Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Jamie Kitman

Transcript

Jamie Kitman · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: My guest today is music manager Jamie Kittman. He's responsible
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: for They Might Be Giants. He also looks after Mike Doughty,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and his previous history was involved with Okay Going the
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: violin Thems. But even more interestingly, he is the New
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: York bureau chief for Audimobile Magazine. Jamie, Hello, Bob Okay,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: So what are you doing in l A Um actually
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: out here for the launch of the land Rover Defender.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Little light music business on the side, but there's a
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: new land Rover Defender for the first time in seventy years. Uh,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: the original coming out, and uh that's kind of a
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: big deal. So I'm actually here covering it for Airmail,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: which is the new Graden Carter Alesander Stanley UM publication. Okay,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: how did you get that gig writing for them? Uh?
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: They called me up and asked me if I wanted
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: to do it, and I was like sure, Um, you know, um,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: I would like to say I'm in three dying industries, uh, cars, music,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: and magazine. So uh, when somebody calls generally in the
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: certainly in the writing realm, I'll hear them out and uh,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: it's uh, it's a pretty exciting publication and so it
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: was kind of an honor to do it. Okay, Now,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I certainly got their first edition free over the summer.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Do you have any idea what's going on with the airmail? Airmail,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: how many people are reading it, etcetera. Um. I was
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: talking to my editor the other day. He said that
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: they thought it was successful so far and that they
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: were still having fun. And I said, well, it's only
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: been out for a couple of months. I hope you're
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: still having fun. But he uh he he indicated was good,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: But I don't really Uh, you know, it's hard to
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: track that the metrics on something like that, and I'm
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: not sure I would understand them anyway. Okay, starting with
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: the automobile thing, You're not only in Automobile Magazine every
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: issue with a column, You're occasionally in the New York
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Times on the opinion page. What generates the most heat
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: for you? Well, I mean it depends what you mean
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: by heat. Um. When I wrote I think my first
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: automotive up ed piece was for the Times was um,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: basically their first ever anti suv uh ed piece. Uh
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: in n So that was gosh, that's twenty four years ago,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: but um, twenty five years ago. Uh that that generated
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of heat in the sense that suddenly I
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: stopped being invited to car launches by manufacturers because uh
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: that was in fact, they're great profidence and it just
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: irritated them. I can tell you a story that combined
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: both of cars and music around that. Uh that was
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: time to the uh New York Auto Show that year
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: and land Rover Um, who are actually my hosts on
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: this trip, We're launching their first ever Discovery model then
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: and it was so important to them that they had
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: hired Staying uh for it as he uh to come
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: to New York and he was gonna um receive a
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: donation for his Brazilian rainforest charity. Uh while introducing the
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Discovery to the assembled media who were in town for
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: the New York Auto Show, but also not just the
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: automotive media, but the music press, which was a thing
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: back then and had all these people. They were going
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: to go to an art directed mound of dirt on
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: at the end of forty Street by the Hudson River,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: and a Discovery was going to drive over it. Then
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Staying would get the oversized check and the photo op
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: and all that stuff. Apparently I found this out a
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: year later from a uh sometimes uh freelance publicist for
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: land Rover. She was like, Jimmie Kentman, you made for
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: the most miserable day of my life. Apparently Sting woke
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: up that morning and read this piece in the Time
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: suggesting that actually SUVs weren't environmentally sound and that they
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: really hadn't you know, no benefit to most people and
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: were unnecessary and just eight more gas were more deadly
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: in accidents, and he woke up and he refused to
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: show up. So uh, the end of the story is
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: is that they ended up having to give his rainforest
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: charity eighty thous dollars instead of forty. So I feel
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: like I did my bit for the environment right there. Yeah,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: I mean obviously, although we still need more money for
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: the rainforest right now. But this was that was when Jaguars,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Jaguarren land Rover are still together but owned by the Chinese.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Now right, that's no, they're owned by the Indians. Now
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: they're owned by Tata Motors. Can't keep straight who's owned
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: by the Chinese and so who's owned by Indians and
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: who's owned by Chinese. The well Jaguar land Rovers owned
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: by the Indians UH. Also the new UM electric sports
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: car company Pininfarina's owned by a different set of Indians, UH,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: and UH the Chinese owned Volvo UH and their new
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: pole Star all electric brand which is just launching its
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: first car, the poll Star one which I drove the
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: other week, which is awesome. And UH. They also UM
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: own Lotus, the English sports car company UM, among others.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: And the actually the people who make London taxis now
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: are owned by this same Chinese company, which is called Jelie.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: And the thing about both of the Indians and the
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Chinese UH the make for interesting case studies as opposed
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: to when American companies were buying of car companies, like
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: when Ford bought Volvo and Jaguar and Aston, Martin, UH
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: and GM, saab UM, is that the Chinese really seemed
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: to stand back and let the engineers who made those
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: companies worth buying in the first place do their job
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: and you know, the executives and the product planners and
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: things like that, whereas the Americans tend to have stuck
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: their fingers deeper into those companies in an effort to
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: realize additional savings and things like that, with sometimes uh,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: negative results for the company that they bought. The the
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: the most egregious example being SAAB, which was bought by
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: General Motors, and you know what they did. They surgically
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: removed its brain. And you know, they sold a Chevy
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Trailblazer as a sub and it was, you know, an
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: affront to everything that SAB ever stood for Now at
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: the same time, I know you happen to have that
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: SABERU the well that was you know, at least that
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: was closer to what a SAB had sub you know,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: not been going bankrupt, what they would have been making,
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: whereas the the Chevy Trailblazer SAB was just an abbommination. Okay,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: I says, I don't need to vend defend my car.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: You know. Interestingly, I just taken to the sub rue
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: place to be serviced. Well there there is no place exactly.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: But uh, I have a friend who owned two sobs
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: and ran into that trouble, said he's never gonna buy Okay,
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: I talked to him about buying a Tesla threason already
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: bought two cars from a company that went out of business.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: I'm anxious, but we'll get to Tesla. Eventually they're great
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: values car cars from companies that are either out of
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: or going out of business. I mostly specialized in those.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: What I bought new cars, great deals. Okay, what have
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: you bought recently to you? Uh? Well, I actually I
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: bought a Fiat was the first car I ever bought
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: new car right after they had an announced going out
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: of business. Eight now, I said, eighty two, I bought
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: a Prussia and ninety two right when they went out
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: of business. Half rice um. I wrote a column in
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: ninety four or ninety late ninety three I had just
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: bought it Alfa Romeo, and I said, well, based on
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: my drag record, they're probably going to go out of business,
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: And six months later they did. Uh so yeah, I
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: mean okay, but interestingly you but you know, fix it again, Tony.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: My sister had a Fiat, great car, but certainly you know,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: the body ended up getting cancer. When you get one
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: of those cars discontinued, especially Pougeau that weren't that many
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: of them. How hard is it to get them serviced? Uh?
