Lotus Emira 2.0 Review; Mark Rober v. Tesla; Electrical Gremlin FOUND

Does the U. S. version of the 2.0-liter turbocharged Lotus Emira really have a better transmission than the one we drove in the UK? How did Matt FINALLY fix the mystery electrical issue plaguing his wife's Nissan? What happened with Mark Rober, the Tesla, and the fake wall? Plus, we answer Patreon questions including: - Why do car companies stop making parts that people need? - Which car is ALL over Montana? - What will Matt do with his Manx buggy? - Our best deal on a used car, ever? - Cayenne hybrids: smart used buy or danger to wallet manifold? - $25k question: 2007 Cayman or 2022 Subaru BRZ? - Road trip breakfast of champions - Which rental cars have the most room? - Do cheap boats exist? - What would a banker buy in 2008? - What's a DIY job that ended up costing you way more than a shop would charge? - Is Porsche Active Ride worth it? - What $100k used car will be worth $150k in 20 years? - And more! Recorded March 17, 2025 Mark and Tesla: https://www.theverge.com/tesla/631308/mark-rober-tesla-youtube-autopilot-lidar-fake-claims Get TWENTY PERCENT off your DeleteMe plan when you go to https://www.joindeleteme.com/TIRE and use promo code TIRE at checkout. Eat smart with Factor. Get started at https://www. FACTORMEALS.com/FACTORPODCAST and use code FACTORPODCAST to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. To listen to DRIVE with Jim Farley, just search for “DRIVE with Jim Farley” in your podcast app. https://www.youtube.com/@Jim. Farley New merch! Grab a shirt or hoodie and support us! https://thesmokingtireshop.com/ Want your question answered? To listen to the episode the day it's recorded? Want to watch the live stream, get ad-free podcasts, or exclusive podcasts? Join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thesmokingtirepodcast Use Off The Record! and ALWAYS fight your tickets! Enter code TST25 for a 10% discount on your first case on the Off The Record app, or go to http://www.offtherecord.com/TST. #cars #comedy #podcast Tweet at us! https://www. Twitter.com/thesmokingtire https://www. Twitter.com/zackklapman Instagram: https://www. Instagram.com/thesmokingtire https://www. Instagram.com/therealzackklapman Click here for the most honest car reviews out there: https://www.youtube.com/thesmokingtire

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. As always, today's episode is brought to you by Off the Record. We love Off the Record here at TST and we have a new code, people, new code. They want to keep the codes moving for every year, so they know who signs up in what year, you feel me? So, go to offtherecord.com/tst or on the app, use code TST25, TST25 at Off the Record. And if you're going, "Hey, what's off the record?" First off, welcome, thanks for finding us. Secondly, they're a service that helps you fight tickets, okay? No matter where you are in the country, they cover 97% of

• 0:41Matt Farah?

  the US. Their partner attorneys will work to fight that ticket, keeping those points off your record for all of the reasons you don't want points on your driving record. Go to offtherecord.com/tst or use code TST25 on the Off the Record app and we'll give you 10% off all legal services booked through Off the Record. I'm telling you guys, not a week goes by that someone doesn't hit me up in the DMs or send an email and say, "Man, Off the Record got me out of a big one," or "Off the Record was super clutch." These are, these are good people, they're working for you. So, go do it, offtherecord.com/tst or code TST25 on the Off the Record app.

• 1:24Matt Farah?

  Okay, on this episode of the program, we talk about some of the issues that the fire damage has caused to the car enthusiast culture in LA. We review the Lotus Emira with the 2-liter AMG motor and the dual-clutch gearbox. I do a little bit on skiing. We answer some great questions and then I give a ridiculous update to the Nissan Pow electrical system, which has spiraled quite out of control, but the end is here. It's a good cruise show today because Zach and I are happy to be with you people. It's the Smoking Tire Podcast.

• 2:03Matt Farah?

  The box of six Pilot fountain pens that I said if I finish this, I'll buy a fountain pen.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 2:09Matt Farah?

  I've decided, I've basically finished it, except for red. But like, what would make me finish a red pen? You know how much red I'd have to write? I've been writing purple checks for like-

• 2:19Speaker 01

  You have to grade so many papers.

• 2:21Matt Farah?

  For like, I think for like, the second half of last year, every bill I paid, which is like hu- it's a bi- it's a business. I write like, I don't know, 40, 50 checks a month, was in a teal fountain pen for like, a quarter.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  And some, I mean, some scanners only use black and blue, right? They only work so, like, did your employees ever have to go, "Hey, I can't, I can't deposit this in a-"

• 2:42Matt Farah?

  Oh, not so, I'm not hand, I'm not hand signing payroll checks, but you, you get paid this through the same system. Uh, no, I'm talking like, but I pay my bills with checks.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 2:49Matt Farah?

  So, but that's, they're not in stone paper, so that's what I was using them for.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Teal, that's funny. A very, uh, third grade girl of you, I feel like, back when everyone's like, "Oh, I got different colored pens," and that was-

• 3:00Matt Farah?

  Just a little fun in your pa- yeah, when you're writing a lawyer a bill for $7,500, that's billing you for phone calls, like, "Let's put a little fun spin into this, how about lilac?"

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Does your checkbook have dolphins on it?

• 3:14Matt Farah?

  I did that, for the first smoking tire checkbook, I did that to fuck with people. I put clowns on it, do you remember that? It had the fucking first smoking tire checkbook-

• 3:23Speaker 01

  I do like when they give you the options, like, "What graphic do you want?" And you go, "You know what?"

• 3:26Matt Farah?

  At one point, I probably paid you some very small amount-

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Probably, yeah.

• 3:29Matt Farah?

  -with a check with fucking clowns on it.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Why not? Why make it, why not have a little fun?

• 3:33Matt Farah?

  And then, and we were with Wells Fargo at the time, and then we went to, uh, sound check live, folks, and then we went from the clowns, uh, I think I went to like, the stage go- it was one with like, a, like a stagecoach scene, because it was Wells Fargo. And then Wells Fargo stole a lot of people's money, and then I was like, "Okay, fuck Wells Fargo." That was literally why I left, I actually-

• 3:57Speaker 01

  I remember you did that very well.

• 3:59Matt Farah?

  You know how hard it is to protest, quit a bank? God, what a fucking bitch that was. Oh, worth it, though.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  I still have a Wells Fargo that I've had since I was 12. And I hate them, but I only have like $400 in it because I don't like, same reason. I moved it to someone else, but they make it so difficult to quit. I go, you know what, you get zero interest from me.

• 4:19Matt Farah?

  You might as well just leave the account, as long as there's no annual fees.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  I'm not, I keep it right above that. I treat them as an ATM. That's all they are to me.

• 4:27Matt Farah?

  Not that there's like, there's, there really aren't any good banks, but like, the one we have now, which doesn't deserve a plug, is better than the one that was openly stealing from people.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Yes, we're creating accounts in their name, or again, again, again.

• 4:42Matt Farah?

  Holy shit. If you want the, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, please go listen to the Dollop Podcast about Wells Fargo. You will laugh while crying, or vice versa.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:54Matt Farah?

  Um, hi. Hi, everybody. I've clearly had half of my large cold brew, haven't I?

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. It's good over there.

• 5:01Matt Farah?

  Mmm.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Funny, you texted me and I biked here. And I had gotten a coffee, but I can only carry one on the bike, so I didn't text you to ask if you wanted anything.

• 5:08Matt Farah?

  That's fair.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  I would have crashed it.

• 5:10Matt Farah?

  So you're saying I'm a more generous friend I offer? No.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  I offer to get you coffee over there all the time. I go there way too frequently.

• 5:16Matt Farah?

  You do offer to get me coffee all the time, yeah. Um, and their iced coffee is good, but goddamn, it's annoying to get good. Every drink takes forever there, so if there's like three people in front of you, you're there for 20 minutes.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  You have to preorder it on the app. It changes your life.

• 5:30Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:31Matt Farah?

  Um, how was your weekend?

• 5:33Speaker 01

  Long, fun, but we did a lot.

• 5:35Matt Farah?

  Really?

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:36Matt Farah?

  Why'd you do so much?

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Uh, we just booked ourselves a lot of stuff with friends, but also I drove that Chevelle to Malibu and like, going to Malibu, you do this frequently. You drive to Malibu in the morning, you get breakfast, you do a canyon drive, you come home. And it's, it's a long adventure.

• 5:51Matt Farah?

  It's now become a lot because PCH is closed.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Exactly. So it was, it was an hour and a half drive down from the old place on the 101 405. So 90 minutes of stop and go in a, in the Chevelle.

• 6:04Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, PCH, and we can talk about the Chevelle, and I want to, because it looks batshit sitting downstairs. Um, but I think we talked about it a couple of weeks ago, but like, um, On top of, on top of all the other tragedies of the fires that we had. PCH still being closed is a real problem. Not just for us recreational people who want to access canyons and Malibu and things like that on our weekend drives, but like, and surfers and stuff. But like, everyone who lives like west of the fire.

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:39Matt Farah?

  Now, if they want to get to the city, has to take like a 20 mile detour to the 101 freeway on the other side of the mountain. Which then bottlenecks at where it meets the 405 to come back south. And if you're not from LA, I'm sorry about the, the localness of this, but like, if you're from the Malibu area, or what was Pacific Palisades and is now nothing.

• 7:06Matt Farah?

  The PCH, which we drive recreationally, is like how you commute.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:11Matt Farah?

  Like, and then there's traffic on it, like a lot, normally. So this being closed pushes it the craziest, shittiest detour imaginable. So Eric, who comes from up north, his commute length has doubled from an hour to two hours.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, during the week. And on the weekend, like, you know, there's a lot of tourism that goes to Malibu from the north. Or they, they're heading to LA, to Anaheim or something, people out of town, but they'll like, why not take PCH? So all of that also has to go around.

• 7:42Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  So, it makes for a much longer day. So, you know, we got, we, we left at 10 AM, I think we got home at 3.

• 7:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  And, uh, and it was fun and there's like, we went to the old place and there's a cool little tiny Cars and Coffee happening. With a very eclectic mix, like Vanderhall Venice, motorcycles.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Strato was there. And then some guy was driving, I don't even know what it was, the car was like a 1926 something. Had no badge on it. And he had a shirt that said Motion Picture Car Association.

• 8:13Matt Farah?

  Oh, okay.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  And he's like, just got it running. And I looked down, it has no taillights. It has wires, I think for taillights, but no taillights, no plate. He's like, we're just gonna hope that we don't get pulled over. Like twenty six, so shout out to him for keeping that dream alive.

• 8:27Matt Farah?

  You'd have to do a lot wrong to get pulled over in a car that old.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 8:31Matt Farah?

  You for you get a pass on basically anything uh when you're driving something like that.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  You're definitely not a danger to other people, other than pedestrians.

• 8:39Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 8:40Matt Farah?

  There is a guy I've seen a bunch in Malibu who's like weekend surf wagon is like a um a model A five door. Like a mo- like what would have been not a chauffeur's car, but like the the big model A. Um, and it's got a surf rack on top and the guy is probably in his fifties, but I see him roll up to like village grocers. Flip flops, the wet suit hanging over the, you know, cracked open window. And this motherfucker just chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga, chugga is up with his coffee.

• 9:14Matt Farah?

  I've seen him a couple of times.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Sounds like the Willy Wonka machine.

• 9:17Matt Farah?

  Yeah, and you know, you know, he when it's when you see people that have cars like that and they're they drive them like all the time, like regular cars. They can maneuver them like as easily as as a regular car pretty much. And so it's, you know, it's a cool thing to see. Yeah, it's fun, but it's a long fucking way there and back. We use the metaphor. It's like if you're looking at a clock face. Like where we live would be at six o'clock on the clock. And where we like to go to chill in Malibu would be at nine o'clock on the clock. And you used to be able to go from six to nine like a clock does. And now you have to go counterclockwise to get to the nine.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:56Matt Farah?

