Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Best of the Bay (Part 4): Fiat 500E, Dodge Durango Hellcat, Acura ZDX

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Best of the Bay (Part 4): Fiat 500E, Dodge Durango Hellcat, Acura ZDX · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Jon 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.
• 0:37
  Good day, good morning, good afternoon.
• 0:39
  It is John Summers, the motoring historian, part four.
• 0:43
  Of the best of the bay driving days that I did so a review of the Fiat 500e the
• 0:49
  electric one the Dodge Durango Hellcat the one with the 707 horsepower Hellcat
• 0:56
  motor as you might expect from the name and the Acura ZDX which that company
• 1:03
  was kind of forgettable but yeah without further ado So it's applicable that I've
• 1:07
  just taken a swig of my espresso because the next thing I drove was the Fiat 500e.
• 1:12
  This is easily the smallest and, uh, you know, least impressive of, uh, of the
• 1:17
  stuff that we drove in terms of like, you know, look at my swinging kind of thing.
• 1:22
  But.
• 1:23
  A perfectly adequate product.
• 1:25
  Plasticky on the inside, but I mean, who cares, right?
• 1:29
  This is an economy car.
• 1:30
  I actually like the simplicity of the design.
• 1:33
  As I say, I struggled to, as I was saying in another part of the presentation here,
• 1:37
  I struggled to find out how to make it go.
• 1:39
  You know, I was in, I found the start button, then I was
• 1:41
  like, how do I put it into gear?
• 1:42
  And they've moved the buttons onto the center console, like where normally the
• 1:47
  heater controls or the radio would be back in a car in the, from the 20th century.
• 1:52
  But you know, obviously once somebody, it's like cut and paste, once they've
• 1:54
  showed you how to do it, once you know how to drag and drop a paragraph
• 1:57
  around in Word, you're like, Oh, you know, my life has changed forever.
• 2:02
  It's that feeling, you know, once you know how to do it, it's easy, right?
• 2:05
  And it becomes hard to believe that you were ever numpty enough
• 2:08
  not to know how to pop it in gear.
• 2:10
  First thing I wrote down about it was that it has a very aggressive regenerative
• 2:15
  breaking and you can modulate that.
• 2:17
  But it's clear that there's less thought gone into the design of how the one pedal
• 2:24
  driving experience is far less than, you know, Hyundai spent on the Ioniq or Lucid
• 2:30
  did, and really the comparison between the Fiat 500 and the Lucid, it shows just
• 2:35
  in the, you know, with practice, you can drive the Fiat smoothly, but it does Take
• 2:40
  a little bit of practice and it's a little bit herky jerky more as Citroen used to
• 2:46
  be than you're the way my mum used to be trying to drive a car with a clutch.
• 2:50
  Forgive me, mum, but very jumpy in that white Fiesta that we had.
• 2:55
  So 500 was a facelift, right?
• 2:57
  So it's got like strakes across the lights and things on the face of it.
• 3:00
  You might look at it and be like, is that even a new model?
• 3:03
  The answer is yes, it is.
• 3:04
  The more you look, more you'll see how is the new model stylish?
• 3:07
  Actually, when you look closely stylish evolution of the, of the
• 3:11
  design, it's got a big ev wine, like a real, like, hi, I'm electric.
• 3:17
  You know, like that milk flow sound.
• 3:20
  For those of us who grew up in suburban England in the late 20th
• 3:24
  century, the wine of the milk flow is, is there, I'm not a fan.
• 3:29
  I mean, I never was gonna be a fan of this kind of car and I don't like as, as I've.
• 3:33
  I think I've said elsewhere in the presentation, I don't like
• 3:35
  the fact that Fiat 500s always have this sit up and beg position.
• 3:39
  Did I like it?
• 3:40
  No.
• 3:41
  Was it a good car?
• 3:42
  Yes.
• 3:43
  Is it the right solution for many people?
• 3:46
  Yes.
• 3:47
  Although I just wonder, you know, would you buy it new and eat the depreciation?
• 3:51
  You know, I'd probably try and find some.
• 3:54
  Secondhand EV where some other tree hugging schmuck had eaten
• 3:58
  the depreciation pill earlier.
