Thoughts? 415

Welcome, everybody.

It's No Driving Glows.

Two weeks in a row, I know that's been a surprise.

Still me solo, still working on some of the logistics of the show.

If we're going to keep it solo, if we're going to have people in, I think we're going

to do a mix of a lot of things over the next few weeks and see how it lands, how it works

for everybody out there.

Again, No Driving Glows is now brought to you by my men's-oriented, higher-end gift shop,

Hustle and Heritage.

You'll find it at hustleandheritage.com on the internet, so we have one location, Rick

and Mortar here in Birmingham, Alabama, and actually, we'll have a second one shortly

in another area of town.

Stay tuned for that.

I'm sure the Hustle and Heritage sponsorship will have a script, but we're going to join

you tonight and we're going to talk about a few little things.

My mini's been in the shop, having a little blemish taken care of because of it.

Believe it or not, a careless motorcycle rider hit me, but not that big of a deal.

The issues and problems with that exact instance will be discussed with you guys at a later date,

but I think the little scuff will come out and the mini will be fine.

The mini might be getting a big brother in the next few days.

Don't know about that one, but while the mini's been away, I've been driving a rental

car and I just don't understand rental companies.

My insurance said, go ahead, make your reservation for the car.

When you pick it up, they'll confirm with us and you'll be good to go.

Well, I made my reservation for the car.

I went to pick it up and the insurance company made a reservation for a car.

I picked whatever it is, now a mid-sized car, so like a Toyota Corolla, something along that

size.

Don't need anything big.

I drive a little bit, so don't want horrible gas mileage, but I don't necessarily want to

be in an avail.

Well, the rental car agency just started to hand me these keys to a GM product.

I said, what the heck is this?

And she goes, why we got you a Tahoe?

I want a Tahoe.

I didn't reserve a Tahoe.

Well, you don't have a reservation.

Well, yes, I do.

Well, this is for your insurance.

You made your own reservation, but this is what the insurance is giving you.

I said, okay, but how about giving me the car that I had the reservation on?

Well, we don't have any of those.

Well, so if I decided to pick this up on my own dime and not deal with the insurance company,

you don't have the car I reserve.

So my complimentary upgrade would be a Tahoe.

I said, well, you've got to have some sort of car.

As many of you know, I'm kind of a car guy.

Yes, I have the new Ford and I use it, but I use it when I need to use it.

I use a truck as a truck, even though it's a fake truck.

Well, they eventually decided they had an Ultima and a Sentra.

Well, there's a lot of things I would rather do than drive a Nissan, no offense, Nissan,

but there's a reason you potentially could be one of the next automakers to be leaving

our shores or possibly even the realm of auto manufacturers.

And I'm sorry because I know some of our listeners and viewers are tied closely to Nissan or have

some good friends with Nissan.

And as a matter of fact, I was just across the street from the Nissan factory in Tennessee

yesterday, but on the way out, I said, what about this?

And the woman goes, well, it's going to take like an hour, an hour and a half to clean it,

but it's available.

I said, okay.

I said, I'd rather sit in your lobby for an hour and a half to drive a Nissan.

So I sat in their lobby for about an hour and went out to a 2025 Toyota Prius, dead

base Prius.

I really, really, really like the way the new Prius looks.

You know, just a smooth flowing line, love the huge expanse of glass on the windshield

and the hatch.

I saw one once with the old MoonEye's aero wheel covers, and that was like almost the

perfect car.

But I mean, considering a Prius, I'm not a huge fan of Toyotas, but I mean, they're

good cars.

Well, with having it for two weeks, I can give you a pretty good review on what I think of the

Prius.

It's a very, very good car.

If you want to literally drive an appliance, I mean, we can say things electric, it's kind

of like a refrigerator.

Over-assisted power steering.

Let's talk about the goods.

Great visibility.

Wonderful visibility.

A lot of driver aids, it's good.

That'll also be on the list of bads.

Gas mileage, I picked it up and it was averaging 48 miles a gallon.

I've driven it for about two weeks.

I'm up to 49.7 now.

So personally, I've been averaging probably 53, 54 miles a gallon driving it, which to me

is just absolutely wonderful.

