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Pebble Beach 2026 · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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John Summers is the motoring historian.
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He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into
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a fairly inept sports bike rider.
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Hailing from California, he collects cars and bikes built with plenty of
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cheap and fast, and not much reliable.
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On his show, he gets together with various co-hosts to talk about new
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and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.
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Good day.
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Good morning.
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Good afternoon.
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It is John Summers, the motoring historian.
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The dust is settling on Pebble Beach 2026.
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I guess it's probably settled for most people already, 'cause it's, like, a
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couple of weeks ago now, but I always take ages to do anything, don't I?
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I actually wrote my thoughts down ages ago, but all right, Pebble Beach 2026.
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So the first thing that we should talk about, or that I, I'd wanna talk about,
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is the car that won Best in Show.
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There's Duesenberg classes every year at Pebble Beach, isn't there?
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And, and even if there are… isn't, like, a specific Duesenberg class, they fit into
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other classes like American, you know, Interwar Closed and American Interwar
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Open, and these other kind of classes.
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So rather like Ferrari, there's always a massive presence.
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But, you know, this year was a standout in terms of the number and
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caliber of Duesenbergs that they had.
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There's one car called the 20 Grand that has a really interesting B pillar design.
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To contemporize, it had a very modern kind of shape.
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I think it was even the car that was used for the World's Fair or
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the Festival of Progress, whatever they were calling it in 1933.
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You know, it was like a… It was o- one of those, uh, kind of… 'Cause
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I think Gordon Buehrig even designed it, if my memory serves correctly.
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But the point is that although most people were buying cars that, you know,
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you could wear your top hat in, and, you know, had front seats and back seats
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and basically walked and talked like a Suburban might do now, there were designs
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that were different from that, right?
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So this 20 Grand is, uh, is one of those.
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Well, obviously, if you were all about performance, you would do a short
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chassis, and you would do the big motor, and you might do two-seat coupe And
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those are super impractical if you think about the size of the car where, you
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know, you could have like seven seater like a Suburban, not as three rows.
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It would have- they would have facing, that's what the seven seats were like
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as well as the space in, in the front.
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In order to make it look more stylish, you can have a coupe body style
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that only seats two people, the, the two front seat passengers there.
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But even lighter and, you know, more rakish in performance than
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that is for that to be a roadster, for that vehicle to have no roof.
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Amongst all these long wheelbase Duesenbergs, and if you listen to my
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prattling about the museum, you know, a time when Bentley was winning Le
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Mans with cars with 200 horsepower, Duesenberg Model J's had 265.
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The supercharged ones had 320.
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There were two short chassis, sort of mega supercharged.
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I didn't drill into exactly how this happened, but there were two 400
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horsepower short chassis SSJs built.
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Now, the Pebble blurb all talked about how this was to distract from the
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fact that Duesenberg were going bust.
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The- these two cars were built, one was black, one was sort
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of two-tone silvery gray.
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Uh, one went to Clark Gable, the other went to Gary Cooper.
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They were both the Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio of their day as it were.
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Now, the gray car I had some contact with before Because after Gary Cooper,
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it passed to Briggs Cunningham, and from Briggs Cunningham, it became part of,
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you know, Miles Collier's inheritance, and hence the Revs collection.
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He parted with that car, uh, you know, in order to free up the money to do
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fu- to do a project that was associated with saving, preserving, encouraging
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the appreciation of, of old cars.
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In fact, I have subsequently felt that the sale of the car was more a way to
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jolt collectors into thinking, "Wow, if Miles Collier's selling, maybe I should
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think about downsizing what would happen to my collection in future." You know, it
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was, I, I, I felt it was more than about seeding funds for a project, although it
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was about seeding funds for a project.
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So that's the gray car.
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The black car, the Clark Gable car that won the show, that apparently
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had come off a fresh restoration.
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I saw the car on the lawn, didn't actually look too closely at it.
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I- this has never happened before in all the years I've been to Pebble Beach.
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I'll, I'll hold up my hand and say in years where I've been a docent, there
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have been more years than not where I have not even seen the winning car on
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the lawn, let alone looked at it and thought, "Oh, that car is going to win."
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And that's not least because the winning car is often an interwar car, and I'm
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not really an interwar kind of guy.
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So if there's Vignale-bodied Ferraris there, which there were lots of this year,
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that's where my attention tends to, uh, to fall, you know, the post-war stuff.
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You know, and they often have classes that are aimed at younger people, and
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being under the age of 65, I count as a younger person for the Pebble crowd.
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So that means, you know, this year they had some Japanese cars, including
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Mazda 787s and Tom's Toyotas and, and that kind of stuff, and I'll talk about
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that a little more in a moment because they had all that stuff out at Laguna,
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and we camped out at Laguna as well and, and experienced the JDM Group C
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in all of its glory To return to the lawn of Pebble itself and Duesenberg
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and this, uh, Clark Gable SSJ, I mean, you've seen the pictures, you can judge
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whether or not you think it's elegant.
