The Chevrolet Corvette is a fast and sporty car made in America. The ZR1X is a special, very powerful version that people get excited about because it can go really fast and handle well on race tracks.
The Lucid Air is a fancy car that runs only on electricity and can go very far on a single charge. It has a lot of new technology and is made to be comfortable and fast.
The Range Rover is a fancy SUV that can drive on rough roads and still keep you comfortable. Sometimes, it can feel a bit bumpy or shaky when the road is very uneven.
The Subaru Outback is a car that’s good for families and people who like to go outside and explore. It can drive well on rough roads because it has special wheels that help it grip the ground.
The Toyota Camry is a bigger car than the Corolla and is very comfortable to drive. Its hybrid version also saves a lot of gas, making it good for everyday use.
The Toyota Corolla is a small, reliable car that many people buy because it doesn't use much gas. The hybrid version is even better at saving fuel, so it can go a long way without needing to fill up.
The Lucid Air Sapphire is a very fast electric car that people can buy. It is a fancy and powerful version of the Lucid Air, which is a type of electric sedan.
Pirelli Trofeo RS tires are special tires made to help cars stick to the road better when driving fast, especially on race tracks. They might not be as comfortable or last as long as normal tires.
The Porsche Taycan is a fast car that runs only on electricity instead of gas. The Turbo S Weissach is a special, very powerful version that can go really fast and handle corners well.
The Porsche 911 is a well-known sports car that many people love. It keeps its speed and power better than most cars, even when things get tough like during long drives or hot weather.
Turbo cars have a special part called a turbocharger that helps the engine make more power. But when they get very hot, they can lose some of that power.
The Corvette Stingray is a fast sports car made by Chevrolet. It has a strong V8 engine and a special shape that makes it fun to drive and comfortable on the road.
This is the type of engine in the Corvette Stingray. It has eight cylinders arranged in a V shape and uses pushrods to open and close the valves. This design helps the engine be powerful and compact.
The Ferrari 308 GT4 is a classic sports car with the engine placed in the middle of the car, behind the seats. It has space for four people and was made in the 1970s.
The Volkswagen Golf is a small car that’s easy to drive and good for everyday use. The sportier GTI version is faster but doesn’t always come with a stick shift anymore.
The Lotus Emira is a small, sporty car made to be fun to drive. It’s special because you can choose to drive it with a stick shift, which some people really like.
The Toyota Prius is a car that uses both gas and electricity to save fuel. It was one of the first cars to do this and is still very good at helping people use less gas.
The Porsche 918 Spyder is a very fast and special car that uses both gas and electricity to go super fast. It was one of the first cars to mix these two power types to be really quick and also save some fuel.
The Dodge Charger is a big, strong car that looks sporty and has a powerful engine. There's a special version called the Skat Pack Daytona that might use electricity to run, showing how muscle cars are changing.
An EV is a car that runs on electricity instead of gas. It uses batteries to power the motor, so it doesn't need fuel like regular cars.
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Happy Friday. Happy Friday to you. Some bonus Friday car imagination. Today is Corvette ZR1X day.
Is that an officially recognized holiday? It should be a federal holiday. If you've driven a
1,250 horsepower Corvette, you would think so too. Jason has done exactly that.
And so we have one here in the studio with us in the background. Don't look.
Don't look. We have something in the background of the studio that we'll talk about if you're
listening to this on a podcast provider. It's something we should not like. We hate these cars.
This being the Carmudgeon show, you being Jason Camisa, me being Derek Timm, hyphen Scott,
and we being driven by Hagerty. And me doing a clap.
They literally just, what we were filming last week, just asked me if the clap was real.
And I had to do the whole like, well Derek had a mic there and so he initially would do it like
that and like half miss and they're like, but is it really real? And I'm like, yeah,
so you just proved it once again. Yet again. That was an actual DTS clap.
Look at that. It's beautiful. You're clearly blinded by its
lights. So I'm so excited to do this episode.
About Subaru. Yeah. Cool. We didn't tell them that in the intro, did we?
No, I mean, obviously everyone knows that this episode is not about the Subaru.
We should have a thumbnail of this episode be like, why we fucking hate Subaru's.
So I feel like everyone already knows that. Yeah, but here's the issue.
We can't leave it to chance. This thing is a Subaru cross track
bread and it showed up. I had a lucid air. So I'm back in the press car game. So I'm doing
my Camisa Vertex on Instagram and it's very difficult to be nice in a world where cars are
just not good. However, so I got a had a lucid air and I'm just fucking absolutely in love with it
for different reasons and hate it for others, which you'll find out in the Camisa Vertex.
And the guy comes in and trades it in my lucid air and it takes the lucid air keys and gives me
the keys to a Subaru hybrid cross track. And so it sat for three weeks. I'm kidding.
Okay. I was wondering where you were going to go with this because I drove it and I was like,
what is he not like about this thing? I know he must hate it, but what does he hate about it?
Oh, but I hate about it is that I have to look into that camera right there and go, I was wrong.
Again, we did the thing where I just handed Eric the keys when he got here and I'm like,
just go drive this and just we're not going to talk about until the cameras are running.
Yeah. So you were seeing in the flesh, in live, whatever our initial responses,
you know, the thing that I liked the least about it was that as soon as I got on the highway,
it immediately went to the left lane and went 53 miles an hour.
And I didn't have control over that. You can turn off the Subaru driver mode.
Yeah, no, I actually thought it was perfectly lovely.
