Pod Insights The Smoking Tire INEOS Off-road; OEM vs Engine Builder; Australian Supercar License About this episode In this episode we come off the mountain after hitting the trail in the new INEOS Grenadier Quartermaster! We go deeper than our video review. Plus, is a custom built engine more or less reliable than a stock motor?; Australian Supercar License claims its first victim, and Patreon Q&A!
Recorded December 4, 2024
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Transcript 10,872 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Matt Farah? Let's start with this turning radius. Look at this. Cold open. It's like a Wes Anderson movie. What's up everybody? Welcome to the Smoking Tire Podcast. As always, today's episode is brought to you by Off the Record. We love Off the Record here and you guys are always emailing me and please keep doing this when you use Off the Record and they get you out of a ticket. Man, I got a good one the other day. It was in Nebraska. Big, big one. And the pay was a patron actually and totally got out of it. Basically, if you get pulled over, if you get a ticket, if you get stopped by law enforcement and issued a summons, call Off the Record.
0:42 Matt Farah? Well, don't literally call. Go to offtherecord.com/tst or download that Off the Record app and use code TSTPOD and Off the Record will fight that ticket in the jurisdiction. You got it. They'll connect with a qualified attorney that'll handle that ticket, go to court, meet with the prosecutor, the whole deal. You don't have to do anything. It's so easy. You'll send them a photo of the ticket, a brief explanation of what happened and Off the Record will take care of the rest. I've used them so many times and you guys out there in podcast land have clearly as well.
1:19 Matt Farah? So once again, that's offtherecord.com/tst or download the Off the Record app and use code TSTPOD, T S T P O D for 10% off all legal services with Off the Record. All right, kids. In this one, Zach and I are returning from a little off-roading adventure in the Ineos Grenadier Quartermaster pickup truck. And so we talked about that a little bit. Plus, someone has actually been cited in Australia's new supercar high-performance driving license requirements thing. So we really get into that.
2:00 Matt Farah? Plus, should you get a Demand Cayman or a Stock GT3, what is the best rental car for a trip to Los Angeles? And a whole lot more. Let's take a drive home from the mountain with Zach and I. It's the Smoking Tire Podcast. Let's go. Cold open. Turning radius. What?
2:19 Speaker 01 And 8S.
2:21 Matt Farah? 8S. No, the 8S is supposed to be still off. We still in off-road mode? Does that last through a cycle?
2:28 Speaker 01 I'll check. We'll use the favorite button.
2:35 Speaker 01 Settings.
2:37 Matt Farah? Vehicle.
2:40 Matt Farah? ADAS.
2:43 Matt Farah? Oh, wow.
2:43 Speaker 01 It's still deactivated.
2:44 Matt Farah? No, no. Yeah, deactivate, yeah. Hello?
2:48 Speaker 01 Jesus Christ.
2:49 Matt Farah? What's going on?
2:50 Speaker 01 What is that?
2:51 Matt Farah? I don't know. I don't know. Oh, it's, it might just be because we're not, maybe we're out of off-road mode and our tires are still low. You think it's just warning us?
3:00 Speaker 01 Maybe.
3:01 Matt Farah? I don't know. Hi, everybody. Learning in real time with Matt and Zach is what this is called.
3:08 Speaker 01 We don't read the manual.
3:10 Matt Farah? Welcome to another rolling edition of the Smoking Tire Podcast. Hopefully, if you're, if you're listening on one of those like $100,000 tube systems where you have to sit in a very specific dot in the middle of the floor, the off-road-iness of the Ineos Grenadier right now isn't messing with you too much.
3:35 Speaker 01 That's a good test for sound deadening in this car. Can the person with the $100,000 whatever, Sonos system, feel the rocks beneath our feet?
3:45 Matt Farah? This is our version of that Howard Stern bit where he made the lady have an orgasm at the base.
3:50 Speaker 01 If you're sitting on your speaker, don't tell us.
3:53 Matt Farah? Yeah. The rumble. But actually, it's pretty good. It's pretty good in here. And we'll be off this trail soon.
4:03 Matt Farah? This is a, this is a, we're driving home from the off-road shoot and because we're talking to you now, you'll note that we didn't die.
4:13 Speaker 01 Right, that's true. If you hear this show before you watch the video, you kind of know the end of the movie before you watch it.
4:19 Matt Farah? Right. And like, you know, I think, I do have to say that we took this vehicle off-road pretty confidently, considering it's, you know, the first car from a company and there's not a lot of like backup plan, you know, we don't have another vehicle.
4:38 Speaker 01 That's true.
4:38 Matt Farah? Vehicle or anything. Just kind of go.
4:41 Speaker 01 But it wasn't, you know, it's not a prototype. This is a production vehicle and sure, some, some production cars have had problems, but it's, I think it's. The hardware has been tested enough. Like, the engine is not... They didn't make their own engine. They got it from BMW.
4:55 Matt Farah? Yeah.
4:55 Speaker 01 So, the engine should work. And then, the rest of the hardware is fairly simple. Solid axles are fairly simple. Like, they're known ideas. It's not experimental.
5:04 Matt Farah? Yeah, but as we... As we found on the way back down the hill... And by the way, we're having a video of this. We're not going to do a whole review of the Grenadier in this podcast. In fact, we're going to do mostly our best to talk about things other than this. Because we have a whole video that is this. It's going to be like 28 minutes or something. But, uh...
5:32 Matt Farah? But just to finish on that thought, we did stress out the power steering system a little bit.
5:38 Speaker 01 We did. I mean, this thing has big tires, but, I mean, even... I think we were coming down the hill, but we were doing three-point turns on fairly flat ground, and it didn't seem to like it. You really needed to be moving a tiny amount...
5:52 Matt Farah? Yeah.
5:52 Speaker 01 ...to help the power steering system. And it was kind of like, like you said, it was whistling the whole time.
5:57 Matt Farah? Yeah.
5:57 Speaker 01 Like, when you drove by me going down in a straight line, it was kind of, you know, you can hear the pump doing its thing. So, it seems like it struggles a little bit.
6:05 Matt Farah? Yeah. But, overall, I think the review of this vehicle is pretty positive.
6:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
6:13 Matt Farah? But you'll see how it drives on the trail in that video, and we're going to drive it home in this thing on the... This little podcast here.
6:23 Speaker 01 Something we didn't cover on the review, and I wish we did it on the drive up, is I wish we had a roller shade over these glass panels.
6:29 Matt Farah? I did. I said I wanted a shade.
6:30 Speaker 01 Did you say that in the review?
6:32 Matt Farah? Yes, I did. It didn't... It would be a nice add-on. And if these things become popular, the aftermarket will certainly take care of it. It might also be an accessory that's available that this one just doesn't have.
6:47 Speaker 01 Another option, maybe.
6:48 Matt Farah? Ineos owners... They'll get mad. It's Ineos.
6:52 Speaker 01 Ineos.
6:52 Matt Farah? It's not E-E-E-O-S.
6:54 Speaker 01 No, it's Ineos.
6:54 Matt Farah? It's Ineos. You must pronounce it exactly like the oil company it's named after.
7:02 Speaker 01 My father, John Shell.
7:05 Matt Farah? Well, it had me thinking about cars named after oil companies.
7:09 Speaker 01 Steven British Petroleum III.
7:11 Matt Farah? Chevron.
7:12 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:13 Matt Farah? Chevron was a car and is now a gas.
7:17 Speaker 01 That's true, but that was named after a person, right?
7:19 Matt Farah? Chevron?
7:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:21 Matt Farah? No, I think it's named after-
7:22 Speaker 01 The guy that started Chevrolet was a Frenchman.
7:25 Matt Farah? Well, Louis Chevrolet is a person, but Chevron is not Chevrolet.
7:29 Speaker 01 Oh, okay.
7:30 Matt Farah? Chevron, you know what a Chevron is?
7:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's a little angular.
7:33 Matt Farah? It's a thing. It's two sides of a triangle.
7:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:35 Matt Farah? Yeah. Often seen on and around racetracks for various purposes. Yeah, that's a Chevron.
7:44 Speaker 01 We got a dusty in here.
7:45 Matt Farah? It's dirty.
7:46 Speaker 01 We drove out the window. Holy crap, there's another one.
