Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Best of the Bay (Part 5): FINALE - This “decontented” Lucid Air “...that thing is SICK!”

Transcript

Best of the Bay (Part 5): FINALE - This “decontented” Lucid Air “...that thing is SICK!” · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  John Summers is the motoring historian.
• 0:02
  He was a company car thrashing, technology sales rep, that turned
• 0:06
  into a fairly inept sports bike rider.
• 0:08
  Hailing from California, he collects cars and bikes built with plenty of
• 0:12
  cheap and fast, and not much reliable.
• 0:15
  On his show, he gets together with various co hosts to talk about new
• 0:18
  and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.
• 0:31
  Good day, good morning, good afternoon.
• 0:33
  It is John Summers, the motoring historian, and this is part five of
• 0:38
  my Best of the Bay road test series.
• 0:41
  This is the shortest episode, but this has the two cars that I thought
• 0:46
  were all together the best, and the best of really a pretty good bunch.
• 0:50
  So, I felt all round the best was the Camry, which I talk about first,
• 0:54
  and that was just because of the amount of performance it had next
• 0:58
  to the amount of money it cost.
• 0:59
  Money no object, the Lucid was the best.
• 1:02
  I liked the Genesis G80 better, but the Lucid was the best car.
• 1:06
  But I guess the, the other car in this group is the Rangey, the full
• 1:10
  Fat Range Rover and kind of what an awesome piece of kit that was.
• 1:14
  If the Lucid is next generation, the Range Rover was the very best of
• 1:18
  what we have been doing up to now, or you know, or at least the leather.
• 1:37
  Alright, so then there was an overnight and then the following morning
• 1:40
  there were the last three cars.
• 1:43
  First, the 2025 Toyota Camry, XSE.
• 1:47
  So could anything be more boring?
• 1:49
  The first thing I wrote was Camry gonna Camry, and that was after I'd sat in
• 1:56
  traffic in it, because the traffic was clearer and I'd done the forest route up
• 2:00
  the hill, winding around a little bit.
• 2:03
  It was nice.
• 2:04
  It was premium.
• 2:04
  It felt, if you just shut your eyes, you'd have thought it was a Lexus.
• 2:08
  And that is, has been the way Camrys have been for, for as long as I can
• 2:12
  remember, they've always felt a little bit better than they should have done.
• 2:16
  out on the fast sweepers.
• 2:18
  Was it as good as the Elantra N?
• 2:20
  No.
• 2:21
  Was it nearly as good?
• 2:23
  Oh yeah.
• 2:24
  Was it a lot better than you ever would have expected a Camry to be at speeds
• 2:29
  far, far higher than you would ever have expected it to be able to cope with?
• 2:35
  Yes.
• 2:36
  It was really a Good car to drive and completely inoffensive.
• 2:41
  You know, all of the modes were easy to use.
• 2:43
  It was modern, but it wasn't too much.
• 2:46
  It was techie, but it's just all of the things that Camry does so well.
• 2:51
  This just did all of those things so well.
• 2:53
  And then when you look at the price and it's 37 grand, you're like bloody hell.
• 2:57
  This is without question, the best.
• 3:00
  Combination of value here.
• 3:02
  When you actually step out of the car and look at it and think, if it was my
• 3:05
  money, would I want to write the check?
• 3:07
  You know, the car looks good.
• 3:09
  It has a visual, it makes a visual statement.
• 3:12
  I like this sort of waterfall grill, holy waterfall grill that the thing has.
• 3:18
  I mean, it's, I still struggle with that much visual aggression against the like
• 3:22
  front wheel drive four cylinder car.
• 3:24
  But, you know, if you look at it for what it is, if you compare it with,
• 3:28
  with Accord, you know, it competes head on and in a convincing way.
• 3:32
  And, and yeah, normally I'd be all about the Accord, but having
• 3:36
  driven this Camry, I would urge anybody who's in that market to look
• 3:40
  closely at what they have on offer.
• 3:43
  I mean the guy's doing like awesome gas mileage like it was in the 40s when I
• 3:48
  toggled for it's a hybrid so it's quiet ish around town but there's no range
• 3:53
  anxiety fear it's just most of the people most of the time this was just the regular
• 4:01
  boy's choice and and If you really are looking for car buying advice and you
• 4:06
  just want something practical and you're only shopping from this, you know, of the
• 4:09
  stuff we drove, this was the best car.
• 4:12
  It filled the definition of car best for most people, most of the time.
• 4:16
  So then from the really, I mean, I'm not sure from the sublime then, because
• 4:20
  that is a sublime piece of design.
• 4:22
  We went to the, I'm not sure if you'd describe it as ridiculous, but I mean,
• 4:25
  the Range Rover, I opened the door and smelled the leather and my word.
• 4:30
  You just sign on the dotted line if you're in the dealership.
