Vantage S Review; that Ford GT Lap; the Peril of Selling a Project
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Off the Record
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Avants
Avants is an automotive community/media company. Here they’re talking about a membership that gives discounts—especially on tires.
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Michelin
Michelin is a major tire manufacturer known for performance and touring tires. The segment mentions Michelin as part of Avants’ discount program, implying listeners can save on Michelin tire purchases.
Car
Aston Martin Vantage S
The Aston Martin Vantage S is a high-performance Aston Martin sports car. This episode is mainly about reviewing how it feels to drive and what it’s like to own.
Car
Ford Gt
Concept
Nürburgring
The Nürburgring is a famous race track in Germany. It’s known for being tough, so a fast lap there is a strong sign a car is truly quick.
Concept
lap time
A lap time is the time it takes to drive around the whole track once. Faster lap times usually mean better performance, but conditions matter.
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facelift
A facelift is when a car gets refreshed a few years after launch. It usually means styling changes (like lights and grille) and sometimes small improvements inside.
Car
Vantage S
Aston Martin’s Vantage S is a sportier version of the regular Vantage. The host is talking about how it drives and how it compares to older Vantage models.
Term
cardio
Cardio is exercise that gets your heart rate up, like brisk walking, cycling, or jogging. It helps your body build stamina over time.
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personal trainer
A personal trainer is someone who helps you plan workouts that fit your goals and your body. They can also show you what to do so you don’t overdo it.
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muscle recovery
Muscle recovery is how your body heals after workouts. If you don’t recover enough, you can feel worn out or stop making progress.
Term
horsepower
Horsepower is a number that roughly tells you how much power the engine can make. More horsepower usually helps the car accelerate harder.
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spin the tires
Spinning the tires means the car’s power is making the wheels slip instead of gripping the road. It’s a sign of limited traction.
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loaded
“Loaded” means the car has a lot of extra options. More options usually means a higher price.
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ceramic brakes
Ceramic brakes are a premium brake type used on some performance cars. They’re designed to keep braking power consistent even when you drive hard for a while. In this segment, they’re mentioned as part of the higher-spec “S” version.
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Formula One
Formula One is the highest level of professional race car driving. It’s known for very advanced technology and top drivers.
Term
gel coat
Gel coat is the shiny protective layer on fiberglass. It’s what gives the surface its glossy look, and if it has sparkle, it can look like it changes as you move.
Term
flake
Flake is the glitter-like material in the paint/finish. When it’s positioned in a way that changes with the light, the car can look like it “shifts” or sparkles more as you move.
Term
tailbone
Tailbone is your lower back bone. The speaker is saying the way the seat pushes on them changes how much pressure they feel there, which affects comfort.
Term
dead pedal
A dead pedal is a fixed footrest that you can rest your left foot on. It helps you stay planted when driving hard, and its placement affects comfort.
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all wheel drive
All-wheel drive means power goes to all four tires. That usually helps the car grip better, especially when you’re accelerating hard.
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rear track width
Rear track width is how wide the car is at the back from one tire to the other. It can affect stability in corners and also how close you can get to walls or curbs.
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Woodward Dream Cruise
The Woodward Dream Cruise is a big car event in Detroit. Thousands of car fans and cars show up along Woodward Avenue, and it’s a fun weekend if you love seeing all kinds of cars.
Car
Ferrari 250 LM
The Ferrari 250 LM is a very famous, very rare Ferrari from the 1960s. The point of the mention is that you might spot a car like that even in a crowded event area.
Car
Unimog
A Unimog is a rugged Mercedes-Benz off-road truck. It’s not a normal “car show” vehicle, so it stands out.
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Roadkill Nights
Roadkill Nights is a car event where car fans show up and often do drag-style racing. It’s more about the vibe and community than a formal track event.
Term
cat blew out
“Cat” is short for the catalytic converter, which cleans exhaust gases. When it fails, the car can’t pass emissions and the fix can cost a lot of money.
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Model 3s
The Tesla Model 3 is an electric car. They’re saying that in LA, it’s so common that it shows up in their stereotype a lot.
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BMW
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Bugatti Veyron
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Bugatti Chiron
The Bugatti Chiron is another ultra-high-end hypercar from Bugatti. It’s the kind of car that costs a fortune and is famous for being insanely fast.
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What up, everybody? Welcome to the Smoking Tire Podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by
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membership. And thank you to Avants for sponsoring the show today. All right, on today's episode,
we talk about the Aston Martin Vantage S, which is just a delight. Plus, Zach and I
are not going to Car Week this year. We have different plans entirely, and Ford has sent a
Ford GT Mark IV around the Nurburgring in six minutes, 15 seconds. We discuss this and more
on today's episode of the Smoking Tire. Guys, the Smoking Tire is giving away a 992.1
Turbo S in partnership with Dream Giveaways. We're giving away a $275,000 car with some slick
choice mods. The proceeds benefit charity, and you don't have to buy any merch. It's a
straightforward entry process. So hit the link in the show notes and get entered to win today.
They had it. We just got it. We just walked into the store and bought it. Not only that,
they had a lot. A bunch of rums. Yeah, they probably had 150 different rums. They had the Zafra.
I didn't look, but they might. I found out my neighbor, whatever, dog neighbor, whatever,
but he's really into rum, and I started talking about it. I was like, it's $60 bottle of rum.
It's way better than $500 bottle of bourbon. He's like, kind of.
In a way. Thank you. I was just talking about doing a rum tasting.
I got one for myself as well, and I had a little sipski last night with a big rock.
Fucking excellent. For people listening, we drank this in BVI,
plantaray, 20-year-old rum, and it was so smooth, but not sweet, aggressively smooth,
like cheap rum. Can I just open the box open to show the bottle? Because the bottle's cool.
So we did a rum tasting on Cooper Island, which I can't recommend highly enough. It was fabulous.
Talked about it. And look at this. It's a bottle. It gives you that little, that pirate wrap that
you need. It was probably like, when you're like hucking bottles on a pirate ship, this gives you
like extra grip, you know? And it also, if they, it keeps them from clinking together and shattering
over time. And you could hang it from something maybe too, but god damn is this shit. It's really
good. Yeah. I mean, if we're going to fuck this all up like we did with, remember we went to Kentucky
in 2013 and tasted Blanton's and then wouldn't shut up about how great Blanton's was and then
he came for $300. So we should buy 10 of these. Sit on them. I'll tell you what. I started, I sent
an, I actually bought three bottles. One for you, one for me. And then I sent one to Big Raj.
Because Big Raj actually likes rum. No way. Like he, he not like, he's never really fucked with
it like this, but he'll like, if he gets a cocktail, it's a rum and coke or a dark and stormy.
That's his cocktail. Yeah. And he has nice bourbons. And he knows about bourbon and whiskey.
Yeah. But yeah, he doesn't really, I go to, I go to the South Carolina house every year,
a couple of times a year, and there's never any whiskey drank from the last time I was there.
So he'll have some when we're having some, but on his own, like no. So I sent him a bottle of this
and be like, I think we need to get about this rum life because this is a different, this is
for people, you know, I don't know, for people like us, this is uncharted territory.
It is. But it's also more affordable territory than the rum ter, than the bourbon territory.
I think if you pour this, I wish we hadn't talked about this. We could trick Johnny to Johnny pour
this in some bottle and be like, this is a $4,000 bottle. A fan sent us a sample and see what you
think. You could tell that it's not. Yeah, it's not. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's these very
good rums are like bourbon in that they are oftentimes aged in bourbon barrels or aged
in whiskey barrels or wine barrels. And so you end up with something that's like a,
it's in the same family of, of flavor profiles, but like, it's not exactly. If you actually put
whiskey next to this, you'd go, these are not. They go down the same freeway and they take
slightly different flavor offerings. Yeah. But one's in the carpool lane. Yeah. Oh yeah.
The bourbon gets a little spicy and has like a little more, you know, kind of alcohol at the
back, I think. And these are just smoother. Yeah. And bourbon's a little more corn and this is a
little more vanilla. Yeah. Like bourbon, a good bourbon to me is like a, it's like breakfast
almost, you know? What? It's got a breakfast smell. The sweetness and corn. Oh, maple syrup type
same. Syrupy sort of thing. This is like very vanilla forward. But anyway, that is for you.
Thank you. That's rad. I'm glad I drove today because sometimes I walk to work and I would just
be carrying. Walking down the street. I mean, listen, if you're walking down this street carrying
a bottle of booze. I'd look like Gareth Reynolds coming to your house for dinner. Just showing
up with bottles and bottles of peanut grocery bags. Oh my God. That's so funny. He walked really
far with all that fucking alcohol. And then we did it, but, but we really did honor him by drinking
it. Yeah. By the way, in a recent episode of the dollup, he fucking, they sort of shouted us out,
but also talked shit while doing it. He basically like, yeah, he basically said, like, cool. We
got really drunk at his house and they sent us home in Waymo's, which was funny. But also,
there may be some ties to Epstein. Like that was what he said. That is unfair. It was pretty tough.
He's uncalled for. I am not in those files. It was brutal. I forgot. I heard that. I was
listening to the show and I was like, I should probably follow up on that. He just went for the
easy low hanging joke fruit. I was like, yeah, Epstein. I mean, look, I know I had, I know I've
actually, I know I've personally hung out with three or four people that are in the Epstein
that's true. But, but look, Gareth is technically from the UK, I think, born. Yes. So is Prince
Andrew, right? So I'm just saying definitely related. Definitely. There's some connections.
The jeans don't lie. Right. Right. Sidney Sweeney said that. Um, the, uh,
the best marketing, right? Fuck. Hi. Hi, everybody. Smoking tire podcast. Bill Kaman
cars. Allegedly, allegedly cars. Uh, we have things. Oh man, there's things to talk about today.
I actually found a lot of things to talk about today. So many things have happened
since we did a show two days ago. First, I want to complain about something. Social media sucks
my fucking asshole on April 2nd. Cause the algorithm is feeding you all these people's
leftover April fools cause it's not timeline anymore. Your TL isn't your fucking TL, it's your
AL. I don't know if you can do it on the desktop version of Instagram. Oh, can you not sort
chronologically? Well, on Instagram, like you, you have to go to the tap down and go to like
following and then it's in order, but it's not the default and that's not on the desktop, which
is dumb because I could serve stuff from three weeks ago. Yeah. A lot. Yeah. Very annoying.
