What’s the Perfect 4 Car London Garage? | The Car Podcast #60

Hello and welcome to Slightly Bleary-eyed episode 60 of the car podcast with Chris

Hours and his friends. Last night we enjoyed a really enjoyable evening at the Bristol

Everyman for the 72nd premiere of Luca seeing Red. So that might be the last one we do,

you never know. But it was a really, really lovely evening in my hometown. I've woken

up very bleary-eyed, full of the cold. Everyone else had to drive for hours and got back at

three in the morning, two in the morning and the roads were closed. So if we're a bit slower

than usual, I do apologise. Let's kick things off with... Oh, a nice easy one to start with.

What did we do in cars this week? Let's start with Chris Cooper.

Can I, just before we start, can I just say we had a really lovely time last night. It was and

the film will come out hopefully a bit more. It was really, really good and the people at Bristol

were lovely. Chris's hometown, Bristol did the film and Mr. Harris proud. It was really, really lovely.

Episode 60 also represents the return of Finley as the producer. Brilliant. Thank fuck.

Mr. Harris, you are a god to us. I was talking... I was at Goodwood this week and I'll talk about

that in a minute because I had a lovely event there in these minis. He's gone. He's gone. Where's he

gone? He loves a bit of praise. He does love a bit of praise, doesn't he? I'll tell the rest of you.

What? I mean, there's an amputated camel. It's not amputated. It's sitting down in the desert.

Someone's cut the toes off. At the Goodwood thing at the weekend, all everyone could talk about was

that Max Verstappen film and how Mr. Harris was the guy that got Max, showed the world a different

version of Max. You're a short fella, you're a giant, but bugger me, you're a useless producer.

You did it twice and actually you got worse. Let me tell you now, Finley does a great job.

When you're trying to get this thing uploaded and it's about one in the morning and it starts doing

weird things in the edit and you press a button and you think, I can't undo that and then it

bins your latest edit and throws it in the bin and starts again and you think yourself,

you ask that famous man-mass question, what would I pay to never have to do this again?

And the number becomes quite large. Yes. It's your Finley. Something around. So Finley, yes,

I really do, but I've always recognized your skills. I never ever want to produce it, but

we put two podcasts out and the numbers were quite good. So, judged empirically, I can say to Chris

Cooper with my most caring hat on, fuck you. Very good. On Saturday, actually Friday and Saturday,

Cameron and I went to Goodwood for essentially a pre-66 mini festival of mini-ness. It was just

a lovely event. It was a swift tune, the people who do all those amazing mini racing things at

Goodwood and the engines and so forth. So, Nick Swift, Georgie, his daughter, his wife,

all of their gang, they generally put on a really, really lovely day. There was a track

day on Friday and a sprint, which I'd never done before, but Cameron did the driving because

he's faster than me. They did a sprint, which he did literally one lap of the circuit, just about

one lap. It was brilliant fun. It was really, it was good natured. It was well behaved. Everybody

enjoyed it. Lots of rock stars, all the famous people of race minis at Goodwood at the front and

sort of us somewhere. And it was really, and I tell you what it did. It reminded me that you

don't need to have the GT3 RS to enjoy a track. There you go. It's about without one. And you

don't need to have rear-wheel drive. You can have front-wheel drive. Those things in the...

rear-wheel drive cars, those things. In the drive, those things never point forwards. It's

extraordinary. They just literally, Cameron Wreckandy was flat all the way from basically

leaving the pits, just sort of going through no-name towards St. Mary's and going through no-name,

which is the last right before the left at St. Mary's. It's just, it's like a Scalect

Street's car that's come off its thing. They're brilliant. They're brilliant. So, it was,

we were lucky with the weather on Saturday. Goodwood was amazing. Goodwood looks really,

really lovely in the autumn. There were literally leaves all over the track. Some of the photography

is going to be great because these little, ditty little minis just fluttering through the leaves.

It was, it was a real feel-good thing. A lot of people turned up. It was a, it wasn't an advertised

event. It was free to get in. But about a thousand people or something turned up on Saturday. It was

extraordinary. Really, really a lot of love. A lot of love for the original little equal mini. And I,

and it just made me feel good about the world of cars and people and celebrating the simplest,

smallest, least powerful car racing thing. And it also reminded me, and I wanted to just to say

this, there's the Goodwood Marshals Club, which basically marshals all those wonderful events

everybody loves at Goodwood. They're having a charity track day in December. We'll put the link

up on, on YouTube and they're doing it in support of the Goodwood Education Trust and Race Against

Dementia. So, Jackie Stewart's amazing charity, which I know most people all around the world

know about. So, if you're in the UK in December, fourth and fifth of December, we'll put a link

on the website. Please go along to it. I might go along on the Friday just to sort of, you know,

help them rattle it in. But yeah, it was, I was really, I've been working really hard the last,

it feels like the last year. And just to have the Friday, half to Friday off, and the Saturday,

in the company of like-minded people, made me really happy. I loved it.

I love minis. And I tell you what, the challenge of driving one of these race minis around Goodwood

Fast is not to be underestimated. It's so rewarding. And I remember being in the paddock there a few

years ago, and I raced not the same weekend, but it might have been a member's meeting in a revival,

a mini in a one-mate race in a Porsche 911. And everyone was jealous of who drove in the Porsche

race. I'll tell you now, the minis are much more fun to drive than those short-wheel-boats 911s.

They feel underpowered, and they're vastly expensive, frankly. The minis are just heroically

fun. They're probably quicker in terms of lap time as well. And they are, when you just turn in,

and the front of the car darts, and you think, good God, that was fast, and the back end tries to

swap, literally trying to overtake you, and you just want to manage this oversteer,

Nick Swift is an absolute genius in these things. He's a magician to watch.

And it's British. I love it. It's a quirky little British car being lobbed around Goodwood.

It's a great thing. So, yeah, I was a bit jealous of that. In fact, I want a mini,

I want a mini of some sort. Next summer I'll come and try it. Neil's got a really cool,

actually Neil, this week, talk about your cars, but you've got a really cool mini in your shed

down south, which I was very jealous of. Go ahead, Neil.

I ticked a bucket list, which was really good, because we've got all these bucket list things,

and we never get round to them. I did the London to Brighton vintage car rally thing.

And for many, many years, because I'm a bit of a voyeur, I like to go to things but not be in them.

I like to be there but not there. It's a little bit. One of my many weirdo things. I'm always

nervous of actually being in it, but I like being there on the sidelines. But I was invited by the

lovely Harvey, Harvey R.M. Harvey, to join him with the owner called Philip in this beautiful

a car I've never heard of, a Moors 1902 French thing to do it. And it was absolutely pissing

with rain. I always go, I always, with often my friend Paul, or my friend Luke, or my friend Zade,

drag my son there, or even drag my wife there. I'm often there on the 615 on the November the

3rd to watch all the cars go out, because it's just a wonderful, wonderful thing,

oldest motoring event in the world, I think. But to do it is another level of excitement

and a nervousness. I'm always nervous if I'm in something. What's going to go wrong? I'm always

thinking of the bloody go wrong things. But Harvey arrived, even though I rang him at 620,

I'm like, mate, you hear, he's like, well, I'm actually still in bed. But I will be there in

nine minutes, which unbelievably was. Does he not know you? Yeah, no, I'm like, come on, it's,

you know, I know we're supposed to leave in an hour, but you really should be here now, just in case.

That will be late being on time. Yeah. I found Philip in section four, there's like a mile of

these cars. I'm always nervous, how am I going to find the man I'm going to get left behind.

But I found him, beautifully charming, lovely, wonderful man, who's done it 35 times in four

different cars. And then off we went. And it was so pleasurable. I wish I'd have sort of

the whole thing, you know, you're always like, shit, why didn't I bring a little

camera so I could film it? You go under the, is it the Wellington Arch? What's that big arch at

a Hyde Park corner, not Hyde Park corner, the other end? Admiralty Arch, wife shouting in the

background. Thank you. You go along the mall, you go round Nelson's column thing, whatever that is,

Fowler Square, you go down 10 Downing Street, well, obviously not down Downing Street, but that bit.

You go across Westminster Bridge, you see Big Ben, and you then have sort of 15 miles through sort

of London, absolutely pissing it down like, oh my God, if it's like this for the next six hours,

this is going to be interesting. Brixton, Stretum, you know, Perley, Croydon, and actually the sun

came out of Gatwick, which is sort of two and a half hours later. And actually,

that's the reason it's never been happened before. I was just about to say the same thing.

That's never my third album. The Sun came out of Gatwick. Yeah, I mean, what a shithole that place is.

As an add any cab expended it, so I was going there with Dan Eyre in 1977 to Benidorm, but we,

the amount of people that lie in the streets, the sort of joy on everyone's faces,

the camaraderie between cars, bikes, you know, there's about 20 blokes on Penny Farthings,

and actually they're in the lead. I saw that. I thought there was some sort of little motorizing

in them, but they were actually powered by this poor little person perched on the top.

