Flock vs the Range Rovers; Ferrari 849 Testarossa Spider Review

Matt Farah has some spicy thoughts on his drive in the new Ferrari 849 Testarossa Spider; he and Zack Klapman discuss the terrifying situation between Flock cameras and Range Rovers; the Manx is even better now; and Patreon questions include: When will Audi etron GTs bottom in price? Quirk battle: Pajero vs Jimny Should a seller supply the PPI? Should this Canadian trade their car for a motorcycle? Mercedes used to be the tech leader. Who is it now? Common car enthusiast financial mistakes. The car with the most diverse fan base is... The OEM we think would "win" the Goodowood FOS Ugly cars that drive great Do nannies REALLY ruin the thrills? Is carbon fiber trim the boomer chrome of our time? And more! Recorded July 15, 2026 Tickets now on sale for our LIVE Show, Aug. 18 in Irvine with Richard Porter and Jonny Smith: https://improv.com/irvine/event/the+smoking+tire+live+feat.+smith+and+sniff+with+matt+farah%2c+zack+klapman%2c+richard+porter%2c+and+jonny+smith/14213624/#showinfo Show Notes DeleteMe Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to www.joindeleteme.com/TIRE and use promo code TIRE at checkout. Casper Right now, save up to 20% on mattresses and up to 25% on everything else when you go to Casper.com. #sponsored Avants https://avants.com/tst use code TST for 10% off your membership! Use Off The Record! and ALWAYS fight your tickets! For a 10% discount on your first case go to https://www.offtherecord.com/TST Want your question answered? Want to watch the live stream, get ad-free podcasts, or exclusive podcasts? Join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thesmokingtirepodcast Instagram: https://www. Instagram.com/thesmokingtire https://www. Instagram.com/therealzackklapman Enter to WIN our AMAZING 2025 Porsche 911 Turbo S!! https://www.dreamgiveaway.com/tickets/porsche?promo=SMOKINGTIRE Promo Code Offer: Get 4X bonus tickets with any donation of $25 or more. With every donation you are helping benefit some wonderful veterans' and children's charities. Podcast Promo Code: SMOKINGTIRE

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Matt Farah?

  What's up everybody? Welcome to the Smoking Tire Podcast. Matt Farah here and today's episode is brought to you by Off the Record. We love Off the Record here at the Smoking Tire. They are looking out for me as I drive all over the country and they are looking out for you in your everyday life. Could be road trips, could be commuting, you name it. If you get pulled over and you get a moving violation, get off the record. Go to offtherecord.com/tst. That's offtherecord.com/tst. That link will get you 10% off all legal services booked through Off the Record. Friends, don't let friends plead guilty. That system is meant to trap you. Fight it. Get

• 0:45Matt Farah?

  off the record at offtherecord.com/tst. Alright folks, on this episode of the podcast, Zach and I review the Ferrari 849 Testa Rosa. We also talk about the scourge that is Flock AI and an update on the Manx and my Taycan has a funny new problem. It's the Smoking Tire Podcast. Let's go. What the fuck is up? Welcome to Greenwich, Connecticut. Say, uh, it's a beautiful morning here in suburbia. That, well, that's half true. It's a beautiful morning in suburbia that is a

• 1:25Matt Farah?

  little bit, if, if the folks watching the video can see in the background, it's not foggy. That's the smoke from the Ontario wildfires.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's really, really, it's gray. It's been, it's like monotone from morning to evening.

• 1:40Matt Farah?

  And like yesterday, it was also so humid that I was like, holy shit. You could, it's so humid, you could see the air, you know, like smoky mountains kind of thing. And then I went outside, I was like, oh wait. And then you were like, dude, fires. And I was like, what are you talking about? And then, uh, yeah, so, uh, it's bad. It's not great. It's not great. And now, and everyone I've seen is like, is this what it was like in California? And like, yep, pretty much.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. People in the chat were...

• 2:10Matt Farah?

  There's a chat happening on the Patreon page. We can't, we're not going to be able to address those. I'm glad that we exist, but it's too far. It's on a, it's on a computer over there. So, whoa, I just got big. But we're glad to have you with us, particularly at 8:15 in the morning, East Coast.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm glad people submitted questions. I made the event a little earlier.

• 2:34Matt Farah?

  But I mean, it's been a while since we've done a show like, so like the shows that people are hearing now were recorded like a week ago.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Very true.

• 2:43Matt Farah?

  So there's things, there's certainly things to talk about. You've got, I mean, we could, I, this happened, like the Flock camera story is just wild.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 2:54Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Um, we could start there. I can now, uh, talk about the Ferrari 849 Testarossa, which I drove in Tannenriff and couldn't talk about. Uh, I can, can I talk about the Grand Sport Corvette? I don't think, I don't know if that's embargoed. Maybe I shouldn't. We'll, we'll say, well, let me table that and see if that's actually embargoed. Um, and we've, I've gotten the Manx back, uh, and we, we can talk about that.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  You drove the, um, Mansory Mercedes?

• 3:24Matt Farah?

  Maybach.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Maybach.

• 3:25Matt Farah?

  Maybach Mercedes.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, as soon as it came out of my mouth, like different M, different.

• 3:28Matt Farah?

  The Maybach Mercedes, uh, which I just posted a review of on Instagram, actually. So where to start?

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Let's start with Flock because it's short.

• 3:36Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  And the other, the other ones would be longer.

• 3:38Matt Farah?

  So for those of you who have not yet seen the story by Jerry Perez on the drive, why is that showing one bar? That's a brand new fucking battery. I don't like that.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Do they?

• 3:52Matt Farah?

  I have more batteries.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Or if you have a USB C to C, I can just.

• 3:58Matt Farah?

  Uh, C to C. I do, I do. It's upstairs. I do. All right.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  I'll plug it in.

• 4:04Matt Farah?

  All right. I apologize. Do you want to plug that in while explaining the background of this story or you want to just pause?

• 4:10Speaker 01

  No, I need, I need the USB C to C.

• 4:12Matt Farah?

  No, I know. All right.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Pause. Uh, I think it was Joel, the drive. Yeah.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  I think also correction, the article is by Joel Fader.

• 4:32Matt Farah?

  Oh, it's Joel, not Jerry. Sorry, excuse me. I knew it was a J who wrote for the drive. Is that...

• 4:40Matt Farah?

  Alright, the battery indicator light's gone away. You don't need to go upstairs when you have an old Jewish mother in a drawer full of cables.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, convenience is everywhere. They plan ahead.

• 4:48Matt Farah?

  Okay, so if you haven't heard the stories, read the story on the drive, a guy called Joel Fader, who is a career automotive journalist, has been doing this for a long time. We know, I know. Was driving a press Range Rover in Minnesota, okay? And Range Rovers, in all press cars, you see them in every photo of every press car, for the most part, not all, many, have distributor plates on them, or manufacturer plates on them. And they look like dealer plates, except instead of DLR, they say MFR or DST. You know, they're typically, it's not just 1, 2, 3, A, B, C,

• 5:32Matt Farah?

  there's typically a smaller set of numbers on the plate somewhere.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Usually fewer, usually like 6 characters, not 7. And there's the thing in the middle, like you see on almost a government plate, or something like that.

• 5:44Matt Farah?

  It's a non-traditional license plate format, okay? That's all you need to know about these, and all these cars have these plates on them. And if you've ever seen a dealer plate for a car dealer, my dealer plate that I have looks like this. And it's like A, B, and then a vertically stacked like 5, C, and then, and then next to it, you know, 6, E, right? So it's like 2, 2, up, down, 2, 2, right? So, and the formats can be different. Why does this matter? Because Joel, this is Costco, his wife, I believe it's his wife, his partner, whatever,

• 6:26Matt Farah?

  backs the fucking Range Rover out of the spot and is surrounded by cop cars, guns drawn. They pull this poor bastard out of a fucking car at gunpoint. And, and they tell him that his license plate, not the car, his license plate is stolen.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:45Matt Farah?

  Okay, now, obviously...

• 6:51Speaker 01

  Well, he then has to, you know, nervously but confidently have to explain to the officers what a press car is, which does take a bit of time because it's a Sunday also.

• 6:59Matt Farah?

  Right. Now Zach and I have been pulled over for moving violations in press cars before, and we have had to have this conversation. I've had to have the conversation going back many years with Tom Morningstar on Bull Run, having been stopped deep into the triple digits in a fucking marked up Shelby, having to explain what a press car is and that this car isn't stolen. Having to explain to that guy at the beginning of COVID, I got dragged out of a 991, uh, the 992 Turbo S.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Oh, right, right, right.

• 7:32Matt Farah?

  I got dragged out of there. He was sure the car was stolen from a dealer because it had manufacturer plates on it and he thought they were dealer plates. Okay, so even cops don't know what M-plates are sometimes. Like, you'd think the kind of thing that they'd teach fucking cops that are on patrol and, and in a world where reading license plates is so important and understanding license plates, you'd think they'd teach them what these plates are.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  I mean, I bet they do, but it's probably five minutes of a, you know, six-week course or something like that and they forget it, yeah.

• 8:05Matt Farah?

  I'm getting sidetracked because why did Joel and his wife get dragged out of the car and held at gunpoint and handcuffed? The cop ultimately, once they, he explains to him what a press car is, the cop ultimately realized what's happened, which is that they subscribe to a service called Flock AI. You can already tell that this is going to be bad. Flock AI is a general surveillance program. It's not a privately-run speed camera program. It's not a, uh, a law, a, it's not a, uh, an automated stop sign enforcement program or speeding program. It is a, a thing where

• 8:46Matt Farah?

  they just put privately-owned cameras, corporate but privately non-government-owned cameras, all fucking over the place. They record everything. And then for however many, you know, thousands of dollars a month, the police department can just subscribe to this totally warrantless surveillance of everybody.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 9:08Matt Farah?

  And can type in a license plate and just get that car's movements around the city.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, there were a lot of stories before this happened about like officers using flock cameras to track their ex-girlfriend's whereabouts and stuff. So like, you know, they can, it's intended as just general surveillance. And then if there's a problem, they could log in and look for like the backtrack of the murderer. But it also has this automated system that will flag license plates that it has deemed are problematic in some way.

• 9:39Matt Farah?

  So here's how this happened. It goes back to the non-traditional layout of the license plate. And I had to learn this because I had to enter my dealer plates into California's toll tag system, fast track. So I could drive to San Diego and back in the 73 and whatever. And it took me like fucking a dozen tries to enter the plate correctly. It was just saying not recognized. And I figured out that you have to, if it's horizontal, horizontal, vertical, vertical, horizontal, horizontal. You treat them like that. You enter it horizontal one, horizontal two, vertical one, vertical two, horizontal three, horizontal four. It just becomes extra digits. Right? It's like

• 10:24Speaker 01

  All in one line.

• 10:25Matt Farah?

  All in one line. You don't skip over the little numbers. You don't make a space. You don't type DLR. It's the numbers, but you type them all. Okay? Well, all of these plates for, let's call it Land Rover, will have the same big numbers. Only the little numbers will change. So if one plate in this fucking stack of 30 plates gets misplaced or stolen, they have to report it to the cops. It's part of having these plates is if you misplace one, you must file a police report. They file a police report. The person who enters the license plate number into this Flock system doesn't fucking

• 11:10Matt Farah?

  know how to do it and does it wrong. And Flock flags all Range Rover plates.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  So they basically, they skipped the middle numbers. So now if, and if all of JLR's plates are AB34 with little things in the middle.