And, uh, when you're on desktop particularly and I, for my sanity, I only keep Instagram on
desktop. I don't have social media on my phone. It's better for you. Better. I don't want to
say you. I don't want to project my own onto other people. It's better for me. Buy all of that. So
anyway, Instagram definitely doesn't want you using Instagram on your fucking computer. They want
you on a phone. So using Instagram in terms of like clunkiness, it's about 2013 what Instagram
desktop is, but like, but yeah, but with algorithms. So yeah, that drives me nuts. Okay,
so get this. There were some great, did you see some great April Fool's car content? I saw
Z tuning that built Z1 engineering that built that 400 Z. I drove. Uh-huh. I did not see that.
There was like the new titanium trumpet exhaust. That's sort of funny. And they, I mean, they did,
they did very good, like probably AI animation. Like it looked like hand-welded for trumpets.
That's pretty funny pipes. That was a really good one. I think I, I saw that in Cabo on the
bunch of pickup trucks in about 2003. You heard it for sure. There's just some good stuff. Some
of the aftermarket companies have a really good time. Yeah, a couple did. And then I just,
that, you know, I just zoned out for April 1st, but because I'm not fun. So I didn't really,
I didn't get in. I don't get in on like social media trends. I posted a picture of Finn, like my cat.
No, you know what I told, you know what I posted was the picture, the memory of Carl.
The day that Carl came to visit in LA and we made matzo ball soup or he made matzo ball soup.
And then we went to APL and fucking ate everything on the menu. And then he threatened to throw me
off my own roof in Venice if I didn't buy the coontosh. All of those things happened in one day.
That was a good, that was there. Yeah, we went three up in a Vast and Vantage.
And that was 2018. That's how long the Aston Martin Vantage has been out in its current iteration,
current ish iteration. Wow. Because this was the, this was the first press car. Matter of fact,
this wasn't the first press car. The first press car was the white one that was the year before
this was the facelift. This was the sorry we've fixed the grill one. Because the lights were too
small in the beginning. Oh, that's right. The first one was 2016. The first one was 16 or 17 on
drive. And that was a long time ago. Yeah. And then that was slower than it should have been.
They're like, it has this much horsepower you can go. Sure. Sure. AMG didn't fuck you. Okay.
I can't believe you guys fit two people, three people in this car. Well, I mean, look, two of them
were, you know, probably fucking. So they were, you know, on, but no, nonetheless, the fact that,
and also for people like, for people listening, Carl is sitting on the woman. Yeah. Not the
inverse. Well, she, uh, shout out to Britain. She's great. But she's probably four inches taller
than him. Okay. Yeah. She's like, she's like tall, like, you know, like, like, like, like a model.
She's built like a, like a model and he's the, you know, he was like a little looking like a troll.
Logistics, fairness thing. And it wasn't in particular, we didn't do this all the way to
Hollywood to APL. I picked him up at his hotel, Marina Del Rey. We went to the Ralph's in Marina
Del Rey and then we went to my house in Venice. So it was a 10 minute drive. And then we took a
fucking Uber to Hollywood. But, um, but this dude made, I posted the recipe on Patreon.
Um, the greatest matzo ball soup in the history of matzo ball soup, which I think I might make
this weekend. I haven't made it in about a year, but we're due. We should you want to make matzo
ball soup this weekend? It takes like fucking four hours. It uses every dish in the kitchen.
It's so labor intensive. So you might go to town this weekend. So if it does, I can just sit there
for five hours. Yeah. But so, so it made me, because I'm, uh, we were driving the new Vantage,
the S and, uh, it made me, I was looking, I was like, ah, I remember when was it that me and Carl
and went did had our day in the, in the VA advantage and it was 2018. So it's been a little, it's been
like nine years as fucking things been on the market, which is like, you know, a slow gestation
to perfection because usually they'll tweak things. Then like G.R. Kroll. I know I've mentioned
a lot, but I drove 24, 25, 26. The change from 24 to 25 was totally noticeable on a racetrack.
Yeah. Big jump in one year. And the change was like, yeah. Yeah. It was a little more,
not, no, it wasn't a huge amount. The jump from 24 to 25 was a big one.
Five to six. Five to six. Also noticeable. Well, this is the, and this being the S,
it's, it's like, I like to say S is for sorted and like that's, if you click one post to the left
on, we can just go right into it. The Aston Martin, not a full, a full post to the, to the
current one, to the Vantage S, which I drove for most of the week and Zach just had a quick go in
because I thought it was a day longer than it was. And I'm very sorry for that. Folks taking
a break from the action today because this episode is brought to you by fit bod. Dude,
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this product accurately. And now back to the show. Did you enjoy your day though?
Yeah, I mean, I if I hadn't gone on the launch of the regular one, I would have been kind of
annoyed. But it was close. It was similar enough things so fast. And I do the emotional side of
me would buy this over a 9 11 turbo. The mental side of me would buy the turbo. That's kind of
my TLDR. Yeah, that's like the thinking man's choice. And this is the like let's fucking go.
This is the Ferrari man's choice. Right. But there's no Ferrari at this price.
I really like this thing so much. Like it's it's a like I would describe it like Carl's
matzabal soup after fucking so much time simmering on the stove. The ingredients have really come
together in a in a very nice way. Whether it's, you know, applying the talents of the Formula
One engineers in the offseason or whether Andrew Kay who did the Valhalla had his hands on this
thing. I didn't go on the launch for this so I didn't speak to the engineers. But like everything
is super fucking harmonious in this car. The power, the tip in the brakes, the gear changes,
the steering ratio, the rebound on the shocks, like all of it like it does exactly the thing you
pretty much want it to do all the time, which is lovely. And then it has 671 horsepower in a very
short wheelbase. And so you can spin the tires, you know, all the way into third gear, if that's
what you're trying to do. My only the only thing about this car I don't I don't there's two things
I don't like about it. One is the eight s which they need to make it stay off through restarts.
This is just this is this is not good. And then the other is all at all advantages. They there's
there was nothing that's been changed about this. It's like I need like I can drive this car for
90 minutes before needing to like get out and stretch. I need one to two inches more leg room
seat travel. That's the only reason I would I would get a 911 gts, which is the same real price
as this, because turbos are more. This is cheaper than a turbo now, but more than a gts. Wow. So
it's yeah, a loaded gts. You can you can you can knock on the door this a loaded gts is more than
the base price of a vantage s. This one is this one was 198 base 248 as tested. Wow. I mean, that's
so much money also, but it's a lot of what's a turbo base to a turbo base is like 230. Oh,
geez. Okay. You know, and the one the turbo s that we are giving away. And by the way, our turbo s
is a dot one, right, the new ones even more expensive. Our turbo s is 275, but it's loaded.
Yeah. It's got a bunch of options. Go to our Instagram link in bio to enter to win our turbo s,
by the way. The best turbo s is a free turbo s. Very true. That's absolutely true. Yeah. But
it really makes this thing seem like, I mean, and again, we're talking about funny money for rich
people, but it does make it in the game of top Trump seem like kind of a bargain. Well, I think
it's a competitor finally, which it wasn't in the middle, in my opinion. It's a dynamic
competitor. It's a dynamic competitor. And I think it's also the aesthetics are there now,
for the most part. Very pretty. It the speed is there, which wasn't there for a little while.
It was almost like, like the V8 Vantage in those earlier days was closer to the 911,
not the turbo, of course, but like, it was pretty good dynamically, it had pretty good power,
and you could you could make the case for it. And then I feel like in the middle,
it just it aged poorly and they made some bad decisions. They didn't have the money,
basically. And now it's kind of well, and also out in context, in the first half of this car's
life cycle, the AMG GT was a thing. Yep, which had the same engine and a better gearbox. And
it was cheaper, cheaper and in our and arguably prettier. I agree. And the interior much prettier,
like as a place to sit, made a great race car. And, you know, this is just my my take when I drove
this car on the old one on the track. It just felt like it felt like there were some horses that
didn't make it on the boat from Germany to England. You know, I don't know. The AMG GT's
always felt faster, tighter, all that stuff. So but now in the nine years they've been making this,
they've gone inch by inch, refining this, getting better, getting better, more power,
tighter, better dampers, better handling, better brakes, better wheels, better cohesion.
The AMG GT is still competent, but is now a fairly soft GT car, less pretty,
heavier. It kind of turned into the SL. Well, they did. They merged those two things into one
product. And then also, all 911s have gotten more expensive, faster than this has gotten more
expensive. That's true. And so now you can get, you know, a pretty bad motherfucker Aston, which is
in the hierarchy of exotic car, probably perceived higher than most 911s. Yes.
For what what is actually like, you know, seems like fairly reasonable money. I think if you ask
most people at a curb, what costs more this car or a GTS, they're going to probably go with the
Aston because the name, the marketing, all that stuff, it is a, it's a rare thing to see. Yeah.
So the S is only 14 more horsepower than the regular car. Yeah. It's more about the handling
and stuff, right? Yeah. And and it's, it's, it's damper tuning. It's got, it's got the ceramic
brakes and all that stuff that, that come with it. And then there's trim, but it's usually,
it means more to me as like a signifier within Aston Martin of like, we've finally nailed this one.
Like whenever you get to an S, you're like, ah, the biggest difference was the fucking
Rapide. Remember the Rapide? Dude, the first one was a pig. And then the S was like, whoa,
what'd you guys do? This is all right. You know, fucking ripped. We went to the launch,
was it a track? It was at Atlanta Motorsports Park. Wow. It was like, it was a hard track.
I was like, wow, this is fucking all right. You guys are doing it. And it was like, it was a big,
but vanquished to vanquish S. You know, the last Vantage S was a big change, although arguably
the seven speed manual was a step back from the six speed, but you know, that not withstanding.
Fucking cool car. Very cool car. It's so nice. Everyone who saw it like loved it, although I
did not get a lot of like love on the street. Like people and like, I, I think I did, I mentioned
that there was an identical car and even that person like didn't acknowledge it. There doesn't
seem to be a lot of like just, you know, people in traffic looking at it. There's not a lot of like,
if you're, if you're seeking attention, it's the wrong car is what I'm saying.
Now, what cars have you driven in the last year that did get lots of attention?
That's a good question. Like I'm wondering if this is just people in traffic looking at their
phones and they're not really noticing cars that. All right. Well, LA is a tough, because there's,
there are so many nice cars here. So you really print, you have to drive something wild for people
to really give a shit. You know, that's a very good question. I would say, well, if I have to
narrow it to new cars, that makes it tough. Oh man. That's a harder question than I expected,
Glapman. Guys, taking a break from the action because support is coming in fast, like Jim
Farley, the CEO of Ford, who's now got a podcast and you're always asking me what I'm listening to
when not recording this show. And right now it's this, the new season of drive with Jim Farley.
Internet, the Ford CEO talks to some of his favorite people about what they're driving
and what drives them to succeed. Like Formula One driver Daniel Ricardo. Listen,
there's a well-worn trope about racing drivers not being interesting to listen to.
