The Great Carvana Resurrection

Welcome to the Avant Podcast, I'm Dan.

I'm Nick.

Nick is swimming.

I'm glad I live on a hill, I'll tell you, this is something.

I don't think, everybody's unfortunately reporting records of rain and where we live,

obviously the fall city carnation, it's getting bad, I'm praying for everybody right now,

but it's pretty bad.

Yeah, this is no joke, this isn't like, oh, it's raining in Seattle as usual, no,

this is like, pretty, and if you're not from here, you're probably seeing it on the news

all over, and it is as bad as it looks, a lot of people from work have been sending me photos

about how bad it is, I was going, are you all right, because they know I'm in Snoqualmie,

well, my house is in Snoqualmie, I am not in Snoqualmie, I am now in Utah, and my house

is way up on a hill, so you would all, everybody in Seattle would be dead if my

house was under water, so take comfort in that.

There are bigger problems, yeah, I'm okay, but man, this is pretty insane, watching

I-90 get closed for a giant mudslide is twice.

Two days in a row, yeah.

Yeah, that's saying a lot, I mean, obviously I-90 being the main thoroughfare from Seattle

to the east coast, it's a pretty well protected highway from things like this, so you know

that's a lot of water.

Well, yeah, especially, I mean, I understand where it is, right now with I-90, the latest

mudslide, everybody is coming off, going east on I-90 is getting off in Snoqualmie,

on a two-lane road, going down into Snoqualmie all over to North Bend, so it's a little, it's

a little bit hectic right now, I'm glad I'm kind of at home and safe and dry for now.

I want to give a shout out to a listener.

Great.

So, I don't know if you've seen, obviously, you know, Google gives you a review of the

things you've seen and done this year, but we have a listener, I think he's

in Portland.

He's in Portland, yeah.

Toby Butler-Brown, who has streamed 4,182 minutes of this podcast, and that's just amazing.

I want to give him a shout out.

I think that's just so cool, you know, we don't do it for the fame, so it's nice

to see that people are listening, but that was, that guy got posted up, he posted that

up on his, you know, Vaughn's Portland page and I was just like, like in my mind

I'm like, that's a lot of episodes, like I don't even know if I've listened to

that many episodes.

Very cool.

Well, the good news is you've participated in that many, so.

Well, yeah, I was going to say, I've been there, I just, as far as listening

after, but it was really neat.

Another really cool thing that's happened this week in the middle of this

snowstorm, it's a rainstorm, is the first Gordon Murray Automotive T-50 has

been delivered to the United States and it's been delivered here in

Seattle to a good acquaintance of ours, Roy Katz.

And actually it's delivered, I didn't realize this, that Cantrell Motors

here is the Gordon Murray Repair Facility.

Yeah, crazy, Cantrell, this is really cool work.

But yeah, it's, I'm not surprised they were chosen.

I'm just like, that's just so cool.

I think they're going to make a hundred cars, but you know, and this has

been, I think like a seven or eight year journey for Roy and we've kind

of followed it through Facebook and things like that, but it's really

cool to see the car.

I've seen photos, I should say, of the car here on American soil.

So I'm sure we'll get plenty of, you know, seeing it with exotics and

things like that.

Roy likes to drive his car, so that's really cool.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward.

That's probably an exotics I'll come out to.

That's a car we're seeing.

You don't see cars like that even at, you know, outside of maybe

car week, you might see one or two and it'll be in the show.

It's rare to see anybody driving one, but you know, thanks

to people like Roy for doing stuff like that because that'll be, that's

an incredible car.

And just if you're not clear, Gordon Murray designed the McLaren F1.

That's all you need to know.

Yeah.

It's amazing to see something that's such a big, big car to be seen here.

So thank you, Roy, for working so hard and being able to afford that car.

Yes, we appreciate you, and that is very cool to see.

Absolutely.

In other automotive fun news, did you check out the new Hoonigan?

Travis Sushant did in Australia?

I've watched like five minutes of it and then I got pulled into work again.

That happens, that happens.

But if you haven't, it's always great to see that the group get out there.

They built a, well, it's loosely a Subaru brat.

Yeah, it's brat-ish.

It was cool to watch.

Those are always neat to watch.

I think the Hoonigan brand is always fun to, they always do cool stuff.

And then, you know, with Travis kind of, I don't want to say taking over,

but stepping in for Ken Block, it's been a really fun thing to watch.

Yeah, that's a nice fit.

I mean, Travis has always been out there doing crazy stuff his whole life.

So this is a good fit for him.

And I'm glad to see the brand to live on in spite of all of its controversy.