They're the fastest. The Penny Farthing guys basically get there almost first,

because it's very difficult. We might talk about sat nav later, but when you have no idea,

particularly if you're doing it the first time, what time are you going to get there? Are you

going to get there at 11, 12, 1, 2? I had no clue. And we were probably top 10% when we arrived in

Brighton, and we arrived about half 12, quarter to 1. We left at 7.15. You know, it's quite a

long way when you're going 15 miles an hour. You have a lovely sort of pit stop at Crawley,

where they give you, sponsored by cars, the go-to people for moving cars around the world,

little sausage sandwich, bacon sandwich, cup of tea. It was just wonderful. And I would highly

recommend it. If you ever get offered, I think it's a it's a life thing, isn't it? If you get

offered something, do it. Could we get, could we ask the nice people who listen to this? You have

the lovely cars. Don't be offended, but if somebody has a Penny Farthing, they'd like me to ride.

No, thank you. I'd love to do that. But steam-powered motorbikes, for fuck's sake,

who knew that existed? I was going to say, what was yours powered by? Was yours powered by coal,

or... This is obviously where my very thin knowledge of mainly, of most things,

but it was a four-cylinder, normal, petrol car. And actually quite talky. You felt like you were

sort of cracking along, be it that you're going at sort of 17 miles an hour, but you're overtaking

a lot of cars. But there's, you know, there's a, who would have thought there was electric cars in

1900? You imagine at the time when they said, you know what, those electric cars are good,

but we've worked out that there's this liquid that you put into a car, and you can actually,

you don't actually have to charge it up because you just fill it up with liquid, and off it goes

again. It's an amazing invention. The steam, there was, you know, coal-powered cars with fire in them,

driving along. I mean, the whole... People was a bloke on the back, on the foot plate.

Yeah, just, you know, keeping the coal going. I mean, just a great event. I'm very appreciative of

Harvey, RM, the RAC Club, Philip. And it's one of those things a bit like, you know, when Chris,

Mr. Harris introduced me to the TT, and you're like, shit, I've actually got to do that now for

the rest of my life because that is a very special thing. I can't actually miss that now. That's a

thing in my calendar. That was one question. Yes. Are you now keen to buy one of those types of

vehicles? Harvey with the sharpest pencil in the box when it comes to trying to wind a car into people.

He's just slightly ahead of Matthew Beard. He was like, well, we should buy one now, Neil,

shouldn't we? You know, let's go half way. You know, it's 25 grand each. We can, you know,

you haven't got to buy these expensive because some of them are like, I don't know, 500 grand,

million quid. They look exactly the, the five million quid one looks exactly the same as the

30 grand one. And you've, you know, this is, this was Mercedes before it was Mercedes. It's a singer

or a Simcar. And, you know, you've no idea what these things, I've got no knowledge of sort of

pre-1930 parts whatsoever. But I would, it's just great. And thank you. And I really enjoyed it.

And I'm going to do it again. I'm jealous. I want to do it. We should all do it. If you want to do

it right in the comments, you four should do it in a car. Manage, what have you done in cars this

week? That just has given me a little idea, because do you remember the film Genevieve,

which was about the London to Brighton race? It was made in the 60s. Gorgeous movie. Very,

very. Do you think we could do an occasional, an occasional Chris Harrison Friends movie night?

Because I bet you we can talk to the every man and have a racing movie with our, with our chums.

If there's a full sequel to cinema, I think that's possible.

Yeah. No one else would want to come, man. It should just be us.

Oh, come on. Can we, I'd love to see Le Mans. I've never seen Le Mans on a big screen. Have you?

Yeah, I think it was a good idea actually.

On a big screen. Genevieve on a big, just something that's vaguely, I'd love to see,

what was it? Is it not the mechanic? What's the, the one, the getaway driver with Ryan O'Neill?

The driver. Oh no. That one. Yeah.

Yeah. That one too. I'm just saying it. Don't you think that would be a lot of fun actually?

Yeah. What did you do in cars this week, Manish?

Okay. So Mr. Harris is a very, very happy, very emotional moment, gave me a call and said,

RM are going to be auctioning in a sealed bid, Senors McLaren MP46, the one that won the Brazilian

Grand Prix in 1991. It was a centerpiece in the movie. I remember watching it as a medical student

and not having the time to cry my eyes out because at that time the BBC used to start a

Grand Prix about 10 minutes before and finish a Grand Prix about a minute afterwards and the

race was running a little bit late. And I have to say, Chris said, look, you and I will just

introduce the car. We'll talk about it for about half an hour after they take the cover off. So

off we went to the very ritzy name, forgotten the name of the hotel, the peninsula to the very

ritzy peninsula. Champagne was flowing. I felt on top form until they took the cover away and

then I could almost not speak. I've never, ever, ever been here with a motion like that. Well,

just once when they unveiled Lola at a Rourke's when they took dramatically took the cover off,

and I thought, oh my God, that's my car. It's really weird being dumbstruck by an inanimate

object because you're not really being dumbstruck by an inanimate object. That object is animate.

That's as close as I have been to my absolute hero. You know, I just just the closest I've

ever been to the greatest moment in my opinion of his life. And I know I'd said it that evening,

for Senna, there were two really important cars. The one he won his world championship in,

the MP4-4 from 1988, where when he, he passed the start finish line at Suzuka, he sort of he

had an experience where he felt God. That's what he said. He felt, you know, he saw God. And the,

the other one was winning in Brazil. And the second of the two was for me, just almost more,

it was almost more incredible because it took three years longer. The number of times Senna

got close to winning in Brazil and crashed or lost this gear or did that. And the heroism

with which he kept it together, he basically started to lose gears and he drove the last,

he had gearbox problems for the last seven laps. He drove the last two laps holding the car in sixth.

It's a manual gearbox car with a V12 engine and he's holding it with his right hand. It was brilliant

because Chris put his head in the car and it managed. That's a proper sort of age box because

Chris thought it might have been a sequential box. It's not. It's not at all.

But you know, there are places that that's our parallel track, right? Beco de Pato. There are

a few corners there where honestly, you could almost stall it in third. How he did not stall

that car on those and Petrazi was coming at him five seconds a lap. I mean, Senna won the race by

2.99 seconds. I remember that and literally he stopped and Petrazi goes boom, straight past him.

It was incredible. That evening, sorry. Is that the race where he's waving the flag and he's

completely exhausted and he's on the, it's that one. Yeah, he can't lift it. He can't lift the trophy.

Anyone touches him. He's in so much pain and you know, I think an RM did such a,

I thought they did such a good job because they had the film playing in the background.

We then had a terrific dinner and I did that really. I was exhausted and somebody said,

oh, come up to the eighth floor for a quick drink. Well, I don't think those guys do quick

drinks, do they? There was sort of, you know, Dom Perignon taps. I think I rolled home at two

o'clock in the morning, but honestly, it was one of the best evenings of my life. I mean,

I touched its wheels. I sat on its front wheel and I just became a little 12 year old fan boy,

is what happened. I didn't realise it was a V12. It's honestly, it's the last V12 that

ever won a world championship. V12 manual. V12 manual. Yeah. I mean, and it's, it's really

beautiful. 540 kilos, right? Towards the end of the season, it was developing 720 horsepower,

so it had a higher power to weight ratio than a modern Formula One car, no electronics,

very simple aero by comparison. I mean, it's a bloke's car that one. Yeah, he is.

Go and watch some stuff on YouTube. It sounds angry that car.

Is that the car that, there's that famous interview, isn't there, with Mr. Honda

about that time? It might have been that car where he's interviewed by somebody in a very earnest

fashion to say, it's amazing, the tradition of Honda and horsepower and from the 60s and where

you are now, you've developed this extraordinary engine. What is the secret of your amazing engine?

And Mr. Honda sort of pauses for a minute and then sort of leans into the microphone and says,

horsepower.

I just love that.

Love it.

Neil Clifford. I've done it. Oh, you have, you've done it under writing. So I was,

you know, I'm going to list what I've done this week. I'm not going to expand on it because I can't

really. So I was at the event with Manish, which was humbling to say the least. We're quite good

at wrapping off each other. When the covers came off, we just stood there, went, don't need to

talk about this really, we'll just all stand and look at it. There was silence in the room. It's

an object of some presence and beauty. When the covers came off, we just stood there and went,

jibber, jibber, jibber, jibber. Manish was eloquent as ever. But for me, it was just noise. I'm afraid

Manish, you told stories that were on point, were relevant and people didn't know, but I was just

looking at this object of thinking. A human being made that, or several human beings, that's

remarkable. If an alien species arrived and I was asked to present to them an object that

demonstrated how clever we were as a species, I might give them that. It's just real presence,

so simple as well, just a simple shape designed to penetrate the air and go around the track as

fast as possible. The steering wheel had five buttons on it, red, yellow, green,

blue, and then there was a little speaker button, that was it. That was the steering wheel.

