Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Oli, the Funky Cat, and the Silver Arrows: The EV State of the Nation

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Oli, the Funky Cat, and the Silver Arrows: The EV State of the Nation · 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.
• 0:32
  Good morning, good day, good afternoon, wherever, uh, whatever
• 0:37
  time or wherever you may be.
• 0:38
  It is John Summers, the motoring historian, with his school friend Mark
• 0:44
  Gammey for another hour or hour and a half or however long we feel to talk a load of
• 0:50
  bollocks about cars, kind of about cars.
• 0:53
  Um, how are you, Mark?
• 0:55
  I'm all right, thank you, sir.
• 0:56
  Yourself?
• 0:58
  Yeah, you know, I, I'm doing, uh, I'm doing pretty good.
• 1:01
  We've had a, we've had some stormy weather here in, in, uh, San Francisco.
• 1:06
  And, uh, the weather has got out nice again.
• 1:09
  And now, you know, there's a whole two weeks that went by where the road was wet
• 1:13
  and I didn't want to ride motorcycles.
• 1:15
  So I would look at the weather forecast and then be like, and it's only, as
• 1:19
  I say this to you now, I think that's so bloody California to be like, Oh,
• 1:23
  I just wait for a sunny day to ride.
• 1:25
  Because in England, I just used to get out and ride anyway.
• 1:28
  But I guess it's a combination of my old age and, uh, and an increased sense
• 1:33
  of, uh, security and responsibility and, uh, and all of that jazz.
• 1:40
  I mean, I, I, I, I'm a fair weather rider.
• 1:43
  I am a portly old git now and uh, I'm, I'm waiting for the blue skies myself, so.
• 1:49
  Although I am gonna get a dirt bike at some point soon and then
• 1:51
  uh, I will ride that whenever, so.
• 1:55
  Yeah.
• 1:55
  On green lanes, not on the road, so yeah.
• 1:57
  Yeah, I'm still trying to persuade Dana to uh, acquiesce to uh, to Ollie.
• 2:04
  Um, we were, uh, he was doing his goalkeeping practice, um, in Sutro
• 2:08
  Park the other day, and some five year old came by on an electric
• 2:11
  bike, um, an electric dirt bike.
• 2:14
  Right.
• 2:15
  And I just want to, I want to highlight, right, that I think at the moment,
• 2:19
  both legally and culturally, there is.
• 2:24
  Uh, gap at the moment around electric bikes, right?
• 2:28
  So in other words, if I buy Ollie, one of these 400, two stroke Chinese,
• 2:35
  but 50 CC bikes that you see on Amazon for three or 400, right?
• 2:40
  If I buy him one of those, I'd have to go and pick it up in Nevada.
• 2:42
  Cause they're not allowed in California, but let's say I like
• 2:45
  shipped it to a PO box in Nevada or something, and then went and picked
• 2:50
  it up and he could have it here.
• 2:52
  If I had that, if he had that running around in Sutro Heights, right?
• 2:56
  Somebody had called the police on him in no time at all, right?
• 3:00
  On me.
• 3:02
  Whereas this lad on the electric bike, because it's quiet, because
• 3:09
  he doesn't have clouds of blue smoke, he's just a little kid
• 3:14
  riding around on the electric bike.
• 3:17
  So Ollie was like, well, can I get an electric bike then?
• 3:20
  So I was like looking at prices and sizes and so on, because he's
• 3:25
  a bit, he's a bit bigger now.
• 3:27
  And I came to the conclusion that no, basically, because if he, if I
• 3:33
  put him on an electric bike, that bike would be like the size of a
• 3:37
  KLX 110 or something like that.
• 3:40
  Now, like the electric bike would be, and that would be too big, right?
• 3:44
  That would be, you know, the old woman walking her little yappy dogs.
• 3:49
  Instead of being like, Oh, cute.
• 3:50
  You know, the lads riding over the berms, it would be, you're going to run me and
• 3:54
  my dogs over and, you know, given how Ollie is on a pedal bike, I know how
• 4:00
  he'd be on a powered bike, so, you know.
• 4:04
  He has this skid every time, right?
• 4:06
  When he comes to stop, he always steers a bit and then gets the brake on.
• 4:11
  So it does like a bit of speedway.
• 4:14
  He's gonna fall off, right?
• 4:16
  But I told him that a month ago and he's just been doing bigger and bigger
• 4:21
  and bigger skids and not falling off.
• 4:23
  So, you know, what, what does dad know?
• 4:26
  Um, Well, those 44 teeth boys, um, Al did his review, didn't he, of the, um,
• 4:32
  was it a KTM 50cc or something like that versus the equivalent electric dirt bike?
• 4:38
  And his lad was basically pro electric?
• 4:42
  Yeah.
• 4:43
  Yeah, well, I, I mean, I was thinking, uh, I've been driving the Mercedes,
• 4:48
  there's that old E55 I, uh, I have.
• 4:51
  And, and, uh It's so smooth and the power is so instantaneous and it
• 4:59
  has this sort of, I mean, it's why they, why, you know, uh, Jason's
• 5:03
  son called it the flying couch.
• 5:05
  I mean, it has that feel right.
• 5:08
  All those characteristics are the characteristics of electric cars.
• 5:12
  It's like when Cadillac said they were going all electric and they were one
• 5:15
  of the first makers to do it, instead of being like, oh, what a disaster, I
• 5:19
  was like, well, those are the virtues of Cadillac anyway, you know, the
• 5:24
  smoothness and, you know, and I'm put in mind of, you know, before the war.
• 5:31
  The Packards and the dos and Bergs and the Cadillacs of that era.
• 5:35
  The idea was that you couldn't hear it running.
• 5:38
  It was silent running.
• 5:39
  So the reason that you did 12 cylinders wasn't 'cause it made more
• 5:42
  power 'cause you could rev higher.
• 5:44
  It was because it delivered better torque and it was smoother and it was quieter.
• 5:51
  And the notion was that you could rest a quarter.
• 5:54
  On the engine block, you know, and the quarter wouldn't fall over.
• 5:58
  The thing was, the thing was so smooth.
• 6:00
  I feel like we moved away from that true luxury, that notion of, of true luxury.
• 6:05
  Um, yeah, I mean, I don't know.
• 6:08
  It's, um, the whole, I mean, electric is coming is, is, is the future or whether,
• 6:13
  I mean, and it looks like it's unlikely to segway sideways into hydrogen anytime
• 6:18
  soon, even though that might be a.
• 6:20
  Better, the specific impulse looks to, uh, uh, output or whatever it is, looks
• 6:24
  a bit too weak, but again, I mean, I listened to, um, a radio show today on
• 6:29
  the BBC talking on Radio 4, um, uh, sliced bread, I think, as in, like, is it the
• 6:34
  best thing since, and they ask, sort of, answer readers questions, and I mean,
• 6:38
  you know, even if you charge up your electric car at home and your previous
• 6:42
  car was, you know, beyond economical repair, so there isn't the argument
• 6:46
  about whether or not you could, you needed to buy one, but, Um, you're still
• 6:50
  looking at between 50 and 80, 000 miles.
• 6:52
  If you're in, if you only charge up at home before you save the
• 6:56
  money, the differential in cost between an electric car, electric
• 7:01
  Astra and the equivalent, you know, small diesel, um, which is a lot.
• 7:07
  Uh, and if you're not in that position to actually need to swap out
• 7:11
  now, there's no argument to do it.
• 7:13
  And the other net net is that.
• 7:15
  If you look around, you know, ignoring all of the economics, and of course, you know,
• 7:18
  now with the petrol prices gone through the roof, you can be paying 70p a, a, a,
• 7:23
  a kilowatt unit or whatever it is now, um, at service stations and so forth, and
• 7:29
  there was four hour queues for the Tesla chargers at Christmas time at the service
• 7:34
  stations on the way down, on the way, when people were heading home, um, This,
• 7:40
  the infrastructure is woefully lacking behind the governmental ambition, sadly.
• 7:45
  So, you know, it's, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I, I would, uh, I would completely, um, I
• 7:52
  would completely agree with you there that the, that the infrastructure is not there.
• 7:56
  Um, I'd also put to you, um, and stop me if you.
• 8:00
  I think you've heard this one before, but I wasn't pretty that I feel like
• 8:03
  the people who buy electric cars are the people who are least able to cope
• 8:09
  with motoring challenges, which the motoring challenges, which are constituent
• 8:15
  of the electric car experience.
• 8:17
  So, in other words, you need to plan where you're going to stop.
• 8:20
  You can't just drive and get there and gas up whenever you know that we've we've
• 8:24
  rolled back the the convenience and I was thinking about this with with my mum
• 8:28
  that that when we were at school together my mum didn't drive and and given that
• 8:33
  she has done since and gets on well and loves modern modern cars my parents have
• 8:38
  a Volkswagen Tiguan still like a 2016 she loves that she loves the sitting up high
• 8:43
  she loves the smoothness of the diesel she loves the fact that it's an automatic
• 8:47
  transmission but it's not slow, um, You know, all of all of that stuff, right?
• 8:52
  That all happened.
• 8:54
  She didn't like the light.
• 8:55
  She didn't like the choke.
• 8:57
  The choke terrified her, you know, between the choke and the clutch,
• 9:01
  you took those two things away.
• 9:02
  It made my mom mobile.
• 9:04
  It made my parents able to live out in the countryside.
• 9:08
  So, you know, I feel like electrification has sort of rolled us, rolled motoring
• 9:15
  back to the way that all that, is it?
• 9:17
  I mean, at least at the moment.
• 9:20
  In a sense that if you live outside of town and you do long journeys
• 9:27
  semi regularly, it's not for you.
• 9:29
  Yeah, it's definitely not for you.
• 9:30
  A commute, short run, regularity.
• 9:36
  And, and that's why, you know, we've, we've run our agenda
• 9:40
  of, of cars to, to talk about.
• 9:42
  But that's what I think's most interesting about a car that's
• 9:45
  not on our agenda to talk about.
• 9:47
  The Citroën Ami.
• 9:50
  Because that Ami It's like, I know it's like, uh, made out of the same material
• 9:54
  as a port a potty is made out of.
• 9:56
  Oh, the Ollie?
• 9:57
  No, the Ami.
• 9:58
  The Ami is the little one.
• 9:59
  The Ollie is the one on our list that we can talk about in a minute.
• 10:03
  I don't think I've even seen the Ami.
