at least twice the size

of the two wide race.

So, you know, the reality is people love watching it.

And, you know, at the end of the day,

as a spectator sport,

you have to do what spectators want to see,

whether it's, whether people like it or not,

they're going to come compete.

And we want the spectators to come see them.

So it's, to me, it's a pragmatic decision.

And it's like, you got to do what you got to do.

And clearly they're voting with their dollars

and their eyeballs.

And if you like smoke and noise

and the smell of drag racing,

having four cars at one time

must be like having fighter jets fly over your head.

Yeah, it's one of those things

when you see a two wide race,

you don't think it can possibly get any louder.

And then all of a sudden four of them are up there

and it'll, I mean, it is,

if you're close enough to them,

it is verging on the painful.

If you're on the starting line,

when four of them go off at the same time,

any sort of ability of mind

to describe what it feels like.

It's just this high frequency vibration,

the noise, the smoke, the fumes,

the nitro engines, it's just, it's wild.

Do you have a favorite track?

Do you have one that you go to

and you're like, this is, this is the one I,

you know, I love the, oh yeah.

New England Dragway, I love Effing

because it's like going to Fenway Park.

I love the Red Sox and, you know,

going to those two places are special.

But, you know, to me, other than that,

there's so much history.

The race is, you know,

the oldest continuous drag race in the world

and it's been going since 55

and it's just, it's the biggest,

most important race we have

and I just love the fact that

we just have this big unveiling

of a brand new timing tower,

the facilities getting upgraded

in phases, it's really fantastic.

Street Outlast type

car channel racing, what do you think?

You know, it's had

I think when we look at, you know,

it's what we would classify as what we call

no prep style drag racing.

So that style of drag racing is still

pretty popular around the country.

It's just not popular in the way that

those guys were doing it.

Like once the show went off the year,

you know, the whole kind of genre

around those specific guys kind of fell

off a little bit, but there's,

there's a lot of no prep style racing

going on around the country.

A lot of young guys like to do it

in those places open. It gives people something to do.

It's productive and it keeps them off the streets.

I'm for it.

Yeah, I, you know, whenever

you get new people interested

in like you pointed out, you know,

plain and simple, you know,

you love, you love things with

tires on them and anytime you can get

people interested in that, I think

is a phenomenal thing and

you know, whether it's, you know, young people

that are racing, you know,

you know, what we call

you know, imports back then,

you know, you know, when you

see somebody tuning a

Supra with a laptop and it's,

you know, 900 horsepower, it's

pretty impressive.

It is. And it's the same stuff, you know, guys

did it 50 years ago with a screwdriver, the same

job that that kid's doing with a laptop. So it's, you know,

as much as people want to talk about how much

everything's changed, the reality of the situation is

the only thing that's changed is just the tools you use.

I mean, still a lot of,

you know, testing two nights at the drag strip,

and they were in the 70s with Grudge Night. You show up

there with your stuff, maybe both a set of slicks on

and see how fast you can go. The car

looked different and the technology is different, but it's

still the same game. And hope it doesn't break

so you can drive home. That's a fact.

That is an absolute fact.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it's

it's really good. It's really

good. And again, I think

you know, whenever,

you know, whatever we can do to

encourage people to

really enjoy motorsports, I think

is great. And

what you do,

you do such a good job

announcing the races.

But also, you have your own

sort of history channel too.

You have your own podcast that you do

before we let you go.

Tell us a little bit about that and where people can find it.

Yeah, so I have

like everybody else these days, I guess, I have a

YouTube channel. It's just my name, Brian Lones,

if you search that. And I do

historical documentaries on

race cars. I do it on engines.

You know, I just, I did a long

video on the history of the

Oppenhauser engine. It's not just drag racing stuff.

It's all different motorsport stuff.

Even some non-motor sports stuff. I did one about

the New England

Timber Reclamation

Administration or New England Timber Salage

Administration after the hurricane of 1938.