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You can judge whether or not you think the black car's better than the gray car.
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You can judge whether you prefer the wire wheels or the disc wheels.
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I think I prefer the wires.
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But if you squint a bit and you imagine the black car on the wire wheels,
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like body color painted wire wheels, I think right there you- you'd have…
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You know, for me, that's what I would consider peak elegance.
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And, you know, in some ways, this is an object lesson in what makes
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a Pebble Beach winner, right?
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The- the- this is a fresh, exquisite, faultless restoration, and the car
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is the very best of the very best.
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It's Duesenberg, which is the best of the American marks, and this is
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one of only two short chassis cars that had that 400 horsepower, as
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well as the celebrity ownership.
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Now, I believe if you go to, I don't know what chain of cinemas it is, but I was,
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uh… I went to the cinema with my family to see the Brad Pitt Formula 1 movie
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when that came out, and I noticed when in the restroom there was a photograph of
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Clark Gable sat in an Olympian-era car.
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Don't know if it was a Duesenberg, but I did find myself thinking, I
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wonder if that car is the actual car that won, uh, Pebble Beach.
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Quite an interesting thing, isn't it?
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The company's going bust and you give the cars to these two celebrities.
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It does make you wonder how much they drove them and- and
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what sort of happened with them.
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'Cause one of the things that Really struck me with cars that were bought,
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that I wrote about for Gooding when I was writing for Gooding.
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It really struck me that a lot of these cars, like Ferrari BBs, I wrote about
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a series of those, where it seemed like after they'd done, like, 3,000
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or 5,000 miles and were, like, three or five years old, clearly something
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happened for the owners to be like, "This is too annoying to drive in
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traffic," or, "I've had a little fender bender in it," or, you know, "It keeps
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getting vapor locked on the 405," or, "Norm, you know, my left foot…"
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Okay, you know, something happens for them, and, you know, you love the
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thing, so you don't sell it, so it sits.
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And, and then, you know, it's how many times it changes hands and who
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decides to do the recommissioning.
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And generally, the less of that that's happened, the better the cars seem to me
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to be when Gooding can be write about…
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I, I, I feel like I wrote about half a dozen Boxers that seemed to have,
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like, this kind of history, but then of course other cars as well.
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Maybe that's just the pattern of those kind of cars.
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So my sense is, right, that's what would've happened with Duesenbergs.
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And in fact, I was watching YouTube where a fellow was showing a Packard that had
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been converted into a wrecker truck.
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In fact, it was a Tom Cotter, it was Barn Find Hunter, and Tom skillfully drilled
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that little bit deeper to be like, "Wow, it was only on the road, if this is a
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'29, you know, it was only on the road so, or if this is a '32, it was only on
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the road seven years before the wrecker body was put on it." And it… So that
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is to say this Gatsby era where they flourished was extremely brief because the
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war came, and with it, the scrap drive.
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So a lot of these cars were actually lost at that time.
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Y- those that weren't, you know, if you think of post-war cars, th- this
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is why these cars were on used car lots alongside the blobby guys of
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the 1940s at ridiculous prices in the 1950s, and of course led to the whole
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collector car movement from there.
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So the Thousand Horsepower Sunbeam gave me a chance with my people on my tours
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to talk not just about the land speed record, but to talk about Segrave as well.
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And as usual with these things, the cars are awesome, but the, the people are, are
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equally awesome, and the stories around the people are as remarkable as the design
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of the, as the design of the vehicles are.
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There were a couple of, of what I would call Gotham City cars there.
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You did hear me right.
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They're like Gotham's, you know, the city where Batman's from.
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It's all dark and stylized, isn't it, right?
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Or stylized, it's always raining.
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Prime place along the lawn, you know, in the, the first car in the
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row, so the natural car for you to begin your tours if you're a
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docent doing a, a show field tour.
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The place where I met my son, both of us sitting rather tiredly looking at
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this actual car, the round door Rolls.
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Google it up.
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It's in the Petersen Museum.
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Now cleverly, Pebble had done this cl- And this is something, right,
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that if you d- have never been to Pebble, you, you won't appreciate it.
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But it's really one of the things I enjoy the most about Pebble, is the way they
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do juxtaposition of the class, right?
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So, so this Round Door Rolls was in the streamlining class.
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Next to streamlining, they had moved out onto aerodynamics and aerodynamic
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experiments, and they had the Batcars of the 1950s and the two naughty Blue
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Ray cars, which we had in the Blackhawk.
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And those cars are not for driving.
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Those cars are for looking at.
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They always were for looking at.