7:48 Matt Farah? A second Ineos. Fuck out of here.
7:52 Speaker 01 This is not-
7:53 Matt Farah? Zack was all, "Why did we get the forward-facing cam?"
7:57 Speaker 01 LA County Fire Department. No one's in it.
7:59 Matt Farah? Get out of here.
7:59 Speaker 01 What are the odds?
8:01 Matt Farah? Zack was all, "Why are we gonna put on the forward-facing Fire Department? We never really see anything interesting." And now we've seen, that is one of three cars we've seen in this park.
8:11 Speaker 01 That's wild. A white Ineos wagon, station wagon.
8:16 Matt Farah? Yeah.
8:17 Speaker 01 We have the pickup truck.
8:19 Matt Farah? Yes, the Quartermaster.
8:20 Speaker 01 Quartermaster. Quartermaster, Trialmaster with, what was the other trim we have on this?
8:27 Matt Farah? Uh, Fieldmaster.
8:29 Speaker 01 Fieldmaster.
8:30 Matt Farah? It's a lot. It's just a master of so many things.
8:34 Speaker 01 Right.
8:34 Matt Farah? Well, a Quartermaster is, that's the master of the quarters, right? So, is that just a nice way of saying like a housekeeper? Or like a house person, a butler?
8:46 Speaker 01 Maybe.
8:47 Matt Farah? Is that an estate manager? This seems like a good estate manager vehicle, actually.
8:51 Speaker 01 Right, because you can have a bed, you can throw furniture in or something like that.
8:54 Matt Farah? You know, it's so funny. This is, this really is, it's a good, because you could do the grounds. You know, if you're driving around the rich people, you know, it's reasonably nice.
9:07 Matt Farah? But it's a good place to spend your time when you're driving around the grounds. But like, the one person I know that is so interested in this car and wants to buy one is an estate manager.
9:18 Speaker 01 Oh, I know, yeah. I know who you mean. Before you even said it, yeah.
9:22 Matt Farah? And he is, he wants to replace his forerunner with one of these.
9:25 Speaker 01 This makes sense for him. It actually really does.
9:28 Matt Farah? Yeah, yeah.
9:31 Speaker 01 If you don't like your 16 miles per gallon city, meet the 14 miles per gallon city.
9:35 Matt Farah? Yeah, yeah. It's not very fuel efficient, but it is very optimistic. It stays on full for a really long time.
9:45 Speaker 01 Right, we did what, 60 miles before the fuel gauge moved?
9:49 Matt Farah? Off of full. I've told you about my weird NSX fuel gauge that's apparently normal, right?
9:56 Speaker 01 No.
9:56 Matt Farah? So it stays on full for like 40 miles. A lot of cars do that, right? 35, 40, it stays on full. Then it starts to drop and it moves normally. And it gets to a quarter, like, pretty quickly. Hovers there for a while and then gets to that red light, right? But here's the thing. The red light, I've done, I've measured this out like a bunch of times. Nice looking Rubicon. I actually think the choice of wheel and tire on that one was very good. Here's the thing, I've done, I've done this, wait, where was I? The Rubicon distracted me.
10:37 Speaker 01 Fuel gauge.
10:38 Matt Farah? Oh, thank you, right. When I fill it up, when the red light comes on, it has five gallons left in it. Which in an NSX is like 120 miles of driving.
10:50 Speaker 01 Wow.
10:51 Matt Farah? And so it's like, it...
10:53 Speaker 01 Wait, how big is the tank capacity?
10:55 Matt Farah? I think it's, I want to say it's 16 gallons offhand. Or maybe it's 16 or maybe even 18 gallons.
11:01 Speaker 01 Whoa, so that's kind of an early alert.
11:03 Matt Farah? Yeah, it's a very conservative gauge. It's weird, but fuel gauge.
11:08 Speaker 01 You have a third of your tank left. Pull over and fill up.
11:11 Matt Farah? Fuel gauge behavior is a real hobby of mine, you know what I'm saying? I could talk for days about the different behaviors of fucking fuel gauges.
11:19 Speaker 01 Please don't, I can't do that.
11:20 Matt Farah? That's my version of like Jeremy Clarkson's like MG thing, you know?
11:24 Speaker 01 MGs are nice though, I think they're gorgeous, you know? Are they fast? No, they can be. They're just cool looking. Were you what? I think they're cool looking.
11:33 Matt Farah? I don't think they're that nice.
11:34 Speaker 01 Do the hatch thing, oh man, that thing's awesome.
11:36 Matt Farah? Wait, it's the moment of truth, ready, and?
11:40 Speaker 01 Silence.
11:41 Matt Farah? I gotta say, I love off-roading, but I also love getting back to a tarmac after hours of off-roading.
11:49 Speaker 01 Your camping is great, but when you're hiking back and you finally see the parking lot, the relief that washes over you is so powerful. Like, you're done walking and you're alive and you know you didn't get lost, all of that.
12:03 Matt Farah? Yeah, when we stopped to set up the cameras for this show, I texted wife, like, "Off mountain, it's okay."
12:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, right, I do that too. Like, we came back. Actually, I do have more when we come back from the canyons because of the Palmdale 500 folks. Like, I'm pretty nervous about that, about having a head-on situation.
12:24 Matt Farah? You have some real unscrupulous double-yellow line crossing happening that morning commuting hours. People think it's like crazy when we're up there, but like, to commute on that road is really where stuff is nuts.
12:39 Speaker 01 People are really bold.
12:41 Matt Farah? I've seen crazier stuff that commuters do on those roads than what enthusiasts do, for real. If you count, like, standard-issue canyon speeding as something that is not morally wrong, then I've seen...
12:59 Speaker 01 Because we're discounting people that, like, go up there to drift or drive like idiots.
13:03 Matt Farah? I'm not discounting drifting up there. I don't think you should be doing that.
13:05 Speaker 01 No, I don't either. I'm saying, like, those are the people that are the dangerous enthusiasts, but normal people who drive to Good Vibes in, like, speed a little bit.
13:12 Matt Farah? Yeah, yeah.
13:13 Speaker 01 The people that commute in clapped Camrys and work trucks and, like, we came around a corner once, double-yellow out of a tunnel, and when someone was taking a peek on the outside to see if they could pass a car in some S's. And people are just, they're running way too late for work.
13:27 Matt Farah? I remember that incident. Do you remember what the car was taking a peek?
13:31 Speaker 01 Civic.
13:32 Matt Farah? Oh, no, it was a Suburban.
13:34 Speaker 01 Oh. It would've killed us either way.
13:37 Matt Farah? Yeah. And we were in, like, a McLaren or something going the other way. It's, uh...
13:43 Speaker 01 Just wake up five minutes earlier, whoever you are, and don't kill anyone on the highway.
13:49 Matt Farah? Zach, I have a question for you.
13:51 Speaker 01 Sure.
13:51 Matt Farah? Do you think that recirculating ball steering with minus 10 PSI in the tires is improved or worsened?
14:04 Speaker 01 In terms of how it tracks? You'll probably have less tram line, but it will be even slower to react to your inputs, is my guess.
14:14 Matt Farah? Yes, slower to react, and it is a lot heavier.
14:21 Speaker 01 Which it didn't need to be.
14:24 Speaker 01 Because the steering weight of this car, the heaviness, gives you the false impression that it is sporty.
14:30 Matt Farah? Yeah.
14:30 Speaker 01 And then the revolutions to get it to turn tell you otherwise.
14:33 Matt Farah? Yeah.
14:34 Speaker 01 Yep. It's a little, well, we talked about it.
14:38 Matt Farah? It was our choice to air down the tires.
14:40 Speaker 01 It works in the off-road, and it's not great on-road.
14:42 Matt Farah? Yeah, yeah.
14:42 Speaker 01 That's the trade-off, so.
14:45 Matt Farah? If I was an estate manager at like, like that house in The Gentleman, did you see The Gentleman?
14:52 Speaker 01 No.
14:52 Matt Farah? Like, one of those big... The idea of The Gentleman, either the film or the television series, both of which are great. The idea is that there's these, a lot of, not a lot, but enough people in England that have inherited royal titles like duke or whatever. And they have a big estate, right? But they've never had like, jobs. So they don't really have any money. They certainly don't have enough money to care for these estates and have staffs and all that. But they're trying to keep up the lifestyle, so in The Gentleman, and this doesn't spoil anything, because this is revealed in the first couple of scenes, both, they lease
15:35 Matt Farah? out their land to weed growers, who build underground grow rooms on their estates.