One of the first things that I noticed is that the CVT actually CVTs, which from the perspective
of like a conventional motorist is, of course, weird, but I think it's more weird and annoying
when a CVT simulates gear shifts. This thing just immediately goes, you're like, well,
at least I'm experiencing efficiency. It's the same type of satisfaction that you get from,
that I get from Regen because you're like, I'm getting free energy charging my battery.
And, you know, when I hear a CVT do that, I'm like, oh, it's going to the power peak and it's
because I've floored it and it's actually delivering peak power instead of simulating
gear changes. Although it does simulate gear changes when you downshift down to when you use
the paddles to request effectively more engine braking.
And what I like about this one is that, first of all, it's a very strong assist
motor on the hybrid system. So it will actually start and move off the line quickly under electric
power. So also an EV mode. Yeah, you can lock in an EV if you have enough. It's just for a little
bit here. Is it a P have then? No, it's not, it's not plugged in. Yeah, but a lot of these will
have it just to allow you to move around. If you just say, you know, I know the next
quarter mile or something, you know, I can arrive at my destination with a dead battery
and I don't care because I'll be coming down the hill. The truth is you don't need it.
I can't think of a situation where you really need it. I did put an EV mode
to back it into the studio knowing that we wouldn't have to carbon monoxide ourselves.
But what I like about it is that it steps off very quickly. Flat fours, though they sound like
moving dying calves, is they're perfectly balanced. And so this will start off under
electric power and then fade in the gas motor and you don't even feel it. Yeah, kind of,
and it doesn't have attack, which kind of irritates me. I noticed that too. But you kind of don't
need it. And from the perspective of a regular consumer who's getting in and driving this car,
it does just about nothing badly. Yeah, it's not loud. It's not coarse. It's, it's perfectly
pleasant. Suspension tuning is great. Yeah. And when you hit a bump and it's in the bump stops,
it's a soft progressive bump stop. So it doesn't do the crash that some, they,
did you do any motoring in it? I mean, I, it wasn't, I flew around an on ramp. So there's an
on ramp sort of that, you know, around the bump in the middle. It's got, it's now, it's getting
worse and worse and worse and worse. And so now everything sort of jumps and hits the bump stops.
It's like 120 degree right with a, I don't know, eight inch drop in the middle of it.
That's more than 120. It's 270. I'm sorry. It's 270. You're right. With, with it's now a jump
and everything sort of hits the bump stops hard on the outside, outside two wheels and stability
always intervenes and everything is now pissed off. This thing didn't, I'm not sure it even
hit the bump stops. It just went right over it. It's tall and it's got a lot of suspension travel,
but even the range Rover that I had last week was unsettled over there. And so they've gotten the
suspension tuning right. The steering's fine. The powertrain's great. The brake feels fine.
Subarus are known for having the worst stereos in the business. They've tuned this so that it
actually works until you get it to, I would call it moderately loud. And then it starts
distorting, but at least it sounds good up until that point. And let's face it, that's,
it does that under bass and Subaru drivers don't listen to bass. They listen to NPR and classical
music and classical music and there's no, you know, bass hits in there. No, I mean, this is a
young people Subaru allegedly. I mean, they might be listening to something other than that
because it's a cross track. It's not a legacy. The boomer, the boomer Subaru is the legacy.
They don't even make that anymore. They don't. No, not for like 20 years. No.
The outback, which is a legacy. Well, it's legacy was a legacy, but now it's just an outback.
Yeah, that's right, man. The outback is the boomer. Well, I mean, you have that f***ing
athent, that horrible, big SUV. That's an SUV. Which I'm sure is lovely too. I haven't driven one
yet. I have recently heard two of those things with horrible exhaust leaks, which I would not
expect for something that new. That is unusual. Anyway, anyway, more importantly, we have a
Subaru cross track. Yeah, it wasn't it wasn't bad. It's great. You can adjust the line with
throttle in the in mid corner, which actually I was surprised that it was willing to do that.
It and it has plenty of body roll. So it felt like it was interesting. You know, I like body roll.
I find it entertaining. So I have plenty of those myself.
Oh, fat rolls, body rolls. Yeah, no, I am. Unfortunately, without this means that we
have to place the blame for the terrible Subaru's on the drivers themselves, not the cars,
because there's no reason that thing is quick enough. There is no reason you can't keep up
traffic. Yeah, it is 100% the people who buy these cars that ruin them. There's nothing wrong with
Yeah, it was actually surprisingly pleasant. Yeah, I will say it did get 30 miles per gallon
on my sort of normal driving when like something like a Corolla hybrid would get 55 and a Camry
hybrid would get 55 and you know, an Alantra hybrid would get 55. It's definitely not as
efficient as other hybrid systems, but it's four-wheel drive. And it's the symmetrical full-wheel
drive, full-time four-wheel drive, not the sort of on-demand stuff that like Toyota would do in
a ref four hybrid. But anyway, that's neither here nor there. But just so you know, I was wrong.
Wow, you heard it here first. Jason said he was wrong.
Of course, great. Yeah, too bad about the axle's bite. Anyway, second topic of the day, which is
our is the other four-wheel drive hybrid. Was I wrong about Corvette? I was never wrong. Because
you called it good. I called the Stingray good, not great in handling. And I will stand by that.