• 10:05
  Oh, well, let's, let's talk about the Ollie.
• 10:08
  And whilst we're talking about the Ollie, you look at the Ami.
• 10:11
  I, so we, we, our little agenda was about electric cars today anyway, and
• 10:16
  we're jumping around on the agenda.
• 10:17
  But you know, that's you and me.
• 10:19
  Um, I have seen that one.
• 10:20
  Yeah.
• 10:20
  Sorry.
• 10:20
  It's quite good.
• 10:21
  So I think both of them, uh, fucking awesome design.
• 10:27
  I get what, you know, Lucid and Rivian are trying to do.
• 10:33
  I I'm just a bit like, you know, that feels a bit like, you know,
• 10:39
  I'm excited for the next model T.
• 10:41
  It's the next Model T that really excites me, and it excites me in the
• 10:46
  way that when I used to sell tech products, I was interested in what the
• 10:51
  next generation tech could, could do.
• 10:55
  And I hated Tesla, partly because I just didn't know what to make of them.
• 11:02
  I just didn't know how to interpret them when they first came along, because
• 11:06
  it seemed to, it was fast, but without the fun, without the viscerality.
• 11:12
  It was.
• 11:13
  You know, they had looked at what Porsche did and just did jelly mold
• 11:17
  size and you were like, well, that's because Porsche are all about the 911.
• 11:21
  They have this like, halo model.
• 11:23
  What's your halo model other than your founder's god damn giant ego?
• 11:28
  You know, like, I, I just, Yeah, you're waiting for the skyline.
• 11:32
  Do you know what I mean?
• 11:33
  You're waiting for the Japanese to go, this is, this is how we do it.
• 11:36
  And then you go, well, shit, that's effective.
• 11:39
  I like that.
• 11:39
  That's amazing.
• 11:40
  That's your own.
• 11:41
  You know, you're not trying to be Ferrari.
• 11:43
  Yeah.
• 11:45
  Yeah, I like this being the ultimate expression of the Japanese.
• 11:49
  It's not copying anymore.
• 11:51
  They're doing something terrific.
• 11:53
  All of them.
• 11:54
  It's just amazing all on its own.
• 11:56
  Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 11:57
  I like, I mean, I suppose it shouldn't have been a surprise
• 11:59
  that it came from Citroen.
• 12:01
  Um, but yeah, I watched a review of that.
• 12:03
  I mean, it's a show car.
• 12:04
  It's a sort of level laboratory thing, but I mean, It's genuinely impressive.
• 12:10
  Loads of quality, the cool and, uh, different thinking for the only, I
• 12:15
  haven't watched the Ami stuff, but I, they had a couple on the picture and
• 12:17
  the philosophy is the same instead of, do you know how heavy the Rivian is?
• 12:23
  It's like 7, 900 pounds, right?
• 12:27
  It's like I said to Ollie, like that's three Mustangs, three of our Mustangs.
• 12:32
  He went three.
• 12:33
  I went three.
• 12:34
  Imagine how that would feel plowing into you, uh, a hundred miles
• 12:38
  an hour, like that was the main standout thing for that Ollie.
• 12:42
  It's like what?
• 12:42
  2, 200 pounds.
• 12:43
  It's like a thousand kilograms.
• 12:45
  Windscreen and the doors and all of that, all of that's fucking clever.
• 12:49
  But the main event about that Ollie is that it's about lightness.
• 12:55
  Well, I know they reckon cause they can put a smaller, was it a 70 kilowatt
• 12:58
  hour battery or something in there?
• 12:59
  So therefore they can make the thing for 20 grand.
• 13:03
  That's like actually the price of gold rather than that plus 15 grand more.
• 13:07
  I mean, yeah, now, now I'm excited about electric car, right?
• 13:12
  Tesla.
• 13:14
  Now we're really, and you said it came from Citroen.
• 13:19
  I looked at it being like, I'm feeling the Citroen two CV here.
• 13:23
  The AMI was launched right alongside, um, when Paris introduced their new
• 13:28
  like 19 mile an hour speed limit.
• 13:31
  Right.
• 13:31
  It's 30 kilometers or something.
• 13:33
  And I'm like, and I'm like, wow, Citroen have grasped the reality of
• 13:41
  urban transportation in the future with that doesn't do any more than 69.
• 13:46
  That's it.
• 13:47
  Well, he's even slower than that.
• 13:50
  Yeah.
• 13:51
  And what they've done is they've, they've done one vehicle for people who live
• 13:55
  right in the city and they've done another vehicle or for people who, you know, might
• 14:00
  want to go out of town at the weekend.
• 14:02
  You know, and you know, but, but this is the, the, this is what I've, I, I, I
• 14:09
  believe, I don't know France and French people very well, but in California,
• 14:15
  you know, I mean, our friends that we spent Christmas that we spent New Year's
• 14:19
  with, uh, we're going to talk about their couple of new cars, Tesla model X and,
• 14:24
  and Cayenne GTS later in the, in, in the sort of little presentation, they now like
• 14:30
  little thing today, but you know, yeah.
• 14:33
  They would never drive, even though the cars, they would never
• 14:36
  consider driving between LA and San Francisco, you would fly.
• 14:41
  So in other words, any journey that's longer than a couple of hundred miles.
• 14:46
  Most people don't want to do it in the pandemic.
• 14:49
  My wife moved to a stage where she doesn't want to be in the car
• 14:53
  for longer than about an hour.
• 14:55
  She's fine driving around town, but she doesn't know when she gets out on the
• 14:59
  freeway, she doesn't know what to do.
• 15:02
  Now me, I'm like waiting for that moment where you can just.
• 15:06
  Sit there and, you know, survey the world.
• 15:09
  Like, I feel like that's like the big, I love nothing more than that moment.
• 15:13
  When, when you go in somewhere and the car's packed and all the bullshit's done,
• 15:17
  and you're just like out on the highway, that moment where you move into the left
• 15:21
  hand lane and switch the cruise on that.
• 15:25
  That's a pinnacle moment.
• 15:27
  That's a like picking up the front wheel moment right there.
• 15:31
  Let's see what like, you know, planet rocks got or a bit of smooth country.
• 15:34
  If I'm feeling like us vibes today, then, you know, let's see what's going on.
• 15:38
  Yeah, that's not what That's not what most people do, to be fair.
• 15:43
  And that's not what these electric cars are designed for.
• 15:47
  That's not what they're, they're designed for.
• 15:49
  No, no.
• 15:49
  And I mean, look, you know, maybe this, what's that, that new Mercedes
• 15:53
  long tail thing that's like going for a thousand kilometres of range on a
• 15:56
  single battery charge or something?
• 15:58
  I mean, it's ugly, but like, whatever.
• 15:59
  I mean, you know, it's, it's, again, it's a, it's a technology showcase thing.
• 16:04
  Um, but yeah, I mean, I don't think, I mean, it's coming.
• 16:09
  Um, but yeah, that's the top thing on our list card on our list to talk about
• 16:15
  that funky cat aura, which at that time I'd not seen the Ollie, so I didn't
• 16:20
  know what the Europeans were doing.
• 16:22
  I'd only seen Mercedes kind of doing that EQS blobby affair, that cat aura.
• 16:27
  You can go by that right now.
• 16:29
  It's 25 grand in England, something like that.
• 16:32
  You can't get it here.
• 16:34
  Um, I, I am struck by it because I feel like electrification is going to be the
• 16:43
  niche that the Chinese need to build.
• 16:47
  A market in Europe and later dominate I feel like I don't think they've
• 16:52
  delivered their skyline I don't know what their cars are, you know
• 16:55
  apart from copies at the moment.
• 16:57
  They definitely haven't delivered the skyline The cat aura is like a step on
• 17:03
  the road And the cat aura sits really nicely against the ollie because the ollie
• 17:08
  is all this exciting design That's at an affordable price point whereas the cat
• 17:13
  aura He's a similar price point, right?
• 17:15
  I, you know, that, that, that concept car is not, you know, they, I, I
• 17:20
  see those as similarly priced kind of, kind of the, well, the cat or
• 17:24
  is something you can buy right now.
• 17:25
  I, um, I have to say, I didn't, I thought it was a bit dull.
• 17:29
  I mean, the guy seemed quite excited about it in the video in terms of its styling.
• 17:33
  But, you know, trying to look like, you know, sort of take Porsche styling
• 17:36
  cues on that sort of little car.
• 17:38
  Always feels like you're sort of fronting and maxing a bit.
• 17:40
  I mean, like really, I mean, just for our, uh, for our listeners or one
• 17:45
  of them, me whilst I'm editing it.
• 17:47
  Um, it just for our listeners, Johnny Smith, late break show.
• 17:51
  And, and he's my electric electric car guru.
• 17:55
  You know, and he, I realized he verbalized what I'd been thinking,
• 18:00
  which is the, this antagonism between electrification and gas power is dumb.
• 18:07
  It's just dumb.
• 18:09
  There's room for everything, right?
• 18:11
  So he's like electric car guy.
• 18:13
  He's testing a VW buzz at the moment, but he has a 68 charger, which in England.
• 18:20
  You know, probably wouldn't be my choice, but like, you know, power to it.
• 18:24
  Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 18:25
  Um, I mean, it's, it's, it's coming.
• 18:28
  I think it's got a use case.
• 18:29
  I mean, it really has.
• 18:30
  I mean, it doesn't fit my use case, but I'm in a minority.
• 18:34
  I'm not the motoring public at large.
• 18:36
  So, um, yeah, I mean, and, you know, if I lived in town, you, you don't
• 18:43
  want to be starting up a, you know, straight six every time with a noisy
• 18:46
  exhaust every time you leave the house.
• 18:48
  I mean, it's a bit silly, isn't it?
• 18:49
  So, you know, it's.
• 18:51
  Um, but I don't, so, you know, man, you know, most of the times we take the
• 18:54
  Fiesta, we're pottering around anyway, so.
• 18:58
  Yeah, yeah.
• 18:59
  Um, so I'm just looking at our agenda here.
• 19:04
  Um, so the whilst we're on the theme of these electrics, another unusual thing
• 19:10
  I would go so far as to say, bloody stupid thing is the fact that you pay a
• 19:16
  premium, like between the Hyundai Ionic five and the Kia EV six or the EV six.
• 19:24
  And the EV six gt.
• 19:25
  That's the two EV six EV six GT and Mustang Mace and MHE gt.