• 4:33
  Just the way the leather looks, the way the leather smells.
• 4:36
  Between the moment you open the door and there's the smell, and then you
• 4:39
  park your arse on the seat and you feel what the leather feels like.
• 4:42
  My word, we British can do interiors very, very well.
• 4:46
  I know the reliability on Land Rovers and Range Rovers is, is dodgy, but when
• 4:52
  you're spending six figures brand new, you know, you hope not to worry about
• 4:55
  those kinds of things to your humour.
• 4:57
  Um, that's the way I'd feel about it.
• 4:59
  If you're the first, you know, reliability, something for the
• 5:01
  second customer to, for the second owner to worry about.
• 5:04
  No sport mode, just a comfort mode, half a dozen different off road modes,
• 5:08
  snow, wading, all of this kind of stuff.
• 5:11
  Obviously I didn't try any of that.
• 5:13
  I just.
• 5:14
  Like the fact that it had a distinctive feel to the screen and that kind of
• 5:19
  interaction, like distinctive Range Rover y kind of feel, but easy to
• 5:24
  use, you know, easy to use, easy to understand, big buttons, big touchscreen
• 5:29
  buttons, you know, you weren't like diving into irritating menus, it was.
• 5:34
  I played with the infotainment unprovoked of the traffic light, and then instead
• 5:37
  of being like, that was irritating and not playing with it again, which is
• 5:41
  what happened with most of the cars, I played with it again afterwards
• 5:46
  and, and, you know, saw if I could lower the suspension anymore or any
• 5:50
  of that kind of thing, but this is not the Range Rover's party piece, right?
• 5:53
  The Range Rover's party piece is when you just get up in the saddle
• 5:56
  and stab the throttle, you feel like you're, uh, member of the aristocracy.
• 6:01
  I mean, you just do, you like float along the highway.
• 6:04
  You know, was it that fast?
• 6:06
  No.
• 6:06
  Was it adequately fast?
• 6:08
  Yes.
• 6:08
  To all intents and purposes, it'll get down the road plenty fast enough for most
• 6:12
  people and it'll change direction fine.
• 6:15
  But most importantly, it'll ride so well.
• 6:18
  And the thing that I wrote and, and that really is, is the takeaway is that.
• 6:22
  Without question, this was the most civilized car that we tested.
• 6:26
  It just felt so well thought out and luxurious.
• 6:31
  With the Durango, you were trying to justify spending all the money.
• 6:36
  With this, the difference between.
• 6:38
  The leather used in the Range Rover and the leather used in the
• 6:42
  Genesis, that alone justified the 30 or 40 grand price differential.
• 6:47
  Yes, you could have had a Camry in between that, but you didn't want a
• 6:50
  Camry in between because you wanted Range Rover leather, Range Rover
• 6:55
  design, the Range Rover aesthetic.
• 6:59
  You know, it's not my thing.
• 7:01
  I couldn't do a Range Rover and a bloody Corgi, right?
• 7:03
  I've already got the Corgi.
• 7:04
  That's ridiculous enough.
• 7:06
  I can't do a Range Rover as well.
• 7:08
  But this one, it set me thinking a little bit.
• 7:11
  I mean, that YouTuber I follow, Chop's Garage, he has a Range Rover.
• 7:14
  And as I look at his, covered in mud, parked up outside his, uh, his
• 7:18
  dealership, I'm like, you know, There is something cool about an old Rangey,
• 7:23
  so I don't know, maybe, uh, let me do my old Jaguars first and then I
• 7:27
  might get around to my old Rangeys.
• 7:29
  Yeah, for the Rangey I wrote, the leather double exclamation mark, smell, touch.
• 7:36
  Then I wrote, no sport, comfort only on road mode.
• 7:41
  Then I wrote civilized.
• 7:42
  I think I just said all those things, so you can probably trim those out, but
• 7:45
  maybe if you weren't listening, you know.
• 8:01
  And this leads us on to the last and, and objectively speaking,
• 8:05
  the best car that we drove.
• 8:06
  So it's double the price of the Camry, which is why it's hard to recommend it.
• 8:10
  But.
• 8:10
  You know, in terms of, was it the best piece of technology?
• 8:13
  Yes, it was.
• 8:14
  And that's the Lucid.
• 8:15
  So it was what?
• 8:17
  Probably two years ago now that I drove that 1100 horsepower air edition one.
• 8:22
  It's the first of these pods.
• 8:24
  They told me to slow down on highway one.
• 8:26
  They said, did I want it in sport mode?
• 8:28
  I said, all right then.
• 8:29
  So they put it in sport mode and then on the piece of road where it
• 8:32
  opened out where I've done obscene speeds on sports bikes, I just did
• 8:36
  obscene speeds in the Lucid and it was just a point and squirt, right?