It's a fantastic

story about all these millions of acres

of forest that got blown over, how the

government worked with, you know, local

lumbermen and all the local communities to

save all this wood and not, you know, crush the

market. So, you know, I love stories like

that that highlight, you know,

teamwork and create a problem

solving. And a lot of that stuff translates back

to racing. So you can find that on YouTube

or if you listen to podcasts, you can go to the

dork emotive podcast, which is basically

that's another kind of thing that I

do. And that's just an audio deal.

So if you want to listen to some of the car about,

you know, racing history, mechanical history, even

the history of Ferris wheels, I got that too.

Yeah, you have a pretty

wide range of things

that you talk about, which I think makes it

really interesting and

you know,

I don't know, it's just

you're bordering a workaholic, I think.

Yeah, I think, you know, for me

that's, you know, my enjoyment is

making these things. I enjoy it.

I guess it's a, you call it a hobby,

you can call it a second job, you can call it

if you want, but I really enjoy the research

element of it. And then, you know, assembling

the story and putting some out to people

like Washington. So it's

my way to chill

out and relax, I guess. When you're on vacation,

do you still find yourself going

to, I don't know, car museums

or local cruise nights or stuff like that?

You know, it depends on what we're

doing. If we're somewhere to see cool stuff

and there's something that doesn't drag everybody too far

out of the way, yes. I mean, you know, we've

hit places like the Henry Ford Museum,

the Museum of the United States Air Force,

you know, there's a lot of great

places to visit and enjoy

a day that can take you through

either history or just cool stuff. So yeah,

I mean, I'm never too far away from what I

guess you'd say. Yeah, every time I drive

by the Don Garlet's Museum, I keep saying to

my wife, we gotta pull in, we gotta pull in.

But it hasn't happened yet. Check it out, man.

And he's in there too. I mean, he'll be

94 years old and he looks like he's

about 65 and he'll be walking around

the museum and he'll be glad to talk

to you about anything you can bring up. He

is one of the most incredible people I've

ever met and he is a gift to still have

around. Yeah, he really is. I think he

lives across the street.

Yeah, his house is on the property. Yeah.

Yeah, he built that. He built

that whole thing with his house on the property

back in the early 80s. Yeah, I thought so, yeah.

No, I met him, I don't know,

20 years ago and

you know, he had

you know, he has

Popeye arms and he still does it, 90

something years old. Yeah, he was just,

there was footage of him putting together

two Emmy last week and he's winging

those, you know, iron cylinder heads around

that weigh like 100 pounds of piece like they're nothing

and he does, he's got a set of

four arms on it, probably still tear a telephone

book in half, it's amazing. I know it

really is. So,

Brian, if people want to catch you this

weekend, I mean this week coming up

or weekend coming up, how do they do that?

Sure. So, our coverage,

you know, if you want to just watch

Drag Racing starting on Wednesday,

you're going to be able to watch

live. If you go to any of these YouTube pages, all

the sportsman qualifying that's going on, that's going to

be streamed for free and then starting on

Sunday we have multiple shows on

FS1 and then on Monday

our elimination show will be from

2 to 5 p.m. on, if you're in the

Boston market, it will be Fox 25, it will be

on the network from 2 to 5 p.m. Monday

and that will be the

70, what, 73rd

running at the U.S. Nationals, so it's going to be

awesome. Yeah, it really

sounds like a good time, it sounds like a good time

to, you know, spend, watch

some racing, get your kids

involved in it, let them watch it.

Yeah, no, it's

fantastic. Brian, thanks for taking

some time out of your Sunday and joining us on the car

dog. Thanks, John. Alright, take care, Brian.

Be good man, I'll see you. See you.

Alright, that was Brian Lones,

just

an overall car guy,

you know, but an overall car guy

that he may be, he may be

right there with one of the most famous

people now, you know, just

a good guy.

I met him, I think I met him

20 years ago maybe at some

tire testing event that was going

on and

you know, and he became a member of the New England

Motor Press Association when he's not

at races, I see him at meetings

so, but he's

amazing

how he's got to where he is

and it isn't because

he's really, really good at it. Why don't we take

a break, pay some bills. My name is John Paul, this is a

car dog to program. If you want to join us, our phone

number is 781-837-4900

when we come back, I want to talk

about the Mini Cooper

fun, frustrating, all of that.

