Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Pebble Prattling: BMW M2 Adventures in the Pyrenees

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Pebble Prattling: BMW M2 Adventures in the Pyrenees · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

0:00
John Summers is the motoring historian.
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He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into
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a fairly inept sports bike rider.
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Hailing from California, he collects cars and bikes built with plenty of
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cheap and fast, and not much reliable.
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On his show, he gets together with various co hosts to talk about new
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and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.
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Good morning, good afternoon, good day to you wherever you may be.
0:37
Welcome to The Motoring Historian.
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My name is John Summers and I'm here again with my school friend, Mark Gammy.
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Um, say hello, Mark.
0:45
Hello, Mark.
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Um, alright, so, uh, without further ado, since we always talk a lot, let's
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have a look at our little agenda.
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And we were going to talk about Pebble Beach, weren't we?
1:00
So what was your take on it, mate?
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And, you know, you went there for the few days, you saw all the stuff, you
1:05
hung around with the, uh, the Richies.
1:07
What was your, what was your take, what was your highlight of the event?
1:13
My highlight of the event was, um, the morning of the tour.
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Um, I went down with, with Ollie, my son, he's now, and we'd been once before, but
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this time he sort of knew what to do, um, in terms of that you were like mingling
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with the cars and maybe taking some photos and he knew what he was doing this time.
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Um, When we went before, um, he, uh, he had less of an idea of, so, so
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this time, right, we, we, I, I mingled with all the people I wanted to,
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he behaved extremely well for that.
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And, you know, listened and didn't wander off and get in other people's
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way and all that kind of thing, which is the normal reason why small kids
2:02
can't go to those kind of events.
2:04
Anyway, you know what the tour is like, where all the cars drive out under
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that hoarding and there's zillions of photographers, you know, professional
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photographers that are wanting to get paid for their photographs being there.
2:18
Um, and I guess this time, I mean, I'm not sure how well you remember it.
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But normally they, they used to turn right out of there with this
2:25
time, they were turning left.
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So because that was different and the police closed the road off in a different
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way, there was more than the usual amount of jostling and sharp elbows.
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And Ollie and I were a little late on the seat.
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And, uh, I realized as we like crossed over the road, the,
2:46
there was nowhere for, for us to.
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To stand, but all he could stand at the front in front of the photographers.
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Below their height where they were standing as, as
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long as I went to the back.
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So I communicated that to him, communicated that to some very rude
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photographers, and then left him at the front knowing, trusting him
3:12
to just stand at the front and, you know, watch, watch the cars off.
3:15
So I was like at the back, um, but communicate with him.
3:19
And I was buying NBC, like one of those NBCE.
3:25
350s that they have with the boom on the top of it that was doing filming
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and I didn't really pay attention to the other people that I was stood
3:32
next to because I was like looking through like the side of the, you know,
3:37
whether that the van's door was open.
3:40
I was like looking through the crack in the door to Um, like, uh, to, to
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see, you know, Ollie's little Ferrari hat to make sure he was where I left
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him and he was, he was watching away.
3:52
Um, and, uh, I realized I was standing next to Derek Hill,
3:56
who's the master of ceremonies and whose dad is still the only.
4:01
American born formula one world champion for Ferrari, no less.
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And you know, a guy who supported pebble for a really long time and, and, you
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know, an all around nice guy, much too nice a guy to be a top racing driver.
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Phil Hill.
4:16
That's the, that's the bottom line.
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Much too much of a car lover.
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To be the kind of person who tore up a racing car, you know, he, in later
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years, he was very much involved in the Pebble Beach show and restored cars and
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the cars that he had tend to be really, you know, interesting ones, you know,
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he, he learned to drive on his mother's Pierce arrow, you know, he, and he never
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lost his love for those kind of pre, you know, those kind of interwar Gatsby
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era, American classics that are beloved of the, of the Pebble Beach crowd.
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So, yeah, so, um, So I was next to his son.
4:53
Who's about my age and I said to him, you know, not quite what I just said
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to you, but I said, you know, that I respected his dad and, and, you
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know, um, yeah, I didn't gush in the way that I did when I met Lazar when
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I was about 25, it wasn't like that.
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Um, but, uh, um, I, I said something to him and, uh, we had a nice little.
5:21
That was forwards conversation about, you know, well, you
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know what it was about, right?
5:26
Um, I have, um, I, I was wearing these terrible pair of, of tiger.
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Um, you know, I wouldn't say trainers.
5:37
They're more, they're like tennis shoes, aren't they?
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Kind of, but those Oninsuka Tigers, they're about my third pair.
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And, uh, the pair that I have at the moment, while my wife's
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like, you can't wear those.
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And I was like, well, there's nothing else.
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And she went, well, they're terrible.
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You have to like, you should buy new shoes.
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And I, anyway, so I was kind of embarrassed of my shoes.
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Cause you know, they always say you can judge how wealthy a bloke is by his shoes.
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And by that measure, I'm the.
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I look like the pauper I am, right?
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Um, so that doesn't always jive properly at Pebble, but I'm like,
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whatever, I'm just doing me this time.
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I'm going with Ollie.
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I'm not trying to be somebody I'm, I'm not.
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So Derek Hill goes, I like your shoes.
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I go, oh really?
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My wife hates them.
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And he goes, ah.
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Really?
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And then he puts his foot next to mine and I realized that he's got the same shoe
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as me and I is a much newer and nicer, but he's got the same shoe as, as me.
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So we, so we, we compare shoes a little bit and then Olly comes over cause the
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first batch of cars has, has gone and he's wearing like Ferrari cap and shirt.
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So Derek Hill engages him and Olly is, you know.
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As behaves as one would hope a eight year old boy would when meeting, uh, you know,
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old bloke, some, you know, old bloke who's gonna chit chat about Ferrari.
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And, uh, Old Hill turns to me and says, uh, interesting, uh, conversation we had.
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I like the way you tell a story.
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Let me take your name and email address.
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I may get in touch with you.
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So I gave him a name and, and email address and, uh, and he said, uh,
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your boy is better behaved than mine.
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And then went on his way to do his piece for, uh, NBC.
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Yeah.
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So I guess that's the first thing that, that came to mind for me for a fun moment.
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Let me, let me share a more automotively focused moment with you as, as well.
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Do you remember Laura Lee's grade?
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That road that goes up over the hill from near Laguna Seca and then down
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the other side and you may know that I know that road quite well since I stay
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there now or the last couple of years I've stayed near there and and I've
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also, um, done, you know, journalist test drive stuff along that that road.
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So I'm not, you know, I'm I'm pretty confident along there.
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So I use the 55 five.
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Um, for the, for the job this year.
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And, uh, at the foot, when I turned off 68 to go ride the way over the top at
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the foot of the grade, there was a car, probably a pair of taillights, probably
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300 yards in front of me, this is about no 1130 at night, late at night, empty
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road, um, clear, good, good weather.
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Um, and he was about, and in the lower section, you can go really fast.
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Like, you know, uh, you know, really fast.
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Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
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And, and, uh, so that's what I did.
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Um, and it, it's only with hindsight that you realize that it was
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surprising that I didn't catch the pair of taillights at that point.
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But as the road became twistier, I caught up the pair of taillights and
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it was a Rimac Nivera, I kid you not.
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Now this was, and when it got, gets really twisty towards
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the top, before the descent.
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We're on the descent.
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Dude, he couldn't leave me.
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I knew the road.
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I was all the way.
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Well, once it got straight down towards Bernardus, he got a bit of a gap on,
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but, and then on the entry to Bernardus, he stopped to see me by, right?
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Because I was probably a hundred yards back by that point.
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And he was turning in, turning left into Barnardus and I kid you not, I
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mean the satisfaction that it gave me when a 20 year old E55 with rust
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on the sunroof, he couldn't put a gap between that and his 2000 horsepower
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Rimac, that amused me somewhat.
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Um, I, I guess my thought on it is that I must've known the
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road somewhat better than him.
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Yeah.
10:14
Um, a little agenda of, of, of Pebble, um, and we were just
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talking about the, the Remak there.
