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.
Notes
J pretentiously compares himself to Tristram Shandy
44 teeth’s Boothy fined
Fun with Mopeds
Runaway vehicle anecdotes
“Gate Building” in Mendocino and a 428 Thunderbird
J’s Gasser vision – The Hound Dog
Other Mark’s E350 and Thunderbird
Thunderbird gets frisky on the Grapevine
The Avant Garde and a Freightliner Highway Hauler
The Avant Garde and smog regulations
Where Miami Vice meets motor racing: the “Blue Thunder” March 83G
Old Man Ferrari and the end of Crocket’s Daytona Spider replica
The Whittington brothers and the Porsche 935 Kremer K3
Mario Rossi and Gary Balough and cigarette boats
Hagerty buying every classic car show – is that a Good Thing?
Quickfire
Favourite car movie. Or best. Or both (Taxi, Ronin, Bad Boys 2, Le Mans, Senna, Two Lane Blacktop)
Best car chase (Roma Violenta)
Two-car Monaco garage, money no object
Most impressive rental car
I didn’t answer the worst car I ever owned: between the blue Cortina, the Capri and the E150 van
Transcript
[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 day, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be. It’s Jon Summers, the motoring historian, with his old friend from school, Mark Gami. How are you doing, Mark? I’m doing well, thank you, sir. Um, well, I did feel, you know, I should try and make the start of these things more dynamic. I don’t know. We should like hit with a [00:01:00] punchline, you know, we should do like, you know, instead of doing something sexy.
That’s what they do in the movies. I say what they could do something sexy like they do in the movies, you know, have like a And later, you know, Ursula Andress type. No, well, yeah, that, or like, or like James Bond, where there’s always like violence. It’s either sex or violence right at the start to like, really, uh, really get, get your attention.
But that’s just not my style, is it? I’m more Tristram Shandy where most people never get. Never really understand the point of what Lawrence Stern was trying to say because he wrapped it up in such a difficult to unravel kind of, of a package, but you know, maybe that’s the message that you need to work hard at reading Tristram Shandy in order to get something out of it.
Maybe that’s the message with, with me as, as well, that, you know. you tuned in to learn about the lucid and there’s half an hour of drivel before I even mention it and then what I say is really not actually that useful to to helping you it’s just entertainment I don’t really [00:02:00] know who it’s been done before man but greater minds James Hutton father of geology Bill Bryson wrote in his short history in nearly everything that the guy was uh visionary, but, uh, that even people who applauded him said his books were terrible.
They were really hard to read. He took four volumes to take something he could have said way quicker in as arcane a language as possible and almost as unreadable. Um, but, uh, you know, he was the father of geology. So if you wanted to get the tips on like, you know, early, uh, views on, uh, the world, then, uh, you need to plug through.
That is, that is the interesting thing, right, that the, you tend to feel, people who aren’t involved in studying history tend to feel history is history and like the facts are the facts, but they’re not. The facts of the Roman Empire are what Tacitus and Livy wrote down and what the archaeological record has, uh, you know, has, has supported.
So I’m not saying these things didn’t happen and it’s all like some big conspiracy theory. [00:03:00] But, but what I am saying is that, you know, history is, uh, um, blurred and nuanced and, and not, you know, and not accurate, and I was going to say something else and I can’t remember. Well, a historian’s got to make a living too, man.
If it was settled, there’d be nothing to do with it. Well, they do say that about historians, don’t they? That it’s the only profession where everyone disagrees. If you had a panel of four historians, they would all disagree and they’d all have like a valid argument and they’d all be friends about it. Can you imagine if that was the case in physics?
Can you imagine if that was the case amongst law professors? Mind you, if that was the case amongst law professors, you’d have the government that we have in the United States at the moment, wouldn’t you? But that is, is, uh, is, is a digression. Um, yeah, so in the news, so in my like, you know, being more structured and, and so on, we always talk about the 44 teeth.
Um, I’ve actually not watched any of their stuff [00:04:00] to the Nurburgring recently on, on like 90 sports bikes. It’s a bit too, it’s them riding my bike, the kind of bikes I have the way that they should be ridden. I think that’s why it’s, uh, it’s almost like watching another man take your wife out for a meal kind of thing.
Um, uh, but I have followed, um, you and I have both been fiddling around on Twitter somewhat for, uh, for, for different projects. I have followed, Um, I encountered old Alice the Fagin, one of the 44 teethers. Um, uh, apparently he was at Bristol Airport picking up Boothy. Boothy’s crossing the road on his crutches with his one leg.
Fagin stops to pick him up and gets fined. 240 quid at the airport. Fined for like, you know. Is that because you’ve got paid to pick people up at the airport now and he didn’t? No, no, what needed to happen was he [00:05:00] needed to go to the car park and Hopalong needed to crutch it all the way up there. And that was what Fagin was pissed off about.
He was like, you know, it’s one thing to be like, you know what, you can’t all be pulling over and picking up at the side of the road. I understand that. But if, what are we coming to when we’re fining people who, uh, uh, you know, The bureaucracy does not care. The bureaucracy does not care, does it? So, uh, but, but the fact that the guy’s getting around a little bit is, is, is good, you know?
And, and we should say, we ought to talk about Boothy because we sponsored him. Um, the last TT that he went to. So, uh, you know, we, we, uh, we’re somewhat invested in him in where once there were two legs, now there’s only one. Um, yeah. Um, he’s going to go racing again. Isn’t he? Awesome. Well, they always do, don’t they?
They always do, because otherwise, otherwise you just look like you were scared off. Um, whether [00:06:00] you, you, it’s like, it’s like McGuinness, right? Is McGuinness the same rider now as he was before that fall in the Northwest TT? I don’t think so. Oh, he’s quit now, isn’t he? Or has he quit, has he just quit Petiti?
Well, I, I don’t, I, I mean, I, I, I really hope he does, cause, cause I don’t think you can do it at heart. Yeah, they said on the last one, that was his last one last year. Um, and bad play to him. I mean, the guy’s the legend. I watched Rutter lead off. The last TTS and I watched him be passed by the younger guys.
And when I was talking with, um, the guys that I was watching with, they were, uh, you know, our age, like forties, fifties, and they would say, and we agreed that the discipline for Rata to ride in the way that he did. Well, obviously completely within himself in comparison to the way that, you know, somebody like Dean Jones, is it the guy that with the pale blue, the, the, the Yorkshire guy, um, could be speed on all the chaps generally, but no, the point is he, he rides within [00:07:00] himself and, and that’s a bloke who’s, who’s riding to get home rather than, uh, than, than riding to win.
And I’m not, not, not. Uh, certainly not knocking him for, uh, for, for that. So, yeah, um, yeah. So good luck to him if he comes back and rides again and I’ll definitely sponsor him again. And, and, you know, um, yeah, God’s speed, um, Matt Booth. Um, so I’ve got two new vehicles in the last month. Very reserved. Have we talked about them before?
I can’t remember. Um, I think you mentioned that you’ve got something. Is that, that, that, that thing that had broken down? One doesn’t work and I bought the other one because it works and it broke down on the test ride. Yeah. I know it was when I, uh, so I’ve, I’ve had that Derby. Mopeds, 50 CC moped forever.
So just to, just to [00:08:00] rewind somewhat electric mopeds are coming out there. We were talking about electric bikes the other day. There’s these revel electric scooters in San Francisco. So I was like, you know, I tried one of the revel scooters. It’s governed to 30 miles an hour. You know, if you lean over the handlebars, it won’t go any faster than 30 miles an hour.
I mean, what kind of, what kind of perversion. Of the two wheel concept is this a machine that can’t be persuaded to exceed its natural top speed. Um, so with that thought, I was like, I’ve got to get a two stroke moped. Like this is, this is going to be my response to these electric mopeds. So I, I did the only natural thing.
And I bought from my friend, John Garcia, I bought his Derby GP150. Which, when, which was the fastest moped you could buy when you could last buy two stroke mopeds in America. [00:09:00] So it has like a Piaggio motor in it, um, and it was owned by this Irish road race guy and he put the exhaust on it and the whole thing.
Which was all fine and dandy and it was really fast, but then John Pressure washed it and it’s never worked since. And it’s, it’s over in the corner of my garage now with an auxiliary fuel line hooked up to it. And it did actually run properly a little bit, but you know, I’d reached a point where I was like, after all this time, I just want a moped that works.