And after that, after Ken, so it's cool.

I don't know if it's just now, but because of that, like,

people have been circulating like the full body scans of Travis Pastrana

and that shows like all of the things are holding him together.

I can't that I don't know how that man doesn't have.

He's going to be the tin man from the Wizard of Oz when he gets up in the morning.

He should have just implanted some claws at this point

because he's pretty close to Wolverine.

I mean, the dude's half metal and a man skeleton.

Yeah, yeah, they'll probably stop him from breaking.

But, you know, I hurt and I haven't even done

a one hundredth of a tenth of what he's done.

So yeah, it literally hurts to look at the the skeletal scans of Travis.

Yeah, yeah, or guy.

I can't imagine what his I mean, I shouldn't the poor guy.

He's, you know, that's the ultimate pay to play.

Lucky guy.

He has played harder than anybody ever.

I mean, him and evil can evil, I guess,

but he's a lot more successful than evil people ever was.

I don't know if he was more broken than evil.

Who knows? Yeah. Yeah.

And how are things with you?

Sunny, sunny, cold in the mornings, warm in the afternoons,

dry, beautiful.

That's right.

We people really don't know where you are.

We've been hiding you kind of.

Yeah, I'm in Utah now.

Traveled down here for the winter and just, you know,

clear my head, get out of the Seattle

darkness, I guess, and the rain.

I didn't expect it to be that bad when I left.

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, sorry.

Took the most beautiful drive.

I think I've ever been on last Sunday.

We went over through, through Zion and Bryce Canyon

and then up to, through Escalante and up to Torrey,

which is a little tiny hole in the wall.

No reason to really stop there, town in Utah.

Nice place, nice people.

But the road that gets there is, I've often said,

Utah 12 is the best road in America.

And I mean it.

It's overly busy most times of the year.

This time of the year, it's freezing.

And virtually no one is at Zion or Bryce.

In fact, there's snow in the hills in most places,

but the road was clear and dry and took it over two days.

One way, one day to Torrey, one day back.

And it was the most perfect drive, I think I've ever been on.

Passed like two cars, the entire trip.

And this is 400 miles, 400 plus miles round trip.

Literally two cars.

And there's just nobody.

It's literally the most beautiful road, I think, in all of North America.

Oh, and you guys took Shawna's car down there too,

so that's probably even better.

I mean, coming to the canyon in the Raptor would be fun,

but the R8's a lot better.

Yeah, it's still a nice drive, because it's just incredibly scenic.

There are no bad views, but I mean going up with Grand Escalante

and then back through Zion, no wait in Zion,

no traffic in Zion, no people in Zion,

like it emptier than I've ever seen it.

Emptyier since I think the emptier than the first time

I was there, way back in like 2009.

And so it is literally the perfect time to go.

There's, if you wanted to do Angel's Landing,

this would be perfect because that's one,

it's you know, 1500 feet straight up and over like a mile.

So it's incredibly hard of a hike, it's rated extreme,

but that cool air would be your friend

and it would be easy to get permits right now

because nobody's out there.

It is still, permits are still required,

but getting into the park, no wait.

It's just, I've never seen it so beautiful

because there's so few people.

And you can just enjoy the road.

Like normally this is a road I tell everybody,

everybody needs to go on, but they should expect traffic

and drive like there's traffic and bicycles

and things that will slow you down.

You know, you don't go out there and go nuts

because this is a very heavily populated area.

It's a very popular drive.

It's Utah 12 Scenic Byways, very famous.

But man, this time of year, it was just heaven.

I've told everybody for years that this should be

the top of their list of roads to drive.

And this is the time of the year to do it.

Once you get in here, yes, it's freezing.

You need to understand that it's gonna affect your tires

and the way you drive.

Like you can't go balls out across the mountain passes

and there are your, but I think almost 8,000 feet

and a couple of the passes out there.

So there's snow and there's ice in the shadows

and you're gonna watch out for stuff down trees that'll fall.

But you can still have a pretty spirited drive

because there's nobody out there.

I did see police actually several times on that route,

but it's one of those roads that's, you know,

it's a 55 to 65 mile an hour road

with corners as low as 10 and 15.

So you don't really have to go crazy over the speed limit

to enjoy the drive.

Like you're not out there, pedal to the metal.

It's just nothing but beautiful views

and lots of great scenic overlook stops.

Yeah, I'll post some pictures with the episode,

but I mean, I can't tell you all to the audience

how much you're missing out if you haven't done this drive,

but even more so if you haven't done it in the off season.

It's not like they get it a lot of rain and snow over here.