  Both ways. That's like, it's pretty much how that looks on a map.

• 10:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I completely understand why PCH is close to anyone who's not a resident like that was affected. They have things to deal with. Makes total sense.

• 10:08Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  It's just this is the nature of things.

• 10:09Matt Farah?

  Yeah, no, I'm like, and what's funny is when I was up there last weekend. Uh, and I was talking to some people who I know who do live there and um, you know, obviously these guys are sort of ultra high end, you know, they, I, I saw them at one of the restaurants in Malibu and they were, uh, you know, driving McLarens and fucking, you know. Drinking gold milkshakes, stuff like that. Yeah, just like, you know, just like hooking up their blood bag of, you know. It's just a boy. The blood boy is just there. An eighteen year old that stands there and drinks. You know, and, and, and it was all about like the, you know, the city mismanagement and the mayor and this and that and it was, you know, I was sort of like, this seems like

• 10:50Matt Farah?

  a hard problem to fix that it probably isn't gonna be fixed, like right, you know. Yeah. And I understand, cause they're, they're the ones who live where I was talking about the hellish commute into the city, that, that is what they have to deal with. And they were talking about like, one of them lives on the west side of the closure and their kid goes to school on the east side of the closure. And so like, it's either like fifteen minutes or like two hours around. But they can go through the closure, right? Well, they can, but they couldn't for, no, cause they didn't live in the zone. Oh. Yeah, it was like, it was, but like, it's just like, it's just like, it, it disorganizational

• 11:33Matt Farah?

  shit that comes with cleaning up after a major, major disaster. The challenge that comes with that. Yeah. And it's, at first it's like, alright, you know, safety, then it's like stability, then it's like, you know. The hierarchy of needs. Yeah, like someone's kid getting through the zone to school like is certainly important, but like, it's probably like twelfth on the list, not, you know, first. Yeah. Um, sorry, we just got into like little local politics there, but like, that's what's happening when you're a car enthusiast in this area this spring, the fires, like. Of course, way less important than people's homes and livelihoods and all that shit. But you were affected and massively inconvenienced as a car.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't like doing that very often. You do it probably once a month, I'd say. You do the Malibu morning.

• 12:21Matt Farah?

  I probably do it once a month, and I very much enjoy it.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  And that's when it's running normally, normal time. And to me, I'm still just like, it's just a long afternoon in the morning.

• 12:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  So I chose the longest one. You go very early.

• 12:34Matt Farah?

  And that does help.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  But I went to Misha Mansour's house the night before to watch F1, because the race was at 9:00 PM, which is a fairly normal time for F1.

• 12:43Matt Farah?

  Did you have a headache from the altitude of walking up to his house?

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Oh, it was the driveway?

• 12:48Matt Farah?

  Misha's house is awesome, and it's got, it's like fucking heavy vertical.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  We have street floors and it's, yeah, it's a lot of stairs.

• 12:54Matt Farah?

  It's three floors and a real steep driveway up to his house. I was like wheezing like crazy. And then like for his birthday, it was on the roof. So it's like, oh, I get up there, I'm like,

• 13:06Matt Farah?

  and all the cardio, it's just me, like, all the cardio I do, which is a lot. And you exercise a lot, too. Four or five flights of stairs. I'm fucking, I'm a wheezy pile of shit.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  That's why people do Stairmaster. I think it's hard.

• 13:18Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  I don't know. I didn't, I always took, I took breaks, though, when I went to his house. I'd stop at the main floor and look around. That's my trick, is I'm actually resting.

• 13:28Matt Farah?

  What's new on this floor?

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, my cardio's not great. I'm just resting.

• 13:31Matt Farah?

  He got a new cat.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  I know. Bet it.

• 13:32Matt Farah?

  Is it the cutest?

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's tiny. It's like the size of this water bottle, and it weighs half as much.

• 13:37Matt Farah?

  Hairless kittens.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, they have hair, not fur, I think, so they're...

• 13:42Matt Farah?

  Is it not the same as the other one?

• 13:43Speaker 01

  It is the same as the other one. But they both have hair, but they're...

• 13:46Matt Farah?

  They're like Sphinx kittens.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  They're not skin. They have hair.

• 13:50Matt Farah?

  They do?

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Yes. They don't have fur. They have hair, which is why they are hypoallergenic and they don't shed.

• 13:55Matt Farah?

  Well, I met it when it was a kitten. It had no hair. The hair grew later.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  It has, it had hair. I think it was hard to tell.

• 14:01Matt Farah?

  What?

• 14:01Speaker 01

  I promise you.

• 14:02Matt Farah?

  Did we see the same cat?

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I saw it again.

• 14:06Matt Farah?

  I'm like, I know cats pretty well.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  I know.

• 14:09Matt Farah?

  Almost as well as I know cars.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  It feels like skin. It's very strange. And you see all the bones and stuff.

• 14:15Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  It's not fluffy like a kitten. So it looks like, it looks like if you cut your cat's hair to like half a mil. That's why.

• 14:22Matt Farah?

  Yeah, maybe it was even wispy-er because it was real.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  It's soft as hell.

• 14:26Matt Farah?

  We saw it at his birthday. They had, they'd had it for like a week.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Right. The new cat looks exactly like that. It's like a time warp.

• 14:32Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  We saw the same cat twice. That's what I feel like. Yeah.

• 14:36Matt Farah?

  I love Misha and it's hypoallergenic cats.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was fun over there. But we stayed till 1 because you know, F1 ended at midnight. It was so funny. I mean, I know you don't watch F1 so I'll keep it short, but I'm like, oh, it's Australia. There's no rain ever in Australia. There's no delays. This will be a race, this race will be over in 2 hours. Lap 1, heavy rain, crashes, full course yellow.

• 14:54Matt Farah?

  Oh wow.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  There were multiple full course yellows and crashes because it rained a deluge.

• 15:00Matt Farah?

  Well, at least there were things to watch.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  There were definitely things to watch.

• 15:03Matt Farah?

  As long as nobody got hurt. At least there were hopefully things to watch.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  No one got hurt. Some rookies went out on formation lap. Embarrassing, but it happens. Fernando Alonso crashed in the rain. Rare. So did Sainz, but I think that's a car problem with Williams. Because he won there last year and like he kind of knows what he's doing.

• 15:18Matt Farah?

  Probably.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  So, uh, there was a lot to see.

• 15:20Matt Farah?

  He turned left, but went right.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  And the racing got really good in the last 10 laps.

• 15:24Matt Farah?

  Hmm, at 1 in the morning.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Pretty much.

• 15:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah, cool. Sorry I didn't watch F1.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Doesn't matter.

• 15:30Matt Farah?

  I'm glad you enjoyed it.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  I did.

• 15:31Matt Farah?

  And you had a cat to watch with. And it didn't make you sneeze.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  It did not. They don't make me sneeze anyway, but.

• 15:36Matt Farah?

  Um, shit, what's fucking the weekend? Oh, do you want to talk about the Chevelle?

• 15:40Speaker 01

  We can talk a little bit about it. I need to, I'm sending them some questions because there are some things I am, I want to ask about before I report on it.

• 15:47Matt Farah?

  We got other things. We can back it up and talk about the Amira.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  We need to talk about the Amira. We never did.

• 15:52Matt Farah?

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• 16:34Matt Farah?

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• 17:19Matt Farah?

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• 17:59Matt Farah?

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• 18:25Matt Farah?

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• 19:09Matt Farah?

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• 19:49Matt Farah?

  The Amira, the Lotus, Amira, AMG, what's the official name? It's, it's, do they, does it have AMG in the name? Is it Amira AMG? I put on Instagram 2.0 AMG so people would know that it was an AMG motor. But I forget how it's marketed. Point is, that's what it is. It's the, uh, it's the Amira. It's got the dual clutch. We reviewed it two summers ago, uh, in England on track, but they finally got the cars, uh, in the US and, and asked if we wanted to try one on the street for a little while.

• 20:26Matt Farah?

  And they said there were some gearbox updates because originally, uh, Mercedes wouldn't allow Lotus to make any tuning changes in the, in the transmission and that now they had made those changes.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  So it seems like it's called the Lotus Amira 2.0.

• 20:42Matt Farah?

  Okay, so I added AMG editorially there. It's just 2.0.

• 20:48Matt Farah?

  If you drove the old car and new car immediately back to back in the same conditions, maybe you could feel the changes to the gearbox two years apart. You cannot.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Right, unfortunately.

• 20:59Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Having said that,

• 21:03Matt Farah?

  it does some things actually really well. I took it up to the canyons. Last week I did the hideous traffic-filled loop.

• 21:12Matt Farah?

  Zach had it for half a week and then I had it for half a week. We both drove it in the city and we can talk about it together in the city. And then I took it in the canyons and I first hated it in the city.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Really? Okay, well.

• 21:24Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, hate is a strong word. But I think from 0 to 5 and 5 to 0 miles an hour, it's bad. It's genuinely bad. Like the way that it engages power from nothing to like going and the way that it comes to a stop in that very jerky fashion.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  The 5 to 0 is a weird issue. We'll get more specific.

• 21:48Matt Farah?

  It's not good.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:49Matt Farah?

  Because fundamentally, like, this powertrain is a hot hatch powertrain. Like, that's what it is. And so when you put it in luxury cars, and this is a luxury car even though it's a lightweight sports car, it's extremely unrefined. It's vibraty. And we're saying in the SL, the SL 43.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  I do think it's better in this because the engine is mounted laterally, right?

• 22:13Matt Farah?

  Yeah, transverse.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Transverse. So the vibrations are going forward aft and you don't know, you truly, I truly didn't, it didn't bother me nearly as much, but in that SL, the car shook. I was like, why am I in an R5 rally car right now?

• 22:24Matt Farah?

  Yeah, the SL, it's really, really bad, especially because that's a GT car.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  That's a GT, that's a GT luxury car. I don't want that. It shouldn't be present.

• 22:33Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  In this, I do want a little bit of pomp and circumstance or something like that.

• 22:37Matt Farah?

  Well, pomp and circumstance, I like, comes from the intakes outside of the window. Where you have every fucking turbo noise possible and it's like, it's actually fabulous.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Great.

• 22:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah. The sounds, you know, at, at low throttle creep through traffic, it sounds like an airliner taxiing, where it's like

• 22:59Matt Farah?

  where it's like that. And then you get your, you know, when you're, when you're going through a tight canyon and you're on and off and on and off, it's like a super tuner car just, you know, all that goodness. And then there's just a, a constant good surge of sound when you're on the throttle. It's very nice.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  It's everything we liked about how the MC20 sounded, the normal one.

• 23:21Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  And that is diminished a lot in the GT2 Stradale, unfortunately. So this is how mid-engine turbo cars should sound.

• 23:28Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it's embrace, it's, and it actually, it never sounds bad. Like the GT4RS has like the best intake sound ever, asterisk as long as it's not in this very narrow window of RPM that you have to go through every time you drive the car. This is, it's good all the time, which is really nice. But if you drive around in normal mode, it's like boggy and it upshifts really low. Like this engine needs to be above 2,500 RPM. If it's above 2,500 RPM, which is not that much, it's smooth. Below that, it's rough as shit. And the normal mode that is default startup,

• 24:10Matt Farah?

  uh, and you presumably would use when just puttering around in traffic, that mode sucks. So you have to put it in sport.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  The auto is a little, I mean, the auto, the auto is slow in manual or in automatic. I hate the shifter. And I, it's not that I hate the shape of it. I don't care. The shape is like, whatever. It looks nice. The responsiveness though, is so delayed. Like when you're parking, you go, you're, you know, pull up next to the cars to, I parallel parked this a number of times. Put it in reverse, you have to, I had to hit it like twice.

• 24:38Matt Farah?

  Dude.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  You'd wait a lot.

• 24:39Matt Farah?

  Scroll down on my Instagram review to the not so good. Here's what I wrote. Uh, okay.