And Ollie and I were over at John’s place the other day and, uh, he had this. Yamaha Zuma, like a 04 Yamaha Zuma. And it’s got these two headlight, you know, I’m a sucker for anything that’s got like two headlights. I love the gypsies with two headlights. I love the stack headlight sixties Pontiacs. You know, I love the, the, the, the pair of headlights.
Um. Capris, Capri Mark 3s, Love, Love Capri Mark 1s, the [00:10:00] 3 with the quad headlamps. Anyway, so I bought this like, so John was like, do you want to ride it? I was like, yeah. And I was, I was half, I was, I was on the block. I was halfway around the block with my, with the throttle on the stop, not without a helmet on in this jacket before I realised what I was doing.
So I was like, you know, well settle down, but like the moped’s cool. Um, so I bought it. Um, and, and John rode it over later on and was like, you know, you just have to, when it gets warm, the, I think the pilot’s jet blocked, what I should do is take the carb off and clean. And I was like, well, I mean, I just didn’t want to like dismantle yet another vehicle that’s having carbon fuel feed kind of.
Problems. I was like, ah. So I was like, what? What? So I was like, do you reckon I can ride it? And he went, well, I can ride it. So I went, well, all right then. So the following day, so he wrote it over and the following day, it was a nice sunny [00:11:00] day. So I went out and I thrashed it up and down the streets here.
It’s really good fun. Like well of a time. Must have ridden it for about 20 minutes. I’m feeling great about the fact that now it’s got some of the new fuel and the fuel cleaner through it. It’s running really well. And then I’m like, I’m gonna run up to the Legion of Honor. Which is this, uh, art gallery, um, that overlooks the Pacific Ocean.
You know, views of the Golden Gate Bridge. So it’s shit tons of tourists up there. So I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. Up the golf course, right? Over the handlebars. Well, as I approach the zebra crossing in front of the Legion, It’s like Marin mum, blonde, right? attractive. So because she’s attractive, I’m looking, she makes eye contact with me and I now have to stop at the crosswalk, right?
So I stop, and it won’t fucking go again. Yeah, geng, geng, geng, geng, geng, geng. But it’s not [00:12:00] going anywhere. So she’s now crossing, is looking at me, like she’s rejoined her family. They’re looking at me, I’m now, geng, geng, ging, ging, geng, ging. Geng, geng, ging, ging, ging, ging. Hahahaha! Aww, man. My, my, machine really loves to fuck you when it’s the worst moment, doesn’t it?
So I, so I’m like, so I was just like, so I took my helmet off and I sat down by the fountain and I, I, I like took a picture of it, posted it on Instagram and was like, Oh bollocks, I just told Dana that I just bought another motorcycle and worse, told her that it broke down. It’s like, bro. So I called John and he was like, Oh, I’m like, And then it’d be like, I’m going out, which means like I’m going somewhere in the hopes of meeting some dog walking chick who he’s working hard with at the moment.
But I only realized that when he turned up and he looked really good and Remus had obviously been bathed [00:13:00] and looked really good, right? So he’s like, so he’s like all business. He’s like, I think I can ride it back to the house. Well, it’s all downhill. I think I can probably ride it back to the house. He went, no, you just need to like rev it more and you need to kick it.
If you kick it, it like gets going more. So he kicks it and it is immediately revving up better. And then he’s like, but here’s the thing, right? It’s not one wheel off the ground, right? He’s got the wheel on the ground, even when it’s on the kickstand. Cause he’s got these like chunky tires. So if you rev the shit out of it too much, when it’s still.
It tries to go off on its own up the street, right? So you need to be holding the brake. So basically it’s like the technique for doing a burnout, right? You stand on the brake and then you come in the gas and rev it to keep the, the, the, the motor up. So, you know, I, I’d love to tell you that I thought it was, well, I’d love to tell you, but you know.
By rights, I tell you, it was an annoying waste of money and I’ve been conned. I bought a [00:14:00] moped that would work and once again, I’ve got another machine that’s kind of cool, but doesn’t work properly. But, you know, at the same time, right, John wrote it back to the house. It works okay. I now have seen that if you kick it, it runs better.
Um, so I might go out and ride again and hope I can blow the dirt out of the Pilot jet rather than uh, what you know, here’s the thing. I mean, I know what you mean, but like, you know It’s a moped. Yeah, it’s a yamaha. It’ll be Pretty easy to get the carb off and clean it. Just do that. Cause like, it’s annoying as fuck to be broken down.
And just to, like, give you a pay your moped story back with a moped story. Um, similar embarrassment levels. Um, I was on the forecourt once. In that, with that red Honda Cub 90 that I had. And, uh, went back to start it, like, you know, put the thing in, wearing, like, a hat, that first helmet, I think the black one I had, with the, with the wax jacket and jeans, you know, I mean, I’m just like riding a moped, um, and I put [00:15:00] the key in, started, like, pressed it, started it, gave it a little bit of revs, because it liked a little bit of revs, and it decided to go, no, I want to be in first.
So it then just trundled forward on its own off the center stand, off the sidestand, and then crashed into the bit where they keep the coal and the logs outside the cabbage. Oh, it like made it all the way across. Well, it’s not quite, it sort of like went and wobbled along. Whilst I stood there thinking about fucking them.
And then went boing onto its side and slid into them. I was like, oh nice. And then you’re looking around and everyone’s like looking at you. You’re like, um. So that, that house we lived in in, you reminded me of The Rolling Away. Uh, that house we lived in, in, um, in early in Reading. Um, you remember because of the Capri and the Alpha, um, being one on the drive, the other on the lawn.
Because the landlord inconsiderately used the garage, didn’t he? So we, we, so I, I, so we would park, remember, on the grass, on the little grassy patch outside of the house. Well, [00:16:00] remember how my dad’s like 90 Cavalier CD, there’s the champagne colored one that was like the old man special that had been owned from new by the old bloke across the road.
Um. I, uh, got back from somewhere parked up, went in the house, like, took a piss, like I had a drink, and I stood in the living room looking out the window, and I was like, car’s gone. Where’s the fucking car? Where’s the fucking car? So I like, woo hoo. I run out, I’m, and I look, looked left, and it’s not, and I looked down and it had rolled, I’d forgotten to put the hand brake on, and it had rolled down the hill off the curb, across the mouth of a T junction, and then had run along the curb.
Across the T junction, the road had curved and it had stopped before it got to the main road where there were cars parked and other houses. I can’t believe you’re telling me about that, that evening now. I’d forgotten about that. Yeah. I mean, that was, I was like, you know, [00:17:00] that was One of those days, you know, Providence is backing you.
Well, as David Hobbs said, you know, it’s better to be lucky than good. Well, that happened to Gaines, didn’t it? And like, the car was a write off. Did he? Not that car, obviously, or that, but I’m sure, yeah, he told me that he’s, um, in one of the cars he had in Plymouth. He didn’t put the handbrake on, like, hard enough, and it rolled back down the hill and smashed into another car.
Yeah, man, it happens. Especially if the handbrake, like, is on, and not quite, I mean, in that BMW, like, I had the handbrake on, but not quite on enough, because when the, when the, uh, I was on the channel, it slid backwards when there was a sort of jolt. And I thought, did that slide backwards? And you’re never quite sure when you’re sitting in the thing.
Is it just be looking out the window at the time? And that starts moving. So I was like, fine. And then I thought as they started to go to be, I thought I was just on the case. I was like, hold on a second. I’m not, I feel wrong about this. I should maybe try and pull forward. And the guy, the ticket guy came by and went, move, move.
They’re going to hit your door. So I pulled it forward and [00:18:00] was just in time. He went by lottery ticket today, man. So you’ve got to be careful with that sort of thing. I mean, what was going to hit your door? What was going to hit your door? It would hit the back of the car. Because when you’re in the channel, you’ve got the barriers that come down in between.
Oh, so when the barrier came down, I wasn’t under it, but they open up. They open up like that. So they don’t go up into the ceiling, they open up to the side. And because it comes forward, if you moved at all, it’s going to hit the back of your car. Or the front, for that matter. I think only the back, because of the way they open up.
Yeah, I don’t know. It’s, um, Lucky Escapes. So, yeah, it’s easy done. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so the moped, um, and the other’s not really so much of a new car as A, uh, part, that’s how I’ve positioned it up to Dana, simply a part, because as you know, Mark, Mark called me and was like, Oh, I’m moving cars from my, like all my spots in Southern [00:19:00] California.
