The Aftermarket Wheel Industry Collapse, Quality vs Cost, Big Moves at Nissan, RAM, & More

Lots going on in the world, Nick, but especially in the automotive world market.

I do want to say before we start, next week is going to be the official 52nd anniversary,

AKA a year of the show, right?

If you're new to the show, we, we, and you missed the joke before, we dropped a fiery

dump of podcast on December, on December 2nd.

That was the exact words that rabbi said.

That was the exact, no, no, no.

You said that's a fire, that's a good fiery dump was a good joke.

So I just ran along with it for a couple of months, but we dropped three episodes

on the first week of December.

Christmas Eve, the first viral video goes and the rest is kind of viral history,

automotive history, I should say, at this point.

So send in your emails, let's go to podcast at gmail.com and we will try

to just like get together as many podcasts or rather emails on next week's

podcast. We'll still do a regular show, but if you guys really ask about anything,

anything regarding Nick's work history, his private life, secrets, secrets

from the underworld. I'm going to tell you this.

You know what questions I think we have to retire.

What?

What would you buy for 8,500 bucks?

You know what?

I agree with you, but a point apart of me is like, it's going to get,

it's going to be so small that we're just going to start talking about scooters.

You can get some mongooses for about $8,500 had a scooter incident

pulling into my shop today.

You run over that guy and you're in your strip.

No, no, my next door neighbor sells all of like the high end one wheel

scooters, dirt bikes, all electric, right?

Coolest neighbors in the world.

I couldn't be better.

They are very respectful of everybody when they do like test runs with people

buying them, like nobody in this park has anything.

I, you know, you got to cross a couple lanes to get into my shop.

OK, so you cross a couple lanes, guys flying on a scooter.

There's no way for you to see him, right?

He's not even in your peripheral when you're when you're doing this.

So he has to stop.

I get the finger.

Do you know the finger?

No, I'm like, but you were on the sidewalk.

Like it's not like you were walking and I almost hit you.

You're you're riding something that goes the speed of the cars on a sidewalk.

Like it'd be like Lance Armstrong riding his bike at full speed on a sidewalk.

You guys would all find that weird.

You just use LX bearing down on you.

Now, here's the deal.

I'm driving the GX today because I got to get it cleaned up.

OK, but here's wouldn't that be funny that my my newest one that my family

drives, I just put a human being right on the hood.

That'd be wild.

People think it's going to be Halloween to a decoration.

Like, no, that's real.

So here I got to ask everybody out there listening, because if you live in

certain neighborhoods, if you're in certain places, these scooters are everywhere.

And I told you, you and I were hanging out in the woodlands and that area,

Houston, like there's kids flying on scooters and you have those weird

paths that like break up for those that have neighborhoods like this.

The path goes like basically right before the stop sign.

You know what I mean?

And then you get out into the street so like you can clip a kid and still not make

the turn. So you got to watch what's going on.

I mean, it's pretty wild.

And we're having the same thing here in Vegas because of the weather.

Southern California is experiencing the same thing anywhere where it's

somewhat warm, these scooters.

So now they're actually here.

Legislation is probably going to get passed.

You got to register these vehicles.

No way.

I mean, it's crazy.

I've seen some videos where people are like riding these E they look like dirt

bikes, but they're, you know, electric or whatever.

My neighbor's got a bunch of dude cops are not knowing what they are.

They're running into issues and then they're kind of here's the thing.

They go 70 miles an hour.

I know. Pretty wild, right?

And on top of that, you can get them for like a couple hundred bucks now.

You can get them really inexpensive.

Well, these are a few G.

I was going to say, if you don't want the really, you know, the ones

that my next-door neighbor has like, let me tell you, they're nice.

I mean, you get on those things.

You're like, oh, yeah, this would be.

I don't know how people are buying these for kids.

Oh, it's so dangerous because, you know, I grew up with dirt bikes.

I understand that world.

I don't know what I would have done if I'd had something that goes

zero to 70 miles an hour.

Yeah. And we're talking about like instantaneously, like this isn't.

I'll tell you what you do.

I tell you what you do.

You're going to be that guy like in the video that I saw last night

that made me want to throw up before bed, where it's a

charger EV, drag racing a Tesla, like you'd be in your dirt bikes as a kid

trying to just race the other kids going zero to 70 in two seconds.

Yeah. But I mean, can you imagine how high you would jump off

like a dirt ramp with one of these EV things?

Yeah, it's terrifying that it's terrifying.

And then as soon as it lands, it just blows up just one bit.

But so now they're running into it.

I mean, I mean, it is because it's I mean, these are technically motor vehicles.

We're talking about it on a car pod as they get it.

But if they have to start putting VIN numbers on these things,

you know, you're going to have to start carrying insurance.

You're going to have to start playing the game and out here,

you know, I don't mind how anybody gets around your thing is your thing.

You know, we're not judgmental.

One of the guys that's worked over here a long time,

they have souped up one of those one wheel things that you stand on.

Like the skateboard looking thing.

Yeah, but it goes between your legs.

It's got two things on the side and a thing in the middle.

I think they got that thing up to 55 miles an hour.

This dude rides it to work.

Oh, my God, he's sound like an old fuddy duddy.

But does he have a helmet at least?

Is he? Oh, yeah, he's he's got the Barry Bonds.

Oh, OK, he's he's going.

No, no, these guys are smart about it.

Like these guys, they run events where like there's dirt tracks.

Oh, cool. These guys are like professional neighbors.

Like in all honesty, they really have, I don't know,

two million dollars worth of merchandise, probably.

Dang, just top notch, maybe they really do it right.

Like and they want people to be safe and they kind of advocate

for people to stop the knucklehead.

But they do they build dirt tracks for guys to have events and stuff.

And people come from so they're cool as hell.

But this guy, I see him every day.

He'll give you the wave.

Got the Bluetooth speaker on his chest.

All all padded up.

He goes to lights.

He's spinning around.

He's dancing and boom, 40 miles an hour in no time.

That's crazy. Wow.

That reminds me, talking about building tracks and dirt tracks and whatnot.

Have you ever had, let me tell you one of these like weird

dream like things that I keep saying one they would be kind of cool to do

when you're just maybe a little bit older

and don't really care about, you know, other real businesses.

Is a basically like a dirt track but for RC cars.

Oh, yeah. No, no, those are so cool.

Yeah, people.

I mean, it's like any other hobby, right?

It's how far you want to take it.

True. Like basically, to me, RC cars then become these guys

are flying like 737 remote control.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

The one where the where the stuff comes back and hits people.

I can watch that shit all day.

It's so bad, man, that like I've seen those two.

And you know, that's just got to like that's concussion central,

like how are taking you out because the stuff is

I get squeamish at this point, man, because they're just getting

rocked by these RC flying.

You know, they're basically boomerangs coming back at their face.

What would you you see the Aspen all I poke that was.

OK, please give me your I love that you said that

because I was going to say for it at the end

and then we'll get into car talk.

What did you think of the whole fight?

What Dana said?

I didn't see what Dana said, but, you know,

you get poked in the eye, you get poked in the eye.

Yeah. I mean, do you see what Bisping said?

I didn't. What do you say?

He said, hey, you're the champ.

You get poked in the eye considering he's got one eye,

basically, and he did for most of the end of his career.

Like you got to keep fighting.

You just got to keep going.

I don't know, man.

No offense to Michael Bisping.

He's not Tom Aspenall. Yeah.

It was it was a brutal poke.

Like he got 100% and if you've never been

really poked in the eye like that,

yeah, I mean, I'm not saying everybody's been to that level.

And Bisping has a point

because he's fought through that kind of stuff.

But, you know, you're the champ.

You get to do what you want to do.

Yeah. And this is what people have a problem with in combat sports is

it's the true meritocracy.

