Pod Insights THIS CAR POD! with Doug DeMuro & Friends! Rivian R2 îs the Perfect Car? New Ferrari Reveal and Ford in Trouble! About this episode Have a question you want answered on the podcast next week? Ask HERE https://crsnbds.com/PODQUESTIONS
Welcome to THIS CAR POD! Doug DeMuro & Friends offers weekly expert insight and opinion on breaking automotive stories, the car market, and audience Q&A.
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Chapters
00:00:00 THIS CAR POD!
00:00:12 Ferrari's New Interior
00:08:04 Doug Drove The Rivian R2
00:18:19 New Grand Tour Hosts
00:22:53 Toyota's New CEO
00:27:18 The New Toyota Highlander
00:35:23 Nio Battery Swapping
00:38:10 Ford's Rough Year
00:43:25 AMG Brings Back The Inline Six
00:47:36 Talk Cars
00:48:13 Euro Car Road Trip
00:53:39 Nick Bought A Car On The Site!
00:59:33 Doug Wants An AMG Wagon
01:02:55 Doug Went On Twitter
01:09:24 Filippo's F250
01:11:28 Doug's Diecast Shout Out
01:13:17 Market Report
01:14:07 Ferrari 458
01:19:08 Community Questions
01:21:28 Is Doug Sad The A140 Died?
01:22:07 Why Haven't You Reviewed A Pajero Evolution?
01:24:41 How Much Mail Does Sean Get?
01:25:00 Why Is The Carrera GT's Shifter Mounted Where It Is?
01:27:46 Does Nick Regret Selling The Murcielago?
01:30:44 How Does Nick Have So Much Time?
01:31:41 Is There A Negative Connotation to Owning An American Car?
01:34:17 Parting Thoughts
#dougdemuro #carsandbids
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Transcript 20,654 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:05 Doug DeMuro? Hello and welcome to this car pod. I'm Filippo.
1:10 Speaker 03 I'm Nick.
1:11 Doug DeMuro? And there's a lot to talk about this week, a lot. Buckle up, get started with the news. Ah, yes. This is Ferrari.
1:17 Speaker 03 The Ferrari Luce, which means light in Italian.
1:21 Doug DeMuro? Oh.
1:21 Speaker 03 Here's what's in the news. We thought that, we'd known for a while that Ferrari was going to make an EV. We thought it was going to be called l'Elektrica or electric. But no, it's called light. Different. But it's in the news because Joni Ive, who famously worked at Apple for a long time as their industrial designer, designed the iPhone 4, the iPad, the Apple Watch, a bunch of older Mac computers. His design firm designed the interior of this car. And Ferrari's done like a whole PR thing about it. And it's kind of interesting. It's obviously a departure from their normal, from their prior language. So I wanted to go to Ferrari's site to go through it so we could really understand what Joni Ive and his team did.
1:59 Doug DeMuro? Okay. They have a steering wheel input? I want to start with that. I love how the steering.
2:04 Speaker 03 I know, it's so cool.
2:05 Doug DeMuro? It's like a really cool, like vintage, you're going to go past it.
2:08 Speaker 03 No, no.
2:08 Doug DeMuro? But it's a really cool vintage looking steering wheel.
2:12 Speaker 03 I love the steering wheel. It reminds me of producer Sean's 360 in a lot of ways.
2:17 Doug DeMuro? It's lighter. Even older, though. Like it's even more, it looks more like the old school, like wood wheels and the old school 60s stuff. It's really cool.
2:25 Speaker 03 And it's supposed to be incredibly light. Apparently their use of CNC machine aluminum means that it's lighter than their prior steering wheels by a substantial mark.
2:35 Speaker 04 You might be getting there, but one notable thing that I think is interesting, there's zero carbon fiber anywhere. They decided carbon fiber is dead, it's no longer cool, so they use different materials throughout, but refuse to do decorative carbon fiber.
2:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's also interesting for the amount of paddle shifters in an EV, also interesting.
2:54 Speaker 04 Very interesting.
2:54 Doug DeMuro? I've been in EVs that have shifted, but in most EVs that have paddle shifters, they use it to control the regen.
3:01 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's the case in this one. It's not the Kia style fake shifters.
3:06 Speaker 03 So what are you gonna say? You're gonna complain about it? What are you gonna say?
3:09 Doug DeMuro? I'm not complaining about anything.
3:10 Speaker 03 A lot of people online hate it.
3:11 Doug DeMuro? Really?
3:12 Speaker 04 I gotta complain.
3:13 Speaker 03 People think it looks too like modern and like not Ferrari, you know?
3:16 Speaker 04 I think it looks very Ferrari. I don't love how the screen is integrated. I don't think that there is a way to do it elegantly, so I feel their pain, and on an EV, you need a big screen, but that, to me, if they could find a Bentley style treatment where it's hideable, or could like disappear into the dash.
3:32 Speaker 03 Fun fact, by the way, this turns. It's on a swivel, so you can face it towards the driver.
3:35 Doug DeMuro? Which that Cadillac Voyage I just reviewed had that, and I was like, more people should do this!
3:40 Speaker 04 There we are.
3:41 Doug DeMuro? This looks like a Jeep Wrangler dashboard, does it not? Or like some sort of mid-tier.
3:44 Speaker 03 Looks a little Ford GT with the circle vents.
3:47 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, but like, the Ferrari's done circle vents, but like just a simple plane of horizontal.
3:52 Speaker 03 I'm into it. Hopefully it's not body color painted and plastic, but.
3:54 Doug DeMuro? To be honest, I'm surprised, I've never seen this before, where the car introduces the driving area and the dashboard before they've announced anything else. And by the way, we're gonna be calling it the loose. You agree, right?
4:06 Speaker 04 Of all the words that he said, I wouldn't have pronounced any of them the same, including Johnny Ive.
4:12 Doug DeMuro? Jonny Ive, isn't that how he says it?
4:14 Speaker 04 No, I'm sure you're correct, but I phonetically do not say it that way.
4:19 Speaker 03 A couple of things that are interesting, a bunch of toggle switches and physical buttons, which is a good return after a lot of capacitive touch Ferrari things. The screens are kinda cool, the gauge design, I think, to find it to be cool. It's a couple of screens layered to give a 3D effect.
4:32 Doug DeMuro? I think it's especially, a lot of the complaints I'm seeing, I think those people haven't been in modern Ferraris, which are already screen dominated, and I have to say... In a lot of modern Ferraris, the screen setup isn't, I don't know if you guys have spent time in brand new Ferraris, but the screen setup isn't great. You're doing it all in the steering wheel with these controls that aren't perfectly mirrored to what's actually going on. A lot of the infotainment is in the gauge cluster screen rather than in some sort of center screen because it's all driver focused. This is definitely a more traditional way to do it. Like, people are like, "This isn't very Ferrari." Well, I have a suspicion if the people who are complaining that got in an 812 or in an SF90, they would have the same complaint.
5:08 Speaker 04 Also, that complaint, it's an EV. We're already way past that this isn't a normal Ferrari.
5:14 Doug DeMuro? The great irony of this is we're all debating this interior and the truth is the car's not going to be popular, successful, or desirable.
5:20 Speaker 04 It's an EV Ferrari. This is more sacrilegious than the SUV, or I'm sorry, what are they called? The sports activity vehicle?
5:26 Doug DeMuro? No, that would be the X5. The X5 was called the sports activity vehicle.
5:29 Speaker 04 They wanted it to be the Ferrari utility vehicle. They did not want to call it an SUV.
5:34 Doug DeMuro? I think BMW might still call the X5 the sports activity vehicle.
5:37 Speaker 03 The activity vehicle, 100%.
5:38 Speaker 04 Wow.
5:39 Speaker 03 I think this is cool. Obviously, Jonny Ives, like, his thing is all, like, material. And the reason that Apple's so popular is that it's very material, glass, metal, circled edges.
5:48 Speaker 04 Yeah. This picture right here, that they nailed, that should be the new standard for all Ferraris.
5:53 Doug DeMuro? I agree. And I think any complaints about it are not taking into account that this really is an improvement over brand new exist. I think a lot of people who are complaining, like, have only been in a 360 and so they don't like any screens in a Ferrari. This is way better. Yeah, go into an interior of a, see, the whole thing, the whole thing is this. There is no center screen and all of it is controlled with little steering wheel pads. It's a lot. It's a lot to deal with. It really is. And I think that this new Jonny Ives thing is a significant improvement. I really do.
6:25 Speaker 04 Jonny was like Steve Jobs's right-hand man, too. Like, he's a big deal.
6:29 Doug DeMuro? Like, all of this, everything is controlled with switches like this. It's on the steering wheel primarily, but it's all done with that kind of stuff.
6:35 Speaker 04 Don't you think it's interesting that they're declaring the death of carbon fiber? Like, that is something Ferrari charges 100 grand for various carbon fiber things. And they're outright saying, "We think it's played out. We're tired of it. If it's decorative, we're not into it. It's only for fun."
6:51 Doug DeMuro? That all of the decisions they make are for purpose and function.
6:55 Speaker 04 Yeah.
6:55 Doug DeMuro? And in an electric car, we know we're not saving weight, so we're just gonna put aside the fiction that that's what carbon fiber is for. I have a suspicion carbon fiber will retain its existence in other Ferrari models.
7:06 Speaker 04 I kind of agree with them that I think carbon fiber is a little played out, especially.
7:10 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, but it's played out by the pretenders and Ferrari is one of the trendsetters.
7:13 Speaker 04 But all carbon fiber in interior is pretty much pretenders. There's a couple of times where they actually fab it, it's usually an overlap.
7:19 Doug DeMuro? Dude, I could argue, I mean, black wheels.
7:21 Speaker 04 Like Kia Sportage. Those are all over too.
7:23 Doug DeMuro? Every Ferrari's got, you know what I mean? Like, at the end of the day, like, you can, you saw it. They're gonna keep doing carbon fiber, I promise. They make too much money off the op.
7:31 Speaker 04 They have to, as a publicly traded company, they've been ripping their customers off with hundreds of grand of this stuff that does no functional benefit or minimal.
7:39 Doug DeMuro? Oh, man, it's amazing we still get press cars.
7:41 Speaker 04 But we do.
7:41 Doug DeMuro? They're trendsetters, they gotta move on. Apparently, they've been working together for the last five years. I think this looks cool, I think it's great. I think that it is absolutely irrelevant because much more interesting to everybody is gonna be this car, how it looks, how it drives, what it is. There's been speculation it's gonna be a hatchback or a four-door hatchback.
8:00 Speaker 04 They have confirmed four doors.
8:01 Doug DeMuro? If that's true, like, why are we talking about the interior? We're on a four-door electric car.
8:07 Speaker 04 Maybe that's why they're introducing this first, it's the least offensive part of the car. They want us to focus on this.
8:13 Doug DeMuro? This is the only way they're gonna get any attention on the car that's positive.
8:16 Speaker 04 On the interior.
8:17 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, right, right. Yeah, cuz people would gloss over the benefit of this interior, which is okay, compared to what is gonna be significant drawbacks of the vehicle itself.
8:26 Speaker 04 Enzo wouldn't take an elevator and now they're making EVs.
8:31 Doug DeMuro? Huh. Um, that's true, that's true. Enzo, in my opinion, was afraid of elevators. I don't think this is teased out of reality, but I've made this point.
8:38 Speaker 04 It's in Wikipedia.
8:40 Doug DeMuro? If it is in Wikipedia, it's because I've been saying it for so long, it is fake. I had this thing with Ken and Ride, told them that, of course, Ferraris are old school because Enzo would see an elevator and he'd hear the ding and he'd freaked out. Enzo was like famously pastoral and like, you know, he never traveled outside Italy, he was famously of his era, if you will. And so I have this thing that he was afraid of telephones and elevators, but I don't think any of that was actually true.
9:02 Speaker 04 Or maybe it is, whatever.
9:04 Doug DeMuro? Okay, move on to the next news story, which is the huge news. The Rivian R2. I drove the Rivian R2.
9:09 Speaker 03 Yeah.
9:10 Doug DeMuro? I'm a select few.
9:11 Speaker 03 One of like 10 at the most.
9:12 Doug DeMuro? All right, there's me, there's Marquez.
9:15 Speaker 03 Who we love.
9:15 Doug DeMuro? Who's much more legit than I am. There's Jerry Rig Everything.
9:18 Speaker 03 Also, we love.
9:20 Doug DeMuro? And then there's some fellow from Motor Trend.
9:21 Speaker 03 Sure.
9:22 Doug DeMuro? And Matt Watson also. And uh, this is a fantastic car. Are you worried that this car is gonna be the only car? Because it's so good?
9:29 Speaker 03 We already, we live in Southern California, live in San Diego. I see a lot of R1s.
9:33 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, R1s are around.
9:34 Speaker 03 This is gonna be, the only other car you see as many of is for runners. And this is like a combines a Rivian and a 4Runner.
9:41 Doug DeMuro? It's like a Rivian and a 4Runner in one car.
9:42 Speaker 03 And that's all there is in Southern California.
9:44 Doug DeMuro? I totally think that. And, and I made the point to them that I think it's gonna, like, no one is gonna buy an R1 now.
9:51 Speaker 03 No.
9:51 Doug DeMuro? And they're like, no way.
9:53 Speaker 03 You want third row, you want a pickup.
9:53 Doug DeMuro? Tesla just canceled their third row.
9:58 Speaker 03 There's a trim of the Model Y, I think.
9:59 Doug DeMuro? They now just added a, but they had the third row on the Model Y before and nobody bought it.
10:03 Speaker 03 Huh? You know where else they had a third row?
10:05 Doug DeMuro? Hmm.
10:05 Speaker 03 Model S had a back face.
10:06 Doug DeMuro? That's right.
10:08 Speaker 03 I, this is, based on what you said in your review, which I legitimately watched all of, which is not always true.
10:13 Doug DeMuro? Oh wow.
10:13 Speaker 03 Uh, this is gonna be an, has the potential to be incredibly.
10:17 Doug DeMuro? I am even more positive about this car now than I was when I was through the video.
10:21 Speaker 03 Yeah.
10:22 Doug DeMuro? I just, I, I think it is, and, and by the way, since that time, between when I recorded the video and now I have seen pricing.
10:28 Speaker 03 Which is not revealed.
10:29 Doug DeMuro? Not allowed to disclose pricing. It could be a billion dollars.
10:36 Doug DeMuro? However, it isn't, and it's actually quite compelling.
10:39 Speaker 03 Yeah.
10:39 Doug DeMuro? And uh, that makes me like the car even more. You know, it's funny because they, they spent a lot of time talking at this launch about how it doesn't have some of the R1's cool suspension stuff like air suspension. But by virtue of being a smaller and unibody vehicle, in my opinion, it drives just as well, if not better.
10:56 Speaker 03 Yeah.
10:57 Doug DeMuro? It, this is a fantastic car, especially for the price point. This is a fantastic car. I truly think one of the very best EVs. I think that probably the best EV I've ever been around.
11:06 Speaker 03 Wow.
11:07 Doug DeMuro? Boom.
11:07 Speaker 03 Wow.
11:07 Doug DeMuro? Better than the Lucha?
11:10 Speaker 04 Well done.
11:10 Doug DeMuro? The Teslas when they first came out were also unbelievable cars, but this reminds me of that. This is like a Tesla but without the kind of weenie played out styling.