I had to leave early and then I had to get to Spain. In the space of, I think, 14 hours,

I stood next to Cedars Brazil winning McLaren MP4-6, then sitting in the driver's seat of

McLaren's chassis number 28 McLaren Longtail F1 GTR. I've had a bit of a McLaren week,

so all of you are working. Thank you very much for making these cars because you do have a legacy

that sometimes lives in the shadows of that particular Italian manufacturer, but we must

never forget that McLaren is our Ferrari. We don't spend enough time celebrating them, I think.

Absolutely remarkable vehicles. I've driven a bullied, Bugatti bullied videos to come,

opinions to come. I nearly broke my neck it so fast. An LMP2 car, a Carrera GT, a GT1

category Porsche from the late 90s that I never knew existed. I've had one of those weeks that I

can't really get my head around, so thank you to Clousen who invited me to drive these cars.

Lots of videos coming. It's just been absolutely remarkable, but the F1 GTR, the noise that car

makes is very, very difficult to explain. Very difficult to explain, I have to say, just magnificent.

Great colours on that car as well. Talking of McLaren, it's interesting, isn't it,

how the thread of McLaren has become so much more vibrant, particularly given their current

success. On Saturday at Goodwood, I bumped into, again, the lovely Piers, who is the chief operating

officer of McLaren Racing, is a lovely chap. He's got a historic Mini as well. He's an engineer,

that man. He's got a 366 Mini, and he was racing as well. He had great fun. He's a lovely chap,

so he runs the factory. He makes the whole organisation work, including trying to win this

year, constructors which they've done, well done, the drivers, and run everything to make sure they

got a car that works next year. Then in the middle of the season, between two Grand Prix weekend,

he said, oh, go down to Goodwood. I mean, there's just amazing people, so it was lovely. Well done,

Piers, for getting your car out and going very, very well. It was great to see.

We were down at the Ascari circuit, which I first went to four or five, I think.

I have to say, there's something about being in a sunny climate in early November, in racing cars,

or nice road cars, that makes you think, I could do some sun in my life. I think we're better with

a bit of vitamin D. I do. Yeah. It was a sensational few days. I also drove my intergarly back from

GP classic customers who did that incredible interior. I mean, what a machine that is. Videos

to come on that. Why have I not had a proper intergarly before now? That car is sensational.

Getting the old agenda up here. Four car London Muse garage.

Where to begin? I'm going to go to Manish here because he's our most metropolitan member,

so he'll understand the requirements of the four car London Muse garage.

I read this. I thought this was just one of the most beautiful topics. I think we've had

in a very, very long time. London Muse is a magical thing. It's something you stumble upon.

You don't know about these. You think you've lived in this area. You think you know where the

sweet shop is and where your waitrose is, and you take a corner one day and you get this,

a muse there, and then you look down and there's just a vista of closed garages. Occasionally,

the odd plant's standing outside. You wonder what is behind those doors. People have a drawing room

and a garage at the same level. That's what a London Muse is. Whenever I see one, and they're

possibly narrow, and I think these things start to define what could possibly live

behind those doors. The other thing about London Muse is that many of them are actually workshops.

There are people in there with fixing cars or cleaning cars or storing cars or rebuilding cars.

I think that when I look, there are a couple of muses around the corner from where I live.

When I look down them, I never imagine a new car. I can't possibly imagine a new car. It's an old

car. I think there's something about the scale of it which probably says it can't be too big a car.

Now, I might be partially wrong because even the old Bentley's, that there were some in these great

muses, but I think they're small. I think they're period. I think they don't have to be cue cars,

but I think there's something about London Muse cars. I don't think they're necessarily that showy.

I just think the very act of opening the garage and just seeing these headlights. That's the other

thing about London Muse. You have to be able to reverse park. London Muse cars do not work

forward parking. I don't think I could own a London Muse because I really find reversing very

difficult. I just wasn't born that far. We can teach you. I would love that. I'd like a day of

doing this. Here are my four. Firstly, they have to be British. I don't think they do have to be

British, but they have to be cool. They have to be completely cool. You're basically Batman, aren't

you? You just go into your London Muse in your suit. When you come out, you're in a car with

your driving gloves and your leather hat and your goggles. These are my four. It's got to be an

early, 64, 63, 64 Lotus Elan in mustard yellow. It has to be small and light and

pop up headlights, the whole thing. I think you have to have a Mini Cooper. I just think you

have to. In period Mini Cooper. Then there's something that I'm a bit in love with. It's not

British, but I would have an R107 450 SL, deep green, black leather, pointing forwards.

My last one, I think you do have to go Italian. I think it has to be an Alfa Romeo Giulia

with some extra little fog lamps on the front in red, say 69 facing forwards. That is my London

Muse. Something for everything. This just makes me want a London Muse property, because actually,

the way you describe that, so beautifully managed, they were properties made for car

nerds, weren't they? They were made for us. They should be our dream properties.

It's the property within which the car is given equal status to the human being.

Which is odd, really, given they're all in London. I know, mad. Okay, so let's go to Chris Cooper.

Well, I've got five, obviously. The outlier. I just think you'd have an i3 BMW.

Good shout. I think you'd have an i3 BMW. So that's kind of like, you know, that probably

wouldn't be in the Muse. That's one part outside the Muse. Basically, yeah, exactly.

Because it's small. It's not. Manages absolutely hit on the theme here. There's something about

footprint. So obviously, most of my cars don't fit that criteria. Some of them do.

I think you'd have. I think I'd have. It becomes quite personalist, doesn't it?

And you sort of get a bit nostalgic about the cars when we first grew up. I mean,

I grew up as a rural simpleton. I still am a rural simpleton before you all chime in.

So the idea of London when I was growing up was very, very,

in the days before the M25, or indeed, colour television,

trips to London were really, really exciting. My family then, we lived in the little village

called, I've mentioned this before, Pluckley in Kent. And we'd quite often drive England's most

haunted village. Still, people, I was in Pluckley earlier this year, and people still talked about

the ghosts, seven official ghosts. So trips to London were really exciting. And we quite often

drive up in my mum's Fiat 126, my dad and my brother and I, in this Fiat 126. And we'd be driving

to Heathrow Airport all the way through London to Plainspot, basically. Fiat 126. We had a Fiat

126, it should have been late 70s, early 80s. Yeah. Fiat 126. Red one. To Heathrow, to Heathrow,

to go Plainspotting. That's pre-M25. Oh yeah, absolutely pre-M25, yeah. So you drive all

through London, and you'd get through to sort of towards, and we'd see, you see glimpses of these

streets, the cobbled streets, that lovely sort of sweep as the cobbles sort of went and thinking.

One of those? Yes. Yeah. Wow. I put that in a ditch in a snowy day once, because I realised that

you could overcome understeer by doing a clutch dip. But I hadn't realised quite what a brutal

dynamic effect a clutch dip would be in a rear wheel drive, rear engine, rear wheel drive car

with a swing axle. The dynamic effect is instant. So it luckily didn't go on its roof,

but it did end up in a ditch. We had to get it. Anyway, that's the story of another time.

So the first car I'd have, I'd have a Kingsley Carr's modified Range Rover Classic.

Two door. I think two door. Okay. I think two door. The Suffolk car.

So there's a picture, there's a clip that Chris, you shared with us a few weeks ago.

I just think there, I drive up that road past Whitney, and I must, I must pop in and go and

have a look at it. I can't afford them, but I just think they'd be lovely. Honestly,

they're, you know, I love that stuff, but they are geniuses. These are so desirable. Carry on, Chris,

sorry. Yeah. There has to be one of these. I'd have a K7. Of course. I just think on a Sunday morning,

in period, you could just go, if you're going to have a K7, have a silly one. So I'd have an

R500 Evo, the K series engine car with 230 horsepower. Chris, I can see you being Patrick

McGuinn from the prisoner in that. Come out of your news house in a suit, you drive down white,

just cool. That's just cool. I'm a free man. On a Sunday morning. They're always 30 grand. There's

starting, they're getting harder to find now. I must ask Andy Noble, who used to be the sales

marketing. He runs that wonderful place, Sevens and Classics, in the Paddock brand's hatch.