When you have the belt, you make all the rules.

Yeah. So, you know, you get you get a shot to the groin.

You want to stop the fight. You could stop the fight.

Otherwise, don't give out belts.

You see Alex's reaction when he said he was that Alex Pejeda.

When when he saw what happened, he's just like, he just got up.

He was watching it wherever I just creep or whatever.

His nice ass fucking house and he just gets up and he's shaking his head.

He just goes and sits down.

And then you see John Jones being like, hey, White House, me, you like,

imagine John Jones versus Alex Pejeda at the White Hour

or any at any point for the lightweight belt.

Well, he wants to he wants to fight Pereira, right? Yeah.

I'm going to say this and I love John Jones and

I think he's the best person, best fighter I've ever seen. Oh, yeah.

There's a lot of dodging that's going on at the end of his career.

I think that's a bad look.

I don't know. It's a bad look.

I don't think so. He's John Jones.

He's no, there's been a lot of dodging before the end of his career.

Like, who do you do? I get it.

Here's what I'm going to say.

Either retire and don't have this on your resume

because let's remember Pereira is not a heavyweight.

He's not he's not a heavyweight.

No, he's probably lightweight, though, for sure, at this point.

He's really a great 85er.

Yeah, he goes to 205.

Let me tell you something.

85er to heavyweight.

Look, you got Roy Jones is basically the only guy on that list

that that made so many jumps like, I don't know, man.

This this is he should have fought Aspinol.

He should have fought him.

It would have been cool to see.

It looked like Sirle Ghan was putting it on him, though.

And John Jones made like my work.

Well, John Jones, you do know fighters get better.

Yeah, Sirle Ghan's gotten really good.

Yeah, that's what's funny to me is they're like, well, you know,

John Jones beat the brakes off him. OK.

But if he goes back to the lab and improves, it wasn't like he was a bum.

He just needed to fix some things.

Not saying he did or he didn't.

But it's always funny to me how people say, well, he got beat up by so.

And so it's like, there's a lot of people in history.

Chuck Liddell got beat up by people and still got the belt.

Randy Couture got beat by people, still got the belt.

You're supposed to go to the lab and get better.

Yeah, like there's just so many people that don't understand that,

like what happened six years ago, three years ago,

doesn't mean that's the same fighter three years later.

I think it's still a super exciting sport.

And I'm glad that more people, like, even if it is the casuals,

I mean, there's more buzz about it.

People kept saying, you know, that it's dying, it's waning.

No Connor, no Diaz, no this.

I'm like, no, no, no, no, there's still superstars in the making.

It's just kind of, you know, taking a little bit longer.

Well, I think people also need to understand that it's hard for us

in America to understand global sports for sure.

Right. Like it sucks that it was a two o'clock or, you know,

whatever time it was on here in the U.S.

But understand the rest of the world, like the NFL and the NBA,

they're in Major League Baseball, they're working to get noticed around the world.

The UFC's already noticed around the world.

Exactly. That's a great point.

So they're working really hard to have what the UFC has built in.

Stars from all over the world, that kind of thing.

So yeah, man, it's just it's you either like it or you don't.

Yeah, I agree.

And speaking of around the world and things that are recognized

and known around the world, wheel companies, Nick,

wheel companies are really going through it right now.

I've been seeing a lot of write ups and a lot of videos of and, you know,

honestly, I think we without naming names, obviously, specifically,

a lot of niches or corners of the automotive market right now are feeling it.

They're feeling the squeeze of purchases and other competitors.

Private equity has really hurt the aftermarket. Absolutely.

So the wheel thing was really interesting to me

because I saw a ton of them over the last week where all of the people going

to Alibaba. So there's a report that Seema puts out.

You're going to Seema the day after this drops.

You're going to be there for a couple of days.

Right. So I forgot what the reports call,

but they kind of just do an assessment of the market at large.

And this particular one was about wheels.

And let's just say for round numbers, they were saying something around

twenty twenty four, seventeen percent of the global market buys aftermarket

wheels, which is a lot of people if you're talking globally,

but a really small pie if you're just talking about, you know, globally,

seventy percent and then ten percent of that are going to things like Alibaba.

I should say mostly Alibaba to find these replica fake wheels.

So the point where BBS, HRE, I think even a couple of other ones,

I don't remember specifically, so don't, you know, roast me for this,

but they were posting those pictures of those wheels on their social

saying fake, these are fake and giving people this like, you know,

don't buy the fake kind of thing.

It's just a weird thing that's kind of unfolding really quickly

this past couple of days.

Yeah, I mean, for anybody, I've been going to Seema.

This will be pretty close to 16 years.

You know, when when I finished this this next week,

there's something really odd that started to take place probably a decade ago.

I mean, I don't know the exact time frame.

I'm sure most of you understand that like you just all the years

that you've been to place, you just kind of runs together

where they're just like Chinese booths with Chinese writing

and 10 people sitting there and nobody stopping by.

I mean, and it's it's pretty much in every hall and you're like,

what who's making money? What is this? Is this?

Are they just spying on other companies?

I was going to say, they're doing recon.

Yeah, what the hell is going on here?

Yeah. And so it's funny

that Seema as an organization knows the problems,

yet they take all the money from the people causing the problem.

Right.

So you have to take this with a grain of salt from Seema

because they are kind of encouraging the behavior

because there are companies and I promise you,

if you guys haven't been there, that you will walk by the booth.

They'll have a bunch of like aftermarket lights

and they'll just be a light company.

It'll say its name.

It'll be 700 words on the on the plate.

Yeah. That that you don't even know what any of it means.

There'll be 10 people sitting in a booth, only talking to each other,

not one single customer there.

And I bet you there'll be.

200, 300, 400 booths like that.

Now, they'll be scattered throughout the show, different things, wheels,

you know, bumpers, what it's always been strange

because you don't even know how to interact.

Maybe it is a good product, but you have no way to interact,

which is the whole point of Seema.

So again, this copycat nature of the Asian market,

you know, flooding the rest of the world with product.

It's very noticeable at something like Seema, because you go,

only thing they could be doing here is recon.

Yeah, they're not selling anything.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

People like people in the booth.

Yeah, you got to you got a name like Fang Fang,

who was doing some recon in California for other reasons.

Those kind of cells will call them or all over the country

in different niches, different, you know, parts of the end,

not just automotive industry, but industries.

Yeah. So it's crazy to think that's not that's not what they're doing.

But let me ask you this.

In those comments of the videos and articles and stuff,

I've never seen so many people say that they're four and pro.

And I know we can talk about the economy and other things.

This isn't the economy show.

That's for next year when we start the economy stocks podcast.

All right. A clutch podcast.

Clutch stocks. Clutch culture stocks.

Yeah. Clutch Wall Street.

But they're like, yeah, of course, I'm buying this now.

I'm going to Alibaba and I'm going to that.

I'm taking the alternative.

Never before in the last, we'll say two, three years

would people have been like, I'm getting the replicas.

I'm getting the fakes. I don't care. Really strange.

Yeah. And and let's say that it's it's it's it's more than just

people being cheap.

OK, because in the automotive industry,

especially in the aftermarket where I've lived my entire career,

there's a lot of people listening to this and a lot of people's

friends that may listen to this and don't realize that you guys

have never paid to have things done right.

I never wanted to pay the price to do things to a high level.

That's OK. It's your car.

I don't judge it, but I don't do business with people like that.

And businesses like mine, whether it's a body shop,

whether it's a wheeled tire shop,

they are eliminating those people from their business.

They don't want price shoppers.

They don't want them.

So part of it is.

Everybody's saying they want something in the in the automotive world

realize the large percentage of people will never pay to get that

thing that they quote unquote want, right?

Because once they get the price to go, oh, I'm getting ripped off.

Nobody's ripping you off.