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: It's harder than than some other cars, but not impossible
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: if you're resourceful and having always been an old car
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: fan Um. Finding obscure parts difficult, you know, to find things.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: You know, it's just been always part of my existence.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: There's actually old cars that it's easier to get parts
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: for now than it was twenty or thirty years ago
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: because because they people started to reproduce uh parts that
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: had gone out of production. There was there was enough
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: of a business case for people old mgs for instance,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: you know, for people to make almost every part that
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: was on one of those cars, so it became easier. Also,
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: the Chinese will make almost any part um if there's
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: a market for it, um and they can do it cheaply.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Uh Sadly they're often of inferior quality, but you know
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: they might get you back on the road, right, Okay,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: So you're here for the land Rover Defender. Okay, I
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: remember land Rover in the seventies, front of mine had
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: it went all of fifty five, but it would climb anything. Okay.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Then about twenty five years ago, a little bit longer,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: they came out with the range Roll. Now in l
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: A that's a status car and it never goes off
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: you know, off trail so to speak. What's your viewpoint
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: on all that? Well, I mean that's actually uh Rover
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: really pioneered that market. The range Rover actually came out
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight, uh in in sixty nine and
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: in the UK and Europe, just didn't get sold in America.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: It was a luxury car then it was it was
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: it was more spartan than it is today, but it
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: was considered a luxury suv and um UM I had
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: an unusual window on that because I was born in Brooklyn,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: but I grew up in Leonia, New Jersey, which was
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: the headquarters for British Leyland, which was the company that
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: owned Rover by that point, and so I saw prototypes
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: of those when I was a kid riding my bicycle
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: around in their parking lot that they had were testing
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: in America doing hot weather testing for um, which in
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: the New Jersey summer is is really believable because it
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: was hot. But my view of them in general is that, uh,
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: you know, uh, I've always liked range Rovers, but uh
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: I like them better when not so many people were
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: driving them, because there there's a certain person who really
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: can make good use of that and I think, you know,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: reasonable efficient use of it, and then there are people
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: who are just mostly wasting gas and taking up too
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: much space. So so I'm sort of ambivalent about that.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: The Defender, I mean, it really leads the more you
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: think about it, it leads you to to the whole
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: authenticity question, which is, you know what so much marketing
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: of everything from you know, cars and high fi systems
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: and bicycles and and music is about um because the
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: Defender was around for so long that it kind of
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: got a free path from everybody, myself included, because it
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: it just it was what it was. It was no
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: nonsense work vehicle, and they didn't really the funds with it,
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: and they weren't catering to you know, the latest uh
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: you know mobile phone app. In fact, it had no telematics,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: no capability to deal with your phone whatsoever. Uh. And
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: that was that was um, you know, gave it an
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: incredible authenticity, which makes the launch and the new Defenders
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: so um interesting. You know, I haven't actually seen it
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: in the medal. I will tonight, but um, you know,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: are they able to sustain that? Are they able to
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: you know, to recreate that with this new car that
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: is modern? You couldn't you couldn't build a car that
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: that was that primitive anymore. It wasn't safe enough. Um,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: it didn't have the you know, facility to do things
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: that everybody expects of their car. Now. The downside of
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: the new things, which are going to be way more
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: electronics and exotic medals and things like that, is that
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: they're harder for people in the bush too to fix.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Which was always one of the things that people liked
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: about land robbers is that you know, you could be
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: in the in the in the deepest jungle in Africa
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: and with the you know, with this Swiss army knife,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: you could get a lot of stuff fixed and repaired.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: But you know, it ain't gonna be that way anymore.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: And it's just okay, how long has it been since
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: they manufactured the original Defender Just about a year I think, like, yeah,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: just a little over a year. And they did a
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: run out edition that was very expensive in the UK
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: that speculators all bought and uh many automotive journalists and
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: my acquaintance also bought. And how expensive expensive Well it was, Yeah,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: it was getting up in the fifty thousands of dollars,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: I would say, which you know, for for what's essentially
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: like yeah, stripped down vehicles was enough The new ones,
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: they will be more expensive, so that will be uh
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: you know, it will keep them exclusive for some time.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: I think we have bought the defender of the VIA
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: generation in America, only there was a brief period they
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: stopped selling what was its predecessor in nineteen four in
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: America and in ninety three through you could buy it legally.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: There's a massive trade in cars that are imported from overseas,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: though many of them illegal, and there was in fact
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: a very um well publicized effort on the part of
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: the government too sees cars that had been fraudulently imported.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: There's a twenty five year exemption on old cars that
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: if a car is twenty five years old, it doesn't
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: have to pass E p A standards and d O
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: T standards. And this is of course before the Trump administration,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: where it doesn't matter if anything passes any standard because
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: they don't enforce any of the rules anymore. But uh
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: so you could bring in a twenty five year old
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: land Rover. What people did was, um they would get
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: a serial number off of twenty five year older older
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: land Rover, slap it on almost brand new one and
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: bring it in. So l a is is uh littered
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: with you know, two thousand and fifteen land Rover Defender
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: one tens with all the trimmings um that are probably
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: titled as a you know, as a or something like that.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: You know, it's interesting you bring up a lot of things.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: You talk about being in New Jersey and seeing the
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: models that are going to come out. I remember being
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: in the library and high school. We'd read those car magazines.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: I never saw a f I grew up a never
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: saw a famous person, never saw one of those covered cars.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Have seen it occasionally in l A friend of mine
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: had the last Defender seventy four and when we lived
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: in Utah, because we were skiing and he wanted a
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: vehicle like that. He brought it in to the company
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: that service and they said, there's no such thing as
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: the seventy four. If you want to come out and
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: see mine, and I remember we were Mammoth Mountain in
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: May and there's nowhere to park. He literally parked it
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: on the side of a mound of snow, nearly vertical.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: It's just amazing with those things could do. They they
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: were great. Okay, so let's let's back up. Holy Okay,
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: let's start with you brought the suv question in your mind,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: the fact that most of these vehicles are now crossovers,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: meaning that they have a cart bottom as opposed to
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: truck bottom, does that save them? In your eyes? It
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: improves them? And you know, in in fairness, they're significantly safer,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: more economical, cleaner, better handling, less likely to roll over,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: less likely to kill the driver. Um then and other
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: people than the SUVs of say the nineties were. Uh,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: it doesn't entirely save them because they're still they're big,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: they're bluff um, and they're tall with higher centers of gravity,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: so they actually get you know, worse mileage than an
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: equivalent car would get or something that was lower. Um.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: They don't necessarily have any more room than a car
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: would have. They're just jacked up higher. And it's uh,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: so that's you know, that's what's negative about them. And
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: a lot of people will say, well, you know, in
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: the electric future, when you know there's these new electric
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: SUVs like the Mustang that was announced last night or
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: the Rivian that's coming that, you know, it won't really matter, um,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: because you won't be using gasoline, but you will be
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: using more electricity to power this thing. That's too heavy,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: too big, and very bluff um, so that it will
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: still be an issue even then that you know, why
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: should you be using more electricity than less electricity? If
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: we didn't care about that, why do we have laws
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: that make refrigerators more efficient and televisions and other appliances.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: So um, so I'm concerned from that point. Also, Dynamically,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: they're a real step down from cars, you know, dynamically
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: meaning how they handle, how you know, how fast you
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: can go around a corner, on from the old school,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: which vout puts a value on, you know, how nicely
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: things go around corners. Uh. The SUV really was a
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: paradigm shift, and that's what Suddenly people stopped caring about it.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: It was like the shift that I know that you've
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: written about often where you know, high fidelity sort of
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: became like what's that. You know, the whole generation of
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: people who had been you know, you know, their predecessors
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: had spent their entire lives in search of better and
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: better sound. Um, suddenly you know went out the window
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: in in in favor of miniaturization and you know, like
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: portability and and uh, you know, connectivity and things like that,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: so that it became a you know, high fidelity became
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: a minority interest where it had been at least a
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: bigger minority. Uh. Same with handling and ride and things
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: like that. Then other an log in the in the
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: car world was the shift from uh, smaller wheels to
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: bigger wheels. Now everything's got twenty inch wheels and big
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: tires or twenty two inch wheels, and that runs against
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: you know, the hundred years of automotive history where engineers
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: and manufacturers learned and customers agreed that that all of
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: that extra weight and height made for a poor ride quality.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: And so things got a lot bumpier than they had been.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: And and you know, a hundred years of trying to
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: make cars ride smoothly went out the windows. Okay, so
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: if you see a car now almost all the cars
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: have these very low profile tires, what are the advantages
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: and disadvantages of those. Well, the advantages are are generally, uh,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: more grip um because there's less flex in the side wall,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: and you know, more confident handling, but mostly aesthetic beyond
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: that and uh and the same with the wheels. So
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: I remember being at the GM proving grounds and in
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: UH war in Michigan, and UH um, we were driving
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: around in a Cadillac Escalade, and um we One of
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: the things we were doing was driving a GM show
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: car from the nineteen thirties called the Wide Job, which
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: was a Buick and a really cool futuristic you know,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: two seater that was you know, eight ft long, but
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: it had these tiny wheels, like thirteen inch wheels with
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: big balloon tires, and um, I asked the guy who
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: was driving me around. I was like, well, you know, like,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: what was the idea with like thirteen inch wheels? Were
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: riding in an escalator on twenty twos? And he's like, oh,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: ride quality absolutely, And I was like, well, why are
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: then just this Cadillac, which is supposed to ride smooth?
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Why is it uh have twenty two inch wheels? And
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: he was like, well, uh, you know people want them.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: They look cool. You know. That's it. That's all I got. Okay,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: starting with handling the Cayenne and the Cayenne Turbo, the
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: poor show how does that handle compared to a sedan? Uh?