And he’s talking to me about all these cars, which I didn’t even realize he’d got, I hadn’t realized he’d got three or four different storage spots. So anyway, he’s like, Oh, I’m looking to like move stuff off. So I don’t know if he was hinting, but I was like, you know, if you want to put that Thunderbird up at my place up north, you can.
So he was like, yeah, I’ll call you. Which usually means you’re never going to hear him from me about this topic ever again for the rest of your days. In fact, he called me and then very helpfully said, I’m going to be there tomorrow. So I’m like, like now I have to like drop everything I’m doing. Here’s the thing, right?
So what I should say is, is the car. So do you remember years ago, I told you that when he was doing his quote, gate building, close quotes, business, Up in Mendocino where in [00:20:00] return for some of the gates, one of the places that he was working at, there was stuff like that at the time when he was looking at it was not interesting, like square body Chevy pickup trucks, which just seems to become super collectible.
But when I remember when you told me about them, I was like, whatever that was, was not something it was, but there were two cars that were there that were of interest. One was a bandit era 78. Firebird Trans Am, but it was all blue, blue exterior, metallic blue exterior, blue interior, silver fire chicken. Um, and that was the car that he was really most interested in, but that required some money and he wanted to take that.
But in the end, he took what was the guy’s Grandad’s car that was this navy blue. They obviously liked blue cars in that family, didn’t they? Looking back navy blue over navy blue Thunderbird [00:21:00] 66 Thunderbird. So, um, Thelma and Louisie kind of era, a cleaned up version of the Thelma and Louise, but with a hard top and most of those Thunderbirds at a three 90 big block three 90, which is what like.
Five, nine, something like that, but some of them, the option, the big block option was, uh, you know, the hypo option was the police interceptor 428. Well, this is a 428 car, which is why Mark wanted it. It’s low mileage. I looked on eBay, you know, the engine, just the engine on its own. I mean, there’s one on eBay at the moment for nine grand and there’s one built for 12.
That’s all. There’s nothing. There’s no other police interceptor 428. So I don’t know if you go on like that Hokie Yass message board, like H A M B, which seems to be the best outlet for hot rod stuff, you know, if you went to the [00:22:00] right swap meets. I mean, I’m not a hot rod guy, so I’m not really, but it seemed to me that the, so the next thing I did was I went on Hemmings and I was like, um, Because I was feeling like if, if there’s no, if, if the 428s are super rare, it’s a bit out of order to take the engine out of it, which is kind of what I want, which is what my plan is.
But there’s half a dozen of them for sale on Hemmings at the moment. Um, yeah, it’s a good color combo. The car’s a car’s a total basket case, right? So the, so the plan is that the engine comes out of it and that it. Go into the mercury to be the gasser so I have the back axle from the 70 Bronco. I have this 66 428 motor.
Um, you can buy top loaders that for speed transmission, 2. 5 grand, something like that. So then I’ve got the bits to build the gasser dragster. So, so, uh, so that [00:23:00] was why. So when Mark was like, I want like, can you help me out? I was like, yeah, yeah. Deliver the Thunderbird. So I was over there with him too.
And he arrives in this light E three 50 silver, E three 50, three 50 VAT towing this Thunderbird on an open trailer, right? And the Thunderbirds not quite straight on the trailer. And I realized it’s because the trailer is like fundamentally bent. Right. And twisted. I should say in the van with Mark, uh, I would say a dozen dogs.
Okay, because he has this like homeless, like this homeless dog rescue business that he does. Right. So, so we and the long and short is coming over the grapevine out of LA, the trailer decided to try and well, the Thunderbird decided first that it would want it wanted to be in the van. And then if it wasn’t allowed to be in the van, it wanted to be off the trailer and at the side of the road.
And [00:24:00] then if it couldn’t be off the trailer at the side of the road, it wanted to be in the central reservation ahead of the E350. So that had been a fairly sphincter clenching descent. Um. It, it, it, the, it bucked around on the trailer and then it displaced the trailer and Mark being Mark had carried on and then it had blown a tire on the trailer because the one of the truck, one of the axles was, was, uh, was crapping.
I mean, he’d, he’d, uh, yeah, so classic, classic Mark. So the van’s silver, right? But one of the rear doors is a door from a Rotorooter van and I’m like. And he’s like, yeah, when I was changing the tire, I tried to throw it up onto the roof. This is all taking place at four o’clock in the morning at the side of the road.
Right. When I was trying to change the tire after the tire burst, I [00:25:00] tried to throw up on the roof, but I missed and I broke the glass while it was raining and cold and the dogs. Couldn’t take it. So yesterday morning I stopped at a wrecking yard like in Merced or Modesto or one of those towns up 99th.
But I guess they bond the glass in, they glue the glass into the door. So mark being mark was like well, I just buy the whole door off you to the to the scrap man And just took the door off took the door off the van and so that’s why it’s got the roto router door So whilst I was there like at my place He’s like taking the door card off and the trim piece with the number plate At the van on and building it onto the door as we’re uh, as we’re uh, yeah, so music and i’m doing musical cars because the race cars with So I’ve got the Thunderbird in, the race car’s at Jason’s, but I’d already used the [00:26:00] race car spot to allow John to store four Honda CB motorcycles.
So yesterday we went over there to get the Mercedes out of the public storage where it had gone, so I didn’t have to pay another month on the public storage. So as, when, when we were driving over there, I said to John, I’m surprised you didn’t bring the van. Because we’ve got to move four bikes and he went, I thought we were only moving two.
That’s why I bought the truck. And I’m like, well, I think we might need to move four. Um, and he’s like, oh, I’m sure we’ll, I’m sure we’ll make them fit.
And we get over there. Right. And, and it’s, and, and it’s clear, right. That the first thing we’re going to have to do is take the bikes out so that we can, you know, like, you know, begin to do anything. Right. But it’s. Piassing with rain now. There’s like standing water. It’s the same weather as when they delivered my Kawasaki [00:27:00] ZX10.
They unloaded it from the truck, and I’d not got on well with the truck driver. He was basically like, fuck you, and drove off. And, uh, left the bike, right? It was on a kickstand, but by the time I came to move it, it had sunk into the mud so much, that it was standing up on its own. Like, I kicked the kickstand up, and it was still like, uh, uh, uh.
So it was like that. So I was like, so how are we going to like the, I said to John when we were driving back and everything had gone smoothly, I was like, I was worried. It was like the beginning of like, uh, a sort of, you know, horror movie when you were like, now it’s slippery. So you push from the shock.
And I’m gonna, cause you know, we had to like the ramp down. So we had to like push it up into the back of the truck, right? The ground’s all soft. So we’ve got it like backed into the, somewhere on the concrete floor of the, the anyway. Anyway, so, uh, so what we ended up doing was getting the 77 Lincoln. [00:28:00] town car, like the one that we traveled in, in, in the States, a 77 Lincoln town car into neutral.
And then we just drove his Toyota truck in, pushed the, the, the Lincoln back. So it’s right touching the Camaro and then got, um, and then the, the, then John was able to get the CB 900 crushed right up against the front of the Lincoln. And then I was able to get the Mercedes in and there was a whole inch.
to spare. I mean, there’s a whole inch to spare and, and now, and now there’s the only way to get from one end of the storage space to the other is by walking on cars. There’s no walkways in between you are walking on cars. So go me with uh with with uh with filling up the space with the non functional stuff that that’s not really what I should have [00:29:00] What I should be doing.
I’m also on the subject of of of my collection. I’m also um very much feeling um Uh, the, I got, I started doing the sports bikes because I was interested in this idea of, of, you remember the sports bikes I was inspired, it was like, it was, I was in Miami and I was in that Windward art district there. And there was, I was in this Chufti art gallery and the artist.
Who had like this terracotta kind of colors and things going on. He painted a Kawasaki ZZR600. And all these art types were going, Hmm, very interesting. Looking at this two grand, not that interesting sports bike, sports tourer up on a plinth. And I was thinking, That was the first time I’d seen motorcycles truly as are and realized that other people could see motorcycles as are as well.