I mean, the only people that truly consistently could rip you off

in the aftermarket are people doing things cheaply

because people that charge appropriately.

You work with some of these shops in Texas.

They're in business for 30 or 40 years.

You don't stay in business that long because you're ripping people off.

But they don't charge cheap prices, right?

But secondly, let's defend the consumer here.

How many of these wheel companies

could have made their product in the US, kept it here?

But they wanted to go build a $50 wheel in China

and then skim their piece off the top.

Name the name all the big truck wheel companies.

Name them all all the off road truck companies.

How many of those are being built in the US?

One percent, two percent.

So what is their game?

I'm going to go over to China.

I'm going to have the wheel built.

I'm going to stamp our name on it.

I'm going to bring it over on a container.

And I'm going to take my piece.

Well, there's a price to be paid that many of you

who've never been over to China, it is very well known.

And China's government and the companies make it well known.

When you come here, we now own the rights to this technology.

Yeah. And so the consumer is right to go.

Well, such and such wheel is made over there.

This is at the same factory.

They could be 100 percent true.

So for all the wheel companies complaining and again,

I've already given you the consumer problem.

So I'm not just blaming the wheel companies.

The consumer has a problem.

They don't really want to pay for high quality.

The other side of it is their right to go.

Well, this company doesn't have a manufacturing facility in the US.

They got to be getting it from somewhere.

And let me tell you, it ain't Italy.

You know what I mean? It's not Germany.

That's not where they're having their wheels made.

They're having their wheels made in a certain place for a certain price.

And they're skimming theirs off the top.

And you and I have talked privately about this.

This is coming to an end. Absolutely.

We now have an economic shift that you guys went over there

and you created the monster.

At some point, you've got to bring the stuff somewhere,

whether that's Vietnam, the Philippines,

more trusted people, you know, to not steal technology

or you got to bring it to the States.

And these companies aren't going to do that

because there's private equity money.

There's all these people.

They just want to keep skimming off the top.

I don't think that lasts the next 10 years.

Yeah, the first thing they do as soon as you shake your hand

that you're your hand in Asia, essentially, or China,

we'll just say it is like they just look at you and say,

I'm the captain now.

They literally give you that phrase from the movie, I'm the captain now.

And you're you're beholden to them.

What else are you going to do?

Right? You want to be in the industry?

You want to do business?

Like, that's what you got to do right now.

And by the way, Fortune 100 companies do get get told this

right to their face. Yeah.

So if you think a small wheel company is going to have any

control over what goes on over there, the biggest companies

in America don't have control of what goes on over there.

OK, like companies where trillions of dollars

cannot control what goes on over there.

And they're told we're going to take your technology.

So if you guys all think that this has been stolen.

No, those American companies signed up for it.

And trust me, because I know people who do business over there

who've lived over there for decades of their life, you're told

this isn't a secret, you know, so it is unfortunate.

And I don't want it to be this way, but you have a consumer problem

who's on their unwilling to pay the price it costs to get high quality

things. And then you have a secondary problem that all these companies

took manufacturing over there, knowing the rules of the game.

And they created their competition.

They created this problem.

And that's why Seema's report.

If you're not going to list all those things or the realities,

what value is that report at all?

That's true. And I think at a certain point, like you

looked for round numbers, you said it won't last for the next 10 years.

And I tend to agree with you.

And it's interesting to think that the more that this kind of continues

being what it is, business as usual, the quote unquote phrase of

that's high quality or this is high quality has no choice but to reduce.

And whatever the price of the market dictates that most people are buying,

there's going to be a little bit of a gap of what's less than that in the middle.

But the quality overall has to diminish.

There's not enough money going around for high what we consider

high quality 20 years ago. Let's talk about it.

You could you can get a total off road set up for a foregrapher

for like 2,500 bucks. That's with rubber, like three grand.

Yeah. OK.

I'm just giving somebody a round number if I'm off a few bucks.

But somewhere between 2000 and 4000, you're getting rubber and wheels.

That means the wheels are being manufactured and delivered

for probably like 50 bucks. Yeah.

So you go, oh, I got these sweet such and such wheels.

You guys all know that they're the brands. Come on.

Yeah. And they go, man, they got such great wheels.

It's like you realize it's $50.

That's how much the wheel costs.

Now, I'm not make your money.

And we said that on I want everybody to make their money.

I want all you guys to make your money.

But don't tell me what a high quality wheel is when it's $50.

I know what the manufacturing cost is.

It's 50 bucks.

And then their biggest cost for a long time in the last especially

in the last five years has been transportation cost more than the wheels cost.

Do logistics expensive.

Right. Container price went up, this kind of thing.

No shade towards any of that.

But we have lost the ability to understand high.

And we did a podcast, you know, before where we talked about

wheels were so expensive back in the day because most of them were being built here.

They were of a certain quality.

Most of those wheels look great today.

Go get a set of black wheels from one of the any suppliers.

You don't take care of them meticulously within a year.

They look terrible.

Yeah, that was never really the case with high quality wheels back in the day.

Like those looked better than factory.

That was what aftermarket companies did.

Not all of them, but the major names.

You look at it now.

Dude, you can get a year down the road and go, oh, man, especially black.

Like, I know you're a bigger fan of the black wheels than I am,

but like shitty black wheels these days look like burnt plastic, essentially.

Yeah, it's a great call.

Just not good.

Well, I mean, in Toyota proves the point, right?

Like black wheels, it's like within two drives, you're like,

what the happened to my wheels?

Yeah, birds constantly just shooting on my wheels soccer game.

What happened to these wheels?

Dude, it's a wild thing right now.

And, you know, I don't know.

I have a lot of hopes for as this audience grows, you know,

they're going to be more on board.

And again, if you're not within the budget range to afford

whatever high quality might be to you or for your platform or whatever,

we get it totally.

But if you do want to see that high quality from the states,

it's going to require a huge collective effort to go into that direction.

And not a lot of people are really actively voicing those opinions or

thoughts or even bringing up these topics at all on a show.

Like I'll say it.

Let's the elephant in the room is everybody wants

everybody to make a great living.

Yeah.

They're like, I want everybody to make a great living,

yet they don't want to pay the bill that comes due for everybody making a great

living. For sure.

That's just what it comes down to.

Yeah, yeah.

And this isn't the last five years.

This isn't the last 10 years.

This has been going on for decades and decades and decades.

OK, where the prices go down,

everybody screams that they want a better wage.

But when everybody starts making a better wage,

that means when you go for your oil change,

your oil change is now $200 instead of $65.

Yeah.

Because you can find those places, by the way,

and most of you don't go to them.

They're very niche.

You know, they're a BMW specialist, an Audi specialist, a Toyota specialist.

Those guys charge you accordingly.

But their business is very minor compared to these big garages

that are charging the numbers most people are comfortable paying,

no matter how expensive their car is.

I mean, I know guys that take Bentley's to quick oil change places.

I mean, it's not an economic thing, guys.

There's a lot of people that believe,

well, there's a certain part of the market that needs that.

Yeah, you're correct.

But I know people in the upper echelon that do this,

that buy cheap wheels, that buy a Raptor

and buy the cheapest wheel they can find,

and buy the cheapest rubber they can find.

And you know, they're not at the bottom

of the economic totem pole.

Everybody wants things to be a certain way,

but they don't want to pay the bill.

And that's been pretty much my whole career, by the way.

That's not just like a recent phenomenon.

And what's interesting, I've talked to some personalities

that have been in the automotive world,

like publicly right on camera for a while.

And when I kind of poke at like what they think

they want to do in the future when it comes to like,

whether it's their small business

or their creative endeavors or whatever,

it's less and less,

I want to do more stuff in the car world.

It's actually, they don't want to do more stuff

on the car world.