• 24:47Matt Farah?

  Three pointers are a disaster because of the world's most sadistic fake shift lever setup. You must double tug, but not too fast, for or aft to engage drive or reverse, and then have to move the lever side to side to shift manually. This is the most insane shifter setup in a sports car.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  It's like an old Tiptronic, right?

• 25:10Matt Farah?

  This is a sports car. Side to side to shift manually? How did that pass anything at Lotus?

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, they think you're gonna lose the paddles.

• 25:19Matt Farah?

  But still, you have an option to use the lever. It's software. It's not mechanical. There's no reason. Who goes, "Okay, I got it, guys."

• 25:27Speaker 01

  Right. Why not just go forward and backwards?

• 25:30Matt Farah?

  Let's, instead of making drive one click to the left and reverse one click to the right, which would be fine, and plus to downshift and to minus towards you to upshift, like, I don't know, fucking sports cars, they, they put reverse forward and you have to hit it twice, but not too fast. Don't engage. You gotta dunk, dunk. And then to go drive, you tug twice.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Because it goes neutral, then drive. But if you pull it too quickly, when it's not ready, it does nothing, which is really annoying.

• 26:04Matt Farah?

  Dude, you look like such a loser trying to make a three-point turn in this car.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Oh, you're like, "Oh, I went to neutral." Yeah. That was, that was very dumb. Um, what I will say in this city is, within literally 10 feet, I turned out of the driveway here, and your driveway is smooth, and the road right outside here is one of the worst in the nearby half-mile area.

• 26:24Matt Farah?

  They're repaving from the other end down towards here, and they're about a half a mile away.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Here it looks like a turtle shell. I mean, it is cracked as hell. And using my car as a baseline, which is stiff, like, it shakes around. But this thing just floated over that in a way that... Few press cars we've had ride that nice. I mean, that is truly the Lotus magic, because it's still agile and fun in the canyons, but it's

• 26:48Matt Farah?

  Non-adjustable.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Right, it's non-adjustable. Fixed suspension. It's just a good, they just did a good job.

• 26:52Matt Farah?

  Yeah, so, so, yeah, the ride, and in, in the canyons, I was gonna get there. When I went up the mountain, and I went in Malibu, which is a tighter canyon, tighter and a bumpier canyon. It's where we typically would test hatchbacks and Miata's. And if you're testing supercars and stuff, you need to be up in the big mountain, which is more open sweepers. This is the small mountain. This car was fucking spectacular on the small, the small mountain. It more resembles a British B-road, but with some elevation. The car takes bumps really well. It maintains a real consistency through corners. You know, it's a nice day, I had the windows down, just like

• 27:32Matt Farah?

  Fucking, when you're really in the pedal, just like so many fucking noises that are, that are just great, you know, coming out of the car. It's not actually that loud from like out, like, the noise is really directed kind of inward at you, which is cool.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  It's a lot more intake noise that you hear than, than exhaust noise.

• 27:49Matt Farah?

  Yeah. And at that speed, that, and you know, you've got it, you shift the thousand RPM before redlines. You're really shifting in a torque band. You know, it's really three to six is where you're going. But it's third, fourth gear with this, with this DCT. The paddles themselves suck, and the, there's a delay between paddle to gearbox, which sucks. They could go a long way by making the paddles clickier. They feel like cheap video game paddles and not, there's not a, you know, for a company that does focus on tactile input a lot, there should be some, some better click for those paddles, especially considering the lever option sucks too.

• 28:31Matt Farah?

  But the steering ratio is great, the brake pedal is really nice. When you're going, the brake pedal works really well.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:38Matt Farah?

  On the Canyon, it made total sense. But then I came to a stop and the last bit was the jerk.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  There's this weird thing where you're slowing down from any speed, but once you get to like seven miles an hour and you go, okay, it's time to stop the car. And usually like you apply a slight, a slightly higher amount of brake pressure to stop that car before you get to the stop line or whatever. It suddenly, you move the pedal one millimeter and it seems to move the brake caliper four millimeters and it jerks forward.

• 29:05Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  And like I couldn't figure out how to do it well. And I haven't driven a car that has had that, that has that kind of brake pressure change. It's weird.

• 29:12Matt Farah?

  And then to make matters worse, even though it's a DCT, it's got a pretty aggressive idle creep. So when you lift off the brake, it engages, creeps forward, now you've got to hit the brake again. So in traffic, you're doing that shit all the time. I had to like apologize to Hannah like four or five times on a drive to dinner. She's like, what the fuck is wrong with you?

• 29:37Matt Farah?

  I was like, I swear to God, it's the car. She's like, that isn't possible. You do this for a living. This is a brand new car. It's like, I swear, this is the car.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Shout out to the podcast called It's Not The Car. So perfect.

• 29:51Matt Farah?

  And then, oh, this, this drives me insane. We've got a photo up on my Instagram that it shows the trunk in the back, which is fine. It then has a full plastic engine cover because presumably this engine doesn't look very good. It wasn't designed to be displayed and that's fine. There's only one part of this engine you can see from the outside with this, with this clear engine cover closed and it's that cap, which I believe is for coolant overflow. And it's this shitty Autozone plastic with a little pop on rubber, like it's the only part of the engine you can see. You've covered the rest of it.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Right, why not go with a fake aluminum one or something?

• 30:33Matt Farah?

  Yeah, like for fucking three dollars, it would cost to have one that looks nice. Like, it's like looking at a, at the top of a bottle of toilet cleaner. It's crazy.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  What bothered me that I noticed when I drove this car, because we drove it in similar conditions, is that if there's water on the trunk lid and you open the trunk lid, the water falls onto the engine cover, which you can see in this photo. But let me assure anyone who's listening, there are 15 to 20 drops of water splattered about the engine cover. So if you have, I don't, if you have something in your trunk-

• 31:04Matt Farah?

  It falls on the engine cover, which then becomes an ice luge into the truck.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think it, I think it gets caught in the seal around the trunk. I don't know if water would go in there necessarily, but if it splatters on there, it's just, it's just something like, you just look at that and you go, the water is falling in the engine. Maybe that's why the engine cover's there. So it's funny.

• 31:24Matt Farah?

  I drove it in the rain. It was really nice. It's actually a great car in the rain, as, as all British cars.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  It's a really good car, but it just reinforces that, for me, the one to get is the manual. Now, if you could get the manual with the 2-liter, that might be a fun discussion.

• 31:39Matt Farah?

  Maybe.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Because it sounds awesome, and you could probably tune in and get a lot more power out of it than you can the supercharged one. But the auto is still so bad. I don't know what they changed, but we can't tell. It still doesn't do the things we want it to do. And it's not just that it's like a little slow in these downshifts and upshifts, like, it's really noticeably slow.

• 31:57Matt Farah?

  I, in the canyons, shifting manually, I was able to adjust my driving to it, which ideally you shouldn't have to do. But, once I learned, okay, I'm looking ahead and I tug the paddle a half a second before I really want the gear, then it became fine. As a 7/10 car, it's really nice. If your driving routine is moving, you're not coming, you're not sitting in traffic a lot. Like, the thought process, well, I get the automatic so I could daily drive it, versus the manual, like, no, you'd rather have a manual with a very

• 32:36Matt Farah?

  light clutch than a shitty automatic. If your, if your car is moving, the auto's not bad. If you're coming to a stop a lot, it sucks. And to compare with the V6, guys, support for the smoking tire comes from the podcast- Drive with Jim Farley. You know Jim Farley. He's the CEO of Ford. Not only that, this guy has a GT40 and a Cobra and all kinds of amazing vintage American metal that he races wheel to wheel at places like Goodwood. He's a boss and you gotta check out this show. It's where Jim talks to some of his favorite people about what they drive and what drives them to succeed. They just started season three with some sick new guests, including

• 33:20Matt Farah?

  Vicky Butler Henderson, the British racing driver and fifth gear personality, Randy Nonnenberg from Bring a Trailer, and T-Pain, the musician turned drifter. Guy's got skills, actually. I listened, I listened to it the other day. It is great. Jim is a great interviewer. He's insightful and it's interesting hearing these folks open up to him. I really am about it. I support Jim's venture here. To listen to Drive with Jim Farley, just search Drive with Jim Farley in any podcast app. That's Drive with Jim Farley. And thank you for supporting this episode. Which is, I mean, the one thing that continues to stand out to me about the V6 is what a smooth engine it is. It doesn't vibrate.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:04Matt Farah?

  At all. So this thing vibrates like a lot. So it's, it's like, it's a much more exotic and refined experience with the V6, just all over the place.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. And you still get really cool sounds. You get supercharger whine, you get into, you can hear the little squeak of the, the blower opening when you, when you downshift it. And that, that engine had its own issues of like that kind of delayed rev response when you would go to downshift. Remember that? It would vary a little bit and the shifter moves, but I think it is the lesser of two evils. And the auto to me shifts at a speed that feels like I am shifting a manual myself.

• 34:40Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  That's kind of the time it takes to downshift using the paddles. And when your competition is Cayman or Boxster.

• 34:47Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  That, cause that's literally the only competition you have, right at this price point with this engine configuration. I go, well, if I want a PDK experience, I need it to be like PDK. So I'm gonna get the manual. Cause I love this car and it does so many, I think it's that it rides at like a nine out of 10 and it handles like a nine out of 10. But then the transmission, like you said, is a 7 out of 10. And I don't want, I don't want that offset.

• 35:11Matt Farah?

  I don't either. I think if you have two functional legs, you should get the V6 with the stick. Because it's just, it's, it's just better, a more cohesive package that simultaneously feels more exotic and more refined and more powerful. It feels all of those things. And the clutch is so light that even if you sat in traffic all the time, it's not like you'd be beating the shit out of your clutch foot. Like, that's a really, really, really light clutch. It's not a hard thing. And, and if you compare a Cayman or a Boxer manual gearbox to a Lotus manual gearbox,

• 35:55Matt Farah?

  they're very closely specced, you know? I, I would totally understand anyone who goes, you know, I thought about a Cayman, but this seems a little more interesting and different and, you know, I like what it's offering. I go, yeah, 100, absolutely. But if you go paddles for paddles, the Lotus loses, unfortunately. But it makes fucking cool tuner car noises, doesn't it?

• 36:16Speaker 01

  And it looks spectacular. It's still, it looks like an expensive supercar.

• 36:20Matt Farah?

  Ah, yeah. I mean, if you park one next to a McLaren Artura, most people wouldn't go, yes, the Artura is 350,000 and this car's 100. One, one of these is not three and a half times more exotic than the other one.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Related idea. I wonder if you took the badges off this and you asked people, what do you think that is? They might say it's a McLaren. And related note is that I've seen photos of people are rebadging their Teslas with other badges and it works really well. And it kind of highlighted to me how much of the identification of a car, because they're all very similar shape now, like Mazda badge works really well. And the shape of, the shape of the Mazda M. You know, the whale tail one. When you put that on a Model X or like a 3Y, it kind of matches the shape of the car.

• 37:10Matt Farah?

  That's pretty funny.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Sure, that totally works.

• 37:12Matt Farah?

  That's funny. You know, I mean, you can look at what Doug Tabit and Arnie were doing, you know, they, when they turned an Audi S8 into, it looked like a Taurus. A police car.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:23Matt Farah?

  You know, all you have to do is change a couple of things and you can, and they, they also, I think, did a Mercedes, I think it was an E63 that they made look like an Accord.

• 37:33Matt Farah?

  And there's a whole thing, yeah, look at that. That really does look like a Mazda.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  This is a Model S with a Mazda badge.

• 37:40Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it's, it fucking works, dude.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  It's like, hey, nice Mazda 6.

• 37:43Matt Farah?