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: It Well, again, it's it's a lot. It's pretty heavy,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: so it's on the heavier end of what a sedan.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: My way on the on the you know, really probably
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: a little past that, but it also is taller. Now
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: that said, you know, they handle about as good as
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: something that weighs, you know, fifty pounds could handle, you know,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: after it's been jacked up six or seven inches. But uh,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: you know, compared to I mean the comparison that I
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: find more emotional for me is comparing it to like
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: a nine eleven or a Boxer, which handles great. Um,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: and it's you know, it's a different thing. The brand
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: has has you know, fundamentally changed or at least large
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: parts of it. Some of my colleagues will tell you, well,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: you know, they had to do that in order to
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: be able to steal offer things like the nine eleven
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: and box there. I don't I don't buy that, but
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: you know that's okay. I know this ridiculous point. But
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: on a percentage basis, what percentage of the handling of
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: a nine eleven would you get with a Cayenne? How
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: much are you losing? Oh? Uh you know, I mean
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: non scientifically, I would say, you know, you're losing uh
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: a lot, you know, I mean, you know, in terms
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: of like how fast you could go around the track, Yeah,
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: not as fast, and in find up slower, but the
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: joy of driving something that's lets close to the ground
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: and that's really it is not carrying any excess weight.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: It is is substantial. I mean, you know, it's like people,
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: you know how you know, like if if somebody weighs
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: too much, you know, like it affects the way they
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: move around it. Okay, So is there any hope? Is
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: there any hole? Especially when the American manufacturers stopping making sedans,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: is there any hope for the sedan in America? Well? Interestingly, UM,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: the Japanese makers Onanda and Toyota and Nissan, UM, and uh,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: the Korean makers haven't given up on that. And reading
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: in the trade press in the last six months, while
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: people are sort of scratching their heads, going like, well,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: why haven't they followed the Americans down this rat hole? Um,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: they say, well, our research tells us that UM millennials
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: actually are buying more UM small cars and sedans than
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: the SUVs, which is different than what older people are doing.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: And you know, I mean I've been predicting this for
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: years and that that people would that it was a
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: fad that would go away SUVs. Of course it would
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: appear on the surface that I was wrong. And and
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: one of the reasons I started being invited back on
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: car launches was that nobody listened to my op ed
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: But um, um, the you know idiots. It's sort of
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: axiomatic in that in the automobiles that uh nobody wants
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: to drive with their parents drove. So you know, station
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: wagons went out in favor of mini vans because you know,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: station wagons weren't cool. And then um, you know, and
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: then mini vans went out largely as SUVs rolled in
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: to take their place. So something you would think would
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: replace that. And I would suggest that station wagons again
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: still make more sense and minivans than most SUVs, being lighter,
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: more nimble and having just as much room and obviously
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: more economical in terms of of using uh, you know,
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: gasoline or in the future. You know, you need to
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: say one thing that an suv will give you. If
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: you're have a large piece of equipment, a surfboard, a
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: paddle board, skis whatever, it would be easier to transport
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: those in an suv. That's very few people. But right well,
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: I mean that's that is uh people's uh justification often
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: for why they buy too much car uh, you know,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: And It's probably their justification why they buy too much
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: house and too much everything is that well, I might
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: need it. So people go like, well, you know, we
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: go up to the lake every summer. You know, it's like,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: you know, for the extra thousands of dollars you're gonna
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: spending gasol and you could just rent a big truck
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: for your summer vacation. If that's true, you know, I
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: might have to tell things. In nineteen uh ninety nine
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: or two thousand, the New York Times magazine hired me
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: to write a story about what we're then the new
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Lincoln and Cadillac pickup trucks, which the not very car
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: focused editors just thought was markably strange that there would
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: be these you know what were then, you know, primarily
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: car brands, although the Escalade and the Navigator had already
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: come out. How why they were doing this? So I
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: spent time in the vowels of GM and Ford talking
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: to marketing people, and their reasons were I mean, they
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: seemed remarkably frank that people didn't need these cars, but
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: that they had tapped into this like you know, kind
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: of like um deep psychology of of people, of of
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: why they would buy them and you know, there was
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: clearly something about writing higher up that makes some people
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: feel comfortable, notwithstanding the fact that, uh, you know, when
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: everybody's in a big stuv you can't see over them anyway,
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: you might as well be trying to look around them
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: or under them. Um and that you know, it's sort
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: of veghets and arms race, you know, like, well, you know,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: if if everybody is going to be in a Lincoln Navigator,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: I might as well be driving a Peter Built or
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: ken Worth you know, eighteen wheeler and be have the
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: the extra weight and height. But u um they should.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: There was that, and they were happy to as you know,
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: what underpins their whole conversation is what why they're happy
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: to sell them is is that they persuaded people that
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: they should pay more for things that ride higher. It's
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: it's just a truism and the almost all marketing in
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: America that the higher it is, the more you can
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: charge for it, even if it's the same car. And
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: that's true with crossovers. So for instance, the four the
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: recently canceled forward Focus was the basis of a Ford Escape,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: but a you know, really loaded up forward Focus might
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: have cost twenty four dollars twenty six thousand dollars. The
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: a loaded up escape is forty dollars and it has
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: about five dollars more content, you know, maybe a thousand
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: dollars more content. So you know, which do they want
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: to sell? That's that's and that they'll always go, well,
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: what can we do? That's what you know the people want.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: But actually you didn't market any of the other things,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: you didn't develop them, and you know you've persuaded people
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: that that's what they want. Now, there are people genuinely
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: who need that, and there are people who generally who
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: want it. But that's that's sort of the issue. But
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: in any case, going back to being in the battles
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: of Ford UM, they were talking about UM the sort
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: of psycho sexual dimension they want. Most of the buying decisions,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is sort of counterintuitive, but most of
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: the buying decisions were UM made by women, a majority
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: of them in car purchases. And they said that women
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: in particular found UM minivans really de sexualizing because you know,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: you saw a mom at a traffic light, you know,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: you could see her kids in the back, and you
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: just knew that you know, she did she did not
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: want to party with you and um and that was
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: you know, upsetting to women. Um that you know, like
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: nobody would eve and give them a second look. Not
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: that they wanted to necessarily party with people, but that
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: that was that that was upsetting to them. So with
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: suv s, you were high up, people couldn't necessarily see
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: what was back and they they started smoking out all
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: the rear windows so you couldn't see the the the
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: rug rats in the bag bouncing up and down, and
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: that that made the women feel more powerful as well
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: as safer and things like that. So that was a
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: surprise to me, and it raised the related question of
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: why um um Ford was calling their new line of
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: engines then the power Stroke. And I was like, They're like,
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: you know, yep, And I was like, I was like,
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: well that sounds kind of dirty to me, and they
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: were like yep, you know. So uh that you know,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: so that they'll you know, they'll sto pretty low to
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: to close the sale. So someone comes to you today,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: what are you tell them to buy? Well, I kind
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: of asked them what they need. I mean often I'd
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: say eight percent of the people come to me already
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: have made up their mind and asking because they want
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: to be have affirmation. But usually, well that's the thing.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: They Often they'll go, oh, you know, I'm I'm calling
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: to ask you what I should buy. But this has
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: happened a lot in in the nineties. They'd go, uh,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm I know you're gonna think this is
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: a bad idea, but I just bought or I just
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: I really want to buy a Ford Excursion or you know,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: some behemoth and uh. I was like, well, uh okay,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: and they're like, uh, you know, I just it's like,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: I have two kids. What am I supposed to do?
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: You know? And I got like, well, I remember when
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: I was a kid and people would have four kids
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: in the back of their BW beatle and you know
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: they managed to survive. Um, and they're just kind of
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: sign off quickly, like conversation over but piece of people.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: You know, they pretty much uh, you know, based on
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: whatever you know, uh mixture of Okay, if someone comes
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: to you today, let's just super for the sake of discussion,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: they want to buy a new car. Let's assume they're
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: not predetermined. What would you recommend. Well, I mean for
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: just an ordinary person, I think Sedayana or a wagon
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: would uh there. You know. The great thing about today
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: is almost nothing is terrible anymore. I mean the days
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: which aren't that far off where you could buy a
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: car you just go, this is appalling. I mean there
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: are still some Jeeps that I would say, we're appalling,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: but not as bad as they were. But uh so, really,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: any brand is okay. And if you um, you know,
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: truly depends how much money you want to spend. But
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: you know, uh, the Koreans are you know, shockingly good
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: now and even there in the luxury realm they're cheaper,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: but you know, more or less as good as anything German,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: and probably more reliable. I like all the German brands
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: swell um and uh you know, and there are good
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: American cars too, although you know, fewer and further between. Well.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: I liked the focus, the late focus up like hot
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: rotted version of they did. It was that focus st
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: that was great. Uh. And there was even better Fiesta,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: which was uh uh you know, very quick, and they
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: killed that as well, so you know, And and the
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: irony is is that they talk about, you know, trying
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: to stay with the young people. I mean young people,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: you know, like the drifters who were out like, you know,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: racing their cars at night. You know what used to
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: be the hot rotters of another generation. You know, they're
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: not in um Ford edges. You know, they're driving Civics
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: and Corollas and you know Nissan Sedans and things like
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: that that that uh, that handled, and so people sort
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: of forget now that uh somebody was just saying this
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: last night. Uh, but the people who were, you know,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: of the hot rudders, it was not a majority thing.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: So there's there's this uh kind of notion about in
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: the land these days that kids just don't care about
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: cars anymore. They don't care about you know, a lot
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: of stuff that you know, the old timers cared about.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: And my experience going around is that there's actually is
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: still a lot of interest among young people and they're
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: really into it and they know stuff. You know, I
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: think there's a segment, but pole to say it, when
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: we grew up sixteen, getting your license that was like
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: the number one thing. And there are I know a
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: lot of people who have children who certainly didn't get
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: their license at sixteen, and some of them don't even
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: have it at age. My own son amusingly um my
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: eldest son didn't even go to get a driver's license
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: until like eight or ten months after he was allowed to.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: My recollection is that I went three days before my
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: seventeenth birthday in New Jersey just in case they changed
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: the law, you know, and I could drive earlier. And
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: of I was driving before then anyway. Uh. And he he,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: he used to tell me, like, you know, we'd be
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: driving down the road and Heed point to like some
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Mitsubishi Lancer or some you know, phenomenally dull Sadan. He'd
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: go that that would be fine for me if I
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: ever had a car, But I don't. I don't want
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: a car. Well, long story short. He's now he finished
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: university and he somewhere along the way he became an
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: insane car not and he rebuilt an Alfa Romeo. And
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: now he's actually apprentice to North America's leading rebuilder of
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: SU carburetors, which are the British carburetors that were current
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: from nineteen oh four to seven, same fundamental design and UH,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: which were on every Jaguar and MG and Triumph that
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: there ever was pretty much and UH in those days,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: and so UH through him. But elsewhere I I do
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: meet young people who are into it, and well, certainly,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: we live in a country of three hundred plus million.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Let's go specifically brand by brand, sure, Audie, Okay, forget
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: in terms of handling other than they're one that's essentially Lamborghini. Uh,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: the R S four, I believe it is. How good
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: is an Audi compared to a Mercedes? But you're thinking
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: of the right, That's what I meant. But how good
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: is the Audi compared to the BMW compared to the Mercedes?
