EP3: Pebble Prattling and BMW M2 in the Pyranees

Jon Summers is the Motoring Historian. He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider. On his show he gets together with various co-hosts to talk about new and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, motoring travel.

Pebble Beach ‘22

• J sees the start of the Tour d’elegance
• Phil Hill, Formula 1 World Champion
• J meets Derek Hill, his son
• A late night dice
• Exotics at Pebble and a convoy of McLarens
• The ex-Shelby Ferrari 410
• Gooding at Pebble Beach ‘22
• Lamborghini 400 GT, Ruf Porsches, Collecting Indy cars vs. Gullwing Mercedes
• J’s Collecting Philosophy
• Suzuki GSX-Rs and the Democratization of Performance
• Musings on car design
• Audi in Formula 1?
• Lucid design revisited from #1
• Electric car headlights as brand identity
• Maserati 3200 and boomerang lights
• M reviews his BMW M2 after 2000 miles in the Pyranees
• In praise of the Fiesta ST
• 2002 AMG E55 vs. 2022 AMG GT53
• Kawasaki H2; Bimotore Tesi
• Countach attains classic status
• With Interuptions from Mrs Motoring Historian

[00:00:00] John Summers is the motoring historian. He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider. Hailing from California, he collects cars and bikes built with plenty of cheap and fast, and not much reliable. On his show, he gets together with various co hosts to talk about new and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.

Good morning, good afternoon, good day to you wherever you may be. Welcome to The Motoring Historian. My name is John Summers and I’m here again with my school friend, Mark Gammy. Um, say hello, Mark. Hello, Mark. Um, alright, so, uh, without further ado, since we always talk a lot, let’s have a look at our little agenda.

And we were going to talk about Pebble Beach, weren’t we? [00:01:00] So what was your take on it, mate? And, you know, you went there for the few days, you saw all the stuff, you hung around with the, uh, the Richies. What was your, what was your take, what was your highlight of the event? My highlight of the event was, um, the morning of the tour.

Um, I went down with, with Ollie, my son, he’s now, and we’d been once before, but this time he sort of knew what to do, um, in terms of that you were like mingling with the cars and maybe taking some photos and he knew what he was doing this time. Um, When we went before, um, he, uh, he had less of an idea of, so, so this time, right, we, we, I, I mingled with all the people I wanted to, he behaved extremely well for that.

And, you know, listened and didn’t wander off and get in other people’s way and all that [00:02:00] kind of thing, which is the normal reason why small kids can’t go to those kind of events. Anyway, you know what the tour is like, where all the cars drive out under that hoarding and there’s zillions of photographers, you know, professional photographers that are wanting to get paid for their photographs being there.

Um, and I guess this time, I mean, I’m not sure how well you remember it. But normally they, they used to turn right out of there with this time, they were turning left. So because that was different and the police closed the road off in a different way, there was more than the usual amount of jostling and sharp elbows.

And Ollie and I were a little late on the seat. And, uh, I realized as we like crossed over the road, the, there was nowhere for, for us to. To stand, but all he could stand at the front in front of the photographers. Below their height where they were standing as, [00:03:00] as long as I went to the back. So I communicated that to him, communicated that to some very rude photographers, and then left him at the front knowing, trusting him to just stand at the front and, you know, watch, watch the cars off.

So I was like at the back, um, but communicate with him. And I was buying NBC, like one of those NBCE. 350s that they have with the boom on the top of it that was doing filming and I didn’t really pay attention to the other people that I was stood next to because I was like looking through like the side of the, you know, whether that the van’s door was open.

I was like looking through the crack in the door to Um, like, uh, to, to see, you know, Ollie’s little Ferrari hat to make sure he was where I left him and he was, he was watching away. Um, and, uh, I realized I was standing next to Derek Hill, who’s the master of ceremonies and whose dad is still [00:04:00] the only.

American born formula one world champion for Ferrari, no less. And you know, a guy who supported pebble for a really long time and, and, you know, an all around nice guy, much too nice a guy to be a top racing driver. Phil Hill. That’s the, that’s the bottom line. Much too much of a car lover. To be the kind of person who tore up a racing car, you know, he, in later years, he was very much involved in the Pebble Beach show and restored cars and the cars that he had tend to be really, you know, interesting ones, you know, he, he learned to drive on his mother’s Pierce arrow, you know, he, and he never lost his love for those kind of pre, you know, those kind of interwar Gatsby era, American classics that are beloved of the, of the Pebble Beach crowd.

So, yeah, so, um, So I was next to his son. Who’s about my age and I said to him, you know, not quite what I just said to you, but I said, you [00:05:00] know, that I respected his dad and, and, you know, um, yeah, I didn’t gush in the way that I did when I met Lazar when I was about 25, it wasn’t like that. Um, but, uh, um, I, I said something to him and, uh, we had a nice little.

That was forwards conversation about, you know, well, you know what it was about, right? Um, I have, um, I, I was wearing these terrible pair of, of tiger. Um, you know, I wouldn’t say trainers. They’re more, they’re like tennis shoes, aren’t they? Kind of, but those Oninsuka Tigers, they’re about my third pair. And, uh, the pair that I have at the moment, while my wife’s like, you can’t wear those.

And I was like, well, there’s nothing else. And she went, well, they’re terrible. You have to like, you should buy new shoes. And I, anyway, so I was kind of embarrassed of my shoes. Cause you know, they always say you can judge how wealthy a bloke is by his [00:06:00] shoes. And by that measure, I’m the. I look like the pauper I am, right?

Um, so that doesn’t always jive properly at Pebble, but I’m like, whatever, I’m just doing me this time. I’m going with Ollie. I’m not trying to be somebody I’m, I’m not. So Derek Hill goes, I like your shoes. I go, oh really? My wife hates them. And he goes, ah. Really? And then he puts his foot next to mine and I realized that he’s got the same shoe as me and I is a much newer and nicer, but he’s got the same shoe as, as me.

So we, so we, we compare shoes a little bit and then Olly comes over cause the first batch of cars has, has gone and he’s wearing like Ferrari cap and shirt. So Derek Hill engages him and Olly is, you know. As behaves as one would hope a eight year old boy would when meeting, uh, you know, old bloke, some, you know, old bloke who’s gonna chit chat about Ferrari.

And, uh, Old Hill turns to me and says, uh, [00:07:00] interesting, uh, conversation we had. I like the way you tell a story. Let me take your name and email address. I may get in touch with you. So I gave him a name and, and email address and, uh, and he said, uh, your boy is better behaved than mine. And then went on his way to do his piece for, uh, NBC.

Yeah. So I guess that’s the first thing that, that came to mind for me for a fun moment. Let me, let me share a more automotively focused moment with you as, as well. Do you remember Laura Lee’s grade? That road that goes up over the hill from near Laguna Seca and then down the other side and you may know that I know that road quite well since I stay there now or the last couple of years I’ve stayed near there and and I’ve also, um, done, you know, journalist test drive stuff along that that road.