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I was really struck by the number of, of modern supercars that were, um,
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and talking with, um, other people within the actual Pebble community.
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Um, I, I think, um, there's almost a subculture.
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Um, Pebble Beach car week people emerging and, and it's, you know, it's, it's, Okay,
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so I was parked up in my little spot on Carmel Valley Road, you know, the spot
11:00
I was parked up there doing, you know, sitting by the side of the road, watching
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the cars come by and, uh, the old, um, you know, Juan's gardening service dropped a,
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uh, cone off the back of his pickup truck and it's there lying in the road and I can
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see it in the rear view and all these cars coming up the hill, they can't see it.
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And everybody knows it's that test route, right?
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I'm looking at it and it's about two yards into one carriageway.
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So it's not right in the road, but it's blocking it.
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It's making that carriageway very narrow, right on a bend when, so I'm thinking,
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wow, there could be a head on here.
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If somebody makes a bad decision.
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About place in the car coming up the hill and swerves around this thing a lot.
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Then so they could head on somebody because they could go over the yellow
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line or if somebody slows down and there's somebody else who's test
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driving a Lucid or a McLaren up the hill here, they're, you know, they
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could potentially be doing, you know.
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Autobahn kind of speeds.
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So that's so anyway, so I hopped out of the E55 trotted over moved the
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the cone and as I moved the cone, I kid you not two dozen McLarens
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came by and I'm like, you know,
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they weren't making cars 10 years ago, right?
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That's why they're such a and similarly Lamborghinis.
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So many Gallardos, so many Hurricanes, particularly so many, even Aventadors,
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you know, the, the stuff, so much stuff that has been made in just the
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last 10 years, 10 or 15 years, you know, since, um, yeah, I don't know.
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I want to say since the Audi takeover in the case of, of Lamborghini, but,
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you Yeah, there, there seems to be, um, and those people aren't coming to the
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Pebble Beach car show it, it itself.
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So I feel like there's a whole subculture of Pebble Beach developing that must,
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that must exist for shows and events, um, for people between the age of like.
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You know, 18 and 40, and I feel like I'm in the during the events for the
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people between, you know, 40 and 140.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're definitely not with the Fast and Furious crew in their
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pimp mobiles outside, it must be said.
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But, I mean, look, it's, I think anything like that, if I understand
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you correctly, sort of gathers, sort of subcultures and stuff as it becomes wider.
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I mean, that thing's obviously been known around for ages, but Um, as it gets
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more exposure and it's live streamed on YouTube it becomes a bit of a broader
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event for people to engage in, I suppose.
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So it's more people turn up, more people sort of doing their own thing around it.
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But, um, It's Carroll Shelby Ferrari 410, the red one,
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that's numbered 98, that RM had.
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Um, dude.
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I was like, that's great.
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Like, that's the one.
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That's the one, you know, I wonder how much it is.
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And then as you approach, you're like, dude, that is a big capacity Ferrari
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sports car from the late fifties.
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So that is a, that is a big money car all day long.
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The estimate was 25 to 27.
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So I think, I think It's it's sold for 22.
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Yeah, I don't have trouble believing it's kind of a bargain
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next to that hundred and forty forty two million dollar Ulan Hauku.
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It was a bargain.
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I mean, yeah, let's have a little look at Gooding.
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Well, yeah, definitely.
15:14
What caught your eye there?
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I'm just, I'm just, I'm just scrolling through getting results.
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So I I've got as far as lot 18 that if, if, you know, purely from my
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heart, regardless of, of values.
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That was the car that I was absolutely and completely in, in love with.
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Um, the picture there doesn't do its faded glory any kind of, of justice.
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It was, um, the paint was so faded off that I loved the red and that
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black interior was, was more tired than the interior of, uh, of my E55.
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But it was So this is the 400 GT2 Plus 2?
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Yeah.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Yeah.
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The Lamborghini 400 GT.
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Yeah.
16:15
Yeah.
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I'm just looking, I mean, looking at the picture of it now, um, from the,
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uh, from the old goodie website and, uh, my word, what an awesome car.
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Love that.
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Yeah.
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There's some nice stuff there.
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A lot of Porsches, a lot of Porsches, a lot of roofs, you know,
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a sense that they're trying to.
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Um, and, and yeah, sense with the roofs, particularly that they, they're trying
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to create, um, a sort of rarefied market.
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For, for Porsches, you know what I mean?
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It's like when Ducati do a version of the bike that has the really
16:57
expensive wheels and suspension on it.
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And they're only going to do a hundred of them.
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They're, you know what I mean, they're deliberately trying to create
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something that's a collective vehicle.
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And I feel that by packaging, um, I'm looking at lots four and five.
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I feel that by packaging lot four.
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Alongside lot five.
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I feel like lot five the 1990 car is collectible.
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I feel like lot four I don't know.
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I mean it hammered for more than lot five, I guess because it's rarer,
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but that I I don't know I I mean, I I yeah the collectible Porsche market.
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I can't pretend to to understand Yeah, I'm looking here.
17:38
I'm, I'm amazed.
17:39
No, I mean, I would, I'd have had the cheapest Porsche.
17:42
I'd have had the, uh, 2004 GT 3, 9, 9 6, and saved lots of money.
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Well, it's funny looking round.
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That was the car that I, uh, that, that I liked.
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Um, you forget how long the chin overhang is, don't you?
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Yeah.
17:57
And, and.
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People hate on the, the nine, uh, nine sixes now, that's a
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great looking car, that lot 10.
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It really is.
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Um, and you're right that next to the other, it's a real bargain.
18:15
Um, yeah.
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And the, the roof thing is it's, it's investor money.
18:20
Gone, gone silly.
18:22
Well, and also like the, because you've got to remember that, you know, on Gran
18:27
Turismo, they didn't have the Porsche license, but they had the RUF license.
18:30
So therefore you could have a rough GT, you know, um, CTR2 and
18:35
things like that, but you couldn't have a 911 for quite a long time.
18:38
So that was the only way you get these in the game.
18:41
Did not know that.
18:43
Yeah, man.
18:45
Gran Turismo, there for you.
18:49
The other thing that, um, that Ollie and I spent a long time hanging around was if
18:56
you scroll down to lots 56, uh, 58 and 59.
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Um, some guy was having his basically having a race car
19:07
collection liquidized and, and there were some awesome, uh, cars.
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He had that, this lot 58, this Bud March 85, um, that evolved into the
19:20
Porsche 956 designed by Adrian Newey.
19:24
Um, and this AAR, All American Racers Gurney IndyCar, um, that was, you, you
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look at the picture there, the little thumbnail image on Gooding's website here,
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and it, it looks like a cool old car.
19:41
You stand next to it and it's like a UFO.
19:44
It's like a 200 mile an hour land born UFO, really, uh, an awesome.
19:51
A lot of the structure when you look at it from the side, is it engine?
19:55
Yeah.
19:56
Yeah.
19:57
Yeah.
19:58
Yeah.
19:59
That's cheap, man.
20:00
112, 112 grand for that.
20:02
Yeah.
20:03
Because it's hard to enjoy.
20:06
True.
20:07
True.
20:08
I mean, it is essentially a complete toy.
20:11
Um and probably undriveable on most of the circuits in the world because they
20:16
have noise limits which it would break.
20:18
Well, I was thinking that if it's truly an indie car, it's
20:21
probably set up to only turn left.
20:25
So, it means that so so for me, right?
20:29
I would do collectible NASCARs.
20:31
But I would only want to do it, I would only want to collect road course cars.
20:38
Um, because I've never driven an Oval, so it would be impossible for me to enjoy
20:44
a car that had been set up for a super speedway, you know, you just, you just,
20:49
to me, if that car had been set up for Indy, you're like dehistoricizing it.
20:55
To take it away from Indy.
20:59
If it had been set up for a road course and it looked like that, I
21:02
looked closely at it, and it seemed, you know, as if it had equal, you know
21:06
suspension arms and things like that.
21:09
Um, at that point, um, but again to enjoy it, right, you need a hauler, you need to
21:15
go to a particular event, you know, you need, probably a, you know, a mechanic.