• 19:33
  The GT models deliver more performance for a higher price, right?
• 19:37
  So far, so normal, but they deliver less range.
• 19:42
  Yeah.
• 19:42
  But people always wanted to measure, didn't they?
• 19:44
  I mean, it's like, you know, they want to go out and sit at the lights
• 19:47
  and show off to them, how fast you could, you could, you could use when,
• 19:52
  when, you know, when you Dick measured your Cortina two liter gear against.
• 20:00
  Your colleagues 1.
• 20:02
  6 L.
• 20:03
  There was like, you know, a tangible velour sunroof and 95 miles an hour
• 20:10
  instead of 90 difference, right?
• 20:13
  There was a tangible difference.
• 20:15
  I, I, I don't believe the difference in performance of electric
• 20:21
  vehicles is remotely tangible.
• 20:24
  I don't believe you can use it.
• 20:25
  I can't use all my Fiesta ST on the road.
• 20:29
  No, you can't use the M2.
• 20:30
  I mean, it's, but it's about, but you can get away with the traffic light Grand Prix
• 20:34
  a bit better, I guess, given it's quiet.
• 20:40
  But I don't want, I'm, I'm a performance vehicle enthusiast and I don't
• 20:44
  want the, the, the GT variety of it because I don't want to be worried.
• 20:51
  I'm more worried about range than I am about half a second.
• 20:55
  Off my naught to 60 time.
• 20:57
  Yeah agreed.
• 20:58
  Um, yeah very much.
• 20:59
  So, um, why would you do the gt model?
• 21:02
  It's total dick measuring.
• 21:04
  Yeah, well utter utter dick measuring and it was stupid with gas powered cars
• 21:10
  But you know, we love them and we're small boys, but now they're electric.
• 21:14
  It's it's like it seems like It's like a throwback to But that was one of
• 21:19
  Tesla's main selling points, wasn't it?
• 21:21
  You know, that it's faster.
• 21:24
  That, you know, you could have electric, but it's quick, and it looked
• 21:26
  like a boring, blobby sedan, but it was faster than, like, a Ferrari.
• 21:31
  That was one of their, their, um, their things.
• 21:33
  I mean Yeah.
• 21:38
  Yeah, maybe they success.
• 21:39
  You see, I just feel this is a different technology, right?
• 21:43
  And I used to feel that I just wasn't enthusiastic about it.
• 21:47
  But then I think maybe it was because Johnny Smith did a video on that cat
• 21:52
  aura months and months ago, you know, like maybe more than a year ago.
• 21:56
  And that was the beginning of me thinking, you know what, there's
• 22:00
  something, there's like the stirrings of something interesting happening here.
• 22:05
  And that's Citroën Olli, and there's other vehicles like that that we could
• 22:07
  talk about, but that's Citroën Olli.
• 22:10
  The AMI is what they've always done really well.
• 22:12
  It's like, you know, it's like a port, it looks like a
• 22:14
  disabled port a potty on wheels.
• 22:16
  That's, that's what AMIs.
• 22:19
  The, the AMI.
• 22:20
  Does.
• 22:21
  But the Ollie, the Ollie is, is like, wow, we can actually do good design
• 22:27
  'cause BMW, the, these electric BMWs, I mean they're god damn ugly and
• 22:32
  they're just big fat bastards that you just with a bunch of performance that
• 22:37
  you don't need and aren't gonna use.
• 22:39
  It just feels a bit bloody pretentious to me, but, well, Dick Mey, and
• 22:43
  I'm not a dick Mey kind of guy.
• 22:45
  No.
• 22:46
  If they don't make 'em like.
• 22:48
  Then the range is a problem.
• 22:49
  Um, you know, we're planning another couple of holidays this year.
• 22:54
  Angie's still waiting for her operation.
• 22:56
  Therefore, it's probably going to be in the car.
• 22:58
  Therefore, I'm probably going to be doing.
• 23:00
  You know, 500 plus miles a day for at least a few days and I'm not stopping
• 23:06
  three times for a couple of hours at the service station like the irony, the
• 23:10
  irony of these vehicles with range with range similar to one of my sports bikes.
• 23:17
  I need to be gassing up as much as that.
• 23:20
  And it's called the GT.
• 23:21
  I mean, the whole notion of the GT is what Harry, Harry Garage's guy does is
• 23:26
  you have your yacht down in Antibes, you get in the car in the morning in
• 23:30
  your farm in England, you drive down there, you don't stop, you gas up.
• 23:35
  That's all.
• 23:36
  Yeah, it's, uh, hey, so why don't we move on to the Ferrari Purasang.
• 23:44
  Now you put this on my little agenda.
• 23:46
  I don't even know how to spell it.
• 23:47
  You had some.
• 23:48
  It's a piece about its suspension or steering.
• 23:51
  I, I would just preface my remarks by saying, yeah, all right.
• 23:55
  Ferrari SUV, Vaffanculo, but I also feel, um, you need to see
• 24:02
  these things in the flesh really to get a real proper sense of it.
• 24:08
  Um, you also need to experience it in the, the butt somewhat.
• 24:15
  And I know from driving that, um.
• 24:18
  07 or whatever it was, Durango, that I had that had the Hemi.
• 24:24
  I mean it looked ugly.
• 24:26
  It was terrible.
• 24:26
  And when you sat in it, the interior and everything was, was terrible.
• 24:30
  And it was all absolutely horrendous.
• 24:33
  Other than that moment where you came in the throttle and the VA
• 24:37
  pulled it along and, and that elevated the whole experience.
• 24:41
  The whole thing was, it wasn't, it wasn't like it was the VA.
• 24:45
  It was just that moment where you tipped into the gas, that it
• 24:48
  elevated it far beyond any other SUV.
• 24:53
  Of, you know, comparable, um, SUV, um, So the purest thing like I get powerful SUVs
• 25:02
  is what I'm saying, but you know, you can pay me to have a Cullinan or a Bentayga.
• 25:07
  I mean, I don't want one.
• 25:09
  This is a bit clear.
• 25:10
  Um, but what I was most interested in, I watched a couple of videos on it.
• 25:14
  Just, uh, Harry did one.
• 25:15
  I think I watched another or part of another one.
• 25:17
  The most interesting thing I thought on there was, I mean, apart from the
• 25:20
  fact they're big nowadays, some of these cars, I think it's got 24 inch
• 25:23
  rims on the back and 23 on the front.
• 25:25
  That's a big ass wheel.
• 25:27
  Um, give an older DRE was singing about 20 inch rims.
• 25:30
  Um, um, not that long ago and they were big ass wheels.
• 25:34
  And now, yeah, yeah, he was also singing about his 98 Oldsmobile,
• 25:40
  which then was there with a 500 beta.
• 25:44
  And now is a full on collector car.
• 25:47
  Yeah, find one if you can.
• 25:49
  Um, yeah, I mean, the most interesting thing about it, I think is, um, apart from
• 25:55
  the fact that obviously, you know, It's an option, but I thought the suspension
• 25:58
  was really interesting that they've got.
• 26:00
  There's no anti roll bars.
• 26:01
  Um, so the way they manage, um, compression and so forth and, you know,
• 26:06
  uh, suspension travel is they've got something, some clever sort of little
• 26:10
  motor with the, um, the, um, The smarts on it, on the stanchion of the suspension.
• 26:17
  So you can use that on each corner to independently stiffen up and change
• 26:21
  the ride height on all four corners.
• 26:24
  So if it drives over a pothole, it can lower the wheel into the pothole.
• 26:28
  And then as it comes back up, it checks the road surface like
• 26:30
  30 times a second or something.
• 26:32
  So it can then bring it back up again.
• 26:34
  So that it minimizes the amount it actually went in.
• 26:36
  So when you're in, you're hard cornering as well.
• 26:39
  It can stiffen up the outside and soften up the inside.
• 26:42
  So you can corner flat.
• 26:43
  It could, could lean it in.
• 26:45
  But apparently they tried that.
• 26:46
  It felt, I feel like it's, it's the 1990s.
• 26:50
  And you're Murray Walker explaining Nigel Mansell's new Formula One car to me.
• 26:56
  It's pretty sick for something on an SUV.
• 26:58
  I mean, you know, it's, although that's, you know, that's, uh,
• 27:02
  that word is not acceptable.
• 27:03
  It's not an SUV.
• 27:05
  I don't know what Ferrari called it.
• 27:06
  I can't remember, but that's what it is.
• 27:07
  Well, BMW, BMW don't build SUVs.
• 27:12
  They build SAVs, which are sports activity vehicles.
• 27:18
  I'll have, you know, it's not, uh, fair enough.
• 27:23
  Yeah, it's, you know, I, as I say, it doesn't fill me particularly with last I
• 27:27
  don't want one, I don't think it looks too bad, but, um, yeah, it's just interesting
• 27:32
  to see them sort of loading in.
• 27:33
  Um, doing, doing a Ferrari and doing it their own way.
• 27:36
  Um, and there's an electric motor on the front and so forth.
• 27:38
  So it can do four wheel drive, but you still get a nose lift as an option
• 27:42
  if you want to lift the front end up.
• 27:43
  So it doesn't do that for you.
• 27:45
  It's all about performance and enhancing the driving experience
• 27:48
  rather than practicality.
• 27:51
  Um, yeah.
• 27:52
  And, and, you know, um, you know, I, I, uh, I, I, I've got to believe it will
• 28:01
  leave you flabbergasted to, to drive.
• 28:05
  Because.
• 28:06
  One, one thing with this.
• 28:08
  sort of latest generation of, of like hypercar of, you know, ultra
• 28:15
  powerful tall vehicles is all of everything's a superlative, right?
• 28:21
  It has 700 horsepower, but the brakes are like the size of a 12
• 28:26
  inch pizza and the tires are like, so, so it's, it has the braking
• 28:32
  performance and the rubber on the road.
• 28:36
  equivalent to like three or four Sierra Cosworths.
• 28:40
  Oh yeah, I think they'd be gobsmacking, let's not mess about.
• 28:43
  Um, but yeah, I mean, I can't say I want one.
• 28:47
  I don't really want anything in the Ferrari range much at the moment.
• 28:50
  I'd have a 296, don't get me wrong, but um, that's about it.
• 28:54
  I'm not really bothered about much else.
• 28:57
  Ollie and I went in Ferrari of Fort Lauderdale while we were in Florida.
• 29:01
  Um, and, uh, I just let him wander.