So, I mean, they do get snow.

Don't be wrong, after December probably,

like as we get into January,

it road will probably be pretty impassable

until March or April.

I think I've done it in March,

but they can have pretty heavy snow through there.

It's pretty high up in the passes, so.

You were mentioning, we were talking about,

because you're in St. George,

which is sort of what Southwestern Utah,

as Southwestern you can get.

And what a different place it is down there.

I was, we were laughing because we were talking

about the fact that your rented next door neighbor

left his garage door open all night,

and you went over to tell him like,

hey, your garage door is open.

And he's like, yeah, that doesn't happen here.

Yeah, they're like, that's not a thing here.

They're not worried about it here.

There's so many police here, it's ridiculous.

They're all nice.

I mean, and sure, just like any city,

you're gonna have your problems here.

And it's just the way it is,

but people coming around and getting into places

they're not supposed to is not high on the list here.

There's a whole lot of don't tread on me flags

and the risk outweighs the reward

for pretty much no matter what you have in the garage.

Got it, okay.

Everybody's looking over everybody's shoulder.

Everybody's friendly, as the old saying goes,

an arm society is a polite society.

And this is actually kind of proofs out here

because everybody's really, really nice.

There you go.

And I often go back and question myself.

I'm like, are people really nicer?

Am I just in a better mood?

And that's a good way to tell you.

It's like, am I more approachable?

No, they are just flat out nicer here.

People see you come and they grab the door for you.

People, you got a cart, they'll ask,

hey, can I take that for you?

People wait when you go to turn into a street.

It's like, if you're gonna parallel park,

the traffic doesn't just go around you

and try and run you off the road.

They're gonna wait.

It's a really different way of living down here

that, and I wish we had more of.

I wish I knew the secret sauce down here.

I have many theories, but it's just a nice place.

Holy crap, are there vehicle enthusiasts?

Down in St. George's, so we're right outside

of San Joraholo.

So your hurricane is where San Joraholo is,

which is there's like St. George, Washington,

and Hurricane, and they're all like just right next to Clara.

I think, right?

Yeah, Santa Clara, yeah.

They're all just like these cities

that are just mashed together now.

And San Joraholo is right here.

And San Joraholo, if people don't know,

is one of the biggest off-road areas in the world.

Matt's Off-Road Recovery is based

right up the road for me here.

APG Off-Road, I believe is here as well.

So like the hardcore guys that are setting up

Baja teams are testing down the road.

Like literally a mile from where I'm staying

is I'm seeing side-by-sides all day.

And I'm not just saying like out of the box side-by-sides.

I'm talking like side-by-sides

with the 100 grand in mods side-by-sides

because they're getting ready to brace prep these things.

So they're everywhere.

And you know, full-tube rock crawlers

is everything you think about here.

There's Baja, rock crawling, side-by-sides,

motorcycles, like you would be hard-pressed

to go by an open garage and not see

at least some kind of dedicated off-road vehicle

because it's paradise for that here.

This is just a big car community in general.

Utah always has been kind of like Washington

where they're kind of low-key about it.

But if you know people here, you know they're probably,

there's a lot of car people in Utah

and a lot of supercars in Utah.

Mainly of course around the Salt Lake City area

but this has been kind of like,

there's probably not a block on here.

There's not some kind of new construction going on

and big garages are sort of essential.

Everybody's got their standard two or three car attached

plus the fully enclosed RV

plus the carport next to the RV parking

for another trailer.

Like that's bigger than the house

and it's every single house out here.

So if you're a car person, this is, I mean,

just down the road for me is another thing.

There's, you know, they have the man cave set up,

they call them, where you buy like the,

the basically the man cave

and it's got a living area above it

just so you can take your off-road vehicle out

or whatever you want, so.

Which you can drive on the road.

And I mean, for anybody that's a social person,

social media person, Stradmans in Utah,

Supercar Ron is in Utah.

There's a lot of car collections in that area.

It's a really fun place to be.

It's always fun to drive down the road.

Raptors are like, we thought we had a lot where we are.

I can't go a block without seeing a twin of my truck.

Everybody's got a Raptor here.

I've seen so many Ranger Raptors, Bronco Raptors

and F-150 Raptors and, you know,

all the Colorado, ZR2, AEV,

it's like all those trucks

that are hard to find are just everywhere here.

It's pretty fun.

Well, I'm glad you're enjoying yourself

and you seem to be smiling, so that's good.

Yeah.

Honestly, I've been working more than I ever have in my life.

It's been one of the busiest times at work ever.

So there's been quite a few days,

I don't even see the sun except through the windows,

but the weekends are pretty amazing.

