These Are The Longest-Lasting Car Models

Hello, and welcome to this week's Truth about Cars podcast, I am Tim Healy, the managing editor,

and this week we're talking about the longest-lasting car models and more.

We have Carl Brower from ICCars.com to discuss the longest-lasting car models, and Matthew

Guy and I discuss headlight restoration kits as well as NASCAR and the Charlotte Roval.

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hear in Truth about Cars podcast, please go ahead and give us a review, and also check

us out online at ttech.com, that's ttac.com, or the Truth about Cars, all spelled out

.com. We are your home for car news, car reviews, opinions, and so, so much more. Here

in the Truth about Cars podcast, we are always talking about the stuff that we use in our

homes, in our cars, and on our cars, as the case may be. And almost always, we

have ttech contributor Matthew Guy with us to discuss that. Matthew, how are you

doing today? Hi, pretty good, Tim. How are you doing? I'm doing well, doing well. So it

is fall, as we record this, and this episode will go live during early autumn

here in the United States and Canada. And of course, Matthew and I are both in

the snow belt. So it is that time of year where the weather will change for

us, unlike some of the so-called smile states on the coasts, who will

actually have, or the southern coast of America anyway, we will have some

weather changing here. So with that in mind, we'll be talking about headlight

restoration kits, and how to get your headlights, especially as it gets dark

earlier, how to get your headlights in tip-top shape so that you can see really

well what you're driving. So Matthew, go ahead and take us away. Yeah, for real,

because you're right, with this time of year, it does get dark earlier, and

nothing wrong with driving at night, but having a good set of headlights really

helps, of course, protects you in your car, but also other people can see you

a lot better. So having the best set of headlights possible is really important,

and we've talked about on the show before having good headlight bulbs and

the importance of that. But the headlight itself, the plastic on the

outside, you know? It's been, what, 40 years or so since we've had those

instead of the sealed beam headlights. So just like any other plastic in your

life, it's going to degrade, it's going to get yellow, it's going to start to

wear out, and especially on the front of a car, because it's constantly

being assaulted with road grime and dirt and all kinds of matter coming

back, being fired at your car. And I used a headlight restoration kit over

the weekend on a car. The car was about 15 years old, so it was definitely

due, and the person was heading off on a bit of an adventure on a three-hour

tour, hopefully they got on better than Gilligan. But yeah, but they took off

at night, so we were doing small changes, stuff like that, and I had

some of this stuff kicking around from a previous project, and I said,

let's give it a shot, it doesn't take very long. And the one I used got

from eBay, and it's a Maguire's brand, and Maguire's I find any of these

major brands, especially something like that, I've noticed other brands like

Sylvania, which is often associated with the bulbs themselves, right? Start

applying their name to some cleaning products as well. So that's another

one I want to try, but this Maguire's one, it was a two-step

restoration kit, and it came with like a cleaning solution, and then it came

with a coating, so those were the two liquids that were in the box, and then

there were a couple of pads that were circular in shape, and then there

was a little attachment there you could hold on to. And it worked really,

really well, what the instructions said were to wet the headlight, make

sure you got the big stuff, the big grit and grime off the headlight

itself, and then use these pads in progressive order. And really what

you're doing is you're sanding off a lot of the dirt and stuff that's

ground into the first little fine layer of that plastic. So it stepped,

you know, from 4,000 grit to 3,000 grit to 2,000 grit sandpaper. And I

mean, 4,000 grit is not much different than paper you write on. It's

almost flat, right? It's almost flat. So you start, I said that

backwards, actually, you go from the roughest, the 2,000 up to the

4,000. Okay. And yeah, and you just generally try to essentially

you're scraping off all the crud that's on the headlights. And

using these coatings and cleaning solutions that come with it

helped to create a little bit of a shine afterwards. And I was

really, really pleased with the results that I got out of this

McGuire's kit that I got off eBay, especially on the driver

side. And it makes sense when you think about it because

that side of the car is facing traffic, oncoming traffic. So if

you're on a two lane, so that one's going to be that headlights

is naturally going to be a little bit more worn out and blasted

with road grime than the other. So I was, I was pretty happy

with it. I was pretty happy with the results I got.

Very cool. Very cool. So these, these systems, not systems,

but these tools or cleaning products will definitely get you

to see easier at night.

Absolutely. I didn't do any measured distance calculations. But

also the quality of the light as well, even if you are seeing an

equal amount of distance, which you won't be you'll be seeing

more once you have clean headlights. But the quality of

light is not yellowed is not dim. It's almost like going

from, you know, having a couple of fireflies and

jam jars to having a couple of really good flashlights,

right? That's the, that's the difference you can

experience. So it's also doesn't, doesn't hurt to do this

frequently if you've got the time, if you've got the

opportunity to do it rather than like I didn't wait until

fall, right? When it's when it's super, when it's super

necessary to start doing these things. So you can, I

mean, this coding is dry to the touch in three to five

minutes. That's why we just did this before the person

went off on their long road trip, right? So it's fully

cured within, you know, a quite amount of short amount

of time. And some of the tools that you might have, you

know, it might say don't expose to water until it's

fully cured and all that type of stuff. So just read the

directions on the back of the box. And you'll have a great

experience.

Yeah, and these are all for mostly for older cars, right?

Or can they work on newer vehicles as well?

To my knowledge, they can work on just about anything

really. I mean, then theoretically, they should

also work on any other sort of plastic cover that you

might have. Actually, I think I'm going to try it out in

the back yard on some of the lights, you know, like the

garden lights that the person might have. There's a

couple out there that are pretty cloudy after all

summer. Maybe I'll give it a shot on those two. But yeah,

there you go. Yeah, so I'm sure there are some weird

edge case scenarios where it wouldn't be appropriate to

use this on a new car. But I think by and large, just

about anything that's on the road would benefit from

one of these kits.

