Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Pebble Beach ‘24: Elegance, Eva Braun’s Bum, Racing Top Gun, a scruffy Bugatti & a Mafia Ferrari

Transcript

Pebble Beach ‘24: Elegance, Eva Braun’s Bum, Racing Top Gun, a scruffy Bugatti & a Mafia Ferrari · 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 into
• 0:06
  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.
• 0:38
  Good day, good morning, good afternoon.
• 0:41
  It is John Summers, the motoring historian.
• 0:44
  So, this episode is about the magic of cars, isn't it?
• 0:47
  It's about the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance.
• 0:49
  A concours, a show comparing cars on the grounds of elegance.
• 1:00
  And, uh, you know, and I would say, look, the headline, this is one of the things
• 1:04
  I'm trying to do better in the pot, right?
• 1:05
  The headline is, is that this year's Pebble Beach winner was not a fresh,
• 1:16
  you know, 500, 000 to 1, 000, 000 to, you know, whatever I popping number
• 1:24
  normal people would buy a house for.
• 1:27
  Um, you know, kind of restoration, recent restoration, traditionally,
• 1:32
  I say traditionally every year up to now that has what's one pebble.
• 1:37
  This, this year was a preservation car.
• 1:39
  So what does that mean?
• 1:41
  Um, well, it means that it's a car which has a contiguous known history that we
• 1:52
  can look at and we can say, um, this is an antique in the truest sense of the word.
• 2:02
  Um, I was trying to explain it to somebody the other day and I found
• 2:08
  myself thinking about a project that I had been asked to offer an opinion
• 2:13
  on and it featured a Um, a car, which I mean, I'll just I'll say what it is.
• 2:21
  It was a grosser Mercedes, a Mercedes 770 that was one of the ones that
• 2:27
  the Nazi party had ordered Mercedes to make after the death of Heydrich.
• 2:33
  So Reinhard Heydrich, who was about the most evil Nazi you can think of outside
• 2:38
  of the SS was, was killed, I think by the Czech resistance, was it maybe anyway,
• 2:43
  whatever it was, it was a car bomb.
• 2:46
  So the party got in touch with Ben's and said, you know, make
• 2:50
  a car that's resistant to this.
• 2:52
  So that the 770 was, was the result of it.
• 2:55
  They're only like seven chassis or, or something like that.
• 2:58
  Well, well, um, uh, a, a friend of mine had been asked to consult on the
• 3:05
  preservation of one of these 770 chassis.
• 3:10
  Um, and, um, He by profession is is not, uh, he by, you know, is not a car guy.
• 3:21
  He's more of a heritage management historian, um, you know,
• 3:26
  archaeologist kind of character.
• 3:28
  So, um, and he always likes to talk with me about car related things if
• 3:34
  he has something car related on his plate because, uh, you know, as he
• 3:38
  once said to me years ago when we were at Pebble Beach, you know, you can,
• 3:42
  you can tell me what I'm looking at.
• 3:44
  You know, and I think over the years, he's gotten a lot better.
• 3:47
  He learned very quickly, but, uh, you know, the, the, the bottom line is, is
• 3:51
  that he, we had a conversation about how would you best show a Mercedes 770?
• 4:01
  And we talked about this particular, uh, uh, car and, and this particular
• 4:06
  car had as a result of research that had recently been undertaken, um, being
• 4:12
  proven to be the car which brought Eva Braun to the bunker at the end of the
• 4:23
  second world war to Hitler's bunker.
• 4:26
  And interestingly, was also involved in Martin Borman's escape, right?
• 4:30
  So it's, uh, so I guess the car sat around, didn't get destroyed.
• 4:35
  And then when Martin Borman fled the bunker, this was the car that he used
• 4:39
  to, like, get to the airport or whatever.
• 4:41
  I might be not quite right on on the history there.
• 4:44
  I'm not quite sure.
• 4:45
  done any research about this before.
• 4:47
  I just remember that at the time when I was doing research about it, that
• 4:51
  was the impression that I formed.
• 4:53
  Anyway, that wasn't the net of the project.
• 4:55
  The net of the project was here's the car.
• 4:58
  It's in need of restoration, the engine and the body and the engine
• 5:02
  or the, you know, the components have been separated for a long time.
• 5:06
  And that's a whole separate and quite interesting story, which at the time I
• 5:10
  got into, and I'm not gonna Look at that.
• 5:12
  I'm not going to go down a digression for the first time in the world ever.
• 5:16
  I'm not going down a digression.
• 5:18
  How about that?
• 5:19
  Um, so anyway, that the net net is how do you display this this
• 5:24
  717 and, um, I can't recall.
• 5:30
  Well, I believe it was probably him, right?
• 5:32
  Who would have suggested this kind of thing first, but we, I remember
• 5:36
  feeling after that conversation that the most important thing about that
• 5:42
  car was the people who sat in it and and their involvement with 20th century
• 5:49
  and indeed contemporary history.
• 5:52
  So, in other words, the most important thing about that Mercedes 770 wasn't
• 5:57
  the engine or the chassis or the body or the restoration or the winning at
• 6:01
  Pebble Beach or anything like that.
• 6:03
  It was that leather seat where Eva Braun had sat on her way to meet
• 6:11
  Hitler in the bunker at the end.
• 6:15
  Now that involvement with history is so it's hard to put your finger on.
• 6:25
  This is, this is the unfathomable.
• 6:27
  This is the unfathomable, blah blah, isn't it?
• 6:30
  It it's something bigger and deeper and greater than, than ourselves.
• 6:34
  It's touching, um, um, history.
• 6:36
  And yet there it is.
• 6:37
  You know, it's a story, it's a fable, it's a, in your imagination.
• 6:42
  And then there is the object that is actually there.
• 6:46
  You know, you too can put your band wear either Braun put hers, um,
• 6:53
  . And of course, the absurdity of that wasn't lost on on us.
• 6:58
  And I don't believe it's lost on on the owner of the car either
• 7:03
  in in terms of of how do you how do you depict this this story?
• 7:07
  How do you depict the car?
• 7:09
  How do you tell the story without glorying Nazi, the Nazi party?
• 7:15
  All of this interesting stuff, which is why I'm drawn to the lawn at Pebble Beach.
• 7:24
  Why I enjoy the show at Pebble Beach because what the show continually makes
• 7:31
  you think about is what is elegant, how should you best tell the cast story.
• 7:37
  But look, the reason why I was thinking about that Eva Braun 770, um, was
• 7:44
  the, the, this The important thing about that car is the fact that it's
• 7:51
  not been preserved, been restored.
• 7:54
  If it had had had the million dollar restoration, it would just be another,
• 7:57
  admittedly very nice Mercedes.
• 8:00
  But the very important thing about it is that arguably just the seat cushion that
• 8:05
  Eva brought, sat on, but, but certainly.
• 8:08
  This would seem to be the best way to tell the story of that object.
• 8:11
  Therefore, a restoration completely and utterly destroys the history of the car.
• 8:19
  I know I ramble a lot and I say a lot of stuff without meaning
• 8:22
  emphasis, but I'm going to say that again, a restoration completely
• 8:27
  destroys the history of the car.
• 8:31
  That's why when we talk about a patination, it's not, Oh, it's
• 8:36
  just some scratches and some dents.
• 8:38
  No.
• 8:38
  No, it isn't.
• 8:39
  No, it isn't.
• 8:40
  It's evidence of a life lived.
• 8:43
  It's evidence that it was actually really there.
• 8:48
  These modern restorations, I'm not really sure what they are.
• 8:52
  Are they, you know, is it a 1932 Packard because it walks and talks like it or
• 8:58
  Is it a night 2024 Packard because just last week it came out of Paul Russell's
• 9:05
  restoration shop and the owner just saw it on the lawn for the first time just now.
• 9:10
  I saw it before he did because it came out of the truck and was on the lawn,
• 9:15
  you know, first thing in the morning when I was down there learning how to do my
• 9:18
  docenting thing, which is why I'm meant to be talking about this on this video.
• 9:22
  So, so look, right, I have, uh.
• 9:27
  I don't mean to.
• 9:30
  Uh, as ever, I, I cast things in an extreme way, don't I?
• 9:33
  I speak in hyperbole and I use the most hyperbolic example of our times, the Nazi
• 9:40
  party, to convey what I'm trying to say.
• 9:44
  But what am I really trying to say here?
• 9:46
  You know, I don't just like unrestored cars because of the way that they look.
• 9:51
  I like unrestored cars because they were actually there.
• 9:55
  They're actually part of real life.
• 9:59
  History.
• 9:59
  Now, you know, am I going to argue that a car like that $35 million
• 10:07
  Pierre Bar, I think that was the name.
• 10:10
  Is that no, is that the bloke that had all the collection in the middle of France?
• 10:13
  Anyway, that the Ferrari that went for 35 million that had the history where
• 10:18
  it had been wrecked early in its life.
• 10:20
  And I think the bloke driving it was, you know, it didn't bloody make it.
• 10:23
  It was like in the early 60s, the family, um, like wealthy family.
• 10:28
  And I guess the family, French family.
• 10:29
  I believe, um, I might well be wrong on this.
• 10:32
  I'm no Marcel Marcini, am I?
• 10:34
  And, uh, anyway, I like stories better than that.
• 10:37
  Whatever.
• 10:37
  My understanding is car was wrecked, parked up, sat for bloody ever.
• 10:41
  Bottoms eventually pried it out of the family's hands.
• 10:43
  I bet you, like a mother died.
• 10:45
  And, and, uh, or a, You know, the living relative.
• 10:48
  Anyway, whatever.
• 10:49
  At that point, the car was freed up.
• 10:52
  And now I'm not quite arguing that that car should have
• 10:54
  remained in unrestored condition.
• 10:56
  There's not, that's not good history.
• 10:59
  That's just a terrible history.
• 11:01
  And most racing cars, they have these fresh lives.
• 11:04
  Most of these, you know, Great cars like Packards and Duesenbergs
• 11:08
  and all this kind of stuff.
• 11:09
  They were mistreated and shabby and they're lucky to have survived.
• 11:13
  So I'm not saying that every time I see a Pebble Beach quality restoration,
• 11:17
  I'm like, get, get out of my face.
• 11:20
  No, not, not at all.
• 11:21
  Right.
• 11:21
  I, I, I can appreciate that as well.
• 11:23
  I'm just saying that if you are comparing a fresh restoration
• 11:29
  with a car, which has seen it all.
• 11:32
  In the case of the winning car, it's a 39, I think.
• 11:35
  So what it's, it's, you know, 80 odd, you know, years old now.
• 11:41
  Um, yeah.
• 11:44
  So for me personally, a huge moment that that car won.
• 11:50
  Um, and that's really the headline.
• 11:52
  And the additional perspective that I can offer is, is that amongst the
• 11:57
  people I do the Pebble Beach dozenting with that I'm going to be talking about
• 12:01
  on this, there was a feeling and a lot of them worked at the Mullin Museum.
• 12:05
  Um, which recently closed, and we'll talk about that a little more later on.
• 12:08
  But I'll talk about that wee, the bloody royal wee, so pretentious.
• 12:12
  I'll talk about that in a little bit.
• 12:14
  Um, there's no team behind me, there's just me.
• 12:17
  I guess there's Eric, isn't there?
• 12:18
  There's poor Eric listening to this prattling editing, isn't it?
• 12:22
  Thank you, Eric, and the Motoring Podcast Network.
• 12:25
  Shit, I completely lost my train of thought.
• 12:27
  This is the moment, isn't it, where you, uh, where I would normally
• 12:32
  add in some, uh, So some music.
• 13:01
  Look, anyway, right, what am I talking about here?
• 13:03
  I'm talking about the importance of preservation cards, aren't I?
• 13:06
  That's really what I was talking about.
• 13:09
  And how pleased I am this preservation card won and how, oh,
• 13:12
  I know what I was going to say.
• 13:12
  So the mulling guys, The Mullen guys were sad and and
• 13:17
  indeed felt it was unjustified.
• 13:19
  The car that came out of the Mullen collection and has since
• 13:23
  been restored, um, Tabalaga or a Delahaye, one of these French things.
• 13:29
  It was done in two.
• 13:30
  I'll show a picture.
• 13:32
  It was done in two tone like blue and turquoise.
• 13:35
  It was, um, Um, not to my taste, should we say, you know, it was, it,
• 13:42
  it really was, it was Uh, you know, I was familiar with the Mullen Museum.
• 13:47
  I was involved in doing the orientation museum, uh, orientation stuff.
• 13:52
  I had no interest in Bugatti's before and, and I left feeling
• 13:56
  like, you know, you know, one day maybe I too would do a type 57.
• 14:00
  I just like that rakish.
• 14:03
  body style and a lot of the other French racing cars I knew nothing about before
• 14:07
  being involved with that collection.
• 14:08
  And I really learned a lot.
• 14:10
  So thank you very much, Peter Mullen, for putting that collection together
• 14:14
  and displaying it in that way and comparing it with with French art.
• 14:18
  But you know what?
• 14:18
  It's not my, it's not my shtick.
• 14:21
  Um, so to see a battered old racing car beat that.
• 14:30
  Um, you know, one guy said to me and it's a valid point is, you know, I just
• 14:39
  don't see how that Bugatti was more elegant than, you know, the Mullin.
• 14:44
  Bugatti Dele Haye, whatever the devil it is, Alba Largo, whatever the devil it was.
• 14:50
  Um, it was a fast car for about 10 minutes in the immediate post war period
• 14:54
  before like Ferrari and Porsche really got their skates on, Maserati, those
• 14:58
  kind of guys, not a fast car by modern standards, but was fast in period.
• 15:03
  And, you know, I get why people like them.
• 15:05
  They're just not my shtick.
• 15:22
  Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Very pleased that People
• 15:26
  Won by Preservation Car.
• 15:29
  Um, and I guess the other headline, um, in the sort of pedal community, if you will,
• 15:35
  that's really pretentious, doesn't it?
• 15:37
  But, you know, the talk, uh, uh, you know, that I, I had various conversations around
• 15:43
  this theme with, with different people.
• 15:44
  And of course the weekend was, uh, the, with Bigatti winning.
• 15:49
  It equalizes them with Mercedes as having won the most pebble beaches and as I, as
• 15:55
  I said to my tour groups, you know, if, if, if you are, you know, if Mercedes
• 16:04
  of 111 and if, uh, Bugatti of, of 110, does that, does that mean Mercedes
• 16:11
  are a more elegant mark than, Bugatti.
• 16:14
  I don't know.
• 16:15
  I never thought of it in those times before because this is
• 16:18
  the first year this sort of that Mercedes had overtaken Bugatti.
• 16:22
  I think, I think Bugatti led for, for, uh, for a long time.
• 16:27
  Um, I in the car itself, I did get close to it.
• 16:30
  Um, on the field walk that we do, we don't do right first thing in the morning.
• 16:35
  I did get really close to the car and, and you know, it's everything
• 16:40
  that's awesome about a vintage sports car club race meeting,
• 16:44
  except this is a super rare Bugatti.
• 16:47
  Um, the wheels are just You know, that's that's the thing.
• 16:51
  If you look at photographs of it, just look at the detail.
• 16:55
  It's it's that Bugatti thing where the closer you look, the more
• 16:59
  incredible the detail is stood back.
• 17:03
  It's elegant taken up close.
• 17:05
  It's elegant.
• 17:06
  Each individual component is elegant.
• 17:09
  And now all these things have been working together in harmony.
• 17:12
  And it's this beautiful history.
• 17:14
  So, uh, you know, I'm pleased that that car won.
• 17:18
  Yeah.
• 17:19
  So now from the sublime or from the from the sublime to the ridiculous or maybe
• 17:25
  from the ridiculous to the sublime.
• 17:26
  I'm not sure.
• 17:27
  I'm sitting here now looking at my back from the dead 775 across the country from
• 17:35
  Minnesota in the winter Kawasaki ZX10.
• 17:43
  Um,
• 17:46
  I bought it because uh, Many years ago, we had this trip to Miami.
• 17:51
  I'm thinking these two things are not connected, but I'm
• 17:53
  telling you, they completely are.
• 17:55
  Many years ago, I had this trip to Miami.
• 17:59
  On the trip, we were in the Windward Art District.
• 18:02
  If you've never been there, go.
• 18:03
  It's bloody awesome.
• 18:05
  It's, it's street art.
• 18:07
  It's, it's, it's people talk about, you know, it's, I'll tell you what it is.
• 18:10
  It's what Venice in L.
• 18:12
  A.
• 18:12
  used to be before Google.
• 18:15
  Came and corporatized it, or if you're a Bay Area person, what the Mission District
• 18:20
  was before, you know, the, the tech money in invaded and changed the character as
• 18:25
  it has in the last sort of 15, 20 years.
• 18:28
  And I, I confess I'm part of that.
• 18:30
  Right.
• 18:30
  Well, I, you know, I'm here based on a tech sales career, and my wife has,
• 18:35
  has done a, a, a, an ad sales career.
• 18:37
  So, you know, it, it, it's, uh, uh, you know, it is what it is.
• 18:42
  You can come and stone me for.
• 18:44
  Blighting our society down the line and what the devil
• 18:47
  was I talking about the ZX10.
• 18:48
  The ZX10 is, is, is back.
• 18:52
  So it always ran, but first it leaked oil and then it seemed to
• 18:55
  just stop that and it had oil in it.
• 18:58
  And, you know, it also appeared to have had a water leak.
• 19:03
  It'd been downed.
• 19:04
  That's why 775.
• 19:06
  I've been on copart a lot and I felt like I could, I could buy it.
• 19:09
  And why did I buy a wrecked one?
• 19:11
  Why copart?
• 19:12
  Well, and it, because of this thing that You know, Miami Windward Art District.
• 19:20
  I, uh, uh, went there years ago with my wife.
• 19:25
  Whilst we're looking at all this avant garde art, there was a Kawasaki ZZR600,
• 19:29
  which some clown had hand painted.
• 19:31
  It was a shitty job.
• 19:32
  It was a shitty work of art.
• 19:34
  You know, it was like when you go around a high school.
• 19:37
  I'm going to be doing a lot of art display.
• 19:38
  You know, there's glimmers of talent in one or two pieces, but most
• 19:42
  of it you just like Jesus, right?
• 19:44
  I don't want to be harsh on high school.
• 19:45
  I mean, high school art learning, aren't you?
• 19:47
  But you know, this is how I felt with a lot of this windward stuff and this bike
• 19:52
  was was, but this is why it's worthwhile.
• 19:55
  I left feeling like one not a great motorcycle.
• 20:00
  put a motorcycle up like plinth why not be a ZZR 1200 not the 600 like
• 20:05
  this just seemed like a bit like and and anyway like what a weird subject
• 20:11
  to to pick not a particularly elegant motorcycle like what was going on and
• 20:16
  people who would walk past really elegant motorcycles parked at the curb, you
• 20:22
  know, Ducati's, um, you know, modern architectural sports bikes like an H2.
• 20:29
  They walk right past that because it's on the street.
• 20:32
  Those people, they're going, hmm, and scratching their chin and, you know,
• 20:37
  Sipping on their fucking lattes, um, looking at this bike and and I was like,
• 20:43
  you know what I've been watching too much of that fashion show with with my wife and
• 20:48
  and that fashion design show with Heidi Klum what they always do like an avant
• 20:52
  garde week and I was like, you know, I'm going to do some avant garde collecting.
• 20:58
  I'm just going to collect what I want around the sports bike
• 21:02
  world because to me, it is art.
• 21:04
  Here it is as art with a paint job on it.
• 21:07
  You know, for me, it's art as, as is.
• 21:11
  So there's a number of projects.
• 21:13
  My, this jigsaw farm project that I'm involved with with Aaron at the moment
• 21:16
  is of course a big, uh, a part of that.
• 21:20
  But, but, uh, so anyway, so I bought this bike in like
• 21:24
  2016, right at the end of 2016.
• 21:26
  It was cheap because, um, it was.
• 21:30
  It was Christmas time, the auction actually closed and I won the bike when
• 21:34
  I was on vacation in England, like seeing my parents and it wasn't a particularly
• 21:39
  good trip for a whole bunch of different reasons and not least because I was half
• 21:43
  concentrating on trying to pay for this wrecked sports bike that was going to
• 21:48
  cost me more to transport than I paid for.
• 21:51
  And I also had to organize the transport and, um, anyway, so it had a fraught
• 21:57
  beginning, not least because I sort of had a falling out with the truck driver
• 22:01
  because they agreed to transport it and then were like, yeah, you're going to
• 22:04
  need a forklift to get it off the truck.
• 22:07
  And I was like, what the fuck are you talking about?
• 22:09
  Need a forklift.
• 22:10
  Like, I paid for the truck, but I paid for the bike to be delivered
• 22:14
  to my house in San Francisco.