15:42 Speaker 01 Got it.
15:43 Matt Farah? And then, you know, a variety of hijinks.
15:46 Speaker 01 Like Clarkson's mushroom growing area.
15:49 Matt Farah? Yeah, the huge.
15:50 Speaker 01 Right.
15:50 Matt Farah? Huge.
15:51 Speaker 01 Okay.
15:51 Matt Farah? Big commercial shit. So, anyway. Estate, if you have one of those estates, this would have been a perfect product placement in the gentleman.
16:02 Speaker 01 But I feel like the amount of wealth you would need to make this your estate vehicle over a John Deere something.
16:09 Matt Farah? Right.
16:10 Speaker 01 Is insane. Like, you have no money left to maintain your estate, but you or your groundskeeper drive a hundred thousand dollar truck around instead of a twenty-two thousand dollar, you know, John Deere Polaris, whatever.
16:22 Matt Farah? Well, Clarkson Farms and a Range Rover, a Lamborghini tractor.
16:25 Speaker 01 And where did his money come from? Television.
16:30 Matt Farah? Aren't all farms TV shows?
16:32 Speaker 01 I think Tanner Fowles seems to be, um...
16:36 Matt Farah? No, his farm looks fun. We should go visit Tanner.
16:39 Speaker 01 Looks amazing. That guy has one at life.
16:41 Matt Farah? Yeah.
16:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, he's got a huge ranch in Colorado.
16:43 Matt Farah? We need to go visit.
16:44 Speaker 01 Awesome.
16:45 Matt Farah? We probably don't even need to drive. I could probably just be like, buddy, next time you're in LA, let me just hop on the, uh, hop on the plane.
16:52 Speaker 01 Hop on the twin prop. What are you doing?
16:54 Matt Farah? Did he get a twin?
16:55 Speaker 01 He's got a turboprop or something.
16:57 Matt Farah? He had, he had a plane that I saw that was a single propeller plane, but it was like a pretty fast.
17:03 Speaker 01 Yeah, they get the turbo single prop, maybe.
17:05 Matt Farah? Okay, I didn't, I heard, I thought I heard you say twin.
17:08 Speaker 01 I did, but I don't know anything about planes or his personal fleet, so I don't know.
17:13 Matt Farah? Doesn't Aaron have a twin? Like, an older one?
17:15 Speaker 01 I thought he just had a Cessna. I thought he had a normal, single prop.
17:18 Matt Farah? Oh, okay, I don't know.
17:19 Speaker 01 I'm not sure.
17:20 Matt Farah? I don't know. I don't know about planes, but once these guys get into planes.
17:23 Speaker 01 I know I shouldn't be a pilot, that's what I know. This is as close to piloting a plane as I should get.
17:28 Matt Farah? Really?
17:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:29 Matt Farah? You flew that drone thing.
17:31 Speaker 01 And, and as soon as I did the checklist with supervision led by the COO, I went, I should not have, I'm not a person to do this by myself.
17:39 Matt Farah? Yeah, by yourself is a fucking thing.
17:42 Speaker 01 And they, and they kept saying, Zach, this is why there's a checklist.
17:44 Matt Farah? It's crazy, they don't have like a trainer one with another person in it.
17:47 Speaker 01 Um, the weight limit. You'd be worried about the weight limit.
17:50 Matt Farah? I know, yeah.
17:51 Speaker 01 But they, they said, this is why people that fly have checklists, because you don't have to remember all the things.
17:56 Matt Farah? You just have to remember to start the checklist.
17:59 Speaker 01 You just have to remember and care enough to go through the checklist.
18:02 Matt Farah? Yeah.
18:03 Speaker 01 And I, I'm not that person, you know? I, I improvise too much, and if I went through the list and one thing was broken, you need to go, oh, never mind, we're not going on the trip, we're not, you know, sunk cost fallacy cannot exist if you're flying a private aircraft.
18:17 Matt Farah? Yeah.
18:17 Speaker 01 I would go, ah, we already came all this way, it'll be fine, probably we can glide if we need to.
18:23 Matt Farah? Glide if we need to.
18:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:25 Matt Farah? That, hey Zach, what are the things that you'd never want a pilot to say?
18:30 Speaker 01 I'm a big fan of contingency plans and having a bunch of them. So I would have parachutes and people go, oh, that's, do you go skydiving? No, no, no, that's for us, just in case. Cause I skipped something on the checklist. This is why I shouldn't have a check, I shouldn't fly an aircraft. Just, I'll go ride in one. I'll ride with Tanner or Aaron, that's fine.
18:48 Matt Farah? I really liked the little tiny bit of flying that I did when Hannah got me a lesson. It was, it was literally, and I'm sure I could learn it, but I didn't want to. The, the radio shit.
19:00 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
19:01 Matt Farah? Yeah.
19:02 Speaker 01 That's hard.
19:02 Matt Farah? Yeah.
19:03 Speaker 01 There's a lot going on.
19:04 Matt Farah? Yeah.
19:05 Speaker 01 Although I think, once you're out, away from the city, there's less, right?
19:09 Matt Farah? Yes, I do think that's true. You could probably go sometime without hearing much radio at all. But I just, like, I couldn't, I couldn't understand, like, not even like 1%
19:24 Speaker 01 I agree.
19:24 Matt Farah? Of what was being said on the radio. And I didn't give enough of a fuck to try. Like the next, the next level of commitment from that first, you know, couple hundred dollar test flight, 20 minutes, the next level of commitment is like, a whole, you know, all your free time for a year.
19:45 Speaker 01 Do you think that it's like, if a pilot who's not into cars listens to us talk about with chassis codes? Like, it's just a language, right?
19:54 Matt Farah? You don't need a chassis code to drive a car.
19:55 Speaker 01 You don't need one, that's very true. But I'm saying like, it's like a language you have to learn. You learn the shorthand.
20:00 Matt Farah? Truck mobbing. Folks, we gotta take a quick break from today's episode because Delete Me is supporting this one. We love them and they are back. Listen, has someone that you know, or maybe yourself, been a victim of identity theft or maybe harassed, stalked, doxed, right? Here's what my problem is, robo calls. I hate them, to the point where I picked up a real call today and I started with the line, "Are you a human?", which is something I've been conditioned to do, cause I have so many robo calls. Personal data is out there on the internet for anyone to see. And more than you think, your name and contact info, social security number, home address,
20:43 Matt Farah? etc., even member, even information about your family members are all being compiled by data brokers and sold online. And they make a profit off it. Your data is a commodity. Anyone on the web can buy your private details, which can lead to identity theft, phishing attempts, harassment, spam, and more. But now you can protect your privacy with Delete Me. I used it. It was so easy. All I did was make an account, like same usual information. But then they started asking me very basic questions about my past, where I lived, where I worked, phone numbers, who I'm related to, where I went to school, and on and on. It took about 20 minutes.
21:25 Matt Farah? Then they went to work and I didn't hear from them for a couple of days. And then I got this email summary saying they found like a thousand bits of information. They, most of them could get automatically removed, but then there was a process where I had to go through and individually select about, I don't know, 20 or 25 different things, which was like, we found this, are you related to this person? Is this phone number related to you? Is this address related to you? And it was yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. Took a few more minutes and then a couple of weeks later, I got another email, same kind of thing. And Delete Me, it's not just a one-time service. It's always working in the background, constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you don't want on the internet.
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22:54 Speaker 01 Mike Amusio who works for Kelly Blue Book and he took me for a flight in his helicopter said that if you can learn air traffic control in LA you can do it anywhere because it's the hardest place to learn to talk. There's so many frequencies and so many things happening.
23:06 Matt Farah? Sure.
23:07 Speaker 01 Doesn't make it easy.
23:08 Matt Farah? And I understand the passion for it. For sure, I understand the passion for it. It's just like, it was not like, oh, in order to do the thing I want to do, I need to do this other thing. And that was bad math for me.
23:21 Speaker 01 Right. Before you're allowed to drive a car, you have to learn Japanese.
23:24 Matt Farah? Yeah.