• 29:07
  Right.
• 29:07
  And, and we.
• 29:10
  And I found myself and I, I let him wander, um, you know, and, and, you
• 29:15
  know, was made sure that the people in the place knew that I was with him and
• 29:18
  I, I, I wasn't going to totally let him run wild, you know, he, I wasn't, you
• 29:23
  know, it wasn't like wild child in, but bottom line is we end up stood next to,
• 29:29
  um, uh, five, 12, like BB black one.
• 29:35
  And I'm like, you know.
• 29:39
  The modern stuff.
• 29:40
  I'm sure.
• 29:41
  I don't know.
• 29:42
  It's all about the scenario in which you could enjoy it.
• 29:44
  And with these things, you know, if you drive them, you, you do love them, but
• 29:48
  I just don't feel the same lust for the modern stuff as I do for the older stuff.
• 29:53
  I feel a level of, I'd sell a kidney for the older stuff that, that,
• 29:59
  um, I don't with the newest stuff.
• 30:01
  Um, uh, you also put on the agenda here, this TTS racing supercharged Hayabusa.
• 30:10
  Well, I mean, this, this TTS supercharged rocket, what, what
• 30:15
  this is, there's something like hot rod company that do a boost.
• 30:19
  It's TTS, TTS, um, in the UK, they basically, um, do modification
• 30:23
  packages for these bikes.
• 30:25
  Um, and you know, they're fully specced and tweaked and, you know, um, yeah,
• 30:32
  I mean, and I put the figures on there just because it's sort of ridiculous to.
• 30:36
  almost to think about the numbers, you know, if I, if you came out with it on
• 30:41
  a top trump card 10 years ago, you'd be like, yeah, yeah, chin on that.
• 30:44
  That's, they're not real.
• 30:45
  Um, but yeah, I mean a nine second quarter mile, 220 miles an hour
• 30:49
  for the supercharged booster.
• 30:50
  Um, and the, the rocket supercharged rocket is, I mean,
• 30:55
  270 foot pounds of torque.
• 30:57
  I mean, are you kidding me?
• 30:59
  Um, You know where you remember years ago, Newton and I went out to, uh,
• 31:05
  the Mojave desert without CBR 600.
• 31:08
  I've got to do land raising stuff and continually failed
• 31:12
  tech inspection, basically, um.
• 31:14
  Just nothing like prior planning to avoid piss poor performance.
• 31:18
  Let me tell you, um, uh, Whilst we were out there one time, we got talking to
• 31:26
  a couple who were, well, they ran a pair of boosters, one supercharged,
• 31:33
  one turbocharged, both of them had gone more than 200 miles an hour and their
• 31:38
  background was, um, her background was master mechanic, engine builder.
• 31:46
  in the aeronautics.
• 31:47
  He built the bodies for tomahawk missiles.
• 31:50
  They're handcrafted.
• 31:52
  That's what he, there's like a bunch of craftsmen around, like who fucking knew?
• 31:57
  Well, these bikes were so perfect.
• 31:59
  Well, obviously we looked at the bikes, gushed over the bikes,
• 32:03
  learned the people's stories.
• 32:05
  Um, the bottom line is that the bike needs to make.
• 32:09
  The bike needs to be supercharged or turbocharged to do more
• 32:13
  than 200 miles an hour.
• 32:14
  You'd think out of a can the Booster could nearly do 200 miles an hour and
• 32:18
  you know those early ones could do like 193 whatever you whatever you believe.
• 32:24
  The bottom line is you now at Bonneville at least where the air is thinner.
• 32:29
  And where you have the traction problems, you need, or, or, well, Mojave, you
• 32:33
  don't have the, the, you know, the, the same, um, thin atmosphere issues,
• 32:39
  but you still have, you, you know, you need a shit ton more than 250 horse.
• 32:44
  I think if you add 370, I think it could probably do 250.
• 32:49
  Not that I'm like an expert who knows?
• 32:51
  I mean, did you?
• 32:52
  Because I mean, it, it's, it's an odd thing.
• 32:54
  I mean, because you can do the, the other way that a Mil Millard video that I sent
• 32:58
  out of the, uh, the, he custom made a viper eight liter V 10 motorbike, um, , I
• 33:05
  mean that thing's due 200 miles an hour.
• 33:07
  Um, and he, he, he, the, the onboard video he showed of it was like a
• 33:11
  gentle quarter throttle run, and.
• 33:15
  Still knocks over 200 miles an hour.
• 33:17
  So, but I mean it's, it's an amazing engineering project, the guy's a genius,
• 33:21
  but uh, it's an impractical bike.
• 33:23
  I mean, clearly, it's just way too big and long, the engine is a stress
• 33:26
  member even, and it's still massive.
• 33:29
  Um, but it's cool.
• 33:30
  Um, but yeah, I mean, I don't know.
• 33:33
  Sorry.
• 33:34
  No, no, no, I was just gonna say, the top speed runs, sort of, I
• 33:39
  didn't see much point in them.
• 33:40
  Um, and then You know, spending a day at Speed Week, um, a
• 33:45
  few years ago on holiday.
• 33:46
  I mean, it was cool.
• 33:47
  It was great fun.
• 33:47
  So, if I live near there, I would find a reason to have some sort of
• 33:52
  project to go and do high speed runs.
• 33:54
  No question.
• 33:55
  I was really into it years ago.
• 33:58
  And You know, I did a bit of stuff out there on bikes, but, and I've thought
• 34:04
  since I would go back with, with cars.
• 34:06
  So I have that, you know, five liter Mustang, and I often knock around the
• 34:11
  notion that if you just call that Ford racing, bought a crate, 500 horse,
• 34:19
  Windsor, I could pay Campbell Ford.
• 34:23
  The two grand, which is the factory rate to do a motor swap and that caged.
• 34:30
  Uh, SN car, 95 Mustang GTS.
• 34:36
  It probably do, I reckon 200 miles an hour, but if you think of it, right,
• 34:42
  the Ferrari GT, uh, Ferrari, um, Daytona could do 174 with 350 horse, right?
• 34:49
  The M5, the E39 M5 can do 186, the restricted.
• 34:58
  With its 400 horse.
• 34:59
  With the 500 horse that an E60 M5 has de restricted, that can do, could do 206.
• 35:08
  My E 55, which is 3 59 horse, it's a oh two, the last of the like W2
• 35:15
  10 blobby eye ones, um, that could do 175 de restrictive, which would
• 35:22
  be bloody terrifying prospect.
• 35:23
  Lemme tell you.
• 35:24
  'cause I know how bloody terrifying that is.
• 35:26
  Anywhere north of uh, yeah.
• 35:29
  Um, uh, my point being.
• 35:35
  If you buy a motor with 500 horse, the car, unless it's an aerodynamic
• 35:41
  brick is going to be sniffing around 190 or 200 miles an hour.
• 35:46
  It's just a case of, of, of raw physics where it so happens that
• 35:49
  SN body style, what was that?
• 35:52
  It was the jelly meat, but it was the jelly bean era.
• 35:57
  It was Ford took a Fox Mustang and thought, how can we make this aerodynamic?
• 36:02
  And that was the SN 95 car.
• 36:05
  So I feel like, you know, you might say, well, he 60s much more air dynamics,
• 36:10
  sophisticated than a shitty old Mustang.
• 36:14
  And I might agree with you, but you know, we will, uh, we wait and see
• 36:18
  if you take it up properly and all of that, you know, so I've thought
• 36:21
  about that, but I've also thought.
• 36:26
  It blows a tire and it's over, right?
• 36:30
  Uh, no, it's, is it, is it that worth pursuing?
• 36:33
  No, I agree with you.
• 36:34
  Um, the idea of spinning out and rolling it doesn't appeal much.
• 36:38
  No.
• 36:38
  Well, you know, you, and let's, let's be real.
• 36:42
  Uh, you know, you're the one checking the tire pressures.
• 36:46
  You're the one that missed the fact that you ran over a nail or something, which
• 36:52
  just made a little cut in the tire.
• 36:55
  But, uh, 195 miles an hour, that little cut was a big tear.
• 37:01
  And, you know, you're eating hospital food despite the roll cage in it.
• 37:05
  You know, I just, I'm too old.
• 37:10
  Upside down accidents is the bottom line.
• 37:16
  So we did our new year in, in Santa Barbara with, uh, with this.
• 37:22
  Family that we've got to know quite well.
• 37:24
  I mean, I guess, you know, Dana's known the girls and she was, I say girl, I
• 37:27
  mean, you know, since they were at college in, uh, in Paris together years ago.
• 37:34
  Um, anyway, bottom line, this is not some bloody soap opera about their family.
• 37:39
  Um, this is about the cars that they have.
• 37:42
  Um, so.
• 37:43
  She had a Tesla Model X, right?
• 37:47
  And remember I told you the door fell on her head.
• 37:51
  And, um, the shoddy build quality.
• 37:55
  He is not a car guy.
• 37:56
  And he commented to me on the shoddy build quality.
• 37:59
  He's not a car guy, but he is a Porsche guy.
• 38:02
  So the comparison, I think, was quite noticeable and jarring for him.
• 38:09
  Um, and after the door fell on her head, I mean, you're like,
• 38:13
  anyway, so, uh, um, So I was quite surprised that she had another one.
• 38:21
  It looked at the Audi e tron.
• 38:23
  Nah, needs three rows.
• 38:26
  No three row BMW.
• 38:27
  It's not coming anytime soon.
• 38:29
  So, you know, the leaf was up.
• 38:31
  So she had another one.
• 38:32
  Right now again, right.
• 38:35
  You can do the Played or the range.
• 38:38
  She was like, I bet you'd have had the played.
• 38:40
  I was like, actually, no.
• 38:42
  'cause of my, we just talked about this with the EV six and EV six GT and Mackey
• 38:47
  and, you know, we, we, we, I was like, no.
• 38:50
  You know, I, I, uh, I wouldn't actually, I, uh, I'm, I'm, I
• 38:56
  like, uh, a, so this one's gray.
• 39:00
  And the interior is noticeably nicer.
• 39:04
  I'm not somebody who really compares this stuff, but the interior on these
• 39:09
  new ones is, is, is noticeably better.
• 39:12
  Um, but it has one of these like, you know, space invader.
• 39:17
  Um, you know, Top Gun, Maverick, um, steering wheels, right?
• 39:22
  Where it's not a complete wheel.