I must do, otherwise I'll never do it. I would have a non, there's got to be something

just extraordinary. And I think it would be a 458 or Perta. Because it's still that slightly

smaller footprint. It's the last Luka car. We could do a premiere of your film, Manage,

every week. And I think we'd enjoy it more. Last night, because it's about the third one,

I think you fourth, the third one you guys don't. Neil and I have done. And the idea was we'd go

and those guys, we all introduced it, we thought we're going to have a bite to eat. So we stood at

the side of the cinema, the auditorium, which is lovely, every man in Bristol, just at the steps

at the side. And we just, we just stood there, watching it. And it's like, oh, shit, we're

supposed to get something to eat. I mean, like watch the third of the film. So we had a very,

very quick, lovely meal in the restaurant across the road. 458 or Perta just feels more and more

right. The last one, that Bentley event that I very fortunate was invited to at the Duke of

London the other, the other month, last month was Joe and the juice. Bentley brought along some of

their recent heritage cards. And they had the very last as your tea. I just dribbled at that.

What color? What color was that? That's really embarrassing. I think it was silver.

Silver with a red roof, I think it was. So those are the four stroke five, I would have.

They're lovely. I could just, can we just do this question every week? I really like this one.

I'm going full on, full on fucking billionaire strategy here. I'm not messing about with his

69 alphas for 25 grand. See, I thought about that. Let's hear yours. This is an interesting theory.

Yes. This is basically the ticking clock in my body, this question. This has been a question

for me, obviously not muse and all that, but what would you do scenarios with budgets scenarios of

cars from age five? Forget counting fucking sheep to get to sleep. This is what I do.

And in 1975, what would have been seven or eight? And you've got the torch under your duvet with

top trumps and you're pretending you're in bed or sleep. It was, I don't know, 50,000 pounds.

What would you do? So I'm really well versed at this shit. I could do one every single week.

I'm lucky enough to know a few people that sort of live this life. And it's a really,

really good life having a muse house in London with four cars with an electric lift that goes down

to a basement. We should all work harder because it's fucking really cool. So what would I do?

I would have, you've got to have one pretty car. I think Manish is right about the vintage thing,

although I'm not doing all vintage. You've got to have one of those cars that is loved by men and

women. And they often, that's a bit rarer than you think that because you know, men can go, oh my

God, look, he's got a LaFerrari. And I think often women who are more discerning and more sort of

better at judging human beings, he's a bit of a tosser with the LaFerrari. So I think you've

got to be really careful. The cars that win that, for me, 356, Priet, Speedster,

just the most gorgeous little Swiss watch car, not a bad angle in it. Super chic. You know,

you've got the whole sort of Steve McQueen thing going on there, or 300 SL Roadster with hardtop.

You could go Goldwing, but frankly, Goldwings, A, you probably can't lift the doors up in the

bloody muse. But also, unless it's 18 degrees, you're too hot in the bloody thing and it's a pain

in the ass. So you go Goldwing with non matching color hardtop. So it's a gunmetal Roadster with

hardtop, green leather. Then you've got to have a Ferrari.

F40. It's such an hour debate with Ferrari, right? But I was going to go LaF, but my fourth car will

mean I don't need a LaF. So I'm going F40 because it's just as iconic as they come,

lifting up an electric door on a little spring morning, just as sunrise coming up,

and there's a LaF. There's a F40 there. You probably can't beat that. You've got to have

a McLaren F1. If you're worth a couple of billion quid, you're just an embarrassment if you haven't

got a McLaren F1. Clearly. There's a dude that's got seven of these. It lives in that world. So

one's enough for me, one's enough, probably chic silver, not the race car. You just have the

road car, whatever it's called, the GTR, whatever. Or maybe it's not called a GTR. Maybe that's the

race car. I'm never sure. It's F1. Yeah, F1. And then as Chris Cooper said, you've got to have

five because you've got a Range Rover outside to get you down to your house on the countryside.

I would, I can't even decide this one. Am I doing a 959S with one mirror?

Right. Red, white wheels. Am I doing Singer DLS?

But I'm not, not actually. I'm doing 918. I'm doing because the electric, driving out of a

muse in electric mode, in a 918, you've found a PTS one in Germany. It's Brewster with chocolate,

or it's, you know, non-metallics, whatever that Sea Island bloody blue is, or whatever,

with red leather. You've found a very, very unique 918 and the electricness of 918.

And then as you get up onto the Edgeware Road, you turn on the engine and off you go up to

Bista for a coffee or something. So this is my forget books. This is my dreaming, this stuff.

I could, I just do this every single day of my life still.

Yeah, I agree. There's so much within this. So I want to be disciplined and keep the four cars.

And already I'm there going right. One of these cars got to double up. It's got to do two things.

So if you, if you, if you actually were living like this, you might have to end up having two new

cars, which you don't want to do because you need one car to drive around town in,

and you need one car to strike out when you leave town. And having the, having the same vehicle do

that would be difficult because to take Chris Cooper's example, the I, I believe a BMW i3 would

be brilliant, but I don't want to drive that out to my place in the Cotswolds. So do you have to,

do you have a storage unit somewhere near Heathrow when you get out of town and the moment you've

got out the M25 around there, you could stop, dump that little thing and go, well that was fine,

but I don't want to drive all the way to the Cotswolds. No, you're not going to do that.

No. So you've got to have one car does both. And I already own it. It's an Alpina D3.

And it's small enough to park in the Muse. It's Euro six compliant, ULES compliant.

And it's, it'll be nice round town. It looks good, but also when you have to get out beyond the M25,

it's doing 45 to the gallon. It's fast. So Alpina D3. Then, then you'll just,

we all have a different version of how we imagine ourselves in the Muse property.

But this, I just cannot extinguish images of Peter Sellers in my, I just see Peter Sellers

on a Sunday morning, opening the doors, driving out. And I see cobblestones and I see

white doors that creak a bit and a bit of paint flecks sort of flecks off them when they, when

they open. I love the imagery. I love, manage the description of, you don't know that they

stumble across these places. It's, he's quite right. So it's going to be more old than you.

I would say Alpina D3. I'm going to go and duplicate Chris Cooper. I think a Kateram

is perfect. These, they're narrow little places. These, they're not easy to drive cars in. And if

you want to maneuver a car anywhere near it, you're not going to. So Kateram, absolutely.

I want something, I want something British. I want to celebrate

British sports cars. And I think that a Kateram. And I wouldn't go for an R500 because they're

a bit of a nightmare in traffic. And they bloody, they, I had an R500 EVO once, which I own, and

they used to overheat a bit. So I'd actually just go for what we call the original Superlight R with

the six-speed gearbox. It was the sort of hottest K on the scene. Yeah. Brilliant, brilliant.

You need one. Yeah. And also, you know, the weight begins with a four if you get those right.

They're just stunning. I need, I need to feed that cliche door opening sellers moment.

I'm going to go Gordon Keeble, I think. Just love the idea of, you know, it's difficult. You don't

want to look like the person that's thought about what cars are having your muse garage,

you know, even though you've spent four months doing it, you mustn't look like you've overthought

it. So for me, I think Gordon Keeble would be, would be perfection. Made in, made in Eastley.

Yeah. And the last, the last one isn't a car. It's a, a Priya Tuono, because again, spaces are

premium and the motorcycle is the way forward around town. I don't want a sports bike because

I don't want to be, I'm too old and fat to have my wrist, wrist getting knackered by a full-on

sports bike. But the Tuono is just, I think you get a factory with the fancy bits on it.

It is the greatest road bike for me. So I just have a Tuono, which I'd probably spend 90% of the

time using over the cars. But do you know what? If I want the lottery, I would, that's, I don't

like, people don't know me now. I don't like property. We have no interest in it whatsoever.

But I would love to live in one of those places. I just, the idea of walking without going up or

downstairs in London to go to your car, it's the property that prioritizes the motor car.

It's, they just made for us, aren't they? Yeah. Do you think we could find a street, a muse,

that's got four houses with four car garages in it? I'll stop, I'll stop you there.

One of us would murder someone else at some point. We need some distance. But yes, I do,

I understand the concept. Yeah. We could then share our toys. I'm thinking 16 cars. That's a pool,

isn't it? Yeah, it is a pool. Okay. Here's a question for you very quickly. You have that scenario,

that living scenario. You have to choose one car from your, your, your fellow podcast's lists

to use. Manage which one are you having? Not one of yours.

I'll take that four, five, eight, a pair of that.

And Neil Clifford.

Fuck. I just like mine.

No, that's not the question. They're my toys. They're just my choice. Caterham. Yeah. Super

McLean F1. Drive back. I'm taking your chili super because that is,

that's, that's Peter Sellers. I'd imagine I was driving around to see Spike Milligan to say

wibble at each other for 10 minutes and then leave. I, I love all that. Okay.

We should do this once a month. That was never ending.

I'm going to skip the next thing on the agenda and move to one on because I think

we're going to run out of time. So I'm going to go straight to sat nav.

How did we survive before it? It's a brilliant question. It's a brilliant question because

yes, two days ago I was leading Bristol and I, I realized five minutes into slightly

calamitous journey that everyone that I was following was doing the same thing as me.

We were all following our phones. I was driving through a city that I know like the back of my

hand because it was easy and I just put a destination in. I was like a sheep being led.