But if there is one that is interesting to listen to, it is Daniel Ricardo. I think this guy's
takes on stuff and life are great. And look, Jim is a racing driver also. I personally raced
against him like two months ago. And for me, a CEO that drives race cars on the weekends
is about the pinnacle of CEOdom when it comes to car companies. So the two of them together
obviously have a lot of things to discuss on Drive with Jim Farley, which you can get on your podcast
app. Very easy to find. Drive with Jim Farley. Check it out. What have you experienced those
people really looking at? I'm really, I'm really struggling to answer. I mean, there's like,
when the C8 was new because it was a new idea. Sure. That got a lot of attention.
The Alpine, but it got question marks. Like I had more people say what is that and look at it,
but I was shocked by the number of heads that turn. Also in Monterey it was car weak. I mean,
I guess the Spectre, although it was a little more than I wanted, driving one of those revologies
around where it looks like a brand new 1969 Mustang like that. That gets a lot of the,
I mean, I'm a broken record, but the Manx. Yeah, of course. I mean, the Manx.
Because that's an oddity. And it's also bright. I mean, it is literally a bright signal in traffic.
I drove it to dinner last night in Venice and driving into the sunset, going around the marina.
I just did my hand and I was like, it's so sparkly. I just said, I said, I was like,
it's so sparkly. She's like, do you hear yourself? The depth, dude, the depth of the gel coat.
Yeah, it's crazy. When we were at the factory and I looked at it,
I mean, it was a little bit like being on a hallucinogen. It is. It shifts. There's thick,
clear coat. And then you can see, it's like looking at a bed of crystals, you know, and you could
zoom into it. It's nuts. Right. Because it's not paint with flake in it. The flake is suspended
in the gel, which has a depth to it. And therefore, there's flake at different heights. So that,
when you move your head back and forth or turn across the light, it creates a fucking trippy
shift. Yeah. It's the best. It's fabulous. But like, yeah, I'm just saying, not a lot of like,
not a lot of street cred in terms of if you want a tent. Now, it doesn't mean,
we went, I took it up to up the mountain on a Friday. People asked about it. People are interested
in it. It, you know, it's very, no one, no one was like, ew, you know, and it's a, I forgot because
I haven't, I haven't had a coop in a while. The ones I've taken home for the last six years have
both been roadsters. The hatchback. Great. Yeah. Golf clubs. I delivered a gun safe to Corey.
It was my golf clubs, my golf shoes, a duffel bag, because I had to shower before going to
Sergio's after golf. And, and then a gun safe. Look, uh, there, like, oh, I took the gun. The gun
safe was in the empty space in the top right where the, where the, but when we got a picture,
this is a lot of the golf clubs go across, you know, like a Corvette, but you got a lot of bags,
it's a lot of depth until you get to that small and then my shoes and my shoes and that other
thing, those are my other shoes go up on the shelf up top. Like you could, you could live
out of this car for a couple of weeks. Definitely. For sure. Yeah. If you wanted to like travel the
country road tripping, this would be an excellent car to do it in. The only thing when I jumped in
this car that I did not like about it is the seats by compare, comparing two and nine 11s,
like 18 ways compared to an 18 way, but I think the, the thigh bolster is just, is a little too
short and that's kind of it. So for really long term driving, you like a very long, I do. I like
it to go to the knee pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. I want almost like, you know, horse-like. No.
You are, you like a long thigh bolster. I do. Yeah. I want as much support because I think for
me with my body, like the more pressure moves back, like the more it's on my spine and tailbone.
Yeah. And I have problematic tailbone due to the snowboarding wrong. I actually, if I extend the
thigh bolster too long have like, it creates a problem somewhere else. Sure. Yeah. So I need,
yeah. But on the 18 ways, I put it out like maybe an inch. Yeah. But if I, but even if I don't put
it out at all, it's still kind of fun. Well, you spent more time in this. So how did you find?
I agree. The seat, the Porsche seats are better. If you're talking about an 18 way, it's better.
If you're talking about like a base Porsche seat or a bucket, I'd rather spend the time in this.
But that one inch of leg room that I don't have in this car, like here's, here's how I know it,
that it's a difference. I spent a half a day driving at barefoot because I had like flip flops on
and I was going somewhere with flip flops. So like I drove it an hour each way, barefoot,
to golf. I drove it all the way to fucking Moorpark, 60 miles each way barefoot. And when I can
stretch my legs out or tuck my feet like behind the pedals or whatever, different sensation at
the end of that trip than trying to drive it with the shoes on where I have that extra, you know,
half three quarter inch on that pedal. Right. Yeah. It's interesting for people like just
highlighting how different everybody is. Right. I think have the same inseam. 32.
Oh, I'm a 30. Okay. That's different. Yeah. I'm 31, 32 inseam, depending on the case.
An inch different, but that's pretty like. But that inch, it's nothing and it's everything.
It's a big difference. Not just the inch, but also the fact that specifically Porsche's pedal box
is wider. There's no engine up there you might notice. And so even if I'm wearing these NBs,
which you see my new NBs, these are the 1000s, these are kind of fun. Even when I'm wearing NBs,
I can put my left foot between the brake pedal and the dead pedal all the way down. Yeah. And
the Aston didn't didn't have a space. You do feel like you're sitting a little closer, you know,
you know, like in a Formula One car in this thing, like the tunnel is really tall. The, I mean,
the door sills on everything now are really tall, but I felt like I was really sunk down in the car.
And some people, Harris famously really liked to sit as low as possible. I do too. I like a little
more visibility. Like sometimes, you know, people are looking just over the top of the wheel,
and I want to be able to see more than that. But I think the hips on this thing are very wide.
Yeah. It looks like overhead view of this and 911 to be very interesting. I don't know off the top
of my head the measurements, but like this almost looks like a rear engine car. It's probably not.
Yeah, I bet you like the stag, the wheel tire proportions are not that different.
A 911 will have this thing from zero to 60. Obviously, the traction is going to be an
issue here versus a 911. But beyond that, if you got, if you got two, two buddies, you know,
dicing it up on a canyon road, or if you've got two people in a track day running lap times,
I think it's going to come down to driver. I think he I think the better driver could drive the car
either of the cars faster. I don't think they're, I mean, it might be, you know,
a small number of a small amount of time a lap difference if the stig is doing it or something,
but like on any given track day, the better driver will be faster in either this or
an equivalently loaded up 911 GTS. I think a 911 Turbo S would probably be quicker than this on a
track. I think it's capable of that. Definitely. Also, all wheel drive, all wheel drive and
clever everything. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. 2025 the rear track width of the Vantage was 65.2
and 2025 GTS rear track width is 61.2. So requires more, requires more actually, which is when I
backed it into my garage, I was really paying attention to those walls. Yeah. Got big hips in
yeah. Fucking cool car. Yeah. Cool thing. I guess we'll talk about the M2 CS next show.
We should, we should say we should, should we talk about Dream Cruise? Yeah. This year,
Zach and I are changing up a little bit. We're not going to go to car week. Instead,
we're going to go to Detroit for the Woodward Dream Cruise. I have rented us a beautiful house.
I'm not going to say exactly where it is, but it is very affordable. God, what a terrible
fucking picture they use to promote this. That makes it look like a boring ass sock hop cars
and coffee, doesn't it? Does. If you don't know what this is, I've been before like 10 years ago.
It's, it's pretty fun. It's the same weekend every year as Pebble Beach. It's in Detroit
and on Woodward Avenue, like for like not the entire length of Woodward, but like miles and
miles of it, it basically becomes anything is street legal, whatever, you know, historical car.
Yeah. One of those. Yeah. That's even the Wikipedia pages better. The thousands and thousands of
cars. Like, you know, we talk about Pebble Beach traffic is a crazy place to find yourself, right?
You could be in traffic at Pebble Beach and there's a Ferrari 250 LM next to you and
there's a 73 RS that raced in period in front of you and like, that's a crazy thing. But
you do that enough, you need to change. This is imagine that same traffic, the same level of
like surrounded by craziness, but it's not the shit you see at Pebble Beach. Yeah. It's tuner cars
and crazy muscle cars and a guy that built a fucking slave. It's towed by eight Harley
Davidson's these somehow controlling. You like, I like to joke that the word contraption is never
used at Pebble Beach, but it is in Detroit. And even in this photo, which has just pulled off
Wikipedia, look, the parked on the sidewalk, you've got, you've got tens of thousands of people
lining the sidewalk, just watching people cruise their crazy shit back and forth. And then you've
got car shows the whole way. Yeah. They're open to the public. Almost nothing is ticketed. You've
got like Pantera Club here. I'm a huge fan. It goes all the way down. There's like 30 Panterras
right there. And there's, look, there's a C4 Corvette with a green wood kit. There's some kind
of bizarre little yellow hot rod thing behind it. There's a, I see a Porsche. I see a 911 cab
back there. I see another C3 Corvette at the traffic light. Is that like a Diablo or something,
that gray thing? Like there's like a prototype. Yeah. What is that? I think it's a C5. Oh,
it does look wedgy, but the front looks C5 to me. But you will absolutely see Italian exotic,
classic Italian exotics and crazy shit. Oh, a police cruiser with some kind of giant drag set
up. So anyway, we think this would be fun. Hell yeah. A change of pace, something different to
do, see and talk about. We got a house. Oh, is that a map up top? Oh, dude, that's this photo.
What a great photo. This is the kind of shit. This was from 2020. Sorry. But that photo was,
dude, look at all the stuff we can find in this one photo. Oh, this is gold. So you've got a starting
from the bottom row. We've got a Trans-Am 70, something giant blower. Hell yeah. You've then
got like maybe some kind of Roush Mustang convertible next to it. An Acura NSX 2017,
there's an Excalibur. There's like a Unimog with a bunch of dudes rolling rolling in the back.
Buick, not often seen today. Buick. There's like 66. Maybe a GTO. Looks like a 66 GTO convertible.
Then behind it, some weird Bel Air modified thing. That's terrible, but that's what that,
yeah, that's like a 58 Bel Air with a Corvette grille. And that's just a bad, that's a contraption.
Then a F-150 with fucking MAGA flags on it. Yeah. And then some kind of a Firehawk maybe.
Yeah, Trans-Amy and then a Challenger, maybe a Red Eye or a Demon. Oh, it's over here now.
And then a Muscle Cars, there's an Eldo. Yep. Right. Fintail, Caddy going the other way. So this
is just, this is one random snapshot of a thing. I'm so about it. I mean, I need to go to Hodgess
Nights like annually for a couple of years. And this is like a much bigger version of that,
which will have way more cars. Well, not more cars, but a wider diversity of cars.