23:24 Speaker 01 That's kind of what it's like. You know, you have to learn all these call signs, east, west, what are we doing, all that stuff. Yeah.
23:31 Matt Farah? And like, I've already done that once with boats and I really like it. I like it with boats. But you don't have to do it very often. And it's like.
23:41 Speaker 01 The pacing also seems slower.
23:43 Matt Farah? Look what they've built here, this shopping center.
23:45 Speaker 01 It's a building.
23:45 Matt Farah? It's a shopping center.
23:46 Speaker 01 First time seeing one?
23:48 Matt Farah? No, but it means that for once, Zach, there might be something good to eat when we come off this particular hill.
23:56 Speaker 01 That's a good point.
23:58 Matt Farah? I love you, Sand Canyon, but listen, if you're passionate about food, go somewhere where there isn't good food and start making good food because it's a beautiful neighborhood around here and I would love to live at the foothills of these mountains. But there ain't a fucking thing to eat out here. Oh, look, Frederick Osbo on the side of the wall here.
24:19 Speaker 01 That's right.
24:20 Matt Farah? That's probably a Jen Horsey placement. Shout out to her.
24:23 Speaker 01 Yeah. Our friend is the agent for like three of the top, all of Papadakis. Yeah. It's a good team to represent. They keep doing well. Although, James Dean won FT Championship last year again, and he's part of RTR.
24:38 Matt Farah? Well, they're very good, too.
24:39 Speaker 01 Yeah, and he is a cyborg.
24:41 Matt Farah? What the fuck? Oh, it's a tire pressure warning.
24:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:44 Matt Farah? Yeah. Okay. Well, I'm sorry, podcast people. You may have to live with that one. When we aired down to go off-road, when you put the car in off-road mode, smartly, it disregards all ADAS stuff. It disregards tire pressure sensors unless you have like a blowout, I think.
25:06 Matt Farah? But other vehicles we've driven, like something I did recently, I think, I want to say the Land Cruiser, like, wouldn't turn off the parking sensors when I was off-roading. And so I'd get close to bushes and stuff, and it would beep like crazy.
25:21 Speaker 01 I'm glad you brought this up. I have a complaint about the RAV4 Hybrid that I want a Toyota engineer to hear and explain to me.
25:29 Matt Farah? Okay.
25:29 Speaker 01 When...
25:30 Matt Farah? Or at the very least, David Twig.
25:31 Speaker 01 Or David Twig. When you're, let's say you're parked at a spot and there's a bush in front of you, you put the car in reverse, your forward parking sensors go off, like they beep a lot, but you're in reverse.
25:44 Matt Farah? Yeah, yeah.
25:45 Speaker 01 The backup camera is on.
25:46 Matt Farah? Yeah.
25:46 Speaker 01 However, we noticed that if you back into a spot, when you pull it, put it into drive, the rear sensors don't alert you to what's behind you, because they know you're going forward.
25:57 Matt Farah? Oh.
25:57 Speaker 01 You know, you understand what I'm saying?
25:58 Matt Farah? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
25:59 Speaker 01 Like, the car goes, I know that you can only go backwards,
26:01 Matt Farah? It doesn't change.
26:02 Speaker 01 But watch out for this thing in front of you. But when you reverse it, or flip it around, it goes, don't worry about what's behind you, you're moving forward.
26:09 Matt Farah? Yeah.
26:10 Speaker 01 It drives Sarah nuts.
26:12 Matt Farah? Yeah.
26:12 Speaker 01 And it's louder. The Toyota Safety Alerts, they really want you to be safe and they yell at you very loudly.
26:18 Matt Farah? I know we wouldn't try, try to talk too much about this truck, but it just happened, and I want to put it on the record. Did you notice while making our three-point turns for doing our drive-by shots, because you drove some and I drove some, did you notice that in off-road mode, the backup camera doesn't come on in reverse?
26:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, I did notice that. That was weird. I had to use the mirrors to look at the straw, so I hope we don't drive over it.
26:40 Matt Farah? I think the backup camera is quite useful if you have to go in reverse.
26:45 Speaker 01 Yeah.
26:45 Matt Farah? Off-road.
26:46 Speaker 01 That's, that's a circuit they should fix, because this also has forward-facing cameras for automatic emergency braking.
26:52 Matt Farah? Yeah.
26:53 Speaker 01 But when you put it in off-road mode, obviously it turns that off, which is good, because sometimes it will detect the ground, you know, you're going down a slope and there's an uphill, and it might auto brake, that'd be a problem. But we know that the cameras can be super helpful off-roading.
27:08 Matt Farah? Yeah.
27:09 Speaker 01 Especially if you, you know, you don't want to drive over the vegetation if you're turning around.
27:14 Matt Farah? No, when you go up a, when you go up a peak with a big break over, like Land Rover's cameras are so good on their modern stuff.
27:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:24 Matt Farah? With that seeing under the nose thing.
27:26 Speaker 01 But those I think are mounted under the front bumper.
27:29 Matt Farah? Yeah.
27:29 Speaker 01 For that purpose, whereas like this has a camera at the top of the windshield.
27:32 Matt Farah? Yeah.
27:33 Speaker 01 So it wouldn't work for that, but the backup camera would be, you know, invaluable for turning around.
27:37 Matt Farah? I was disappointed in the G-Wagon's front camera. It's really wide angle and to the point where on that sort of camelback rock that we go, we drive on on these trails. Like it really, it makes it very distorted and hard to, to really discern what you're looking at at all. Not great. I mean, otherwise that thing rules, but like it's, uh, that was a bad camera. You know what I did? I dropped the bottle cap on the floor and it's gone under the seat and now.
28:13 Speaker 01 Chuck it, chuck it up.
28:16 Matt Farah? Or hold it. So you know what? A bunch of people sent me a story this morning or last night about, uh, the first ticket was issued for that Australian supercar license.
28:31 Speaker 01 Oh.
28:32 Matt Farah? So the law went into effect like whatever, you know, a week ago or days ago. And on the very first day, someone was driving around in a Lambo, I believe it was a Huracan. It had no tags on it, got pulled over. I didn't know you could roll no tags in Australia. Australia is a little more surveillancy than America.
28:52 Speaker 01 Really? You can't because they got pulled over.
28:53 Matt Farah? Right, true, but I didn't know it was like culturally, it was a thing that was even done.
28:57 Speaker 01 Okay.
28:59 Matt Farah? When I say can, yeah, there's legally and then it's like, is it done in that region?
29:04 Speaker 01 Gotcha. Well, what do they, so what do they get a ticket for?
29:08 Matt Farah? Oh, they got a ticket for no tags and they got a ticket for driving without the ultra-high performance license.
29:15 Speaker 01 Right, because they now require you if you have the vehicle to have that license.
29:19 Matt Farah? You don't get any special privileges.
29:21 Speaker 01 Interesting.
29:22 Matt Farah? People sent it to me because this is when I, I have been talking for years along with Rob Ferretti about there should be a high-performance license. That allows you to drive a higher speed than the regular speed limit, but comes with like extra levels of training and possibly restriction.
29:43 Speaker 01 Right.
29:44 Matt Farah? Almost like a commercial grade driver's license, like a CDL for, for, you know, speeding.
29:53 Speaker 01 Right.
29:55 Matt Farah? But in Australia, it's not that. It's, it's if you're going to buy a car that's over a certain power to weight ratio.
30:07 Matt Farah? And I, we, it's the number, we would look up the number if we weren't in the car. It was like 300, it was such a fucking Australian number. It was like 370 kilowatts per ton.
30:18 Speaker 01 Okay.
30:19 Matt Farah? Which is like, we have to do that individually on every single car.
30:24 Speaker 01 Unless it's an EV and then, okay.
30:25 Matt Farah? Yeah. Oh, actually, that's.
30:27 Speaker 01 Right, it works for that.
30:28 Matt Farah? That's actually true, right? There, I hadn't thought about the fact that their default was also the EV, even though in hindsight, that seems incredibly obvious.
30:39 Matt Farah? But anyway, he got ticketed for not having the license. And you need, it's like, it's like an hour online course. It's like pretty bullshit.
30:48 Speaker 01 Well, so it seems like, and I'm not usually one to go this direction, but it sounds like it's probably a revenue generator more than a safety thing. Like you don't get, because what we want is extra training within extra privileges.