But the as Corvette has gotten a little bit or has gotten more extreme, it's gotten better and
better and better. And they did a bunch of an interior refresh for 2026 that got rid of the
waterfall controls, which were a real problem for usability. So as we mentioned, today is 01X day,
meaning today's the embargo. Happy Friday. Happy Friday. Oh, yeah. Sorry, we're here on a Friday.
Oops. And I got to spend a lot of time with 01X because we filmed an episode of Ultimate
Drag Race Replay with it that is currently being edited. And so I'm not going to tell you guys
what it did in a quarter mile. You're gonna have to watch, but we came up with or what it raced
against even. Will you share that? Well, let's put it this way. The number one fastest car we've
ever tested and which I would maintain is the world's fastest production car is the Lucid Air
Sapphire. We did this time have a different Lucid Air Sapphire is this time we had the Lucid Air
Sapphire with the optional Pirelli Trofeo RS tires on it. Those are a factory option on that car?
Yeah. This doesn't fuck around. That's wild. Like who buys that car and puts that tire on it?
Do you want to track it? I think it was just probably a response to maybe Taycan Turbo S
Weissach, which, you know, which comes on Cup 2 RSs or Cup 2 RS or something.
Because if you're, you know, you're trying to get a laugh. I just imagine trying to use that car
like for normal big sedan duty with that tire on it. Well, I think rides like a dream.
Yeah, but what if it, what if you drive over a spilled soda? What if it's 39 degrees?
Double loops. What's your range? You measure your range in cold weather and how many times
you spin out? Like, oh, it's got three spins per the range. Three spins per battery. That's
those tires in anything other than dry and warm scare the living shit out of them.
They should. However, so we had that and then we had two benchmark very fast cars that,
I'll leave that as a surprise, just to show the difference between something you think is very
fast and something that is actually very fast. And the goal for this was if we look at the numbers
that General Motors advertised for this car, which was 8.675 seconds through the quarter mile
on a VHT prepped surface, that is the fastest we've ever seen. They are, they claimed an 8.95
second quarter mile on an unprepped surface, which would be the fastest production car ever made.
And that beats our 9.1 that we saw on the Lucid air. What is Lucid quote? Do they,
I don't know if Lucid quotes, but we've done, we've done two episodes and we did a prototype and
then we did a production car and I got nine one out of both of them on Willow Springs's surface,
which is not, not the best. This time we weren't at Willow Springs, we're at Chakwala.
Was the Lucid, how different was the Lucid? Can you give that away?
It was quicker to 60 than the previous one. Because you think surface?
Well, because tires, because they were on the Trofeos. It, did I, I have a, I measured,
so the last sapphire that we tested, I think did a two one to 60. And, and let me say this one
thing about these DCVs that people are like, yeah, but it doesn't once. Oh, shit. We, the way we film
Ultimate Drag Race Replay, and I'm not going to delve too far into the details is you will see
this race from 700,000 different angles and you're never going to see a camera,
which means we're running that race over and over and over and over again. And when we, and
there are some, we got to like, when every car derates, nothing except for Porsches,
except for like, you know, Porsche 911s, everything starts to get slower. And at the end of the day,
there are times when we have to start, start playing a little bit of games to get the cars where
they need to have where they need to be. Because what we're doing is recreating the box data that
we got from beginning. And some cars don't like the heat, some cars went around and blah, blah,
blah. And then, yeah, pain in the ass. The last lucid that we have was banging off nine ones and
nine twos until it was down to 40% state of charge. And so there was a slight drop between
195 and we're talking like no time, but maybe a mile an hour or two and trap speed by the end.
But it was so consistent. We don't, we don't really worry about EVs derating anymore. It's
actually the turbo cars that start to lose power away first than that. So I'm pretty sure that car
did a two one to 60 every time. And this one, I did get a 2.02, which is a two second flat.
The V box gives me numbers to the hundredth and the draggy. So I use a V box and a the new draggy
pro. And they both give me numbers. And they're usually within a couple hundreds of each other,
but really that's within the noise because they're 20 Hertz. And so you're only taking 20 measurements
a second. You can't really know thousands. But so this lucid was quicker than our previous one,
260, even on Chacoala's surface, which was is better than Willow. But there was so much wind
that it kept blowing dirt onto the track and we had it blown off and it was just, it was a,
it was a pain in the ass. But yeah, this was one hell of a race. The Corvette, I will reveal
their Corvettes number. I got two perfect launches on the Corvette, which was very difficult to do
on that surface. Because also the other thing was that we're ripping the top layer off the
surface every time that car launches. So our plan was to minimize damage, was to launch
on top of our tracks for filming again, and again, and again, and again, and again. And so we're
not destroying an entire runway. And there was no top layer of asphalt in Funder either of these
cars by the end. But I did get two perfect launches in testing and it did a 1.99 and a 2.01.
This is now the fastest car I've ever experienced. By two hundredths.
Yep. Yeah, it was 1.99, 2.01, and then 2.04. Yeah, pretty amazing that an internal combustion
car can beat an EV to 60 that we've never seen. Okay, so let's talk about Corvette for a second.
So Stingray comes out, Stingray's got the 6.2 liter push rod V8. Nice tourer. I think it's
defining characteristics are its incredible ride. It's strange proportions because it's, you know,
it's got this really huge distance between the door and the rear wheels and you're sitting
really far forward. Like a 308 GT4. Exactly the same proportions as a 308 GT4. In fact,
I parked them next to each other and then I did a little, did you ever see that thing I did?