And we were all doing that. There were 10 cars doing the same random thing.

To observe, it must be quite odd to see. I'm going to go to Chris Cooper here.

Well, this is all about Sputnik really, isn't it?

And the origins of the global positioning system GPS.

When Sputnik first, 1957, some American scientists worked out that using the Doppler effect,

we want the Doppler effect is, you know, when a police car goes past and the tone changes

is because the sound waves compress or expand. Not the modern urban phenomena of whoop whoop,

it's the sound of the police. No, that's a different effect. That's just me being down with it.

So they worked out that you could work out from a satellite where it was. In the 60s and 70s,

there were radio navigation systems used, mainly for maritime and some aviation positioning.

I used to do lots of yacht racing in the 80s. And in Europe, there's a system called DECA,

which was you could take positions from fixed radio stations as a U.S. system,

where it's all called Loran. They were a bit limited in range, got too far from the coast,

blah, blah, blah. And when the Cold War became sort of hotter and intercontinental missiles

started becoming popular. Talking about sat nav. I'm talking about sat nav. This is Chris Cooper

explain sat nav. I love it. I fucking love you. So they decided that they had to have a more,

because there were inertial navigation systems. Aviation, long distance aviation used a gyro.

Gyro is the same principle as a motorcycle wheel going, you know, when motorcycles are going

very, very fast, that's why the ride standard, because the effect, the dynamic effect of a

wheel rotating very, very fast creates massive stability. So when you put that in an aircraft,

as the aircraft moves physically, it creates a pressure against the gyro. So if you measure

those movements, you can work out where you've been going. It's a sophisticated form of what's

called dead reckoning. Dead reckoning was the film, the Mission Impossible film. Dead reckoning,

which I used to use when I was sailing across oceans is, if you know where you're pointing

and how fast you've gone and how long, you can literally point pops on a map from the

one side of Atlantic to the other and roughly end up where you think you're going to get to. And

GPS was much more important than we wanted to find missiles at Moscow. So the US basically

developed it, but they realized that it had a significant strategic effect. So they put a code

on it. It was basically selective availability. So they desensitized the accuracy of GPS until

about the 90s. And in fact, the event that changed all this, you remember then the 80s and the

horrible height of the Cold War, and there's a lot of tension all around the world, very, very

tragically, a Korean Airlines jumbo was shot down in Asia because the airliner had got lost.

It had probably been using dead reckoning or a bit of inertial navigation, blah, blah, blah.

Didn't get lost. They said in the investigation that one of the big things about Korean airline

was to use as little fuel as possible. And they said that the captain had plotted a route to try

to just, you know, they were always, it was a big badge of honor. So the captain plotted a route,

which was actually just a little bit too close to somewhere he shouldn't have been. That's why it

got shot down. Okay. So when that happened, there was a fuss about its precise location.

So Ronald Reagan, as president said, we're going to make GPS more commonly available. We're going

to eliminate. So from civilian use going from like 200 meters accuracy, it went to like a meter

actually, that opened the door to commercially consumer available satellite accurate GPS satnav

cars was born. And I don't, I honestly don't know how we cope before we had maps. We knew

there's a map. You had it in your hand. And North was at the top of the map. I've now started using

carplay. I joined the human race. And one of the things about carplay that I do still find slightly,

I hate myself for it. I let the map orientate to the direction of travel. So you don't know

where North is. And I do think we've lost something in the ability of people and our sense of

responsibility and ownership of our own fortunes. That's a big statement for a little piece of

technology on your iPhone, but not knowing in a car where North is. I remember asking, I was

meeting somebody in London years ago, and they were driving down the A4. And I wasn't quite sure

which way they were going. So I said, on the map in your little screen in your car, which way are

you going across the screen? Are you going from left to right? Are you going east? Or are you

going right to left? Are you going west? I said, no, I'm just going from the bottom to the top.

And I thought, no, I know somebody who's orientated their map. So it's not facing North. They're dead

to me.

Can you imagine sitting down at a business meeting and saying, which way is North, please?

North is always up top of that. So I'm torn on this because for lots of good reasons,

sat nav has improved the world. And yesterday I had to go, I drove from here in the office up to

Banbury. And then I had to drive somewhere between there and Swindon. And I went to Swindon to try

and see Matthew Booty wasn't there. And then I drove from there to Bristol. I had to navigate

all three Bristol to cut things in Bristol. And I had carplay on and it was brilliant.

It was really, really good. But I still hate myself that there's now no longer an AA road

atlas 2007 or whatever it is, stuffed behind the seat or between the seat in the center console.

And those times when we were younger and, you know, we were, I'm going to use a word that my

parents would have used, courting, the young needed. And you were trying to find a cottage

in the middle of nowhere in Devon or on Xmore or something. And it was dark and you just had a map.

And it was fun getting lost and finding a junction and thinking about that. And I don't

think we've lost a little bit of magic, but you probably would find the cottage on Xmore now

rather more quickly. And I was going to say, get the fire stoked, but that sounds like a

dooble on tonder. At which point I'll hand over to somebody else. That was wonderful, Mr Cooper.

I fell on recording that you can go do that the other bit of French under the title I digress.

So Neil Clifford, how do we live without it?

Oh, I've got such a rotic horror here because it's so bloody useful, isn't it? But I so hate it.

It's like a really, it's really tricky because I try sometimes, it's an addiction.

Forget sugar or coffee or alcohol or cocaine. I mean, sat nav. No, but it's almost up there,

isn't it? Because you just you, you know, I leave, I leave home before anyone else.

And there's no traffic on the road. I know exactly the way I have to go. But I put the sat nav on.

I wouldn't, I would, I would feel a bit nervous if I didn't. And I think that

it's true. It's a bit like, I don't know, the addiction of social media or the addiction of

many things. I think it's created by the sat nav companies or the phone companies, I'm sure,

as an addiction. It gives you an anxiety if you don't use it. And every single, every single day,

I put, you know, Salvino, and, and it's, you know, I leave at 522. And I get there at 610.

And it's exactly the fucking same every day. But I put the sat nav down. And I sometimes

force myself not to do it. And I'm, I'm a little bit anxious of what if the M 25 is closed,

the one in 100 time where I haven't used the sat nav and the M 20 and I'm trapped.

So it is a safety net, but I'm, I'm, I'm annoyed by it as well. I try to out, out do it. I try to

cheat it sometimes. I tried to test particularly ways. When I deliberately know there's another

route, and it will turn me to join the M 25 from the A 41 and go around to Johnson six and down

the M one. And I'm like, you bastard, I bet you're lying to me. I want to go through Watford.

I want to go down to junction five. And I'm going to look at the time. And it says, it sometimes

says from 622 to Salvino, it changes to 618. And I'm like, you bastard, you were lying to me.

Someone is deliberately taking me the wrong way, because for whatever reason, to use more fuel,

is it funded by the petrol companies secretly, so they can make more money? Or is there some

advertising they want to drive me? I get all these sort of

bad thoughts about maybe sat nav is controlling us. So it's a big, it's a big thing in my head,

this. But of course, if you are finding the Cornwall Cottage, or last night when the bloody

A 361 was closed, and I was so dead, I drank two cans of Red Bull, and I still ran out of

puff. I had to get my wife to drive the last hour, bless her. And frankly, she should be in the RAC

rally. She's bloody much better driver than I am. We had to go right across X more, we would have

been a bit fucked without. So it's a really, really tricky one. But I think there is some sort

of, it's slightly sinister. And we should try to, once a week, don't use sat nav. But maybe,

if everyone didn't use sat nav, maybe the rows would be a little bit less clogged up, as opposed

to every fucker going the same way. I do think that that is you've hit on something that I've

just realized I do as well. I know where I'm going, but I want to know that it's okay. And what the

ETA is, you play the games to say, can I get the ETA down a bit? Up a bit? If I go that way?

Oh, I love that game. It's actually something to do in the car, isn't it? Because you've run out,

sometimes if they want to listen to music, sometimes on board with the fucking miserable news on

Radio 4. I just play with myself. That's probably not what we want to say. I play with my sat nav.

I play with the little time thing, which, of course, you have to keep within the speed limit.

But it says 6.22, and I arrived at 6.19. I won. I like that little game.

Manish.

I have no sense of direction. I mean, I literally have no sense of direction. And it's just,

it's not been correctable. I can live somewhere for years, go away for six months, come back,

and cannot find any roads that I used to have. I remember actually, when I was at university,

if we went out of college, I had this friend, he's now an eye surgeon, and we used to go to

lectures every morning together. The first four weeks, you came out of college, and we just

turn left and you end up at the medical faculty. The first time I didn't go to lectures with Rick,

I turned right and ended up in the economics faculty.

There's no call for that.