It's there, you're outside the door, yeah.

Yeah.

Cool, how's Theo doing?

Needy, he has not been to the park today

and we take him to the park usually once or twice a day

because there's so many parks here.

There's parks everywhere

and they all have their dog friendly zone

like nobody really cares.

You can go to restaurants here easily

and just bring in the dog

and it's like quite literally,

we were in Torrey and we're like,

can we just bring in the dog?

Like we don't care, nobody cares.

It's like, yeah, they're like,

if the dog's not a problem, it's not a problem for us.

So like if your dog's gonna be annoying,

you're not gonna take him to the restaurant

and Theo just take him in and just tell him to shut up

and go to sit down, he's fine.

So it's a really cool vibe here.

If you're a car person, an off-road person,

a motorcycle person, this should be a destination.

Most, it's funny how people just have never heard

of St. George, they never think about it.

The only people that I really know

that have been down here or thought about it

are really, really in off-roading

and there's so much more than that here.

The back roads around here are just incredible for drives

and it shows, I mean.

I didn't hear about it till you told me about it.

So, you know.

Yeah, and I mean, I sort of discovered it by accident.

If I hadn't been going to Zion,

I never would have thought about it.

And then like I said,

Doug Perry had some investments here

from Driver's Club about,

I don't know what happened with that,

I don't have any direct things there,

but I knew he was looking at some property

or he was doing some development here.

So, yeah.

Nice, yeah.

Well, I was gonna tell you from an Avant standpoint,

and this will kind of lead into our Carter Automotive.

We had the Avant's Toy Drive this weekend,

which was awesome at One Drivers Club.

I actually ran into Mr. Carter there.

Oh, nice.

It was a lot of fun,

but I know we have a good Carter Automotive tip

this year, or this year, this week.

This week?

Yeah, so this is the one we were mentioning last week.

I wanna talk a little about OBD2 scanners

and just a little bit about the codes that come with them

because they're not just random numbers

and letters, obviously.

But if you're having trouble deciphering your code,

this might help you a little bit.

So, if you're looking at OBD2 codes,

a letter always comes first.

It's either gonna be a C, a B,

I say C isn't Charlie, B isn't Bravo,

P isn't Papa, or U is in uniform.

And so, C, B, P, U.

B stands for body, C for chassis,

P for powertrain, and U for network communication.

So, this tells you which part of your vehicle

is throwing the code,

and then after that will be either a zero or a one.

So, zero means it's just a generic code.

It doesn't have an exact source to tell you,

and then one means it's manufacturer-specific.

So, it'll be, that was much easier to figure out.

So, let's say if the code includes a one

and you drive a Ford,

it's no use reading up

when someone with a Honda did to get their car.

Like, if you've got a one in there,

look for a Ford-specific code.

You've got a zero, that could be lots of things.

Then the number after that includes a two

for the fuel system, or a seven,

or a four and eight for the transmission.

And then finally,

the last two numbers indicate the exact problem.

So, like a misfire code would be,

it can be P0301,

suggesting a misfire in cylinder one,

or P0304,

which tells us that the misfire

can be found in the four cylinder.

So, it's just a guide.

It gets a little overwhelming,

but obviously that's what the internet is for.

But just keep that in mind

when you're looking at scanners.

Like, there is a rhythm to the rhyme

about what the codes that give you are, so.

And will a lot of scanners kind of tell you

what the code is

if you don't know how to decipher it?

It gives you a generic, like.

Yeah, so the more you pay for a scanner,

the more you will find out about those codes.

So, like the really expensive ones

can, you can type in your VIN

to like the really nice ones

and they will help you like diagnose completely.

It'll go really into detail.

It'll tell you if it's generic.

It'll tell you exactly what the code is

if you have your VIN in there.

So, and then from there,

clearing your code does not fix your car.

Just so you know, we've all tried it.

Myself included, but just keep that in mind.

Yeah, that's, it's not gonna go away.

It's just going away till the car runs the scan again.

So.

Yeah, exactly.

So.

Nice.

Well, that's awesome.

Yeah.

That's what I got about that.

Now you know a little bit about codes.

I can go into more,

but I just want to keep it light for now.

It'd be really, it'd be like the whole,

the whole show who went into that.

Just totally nerd out P0133.

That's it.

Yeah.

That's what this code does.

Yeah.

I'll tell you.

I've been noticing obviously a lot of automotive news

lately with, with F1 wrapping up and Lando,

by the way, big Lando fan.

Glad to see him.

Yeah.

He'll be a world champion.