It's the noisiest Toyota, excuse me, it has some very interesting engine noises and sounds.

I love the keyless entry door handles and that, not that we do have a Toyota in the garage

here, it's her car.

But I mean, it's got a couple of the creature comforts I like.

Love the Apple CarPlay interface works fairly well.

Climate control, love it.

Real buttons, easy to adjust.

The auto function actually works well on my Maverick.

Unless I set the temperature for like 82 degrees, I freeze the air, I don't know where they

put the temperature sensor for the air conditioner, but it must be right next to the catalytic

converters or something because it never thinks the truck gets cold.

And I mean, it'll just freeze you out.

One of the great things I've noticed about this Prius, I don't know what Toyota is using

for glass, but normally when I drive and I park, I actually use one of the windshield

sunshades, put it in to help keep the interior cooler.

Now it's been high 80s, low 90s for the last two weeks where I've had this car.

And we know I do multiple stops and in and out of stores all day long.

And this car just doesn't get hot.

Now I normally try to park, nah, well, if I really want to use the sunshade, I'll usually

part facing the sun so the sunshade's reflecting everything off the windshield and nothing

can get in the back glass.

Well, this car, I haven't really paid too much attention.

I've hardly ever used the sunshade, whether I've parked facing the sun or with the back

glass to the sun.

The interior just doesn't seem to get warm and I just don't understand that.

They must have some sort of coating or something, but whatever coating they have, whatever coating

you have Toyota, do a Volvo and let the rest of the world know what it is because

it's nice to be able to get into a cool, I'm not saying cold, but a cooler car, something

that's not 180 degrees.

And I would think with this car with the massive windshield and the massive slope glass, I mean

the glass is just pointing skyward front and back.

You would think it would absorb heat and this car would get on godly hot inside.

For some reason, this one just doesn't.

Probably one of the coolest features about this car, no pun intended.

However, the complaints and ironically one of the subjects I want to talk about is the

return of buttons to cars.

I hate touchscreens and going through 14 menus.

I don't like in the many going through the iDrive rotary controller to jump this

jump that remember where things are.

I like real buttons.

Well, as they say, careful what you wish for because now in this Prius, I've got a whole

row of buttons that control the climate control.

I've got Apple Car Playup, which is buttons on a touchscreen, but they pretty much I

know the touchscreen hardly ever changes there.

It's got like, excuse me, let's speak English.

It has six or seven buttons in the center console around the shifter, which is a whole

another thing.

I don't understand why we have to have all these complicated shifters, but there's

a button for park.

There's a button for hold for this new brake thing that everybody thinks they

have to have.

We have the button for eco.

We have the button for sport.

We have and so on.

And then I couldn't tell you how many buttons are on the steering wheel and it

drives me crazy on the Camry that I've re driven repeatedly.

There's too many damn buttons.

They don't have words on them.

They have pictures and I don't know what half the pictures mean.

And you get into another car.

It might have words that might have pictures, but.

They print them in the finest, thinnest lines possible.

They are not backlit.

They're always on the steering wheel and they're always in the shadows.

So I'm lucky to get the cruise control turned on on this car.

But if I get the cruise control turned on, it usually turns on the radar

sensing cruise control, which.

Well, that's a whole other thing, but there's.

The there's too many cryptic buttons and, you know, granted, it's around.

Also, I didn't read the owner's manual.

I didn't take time to learn the car.

Maybe if I took a little bit of time to learn the car, it wouldn't be so bad,

but there's got to be a happy medium.

We don't need our cars doing everything.

But then again, it's a Prius, so it's like a rolling computer.

I guess we'll go to the cruise control and the safety alerts.

Yeah, this thing has blind spot protection, cross traffic detection.

I think it has auto stop braking.

I know it's got front parking sensors, because when I pull into the

driveway behind the Maverick, it gives me it starts morning me at five feet,

but it doesn't creep it five feet.

It stops and then I can hit the gas and it might go to four, but it might go to three.

And I've never tried to go beyond three because it might go to two or it might go to zero.

And then I got a front nose to replace.

It doesn't have smooth throttle application.

It has way over assisted power steering, but it has so many alerts and beeps.