• 4:00
  I wrote here, tire roar noticeable.
• 4:03
  It's fine around town.
• 4:05
  Screen and air conditioning are easy to use.
• 4:08
  Oh, there's an amusing thing that happened.
• 4:11
  A couple of times, a couple of the cars, the technology sort of tripped up.
• 4:16
  So the Honda, it like wanted to break cause it saw the car in front breaking.
• 4:21
  So it was like, ah, emergency, like car in front, it's stopping.
• 4:24
  Like, ah, you got a break.
• 4:26
  And I'm like, dude, I'm like 50 feet away from the car in front.
• 4:29
  Like cool your boots.
• 4:30
  And it settled down once the car had like turned off, but I'd never
• 4:34
  had that before where the car had been like, Oh, we're going to crash.
• 4:37
  Like, cause like the gauge flashed red.
• 4:39
  I don't know what kind of car has 500 horsepower and isn't, and is
• 4:43
  like a old mother hen like that.
• 4:45
  It's really bizarre.
• 4:47
  Sorry, Acura.
• 4:48
  Jake, the, the rep from Acura, really nice guy, but the product is, it's
• 4:54
  not that the product is off the pace.
• 4:57
  Because it isn't, right?
• 4:58
  Because that, on the prologue, that low wide stance, really cool.
• 5:02
  But there was, I don't know, I mean, the car had only done 100 miles.
• 5:07
  The Acura ZDX that did this like flash for me.
• 5:11
  So I don't know, you know, maybe those kind of warning systems
• 5:15
  were still tuning themselves in.
• 5:17
  But that was the most serious incident where, You know, where the
• 5:20
  technology got in my way and was like,
• 5:25
  you know, when, and you're like, dude, just settle the fuck down and act like
• 5:29
  you were a 1980 CRX, the Fiat 500.
• 5:33
  It's one was the AI.
• 5:35
  They're like the voice listening their voice.
• 5:38
  Sensing thing must have been working because at one point
• 5:41
  I was talking to myself.
• 5:43
  I don't know what I said, but I said something out loud and
• 5:46
  the car was like, what was that?
• 5:48
  Can I help you?
• 5:49
  Pardon?
• 5:50
  And all this kind of cars trying to start a damn conversation with me.
• 5:53
  And all I'd done was like mutter about somebody moving into my lane.
• 5:57
  It was like I'd done like a fucking L or something like that.
• 6:00
  I just had one of those in the car was like, what?
• 6:02
  Like, can I help you?
• 6:03
  Sir, you know, would you like a paper hat with that?
• 6:05
  And I'm just like, out of my face, dumb technology.
• 6:10
  Oh, I also triggered the emergency break.
• 6:13
  That's the other thing.
• 6:14
  It was for a second triggered the emergency breaking on the fear.
• 6:20
  The Acura that I just talked about, that was a, that was a separate incident.
• 6:23
  Now, I think of it, those were the three things.
• 6:25
  So I guess whilst I like the fear, that technology feels like it's not
• 6:30
  quite tuned in properly yet, even for the kind of people who like it.
• 6:34
  And I obviously.
• 6:36
  Hate that kind of technology.
• 6:38
  I quite like this little Fiat, despite it, even despite it asking me, you
• 6:42
  know, over waiting on me and, uh, the emergency braking going off.
• 6:47
  Cause it said I was too close to the traffic in front.
• 6:50
  It's like, who's driving me or you car, but I'm driving.
• 7:05
  So from the sublime to the ridiculous, cause it went from the Fiat 500.
• 7:22
  To the Dodge Durango Hellcat.
• 7:25
  I think it was some silver bullet last call.
• 7:28
  Get a gas guzzling V8 while you can kind of special edition.
• 7:34
  Silver matte black hood really looked good.
• 7:38
  This is a three row SUV with a 707 horsepower supercharged V8.
• 7:48
  Nice bull's blood leather.
• 7:50
  Interior in it that actually was kind of nicer than the rest of the interior.
• 7:54
  There was that sort of a mismatch and I sat in it and I'd driven
• 7:57
  it before I looked at the price.
• 7:59
  And were it the same price as the Genesis and the Lexus, you might allow your heart
• 8:06
  and that epic engine to win you over.