• 11:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  You know, if they have 50 plates in the United States, and this is like dealer loaners and it's press cars and everything, Flock then put out alerts for every plate that was, you know, AB34, whatever I said. And what was really scary and concerning, I mean.

• 11:41Matt Farah?

  So many plates.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  So that's why they, they went after this guy, cause it popped up as being in their city. And it said, hey, this stolen plate is in your city. And then it also had sent alerts, the, the police officer informed Joel, to like six other precincts.

• 11:54Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  I don't know if it was all Minneapolis, or if it was just around the country. I don't remember. But it's like, you know, every Range Rover or every plate that fit these, these four characters have been flagged in the country by this AI system.

• 12:07Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it's probably like every Land Rover, marketing or press vehicle in the country.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:12Matt Farah?

  Pretty, probably, or at least a good percentage of them that are using what appear to be identical plates, if you're a fucking moron.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:20Matt Farah?

  Okay? And, and so not only is this Flock AI system ripe for abuse by the exact kind of people who would abuse such a system, it's also ripe for errors by the exact kind of fucking people that are lazy about inputting this shit right, or getting the details right. And so. Folks, support is coming in today from Casper. You know, when you've had that long day and just can't wait to get into bed, you got a presentation, the internet cuts out, you go on a date, and it's awful, no matter what happens, you can always go home to your Casper with Snow Technology to keep you cool no matter what.

• 13:02Matt Farah?

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• 13:48Matt Farah?

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• 14:31Matt Farah?

  and up to twenty-five percent on everything else. Thank you to Casper for sponsoring today's episode. Support also coming in today from Delete Me. Love Delete Me. They're looking out for me twenty-four seven, three sixty-five. In the age of AI, we are especially vulnerable to scammers using our personal data that's floating around on the internet. They're using it against you. You ever Googled yourself and found your home address, your phone number, the name of a family member? It can be unsettling, but the good news is Delete Me can help. Delete Me was named the top pick for data removal services by Wirecutter.

• 15:10Matt Farah?

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• 15:54Matt Farah?

  It seems counterintuitive to give this information to the site that's trying to get this information off the net, but you've gotta tell them what to look for. That's just sort of how it goes. They then go looking and you don't hear from them for a little bit, and they come back with an overwhelming of instances of, uh, your information being out there on these data broker websites. You instruct them to then delete the data and they keep going. Every month sending you a new report, the idea being the number of instances gets smaller and smaller and smaller. And because you still love on the internet, it never gets to zero, but I have noticed a drastic reduction in fake text messages, calls and, uh, email spam.

• 16:36Matt Farah?

  And you can take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me now at a special discount for our listeners. You can get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindelete.me.com/tire and use promo code tire at checkout. The only way to get 20% off is to go to www.joindelete.me.com/tire and enter code tire at checkout. That's www.joindelete.me.com/tire, code tire. I was, I was very nervous because I was reading stories that the city of LA was gonna adopt flock leading up to the Olympics.

• 17:19Matt Farah?

  And if you really want a fucking story, go listen to the dollop about the 1980 LA Olympics, which many will be like, it was the first ever profitable Olympics, which is true. It's also the Olympics. That basically invented modern policing. Choppers, SWAT teams. The militarization of policing went into super overdrive specifically for the Olympics.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 17:45Matt Farah?

  Under the sort of threat of the, you know, of what could happen at the Olympics. This is 1979, terrorism, Iran, Iran hostage crisis, shit like that. There's hijackings on airplanes, you know.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:00Matt Farah?

  They're, they're, the fear of what would happen. Drove a serious militarization of the LAPD. That did obviously, like the Patriot Act and everything else, didn't turn off. Once the event went over and, and so now they were talking about bringing in flock for the fucking Olympics. And I'm like, oh my fucking God, you know.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Well, and they've also, I mean, they've installed flock in a bunch of other municipalities.

• 18:24Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  And the pushback from the public was, I don't know, it was a small but like energetic murmur like six months ago. A couple of journalists were covering it and now people are like knocking cameras down and throwing them in, you know, garbage and, you know, in lakes and stuff like that. I mean, you know, there's a lot of pushback about it, but LA, I think dissolved their relationship with flock because they realized that like the air, it was too air prone and expensive.

• 18:50Matt Farah?

  Yeah, like four, like, you know, four days after, five days after the story on the drive came out. I, I don't know if it was, if it was causation direct or correlation or causation, but like couldn't have helped.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  Well, this is what happened with red light cameras, you know, like the red light camera.

• 19:05Matt Farah?

  Redflex, remember Redflex?

• 19:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, in LA, they were bad because they were issuing too many false tickets. And it was costing the city more money to subscribe to and maintain the system than they were getting in revenue. It was like the worst business decision.

• 19:18Matt Farah?

  It was like, it was a bad decision morally to have a profit motive in getting these tickets as opposed to a safety motive.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:27Matt Farah?

  But that's not ultimately, that's not ultimately what stopped them.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  Of course not, yeah.

• 19:31Matt Farah?

  What stopped them was like, oh, actually, it's also bad for capital.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, the business case doesn't work.

• 19:36Matt Farah?

  Yeah. So, you know, LA, at least as of a few days ago, there was a story that they dissolved their relationship with Flock and like, fuck it, thank God. Like, if you hear about this coming to your city, you need to fight this. It's like, this is some seriously dystopian shit.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  It's a really surprising, like, it seems like such an elementary error, you know, because there's plenty of plates out there that have little numbers in between or like different shapes or, you know, logos in the middle. Like, other states allow that stuff, historic vehicles. And for this, you know, allegedly like high-def video system to miss this essential detail that is a part of like any license plate manufacturing and registration, I can't believe that they didn't think about this.

• 20:18Matt Farah?

  Yeah. And even if you, the cops on the ground, like, when all of this rolls down to the cops on the ground, like, none of them, like, saw the plate on the car and were like, hang on, it's got little numbers on it. And the one on Flock doesn't have the little numbers. Like, no, but there's like no critical thinking involved in anywhere in the process either. Like, it's a complete turnover of the decision-making to AI.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 20:50Matt Farah?

  Without any critical thinking, even though the mistake was incredibly obvious the entire time.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:57Matt Farah?

  Like, that's...

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Or, or, you know, I mean, if they're in the pitch meeting with Flock and they're like, no, no, this is error-proof and so whatever the system says, and they just go, okay, like, we've been told that it, you know, if it's, it says Range Rover in the registration and it says these numbers, like, then it has figured it out. And they learned in real time, luckily, without anyone getting hurt, that it does not know the difference.

• 21:19Matt Farah?

  Well, then there's that fucking body cam video that they got where he said, the cop says to him, you know, you're lucky you were in this town and not Minneapolis, they'd have shot you.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  I think he said they would have approached guns drawn in that county and they didn't here. But like it was still four police cars, all swarming. And maybe stolen plates are a much bigger, you know, maybe, maybe they have learned over time that someone who steals a plate and drives around is more dangerous. It seems like a large response.

• 21:47Matt Farah?

  Yeah, or these cops have just have nothing to do in this small town. And this is the only, the only, uh, non-white collar crime.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  But like, you know, misidentification is obviously a very big problem with in, in our legal system, um, in policing system. And so now you're handing that over, you know, to AI. What could go wrong?

• 22:07Matt Farah?

  Nothing, obviously, unless you happen to be driving a car in America.

• 22:13Matt Farah?

  Uh, okay. So speaking of not driving cars in America.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:16Matt Farah?

  The Ferrari eight, four, nine spider, Testarossa, Testarossa Spider.

• 22:24Matt Farah?

  Uh, the editors at Road and Track, my review is up on the site now. You happen to read it? It's, uh, complimentary to the driving dynamics, not so much the styling. Um, so you drove the SF 90 actually five years ago as well. And neither of us loved it. It, it, it felt heavy. It felt clunky and for a car that made it almost a thousand horsepower is nine eighty or something. It, uh, nine sixty, nine, more than nine and less than a thousand, a lot. It, it, it wasn't particularly exciting by the standard of having that much power. It was still, you know.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  It was exhilarating, but it was not, uh, as exciting or kind of, I think what we wanted from a supercar. And then it was made obsolete by the two nine six.

• 23:10Matt Farah?

  Correct. Uh, which looked all, you know, if you really didn't have a keen eye, you'd think those were the same car. I mean, uh, it's if, for people that don't really know cars, they're, they're effectively the same car.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:24Matt Farah?

  Um, and, and acceleration tests, even without the all wheel drive and even without, even down two cylinders, the, the two nine six is really just as fast as the SF 90. I mean, you're talking about a tenth or two here and there. And for hundreds of thousands of dollars in the real world, that's not a difference.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  And from seat of your pants or your passenger's pants, a few tenths is probably not noticeable. Like both will feel extremely fast.

• 23:49Matt Farah?

  And the steering was better in the two nine six. So it didn't have the, you know, the weight on the front and all that kind of stuff. So. My theory is that this upset, the depreciation of the SF90 and the fact that people didn't really want it and their own car made it obsolete, drove them into sort of a panic where they said, "You have to make it look different. I don't care. You need mid-cycle refresh. This isn't going to be a little refresh. It has to look way different from the 296. I don't care what it looks like, as long as it doesn't look like that somewhere there was a meeting

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:29Matt Farah?

  where some angry man goes, "I don't care. I don't care what it look like. As long as it don't look like a 296."

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Right, it has to be distinct.

• 24:36Matt Farah?

  Change it different. And it must have 1,000 horsepower. That's it. It's got to have over 1,000 to justify the hypercarness now. And I don't give a shit what it looks like, as long as it doesn't look anything like the one that's cheaper. Go. And this is what you end up with. But also do it on a budget. Because they clearly have, and one engineer on the sly was like, "We only had the budgets." Like, seriously, the guy said me that. So if you look at a photo of this car, the greenhouse of the car, the glass, the roof structure, the top structure, the engine cover,

• 25:15Matt Farah?

  are pretty much the same as the SF90, particularly the greenhouse and the interior. They are the same. And they said this to me, that it's the same. But then all the other body panels are changed, right? And so it looks like, remember like 10 years ago when the Ferrari like Special Projects Division was like doing that shit for Eric Clapton and these people? And they would turn a 430 into a 512 boxer or whatever the fuck? But they had the 430's greenhouse still. And so, you know, you kind of saw what they were going for, but it looked sort of wonky. That's this. This is that exact thing.

• 25:57Matt Farah?

  They've got the lower body elements from the old 512M race car, which is like a Group C car.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:05Matt Farah?

  It was like somewhere between a Porsche 917 and 962, Ferrari's take on that shape of a car. Wedgie, you know, a curvy top, but sort of slab-sided.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:17Matt Farah?

  And these sort of, these double flip tails. That's where they get the double flip tail from on this car? And a real square, but it looks like they've put a square body on top of a round car. Guys, one more quick break for Avance. You know about Avance. We've been talking about them before. They help enthusiasts save money and enjoy their car passion even more because members get sweet discounts on the stuff you're gonna buy anyway, plus a beautiful quarterly print magazine and access to members events all over the country. I have known Adam and Avance for many years. I've been featured in their magazine. I've attended their parties and I've used their discounts.

• 27:00Matt Farah?