So I’m not, you know, I’m I’m pretty confident along there. So I [00:08:00] use the 55 five. Um, for the, for the job this year. And, uh, at the foot, when I turned off 68 to go ride the way over the top at the foot of the grade, there was a car, probably a pair of taillights, probably 300 yards in front of me, this is about no 1130 at night, late at night, empty road, um, clear, good, good weather.

Um, and he was about, and in the lower section, you can go really fast. Like, you know, uh, you know, really fast. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, and, uh, so that’s what I did. Um, and it, it’s only with hindsight that you realize that it was surprising that I didn’t catch the pair of taillights at that point. But as the road became [00:09:00] twistier, I caught up the pair of taillights and it was a Rimac Nivera, I kid you not.

Now this was, and when it got, gets really twisty towards the top, before the descent. We’re on the descent. Dude, he couldn’t leave me. I knew the road. I was all the way. Well, once it got straight down towards Bernardus, he got a bit of a gap on, but, and then on the entry to Bernardus, he stopped to see me by, right?

Because I was probably a hundred yards back by that point. And he was turning in, turning left into Barnardus and I kid you not, I mean the satisfaction that it gave me when a 20 year old E55 with rust on the sunroof, he couldn’t put a gap between that and his 2000 [00:10:00] horsepower Rimac, that amused me somewhat.

Um, I, I guess my thought on it is that I must’ve known the road somewhat better than him. Yeah. Um, a little agenda of, of, of Pebble, um, and we were just talking about the, the Remak there. I was really struck by the number of, of modern supercars that were, um, and talking with, um, other people within the actual Pebble community.

Um, I, I think, um, there’s almost a subculture. Um, Pebble Beach car week people emerging and, and it’s, you know, it’s, it’s, Okay, so I was parked up in my little spot on Carmel Valley Road, you know, the [00:11:00] spot I was parked up there doing, you know, sitting by the side of the road, watching the cars come by and, uh, the old, um, you know, Juan’s gardening service dropped a, uh, cone off the back of his pickup truck and it’s there lying in the road and I can see it in the rear view and all these cars coming up the hill, they can’t see it.

And everybody knows it’s that test route, right? I’m looking at it and it’s about two yards into one carriageway. So it’s not right in the road, but it’s blocking it. It’s making that carriageway very narrow, right on a bend when, so I’m thinking, wow, there could be a head on here. If somebody makes a bad decision.

About place in the car coming up the hill and swerves around this thing a lot. Then so they could head on somebody because they could go over the yellow line or if somebody slows down and there’s [00:12:00] somebody else who’s test driving a Lucid or a McLaren up the hill here, they’re, you know, they could potentially be doing, you know.

Autobahn kind of speeds. So that’s so anyway, so I hopped out of the E55 trotted over moved the the cone and as I moved the cone, I kid you not two dozen McLarens came by and I’m like, you know,

they weren’t making cars 10 years ago, right? That’s why they’re such a and similarly Lamborghinis. So many Gallardos, so many Hurricanes, particularly so many, even Aventadors, you know, the, the stuff, so much stuff that has been made in just the last 10 years, 10 or [00:13:00] 15 years, you know, since, um, yeah, I don’t know.

I want to say since the Audi takeover in the case of, of Lamborghini, but, you Yeah, there, there seems to be, um, and those people aren’t coming to the Pebble Beach car show it, it itself. So I feel like there’s a whole subculture of Pebble Beach developing that must, that must exist for shows and events, um, for people between the age of like.

You know, 18 and 40, and I feel like I’m in the during the events for the people between, you know, 40 and 140. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re definitely not with the Fast and Furious crew in their pimp mobiles outside, it must be said. But, I mean, look, it’s, I think anything like that, if I understand you correctly, sort of gathers, sort of subcultures and stuff as it becomes [00:14:00] wider.

I mean, that thing’s obviously been known around for ages, but Um, as it gets more exposure and it’s live streamed on YouTube it becomes a bit of a broader event for people to engage in, I suppose. So it’s more people turn up, more people sort of doing their own thing around it. But, um, It’s Carroll Shelby Ferrari 410, the red one, that’s numbered 98, that RM had.

Um, dude. I was like, that’s great. Like, that’s the one. That’s the one, you know, I wonder how much it is. And then as you approach, you’re like, dude, that is a big capacity Ferrari sports car from the late fifties. So that is a, that is a big money car all day long. The estimate was 25 to 27. So I think, I think It’s it’s sold for 22.

Yeah, I don’t have trouble believing it’s kind of a bargain[00:15:00]

next to that hundred and forty forty two million dollar Ulan Hauku. It was a bargain. I mean, yeah, let’s have a little look at Gooding. Well, yeah, definitely. What caught your eye there?

I’m just, I’m just, I’m just scrolling through getting results. So I I’ve got as far as lot 18 that if, if, you know, purely from my heart, regardless of, of values. That was the car that I was absolutely and completely in, in love with. Um, the picture there doesn’t do its faded glory any kind of, of justice.

It was, um, the paint was so faded off that I loved the red and that black interior was, was more [00:16:00] tired than the interior of, uh, of my E55. But it was So this is the 400 GT2 Plus 2? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The Lamborghini 400 GT. Yeah. Yeah. I’m just looking, I mean, looking at the picture of it now, um, from the, uh, from the old goodie website and, uh, my word, what an awesome car.

Love that. Yeah. There’s some nice stuff there. A lot of Porsches, a lot of Porsches, a lot of roofs, you know, a sense that they’re trying to. Um, and, and yeah, sense with the roofs, particularly that they, they’re trying to create, um, a sort of rarefied market. For, for Porsches, you know what I mean? It’s like when Ducati do a version of the bike that has the really expensive wheels and suspension [00:17:00] on it.

And they’re only going to do a hundred of them. They’re, you know what I mean, they’re deliberately trying to create something that’s a collective vehicle. And I feel that by packaging, um, I’m looking at lots four and five. I feel that by packaging lot four. Alongside lot five. I feel like lot five the 1990 car is collectible.

I feel like lot four I don’t know. I mean it hammered for more than lot five, I guess because it’s rarer, but that I I don’t know I I mean, I I yeah the collectible Porsche market. I can’t pretend to to understand Yeah, I’m looking here. I’m, I’m amazed. No, I mean, I would, I’d have had the cheapest Porsche.

I’d have had the, uh, 2004 GT 3, 9, 9 6, and saved lots of money. Well, it’s funny looking round. That was the car that I, uh, that, that I liked. Um, you forget how long the chin overhang is, don’t you? Yeah. And, and. [00:18:00] People hate on the, the nine, uh, nine sixes now, that’s a great looking car, that lot 10. It really is.

