Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Go Out and Enjoy The Open Road While You Still Can

Transcript

Go Out and Enjoy The Open Road While You Still Can · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  John Summers is the motoring historian.
• 0:02
  He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept
• 0:07
  sports bike rider hailing from California.
• 0:10
  He collects cars and bikes built with plenty of cheap and
• 0:12
  fast and not much reliable.
• 0:15
  On his show.
• 0:15
  He gets together with various co-hosts to talk about new and
• 0:18
  old cars driving motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.
• 0:36
  Good day.
• 0:37
  Good morning, good afternoon.
• 0:39
  It is John Summers the motoring historian and after a six month absence, I'm sure
• 0:44
  you audience members were missing him.
• 0:46
  We have Mark Gamy with us after out of a long, dark COVID tunnel.
• 0:52
  Mark.
• 0:53
  Yeah, I am.
• 0:54
  It's that a big hello to the listener.
• 0:56
  Lovely to be back.
• 0:57
  Yeah.
• 0:57
  Yeah.
• 0:58
  It's Eric editing, he's the listener.
• 1:01
  Nice, nice to virtually not meet him.
• 1:04
  So given we're now into 2025, what better time do review of 2024?
• 1:11
  And given all my episodes are backed up like a sort of constipated bloke
• 1:17
  who's eaten too much curry last night, kind of, kind of thing.
• 1:20
  Um, it probably won't be released until February.
• 1:23
  So, you know, everything we say will be completely out of date because we're
• 1:27
  always so topical and punctual and, and, you know, on form with it all.
• 1:33
  So a review of 2024.
• 1:36
  And as you know, gamy, I always love to begin where in recent pods I've
• 1:40
  taken to beginning with, uh, with a little story about an activity
• 1:44
  that I've, uh, I've participated in.
• 1:47
  Um, so I'm gonna begin this time.
• 1:49
  And help you, uh, settle into, to, uh, to the mood again.
• 1:53
  Um, we had a story about that black Honda CBR race bike.
• 1:57
  That, that I have.
• 1:59
  Did you know it's back from the dead?
• 2:01
  Uh, only 'cause you mentioned it to me yesterday, but No, I didn't know
• 2:04
  formally, if you know what I mean.
• 2:05
  Yeah, yeah.
• 2:06
  It's, it's sat in the corner of, by the filing cabinet for probably
• 2:10
  about five years without even moving.
• 2:13
  And then last summer, Ollie was like, yeah, it'll never go.
• 2:16
  And I went, it'll just start on the button.
• 2:18
  He went, it won't, and I went, it will, and wheeled it out.
• 2:21
  And guess what?
• 2:22
  I never would've said that if it wasn't a Honda, but it went.
• 2:25
  Right.
• 2:26
  It, it fired up, it ran like shit on the bad fuel, but like it ran,
• 2:31
  you know, which is a lot to be said for a bike that's on carbs, right?
• 2:33
  It is a carbs hell yeah.
• 2:35
  Carbs bike.
• 2:36
  Although I do find that these race carbs do better with the ethanol
• 2:40
  fuel than the non race carbs.
• 2:42
  But look, I'm not gonna fall down that rat hole.
• 2:44
  I'm just gonna tell you the story so we can get into the rest of
• 2:48
  the, uh, of the episode here.
• 2:50
  And the story is this, uh, is, so the CBR works again, it had a
• 2:54
  bunch of fatty little things on it.
• 2:56
  And John called me and was like, I've kind of spent three days on this, which means
• 2:59
  that you know the bills I. A little bit more than I was ex probably anticipating.
• 3:05
  Right.
• 3:05
  But, you know, the reason I pay him to do it is 'cause the
• 3:08
  bloke does such thorough work.
• 3:09
  So, you know, if he tells you it's gonna be four days, you just suck
• 3:12
  your teeth and wish he bought a better example in the first place.
• 3:15
  Or, or, or you don't, do you?
• 3:17
  I like buying the wrecks and I like supporting him in his business of, you
• 3:23
  know, looking after motorcycles and flipping them in bloody San Francisco.
• 3:26
  I, I, I love the way that he's able to, uh, to do that and, uh.
• 3:31
  It's kind of like, uh, yeah, so I, I'm, anyway, so I'm, I'm happy to support
• 3:35
  him and of course it means that when you throw the leg over the bike, you also,
• 3:38
  you know that it's gonna work properly.
• 3:40
  'cause he's thrown the leg over it before and has ridden it and
• 3:42
  he is gonna ride it not around the block in bloody second gear.
• 3:46
  He is actually going to, to ride it.
• 3:48
  So, um, so anyway, so this is how I justify it anyway, so I paid him to, uh,
• 3:53
  bring the, the CBR back from the dead.
• 3:55
  And he called me and was like, ah, dude, you know, it kind of needs
• 3:59
  tires and, you know, I would feel better if it had the tires and I
• 4:04
  won't bill you any extra time for it.
• 4:06
  It'll just bill all part of the three days and that'll be completely done.
• 4:11
  So, you know, at that point he's like, I've probably spent a week
• 4:13
  working on this bike, but I don't want to charge you any more money.
• 4:16
  I feel bad.
• 4:17
  Anyway, so he, he rode it over and dropped it off, and then he went.
• 4:20
  This bike's had work done, hasn't it?
• 4:22
  And I went, yeah, I think it had ca it's had race cams in it.
• 4:26
  'cause I've got the original cams and he's like, yeah, but it's more than that.
• 4:29
  It's like, it's a full race exhaust, which has been tuned and like, I don't
• 4:33
  know what the carbs are, but they're clearly 'cause it, it really pulls
• 4:38
  well now I've ridden, uh, I ride the same route on my little test route.
• 4:43
  And, uh, there's a point where you can open the throttle properly and, uh, at
• 4:47
  that point where you open the throttle properly, I know how a liter bike feels
• 4:51
  versus there's a seven 50, I'm telling you, gamy for the first, like up to about.
• 4:57
  You know, 60 miles an hour.
• 5:00
  It is like a liter bike.
• 5:02
  There's something about the cams.
• 5:04
  It's got a big sprocket on the rear, something like that.
• 5:07
  It is a scouted cat.
• 5:10
  Uh, any legal speeds, right?
• 5:13
  It's a 600 though.
• 5:14
  Yeah.
• 5:14
  And only you know, only in theory on the track.
• 5:18
  Do you notice that it's not got the umph of a liter bike?
• 5:21
  Do you notice that the mid range is a little flat in comparison?
• 5:25
  That's the first time I've ever felt that, obviously in a track scenario, you
• 5:29
  know, professional driver, uh, only right?
• 5:33
  Yeah.
• 5:33
  It, it certainly wasn't immediately after, as I first came up the hill
• 5:37
  with a throttle cracked open, and as I came over the crest of the hill,
• 5:39
  there was a big gust of wind and it picked up the front of the bike and
• 5:42
  pointed me right at the scenery.
• 5:44
  Oh, man.
• 5:45
  It woke me up.
• 5:46
  It woke me up.
• 5:47
  I literally, because I had the throttle open and all the weight was on the
• 5:51
  rear tire, it just moved the front of the bike across the road like a
• 5:55
  pencil on, uh, my word, love the sport.
• 6:09
  Uh, you gotta love a sport bike.
• 6:10
  It is a proper hit in a way that, you know, anything with doors kind
• 6:15
  of can't be anything with doors is just not thrilling in, in this.
• 6:20
  No, in the same way.
• 6:21
  And this is, this is one of the things about, um, I've, I'm lucky enough
• 6:27
  to have ridden in a proper high boy hot rod for banger, but like open
• 6:32
  fender 29 Ford Roads to pick up.
• 6:36
  Uh, you know what it's like 'cause you've driven a cater.
• 6:38
  The appeal of hot rods is the same as the appeal of, of caters in every way.
• 6:43
  Yeah.
• 6:43
  The simplicity, the basic, the honing the form and plus the fact that you are
• 6:49
  completely in touch with, with the car.
• 6:52
  You know, you, you look down, you see the front wheel, you place it.
• 6:56
  As you turn, you know that that's, yeah, that is epic.
• 7:00
  So the CBR lives again, and, uh, I very much, uh, I very much enjoyed it.
• 7:06
  As, you know, we really cater to our sponsors here.
• 7:09
  Yes.
• 7:09
  And one of the sponsors, which if you go to the motioning podcast website,
• 7:13
  you'll see that Eric's really gone to town with the sponsorship is these
• 7:17
  guys zeto who do these LED bulbs.
• 7:22
  And you might like Eagle Eye listeners.
• 7:25
  It's probably just a fucking AI tool doing a scrape nowadays, isn't it?
• 7:28
  Yeah, it's certainly the AI tool will remember that in an earlier episode
• 7:33
  we talked about ATO and I said, you know, I had a real need for them.
• 7:36
  And I told that story about crashing the Mustang off the road in the desert after a
• 7:41
  conference of yours in, uh, Vegas, uh, one day, probably fucking 15 years ago now.
• 7:47
  But let's not worry about trying to hang a time on it.
• 7:50
  So since then I've wanted to fit proper lights.
• 7:52
  These Xito guys, they're proper lights I watched Furious driving.
• 7:56
  He fitted them to his myta, or the Beard and slipper brigade.
• 8:00
  Were like, those lights are too bright.
• 8:02
  So I immediately thought, I've gotta fit into my Mustang.
• 8:06
  So, and you might remember I was gonna do this big challenge with them where I was
• 8:09
  gonna, you know, test the lights before and test the lights after and all of that.
• 8:14
  Well, it took me ages to organize that, but eventually I did it and
• 8:17
  I took a photograph of the lights, as you know, the light on my, the
• 8:22
  Mustang's headlights on Dip Beam.
• 8:24
  And then I took the Mustangs headlights on High Bee and I showed Ollie the photos
• 8:28
  and was like, can you tell the difference?
• 8:30
  And he went, no.
• 8:31
  Is this like some kind of spot the difference?
• 8:33
  And I went, well, one's high beam and one's dip beam.
• 8:35
  And he went, Hmm.
• 8:36
  Now it may have been because I had the car pointing down the
• 8:38
  hill and there were street lights.
• 8:40
  But the point is that that car is not a good base case.
• 8:44
  The lights are shit on it, is what I'm saying.
• 8:46
  And I was bemoaning that to the producer.
• 8:49
  I feel like I'm the two.
• 8:49
  Ron, do you remember how Ro Ronnie Corbert always used to do?
• 8:54
  Oh, the producer I was chatting with the producer.
• 8:57
  The producer said to me, he said, Ronnie, he said first name terms, you see?
• 9:03
  He, he, he said, uh, I feared the zeto bulbs.
• 9:07
  They're good.
• 9:08
  I put him in my wife's Jetta or pass out or something and they're, they're good.
• 9:12
  He's like a VW Audi dude.
• 9:13
  He went, they're good.
• 9:14
  They're better than the factory one.
• 9:15
  So there you have it listeners, listener.
• 9:19
  There's a genuine test and a, a genuine endorsement and genuinely something
• 9:25
  that a bloke recommended you in the pub rather than these unreliable
• 9:30
  sources like Yelp or whatever.
• 9:32
  Yeah, that makes sense.
• 9:33
  Yeah.
• 9:33
  So there's a discount code.
• 9:36
  I think the code is motoring historian, but I'm, I'm not sure.
• 9:39
  It might be motoring history mightn't it.
• 9:41
  I should have known that before we came on air, but, but not to worry.
• 9:44
  Edit in here.
• 9:47
  The code is motoring historian, all in capitals motoring historian.
• 9:58
  At World Music Gamy.
• 9:59
  What?
• 10:00
  What music?
• 10:00
  This episode, you should do some banging trance.
• 10:16
  Excellent, excellent.
• 10:17
  Alright.
• 10:19
  Send me a couple of samples and I'll do them.
• 10:32
  Move on to, you know, matters of moment as they used to call it the
• 10:36
  motor magazines, which, you know, it's like quite a good pun, isn't it?
• 10:40
  I guess I could have that section.
• 10:42
  I might just, I've subconsciously thought of this section as, as that which is,
• 10:46
  you know, which you might read as, you know, depressing news about motoring, you
• 10:51
  know, so I've two areas to, to talk about.
• 10:56
  One in Britain, average speed checks are fucking everywhere.
• 11:02
  Suck balls.
• 11:03
  Yeah, yeah, definitely.
• 11:05
  And I, I add other examples, but I'm not gonna dwell on this.