• 22:17
  to be dropped in Livermore, which is a clear hour and a half more in
• 22:21
  the rush hour away from my house.
• 22:24
  And I have no means of getting it here.
• 22:25
  Like, what are we, what are we talking about?
• 22:28
  So, so the trucker and I had a, had a falling out.
• 22:32
  I would handle it differently now.
• 22:34
  Anyway, the long and short was he dropped it in Lodi and he got there
• 22:38
  and dropped it off before I got there.
• 22:40
  So, uh, uh, and when I got there, although the kickstand was down,
• 22:44
  when I raised the kickstand, the bike, Didn't want to fall over.
• 22:48
  It sunk in the mud that much.
• 22:50
  I had to call my friend Wayne.
• 22:52
  And now I do like the pebble beachy stuff with with normally and lives in Lodi.
• 22:56
  I had to call him to help me push it out of the mud and into the storage unit.
• 23:02
  And it wouldn't start at that time.
• 23:04
  It said it ran on the listing.
• 23:07
  But having come across the country in the middle of winter in the week
• 23:13
  between Christmas and New Year.
• 23:16
  In an on an open flatbed truck, the dampness had got into it and it wouldn't
• 23:22
  run, but I just let it sit in the storage unit and a couple of weeks later when
• 23:26
  I was over in the storage unit, I stuck a key in it and it fired up as I said,
• 23:30
  it's I was happy about that, but it did leak oil and as I said, it had been down.
• 23:36
  So did things like check the frame and all of that kind of stuff.
• 23:40
  And, and, uh, yeah, as I say, that was 2016 and one way or another with other
• 23:44
  bikes in the way and, and me being, you know, scared to ride it and, and,
• 23:51
  you know, the smell of oil, it taking a while, but over the years, I guess it's
• 23:54
  just, um, the fluid leaks have stopped.
• 23:56
  And the other day
• 24:00
  I was like, you know what, I'm going to really try and get it sorted out.
• 24:04
  And, uh, I guess the reason why I decided I wasn't gonna write it was because
• 24:11
  the clutch was was not working right.
• 24:14
  But I was just able to just played with it and fiddled with it and
• 24:18
  realized I could put it back together again and make it work properly.
• 24:22
  And I did that.
• 24:24
  And, uh, Then I felt, well, well, the next step is to ride it.
• 24:29
  And there were a few bits of like loose plastic on it.
• 24:31
  Like, you know, the plastic on one side was missing.
• 24:34
  So where it holds the indicator, the metal bracket was swinging around.
• 24:38
  So I like, you know, dealt with that, like took it off or zip tie the wires or,
• 24:43
  or, or whatever, just dealt with that.
• 24:45
  And, uh.
• 24:47
  Yeah, I've got out and uh and add a little turn around the block and I
• 24:50
  should say over the years I've stockpiled parts on it and I always had a vision
• 24:55
  to do a kind of like Harlequin pattern with the body work on it because uh I
• 25:00
  guess it's been down, resurrected and then downed again before I bought it.
• 25:07
  It has 28 just coming up to 29, 000 miles on it.
• 25:11
  So I bought a bunch of, you know, cheap plastic, cheap Chinese bits for it.
• 25:17
  Also like an authentic, it's got one authentic black side panel that
• 25:21
  says ninja and another authentic green side panel that said ninja.
• 25:26
  So, uh, but I also got like the peachy orange to go on one side, which I
• 25:31
  thought might work, but it doesn't.
• 25:33
  Um, bloke who had it before me, the headlights are green.
• 25:40
  It's got these little like spotlights and they're green and
• 25:43
  the tail light is green as well.
• 25:46
  It has, uh, although most of the body work is black, um, the tank is green.
• 25:51
  So it has this sort of mismatched kind of, of, of color going on.
• 25:56
  Really cool.
• 25:57
  Always wanted to, to do that.
• 25:58
  Actually looking at it now, I probably should just, just, just done black.
• 26:02
  And then it just would have just looked sinister because it would
• 26:04
  have been black and, but for the green, but for the green tank.
• 26:07
  But we, uh.
• 26:08
  Maybe I'll, uh, maybe I'll swap those parts out later on.
• 26:11
  Anyway, those things, uh, uh, are neither here nor there because, uh, in
• 26:17
  the spirit of avant garde collecting, I've left the Copart sticker on it.
• 26:21
  Um, it's fully insured.
• 26:23
  It's fully legally registered.
• 26:27
  Um, I, uh, bought two new tires for it.
• 26:31
  I bought a new chain for it and spark plugs and oil.
• 26:34
  So, the work is done and and it's back.
• 26:35
  So, what I'm excited about this bike is that I believe this bike is peak analog.
• 26:41
  Um, by that, I mean that any bike that came before was not,
• 26:46
  uh, did not make as much power.
• 26:49
  It makes 180 horsepower with ram air at 180 miles an hour.
• 26:54
  That's the I remembered about it when it was new.
• 26:57
  So cool.
• 26:59
  Um, you know, the gixxer of the same era made a buck sixty.
• 27:03
  You know, they're not there.
• 27:04
  The gap is, is huge in, in terms of, of actual power.
• 27:10
  The Honda and the Yam, they were, they weren't in the ballpark
• 27:13
  at that time in, in 2005.
• 27:16
  Um, at the time it had a reputation for having a head shake, that ZX 10,
• 27:21
  the C, the C1, because it was, uh, it was clear that the Kawasaki came back
• 27:26
  with more power and a shorter chassis and a bike that was feisty, And hard
• 27:31
  to ride, you know, just at the time all the TT guys were using Hondas.
• 27:35
  They were definitely not using ZX10s.
• 27:39
  Um, that's obviously subsequently changed a lot.
• 27:44
  So, uh, . So, yeah, so, um, peak analog in terms of, of, and after that, or I say
• 27:53
  peak analog 'cause after that a BS right, everything had a BS traction control.
• 27:57
  And it first came in, in 2006, that that's when the, uh, the K six
• 28:03
  jigsaw tha had switchable, you know, switchable controls on your, under
• 28:09
  your thumb like engine mode controls.
• 28:12
  Like, I remember feeling like ew at the time, like, ew, um, really weird.
• 28:16
  Um.
• 28:17
  Since then, I quite like the idea of ABS.
• 28:19
  Don't have a bike with it, but absolutely would ride a bike with
• 28:22
  ABS, although I think it might spoil me, that's what BMW guys have said.
• 28:26
  One guy said to me, you know, you've got ABS.
• 28:28
  If it's damp, you can just break in the turn.
• 28:31
  You can break when the bike's leaned over and I was like, fucking hell.
• 28:34
  Yes, you can, because you try and do that on one of these and it
• 28:37
  does not turn out well, even if you're not really going very fast.
• 28:41
  And if you're going fast, you know, you are very, uh, Uh, committed, which,
• 28:46
  uh, so yeah, so, um, awesome bike.
• 28:51
  Awesome to have it back.
• 28:52
  Awesome that I resurrected this copark wreck, which I thought was not a
• 28:58
  wreck, which I thought could come back.
• 29:00
  And here it is back and, and riding and, and being alive and
• 29:05
  being part of the collection.
• 29:07
  Absolutely.
• 29:09
  Awesome.
• 29:09
  It's only taken me eight years, hasn't it?
• 29:12
  So, uh, hopefully I'll get the other Coparts stuff moving.
• 29:16
  The other Coparts stuff I bought years ago moving, moving more quickly than that.
• 29:21
  So.
• 29:22
  Having positioned the ZX10 there, I'm going to share a story that my buddy
• 29:29
  was out on a little test ride with it, and he was at a stoplight, he was
• 29:34
  at a stoplight and had a guy on an H2, the Top Gun, you know, Maverick.
• 29:42
  Bike.
• 29:43
  Pulled up alongside him.
• 29:44
  And if you don't know these bikes, they are supercharged.
• 29:47
  It's a motorcycle with a supercharger.
• 29:49
  And if you've driven a car with a supercharger, you know it,
• 29:52
  it makes a linear power all the way through the rev range.
• 29:57
  So it turns, um, you know, a bike, which is, uh, you know, a bike like mine.
• 30:04
  Like mine, which are fast in a straight line, but you know, flickable as well.
• 30:09
  It turns that into even more of a high speed straight line missile.
• 30:15
  So as fast around the track as is the X 10 ridden well, no.
• 30:20
  Can it lean and go around corners better than a Harley?
• 30:22
  Yes, it can.
• 30:23
  Um, but, you know, really, it's, it's, uh, it's a power
• 30:29
  bike, the, the, the Kawasaki H2.
• 30:32
  So, broke on one of these, pulls up alongside John, and when the lights
• 30:36
  turned green, he totally blew John off.
• 30:39
  Yeah, so, uh, he, he had a brain out moment and took
• 30:43
  off, took off after the guy.
• 30:46
  Basically, there was a moment where on the straight, the other guy was ahead, but
• 30:53
  by the time they came to a twisty section and I know the piece of road quite well,
• 31:00
  it's, it's a, um, it's right by the ocean and it's a dual carriageway and it sweeps
• 31:05
  right downhill and then the line tightens.
• 31:09
  And if you know the curve, it's exciting because it's two curves, right?
• 31:14
  It's a gentle one and then you actively need to really get the bike lower.
• 31:19
  And there's a concrete wall and there's always cars around
• 31:22
  because it's like a freeway.
• 31:24
  And then and then it leads left and the road sweeps left and it opens out.
• 31:30
  Um, you can go faster through the left hander and there's the ocean on the left
• 31:36
  and it's on the right hand side there.
• 31:38
  And it's just.
• 31:39
  It's super picturesque.
• 31:41
  It's one of those like, this is why I moved to California moments.
• 31:44
  Well, we're down there.
• 31:45
  Uh, this fella didn't have as much bottle as, as John and down onto the flat,
• 31:51
  uh, John just left him in, in the dust.
• 31:54
  And uh, when he dropped the bike off, he explained that he'd had this, this moment,
• 32:00
  um, mentioned a number that he'd seen on the speedo that I'm not going to share.
• 32:07
  But.
• 32:09
  The point he made was how effortlessly he got there.
• 32:13
  He kept comparing it with his R1, which is one of his like all time
• 32:17
  favorite, like, you know, out of my cold dead hands kind of of a motorcycle.
• 32:24
  He kept comparing it with with with that.
• 32:31
  yes.
• 32:31
  So, having not having been ridden, wrecked, rebuilt by a bloke who
• 32:39
  John thinks did a really good job.
• 32:41
  It's got this full brox exhaust on it and all of that.
• 32:43
  I wasn't sure about the quality of the job because of the green lights and all
• 32:46
  that, but John thinks the bloke that did the work really knew what he was doing.
• 32:50
  He thinks the exhaust had a proper tune on it.
• 32:53
  So, um, Go me.
• 32:55
  I, uh, I really got a great bike there and got exactly what, what I wanted.
• 33:00
  It's the most awesome piece of, of avant garde collecting.
• 33:03
  And now, um, you know, I had one ride on it where I thought, is
• 33:08
  this piece of shit actually okay?
• 33:10
  And the answer was yes.
• 33:11
  And I had another ride on it where, um, you know, sports
• 33:16
  bike speeds were attained.
• 33:18
  Right.
• 33:19
  And, uh, Without me planning to do it, I had no plastic on it then, which normally,
• 33:25
  that kind of speed, you know, you, the, the power, you need the plastic, right?
• 33:30
  You feel like you're going to be pulled off it.
• 33:31
  Not, not that bike.
• 33:32
  I don't know if it just got there really far.
• 33:34
  I just, it was just effortless.
• 33:36
  Didn't get out of third gear.
• 33:37
  Um, I just was actually testing the gearbox that was at that moment
• 33:41
  and there was a straight bit.
• 33:42
  So, you know, I came in the throttle a bit more and, and, you know,
• 33:45
  it's just a liter bike, isn't it?
• 33:47
  In the power band, like, that was how it, uh, how it happened that first time.
• 33:53
  I went fast on it without really meaning to because it was like
• 33:56
  shitty old tires at that time and had an old chain and all of that.
• 34:00
  Anyway, um.
• 34:02
  And just for that, like, hot minute, hot moment, right?
• 34:04
  So, so that was why I was like, you know what, I've got to
• 34:07
  get all the stuff done on it.
• 34:08
  Cause this bike basically is, is, uh, it's fine to drive one of those moments, but I
• 34:12
  think, um, a little bit more so than that.
• 34:15
  And the bloke didn't stay with him.
• 34:16
  The bloke just fell off the back of him.
• 34:19
  Um, and I'm like, wow, is this the reality that, that, um, having sat
• 34:26
  for all those years, And now I've been resurrected that in one of the first
• 34:31
  rides, you're going to blow off, uh, you know, you're going to blow off Top Gun.
• 34:37
  Um, the answer is yes.
• 34:40
  So, uh, yeah, the legend, uh, the legend around the spattered ZX10 grows.
• 34:47
  And, uh, I'm really excited that it's alive.
• 34:52
  And, uh, and has joined the fleet.
• 35:10
  So why all this relentless prattling about the Kawasaki ZX 10?
• 35:15
  What does that have to do with with Pebble Beach?
• 35:17
  Well, it's this whole thing about collecting connoisseurship.
• 35:24
  And what does it really mean to be elegant?
• 35:30
  What is elegant?
• 35:33
  At the end of my last pod, I talked about some work that I'd done with
• 35:36
  the Haggerty Junior Judging Program at the, at the Hillsborough Encore,
• 35:40
  where, um, I'd been asked to be involved in, in the program as a, as a docent.
• 35:46
  And, um, I, uh, you know, the, the suggestion was that you found half
• 35:52
  a dozen cars and you talked a little bit about them and then you had them
• 35:55
  pick from those half dozen cars.
• 35:59
  And, you know, that was, I really made a point of delivering pithy messages
• 36:07
  and comparing different cars together.
• 36:09
  And candidly, I had the unfair advantage of being able to consult with a, uh,
• 36:14
  with a nine year old, um, you know, my son, who is there with me, about what
• 36:19
  we should do or compare and contrast.
• 36:21
  So we did some of the things that I thought was cool and some of the things
• 36:24
  that he thought was cool and some of the things that we agreed both to do.
• 36:28
  with both thought was cool and and uh, as such that the whole, um, you know,
• 36:33
  that the whole thing worked really well.
• 36:35
  But, but when you've got small children, you know, and you say to
• 36:39
  them, this is a concord elegance.
• 36:42
  We're judging elegance.
• 36:44
  Um, what does elegance mean?
• 36:46
  You can say to adults, we're judging elegance.
• 36:48
  That's why I say to the people who are right due to a sort of bevel beach.
• 36:51
  What did I say to these kids?
• 36:53
  Uh, uh, uh, uh, Hillsborough.
• 36:57
  I said that basically they're judging coolness.
• 37:00
  You're judging coolness.
• 37:02
  Now that's why the preserved Bugatti with all the dings and
• 37:10
  scratches of a life well lived.
• 37:14
  This is way cooler than some gussied up fresh restoration that
• 37:19
  some cheesedick spent ages picking stones out of the tires for.
• 37:23
  Like, it just is cooler.
• 37:25
  Just like some gussied up, modern, fast, showy Kawasaki.
• 37:31
  All right.
• 37:32
  Live your Jim.
• 37:33
  Live your Tom Cruise.
• 37:36
  Fantasy live your maverick fantasy, right?
• 37:39
  Because that is the X10 is the real deal in every way, shape or form.
• 37:45
  It's absolutely like uh, uh, Yeah, it's a splash of cold water in the face.
• 37:53
  It's just the.
• 37:55
  The most it's what I think is super cool about cars and bikes and uh, and the
• 38:01
  motoring experience So yes, I did just delight the multi million dollar pebble
• 38:08
  beach winning Bugatti race car with my battered salvage title Kawasaki zx10.
• 38:17
  Yes.
• 38:18
  I did just do that
• 38:35
  So look I entitled this You Presentation Pebble Beach 2024.
• 38:41
  What does a Pebble Beach docent do?
• 38:44
  And in this case, I talked a load of bollocks about Some
• 38:49
  Pebble Beach cars and some stuff nothing to do with Pebble Beach.
• 38:53
  Um, Is that kind of what I do at Pebble?
• 38:56
  Um sort of um A number of I had a number of serendipitous connections
• 39:03
  happen, uh, some years ago, I was writing for Gooding, who was seen as
• 39:07
  the premier, you know, classic car auction house and I connected with,
• 39:12
  um, I connected with with Pebble Beach.
• 39:16
  Um, I was doing some work with my friend Wayne, who I mentioned
• 39:20
  earlier, who we were doing the docent program at Hillsborough.
• 39:24
  I mentioned that we did that.
• 39:25
  And he and I met through the Blackhawk Museum.
• 39:29
  And at the time, Blackhawk had two floors of cars and we
• 39:32
  used to do tours around there.
• 39:33
  And I was a docent there.
• 39:36
  And I was involved with Wayne still is involved with with Ironstone, which is an
• 39:42
  awesome event out in the, uh, you know, in the Sierra Nevada foothills, their,
• 39:47
  um, big car show attracts all sorts of different cars, kind of like a hot rod
• 39:51
  show, kind of like a car show, really a great venue and a great event to go to.
• 39:57
  Wayne's always been involved with the racing car class there and,
• 40:00
  and, um, So having sort of stood the docent tours up at these different
• 40:09
  events, we, we, um, started doing them at Pebble Beach as well.
• 40:14
  And, uh, there was already kind of a program there and Wayne was involved
• 40:18
  in, in taking that program over.
• 40:21
  Um, so, um, I am Um, and have been for probably 10 years now, um,
• 40:28
  a pebble beach volunteer docent.
• 40:32
  Um, so what does that mean?
• 40:33
  It means that on the day of the pebble beach car show, um, instead of buying
• 40:42
  a ticket and go in there with my wife, um, dressed up to the nines.
• 40:47
  you know, a civilized hour.
• 40:49
  Um, I usually get up at three o'clock in the morning and and wear, um, a
• 40:55
  blue blazer and a white shirt and khaki trousers and a straw boater and the
• 41:02
  tie that I get given, which is the tie that all Pebble Beach volunteers wear.
• 41:08
  It's a little bit like Davenport High School for Boys, you know,
• 41:10
  you have to put the uniform on.
• 41:12
  And, uh, look the part and, and, you know, represent Davenport
• 41:16
  High School for boys properly.
• 41:18
  And in this case, that's not, you know, beat around the bush,
• 41:20
  although this is, you know, rich people coming and showing off.
• 41:23
  Ultimately, millions of dollars are raised for local, you know, animal
• 41:27
  and children's welfare charities.
• 41:29
  So there is some good coming out of the rich people.
• 41:32
  Showing off their cars.
• 41:33
  You know, there is some good, some good coming out of the Pebble Beach show.
• 41:38
  So what do I do as a docent?
• 41:40
  So I wanted to make this a bit, a little bit of a day in a life.
• 41:44
  Of course, I've miserably failed because I've bolloxed on about the
• 41:46
  ZX10 loads first and all of that different, different kind of thing.
• 41:51
  But this is what a Pebble Beach docent does, right?
• 41:54
  Because realistically, the reason why I'm able to spend the time doing
• 41:59
  this is if I had a proper job, I couldn't spend the time doing it.
• 42:02
  Fundamentally, if, uh, as it is, I'm able to do it because I can take time
• 42:08
  out of my, uh, out of my schedule.
• 42:10
  So what do we do?
• 42:11
  Um, there are two kinds of tickets at Pebble Beach.
• 42:13
  There's your basic entry, and then there's a club dental grants ticket, which
• 42:18
  provides various sort of benefits for you.
• 42:20
  It's a lot more money.
• 42:21
  It's twice as much money.
• 42:22
  So, you know, more than 1, 000 this year for those club tickets.
• 42:26
  So for me, um, Um, one of the benefits is a dose of tour.
• 42:29
  So for me, anybody who stumped up that much to come to the car show, I am going
• 42:34
  to try and knock it out of the park for them in terms of telling them stories
• 42:38
  about the cars that are on the lawn.
• 42:40
  So, um, what does it look like?
• 42:43
  Um, early in the morning, you know, you're done, you're glad rags and, and,
• 42:47
  um, drive into, um, Monterey this year.
• 42:51
  I, I, I, I used to.
• 42:54
  was I used to be able to lucky.
• 42:56
  I used to be lucky enough to stay with people who were closer.
• 43:01
  And for many years I stayed with with Wayne.
• 43:03
  But the last couple of years I've I've been on my own.
• 43:06
  And one year I did a motel in Soledad.
• 43:09
  Um, not to be recommended, but too far away this year I
• 43:13
  did a golf club in Hollister.
