Which Era is Peak Automobile? — The Carmudgeon Show w/ Jason Cammisa & Derek Tam-Scott — Ep 212

Oh, God, another one.

Another what?

Another episode of the Corimagine show.

Congratulations.

Happy Monday if you are consuming on Monday.

Unhappy Monday if you're not.

I think that's a little rude, don't you?

I wish you a poor Monday.

I wish you a happy whatever day of the week it is.

Why am I the one ray of fucking sunshine this episode?

You know, Jason, the ray of sunshine, obviously.

Welcome to the Hagerty driven podcast of the Corimagine show

presented by Jason Camisa and Derek Tam, Hyphen Scott.

I composed that.

It was an original composition that I made on the spot,

if you couldn't tell.

This episode is about, what is it about?

It's about choosing when peak car was.

When was peak automobile?

Or, I'm not that way.

If we can pick.

We do, and then we don't, then we do,

and then we don't.

There's a lot of actual authentically objective thinking

in this episode, which hurts my brain a lot.

It certainly hurts the brain.

But well, for thought.

So, Derek, we'll clap and we're gonna get right into it.

All right.

That's two weeks in a row.

Yeah. Congratulations.

Thank you.

We've got another one, there we go.

Actually, we're gonna have to add a full clap track to this.

So, audience, applaud.

Thank you.

So, they're still going.

Thank you.

1965.

What happened in 1965?

You turned 40?

Yeah, with my big bonus that you're,

I bought a Volkswagen square back.

I thought you were gonna say

you bought a battery tender, battery maintainer.

Oh yes.

Since battery tender has been around since 1965.

And they're the sponsor of this episode

of the Carmanjin Show.

And they're the innovators in this space

having made a advice that can be used to both charge your car

and start it and compress air

such that you might put it in your tires.

You could probably also blow up a beach ball.

You could, yeah, or a basketball.

And they made this bobble head and gave it to us,

which I find endlessly amusing.

Don't forget, you can get 20%

off your battery tender purchase at batterytender.com

by using the code Hagerty20.

Which brings us to the other sponsor of this episode,

which is Hagerty.

Not technically not the sponsor, the owner.

Not the owner.

Patron saint.

Patron saint?

I don't know.

Patron saint driver.

Because Carmanjin Show is driven by Hagerty.

Speaking of things that Hagerty is driving,

no one has driven my Rover in quite some time.

Because as you remember, I crashed it

to the back of a pickup truck,

thus starting this whole JasonSemi.com thing

to go get quotes on insurance.

It was drivable to be clear after the crash.

It was drivable.

That's not why no one is driving it.

No one's driving it because it has no engine in it.

So the body, I don't know how much we've talked about,

I don't remember.

This has been going on for many months,

but the car went over to Hagerty's garage

in Driver City and I flew over there

and I pulled the engine out with David

who does our red line rebuild, engine rebuilds.

We are now two episodes public on that?

I possibly three by the time this one goes live.

But more importantly, at some point around the time

that this episode goes live,

I will be back in Traverse City and most likely

you should cross be putting the engine back in

and starting it for the first time.

That's quite exciting.

Yeah, we're on a bit of a time crunch.

So unfortunately it can't.

It'll be snowy potentially.

If it's not, it'll be smoky

because we're gonna do a burnout.

I have been told.

In either case, visibility does not look good

in Traverse City.

Exactly, I've been told it might have

a limited slip differential in it now.

It might, you'll find out, I guess.

I'll find out.

Well, I did one hell of a fucking burnout.

When was it?

It was, yes, it was very, very much one.

Just one burning.

You gotta rotate your tires.

One tire of fire.

So yeah, no, I'm super excited about that.

Which are?

Fredestine Sprint Classics.

Were.

Now they're there.

Now they're dust.

Fredestine Sprint Dust.

Yeah, I can't wait.

I can't wait to drive this car.

I'm very excited about it.

I'm interested to see it again.

Yeah, I'm interested to see it post crash repair

because it is, it's going to look very different

with very totally different front end.

Euro conversion.

Full Euro conversion, which means.

The world's finest SD1 just keeps getting finer.

I did see actually a really beautiful,

like Pristine Vitesse SD1 when I was in England.

So maybe it's the second world's finest.

I don't really know if my car is.

America's finest SD1.

I'm sure somebody has a Concord level one

without a crack dash, but I don't know.

All I know is now this is as,

at least as the designers intended

because the front end has a small early chrome bumper

with the correct series one headlights

with the correct series one grill

and front cross member.

And then rear bumper, I also did.

So can't wait, can't wait.

The world's finest sports sedan at your disposal.

Well, that leads me to the question.

Is that peak sports sedan?

What kind of question is that?

It's a question to bring us

around to the topic of this episode.

All right, next question.

Is that one was?

Is that?

No, that's not a sedan.

Exactly.

However, it does share some underpinnings

with a car that some might say is the peak sports sedan.

It's not a sedan.

It shares some of its underpinnings

with the thing that someone might say

could possibly be the world's best sports sedan.

Such underpinnings.

What is that technically?

That's an E-90 underneath?

Is that an E-90 underneath?

Or is that an E-64 underneath?

It's got a fucking S-64 in the hood.

Yeah, so that's now a sedan.

That's a coupe.

It's a sedan.

The S-54.

It's a two-door sedan.

This is like the Beetle sedan

when they called the Volkswagen Beetle a sedan.

Hey, the E-32 door was considered a sedan also.

By whom?

By the DMV.

It's a two-door, I see it.

I'm trying here.

Okay, listen.

All right, so this week, this past week,

depending on when you see this most likely

this done past week had done,

there's a new show that debuted

on the Hagger to YouTube channel that I did.

It's called Retrospective.

Mentioned this a couple of weeks ago

in the roasting episode.

But we loved, Anthony Esposito and I

were brainstorming things,

loved the idea that we should go back

and look at rivalries from the past

and see if the magazine sort of got it wrong

or if time has gotten it wrong, right?

Or revisiting some of these comparison tests.

Because you guys enjoy torturing yourselves

by requiring you to get more than one car

into the studio,

because one car isn't hard enough.

So now you have to do two, three.

Studio is relatively easy on a racetrack

allowing us to do with those cars what we please.

So at the same time, we were talking about

to the guys over, guys and girls are over

at Haggerty Marketplace and Haggerty Marketplace

is Haggerty's sort of online auction.

So, you know, Haggerty has broad arrow,

which is the sort of in-person auctions.

And then Haggerty Marketplace, which is online auctions.

And we were talking about them and they said,

hey, can you help us out and give us some coverage?

We're relatively new.

And I'm like, yeah, sure,

but I don't know anything about you.

Can you do me a favor and go find 32,008?

Sports sedans.

And just listen for auction when we're done with them.

And to my absolute surprise, everyone involved

is like, yeah, that's really cool.

So we found they, someone,

someone found three 2008 cars.

So 2008 was the one magical year

where you had your choice of three German compact sports

sedans with a V8 engine and a manual.