• 8:40
  It was not, uh, you know, and you just squirt and when they expected me
• 8:44
  to lift off, I carried on squirting and it squirted all the way up to
• 8:49
  a bonkers speed, frankly, to the extent that even I was a bit scared
• 8:53
  and then they asked me to slow down.
• 8:54
  So that's what happened on the last one.
• 8:56
  We were kind of running out of road as well.
• 8:58
  I was, I was worried, actually, I was a little worried that that might
• 9:02
  have, have affected whether or not they would let me drive this new one.
• 9:06
  Anyway, right, Lucid, as we know, are in a bit of trouble financially.
• 9:10
  Apparently, I spoke to the rep. Because of this whole, like,
• 9:13
  funded by the Saudi government thing, they're not going anywhere.
• 9:17
  This car that they brought was about half the price of the one that I'd driven.
• 9:22
  Visually, it looked pretty similar.
• 9:24
  The rep described it as decontented.
• 9:26
  It didn't have a moonroof.
• 9:28
  It had 430 So you're driving it thinking, is this too decontented because prior
• 9:36
  to driving that 1100 horsepower one, they had one in a mall somewhere in
• 9:40
  Silicon Valley and, uh, I was at a loose end with my father in law was in town.
• 9:45
  It was me, my father in law and my son, when my son was, you know, younger
• 9:50
  and I'd signed up to get mailings from Lucid and they were like, do you want
• 9:54
  to come to our showroom in, you know.
• 9:56
  Festival mall or whatever it was called.
• 9:58
  It's some cheesy mall in San Jose.
• 10:00
  I hate the place.
• 10:01
  But anyway, we went there.
• 10:02
  The guy was really keen to do his spiel before we got in the car.
• 10:06
  And afterwards I realized why.
• 10:07
  Because, uh, the materials, they looked great from 10 feet away.
• 10:11
  But when you went close and touched them, my god, the quality was terrible.
• 10:15
  Well, when I said that to the people who, when they introduced the Dream
• 10:19
  Edition that was the 1100 horsepower one, they were shocked by that because
• 10:23
  they really wanted the car to have this Awesome California luxury kind of feel
• 10:29
  and that 1100 horsepower one really did.
• 10:32
  So then I was like, Oh, wow, these guys are lucid.
• 10:34
  They're really good at baiting and switching, you know, impressing us
• 10:38
  with an 1100 horsepower moon roof, you know, feels like restoration hardware,
• 10:43
  luxury furniture store inside, right?
• 10:47
  They're great at doing that and then, you know, now in order to get from
• 10:50
  200 grand to 80 grand, you know, not only if they shed horsepower, right,
• 10:55
  what's it going to feel like inside?
• 10:57
  Is it going to have cheapened out too much?
• 10:59
  That was my fear.
• 10:59
  And the answer is absolutely not.
• 11:02
  You know, had it been my 70 or 80 grand, I'd have bought the G80,
• 11:06
  but I like steak and potatoes.
• 11:08
  Most people, most of the time, it is Mercedes S class quality, right?
• 11:14
  The smoothness.
• 11:16
  Every element of the way the vehicle's designed is thought about well, so I
• 11:21
  drove, I drove out and leaned on it a bit.
• 11:25
  So when I drove back, I very much had a feeling that, you know, I'd done this test
• 11:29
  driving, I leaned out of the high window in terms of my driving license for the
• 11:34
  last Two days, and I didn't want to lean out any further, so I just put the cruise
• 11:38
  on and sat, and I found I had my wheel, my hand, on the flat bit of the steering
• 11:43
  wheel at the bottom, and my thought was, wow, this flat bit is a really
• 11:47
  good piece of design, and that's just.
• 11:50
  Uh, a little vignette that shows you the way that the
• 11:54
  Lucid is, uh, is, is designed.
• 11:57
  Their shift mechanism is a little bit like Mercedes have been.
• 12:00
  So it's like a, a little toggle lever, toggle switch.
• 12:04
  And you just like, you push the button and then knock it up or knock
• 12:07
  it down to make it go into gear.
• 12:09
  No moonroof.
• 12:10
  And obviously, you know, quite hard plastics on the inside.
• 12:14
  You could see it was, you know, a 318, not a 325 kind of feeling if
• 12:19
  we're going to use E30 BMW kind of comparisons, but you know, it did
• 12:24
  not feel, it still felt really, all the things that were cool about the
• 12:29
  1100 horsepower one that I drove, they were still cool about this one.
• 12:33
  And you know, would I have wanted a moonroof?
• 12:35
  Yeah.
• 12:35
  You know, you can order the base one and have the moon roof.
• 12:37
  And similarly, this mega technology with the motors.
• 12:41
  Yeah.
• 12:41
  I wanted to talk about the regen braking.