• 43:16
  So it's too far away for most people.
• 43:18
  But you know, I don't mind the driving and I'm going to talk
• 43:20
  about that a little bit more.
• 43:22
  a little bit more later on.
• 43:23
  It's also to do with the way that I structure Pebble.
• 43:26
  It's also to do with the fact that I don't want to spend a lot of money.
• 43:28
  I mean, you have to spend a lot of money because the Pebble Because
• 43:31
  accommodation, Purple Beach Week is just absolutely ridiculous.
• 43:35
  I mean, a motel that's normally 100 or 150 a night is going to be,
• 43:39
  uh, 400, 500 a night, literally.
• 43:43
  So if you're going to stay there for three or four nights, you,
• 43:46
  you literally are spending.
• 43:48
  Thousands of dollars on the motel.
• 43:51
  So I, you know, if, if, if, if it's that, or if it's drive a bit at the end of the
• 43:56
  day, thanks, I'm going to do the cheap motel and, and save myself some money.
• 44:01
  So, so that's, uh, that's very much.
• 44:04
  So what do I do?
• 44:05
  I drive in, then you park up in Monterey college is where
• 44:08
  the volunteer parking is right.
• 44:10
  The shuttle bus in first thing in the morning, and then.
• 44:13
  I'm where I usually we docents usually meet down on the field at 6
• 44:19
  30 in the morning for the field tour, because although we see the list of
• 44:26
  cars early, there's no substitute for actually walk in the field and
• 44:30
  knowing where the cars are laid out.
• 44:32
  And also for me, that's my favorite part of the weekend.
• 44:36
  Increasingly, that's becoming my favorite part of the weekend because
• 44:39
  there's nobody else on the field.
• 44:41
  There's like, you know, other volunteers like, you know, directing cars
• 44:46
  and that kind of thing into place.
• 44:48
  But there's, you know, the fences aren't up yet.
• 44:51
  The ticketed guests aren't arriving yet.
• 44:54
  So there's lots of room to look at the cars properly.
• 44:58
  Um, And we do a field walk where we share what we've learned about the cars.
• 45:04
  And, and of course, what that means is you are learning off.
• 45:09
  people who have a really deep, passionate understanding of the cast.
• 45:15
  So, you know, I can do a schtick about Maserati, but listening to the guy
• 45:20
  from the National Automotive Museum in Reno talking about Packard, oh
• 45:25
  my word, I really learned something.
• 45:28
  So, um, Love that experience.
• 45:32
  And, and look, that's really what it's about is, is it's about a
• 45:38
  boys club where we're all just really, really enjoying the toys.
• 45:43
  And, and on that field walk this morning, we on that field walk
• 45:47
  this year, we spent a long time with the winning guys, Bugatti.
• 45:53
  He's there with his daughter.
• 45:54
  Um, he drove it 200 miles that weekend.
• 45:58
  It went on the tour.
• 46:00
  Um, so that, uh, we'll talk, I'll talk a little bit more about the
• 46:04
  format for weekend in a, in a moment.
• 46:06
  But, um, the point is that the car is being driven in the, in the course
• 46:11
  of the weekend and, and that, um, You know, my most intimate experience
• 46:17
  with the car, intimate experience.
• 46:18
  I don't know if it's absolutely, no, no, my, the, the actual, you know, up close
• 46:23
  and personal with the car, um, occurred that morning on, on that field walk.
• 46:28
  And then, um, we have a tour scheduled through the morning to about lunchtime
• 46:35
  when the field becomes too crowded.
• 46:37
  Um, and it will be Uh, sponsor group.
• 46:39
  So last year I did a tour from Sadie's Benz.
• 46:42
  Um, other years, the main sponsor's Rolex.
• 46:45
  So, you know, years ago, um, I used to do a tour where, um, it would be the
• 46:52
  Rolex people and, uh, Wayne's very tall.
• 46:55
  So he would be at the front with Jackie Stewart, um, and I would miss
• 46:59
  Jackie Stewart stories, which was sad.
• 47:01
  Um, cause Jackie Stewart's like the ambassador, the Rolex ambassador.
• 47:05
  Um, I'd miss his stories, but I would be at the back with the Rolex
• 47:11
  dealer's wives, because the people invited to the hospitality are the
• 47:15
  best Rolex dealers It used to be.
• 47:17
  I'm not sure if it still is.
• 47:18
  And, uh, I, I was, uh, I remember cha uh, it was one of the most enjoyable P
• 47:24
  beach experiences for me was chatting.
• 47:27
  with, with the wives who clearly really were, you know, enjoying themselves
• 47:32
  in terms of intake of alcohol.
• 47:34
  Um, and we're chuckling at my, you know, not very amusing sides.
• 47:40
  And, and there was a middle aged guy who was coming along with us.
• 47:43
  It wasn't, uh, uh, he wasn't a husband.
• 47:46
  I didn't know who he was.
• 47:47
  He introduced himself to me as, as Stuart, um, Englishman.
• 47:53
  Um, we, and I was just talking with them about the cars we were looking at because
• 47:57
  none of us could hear Jackie Stewart.
• 47:58
  He was like miles away and, you know, talking 10 to the dozen and, you know,
• 48:03
  racing this and racing that they were interested in Ralph Lauren's cars.
• 48:06
  They are interested in that whole Pebble Beach thing that, you
• 48:10
  know, you're contrasting colors.
• 48:12
  Um, and the way the cars were arranged on the law is important.
• 48:15
  This is an artistic experience.
• 48:18
  Above all, this is meant to be an artistic experience.
• 48:21
  So if you're able to divorce yourself from the speeds and feeds,
• 48:24
  you have a different experience.
• 48:26
  And they really appreciated that.
• 48:28
  And it turned out he was the CEO of Rolex and he really appreciated
• 48:33
  me delivering something awesome, not just car guy ish for them.
• 48:37
  So that's really what the.
• 48:41
  You know, this is the pleasurable experience for me as, as, as, you
• 48:45
  know, doing a Pebble Beach, uh, docent and thing I should say, Mercedes tour
• 48:49
  that I did, these are the people that were involved in designing the EQS.
• 48:54
  They're all under the age of 40.
• 48:56
  It was all spoke incredible English.
• 48:59
  I was halfway around the tour before I realized that everyone in the tour group
• 49:03
  was a mother tongue German speaker.
• 49:05
  There was nobody from Mercedes Benz USA.
• 49:07
  They were all people from Stuttgart.
• 49:10
  Um, being able to stand in between a row of Mercedes limousines next
• 49:20
  to two Vanderbilt Cup Mercedes 60 and 90 horsepower and to be able
• 49:28
  to talk about those cars and see them be awestruck at their own
• 49:34
  company's history and engineering.
• 49:37
  That was It was one of the most, you know, as a storyteller, one of the most
• 49:41
  enjoyable moments I've, I've, I've had, um, I guess this year, my moment for, uh,
• 49:48
  for, for that happening was, uh, if you, if you watch the video, um, the, uh, mass
• 49:56
  mistress of ceremonies, Amanda Stretton was driven across the ramp, um, in one
• 50:02
  of the through, uh, Maserati's, um, Um, A6GCS, A6GC, I don't understand, whatever.
• 50:09
  Um, either way, the owner, uh, guy's named Jonathan Seagal, told all like,
• 50:15
  you know, linen suit, cigar, you know, she's big cigar on the go all the time,
• 50:21
  really like sort of theatrical character, invited me when I had a group this year,
• 50:27
  invited me to come behind the rope.
• 50:28
  So I'm talking about how they need to be looking at detail.
• 50:32
  and the trunk was up on the car and I pointed out the hood latch on this
• 50:38
  through a Maserati and he stepped in and was like, do you mind if I step in
• 50:43
  because this is a unique, this trunk latch is a unique through a feature, and
• 50:49
  he clearly loved what I'd been saying about look at the elegance in the deep.
• 50:53
  He then pointed out another half a dozen little fruiter.
• 50:57
  touches, which I hadn't seen.
• 50:59
  I didn't know about.
• 51:01
  And it's this connoisseurship and detail.
• 51:04
  It's this business of, um, we're all small boys enjoying these toys together.
• 51:12
  He's normally the kind of person who I could, would no more take my port and fly.
• 51:16
  But because we're all here celebrating the awesomeness of Maserati and Frua,
• 51:22
  um, yeah, so it's, and at that point you feel, you know, as a tour guide, you feel
• 51:28
  like you brought the people something which they wouldn't have gotten if they'd
• 51:32
  have just bought the normal ticket.
• 51:34
  If they weren't, you know, flown out by Mercedes as a thank you the work moving
• 51:38
  heaven and earth to design a Tesla, Peter, um, Whether it is a Tesla beater or not
• 51:44
  really needs to be seen, doesn't it?
• 51:45
  But, uh, yeah.
• 51:48
  So yeah, so there look, I've rambled for bloody ages to answer the first bullet
• 51:54
  point on my on my list here of what does a does a Pebble Beach docent do?
• 51:59
  He talks a lot and tells those kind of stories to So Apple is listeners,
• 52:11
  but I guess, look, the other reason why I wanted to do this kind of part was
• 52:15
  looking a little deeper than, than just the Pebble Beach docent experience because
• 52:20
  I've been for years now, I know, um, the whole car week, um, infrastructure around
• 52:28
  the Pebble Beach car show extremely well.
• 52:31
  Um, So, it's my thought as I ramble here to try and share some of the
• 52:37
  way that I plan my time to make the most of it, not to break the bank,
• 52:43
  um, to see, you know, as many of the interesting cars and experiences as I can.
• 52:51
  Um, I, I would say that in recent years, I would say that in recent years.
• 53:00
  I've, you know, for many years, I, I was sort of wingman with, with Wayne.
• 53:06
  Um,
• 53:08
  And, uh, just in recent years, as my son's got older, he started coming as
• 53:12
  well, and that sort of structured what I've what I've done where he would come
• 53:17
  along for a couple of days and then I'd usually, you know, usually I have to
• 53:20
  take him home before then spending the Sunday actually actually doing probably
• 53:25
  so it's a it's a car week and then it's usually the third week in August and
• 53:29
  the Pebble Beach show itself on Sunday.
• 53:32
  So, you know, the Sunday's written or whether Sunday's fall for me so.
• 53:36
  Um, you know, when we usually I used to try and come down on a Tuesday
• 53:39
  or something like that, usually we come down on a on a Wednesday and
• 53:43
  I'll talk about what happens sort of day to day in, uh, As I move through
• 53:48
  my, uh, my bullet points here.
• 53:50
  So, so where did the sort of, what were the origins of Pebble Beach?
• 53:56
  Well, um, you know, there's a book by a guy called Bob Devlin, um, that tells
• 54:00
  the story of, of the Pebble Beach, of the Pebble Beach show, um, it really
• 54:05
  in, in detail, but, um, gloriously, it begins with some road races.
• 54:09
  It begins with, um, And that begins with, with horse races.
• 54:15
  So in other words, you know, it's Monterey, it's Cannery Row,
• 54:18
  it's, you know, Steinbeck and the Tin Lizzies coming, coming west.
• 54:22
  So in that era, the man from Del Monte, he put the fruit in cans, right?
• 54:27
  That's basically what he, what he did, Cannery Row, and
• 54:30
  he got bloody rich doing it.
• 54:32
  Now in front of his house, he used to have this, this is if I remember
• 54:35
  correctly, horse like loop, You know, so people would have horse races around it.
• 54:40
  Well, they'd race jalopies around there, what they call jalopies, you know,
• 54:45
  what we would maybe call like primitive sprint cars, like, you know, not like
• 54:49
  a modern, like winged sprint car, like an old fashioned 30s sprint car, which
• 54:53
  is like, you know, a Ford Model A.
• 54:55
  You know, with stripped body and fenders and, and, you know, but, you
• 54:59
  know, in the, uh, and, you know, in an oval, like a, a roundy round in, in
• 55:03
  an oval, well, post war, the thought was, can we do something that's a
• 55:08
  little bit more European in character?
• 55:11
  You know, we've got these cool European sports cars.
• 55:14
  Can we do something that's a little bit more European character?
• 55:17
  And and there are a number of these kind of road races around us.
• 55:21
  There were ones at the airport in Santa Barbara.
• 55:23
  There was a track up in North Northern California here.
• 55:27
  Candlestick Park, you know, the Niners stadium.
• 55:31
  Before, you know, the car part used to be used for, for, for racing.
• 55:35
  I had a friend at the Blackhawk who was involved in, in racing a candlestick.
• 55:39
  Um, So there'd been lots of different racing venues, uh, in and around.
• 55:43
  I mean, believe it or not, the, the Golden Gate Park there was a
• 55:46
  a, a track there and, and, and the Pebble Beach track was, was part of
• 55:50
  this, this kind of, of, of spirit.
• 55:52
  So, um, there were road races there in the early fifties and,
• 55:56
  and really it's illustrative of.
• 55:57
  of the fact that, um, you know, the people running Pebble Beach, I think, realized
• 56:01
  that the cars were getting faster and there was a, wasn't it, Ernie McAfee or
• 56:05
  Jack McAfee had an accident and that's what put paid to, to the racing there.
• 56:09
  Now, you can still drive the course now.
• 56:11
  Um, I have been, uh, you can still drive the course now.
• 56:16
  It, it's, it's around, you know, it, it's around the back of Pebble Beach Lodge.
• 56:21
  If you could, you know, if you Google it up, you won't
• 56:24
  be able to believe how narrow.
• 56:26
  The lanes are if you're an Englishman listening to this, uh,
• 56:30
  think of like racing on English B roads with trees on each side.
• 56:35
  Um, uh, you know, there is barely room for two cars to pass.
• 56:40
  Um, what kind of cars raced?
• 56:42
  Well, the first race was won by Phil Hill in a, uh, Uh, Jaguar XK120, early
• 56:49
  Ferraris, but most people had, um, you know, Ken, we know Ken Miles, don't
• 56:55
  we, from Ford versus Ferrari, um, you might remember the line in Ford versus
• 57:00
  Ferrari, um, about, uh, about, um, uh, winning the SCCA championship in
• 57:06
  some piece of shit he built himself.
• 57:08
  Yeah.
• 57:09
  A car was called the Flying Shingle, it was a modified MG.
• 57:12
  And one of the races that he won was, uh, the pebble beach road races
• 57:18
  with the with the flying shingle.
• 57:20
  Um, so it was these kind of little narrow tire, you know, sub 200 horsepower.
• 57:27
  Um, you know, probably sub 150 horsepower.
• 57:30
  Um, little hot rods that you could, you know, our logs, that kind of
• 57:34
  thing that you could, um, have some fun sliding around the Ferrari.
• 57:38
  I remember was owned by, uh, uh, William Kimberley of the
• 57:44
  Kimberley, you know, like Kimberley.
• 57:51
  Station not stationary product like toiletry products like I'm gonna
• 57:54
  have to dub in whatever kind of products is what products is it?
• 57:57
  Um, anyway, the XK 120.
• 58:01
  I have a personal collection with the the XK 120.
• 58:04
  I've actually driven the course as a passenger in Phil Hills winning XK.
• 58:11
  It's called 120.
• 58:11
  One of my really cooler Pebble Beach experiences.
• 58:15
  I'm I'm uh acquainted with the owner.
• 58:17
  I've not seen him for years and years which one of the uh
• 58:21
  one of the most interesting car guys I've I've I've ever met.
• 58:28
  Um if I tell you that he got into a grapple with his local nice, you know,
• 58:34
  nice part of the valley town council.
• 58:37
  Like over, you know, the city, over junk cars in the driveway.
• 58:43
  And, uh, in conversation, it came out that, that he, he argued that
• 58:50
  it couldn't be a junk car since it was a Ferrari, but then subsequently
• 58:55
  admitted that it was up on bricks.
• 58:57
  So if you imagine this really nicey neighborhood with the car with not, and
• 59:04
  this wasn't the only car on the driver.
• 59:05
  There's tons of, of when, when normally.
• 59:10
  When you do, you know, the, the, the pickup and drop off for, you know,
• 59:15
  the trucks, the truck marshalling for, for Pebble Beach, um, it's all these
• 59:20
  orange Kenworth's and Peter builds from like reliable, the hue, you know, 18
• 59:26
  wheeler, like double decker transporters, he had this XK one 20, he had it,
• 59:32
  it was a closed trailer, but he was towing it behind is like 95 F one 50.
• 59:38
  That was, uh, That was how this guy got really cool guy.
• 59:43
  Um, the kind of person who wouldn't want me to name him, um, on the pod here.
• 59:49
  So I Sean, but, but really, thank you, sir, for that ride.
• 59:53
  And, and thank you for your passion in preserving the car and thank you for
• 59:59
  probably not realizing it, but being kind of a mental figure for me in terms of a
• 1:00:03
  do the car guy thing and just doing it.
• 1:00:06
  Be eccentric like Dennis Jenkinson and don't give a shit what people think.
• 1:00:11
  Fight the city.
• 1:00:11
  It's a Ferrari.
• 1:00:12
  How can it be a junk car in the driveway?
• 1:00:15
  It's a Ferrari for God's sake.
• 1:00:18
  Thank you, drive through.
• 1:00:28
  So that was the road races.
• 1:00:29
  So what the devil did the road races have to do with the show?
• 1:00:32
  Well, after the road races, they used to, you know, park the cars up and have
• 1:00:36
  a show and judge which car was was best.
• 1:00:38
  Um, and the show, you know, evolved and, and gained momentum, and I think now is,
• 1:00:45
  is when it's important that we talk about, um, we talk about bloody pretentious.
• 1:00:51
  Now, it's important that I talk about Don Williams, um, uh, from
• 1:00:55
  the, of the Blackhawk collection.
• 1:00:58
  Um, he and I don't share the same aesthetic.
• 1:01:01
  I've talked about that before.
• 1:01:03
  Um, but I realized the other day that the, you know, much as, as.
• 1:01:07
  The Phil Hill XK 120 guy, um, provided, uh, mentorship within the hobby for me
• 1:01:14
  without realizing that I realized that, uh, uh, Don Williams did as well because
• 1:01:18
  my first involvement with, Uh, the old car community in the in the Bay Area here
• 1:01:23
  was at the Black Hawk Museum, um, and it was a docent program that they ran there.
• 1:01:28
  And I should credit Nora Wagner, who at the time was
• 1:01:31
  was running the docent program.
• 1:01:32
  And really, because of the way that she structured and led what she did,
• 1:01:36
  it meant that people like myself and Wayne became friends and and had,
• 1:01:41
  um, a pattern then to take towards being docents at other places.
• 1:01:46
  There was a blueprint, there was a structure, we had credibility
• 1:01:50
  and, and, and so it started with, with the Blackhawk.
• 1:01:52
  So, uh, what is the, the Blackhawk Museum?
• 1:01:55
  Well, if you Google it up, it's cars floating in a vacuum
• 1:02:00
  set against this black marble.
• 1:02:02
  It's often, you know, Pebble Beachy winning cars, you know,
• 1:02:05
  Duesenbergs and Packards and, you know, that kind of thing.
• 1:02:09
  Right.
• 1:02:09
  Um, and, and, You know, Don Williams was very much part of this movement with Bill
• 1:02:18
  Harrah of, you know, Harrah's casinos.
• 1:02:21
  He was very much one of these people who in the 1950s
• 1:02:27
  saw the Duesenbergs and the Packards, saw the Olympian cars on used car
• 1:02:32
  lots for less money than a new Chevy.
• 1:02:35
  Like a, do you want a 50 Ford or a 29 Duesenberg in need of some work?
• 1:02:40
  I mean, literally, that's, that's what was, was happening.
• 1:02:44
  I mean, I know a guy who has a lovely pack car that he bought off a used car lot
• 1:02:48
  in Nevada in 1968, even as late as that.
• 1:02:52
  It was, you know, it was still.
• 1:02:55
  This 38 Packard was a classic car, but it was on a used car lot and not
• 1:03:01
  loved, not treated in the way that, you know, these Olympian cars, you
• 1:03:08
  know, you, you see them being treated.
• 1:03:09
  No, it was just being treated as a, as a, as a used car.
• 1:03:13
  Maybe the way that we treat, you know, Rolls Royce Silver Shadows or, or, you
• 1:03:17
  know, You know, 90s Rolls Royce is that was sort of the seeing that Don Williams
• 1:03:22
  was like, no, these are great cars.
• 1:03:24
  The craftsmanship is greater than it was.
• 1:03:26
  They're often completely individual with the, um, you know, individual
• 1:03:31
  body styles, individual color schemes, completely built to order.
• 1:03:35
  These things need to be preserved and loved and, and.
• 1:03:40
  So people started doing that, and the Pebble Beach Concourse
• 1:03:46
  became the outlet for that.