You're listening to the car dog

program at 959-WATD, we'll be right back.

Even

car geeks and do-it-yourselfers rely

on AAA to give them extra

peace of mind on the road. AAA offers

24-7 roadside assistance,

whether you're in your own vehicle, a friend's car

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Get a special membership offered today

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AAA.com

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August 19th, 1998,

Bob Murphy finally took a vacation.

You just can't put in 18-hour days forever.

So Bob loaded up the tents, the

fishing poles, the firewood camp stove,

the steaks, the soda, the beer, mattresses,

sleeping bags, lanterns, and the canoe.

It all fit neatly into the big van,

even the canoe, except

it was sticking out the back a little too far.

Bob's daughter Mandy warned him,

Dad, it's going to hit the windshield.

Ah, just a little bit more, honey.

It'll be alright. Bob's a gentleman

but he is human.

So let's just say that Daddy

doesn't usually say those things

and we can add that tiny will come

to your home, your work,

or your campsite and fix your windshield.

I'm Peter Brown of Tiny and Sun's

Autoglass in Pembroke.

If your windshield is broken, just call

1-888-64-TINIES

and thank you.

Hi there, it's

Paul Kibillion from Kibillion's Car Care

at 104 Maddox case and street in Pembroke.

Vacation season is here

and the time to take care of your car is now

before those road trips.

Kibillions is always here to make sure

you're road ready. To schedule an appointment

call 781-834-6558.

Find us

at 104 Maddox case and street in Pembroke.

Or find us online at Kibillion's Car Care

dot com.

Thanks a million, Mr. Kibillion!

Won't you step into the light?

Hi, I'm Dan Chauvin.

Step into the light and tune into

Twilight Showcase Radio, hosted by

Sandy Stride and Keith James

on 959 WATD

and 959WATD.com.

Search for

Twilight Showcase on Facebook

and visit twilightshowcase.org.

Twilight Showcase

Tonight from 8 to 10

on 959 WATD.

Make an appointment

Sunday morning at 11

for John Paul, the car doctor

on 959 WATD.

Now, back to the car doctor.

And welcome back to the car doctor

program. If you would like to

join us, our phone number is

781-837-4900.

If you want to hang on the phone

with Bill, we'll get to you in just

a minute, Bill. I want to talk about

the 2025

Mini Cooper S

and the one I

drove was a convertible.

And the Cooper S means

it's a little bit more powerful.

It uses a 7-speed dual clutch

transmission.

Oddly, it doesn't have

manual shifting capability,

which seems like it would

have paddle shifters, but it doesn't.

But it is a

fun little car. It certainly is.

It's got a 2-liter turbocharged 4-cylinder engine.

It's about 200 horsepower,

a little bit more torque, I think,

220 or so foot-pounds of torque.

Go to 0 to 60 in

6.5 seconds, which

today isn't

supercar fast, but still

fast enough.

The transmission shifts smooth.

Again, no paddle shifters,

which seems a bit odd. You can put it

into L for a sporty

shift map, but it's not

and, you know, as much

as paddle shifters are nice, I still like

a real transmission

with a real clutch pedal.

My neighbor happens to have a Cooper S.

It's an older one. I think it's a 2014

or 15 or something like that.

And it is about the same engine,

but it's actually a manual, which makes

it more fun to drive.

It's still a go-kart, no matter how you look at it.

Dodge through corners,

it's a lot of fun to drive.

I read somewhere it's not

as raw as older models.

I think that's good, because

the older ones that I drove all seem to break.

Is it an English car?

Well, it's

really a BMW.

Mini Cooper was English,

but today these are more

BMW design.

I put on Facebook

it's fun and frustrating. One of the reasons is

it has a 9.5 inch

circular

touchscreen.

And it's kind of retrofuturistic,

if that makes any sense. So it looks

the display is old, but because

it's

OLED instead of LED, I guess.

It makes

it look more

modern. It's just

aggro. You go to

adjust the climate control

or the next thing you know the

seat heater is on.