31:02 Matt Farah? Right, right.
31:03 Speaker 01 You have this high performance vehicle that can go fast, that safely go very fast.
31:07 Matt Farah? Yeah.
31:08 Speaker 01 Here are the conditions you're allowed to do that.
31:10 Matt Farah? Yeah.
31:10 Speaker 01 And you know how to handle the vehicle. Because, but they're going, these cars are dangerous. You can go faster and lose control. Let's give you a quick hour long online course. You pay money and now you can go driving.
31:23 Matt Farah? Yeah.
31:23 Speaker 01 So that's not really preparing you for if the thing kicks out at 120 miles an hour because you're going too fast, or it's raining, or if the tires are, are compounds and they're wet. So, hmm, we need to look at the class. Maybe if someone's listening from Australia, tell us what's in that course, because that doesn't seem thorough enough.
31:39 Matt Farah? No, it seems dumb. But also it seems like it gives a possible prerequisite.
31:49 Matt Farah? Maybe to pull people over. I don't know if they can, if they have a stop and frisk for supercar drivers like.
31:57 Speaker 01 You know what? That would be karma. Like the stop and frisk was definitely not aimed at people that can afford supercars. So maybe it went the other way.
32:02 Matt Farah? Now you get to see what it's like.
32:03 Speaker 01 Exactly.
32:04 Matt Farah? Yeah.
32:05 Speaker 01 Real quick, I'm pretty sure that when that Harley rider got on, he adjusted the damping on his rear suspension as he merged. Like he reached back and like did something with his shotgun.
32:14 Matt Farah? Oh, you don't think he gave us a little what's up for being in some kind of enthusiast?
32:18 Speaker 01 No, I think he, I think he gestured to signal because he didn't have, doesn't have signal or, um, you know, blinkers. And then he reached back and set his shit to soft or hard. I don't know. He just looked like someone who races motorcycles up in Sunland and then whatever. Just like a weird detail I noticed.
32:35 Matt Farah? Remember right before they closed the Snake in 2018, all the superbike guys had switched over to like Harleys and because they got bored of like doing stunts and like carving on, you know, Jixters and shit. And they were like, let's see what this is like on a fat boy.
32:52 Speaker 01 It was amazing.
32:53 Matt Farah? It's like dragging sparks up.
32:55 Speaker 01 Some of the most amazing motorcycle riding you'll ever see is people, yeah, dragging sparks with ape hangers.
33:01 Matt Farah? Yeah.
33:01 Speaker 01 And their knee is like inches from rocks. Really, it was impressive. It was really impressive.
33:06 Matt Farah? King of the Baggers has become like a thing, right? That's like ongoing now?
33:10 Speaker 01 It is. They're in multiple seasons and the times they run are really fast.
33:14 Matt Farah? Yeah.
33:15 Speaker 01 Because the engines are really big. It's incredible what they've done, um, with those. For people that don't know, they take bagger motorcycles, motorcycles with saddlebags, traditionally like PT bikes. And they race them wheel to wheel at racetracks, you know, famously for us Laguna Seca. But they do multiple events and they haul ass. Like their lap times aren't a joke.
33:36 Matt Farah? Someone started it as like a meme, like a meme basically, as like a joke. Like wouldn't it be funny and silly if we raced these things? And then it sort of became, it was like such a hit that it then turned into like a real thing.
33:50 Speaker 01 Well, and they got competitive because that's what, you know.
33:53 Matt Farah? How often do you see a RAV4 flat tow another RAV4? Not often? Pretty good?
34:00 Speaker 01 Sort of a human centipede situation.
34:02 Matt Farah? Pretty good.
34:05 Speaker 01 So we have 30 minutes left. Should we go to questions from people?
34:09 Matt Farah? Oh, we do?
34:10 Speaker 01 Only because there's no traffic today.
34:12 Matt Farah? Why not?
34:13 Speaker 01 Because it's later than we normally drive back, by like two hours.
34:16 Matt Farah? Oh.
34:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
34:18 Matt Farah? Okay.
34:18 Speaker 01 Normally, this drive takes us an hour and a half.
34:21 Matt Farah? Yeah. Alright.
34:23 Speaker 01 Oh, do you have more topics? I'm just noticing the time.
34:26 Matt Farah? That's a good thing to notice. I really appreciate that.
34:31 Matt Farah? What was I going to say? So Eric heard us talking about his Porsche on the show.
34:40 Matt Farah? And now he wants to sell the Porsche. And he gave me details on the warranty. And again, if you didn't listen to the last episode, my general manager Eric has a 997.2 Turbo in a stick. With like, I think it's like 15,000 miles, give or take. I don't know exactly. But it's in that area, 15,000 miles. Stick.2 turbos are very, very rare. And low mileage ones are very valuable. And he's had this one for a long time. What makes it interesting is that it is still under warranty. This is a 2012 car that has a bumper-to-bumper Porsche warranty.
35:26 Matt Farah? Until, I believe, like fall of 2026, or 70,000 miles. And so we're going to list the car for sale. And we'll see.
35:40 Speaker 01 It's gorgeous. It's on BBSs, right?
35:42 Matt Farah? Yeah, it's on BBSs, but it comes with the stock wheels, too.
35:46 Speaker 01 That is like the best turbo, though, because you get, what, 997.2 interior? You get the good interior, but it's a manual, and it's Mezger.
35:53 Matt Farah? And it's so fast.
35:55 Speaker 01 It's so fast, and can be made even faster. And it'll hold up to whatever boost you want to throw at it. That is one of like the unicorn 911 turbos.
36:04 Matt Farah? Yeah, it's a good one. You do not see them very often. Almost all of the 997 turbos that you see are dot box manuals, all the manual manuals.
36:15 Speaker 01 Everyone went PDK.
36:16 Matt Farah? Yeah, because most of them were sold as Turbo Ss, which were PDK also. And the acceleration, obviously...
36:27 Matt Farah? With Pete, the introduction of PDK to the 911 Turbo, it was a big deal at the time, for sure. And it was the best automatic at the time. And it was the first time that people didn't feel as much like pressure to buy the stick because the PDK was also respectable.
36:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:46 Matt Farah? It wasn't like this shitty auto like with the 996.
36:52 Matt Farah? So, anyway, that's kind of funny. That's a lot of warranty remainder for a 2012. It's crazy.
37:03 Matt Farah? But yeah, let's, uh, let's talk to the people. If you want to ask questions for the show, comment on the wind noise of the Ineos Grenadier,
37:14 Matt Farah? get the show ahead of time, get an ad-free listening experience, all that good stuff that you're used to, that you love, and that makes podcasting a direct-to-consumer experience. Patreon.com slash The Smoking Tire Podcast.
37:31 Speaker 01 All right, uh, so for Patreons listening, we're hitting the leftover questions from last show, and then we'll hit the new ones. So this is from Barely Streetable, says, "Other than the convenience of four doors, what would your pick be between an Audi RS3 and RS5, and why?"
37:53 Speaker 01 RS3 gets the inline-five turbo.
37:56 Matt Farah? Yeah, the RS5 is like, is like a six-cylinder turbo. Like, it's not a bad car at all, but like, I don't know, it doesn't really, doesn't really do it for me. That powertrain doesn't feel as special.
38:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, true.
38:09 Matt Farah? I'd still rather have the RS3.
38:11 Speaker 01 The one we had that was the, uh, what was the trim level with the upgrade? Like, they upgraded the diff, the steering system.
38:18 Matt Farah? Yeah, there was like a competition or something.
38:20 Speaker 01 I mean, if you get that, that was a pretty good driver's car.
38:22 Matt Farah? It was.
38:24 Speaker 01 But yeah, the engine's not as unique. And I think they had the exact same front interior volume, like...
38:31 Matt Farah? Like, front seats to death.
38:32 Speaker 01 Front seat, shoulder, everything was basically the same.
38:34 Matt Farah? It is pretty close.
38:35 Speaker 01 So you're not getting a ton more luxurious space with the RS5 versus the RS3, so...
38:40 Matt Farah? Yeah, the RS3 rides well enough that you don't need to go to a bigger car in order to get a better ride.