Gotcha. Anything else we should add on this? Or

should we go ahead and just close the segment for

today? Yeah, I think we shine a pretty good light on

this today. Oh, nice. Got the nice pun going on. So yeah,

all right, with that, with that in mind, we'll go

ahead and wrap this week's stuff we use segment on

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On this week's Truth About Cars podcast,

we've got Carl Brower, the executive analyst

from ICCars.com talking to us that's IC

as in vision, so scecars.com. And if it sounds

like deja vu, we, yes, we did have Carl on

last week to talk about the longest lasting

car brands. And now we are following it up.

And normally we often space our guests a few

weeks, but I think in this case it made more

sense to do it back to back.

Because now we're talking about the longest

car models. So we can kind of piggyback

off that conversation from last week that

Carl and I had, and then go from there

and talk about the longest lasting car

models. So Carl, how are you doing

today? Oh, I'm doing great.

You know, this is kind of one of our big

deals at ICCars every year that we've been

doing for over 10 years. You know, Tim,

we've been doing this study since 2014.

So we've got

the data science pretty dialed

in now. Yeah, that's a long time.

Yeah, I know. I just think it's fascinating

to see. Over a decade.

Yep. Yeah.

Yeah, so speaking of data science,

why don't you walk our listeners, we'll get

into the top 10 and other models in just

a second. So why don't you walk our listeners

through the methodology of the study first?

Absolutely. So

when you think about it, there's all these

vehicles out there that are constantly

showing up on listing sites like

iccars.com. So

we realized over a decade ago that we

had access to all of this

information about these cars, you know,

from vins that show up

and reshow up to

mott makes and models and trims

and the miles that they're showing up with

are, you know, when you think about all the stuff

that's in a listing the year, make

model then

miles, you start to

really get a picture if you've got a massive

amount of data, which we do

as to how quickly the cars

are aging, how much they're being driven

and when they stop showing

up when they kind of, you know, what

year and or mileage do

certain models tend to vanish

because they're not, they're not

sellable anymore. They're not functional cars

anymore. So that's

the starting point.

But then there's a lot of data science that our

very talented data team goes into

and really tries to

manage

not just the hard data, but

a lot of what that data points to

and how to draw conclusions from

it. And that's where kind of the magic

happens in the secret sauce.

So we had 174

million vehicles that we looked at

for this particular study

and when you have that kind of

critical mass, you end up

starting to get fairly clear pictures when you know

what to do with it on

how long these cars will last.

Yeah. Okay. So with that out of the way

now we can kind of go into the

top 10 models

and I almost said brands. This is models.

So just for our listeners

to clarify brand is the company

obviously everyone should know this but

it's just or all the same page

brand is the company. So Toyota

Lexus, Ford, General Motors

and of course brand being

a different brand

obviously some companies are

you have multiple brands Toyota Lexus are both

different brands within the Toyota family of course.

So obviously we all know that but just

want to clarify these are models.

So these are like Honda Accord, Toyota Camry

that sort of thing and

looking at this list of top 10

is dominated

by Toyota and Lexus. So I'll

just run through it real quick and

get into the percentage chances and the comparisons

to average Carl and just a second

but I'm just going to run through the model list and it's

Toyota Sequoia, Toyota 4Runner

Toyota Highlander Hybrid, Toyota Tundra so

top four are Toyota's

Lexus IS, Toyota Tacoma

Small Truck

Toyota Avalon, Lexus GX

Lexus RX, you have parenthetically

hybrid so I think it looks like the hybrid

model only and then the 10th model

is the first non Toyota or non Lexus

and again Toyota and Lexus are the same company

and Lexus being the luxury arm.

So Honda is got

not the Accord which is a lot of people

who think are the Civic but the Ridgeline

the Pickup Truck, the Honda Ridgeline

so that's the top 10 vehicles

or top 10 models I should say

and this excludes heavy

duty vehicles okay.

So

that is a key takeaway of these models

and you have a few other key findings

we'll get into but right now let's kind of

go over those top 10 models and why

they dominate so much.