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: Ben It's uh in uh, my current rankings have changed.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: There was a time where BMW was unassailably the driver's
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: car of the three of those brands. Um and um,
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: that's changed. Um. They you know, the famous tagline was
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: BMW S for the Ultimate Driving Machines. I'd like to
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: call them the pen ultimate driving machine now because they
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: really have taken their eye off the ball. It's just
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: not you know, Well, let's go back to BMW, who
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: is number one? Well right now I would say, i'm
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: i'm I feel like it's fairly closed, but I might
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: give Mercedes the odd uh as being the one I
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: would most like to own. But I just had an
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: A seven last week in New York and was driving
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: on the highway from some distance and it was pretty great.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Audis are pretty great. Uh and uh, you know they're
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: all fine, and they all make SUVs that I despise, um,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: but their cars, which are you know, what the TVs
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: are based on, are are are better than they were.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Mostly BMW has taken its eye off of of that
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: last degree of excellence. Let's just grown so much that
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: they're really uh there. I mean, Volkswagen group that depends
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: in great measure on Autis being successful because they're essentially
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: you know, good volkswagens um that have been upscaled a
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: lot and and they charged a lot more money for them,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: so it's a huge profit center for them. You know,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: it's estimated that Volkswagen bakes barely any profit for for
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: the Volkswagen group. Autie makes you know, the lions share
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: of it. And then they also owned Porsche, which is
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: hugely profitable, and Lamborghini and Bentley, and so that those
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: companies are generating most of the profit. Uh. They because
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: of that. This is particularly true now with BMWC. They
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: need more more and more volume of stuff and they
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: want to sell stuff that's more expensive, so they have
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: you know, massive amounts of of Uh. They have huge
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: product lines. Um. And they're making lots and lots of
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: bigger and bigger SUVs, which is exactly the wrong direction
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: they know on some level for them to be going
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: in in terms of the environment and and the mandates
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: that you know, bud for Trump are coming down everywhere
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: in the world. Um and um. So there seems to
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: be a notion of foot at all the car companies
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: now that we've got to make as much money as
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: we can to get ready for this transition to electric cars. Okay,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: so BMW, because as you say, they have an incredibly
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: wide line forgetting the SUVs, the standard Sedan's your bitch
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: with them is uh, they're they've gotten bigger and bigger
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: and bigger as so you know, they're less dynamically, um
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: amusing to me than they were. But so I would
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: if I was gonna buy a BMW, I'd get a
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: three series, which was the you know, the smartest one,
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: which is now the size. It's bigger than the old
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: five series. So they get bigger and bigger and bigger.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: And the station wagon model is very handsome. Uh. Auties Uh,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: starting with BMW, do they not? Because BMW every all
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: the car magazine seemed to say that the M two
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: was like the ultimate driving machine. It's it's pretty great.
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: It's pretty cramp though for my money, and it's still
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: is is pretty heavy, but yeah, it is the it
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: is the funnest one. I don't know that I'd recommend
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: it to everybody. It's for somebody who doesn't have three
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: kids and isn't Let's assume I want to buy an
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: M too, okay or three? Your ship has come in. No, no, no,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: If you want to buy an M two or M three,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: M five, are there equivalent Outies or Mercedes that are
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: just as good or better. They're pretty close. Yeah. They
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: You have the MG line of Mercedes, C classes any
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: classes and uh S classes uh and the out RS
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: models which are like the R S four, R six
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: those are those are hot, really hot cars. So if
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: you have to buy one of the three brands, which
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: would you buy? Oh, golly, um that I can't choose. Okay,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: let's go, let's go. Let's go across difference between Toyota, Nissan,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: Subaru the rest of the Japanese companies, well, I mean
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: it's hard to separate them from their current predicaments, which
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: are in Nissan's case, like complete shake up of their
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: corporate governance and the sort of simultaneous realization that they've
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: sort of been getting their sales for the last several
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: years to make themselves look more successful than they were. Uh,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: similar problems. Uh leaving Japan with f c A, the
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: Fiat Chrysler where they were building cars and parking them
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: and you know, registering them and jetting their sales. So uh,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: those those there there was that for those companies. Nissan
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: is suddenly about to not be profitable and that's you
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: know that that really changed their Okay, well when we
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: talk about I'm gonna buy one, oh well, I mean, uh,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: I like Subaru. Still they for my money, they've gotten
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: way too big. They just get bigger and uglier with
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: each iteration. But um, but I'm sympathetic to them. Uh.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: Toyotas are probably you know, your best bet overall in
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: terms of reliability, and um, some of their cars are
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: are quite good. I think you know, the new Corolla
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: x S. I think it's called it's a hatchback for
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: do or Corolla, and it's you know, it's aimed at
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: young people. Is actually remarkably you know, a pleasant car
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: to drive and pretty sporty. But I mean, you know
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: they've uh w r X subarus are pretty pretty groovy.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: Um and uh I would also probably recommend that you
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: look at Days and Kiya's too before we get to
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: the Koreans. Okay, if we got to consumer reports every year,
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: Toyota and Lexus dominate. Okay, do you think that's a
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: significant dominance and reliability or do you believe whatever? I
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: think there's uh there, they are very reliable. I think
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: that a lot of those surveys, though, are kind of
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: they're they're kind of closed loops where people are happy
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: because they think they're happy. So they're happy, you know,
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: they think this is gonna be great, and so they're
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: perhaps more forgiving of of things than they might otherwise be. UM. Now,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: certainly in the consumer reports, ratings are more um probably
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: more telling than you know, like the JD Power ones, um,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: where where it really does depend you know, they're like
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: initial satisfaction, you know, Yeah, I mean so some really unreliable,
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: crappy brands had great initial satisfaction. Hummers for instance, which incidentally,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: there's a rumor is going to come back as an
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: electric vehicle for general motors. Um so, uh, you know,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: if you wait long enough, everything will happen. Okay, But
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: I come from the arrow where you wouldn't buy an
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: American car. I'm talking about once you get the seventies sixties,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: we all all our parents had American cars. I have
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: a friend and bought a volt and he's had a
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: long stream and still owns uh German and Japanese uh cars.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: He says, you know, it loosened up just like an
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: old American car in a good way or a bad way. Yeah. Well,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: I don't see many people driving American cars with two
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: or three hundred thousand miles on them. I know plenty
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: of people with Hondas with two or three hundred thousand. Yeah,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: you'd be surprised, though. I've I've run into some of
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: those American cars with high miles. Uh. You know it's
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: sunds like the engines can be very good in in
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: in terms of durability. Um. But yeah, and there's some
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: really the Chevy Bolt, which is the all electric one,
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: feels great. But what it's like with three hundred thousand miles,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: I can't tell you. Um. But uh, but in general, yeah,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: no it's not. You know, American cars they sell because
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: of people's you know, patriotism. You know, they're misca, so
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: they tend to be cheaper. And that's what I was
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: gonna say, is but if they were the same price,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: I think, you know, you're a professional, but I would
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: say the Japanese cars are more reliable. Yeah, absolutely, and
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: that's why, Um, the American cars, well, there are no
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: more American cars. There's American Trusty. Are the Korean cars
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: as reliable as the Japanese cars? Um, my personal impression
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: is yes, I don't. I don't have the statistics. I mean,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: I love I once. You know, I was at a
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: rental place about ten years ago and the only they
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: had left was Hyundai, and I cursed them as Sunday
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: is zero. By time I was ready to turn it
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: back in, I would have bought it. Yeah, you know,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: it's just amazing how it's turned. You know. One of
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: the things about the automobile industry and a lot of
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: I guess it's true in a lot of industry is
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: probably making steal um that who you know, the people
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: who spend the big money the most recently are going
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: to necessarily have the most efficient uh production, UM you know,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: UH systems and and the best equipment and stuff like that.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: You know. So what what happens is when you fail
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: to reinvest sort of on a regular basis, you're just
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: you're just always going to be behind on on terms
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: like that. So the Koreans, you know, in some ways
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: or probably ahead of the Japanese for the fact that
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: they spend all the money more recently. So buy or lease? Uh,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: there are situations where leases are a good idea. UM.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: The UH it's mostly like when you know it's a
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: business purchase and you can write them. UH. It's also
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: a good idea in the sense that if you're uh
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: you have to be concerned about your monthly payment that
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: it's gonna cost you less, but you know it's it's
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: it's slightly somewhat more worth it to buy than lease
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: if you're just if you're just a private citizen, you
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: know you will have more money left at the end,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: even if it costs you more per month. UH. And
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: then you also you own your car, and that's you know,
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: that's worth whatever it's it's worth. The one of the
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: trends in the industry that uh, you know, the average
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: person may not be aware of. UH. Is that because
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: cars have gotten more expensive, UM significantly really in the
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: last ten years. Is that least terms UH and UM
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: are and and car loans are going out much further
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: so because often people would be way upside down for
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: a long time, UH and have and monthly unaffordable monthly payments.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: So you have uh six and seven year leases and
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: and you know car loans now which were unheard of.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: You know certainly what you know UM in the in
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: the last century. You know, in part because you know
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: your car probably wasn't gonna last six or seven years. Okay,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: we're used the smart shopper buys a two year old,
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: low mileage off lease car from from a dealer in
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: terms of probably the least hassle. But but the first
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: two years r when the big depreciation happens. And most cars,
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: you know, if they have twenty miles on them, have
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: a ton of life left, So that would be the
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: the smart move. Do you buy a certified or uncertified
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: if you can afford it. Certified, it's good. It's just
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: less hassle, more seamless operation, and uh, you know you
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: have a warranty. That's that's usually is very good for
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: a long time. That's a certainly a growing segment of
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: sales or certified cars. Okay, used to be the rule,
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: don't buy a car first year they changed the model. Uh,
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: you know, there's probably some validity to that, although they
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: you know, they have a generally have a pretty good
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: idea of what's good and bad about a new car.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: But in this century, certainly with the explosion in electronics
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: and cars, there are a lot of cars that were
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: being sold that they hadn't figured out the bugs yet.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: The Sea class Mercedes early in the century, I mean
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: they were they were still writing code for those back
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: in in short guard while cars were here on their
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: flat bed way on their way back to the dealers
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: for you know, inexplicable problems that were related to unfinished code,
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: UM and faulty code and things like that. So, uh,
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: cars are being asked to do so many more things
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: now that um um there. There's just a lot to do.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: And of course the Germans wanted, who are very competitive
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: with each other. The minute one of them enters a
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: new market segment, Uh, they all follow. It's it's like clockwork. Uh,
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: they have a lot, you know, they're stretched. It's pretty thin. Okay,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: what about Tesla, Well, you know a noble uh project.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: You know, it's you know, good cars. I would say, uh,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: you know, great in some respects uh that for whatever reason,
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: I've never been like, you know, a true believer like I'm.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: They don't excite me. I don't aspire to own one.