  It does, it does actually work. Yeah, there was the whole, um, did you remember that thing they, that someone did a few years ago? They put every mid-sized sedan vertically and then blocked off the nose and the rear fascia and asked you to identify which was which as basically possible task. Yeah. It's very funny, though, how the people are rebadging their Teslas. It's not as funny as if they were selling them, which is what they should be doing. You, at this point, at this point, there's, oh, yeah, look at that. At this point, there's no doubt that, you know, you're, you're, you're, he's a Nazi. Cause an act like, he's, yeah. And so like, you know, it's time to sell your car, guys.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  He's retweeting some very concerning tweets. Like, I've had this discussion with a friend and he's like, and every, just, this was a week ago, I was having this discussion. And three days ago, more evidence showed up where like, he's retweeting this thing. And I sent that, I was like, look at this shit, dude. It's really weird.

• 38:39Matt Farah?

  Here's what I hate. You know, there's the, the, the sticker that's there, that's showing up all over the, I, I bought it before we knew he was crazy.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:48Matt Farah?

  Unlike a 2022 model car, eat shit. Eat shit.

• 38:54Matt Farah?

  We have been saying this guy was a fucking dickbag for like nine years.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Well, it's definitely escalated, I'd say in the last 12 months.

• 39:02Matt Farah?

  Yo, if you're rolling a 2014 and you say, "I bought this before I knew it," okay, you can have that. We didn't know. But he started selling fake autonomy in 2016.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, but I think that's different than the...

• 39:18Matt Farah?

  Oh, he wasn't a Nazi until a little later, yeah, for sure. That pandemic era was Nazi, but bad guy before that. Now, now, there's no more excuse.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:29Matt Farah?

  But yeah, if you put a, if you're, if you're rolling a 22, if your shit has a yoke, you can't put that fucking sticker on.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and if it's 2024, 2025.

• 39:40Matt Farah?

  You bought the fucking bit. Did you see the story, the video the guy made where FSD crashed into a wily coyote style?

• 39:49Speaker 01

  But I also saw a lot of responses, like the drive was getting lit up on Instagram saying that the video showed that Mark Rober, we're talking about Mark Rober, who does amazing videos of all kinds of like, I don't know, Rober Goldberg machines and experiments and stuff. And so he made a wall, like a foam wall across a road and painted it like Wile E. Coyote to see if this autopilot would stop, and it didn't. People are saying in the comments that he didn't have FSD activated and you could see it on the dashboard. I have not investigated it further and half these comments are people that have private pages, so I don't know if that's just bots or not.

• 40:25Matt Farah?

  The response is that he used autopilot and not FSD and their capabilities to recognize a real wall versus something painted like a wall are different, even though they're using the same cameras and sensors.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  Correct, which I completely agree, like, I am a supporter of LiDAR is better than camera.

• 40:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  So it would make sense that the radar LiDAR system would detect that. So people, I think...

• 40:53Matt Farah?

  Wait, to be clear, I support a combined sensor suite.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 40:57Matt Farah?

  Not LiDAR is better, camera plus LiDAR plus radar.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I don't think just cameras is enough.

• 41:03Matt Farah?

  No, no, no.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  For sure, like, look what Waymo has, everything. It's ugly, but it fucking works.

• 41:07Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  People's complaint, and we'll see if it's valid or not, is that the Tesla was not using autopilot nor FSD.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  They were just trying to test the emergency braking detection. And it worked on like a mannequin that they put out in front of the road, but it did not work for the wall. Whereas the LiDAR car worked on the wall. There's also people accusing the video of being paid for by the LiDAR company. I don't know if that's true. I'm basically just saying what I read this morning.

• 41:38Matt Farah?

  Sure, yeah, yeah. It's not like a Dan O'Dowd project. This is a dude. This is a guy.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Right, and I don't know if it was paid for, or if that's just people, you know, Tesla bots accusing. But either way, I would be shocked if FSD or autopilot would work on this wall. This is speculative, I admit, but it's because it's a camera. And if the wall's painted well enough, the camera's using its method and data, which is to look for roads, it stands to reason that it would just drive through that.

• 42:08Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  And that's why, you know, now, I mean, I'm a proponent of radar LiDAR combination because it works through fog, which we know the cameras don't. You're more likely to encounter fog than a fake wall.

• 42:18Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 42:18Speaker 01

  But...

• 42:20Matt Farah?

  Well, no, but the fake wall thing and presuming the video is trustworthy and made in good faith. Okay, admittedly, I didn't read the comments on fucking Reddit or anywhere else. But presumably, if the video is made in good faith, and I'll assume from there, the fake wall thing just illustrates that there's... That the human brain is so much better at interpreting the inputs here than a camera is, especially a camera without a brain-powered CPU,

• 43:03Matt Farah?

  a human-brain-powered CPU behind it. And therefore, a camera alone should not be totally trusted to do the job.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 43:13Matt Farah?

  And therefore, if you're going to sell something and promise that this vehicle will drive itself based on evidence that this system is better, and it continues to show that actually it's not, and that the other way actually does, at it current today, 2025, you know, March-level settings have like a...

• 43:43Matt Farah?

  The total suites are better as of today. Tesla is still fucking full throttle on this camera only thing, I think because they're, he's just so committed, he can't be seen as being wrong.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  I agree with that. And I think this wall, the painted wall thing reminds me of that case in Florida where a semi truck trailer was like pulling across the road and the car that was on autopilot crashed into it. Like it didn't see this giant broad white thing across the road. And that wasn't painted to look like the road. So either it was looking under the semi truck or whatever, but

• 44:17Speaker 01

  again speculation, but it seems like a radar system would detect this giant thing and probably slow down.

• 44:22Matt Farah?

  I have yet and and I'm interested, you pulled up an article that says that this guy tests cameras versus lidar and gets it wrong. And I'm open to hearing expert arguments, but I have yet to see any evidence that going camera only produces a safer vehicle than going multi sensor.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Totally agree.

• 44:42Matt Farah?

  No, nobody has, I mean, no argument. The only arguments ever presented are again from a fucking proven liar like Elon Musk and from people who are talking about it being cheaper. That's it. Just to, it's just cheaper.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  And the only reason I'm presenting this is because it, what people are saying is that his methodology was not what he was advertising.

• 45:04Matt Farah?

  So what does this say?

• 45:05Speaker 01

  I don't, I haven't read this.

• 45:06Matt Farah?

  Oh, it's just we found a headline?

• 45:09Speaker 01

  This just says that YouTuber Mark Rober test the cameras versus lidar and gets it wrong. But I've not read this article. I'm saying that people are more, seem more irritated that the methodology was not what was said on the video title. If he's like lidar beats FSD and they're saying, well, you weren't using FSD. You were using emergency accident braking. It's like, okay, sure. But does the system, do both FSD and emergency braking use cameras? If so,

• 45:34Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  then that their complaint doesn't disprove the ineffectiveness of full self-driving, in my opinion.

• 45:43Matt Farah?

  Well, were the, but the other car with the lidar was also using the emergency braking, right? It's not like it was using some type of self-driving system.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  I think I need to watch the video.

• 45:53Matt Farah?

  Yeah. I mean, if they were both using the same setting, then I don't see the problem.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  One stopped for the wall and one didn't stop for the wall.

• 46:01Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  So we'll, we'll look into it more. More to live in.

• 46:06Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I don't want to like share fake news, but I mean, it's also other.

• 46:12Matt Farah?

  I don't want to say it backs up a preconceived notion. It does, it backs up what other experts, like actual experts, like fucking Klapman, have been saying about camera-only systems for a very long time. I don't, I don't personally think they're up to the task unless they're incredibly limited in scope, uh, like, um, Super Cruise and Blue Cruise are. Where they're only allowed in certain places. Um, where there wouldn't be a fake wall, maybe. Um, yeah.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  They should just, just do it again with FSD and that would be the thing to do.

• 46:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, here.

• 46:53Matt Farah?

  Here's the raw footage of my Tesla going through the wall. Okay.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Oh, this is very interesting though. We've talked about this before. So just read, read Mark's.

• 47:02Matt Farah?

  The highlighted part or the, or the tweet?

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Um, read the highlighted part.

• 47:05Matt Farah?

  The highlighted part says, "Update: Online critics have pointed out a number of concerning inconsistencies in the video, and a quote 'raw clip provided by rober.' Further, it seems that the appearance of the cartoon pattern in the brick wallpaper before he hits it indicates it was hit before and reconstructed for the take which was shown." Okay, so, uh, then here's the video embedded. Here's the raw footage of my Tesla going through the wall. Not sure why it disengages 17 frames before hitting the wall, but my feet weren't touching the brake or gas.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Now, that's something that we've talked about a lot on this, and I think NHTSA has been investigating, is that Tesla will often report that when there's an accident, autopilot was not engaged.

• 47:53Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  But they have seen, the speculation from NHTSA and other people is that when right before it's about to crash and knows it, it de-activates autopilot so that you can't blame autopilot, right?

• 48:05Matt Farah?

  I have read that from a variety of places and accusations, and some of them, including Ed Niedermeyer, are very thoroughly backed up.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 48:15Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  So.

• 48:16Matt Farah?

  Um, yeah, in order, in order to place blame on any accident from, yeah, to create a sort of catch-22. Either the driver's driving, or the driver took over, you know, whatever, to, to, so at the point of impact, it was disengaged. So, I mean, look.

• 48:38Matt Farah?

  The company has a habit of doing really shady shit, like really shady shit. In order to falsely inflate the capability of this system on which the entire value of their fucking company is based. They're selling old ass cars and getting smoked by both the Chinese and other legacy fucking automakers. The cars aren't that good and the Cybertrucks are fucking flop. This is what they have.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  The stock trade, even with this 40% haircut it's gotten in the last.

• 49:10Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  It still trades at this PE ratio.

• 49:13Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  You know, it's like every other car company combined.

• 49:16Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  It would equal that stock price, so. And it's all based on this magical technology that, you know.

• 49:22Matt Farah?

  And now people, and now people are fucking ashamed to be seen with their cars badged as Teslas.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's going well.

• 49:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah. It's good. I like, I really like giving people in Cybertrucks thumbs down. It's, I find that thumbs down is a really good, good way to indicate that, um, how you feel without it being aggressive.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  It's not as aggressive as a middle finger.

• 49:48Matt Farah?

  Oh, yeah. No, no, I'm not middle fingering somebody just for existing um, with a Cybertruck, but a thumbs down, 100%, especially if it's like modified in any way, because then they're really in.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  A gold plated one, I think Daily Show did a story, there was some guy who's trying to sell his gold wrapped Cybertruck because of the negative response that's been happening and they're, and he's like, I can't, but I can't sell it. And Daily Show's like, I mean, yeah, come on, like, this is a hard thing to sell anyway. You know, how many people want a gold one?

• 50:19Matt Farah?

  The negative, like, the, because of the response, like, this is a person who bought, went out and bought a fucking fuck you got mine vehicle, and then made it an even more attention seeking color.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  But I don't think, I don't think everyone looks at it as a fuck you got mine vehicle. I think plenty of people go, oh, it's the cool new thing. It looks like, you know, a truck from the eighties future sci fi movie. Sure.

• 50:44Matt Farah?

  Nah, you couldn't have take, you, you had to take delivery of that vehicle in 2024. By the time you took delivery, you knew what that thing stood for.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I think there are some people that just think it looks cool and they thought it was fast.

• 50:55Matt Farah?

  I'm not buying it.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 50:57Matt Farah?

  Yeah, not buying it. Uh, or you at least knew it was a total shit box?

• 51:01Speaker 01

  I also don't, people don't drive as many cars as we do. And if they wa, if they watched, dude, so many of the early reviews were like, "This is amazing." And one of the best ones that went viral was the comparison this woman did against, this woman's like cyber mom or whatever on Instagram and she's like, "Look, it has a place for my purse." And then you cut to the woman with her minivan and she's like,

• 51:20Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  "This also does."

• 51:21Matt Farah?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  And the Cybertruck chick was like, "Look, it has a glove box." And she, she came back later and was like, "I was being sarcastic. That was not disclosed in your video."