Um, and you’re right that next to the other, it’s a real bargain. Um, yeah. And the, the roof thing is it’s, it’s investor money. Gone, gone silly. Well, and also like the, because you’ve got to remember that, you know, on Gran Turismo, they didn’t have the Porsche license, but they had the RUF license. So therefore you could have a rough GT, you know, um, CTR2 and things like that, but you couldn’t have a 911 for quite a long time.

So that was the only way you get these in the game. Did not know that. Yeah, man. Gran Turismo, there for you. The other thing that, um, that Ollie and I spent a long time hanging around was if you scroll down to lots 56, [00:19:00] uh, 58 and 59. Um, some guy was having his basically having a race car collection liquidized and, and there were some awesome, uh, cars.

He had that, this lot 58, this Bud March 85, um, that evolved into the Porsche 956 designed by Adrian Newey. Um, and this AAR, All American Racers Gurney IndyCar, um, that was, you, you look at the picture there, the little thumbnail image on Gooding’s website here, and it, it looks like a cool old car. You stand next to it and it’s like a UFO.

It’s like a 200 mile an hour land born UFO, really, uh, an awesome. A lot of the structure when you look at it from the side, is it engine? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s cheap, [00:20:00] man. 112, 112 grand for that. Yeah. Because it’s hard to enjoy. True. True. I mean, it is essentially a complete toy. Um and probably undriveable on most of the circuits in the world because they have noise limits which it would break.

Well, I was thinking that if it’s truly an indie car, it’s probably set up to only turn left. So, it means that so so for me, right? I would do collectible NASCARs. But I would only want to do it, I would only want to collect road course cars. Um, because I’ve never driven an Oval, so it would be impossible for me to enjoy a car that had been set up for a super speedway, you know, you just, you just, to me, if that car had been set up for Indy, you’re like dehistoricizing it.

To take it away from Indy. If [00:21:00] it had been set up for a road course and it looked like that, I looked closely at it, and it seemed, you know, as if it had equal, you know suspension arms and things like that. Um, at that point, um, but again to enjoy it, right, you need a hauler, you need to go to a particular event, you know, you need, probably a, you know, a mechanic.

If, if not, you know, you need to be really good yourself and have a lot of time to spend on it. You know, it’s a much harder car to enjoy than, you know, that lot 60 that’s next to it, that gullwing, you can take that to a Carlson coffee. You know, you can take your wife out to dinner in in that if you know, yeah, if it’s in a nice place and you’ve got a nice I’ll take your point, but like, you know, there’s a bit of a gap between the two price wise.

Well, I, I, I, I, I, yes, but that’s why a And I mean, and that’s a really nice example of a gut wing, isn’t it? I’m not sure if it’s an aluminum body [00:22:00] one there. It’s got the rudge wheels and the silver makes it is, is, you know, but no, I think that’s why racing cars generally, historic racing cars are often far cheaper than you think, because finding an environment to enjoy them.

Is, is really hard. True that. Yeah. Now there’s some nice stuff here and there’s stuff where you think that’s, you know, I mean, it’s got plenty to go. I mean, I’m no expert on the used car market, but just by the sort of, sort of gut feels. I mean, that 99 AM three looks like about where you expected to go for, but yeah, I think there’s some appreciation in there over the next 10 years.

Uh, 108. We looked at that, Ollie and I looked at that car, he liked the car, um, and the car was cosmetically not perfect. It felt to me like that was a car that was part of a collection [00:23:00] which David Gooding had had to sell all of them rather than that one because that car didn’t meet the sort of presentation standards that he, um, might normally have, though some of the trim.

was phased on it. Um, I’m saying that like I’m a pebble beach judge. Obviously that made the car far more appealing to me. Um, cause it felt drivable. It felt like it had been driven and it felt drivable. I mean, dude, I mean, lately I get to, I’m a whole bugger with this sort of stuff. If it can’t be driven regularly, I’m not interested in it.

I’m interested in it from a point of view of like, you know, the sort of stuff you see in museums and things and like, it’s nice to know that they’re still around and You know, if I ever rich enough to buy that sort of stuff, and then lucky enough to be able to rinse it at Goodwood, I will definitely do so, um, because that’s what they’re for, um, so it, you know, it’s, but that depends on the type of car, doesn’t it?

But, um, so I always end up looking at the stuff like that and then going like, cool, but if I had the money, you know, it’d be nice to go to lunch in the 3500 GT Maserati, [00:24:00] that’d be pretty cool. So it’d be nice to have that sort of like thing to cruise around in. Um, but, uh, I mean, it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s like a kid in a sweet shop.

There’s so much stuff that you could have. It’s amazing. My, uh, philosophy is to, to split, um, the stuff that you have to drive, um, from the, the stuff that’s, that’s purely collectible because there is something, um, you know, glorious about something like a dragster. Which can only run on nitromethane and, you know, needs a full rebuild after you run it.

Um, these are magnificent, magnificent machines, and there should be room in the corner of the barn to [00:25:00] keep these things. There’s. Yeah, yeah, for real. I mean, that’s fair enough. Those top fuel things are just crazy. So my version of that is sports bikes and Suzuki GSX Rs particularly, and I, that is why I’ve thought a lot about this idea of things being hard to enjoy, because, um, gixxers are hard to enjoy on, on the road, you know, most of them can do 100 miles an hour in first gear, so that makes them a hard thing to, to enjoy and, and, you know, I lack the skill.

To enjoy them properly on, on the track. And it leaves you in this place of feeling, well, there really is no place for them yet. They remain absolutely glorious in their intersection of huge performance. And super, super [00:26:00] accessible price point. It’s like the democratization of performance. And maybe that’s why we were talking about the guys with the McLarens and the Lamborghinis.

I think that’s maybe why I’m, I wouldn’t say I’m, I’m. Snide about them because I’m everyone I want everybody to enjoy the car hobby and and automobiles and so on in their own way, but you do feel a little bit as if, um, you know, I would feel a little bit of a poser in a Lamborghini when you can achieve

just create a pause here whilst Dana gets her lunch in. You’re not really a classic car person. You’re like a driving person. I’ve always thought this about you. You’re like a driving person who has the right, like a running person who has the right shoes for, for the job. The [00:27:00] interest in cars is the same as the runner’s interest in running shoes and making sure he’s got the right, the right tool for the job.

Um, and classic cars are never going to be the best tool for the job. Um. But here’s the thing, you know, when I had a small lump of money a while ago, I, I looked at buying a classic car and the whole thing with it is, is that I’m not, you know, I could have bought a nice ish muscle car, um, but I, I just couldn’t see myself like buying a deck chair and going to car shows and parking up and sitting in the deck chair and, you know, chit chatting with people about, you know, how it was a five speed now, but it had used to be a three speed and, you know, no, it wasn’t a big block and, you know, I’m just, I dunno, that’s [00:28:00] not where the, the hobby is, is for me.