So then began to think, well, if I’m, uh, you [00:30:00] know, if I’m really, I’m really into these things, I feel really passionately about them. If anybody can do what you’ve heard of avant garde fashion, right? Where it’s like thought leadership, it’s ideas that kind of seem like bullshit. But, and they seem crazy and they’re out there a little bit, but sometimes years go by and they’re seen to be quite prescient and these things come from the gut when John Garcia started buying cars, um, Suzuki GSXRs, it wasn’t because he was like, Oh, these oil cooled ones.
Are going to escalate in value because these wasn’t anything like that at all. He just liked them and he had the money and he didn’t want to save in the bank or do the stock market. And he enjoyed surfing Suzuki GSXRs and you know, he bought lots of Suzuki GSXRs and rode them and became a connoisseur of them.
And you know, and then I was ahead of the market and now they’re worth much more than, than I paid for them. You know, it’s so [00:31:00] seeing that right. And failing to buy a Suzuki Hayabusa. For 99, one owner, 20, 000 mile, you know, the bike having let that go. I, uh, I decided, so, so that was what led me to do the bike collecting.
I’m now feeling another stage of this avant garde. Collecting and we’ve touched on this somewhat before. I want an 18 wheeler. I want a big truck. I want a big diesel truck with, you know, I want a proper highway haul and not a Peterbilt or gussied up. Not one of these ones that does that tows stuff to Walgreens or Safeway locally.
I want one of the ones that are out on the highway that are going to be autonomous and electrified first. I want one of the ones that toes between the distribution centers. And I, I, uh, I’d like a freight liner and, and I want it [00:32:00] at it. And if it’s truly to be my avant garde collecting, even if I had the funds to get a decent one, I should get a clapped out one, right.
At the end of his life, because that is my earth.
I mean, where are you going to keep it? Is the obvious question. Okay, well that I gave considerable thought to as, as well, because this is the reality, right? That storage, to enjoy the car hobby is to have storage problems, right? And we were just talking about the storage problems earlier. We even, the whole reason why that Cavalier rolled down the hill was because the Capri and the Alpha.
Uh, well, we’re sat there on, on, on the drive there, weren’t they? Um, so I think it’s a scale thing, right? I think that, that you begin with finding somewhere where you can rent. Land cheaply and put a shipping crate on there and I [00:33:00] think you do a series of 40 foot shipping crates because each 40 foot shipping crate is two cars, right?
Or, you know, however many bikes you can shake a sticker, right? So, so you and I think the step from there is buying land and I think the step from there is putting up like a building on that land. That becomes the space. The challenge for me is that I, I don’t like leaving, you know, I leave my toy box away.
I like to be close to the toy box. And the only way you can afford land and the toy box is outside of the city, which is exactly where my wife doesn’t want to live. So that’s, this is why I did the bikes really, because I can get lots of them in my garage here in, in, in the city without needing to, to, you know, to, to, okay.
Where’s the truck going? Oh, later on. So, so, so it’s, it’s going, [00:34:00] um, Uh, wherever the shipping crates are, it’s part of the whole shipping crate. It’s part. No, no, it won’t. It’ll sit alongside the shipping crate. It will also of course facilitate the movement of the shipping crates. It being an 18 wheeler and all.
Are you going to have the shipping crates on trailers? I could do, couldn’t I? Was that or you have a crane? You know, I was looking at a moment ago before you called, I was on, before we did this call, I was on commercial vehicle trailer and I was looking at a new car, like a, a trailer that can haul eight cars.
And I was thinking, oh, you don’t even need storage. You just put the cars on there. The only issue with that though, is that you are essentially saying, here are all my toys ready to be robbed. Because they’re all ready on the inside. It would need to, you need to put the whole thing inside. Yeah. Um, yeah, I mean, look, yeah, [00:35:00] it would also be a total asshole because if you needed to get off one of the cars at the front and you know, one of the ones in between didn’t start or couldn’t be moved for some reason, which never happened with any of the cars that I was likely to interact with.
Yes, but, but the, the, the, the other, the other wrinkle with it is that California has this rule that you can’t operate any commercial vehicles with diesel engines that are older than 2010. Hard and fast rule, none at all. But I was beagling and shneagling around, and I realized that there is an exemption for vehicles that are driven less than a thousand miles a year.
So I can drive any polluting old piece of shit. Even in California, as long as I think you mean you can drive any old classic. That’s got to be a classics policy, hasn’t it? Less than a thousand miles a year. Well, except it doesn’t specify age. That’s what I was looking at this morning. Because I remember the exemption was [00:36:00] there, but I was reading this morning, it doesn’t specify age.
See, there’s another angle here that John’s trying to work, which is the Irish moving guys have a truck and he’s wondering if he can use that truck for storage. But the, uh, you know, the, uh, Well, candidly, the legality of the truck is considerably in question. There was some tomfoolery where the finance company that owned it went bust.
So they still own it, but they don’t have, they never took possession of it. And until they take possession of it, you, you can’t, there’s like, it’s, it’s like in title limbo, it doesn’t have a legal. How, how we talk for half an hour and I’m only on the second, how I talk for half an hour, I’m only on the second, uh, item on my, uh, on my agenda.
Um, so I, I, I’ve, you know, so my, so my vision is, is working towards this truck at the moment. And I will do a CDL like a commercial [00:37:00] driver’s license. I have the skills to, to, to operate it properly. And I am conscious of the fact that if you’re driving some old piece of shit, that’s, you know, weighing 44 tons, that’s.
You know, a serious safety thing. So it’s a bit like, you know, flying cool old planes. They’re like cool, but they’re dangerous. Um, I’m not sure, you know, so I might, you know, but I want to, as I say, it’s this, it’s this concept. And this is what I kind of wanted to touch on with you is this concept of avant garde collecting the concept of getting something just because you think it’s cool.
For no reason other than you think it’s cool and you’re feeling it. And even if other people aren’t feeling it, it’s your poem and it’s your thing. And in time, the general perception will, will catch up because they will write diesel trucks in the year 2040 diesel trucks are going to have completely disappeared.
Like a diesel truck that you can drive and has like 18 wheels and a Detroit two stroke diesel. Those things are going to disappear completely. They’re all going to be these electric [00:38:00] things that are controlled remotely, aren’t they? So they’re going to be like steam engines at that point. Well, then they’re going to be interesting.
I’m not saying they’re going to be worth anything, but I’m also saying nobody preserves. People are going to preserve the Peterbilt’s. Nobody’s going to preserve the Freightliner in white that was owned by Ryder, has now done 3 million miles, and he’s over. It’s ready to be broken up. No, someone’s is going to step in and save it.
A sleeper. It’s got to be a sleeper. Mostly, mostly for the aesthetics, but also for the practicality of it. You too can wank where some trucker has wanked before. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.
So remember when we were living together, um, maybe 20 years ago, we were watching, we watched Miami Vice again. [00:39:00] And. We were disappointed in it because we remembered it as teenagers and it seemed so ineffably cool when we were teenagers. And then when we watched it again, um, like in the early 2000s, it just seemed naff, basically.
And, and then it’s sort of now it’s made its way into the realms of coolness. Again, I, I, and, and I’m, I’m struck by, you might remember a couple of years ago. I’d, um, Obviously through cars, I just rubbed up against in YouTube, um, new retro wave music because so much new retro wave music has Lamborghini Countach and Ferrari Testarossas, um, you know, pictured in it.
So, so I’d encountered new retro wave music and, and through new retro wave music, [00:40:00] I realized that there was this whole sort of 80s, like retro kind of, of, of thing going on that had taken. You know, Miami vice to be, you know, the center of this like arc, you know, archetypal coolness. Right. And, you know, my wife has relatives that live in, in Florida.
So, you know, the first time I went to Miami, yeah, I went to the police station, the Miami vice police station. Yeah. I went to the Harbor where Crockett’s boat was, and that was disappointing, right? Because there’s a fucking great bridge with cars or driving over it. Right by the harbor, but the camera angle was always shot away from the bridge, right?
It was like, it was like the camera angle and that every angle at Crockett’s Harbor was shot like in a baseball diamond that cut out the industrial bit of the harbor and the big ships and cut [00:41:00] out the fact that you were overlooked and By the car, it was just, it made you realize just how a completely bogus environment the world of, of, of Miami Vice was right.