• 51:29Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  So it was trying to show that the Cybertruck has invented these ideas, which it definitely had not.

• 51:33Matt Farah?

  Well, that's, I mean.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  So I think a lot of people bought them because they were like, "Wow, all these videos say it's amazing." And then it wasn't. It was a flash in the pan. This was a hit single.

• 51:43Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Elon Musk inventing things that were already invented since fucking 2009. Just worse.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:51Matt Farah?

  It's worse. I was listening to the Behind the Bastards, Oprah, today, the six-parter.

• 51:57Matt Farah?

  Because Oprah, while not the most bastard-y person out there, is the only person to have spawned three other people that became, that got multi-part bastard episodes.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  Right, the Jerry Springer doc was really fascinating.

• 52:11Matt Farah?

  Well, this would be Dr. Phil, Dr. Oz, and John of God, who had got their own Behind the Bastards. And we're all, we're all introduced by Oprah.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  John of who?

• 52:19Matt Farah?

  John of God was a Brazilian faith healer that Oprah promoted and he raped like 600 women. Yeah.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  I thought the bad part was that he fake healed people.

• 52:30Matt Farah?

  No, no, that was the good part. The fake healing was the good part of John of God.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  God, that's, that's.

• 52:35Matt Farah?

  The raping.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  Which is worse.

• 52:36Matt Farah?

  The raping was the bad one. Yep.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  I'm not trying to diminish either one. I'm like, well, one of them, you take people away from real medicine and they might die. And the other one is like the most egregious thing you can do to a human.

• 52:46Matt Farah?

  Up there.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  Because they'd keep living and live with the trauma.

• 52:49Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Thanks Oprah. So anyway, if you want six hours of great fucking radio. Uh, but anyway, one of the guests on the, on the, the show was incredibly astute was just, just said like today, he's like, the last fucking, he's like, he's like, I live in LA and he's like, these like, these fucking people would rather fucking invent self-driving cars than just do something that was invented in the 1800s and works, like build a goddamn subway. Like.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Or yeah, or you know, build a library or something. People were talking about Carnegie Mellon and they're like, yeah, I mean, these people were billionaires back in the early 1900s, but what did they do with their money? They built universities and libraries.

• 53:28Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Does that make them better? No. Does that make them better?

• 53:32Speaker 01

  I think so, because at least they left something that can be used for good in education instead of like buying Twitter and manufacturing controversy that just.

• 53:40Matt Farah?

  Yeah, well, yes, that's better, but yeah. But I mean, you know, the Getty's bought newspapers though. That's bad.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  That's bad, but they have a museum also. So there's, it doesn't offset entirely, but it's something. Cause.

• 53:52Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Like Oprah had did a couple of good things.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Uh, let's say publicized wealthy people right now.

• 53:58Matt Farah?

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  It seems like they've only done very selfish things.

• 54:00Matt Farah?

  Um, yeah.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  Put a clock in a mountain and avoid 600 million dollars in taxes at the same time.

• 54:06Matt Farah?

  Right. Uh.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  When Bezos University opens, maybe I'll change my.

• 54:11Matt Farah?

  I can't, I can't wait to go to Amazon U.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  It's a quick, a quick additional tangent related to your Oprah viewing. So my, my favorite channel show I watch is Dropout TV, which is what spun off from college TV. And it's ran and owned by Sam Reich, who is Robert Reich's son.

• 54:28Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Famous economist, amazing, uh, follow online.

• 54:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Drives a Mini.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  Drives a Mini. And so Brennan Lee Mulligan is one of their longest employees, very funny person, but they, they often do this show where they give them improv prompts and they basically set Brennan up to rant about billionaires. And he always goes off in the funniest way about Bezos and Elon and you know, Trump and whoever. And last week they did a prompter, they were like, Brennan, we always love your takedown of billionaires. Please address the billionaires, Rihanna, Oprah, and, uh, um.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  What's her fucking name? Beyonce. So it's like, because it's always rich white dudes who are unmaking the world. And the awkward improv that followed as he tried to like, like literally get himself out of this was hilarious.

• 55:15Matt Farah?

  That is.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  He probably didn't know about the faith healing.

• 55:17Matt Farah?

  I don't know if, uh, yeah, Oprah is, I mean, look, there was enough for a six part behind the bastards about her. Which is one of, if not the longest, I think they said it was, I think Robert Evans said it might have been the longest one he'd ever done. It was 24,000 words was the script. It was fucking, yeah, six hours. Uh, I don't know if Beyonce and Rihanna are quite bastards. I think they're probably okay.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Right, that's, I mean, that's why they don't seem like they're vending the world to their whim. They just like built up products and music that people love.

• 55:50Matt Farah?

  I, I think that's probably true. I think that's probably true. Yeah. There are, there's, there's some of those too. There, there are. There's people that sell things to people who want to buy them and that's okay. Um, fuck, should we go to the people? Do we have things to the people?

• 56:04Speaker 01

  We do.

• 56:04Matt Farah?

  We can go to the people. God, my lips are so chapped. I went skiing this weekend in Montana and we got a foot of fucking powder. And it was the greatest. Um, it was so nice. And Tim, I did, I got to ski with Timmy.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  Oh, he was there?

• 56:23Matt Farah?

  He was there. So he came out and he came out and skied with us and Hannah. I'm so proud of Hannah. Has she, uh, she is in her, in her middle 40s, like I am, has never skied. And in two days, you know, the end of the second day, we got her fucking on chairlifts, going down, uh, green runs, looking, looking pretty good. And she even said she wanted to continue to learn to ski, which I think would be amazing because like, I fucking love. I love skiing and it, it sucks that I can't, uh, do it with her.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:57Matt Farah?

  And I would happily like dial down my skiing to meet her if it meant we could do it together. So like, I think if we committed to like maybe four or five days of lessons, um, she'd probably be at a comfortable level.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then you can teach her a little bit also.

• 57:12Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  After she does pro lessons, gets leveled up and you can talk like new stuff. Yeah.

• 57:17Matt Farah?

  That would be a good, that would be a good use of our, uh, of our time. But man, Montana snow. Delightful.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the dry stuff.

• 57:24Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that's that. That's that smoke. Yeah, deep smoke. Balzac on the Patreon.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  I remember that toy.

• 57:33Matt Farah?

  Of course, if you want to ask us questions for the show, get the show live, get the show without ads, get the show early, get extra show, all them things, patreon.com/the-smoke-and-tirepodcast. You can also just DM Balzac. We'll get you in.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know who that is, but DM that person.

• 57:49Matt Farah?

  Uh, he's, uh, he's at number three at Doge, right?

• 57:53Speaker 01

  Big Ball.

• 57:54Matt Farah?

  Right under Big Balls. I told you that fucking kid went to my high school, right?

• 57:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:58Matt Farah?

  Fuck.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  I've read some funny, funny.

• 58:00Matt Farah?

  They need to do a Behind the Bastards on Rye Country Day School for fucking sure. For churning them out, dude.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  You have to stop telling people you went there.

• 58:07Matt Farah?

  I, I ain't ashamed.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  You would be after they do a deep dive.

• 58:12Matt Farah?

  Yeah, man, right? Um, one of my favorite teachers just died a couple of weeks ago, actually. It's kind of a bummer. Shout out to Mr. Pike. Uh, Balzac says Volkswagen no longer manufactures some parts for Mark IV and Mark V Golfs. How long should OEM manufacturers parts after the build date of the vehicles? And should the law require them to build them for a certain amount of years? I think there is a law that does require manufacturers to support vehicles for a certain number of years. And I think Volkswagen and Audi stop supporting the cars when that law runs out. I hear this about old Audis all the fucking time. The problem with old Audis is you can't get parts. This is the first time I'm hearing about Golfs, but fucking B5 S4s, God help you if you need something from Audi.

• 58:58Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Um, my client's, uh, has a beautiful TT, was his first car. And, uh, it sat for like six years, seven years, because he left it like at his parents' house or whatever, and moved on about his life. Uh, and he got it back and the gas tank had rusted. And there was not a gas tank to be found anywhere in the country. Couldn't find it. And we had to like, put out all these feelers and wait months to find a gas tank for this car.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  I wonder if Audi has just looked at the math and their cars are just not. Either as collectible or whatever, like, I mean BMW club is a thing, Porsche club is a thing. I'm sure there's an Audi club, but like it just seems like that market goes lease, buy, shorter term, move on, they want the newer luxury thing. There are people obviously who want to drive those cars, but I mean Volkswagen community is definitely more passionate about mods and driving old stuff.

• 59:54Matt Farah?

  For sure.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  Audi, but it's probably just like the cost to them is not worth it.

• 59:57Matt Farah?

  Uh, I, I think a lot of Audi enthusiasts are not about classic Audis. They're about the, the newer, the newer Audis, even if it's not the newest Audi.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  And they got way better. I mean, I would much rather drive a new S3 than a, we've drove those B5 S4s, like they're cool, but man, they break and they don't handle that well.

• 1:00:15Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Uh, 1.21 gigawatts. Did you see more Montana tags in Montana or at a Cars and Coffee in LA? You're, you're not wrong, and I will, I will say that it was weird being in a place with all Montana tags. I kept looking around and chuckling. And, uh, you know what? Up there in, uh, there's, apparently there's like very few dealers. So I was at a place called the Yellowstone Club, which is just something else. It's fucking crazy. I was a guest of somebody and I, I will never in a hundred lifetimes ever be able to afford to do, to go there, but it was something nice of someone to bring me and, uh, but it's all

• 1:00:57Matt Farah?

  these insanely rich people, but because there's only a couple of car dealers in that general area, everybody drives a Tahoe or a Suburban. I took a picture of the valet lot like in front of this place and there were like 12 Suburbans just parked next to each, like the fucking Chevy dealer in Bozeman must be crushing it.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's all you can get.

• 1:01:19Matt Farah?

  It's all anybody's got. It's amazing. Uh, Dixon Ciderbox says, where am I most looking forward to driving the Manx? One since finished. When will I take delivery and will I take it to the Manx Club Big Bear Bash? Uh, uh, let's see. I am supposed to take delivery.

• 1:01:40Matt Farah?

  In theory, in May, and they've told me that once all the parts reach a Manx Classic in Costa Mesa, and they start to actually assemble it, that I can come down and do some content on the build process. So you guys will be able to see what's going on with the Manx probably once or twice throughout the build. And then, of course, when it's done, it takes about a month for them to actually assemble it once all the parts arrive. Small company. I'm gonna take it to Pebble this year, ideally. Cool. You're gonna drive it up there? You're gonna tow it?

• 1:02:17Matt Farah?

  I don't, I probably, I'm working on a gig opportunity right now that would basically provide me with a press car of some kind, because there's a thing I'd have to do that would require some performance driving. And I would probably ship the Manx up there to fuck around with during the week, and then I'd ship it home. I wouldn't be opposed to driving it up there, and I totally like would, but if this gig goes, I actually need a fast car. Having two cars at Pebble would be egregious, and luxurious, and potentially

• 1:03:00Matt Farah?

  gluttonous. But I'm also trying to nudge Freeman into having them display the Manx at the Quail. Oh, that's a good way to get free transport. I'd still pay for the transport, but like provenance, never know. And I think it would be fun to be like, "I'm displaying a car to the Quail." That's very cool. Just walk up to it and kick it in front of a bunch of rich people. You won't do that. No, I won't. And I know about the Manx, the Big Bear Bash, which does seem really fun. It's a big Manx club thing, and I'm sure we would go. I don't know when it is. Matt Rantle, what's the best deal you've ever got when buying a used car, or new for

• 1:03:45Matt Farah?

  that matter? Hmm.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  Best deal?

• 1:03:49Matt Farah?

  The E46 wagon I got for all cars three for

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  Two grand?

• 1:03:53Matt Farah?

  Two, was it two?

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  Nineteen hundred or something?

• 1:03:55Matt Farah?

  I think it was two grand or the Previa for eighteen hundred that I drove a thousand miles off road with no problems.