It took me, the thing is, I almost had to walk into an economics lecture to realise how wrong

I got it. Like no dead bodies, no pictures of livers, you know, just graphs everywhere and a

bunch of proto bankers, as far as I could see. Anyway, the point is, I could not drive before

the sat-nav. It was just, it was actually quite, you'd go on the road, the amount of OCD, road

sign checking disorder. What I would do is, you'd have to get your A to Z out before you went.

I'd work out pretty much where I was going and then write. I would literally write down

the road and blue-tack it to the to the dashboard. You'd go, you must take a left there. Someone I

knew actually used to record the directions on a TDK SA-90 tape. Go down there and try to almost

time it. Go for one minute. Play it. Yeah, they'd play it. Brilliant. You used to be able to go to

the AA if you're doing a long journey. They'd print you out the directions. Do you remember

that? There was a man that would do it for you. They still sort of have it on their website. They

still have the automatic version of that, the root finder. We can print it out like paste notes.

Manish, you've just come up with the most important piece of consumer advice I think

we've ever provided on this podcast. You sat-nav, otherwise you too might end up in an economics

lecture. The thing about modern sat-nav, as you say, it is very compelling. You can go on a journey

that you know forwards and backwards, but you feel compelled to put it in there. You are looking at

it, whether you like it or not. That's the other thing it does. You're looking at it. When I picked

up Lola, they were shocked to see because she had such a deep dashboard. The one thing I bought

was an iPhone holder on a very, very long arm. It's a one foot arm. Sticks to the dashboard

comes out. My iPhone sits in there and I had to have an extra USB built in it so that the phone

wouldn't run out of power when I'm using it as a sat-nav. I would put in fact petrol and sat-nav,

but perhaps not even in that order in terms of importance of driving. I mean, it's just so

scary. If you'd asked me, honestly, to frankly find the every man at Bristol yesterday without a

sat-nav, it's an impossibility. It's very true, but it's an addiction and we need to try and shake

it off when we know where we're going. That's a really good question. The worst thing is you're

driving and you do know a route and you've got your sat-nav and it says, suggested route 1.4

seconds faster if you turn left here. Last night, I was going into Bristol and it said,

oh, there's ways, I think. Oh, a new route that will save you seven minutes so you click on it

and the fucking time doesn't change. It's tricking you. Yeah. Lying. Lying. Yes, it's lying.

Rage against the machine. You three have completed this task so well. I don't have much to add

I agree with all of your points and it feeds my sense of worry, concern. I suppose the sat-nav to

journeys and I use the word journey in a really positive sense because it's every journey is an

adventure, really. It has done to journeys what the microwave did to cooking in the 80s, really.

It's made us all be ashamed of our addiction to convenience and that you wish you were a person

that wasn't seduced by such convenience and that you could resist it but the fact is it's difficult

to resist something that's really quite useful. Sat-nav, when it first was launched, all test

cars that had sat-nav, I didn't use it because it was always shit. It never quite worked,

it frustrated you. They were trying to sell it and up-push it in their markets because it would

make you so much money for them but it was rubbish. It was only really when you had this

universal standard of Apple CarPlay that I think it became good. Before, I mean, do you remember

the Tom Tom? How good the Tom Tom was? I like a Tom Tom. They were really, really good Tom Tom's

and I think you used it as a tricky one. It was an option the Tom Tom though, wasn't it?

Shall we use the Tom Tom? Because it wasn't an everyday, every single fucking journey,

even if it's three miles, you put it into ways. It's too much. We should go back to Tom Tom.

I think you're right. When you realise you are in a sat-nav-induced chain of lemmings and you're

one of the lemmings zigzagging through a town with no logic whatsoever, you just think, oh my

god, what's next? Are they going to put a chip in my head and I'm going to march around? At that

point, I feel ashamed really. It saved my bacon so many times. It's a brilliant piece of technology.

How did we survive before it was original? It's funny how you realise how shit it was though,

Chris. You get an evently continental GT now from 2004 and you say, oh, it's got a button called

map. I'll have a look at that. Literally, it's like MS-DOS. It's like there's a shift in three.

And of course, you put in a postcode. I can remember early days, you'd put in your postcode.

If you're a Bristol, it would take BS. That was it. You were lucky if you got a number after

it. Well, this is bloody pointless. Then you'd try and put a pin in and then you'd follow that

pin and realise it had decided to put your pin four miles away from where you'd put your,

I mean, it was, it was shite. I remember the first one I drove was an imported Prius that

Toyota had in the UK, mid to late 90s. And it was just, it was woeful. It really was. So I think

it's a really interesting one. So how do we live before it? Answer, quite happily. Really?

Quite happily. I can put to one side all of the lovely stuff about using it to make journeys

fun, trying to beat your destination time, beat the computer, all that. I get that.

Anything that makes boring journeys more enjoyable for me is a great thing. And sat and I've come

under that heading. I also think, there you go, the idea, Chris Cooper's holding a picture saying

of a map book. Of course, we'd love a map book, but that's another discussion, the map book.

This is how did we, how did we survive before? We did perfectly well. We did perfectly well.

You used to learn where you were going. You see, you paid attention. And if you didn't,

you took a map book with you. Yeah. Or you asked people, you got close. I just relied on human

beings. I'd get, I'd strike, strike out, get there really close. I'll ask someone.

Okay, I'm just, just one tiny point before we move on. There's a slightly serious point to this,

too. Not quite answering the question, but the, the idea of a sat nav, sat navs have been known

to navigate things, especially heavy goods vehicles and to completely inappropriate roads.

They've also been known to navigate people the wrong way on motorways. It's supposed to be one

of the biggest reasons why people, yes, they follow the sat nav, suddenly find themselves on an exit

road, especially at a bad time, entering an exit. I'm sorry. That's a human fuck up base.

Quite possibly, but it, you know, it is supposed to be one of the biggest, you know,

the HGVs don't really go down the, you know, little tiny six foot roads, except when

someone's driving from, I guess, Poland to wherever, and the sat nav's telling them,

take this route, take this route, take this route, suddenly they're stuck. So, you know,

they do have their, I think we should have in the comments, people's funniest sat nav fuck ups.

Fuck ups. Good one. Yes. You know, I definitely would never admit to the fact that I got a long way

once going to Nuremberg rather than a race circuit in the north of the country. I was going for

Moscow and I just put, I just typed in NUR, I think it's heading to Nürburgring and I got very

close to Nuremberg before I realized that I wasn't going the right way. So, I, it's a necessary evil,

but it is, but we did live without it really well. Like we did mobile telephones, you know,

you'd arrange to meet someone a few days in advance and learn, but hold you both be there.

Chris, did you get a mobile telephone? Right, here we go. Best motoring cliche.

EG doors like a bank vault. Now, because of my profession, I'm more,

what would I say? I'm more sensitive to these because they used to get pulled out of your copy.

So, and what would happen was the category itself become very broad. So, what was considered to

be a cliche? I thought it was unfair at times. Someone said, well, that's just a bit of a cliche.

I think, well, I've only ever read that once in a car magazine, but maybe because it wasn't

entirely original, you were accused of falling into cliche and it became quite difficult to

navigate. So, I'm fascinated to know what you lot think are these cliches and what the best ones

are. I'm going to go first with Manish. Well, I'm going to take a little formula one spin on this,

okay? And I think there's just one human being who just spoke for his entire 15 years in Formula

One in cliches, and that was our nige. And I've got a little list of some of the things.

He could not use any sentence without putting for sure in it, for sure I was trying, for sure

we're doing the best job we can. His other one was I was giving it 110% from the go.

That was he said that every race 110% effort. His other one that I absolutely love is

what the public don't understand. I love that when anything wrote down. What the public don't

understand. The other thing he did a little variation on this. He used to say, my public,

my public, I love that every sentence. And then the best one, the best one, when he was beaten,

he would explain what advantage they had, whatever it was, the Honda engine, the this and that,

say, but I'm not taking anything away from them. Genius, just a genius.

Sorry about my discipline there. You might notice I've dusted off three times. My laptop,

I wasn't charging and I couldn't work out why. I just worked out that it wasn't plugged in, sorry,

because I got down to 2%. I really was running the gauntlet, but I now feel quite relieved

that we plugged in again. I love a podcast where somebody can give you the origins of GPS down

to literally talking about an aircraft disaster and just sitting next to him on my screens,

a guy who can't plug a computer in. I like podcasts. We're certainly different. We cover all

bases. So let's go to Neil Clifford. I think, was it Chris Cooper that suggested this, but Neil

Clifford, what are your favorite motoring cliches? Well, I've got a lot of them. I know we haven't

got a lot of time in it, but my favorite, I'll jump straight to the end, is it makes you want

to take the long way home. You know, when you read that, whether it's you, actually, or Richard

Meadon, or any of you amazing guys that I've spent many, many years reading, it makes you want to

take the long way home. And I think that was always a sort of, oh, well, that's got to be a

fantastic car. The rifle bolt gear shift. It's true. It's fucking, that was really overused,

that anything to do with the Japanese car in the 1980s or 1990s, the rifle bolt gear change.