It was a completely, it was as fake as that Ferrari Daytona was the old man Ferrari. Apparently the whole deal with the white car, there was the black one and then the white one. The whole deal with the black one was Ferrari loved the show, hated the replica car. So the understanding was that the white car would be given to them, given to them, on the understanding the black one was trashed on the screen, blew up on the screen, was over on the screen, and there is an episode where the black car disappears and the white one is, is introduced and all that was apparently scripted by old man Ferrari, believe that if, uh, if, if [00:42:00] you want, um, I So the reason that I had this as a theme was that this is a piece of motoring history that I’m really interested in because there is a point where motorsport and Miami Vice completely intersects.
Now there were Miami Vice Grand Prix. And these Miami Grand Prix, and these weren’t Formula One Grand Prix. These were for what you would understand to be Group C cars, like 80s Le Mans cars. So these big aero wings, ground effects wings with like V6 and four cylinder motors with great big turbos on them and tons of turbo lag and, you know.
Probably Duke and, you know, plenty 200 miles an hour all day long, but yeah, Porsche, [00:43:00] Porsche 956s, right? Well, I’m maybe, well, I’ll tell you how long ago it was. It was 2018 because I looked up the description. In 2018, Gooding asked me to write about a March 83 G, and the car was in this blue thunder racing livery.
And I thought, blue thunder? What association do you have with blue thunder? Me? Yeah. When you say blue A helicopter gunship. Yeah, a helicopter gunship, a TV show that was a helicopter gunship. Yeah. Well, in the 80s, right? IMSA, which was Le Mans racing, there was a joke that it stood for the International Marijuana Smuggling Association, right?[00:44:00]
And, and the, the reality is that there were a number of teams that basically smuggled drugs and spent the money racing. And yeah, I watched some VIN wiki thing about somebody or was it one that you sent me? I can’t remember. Oh, well, I’ve been digging around like there’s, there’s a couple of areas of history that I’ve been digging around.
I’ve bought the books. I’ve, I’ve not really got into it and, and, and read it properly, but it started for me with this March 83 G. The car’s an awesome car, right? There are only three ever made. One’s in this blue thunder livery, another’s in this red lobster livery, you know that restaurant Red Lobster?
But if you imagine a Porsche 956 that doesn’t have lights. It’s all white. It doesn’t have lights. And where the lights are, it’s as if you’ve laid a lobster over the top of it. So it has these claws coming down like the side of the cabin. One [00:45:00] of the coolest liveries, this side of like the hippie 9 1 7. If you don’t know what I mean by the hippie 9 1 7, have a look at that card.
But yeah, so, so I was, so, so the 83 G, right, is the designed by Adrian Newey, the March 83 G designed by Adrian Newey before he’s in Formula One, the car evolves into the Porsche 956, it’s a winner with a bunch with two or three different engines in it, which if you just stop and think about that. Think about how hard it is to design a racing car around one engine, let alone a car that was good with one engine and then could win with others.
Um, well, Blue Thunder Racing is one of these pot sponsored teams. I think, from my research, there’s a good chance that the chassis that I wrote about itself was [00:46:00] actually used to smuggle pot. I think it’s to stick it in the chassis, yeah? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, but it, it would. You know, the, the, um, so the, the blue thunder guy was this guy, Randy Lanier, really nice guy, um, served a lot of time and he’s out of jail now.
Um, but the, the Miami vice tie is that that is that the, it was all mixed up with flying as well. Right. That the cars and the flying was all sort of tied, tied together. Um, and the, you know, and it’s, it’s, I tell you what it is, right? We’ve all seen Top Gun Maverick, right? And there’s Maverick living in the warehouse with the hot rod plane and the bikes and the, and it’s the epitome of cool, the coolest people in the Miami Vice world.
Were the people that flew the [00:47:00] planes that that and and the fact that you could, you know, you, you could, you, you could have, uh, you, you could be, you, you could be Top Gun Maverick, right? And, and not have to take the army shell. You could do, you could have done it flying. Drugs easily if you were ethically, um, if you’re ethically, uh, compromised in, in, in that kind of way.
Yeah. Um, so old, uh, so, so Lanier and the blue, so blue thunder, right? I reckon they were sitting around smoking a joint one day. The show comes on and they’re like, that’s fucking cool. What are we going to call the team? I mean, one of them, um, the other guys, the Whittington brothers, they did a sponsorship deal where, uh, it was like for, for a perfume.
And they bought somebody else’s perfume, relabeled it, hired all these models to walk around the pits spraying people with the perfume. And it was like whoever’s perfume on the side of the car, all funded by drug smuggling. [00:48:00] I’d get rid of the smell of the puff, wouldn’t it? So the car, there was a car on the lawn at Pebble Beach last year.
And it was one of my favorite stories about this, that the Porsche did the 935, right? And it was the rules at Le Mans where it had to be like a silhouette shape. But they could do the flat nose and the wide wing on it and the big tail on it. And, and there’s socking great turbo on it. So it’s like a normal Porsche, normal Porsche flat six, but with a giant mode, obviously strengthened, right.
But with a giant turbo on it, well, apparently it, well, I mean, I’m no expert, but according to the Porsche people that I, you know, did my pebble docent stuff with, um, Kramer, the privateer. Developed a version of the turbo in a different aero package that so their car was better than anybody else’s. It became known as the K3, the 935 K3, but he’s [00:49:00] fundamentally different car from the 935.
Well, Kramer, um, so knowing this, right. The Whittington brothers agree with the, with Kramer that they’re gonna be able to drive at Lamar. So they turn up at Lamar and before the race, Kramer’s there with like Klaus Ludvig and the other German drivers. And he is like, you know, right. You know, Ludwig will start, bill Wittington will be next.
You know, other Wittington will be, and the, and the Wittingtons are like, no, no, you don’t understand. Like, we wanna start the race. If the car breaks. We are not gonna race. We’re not coming all the way from America to not get a race. And they’re like, no, no, you don’t understand IMZT manager. I say, what happened?
Well, what would it take for us to run the tee? Well, you’d need to own the car, Joe. Well, how much would that be? Throw the number. Were throws out an random number. The car at most was worth a hundred grand. [00:50:00] He says 250 Grand Kramer says. So Dick and Bill look at each other and one says to the other, go back to the trailer and get the duffel bag.
And they buy the car on the spot and win the race and win the race in the rain. In the,
that’s been some good puff. Must have been some good puff, right? Um, they own road Atlanta and the thought was that what they used to do was they would fly two identical planes. Two planes would take off from like one from a race location, say, and another one from some spot in South America, say. And then as they approached U.
S. radar, one would. Go under the other and they would fly like this, the road Atlanta and road Atlanta has a long straight on it. So road Atlanta, [00:51:00] super long backstretch the two planes. would, would come along and one plane still underneath the other one and, you know, the one with all the dukes in would land on the runway and the other one would carry on to its like legitimate, uh, uh, location.
Now the way that story cropped up was that people driving on the track would notice these weird skid marks.
Because it’d be like, if you think, think about what a runway looks like versus what, you know, this year and a half way down that, you know, like the part of the track where it’s like wide open throttle and there’s like skid marks there, you know what I mean? That’s not, uh, so yeah. So, um, uh,
the other thing, and we maybe even talked about this, but before I’ve talked about it a lot, cause it really, um, got my attention was, um, that podcast I listened to the sneak. That was about that NASCAR [00:52:00] mechanic, Mario Rossi, who disappeared. He was in the engine builder and he disappeared. And without wanting to give away what happens in the sneak podcast, cause it’s an amazing story, brilliantly told without wanting to, to, to give away.
You know, what I want to do is plot spoiler. Um, it’s exactly, it’s where NASCAR meets Miami vice and the intersection point was Mark, the last time I saw him is like, you know, there’s a boat near my storage unit. He’s looking at the boat. I’m like, why are you doing? He’s like best source of date. Correct.
Big block motors, his boats. In the seventies, people were going to junk yards, taking motors out of Cadillacs and so on, taking big block motors out of cars and pushing them in boats. And now it’s a great way [00:53:00] to, to, to, to, to find them again, right? So that intersection between cars and boats, think about Miami Vice, think about Crockett.
Yeah, he has the Ferrari. He also has a cigarette boat. Why do you have the cigarette boat? Because you might just. Land the float plane out to sea and you go out in the boat and you pick it up and you come back and you need the boat to be as fast as fuck because the customs guys are going to try and intercept you.
You need to be out there. Grab the stash and back again as fast as possible. You would clearly need to be some mean pilot to land in the open ocean. Maybe you don’t land in the open ocean. Maybe they just circle and chuck the stuff out. But the point is that that was the point of those cigarette boats. I think that was how Mario Rossi got wrapped up in that hole.