11:19 Speaker 04 Tesla's like hanging it up and saying we're just quietly exiting and going into robots and Rivian's sitting there strapping.
11:25 Speaker 03 Which is good. I mean Rivian needs to, right? Like financially, they very much need.
11:29 Doug DeMuro? This car, it's very important that it succeeds. And I hear from a lot of people that they're excited by the R3. Mostly I hear that from enthusiasts. I think that this car will sell to regular people in massive numbers.
11:40 Speaker 04 It's like your sensor reviewed it all the views on YouTube, even though us enthusiasts could care less. This is going to appeal to a lot of people and the R3 is all our buddies.
11:50 Doug DeMuro? Imagine a 4Runner except like in the modern era. With better ride, the similar off-road capabilities, much more power, better technology.
11:58 Speaker 04 And the styling. The styling, so many EVs, the styling is so bland or weird and polarizing. This we're all used to. It's not polarizing and it's pretty attractive.
12:08 Doug DeMuro? Pretty attractive. I was truly astonished by just the overall level of competence that this pre-production car that I was driving had. And I can't imagine they don't sell a zillion of these. My point on the R1 is that like Rivian's like, no, there's going to be people who want the R1. I don't think that the R1 is visually distinct enough and or distinct enough in other ways. The reason that the full-size Range Rover still sells, even though they have other models, is that the full-size Range Rover has this kind of boss look and presence. To me, this looks just, and in fact, they had an R2 and an R1 next to each other and the design student did a walk around. It's hard to tell them apart. Even though there are massive physical size differences, the appearance is so similar. I don't think people are going to say, I want an R1 for the clout, because I don't think honestly there's going to be significant.
12:51 Speaker 04 It'll be people that want the size. I fall into that category.
12:54 Doug DeMuro? It'll only be people who want the size.
12:55 Speaker 03 1200 horsepower.
12:56 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, but this is already doing 0-60 in some incredibly quick. I can't remember what I'm allowed to talk about it.
13:01 Speaker 04 They may come out with the higher power version eventually.
13:04 Speaker 03 The hard part of being a small company, right? Like a large manufacturer, if Ford built these, they would have a redesign of the R1S coming in a year or two. Rivian almost certainly can't. They don't have the engineering resources, they don't have the factory resources to do that. And so we will probably have to deal, they will probably have to accept that R1S sales and R1T sales probably go down for a while till they can actually invest in, till R3 comes out, till.
13:29 Doug DeMuro? Whatever they want to have come out before it.
13:31 Speaker 03 Yep.
13:31 Doug DeMuro? And then they either sunset.
13:32 Speaker 03 I'm sure they modeled that out, though, and said, all right, we'll cannibalize a little internal sales, but we will reach such a massive more audience between the price point and the size that it doesn't matter.
13:40 Doug DeMuro? You've got to assume this car's going to hit. It's also global. Unlike the R1s, which are not really available for sale in other markets. You don't think that matters? Model Y is the best-selling car in the world. How is this not a Model Y, but better? Explain that. Explain that, Mr. Shrug. Mr.
13:54 Speaker 00 At Edward Jones, we believe rich is about taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your financial advisor personalizes your plan to help you preserve your progress and create something that lasts. Let's find your rich. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.
14:10 Speaker 03 Tesla has had sales infrastructure across the world.
14:13 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
14:13 Speaker 03 For 15 years now.
14:15 Doug DeMuro? But there was a time when they didn't.
14:17 Speaker 03 Decade, I should say.
14:18 Doug DeMuro? Uh, sure, but I haven't seen Rivian make moves yet to really do that. This thing will be the pride of Turkey. This thing, when you go to Islamabad, they're going to be everywhere. This thing will be the number one best-selling car in Kuala Lumpur, second only to a rebadged 2009 Honda Accord.
14:37 Speaker 03 Large jump forward, if you will. You know, the normal Illinois factory better start producing a lot of cars.
14:42 Doug DeMuro? Well, they're building a factory in Georgia. Did you know that?
14:44 Speaker 03 Yes.
14:45 Doug DeMuro? They're building a factory in Georgia.
14:46 Speaker 03 The country or the state?
14:47 Doug DeMuro? No, United States, Georgia. America. They're sick of union labor in Illinois.
14:51 Speaker 03 They've retooled the normal factory for the R2.
14:54 Doug DeMuro? I don't know what's going on. I didn't ask factory questions. I didn't want to get into it. One of the things they told me about the factory in Normal is that it's hard to get to it. I think this is why Mitsubishi failed. This is a theory. One of several. I'm going to pause it on today's podcast.
15:08 Speaker 03 They're still an automotive maker.
15:09 Doug DeMuro? Not really. Not really. Right. And the reason is they had this factory in Illinois. And when they wanted to visit it and say, no, you got to make a different car, they had to go, they had to fly to Chicago, and then they had to take like a three-hour bus ride to the factory.
15:21 Speaker 03 Far.
15:21 Doug DeMuro? And I think that that like nine-hour experience, they were just like, you know what? We're going to let them continue building the Eclipse because it's just too hard to go down there. And I think by building the factory in Georgia near the Atlanta airport, that's easy to get to. You see my point?
15:36 Speaker 03 The plan is for the R2 to shift production to Georgia in 2028. Doug's the kind of guy that says before the podcast, we've got to start taking this more seriously. And then pauses a theory that Mitsubishi is dead because they were inconvenient to his favorite airport.
15:53 Doug DeMuro? Not my favorite airport.
15:54 Speaker 03 Nobody's favorite airport, I'll say that much.
15:56 Doug DeMuro? Atlanta, you can fly it out of no problem. Normal, Illinois, it is impossible to get to. This is all real, okay? Remember, keep in mind, the Normal, Illinois factory has given us now several great products. The Plymouth Laser RS Turbo, that was the first, and the Eagle Talon Mitsubishi Eclipse, and now Rivian.
16:13 Speaker 03 Speaking of, on the last pod, we asked what was the worst rebad or relaunch?
16:18 Doug DeMuro? Eclipse cross.
16:18 Speaker 03 Eclipse, we missed that.
16:20 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
16:21 Speaker 03 Big miss.
16:21 Doug DeMuro? That was a tough retro.
16:22 Speaker 03 Or, you know, relaunch.
16:24 Doug DeMuro? Relaunch of an old brand.
16:26 Speaker 03 Are you worried that the Georgia factory in Social Circle, Georgia, is an hour away from the Atlanta airport?
16:32 Doug DeMuro? No, I'm not worried about it personally. Legitimately, though, I truly think this is a massive success car. And if they actually follow this with R3 next year, or maybe early the year after, Rivian, like, yeah. Even in the world where EVs are not as popular, not as successful.
16:47 Speaker 03 This will be the market.
16:48 Doug DeMuro? This is such a good car.
16:49 Speaker 03 It's interesting. I distinctly remember your Lucid Air video, where you were basically like, this is an incredibly good car. Because it is. The Lucid Air reliability aside, it's a probably good car.
16:58 Doug DeMuro? Probably the best EV.
16:59 Speaker 03 But it did always feel like that didn't have the market fit. This feels like incredibly good car from early impressions, and also a real demand driver.
17:07 Doug DeMuro? I think if the market was really looking for $120,000 luxury sedans, the Lucid Air would have been a massive success. But ultimately, it's not, nor is it looking for $100,000 minivans.
17:16 Speaker 03 And more relevant, the Gravity is a design flop that makes, will never reach this level of success. Like, the Gravity is a minivan. This looks cool.
17:25 Doug DeMuro? I don't necessarily consider it a design flop. I think it's too expensive, and I think the look is not great. But to your point, this is, and more than even Model Y. People want boxy, look at Telluride, look at G-Wagon, these are global, you know, look, there's a global design interest in these boxy vehicles that now Rivian has come out.
17:41 Speaker 03 Agreed. They've nailed it.
17:43 Doug DeMuro? It's gonna sell in America, it's gonna sell in Canada, and it's gonna sell in Kuala Lumpur.
17:47 Speaker 03 And the rest of the world.
17:48 Doug DeMuro? Kuala Lumpur.
17:49 Speaker 03 Included, maybe.
17:50 Doug DeMuro? What is that re-bodied?
17:53 Doug DeMuro? Honda Accord, you know what I'm talking about?
17:55 Speaker 03 No.
17:55 Doug DeMuro? Proton Perdana.
17:56 Speaker 03 Oh, the Proton, yeah, the Malaysian brand.
17:59 Doug DeMuro? That's what I'm saying.
18:00 Speaker 03 No, I know.
18:00 Doug DeMuro? You think I'm making any of this up?
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19:35 Doug DeMuro? All right, speaking of...
19:36 Speaker 03 All right.
19:37 Doug DeMuro? Something. Here's the deal about this grand tour situation. Next, all right, what are you gonna say?
19:43 Speaker 03 Nothing.
19:43 Doug DeMuro? I'm not gonna say anything. I have a lot of faith that it's gonna work out. They finally have confirmed, after we already knew it, that the grand tour, which was... Okay, so there was Top Gear, and then they got kicked off the air for hitting somebody or something.
19:56 Speaker 03 Yeah.
19:57 Doug DeMuro? They went over to Amazon and did the grand tour.
19:59 Speaker 03 Yep.
19:59 Doug DeMuro? This is Hammond, James, May, and Jeremy Clarkson. Then eventually they retired because they got old.
20:05 Speaker 03 And rich.
20:07 Doug DeMuro? And rich. And then the grand tour stopped. And now the grand tour has restarted, except it's with three new people.
20:13 Speaker 03 Yep.
20:14 Doug DeMuro? James and Thomas, who we know from Throttle House.
20:16 Speaker 03 They're delightful humans.
20:18 Doug DeMuro? Delightful folks, great YouTube channel. If you haven't already seen it, go watch it right now. Literally stop watching the podcast.
20:25 Speaker 03 Yep.
20:26 Doug DeMuro? Or listening. No, and then there's the other fellow.
20:30 Speaker 03 Yeah. Francois something. The train guy, that's all I know, but he's in the train.
20:35 Doug DeMuro? There's been a little, there's been a little anxiety in the automotive community that Francois Bergerot.
20:41 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:42 Doug DeMuro? Maybe isn't.
20:44 Speaker 03 Francis.
20:45 Doug DeMuro? Okay, thank you. Maybe isn't like the, the, you know, person we were hoping would for, right? And I think that they have really gone out of their way to try to pitch us to make sure that we believe that he's right, right? Like even in Throttle House's like opening announcement video, they had to be like, no, he's good. But he might be.
21:06 Speaker 03 He might be.
21:07 Doug DeMuro? I don't want to say anything yet. I think it's totally inappropriate to like, to like, make those kinds of statements. I truly believe that. So I'm totally willing to let it happen and see what. I just think it's odd because none of us, we don't have like a.
21:19 Speaker 03 We don't know.
21:19 Doug DeMuro? A knowledge of it.
21:20 Speaker 03 But a lot of people that you think would be good on cameras together aren't.
21:23 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
21:24 Speaker 03 And it's also true, people that you might not know that well, that might not like, from the little information you have, feel like, yes, they'd fit well, do.
21:30 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
21:31 Speaker 04 I totally agree. On, on this podcast, Filippo and I work really well together and we let our weird, quirky.
21:36 Speaker 03 In real life.
21:36 Speaker 04 Slightly are, you know.
21:39 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
21:40 Speaker 04 Someone, someone who's.
21:41 Doug DeMuro? Nick.
21:42 Speaker 04 You know.
21:42 Doug DeMuro? Nick.
21:43 Speaker 04 On a spectrum. I'm not sure which spectrum, but.
21:45 Doug DeMuro? Everybody knows you're crazy.
21:47 Speaker 04 No.
21:48 Doug DeMuro? Nick, they do.
21:49 Speaker 04 Filippo and I are the, the James and Thomas, and you are Train Boy. You collect license plates?
21:55 Doug DeMuro? Nick, you're insane. You're literally insane.
21:58 Speaker 04 I've done nothing crazy.
21:59 Doug DeMuro? Okay, I'm just gonna move on from that.
22:01 Speaker 03 Do we know when it's coming out? We don't yet, right?
22:03 Doug DeMuro? I haven't paid attention to that.
22:05 Speaker 04 No, I'm excited.
22:06 Doug DeMuro? Do you think that any ill will I have towards the train fellow is because I my, yeah, yeah, is, like I said, is because I myself am jealous that they didn't bring me on the show?
22:17 Speaker 03 I think there's, should somebody tell you about their travel schedule? Cause I think that'll make you quickly unjealous.
22:23 Doug DeMuro? Do they go past the Hyundai building on the 405?
22:25 Speaker 03 I think they go past the Hyundai building on the 405, at least weekly.
22:28 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, no, I thought about this, that, uh, that I belong there in this picture next to a 350Z.
22:34 Speaker 04 That is, that is your kinda car.
22:35 Doug DeMuro? And I'm upset. And I'm upset that I'm not.
22:38 Speaker 04 Ryan Lopez should have been the third.
22:40 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, Ryan Lopez. I got a story for you folks. Ryan, he's one of our people.
22:44 Speaker 03 He's in a lot of the content on the Carson Bit Show.
22:46 Doug DeMuro? He's in some of the content. So he comes in today, he's late. And he, and he, he says, do you know the story yet?
22:50 Speaker 04 No.
22:51 Doug DeMuro? He comes in today, he's late, he's late for the, the.
22:55 Doug DeMuro? He comes in and he says, he says, "I'm sorry I'm late." He says, "Um, my air conditioning broke at home and I couldn't sleep." Now, it's February, and even here in San Diego, we checked it last night, it got down to 50 degrees.
23:10 Doug DeMuro? That's what he said. His air conditioning broke. So anyway, that's, that's a tough break for him.
23:16 Speaker 04 That's a tough one. Uh, send, send, uh, we're, we're gonna create a Gmail account, [email protected] .
23:23 Doug DeMuro? Producer Sean doesn't even have air conditioning. All he has is a bad colored G-Wang.
23:28 Speaker 03 Yes, I will say, I am excited that they finally formally announced that they're the Grand Tour host, cause that probably means that we're getting closer, that we're closer to seeing some good.
23:36 Doug DeMuro? I am excited. I'm literally legitimately excited to see this come back. I have to be honest, I had kinda stopped watching the Grand Tour with the guys. It had kinda run its course by the end, but I'm truly excited for the new cast to come back. And I think most people I know feel the same way.
23:50 Speaker 03 We don't know Francis, but we do legitimately love Thompson James.
23:52 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, no, and, and I could see myself loving Fran. I've watched some of his content. I'm ready for it to happen. You got any thoughts on these people?
23:59 Speaker 04 Uh, no, that's it.
24:01 Doug DeMuro? Okay.
24:01 Speaker 04 Yeah. I, I didn't watch Top Gear, ever.
24:04 Doug DeMuro? Oh, yeah.
24:04 Speaker 04 That's right. I didn't watch the Grand Tour.
24:07 Speaker 03 Move on.
24:07 Speaker 04 I have nothing to add.
24:09 Doug DeMuro? Move on to the next news.
24:10 Speaker 04 I'm gonna send clips.
24:11 Doug DeMuro? Nick, any thoughts on this?
24:13 Speaker 03 Nope, nope, nope, nope.
24:14 Speaker 04 I have no idea what's going on here.
24:15 Speaker 03 Nope, nope, nope, nope. All right. Toyota announced today that they, or a few days ago really, that they have a new CEO.