I don't think so. I did a little Instagram post where we flipped back and forth between the two
cars on a profile shot and I marked where the steering wheel and seat was and I aligned steering
wheel and seat and you see the wheels don't change relative to each other and just the shape of the
body changes. Very strange proportion car, but it rides like a dream and it sounds great.
Really great. That small block is amazing. It's well suited to the New Balance owners.
Sure, I guess. I mean, my problem with it is it doesn't feel like a Corvette. I loved gruff,
crappy, trashy Corvettes. You know, I liked a really heavy clutch and a really stiff shifter and,
you know, that the small block misfires at idle like no other thing does.
You know, the whole car just kind of twitches a little bit and it's just all, you know,
it's a big heavy flywheel and so it's just butch. The whole experience is butch and the C8,
Stingray, immediately just struck me as soft in that. It feels like a Ferrari and the shifts are,
everything's light and delicate and I just didn't tickle me because it just didn't feel like a Corvette
and handling was relentless understeer and I just thought if anyone else had done this,
mid-engine cars are difficult to make balance. If anyone else had done this, I would have been
a little bit more accepting, but GM's team is so good at chassis tuning. Front-engined cars.
Why? Is there another bad mid-engine car?
No, I mean, it's just that everything that they've really made that's been exceptional handling has
been front-engined. Fair point. Yeah, it's the Alpha Platform cars. It's the Camaro.
That last ATS-V was just like mind-blowing and so when C8 came out, it just wasn't.
It was good. It just wasn't unnaturally amazing. I was told by the engineers, one engineer that was
with us on that thing that on that launch that I was on or test, that a bunch of decisions had been
made early on in the Corvette's gestation that resulted in a lack of weight on the front wheels
and so they were unable to do their normal tricks. They won't tell me what their normal
tricks are. They won't explain to me how they're doing it, but they're playing tricks with its
diff brakes steering suspension and they can play some tricks to keep these cars neutral all time.
They were not able to do that on base sting, right? So that's the push-rod engine. Or hadn't yet
figured it out. They were working with other tire suppliers. They had Michelins on at a time and
they confirmed to my suspicion that Michelins really do best on heavy cars and so they were
hoping to find a different tire package that would respond a little bit better to the tricks up
front with less weight on it. I don't know if they ever did. I never followed up. In fact,
I was banned by GMPR after calling it good. Hard to follow up if you're banned. Kind of hard to
follow up when you're not allowed in the cars and in any cars. But anyway, fucking idiot who did
that is no longer in that position at GM. I shouldn't call him an idiot. Lunatic. But so then what
GM did was really take advantage. And by the way, Stingray was 2.8 to 60 when it came out. It was
the fastest accelerating Corvette ever and it was a really nice combination of obviously good inherent
suspension and traction design and whatever else, but short gears, dual clutch and launch control.
And so you have the weight in the right spot, good suspension geometry and they just went.
So it beat all the previous crazy Corvettes. Next up, so not chronologically, but in the order
you can add the motor in the back. The engine in the back means you can add a motor in the front.
And so the next one is e-ray, which is Stingray plus electric. And the e-ray dropped that 0 to 60
down to 2.4. By just putting an electric motor at the front end. Yep. I think it was 160-ish horsepower
up front. And basically it's in a 4-wheel drive. It was the first ever 4-wheel drive Corvette.
I spent some time drag racing it. I never spent any other time. I never drove it on the road.
But great. Then you have the 0-6. And so 0-6 goes back to just rear-wheel drive and that is the
naturally aspirated flat-plane crank LT6 V8. This is a 5.5 liter, plus 1,000 RPM, 8500 RPM
V6 flat-plane crank V8. The car is absolutely ridiculous in terms of its noise.
It's the closest thing to Ferrari on the market today to the old Ferraris. Sounds very much like
a 458. Has a lot of the feel of that car. And now it got extreme enough that I'm kind of okay
that it doesn't feel like a Corvette anymore. Because now it feels like its own thing. It
feels like where Ferrari was and it's not a bad place to be. Then Chevy slaps, effectively slaps
two turbochargers on that flat-plane crank V8. It makes the ZR1. That is a 0-6 with slightly
softer suspension. But now with turbos on it, 1,064 horsepower. We did the icons on that car.
We've talked about on the show. Spectacular. I'm one of the most approachable until it's not.
Until you fuck up. But really the car is, it's like a Doberman with razor-sharp teeth
who looks like it wants to kill you, but actually just wants to sit in your lap and give you kisses.
A wonderfully tuned car that does almost nothing wrong and just somehow makes 1,064 horsepower
kind of normal. Like it just all works. And now what GM has done for this, the ZR1X is add an
electric motor back to the front. So you have the e-rays set up effectively. But it's 186 horsepower.
It's even more power. 186. I can't do this math in my head. Whatever. I think it's
1,300 horsepower. 1,250 total. So 1,250 total system output. So the ZR1 engine in the back
untouched 1,064 horsepower. This is the brilliance of this design. You have three engines and two
motors and it's just mix and match, whichever one you want. And they literally did not touch
the ZR1's driveline in the back to add the e-rays sort of, e-ray plus up front. And it's, I think,
even better. Like, I just don't know. Like the thing is so fucking fast. I did one run, which we'll
at Sonoma Raceway while they were setting up for their press launch. And I showed up early and
just to talk to engineers and then get a background knowledge on the cars and they were running.
Sonoma is always slow because Sonoma's uphill into a headwind and not as grippy as some other tracks.