Sorry, not a manual.

We talked about that last week, should be manual swapped.

But isn't yet.

The annoying thing is after a week after this,

I drove a C63 AMG giving them,

giving that away with a manual swap.

And the results of that episode

could have been a little bit different

if I had one of the manual swap theirs.

But we sort of postulate that 2000,

that era of sports sedan was peak.

So you had the E90 BMW M3,

which has the-

With the high revving four liter V8.

Magnificence.

The S65.

Still the highest revving,

naturally aspirated cross-plane crank V8 ever made.

At 8,000.

8,250, I think it was, 83.

And the, isn't the RS for?

50 RPM below.

50 RPM.

So it all depends on how you-

50,50.

It's 50, I think it is.

Yeah, so 80,250 versus 80,300.

I think something like that or 80.

So I have numbers bouncing around my head

because different places have talked about red line

versus fuel cut.

And fuel cut.

In either case, I believe the BMW wins by 50 or 100 RPM.

But the Audi RS4,

which did come a year earlier that came in 2007

was the highest specific output and the highest revving.

And then the BMW beat it in both measures.

Because it got similar horsepower.

Same German horsepower, right?

It's a European-

420PS.

420PS from four liters versus four two in the Audi.

And it's one just slightly higher.

And then of course, Mercedes came in same year, 2008

with a absolute hammer and it's like 4.2 liters.

4.0 liters, fuck you.

He has 6.2 and just to shove it in further

called it a 6.3.

So that is the Magnificent M156 engine.

So in the Audi RS4.

And they have a C63.

So we have, she's Christ.

We should have had lunch.

We should have had lunch before this.

We're experiencing hypoxia or whatever it happens

when you don't eat enough.

That's a lot of oxygen.

Hyphoodia, hypolysis.

Hypoglycemia?

No, that's not enough sugar.

Which is what do you get when you eat?

Sugar, depends on what you eat.

Yeah, chocolate isn't it?

Anyway, more importantly.

It's a bunch of letters and numbers.

A bunch of letters and numbers.

Because they're all German cars.

And we, my question is what then happens.

So let's revisit and this comparison test

and then let's pitch it against,

pitch these three cars up against,

put them up against, not pitch,

pitch them up against today's best driving sports sedan.

Which is not the BMW M3.

The BMWs could be, I could argue either way,

but I could argue that the M3 is currently

the best sports sedan on the market.

That's gas powered.

But I would argue that the overall is an overall package

that the Cadillac CT4V Blackwing

is the best driving sports sedan at the moment.

And so my question was,

how does, does do any of these three cars

have a snowball's chance in hell against today's best?

And if so, why and how?

And so we examined all that.

Next week, there is a second episode

with those three cars.

That's maybe about a drag race

to see if anything's gotten faster than them.

But that's a different story.

So that's this coming Thursday, I think.

Scheduling is not my job.

But it was a really, really interesting question.

So my question to you and go watch the video

because we had a lot of talk.

I will do so.

Maybe I'll give you a sneak preview after this

because it would have been very helpful

for you to have seen it before.

Sorry.

My question is, when was peak car?

Who is asking and what do they care about?

You fucking idiot, what the fuck?

No, I mean, is that not obvious?

Was that harsh calling you fucking?

No, but the point I was trying to make

was that it's a subjective question

and that everyone has,

the era that someone prefers resonates differently

for every person.

You know, you and I care about things

that not every person who likes cars will care about.

And there's, I'm sure after us,

an entire generation of people for whom E-Pass

is perfectly sufficient and not objectionable.

That's because they're fools.

Yeah.

The world is composed of fools.

We know this.

This is one of the fundamental premises

of the Carmudgeon show.

It's our belief that everyone else is an idiot.

We're excited.

Well, like people who aren't into cars,

you know, are idiots obviously

and there's lots of wrong ways to be into cars.

But it's all subjective, right?

What do you care about?

If you, so.

Well, I'm glad you said that

because actually I just brought my handy notepad out

that's actually just a scrap of paper

with nothing written on it yet

with a little clicky pen.

Let's try to make this objective

and let's think about actually what would make peak car

or peak sports sedan.

Because I think obviously, like if you look at my collection

of cars, the model years of cars that I own, 75, 80, 85, 87,

88, 89, 90, 91, 94, 96.

A little bit of a pattern there, right?

Nothing from the 60s, nothing from the 40s,

nothing from the 2010s, except my Peter E. Golf.

Which I would say is a better car than most

but it's electric and so that's a completely

different story.

Your owner, the cars you own, 1863, 1865, 1901.

Civil war was really a peak moment for me.

Yeah, let's see, 1957, 1969, 1972.

I don't have them all in order by year.

1982, 1990, I think I have two from 99, 94, 95,

294s, 195, N and 08.

The GTI.

Oh, forgot about that.

Yeah, so we both have, both of our most modern vehicles

is a Volkswagen Golf.

Very different functions.

Yours is a track rat and mine is a grocery getter.

I, yeah, hold on, I'm gonna write down

another episode concept that I just remembered.

So you're, so my time, the dawn of time for me

is actually, and I would own older cars.

I purposely prevent myself from buying older cars

than even the 1950s because I know that they are

completely illiquid and will only depreciate

but left to my own devices, I would have older cars

even in 1957.

I tend to not have cars that old

because they don't drive the way I want them to.

So let's set aside, but our preferences,

I think it's really fascinating that you own cars

that are, that spend 51 years.

And if I did that math or whatever, 50 something years,

that's really cool.

But when we're talking about the engineering of a car

and the purpose of it, which is transporting

and you add in build quality and reliability and joy.

So let's talk about the things that make a good car.

I think first of all, it's ability to transport, right?

To, well, that's what a car does, right?

At the end of the day, it's there.

This is transportation device by definition.

Automobile, it moves itself.

If a car fails to proceed, it's a bad car by that measure.

No, you don't think?

There's a lot of cool shit that may,

that'll fail to proceed.

Like?

Like a Mira.

That makes it a terrible car.

Yeah.

See, that's my point.

So what are the standards by which we are measuring

where our car is good, are flawed in my opinion then.

I think there's a minimum.

Is an Alfa Romeo, Julia Super, therefore out of contention?

Yeah.

As a car?

Okay, hold on.

Let's speak.

What is the question we're answering?

The greatest sports sedan?

When did the car peak?

I think it's-

When did the car peak?

The sports sedan, look, I've-

But what is the car doing?

This is the question I first asked.

What is it?

Who's judging everything?

It's the combined, the sum total of all of its abilities.

Right, so you have all of these curves

and when did the aggregate of all of those things peak?

So one of them is going to be its ability to move.

Okay, so then it has to be fuel injected.

I would agree with that.

I would agree with that, because carburetors,

which I love all the hate that you got

on that Instagram reel.

Did I?

Oh my God.

So we, the Haggerty's social media guy does these clips,

they reels and it takes clips of our,

of the Carman Giro puts them on Instagram

and some of them get a lot of views and comments.