Well, it's just a different vibe. It's a totally different thing.
And they do the, do they still do the Roadkill Nights like Drag Race down the street?
I think so. Awesome, crazy.
So I've put in a few phone calls to people that might be able to get us
interesting and unique cars to cruise in. You know, I haven't called the guys with the Drift Hummer.
That thing's nuts. The Drift Hummer was pretty good. That was pretty good.
Yeah, Cummins Diesel, right? Yeah, it was a Cummins. No, it was a Duramax,
1000 horsepower Duramax with an Allison gearbox and a rear drive conversion.
Yeah, it was very good. So I, and I do have one story idea that's, that's very,
that I don't want to even talk about until I know if it's going to happen or definitively not happen.
But anyway, the reason I bring it up is because I'm sure we have some fans in Detroit. And so
if, if any of you guys know about interesting things, and please don't give us like,
don't say Roadkill Nights. If you know, it's like interesting, cool local shit
that's going down in Detroit for Dream Crew, specifically stuff that's,
I would say in the sort of Royal Oak to Birmingham corridor, which is, I think,
where we're going to be probably spending most of our time. Do let us know in the comments or,
or whatever. And I'm trying to see if there's a way we can do a live show there. So we'll see.
But we do have the house, which is a starting point. And yeah, people if, if people are a little
burnt out on Pebble Beach, I think this is going to be a fun, a really fun alternative. It's so
different. And like the question will be, if we get our trailer, do we end up like hauling like
the Manx or something out there? Does that become something that's worthwhile?
The Manx will be a good thing to cruise around there. It would. It fits in.
It would. Yeah. But it's a long, you know, it's probably like a
three day. It's, no, I drove the fucking Tycon back from there. It's four days.
And you're towing now.
Yeah. But I was driving an EV. So that's the same.
That's a fucking wash. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, you know, four days.
That's a long time.
No, if I had to, I would just ship it. But I don't want to tow it that far. That's,
that's just a waste of fucking time. But anyway, shout out to Detroit. I love,
I love Detroit. I don't care what anybody says. I'm just kidding. I love Detroit.
It's cool. I do love Detroit. I mean, I haven't been there in 10 years.
Detroit is a city full of flavor. It's a good time. Yeah.
Dream Cruise is the best time to be there. It's a total, total shit show.
Just, I mean, how many people show up for this thing? It's got to be hundreds of thousands,
yeah. Yeah. And, and it's not like, it's not like, you know, the, the tour de elegance,
right? Which is the thing that if you want to win a trophy at Pebble Beach Concourse,
you have to do this drive down Big Sur and back and you have to complete it in order to, to win.
Not to show, but to win. And so watching it is fabulous. You pull over on the side of this
extraordinarily beautiful place and these fucking $10 million, you know, Gilded Era shit comes by
and race cars and you've seen the photos. You know what it is. But it's like an hour,
you know, it, it happens and then it's over this from Thursday until Sunday morning.
This is going on. It doesn't turn off. I mean, maybe it turns off kind of like three in the
morning. I don't know. I was asleep last time, but like far as I know, it doesn't turn off.
And the house I got is walking distance from Woodward. So like, we can get absolutely fucking
shithouse at our, at our house and then just walk over to Woodward with a Yeti cooler. I mean,
I can't imagine there's open container laws in this city. There's basically no laws.
No, not during this. We saw plenty of people sitting on the sidewalk. Just if you have a cup
that looks like nothing. Post up. Yeah. We look what we have, buddy. Exactly. It's going to be a
fucking rum August. I was just curious about the scale. So the hot August nights loop is four
miles long. The, the Woodward dream cruise is 16 miles long. So that many more cars,
that many more people hanging out. Whoa. That's crazy. Dude, it's so like I, the last time I went,
it, it took me something like an hour and a half to do a lap. Like it was, it was like,
it was like a whole, a whole morning basically. You're at idle speed, right? Basically. Yeah.
I mean, unless you find yourself at the front and then you're obligated to like hammer down
two gears. No one is trained for this. Like us, because we live here, you know,
stop and go traffic for 16 miles. We've done it. We are pro. Yeah. And then what's crazy is you go
like a couple of blocks off of Woodward either way. And it's like back to normal Detroit. Yeah.
It's not, it's not like you have to deal with the traffic to go anywhere. Like you go just a
bigger city. Whereas Monterey is, it's kind of traffic everywhere because there's only a few
ways to get around the city. And I love Car Week, but I just, I looked and it's been,
it's been nine years in a row. I've gone. So it's, and I've gone like 14 of the last 16 years.
So like, I think it's a, and actually the two years I didn't go, I went to this.
Car Week every time. Yeah. I'm excited. So yeah, we gotta, we're gonna, we need, we need a couple
things. We need a car to cruise. And then we need to figure out, you know, what, what we can get.
That's a, that's a cool enough daily. So even when we're not cruising, we're still rolling.
You know, obviously it's going to have to be something American because all those cars are
there, but, and we're going to maybe, maybe have wives and maybe have friends. So it'll
probably have to be something big, but. So Escalade V. It'll be Escalade V. Basically what I'm
saying is we're going to require an Escalade V is what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. Burning through gas
so fast. Yeah. I mean, less idling in traffic or just the TRX, the new, the new TRX will get like
one mile per gallon. Probably. Well, we're going to have a, you booked it. You booked it. We're
going to road America. You're, you're racing. Well, even if I'm not racing, I'm going.
I'm coming over. Imagine you fly all the way and you actually know.
Uh, yeah. The license falls through. Johnny, Johnny is out and, uh, and, and you are in and, uh,
and so yeah, team, it's gonna be you and I and fucking Tato Siderman and Tommy Kendall. Rad.
Amazing. Your first race with a competition license is going to be with Tommy Kendall. So cool.
That rules. Never, never would have dreamed this in my life. Fantastic. You'll likely be
handing the car off to him because it's probably going to be Tato, me, you. Well, I don't know.
I don't know. Last time that was, it was, it was going to be Tato, me, Johnny, Tommy,
but then Johnny tapped out. So it was just me, but it would probably be Tato, me, you. Cool.
But like, whatever, it's going to be fun. That's rad. Amazing racetrack. Do we dodge got us a
Hellcat Durango to get from Chicago to the track and then to run practice laps. Tato,
the day I went over there to do SIM training with him, he's like, how do you think the
Durango will be like on the track? And I go, what do you mean? And he goes,
like, how do you think it will handle some of this stuff? And after, this is after he had
shown me like his line and hitting these bumps. And I was like, you mean like curbing? He goes,
yeah, like I knew he was asking something without asking. I go, I don't think you should do it four
up first. I think you should do it one person because, and then I explained to him moose test,
gross vehicle weight limits and how center of gravity, like, and he had never heard the
moose test. And I go, well, let me tell you how this works. So I think he should go out by himself
and see before he starts doing school. I don't think Tato's signing the f**k. I don't think he's
signing the loan agreement. He's definitely not insured to drive his vehicle on a racetrack.
Absolutely fine. You can do the, because you know, we could do the taxi laps. Bro, I am 100%
capable of this. Yeah, you are. I am. And I have precedent and wrote America with the track
hawk. Right. I was, and you, excuse me, wrote Atlanta with the track hawk and you absolutely
can take an extremely generous, not necessarily the exit. You don't want to, because you don't
want your outside loaded up rear tire in grass. No. What you can do is cut the apex extremely
generously to where if you're turning, let's say you're turning left, only the
half of your right tires need to be on tarmac and like the rest of the vehicle can be basically in
grass. Full wheel drive. Go watch my track hawk video. It's, it's from, I don't know, 2019,
18 maybe, 17 maybe, but it's basically the same s**t. Yeah. Yeah. So we're going to Dream Cruise
and we're going racing and wrote America. You can actually, if you, if you're in that area
and you want to come say hi during the race, like you can, we will be there. Tickets are cheap.
Someone, a fan hit us up. It's like $10. Yeah, to get the WRL, of course. It's a really cheap ticket
and you can get a day pass or yeah. And it's all access and you can get like a weekend pass for
$18 or something like that. So very affordable. Speaking of racing, did you see the, did you,
the press release the morning this 4GT Mark 4 ran a 616 at the Nurburgring?
Technically it was like 615, like 97 or something, but we'll call it, we'll call that a 616.
And yeah. So third fastest time ever and fastest gas only car. Third fastest time ever for what
like category? Well, but ever behind the, the Volkswagen like ID, whatever the f**k thing.
And then the 911 Evo. Yeah. Oh my God. Those two and then this.
And they also, which is amazing. I mean, and fastest petrol ever is also amazing.
They also like made, kind of made up another fun, fun statistic in the press release.
They said also it's the fastest vehicle ever that you can buy, which is a total, that is,
that is the first time anyone has ever made that distinction as regards Nurburgring time.
So I applaud their PR department for making up a new statistic to crown themselves king of.
There's this guy. It can be really instantly invalidated, by the way, if Volkswagen just
sells the IDR to somebody, anybody. It's like when they make up Guinness World Records,
like there's this crazy stunt guy I follow on Instagram and he's like New World Record.
And what he did is they rode guy strapped to car. He's, he's operating a motorcycle next to him,
no rider on it at like 150. And then he sends the motorcycle off a ramp and then he's still
strapped to the car. So they just sent, they just ghost rode a motorcycle at like 150 off a ramp
and he's like New Distance Record and went for unmanned motorcycle, probably zero. Yes,
for unmanned motorcycle jump. Yeah. The guy is like Shiboda.
I'll find it for you. But yeah, making up records, they all do it these days. But that is.
But also, it's, I mean, look, that's also, it's also really stretching the quote that you can buy.
They made, I think, 67 of these things. Well, is it doesn't look street, I mean,
it's not really. They don't claim it's street legal. It's, it's fast as that you can buy. Yeah.
Which, I mean, maybe there's an implication there. But I mean, it's a fucking sick car and that's a
crazy time. Did they make, is this all new body panels in the back? These intakes look even
bigger than on the regular GT. I think they have changed some things, but that also might be like
the most perfect angle. That's true. Of it. No, I think they're bigger. I think they might be bigger
on the Mark IV. These, this whole gap looks bigger, but. And also the front bumper doesn't seem to
have headlights. No, no, there's no headlights. I think these are just tape and intakes, Nacoducks.
Um, but that said, what's the powertrain? It's still the same. Yeah, I mean, effect. Yeah. I
mean, I think it has, it has more power than the road car, but it's not, it's not a different engine.