• 11:09
  Driving, dying A slow death by asphyxiation, which I feel that it is.
• 11:13
  I'm gonna move to my next bullet, which is this.
• 11:16
  I could be mad about it, but I'm just not.
• 11:19
  Because you can still go out and find it.
• 11:22
  And I feel like I personally am enjoying motoring more than ever illustrated
• 11:28
  by my silly story about the CBRI.
• 11:31
  I mean, yeah, I'm enjoying it more and you can go out and look for it.
• 11:36
  And I don't mean the, the, you need to, especially on Sports Bus.
• 11:40
  I used to feel the need to ride really fast and I just don't anymore.
• 11:43
  Now I can really enjoy them just going out and, and staying
• 11:49
  within, within speed limits.
• 11:51
  So I feel like I am enjoying motioning more than ever.
• 11:55
  I feel like you can still go out and find it.
• 11:58
  You said earlier you could, if you get up early enough,
• 12:01
  you, you are absolutely right.
• 12:02
  Or if you're ready to do stuff at night, and that's where org zeto, you know,
• 12:07
  when the lights come in again or where my original desire to have better lights
• 12:11
  came from because you really can go out and cover some miles at night and it, and
• 12:16
  you know, it is easier because there's not other distractions for your eyes.
• 12:20
  You are just looking for light.
• 12:21
  I, I feel like there's something in that.
• 12:23
  Well, for real.
• 12:24
  Yeah.
• 12:24
  And, and look, I mean, I, it's, I think again, it's, it's looking at
• 12:28
  things in a slightly orthodox way.
• 12:29
  I mean, it, it's forcing people out of cars.
• 12:31
  Look, you know, on the one hand, does it make any sense for 90 something percent of
• 12:36
  journeys to be when you leave the house, do you take four suitcases with you?
• 12:42
  You, you don't.
• 12:42
  But you know, you take three spare seats and a massive boot and a tin body
• 12:47
  wherever you go, if you get in a car like that doesn't make a lot of sense.
• 12:50
  So I absolutely can understand trying to get us into smaller cars
• 12:54
  or, but again, follow the logic through, make people ride motorbikes.
• 12:59
  Yeah.
• 12:59
  And then there's way more room and way more deeper.
• 13:01
  That's, that's the antagonism.
• 13:03
  Isn't that, that, that there is with cars at the moment between wanting
• 13:08
  to be eco, but wanting to be safe.
• 13:12
  Because wanting to be safe.
• 13:14
  That's why a Rivian weighs 8,000 pounds rather than a range road from
• 13:18
  the 1970s that only weighs 4,000.
• 13:21
  Yeah, yeah.
• 13:22
  It does lead to massive fuck you electric SUV bullshit, which is just Apex been
• 13:28
  backwards and forwards about electric stuff since the the pod started.
• 13:32
  I do feel like it's, it's, and partly what I wanted to do with this pod
• 13:36
  is document the rise of electric.
• 13:39
  Mm-hmm.
• 13:39
  So, on that theme, I feel like.
• 13:42
  We can, and you know, this is meant to be like a year review, so
• 13:45
  let's review sort of state of the nation of, of, of EVs in, in 2025.
• 13:51
  Hmm.
• 13:51
  Or beginning of 2025.
• 13:53
  I think we can say that these big heavy SUV things are just
• 13:59
  kind of, of the last century.
• 14:00
  They're, they're just not really good design.
• 14:03
  And this next generation of EVs that, that are coming where there's more emphasis
• 14:11
  on lightness and where we are doing better with battery design and where.
• 14:18
  Everyone's comfortable with regen one pedal braking.
• 14:22
  So I feel like, you know, one pedal driving, you know, you accelerate and
• 14:26
  you break by modulating the same pedal.
• 14:28
  As we move, as we move towards that, I feel like, you know, we've, we
• 14:32
  talked before about the Citro Ollie and the Citron ami, which are two
• 14:37
  sort of concept D cars, that one of which the Ami, you know, made,
• 14:42
  made production like city cars.
• 14:45
  Yeah.
• 14:45
  I, I feel like we can see now what EVs are gonna be like and how we've
• 14:52
  carried a lot of the problems of vehicles of the last century forward
• 14:57
  into the new, this new design.
• 14:59
  Oh, agreed.
• 14:59
  You're gonna have like electric small cars that produce no
• 15:05
  emissions at the point of use.
• 15:07
  Makes a lot of sense.
• 15:09
  You can charge them up at home, which, you know, admittedly at least
• 15:13
  a third of the UK can't do because you have to run a cable across
• 15:16
  the pavement or things like that.
• 15:17
  Or you're in a flat.
• 15:18
  So it's not for everyone.
• 15:20
  But yeah, I mean that, that sort of thing, a local city
• 15:23
  runs that absolutely fabulous.
• 15:24
  That I would be my first choice for that sort of stuff now.
• 15:27
  But that's not what people do.
• 15:29
  They, they get defensive, they want to have the same thing.
• 15:31
  They wanna have no anxiety ranges.
• 15:32
  They want to have the kids in it, therefore they want be up high.
• 15:35
  'cause it makes them feel safer.
• 15:36
  Therefore they need a bigger battery and they want some luxury and therefore
• 15:39
  they need a bigger battery and then they want the heating on in the winter.
• 15:42
  And so they need an even bigger battery.
• 15:44
  And the thing weighs three tons and is fucking five meters long.
• 15:48
  I mean, it's, yeah, and, and I tell you, you get, you get addicted to the big gulp.
• 15:54
  Really quickly.
• 15:55
  I mean, I, I, as I was doing a school run this morning in the tundra
• 16:00
  passing the fiesta parked up at the curb, not, haven't moved for a week.
• 16:04
  I'm like, yeah, why am I using this?
• 16:06
  Not that for, for the school run here?
• 16:08
  Well, because I want the wide leather seat.
• 16:12
  I want the automatic transmission.
• 16:16
  I can take the dog if I'm trying to change gear.
• 16:20
  So the fiesta sits at the curb.
• 16:22
  Yeah.
• 16:22
  But the problem with that is, what you've just given me is a personal
• 16:25
  subjective justification for taking the mega machinery rather than
• 16:30
  the already too big machinery.
• 16:32
  'cause you're taking three spare seats and you only need to take your kid to school.
• 16:36
  Do you know what I mean?
• 16:39
  Subjectively and therefore.
• 16:41
  The planet's gonna burn.
• 16:42
  That's the nature of it, which is why governments try and call back in no waste.
• 16:47
  Well, no, because bloody San Francisco has forced you to be progressive.
• 16:51
  They close the Great Highway, which is my school run.
• 16:54
  Mm-hmm.
• 16:54
  Which for the record, I don't just use four times a day.
• 16:58
  I often use six or eight times a day if I'm in and out on motorcycles as well.
• 17:03
  'cause it's there.
• 17:04
  And back on the school run, that's the base four.
• 17:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 17:07
  Pick up and drop off.
• 17:08
  And then if I go out and do anything, just normal errands,
• 17:13
  not necessarily with a car.
• 17:14
  If I go out to the post office and then I ride a motorcycle, I'm gonna have been
• 17:18
  up and down the Great Highway eight times and it's been closed and turned into a
• 17:23
  park and it was voted on by a majority of 55% of the residents of San Francisco.
• 17:29
  In other words, the people living in the city, the 20 somethings got a
• 17:34
  ballot that said, do you want a park?
• 17:37
  In another part of the city that you can visit maybe once a month.
• 17:40
  Yeah.
• 17:40
  On the outside or not.
• 17:42
  And of course those of us in the neighborhood were like, ah, ah, like up
• 17:44
  in arms and everyone voted and you know, but no, we were outvoted by the people
• 17:49
  whose, you know, I'm like, you know, it's like, I feel like being like Marina Green
• 17:54
  and Barca, let's turn them into a park.
• 17:57
  Why not?
• 17:57
  Thus on people on our side of the city wouldn't fuck up our lives,
• 18:01
  wouldn't fuck up our commute, would it?
• 18:03
  There's an article in the New York Times that talked about how this
• 18:06
  wasn't about the closure of a road.
• 18:08
  This was a de debate between Urbanite San Franciscans and
• 18:11
  Suburbanite San Franciscans, and it showed how the city was changing.
• 18:16
  Meanwhile, it passed, but there's a move to remove the councilman.
• 18:21
  Who pushed it through.
• 18:23
  Who in the district?
• 18:24
  Yeah.
• 18:25
  People that like review gamy.
• 18:27
  My response to it is to try and get electric bikes.
• 18:33
  I've been looking at this free Go mountain bike.
• 18:37
  It qualifies as a mountain bike.
• 18:39
  It's got pedals, but in, in eco mode it only does 28 miles an hour.
• 18:44
  But in like normal mode, it'll do 50 miles an hour.
• 18:47
  I mean, I've tried one 50 mile an hour mo push bike, that's quite a
• 18:50
  lot because, you know, are you gonna remember to like, put leathers on?
• 18:54
  No, but no, you wanna have like summing on because like, going down at 30 pretty bad.
• 19:00
  Anyway, dude, I, I don't think I'm gonna buy one.
• 19:03
  Okay.
• 19:03
  I, I keep looking at them.
• 19:05
  I don't think I'm gonna buy one because I just can't see, every time I see somebody
• 19:10
  on one, he's pulling a giant wheelie.
• 19:13
  It usually, it's, there's always a he wait, it's always a he and he's always
• 19:18
  between the ages of like 15 and 20.
• 19:21
  Right.
• 19:21
  And if you look at the reviews of electric bikes, the people are like, on the
• 19:27
  sidewalk, off the sidewalk, you know?
• 19:29
  Whoa.
• 19:29
  I went a bit wide there as they go completely wide on a t junction in the way
• 19:34
  that I described happening with these bold junctions in, uh, in, in San Francisco.
• 19:39
  So, yeah.
• 19:40
  So anyway, um, uh, I, so my response to the closure of the Great Highway is to be
• 19:46
  like, you know what, and similarly I told you about these fucking cycling lanes.
• 19:50
  I'm like, all right, I'm gonna get something where I can go in.
• 19:53
  The cycling lanes.
• 19:54
  I'm not gonna, I I'm not about fighting the system.
• 19:56
  I'm about, you know, this is, this is the mantra of the year, Dana.
• 20:00
  It's like we have a mantra for each year.
• 20:01
  Last year it was trying new things.
• 20:03
  This year it's go with the flow.
• 20:05
  So I'm just going with the flow.
• 20:06
  I'm not getting bent outta shape about sharing the road with no fucking cyclists.
• 20:10
  I'm not getting bent outta shape about that.
• 20:12
  No, I, I'm, you know, taking my therapy dog with me and he's sitting
• 20:16
  on my lap so I don't have road rage.
• 20:18
  Fair enough.
• 20:18
  But look, right, we were talking about EV shit, right?
• 20:22
  Mm. Do you know these people at Grider, the people who are like
• 20:26
  ee building, like the network of charging stations in England?
• 20:31
  No.
• 20:31
  Oh, Gary, this is Epic.
• 20:34
  There's two brothers and they're called Coddington and Heston Harper.
• 20:40
  Of course.
• 20:40
  They're, what wouldn't they be?
• 20:42
  That's right.
• 20:43
  Their mom and dad named them after service stations, and now they're rolling out
• 20:50
  electric charging to those same service station Coddington and Heston Harper.
• 20:56
  You cannot make this shit up.
• 20:59
  If it was in a novel, it would feel like catch 22 and you'd be like, where's major?
• 21:05
  Major?
• 21:06
  Remember in track 22, I feel it's like, yeah, yeah.
• 21:10
  I'm just looking up how much they're charging just to, uh, to see.
• 21:13
  Yeah.
• 21:14
  It's like basically more expensive than gas.
• 21:17
  Yeah.
• 21:18
  Well, well, I, I, I, I, I'm not accusing Coddington and Heston Harper.
• 21:24
  Of, of anything here.
• 21:26
  I did just write down around this green snake oil salesman.
• 21:32
  I'm not accusing Heston, I'm not having it.
• 21:35
  I mean, to be fair to them, I did read an article, I think I might have
• 21:38
  mentioned it while back saying that, you know, Exeter services, which you and I
• 21:42
  both know well, was having to put in, in order to serve the expected usage
• 21:47
  of electric car charging stations at the services they were gonna need to
• 21:51
  put in some an a feed from the power station or the nearest, like put node.