They want to pivot somewhere else into,

because they know people,

the Rellodex has expanded into other aspects of a business.

They're like, I'll work around the automotive industry,

but I don't want to be in the automotive industry.

It's super competitive.

Yeah, it's super competitive.

If you've never done business in the automotive world,

you have no idea how much competition

on every level there is.

Do you own a mechanic shop in Houston?

You have probably more competition than Apple has,

because Apple only has to deal with like

three or four companies.

You're dealing with backyard mechanics,

guys running shops that don't need to make a profit

for whatever illegal reason that they're running.

Like, it's insanity.

And it's nothing to cry about, right?

I don't want people to take it that way.

It's, this is just a facts of life.

And this is why I hate things like the SEMA reports

on this kind of stuff,

because they don't lay out what's going on.

You know, if you take your wheel company

and you go offshore,

it's anybody's game at that point.

You didn't have to go offshore.

You made the choice to.

And it's funny, more recently like,

I don't know, in the last month or two,

I've seen some people who some,

we'll call them bigger names in wheels,

just automatically, not automatically,

all of a sudden rather,

start a, what do you call it?

Like a cheaper van with a value brand

or some other, you know,

and another arm of their business

where they're just basically the same things,

maybe a different color

with like one little element that's a different design.

And then they sell it for like half the price

or something like that.

Economic, that's the word I was looking for.

They're trying to find an economic line to their wheels.

And on my mind, I'm like,

is that really solving the issue of what you're,

your margins look like or the profit looks like?

I don't think so.

It's the low hanging fruit.

And then they go over there

and then that company brings out a lower priced one

because they're the manufacturer

that looks exactly like yours.

And you go, these aren't ours.

Well, yes they are.

You gave that technology to the company you hired.

As a guy that owns a manufacturing business,

there's realities.

Once I know how to make something,

I'm the captain now.

You know what I mean?

Like owning the means of production

is something that we have vastly undervalued

for probably since the nineties.

Okay, 1990, you know, 1988,

something around that timeframe.

Now the next decade is going to be

who controls the means of production for your company.

So if you're a wheel company,

you better find a way to own your production line.

This is what we say a lot about car companies.

We're seeing all kinds of fragility

in the supply chain again.

Worries about chips, another chip shortage coming.

Guess what?

When you don't own the means of production,

you're stuck because now you're at the mercy

of whoever owns that means of production.

Yeah, we're going to be hearing,

we've already heard that phrase a lot.

Just wait for the next couple of years.

The means of production.

Boy, is that getting tossed around

by a lot of fucking low IQ people

on the streets right now, but.

Yeah, and people don't actually know what it means.

And what it actually means is

who has the ability to make something?

That's what's going to matter.

If you have zero ability to make your product,

we have seen it time and time again.

Somebody's going to take your product

that they're producing in a part of the world

that has no ethics towards this stuff

and they're going to go into competition with you.

That's what they're going to do.

Yeah, make and distribute, for sure.

Yes, 100%.

All right, we need a palate cleanser here.

We got real deep with some serious talk

about how certain parts of the industry

are just collapsing.

Just kidding, just using that as click bait, right?

Just to get you all worked up, everybody.

Don't worry.

Relax.

Relax, relax everyone.

What do you get when you combine NVIDIA and Uber?

What do you think we get?

More technology that's going to make you mad.

Survey says probably Uber's next drivers,

100,000 self-driving cars.

The world's most valuable company thinks physical AI

and autonomous vehicles is the next big thing.

How long we've been hearing this, Rob?

Self-driving is what?

10 years old now?

13, yeah, something like that.

10, a little over 10 years.

10 plus, we're a decade into this.

We're no, I mean, cars, I guess,

technically have self-driving.

That's not, you know,

I don't want people to get all up in arms.

We still have Waymo hitting pedestrians,

but you know, you guys haven't figured out,

look, this is coming.

I don't know when it's going to get there.

They still haven't solved the insurance thing.

That seems to be very, very hot button issue

with all of this.

I hope it's wrapped in this NVIDIA livery as well.

Didn't NVIDIA pass Germany in GDP?

I think it did, yeah, I think that's right.

So I'm sure that's not a bubble.

But when you look at this,

I think everybody, all of us have to kind of

collectively say, we're somewhere.

I don't really know where we're at, right?

Because I've been here in self-driving

and, you know, let's go back to Elon Musk's say

and he's gonna, every Tesla's gonna be a taxi

and basically we're gonna pay your car payment

by, you know, turning it into a Robo taxi,

which by the way, if you own a car,

you want drunk people thrown up

in the back of your Tesla while you're asleep.

I just don't think you guys want that,

but that's beside the point.

He didn't think about that, right?

Like, are you gonna screen the people

getting into my Robo taxi while I'm asleep?

Elon, no, okay, that should be it.

But if you do sign up for that,

go over to hypercleanser.com,

we'll help you clean those carpets

when they're done with them.

Yeah, when they're done throwing up

from being on the strip.

Yeah, but I think we all have to look

at this collectively and say, we're somewhere.

All of these technology companies,

I think you and many others talk a lot

about AI slop in the system.

I don't know how much of this news has been sloped.

For the last decade, it's pretty much all been sloped,

meaning like it hasn't come to fruition.

You've had all the giants get in,

Google, Apple went heavily down the road of this

and backed out.

You now have Nvidia, we know Tesla's been far down.

You got GM, who's far down this.

They have some semblance of self-driving

after 10 years.

Some semblance, right?

How many of you understand it?

How many of you use it consistently?

Tiny percentage?

And again, I don't even think the insurance industry

knows what to do.

I mean, this could collapse parts

of the insurance industry and I get it,

we all hate insurance.

I'm not defending insurance in any way.

It deserves to have some changes come.

But if that collapses, it now puts a lot

of things in question for you, the everyday driver,

if you get in an accident.

Because if you guys ever see when an insurance company

pulls out of a state, the kind of disaster

it leaves in its wake, you gotta be very common sense

about this.

And again, no defensive insurance,

I hate it as much as anybody.

I just don't think any questions,

any of the major questions have actually been solved

in the last decade.

Like in a straight line, on a free way,

we've solved self-driving, okay?

Let's say that in 10 years.

How many of you drive in a straight line

to work every day in an open road

with not that many turns, with not that many crosswalks,

with not that much traffic?

I would say none of us, pretty much

unless you live in rural somewhere in the country.

I just don't think we're that far along

but I do think it's coming.

I just got no idea when it is.

Yeah and I don't feel like it's anytime soon.

I will continue to cover these and talk about these

and read these articles and watch these videos

because I think it's interesting

and people seem to think it's around the corner

but again, it's been a decade around the corner

kind of thing plus.

But and I try to stay out of Austin

just because like there's just not a whole lot

for parents, right, with kids to really do an Austin

unless you just have people in town like we did.

We had some people in town not too long ago

and did some fun, had some good food

and the amount of, and here's what I wanted to say,

the amount of Waymo's that I saw in that one weekend

was so annoying and again, I don't know why

because I'm interested in this stuff.

I don't know other people interested in it too

but I just think it's such a bad idea.

I don't think it's a genius idea

that's gonna revolutionize driving these walkable cities

that people need because whatever the reasons are

I just don't see it being a good idea.

So we have the underground loop

for the convention center here

which Tesla built with the boring company

so everything runs underground.

It's a better idea.

Works fantastically.

Yeah, it's a better idea.

Works fantastically.

But guess what?

It's only Tesla's going one direction

on a planned route in the tunnel.

You know, that's the planned route.

So if you look at places like Austin,

if you blocked off let's say the whole center of Austin

and you said, we're only gonna allow autonomous vehicles

down here that run in a certain direction

sort of like a bus route, that would work fantastically

because you'd say these are the only things.