• 1:04:03Matt Farah?

  Those are great fucking deals.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Cause that thing was really clean inside too.

• 1:04:06Matt Farah?

  The Previa?

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:07Matt Farah?

  Yeah, the Previa could have done a couple hundred thousand road miles more.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:11Matt Farah?

  Absolutely.

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  How was the forty six before we put suspension on? Actually, I guess we never drove it. So.

• 1:04:16Matt Farah?

  I mean.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  That was a pretty good deal.

• 1:04:17Matt Farah?

  It wasn't like, it wasn't terrible. I drove it around a little bit.

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  You had no check engine lights, like the thing.

• 1:04:21Matt Farah?

  No, it was great.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  For two grand.

• 1:04:22Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it didn't rattle or anything.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:24Matt Farah?

  It was a little smelly.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  Whatever.

• 1:04:27Matt Farah?

  But it served its purpose.

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:29Matt Farah?

  Max Field, thoughts on Cayenne Hybrid? My wife wants an SUV newer than twenty twenty and a plug in hybrid might be nice. I mean, look, my dad has the Cayenne Hybrid. I don't know about the first gen. My dad has a twenty twenty three, three model year.

• 1:04:49Matt Farah?

  He loves it and I think it's great, assuming, you know, you, you, this is a very complex vehicle. Get an extended warranty. I'm not sure I'd want one out of warranty, but in general, lovely, absolutely lovely. Uh, Subaru in the left lane, weekend flat engine fun car dilemma. Oh, seven Cayman base versus used but current gen BRZ for twenty five thousand. I'd probably go BRZ, honestly.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  That's a fifteen year newer car.

• 1:05:19Matt Farah?

  Yeah, and the base Cayman from back then is not very fast and very expensive to maintain relative to a BRZ.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  Is it still open diff too? Cause it's not an S?

• 1:05:30Matt Farah?

  I couldn't tell you, but like the, the, the early base cars are not that great.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, plus a soft top and was it plastic?

• 1:05:37Matt Farah?

  Cayman.

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  Oh, sorry. My brain went Boxer. Yeah, I'd BRZ.

• 1:05:41Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I probably would. Um, okay, Dre from Houston wants to get new tires on the Taycan 4S. It's currently on the OE Conti's and I've got Pilots on my 911. Uh, any benefits to changing to the Pilots, assuming you mean Pilot Sport 4S's on the Taycan? Um, benefits could be incremental handling improvements, uh, and possibly a quieter ride. But it, there's, those are sticky and on an electric car, that may negatively impact your range. Um, I just ordered, um, for my Taycan, for the new wheels, um, the Pirelli EV tire that comes,

• 1:06:26Matt Farah?

  that is the OE on the Taycan Turbo, uh, S, not the GT, not the super sticky shit.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  Turbo or Turbo S?

• 1:06:38Matt Farah?

  I don't know. It's the, whatever the P0 EV one is, I didn't pay that. I just did, you know, Taycan fit mints, blah, blah, blah. Cause I didn't want to go make the range worse, basically. So, um, I'll let you know how they are, but I think, you know, it has Kamisa found out, whatever, a couple of years ago on his golf, you know, sticky tires will fuck your range right up. So be careful about that.

• 1:07:03Matt Farah?

  Okay, hypothetical, you're on a road trip, you need to eat a full meal while driving due to the fact that you're already running late. What's the best thing to get to satiate the hunger, but not make a mess of the car?

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  So we're eating in the car, right?

• 1:07:16Matt Farah?

  Eating while driving.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  The best thing to get, oh, I mean, a burrito.

• 1:07:21Matt Farah?

  A burrito is-

• 1:07:22Speaker 01

  A well-constructed burrito that's wrapped in good foil.

• 1:07:24Matt Farah?

  Bluey's breakfast burrito or one of Bill's breakfast burritos would be, is the perfect move.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:07:30Matt Farah?

  Um, second to that?

• 1:07:36Matt Farah?

  You know, like a, like a chicken, you know, chicken fingers, you know, you need to have some wipes or some alcohol, uh, hand sand ready, but you can go one hand, straight dunk. Uh, I think you're okay there.

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:50Matt Farah?

  Um, a kebab, meat on a stick.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  I ate at an A and W on our Kansas road trip and I haven't eaten there in a long, I don't know, whatever, 30 years, and their chicken fingers are like the best protein ratio of chicken fingers, like chicken to breading, and it's, and it's not, uh, toothpaste chicken, like there's actually, you know, you can see like the strings of, of whatever, uh, muscle and stuff, I would do that.

• 1:08:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I've had a pretty good, I know they've gotten big and very commercial, but I've had a pretty good run with Raising Canes if I'm feeling fingers on the road.

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 1:08:21Matt Farah?

  Raising Canes does an alright job.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  And the Raising Canes, uh, the container is, is good, cause the glue on the A and W container, like melted, and then it leaked chicken juice like all over my lap.

• 1:08:31Matt Farah?

  That's no good.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  So that's not helping the mess.

• 1:08:33Matt Farah?

  You remember the, the car you garbage question, have you ever modified your car to be easier to eat in? That was a good one, Kippee and Foley liked that one. Shout out to, did you see the, did you watch the Route 66 special? It's pretty funny. It's, it's, it's worth your time. On YouTube, it's very funny. It's not just, it's a comedy BTS road trip, it's, it's fun. Um, okay. Hunter Sands is a big boy and travels for work, rents a lot of cars, always goes for an SUV cause it's similar size to me. What manufacturer can I rely on to best accommodate someone my size?

• 1:09:13Matt Farah?

  Uh, uh, what manufact- do you mean manufacturer or what rental car agency? He says manufacturer.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  Manufacturer, but I don't, I feel like most cars, you know, of, of classes are the same basic interior volume.

• 1:09:29Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  I mean, my brain went to like Dodge, like Dodge Durango or something like that.

• 1:09:33Matt Farah?

  Um.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  Or Challenger.

• 1:09:35Matt Farah?

  Wait, wait.

• 1:09:37Matt Farah?

  He's talking about rental cars still, right? He's not talking about buying one of these cars. This question means rental cars. Like, it's highly inefficient, like, to travel, if you're traveling solo, you probably don't need to do this, nor is it like efficient, but like, a Tahoe. A Tahoe is a very comfortable vehicle for a tall, broad, or fat person.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  True.

• 1:09:59Matt Farah?

  Like, if you gotta do a bunch of miles in a rental car and someone else is paying for the gas, I know.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  Explorer also. I remember the Explorer, like, distance from seat to armrest was huge.

• 1:10:08Matt Farah?

  You know why that is?

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  For police officers.

• 1:10:10Matt Farah?

  Cops.

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:10:12Matt Farah?

  Cops, yeah. Um, or minivans.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:17Matt Farah?

  Bro, get yourself a fucking Pacifica with low miles, or a Sienna? Hell, yeah.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  But the challenge that this person's running into is, in my experience, most rental agencies can't guarantee manufacturer vehicle.

• 1:10:31Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  They can guarantee class.

• 1:10:33Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:10:34Matt Farah?

  But usually.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  If you can walk out and pick.

• 1:10:35Matt Farah?

  Yeah, usually, yeah, you go, then you go with Hertz or Enterprise and you walk the aisle and you go, yeah, that one. And then you do the smell check? Just a little, because you never know. You don't point and go, "I'll take that one," without fucking a scent check.

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  I haven't had a problem with that.

• 1:10:50Matt Farah?

  Or an odometer check.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, if someone smoked in it, or if it was a flood car.

• 1:10:54Matt Farah?

  Unless I'm in a fucking hurry, hurry, I'm looking at three vehicles, minimum.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:11:00Matt Farah?

  Minimum.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  Oh, man, I don't have time for that.

• 1:11:02Matt Farah?

  Yeah. We got lucky in South Carolina. Remember they gave me that Pacifica with 150 miles on it? Oh, that was, that was fucking great.

• 1:11:09Speaker 01

  I just wanna go.

• 1:11:10Matt Farah?

  Oh, no. If I, I mean, look, if it's a one-dayer, yeah, but if I'm living in this motherfucker for a week, I'm checking, like.

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  I just haven't been burned yet, so that's why.

• 1:11:18Matt Farah?

  Really?

• 1:11:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I haven't got a rental car, and I'm like, "Oh, my God, it smells terrible in here."

• 1:11:21Matt Farah?

  Oh, you seem to have forgotten.

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  Panama's different.

• 1:11:26Matt Farah?

  The black mold in lung.

• 1:11:28Speaker 01

  But I think you're carrying that trauma too long. That was 10 years ago in a different country.

• 1:11:32Matt Farah?

  That was not Panama or Hertz's fault. That was my fault, definitely.

• 1:11:37Speaker 01

  No, no, I'm saying, carrying that with you and going, "I'm gonna have that same experience here as I had in Panama."

• 1:11:42Matt Farah?

  Oh, you, come on. I guarantee you, leave a fucking comment in the Youtubes if you've had a car that looked fine on the outside, and you got in and went, "Pfft, pfft," and it was insta-bad.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  Add to the comment, "Was it a black mold smell, or like a fart or cigarette smell?"

• 1:11:57Matt Farah?

  Black. I mean, look, one of those results in a near hospital, hospitalization. The other ones are merely terrible, alike.

• 1:12:07Matt Farah?

  But like, yeah, no, I'm checking three, for sure. Okay. Yeah, because why not? What do they care? You got two minutes? No, you can check. I'm gonna wait with our camera cases and I'll let him check and then I'll get in the car. See, that shit's like sixty-eight thousand miles at Enterprise. What the fuck? That's true. Remember, we rented a yellow Camaro for a TV shoot. It had thirty-eight thousand miles on it, and when I closed the door, when I picked it up, the latch for the convertible top fell off, like, onto the center console. Yep. Vlad Tataranu, I'm one of these days I'm gonna get that right. Uh, Jesus Christ, here's an expensive friend to have. I'm thinking of getting a classic wooden sailing yacht to cruise around Scotland. Oh, to BU. Sounds all right.

• 1:12:50Matt Farah?

  Starting at six thousand bucks for a good runner that needs a little interior TLC and four grand a year for birth and regular maintenance. How ruinous can a cheap boat really be? It's cheap. I mean, look, it's, it's, if you're handy, they're not expensive in terms of, like, parts. Okay. But they're very labor-intensive. You're always fixing, or sanding, or painting, or scraping fucking something. I mean, especially if we're talking about a saltwater boat. Right, the wooden boat. You have to keep lacquering it or whatever to seal it. Yeah, wooden boats are super expensive to mend. That's why I'm shocked. Classic wooden sailing boat for six grand. But I don't know boat prices. Is that crazy?

• 1:13:35Matt Farah?

  No, like, you could get a boat that, like, that you could, I mean, you wouldn't want to, but like, that, our friend George, Motoman George. Like, a boat like his, that he literally lived on for a couple of years, six grand would get you that boat. Okay. Like, a cheap boat, people fucking dump boats for nothing. Once they need something big, or, you know, they run out of money, or whatever. Um, but if you're handy and are into the idea of working on it all the time, then they can be a fun, you know, rewarding project. It's like, like a car, but like... Dude, the salt, just, trust me, I lived there, the salt, fucking, fuck shit, oh! But sailing around Scotland...

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, he says he's young and he has plenty of time on his hands, so...

• 1:14:16Matt Farah?

  Dude, with a fucking, grab a bottle of Bunnahaven and a nice coat, mmm!

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  Well, and, as George explained to us, like, this dude might be able to get a cheap boat, fix it up, and then later sell it for profit.

• 1:14:26Matt Farah?

  Totally, totally. Yeah, it sounds like a fun hobby. Uh, Billy Jimmy Zucks says, "What do you typically see photographers charging for photo shoots for the BAT Cars and Bids auctions and what's included? Trying to get a quote out to a potential customer." Um, we pay at WCCS, we pay our photographers, uh, $450 for 200, exactly 200, uh, edited photos. And that's generally about, um, I mean, a half-day work for these folks on-site. You can, I, I, I know if you, I mean, literally, if you click on, like, "Get a photographer from Bring a Trailer," um, they, they made, they charge less, I think they charge like

• 1:15:10Matt Farah?