And one was, we were talking about,

I don't remember which episode it was,

but you said something like, you take,

like you're washing machine or something.

And if people who were buying,

we were talking about EVs, obviously,

and you were saying, if you subjected to someone today

to all of the fuckery that you had to deal with

and dealing with a carburetor,

people would say, absolutely not, no way.

And they just wouldn't be willing to put up

with all of that shit.

And there were people who were commenting like,

this fucking guy is the reason why everything

is an appliance these days.

And I'm like, do you understand the shit piles

that he drives?

Like that was taken totally at a context

for someone who doesn't know you

and know that you're total petrolhead

and everything you like best as carburetors.

I thought that was so hilarious.

I'm like, let the hate come in, go right ahead.

Like learn who you're listening to here.

You are clearly not a fan of.

But I was also talking about the average consumer.

That you literally said those words.

Okay, well then they're, like we said,

what are we returning to the premise of foolishness.

Fools, yes, exactly.

But yeah, a car's ability to function as a car.

Okay, so you're leading the class to the answer,

which is that it has to be fuel injected.

What else is-

You came to that conclusion,

but I would agree to that.

Well, if you're treating the ability of the car

to function reliably as an important metric.

It's okay.

So when did a car's ability to start run

and not give you any shit peak in terms of reliability?

It's-

In terms of not necessarily reliability, but-

It's EFI.

It's just sort of the, it's not too complex,

but it's EFI, early EFI.

I don't think early EFI.

No, no, no, not 70s.

Like 80s, 80s, 90s EFI, like Bosch Petronic.

I'd say even later,

because you had self-diagnostic capability and redundancy

and they hadn't quite figured that out.

So once you get to the era of EFI,

where the computer will say,

oh, crank position sensor went out,

I'll just use the cam position sensor,

lock the cam timing, throw a light on

and continue to run and get you home,

is really, is a step change over any one of this-

This is also subjective though.

I just, it's how do you do,

like what is your weight you place on this versus that?

Like the weight that you place on getting home

is higher than some other person

might declare the weight on getting home.

Like you could also say that, oh,

a carbureted car is actually more reliable

because there's no electronic parts in there to break

and then you can sort of fix it on the side of the road

with a bag of sand and a shoe or whatever it is that,

you know, you need to fix a car.

Like you could say, okay, well,

then you should be driving a carbureted 1960s car

and then the Julia Super is actually the ideal answer

to that.

Okay, I understand where you're coming from,

which is a slight defensive standpoint

because you like your carburetors,

but I think if we looked objectively

at reliability data, percent uptime,

how many times out of a hundred does someone,

Sally, cue, save, driver, get out-

But the person who is deciding

that that's important in a car to them,

like how do they-

We're gonna have plenty of other categories.

This is just, it's a car's ability,

I can't believe you're fighting me on this,

I love this, a car's ability to start and run

and get you to your destination.

Have you been on the side of the road?

First of all, you probably actually aren't old enough

to really remember pre-sale phone days.

Breaking down is a stressful event,

especially for people who don't know what's going on,

for whom a car is a black box of scariness.

It threw a light and it turned off

and it made the sound and I don't know what's going on

and now I'm gonna be bankrupt

and I'm gonna have to walk to work

and I'm never gonna make it to work

and I'm gonna lose my house.

Yeah, but this is like an average consumer

and not an enthusiast.

Like why are you judging what the ideal enthusiast car

is like when it's for the audience

is an enthusiast.

When did car peak?

I answered the question.

It's impossible to answer the question

is what I'm trying to say.

I'm gonna say, I answered the question of whether,

if 2008 was peak sports sedan

or we're actually better off today,

I answered that in the video,

you didn't get to watch the video

so maybe you're at a disadvantage here.

I have my beliefs that's not relevant here.

I'm asking when did car peak

and I think reliability peaked.

So who's the consumer?

Is it an enthusiast?

Are they twisted like us?

No, they are.

It's an average just person who doesn't wanna walk.

Let's give it, if we are a 10 on the autism scale of

auto-motions and enthusiasm.

And a zero is a Prius slash super driver

who just needs basic transportation.

Let's give them a four, five.

Middle of the bell curve.

Maybe 70th percentile of the bell curve.

Give him a six.

Okay.

Person needs to get to work.

A car has to get to somewhere.

If it doesn't move, it's not a car.

Or something.

It's not an automobile.

It's a yard art, like that shit.

Volkswagen, then I have my front yard rotting.

So in that case, we're just really looking at

reliability is maybe the wrong word here.

It's ability to just get you where you need to go,

which is a function of reliability.

I have my thoughts about where they peaked.

But do you and you have experience

with modern cars too

and you hear stories about people

having modern cars explode,

lights going on, whatever.

Where do you think?

It's the 10 year period between 95 and 05, I think.

Yeah.

I would say I'm gonna push to the later part of that

because once when computers took over,

I think there was a little bit of over reliance on them

and cars started to get less reliable there

because that one sensor could pull the whole thing down

or one can bus failure could pull the whole thing down

and they got a little bit better.

So I'm gonna say somewhere between 2000 and 2010.

So we're sort of in the same era.

So we're 2000s effectively, say 2000 somewhere on.

I think that's important, right?

I think we took a step down in complexity.

You didn't have cars having turbo issues

when they didn't have turbos on them

and you didn't have hybrid system faults.

Although Toyota has really ruined that argument

because Toyota makes incredibly reliable hybrids

but some other car companies don't.

And so now you have these cars that just brick themselves

and don't start.

And I think we've definitely taken a step back in that.

Now, some of them will get you home

but a lot of them brick and they just didn't do that

10 years ago.

Next objective criteria of automotive engineering

in a car is has to be safety.

Do you die in the thing that gets you to work?

Okay.

Where do you feel on that?

Isn't it just the more modern it is, the safer it is?

Has there been any retrenching?

Have we given up anything in safety ever?

So ideally, no.

But if you've started to think about the disparity

of mass on the roads in the last couple of years

with where you have 7,000, 8,000 pound

electric pickup trucks and five, six, 7,000 pound

cars going up against smaller, I think the spread

of in the market of masses of cars and bumper heights

and sort of all these other factors in safety

are contributing to a differential in death rates

in real world death rates.

And then when you factor in the distraction numbers

from all of that.

But that has nothing to do with cars.

Oh, you mean stuff in the car.

Of infotainment, pillar thickness.

So we're actually seeing rise in death rates in cars.

Huge rise in pedestrian death rates in cars,

which is also part of it,

but also even death rates from people

from distracted distraction techniques, right?

Or distraction factors like infotainment systems

in the car, all these fucking idiots driving

with no lights on.

That was not a problem 15 years ago.

It's a real problem now.

I don't know if it's resulting in deaths,

but I can't imagine it's not.

So I do think we peaked in terms of automotive safety,

even though the cars are likely better

in a crash. Survivable.

Right.