• 8:11
  But, hand on heart, even died in the war confirmed gearhead like me, were it my
• 8:20
  money, for the same money, I'd take the Genesis GV Coupe over the Hellcat Durango.
• 8:28
  That's if they were the same money, but the GVs, they were 70 to 80ish.
• 8:33
  This Hellcat.
• 8:34
  It was 115.
• 8:37
  113. One was 115, one was 113.
• 8:40
  It was the range and the Durango were the two most expensive.
• 8:43
  I'm here to tell you, the Durango felt overpriced.
• 8:47
  It felt like a, you taking the piss because this is not in the
• 8:51
  same, the bill quality was not even like close to the Lexus.
• 8:57
  And the Lexus is like 30 grand less.
• 8:59
  Like you literally, you could have had the Lexus and the Lan Elantra n. Instead of
• 9:04
  the Hellcat, but that's missing the point.
• 9:07
  Isn't it?
• 9:07
  The last best of the bay.
• 9:09
  I wasn't able to make it because I wasn't able to go for the whole time, but their
• 9:12
  best car was, you know, the best debate they picked was a stick shift Acura.
• 9:17
  And, you know, Michael did joke at one point.
• 9:20
  What were you going to do if the Hellcat one kind of thing?
• 9:24
  And You know, I'm a sufficient Luddite that I steeled myself to make a good
• 9:29
  judgment and not allow myself to be blinded by that epic engine because I knew
• 9:34
  the engine was going to be impressive.
• 9:36
  And it was right.
• 9:37
  It is an awesome thing.
• 9:39
  You know, one of the awards that we had to give was the best piece of technology.
• 9:43
  And honestly, without a trace of facetiousness, the best piece
• 9:49
  of technology we experienced there wasn't the Lucids.
• 9:53
  Regen breaking, which I'll talk more about later on, but that really is,
• 9:58
  that's an awesome feat of engineering.
• 10:00
  I mean, that is an awesome feat of engineering, but it is not in the
• 10:05
  same league as 707 Horsepower of supercharged V8 let loose on the highway,
• 10:14
  that is just a thing unto itself.
• 10:18
  So you're never allowed to forget about the engine in sport mode.
• 10:21
  It's incredibly loud in normal mode.
• 10:25
  It's bloody loud.
• 10:26
  You know, you don't ever forget these cars about the engine.
• 10:30
  It's like a Porsche 911 or a Suzuki tach is right in the middle
• 10:35
  and the speedo and all the other stuff is just off to the side.
• 10:39
  It's got all these track modes and launch modes.
• 10:42
  I didn't play around with with any of that stuff.
• 10:46
  I just got out on the highway and pressed the loud pedal.
• 10:50
  You know, for a while I looked at those Ram SRT10 pickup trucks.
• 10:56
  That is a Ram pickup truck with a Dodge Viper 8 litre
• 11:01
  normally aspirated V10 in it.
• 11:03
  In concept, it's pretty cool.
• 11:06
  They don't, they can't tow that much, but you can tow a car in them.
• 11:09
  The gas mileage is bad, but what would you expect?
• 11:12
  They're expensive to maintain, but you know, what would you expect kind of thing?
• 11:15
  But really what put me off is that for a truck you want torque, and this is a race
• 11:20
  motor that makes all its power high up.
• 11:22
  So really, you know, people burnouts and then sell them.
• 11:25
  A lot of them have very, uh, have a very high number of, of owners.
• 11:29
  So as I sort of.
• 11:30
  Passed out that I didn't really want this SRT 10 truck.
• 11:35
  One of the things that always stuck in my mind about them was that that motor
• 11:38
  in the Viper makes it like a 200 mile an hour car, 190, 200 mile an hour car.
• 11:44
  The truck can do 140.
• 11:49
  Arrow limited, and I would never have thought that, you know, I'd have thought
• 11:53
  500 horsepower was 500 horsepower.
• 11:56
  If, if an E type with 270 horsepower can knock on the door of 150 miles an hour,
• 12:02
  if my a MG Mercedes de restricted when new, you know, a 2000 and, you know, W2
• 12:08
  10 E 55, supposedly called to Wikipedia de restricted, can do 175 miles an
• 12:14
  hour, 350 horseback Ferrari, Daytona.