21:23
If, if not, you know, you need to be really good yourself and have
21:26
a lot of time to spend on it.
21:27
You know, it's a much harder car to enjoy than, you know, that lot 60
21:33
that's next to it, that gullwing, you can take that to a Carlson coffee.
21:37
You know, you can take your wife out to dinner in in that if you know,
21:42
yeah, if it's in a nice place and you've got a nice I'll take your point,
21:46
but like, you know, there's a bit of a gap between the two price wise.
21:49
Well, I, I, I, I, I, yes, but that's why a And I mean, and that's a really
21:56
nice example of a gut wing, isn't it?
21:58
I'm not sure if it's an aluminum body one there.
22:00
It's got the rudge wheels and the silver makes it is, is, you know, but
22:05
no, I think that's why racing cars generally, historic racing cars are
22:11
often far cheaper than you think, because finding an environment to enjoy them.
22:17
Is, is really hard.
22:22
True that.
22:22
Yeah.
22:24
Now there's some nice stuff here and there's stuff where you think that's,
22:26
you know, I mean, it's got plenty to go.
22:28
I mean, I'm no expert on the used car market, but just by
22:30
the sort of, sort of gut feels.
22:33
I mean, that 99 AM three looks like about where you expected to go for, but
22:38
yeah, I think there's some appreciation in there over the next 10 years.
22:41
Uh, 108.
22:44
We looked at that, Ollie and I looked at that car, he liked the car, um, and
22:51
the car was cosmetically not perfect.
22:54
It felt to me like that was a car that was part of a collection which David
23:01
Gooding had had to sell all of them rather than that one because that car
23:05
didn't meet the sort of presentation standards that he, um, might normally
23:10
have, though some of the trim.
23:12
was phased on it.
23:13
Um, I'm saying that like I'm a pebble beach judge.
23:15
Obviously that made the car far more appealing to me.
23:19
Um, cause it felt drivable.
23:20
It felt like it had been driven and it felt drivable.
23:24
I mean, dude, I mean, lately I get to, I'm a whole bugger with this sort of stuff.
23:28
If it can't be driven regularly, I'm not interested in it.
23:32
I'm interested in it from a point of view of like, you know, the sort of
23:35
stuff you see in museums and things and like, it's nice to know that they're
23:37
still around and You know, if I ever rich enough to buy that sort of stuff,
23:41
and then lucky enough to be able to rinse it at Goodwood, I will definitely
23:44
do so, um, because that's what they're for, um, so it, you know, it's, but that
23:50
depends on the type of car, doesn't it?
23:51
But, um, so I always end up looking at the stuff like that and then going like,
23:55
cool, but if I had the money, you know, it'd be nice to go to lunch in the 3500
23:59
GT Maserati, that'd be pretty cool.
24:00
So it'd be nice to have that sort of like thing to cruise around in.
24:04
Um, but, uh, I mean, it's, it's, yeah, it's like a kid in a sweet shop.
24:07
There's so much stuff that you could have.
24:09
It's amazing.
24:10
My, uh, philosophy is to, to split, um, the stuff that you have to drive,
24:21
um, from the, the stuff that's, that's purely collectible because there is
24:27
something, um, you know, glorious about something like a dragster.
24:36
Which can only run on nitromethane and, you know, needs a full
24:43
rebuild after you run it.
24:47
Um, these are magnificent, magnificent machines, and there should be room in the
24:58
corner of the barn to keep these things.
25:01
There's.
25:03
Yeah, yeah, for real.
25:05
I mean, that's fair enough.
25:06
Those top fuel things are just crazy.
25:07
So my version of that is sports bikes and Suzuki GSX Rs particularly, and I, that
25:18
is why I've thought a lot about this idea of things being hard to enjoy, because,
25:23
um, gixxers are hard to enjoy on, on the road, you know, most of them can do
25:28
100 miles an hour in first gear, so that makes them a hard thing to, to enjoy
25:36
and, and, you know, I lack the skill.
25:39
To enjoy them properly on, on the track.
25:43
And it leaves you in this place of feeling, well, there really
25:45
is no place for them yet.
25:47
They remain absolutely glorious in their intersection of huge performance.
25:57
And super, super accessible price point.
26:01
It's like the democratization of performance.
26:04
And maybe that's why we were talking about the guys with the
26:07
McLarens and the Lamborghinis.
26:08
I think that's maybe why I'm, I wouldn't say I'm, I'm.
26:12
Snide about them because I'm everyone I want everybody to enjoy the car
26:18
hobby and and automobiles and so on in their own way, but you do feel
26:24
a little bit as if, um, you know, I would feel a little bit of a poser
26:31
in a Lamborghini when you can achieve
26:38
just create a pause here whilst Dana gets her lunch in.
26:44
You're not really a classic car person.
26:46
You're like a driving person.
26:49
I've always thought this about you.
26:51
You're like a driving person who has the right, like a running person who
26:56
has the right shoes for, for the job.
26:59
The interest in cars is the same as the runner's interest in running
27:03
shoes and making sure he's got the right, the right tool for the job.
27:07
Um, and classic cars are never going to be the best tool for the job.
27:12
Um.
27:13
But here's the thing, you know, when I had a small lump of money a while ago,
27:18
I, I looked at buying a classic car and the whole thing with it is, is that I'm
27:25
not, you know, I could have bought a nice ish muscle car, um, but I, I just
27:33
couldn't see myself like buying a deck chair and going to car shows and parking
27:38
up and sitting in the deck chair and, you know, chit chatting with people
27:45
about, you know, how it was a five speed now, but it had used to be a three speed
27:51
and, you know, no, it wasn't a big block and, you know, I'm just, I dunno, that's
27:59
not where the, the hobby is, is for me.
28:03
So, you know, I like the fact that different people do the
28:06
hobby in different kinds of ways.
28:08
If you want to have a, you know, have a Mustang in your semi detached house
28:14
in, you know, the home counties of England, you know, if you want to
28:18
have a sixties, you know, automatic 289 Mustang, you know, be my guest.
28:25
You know, it's not my thing, but, but be my guest.
28:28
I do draw the line.
28:30
I see people with, you know, that blobby era, that white car that we're
28:35
looking at my racing car, the, the 95, 94, 95, that kind of, of era.
28:43
Um, That blobby body style, those cars with six cylinder engines, for me, not
28:52
collectible with eight cylinder engines, not to my taste, but collectible.
28:56
I like my car because it's slammed and it's got the Cobra wheels on
29:00
it, but it sort of needs those things without those things, or
29:05
they're a little bit like Capri.
29:07
1.
29:07
6 is in Capri 1.
29:10
3s.
29:10
They're just, I just, I, I, I mean, I, I love, I love, I love
29:16
those cars in their ultimate form.
29:18
You know, and this is a interesting question.
29:21
Um, I, I asked.
29:23
Um, a room full of design professionals at Stanford University,
29:28
no less, I say a room full.
29:29
I mean, a table of people sitting around the table, um, is the purest
29:34
form of the Chevrolet Camaro, the six cylinder rental car that you pick up
29:40
at the airport, the convertible that everybody drives that they make the most
29:45
of with the automatic transmission and the steel wheels and the tour tires.
29:52
Is that the purest iteration of cama or is the purest iteration of cama?
29:57
The ZL one with the supercharged 650 horsepower va and the stick shift and
30:06
the look like it just fell out with the Transformers movie 'cause it just did, um,
30:12
which is the pure iteration of, of Camaro.
30:16
And they said, oh, always the most extreme one because that's what the designer.
30:23
intended.
30:24
That's what the designer had in mind when he thought of Camaro,
30:29
he or she thought of Camaro.
30:31
They thought of that extreme interpretation.
30:35
They thought ZL1, they thought Z28, um, they thought, you know,
30:43
black alloy wheels, not silver painted pressed steel ones.
30:49
I mean, yeah, that's interesting.
30:51
So that, so, so do you think, I mean, cause I never really considered which
30:54
way around it, but they, they do these because when you see concept car designs
30:58
and you see design art studio people doing interpretations or gesture,
31:02
you know, and the thought experiments for, um, uh, manufacturers, even
31:06
though they aren't working for them necessarily as sort of like as much
31:08
as CV effort, if you like, but still.