The things where it gets crazy

and we have this company, the Amazon

or the Jeff Bezos company, Zooks here now.

You know, they have those big like glass,

looks like big squares.

They've been in town taking data points, Rob,

I don't know, five, six, seven years.

They just launched like three or four months ago here.

Right, but the cars, the people driving the cars

and having all the sensors and plotting the streets.

I mean, it had to be at least five years.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

But you don't get everything,

computers are good at repetitive things.

So again, would Austin be great if you just had Waymo

in these like, you know, this 10 block circle radius?

I think that would work perfectly.

The human element being added in

to driving around these vehicles

seemed to be the problem that isn't solved.

Yeah, earlier this year, speaking of Austin,

like they, you know, six street has been forever

this famous, you know, little downtown area

where you go, you party, have fun, music.

It's just, it's a cool place.

It was way cooler, you know, 10 plus years ago

in my opinion, I could be the old geezer in me

in my mid thirties, but they put barriers up there.

So you have traffic there now at all times.

You can have traffic go through.

And in my mind, when that, this was back in the springtime

they're like, okay, they're obviously planning

to have more autonomous vehicles going up and down

six street and all of the downtown areas.

And they were water filled and then they moved

to concrete.

I don't think they've done that yet,

but they're essentially just solidifying the fact

that you're not gonna be roaming these streets.

Autonomous vehicles are gonna be roaming these streets

and we need to make them safer for that.

Yeah, and walkable downtowns are an absolute

great thing to have in a city like Austin.

You know, like there's parts of,

and people that live in Miami Beach can correct me on this.

I think there's part of, you know, now South Beach

that's only walkable.

They just shut the cars down, like any car.

You're not gonna come down here.

And people can correct me or that was the plan.

I think that's totally fine for places that,

you know, you could make New York city some of that.

You know, but you're only talking about,

you know, Chicago, parts of Los Angeles.

It wouldn't even be all of Los Angeles

for those of you who haven't been there.

L.A.'s really spread out.

But could you make Soho and North Hollywood

and parts of that walkable and not any cars?

Look, man, I'm all for that.

And I don't think most of you care

about driving in those places, right?

Like if I had to park somewhere,

Scottsdale's like this, old Scottsdale.

Hey, park your car, walk around there.

There's plenty of stuff.

It's all pretty near.

I don't really have an issue with any of that.

I don't think that's taking away drivers rights

because it sucks to drive in those places anyway.

You know, the places that really suck to drive,

it's like, let's just be done with it, right?

So I think we have an interesting question here,

but we are somewhere with all this autonomous stuff.

I think anybody that's being honest

on one of these types of car podcasts needs to say,

I don't think any of us know where this actually stands.

No, no, but I love when people are really sure of themselves

and they write stuff definitively

like this is what's next.

This is the next big thing.

I'm like, okay, I'm gonna drive my popcorn

and see how right you are in the next couple of months.

Well, for 10 years they've been wrong.

Yeah, exactly.

But it's like the people that say a collapse is coming.

If you say it for 100 years,

there's a certain number of years you're gonna be right.

So speaking of, and we talked about Amazon,

now we're talking about AI,

they had this huge layoff here recently, right?

AI, it's revolutionizing industry here taking,

I think I had written down 30,000,

but I think it was half that

maybe leading up to 30,000.

This is gonna happen across the board.

GM's going through the same thing.

At least this is what the headlines are saying.

I think the AI thing is a farce

when it comes to these layoffs.

Please expand, love to hear.

Yeah, it's really simple to understand.

Anytime, so here's what we're supposed to believe now.

We are headed into, or some of you may believe

we're already in a recessionary period

and maybe have been for the better part of 18 months,

right?

Name me a time in a recession,

companies like Amazon and UPS and Chase Bank

and whatever didn't do layoffs, right?

Right.

I mean, that's exactly what happens

in a recessionary period.

So now it's like these companies

can get let off the hook and say this technology

that again, many companies six months ago

were like, we don't really know how this is gonna work

and we've been working with it.

We don't, you didn't lay off 30,000 people

because of AI.

You laid off 30,000 people

because during good times you bloat

with employees and in recessionary times

you fix the headcount.

Now, does some of those percentage go to AI?

Yeah, but 30,000 jobs now, that's crazy.

People are just too simplistic with it.

Like we had no AI in 1999 during the dot com bubble.

Bunch of people lost their job,

wasn't AI, wasn't the internet,

it was that companies were bloated.

2008, wide layoffs happened.

There was a financial collapse,

they had less money to pay employees

so they laid them off.

That's exactly the situation here.

Some portion of that is AI,

but it's a very tiny portion.

Yeah, it's fascinating.

Last night Nick and I were just texting

about something else, you know,

car delinquencies and every time we get these articles

it just seems like it's like that phrase

like it's slow and then all at once.

Like it just feels like slowly we're getting like

bad news, bad news and then as soon as like

New Year's hits, boom,

something just big is gonna happen.

Yeah, no.

People have to stop with the recency bias, you know,

and this is what social media does to all of us.

Just like we have all these people that tell me

all cars, you know, you're wrong.

They never sold for less than MSRP.

Cars have been sold for a hundred years.

You guys are worried about the last four and a half years.

Somebody said they hadn't been sold for under MSRP.

Oh yeah, no, there's always cars

that are sold above MSRP.

I don't know, man.

I've been in the car market for 25 years.

I never paid MSRP ever in my life.

Not once.

No.

Not one time because incentives,

they would run a deal,

you'd get financing at 0%, come on, man.

Like, but you can't be the people in the car market

that look at a four year period out of a hundred years,

4% of the time and say that's the market.

That isn't the market.

And even today, I had a guy say,

he lived in a certain state, he goes,

if you come up here, everything's selling for MSRP.

What he didn't know is we just got two deliveries

of two trucks out of that state,

both of them, a little bit less than MSRP.

Because one of my clients is a big hunter.

They had some specs he wanted.

We bring down two Ford products,

both sold for under MSRP.

But in his world, he thinks every product

in his state sells for them over MSRP.

No, they don't.

Guys, GT3s sell for them over MSRP.

But you can probably get most 9-11s for MSRP,

maybe a little less, maybe a financing deal.

But at times, maybe a 9-11 turbo,

you have paid MSRP or over.

But again, you're talking about a tiny percentage of time

that the 9-11 turbo has been sold.

Blipping time, man, blips in time.

So I was telling them before we started,

there was an article from Motor Trend,

good, weird, and ugly.

And they had driven a bunch of cars,

had a bunch of different ride-ups

on different parts of it.

And Nick had mentioned he was around a Benz

and EQS here recently.

And this was an interesting one

that I felt like you might have some feedback on.

And since we're talking about EVs

and all this world right now,

why not bring it up?

We are 26 EQS 400.

So essentially they, it wouldn't charge on anything

other than a level three Electrify America stations.

He tried two L2s and unlocks Tesla Supercharger,

even a power-up and nothing.

To get it charged enough to go back to the test track,

they ended up having to hang out

at a supermarket parking lot until 1 AM

until every other Mercedes in Glendale

had finished charging free for the first two years, you know?

So that was a weird part of it.

And I wondered to myself,

how many people are experiencing this?

I mean, 1 AM at a supermarket

because nothing else would charge this thing.

You know, had someone's gotta be,

if that happens to them,

like an average person, not going to a test track.

The defenders of EVs just always leave

these things out of the story.

Yeah.

And I read these a lot to be honest with you.

Yeah, there's no, this isn't new.

This has been the cork of EV since it started.

That doesn't mean EVs are evil.

But this is part of the story, right?

And it's like, I read something elsewhere.

A guy goes, I wish this car was an EV.

You know, the gas engine, this, the gas.

So why'd you drive it?

Why'd you let that company send you that car

if your whole thing was gonna be,

I wish this was an EV form?