Ford Puma. Ford Puma was a problem in the office. Ford Puma. I'll give you one more. Let me, I've

got the driver focused cockpit.

BMW. I'll tell you why the cliché is one of the most abused things on the planet, because more

often than not, the cliché has emerged because it is the best way to describe something.

Exactly. So they're totally worthwhile. And the answer to anyone that's been accused of falling

into clichés, say, well, you find a better way of describing that, a more efficient way of describing

that. So they were always quite worthy phrases. I mean, the ones that I used to hate where Niels

hit their nail on head as usual, was to describe certain parts of the interior of a car was really

difficult, because you'd brush over them, you'd have the five page road test and also you had

three page road test was the small one. The biggie was the five page road test reserved for the big

guns. But you told describing the way that buttons are dispersed around a dashboard.

And without saying, well, everything falls easily to hand. And as you write it, you realize if you

submit that copy, you'll probably get sacked. I mean, that falls easily down, I think was the

ultimate sin. But I can remember sitting in a car thinking, ultimately, everything does sort of

fall easily to hand in here. So let me find another way of describing that. So what you would find,

and maybe this is the most pernicious side of the cliché is that to avoid falling into cliché,

people would write even more bobbins because they weren't trying to describe something. They were

thinking my primary, my primary aim here is to not be accused of cliché. So they'd come up with

even more ridiculous phrases. And you really think what you've done there is tried not to write,

falls easily to hand, and you've written something even more ridiculous. So it was a bloody

minefield, really. So that was replaced by that beautiful word, wasn't it? Intuitive.

It's intuitive. There's an amazing episode of the 12th man, we might discuss that here,

which was the Billy Birmingham spoof cricket commentary tapes from the 80s and 90s. This

guy called Billy Birmingham, it's a bit cricket this, but he could do impressions of all the famous

Australian cricket commentators. And he was, he's brilliant, look him up, he's, so he'd do Richie

Beno, Bill Laurie, Tony Greg, anyhow. These commentators had their stock phrases, which were

clichés. And there's an amazing episode where Bill Laurie and Tony Greg are told you can't

use that phrase in your commentary to come back to what you said about Nigel.

They'd have their stock phrases and every time they're about to say one, they have to try and

you hear their thought process trying to avoid it. Straight off the middle of the bat,

straight off the middle of the bat, Tony Greg's trying to find another way of saying it, but

he can't because it's his phrase. So my response to this is we should celebrate clichés because

more often than not, they're the best way to say something. Chris Cooper. Well, I chose this

because for all the reasons all of you said, because when, when we were little and dad had a

Ford console or a Ford Granada, we didn't know what cars were like. We wanted to believe that

cars were amazing. And right back from William Woolard on top gear. And that's, you know,

the words that he used. And when we read stuff more recently, like, you know, and your stuff,

Chris, and, and Dickie Mead and, and John Barker and Evo. And the truth is they do work.

And you, when you got to the fortunate position of being able to drive a catering seven,

or a Porsche 911, you wanted to know, is that actually how it feels? And, and it was true.

And the doors like about my favorite is doors like a bank vault. Just conveyed.

That was red pen straight through it. And the note would be, don't be so lazy.

But it's true that when I was fortunate enough to be able to not quite afford a 911,

everyone buys a 911 when they can't really afford it. They don't wait until they can afford it.

It happens before that. And it did with me. And I had a 993 C2S. It's a couple of years old.

Tiptonic. And again, tiptonic. No, it was a no.

It had the 17 inch wheels, rather than 18 inch, which I convinced myself was better for ride.

I look back and I think it's a bit under anyway. When you first click that door handle and little

clicker inside the door handle, and that myth of, oh, you've got to lower the glass and the window

to make sure it opens and shuts. Okay. But when you the thunk, when you first shut that door,

or even open it, yes, I've never opened a bank vault door. But that's what they feel like.

I just think it's, I think, so this is sort of a, it's a bit of a thank you

to all of those motoring journalists who did help us. And that's the power of what,

that's why we all loved car magazines. Yes. Because there weren't moving pictures. The

pictures themselves weren't great. I mean, printing wasn't wonderful in those days.

A lot of them were just black and white pictures when we were growing up in magazines.

But the words and that rifle bolt, you know, falls easily to hand, you know, that rifle bolt

is only the second best one. No one said the best one. Yeah. I'm sorry.

There's only one that I know would result, I think, in a letter, a warning letter from

employer straight away. Can I guess? Can I give you one? I was going to say corners on rails.

Corners on rails. Form follows function from a design perspective. Oh, no, that's,

that's all, that's, that would be okay. Actually, you get away with that.

Now I'll give you a clue. It's to describe a particular type of power delivery.

Okay. Paul's like a freight train. No. It's specific to torque. Stump pulling torque was

the absolute no, no. Because I can remember, I once wrote it and a sub editor came over and said,

when was the last time you pulled a tree stump out? I was like, yeah. But hands up,

who was pulled a tree stump with a car? I have. But if you wrote, it was a car when I was there

between 90, whatever it was, 2002, if you wrote, it has stump pulling torque. You, you were just

asking me to build it. This is true. If you've tried pulling a tree stump with a car, you need

literally, literally red card. See you. So yeah, lots of fun there. Okay, right. Let's go back

to our agenda. Right, I'm going to do our two car garage. We're a long way into this, aren't we?

Sorry. You're doing an extended version. Perfect. Two car garage. Stump pulling torque.

Telepathic steering. A lot of it. A lot. The other thing about the cliche is you,

when did something become a cliche? You know, the point of which it does is, is never defined.

But I know that car magazine from as that golden era of car magazine was guilty,

certain of certainly creating what became cliches, because they invented these phrases

that would ever went, that's the best way to describe that copy it. That's what happened.

Okay. I'm sure Ronald Steady Barker wrote stump pulling torque once and everyone thought,

I've never heard it described like that. That's brilliant. Well, six years later,

when every other lazy motorist has nicked it, it becomes a cliche. Yeah. Okay. You're 21 and just

passed your advanced driving test. You adore cars and driving. It's your happy place. You're

especially bored. You adore track day. You've done the Palmer sport driving day three times. You are

always in the top 25% of the track. You might well be the next generation. Chris Harris,

your granddad sadly just passed away last month at the ripe old age of 92. He shared your passion

for cars and race to D type in period after the war and daily the next J. S. Cooper until he died.

He left you all his premium bond savings of 44,000 pounds, but he insists you spend it on just two

cars. They have to be British is the only rule he set you one engaging reliable everyday car.

You less compliant for work trip plus a hard top track day machine for honing your racing

and competitive driving skills. Do your granddad proud the squealing that has come from reading

this one for a particular corner of the podcast because he thought it was too difficult to find

a car that fitted within the criteria has been most amusing. I won't say who that was, but it's

definitely kept me abused. Managed might be pointing at his own face. So let's go to manage

first and see whether he managed to solve the problem. I thought this was really difficult.

There were so many constraints there, not just financial. I think it was with you less. I didn't

like that. Just technically you less means 2006 onwards. It's a tricky thing. And then it's British.

Well, it does depend. Anyway, we've gone on long enough. I'm just going to tell you, okay,

the one that he's going to daily that's going to make his granddad really rather proud.

Now you can get this is there's a beautiful 2003 Jaguar XKR convertible for sale by auction in that

beautiful metallic green. Okay. And I found out that you can you less these things for less than

2000 pounds, you can get a converter, they'll remap your thingy and they'll put a new exhaust on.

So that's what I'm doing. I'm buying that the auction. I'm spending a couple of grand you

leasing it. That's the single cleverest thing we've ever said on the podcast. I did not know

you could do that. You just changed a lot of it was live. You get a new exhaust and they remap

your ECU and you are you less. So don't say we're not important. How do you get that? How do you

get that done on your v five so that when they zap you on the camera, they know that it's not a

2003. It's actually a special clever car. Well, presumably they modify whatever they let them

know I don't know but you are you less you are you less on this kind. I found a couple of people

who do it because I found this very tricky, very clever. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

And we could do it could do just we all know people can remap we know people give you a new

exhaust. That's what you do. And then my my track car it's funny. Mr. Cooper was at a little mini

event. But it's this beautiful 2010. Mini Cooper got a lovely hard top. Yeah, it's good. It's that

WC 50. I think they're about 100. Yeah, no, that's a really good choice. Whatever of them. And I think

you can get that for for the for the right sum of money. And they are my two two cars.

And this two car garage. I don't know what the problem is. She's done a great job.

Thank you. Yeah, that's a great job. Okay, good.

Yeah, I wrote this and I was I was trying to be particularly tricky around the coupé

track car because otherwise we'd all choose a fucking catering wouldn't we? Yes. So, you know,

we're trying to put some a little bit of variety into our hard topped actually number of doors.