31:11
They always do the cool version.
31:13
It's very rare.
31:13
They'll do a homogenous dull box on the basis of that.
31:17
That might be what it'd be dumbed down to.
31:19
So you have to assume therefore that the designers don't change much when they
31:22
become employed by the manufacturers so that they do do it that way around.
31:25
I just never considered it that.
31:27
Because that, what a depressing process, taking something that you've just made
31:30
epically cool and then just boring the crap out of it in order to make it a
31:34
more sort of like steel wheel sellable 50, 000 unit shitbox in comparison to
31:40
this gorgeous supermodel of a build that you've got in clay in the workshop
31:46
that you know, they won't build for four years because they've got to run
31:48
out of enough metal to make enough money to be justified your concept car.
31:57
So I met the bloke that was chief designer on the Volvo XC90, which not to my
32:03
taste, but not, you know, a great car.
32:07
And loved by other great cars.
32:10
I mean, famously Clarkson had three of them, didn't he?
32:13
When he was a, was a family man.
32:15
So I can acknowledge these are, uh, are a well designed vehicle,
32:19
even if they're not, not my thing.
32:21
And I said to him, I asked him when you see them on the road, is it
32:27
like seeing one of your children?
32:29
You know, do you feel like proud of it when you see it?
32:33
And he said, honestly, no, because there's so many elements
32:37
of it, which you've changed.
32:39
You know, I'm proud of what my team achieved, but I, you know, equally,
32:48
I see elements of it, of the design.
32:51
And I'm not going to tell you what they are, which I really don't like.
32:55
I see elements of the design.
32:56
I feel I told you so about.
33:00
To my team and that I can't say I'm not going to say to you and I wouldn't say
33:06
to them either, but I know when I look at that car, there are those things.
33:12
Um, now I met the old, the, I met, I can't remember the blokes name, Japanese
33:17
guy that designed the Nissan Leaf.
33:20
And he was saying that.
33:24
Until the sort of turn of the century, probably one person designed a car, but
33:32
now it's really a committee designs a car.
33:37
I really, they might say, Oh, you know, Dave Jones designed it, but really that's
33:43
because Dave Jones is a handsome young guy and the firm feel that he's the
33:47
right person to represent them in talking about the design ethos of the company.
33:54
He, you know, he didn't really design it.
33:56
It's like the famous bangle, but the Chris bangle was the design lead, but it
34:03
was actually Adrian Von Hoyen doik, the guy who then went to Lamborghini and I
34:08
don't know where he is now, but it was him that actually did that design feature.
34:13
It wasn't actually Chris bangle, um, at all.
34:18
Um, um, the fellow that designed the leaf, he said that it changed.
34:26
In the, the, so I, I, so, you know, does the leaf, you know, this, it
34:33
changed from being a single person who had their stamp on a vehicle.
34:39
So I, so for him, the car that he feels is very much him is the 1980s.
34:48
Nissan Maxima, not the Nissan Maxima that you will remember that
34:56
crazy Texan perfume salesman in the 1990s, which was a powerful world.
35:05
I'm sorry?
35:06
It's the company, as I recollect.
35:07
Yeah.
35:07
World.
35:08
Car.
35:09
Fun.
35:09
Yeah.
35:10
Well, fuck me.
35:13
That's alright.
35:14
Headline on Ars Technica, on the cars page, Audi, Audi will build F1
35:19
engines, entering the sport in 2026.
35:22
Didn't Audi Didn't Volkswagen always say they always, they never wanted to do
35:29
Formula One because they felt that they were developing a technology that would
35:35
have no reflection on their road cars.
35:39
So my understanding was they never wanted to do Formula One because they
35:43
were building lots of, that would mean building V6s or V8s or V10s and that was
35:49
not something that they wanted to do.
35:51
Whereas now Formula One's doing four cylinder engines.
35:55
It seems logical that Audi or VAG or whatever they're calling
35:59
themselves now PX Organization would be interested in in doing.
36:07
Yeah, it looks like they're gonna have to do in there Porsche and Audi Um,
36:14
yeah the designer of the leaf He said he designed the first generation maxima not
36:24
that blobby one That that world parfum guy That we worked with in Richmond or
36:32
Alabama or wherever, Richmond, Virginia, or wherever it was all those decades
36:36
ago, not that nineties blobby Maxima.
36:40
Um, a squared off eighties version of, uh, of that car, but with the
36:46
same virtues as that car of the world.
36:49
Parfum guy that you'll remember, like, you know, American style appointments
36:54
inside and a remarkable liquor speed for a fairly stayed looking.
37:00
You know, automatic sedan, um, that up.
37:05
So in the eighties, you felt like it was your car when you were a designer into
37:10
the nineties, you lost that feeling.
37:12
And, you know, by the 20th century, um, maybe it had gone completely.
37:18
And that ties into what we were talking about.
37:20
You know, with lucid a couple of weeks ago that that was a small design team
37:26
that had a free hand to design what they wanted to do is what they wanted
37:30
to design and they had this ethos of designing from the inside out.
37:36
Um, and I know I also wanted to revisit.
37:40
comment that we made in a, in a previous pod about the shape being
37:45
bland, the lucid shape being bland.
37:48
Um, it's wind cheating.
37:50
So it has to be that way.
37:52
What isn't bland is if you see the car at night, the headlight pattern is
37:58
completely different from any other car.
38:01
And that's something which has changed.
38:03
And I think it's quite interesting.
38:05
Just in the last.
38:06
couple of years is that car makers are looking to give
38:09
themselves a brand identity in the shape of of the headlights.
38:14
For, for Rivian, Rivian are doing it as well.
38:17
They have a little oval, but car makers are increasingly giving themselves a brand
38:24
identity through the headlight shape.
38:26
And I kind of I do the headlight shape, not in the day at night,
38:30
the way it projects at night.
38:32
And I, I, for one thing, that's interesting and futuristic.
38:35
I suppose I was thinking of the 991's wraparound tail light and those Maserati
38:39
boomerang tail lights on the 3200 that I so love that they then got rid of.
38:43
Um, but it's interesting when the manufacturers play with it a bit and
38:46
do a bit, something a bit different.
38:48
Sometimes it's not very well received, which is a shame because
38:50
on reflection, like those Maserati lights, they were, they were cool.
38:57
Yeah, the Maserati lights really were a thing, those boomerang taillights on
39:03
those early Maserati coupes, the 3200s.
39:08
I think they lost it for the 4200s, it's a real shame, but they had
39:11
them in the 3200s, definitely.
39:15
Weird cars, those because you get them on the Grand and the Grand Sports.
39:20
They've got an SMG only, but it's a paddle shift actual manual.
39:24
That was the era of, I'm not sure if that car had it, but that
39:31
was the era of sequential semi automatic transmissions, wasn't it?
39:37
You had two pedals and you went up and down the gearbox like a motorcycle,
39:44
where you had to be in every gear.
39:46
I remember the Alpha GTA had that kind of gearbox.
39:52
The Alpha 156, the hot rod version of that, you could get it with a stick,
39:57
or you could get it with basically a sequential, it was a sequential, it
40:04
acted like an automatic transmission in that it didn't have a clutch pedal,
40:09
but you moved paddles to make it shift, or with some cars, and I think this
40:15
Alpha, you had like a, like a touring car, you knock the lever forward, or you
40:20
knocked it back to shift, Yeah, yeah.
40:25
If you look at the manuals, they have that sort of flip across from sort of
40:28
the sort of up from, you know, R down to D and stuff on the left hand side.
40:33
You can click it over and then bang it up and down, can't you?
40:36
Yeah.
40:36
This was, um, this is different than on BMW, than on most cars, because
40:40
most cars that have a BMW system, the car still has a torque converter.
40:44
I'm not sure if those Alfa Romeos had a conventional torque converter, or if
40:48
they just had a, Clutch like a motorcycle clutch, you know, in a gearbox that was,
40:53
was, I think it may have been a different, a different thing, but we don't know.