Yeah I mean

you know again when you look at like

what causes a vehicle to not

be functionally more and there's we

our data guys are always like there's two things that kill a car

time and miles

and time eventually kills every car

except like you know for our GTOs

and Hemikutas and stuff like that because

they're too valuable to let die

but those cars end up hardly being for sale

and they're very small volumes so they don't

pay or play any role

in the numbers you're seeing here

but most cars

94, 96, 98 some percentage like that

of cars

are killed eventually

you know they end up in salvage yards

and they're never seen again at some point

in their life

and if you don't drive a car

enough time will kill it

because the seats

and the interior will start to come apart

the paint will start to fade you know

class 5 tires yeah

tires you know everything that

plus plus

value too what's the other thing besides

how long you drive a car

how much does it cost to keep driving it right

if you've got a car that's got a

market value of $20,000 and you need to spend

$400 to keep it going

and you really like it you'll probably spend that

if you've got a car with a $4,000

market value and it cost

$3,000 or $3,500 or $4,100

to fix the transmission because it

just blew you probably won't pay the money

to keep it going so

that's why time eventually

kills every car because eventually

a car's value to

the marketplace and to the owner

versus the cost

to keep it alive don't match up

and it's not worth it any longer

so the more you drive a vehicle

aggressively and when it's

young and time hasn't worn

out and depreciation hasn't cost it to be

not worth maintaining the more likely it will be

to get to 250,000 miles notice

how there isn't a single sedan

until number 7

the Avalon and then not another one

until the Prius

at 15 those are

the first two sedans

on the list here because sedans

aren't driven as aggressively Tim you can't do as many

things with sedans you got you use them to

commute and you can carry some people in them

but the first car on the list toyota

that's like the most flexible car

you could buy what you want to do do you want

to go to and from work it'll do that

you want to go to soccer practice with all the kids

in the equipment it'll do that you want to take a long

vacation it'll do that you want to go off road

it'll do that you want to toss it

so that's where

SUVs and trucks have the advantage and that's why they

dominate the list because

they are they are so flexible

there are so many very things that

they can do that people do

them and because

they're doing so many things with them they're

wearing the cars out or sorry

I should say they're getting the cars to

250,000 miles before the car

would otherwise not be worth driving anymore

it's the interior is falling apart

the paint's faded the cost to maintain it

plus don't forget that toys and Lexus

also have great resale value so that plays

another role is if you've

got a car that's got all the high resale value

it's long it's going to take longer for its

maintenance costs and the cost to keep it

alive to eclipse the

rate at which you would want to spend that because

the value of the car is so low takes

longer for to just do that and that's why

it's a self-fulfilling proxy

because Toyota's lasts so long

they hold their value longer over time

because they hold their value so long over

time people could drive them longer because

they're still worth driving even if you have to put some money into them

so this is why Toyota

leads you could literally trace

its dominance on this list

among other things beyond its obvious

quality of engineering and

and build which are certainly

kind of the starting point

it's also the resale value that we

always see Toyota's leading act they're leading

in resale value because they last so long and

they last so long because they're leading in resale

value so that's it also one quick correction

I said the Avalon was first set sedan

I forgot that the Lexus IS at number five

is also a sedan so yeah

well I think

of the IS sports car even though it is a sedan

right

so that's that's it and

what's crazy is the rate Tim I mean

the average vehicle if you

take all vehicles and you average their

chance to get to 250,000 miles

4.8%

so it's less than 5% that the average car

would get to that but the Toyota Sequoia

the number one vehicle on our list has a

39.1% chance

it's got an 8.1

times it's 8.1 times

more likely to get to 250,000

miles than the average car

and even the top like 6 you know

5 it's 32.9%

for the forerunner it's 31%

for the Highlander hybrid it's 30%

for the Tundra and then 27.5%

for the Lexus IS

so those top five cars are between

like 5.7

and 8.1 times as likely

to get to 250,000

miles for all those reasons I just said

that's insane and you kind of

stole my thunder a little bit by getting to the

SUV thing I was actually going to ask you why

SUVs did so well but

one other thing too I want to think

I think I want to ask about SUVs

is

construction play a part at all too some

SUVs are body on frame which is

for those who don't know most cars

and some SUVs or what they call a

unibody construction or the frame kind of

integrates a little bit into the chassis

and all that sort of stuff I'm simplifying

by a lot because the engineering is complicated

whereas body on frame is more of a frame

kind of is constructed in the body

sort of bolted on top body and frame

construction is seen on certain older

SUVs certain more rugged

SUVs certain pickup trucks

body and frame is

a little more profitable for manufacturers

cheaper to manufacture but also tends

to be in most

cases a little more durable I think over time

so does that play a role at all the body

and frame construction well that's

an excellent question Tim because again

we've been doing this for 11 years now

and

it used to it used to be

that the body on frame cars

dominated the top and they were much higher

up trucks traditional like

full-size trucks that are always almost always body

on frame and also

body on frame SUVs

like Suburbans and all they used to be

at the top but

what I think has happened is

non body on frame

unibody as you as you directly call them

the integrated body and chassis

has gotten better like

there is they're just designing these things better

it's kind of like the Ridgeline which happens to be the only

non Toyota in the top 10

is not a body

on frame truck but you talk

to Honda about it's bending you know they have

this thing where it's like bending

flexibility of how stiff the chassis

is and what it takes to get it to bend

how much energy before the chassis bends

and Honda brags about how the Ridgeline

a non body on frame

mid-sized truck is

so strong and it can do such

good off-roading even though it's not like

say a Tacoma which

which is a body on frame

truck and the fact that the

Ridgeline isn't as capable as a Tacoma off-road

but the delta between the two of them

is much smaller than it used to be

because body on frame

and unibody stiffness

isn't what it used to be

we know that from like just the facts

of like you know they'll literally put these

chassis on like or these car

bodies on like machines and they'll

start putting pressure on them from