Now I can't see what's coming to my left

when I'm at a stop sign crossing a street

because I have this massive pillar there

that will help me in a rollover,

but now caused me to pull out in front of a tractor trailer

doing 70 miles an hour and I die.

So I think we did peak.

I mean, objectively, I don't hold me to the years,

but probably 2010 is when the tide started shifting

on real world.

I mean, the data would be the most definitive way

to answer that.

That's a question.

I don't even have my phone here.

I would ask the GPT of Chattness,

but we should probably do our homework before we do.

So those are the sort of, I think two of the big factors.

I think economy is another factor, right?

Did from a consumer oriented perspective,

if your car gets nine miles per gallon on your commute

versus one that performs the same way

and gets 20 miles per gallon,

I think one is a better product.

Is that a fair factor?

Yes, you could also call it efficiency

and then it has less of a negative connotation

in the eyes of a car enthusiast.

Okay.

We like efficiency.

Lotus is all about efficiency.

Yes, correct.

I don't, I think we've now peaked

because my feeling on this is the current government's

sort of knee capping of CAFE standards,

it means we're going to take a step back in efficiency.

I'm not sure that's necessarily the case

for most consumer products.

I think it's going to just allow

a lot more enthusiast products,

big burbly V8s and shit like that.

I'm also not convinced that a lot of these downsized

turbo cars are really actually delivering much better

real world economy.

Yes, this is like that top gear thing

that they did where they ran at Prius flat out

around a race track versus a M3

that was going the same speed.

And Prius used more gas.

I mean, they, I'm sure engineered that outcome

because Jeremy Clarkson,

but the point he was trying to make

is that if you adjusted for pace,

the M3 is not wildly inefficient.

It's just capable of doing more things or more.

Many years ago when the EcoBoost F-150s first came out,

there was a company called, they're gone now,

I believe, Automatic.

And it was a $19 OBD2 reader that was Bluetooth in.

If I, I think this was automatic,

but there was a company that did this.

And essentially their business on,

from the consumer standpoint was you plug this thing in

and it monitors all your shit

and just talks to your phone, whatever.

In the background, what was really happening

was all of that real world data

was being fed into a database.

And so they were starting to capture

actual real world data on all of these different cars.

And so they can see everything that was available

from the OBD2 plug.

And someone who worked there told me

that they were seeing that the two,

the three and a half liter EcoBoost F-150s,

which were invented basically to match,

to make better for better EPA numbers,

were using vastly more gas in the real world

than the V8s were.

And so they were, they wanted to be this repository

of real world actual data.

Did the cars do better or trucks do better in the EPA tests?

The EcoBoost did way better, right?

And you saw this sometimes with like, you know,

some manufacturers was downsized

in turbocharged cars like Porsche.

Porsche, when the, when the Cayman went to the 718

and went from a naturally aspirated six to a turbo four,

in every single trim level on EPA tests,

the four cylinder did worse than the six had done.

Oh, but that's EPA verified.

That was EPA verified.

And in the real world, you can absolutely believe

that the four cylinders would do way worse.

In the case of the EcoBoost, the F-150s,

the V6s were done to bring down their CAFE

and their average fuel economy

because they did far better bring down the CAFE penalties,

bring up their MPGs, right?

They did better in testing, turbocharged,

small engines do really well in testing

because in testing, you're using light throttle,

low boost, but once you go to heavy boost,

you need enrichment, which means you're running fat,

which means you're wasting fuel.

And in fact, in most cases, in most load scenarios,

a heavy load scenarios, a naturally aspirated engine

will do better than a turbo or a boosted engine.

And so I would love to know

if anyone's looking at actual real world efficiency,

but I suspect as the fleet moves more and more automatic

where car companies can play tricks

on the NEPA testing to achieve that.

And as the computers in the cars have more levers to pull

with more sensors and more variability,

very variable file timing stuff,

that the differential between real world fuel economy

and NEPA rating is growing.

So I think we've also peaked there.

Now, once you go electric, you're talking about

a sea change, you're talking 120 miles per gallon

equivalent in the real world versus 20 or 30.

And so that changes.

But I think once, when you're talking about combustion cars,

I think we also peaked probably somewhere in the late teens.

Experience with this stuff?

I mean, you are crafting an argument right now

to frame the goodness of a car in the terms

that an enthusiast may not care about.

Oh, we haven't gotten to the enthusiast yet.

Okay.

I just think in order of the mass market, right?

Sure.

People are, if you look at what people,

the consumer of the automobile looks at,

Steering Hill's not going to be one of them.

Yes.

We're going to add that back in.

We're going to, so, but I,

that's why I've got little handy dandy piece of paper

because I think there are a lot of categories that we should.

Yes, for the average person who's looking to get

from A to B efficiency matters, certainly.

All right, so let's, we'll go a little bit,

a little bit down the road of enthusiasm,

diversity of offering.

I think that's a really interesting thing to look at.

So can I, as a consumer of cars,

go buy something that's different,

or that's unique, or that speaks to my personality,

like in the way that someone would go buy a Honda Element

instead of a CR-V,

or a Saab 900 instead of an Acura Legend, right?

Or I mean, you know, if you think on the surface,

something like a Scion XB that's just, you know,

a Scion XA with a cool box shape on it.

But on the other hand, a Saab is a perfect example.

This is a car that shares,

no, you're talking about the original, not classic,

that shares nothing.

It's just fucking batshit.

The engine's backwards upside down,

you know, wrapped around the rear bumper

and belt driven by Satan or something.

Chain, but yeah.

Isn't it chain?

Chain driven underneath the transmission,

not wrapped around the back bumper.

But the exhaust is wrapped around the battery, basically.

Goes forward and then back.

Like a Bentley Turbo R.

Right, you know, I'll let you talk on this one

because you brought up the Saab, diversity of offering.

Yeah, but does the average consumer, you know,

like I think that there was certainly a lot of that,

if you like, I'm struck by this when I read old magazines

from the 1990s about, you know,

there were certainly wacky Saabs and Stirlings

and Alfa Romeo 164s,

even in the sort of pedestrian car form factor,

there was more variety back then, you know,

was that good?

Did consumers benefit from that?

In the near term, at time of buying, sure,

but like the experience of owning an orphaned car

after a Pujo, Alfa Romeo, Stirling

or whomever else left the United States market,

like is that an improvement?

Or is like the convergence on sameness that we have now

where at least all the manufacturers around

and we have 10 year warranties and all that stuff,

is that better for the consumer?

Like what is that consumer choice?

Well, what is the difference story then?

Yeah, but the cars that are warrantyable

for that long, like are the,

is the consumer of the early 90s

who has an orphaned Pujo 405 or Stirling 827,

like are they truly better off than they were 10 or 15

or 20 years later when they have a Hyundai

with a 10 year, 100,000 mile warranty?

Okay, valid question.

Although what I would say is in the consumer

in the late 80s had a choice of a Nissan Pulsar

with three different removable rear sections on it.

I can have a Pulsar with a hatchback,

I can have a Pulsar with a fastback,

I can have a Pulsar with a notchback, right?