40:57
So we're just whittling, aren't we?
41:00
Um, uh, we've talked for ages here, uh, you're just back from the
41:05
Pyrenees or wherever you were in France with this, uh, uh, spiffy
41:10
new car, like how was the vacation?
41:14
Very nice.
41:15
Thanks.
41:16
Um.
41:17
And we've spoken briefly about it.
41:18
Some of the highlights of the holiday, you know, visiting the
41:21
Nîmes Amphitheatre and so forth, Roman Colosseum outside of Italy.
41:25
Fabulous.
41:26
Um, still being used for entertainment.
41:27
That was superb.
41:28
But getting back to the car, um, yeah, I mean, like, you
41:32
know, it's, it's, it's nice.
41:34
I mean, I've done like, I think, 2, 600 miles in it.
41:36
Now, to be fair, most of that's payage, comfort mode, just tickling along.
41:42
And it does that sort of, you know, middleweighty stub, the car
41:46
of just loping along and eating the miles pretty effectively.
41:48
It's quite comfortable.
41:49
Uh, I saw a review saying that the seats bite your arse after a while, but
41:53
I didn't find that, so that was nice.
41:56
Um, and, you know, it looks decent, um, I've graunched the front left wheel
42:02
even further, because when you've got a wife who's got a hip problem, you want
42:06
to get as close to the little, sort of, uh, petit bras, um, leaning out the
42:09
left hand window with your little arms to get to the, uh, the payage, pay on
42:13
the thing, and, uh, pull the ticket out and stuff, so you want to get as close
42:16
as possible, so inevitably With the different, um, new car, just to, um,
42:21
judging the, uh, the, uh, wheel arches.
42:23
And of course the wheel arch is being extended out from the body
42:25
shape by a couple of inches and three to the front and three inches
42:28
or whatever it is at the back.
42:30
I made mistakes, so I need to have the wheels resprayed, but yeah, anyway,
42:34
getting back to the meat of it.
42:35
Oh yeah.
42:35
I like it.
42:36
It's, it's a nice car.
42:37
Um, it's weird in comfort mode because when you give it some beans.
42:41
It's got such it's got a noticeable drop off in power about below
42:44
three and a half thousand revs.
42:45
So if you don't take it up to about four and a half five it drops down to
42:49
that three and a half Um, and then it's a little bit Before it sort of picks
42:54
back up again when the turbo scrolls up.
42:57
Um, so It's quick anyway, but that can make it almost feel a bit lurchy so you
43:03
sort of need to bang into sport, um, and then Give it the beans and remember
43:08
that it'll happily rev up to about 7k.
43:11
Uh, and if you're not up about 5 or 6, you know, why?
43:15
Um, and then it's pretty damn good.
43:17
So it's, uh, it feels decent.
43:19
I mean, the exhaust note's egregious when you start out from cold.
43:23
Um, it really is.
43:24
Um, we stayed, we were fortunate enough to stay in some nice places and you're
43:28
conscious that you're in, you know, a quiet chateau and you're leaving at
43:30
seven o'clock to drive up to Lascaux or six o'clock in the morning to drive
43:34
up to Lascaux Caves a few hundred miles away and there's no way you can turn
43:38
your car on and not wake everyone else in the chateau, which feels a bit bad.
43:43
Um, but hey, um, but yeah, no, overall it feels tight.
43:48
I mean, the nicest driving I did, I suppose, was up in the Pyrenees.
43:50
I'm not hugely surprising.
43:52
There's one of the roads that drives across from Poe.
43:55
down towards, um, the Spanish border, um, goes up towards, um,
44:02
uh, one of the couple of the coals and the peak to MIDI and so forth.
44:05
And yeah, it's really, it's, there's some cracking roads.
44:07
I got really lucky with a bit where I just came out and it was all sunny.
44:10
And, uh, I turned left when there was a big queue of people going
44:13
right and drove towards Spain for about, I don't know, 20, 30 miles.
44:17
And didn't really see anyone, maybe not that far in distance, but had a good 15
44:21
20 minutes of just really enjoying some lovely, nice sweeping sort of, if it was
44:26
in England, A roads, you know, two lanes, one lane each way, but some reasonable
44:31
twists and turns and elevation changes and stuff, some beautiful scenery, like little
44:34
river down at the side of the road and so forth, um, lovely sidelines and stuff.
44:38
So that was a real sort of gem of a moment.
44:40
And um, It likes that sort of thing a lot.
44:43
Um, and you can make very rapid progress as you would expect in that sort of car
44:47
without really straining it particularly.
44:49
You can stay below the turbo really spooling up and still lope along
44:53
at an effortless, decent pace.
44:55
Um, but there is a, you know, a noticeable jump up when you ramp above that.
45:00
I mean, that said, the torque's still available from reasonably
45:03
mid range so it doesn't feel like it's got a sort of rabid top end.
45:07
Um, and I'm interested in, there's a Litchfield, um, conversion where
45:13
you can get a larger intercooler and push it up to the same sort of
45:15
horsepower as on the competition.
45:18
So it'll go up from like 370 to the 410 ish, something like that.
45:23
Uh, and they do, um, a tune with the exhaust, um, to map it out properly.
45:29
I'd be quite interested in that.
45:30
Um, get in a little bit of time, I think.
45:33
Um.
45:35
Because there's clearly higher, more you can get from the top end of that
45:38
car, as proved by the competition and the other ones that came afterwards.
45:42
But yeah, it looks nice.
45:43
It's carried all the luggage pretty well.
45:46
Um, so yeah, we'll see.
45:48
I still don't feel I know it properly.
45:49
I'm going to see if I can squeeze it into a track day at Thruxton
45:52
before the end of the year.
45:52
If we get some nice, the weather holds out.
45:56
Um, cause it's just not very far away and then have a bit more of a, uh,
46:00
feel of it at, you know, decent speeds.
46:02
Cause again, I mean, on the road, you can't really.
46:05
Give it what you shouldn't be giving it anywhere near what it can deliver.
46:08
Um, so you don't really get a proper feel for what it's like.
46:12
Um, even, you know, getting to the limits of traction on second
46:17
gear corners and so forth.
46:18
You're still at points where you, you know, it's too fast.
46:21
You shouldn't be doing that sort of speed on the road kind of thing.
46:23
And if so, yeah, it's, it's, uh, yeah, I think, I mean, it'd be fun
46:28
to take it on track and see what, see what it delivers there as well.
46:32
So yeah, no early, early indications are good.
46:34
I mean, I will say as a slight downside to the upside.
46:39
Beep.
46:41
Experience of buying used approved didn't really improve the car.
46:44
There's about three things wrong with it.
46:46
Um, the, uh, I won't bore you, well I can't bore you with it.
46:50
The reversing in, the proximity warning doesn't turn off when you pull it out
46:54
of reverse and put it into first gear.
46:55
You have to turn the car off and on to stop the fucking thing
46:57
beeping, which is quite annoying.
47:00
Um, the map update that I bought for about 80 quid or whatever it
47:04
was to have up to date maps before I went to Europe, won't install.
47:09
So that was quite annoying, um, and it's got worse aircon.
47:14
They, when it, when it arrived, uh, I was thinking, oh, look, it's, the
47:18
aircon's so cold that you can almost see like cold mist coming out of
47:21
the, the, the, um, uh, the vents.
47:24
And I thought, hmm, that feels suspicious.
47:27
I like that they've overgassed it or something because the
47:30
aircon's actually not very good.
47:32
Uh, and yeah, I'm, it's got basically slowly worse over
47:36
the period of the holiday.
47:37
Um, and you know, if you set it at sort of 21 or 22, it just doesn't get there
47:42
on a hot day, it just stays like going really high and carrying on forever
47:46
and never makes it to that temperature, which feels pretty shit when my wife
47:49
Fiesta ST will do that comfortably.
47:52
So, um.
47:53
I'm suspicious that there might be a reason why that dealership
47:57
didn't want to do that work.
47:59
Um, I mean, look, maybe it's just got a leak, but I feel that it might be
48:02
one of those ones where they need to take the front of the engine off or
48:05
something to get to the AC compressor, and it's that sort of ball ache of a job.