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• 27:41Matt Farah?

  just with that one purchase. Plus, members get 10% off at FCP Euro, which have both OEM and aftermarket parts for European cars, 5% off Hagerty Insurance, which could add up to a very big number depending on how many cars you got, and more. Avance memberships are only $99 a year and they send you a $70 gift card to Griot's Garage when you sign up. The membership literally pays for itself. So, go to avants.com/tst and then use code TST for a further 10% off your membership. Again, one more time,

• 28:19Matt Farah?

  avance, A-V-A-N-T-S dot com slash TST and code TST for 10% off. And thank you to Avance for sponsoring today's episode. Very much so. Like if you painted it black, it would look like a, if you, if you drove around in a matte black. 849, it would look like you were driving a camoed up prototype car.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, I mean, this is something that I didn't like. I think when they released the first press photos of the white one, like, and I know that I'm not a car designer and so whatever caveat, but like it looked like they had the round body language of the 296 and the SF90, which I really like, but then when like the intakes on the side are very angular.

• 29:01Matt Farah?

  They're square.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Polygonal, polygonal, sure. Like they're, yeah, they're squared off polygons and I just, for me, it's like this weird collision of two different ideas and it makes, it makes those new parts look even more tacked on.

• 29:14Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Because it looks like such a difference.

• 29:16Matt Farah?

  In the case of the, the, the square bits on the nose, they almost are tacked on because the shape of the SF90 face is still there, just with these protruding corner bits coming out of it. It's really, really strange and, and even in the best colors, even in the most complimentary angles, even in person, in three dimensions, this is a strange looking car.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  The canard things on the front, it's kind of like the, the Roma, which I think is a beautiful car, except for having that little like, you know, protruding singular duck lip.

• 29:52Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  And this has it now like in four places, you know, on these corners.

• 29:57Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Um, and actually six if you count the back.

• 30:00Matt Farah?

  Okay. So, uh, you know, if you, you look at it and look, if people, there's going to be some people that like how it looks like, okay, fine. Like, don't let me tell you how to think, but I think it looks weird. Driving it, different story. It's a big wide, you know, supercar. It's, it's heavy. It's going to be like 3,800. It might, it could even possibly be 4,000 pounds. Like the, the weight, they were very coy about it, you know, obviously, and they're talking about dry weight and like, we don't really know what it weighs. It could be 4,000 pounds. It's so goddamn fast, obviously. And you, you know, the V8 sounds good, but not as good as it used to sound.

• 30:45Matt Farah?

  It's got the particulate filters in it. And so now I had a very funny conversation with the Ferrari engineers, which I'm sure probably shouldn't have been, it's not, I don't know, maybe they shouldn't have had it. But we were talking, they were like, yeah, we fully expect everyone to put an exhaust on it. And I was like, well, what brands do you like? And they were like, oh, this one sounds like, I mean, I have never had as in-depth a conversation with a supercar engineer about which exhaust you should plan to put on your car.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  They're like, we test this one, or we like this one.

• 31:17Matt Farah?

  Yeah, they basically, they ultimately said they have a partnership with a Kropovich. And so, you know, okay.

• 31:25Matt Farah?

  But, so, you know, it sounds nice, but it's not that loud.

• 31:30Matt Farah?

  It rides beautifully, although for all the money they're charging for this thing, on some bumps, you can still tell it's not a carbon tub. There's a little bit of a jiggle.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 31:43Matt Farah?

  And it's like $700,000.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  And it's 2026.

• 31:46Matt Farah?

  2026. And like, they have not got, you just can't, it's still a metal structure. Like, here's the thing.

• 31:55Matt Farah?

  This car is, this is an amazing car. You know, the electric, the hybrid system is much better integrated than before. If you put it into sport, or they call it performance mode, which is where the motor, the gas engine just stays on, which is where you want to drive it. You don't want to drive this thing enough. They've got a real start button now. But when you press it, it turns the car into on with a silent EV mode. You then have to press a haptic button to actually fire the engine.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  That's pretty funny. And that's missing the theater.

• 32:25Matt Farah?

  That is the most backhanded get, like, press the haptic button to start the hybrid, and what are you doing? What are you doing, guys? Like, so, like, when I turned in my article.

• 32:38Matt Farah?

  They toned it way fucking down. And Dan was like, there's a sour tone to it that I don't think is necessary. And I was like, but, but all of this stuff, all on an individual level, all of these choices were so poor. Like, and, and like, I just don't, there, there should be a sour tone to this. This car is so expensive. This car is crazy money.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  And it's missed some of these things that like, you know, a lot of us in the public, I think, has complained about.

• 33:10Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  You know, and some of it, like particulate filter, it's a European rule, fine, they have to do that. But like, do they have to do this startup or why can't, you know, can't you just power the car on? Hit the haptic for the mode you want and then push the, because that's the feeder button. It's the exciting button, you know, that is like, let's turn on the, like, F16's Top Gear or Top Gun, all that stuff, it's like flick, flick, flick, do, do, do, on, on, on, and then you get, and like, that's the part that's, you know, it's the crescendo.

• 33:38Matt Farah?

  I, this is the Manx, it's the plunger in the Manx that it makes, you know. So, does it drive great? Yeah, it drives great. Does it go faster than you could possibly go? Yes, it, it does. It has beautiful steering, it has the, the blend of the brakes between the hybrid and the, and the caliper is really nice. You can't really tell, even though it's brake by wire.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  That's good. Does it do anything positively, uh, different than other hypercars or hybrids or not that you've driven?

• 34:09Matt Farah?

  Does it real, like, does it really stand out above a Revuelto?

• 34:13Speaker 01

  750 or Revuelto or Artura or, um?

• 34:18Matt Farah?

  It, so, I mean, huh, that's, that's a tough question and like, no, not really. No, it's at, it's on that level. I mean, I, I think of, of Val, uh, Valhalla is much more extreme.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 34:34Matt Farah?

  A Artura, um, is more chill. A, uh, you know, a ZR1X for a third of the price, pretty close. Um, although the Ferrari with the two motors at the front end is how you get that magical steering. Whereas I, I would not personally want an XZR, I'd want a regular ZR1 after having just done 800 miles in a Grand Sport. And I did a couple of months ago, a lot of miles in the E-Ray. You want a rear wheel drive Corvette. The steering is not helped with that front axle system. That's for, it's, that front axle system is for drag racing.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:16Matt Farah?

  And snow.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:17Matt Farah?

  It's not for handling. So it marginal returns there for worse steering feel.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  I think it's probably, you know, on, to take Ferrari aside for a minute, or actually all the companies. I think it's probably getting harder and harder to make your cars distinctive because especially like, let's say $700,000. Crazy money, obviously, but you can't step on your million dollar products toes too much, you know? So if Aston made a mid-engine car tomorrow, they would go, well, it can't be more exciting or faster than Valhalla. It has to be 700 grand worth of car. And like in the, you know, particulate rules and these different like emissions rules. And so it's just like the box kind of tightens, kind of like F1, where there's just fewer and fewer ways to solve this problem.

• 35:57Matt Farah?

  Sure.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  And so what we have to look forward to or look for to separate the cars is like styling. You know, the cockpit design buttons, like all the things you interact with. So I think it's probably, you know, to push back on, on pun, like we probably have to focus on those things more. Cause it's kind of like the straws we have left.

• 36:16Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, if the end, if it was gorgeous and the engine sounded incredible. I wouldn't dare say, you know, there's a Corvette. You know, there's, there's a Corvette that's, that, that, cause I just drove the Grand Sport and I, I'm not sure if I should review it. But let me just say that I drove the Grand Sport three days after, for four days after driving the Ferrari. Mountain roads and I went, oh boy. Because this, the Corvette is so user friendly. Structurally the same.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 36:58Matt Farah?

  The same.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:59Matt Farah?

  It's the same. You know, it doesn't, it's not like we're talking about a carbon tub car versus a Corvette. The Ferrari and the Corvette are built the same.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:08Matt Farah?

  And, and you know, the Corvette had 535 horsepower, the Ferrari, but I was going the same speed down the road because in 2026, it's your, your, the level of your morality, your talent, and who else is on the road that's going to determine that, not whether you have 1,000 horsepower or 500. You cannot go faster down the road most of the time in one of these cars than the other.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  But hasn't that been the case for along like, you know, C7, Z06 or Grand Sport, you know, or if we go back a little further, like versus the 612 or something, you know, outright speed, probably basically the same. Corvette interior layout may have been more usable and probably more reliable in some ways, but I think, you know, was the art and the, and the design of the interior of the Ferrari, it's more about what it's saying. But like, was what you were looking at, some styling we preferred, you know, and now it's not with all the haptic stuff.

• 38:00Matt Farah?

  With all the haptics, with the styling, the Ferrari materials were, the, the materials in the interior were, were very good. They were beautiful. The carbon was nice. The, the leather was nice. Was it several levels above, I mean, what I, I was in a very loaded up Corvette. It had the nicest interior you could get. They, these are, these were pretty close.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 38:25Matt Farah?

  The leather was nice. The stitching was straight. The, the, the metal was, the aluminum was real metal. There's touchscreens. Like, you know, I, I can no longer say that the Ferrari's cluster is fully digital. And oh, by the way, you can't have fucking GPS up and see a tech.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:45Matt Farah?

  This is, this is, so this is crazy. This is, and I, I said this to them. I said this to them to their face. I go, guys, why do I not have a tachometer with, when I have GPS? There's only one screen. It's right in front of you. And you have to flip, and I, and, and, and he goes, He goes, well, uh, the car play it must be like this. And I go, okay, well, your screen is shaped like this and you have this room on the side. I go, how about on the left? Where it shows the speed, why not just a small, one of those small, you know, like the 1980s hockey stick tack?

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, or what Mustang uses now.

• 39:21Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I said, I said, come on, I said, why I'm on this beautiful island. I don't know where I'm going. So I want to have my GPS up, but I want to shift the car manually. I go, you, you, it's a screen. You have infinite choices. In, in a choice of anything, you've done nothing. And I, and I said, this is the same from 296, there was none. And I, I go, why don't you do the talk? And he goes, oh.

• 39:48Matt Farah?

  Over there. It's like, dude, nobody has said to put a tack in the fucking blank part of the screen. Like, this is crazy.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Need to hire someone who's.

• 39:56Matt Farah?

  It's like some of these decisions, I go, you're Ferrari? Nobody thought of this? No one thought with these paddle shifters that I'd like to know what my RPMs are? That's insanity. Imagine the meeting.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  They must just be like, they must be taking 99 cents of every dollar and just giving it to Formula One. Hoping that Lewis and, you know, Charles can like do something. Because stuff like that. Well, you know. All these, like Corvette's getting so close, spending. Maybe not spending less money, but like they charge a lot less money for the car.

• 40:27Matt Farah?

  A lot less money, certainly.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Profit on the Ferraris is 80% of the car's cost, or like the resources are going elsewhere. Because that seems like such a simple thing.

• 40:35Matt Farah?

  You can get a Ferrari, a Corvette with a naturally aspirated, flat plane crank V8 right now. Ferrari owned that. They threw it away and GM's like, okay, we'll do that. You, you can get a Corvette. That is essentially like, uh, like, uh, uh, like a, like a, uh, uh, not a 488, like a 488 Pista. You know, like a turbocharged. You know, non-hybrid monster for $200,000, like. If, if the Ferrari were a stunner. And I went, fuck Corvette, you know, GM, why is the, you know, the Corvette is, uh, the C7 Corvette isn't as pretty as a Ferrari F12?

• 41:19Matt Farah?

  Because curves are really expensive, you know what I mean? But like. I can't say definitively that an 849 is prettier than a Corvette ZR1. In fact, I think it's less pretty.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:30Matt Farah?

  It's my opinion, but like if you put them next to each other and you went, which one is the Italian styled Ferrari, you know, and which one is the

• 41:39Speaker 01

  If you took the badge off, I mean, that would be, that would be a tough experiment to conduct, but it would be a good experiment. Um, I, I do wonder what the general public thinks and this, and actually I would also say like the 12 year old public because who are we just talking to?