• 12:43
  So around town, it's quite aggressive regen braking, but if you're like really
• 12:49
  leaning on it and doing high speed, if you come out of the gas, that regen
• 12:53
  braking is nowhere near so aggressive.
• 12:55
  It's there, but it's nowhere near so aggressive.
• 12:58
  It just acts like engine braking.
• 13:01
  Like, if you came out of the gas in, like, if you were hard in the gas in
• 13:05
  top gear in a big German sedan, if you came out of the gas, imagine the kind
• 13:09
  of engine braking that you would get.
• 13:11
  Controlled deceleration.
• 13:13
  That's how this, this Lucid is.
• 13:15
  So it means that the car doesn't need to be pointing straight for you
• 13:19
  to be able to use that deceleration and use it in a controlled way.
• 13:23
  The Fiat, you'd be worried you were going to spin off into the
• 13:26
  scenery if the car was in any way not pointing straight and you were.
• 13:30
  going to trigger the regen braking at north of 60 miles an hour.
• 13:35
  Three modes, smooth, swift and sprint.
• 13:39
  It seemed to be about how the power was delivered.
• 13:42
  I actually liked smooth best.
• 13:44
  Sprint seemed just to be about, you know, putting a crick in your neck.
• 13:47
  The interior, whilst it was nice and whilst it was similar to,
• 13:53
  you know, the previous one, price is similar to the G80 sedan.
• 13:56
  So with the cars I drove, that was the obvious comparison point.
• 13:59
  In comparison to that, the G80 just bloody destroys it because the quality
• 14:04
  of materials is just so much nicer.
• 14:06
  And even if you do prefer, you know.
• 14:08
  Roughly recycled plastic over leather.
• 14:12
  I just feel like the way that it was put together, the Genesis
• 14:17
  was just a nicer place to be.
• 14:18
  But, you know, I, I dunno, like I'm an old dude, you know, I'm sitting recording
• 14:23
  this in my man cave library garage space.
• 14:27
  And, you know, I'm sitting on a leather Chesterfield to do it.
• 14:30
  So, you know, I like.
• 14:31
  the leather and the wood and cars as they have been.
• 14:34
  So if I'm thinking about what's best here, you know, even maybe on the interior, I
• 14:39
  could see some people who like a clean California, modern look and feel, that
• 14:43
  person is going to choose not the Genesis.
• 14:46
  They're going to.
• 14:47
  Choose the lucid.
• 14:49
  Yeah.
• 14:49
  So this is what I put it that the lucid it makes the G80 and the Range Rover.
• 14:55
  It makes them feel very old.
• 14:57
  It makes them feel a previous generation technology.
• 15:02
  So on those last days, I did the same route each day and I drove
• 15:06
  and turned around in the same.
• 15:08
  lay by.
• 15:08
  And now I stepped out to take pictures.
• 15:10
  I might even include some of the pictures in, in the thing of that first of the
• 15:14
  Rangy and then of the, uh, of the Lucid.
• 15:16
  And when I was photographing the Rangy, I noticed at the side of the lay by,
• 15:19
  there was a guy who was obviously traveling and camping in his Prius.
• 15:23
  So he's got like a Prius with a tent off the side of it.
• 15:26
  He's got a couple of big German shepherds and they were like lying around the place.
• 15:29
  And I noticed that because they'd noticed me because, you know, I'd
• 15:32
  like turned around and approached in it at the car, the car.
• 15:36
  So, uh, as I'm photographing the Lucid, the dude yells out, I've just got to
• 15:41
  say something that thing is sick and we talked a bit more about the car
• 15:47
  and he was like, you know, I'm sorry, I interrupted you and all of that.
• 15:50
  And I was like, no, dude, I'm so glad you did because.
• 15:53
  This is a good way to end this review, right?
• 15:56
  The, of all the cars I drove, the only one that provoked comment from
• 16:01
  a passerby was that one, because that's how futuristic this quote,
• 16:06
  decontented, close quotes, lucid is.
• 16:09
  So I wonder, maybe this decontent, this, this did not, you know, I don't need.
• 16:15
  In my Caesar salad, I don't need the chicken.
• 16:18
  I don't need the cheese.
• 16:19
  I still enjoy Caesar salad without those things.
• 16:22
  And, and maybe that's what we're talking about with this, uh, Lucid.
• 16:25
  I don't know what the edition was because that's how they, they name it.
• 16:29
  But yeah, if you're in the market and you've got the money to spend,
• 16:32
  um, that definitely is of the stuff that we drove the most tom tomorrow.
• 16:40
  Kind of vehicle.
• 16:41
  It was, uh, truly next generational.
• 16:44
  I wrote that and, you know, I'll stand by it.
• 16:47
  Truly a next generational vehicle.
• 16:49
  Well, thanks for listening.
• 17:39
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