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They're really interesting culturally about, you know, where the companies were.
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It's about the past, it's about the fut- It's really, uh, um…
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So, and look, aerodynamics is partly done with wind tunnels.
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The Japanese cars and, you know, the 787 and Le Mans cars were, were
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there as well representing downforce.
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So you had streamlining, that looks fast, giving way to aerodynamics.
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We maybe worked in a wind tunnel giving way to what's actually gonna get us
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down Mulsanne fastest, but still give us good downforce around the kink, and
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still give us good downforce around Indianapolis because, you know, that
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story was, was told right there.
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So this Rolls has a round door.
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That is the distinctive feature of it.
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But actually I think almost more distinctive is the giant grill.
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'Cause you've probably heard me say before, and you're probably aware,
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that these interwar Olympian cars, you bought the engine and the chassis and
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then somebody else did the body for you.
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Well, that meant if you were gonna have brand recognition, if you were
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Volvo or Mas- uh, not Volvo, if you were Bentley or Duesenberg or Marmon
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and you… Or actually that's a bad example 'cause they sort of did in-house.
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But, uh, generally speaking, the grill and the front of the car was
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what was recognizable, and then a local coach builder would do the body.
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So the, the coach builder is often somebody who built coaches
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for the family buying the car for generations before, right?
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So, uh, Italian car is gonna have, likely have an Italian body unless
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it was imported to England, in which case it might have a British body on
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it, leading to some really interesting combinations of engines and, and
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bodies and, and all this kind of thing.
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So the grill shape is sacred though, right?
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'Cause that's how you're gonna recognize the car.
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Like, you know, you recognize a Packard now 'cause it has the fluted grill.
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You recognize a Duesenberg 'cause it has the mustache bumper and, you
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know, the headlights and the grill.
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That's the, the signature look if, if you will.
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The Round Door Rolls has a custom grill on it.
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It's a Rolls-Royce grill, but it's like leaned back.
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It's as if the ZZ Top Eliminator hot rod and a normal Rolls-Royce had a baby.
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Like, it's got this big lean back grill.
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It's got this massive high hood line.
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Hans, one of the other docent at the Petersen as well, and I have to say, uh,
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yeah, Hans Kraakee is the guy's name.
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What a well-informed individual.
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I learn so much from him every time.
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He told me in period when they used to drive it around, he used to put
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seat cushions on the seat because the cowl's so high that it's really
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hard to see out, which I can believe.
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So the car's a 1925, and if you Google up like 1925 Rolls-Royce,
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you can see why the, the lady who owned it, and it was a, a, a lady…
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I, I don't know if it got in a wreck or if the body got tired or if she
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bought it secondhand, but the decision to have this body put on this pretty
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staid-looking but quality mid-'20s British car, what a awesome piece of design.
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So Google it up if you don't know it, the Round Door Rolls.
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Now, the other Gotham City car that was, was on the lawn
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there was the Phantom Corsair.
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There's a Hot Wheels of it.
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It's a weirdly proportioned thing, a weird-looking car.
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Not gonna try and describe it.
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Google it up.
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Like, it's just full Go- full-on Gotham City.
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The Heinz heir financed it.
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It's Heinz money.
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You know, I… Some of the other docents were like, "Oh, you know, paid for with
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ketchup." I wonder, didn't they do beans?
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Didn't they do canned soup as well, I wonder?
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I wonder what did mostly finance it.
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It appeared in movies.
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There were movies made about it.
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It does look rather sinister, but it's all about the front, and
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the back is a little bit less, um, impressive looking, you know?
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When it's driving away, it just looks like an old black car, whereas from the front
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it has a real sort of, uh, sinisterness about it even, uh, even today.
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I saw it on the lawn quite early in the morning, kind of in the mist a bit,
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and, you know, it looked pretty Gotham City and, you know, you could see, uh,
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you know, goth musicians from the '80s like Andrew Eldritch or The Mission or
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somebody like that getting out of it.
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It had that kind of, uh, atmosphere about it.
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The Phantom Corsair.
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In advance, I was very excited to see, uh, there was an Alfa 2900B.
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I think there are only three chassis.
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Miles Collier, the Napoli, Naples, the Revs people have one.
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Believe Ralph Lauren has one.
16:08
I thought they were all open wire wheel Mille Miglia monsters.
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This one in the show was gray.
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It had a coupe body on it.
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It had weird spats on it.
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I didn't look at the car properly.
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There may be more than three.
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I might be completely wrong.
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So that was a car that I thought might win, but when I actually looked at it,
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it just… Italian design, sometimes it really works, sometimes it doesn't.
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There was a… In the Vignale class, there was a little red etcetera.
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I can't even remember exactly what it was, like Siata, Moretti, one of
16:49
those, like a Stanguellini, you know, one of those, like, little Italian
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marks around in the '50s and '60s.