• 41:53Matt Farah?

  Well, I just judged, I just judged a car show, Sergio's car show for charity and it was for, um, Jesus, I'm going to get the, it was an autism charity and I'm very sorry. I can't remember which one. I'd love to plug them, but it was for

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Riff Raff Autism, whatever. Yeah.

• 42:13Matt Farah?

  It was, it was, it was for, for an autism charity. So I was a judge judging like the supercar class. Johnny judged the nineties car class and Tommy Kendall judged another, another class. Well, we were assigned, you know, helpers. Um, I actually don't know if they were autistic helpers or just the kids of people who were there. They seemed pretty normal to me. Anyway, what did the kids like? The ZR1. The kids didn't really care that much about the Italian stuff. They were into the ZR1 had big wings and shit.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  What year Italian? So, right. So that

• 42:49Matt Farah?

  New stuff.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Oh, I know. We were talking to Jonny Smith because we're doing a podcast, which we probably plugged at the beginning of this show with Richard Porter and Jonny Smith, August 18th at the Irvine Improv. Um, but his kids are like 12 and he said, oh, we went to this car show and they were mostly interested in the new hypercars, which he was like, you know, like we are kind of bored of. So I wonder if young people just see the badge and go Ferrari and then whatever's around it, like, does it program their brain to like that? Or do they look at it, you know, and go, you know, I don't know. I'm curious what young people think, how it compares to styling like McLaren or work Corvette or Lamborghini or whatever.

• 43:28Matt Farah?

  I, when I was young, I'm not sure I ever thought about any supercar as, well, that's ugly.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Right. Exactly. You're just excited about it.

• 43:38Matt Farah?

  That it was a supercar was enough for me. I don't think I had the judgment to go, you know, that's not very good looking. It it comes later.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:46Matt Farah?

  And when I was driving the Ferrari around Tenerife, little kids were excited by it. I mean, other, you know, people, they don't see a lot of exotic cars there. So the presence of any Ferrari would excite them. Um, some of them cars are still there because I get fucking D. People don't understand. I get, I that that that's not me. I post, I was like the first person to post a picture of this thing on Tenerife and like, there were six identical silver cars. They've been there for like a month. But people are like, I saw you driving yesterday. Like, no, dude.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Like, I left weeks ago.

• 44:18Matt Farah?

  I'm glad I took a photo of all six of them next to each other. I just respond with that now. I just go, dude, there's, there's, it's not me. So, anyway. Um, it's, it's a car that drives beautifully, but not head and shoulders above, you know, some of the other supercars I've driven. It's got great steering. It's got great brakes. It's incredibly capable, beautiful ride, not much trunk. And I don't love how it looks.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 44:48Matt Farah?

  Um, and it's real expensive.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:50Matt Farah?

  And the name is strange. There's nothing about it that's Testarossa. There's no Easter eggs to link it to any other Testarossa in history.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 44:59Matt Farah?

  There's no mechanical connections.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  They should have hired the guy at Jeep or the person at Jeep who does all the Easter eggs.

• 45:03Matt Farah?

  It just seems, it seemed like it was like, uh, the name you know. You know, they just had it laying around. And the number scheme is wrong too. Like, it's normally, you know, uh, displacement followed by cylinder count. The 328 was a 3.2 liter 8.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 45:19Matt Farah?

  The, uh, the 5, 512 was a 5 liter 12, right? Now, this is a 4 liter V8. Or it gets 3.99. So they could have done 398 or 408, both of which fit the scheme and have not been used. Instead, they did 849, which is they moved the cylinder count to the front. And the 49 refers to 499 cc's, which is the displacement of each cylinder.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  But who doesn't know that?

• 45:48Matt Farah?

  Which is, but it's kind of dumb because like a 2.0 liter 4 cylinder, a 4.0 liter V8, like a lot, all the most common engines now are that displacement per cylinder. It's not like they've come up with some unique displacement per cylinder and are bragging about their unique cylinder size. It's the same size cylinder almost everybody else uses in their car.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  They just, do you think their target was, we need a big number? And then we will then figure out how to get there.

• 46:16Matt Farah?

  We need a big number, we need a familiar name.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:19Matt Farah?

  It's got to have 1,000 horsepower and I don't give a shit how it looks as long as it doesn't look like a 296.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  And it can't have SF in the name.

• 46:25Matt Farah?

  Move your water bottle. I feel like it's in that, in front of that camera.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 46:28Matt Farah?

  Right?

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Uh, and it can't have SF in the name because they have that already. So it has to be, you know, start with an 8.

• 46:34Matt Farah?

  Yeah. So it's like, you know, what's around?

• 46:37Speaker 01

  It has to be bigger than 812.

• 46:38Matt Farah?

  And what, yeah. And what can we make up, right? It's just, it's, but they have 296 already. And 408 or 398 are as bigger than 296.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:48Matt Farah?

  Like you, I, it, there's so, it's confusing. All this is so confusing and makes me like really frustrated because like, it wipes away the mystique of Ferrari, like.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  I feel like, I feel like sometime, if they keep progressing on that, at sometime in their near future, we will have a Ferrari 1000. Mark my words.

• 47:10Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  Calling it 2026.

• 47:12Matt Farah?

  Yeah, even though four digits is weird. You need, three digits is much better than four.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Why? Because aesthetically?

• 47:19Matt Farah?

  Yeah, aesthetically and when you say it, when you say it out loud, think about the number of syllables to say.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 47:25Matt Farah?

  680, 500, 412. It's got a, it's got a cadence versus 1,022, you know, it's a little more. It's like falling down the stairs.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. What is the Escalade? There's the Escalade.

• 47:38Matt Farah?

  There was a 600.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  Hennessy 1000 and then they have the 600, right?

• 47:42Matt Farah?

  Well, you know, 1,000 does sound good.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  1K.

• 47:46Matt Farah?

  Following the word Hennessy. I get, for some reason, that's got to flow.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  Well, because that's telling you the horsepower.

• 47:51Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  But the Ferrari 1K, that actually wouldn't be bad.

• 47:55Matt Farah?

  That's what they probably could have gotten away with that for like Luce.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  They hire me. I'll be there for five minutes and I'll sell you this idea. You'll sell them the tack idea. Can't review them again, alright?

• 48:06Matt Farah?

  So if you if you want to read the somewhat sanitized but but but well crafted version of what I just said there, it's up on Road and Track.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  It's lemonade. It's still a bit sour and tart, but they added some sugar. Is that?

• 48:19Matt Farah?

  They toned down my abject horror at some of the decisions that were made. I I had I had conversations with people who defended some of these decisions over there and I just went wide eyed, said to their face, "Oh my god." You you you had the conversation and this is where you ended up. Like wow. Sorry, like I did, like. Um, right. Uh, people seem to like the GT3 convertible.

• 48:54Matt Farah?

  Everyone who went on the on the on the launch and I mean, I I'm not surprised that people like the GT3 convertible. I figured they would, but like, people really seem into it.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  It just seems like math. I mean, if you like the GT3 and if you're a convertible person, they go, "Well, here's your here's your Trudukan." And they go, "Okay." And I think, maybe Chris said this, like, you know, people that are pushing back on it, like a GT3 should be a coupe. It's like, alright, they just don't get it. Like, they have that. They offer that, you know?

• 49:24Matt Farah?

  Yeah, uh, I think it's, I think it comes down to what does the word GT3, you know, mean?

• 49:31Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 49:31Matt Farah?

  I mean, I think it, I think it means, historically, it meant optimized for the track, I think. And now.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Well, it used to mean race car. I mean, it's a racing class.

• 49:41Matt Farah?

  Sure, but I mean historically within within Porsche's nomenclature since 2006 or whatever, for.

• 49:50Matt Farah?

  And now it just means like the fizzy engaging one, really.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's their, well, I was gonna say it's not their RS. They have that too. It's, I was thinking RS like Audi, you know, that's, that's what it is for them. Yeah, it just tell, it tells you. More successfully than Ferrari's naming scheme. It tells you exactly what the car will be about and probably what is underneath the hood.

• 50:14Matt Farah?

  Sure.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:16Matt Farah?

  It means naturally aspirated, you know, now.

• 50:20Matt Farah?

  More than anything, you know. That's, that's, those are right now, right now, these are the last of the naturally aspirated engines.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:27Matt Farah?

  I mean, there will be a GT2 probably coming soon that's turbo, but for now, that's really what it means. But like, I'm stoked to drive it. I, I, I didn't get, we just get drop a rain? Drop a rain on?

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 50:42Matt Farah?

  Oh, look at that. Uh oh. It's not supposed to rain right now. Well, that would certainly be interesting, wouldn't it?

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Just need a roof.

• 50:52Matt Farah?

  We just need a roof.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  Or a tarp.

• 50:54Matt Farah?

  We have a pergola. I don't know.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Is that what it's called?

• 50:57Matt Farah?

  This is a pergola.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 50:58Matt Farah?

  Yeah. I hope, well, if we have to, if we have to move, we'll, we'll stop down and move, but I'd rather not. I kind of like it out here.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Hopefully we'll be okay.

• 51:07Matt Farah?

  Uh, but, oh, okay. Uh, moving on. The Taycan has gone back to the shop.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  I heard your side of that phone call and I was very curious what's going on. Cause I truly never got the details. I just heard you've been like, it's, needs to come in again. And I was like, what?

• 51:24Matt Farah?

  So, it was at my house and the alarm just started going off. And Hannah, you know, Hannah like unlocked it and then, you know, it went, it stopped. She goes back inside and like two minutes later, she like, it's, it's going off again.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  Did she unlock it and then re-lock it or she just unlocked it?

• 51:45Matt Farah?

  No, well, but, but it automatically re-locks after like, you know, 60 seconds of idle time or something, right? And then the alarm goes off again. And she gets in it and starts it and turns off, the alarm stops and she drives it around and. I go, okay, uh, you know, take it to the shop, like do, do, do, uh, do, do the soft reset thing where you do the double lock and you walk away. That doesn't solve it. Okay, I called our buddy at Porsche and he says, you know, disable interior monitoring. So it uses the driver monitoring camera to, as a security camera. So turn that off. Well, that worked for like a little while, but like then it went off again.

• 52:28Matt Farah?

  I said, okay, bring it down to West Side, put it in the fucking basement. Turn off interior monitoring, like leave, leave all the windows down and just like, you know, just fucking leave it there. And if the alarm goes off all night, the alarm goes off all night, you know? So we take, we take it to Porsche, tell them what's going on. And for two days, they go, we can't replicate the issue. And I'm like, motherfucker!

• 52:50Speaker 01

  All the time.

• 52:51Matt Farah?

  And I go, okay, so before we brought it in, we had disabled interior monitoring, which comes back on. You have to elect to turn it off every time you turn the car off.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  You love a car that does that, especially like ADAS.

• 53:02Matt Farah?

  Normally I just leave it on. I don't, I don't turn it off. When you turn the, when you shut the car down, a window pops up on the screen that says, would you like to disable interior monitoring? And I just don't touch it. Just go, you know? But we've been doing it. And so I said, make sure interior monitoring is on and then leave it. And they called me like an hour, like it did it.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 53:22Matt Farah?

  And I'm, and I'm like, okay, great. And they said, apparently there was a TSB for this several years ago for some series of VIN numbers, of which your car is one, where the alarm module could go bad and we just replace it. And I go, they go, it'll be done tomorrow. We've got the part on order. So, so the alarm module itself did actually fail and they're replacing it. So there, there was actually something wrong.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, I mean, that's good. I'm glad they were able to replicate it. I mean, that's good, like detective work.