So, you know, I like the fact that different people do the hobby in different kinds of ways. If you want to have a, you know, have a Mustang in your semi detached house in, you know, the home counties of England, you know, if you want to have a sixties, you know, automatic 289 Mustang, you know, be my guest. You know, it’s not my thing, but, but be my guest.

I do draw the line. I see people with, you know, that blobby era, that white car that we’re looking at my racing car, the, the 95, 94, 95, that kind of, of era. Um, That blobby body style, those cars with six cylinder engines, for me, not collectible with eight cylinder engines, not to my taste, but collectible. I like my car because it’s slammed and it’s got the [00:29:00] Cobra wheels on it, but it sort of needs those things without those things, or they’re a little bit like Capri.

1. 6 is in Capri 1. 3s. They’re just, I just, I, I, I mean, I, I love, I love, I love those cars in their ultimate form. You know, and this is a interesting question. Um, I, I asked. Um, a room full of design professionals at Stanford University, no less, I say a room full. I mean, a table of people sitting around the table, um, is the purest form of the Chevrolet Camaro, the six cylinder rental car that you pick up at the airport, the convertible that everybody drives that they make the most of with the automatic transmission and the steel wheels and the tour tires.

Is that the purest iteration of cama or is the purest iteration of cama? The ZL one with the [00:30:00] supercharged 650 horsepower va and the stick shift and the look like it just fell out with the Transformers movie ’cause it just did, um, which is the pure iteration of, of Camaro. And they said, oh, always the most extreme one because that’s what the designer.

intended. That’s what the designer had in mind when he thought of Camaro, he or she thought of Camaro. They thought of that extreme interpretation. They thought ZL1, they thought Z28, um, they thought, you know, black alloy wheels, not silver painted pressed steel ones. I mean, yeah, that’s interesting. So that, so, so do you think, I mean, cause I never really considered which way around it, but they, they do these because when you see concept car designs and you see design art studio [00:31:00] people doing interpretations or gesture, you know, and the thought experiments for, um, uh, manufacturers, even though they aren’t working for them necessarily as sort of like as much as CV effort, if you like, but still.

They always do the cool version. It’s very rare. They’ll do a homogenous dull box on the basis of that. That might be what it’d be dumbed down to. So you have to assume therefore that the designers don’t change much when they become employed by the manufacturers so that they do do it that way around. I just never considered it that.

Because that, what a depressing process, taking something that you’ve just made epically cool and then just boring the crap out of it in order to make it a more sort of like steel wheel sellable 50, 000 unit shitbox in comparison to this gorgeous supermodel of a build that you’ve got in clay in the workshop that you know, they won’t build for four years because they’ve got to run out of enough metal to make enough money to be justified your concept car.

So I met the bloke that was chief designer on [00:32:00] the Volvo XC90, which not to my taste, but not, you know, a great car. And loved by other great cars. I mean, famously Clarkson had three of them, didn’t he? When he was a, was a family man. So I can acknowledge these are, uh, are a well designed vehicle, even if they’re not, not my thing.

And I said to him, I asked him when you see them on the road, is it like seeing one of your children? You know, do you feel like proud of it when you see it? And he said, honestly, no, because there’s so many elements of it, which you’ve changed. You know, I’m proud of what my team achieved, but I, you know, equally, I see elements of it, of the design.

And I’m not going to tell you what they are, which I really don’t like. I see elements of the design. I feel I told you so about. [00:33:00] To my team and that I can’t say I’m not going to say to you and I wouldn’t say to them either, but I know when I look at that car, there are those things. Um, now I met the old, the, I met, I can’t remember the blokes name, Japanese guy that designed the Nissan Leaf.

And he was saying that. Until the sort of turn of the century, probably one person designed a car, but now it’s really a committee designs a car. I really, they might say, Oh, you know, Dave Jones designed it, but really that’s because Dave Jones is a handsome young guy and the firm feel that he’s the right person to represent them in talking about the design ethos of the company.

He, you know, he didn’t really design it. It’s like the famous bangle, but the [00:34:00] Chris bangle was the design lead, but it was actually Adrian Von Hoyen doik, the guy who then went to Lamborghini and I don’t know where he is now, but it was him that actually did that design feature. It wasn’t actually Chris bangle, um, at all.

Um, um, the fellow that designed the leaf, he said that it changed. In the, the, so I, I, so, you know, does the leaf, you know, this, it changed from being a single person who had their stamp on a vehicle. So I, so for him, the car that he feels is very much him is the 1980s. Nissan Maxima, not the Nissan Maxima that you will remember that crazy Texan perfume [00:35:00] salesman in the 1990s, which was a powerful world.

I’m sorry? It’s the company, as I recollect. Yeah. World. Car. Fun. Yeah. Well, fuck me. That’s alright. Headline on Ars Technica, on the cars page, Audi, Audi will build F1 engines, entering the sport in 2026. Didn’t Audi Didn’t Volkswagen always say they always, they never wanted to do Formula One because they felt that they were developing a technology that would have no reflection on their road cars.

So my understanding was they never wanted to do Formula One because they were building lots of, that would mean building V6s or V8s or V10s and that was not something that they wanted to do. Whereas now Formula One’s doing four cylinder engines. It seems logical that Audi or VAG or whatever they’re calling [00:36:00] themselves now PX Organization would be interested in in doing.

Yeah, it looks like they’re gonna have to do in there Porsche and Audi Um,

yeah the designer of the leaf He said he designed the first generation maxima not that blobby one That that world parfum guy That we worked with in Richmond or Alabama or wherever, Richmond, Virginia, or wherever it was all those decades ago, not that nineties blobby Maxima. Um, a squared off eighties version of, uh, of that car, but with the same virtues as that car of the world.

Parfum guy that you’ll remember, like, you know, American style appointments inside and a remarkable liquor speed for a fairly stayed [00:37:00] looking. You know, automatic sedan, um, that up. So in the eighties, you felt like it was your car when you were a designer into the nineties, you lost that feeling. And, you know, by the 20th century, um, maybe it had gone completely.

And that ties into what we were talking about. You know, with lucid a couple of weeks ago that that was a small design team that had a free hand to design what they wanted to do is what they wanted to design and they had this ethos of designing from the inside out. Um, and I know I also wanted to revisit.

comment that we made in a, in a previous pod about the shape being bland, the lucid shape being bland. Um, it’s wind cheating. So it has to be that way. What isn’t bland is if you see the car at night, the headlight pattern is completely different from any other [00:38:00] car. And that’s something which has changed.

And I think it’s quite interesting. Just in the last. couple of years is that car makers are looking to give themselves a brand identity in the shape of of the headlights. For, for Rivian, Rivian are doing it as well. They have a little oval, but car makers are increasingly giving themselves a brand identity through the headlight shape.