You go to try to change the radius.

It looks really good.

Functionality

not so good.

At least with me, maybe you get used to it.

The seats I

found were really comfortable. Rear seats are

well

they have one.

They have rear seats.

Bags maybe

with the front seats move forward,

maybe kids maybe

even with the top down

I don't think adults

you'd have to be a bunch of

you'd have to be really squished in there.

It has a clever

two-stage opening top

which

it can open like a

sunroof so you can keep

part of it open and then if you want

the whole top comes down.

I found that

to work better

in theory than in reality

and maybe if you're shorter it's fine

but I found when I opened up the top

in sort of sunroof mode

it was too much

blowing around inside the cabin

I just found it

annoying so I put the top all the way down

which I really liked. It is a

really good

top down car.

Top goes down pretty quick

like I said the turbo works

good it's got a

indicator in it I think it's in the go-kart mode

tells you how many horsepower it's using

and it still goes as you know we talk about

horsepower a lot

60 miles an hour

you only need about 10 horsepower to maintain

that 60 miles an hour so

it is

you don't need a million horsepower

but the 200 horsepower does

make it feel really good

you know this falls into the car

the saying of

life's too short to drive boring cars

this is not a boring car

you know when

the world is full of kind of

dull and boring

SUVs and crossovers now there's some really

good ones that aren't dull and boring

but if you want to

feel comfortable you want to drive something that's fun

you want to drive something that handles well

you can

put up with kind of the cheeky

tech savvy

interior pieces

I think it's a good choice

you won't get to

shift the gears by yourself

but you'll get to drive it

it feels fun to drive

it's easy to park

I went to the Plymouth

yesterday where

I got to meet Jim from North Reading

he came down and we'll talk to Jim in just a minute

but

there was a

million people in Plymouth yesterday

and Jesse I'm not exaggerating a million people

in Plymouth and

you know finding a parking space was hard

I'm glad I had this Mini Cooper

because there was one parking

space and an N parking lot

you know way down at the other end

of where the WATD

tent was

and most people tried to fit in

it couldn't fit in it because there was a

SUV on one side kind of parked

on the line and a Ford

van on the other side

and people drove by the spot tried to edge

their way in it couldn't open the doors

I was happy to be in the Mini Cooper

where I could get in, get out

and finally found a parking space

so it was good

so that's the Mini Cooper S

again it's vibrant, it's

wind in your hair, it's fun to drive

it can be a little aggravating

but I guess like all things

you take a little bit of, you take a lot of the good

with a little bit of the aggravation

and you end up good at the end

let's talk to Bill and Maldon

Bill good morning

good morning John

how are you?

pretty good, pretty good

I have a

kind of

hoping you run into the situation

before

the vehicle I'm driving

it's a 2013

and it's about to turn 140,000

on the clock this week probably

and

it's going to need some work

I'm looking at brakes and a lot of suspension work

but in the interim

I've become aware of several vehicles

the same year

and one that's a 14

and two of them

have over 100,000 miles

less than the car I'm driving

I haven't

seen these vehicles because they don't believe it

one has 28,000

claimed and the other has

19,000

what kind of car is it?

the car I'm driving

is a 2013 Lincoln

MKS

and I think value wise

these things have just

dropped off the marketplace

but

if those mileage could be

substantiated

my question John

would it be worth buying one of those cars

and foregoing the repairs that this car is going to need?

yeah I mean

as an example

the one with the

a little bit higher mileage

what are they looking to get for that?

I think 20,000

that's a 2014

it's the exact

everything I have

all the options

to drive itself to a pocket

but all these

things I've never used

and

and the question always becomes

you look at your car

and try to determine

its value

and you go

to my car with

$15,000

if I put it into it

how long is my car going to last

with

100,000 more miles on it than these cars have

my concern

always is with

a

12 year old or 13 year old car

that only has

15,000, 20,000, 30,000 miles on it

how was it taken

care of in those 13 years?

did it still get the oil

did it still get the oil change regularly?