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: At the same time, I admire them great for what
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: they proved could be done. And I also I'm not
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: a true hater, which the automotive world is pretty much
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: split up between Tesla drives UH car companies, but particularly
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: American car companies crazy because you know, four in GM
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: can they can make billions of dollars of profit and
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: their stock goes down and Tesla is you know, is
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: its market cap is higher than GM some days and
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: they don't you know, they haven't made a profit really ever,
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: except by selling tax credits. They don't sell you know,
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: like a fraction of the cars. And yet people give
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: them all the breaks. So the car companies, you know,
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: being an American car executive has basically been kind of
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: like uh uh you know, some kind of slow form
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: of water torture for the last forgetting Tesla fan, I'm
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: not as sympathetic to the car manufacturers in America as
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: you are. They've consistently refused to make change. So at
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: this point they're hanging it out in suv Land. As
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: soon as the bubble bursts, they're fucked. Yeah. I mean, Bob,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: I you're a pal, So I won't I won't take
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: offense at that remark that UM, I'm I've been you know,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: I've been complaining about how stupid they are since i
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: first started UM. In an up end in the l
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: A Times, I predicted GM's bankruptcy following its uh most
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: profitable quarter ever. UM and Automobile Magazine refused to run it,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: and Uh I was able to. I said that what
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: we see here is is that they are not UM
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: they've given up on cars. Uh, they hadn't given up
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: like they've given up now. But it was the exact
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: same thing, and all their money was coming from SUVs
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: and pickup trucks, and one of three things we're gonna happen,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: or some combination of uh, you know, the there'd be
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: a gas crisis and it would be a problem. Uh,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: there would be Japanese competition, you know that they were
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: going to just catch up and make SUVs and pickup trucks. Uh,
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: and the fashion would change and all of that came
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: to pass in the ten years later when uh, you know,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: in the early two thousands were of course rocky, but
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: when they went bankrupt. Okay, so let's talk about a first.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: Let's break it down a little bit, the shift to
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: electric How do you see that playing out slower than
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: um we might hope. I mean, I should start by
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: saying that I was never anti electric, but I was
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: sort of skeptical, and then I actually got to spend
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: time with electric cars and they can be great. Uh.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: And uh I had actually an electric Volkswagen Golf for
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: a year in New York. I put fifteen thousand miles
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: on it. I calculated I skipped fifty five separate trips
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: to the gas station, which was you know, its own reward. Um.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: And I loved it. Uh. And it didn't even have
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: the big ranges that cars have now. Uh, there's something
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: about being an electric car that's so relaxed. Seeing you've
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: drive through some horrible traffic and you're you know, a
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: distance to get somewhere and you just get out. You're
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: not hearing that, you know of an engine for uh,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: you know, an hour or two. Is is really makes
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: you feel better? So it's it's quite luxurious in that sense. Um,
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: but I think that uh, the internationally there certainly is
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: a huge push for that to happen. It probably has
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: to happen, you know, it's beyond argument. Although if you
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: this was a call in show, we'd have eleven Yeah,
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: who's waiting in this agreement? Me? But I'm not interested
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: in them? But uh, but it's beyond argument that the
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: electric cars are more efficient. Even if you live in
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: a state that burns coal, you're still better off in
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: an electric car than you are buying gasoline. And of course,
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: you know, the oil companies people when I was a kid,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: you know, people used to go, well, and you know,
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: in the seventies like what what's worse like the GM
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: or XI mobile and people go, I don't know, you know. Now,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: to me, it's clear that the oil companies are the
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: evil list of of the evil corporate actors, worse even
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: than the car companies, who are you know, amazingly bad themselves.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: But the wild companies were the words so so starving
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: them of of money for gasoline is uh is would
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: be a fine, you know thing to do with your life.
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: So when does the fleet go all electric? I think that,
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: you know, uh, increasingly. And it's hard to tell what
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: the effect of Trump has been, which has been, you know,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: completely negative on the world in every respect. But um,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: the people used to think it was going to happen
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: like next year and the year after that. Uh. You know,
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: I think we'll be seeing uh, internal combustion engines. I
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: see engines or i c e. As they call them,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: uh into the you know, Uh, I don't mean we'll
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: see uh, we won't see a lot more electrics. I
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: could say, I could see thirty When will they stop manufacturing?
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: Volkswagen has said that they're gonna stop designing anymore now,
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: but nobody necessarily believes that, but they have that. Volvo
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: said that they're gonna go all electric. Um and uh,
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: but their first electric car is a hybrid with a
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: gas engine and a big battery pack, so the poll
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: Star one. But so so I would say that, you know,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: you will see more and more electric cars. You know.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: The what's lacking is infrastructural investment, you know, charging stations
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: and more of them, and you see hopeful signs. I
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: think it was Shell said they were going to spend
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: five billion dollars to put charging stations into shell stations. Uh.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: And I have every confidence in the oil industry that
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: they will whatever the next fuel sources, because um hydrogen
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: is not dead yet uh and fuel cells, UH, that
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: that whatever happens, that the oil companies will figure out
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: a way to sell it to us. Yeah. I mean they'll, they'll, they'll. Okay,
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: so let's go drill down to Trump. He on an
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: environmental level, he's battling the state of California. How did
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: you see that playing out? I don't know, sadly. A
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: lot of it I think has to do with the
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court. But I see a lot of uh, positive
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: futures in states standing up that you know, are for
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: cleaning up the air against them. So I think it's
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: going to go on and on and on. But when
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: he's replaced, I think that a a more sensible administration,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: even a Republican one. I mean, he is, he is beyond,
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: absolutely beyond the pale. I mean, George Bush was terrible
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: for the environment, Dick Cheney and fracking, which just led
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: to a kind of a third win for gasoline powered
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: cars and cheap us and all that kind of stuff. Uh.
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: Even he you know, cleaned up diesel in America, not
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: to a point where it's actually good for you, but
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: it's it's was way less bad than it was. Uh Trump,
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: It's not that he's just against regulation. You get the feeling.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: You start getting the feeling that he's for pollution. He's
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: actively for it and if there's anything he can do
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: to make the air dirtier, he'll he'll do it. Um.
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: And that's uh, that's pretty dispiriting. Um. People at the
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: e p A Are like, if you could even get
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: somebody to talk to you, their shell shocked, um and
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: keeping their heads down, you know, waiting for him to
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: go because Um, it's put the United States really out
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: of step with the rest of the world. It's actually
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: put American makers, who were embracing it at a competitive
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: disadvantage in the world, certainly China, Electric Volkswagen World. We're
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: you know, we are paddling to third world status is
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: as hard as we can. Okay, what about self driving also, Uh,
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: their imminence has been greatly overstated. I would say they're
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: they're gonna come, but there's so many issues involved with
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: them that um it is uh, you know, they're they're
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: a lot further out. I mean, Tesla predicted that they
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: would have one in two thousands, seventeen and this year,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: and it's now, it's going to be in a few months,
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: and they're still not as self driving as they were
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: supposed to be. You have to have a driver. A
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: lot of UH companies have have gone back to the
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: drawing board to think about it harder. Now there, I
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: think it will happen, but it is one of those
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: things that really leads you to wonder, like, you know,
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: is it really worth it in a in a in
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: a sort of scarcity environment, even with the huge deficits
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: were ready to run now, like, do we really want
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: to be investing what has to be trillions of dollars
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: in making it so people can like party in their car?