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I will maybe use this car as a thumbnail because it was
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such an awesome little thing.
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I stood with my son next to it saying this would be the most elegant car in
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the show, in my opinion, were it bigger.
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Isn't it weird that being big like a Duesenberg is elegant if you carry it off
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properly, whereas being small like this is always kind of small and is always less?
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And it's really weird that size, size is important.
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Size matters.
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Well, there is a newsletter, Sports Car Digest I think it's called.
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The writer in that highlighted the car in the class next to my little red guy,
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a blue car with, I thought, the most overstated, silly, filigree design.
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Like, all of the gee-gaws that Vignale does, which some of which work, some
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of which don't It had all of them and none of them worked on that car.
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The one next to it, the red one, I loved.
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Sports car guy dress guy, he had photographed the blue car with my
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little red one in the background.
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Like, my car was…
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That was just like cannon fodder in the background.
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He was commenting on how awesome the blue car was, and that is what's so special
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about the Pebble Beach experience.
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So I mentioned there were the Japanese cars, the rotary Mazdas and, and Toyotas.
18:22
Well deserved.
18:23
Fact of the matter is this is the second or third year that I've camped
18:29
at Laguna Seca, and the Group C cars represent one of the very best spectacles.
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It's the shape of them.
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It's the noise.
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Again, it's the size.
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They have a presence about them.
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They're quite big cars and, you know, my son is there, he's 12 now,
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he's there with two other lads the same age, and they have the same
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sort of visceral reaction to them.
18:56
I can't underline enough how people at Laguna Seca do not know what it
19:05
took to win Le Mans in the 1980s.
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They don't know that Martin Brundle won Le Mans in that era.
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They maybe don't even know that that orange and green
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Mazda has a four-rotor engine.
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But they're all in that place that I was in reading Motorsport
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Magazine in the 1980s because there was no Group C on the TV.
19:30
There was Formula 1 and there was rallying.
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There was no Group C on TV, so Group C reached me through reading.
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You, you just looked at the statistics and you looked at the lap speed and you looked
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at the top speed and you looked at the pictures of the cars, the still pictures
19:47
of the cars, and that was enough for me to feel what an incredible spectacle it was.
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So what am I saying?
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I'm saying that the legend is only growing because people now, youngins,
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are seeing these cars and then having the same kind of digging back into the past
20:10
experience that I had reading Motorsport.
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For them, it's this looking back through the past.
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Now, the producer, Eric, the producer, listening in and editing my every
20:21
word here, you know, he and I have talked about rallying before.
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Both of us share a passion for rallying.
20:27
I, of course, with my following of, of Senna's career, followed the turbo era
20:32
in, in Formula 1 and, you know, as I just said, through Motorsport, I, I read
20:36
about and, and learned about, uh, Group C somewhat as well, or, although less.
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Eric feels like Group C may well have been the craziest of the three.
20:46
I'm not sure.
20:48
I do think that given they used the Nordschleife Given they used Spa in
20:55
its current form, not the old circuit, I do feel like, and given with all
21:01
of these Group C cars, and this is what I said to people on the lawn at
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Pebble Beach, is, is, you know, you have to imagine the 240 miles an hour.
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I gave them the Martin Brundle story.
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And then I said to them, look at where your feet are going to be.
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And Eric, I stole your line from, uh, when we were at Hillsborough, when we
21:20
worked the Hillsborough Encore together.
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I stole your line.
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Look at where your feet are.
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Your feet are going to be in front of the axle line.
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And what is there?
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A bit of fiberglass, bit of tube frame, brake master cylinder,
21:33
your feet and the barrier if you make any kind of mistake at all.
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So that's not lost on these kids.
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So the spectacle of Group C is absolutely incredible.
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And to bring that to the lawn at Pebble Beach and to put it alongside
21:50
the bat cars, aerodynamic study, the Nardi Blu-ray, the round door Rolls,
21:56
uh, you know, Century of Progress, Gordon Buehrig, 20 grand Duesenberg.
22:02
That row this year along the ocean there told an awesome story
22:06
in a really interesting way.
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It connected cars together in a really interesting way.
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And of course, as a connoisseur of cars, it's, it's great to see the
22:17
story told in a slightly different way.
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That's what I'm saying.
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Well, what does that have to do with Pebble Beach, you're thinking.
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This, dear listener, or one of you that's stayed with me this long, there were
22:31
two XJRs on the lawn at Pebble Beach.
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Two, not one, two.
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In keeping with this theme of like royal cars, they had a Lady Diana Spencer
22:40
one, which brings us onto the other car on the lawn at Pebble Beach, uh,
22:44
which is the Bob Tullius IMSA or SCCA.