I mean it is possible that

this is a sedan

people didn't drive them as much

somebody just

it was a short distance driver

but on the other hand lack of use

in some cases is worse

than abuse for a car

so sometimes when you buy a low mileage car

depends where it was stored

depends how it was driven

that can be a problem

some of these cars had the 3.5

turbo

some of them had the 3.7 in them

the turbo would

worry me a little bit

because it had some problems with them

is yours the turbocharged one or the non-turbocharged one?

yes

in fact John one of them has been replaced

I forget how many thousand miles to go

and that would

that would even concern me on the low miles cars

because

depending on how they were driven

and depending on

oil changes

all kinds of things

mechanical parts

don't like sitting still

and if somebody said

I drive the car once a week

for about 30 miles a week

it's probably perfect

for somebody who drove it every day

for a mile a day

those are the ones that can be problems

I mean you've already addressed

one of the biggest issues

that lack of use is almost as bad as overuse

and of course

getting one of those vehicles wouldn't preclude

it having all the problems I have

with this one over the years

that's right, suspension wise

that can

that's as much age related

as miles related

and even some of the little

nuisancey things

switches that

act up and components

that act up

those things can go bad just because of age

as much as use

something like

internally the climate control system

one of the little motors that opens and closes

events which can turn into

a nightmare repair

they can go bad just from sitting too

very good, I'm still

at that point where I'd love to see these cars

just to see how they

represent themselves

but

we'll just have to let it go for now

there you go

I think it's a shame

that Lincoln stopped making sedans

I think

Lincoln

they were

like Cadillac

they built

really good cars and the idea

that they did away with things like

whether it's something like the MKS

or something like a town car

that's what

they were known for

solid cars

and sedans and the idea that

oh I'm going to go buy a Lincoln but it's an SUV

well

nobody wants an SUV

I mean it's

interesting you mentioned

the twin turbos

this car goes right along

you hit the gas

it'll scoot along

and then one final question John

these things I'm looking at with the suspension

and brakes when I do the brakes I was just

going to have them tear into the suspension

is that something Sullivan Tyre could do

oh yeah I would think so

because they have

they have all the scan tools

necessary to reset everything when they're done

so and what's also kind of nice

about Sullivan Tyre

they actually have

a couple of guys now

they're sort of mobile guys

and they're the ones that have

all the sophisticated equipment

when stuff doesn't go the way it's

supposed to

and they work with

so they're sort of like

the equivalent of you know there's a

lot of tech assist

phone numbers and websites and stuff

they have sort of their own guy

who does that

and I met one

of the guys and he's just a sponge

for knowledge and he just

he just knows everything

and does everything so yeah

I would think Sullivan Tyre could

do this work without any problem

very good well thank you very much

you enjoy the rest of your Sunday

and I'll talk to you in the future

alright thanks Bill take care

thank you very much bye bye

now it's not often I meet somebody in person

because well I never leave the house

it seems like but

WATD had a booth at the

Plymouth seaside festival yesterday

and

Jim from North Reading showed up and now he's on the phone

Jim good morning

good morning highlight of my day

yesterday was meeting you

I wouldn't stop talking about it when I came home

well I'm

sad that that was the highlight of your day

because but I will

admit you know having you come down

and it's funny Rob Hackler

came down a little while later to help

break down the booth and I said

oh one of our regular listeners

and I said I love our listener

family I said one of our regular listeners

showed up and he's from

North Reading and he said

that's like 70 miles away

and I said yeah but he stopped on by

and it was great so I

was talking about you as much

as probably you were talking about me so

thank you

I did get to listen to the podcast

that I missed because of the streaming problems

this morning

and I was fascinated

by the Slate pickup truck

did you happen to get to

Newport?