• 1:03:48
  And I think we should mention the guy who's won Pebble
• 1:03:50
  more than anybody else, J.
• 1:03:52
  B.
• 1:03:52
  Nethercutt.
• 1:03:53
  Um, he has a museum down in Sylmar, which to my shame, I've never been to.
• 1:03:58
  What he collected was fading Americanas.
• 1:04:02
  So the Dusenberg fits alongside the Duke boxes and the faded, you
• 1:04:06
  know, Hollywood memorabilia, right?
• 1:04:08
  That, that this is, is part of, of, of a glorious Americana,
• 1:04:14
  which is, which is going away.
• 1:04:16
  So that's what, what Never cut.
• 1:04:17
  And, and Williams was sort of, uh, we never cut more than Williams
• 1:04:21
  was, was part of Williams is a restored a crap out of a car.
• 1:04:25
  You know, he would definitely have restored Eva bronze Mercedes seven 70.
• 1:04:29
  Make no mistake, he would've restored it.
• 1:04:32
  So, um, so now you've got guys like Williams and Nethercutt competing for
• 1:04:38
  the most perfectly restored cars and you have the beginning of a formal judging
• 1:04:45
  and Pebble Beach coming along as, as, as we, uh, as, as we know it, uh, continues.
• 1:04:50
  today.
• 1:04:51
  Um, so through all these years, of course, the cars that are
• 1:04:56
  winning a shiny and have got fresh white wall tires and all of that.
• 1:05:00
  And I should just just pause and say, and now, of course, we
• 1:05:03
  have a preservation car winning.
• 1:05:04
  That's the, that's the contrast, right?
• 1:05:07
  That you've got all of these, uh, uh, shiny cars winning and now
• 1:05:12
  that the preservation car winning.
• 1:05:15
  I just want to talk a little bit about the shiny car aesthetic, right?
• 1:05:19
  Because I've been cynical about it up to now, and I want to contextualize
• 1:05:23
  it because, um, Don Williams used to tell a story about walking in Geneva.
• 1:05:29
  Having had dinner with a guy called Ken Baring, who
• 1:05:31
  financed the Black Hawk Museum.
• 1:05:33
  So Ken was a successful entrepreneur and businessman who became interested in
• 1:05:38
  car collecting and I guess bought cars off Don Williams and used Don Williams
• 1:05:42
  as a as a kind of car consultant.
• 1:05:44
  But as so often in these situations, you know, they became friends.
• 1:05:48
  And, you know, I used to go to the Geneva Motor Show every year.
• 1:05:51
  So this story really resonated with me.
• 1:05:53
  And if you've been to Geneva, you know what it's like.
• 1:05:55
  You have the fondue.
• 1:05:57
  And then you're going to walk back to the hotel.
• 1:05:59
  It's Geneva.
• 1:05:59
  It's not a driving city.
• 1:06:01
  It's a walking city and and you're walking and you're looking at the, there's the
• 1:06:05
  fountain, you know, the big fountain that spits up and you know, you may be, you're
• 1:06:10
  probably looking at the Porsches parked on the street and you're also looking
• 1:06:14
  at the jewelers in the window, right?
• 1:06:17
  You just.
• 1:06:18
  browsing.
• 1:06:18
  That's what they were doing.
• 1:06:20
  And it came to them, wouldn't it be a great idea to display cars in
• 1:06:26
  the same environment as a jeweler?
• 1:06:31
  Wouldn't it be great to have this black background and
• 1:06:34
  spotlight, spotlight the people?
• 1:06:37
  So that's why when we as docents used to say, well, can we have like a mannequin
• 1:06:42
  so that we can show the dress that people used to wear when they were driving, you
• 1:06:46
  know, in 1906 olds curve dash, the answer was used to be no, because, uh, hurts this
• 1:06:55
  presentation as a piece of, of jewelry.
• 1:06:58
  It's like having a hairy arm behind the watch that you're
• 1:07:01
  trying to sell for 25, 000.
• 1:07:03
  Like, no, right, it's a piece of jewelry.
• 1:07:05
  Let's show it as a piece of, of jewelry.
• 1:07:08
  So, um, again, when Don was around, I was sort of cynical
• 1:07:12
  about that and now he's gone.
• 1:07:14
  I realized that by having that very clear aesthetic, he helped me define
• 1:07:18
  my own Knackered ZX10 aesthetic.
• 1:07:29
  As the Concord evolved, so wraparound events evolved.
• 1:07:35
  Now, the classic car auction business was, they reckon, was invented
• 1:07:40
  by Christie's in the early 70s.
• 1:07:43
  Um, you know, I don't want to delve into it, the history of it, of it here.
• 1:07:50
  I would just point out the, um, you know, they can, art historians
• 1:07:57
  know when an art market was born.
• 1:07:59
  It was in the 1780s.
• 1:08:00
  They could nail it and they can nail it because there didn't used
• 1:08:04
  to be auctions and then afterwards there were auctions beforehand.
• 1:08:07
  If you wanted a painting, you either had to do a private transaction or you
• 1:08:11
  had to commission it done afterwards.
• 1:08:13
  There was an art market and specialists and so around the show
• 1:08:18
  inevitably comes the specialists and the consultants who were then
• 1:08:22
  selling the cars to the collectors.
• 1:08:24
  And there's the restoration community and this whole thing.
• 1:08:27
  Sort of, of, of, of theater around it.
• 1:08:31
  So Christie's, um, the, the other role there.
• 1:08:34
  So the auction house that has the closest relationship with Pebble Beach now is
• 1:08:38
  Gooding and, and really, uh, you know, they used to have a tagline ownership.
• 1:08:42
  They still use it.
• 1:08:43
  The quality is off.
• 1:08:44
  Brand or qualities are style or something like that.
• 1:08:47
  And that was always a thing when I was writing for them.
• 1:08:49
  What you would look for was why their car was 10 percent more than everybody else's,
• 1:08:53
  because if they had a Porsche 930, you knew there was going to be something about
• 1:08:58
  it that was better than the other cars.
• 1:09:00
  That's why they were then other guys, you know, nine thirties.
• 1:09:03
  It wasn't just going to be a bog standard, you know, example of that.
• 1:09:07
  It was going to be a really great example of what they, uh, of what they had.
• 1:09:12
  So, uh, so that's good.
• 1:09:14
  Um, as classic cars emerges an investment class, you've got, uh, other auction
• 1:09:24
  houses, uh, Bonham's, um, RM, Sotheby's.
• 1:09:34
  Hang on a minute.
• 1:09:42
  So other auction houses came, didn't they?
• 1:09:44
  Um, Bonhams.
• 1:09:47
  So nowadays, Bonhams have a thing down on a golf course called the Quail.
• 1:09:52
  Um, a little bit away.
• 1:09:54
  RM and Sotheby's, they merged a couple of years ago.
• 1:09:57
  Um, and they take over the Portola Hotel in downtown Monterey.
• 1:10:05
  Um, Now, why would you look at the auctions if you don't have hundreds of
• 1:10:08
  thousands of dollars to spend on a car?
• 1:10:11
  Well, because they represent a car show in and of themselves, so part of the Pebble
• 1:10:17
  Beach experience isn't just the hundred cars that are on the lawn at Pebble Beach.
• 1:10:21
  It's seeing the cars at at the at the auctions.
• 1:10:26
  There were also other shows.
• 1:10:29
  that take place in the proceeding in the preceding week.
• 1:10:32
  Many, many of these.
• 1:10:34
  So I mentioned two of them.
• 1:10:35
  A German themed one called Legends of the Autobahn, which I've not been
• 1:10:39
  to for a couple of years, but used to be, uh, a really enjoyable event.
• 1:10:43
  And that was the kind of event where, you know, uh, if, if you, you know, a
• 1:10:48
  car like my Knackered E55 would be really Um, if I was serious about selling it,
• 1:10:55
  I should go to legends and put a note in the window, you know, that would probably
• 1:10:58
  it would probably get moved right there.
• 1:11:00
  And that's not a bad idea.
• 1:11:01
  Um, I'm kind of in love with it again.
• 1:11:05
  Don't want to sell it.
• 1:11:06
  Um, there was an Italian event.
• 1:11:08
  Um, there is an Italian event called Concorso Italiano.
• 1:11:12
  Um, I went a couple of years ago.
• 1:11:13
  The tickets were quite expensive.
• 1:11:14
  Um, I have a neighbor who was quite hype in the Ferrari community and he judges.
• 1:11:22
  Has judged a concourse.
• 1:11:24
  So in the past, I'm not sure if you went this year, he said that
• 1:11:26
  the number of cars were down.
• 1:11:28
  So I'm not sure if that event is, uh, it feels like that events on the way.
• 1:11:34
  Now, an event that's definitely on the wax is, uh, concourse dilemmas.
• 1:11:40
  Which is a event I've never been to, although Wayne judges, which is kind
• 1:11:43
  of ridiculous that I've never been to.
• 1:11:45
  I think, I think I've not been because I've been focused at that time on doing,
• 1:11:49
  um, events with my son, but, but this is, you know, as the name suggests, it's,
• 1:11:54
  it's related to the 24 hour of lemons and it's a sort of spoof concord event.
• 1:12:00
  And I think I've always felt, you know, I'm not gonna.
• 1:12:03
  I don't want to be going and looking at plenifalience.
• 1:12:06
  Um, when I could be, um, you know, up at Mecham looking at muscle
• 1:12:10
  cars, I'd rather, you know, Wayne's bored of looking at muscle cars.
• 1:12:14
  I understand that.
• 1:12:16
  I like looking at muscle cars up at Mecham.
• 1:12:18
  I've got time to Potter all the way around Mecham as as well.
• 1:12:23
  And that's something to realize is that, you know, um, Gooding has 100 cars.
• 1:12:28
  Bonhams have 100 cars.
• 1:12:31
  Um, they had a lot of muscle this year, by the way, Bonhams.
• 1:12:34
  Um, but Mecham will move, you know, two or three hundred cars every Yeah?
• 1:12:43
  I mean, like, is it better for it to be, like, how much of an
• 1:12:46
  angle is it, like, most stable?
• 1:12:49
  Well, it's, it's about the friction of it gripping on the floor.
• 1:12:55
  I don't know.
• 1:13:09
  Yeah, just let me finish my thought here.
• 1:13:11
  What?
• 1:13:12
  Just let me finish my thought here.
• 1:13:13
  Okay, sorry.
• 1:13:14
  Are you hungry for a picnic lunch outside?
• 1:13:16
  Yeah.
• 1:13:17
  Yeah, I am.
• 1:13:17
  Yeah.
• 1:13:18
  Yeah, I am.
• 1:13:19
  Alright, I'll get it started.
• 1:13:36
  Meum are gonna be moving 200 cars probably every day.
• 1:13:40
  Probably more than that.
• 1:13:41
  I mean, I don't know.
• 1:13:42
  I should probably have done my research before.
• 1:13:43
  But the point is that with Meum, there's a rinse and repeat.
• 1:13:46
  You could go back every day and see different cuts.
• 1:13:48
  Um,
• 1:13:51
  , so the shows, the auctions, which are shows in themselves, then.
• 1:14:01
  There's an army land, wasn't there?
• 1:14:03
  Just, uh, in the on the Monterey Peninsula, I guess.
• 1:14:06
  Years ago, there was that, uh, colonel who was an enthusiast of
• 1:14:10
  motor racing and created Laguna Seca.
• 1:14:14
  Um, you know, I think I feel like Laguna Seca.
• 1:14:18
  I feel like if you survive this far through the pod, Laguna Seca is going
• 1:14:21
  to require, you know, no introduction.
• 1:14:24
  Um, there's so there's the Monterey historics there.
• 1:14:29
  Um, Is this the Goodwood Festival?
• 1:14:32
  Well, no, because people aren't dressing up and the racing is
• 1:14:36
  less, you know, gloves off here.
• 1:14:39
  If there's any contact, uh, uh, the, I think they call it the
• 1:14:43
  Rolex Monterey historic race, uh, uh, camera, what they call it.
• 1:14:49
  Um, but the, the point is that the, you know, it's the, the racing is less racy.
• 1:14:56
  Um, at the Monterey historics.
• 1:14:58
  Um, but that said, what you get instead is, you know, See his
• 1:15:07
  point in Finian Raceway there up in Northern California and Laguna.
• 1:15:13
  What they have in common and a number of other California tracks have it
• 1:15:16
  is that they're built in a bowl.
• 1:15:18
  So they're actually designed to be great for the spectators.
• 1:15:20
  So you can see multiple corners and from many places in the track,
• 1:15:25
  you get a really great view.
• 1:15:27
  It's like the opposite of standing at the side of the track.
• 1:15:31
  You know, cops are the outside of cops at Silverstone, where, you know,
• 1:15:34
  they come past and then they're gone.
• 1:15:36
  You see one corner.
• 1:15:37
  This is not like that.
• 1:15:38
  These circuits are, are, are really well designed for you to, to, to
• 1:15:42
  see all the way around the paddock.
• 1:15:44
  It's also an awesome facility that you could always wander around at, at Laguna.
• 1:15:49
  So for the historics, that really makes for, uh, for a, a, a compelling, um.
• 1:15:56
  Uh, you know, that makes for a compelling thing.
• 1:15:58
  You, you know, I feel like if you do Pebble Beach, you have to spend some
• 1:16:02
  time out at Laguna and I think the best thing about the historic stuff is, is
• 1:16:07
  by all means, Pebble Beach weekend is, is great for, for the previous weekend.
• 1:16:13
  weekend before pebble.
• 1:16:14
  Um, all the cars racing, but there's none of the razzmatazz.
• 1:16:18
  So if you're there for the cars and you don't need the razzmatazz, it's
• 1:16:22
  cheaper and it's easier to see the cars.
• 1:16:25
  So that's the really, um, sort of compelling, um, compelling feature of
• 1:16:32
  the whole like Laguna Monterey weekend.
• 1:16:37
  Um, I also feel like, you know, the thing about Pebble is the, it has this feeling
• 1:16:45
  of car guy jamboree, that driving around on the road, you see interesting cars.
• 1:16:50
  If you just park up at the side of the road and just sit there,
• 1:16:54
  interesting stuff comes past.
• 1:16:56
  Um, almost anywhere, wherever you are, um, and, and that can
• 1:17:00
  be anything from like, you know,
• 1:17:04
  yeah, the, so it has this feeling of, uh, automotive jamboree.
• 1:17:12
  I would say that
• 1:17:16
  in recent years and it's, you know, it's a function of the appreciation
• 1:17:22
  of, of classic cars, right?
• 1:17:24
  That, that it's become more of a rich guy thing and pebble itself.
• 1:17:28
  Um, the people there, you're conscious that it's more of a
• 1:17:33
  rich person or pretending to be rich person's lifestyle event.
• 1:17:39
  It's more of that than, It is a car show, which is a shame because the car show
• 1:17:45
  element of it is, is absolutely awesome.
• 1:17:47
  And if you are a car guy, there is just so much for you to see that isn't
• 1:17:52
  the, the people who you know are, uh, who, who are there to see and
• 1:17:57
  be seen rather than to see the cars.
• 1:18:11
  Well, I've been away and my batteries are recharged and I've, uh, got
• 1:18:15
  myself an espresso and, and so on.
• 1:18:17
  Having.
• 1:18:18
  Framed as my usual way, taking bloody ages to frame what I'm going to say, having
• 1:18:22
  framed and contextualized and, you know, sizzle reeled for more than an hour.
• 1:18:30
  Um, let me, uh, let me now try and talk through a little bit about what I actually
• 1:18:36
  did this this time at Purple Beach.
• 1:18:41
  Um, So in, in other years, as I say, I've, I've done the German car
• 1:18:47
  event, Legends of the Autobahn, I've done Concorso Italiana, in, in other
• 1:18:51
  years, I've been invited to charity breakfasts and, and things like that.
• 1:18:56
  Um, other events, which are clearly going on, which I'm not invited to,
• 1:19:00
  there's a lot of Mark specific stuff.
• 1:19:03
  Um, last year I have a spot where I, Park up at the side of the road and
• 1:19:08
  I was parked up there watching the traffic go by and 20 McLarens went
• 1:19:12
  by, you know, in, uh, in convoy.
• 1:19:15
  Um, yeah, Rolls Royce always take over Barnardus, which
• 1:19:19
  is a really nice, uh, hotel.
• 1:19:22
  Um, Just near Laguna Seca, just over the hill from Laguna Seca, really
• 1:19:27
  good road up over the hill to Laguna Seca and Rolls Royce for the last
• 1:19:32
  couple of years have been in there.
• 1:19:33
  So literally there'll be like 20 new Rolls Royces.
• 1:19:38
  It's kind of stupefying.
• 1:19:42
  So many of them, they almost didn't seem ostentatious and excessive last year when
• 1:19:46
  I was, uh, I rolled the car park, you see, that's how I knew that I just on the
• 1:19:51
  way past, I turned into Bernard as drove around the car park and had a had a little
• 1:19:56
  look that's, uh, and that's kind of what I wanted to do with this, uh, with this.
• 1:20:00
  Um, pod was or at least the second part of the pod was do those kind of
• 1:20:06
  little pointers into how to make the most of your time at Pebble Beach
• 1:20:11
  if you're, if you're going to come.
• 1:20:14
  So I mentioned accommodation.
• 1:20:16
  Um, obviously the, the best way to do it is just be rich and
• 1:20:19
  spend a lot of money and stay somewhere nice and book in advance.
• 1:20:23
  Um, And you know, so if you can stay in, you know, Monterey, that's awesome.
• 1:20:30
  Um, what a lot of people will say to do is, is stay in a part of, of Monterey
• 1:20:35
  called Pacific Grove, which is, you know, it's a little bit more out of the way.
• 1:20:40
  It's a little bit more quiet.
• 1:20:42
  Um, I don't really know why Pacific Grove is forgotten, to be honest,
• 1:20:46
  because it's well placed and all of that.
• 1:20:48
  And if you've been to Monterrey and stayed in Monterrey in the past,
• 1:20:51
  there's a sort of drag up a hill, I think the street's called Munras,
• 1:20:56
  and there's a lot of motels on there.
• 1:20:57
  And certainly when I rode a Harley up the coast years and years ago, I
• 1:21:01
  stayed at a motel on Munras there.
• 1:21:04
  And last year, Ollie and I, because we came down on the Wednesday,
• 1:21:07
  we were able to score a motel.
• 1:21:09
  But.
• 1:21:09
  200 a night, not a very nice one, but a couple of hundred dollars
• 1:21:12
  a night right on Munrath's there.
• 1:21:14
  Only for the Wednesday and the Thursday.
• 1:21:16
  We wouldn't have done it for the Friday or the Saturday or the Sunday
• 1:21:19
  because those are, you know, so much more, uh, that final weekend is just
• 1:21:24
  really when the, when the pricing is really, it's really premium.
• 1:21:27
  So as I said, so this is my estate in Hollister, whichever you have a
• 1:21:30
  look on the map is bloody miles away.
• 1:21:32
  Um, It's Hollister of the clothing brand.
• 1:21:35
  The town's like, you know, all right.
• 1:21:37
  It's like, it's an interesting town because it's right on
• 1:21:40
  the edge of the Bay Area.
• 1:21:42
  So it's, um, you know, it feels more like rural California than it does, uh, uh,
• 1:21:51
  You know, Gilroy, which is very much on the edge of the Bay Area and is the next
• 1:21:55
  town up in Gilroy is known for onions.
• 1:21:59
  I don't know what Hollister's known for other than the clothing brand.
• 1:22:02
  I don't know.
• 1:22:03
  The clothing brand has to do with the town.
• 1:22:05
  The town seemed to be a, you know, fairly small, nice, You know, farming town.
• 1:22:11
  Um, so yeah, so the stay in there that worked out quite well.
• 1:22:15
  So I said last year I stayed at this motel in Soledad.
• 1:22:17
  Um, I did.
• 1:22:19
  Um, I liked the Soledad one because if you have a look on Google
• 1:22:24
  Maps, you'll see that this river road that runs parallel to 101.
• 1:22:29
  That's a really nice road.
• 1:22:31
  To move along, if you know the road quite well, kind of think,
• 1:22:35
  um, Lincolnshire in England.
• 1:22:38
  If, if that's a useful metaphor for you, you know, open flat can run
• 1:22:42
  very fast, can often see a long way up the road, can take racing lines.
• 1:22:47
  Um, so I chose to do that rather than one on one and I chose to give myself,
• 1:22:51
  you know, cheap accommodation and a long drive because I don't mind driving.
• 1:22:54
  I hate sitting in traffic, but I don't mind driving.
• 1:22:56
  If I'm driving, I'm, I'm kind of, uh, I'm kind of fine with it.
• 1:23:01
  That's, uh, that's our accommodation.