And I kind of I do the headlight shape, not in the day at night, the way it projects at night. And I, I, for one thing, that’s interesting and futuristic. I suppose I was thinking of the 991’s wraparound tail light and those Maserati boomerang tail lights on the 3200 that I so love that they then got rid of.

Um, but it’s interesting when the manufacturers play with it a bit and do a bit, something a bit different. Sometimes it’s not very well received, which is a shame because on reflection, like those Maserati lights, they were, they were cool.

Yeah, the Maserati [00:39:00] lights really were a thing, those boomerang taillights on those early Maserati coupes, the 3200s. I think they lost it for the 4200s, it’s a real shame, but they had them in the 3200s, definitely. Weird cars, those because you get them on the Grand and the Grand Sports. They’ve got an SMG only, but it’s a paddle shift actual manual.

That was the era of, I’m not sure if that car had it, but that was the era of sequential semi automatic transmissions, wasn’t it? You had two pedals and you went up and down the gearbox like a motorcycle, where you had to be in every gear. I remember the Alpha GTA had that kind of gearbox. The Alpha 156, the hot rod version of that, you could get it with a stick, or you could get it with basically a [00:40:00] sequential, it was a sequential, it acted like an automatic transmission in that it didn’t have a clutch pedal, but you moved paddles to make it shift, or with some cars, and I think this Alpha, you had like a, like a touring car, you knock the lever forward, or you knocked it back to shift, Yeah, yeah.

If you look at the manuals, they have that sort of flip across from sort of the sort of up from, you know, R down to D and stuff on the left hand side. You can click it over and then bang it up and down, can’t you? Yeah. This was, um, this is different than on BMW, than on most cars, because most cars that have a BMW system, the car still has a torque converter.

I’m not sure if those Alfa Romeos had a conventional torque converter, or if they just had a, Clutch like a motorcycle clutch, you know, in a gearbox that was, was, I think it may have been a different, a different thing, but we don’t know. So we’re just whittling, aren’t [00:41:00] we? Um, uh, we’ve talked for ages here, uh, you’re just back from the Pyrenees or wherever you were in France with this, uh, uh, spiffy new car, like how was the vacation?

Very nice. Thanks. Um. And we’ve spoken briefly about it. Some of the highlights of the holiday, you know, visiting the Nîmes Amphitheatre and so forth, Roman Colosseum outside of Italy. Fabulous. Um, still being used for entertainment. That was superb. But getting back to the car, um, yeah, I mean, like, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s nice.

I mean, I’ve done like, I think, 2, 600 miles in it. Now, to be fair, most of that’s payage, comfort mode, just tickling along. And it does that sort of, you know, middleweighty stub, the car of just loping along and eating the miles pretty effectively. It’s quite comfortable. Uh, I saw a review saying that the seats bite your arse after a while, but I didn’t find that, so that was nice.

Um, and, you know, it looks decent, um, I’ve [00:42:00] graunched the front left wheel even further, because when you’ve got a wife who’s got a hip problem, you want to get as close to the little, sort of, uh, petit bras, um, leaning out the left hand window with your little arms to get to the, uh, the payage, pay on the thing, and, uh, pull the ticket out and stuff, so you want to get as close as possible, so inevitably With the different, um, new car, just to, um, judging the, uh, the, uh, wheel arches.

And of course the wheel arch is being extended out from the body shape by a couple of inches and three to the front and three inches or whatever it is at the back. I made mistakes, so I need to have the wheels resprayed, but yeah, anyway, getting back to the meat of it. Oh yeah. I like it. It’s, it’s a nice car.

Um, it’s weird in comfort mode because when you give it some beans. It’s got such it’s got a noticeable drop off in power about below three and a half thousand revs. So if you don’t take it up to about four and a half five it drops down to that three and a half Um, and then it’s a little bit Before it sort of picks back up again when the turbo scrolls up.

Um, so It’s [00:43:00] quick anyway, but that can make it almost feel a bit lurchy so you sort of need to bang into sport, um, and then Give it the beans and remember that it’ll happily rev up to about 7k. Uh, and if you’re not up about 5 or 6, you know, why? Um, and then it’s pretty damn good. So it’s, uh, it feels decent.

I mean, the exhaust note’s egregious when you start out from cold. Um, it really is. Um, we stayed, we were fortunate enough to stay in some nice places and you’re conscious that you’re in, you know, a quiet chateau and you’re leaving at seven o’clock to drive up to Lascaux or six o’clock in the morning to drive up to Lascaux Caves a few hundred miles away and there’s no way you can turn your car on and not wake everyone else in the chateau, which feels a bit bad.

Um, but hey, um, but yeah, no, overall it feels tight. I mean, the nicest driving I did, I suppose, was up in the Pyrenees. I’m not hugely surprising. There’s one of the roads that drives across from Poe. down towards, um, the Spanish border, um, goes up [00:44:00] towards, um, uh, one of the couple of the coals and the peak to MIDI and so forth.

And yeah, it’s really, it’s, there’s some cracking roads. I got really lucky with a bit where I just came out and it was all sunny. And, uh, I turned left when there was a big queue of people going right and drove towards Spain for about, I don’t know, 20, 30 miles. And didn’t really see anyone, maybe not that far in distance, but had a good 15 20 minutes of just really enjoying some lovely, nice sweeping sort of, if it was in England, A roads, you know, two lanes, one lane each way, but some reasonable twists and turns and elevation changes and stuff, some beautiful scenery, like little river down at the side of the road and so forth, um, lovely sidelines and stuff.

So that was a real sort of gem of a moment. And um, It likes that sort of thing a lot. Um, and you can make very rapid progress as you would expect in that sort of car without really straining it particularly. You can stay below the turbo really spooling up and still lope along at an effortless, decent pace.

Um, but there is a, you know, a noticeable jump up [00:45:00] when you ramp above that. I mean, that said, the torque’s still available from reasonably mid range so it doesn’t feel like it’s got a sort of rabid top end. Um, and I’m interested in, there’s a Litchfield, um, conversion where you can get a larger intercooler and push it up to the same sort of horsepower as on the competition.

So it’ll go up from like 370 to the 410 ish, something like that. Uh, and they do, um, a tune with the exhaust, um, to map it out properly. I’d be quite interested in that. Um, get in a little bit of time, I think. Um. Because there’s clearly higher, more you can get from the top end of that car, as proved by the competition and the other ones that came afterwards.

But yeah, it looks nice. It’s carried all the luggage pretty well. Um, so yeah, we’ll see. I still don’t feel I know it properly. I’m going to see if I can squeeze it into a track day at Thruxton before the end of the year. If we get some nice, the weather holds out. Um, cause it’s just not very far away and then have a bit more of a, [00:46:00] uh, feel of it at, you know, decent speeds.