• 21:58
  Into that, that was big enough to serve half the city.
• 22:02
  So it needed to be that amount of additional power to the service
• 22:05
  station just to provide for expected use as it goes forward.
• 22:09
  So I can understand if you've gotta pay for that sort of infrastructure
• 22:12
  to put that sort of shit in place, you need to make your money back.
• 22:14
  Yeah.
• 22:15
  That's economics.
• 22:15
  That's how that shit works.
• 22:17
  And you'll put it in if there's demand for it, but that doesn't fly for the
• 22:21
  one third of the people in the UK who.
• 22:23
  Can't charge a home, you ain't gonna ever convince those people to move
• 22:26
  off of gas or diesel if it's more expensive to run and you have all the
• 22:31
  inconvenience of like having to only find electric charging stations and it
• 22:34
  taking 20 minutes even when that longer period is fixed, which it isn't yet.
• 22:39
  You ain't gonna convince people like that.
• 22:41
  So it can't be like this unfortunately.
• 22:43
  But I'm sure Coddington has got in hand.
• 22:45
  I think Coddington only gives a shit about Feather in his own nest.
• 22:49
  Those kind of business people are usually like that own.
• 22:52
  I'm not disparaging Coddington or Indeed Heston particularly.
• 22:57
  No.
• 22:58
  Do you reckon that's what they were called Stringham or Union Street?
• 23:04
  Do you reckon it was um, they were conceived in these service stations?
• 23:07
  Do you think that's what it is?
• 23:08
  Dude, funny you should say that.
• 23:10
  Google up this woman Chris, she staus.
• 23:14
  How am I spelling Chris?
• 23:16
  She like it sounds Chris shell this.
• 23:25
  Elle spouse, STAI found.
• 23:29
  Yeah.
• 23:29
  She looks American.
• 23:30
  Oh, she is turbo American.
• 23:32
  She's as American as a fucking red Camaro.
• 23:35
  Her mom went into labor in a shell station and the gas attendant
• 23:41
  Chris helped our mom give birth.
• 23:44
  Chris Shell.
• 23:45
  You see, it's clever like that.
• 23:47
  Oh, that is that.
• 23:48
  I wouldn't have got there.
• 23:54
  She's beating me already.
• 23:55
  I'm behind.
• 23:57
  Yeah.
• 23:58
  She's one of the people who had to flee the Palisades fires.
• 24:01
  Apparently I learned this morning.
• 24:03
  Wow.
• 24:04
  I'll probably never, never let her up.
• 24:05
  Let the record show that the bloke that bullied my wife in the office
• 24:10
  from his Oak paneled office in Pacific Palisades let the record show that said
• 24:15
  fellow was at CES, flew to CES with a house and came home from CES without
• 24:23
  a house or a wood paneled office.
• 24:25
  And I don't wanna say that there was a sense of karma for me, but there was,
• 24:30
  you know who you are, sir. Life is filled with little ups and downs, isn't it?
• 24:34
  It it is, isn't it?
• 24:35
  And, and I feel bad for his family.
• 24:37
  He's, he's got kids for sure, for sure.
• 24:39
  Got kids younger than, than, than the boy, Lord knows.
• 24:42
  His wife has to put up with him all the time.
• 24:44
  Just not just some of the time, like his work colleagues.
• 24:47
  So, you know, guess she's probably got a shitty end of the stick than anybody.
• 24:50
  And now she's not even got a nice house, so, you know.
• 24:53
  Yep.
• 24:53
  But, so there's lots to be mad or sad about, but I'm not, I'm still really
• 24:58
  enjoying the motoring experience.
• 25:00
  And, and I, my next bullet point was that if this pod has a point,
• 25:05
  it is to go out and enjoy the open road while you still can.
• 25:10
  Definitely.
• 25:10
  And to that end, mark Gammy, I have two quick five questions for you.
• 25:15
  Here they come.
• 25:16
  What was your best drive of the year?
• 25:18
  I think, to be honest, my best drive of the year was to and fro in creek.
• 25:25
  Along the little mountain road, dodging the goats, having gone
• 25:28
  out and raided the local, I don't know what they actually are.
• 25:31
  I keep wanting to call it a spa.
• 25:32
  I'm not sure it was a spa, but if you know it's spas in the uk, it had a very
• 25:36
  similar sort of independent co-op strike, stroke spa kind of supermarket feel.
• 25:42
  But driving from the little villa we rented across to them back dodging the
• 25:45
  goats and the massive, massive comedy style drop offs off the edge of the
• 25:50
  boat was the most, uh, memorable 'cause it was just so beautiful and so quiet.
• 25:54
  And we'd drive along.
• 25:55
  With the windows down and it being lovely and sunny and then here and
• 25:58
  there randomly on the radio one.
• 26:00
  I think once we got a random ac DC track on the radio and
• 26:03
  I was a very happy gentleman.
• 26:05
  Just toggling along at 35 or 40 miles an hour and the I go, that's I think
• 26:09
  episode 28 cretinous cars sent from God.
• 26:14
  Thank you for, for that and what my best drive of the year.
• 26:19
  I've gotta say the most memorable drive for, for me this year was after
• 26:25
  all the futzing around not buying a duly ram and buying that tundra the
• 26:33
  whole week of that where I drove to Sacramento and back looking at one truck.
• 26:38
  Which is just so fucking hot.
• 26:40
  This was a all black truck and gamy, when I tried to lie underneath this truck to
• 26:45
  see whether or not I'd been hit the tarmac was too fucking hot for me to lie on.
• 26:50
  So I looked at that truck and then the next day I looked at this other one
• 26:55
  down in Clovis, the one that, that I bought, and then the day after that.
• 26:59
  So I, I bought it, stayed over, paid for it the next day, drove home,
• 27:03
  then the next day got up, got a trailer and drove back to Clovis to
• 27:09
  load the Mercedes up to drive home.
• 27:11
  And the most memorable part about that was obviously when you're, when
• 27:17
  you finally got it loaded up and you know, the alarm's not going off.
• 27:22
  'cause at first, every time I moved I, the fucking movement
• 27:25
  alarm on the Mercedes went off.
• 27:26
  And Mercedes of that era, they've like, uh.
• 27:29
  Switch on the dash, and I just kept on forgetting to do the, like towing
• 27:35
  switch so the alarm didn't go off, like the alarm disabling, uh, uh, thing.
• 27:39
  Anyway, so, uh, yeah, super memorable.
• 27:43
  Uh, with it.
• 27:44
  Super, uh, most memorable, a of it was 1 52, which is like a big long climb.
• 27:51
  Like on the climb with the Mercedes on the back.
• 27:53
  Dude, it just pulled fine on the descent, it juggled gears and didn't
• 27:59
  need me to do anything at all.
• 28:02
  I didn't need to touch the brake.
• 28:03
  It just juggle gears without making the motor screen at all.
• 28:08
  And you're just like, wow, nice.
• 28:11
  Satisfactory, wow, this, this thing can, can, can, and it makes
• 28:16
  you think that, that, you know, you could load it up with shit.
• 28:19
  Like you could have two sports bikes on the back of it and you could have
• 28:22
  a covered trailer with a race car in and it would have no fucking problem.
• 28:27
  It would've no problem.
• 28:28
  The height alone means the sandy loose surfaces, curbs, all of that.
• 28:35
  It can do that.
• 28:36
  No problem in two wheel drive.
• 28:38
  There's never been a time where I've been like, oh, better engage four wheel drive.
• 28:42
  I've done like two, 3000 miles now.
• 28:44
  Cool.
• 28:44
  Favorite car of the year?
• 28:46
  Favorite car of the year?
• 28:48
  My green Mustang.
• 28:49
  We went to Mexico and I mean, it just reminds you how lucky you are.
• 28:56
  To somewhere where you can have awesome cars.
• 28:58
  Yeah.
• 28:59
  I, I, I would say I'm time and point about the awesome cars as well, right?
• 29:06
  The, the, all of the new ones, they're just so not desirable to me.
• 29:10
  They're just so not desirable To me, it's, it's like now
• 29:14
  they're like, I'm not, you know,
• 29:19
  postman.
• 29:20
  Well, he better defend you, dude.
• 29:22
  He is.
• 29:23
  The other day we were walking, he saw a postman on the street and he's
• 29:26
  like, barking and stradling on the leash and wanted to go fight him.
• 29:30
  He's, he's funny with me, who is this motherfucker and keeps approaching
• 29:34
  and touching up the front door.
• 29:35
  It's totally defending, but, but you know, you can't knock him for it, right?
• 29:38
  We're walking on the beach, right, and there's this massive gas cylinder
• 29:42
  that's obviously fallen off a ship.
• 29:46
  Five feet in diameter.
• 29:48
  Mm. It's on the beach and it's rolling.
• 29:51
  As the waves move and as they approach it, he's carrying behind me.
• 29:55
  He's barking at it.
• 29:57
  He's like, he is.
• 29:58
  He knows that is not a natural object and it shouldn't be here.
• 30:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:15
  So, yeah, so I, I pity these people stuck with Front World Drive four
• 30:19
  cylinder things and, and you know, my Mustang's not the mus itt muscle
• 30:24
  car and it's not the nicest muscle car and it's not, who cares, right?
• 30:28
  It's, I love steak and eggs and that's what that car is and it's just mm-hmm.
• 30:33
  Just brilliant.
• 30:34
  Agreed.
• 30:34
  I mean, so my neighbor just down the hill there who we've become closer
• 30:40
  to, he let me have a go in his Ferrari 3 0 8 over the course of the summer.
• 30:45
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:46
  I have to say, mark, when, when I was talking with him before about
• 30:50
  it, I was talking about Testa Ross's with him and he behaved as if I was
• 30:54
  talking about a completely different thing as if I was talking about like
• 30:57
  a muscle car or something like that.
• 30:59
  It just wasn't in his, and I realized I thought of that as I was
• 31:03
  driving that 3 0 8, because the most striking thing about it is that it's
• 31:08
  not a super car is a sports car.
• 31:11
  Yeah.
• 31:11
  The feeling of all of the weight behind you and the only weight at the front
• 31:18
  being like, you know, the lights and the brakes and there'd be a tube frame.
• 31:23
  Mm-hmm.
• 31:23
  You know, the front suspension.
• 31:25
  Right.
• 31:25
  That feeling, that's the most memorable thing about it.
• 31:28
  And the coolest thing about it, the motor, because it's that flat plane, it
• 31:34
  sounds a bit like Roughy four cylinder, it sounds like Roughy four cylinder.
• 31:39
  Now in the days where they used Ferrari three oh eights for rallying,
• 31:44
  you looked at that and thought, but that's, it's like a beautiful super car.
• 31:48
  You know, that's not for rallying, you know, and escorts for rallying,
• 31:51
  not a supercar, but actually it was totally for rallying.
• 31:56
  And actually there is a lineage from the LANCIA oh three seven.
• 32:01
  Well, from the, oh, from the Ferrari 3 0 8 to the oh three seven.
• 32:06
  And then in turn to the 2 8 8 GTO, the three are all sort of the, the
• 32:13
  same mid-engine, naughty light motor mounted in the middle, driving the
• 32:20
  rear wheels and nothing else, hardly anything else, like the rest is as
• 32:25
  minimalist as it can possibly be.
• 32:28
  And, and so immediately.
• 32:29
  Right.
• 32:30
  I see.
• 32:30
  Why in les's mind, Testa Ross something completely different.
• 32:34
  That's a big and heavy and it's a proper grand tour, whereas the
• 32:38
  three oh eights nothing like that.
• 32:40
  It's, it's like a. Little sports car, it's, it's closer to a ca, super
• 32:45
  seven than it is to a Testa Rosser.
• 32:47
  And, and I mean that in, in the nicest way.
• 32:50
  'cause you know, you are inside and it does have some leather and it can blow hot
• 32:55
  and cold, which, you know, a ca can't do.
• 32:58
  So, you know, it, it has a lot of, of uh, really cool, really a cool experience.
• 33:07
  I mean, I still like them.
• 33:08
  I think they're great.
• 33:09
  They would not disappoint you if you bought one.
• 33:11
  It would not disappoint you.
• 33:13
  Yeah.
• 33:13
  Ferrari's that weird brand.
• 33:15
  I mean, you basically don't want one 'cause they're too expensive to run.
• 33:19
  But there is a period if you've got where, especially at the moment where
• 33:24
  not that long after they've been out obscenely cheap in comparison
• 33:28
  to what they cost initially.