• 53:53Matt Farah?

  Yes.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Um, similarly, my car's flashers.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  Go off when the car's been locked for like 12 minutes. So right now I just park in my garage with the car unlocked.

• 54:04Matt Farah?

  Wait, wait.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  It's like, it's like a silent alarm. It's like, it seems like the alarm should be beeping, which it has an alarm. But it's just like the hazards are going. And for a while, some of the forums, of course, were like, oh, it's your, your hood pop module is going bad. You can replace it or you can just unplug it. So I unplugged it and it did it, it did do it for like six months and now it's doing it again.

• 54:28Matt Farah?

  The, the internet said that I should, we should check the, I should check the contacts on my frunk. That they can get, you know, gunked up and it thinks, the alarm goes off because it thinks the frunk's not closed. Just shit like that. You know, we tried a bunch of stuff, but it, you know, it turns out it there was actually wasn't, was a broken thing. Um, but you know what's not broken is the Manx. The Manx came back last week and dude, this is, they're, they have really done some fine work.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Oh, you drove it right?

• 54:57Matt Farah?

  I drove it a bunch. Yeah, I drove it a bunch. So, you know, it has, it's got the front mount now, which is a really, really clean install.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  It is.

• 55:04Matt Farah?

  It's very cool. Um, and it's got the insulated, you know, cooling lines that go underneath the, the undercuts of the body.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  It's like a 512 BB.

• 55:13Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  Fuel.

• 55:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah. So you can't, you can't see them. And so it, there's a lot more coolant. You know, there's like almost twice as much coolant in the system now. There's also the front and the rear radiators are CSF radiators now. And they have this high-performance fuel pump, uh, excuse me, water pump. Um, and so it, it, dude, I drove it all over high speed. It did not go over like 195.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 55:42Matt Farah?

  Which is great. Um, and the, they've retuned the throttle, like it probably feels like it's got 20 more horsepower. The throttle response is, is better. The idle is smoother. Um, the, you know, normally on a cold start, funny for a radial engine, on a cold start, it fires on like half a crank. Like you just engage the starter and it fires. On a hot start, it's like, it's like four or five cranks. Now it's all the same. Now it's all one crank. So the hot, whatever was causing the hot start to take longer, it's now, it's now not doing that anymore.

• 56:23Matt Farah?

  It's, yeah, they've, they've, they've, they set up the shocks a little bit. They, they turned some of the knobs on the shocks. It feels really nice. It's, it's fucking proper. It's, it's running great. There's no smoke on startup.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  It didn't get quicker or was that two services ago? Didn't they do something that you said, you said it came back and it's running like stronger?

• 56:45Matt Farah?

  They did, yes. They did something, I don't know what, on the second tune and now it feels like it's, although it could be because what they were saying with the decompression valves, they were getting gunked up and when they get gunked up, they bleed compression and so, I may have been losing little bits of horsepower over time. These new valves are not supposed to get as gunked up. They're made of a different material and blah, blah, blah. But it, it feels like it's got 20 more horsepower for sure. Uh, but it sounds different too. The engine actually sounds, sounds a little different. And is there a dogfight happening in the neighbor's yard?

• 57:23Matt Farah?

  Didn't that sound like that?

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, uh, um, as an EMT at a rave said in a video, is that good screaming or bad screaming?

• 57:31Matt Farah?

  It's, I'm sure there's like a group dog walker or something going around the neighborhood, but, um, it's, dude, it's, it's such a, it's really, they're, they're, they're, I mean, I'm, one could say that it wasn't quite done when I bought it, but I knew what I was getting wasn't a totally finished product and I'm happy they have kept up with their, their word of getting, you know, getting me the improvements and, and...

• 57:57Speaker 01

  You're part of the R and D program.

• 57:58Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 57:59Speaker 01

  It's a good thing you live near them.

• 58:00Matt Farah?

  They also, they put 300 miles on it while they had it. So I gave it to them with a thousand miles and it came back with 1,300. And I was like, whoa, and they're like, we wanted to make sure it worked. So they're like,

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Fair?

• 58:10Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  I mean, if your complaint was it gets hot on, at high, at freeway speeds over long periods of time, like that's how you gotta test it.

• 58:18Matt Farah?

  I'm not sure there's a car on the planet where the odometer matters less than this fucking thing. Who cares? Whatever, like, if, uh, you know.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  It's depreciating with every mile. Probably not.

• 58:29Matt Farah?

  I have absolutely no care about what the odometer says, so I'm just happy. Where do you drive it? It's fucking cool.

• 58:37Speaker 01

  They're fun.

• 58:37Matt Farah?

  Really, really, it's nicely set up. Now, they've done a great job.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 58:41Matt Farah?

  So, I'm excited to really have a proper go in it. Should we go to the people? Is it that time?

• 58:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:49Matt Farah?

  Okay, let's go to the people. 51 minutes. If you want to ask questions for our podcast, even when we're in Greenwich, Connecticut, patreon.com/thesmokingtirepodcast. It's where you ask questions and watch the show live, even if it's over my laptop. It's where you get the show early. It's where you get extra show. It's where you get the show without ads. And it's where you get access to all kinds of cool collabs and things that we are doing. Got a new tactile turn pen collab coming at you soon. I just got the prototype.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  Sweet. I want to see. You spoke about this.

• 59:21Matt Farah?

  Very cool. Yeah, I'm into this one. And the prototype's waiting at the studio. And what else do we have coming up?

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Well, we have the Grotto.

• 59:31Matt Farah?

  The Grotto Blazers, dude.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  Hooded Blazers.

• 59:33Matt Farah?

  I got, this one was a slow burn on day one, but the orders have come in and I am really, my blazer went to the dry cleaners before I left because I wore it like four days in a row. That shit is mad comfortable. Mine is so soft.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  Yours is slightly stretchier than mine because it's wool, not like a linen blend.

• 59:53Matt Farah?

  Sorry about that.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  But yeah, I've got a lot of compliments from people I wasn't expecting to compliment fashion.

• 59:58Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Like, which was, you know, friends of mine are like, "That looks really awesome." Like, but you dress, you know, worse than me most of the time.

• 1:00:05Matt Farah?

  I really am into.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  It was surprising.

• 1:00:08Matt Farah?

  Really am into my blazer.

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I really like it. My wife really likes it and that makes me happy.

• 1:00:13Matt Farah?

  Right? All right. What do you got, buddy?

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  Duffle Shuffler Retirement Club says, "Used Audi e-tron GTs are going for 50% of their original sticker at just two to three years old, each. Do you think that's their floor for the time being, or will they hit zero in two to four years?" I mean, we never know what the floor is of any EV. And really, I think, I think the descent, the rate of descent probably depends more on reliability than this time.

• 1:00:38Matt Farah?

  Yeah. I mean, as if it has a, if it works, the floor isn't zero.

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:45Matt Farah?

  Right?

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  Running car.

• 1:00:46Matt Farah?

  If it works, the floor on something like this is probably like 20 grand. You know, it's, it's still a, whatever, 800 horsepower, 700 horsepower, high-performance German car. So although the eventual floor could be zero, if, if the entire car like bricks, if it works, the floor is not zero.

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. If, if oceans don't have a floor, I'm sorry, if the floor of an ocean is not zero, then the floor of these is higher.

• 1:01:13Matt Farah?

  So like,

• 1:01:16Matt Farah?

  the way I would think about it is if it depreciated that much the first year,

• 1:01:22Matt Farah?

  it can't depreciate that much for you. If it lost half its value in year one.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Could still lose half its current value.

• 1:01:28Matt Farah?

  If it lost half its value again, you've done much better than the first guy.

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  That is true.

• 1:01:33Matt Farah?

  Like, if you don't think about it in terms of percentages and think about it in terms of raw dollars.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:39Matt Farah?

  It depreciated 20,000 a year for him and maybe only 10,000 a year for you. So that's how I would think about that.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  That's pretty funny. That's like, there's like a lesson in grade school, like if I, if I want to walk to the, the wall and with each step I take, the step is half the distance of the previous one. Will I ever get there?

• 1:01:58Matt Farah?

  No.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  No, you will never get there. So it's just like, it's slowing down, you know? It went down 80 grand, then 40, then 20, then yeah.

• 1:02:04Matt Farah?

  There's a ton of value in those cars. And, and I considered buying one instead of the Taycan, but the SEO for our, for my, for a content creator, the SEO was terrible. So on those, nobody.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  You know what would be interesting? Like, if the reliability of the electric Audis or, you know, other companies that are known for having complicated cars, the reliability of their EVs is much better than the ICE versions, like the EVs, I wonder if they will depreciate at a slower rate overall, over like 15 years than the gas ones, right?

• 1:02:36Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Like a 2012, you know, Mercedes CL600 or something like that. Amazing, but everyone just knows they're really complicated and they fall apart.

• 1:02:44Matt Farah?

  Interesting.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  So I wonder if something that's got an electric powertrain.

• 1:02:47Matt Farah?

  If the battery health holds up.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. A lone listless says, what's the better quirky car, a Mitsubishi Pajero or a Suzuki Jimny? I think the Jimny because it's friendlier looking. I think if I'm going quirky to me, then it's like weird, it's tiny and it, you know, the Pajero is like trying to look a little bit like a off-road rally thing.

• 1:03:08Matt Farah?

  Well, because it is.

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:03:09Matt Farah?

  It's a mulligation.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it looks like, it looks more aggressive, so I don't think, I wouldn't call it as quirky.

• 1:03:13Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 1:03:18Matt Farah?

  Funny thing is like, I don't think either of them are that quote, I think the Pajero is probably quirkier because it's like got box flares and stuff on it and, and it could just as easily not have those things.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  True.

• 1:03:32Matt Farah?

  They made a regular Pajero that looked a lot like a regular Jimny. I think that, I think because there is a regular Pajero that looks kind of like a regular Jimny, the Evo is quirkier.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  Hmm, okay. Zach's nitrous boo balls, "Am I the only one who misses Panther platform cars on our roads? Take me back to the era when every cop car was a Crown Vic." Do you miss? I don't really miss seeing town cars.

• 1:03:57Matt Farah?

  I, I, I don't, I miss the Panther platform? I mean, I, I still see plenty of them around. I, I saw a fucking LAPD black and white, not two weeks ago, that was a fucking Crown Vic, still, active, like, I, I, I see them.

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:16Matt Farah?

  They ain't, they ain't all that. I mean, come on, they're tough.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  I think they're living, their, their retirement career right now is race cars and stunt cars and for dirtbags like myself or in high school as reliable transportation is a great life.

• 1:04:30Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Plain white Carrera tees, "Is getting a PPI as a seller worth it to show potential buyers that it's a good car or would the potential buyers think that, that is suspicious and assume the seller is in with the guy who did the PPI?"

• 1:04:45Matt Farah?

  Somewhere in between, somewhere in between. You, you, it's, it's, it's a, it's a nice to have, but, but I as a buyer, wouldn't put much credence into it because, because of what you just said. I mean, it's not, it's not that it's, it's not that you hired the guy to write a, a fake PPI, it's that, the point is that it's independent and so if, if the, the guy selling the car is, is tight with the guy doing the PPI, then it is just an appearance of, of being improper.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:05:20Matt Farah?