If I turn the turn signal on to show a lane change, just after a car goes beyond me or I've just, you know,

I've went far enough beyond the car that I can see it in my rear view mirror,

which when I was taught to drive, if you can see the full car in the rear view mirror,

it's safe to come over.

Well, this car wants like another six feet because you start to do that,

you get chirps and alarms and, oh, no, there's a car there.

Well, okay, maybe, maybe.

And then it has the lane detection or lane keep feature, which is great when it wants to work.

Sometimes it doesn't want to work.

Sometimes it works too well.

And then the regenerative braking in this car, I don't know who designed it.

You know, I'm coming down a steep hill and I've got the regenerative, you know,

and I'm letting the regenerative braking slow the car down.

So that technically I'm charging the battery and that, but then it gives up and just all of a sudden

it's freewheeling down the hill.

So you go all of a sudden from 60 to 85 miles an hour or so.

And there's no rhyme or reason why it works.

And then you can be pulling up behind somebody and it's almost like one foot driving,

the car will almost want to stop itself, but not every single time.

Sometimes it just wants to roll right up to the car in front of it.

There's just nothing that makes sense about some of these computer sensors.

No wonder we have so many issues and accidents and

just, if you get in this car and you want to rely on the tech 100% of the time,

it's just not there.

I mean, it's a reasonably comfortable car to drive.

There's, to me, the minis got, and I can remind I've got a two door Cooper S hard top.

I think I have more usable space inside of that car between the small hatch area and the

backseat area than I do in the Prius.

Every time I've went to do something, I have literally filled the hatch up with everything.

Sometimes filled the whole backseat up.

When I travel, I have my refrigerator in the backseat.

I have a suitcase, a duffel bag, and the duffel bag and a suitcase take up most of the

hatch area, the refrigerator I put on the driver's side of the backseat

on some cardboard and that just so that it has room to breathe.

But if I buy anything, boom, the thing's full.

It just, I don't, it doesn't have good use of the space inside of the car.

Just, there's just so many little things.

Now, like I said, I love the way the car looks, and I entertain the idea of possibly getting one

of these Prius, but I'm glad I lived with it for two weeks because it just does not fit

my driving style and the way I operate.

So yay, you've tuned into no driving gloves to listen to me babble on about a Prius for 15

minutes and babble on about the buttons.

But Mercedes announced this week that they too have decided they need to go back to more buttons.

Volkswagen was one of the first companies to say this.

Hyundai's jumped on board, now we've got Mercedes.

So, you know, give us buttons for the things we use most of the time.

Climate control, potentially radio controls, I still to this day, after having it six months,

have no idea how to get from Apple CarPlay, where I listen to podcasts all the time,

to the FM radio in my Maverick, without telling the car through voice activation,

FM radio, and then it'll switch to FM radio for me.

Other than that, I don't have a clue how to get there.

And I've looked in the owner's manual, which is another thing I want a paper owner's manual,

should come with the truck.

They'll let me download it and I can print it myself, or it's in the app, or it's on the

dashboard or in the touchscreen. I don't know. Give me climate controls, give me radio controls,

give me simplified cruise control things. You know, all the lane keep assist and that,

that can be in the dashboard, in my opinion, because once I set it, I don't need to change it

every single time I drive. The things that I need to change often need to be buttons,

hard, easy to find buttons. Things that change little settings in minutia,

put them on the touchscreen, even in the Prius thing. This one you put in eco, it stays in eco.

And if you're going to use that logic, put it in the touchscreen. I don't need a little

plastic button to go normal eco and sport or so. And for the Maverick, you've got it,

that one is in a touchscreen. But the dumb thing is, it resets to normal mode every single time,

unless you're paying attention. And in the one second, right after you start, you can push the

button to tell it to stay in eco. But if you don't do that, then you've got to go through the menu

and scroll and switch it back to eco, which is a couple of button pushes, but it'd be just much

easier if it remembered, or if it was, I guess it should remember. If you're not going to have a

remember, then give me the hard button. You're going to have it remember, take the hard button away.