22:48
It raced in either way a five-speed stick, stripped out, caged XJS,
22:55
which next to… So there was this SC on the lawn, did I say that,
22:58
that was built for, uh, Lady Diana.
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She had like a pre-production SC.
23:05
It also had the American quad headlight nose in it.
23:07
So that was, uh, was interesting, but it's like a C or E plater, that
23:12
kind of, of era if you're a Brit.
23:14
That's the registration plate that it had on it.
23:17
So the Lady Di XJS and the Bob Tullius SCCA race car that was all
23:23
kinds of, uh, side piped awesomeness.
23:26
It set me surfing people who can turn the Jaguar V12 from a sort of docile
23:33
pussycat into a Le Mans screaming beast.
23:37
They are out there, but the engines start at $25,000, which is a little bit more
23:43
than I was, uh, I was hoping to spend.
23:49
Often my favorite car at Pebble Beach is a preservation class
23:52
car, and thus it was again.
23:54
This year, uh, there was a Hispano-Suiza sedan, just like a little sporting sedan.
24:04
I don't know what it is about the fact that the same car, had
24:10
it been restored, would not have been remarkable to me at all.
24:14
The smell, the paint, the leather The combination of all those
24:22
things together, this is everything that's awesome about old cars.
24:29
Uh, that car restored is no different to me really than
24:34
my wife's nice new Cadillac.
24:36
The design of it's different, maybe craftsmanship of the materials is nice,
24:40
but the unrestored, I'm not gonna say time capsule because that's such a
24:46
cliche, but the unrestored, the preserved car that's now a century or so old,
24:53
yeah, they are often my favorite car at Pebble Beach each year because for
25:00
me, they illustrate what Pebble Beach stands for, which is the preservation
25:06
and reverence of one's great design.
25:10
So the preservation class Hispano-Suiza, which I, I so loved, had so much
25:16
more charisma for me than the 20 Grand Duesenberg, which is a car that
25:20
I know well from the Black Hawks.
25:22
So I'd looked at that car a lot before, and I, I, I understand why people
25:26
thought it was exciting at the time if you compare it with other, but
25:29
it, it just, it just, those kind of jewelry box, Pebble Beach, Black Hawk
25:36
Collection kind of restorations, they just don't interest me as much as the
25:40
car which has come all the way down.
25:43
And I don't know why I wanna keep talking about the smell.
25:46
When I was with the Hispano, a guy commented to me on how
25:51
incredible the smell was.
25:53
It's a little bit like these, this realization that we've had
25:57
as electrification and its, with its silence comes, but we really
26:01
did like the sound of racing cars.
26:04
And at Laguna Seca, you know, listening not just to the group C cars, but
26:09
you know, just to cars racing, there's, there's a sense of, you know,
26:12
we're worshiping a wall of noise.
26:16
There's something to look at, but it's the wall of noise that is
26:21
the dominating sensory experience.
26:25
We sort of didn't realize that even in the era of the V10s, which
26:30
Formula 1 cars, which the youngins feel like now is, you know, the
26:33
greatest era, the screaming V10s.
26:36
You know, it was, for sure it was part of the spectacle, but you didn't feel
26:40
like it was the dominant sense that you were experiencing the event through.
26:46
Does that make sense?
26:47
It's not a visual experience.
26:50
It's, uh, mostly an audible kind of experience because they're so loud,
26:57
because you hadn't expected them to be so loud, because you can't quite
27:03
process the deafening intensity of it.
27:06
It is like a heavy metal show, isn't it?
27:08
That's the whole, uh, point of it.
27:10
So with these older cars, the smell and, and with it then the visual patination
27:19
that you can see and feel, right?
27:21
You can feel that the leather's softer, uh, that the steering wheel's worn.
27:27
What am I trying to say?
27:27
I'm trying to say that smell is perhaps the, the dominant experience
27:35
with, uh, the patina cars.
27:37
My, my final thought would be that as we move towards electrification
27:41
and we see a generation raised only knowing electrified cars, any kind
27:48
of gas-powered vehicle is gonna have so much theater about it because it's
27:55
gonna have the noise and the smell.
27:58
And I don't just mean, you know, the beautiful Espada Suede interior smell.
28:02
I mean the smell of, you know, my diesel F-250 or, or the smell of two-stroke
28:08
race fuel, which a lot of people will talk about as being, you know, the
28:12
single most evocative thing in motoring.
28:18
So to move from the lawn at Pebble Beach to the week as a whole.
28:24
If you listen to the piece that Eric and William Ferrari chat Ross
28:30
did from Kissimmee, we talked a lot there about how, you know, whilst
28:35
the Bianco Speciale GTO that we'd come to see hadn't underperformed,
28:40
it also hadn't overperformed.