24:23 Doug DeMuro? Was it actually announced that Toyota is abdicating the throne because he thinks that the fun path that he had set the company on is not the right path?
24:32 Speaker 03 No, no.
24:32 Doug DeMuro? So he's just old, he's retired.
24:34 Speaker 03 He has not been the CEO for the last few years.
24:37 Speaker 03 There was a guy who was the CEO for a bit, who's going to remain as like the chief commerce officer.
24:42 Doug DeMuro? We had been told that he had set a new direction for the company though.
24:46 Speaker 03 He is still the chairman. He is still above the CEO, just not as involved day to day. Koji Sato, who has been for the last three years, is going to become the vice chairman and the chief industry officer. And then the finance guy, Kentacan, will become the CEO.
24:59 Doug DeMuro? The, the, the direction of Toyota in the last few years is, the, the, is clearly been set on a more enthusiast-friendly, fun car path.
25:11 Speaker 03 It's gonna be interesting to see what happens.
25:12 Doug DeMuro? Like clearly, like it has become clear quickly. Like there have been high-performance versions of a lot of cars. I mean, when I was 16, Toyota was like the most boring, bland, like people laughed at how kind of bad it had gotten, kind of brand.
25:25 Speaker 03 It's gonna be interesting. So in the press conference, I'm gonna read you a couple of quotes from Kentacan. They include that his mission is to create a war chest for the car company to take courageous challenges. And he also said, "I'm a guy that loves numbers, I'm a guy that loves money. I always think about money and creating a financial foundation so that we can make good cars."
25:44 Doug DeMuro? Nick, what do you think about the fact that he loves numbers?
25:47 Speaker 03 And money.
25:49 Speaker 04 I feel like letting the bean counters make the decisions is often not the best path forward for innovation, for certainly enthusiasts, right? Like that's, sounds to me like we're gonna enter another bland era. Maybe, I don't know, I don't know the guy.
26:05 Speaker 03 It's interesting, but so he was actually at Kia Toyota as like personal secretary for a long time. They're very close. And so I do wonder if some of the, like, passion for cars has been instilled in him as a result of that. It's also interesting, Toyota owns a lot of things.
26:18 Doug DeMuro? Right.
26:19 Speaker 03 They own large stakes in.
26:20 Doug DeMuro? Subaru.
26:21 Speaker 03 To be sure, they own a lot of Subaru, which we're seeing come play out in a lot of their EV decisions. They have a bunch of other kind of development things. And it's interesting, like how much of the actual running of the company? And how many decisions come to him versus will he be more focused on the financial structure things even as CEO?
26:40 Speaker 04 I think too, you got peacetime CEOs, wartime CEOs. The automotive industry is heading through a lot of change, like EVs, hybrids. Toyota has famously sort of leaned into hybrids and sort of shied away from EVs, although new story coming soon to the contrary. But it's going to be a tricky time where you do need someone who's a little bit more cautious, just to say, do we want to be like Ford and invest all this money in EVs and then write down $5 billion of losses? Do we want to ignore them entirely and let BYD take our, our position? Like, like it's a tough time. So I think you do need someone who's pretty rational and careful.
27:13 Speaker 03 I don't know. It's really interesting all along. Like during the press conference, somebody also did ask him whether he is a car guy. And he kind of said, eh. And the former CEO said that he loves minivans, like the Vauxhall.
27:25 Speaker 04 Does it bother you that this guy is like you?
27:28 Speaker 03 I'm just jealous.
27:29 Speaker 04 You're jealous.
27:30 Speaker 03 I will.
27:30 Speaker 04 You've got better hair.
27:32 Speaker 03 Toyota, thank you. Toyota has had a, a record year in a lot of ways. They've pushed up their, yeah, thanks to the Sequoia 3D Pro. They've pushed up their targets for, for next year and the kind of the communications, the descriptions that they communicate out. It's a kind of a weird time to transition out CEOs when the last CEO has had a generally positive.
27:52 Speaker 04 Well, sometimes people retire, Felipe.
27:53 Speaker 03 He's moving to a different role-ish.
27:55 Speaker 04 Sometimes people just want to spend time with their kids.
27:57 Speaker 03 They just want to have fun.
27:58 Speaker 04 Which takes me back to the Johnny, Joni Ive thing. This guy designed the iPad and the iPod and the iTouch.
28:04 Speaker 03 Yeah.
28:05 Speaker 04 And he, he's still working?
28:07 Speaker 03 Yeah.
28:07 Speaker 04 Chill dude. All these tech guys end up moving to Costa Rica. Once they realize the havoc they've wreaked on the world from their tech jobs, they all like move off grid to Costa Rica. That's like the usual path.
28:18 Speaker 03 By the way, not only that, but he started a company called Love From alongside another designer and OpenAI purchased it last year for $6.5 billion.
28:25 Speaker 04 This dude could be just chilling.
28:27 Speaker 03 He could be chilling, but I think he loves working Ferrari.
28:29 Speaker 04 All right. We, we, we, this is the Toyota situation. There's more Toyota coming momentarily. There we go.
28:34 Speaker 03 You want to talk about this?
28:35 Speaker 04 Sure. The new Highlander is going to be all EV.
28:38 Speaker 03 Yep.
28:39 Speaker 04 Not a hybrid, not available with a ICE motor or anything like that. You could see the design language. The Highlander's always been a little soft and rounded and kind of inoffensive. I wouldn't say that this is bold, but it reminds me more of like the new Telluride in terms of it's a little more edgy, a little bit more angular.
28:57 Doug DeMuro? No, I agree with that.
28:57 Speaker 04 It's more aggressive than the outgoing.
28:59 Doug DeMuro? All the other, he's right. All the other Islanders have been kind of swoopy, except for the third gen Highlander, which is the greatest designed vehicle in American history.
29:06 Speaker 03 And you're calling that one not swoopy and rounded?
29:08 Doug DeMuro? It was harder. It was, it was, it was more aggressive. Pull up a third gen Highlander. Pull up a third gen Highlander. I want to see it.
29:16 Speaker 04 But it is again, as we just talked about with Toyota, they have sort of not done a lot of all EV ones. And this is one of their most important vehicles. It is the midsize SUV that a lot of families pick. And I think that's why they've always been kind of vanilla with it is that they just,
29:31 Doug DeMuro? Right.
29:32 Speaker 04 they don't want to offend the soccer moms or the people that just want a point A to point B vehicle. So this is by Toyota standards, a risky move.
29:39 Doug DeMuro? It's super risky, I think, to go full, oh, you're not gonna,
29:42 Speaker 03 No, we've looked at it enough, long enough. But the third gen Highlander is still basically the Highlander?
29:47 Doug DeMuro? No, the third gen Highlander is still basically the Highlander. I agree.
29:51 Speaker 03 No, no, like it is still the one for sale, pretty much.
29:54 Doug DeMuro? No, there's, there's a fourth gen.
29:55 Speaker 03 It looks like it.
29:56 Doug DeMuro? I, I,
29:57 Speaker 03 There's a Grand Highlander.
29:57 Doug DeMuro? I am astonished that they go all electric with this. So the big rivals like the EV9 and the Ioniq 9, which are actually selling in pretty good numbers, but not like the Highlander. I mean, this is taking one of the most popular products and going EV. Now, Filippo's retort is going to be, wait a second. They have come out in the last couple of years with the Grand Highlander, gas powered, and that car has been a massive success to the point where it now seems like what they're really poised to do is have a gas and an electric Highlander. And one will be the Highlander, one will be the Grand Highlander, but it sounds like they're going to be about the same size.
30:30 Speaker 04 I also think the 4Runner now has a third row and a lot of people got the Highlander for the third row. So you kind of already have a few, and frankly, the Land Cruiser is also in there. They've got a lot of overlap, so I think they can kind of risk the Highlander brand. And then if, if people don't like it, that's fine. You've got three other Toyota SUVs of the same size.
30:49 Doug DeMuro? I am nonetheless a little bit surprised. Land Cruiser does not have a third row, by the way. It's a Quattro.
30:53 Speaker 04 No, I know it does. But I mean, in terms of the, if you want a midsize Toyota SUV.
30:56 Doug DeMuro? Right.
30:57 Speaker 04 You got choices if you don't want.
30:58 Doug DeMuro? I am a little bit surprised, though, that Toyota, who sat out the EV game for the last 20, right? Tesla Model XS comes out in 12, Volt's 10, these are the first EVs 20 years ago. And Toyota's been taking a wait and see approach, and then they finally jump in. They cancel their most popular vehicle in favor of a full electric. Like, damn, okay, that's pretty legit.
31:21 Speaker 04 If you were gonna risk a nameplate, wouldn't it be the Crown Signia? I guess it's more recently redesigned.
31:27 Doug DeMuro? That car's, that car's not selling.
31:29 Speaker 04 So replace it.
31:30 Doug DeMuro? I think, I think what they're, I truly think what they're trying to do is create a alternative electric Highlander, gas Highlander. And what that's gonna be is the electric Highlander and the Grand Highlander, which probably has a stronger nameplate now. People think it's more luxurious, whatever.
31:44 Speaker 04 Now, the Wagoneer did the opposite, though.
31:45 Doug DeMuro? Well, the Wagoneer is bad.
31:47 Speaker 04 Yeah.
31:47 Doug DeMuro? It was, it's bad.
31:48 Speaker 04 I know, but putting grand in front of it, maybe it makes it sound less bad.
31:51 Doug DeMuro? I think that putting grand in front of it makes people think that it's bigger and more luxurious. And so you could buy the Highlander, it's an EV, which is cool, or you could buy the Grand Highlander, which is grand, and it's cool. But either way, they'll have a car for you in this segment.
32:02 Speaker 03 Their current positioning of the Grand Highlander, which I think doesn't, the base one doesn't have a hybrid, and maybe all Highlanders now are hybrid.
32:09 Doug DeMuro? It's cheaper than the regular Highlander?
32:11 Speaker 03 Apparently.
32:12 Doug DeMuro? There was a problem here already.
32:13 Speaker 03 Clearly, they're trying to kind of fix it. The Highlander, you'll remember, didn't, got a small facelift in 24, but didn't get a full redesign. The Grand Highlander was a whole new model. I bet it's aging out.
32:24 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
32:24 Speaker 03 Why replace it with a car that already exists?
32:26 Doug DeMuro? The question was, do we replace it with a fairly similar sized vehicle? Or we, do we do something a little bit more radical?
32:32 Speaker 03 Especially when everybody else, the Telly Ride, the Palisade are a little bit bigger than the Highlander.
32:35 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
32:35 Speaker 03 They, they're more grand. I think they've needed to adjust to compete, and they may as well reuse it.
32:39 Doug DeMuro? The great irony, of course, is these two cars, basically identical, have them on sale. These two cars, basically identical, and Toyota's like, yeah, that's no problem. No big deal.
32:48 Speaker 03 One interesting thing, you may recall that the BZ, what used to be called the Z4X, now just a BZ, has a twin called the Subaru Solterra. The BZ Woodlin, which is the wagon version, has a twin at Subaru called.
32:59 Doug DeMuro? The Trail Seeker. I'm getting a BZ Woodlin next week. I cannot wait.
33:03 Speaker 03 The CHR, which has just been announced, has a twin at Subaru called the.
33:08 Doug DeMuro? Does it?
33:08 Speaker 03 Yes.
33:08 Doug DeMuro? Oh, yeah, I gave you this. You didn't know this until I gave you it.
33:11 Speaker 03 Of course I knew it. It's called the Uncharted. The Highlander EV will also have a twin at Subaru.
33:17 Doug DeMuro? Really?
33:18 Speaker 03 Which will mean that Subaru, for the first time ever, has two three-row SUVs.
33:21 Doug DeMuro? I can't believe that, you know, I thought we got rid of badge-engineered twin cars in like 1996.
33:27 Speaker 03 We're back.
33:28 Doug DeMuro? We're back.
33:29 Speaker 03 Fully back.
33:29 Doug DeMuro? Like, the Solterra and the BZ4X is embarrassing, how similar and bad they are.
33:34 Speaker 03 Apparently, they're better. Apparently, they're better.
33:37 Doug DeMuro? They are better. They're like more affordable and the range is longer. I truly can't wait for the BZ1.
33:41 Speaker 03 Same. The Subaru ones tend to be cheaper. Makes no sense. Regardless, the new Highlander, three rows, either six seats or seven, only two seats in the third row, 320 miles of range.
33:54 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
33:55 Speaker 03 In at least one of the trims. It'll be interesting. It'll look fun.
33:58 Doug DeMuro? I think it makes sense. It is amazing to me, the number of people who asked me, "I want an electric three-row." And the only thing that is available to them is EV9 and the Ioniq 9. EV...
34:07 Speaker 03 Yep.
34:07 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, 9 and Ioniq 9. Which are popular. I have a ton of friends who have bought these vehicles, simply because it was kind of the only game in town.
34:15 Speaker 04 And now Honda's entering it.
34:16 Doug DeMuro? You don't like Toyota, maybe even too. You don't like how this looks, I assume, right?
34:19 Speaker 03 No, I do.
34:20 Doug DeMuro? Really?
34:21 Speaker 04 Have you seen the back, though?
34:22 Doug DeMuro? You're gonna end up with one, aren't you? All the talk about you getting some cool something.
34:26 Speaker 04 We gotta get my wife into something new this year.
34:28 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
34:29 Speaker 04 EX90, they haven't sold many, but so they're around.
34:31 Doug DeMuro? I love the EX90.
34:32 Speaker 04 They've sold like 4,000 last two years. It's tough. What I'm gonna do, if my wife doesn't make up her mind on what she wants, I'm gonna do one of those Christmas things where you just show up with one on.
34:41 Doug DeMuro? I did that once.
34:42 Speaker 04 Yeah? How to go up. Car beforehand.
34:44 Doug DeMuro? We already did.
34:45 Speaker 04 No, no, no, I went like pure surprise. I made a huge financial decision without your input.
34:49 Speaker 03 That's a great SNL fit.
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36:38 Speaker 03 Uh, okay, next news story, there's a car coming out of a parking garage in Asia. This is Neo. Neo is a Chinese EV manufacturer, and they are the only ones that are doing battery swaps at scale. Yeah. So here's, they've done over a hundred million battery swaps. Yeah. A hundred million. Yep. This is like real technology. This is not, we've done a couple. Yeah. You drive into a Neo power building, it takes about three minutes on average. Three minutes, you leave with a fully charged battery pack. It basically changes the battery pack not really being yours in the same way.
37:14 Doug DeMuro? The battery pack is no longer yours, however, the benefit is that you get a swap as quickly as a fuel.
37:22 Speaker 04 Yeah, you don't have to worry about your full range anymore.
37:24 Doug DeMuro? You show up with the depleted battery and you come out with a fully charged battery that they've been sitting there charging. And you're on your way in three minutes.
37:31 Speaker 03 It's, we've known that this technology existed.
37:34 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
37:35 Speaker 03 It is stunning that it's actually been in use for enough to get to a real number of swaps.
37:40 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you something, this changes, if I could do an R2 with a battery swap, I'm there.
37:45 Speaker 03 Yep.
37:46 Speaker 04 What vehicles can they do this on? Is it only a car?
37:48 Speaker 03 All of their Neo products, I think.
37:50 Speaker 04 Okay, so they're the manufacturer.