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: And um, well, I don't. Look, I don't have the
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: same perspective. I believe these things are inevitable. I believe
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: you'll call up a vehicle. No one will own a vehicle.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: It's just about the time. Oh yeah, I'm not I'm
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: not saying that they're not. But the reality is is
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: that there are a lot of negative things about that.
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: An interesting analysis in Business Week saying yes, if we
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: go to driverless cars, they're gonna be some accidents and
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: they're gonna kill some people. But if you don't go
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: to driverless cars, which on some levels are much safer,
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: we're gonna kill more people because people are getting killed
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: and we're still gonna have to go through this. We will,
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: we will find out about that. I think the accidents
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: will be uh more spectacular in some ways. You know,
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: twelve hundred people exit the Jersey Turnpike to go to
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: the same parking spot McDonald's at a hundred and ten
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: miles an hour, then uh and six hundred people die.
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: But we'll we'll, we'll find out about that. Um and
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: I agree with you that it's gonna happen. But in
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: the process, what's getting short shrift is mass transit, Like
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: where's all the money for the subways to fix the
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: and build trains which remain more efficient. It's great if
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: everybody is in there little pod, but if you still
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: have everybody a little pod, there's still gonna be more
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: traffic and more energy consumption than there would be if
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: people rode a clean bus or a well, no one's
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: gonna ride the bus because it takes so long trains
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: are an interesting thing, certainly in the metropolis. They're not
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: being improved because no one wants to pay taxes. But
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: keep going here. How many cars do you presently own?
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: I own an embarrassingly large number, but somewhere around uh
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: twenty three I think, which is actually down from what
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: it was. But I have an excuse that. Um. I
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: started a picture car business in New York and uh,
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: which we hope to go national. We're working with the
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: classic car insurance company Haggardy UH and we've been doing
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: um um Mrs Mazel and uh Deduce and other TV
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: shows around. Anyway, we have a database of thousands of
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: cars and we supply old cars. So okay, but let's
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: forget their cars. You have twenty three cars? What are they?
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: They're nothing that I would recommend to. Uh, So what
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: are they people? UM? I have Launchia and some Fulvia
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: UM and a Flavia Uh that's dead. I have a
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: bunch of Poe's and mg s and uh Lotus Cortina
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: and Volvo old Volvos and um some Jaguars and uh
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: you know where are they're in? Uh in New York
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: back not in the city, but in a big garage
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: and a bunch of them are sort of in pieces
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: and shops around the area. Okay, and how does one
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: deal in terms of driving? How does the insurance work? Well?
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: Through Haggardy, But there's other carriers, there's Classic Car insurance.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: It's very cheap. So for all those cars, the total
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: insurance bill is probably like four thousand bucks a year. Really, yeah,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: because you know, you're their limitations on use. You could
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: only go miles a year. But like, yeah, I mean
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: I'm lucky if I get a thousand on on some
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: of them. Um, and uh, you can't you know, drive that.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: You're not supposed to drive them to work. You're not
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: supposed to uh uh you know, um commuting them and
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: things like that. But uh but yeah, no, it's a
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: really it's a really sensible option for somebody to Okay,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: so what's your test cars? I get a different car
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: dropped off every week to my house and they pick
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: it up at the end of the week. Every week,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: every single week. Yeah, I probably drive like well, sometimes
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: they have two. It's like se I probably new cars
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: a year. I actually dropped off an Audi A seven
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: at the airport when I came here, and I'm picking
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: up a Jeep Gladiator, which is the new ge pick
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: up based on the Wrangler. When I get back to town,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: let's assume you drive into one. Do you necessarily right
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: about each one? No? No, they don't care. Uh they might.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: You know, there's certain cars like if you ask for
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: a nine eleven turbo and then didn't do anything, they'd
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: remember that. But who is they companies that to all
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: the companies they're all at the airport generally have a well,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: they have fleet managers who are approximate to major cities
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: and often to airports. Uh. And they you know, they
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: drop them off, pick them up. They'll either drop him
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: at the airport, they'll pick up drop him at your house.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: They'll pick up one before. So there's four or five
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: companies in New York that do that. So you deal
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: with them and the companies themselves. Okay, so what are
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: some companies? What are Since you drive so many cars,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: your personal experience big winners, big losers? Uh? In what sense?
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: Personal satisfaction? Oh? Um? I love, I love um sports
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: cars that are uh, nimble and on the smaller side.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: I love. My most exciting car of of two thousand
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: nineteen was the New Lotus of Oura GT for thirty
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: or something like that. Just awesome car. UM. I drove
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: a Ford that's been discontinued in America, the Fiesta RS
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: in France, uh in September for a week and it
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: was fabulous. And they made a terrible mistake and not
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: bring the car to America. In my view, um, you know,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: better than the car that we had and loved before it. Um.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: So those those were h two standouts. UM, but you know,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: you drive some The new poll Star was very impressive. UM.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: And you drive you know, I mean how you know
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: what gear head wouldn't want to drive a McLaren or Ferrari.
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: You know they're awesome. But uh so those have been great.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: But I actually, um, I'm really interested in the bottom
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: end of the market, so I drive, you know, the
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: cheap cars too, and and I'm often really impressed by
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: Oh gosh. Uh. I really liked the Honda Clarity, which
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: is a hybrid. It's a hybrid. There's also a fuel
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: cell version, but in California, and they've sold six or
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: something like that. They don't really want to sell them.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: Um and uh. I drove the new Civic Sin that
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: was pretty pretty fun. Um and UM gosh, Uh what else?
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: The M two was great? Uh? The BMW so yeah,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: I mean there's I just had a The Jeep Wrangler
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: the other week, and I had initially lukewarm reaction to it.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: I thought it was it was a lot better than
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: I thought. Actually, by coincidence, I was delivering to uh
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: the set of an Apple TV show a G sixty
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: three Galanda bag and Mercedes from two thou eighteen, which
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: is it's actually been updated and is better since that.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: But in every respect except like straight it had speed
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: and the quality of the materials. The Jeep was more
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: pleasant than the Mercedes was, which cost trip all the money. Yeah,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: but the Mercedes was always considered a joke. It was
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: you know, people bought those for status, but no one
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: ever said they were a smooth rod or a car
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: where they were wor smoother. Before somebody had the idea
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: of putting them on twenty three inch wheels with seven
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: hundred horsepower engine in them, which is just like the
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: stupidest idea in the world. People don't know about the
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: Glanda Vagum that it was actually the show of Iran's idea.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: He went to Mercedes and said, if you could build
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: me something that was sort of like this. Um we
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: we we would buy them from me for our army,
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: and so they did. It was originally kind of a
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: military vehicle and then but it was much more more
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: austere and you know, sort of work vehicle. Then just
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: a style in vehicle. So are you a car person
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: or a music manager? First? Uh? I like to say
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: I divide my time music eight percent, uh cars. So
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: I have a fractured social life. My you know, my
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: family is often piste off at me because I'm in right,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: I have to write, you know, at night or over
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: the weekend to make it happen. But they actually dovetail
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: really nicely. Um. I always remembered when I was managing
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: okay go um we were at Capitol Records, and you know,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: the person who was really gonna make something happen was
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: the then president, Andy Slayter, who was you know, friendly
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: guy we uh we shared uh, a lawyer who was
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: a dear friend of both of ours. But he, you know,
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: he was a busy guy and and and had a
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: lot of stuff to do. And you know, in the
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: in the major label business, you know, how much attention
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: and executive can pay to you is you know is
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: you know, perhaps properly but but certainly typically is allocated
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: based on like how many records have you sold? And
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: if I just wanted to go in and talk to
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: him about my band, I might not get that much time.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: But if I said, hey, Andy, you know at the
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: new DV nine aston outside and uh we could, I
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: could get him in the car for two or three
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: hours and you know we could we could talk some business. Um.
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: So that was often I found the job of the
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: manager's figure out what floated somebody's boat, and some people
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: were really into cars. And it was also just you know,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: convenient because like, uh, I'd be getting flown out to
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: l A to a car launch and then I could
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: go meet all the labels that I probably wouldn't have
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: gotten to if it was up to my bands to
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: buy me a ticket or for me to buy my Okay,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: so today, who are you working with? We're working with
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: they might be giants. Um. We work with a band
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: called the rad Traads, who are a rock and combo
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: largely out of New York. Right now, Uh that two brothers,
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: theve Adams um from Chicago. We were Cuban Americans or
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: the the kind of it was. It was their thing.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: But um that's that's about it. Um and uh, I
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: probably spend less time doing that, and the people who
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: work in the management business spend more time doing a
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: lot of that stuff, a lot of stuff, and managing
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: bands is sort of ministerial. Um and uh I guess
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: I realized that, um, I really didn't have anymore what
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: it took to be going out to rock clubs at
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: one o'clock in the morning and East Brooklyn to see
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: bands that we're never gat a record deal, uh never
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: gat a publishing deal. And uh you know that life
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: was was you know, short enough that um I just
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: I just didn't have, uh that that to break. So
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: how did you get into music management to begin with? Um?