Cause again, I mean, on the road, you can’t really. Give it what you shouldn’t be giving it anywhere near what it can deliver. Um, so you don’t really get a proper feel for what it’s like. Um, even, you know, getting to the limits of traction on second gear corners and so forth. You’re still at points where you, you know, it’s too fast.

You shouldn’t be doing that sort of speed on the road kind of thing. And if so, yeah, it’s, it’s, uh, yeah, I think, I mean, it’d be fun to take it on track and see what, see what it delivers there as well. So yeah, no early, early indications are good. I mean, I will say as a slight downside to the upside. Beep.

Experience of buying used approved didn’t really improve the car. There’s about three things wrong with it. Um, the, uh, I won’t bore you, well I can’t bore you with it. The reversing in, the proximity warning doesn’t turn off when you pull it out of reverse and put it into first gear. You have to turn the car off and on to stop the fucking thing beeping, which is quite annoying.[00:47:00]

Um, the map update that I bought for about 80 quid or whatever it was to have up to date maps before I went to Europe, won’t install. So that was quite annoying, um, and it’s got worse aircon. They, when it, when it arrived, uh, I was thinking, oh, look, it’s, the aircon’s so cold that you can almost see like cold mist coming out of the, the, the, um, uh, the vents.

And I thought, hmm, that feels suspicious. I like that they’ve overgassed it or something because the aircon’s actually not very good. Uh, and yeah, I’m, it’s got basically slowly worse over the period of the holiday. Um, and you know, if you set it at sort of 21 or 22, it just doesn’t get there on a hot day, it just stays like going really high and carrying on forever and never makes it to that temperature, which feels pretty shit when my wife Fiesta ST will do that comfortably.

So, um. I’m suspicious that there might be a reason why that dealership didn’t want to do that work. Um, I mean, [00:48:00] look, maybe it’s just got a leak, but I feel that it might be one of those ones where they need to take the front of the engine off or something to get to the AC compressor, and it’s that sort of ball ache of a job.

So it’s easier for someone else to do it under warranty from the BMW dealership. So maybe I’m just a suspicious bastard. Finding, um, an air conditioning leak like that, which it sounds like what you’ve got finding that what, uh, pain in the bottom that’s going to be, well, I mean, I’ve got 12 months BMW warranty because it’s used to prove which is what I bought from the dealer and I’ve got the extended upgraded warranty on it as well.

So, unlucky boys, give me a spare car while you fix it. Well, that would seem to be, um, in the case of the air conditioning, something that, uh, that I would look for, look for them to do. Does it feel meaningfully faster than, you know, your Nissan had what, has what, or had? Um, what? 307. 307. Does [00:49:00] it feel meaningfully faster than that?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it does. Um, it’s, I mean, yeah, it’s, I think the Nissan’s 5. 5 to 60 and that’s with the SMG box, I think it’s 4. 5. I think with the manual is like 4. 7, um, to 60. So, you know, it’s pretty pokey, uh, and it’s very fast. Um, it’s, it was interesting that, you know, I, Angie’s a pretty good. wingman for a wag, an awful way to say it, but she’s pretty savvy with the uh, old overtaking and uh, seeing ahead and judging gaps for me to be able to overtake on French roads, because obviously you’re, you’re passing, you’re driving from the gutter, uh, in your right hand drive car.

Um, she’s pretty good at that, but it took her a while to sort of get up to speed from the shift from 276 to 370 in terms of the available sort of point and squirt [00:50:00] and nab gaps. Um, was no, there was, there was much more potential for overtaking with, uh, less requirement for, um, yeah, perceived distance to oncoming, uh, collision.

So, yeah, no, it was, so that, that was good fun. Um, I had, it was funny actually, I, I had it, drove it back from, um, Colchester. Just to around on a sort of Friday or Monday afternoon, whatever it was. Um, and then I took her out in the evening just to go down to the pub and two people on the way down there.

Some guy cut trimming his hedge. I was a bit fruity through the, through the, uh, the, uh, he lives in a little village down. Um, there’s some lanes between us and him and there’s about six houses before another lane by the garden center and the pub. And he was tripping his hedge and I’d obviously been giving it a bit of a footfall for the missus, um, uh, with it in sport mode.

So it was giving it the full trombone. Um, and, uh, as I came out in the corner, he’d stopped tripping the hedge and was like looking [00:51:00] down the lane to see who was coming. And, uh, as I drove past him, he gave me the little sort of like Divers like nice, you know, as I came past, uh, and then some old gamer like, like nodded appreciatively as we drove past as well.

And Angie was like, are you telling me that this new car you’ve got two people have just given you the thumbs up on the way to the pub? Um, And it does feel a bit more, I mean, like that lad I know who’s got, who had the uh, Lamborghini until recently. It’s a sort of sniff of his world in the sense that, you know, wherever you go in that sort of car, everyone’s looking at you.

It’s like, you’re walking around with an absolute supermodel in your arm. I mean, it’s that sort of level of consciousness. I’m not there, at all. It did feel like a guy in a French, um, garage said to Angie, like, Ton car, votre car, votre voiture est puffy. You know, like, you know, kind of thing, as she was, like, trying to use the loo in there.

Um, so, you do get more notice in it, um, and I wasn’t necessarily quite after that. Um, at [00:52:00] all, which is part of the reason I went for an M2, because it’s a sort of chunked up 2 series, you know, it’s just a 2 series, you know, there’s not a lot to see. I mean, the fact that it’s got four exhausts and punched out M badges all over the show, I can sort of ignore that.

Um, and most punters do, but it’s still, you know, I suppose I can’t play a game to be too shy of retiring, given I painted the wheels gold.

Although again, I did wheels. That’s not the gold that I asked for. I asked for frozen gold. And what they’ve done is lazily painted over the gloss black in a couple of coats of frozen gold gone out. You’ve got that sort of weird bronze color. Well, it looks quite cool. You can have that, which in theory is fine.

But when you inevitably scuff them, you can’t buy a rattle can of frozen gold to fix the bit because it’s not the right color. So you’re never going to be able to repaint them to that color. Um, so I’m going to have to have, when one’s got a bit of a nick, I’m going to need to get them all repainted to the colour I asked for in the first place.

Um, otherwise they’re going to look bad ended. So, there is a difference. Yeah, I would. [00:53:00] Um,

with the issue with them painting the, you know, painting frozen gold wheels over the black and not stripping the black back and, and now, you know, you being in this position where, because you damaged one, you can’t just repaint that one, you have to repaint all four.

I feel your best recourse is to have a conversation with the dealer and explain to them that in a reasonable way and then try and get them to cover some of the cost of doing the job properly because you don’t want to rub their face in the fact that it’s their fault that You’re in this position and you [00:54:00] only recently purchased the car, you know, it’s not like you bought it six months ago.