No I didn't get to Newport to go see it

and I am

I kind of wonder

how they're really going to do because

they were really counting

on the federal tax

credit stuff and all that too

you know at close to

30,000

but I like

and I guess

everybody says this

everybody is looking for a small basic pickup truck

except they go out and they buy

GMC Denali

or Ford

F-150

with every bell and whistle

and special leather interior in it

but I like the idea of this

pickup truck that

is just a pickup truck

really pretended to be much more than that

I kind of wonder about

the SUV kit that you can buy

for it to turn it into a little

two door SUV but

only because I kind of

this is a fair amount

of assembly required to do that

because it actually comes with rear seat

airbags and stuff too

but just the idea of

this two door

three person I guess

five

or so foot bed that you can

you know that has the ability

to carry some stuff I mean there is days

there are days that I really wish

I had a pickup truck usually my little SUV

can do everything I need

to do except you know I wouldn't want to shovel dirt

in the back of it but

but just the idea of this basic

truck and

although I'm it's probably beyond

my technical level

the idea that you

can 3D print accessories

kind of

just fascinates me that they send you

the information it's like

if you have a 3D printer you can

make your own cup holders

or you make your own

iPhone holder or something

there is

part of this sort of

assemble it yourself

part of this truck that I really

kind of like and the idea that

it can go 150 to 200 miles on a charge

and plug it in and charge it back up

I think it has potential

and it's got

the guy behind us the Amazon guy so there's

plenty of money behind it

so what do you think?

yeah I mean

it's not like over the years

there has been some startups

of weird little electric

trucks and cars

and I've talked to a lot of these different people

and

they never go anywhere because they don't really

have the budget

I mean there was a, I forget the name

of it but there was a 3 wheel

or maybe 4 wheel

electric

car and it was actually

it was a cab driver

in New York I think that

he was an engineer by trade but he was

a cab driver most of the time

and he invented this little car

and I saw a

real one sort of at

the New York auto show

it never happened because

he didn't have the budget behind it

and you know when you got somebody like

the Amazon guy behind a vehicle

there's probably a pretty good chance

it's going to get built and it's going to get sold

but you still go back

I like talking car history with people

because if you look back

over the last 100 years

a lot of car companies went out of business

that was my concern but a $50

deposit I guess I'll gamble

well you know I was

I was

I think I've talked to half a dozen

people now that put $50 down

now the real question is

where are you in line to be able to get one

and you probably don't find out

until you put the deposit down or you still don't even

find out

but you know it's way better than

Tesla which started off

kind of building a sports car

so they had they took a Lotus

and took all the engine out of it

and built a sports car

electric sports car

they said they were going to build an electric supercar

sports car is going to zero to 60

and stupid you know two seconds or whatever

and I believe the deposit

was $50,000

and

unless you wanted one of the first 100

then it was a $200,000 deposit

I have no idea how much this thing costs

but I know a guy

$50,000 down

and that was five years ago

and he's still no closer to getting a car

than he was five years ago so I think

putting $50 down on a slate

I think I would take a chance

and you can get your money back

so

so what do you think Jim

going for it

and it was a pleasure meeting

you yesterday

it was a

I got to meet a few

of our local listeners as well

but the idea that you were

in the area and came down I hope you enjoyed yourself

at the little festival there

and

I did I spent a little money

I had some lunch and got to meet

my favorite talk show

Doctor Talk Show

well thanks Jim

have a good day John

bye bye

see Jesse

he's a fan

just because you pretend to be

and I know Jesse's having

trouble with his end here

working hard

never had trouble

why don't we take a break

pay some bills

you'll be sitting on 959 WATD

we'll be right back

for peace of mind on the road

AAA offers 24-7 roadside assistance

whether you're in your own vehicle

a friend's car or even a rental

combine that with great rates of insurance

hotel gas and buying savings

and discounts on 8700 brands

and you're covered on and off the road

get a special membership

offer today at

aaa.com

that's aaa.com

slash join

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hey there folks it's quinkelly reminding you to tune in

sunday night at five for the south shore's

first voice in sports talk radio

the sports exchange on match coverage of

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voice on all things boston pro sports

we've got you covered live at five

every sunday night have a question for our host

miss last week's show or just want to share

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make an appointment sunday morning at eleven