• 1:23:03
  That was, uh, so yeah, so this summer at this golf club out in, uh, in
• 1:23:07
  Hollister, and I guess the raid was cheap.
• 1:23:08
  I mean, I, it's still more, it still cost me more than $800 for,
• 1:23:12
  uh, you know, the five nights that, that I, uh, I had the place.
• 1:23:16
  So, um, you know, you're not gonna.
• 1:23:20
  You know, and you're not going to escape the weekend without it costing you 1, 000.
• 1:23:25
  I think that's fair to say, even for me as a docent where I'm getting a free ticket
• 1:23:29
  to the main show, Pebble Beach itself.
• 1:23:33
  So, um, so, you know, we, uh, uh, you need to pack like California light, right?
• 1:23:42
  In terms of the fact that you're going to be in the car a lot
• 1:23:45
  in terms of the fact that.
• 1:23:47
  You're going to be doing events morning, noon and night.
• 1:23:50
  So when the sun goes down in California, you need that hoodie.
• 1:23:54
  Um, you can still probably get on with the flip flops, but you really need a hoodie.
• 1:23:58
  Um, so having that kind of stuff like, you know, in the car.
• 1:24:02
  Um, the, the two weekends I did hot August nights and then Pebble
• 1:24:08
  Beach and put 1, 700 miles.
• 1:24:11
  on the car that we were using, and I'll talk about that a little, you
• 1:24:15
  know, a little more down the line.
• 1:24:18
  Um, uh, so I always feel like I'm absolutely living in the car, so that
• 1:24:24
  means, you know, that thought you have, oh, you know, shall I take the stick
• 1:24:28
  shift, no AC, no, you know, shall I take the not interesting, always works,
• 1:24:35
  oh, yes, always works with AC, oh, yes.
• 1:24:39
  Automatic transmission.
• 1:24:41
  Oh, yes.
• 1:24:41
  The traffic.
• 1:24:42
  Yes.
• 1:24:43
  So although it gores you to go to a car event, driving something that's,
• 1:24:47
  you know, practical sometimes, that's what I would the advice that I'd offer.
• 1:24:52
  I used to use the bullet Mustang.
• 1:24:53
  I think I used the Fiesta one year and it was just too
• 1:24:55
  uncomfortable to sit in other years.
• 1:24:58
  So the last three years I've used that Mercedes E 55 that, uh, That we have.
• 1:25:05
  So that's, you know, a great car for it because it's like a comfortable
• 1:25:09
  place to be when you're sitting in traffic, a comfortable place
• 1:25:12
  to be for, you know, a long time.
• 1:25:15
  Um, so I guess for me, the reason it's structured like that is
• 1:25:18
  because I have to be bowels and forwards to be dropping only off.
• 1:25:21
  And because, you know, I'm a long way away from the venues.
• 1:25:25
  That's part of the reason why there's always a lot of driving for me.
• 1:25:30
  So that first day, um, we, uh, I went with my son and, uh, we bought
• 1:25:35
  tickets for RM and went round RM.
• 1:25:38
  Um, so this is in the, um, Portola, right in the centre of, of downtown Monterey.
• 1:25:48
  Um, you can walk round for free.
• 1:25:50
  You can see a lot of the cars are parked about the side, so you can get a
• 1:25:53
  sense of what they look like for free.
• 1:25:54
  If you buy a ticket.
• 1:25:56
  30 or 40, I think it cost us.
• 1:25:58
  I think Ollie was free and you get the catalogs as well, which are a
• 1:26:02
  really nice souvenir to take away.
• 1:26:04
  And more than that, these kinds of auction catalogs, they form a
• 1:26:08
  document of the history of individual cars, kind of like a VIN wiki before
• 1:26:14
  a non digital VIN wiki really.
• 1:26:16
  And, and, you know, this is the value add that guys like.
• 1:26:20
  You know, Rob Byers and Ian Kelleher and David Gooding bring to the industry,
• 1:26:27
  right, is that they're cataloging and understanding of the cars and the owners
• 1:26:32
  and who owns what and who wants what is what drives the business there.
• 1:26:40
  I wrote for Ian Keller as well, very briefly, so I do know him.
• 1:26:43
  If you've been around the classic car space at all and you meet
• 1:26:46
  him, you don't forget him.
• 1:26:47
  He's huge, physically huge and tall, not a fat bastard, just like a big guy,
• 1:26:53
  the kind of guy you never would have wanted to tackle on the rugby field.
• 1:26:57
  And he has a similar kind of, uh, I direct personality and you know what I mean?
• 1:27:05
  You do feel like with him.
• 1:27:07
  Um, you could do business with him, which if you were buying a multimillion
• 1:27:10
  dollar car, you know, that's that's the, uh, uh, You know, that's how
• 1:27:14
  you, you know, I see why I see why he's done well in his career.
• 1:27:17
  Put it that way.
• 1:27:17
  I first met him on Dutch event in 2006 and then I wrote for him a
• 1:27:22
  little bit of the next place that he was at like that kind of time.
• 1:27:27
  It would have been because I remember it conflicting with the tech sales job that I
• 1:27:30
  was not motivated by but had at the time.
• 1:27:35
  Yeah, uh, so, but he's not with RM, he's with these guys, Broad
• 1:27:39
  Arrow, and that's a, uh, an event that I've, it's out at the airport.
• 1:27:43
  I've never been to that event.
• 1:27:44
  I think it's Highbrow.
• 1:27:45
  I think you need an invite.
• 1:27:47
  Um, I've not been to, to, uh, Highbrow.
• 1:27:51
  I say, you just need to have deeper pockets and grease the right palms.
• 1:27:54
  Don't you have the right invite?
• 1:27:56
  I mean, that's, uh, that's exactly how it works.
• 1:27:59
  That's how I got to be a, uh, a docent at Pebble.
• 1:28:02
  You know, you just, I just knew the, you know, knew the people who knew the
• 1:28:05
  right people really, and I hadn't had the right experience, you know, I talked
• 1:28:09
  about that stuff with the Blackhawk and, um, you know, Don's involvement, Don
• 1:28:13
  Williams involvement in Pebble Beach means that the Blackhawk, a docent at
• 1:28:17
  the Blackhawk was more than, you know, a docent at the, uh, who Jimmy Flip, um,
• 1:28:22
  it was, uh, uh, you know, it carried, it carried gravitas with the people
• 1:28:28
  that, that run, that run Pebble Beach.
• 1:28:30
  And what I should say is what's been interesting about the whole experience
• 1:28:33
  is that, um, You know, we all know, um, State Farm's Mayhem or State Farm is the,
• 1:28:39
  you know, we, the insurance companies have a personification, don't they?
• 1:28:44
  Progressive have Flow and, you know, there's that Mayhem character.
• 1:28:48
  Is that State Farm?
• 1:28:49
  Is that, you know, See, that's bad that the connection is not there.
• 1:28:52
  I remember the character, but not the connection, isn't it?
• 1:28:54
  But, uh, no, bottom line is that the, um, we, in a mediated age, we
• 1:29:02
  increasingly look to personify and put a human face on these things.
• 1:29:05
  We advertise faceless products by putting a compelling, memorable,
• 1:29:10
  human ish human face on it, right?
• 1:29:13
  Um, In the case of the insurance companies, sort of stereotyped
• 1:29:17
  human face, right, really thought of it in those terms for a minute,
• 1:29:21
  but it is, uh, it is stereotyped.
• 1:29:23
  And, uh, in a sense, a lot of the photographs that you see from pebble
• 1:29:28
  nowadays are of docent groups or judges or of the Stanford junior judges.
• 1:29:36
  Because there's a nice personification and everyone's wearing the same thing
• 1:29:40
  and there is an image play about that.
• 1:29:42
  So, um, yeah, so that has been, uh, an interesting transition
• 1:29:48
  in the time that I've been doing the, uh, the docenting program.
• 1:29:51
  So, yeah, anyway, um, So we went around RM.
• 1:29:56
  Um,
• 1:29:59
  the headline here is the Tony Paravano, um, I think it's a Ferrari 410, the big
• 1:30:09
  sports racing Ferrari, um, and borderline the most elegant car I've ever seen.
• 1:30:15
  It has a slightly longer tail than most other sports racing Ferraris of
• 1:30:19
  the era, and that really works for me.
• 1:30:22
  Um, Tony Paravano was a, um, Chicago resident of Italian extraction who
• 1:30:34
  came west and invested, you know, and having made a lot of money in property.
• 1:30:39
  That's what he told people.
• 1:30:40
  He made a lot of money in property, uh, and he bought Ferraris and raced
• 1:30:47
  Ferraris out on the on the West Coast.
• 1:30:49
  I think, um, reading between the lines and I don't want to, you know, libel
• 1:30:54
  anybody here, but I'm about to, um, the historian in me having done some.
• 1:31:00
  Pretty limited research, right?
• 1:31:02
  I'm not done a lot of research, but I think he was
• 1:31:04
  laundering money for the Mafia.
• 1:31:05
  I think, um, anyway, he went missing when it came out that
• 1:31:10
  he owed the IRS a lot of money.
• 1:31:12
  He disappeared.
• 1:31:14
  The implication always is that he disappeared in the Jimmy Hoffa
• 1:31:17
  sense of the word and not in there.
• 1:31:20
  He ran away and created a new identity for himself.
• 1:31:22
  But of course, there is this DB Cooper light flavor.
• 1:31:26
  Um, about it.
• 1:31:27
  It's a not car.
• 1:31:29
  So, you know, my son who's very proud of his American heritage.
• 1:31:32
  He loves the fact that love the fact that it was a not car.
• 1:31:36
  Um, um, you know, and it's a big capacity sports racing Ferrari.
• 1:31:42
  So it's, uh, you know, 180, 190 mile an hour, narrow, tired.
• 1:31:49
  absolute roaring beast of an automobile.
• 1:31:53
  It's fully the car that looks shazam and then is even more
• 1:31:57
  shazam when you tried it.
• 1:32:00
  Um, You know, and I like him because the sports racing car in theory, it's
• 1:32:05
  something you could use on the road.
• 1:32:06
  I mean, you couldn't really, but you know, so I love that car.
• 1:32:09
  I spent ages looking at that car.
• 1:32:12
  And and, um, As you is typical me, I like the B side more than the A side because
• 1:32:18
  the other thing that they were showcasing that was that you may have seen this
• 1:32:22
  if you follow the The hubbub around the classic car world is, uh, um, their RM.
• 1:32:29
  So the bees are offering at some point soon, um, uh, Mercedes
• 1:32:34
  W196 Streamliner Stromlin Wagen.
• 1:32:38
  I think that's the, uh, the German pronunciation.
• 1:32:41
  So these were the 196 Formula One cars that were given Streamliner bodies.
• 1:32:49
  Um, so is it a 300 SLR?
• 1:32:52
  Well, it looks a bit like a 300 SLR, but it's not a 300 SLR because it has
• 1:32:57
  a monoposto center driving position and it's a, you know, it's a 2.
• 1:33:01
  5 liter high revving Grand Prix car, not a 3 liter lower revving sports racing car.
• 1:33:07
  Um, It's a different in a different in character.
• 1:33:11
  Don't know about the particular history of the car.
• 1:33:14
  Um, the thing that made me smile, um, about it was that it is positioned
• 1:33:22
  as being worth up to 70 million.
• 1:33:28
  And I read that and then I looked at the Paravano car and had all the thoughts that
• 1:33:31
  I've just had about the Paravano car and, you know, Ollie needed to pee and we went
• 1:33:35
  for a pee and then we bought the catalogs and I came back and spent another five
• 1:33:39
  minutes communing with the Paravano car.
• 1:33:42
  And then I suddenly had a thought, where did they pull that 70 million from?
• 1:33:47
  I'll tell you where they pulled that 70 million from.
• 1:33:51
  The.
• 1:33:52
  Most expensive car to sell at auction before then was that wrecked
• 1:33:57
  Ferrari GTO, right at 35, right?
• 1:34:00
  Then there's the open secret of Dave MacDonald, the weather tech guy, buying
• 1:34:07
  the silver GTO for 70, 75 million, something like that, which at the time
• 1:34:15
  seemed outrageous, but now totally doesn't because Mercedes got those people
• 1:34:20
  together and auctioned off that Ulaan Haakoub for 140 million, didn't they?
• 1:34:28
  So if you think of it, you've got this 140 million mark, then this
• 1:34:30
  70 million mark, then this 35, and then everything else just, like,
• 1:34:34
  straggling behind, right, in terms of most valuable cars, um, ever sold.
• 1:34:41
  So, RM picked that 70 because it's half of 140 and pretty close to
• 1:34:47
  what Dave McDonald paid for in that private transaction for that, uh, 250.
• 1:34:54
  Um, I said to Wally, clearly they don't have a fucking clue what
• 1:34:58
  it's going to bring and who would?
• 1:35:00
  There's no comps.
• 1:35:02
  And that's the key point about Mercedes 300 SLs and Ferrari
• 1:35:08
  GTOs and Bugatti Type 35s.
• 1:35:12
  These benchmark cars, Cobras, you know, there's a limited number of them made and
• 1:35:22
  that guarantees, you know, provenance.
• 1:35:25
  There's provenance on every chassis.
• 1:35:29
  Um, and you can compare, right?
• 1:35:31
  You can compare, you can say that because that car that 35 million was clearly
• 1:35:40
  not a great example, you clearly, if somebody was going to buy a new example
• 1:35:47
  of it and a nice example of it, you know, one of the few, I don't know if
• 1:35:50
  there's more than one silver Testa Rossa, but that is the car that Dave, Dave
• 1:35:53
  McDonnell bought, isn't that silver one.
• 1:35:55
  So it's very distinctive, right?
• 1:35:57
  You are the guy with the silver.
• 1:36:00
  Rossa with the silver GTO, right?
• 1:36:03
  Um, you know, I, I feel like, um, you know, so it seemed a lot when he paid
• 1:36:10
  it, right, but maybe, you know, 20, it seemed a lot when Chris Evans paid 25
• 1:36:15
  million for that GTO all those years ago in, uh, in, in England, I wonder if
• 1:36:20
  he still owns it, I wonder if he does
• 1:36:34
  the last couple of years, what RM have had as Pretty much rivaled what
• 1:36:40
  Gooding has had in, in my opinion.
• 1:36:43
  Um, Traditionally, Gooding always had the very best cars and RM always had more, and
• 1:36:50
  you know, they used to have Elon Musk's cars and things like that, not Mecham
• 1:36:55
  style or, you know, that Drew Alcazar guy before he went bust, but silver car,
• 1:37:01
  not like that, but they were still, um,
• 1:37:09
  Drew Alcazar, bloke's name, wasn't it?
• 1:37:11
  Um, Anyway, the long and short is, is that in recent years, the caliber of stuff
• 1:37:16
  that RM has had has been bloody awesome.
• 1:37:18
  Um, they take a car park outside.
• 1:37:21
  They also take a couple of floors of the hotel.
• 1:37:23
  So you're like walking around the hotel, you're like ride up an
• 1:37:26
  airport escalator style and come off the top of the escalator.
• 1:37:30
  And there's, you know, the Oni mint green Ferrari F40 just like bloody park.
• 1:37:35
  Um, one year I'd had a bit to drink and was in a like, fuck it and fuck
• 1:37:40
  you kind of mood and sat in a 288 GTO.
• 1:37:43
  I just opened the door and sat in it.
• 1:37:46
  The security guard wasn't really expecting it and clearly didn't know whether I was a
• 1:37:49
  prospective buyer, so just bloody did it.
• 1:37:52
  Could have done the same with the Duesenberg that was up there as well, but
• 1:37:56
  those things have such a regal bearing.
• 1:37:59
  Whereas modern, modern stuff, I feel like I could just, You know, I feel
• 1:38:04
  like I could just get in and drive it, you know, even the 288 GTO there.
• 1:38:09
  Um, yeah, um,
• 1:38:14
  my son loves Chinese food, so after that, we went to the Chinese restaurant that
• 1:38:18
  he enjoyed last year and, uh, ordered sufficient Chinese that the following
• 1:38:23
  morning when we woke up, we could put it in the microwave and have breakfast,
• 1:38:28
  thereby being able to get straight out on the road rather than having to come back.
• 1:38:32
  Mess around with with breakfast with breakfast tomfoolery.
• 1:38:38
  So a feature of I'm jumping around here, but, um, one of the reasons why it really
• 1:38:44
  pays to engage around accommodation is you can just make life so much easier for
• 1:38:48
  yourself if you have a fridge, um, and a microwave, because then you can, you
• 1:38:54
  know, then you're completely independent on food and can live out of the room and
• 1:38:58
  save food easily and do, you know, to do, you know, Take about, you know, carry
• 1:39:04
  a box out and actually have somewhere to put it to, you know, finish it up.
• 1:39:08
  And then the next day I know this is like travel 101, but, um, I've
• 1:39:13
  been guilty of, you know, false false economies in in the past.
• 1:39:17
  And this is one of the reasons why, you know, I was more interested in having, um.
• 1:39:22
  a certain standard of accommodation than I was in having the, uh, the best price.
• 1:39:40
  I feel like RM, so as I say, I feel like Gooding have always
• 1:39:47
  done the very best cars.
• 1:39:48
  I feel like RM are doing a lot of cars now, but really with incredible depth.
• 1:39:55
  I feel that Bonhams, who used to sort of, I feel like, I used to feel
• 1:40:00
  like the second to, um, Uh, good.
• 1:40:05
  Now, II feel like they've fallen off a little bit in comparison.
• 1:40:08
  They had a lot of muscle cars.
• 1:40:10
  They were doing like a guy's collection of muscle cars and I didn't pay to go in
• 1:40:14
  because Olly was knackered by the time we got down there on the Friday night.
• 1:40:18
  But, um, I just, I don't know.
• 1:40:20
  You know, you can look at bottoms from the outside more easily than the other
• 1:40:23
  side just, uh, you know, how to look from the point outside, you know, looked
• 1:40:27
  around the field of what they, uh, what they had didn't look close didn't
• 1:40:32
  sort of see in anything or anything like that to what they did have.
• 1:40:35
  That was really nice that, you know, if it had been my money,
• 1:40:37
  what would I have bought?
• 1:40:39
  Um, that a nice sort of four speed pistol grip 70 charger in black.
• 1:40:46
  440 cars.
• 1:40:47
  So, you know, kind of car that I, you know, really would have bought in period
• 1:40:52
  and, you know, we'd love to buy now.
• 1:40:54
  I mean, obviously everyone loves the jigsaw hazard 69, but I actually feel
• 1:40:59
  like the 70 is arguably a better shape with the full round bumper there.
• 1:41:18
  So for many years, I've said to people, the best way to enjoy pebble
• 1:41:22
  is to go On the best event to do a pedal is to go on the Thursday
• 1:41:30
  morning to the start of the tour.
• 1:41:35
  So in other words, there's the show on the Sunday afternoon.
• 1:41:41
  But as.
• 1:41:44
  of the way of just extending the overall car festivities and also as a way of
• 1:41:53
  making sure that owners actually do interact with their cars a little bit
• 1:41:58
  and rewarding those owners that do that, um, there is a driving tour.
• 1:42:04
  On the Thursday morning now, if when it comes to judging on the show field,
• 1:42:10
  if the scores are equal, but one car has done the tour and the other one
• 1:42:14
  hasn't, the car that's done the tour, that is actually a deciding factor.
• 1:42:19
  So if you're serious about winning, you need to get yourself out there and get
• 1:42:23
  yourself in the car and do the tour.
• 1:42:25
  So the winner.
• 1:42:26
  Did did do that.
• 1:42:27
  Um, I saw the car that morning.
• 1:42:30
  Um, so it sets off at nine o'clock, but the best time to be there
• 1:42:34
  is sort of 7 15 7 30 onwards.
• 1:42:38
  Um, it's at the top of the Peter Hay golf course.
• 1:42:41
  Um, if that means, you know, if you have a look at your Pebble Beach layout, it's
• 1:42:45
  up the hill, basically from the from the clubhouse near where Mercedes that
• 1:42:49
  Mercedes 10 and the whole like, you know, Concourse Village affair it is, um, so
• 1:42:56
  the cars set off and drive from there.
• 1:42:58
  They used to go into Carmel and, you know, park up Carmel and lunchtime
• 1:43:02
  and then come back, but that used to turn into such a scrum that they just
• 1:43:05
  stopped, uh, they stopped doing that.
• 1:43:08
  So now your best chance to see the cars for free is at the start
• 1:43:12
  of the tour, or a lot of people sit along the route of the tour.
• 1:43:16
  So as it drives along 17 mile drive out of Uh, uh, out of, um, out of, um, uh, you
• 1:43:26
  know, Pebble Beach itself as there's you drive out of the, um, the sort of little
• 1:43:32
  national park, the, uh, Pebble Beach is in as you drive along 70 mile drive.