38:47 Speaker 01 Alright, someone says, "I hope Matt likes my username. Do you have any memorable driving roads in the Pacific Northwest, specifically around Portland? How do you plan a route for a driving group?" We've covered this before. You just Google Earth. Look for squiggles.
39:01 Matt Farah? Yeah.
39:02 Speaker 01 Look for as few... squiggles with as few roads or driveways intersecting with the squiggle. And then go to Street View and look for good tarmac. Because you can usually tell if the road is dirt or bad, cracked up tarmac unless it's been repaved.
39:18 Matt Farah? Yeah.
39:19 Speaker 01 You look for those things.
39:20 Matt Farah? Yeah. It isn't all that difficult. You pick your start and your end points, and then you drag the line around and find the squiggly routes, and then you inspect the quality of the road from there.
39:31 Speaker 01 Right. And if you have time, you could pre-run it?
39:33 Matt Farah? Yeah.
39:33 Speaker 01 If you really want... I mean, that's the best thing to do, if you can. But if you can't, just go on the adventure.
39:40 Matt Farah? I don't have any memorable Pacific Northwest roads. Not because the roads aren't great, just because all the times I've driven them have been on like, press launches and stuff where they give you a route. And so I'm not really paying attention so much to the names of the roads. But, I mean, wherever you are, find the mountains, and then find the roads on and off those mountains.
40:07 Speaker 01 True.
40:07 Matt Farah? Is generally a good place to start.
40:09 Speaker 01 Yeah. Or head into the woods.
40:11 Matt Farah? Yeah.
40:11 Speaker 01 And head back out of the woods.
40:13 Matt Farah? Yeah.
40:13 Speaker 01 Pretty much it.
40:15 Matt Farah? Yeah. Mountains rarely let you down when it comes to finding a road.
40:19 Speaker 01 Yeah. They can't go straight up them for a reason.
40:21 Matt Farah? Yeah.
40:21 Speaker 01 Murray Manchantisuk says, "He had a deposit on a BRZ Series Purple, but changed his mind after test driving and then buying a GR Corolla Core. As his only car and first new car, how should he preserve it? How do you decide between PPF over ceramic or AMO Reflex?"
40:42 Matt Farah? Math.
40:44 Matt Farah? PPF is expensive.
40:45 Speaker 01 Yes.
40:47 Matt Farah? You know, to PPF a car costs probably...
40:52 Matt Farah? As much as, you know, not a full, not a repaint, but like, like a car is anywhere from like six to $10,000 to PPF.
41:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, we're talking full coverage.
41:06 Matt Farah? Yeah, full coverage.
41:07 Speaker 01 But that's a lot of money.
41:08 Matt Farah? That's a lot of money. You can do the nose, you can just, you know, you can do half a car.
41:12 Speaker 01 A lot of people do, let's call it like
41:14 Matt Farah? Impact zones.
41:15 Speaker 01 Impact areas, right?
41:16 Matt Farah? Yeah, that's like the nose and the hood.
41:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, stuff like that.
41:19 Matt Farah? But like, so what I like to do, I mean, if you, if it's a car that you're going to keep for a long time, I mean, that's usually the first math. Are you going to keep this car for a very long time? And if I have to repaint the bumper or repaint bits of the car, how much will that cost versus spending six to $9,000, let's call it, on a full PPF to guarantee you won't, you know, do that? That's one thing. Also, you can't really PPF like old cars quite as well because the paint is more fragile and, and so you don't really want to put PPF on like an original paint car that's 20
42:02 Matt Farah? or 30 years old. Ceramic is like fine and Reflex, Hermos product, is a ceramic-like coating that just lasts about half as long as ceramic. Ceramic has in theory a five to 10-year commitment, you know, level to it. I like to do PPF with M-O Reflex on top of it and that makes it look really great. It makes it really easy to wash. But that's for cars like my Porsche or the Acura NSX where I really want to preserve that original paint as, as long as I can.
42:48 Matt Farah? With a Corolla, I know you think you want to keep it forever now, but, and maybe you do, but I would say the value, the cost to PPF it probably outweighs the return. Because even if you have to paint the front bumper, it won't be that much for a Corolla, comparatively speaking, compared to like a Ferrari.
43:11 Speaker 01 Right. If you PPF the whole thing, it's like 20% of the cost of the car, you know? And that's, that's a lot.
43:17 Matt Farah? Yeah.
43:18 Speaker 01 And you won't, you will not get that back when you sell it. I mean, it will, it will make the car easier to sell to tell someone, hey, the whole thing's PPFed. You could, but I would call a shop and see what they would charge for the high-impact zones.
43:30 Matt Farah? Yeah.
43:31 Speaker 01 The frequently impacted zones and see what that's like. But it's a lot more expensive than ceramic coating.
43:37 Matt Farah? You know what I love about PPF though? The unintended other thing about PPF is I don't have to feel bad about like leaning on my car or other people leaning on my car.
43:52 Speaker 01 Hmm.
43:52 Matt Farah? You know, like if I'm just standing around a parking lot or wherever, like I want to lean on the car. Like I'm not going to scratch it. I'm going to put, I want to put this beverage down on the car. I'm not going to scratch it or like leave a ring in the paint or anything like that.
44:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's a good point.
44:08 Matt Farah? It just like, it allows me like one extra step of like, I don't have to be too precious with this because it's got the protection on it.
44:18 Speaker 01 Right.
44:18 Matt Farah? And that makes me feel good. Even on the Safari 911 when we did it, it really made me feel good. Lean on the car and sit on it, like whatever.
44:30 Speaker 01 Well, and take it off in the dirt and just go shred and without worrying about it.
44:34 Matt Farah? It made me feel real nice.
44:36 Speaker 01 Um, great inmate mate says he has a 718 GT4 manual. He was thinking of doing the demand thing, but he's worried about long-term reliability on an engine built to such an aggressive level. So his question is kind of multifaceted. Do you know anything about the long-term reliability of that engine? Or would you rather switch to a 991.2 GT3 Touring or a 992 Touring to get that horsepower in what is perceived as a more reliable package?
45:06 Matt Farah? I mean...
45:10 Matt Farah? I've never personally witnessed a demand engine blow up. Doesn't mean it hasn't happened, but I've never personally witnessed it. And I feel like if it became problematic, I would probably be the first people, person that they would call. Because as their biggest name customer, I am somehow a de facto representative of the brand.
45:35 Speaker 01 Sure.
45:36 Matt Farah? Which is fine. I understand that. And I've never heard anything like that. Now, I've heard people complain about Rick because he can be hard to deal with, but that's a different story. It's not the car or the motor. And I'm, Rick has told me and insists, and I don't have a good reason to doubt him because he's been building race cars for a very long time.
46:00 Matt Farah? That this engine, meaning the 4.5, the service life of it is 100,000 street miles.
46:09 Matt Farah? A factory Porsche engine is longer than that, probably.
46:15 Matt Farah? But that's what this engine is. That's his comfort level for, for its life. It, it was something like 25 hours of racing between rebuilds on this same engine.
46:32 Matt Farah? And according to him, again, you can maximize that life by doing a proper break-in, which is what I did. And I went through some mile, are we going to go into the fog? This would be so nice. I went in through some, you know, a mild headache of a process to do, you know, levels of improving the throttle and pushing it harder and whatever, while doing oil changes and blackstone tests to make sure everything was fine. So there's no metal in there that's not supposed to be there and the cylinders are, or the, the bores are good and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
47:09 Matt Farah? So we've had no problems. I haven't, there hasn't been a whole lot of people emailing me going, I've had these problems and, you know, they're not taking my calls or whatever, which is what would happen for sure if there were problems.
47:28 Matt Farah? Belike.
47:31 Matt Farah? So anyway, to answer your question, a 991.2 Touring is an exceptionally good car. But I've seen those engines blow up. I've seen 99... A customer's 992 GT3 took an enormous dump about 100 yards from my driveway at idle speed and Porsche Santa Clarita did a full engine replacement warranty. Car had 1,200 miles on it.
47:57 Speaker 01 Right.
47:57 Matt Farah? So like, I have no evidence that a Demand motor is less reliable than a Porsche motor. None. So like, there's that.
48:11 Matt Farah? But, you know, it's sort of a... You gotta be comfortable with pushing. It's a little bit of pay the cost to be the boss and the car is so fast.