you know some amazing pressure from some outside force

something will be pushing on it and see how many

I think is it hurts or something like that

there's some number for how much it takes

to bend it a certain degree

and all the unibody cars just keep getting

better because the engineering is just always

improving to make them almost as stiff as body

on frame so the short answer is

it used to be a bigger influence

on this longest lasting list because

again if you have a body on frame

you're that much tougher

the car is that much harder to wear out

and what you find

with a body on frame vehicle is

you can drive it more aggressively you can

go off-road like in a suburban or

in of F-150 or

a Tundra

and it won't affect

its ride quality or its steering

or its handling whereas if you start

if a frame starts to slowly kind of

bend and get out of

you know alignment

everything starts to be worse

on the vehicle it's rattling more

it's alignments harder to get and

sometimes you see this you go down you'll be driving on the road

and you'll see a vehicle in front of you and you can see

like the front tires clearly

and the back tires when you're behind it

because the car is going down the road

you know some might say cock-eyed you know

but it's just going down the road now

that's an example of a bent frame

and that makes the car handle weird

it makes it worse fuel efficiency

everything's worse a reason you wouldn't keep driving the car

so there's an inherent advantage

to body on frame cars lasting longer

because of the stiffness of the chassis advantage

over a unit body but that advantage

isn't what it used to be and you can see

the 10 list has plenty of non body

on frame cars

yeah I noticed that too I was just curious

what the effect was and then

the other thing kind of jumped out to me a little bit

just going through your key takeaways here

kind of the bolded

bolded bullet points as you

as you were or as you will

hybrids you know

you see that they're proving to be

really durable and five miles are in the top 25

which was up from three last year

and none in

23

I was always kind of under the impression

and I don't have data

on hybrid reliability in front of me

I don't have JD power in front of me or anything like that

but I was always under the impression

that because hybrids have complex

more complex powertrains

I mean all powertrains are complex these days

but because hybrids have

more complex powertrains there's more things that can go wrong

they cost more to fix

when things do go wrong

so is that just not true

so hybrid drivetrains do cost

have more complex drivetrains

that have potential things that go wrong

and it does cost more

very commonly when things do go wrong

however I use the

comparison to turbos

turbos were huge in like

the 80s and starting into the 90s

and then they vanished why did they vanish

because they couldn't keep up with emissions

turbos and the fact they used the exhaust system

as part of the way to power the engine

and all that it caused a problem

with being able to keep the cars clean enough

so they vanished

then what happened computer processing

and fuel injection systems

and ECUs that controlled the drivetrain

got so advanced that they then

could keep up with emissions

and now it seems like every time

I look at a new car or an old new car

they're getting turbo engines

turbo engines are everywhere now because

the original idea that we've gotten back to again

is that you make a smaller engine

and yet you maintain both

efficiency and power and acceleration

because turbos can do that

and now they're everywhere why

because there was basically a technological fix

is the term you often hear

same thing has happened with hybrid technology

once upon a time hybrid

components if you put them on a drivetrain

they cost a lot they weighed a lot

and they weren't as reliable

because we were in the learning curve

we were in the early stages of hybrid technology

20 years ago was when the Prius had

it's like redesigned for 2004

when it kind of became mainstream

Leo DiCaprio went to

an awards show with it and I always remember this very clearly

and all of a sudden that was like the car to buy

but they were still early in the curve

on figuring that out and by the way

there's a lot of these original 20 year old Priuses

people are freaked out that have like their original battery

and are still on the road and are running

because even in 2004

Toyota was already you know

they had a standard they've always had a standard

that before they sell cars to consumers

they have a bunch of testing and a bunch of internal

like levels that these cars have to meet

for quality and reliability

and the Prius was meeting those in 2004

on that redesign and you still

see those on the road and that's helping them

get to the 250,000 number that

that model

but all Priuses are

sorry all hybrids are much more

efficient now in terms

of weight and size

weight size and cost of the components

and they're more reliable too Tim

they just don't break

as much as you would think they would

even though they are more complex just like they're not as much

they don't weigh as much more as they used to

and they give you great fuel efficiency

and they don't even cost as much more

so look at the RAV4

which a lot of us

are going to be driving soon because it's being redesigned

and they're launching it soon

there isn't a non hybrid version of the RAV4

Toyota has already done this with the Camry

there's no non hybrid versions of the Camry

so I look at hybrid technology

like fuel injection once upon a time

there was this exotic component of a

drivetrain and it was only put on

high-end expensive performance cars

because you couldn't justify putting fuel injection on

I'm just barely old enough to remember that

yeah, yeah

carburetors were what you used unless you had

some kind of specialized car that really deserved to have fuel injection

and again by the late 80s

you had fuel injection on everything, why

because emissions required

that you had more precise metering of the fuel

and now of course we got high pressure

fuel injection and we got all these crazy

things that the fuel injection system can do

that it couldn't do 40 years ago

to make cars more fuel efficient

and burn cleaner from their exhaust emissions

so you wouldn't build a car today

without fuel injection or you would never

pass emissions on that

we're going to see that happen to hybrid technology

hybrid technology is going to eventually be

on every car because it'll be so inexpensive

to add it and every car

has to slow down and hit its brakes

why are we turning that energy of slowing the car down

into nothing but heat on a disc

we should be turning it into

we should be recapturing it somehow

and then using it to get the car going again

it's zero to five miles an hour is the heaviest

fuel use of any car, the whole Newton

object and motion object at rest

so all cars are going to be hybrids soon

and this list the fact that we've seen

now we're starting to see a geometric rate

of hybrids getting to 250,000

miles just compared to a couple years ago

is proof A

that there's more and more hybrids that have been around

long enough for us to have data on

this study showing that but B

that hybrids are starting to permeate