It's the same engine. Because the IDR is full electric. Yeah. The 911 EVO is hybrid. Yes. So
it's pretty rad that it's closing in and it's just gasoline. Yeah. Whoa. Crazy, right? Really
crazy. Good for them. Six fucking 16. I saw last week, nine something, something,
we'll just call it 616, but like, God, motherfucking damn. I think Ford's GTD unofficially beat the
ZR1's time. Yeah, I saw that, but I, well someone, somebody, somebody said they did that.
But then I thought that maybe it was a mistaken story and they actually should have been
it was actually this and they heard the rumor wrong. Oh, I mean, well, I don't know. I think
if Ford actually did it, they probably would have just said like, why, why not say it if you do it?
I don't know. I'll look it up. We got the time, the fastest road registered car on this was the MG1.
629, which, you know, sort of barely road legal there, but, oh, power is up on the mark four to
789 from 650 and it has a sequential gearbox. So, you know, yeah, obviously it's a race car,
so it's got race car shit. That's amazing. Yeah. Good for them. Six minute 15, 9, 7, 7.
Fuckity fuck. That's kind of crazy, isn't it? It's very crazy. That's kind of crazy. Okay. And
before we go to the people, because we're going to go to the people, get this sack. I called Shant
over at CMS Motorsports. Look at your car every day. Our friend, you drive by it. You walk by it
and I look for progress. Yeah. Do you see any? No. Okay. That's because there hasn't been any,
but there has been some. You just haven't seen it. Got it. Right? I know what you're saying. It's
because I know there was other ideas developing. What we're doing is building a ballroom. No,
it's cancelled recently. No, so they have another shop in the valley, because of course you do.
When you're an Armenian, you always have another shop in the valley. Well, and the place here is
it's tiny. It's small. Right. So I call him and I was like, hey, man, you know, and when we last
left off, it was a month ago, and he said, when doing the powertrain swap, and again, if you're
just here for the first time, I got a free Mercedes 124 Cabriolet, and I'm trying to make it awesome
on the kind of cheap. That's what I'm trying to do. And my friend, Shant, who owns CMS Motorsports,
maybe you've seen him. He's one of the, one of, if not the most ridiculous Mercedes Benz
builders in the country. He does all these insane Euro tuner cars, pre-merger AMGs.
He collects all these cars and these parts at Pebble last year. He built a shooting brake,
wide body, like AMG Hammer. That was just so cool. Yeah. He won the awards.
He's very creative and his team is very talented. And so anyway, I was, he's wanted to do some
with me. I've wanted to do some with him. This fucking free Mercedes fell into my lap. And I said,
well, wouldn't it be cool if we took this E320 and turned it into the 500E Cabrio that Mercedes
never made? Shant was like, fuck to the yes, my brother. So first step is a V8 and a five-speed
automatic gearbox. The M119, which is the 500E four cam V8, is actually like not a great engine.
I mean, it's a fine engine, but it's like, you don't need a four cam engine for a car that's
putter around in traffic. What you want is torque. And so, and also the 320, which my car is,
has a different length of engine compartment than the original 500E. It was longer. The M119
is a physically big engine. What you actually want is the E55's engine from 99 to 01. That,
the round, the four-eyed square, the first E55, 369 horsepower naturally aspirated,
five and a half liter V8. That's the engine that you want. It's physically smaller and it is
incredibly robust. And so, anyway, that's the engine we got. I didn't realize that there were
some other key differences. And so, what he was doing was going to build, his brother was building
something similar to this out of a coupe. So he was like, we're going to do it. And if it works
good, then we just do it for your car. So, to make the engine work, it's smaller, it fits. You
also use the gearbox, it fits. But this 2000, 2001 E55 is throttled by wire and also has digital
gauges. And he wants it to look stock. So, he told me and I thought he was just going to finish
his brother's car and then we'd come back to mine and whatever. He got a very short way into his
brother's car when he said, you know, this would just go better if we build both cars at the same
time and just do double everything. You know, if we do it on this car, if it works, we just
right on this car. So, he's a little further than I thought. So, they have two E55 engines running
on stands. They have two functional wiring harnesses. They're still trying to figure out the gauges,
but they have running engines on stands. They have gearboxes. And so, they actually
sort of have a lot of the mechanicals needed for the powertrain swap ready to go,
which surprised the shit out of me. I didn't think they were anywhere in this. They also have
all four replacement body panels ready. Whoa. Like, they're not... Oh, shit. Yeah. He's like,
your front and rear quarter panels are done, too. Like, you're getting close to install time for this
stuff. Yeah. Whoa. And he was like, he was like, so, yeah, like next week, you should come like,
see where we're at. And I was like, wait, really? Like, we're like, you've made bodies like, oh,
we've made... He's like, this is going to be an all steel E55. It's going to look just like Mercedes
made it. That's dope. But it's, you know, but it's going to have this, this better engine. And I was
like, shit, we need to go see the material guy. We got to do leathers. We got to do inlays. We got
to do, you know, make sure we order that, the fabric, the right fabric that we like. Get that
shit done. Dude, that's crazy. When I walk by, like, it still looks like this. Yeah. No, he hasn't put
any of the things on the car, but he's assembling a bunch of shit. Yeah. Whoa. I don't know if he's
got the front and rear bumper handy yet, but I think he didn't need to make those. He just bought
those. But the fenders he had to make, right? The fenders he had to make because the, you know,
because this is a two door and the E55 was a four door, you can't just make the way it meets with
the doors is completely different. So you make it look just like the E55 fender, excuse me,
the 500 E fender, but you make it by hand. Yeah. Nice. But out of metal. Yeah. That's great.
Which is rad. Yeah. Yeah. And the hood, the hood, the trunk lid are both staying. They're fine.
And yeah. So that's, that's pretty sweet. It's happening. Dude, that's a lot further than we
thought. Yeah. Crazy. All right. So I want to go to the people, but man, it's been, I really,
what is wrong with me? I chugged a little bit of water before and now I have to pee.
That works. Will you, uh, will you plug everything they get with Patreon? Sure.
Oh, if you're a new listener, what you get on Patreon is pretty awesome. For a long time,
people were asking us, Hey, can I get that episode sooner than when it would go up on public? When
is that episode going up? People are really excited about it. So if you join Patreon,
depending on the tier you sign up for, you can get an ad free experience listening and watching.
You can also get the shows early right after we record them instead of waiting a day, a week,
a month until it's time to drop them to the public. You can also get exclusive or early
access to rad collabs like the notice watches that Matt has designed and top tier people,
champion tier, you can get our car review videos ad free. And we also are starting to pepper in
some BTS stuff, some polls asking people for feedback on our content or style of things.
You get a whole bunch of stuff. It's over at patreon.com slash the smoking tire podcast.
Tears start at just three bucks. And now what do we do while he's urinating?
Oh, did you keep them entertained? I did. Yeah.
That's right. Okay. What do we have going on here? Did you already tell them what they get
with the patreon? So I don't have to do that. You're right. Do I did it? Wow, that's a relief.
Nishant Ketterpahl says, uh, any thoughts on on this car replacement, uh, replacing an Audi S4
B 8.5 Audi S4 with 100,000 miles with a 50,000 mile mark seven golf,
are mark 7.5 golf are manual year round driver in Michigan. Perfect.
Yeah. Okay. Perfect. That's fine. Yep. I think that's fine. Yeah.
This question is more complicated. And in SoCal, what should replace a high mile
Maserati Quattroporte S that will surely need very expensive repair soon?
Four door automatic and not so collectible. So a bit of abuse is fine for 50 to 100 K.
I mean, I would say almost any lightly used AMG car. There's so many E 63s and CLS 63s
or, or even, uh, uh, uh, you know, GLE 63s and all that shit, 50 to 100 K. Get you all of that.
All of them. They start cheaper than that. If you want to, dude, you could probably get
lightly used E 63 wagon for that. Yes. Absolutely. Couldn't. That would be my jam.
That's what I would do. Yeah. I feel like that's the Maserati flavor versus anything from BMW or,
or Audi. I mean, there might be a brand new alpha Julia left on the lot somewhere.
That's true. Like a Quattroporte. Yeah. You get the fast one brand new. Yeah. Yeah.
Quadrifoglio. Quadrifoglio. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah.
Um, LL Coolbean says, uh, with Metallica scheduled to play at Sphere later this year,
I'm wondering what would be each of your dream shows to see there?
I mean, fucking Metallica is not far off. I'm, I'm going to that.
Uh, you're Metallica. Yeah. Sphere. Yeah. I texted Christian to see if it's going to be a good one.
It's going to be. Do you have date set and shit? No, but I, I, you know, the, the purse, our person
who was there is, is Christians person. And I'm friendly with her as well. And she's, she's fabulous.
And, and if it had only been like a month or two since we saw you two, I would probably text her
directly, but it's been like a year and I haven't seen her and I don't want to be like, Hey, hey,
you know, I kind of want Christian to ask for me. So I, I'm flexible on the dates and we are going.
I'm just, I'm waiting to find out when I'm keeping it open. Do you have a dream show there that
would be, I mean, I'll, I'll make, you mean, if you ask me to. When I saw Metallica was playing
there, I texted Christian also, and I said, is this going to be a good one? Yeah. Because there's
so many variables. Yes, it is. He said yes. That will be rad. I also, I always thought this sphere
would be good for more, I don't know, like slower music because the visuals can really play, but
I don't really know. But I thought glass animals would be cool, something like that where it's
little trippy. If they really spent the time on the visual side of it.
Yeah, they probably could. You'd have, you'd need a budget that I'm not sure glass animals
could pull off, but like I'd see where your head is out there. I think nine inch nails would be
fucking epic because you have trends, creativity, and, and I think the music would lend itself well
to that. Yeah. Metallica is going to be crazy because I, you know, when I saw it, when I went to
that, um, the power trip festival thing, the treatment, which is the company that is doing a
lot of the sphere stuff, did Metallica's set at this festival and it was bananas. Whoa. The,
the visuals that they did for an outdoor festival were about the best I've ever seen. I had no idea
that Metallica would have visuals besides just zooming in on their faces. Like I didn't, didn't
expect that. No. Okay. I mean, they had the whole, it was fucking crazy. Cool. Yeah. It was really
cool. Really cool. And they had a lot of fire. I don't know if you can do fire in sphere, but
you need to be a, you need to be a big band to pull off that venue. And you also can't be like,
well, the dead, you either can't be an improv band or you need to like be an improv band. Like the
dead, I know what they had to do to make that. They had to like make so much more than they needed
because they might be like, let's play or let's make this stretch this song.
Yeah. And so they had to make the, the, the visuals much more like flick flexible
than you too did where it was incredibly like precise. Metallica is precise. I've seen Metallica
three times. I don't think I've ever seen a band that's more precise than Metallica. Even Lars
Dude, go with Corey. Corey, when he came, he hates life so much. It's so funny.