48:27 Speaker 01 And it's a different thing. The experience is different. Like the torque, the sound, all of that. For me, it is definitely a different thing than driving a GT3 Touring or even ST.
48:38 Matt Farah? Yeah.
48:38 Speaker 01 It's all deeper sound, torque down low, all that stuff. It feels way more hot rod and race car. I mean, you'll have a very unique car if you get that. But you just have to be willing to deal with the uncertainty in the back of your mind, which may be unfounded. And then if something does go wrong with the engine, you can't just take it to your Porsche dealership the way if you had a GT3 with a warranty, you could.
49:03 Matt Farah? Yeah.
49:04 Speaker 01 But on the other hand, if you have a GT3 that's out of warranty, you gotta use one.
49:08 Matt Farah? Yeah.
49:08 Speaker 01 And the engine explodes for some unfortunate reason.
49:10 Matt Farah? You're equally hosed.
49:12 Speaker 01 Right. Either way, you're paying for someone to rebuild an engine and it won't be cheap.
49:16 Matt Farah? I will say, part of how I ended up in the Demand thing in the first place is, we've driven all of the other Porsches. We haven't owned them all, but we've gotten a taste and we continue to get tastes. We continue to be able to drive the newest GT3 for a couple hundred miles in a way you'd want to drive one. And so we get that experience often enough.
49:46 Matt Farah? And know what it's like that I wasn't personally passionate about having that exact same experience in my garage. By working with something that's sort of outside of that system, I don't think I'd get tired of it the way it is if I had a stock one and then I just want the newer, faster, whatever one later, you know?
50:07 Speaker 01 Right, that's possible.
50:09 Matt Farah? So, anyway.
50:10 Speaker 01 Um, double O slow says, "Do you think car condos, where people get a condo and they can modify it how they want, would be successful in LA? Or do you think it wouldn't because of regulation, cost of land, etc.?"
50:24 Matt Farah? Um, I think it depends, like, I mean, car condos exist in, in LA. They don't exist like in the city of Los Angeles, but they exist in the suburbs surrounding Los Angeles. I think within the city, they, um, could be very, very, very expensive.
50:46 Speaker 01 It'd be so expensive.
50:47 Matt Farah? And it's not to say you couldn't, you couldn't get it. You, you probably could. It's a crazy place. There's rich people all over the place. But like, building it would be, I mean, I ran the math on doing it. You know, just the, the property, you know, you, it's like 50 million for dirt.
51:08 Speaker 01 Right, you know, because if you want to store, what, six cars per condo? Let's just say that.
51:13 Matt Farah? Yeah.
51:14 Speaker 01 That's, you know, it's not a ton of cars, but it's more than someone can store at their house. The land needed for that, for one unit.
51:21 Matt Farah? Really expensive.
51:22 Speaker 01 I mean, that's like a house.
51:23 Matt Farah? Yeah.
51:24 Speaker 01 That you could sell, you could build in LA and sell for $2 million or, you know, something like that.
51:29 Matt Farah? I mean, what's nice about the car condos is, you know, they could be people's offices also. It could be a business expense. Uh, if your office is there, you know, there's, you register it. It could be your company, your corporate office and whatever. And it's where people socialize. Like, I love, if, I wouldn't have done anything with any of this business if there was a car condo reasonably priced somewhere in West LA.
51:54 Speaker 01 Right.
51:55 Matt Farah? You know, I wouldn't have gone through all this trouble or needed to. You know, I would have seen the value in buying a car condo at that time, but now, fuck.
52:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
52:06 Matt Farah? It's so hard.
52:07 Speaker 01 Be too expensive. This is the wrong place for it.
52:09 Matt Farah? Not to mention, those are considered commercial properties, so they have to be ADA, commercially insured. I mean, it's a whole, it's a whole other level of regulation. It's very, very challenging. But they exist in the greater LA area, though, yeah.
52:26 Speaker 01 Isaiah Stanley says, "With nothing exciting on the horizon, what is more likely to happen to Nissan? A restructuring, or you completely gut it and sell off the IP?"
52:37 Matt Farah? I think they're gonna go back to Datsun.
52:40 Speaker 01 You think they'll just do that?
52:41 Matt Farah? Yeah, you know what? We're going, we're going back to, back to the good old days of Datsun.
52:46 Speaker 01 I think they'll get restructured. There's talk of like Honda putting in a bunch of money to buy a piece of it. I mean, I think we underestimate the size of Nissan.
52:55 Matt Farah? Yeah.
52:55 Speaker 01 And how big a part of Renault they've been, how big a manufacturer they are globally, and how many cars they sell. I have to look up the numbers later, but
53:02 Matt Farah? It's a lot to just call the game.
53:04 Speaker 01 Right. There's, it's someone, someone is always willing to pick up the pieces at a discount.
53:09 Matt Farah? Yeah.
53:09 Speaker 01 Maybe 25 cents on the dollar, because for them, that's a deal. And then they can do something with it. This car we're in, it was built in an old Mercedes factory.
53:18 Matt Farah? Yeah.
53:19 Speaker 01 I'm sure Mercedes was happy to get some money for it.
53:23 Speaker 01 Liang Kuo says, "In our opinion, what separates a driver from average to decent, decent to good, and good to great on public roads?" I like this question.
53:34 Matt Farah? Okay, what was the lowest level?
53:36 Speaker 01 Average.
53:37 Matt Farah? Average, okay. Average is, you get around without causing any accidents. People don't honk at you very often. People don't feel inspired to pass you aggressively and flip you off. Once you get past that, that's average.
53:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, you signal, you go when the light turns green.
53:58 Matt Farah? Yeah.
54:00 Matt Farah? You drive, average is pretty much like textbook, you know, driver, like, you know, the licensing standard stuff.
54:09 Speaker 01 Now, I think, good for me, an attribute is, when there's traffic, people stack up as close as safely possible.
54:17 Matt Farah? Right.
54:18 Speaker 01 They're very aware of the cars around them, and like, if a car is behind them waiting to go left, and there's just not enough room between the curb and that car in front of you.
54:26 Matt Farah? Right.
54:27 Speaker 01 The car, the driver notices, and they move up, and you can fit.
54:29 Matt Farah? Yeah.
54:30 Speaker 01 That, to me, you are a good driver. You're paying attention.
54:32 Matt Farah? Good, to me, is where you start to, where I start to notice your smoothness of your inputs. Where I can really feel that your throttle tip-in is super smooth, your like, brake pedal is really smooth, and where you start to take steps to smooth out the ride by seeing road surface and adjusting accordingly.
54:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
55:00 Matt Farah? Not just like, blindingly going over potholes.
55:03 Speaker 01 Very good point. I would say that, that also, if you're great, you go to the next level of, you're in a canyon, and you can kind of minimize how much people are moving around, or you downshift on the downhills, so you're not eating up the brakes.
55:15 Matt Farah? Yeah, great is like, you start using parts of the car, like manually shifting, or low-range, or other things that are like, you have to know an extra level to use, but also, like, a greater situational awareness, like, your eyes are always doing the four-stop, right? Like, do you do the four-stop? Like, every 15 seconds, I check all four positions.
55:41 Speaker 01 Oh, I just...
55:42 Matt Farah? Like, position one is your eyes ahead, but then it's like, center mirror, right mirror, left mirror.
55:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
55:49 Matt Farah? About every 15 or 20.
55:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, like, if you call out something, and you're like, oh, this person up ahead is doing something weird.
55:54 Matt Farah? Yeah.
55:55 Speaker 01 Like, you're slowing down preemptively, because that truck starts to wiggle.
55:58 Matt Farah? Yeah.
55:59 Speaker 01 And you go, that person's gonna make a bad pass in five seconds.
56:01 Matt Farah? Yeah, yeah.
56:02 Speaker 01 And they do it, yeah.
56:03 Matt Farah? Yeah, that's where I would say you're at the highest level, is where you're predicting when another car is about to do something really dumb, and then they do it.
56:13 Speaker 01 Right.
56:14 Matt Farah? That's, that's like, another one. You know where you get that one? Is like, motorcycling.
56:18 Speaker 01 Right, when you, you were on that scooter.
56:20 Matt Farah? Yeah.
56:21 Speaker 01 Saw the person.