• 12:18
  350 horsepower AMG Benz.
• 12:20
  This is mid 170s, isn't it?
• 12:22
  So it seems to me, I thought, you know, 500 horsepower would inevitably mean
• 12:27
  that you were looking at more than that.
• 12:29
  But the error effect is significant in the case of those rams.
• 12:34
  The same is the case with with this Durango, and I was surprised
• 12:39
  by how error limited it was.
• 12:42
  It was pretty stable high speed.
• 12:45
  It certainly was fun.
• 12:47
  Um, it certainly is.
• 12:50
  more fun.
• 12:52
  There is a difference in the organic power delivery of a gasoline or diesel powered
• 13:00
  vehicle versus the electric whoosh of Of an ev right there, there is a difference.
• 13:08
  So it's not about the amount of horsepower, it's the way that
• 13:12
  the power is, is delivered.
• 13:14
  And that contrast was actually most noticeable between the Ionic
• 13:18
  five N and the Elantra N. It's the, just the way the power comes in.
• 13:22
  And the Elantra just left me feeling like an old pair of slippers, whereas
• 13:26
  the Ionic five left me feeling like was I, I feel like halfway
• 13:30
  between a PlayStation and real life.
• 13:32
  The Durango is definitely on the real life section.
• 13:35
  It's an absolute beast.
• 13:38
  I wonder if the price is even relevant because this is a future classic.
• 13:43
  Like, you can't get that V8 anymore after this year.
• 13:47
  You can't get it in a sedan or coupe wrapper even now.
• 13:52
  You know, it's, it's over.
• 13:54
  And yes, this new inline six that they do, they're going to turbo
• 13:57
  charge for more power soon enough.
• 13:59
  But this, this Hellcat is the last of the American V8s.
• 14:05
  And if you look at that.
• 14:06
  In that context, it's not the last is the Ford Mustang will be, but if
• 14:10
  you look at it in, in that context, it seems a bit silly to wrap it in
• 14:15
  a three row SUV body, to be honest.
• 14:19
  Like, I feel like, you know, if you want a Hellcat buy a 50 grand
• 14:23
  Challenger and a 50 grand Hemi Durango.
• 14:26
  You know, when, and yeah, to say I was underwhelmed is
• 14:30
  completely the wrong thing.
• 14:31
  I wasn't underwhelmed.
• 14:32
  Like I loved it.
• 14:33
  Like I, I drove further than I drove.
• 14:35
  Any of the other cars drove beyond the end of the designated test route.
• 14:39
  And I still didn't want to turn around.
• 14:41
  And I drove up a little lane and the surface was rough and it was twisty.
• 14:46
  And I, you know, I wanted to fling it down there and see how it rode the bumps.
• 14:50
  See if I could try and make a case for a 700 horsepower, three row SUV.
• 14:56
  And I got out and, you know, walk around it and took pictures and,
• 15:00
  and was, was smitten with it.
• 15:03
  But not only was it not the best, it just wasn't the most
• 15:08
  charismatic, just complete package.
• 15:11
  It was, uh, rather like.
• 15:14
  Reminded me a lot of that SRT 10 RAM that the engine was epic and
• 15:19
  the idea of pickup truck was epic.
• 15:20
  But you know, you don't want mustard on ice cream and, and that was how I felt.
• 15:25
  You know, the mustard belongs on the roast beef and the
• 15:28
  chocolate sauce on the ice cream.
• 15:30
  And you know, that engine in the GV80.
• 15:33
  Oh, now I see why people love Hellcat Chargers.
• 15:36
  Why the Chargers was so popular, even alongside the Challengers.
• 15:41
  So I wrote down that it had a Harmon card stereo, which you'd expect
• 15:45
  for the price point, wouldn't you?
• 15:46
  The lovely smell, our canara steering wheel, so it felt sporty.
• 15:50
  It had a fan seat, so like you could have the, like, the cool air blowing
• 15:55
  up your ass crack, and the, our canara steering wheel being heated
• 15:59
  and that was, was pretty cool.
• 16:01
  I wrote noisy and guttural, even in normal mode, let alone sport.