That's what I'm talking about.

Oh, okay, I want a Mazda 626 in coupe form

so I can have an MX6.

Yeah, or a hatchback, five door hatchback, 626, that was a thing.

That's true, I forgot about that.

Wow, I think you said it, right?

Converge this on sameness that we have now.

But if you really think about the offerings that we had,

so right now people would say,

oh, Mercedes lineup is bigger than ever.

Just because they make a GLC coupe and a GLC SUV,

which are the same thing,

one of which is just stupid looking

and the other one's just ugly.

Is that really giving the consumer choice?

Because they all have the same engines,

they all have the same drivelines.

In fact, I mean, so does your Pulsar.

Okay, but the Mazda MX3 had a 1.8 liter V6

and nothing today does.

Yes, I will grant that.

I think we are at an absolute low point

in consumer choice.

Or not both, in body style,

in drivetrain configuration,

in transmission offerings,

in unique styling, in size, in shape, in color.

You can't get a fucking car with a color.

That weirdo looking Z4 coupe behind us

is bronze for fuck's sake.

That's, I don't even, it's bronze.

It's a pang.

It's fucking awesome.

Find me something that's on sale to this day

in a cool color, with a cool engine,

with a cool transmission, with a cool hatchback shape.

There just exists nothing.

It's all same.

Yeah, but if you went back to that era,

I think that was the only car that fit that description also

at that time, which is why people like them.

Yeah.

Fair point, fair point.

I mean, I guess today you could have a GRD6,

would be the closest thing to that.

Yeah, but certainly doesn't-

I'm afraid a great inline six with rod bearing problems

for a also lubrication challenge flat four, like.

I think we had far more diversity of choice there,

but yes, I would, the only thing equivalent today

would be that, Bersie, and I would have one of those cars

if I wanted a shape.

But hold on, now you want a sport coupe shape today.

Yeah, yes.

This was the other thing that I was about to say

that the death of the sport coupe all together

is very lamentable and that's a real and inarguable.

How about a hatchback?

How about a hot hatch?

Yes.

I mean, what's left?

You have a Fiat 500E that's not hot at all.

It's gorgeous.

Great.

You can have a GTI that's-

Mazda 3.

No manual, Mazda 3, which is-

Mini.

Not hot, Mini, which is not a good car.

You can have, oh, well technically-

Is this the evolution of consumer preference?

This is chicken or egg.

Was the consumer preference shaped by manufacturers

not offering compelling hatchbacks

or did consumers just decide that hatchbacks were uncool?

Other markets have hatchbacks.

And are they cool?

Yeah, look at some of the French shit,

some of the, I mean, even the German shit

is still kind of cool, I don't have a one series over.

That's always been a question though,

is that hot hatches generally are like appealing

and consumers gravitate towards them

in non-U.S. markets in a way that they never did in the U.S.

even when there was peak U.S. hatchbackery.

That's I think just a function of geography, right?

In the U.S., most of the U.S.

It's like consumer preferences

or like philosophy of Americans, right?

We had like this unique genre of land yacht

which was very American

and hatchback was diametrically opposed to that.

And so there was something like vaguely non-American

or communist about hatchbacks in the American psyche

in the 70s and 80s.

Or I see you're very poor

and you've bought a foreign economy car

of poor and anti-American.

So you've bought an economy car, you know, a Honda Civic.

Or poor and stupid and bought a Chevy Chevette.

Yes, yes.

Which was a vastly inferior product, right?

Yeah, but American made.

But American.

No, I think you're right.

I honestly, I think that the land yacht

versus hatchback thing is far more a function of geography

because try to park a land yacht in downtown Paris.

Yes, but by its nature

then it becomes distinctly American

and it sort of underlines that point

that you are doing something that is specific

to the place that you are from

and that is a fundamental part if we are.

Yep.

And of course you're gonna have the counterculture of people

like me who's like, I want a hatchback

even when I live in Michigan.

Yes.

And so there is space for you to make a statement.

And that's all gone, right?

I understand why hatchbacks

don't sell in large numbers in the US

unless they're in SUV form.

So what is a person, what is a,

not an enthusiast but a consumer

who wishes to make a statement.

The way that say a 900,

because I would almost argue that a sob 900

if you go back to 1989 or whenever they were most prevalent

was not an enthusiast choice.

It was an individualist choice

but not because you were a car enthusiast

but because you wanted to wear, you know.

Tweed.

Yeah, spectacles with thick horn rims

instead of sort of benign regular old person glasses.

Not because you were an eyewear enthusiast

but because it was a part of your outfit

that you wanted to be different.

Didn't want to blend in, right?

You wanted something different.

Okay, so what does that,

is there such a thing now to buy that does that?

I mean, I know that you're,

the argument you're building currently right now

is that no such thing exists.

So you're probably the wrong person to ask.

I'm, well, I'm trying to think about this.

Like it parts of the country.

The Mazda 3 is sort of that car a little bit.

Mazda products generally

because you would normally choose a Honda or Toyota

or maybe a GM crossover.

But is the Mazda thing the different counterculture choice

because it's mechanically and functionally different

or is just because it's done

because it's the same shit?

It's executed at a different level

and it's aesthetically different

but it's the same ingredients but done differently.

So it's, that's just a vignette

or sorry, a veneer of.

Yes, veneer of difference that's not really.

That doesn't backed up by the wacky shit

under the skin.

Now if it still had a rotary

then it would be a true, yeah.

I think all sort of counter,

like you could say maybe in parts of the country, Teslas

in the Bay Area, Tesla is the obvious choice, right?

Parts of the country, anything electric

that could be sort of counterculture.

Having a Cadillac in the Bay Area

would be sort of counterculture, right?

You have a CT 5V blackwing manual.

So you have a big supercharged V8 with a stick shift.

It says that you're somewhere else.

Altogether different from everyone else.

How ironic is it that a General Magans,

yeah, that a GM product would be

the counterculture in America, right?

That's kind of.

Well, we're in a particular part of America

that is the least patriotic probably,

one of the least patriotic parts of America.

But I think Cadillac is one of the most counterculture,

one of the blackwing, there's a sporty Cadillacs

would be one of the most counterculture things

you could buy in this country, anywhere.

Like what the hell is different?

There's kind of nothing.

Oh, I'm gonna have a dodge.

Well, it's almost anachronistic.

It's a dinosaur.

It's not like different for being different.

It's just old, conceptually,

like the concept is an old concept

that has been retired by most people, but not Cadillac.

I think diversity of choice peaked in early 90s.

Okay, here's the punchline.

Okay, early 90s.

What would you say?

Just before the departure of Pujo and Alfa Romeo and.

Well, when you still had some cars.

But after the arrival of all the Japanese upstarts.

Yeah, you had cylinder count choice,

you had displacement choice, you had high revving,

like variable valve timing, 16-4 valve stuff coming in,

forced induction stuff coming in,

then you had pushrod American stuff coming in.