37:51 Speaker 03 They're the manufacturer of the car, yeah. And they have something like 3,800 swap stations, including some in Europe, and they're planning on building another 1,000 this year.
37:59 Speaker 04 What's cool too is you could buy a used EV and like you don't have to care about the health of the battery, like you could just.
38:04 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, I mean, what do they do about that? Car will come in and the battery is at 60% and then they replace it with one, you know what I mean?
38:10 Speaker 03 It changes it. It changes the battery being some, my recollection, which I, I might be slightly incorrect, is that you leased a vehicle and you leased a battery pack separately. It's like, the battery pack is not part of the car.
38:20 Speaker 04 It's like a subscription.
38:21 Doug DeMuro? I remember when Tesla talked about doing this, one of the things they talked about was you have to have, at some point eventually go back and get your battery again.
38:28 Speaker 03 Oh, no, I think they're just straight up, you don't own the battery.
38:30 Doug DeMuro? That was like the thing about, we can do the swap, and they did it, in one of those Elon Musk presentations on camera, they like did it. But he was like, but it became out that like you would have to eventually go back and get your battery again.
38:41 Speaker 03 Yep. But it, I, my understanding is that just the battery is something that you're renting, really. You're renting it for a use.
38:48 Speaker 04 In theory, I think this would drive much more widespread EV adoption.
38:52 Doug DeMuro? Totally.
38:52 Speaker 03 I also wonder what will happen, like, you don't need chargers anymore.
38:55 Speaker 04 Yeah.
38:56 Speaker 03 At homes, the apartment dwellers and the street parkers.
38:58 Doug DeMuro? Yep.
38:59 Speaker 03 And will it mean that you, as technology improves, maybe now you'll suddenly have a new battery pack that has twice the range?
39:05 Speaker 04 Yeah.
39:05 Speaker 03 Cause battery tech has improved or whatever, it's interesting. Yeah, it is.
39:08 Speaker 04 Or it's like, you know, you're you're kind of broke and you're like, I can only put $5 of gas in like, give me the, give me one of the crappy batteries.
39:14 Speaker 03 I don't think that, yeah, maybe, maybe. I think it's incredible.
39:19 Doug DeMuro? Incredible, amazing technology, another Chinese innovation, which brings us to our next news story.
39:25 Speaker 04 Ford had a tough Q4 slash last year. They got hit with what they're calling a surprise tariff. They were expecting what 400 million and it ended up being 900.
39:36 Speaker 03 Here's what happened, they they expected that they would be able to apply credit for the USMCA. So basically for parts produced in Mexico, the US or Canada, those are tariff exempt, you'll get credit for them. They thought this would apply going back to May, but actually they apply going back to November, something thereabouts, and so it's a much less tax saving for the year.
39:54 Speaker 04 I thought the more interesting thing is they said they lost $5.4 billion on EVs last year. So those subsidies going away, which I'm sure is the point you're about to make, is makes it really difficult for American auto manufacturers like Ford to continue doing that.
40:07 Doug DeMuro? Between the tariffs coming in and the subsidies going away, it seems like we've hurt our own auto industry more than any, more than whatever the hell the goal was supposed to be for the tariffs. And the sudden depletion of the subsidies.
40:20 Speaker 03 Yep. I do have an interesting question. Jim Farley, well liked in the car industry community because he's a car guy.
40:26 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
40:26 Speaker 03 Is he a good CEO for Ford?
40:27 Doug DeMuro? Well, I I really don't know.
40:29 Speaker 03 I don't think that Jim Farley made this, this isn't a Jim Farley decision. The the EV, the EV write down is going on with every automaker right now.
40:36 Doug DeMuro? But you got to wonder.
40:38 Speaker 03 GM doing better financially. They they have been relatively on track with expectations that they've set with with Wall Street. They've been producing about the number of cars, same about the number of cars, gross profits where they want to be. Ford's has not been consistent.
40:50 Doug DeMuro? I think that Ford made a big bet on electric cars that was seemed like the right decision at the time.
40:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, it did.
40:56 Doug DeMuro? They had two. Yeah, but they were spending a ton of money developing other stuff and the lightning was a massive thing that they had to deal with that has now been completely diminished. They also put in a huge amount of money into Rivian and other.
41:08 Speaker 03 They exited that years ago.
41:09 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, but there were other EV investments that they made that they like completely wrote down. It had massive paper losses.
41:15 Speaker 03 They also did shift away from all lower priced vehicles and that and non SUVs. And now they're going to bring back.
41:21 Doug DeMuro? They announced that that might come back.
41:22 Speaker 03 Bring back.
41:23 Doug DeMuro? We don't want sedans back. Give us the EcoSport with the EcoBoost.
41:30 Speaker 03 But yeah, tough little news cycle for Ford.
41:32 Doug DeMuro? It is interesting, isn't it? I thought the whole tariffs thing was supposed to help the car, the Americans.
41:38 Speaker 03 Yeah.
41:38 Doug DeMuro? What happened with that?
41:39 Speaker 03 It's gonna be, one of the new stories that's vaguely car related that's gonna be interesting to watch is there's a new bridge that's been built connecting Detroit and Canada.
41:47 Doug DeMuro? Detroit and Canada. You can go from Detroit to Canada.
41:51 Speaker 03 I recognize the phrase, and that's the best way to describe it. It has been paid for entirely by the Canadian government and a little bit by Michigan. The president of the US has said that he might block the opening of it. But it's interesting because it's like a major shipping port back and forth because the current bridge is privately owned. They're gonna keep it, is my understanding, but it's privately owned. Are you aware of this?
42:13 Doug DeMuro? No, that's interesting.
42:14 Speaker 03 The Ambassador Bridge is privately owned and also a major blockage to bringing things in and out.
42:18 Doug DeMuro? 10 years ago, in the Bay Area, they opened, they had the Bay Bridge. They connected San Francisco and whatever's on the other side there. And then they built a new Bay Bridge and they called it the New Bay Bridge and they, they
42:30 Speaker 03 Clever.
42:30 Doug DeMuro? They took away the old one and I think that what they should have done instead was stop maintaining it, but still allow people to drive on it at a lower toll amount, sort of at their own risk. Do you know what I'm saying? And just after a while, that would become untenable, but like then you have two bridges, like just let it happen. You know what I mean?
42:48 Speaker 03 And just let the pores fall into the water.
42:50 Doug DeMuro? I don't even think it would be poor people for a while. I think it would be like whichever one is, is, has less traffic, but then eventually, yeah, I think there would become like
42:59 Speaker 03 Like the real life Hunger Games or Beast Games of the world.
43:02 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, but it would save people a lot of time.
43:04 Speaker 03 Imagine with these heavy EVs too, like that, that would get more interesting.
43:07 Doug DeMuro? I'm talking about double the bridge traffic, the like, the output, the bridge traffic, instead of just one, you got two.
43:13 Speaker 03 Like the upper, lower level of the George Washington.
43:15 Doug DeMuro? Something like that, but here there's an upper, lower on both bridges. You know what I'm saying?
43:19 Speaker 03 Can I legitimately recommend that you do a Wikipedia deep dive on the Ambassador Bridge? It's fascinating. The, the bridge was publicly traded.
43:26 Doug DeMuro? Oh.
43:26 Speaker 03 The corporation that owned the bridge publicly traded and then, and then a guy named Manuel Moron, who was like a billionaire from Growth Point, slowly bought it.
43:34 Doug DeMuro? So we could have just, we could just own the only link between Detroit and Canada if we wanted to. Not anymore though.
43:39 Speaker 03 Apparently, but the other bridge isn't opening yet.
43:41 Doug DeMuro? The point of this is that Ford's in trouble and it's all going to hell. And Neo is winning again.
43:48 Speaker 04 Neo's winning again.
43:49 Doug DeMuro? What did I hear about Ford and BYD in terms of sales?
43:52 Speaker 04 BYD overtook them in global sales.
43:54 Doug DeMuro? That's interesting.
43:55 Speaker 03 There's also a conversation of a partnership between them.
43:58 Doug DeMuro? BYD, a company that no one had heard of 16 months ago.
44:02 Speaker 03 Which is not what it stands for, but nevertheless.
44:03 Doug DeMuro? It is what? It's a backronym?
44:05 Speaker 03 Yeah.
44:06 Doug DeMuro? Uh, it's a company that no one had heard of 16 months ago is now selling more cars than Ford.
44:11 Speaker 03 They have karaoke in their car.
44:13 Doug DeMuro? Neo has done 100 million battery swaps. Like, this is it. He, Sean told me that Mexico, 20% of cars sold in Mexico are Chinese now. This is it. They're selling in Canada. This is it. You're seeing it happen in real time, something I've been screaming about on this podcast for now eight, 10 episodes.
44:28 Speaker 03 For the entire length of the time that BYD has been around.
44:30 Doug DeMuro? Totally. BYD didn't exist when we started this podcast, and I said that one day there will be a Chinese company that overtakes us all, and now it has happened.
44:38 Speaker 04 News, next news story, please.
44:40 Speaker 03 Uh, established 2003, if you're here.
44:43 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
44:43 Speaker 03 Slightly off.
44:44 Doug DeMuro? I don't think this is real.
44:46 Speaker 04 I'm gonna put my head in the sand about this news story.
44:48 Speaker 03 All right, the Mercedes has, has announced the GLC 53. This is an E something, sorry, C something. But they've actually announced the GLC 53, which is a six-cylinder AMG car. So the GLC 63, most recently, and the C63 have been four-cylinder, turbocharged, maybe twincharged, nobody remembers. Uh, but it's, that's going away. The GLC 43 is going away, and it's gonna have a turbocharged 3.0 liter inline-six.
45:15 Doug DeMuro? Yeah. You believe this is a big news story because?
45:19 Speaker 03 Because AMG made a big deal of going to four-cylinder, there's another going back to the six.
45:22 Speaker 04 You were quite critical of that C43, if I recall.
45:25 Doug DeMuro? So you're not gonna say the thing about you think the E63 is canceled?
45:28 Speaker 03 I didn't say that.
45:29 Doug DeMuro? The big news story here is that there is talk that there will not be another E63. Nick, you're an E-Class AMG man.
45:35 Speaker 04 I am.
45:37 Doug DeMuro? After I was first. Why don't we, why don't we talk about what you wanna talk about here? They still have not announced a new E63.
45:45 Speaker 03 Yep.
45:47 Doug DeMuro? The C63 was a four cylinder something or other. That was bad.
45:52 Speaker 03 Yep.
45:52 Doug DeMuro? Do we think this E63 with a V8 is gone?
45:58 Speaker 03 Remember when it was gone for a couple of years anyways?
45:59 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, but that was some sketchy stuff that no one wanted to talk about.
46:03 Speaker 03 Mercedes stopped selling.
46:04 Doug DeMuro? And remember, it did come back.
46:06 Speaker 03 Yeah.
46:06 Doug DeMuro? There was a final edition, 2023 model year before the transition to the next E-Class. But the new E-Class came out for 24 or 25. It's been out for like two years and there is no E63 on the horizon. There's an RS6, there's an M5. We don't see an E63. There's an E53 now. That's been out for a while. I filmed a video with it, never posted it.
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46:44 Speaker 03 That's an interesting point. You went and filmed the video with the wagon. Is that coming out?
46:48 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, yeah, someday. But the E63 still eludes us.
46:52 Speaker 03 I mean, wait and see kind of makes sense. It's like, okay, one minute we were all going EV. Then we were worried about cafe standards and all that.
46:59 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, so they're just gonna wait and see through the whole generation of the car. They're like, eh, we're not sure.
47:03 Speaker 03 Probably the last E-Class.
47:05 Doug DeMuro? Excuse you. This is my beloved car. I've owned every version of it.
47:10 Speaker 03 Buy it now, buddy. By the way, we're combining a bunch of things and talking about this primarily because Mercedes' own numbering system and naming system is bad. For example, there was already a CLE53 that had this engine. But now it's going to replace the C63 and the GLC4. Basically, there's an inline six.
47:26 Doug DeMuro? Mercedes Benz naming has gotten tough. I had that AMG GT four door E-Performance GC63S.
47:33 Speaker 03 That wasn't quite right, but sure.
47:35 Doug DeMuro? It was, it was as close as anyone's gonna get.
47:37 Speaker 03 Yeah.
47:38 Doug DeMuro? And they're just, you know.
47:44 Speaker 03 Anyway.
47:44 Speaker 04 You know, the, the sales training that I took says, you know, you don't want to call anything like good, bad, ugly, or small, medium, large, because you're dissuading people.
47:52 Speaker 03 Right.
47:53 Speaker 04 So we say good, better, or best. Those are your options. Kind of like large, extra large, like Mercedes isn't that conundrum. They can't say, oh, this is the wimpy one.
48:01 Speaker 03 I am, I am legitimately interested in what happens with the E sixty-three, fifty-three situation.
48:06 Speaker 04 I hope it comes back.
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48:52 Speaker 03 Get started with Claude today at claude.ai/cars. That's claude.ai/cars. And be sure to check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all of the features that we mentioned today. Claude.ai/cars. Okay, we gotta move on to the Talk Cars segment. The Talk Cars segment is brought to you by Hagerty. Hagerty, which is the greatest automotive insurer in existence. You insure your stuff with Hagerty, right?
49:19 Speaker 04 Sure do.
49:20 Speaker 03 Me too. Do you? You don't have any enthusiast cars?
49:23 Speaker 04 Yeah.
49:23 Speaker 03 Yeah.
49:24 Speaker 04 That seems right.
49:24 Speaker 03 Yep. Um, what about that Porsche? You don't have a Hagerty policy on that?
49:27 Speaker 04 It's my daily.
49:28 Speaker 03 I love Hagerty and they insure all my cars and I gotta, I gotta up my insurance policy on some of them.
49:33 Speaker 04 Yep. My dad actually sent me an article they wrote on the sixty-three T-Bird.
49:36 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
49:37 Speaker 04 So they've actually got some pretty good magazines and publications.
49:39 Speaker 03 We love, we truly love Hagerty. We are thrilled that they are our sponsor, including our sponsor for the Euro Car Road Trip.
49:46 Speaker 04 Yes. Which was so much fun.
49:48 Speaker 03 The, there is one of the Euro cars behind me. Do not buy this car. It's for sale right now.
49:53 Speaker 04 By the time people are watching this, it will already be ending, or ending in like the next hour.
49:58 Speaker 03 Yep. So that was your chance.
50:02 Speaker 03 We have a couple of great videos.
50:03 Doug DeMuro? We did. We took the Euro cars on a road trip. We imported, me and Nick imported Euro cars, an Audi A2 and a Fiat Multiplus, which by the way, yikes on that Multiplus.
50:12 Speaker 03 It's such an incredible car. Not saying that's an incredible example of it, but it's such an incredible car.
50:16 Doug DeMuro? Whoever ends up with this, uh, don't drive it home, even if you live in San Diego.
50:21 Speaker 03 No.
50:21 Doug DeMuro? You get that thing flatbed.
50:23 Speaker 04 No, it's great.
50:24 Doug DeMuro? He just said-
50:25 Speaker 04 I've driven it thousands of miles, or kilometers.
50:28 Doug DeMuro? You have not.
50:29 Speaker 04 I have. Took it to LA multiple times.