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: I was um uh Well, the the short, long story
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: is I went to an alternative high school, which was
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: the thing in the seventies, sort of a hangover from
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: Summer Hill and those experiments. And it was a public school,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: but we had classes. We had some core teachers, but
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: we also had classes that were taught by townspeople in
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: the town of Leoni in New Jersey. As it happened,
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: the guy who a young or guy who rented the
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: house the cottage behind the house that was next door,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: which was like a converted garage was a uh record
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: uh a. And our guy at Columbia, his name was
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: Tom Merman, who went on to be Mr Producer. Great
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: she did Nugent now runs A B and B in Massachusetts.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: I've stayed there really Yeah, so in any case, he was, uh,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: we we did this class. This is probably in nineteen
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: five or four, and um at the end of it,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: he said, you know, there's like sixteen kids in this class,
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: and really only two of them have any business thinking
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: about a career in the music business. But you're one
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: of them. And uh so, um he was. He was
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: sort of was like halfway between my parents age and me,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: and he was cool, you know, um and uh So.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: I sort of took that to heart and kind of
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: kept my eyes and years open. I went I worked
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: at newspapers for a couple of years. After I got
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: out of college, I went to h law school, and
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: I guess the summer my first year in law school,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: I was down in New York clerking um and uh
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: for the state Attorney General and uh a friend of
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: mine from college invited me to see this these guys.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: He was working with, and it was the band they
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: might be Giants, who I thought were great. They were like,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: if you took away the guest list, there were negative
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: three people. He was in Hell's Kitchen when it was
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: really shitty and uh um. But they reminded me of
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: the Everly Brothers. They sang incredible harmonies together, which was
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: super uncool incidentally when I was in high school to
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: be in the Everly Brothers, but I was. And I
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: also liked the Four Seasons and the Bgs and some
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: other things along with the more traditional fair um and
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: so I was kind of a harmony guy and I
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: could just see they had that, and so I sort
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: of made it my business to befriend them, and over
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: the next couple of years, while I was finishing law school,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: UM I would give them free legal advice. And because
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: I sort of came from a media background, my dad
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: was television critic in New York for thirty seven years,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: um I UM, and I had worked at newspapers. I
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: sort of understood how press worked and stuff like that,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: and I kind of ended up getting like a permanent
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: ability to put people on their guest list. And uh
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: so I did that a lot and then while living
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: the rest of my life. And then um, I I
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: knew this guy. His name was Art Lugoff, who owned
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: a great famous jazz club in New York called the
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: Village Gate, and Um, he he was a neighbor and
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: friends sort of friends with my parents from the kind
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: of like kind of left journal scene in New York
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: and the Village Gate in the middle late nine eighties
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: was um suffering from the fact that interest in jazz
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: had really was declining, and he'd have shows that were
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: you know, I remember going to see the Dirty Dozen
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: Brass Band there and there were you know, like fifteen
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: Japanese tourists and me and my friend I was in.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: So he was he was like one day he's like, hey, kid,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: you know, if you if you didn't bring any in here,
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: you know, give me five hundred bucks in the bar
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: and it's yours. So I went to the Um John
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: and John from the MP Giants and said like, uh,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: you know, we you know you're playing for a hundred
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: people a night in the Um East Village you know often, UM,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: and you know you're you're selling out these shows, and
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: I think we could make a move to the West Village. Mean,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: that's what a different time it was. And they they
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: were like, you know, and and we could go do
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: this show at the Village Gate and it wouldn't cost
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: us but five hundred bucks and then the rest of
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: the money's hours. And they were like, you know, you know,
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: if you want to do that, you can do that,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: but we don't. We're not. We get a hundred and
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: fifty dollars at night, that's their deal, and pay us
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: a hundred fifty dollars and you know, you know, we'll
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: do We'll show up. So we uh. They're live. Sound
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: guy who was the friend who introduced me to them
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: and who ended up producing their first records. He he
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: agreed to go partner with me on this show and
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: we we you know, we took ads uh and it
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: was going well and then through no fall to our
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: own um the New York Times wrote a preview story
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: and we ended up um UM selling like, you know,
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: eight hundred tickets and at the end of the night
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: we were at backstage sitting there with um you know,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: thousands and thou eight thousand dollars, seven thousand dollars something
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: like that, more money than I'd ever seen in my
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: life in in cash and Uh. I was like, you guys,
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: gotta take some of this money. And they were like, no,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: you know, we've made a deal. It's a hundred fifty
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: dollars a night, which was very menshi of them. And
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: uh for and we had done two shows and uh,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: but do you want to be a manager? And I
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: was like, yes, I do. So I had recently, Um,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: I had clerk for a judge after law school. I
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: was the clerk for the Chief Justice of the New
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: Jersey Supreme Court, which was suddenly took a my mediocre
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: law career and made me really employable. And I had
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: the previous summer. Uh, Matt also started selling stories to
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: Automobile Magazine and I had persuaded them then and their owner,
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: Rupert Murdoch then to send me to every baseball park
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: in America and at Corvette Roadster in the summer of
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: eight six, culminating in uh the World Series between the
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: Mats and the Red Sox, which I got to see
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: it every game of which is awesome. I saw the
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: your game. I was there. Uh and um. But in
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: any case, UM, while I was doing that, I had
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: this epiphany. I had accepted a job back in New
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: York at a fancy firm, and I also accepted another
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: job working for the new Jersey State Attorney General. And uh,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: I had to decide which when I was actually going
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: a job for, and then it had an epiphany that
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: I should show up for neither one. Pulled over the
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: side of the road in Utah and called from They
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: used to have pay phones that you could call from
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: your car, low pay phones, and I called and I
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: was like, I can't be there on Monday, and they
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: were like what, and you know, they were like Tuesday.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, they were like Wednesday, and I think,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: you know, actually never, so I never uh took those jobs.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: I came back and within a few months I was
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: managing them might be giants and that went so well that, uh,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: you know, I ended up managing bands, which had it
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: not gone well, I would have been out of the
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: music business probably, And uh, the great thing is is
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: that they continued to do amazing. Well. They've just put
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: a tour up which is their best quickest selling tour
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: in their entire career, which is awesome. You know, they
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: get you know, millions of streams a month, and uh,
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: you know, they have the most uh, and that was
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: sort of the inside I had about them was that
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: they would have a career as long as they felt
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: like having a career. And and they've at many stages,
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: you know, I've not agreed necessarily with their choices, which
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: they like. They were kind of things they could have
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: done that were the conventional wisdom, you should do this,
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: you should open for this shitty band because you'll get
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: in front of you know, ten thousand people a night
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: instead of one thousand or two thousand. And they just
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: just did you know, they pleased themselves. They're they're really
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, you're right about this all the time. But
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: they were totally real artists and they didn't care. They
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: weren't associated with any haircut or clothes style or stuff
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: like that. So it was like they never wasn't like
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: they were going to go out of style because they
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: were an in style. And uh, they have a rabid
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: fan base you know, around the world, so they you know,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: they tour Europe successfully, in Japan and Australia, and uh,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: it's been great. I've I've between that and writing about cars,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: I've seen the world and um, you know, I feel
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: pretty great that it was like, you know, my personality development,
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: Um kind of was arrested at the age of twelve,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: and I have been able to spend my life going
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: to rock shows and um driving cars. So you know,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: I wish I was I was heavier. So you have
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: like decades where they might be giants. That is rare.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: How come they didn't fire you or have never gone on.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: I think in part there because they you know, uh,
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: we liked each other. But I think, uh, you know,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: I didn't really you know, make you know, like real
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: prima Donna stands that if they didn't do what I
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: wanted them to do. I think, you know, I was
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: I was like there, Bill Barr, you know I did.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: I was there ko you know, I did what they
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: wanted to get done. And um, I was good at
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: the business part of it, having been to law school
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: and knowing about licenses in the early days we were
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: you know, it was in with with indie labels. Go
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: like c D rights. No, it doesn't say in this
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: contract that you have the right to make this new
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: thing called a c D. And people go like what
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: you know, and you go like, yeah, and I went
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: to law school too, so I must be true and
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: they go, oh, ship And I remember going to like
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: rough trade in England to get their first album put overseas,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: and they were like, here's a contract you'll have. Your
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: lawyer looked that. I was like, oh, I am a lawyer,
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: and they'd go like, here, don't take this contract and
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: so uh uh so we they were just uh uh
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: So we were able to you know, back in the
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: days where there were territories and things like that, we
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: were able to license stuff over and over again. And
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: I was also I think they're most ardent cheerleader. So
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: you know when Birdhouse and Your Soul was it was
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: a top ten hit in England, that was down to us.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: You know, it was down to it being a great song,
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: but it wouldn't have been the only great song that
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: got ignored before. Um and so that was something that
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: I never worked with bands that I didn't like, but
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: um uh, if I really believed in it, it would
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: put me in a good position to advocate for it.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: So we managed the band the Laws that had the
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: great hit there she goes. But and you know, I
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: really liked the president of London Records. He's a great guy,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: but he was like, how do I know this? It
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: wasn't Roger was actually a gentleman named Peter Cupkey still
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: who's sweet guy actually had tried to side the name
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: of Giants to Atlantic and um, but he was you know,
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: he was necessarily nervous because that was the mood at
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: PolyGram and he was like, well, how do I know
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: it's It's like, how do you know it's a hit?