• 39:23
  It's, it's, it's not just squared off at the bottom.
• 39:27
  It, it, yeah, it's only like it's between a nine o'clock and 11 o'clock on one side.
• 39:35
  And, and, you know, three o'clock and one o'clock on, on, on the other side.
• 39:40
  Um, so she was complaining about that.
• 39:43
  And, and we, we went out for a little, well, I mean, we were just hanging out.
• 39:47
  So when, when the time that we were there, when we were going out, I happened to be
• 39:51
  sat next to her in the passenger seat one time when, when we were driving and in
• 39:54
  normal operation, it's not a thing, right?
• 39:57
  But when we were going up some winding driveway, she'd been complaining about
• 40:02
  it, but actually watching her use it.
• 40:04
  It was not like a steering wheel, but it was arguably better because you could just
• 40:09
  put your hand underneath it and push it.
• 40:12
  The whole thing was like a large PlayStation console, like,
• 40:16
  controller, rather than, uh, yeah.
• 40:20
  So, um, I first saw that on an arcade game.
• 40:25
  About 25, 30 years ago.
• 40:28
  Yeah.
• 40:30
  You, you, and you and the design genius fucking Tesla was the industries
• 40:37
  dusters arcade in Plymouth as well.
• 40:40
  Yeah.
• 40:40
  I was, I was thinking about dusters arcade in Plymouth just the other day.
• 40:44
  Why was I thinking about it?
• 40:46
  Oh, I know why I was thinking about it.
• 40:48
  Do you remember that game?
• 40:49
  That was, uh, it was like on you were on a road and you had some kind of
• 40:53
  hot rod muscle car and it was it was so it's like similar layout to outrun
• 40:59
  but it was like in a kind of science fiction neon light space and the car was
• 41:05
  clearly a muscle car and and I remember.
• 41:08
  I remember I was, and I was looking at a new Retrowave video that
• 41:12
  reminded me of that computer game.
• 41:14
  And that computer game reminded me of, of, uh, of being in Dusters with, with you and
• 41:20
  Dan, which was really seedy looking back.
• 41:22
  Dusters in Plymouth, by the way, for, for listeners, which
• 41:26
  has long since disappeared.
• 41:27
  Sadly gone.
• 41:28
  Yeah.
• 41:29
  Sadly gone.
• 41:30
  The other one that you boys used to play was the fighting game.
• 41:34
  where they were like the two of you and it was like a platformer but it was from
• 41:38
  a like three quarter elevated perspective.
• 41:41
  Golden Axe.
• 41:42
  No no it wasn't like barbarian fighting it was like you would it was like a
• 41:46
  two player you were like two brothers.
• 41:49
  Yeah you could play Golden Axe multiple player as well um.
• 41:52
  But yeah, yeah, you might have been Knox.
• 41:54
  That was the ones where the intro was you slid in and then all jumped, did a
• 42:00
  massive skid, I think in a 911 rag top turbo, and then you jumped out of it.
• 42:05
  And then landed with your two SMGs, or MAC teens, or whatever you were running.
• 42:10
  And, uh, then had to beat up, like, junkies that would throw, like,
• 42:12
  diseased needles at you and stuff.
• 42:15
  Quality game!
• 42:16
  You can tell they were diseased because they were, like, bright green.
• 42:24
  Yeah, yeah, obviously.
• 42:26
  Obviously, yeah.
• 42:28
  Yeah.
• 42:29
  Yeah.
• 42:31
  Um, so, uh, the other thing that, yeah, that he's, he's got a new
• 42:36
  Cayenne GTS and it's in there.
• 42:40
  Um, I, it's not, it's, I want to say pewter, but I'm not sure if it is pewter.
• 42:47
  It's in this, you know, dove gray, the, the, the, like the, the non, the,
• 42:52
  where it's, I, what am I looking for?
• 42:54
  Like earth tones, if I'm not showing a bit of interior design pretension
• 43:00
  there, it's, it's a, either way, it's an amazing color, right?
• 43:03
  It is.
• 43:04
  And, and the thing is, is.
• 43:07
  You know, I said to him, you know, at first, Ollie and I were disappointed.
• 43:10
  You got rid of the Panamera, but you know, now we're not because it
• 43:14
  sounds better than the Panamera.
• 43:16
  And, uh, you know, for most of the people, most of the time in California, he's right
• 43:23
  when he says, you know, I've got to carry on because it's higher, it's like higher
• 43:28
  up, it's easy to get the kids in and out.
• 43:30
  My first thought was, well, you've got one bloody SUV.
• 43:32
  Why'd you need another one?
• 43:34
  But the point is that people know what's right for their lifestyle and
• 43:38
  having spent that time with them, I can see why, uh, he was like, all he
• 43:44
  was like, can you put it in sport plus?
• 43:46
  So he did, right?
• 43:47
  But you're like sat behind other traffic.
• 43:49
  So it's kind of, and I'm in all this, like falling into potholes.
• 43:54
  I mean, this like savage throttle response and snatching of gears
• 43:58
  driving down the high street.
• 44:00
  And I'm like, no, no, this is for the, like, this is for the motorway on ramp.
• 44:04
  You know, this is the, the, yeah, I spent most of my time in the M2 in comfort
• 44:10
  because, uh, unless you actually want to drive, it's just, yeah, I'm civilized.
• 44:18
  The next item on my little agenda is, you know, I brand this
• 44:22
  as motoring historian, right?
• 44:23
  But we, I never actually, as I said, I, I feel like there's a
• 44:26
  kind of bait and switch going on.
• 44:28
  You were expecting, you know, the history of, you know, the Triple E Grand Prix.
• 44:34
  And instead, you know, you get in, uh, us.
• 44:37
  Boling on about new cast.
• 44:39
  Well, firstly, you know, unlucky and secondly, you must like it
• 44:42
  if you listen for, for this long.
• 44:44
  But, but what I was gonna say was I was gonna actually talk
• 44:47
  about the fact that I have done a little bit of history recently.
• 44:52
  Mm-Hmm.
• 44:52
  . And I've not spoken to you, mark, about this.
• 44:54
  So your reaction is genuine andfor.
• 44:57
  There we go.
• 44:57
  Breaking down that third wall.
• 44:59
  Um, again, so I wrote a piece about.
• 45:03
  The silver arrows, the German racing cars from before the second
• 45:07
  world war auto union, kind of like modern Audi and Mercedes Benz.
• 45:12
  And, you know, really, I think the basis of modern formula one in
• 45:18
  the, you know, it's like, uh, uh.
• 45:21
  Pinnacle technical competition as a, um, national competition.
• 45:29
  You know, your trial is the traveling circus to me.
• 45:31
  That was the beginning of, of the traveling circus.
• 45:34
  Now I, after I wrote the paper, the person that reviewed it said they thought that
• 45:38
  it was, that was maybe present in the 1920s and I'm now going to have to go
• 45:43
  away and do another load of, of research to see if I think that I just was wrong.
• 45:48
  Or, or if I'm going to try and defend my, uh, defend my position.
• 45:53
  Um, and I guess that's the bottom line with this work was that I, I
• 45:57
  did a lot of reading, but the reading that I did was mostly in the 1990s.
• 46:03
  And I missed this one crucial book that was published in 2008, which is
• 46:08
  basically everything that I'd written about, but of course done much better.
• 46:12
  Not least because the bloke that wrote it is German, so can
• 46:15
  read all the German language.
• 46:17
  books and the bloke reviewing my essay was like, yeah, you know,
• 46:22
  but you know, you basically say most of the sources are in German.
• 46:26
  I can't read German.
• 46:28
  And also, um, the sources that you have used, you've gone on to say, well, they're
• 46:34
  biographies that were in after the war.
• 46:38
  When the drivers and the team manager and so on, they're all trying to
• 46:42
  distance themselves from everything that was Germany in the 1930s.
• 46:47
  So, you know, I, so I had been, I had basically said that I felt that they'd
• 46:55
  done the different drivers that I, I looked at, I looked at for, um, I
• 47:01
  basically said that I thought they'd done quite a good job of being apolitical.
• 47:06
  And the reviewer has said, you know, on the contrary, you have a look at
• 47:11
  this other book written by this German bloke who dug deeper into the past
• 47:17
  and found, you know, the bloke that said he'd never worn a Nazi uniform.
• 47:22
  There's a ton of pictures of him doing it.
• 47:24
  The, when Ross and I was killed.
• 47:28
  His, you know, he was, he, he was like David Beckham in terms
• 47:33
  of being outside of motorsport.
• 47:36
  He was an icon in the popular imagination because, you know,
• 47:39
  he wasn't married to Pospice.
• 47:41
  He was married to a woman aviatrix, you know, one of these
• 47:45
  like acrobatic distance flyers.
• 47:49
  Ellie Beinhorn was anyway, whatever.
• 47:51
  The, the, the point is that she's almost more interesting than, than him
• 47:55
  if you, uh, uh, re read about them.
• 47:57
  The relationship's really interesting.
• 47:58
  Anyway, um, uh, where was I going?
• 48:03
  I was going somewhere.
• 48:04
  Are you talking about the source material and the chap having done
• 48:07
  deeper research, um, and, uh, some of the stuff that they purported
• 48:10
  not being quite, uh, on the level?
• 48:12
  Oh, the bottom line was I just not read the right book.
• 48:16
  I, like, and the book was published in a period where I thought I'd read just
• 48:21
  about everything there was to read.
• 48:23
  So I got egg on my face, somewhat, I, I do feel that and, and I'm, I've
• 48:29
  moved from the, the stage of being, um, miffed that I'd done that, not miffed
• 48:35
  at the messenger, at the message or the messenger, miffed at the fact that I'd
• 48:40
  done that, to feeling, well, all right, I need to go away and do a lot of work to
• 48:44
  kind of restructure what, what I'm doing.
• 48:46
  And I should say, you know, what I've tried to say is, is in an era.
• 48:51
  Of, um, government where government is putting pressure on people to do things
• 48:59
  that, uh, not ethical or not moral.
• 49:03
  How do people respond and how do people who are in positions of, of.
• 49:07
  Uh, not leadership, but positions of kind of responsibility.
• 49:12
  How do they, uh, how do they respond to that?
• 49:16
  So I talked about, um, Von Brauchitsch, the Mercedes driver, Caracciola,
• 49:22
  the other Mercedes driver, and I misspelled his name throughout.
• 49:25
  fucking embarrassing.