• 1:43:37
  That's, uh, it's super picturesque, right?
• 1:43:39
  So a lot of people will just park up and do chairs and things like that.
• 1:43:43
  I actually found myself thinking I might do that.
• 1:43:45
  This this year.
• 1:43:45
  So other years I've advised people to go early, see the start of the tour.
• 1:43:49
  And I used to love it because, um, you know, I used to try and network with
• 1:43:53
  people when I was keen to try and find employment opportunities in space.
• 1:43:57
  And I used to try and network with people and and that was
• 1:44:01
  the best opportunity to network.
• 1:44:03
  Because in within the first half an hour of turning up, you would have met
• 1:44:07
  everybody I would, you know, I'd have a checklist of people and I would have met
• 1:44:10
  all of those people and connected with them and had conversations with them all
• 1:44:14
  the while looking at the cars that were potentially, you know, that we're going
• 1:44:18
  to be on the lawn, um, that afternoon.
• 1:44:21
  So it, you know, on the Sunday afternoon.
• 1:44:23
  Um,
• 1:44:28
  a great event.
• 1:44:29
  Um, and I thought I had that pretty down pat, but then last year, because
• 1:44:33
  we excessively did RM and then did the Chinese, my son was tired.
• 1:44:38
  He was only eight then, wasn't he?
• 1:44:40
  So, uh, I was like, bugger, getting up and going to thingy.
• 1:44:43
  I just let him sleep and we just went along there later on.
• 1:44:46
  We went and had some breakfast at the restaurant.
• 1:44:48
  Golf club and just did different things that day from, well, I don't
• 1:44:51
  know the years quite liberating actually really well this year, um,
• 1:44:56
  I thought, you know what we'll do.
• 1:44:57
  We'll go along.
• 1:44:59
  We'll look at good in because good in set up right there is as well
• 1:45:03
  right by the start of the tour.
• 1:45:04
  And, and so what I used to do is watch people go off, then do goodie nowadays.
• 1:45:09
  What I, what I thought this year was, was, uh, we'll pass around goodie.
• 1:45:13
  Um, he's a bit more expensive.
• 1:45:15
  He's like 60 or 90 or something like that.
• 1:45:18
  Not, not a hundred dollars.
• 1:45:19
  I mean, years ago, it used to be that much.
• 1:45:22
  Um, and it was worth me trying to get the free arm bands.
• 1:45:25
  Then that's how you get in.
• 1:45:26
  It's like a colored armband.
• 1:45:27
  That's what, uh, what couldn't, couldn't does.
• 1:45:30
  But, uh, yeah, I mean, I just bought a catalog this time.
• 1:45:33
  Um, He's got about 100 cars.
• 1:45:36
  Um, it was, uh, it was a good show.
• 1:45:39
  Ollie and I, Ollie was keen to go around, um, keen to go around that, um, and my
• 1:45:44
  thought was afterwards, I'll look at the tour cars, you know, the cars that are
• 1:45:48
  going to be on the lawn as they're in the car park, you know, restaging, getting
• 1:45:52
  back in there, reliable transporters, obviously, you're not going to see
• 1:45:55
  everything, but you are going to see cars driving and, you know, it is an
• 1:45:59
  opportunity to wander around and look at them, um, in a, you know, Quiet kind
• 1:46:03
  of setting without there being loads of other bloody people, you know, you can,
• 1:46:07
  um, you know, I, I, I, I'll include a picture of a Jaguar D type that I got
• 1:46:12
  a picture of, and it's, it's awesome that you can, you know, that the cars
• 1:46:16
  are around like that in the car park and it's that kind of secure environment.
• 1:46:19
  And that is one element of, you know, Pebble Beach that feels quite
• 1:46:23
  Goodwood esque, but you can actually get close to the cars and, and, uh,
• 1:46:28
  they're, they're like sitting around like real cars rather than like, you
• 1:46:32
  know, um, million dollar antiques.
• 1:46:37
  So, uh, of course, if you don't do the networking out.
• 1:46:41
  In the tour in the morning you end up bumping into people in the tent in Gooding
• 1:46:45
  and that's what happened this year.
• 1:46:46
  So um, I was engaged with uh, oh a guy I remember I know
• 1:46:51
  since he graduated college.
• 1:46:53
  Um, he's at the HVA now and was at uh, I guess as the HVA has
• 1:46:58
  integrated more with Hagerty.
• 1:46:59
  I think his business card says senior historian or something
• 1:47:03
  like that with Hagerty now.
• 1:47:04
  But anyway, um, I was catching up with him.
• 1:47:07
  Um, I credit where credit's due.
• 1:47:09
  This is the guy.
• 1:47:10
  I'll name names.
• 1:47:11
  Casey Maxson is the guy that put in mind for me to start collecting motorcycles.
• 1:47:17
  I told that story about the bike up on the plinth.
• 1:47:20
  That set me thinking about the avant garde collecting.
• 1:47:23
  It was Casey who said to me, um, probably 2018, 2017, 2018, something like that.
• 1:47:30
  Somebody's got to start collecting 90 sports bikes.
• 1:47:35
  And I flew home from the conference thinking it's fucking me if
• 1:47:39
  me is going to do it because there is nobody else doing it.
• 1:47:42
  There is nobody else doing it.
• 1:47:44
  Um, because of that, because what we'd been having a conversation about
• 1:47:47
  how they would do it cheap, you know, how you could, you know, you could go
• 1:47:50
  out at that time, you know, you could still buy, um, a clean, you know,
• 1:47:55
  slabby jigsaw for 5, 000, 5, 000.
• 1:47:59
  Um, obviously that's, uh, that's since past and I, I guess I just realized
• 1:48:04
  that the, because the bikes were cheap, they were still being ridden
• 1:48:07
  by noobs and wrecked and then broken up and I'd realized that because of
• 1:48:11
  what I'd seen on Copa and that's why I wanted to buy the bikes and I save,
• 1:48:16
  save some of them in that wonderful.
• 1:48:18
  Um, you know, used unrestored kind of, of, of condition.
• 1:48:22
  So, um, yeah, Casey and that exhibit in, in Miami, that really put me down this
• 1:48:28
  road to, uh, to, to collecting bikes that, and, uh, really bizarrely, I, I,
• 1:48:35
  uh, have done role play games for, for years and years, not too much nowadays.
• 1:48:42
  Dungeons and Dragons did a game called Rifts.
• 1:48:44
  My character in Rifts had a hangout where it was like an undercover hangout and
• 1:48:50
  I had it as a motorcycle repair shop.
• 1:48:53
  That was my, uh, I mean, it's a science fiction game.
• 1:48:57
  So they were like flying motorcycles, but it was basically like, you
• 1:49:00
  know, they're basically like the sport bikes of the future.
• 1:49:02
  So I was like, well, you know, I'll, and I thought that was, I thought that was cool.
• 1:49:06
  And then I was like, it was a good idea.
• 1:49:08
  And then I got to thinking, You know what?
• 1:49:10
  It shouldn't just be your character that could do it.
• 1:49:12
  You could do that in real life.
• 1:49:13
  Why don't you do that in real life?
• 1:49:14
  And the bikes were cheap and, you know, I was able to eke out the Anyway, so
• 1:49:19
  that's why I ended up with a garage full of, uh, of 90s sports bikes.
• 1:49:23
  So I was talking with Casey.
• 1:49:26
  And then Ollie tapped me on the shoulder and was like, uh, this guy's just asked
• 1:49:29
  me if I can go sit in that car over there.
• 1:49:31
  And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about?
• 1:49:34
  And he's like, that one over there, pointing at this 1960 Lotus
• 1:49:38
  18, you know, as in, you know, the car that's Sterling Moss.
• 1:49:42
  Beat the Ferraris with at Monaco, you know, not that car.
• 1:49:45
  It was a green with yellow wheels example, but like a load.
• 1:49:49
  So I'm like, yeah, for sure.
• 1:49:50
  You can you can go and get in and yes, so, uh, he's saying the car is they
• 1:49:56
  like, because the mechanics like tinkered around with it because he's so small.
• 1:50:00
  He can touch all the pedals now.
• 1:50:02
  And he's, you know, he's doing it.
• 1:50:03
  doing his Gran Turismo and he's doing his uh, uh, karting.
• 1:50:08
  So it all tessellated together nicely and what was really superb for me was the,
• 1:50:15
  the Gooding guy who'd asked me, said to me whilst he was sat in the car, just
• 1:50:19
  came up to me and said, you know, not all kids are, you know, your kids really
• 1:50:23
  polite and grateful and that really makes a difference because not all kids are.
• 1:50:29
  I was like, awesome.
• 1:50:31
  Awesome.
• 1:50:32
  Awesome.
• 1:50:32
  This is why we do these things.
• 1:50:34
  This is why we've been coming for two or three years now.
• 1:50:37
  So he said, you know, I want to do Gooding because, uh, he knew what to expect.
• 1:50:41
  So this was, uh, talk about inculcating them, uh, young into the very best
• 1:50:47
  parts of, uh, of, of the hobby.
• 1:50:51
  So yeah, so then we did, as I thought we might, uh, having looked around Gooding,
• 1:50:55
  what did Gooding have that was exciting?
• 1:50:57
  I mean, I flicked the catalog for, uh, 2024 Monterey because the market has
• 1:51:08
  been in a place where you felt like people were like, wow, if I'm going to
• 1:51:12
  realize my gains, I've got to do it now.
• 1:51:15
  The investee kind of types.
• 1:51:17
  So, you know, there are a shitload of cars on the market and I mean, the raw stats.
• 1:51:23
  And again, if you're faintly interested, you'll have You know, look this up
• 1:51:26
  already, but I think I read Haggerty had a sell through rate, 1, 100 cars,
• 1:51:31
  864 sold, so a sell through rate of 72%, but a sell through rate of less than
• 1:51:37
  50 percent on cars built before 1981.
• 1:51:42
  You heard me right, 1981, not 1961, 1981.
• 1:51:47
  81.
• 1:51:49
  So that means that less than 50 percent sell through on muscle shit.
• 1:51:55
  Less than 50 percent sell through on really nice 50s, you know,
• 1:52:00
  Bel Air, Chevy Bel Airs, Pontiac Chieftains, that kind of thing, right?
• 1:52:04
  Those kind of, you know, Bobby Basic American collector cars.
• 1:52:11
  Those guys not selling.
• 1:52:13
  Now, I don't know what the sell through was on, you know, I don't know if
• 1:52:19
  you broke the demo down further and you looked at what the sell through
• 1:52:23
  was on pre war cars, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was below 20%.
• 1:52:29
  Um, so yeah, so the worm has turned because You know, the buzz around the,
• 1:52:45
  you know, super car y kind of stuff.
• 1:52:48
  I mean, maybe I'm feeling it because that's what speaks to my son.
• 1:52:52
  But, you know, we looked closely at Ferrari Testarossas last year
• 1:52:56
  and looked again this year and the prices are a lot higher.
• 1:53:01
  I'm going to show you how to get into a car for less than a hundred this year.
• 1:53:07
  I don't feel like I've gained one for, you know, less than 140, maybe on auto trader.
• 1:53:13
  When we were looking, when we were, you know, like if you do auto Tempest,
• 1:53:17
  when you do like the search for like across the country, like Testa
• 1:53:21
  Rossa for sale, seven cars for sale, all of them were 150 and up, right?
• 1:53:26
  And there's a lot of like, you know, 13 mile owned by the Aga car, you know.
• 1:53:32
  And it's balls waxed by, you know, you know, you know what I mean?
• 1:53:37
  There's a lot of really gussied cars that wouldn't have been
• 1:53:42
  the right kind of car for us.
• 1:53:44
  Um, and very few that would be the right car for us.
• 1:54:11
  So we went out into the car park and looked at all the
• 1:54:13
  cars coming back from the tour.
• 1:54:15
  Saw a lot of cars that subsequently we saw at the show.
• 1:54:19
  The one that's standing out in my mind now as I talk about it is, uh, uh,
• 1:54:24
  the Cizetta Moroder V16, um, white.
• 1:54:28
  It's a transverse V16, um, When you see the engine cover open and
• 1:54:36
  there's radiators at both ends and the gearbox tacked on like it's
• 1:54:41
  a fucking enormous Austin Mini.
• 1:54:44
  I mean, you have, uh, it really, it's a piece of theatre.
• 1:54:48
  I was way more impressed with that Suzetta Moroder than, than
• 1:54:53
  I, uh, than I expected to be.
• 1:55:15
  In terms of Friday.
• 1:55:19
  Um, I had bought us tickets for Laguna Seca.
• 1:55:22
  So we, uh, we went there and we spent all day there.
• 1:55:26
  Um, the other activity that really is a compelling event to do if you
• 1:55:32
  can get hold of tickets is the quail.
• 1:55:34
  This is, uh, a car show.
• 1:55:36
  The quails like a golf club that's on Carmel Valley Road, just outside Monterey.
• 1:55:42
  Um, it's, you know, normally it's like a, 10 or 15 minute drive.
• 1:55:48
  If the traffic's bad, it can be, you know, more than that.
• 1:55:51
  Um, bottoms are always down by the quail.
• 1:55:54
  Um, there is a car show down there.
• 1:55:56
  Um, it is, I mean, traditionally I thought the tickets were only available
• 1:56:01
  by lottery and they used to be 1, 000.
• 1:56:04
  I don't know if that's changed.
• 1:56:06
  Um, I used to go right at the end as they were packing up on a Friday
• 1:56:10
  night, so I used to go look around Bonhams a little bit and then, um,
• 1:56:14
  you know, go and look at, uh, uh, walk into the Quail as they were leaving.
• 1:56:19
  You might remember I mentioned it on the pod.
• 1:56:22
  There was one year where I, uh, I blagged my way in.
• 1:56:26
  Um, but I guess everyone was wearing nice purple beach attire, and I was wearing
• 1:56:30
  this John McGuinness Isle of Man TT shirt.
• 1:56:33
  And somebody recognized the shirt, which is why I'd got been given the credentials.
• 1:56:36
  He was leaving, I was arriving, but the show was kind of still going on.
• 1:56:40
  So I arrived much earlier than I had, uh, uh, other years, and I felt like
• 1:56:45
  a total rock star, because I was the only one not dressed to the nines.
• 1:56:49
  Well, these drunk women kept talking to me, and then perhaps in
• 1:56:52
  a pinnacle moment, Jensen Button.
• 1:56:55
  sneered at me and absolutely looked at me like I was shit on his shoe, which, uh,
• 1:57:02
  uh, cause I have flip flops on as well.
• 1:57:04
  He was really nicely dressed as well and was with, uh, with his wife there.
• 1:57:09
  She's a handsome woman.
• 1:57:10
  She was a playboy playmate.
• 1:57:12
  I think he's doing a lot of stuff in America nowadays.
• 1:57:14
  I mean, good for him, but, uh, uh, it's a bit like, uh, um, Yeah, I feel
• 1:57:21
  he's a bit like the royal, you know, he's like married a Californian one and
• 1:57:25
  now he's out here doing the California thing somewhat, you know, I don't know.
• 1:57:28
  I guess the invitation is the most sincere form of flattery as if
• 1:57:31
  anybody's imitating me, but yeah.
• 1:57:33
  Um, so look, The Quail's a good show to do, but it's not beat around the bush.
• 1:57:37
  Um, other years, um, there has been, it's craftsmanship there.
• 1:57:44
  Um, it's high end stuff.
• 1:57:47
  It's where, you know, Lamborghini, web, A few years ago, Bentley
• 1:57:51
  launched that continuation blower.
• 1:57:53
  Um, I remember one year seeing an all aluminum.
• 1:57:57
  You know, freshly recreated pontoon fender, Testa Rosser.
• 1:58:01
  Um, it's where last year Lamborghini launched that like
• 1:58:04
  revamped reimagined count hash.
• 1:58:08
  Um, you know, I, I mean, I guess if money was no object, it
• 1:58:12
  would be a good thing to go to.
• 1:58:14
  I mean, that guy that I know that owns the, uh.
• 1:58:18
  Uh, the Phil Hill Jaguar, um, 120, the Pebble Beach winning car, he was invited
• 1:58:25
  one year to show a Maserati Ghibli.
• 1:58:28
  Um, and I said, you know, not being funny, you know, blank, but why you,
• 1:58:36
  I mean, and he's like, cause it's the most original, clean example and I was
• 1:58:42
  like, well, how did the showing go?
• 1:58:43
  And he went, I couldn't find the fucking key.
• 1:58:46
  I mean, I kid you not, I kid you not, I turned the place up, my house upside
• 1:58:50
  down, I couldn't find the key to the car.
• 1:58:53
  Eventually, it was brought there on a flatbed without the key
• 1:58:57
  because he couldn't find the key.
• 1:59:00
  Nissan Concepts, I saw there one year, um, really weird, you know, Buck Rogers
• 1:59:08
  in the 20th century Nissan Concepts.
• 1:59:11
  I, uh, I I filmed, um, or I, I saw, uh, the historic Lancia team loading up, um,
• 1:59:21
  an LC2, uh, 037 and a Delta S4 one year.
• 1:59:28
  And I just like stood at the side of the road and watched.
• 1:59:31
  Um, one year I was walking and there were a couple who were trying to get what I
• 1:59:40
  now recognize to be an indie roadster.
• 1:59:43
  Like an off the indie roadster from the fifties loaded and, uh, they
• 1:59:49
  needed help with a push and, uh, I helped and they were very grateful.
• 1:59:55
  And looking back, I, I touched a piece of Indianapolis history
• 1:59:59
  without even knowing it.
• 2:00:00
  So that's what's, uh, so that's, you know, some snapshots of, uh, of, of the quail.
• 2:00:07
  And the other thing to do if you're around at the quail is.
• 2:00:10
  There's a spot called the Baja Cantina, and it's an okay place to eat, but mostly
• 2:00:16
  there's a car park there, and there's always interesting cars in that car park.
• 2:00:20
  That's going to be more like things like, you know, Datsun 510s than
• 2:00:24
  blower Bentleys, but, you know, I'm as interested in a Datsun 510 or,
• 2:00:29
  you know, E30 325, that's the kind of thing that you, that you find there.
• 2:00:35
  Um.
• 2:00:35
  You need more printing?
• 2:00:36
  Yeah.
• 2:00:39
  Oh, it's the same document, but with more pictures.
• 2:00:43
  Yeah.
• 2:00:43
  Glickenhaus, Derek Jeter, dirt bike, Honda.
• 2:00:46
  You like the NSA?
• 2:00:49
  I don't know, I don't like it.
• 2:00:50
  It's just the symbol car of Gran Turismo.
• 2:00:54
  Yeah, good, good thought.
• 2:00:55
  So
• 2:01:00
  what subject is this that they want this collage on the book?
• 2:01:04
  Uh, language arts.
• 2:01:06
  The teacher just likes to draw and stuff, so.
• 2:01:10
  It's a fun warm up for homework.
• 2:01:13
  It is a fun warm up for homework.
• 2:01:16
  Sorry I screwed up your pod again.
• 2:01:20
  It's alright, it's working out quite well that I'm able to take
• 2:01:23
  a little break from it, and like, reposition what I'm gonna say.
• 2:01:28
  I'm worried this one's gonna be really long, though.
• 2:01:31
  Well, it is gonna be really long.
• 2:01:33
  Why is, why do, why does anybody care?
• 2:01:58
  Because people listen to it in bits.
• 2:02:00
  You need to do like, chapters, so like, when you're done
• 2:02:04
  drawing you know something?
• 2:02:06
  You need to like have a break for a musical interlude and then say like That
• 2:02:11
  was our first chapter on blower bentleys.
• 2:02:14
  Now we're moving into scooper But nothing I do is that structured you
• 2:02:19
  see you need to get that structured So if you have a five hour one and
• 2:02:23
  say your usual two hour one People can listen to it in pieces while they're
• 2:02:28
  riding to their bus through Right on the bus to their work That's, yeah.
• 2:02:34
  We need to structure in a way that when people have their AirPods on
• 2:02:38
  the bus, they can listen to it.
• 2:02:41
  Yeah.
• 2:02:41
  And like, like, yeah, I need to structure it better.
• 2:02:47
  You just structure my pod better.
• 2:02:49
  Did you hear that business?
• 2:02:51
  Yeah.
• 2:02:51
  You pull, you hapless bastards are thinking, yeah, you bloody do.
• 2:02:56
  Maybe you don't, maybe you're relishing the free and easy
• 2:03:00
  whimsical style that I have.
• 2:03:04
  The other thing that's along there, right, and it's, uh, it's up there
• 2:03:07
  by the Baja cantina, is there's, uh, there's a breakfast place that does the
• 2:03:13
  best briskets and gravy I've ever had.