  But like... The mechanic works for the person who pays them. So if the seller is paying them, he's gonna tell the seller a little more what they want to hear versus if he works for a buyer, he's gonna tell a buyer what they need to hear sometimes.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  I wonder if you, like if I was selling a car and I was, if I was like a independent dealership that also did the PPI, and then you bought the car and I had misrepresented it somehow on the PPI, would there be legal recourse?

• 1:05:50Matt Farah?

  No.

• 1:05:50Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:05:51Matt Farah?

  Yeah, you can, you can lie about anything to anybody on a car and there's no legal recourse. As a dealer, if you're a dealer, you are, you could be sued for misrepresentation. As an individual, fuck no.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:04Matt Farah?

  You can get away with that.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  So as a dealership, yeah.

• 1:06:06Matt Farah?

  Yeah, as a dealership, you could be sued for misrepresentation. Yes, you could. But like,

• 1:06:13Matt Farah?

  if you're a seller and you want to really have a good faith showing as a seller, what you should do is, is take the car to the person who normally services it and say, "Go through it and give it anything it needs." Whatever that might be. And then you go, when you list it, you go, you don't say, "Here's a PPI." You say, "I took it in for service. I said, 'Do whatever it needs.' Here's what they did. We are welcome to have any PPIs." And then make the car available for the prospective buyer to do a PPI. That's, make it easy for the buyer to get a PPI is better than getting a PPI as a seller.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Got it. Sean Burnham, "I'm considering selling my car for a motorcycle, but I live in Canada near Toronto and I'm worried about shortening my already short driving season, which currently is seven months out of the year. We've ridden motorcycles before. What do we think?"

• 1:07:11Matt Farah?

  I...

• 1:07:14Matt Farah?

  Man, the idea of motorcycles where it's in a place that's cold and raining is not appealing to me at all.

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  No, our friend Mike Musto used to commute to work from like Jersey to Manhattan in the winter on a motorcycle with like heated suit. Heated, like you plug the suit in when you get on the bike and I, I'm very impressed he did that and I was like, man, alright, you know, Mike, that's pretty tough. But I don't want to do it. It doesn't sound fun. It sounds like you're just doing it because it's, it's a tool. It's easier to park or it's quicker to get into town. But like, are you going to enjoy that riding? Or you just, what do you do for those seven months out of the year? You know, just take public transportation? I don't know. I would keep the car.

• 1:07:54Matt Farah?

  I would, I would keep.

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  You can have fun driving in the winter time.

• 1:07:57Matt Farah?

  You're in Canada.

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, go snow driving, go, go do snow racing.

• 1:08:01Matt Farah?

  You need a heater.

• 1:08:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, Carbs Legal Bakery. Have we lost the automotive industry's North Star? Mercedes Benz.

• 1:08:10Matt Farah?

  The V8 engine? Yes, we have.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Mercedes Benz was once seen as the brand that was at the forefront of it all. Uh, they were years ahead of everything and had all the new things first. I feel this is not the case anymore and not sure if automakers are still viewed that way. It says parentheses, some might say it's Tesla, but I think that, I think they used to say that.

• 1:08:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  Like, do we have, who's our tech leader the way Mercedes used to be?

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  I think Mercedes.

• 1:08:46Matt Farah?

  It's Chinese shit, dude. It's all, it's like, it's like whatever the fucking Camry is in China is so much more tech than an S-Class. Like, it's that. It's not, it's nothing that anyone in America is driving, you know?

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:04Matt Farah?

  It's, they, they have, you know, effectively, you know, some, some level three autonomy over there for privately owned cars. That's beyond what we've got.

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  They have, you know, hydraulic suspension at lower prices. They've got the crazy electric speed. I mean, you know, they're out there like competing for Nürburgring times and whatnot. Yeah, that's probably the right answer.

• 1:09:28Matt Farah?

  Or, I mean, maybe it would be like.

• 1:09:34Matt Farah?

  The thing is, like, a lot of the, a lot of the, the, the tech advances don't necessarily translate into like, features. Like, it, it used to be like Mercedes would like, add a feature to the car that other people don't have. Now, it's not really like that. There were sort of at the limit of features, and the stuff that gets added is like, background-y type, type things. Like, that, like a, like a, you know, like a hybrid powertrain or something is not, is not something that like, I, I am using actively.

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  You don't interact with it, right?

• 1:10:07Matt Farah?

  Right. You know, so, Mercedes still does have a, a lot of technology. Um, but the leader...

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  I think they used to, like, when they had night vision, you know, early on, or I mean, they had ABS early on, but then night vision, or sophisticated traction control, or, or whatever, it was probably because they were thinking up these ideas, finding partners that could build them. And now, I think we're in an era where the people that have built those things, in China, just went, "What if we just make the car ourselves?" Or they partner with BYD, who lives out, who works down the street. So you're getting that, you know, quote, "early tech," you know, from these other, uh, other sources.

• 1:10:47Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  John Othman Davis, "I recently picked up an O2 CLK 430 Cabrio. It's fun for bombing around..."

• 1:10:57Matt Farah?

  Manual swap.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  Chesco? I don't know where that is. Uh, Chesco?

• 1:11:01Matt Farah?

  Where?

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  Chesco? Chesco, I don't know.

• 1:11:03Matt Farah?

  Maybe.

• 1:11:04Speaker 01

  "Fun for heading to the shore, but the columns, the, uh, the steering column not tilting is very annoying. Um, are there any solutions out there for that?"

• 1:11:11Matt Farah?

  I don't believe so.

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  I don't. That's, I wouldn't open that bag of worms.

• 1:11:15Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I've, I've never seen, I, I wouldn't mess with a steering shaft of a fucking Mercedes, dude.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  Nope. Just, dude, just deal with it, adjust your seat. I mean, it's a Cabrio, like, alright, just put your hands on the bottom and steer like it's a Rolls Royce.

• 1:11:29Matt Farah?

  No, you're better off trying to change the seat than changing the steering wheel.

• 1:11:33Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:11:34Matt Farah?

  But this is, you know, that's a problem with a lot of cars. A lot of, a lot of old cars, that's a, that's a one-way kind of adjustment, if, if anything.

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  Talk about a, a solution for a market of one, though. It's like, I want a tilting column for a 24-year-old car.

• 1:11:47Matt Farah?

  If we're gonna do that, it's gonna be for the S2000.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:11:51Matt Farah?

  No ifs, ands, or fucking buts.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:11:53Matt Farah?

  The CLK market is not big enough, but I know a few tall people that would like to drive an S2000.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  Very true. Edward Shifter Hands wants to add another

• 1:12:02Matt Farah?

  That's funny.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. They're looking to add another vehicle, not a daily driver, something to alternate with my 23 Camaro SS1LE manual. Any good garage suggests, oh, this is too broad, oh, $30,000 budget. But no other constraints.

• 1:12:16Matt Farah?

  Wait, the Camaro SS is the daily?

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:20Matt Farah?

  And so you want, he wants something?

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  They want something interesting for 30 grand to complement their Camaro. But I think, I don't think we have enough information.

• 1:12:29Matt Farah?

  That's not a lot of information. I mean, if a Camaro is big and heavy and brutish and it drives like wearing a hoodie, the opposite of that for 30K would be like a BMW E30,

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  Cabrio.

• 1:12:41Matt Farah?

  325i Cabrio.

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:44Matt Farah?

  With like nice suspension and a super sprint exhaust.

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  I think you want something slow and interesting.

• 1:12:50Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:50Matt Farah?

  Fun to like rev out, but like light, good visibility.

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:54Matt Farah?

  I think an E, a great E30, six cylinder.

• 1:12:58Speaker 01

  Or a truck, like an off-road truck.

• 1:13:00Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  But I think, I think that's as much we can give them because we don't know where they live.

• 1:13:05Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  What are some, oh, this is not the bees. What are some common financial misconceptions or bad decisions we see non enthusiasts make when it comes to cars? Oh, man.

• 1:13:17Matt Farah?

  Boy, are there a great many.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:21Matt Farah?

  That, I mean, just all the upside down loans.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  That.

• 1:13:24Matt Farah?

  I mean, you know, you're, you're the ego driving the need to always have a brand new car when the bank account very much cannot afford that.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  There's a good following, I think his name is like Riding with Youssef and he's like a used luxury car dealer in Miami. But his content is like people calling in trying to rotate out of their underwater Hellcat 23 into a 25.

• 1:13:47Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  And, and he puts these videos out to inform people who might be thinking about this, like here's how to not get underwater. Wow, there's ash on my computer. How to not get underwater on a loan and it's, if you're, if you haven't bought a car yet, watch one of these videos and you realize how quickly and badly people get fucked.

• 1:14:05Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  But, and they put themselves, and they, and you hear them like on the phone, learning how finance works and it's really sad.

• 1:14:12Matt Farah?

  Dude, they're learning about their own credit from like a fucking used car dealer in Miami.

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:17Matt Farah?

  Like that's the, that's not where you want to be learning about your credit.

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  Well, usually the I mean speculate, a lot of used car dealerships prey on the people who don't know about their credit.

• 1:14:26Matt Farah?

  For sure.

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  Credit to him for, no pun intended, like helping inform them, but yeah, that's the biggest financial misconception is that getting into a newer car is necessary, a smart financial decision, that stretching for a car is a good idea in any way. And I think a big one is not considering all the cost for a car.

• 1:14:45Matt Farah?

  For sure.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  Insurance, like factoring that in, and the terms of your loan, like how long is it? How much are you actually going to pay for this thing over eight years?

• 1:14:54Matt Farah?

  Yeah, or, you know, buying a enthusiast car, if you're not, you know, that, the question is that we see non enthusiasts make, but it's really more casual enthusiasts that dive in with both feet without really looking at the, is, am I buying, you know? Bring a trailer and cars and bids are great sites, but, and they, and they attract a lot of first time buyers of auction and enthusiast cars. And as someone who sells cars on these platforms, there's a whole lot of people that will click to bid and then

• 1:15:38Matt Farah?

  not really realize what they've done. I mean, they've bought a car. That the money for that car is going, so they'll buy a car and then they'll get very sketched out about the idea of a wire transfer. Like what exactly did you think was going to happen when you had to pay for this car? Like the money has to change hands, like, you know what I mean? And like, it's so, so I think, you know, also a little, it's, it's become so easy to make an account and just click bid. And, and then not realize what you've actually done. If, or, you know, or it's, it's also conversely, it's become pretty easy to abuse those platforms.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:16:23Matt Farah?

  To, if you're a malicious actor.

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:25Matt Farah?

  So.

• 1:16:26Speaker 01

  There's no, there's no SEC for that area.

• 1:16:30Matt Farah?

  There's no SEC by the way.

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  Also, there's no SEC in general.

• 1:16:33Matt Farah?

  You could've stopped the sentence, just right there.

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  Front wheel drive NSX, what is the most diverse car fanbase? They recently got into the GMT800 world on Facebook.

• 1:16:43Matt Farah?

  Probably.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  And they said, "Boy, howdy, goes all the way from wannabe, blue collar teens, all the way to very hardcore."

• 1:16:50Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, starting from a perspective of pickup trucks and SUV like that, that makes a lot of sense. I think maybe, maybe Wranglers. I mean, think about the Jeep Wrangler, who's driving those, who's modifying them, and how many ways you can do that.

• 1:17:07Speaker 01

  And how expensive they can get.

• 1:17:08Matt Farah?

  Yeah, how expen- but also how cheap.

• 1:17:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:17:11Matt Farah?

  You know, like, I mean, we, there's a Jeep Wrangler up my road that has one of those fucking, like, Terradyne kits on it or whatever, where it looks like some apocalypse thing.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:22Matt Farah?