And I think every, I think the run that I videoed was like a 9.033. And then I got in a car with
ice cold tires and did a 9.3 and it was easy to manage. Like this is just numbers that don't exist.
Not an 8.675, but I do believe that with the right conditions you could get an 8.675. Which,
by the way, is hilarious because under NHRA rules when you're at a racetrack, if you were
under 10, under 9, you get kicked out. If you're over 150, you get kicked out. Well, this is an
8.675 at 158. So you're kicked out twice. So I love that they were like, this is what it does and
you can never do it or you're getting kicked out. Forbidden. I mean, it's hilarious to make
a car that has a drag, you know, effectively a drag strip prowess that gets it kicked out from
drag strips. Unbelievable. What a time to be alive. Yeah. I mean, I'm back in the press car game as
we see what the Subaru behind is. And I got to say, it's mostly bad news. I mean, I have Gene
Jennings voice. How do you know? Maybe every car that you experienced like the Subaru could actually
be quite, you thought it was bad, but it's actually good. No, no. And you know what it is? It's all
the luxury shit. That's what I realized is it's actually the simple end of the market is brilliant
right now. Like all the Toyota stuff is great. All the Mazda stuff is predominantly good. Even
predominantly good. Look, I just had a Mazda CX70, which is the straight six and the straight six
is terrible. Which I gave that car a scathing review on Instagram as the verdict because the
part of that car that should have been the best and the highlight of it was actually the biggest
disappointment. That six is coarser than most V6's. How do you do that? You make a new type of
transmission that shifts differently than any other because of the way they integrate them,
the hybrid system. Mazda called me after that, after that review. They were not exactly pleased.
Well, I presume your response is, well, you should have made a better car.
I didn't have to because Mazda agrees. So what they did was call me to explain why
the things I noticed happened. And in that case, the transmission has a natural resonance that's
excited by the crankshaft on the straight six. It's not actually the engine that sounds like a
garbage truck gurgling on, insert something crunchy on Doritos. I'm hungry. It's a bunch of time.
On whatever your neighbor managed to leave out at the curb.
Exactly. An old washing machine.
It's actually a resonance in the transmission that then vibrates to the whole driveline.
So they're aware of it and they know. But most of the modern stuff, we had an
ultimate rental car last time Randy Pope's was in town. Think of 50 miles per gallon,
it was just amazing. There's so much good stuff, but it's the luxury and the top end of the market
where the cars are actually ruined by their UX. Is that a Range Rover that you have,
you press a little button on the, when you walk up to it to get the door handles to extend to open
and it doesn't respond one out of every three times. And then even if it does respond instantly,
which it usually doesn't, it's out. And by the time the fucking door handles go,
I've already punched a hole through the fucking window because I'm in impatient New York
asshole and I just want to get in my car and go. And then you hit the start button,
as has been the case for 20 years on Jaguar Land Rover products, then it doesn't respond
because it wants a longer press and then it's slow to boot up. And then I had a lucid,
that same thing with the fucking door handles didn't respond half the time.
And it screens everywhere in a Cadillac Vistick, which I just slimed the shirt out of in a review
too, because every screen is delayed and everything you did on that car was on a delay.
And I don't want a delay. If I hit a window button, I want the window to start moving now.
If I open a door, I want the door to respond and that they all have these stupid electric door
releases, which are dangerous because then they have to hide the manual override. So you get an
accident, you can't open the fucking door and now you're frazzled or bleeding or injured or got,
you know, half unconscious and you're looking for an emergency door release that you've never seen
before. So stupid. And they're on a fucking delay. What is the point if I hit the button,
just open the friggin door. So it's, I think it's more the top end of the car
market that's ruined. What's nice about the Corvette is it's a very clear mission of what it is. I
am a sports car. And so it's fucking loud inside, but the noises you hear are all engine and are
wonderful. And I have 1,250 horsepower and I'm not going to pretend I'm not going to rip your
face off. I'm just going to rip your face off. Fine. Perfect. It's like the car's got a confidence
that it knows what it is. Yeah, clarity of purpose. Right, sure. I mean, all the Ferrari stuff that
I've driven recently has been magic dynamically, but it's sort of lacking that sense of humor and
confidence. It's like, oh, now I'm a luxury car and it screens everywhere. And not real buttons,
which they're apparently returning. Yeah. Everyone's finally returning to buttons,
although we just had a Golf R on a shoot. And that was supposed to get real buttons and only
the GTI did, which lost its fucking manual. So it's unbiable anyway. For whatever reason,
the Golf R doesn't get the real buttons. So every time I turn the wheel, I turn the heated steering
wheel on because the palm of my hand hits the button or not a button, breezes the stupid
capacitive touch idiocy. And I just, I just hate these cars. So you're enjoying being in modern
press cars again. It sounds like it's different. I'll be honest with you. It's really tough because
I don't, oh, I started to say, I Jean Jennings voice in my head. So when I was at, I started
automobile, I would give a bad review to anything. And she's like, nobody wants to hear you fucking
bitching. And I understood she's like, look, we're in the entertainment business. People come to us
for a respite from all the things that go wrong with their lives. And if every car sucks, they're
not going to want to read. So when you're criticizing, you can criticize something that's bad,
but you have to do it in a way that's not angry. And it's not bitter. And it's just, it has to be
about the facts. And you triple check your work when you're reviewing something bad. So for example,
catalyzed acoustic review that, that just went out a couple of days ago. I've probably revised that
26 times to tone down what would have otherwise appeared as anger. I think that is a fail as a
consumer product. Like I would never recommend it to anyone for any reason. I just don't see a single
reason why you'd buy it unless you love the way it looked, which go get your eyes checked, over
like a Rivian or, you know, so many other great choices. But I don't, I can't say that. I can't
say this is a fail from start to finish. What I have to say is like, okay, this is what it does
well. And here are the misses and here are the why those are misses. And that's a lot of work.