on paul the car doctor

on ninety five nine w-a-t-d

now back to the car doctor

and welcome back to the car doctor program

a couple of questions that came in this week

i have a Toyota Tacoma that has a problem

the battery goes dead eventually

battery goes

dead eventually

take a

comma out of that question

the shop thought a parasitic

drain but after doing some testing after

twenty minutes any drain is gone

they suggest a new battery and an alternator

the battery because this one has died

a few times in the last month

the alternator because it didn't seem right

i replaced both myself and now

eight weeks later a dead battery

any thoughts on this

i think the shop was

headed in the right direction

i would look for

i talk about voltage drop a lot

i would

want to see what the alternator

output is

at the alternator and then at the

battery i've seen some

cases where

the alternator is putting out 14.2

14.3 volts

but when you check it at the battery

it's 13.2

so you've lost a volt somewhere along the

line

and only charging

13 volts or 12 and

a half volts or whatever you're seeing at the battery

is enough that over time

over that eight weeks or however

long it's been that's enough for the

battery just to go dead

so a little bit loses a little bit

every day to get driving it

so i would start by looking at corrosion

i'd pull the power

and ground wires off i'd clean them

i'd maybe look

don't just look at the cable ends

themselves look back a little bit

into the

leads and this is a

case where an ohm meter

doesn't always tell you the real story

you can check an ohm meter and put it on one

end of the negative cable and the other

end of the negative cable and

you know it says oh

there's good continuity

but you put it under a strain

you

crank the engine over

and all of a sudden you see voltage

drop because

there's a poor connection in there

so that could be it

there could be multiple ground

wires on this Tacoma

and you've lost one or two of them

for whatever reason

so there you go

this one i like

this question and two questions

came in that were kind of funny

one asked me about is jacy wittney

still around and i said

i said

no they got bought by i think it was car parts

or something and somebody emailed me this morning

they i use that same question

in a column and i said yeah you

can still get you know every kind of

g-part in the world from these people

but no more winky the cat

which was you could buy it

from jacy wittney catalogs it was like this

fake cat you put your back window and its eyes

would blink when you had the turn signals on

but this person says

um i have a silly

dumb question i watch a lot of youtube videos

on car repair i've heard several of the

hosts talk about letting the smoke out

when testing electronics

what does that mean

well it's an old expression

and it comes from the idea that

all electronics run on smoke

and when you let the smoke out

of the part it does not work

well they don't really have smoke in them

but if you short something out

by testing it

it'll overheat burn smoke

and all of a sudden now that part

doesn't work anymore because you shorted it out

uh so because you let the smoke out

not

there's no smoke but you did cause a short

and as good as

um there's a tool

called a power probe a lot of people use them

i have two versions of them

i have a $20 one that i bought off of

amazon uh basically what it is

it's a it's a fancy

test light that has power and ground so you

can actually apply ground to something

and you can apply power to something

well if you apply power to something that's

not supposed to have 12 volts of power

you will let the smoke out of it

so if it's something that's only designed

to run on 5 volts

the difference between the $20 amazon one

and the better version of the

innova one that i have

is the innova one actually has a circuit breaker

and so if you do something dumb

it actually pops

its own internal circuit breaker so it doesn't

damage the tool and may

not damage the component but you need to be

careful with them because you can't apply power

to places that aren't supposed to have power

um so if you apply power to a ground

it's going to pop the internal

circuit breaker so it doesn't damage the tool

the $20 one

i haven't tested it to see if it works

but i did spend $22 on it

and i don't want to break it so

and they are you know on

on complex electronics they're really handy

on simple electronics like things like

if you have a utility trailer or

any other kind of little trailer that the lights

don't work really good tool to

you know is it a bad ground it is a bad power

is it this that really

handy for that kind of thing so

my

thoughts would be buy a little

better one the $22 one

not quite as good get the

another one there we go

we used up an hour today until

next week make sure you wear your seatbelt

drive safely be good to your car if you see an emergency

vehicle by the side of the road slow down

and move over save lives talk to you on next

week bye bye

Talking NHRA with Fox Sports/Car Guy Brian Lohnes and a review of the Mini Cooper S convertible

Toyota Supra

Ford Edge

Ford F150

Toyota Tacoma

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