That's rad. I think I would throw a curveball. I bet a symphony there with the right crazy
visuals and maybe some enhancements would be good. Oh yeah. No, bring your drugs for sure.
I would never. I don't know. Not certainly not cross stable. I would never.
Affila great disturbance in this name is so good. That's really good.
Cancel that project. That's one of my favorite name. It was a really bad name.
Not the username is good. Affila for a car. The name for a car. Commercials were weird.
Great username. Yeah. Your pets not included your own pets, not included best cat and best dog
among auto journalists. That's cold. A judge people's cats. I haven't met
any journalist dogs. I don't think. I've got it. I must have met journalist dogs.
Doesn't.
Exactly. That's a good one. Like we have friends that have dogs, but I'm not really sure other.
Yeah, we don't see a lot of these folks in their own homes.
A journalist dog. Oh, okay. Andrew Collins puts up photos. His dog a lot. It's a half Aussie. So
that one. Wes Seiler. Harris puts up photos of his. What is it? American Bulldog? Like living
in the GT3. Yeah. He's got one of those. Yeah. And Wes Seiler, who was on the show, has dogs.
Cats. Obviously, Michael T. O. Van Ronkel, who was the guy who along with his partner adopted
the three kittens that I found with Hannah in the tree. And those cats are unbelievable. I've
never seen like the idea that one could randomly end up with those cats is crazy. They're so beautiful,
so well behaved and so social with strangers. Like it's they're amazing. Yeah. Good cat.
Great cats. I wish I could have kept them.
Coheed and Camber. Ace. Superb. Superb. Mid 2000s reference. We will accept
any and all 2000s alt rock. What is Coheed referring to? The band. Coheed and Cambria.
Oh, I didn't know those bands. You've never heard of a band, Coheed and Cambria.
They're kind of like my chemical romance. They're of that same. They're the
deep impact. And what's the other fucking movie? Armageddon. The Armageddon and deep impact of
that type of music. Got it. Yeah. My parents have an 80s fiat spider 2000 and the engine feels
pretty meh. No shit. I've heard the carb versions of these engines are loved. But this one leaves
me wanting so much more even though the fuel injected system is quote better. What are some
other cars that would be better if they were worse? I mean, a lot of snobs will tell you that
Lamborghini Cuntoshes are better with carbs, but I don't necessarily agree with that. Yeah,
I think some cars, I don't know. I hear people say the sound of the carb makes it. But the cars
I've driven that have carb carburetors are so loud exhaust wise that I can't really hear the
intake. The Morgan three wheeler, I hate to say going to the super three, which they make now,
it has a car engine and it's quieter and it has more power and it has more emissions,
excuse me, fewer emissions. I'm sorry. And it's more reliable. It's less vibrating. And all of
those things make it worse than the motorcycle. You lost the umpada, umpada steampunk thing that
sorry guys. You didn't know why we were here in the first place. Yeah, that's true. I mean,
a lot of new cars and they make them too stiff and the quest for lap times makes it
worse for 90% of the people 99% of the time. Sure. Like respect to Ford and what they've done with
this Ford GT, the Nurburgring, like that's insane. But if I had to go spend a day had to, if I got
to spend a day and there's two cars in front of me and I'm going to drive, you know, the mountain
passes in Switzerland or our roads here or I'm driving from here to car week and I get to drive
a current gen Ford GT or I get to drive an 06 Ford GT, I will take the 06. So like it's slower,
it has less power, it's a manual, it's not it, blah, blah, blah, blah. And when they tried to
race one, it was garbage as a race car, but, but it's better on the road because it's worse.
Yeah. Okay. L L Cartier, I work mostly from home, but have to drive out of state once a month. I
want to do it all car for long drives and quarterly track days. And I have racing experience, so the
car needs to be legitimately fun. I'm thinking 996 Porsche, first gen M2, E90 M3. I've got 35 grand
and it's got to have a backseat big enough for a baby. Okay. I really like the specificity of this.
The car is pretty much for road trips and track days. So that's a tough thing because a lot of
ways those are like kind of opposites. They are, but I think the cars he's listed, I mean the dual
ability of those is very, I agree, is part of that car's ethos. Like, and you can get M2 as I'm
looking at cars and bids around 30 grand with 26,000 miles on them. Really? I've talked to people
that have these cars and they all profess the reliability of them and I say how many miles
are on the car and it's like 30,000. They're pretty fine. So that might be a good choice. Check the
forms, but a first gen M2 is a great choice. It really is a 996. It's not that there's anything
wrong with it. But if it hasn't, if it doesn't have like service records and I don't mean service
records that are like the oils changed and blah, blah, blah. I mean, like at this point, the newest
996s need like bushings and they should have had like motor mounts and like all the shit that comes
up, these are 20-year-old cars. So for a great 996 that needs nothing is going to be like 45,
50 grand probably. The kind that you're going to like road trip and track days are like two
pretty high pressure environments. You're going to strain this car at the track and you're going to
be far from home. A lot. A lot with this thing and these are out of state drives probably for work
or for something important, I'm guessing. So like it's not that these cars aren't dependable, but
like the one you buy is going to either have needs or you're going to pay for the one that doesn't
have needs. I know this because my neighbor just bought a 996 4S and he's into it. It's a great color
combo. It's got reasonably low miles and he got it for a good price. It's got like
60 some thousand miles. I think he paid 40 grand for it. But right in the first like week,
some things have like come up, you know, like the check engine light is this and he hit a bump and
hurt a thing and now he needs to get it checked and you know, just stuff like that. Do you think an
S would be more expensive than a 4S because it's less sought after? There are no 996 S's. Sorry,
just not regular, real drive. Sure, it'll certainly be less expensive than a 4S.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But 35 grand is a low. But they all, it doesn't matter. They all need
something. Yeah. Yeah. So like your money, if you could buy like a five year old car or a four year
old car for that kind of money versus a 20 year old car, if you like need it as a car, you know what
I mean? I would do that. Like my home, my neighbor like has a regular car. Like so if this thing's
in the shop, he's whatever, he's fine. Okay. Oh, there's a question just exactly related to what
we were just at with 996 coupe prices now hitting 40K for the good ones. At what point is a 996 no
longer quote worth it? Is it a 40K driving experience in 2026? Or are there other two plus twos
that deliver a similar experience for that price? There are no cars that feel like 911s.
Yeah. There's no similar experience. It doesn't exist. Because there's nothing else that's rear
that car is what it is. There's nothing like it. There's no substitute, one might say.
But like 40K was 30K five years ago. Like in like inflationary reasons. So like
everything else is like is more expensive. It's not like there's some new option that's come out
that's affordable and affordable alternative to the 911. I mean, they're kind of just like
isn't sorry to say. I think this person has to write down you have to remove the rear engine
platform and feel from the equation and think about what else do you want from a driving
experience? Like do you want precise controls? Do you want speed? Do you want grip and handling?
Do you want a quiet interior on a highway? Like other aspects that the 911 also has,
can you get those somewhere else for 40 grand or less? Like I think the M2 delivers a lot of those
things just as an example. But if you wanted like outright grip and maneuverability, you could drop
to like a GR86 but it's not going to be quiet on the highway like a 911. It doesn't have the
curb presence of a 911. So you have to look at other things you want because 40 grand is pretty
cheap. Yeah, I mean, yeah. And you know, either you can pay for a good one or you can get a cheaper
one and have to put question mark into it once you get it home. My fucking poor physical therapist
got this 996, also a 4S. And dude, the cat blew out like a thousand miles into him owning it.
And an OEM replacement cat was like $9,000. And even the Magnaflow like, you know,
carb, he wants to pass smog. This guy's not like a hot rod guy. He's a fucking physical therapist.
The Magnaflow replacement that would pass carb, it was about $3,800. Still a huge amount of money,
but it was backordered for like four months. And so Homie's car just sat at BBI who felt very bad,
but couldn't do anything. And he had to, you know, he had to do a bunch of stuff to this car.
He had to have the shifter linkage adjusted to the service. The cats have the car like corner
weighted because it had coilovers on it, but they were like set up all fucked up. So, you know,
he bought this car and then he had to do immediately within a thousand miles, like $7,000,
worth of shit. And then the car had to sit for a while. You know, 10 to 20% of the value of the
car. Yeah. And that hurts because you go, I wasn't planning, I was, when you bought a car,
you wanted to spend X. You didn't, if you, if you knew you were going to have to spend 20% of
that right afterwards, maybe you would have just bought a more expensive car. Yeah. Yeah. So
Chef Carl Spice Tolerance going to, going to Tuscany for a month in the fall doing a food
wine tour. That sounds all right. Is it worth trying to rent an interesting car, bike or scooter
while I'm there? Or is the transit and walking situation good enough? Well, I mean, if you're
staying in Tuscany for a month, the food, all right. So this sounds awesome, by the way,
congrats. If you're doing the food wine tour, presumably they are going to bring you to the
places you need to go, I hope. So you don't need any transport for that, I think. Having said that,
when Hannah and I went to Tuscany for our food and wine school slash tour, we did rent a little
hatchback, Alpha Giulietta. It was fairly shit. It was not that fun. But at the moments that we
weren't, you know, required to be at a place, like we did have options. And then once the school
ended, we did drive around to some different places and drive to Rome and whatever. So like,
yeah, having, having transport, if you're in Tuscany for a month, you is probably good because
there's villages. And you, in between the villages, I'm sure there's some kind of transit, but like,
if you've got the budget to rent a little something, something you probably want to.
Yeah, it's amazing. You can hike, but there's like the wine trail and you can like hike the
wine trail between the villages, which is awesome. I love Tuscany. The user formerly known as Donny's
cellmate. As men who had their early to mid twenties in one of the roughest times in American
history, what general advice do you have for Jesus? Right. 20, 25 year olds going through our
more formative years of adulthood right now. Shit. Yeah, I mean, I was, I was 26 when the
2008 crash happened. So I certainly saw, saw one of them when I was in my twenties.