48:08
So it's easier for someone else to do it under warranty from the BMW dealership.
48:12
So maybe I'm just a suspicious bastard.
48:15
Finding, um, an air conditioning leak like that, which it sounds like what
48:19
you've got finding that what, uh, pain in the bottom that's going to be, well,
48:26
I mean, I've got 12 months BMW warranty because it's used to prove which is what
48:29
I bought from the dealer and I've got the extended upgraded warranty on it as well.
48:33
So, unlucky boys, give me a spare car while you fix it.
48:39
Well, that would seem to be, um, in the case of the air conditioning,
48:44
something that, uh, that I would look for, look for them to do.
48:48
Does it feel meaningfully faster than, you know, your Nissan
48:53
had what, has what, or had?
48:55
Um, what?
48:56
307.
48:57
307.
48:58
Does it feel meaningfully faster than that?
49:04
Yeah, I mean, yeah, it does.
49:06
Um, it's, I mean, yeah, it's, I think the Nissan's 5.
49:12
5 to 60 and that's with the SMG box, I think it's 4.
49:15
5.
49:16
I think with the manual is like 4.
49:17
7, um, to 60.
49:20
So, you know, it's pretty pokey, uh, and it's very fast.
49:25
Um, it's, it was interesting that, you know, I, Angie's a pretty good.
49:30
wingman for a wag, an awful way to say it, but she's pretty savvy with the uh,
49:38
old overtaking and uh, seeing ahead and judging gaps for me to be able to overtake
49:43
on French roads, because obviously you're, you're passing, you're driving from the
49:46
gutter, uh, in your right hand drive car.
49:49
Um, she's pretty good at that, but it took her a while to sort of get
49:52
up to speed from the shift from 276 to 370 in terms of the available sort
49:58
of point and squirt and nab gaps.
50:01
Um, was no, there was, there was much more potential for overtaking with, uh,
50:07
less requirement for, um, yeah, perceived distance to oncoming, uh, collision.
50:14
So, yeah, no, it was, so that, that was good fun.
50:16
Um, I had, it was funny actually, I, I had it, drove it back from, um, Colchester.
50:23
Just to around on a sort of Friday or Monday afternoon, whatever it was.
50:27
Um, and then I took her out in the evening just to go down to the pub
50:31
and two people on the way down there.
50:34
Some guy cut trimming his hedge.
50:36
I was a bit fruity through the, through the, uh, the, uh, he
50:39
lives in a little village down.
50:40
Um, there's some lanes between us and him and there's about six
50:42
houses before another lane by the garden center and the pub.
50:45
And he was tripping his hedge and I'd obviously been giving it a
50:48
bit of a footfall for the missus, um, uh, with it in sport mode.
50:53
So it was giving it the full trombone.
50:55
Um, and, uh, as I came out in the corner, he'd stopped tripping the
50:58
hedge and was like looking down the lane to see who was coming.
51:02
And, uh, as I drove past him, he gave me the little sort of like Divers like
51:06
nice, you know, as I came past, uh, and then some old gamer like, like nodded
51:11
appreciatively as we drove past as well.
51:13
And Angie was like, are you telling me that this new car you've got
51:15
two people have just given you the thumbs up on the way to the pub?
51:19
Um, And it does feel a bit more, I mean, like that lad I know who's got, who
51:23
had the uh, Lamborghini until recently.
51:26
It's a sort of sniff of his world in the sense that, you know,
51:29
wherever you go in that sort of car, everyone's looking at you.
51:32
It's like, you're walking around with an absolute supermodel in your arm.
51:35
I mean, it's that sort of level of consciousness.
51:37
I'm not there, at all.
51:40
It did feel like a guy in a French, um, garage said to Angie, like, Ton car,
51:44
votre car, votre voiture est puffy.
51:47
You know, like, you know, kind of thing, as she was, like,
51:50
trying to use the loo in there.
51:51
Um, so, you do get more notice in it, um, and I wasn't necessarily quite after that.
51:59
Um, at all, which is part of the reason I went for an M2, because
52:02
it's a sort of chunked up 2 series, you know, it's just a 2 series,
52:05
you know, there's not a lot to see.
52:07
I mean, the fact that it's got four exhausts and punched out M badges all
52:10
over the show, I can sort of ignore that.
52:12
Um, and most punters do, but it's still, you know, I suppose I can't
52:18
play a game to be too shy of retiring, given I painted the wheels gold.
52:23
Although again, I did wheels.
52:25
That's not the gold that I asked for.
52:27
I asked for frozen gold.
52:28
And what they've done is lazily painted over the gloss black in a couple
52:32
of coats of frozen gold gone out.
52:34
You've got that sort of weird bronze color.
52:35
Well, it looks quite cool.
52:36
You can have that, which in theory is fine.
52:39
But when you inevitably scuff them, you can't buy a rattle can
52:43
of frozen gold to fix the bit because it's not the right color.
52:46
So you're never going to be able to repaint them to that color.
52:49
Um, so I'm going to have to have, when one's got a bit of a nick, I'm going to
52:53
need to get them all repainted to the colour I asked for in the first place.
52:56
Um, otherwise they're going to look bad ended.
52:58
So, there is a difference.
52:59
Yeah, I would.
53:00
Um,
53:04
with the issue with them painting the, you know, painting frozen gold wheels
53:14
over the black and not stripping the black back and, and now, you know, you
53:20
being in this position where, because you damaged one, you can't just repaint
53:26
that one, you have to repaint all four.
53:33
I feel your best recourse is to have a conversation with the dealer and explain
53:40
to them that in a reasonable way and then try and get them to cover some of the
53:46
cost of doing the job properly because you don't want to rub their face in the
53:51
fact that it's their fault that You're in this position and you only recently
54:02
purchased the car, you know, it's not like you bought it six months ago.
54:06
You only just bought it.
54:09
It's time to go back in for the other things to be fixed on it anyway.
54:12
Um, we'll see.
54:14
I mean, I suspect they'll be reasonable about it.
54:16
But, um, I mean, all the stuff that's wrong with it, I think they'll fix.
54:19
I don't think they'll meet me halfway on the price for that.
54:22
I mean, I was the one that damaged the wheel to be fair, let's not mess about.
54:25
Um.
54:26
So, that'll probably be their excuse, and, probably justifiably, it's just
54:32
slightly annoying that I haven't got an easy recourse to a fix because of
54:35
the route they took, which was a bit of a lazy shortcut, so, um, there
54:41
you are, but still, look, yeah, big picture that I like the car, yep, very
54:45
much so, um, and it was nice being in Macron's, uh, price governed, uh,
54:55
petrol universe, uh, of France, where it's cheaper there because he's put a
54:59
cap on the, the fuel prices, so, um, Uh, 98 Ron was, um, about 10 percent
55:08
cheaper than it would be over here, even if you were buying it from there.
55:11
Payage services.
55:13
Nice.
55:14
Didn't know that about the French fuel cap holding, uh, holding prices down there.
55:23
So, uh, the next item on the agenda, automatic stop start systems.
55:34
Mm.
55:34
That's another thing that doesn't work on the BMW.
55:38
Well, good.
55:41
I spent some time in a pub with a man from Birmingham who worked for the post office,
55:49
who was a postman, and he said that these vans that they have, that have the
55:54
automatic stop start, it just destroys the vehicles because it, because the thing's
56:00
stopping and starting all the time.
56:03
So by the time it's done about 150, 000 miles, the thing's turned on and switched
56:08
off so many times that all of those components, everything associated with
56:13
the stopping and starting is worn out.
56:17
Well, they're going to ban all that stuff soon anyway, aren't they?
56:19
Because it's all going to be pet, it's going to be electric cars sooner or later.
56:22
Um, so that gets rid of that problem.
56:24
Um, but, uh, they do need to fix the infrastructure problem in terms of
56:28
charging stations before they're able actually to achieve that, uh, Yeah.
56:33
And how long do cars last in Britain?
56:35
I mean, in, in California, when I was learning to be a smog tech, my
56:40
understanding was, was that any law passed in Sacramento, you know, any
56:46
w w would take 18 years to penetrate 80 percent of California's fleet.