A lot of work to try to be nice when really you just want to bash it into a tree and say next,
give me the next shipbox so I can bitch about the screens that don't work and
the super cruise that wants to kill you. And so you're a fan of the Corvette?
Yes. This is a rambling. Yeah. So what else, what else about the Corvette? First of all,
what I think is very interesting is that that awkward proportioned shape that I didn't particularly
care for and don't particularly care for on a on the stingray gets better, the more outrageous.
Yeah, you put more stuff on it and there's less unadorned space that looks awkward because it's
covered in shit. Yeah, excrescences. Well, what? Excrescences. What are excrescences?
Shit that sticks off of other shit. Shit. Okay. Excrad just never heard that word before.
Protrusions. Protrusions. This is the test car that we had was a ZTK, which is the performance
package, the crazy arrow and the car just looks incredible with that arrow on it. The big spoiler,
you know, all of that stuff. They've done some interesting things with the UX. So it's a 20
year struggle of mine now to get GM products in the PTM mode that I want them to. So PTM is
performance track, traction management. So stability, stability control. And there are,
there's like a wet mode, a tour mode, a sport mode, race one and race two in all of the GM
performance stuff. And the engineers call that PTM one through PTM five. So PTM five is like
track two, which is you have a certain level of protection, but you're, it's not going to help you.
It'll help you go faster more than it's ever going to, it will never slow you down. So
like when Randy's just set the lap record at Sonoma, he was in PTM two and didn't even know it.
And then we turned it all off and he came back and did another lap and he's like,
nah, I preferred it on because it was like, there were times he had to manage traction at the back.
And this is in a ZR1 with a 1064 horsepower at the rear end. It's like, there's times,
but I didn't even realize that, you know, that was just a split second power cut when the wheels
were unloaded. And to get fucking PTM active was always this like rub your stomach, pat your head,
like a double tap followed by a fucking long press. I just, it never worked. So the Corvette
now has a screen on the left side, where some extra controls are for like lights and like display
settings and whatnot. And they three buttons underneath it. And one of them is just PTM now.
And so you just right down and you're in PTM five or PTM one, two, three, four, five.
And then there's a launch control button there. That is it took that whole process from being
like inscrutable to super easy. And then they went and fucked it up by having to do a burnout to
warm up the tires, which you need on the ZR1X. It doesn't just a rear, rear drive burnout.
You have to be in PTM off, which is pro mode now it's called. So it's pro, which is technically
everything off. Is that PTM zero or PTM six? I just call it. They were calling it pro. The
engineers were calling it pro when they were giving me a little tour of it. It'll do it.
It'll burn out in the other modes, but then doesn't give you enough wheel spin to whatever.
So it's PTM off. And the car's sitting there and you're in drive, the car's sitting there at
800 RPM idle and you pull both paddles, release one, and it's the right one. I always did. I
assume it's got to be that one and then pull, pull it back. Now idle jumps to 1100 or just over a
thousand. So you have an acoustic confirmation, nothing on the screen that something's different.
And then you apply full throttle and it will load it up. And it releases the throttle,
it releases the clutches when you release the paddles. But it doesn't matter what you're doing
with the pedals. So you're initiating a burnout, which is a fucking launch on a mid-engine car,
with your hands and not your feet. And if you have too much brake pressure, it won't do it.
So they always advise, don't have your foot on the brake at all. And let me tell you,
that's you're in a thousand horsepower car that will get from here to there in 0.00 seconds.
And they're telling you to do a burnout without your foot on the brake.
On the brake. But then you got to go back to the brake to hold the car,
but you can't do too much brake, especially if you shift in whatever else. And so it's just this,
like, I was there, like I said earlier, Sonomo and the engineers were there,
and I went up and just did the, I went up and I did a really 1.5 second burnout. And the guy who
worked for the track, not for the engineers, comes over and gives me a fist bump. He's like,
you just did the best burnout of any of these fucking engineers. They can't even figure out
how to get this to work. There has been some feedback given to the engineering team,
but just do me a favor and make this so that I initiate, I can do paddle and let go,
let go of everything and initiate the burnout with letting go of the brakes.
That makes sense. And so they're now considering it and knowing GM, they'll do it because that's
this car has just been this constant evolution of stingray was good. Eray was interesting.
0.6 was amazing. 0.1 is like fucking unbelievable. And now 0.1 X is just
$204,000 or whatever they're, $250,000, whatever, somewhere in there, you have the fast car for
the money, especially when you come from the rest of the landscape and you know what all that other
stuff costs. Fastest accelerating car in the history of the world. For 200 grand. For 200 grand.
And it's provided you have a good surface and you can do the burnout and rubber baby buggy
bumper bullshit. You can actually just do it anywhere. And the thing is the car actually
feels controlled. Like when we did the race against Lucid 200 times for the video, the Lucid
actually felt squidgy and soft and sort of a little bit torque steery and whatever. And that's
0.1 was just gone every single time. That is the best sports car on the market.