Gonna have, gonna be seeing a lot of interesting stuff

with Cadillac coming into F1.

They're already starting to test

with Valerie, Valerie Votos and, and Czecho.

It's funny to have the two backup drivers

from the two biggest teams

where they used to be are now running this team.

So I'm really excited to kind of see that.

I think F1, obviously we've talked about this

has really taken over America.

I think it's always been here for us car individuals,

but the rest of America is starting to see it.

Obviously with the F1 movie

and then drive to survive and things like that.

But it's fun to see that the fact that he's,

you know, everybody's like, oh, the season's over.

And I'm like, no, they're just starting.

Like they, little, these guys got out of cars,

went home, got a good night's sleep

and came back and started testing.

So it's really gonna be an interesting,

I think year with Audi coming in and with Cadillac.

Yeah, you know, more F1 is always good

and more manufacturers in F1 is always good.

Like I said, that helps drive technology to us,

hybrids, curves, systems, all that fun stuff,

carbon ceramic brakes, better aero,

that all trickles down eventually.

The more people in it, the more we get it,

especially in the workable that love F1

helps drive performance markets.

So maybe you should like F1, just saying.

I mean, you know, it's in the P1.

I think, I think, you know, push the pass button

in all cars, which should be just fine.

I had to read.

That's what we need.

I mean.

Some cars do.

Some do, but.

Yeah.

I want to see it in the Hyundai.

That's what I want to see it.

Yeah.

Just juices it up and goes, what?

Okay.

Oh, it's gonna sit.

Yeah.

That'd be great.

Have you been following the news

on Caravana of all things?

The news of?

So Caravana like in 2022 pretty much died.

They were basically worthless.

The business idea behind them sort of failed,

but it didn't.

And that's what the news is.

This is the car vending machines, right?

Yeah, basically.

Really easy way of buying a car.

So since 2022, talk about missed opportunities

that we could have retired from.

Their stock has surged 8,000%.

They are worth more than Ford or GM at this point.

Market value is about 97 billion,

putting them above Ford at 52

and General Motors at 71.

So pretty wild.

What's caused it all of a sudden?

I mean, obviously we knew about it.

I'm definitely seeing more cars being delivered

on the back of the little white trucks.

I think I've only seen one of the vending machines

in my life, maybe in Arizona.

But what's causing it?

So basically car sales.

It's not like cars are getting any cheaper.

Basically they've just done really well

at selling cars from what I can tell.

It's just, I'm just still kind of surprised.

Like at Caravana I'd kind of written off

as a dead brand.

And now they're everywhere again.

I mean, it's an interesting, you know,

I think like when I think of that model

like CarMax and Caravana and the fact

that you don't really have to leave your house.

Like you can literally go online, get financing, get a car.

I mean, but you and I want to go drive a car.

I think what we always have.

And obviously I think you can do that with them.

I think, I know with CarMax you can.

I don't know with Caravana.

But it obviously, something changed.

Obviously there was a change in leadership

or something because you're correct.

Now that I think about it, I'm seeing a ton more.

I guess in my mind I just assumed

it had always been like that.

Yeah, what I wanted to talk about here

is the bigger conversation this leads us into

is we've hinted at this before a couple of times

on the show, but I'm wondering

with this explosive growth of Caravana

if we are leaning more toward the market

going more toward a click here and buy model

because that's how we buy everything.

I'm wondering how that affects dealers.

We should talk to Brian about this again.

I mean, and I'm gonna use the generic term,

the normies that would buy cars.

I think it works for them.

I don't think it necessarily works for you and I.

Like you're not gonna go on,

I'm not gonna buy a car that I haven't driven,

I haven't seen, I haven't sat in.

There's plenty of cars I've looked at

and thought, oh that'd be perfect for me.

And then I go drive it and it either sucks

as a driver or it's uncomfortable and I couldn't own it.

So I think for somebody that's going,

I need a commuter, I need a car from 10,000 to 50,000.

My credit's good, I don't care what it does,

I just need to get me from point A to point B

and I need to show up at my door

because I'm too busy to go to the car dealership.

I think Caravana works for them.

Yeah, that's a good point.

I wonder if it's a step in the wrong direction.

Unfortunately, I think it's the step

in the direction of the market,

but it hopefully doesn't create a sad outlook

for car enthusiasts.

Because I mean, like you said,

I couldn't do that if I wanted to determine

if a car was fun to drive or not.

If I'm looking at, especially performance cars,

the last thing I want to do is, I mean,

I'll go drive a model, like if I'm gonna go look

at a new ZR1, I can go drive a Z06 and be like,

hey, if I crank this thing to 11, it's gonna be better.