  With like those giant loud tires. And then also, I go bird hunting in the deep south, off a trailer that's towed by like a 25-year-old, four-cylinder shitpile Wrangler, driven by a 300-pound redneck with three dogs.

• 1:17:37Speaker 01

  And then, one of my friends, who's like a set designer and like, most amazing costumes and just extroverted person, she's been driving a sun yellow Wrangler with no doors for like 10 years. It's all sun cooked, it's got like flower seat covers and stuff, like total beach mobile.

• 1:17:55Matt Farah?

  Cher from Clueless.

• 1:17:56Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:57Matt Farah?

  And then, my fucking gym teacher, shout out to Mr. C. My gym teacher from high school, fucking full-time, I was there every year.

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  And I think when, when, I don't know if it still exists, but GayWheels.com was a thing, and I think they had the Wrangler listed as like...

• 1:18:11Matt Farah?

  Was that Donnie? Donnie was Gay Wheels, right? Donnie Nordlick, wasn't Donnie Nordlick GayWheels.com?

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 1:18:17Matt Farah?

  I think he was, he wrote for them at least.

• 1:18:19Speaker 01

  I think the Wrangler was listed like as high up.

• 1:18:21Matt Farah?

  Shout out to Donnie, we love Donnie.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  It's popular among all demographics, I would say, yeah.

• 1:18:24Matt Farah?

  You could all, you could find a Wrangler for almost every single demographic group possible.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:31Matt Farah?

  I think that's, I think that's even better than GMT800.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  I think that's a great answer.

• 1:18:35Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  Two Ghiblis, one Cupra, that's really funny. That's great.

• 1:18:42Matt Farah?

  It should be two two Cooper's one Ghibli.

• 1:18:45Speaker 01

  Two. Well, no, it's two girls, one cup.

• 1:18:48Matt Farah?

  Oh, I guess that's right.

• 1:18:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. As Porsche is now a public company, I mean, they have been for a little bit. Are we worried that due to their recent financial problems, they will be susceptible to trying to eke out short term profit? You know?

• 1:19:02Matt Farah?

  I mean, I think, I think probably not. I think they're, I mean, look, I think the GT3 Cabrio is, is a, is a profit project. Because they didn't have, they, it's a parts bin car and that doesn't make it a bad car. It doesn't make it underdeveloped. But it's certainly cheaper to make than a speedster.

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:20Matt Farah?

  It's a, it's a way to squeeze a lot of profit out of parts they were already making.

• 1:19:26Speaker 01

  And isn't the GT4 also that? Like they took the GT3 engine, they put it in the, you know, Cayman?

• 1:19:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah. So, I mean, I don't think they're going to start building a bunch of garbage. And I think Porsche's shareholders understand why the, they lost all the profit last year. I mean, they made, they made a big bet that turned out to be bad, but it's not like their business model is fundamentally unsound.

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  And I would also say that, I mean, they might do a few more special additions than they might have planned. But I don't think that will undo all the damage done by losing, you know, these huge EV market. Like the number of cars they were selling for with the Macan and all that stuff, like that's a lot to make up. And I don't think you could just do it with like a couple of special nine elevens, even, even doing that per year.

• 1:20:18Matt Farah?

  Yeah. They're talking about tooling up whole factories and then like shutting it down.

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  We're talking about tens of thousands of cars every year and they lost those sales. That's a lot. Song for the dead pedal. That's pretty cool. Audi brought out all the stops for their heritage collection at Goodwood Festival of Speed. Which manufacturer do we think could definitively win at Goodwood with their heritage collection? Like who would we want to see, you know, in our mind would be the coolest manufacturer to bring out everything in their barn?

• 1:20:53Matt Farah?

  I mean Ferrari is, you know.

• 1:20:55Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:20:56Matt Farah?

  Ferrari is the obvious answer.

• 1:21:01Matt Farah?

  But.

• 1:21:04Matt Farah?

  Uh, but it wouldn't make me as happy as if it was like maybe Aston Martin.

• 1:21:13Matt Farah?

  But.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  I think, uh, I think Ford. I mean, this is similar to the question we've had before, which is like we only have like celebrate one. They just, they've got the mid-engine racers from the sixties and now they've got cool muscle cars and then they've got crazy off-road stuff that.

• 1:21:27Matt Farah?

  And they've got race cars they didn't build, but they supplied engines for.

• 1:21:31Speaker 01

  Oh, sure.

• 1:21:32Matt Farah?

  Cars and.

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:33Matt Farah?

  C cars and shit like that.

• 1:21:34Speaker 01

  Cars, you know, expanded, yeah.

• 1:21:36Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that's probably the better answer is probably Ford. Or actually, I mean, actually, maybe even, maybe even GM, but I think probably Ford over GM.

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 1:21:44Matt Farah?

  Cause if you expand GM to all the brands, I mean, you could really pick and choose some bangers.

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just think seeing variety. It's like McLaren would only have mid-engine cars and F1 cars.

• 1:21:55Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  So, um. Tappin Z's nuts. What's the ugliest car you would own only because the experience is too damn good?

• 1:22:07Speaker 01

  Their examples are like first gen Panamera, uh, Chevy HHR SS, absolutely not.

• 1:22:12Matt Farah?

  Oh, man, a car that's where the driving experience overpowers its ugliness.

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  Well, you like the old Aston Vantage. That's just me talking shit.

• 1:22:23Matt Farah?

  The one from the eighties, the one from the seventies? You don't like those?

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  It looks like a Mustang. It's, they're growing on me slowly, but.

• 1:22:29Matt Farah?

  Of course it looks like a Mustang, but like a more expensive Mustang.

• 1:22:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. A less reliable, more expensive Mustang. Um.

• 1:22:37Matt Farah?

  I don't, it's hard for me, the car that's ugly but drives really good. There's not a lot of them.

• 1:22:46Speaker 01

  C eight, uh, I feel like we answered maybe C eight Corvette. I think we answered a similar question a week ago, I'm realizing.

• 1:22:51Matt Farah?

  Oh.

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  C eight Corvette.

• 1:22:53Matt Farah?

  The narrow body, the narrow body one, yeah.

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  I don't like it, but it's one of the best driving cars.

• 1:22:58Matt Farah?

  Sure. I mean, the Ferrari eight four, I wouldn't, I would not want, I think I, I wouldn't want to own that. What's fucking? I mean, most people are not that into the Ferrari Mondi Alti. Most people call that an ugly car. I don't think it's that ugly and they drive a lot like three forty eights. Um, and they have four seats and that's kind of, that's kind of interesting.

• 1:23:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's kind of cool.

• 1:23:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:28Matt Farah?

  I mean, a lot of people think the Aston Martin Lagonda is ugly and I would, I would fuck with one of those even though it probably doesn't drive very good.

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  Um, all will drive biased. How does east coast car culture differ from west coast car culture?

• 1:23:43Matt Farah?

  I mean, other than it's being a shorter season, the internet has really very much evened the playing field. So on the east coast, it's, it's, you don't, I mean, you don't have like low riders and shit out here. Um, at least not in Greenwich. You, you might in, in the Bronx somewhere or in Queens, you might have some low riders, but, but not out here. Out here, what we have is the same kind of thing you have in like Calabasas where it's like car spotter culture. So it's like the kids that run up and down Greenwich Avenue and wait for people in hypercars and supercars to drive by. You know, the, the, the kids drive the same shit they drive everywhere. I mean, it's, it's, there's not,

• 1:24:27Matt Farah?

  some secret here, although as I was saying last night, as we were driving back from dinner, you know, being in, in Connecticut reminds me that like there are places where your daily driver, like where handling and brakes and stuff matter. Cause there's lots of curves and hills on, on every single drive you take, unlike, uh, where we are.

• 1:24:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:24:49Matt Farah?

  No, I had nothing else.

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  We got some fun ones.

• 1:24:51Matt Farah?

  I had nothing else.

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  Um, a second Jay-Z has hit the supra. Uh, is carbon fiber trim on every single interior of 4,500 pound cars? Uh, the 2020s version of baby boomer chrome? That's pretty interesting.

• 1:25:08Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, it might not age well.

• 1:25:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:11Matt Farah?

  Might not age well.

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  It's not a, the Venn diagram is not a circle, but it's close because it's like, it's trying to highlight, uh, you know, chrome was luxury, right? It was like the more chrome you see, the more expensive this was. And now it's like the more carbon fiber. Race, race sportiness, even if you're in a huge vehicle.

• 1:25:27Matt Farah?

  Yes, it is your, it is your, it's your Pavlovian trigger for sportiness.

• 1:25:33Speaker 01

  For sporty technology.

• 1:25:35Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. That's a good thought.

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  It's a good thought. Um.

• 1:25:40Matt Farah?

  My, my new Vespa has fake carbon fiber on it.

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  It does?

• 1:25:43Matt Farah?

  On the, yeah, because you know, it's all the, all, instead of chrome, it's blacked out on mine. But the center stripe down the front fascia is fa- is fake carbon fiber.

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  That's funny. eBay carbon. Um, Zach looks like the singer from Turnstile. We determined I don't. Um, can you name the five cars that would give a driver the opportunity to learn and understand driving feel and dynamics?

• 1:26:05Matt Farah?

  Sure. Miata. 911.

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  Integra Type R.

• 1:26:11Matt Farah?

  Integra Type R.

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  The old one.

• 1:26:14Matt Farah?

  Mitsubishi Evo eight slash nine.

• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:18Matt Farah?

  And.

• 1:26:20Speaker 01

  Ranger Raptor.

• 1:26:22Matt Farah?

  Ah, that could be a good one.

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  Feel the lean.

• 1:26:24Matt Farah?

  Do we have a, do we don't have a mid-engine car in there, do we?

• 1:26:27Speaker 01

  Oh, we don't.

• 1:26:29Matt Farah?

  I would, I would probably put a mid-engine, a mid-engine car in there before I'd put a Ranger Raptor in there. I'd probably put like.

• 1:26:36Speaker 01

  Cayman.

• 1:26:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, some kind of a, some kind of Cayman.

• 1:26:42Matt Farah?

  Yeah, so you've got, you've got, yeah, Miata.

• 1:26:47Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that's fine.

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Okay.

• 1:26:52Speaker 01

  Uh, blasting AMG spot. Wow. Wow. They have kids on the way, no kidding with that name. Hope, can we help them create a list of cars to test drive? New CPO lease doesn't matter. Seventy-five grand. Or twelve thousand a year if it's on a lease. They're leaning sedan but open to SUV. Reliable. Wait, sorry.

• 1:27:16Speaker 01

  Looking for gas or hybrid, comfortable, not boring, good back seats, adaptive cruise for LA traffic.

• 1:27:22Matt Farah?

  Volvo V60R.

• 1:27:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:25Matt Farah?

  Or Volvo, or, yeah, Volvo XC60.

• 1:27:30Matt Farah?

  With the, with the good interior.

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:32Matt Farah?

  Or a V.

• 1:27:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that was like seventy-two, right?

• 1:27:35Matt Farah?

  Seventy-two thousand.

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  You love that car.

• 1:27:36Matt Farah?

  That thing was dope.

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  I would say Acura ZDX also. Great adaptive cruise. Very comfortable seats.

• 1:27:43Matt Farah?

  Yeah, you can get, those, those are not expensive.

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  Definitely less than seventy-five grand. It says budget stretches to seventy-five.

• 1:27:48Matt Farah?

  I mean, if, if you are open to electric vehicles, the Mach-E Rally.

• 1:27:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:27:54Matt Farah?

  Is a, is a good time and also good for families.

• 1:27:57Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:28:00Matt Farah?