You had this, you could go buy a car

with a 4,000 RPM redline or an 8,700 RPM redline

and every choice, you had every choice

of suspension geometry, it's a suspension type.

You had every choice of steering,

thing worm and roller recirculating ball.

You had every shape, every size.

Sports coupes still existed.

But that wasn't intentional.

It wasn't intentional, it was the result of the fact

that there was a transition occurring

and it's a snapshot of a moment

where the transition has occurred for some,

but not for others.

I think the car industry was still progressing

and I think they were progressing at different speeds.

And so you had some that were left in the past

and some that weren't

and I don't think we have that anymore.

Okay, you have pushrod hemiv8s from Chrysler

who just tried to retire it in favor of another 500 CC,

right, 500 CC, direct injection turbocharged, blah, blah,

blah, blah, sure it's 500 CC per cylinder, per cylinder.

What did I say?

You just didn't finish

because you moved on to the next thought.

Oops.

Yeah, for sure, I think we've now converged on sameness

to the disadvantage of the car.

I agree with that.

All right, when did it peak for you?

I mean, yeah, I buy your 90s argument.

There's also, you know, like this is a different phase

in the maturing of the automobile industry

but you can also point to like the early days

when it didn't take much, there weren't many barriers

to becoming a new manufacturer.

There was a huge like prevalence

and I wish I had these numbers handy

but I recall reading somewhere that, you know, in 1920 X

there were like 200 different German car manufacturers

and then they all consolidated

because the standard of the products

and the amount of capital investment necessary

to participate and sort of acquisitions

and sort of, you know, this is where GM emerges from

like the number of marks that was in there

that all ended up getting combined into GM

and consolidated into, you know,

what the number was, maybe it was 10

and at some point before Oldsmobile and Pontiac

and all that went away and now it's like six or seven

or something like that.

But like at some point there were hundreds

of different manufacturers of cars.

And so you say, well, is that a time

when consumers had more choice?

Like, sure.

So you came to, came, you stumbled early

on the follow-up question that I was gonna ask

is are we being incredibly myopic

by only looking at like 1960s to today?

So I think, yeah, there was a far more diversity

of choice.

I mean, you could get steam cars and electric cars

and like, you know, there were people

who were like making four valves per cylinder

and dual overhead camshafts in the 1920s,

very small number of people, but like Bugatti and Bentley

and straight Aids, V8s, V16s, four cylinders.

No V6s.

No V6s, hadn't been invented.

V6s hadn't been invented, wasn't invented

until the, I think Lancia invented it

doing the engineering work in the 40s.

Technically a VR4.

No, it was a VR4 and a V6, real V6, yeah.

Yeah, I think you had diversity of manufacturer for sure.

I mean, I would think about all the brands that are gone.

Yes.

Hupmobile.

I mean, Hudson.

Packard, Franklin.

Yeah.

Stubaker.

Pierce Arrow.

We, these are all American companies too, yeah.

I don't even know anything about them

and I know they exist.

What's the one with the really cool front wheel drive cars?

Cord.

Cord, Tucker.

I mean, yeah, I think there have been definite waves of that

but I think the last wave of diversity for consumers

was probably late 80s, early 90s, the 90s maybe.

I mean, you had a five cylinder, accurate figure.

There was some really great stuff.

Okay.

Okay, 90s.

Sure, I will accept that as one of the possible answers.

Service ability.

By whom?

By,

And frequency of service or just access for service?

I was thinking access of service

because I think frequency of service

probably falls back into the sort of first category

of does it work?

You look at, you look at a car from the 40s and 50s

and you're like, I could stand in the engine compartment

next to the engine and work on it

and that's not true of a car from the 90s

or something like that.

So, that service ability was superior

but reliability and like the fact that you needed

to regular service, do tune ups

and regular service your ignition system

to adjust the points and all that and that was inferior

but you certainly had better access

to get in the engine compartment

because of all the space around.

So I think the fact that you had to adjust points

every five or 10,000 miles and plugs

every 15,000 miles and oil changes every two feet

and whatever else falls into the ability

to mobilize itself first category

which is how much of the, how much uptime, right?

And if the car's got to go in for a major service

and chassis lube and all this other crap every three weeks

then it's really, it doesn't matter how easy it is.

I'm thinking ease of service ability

and that is, is there room to do this?

Yeah, but if you have to do it all the time

possibly not.

What I'm, the reason I ask that is

anyone with a screwdriver can fix a carbureted car.

I mean, you know, you don't need specialized equipment.

You get to- Anyone with a screwdriver?

Okay.

You don't need- A person who has only a screwdriver.

And nothing else and no brain.

You don't need a brain or fingers.

No, but I think we definitely, at the advent of EFI

I think actually worse, the advent of mechanical

fuel injection shit took a really wrong turn, right?

Yeah, you look at the plumbing and all the hoses

and all that in like a Jaguar XJ12 engine

or like a new apartment or like your Rover.

Honda's PGMFI, I mean that was,

that was abbreviation alphabet soup for spaghetti

with those, I've never seen so many vacuum lines

in my life or you know, even Bosch simple CIS

not serviceable, pain in the ass nightmare.

Mechanics don't want to touch them now.

They didn't then they couldn't figure them out.

It was black magic.

I think that took a big step up with OBD2

self-diagnostic capability and I hate to congratulate

anything mandated by the government

because that was a government thing.

But at the end of the day,

self-diagnostic capability with the ability

and the mandate from a government to say anyone

with a scanner can get a standardized code

and be told what's wrong with their engine

was a stroke of genius for surface ability.

And I think that ramped up

and then now has taken a complete nosedive once again

when car companies have proprietary computer systems

where you can't access half of the things

you need to access.

And the fact that cars now when you start to look

at mechanics who work on cars

when they're dealing with problems,

it's often not mechanical issues, it's networking issues.

It's this can dropped out, this network dropped out,

this thing isn't communicating.

I can't get a signal from this.

I can't get diagnostic stuff from that.

That is really the last 15 years has become a nightmare.

Every tech I know is a network administrator

as much as they are a tech.

And so fuck that.

The day that my e-golf breaks

and then doesn't know why it's broken and can't tell me,

oh, because it has no network connection, you're fucked.

You're just fucked.

And I think like, even-

You think that this is a permanent problem

or is this one of these transitional things

where we're going to solve it

and then it'll be okay?

Like in the infotainment comment that you made,

like eventually we figured out how to engineer around that

or when the ECUs first appeared in cars

and people were like,

you're putting computers into cars now.

How are people gonna fix those things in 30 years?

And you were like, well, you open the ECU

and then you like redo all the solders

or like look for burned out capacitors

and then like, oh look, the problem is easily solved.

You mail the thing to a guy for 500 bucks

or you figure out how to do it yourself

and he rebuilt the ECU like we figured it out.

It's not that hard.

It's one of the things

that I think about stereo systems in the 1980s, right?

I mean, you had 16 different components on a rack.