It's good to see we're going back to these push buttons and things,

kind of like the olden days. The touchscreens and the model tees just weren't that hot or that

great. And I'm going to work on just a couple little stupid things I've heard in the car world

over the last week or so. Ferrari introduced the new Testarosa about a week ago, I think before

the last episode I recorded, but I was indifferent. I go, I really want to say anything because to

me it doesn't look anything like a Testarosa. And a lot of people are complaining it does not look

like a Testarosa. And then I got thinking when I was paying attention to that. We're in 2025,

40 years, just over 40 years since the last Testarosa was introduced.

So things do change. And yeah, okay, you have to have styling cues that go back to the old car.

Yeah, maybe that'd be cool. But for the longest time I said I'm not a big fan of retro.

So do we really want cheese grater slats on the side? Do we really want this thing to be just

a doorstop wedge? Do we want pop-up headlights? Yes, Ferrari, you figured out how to do pop-up

headlights again. Porsche, you're coming back with the 935 slant nose or 930 slant nose.

You need to copy Ferrari and their pop-up, their new style quote, pop-up headlamps. But

then I got even thinking further. The 84 Testarosa, the 92 512 BB,

they had nothing, nothing in common with the 1958-1959 Testarosa. The big pontoon fendered

17 to 25 million dollar cars that they are today. They only built one or two dozen

total of all of them. There's not a single thing on that car that carried through to the 84

Testarosa. Except the name, even though the name became one word as opposed to two words,

still meaning the same thing. And the red valve covers. I don't know if the new car has red valve

covers or not. Redhead is what Testarosa means. Testarosa is Italian for redhead.

So, I don't remember back in 84, but I don't remember back in 84 people complaining that it

doesn't look anything like the 58 car. Because we weren't doing retro, things didn't have to do that.

It was, ooh, a cool name from the past. And I think that's what they did with this car.

The way the world thinks now it's improperly named, but I'm good with it. We can call the new car

Testarosa, even though it doesn't look like the 1958 car, doesn't have one similarity. I doubt if the

reds are even the same. And it doesn't have anything to do with the 84 car. It's just

another car. Just reusing a name. And I still prefer names over chassis numbers and numerical

designations. They kind of used to make sense, but now they just randomly seem to number

anything and then make up an excuse why they're randomly numbered stupid.

And I mean, do you like the new Testarosa? Yay. Go out by 16 Ferraris and you might

be able to buy a brand new one. But I haven't seen it up close. I haven't seen it in detail.

But overall, I'm not a big fan of the new Ferrari styling. The 296, it's okay.

The Ferrari SF90? No, I mean, I can barely tell it apart from the 296 and you're never going to use

90% of the horsepower you're paying an extra half a million dollars for. And I think buyers are

realizing it because the prices are coming down on those. I mean, not everything in the world is a

911. You know, one of my complaints about 911s is they always have looked like a 911. And I

guess that's what people want. Let's go back to 1962 and take a Ferrari GTO and if we would have

just built it all the way to today and never changed it. And at some point it would have

looked like a 240Z or whatever. So we had the Testarosa thing. I don't even know if we

want to touch on the guy that was driving his roommate's daughter's Barbie Jeep to,

I can't remember, he's going to liquor store, grocery store or something,

but got pulled over on it and was actually intoxicated and they ticketed him for a DUI.

This was in Canada because he was operating a motor vehicle. And I guess this is just a,

I guess PSA. Anything with a motor in Canada

if you operate a drunk, you're susceptible to a DUI. Now I wonder if that means engine because

motor is electric, engine is gasoline technically by Webster's dictionary. So

we get into the legalese, let the lawyer sort that one out. But I mean, I guess we've

got to have that story at once. Once every five years, six years, somebody comes out driving

a lawn mower, a power wheels or whatever drunk. It's going to happen. It's kind of cool.

Pretty soon we'll have them driving the Walmart, I want to say Rascal, but I don't

believe they're Rascal scooters. But this Walmart scooters, somebody who can come in

out of a Walmart, coming out of the Guy Ferrari or Ferrari is starting to put chicken joints and

Walmart's come out of there. And then we'll just touch on the last one, which offers a lot of

confusion and a lot of, I've heard people report this story, but they miss the opposite thing.

And it's the gentleman who was pulled over in his brand new charger Daytona and was cited for loud

exhaust. I'm talking brand new charger Daytona, the electric one that doesn't have a gas motor

on the market yet, coming soon with a gas motor, but doesn't have one.