That's probably gonna be enough for me

and I can order my ZR1.

But yeah, I wonder if there's gonna be a model

like that where you just go,

like, you know, you get pre-approved

and they deliver you like, okay, here's your test drive,

but I don't know.

Because I think there, obviously,

there's something built in the contract

where if they show up at your house

and you drive it and you don't like it.

There's gotta be some claws in there.

I think you couldn't just drop something off

and somebody's driving and be like, well, good luck,

you know, your credit's now dinged

and you have a new car.

Yeah, I think it, when I think of Carvana,

when I first started thinking of it,

it was a gimmick because people could,

they gave you a giant coin

and you went to the vending machine

and put it in the coin, which meant nothing,

your car came down.

Which is cool, like, don't get me wrong.

I mean, I think it'd be a really cool way

to store a whole car collection like somewhere.

Yeah, a giant stacker.

Yeah, absolutely.

But I don't think it necessarily works

for the real automotive enthusiasts,

maybe unless they're buying a car for your kid

or, you know, a commuter car.

Because you're not gonna go to Carvana

and be like, okay, I wanna,

because it's gonna be used,

you know, a used GT3 RS, YSEC package, you know,

I might buy that car from there.

I think I could survive on that.

Yeah, so you wouldn't have to twist my arm on that.

Yeah.

Yeah, has anybody bought a car from Carvana, listeners?

Yeah.

If you have, let us know.

Shaq is their official spokesperson, by the way,

which always makes me laugh.

But if you're a listener and you've used Carvana,

let me know, let us know.

Come and tell us about it.

I would love to hear your experience.

I will say this, the last one I saw

was one of the really little,

like cabover design trucks

that they were delivering an Escalade.

And those trucks that they hauled them on are not big.

And this Escalade was tipping back and forth.

And I'm like, maybe you just drive it to the customer,

like this just seems dangerous.

Another one that really has,

I think this has surprised me

and I was talking to somebody about this a couple of days

ago is Copart.

Copart is everywhere.

And I didn't realize that they were worldwide now.

Like they are just, you know,

I think I've seen it come to blossom

with a lot of these YouTubers that are,

they buy cars off Copart,

like Matt Armstrong that are buying them,

fixing them, selling them kind of thing.

You know, they're buying either stolen cars or wrecked cars.

Yep, so I actually have some information about that.

So one of the, Copart was blowing up,

the reason Copart exists the way it has

is they were one of the only wrecking yard businesses

that were actually truly able to utilize online.

They were the ones that were the early adopters

of we're going to go all online.

We're going to inventory all of our stuff.

And you know who uses that more than anybody?

Body shops.

You go get LKQ, like kinder quality,

which is going to be aftermarket

or you're going to get used.

And we've talked about this a long time ago,

actually remember this,

used is often better than LKQ.

Aftermarket headlights, aftermarket fenders,

they mostly suck until you get into the specialty market

of high end carbon fiber stuff

or rest-o-mod parts.

Quite literally you need to buy your three-body,

65, 66 Mustang, whatever you can buy the whole body.

That kind of stuff, that specialty market stuff

is not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about if you buy a fender for your Accord

after it's been wrecked

and that fender is aftermarket,

it's not going to fit as well as the OEM one, period.

And it's, it'll never be the same.

The metal is lower quality, the primer,

they come usually factory-primed, sucks.

So usually if you get a good body shop,

they'll reject them and say and know why.

But a lot of insurance companies are insisting on it

because aftermarket Chinese metal is cheaper for a reason.

So these co-part, thank God for places like co-part

and wrecking yards,

because if you can find a used one that has like

just a ding in it,

that's no problem for a body shop to fix.

And it's going to fit a hundred times better

every single time.

I used to send back headlights.

They give me an LKQ headlight,

it'd come in and have a plastic lens,

the plastic on the back never fit as well as the stock one.

It didn't fit in the fender.

Like if you think about a fender specifically,

there's a lot of parts that connect to the fender,

the bumper, the headlight,

and it connects on the inside of the body

to the strut tower.

The door has to align to it perfectly

with the same spacing all the way around.

But headlights in particular were the worst,

but fenders, there's so many angles to them.

So when you don't get that factory dye,

that factory press, they just don't fit as well

because it's somebody's taking a cast of a fender

and then trying to make it as good as the OEM one

and they never do.

They don't have Honda's facilities,

they don't have Ford's facilities

and you can knock cheap brands all you want,

but you've never seen cheap until you've had to try

and put an aftermarket fender on something.