Okay. If you define a sports car needing a manual and give me a Lotus Amira and all that other
stuff, however, I never thought I'd say the words that I think a Corvette is more desirable than
anything for Army makes right now. Wow. This is viewed through the narrow lens of drag racing.
Drag racing. I mean, I know what about, well, I guess you have spent enough time with it around
the circuit without the regular zero one. I didn't, I didn't get a shit ton of time.
I didn't drive zero one X on the road, but I have driven zero one on the road. And it's just a
nice road car. And, you know, look, you have to respect 1000 horsepower with the rear axle. And
this has 1000 horsepower at the rear axle. The one thing I will say is the runway is wide enough,
especially at the end, there's like a sort of bulb where I can, I do a turnaround night. So, you
know, once the airplanes do the same thing, that's why it's there. That would make sense,
but they probably don't do it the way I did, which is to come in under braking,
skinny, flick it and see what it'll do. That's probably true. That's probably true because
they'd scrape wing on the way there. The car just normalizes power in a way that I've never
seen. But the hard part when you're adding that kind of electric torque up front
is that you have to make the systems work together. And, you know, some companies that do great
dynamics like Jaguar, for example, have fucked up all wheel drive integration. So when the F type
first got all wheel drive, they, this beautiful rear wheel drive moment as you're adding throttle,
and then it would engage the front axle with this thud, it would just lock the clutch.
And then it would just, you'd go from sliding to, you know, like from yawing to a four wheel
drift in whatever direction Jesus told it to go. And you, it was just deeply unsettling. GTR,
for example, and GTR got it right from the get go. And these guys seem to have gotten it right.
The only thing I will say is when you have the ability to absolutely incinerate all four tires
on command, you're going to take up a lot of real estate doing it. And so you're coming into a corner,
you know, you sort of flick the car around using the brakes, trail break it in, get it nice and
sideways and fucking one eighth throttle is all it takes to hold that. And if you start getting
greedy, you'll just do these lured three lane wide slides perfectly controllable. I don't,
there's kind of nothing else better they could have done. But the airport environment is the
ideal environment to experience. I think that thing would be an absolute riot on a racetrack.
So what they, they had to do a couple of interesting things up front was actually increase the maximum
speed of the front motor because they didn't want it to decouple in the middle of a quarter mile run,
thinking people would be drag racing it. And the previous, the e-raise motor decouples at 150
miles an hour and they're seeing speeds way higher than that in this. And so they reinforced,
they put some new bearings in it that gave it the ability to spin faster and then redesigned
another bearing because the additional power from coming to the motor, a torque technically,
was trying to split the case in half. It's just naturally pushing them apart.
And so now this thing is active up to 160 miles an hour. And if you can't put the power down by
160, then just, it's time to, it's time to, it's time to simmer down. Yeah, simmer down a little bit.
But it all just seems so naturally integrated. I did find a secret mode that I don't know if
it's secret, but you can just pull the, pull the mode selector down twice and you have like a
transport mode where it'll just be electric. So it's really cool. You can like sneak up and
run people over in the dark on your, in your Corvette. This is perfect for driving around in
London. You too avoid the congestion fee. So it does say right on the screen, not for a road,
like not legal for road use or something. And it is limited to 22 miles an hour.
But it's just neat. Can't imagine one goes much faster than that in London anyway.
That's quite true. Well, maybe not in the UK. Who knows? Maybe the bill certifies. So what is it for?
I think that they call the, it's like shuttle mode or something. It's probably just to move it
around a shop. But I did drive it around and like on the runway, just kind of like
going here or there. It's a, it's a relatively small battery. Allegedly that, so the battery,
it puts out 186 horsepower and allegedly can pull back in 186 also. There's a display and I think
I never saw it more than about 80 horsepower in and out, but like you would do a quarter mile run,
which they chose that power output by the way, because that's all that the car can possibly
put down under ideal conditions on full launch. Because any more than that, there's just so little
weight on the front end of the car given that the, you know, you have so much weight transfer back
from 1064 on the back. So you're, it's probably putting out near, near max for most of that
quarter mile run. And then by the time I would slow down and turn around to come back for another
run, it was charged before I was halfway back. It was pretty wild. From the diesel? From diesel.
And then if you're in track mode, it automatically goes into battery charge mode,
so it'll load it up and charge it as much as it can. As long as you're in motion, right?
Yeah, as long as you're in motion. Yeah, because it has no way, there's no physical connection
other than through the road of the front and rear wheels, so the electric and the,
and the gas system. It's pretty wild. You have to be moving to charge the battery,
but it charges quick. And other things like the engineers told me, like one of the tricks they
use, they'll drag brake a little bit under power, which is just adding regen before it adds friction
brake. And so early on, I had to charge it. I wanted that battery at 100% when I was doing
the timed runs for the, with the V-Box. And so I went to the other side of the runway,
and they have a burnout box there that they've set up, and I do a big arc around it, and it's
a little bit bumpy. And dragging the brakes, it would just keep locking the inside front wheel.
So you're coming around the corner, which is fun, fun party tricks.