• 49:27
  Um, but you know, it's my poor attention to detail, right?
• 49:30
  I didn't grammarly my own piece, you know, like, you know, yeah, she'd
• 49:36
  think you'd think I didn't have any experience editing other people's work.
• 49:40
  Um, Herman Lang.
• 49:43
  And, um, uh, Hans Stuck and I guess von Brauchitsch, um, defected to
• 49:51
  East Germany after the war, and it's all a bit of a sad story, the, the
• 49:56
  Belgrade Grand Prix of 1939, right?
• 50:00
  Four days after the war started, four days after the invasion of Poland, the morning
• 50:06
  that Neville Chamberlain declared war,
• 50:12
  Lange came down to breakfast, Neubauer, the team manager's
• 50:15
  like, where's Brauchitsch?
• 50:17
  He's like, oh, I don't know.
• 50:19
  Brauchitsch gets in the car, drives to the airport.
• 50:21
  Von Brauchitsch, um, Neubauer gets in the car, drives to the airport.
• 50:26
  Von Brauchitsch is on the plane.
• 50:28
  The plane's about to take off.
• 50:29
  He pulls him off the plane and says, you've got a race.
• 50:33
  Only subsequently, this is what he says in his biography, right?
• 50:36
  So who knows whether or not he's true.
• 50:37
  He says, only subsequently did I realize that the plane was going to Switzerland.
• 50:45
  So this son of the Prussian military family is, you know, fleeing to, so,
• 50:51
  so you've got So I got to think, so clearly, right, this was not somebody
• 50:56
  who drank the Nazi Kool Aid, right?
• 50:59
  Despite the fact that he's like a Nazi poster child, despite the fact
• 51:03
  that he's appeared in a movie, um, in a movie with like a Hollywood
• 51:10
  actress about a racing driver, and you know, he's, he's a movie star.
• 51:14
  So that was, he was the one guy, and I've assigned picture of him, right?
• 51:17
  So I feel like, which I bought 20 years ago.
• 51:20
  Um, 25 years ago now, so I, you know, he's always been the, the,
• 51:26
  the figure for me, that, that fit, that photograph that got me involved
• 51:29
  with the Silver Arrows in the first place of the 1937 British Grand Prix.
• 51:35
  There's a photograph at Donington of, of the car wheeling.
• 51:39
  Up the hill like it's on.
• 51:41
  It's doing a wheel stand is two wheels off the ground.
• 51:43
  That photograph is of Von Brauchitsch.
• 51:46
  And that's the picture that I would say didn't just get me into the
• 51:49
  Silver Hours, got me into Formula One, got me into motoring history.
• 51:53
  It all stems from that one picture.
• 51:56
  So hence my interest in Von Brauchitsch.
• 51:58
  Um, uh, Caracciola, uh, bought a villa in Switzerland before the war and was
• 52:06
  always like up at the villa and up at the villa and just stayed up at the villa.
• 52:10
  That's what he did basically.
• 52:12
  And I, my thought about that is that, you know, he was the most
• 52:16
  successful driver of the era.
• 52:18
  And you can say, well, he was not as fast as Ross Meyer and
• 52:22
  Lang was better by, by the end.
• 52:24
  And I think those things are absolutely true.
• 52:28
  I feel like anybody who can.
• 52:31
  Come out of the whole debacle of the war and you know, the whole like
• 52:38
  thing as slickly as Karachi Ola did.
• 52:42
  I'm reminded of of the circuit that his villa in Lugano is closest to his band
• 52:49
  and the feature at band was cobbles.
• 52:52
  And it was like fast and sweeping.
• 52:54
  If you look at a track map, a lot of the corners are kind of Thruxton, churchy,
• 53:00
  but over cobbles and it would rain a lot.
• 53:02
  So you can imagine, imagine what that was like.
• 53:05
  So, so anybody who can slide and 500, 600 horsepower Mercedes Benz Grand
• 53:12
  Prix car 150 miles an hour, which is what it took to set a decent lap time.
• 53:19
  Then, you know, this was driftastic and, and, you know.
• 53:24
  Yeah, so, um, and as I said, Lang, Lang's working class, Lang's a motor,
• 53:28
  uh, motorcycle racer, has a good career, has brothers who have killed motorcycle
• 53:33
  racing, who still has a good career, but then when the Weimar Republic collapses,
• 53:38
  loses any chance of being a racing driver and has to like, try and make ends meet
• 53:44
  and survive any way he can, ends up working for Daimler Benz, ends up being on
• 53:48
  the Mercedes team, actually being, um, I can't remember who's chief mechanic, but
• 53:56
  he was chief mechanic, and then in his biography he describes this train ride.
• 54:01
  Back from Monza after they'd done some testing up back to Stuttgart
• 54:07
  and sharing the carriage with him was this other mechanic Zimmer, who he'd
• 54:11
  raced with years ago and the designer, car designer and, uh, the race.
• 54:18
  And until that conversation where Zimmer and Lang had been bantering about some
• 54:25
  oil that Zimmer had borrowed for a race that they'd done like a decade before.
• 54:30
  He'll, he'll climb like a motorcycle.
• 54:32
  He'll climb Zimmer was basically Lang one, everything, right?
• 54:37
  There was this period where Lang and that's what Zimmer alluded to the
• 54:40
  designer, whose name escapes me, heard that was, and from then on one in
• 54:46
  campaign to let Lang drive the car.
• 54:49
  But the whole social class thing meant that Lang wasn't really allowed
• 54:53
  and, and, and eventually got there.
• 54:56
  But the first time he ever drove a Grand Prix car was.
• 55:01
  The 646 horse Mercedes W 125.
• 55:06
  Like that was the, that was like his introduction.
• 55:09
  There was no like Formula Ford or anything like that.
• 55:12
  There was no warmup.
• 55:14
  There was like straight out there and the circuit.
• 55:17
  If you Google up a map of the Melhalla Triple E Grand Prix circuit, if I tell
• 55:23
  you it was faster than Spa, faster than Monza, the average speed, and it's
• 55:28
  all like these crazy sweeping turns through like, you know, between palm
• 55:32
  trees and, and so on, you know, cause it's like the North African coast.
• 55:37
  It was, it was when, uh, it was when, you know, Mussolini had his like ambitions,
• 55:41
  his colonial ambitions and, and the.
• 55:45
  Tripoli Grand Prix was like a showpiece.
• 55:48
  It was like a resort.
• 55:49
  It looked like, it looks like, you know, Cuba used to in the 1950s.
• 55:53
  That's how it, uh, that, that, that's how it, uh, how it looked.
• 55:56
  He won first time out, like unbelievable, like unbelievable.
• 56:04
  Um, so Lang and, and then And Stuck's the really interesting one because he, he
• 56:12
  was His wife had a Jewish grandfather, so although officially she wasn't Jewish the
• 56:20
  brown shirts had all these like spit on stuck kind of campaigns going on, right?
• 56:27
  Well, you know what Stuck did, right?
• 56:30
  This is just like eye popping, right?
• 56:34
  He wrote to Himmler and said, can you stop this?
• 56:39
  So Himmler organized for it to be stopped.
• 56:45
  Okay, go to the head of the problem, I suppose.
• 56:47
  Right, he went to Hitler and said, uh, I really want to do the land speed record.
• 56:53
  You know, the Brits held the land speed records.
• 56:55
  I'm mates with Malcolm Campbell.
• 56:57
  Like, damn it, I want to do the land speed record.
• 56:59
  And Hitler went, great, go and do it.
• 57:01
  Go and do it.
• 57:02
  I give this project my blessings.
• 57:05
  So they designed the car, this Mercedes T80, that was the, if you
• 57:10
  Google that up, it looks like it's a bloody spaceship you've never seen.
• 57:14
  The Allies, when they found it, didn't know what it was.
• 57:17
  They thought it was like a Nazi super weapon.
• 57:19
  They had no idea what it was.
• 57:20
  It was, it was Stuck's land speed record car.
• 57:23
  Um, and the, the, when it seemed, when Stuck heard rumours that he was
• 57:31
  not going to be the driver, That the, that, you know, the people around
• 57:35
  Hitler wanted to put somebody who was, you know, like Lange, a working
• 57:40
  class hero, not, you know, foppish.
• 57:45
  You know, traveling aristocrat with a Jewish wife who was a tennis
• 57:49
  pro, by the way, they were totally Gatsby, racing driver and tennis pro.
• 57:54
  Um, you know, so there's a whole like social class thing going on there as
• 57:58
  well, which we, which we see reflected in the modern era somewhat as, as, as well.
• 58:04
  Um, uh, where was I going with Stuck and, uh, um.
• 58:11
  When he heard that they were going to put someone else in the car.
• 58:13
  Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 58:14
  He went to the Berlin Motor Show because he heard Hitler was going
• 58:16
  to be there and walked up to him and said, Um, who, who's going to be
• 58:20
  driving the land speed record car?
• 58:22
  And Hitler went loudly so the whole entourage could hear, Stuck will be
• 58:27
  driving the land speed record car.
• 58:30
  In other words, he knew.
• 58:31
  That Stuck's request to see him had been denied by people in the office and so on.
• 58:36
  So when Stuck walked right up to him, eyeballed him, he said loudly.
• 58:40
  So all the brown shirts around him who were, you know, cat.
• 58:44
  So I just thought that was interesting because it shows how, you know,
• 58:48
  it's the, the politics laid bare.
• 58:50
  But it also shows how Stuck wasn't really that interested in the whole like.
• 58:55
  You know, it didn't matter what Hitler said.
• 58:57
  About, you know, hating on the Jews.
• 59:00
  That didn't matter at all.
• 59:02
  It was only for me to be able to do my motor racing.
• 59:05
  Don't you understand?
• 59:06
  And similarly Karachiola with being like, well, this is clearly a load of
• 59:10
  bollocks and this bloke's a wanker.
• 59:12
  He delivered him a Mercedes in 1926 and Hitler gabbed on a lot and, you know.
• 59:19
  And, you know, and was unimpressed.
• 59:22
  Well, at least that's what Karachi says in his biography post war pre war.
• 59:26
  He says something slightly different, but you know, post war the, but you
• 59:31
  know, he was up in Switzerland, right?
• 59:32
  He wasn't exactly trying to be like, hang on a minute, this,
• 59:35
  I can't be involved in this.
• 59:37
  I just want to, they were just about wanting to go motor racing, but
• 59:40
  the final, what I want to end with.