And if you're rebuilding a car that's been wrecked,

like a total loss, you're doing a rebuild for fun,

whatever, or you're just trying to get it back

to the street ability, nothing wrong with that.

You might want to cut some corners

and that can save you some money,

but man, used parts are the way to go.

I mean, it makes sense.

I think we kind of experienced that

when we were in our teens and 20s in the fact

of like a lot of the wings West body kits, they never fit.

It took so much work to make those horrible.

And the APC tail lights you could get from AutoZone

that fit well enough, but they leaked and things like that.

So, you know.

Yep, you know, it's funny,

I dealt with some pretty high-end body kits

back in the day working with Jeff at JMI Motoring.

Shout out to those guys.

He's still technically exists.

He pretty much takes only clients he wants

and cars he wants and nothing else.

But I mean, he was doing stuff like that fortune,

the fortune wide body Supras, like the real high-end stuff.

And you know what?

It fits like shit.

It's still like, it doesn't matter how much you paid

for it at the time, all aftermarket body kits

even now fit like shit.

Unless you're buying something from Singer,

which isn't, there's just gonna be a whole car.

It's not gonna fit.

It's all in the body guy to make that fit and work great.

And a good body guy can take a really crappy body kit

and make it work,

but you're gonna pay way more than the body kit.

Like, you know, aftermarket bumpers, you know,

and body kits would be, you know, 2,500 bucks, 3,000 bucks.

And then to install it, seven, eight minimum,

if you want it to fit.

That stuff doesn't fit from the factory.

It just doesn't.

Even the stuff from the factory doesn't fit half the time.

Now you get aftermarket or not aftermarket,

but like now it's much better.

But you could get like,

for example, the Acura TL had the Type-S body.

You could get the Type-S parts and put it on the car.

You could get it as a kit.

They still didn't fit that well.

Like they were in, those were plastic and, you know,

totally formed and that's from Honda and Acura.

Like this is top quality stuff.

Even that, you were gonna have gaps between,

you had to like kind of sand down the inside

of the side skirt a little bit

to get it to fit just perfect.

There's always fitment with that stuff.

So just keep that in mind.

Well, and I've seen it a lot with people

that want to order aftermarket parts that are now carbon

and you know, with bare carbon.

That's the worst.

There's not a lot of place you can work with things.

Like if it's warped or something like that,

you can't really make it work

unless you're gonna paint over it.

Yeah, even really expensive carbon parts

don't really fit that well.

I mean, the Porsche stuff is sort of out

like the exotic car stuff.

That's a different story

because that's coming straight from the factory

and you can order those cars

from the factory with that carbon.

So you're getting a perfectly fitted carbon piece

because it's a factory, it's like a factory hood.

It's not an aftermarket car.

You're getting it straight from Porsche.

Well, I mean, like you said,

how are you in Manti racing for the GT3 RS?

What's the one that's all over UAE Mansori?

Mansori makes them, but I mean, that's, I mean,

it's hideous, but it fits, so yeah.

Sort of, have you seen the aftermarket stuff

from who was it?

I think, I don't want to throw a name under the bus

because I don't remember the name of it,

I don't think it's Brabis,

but the G63 stuff, the G-Wagon stuff,

it fits like trash and it's super thin carbon fiber

and it's just, good carbon is not cheap.

It's funny because I was looking at some APG stuff, carbon,

and they make real carbon off-road racing stuff.

If you've looked at real carbon

for like performance use, street or off-road,

that stuff is thick, it's thick, heavy

and it'll take a beating.

Are you talking about the wide-body kits

for the Broncos, that carbon, the APG, the AP...

Yeah, the stuff where they do the overfenders

and stuff like that, that stuff is not cheap.

That stuff fits like skid plate thick.

It's a lot of carbon, so yeah.

Yeah, it's also like $30,000.

Yeah, oh yeah, I get that.

Yeah.

Anyway, shout out to Copart for getting

on the internet game early and doing well

because that's where all the junkyards,

all the junkyards closed to get back on track,

all the junkyards closed because they were either

selling a ton of stolen items

or they were money laundering.

True story, go look it up around Western Washington.

Almost all of them got shut down at the same time

due to FBI raids.

And so that's why you saw a ton of them

just suddenly disappear all over the East side

is because they all got shut down

for FBI raids, money laundering, selling

and they were all chop shops.

Well, Copart, Europe, in fact,

this is in the latest video of Matt Armstrong's

is having issue with people cloning cars

and then they're selling them

and not realizing that they're cloned,

which I didn't know was a thing,

but there was a recent issue with that.

They do that with Hellcats

and Hellcat challengers and chargers a lot.