Dude, I don't fucking know. There's a lot of unpredictables. I mean, with,
well, there is one thing that's predictable and that's that people will continue
eating and shitting. So if you get into an industry that involves people eating or shitting,
you will be foolproof. No, I mean, I don't know, man. We should probably ask my dad that because
he's been through like five recessions. My dad, when I talked about the economic situation right
now, my dad liked to remind me that he bought our first house in New Jersey at 19% interest in
1979. For houses used to be a lot higher. The houses were cheaper and there's a whole thing
there, but like that is true. Yeah, no, but I think, I don't know, patience, maybe the power
of compounding interest. I mean, that is a thing. Like I'd say start investing or start at least
saving. That's what I'd say is someone in their twenties. Like, I don't know, it's hard. You're
not making any much money and you want to do a lot of stuff. Just save some money, like five or
10% of your paycheck, even if you save it in cash, which is depreciating, because saving money now
will give you options or security later. And that's something I wasn't able to do or figure out
till I was like in my 30s and it can allow you to quit a job that's terrible or go back to school
or a trade school to get a better job or do a different thing. Like money gives you flexibility
and you probably won't have a lot of it in your twenties, but you can at least have some where
it gives you less stress, some options. That's a good point. I would say that. And look, to your
point, Matt, there are going to be some jobs that will last through AI. The guy that's going around
and he was like an AI programmer at Google is saying jobs and trades, like things that require
hands. He's like HVAC, robots are not going to be able to install, crawl in the crawl space,
do that shit for decades, a hundred years. Like getting a job like that, it'll pay well,
it'll be physical. It's not sitting at a computer, but which is probably a good idea.
Jobs that require some physical activity that a bolted in machining robot can't do is probably
a good idea. Yeah, making things, building things, fixing things, fixing people's real
world problems. Also, like you just said, with Saving, I read this book recently and it wasn't
a fucking very good book, and I didn't get a lot out of it, so that's why I haven't really talked
about it. But one passage that did work for me, and I'm not going to be the guy who quotes the
book, but he was talking about saving. And he basically said, by saving, you're buying your
future time, which is a good way to think about, because I think one of the problems, I hate to
be, I'm not going to be the guy who's like, these kids don't want to work. Some of the people I
talk to in other industries are very much like, these kids don't want to work. And I'm sort of
like, look, if they don't see that their work is building to something, if they don't see that
their company or their society or their city or their civilization will somehow take care of them
for the work that they're doing, but why would they try? Why wouldn't they just take every day
off they can take and whatever and be a fucking slacker? If it all seems bleak, then of course,
what are you investing for? So I understand that young people feel that way and maybe act accordingly.
But yeah, if you can save money, what you're buying is your future time, which odds are you'll
live long enough to want some. You'll want to have some time in your future at some point where
you want to be able to make a choice to short term or long term not work. So you kind of have to start
early if you don't want to find yourself at fucking 45 with nothing. That's shitty.
Yeah, it's real bad because you will also have to continue eating and shitting.
When I see people that are like Walmart greeters at advanced age,
and maybe some of them might be doing it because they want something to do, but
to be obligated to work at a very late age I think would be really hard and especially physically
difficult mentally difficult and to put yourself in that position. If you can prevent that position
now because you can if you're in 2025, even just with a little bit of savings and money,
I would recommend that. And also go out and live and meet a lot of people from a lot of different
walks of life and go make mistakes and expose yourself to lots of different stuff.
That too. That too. Do the Lancer Evolution. Pretty good.
That's good.
When we think of douchey or trashy drivers, dudes in lifted trucks or G37s come to mind first,
maybe for you. Yeah, in LA they're 90% Model 3s. What do trashy women drive? This question
can't get me in trouble at all. What does a trashy woman drive?
I think it always depends on where you are. Regionally, in the city, shitty people drive
everything. Some just have bigger budgets, so it depends on how you define trashy too.
Yeah. Cooled911 says, thinking about those hypercar collectors who rarely drive their cars,
do they service them based on mileage or time? And if time, would you be hesitant to buy a
low mileage example versus a high mileage car that's had more frequent servicing?
A lot of those folks send the car to service once a year, whether it gets driven or not.
So I imagine most cars you're buying in that, there's going to be a couple of shitters out there.
There's going to be cars that have been crashed or fucking, oh, that one was
Prince Jeffrey's fucking car. It's got glitter all over it, and it's full of fucking sand or
something. Maintenance skipped. We don't have a lot of hypercars here at West Side Collector Car
Storage, but we have a lot of high-value air-cooled stuff, and your singers, your gunthers, your
roofs and stuff like that, and then your run-of-the-mill quote, you know, super cars. The vast majority
of these cars will go to service once a year, whether they're driven or not. So miles don't
bother me on cars. If I was McLaren shopping, I'd want some miles. I don't want a car that's got
1,500 miles and sat for two years. I'll take an 8,000-9,000-mile car that's been through a few
services and been through a set of tires and, you know...
Because those seals, like you want that liquid splashing around to every part of the seal. If it
just sits and then gets serviced, there's stuff deeper in the engine or in the diff or whatever
that's just not really getting any attention from the liquids, and it might dry out quicker.
Yeah. Ideally, a car does, you know, 1,000 to 2,000 miles a year, you know, kind of minimum.
Keeps things moving. Dude, elitist Arawan shopper says,
Thoughts on the Refresh 2026 Lexus IS. You know what's so funny? I didn't even know there was
a refresh. I was driving down La Brea the other day, and I saw this weird looking Lexus front end,
and I was like, what? Is that a prototype? What is it? And no, it was the facelifted IS, which
has a very Prius-like nose on it. Would you describe that as... It looks like a Toyota-ized
front end, more so than a Lexus. I see like GR Corolla and Prius in this front end more than I
see Lexus. I wonder if Toyota has come to... I mean, it still has the giant mouth that Lexus started.
I think it's a pretty good looking car. You know, I'm not saying it's bad. I saw this on the street,
and I was like, oh, shit, I guess Lexus went and did it without telling your boy over here, so...
Wait, let me see 2026. I think the Prius has... Oh, come on, Toyota.
I don't know. I feel like, I mean, obviously it's a bigger, it's a much bigger grille, but
from the middle section up, I think it's got some Prius in it. This hood looks very GR
and 86 to me, which I think it's a good looking... You know what, you're right. It's more 86
and GR Corolla than it is Prius. Yeah, but with you, I didn't know they were going to refresh
it, keep it going. This thing's got legs that keep just changing. Every couple years, they change
the headlights. I know it's a facelift, and I haven't driven one since the IS500. The 500.
I've been driven a regular one since along before that. I mean, like 22 miles per gallon,
so bad, 0-60 in six seconds. That is... These are bad numbers. These two things
are why I didn't buy an IS300 back in the day. They're not that fast, but they consume a lot of
gasoline. Yeah. And that's still the case. Yeah. How about that? Interesting.
Revved up like a deuce. Front collision warning systems are, I'm assuming, pretty effective.
What do you think of a rear collision warning system to potentially prevent getting rear-ended
in sudden traffic, slowdowns, et cetera? This is a really fascinating question.
How do you suppose that would work? Right. So let's play this out. I am... Okay, here we go.
I'm here, and I'm coming to a stop. Okay, here we go. The microphone is traffic,
so I come to a stop. Okay. And now here you are, barreling down, and so what is my
rear collision avoidance system going to do? Right. Because a front collision system stops
you because you are moving. I don't know if they have evasive steer plugged in now, but like a rear
one, if you are stationary, it would have to then begin moving, right? And is it... It would have to
look ahead of you and... To the sides. Theoretically, I guess, to the sides, see what gaps exist around
you and then decide to accelerate aggressively and shoot for a gap between cars or moving lanes,
also while reading the language of the car that's approaching behind you and going,
if I duck to the right lane, that car is not going to do that. It's going to stay
of the course and hit the car that's in front of me. It just seems like complicated and dangerous.
And also, if you're not... If this system has come on, it's because a rear ending is imminent and you
haven't already taken an action. So now the car is going to start driving by itself,
and you're not going to know why. And you're going to freak out and slam on the brakes, probably,
hampering it from doing the thing it's trying to do. I think... All right, if you really want to
prevent getting rear-ended, what we need are, obviously, rear-mounted rockets that will blow
the car up. It will be more effective. If it gets too close. Yeah. Or a ramp that you deploy.
You have a ramp on the back of the car, and if it's impending, it drops and it sends the car over
you. Also, imagine how many... You know how many times you drive a car and it has the front collision
warning that just turns on? You're taking a left on a street. Imagine if it suddenly accelerated
because it thinks there's a rear-ending happening. Problematic. How BBI Autosport,
is there a perfect place to test a car that showcases everything about its driving dynamics in
one location? Proving grounds. Yeah, and OEM is proving grounds. I mean, second to that, I think
there's an argument for the Nurburgring. I think that one would have to... Because the
Nurburgring is a place. The Nurburgring is also a thing that people... When I say the car was tested
on the Nurburgring, you assume that somebody is out there trying to go as fast as possible.
Should one wants to, they could also use the Nurburgring as a road to test ride quality,
to test all kinds of different things if you wanted to. The Nurburgring could be used for
things besides pure speed. So, I'm suggesting that you could use the Nurburgring for everything,
even things that are not related to speed. But then you essentially have a proving ground.
Right. Well, BMW, they use Los Angeles and I think they do a lot of
efficiency testing here. We see them in the canyons a lot. They're probably doing... I think in the
canyons you can do ride quality. You can't do limit grip or braking. But I think what I would
want is a road that has bumps, heartbreaking, some sweepers, and then just a lot of bumpy
shit. So, I don't know one place, but LA, pretty good. Yeah. I mean, I would say the pairing of
a racetrack and, you know, Angeles Crest Highway and the Angeles Forest is a pretty good place.
And that's why most OEMs can be spotted up there once in a while. Yeah. I blow horns.
Can you describe how the forces and sensations in the steering wheel and seat change when one
fits lightweight, unsprung components like carbon ceramics or carbon fiber wheels? Sure.
So, you'll have less resistance to start spinning the tires. So, when you accelerate,
you'll have less mass to get moving. So, your acceleration will be snappier and more responsive.
You'll also have less inertia going forward when you transfer from throttle to brake at the end of
the front straight. And because your wheels and rotating mass is lighter, your brakes have to
work less hard to slow that all down. And then you have a gyroscopic effect of your front tires
turning in a straight line. And that helps to keep your car going in a straight line. So,
lighter wheels have less resistance to turning in a direction off of straight. And so,
it's literally everything about a car gets better. The steering feels lighter because the wheels are
lighter, but it's also more eager to turn because you have less gyroscopic effect going forward.
The brakes work better because they have less mass to stop. The power gets down better because it
has less mass to start. So, yeah. You can really feel that kind of stuff. Prayer of the refugee
wagon with Montana plates. Right. Do either of you remember the moment that you met? Do you
remember what your initial thoughts of one another were and how those thoughts may have changed?
Was our first in-person meeting at the barbecue at Redondo?