56:22 Matt Farah? Yeah. But that's a very good question.
56:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, I like that question.
56:25 Matt Farah? Yeah.
56:26 Speaker 01 Nathan Reynolds, uh, da-da-da, oh, these bumps are terrible for leading.
56:31 Matt Farah? Great, also, I would say, if I can ride with you and you're using techniques you clearly used, learned on a racetrack, on the road, like really nice heel-toe shifting, if you like trail brake a little bit into a corner, like nicely, and someone like, someone taught you that on a track and you brought it back to the road.
56:52 Speaker 01 Sure.
56:52 Matt Farah? That's when you get to great also.
56:55 Speaker 01 All right, Nathan Reynolds has a long question, but basically, he loves the E90 M3, but he's upset that they never put that engine in his Z4. Is he alone in thinking that?
57:05 Matt Farah? So I drove the Z4 GT3 race car.
57:08 Speaker 01 Right.
57:09 Matt Farah? Which had not quite exactly the same, but had the E39 M5 V8 in it, a Dynan-built motorsport version of that engine. And a V8 Z4 is good, objectively, very, very good. And I think someone should figure out an engine swap and get the, uh, the M3 motor, the V8, into his E4.
57:36 Matt Farah? Sure goes away.
57:37 Speaker 01 And then Christian says he's visiting LA, well, he's here this week. Basically, if you're gonna rent a car here, would you rent a new 7 Series, a new S-Class, or a new Range Rover Sport? Which will have the softest, most comfortable ride?
57:51 Speaker 01 I haven't driven a new 7 Series, I'm not sure.
57:53 Matt Farah? I haven't driven a new 7 Series either. Johnny seems to really like it. It's a weird-looking car.
57:58 Speaker 01 Terrible-looking car. The S-Class I drove was the new AMG and it was too stiff, but it was the AMG.
58:05 Matt Farah? The regular one probably would not be that stiff.
58:08 Speaker 01 Hope so.
58:10 Speaker 01 Range Rover Sport? I would do that just for the visibility.
58:14 Matt Farah? Yeah, Range Rover Sport, maybe, and also the, that's a tighter package, shorter, you know, not as long. Also, maybe like, I don't know, maybe, maybe like a Panamera?
58:29 Matt Farah? Cayenne?
58:31 Speaker 01 Cayenne.
58:31 Matt Farah? No, softest ride?
58:32 Speaker 01 I'd go Cayenne, probably.
58:34 Matt Farah? You could probably get a full-size Range Rover.
58:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
58:37 Matt Farah? I mean, a full-size Range Rover on, either from like Enterprise or Turo would be like not that much.
58:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
58:44 Matt Farah? I would do, if you can swing a full-size Rover, that is the perfect Los Angeles car.
58:51 Speaker 01 Alright, my main man Casey says, "Where do we think Stellantis will be in three years? Do we think a federal auto bailout program would ever happen again?" I don't think we need a massive federal program because the other companies are doing pretty well.
59:05 Matt Farah? Yeah.
59:06 Speaker 01 But Stellantis...
59:07 Matt Farah? Just fucking rename the whole thing Jeep and call it a game.
59:11 Speaker 01 I agree, Stellantis. Well, they own so many other companies, that's the problem.
59:14 Matt Farah? Bring back AMC.
59:15 Speaker 01 But their CEO left last week.
59:17 Matt Farah? Yeah, they made that out to be a little bit bigger, I think, because he was gonna retire in a year anyway. And I, from my father, I know how shitty a company restructuring, or a sale, or a takeover, or whatever can be. And if I'm the CEO and I'm rich as fuck, and I've had a 30-year career, and it's not looking so good, I kinda understand pulling the ripcord before being dragged out for... Because if he, let's say he works 40 hours a week now. If there's a takeover going on, or a restructuring, he's gonna have to do like 80 hours a week for a year.
1:00:01 Speaker 01 And he has to restructure everything and then leave.
1:00:04 Matt Farah? Yeah.
1:00:05 Speaker 01 And that's kind of, that would be a hard thing for the company, I think, optics-wise. Like, this person's on their way out.
1:00:11 Matt Farah? Yeah.
1:00:12 Speaker 01 So if everything doesn't work out perfectly, people will say, "Did they put in as much time as they could? They were on their way out anyway." That's probably a bad idea.
1:00:19 Matt Farah? He gets one day of bad press, and then it's gone. Versus having to deal with, you know, a corporate restructuring where there's no outcome, where he looks good.
1:00:31 Speaker 01 Yeah. This person, "I pull out beach towing on Instagram." They live in Nantucket, they saw tons of Grenadier years. When they saw them in photos, hated it, saw them in person, and they like it. So what vehicles have we hated the photos of, but changed our tune when we saw them in the wild?
1:00:48 Matt Farah? Oh, um.
1:00:50 Speaker 01 New Vantage, I thought it looked weird. And the wrong angle can make Astons look strange. The mouths are so big and the shape of them.
1:00:59 Matt Farah? Yeah, that's a good question. Um, photos were terrible and.
1:01:09 Speaker 01 Me and Rivian, we have one in front of us, but when I first saw the headlights, I was that stupid like, this isn't like the thing I'm familiar with. What are these ovals?
1:01:16 Matt Farah? Yeah.
1:01:16 Speaker 01 But the shape of the car is great.
1:01:18 Matt Farah? I've gotten used to the headlights on the Rivian. Man, that's an interesting one because I feel like I could normally think of a whole bunch. Like this, the Ineos, I said it wrong, Ineos, the Ineos. It's a subtle wrong, but it's a wrong. Uh, the Ineos, I, when we saw it at Goodwood Festival of Speed, it was like some real early prototypes. And it wasn't so much that I didn't like how it looked. It's just that it like, it looked a little cheap, but it might've just been like 3D printed, you know, interiors or something. But, uh, and these, the production one doesn't seem that way at all. But, um.
1:01:57 Speaker 01 Got to fill these tires up.
1:01:58 Matt Farah? Yeah. Um, man, what other car has looked better in person than the first photos?
1:02:10 Speaker 01 The new Z06, because I don't really like the C8, but seeing it in person, like, it's hard to communicate proportion and subtle fender flare in pictures, especially depending on the color they use.
1:02:21 Matt Farah? Yeah.
1:02:22 Speaker 01 That helped a bit.
1:02:24 Matt Farah? Yeah, I'm just like looking, I'm like looking around, hoping to see one, be like, yes, that. It's a Volvo S40, that's the one I wanted. Man, what car?
1:02:37 Matt Farah? I'm not, I'm, I don't care how boring this radio is, I'm not giving up until I, until I come up with one.
1:02:46 Matt Farah? This, watch, watch how hard it is to, oh, we're going to pull into the bay because we got to put air in the tires. Shit.
1:02:56 Matt Farah? What car was ugly in photos and then good in person? A just ISO.
1:03:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, hopefully it is. I'm looking around at the parking bay here.
1:03:09 Matt Farah? Ugly in photos and good in person. I am truly, I feel stumped.
1:03:16 Speaker 01 I think it depends. When I first saw the 720S, I thought the headlights, again, were strange. But when I see the profile of it, I just love it.
1:03:25 Matt Farah? Yeah.
1:03:29 Matt Farah? Enzos, I mean Ferrari Enzos, I think look, I still don't think they look very good. They're definitely better in person.
1:03:36 Speaker 01 The thing with photos is unless there's something that can communicate proportional size, it can look weird.
1:03:43 Matt Farah? Gunther Works. Gunther Works don't photograph as well.
1:03:47 Speaker 01 Especially from the front.
1:03:47 Matt Farah? Especially from the front, especially using something like an iPhone.
1:03:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:03:50 Matt Farah? Without, if you, they photograph fine with like a 400mm from like 30 yards away.
1:03:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, but if you're too high, Porsches in general, if you do the high down at the hood, I mean it flattens everything, it looks like 928. It's not good.
1:04:02 Matt Farah? Yeah. Well, that's our slightly truncated show. We'll save everything for the next one. But it's important to use your time wisely. That's what we've learned making content. We had an hour and change to drive. We thought we'd use it talking to you folks. Thank you to our patrons for your questions today. Thank you to everyone else for listening to us yak. And we'll see you later. Bye.
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