Then just get the EV one.

Is this a journalist?

What's that?

Was this a journalist you're talking about?

I mean, go ahead and put the air quotes up.

Capital J?

Go ahead and put the air quotes up, yeah, journalist.

The journalist that says,

you know what would make this better if it was an EV.

Oh my gosh.

Okay, well they have an EV version.

Why don't you just have them send you that?

That person should never get a car from anybody again.

Well, this guy should have never been allowed

ever to be anything.

I mean, this guy's been hackish

for as long as I can remember.

But I don't understand why we always leave stuff

out of the story.

None of us own Mercedes, none of us own Tesla,

none of, we're all just consumers of this

and we're all just watching the story.

So it's like saying you're for the little guy,

you tell the little guy to buy an EV

but he loses 50% of his money

because you didn't tell him

that the depreciation was historic.

But you're for the little guy.

No, you aren't.

You are for EVs because you wanna be invited

to certain parties.

You wanna seem like you're cool when you're not.

You don't really have any interesting takes.

So this is what you're gonna latch on to.

I don't latch on to any of it.

EVs, if you can charge at home,

EVs for a commuter car work perfectly, okay?

They work perfectly.

You're gonna have some corks with them.

You're gonna have some things not,

just like you would with your gas car.

You're gonna have some recalls.

You're gonna have some things.

I'm not trying to bang on EV.

I'm not trying to bang on an ice vehicle.

We're just gonna tell the truth about what they are.

And guess what?

When you have to charge on the road,

stop telling people it's all figured out.

Because time and time and time again,

I sent you a video of a woman

who took her Tesla on a road trip for the first time.

That video was unhinged for an EV on her, right?

She was like, I can't believe it.

This trip's gonna take extra, extra hours.

And so when I said this on this podcast,

I was like, San Diego to Las Vegas,

I've seen people taking an exorbitant amount of extra time

when they rented a Tesla to try it out, right?

They did the responsible thing.

They wanted to see how they could live with it.

That didn't happen.

Buddy, yes it did.

I got no dog in the fight.

I don't own any of these companies.

And by the way, just so we're clear,

I don't own them in my stock portfolio.

There you go.

I have no dog in the fight here.

Where else do you get this kind of transparency, people?

Nowhere, nowhere.

I don't have any of this as like,

I gotta defend something.

But guys, yeah, the charging thing,

especially when it's not at your house,

is still problematic, okay?

That doesn't mean it's as bad as it was 10 years ago.

It's not what I'm saying, but it is problematic.

And again, if Motor Trend is willing

to write an article like this,

it tells you that it's bad.

Because make no mistake, they don't wanna write that.

And there's a lot of things those publications have hidden

from you over the years that I'm aware of.

This is not second and third-hand knowledge.

I know they've been at things, Motor Trend,

Road and Track, all of them,

where cars caught on fire, never made it into the article.

So they wrote this, it must've been bad.

Make no mistake is one of my favorite phrases

that people use, like make no mistake

and then you just say something funny.

It's, I don't know why it just brings

everything together so well.

Yeah, and guys, that's why we use

the air quotes journalist.

Because we know some of these men and women

have been at events, had the whole fleet of cars

catch fire in some way and wrote a glowing article

about the car.

Literally, literally a fireball.

It was literally a fireball.

Yeah, like had caught fire.

And when you talk to the manufacturer, like,

yeah, we can't believe it.

Yeah, I mean, all of our cars caught fire.

Nobody even said anything about it.

Hey, you're not gonna put that in the article, are you?

We could just forget that happened.

By the way, they didn't even have to ask that.

They already knew it was without saying.

They already knew it wasn't going on the article.

Make no mistake, not going in the article.

When it didn't go on the article, they go,

can you believe these people didn't put that in the article?

Like, we got those actual stories, guys.

That is so good.

Let's take an opposite direction, left-hand turn here

into some gas talk, all right?

Our boys over it, I say our boys,

over it dot, over it ram, I should say.

They're gonna launch their first SUV in 2028

with gas and plug-in hybrid setups.

Before I even scroll down anymore,

how excited are you for a new ram SUV?

Ram.

Hmm.

Can I, before you scroll down, can I say I'm optimistic

because I think they could do some cool stuff

if it's done right.

My concern before you scroll down is

it's not gonna be cool.

I wish I could give you more than what they gave us here,

but all they're saying is that, look, okay,

so we got a wagon here clearly.

The ram SUV is gonna be built at the war in Michigan,

in war in Michigan, where the grand wagon year

is manufactured.

And they don't really give you how much more,

but they're kinda letting you know, like,

hey, we're putting some big dollar-dollars behind this.

So are they just gonna build a ram wagon here?

It kinda seems like it.

I'm not gonna lie to you.

But I don't know, I don't know.

I hope that doesn't happen.

So that's one, right?

And the second part of it was,

we're gonna have some trucks

that are going along with this.

So two SRT trucks coming out next year.

Here's what the dude concept is gonna debut at SEMA.

So I need you to take a picture of this.

If you can get in it, if you can look it inside this,

please look inside of this,

because I'm not gonna lie, kinda like this.

Tell me your thoughts.

Well, it has a lot of vinyl,

so I'm assuming you liked it.

Wow, it didn't happen.

Unfortunately, I'm not a big sticker

on the side of my car, guy.

This gives me like Super B vibes,

charger Super B vibes, 1671, yep, yep.

The front end looks mean.

Looks good.

Looks good, yeah, no, it looks good.

Where do you rest on hood scoop?

I knew you were gonna say that.

Dude, it's a love of hate

because I really do like hood scoops,

but it's gotta be functional.

And I know that's cliche

because if it's not functional

like the older Mustangs or something

or even a lot of modern cars,

it's kind of a bummer, but I like this.

Do you don't think this hood scoop looks good?

I actually think it looks good.

That's why I was asking.

Okay, cool.

I'm not a big fan, but let's cheer it on, Rob.

I'm cheering it on.

I hope this is something, we need more good stuff.

I don't think people kind of see that about us at times.

It's like, I really just want more good stuff.

It's like your boy's over at Nissan saying

we're gonna make an Infiniti QX80 with a GT-R engine.

And it's like, okay, I don't know if it's gonna get made,

but let's go.

Let's go.

Let's ride into the sun.

And if it burns up,

at least you know we made it to the sun, whatever.

At least you took the spaceship right into the sun.

Exactly.

And she did it.

So at the briefing,

they said that Ramwood received two models

under the SRT performance division,

mostly Dorman obviously for the last while,

but it's gonna be something along the lines of this

and then a reborn TRX, which is pretty cool.

I think we did that a couple of months ago.

One thing with TRX.

Yeah.

You can give any advice to Ram.

Fix your electrical problems.

Please make it something that's close

to the price of the Raptor.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, that's a good point too.

I thought you were gonna say the electrical problem.

Stop this.

Okay, so what is that?

What's the happy medium in your opinion

if we're being realistic?

A new TRX.

I think you can get Raptors now what?

65 to 95?

Yeah.

You know, let's just say, you know,

and again Raptor R,

I get that that's a different segment of Raptor,

but for TRX to work,

you need to go after Raptor, right?

Meaning like Raptor is the dominant force

in that type of truck.

Chevy's not going after it properly.

Dodge is, or Ram's not going after it properly.

At the end of the day, if you built,

you know, and I'm just gonna use numbers,

guys, I'm not in the new Raptor market all the time,

somewhere between 65 and 95,

depending on what spec you get,

then if you wanna build this ultimate TRX,

you know, just like the Raptor R,

go ahead and build $120 plus thousand dollar one.

But I think they screwed it up,

and I like the TRX truck, by the way,

so this is not an indictment on that.

But coming out where that thing was already six figures,

and that was your starting point,

you're not really solving the Raptor problem

that you have if you're Ram.