I think he didn’t just build engines for [00:54:00] race cars. I think the race car engines went in some hot rod boats as well. And I think that meant that he got mixed up with some, uh, some people who it might have been better that he didn’t get. Mixed up with I think they had that nine five three five at Goodwood first of a speed last year.
Yeah, it’s it’s white Well, I mean, I was sorry and whether or not it was that one. They had a 935 I think it was this orange one to be honest. They’re awesome. Awesome cars. Oh, yeah They were originally designed with the wide body all the way up the door. Regulators were like upset about it and that’s why they had to take the doors off.
So if you, because if you look at a 935 at the side, it looks like a 911 class house and everything is completely 911. One of the things very noticeable is that it almost seems, it’s almost like one of those hot rod Volkswagen Beetles when you sit, when I was [00:55:00] looking at it on the lawn of Pebble because the windshield’s so, uh, so upright.
Yeah. Um,
so, uh, here’s a topic, Hagerty, the classic car insurance company, are buying all the car shows. So, for example, they bought the Amelia Island Concours, partly, I think, because Bill Warner wanted to retire, and it was like his thing, and you might think to yourself, well, can you buy a Concours? Well, I guess you can, because Hagerty have been, because it’s been an ongoing concern.
So if you, in the UK, um, HubNut does that event, the Festival of the Unexceptional, where, you know, if you’ve an Austin Maestro, you can take it along kind of thing. Um, well, I know, right? It’s not your bag, but these, these, these things are [00:56:00] hugely Uh, these things are hugely popular, you know, each to each their own, right?
There’s a place for everyone. Yeah, definitely. So now Hagerty are buying all these classic car shows. What is that? Is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? I guess I had considered it was a safe pair of hands, you know, and it’s nice that they’re investing in the future of, of the hobby. You know, if I want cars to carry on being driven and used and Hagerty’s business is.
Driving and using cars. I’ve met McKeel Haggerty on a number of occasions. I’ve seen him speak in person on a number of, I’ve sat around boardroom tables with him and heard him contribute. The bloke gets cars. The bloke loves cars. Um, Of all the people to be buying up everything, you know, more power to him.
I’m just a bit worried that he’s going to [00:57:00] be by 2040. He’s going to be the emperor of classic cars or from capitalism. It happens in every industry. I’m not talking about the business side of it. I’m talking about what does that do to the classic car movement? What was once something that was independent has now become.
Not just a corporate entity, but one particular corporate entity and a particular corporate entity that has a particular agenda. And I, I want to know whether or not I’m paranoid, you know, I, I spoke to, uh, an old friend, um, you know, somebody who’s been really influential to me, um, over, uh, you know, at Pebble Beach last year and his.
He was the person who, when I was like, you know, hanging here buying everything, he went, yeah, how do you feel about that? And I said, you know, I never really thought about it before. And he went, yeah, [00:58:00] I’m not sure how I feel about it either. And that was what set me thinking, what implications does this have for, you know, is it a good thing for English heritage to own all the, uh, you know, castles and earthworks of a certain kind in, in Britain?
Yes, I, I believe. But they don’t make enough money, like, so, they need protected. Car shows? I mean, it’s They’re owning sh they’re owning shows, and, and so, so instead of just saying, you know, there’s the old car space, and I’m gonna insure it, they’re saying there’s the old car space, I’m gonna insure it, I’m gonna protect my own business.
By making sure people are still driving on the road and the way that I’m going to ensure that they do that is by making sure there’s a really vibrant community of [00:59:00] shows and, and events, because if there’s no shows to go to, you know, nobody’s gonna, if there’s, if there’s no event to go to. It’s nice to show off.
Yeah, isn’t it? I mean, let’s be honest. It’s, it’s nice to go and play with your toys. People don’t do it enough. So, you know, I think that should be encouraged. Yeah. But all of it being these shows that used to be independently owned and now all, you know, the whole there’s a sense of you know, when the music label owns the band’s music you know, there’s something weird about that to me.
As I say, until I had the conversation with Mark Gessler, I hadn’t had any thought about it at all. And then after that conversation, I was like, you know, I like McKeel Haggerty. I just. Don’t like power [01:00:00] concentrated in one in 1, 8, 2. Yeah. Yeah. I mean there’s, yeah, and there are plenty of parallels as how as to how it can go both ways, can’t you?
Isn’t it, doesn’t it? Uh, and often, you know, it doesn’t, you know, the, uh, the regency doesn’t survive down the generations, if you like, in terms of, uh, if you’ve got a really talented general, doesn’t mean the son of the job, the son of the king is gonna be any good. Um, so yeah. And Haage are a publicly traded company.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, they’re gonna be driven by. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, there’s a sound business case, right? That, that, you know, if you’re insuring cars, you need to, you know, if you can create a theater for people to use the cars and then protect that, you know, it’s a bit like Drive the values.
That’s what you can do. You can drive enthusiasm and drive the values. So the more they do from that point of view, it’s going to be a good thing, I guess. Um, it does, it’s difficult for it not to, you know, drive some level of homogeneity because it’s the same company with the same people with the same heads.
[01:01:00] So therefore they can only have so many ideas. Um, but you know. I actually had lunch with with the guy that’s that’s lunch dinner. I should say with because Wayne it’s it’s I say this is it’s not really me. It was Wayne knew the guy. So I tagged along and we we had we had dinner in a in a restaurant at Pebble.
Um, a couple of years ago, um, he is, um, you know, well, I, I like the people that I meet at Hackety, you know, of all the companies to be doing it, you know, I feel, I, you know, I almost feel, I feel better about that than I felt about Mercedes buying everything at Brooklyn’s, you know, even though that was. If it hadn’t been Mercedes, if it hadn’t been a German company, it maybe wouldn’t have stuck in my craw in quite the same way, but at the same time, I recognize that Mercedes are an excellent caretaker.
Um, Hagerty are that caretaker. Um, there is, [01:02:00] and maybe, you know, maybe a small Concorde. You know, maybe the festival, the unexceptional and other British Concord and Concord in Germany and France and so on, maybe they can benefit from, you know, techniques that are used in, in other, you know, Concord around the world.
You know, I don’t, I, there is, it’s, uh, yeah, it’s just weird that an amateur thing’s becoming corporatized. I think that’s my basic contention. Yeah. Um. All right, we’ve talked for ages. Let’s do the quickfire. We’ll probably talk for another half an hour in the quickfire. Um, what is your favorite car movie?
Or what’s, what do you think the best car movie is? Or, or both? Well, I can’t profess to have watched all the car movies. So, you know, any, take it everything, caveat it. But, I [01:03:00] saw this on the list, um, about an hour ago. So, um, I reckon I difficult to, I, I haven’t decided yet to narrow it down to, uh, an actual winner, but for different things.
And we can include the next item on the list, which is Best Car Chase in the same conversation, I think. ’cause they are in inextricably linked. Um, I like taxi, the original one in French where he’s driving. Is it that Citron or is it a, was it a, or was it a Pergio? The one that comes up on like jacks and lowers itself down and stuff.
And it’s basically a romance whole thing. Yeah. Is it white? White? Yeah. It’s a photo 4 0 5. 4 0 6, isn’t it? Yeah, six. But like, it’s like, you know, it’s essentially a soppy romance movie, um, broadly as I recollect it through the f of a, a wild Zane living room. Um, yeah, that was pretty special. But the, the, because the opening scene, the guy gets in and goes, get me to the airport, like, you’ve gotta get me to the airport.
And he’s like, well, how long have you [01:04:00] got? And he sets the time on his watch and gets there, like, quicker. But the guy throws up when he gets out of the back of the thing because it’s been so violently driven, like a touring car through the streets. So that’s pretty good. I enjoyed that. I’ve only seen that once.
It was a long time ago, but I remember thinking it was pretty cool. I like the one in France, obviously, with, um, uh, the assassins bit going on. I can’t remember. Ronin. Ronin, yeah, that’s pretty good. Um, I like that essay quite a lot. Um, Not just the S8, there is the scene with, um, there’s three of those, there’s this scene everyone remembers at the end with the M5 and the Peugeot 406, where Robert De Niro sitting alongside, they got a left hand drive car.
And so, and then rigged it up and, but his reactions are real, right? So the car’s being driven and he sat on the other side. Do you see what I mean? They use a British registered right hand drive car. So the front drive, he does it like he’s [01:05:00] bricking it at points. And when he is, is that like, cause he’s next to a stunt driver who’s doing it.