50:31 Doug DeMuro? I'm gonna give you a direct quote in the office from Nick a minute ago. Felipe said, "When you move it, there's no power steering fluid in it." And Nick goes, "Oh, there is power steering fluid in it. It's just in a bottle in the passenger seat."
50:42 Speaker 04 There's a small leak, which has been disclosed.
50:44 Doug DeMuro? It's been disclosed.
50:44 Speaker 04 But not fixed. I don't want to top it up and leak on your floors here.
50:48 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
50:49 Speaker 04 Thank you.
50:49 Doug DeMuro? Yes. It has been a problem. Yeah. Uh, anyway, bad car. And the A2 is a good car. And the 500 of Barth is-
50:56 Speaker 03 It's a great car. It won that, the drag race. It was the fastest at the track.
51:01 Doug DeMuro? The Euro car road trip was excellent. We had a lot of fun doing it. We drove these cars out somewhere. We stayed in some desert hotel. We went to, we managed to find the world's only farm-to-table restaurant in Lake Elsinore, or wherever the hell we were. And it was great.
51:15 Speaker 03 It was delightful. Okay, the episode that came out today, we're filming this on Wednesday, was us at a go-kart track.
51:21 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
51:22 Speaker 03 That Fiat is just so fun.
51:24 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
51:25 Speaker 03 Around a go-kart track. Turns out a go-kart track's the right size. You don't need more speed than it has. It was like just such, truly such a blast. And then Sean went out and our camera guy went out just to do laps in the Fiat, and the Fiat held up beautifully.
51:37 Doug DeMuro? Beautifully.
51:38 Speaker 03 And I drove it home. It was great.
51:39 Doug DeMuro? Yeah. No, the Fiat's great. It's a great car. It's actually well-known and well-documented. It's durability and quality is well-documented.
51:46 Speaker 03 Let's start with this. My, I have not treated that Fiat 500 of Barth Cabriolet nicely.
51:51 Doug DeMuro? Right.
51:52 Speaker 03 Goes to Redline often, gets an oil change once a year, gets nothing else. That's, none of this is news.
51:57 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
51:58 Speaker 03 It hasn't complained ever.
52:00 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
52:00 Speaker 03 And it can go around a go-kart track many, many, many times.
52:03 Doug DeMuro? Did we leave in all the clips of you having to jump-start it, or did we-
52:06 Speaker 03 That was the battery issue. It's not the car's fault. The battery was seven years old. As a new battery, it starts right up.
52:11 Doug DeMuro? Starts right up, folks.
52:12 Speaker 03 And I'll say with a jumper pack, it then started right up.
52:14 Doug DeMuro? Does that Multiplus start right up?
52:16 Speaker 03 Yeah. Except for that one time.
52:18 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
52:18 Speaker 04 Yeah.
52:18 Doug DeMuro? Great.
52:19 Speaker 04 I replaced the battery. Like you, and then I replaced the crankshaft position sensor, which was the part that was acting up, so.
52:26 Doug DeMuro? And look at you now. You can drive around in this car as long as power steering is not a priority. You can drive around.
52:30 Speaker 04 No, I mean, it it works fine.
52:32 Doug DeMuro? How often do you top up the oil?
52:34 Speaker 04 Um, I haven't ever.
52:36 Doug DeMuro? Good.
52:37 Speaker 04 What I, two questions for you. One, I I think the feedback was largely positive on the series, but the comments are overwhelmingly, Doug gear, top gear, you guys want to be top gear, blah, blah, blah. Is it possible to create content like this without being compared to top gear?
52:51 Doug DeMuro? Thomas and James are figuring all that out right now.
52:54 Speaker 04 Okay.
52:55 Doug DeMuro? And and the Francis Bourgeois, they're gonna figure all that out. Me and you and Filippo, it was three guys in the desert. With a producer giving us challenges. Any comparison is unintentional.
53:09 Speaker 04 Are we gonna do another one of these?
53:10 Doug DeMuro? No.
53:11 Speaker 04 No?
53:11 Doug DeMuro? No.
53:12 Speaker 04 What if we all get E55 wagons?
53:14 Speaker 03 Then what's the challenge?
53:16 Speaker 04 We'll figure it out.
53:17 Doug DeMuro? Okay, I, we gotta move on and talk about the E55 wagons.
53:20 Speaker 03 No way, I guess I say one thing about the.
53:21 Doug DeMuro? He bought a car on the.
53:22 Speaker 03 I gotta say one thing about the multiple.
53:23 Doug DeMuro? Okay.
53:24 Speaker 03 We removed all the seats from the multiple and fit a full go-kart into it.
53:28 Doug DeMuro? I, that's all good and fine.
53:30 Speaker 03 You could have still fit, you could have still fit three adults in the front.
53:33 Doug DeMuro? If it wasn't.
53:34 Speaker 03 It's, that's the best car in the world.
53:35 Doug DeMuro? If it wasn't leaking more fluids than are contained in a fluid transporter, then it would be great.
53:45 Speaker 03 That's the best car, not that one specifically. The multiple is the best car in the world.
53:49 Doug DeMuro? A new multiple would be great.
53:51 Speaker 04 If if you go look for used multiple in Europe, you will be surprised at how high percentile of.
53:56 Speaker 03 Because they were all used, one of the best. They were reliable that JCD105, my dad had in a February weekend, he had 350,000 kilometers.
54:03 Doug DeMuro? Is bad, and if you buy it, you will regret it.
54:06 Speaker 04 Doug, quit trying to alter the outcome of our bet. I shall prevail.
54:09 Speaker 03 I'm not even concerned anymore about the bet, now that I've, especially now that I've seen that car run.
54:13 Speaker 04 I think because this will come out, no, I can't say what the the number is. Later, we will reveal what our bet was.
54:19 Doug DeMuro? I can't believe the A2 is almost more.
54:21 Speaker 04 Close to the lower threshold.
54:24 Doug DeMuro? Aren't you shocked by this? To me, all these cars are well beyond what they're worth.
54:28 Speaker 03 Well, we did the picture of that one with the The good headlight.
54:32 Doug DeMuro? The headlight needs to be replaced. That's nothing. That is that car's only issue. There was some air conditioning. Oh, sometimes the AC like will not blow as well. Ah, it's fine.
54:43 Speaker 03 Can we make sure that's
54:45 Doug DeMuro? Ah, it's all good.
54:47 Speaker 03 Every flaw that I'm aware of on the 500 is disclosed. I've wrote a really long comment.
54:51 Doug DeMuro? The A2 is honestly a really clean car in really nice shape. It's just dull, but if you just want to use a car as a car to like drive around. I hope though, that all three of these cars have the same fate that happened to the A-Class that I imported, which was that it gets destroyed while parked on the street in Oakland. Okay, we gotta move on. Nick brought up the E55 wagon. Nick, tell us, tell us what happened.
55:15 Speaker 04 What happened? I finally bought a car on the site. I have sold six cars now, or five and a half, since the multiple hasn't ended yet.
55:22 Doug DeMuro? Yep.
55:22 Speaker 04 Um, I've never bought a car on the site.
55:24 Speaker 03 Never bought a car on the site?
55:25 Speaker 04 The, there were two auctions ending on Monday, a B5 RS4, which frankly is the car I wanted more, but required a little bit more out of pocket than this. And I think this E55 is interesting. 200,000 miles, which is high for this. So there was like 150 to 180 of these, under 200 total made. In terms of the wagon, E55 W211.
55:46 Speaker 03 Sold in the US.
55:47 Speaker 04 Sold in the US. A very rare car to begin with. Like, I've been looking for one for six months. I think I've seen one or two pop up.
55:53 Speaker 03 Wait, you've been looking for six months, but you haven't brought it up to us?
55:55 Speaker 04 Well, I've been looking since I got the SLR and decided, my, my real goal here is I want to manually swap the SLR, but I'm, I'm too afraid to do that on that expensive of a car. So I wanted to find a M113K, which is not the same motor, but close enough, and manually swap that and see how I like it.
56:11 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
56:11 Speaker 04 So finding another E55 motor AMG, this was the ultimate one because it's a dad car. It's cool. It's rare. I've never had a wagon. But they generally trade for 30 to 50, I would say. This one's milled up. It had an accident. It has an active check engine light. It has some other flaws.
56:29 Speaker 03 It spoke to Nick.
56:29 Speaker 04 It spoke to me as a value play. Because if you're going to tear it apart and manually swap it. But you don't want like the most perfect, nice one ever, which I also drove.
56:37 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
56:38 Speaker 04 Um, so this one came across and I thought, hey, let's, let's see.
56:41 Doug DeMuro? It also actually looks okay considering the mileage. I, I personally think.
56:44 Speaker 04 It's not terrible.
56:45 Doug DeMuro? I personally think that Flint Gray is the best looking color. I would only get silver because that was like the color and that's what I do.
56:50 Speaker 04 Yeah.
56:50 Doug DeMuro? But I think that Flint Gray looks.
56:52 Speaker 04 Yeah.
56:52 Doug DeMuro? Baller on this car. It looks so nice.
56:54 Speaker 04 The silver one, I did find one in the matching, not exact, but close enough to my SLR, but it was gonna end up being probably double.
57:01 Doug DeMuro? So you bought this car, you're gonna manual swap it. So you're, you're not even gonna bring it here.
57:05 Speaker 04 I'm not even, I don't even wanna drive it. I'm sending it directly to DC Motorworks in Atlanta. They're gonna swap it for me. They think it'll take about a month, mid-March.
57:12 Doug DeMuro? They do Mercedes-Benz manual swaps?
57:14 Speaker 04 What they've done, like 10 or so.
57:16 Doug DeMuro? On, on, on what cars?
57:18 Speaker 04 They've, they've done Black Series, too. They've done like R-classes and random stuff.
57:23 Doug DeMuro? They've done R-class?
57:24 Speaker 04 So they're not.
57:24 Doug DeMuro? They don't have a column shifter?
57:26 Speaker 04 Maybe not in our class.
57:27 Doug DeMuro? I think they haven't done.
57:27 Speaker 04 They've done, they've done stuff. They've done a CLK 55, so they've done the motor.
57:31 Doug DeMuro? Oh, really?
57:32 Speaker 04 Um, they are not using the crossfire trans. We're gonna use one out of a, like an 06 plus Mercedes.
57:37 Doug DeMuro? Which presumably is actually the same transmission.
57:41 Speaker 04 No, they've made some improvements. There's a lockout difference a few. Cameron, Cameron over there was trying to bring me up to speed a little bit, but I'm just trusting him that it's gonna turn out good. And if not, I think we'll be in it probably under 30 to have the first manual swapped E55 wagon. Someone will want it. I think I'll want it. I think I'll enjoy it.
57:58 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, I think you'll love it.
58:00 Speaker 04 You are skeptical of I can pull it off or not, but we'll find out.
58:02 Doug DeMuro? No, I think you'll be able to pull it off, for sure.
58:04 Speaker 04 You just think it'll take a while?
58:05 Doug DeMuro? I think that it'll take a while and then you'll tire of the car. Um, but I'm thrilled, honestly. I, you know, I had one of these, a lot of the cars that Nick buys, I, I had first.
58:17 Speaker 04 No.
58:17 Doug DeMuro? I had one, no?
58:19 Speaker 04 You had the 63.
58:20 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, but this.
58:21 Speaker 04 Much different.
58:21 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
58:22 Speaker 04 Much different.
58:22 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, more power.
58:24 Speaker 04 Yeah.
58:24 Doug DeMuro? No, actually, I always preferred this. And when I was looking for my 63, back then, in the days before Cars and Bids and bringing the trailer and all these things, the only way to find an AMG station wagon, I swear to God, this is true, there was a thread on MB World forums. I, I'm dead serious. And it was E50, it was in the E-Class AMG section, and it was the wagons for. And you would, if you wanted one, you would visit the thread 10 times a day. And I did, and one day one popped up and I was first. And that's how I got mine. I didn't want that car. I got a pewter E63 wagon. I wanted honestly a silver 55 wagon, but it was what was available.
58:58 Speaker 04 Well, if you're lucky, I'll let you take it first.
59:01 Doug DeMuro? Well, then I later had a 212, which is a significantly better car. That would be cool to manual swap, although that was also, no, no, that had a.
59:09 Speaker 04 The AMGs had that thing.
59:12 Speaker 04 This is the best looking E-class wagon. Yeah, I'm excited for it.
59:16 Doug DeMuro? Wow. The best looking E-class. No, the 213s and the 214s look best.
59:21 Speaker 04 No.
59:21 Doug DeMuro? No, there's no question about that.
59:23 Speaker 04 No.
59:24 Doug DeMuro? That's insane.
59:24 Speaker 04 I agree. There's no question about the statement, but I.
59:29 Speaker 04 Certainly for 17, what's interesting is I test drove over the weekend in SRT10 Ram, which I've wanted forever.
59:34 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
59:35 Speaker 04 I was like, this one was a little rough, but I was pretty disappointed by it.
59:38 Doug DeMuro? They were asking for a four door automatic. That is just a pickup truck.
59:41 Speaker 04 Had you never driven one before? I tried to and the seller's always so sketchy that like half the time the car doesn't exist or like it's being worked on or whatever. So I've seen a lot and I've never gotten seat time. I was underwhelmed and they wanted 17.5. He dropped the price of 17.4, but it's like, man, for the same money as a Ram pickup, I got a supercharged AMG wagon. So I'm pretty thrilled with it. You know, I'm all about finding value, whether it's a pristine Mercedes McLaren SL Roadster that might have had a small trunk fire or a free Range Rover P38 given to me from a subscriber. I like to get a good deal, but let's talk about a different kind of asset that appreciates slightly better than a free Range Rover.
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1:01:04 Doug DeMuro? I want to take this time in the podcast, since we're talking AMG wagon, to tell everybody that I am still on the hunt for a facelift. W210.
1:01:13 Speaker 03 Facelift is important.
1:01:14 Doug DeMuro? E55 AMG wagon with a third row. I am desperately searching. I will pay. I will do whatever it takes. Now, I announced this last week, and if you have one of these, they didn't sell them in the US. They have them in Europe and Asia and such. Facelift, here's the qualities. Facelift, that means 2000 and up. And by the way. You can tell from the steering wheel. If it has steering wheel controls, it's a facelift.
1:01:36 Speaker 03 You can't tell from literally anything.
1:01:37 Doug DeMuro? That is completely, the rocker panels, the front end treatment, the rear end treatment, there's this entire interior.
1:01:42 Speaker 03 You didn't say the rear end, front end. No, no, the treatment.
1:01:45 Doug DeMuro? Well, the trim, the way it looks. This is like the E39 facelift that only Canon can tell. The car also drives significantly better post facelift. That's the real reason I want it. So facelift, so that's 2000, late 2000 or up.
1:01:56 Speaker 03 Yep.
1:01:56 Doug DeMuro? Facelift, wagon, third row, silver. If you know of such a car. Left-hand drive. This is 2000, 2001, 2002. I would probably consider a right-hand drive.
1:02:05 Speaker 03 Are they right-hand driving?
1:02:06 Doug DeMuro? If you know of such a car, email us at Sean, that's S-E-A-N at carsandbids.com. Sean at carsandbids.com. Now, last week, I announced that I was looking for this car, and many people reached out with the usual stuff. And I forgot, I forgot that even though this is exactly how I found my 993, it also led to an enormous amount of BS. People are like, here's one, and it's a pre facelift. Here's one, doesn't have a third row. One guy sent us a long email, Sean, talking about how I should instead look at C-Class AMG wagons and then send pictures of all of them as if I have never heard of the C-Class AMG wagon.