I wonder, so the powertrain integration seems quite good. I wonder if that makes sense in any
other applications for them. Like, do you think that this, the learnings from this car will filter
to more pedestrian vehicles or would serve some benefit? I hope so. And here's why. Prius is a
perfect example. Prius and Rev for hybrids. They just do electricity on the rear axle. So like a
Prius doesn't need a conventional four wheel drive system, you're only going to use the four wheel
drive to get moving. So why not put a propulsion motor in the back, keep the, you know, the transverse
compact hybrid powertrain up front to do what it normally does. And it's a great way of getting
additional traction off the line and then sort of normal driving conditions. And so
that's a really nice way of making a hybrid. Look, Porsche started this, right? I think,
918. So if you think about it, the ZR1 is spiritual successor to a 918.
Interflat technical format. Yeah. Flat plane V8 in the back. Okay. Admittedly with two turbos.
Now an electric motor up front. The 918. And the Porsche also turbocharged? No.
Or am I losing my mind? No, I think it was NA. So technically, a Z06 with an e-ray powertrain,
with a ZR1X front motor would be the closest thing we could get to a
918 Spider. And by the way, it would be quicker through the, than a 918 Spider.
It's been a decade. Yeah. But that was a million dollars then,
which given current inflation is probably $5,000,000.
Were they a million dollars when they were new? I thought they were less.
To me, they just always seem a lot of money.
No, they were a lot of money. I'm sure.
Yeah, certainly not 200. Yeah, certainly not $200,000.
300 or 400.
What is going on in the automotive industry is so nuts right now. The world is in panic mode.
And everyone is just taking all the fun out of everything and like prepping for the end of the
world. And the American car companies are just fucking nailing it. I'm like,
let's just have some goddamn fun before all this gets outlawed.
We just, I also just drove the Dodge Charger Skat Pack
Daytona, which is the electric one. Daytona means electric?
Why? And also it was a charger two door,
a charger two door, which is technically supposed to be a challenger.
They're Dodge's naming scheme. We're not going to talk about that.
We are going to talk about that. This electric charger has a frat zonic exhaust on the back,
which is their brand name for this insane, insane speaker system.
Yeah. That put out 103, three feet away. It was 103 decibel, 104 decibels of sound.
It makes the startup sound of this EV is the loudest fucking most
basso profundo fucking kick in the chest I've ever heard. Like you started, it's like,
it does this like Superman and then or Batman. I guess it's like the Batman thing,
like a jet spinning up followed by a it's, and then shots up.
Oh,
dumbest thing ever. But come on, let's have some fun here.
America, America. Okay. Well, my brows furrowed. Disapprovingly.
At the sound room. That notion of the, no, the, of the,
what you just described from our friends at Stellantis.
I make fun of that quite a bit. And that's another forthcoming episode.
I have to, you have to make fun of it when that, when the EV version is louder than the gas version
by significant margin, but the point here is still like legislation on cars was,
and isn't the rest of the world and was in the US getting tighter and tighter and tighter,
and no one is allowed to have a little bit of fun. And I think it's so fucking cool that
the American car companies that the world laughed at for so long
are the ones that figured out how to, how to just have a party.
And so they made to my accelerate their demise when, when the political climates change again
and say, and everything is like, Oh, no, no, we do have a mission centers again,
and you may have to go EV like the rest of the world does.
And they're caught with their pants down and China comes in and sells amazing cars for
$3. But yes, because the tariff environment has also changed potentially.
But this is, yes. And this is the first time in our lives, and you've been around for a long time,
that the American cars are kind of
genuinely compelling and world-class. Yeah, it's worn enthusiast.
Yeah, sure. Let's have some goddamn fun. Well, how heartwarming.
Look at, we found two things to like, this wasn't very carmajony at all.
That's what happens when carmajony comes out on Friday.
See, by the end of the week, we've expended our
all of our negative energy. Yes, it's been this, this is deployed already. And now we're
nice to Subaru's nice to Subaru's and like American cars.
What do we need to go? Yeah, we'd better get into the weekend before we,
okay. So we'll be back on Monday with another episode where we bitch about everything about
that. Oh, thank God. All right, go have a miserable fucking weekend.
All right. And I'll see y'all next time. Okay.
About this episode
Jason Cammisa and Derek Tam-Scott dive into their surprising positive impressions of the Subaru Crosstrek hybrid, challenging their usual skepticism by praising its smooth powertrain, suspension, and overall pleasant driving experience despite some quirks. They also discuss the extreme performance of the Corvette ZR1X, highlighting its record-breaking quarter-mile times and comparing it to other hypercars like the Lucid Air Sapphire. The episode blends candid car critiques with insights on hybrid tech, suspension tuning, and high-performance benchmarks.
Surprise! We’re back on the mics a few days early to discuss the new 2026 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1X, which Jason has recently driven.
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Visit http://JasonSentMe.com to get a Hagerty Guaranteed Value (TM) collector-car insurance quote!
===
In this episode, Jason breaks down his experience behind the wheel while testing the ZR1X at Sonoma Raceway. Jason and Derek discuss where C8 has started and how it has progressed, and how the Corvette model lineup has stacked up until now with ZR1X at the top of the food chain.
Claimed to be “America’s Quickest Production Car”, the ZR1X claims a sub 9 second quarter mile and a sub 2 second 0-60 - with help from a LT7 V8 engine and a front-axle electric motor to generate 1,250 total AWD horsepower.
Jason and Derek also discuss the white elephant in the studio - the Subaru Crosstrek Hybrid that Jason has on loan for the week. The Cammisa Verdict is back, and Jason has recently reviewed an array of new cars including but not limited to the Cadillac Vistiq, Mazda CX-70, Alpina XB7, and many more to come…
All this and more on this week’s episode of The Carmudgeon Show.
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