56:54
So in other words, you can say no more gas powered cars being made today.
57:01
Right today, and it would still be 2034 before 80 percent on the car of the cars
57:07
on the road were electric if you so so what we're saying is there's still going
57:11
to be many gas powered cars around in 2045 by that measure if Gavin Newsom,
57:19
you know, bans cars as he said he was going to or as California legislature
57:24
is meant to do in in 20 in 2035.
57:30
Yeah.
57:31
Um.
57:32
But the actual actual stops are systems themselves.
57:36
I feel that I suppose they're part of a they're related to these problems
57:42
with diesel particulate filters that people are having with big diesel trucks
57:48
because these big diesel trucks have.
57:50
These DPF systems on them and the canisters get blocked up
57:54
and you have to replace them.
57:56
And if you don't, eventually they clog up and stop the truck altogether.
58:01
So basically all the trucks that have higher miles on them have just had this
58:06
DPF delete because the trucks themselves will do like half a million miles.
58:12
And if it's your job working as like a car hauler, You're going to
58:15
do like 200, 000 miles in a year.
58:18
Well, that'd mean every three months you were having a DPF thing done.
58:21
So they just like, you know, delete them.
58:24
Then the engines make way more power.
58:27
There's actually court cases where the people who sell these deletes.
58:31
Kits being taken to court by the, uh, EPA just, uh, at the moment, I'm sure
58:36
if we Google around, we would, uh, we would find those kinds of stories,
58:40
but, but yeah, um, all emission systems make the mechanics of just making,
58:47
um, cars work much, much harder.
58:50
And it all looks to people who just have to make a living
58:55
with these kinds of tools, like societies conspiring against them.
59:00
Um, and you know, I get the environmental angle, but you know, it's, uh, it's
59:06
tiring and the automatic stop start thing I fear is another one of those kind
59:12
of, uh, one of those kinds of things.
59:14
Hmm.
59:15
I can see the well meaning attitude, but like if it's, uh, smashing
59:20
the cars up quicker than it is.
59:22
Yeah.
59:23
It's you struggle to then make the, uh.
59:25
Justify the other savings, don't you?
59:28
I'm reminded of that grey Sierra that you had that also had an automatic stop,
59:33
but it was like, it was like greeps.
59:36
Half bulimia, you know, where you, uh, where you eat all the
59:39
food and then don't throw up.
59:41
Um, this, this is, is, is the same thing.
59:43
You're Sierra.
59:44
You used to have automatic stop and not start wouldn't it for, for
59:48
a long while in the winter there.
59:50
It's really good at that.
59:52
Yeah, it would, it would, you needed to be in the throttle for it to aisle.
59:55
So you needed a bloody three feet every time you were approaching a roundabout
59:59
or sitting in traffic, especially if you were on a little incline.
1:00:04
Yeah.
1:00:06
The Mitsubishi Mirage.
1:00:09
This is the winner of the John Summers Award for the single cheapest
1:00:18
addition to any vehicle for sale in the United States of America.
1:00:25
Because if you are looking at the rear of a Mitsubishi Mirage,
1:00:30
you will see a square, a camera, tacked on to the trunk lid.
1:00:38
Which must be the backing up camera
1:00:43
and it's clear to me that the conversation went something in the product planning
1:00:48
team went something like We've got to have a backup camera to be sales
1:00:53
saying we've got to have a backup camera to be competitive The Mitsubishi
1:00:57
Mirage must have a backup camera.
1:00:59
We are losing sales 'cause you don't have a backup camera.
1:01:02
And the accountants went, well, we're not giving you any more
1:01:04
money for the backup camera.
1:01:06
And the sales people went, we've gotta have one.
1:01:09
And the, and the, they both went to the engineers, what's the cheapest
1:01:14
way we can get a backup camera?
1:01:17
And the engineers went, well, you can drill a hole in the trunk and tack one in.
1:01:23
And you know, for an extra 3 cents, we can spray it body color.
1:01:31
And nobody in the room said, but that will look absolutely terrible.
1:01:36
It will look worse than if you bought your own kit from an auto factor
1:01:42
store and installed it on the car.
1:01:45
Nobody said that.
1:01:47
And they went ahead.
1:01:48
With this grotesque camera on the, the trunk lid and I, I was following
1:01:57
somebody with one the other day and I thought if I said this to
1:02:00
the owner, they would be confused.
1:02:03
They bought a cheap car and their cheap car had a backup camera and I realized
1:02:08
that what I perceived as ugliness in fact was design minimalism, even design
1:02:17
excellence because a Mitsubishi Mirage.
1:02:20
Buyer does not cover a camera, which has been expensively hidden.
1:02:26
He or she is happy merely with the functionality of being able to reverse
1:02:32
and the basic functional transport that a Mitsubishi Mirage provides.
1:02:41
Does look like a sort of slightly misplaced asshole.
1:02:45
Yeah.
1:02:46
Like when cats walk away from you.
1:02:48
Whole car's a bit like that, really.
1:02:50
Yeah, a little bit.
1:02:56
Took me a while to find that picture, but yeah, no, it does look weird.
1:02:59
It very much does that.
1:03:00
I wanted to pass with a bit of blue tack and gone, yeah, so these few questions,
1:03:04
sort of quick fire questions I've got at the, uh, at the end here, um, what's your
1:03:12
favorite YouTube channel at the moment?
1:03:18
Uh, North Dakota yak angler.
1:03:25
So that yak as in kayak is a guy in North Dakota who goes fishing in his
1:03:30
kayak and he fishes for like small mouth bass and large mouth bass and he
1:03:35
doesn't do any whooping or hollering.
1:03:37
Um, And he catches them and goes, Oh, that's a beautiful
1:03:39
fish, isn't that really nice?
1:03:40
Oh, that's good fight, really got the adrenaline going.
1:03:42
And he lets it go really quickly.
1:03:43
Um, he's just a really chilled out ASMR guy.
1:03:47
About, he just loves his fishing, you know.
1:03:50
And he goes along, and they're about 10 minutes long.
1:03:53
And he's really good at fishing.
1:03:56
And it's a nice relaxing way to spend, sort of, 10 or 15 minutes during the day.
1:03:59
And he uploads about once a week.
1:04:01
And you go, yeah, just watch a bit of that.
1:04:03
He might catch a big pike or something.
1:04:05
And you go, wow.
1:04:06
And then you carry on.
1:04:07
It's nice chilled out.
1:04:08
I was going to say, I didn't realize fishing was a spectator sport, but then
1:04:11
I remember that vacation that we took to Scotland many, many years ago, where you
1:04:17
fished and I sat on the bank and read.
1:04:20
A mystery a book about mysteries of scotland or something if I
1:04:24
recall correctly, but I didn't fish It was a spectator sport for me.
1:04:28
So all right Um, so my favorite youtube channel at the moment is is this chops
1:04:33
garage guy this guy down in barnstaple In uh in north devon there buying and selling
1:04:39
five thousand dollar cars trying to do it honestly And just showing you what?
1:04:45
How it's not that the used car trade is not dishonest because people set out to
1:04:50
be dishonest It's because more often than not the customers are dishonest or there's
1:04:55
just a misunderstanding around what's involved to actually Make a car, you know,
1:05:01
usable and sound and, and, and so on.
1:05:04
So yeah, just an interesting learning for me.
1:05:07
What's your favorite car at the moment at the moment?
1:05:15
Um, what I'm saying, like what we talked about recently of I'm just me of the
1:05:22
moment, it's a totally spontaneous thing.
1:05:27
I've been enjoying the Mrs.
1:05:28
Fiesta ST at the moment.
1:05:30
I've been driving that since I got back.
1:05:31
It's great.
1:05:33
I mean, it looks great.
1:05:34
It's a little pugnacious, little We've been considering keeping it
1:05:38
when we move to France, and therefore having it at home, not selling it
1:05:42
because we own it and I love it.
1:05:43
I don't want to get rid of it.
1:05:44
And then when we come back to the UK, just keep it in storage.