1:02:40 Speaker 03 Thank you for your passion.
1:02:41 Doug DeMuro? Dude, I know, I know it's there. Oh, yeah, yeah. Thanks for watching, appreciate it.
1:02:45 Speaker 03 Are you not, also if you're a Mercedes expert and you know factually that that car doesn't exist.
1:02:51 Doug DeMuro? No, we've, we've, there are three rows. Can you pull up S210, I want a picture of the car on the thing. Throughout my entire rant, whoever's editing this, throughout my entire rant, I want a giant picture of the car on the site. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this, this exact thing. This, that's a, see, that's a, there you go, that car.
1:03:10 Speaker 04 Oh, that's.
1:03:10 Doug DeMuro? That car, but in silver and with a third row.
1:03:14 Speaker 04 And we gotta have those wheels.
1:03:15 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, well, those are OE wheels, all fine.
1:03:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, those are sick.
1:03:17 Doug DeMuro? Yeah. This car, this is what I want with a third row in silver, I don't care where you are, even if you're in Kuala Lumpur and your primary daily driver is one of those Proton's that I just mentioned. You get me one of these, I'll buy it.
1:03:32 Speaker 03 Congratulations.
1:03:33 Doug DeMuro? Thank you.
1:03:33 Speaker 03 Do you think that when you get this car, you will learn how to drive a manual transmission?
1:03:37 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
1:03:37 Speaker 04 I was wondering.
1:03:38 Doug DeMuro? You were just waiting to pull that out.
1:03:40 Speaker 04 Maybe we could do a collaboration where I had a professional driving instructor, kind of give me some pointers.
1:03:44 Doug DeMuro? I think that might be wise.
1:03:46 Speaker 04 The problem was, at the time, I had the Mercy and let's just say the clutch pedal felt a little different between a multiple and a Mercy Lago.
1:03:53 Doug DeMuro? Oh, sure, that's his, that's his, uh.
1:03:56 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:03:57 Doug DeMuro? I think he'd sold the Mercy.
1:03:58 Speaker 03 I think so too.
1:04:00 Speaker 04 That's what he's been driving as a manual for a while, so.
1:04:03 Speaker 03 This man stalled whilst trying to start a drag race.
1:04:06 Doug DeMuro? A drag race, that happens actually, but the real surprise is he did it in a diesel, which has so much low end torque and a light clutch that usually you could just kind of.
1:04:13 Speaker 03 He stalled in a Taco Bell drive through.
1:04:15 Doug DeMuro? It's a whole problem. I want one of these. Felipe, are you doing anything to find it for me? Okay, I'll give you a thousand dollars if you find me one.
1:04:22 Speaker 04 Wow. Think about it. I would like a Carrera GT jacket and I'll do it free.
1:04:26 Doug DeMuro? I want to, I want to give another car that I think you'll appreciate.
1:04:29 Speaker 04 Oh, please.
1:04:29 Doug DeMuro? Do you remember back in the day when I would review a Tesla and if I'd said anything negative, there would be thousands of people on Twitter?
1:04:34 Speaker 04 Yep.
1:04:34 Doug DeMuro? Who would lose their mind.
1:04:36 Speaker 04 Absolutely.
1:04:36 Doug DeMuro? Okay, I haven't gone on Twitter in years, obviously it's a cesspool, it's a complete disaster. And so no one really goes on it anymore except crazy people.
1:04:42 Speaker 04 It's called X now.
1:04:43 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, whatever. Okay, so I'm on it, the other day, I, for some reason or another, I had to go on it, there was some.
1:04:49 Speaker 03 Oh, did you want to respond to an emergency alert? Did you want to see the emergency alert? It's a real problem where a lot of governments, when they issue emergency, like state governments, when they should emergency alert, they should just link to an X post. To see the post, you need to have an X account. And it's really a problem.
1:05:04 Doug DeMuro? So, so I had to go, I clicked on the Twitter link, or X, whatever, for the first time in probably a year, year and a half. And I, we had, I clicked on it, and it was just after we had put up some reel where we talked negatively about Tesla, like in the last pod. I don't remember even what we said. It was something. And those people are still out there! They're still out there! And I was so here for it. They are still, and I assume a lot of them are bots. Like, none of them have real people as profile pictures, or none of them have real locations. Like, I assume a lot of them are either bots, or like paid.
1:05:35 Speaker 04 Elon Musk doesn't accept bots.
1:05:36 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, yeah, right. There's no bots at all on that platform. But those people are still there being like, Doug is paid by Big Auto, like Doug needs gas cars to survive, like, and, and I don't even respond anymore. So I'm looking at it, and I'm, I'm realizing they're like spinning themselves up. Because I'm not even responding to defend myself. They're just getting each other, like, successively angry with each other.
1:05:56 Speaker 04 It's turning into Facebook. It's just like the...
1:05:58 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, the boomers. And then it reminded me of something. I'm gonna tell a story here that I haven't told you guys.
1:06:03 Speaker 03 Whoa.
1:06:04 Doug DeMuro? Many years ago, when we launched Cars and Bits, there was a fellow, and I hope he sees this, this is why I'm telling this story. There was a fellow on the Twitter, and he was in Western Pennsylvania, and he was very critical of Cars and Bits. And later I determined who he was, and his association with a competitor of ours. And, and he would constantly be talking up the competitor and talking down Cars and Bits. And eventually, it just annoyed me so much that I spent an hour, went way back in his post history, and found some racist tweets that he had posted from 10 years ago.
1:06:38 Speaker 03 As you did at the time.
1:06:39 Doug DeMuro? And, and, so then one, the next time he talked badly about Cars and Bits... I had screenshotted and linked the tweets and I was like, is this you? And within 30 seconds, he had locked down his profile, blocked me. Like, he was scared, because he realized that I knew who he was and I found out that he'd done racist tweets. And you know what? I regret it. I regret doing it. Because he was actually kind of fun to back and forth complain with. And I went on the Twitter and he is still on there complaining about cars and bids. And I'm like, you know what? But he's unlocked his profile. And I'm like, you know what? I am not going to bring up your racist tweets anymore.
1:07:17 Doug DeMuro? And I hope that someday we can have, again, very uncivil, inappropriately angry discourse. And I regret, I regret the airing of the racism. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I actually enjoyed the back and forth complaint.
1:07:35 Speaker 04 I really need the off-camera version of the story.
1:07:37 Doug DeMuro? That's the whole story. That's the whole story.
1:07:41 Speaker 03 Fascinating.
1:07:42 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
1:07:42 Speaker 03 I'm proud of... No, I don't know if I'm proud of your growth on this or not. Is that growth?
1:07:47 Doug DeMuro? I'm not sure. Like, I think the correct thing to do would be like, hey, this guy is a racist, right? But I think like-
1:07:52 Speaker 04 That's acceptable now, I think.
1:07:54 Doug DeMuro? In some ways. And it was 15 years ago and all this stuff. But most importantly, I just miss arguing with the fellow. And now he's blocked me and all this stuff, which he should have, because I know his racist past, you know, like-
1:08:07 Speaker 04 If somebody knows your racist past, you block them.
1:08:08 Doug DeMuro? But that was something that reminded me recently. That was something that I was reminded about when I went on Twitter. I was like, you know, I wonder what that guy's doing now? Because I hadn't looked at his profile in like, two years. And sure enough, his most recent post was complaining about cars and bids.
1:08:24 Speaker 03 Fascinating.
1:08:25 Doug DeMuro? Yes!
1:08:26 Speaker 03 Fascinating.
1:08:27 Doug DeMuro? Anyway, deep regret.
1:08:28 Speaker 04 I think it's great you added him.
1:08:30 Doug DeMuro? Really?
1:08:31 Speaker 04 Yeah. I think the best thing you can do with people like that is just hold up a mirror and let them just see how they look and sound.
1:08:39 Speaker 03 Is that how you feel when we send you the clips we have to cut out of the podcast?
1:08:43 Speaker 04 Sometimes, yes. No, I, I, it is not uncommon that someone will say, here's how you behaved. And I think on it, and I say, I wish I hadn't done it that way. And I hope this gentleman took that opportunity.
1:08:54 Doug DeMuro? Agree with all of that, but I guess my point is, I don't get in a lot of internet fights anymore. Like back in the day when I was really fighting for my life, I was, but I, there was a part of me that really had fun. You know what I mean?
1:09:05 Speaker 03 You used to engage more.
1:09:06 Doug DeMuro? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Including with the haters. And that was what hit me with the test. I think I signed on to Twitter and I was like, oh my God, the haters are still here. Holy crap, I can't believe people are still doing this. And then I was like, what about that guy? The racist hater guy. That's where this all went.
1:09:18 Speaker 04 The haters, a lot of them now, I think you can have those conversations on Reddit. And the way that Twitter used to be, there's a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more intelligent. But like, I got an alert on Reddit the other day for your slash Doug DeMuro.
1:09:30 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
1:09:30 Speaker 04 And like, man, people say weirds, like about me, even I'm like nobody. And they were like talking smack on me.
1:09:37 Doug DeMuro? The problem I have on Reddit is it's like all, it's Reddit is seems to me to be like a much smaller cross section of reality.
1:09:42 Speaker 04 I think X is becoming that.
1:09:44 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
1:09:45 Speaker 04 A lot of the normies have left X.
1:09:46 Doug DeMuro? But back when this guy was racist, I think it was a more broader.
1:09:49 Speaker 04 Reddit is becoming more mainstream.
1:09:51 Doug DeMuro? Reddit's like 13 year old kind of basement kids. It's like.
1:09:53 Speaker 04 I don't think so anymore.
1:09:54 Doug DeMuro? 23 year old basement kids, but it's not like reality, unfortunately.
1:09:57 Speaker 03 Keep in mind that Reddit has a billion people active every month.
1:09:59 Doug DeMuro? Sure. However, the people who post like in the cars area, I think is different than people who are posting like cooking tips. And I think some of it is very useful. And I think a lot of it is kind of sketch people.
1:10:10 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:10:10 Doug DeMuro? Um, which is a shame. Like if you go and see some of the complaints about us or about any of the car YouTubers, it's like kind of.
1:10:16 Speaker 04 What used to be really cool about Twitter was it was, it used to be more intelligent people that had done like deep cuts and deep research and unique insights. Reddit does attract that kind of clientele where are people that are like going a little bit past the surface level? And I do learn stuff from it versus, I don't think that's true.
1:10:32 Doug DeMuro? But I think that's not happening in like the general subreddits where you just, where like the whatever sounds right gets up voted and stuff. I think that happens more in more specific ones where you find that more stuff.
1:10:41 Speaker 04 The types of insults I get are like, I hope that guy has problems with his BECM module on his PC. Like deep insult and rude, but like, that isn't just like, oh, your mom's fat or whatever. Like it is like deeply specific.
1:10:55 Doug DeMuro? Uh, I wanted, before we move on from talk cars, uh, this plug is going to go way long. I want to talk about your F250.
1:11:00 Speaker 04 Yeah. Yes, me too.
1:11:02 Speaker 03 My F-250 is still at my late father-in-law's lower driveway.
1:11:06 Doug DeMuro? We were gonna tow it home with a Bentley and a U-Haul, but shockingly that didn't happen.
1:11:10 Speaker 03 But, but a gentleman named Dave who runs Iconic Automotive in Northern Arizona, reached out, actually his wife Stephanie reached out to me on Instagram and said, "Hey, Dave runs a shop, he can go out and take a look." Dave went out last Sunday, took a look at the truck, did a little bit of diagnostics, and he's gonna have it towed, we're gonna have it towed next Monday to his shop to do a little bit of work. We gotta maybe drop the fuel tanks, clear out some old gas, that was one of the problems, flush out the carb, maybe rebuild it, they'll do a little bit of other work, and then it will be ready to be shipped down here to me. And it'll be ready to drive, tires aside, I gotta get new tires. Yeah. Like, it's gonna happen, it's gonna be here. Dave has been incredibly helpful.
1:11:47 Doug DeMuro? On President's Day, they're getting it.
1:11:49 Speaker 03 Yeah. Do you think- President's Day is in like a week.
1:11:51 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, yeah, next Monday.
1:11:52 Speaker 03 Oh, we're gonna get it to the shop.
1:11:54 Doug DeMuro? As you said, um, well, let me just ask this, what do you think the chances of any of this?
1:12:01 Speaker 03 It's all, it's all happening.
1:12:01 Doug DeMuro? I don't think Dave's gonna let you down.
1:12:03 Speaker 04 If you can get it to a qualified mechanic, cars like this are not that complicated. Cars are available.
1:12:08 Speaker 03 Also, in Northern Arizona, like, what Dave told me is that his shop mostly does like diesels and a bunch of like fleet vehicles for the local government, but he grew up working on carbureted old trucks.
1:12:17 Doug DeMuro? When do you think we'll see this car? Like, then Filippo's gotta get it here.
1:12:20 Speaker 04 Honestly, I'll be in Phoenix this weekend through Tuesday, so I might pop up.
1:12:23 Doug DeMuro? Pop on over to-
1:12:24 Speaker 04 Go meet Dave.
1:12:25 Doug DeMuro? Go meet Dave.
1:12:25 Speaker 03 Please do, Dave's a great guy. He races out at the racetrack outside of Phoenix.
1:12:29 Doug DeMuro? Oh, cool. Well, I'm pumped that it's now at least legitimately in the hands of a qualified human being.
1:12:33 Speaker 03 I am too.
1:12:34 Speaker 04 Filippo and an F-250, that'll be a sight.
1:12:36 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
1:12:37 Speaker 04 Who do you think will get their car back first? Me with the manual E55 or you with an F-250?
1:12:40 Doug DeMuro? You know what's funny, by the way? The Super Bowl halftime show, Bad Bunny had an F-250 out there on the field.
1:12:46 Speaker 03 Not quite, my gen B.
1:12:47 Doug DeMuro? The Super Bowl halftime show, not the Alternative America one had an F-250, but the Bad Bunny one had an F-250 with Puerto Rican license plates on it. This is right up Filippo's alley.
1:12:59 Doug DeMuro? I want to give a quick shout out. We had an event here. I don't remember what it was for.
1:13:03 Speaker 03 For Avant.
1:13:03 Doug DeMuro? Oh, yeah.
1:13:04 Speaker 03 The great car community.
1:13:05 Doug DeMuro? Avance, which was awesome. We had a great, it was a great.
1:13:06 Speaker 03 It was fun.
1:13:07 Doug DeMuro? It was fun. We had a great time. Anyway, fellow came up to me at this event from diecast talk. You go on Instagram, you follow him, diecast talk, and he got me this.
1:13:15 Speaker 03 Wow.
1:13:15 Doug DeMuro? Which is a Sequoia TRD Pro diecast.
1:13:19 Speaker 03 No way.
1:13:19 Doug DeMuro? And it's my exact car, except there's a red interior, which I wanted.
1:13:23 Speaker 03 And no mods.
1:13:24 Doug DeMuro? What do you mean mods?
1:13:26 Speaker 03 Well, you removed the, the running board.
1:13:29 Doug DeMuro? Which this car has the running boards removed.
1:13:31 Speaker 03 You, you.
1:13:32 Doug DeMuro? I painted the wheels a lighter.