You had an amplifier and then a tuner

or together they were a receiver

and then you had a CD player and a two tape deck solution

and then a VCR that was plumbed into that.

For example, they didn't speak to each other

and then you had to daisy chain it all together.

And now you have a phone

that just Bluetooth to something else.

The world comes and figures out how to fix these things.

Computers were nightmares.

I don't know if you remember, like I built,

I was so excited.

I built a 486 DX266 when that processor came out.

And so I built a computer around it

and just trying to get the graphics card

to work with whatever IO interrupt error bullshit came out

and it was just a nightmare.

It was an absolute nightmare.

That's been figured out.

Plug and play stuff just sort of works now.

And so I hope that we are in a world

where that's will get better.

The phase of transition, yeah.

And I think Tesla and Lucid and Rivian

that sort of startups have shown that like guys,

it doesn't have to be these individual modules.

One module control the whole thing.

So that will be solved, right?

And especially once we go to EVs

because there's far fewer sensors and shit.

So, but I think ease of service ability did peak

and we're in a trough

and it will probably come back up again.

But I don't want to work on 20 teens cars.

I don't.

I would work on an early 2000s car

and that's sort of the end of like

until someone figures out what you said

the guy or the diagnostic tools or something else.

I think that's a trough.

Yeah.

So we're thinking, was that really though 1970s?

Ease of service ability or 80s, maybe?

Well, I think that when you have like

mechanical fuel injection,

I think automatically disqualifies.

Too many vacuum lines also disqualifies.

I think metronic is like that level of complexity

is kind of ideal, right?

There's like, secondary air injection.

Yeah, but you can talk to it, right?

I think it's OBD-2.

Once you're an OBD-2 then.

Early OBD-2, so you're just gonna call it

the second half of the 90s.

Early 2000s probably,

because of course I had even more diagnostic capability

and the computers weren't so,

you get into it like an E90

and I only know this because I knew people worked on them.

E90s were fully can based.

So, you know, that three series generation,

that whole generation of BMWs.

And there was a K can,

which is K is K-Rosseri in German,

which is chassis.

And so that was the chassis,

the body network basically.

And if anything pulled the body network down,

none of the modules could talk to each other.

And they go into what the texts refer to as K-Can failure.

And K-Can failure mode is hilarious on that car.

So it's all of a sudden the computer saying,

I no longer can communicate between devices.

Therefore, I don't know what's going on

and that poses a safety risk.

So everything on the K-Can will revert to a setting

that is most likely to be helpful in an emergency.

So the windows roll down slightly,

the flashers turn on, the wipers turn on,

the heat goes, the HVAC goes to defrost plus AC plus hot.

And so defrost is where the air goes and whatever.

The doors unlock and there's like,

the car is fucking possessed.

And so, you know, I saw one car that a customer

of a friend who was mechanic had

that every time they had a pothole,

it would just go into K-Can failure.

And so you're driving along, boom, wipers lights,

all the lights are on.

Like what the fucking windows are down?

Like this thing is possessed by Satan.

I'm sorry.

It took that particular car was sitting

in the BMW dealership.

They let it time out for 21 days

so the consumer got the,

they bought the car back and gave them another one.

And then it sat in their service center for 90 days

and they couldn't figure it out

and then gave it to an independent shop here

with for help, just please figure this out.

And it was a fucking wire that was under one

of the four seats, seat mounts.

And so the wire was pinched between the seat

and the floorboard.

And every time, if, and only if there was a passenger

between a certain amount of weight would,

they'd hit a bump that would short that out,

pull the can down and shut the car off,

shut, put the car in that mode.

No, if your car has the capability

of doing that, the network engineers are idiots.

Right? That's just should,

I understand that, you know,

the sort of K can't fail your motive

like most safety lights on, whatever else.

The answer to that is no, you've failed number one,

which is just the car needs to just work.

I mean, it does until it doesn't.

It does, yeah.

So I'd say early 2000s.

Okay.

Now let's get into the fun stuff.

Speed.

The later you go, the faster they get.

100%.

No, of course there's so much faster today

than they've ever been.

Enjoyability, enjoyableness,

enjoyability of driving, pleasure of driving.

That is entirely subjective.

Shit.

It is.

It is, yeah, it is.

Right, some person might be like,

oh man, I really fricking love double clutching,

unsynchronized gearboxes.

And some people might be like,

I love going zero to 60 in 2.4

and just putting a pedal down

and not having to do anything else.

It's entirely subjective.

Is there no way to quantify any of this?

I mean, you could quantify handling,

you could quantify steering feel.

Yeah, but that's not like enjoyment.

Just because it's more G doesn't mean it's more enjoyment.

No, I mean behavior, not grip.

Because grip, listen, braking distances, all times low.

Acceleration rates, all time high.

Top speeds, probably all time high.

Handling G, all time high.

Across the board in every performance category,

cars are better than ever, without question.

Do you have a metric or a rubric in mind

for quantifying and automotive enjoyability?

It would have to be handling behavior,

steering, response and feel, braking feel.

Oh, I forgot one.

All right, there's another.

There's a whole NVH and sort of-

Refinement.

Comfort and refinement category.

Let's leave out the enjoyment for a second

because I think that's where it ends.

I don't think you can really be objective about that.

I agree.

Okay, I'll cross it out and just say refinement.

So we're going back to the mainstream consumer

and away from the enthusiast.

For a second.

Okay.

Doesn't everything just get more and more insular?

Drive an S-Class now and drive your 140

that was here last week.

Which one rides better?

I haven't driven a modern S-Class.

I will say the 221.

The 221 and the 140 both ride very beautifully actually.

I don't know that there's a...

The 221 feels more structurally rigid

and that gives an impression of bitterness

as in terms of ride, I guess.

This one's a top.

It's more responsive also, which is less luxurious,

less insular.

It's better in some ways and not as good in other ways.

It's again a little bit subjective.

Yeah, but I don't think we...

So in terms of chassis structure

and actual noise, vibration, harshness,

I think engineers would say we haven't peaked

or just we continue to get better.

I think that when some cases

you see cost cutting happening over time.

So you have some generations of Mercedes

where they definitely took a step back in terms of...

Yes, I would certainly say that between 140 and 220.

Yep, 210.

E-Class I don't think was better in a lot of ways

than 211, I also don't think was all that much better.

So 203 for the 190.

So Mercedes had a definite era of getting worse.

BMW certainly did with that F30, that three series.

That was a massive step backwards.

So it does happen, but I think overall the march...

But it's not about...

Yeah, okay.

So it's not about the capability.

It's about the external factors

that get baked into the product.

Yeah, somebody cost cut something to death

and said we're not gonna do the right thing

because to save a penny.

But ride quality is the one where I don't know

if we've gotten much better.

I think we did peak a while back

when wheels were a bit smaller

and sidewalls were a little taller.

What about Lucid?

I mean, it rides really well.

Is it...

Does it ride as well as like a Lexus LS460L

from five years ago, 10 years ago?

I doubt it.