• 2:03:18
  And if you're a Brit, you're thinking biscuits and gravy?
• 2:03:21
  What digestives with gravy on?
• 2:03:23
  Like what the f k is that?
• 2:03:24
  No, no, this is like an American thing where the gravy is basically like
• 2:03:30
  sausages in some kind of unpleasant looking but super tasty like white juice.
• 2:03:36
  And the biscuits, that's like, they're like, basically
• 2:03:40
  just like, you know, bread.
• 2:03:43
  Like some bready kind of stuff that absorbs it.
• 2:03:46
  So anyway, it's Absolutely outstanding and an absolute culinary must do, uh,
• 2:03:54
  when you're when you're at pebble.
• 2:03:55
  I missed it this year, unfortunately, because I just the whole Hollister thing.
• 2:04:00
  It just took me away from that that area a lot.
• 2:04:04
  I only, um.
• 2:04:06
  Yeah, I was only along, uh, at Bonhams, uh, that one time with my son, um,
• 2:04:11
  because on the Friday we did Laguna, um, on the Saturday on and took him
• 2:04:15
  home on the Friday night and on the Saturday, um, I drove back down and I'll
• 2:04:20
  talk about what I did on the Saturday in, uh, in a moment after I've talked
• 2:04:23
  about, after I've talked about Laguna.
• 2:04:25
  See, I do have a structure and a process, don't I?
• 2:04:27
  Good Lord.
• 2:04:29
  All right.
• 2:04:30
  So the Monterey historics at Laguna Acre, um.
• 2:04:35
  So Laguna, as I said earlier, Laguna is a great circuit to spectate.
• 2:04:39
  It's hot.
• 2:04:40
  Um, my son's favorite viewing point is at the Corkscrew.
• 2:04:43
  So, you know, other years I've, like, struggled up the hill in flip
• 2:04:46
  flops, slopping beer everywhere, being like, fucking hell, he can't
• 2:04:50
  be sitting at the bottom of the hill.
• 2:04:51
  Um, but, uh, then once we've got up there, of course, it's been really worth it.
• 2:04:56
  And his passion has made it really, has made it really worthwhile.
• 2:05:00
  Well, this year, an old friend of mine, um, Jack Pesso, if you're ever listed
• 2:05:06
  one of the most interesting characters you're ever going to, uh, ever going to
• 2:05:10
  want to meet, um, has an old, has, uh, has had a campsite up there with his son.
• 2:05:16
  Um, Jack's one of the first people who ever did the Mercedes Sprinter van.
• 2:05:21
  He's like, he was living the van life before anybody else
• 2:05:25
  had ever, ever heard of it.
• 2:05:27
  Um, You know, literally when I pinged him to be like, you know what, Jack, you still
• 2:05:32
  have that campsite because, uh, you know, we might swing by and see if we can see
• 2:05:37
  you and hang out with you this this year.
• 2:05:39
  Um, he was when I sent him that text, he was dirt biking in the Sierra Nevadas.
• 2:05:45
  You know, that's how it works.
• 2:05:47
  Um, really, uh, uh, I always felt a very skilled rider.
• 2:05:51
  I've never ridden with him.
• 2:05:54
  I just know by talking with him about riding experience.
• 2:05:58
  Never somebody who's overestimated his, his own skills, won't ride
• 2:06:02
  sports bikes because they scare him.
• 2:06:04
  But if you see him ride a super motard, he just rides so hard.
• 2:06:08
  It's like picking the front wheel out of every, picking up the
• 2:06:10
  front wheel out of every corner.
• 2:06:12
  And, and, you know, you look at the tires and there is no, There's no chicken strip
• 2:06:17
  on them because the guy grew up on dirt bikes and now it's like, uh, uh, you know,
• 2:06:22
  your channel, all of the frustrations of, of being a, uh, you know, he's like
• 2:06:29
  me in that he swims against the tide.
• 2:06:32
  And when you say to him, but you're swimming against the tide, you say he
• 2:06:35
  just pushes back on the notion that he's swimming against the tide and
• 2:06:39
  won't see that there's another way.
• 2:06:41
  And I understand that because I am like that myself.
• 2:06:44
  I think that's why, um, I, uh, so having not seen him or spoken properly to him for
• 2:06:49
  years, I, I, uh, you know, we've gone like that before, where when you spend time
• 2:06:54
  together again, you just, we just get on.
• 2:06:56
  And, uh, yeah, so, um, So I hung out with, uh, with Jack up on his, his sprinter.
• 2:07:02
  He did, uh, um, fried up some burgers for us, which, uh, was
• 2:07:07
  fucking awesome and lovely.
• 2:07:09
  And, uh, you know, we drank beers and, uh, then potted down for me.
• 2:07:14
  He was on the outside of turn nine.
• 2:07:17
  So if you know the track, um, you do the corkscrew.
• 2:07:21
  You know, so Laguna is awesome, right?
• 2:07:23
  There's the start finish, which is when you're out of speed, it's a climb.
• 2:07:28
  So turn one is the elbow on the straight where most people
• 2:07:33
  use that as the cutoff point.
• 2:07:35
  And then, um, you sort of goes light through one and then there's
• 2:07:39
  a descent into a hairpin of number two and then three, four and five.
• 2:07:46
  3 is a right, 4 is a right, 5 is a left, 6 is a left as well.
• 2:07:51
  Um, they get progressively faster, and they, they have a wonderful rhythm.
• 2:07:57
  The kind of rhythm that you know about if you've played, you know,
• 2:08:03
  racing games on the Nürburgring, or if you're really good on the Nürburgring.
• 2:08:06
  That section, um, At the top of the track, you know, after the carousel,
• 2:08:12
  Viperman, that kind of section there, um, where it's left, right, left, right,
• 2:08:16
  downhill, faster and faster, um, you know, goading you to put a wheel off the road.
• 2:08:21
  And if you do, it's it's a disaster.
• 2:08:22
  Yeah, awesome.
• 2:08:26
  Awesome.
• 2:08:26
  Uh, circuit.
• 2:08:29
  Well, Laguna, you then are on that little straight up the hill.
• 2:08:32
  And then it's the corkscrew.
• 2:08:34
  So the corkscrew is blind.
• 2:08:36
  I'm a motorcycle.
• 2:08:37
  You have to flop in without seeing the first apex.
• 2:08:41
  And then almost before you've seen the first apex, you have
• 2:08:45
  to get the bike flopped onto the other side and wind that throttle.
• 2:08:49
  Well, we were, uh, I guess it's sevens.
• 2:08:53
  The is it seven a and B, whatever we were on the A side.
• 2:08:56
  Exit of the next turn.
• 2:08:58
  So as they come down that and that's a really weird turn because the line
• 2:09:02
  is sort of in the middle of the road.
• 2:09:04
  It's a really, um, peculiar part of the course.
• 2:09:09
  It's, you know, it's going to be in a technical circuit.
• 2:09:12
  Um, the coolest part of the whole weekend.
• 2:09:15
  The thing I'll take away from me, which we watched one race of like saloon cars.
• 2:09:20
  Like, you know, Lotus Cortinas, and it was like Lotus Cortinas and Alfas, Alfa
• 2:09:25
  Giulias going at it, Hammer and Tonks, and Minis, and there was this one car, 44X,
• 2:09:32
  and whether it was even when they changed drivers, whoever it was, both drivers had
• 2:09:36
  the same style, that the way they turned in, they like, The car physically that
• 2:09:42
  the turn in was one of the most incredibly direct, awesome things I've seen.
• 2:09:48
  We saw a couple of spins, we saw a couple of cars go into the barrier, sadly.
• 2:09:52
  The part I remember is an Alfa doing a full 360 and then finding
• 2:09:58
  bottom gear without going into the gravel and taking off.
• 2:10:02
  We did see, um, IMSA cars raced as well, like 80s IMSA cars.
• 2:10:06
  So like, you know, um, I rocked that.
• 2:10:10
  And, um, you know, the race was won by Mazda RX 7, which
• 2:10:16
  came right through the field.
• 2:10:18
  There was a Mustang leading, which it came and passed like Fox body, uh,
• 2:10:23
  Mustang, another Fox body Mustang.
• 2:10:25
  The guy just got a little bit of understeer and then it understood and
• 2:10:29
  it understood and it understood that it was in the gravel and then it was
• 2:10:32
  in the barrier and you were like, shit.
• 2:10:34
  The.
• 2:10:34
  bad.
• 2:10:34
  Like it was, it was almost in slow motion.
• 2:10:38
  It was really like hard to hard to watch.
• 2:10:42
  Um, so, you know, I had a really good time and got really sunburned without
• 2:10:47
  noticing it because it was windy.
• 2:10:49
  Um, I know while he had a good time, seemed to get on well with,
• 2:10:53
  um, with Jack's son as well.
• 2:10:55
  So that was, uh, was all together.
• 2:10:57
  Awesome.
• 2:10:57
  When we were sat up at the, uh, at the campsite at the sort of level below
• 2:11:01
  those You know, sort of a camping ship, but there's also, um, you know,
• 2:11:05
  a really nice series one E type, like a fresh restoration series one E
• 2:11:11
  type, fixed head, 3A in blue, like a sort of clayey kind of greyish blue.
• 2:11:18
  Um, Ollie said he loved it and I was made up because, uh, as part of me, I
• 2:11:23
  started falling back in love with E types.
• 2:11:25
  His engagement around E types has made me feel again this would really be an awesome
• 2:11:32
  piece of, you know, it's an antique, a true piece, British antique that I could
• 2:11:38
  have and, and enjoy and work with, um, in the way that I have done with these
• 2:11:43
  bikes, but where it's not like, you know, Japanese microwave oven, um, it,
• 2:11:48
  it's, you know, British craftsmanship.
• 2:11:50
  It's, you know, the same as you carburetors that were
• 2:11:53
  on Spitfires for God's sake.
• 2:11:55
  So, um, That excites me, so it's exciting to me that he liked that, uh, that e type.
• 2:12:02
  Which brings us to the Saturday.
• 2:12:04
  It took me five hours to do a drive, which normally takes me two and a half or three.
• 2:12:12
  I mean, so that's the traffic for Pebble Beach on a Saturday.
• 2:12:17
  I have a docent meeting, uh, on the Saturday afternoon, and that
• 2:12:21
  always takes place at a place called the Inn at Spanish Bay.
• 2:12:25
  Now, as a young and said to me as we were, uh, as I was parking up,
• 2:12:32
  is this a place to come to see the supercars and the celebrities?
• 2:12:37
  And I said to him, sir, you are correct.
• 2:12:40
  This is the place to see the sheer walls, like lying like leaves upon the floor.
• 2:12:49
  Um, not quite like that, but there's a ways, uh, you know, off a dozen, you
• 2:12:54
  know, of the latest hyper supercars parked up with the attendant teenage
• 2:13:00
  fanboys and uh, old fat men with scantily clad young women clinging on their arms.
• 2:13:07
  I saw, uh, um, there is a cheese dick LA realty show called Selling, what is it?
• 2:13:16
  Selling Sunset.
• 2:13:17
  Anyway, the character in it is called Josh Altman.
• 2:13:21
  Google him up.
• 2:13:22
  He's, uh, you know, I actually feel like if I had a beer with him, he'd
• 2:13:26
  make me laugh and I'd like him because I feel like I understand, um, his
• 2:13:30
  character, but he's a cheat stick.
• 2:13:32
  He, I mean, there are a few people who can carry off a Rolls Royce without
• 2:13:38
  it, you know, without it seeming overblown, but Josh Altman is somebody
• 2:13:42
  who can carry off a Rolls Royce.
• 2:13:44
  I saw him.
• 2:13:45
  There a couple of years ago, um, there was maybe three years in a
• 2:13:49
  row where every time I went through reception of the hotel, because we
• 2:13:54
  sometimes like somebody says this is a nice little steakhouse there.
• 2:13:57
  And I sometimes used to have a meal with with Wayne.
• 2:13:59
  It didn't used to be quite as round as it is now.
• 2:14:02
  So Wayne and I sometimes after that, those that meeting would
• 2:14:05
  go out for have a steak dinner.
• 2:14:07
  I, uh, which was nice.
• 2:14:08
  I, uh, met a really interesting guy at Hagerty who looks after all of
• 2:14:12
  Hagerty's events, Chapel and Matt.
• 2:14:14
  Arendak.
• 2:14:15
  Um.
• 2:14:16
  I had dinner with him one time, and that was a fascinating just learning
• 2:14:20
  about HackerTees vision for, you know, why are they buying all these shows
• 2:14:24
  and what they planning to do with them?
• 2:14:26
  And, you know, so I had some idea where they were going with that anyway.
• 2:14:29
  So I have, uh, but I was going to say on that there seemed to be three
• 2:14:33
  years in a row where I saw Derek Bell.
• 2:14:35
  In reception of, uh, the in at Spanish Bay.
• 2:14:39
  So went there, had the, uh, the docent meeting, looked at the hypercars.
• 2:14:43
  I wandered the car parks.
• 2:14:45
  This is really one to, to wander the car parks in.
• 2:14:48
  Um, I can't remember anything that particularly stood out for me, but I
• 2:14:52
  really use it as an opportunity to have a look, see, uh, whatever the latest
• 2:14:56
  and greatest, you know, supercars are.
• 2:14:59
  knocking around because this is a good environment to do.
• 2:15:02
  I dare say there are better environments to spot supercars.
• 2:15:04
  Pebble Beach weekend.
• 2:15:05
  There is a supercar event.
• 2:15:08
  Um, I can't remember which day it is.
• 2:15:11
  I went one year.
• 2:15:12
  It was absolutely rammed.
• 2:15:13
  The free events tend to be rammed.
• 2:15:15
  I'd, I would rather pay because that way, you know, you're actually going to be able
• 2:15:19
  to stand back and look at the cards there.
• 2:15:21
  Look, I've given you another useful little nugget of, uh, of advice.
• 2:15:27
  Um, all right.
• 2:15:49
  Those team will rendezvous with, um, with a meeting point in moves around.
• 2:15:55
  Traditionally, we've never had a very good spot to meet people or meet each other.
• 2:15:59
  Now we've a decent spot just because of some tweaks they've made to the design
• 2:16:03
  of the field, which is great, right?
• 2:16:05
  It means that we're becoming more important to what Pebble Beach
• 2:16:09
  is, not, not less important.
• 2:16:11
  And that's, you know, that's not about my ego.
• 2:16:14
  That's about, you know, the stories around the cars are more important
• 2:16:17
  than just looking and going in and out.
• 2:16:19
  Um, so that's competitive.
• 2:16:22
  Um, the first cars.
• 2:16:26
  So, there's this, there's this Pebble Beach thing, the dawn patrol, where
• 2:16:31
  you like go and you see the cars come onto the lawn right at the beginning.
• 2:16:35
  Um, I, You know, the reality is when it's too dark, you can't bloody see, right?
• 2:16:44
  So, and the sun is not up until, you know, quarter past six, something like that.
• 2:16:51
  So, or at least not up sufficiently for you to be able to see anything.
• 2:16:55
  So, um, Yeah, and then 30 and then we'll walk the show field, engaging
• 2:17:04
  with as many owners as we possibly can and sharing as much knowledge with
• 2:17:09
  each other about what we've learned.
• 2:17:11
  And I use that time to decide where I'm going to stand.
• 2:17:17
  to do the tours that I'm going to do later in the day.
• 2:17:20
  Because if you think about it, you might be like, oh, there's a class of
• 2:17:23
  Porsche 917s, I want to talk about them.
• 2:17:25
  But if they're right at the other end of the field, you're
• 2:17:28
  never going to get there, right?
• 2:17:29
  You have to have things to talk about, which are relevant with the
• 2:17:35
  people who are, who are really close.
• 2:17:37
  The other thing is people always say to you, you know, how do
• 2:17:40
  you learn about little cars?
• 2:17:41
  Or, you know, do you, one guy asked me this this year, you know, do you, you
• 2:17:45
  know, do you each take specific marks?
• 2:17:48
  And I told him no, because, you know, you have to know something about everything.
• 2:17:52
  But in reality, you do, right?
• 2:17:54
  Is that, you know, this year, the two featured marks were
• 2:17:57
  Packard and and Maserati.
• 2:18:00
  Well, the best will in the world, you know, I'm not going to become an expert
• 2:18:04
  on Packard overnight, but Maserati, I have a great feel for Maserati anyway.
• 2:18:10
  You know, I know what made the cars great without needing without
• 2:18:14
  knowing what a six GCS stands for.
• 2:18:17
  I know what made them great.
• 2:18:21
  Um, you always learn something fresh at pebbles.
• 2:18:23
  So what I would say to you now is, is you may well know that the
• 2:18:26
  great sports racing Maseratis of the fifties were six cylinder.
• 2:18:31
  But did you know that they were twin spark?
• 2:18:34
  So that meant that in like 1954, they could have a two liter that revved
• 2:18:39
  to 8, 000 RPM and made 190 horse.
• 2:18:43
  I mean, it's eye popping stuff, right?
• 2:18:45
  It's just, and, and the scale it's done on, it's done on a smaller scale than
• 2:18:53
  these big Ferraris and this kind of stuff.
• 2:18:55
  It's not quite Seata.
• 2:18:58
  You know, miniature scale.
• 2:19:00
  It's not quite, you know, Mila Mila, etcetera special on a Topolino frame.
• 2:19:07
  You know, it's not quite like that.
• 2:19:09
  It's bigger than that.
• 2:19:11
  So I said, I said to people, I don't feel that big enough to be physically
• 2:19:16
  big enough to be Pebble Beach winners.
• 2:19:19
  But my word.
• 2:19:23
  Sorry, Dana.
• 2:19:24
  Are we printing off more?
• 2:19:27
  No, I think we're done.
• 2:19:29
  At least I need a break.
• 2:19:30
  It's like, Freaking masterpiece worthy.
• 2:19:33
  It's so, we were just working on it for two and a half hours.
• 2:19:36
  I know.
• 2:19:37
  It's so good.
• 2:19:38
  I love, as soon as he's in collaging, I'm like, we're buying rubber cement.
• 2:19:42
  Yeah.
• 2:19:43
  Um, so we did a good job.
• 2:19:45
  Your excitement at completing the project is, uh Yeah, we did it together.
• 2:19:50
  I'm just feeling it.
• 2:19:51
  Yeah!
• 2:19:52
  I don't think Nanny ever wanted to put two and a half minutes on
• 2:19:56
  anything much less than a half hour.
• 2:19:58
  No, basically it's like, oh, it's a spur of the age, isn't it?
• 2:20:02
  It's a spur of the age, isn't it?
• 2:20:04
  Right, Doodle, our dinner is very easy to Oh, no, are you recording us?
• 2:20:09
  Yeah.
• 2:20:09
  Ay, ay, ay.
• 2:20:10
  Our dinner is very easy to make.
• 2:20:12
  It can be ready within 15 minutes or 20 minutes.
• 2:20:18
  So should I do it?
• 2:20:19
  I don't want to.
• 2:20:21
  In 15, not in 15 minutes.
• 2:20:23
  Let me finish this up.
• 2:20:24
  I have a couple more bullets to do.
• 2:20:26
  So, so come upstairs.
• 2:20:28
  We're going to put a show on.
• 2:20:29
  I'll pause it and cook dinner as soon as you come upstairs and then it'll
• 2:20:32
  be ready 20 minutes from that time.
• 2:20:34
  Alright.
• 2:20:35
  Made you wait!
• 2:20:37
  Roughly about 15 or 20 minutes.
• 2:20:39
  We will now return to our wait.
• 2:20:41
  I'm not going to it yet then because otherwise it'll be ready too fast.
• 2:20:44
  Yeah, don't do anything yet, because I've still got It's gonna be really good.
• 2:20:47
  I've still got one, two, three, four bullets.
• 2:20:51
  We're gonna watch a show.
• 2:20:52
  Ollie, the bi the, the, um The barbecue show isn't over, it's the finals.
• 2:20:58
  Oh, I thought it was over.
• 2:20:59
  I thought we saw that, like, shitty Can I say say that?
• 2:21:03
  I'm saving it, that's why it was here.
• 2:21:05
  Alright, we will now return to our regularly scheduled pod.
• 2:21:30
  So this year, my first tour was 8.
• 2:21:33
  30 in the morning.
• 2:21:35
  And typically, um, other years I've, I've led tours on my own.
• 2:21:39
  Um, or maybe I've talked and, and other people have, have, you know, newer docents
• 2:21:46
  or something like that have shadowed.
• 2:21:48
  Um, so this is a, it was unusual for me to, to be in a position where another
• 2:21:53
  docent was leading and, and I said to him, how do you want to structure it?
• 2:21:56
  You know, you're the designated leader.