Was that my house? Right. Yeah, you came to my house. I know, but I was saying,
did I meet you in person before that or did I start writing for the site online? No,
I met you over email first and then you came to my house. I liked Zach right away. I was like,
oh, this guy's fucking cool. Great. I have a friend. I remember you seemed like a very confident adult
and I worked as a server with a bunch of people frozen adolescents. Yeah, because you had a
house that you rented and you seemed to know everybody. You were very much in command of the
situation and you had sideburns and I was like, oh, this is like a person kind of in charge of
shit. You don't have those sideburns unless you really know. And my girlfriend lived with me,
so I guess you're like, someone can stand this guy. Tracy was living with us. Yeah,
you just seemed like an actual adult and I was like... That's funny. Yeah, you didn't seem like
a child, but I was like, oh, I like this guy. This is all right. Yeah, friends, yeah. I was very
my first year in California, I was very much like trying to make friends. I would say I'm not doing
that anymore. I have so many. And even so, I think you meet a lot of new people. I mean,
we hit it off and then very soon after you guys were like, do you want to come help on shoots
because you're not sane. Yeah, that was great. Yeah. Yeah, I would say, have thoughts, have
thoughts, my thoughts changed? I mean, no, not really. I mean, I don't want to like,
not have a good answer to that, but like, you don't stick around for 15 years with somebody
unless you like them. I agree. Okay, wait, Darian Lux says,
can you, all right, with the recent Valhalla video, can you list the seven figure performance
cars you've driven? Oh, there's okay. Veyron, Chiron, Koenigsegg, Pagani Utopia, Koenigsegg,
SSC. Some of the singers, seven figures. Oh yeah. Every singer except a turbo DLS and that
weird Carrera thing that no one's driven yet. All the roofs, everything, everything, no, not the
SCR. No, that was 700, 800. Okay. But the roof, the roofs that are over, whatever, the rodeo is
over a million and the twin turbo one is over a million. I'm trying to think. Gunther's close.
Gunther with tax. The Gunther turbo. Gunther turbo is over a million.
The Zinger. Oh yeah. The Zinger is over two million. Yeah. There must be more. There's
a tough one. That's a lot. That is a lot. McLaren F1. That was not over a million new,
but I think it generally falls into what people would refer to as that sort of thing.
What are other, are there other
like hypercars that are, that I'm not thinking of? There must be. I'm trying to work my way
around. Revolta. I'm trying to work my way around the quail. No, no. Revolta is like,
they're like sixes, sevens, but that's crazy, but no.
Tothill. Oh, 9-11K. Tothill, 9-11K. Obviously Valhalla. Yeah, I think that,
Senna. McLaren, Senna. Were those under a million new? Yeah. Okay. They're like 760.
All right, but holy trinity cars, I think we can probably put them in the similar vibe.
Yeah, that's a bunch. I think that's a bunch. Oops, I tapped the table says,
congratulations, it's 2002 and you're in charge of casting Jason Statham's vehicle for the
transporter. What is he driving instead of what he already was driving? I looked up,
the first CTS-V was until 04, because that would have been a fun one, but in 2002...
I mean, those are, that's a very well-cast thing. Aside, the M5 I think would be too attention
seeking. The fact that he has a seven series, it's under, more under the radar, it's got the
small wheels. I think that there's supposed to be livery cars essentially, right? It's like,
this is a limousine and also fast. Yeah, 2000. It could be our nage T, Bentley our nage T.
True, not as subtle, but fast in a straight line. But British.
GT-R, was it GTST? Go for Skyline? Skyline 4-Door. Understated, I'll go Chaser.
A Chaser, sure. That's kind of, no one will expect that.
Got a Lotus Carlton. That also would be, that's what the bad guys would drive to chase you,
I think. Yeah, WCCS is going to have one of those for sale soon. We're selling one on Bat
pretty soon. It's really nice. Christian says, what do you think about Rivian partnering with Uber?
Did Rivian partner with Uber? Have I missed that?
Um, how about we're a Rivian partner to deploy up to 50,000 fully autonomous robo taxis?
Oh boy. Cold word choice Rivian.
Okay, well, this is, let's see the story. Uber will invest 1.25 billion through 2031,
subject to the achievement of autonomous performance milestones. This is at Rivian.com.
Funny. Uber is, or Uber or its fleet partners are expected to purchase 10,000 fully autonomous
R2 robo taxis with the option to purchase 40,000 more in 2030. Initial commercial deployments
for San Francisco and Miami in 2028, scaling to 25 cities through 2031.
Is the R2 going to have LIDAR? Yes.
Okay. I believe it will be at least LIDAR ready. Yeah, so we'll see. I mean,
this is, I don't know how many cars have come out and how they say LIDAR ready. We've driven a
couple of them. It's all about like getting the cost down and deploying them in the testing. So this
is a, I mean, 2030 is a, I think a very bold timeline considering, considering that in this
press release, they say this all depends on them achieving autonomous performance milestones,
so which that tells me that Rivian has not proven yet that they can meet those milestones.
Sure. They have to do that and then, you know, they'll sell more cars, but okay.
Yeah. And I mean, Rivians are an emotional purchase. Our friend, Tim, I would say has a problem
with his want to purchase an R2 and it's, it just needs to be over already.
He needs to stop talking about it. Yeah. Just ask her out. Just get it. Yeah. Just ask her,
come in. Does it lower the brand value? I mean, listen, not selling cars lowers the brand value
and selling 40,000 cars to Uber probably makes Rivian shareholders feel nice, even if it's,
even if it's a, only if you can make them drive themselves kind of deal. I think I would say that,
look, Toyota sells 400,000 RAV4s a year in this country. Does seeing them everywhere lower the
brand value and make people not want to buy them? Obviously not. Cause they keep selling
for her. So if the car is good, seeing them around won't I think diminish that value.
Well, I'll say that look, I mean, remember when Lincoln came out with the continental in like 20,
whatever it was, 13 to 15 sometime. And I thought it was like a pretty nice car. And then I just saw
like 10 of them at the airport as liveries. And I was like, Oh, nevermind. I agree. But I think
the difference is that with Uber cars, they look like normal cars with, except for that little
sticker, the livery cars, they're all black. They have the numbers on the back and you didn't see
them anywhere else. Right. That's true. Crucially, we didn't see them anywhere. I think that's the
big thing. Yeah. I think it's, I think it devalues Rivian less than if they said,
Rivian is now offering a ride share special where you can, you know, lease it by the week or
something, you know, for, for that directly from the company. That would probably devalue it more.
Blurple says a car selling question. I'm ready to part ways with a car of own since new and I have
a few questions. The car is a project that's 90% finished needs interior and repaint. What is
the best platform to resell a car that isn't carb legal or able to pass smog? I'm not interested
in returning the car to stock. Do I set a reserve that pays off the debt owed? Oh God,
guys got a project car with a loan on it. Yikes. Do I let the market determine the price,
which is likely less than the debt owed? Or do I try something else to recoup the funds for
modding the car? Damn. The obvious, I mean, dude, fuck debt owed, no interior, no paint.
Really hard because you're, you know, it just means your market is smaller. You need,
your market are people who see the dream you had and they think they can complete it.
So, yeah, I mean, selling what, what platform to sell a car that isn't carb legal, it doesn't
really make, make a difference. You can sell a car on any platform that's not carb vehicle,
as long as you say, as they'll say, like, you know, can it be registered and you know,
right? And it'll say that too, but like bring a trailer, cars and bins, like they don't go,
fuck, they'll list it. It just means you're selling to 49 States and people in California
will be less likely to buy it. Yeah, or sketchy people. 49 States and some sketchy fucking
motherfuckers here. Look, here's the thing. You got to run comps for this car. Setting a reserve
based on what you need to get is a strategy. I totally get it. That may be totally incongruous
with what the market says this car is worth. So, like, ask yourself if you auction this car and
it doesn't sell and you don't, you don't get the money and you're now stuck with the car because
it didn't get to your threshold. Are you happy about that? Or are you annoyed? Because now
you're stuck with the car, but you didn't take less. Or if you go no reserve, send it and you
get less than you're owed and you got to write the bank a check, put the cars gone and it's over
and you go on your life. Which of those scenarios is better? It doesn't sell. You still have the car
or it sells and you got to take a little fucking haircut on the loan. So,
I would add a third option that I know this person said they don't want to do, but if you put it...
Insurance fraud. Exactly right, Zach. You light it on fire, get full coverage. I don't know nothing.
I definitely would not suggest that in a public forum. People do it. I was going to say if you
put it up with a reserve that you need and it doesn't get met, that is telling you you have to
put it back to stock. So, right now you say I don't want to do it. I get it. It's a pain. I don't know
how much work has been done on this, but that might tell you no one wants to buy this project.
You have to separate it back to a regular car that doesn't have paint, but at least have an
interior and shit. And then sell that and then sell the parts and then you're still going to lose
money. Yeah. So, that's a bummer. Yeah. It's a bummer. I, man, I don't know everyone's situation,
but I do not recommend taking your car apart and turning it into a project if you owe money on it.
That's a tough place to find yourself. I mean, if you're a business that does,
like if you're building a SEMA car, sure. No, that's not what we're talking about.
But as an individual, don't do that. That's hard. Yeah. That's hard. Let's save the rest.
It's been a good run. We'll save the rest for the next cruise show. Thank you to our patrons for
asking such great questions. We appreciate it. Thank you to everybody else for listening and
playing along. And we will see you guys next time. Bye.
About this episode
The Smoking Tire digs into the refreshed Aston Martin Vantage S, praising its refined balance—brakes, steering, gear changes, and overall “harmonious” feel—while noting quirks like restart behavior and tight legroom versus a 911. They compare it to the AMG GT and discuss why the Vantage’s long development finally makes it a sharper rival. Off-track, they talk Dream Cruise plans for Detroit, the Ford GT Mark IV’s 6:15 Nürburgring run, and the perils of selling an unfinished project car. Listener Q&A covers car swaps, 996 value, and even rear-collision tech.
Original notes
Matt Farah and Zack Klapman review the new Aston Martin Vantage S; would a rear collision avoidance system work; listing every hypercar Matt has driven; a special Ford GT just set a blistering Nurburgring record; why they're spending car week in Detroit this year; try to sort out the best car for the Woodward Dream Cruise; and answer Patreon questions including:
Will a Golf R replace my Audi S4 sadness?
What cars are better when they're worse?
How to sell a project car
Need a commuter for quarterly track days
Is $40k "worth it" for a 996?
Are hypercars serviced by mileage or time?
The 2026 Lexus IS refresh
Our thoughts on Rivian dating Uber
Dream show at the Vegas Sphere?
Where to test a car
General advice for people in their 20s
Do you need a car in Tuscany?
And more!
Recorded April 2, 2026
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The Smoking Tire
Zack Klapman, Matt Farah
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