  $3.99 maybe. Um, you know, the guys I'm hiring are my friends, which are, like, literally the guys who shoot for the car magazines, like, literally, like, the guy who shot this Ferrari 430 that we're about to list on Bring a Trailer, shot like, a major feature in Road and Track, like, not very long ago. Um, so, you know, they're photographers that I've personally vetted, but, you know, $3.50 to $500 is probably the range, depending on what kind of, uh, level of details involved.

• 1:15:44Matt Farah?

  Don't forget, by the way, if you're shooting for BAT or Cars and Bids, undercarriage. Undercarriage is important. I'm sorry, I'm like, so gross, my fucking lips are... Uh, my lips didn't get chapped until I, I, the doors opened at LAX and it went, "Yeehaw!"

• 1:15:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, the desert hits you, yeah, totally.

• 1:15:59Matt Farah?

  Fucking, yep, dunzo. Nathan T. Reynolds says, "It's 2008 and you've recently been promoted to VP at your investment banking job." Is this, I'm guessing this is before, this is the beginning, this is the beginning of 2008.

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  January 08.

• 1:16:15Matt Farah?

  It's not, it's not November.

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:17Matt Farah?

  "You're in your mid twenties and you want a premium sports sedan that says, 'I've arrived,' but doesn't quite say, 'I'm compensating.'" "What do you choose, the B7 RS4?" Oh, this is basically the Top Gear comparison test. It's, it's sports sedans in 08. So you've got the RS4, the E90 M3, the C63, the Lexus ISF.

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  If I'm mid twenties back then, I still think I'm an oversteering Stig person, so I'm going M3 or, uh, or C63. I think the more responsible and comfortable purchase is the RS4. That's, that's the more restrained one.

• 1:16:56Matt Farah?

  Yeah. If I'm, if I'm living in Scarsdale, I've re-

• 1:16:59Speaker 01

  Where's that?

• 1:17:00Matt Farah?

  Scarsdale is one of the places that rich people live in, in Westchester County. They commute to the city. Uh, I live in Scarsdale, I'm commuting to the city on the Henry Hudson Parkway, Westside Highway, all seasons, right? Four seasons, all weather. Um, but I want to look great and I might have a young family or, you know, some friends to carry around. Maybe I want to go skiing in Vermont. I'm RS4 all day. RS4 is the perfect northeast sports sedan from 08.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that's the one. Uh, wow. "Fucking new in the running. I'm not fat, but my waistband uses the NASCAR line at Cota," which is pretty funny.

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the username, that's the longest one. I think it got cut off at the A.

• 1:17:45Matt Farah?

  Yeah. "I've been having lower back issues since I have to slump to fit in a C6 Corvette. I'm six foot two. I'm planning on getting a different vehicle for longer trips. I'm looking at super sedans and saw used Panameras for not too much and then remember the SE Hybrid is a partial PHEV and I'm curious about having hybrid option for in-town trips. For your 30 to 40K, what would be your choice for performance and comfort with a great supportive seat?"

• 1:18:17Matt Farah?

  I would say for most supportive seats Porsche and Mercedes are probably your best.

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  And Acura are also a close second.

• 1:18:27Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  It depends on the model and if it has lumbar. But yeah, Porsche and Mercedes are fantastic.

• 1:18:32Matt Farah?

  Yeah, now, you know, used Panameras are depreciated. But the hybrid, like we were just talking about, Cayenne's could be an issue with expensive repairs potentially. It's a complicated thing, so extended warranties are your friend with these type of cars.

• 1:18:50Matt Farah?

  You know.

• 1:18:52Matt Farah?

  But that's just, that's Porsche. But also Mercedes, 30 to 40K gets you a pretty nice, dude, E-Class diesel. Fabulous seats and very efficient, very powerful.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  And if you're driving five hours at a clip, you want that big tank, you got a good range, that would be fantastic.

• 1:19:12Matt Farah?

  Big Ben, Zach's nightmare power steering job reminded me of a time I decided to change the turbo on my Duramax in my driveway.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Wait, but he says dealers take the cab off to do this. That is ambitious, dude.

• 1:19:27Matt Farah?

  What's a job you decided to do to save money and DIY that ended up being a horrible mistake?

• 1:19:33Speaker 01

  Well, you don't wrench, but have you done this at your house? Have you done things, because you've done, you've started getting like house projects that you've taken on.

• 1:19:40Matt Farah?

  No, I have a wrench, I have a wrenchy one. I got those Baja bumpers on my Raptor, my F-150 Raptor. And the instructions were very short. It was like, you know, drill these couple of holes and, you know, remove this and mount this, right? It was like one or two pages. But they don't, the holes you have to drill were in the frame, they're in steel. And so it took like eight drill bits, two drills, and maybe like six trips to Home Depot to drill four holes.

• 1:20:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, you kept wearing the bits out, right? Yeah, I forgot about that.

• 1:20:17Matt Farah?

  And then I killed a drill, and then I killed a second drill. And like... Eventually, I called like a shop, I forget who I called, but I was like, just, it took 18 hours to put two bumpers on, me and Tim. And my back hurt, I'm like, broken. And eventually, I called, I was like, how much would you, they would have charged me like, you know, $285.

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's when you get that hourly math that sucks. I won't tell a BMW story, but Thad and I replaced the rotors on his old Mini. And one of the rotors, like, a bolt was seized, and then we tried to pull it out, and we ended up stripping the bolt. And we literally spent one entire day trying to get one rotor off, because we had to go to the shop to get like, the tap and die kit to reverse thread and like, pull this bolt out. That was a nightmare.

• 1:21:05Matt Farah?

  Christian says, is Porsche Active Ride actually worth 7K in terms of comfort? In my opinion, it is. If you're already buying, like, put it this way, Porsche has a million options, and some of them are stupidly expensive. And, you know, and you don't, you don't get much for that. Like, you get, you know, contrast this, or some special this, that's like, a little fucking nothing, and it's five grand, right? And, and if people want it, like, go ahead. You can feel Active Ride. Every time you get in the car, it's pretty hard to ignore the fact that Active Ride is making your drive better.

• 1:21:47Matt Farah?

  Whether it's comfort, or efficiency, or the popping up to make it easier to get in and out of the car, or the way it leans into corners for comfort, or the fact that it can corner perfectly flat, like, that affects your drive every day. So, it's expensive as hell, but in the context of dumbass expensive Porsche options, at least you feel it in the drive, which is very important. I, yeah. We did back-to-back at Panamera launch, and the air suspension is great. I mean, that was the upgrade, it's now the standard. They all get air suspension now, but it's a big, big difference with Active Ride.

• 1:22:26Matt Farah?

  Especially if you either live somewhere with bad roads, or you plan on doing dynamic driving. Joey Bag of Donuts, pick an entry-level exotic under 100K? Wait, hold on. Wait, wait.

• 1:22:42Matt Farah?

  Oh, this one is tough because Joey Bag of Donuts here wants us to buy an entry level exotic under 100K that will appreciate 50% in 20 years.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  Ooh. So new now? Or new-ish, I guess, or just anything?

• 1:23:01Matt Farah?

  Alright, I got one. How about a Ferrari 360 coupe with a stick, but with miles?

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  You took the words out of my mouth.

• 1:23:09Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it's timeless and yeah, that'll be more expensive.

• 1:23:13Matt Farah?

  Or a...

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  Four, five, oh, four, five eights are too expensive right now.

• 1:23:16Matt Farah?

  No, they're too much. How about a very well-cared-for Ferrari 348 GTS or GTB? Those are great and, you know, 80, 90K gets you a good one.

• 1:23:29Speaker 01

  What are spikers today?

• 1:23:30Matt Farah?

  More than that. Spikers, you could, spikers, the second spiker went out of business, the cars were fucking

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:38Matt Farah?

  Worth a buck.

• 1:23:38Speaker 01

  I know we said it last week also, but I think an R8 V8 with a manual will be a classic. It's just, there's still, people aren't paying enough attention to them yet. I don't know why. But that would probably float a little bit.

• 1:23:49Matt Farah?

  Yeah. You might be able to...

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  The 8 Vantage? Like a real good one?

• 1:23:58Matt Farah?

  You could probably buy the nicest, like, 1993 Viper anywhere. And for that much, and maybe do that.

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  Maybe. I don't, but I think the Vipers got so much, well, collectability is not always about quality. Like, the later Vipers were better, but people don't really care.

• 1:24:17Matt Farah?

  They're better, but like, better doesn't mean better.

• 1:24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. CT5 V Blackwing?

• 1:24:23Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Shout out to Tony A. Dude, one of my favorite people, Tony A., patron, former customer of mine, the former owner of my Acura NSX, will be joining us at the Texas event, the Road and Track event I'm doing. And Tony A. is boss, because Tony A. buys a new car for each of these events. And he always finds like a depreciated, he's a man of means, but he always finds a fun depreci- car to do the events in and then makes like a big road trip out of it. He came on one of them with the E92 M3 that he traded Vinny his Alpina B8 for a supercharger, his Alpina B7 for a VF supercharger.

• 1:25:06Matt Farah?

  So he did the supercharged E90 M3. And then for last year's event, he bought a used Panamera Turbo for $28,000 and did it. Car was great, by the way. And then he just bought a two-year-old CT5 Blackwing for this one. He's like, what do you think of this? I was like, you're in the fucking game. Yeah. So that's a good one. Um, Nathan T. Reynolds, N82 Acura NSX or a really nice 360 manual?

• 1:25:36Speaker 01

  360.

• 1:25:37Matt Farah?

  I probably have to say 360.

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  Based on sound alone, but also I mean, it's Ferrari. Like, you know, I like the NSX, but I didn't grow up as a kid lusting after owning an NSX one day.

• 1:25:51Matt Farah?

  Sure. And I mean, even as an NSX owner, I think I'd probably, you know, if I could, if I could do a direct swap of my NSX to a 360 manual that was in similar condition and in a nice color, I'd probably do it.

• 1:26:07Speaker 01

  You want to trade Vin Anatra for his hand-dyed interior?

• 1:26:12Matt Farah?

  Uh, I'd trade him the Pow. Oh shit, by the way, I have an update on the Pow. Don't let me forget that because it's hilarious. Um, but, um, yeah, man, if I could do it, if I could do a direct swap, because my NSX is worth a little more than I paid for it. At the time I bought it, the idea that I could get a good manual 360 for that same money was not really, it was, it was more. The NSX has caught up.

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  That might also be a candidate for the buy at 100 now and sell for 150 in 20 years.

• 1:26:42Matt Farah?

  An NSX, an NSX, yeah. 100K gets you a lot of NSX. It won't get you like an 04 and 05, but it'll get you another great year. Um, I was just talking to our buddy over there in North Carolina, the young one, about NSXs, and he's, he's in the game.

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 1:26:58Matt Farah?

  Very excited. Um, oh, let me sidebar, the Pow. Have I talked about the Pow having a mystery drain?

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this has been ongoing for six months? More?

• 1:27:09Matt Farah?

  A year, a year.

• 1:27:10Speaker 01

  It's gone to two techs.

• 1:27:11Matt Farah?

  It's killed three batteries in two years. It's gone to three different places, okay? And we're talking about a one-liter economy car with a fucking carbureator. Like, this is a simple, simple car. So, as it turns out, Mad Mike from Pimp My Ride, if you remember him, Mike works at, he works at Galpin, and I found this out through David Tracy at the Autopian, that it, that Mad Mike is like an electrical genius. I didn't know that. Um, which, like, great. So I got his number and I called him, and I go, "I got one, I bet you never seen." And, boy, was I right.

• 1:27:50Matt Farah?