every part of the market and eventually

that technology is going to be everywhere

yeah totally makes sense

anything else you want to kind of

get into it we have about ten minutes or so left

anything else you want to

chat about on this particular study

that we've not gone over that maybe

didn't make it into your talking points

in the press release

or on the website anything that you just kind of

like hey you know this little news

nugget or a little note

didn't quite make it into the main thing

but it is something we're talking about

anything like that do you have on your mind

yeah I mean I think it's interesting

that in the study we don't just have the top cars

that last the longest

but then we've broken them out by different

vehicle types and brands

now we had the brands last week

surprise Toyota was number one on the brands list

now we know why given the model list

but you know

a couple things first

the Chevy Silverado

is there in number 13 and the Chevy Suburban

is number 16

on the top 25 list

so again those were vehicles we typically

saw a few years ago in like the top

five or tops top

six but it's just again proof

that a our data science I think is getting

more more precise

in knowing how long the cars are lasting and be

more non-large

body on frame type vehicles which the Suburban

and the Silverado

both are

they're both chassis body on frame chassis

but they don't that's not required to last

long as we talked about

and then of course we see a couple high see multiple

hybrids in the top 25 but if you go down

to like trucks where we

did include heavy duty

because we figured truck people would want to see that then it's interesting

that of course you see a lot of heavy

duty vehicles in the

leading the truck list but you still see the Toyota

Tundra which is not considered a heavy duty truck

at number two so it's got that

30% chance of getting to

250,000 miles and it's not a heavy duty

truck number one is the Ram 3500

at 39%

and then number four is the F-150

sorry the F-450 which is

a super duty heavy duty truck

but then again number four that's number three

and number four is the Tacoma

which is another non

heavy duty

vehicle so the Toyotas

are basically slugging it out right

there with the heavy duty trucks

for their two trucks

which I think is again telling

and shows why they did

so well in the overall list and then

the other thing that's interesting to notice if you go to the car

list that IS is number one

and the Avalon and the Prius and the Civic

are all R at the top four

those all made the top 25 but

then you have things like the Acura ILX

which is essentially an Acura Civic

as we know you got the Canary

and the Avalon hybrids

which like the Prius which is number three

on the overall car list

the Prius with the hybrid technology is becoming quite reliable

and then you have the Canary in number

eight, the Accord in number nine

and the Lexus EF hybrid

in number ten

so it's worth noting that number eleven

on the car list is the Mercedes

Benz E-Class so

you know it made it

it's the first I think luxury vehicle

on the list

it didn't quite make the top 25 because it

still only has a six

percent chance of getting there

so six point

seven percent chance so it did make the top

25 which stops with the Acura

MDX at about

I think nine percent

and the Model S worth noting too

that the Model S

shows up on the car specific list

it's four point six percent

so it's still below

the average for all cars but it's above

the average for cars

specifically it's also worth noting

cars, just cars, no trucks

no SUVs have an average chance

of two point six percent of getting to

250,000 miles so a much lower

percentage chance that cars can get to 250

for the reasons we talked about they aren't

starting to use this aggressively

but within the car world

Tesla, sorry, yeah

the Tesla Model S is above the average

at four point six percent but

compared to all cars four point six percent is still below

the average for all cars so

so EV, there's an EV though

just show up, one EV

starting to show up and again Model S has been around the longest

of all the Tesla models so it's got the chance

the other thing don't forget like if you've got a newer model

you know the

the Kia K5 cannot show up

on this list because

it just got injured, how do we know how long

it's going to last when it just came out like

three or four years ago whatever

so that's the deal to keep in mind too

is that you need older nameplates

you're not going to see new nameplates because we can't have

data on how long new nameplates last

but around for any time

Makes sense, I actually

want to push back on something, let me push back

I had a question that popped in my head early

in this conversation and I just quite

couldn't quite formulate it and I just did just now

so

you mentioned the SUVs last long

they're typically because

they're driven more aggressively but also aren't they just

built for it whether they're body and frame

or unibody aren't they just

and I guess you kind of did say this

early so maybe I'm being a little repetitive

but I would say it's sort of like

you did mention they can go off-road and stuff like that

so if you have a vehicle that's meant for off-road

a little bit of light off-roading or

meant for carrying a lot of people

isn't there just maybe some

ruggedness built in

to Toyota Sequoia

or Chevy Suburban

or Toyota Land Cruiser that maybe is not built

into a Camry or Honda Accord

Absolutely, yeah there's absolutely

a confluence of

the use of SUVs

the durability

engineered into SUVs because of the use cases

you know they tow things a lot

they go off-road a lot

you need a stiffer body

whether it's unibody or body on frame

you need a stiffer chassis

to do all the things that an SUV does

and it has to be engineered for that

and if it's engineered for those things

it's going to hold up better over time

it's just not going to wear out as much

you're going to go over bumps

and the suspension is going to be more robust

it's either aligned or replaced suspension components

how long it takes to wear them out

it's going to take longer

and if that's true

if even wear items on the cars take longer

to wear out and need to be replaced

that reduces your running cost

that makes you drive the car longer

because you're not spending as much to keep it alive

and keep it on the road

Makes sense, Carl thank you so much for your time

thanks for coming out in two weeks in a row

which is a little bit unusual for us

but we do appreciate you coming out

with our last in car brands from iccars.com

and now the longest last in car models

and of course

anyone who was paying attention last week

probably would not be surprised

that Toyota dominated this list

especially the top ten

of longest last in car models because obviously

Toyota was number one on the list last week

so again we've been talking to Carl Brower

the executive analyst over at iccars.com

and it's a little cheesy

but I was caught like vision

I see so you see

things with your eyes so iccars.com

Carl thank you so much for your time

absolutely Tim always fun talking to you

and look forward to the next one

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as per usual in the truth about cars