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: I mean like, this is probably one of the greatest
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: songs ever and it's of course it's a hit, and
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: it's already hit in England, so like, you know, that's
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: pretty easy to figure out. And so yeah, and it
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: was a hit and not as big a hit as
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: it should have been, but uh, because they didn't want
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: to spend the money on top forty radio and stuff
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: like that. And of course the laws were insane themselves,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: but which didn't make it any easier. But that was
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean like believing in something. Uh is
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: you know that that right off the bat makes the
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: difference between of effective manager and ineffective one. I think, Um,
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: they you know, but they were the John's were always uh,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: you know, we worked with a lot of great bands.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: We've managed the Meat Puppets and Yola Tango and uh,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: the Laws we did Edwyn Collins when he had to
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: hit the United States. We just looked after him in
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: the States, and uh Fredy Johnston, who was great. And
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: so why is it in because you know, for most
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: managers it ends at some point, what's what happens there? Uh? Well, uh,
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: in a couple of cases, Uh, basically, uh, people decided
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: to manage themselves. Uh. Really a terrible mistake. I mean
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: I'm always like, you know what, like find another manager,
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: Let's find you a good manager that you like better.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: But h but don't not manage yourself. That's you know,
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: it's just like the the if a manager is not
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: making their fifteen or uh for you, you know, it's
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: like it's rare. I mean, that would be a really
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: bad All it takes is somebody to call up and say,
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: you know for a baby band, you know, you want
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: five hundred bucks for this gig, or we'll give you
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: five hundred bucks. You get it up to seven fifty dollars,
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: you've paid for your commission and then so uh, it's
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: it's really shortsighted. There's also too many jobs for a
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: band to do. If if they think that they have
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: the time to keep their books and to book their
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: gigs and do all this ministerial work that is, you know,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: get the visas and stuff like that. Then you know,
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: that is anti art, that's the anti creativity. And so
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: that was one of the things with the Johnson I
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: think they were I was liberating to them, is I
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: was like, quit your fucking jobs, you know, like that
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: was like the first thing that they did when they
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: got a manager, even though they had been successfully running
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: their own operation. That's one reason that it kept going
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: is that, I mean, they're both like brilliant guys, but um,
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: one of them in particular was just like I mean,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: he he was indefatigable and and they really really wanted it,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: and he and they wanted it on their terms. And
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: when I meet bands where there's no you know, but
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: nobody has megalomaniacal tendencies, nobody thinks that the world will
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: be a sadder place if they're not in front of
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: three thousand people or ten thousand people, you know, shaking
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: their ass um then there's a band that's probably not
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: going anywhere. You know. It takes that in in so
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: many areas of life, somebody who really really really really
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: really cares and they don't if you want to tell
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: me I suck. You know you're wrong. You know I'll
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: prove to you you're wrong. And that's you know, obviously,
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: being on kind of a left of center artists, there's
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: lots of people who want to tell you you suck,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: even when you know minutes after they tell you that
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: they did it. You know, I remember trying to sign
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: them to a major label after they've had success at
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: alternative radio and MTV and people calling, oh, those guys,
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: I I love them even when I hated them, you know,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: or uh and so yeah, okay, before we go, just
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: a couple of quick car questions. Bentley's Rolls Royce worth
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: it unique cars basically gussied up Volkswagen. What do we
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: got there? Well, I mean they are, uh well, Rolls
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: Royce is a gussied at BMW and Bentley's guess a
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: volks It. The thing is is that Volkswagen and BMW
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: are you know, among, if not the greatest UH car
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: companies in the world, and so their technology when they
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: let you pull out all the stops is pretty awesome. Um,
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's sort of perverse that these
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: two English companies were bought by Germans, right, uh, but
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: and they very much um, you know, try to preserve
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: parts of their Britishness. But at the same time, you know,
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: you feel German all over them, which is you know,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: that's really no bad thing. But as I say, for
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: your money, are you getting something? No, I think really
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: somewhere probably now I used to say fifty thousand, but
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: now it's probably more like seventy or eighty thousand. You
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: stop really getting any benefit other than whatever the perceived
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: status advantages or things like that. Okay, let's go to
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: the other end. The Ferraris, Lamborghinis, McLaren's. What's the best
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: of that? ILK, I probably, I probably like the Ferraris
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: the best. But they're all so much more competent and
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: and reliable and safe than they were. But they're just
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: you know, uh, to me, they don't they're not really
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: what UM turns me on and I find as there.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: You know, they used to be quite rare, and now
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: you know they they've been bought by companies that have
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: the ability to sell five thousand of them a year
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: instead of you know, three hundred or nine hundred or
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: two thousand. UM that they're they're common and to me
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: they're just kind of a little embarrassing. Um. The I
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: was in Hamburg with a friend who's a car guy
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: who's driving me around, and he said, I'm gonna take
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: you to Russian Street and I was like, what's Russian Street.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: He's the street where all the Lamborghinis are. And they're
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: all these you know, like you know, rich Russians, you know,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: and you know, hanging out in front of their Lamborghinis
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: and they did you know, and you see that in London,
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: um on the Edgeware Road, you see, you know, the
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: the mirror plated Lamborghinis and and uh Ferraris and you
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: know it's just you know, it's just it's just vulgar
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: really to me. But you know, I I celebrate automotive diversity,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: and you know, I think whatever people want to do,
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: you know, uh, for the time being, that's what they
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: ought to do, you know, any future for Aston Martin
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: Busin this week this week we're just talking about the
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: stock is. Yeah. Well, you know it's it's they have
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: a really bold plan, which is you know, one part real,
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: you know, two parts fairy dust. So uh, I think
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: they're they're smart guys, and you know, it's really it's
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: given how you know, you know, all these companies like
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: to the fact that they survived. I've survived. Aston Martin
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: has been around almost a hundred years and you know
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: they've never sold that many cars, Uh, is a miracle
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: and um and so you know, I kind of wish
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: them all the best. Building a brand that that means anything,
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: you know, that's that's a multibillion dollar undertaking. If you
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: were to try now, you know, twenty billion dollars wouldn't
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: be even to begin to be enough to to actually
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: make a brand that anyone cared about. And then you
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: know they wouldn't care about it the way they care
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: about Aston Martin. So I always say brand is a
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: terrible thing to waste, and I think that, um, they
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: you know, I wish them every success. And you know,
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: the difficulty is is that as technology changes that the
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: investments that are required to be relevant are phenomenal. So
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: what you see, you know, Aston has partnered a lot
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: with Mercedes to use a lot of their engines and
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: you know, various things and when it comes to autonomous
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: cars and electric power, so you're gonna see I think,
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: you know, though, they will become effectively parts of bigger
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: cod Okay, what's the next merger. Well, the one that is,
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: it's been they're working towards it is the U P
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: s A, which is Burgo and f C A, which
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: is Fiat Chrysler. So P s A is now UH
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: Persia Sito and um um Opal which they bought from
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: General Motors and ironically um it turned to profit after
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: twenty losing years within six months of being got uh
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: so um that that's going to be a big one.
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: That will create the world's fourth largest carmaker. That's exciting
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: to contemplate for fans of any of those brands that
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: are are planning to come back to the United States.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: Um okay, but it's like, say, well, we see further
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: and further consolidation. I think we will. In Japan, there's
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: pretty much the Toyota orbit, which is UM Toyota, Subaru,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: uh Suzuki I think is working with them, and UH
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: Mazda is also doing a lot of stuff with Toyota.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: And then there's the Nissan world, which is Nissan and Mitsubishi,
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: UM and UH. I think that those companies could end
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: up being intertwined more. And I think that, yeah, I
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: think that that we could see. I think it wouldn't
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: be the weirdest thing in the world to see the
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: American companies end up merging with somebody else. I think
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: they should survive. Okay, lightning round, don't don't evade this
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: small car. What do you recommend? Well, I like the golfs,
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: even though they're canceling the regular golf for America. Okay,
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: that's any answer. Next step up Sedan Oh uh gag
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: uh in the in the low priced realm. I like
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: Monster six is um in higher priced realm, I would
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: be happy with Hey, probably with the E class Mercedes. Okay,
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: more luxurious. Um. I really liked the X Jays Jaguar,
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: which is also canceled but coming back as an electric
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 1: car in a year or two. But more luxurious than that.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: He's he's he's uh no in that category. Other than
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: the jack Bars, it's more like serious. Uh. Oh golly, um,
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: I wish I was more inspired right now, I can't.
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: I can't say I'm not. I'm not really um um, Well,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: I would never see myself only one. Uh. There's something
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: about the Rolls Royce Phantom that I find. It's it's
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: more bespoke than the Bentley's So I sort of prefer that,
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: and it's getting redone any second. Uh, But so I
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: would say, you know, for the for the big fuck
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: you car, I'd say, there's you know, nothing says fuck
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: you quite so loudly as a phantom. And there we
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: have it. Jamie Kentman, automobile expert music manager for decades. Jamie,
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: thanks so much for being Until next time, it's Bob
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: left S