1:05:46
And to the UK, we can use it.
1:05:47
I drove my Fiesta ST over to Copperopolis yesterday.
1:05:52
Um, when I checked the oil at Copperopolis The temperature on
1:05:55
the gauge was 104 degrees and it was too hot to touch the hood.
1:06:00
Like literally, I was like, oh, oh, oh, to touch, touching the, uh, the hood.
1:06:05
It was so, it was so hot.
1:06:07
Um, such a fun little car on, on twisty roads like that.
1:06:11
So not a freeway car.
1:06:13
The suspension's so hard.
1:06:15
Like I was like, have these wheels squared off?
1:06:18
Cause I'd not driven it for a little bit there.
1:06:20
Um.
1:06:21
But no, what a marvelous little car.
1:06:23
Love the Fiesta ST.
1:06:25
But actually my favorite car at the moment is, is that E55.
1:06:29
I've driven that, um, really since I got back over the summer to say 2002, I used
1:06:34
it throughout Pebble did a thousand miles.
1:06:36
I've been driving a lot of cars on and you know, through Pebble Week
1:06:38
going backwards and forwards and doing different stuff when I was around there
1:06:42
and I just love how that car drives.
1:06:44
Um in a previous podcast, I did.
1:06:47
We talked about the Western Automotive Journalist event
1:06:50
and I drove an AMG GT 53 there.
1:06:55
Um that car that car did not impress me.
1:07:02
It was not the same car as mine.
1:07:05
I preferred my old E55 to the modern E53.
1:07:09
Hang on a minute.
1:07:11
Hello Dana.
1:07:12
Hi, I need a bat.
1:07:19
Okay.
1:07:21
I know he wants the Louisville Slugger, which is like brand of bat.
1:07:26
They only have that one in like 26 inch, which is the T ball.
1:07:32
It says T ball on it.
1:07:33
So I think he's going to reject it.
1:07:35
Yeah.
1:07:35
Like I don't think he's going to be happy with it.
1:07:36
Yeah.
1:07:37
But they do have the Rollins.
1:07:39
Which is, you know, his brand of glove and everything else that
1:07:43
is, it says pro model 28 inch.
1:07:47
Yeah.
1:07:50
Do you have any thoughts?
1:07:51
We need to order a Louisville Slugger in a longer length or go somewhere else.
1:07:58
Okay, let me look online and see if it comes that way.
1:08:02
Yeah, online you can go to them in, in each of the, in 26, 27 or
1:08:08
28 inch for about 30 or 40 dollars.
1:08:12
Yeah, that's about the price here.
1:08:14
Yeah.
1:08:15
Yeah.
1:08:15
Okay.
1:08:16
So you can order a Louisville slugger.
1:08:18
Yes.
1:08:19
Okay.
1:08:19
Why don't you do that and print it out and we'll give it from granny
1:08:23
and granddad and we'll just order it.
1:08:24
Okay.
1:08:25
That's what he really wants.
1:08:26
Okay.
1:08:27
Yeah.
1:08:27
I know that's what he really wants.
1:08:28
Yeah.
1:08:29
He's not going to want the right.
1:08:30
He's got to have the Louisville slugger.
1:08:32
I think so.
1:08:33
Yeah.
1:08:33
Okay.
1:08:33
All right.
1:08:34
Can you do that then?
1:08:35
Cause I just raced over here and now I have to go get my haircut.
1:08:39
Okay, but can you do it and like print it?
1:08:42
Yeah, I'm still I'm still recording the pod at the moment.
1:08:46
Okay Sorry, is there anything else your parents would want
1:08:48
me to get him from here?
1:08:50
I'm sure he would want like a baseball backpack or something, but no, no,
1:08:55
don't worry about that So they were like we feel like the bat's not enough
1:08:59
And and I was like, no, I feel like it is because it's so important to ollie.
1:09:03
Yeah, he really wants it.
1:09:04
Okay Okay.
1:09:05
All right.
1:09:06
I'm gonna get out of here then.
1:09:07
All right.
1:09:08
Okay.
1:09:08
Love you.
1:09:08
I love you.
1:09:09
Dana.
1:09:09
Bye So, um, what's your favorite bike right now?
1:09:17
Hmm.
1:09:18
That's a good question.
1:09:21
Um, I watched an old 44 Teeth video, where, uh, Al was ta Fagan
1:09:27
was taking around that Kawasaki, um, uh, in in a in a in a gap in
1:09:33
between Superbike races or something.
1:09:35
He took the Kawasaki, what is it, K not the KZ1.
1:09:39
The, um, the one that they did the, uh, the 240 horsepower supercharged
1:09:44
one, whatever that one was.
1:09:45
H2.
1:09:46
Um.
1:09:47
Yeah, H2.
1:09:48
He took that round at one of the laps, and then a rev bomb
1:09:51
going down the straight on it.
1:09:53
Um, that thing's a beast.
1:09:56
Um, I sort of love how, it just, OTT it is in every way.
1:10:01
Superb looking cut bike.
1:10:02
Um, It definitely looked the part in Top Gun.
1:10:06
In this Top Gun Maverick movie, the bike so looked the part.
1:10:11
He rides it without a helmet.
1:10:12
Oh, he's got one of those, I haven't seen that yet.
1:10:14
He rides it without a helmet, of course, but he totally looks the part.
1:10:17
Of course.
1:10:18
Yeah.
1:10:19
Um.
1:10:20
My favorite bike at the moment is, um, do you remember when we were at Goodwood?
1:10:25
Um, I picked up the, this, the flyer for the Bimotora Tezi H2 and at the
1:10:33
time I wasn't sure about it at all, but I've kept the flyer and I've kept on
1:10:37
looking at it, especially the Tricolore.
1:10:42
Oh, yeah, yeah.
1:10:44
Yeah, yeah.
1:10:45
No, I remember it.
1:10:46
Yeah.
1:10:46
Really?
1:10:46
A bit front heavy, but super.
1:10:48
Yeah.
1:10:49
That at the time I wasn't sure, but at the time I was busy being overwhelmed and
1:10:54
cynical about seeing a Porsche's which.
1:10:57
You know, I, I just know what a fabulous looking motorcycle and because
1:11:02
it's been sitting on my this that the flyers been sitting on my desk.
1:11:06
It's been, uh, it's been obsessing me.
1:11:08
Um, now, um,
1:11:17
what are you reading?
1:11:21
Uh, I haven't been reading anything at the moment, to be honest,
1:11:25
because I've been writing and if I, it's the same spare time.
1:11:32
I most recently read, um, an article in Haggerty.
1:11:38
Um, about, um, this was my morning, you know, toilet reading about how the
1:11:46
Countach and it wasn't What I was thinking was this is the Lamborghini Countach
1:11:52
becoming like accepted as a collector car.
1:11:55
It never used to be accepted as a collector car.
1:11:58
Now it's accepted as a collector car because it's sitting in this magazine.
1:12:02
And you know, the previous article was talking about Lincolns and,
1:12:05
and had some quote from Frank Lloyd Wright, the great architect.
1:12:10
And then, you know, you flip on a few pages and there's artsy
1:12:13
photos of Lamborghini Countaches with, with, with the doors up.
1:12:18
Um, And I just feel that's crazy.
1:12:20
Cause even five years ago, they were far too Honda civic type are it's
1:12:28
ugly with those crazy, silly wings and doors, you know, that was what, um, the
1:12:34
Lamborghini Countach was certainly 10 years ago, probably still five years ago.
1:12:40
And now it's crossed over.
1:12:42
So I just thought that that was interesting.
1:12:45
And perhaps that perhaps that's the story of Pebble.
1:12:48
I said there were loads of supercars at Pebble.
1:12:50
Perhaps that's the main story for Pebble.
1:12:55
Look at that.
1:12:55
We've talked for our time here now, and we never once mentioned what car won Pebble
1:13:01
Beach or anything about what you actually saw whilst you were touring around France.
1:13:07
Marvelous.
1:13:08
Thank you for your time, Mark.
1:13:10
My pleasure.
1:13:11
Take care.
1:13:12
Bye.
1:13:23
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Vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom.