Aston Vantage Roadster vs Porsche 911 GTS; Buy a Swapped Car?

Matt Farah and Zack Klapman review the new 2025 Aston Martin Vantage Roadster and discuss it's German competitors like the Porsche 911 GTS; then we answer Patreon questions including: Which car brand has the best community? Miata engine upgrade: Turbo or V8 swap? What will Singer do when they run out of 964s? Most memorable travel moments? Would you buy a car that's been engine swapped? What to look for? If we were in Cars 4, what cars would we be? Should a Miata owner buy an old, British roadster? Worst speeding ticket story Do police cars have to be visible? Our choice for the next pope-mobile How to choose a scooter Are outdoorsy trims actually tough? Is a car really a pigeon controlling a horse? And more! Recorded May 9, 2025 TrueWerk Check out the full lineup and get 15 percent off your first order at https://TRUEWERK.com/tire Cremo Head to Target or Target.com to find Cremo’s new line of antiperspirants and deodorants in the Italian Bergamont and Palo Santo scents MudWtr Start your new morning ritual & get up to 43% off your @MUDWTR with code TIRE at https://www.mudwtr.com/tire ! #mudwtrpod 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! For a 10% discount on your first case go to https://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. Today's episode is brought to you as always by Off the Record. We love Off the Record and they are here for you. If you get a moving violation, don't plead guilty, get off the record. There's only one way to do it. There used to be two ways, now there's only one. You go to offtherecord.com/tst. That's offtherecord.com/tst. Once you're there, you just tell them a little bit about the ticket you got, the circumstances, etc. They fight that ticket on your behalf. More often than not, they win. And if they don't win, you don't pay. Those points come off your record, it won't affect your insurance, your job, etc.

• 0:43Matt Farah?

  Once again, offtherecord.com/tst. That's offtherecord.com/tst. Alright folks, on this episode of the podcast, I review the Aston Vantage Roadster, which I drove out in Palm Springs and compare it to the Porsche 992 GTS Hybrid that I drove out there and back. Actually, quite an interesting comparison and that takes a lot of the show, to be honest with you. And of course, we talk about the highlight of the week, which is that a Lamborghini themed yacht has sunk off of Miami Beach with 32 influencers on it. Frankly, the jokes write themselves.

• 1:28Matt Farah?

  It's the Smoking Tire Podcast, let's go. Hi everybody, how you doing, what's happening? Let's actually, we don't need to talk about depressing things. Let's talk about something fucking funny. It's like you're saying. No, no, no, this is good. This is in Miami, last week, where only good things happen. A Technomar 63 Lamborghini yacht.

• 1:54Matt Farah?

  You know, uh, the company that builds the yacht is called Technomar.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  I do not know that.

• 1:58Matt Farah?

  But they did a collab, an X, a big collab with Lamborghini. And they made a yacht. Uh, that has like a ventador and Lamborghini styling cues on it. And last week, one of them sank in Miami. Now, the oldest one of these boats is like two years old. These are brand new boats. And, uh, but we have recently learned that a contributing factor is the fact that there were thirty-two people on a boat that I think was supposed to hold twelve. All these influencers just influencing on this boat.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Overloaded by twenty people.

• 2:38Matt Farah?

  Bro, you know how bad you have to fuck up to capsize a sixty-three foot boat? That's so crazy.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:47Matt Farah?

  Wait, what's it? Do we have a, we have a better photo?

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 2:50Matt Farah?

  Oh, what, what has happened? It's all gone wrong. But the, it is, um, is truly.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Look at that, it is a video.

• 2:57Matt Farah?

  Yeah, there's a video of it. Ass down. It's like those trucks in, uh, Carolina.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:02Matt Farah?

  The squat trucks.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  South Carolina squat or whatever it's called.

• 3:04Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Ass down, face up, just pointing out of the water.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  That, that signals it was overloaded. Cause it didn't tip over.

• 3:12Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Obviously, cause that'd be very hard to do in that boat.

• 3:14Matt Farah?

  I mean.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  It just, it's just too heavy. They, and, and.

• 3:17Matt Farah?

  Yeah, there may have been a problem.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  They didn't notice until they were too far away.

• 3:19Matt Farah?

  Mm-hmm. Wow. So, yeah, the Lambo yacht, man down.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Look at the emergency response.

• 3:25Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  I mean, there are like five police, fire department boats.

• 3:29Matt Farah?

  I'll tell you what, when shit goes down on a boat and people are around, they come to help. People wanna help. On boats, you know, you, the, the stakes are real high on the water. No, you know, if, if people see a boat in distress, you gotta be a real piece of shit to not come running if there's a boat in distress.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Definitely. Or Captain Sully, there's a plane in the water.

• 3:49Matt Farah?

  Uh, for Hannah's birthday? Two years ago, when we, we towed that guy in?

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:54Matt Farah?

  In South Carolina? Yeah, this guy, this guy had a fucking outboard that just fell off.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:01Matt Farah?

  In his outboard engine.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  It was just him in a tin boat.

• 4:04Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  It was like a shell fishing boat.

• 4:06Matt Farah?

  The chillest dude ever. Flagged us down like, hey man, lost my motor.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we towed him for ten minutes.

• 4:12Matt Farah?

  Yeah, we gave him a fucking joint. Gillian gave him a joint to smoke in his little rowboat. And we towed him, towed him in.

• 4:22Matt Farah?

  And, uh, yeah.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  I think, yeah, I remember she was admiring his shoulders.

• 4:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah, but she, remember she tossed the rope and tossed the joint?

• 4:29Speaker 01

  I remember that.

• 4:30Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  The rope part, and we towed him over to the land.

• 4:33Matt Farah?

  Yep. There we go. So, yeah, this photo was really, uh, it's gone badly. But this thing's got like an Aventador steering wheel, or it had.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:41Matt Farah?

  And it's got like, you know, the hexagons, uh, all over. The dash sort of looks like, uh, like the, you know, Lambo styling. Um, it's a real collab piece. Conor McGregor got one, because of course he did.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  For free, probably.

• 4:56Matt Farah?

  I don't think so. I don't think, I don't think they're like giving influencers like, or even Conor McGregor, like, you know, five million dollar yachts or whatever these days.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Oh, here's another reason, uh, there was such a response was if you're overloaded by 20 people, you have 22 few life jackets, right?

• 5:14Matt Farah?

  Probably.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Right. So, you know, they're going, oh, we only, we have 20 people with no life jackets. I mean, these, they're, how far do you think they are from shore here? Half a mile?

• 5:25Matt Farah?

  I mean, it's Miami, so one photo does it, like, they might be half a mile from whatever that is, but, you know, a couple hundred yards or something else. I mean, probably further than you'd want to swim.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:35Matt Farah?

  Um, but probably not further than someone could swim.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Depending on the individual, yeah.

• 5:41Matt Farah?

  Yeah. I mean, it's, hopefully, uh, yeah, yikes. Hopefully, I think everyone's okay. I don't, I think, I think they rescued everybody fine, but, yeah, you shouldn't overload your yachts by that much.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Specs matter. Specs really, really matter.

• 5:57Matt Farah?

  Yeah. You ever do a track, uh, run a couple laps on a track, Five Up in a CTSV? Because I have.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Oh, right, yeah, full gross weight.

• 6:05Matt Farah?

  Yeah, you go, the GVWR Challenge, oh, has anyone ever done that?

• 6:10Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 6:11Matt Farah?

  Oh, that'd be a great bit, wouldn't it? What if we took a bunch of like?

• 6:16Speaker 01

  Well, that's the moose test.

• 6:17Matt Farah?

  You'd probably want to do like super saloons, right? Because they, they probably have the biggest, because like a two-door sports car with a small trunk would have a, a bigger discrepancy, or smaller discrepancy between their curb weight and their gross weight, right? Because gross weight is everything you can fit into a car, people and luggage.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:36Matt Farah?

  So like, and with trucks, it's loaded beds and shit too, but, super saloons, you're talking about five people and pretty maxed out luggage. It's usually a pretty big number.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, what, 6,000 pounds?

• 6:49Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  If your car weighs 5,000 pounds, I'm sure that the the max weight now is like 7.

• 6:54Matt Farah?

  I think we should, I think it would be fun to see if we could do like some basic performance testings at gross weight with a bunch of like super sedans or something. That would be a good time, I think.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  That would be cool. The moose test, the famous one with SUVs, they, part of the reason it's such a difficult test is because they load it to max and then they do that crazy braking slalom. Because then you have all this weight momentum up high that, you know, is thrown around and that's why so many things tip over.

• 7:19Matt Farah?

  That makes a lot of sense, actually.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Gross vehicle weight rating of the new M5 is 6482.

• 7:26Matt Farah?

  That's a lot.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  Right, and then, so it it weighs 5,400 pounds, and so you can.

• 7:31Matt Farah?

  So it's 1,000 pounds of stuff.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, which actually, isn't that much?

• 7:37Matt Farah?

  In Amer- in America.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Right, if you have four people who weigh 200 pounds, you get 200 pounds of luggage, 50 pounds each.

• 7:43Matt Farah?

  In Germany, like, four people, 200 pounds.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Tires can only take so much. Well, I would, I would wager that as the weight of cars goes up, the max weight, the difference between that and the max weight probably has shrunk because tires are only so strong, right?

• 8:02Matt Farah?

  I'm not su-

• 8:03Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying?

• 8:04Matt Farah?

  The formula for gross vehicle weight may be dependent on a standard-sized passenger and a standard-sized sort of piece of luggage.

• 8:16Matt Farah?

  Send out the Tuig signal. Mr. Tuig! We are any, any, if not, if not, Mr. Tuig, any, any of three or four different vehicle product line managers. If you're not a vehicle product line manager or formal vehicle product line manager, I don't want to hear from you on this. You are not an expert. We're not chat GPTing this shit. I want a fucking expert with a resume. Please tell me how we calculate gross vehicle weight for a given car. We'll come back to you on this one next episode.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, cool.

• 8:47Matt Farah?

  From a prof- we need a professional.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:48Matt Farah?

  You send out the Tuig signal and you, and you get a professional, like the plumbing signal.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Also, read his book, if you're listening to this.

• 8:54Matt Farah?

  Yes.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Inside the Machine.

• 8:56Matt Farah?

  I went back to, uh, how to, how to build a car. I read the first chapter of Adrian Newey's book. And then I, I think I, it's a big, thick, fucking, heavy ass book. I think I started it and I was like, this is very good. And then I went on some trip and I was like, I'm not carrying that on an airplane. And then I forgot it. It got like, um, my housekeeper shuffles books around. You know, if I leave it out on the kitchen counter, it doesn't, doesn't go back on my, like on my desk. It goes like on the bookshelf and then I, I, I forget that I'm reading it.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Forever.

• 9:29Matt Farah?

  Yeah. So I found it after like a year and going back to that one. Um, I think our past times episode went up today.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Did it?

• 9:38Matt Farah?

  I think it did.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  It was supposed to go up yesterday.

• 9:39Matt Farah?

  Me and Zach were on the past times and I think it went up today. It certainly will be up by the time this goes up for the public.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 9:46Matt Farah?

  Um, so, uh, definitely go listen to that. It's on the Dollops. Ki- is there a past times feed?

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Not that I saw.

• 9:54Matt Farah?

  So they have to go to the Dollop podcast.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  They, they have to go to the Dollop podcast right now.

• 9:58Matt Farah?

  And it's the sub show on the Dollop podcast. We're gonna keep refreshing until it's there.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  I'm, I was yesterday and then I gave up, uh, cause I had so much fun doing that. Right now it's still not up, but maybe it'll go up today.

• 10:08Matt Farah?

  It's, uh, it was really, really fun. It'll be up by the time basically anybody listens to this unless they're on the live stream right now. Um, Ben and Zach's RFK impression is getting huge, huge traction, huge laughs.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  That was fun. I gotta do that. I'll find more excuses for that.

• 10:24Matt Farah?

  Very accurate impression from, from last episode and there should absolutely be, uh, more of them. Um, let's talk about a car for a minute.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 10:34Matt Farah?

  Last week I went to, uh, Palm Springs where I drove the new Aston Martin Vantage Roadster. Uh, I drove it with Johnny, spent six hours, six hours driving around with Johnny. And boy, do we talk about a lot of things that you'll never hear about. No, I'm just kidding. Uh.

• 10:54Matt Farah?

  Um, it was, uh, this car.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Was George Soros in the backseat with you guys?

• 11:00Matt Farah?

  Listen, yes. First off, we were, we successfully, you can fit two immigrants in the trunk. Got them safe.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  We brought them to a voting.

• 11:10Matt Farah?

  We then, yes, we stopped at George's place in Palm Springs to talk about some policy.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Old GS.

• 11:16Matt Farah?

  Old GS. This place is fire. Stopped to talk some policy. You know, all Jews go through there. Right, every, every Jew does. And he was like, is that the new Roadster? I was like, yes. He's like, I'll take one. I was like, just take this one. Just make the Jews control more. And he was like, okay, understood.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  That's the second Bar Mitzvah.

• 11:33Matt Farah?

  Yeah, and as Johnny and I were leaving, he was like, how do I turn off the ADAS?

• 11:39Matt Farah?

  Um, good old George. Me and George, we hang out all the time. We're friends.

• 11:45Matt Farah?

  The Roadster, magic has happened here. One might say, Jew man. No.

• 11:55Matt Farah?

  No, uh, magic has happened here because you drove the Vantage Coupe.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah.

• 11:59Matt Farah?

  Uh, in Spain. And, uh, super fast. And in Spain, probably, where the tarmac is good, the ride was probably pretty good.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, true.

• 12:10Matt Farah?

  Performance Car of the Year, Northern California. The Vantage Coupe was fabulously fun on a racetrack, loosey goosey and slidey, but it was a little bouncy on the road, like a little harsh.

• 12:24Matt Farah?

  They haven't changed much suspension-wise for the Roadster. But the ride is awesome.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  Is this, is the Roadster heavier?

• 12:33Matt Farah?

  Yes, it's 131 pounds heavier. The only thing they've changed is some of the calibration for the shocks. It's the, the, uh, Skyhook, uh, thing.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Not the air suspension.

• 12:47Matt Farah?

  It's not air, it's, uh, Bilstein Skyhook Adaptive DTX dampers. So they retuned them software, and there's a new transaxle mount.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, as we know from 911ST, you can do a lot with.

• 13:01Matt Farah?

  You can do a lot with a little.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Like, it can feel like a spring change, but it's not.

• 13:05Matt Farah?

  And also, it was not lost on Johnny and myself, that we might have been approaching GWV.

• 13:14Matt Farah?

  Uh, GVWR. Guys, we gotta take a quick break from the show for Truework. Loving Truework over here. They keep sending me clothes and they are great. Truework is hell bent on creating the most technical, high-performance workwear in the world. The Truework story begins in the Colorado mountains where a trade worker knew there had to be a better solution than wet, heavy jeans. And they were weighing him down and Truework was born. Every Truework product is engineered for maximum comfort, protection, and efficiency with minimum bulk or extra weight. And that's what I love about the Truework stuff that they sent me. They sent me the Cloud Shorts, which fit really good.

• 13:57Matt Farah?

  Beautiful technical fabric, lots of pockets, a nice lightly elastic waist that fits with my belt, holds all my things, and they seem like they would be great out on a summer hike. Also, they just sent me this sun-blocking technical hoodie. It's very thin, like a base layer, but it's got a hood on it. So if I'm out in the desert shooting video or driving the spider on a hot day, it's got UV protection, keep me from getting sunburned, getting too hot, and man, it is nice, soft, soft, soft, and comfortable. I love it. Man, you know, there's room in your life, right? For denim and canvas, but they haven't changed much in 200 years.

• 14:41Matt Farah?

  And Truework, that upgrades your workwear by replacing traditional fabrics worn with with with with modern technical fabrics worn by elite athletes. They're soft, they're stretchy, they're sweat-wicking, and they are strong. They're windproof, waterproof, and have intelligently placed insulation for streamlined warmth, warmth, right? Check out the full lineup and get 15% off your first order at truewerk.com/tire. That's 15% off at T R U E W E R K dot com slash tire. That's T R U E W E R K dot com slash tire.

• 15:26Matt Farah?

  Gotta give 60 more seconds, folks, to Cremo. I love this Cremo. When I go out for a morning filming session, right? I get up at like 5 a.m. I'm up on the mountains. I'm in and out of the car crawling over all over these hot cars, uh, setting up cameras, getting back in the car, in, out, in, out, in, out. Now it's like 90 degrees. Now I'm sweaty. Now I have to sit in the car all the way back to city and then do podcasts and office stuff afterwards. I don't have a time for the shower, right? But Cremo has got me covered. They've, their deodorant provides me with a 48-hour odor protection. Now, I don't need all 48 of them hours, but I'll need four to six. And I, and this more than covers that.

• 16:09Matt Farah?

  Cremo products are barber grade, made with pride, professionalism, and passion to guarantee quality without compromise. You can elevate your deodorant experience right now, like I just did. They've got new signature scents, folks. The Italian Bergamot, it's bright, fresh, and robust. And then, of course, the Palo Santo, that's what I've been using. I love my Palo Santo. It actually, it replaces a cologne. You can wear it, a little heavy bike, and then you're good. You're, you are ready to go out, not just ready to go to the office. I really like it. Helps me, keep me going throughout the day when I don't have time for a shower. Cremo's using enhanced multi-layered scent technology for a longer lasting experience. Lasts all day.

• 16:52Matt Farah?

  And, uh, they are really, really thoughtfully blending those ingredients. They're soft to the touch. They don't leave a residue on you and they smell delightful. You can get them now at Target or Target.com to find Cremo's new line of antiperspirants and deodorants in Italian Bergamot and Palo Santo scents. Once again, get that Cremo at Target or Target.com. Uh, so that may, we may have preloaded the shocks a little bit. It's possible. Uh, but you feel what you feel. And both of us agreed that this roadster has a absolutely fabulous balance of ride and handling. Really, really, really beautifully balanced.

• 17:37Matt Farah?

  And what's really interesting is I drove the same road the day before in the Carrera GTS Hybrid. And then I drove it again in the Vantage. And I drove the same highway two days in a row in the Carrera GTS Hybrid and the Vantage. The, uh, particularly the GTS I was driving had no backseat, bucket seats. It was the wannabe GT3 spec.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:02Matt Farah?

  This, the, you know, there's no replicating the, the feeling of either a Porsche flat six or a car that has no weight on the front axle.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Like a mid-engine car, sure.

• 18:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah, a mid-engine or a rear-engine car. You can't replicate that steering in any front-engine car. It's not possible because of the weight.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:22Matt Farah?

  But for a front-engine car, the Aston is incredibly pointy.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:28Matt Farah?

  Um, but also much more relaxed on the highway than the Carrera GTS. The Carrera GTS was way dartier on the highway, more like the GT3. This was much more relaxed on the highway.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Well, that, this might have a more relaxed alignment then, where the GTS might be more aggressive for that turn-in and just, and outright grip handling and stuff like that.

• 18:51Matt Farah?

  Yeah, but also the ride was better.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  And the Vantage is really nice and quick.

• 18:55Matt Farah?

  It is.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  And it does, it directs that nose even with a big engine and stuff. I mean, relatively big, like, it's pretty, uh, quick to turn.

• 19:02Matt Farah?

  They're, uh, they were sort of mimicking the Ferrari Roma steering, which ironically, immediately after this podcast, a Roma Spider is being dropped off here. So we will be able to drive them almost back-to-back and really feel, um, that's their closest competitor to this is Roma Spider. Next closest is probably 911 Turbo or maybe 911 GTS. Price point, it's Turbo.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Price-wise, yeah.

• 19:27Matt Farah?

  Yeah, but there isn't a new Turbo. This is expensive. They haven't actually given me the US price yet, but it starts with a two.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  186 or something.

• 19:35Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it starts with a two. Um, but the new interior, which you can also get in the coupe that comes from the DB12 and the new UI, really, really good.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 19:45Matt Farah?

  Asterisk. When you take the top down, a lot of those big, black buttons that control major drive functions, like the suspension settings and whatever, they light up red. In a coupe, no problem. And when the top's down, you have absolutely no idea when they're on or not. You have to do this.

• 20:06Matt Farah?

  Because you can't tell when the little light is on.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  That's a great point. Porsche, a lot of their lights are also red. But I can't remember the last time I drove a convertible. And like Porsche convertible and then looked at the center console. Like the Panamera we drove, it's also red.

• 20:19Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  But I'm wondering if theirs is brighter or if it's just something we overlooked.

• 20:23Matt Farah?

  Theirs, Porsches are a little brighter.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 20:25Matt Farah?

  And where they place them is a little more in the shade.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 20:29Matt Farah?

  Like the Porsche dash is more vertical and the buttons are sort of forward.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Because they don't have an engine trans right there.

• 20:35Matt Farah?

  At the base of the wall. This dash is much more of a waterfall on an angle and everything is just sort of out in the sun. There's not a lot you could do about this. I mean, it's just like, alright, you know, it's a convertible. But if you're driving a lot with the top down, that might bother you a little bit.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Maybe, I guess, I would, well, no, I was gonna say you probably don't change your driver settings a lot if you're not a journalist. But I could see, you know, you get off the highway, you get onto a twisty road, you want to adjust your stuff and then you get back on a highway. You want to adjust it again, so.

• 21:04Matt Farah?

  I mean, in fairness, the big drive mode knob is gonna do most of your mode changing. The buttons are for like, if, do you want sport but a soft shock? Do you, you know, if you want to then further change, do you just want to turn off this? Okay, fine. So that's one drawback.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Was there an indicator, an indication on the gauges when you would change those suspension things?

• 21:25Matt Farah?

  Yes. And remember how everybody, including you, complained that you couldn't read the gear indicator in the gauge cluster?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Because it was size four font?

• 21:32Matt Farah?

  New gauge cluster. The entire inside of the TAC is now a big gear indicator. Very clear.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  Great.

• 21:38Matt Farah?

  Message received retroactively, not retroactively, but applied to the new coupes.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Fantastic.

• 21:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah, also. Look at the steering wheel, most, almost all the way around.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Mostly round.

• 21:49Matt Farah?

  Almost all the way around, love it. I love the gauge cluster surround, the binnacle. I mean, you know, I'm not going to repeat my feelings on LCD screens for, for gauge clusters versus analog. But like, I love the surround, very nice. The stereo was really good. I love Aston's side view frameless mirrors. Those don't get enough love. There's no frame around them, so you use the full size of the mirror, which is great.

• 22:18Matt Farah?

  Just in general, a really, really lovely place to be. Fabulous leather, fabulous construction.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  So I have a question.

• 22:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Because we've driven DB, well, you've driven DBS, I drove a DB12.

• 22:31Matt Farah?

  I drove DB12.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  We drove it together.

• 22:32Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  In Malibu, convertible, etc.

• 22:34Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  When you drove this, did it make DB12 feel a little bit, not obsolete, but like the draw to that is reduced versus previous generations?

• 22:45Matt Farah?

  I'll tell you what, I mean because of the powertrain?

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Because the power is insane in this thing, like 680 horsepower, right?

• 22:51Matt Farah?

  It's 655, 656 and 590 torque, which in a short wheelbase car is an unbelievable, this car is so fast.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  So DB12 has 671 horsepower, so 20 shy in this thing.

• 23:07Matt Farah?

  DB12 has the longer wheelbase.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 23:09Matt Farah?

  It has, it has something resembling a backseat, and it has more legroom, you can move the seat further back than the Vantage, that's actually kind of a big one for me. I'm just, I'm not even that tall, but I'm right on the line of being able to drive this car comfortably. The DB12 does have a lot more space, and I think the DB12 is still prettier.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Oh, I agree, and especially the back, because the back on this is the same as it was the previous generation, basically, with like, I have said it since 2016, like these big plastic angles around the exhaust pipes, I do not like.

• 23:48Matt Farah?

  I'm not a big fan of that.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Especially when the top half of the car is like, I'll say, standard Aston Vantage little, you know, flip up on the trunk.

• 23:57Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  It's pretty nice, it's pretty looking.

• 23:58Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 23:59Speaker 01

  And then it just falls apart into transformers.

• 24:01Matt Farah?

  I agree, that rear diffuser segment is not my favorite, and I don't think the US bumparets around the license plate are doing it any favors, I think you could probably get rid of those and make the car look a lot better. But look, the top, up or down, it looks great, very well insulated, very quiet with the top up, eight layers, goes down in under seven seconds.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  That's fast.

• 24:27Matt Farah?

  Up to 30 miles an hour, really fast. And the trunk doesn't have to do a thing. It's called this like Z-fold top. It doesn't have, because the trunk doesn't have to open at all. It's all in that self-contained, just up-down. That really makes it work fast. And it also doesn't, it has a surprisingly big trunk. Two rolling carry-ons in the trunk of this. And the top up or down does not impede the trunk space.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  That is a very nice thing, because a lot of cars we've driven, like I think Portofino and SL was it? I mean, the top goes into the trunk a bit and does impact it. Seven seconds is half the speed it takes to put down an RF Miata top.

• 25:07Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  Or I think like McLaren's like 12.

• 25:10Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  That's real fast.

• 25:11Matt Farah?

  It's really fast. So, and what that really means is, you might put the top up and down multiple times per drive. You know, like, you might put the top down to drive from your house to the highway. Put the top up to get on the highway and go on the highway. Put the top down when you get back off that, like, when, when things are that easy and fast, you do them more.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah.

• 25:33Matt Farah?

  Compared to like my Spyder, where my top comes down for the day.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, because you have to get out of the car.

• 25:40Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, I parked that car, I go to lunch, the top's staying down, you know. Do I have any pictures of it with the top up? Did I take a single photo with the top up? I don't know if I did or not. It was a beautiful day. But like, Aston's, Aston's really, really getting there dynamically.

• 26:01Matt Farah?

  The only thing that really holds this car back,

• 26:06Matt Farah?

  and only compared to its competition, in a vacuum, this car's absolutely fabulous. There's, there's not much to criticize, actually. It's like, whether you like it visually or not, you know, that's, some people will love it, some people won't. I'm not going to judge. I, I happen to think it mostly looks good.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 26:23Matt Farah?

  I absolutely would be proud to be driving it around, but I could nitpick some things if I wanted to. In general, I think it's very pretty, from almost every angle. And it's really fucking fast. This is a 202 mile an hour car. And it does 0-60 in the low 3s. Um, the thirty to a hundred is obscene. Uh, the passing power on a single lane, you know, getting, getting around someone, uh, it, it's absolutely obscene, the power on this. And Aston now has full control over the engine and gearbox and they've redesigned a lot of stuff. Um, so it is ba- it is the four liter engine.

• 27:06Matt Farah?

  Uh, but it really doesn't sound much like a Mercedes anymore. The sound is different. Uh, I, I think it, I mean, you know, it's a four liter V eight twin turbo, right? So they all kind of have the same sort of sound, but it does sound different enough from what Mercedes' engine sound like right now.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  I am, I am, uh, always amazed at the difference. It's, it's subtle, but it's just, it's noticeable between like Porsche and Mercedes. Anyone with a four liter, and I know it's not the same engine, but like it's a four liter V eight. But they can sound very different and it also depends across the different model lines sometimes. Like they might make it sound louder. It's just muffler design is impressive.

• 27:46Matt Farah?

  G-Wagon sounds way different from, you know, an E, uh, five fifty or whatever, even though they use the same exact four liter, you know, version of the G-Wagon.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  It's almost like they can make the G-Wagon sound like a bigger engine or a smaller engine. Yeah.

• 27:59Matt Farah?

  Um, but they made a, a point of having this sound as different as they could from the Mercedes. And I do think it sounds and feels, it has a different torque curve from the Mercedes. Um, the Mercedes goes up and stays flat. This, uh, builds a little bit and, and peaks. And it's supposed to have a more linear peak, which I actually think it does. But the only real negative is that compared to its competition. Guys, we gotta take one more quick break for Mudwater. Listen, Mudwater, it's a, it's a different thing. It's a totally different thing. You might have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about right now, but hear me out. Mudwater is a cozy mix of cacao, chai, turmeric, and adaptogenic mushrooms to help

• 28:43Matt Farah?

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• 29:27Matt Farah?

  Little grade A, uh, light amber, grade B, medium amber. The maple syrup is secret, actually. That's a good one. I shouldn't even be telling you this, but it's pretty fire, to be honest with you. And the best part about Mudwater is it provides sustained energy delivery, but without the spikes and crashes of coffee, right? And Mudwater does have some caffeine in it, but they do have a caffeine version also. But it's not as much caffeine as coffee, right? But every ingredient in Mudwater is serving a purpose. The cacao and chai have a hint of caffeine and hot chocolate flavor. There's lion's mane for focus, cordyceps to promote natural energy, and chaga and reishi to support a healthy immune system.

• 30:11Matt Farah?

  I'll be honest, I have no idea what a reishi is, but it sounds good. Sounds legit. You know what I'm saying? Then you can get the matcha starter kit, you can get the turmeric starter kit, the rest starter kit, they all use different starter kits for different functions. You start with your desired outcome and you work backwards with Mudwater. That's what it's about. So are you ready to make the switch to cleaner energy? Head over to M U D W T R dot com and grab that starter kit today. Right now, our listeners get an exclusive deal up to 43% off your entire order, plus free shipping and a free rechargeable frother when you use code tire.

• 30:52Matt Farah?

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• 31:37Matt Farah?

  A P D K downshift is exactly the same every time, every gear. An automatic isn't. You know what I mean? Like, the diff, and I told the engineers this. The difference in speed, like 5-4-4-3 are real fast in this car. 3-2 is a completely different speed. And a 3-2 downshift is an important one. And so I was like, does it not lock the torque converter until third gear? And that's why the faster ones are sn- and he was kind of like, I'll get, I'll get back to you. Like, he didn't, the person I asked didn't really know that. Usually, they lock either after first or after second. If this is after second, then maybe that's why that downshift is,

• 32:19Matt Farah?

  or the red, the, the gap in RPM is more, I don't know. But like, that shit don't happen in other. Absolutely. You know, $300,000 cars. Yeah.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  That was, you know, we, when I went to the launch of the coupe, it was at a track. I mean, we did road and track driving. Get the magazine, bing. Um, but one of the things that this track had were, I'd say, two second gear corners, like sharp hairpins.

• 32:43Matt Farah?

  The big chicanes.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  There was the chicane, but there was also one that was like a U-turn almost.

• 32:48Matt Farah?

  Oh, the end of the front straight.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  And, uh, oh, then there was three. There was that one, and then you kind of do like the wiggle wiggle thing. And then there's the downhill, which with a sharp right-hander, that was like a fun thing to slide. Um, you had to do a lot of three-two downshifts is basically it on that particular track and many tracks. And that's where I noticed that you need more of that RPM gap.

• 33:07Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Before it would let you downshift.

• 33:09Matt Farah?

  Yes.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  What I, what I don't like about that is, one, the competition doesn't have that problem, but two, I was left waiting and, and paying attention to the gauge and watching, do I have the gear yet? Am I gonna be in too tall gear when I start to turn in? Cause then I have to adjust my throttle tip in, cause if it's stuck in third for some reason, well now if I had too much throttle, my wheel speed is gonna go crazy versus thinking I was gonna be in second gear.

• 33:33Matt Farah?

  Totally.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  It just required a lot more mental bandwidth.

• 33:36Matt Farah?

  Isn't it weird? Like, I never have problems asking for a gear and getting it in a, in a proper sports car with a dual clutch. Never. I'm never like tugging the pedal and not getting the gear. And in torque converter ones, all the time.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  I'm sure, I mean, if someone is like a transmission engineer, put it in the comments, let us know why this is. It's, it is clearly a problem that's native to the hardware.

• 34:02Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Like, there's a limitation, and automatics have gotten better at this over, especially in the last like 10 years, like ZF8 speed, everything. But when you're charging this much money and your literal competition is Porsche with their transmission, the comparisons are gonna have to be made.

• 34:19Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  And that's where they really separate.

• 34:21Matt Farah?

  This is pretty much the cheapest car in its class, unless you consider the LC500 its class.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Oh. Um, I mean, that's far below this performance.

• 34:31Matt Farah?

  It is, it is, you know, um.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Plus, half the price.

• 34:35Matt Farah?

  It's half the price, you know? I actually, I think it's a better value than this, objectively.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah.

• 34:39Matt Farah?

  I think you get a lot for your money with an LC500 convertible. That's a fire looking car. Uh, it sounds great. Yeah. Um, and it's as fast as you'd ever realistically need to go. It's not a great Canyon. It's a 710's car. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a, it's a GT. Yeah. Yeah, this is more, this is sportier for sure. But the, so the, the 911 GTS in that particular spec I had was slightly sharper. Right? I mean, are we shocked? You know, it's a, it's a rear engine car. Of course it's gonna be slightly sharper. It's got no weight on the nose. That it's enough, it's, it's got no resistance to turning in. Conversely, the Aston was slightly more relaxed on the highway. The Aston, I, I think on a track, these two cars would actually be pretty close.

• 35:23Matt Farah?

  I think it would come down to the driver more than anything else. Uh, particularly if the GTS was more of a touring spec. Um, you know, without the bucket seats and all that and with a backseat and, you know, things that would spec it more like this. Um, on a Canyon, these cars are the same speed, but they have completely different feel. Yeah. You know, it's, it's a front engine car, but it's a very pointy and responsive front engine car. Uh, the steering is a little less communicative, but a sharper ratio with the Aston. Uh, whereas the 911 inquires requires a little more wheel input, but you feel a little more through the wheel, cause there isn't the weight of an engine to dampen all that stuff. Both incredibly fun. I mean, honest, I can't say I had more fun

• 36:09Matt Farah?

  going down the twisty road in one than the other. Driving home from the Aston launch in traffic and shit in the nine, like, I, um, maybe I wasn't clear. I drove the 911 GTS to the Aston launch and then home.

• 36:26Matt Farah?

  So I drove the Canyon route on the way there and I drove the highway route on the way home in the 911. And in between, I did the reverse of that in the Aston Martin. It was actually quite convenient to be able to do that. Going home in the nine eleven, I wished I was in the Aston.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 36:43Matt Farah?

  Because it was more mellow and insulated and after a long day, it was a more welcoming place and with the nine elevens buckets, I would drive it for twenty minutes and go, I should have fucking bought the buckets in my car. Why did I get the comfort seats? I should have bought the buckets. After an hour, thank God I got the comfort seats. You know?

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Your adjustability is very important.

• 37:07Matt Farah?

  Yeah, no lumbar, you know, if you're in like peak physical condition, sure, your buckets are fine, but if you require lumbar support, no.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  But it also depends on how long you're driving your car, in my opinion. Even if I'm in a seat that a great bucket that has lumbar and fits my body, after two hours or an hour and a half, like I need to adjust things a little bit just because I have to. So having that fixed back and it's like, here's how you're sitting, no matter what.

• 37:36Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Forever.

• 37:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  I wouldn't like that unless it's a track car or it's only a Canyon car.

• 37:41Matt Farah?

  Sure. I'm good in a bucket for about an hour and then it's tough. So,

• 37:48Matt Farah?

  you know, this Aston though, you know, you could easily daily it. I mean, in all but snow. I think with the wet traction mode, I think it would be just fine in the rain. The trunk is big enough for everyday use. It's absolutely comfortable. You drive it in like whatever. I mean, I think sport is the mellowest drive mode other than wet. But with the exhaust closed, like it's mellow. It's not bad.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:12Matt Farah?

  Really continues that formula of the, you know, the British roadsters into and the Shelby Cobras into the Vipers and the F types and, you know, that traditional, you know, front engine, rear drive formula, fast roadster, you know, sort of British brute force muscle car. Just a really, really nice thing.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:33Matt Farah?

  Really fun.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  I think it's super well rounded compared to the last generation Vantage, which had this very old feeling interior, even when it was new.

• 38:41Matt Farah?

  Oh, yeah, the interiors.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  The one with like the thirty buttons that all look the same. It didn't look upscale and the car still costs a lot of money. I think the front engine, the front end design of this is much better than the old tiny Miyata lights. Like, I think it's better visually outside. The interior is of a quality and a architecture, like a design, from a design point, that justifies the price.

• 39:03Matt Farah?

  Yeah. It, it, in general, I mean, it's a, it's a fabulous thing. I would really, I actually asked, straight up, I asked Aston Martin to, if they would mind if I take one on the September Northern California Road and Track event, which would be some laps at Sonoma and driving across from Sonoma to Lake Tahoe. Fuck, yeah. In this, absolutely. That's, that's the-

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Hopefully they give you one, yeah.

• 39:29Matt Farah?

  Oh, well, they were, they were kind of stout, because they were like, "Don't you normally drive Bentleys on those things?" And I was like, "Yes, I normally do drive Bentleys or McLarens." Matter of fact, I've driven every major British automaker so far, except-

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Except yours.

• 39:40Matt Farah?

  Except yours.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:41Matt Farah?

  Consider it a conquest sale.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  I think this thing moved up a lot. That's why I said it, it reminds me of the DB12, because the interior is so nice and looks so good. And it has a lot of similar hardware, where I went, "Ooh, this feels like it moved up in price a lot, like, price point."

• 39:55Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  And kind of closed the gap a bit, whereas the other one felt slower, or like, felt, to me, it felt slower than the AMG GTs.

• 40:03Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  And didn't look as nice inside and cost more money.

• 40:06Matt Farah?

  Look, it didn't help that Mercedes discontinued the, you know, the old AMG GT. You know, they don't have a car now that's better than this.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 40:15Matt Farah?

  They did.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  That might have opened up some tuning ability, yeah.

• 40:18Matt Farah?

  Mercedes used to make a car that's better than this one.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  They did.

• 40:21Matt Farah?

  And they just don't now.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:23Matt Farah?

  They make another car, but it's not better than this.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:27Matt Farah?

  But really, I mean, I have to drive it alone, I guess, to see if it was the gross vehicle weight, or maybe it's the transmission mount, or maybe it's the 131 of extra pounds from the convertible top that moves the weight distribution 1% rearward. It's now 4951 instead of 5050. But less bouncy, and that's a big, big deal in a car like this, because it's so easy to make a front-engine sports car bouncy.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:56Matt Farah?

  Because you have to make them stiff to turn in.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:59Matt Farah?

  So like Mustangs are a good example because it's a big honking engine. Yeah, so not a non-bouncy car is luxurious. So but really interesting to get to do back to back with the GTS. Yeah, that's great. And then this and then to have the Roma coming today like what a treat. So we get to we get to try them all. Very niche market.

• 41:22Matt Farah?

  Uh, do we have anything else to talk about? Um, I've been I've been talking to a guy, uh, who, uh, wow, it's all that's. It gets into it's gonna get into a whole fucking can of worms. Um, but shout out to Massachusetts. Let me just say they're doing good things in Massachusetts. Okay. They got. So fake. Huh? There I've been talking to someone who works at the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and they and they're talking about.

• 41:51Matt Farah?

  Some of the infrastructure improvements that they're doing there. And there's like a like a very long term plan. It's like a hundred years plan to essentially undo a lot of the carification from the 1970s. Whoa. Turn a lot of their public spaces back into pedestrian centric areas. And it comes with along with road improvements and stuff like that. Oh, cool. Shit, that's awesome. Rad.

• 42:20Matt Farah?

  I wonder if my article is up on Road and Track yet about PCH. They said they were gonna put it up by the end of the week. I wrote a I wrote a bit on the, um, the, uh, new, uh, there's a plan. Out, uh, that they're asking for votes on about the redevelopment of PCH. Not just because of the fire. Go go down to like the culture section. Uh, not just because of the fires. In fact, it's totally independent from the fires, but actually because, um, pretty much everyone hates PCH.

• 42:56Matt Farah?

  I mean, we need it and we love the idea of PCH. Uh, but people, uh, die on it a lot and it's not up yet. Okay, uh, people die on it a lot and there's traffic and the parking is. All wrong and a whole bunch of things about it are designed really badly. And it turns out, uh, something that I have been saying for quite some time is we could drastically improve safety with some concrete and some paint. We do not need self-driving cars for this and we do not need to eliminate cars for this. Uh, and the plan is incredibly brilliant. Um, and I'm super supportive of it. Uh, because it literally says

• 43:38Matt Farah?

  what does, do each of these sections of PCH really need? And how can we give it to them? Uh, and prioritize, um, the humans that have to be here. As opposed to prioritizing getting more vehicles per hour through this area. And that doesn't necessarily mean increasing traffic, by the way. Traffic will still be traffic at the times that, that the beach and shit are in demand. If traffic's already moving at fucking five miles an hour, then having going from, uh, going from an area that supports fifty-five miles an hour traffic to an area that supports twenty-five miles an hour traffic won't change anything. There'll still be five mile an hour traffic.

• 44:20Matt Farah?

  You know what I mean? Like, so it won't change that, but it will hopefully, um, not just reduce the speed of vehicle traffic, because that's not what I'm talking about specifically. I'm talking about making it safer to cross the road, making it safer to turn left, making it so that street parking is aligned with whatever that street parking is for. Like for instance, right now, there's a historical thing to preserve the view of the ocean from your car. And what that means is they don't allow beachside parking. They make you park on the side opposite the beach. And make you fucking run across a four-lane highway with a fifty-five mile an hour speed limit

• 45:05Matt Farah?

  and no crosswalks. That's a very- Carrying your beach shit. So that you can sit in your car and look at the beach. So that you can see the beach as you're driving by. They're preserving the view of the beach for the motorists. Which like, mo- you know, view for motorists or-

• 45:22Matt Farah?

  Keep people from getting fucking hit by cars.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Well, also, the number of sections where people are walking across to get to a beach is pretty small. Like, it's not like the entire length of-

• 45:30Matt Farah?

  Right, I'm talking about, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, correct.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  So, like, preserving that view in that section is kind of silly, because you'll see the ocean a little, like, a moment later.

• 45:39Matt Farah?

  Correct. Um, and it's, you know, that's not like hostile to cars. That's just like common sense shit. And vice versa, there's a lot of places where, uh, parking is opposite, uh, um, businesses. And so people have to park on the other side of the street and run across to their restaurant or to their whatever. And so they can change the parking rules so that your parking is happening on the same side as the thing. I mean, it's just like, it's like pretty common sense stuff. It shouldn't be political or anything. We're talking about concrete and paint, common sense measures to save lives.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  What is it about the fire that has allowed them to make these changes?

• 46:20Matt Farah?

  Nothing. Nothing. It has nothing to do with the fire. It was already happening anyway.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 46:23Matt Farah?

  There's going to be emergency, there's eyeballs drawn to PCH because of the fire damage.

• 46:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:30Matt Farah?

  I got a quote from Caltrans, "There are emergency repairs happening to make PCH open now."

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 46:39Matt Farah?

  This isn't that. This is a 20-year plan to make it safer for pedestrians, cyclists. We're talking about a full-length protected bike lane.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  That'd be so cool.

• 46:50Matt Farah?

  Entire length of Malibu. How amazing would that be?

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Be very amazing.

• 46:53Matt Farah?

  You could ride from the north end of Malibu all the way to Palos Verdes on a bike path. That's fucking sick.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:59Matt Farah?

  Um, I, have you ever ridden a bike on PCH?

• 47:02Speaker 01

  No, I do not want to.

• 47:03Matt Farah?

  Dude, you want a fucking, you want it, the scariest day of your life-

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:08Matt Farah?

  -will be a day that you ride a bicycle on PCH. It's fucking terrifying.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  Everyone's going 60.

• 47:12Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:13Matt Farah?

  Um-

• 47:14Speaker 01

  And taking pictures on the beach with your phone.

• 47:16Matt Farah?

  Roundabouts. Plans for four roundabouts. You know, uh, at the base of four of our favorite roads, Tuna Canyon, Latigo Canyon, Enstal Canyon, Mulholland Highway, you have to make an unprotected left turn onto PCH to get out of there.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Uh, yes, that's true.

• 47:32Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 47:33Matt Farah?

  What if there was a big fucking roundabout?

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 47:36Matt Farah?

  Yeah, boy.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Slow on the flow of everything, but that's okay.

• 47:39Matt Farah?

  Yeah, but one of the plans is to reduce PCH to single lane north of Trancas.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 47:48Matt Farah?

  Which there wouldn't, there doesn't, there, there isn't really a good justification, traffic wise, for that being two lanes anyway. They could better use the space for cyclists and, and things like that.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Cause it right now, it's two lanes each way right now.

• 48:01Matt Farah?

  Two lanes each way right now and it's, there's never enough cars to justify that. That's always an empty section of road.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:07Matt Farah?

  Um, and so they could better use that, that space and, and if it's single lane, then a big two hundred, uh, two hundred foot roundabout, or a hundred foot, not two hundred, but a hundred foot roundabout, probably would not impede traffic flow by very much at all.

• 48:21Speaker 01

  Sure. I mean, and when we were in UK with Lotus and stuff, like there's, we're on a highway, there's a roundabout all of a sudden, it's just there. And everyone slows down and it just work, but it filters those.

• 48:29Matt Farah?

  Do you remember when we drove for like three hours across the UK without stopping?

• 48:37Speaker 01

  Um, oh.

• 48:38Matt Farah?

  Like on country, like on country roads and we drove, and we drove like the whole way without coming to a stop.

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's no lights.

• 48:45Matt Farah?

  I understand that that isn't possible within our cities, but like, that is possible in our more like rural areas. Like it's, it's totally possible. It's fucking concrete and paint. Like, we don't have to invent anything.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  That will help in some ways, cause some, you know, the, the stop signs and stoplights in some places, like motorists linger too long. And there's this backup thing that happens, like it keeps things moving.

• 49:08Matt Farah?

  Keeps it flowing. Ah, it's so nice. Can't.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 49:11Matt Farah?

  Uh, so anyway, that story should be up at some point. I think, I don't know. I think, cause it seems like anti-car. It's not anti-car. This plan adds, I think, I wanna, I have, it's, it'll be correct in the article, but I wanna say it adds seven hundred parking spaces. Adds by, by, by moving this. And it adds three hundred bicycle parking spaces.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 49:35Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  That's a lot.

• 49:36Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I'm down. Uh, should we Patreon it? I love the Patreon. It's where you pay to be a trion.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Pay to be a trion.

• 49:48Matt Farah?

  The Patreon is where you watch the livestream. It's where you get the show early. It's where you get the show without ads. It's where you get to ask us questions. And actually, in today's case, it's where you get to listen to a car review two days before the embargo, because the embargo's the 11th. So, most people are gonna hear this two days after the embargo.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  Good point.

• 50:09Matt Farah?

  But if you're a Patreon, boy, don't fuck it up for everybody else, okay?

• 50:13Speaker 01

  Don't start tweeting about it.

• 50:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Patreon.com/the Smoking Tire Podcast. Yes, sir?

• 50:19Speaker 01

  You also sometimes get early access to watches.

• 50:21Matt Farah?

  Yeah, if you want either of the last two watches, you almost certainly will have to be a patron, because these is gonna go. We got the Notice Canyon in British Racing Green with gilt dial, as well as the Tahitian Black Pearl. There's only gonna be 50 of the Black Pearl and 100 of the Green. Yeah. Do you, are you interested in one, Mr. Klabin?

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Uh, I do like the green one.

• 50:46Matt Farah?

  You like the green?

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:47Matt Farah?

  Oh, I thought we were saving you a green. I think we are saving you a green, yeah. I was fucking with the green the other day. That is a superior watch.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  It's a really good green.

• 50:57Matt Farah?

  The green is excellent.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  When I saw the prototype, I was like, oh, that's...

• 51:00Matt Farah?

  And if I'm being totally honest, I've pre-sold 15 of the Mother of Pearls to my friends.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  That's Patreon Tier 5.

• 51:08Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Well, I say my friends, but two of the, two people emailed me, are patrons, and own the, all three of the other colors. And they said they planned to buy the last two. And could they please just ensure that they could get a complete collection? And so, I put their names on the list, and yes.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 51:30Matt Farah?

  If you, if you already have the other three, I will ensure that you get the last two. There's a few people that have that. So, yeah, you, if you wanna complete the collection, hit me up. I like having the complete collection. It is good. You know what I did for Mother's Day? I, you know, we were gonna do a purple dial.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:51Matt Farah?

  And we ended up not, not doing it. I thought it was a little too close to the blue. My mom really liked the prototype, and so I gave it to her for Mother's Day.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, cool.

• 52:01Matt Farah?

  She was into that.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  That's red.

• 52:03Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Piece unique. She's got the one of one, uh, purple dial. Never, never produced.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  Nice. She's flipping it on eBay.

• 52:11Matt Farah?

  And did I tell you about Cameron? Did we talk about that?

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Uh, you said he was building a new watch?

• 52:16Matt Farah?

  He has a new movement. But I tell you, he took the Delica on a vacation?

• 52:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:20Matt Farah?

  Did I tell you on the show?

• 52:21Speaker 01

  You know.

• 52:22Matt Farah?

  Did we talk? Oh, so Cameron Weiss, the watchmaker, uh, our good friend, former, my former co-host of the Watch and Listen podcast, which doesn't exist on Apple Podcasts anymore. It does exist on YouTube.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 52:34Matt Farah?

  So you can go get the complete Watch and Listen podcast on YouTube, and I strongly recommend you do if you're a watcher. He was sponsoring a bike race in the Alabama hills, which is not in Alabama. It's in Lone Pine, California. It's where they shot a lot of like Lost in Space and John Wayne shit in the 50s. Um, it looks like Mars.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  It's a very cool place to stop if you're in the area.

• 52:56Matt Farah?

  So he was like, I'm gonna, I was gonna drive the Land Rover there, uh, which that sentence is insane because A, it's a 1962 Land Rover, and B, he lives in fucking Nashville. He was going to drive a 1962 Land Rover there from Nashville. But then he decided, he says, that that wasn't a great idea.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Is this bike race called Whiskey Tango Fondo, and it's a gravel bike race called the Hardest Race? Okay.

• 53:20Matt Farah?

  Yes.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 53:21Matt Farah?

  Did you find it?

• 53:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did.

• 53:22Matt Farah?

  So I lent him the Delica. I said, he goes, where can I buy, rent a cool four by four? And I go, you can't rent anything, but you should take the Delica. It should probably go on a little adventure. So he flew in and took the Delica to, which is like a three-hour road trip to, uh, out there, sent me some amazing photos of it in the dirt. I'll have to post them on Instagram. It looks right at home.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's perfect.

• 53:47Matt Farah?

  He came back like loving it, and he was like, I have to buy one of these. I was like, this is, this is when people learn that Land Rovers aren't as good as everybody says they are. Cause like, this little fucking Billy Goat is better than your Defender.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  It does a great job and it's right, it's very soft.

• 54:02Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  Speed bumps, it kind of pogo's a little bit, but it's a nice riding thing.

• 54:05Matt Farah?

  But if you're by yourself, if you're, if you're, if you're not, if it's not loaded down with weight, a Delica will cruise comfortably at 70 miles an hour, no problem. Uh, if you've got like seven people in it, different story. Um, but he sent me these great pictures. Anyway, um, he asked if he could like pay, which was insane. Of course you can't pay, but I did, my, my wife's watch needed a service. So it doesn't need a service. It's fine. It's just been long enough. So I said, hey, how about a service? And I said, while you're in there, well, while you're in there, I thought was, was maybe pertinent. I asked him to paint loom on my dial.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a good idea.

• 54:43Matt Farah?

  Right? Little upgrade?

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Little, little while you're in there.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause at night you can't see it.

• 54:48Matt Farah?

  Can't see it. The hands have loom.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:50Matt Farah?

  And I, I can tell time without, without, but, but why not? Little upgrade. So anyway.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 54:56Matt Farah?

  And he's got a new movement he's working on. Very exciting. Okay. Back to the Patreon. Sorry. Mama Miata says, timely question, turbo Miata or V8 swap Miata? Uh, would your choice differ based on how much canyon driving you're planning to do relative to using it as a daily driver? I think it's more like, what do you, what is, what vibe do you want? Is this because we have the flying Miata car here?

• 55:23Speaker 01

  I put it in the description.

• 55:25Matt Farah?

  So, I mean, it also depends on like, your level of like, finish on the swap.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 55:34Matt Farah?