But he was ticketed for loud exhaust.

He pointed out to the officer that it's an electric car and doesn't have an exhaust,

but the officer still went ahead and ticketed him for a loud exhaust.

I imagine any two bit lawyer can probably get that ticket tossed if you want to fight it. Equipment

violations on a moving violation, it just might be cheaper to pay the ticket. But

yes, the car doesn't have an exhaust. But if you go into the federal regulations,

all cars are required to have a muffler and a catalytic converter. Otherwise,

they are illegal. It doesn't differ, say anything about if you're an EV or that.

So technically, all EVs violate federal emission standards because they do not have a catalytic converter

nor a muffler. So I guess we've got to start installing those. So maybe a loud exhaust ticket

wasn't proper for him, but an equipment violation for not having those pieces. Come on,

California, let's get on the ball. Let's start arresting all these people driving these EVs because

they're illegal. But now we can look at, okay, he can get arrested for not having the muffler and

catalytic converter, but he still can't get arrested for having a loud exhaust because

he doesn't have a loud exhaust because, and I guess this is a problem I have with the

Prius too. The charger makes exhaust noises electronically from a soundtrack,

and they can be projected outside of the vehicle and inside of the vehicle so you feel like you

can enjoy a gas powered car in your EV. And I guess there's something to be said, you know,

maybe you have a little bit of fun. I heard a couple of people really like the

electric cars with the fake. I think Hyundai has it and believe Porsche is introducing it with the

fake manual transmission. So you can shift it and it gives you the throttle blip and everything,

but maybe, maybe not. I haven't driven it for one personally, so I don't know. But

go back to the charger. Okay, I'm not going to give you an exhaust ticket, but now I'm going

to give you an excessive noise stereo ticket because the noise outside the car is being produced

by a speaker that obviously could be heard more than 50 feet away. So just like anybody with a car

stereo playing it really loud, you can get ticketed for it. If I'm playing Formula 1 sounds

through my car stereo and I have something that'll hit 148 SBL and you can hear it two

and a half miles away, I'm very susceptible to getting a car stereo ticket. There's absolutely no

difference between that and this charger being electric with artificial exhaust sounds being

emanated from the outside, obviously at a very loud volume. Whether or not that's driver controlled,

I don't know. Take that up with Stellantis. Possibly the competing with Nissan for the

next car company to be leaving the country, or at least portions of. Bye-bye Chrysler.

And I'll swing that back since we lie always at no driving gloves. We'll always go back down to the

beginning, go back to that Prius. It has engine noises. I don't necessarily like engine noises

in my electric car or my hybrid. I want to know when I'm in hybrid and not a little

thought on the dashboard. I don't like these fake engine noises, especially in a hybrid,

because I don't know if I'm really having an engine problem because I can't hear the engine. I can't

feel the engine. These fake noises hide some of that. I don't want to say visceral, but

visceral experience, some of that connection I have to a car because the noises just don't make sense.

So that's my little no driving gloves tonight. A little bit more true no driving gloves.

Tell you a little bit of truth, tell you a little bit of news, but it's gloves off.

It's a gloves off approach to the automotive hobby. A couple of things going on there.

If you got any ideas for topics, if you got something you want to come on the show and talk about,

shoot us an email, nodrivingglovesgmail.com. We actually have producer at nodrivinggloves.com.

Either one works. Remember hustle and heritage at hustleandheritage.com for all your looking for

that hard to find gift for a man. If you're in the Birmingham area in Alabama and swing by

the brick and mortar and pick it up, not even have to wait. A lot of the stuff that I have is not

available on Amazon or a lot of even websites. It's been digging to find hard to find stuff,

and some stuff can't be replaced. Sometimes I was able to get five or six of them.

That's it. That's what I'm looking for to keep that store stock.

But as we always say here at no driving gloves,

even though we miss the old guys, but you know what to do. It's time to get off your ass.

Go burn some gas, because John is out.

Thoughts? 415

Toyota Corolla

Nissan Sentra

Toyota Prius

Ford Maverick

Toyota Camry

Testarossa Testarosa

Porsche 935

Datsun 240Z

Dodge Charger

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