podcast we were talking NASCAR

as we get deeper and deeper into the playoffs

and also as per usual

we have Matthew Guy with us t-tech contributor

extraordinaire. Matthew how are you doing today

pretty good how are you doing today

I'm doing well so we're getting to the point

where we are down to the final eight

and we are getting really close

well still about a month to go

believe it or not but

we're getting close to determining a champion

and last year's champion

is still alive in the playoffs

after the race

in Charlotte the Roval Race

the final turn right race

of the year so

we'll talk about what happened there

because Joey Logano got a bit of a gift at the end

and then we'll also talk about

what you and I predicted several times

in the past month and

how it came to

fruition but also didn't affect the

actual standings in the playoff

cut line so

or the playoff cut down I should say

so let's go ahead and just kind of recap briefly

for those who didn't see the race

the NASCAR playoffs

were in Charlotte, North Carolina this past weekend

and they were at what they called the Roval

the reason why they made up a word

called Roval is that

it's part road course part oval

hence Roval

I believe that Charlotte is not the only track that does this

Daytona has this for the 24 hours

although I don't know if NASCAR

raced on it and then Indy has it as well

for

previous NASCAR races although they were back to the oval

this year at Brickyard and I think

it's also been used for F1

at the Indy motor speedway

I believe there's a few other speedways I know

I think Vegas had or has

a similar setup I know that I've driven it on a press event

so anyway

Roval's do exist and it's part road course part oval

so that's where

NASCAR was this past weekend

and they were

moving up this particular round to the playoffs

the second round which would bring it down from

12 drivers to 8

we'll get into that in just a moment

we'll give you the 8 drivers who moved on

and this particular race came down to the very end

while Ross Chastain was in

position to win

he lost control took out

Tinney Hamlin in the process

Hamlin's moving on anyway so Hamlin didn't

to worry and then Julio Logano

who was last year's champ

snuck on through to get the victory

into the next round so

Matthew I want to hear your thoughts

on what happened and before

you get into that I also wanted to point out too

that Matthew and I had been predicting

that Shane Van Gisburg would win this round

or win this race excuse me and

he would

we were both kind of thinking

they'd be kind of cool if he'd make it to the second round of the playoffs

and have a chance to win

this would push him into the third round

well we were half right he won the race but he was not

a playoff competitor as he did not advance

in the past first round and obviously

NASCAR

you can be driving the race but not

a playoff competitor so

obviously we could talk about a little bit more

how a non-playoff driver can

affect the race but Matthew I want to hear what your thoughts are

on

what happened in Charlotte after I give that recap

absolutely

the thing with the

Roval is that it always

brings out when you're turning left and right

there's a lot of different things that can happen

in NASCAR anyways

but

you do have like you said leading up into the

last

last chicane there just before the start

finish line

when Chastain hopped over the curb a little bit

got into the 11 both of them went around

and just for the entire

race I mean

there are 17 turns in that Roval

and Logano and Chastain they were in terms

of points right I mean they were

just about inseparable

almost entire for the entire

race just at the cut line there

you know in terms of moving on to the next round

of these playoffs

you know one lap Logano would be ahead

then the next Chastain would slide

a little bit up the running order

into the eighth spot

and I found I don't know if

other of our listeners found this but

there was some pretty heavy tire fall off like the tires

in terms of falling off I mean

you're losing

traction very quickly compared to a

brand new tire is what I mean by that

and there were some pretty heavy tire fall off

and that really

hammered

the strategy and making sure you didn't

lose much on pit road and I think both

teams did fine for that

but where it went right into

NASCAR's wheelhouse

for

argument for having these playoffs is that

those two teams

the number one

car and the number

two car were fighting for that last

transfer spot to get on to the next

playoffs and

had Chastain not

spun out and finished

where he did

right and finished where he was going to

you know if he had gotten ahead of Denny Hamlin

and finished there he would

have beaten the 22 in terms

of points and the 22 would not

have moved on but of course

it would have been also a really

good post script because we know

that

Ross got into the final

four what was that two three years ago

when he rode the wall all around Martinsville

oh I remember him doing that

I don't remember when that was

yes those two or three years ago so we just

an absolutely bonkers move to get into

the

move on in the playoffs and had he been

successful here he would have literally

backed his way into the playoffs because

they spun and then

he didn't have time to spin

back around and just position

the car so he shoved the car into reverse

and crossed the finish line smoking the

tires backwards so

had Logano been a few more places

behind he would have beaten

there is a possibility

that he would have beaten Logano to the punch

backwards across the line so it would have been

two things that Chastain would have

done very very well that would be pretty funny yeah

that would be pretty funny to get into the next round

so it's still I mean looked

great on TV and I know that's part of

the players desire

for these playoffs so that they make these

moments but I think

it was a good race to watch and we're

on record as being fans of

of road courses

and I think this is another

good example I hope they don't get rid of it

you know I know that they went back

and are using the oval again

at Indy

that's a little bit different just because

yeah I think it's better

to be on the oval at Indy

and then I know there's so much history

NASCAR history at Charlotte

but we're there already

earlier in the year so I think there is an argument

to keep the roval here I hope they do

I really hope they do

because you've got some

you know you do have playoff ringers here

like with the 88

and you know and Chase Elliott

like you've said so many times as well

and Kyle Larson they're all great on road courses

and it requires a different level of skill

so I think this helps

to showcase

our drivers in NASCAR how good they are

because there are certainly other people

who watch other forms of motorsport

who are like oh well you know it's just NASCAR

they're going around in circles

and there's a lot more to it than that

even if you are on ovals for all 36 races

I hope we're not

and then I do think though

that this gives our drivers

a better opportunity

to put their skills forth right

on the big stage

so

but yeah but Logano I mean he grasped that final

semi-final spot by like four points

or something like that

it wasn't very much

he just squeezed in

so I mean if Logano does win the championship

and there's every chance that he will

because he's very strong coming up

for these races that we have

remaining in the

so there's three in the next round

then there's the final round of one race

which is another conversation all together

and I would say that this was the

TSN turning point

of the playoffs

for the 22 team

yeah yeah and I think

obviously you know Logano is a very good driver

this will give him

a chance to repeat

so that's huge

that's definitely big for him

so

you know

obviously seeing Logano give it a second shot

is going to be huge and he just got a little bit lucky

with

you know Chastain spinning out

so obviously you could take that

you know

very much so very very lucky in terms of

because if he had made that pass

against the

if he had made that pass against the

against the 11 car

then he would have been below the cut line

and we've talked about you know this so much

I'm looking at the number of

wins here

the numbers of road course wins

Chace Elliott has 7

right now Kyle Larson has 6

and then you're there with Van Gisburg

and also with 6 right because he was there

at Chicago there in 23 and 25

and then 5

5 races

he won 5 of those 6 this year so he's definitely

figured out the car don't you think

yeah the guys who always

make me

take notice on a road course