  Like you could install a turbo kit, this, this flying Miata turbo kit, I'm assuming on an otherwise completely stock vehicle. And have a car that you could just daily drive and would not be remotely affected. You would, you'd have, other than maybe, I don't know, fuel economy or something, you'd have no negative externalities from the turbo kit. If you put a V8 in that car, you're changing a lot.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  You're changing a lot of stuff.

• 56:00Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  And there's plenty of companies, including Fly Me Out of that sell kits for LS swaps.

• 56:04Matt Farah?

  Sure.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Fully swap cars if you want. We drove their swapped ND.

• 56:11Matt Farah?

  We drove their swapped ND. And for one reason or another, and maybe I'll ask Keith why they abandoned that project. But they sold that car to an outfit in Florida that is now selling those under their name. And I don't remember the name of it.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  And like.

• 56:26Matt Farah?

  But it's that same fucking car, the silver car.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  And I filmed for a TV show, an NA from them that was amazing. But what I remember about all those is it changes the vibe to Mini Corvette.

• 56:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  And it's, or Mini Cobra, I mean, it's exciting, especially the NA with the V8 swap was nuts.

• 56:41Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  Because it's such a tiny thing. But you add more vibration into the car and it changes the character into something that's like.

• 56:48Matt Farah?

  It's a hot rod now.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  Monster Miata hot rod, whereas I think the turbo kit, one, you retain the longitudinally mounted inline four. So you keep the smooth engine, which I have come to really appreciate in my car whenever I jump in a press car with a V8. But also I think the turbo, it just, to me, for whatever reason, it's very subjective, is more in line with the Miata ethos, the Japanese tuner car thing. And I think it would, it remains more of a Miata and a more interesting thing than making a miniature Corvette.

• 57:17Matt Farah?

  I agree. LS swaps tend to turn any car into a Corvette. And so, yeah, if you want a Mini Corvette, or if you want the vibe of a Shelby Cobra.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:29Matt Farah?

  Then you have your V8. But if you really want a Miata for its Miata character, then doing a turbo kit will not fuck that up. You'll just have a little more fun when you're accelerating.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Especially if it was going to be a daily, like I'd rather have the inline four.

• 57:46Matt Farah?

  I mean, this one we're doing for this NC, I mean, this turbo kit is a carb legal, 91 octane, daily drivable turbo kit. It's not a huge amount of power, but when you put your foot in it, it is exciting. And it'll pass smog and you can run pump. Gas and that's great. So, um, we'll do a thing with it when, uh, when we get a chance. It's gonna live here for a little bit. Uh, Nice Cam says, "Thoughts on buying a pre-engine swapped car." Uh, the, uh, the idea of an LS swap GR86 is appealing, but I'm not a wrench, so should I be worried about maintenance on a car I didn't swap myself? Our friend bought an engine swapped car recently.

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Yes, he did.

• 58:31Matt Farah?

  How did that go?

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Medium.

• 58:32Matt Farah?

  Yeah, medium is right. Yeah, the bones were okay.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:36Matt Farah?

  But there was some Mickey Mouse stuff in there that he, that a professional shop had to fix.

• 58:41Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 58:42Matt Farah?

  And he, and we're talking about a, this is an E36M3, uh, with an S54 in it. I talked about it, uh, last show, cause he was mobbing in town, Big Tonga.

• 58:54Matt Farah?

  But, uh, yeah, no, there was some tidying up that needed to be done for a bit.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  It's, it's a hard thing because, I mean, when I was shopping for cars, I, I came, I couldn't afford at the time, but there was a nice LS swapped IS300, done by a race shop, amazing documentation, and the forums' response to this build and this car and the builder was super strong. Like, it had everyone's endorsement. Um, but it was, at the time, it was more money than I could afford. But, looking at Thad and other places, you, like, who did the swap is the first question? Was it an individual or, or a professional mechanic or shop? And either way, how good is that individual or shop? Have they done a lot of these things? Like, because you're, you're receiving this project in whatever state it's in,

• 59:40Speaker 01

  and if they Mickey Mouse some stuff, or they haven't done a lot of swaps and they've figured it out, well, you are gonna have to bring it to someone to work on it, if you're not mechanically inclined. And now they have to look at how this person did these things, and they have to figure out how their brain worked to work on it. So I think, you know, the, if it was done by like, a really professional place that's done a bunch of them, you could end up with a great car that has very minimal issues, and when someone goes to work on it, it's not a hard thing to work on. But if they Mickey Mouse shit, then someone has to reverse engineer these mistakes and then fix them. And that can be expensive and complicated.

• 1:00:14Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Basically, yeah, you're rolling the dice, save some cash on the side. You know what I mean? Worst case, what's the best, what's the worst, you know? Worst that happens, you don't spend it.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  And this is the case, I mean, you talk about getting a PPI, like, if you can have someone who's a high-end tech, go look at the thing first. Do that.

• 1:00:34Matt Farah?

  And you also may have problems that are completely unexpected because this engine was never designed to go where it is.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  Also a good point, yeah.

• 1:00:42Matt Farah?

  That could come up down the road.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:44Matt Farah?

  Heat management, or whatever, you know.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  You gotta look at, does the AC work? I mean, there's shit like that, like, Tad's AC doesn't work. And so, sometimes swaps will cut corners because they go, "I don't need it," or "it's hard," or "the bracket's not made for that." So you need to look at those things.

• 1:00:58Matt Farah?

  Right. Keel and Toe, um, I hear this one all the time. Great question, though. "Where do you see Singer going if and when they run out of 964s to reimagine?" I asked Maz when I was at the factory, that, this question. And he rolled his eyes through the back of his head and out his fucking asshole. And said, and said, "Do you know how many of these fucking things they made?" He said, "They're all over the place. We're not gonna run out." He said, "I got a warehouse over there. It's got 250 donors sitting in it." "This is not a problem."

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  And they make how many cars a year now? How many can they put out?

• 1:01:36Matt Farah?

  Uh, maybe a hundred.

• 1:01:40Matt Farah?

  I mean, it takes like a year, year and a half to build, but they can do a lot of them at a time.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  With a new factory, yeah.

• 1:01:45Matt Farah?

  I mean, it's, there's thousands of them. They're not gonna, they're not gonna run out of cars. Scandinavian Booger Flick. "What are some of the most memorable non-car moments you've had, huh?"

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  Real quick, do you know how many, uh, G-series were made between 74 and 89?

• 1:02:02Matt Farah?

  Not G-series, 964s.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  I typed in 964, why did I give you?

• 1:02:05Matt Farah?

  That's not a G-series.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  Oh, sorry, different, okay, up here, I have the, uh, the right numbers. Uh, 63,762.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:02:12Matt Farah?

  There's a lot.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  And it's somehow considered the rarest, that's AI. But that's a lot, a lot of cars. Alright, can, sorry, continue.

• 1:02:18Matt Farah?

  Uh, it's, it might be the, it's, uh, it, it could be some of the rarest, but they still made a lot of them. It's, they're not running out.

• 1:02:28Matt Farah?

  Some of the best mem- most memorable non-car moments you've had traveling on a press launch?

• 1:02:36Matt Farah?

  I mean, there's not, you know, let's see, a lot of these, a lot of them would be like, partying in places, I suppose.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Which means the memories are fuzzy.

• 1:02:43Matt Farah?

  The memories would be a little fuzzy. Um, I mean, going in search of, uh, jamon in Spain, dedicating almost a whole day to tasting and finding the best jamon in Seville was pretty, is pretty awesome.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  I think the old Hyundai launch where we discovered that our little hotel room, the, the door that had joined to the next room was open and we went in and it was a suite.

• 1:03:07Matt Farah?

  The super presidential suite?

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  Six rooms, a weird gym, it had a chrome wall.

• 1:03:12Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  It had a full bar and a library and it was like, we're.

• 1:03:16Matt Farah?

  At the Mandarin Oriental.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  Across the railroad track.

• 1:03:17Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  Very, that was weird.

• 1:03:20Matt Farah?

  Yeah, that was a fun one. Um, let's see, oof.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  You had to be driven from that hotel to the racetrack because at the time you had speeding tickets on your record.

• 1:03:29Matt Farah?

  Oh, they wouldn't, they wouldn't let me drive on the road. Yeah, that's pretty funny. Yeah. I had priors.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  So ridiculous. They were, that was when they were very strict about that stuff.

• 1:03:39Matt Farah?

  That's so funny and very fucking true. Um, yeah. Uh, I mean, uh, the DB12 launch in Monaco, I mean, we had a Michelin star dinner with, with a, a professional wine pairing by this guy, Ali.

• 1:03:56Matt Farah?

  Ali is like, uh, I'm, I'm blanking on his last name. He was so fucking cool too. I sat next to him and we chatted all night. He was great. He, uh, and I follow him on Instagram. Uh, and he's like a, like a, a TV wine guy. So he's like, you know, a big personality and he did this whole spiel about the wine and pairing with the food and it was just ridiculous, you know, stuff like that. Almond Jiri, uh, for Range Rover. You know.

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  Lot of very nice fancy hotels for sure.

• 1:04:25Matt Farah?

  Fancy hotels, I mean, they've, they haven't, they, they've taken away some of like the non, I, and I, and I, I don't go on the ones where there's like things that aren't driving. I don't really give a shit about that kind of stuff. We flew, uh, we drove, um, Jaguar F-type coupe. We drove, um, one way from Seattle to like, I don't know. Most of the way to Oregon, like the windy way. Wherever the Ridge Motorsports Park is, we drove from Seattle to there. And then drove to the ocean and then got in a seaplane and they flew us back.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  That's super cool.

• 1:05:03Matt Farah?

  On a seaplane, which was pretty rad.

• 1:05:07Matt Farah?

  But I don't put the non-car things, I mean. You know, I've gotten like real drunk with like serious power players in the industry that got like, you know, crazy nights in clubs, you know, like going to strip clubs and shit, Vegas, like just all kinds of stuff with people. It's like, you designed like this supercar, like, alright, cool.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  Someone just wrote, there's a great article, not to sell our competition, but on the intercooler, someone wrote an article about like, you know, what are legendary stories from auto journalism that aren't talked about? And it was basically like, well, here's the eighties, because it's like, it's safe to talk about these without naming names.

• 1:05:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  There are a lot of stories in that article about illegal substances and brothels.

• 1:05:49Matt Farah?

  Yeah, for sure. I, I, I buy every word of that.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  It's wild.

• 1:05:54Matt Farah?

  The, uh, we, I, I took our friend, you know who, to a brothel in Germany on a press thing.

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  You'll have to tell me who afterwards.

• 1:06:02Matt Farah?

  You know who.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  I don't remember.

• 1:06:03Matt Farah?

  The one, the little guy. Up there who built the house.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's what I thought you meant, but my brain was like, well, it can't be him because you're probably talking about an industry person.

• 1:06:12Matt Farah?

  No, no, no. Yeah, no.

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  I think he brought you there.

• 1:06:15Matt Farah?

  I had to, he did actually bring me there, but then I was like, this is weird and not about it. Rich in New York has a stock N A Miata and is thinking about an even older two-seat sports car. Like a British roadster. I do my own wrenching. Thoughts on if it is an upgrade from the Miata as far as an experience? Tough to put a value on that.

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  I love this question.

• 1:06:41Matt Farah?

  Yeah, so is the original thing better than the Japanese thing that was made to be a better version of the original thing?

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  Is it better somehow because it's worse, but it's truer to the original idea?

• 1:06:52Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Your experience will be different because you'll have to fix it.

• 1:06:56Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  Miata's don't really need much. You know, every 200,000 miles, you do like a valve cover gasket.

• 1:07:03Matt Farah?

  Those type of little, little British roadsters don't appeal that much to me personally. I've driven a few of them for videos and I've never walked away from them being like, yep, that's the thing. I, I, I might, if you wanted to go, go for it and go older, I'd say like, go for an E-Type. Because now you've, now you've got something that might feel like an upgrade. I, I think going to a Triumph Spitfire would feel like a downgrade from a Miata, honestly.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Probably would, or, like, I know, you know, Thomas of Throttle House, like, he loves his Fiat very much. It breaks very much.

• 1:07:42Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  But, so, like, you could have the experience for maybe a year, but then I would leap to something like an E-Type. Get something with a really interesting engine.

• 1:07:52Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  Not just the version 0.1 of what you're driving now.

• 1:07:56Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  You know, they'll sound a little different and you'll have to fix them, which I guess can be charming if you're into that kind of thing.

• 1:08:01Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  But I feel like the E-Type is worth the trouble.

• 1:08:05Matt Farah?

  I agree.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  Like a big 4.2.

• 1:08:07Matt Farah?

  And like, how about here, from my personal experience, I had the Ferrari 328, and then I got the Spyder, and then I got the NSX, right? And I've now had, if I had had the NSX, I wouldn't have liked the 328 at all.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:23Matt Farah?

  It would feel like a worse version of the same thing.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  Because you were literally going back in time.

• 1:08:27Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I had to have the 328 first to appreciate the NSX.

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:33Matt Farah?

  Yeah. And if you drive the NSX, you appreciate the Boxer even more.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  This is like, have you ever tried to watch a movie recently that was made in the 60s? And the pacing is, and even if it was like heralded as amazing, I mean, I think I have to start at the 70s before it gets too slow.

• 1:08:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah, for me, it's like early 80s. Like, maybe like, well, maybe late 70s, I'd have to, I'd have to look at exactly where the line gets drawn, but like, Animal House? Is like pretty much where my ability to process the pacing of a movie starts, right?

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I get it. It's Stripe, stuff like that. Comics are different too. But drama, like Taxi Driver.

• 1:09:12Matt Farah?

  Tough, tough to watch.

• 1:09:15Matt Farah?

  I mean, like, yeah, Bullitt is unwatchable trash.

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  It's also bad.

• 1:09:18Matt Farah?

  French, yeah, it's also bad.

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  French Connection's better, because Gene Hackman's a better actor.

• 1:09:22Matt Farah?

  But it's also like just, whoa.

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  Steve McQueen, I'm not that good an actor, come at me, bro.

• 1:09:26Matt Farah?

  And he's a piece of shit. Fuck Steve McQueen, he sucks.

• 1:09:31Matt Farah?

  So, someone mentions McQueen in the next fucking thing. Frozen Dingleberry Metallic, uh, what, uh, if you were to have an automotive celebrity cameo in Pixar Cars 4, what car would you be cannot be a car you own?

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:09:47Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 1:09:49Matt Farah?

  Well, it would have to be an anthropomorphic version of us, right?

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:53Matt Farah?

  So it would have to like reflect my, our, your, our personalities and maybe physical attributes.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  Okay, I would do a, a Baja Bug that's got a little too much engine, because it's a cheap version of a Porsche. Because I am the cheap version of many other things, I think, you know? And it's like, it's kind of silly and fun, and it's kind of a risk. Uh, I think I would do that.

• 1:10:23Matt Farah?

  It would be fun to be like...

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  Like a Subi engine. But it hurt, it breaks a lot, too.

• 1:10:29Matt Farah?

  I mean, I, the kind of car I'd like to be in a movie is different than I think the kind of car I'd like to drive as a human.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  No, no, no, this is not drive, this is, you, you said it perfectly. This has to represent you as an individual. So I think I am a somewhat unreliable, often problematic in my skeletal system. I have a lot of maintenance issues.

• 1:10:48Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

  So, but I'm not as classy as a BMW.

• 1:10:51Matt Farah?

  I'm like big and crush under the weight of my own mass.

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  No, but you're strong, like you don't, yeah.

• 1:10:57Matt Farah?

  Uh, but also strong, so like, I mean, I, I almost would be like a fucking, like a, like a Bronco Raptor or something, if, you know, I'm like loud, uh, and, and, and not very nuanced in my presentation.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you're smart also.

• 1:11:18Matt Farah?

  Okay, so what's the smart version of that?

• 1:11:22Speaker 01

  Um, what's his face? You're like Joe Scarborough's crazy, uh, trophy truck.

• 1:11:28Matt Farah?

  Oh, a trophy truck? I could be a trophy truck, that would be fun.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  That'd be very fun.

• 1:11:33Matt Farah?

  I'd like to be an amphibious vehicle.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  Oh, no, you're Land Rover's Octa.

• 1:11:37Matt Farah?

  The Octa? Land Rover Octa?

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  Your Land Rover Octa.

• 1:11:39Matt Farah?

  Okay, sort of like, yeah, like a, like a, maybe, or how about like a Dakar, like a Camaz?

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  I thought about that.

• 1:11:45Matt Farah?

  Camaz Dakar truck would be fun, or maybe one of those Brazilian racing semis.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  I think you're more refined than those things, you know, you have fancy tastes.

• 1:11:55Matt Farah?

  Brazilian racing semis, pretty, pretty refined.

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  For what? Those, that shit's like.

• 1:11:58Matt Farah?

  That's not like trashy in Brazil, that's like F1 of trucks.

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's, I'm, I'm sure that the NVH is rather high in those things.

• 1:12:06Matt Farah?

  I did it in the sim, I was pretty good at it. At CXC, I was like, yo, throw me in the fucking trucks at Interlagos.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  I should go there to drive Thunder Hill for, before my.

• 1:12:15Matt Farah?

  Are you doing, is it east or west?

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  It's like the whole thing.

• 1:12:18Matt Farah?

  It's full course?

• 1:12:18Speaker 01

  Full course, cause I think they have so many cars, they gotta stretch it out.

• 1:12:21Matt Farah?

  Oh, and you're driving that shit box though, aren't you?

• 1:12:23Speaker 01

  First of all, the lemons, they're almost all shit.

• 1:12:25Matt Farah?

  Yeah, but some of them are fast. This one's not fast, yeah. Uh, just the Tiptronic, very good. Drove my new manual 981S from LA to San Francisco, finally had an empty visibility, uh, empty stretch of the 101 with long vis, did a hard pull and got clocked at 113 by CHP going the other way. Uh, I hope you call off the record, that is absolutely an off the record, offtherecord.com/tst. If you haven't already done that, you need to be doing that immediately, they will take care of that for you.

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  I know exactly where this person was.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  There were grapevines on the west side of that highway, I know exactly where you were.

• 1:13:09Matt Farah?

  Yeah. But Just the Tiptronic wants the worst ticket story. I mean, you know, the first to get a ticket contest.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  That's, I don't have a story better than that, for sure.

• 1:13:19Matt Farah?

  Tom Morningstar and I got six tickets in one day, between the two of us, on Bull Run in 2011.

• 1:13:25Speaker 01

  That was, I got two in one day in a Cadillac ELR with Thad driving.

• 1:13:28Matt Farah?

  Whoa, in an ELR, that stinks. Justin Gerard, the real one. If you had to choose the new Pope Mobile, based on an American car, that's a good question.

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  I thought about this a lot, because I did scroll through these, at first I didn't want to. I think it would be an E350 van that says "free candy" on the side.

• 1:13:48Matt Farah?

  I haven't done my-

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  As a whole, that sums up my feelings on that particular organization.

• 1:13:52Matt Farah?

  Sure, yeah, I didn't know if this particular one was problematic, specific. Okay, I'll take it a little more seriously. I think it should be-

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  I think I'm taking it more seriously than you are, but no.

• 1:14:04Matt Farah?

  I think maybe you are, but um, I would say, I mean, it's America, right? So, it has to be a Hummer pickup. It's very America.

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  EV, quiet, for driving slowly through-

• 1:14:19Matt Farah?

  Yeah, crowds, through and over crowds.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  That is a good, that is a good selection.

• 1:14:23Matt Farah?

  That might actually be like a decent, you know-

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  Cadillac Celestique would kind of represent the Vatican well, in terms of the opulent decor.

• 1:14:34Matt Farah?

  I mean, I think they have, don't they, didn't they have one that was based on a Jeep product? I think they had a Wrangler-based one at one point.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Oh, they did, I mean, G-Wagon was the famous one.

• 1:14:42Matt Farah?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  It's also easy to maneuver, versus the Hummer's much bigger.

• 1:14:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah, like a crab walk.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  But the crab walk helps, Hummer's a good call.

• 1:14:49Matt Farah?

  Bad Gardener says, "What are the laws for, can you scroll down, for police car visibility? Some are very visible, but even the more undercover ones seem to have stickers. I've seen towns whose cop cars use paint match, so they're impossible to see."

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  True.

• 1:15:06Matt Farah?

  I mean, I don't think police cars need to be marked at all.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  There's plenty of unmarked cars.

• 1:15:10Matt Farah?

  There's tons of unmarked cars. I've been pulled over by unmarked cars before. I mean, I don't.

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  I'm sure it varies state to state and maybe even in different counties would be the answer. A bunch of people sent me these videos. There's a new CHP cars rolling out here. They're unmarked Durango's.

• 1:15:25Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  So, watch out.

• 1:15:27Matt Farah?

  Yeah. I don't think there's any laws saying the cops need to or cannot have marked cars. I think it's whatever they feel like doing, but.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  Like, I think Georgia I've seen where there's CHP, they're not unmarked. They have stickers that are visible in the daytime. Oh, sorry. The stickers are body color, but at night they light up. So that's like, I think their law there seems to be, it has to be highly visible at night, but doesn't have to be especially visible in the daytime.

• 1:15:50Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Um, barbecue sauce on my titties? Oh, right. I'm guessing that's a man. Do you, will Dodge ever bring back the Viper as a mid-engine platform with a Hellcat motor? I don't think so.

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  I mean, this is fun. They go on that with the MC20, uh, under Stellantis' wing, could they use the same tub with the Hellcat? That would be fucking exciting. If you, if Rich rebuilds or Tavares want to put a Hellcat engine in a salvage MC20.

• 1:16:25Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:26Speaker 01

  I don't, I only probably wouldn't fit. But that would be quite a thing.

• 1:16:29Matt Farah?

  I doubt it would fit.

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  It's like a Forza build.

• 1:16:32Matt Farah?

  But that is a good thing to think about. I think it would be fun. And I don't think there is a market right now for a $250,000 Dodge.

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  Probably not. They have a lot of issues. I saw my first new Charger on the road the other day.

• 1:16:47Matt Farah?

  Yeah, it's weird looking, isn't it?

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was just behind it. It was almost unrecognizable. I mean, it looks fine, but, yeah.

• 1:16:52Matt Farah?

  It is, uh, it is strange. I'm only looking at my watch because the Ferrari is coming at 11:30 and I just want to make sure I don't miss them. Um, auto Bon Jovi, um.

• 1:17:04Matt Farah?

  Oh, well, this is, I mean, look, I appreciate the sentiment. Basically, in reference to me talking about the great New York bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, um, which is a, which is bacon, egg, and cheese, salt, pepper, ketchup on a Kaiser roll. And he's, he wants to know where to go in New York to get the best version of that sandwich. That's what makes that sandwich, that sandwich. It's universal. You go to any bodega, you get that, it'll be the same. There is no, it's, oh, there's no secret sauce. That's what makes it so good. You get it any fucking where. Like, Bodega Deli, that's where you go. Bacon, egg, and cheese, salt, pepper, ketchup. It's all you say, you get it exactly the same. Yeah, I can't wait to go to New York.

• 1:17:46Speaker 01

  It's like the kilogram, like, there's a standard weight measure of this New York sandwich. It's true.

• 1:17:51Matt Farah?

  Yeah, only, yeah, if you're in New York, the idea that somebody would, that there would be a best version of this sandwich is insane. In California, of course, who's got the best burrito? Who's got the best this? Who's got the best that? In New York, this is such a universal thing, that there is only one way to make it.

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:18:08Matt Farah?

  Everybody makes it the same. No one even attempts a competitive advantage in this area. It's just, this is how it's done. It's great. Some things should not be fucked with. Maxfield says, uh, what car brand has the strongest enthusiast community? And why do you think that's the case?

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  How do we define strongest? I think that's important.

• 1:18:32Matt Farah?

  I think it's a, it's probably a good, it's a blend of things to do with your cars, events, uh, online representation by a variety of different types of people, right? Diverse, diversity and culture.

• 1:18:49Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:18:50Matt Farah?

  Um, maybe multiple different genres of modification for that type of vehicle.

• 1:18:58Matt Farah?

  You know, like, like, just as an example, the 9/11 could be a track car, or a Stance Nation slammed car, or a rally car, right?

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  True. 9/11 is not often Stance Nation, but I hear what you're saying.

• 1:19:10Matt Farah?

  No, but we, I went to that car show with Vinny in East LA, one of those Brecky Car Club shows, and there was a whole group of folks doing like hardcore 90's JDM mods to 996s and 997s.

• 1:19:23Speaker 01

  No shit.

• 1:19:24Matt Farah?

  It is an emerging thing.

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  Like VIP kind of style?

• 1:19:26Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Not like full, not VIP.

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:19:28Matt Farah?

  But definitely like stanced.

• 1:19:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:19:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  Like they used to back in the V-Dog days?

• 1:19:33Matt Farah?

  With like the clear dildo shifters and like, you know, the cage will be pink and there'll be, yeah.

• 1:19:38Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 1:19:38Matt Farah?

  Like, take it off a RX7 and put it on a 9/11.

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  I understand.

• 1:19:42Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Um, I mean Ferrari has an incredibly, uh, I mean, not diverse, I'm talking about a, but a, but a passionate community.

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  They have, definitely, very true. To folks here, they're very passionate. I think they're, they're not as friendly to modifications, but that might be changing with generations. Hopefully it is. That's hard, because I think-

• 1:19:59Matt Farah?

  Jeep?

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's a good answer. They have a lot of events.

• 1:20:06Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  Mostly outdoors.

• 1:20:07Matt Farah?

  There's a lot of ways to get out and drive your Jeep, and talk to people about your Jeep.

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  I would say, like, the Honda community, but maybe larger is JDM, because, because there's Time Attack, there's Drift Events, there's Parking Lot Events, there's VIP stuff, they're like, I think that, that might be too broad, but that group has brought so many like motorsport trends to America, and style trends, and parts, and all kinds of things. And it's also, it can range from someone who, especially nowadays, spent 300 grand on a, an NS, like a first gen NSX that's rare, or someone who has $3,000 Honda Civic that they've modified.

• 1:20:44Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  You can see both at a show.

• 1:20:45Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Uh, Misfit Cyclone, what do you think of the idea, excuse me, uh, that Cadillac should have been a competitor to Bentley, Rolls Royce, and Maybach, rather than BMW and Mercedes, and that role should have been done by Buick? The problem, I, I mean, I understand that ethos. I think in the 1950s and 60s-

• 1:21:13Matt Farah?

  Cadillac, if they wanted to, was already kinda there and could have maintained that. But they chose not to because they got really greedy.

• 1:21:25Speaker 01

  I think, true. I think they also had sold such a large volume of cars. They really increased their volume versus Bentley, Rolls Royce, etc. Now Bentley, Rolls Royce may have wanted to sell more cars and couldn't because of the price point. But they went, alright, we're gonna keep this hand-built, super expensive, super elite thing.

• 1:21:43Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  And Cadillac used to be that, but then by the 80s was selling like, you know, almost K cars to anybody who would buy them.

• 1:21:49Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:50Speaker 01

  That right there, that separation lasted for decades and I don't think they could come back to that.

• 1:21:55Matt Farah?

  I don't think, and I haven't seen a Celestiq in person yet. You know, Jethro wrote the review for Road and Track and seemed to be intrigued by it. But I've never seen any Cadillac that I thought was built to a, an actual, you know, standard that justified its, its price point. Other, like, other than the Blackwing, but that's only because of how it drives. You know what I mean? Like, the Blackwing is, does not have a crappy interior or anything. Like, it's, it's a very nicely-built car that's worth its price.

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:31Matt Farah?

  But I've never, excuse me, let me rephrase that. I've never seen any evidence that Cadillac can build a better Bentley. I've never seen any evidence that Cadillac could build a better Rolls Royce if they just tried. I've never seen, go back to 1950 or 55 with the Bia Ritz or whatever, to find a time where Cadillac actually built something resembling a Rolls Royce or a Bentley. They're not doing that shit now.

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:59Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  I, I think you can't, you can't discount the amount of the decades that have gone into each company, Cadillac, Bentley, doing different things for this long and they've been perfecting those processes. So to have them try to pivot, or to have Cadillac try to pivot and suddenly take this huge assembly line that's trying to sell, you know, what is it, Cadillac, the CT4 and everything else? And go, "Quick, make a $500,000 sedan that's perfect." Like, you just can't change that.

• 1:23:22Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Enrico Palazzo, Matt and Zach are forbidden from owning or daily driving anything considered to be an enthusiast car. What are your picks for a daily driver meant for normies?

• 1:23:37Matt Farah?

  I mean, look, I loved my Mach-E, and even though that said Mustang on it, that wasn't a fucking Mustang. That's a toaster, but it was a fabulous daily driver that I'd recommend to anybody. The Prius.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  Pretty great.

• 1:23:49Matt Farah?

  Dude, the Prius is so nice.

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  The, or sorry, not C, the new Prius looks really good, I think. I would drive that for sure. Or like, man, I haven't driven a Model 3 in a while. You like the Model 3 Performance. I don't want to buy a Tesla, but...

• 1:24:03Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I, the Model 3 Performance did, did some things well. Yep, it did. The new Model Y's are, you know, out. I don't, I don't hate the front end that's got the sort of Cybertruck light bar thing on it. I actually don't hate that when paired with like regular headlights too. The, that flat bar across the rear, that's terrible. That doesn't look good at all. That's a real downgrade from...

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  Depends on what car. I mean, the Charger did it and looked fine.

• 1:24:29Matt Farah?

  No, I mean, the Model Y. It's horrible on the Model Y.

• 1:24:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a weird, that's a cheap way to try and sell an old car as a new car.

• 1:24:37Matt Farah?

  Yeah, not great.

• 1:24:39Speaker 01

  I could just go full outback too.

• 1:24:40Matt Farah?

  Outback, yeah. Outback Wilderness was lovely. That's a great, great normie car. I mean, I suppose because it's, it being a wilderness does make it something enthusiastic, but I'm pretty sure that's not what you're talking about. Here from At's Cats, wife has expressed an interest in a scooter or Vespa for around town. I know nothing about them. Any buying advice? Sure. First off, make sure that she, and maybe you do it together, take a Motorcycle Safety Foundation class. You can do it on a scooter. You don't need to do it on a full motorcycle. You learn a lot and you come away with it, with, from it with a license, and so that's helpful. And I think your insurance may be affected as well, positively.

• 1:25:24Matt Farah?

  Vespas come in three sizes, basically 50, 150, and 300. Almost everybody, a 150 is the, is the right one. If it's like for puttering around your gated community, or if your wife weighs like 100 pounds, a 50 might be fine. A 50 is like 7 horsepower. A 150 is about 50... 15 horsepower and a 300 is like 28 horsepower. Um, 300s are for big boys. If you're a big boy, you want a 300. Everyone else almost should have a 150. Tops out about 60 miles an hour. Um, the best advice I can tell you is a Vespa brand scooter is generally worth the premium.

• 1:26:05Matt Farah?

  Because you get it back on the other end. And if you buy them used, um, like on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. A used 150 should be $3,000 forever. If it's not been crashed or horribly fucked up. Uh, a used 50 should be about $2,000 forever. Uh, and a used 300 should be about $5,000 forever. If they're in anything resembling decent shape. So you buy it now. Hundred bucks a year to insure it. You're selling it for exactly the same amount on the other end. So. That's how I would roll. I would get a Vespa brand. But I had that Yamaha Zuma for a while and it was alright. That was, it was fine too.

• 1:26:47Matt Farah?

  If the company also makes like motorcycles, like I'd buy, I would buy a Honda or a Yamaha. You know, or like a Piaggio, like a, if the company makes motorcycles too, you're probably okay. A lot of scooter companies all use the Piaggio engine. Like Piaggio owns Vespa, um, but like other companies just use the Piaggio engine, even if it's like a Japanese bike. Really? Yeah. Like a Honda? There's, I, I don't know about Honda particularly, but there are other companies that use Piaggio engines.

• 1:27:22Matt Farah?

  Insert username here. Can I buy WCCS swag from the Playa Vista store? Yes, you can. We have hats. You can come buy them. You can give us a credit card or you can pay, pay buying cash. Um, and we'll give you a tour. Uh, that's a lot of nuts. Uh, are car companies gaslighting us into all the outdoorsy off-road trims or are people actually using that way? I swear every brand has an off-road trim for every crossover they sell. Rugginess sells, bro. That's, that's nothing new. It's where could I go? Yeah. Where could I go if?

• 1:27:57Speaker 01

  And I'm sure that they, part of the, people took things places that they weren't meant to, but also the number of people that buy the rugged thing but don't go there is, it's probably a very high percentage.

• 1:28:06Matt Farah?

  Yeah. When you see our King of the Hammers video that will probably be out by the time this podcast comes out for everybody else,

• 1:28:14Matt Farah?

  you know, we're driving a Raptor in the desert. There's all these people in all these buggies. And then there's just a dude in like a two-wheel-drive pool guy's truck going to all the same fucking places. So it's like, what we need versus what we want and what gets us going is, uh...

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  What we could do is at the root of almost all marketing.

• 1:28:34Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:34Speaker 01

  Choose cars, sports cars, off-road things, everything.

• 1:28:37Matt Farah?

  You could run a six-minute and 55-second Nürburgring. You could climb the top of that mountain. You could move a couch if you ever wanted to move a couch, you know? Yeah. You know, you're not gonna, but it's nice to know you could.

• 1:28:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:52Matt Farah?

  Yeah. The yacht formerly known as Tits.

• 1:28:57Matt Farah?

  That may be username of the year. That's exceptionally good. Very much like that one. At what point do autonomous slash AI-powered cars turn into a horse guided by a homing pigeon? Let me, hang on.

• 1:29:15Matt Farah?

  We need, we, like, a horse guided by a homing pigeon.

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  That seems more complicated than designing an AI car.

• 1:29:23Matt Farah?

  Right. That's, that's, that is more, is, is the implication that that's more trouble than it's worth?

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't know.

• 1:29:37Matt Farah?

  I mean, like, like, last night I was out drinking with some friends, all of whom are in the car industry. And we were talking about, you know, autonomous driving, because we were talking about PCH and stuff like that. And, uh... It just over and over it comes up that we don't need autonomous driving to drastically improve safety, you know, we can do so much with with willpower, paint and concrete.

• 1:30:05Speaker 01

  But I think, I mean, we've talked about this, I think safety is the lie and they're trying to sell convenience to people who are like, "You don't like driving? Wouldn't you rather look at your phone because you're stuck in traffic?" That's what people want.

• 1:30:15Matt Farah?

  Yeah. You have to work from the assumption that things will stay the way they are from an infrastructure perspective. We don't want to, we don't want to build new things. We don't want to change society. So here, you're here. You're gonna be stuck in traffic, but, you know, you'll be able to scroll Instagram. Fuck you. Uh, Angeles-Brest Highway? That's pretty fun. Did you solicit sexual usernames today?

• 1:30:40Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:30:41Matt Farah?

  It's just, oh, it's just gone that way, huh?

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  I think it's just springtime.

• 1:30:45Matt Farah?

  I'm wearing my summer shirt today.

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  Your summer journey shirt?

• 1:30:49Matt Farah?

  Yeah, dude, I'm tripping both. Um, this is my Gordon, this is my Gordon Murray shirt.

• 1:30:55Speaker 01

  That'd be a very funny shirt to wear when you, if you got pulled over.

• 1:30:58Matt Farah?

  I wore, I wore this shirt to the Quail two years ago.

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:31:00Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Last year I wore Doc Brown's shirt from Back to the Future.

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  How many people, you don't have to name them, how many people, when they saw this shirt, for people listening, it has psychedelic mushrooms all over it, asked you if you had any?

• 1:31:12Matt Farah?

  No, none.

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:31:13Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I think they know me well enough to know I'm not holding these days.

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  They don't really.

• 1:31:19Matt Farah?

  So you're, I, two separate people to me did suggest doing hallucinogens during Car Week this year. And my response was the very minimum to ask my wife, very kindly, to make some Fear and Loathing in Monterey t-shirts with me and Ali as fucking Raul Duke and, uh, and, uh, the lawyer. What's his fucking name? What's Benicio's name in Fear and Loathing? My attorney, uh, fucking, fuck, fuck.

• 1:31:51Matt Farah?

  Uh, Zach will find that. And, uh, anyway, Angeles Breast Highway. Got a new job, congratulations.

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  Dr. Gonzo.

• 1:31:57Matt Farah?

  Dr. Gonzo, thank you. Uh, I almost said Gonzo, and then I was like, that's not right. Um, and my dream is to have a GMT Master Pepsi. That's a Rolex. My parents bought me one for the new job, as a congratulations. Once I calmed down from the excitement, they told me that it's fake. That's funny. I wonder if it's like a real legit one. Uh, I don't wanna be ungrateful, but it also ruined the moment I always dreamed of. Uh, if this happened to you, would you wear it or hide it away and forget that it happened? Man, that's tough. They bought you a fake Rolex, knowing you, your dream is to have a real one. They told you it's fake. Um, shit. Oh, man.

• 1:32:41Matt Farah?

  I, it, was it a prank? Like, no, like, I mean, uh, like, that's, that, I'm serious, like, was it?

• 1:32:49Speaker 01

  My dad is Jake Paul.

• 1:32:50Matt Farah?

  Was it done as a goof? Or was it done in a way that was like, I know you, you can't, we can't afford the real thing, but I want you to, you know, I want, like, it's, it kinda matters, like, what the vibe is of the gift.

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  Definitely. Cause the parents could be saying, uh, there's two things that came to my mind. It could be either saying, we know you love these, maybe you put this on your desk, and one day, like, with this new job, we're very proud of you, you could get the real thing. Like, it inspires you to work hard and get it. Or, it could be a misunderstanding, like, where the parents don't understand how watch culture works.

• 1:33:22Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:23Speaker 01

  And you just talked about this all the time, and they got you one that looks the same, and they go, what's the difference? It still works, it tells time, it looks the same. And that's just a disconnect.

• 1:33:30Matt Farah?

  Yeah. And, I mean, I, I think you, I don't think it would be that weird to have a conversation with your parents that are like, look, I see what you did here. Let's assume that, that they, they meant it as a real gift. I see what you did here. But I really don't feel comfortable like wearing a fake out into the world. I I I wouldn't, you know, it's it's it's a thing and watch culture, you know, fakes are are sort of looked down on. I think you you might you can say like, I really appreciate the gift. I'm gonna keep it. I'm gonna hold on to it. But like, I'm sorry, like, I just don't feel comfortable wearing that to my new job as it's a fake. Now, look, between you and me, if it's real good, and there are some, there's a couple of companies out of like China.

• 1:34:14Matt Farah?