28:43
Whereas some of the other cars that we saw, the orange paint sample,
28:47
Porsche 918, um, or especially the yellow Bachman Ferrari Enzo, these
28:53
were cars that just did, you know, in the case of the, uh, 918, $2 or $3
29:00
million more than it was valued at.
29:03
Just stop and think about that.
29:04
A hell of a lot of money for the auction company to not even see coming.
29:08
Hell of a lot of money, right?
29:10
But this was nothing compared to the Enzo, right?
29:11
The Enzo was estimated, I think, at like five or eight or something like that, and
29:15
it got into the teams, like mid-teams.
29:18
This is, you know, 2X, maybe even 3X what the, the estimate was, what
29:24
the seller might have realistically expected to get for that car.
29:29
So we left Kissimmee being a bit like, "What the fuck's going on?"
29:33
And do you remember I did my piece about, oh, the guard's changing.
29:36
You know, soon we will see a McLaren F1 overtake a Ferrari GTO in value.
29:43
Well, Pebble coulda, shoulda, woulda been that weekend because apparently,
29:48
I'm no a McLaren guru, but my understanding is that there were two
29:53
short-tailed F95 GTRs or something.
29:57
One won Le Mans, the other one went to Nick Mason.
29:59
It was painted in pop art, and the Nick Mason pop art car was up for
30:03
sale, estimated at 35 million, which I thought was, you know, that's the,
30:09
uh, less than the white GTO, but only just, and this previous record
30:16
public auction price for a GTO.
30:19
So I mean, Dave MacDonald paid in the mid-'70s, we think, but
30:22
that was a private transaction.
30:24
The previous GTO transaction I think was 35.
30:27
Nick Mason car does not break that 35 number, so we're not there yet.
30:32
Something else might need to happen before, you know, McLaren F1s flip
30:38
Ferrari GTOs as the one to have.
30:41
"But John," you're saying, "what about the Ferrari Luce?" Yeah.
30:47
What about- The Ferrari Luce.
30:51
The guy that bought it made his money in ophthalmic devices, so seeing and
30:59
bringing light, it, it works, doesn't it?
31:02
He's also a billionaire and a philanthropist, so he gives
31:06
a lot of money to charity.
31:07
So 40 million, rather than just going to a charity, getting this
31:13
Ferrari in, in return, chassis number 001, I, I can see why he did it.
31:18
He's somebody in the Ferrari world now.
31:20
If he's just bought that McLaren F1, what would he have been?
31:23
Just another rich-guy car collector, whereas by doing this Ferrari
31:27
Luce, he's really put himself as somebody in the Ferrari world.
31:33
Now, I follow a little bit Doug Tabert, that fellow that seems to buy and sell
31:39
a lot of Porsche GT3s, a main fellow.
31:42
He has a podcast called Switch Cars.
31:44
Uh, he was saying on that apparently Ferraris were the big winners
31:48
in value for Monterey this year.
31:50
So if that was the case, this bloke paying $40 million for this Luce, I, I wouldn't
31:56
do it, but I can understand why he did, is my point, and I don't think it was a waste
32:00
of money 'cause it went to charity, right?
32:03
The car itself, they did have one there.
32:06
I mean, it does have slightly more elegant proportions than the Nissan
32:11
Leaf, which, you know, the internet has been comparing it to, but it
32:15
definitely looks like a mouse, right?
32:17
It… When they tell you the guy from Apple designed it, you're like,
32:20
"Oh, yeah." I mean, they had one on the lawn at Casa Ferrari right
32:24
alongside the Ferraris of, of the past.
32:27
And, uh, not only, not only is it not a narc Daytona, which I don't
32:34
know if you can picture what animals they are, but not only is it not
32:38
that kind of aggressive shape, it's not got the prettiness of a 206.
32:46
It's not got the look at my big dick of a Testarossa.
32:54
Doesn't have any of, of that going on.
32:58
Now I know, right?
32:59
It's aimed at a different demographic, and it's a glib to say that, but I
33:05
think the statistic that you need to think about with the Luce is that less
33:11
than 1% of the people wealthy enough to own a Ferrari have owned a Ferrari.
33:18
Do you think the same stat is true for a Mercedes-Benz?
33:22
I put it to you, absolutely not.
33:25
So Ferrari can achieve a great deal more market penetration,
33:31
can't they, without diluting the brand's exclusivity at all, right?
33:37
That seems to be the thought, and the thought seems to be that if Porsche
33:42
can basically be building SUVs and four doors now, but can still have an image
33:48
as a sports car maker and can still churn out, you know, the odd Boxster
33:52
and GT3 RS, then how's an Porsche continue to be what Porsche always were?
34:00
And f- you know, Ferrari are a publicly traded company.