He’s giving it a 10 out of 10. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. There’s a scene. I remember a scene with a Brown Mercedes, like first generation Mercedes S class. And I remember enjoying that scene very much and, and, uh, yeah, yeah, that is a good movie for, for, yeah, it’s got some quality bits. So when he does that lovely four wheel drift in the S8 round the corner on cobbles at the top of the hill to go back down the next street, that’s just chef’s kiss.
Really nice. Um, but, uh, yeah, so I like that. And then I know it’s cake. Yeah, I know it’s cake, but like. The Bad Boys 2, 550 scene, where he’s sliding it around and firing an Uzi out of the window. I mean, like, come on. It’s, it’s just lovely. That whole scene where they’re, like, dropping shit off the back of, or is that in Bad Boys 1, where they’re dropping stuff off the back of, uh, car trailers?
And bouncing them on the road. No, that is bad boy 2, and he’s driving the [01:06:00] 550 in between it. And, you know, it’s early CGI, so some of the bits you’re like, Alright, it’s a like, it’s a little bit like, that’s computer enhanced. I mean, it’s still pretty cool. People are getting hit in the face with like, flying cars.
Um, and massive 550 V12 wailing through the whole thing. So, uh, it’s pretty cool. I quite enjoyed that. I think, uh, for me, um, I always would say that, uh, I thought Le Mans was, uh, was my favorite car movie. I’m not sure if it is now. I’ve, I’ve watched it so many times with Ollie, I’m not sure if I’m a bit over it.
Um, I do think Le Mans is probably the best movie that I’ve watched about motor racing. The Santa movies. The center documentary is really, really good, um, as, as well. But, um, I don’t know what, and I don’t know what I’d say my, my favorite car movie is. I mean, two lane blacktop deserves a mention, but what I would say for car chases, I encountered this on [01:07:00] YouTube.
Um, in the wake of Dirty Harry, there were like a bunch of Italian movies made that were like Italian versions of Dirty Harry. And there’s one movie called Roma Violenta, which you don’t need to speak much Italian to, to understand it. And the clip that I remember is, is, uh, there’s a armed robbery. And the bad guys make off in one of those BMW sedans, early 70s sedans that are like the 1600 or 2002s, but were a bit bigger and they had the, the square lights.
So there was, was it Neue Klasse? Is that what they called it? It was like the Neue Klasse design, but the bigger, anyway, one of those. So the bad guys are making off in, in there and the good guy, he’s following in a burgundy alpha sedan. And, uh, Um It’s through Rome. [01:08:00] It’s really pacey. It’s really gritty. Uh, there’s one scene where, um, the bad guys like cut across a park and, uh, uh, there’s another, and, and there’s some people waiting at a bus stop and they machine gun the people at the bus stop in the hope of holding up the, the, and a lot of the clips on YouTube, that bit’s edited out because it’s so.
Fucking gratuity. . So absolutely gratuitous. But, but they, uh, and then like they, they hold some people up and they machine gun him again. And there’s, there’s another scene that I remember. I used it in one of my classes one time or one of my students, um, said about that his favorite scene was that the heroes, like this blonde guy with, with like a big mustache, which the, the Italians call I Ibai Conquistador, which is brilliant.
This is Clay. Uh, uh. Clay Regazzoni, one of Ferrari’s engineers, one of Ferrari’s, like, employees, described Regazzoni as having a baffy [01:09:00] conquistador y, and I always remember that, because that’s the, that’s the kind of mustache the hero has, right? And, and so, you know, the windshield has been riddled, this alpha’s been riddled with bullets, so you see him, like, lean back.
And he puts his feet up and he kicks the windshield out. And you can see like the wooden dash and one of those shifters that comes out of the kind of out of the floor, but more out of the dashboard. So the knobs really close to, to, to the, uh, to, to the steering wheel. Um, what my student pointed out was it’s that moment where the chase, where there’s been the chase, then there’s been the out of order.
incident at the bus stop. Now, with the kicking out of the windshield, that there comes some like 70s widdly woo music and the chase speeds up. They’re like outside a town, like the chase has a has a rhythm to it. I can’t believe I’ve waxed so lyrical about Roma Violenta. It’s like an eight minute car chase and there is a bit of under cranking, you know, it’s sped up in [01:10:00] places, but it really, uh, Really enjoyable.
Okay, you have a two car garage in Monaco. What’s in it? Money, no object. Money, no object, but you and your wife, this is, these are the two cars for you and your family. Yeah, so I won’t be anything stupid. I don’t know. Let me have a think about that one. I mean, my instant thought is to have something like city useful.
Well, I’ll go first whilst you’re thinking. Um, my first one was exactly what you thought after I have something practical, right? My wife needs to drive something. Um, a Turbo S Cabrio. A late model Turbo S colour. I was thinking actually more city practical than that. I was thinking like a Yaris GR. Nah.
Well, you can have your Yaris GR. On the other side of my garage, and I’ll say it now before I think more and change my mind. A Bentley. [01:11:00] Period. Proper Bentley. I was thinking about those 599s you could get with a manual. Ooh! 640 horsepower, V12, front engine, rear wheel drive with a stick. I mean, it cost me a lot of money because I think they made four of them.
It doesn’t cost you any money. It’s this magic garage. Oh, well, I mean, in which case I definitely have one of those. What colour? Black with the pentagram alloys. Like, if I’m going to cheese dick it, then fucking suck on it. With red interior or, or, or cream interior? I don’t know. I might go for a sort of a nice, I don’t know.
Nah, probably like a, yeah, sort of a charcoal leather interior or something like that. Or maybe no, no sort of like graphite y sort of leather interior, I think. The black exterior, greyish interior. Yeah, but I think maybe that sort of grey Alcantara suede. I quite like that. Um, [01:12:00] most impressive rental car? Um, well, as you know, I’ve done about 25, 000 miles around America’s west coast natural national parks over multiple years, costing me far too much money on holidays, um, in a selection of Mustangs.
Uh, starting with the, the V, the, uh, the small one, um, and then working up to a series of V8s over multiple years. I have had amazing times in those cars, given where we were and, you know, runs up, you know, extinct volcanoes and back down and stuff to get back down before they stop serving gluten free pasta because my wife’s having a sugar moment and stuff in this beautiful sunset, thrashing a V8 along like empty roads because everyone left the National Park ages ago, we passed them leaving when we were on our way up, but it’s a lovely time to visit National Parks because you’re driving up empty, beautiful roads in the sunset, right?
yeah, And then, you have your moment up there, [01:13:00] wearing this hard hitting one hair, and then you drive back down and race to get back to the restaurant in time. But you arrive at like, ten to nine, and then have a three course meal. And they’re really nice about it, just tip generously, you know? But, uh, um, yeah, so those things have got to get mentioned.
But, yeah, I mean, at the other end of the scale, we had that, um, No, actually, no. Okay, yeah. I was going to say that 406 we took down from Paris, well, just after they came out, down to the Côte d’Azur. And then we got moved on by the police at five in the morning from the services we were sleeping at and they banged on the window and went and barked at me and you and I looked sleepy and I went, uh, d’accord?
And they just cursed us out and drove away. We got off, we got off the Eurostar, went to the rental car place. They gave us the rental car and it was brand new. It had like three kilometers on it. And, and then I had to get it out of the parking station, which was tighter than an ant’s [01:14:00] nether regions. And then I had to get it out of Paris.
And I remember being so, I remember getting it out of Gardunor and thinking what an asshole that station was and being nervous about the streets. The next thing I remember was the juror and um, It’s from rain on the screen and the wipers working. And it was the first time I’d ever experienced wipers.
You know what it was? It was a, it was an early pre, it was an early second generation one that had like the clear lens headlights and the grill. was like more of a mouth than a grill. It was a really good looking car, not for nothing. Peugeots now, I think, are really good looking cars. I think Peugeot are really nailed styling.
Um, they often do better in the face than they do in the sort of nether regions. It’s a bit like a dog that’s got a giant head and a really small ass. I think sometimes we’re with [01:15:00] Peugeot’s, uh, styling, but I love that, that 407, I do remember being woken up. We also woke up, we also, they woke us up and we went into the services and had steak free for breakfast.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was nice. Yeah. I wonder why, I wonder why I’ve got high cholesterol. And it bears saying that those service, the services food on Europe is better. It’s not great, but it’s better than you get. It just is. Except for those independent ones that are run by farms and they usually got some cool stuff there.