or a role role of Van Gisburg

Larson

Chace Elliott and

to a lesser extent Alex Bowman

those are the ones I was kind of

and Hamlin too I think has done a lot of road courses

you know but

it'll be interesting going forward

with this particular race

being the last road course

now it's going to be all

traditional NASCAR all ovals

the rest of the way so

I'll see who that favors

I mean these guys are

still as much as we

have seen expansion into

the street racing in Chicago and next year in San Diego

and we've seen

road courses a little more road course action

over the past 5 to 10 years

and we have in the past

in Road America, Sonoma

Watkins Glen thank you

I was trying to

think of it off the top of my head

Watkins Glen and then obviously these ovals

you know we've seen more road course racing

but you know

there is still

I'm not going to do the math on all 36 races

but it's still about 80 to 90%

ovals if you count

short tracks

if you take away the short tracks and just count the

super speedways and the intermediate ovals

the mile to mile and a half tracks

you're still looking at 85%

so it's just a rough guess

but it's still the bread

and butter of NASCAR

to run ovals

so the sport will be going back to its roots

as it always does for the final

however many races we have left

I think it's trying to do the math in my head

I want to say it's 4

can we go into like mid-November

so 4 races

we got I think 3 left in October

and 1 in November something like that

so yeah

it'll be kind of a chase

to the end here and then

looking at the cut line, Logano still has a lot of work to do

you know he is 8th

right now

so for those of

I think I finally figured out how this

works after a month of playoffs

but we have

the 8 drivers who are moving on

there are 4 who on points are above the cut line

now obviously with the 4 races left

and I think it's

3 to determine the championship

and then the championship race

you know Hamlin

Blaney, Larson, Byron

they're all safe on points right now

of course anyone who wins a race

anyone of these 8 drivers who wins a race

marks themselves safe for the final 4

but

Christopher Bell, Chase Elliott

Chase Briscoe and Joey Logano are below

the cut line now

Bell is only 4 points below

so William Byron and Kyle Larson

are only 4 points above

so Bell's got a shot to move back in on points

I

Chase Elliott, Chase Briscoe and Logano

probably need another win

to get this thing done

after the Martinsville elimination

October 26

if those guys don't have some strong points races

between now

and Martinsville in

3 weeks

then they're going to have to

maybe win a race here

you're right

and there's the 3 different

the playoffs are what they are

so we might as well talk about them

and maybe a little bit different next year

but at least for this year the round

will be situated

with these 3 races

they're all very different tracks

and I think that's a good thing

because Las Vegas you've got your intermediate

fast track but it is an intermediate

Talladega Super Speedway

anything can happen

and that's always the wild card

I am glad

some bright minds in NASCAR

put Talladega in the middle there

and didn't make it the cutoff

because for Talladega to be the cutoff

you can get caught up in someone else's mess real quick

at Talladega

putting that there in the middle you can have a real bad day

or a real good day at Talladega

and then Martinsville is just really close quarters

little tight little paper clip

500 laps

that seem to go so so fast

right and you've got

a lot of pitch strategy there

just the way that everything is laid out

you've got to have a really good head on shoulders

when you're in any of these

but I mean when you're in

there's a lot of stuff going on

there's not much room to move

so there's any of those

any of those variables

can make or break someone's day

and I

off the 8 that are here you're exactly right

I mean the 9 car is 14

points out and then they're tied with the 19 car

and Logano being there

in the basement at 24

but that doesn't mean he's out by any stretch

of the imagination not with this round just starting

yeah

and I'm just thinking ahead

to these next three tracks

and one thing that

as you were speaking

kind of struck out of me or struck out

stood out

I think it's the word I'm looking for

one thing that stood out to me is

you know these next three

tracks and we may have discussed this before

but I don't believe we have

these next three tracks represent

three of the main four types of NASCAR racing

so you have your super speedway

at Talladega on the 19th

this coming weekend

in Vegas on the intermediate

and then short track

the only type of racing not represented

is the road course which we just had

so you know

so that's kind of a

I think we've complained before about

the races that are part of the playoffs

I'm pretty sure we have

and it's suggested maybe we should move things around

or change things up

but I don't think the final race

track be part of the playoffs

but I think in this particular case

and this particular round

anyway

we have a nice representation

of each, a nice sample of each type of track

so I think the first

two rounds you can play with

you know these

I don't know

you really can't move a road course up because

the final race has to be the championship with the final four drivers

but

you can move

tracks around

for September

and early October

sorry late August

those early playoff races

but you know having these three races

as a nice sample

for the round of eight

I think is really nicely set up by NASCAR

it is, it's a good sample size

something that I

encountered over

in people doing postmortems and talking about

the track and people are actually involved in the race

and

calling the race with some

being spotters and stuff

they were suggesting that NASCAR is frowning

on telling

on people telling drivers and keeping them up to date

about where they are

in the points and how that came up

was that Denny Hamlin said afterwards

that he didn't know

that if Ross was ahead of him

that he would have taken out Lugano from

from the points right from

the playoffs

Denny Hamlin said that he didn't know that

and I highly suspect

I mean drivers are not one to give up

a place

but you got to think that if

Denny Hamlin knew

that he could deny

the defending champion

the chance to be in the next round

of playoffs

that might have happened right

it might have happened but the point was

that these people were talking about

different podcasts on really good podcasts

that are

reliable

saying that NASCAR is frowning on us telling

the drivers

where they stand and what they

or someone else needs to do right Lugano needs

two more positions right as an example

because of race manipulation

and they don't want that happening and we see that

happen all the time in other

other sports

in other series and we've seen

it happen in NASCAR blatantly sometimes

you see people trying to

impact the outcome of a race

so that's

NASCAR has boxed itself into

a corner with that because they've created

these playoffs

and they've created the opportunity for people

to speed up slow down

help their teammate etc

by

moving around on the track a little bit

and by creating

this playoff structure NASCAR has boxed itself

into a corner for that and I just found it

interesting anyways that you had some of these spotters

and some of these other guys

on different podcasts saying yeah you know

NASCAR is frowning on that

and telling us one guy said they told us

not to do it and then the other person came back

and said well we clearly heard the 22 talking

about it

and I thought okay well there you go

it's just how often is this stuff

policed? Well I'm glad you brought that up

because

you look at the other four sports

especially the four major stick and ball sports

hockey, football, basketball, baseball

I don't know how much manipulation

there really is when a team

is out of it and they're out of the playoffs

and it's late

September and baseball and they're out of the playoffs

a lot of it is just

if you don't make the playoffs

and you know that your season's over

but you still have games to play in the regular season

a lot of it's just playing for pride

as well as players who might be free agents

playing for their future contracts

and guys still want to win right

because you know we want to try and get

jobs for next year or just personal pride

so I don't really see a lot of

and obviously

some teams will be tanking for a draft pick

but any team that's quote-unquote tanking

probably has been doing it all season long

so it doesn't really matter