34:03
They have to make money, and making money means selling more cars, and
34:06
there's tons of demand for the cars in different parts of the world, but those
34:10
people are not gonna buy Testarossas.
34:14
And in today's day and age, how can you even make something
34:18
as cool as a Testarossa?
34:21
Uh, whether it's the '50s thing or the '80s thing, right, you just can't
34:25
make those kind of, of vehicles now.
34:28
Y- you know, from a legislation perspective, you simply can't
34:31
build those kind of vehicles now.
34:32
So I see that Ferrari had to do something different.
34:36
Although the notion of partnering with Apple, 'cause I don't like Apple
34:41
myself, partnering with Apple as, you know, they do the best technology.
34:45
We're living in an age of technology.
34:46
How can we marry ourselves to… I see the rationale of all of that,
34:51
and I don't hate it because it is so different that it's left room for
34:56
them still to do really pure stuff.
34:59
So I've made my peace with the Luce is, uh, is I guess what I'm saying.
35:07
So the record number, 760 million or whatever for Pebble Week, that record
35:13
number is carried by a small number of cars at the very top of the market.
35:21
It's the K-shaped economy, right?
35:23
Now, what that looks like on the ground at Pebble is more and more events, Tutto
35:30
Bene, an Aston Martin exclusive party.
35:33
Ollie trying to get into the Jaguar stand only to find, you know,
35:37
you had to be an invited Jaguar VIP to get onto the Jaguar stand.
35:43
So there's more of that kind of, you know, late model people coming to Car
35:47
Week, but the kind of people who I don't know, I, I sat in a three-star
35:52
restaurant with my wife the other day.
35:55
It was, like, a couple of months ago.
35:56
It was a date.
35:57
A tasting menu, two tech bros in their 30s sat next to us, and they were,
36:03
like, having a, like, a let's catch up.
36:05
But, you know, they were having this m- m- tasting menu that was definitely
36:09
costing more than $500 'cause they had the wine pairing as, as well, right?
36:13
So, you know, they're the same thing as we had, and, and, you
36:16
know, I know what the bill was.
36:17
So I sat there thinking, trying not to listen to the
36:20
conversation, focus on my wife.
36:21
But, you know, y- you always, uh… 'Cause afterwards my wife and I talked, right?
36:25
And she was like, "Yeah, I was trying not to as well," but you're
36:27
sort of trying to listen as well.
36:29
And I knew when my wife went to the loo, I vaguely tuned into their conversation,
36:33
and I thought, "I bet you they're gonna talk about Porsches at some point." And,
36:39
uh, sure enough, I, I would say not 10 minutes later, they had a conversation
36:44
about, "You've got your GT3, um, RS has come," that kind of, of thing.
36:49
You know, you shouldn't be put off a car because of the kind of
36:54
people who own it, should you?
36:55
You know?
36:56
You shouldn't be put off the performance bargain that C4 Corvettes are because
37:00
they have the image that they have.
37:02
You shouldn't be But, oof, it can be hard.
37:06
But look, right, the tech bros with their GT3s, that is the K shape.
37:12
It's people who are further up that curve who are driving
37:17
the values of F40s, of F1s.
37:22
I also think it's part of the generational wealth shift that you read about on
37:30
the, you know, financial… I was gonna say pages of the newspaper,
37:34
but you know, you know what I mean.
37:35
Like, the financial.
37:37
In your financial scrolling, you will come across people talking about, you
37:41
know, the great wealth transfer as the boomers' generation passes, right?
37:46
Well, I had heard that a couple of the top wealth management firms, so firms that
37:52
look after the money of the billionaires and the hundreds of millionaires, these
37:58
fellows have begun to allow inclusion of cars, certain cars, if you're on the list.
38:08
If your name's not on the list, you're not coming in.
38:10
Certain cars alongside art.
38:13
So just as in a diversified portfolio you would have stocks, and shares,
38:18
and property, you might have art, a small proportion allocated to.
38:23
And now cars, certain cars, blue-chip collectibles, you know, 300SLs,
38:29
Ferrari F40s are on that list.
38:32
Now, I'm not sure if 300SLs are on the list, right?
38:34
Because that is last generation stuff.
38:38
I'm sure the F40 is.
38:39
I'm sure the 959 is.
38:41
You know, I'm sure.
38:43
So that's the kind of stuff that is truly investment grade, right?
38:49
Literally investment grade now.
38:52
So apparently this is what's driving the, the, the price boom.
38:56
So the flip of that is what, what are the bargains out there?
38:59
Well, the statistics are that, you know, muscle stuff, '50s stuff,
39:05
muscle stuff's kind of flat and, you know, '50s stuff, '30s stuff
39:09
is really going down a little bit.
39:11
And I've heard two or three people say that.