• 2:21:58
  How do you want to structure it?
• 2:21:59
  And he said, you know, um, There's three of us doing it.
• 2:22:03
  Um, you know, I like to talk about this mark and that mark, you know, we're just
• 2:22:08
  so I basically we agreed that he would call on me when when Maserati came around.
• 2:22:13
  Well, um, he has a really conversational like easy kind of style.
• 2:22:20
  And although I found the pacing quite slow, um, it worked for the group.
• 2:22:26
  And had he not had that conversational style, the incident that I recounted
• 2:22:33
  earlier about, you know, spotting the hinge on the Frua Maserati and me talking
• 2:22:38
  about it and then the owner stepping in, had there not been that conversational
• 2:22:42
  style developed by David the other day.
• 2:22:46
  the other dose and that wouldn't have happened.
• 2:22:48
  So, um, I learned something about tour guiding as as well as, of
• 2:22:52
  course, something about the cars by by listening to the other people.
• 2:22:56
  So that was, was, uh, was enjoyable.
• 2:23:00
  Um, as we are Doing those tours first thing in the morning, the
• 2:23:04
  judging is already taking place.
• 2:23:06
  So that's how the show works, the judging takes place.
• 2:23:09
  And if you're not aware, there's two kinds of ways of judging Concorde.
• 2:23:14
  There's the Pebble Beach way, where every car starts with 100 points, and
• 2:23:17
  every fault you find is a deduction.
• 2:23:19
  And that can literally be as little as a thumbprint on a piece of chrome can
• 2:23:25
  count as a, as a half point deduction.
• 2:23:28
  So that'd be harsh, but it can be, um, you're not likely to win your
• 2:23:34
  class, let alone the event outright if you don't score 100 points.
• 2:23:38
  Um, so the judging's taking place there.
• 2:23:42
  Of course, the judges are people who are known as being experts
• 2:23:47
  in that, Mark, because, because,
• 2:23:53
  When you're invited to pebble, you can't come back for 10 years.
• 2:23:58
  Owners perceive it as a one shot deal quite often to come and
• 2:24:01
  either you either win or you don't.
• 2:24:05
  You know, so, so you want to, you know, so there is a sense of competition there.
• 2:24:10
  So the judges doing a great job and judging completely fairly and knowing more
• 2:24:15
  than the people who've restored the cars about, you know, how the car should be.
• 2:24:20
  That's, uh, Uh, you know, that's something that the judges have to contend with.
• 2:24:25
  So that element of it means that if they're a bit tetchy and take
• 2:24:29
  what they're doing very seriously, you know, I understand why.
• 2:24:32
  Because of the time, money and effort that people put in to getting cars
• 2:24:37
  ready, um, it is a mark of respect by the judges to, you know, actually do the
• 2:24:46
  job seriously rather than, uh, you know, Yeah, that's what I'm trying to say.
• 2:24:51
  I'm trying to say that the seriousness of the judging reflects the seriousness
• 2:24:55
  the, uh, contestants, you know, go to when they're spending a million dollars.
• 2:25:00
  Some people spend on on a restoration before, you know.
• 2:25:04
  In addition to the cost of the car and transporting it there and and,
• 2:25:08
  you know, all of all of that stuff.
• 2:25:10
  So, um, the cars divided into classes is about 100 of them.
• 2:25:14
  The reason why I like about 100 is you can see about that many more than that.
• 2:25:18
  It's difficult to look properly at that many cars in the course of a day.
• 2:25:22
  I think it is possible.
• 2:25:23
  But as I get older, I even find 100 quite a lot to work to look at.
• 2:25:28
  Um, and I freely confess there are years where I missed the best in show.
• 2:25:34
  Um, You know, not least because I tend to, you know, err on the side of the
• 2:25:39
  post war stuff, not the pre war stuff.
• 2:25:42
  Um, you know, I'm far more likely to spend time talking about the Ferraris
• 2:25:47
  than I am talking about the Duesenbergs.
• 2:25:49
  That's the bottom line there.
• 2:25:51
  And when Pebble do something like they did this year, where they
• 2:25:55
  have a class of wedge cars, where you've got, you know, the Lancia.
• 2:26:00
  Stratos zero, which is, you know, lower in height than a, uh, four GT 40.
• 2:26:06
  It looks like a UFO.
• 2:26:07
  You know, when you've got a class that there was a vector W two on, on the show
• 2:26:14
  field, you know, when you've got cars like that on the show field, I want to
• 2:26:17
  talk about that and I want to be able to engage people my age and younger.
• 2:26:22
  I'll leave it to the people.
• 2:26:24
  I will let the meter to get excited about.
• 2:26:26
  The, the, the Packards and the duesenbergs.
• 2:26:28
  Although, although, you know, I did spend some time this year looking at
• 2:26:33
  those cars when I had some free time on my own in the afternoon, and, and I
• 2:26:38
  really am convinced that, you know, the, that the Don Williams folk are right.
• 2:26:45
  That, that these Olympian casters.
• 2:26:48
  Book called the Olympian cars that I was recommended to read years and years ago.
• 2:26:52
  It's an outstanding book, and really, it explains, you know, how the premier
• 2:27:01
  American also European March Mercedes Bentley, you know, the large, you know,
• 2:27:08
  Are in the same breath as as the packar.
• 2:27:11
  The peerless as the, the, the duesenbergs, the, I mean, sort of fresh heini would
• 2:27:15
  be another, um, you know, there, there's these, were were cars that were built
• 2:27:21
  up to a standard, not down to a price.
• 2:27:25
  And, and nobody.
• 2:27:26
  builds cars in that way anymore.
• 2:27:29
  Nobody builds anything in that way anymore.
• 2:27:32
  And it's right that we glory that kind of, uh, of craftsmanship.
• 2:27:40
  Um, so for me, um, You know, I've seen the cars drive across the
• 2:27:46
  ramp before, and it's not like I don't care who bested show is.
• 2:27:49
  It's that by I, I like to use that time when the cars are
• 2:27:54
  around the ramp in the afternoon.
• 2:27:56
  I like to use that time to really look at cars on the field that
• 2:27:59
  I've not looked properly at.
• 2:28:01
  And this is gonna be a last time to, to look at them because once it gets
• 2:28:05
  past lunchtime, you know, you've.
• 2:28:07
  Been on your feet for six, seven hours at that time, and, and you, you're
• 2:28:13
  starting to feel quite, quite tired.
• 2:28:15
  So I find even if I caffeinate and sit down and Reed energize, you know,
• 2:28:19
  you, the, the batteries are pretty seriously defeated by, by that time.
• 2:28:23
  Now, what I would say, um, is, is, and in what I've really tried to
• 2:28:28
  do in recent years is make sure I star energy for Kaza Ferrari.
• 2:28:52
  So as you come down onto the Pebble Beach show field.
• 2:28:55
  There's always, um, you know, as you come past the golf club, there's a
• 2:29:01
  little field up and to the left, and in recent years, there, um, out on
• 2:29:09
  the field, there has been a display of probably about 100 Ferraris.
• 2:29:16
  Um, so that's right.
• 2:29:18
  It's like you, you pay to come to Pebble, but arguably, if you like Ferraris.
• 2:29:24
  The bonus Ferrari show is better than the pedal show if you're a, if you're a
• 2:29:31
  Ferrari guy, if you're the kind of guy who thinks that Ferrari F40 is, you know, the
• 2:29:35
  most wonderful thing ever, you are likely to be did not need to go anywhere near the
• 2:29:42
  actual pedal beat show field, you would be content just being around cars of Ferrari.
• 2:29:48
  Um, They had a special little, I'm going to say class because it's not a judge
• 2:29:55
  show, but they had like clearly and made a special point of inviting super
• 2:30:01
  fasts from the You know, 50s and 60s.
• 2:30:06
  Um, so this is kind of the, you know, the F40, F50, Enzo, you
• 2:30:13
  know, LaFerrari of, of their time.
• 2:30:16
  This was the, you know, the first, the 400 Superfast then the 500 Superfast.
• 2:30:22
  These really were, um, very exclusive, um, aimed at Ferrari's,
• 2:30:28
  you know, most wealthy clients.
• 2:30:31
  Um,
• 2:30:34
  uh, so produced in.
• 2:30:37
  In minuscule numbers, such the, you know, if you like the cars, it's not long
• 2:30:42
  before you begin to recognize, you know, individual chassis numbers, um, you know,
• 2:30:48
  individual cars without, you know, without going as far as looking at the chassis
• 2:30:51
  numbers, you know, there's, there's, there's that limited a number of them and
• 2:30:56
  the same cars come up for sale, you know, because there is a sense that I think
• 2:31:00
  people want to touch these things for a little bit and then, and then let them go.
• 2:31:05
  Um, I want to emphasize two cars are at Casa Ferrari.
• 2:31:11
  I want to emphasize the Luigi Kineti Vignale bodied 340 Mexico.
• 2:31:18
  It's, it's one of three Vignale bodied 340 Mexicos.
• 2:31:23
  It's the only one with a hard top, I believe.
• 2:31:25
  Um, Kineti used it to do the Carrera Panamericana.
• 2:31:29
  Um, I mean, the history is just stupefying right there, isn't it?
• 2:31:34
  And it's not a 250.
• 2:31:36
  It's a 340.
• 2:31:37
  And, you know, I did that event with Alain Ducadene all those
• 2:31:40
  years ago where we had a Buono 250.
• 2:31:43
  And it was, you know, it was a gutsy sports car, but it performed
• 2:31:47
  more like a Triumph than it did like, you know, It's a 56, right?
• 2:31:52
  You know, it's, well, that's because that's a 250, right?
• 2:31:56
  A 340, that's a 300 horsepower plus 150 mile an hour, you know, scare the
• 2:32:04
  shit out of you, proper sports car.
• 2:32:08
  Um, Loved it.
• 2:32:10
  Spent ages with that car.
• 2:32:12
  The styling of it with the high, um, with the high fenders and the way the
• 2:32:18
  lights are set and the way there's the indents in, in the door, it is without
• 2:32:25
  question one of the most interestingly styled cars I've, I've, I've seen.
• 2:32:30
  Um, Also, one of the Superfasts, a black convertible, a piece of chrome that
• 2:32:36
  went from, you know, the headlight all the way down the fender, down the door,
• 2:32:42
  down the rear fender, over the top of the rear wheel arch, and then met the
• 2:32:46
  back of the bottom of the tail light.
• 2:32:50
  It was like, it was as if, you know, A Ferrari had, you know, had got
• 2:32:59
  a dash of 57 Chevy in his blood.
• 2:33:02
  It, it, I don't normally like convertibles.
• 2:33:05
  This was really, uh, an incredible piece.
• 2:33:10
  Um, I said to the, you know, our friend Les that lives down the street there that
• 2:33:16
  has the, those 308s, you know, what's so awesome about that collection of a super
• 2:33:22
  fast was you would look at individual elements that individual stylists did.
• 2:33:28
  So, um, the.
• 2:33:30
  trailing fender lines on Ferrari 400 Superfasts.
• 2:33:34
  They're doing away with the exposed headlights and going to Perspex.
• 2:33:38
  They're going away from the Perspex and doing pop up lights, which
• 2:33:42
  they all did in, in the early 60s.
• 2:33:44
  And the fitting of spats, um, the fitting of, Chrome trailing
• 2:33:49
  strips around the hood scoop.
• 2:33:53
  These small details, you could see all of these being experimented with
• 2:33:58
  and evolving into then hard design features that came on later cars like
• 2:34:04
  the Ferrari 330 GTC, you know, the end of the end of that line of cars before
• 2:34:10
  they went, you know, full full wedge.
• 2:34:13
  So, um, That was really incredible.
• 2:34:17
  You can tell can't you?
• 2:34:18
  I enjoyed looking at those Ferraris more than I enjoyed looking at a lot of the, a
• 2:34:24
  lot of the cars on the, on the show field.
• 2:34:27
  They just, uh, yeah, they, they just it's so, It is that thing that
• 2:34:34
  they are beautiful to look at and, you know, when you sat in them and
• 2:34:38
  drove them, they would be awesome.
• 2:34:41
  So it affects you the way that, you know, a teenage crush does for me.
• 2:34:48
  Now, you know, it has that kind of, uh, of thing going on.
• 2:34:53
  I'm on the lawn there.
• 2:34:54
  They put up these mirrors and all of these people, all these people
• 2:34:58
  are coming along, taking photographs of themselves in the mirror.
• 2:35:01
  And I'm like, And it's just, in that instant, you've got everything, you
• 2:35:07
  know, the car is that's wonderful about Ferrari and the people who are
• 2:35:10
  attracted to them is everything that's sort of, you know, well, the hangers
• 2:35:15
  on, the wannabes, it's anything that's cool, there's always hangers on and
• 2:35:19
  wannabes, and, yeah, my word, it's, it's, uh, fake it till you make it, people,
• 2:35:24
  why, why, life's too short to fake it.
• 2:35:27
  Find a way to be real.
• 2:35:29
  Find a way to discover who you really are, for God's sake.
• 2:35:32
  Don't fake it.
• 2:35:32
  A lot of fakey do people there, you know, as they used to say in Private
• 2:35:37
  Eye, when other people show you their Rolex, break out your Bolux.
• 2:35:45
  B O L U X, which was like a Rolex knockoff, I really always meant to.
• 2:35:51
  And to get when you're bollocks, of course, but I mean, that fake watch
• 2:35:56
  looks better than a lot of fake wire.
• 2:35:57
  A lot of real watches that people you see people wearing nowadays, like my
• 2:36:01
  God, anyway, a watch digression, right?
• 2:36:05
  A watch digression.
• 2:36:07
  Um, you know, one keeps one's eye firmly at car level,
• 2:36:12
  doesn't one and doesn't bother.
• 2:36:13
  Looking at the people, that's the way that, uh, that I do it.
• 2:36:17
  Quite funny, actually, a lot of people are sort of deferential to
• 2:36:19
  me because I'm, like, wearing the Pebble Beach uniform and I wanted to
• 2:36:22
  say to them, look, my, my authority does not extend off that field there.
• 2:36:28
  You know, I'm just another punter like you who's looking at these
• 2:36:30
  wonderful Ferraris that I'm never going to be able to afford, you know?
• 2:36:47
  So finally, um, I mentioned it earlier, um, I used that old
• 2:36:52
  Mercedes E55 AMG for the trip.
• 2:36:56
  Um, it's passed 160, 000 miles now.
• 2:37:00
  Um, it did it on this, on this trip.
• 2:37:02
  I, I used it for August nights.
• 2:37:05
  Um, this, uh, which is like a previous pod.
• 2:37:08
  If you, you know, you look back a little bit in my, uh, in my catalog as it were.
• 2:37:14
  Um, so yeah, um, So I did Reno really leaned on it quite hard in the Reno
• 2:37:22
  trip, leaned on it pretty hard in the Pebble trip, but, but, but less
• 2:37:26
  so, and it has not missed a beat.
• 2:37:29
  And if I sound surprised by that, it's because I know I haven't used
• 2:37:34
  it since Pebble Beach last year.
• 2:37:38
  And I know that because when I took it out of storage, it had, when I
• 2:37:45
  took it out of storage, It had the last year's registration on it,
• 2:37:52
  had August 2023 registration on it.
• 2:37:56
  So I actually stuck a registration sticker on it for it to be good
• 2:38:00
  through, uh, through this year.
• 2:38:04
  So it works extremely well for that kind of trip because it's comfortable and
• 2:38:07
  it's fast and the issues that it has.
• 2:38:12
  I guess the main issue that it has is the rust in the roof, which I've talked about
• 2:38:17
  before, but it's now like in an L shape, the whole like the rust section is like in
• 2:38:22
  an L shape around the top of the sunroof.
• 2:38:24
  And if you catch it in the right light, you can actually see the interior
• 2:38:28
  light through the hole in the roof.
• 2:38:32
  I mean, how long it takes.
• 2:38:33
  Before there's electrical problems as a result of that.
• 2:38:36
  I mean, I've ridiculously been lying a cloth over the holes so the
• 2:38:40
  condensation doesn't go in the holes.
• 2:38:43
  I mean, it's so ridiculous.
• 2:38:45
  So I don't know what I'm going to do with that, uh, that car longer
• 2:38:48
  term because it needs a lot of money spending on it really cracks.
• 2:38:52
  The windshield is terrible.
• 2:38:54
  Cracks in it now.
• 2:38:54
  I guess one time the wiper went and look, it's got one of these like
• 2:38:58
  single reach into the corner wipers.
• 2:39:00
  Well, that went and, uh, it, uh, when it, when I twitched it
• 2:39:05
  on, it just cracked the window.
• 2:39:07
  I was a little bit cracked anyway, and it's gotten worse since and, you know,
• 2:39:11
  but yeah, so it has a real, um, you know, It just looks really, really tired now.
• 2:39:19
  Um, there's a load of oil coming out around on one of the front wheels as well.
• 2:39:23
  I think I mentioned this on another pod, but the point is that I think
• 2:39:26
  the wheel bearing's going away.
• 2:39:28
  So, um, yeah.
• 2:39:30
  So probably what I'll do is just put it back into low die, take the
• 2:39:33
  Fiesta back out again, use that for another year and not touch it.
• 2:39:36
  But the thing is, every time I get in and drive it, I'm just
• 2:39:39
  like, it's just so comfortable.
• 2:39:40
  It's so much easier to use than, you know, the Fiesta or the
• 2:39:44
  Mustang, because they're both.
• 2:39:45
  You know, stick shift.
• 2:39:46
  So yeah, for the school run, you know, just love that bloody Mercedes.
• 2:39:50
  So, uh, yeah, enough eulogizing, um, that thing.
• 2:39:54
  Um, let me wrap up with, um, A recommendation of decent road,
• 2:40:03
  um, and also a perspective piece on California, right?
• 2:40:06
  And it's, it's the, the, my, uh, the hotel I was staying at, Hotel Golf Course,
• 2:40:12
  whatever, was, uh, right on Highway 25.
• 2:40:16
  And, uh, I thought, Where the, you know, the bit of Highway 25 running
• 2:40:22
  south, I thought that looked pretty remote when I was like looking at it
• 2:40:26
  on, uh, you know, on, on Google Maps.
• 2:40:28
  So I thought the day after the show ended, I thought, you know what I'll do?
• 2:40:34
  I'll, uh, I'll, um, you know, I'll do a bit of a scenic route home
• 2:40:41
  and I'll explore this Highway 25.
• 2:40:44
  Um, if I tell you that As you leave Hollister, you pass a sign that
• 2:40:52
  says next services 76 miles, like you're in the Nevada desert or
• 2:40:59
  something, not in, you know, barely out of the Bay Area in California.
• 2:41:04
  Um, That gives you some idea of what that part of the northern central valley of
• 2:41:10
  California is, is like this highway 25.
• 2:41:13
  Basically, it takes you to there's some national parks and things
• 2:41:17
  in there, but those are non contiguous non contiguous roads.
• 2:41:21
  So I was just doing a, you know, can I.
• 2:41:25
  You know, what are these roads like?
• 2:41:26
  Can I explore?
• 2:41:27
  And I had the most wonderful road trip experience.
• 2:41:32
  Um, really wanted to recommend Highway five as a road to explore if you're in
• 2:41:39
  California and doing a road trip by year.
• 2:41:42
  I turned west on, I think, Bittersweet Road, it was called and dropped down
• 2:41:48
  into one of the, into King City and then, uh, you know, I actually, I
• 2:41:53
  made a real road trip out of it.
• 2:41:55
  I then in King City, I crossed over King City and then did that river road
• 2:41:59
  that I was talking about, um, up back towards, I took that north and then,
• 2:42:05
  uh, parallel to 101 and then got on, uh,
• 2:42:12
  Yeah, we then got on 101 and came home the normal way.
• 2:42:14
  So just for Europeans here, what you have to understand about roads out
• 2:42:18
  west here is that there's like one road, the Mother Road 101, Highway
• 2:42:23
  101, this is the road that connected California's missions together, um, and
• 2:42:29
  that roads turned into like a, Highway or dual carriageway, but every other
• 2:42:34
  road off there is like a tributary.
• 2:42:36
  There's not very many parallel roads.
• 2:42:38
  There's not very many alternative routes.
• 2:42:40
  So what you tend to find is that all the traffic is on 101 and it's
• 2:42:44
  not a very good driving experience.
• 2:42:46
  But if there are parallel roads, even if they're much slower, they're often
• 2:42:50
  a really wonderful motoring experience.
• 2:42:53
  So, uh, that's why I like to stay off the highways.
• 2:42:57
  That's why I would highly recommend Highway 25 as a part of your
• 2:43:02
  Pebble Beach road trip experience.
• 2:43:05
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• 2:44:14
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