You only just bought it. It’s time to go back in for the other things to be fixed on it anyway. Um, we’ll see. I mean, I suspect they’ll be reasonable about it. But, um, I mean, all the stuff that’s wrong with it, I think they’ll fix. I don’t think they’ll meet me halfway on the price for that. I mean, I was the one that damaged the wheel to be fair, let’s not mess about.

Um. So, that’ll probably be their excuse, and, probably justifiably, it’s just slightly annoying that I haven’t got an easy recourse to a fix because of the route they took, which was a bit of a lazy shortcut, so, um, there you are, but still, look, yeah, big picture that I like the car, yep, very much so, um, and it was nice being in Macron’s, uh, price governed, uh, petrol universe, uh, of France, where it’s cheaper there because he’s put a [00:55:00] cap on the, the fuel prices, so, um, Uh, 98 Ron was, um, about 10 percent cheaper than it would be over here, even if you were buying it from there.

Payage services. Nice. Didn’t know that about the French fuel cap holding, uh, holding prices down there.

So, uh, the next item on the agenda, automatic stop start systems. Mm. That’s another thing that doesn’t work on the BMW. Well, good. I spent some time in a pub with a man from Birmingham who worked for the post office, who was a postman, and he said that these vans that they have, that have the automatic stop start, it just destroys the vehicles because it, [00:56:00] because the thing’s stopping and starting all the time.

So by the time it’s done about 150, 000 miles, the thing’s turned on and switched off so many times that all of those components, everything associated with the stopping and starting is worn out. Well, they’re going to ban all that stuff soon anyway, aren’t they? Because it’s all going to be pet, it’s going to be electric cars sooner or later.

Um, so that gets rid of that problem. Um, but, uh, they do need to fix the infrastructure problem in terms of charging stations before they’re able actually to achieve that, uh, Yeah. And how long do cars last in Britain? I mean, in, in California, when I was learning to be a smog tech, my understanding was, was that any law passed in Sacramento, you know, any w w would take 18 years to penetrate 80 percent of California’s fleet.

So in other words, you can say no more gas powered cars [00:57:00] being made today. Right today, and it would still be 2034 before 80 percent on the car of the cars on the road were electric if you so so what we’re saying is there’s still going to be many gas powered cars around in 2045 by that measure if Gavin Newsom, you know, bans cars as he said he was going to or as California legislature is meant to do in in 20 in 2035.

Yeah. Um. But the actual actual stops are systems themselves. I feel that I suppose they’re part of a they’re related to these problems with diesel particulate filters that people are having with big diesel trucks because these big diesel trucks have. These DPF systems on them and the canisters get blocked up and you have to replace them.

And if you don’t, eventually they clog up and stop the truck altogether. [00:58:00] So basically all the trucks that have higher miles on them have just had this DPF delete because the trucks themselves will do like half a million miles. And if it’s your job working as like a car hauler, You’re going to do like 200, 000 miles in a year.

Well, that’d mean every three months you were having a DPF thing done. So they just like, you know, delete them. Then the engines make way more power. There’s actually court cases where the people who sell these deletes. Kits being taken to court by the, uh, EPA just, uh, at the moment, I’m sure if we Google around, we would, uh, we would find those kinds of stories, but, but yeah, um, all emission systems make the mechanics of just making, um, cars work much, much harder.

And it all looks to people who just have to make a living with these kinds of tools, like societies conspiring against them. [00:59:00] Um, and you know, I get the environmental angle, but you know, it’s, uh, it’s tiring and the automatic stop start thing I fear is another one of those kind of, uh, one of those kinds of things.

Hmm. I can see the well meaning attitude, but like if it’s, uh, smashing the cars up quicker than it is. Yeah. It’s you struggle to then make the, uh. Justify the other savings, don’t you? I’m reminded of that grey Sierra that you had that also had an automatic stop, but it was like, it was like greeps. Half bulimia, you know, where you, uh, where you eat all the food and then don’t throw up.

Um, this, this is, is, is the same thing. You’re Sierra. You used to have automatic stop and not start wouldn’t it for, for a long while in the winter there. It’s really good at that. Yeah, it would, it would, you needed to be in the throttle for it to aisle. So you needed a bloody three feet every time you were approaching a roundabout or [01:00:00] sitting in traffic, especially if you were on a little incline.

Yeah. The Mitsubishi Mirage. This is the winner of the John Summers Award for the single cheapest addition to any vehicle for sale in the United States of America. Because if you are looking at the rear of a Mitsubishi Mirage, you will see a square, a camera, tacked on to the trunk lid. Which must be the backing up camera

and it’s clear to me that the conversation went something in the product planning team went something like We’ve got to have a backup camera to be sales saying we’ve got to have a backup camera to be competitive The Mitsubishi Mirage must have a backup camera. We are [01:01:00] losing sales ’cause you don’t have a backup camera.

And the accountants went, well, we’re not giving you any more money for the backup camera. And the sales people went, we’ve gotta have one. And the, and the, they both went to the engineers, what’s the cheapest way we can get a backup camera? And the engineers went, well, you can drill a hole in the trunk and tack one in.

And you know, for an extra 3 cents, we can spray it body color. And nobody in the room said, but that will look absolutely terrible. It will look worse than if you bought your own kit from an auto factor store and installed it on the car. Nobody said that. And they went ahead. With this grotesque camera on the, the trunk lid and I, I was following somebody with one the other day and I thought if I said this [01:02:00] to the owner, they would be confused.

They bought a cheap car and their cheap car had a backup camera and I realized that what I perceived as ugliness in fact was design minimalism, even design excellence because a Mitsubishi Mirage. Buyer does not cover a camera, which has been expensively hidden. He or she is happy merely with the functionality of being able to reverse and the basic functional transport that a Mitsubishi Mirage provides.

Does look like a sort of slightly misplaced asshole. Yeah. Like when cats walk away from you. Whole car’s a bit like that, really. Yeah, a little bit. Took me a while to find that picture, but yeah, no, it does look weird. It very much [01:03:00] does that. I wanted to pass with a bit of blue tack and gone, yeah, so these few questions, sort of quick fire questions I’ve got at the, uh, at the end here, um, what’s your favorite YouTube channel at the moment?

Uh, North Dakota yak angler.

So that yak as in kayak is a guy in North Dakota who goes fishing in his kayak and he fishes for like small mouth bass and large mouth bass and he doesn’t do any whooping or hollering. Um, And he catches them and goes, Oh, that’s a beautiful fish, isn’t that really nice? Oh, that’s good fight, really got the adrenaline going.

And he lets it go really quickly. Um, he’s just a really chilled out ASMR guy. About, he just loves his fishing, you know. And he goes along, and they’re about 10 minutes long. And he’s really good at fishing. And it’s a nice relaxing way to spend, sort of, 10 or 15 minutes during the day. And he [01:04:00] uploads about once a week.