• 33:30
  Yeah.
• 33:33
  You can three pound card for like 80,000 cart pounds, like within five years,
• 33:40
  that sort of amount of depreciation.
• 33:42
  Yeah.
• 33:43
  Everything's still gonna absolutely wallet rake you whenever, you know,
• 33:46
  anything goes wrong on it at all.
• 33:48
  But, you know, there is an appeal to getting value for money in that way.
• 33:51
  I absolutely see it.
• 33:52
  And especially if you're picking up a V 12 and things like that, uh, uh as well.
• 33:55
  But anything they produce and have produced for quite a long time
• 33:59
  is, is, is, is high quality stuff.
• 34:01
  And I look, I trust the motoring journalists.
• 34:03
  I trust people like Chris Harris when they say, look, you know, it still feels quite
• 34:07
  organic even though you're, you know, you're conscious, you're driving with AI
• 34:10
  informed side slip control and TCS this and EBS this and all that sort of stuff.
• 34:17
  But I fundamentally don't want all that.
• 34:19
  And no, I, I, uh, I mean, spoiler alert, I drove a Basey lucid, recently lucid
• 34:26
  air sedan, like a sub 50 grand one.
• 34:29
  I mean, it's still the best car in the world.
• 34:31
  I don't want one, but it's still objectively, and I defy you gamy to
• 34:37
  sit in it and drive it and not be like, that thing drives fucking awesome.
• 34:41
  Like dumb looks.
• 34:43
  The seat of the pants thing, it's, it's every inch as good as the best crowd.
• 34:50
  V eight sedan I'm sure, but like I, I don't wanna pay 150 to 250
• 34:57
  grand for someone to take most of the driving experience away.
• 35:01
  You know, at least hide it behind electronics when I don't need any of that.
• 35:05
  I don't wanna spend any money.
• 35:06
  No.
• 35:07
  And, and this, this brings me back to that green Mustang.
• 35:10
  That green Mustang has, what, what the lucid can, can sort of never have.
• 35:14
  There's a sort of organicness, there is an organicness that is the right word for it.
• 35:19
  There's a sort of earthiness, which is, is missing it completely.
• 35:24
  I mean, and like, you know, it's like I don't mind a bit of technology.
• 35:26
  You know, there's always gonna be a technology creep.
• 35:29
  You know, the Z's got traction control like admittedly on
• 35:31
  and off, but you, I've got it.
• 35:33
  The, you know, I bought, I deliberately bought that CBR 'cause
• 35:35
  it was the first one that came with a BS on a standard on the CBR 600.
• 35:40
  And I'm like, I don't regret it.
• 35:41
  It's nice to have that when you're riding no minutes, you about a pl
• 35:43
  of rain and, you know, it gives you a little bit of extra confidence
• 35:46
  on breaking feel on the front end.
• 35:48
  You know, there's nothing wrong with that.
• 35:49
  The more you layer on just, you know, it, it just dulls it for me.
• 35:53
  And when, when you take, you don't sort of necessarily notice
• 35:55
  it until either like the BW.
• 35:58
  It's just been a bag of shit and not work properly, but also more to the point when
• 36:02
  you drive something that hasn't really got it and you're like, you don't miss it.
• 36:05
  In fact, if anything you prefer what you are getting in that
• 36:08
  organic sort of like, you know, less is more style sort of way less.
• 36:13
  I, I'll come to the conclusion.
• 36:14
  I don't really want like, I mean I do want a big auto bun er some sort
• 36:18
  of middleweight Mercedes automatic gearbox thing for doing that sort of
• 36:23
  station run for driving international.
• 36:25
  You don't need, with Mercedes and BMWs you don't need to do like the air
• 36:30
  may mg like look at me, I'm the fast.
• 36:33
  No, if you do like a Mercedes 500, like a remap and an exhaust it,
• 36:38
  it's as good as an A MG car anyway.
• 36:41
  For sure.
• 36:41
  And you don't remap or exhaust or I tell you what I really would do gamy
• 36:47
  is I think Lexus are doing better styling than any of the others now.
• 36:51
  I think the three 50 sedan.
• 36:54
  Really looks good.
• 36:55
  The IS three 50.
• 36:57
  I think the, the model that I'm really interested in was, they
• 37:01
  did a model probably 10 years ago now f version of the Gs.
• 37:07
  So the mid-size sedan, like the E-Class size sedan, but with TRD normally
• 37:14
  aspirated five liter V eight, 400 horse.
• 37:18
  And it has like, you know, a little bit of body kit on it.
• 37:22
  But mo no, I love those because it's Toyota Bulletproof.
• 37:27
  It's also JDM solid gold investible and nobody bought them.
• 37:33
  Anybody you talk to who knows cars, knows those, knows them.
• 37:38
  And rec I, they've, they've come around for me with three or four
• 37:42
  different, different people and I just know that they're like a, uh, an E,
• 37:47
  they're like the thinking man's E 39.
• 37:49
  Nowadays.
• 37:49
  'cause the E 39 is all very well, but it's still a stick.
• 37:52
  Right.
• 37:53
  And California, you don't want that.
• 37:55
  Dubai you don't want, I, I mean, was one of some of the jobs I've
• 37:58
  been advertising for recently.
• 37:59
  It's, it I looking for recently.
• 38:01
  It's um, they're like two or three days on the road.
• 38:04
  No, I don't mind that.
• 38:04
  I get through a lot of audio books.
• 38:05
  I quite like on the road Diesel s class.
• 38:08
  Well, it was Harris did, Chris Harris did a video on the, uh, three, the
• 38:14
  Alpine B, whatever it is, the diesel version of, of the three series, and
• 38:20
  was like, look, it's an automatic, but it's got like 500 foot pounds of torque
• 38:24
  and comfy a suspension, and you know it, it's got all the toys and stuff.
• 38:29
  Now the issue with them is 'cause of the limited numbers, actually,
• 38:31
  they're that bit more expensive again.
• 38:33
  But it was like that sort of thing.
• 38:34
  I'm thinking, look, I, you know, for doing Moway Cruisey stuff and for, you
• 38:38
  know, Angie going and picking her mom and dad up from the ga from the station
• 38:41
  with like suitcases and stuff, automatic back doors so that, you know, a dad and
• 38:46
  mom can get in because like they, they're getting old, you know, they don't want
• 38:49
  to have to fucking have the CX Fiesta seat tipped forward and like crouching
• 38:53
  through the, like, you know what I mean?
• 38:54
  So I need something like that.
• 38:56
  But that means that if once have got that, everything else can be impractical.
• 39:00
  Yeah, dude, it's like when I bought that tundra, I said to Ollie,
• 39:03
  everything else can be fucking stupid.
• 39:05
  From here on in, that's how it's gonna be.
• 39:08
  My first project is getting the Z going again properly.
• 39:11
  Yeah, dude, you gotta lean into that.
• 39:12
  Yeah.
• 39:13
  You gotta lean into that.
• 39:14
  The, the, the play, I think to see it is that there's like skills to learn.
• 39:19
  Yes.
• 39:19
  But once you've learned them, it's gonna be easy.
• 39:21
  There's skills learn and kit to buy in terms of jump packs
• 39:25
  and how to do a fluid chase.
• 39:28
  I've got, I've got a proper, I bought some three and a half ton like axle
• 39:31
  stands and it's like nowhere near that.
• 39:33
  It's like less, it's like less than half that.
• 39:35
  So I was like, okay, that's about the right sort of cover ratio on.
• 39:37
  I've got a trolley jack and all that sort of stuff, so, but obviously it's
• 39:41
  Britain so it's fucking freezing.
• 39:42
  So went got some light back in the spring.
• 39:45
  I'm not telling you to go out and do it now.
• 39:47
  I was watching Jeff buy buys cars and he was at strange some services and it
• 39:52
  was that kind of super rain where he was like his 11 o'clock in the morning, but
• 39:57
  it looked like it was about six o'clock in the morning and the sun was still
• 40:01
  struggling to come up and I'm like, oh yeah, single England in the winter.
• 40:05
  How I you No, no.
• 40:07
  Definitely not worth missing.
• 40:09
  I hate on the subject of Jeff buys cars and other silly automotive YouTubers,
• 40:15
  the reaction to the Jaguar rebrand.
• 40:19
  Now we'll position it, right?
• 40:21
  This is what I think is important and people aren't.
• 40:23
  Taken on board in 1926, Henry Ford was at last persuaded by his son Edsel, that the
• 40:32
  Model T, which was the most successful car in the world, more than three quarters
• 40:37
  of the cars in the world were Model Ts.
• 40:39
  That this design, which had been in production for the last 20 years, was
• 40:43
  not the pinnacle of automotive design.
• 40:46
  And in fact, competitors had already stolen March and a new
• 40:52
  vehicle was needed to take on.
• 40:55
  Specifically Louis Chevrolet and and Billy Duran and the GM brands.
• 41:00
  So Ford shut the whole factory for a year whilst they retooled
• 41:05
  for the model A, the new model a.
• 41:07
  And Malay went into production in 1928, right?
• 41:10
  The point is that like Jaguar, the whole factory went offline for a year to
• 41:16
  completely reposition what they're doing.
• 41:18
  And I think with Jaguar, what the fuck are Jaguar in this new EV world?
• 41:25
  Because Range Rover, they fit perfectly in this new EV world.
• 41:30
  But nobody buys cars anymore.
• 41:32
  Everyone buys SUVs.
• 41:34
  So you know, if I'm tartar, Jaguar needs to make a case for its survival.
• 41:39
  And if they're offline for a year, well maybe they're never coming back.
• 41:44
  If you are going to do that, you need to have some kind of the splashiest
• 41:51
  marketing campaign you can possibly have.
• 41:54
  And I feel like that was what, that was probably the design brief and that
• 41:59
  was definitely what was delivered.
• 42:01
  Was this really shocking Rebrand your thoughts.
• 42:07
  The interesting thing for me, I mean, I've never owned a Jaguar
• 42:11
  and now would I own a Jaguar?
• 42:13
  Yeah, there were Jags I would buy definitely, but.
• 42:16
  Is that very likely at the moment, no.
• 42:19
  And when it actually comes down to it, am I likely to shell out the dollars for
• 42:22
  it when there's comparable other stuff?
• 42:24
  Yeah, probably not.
• 42:25
  You have that do, so the Scottish Islands for a dip, tell us about that.
• 42:30
  Oh, the F type R?
• 42:31
  Yeah.
• 42:31
  Two things about that that stand out.
• 42:33
  One, when you get an internal, the, the ignition vent, the vents like of the
• 42:37
  leather dash, the, the whole leather dash at the top bit underneath the
• 42:41
  screen rises up so that the air vents can appear, which is kind of theater
• 42:45
  and it sort of squeaks a bit 'cause it's not fitted perfectly 'cause it's
• 42:48
  leather as well, which is quite funny.
• 42:50
  And it's got a loud button for the exhaust.
• 42:54
  It, it, it opens valves or something.
• 42:56
  But like, basically it is always open when you turn the thing on because fuck
• 43:00
  the neighbors and because if you have it on, even you forget when you've been
• 43:05
  driving through the country and you've been enjoying the exhaust and it popping
• 43:07
  and banging and all that sort of stuff, which it did with like much gusto.
• 43:11
  When you then roll up to the traffic lights or the zebra crossing.
• 43:15
  And you breathe on the throttle just to go the last couple of feet.
• 43:18
  And the old granny walking across, carrying her suit, pulling her
• 43:21
  shopping along in one of those little tartan wheelie bag things like
• 43:25
  nearly shits herself because, because he goes bang, bang, bang stuff.
• 43:30
  And he went like two miles hour.
• 43:32
  So, and it had, it had personality.
• 43:34
  Yeah, I liked it.
• 43:35
  And you could pick it up for not a ridiculous amount of money, given how
• 43:40
  much horse, I mean, 523 brake horse per.
• 43:43
  It's a lot, you know, and like it revs out to like 7, 2 50, like something like that.
• 43:47
  So we, uh, when we were in the, when we were in the Jaguar, Daimler
• 43:51
  Heritage Trust, they had this, uh, XFR, the XFR version, which mm-hmm.
• 43:58
  I think is the bargain.
• 43:59
  Used bargain at the moment.
• 44:01
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 44:01
  That's the look brand.
• 44:03
  500 horse, 510 horsepower or something.
• 44:06
  Um, a lot of 'em are white, believe it or not.
• 44:08
  Can you imagine the kind of person in Atlanta who's buying a white one?
• 44:11
  Uh, anyway, point about I was gonna make about this FR was
• 44:15
  they took it out to Bonneville.
• 44:16
  They didn't make any changes to the engine.
• 44:18
  They just de restricted it.
• 44:20
  Then they lowered it, put some arrow on it, fucking thing went 206 miles an hour.
• 44:24
  Yeah, I can believe it.
• 44:25
  It is a powerful lump.
• 44:27
  And look, I mean, that was a cracking car.
• 44:28
  I really enjoyed it.
• 44:29
  I mean, when we went to Sky in it, and like, I'm sure I've said
• 44:31
  on the pod before, I booked a three and a half liter V six.
• 44:35
  And when I arrived, good guy checked me into the vehicle,
• 44:38
  took me out to the vehicle.
• 44:39
  And as we we're approaching, I'm looking at it going, that's not a V six.
• 44:41
  That's not a V six.
• 44:42
  It's got quad pipes out the back.
• 44:44
  That's a fuck.
• 44:44
  So anyway, we got in the ding and drove away and I said, Angie said to
• 44:47
  me like, it's quite loud, isn't it?
• 44:48
  I said, yeah, it's the wrong car.
• 44:49
  Don't accept any phone calls for the next hour until we're out
• 44:52
  of mobile cell coverage, because this is not what we booked.
• 44:55
  And just, and it had a weekend on Sky and it was amazing, but it was a
• 44:59
  bit rainy, but like it gripped like shit to a blanket even in the rain.
• 45:02
  And it had that sort of, you could make gangster progress never
• 45:06
  going above 5,000, 50, 200 revs.
• 45:09
  So when you really pressed on into the sort of five to seven and a half thousand
• 45:13
  revs, like holy shitballs was, you really mo you were really shifting at that point.
• 45:20
  So look, I mean, I, I would like Jaguar products.
• 45:22
  Yeah.
• 45:22
  Especially when they've got their sort of Ard Aviv going on.
• 45:25
  I think the interesting thing from a sort of macro perspective, zooming
• 45:28
  out again from their rebrand, is that there's lots of ways to do
• 45:31
  a, a sort of do a wacky rebrand.
• 45:33
  Not wacky, but you know what I mean, to do a sort of an out there rebrand.
• 45:37
  There's lots of ways you can make it funny.
• 45:39
  You can make it sort of shocking artistically.
• 45:41
  You can do art, cast style, BMW takes on things.
• 45:44
  There's all sorts of different things you could do.
• 45:46
  And there's two things, two sides to it.
• 45:47
  I think.
• 45:48
  There's the model car that they produced, which is, you know, big bonnet
• 45:51
  sort of looked like something out of like Batman's fucking Gotham City.
• 45:55
  Really long bonnet, really high grill.
• 45:58
  Why I sort of get the sort of heritage I want to look cool and that sort of thing.
• 46:02
  And have road presence.
• 46:04
  Got spades of that.
• 46:05
  But part of the benefit of an having an electric vehicle is the fucking,
• 46:08
  it's all under the floor, isn't it?
• 46:09
  So you can have more usable space.
• 46:11
  Why have you got a massive bonnet?
• 46:13
  What's, that's the challenge with this.
• 46:15
  How, what's the point of Jaguar, right?
• 46:17
  Yeah.
• 46:18
  Like what's that gonna be a sort of huge trunk or something.
• 46:20
  You can have a pool in there.
• 46:21
  I mean it's got a pool in there.
• 46:22
  I'm just sort, I'm back on.
• 46:24
  So there's that sort of things and then there's the sort of, if you look at the
• 46:27
  sort of the rise of populism and without going to get too political, I. That sort
• 46:31
  of movement against climate change and RY and diversity and being nice to people,
• 46:40
  leaning into sort of a bunch of sort of albino, tele tubby weirdos sort of be
• 46:45
  like the people wandering out into in neon colors to your fucking weird tune with
• 46:51
  the car in the background like it's on.
• 46:54
  And also, can I just say, I think I benched you in the email about it when I
• 46:58
  sent the link across and I made a comment and no one really understood what I'd said
• 47:02
  on the bottom of Harry's Garage video.
• 47:03
  When you see that car inverted, when you see it mirror imaged,
• 47:08
  the, the two js on the um, on the logo on the wheels are flipped.
• 47:14
  So it says 69.
• 47:16
  So on the front and back wheels, when you look at it flipped and the bit
• 47:18
  pictures and it is on the image of how he's garage's review of the, of
• 47:22
  the where day went to the factory.
• 47:23
  It's basically you are rolling past and you'll see that from the inside
• 47:26
  of the car whenever you see it in like glass fronting windows kind of thing.
• 47:30
  You are gonna get the mirror image version, aren't you?
• 47:32
  Yeah.
• 47:33
  So therefore you are gonna be 69 ing all the way down that way.
• 47:38
  You massive.
• 47:39
  Anyway, make me smile.
• 47:41
  They have to do something, don't they?
• 47:42
  They do.
• 47:43
  I mean, I'm not sure that's gonna save the company.
• 47:45
  Uh, and I saw again, cars, old fuddy duddies, uh, talking about, and that
• 47:51
  someone, one of the guys saying like, look, I've owned multiple jaguars, and
• 47:54
  it sort of feels like they're saying we don't want your customer again.
• 47:57
  And that's a bold strategy.
• 47:59
  That is a bold strategy when you haven't really established a new market to go.
• 48:03
  We don't want the old one.
• 48:04
  But that, I think, I think the point is somewhere, I think the point is
• 48:07
  that there's not enough of those other people and too many of those people
• 48:12
  that, and that person who's like, oh, you know, you've lost me as a customer.
• 48:16
  They're still likely to buy rangey.
• 48:18
  There's nothing else.
• 48:19
  Oh, really?
• 48:19
  Yeah, dude.
• 48:20
  Absolutely.
• 48:20
  I drove, I drove a rangey recently and, and, uh, yeah, it was the most expensive
• 48:26
  car I drove of these like 20 cars.
• 48:28
  I drove back to back, dude.
• 48:30
  It was really a thing I didn't expect to be like, oh wow, this range is a thing.
• 48:37
  I literally drove it for a bit, got out and walked around it and
• 48:41
  thought, Jesus, am I a farmer?
• 48:43
  It's like, and I've, for the having after I drove it, that's the first
• 48:47
  time I've ever found myself thinking I might actually like a Range Rover
• 48:51
  as a, as a, you know, a Beatle.
• 48:53
  Yeah.
• 48:53
  I think there's a reason why, you know, Clarkson loves his Range Rover.
• 48:57
  Harry, Harry Metcalf loves his Range Rover, and you know, there's there,
• 49:02
  there's, there's a sort of executive premium feel to 'em that people like.
• 49:07
  Yeah, I mean the leather in this one that I test drove was just on another level.
• 49:11
  Hmm.
• 49:12
  It had five driving modes.
• 49:14
  Only one of them was on road.
• 49:16
  There was no stupid performance mode or, you know, range River, was it Discovery?
• 49:21
  I can't remember which one.
• 49:22
  I think it's Range Rover they both got, isn't it?
• 49:24
  I I, I'll make sure I'm right on that one.
• 49:25
  Can't remember.
• 49:26
  Whatever.
• 49:26
  Yeah.
• 49:27
  Again, I, I, I, I struggle with the whole thing and just find it a bit like,
• 49:30
  don't want, you know, it's too big.
• 49:32
  What the fuck is it for?
• 49:33
  Google this one?
• 49:34
  Bentley perfume.
• 49:36
  Oh, is it actually perfume or is it a car?
• 49:39
  Oh, for fuck sake,
• 49:42
  qua.
• 49:43
  What's the reaction?
• 49:44
  I was, I was looking for, is this something that you
• 49:47
  as a guy buy for your girl?
• 49:49
  Uh, wi you know, wife, significant other.
• 49:52
  I, I met a bloke from Bentley recently, and, and he was sad.
• 49:56
  He does interior design and, uh, he said, you know, these people from product
• 50:01
  are like coming to me with this vegan leather and I, what's, what's that?
• 50:05
  Vinyl?
• 50:06
  And he went, well, no, but yeah, like, and I'm like, again, if the leather's
• 50:13
  good enough, don't kill the cow.
• 50:14
  I don't care.
• 50:15
  And I'm looking doubtful, and I'm like, and, and he's like, it's all right.
• 50:18
  You don't need to try not to be negative.
• 50:20
  Can you imagine what the Russian billionaires would say if we tried to
• 50:23
  sell them Bentleys with vegan leather?
• 50:25
  Yeah, that wouldn't go a long way, would it?
• 50:28
  That's the challenge, right?
• 50:29
  That's the challenge.
• 50:31
  There's a real challenge around modernizing these old brands.
• 50:35
  Well, of course what he means, just to be clear in life, say with the legal
• 50:38
  people, is Kazakhstani billionaires who definitely aren't gonna then
• 50:42
  sell it onto the Russian billionaires 'cause they're not actually supposed
• 50:45
  to be selling to Russian billionaires.
• 50:46
  'cause they're a war mongering, bunch of cunts.
• 50:49
  So they have to get round these things by selling them to people
• 50:51
  who are totally unrelated and, you know, demands gone massively through
• 50:54
  the roof in these old Soviet states.
• 50:56
  So, but that's incidental.
• 50:58
  It's just a coincidence that the Russian to demand seems to have
• 51:01
  migrated about 500 miles off the border and then they mysteriously don't
• 51:06
  have a life in Kazakhstan anymore.
• 51:08
  I mean, I'm, that's just a coincidence.
• 51:11
  Interesting, gamy.
• 51:12
  Interesting.
• 51:13
  Uh, aside that one,
• 51:26
  Dana's German friends came, visited over the summer.
• 51:30
  They had this GMC Denali.
• 51:32
  It was like a late model GMC Denali, so like a gussied up Tahoe.
• 51:37
  Obviously for European roads, absolutely bloody ridiculous.
• 51:41
  But for American roads, oh dude, what a vehicle directly related to the
• 51:47
  conversation we were just having about the Range Rover, because this is a vehicle
• 51:51
  which is about two thirds the price of the rangey, less obviously if you buy a
• 51:56
  used one, but it has all of the things that were cool about the Rangey, but it
• 52:02
  will go on forever and ever and ever and can be fixed at every Chevy dealership.
• 52:06
  Unlike the Rey.
• 52:08
  A lot to be said for that kind of vehicle in America.
• 52:12
  Indeed.
• 52:13
  Yeah.
• 52:13
  I'm gonna get rid of the absolute odor par farm now from my, yeah, some months
• 52:18
  ago we had an exchange about a piece that, of journalism that I've lost,
• 52:23
  and I don't wanna throw the journalist under the bus so it, so it doesn't
• 52:26
  matter, but it basically, it was a piece talking about, say a lay on Coopers.
• 52:33
  And I was reminded of Cooper's because this Cooper brand as, as it's now a
• 52:38
  standalone brand, John Garcia's rent car in Ireland was a Cooper, not a sayer.
• 52:44
  When I was like, was it a say?
• 52:46
  He was like, no, it was Cooper, whatever that is.
• 52:49
  Yeah, it's, it's like it's own brand now.
• 52:51
  And you had those two Coopers back to back.
• 52:55
  I mean, I always felt at the time they looked better than golf GTIs.
• 52:59
  Yeah.
• 53:00
  You felt I I, well, I'm gonna ask your opinions in a minute, but what
• 53:04
  this bullet point is Coopers versus golf versus whipper snapper writers,
• 53:11
  and this is really the point that I'm making, is the bloke that wrote that
• 53:14
  article was some young whipper snapper.
• 53:17
  He wasn't some 50-year-old bloke who caned about 150,000 miles on two coopers and
• 53:24
  drove a bunch of golfs in period as well.
• 53:27
  So have the floor.
• 53:28
  Are the Coopers better?
• 53:29
  I know the answer.
• 53:31
  Yeah, of course.
• 53:32
  I mean, to be fair to the dude, like you're absolutely right.
• 53:34
  He was a young chap, I can't remember what it was, road on track
• 53:36
  or so, but it wasn't, it wasn't an article about the Cooper, it was an
• 53:39
  article about the period golf, GTI.
• 53:41
  It was an article about the period golf, GTI, that 130 horsepower
• 53:45
  baggy sack of shit didn't deserve to wear badge that golf GTI.
• 53:50
  And he was saying how he'd driven it again, like as if
• 53:53
  he drove it the first time.
• 53:54
  It wasn't an itch in the Milkman's ball bag at the time, do you know what I mean?
• 53:57
  Like
• 53:59
  not alive.
• 54:00
  He was driving.
• 54:01
  Yeah.
• 54:01
  So he, he, he'd driven it and he was like, look, you know, it is quite good.
• 54:04
  It's quite snappy and like, look Okay compared to the, you know, the standard
• 54:09
  80 horsepower, 90 horsepower golf y. Yeah.
• 54:12
  But my point was, what the hell is this bloke talking about on an out?
• 54:15
  And I can't remember.
• 54:16
  It was, I mean, I only read a couple of you like US motoring websites, so
• 54:20
  it would've been like Road and Track, or it would've been maybe the Ars
• 54:23
  Technica cars section, or it would've been maybe one of the other ones.
• 54:27
  Um, the one that, um, that, that, uh, Victoria Beaver writes for?
• 54:31
  No, she writes for provoking tracks and she.
• 54:33
  Um, but anyway, there's another, there's another, um, uh, US one that I sometimes
• 54:37
  read, but nevertheless, it was pointing out that, you know, if you compare the
• 54:40
  two, they were at the rateable at the same period and they were shockingly different.
• 54:45
  There, there were two versions of the Cooper.
• 54:47
  The, uh, in my period there was the 180 version horsepower
• 54:49
  Cooper in the original version.
• 54:51
  And then there was the 210 horsepower Cupra R and they had a different
• 54:55
  body kit and the Cooper looked like better than the standard lay anyway.
• 54:59
  And then when you put the Cupra R body kit on, I mean, it was really like a
• 55:04
  David Tard chin spoiler and all sorts of aggro wheel arch blistering and all
• 55:10
  sorts of cheese and like a big ass central exhaust at the back and things like that.
• 55:15
  A big ass exhaust pipe that was two in one at the back.
• 55:17
  It sounded mean.
• 55:18
  It looked mean and it was aggressive.
• 55:21
  My boss once came in with him, me in in, in it with me after
• 55:25
  I'd, not long after I'd got it.
• 55:26
  And I went, there was a sort of like, you know, a sort of slight riff in
• 55:30
  the road and he, it banged over it because it was suspension and he was
• 55:34
  like, bloody hell, what do we do?
• 55:36
  Just run over a fox or something.
• 55:38
  It was probably a 50 p sized indentation on the road.
• 55:41
  So you know, you did have to put up with some discomfort for your pleasure.
• 55:45
  But I led it to my mate to drive it down to uh, Lamar.
• 55:49
  The first one I got was a Wangled company car and then the
• 55:51
  second one I bought my own one.
• 55:53
  The one that came out with the 225 horsepower one.
• 55:55
  'cause there was still nothing in that space to compete with it for
• 55:58
  sort of looks or usable VA group performance and reliability with
• 56:04
  four seats in a decent sized boot.
• 56:05
  And that looked great.
• 56:06
  Had more punctures in that car, I think, than any other car ever.
• 56:11
  'cause it was on 18 low 18 inch wheels with fairly low profile rubber on there.
• 56:15
  And it was peri P zero rossos when it came as as standard.
• 56:20
  And I went through to the canvas on the fronts on those in six
• 56:24
  and a half thousand miles.
• 56:25
  On the first set.
• 56:27
  So I agreed with my sales manager that they wouldn't be put back on it
• 56:31
  and that I would get like Goodyear Pilot Sport Cups or something like
• 56:34
  that instead, which would make 15,000 miles on the fronts and therefore
• 56:38
  wouldn't, uh, cause issues with hr.
• 56:42
  But they, you know, my, my original point, again, zooming back out.
• 56:46
  At a macro level, I think we like to be a sweeping, it was a sensational
• 56:49
  car in period and the golf was an embarrassment in the range.
• 56:53
  It was the absolute nadir of golf.
• 56:55
  After that, they had the sort of different letters with different horsepowers and one
• 56:58
  of them like had, had like 180 horsepower, vaguely getting back up to speed.
• 57:02
  But it wasn't until the one with those sort of pepper potty sort
• 57:05
  of, uh, alloys that came out with the white one with a little bit of
• 57:08
  lipstick underneath the spoiler, uh, underneath the sort of the grill.
• 57:11
  It wasn't until that one where they went to 210 horsepower in a proper six speed
• 57:15
  box that the GTI was r was sort of dug back out from its death that it was going
• 57:21
  through for the previous decade plus.
• 57:23
  And so therefore, to write in articles, eulogizing essentially a piece of
• 57:28
  shit on the brand logo felt to me like you were celebrating failure.
• 57:33
  Whereas within the same group, there was another part.
• 57:37
  On the same platform with the same chassis.
• 57:39
  You fundamentally the same company producing something dynamically,
• 57:45
  completely different and way more purposeful as, as I was saying, like
• 57:48
  I landed Dispute going outta the mall.
• 57:49
  He chased his mate in an M three and he mate in the M three couldn't lose him.
• 57:53
  He rang me up slightly worse for, uh, well, let's call it alcohol, um, later
• 57:58
  on that evening, telling me in no uncertain terms about how amazing it
• 58:02
  was, and, uh, he couldn't believe that the two things were produced within,
• 58:06
  uh, Sten to be the same building.
• 58:08
  Would you Ga is that guy the TVR guy?
• 58:11
  Yeah.
• 58:13
  Ah, he does kind of owe you a beer, doesn't he?
• 58:16
  Yeah, I mean, it was a company car, but I had to lie.
• 58:19
  I just, I just feel like if you were, I might edit this bit out.
• 58:22
  I just feel like if you were gonna make money flipping cars on the 25 year
• 58:27
  rule, TVRS will be the way to do it and the place to buy them is England.
• 58:31
  And the way to do it with somebody who knows car, knows the cars really well.
• 58:35
  And what you need to make a business like that work is people
• 58:39
  in England and people in America.
• 58:42
  And you know, I, I feel like there might be a, a kind of business opportunity
• 58:46
  there and I definitely find out from him.
• 58:47
  I could have a chat, I could meet him for beer at some point and have
• 58:49
  a chat with him and say like, 'cause he knows all the garages and knows
• 58:52
  the people and it's, it's more.
• 58:54
  It's more that, that you make it worth his while to go look at cars.
• 58:59
  I would, if I was, came to England, or if you were looking at cars and we were
• 59:03
  gonna split whatever money we might make from flipping it or something like that,
• 59:08
  or I was gonna pay you for your time to go look at it or something like that,
• 59:12
  which, that I have to do the maths on that to see what it would work, what I could
• 59:16
  actually, where if the car was landed here in California and if I was able to.
• 59:21
  'cause for me, the, the only time I know the real cost of it is when I am landed
• 59:26
  here with it, I can drive it around a little bit and give it to John to sell.
• 59:29
  You know, that's the Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 59:32
  I mean, look, there, there, there's definitely expertise there.
• 59:34
  Awesome.
• 59:44
  Hypothetical.
• 59:45
  Scenario.
• 59:46
  I've retired to Santa Barbara, I'm considering getting a douche car.
• 59:50
  That was how he described it.
• 59:51
  A douche car.
• 59:53
  I can tell you what he, what he was considering, if you like.
• 59:56
  I was gonna ask you what you would do for your, as your douche car
• 1:00:02
  for rolling around Santa Barbara.
• 1:00:04
  So it's lovely weather to the country club, bit of school run edge, you know,
• 1:00:09
  just, just for like bit of beach age, bit of to the supermarket where you have to
• 1:00:14
  fit in a car, normal car park, you know.
• 1:00:16
  But like, so, um, would you wanna think on it and then, uh, I'll tell
• 1:00:20
  you what I would do in a minute.
• 1:00:22
  Yeah.
• 1:00:22
  All right.
• 1:00:34
  But to answer your question, I would probably just guess something
• 1:00:36
  like a nice Mustang GT Cabrio.
• 1:00:39
  Because then you can roll around like four seats.
• 1:00:42
  You can have the roof down.
• 1:00:43
  It's nice.
• 1:00:44
  You got four, five, you know, five, 400 plus horsepower.
• 1:00:47
  It's nice and cheap.
• 1:00:48
  It's fairly low key.
• 1:00:49
  There's a lot of 'em about, you can get a nice one, get all the toys in it.
• 1:00:53
  It's not that much money and you can do burnouts and stuff.
• 1:00:55
  You just do like a modern, go down the local Ford dealership
• 1:00:58
  and find a loaded convertible 5.0.
• 1:01:01
  Yeah.
• 1:01:02
  Having driven that a lot around America, different versions of it.
• 1:01:05
  It's anonymous enough.
• 1:01:07
  But people who know go, yeah, that's the nice version.
• 1:01:09
  It's fun enough and it's got enough toys.
• 1:01:12
  But you know, the key thing for someone like that with lot of money
• 1:01:14
  is it's anonymous enough and it's fun.
• 1:01:16
  You know, you could rev the nuts out of it.
• 1:01:17
  It sounds good.
• 1:01:18
  And you can do like burnouts and stuff.
• 1:01:19
  And also if you wanna upgrade it, you can put all the bits from the
• 1:01:22
  GT three 50 on it if you want to.
• 1:01:24
  And like no one need.
• 1:01:24
  No, yeah, you're right.
• 1:01:26
  There's so many color combinations.
• 1:01:28
  Hmm.
• 1:01:29
  Where you could really do a good color.
• 1:01:31
  Yeah, exactly.
• 1:01:32
  Like distinct color.
• 1:01:33
  Yeah.
• 1:01:33
  Again, as soon as you lean that way, you are more noticeable.
• 1:01:36
  'cause you know, the, the, the, the nice alloys that I did on the
• 1:01:39
  M two, you are more noticeable.
• 1:01:41
  People notice the cardboard.
• 1:01:42
  It looks cooler, but do you wanna be more noticeable?
• 1:01:45
  You know, I think rolling around in California is pretty non noticeable.
• 1:01:48
  I. But as soon as you're rolling around in the slightly more Trumpy
• 1:01:50
  areas, this is a bit more noticeable.
• 1:01:52
  So, do you know what I mean?
• 1:01:53
  It depends.
• 1:01:54
  Yeah, no, I, I, uh, I do know, uh, I do know exactly what you mean.
• 1:01:59
  Uh, my douche car, I, I would do a mid sixties Cadillac convertible.
• 1:02:05
  How that We both went rag top though yellow probably.
• 1:02:08
  Yeah.
• 1:02:08
  Yeah.
• 1:02:09
  Santa Barbara, you've gotta go wrapped up.
• 1:02:10
  That's what I thought.
• 1:02:11
  He's gotta lean into it, you know?
• 1:02:13
  Yeah.
• 1:02:13
  I mean, and, and I love those stack headlight ca I love
• 1:02:17
  stack headlights, period.
• 1:02:18
  I love pair of headlights love stack.
• 1:02:20
  Those mid sixties Cadillacs.
• 1:02:22
  The just awesome does he awesome.
• 1:02:25
  Reliability.
• 1:02:26
  I'm not suggesting it wouldn't be.
• 1:02:27
  I'm just saying, you know, but you'd have to make sure it was, but
• 1:02:30
  does he want classic car ownership?
• 1:02:33
  That's why?
• 1:02:33
  No, he does.
• 1:02:34
  No, that's why I went for the, like the, the less than five years
• 1:02:37
  old Mustang GT with all the toys.
• 1:02:40
  Because I know and, uh, and, and I'm sad.
• 1:02:43
  It's sad to say that.
• 1:02:44
  I think the issue with that would be the, the image associated with Mustangs.
• 1:02:51
  You know, I think in America it's kind of anonymous.
• 1:02:54
  It's completely, that's why you are so right to say that a night
• 1:02:58
  that the right Mustang would really be a great car for him.
• 1:03:03
  Four Oh horsepower is a lot.
• 1:03:04
  I've raced that thing up and down mountains and through many a national
• 1:03:07
  park in America and at a whale of a time, you know, you know, uh, the
• 1:03:11
  standing joke with Angie and I is that, you know, we went up to Mount Hood,
• 1:03:14
  I think it was like just above the Colorado River and before we left the
• 1:03:18
  motel, we'd like booked on hotels.com.
• 1:03:21
  Uh, about three in the afternoon as we were driving down the river,
• 1:03:24
  like she checked with the rest restaurant to say like, you know,
• 1:03:27
  when are you stop serving food?
• 1:03:29
  And she was like, oh, well, like at like eight 30 or something,
• 1:03:31
  and it was like six o'clock.
• 1:03:33
  I'm like, well, I want to go and drive up the mountain.
• 1:03:35
  It's a nice sunset coming and due and stuff.
• 1:03:36
  Let's go and drive up the mountain.
• 1:03:38
  And of course you drive up the, into the national parks at that time of
• 1:03:40
  day everyone's going the other way.
• 1:03:42
  So you've got the road to yourself.
• 1:03:43
  So you've got some probably really quite nicely maintained asphalt by
• 1:03:46
  the National Park Service tip of the cap to those boys and girls.
• 1:03:50
  A lovely time of day, golden sunlight and stuff.
• 1:03:52
  And there's nobody going your way.
• 1:03:53
  So you can absolutely spank the staying up and down.
• 1:03:56
  Yeah, it's great fun.
• 1:03:57
  It really lends itself to those sort of things.
• 1:03:59
  But again, when it's there hot and ticking over and pinging in the car park and
• 1:04:02
  the brake discs are smelling a bit, eh, it's just a guy likes driving his stank.
• 1:04:06
  You, when we drove the stag back through, um, Napa, um, from that scenario that, uh,
• 1:04:11
  vineyard that we did the wine tasting at, I've done that road multiple times 'cause
• 1:04:14
  it's really good and fun and twisty.
• 1:04:16
  And it really actually showed why you want the gt, not the, the four cylinder.
• 1:04:20
  'cause I had that red four cylinder that year.
• 1:04:22
  And the bumps and humps really upset the suspension on it.
• 1:04:25
  When you were pushing on, I, I was one of those ones.
• 1:04:28
  I said to Angie at one point, I'm gonna stop driving this car so fast.
• 1:04:31
  'cause he doesn't like it on these roads.
• 1:04:33
  It just got too unsettled and just too out of like ju jalopy about a bit.
• 1:04:37
  But the gt ate it up.
• 1:04:39
  Absolutely loved it.
• 1:04:39
  My point is, three times people saw me approaching at high speed in the rear
• 1:04:43
  view mirror and just indicating, let me go by, he's just a boy in his mustang.
• 1:04:47
  Most of the man mustangs, one in a Mustang.
• 1:04:50
  Oh, my mate's got a must.
• 1:04:51
  The, the, the attitude of the road user is, oh yeah, you go and overtake and
• 1:04:55
  enjoy your A and driving your Mustang.
• 1:04:57
  Or at least it seemed to me as a white bloke in a Mustang with a white wife.
• 1:05:00
  So I, let's caveat it that way.
• 1:05:02
  But in the areas he is gonna be driving in, if he gets a bit enthusiastic
• 1:05:05
  and overtakes people, they're less likely to call the cops for you and
• 1:05:08
  your sue or whatever shit might.
• 1:05:13
  Especially these days, he was thinking about Maseratis,
• 1:05:16
  like a Maserati convertible.
• 1:05:18
  A Grand Cou.
• 1:05:19
  No, not a Grand Cou.
• 1:05:20
  Um, uh.
• 1:05:21
  They're quite reporting.
• 1:05:22
  No, no.
• 1:05:23
  A convertible one.
• 1:05:24
  Is it a grand cou or a grand whatever.
• 1:05:27
  They're old though now.
• 1:05:29
  Well, I know, but like they also only did paddle shifts.
• 1:05:32
  If I recollect.
• 1:05:33
  They might have done autos for the us.
• 1:05:36
  Yeah, that's, I know that's immaterial.
• 1:05:37
  That's me thinking about you and me owning it, not about him owning it.
• 1:05:40
  Um, but I'm just saying for the record, this is why the whole
• 1:05:43
  question of what would you do?
• 1:05:45
  Like Yeah, my Cadillac could get fuel vaporization, but I
• 1:05:48
  wouldn't let that put me off.
• 1:05:49
  It, would I?
• 1:05:50
  I'd still have it.
• 1:05:52
  No, I'm just saying like, you know, for, for that, I, I think as a sort
• 1:05:54
  of Swiss army knife, 'cause he says that I, you know, I want low, the
• 1:05:57
  right mustang's really, really good.
• 1:06:00
  You get a nice, like dark green one.
• 1:06:02
  You even get some sort of nice coppery alloys or something like that on there.
• 1:06:05
  Yeah.
• 1:06:06
  You really, you really could.
• 1:06:07
  Yeah.
• 1:06:08
  Yeah.
• 1:06:08
  And you wanted to give it the old, like snap, crack and pop, then
• 1:06:11
  just put like the full system or something like that on the back.
• 1:06:15
  Yeah, well, all, uh, the, the stuff you can order straight from the Ford
• 1:06:19
  dealership, which would work for him.
• 1:06:21
  The other thing is, is that he, it would feel very well priced
• 1:06:25
  in comparison to the norm.
• 1:06:26
  Oh yeah.
• 1:06:27
  Yeah.
• 1:06:27
  I mean, don't, yeah.
• 1:06:27
  Can I have a, can I have a cut of the a hundred grand?
• 1:06:29
  We've just saved him by not buying the masie.
• 1:06:32
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:37
  Um, but yeah, I mean, look, it's each of their own, isn't it?
• 1:06:39
  But I, I think, you know, driving the, the M two through little French, poor
• 1:06:43
  French villages, sometimes you are like, uh, it's just a little bit loud and
• 1:06:48
  a little bit sort of like, you know, drawing the eye of the local youth.
• 1:06:51
  And you don't always want that.
• 1:06:53
  You often want to just roll through town, and it's quite nice
• 1:06:56
  when you know you are rolling.
• 1:06:57
  I was rolling out a car park one day in the Mustang, and I, the, the
• 1:06:59
  webcam, the, the, uh, the GoPros like stuck to the windscreen.
• 1:07:04
  And so Angie said she heard a little boy asking her, asking his dad
• 1:07:07
  like, what's that on the card daddy?
• 1:07:09
  And he was like, oh, it's a, it's a camera.
• 1:07:10
  So he is like filming it.
• 1:07:12
  He's out to driving his Mustang.
• 1:07:13
  He's like, yeah.
• 1:07:14
  Cool.
• 1:07:17
  It is cool kid.
• 1:07:18
  It's good fun, but it's not ostentatious.
• 1:07:29
  So you mentioned the M two.
• 1:07:31
  Mm. Let's do a little fleet update.
• 1:07:34
  And that's, uh, it begin with that M two.
• 1:07:38
  So I've, I've a load of like quick fiery things, uh, that will
• 1:07:42
  cover everything about the car.
• 1:07:44
  What was the best thing about that?
• 1:07:46
  M two Gamy.
• 1:07:48
  What year is it?
• 1:07:48
  2016. Yeah.
• 1:07:50
  What's the best thing about it?
• 1:07:51
  It's difficult for me a judge, to be honest, because it's been
• 1:07:53
  such a, an absolute nightmare of an ownership pros proposition.
• 1:07:57
  Everything around it's been awful.
• 1:07:59
  The only thing that was good about it was the first two weeks where we drove
• 1:08:02
  it down and had a good fun in it with, in around France before the random things
• 1:08:07
  that were wrong with it and like just ruined the ownership experience for me.
• 1:08:11
  And I've barely driven it in the last 12 months.
• 1:08:13
  So next up is get it on the road and sorted and had gone.
• 1:08:17
  But as fundamentally, when I was rang Pon, pushing around
• 1:08:21
  the Pyrenees, it was good fun.
• 1:08:22
  But even then, uh, early doors, it's like, okay, they just overloaded the air con.
• 1:08:27
  That's why there was vapor coming out and within a week it's not
• 1:08:29
  like pushing air con, right?
• 1:08:31
  So that why have they done that?
• 1:08:32
  You look it up on your phone in the hotel that evening because
• 1:08:34
  it's too expensive to replace.
• 1:08:36
  The AC and AC won't be covered on the warranty they sold you and
• 1:08:39
  on and on and on and on and on.
• 1:08:41
  The whole thing has become just a pain point, you know?
• 1:08:44
  I don't even think about it anymore.
• 1:08:45
  It's been so awful.
• 1:08:47
  It's less about, but, but really that's less about the, the, the
• 1:08:50
  fundamentals of the car and more, more about the particular car you
• 1:08:55
  had and the way it was prepared.
• 1:08:57
  Is that fair?
• 1:08:57
  Um, prob probably, I've just been extremely unlucky on all fronts, but
• 1:09:01
  the dealership didn't do a good job.
• 1:09:03
  They bod a car and sold it to me while my wife had cancer, so I wasn't really able
• 1:09:08
  to address it and I was back and forth to the hospital, didn't have a lot of time
• 1:09:11
  to be going over there and chasing them up and arguing with them about stuff.
• 1:09:14
  And it sat off the road for quite some time.
• 1:09:16
  So by the time it's, you know, you are getting around to re-looking at it again.
• 1:09:19
  It's beyond the three month initial warranty and.
• 1:09:22
  You try and use the other warranty that they sold you and oh, we don't
• 1:09:25
  cover that and we don't cover that.
• 1:09:26
  So I was never able to really get to grips with fixing it and
• 1:09:29
  fundamentally addressing all of the things that were wrong with it.
• 1:09:32
  Is it as a platform fun and usable?
• 1:09:34
  Yeah, it absolutely is.
• 1:09:36
  It's a nice little car.
• 1:09:37
  It feels dynamically poised.
• 1:09:39
  Probably more power than you need if I'm honest.
• 1:09:42
  And it's only 3 75, but it did really start to open my eyes to
• 1:09:45
  the fact that how much do you need?
• 1:09:46
  Because like, I don't want to be driving so fast that you are in
• 1:09:50
  licensed losing territory every time you breathe on the throttle.
• 1:09:53
  Anything above the sort of zed level horsepower you sort of are.
• 1:09:57
  So you can go and hustle through B Roads and sea roads and things like that and
• 1:10:01
  have your own little bits where you know, there won't be people at times a
• 1:10:04
  day and have a great time in your car.
• 1:10:06
  But that in those terms, you're hardly ever doing more than
• 1:10:08
  70 or 80 miles an hour at max.
• 1:10:10
  'cause to be is sea roads, you know what I mean?
• 1:10:11
  They're, they're small, they're canid.
• 1:10:12
  It's probably like one or two or one or lane with passing places, one lane.
• 1:10:16
  That sort of road.
• 1:10:17
  So you are not doing, you know, a ton plus, I don't wanna be
• 1:10:20
  doing that sort of speed unless you're gonna take it on track.
• 1:10:22
  I don't see the point in it at that point.
• 1:10:24
  And most people don't take it on track in a way, the way most gss never go
• 1:10:27
  off road, it, it's one of those things.
• 1:10:29
  So at some point it becomes a numbers game and dick measuring and top Trump,
• 1:10:34
  um, heights and speeds and feeds.
• 1:10:36
  And actually less about the fundamentals of enjoying your
• 1:10:39
  morning drive on a Saturday.
• 1:10:41
  And so really it sort of cemented my view that the, the technology has
• 1:10:45
  ceased to enhance for me and has sort of started to dull the experience.
• 1:10:50
  So the last car I'm really interested in driving is that Toyota Yaris gr.
• 1:10:55
  But again, you're back to hot hatches and a little rally spec hot hatch
• 1:11:00
  with proper four wheel drive and like, you know, no usable rear seats.
• 1:11:04
  And you know, they, 'cause the roofs is like custom and smoke snakes down.
• 1:11:07
  So it used to have headroom in the standard DRIs, but not anymore.
• 1:11:10
  But again, where's the technology that the technology gone there into A tricky dicky,
• 1:11:14
  you know, WRC thinking four wheel drive system not into lane assist and you know,
• 1:11:20
  eight levels of traction control and eight levels of all these, that's too much.
• 1:11:24
  You know, it's, it's, yeah, I dunno, it's, it's sort of been
• 1:11:27
  an interesting car to own it.
• 1:11:28
  I really wanted to own BMW.
• 1:11:30
  It's sort of put me off BMW and I'm trying not to let it do that 'cause I
• 1:11:33
  feel that's a bit unfair to the brand.
• 1:11:34
  But I certainly will be getting a Mercedes instead as the cruiser car
• 1:11:38
  'cause I'd like to try them out rather.