• 59:43
  And it's just.
• 59:44
  Uh, uh, uh, uh, just so telling of the time.
• 59:50
  Hitler says, go and see the head of the air force and ask him for an engine.
• 59:56
  So Stuck goes to see this guy, Ernst Udet, who was a World War I fighter ace and
• 1:00:01
  says, can I have one of the most fuck off engines you've got to build this lad speed
• 1:00:08
  record car to go faster than Campbell and Seagrave and these bloody Englishmen?
• 1:00:12
  And Udet says, come and see me in two weeks, right?
• 1:00:17
  So when Stuck sees him in two weeks time, he has not one,
• 1:00:21
  two of these giant jet engines.
• 1:00:24
  So Stuck goes back to Hitler and says, can I do a boat as well?
• 1:00:28
  I want to do a boat as well.
• 1:00:31
  And I'm just like, you know, that was the spirit, which, you know, is.
• 1:00:37
  Just, um, it's Gatsby, right?
• 1:00:41
  It's not the, it's so to be like, to, so to, and, and, you know, with
• 1:00:49
  our eyes, we look back and we say, well, should you, you know, should
• 1:00:52
  you really have been, you know.
• 1:00:55
  So keen to do the land speed record that you were happy to drive a car
• 1:00:58
  with a swastika on it, even though you absolutely knew how evil the policies
• 1:01:04
  were and how they affected people.
• 1:01:05
  You know, the Gestapo raided your hotel room, one Monaco Grand Prix weekend,
• 1:01:11
  you know, like you knew what it was.
• 1:01:13
  So there's.
• 1:01:15
  A lot of nuance there and I was a butt munch to not properly review
• 1:01:20
  all the literature and miss this key book, which is German journalist
• 1:01:25
  had written about this very topic.
• 1:01:27
  So I don't know, I might read his book and be like, actually, I don't
• 1:01:30
  have anything valid to say, but I usually have a lot to say, don't I?
• 1:01:34
  I just, So, uh, I see the timers as run on as it usually does, Mark.
• 1:01:40
  Um, I have a few quick fires here for us to, uh, to wrap up with.
• 1:01:47
  Um, what's the car you most regret parting with?
• 1:01:53
  The E773 NKV.
• 1:01:57
  Vulture Man, the Ford Sierra, uh, in grey or whatever the, uh, whatever version
• 1:02:04
  of grey was with, uh, uh, the first guy.
• 1:02:08
  I loved it.
• 1:02:09
  I mean, the fact that it ended up all moldy and we had to get rid of it.
• 1:02:11
  I mean, we did have to get rid of it, but if I could have a car back lurking
• 1:02:16
  on the drive, that would be the one.
• 1:02:17
  Yeah.
• 1:02:17
  Grey Sierra two litre base, wasn't it?
• 1:02:20
  It was rare in that it was a base.
• 1:02:23
  It never had any wheel caps all the time that you had it.
• 1:02:27
  Yeah.
• 1:02:28
  Yeah, I, uh, a worthy, uh, a worthy choice.
• 1:02:33
  Um, I test drove when I was a student, a blue Ford Capri three liter s.
• 1:02:41
  Um, it was lovely.
• 1:02:44
  It had that tartan interior, but blue, um, it was a tea plater.
• 1:02:52
  Um, when I got back to the house and tell the bloke I'd call him
• 1:02:55
  in the morning, he called me a
• 1:02:59
  for being a sh for being a time waster.
• 1:03:04
  Oh dear.
• 1:03:05
  Um, and I really wish, um, cause I was, I really was in a place where, you know,
• 1:03:13
  he was probably right that I probably wouldn't have bought the car, but I
• 1:03:19
  still felt, you know, at the time I, I, and I looking back now, I wish I had
• 1:03:27
  gone with a hundred bucks in my pocket cause I'd have given him the money and
• 1:03:32
  then found a way to make the rest, um, whole, but you know, but I don't know
• 1:03:38
  what I would have done with it and I would have had to keep it outside and
• 1:03:41
  I couldn't have insured it and yeah.
• 1:03:43
  I would have liked that Renault five turbo, the baggy one that
• 1:03:46
  Angie's house may had, um, Yeah.
• 1:03:51
  Was it reliable?
• 1:03:52
  No.
• 1:03:54
  Did it, did it look just right?
• 1:03:55
  Yeah.
• 1:03:56
  Yeah.
• 1:03:56
  And I wondered, but yeah, I didn't have a 15 year old.
• 1:04:00
  Both taste lived in that same grey as, as your Sierra was.
• 1:04:05
  Um, alright, worst car you ever owned?
• 1:04:10
  I thought about that.
• 1:04:11
  Um, I don't think I've owned a shit car.
• 1:04:13
  The worst car I've ever actually had for any period of time, um, was when I
• 1:04:19
  swapped, um, the Cupra R I had, that Seat Leon Cupra R from my mates driving down
• 1:04:25
  at Le Mans, and had his dog eared GTI in that awful era where Volkswagen were
• 1:04:32
  like doing the red, I think it was even before they were doing the red letters
• 1:04:36
  on the GTI that had actual different.
• 1:04:38
  Horsepower level, and it was just some baggy shit, 130 horsepower
• 1:04:42
  piece of crap, uh, and it was awful.
• 1:04:44
  Um, that was horrendous.
• 1:04:46
  Like a Golf Mk4 or something.
• 1:04:49
  Yeah, it was, it was like, ugly, and slow, and knackered, um, and I hated it.
• 1:04:57
  No wonder he needed the Cupra to go to Le Mans.
• 1:04:59
  Well, I mean, it was about five times the car in every way.
• 1:05:04
  It was just so much better looking, better performance, just better.
• 1:05:09
  Uh, most loyal dog.
• 1:05:11
  I've never owned a dog.
• 1:05:12
  No, no actual dog like car.
• 1:05:17
  Um, I feel like that ought to be, uh, oh, what can I remember the reg of this one?
• 1:05:22
  Was it R323CNE?
• 1:05:25
  That, um, Red Laguna Company car I had.
• 1:05:29
  That was a beater of an old dog and I kind of loved it.
• 1:05:32
  It was shit delivered.
• 1:05:35
  In a sort of enthusiastic French way that made it good.
• 1:05:40
  You know, I, I liked it when dirty and handbrake turned regularly, um, across
• 1:05:46
  the dirt drive to where I was living on that farm while with you for some period
• 1:05:49
  of time, um, yeah, I have fond memories of that car, even though it wasn't
• 1:05:54
  a good car, if you know what I mean.
• 1:05:55
  Yeah.
• 1:05:55
  Yeah.
• 1:05:56
  The pool car.
• 1:05:57
  Um, I would pick, uh, um, that black Mondeo ST 24 that, that we use.
• 1:06:09
  Yeah.
• 1:06:09
  Yeah.
• 1:06:10
  That I use for, um, well, you did 6, 000 miles in that car between us.
• 1:06:15
  Didn't we over two or three different, different summers before it succumbed
• 1:06:20
  to the, uh, to the great scrap man in the sky, but yeah, really sad to,
• 1:06:24
  to see that cargo, um, Really wish I could have found a way to keep it.
• 1:06:29
  Um, that Yamaha motor, what a, what a gem.
• 1:06:32
  I mean, that was a, that was a fast car, uh, utterly clapped out.
• 1:06:37
  I mean, we, we, I paid, I mean, we went together to look at it, didn't we?
• 1:06:41
  I, what did I pay?
• 1:06:42
  350 quid for it, 320 quid, something like that.
• 1:06:45
  I did not pay, uh, uh, a lot of money for it.
• 1:06:49
  Um, what's the best road that you've driven in Europe?
• 1:06:54
  We talked about America a couple of, or maybe last time best road.
• 1:07:00
  That's difficult.
• 1:07:00
  I mean, there's some excellent roads around the Nürburgring.
• 1:07:03
  Um, that are better than the Nürburgring in lots of ways.
• 1:07:06
  Um, you could say spa in that technically it used to be roads, but
• 1:07:11
  like, and that's cheating because there's a track, but it is amazing.
• 1:07:14
  Um, I don't know.
• 1:07:15
  There are some great roads in the, in the Alps.
• 1:07:17
  Um, I, the, the road, if you don't take the marble tunnel
• 1:07:21
  and you go up over the top.
• 1:07:23
  Um, instead, um, from wherever, I'm just trying to remember where we were,
• 1:07:27
  but, um, doesn't really help people to find it on the map, unfortunately.
• 1:07:30
  If I can think of it, I'll put a link in it.
• 1:07:32
  But, um, I had a wonderful period where I was driving that McGann RS,
• 1:07:37
  um, and about eight bikes of various naked and sports bike types came past.
• 1:07:45
  And, um, the sort of the gods were with me for a bit in terms of traffic flow.
• 1:07:50
  And I was able to sort of clip along behind them at about 95 to a ton 10
• 1:07:55
  for about half an hour on sort of wonderful long sweeping roads, like
• 1:08:02
  on the plane in between the sort of the mountain top bits, just stunning.
• 1:08:05
  So, and some of the roads up out of Italy around Lake Como, Lake Como
• 1:08:09
  is just too nudgery, but there's some nice roads around there.
• 1:08:13
  I haven't got a top road to be honest, I need to work on it.
• 1:08:16
  Como is where Caracciola lived, that, that area.
• 1:08:19
  Oh, it's Gordon.
• 1:08:20
  Yeah, Lugano.
• 1:08:22
  Um, I, uh, so my picks, the Alps as well, um, I, I drove from Turin to Chambury to
• 1:08:33
  retrace Giuseppe Farina, first Formula One world champion, to retrace his last drive.
• 1:08:40
  So he was invited to participate in, um, John Frankenheimer's Grand Prix.
• 1:08:47
  And that morning he hopped in his Lotus Cortina in Turin
• 1:08:50
  and drove up over the Alps.
• 1:08:52
  Um, on his way to, uh, to, to Rams as, uh, as I understand that you say it
• 1:08:58
  and, uh, and the French Grand Prix.
• 1:09:00
  And, uh, uh, when they found the car, it was wrapped around a lamppost and the
• 1:09:05
  speedo was pegged at 170 kilometers an hour, which if I, to, um, to understand
• 1:09:12
  it, that's about 115 miles an hour, which is about Lotus Cortina's maximum.
• 1:09:18
  So I think he hit ice.