And so I hope that's something that they do, truthfully,

because I like the design of it.

I think that truck looks mean when it's driving around,

I like the way it looks.

No, it does look good, right?

And are you a fan of the smaller,

just like the single cab, the two door,

you know, smaller version of the TRX

when you see those putting around?

Yeah, I mean, but again,

we all know that the consumer wants to buy the four door.

Yeah. Right?

So I think I wanna see something challenge Raptor.

I really do, and I don't care what company does it.

You know, I don't have a dog in that fight either.

Like I just wanna see somebody,

like it's unbelievable to me that Chevy just said,

nah, we're good.

Nah, we're good.

You realize that's been 15 years.

Is it really?

2010 is Raptor.

2010 to 20, what, 14 was gen one.

Okay, somewhere in there.

So I mean, actually it could be late 2009,

if I got it right.

I think you're right, yeah.

Something like that.

15 years, Chevy's just been,

nah, we don't need that money.

It's like you already have a platform.

Yeah.

What's worse?

That or the FJ for all the time it's been away.

Well, the FJs, the FJ was just like XTERRA.

You couldn't have canceled something

at a worse moment in time

when you were about to go on a legendary 10, 12 year run

with overlanding vehicles.

And by the way, you have cashed in on TRD Pro

with all of your other vehicles.

So yeah, I mean, the FJ will go down as one of the strangest,

if not one of the worst automotive decisions to ever,

just because of when it happened.

Like if FJ would have been canceled in 2001,

it's not that big of a problem.

They canceled it like before, like right before it hit.

And by the way, you think they could have just turned

the key and go, we're bringing it back,

this thing caught fire?

Nah, we're good.

Six months later, they could have had it,

they got it just roaring in six months.

Yeah.

Okay, I'm glad, I'm so glad you mentioned the XTERRA

right alongside the FJ just now

because have you seen what they're bringing to SEMA?

That's fire?

Let's go, bro.

Cause you mentioned hood scoops.

We got hood scoops and all in this thing.

Check this out.

All right, I'm just gonna give you a little teaser here.

Look at this front end.

What do you think?

I need to see the rest of it, but it looks all right.

Okay, okay, here we go.

Here we go.

Boom.

Dude.

Whoa.

Right, so check this out.

So they announced that they're gonna do a V6, right?

But leading up to SEMA,

they're bringing a Resto modded V8 XTERRA

with a bunch of goodies from their umbrella of goodies.

How cool is that?

I love it, man.

I love this thing.

I mean, let's go.

Look at that.

From the side?

Revive Nissan here.

Let's do it.

Like just fire up Nissan and get this thing going.

You know what?

Put a GTR engine in this.

How about that?

If you're Nissan right now.

You're hiring us?

Absolutely.

You've made eight billion bad decisions.

Yeah, let's make a good one here, yeah?

And by the way, even if this turns out to be bad,

it's only eight billion in one bad decision.

Yeah, exactly.

Look at the interior.

It's a drop in the bucket.

Yeah, this looks good, dude.

Not terrible.

Hey, you gotta let me know,

because this is now the second.

Did Nissan and Ram get a deal on this color of paint?

Like was somebody trying to offload

this color of paint and said,

hey, we got a smoke and deal for you.

We got to take this color.

That's a great point.

How did I not put that together?

Also, did they have some old TRX lights

that they needed to put somewhere?

Cause those kind of look like old TRX lights too

from the Gen 1 kind of.

Yeah, did they, did Ram and Nissan go,

hey, we can get a deal on paint from PPG and Dupont.

They got a bunch of this extra color.

And oh, by the way, we got some extra headlights.

I mean, they're already in the mix with Roush.

Why not just say, hey,

who else wants to come in on a project?

Yeah, you get a car and you get a car.

Hey, I'm in.

Just do it.

It's like, what was it called?

The Toyota surf that they brought to SEMA last year.

Just build it.

Yeah.

What do you gotta lose at this point?

Honestly, if we're being honest.

If you're Toyota, you got nothing to lose.

Yeah, I hate to say that way.

By the way, you got people paying

exorbitant amounts of money for Tundra.

You got the most runway of anybody.

Yeah, I hate to say it that way,

but what do you got to lose at this point?

For them, they got nothing to lose.

They're the big dogs on the block.

They can do anything.

All right, so sticking the Nissan here,

we have the patrol, sorry,

the Dune Patrol coming to SEMA.

That looks pretty cool too.

Yeah, it looks great.

Look at that.

Man, that's badass.

Super bad.

I'm upset it didn't have a whittle watter

because that would have made it complete.

Hey, in case you get hurt,

they go ahead and have a stretcher on the back for you.

Yeah, you go and snow,

I thought it was a surfboard for the sand.

That's if things go off kilter for you.

We gotta stabilize your neck, Rob.

They need to put this in the new Call of Duty

or battlefield or something.

This is a great...

Hey, and if you miss the mountains,

you just look at the graphics on the side,

you're right back in the mountains.

That's...

Hey, I miss the mountains.

Let me walk to my garage

and look at the mountains on the side of my...

I literally got teary eyed when I laughed just now

because I totally missed that.

I just thought it was like a design,

but you're right, it's just Dune's.

Duh.

Hey, do you miss the Dune's?

Do you wanna go back?

Just go to your garage?

Look at your Dune Patrol.

That looks awesome, by the way.

Yeah, that's cool.

So Nissan brings two forbidden fruit off-roaders

to SEMA, I guess.

I'll do my best guys

to put this on our Instagram story.

I wanna see this.

This looks great.

We wanna see it in the stories,

but we also want some like really artistic,

journalistic takes while you're there.

So we need the...

Pretend like you're holding a microphone

or just pick up a microphone or whatever.

Give us your most authentic Nick journalist impression

when you're there

because we want the quarks and features.

Shout out Doug DeMiro.

We like Doug DeMiro.

But we wanna know your true...

Touch the car, right?

How's it feel?

How's it smell?

Let us know everything.

The only thing we don't have figured out at SEMA is Wi-Fi.

So the post might come a little later.

Really?

The biggest convention center in the United States

can't figure out Wi-Fi?

You guys have all been to stuff like this.

It's just one of those things, man.

You get Wi-Fi in certain parts, other parts.

It's a little spotty.

So I'm sure they'll get it figured out, Rob.

I could, I could.

I gotta pull this last article

before I ask you one question

that's not article related.

Your thoughts on Alfa Romeo right now?

It's a dumpster fire.

It is, right?

Look at this.

26 Alfa Romeo.

Is it tonal, tonal?

I don't know.

Still feel special when Dodge feels similar.

What does this look like to you?

A Dodge Hornet.

Thank you!

Exactly.

This is basically a Hornet with an Alfa front

and some wheels.

Yep.

It's uninspired from a brand that

I think we all had high hopes for

when they reintroduced back to the U.S. market.

Right?

I mean, they built one of the great looking,

great performance sedans.

Everybody has a little bit of their own opinion on that.

But by all accounts,

and I had many, many friends and customers buy Alfa

when it came back to the States

and they can't stay out of the shop.

They just continue to have the same problems

historically they've always had.

And now you're essentially going backwards.

And again, we find another pair of SUVs here

that are going to be in the $40,000 to $55,000 range,

which is, at this point,

is this one of the most crowded price segments

in the history of the car business?

Yeah, because everything's that rep-priced right now,

essentially.

Yeah, I mean, everything's falling.

Let's be fair.

There's a $20,000 range, $40,000 to $60,000,

that's as crowded as it's ever been.

If you're Alfa,

I understand it costs you what it costs you to build,

but you can't go into the most crowded segment

because you're not going to win.

No, there's no-

You're not going to beat Toyota,

you're not going to beat Honda,

you're not going to beat Chevy,

you're not going to beat Ford,

you're not going to beat those companies.

So you either need to start building better vehicles

at a higher price point and get out of the clutter,

or you got to find a way, just like Dodge Hornet.

You and I have said it,

Dodge Hornet is, if it was $22,000 to $25,000,

I think Dodge Hornet would have done fine.

But it was like $42,000.

Yeah, that's crazy.

It just doesn't work.

It also just came out at a bad time.

Like the market at that time was not good

for any new car to be released at that price.

You remember at Barra Jackson,

they had the Dodge Hornet test drive?

No, I don't remember that.

Oh yeah, so I remember sending you a text to go.

Oh, that's right, you were there.

They have Dodge Hornet test drives,

they got these signs all outside.

I go, man, if you're Dodge,

is that really what you want on a sign?

Yep, yep, yep.

And I think you had seen some BMWs

that weren't quite out yet

or the electric wasn't that big red too.

Dude, I'm going,

the Dodge Hornet test drive experience,

I don't think you're selling that

at Barrett Jackson of all places.

Oh my gosh.

You might be able to sell that at a pumpkin patch.

You know, say, we're the only people here,

but at Barrett Jackson, it seemed like

bring just the weirdest place in the world.

On the Dodge power wheels

over here through the pumpkin patch.

All right, look, as we land the plan,

I got to ask you a question

because we're coming into,

we're basically in the best time of the year,

in my opinion, fall, going into winter shortly,

rounding out 2026.

And one of my favorite things to do around this time,

because I like to keep my car clean as much as I can,

is Rensseless Waterless Washes.

And when I met Nick years ago,

one of the first things that when I found out they made

was awesome in my mind

was a Rensseless Waterless product, right?

So it's called Eco One.

Do you have a preferred way to Rensseless Wash your car

if you're doing it in the garage

because it's cold outside

and you want to do it in like, you know,

half an hour, maybe even if it takes you an hour,

but like in a reduced time.

Because I have a way real quick

and I'm going to tell you

and I want you to roast it

or tell me if it's a good method,

but you tell me the right method first.

Yeah, the right method is put something in a spray bottle

or, you know, a pump spray or whatever,

soak the car down with your, you know, waterless solution,

get some solution on there.

You know, the solution helps you remove the dirt.

It's got some, you know, things in there

to help you to remove the dirt or factants, et cetera.

But then it adds lubrication,

which causes you not to scratch your car,

which is what most of you guys care about.

You don't want to make your car

look worse from washing it.

And then you just have a couple ounces

with some water in a bucket,

a bunch of towels and go to work.

So what are your thoughts on,

and I saw this a long time ago

and I had an accident meeting

so it's perfect to talk about on the podcast

so you can either tell me

that the stupid idea or a really good one.

If you have a, let's just say a five gallon bucket,

like you were going to wash the car regularly

and you put a couple of ounces of the,

we'll say eco one in this case

and some water maybe to kind of dilute it depends

on how much you're using.

And then you just kind of kept it in there

with towels so that if you got like,

I got time here, it's already ready to go.

You just maybe spray some more on the car

and then you take the towels that have been kind of,

you know, I guess,

soaking exactly into the bucket

and then go that way.

Is that cool?

Well, the problem is,

is that you're going to run into

how clean is your water?

So like if you use distilled water,

it would absolutely work, right?

But if you're just using regular water,

you don't have spot free water or anything like that.

What's going to happen is it's going to eat

at the solution.

So, but you could always keep

a five gallon bucket of water ready to go

and then just take your gallon,

couple swigs into the bucket

when you're ready to go and then go.

Like it's seizing your towels is not,

not a bad idea,

but what's going to happen is

it's going to diminish the effectiveness of that

by the minerals starting to eat things away

and that kind of thing.

So I would just keep the bucket of water ready

and a couple of swigs when you're ready to go

and you're good to go,

swirl it around in there.

Damn it.

I thought it was like,

just a slightly efficient way.

You could do it, you could do it.

But like I said,

it's just going to lose some effectiveness.

Yeah, no, I want the full power of you go on it.

When I use it, I want the full thing.

I don't want to fucking dilute it.

Just do,

there's plenty of videos on hyper clean store.

Just do it the way I tell you.

I get it.

Just do it the right way.

You're right.

I'm the average person right now is to be like,

can I cut a corner here

by just having it mixed pretty early?

Well, dude, I got my,

my GX it's, it needs some love.

Like when we get off this,

I'm going to be a long time today

of working on this car.

Nice.

Kids, family.

Yes, same.

So I filmed a little bit of my car.

I'm going to start, you know,

in 2026 make some content alongside Nick

because I have some cool things that are,

have kind of come up for the GTI that I can do.

And I know people love hot hatches.

It was super dirty.

I got video of it, super dirty.

And then I didn't get video of it clean yet,

but I went to Houston.

It was a quick day thing,

but put a couple of hundred miles on the car

and I saw clear skies and all of a sudden

just out of nowhere rain came.

I was like, you have got to be kidding me.

Brutal.

Brutal dude.

That's a brutal break.

Oh my God, right.

By the time I got back,

it wasn't as dirty as before I left,

but it was a perfect opportunity to start rinsless.

And now I'll just keep on the rinsless maintenance.

So I don't have to keep going out there

with the whole rig and the sprayer, you know.

Yeah, exactly right.

That was my thought.

It's a perfect in between, stay on top,

go out there on a Saturday morning for,

once you get good at it,

go out there for 30 minutes.

Yeah.

You know, before you got to go to a kid's event,

before you go to a car event,

before, whatever it is you got to do.

Let's say you got something at nine o'clock,

7.30 to eight, go out there, get your car right,

take a shower, take off.

I mean, it's, it can really help your life

and carry your car.

Because I don't really ask Nick this

on personal calls if you talk about other things.

This way it helps you guys and me.

What about the wheels real quick?

The wheels and tires, if you're doing rinsless,

what's the best way?

It's gonna be taxing.

You're gonna have to get some towels in there,

separate from your paint towels.

Obviously, never mix them.

Never mix them, too.

Never mix those.

Yeah, you're gonna have to work a little bit,

gonna be a little bit more elbow grease and solution.

Look, nothing's ever gonna replace a power washer guys,

and it's not gonna happen.

But you know, if you can only get the faces

and you can get what you can get.

Rinsless is a good thing for a lot of you guys

in the winter months that are in very cold climates.

You don't have a choice, right?

Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do

to make your stuff look as good as you can make it look.

Luckily out here, I don't deal with that, you know?

But we get a lot of high winds in the winter time,

so things get extremely dusty.

Dusty, yeah, huge problem.

You know, just not good looking.

So you gotta, the only good thing saving grace on my GX

is it's full PPF, head to toe.

So it makes me feel a little better when it gets neglected

because it's nice to act like

you can get to everything all the time.

I mean, I have a shop, I have the setup,

I have every chemical you could want.

Man, when your life gets busy,

it just is what it is, and you gotta make the best of it.

All right, well, that's hypercleanstore.com.

Go get EcoOne.

I'm going to, Nick doesn't know this,

but he's gonna be funding some future projects

for the podcast with things like EcoOne.

So letting him know on the show, that's what's happening.

So yeah, so you guys gotta go support that

if I need to, if I can convince Nick to make that happen.

So until next week, remember,

send in the emails for our 52nd episode,

ClutchCulturePodcast at gmail.com,

follow the pod everywhere,

ClutchCulturePod all over the internet,

and we'll see you.

And guys, we'll try to do as much,

seem a content that's worth it for you.

We'll try to shoot some stuff when we're there.

Awesome, looking forward to it, man.

Have a good one.

You too, man.

See ya.

The Aftermarket Wheel Industry Collapse, Quality vs Cost, Big Moves at Nissan, RAM, & More

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