• 1:11:40
  And I think it also fits their sort of brand ethos a bit better anyway.
• 1:11:44
  So yeah, it's been, it's been a bit of a poison pill.
• 1:11:47
  How many miles you do it?
• 1:11:48
  Oh, this last year.
• 1:11:49
  Hardly any, I think less than 500.
• 1:11:51
  Just don't wanna drive it.
• 1:11:51
  It makes me miserable.
• 1:11:52
  Everything about it's been awful.
• 1:11:53
  This is not a long diatribe, just due to bullet points.
• 1:11:56
  What has actually gone wrong on it?
• 1:11:58
  So there's a problem with the brakes, um, which I suspect was because
• 1:12:01
  it was either tracked, but anyway, there's a problem with the brakes
• 1:12:03
  and they've never addressed it.
• 1:12:05
  Um, there was a problem with the reversing beeping that came and went, and then
• 1:12:10
  wouldn't you turn the car on and start reversing and then it wouldn't stop
• 1:12:13
  beeping until you turn the car off again.
• 1:12:15
  That sort of thing, which is a bit inconvenient if you're doing a
• 1:12:17
  three point turn in the road and you have to get out of where you've got
• 1:12:20
  to, you know, that sort of thing.
• 1:12:21
  Then it had, uh, a very expensive service, which costs a whole load of things.
• 1:12:25
  They did.
• 1:12:25
  They did it.
• 1:12:26
  They fixed the, they did the wheels, but they didn't do it properly, so
• 1:12:30
  they didn't undercoat it properly.
• 1:12:31
  So when you got a scuff on the wheels, you couldn't repair
• 1:12:34
  that color to the right color.
• 1:12:35
  You'd have all the wheels redone again.
• 1:12:37
  The problem with reversing turned into a problem with the amp because someone
• 1:12:40
  had gone in and broken the, uh, stop start on it to turn that permanently off.
• 1:12:45
  But the box you need to go into to electronically hack into that CPU, they
• 1:12:49
  hadn't fixed it properly back down.
• 1:12:51
  So Rain got into it and destroyed the amp.
• 1:12:53
  So that meant that for about a month, whenever you drove it at random points,
• 1:12:58
  it would just start playing screeching noise at about 120 decibels in the
• 1:13:02
  car, and you couldn't stop it until you stopped the car and turned it off.
• 1:13:05
  And sometimes it would come back and sometimes it wouldn't.
• 1:13:07
  So in order to get that fixed, they've had to just disconnect all
• 1:13:10
  of the set, all of the SAT nav.
• 1:13:11
  Oh, the sat nav.
• 1:13:12
  I bought the upgraded sat nav and it wouldn't load.
• 1:13:14
  So I paid 300 quid for that and it won't, it's never gone onto the.
• 1:13:18
  I'm forgetting stuff, but you get the idea I add as bullets, what should potential
• 1:13:23
  buyers know and would you recommend?
• 1:13:26
  But I don't think we need to go there, do we?
• 1:13:29
  I think we could just move straight on to your Nissan three 50 Z. Yeah.
• 1:13:33
  So the Nissan, um, the biggest complaint about the Nissan is getting spare parts.
• 1:13:38
  That's it.
• 1:13:39
  I love that car.
• 1:13:40
  It's amazing.
• 1:13:41
  It's the best car I've ever bought.
• 1:13:42
  I bought it with 4,000 miles.
• 1:13:43
  It's got 179,000 miles on it now.
• 1:13:46
  I'll die owning it.
• 1:13:48
  It's amazing.
• 1:13:49
  I I, you know, it's at that age now when you get it running, you get
• 1:13:51
  an MOT and you drive it for bit, it goes back in the garage and then you
• 1:13:54
  notice that something else is broken like, and you then spend the time
• 1:13:57
  ordering that part and fixing that part and then using it for a bit again.
• 1:14:01
  But my idea is to just, you're forcing myself to bite the bullet of
• 1:14:04
  six months of annoying that shit and just use it a bunch more regularly.
• 1:14:08
  So then split driving between it as the weekend car and this
• 1:14:12
  Mercedes usable everyday car as the uh, two around journey stuff.
• 1:14:17
  And then more bikes.
• 1:14:18
  Uh, more bikes.
• 1:14:19
  I uh, music to it, music to my ears.
• 1:14:22
  Mark Ami, both of us have Fiesta Ts both of us love them.
• 1:14:27
  Yep.
• 1:14:27
  You've used yours much this last year, or your wife's I should say loads.
• 1:14:32
  'cause I haven't been driving the BMW.
• 1:14:34
  It's the car I've driven the most.
• 1:14:35
  It's amazing.
• 1:14:36
  I. We had the, we had the, uh, the, uh, the full system put on this year.
• 1:14:39
  Well, from the cap back system, uh, the aftermarket system, um, put on there.
• 1:14:44
  Love.
• 1:14:45
  It does change the sort of tone a little bit.
• 1:14:47
  It means that driving on the motorway at sort of 75 ish, you
• 1:14:51
  sort of wanna be doing 80 ish.
• 1:14:52
  Because it's a little bit droney, but other than that, added a little bit of
• 1:14:56
  punch and it sort of prepares the car for the cat, the high performance cat, and
• 1:15:00
  chipping from the same company next time.
• 1:15:02
  It needs those bits.
• 1:15:04
  I love it.
• 1:15:04
  It's, it's an amazing car.
• 1:15:06
  All right, mark, as a final quick fire here.
• 1:15:10
  What is your top motoring tip for 2025?
• 1:15:14
  Um, top motoring tip for 2025.
• 1:15:17
  I don't really have one either.
• 1:15:18
  Um, we could, we can, I, I'll give two.
• 1:15:21
  So if you're gonna be traveling abroad, do like two minutes of
• 1:15:25
  Googling on where you're going.
• 1:15:27
  Just so you know when people are randomly driving over the hard shoulder and
• 1:15:30
  things like that, what they're up to.
• 1:15:32
  Um, 'cause there might be a method to their madness that's
• 1:15:34
  a local custom kind of thing.
• 1:15:36
  And two, I saw.
• 1:15:37
  On that geezer on bike world.
• 1:15:39
  Uh, he did that rally thing.
• 1:15:41
  He said that he'd spoken to Simon Pavy, the Dex Dakar rider, and he
• 1:15:45
  is that BMW off-road skills course.
• 1:15:47
  I think that's him.
• 1:15:48
  And he put some insulating tape just around the front brake lever and clutch
• 1:15:53
  lever on his motorbike whenever he is doing cold winter east things off road
• 1:15:58
  so that if you've got your finger on the brakes or two fingers on the brakes,
• 1:16:01
  you're not onto the metal, you're onto this insulating tape and it keeps your
• 1:16:04
  hands a load warmer, which I thought that was a really useful tip, especially if as
• 1:16:08
  he was doing this rally thing, it's like one degree and it's like brass monkeys.
• 1:16:12
  Then anything to keep your MITs a bit warmer is, uh,
• 1:16:15
  was definitely a good thing.
• 1:16:16
  I'm trying to think of any, uh, of my top motoring tip.
• 1:16:20
  I guess my thing, the thing on my mind, it, it is, uh, beware the ethanol fuel.
• 1:16:27
  Oh shit.
• 1:16:27
  Yeah.
• 1:16:28
  Yeah.
• 1:16:28
  I mean, I, I'm, I'm on the K five the other day, meant to just go around the
• 1:16:33
  block but ended up going up the hill.
• 1:16:36
  Anyway, I split a couple of cars and as it came into the power band, it choked a load
• 1:16:40
  of bad fuel, which put the shit up, up me and made me think really the this bad
• 1:16:46
  fuel thing, it's not just inconvenient, it's actually kind of dangerous.
• 1:16:50
  So for sure get the gone fucking ethanol fuel.
• 1:16:54
  There's this stuff you can buy for storing, you know, farm equipment
• 1:16:58
  or you know, like your ride on mower or your streamer or something
• 1:17:02
  like that called True fuel that you can get from the hardware store.
• 1:17:06
  So it's 92 octane, so you know, it's not race fuel.
• 1:17:09
  Nice.
• 1:17:10
  But the bikes don't know, know the difference.
• 1:17:12
  So I've got a pump and I'm gonna try and empty out the ri the
• 1:17:16
  ones that have got remain fuel.
• 1:17:18
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:17:19
  No, definitely.
• 1:17:19
  Yeah.
• 1:17:20
  Again, Harry was, did his roundup of it, was it the, uh,
• 1:17:24
  Kash or one of his exoticas.
• 1:17:26
  Where it had got water into the fuel system and it had like, ruined it.
• 1:17:31
  Well, it might have been these, um, is nine 30 turbo and it was, I can't remember
• 1:17:36
  exactly how it happened, but there was, there was, there was a science bit like
• 1:17:40
  in the, in the, in the L'Oreal ads, but.
• 1:17:43
  It was the ethanol fuel that had sort of sucked some of this shit
• 1:17:46
  out and it had been sitting absorbed water and it had got into the system
• 1:17:49
  and then rusted a lot of stuff.
• 1:17:51
  It is absolute poison.
• 1:17:54
  It, it really is.
• 1:17:55
  And at first I was pretty, I couldn't come up with a plan for how to get
• 1:18:02
  off it and how to get onto something else and how I, what I was gonna do.
• 1:18:06
  But I think what my new policy is gonna be, and, and this is, you know,
• 1:18:11
  for anybody who's got motorcycles or even classic cars, is you know
• 1:18:14
  exactly how much gas is in the tank.
• 1:18:16
  And when it's empty and you're parking it up, you put true fuel in it.
• 1:18:21
  If there is remaining gas in it, you put that stable stuff.
• 1:18:26
  In it so you have something to stop it from going bad, but you also have as
• 1:18:32
  much true fuel or you know, as much like storage fuel, decent fuel that's not
• 1:18:38
  got ethanol in and, and so, but you're not, you don't want to be pouring a full
• 1:18:43
  carrier of, you know, loads of true fuel in because it's so bloody expensive.
• 1:18:46
  So that's not realistic.
• 1:18:48
  So for me, what I've decided I'm gonna have to do is the beginning of any
• 1:18:53
  ride that I do is to the gas station.
• 1:18:55
  And at the gas station I put in however much gas I'm gonna
• 1:18:59
  burn about on that ride.
• 1:19:02
  So if I'm gonna go short this a little bit in, if I'm gonna
• 1:19:05
  go further, I put more in.
• 1:19:07
  And, and the idea is when you get home, you step off the bike, you
• 1:19:10
  put stable in, you know, I have fuel system cleaner stuff to try and debunk
• 1:19:15
  the ones that have got gunked up and that's a whole separate kind of story.
• 1:19:18
  But that's how I'm gonna be doing it.
• 1:19:21
  I remember what the science bit was now, the science bit was.
• 1:19:24
  He'd gone to a garage that was a bit in middle of nowhere and bought like high
• 1:19:28
  octane fuel, the like super un netted or whatever the best thing he could get.
• 1:19:32
  But they, when they did the sort of the reverse diagnostics, they thought that
• 1:19:36
  it was probably because that garage doesn't sell much high octane gas.
• 1:19:40
  Because in the middle of nowhere, and therefore it sits around in
• 1:19:44
  the gas tank in, in the underground storage tank for a long time.
• 1:19:47
  And that there, if it's there and doesn't turn over, it's
• 1:19:50
  super, it will absorb water.
• 1:19:51
  So it ended up with like 4% water content or something like that.
• 1:19:54
  And that's what fucked the internals on the porch, you know?
• 1:19:57
  So don't, you're gonna have to buy it and leave it in the car, buy it from
• 1:20:00
  somewhere where it turns over regularly in a busy super, in a busy turn.
• 1:20:04
  And, and it's also, you know, I was thinking this when you were talking about
• 1:20:08
  your three 50 is they don't like sitting.
• 1:20:10
  Really.
• 1:20:11
  No.
• 1:20:11
  And I think if you were to start using it really regularly to like, I'm also
• 1:20:17
  why my stuff, I, I am not, you know, I'm very hypocritical as I say this, but you
• 1:20:24
  know, if you use the stuff regularly, it, it's not that it doesn't need stuff, it's
• 1:20:28
  that the stuff it needs is different.
• 1:20:31
  Like a car in service is different from some fucking thing
• 1:20:34
  that's been sitting for ages.
• 1:20:36
  Mark, thank you for your time today.
• 1:20:38
  Pleasure, bro.
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