  It took Mad Mike, a, a guy that more, more than one person said was an electrical genius, thirty hours to find what was draining the battery in the pow.

• 1:28:04Speaker 01

  Three zero.

• 1:28:04Matt Farah?

  Three zero. And eventually, he did source it to the blinker, that something in the blinker, which, the, the blinker is on the right in a pow, not on the left, it's on the right, also, that's the headlight control, you twist it, something in that, every fifteen minutes, would activate and draw three and a half amps.

• 1:28:27Speaker 01

  Every fifteen minutes?

• 1:28:28Matt Farah?

  Every fifteen minutes.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  And there was no, no, no pun intended, like, there's no indicator on when this would happen, right?

• 1:28:33Matt Farah?

  No, no, no, nothing, no.

• 1:28:34Speaker 01

  Would the blinker blink or anything?

• 1:28:35Matt Farah?

  No, like, every once in a while, like, every three or four months, the, like, taillights would spontaneously turn on, which took us down a rabbit hole of thinking it was like the brake light switch, or something like that, sticking, but nope, never found anything like that. So, anyway, they discounted the bill, you know?

• 1:28:57Speaker 01

  The thirty hours.

• 1:28:58Matt Farah?

  They discounted the bill, but we're talking about, it cost me another ten percent of the, of what I paid for the car.

• 1:29:06Speaker 01

  How did they fix it? Like, was it a part that had a problem? Or did they have to reroute something?

• 1:29:11Matt Farah?

  They were able to get a, a good condition, used blinker from eBay. Uh, and they redid the wiring and the problem went away.

• 1:29:21Speaker 01

  Thirty hours.

• 1:29:22Matt Farah?

  Thirty hours with like an expert.

• 1:29:24Speaker 01

  You could rebuild the engine in that time. Thirty hours. I mean, that's why electrical gremlins. Yeah.

• 1:29:33Matt Farah?

  I mean, you know what, it does, it does on the, on one hand, make me feel better because the odds of me or like one of my like handy friends being able to fix it were zero. It wasn't like, oh, you're an idiot because you can't fucking figure this out. Like, I had some pretty smart people looking around and scratching their heads. Like, I'm glad, I'm not glad that it was that expensive. And I'm not, I hope, I hope that Mike didn't get too frustrated and want to blow his brains out, you know, but like, uh, I'm, I'm glad it wasn't something simple that was, well, it is simple, but I'm glad it wasn't something that was like, oh, fuck, you're an idiot, just like, you know, unplugged something back in and that was the end of it, you know?

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. Thirty hours.

• 1:30:20Matt Farah?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 1:30:21Speaker 01

  Yes, it's insane. She better drive that car.

• 1:30:25Matt Farah?

  Well, I mean, and that's the thing, you know, it's, it's, it's Hannah, I, I can't, she can't, if she's, if I'm going to keep her in this old car game, she, she has to trust the car. The car, your car can't leave her stranded. She's out if that happens. You know, so I need, I need these cars to fucking work. I don't care how much it costs. She, the only reason I can be as stupid as I, as I am with cars, you think I didn't have to ask permission to get the Manx? I fucking did.

• 1:30:50Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, it's really a bribe.

• 1:30:51Matt Farah?

  That was a discussion.

• 1:30:52Speaker 01

  She has a project car. So you're like, now you understand why I want one. She's like, but you gave it to me. Like, you, you gave her the thing that just, you gave her the loophole.

• 1:30:59Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:00Matt Farah?

  Uh, yeah. And she keeps referring to that car as ours and I keep referring to it as hers.

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  That's what I, one day, one day what I should do is I should sell the M3 and get an old Mustang project because Sarah loves, likes old Mustangs. And then it's our project.

• 1:31:13Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  And then it's not just my problem.

• 1:31:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Tow Matters 4th DUI. What is something the general public doesn't understand about automotive journalism? Other than driving supercars all day?

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  It's Towmater.

• 1:31:29Matt Farah?

  Oh, Towmater.

• 1:31:30Speaker 01

  Towmater.

• 1:31:30Matt Farah?

  Towmater is 4th DUI. Oh, sorry. For example, I'm a paramedic and everyone thinks that every call we go on is some Hollywood level drama with death and destruction. I'm sure that isn't that. Something that people don't understand?

• 1:31:47Matt Farah?

  I mean, the amount of time doing other shit versus doing actual journalism? Or driving the intended car? I mean, there's so many times we've talked about 30 hours of travel for two or three hours of seat time. I once did 36 hours of travel for six laps around a racetrack I'd never been on before in the wet.

• 1:32:11Speaker 01

  That's what the Maserati thing was gonna be, but they got us some extra time.

• 1:32:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah, but like, I just think there's like, the difference between the lived reality and the headline. I went to Spain to drive the thing. Versus what the lived experience is of that. It's just not the same thing. But like, it's not, it's not bad. It's just that the general public doesn't necessarily understand. And also how much, how much like, most, a lot of people think, even though I say automotive journalism, they, they just, they go, oh, so the car companies pay you to drive the cars? And I go, no. The car company lends me the car, and then I have to figure out how to pay for it myself? And they're like, what? They actually just think that that's how it works, that it's all an ad.

• 1:32:58Matt Farah?

  So, I suppose you could just do that, and like, your life would probably be easier. But to like, not do that, makes your life a little harder.

• 1:33:10Matt Farah?

  Uh, nice cams. Oh, liked the video I did with Teddy Baldassar. Uh, that was the watch guy. And he's very, has a huge channel and I did a video with him here at West Side and showed some watches and the video's already done monster numbers, even though it's like 58 minutes long.

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:33:31Matt Farah?

  Hmm, and he was an absolute, uh, lovely, lovely, lovely guy. He was really cool, really fun. We had a great day. Um, very interesting. Uh, we talked about, you know, business content, you know, doing, you know, he's got a retail operation now and when he told me the numbers, I was just like, oh my God, like fucking guys is like crushing. Um, but he was so chill. He was great. And then he has an open invite to come hang out and do, do our show when he's, when he's back in town. Um, Benetow Driver, shout out to sailors. Favorite sailing story or experience? I mean, we almost lost the yacht into, in Thailand.

• 1:34:11Speaker 01

  That's the best story.

• 1:34:13Matt Farah?

  Uh, we've told it before, but long story short, we went to shore, uh, to party our fucking faces off in Thailand. There was a windstorm. We were all on drugs and we're like, yay, windstorm.

• 1:34:25Speaker 01

  Tide went out also.

• 1:34:27Matt Farah?

  And then the tide also went out and our boat came off anchor and, and went out to sea.

• 1:34:32Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:34:32Matt Farah?

  And it, it was a major, major problem, but we somehow figured out how to talk. I think I made it, I don't know how much money I gave that person, but I got some drunk fishermen to drive us out into the middle of nowhere to get our boat.

• 1:34:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:48Matt Farah?

  It's crazy.

• 1:34:49Speaker 01

  It's like two o'clock in the morning. I used Google Translate to talk to the police.

• 1:34:52Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:53Speaker 01

  And that guy didn't give a shit. He drew a picture of a boat. Remember that?

• 1:34:56Matt Farah?

  I drew it.

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  I told him the story and he drew a picture of a boat. And we realized we were fucked.

• 1:35:04Matt Farah?

  Yep. Uh, Alex, hey, watch question. Oh, boy. Holy shit. Here's where we're gonna lose everybody. Do you prefer the elegance of the JLC Master Ultra Thin Moon or the complications? Holy shit. Um, I don't, dude, I'm sorry. I don't know the answer to your question. I am not an expert in, uh, Géger Le Coq, uh, watches. Um, thin is good. That's all I can say. All right, wait, hang on. Let's, we'll do one more and then we're gonna call the show and save the rest for uh, the next thing, cuz I am running low on steam. Um, oh, okay, here's a good question. I like this. I like Tim A's. What do you think there?

• 1:35:45Matt Farah?

  Tim A says, "What would you want from a mid-engined C8-based Cadillac?" We talked about this last show, that Cadillac, or recently, that Cadillac, there should be a Cadillac, uh, C8, uh, like the XLR was. The XLR had a lot of promise, I thought. I thought, I thought using North Star instead of a LS motor was personally a mistake, but I still thought the idea was sound. Um, a C8-based Cadillac, what would you want that to look like?

• 1:36:12Speaker 01

  I just wanted to look, it would have to look very different. I mean, inside and out. I think, I think the interior of the Corvette, while very functional, it matches the outside. There's just too many angles. I'm not a huge fan of the way the C8 looks. It's tough and it looks like a fighter jet. But I just prefer more, more organic shapes. And I know that's not really their design language right now. So I think the Cadillac would have to go chase, you know, McLaren, Ferrari, I mean, McLaren and Ferrari right now, 296s and 720 and 750 are very like round, organic, smooth, kind of, uh, sultry shapes. I think they have to go that way, cuz that would, you need it to stand out from the C8 immediately and clearly. You cannot have anybody look at it and go, "Is that the Corvette or the Cadillac?"

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  You're fucked if it's, if you do that. And the same with the interior. I would get rid of the center console wall. I'd get rid of the, um, the abstinence wall, as I call it, and just, you have to do something totally different in that.

• 1:37:07Matt Farah?

  The chastity wall.

• 1:37:08Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, you have to change the dash. I mean, I know there's limitations what the engineers and the accountants would let them do, but it just needs to look like a completely different car.

• 1:37:15Matt Farah?

  Well, look, the, the XLR, you know, you could tell because of the wheelbase and things like that, there was, that there was Corvette under there, but it really did look... Very different from a C6 Corvette.

• 1:37:27Speaker 01

  Cause at the time, the C6 was very rounded, smooth and Cadillac went real angular.

• 1:37:32Matt Farah?

  Yeah. I actually think the styling has held up well on the XLR. Yeah. Has anyone done a fucking like a proper LS swapped? Like, somebody should if they haven't done like a proper Z06 or LS something swapped XLR. That could be pretty cool.

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  Wow, with this backdrop, this looks almost like your R129 Mercedes.

• 1:37:54Matt Farah?

  It does look like an R129 against a white backdrop. Yeah. Um, so I, I think powertrain wise, we probably are looking at that, the ZR1 powertrain, right? Or maybe, um, you know, or actually I, I do think maybe the hybrid, you know, it could be E-Ray based, but maybe with a small turbos, you know, a, a, a twin turbo based kinda thing.

• 1:38:21Matt Farah?

  I, you know, the black wing engine, they could go back to the, to the LT4. You know, maybe put the supercharged engine in there. That could be very interesting.

• 1:38:29Speaker 01

  Cause then it's also related to CT5. Yeah. Or that's what you just said, black wing. Yeah. That's a good idea. And it's distinct.

• 1:38:34Matt Farah?

  Mm-hmm. Um, but I think there's room in the market for that for sure. Yeah. 150 grand probably for a Cadillac C8. It would have to be fast as fuck and it would have to have an interior that justified, you know, the price. But if, it would, it would be, I think, you know, a little more than Z06, less than ZR1 is probably the right place for a car like that.

• 1:38:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, that'd be, that'd be cool, but it just has to be just.

• 1:38:58Matt Farah?

  Man, would it be rad if that was the manual? The manual was a cat, cause the black wings are manuals. They're on board for that.

• 1:39:06Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 1:39:06Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Right? Oh boy, that was a fun one, kids. Thank you for joining us. Thank you to our patrons for such good questions. Um, there's, uh, what went up today? Our Panamera Turbo S E Hybrid with the active, uh, active ride went up today. Uh, go check that video out on the YouTube channel and.

• 1:39:29Speaker 01

  Uh, last week I published the Grand Wagoneer with a red eye engine in it. So go check that out too. Big noisy school bus thing.

• 1:39:36Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:37Speaker 01

  Announcements, one, episode 1000 comes up in 13 days.

• 1:39:41Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it does. And tomorrow we're going to record episode 999. Should be a good time. Thanks, everybody.