Anyway, we very much digress. Um, but yeah, um, reality is I wouldn’t get away with a Yaris GR on the other side when the missus could have like a dream Ferrari. So that would be in the other side of the garage. Um, my, uh, my most impressive rental car was, uh, when Mark Newton and I went to the 2006 NASCAR race at Fontana in LA and he [01:16:00] rented an infinity G35 sedan.
So you’re Nissan, um, but with like a four door sedan body and it had this, at the time, Infiniti had this really exciting, like, catamaran styling going on. It had these oblong headlights that were a bit like, you know, early seventies Mercedes with those oblong headlights, but they were leaned back. It was a bit visually challenging at the time.
I remember pointing them out to you and, and Dents. Um, and both of you being a bit like, uh, this is when I was getting married, like 2006, something like something like that. But, um, at the time we, we had one, um, so after Fontana, when we were driving home, we came off one freeway and north of LA somewhere.
And it was a sweeping. Right hander. And I don’t know why Mark was going as fast as he was, but we were in this like right hander about like 120 miles an hour or something like that. And, and there was a suburban on the hard shoulder and it pulled off the [01:17:00] hard shoulder. So in the turn, uh, well north of a hundred miles now, Mark had to use some break and the thing was fine.
The thing was just composed. Yeah. Mark didn’t panic and didn’t hit the brakes too hard and you know, the, the, the, you know, we shingled on there was plenty of room and there was no reason to panic. I was at that moment, that car impressed the, the, the, the Jesus out of me. I, I’d never encountered like a middleweight sedan that could do 140 miles an hour.
Like that easily before. I mean, my Laguna could do 140 miles an hour, but it was like, you know, that was like, you know, that was the big motor in the plane wrapper. And it was as rare as Ben’s teeth, right? That, that, and because that Infinity was rear wheel drive as well. I just thought those were epic.
Epic cars. Um, the other one that ought to get an honorable mention very briefly is the white Nissan Micra [01:18:00] that I rented on, uh, when we went to that Greek, um, what’s his name? That Greek Island, which all the pretty pictures they have of the beautiful Louisa. I can’t remember it come back to me. Uh, but we went there and, uh, we, for the last day we had to check out and our flight wasn’t till like.
9 o’clock or something like that in the evening. 9. 30, I think it was. So we had all day. So I said, well, let’s like rent a car and just drive around. So we went and looked at the, uh, the sort of old, the old ruins and stuff and where they are. They found some stuff from, that they dug out from volcanic action and things like that.
So there’s all sorts of cool like archaeology and stuff to go and watch. Um, so I had to go and look at that. But this thing had no, it was on steelies, black, lost all the wheel caps. absolutely baggy as you like, terrible car in virtually every way. Uh, and, uh, but it didn’t need any fuel. It, when we got in it, it had the fuel light on and, uh, Angie said, are you going to put some fuel in it?
I said, nah, it’d be all right. We’re going to drive around the island for a bit and then drop [01:19:00] it off at the airport. And, you know, I don’t really want to like waste time. So we didn’t, and it beeped at me all the way around. And, uh, Yeah, got all the way there, and then the handoff procedure was, I mean, it wasn’t Avis, can I say, it was a mate of the guy who owned the place that we were renting, sorted it out, and he did make me sign something, but I can’t even remember if I got a copy of it, so, you know, yeah, what we did was parked it in the long stay car parking outside the airport, uh, leave the car unlocked, and throw the keys under the passenger mat, and walk away, which is my favorite checkout procedure of any rental.
So, Much better than standing in the queue. I think they should implement that and stuff. The Swiss need some of that. Oh, don’t they ever? Yeah. The Swiss needs some of that. Plenty of that. I bet everybody did it with, did it work? Yeah. I left the car and we went into the airport. Um, [01:20:00] I’d never actually answered the quick fire question last week of what was the worst car.
That I ever owned. Oh. And I did sit and think about it and, you know, it is a race to the bottom with the stuff that I’ve owned. You know, I’m, we’re, we’re coming, we’re ending where we came in, aren’t we? With my, uh, your shitty cars? Yeah. Yeah. With my terrible cars. And so I was gonna put it to you. Worst car I ever owned.
The blue Corina that I sold to Gypsies. Well, my dad sold to Gypsies for 30 pounds. That blue Cortina that I had, that was pretty bad, wasn’t it? Um. It broke down a lot. It did. Oh yes, it was unreliable too, wasn’t it? Because the orange one, it was very rusty, that orange one. You remember you opened the door one time.
And it always, it did work. It was a bad damp starter. Yeah, so we were almost late for those A levels when I parked it too far down the driveway and I couldn’t push it up the driveway. That’s right. [01:21:00] And we had push out the driveway and then jump in and it would roll down the street and I could jumpstart it easily enough.
’cause I knew it wanted to, uh, I knew it wanted to start. Yeah. Um, yeah. So maybe the Blue Cortina crusader, maybe that. Econoline van that I had here, that E 150 van that I bought from Stanford and then put like 20, 000 miles on and Mark had in LA for a bit and. The one where the brake pedal went to the floor and the, you know, the other story I remember about that van.
Um, do you remember, um, one time when you visited and we were driving on California street in San Francisco and I know it was California street because. It’s the one with the cable cars, and you know what? You know what I’m gonna say? I got it stuck on that white line, didn’t I? It was like wheelspin, wheelspin, wheelspin.
Yeah, that was smoke. Slide sideways down the hill, smoke, smoke, sideways down the hill, sideways down [01:22:00] the hill. Ah, yeah. That was fucking quality, yeah. Now that was a bad car. Um, but like, dude, I mean, I’ve got a video. My Capri was a terrible car, though. Oh, yeah, yeah. It was pretty bad. I mean, of those three, the van worked the most.
Yeah, I mean, I like the eight directional seat control the van had. So, on the passenger side, you could just move it around with one finger. But that was a modification I made. That was a modification I made. It had those brown, it had the brown plastic seat first, but then Mark’s dog Oh I see, is that why it was only screwed in with one screw?
Mark’s dogs chewed that seat up. So I was like, fuck this chewed up doggy seat, this is You felt like, it felt like you were sitting in the loo when you were driving it after the dogs had chewed the seat up. So I was like, you know, and you know where that is now, it’s in Ollie’s shop now, that seat, that’s all that’s left.
Of that van, because the van’s gone, everything else of that van went to the great scrap man in the sky in like, [01:23:00] 2016 or 17, something like that. It’s been gone, uh, uh, uh, a while. Um, yeah, it was, it was, well, it was Moss and oh, man, do you remember at the end, it got all black widowed up because I put it in storage in a field and I, I came back up pretty much.
They recognize the cool. They want to be associated. Paid up, like, the, the meth y dude that was, like, in the field. And, uh, you know, I just got in it and started it. I so wanted to know if it was actually going to start, or if I was going to have to, like, hang out with the meth y dude and try and jump it, or some craziness like, like that.
But it fired up straight away, and I just drove it straight to the nearest gas station. Um, and I had to get, uh, straight to the nearest gas station. As I was putting air in it, there was black widows crawling out from behind the gas station. But from the hunt behind the wheel caps, [01:24:00] like absolutely like I say plural because it did one wheel and I was like, well, maybe I just won’t do that.
We went to the next one. There were two on that one. And I was like, I’m just like, ah, I just, uh, yeah. So then you’re driving and it was full of stuff. And every time, every like little itch or every drop of sweat, you were like worried that it was a black widow down the back of your neck. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and then I put it in my storage unit, drove away, and it was only a week later that I was like, shit, I just put a Black Widow infested vehicle in my storage place with all my other vehicles.
Like, wow, like, yeah. I’d probably just snuff it. Yeah, well, they did, but it took a couple of years to be honest. I was seeing them for a couple of years because Danny used to be terrified whether I, if I went over there with Ollie, because, uh, the, the, the, the bike can’t be enough to, uh, to, to, to kill. Well, I don’t want to have an, don’t want to, don’t want to snuggle.
Yeah. Um,[01:25:00]
I feel like we’ve come to a natural conclusion there. Cool. All right, buddy. Appreciate your time, Mark. Um. I’ll see you next time. Yeah, take it easy, man.
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