• 16:06
  The modes were really easy to use.
• 16:09
  And it was easy to sort of bespoke up the suspension and you could do that on the
• 16:14
  fly, you know, so that felt really usable.
• 16:18
  There is a noticeable supercharger whine and it is a million times
• 16:22
  cooler than that irritating EV whine.
• 16:25
  Like here comes the milk float that a lot of them, that a couple of the cars had.
• 16:30
  Yeah, I just wrote the motor is always there.
• 16:44
  So the Acura ZDX.
• 16:46
  So this is maybe more familiar to a lot of you as the Honda Prologue.
• 16:52
  I know somebody in the school pickup line is one of these Honda Prologues
• 16:55
  and, and where a lot of SUVs are going down the sort of narrow, tall, kind
• 17:02
  of design, you know, more like Rivian, uh, more like the Land Rover Discovery
• 17:06
  and the Lexus is an example of that.
• 17:08
  The Prologue's of that in that it's wider and lower, so it actually
• 17:14
  appears more like a sort of square or wider station wagon, traditional
• 17:20
  American station wagon or a state car, than it does seem like, uh, an SUV.
• 17:25
  I didn't poke around in the trunk properly.
• 17:27
  I'd got back ended on the, the times and it was the last car of, of the day.
• 17:32
  And I've got to say, I was feeling tired.
• 17:34
  So did I give it a fair crack of the whip?
• 17:37
  I certainly tried.
• 17:38
  As I mentioned earlier, it, it got upset with me because it said I was
• 17:42
  following another car too closely and, and tried to do the, uh,
• 17:45
  the emergency, uh, braking on me.
• 17:47
  At 544 horsepower, apparently, so, you know, the thing had
• 17:52
  plenty of, uh, of, of giddy up.
• 17:54
  It didn't feel that fast.
• 17:56
  I didn't toggle with the modes very much.
• 17:59
  And sadly, at the end of the day, it didn't make that much of an impression.
• 18:03
  I did go back to look at it again afterwards, but I actually was
• 18:08
  distracted by the Lexus, and I went back and looked at the Lexus.
• 18:12
  I set out from, you know, at the end of the day, when I was looking at stuff right
• 18:16
  at the end, about before I did my voting, I set out to look at it again to try and
• 18:22
  form more of an opinion about it and, uh, ended up sitting in the Lexus again and
• 18:27
  thinking, Oh, that's really nice quality.
• 18:29
  So, you know, maybe within this, right, there's a metaphor for the challenge
• 18:33
  that Acura have at the moment, which is that was this a bad product?
• 18:36
  Absolutely not.
• 18:38
  But was it in any way memorable in comparison to the other
• 18:41
  things that I experienced?
• 18:43
  No, no, it really wasn't.
• 18:45
  You know, is it better objectively than the Hellcat?
• 18:48
  Of course.
• 18:49
  Slight.
• 18:50
  By a country mile, but what the Hellcat had, and in fact, what the Genesis
• 18:55
  has in spades, the sort of design swagger, just the coolness, just, uh,
• 19:01
  I'm paying 700 pounds, 700 a month for the next five years, but it's cars.
• 19:06
  Bloody cool.
• 19:07
  I'm not sure if you'd feel like that about the ZDX.
• 19:10
  You know, I can't remember what the interior looked like.
• 19:12
  As I said, I was tired.
• 19:14
  Right.
• 19:14
  A lot of this, this might be more about me than about the car.
• 19:17
  And certainly I did lean on it before I'm driving wise.
• 19:21
  And you know, it just as all EVs tend to do, it just like did it all.
• 19:26
  It didn't like fall apart at really high speeds.
• 19:28
  It just like did it all.
• 19:30
  I should say as well, the Fiat.
• 19:31
  Enough speed for any normal bear, normal time.
• 19:35
  You know, I explored, uh, I explored that much.
• 19:39
  So for the Acura, I wrote the toggling for mode's not perfect.
• 19:43
  Awesome ride, great ride, and it feels planted on the road.
• 19:47
  So sorry, Acura, that I haven't given you as fair a crack there.
• 19:50
  I should have really driven that car again afterwards, so sorry about that.
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