39:14
Uh, you see that in… You know, one of the other Pebble Dosens was talking
39:18
about trying to get rid of a couple of '20s cars that he's got and, you
39:21
know, there's just no interest in them.
39:24
And you, you sit there thinking, you know, if you were gonna get
39:27
this kind of car, this is the bloke to get it from But I just don't
39:31
care about Model T Fords, you know?
39:33
I d- y- I mean, it is faintly interesting, but they're just so hard
39:38
to use because of that low top speed.
39:41
And, you know, if you've got your own estate to drive around, maybe.
39:45
But, I mean, yeah, they're just not practical, and I've got too much
39:50
stuff that's not practical already.
39:52
So I mentioned that we were out at the track.
39:55
There was a e- exhibit of Japanese motorsport heritage, Formula 1 cars,
40:02
but also a great collection of bikes.
40:06
So I was, uh, you know, looking closely at Nicky Hayden's RCV211 and there was
40:12
a Mick Doohan two-stroke guy there.
40:16
And, and so I was focused on that when I noticed Kenny Roberts and
40:20
Eddie Lawson just there chatting.
40:23
Being me, I didn't be like, "Ooh, can I have an, uh, autograph?" Didn't do that.
40:28
Stood, like, respectfully, uh, off.
40:31
They were chatting with another guy, and he was asking them a lot
40:33
of questions, and they were asking him about the nice Honda CB750 that
40:38
he had, who I did not recognize.
40:40
I recognized him, but couldn't place his name.
40:43
Well, later I realized it was Jim Farley, CEO of Ford.
40:48
So there's Farley, Kenny Roberts, King Kenny Roberts, the guy that
40:53
popularized the knee-down slide, foil to Barry Sheene, and Eddie Lawson,
40:59
who's known for those big Kawasakis, who was like a MotoGP champion.
41:03
So this is the era where the two-stroke Grand Prix bikes produced such pr-
41:09
made the power so brutally that the only people who were able to
41:13
ride them were people who'd grown up riding two-stroke dirt bikes.
41:17
So all the, like, smooth European guys, hopeless.
41:20
The guys that just rode it on the back wheel, and when it broke away,
41:24
they just bloody caught it, those guys, they were the fast guys.
41:27
So Lawson was, was one of those.
41:29
Um, others were like Randy Mamola.
41:31
Also saw Wayne Rainey, and Wayne Rainey, you know, had a sort of Senna-Prost kind
41:37
of rivalry with Kevin Schwantz in the, in the early '90s, contemporary with
41:42
Prost and Senna in a super cool way, riding these super cool two-stroke bikes.
41:46
Um, unfortunately, if you don't know the story, Rainey had a fall, was paralyzed
41:50
and, you know, was in the wheelchair when he was chatting there with, uh, with Jim
41:55
Farley and Eddie Lawson and King Kenny.
41:58
Now, that would be a cool story in itself, wouldn't it?
42:01
But as I'm stood there, Farley asks Lawson "Did you ever ride that?"
42:08
And he's pointing at a flat track Yamaha XS, but it's not like a 650
42:15
with two cylinders, which is, uh, you know, like 100 mile an hour bike.
42:20
It's a four cylinder.
42:22
And if you don't know flat track, flat track is an oval.
42:26
Uh, some of them a mile, some of them half miles, but it was popular years ago.
42:30
And it's kind of like speedway, in the English sort of speedway,
42:34
but on bigger tracks, where you're fast on the straight, and then you
42:37
just lean the bike over in a slide.
42:39
You have like a metal shoe, and you're gonna drag the inside foot on the dirt
42:43
there as the back of the bike slides.
42:45
If, if it sounds terrifying and dangerous, you, you're absolutely right.
42:49
There is a movie called On Any Sunday.
42:53
If you've not seen it, it's an absolute must-watch.
42:57
It's all about motorcycling, but it's also specifically about flat track, and the
43:04
opening credits feature flat track riders.
43:08
"Did you ever ride that bike?"
43:10
Farley asks Lawson.
43:12
Lawson grimaces and says, "Too fucking dangerous for me." So I carry that thought
43:18
back to camp, because back at camp is one of my mates whose dad raced flat track,
43:26
whose dad not only raced flat track, but appears in the credits of On Any Sunday,
43:32
in the opening credits, crashing, no less.
43:34
Not just in the credits doing flat track, but in the credits crashing.
43:38
Bloke's still alive now.
43:40
So I get back to camp.
43:41
I tell Jason the story I just recounted to you.
43:45
So Jason's like, "Oh, I'll ask my dad if he ever rode any of the four-cylinder
43:48
ones." Back comes the reply, "There were four-cylinder Hondas as well."
43:52
"Did you ever ride them?" asks Jason.
43:55
"I'm still alive, aren't I?" comes the reply.
43:58
Thank you.
43:58
Drive through.
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