1:13:33 Speaker 03 You also removed something else.
1:13:35 Doug DeMuro? It just never had a roof rack.
1:13:36 Speaker 03 No, no, you removed something else.
1:13:38 Speaker 04 You extended the cold start to be longer because you just wanted to enjoy that.
1:13:43 Doug DeMuro? Anyway, he gave me this and he said, he said, look, he says he makes these diecast cars and he said, usually he does like super limited runs. They sell it in like 10 minutes. And I remember when the Sequoia came out, I had not known about it right away and it sold out immediately. But he saved one for me and I haven't and, and I'm so thrilled. And also I am back on my Sequoia. I am in love with my Sequoia again. I have no interest in it. It likes over trail anymore. I am in love with the Sequoia.
1:14:04 Speaker 04 That makes fun of you.
1:14:05 Doug DeMuro? Yep. It's so good. It's, you, but the problem, the thing that you don't understand, you've never gone off roading and you've never had a family. And so you know what the funny thing is? He's, he's making fun of me, but in, in four years or whatever the usual timeline is, he's going to end up with a Sequoia.
1:14:20 Speaker 03 He's going to end up with a TRD off road.
1:14:22 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, or like a, or like a Capstone or SR5, some BS Sequoia. He's like, you know, I always liked this thing.
1:14:28 Speaker 04 You are correct in that I will get a newer, better version of what you currently have.
1:14:31 Doug DeMuro? Oh God, we can't go down this road.
1:14:33 Speaker 03 Nick only buys cars that I've already.
1:14:35 Doug DeMuro? We can't go down this road.
1:14:36 Speaker 04 Says the RRC owner.
1:14:37 Doug DeMuro? Can't go.
1:14:38 Speaker 03 I had an L322.
1:14:39 Speaker 04 Lick my P38 boots. All right.
1:14:41 Doug DeMuro? Lick my BECM module.
1:14:43 Speaker 04 Yes. It's probably broken.
1:14:45 Doug DeMuro? All right.
1:14:45 Speaker 04 It's raining out right now. I suspect it's getting waterlogged.
1:14:48 Doug DeMuro? We've, I gotta move on to the market report, which is brought to you by, by Ryan's Air Conditioning. Folks, it's broken and it's, it's right now it's 61 degrees here in San Diego. I don't know if he's going to make it through the night.
1:15:04 Speaker 04 He informed me he has both a fitted sheet and a duvet. So I think one strategy Ryan might want to try is just the fitted sheet. Just sort of take the duvet off.
1:15:13 Doug DeMuro? Sean, meanwhile, has never had air conditioning at all. Ryan's, I couldn't sleep in the middle of winter. Anyway, Mark Report's brought to you by Ryan's Air Conditioning, which God, we hope a miracle will come and it'll get fixed before it gets up to 66.
1:15:33 Doug DeMuro? We're really having a bad weather here.
1:15:34 Speaker 04 We'll build some buffer into the filming schedule for air conditioning.
1:15:38 Doug DeMuro? All right, I want to talk about the 458. Can you pull up the 458?
1:15:40 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:15:41 Doug DeMuro? We sold the 458 yesterday.
1:15:43 Speaker 04 Did you see? Big money.
1:15:44 Doug DeMuro? This was a 458, which has become kind of a darling in the used Ferrari community.
1:15:49 Speaker 04 For good reason.
1:15:49 Doug DeMuro? The 458, the last NA Ferrari, the first Ferrari that adopted this design language, which kind of since permeated throughout the entire lineup. We sold a 1,400 mile car. That also is rare. Ferraris used to have super low miles as kind of a matter of course, but they've become so usable and so relatively reliable, people are using it a lot more.
1:16:07 Speaker 04 And just mass produced.
1:16:08 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, so this car had 1,400 miles on it. Yeah, one of them we sold with 48,000 miles, 30,000, et cetera. But one we sold with 1,400 miles on it sold for $380,000.
1:16:19 Speaker 04 That's real money.
1:16:19 Doug DeMuro? And our friend Sam, who's air conditioning works, he made the point that 458s are almost more expensive than SF90s.
1:16:29 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:16:30 Doug DeMuro? SF90, which is Ferrari's newest, you know, supposedly almost hypercar with 8,000 horsepower that nobody wants, and they can't find anybody to buy used ones. They're selling in the low 400s. And this is a 380 number, not even a Speciale or a whatever, like just a regular 458 Spider.
1:16:48 Speaker 04 Yep. A base like that is a low spec SF90 surely is less than this.
1:16:53 Doug DeMuro? This further proves my continued theory that that mid 2000s, to, I guess, whenever hybridization took over, era is like the era. And we're already starting to see cars from that era eclipse later cars that are better. Right? Like the Ford GTs and this and the SF90, which is laughable. Like the market, the used market. Market, the enthusiast collector market certainly knows what it wants.
1:17:17 Speaker 03 It is kind of interesting that the 458 is getting this kind of recognition. Obviously, it's a beautiful car. The styling did set the tone for Ferrari for a decade after this car came out. But it's also unlike the 4GT, the 054GT manual, raw, in a way that the new 4GT isn't. This is an automatic car.
1:17:33 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, the only
1:17:34 Speaker 03 This has computer.
1:17:34 Doug DeMuro? The only real thing it has going for it was the last NA car. But it wasn't even like the last gas car or even the last V8 car. But nonetheless, the market has really coaxed around.
1:17:42 Speaker 04 It is also weird that imagining you now bought this car with 1,400 miles, you're afraid to put miles on it, maybe?
1:17:48 Doug DeMuro? Probably.
1:17:49 Speaker 04 But like it's a 458.
1:17:50 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
1:17:51 Speaker 04 It's a car to drive. It's not really a collector car.
1:17:53 Doug DeMuro? Maybe, but I think that this sale proves that super low mile 458s are gonna
1:17:57 Speaker 04 Yeah, no, clearly.
1:17:59 Doug DeMuro? More and more valuable. I have a suspicion that good low mile 458s become really valuable someday. As sort of the end of an era. You know, if I were to have bet on this 10 years ago, I would have put my money on the 430. It feels, it's more mechanical.
1:18:10 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:18:10 Doug DeMuro? They've still made manuals, like it has sort of this last old school feel. Whereas this is a dual clutch car that was made in larger numbers, but that's not what the market has shown. The 430s continue to be shockingly cheap for what they are and 458s never got cheap, even high mile ones.
1:18:24 Speaker 03 I do think it's a little bit of a, the 458 I think is a more beautiful car than the 430.
1:18:27 Doug DeMuro? I agree. I agree.
1:18:28 Speaker 00 At Edward Jones, we believe rich is about taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your financial advisor personalizes your plan to help you preserve your progress and create something that lasts. Let's find your rich. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.
1:18:43 Speaker 03 More striking, more modern looking. The 430 looks
1:18:47 Doug DeMuro? Totally.
1:18:47 Speaker 03 Like an old car now.
1:18:48 Doug DeMuro? Yep, agreed.
1:18:49 Speaker 03 But yeah, it's surprising.
1:18:49 Doug DeMuro? Nonetheless, I'm like really shocked because it is kind of a more, it's dual clutch on, you know.
1:18:55 Speaker 03 Yeah. I wonder if it is like a little bit like you buy a 430 if you want a Ferrari from that era and also gated 430 is real money.
1:19:01 Doug DeMuro? Yep.
1:19:02 Speaker 03 Like a factory gated 430.
1:19:03 Doug DeMuro? That's true.
1:19:04 Speaker 03 Is real money.
1:19:05 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
1:19:05 Speaker 03 But this, even if you're considering a new Ferrari or just barely used, this might feel like the more analog
1:19:11 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
1:19:12 Speaker 03 Older version.
1:19:12 Doug DeMuro? No, I think that's exactly it. I think the NAV8, the sound.
1:19:15 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:19:16 Doug DeMuro? And yes, it probably feels more connected, et cetera. No massive screens like N296, which is also an awesome car. But the market is making a decision here. 380 is real money. You can go buy a lot of new cars, including new Ferraris for either that or damn close to it.
1:19:30 Speaker 03 Yep.
1:19:31 Doug DeMuro? And the market loves 458.
1:19:33 Speaker 03 And about 3C8 Eres.
1:19:35 Doug DeMuro? You ever thought about a 458? You'd rather have an SLR than a 458?
1:19:38 Speaker 03 Yep. Yep.
1:19:41 Speaker 04 That's all I gotta say about that. I like the 430, if anything because they could manual swap it or buy it manual, but
1:19:47 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
1:19:47 Speaker 04 I mean, they're really pretty cars. Yeah, get the next gen, the better one.
1:19:54 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, that's what you do. I had an 06.
1:19:57 Speaker 04 They're pretty cars. 380, what, you could buy a 4GT?
1:20:00 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
1:20:01 Speaker 04 A 506?
1:20:02 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, mild one, but not a bad car, like a bad
1:20:05 Speaker 04 Not a 1400 mile one.
1:20:06 Doug DeMuro? You could buy a driver 405 4GT, a red one for sure.
1:20:10 Speaker 04 But if you're super into Ferraris, you definitely want a Ferrari, you want a DCT and you want almost 600 horsepower, I get it. It's not me.
1:20:19 Doug DeMuro? It is a very good sweet spot, this car, if the mechanical isn't quite your biggest priority, but instead like performance and stuff without going too modern, this car is a good sweet spot. I do think for me, there's a lot of things I like more about that 430. Most of which is the fact that it's still a sick, but also it just, to me, it's more of like an old school type car. But I still think this is awesome.
1:20:41 Speaker 04 Yep.
1:20:42 Doug DeMuro? And the market does too.
1:20:43 Speaker 04 Clearly the market is thinking about it as a long-term play. Right, like if you want a driving, buy a higher model or a 488.
1:20:49 Doug DeMuro? Also proven with speciale and speciale imperative values, which are crazy.
1:20:53 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:20:53 Doug DeMuro? Should we move on to questions?
1:20:55 Speaker 04 Yes.
1:20:55 Doug DeMuro? Okay, I want to move on to questions. The questions are brought to us by Nick Rochon and his YouTube channel.
1:21:01 Speaker 04 Oh, thank you.
1:21:01 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, absolutely. Go to Nick Rochon, pull up Nick Rochon. Fill up the Nick YouTube channel, let's just leave it up there for a minute. Is this?
1:21:10 Speaker 04 This is the Cars and BIDS account, homepage.
1:21:12 Doug DeMuro? See what the Cars and BIDS account. This is the Nick Rochon YouTube channel. It is excellent. This video, little underperformer.
1:21:20 Speaker 04 A little bit, a little bit. I think people are tired of the multipla. It's been a lot.
1:21:23 Doug DeMuro? We're all tired of the
1:21:24 Speaker 04 I want to be clear, I do believe that I've watched each of these videos. This is not my personal
1:21:28 Doug DeMuro? The next owner will be especially tired of the multipla, within a couple of hours of picking it up.
1:21:33 Speaker 04 It's a great car, the multipla, it's an incredible car.
1:21:36 Doug DeMuro? I am so happy.
1:21:37 Speaker 04 But I did that for multiple reasons, much like
1:21:40 Doug DeMuro? Multiple reasons?
1:21:40 Speaker 04 E55, yeah, there you go. The E55 is my bellwether to manual swap an AMG. The multiple was my bellwether to try importing a vehicle and understanding how the process works. So I learned a lot, I had a lot of fun. It just, it checked all the boxes a little quicker than like a Merciolo might.
1:21:56 Doug DeMuro? Okay, next, the questions are all really good this week. And remember, you can ask us questions. Go to carsandbids.com, you click on the community tab and there's a post in there that says, "Questions, ask us your questions." Oh, oh, and then that's where you can ask.
1:22:07 Speaker 04 I tried to slip in one for my sister, did you see that?
1:22:10 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, about your sister's trying to get a van or something from Ohio. She's, she's, she's in Ohio.
1:22:15 Speaker 04 What minivan should my sister get?
1:22:16 Doug DeMuro? She wants a van that can handle Ohio winters. The only four-wheel drive minivan available today is
1:22:20 Speaker 04 The Sienna.
1:22:20 Doug DeMuro? Which also happens to be the best minivan, so she's good. Get that.
1:22:24 Speaker 03 A different option? Chevy Astro.
1:22:26 Doug DeMuro? Oh, pull up, have we sold Astros?
1:22:29 Speaker 04 No, of course not. I don't know, man. Do you think I'm shopping for vans?
1:22:33 Doug DeMuro? 25 years since they've made the Chevy Astro. We have one live right now.
1:22:37 Speaker 04 Right now, we have an Astro live. I will send this to her.
1:22:40 Doug DeMuro? With four-wheel drive, where is it? It must be in Ohio. Oh, it's in Florida.
1:22:43 Speaker 03 Actually, unfortunately, this has a camper package.
1:22:46 Doug DeMuro? But it's, those are, those are seats, those become seats.
1:22:48 Speaker 04 Wow.
1:22:49 Doug DeMuro? Nick?
1:22:50 Speaker 04 It looks new to me.
1:22:52 Doug DeMuro? You gotta get her to get, one of the things that I think this wheel design really benefited from was
1:22:56 Speaker 04 I don't think she's trying to kidnap children.
1:22:57 Doug DeMuro? If the center part, no.
1:22:59 Speaker 04 Haul hers around.
1:22:59 Doug DeMuro? Quality van. If the center part matches the other side, it looks like a modern vehicle. You know, these were sold, I think, through 05?
1:23:06 Speaker 04 I think that's correct.
1:23:06 Doug DeMuro? Just crazy to think about. The Ford GT was on sale.
1:23:11 Speaker 04 Kristen and Scott, it sounds like a Sienna or an Astro.
1:23:13 Doug DeMuro? You gotta find a Sienna, it's hard. All right, next, first question from Baja GP. Doug, your A140 is dead. I owned it for six months in Texas, sold it on Cars and Bids. It was totaled by an old lady in a minivan. I mentioned this actually in one of my own videos a couple of days ago. My question is this, you said you're not sentimental about your old cars. However, do you go back and look them up to see your current state of existence? Knowing that your one of one US A140 dies by an old woman in a minivan while parked on the street, are you at least a little sad? No. Next. Next.
1:23:38 Speaker 04 I am.
1:23:39 Doug DeMuro? Thrilled. You're sad.
1:23:41 Speaker 03 I saw that car during Car Week because the current owner, I didn't mean to tell, it got hit, lived in the Bay. And they came, brought it down. It was great to see it again.
1:23:49 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
1:23:49 Speaker 03 I hadn't missed it.
1:23:50 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
1:23:52 Doug DeMuro? Well, you're the one. Uh, next question, uh, from Coach Carson IG. Doug and background characters, that's the two of you.
1:23:59 Speaker 03 Harsh, that's as bad as bringing up the module.
1:24:02 Doug DeMuro? Uh, why?
1:24:04 Doug DeMuro? Why have you not reviewed a Pajero Evolution yet? The same reason I don't review any car yet. I haven't found the right one, but I will, don't worry. We got a Z32300ZX coming, which is a big deal. I've been asked about that car for years and years. We finally found the right one. Now it's here, now we're reviewing it. When a great Pajero Evo comes that's being for sale on the site, we will pick it up. I need a stick, that's one of the big problems. They're almost all automatics, a lot of them are heinously modified. We need to find a nice, clean stick and then we will get it here and I will review it. And Sean will pay to ship it here.