They complete, they'll clone them,

they'll make them into demons or whatever

by stealing them, putting this stuff

in regular V8 cars and all of a sudden

they've got like, yeah, it's a Hellcat demon.

No, no, no, I'm talking about this European cloning

where if you have a Yasmin Marine Blue BMW M3

and you're in Cincinnati,

they will steal a Yasmin Blue M3 here

and then they swap all the data on all the tags

and everything over and make the new car

a clone of your car and it's a thing.

It's a lot of work.

It is a lot of work,

but if you're stealing something for $5,000

and you're putting a few thousand dollars

and then you're selling it

for what would be retail on that car,

you're making a lot of money.

So I don't wanna give people ideas

but this is, if you're really curious about it

and you reach out to me

and I'll send you the video link from Matt Armstrong

because he's going through this right now

and it's a detailed video of how they do it

and it's kind of interesting.

Yeah, and just a hint that if you do do that,

you've got some stiff competition

that will get rid of you if you're good at it.

So keep that in mind as well.

And you won't go out of business.

They will get rid of you.

Yeah, you will wear cement shoes.

Oh, he sank with the car.

It happens, it happens.

Yeah, you guys got any other fun drives coming up?

Probably do that drive again.

Honestly, it was so good.

I wanna get it in before the weather turns on us.

And then of course, there's the off-road stuff.

I wanna get out to Sand Hollow.

I just haven't had the time yet.

There's been zero time during the day.

I said I've been working pretty much

set up to sundown every single day.

And then I have some,

but we have some time off coming up of course.

So I'm packing my days until that time off comes.

So nothing yet, but there's a lot of exploring to do.

Devil's Backbone is a really popular scenic route.

It's, the name says a lot,

but it's really just, if it was summer,

this would be a gravel road scenic by way.

You could take your stock super route on it and be fine.

But it sort of goes next to Utah 12,

takes you up through Grandescalante

and it's just an absolutely beautiful drive.

Some people have reported snow.

It's on Onyx and, but it's still passable by most accounts

and it hasn't snowed up there in a while.

So most of that snow is gone.

So I'm hoping to give it a shot.

And hopefully somebody else will do it before me

because I don't wanna go up there alone.

But I've been dying to do that route my whole life.

I think you could go up in Sand Hollow

and go up to Santa's mailbox

and top of the world and all that.

I mean, I'm sure the route would be fine.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah.

I'll probably stick to the threes and fours, but yeah.

I also want you to go check out that.

I think it's on the east side of Sand Hollow

as you come out of there is that new like water park

that they put in there.

Like it's like a, it's, I wanna, yeah.

It's down the road for me.

It's, yeah, it's right down the road for me.

It looks really cool.

Obviously none of the parks are open now.

At the truck is iced over the morning when I wake up,

but there is a ton of infrastructure blowing up.

There's just down the road for me.

There's a ropes course.

There's like mini golf.

There's golf courses all over here.

You know, it's, it's crazy the amount of boom

that's still going on here.

Like I said, you can't go a block

without seeing something new going in.

I have to get it out.

It was great.

You know me, I want a multimillion dollar home

on a fake lake that I can wakeboard on by a fake line.

So that's what I want.

So, you know, that's what we all want.

Yeah, I mean, that's what we all want.

With a wave pool.

Yeah, excellent.

I want the wave pool more than I want the wave pool.

Yeah, there's a lot of boats down here.

I just take a cold plunge right now.

My back's killing me.

Yep.

Definitely going to do some, when the time comes,

definitely going to do some hiking.

Like I said, the cold is actually kind of nice

for that out here because, you know,

I'm probably going to take it pretty easy,

but there's still so much to enjoy this time here.

Yeah, so.

Cool.

Well, good.

Glad to hear it.

Well, I miss you down here.

I wish you were in, you wish you and Kate were here.

You guys would love it.

It's a beautiful city.

I mean, usually I wish I'm there,

but I really wish I was there right now

because it's, this is not, this is, I mean, it's,

in fact, as we record this,

I'm slowly waiting for Kate to get home.

She left Bellevue at 4.30 and she's, it's 6.30 now

and she's still not home.

I can track her, but she's just getting off the exit

at our house because everybody's getting off there

to go through our roads.

So lucky us.

Yeah.

Yep.

Well, good luck and stay safe.

I know there's more rain to come,

so I will catch up with you next week.

Yeah.

All right. Well, for this episode of the Yvonne's podcast,

as always, I'm Nick and I'm Dan.

I don't just get there.

Enjoy the drive.

The Great Carvana Resurrection

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