  And you can on Reddit, there's all these forums about these fakes. Some of them, you cannot tell. You literally cannot tell. You certainly couldn't tell from across the room. You couldn't tell unless you took the case back off. I mean, really, or if you had a real one and a loop. Like, at a bar, at a meeting, at the office, nobody's telling, nobody, for sure. Thad brought me one that he got in Dubai, and I have the real one, and it I had to weigh them. Wow. The real one was five grams more. Okay. Yeah. And and otherwise, dude, the the quality of the the, I mean, literally, if you were wearing it right now,

• 1:34:56Matt Farah?

  there is no question I would think it was real. And especially if you new job, if you're in a tax bracket that justifies you wearing that. The most common giveaway of a fake is like, you know, this dude doesn't have 50 Gs. Or whatever, right? It's that's a giveaway. Um, but, man, I don't know. If it's really, really good, maybe wear it. I don't know. But when he's talking about the moment you're you've dreamed of, what I like about that person is it's not about showing off that you have one to somebody else. A lot of people get fakes because if you walk into that boardroom with a heavy bike on,

• 1:35:38Matt Farah?

  you people will notice that know what that is, and it's like sort of a power move, right? It's a status thing. I don't really like watches like that and I'm not trying to be holier than thou. I don't care if you do, honestly. Be flashy, be, even if you want to wear fucking fakes. But like, the satisfaction I get from wearing the real deal could never, ever, ever be given with even the best fake. It's just because that's not, it's the reward for the thing. It's like, fake cheating or faking or shortcut, you, you don't, it's less rewarding. It's always less rewarding when you've cheated. So, um, I like the question. You don't want to be ungrateful, but I would say be honest with them about how you feel about wearing a fake outside of the house.

• 1:36:21Speaker 01

  And I'd also add, depending on what tax bracket your parents are in, make sure they don't feel like you're pressuring them to buy you a $50,000 watch if they clearly couldn't.

• 1:36:28Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 1:36:28Speaker 01

  You know, don't be like, oh, this isn't, and they, because then they're going to feel like they haven't done enough in life.

• 1:36:33Matt Farah?

  And my guess is, like, over time, the, the, getting the real one will remain your goal and you'll, this won't ruin the moment.

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:41Matt Farah?

  And you'll be very happy when you get the real deal, which you will.

• 1:36:43Speaker 01

  You could do the switcher, really.

• 1:36:45Matt Farah?

  Right.

• 1:36:45Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:36:46Matt Farah?

  Andre says, uh, "As modern car design often draws cues from past designs such as the Nissan Z or Charger, or even goes retro future such as the Envision Hyundai's, which of today's car designs or trends will inspire the next generation? Are there any modern cars that you think of truly original or timeless designs?" Hmm, good question.

• 1:37:12Matt Farah?

  I think, uh, the Aventador styling is very, could be very inspirational for a child. I think some of the, you know, really ridiculous hypercar styling would probably inspire a child.

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  I mean, that always grabbed my attention when I was a kid.

• 1:37:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:32Speaker 01

  Look at it, it looks like a spaceship.

• 1:37:33Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  Revolto, I mean, also, Revolto is a busier version of Aventador and it just looks even more extreme.

• 1:37:40Matt Farah?

  Yeah, things like Raptors, you know, Tonka truck looking stuff.

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  I think things on the extremes will probably always inspire children because it looks different than what they see every day.

• 1:37:50Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Um, yeah. "Plethora of Pinatas, which of the four generations of the Miata is best for a taller driver? 6'1", long legs. Tried an ND RF but a little tight." I think the, I think the ND...

• 1:38:12Matt Farah?

  With the soft top. Is there a difference in the bulkhead? I don't know if there's a difference in the bulkhead. I think the seats might be the same.

• 1:38:20Speaker 01

  I'm not sure. I think they're the same.

• 1:38:22Matt Farah?

  You can do like various tall man mods. I mean, you like. By the way, you can take seats. Like the Miata I used to race. It was an NC. And the stock seats were taken out and there was a Recaro racing seat in it. And it was mount, it was so luxurious. How low and how far back I could sit. I could sit there for six hours, no problem. And the seat was on a slider. Cause other drivers were driving it too. And not, there, there seemed to be no negative impacts from me buying a Recar, from buying a Recaro seat. And just, and, and you can make a lot more room in that car by getting rid of the stock seat.

• 1:39:01Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:39:01Matt Farah?

  Um, so. And I think you could probably make that work in any of the four generations, to be honest with you. Uh, but NC or, not NB. NBs I think are small.

• 1:39:11Speaker 01

  It also depends on torso versus legs. Like I remember Thaddeus could drive my NA pretty comfortably. But a passenger seat, forget about it because of the, um. You know, the glove box intruding on like legroom. So if you're a very, if you're a very torso tall person, they all might be challenging.

• 1:39:28Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Gary Reynolds, nicely done, my friend. Top three defunct car brands, not for resurrection, but because they made cool stuff. Saab. Duesenberg.

• 1:39:44Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 1:39:46Matt Farah?

  And.

• 1:39:47Speaker 01

  Oh, what's the? Why am I blanking on?

• 1:39:52Speaker 01

  Spiker.

• 1:39:53Matt Farah?

  Spiker.

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go Spiker.

• 1:39:54Matt Farah?

  Spiker, yeah.

• 1:39:56Speaker 01

  More, more modern brand for sure.

• 1:39:58Matt Farah?

  Yeah. Saab, man, Saab could have, fuck, if Saab could have kept it together. They could have had some dope shit going on.

• 1:40:05Speaker 01

  They, I think for me, they had clever stuff and they definitely moved some parts of the market forward, but like. If I see one, I don't care that much. I'd go, oh, my, some family members had them. They're cute, but they were never very exciting for me.

• 1:40:17Matt Farah?

  Uh, you gotta be a Northeast kid for that, I think.

• 1:40:19Speaker 01

  Possibly, very, very true.

• 1:40:20Matt Farah?

  In the, in, if I see a Saab 900 Turbo. That was in, in the early 90s, those drove, those were awesome. That was a fabulous car.

• 1:40:28Speaker 01

  My grandma, right before, maybe the car right before she took, we took her license away, she got a Saab Turbo. And it was terrifying because she was 80 and the boost would kick in and everyone would just kind of hold on to the ocean handle.

• 1:40:41Matt Farah?

  Well, um, Watkins Glendale, Watkins Glendale, that's funny. I don't know what you're talking about. Talking about a road trip that was canceled, but I, I don't, did we have a plan to go to Canada?

• 1:40:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:40:58Matt Farah?

  And cancel it for COVID?

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  Was there a road and track thing?

• 1:41:00Matt Farah?

  I don't know. I don't think so. We try to not do international because there's like a lot of headaches involved with people going.

• 1:41:05Speaker 01

  Organization?

• 1:41:06Matt Farah?

  Oh, maybe it was an adventure drives one. Yeah, there might have been an event. I don't, I don't know. I was an attendee on any adventure drives. I don't work there. Uh, mellow greetings. Plans for more podcasts or events at WCCS South Bay? Eventually, yes, but not until building two is open. Um, all right, wait.

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  These are the end. This is the end.

• 1:41:28Matt Farah?

  All right. This one's so many words. Can, can you, I'll do the next one. Can you make that less words? It's too many words. Using a Montana zip code to avoid sales tax on Patreon. You know what? I encourage that. If you have to VPN your Patreon to not pay sales tax, that's all right. I like it. Uh, with how bad drivers are getting and the invention of quote self-driving cars, I'm considering add, adding a dash cam to my vehicle. Obviously you have cameras on for reviews, but do you have normal dash cams for normal commuting? Why or why not? Uh, we just advertised the Van True dash cam. So we're going to have a link in an upcoming video. So it's actually a really nice little rig. If you're going to get a dash cam, uh, when our King of the Hammers video comes out, buy

• 1:42:12Matt Farah?

  the one at that link and help us out. It's very small. Um, I, so if you drive one car every day, you should absolutely have a dash cam. There's no reason you shouldn't. Um, you should also have like a Valentine too. And you know, like my, my biggest issue with accessories in cars is that I'm always in a different car. I'm just changing cars all the fucking time. And so if I was having stuff like that, it would just be, I would be either forgetting it or it would, it would be, I have so much time, you know, on any given day, I might drive three different cars and ride a motorcycle. And so it doesn't make any sense for me personally, but like if you drive one car mainly, totally

• 1:42:57Matt Farah?

  get a dash cam. It might save your fucking ass, dude.

• 1:43:00Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 1:43:01Matt Farah?

  Yeah. No downside.

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  I should probably install one.

• 1:43:04Matt Farah?

  Yeah, I mean, no downside, really, unless you you don't like it being on your dashboard or on your windshield or whatever. But, yeah, I think I think it's a good thing to have. It might, you know, if someone tries to scam you, you know, break check you or get insurance or you get into an accident or, you know, you catch something crazy going on, like, you never you never know, what couldn't really hurt.

• 1:43:29Matt Farah?

  Okay.

• 1:43:32Matt Farah?

  Did you shadow ban me? EV swapped Mitsubishi Delica, would you do it for 70K? Absolutely not. I would not, no.

• 1:43:43Matt Farah?

  I would see the appeal for a resto-motored Delica EV that had a cool interior, some nice attention to details, and that was sort of turned into like a beach cruiser. Like, I think that could be a cool thing to do. Now, I don't know if there's a market for it or not, but like, but like, the problem with doing that is, the Delica engine does have enough power. It's not that slow. You can drive it basically anywhere you want. You can't speed, but it's fine. It's not so slow you can't use it. Very reliable.

• 1:44:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:44:22Matt Farah?

  It's reasonably fuel efficient. And the nicest Delica L300 in the world is like 25,000 bucks.

• 1:44:29Speaker 01

  Plus, you have this good four-wheel drive system.

• 1:44:31Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:33Speaker 01

  My parents' neighbor asked me, he wanted to EV swap a VW bus, an old one.

• 1:44:38Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:39Speaker 01

  And I was like, you'll never get the money back, but I get it.

• 1:44:41Matt Farah?

  It makes sense.

• 1:44:41Speaker 01

  Because those engines are weak.

• 1:44:42Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  Somewhat unreliable, reliable, you have to tinker with them a lot. And I think they have a style that lends itself to that, and they also, his doesn't have four-wheel drive. So you're not really losing any of the abilities. But with a Delica, unless you can put in two motors, so now you keep the four-wheel drive, but then you lose the range and ability to go really exploring.

• 1:45:02Matt Farah?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:03Speaker 01

  You lose so much of what the Delica can do, just to, what, give it some power and highway speed?

• 1:45:09Matt Farah?

  I think having a dependable, understressed diesel powertrain fits the character of that vehicle.

• 1:45:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:17Matt Farah?

  Just fine.

• 1:45:20Matt Farah?

  Maybe there's a way to swap in the engine from the L400 to make, you know, 50 more horsepower. Someone might have done that, you know. Um, I would EV swap. I'd spend, let's, let's just say, play money, not, not, not real life, play money. I'd probably spend 25K EV swapping the pow. That would be awesome. A little neighborhood vehicle. The engine in it is such a pile of shit. Cause now you got a pow golf cart. 57 horsepower, fucking gutless little piece of junk, three-speed automatic. I mean, it's a, it's a, it's not a good powertrain. If I could rip that out and put in a single motor, 100 horsepower, maybe even rear drive, solid axle.

• 1:46:05Matt Farah?

  You know, let's call it a 20 kilowatt hour battery. 60 miles of range. Yeah. Fucking, that would be the dopest little golf cart thing, like, ever. Yeah. Let me just fucking give it to Philip. Just give it to Max. Find a crashed Twingo or whatever you call it, yeah. Yeah, so I mean, um, yeah, these vans though, I don't think EVs swaps the move with that one. Ben and Toad Driver, what is next with WCCS? More locations, franchises? Seems like there's a lot of growth potential and a strong brand. You know, um, thank you, that's a very nice compliment. I've talked to some people about franchises and

• 1:46:49Matt Farah?

  they don't seem to work. I don't think car storage is a great business. If you, if you don't own your building and your land, it's not a great business. And if you have to pay the franchisor, I think, based on the reactions from people, it seems like in many areas, a lot of the margins that they could earn in this business, they'd have to give up too much to the franchisor, me, to make it worth their while. And I'd have to charge more for my time. You know, I have to charge something for my brand and my time and my expertise and our methods and all that kind of stuff.

• 1:47:29Matt Farah?

  You know, for me to make it worth it from a work perspective versus what they, works for their business, I think that doesn't really work. My business model is to slowly build more locations at a pace that won't give me a heart attack. Until eventually I can. Coast out the second half of my life, doing a fairly low-impact business and having a real estate portfolio and maybe being like our new friend Harry Metcalf and playing with cars when we want to, not because we have to. That's sort of the plan. And to not have those buildings scattered across the world, so it requires flying, you know. Flying for fun, not for work. Great show today. Thank you all for joining us.

• 1:48:14Matt Farah?

  We appreciate you. Go watch our King of the Hammers video. I don't know if it's gonna go up probably Monday at this point, right? Are we supposed to put up another video on Monday, though? Or is 9/11 GTS Wednesday? Might be Wednesday. I don't know. I'll have that one. Okay. Probably today. All right. Either way, we will make it happen. King of the Hammers. The video, I think it's, I tried to do a little Bourdain-y in there. Tried to make it a little more inspired by, like, parts unknown, although there is a Ranger Raptor car review in the desert in there as well. It's a good time. That's cool. Zach, anything else? No, I'm trying to find that thing.

• 1:48:56Matt Farah?

  Okay. Thank you to our patrons. We love you all. Thank you to our non-patrons. You're awesome, too. Don't fuck it up, okay? If you like the show, like, share, subscribe. Like, share. And leave a review on iTunes. That does help a lot. Yeah. Yep. See you later. Bye.