The other thing I would bring up

to add further complexity is sports cars

because there's been this entire new generation

of holy shit sports cars that are incredibly capable

and have really good body control

but also ride far better than anything

that had that kind of body control historically did.

And that is one of the modern things

that mind blows me all the time.

The bumpy road mode in modern Ferraris,

the modern GT3 touring

I had the ride quality was certainly better

than a RS product from the 90s,

Porsche RS product from the 90s.

So there's been this ability to,

I don't know, is it for structures

that therefore allows you to do more with the suspension?

I don't know what it is

that it's been that magnetorealogical dampers obviously

are important, but not all the cars

that we've lawed have those, I think.

So like, I don't know,

but there's definitely been an incredible ability

to improve ride quality and body control

in recent years in sporting cars

that has really impressed me.

And not necessarily just in sporting cars.

So I just was served a video on social media

with the old Bose system

that they'd put in that Lexus LS.

And I was watching with a friend

and his question was, why didn't they do this?

And it was just, it was way too power intensive

and way too expensive and way too heavy.

Did it take up all the entire trunk?

Yeah, and it weighed like four billion pounds

and you know, whatever it was, obviously.

But it was kind of a dead end technology

until the current Panamera,

which is also the Bentley Conti.

That Panamera rides like nothing I've ever been in ever

and then handles like a GT3 in terms of body control.

But that has a, I think it's a 48,

I think it uses the 48 volt,

it might use an even higher,

no, it might use the hybrid like the 400,

don't quote me to it.

Very high voltage,

electro-hydraulic actuators in the shocks

and that actually can lift the car.

So it's active suspension, mind boggling.

So we have not peaked in ride quality yet.

We've just begun the next chapter

and when cars start to have that,

that is a holy shit moment

that just shits on a 140 or a Rolls Royce or anything

and nothing comes close to that.

Because it does it, like you said with the sports cars,

does it with a commensurate increase

in its cornering ability and body control

and those circumstances too.

So I don't think we've really peaked yet

in refinement overall.

I think we'll keep getting there,

but we took a step back with big wheels

and now we're going around.

And to return to the question that you asked

when we were briefly talking about enthusiasts,

like is that good, is refinement good?

Is that something that enthusiasts desire?

Well, I think all of these,

I think because we've covered sort of seven main groups,

now go back to enjoyment,

which is then the fully subjective side

and which do we all personally enjoy?

Some people enjoy speed.

And if you enjoy speed,

you buy an electric car and you're done.

You've never been the fastest.

Some people enjoy the ability

to mobilize yourself and get to work every day.

And that's all they care about for the car.

Some people, if they're doing work

on the cars themselves

or don't want to pay big repair bills,

really value ease of service ability.

Some people want an identity difference

and so they'll see diversity

but some people care about efficiency.

And so I think there's no way to say the automobile has peaked.

Yes, because it's too many things with too many people.

Yep.

Well, that was satisfying.

Yeah.

I mean, it comes down to your personal preferences

and you deciding what answers the questions

that matter to you the most on these axes.

I think there's no way

when you have eight billion people on a planet,

you can't, you can't.

So the logical question is what is the answer for you?

Well, the answer, I answered that

on the case of how that narrow definition

of a sports sedan was on that retrospective episode.

For me, I think that all the curves

sort of come together in the 90s probably.

Talking given the ages of the cars that you own.

My cars are all older, right?

But I don't want the good cars.

Remember that part of my sort of philosophy

is that good cars make shitty collectibles.

Not shitty, but the best collectibles are the worst cars.

I don't want them to be so great

but maybe something from the 90s would,

or the early 2000s would hit.

The type of badness that you crave

is not the same type of badness

that other people crave.

Exactly, right.

I just don't want the cars to,

I could go tomorrow and buy one car

that does everything better than every other car I own

and I wouldn't be satisfied.

So I sort of purposefully don't have,

do I, if I could have a manual swapped

Maserati Quartre Porte 5,

kind of would do everything better

than every car that I own.

It would sound better, it would look better,

it would be faster,

it would be certainly more unreliable.

Wouldn't dance over the road maybe in the same way.

It's a little heavy.

Sure, sure, but ultimately we'd probably be able

to maintain a bigger pace than any of the cars

that I own or a higher pace.

I don't know, I know it's a really difficult choice.

I mean, your spectrum is 50 years.

Where do you put the sort of center point?

It changes over time based on my mood.

Even day to day, some days,

like if it's a rainy day,

I really enjoy getting into my Mercedes-Benz 140

that is currently not here.

It's a very secure feeling car that's sort of insular

and it's a cozy place to be, you feel safe

and it has good ventilation and wipers

and it just, there's a sense of wellbeing

that comes with that.

This is why, I think, well,

this is why I have so many cars

and why they're so disparate or schizophrenic.

On the other hand, other times,

it's a 1950s or 60s Italian

or British carbureted car.

It really is variable,

just depending on the sort of day and the mood

and the mission and the place you're going

and that's why I think I have so much variety

in automobile type.

I mean, I have a Ferrari with a manual

and eight throat, four twin throat carburetors

that leaks huge amount of oil

and then I have the E-Golf

and if it's raining and dark

and I'm gonna be in traffic,

there's no question, I'm taking the E-Golf, right?

First of all, it has, to your point,

ventilation is really important, right?

It keeps the windows clear,

but it also has AEB, autonomous braking

and it will warn me if someone's gonna hit me

from the side and all these other safety features

and if I do get hit, I'm far more likely

to walk away in that thing

than I'm from something else.

Plus it has stability control,

plus, plus, plus, plus, plus all this other shit

and a great stereo.

So if I'm gonna be sitting in traffic,

that's the one I'm choosing

and so how could I then say,

cars peaked in 1999, for example, or 2000

and then I choose that?

Because, and then I also love the efficiency of it

and how cheap it is to operate.

Funny thing is that my 1999 C43

did most of the things that I needed it to do.

I didn't feel like it was wanting

for any of the things that I asked a car to do

as daily and I use that car as a daily for two years

and I really enjoyed it.

Having previously dailyed a 2019 GTI.

That's kind of why I tend to wanna say

for me those cars peaked there, right?

I mean, my C4, I had a C43 also

and it did everything I wanted

and nothing I didn't other than it had an automatic.

Really, overall just across the board,

reliable, serviceable, no variable valve timing,

single camper bank, easy to work on.

Computers could shut down on the car

which still function as a car

and it was safe enough

and it had stability control

and it had heated seats and rain sensing wipers

and xenon lights and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So as usual, we've ended up in a Soco-era Mercedes.

Oh, shit.

You're welcome, everyone.

All right, spoiler alert.

The automotive automobile has peaked

at the 1998 through 2000 Mercedes C43 AMG

with a manual swap.

All right, great, big surprise.

Thank you for joining us for this week.

I'm done, I can't do this one.

Which Era is Peak Automobile? — The Carmudgeon Show w/ Jason Cammisa & Derek Tam-Scott — Ep 212

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