• 1:09:20
  I think.
• 1:09:22
  And, and Fangio famously said about it, you know, he would, whenever Farina
• 1:09:27
  crashed, he would always think the Virgin was going to look after him and
• 1:09:30
  Fangio's point was, you know, I guess the Virgin stopped looking after him.
• 1:09:34
  When I drove the road, the Virgin had not stopped.
• 1:09:38
  Looking after him.
• 1:09:39
  He, he was doing what he loved.
• 1:09:42
  The car was in a full blooded four wheel drift with a throttle
• 1:09:45
  wide open, 150 miles an hour.
• 1:09:47
  And at 60, he hit the lamppost and died.
• 1:09:51
  The Virgin was with him to the very end.
• 1:09:54
  So the road, I think is.
• 1:09:57
  If you've, I mean, it, it is the, I bought an Atlas of Italy, a road atlas of Italy
• 1:10:03
  in the fifties, and looked at the main road and the road that I drove, um, I
• 1:10:09
  think it was SS 20 or something like that.
• 1:10:11
  But it does, you know, I, I, uh, should have planned this better, shouldn't I?
• 1:10:15
  But no, I followed a camper van up the hill.
• 1:10:18
  In this little A3 diesel rental car that I had, poor thing.
• 1:10:23
  And, uh, the first climb, I was like, I'm not going to pass.
• 1:10:26
  But then the second switchback, it was a really long straight.
• 1:10:29
  And I thought I'll pass.
• 1:10:31
  And when I passed the camper van, uh, there was like nothing, there
• 1:10:34
  was no other traffic on that road.
• 1:10:36
  And I went up the switchbacks all the way up the hill, getting
• 1:10:39
  faster and faster and faster and feeding like it was a computer game.
• 1:10:43
  And then over the top of the hill.
• 1:10:45
  Coming out of Italy and into France, the road surface improved.
• 1:10:49
  And it was like a computer game with these sweeping downhills where you
• 1:10:53
  could, could look, I mean, I was doing racing lines, even though there was just
• 1:10:56
  sheer drop off, I wasn't like leaning on the car that hard, but I, it was
• 1:11:00
  because you could see right though the way down, like that kind of Stelvio
• 1:11:05
  class, but more open, less switchbacky and, and more, and, and, and more open.
• 1:11:10
  And, um.
• 1:11:12
  Yeah, so the Alps, uh, uh, are, I mean, don't get me wrong, I
• 1:11:16
  did some lovely driving in the Pyrenees last summer, there's some
• 1:11:18
  stunning roads down there as well.
• 1:11:20
  A lot of the little, little ones are just too small, you know, they're beautiful
• 1:11:24
  views, pretty, but you can't really enjoy driving them because, you know,
• 1:11:28
  single lane with passing places with no runoff and, you know, it's, yeah.
• 1:11:34
  Um, what's the best track in Britain?
• 1:11:38
  Um, poor, I can only say the ones I've driven on, which is only a few, um.
• 1:11:44
  I've done Thruxton, I've done Brands Hatch Indy, um, I think, I mean the one I like
• 1:11:50
  the most that I've driven was Darlington.
• 1:11:53
  Um, there is a cheat here, isn't there, is the TT course, really.
• 1:11:59
  But if you discount the TT course, I had Thruxton.
• 1:12:02
  I was between Thruxton and Alton.
• 1:12:05
  I think Alton's good.
• 1:12:06
  I've never done track day at Alton, so I don't really know, but I, but
• 1:12:10
  Thruxton is, is Thruxton's quality, yeah.
• 1:12:13
  Um, you've got a hundred thousand dollars.
• 1:12:17
  What do you buy?
• 1:12:18
  A
• 1:12:22
  hundred grand.
• 1:12:22
  What do I buy?
• 1:12:23
  Uh, well, I'm one thing or am I buying a small garage full of, uh, Your choice.
• 1:12:30
  Oh, and in which case I buy probably a, a nice tidy 997 GTS.
• 1:12:37
  Sorry.
• 1:12:37
  997 Carrera S with the right kit on it, with the right alloys on it.
• 1:12:41
  I buy.
• 1:12:42
  Uh, a dirt bike, I probably buy, I might even buy one of those BMW M1000Rs.
• 1:12:49
  Because I quite like the idea of that ridiculous 200 and
• 1:12:52
  something horsepower in a naked.
• 1:12:53
  Because, uh, Increasingly, sports bikes make less, because they're even more
• 1:12:58
  ridiculous to ride than, um, supercars in the sense that you can get there
• 1:13:03
  even faster than the supercar to the, not just the license losing, but to
• 1:13:07
  the, uh oh, the accident is muerto sort of time, um, even more scarily fast.
• 1:13:13
  Um, but yeah, and, and then, I don't know, I kind of like the idea
• 1:13:19
  of having one of those, if I can get a dog eared 760 IL, or M60 or
• 1:13:26
  something, M6 or something like that.
• 1:13:28
  So I can have a nice four door car as well.
• 1:13:32
  But, uh, with ridiculous power.
• 1:13:34
  And then I'll keep the other 15 grand to put fuel in it for about three weeks.
• 1:13:39
  Ah, ah man.
• 1:13:41
  Um, I would do, and I did, this is like an off the cuff, I've not
• 1:13:45
  thought too deeply about this.
• 1:13:48
  I would do, uh, I really want a dually ram.
• 1:13:51
  I've not like got out of the way of, of, uh, I know exactly the
• 1:13:55
  year and the spec that I want.
• 1:13:58
  It's taken me a long time to get, but I really would love a two wheel drive.
• 1:14:02
  Extended cab 2016 17 dually ramp.
• 1:14:09
  Um, I would also do, and not least because I feel like I missed the boat on this.
• 1:14:17
  I would love a really nice original daily drivable.
• 1:14:23
  Well, not daily drivable, but like usable, like the cars that
• 1:14:27
  I drive every day are muscle car.
• 1:14:30
  Um, I would do a Firebird, but it's too much like the Camaro.
• 1:14:36
  I would really love a Boss Mustang, like a 6970 Boss 302
• 1:14:42
  Mustang with a 4 speed, of course.
• 1:14:45
  Um, I feel, uh, there's a timelessness about them.
• 1:14:49
  I feel something of a Mustang fraud.
• 1:14:52
  Having only had, you know, later era ones that are like a reflection and a
• 1:14:56
  reference to, to, to the earlier ones.
• 1:14:59
  So I would like, uh, I'd like to do something like, uh, I'd
• 1:15:02
  like to do something like that.
• 1:15:03
  Um, you know what I was going to say?
• 1:15:06
  Um, we talked about the scariest moment you've ever had in a car and I was going
• 1:15:10
  to do a little reprise of, of, of that.
• 1:15:13
  I can't remember what I said when, when we talked about it before, but I, I
• 1:15:16
  actually think that, oh, when I pranged.
• 1:15:19
  that white Sierra that we both owned.
• 1:15:21
  Um, you know, I, I also had a pretty terrifying moment in the
• 1:15:26
  era of the Econoline Club Wagon Van 1992, twin toe brown, Stanford
• 1:15:34
  excess property auction, 720.
• 1:15:38
  Um, do you remember?
• 1:15:41
  Well, you maybe don't because you maybe didn't know Jason at that time, but
• 1:15:44
  our buddy, uh, Jason has, uh, um, used to, I lived with for a while, used to
• 1:15:50
  have Volvo 240 station wagons because you could pick them up cheap and you
• 1:15:56
  could fit a bike in the back of them.
• 1:15:58
  And Jason was all about the bike racing.
• 1:16:00
  So that was, you know, that was the criteria.
• 1:16:03
  So when I first moved to California, I helped him with the running costs of
• 1:16:07
  the, the 240 that he had at the time.
• 1:16:10
  And the brakes died to grind.
• 1:16:11
  And he said to me, don't worry about it.
• 1:16:13
  The brakes can grind forever and it's fine.
• 1:16:16
  Like I've had two other Volvo's and the brakes can grind forever and it's fine.
• 1:16:21
  And the brakes ground forever and it was fine.
• 1:16:23
  And eventually we did.
• 1:16:25
  So I was like, the brakes can grind forever, right?
• 1:16:29
  That was my thought with the van.
• 1:16:30
  Well, I'm telling you they can't because the, the, the pedal went to
• 1:16:34
  the fucking floor when I was trying to get slow from like 80 to like, you
• 1:16:40
  know, 60 to merge with traffic to an extent that I abandoned any attempt
• 1:16:46
  to merge and continued on because I was, it literally, the pedal just went
• 1:16:50
  straight to the floor and I pumped and nothing happened, you know, the pedal.
• 1:16:54
  Was was, it was.
• 1:16:55
  So that was, uh, a pretty, um, hin de clenching, uh, moment.
• 1:17:00
  Yeah.
• 1:17:00
  That would puck a one up, wouldn't it?
• 1:17:01
  Yeah.
• 1:17:02
  . Um, uh, what are you reading at the moment?
• 1:17:07
  Um, we're plug the book.
• 1:17:09
  You are not reading anything because we, yeah.
• 1:17:12
  I've just been spending all my time writing and editing and writing and
• 1:17:16
  Chronicles of Alvar and Clarence.
• 1:17:18
  Go to Amazon and buy it now.
• 1:17:20
  Mm-Hmm.
• 1:17:21
  Uh, I am reading a biography of David Pearson called 21 Forever.
• 1:17:27
  And motor racing biographies are often lightweight, and I think this qualifies
• 1:17:33
  as the most lightweight motor racing biography I think I've ever read, and
• 1:17:38
  I think the real tragedy is this is apparently the only one, this is, there
• 1:17:41
  are no other, uh, you know, maybe he was a simple As he, as he comes across, I don't
• 1:17:48
  mean simple as in dumb, maybe he was as, you know, as much like a character in a
• 1:17:54
  country music song as he, as he seems to be, I, I, uh, yeah, I don't know, it's,
• 1:17:59
  it's, uh, I crave more depth, you know, there's more depth with Junior Johnson,
• 1:18:04
  there's more depth with Richard Petty, the, the, it's, I'm struggling to find
• 1:18:09
  it with this, uh, uh, this, uh, David Pearson biography, um, um, um, All right,
• 1:18:18
  um really appreciate your time again mark.
• 1:18:20
  We've just ticked all good man.
• 1:18:22
  Um, have uh, Have a good one and i'll speak to you next time
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