1:24:32 Speaker 04 The market report on that one is interesting. I want to buy one, I've been looking for one for a while.
1:24:36 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, that'd be cool.
1:24:37 Speaker 04 Initially, there was a lot of hype and they were selling for decent numbers.
1:24:41 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, they're down.
1:24:42 Speaker 04 They're down enough now that it doesn't really make sense to import, like the multiple.
1:24:46 Doug DeMuro? Oh, really?
1:24:46 Speaker 04 If you import and then sell, like maybe you get, there's certainly no like profit arbitrage.
1:24:51 Doug DeMuro? So there's like, we're capped on the number of Pajero Evo's that are here.
1:24:54 Speaker 04 The market's really shifted down, maybe it starts to stabilize, but I think it's slowing down the influx of new ones for sale.
1:25:00 Doug DeMuro? It is interesting, I'll give you a little market report, which you were going to talk about with the RS4. Like, one thing that I've noticed now repeatedly is that if you really want a car that becomes legal, if you can just wait 24 months, the market will be completely different. The R34GTR is taped after two years. The B5RS4s, which were a hundred grand, are now nice ones, are like lucky to find the 60s. Cheap ones are in the 40s.
1:25:25 Speaker 04 Their competitor site, who may or may not be involved with a Twitter poster, we don't know, sold one for like 45.
1:25:34 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, I mean, we sold one from the 90s, around 90s.
1:25:37 Speaker 04 I bid on that one that went to 86.5. I bid up to like 85.
1:25:40 Doug DeMuro? Which that car later sold for 85. There's a million examples, Pajero Evo's a great example, but there's a million examples of, once the car is legal, there's a mad rush for people who've always wanted one to get it. And then the market floods with them and they absolutely crash.
1:25:56 Speaker 04 So, Pajero Evo, I think, we're at that 24 mark where I'm eyeing them because I think they're going to start to become values.
1:26:03 Doug DeMuro? 20s?
1:26:05 Speaker 04 Yeah, I mean, I think if you want a manual and you're more picky about condition and rest and stuff.
1:26:08 Doug DeMuro? Which Nick's not.
1:26:09 Speaker 04 You need to spend 30s to get a decent one.
1:26:10 Doug DeMuro? A lot of them were.
1:26:11 Speaker 04 They're available for 20s.
1:26:12 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, and I bet automatics are, are, a lot of them were rough. It's one of the things I learned about Pajero Evo's when I was thinking about doing it is that a lot of them were driven hard and they were off roading.
1:26:24 Speaker 04 You know?
1:26:24 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, there's that too. Next question from Auto Autopsy. Question for Sean, how much junk mail do you get when the pod blasting your email? Tell you the answer. You want to know the answer? You can find out. You just send him an email. [email protected] . That's S E A N at carsandbids.com.
1:26:43 Speaker 04 By the way, shout out to that guy. He's, we talked about Sops a lot, but in Arizona.
1:26:46 Doug DeMuro? Next question from Soho. This is a great question for, or maybe Sojo. The Carrera GT's shifter placement seems completely unique, not replicated by any other cars to my knowledge.
1:26:54 Speaker 04 Literally behind you.
1:26:56 Doug DeMuro? And over there.
1:26:57 Speaker 04 Jeez. The Fiat F500 Barth and the multiple.
1:26:59 Doug DeMuro? This is the, I'm reading the question. I didn't write the question. That was going to be most of what I said. And yet it's also considered one of the greatest.
1:27:06 Speaker 04 Our background characters are offended by this question.
1:27:08 Doug DeMuro? What is the shifter, what is the driving experience like with the shifter in that position? Why is it good and why has it been replicated? Okay, the driving experience is fantastic with the shifter in that position because it is right next to the steering wheel.
1:27:18 Speaker 04 Plus the multiple has a tube.
1:27:19 Doug DeMuro? The huge benefit and the reason that every sports car should be like this is because it's just less of a distance for you to take with your hands. So you're boom, boom, boom, and you can do it a lot quicker. And I really mean that. I really think it's great. The Carrera GT, as these guys are pointing out, is not the only car like that. The car actually that I most associate with that shifter placement is the Alpha Spider, which used that shifter placement from the 1960s all the way through the mid 1990s. Any Alpha Spider, any old Alpha Spider that we've had will have it. And you can click on, yeah, like that. The shifter is in the exact same thing. It's mounted high. I mean, you can see it's almost laughable how it's, it's like mounted where the air conditioning, you know, controls ought to be. But they do that for the exact same reason. These were drivers' cars and you can see, yeah, right there. Same exact thing, almost the exact same placement.
1:28:05 Doug DeMuro? The reason I think most cars, and then there are others too, the Civic SI, the hatchback Civic SI was like that.
1:28:10 Speaker 04 Rubber boot.
1:28:11 Doug DeMuro? The reason I think most cars don't do it is because it actually takes. Some real design and engineering work to get a shifter placed where controls should be. Yeah. Like in this car, stuff had to happen to make this work. They had to move stuff out of the way and all this crap. In the Multipla, which is sort of like that, the shifter's higher. It's the same kind of thing. Like, there's a lot of controls that ended up having to get pushed in a weird way up. And so it's actually kind of a complicated thing. But I think if you were to ask, like, you know, car enthusiasts about their dream shifter placement, it would be there, but it comes with some real sacrifices. The Carrera GT's radio is mostly unreachable from the driver's seat as a result of that. It's pushed so far into the dashboard. The Fiat does it perfectly. The 500 Abarth?
1:28:55 Doug DeMuro? Yeah, the shifter's there, not in the way of anything else. Show us. Show us. I'll show you. The shifter's pretty low. It just happens to be in the middle thing. It's not in the center. That's not the same. Yes, it is. It's getting there. It's quite high. That's not, it's not similar at all. It's incredibly similar. No, the Carrera GT is like literally here.
1:29:15 Speaker 04 Oh, look at that poor RAV4 in the background.
1:29:17 Doug DeMuro? Ooh.
1:29:17 Speaker 04 Poor car.
1:29:18 Doug DeMuro? Wow.
1:29:18 Speaker 04 Solid hit.
1:29:19 Doug DeMuro? I accuse our photographer.
1:29:21 Speaker 04 I was like, just give me whatever you got in cash and we'll call it a day.
1:29:25 Doug DeMuro? The photographer took it over by the RAV4 to make the Abarth look better. I really accuse him of trying to compare it to that RAV4, which looks tough. Okay, question from FBmap51. Question for Nick. Now that some time has passed, does Nick regret selling the Mercy a lot?
1:29:39 Speaker 04 Sounds like a question you submitted.
1:29:42 Doug DeMuro? I do. Okay, next question.
1:29:44 Speaker 04 No, there's much more nuance to it. That car was very special. I really had a lot of fun with it. I know the new owners had a lot of fun with it too. Mercy's continued to rise, so financially I look at it and say like, would be a good place to own and see the values go up. I think the manual experience, I do miss having an automatic. And like, the V12 and the exhaust gave a sense of occasion the SLR does not have. That being said, the SLR for my season of life is so usable. Like, it is almost a daily supercar. Like, I could drive it to Arizona and back without having a headache or not having AC or a functioning roof. So like, I think what I got is a good for me for my use case right now, but the Mercy was so special.
1:30:29 Speaker 04 And I do see friends getting Diablo's or Countaches and that they look at it with a sort of a lustful gaze, you know, and they're like.
1:30:37 Doug DeMuro? The Mercy?
1:30:38 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, compared to, you know, like a Countach.
1:30:41 Doug DeMuro? I think that I.
1:30:43 Speaker 04 A lot, a lot, a lot of, a lot of people are saying they kind of regret the Countach, you know.
1:30:47 Doug DeMuro? I definitely don't regret the Countach, but I do wish I could add another Lambo without being perceived as a Lambo guy.
1:30:53 Speaker 04 What would you get?
1:30:54 Doug DeMuro? Uh, probably a gated pre LP Mercy.
1:30:57 Speaker 04 Oh, oh, yeah. And Peter?
1:30:59 Doug DeMuro? I think your color was a, was, was a embarrassment to the car.
1:31:03 Speaker 04 No, I, I love that color and I think a lot of people did.
1:31:06 Doug DeMuro? The craziest design car of all time and put the most subtle.
1:31:11 Speaker 04 No, that's.
1:31:13 Doug DeMuro? That's why it worked for us that don't need, oh, look at me, I'm a famous YouTuber. You're right, that car was certainly out of look at me. You turn on that car, the exhaust, people upstairs would complain, is there a bomb going off in your?
1:31:25 Speaker 04 If you're the kind of guy that buys a chrome Porsche Carrera GT jacket, then yes, maybe that color is not for you. For us subtle men of refined taste, the Grigioan Terrace is a lovely color for the car.
1:31:37 Doug DeMuro? I, I, I do love that car. I think one nuance that the, the audience, a lot of the audience kind of still doesn't get, even though we've talked about it a little bit, is that like, you're not a collector. Like your goal wasn't to just accumulate stuff. You want to accumulate experience.
1:31:50 Speaker 04 If I had both space and money, I would have kept it.
1:31:53 Doug DeMuro? We all would, right? Like every one of us would keep every car, but like at the end of the day, there becomes a constraint, whether it's me with four car garage or Leno with a hundred, like at some point there is a constraint. And you can't keep them all and, but you do want to have varied experience.
1:32:07 Speaker 04 It was so, even the other day, I saw, I heard one like just like move and I was like, I miss that sound. Like, there's just a lot of things that were really special about the car.
1:32:16 Doug DeMuro? You're gonna be back in Lambo world.
1:32:18 Speaker 04 I agree, by the way, that the market has moved on them, but not crazy.
1:32:21 Doug DeMuro? Not crazy, but there, it's, it's moving in the right direction. If you're owning one, every month that goes by, you're thinking, all right, I'm a little bit better in terms of the investment in this car.
1:32:30 Doug DeMuro? Speaking of, next question is from Alex D. Question for Nick. How do you have enough time in the day for a full-time job, YouTube, lowballing people on Facebook Marketplace, working on broken cars and all the cars and bids film?
1:32:40 Speaker 04 Good question. I, I saw this in advance.
1:32:42 Doug DeMuro? If we need to cut this, we can.
1:32:45 Speaker 04 Um, the, I have a very supportive wife, first of all. Like she picks up so much slack. I think she puts up with a lot from me and occasionally I way over commit myself.
1:32:56 Doug DeMuro? Yeah.
1:32:57 Speaker 04 So, I mean, I, I, I think I burned the candle at both ends for a while. I'm trying to pare that back a little bit. Um, as I just like my YouTube channel, I'm no longer going to be like, oh, I need to post weekly or I'm going to lose all my cred. Like, I don't care. You all do all the hard work here. I just show up and you turn the camera on and then we say things that may or may not get cut.
1:33:17 Doug DeMuro? Right.
1:33:18 Speaker 04 But it is a lot, um, for sure.
1:33:20 Doug DeMuro? Nick is, oh, he's got a deal. He's got a deal happening right now.
1:33:25 Speaker 04 How ironic, huh?
1:33:26 Doug DeMuro? Okay, last question, uh, last question. This is an America question, so you'll like it. Uh, this is from Sir Yamalot.
1:33:33 Speaker 04 Oh yeah, I wrote down my end, please.
1:33:35 Doug DeMuro? No, this is different than the one you wrote. The, this, last question, this one's from Sir Yamalot. We've gone way too far. Filippo gets a 911 instead of a Corvette. Filippo said he wanted Corvette, got a 911.
1:33:45 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:33:45 Doug DeMuro? Kenan gets a Mercedes instead of a Viper.
1:33:47 Speaker 04 Well, that was a mistake.
1:33:48 Doug DeMuro? Hmm. My questions are, do you feel like there's a negative connotation owning an American car after a certain age? And two, would you consider another special trip with the gang, uh, where everyone has an American car?
1:33:58 Speaker 04 For the record, we did that. I had an American muscle car. I won.
1:34:00 Doug DeMuro? I want to tell you something, and I'm dead serious about this. Every time I drive my Ford GT, I am proud of the fact that it was designed in America, by an American, and built in America, and is an American car for an American brand. And I mean that with all seriousness. I think that is the greatest American car ever built. And so whether Filippo has some embarrassment about driving an American vehicle, or whether Nick drives a Ram SRT10 and then decides in the end to buy an E55 station wagon, there are some of us who still wave the red, white, and blue.
1:34:35 Speaker 04 I'm down to do an American adventure. I have a focus.
1:34:39 Doug DeMuro? Um, I had a focus.
1:34:40 Speaker 04 Yeah, no, they're.
1:34:41 Doug DeMuro? How come you guys don't support our, our nation? You guys all, between you have like eight, nine cars.
1:34:45 Speaker 04 Somehow I have become a German car guy. All my cars are German.
1:34:48 Doug DeMuro? Except for the Fiat. You got three German cars.
1:34:49 Speaker 04 Built in Mexico.
1:34:50 Doug DeMuro? Built in Mexico, but gonna be sold and not an American brand.
1:34:53 Speaker 04 I have a Ford F250. Wait, what am I saying? We're good.
1:34:55 Doug DeMuro? You don't have a Ford F250. Honey, until that car moves under its own power.
1:35:01 Doug DeMuro? How about we, or moves at all, honestly?
1:35:03 Speaker 04 Take an adventure trip to Normal, Illinois.
1:35:05 Doug DeMuro? Nick, why don't you have an American car? You often come on the pod and say crazy stuff.
1:35:09 Speaker 03 He does. No way. The Ford Focus is your wife.
1:35:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's true. I already disavowed it.
1:35:14 Doug DeMuro? You disavowed it earlier. You can either take credit for it or...
1:35:17 Speaker 04 I don't really care about this one.
1:35:19 Doug DeMuro? But you don't care. You don't want an American car. You don't believe in America.
1:35:23 Speaker 04 I'm a citizen of the globe.
1:35:25 Doug DeMuro? Oh, my God. Here we go.
1:35:27 Speaker 03 Let's talk about the fact that in this video, you drove almost exclusively, in one of these videos, in a C5 Corvette.
1:35:34 Speaker 04 I love that Corvette, too. I would love to do more adventure series. I hope you all have both the budget and resources to do more of them.
1:35:42 Doug DeMuro? I don't think we have the desire. I think that's our primary issue, is that...
1:35:46 Speaker 04 Nick, let's go. Let's go. You and I, let's go.
1:35:48 Doug DeMuro? You guys have fun. Meanwhile, I'm gonna be driving my actual American car that actually belongs to me.
1:35:53 Speaker 03 The Sequoia?
1:35:54 Doug DeMuro? And by the way, built in Texas. Hardcore.
1:35:58 Speaker 04 It shows. It shows.
1:35:59 Speaker 03 San Antonio.
1:36:00 Doug DeMuro? San Antonio, best city in Texas.
1:36:01 Speaker 03 Agreed.
1:36:02 Doug DeMuro? Okay. All right. It's been an absolute pleasure. Nick, do you have any parting thoughts for us here on the pod?
1:36:09 Speaker 04 Bet on Filippo's car.
1:36:10 Doug DeMuro? Yeah. Bet on my car.
1:36:13 Speaker 04 I think he deserves it.
1:36:14 Doug DeMuro? Best pod we ever did. Go watch James and Thomas on the grand tour there with the other fella. Goodbye, everyone.
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