  Seventy-five grand will get you. A fucking sweet used Panamera Turbo. Like, big backseat, you know, or, or a fast Cayenne, if you wanted something like that.

• 1:28:11Speaker 01

  That'd be very fun. It's such a waste in LA traffic, but it's a very fun idea. I mean.

• 1:28:15Matt Farah?

  I'm looking, dude, I'm, well, I'm looking at, you know, Cayenne hybrids, you know, off, off lease, twenty-some thousand miles, seventy-five grand.

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:28:23Matt Farah?

  That's good for LA. Speaking of which. My, my, I had talked to my dad, because our trailer is actually coming in a few weeks, really is coming. And I was like. You know, when you're done with your Cayenne hybrid. Can I buy it off you and and maybe and use it to tow with because he's really got not a lot of miles on this thing? And it's paint to sample and it's fucking bitchin'. It does not have a tow package. So I've done some research and I've found out that you can actually install a factory tow package later. But you have to either get a new rear bumper that has a cutout for the tow thing.

• 1:29:05Matt Farah?

  Or if you are comfortable having a body shop, just cut it. You know, just cut it and and sort of try to trim it. You can do that.

• 1:29:13Speaker 01

  Have Sean do it.

• 1:29:15Matt Farah?

  I think we probably could have a tow hitch just cut out.

• 1:29:18Speaker 01

  Or you take the bumper off, install the tow hitch. And then have the Joey Seeley off-road bar put on the back. Oh, but it might leave too much exposed.

• 1:29:28Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, we have we'll have to do some math on it, but I it's it's about eighteen hundred bucks in parts from Porsche. And you have to you have to use a P-Wiz, which is a Porsche dealer computer to code the anti-sway and the the the the air suspension shit for towing. But but it I I Mitch, our buddy Mitch McKee from M Engineering, I talked to someone at Porsche, like it can be done.

• 1:29:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:29:56Matt Farah?

  So that's a that's a that's possibly on the table.

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  I want to watch you negotiate with Roger.

• 1:30:05Speaker 01

  I'm just making sure there's nothing like wrong. Great.

• 1:30:08Matt Farah?

  Uh, what, we're just checking to make sure our live stream was still live streaming? Seems it is. What else?

• 1:30:15Speaker 01

  Um, all right, two more. Um, your poorest patron. Regarding radial engines, what conventional engine would we compare the radial to in terms of power delivery and feel? And if you could upsize it to a five or seven cylinder? What other cars would benefit from a radial? Well, it would get really big.

• 1:30:34Matt Farah?

  It would really big.

• 1:30:36Speaker 01

  It wouldn't fit in anything.

• 1:30:38Matt Farah?

  Yeah, um, it, it doesn't, you, there isn't room to just add, so you'd have to physically make the room for it. And so there's a guy who did like a seven or nine cylinder one and he turned it flat. And it was like, it was almost like a truck, a truck, pickup truck almost with a cab with like no bed. And the engine horizontal, you know, on the back and there was some kind of thing that turned the drive 90 degrees to turn the wheels.

• 1:31:09Speaker 01

  Vibrate? I just imagining all these weird forces.

• 1:31:11Matt Farah?

  I saw a video of it like on fucking Instagram. I, you know, I don't, it seemed pretty hardcore. Um, I'm not sure it was an improvement over what I've actually got. Yeah, the power band, I mean, it, it does sound weird. It sounds, um, somewhere between like a Harley or like a Ducati.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does.

• 1:31:31Matt Farah?

  It's, it's Ducati-ish at idle. And then it very much sounds like a propeller aircraft at, at higher RPM. But the power band is, is linear. I mean, it, it doesn't, it, it drives like a naturally aspirated, you know, four cylinder engine or something.

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it has more torque. I feel like it's V6-ish.

• 1:31:53Matt Farah?

  Flat four, you know, ish kind of, uh, it's torquey.

• 1:31:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:31:58Matt Farah?

  You do not have to wind it to redline. Um, and if you put your foot down, it's fucking fast.

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  It's quick enough for sure.

• 1:32:05Matt Farah?

  But it drives like a regular car. It just sounds, sounds kind of weird.

• 1:32:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:10Matt Farah?

  Sounds like a plane.

• 1:32:11Speaker 01

  Like, I don't know what, like, car that would benefit from a radial. It's like, you just have to like what the engine is. It, it's not a performance advantage, a packaging advantage. It's none of those things.

• 1:32:20Matt Farah?

  No, it's not better for like, really anything.

• 1:32:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the benefit of, well, you don't even need that. Like, once you get to huge, you know, the giant airplane engines that made 2,000 horsepower. You know, they were enormous, but I don't, but you can make 2,000 horsepower now with a small block of turbos.

• 1:32:34Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  So you don't need that.

• 1:32:36Matt Farah?

  It's, um, it's weird for the sake of being weird and steampunk. It's not, it's not that it's better. It's just that it's fucking weird to be fun. Yeah. The fact that it works at all is amazing.

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  It kind of is, especially with like this weird oil, you know, evacuation valve thing. Straight five dog scenario, has a question about PPIs. I bought my car from a mechanic and assumed he had taken care of it. Bad assumption, learned lesson. Has it been our experience that a licensed mechanic will not reveal issues and get one over on an unsuspecting customer? I think like any, like anything with humans, there's good and bad. So there's mechanics, you see it a lot on Craigslist or like shopping for cars, like mechanic's special.

• 1:33:21Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:21Speaker 01

  They bought it, they repaired something to flip it, or they're selling their own car like, what's the guy's name, Matt Quick, you know, he's selling that Mercedes, it's his. So if they're a good person, maybe they, you know, know how to fix the car, they flipped it, their labor's free, great. But there also are probably people that use that calling card as an advertisement and they know you can't return the car and you're like, go fuck yourself.

• 1:33:42Matt Farah?

  If it's a mechanic who really cares about their reputation, if they've got a name in some sort of an enthusiast community and you're buying a car from them and they really care about and understand the value of their reputation long-term, then maybe it means something. If it's just some dude on the corner who's a mechanic, then there is no guarantee that car has been taken care of at all, you know, or that they're not gonna fuck you.

• 1:34:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say look up the reviews of their business before you drive the car. That might tell you a lot. All right, last one, supercar question, perfect to bookend our Ferrari topic.

• 1:34:25Speaker 01

  Put it in the ditch Martha is the name.

• 1:34:29Speaker 01

  Really funny.

• 1:34:29Matt Farah?

  Oh, leave my poor ex-girlfriends alone.

• 1:34:31Speaker 01

  Ah, that's so funny.

• 1:34:33Matt Farah?

  That's funny.

• 1:34:34Speaker 01

  All right, in today's supercar world, everything has a plethora of nannies, which is the main reason people look for more raw experience in older cars.

• 1:34:40Matt Farah?

  849, you have to turn off ADAS every time you start the car.

• 1:34:43Speaker 01

  It's gotta be, it's a European requirement, right?

• 1:34:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:46Speaker 01

  With cars like the Temerario making people feel overconfident in their own skills, at what point do the nannies make the experience feel less special and that they aren't, and then therefore rendering the car not worth today's prices?

• 1:35:02Matt Farah?

  When the nannies get really good, you aren't supposed to know that they're there. And you know what I mean? Like, like.

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:11Matt Farah?

  The funniest thing is when you see people get really surprised at what happens when they turn the traction control off in their car. They don't really realize that they were driving, you know, down 100 horsepower or, or, um, or with this very, very clever system that was keeping them from doing whatever was gonna happen with, you know, without.

• 1:35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:37Matt Farah?

  When we drive cars on, in the canyons, we don't touch the traction control at all.

• 1:35:42Speaker 01

  Not really. Sport plus mode, whatever.

• 1:35:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, but that's, but that's more for throttle settings and gearbox settings than to have a more permissive traction control system on public roads. On a racetrack, if it's a different story where you go, I'm going flat and it's clearly not delivering and, you know, and, and, and you're not getting oversteer or understeer at all. Uh, if you're on a racetrack and you're not getting oversteer, understeer at all, your traction control is probably on and probably very good.

• 1:36:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:12Matt Farah?

  It, it, it's only starts to take away from the experience for me when you're going very, very fast on racetracks. When you're on the road, I, I'd leave everything on almost every time.

• 1:36:25Speaker 01

  And I think the more sophisticated it gets, then the more desirable it is because it gets you closer and closer to driving perfection, meaning like making your driving perfect. When, when Mercedes came out with the AMG GT-R Pro and they had the 10-mode like traction selector switch, that was a, a cool breakthrough everybody really liked because you could seriously just turn the knob. How much help do you want to get around this track faster, faster, to train you to drive better, better? And so I think like, we welcome that progression because it gets us closer to, you know, the perfect lap or whatever.

• 1:36:58Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  Um, without being like, without, uh, totally disturbing your driving.

• 1:37:03Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 1:37:04Speaker 01

  Whereas it used to maybe 10 years ago.

• 1:37:06Matt Farah?

  Yeah, and some of these systems make you look really good. I mean, if you've got the Ferrari system or the McLaren system, um, you know, you can do some pretty solid slides with that thing in like the middle setting.

• 1:37:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:37:18Matt Farah?

  And it'll unwind nicely and it, and it won't be scary and like, those are pretty cool. Like there's, there's a whole world in between on and off.

• 1:37:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:28Matt Farah?

  That is designed for you to play in.

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  Right. It helps you play safely and kind of, it's an education.

• 1:37:34Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  Without like big consequences. You know, if you just go full off and you're 750 and you've never done it, you could spin out.

• 1:37:40Matt Farah?

  But if your, if your goal is to keep the car, not necessarily straight, but, but, but, but gripped, if you want to, you know, then in even a Temerario with the systems on will still be pretty exciting.

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:53Matt Farah?

  You'll still be going very, very fast. Um, so I, I, I wouldn't worry too much about it until you, you know, really get comfortable with the car and you, when you can start to go fast enough where you can actually feel, this isn't what this, you know, I could go past this here and then you could start.

• 1:38:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:14Matt Farah?

  Uh, thank you for joining us live from Greenwich, Connecticut. Maybe we'll do, if Nat has good internet, maybe we'll do his live too. We actually have another show this afternoon that, uh, will probably broadcast the same way through my computer on Patreon, uh, with my very old friend Nat Monday, who is a really interesting entrepreneur from around here who I've known for 25 years. And, uh, he's a fun guy. So that's going to be a fun show this afternoon. Um, and for everyone else, thank you for listening, watching, playing along, submitting your questions. Uh, you can get our Blazer collab with the Grotto, uh, right now. The link is on our Instagram. Um, we're going to be selling those through August 6th or something. I think August 6th, July 6th to August 6th,

• 1:38:57Matt Farah?

  one month. Yeah. Um, they're really cool. They come in US sizes. They're very tailorable. And, um, although they are not cheap, um, they are certainly not fast fashion. They're designed, designed to last a lifetime. And if you were having this garment made just by itself, it would be a thousand bucks. So, um, it's really. Cool, and we're gonna have, um, tickets are up on our Instagram.

• 1:39:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, the page is live.

• 1:39:22Matt Farah?

  For, uh, TST with Smith and Sniff in Los Angeles, technically Irvine, at the Irvine Improv. Um, come on down and hang out.

• 1:39:30Speaker 01

  August 18th, show starts at 8pm, so doors at like 7. Uh, that's gonna be so much fun.

• 1:39:35Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  Those guys are hilarious.

• 1:39:37Matt Farah?

  It's gonna be a really good time, and, uh, that's all I got. We'll see you later today, if not next week, goodbye.