I said, I can't remember. You less. The thing about you less, if you buy a car that's pre 73,

it's you less. Yeah. Yes, the other way around. Of course, actually, I'm ignoring the sort of,

you know, 2006 or whatever all that annoying, bloody stuff on the real you less thing. I'm

just going old. If you've got if you've got an old car pre 73, it's you less, you're not paying

anything. So, and because my granddad raised the D type, it's got to be a Jaguar. And, but you do

want something that's a little bit, you know, you want those mark one jaguars or mark two

jaguars, they are fantastic, but they are unreliable, bloody things a little bit or my

experience of them, particularly on the on the electrics. So I'm buying this 1962 is actually

in the auction 1962. Is that a mark two? I think so. Yeah, an old part. Someone has put a 4.2

supercharged rest no mod engine in it. So you've got an old looking chic car that would work very

well in a muse. But also, because it hasn't got those bloody carburetors and the shitty Lucas

electrics that's going to catch fire if you're not bloody careful. I've been down that road.

And then and then really tricky. Again, I'm staying British because obviously he said

British, didn't he? We've got to be British for granddad and the premium bonds. So I'm going mini

actually, you're right. And I think, you know, Mr Cooper on his track day got me very excited.

I'm going mini. There's tons of them on car and classic of which now I can't find any of them in

my photographs. But I found a lovely red semi tracked an original mini is set up for rallying

set up for track. It's a red car. I'll find it when we put when we do the filming. And I think

it's only about 15 grand. So I've got loads of money to buy another car when that Jag blows up

and this gets written off, which I'm sure will happen. Because that's what happens to old bloody

Jaguars. But thank you, granddad. It's interesting this because it's, as ever,

you've got to read these quite carefully, haven't you, Chris Cooper? Because there are little

there are little avenues you can explore and exploit, which I quite like. Chris Cooper,

what have you exploited in these words? I really like this. I thought it was a number of criteria

you can put on a graph. And you can sort of fill that's the one that Neil's put up is red mini.

So the Jaguar bit, I also spotted that. So I think the daily would be

this 2006 XJ350 three liter. But it is, I think it is you less compliant to 2006.

So that one. And then I think the track car that was quite interesting, because the bit I

particularly liked was hard topped. Yeah, it doesn't necessarily mean no, it doesn't. You're

right. A fixed roof like a coupe. Here we go. So that allowed me to choose that Lotus Elise.

Oh, yeah.

Looks at the mark too, but I think it's probably a better car, isn't it?

Oh, it's a better car, but it doesn't look as good.

No, it doesn't look as good. So the the elitist actually might be on the brink of selling in

the auctions by the time some Friday, the Jag will have about three days to go. Both of

those are on the and I think both of those together would go just about within granddad's

very kind bequeath of his premium bond savings. I like all of these. I would say that

there's some lovely words to exploit here. British is an interesting word here,

because I agree with Manish that, you know, the mini that you chose,

that's a German motor company, but it's built in Cowley. So it's British built.

It's British. So I allow myself to run with British built.

Nice. It's one car that I deliberately searched. I didn't do this very often,

but I searched one of these to see if I could find it. It's totally out of my price range,

but I'm choosing it anyway, because ultimately I'm allowed to. So

Frank Sittner's operation actually built some alpinas. They did back in the late 80s.

They were British built alpinas. They would get the kits over here and assemble the cars.

They're British built alpinas, right? So I found a B9. It's a brand new car.

It's a load of money. It's 54 grand. You're not going to get it for 44,000 pounds,

but there's a good chance you could probably negotiate a deal on that car. And it's

absolutely sunny. It's a seven car classic. And it's just opal green, one of 70 cars,

maybe Alpina for the UK. It's just my chance to tell the audience that they once built alpinas

in the UK. That's all I've done now. And I think I think my learning colleagues will allow me a

little bit of leeway to share that information with you. I think it's important consumer advice

that people know that they were British cars as well. For my, and I've gone and banished,

I've just gone for a mini John Kipp works, which, you know, that looks a lot of six and a half grand

reminds me of the latest mini doesn't look too good. And I'm, you would have so much fun in that

car. That's a great car. I think those two, and I'm not dismissing the value of the Alpina because

I think the guy that's selling it has spent nine years restoring it. And I'm not trying to say it

is worth 44,000. What I'm saying is we need to know about that car. Someone needs to phone

you and negotiate a deal. That is look at that. Yeah. Oh, one that's the winner. Yeah. Right. So

let's move on to a bit of music. Managed to go first. Yes, I've been listening to lots of Beatles.

I don't know why, but I'm going through a Beatles phase. And the track I would most like to listen

to when I start Lola up this weekend is back in the USSR. What a rocking team. Oh, I've been

listening to on the best of sorry. That's a great album. No clip. You know, when you're really tired

and you're trying to keep your wife awake and she's trying to keep you awake because you're

keeping her awake. And it's one o'clock in the morning and you've got a diversion across fucking

X more. You're listening to music that you can sing along to. And even sometimes I have to put

the windows down to keep yourself awake. And I found a lovely track. New order track called Run Wild.

Every single is at the back end of one of their albums. I think the album's called Substance or

something or maybe that's the best of new order. Run Wild New Order. Really, really, really good

song. I know we're all a bit biased of our music choices, but I've chosen the best one this week.

You have? Chris Cooper.

This lovely dinner we had on Friday night at the Goubert Hotel before the sprint event.

Somebody came up to me and said, why didn't any of you on the podcast that went out on the 31st

of October Halloween, why didn't any of you choose Thriller? And I said, because we forgot.

Yeah. So a week late, but the Thriller and that video, that John Landis video, the extended version

of it, I think it's brilliant. And it's such a banging tune in the car. It's a great part, Michael

Jackson, just for a moment. Listen to the song. Look at the creativity of John Landis' video.

Thriller by Michael Jackson. Didn't they have to play that after 10 o'clock at night on the tube?

The video was, it was, it was a bit, it was so scary. There was a myth about the extended cut.

You know, you'd get to see the two and a half minutes, but there was a nine minute that existed

when you can only get on MTV and LA or something. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I'm slightly

obsessed by intros to songs. I described this the other day on the podcast. I just think the skill

involved in getting you into a tune before you even aware that you're into it is just,

it's just glorious, something I wish I could do. And how about this for a cheesy tune that gets

you in there straight away, going back to my roots by Odyssey. This is the first 20 seconds of that

and your shoulders are going before you even know it. It's an amazing tune. Yeah. Yeah. That is funk.

That is funky is best. It is really good. Manage a bit of housekeeping on,

on the every man dates just to give another push that you wanted to do.

Yes, please. Thank you. So you will have a chance to see the film, although it is now

starting to sell out in a few cinemas on the 10th and the 12th of November. So that's next Monday

and next Wednesday. Lucas seeing red will be on almost certainly, not completely certainly,

but almost certainly at an every man cinema near you. And this will really be the last two

before next year when we get a real idea of its distribution. So if you can get to see it on a

big screen, I really would, you know, we may not get a, we may not get a wide distribution in the

cinemas in which case you'll have to watch on your plasma screen on some stream. And it really,

this one, mostly for Mr. Harris's brilliant, brilliant interrogation of the greatest car

boss of all time, but also for Mr. Pinto's beautiful music. It's really worth and Robin

Fox's beautiful photography. It's really worth seeing on a big screen. I'm not sure we've said

this before, but it is quite a good movie. Oh, thank you. It is quite a good movie.

You can go back and watch it a couple of times because these two do talk about

some special stuff. And when you sit on a big screen, you would notice a little bit more

little nuance here, little nuance there, proper OCD car stuff this. We should do a movie every year,

then we can always talk about our movies. Yeah. We should have 10 premiers as well. Yeah, exactly.

We actually, we've seen it a few times. We introduced the film last night and then we

ducked out and had some food. So I want to give a shout out, don't do this very often,

to Patso, P-A-Z-Z-O, you know, the ex Bianchi's guys who, I mean, they delivered. I mean,

how good was that food last night? It was very good. It was, obviously, Robin and his team

knocked it out of the park. Unbelievable. Pasta loco guys. Well, just stunning food. It was a

marriage that we do apologize. We're trying to set some privacy next time out. Have a lovely weekend.

Right across America, people listen to the Tony and Ryan podcast every day. That's us,

by the way. I'm Ryan. This is my best friend, Tony. Howdy. Don't just take our word for it.

Get IMJ from Pittsburgh. How did you discover our podcast? I first discovered Tony and Ryan

as a recommendation. They absolutely exceeded my expectations to the point where I was like,

I must be a part of this in crowd. Oh my God, I've never been part of the in crowd before.

Well, you're part of this one. I'm Tony in crowd. Wait. She'll work on that. You come listen. Tony and Ryan.

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