but so that's what makes NASCAR unique

is because you have got

teammates that might want to help each other

out as you said

or maybe in the

first season

or maybe in some cases heard another team

or heard another driver

but it's also unique

because in NASCAR

you can't scoreboard a watch behind the wheel

you can't see a scoreboard

you have to be told what's going on

whereas if you're a baseball player

and let's say you are an opponent race

and maybe you're in the fringe of the playoffs

and you want to see how the other team

that you're competing with is doing

you can check the out-town scoreboard

between innings when you're in the dugout

you can do that

on the bench and football and just by any other sport

most stadiums will show that stuff

so

you can't really stop scoreboard watching the other sports

unless you take away the scoreboards and the stadiums

but of course then people still have cell phones

and iPads and all that stuff

but with NASCAR drivers

when they're in the car

I don't know if there might be some tracks

where maybe the famous

pole at Indy where they can see their positions

and stuff like that when they're driving

I've never really

paid that close of attention to the

in-cars but most in-car cameras

shots that I do see

I'm trying to remember Indy at the top of my head I can't right now

but you can't see a scoreboard

you know what I mean

or if you can it might show

the scoreboards you might be able to see like I said like Indy

might show you that race

it might show you where you're at

and maybe you can get a glimpse of it as you pass by

but that's not going to be at most tracks

and it's not going to be really

helpful

you kind of already know where you are

so

no one was going on behind you

or way ahead if you're not in the front of the pack

you're going to have to spot her and crew chief

we're going to have to probably tell you

and again like I said there may be some exceptions

like again Indy might be able to see that pole

as you come around the front stretch

but most tracks you just can't see the scoreboard when you're driving

no matter how fast you're going

so

or if you're on a road course

you're done with road courses now for the rest of the year

but if you're on a road course

especially a large one you might not be able to see around the corner

to see where somebody is

so you have to have the information

from the spotters

and the crew chiefs

and I really think it is interesting that

NASCAR is trying to crack down on that

and I get where NASCAR is coming from

they don't want someone to

make things unfair

to punt a driver

you don't want someone to help his teammate

punting another driver

that's kind of unfair and cruddy

it's not part of the spirit of competition

but at the same time

I think drivers would like to know

even drivers who are not in the playoffs anymore

who have been knocked out

I think it would be nice for them to know what's going on

so that's a very interesting philosophical question

we can get into a little bit more next week

absolutely

I think that's a great philosophical question to talk about

because when you're in

your

allegory

your example

the example that you gave

in stick and ball sports

because you go back to the bench

with a tablet or whatever

and this is what we need to do

and then so when the captain comes

you know

the captain comes off the ice

and stops their shift

and they're on the bench for a minute

someone can relay that information to them

but that doesn't happen in NASCAR

driving 100, 200 miles an hour

you can't check the scoreboard

you can't take out the tablet

and look at it

a lot of these tracks don't even have scoreboards

you can really see from the track

even if you're going 20 miles an hour

you wouldn't be able to see it

sorry, go ahead

you're so right

I was just agreeing that

you don't have those opportunities

to see that on the fly from inside the car

and you can be guaranteed

that that's one of the reasons

why do you remember

when Juan Pablo Montoya

smoked into the

jet dryer all those years ago

at Daytona

and he

the race was red flagged

and I think it was Kazdowski was leading

he might have been leading or he might have been second

and he tweeted back when it was actually called Twitter

a picture

from inside the car

he was like well he said stop for a minute

and up until that point

no one really had thought about people having

phones on their

person in the car

he just tucked it inside his suit it's not a big deal

and then of course they don't allow that

because

now because you can get all kinds of telemetry

that you're not supposed to be able to get

from different apps and different things like that

so you can bet

with the different gauge cluster

that they have now is basically one big

tablet in the car

it's not impossible

it's anyone with

a bit of technology

knowledge any you know

a 12 year old hacker in a basement could figure it out

how to

get those screens

in the car to display

information such as that I mean if you're a cop

yeah that would be

that would be another conversation all together

but NASCAR has always been about

working around

the rules and not breaking rules

but making new ones right exactly

yeah right if one of the teams if there's no

rule right now that says

that those displays those computer

eyes tablets the displays

in the car that act as a dashboard

if there's no rule that currently says you cannot

display the points

standings on them if there's

no rule that says that right now then

someone can figure it out someone

with a brighter mind than I would be able

to figure it out need that information to

that tablet I guarantee someone

can figure it out and they probably are already

you just I mean how are you going to prove it

right other than the in-car camera

but then you just have some sort of filter on the lens

that's all right because we see

that all the time like we have a filter over our

computer screens no one can see what we're doing

yeah exactly so it is I'm

just I'm just a bit bald in here I'm just rolling with this

so if anyone's if anyone in

the in the halls of one of

these one of these playoff contending

teams is listening happens to

be listening to our podcast there's a free idea

for you as if you haven't come up with it before

yeah for sure

yeah we should probably

revisit this a little bit more next week

depending on what happens in the race

because

this is something I never really thought of before

I don't know why but

you know teams just being

how do I say this teams having

the information that they can give to the drivers

and I really am actually curious about

how it affects drivers who are not in

the playoffs anymore have been knocked out

but maybe like I said they may have a teammate

who still is in

or I think actually the one who said that or

maybe

there's another reason personal rivalry

money whatever

so yeah I'm very curious

to kind of we can dig into

this either in the offseason or next week

depending on how

the race goes so we were actually

a little bit tight on time Matthew is there anything you

wanted to add before we close the segment

no not at all thanks for having me on again this week

yeah absolutely so next week of course is

Las Vegas

I always

have mixed feelings about watching that

race because it's sometimes there's some really

fun racing at that track

but also we are kind of getting into the point

where it is going to be

another standard intermediate

track like Chicago land which they've

not been at for a few years or

Kansas so we're

kind of getting to that that's sort of

you know these next gen cars though

on the other hand do fit those tracks pretty well

so for the drivers have said

so we will

keep an eye on that and then

I think the more interesting races are in Martinsville

finishing

the finishing

the playoffs before

the championship race

with a short track and then of course

Talladega where luck plays

as much role of skill so I think Talladega

and Martinsville are going to be two to really watch

but Vegas will get us started so

with that we will go ahead and wrap this

segment for NASCAR

here on this week's Truth About Cars podcast

Matthew thank you so much for being on

with us this afternoon. I appreciate it bro

thanks man. That's all for this week's

Truth About Cars podcast I'm Tim Healy

a managing editor and you can find us wherever

you get your podcasts you can also find us online

at ttac.com or the Truth About Cars

allspodout.com

we thank Carl Brower, Matthew Guy

for their time and Matt Poskey for editing

most of all we thank you for listening

and we'll see you next time

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