And you go, yeah, just watch a bit of that. He might catch a big pike or something. And you go, wow. And then you carry on. It’s nice chilled out. I was going to say, I didn’t realize fishing was a spectator sport, but then I remember that vacation that we took to Scotland many, many years ago, where you fished and I sat on the bank and read.

A mystery a book about mysteries of scotland or something if I recall correctly, but I didn’t fish It was a spectator sport for me. So all right Um, so my favorite youtube channel at the moment is is this chops garage guy this guy down in barnstaple In uh in north devon there buying and selling five thousand dollar cars trying to do it honestly And just showing you what?

How it’s not that the used car trade is not dishonest because people set out to be dishonest It’s because more often than not the customers are dishonest or there’s just a misunderstanding around what’s involved to actually [01:05:00] Make a car, you know, usable and sound and, and, and so on. So yeah, just an interesting learning for me.

What’s your favorite car at the moment at the moment?

Um, what I’m saying, like what we talked about recently of I’m just me of the moment, it’s a totally spontaneous thing.

I’ve been enjoying the Mrs. Fiesta ST at the moment. I’ve been driving that since I got back. It’s great. I mean, it looks great. It’s a little pugnacious, little We’ve been considering keeping it when we move to France, and therefore having it at home, not selling it because we own it and I love it. I don’t want to get rid of it.

And then when we come back to the UK, just keep it in storage. And to the UK, we can use it. I drove my Fiesta ST over to Copperopolis yesterday. Um, when I checked the oil at Copperopolis The temperature on the gauge was 104 degrees and it was too hot to [01:06:00] touch the hood. Like literally, I was like, oh, oh, oh, to touch, touching the, uh, the hood.

It was so, it was so hot. Um, such a fun little car on, on twisty roads like that. So not a freeway car. The suspension’s so hard. Like I was like, have these wheels squared off? Cause I’d not driven it for a little bit there. Um. But no, what a marvelous little car. Love the Fiesta ST. But actually my favorite car at the moment is, is that E55.

I’ve driven that, um, really since I got back over the summer to say 2002, I used it throughout Pebble did a thousand miles. I’ve been driving a lot of cars on and you know, through Pebble Week going backwards and forwards and doing different stuff when I was around there and I just love how that car drives.

Um in a previous podcast, I did. We talked about the Western Automotive Journalist event and I drove an AMG GT 53 there. Um that car that car did [01:07:00] not impress me. It was not the same car as mine. I preferred my old E55 to the modern E53. Hang on a minute. Hello Dana. Hi, I need a bat.

Okay. I know he wants the Louisville Slugger, which is like brand of bat. They only have that one in like 26 inch, which is the T ball. It says T ball on it. So I think he’s going to reject it. Yeah. Like I don’t think he’s going to be happy with it. Yeah. But they do have the Rollins. Which is, you know, his brand of glove and everything else that is, it says pro model 28 inch.

Yeah. Do you have any thoughts? We need to order a Louisville Slugger in a longer length or go somewhere else. Okay, let me look [01:08:00] online and see if it comes that way. Yeah, online you can go to them in, in each of the, in 26, 27 or 28 inch for about 30 or 40 dollars. Yeah, that’s about the price here. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. So you can order a Louisville slugger. Yes. Okay. Why don’t you do that and print it out and we’ll give it from granny and granddad and we’ll just order it. Okay. That’s what he really wants. Okay. Yeah. I know that’s what he really wants. Yeah. He’s not going to want the right. He’s got to have the Louisville slugger.

I think so. Yeah. Okay. All right. Can you do that then? Cause I just raced over here and now I have to go get my haircut. Okay, but can you do it and like print it? Yeah, I’m still I’m still recording the pod at the moment. Okay Sorry, is there anything else your parents would want me to get him from here?

I’m sure he would want like a baseball backpack or something, but no, no, don’t worry about that So they were like we feel like the bat’s not enough And and I was [01:09:00] like, no, I feel like it is because it’s so important to ollie. Yeah, he really wants it. Okay Okay. All right. I’m gonna get out of here then. All right.

Okay. Love you. I love you. Dana. Bye So, um, what’s your favorite bike right now?

Hmm. That’s a good question. Um, I watched an old 44 Teeth video, where, uh, Al was ta Fagan was taking around that Kawasaki, um, uh, in in a in a in a gap in between Superbike races or something. He took the Kawasaki, what is it, K not the KZ1. The, um, the one that they did the, uh, the 240 horsepower supercharged one, whatever that one was.

H2. Um. Yeah, H2. He took that round at one of the laps, and then a rev bomb going down the straight on it. Um, that thing’s a beast. Um, I sort of love how, it just, OTT it is in [01:10:00] every way. Superb looking cut bike. Um, It definitely looked the part in Top Gun. In this Top Gun Maverick movie, the bike so looked the part.

He rides it without a helmet. Oh, he’s got one of those, I haven’t seen that yet. He rides it without a helmet, of course, but he totally looks the part. Of course. Yeah. Um. My favorite bike at the moment is, um, do you remember when we were at Goodwood? Um, I picked up the, this, the flyer for the Bimotora Tezi H2 and at the time I wasn’t sure about it at all, but I’ve kept the flyer and I’ve kept on looking at it, especially the Tricolore.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I remember it. Yeah. Really? A bit front heavy, but super. Yeah. That at the time I wasn’t sure, but at the time I was busy being overwhelmed and cynical about seeing a Porsche’s which. You know, I, I just know [01:11:00] what a fabulous looking motorcycle and because it’s been sitting on my this that the flyers been sitting on my desk.

It’s been, uh, it’s been obsessing me. Um, now, um,

what are you reading?

Uh, I haven’t been reading anything at the moment, to be honest, because I’ve been writing and if I, it’s the same spare time. I most recently read, um, an article in Haggerty. Um, about, um, this was my morning, you know, toilet reading about how the Countach and it wasn’t What I was thinking was this is the Lamborghini Countach becoming like accepted as a collector car.

It never used to be accepted as a collector car. Now it’s accepted as a [01:12:00] collector car because it’s sitting in this magazine. And you know, the previous article was talking about Lincolns and, and had some quote from Frank Lloyd Wright, the great architect. And then, you know, you flip on a few pages and there’s artsy photos of Lamborghini Countaches with, with, with the doors up.

Um, And I just feel that’s crazy. Cause even five years ago, they were far too Honda civic type are it’s ugly with those crazy, silly wings and doors, you know, that was what, um, the Lamborghini Countach was certainly 10 years ago, probably still five years ago. And now it’s crossed over. So I just thought that that was interesting.

And perhaps that perhaps that’s the story of Pebble. I said there were loads of supercars at Pebble. Perhaps that’s the main story for Pebble. Look at that. We’ve talked for our time here now, and we never once [01:13:00] mentioned what car won Pebble Beach or anything about what you actually saw whilst you were touring around France.

Marvelous. Thank you for your time, Mark. My pleasure. Take care. Bye.

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Vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom.