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
Tommy Vance, Radio Caroline and Early rock radio in Britain
WASP
Four bands in one: the evolution of Judas Priest
The science fiction theatre of Iron Maiden
Aerosmith or Kiss ?
Production and thrash metal – to remaster or not to remaster
Motley Crue, Backing tracks and the digitization of live music
Mixtapes, and M’s impression of For Whom the Bell Tolls
Listening culture 1980s vs 2020s
WASP – Shoot from the Hip
News – Ford/Tesla (and GM/Rivian) charging infrastructure partnerships
M remains EV sceptical
J loves the hybrid Chevy Volt design
J is flabbergasted by the Faraday Future launch
Tesla, Lucid and Faraday: redefining the car
EV ranges: the utility of 200 miles vs 400 miles
M theorizes that lightweight is better than EV behemoths
The unsafety of cabover vans
44teeth Boothy’s return to the TT
A shameless plug for our book, The Chronicles of Halvar and Clarence
Isle of Man TT: Hickey’s 133 mph lap
Twenty years since the passing of Dave Jeffries
Bullett – Stay Wild
Pau Historic Grand Prix – A balcony overlooking the track: M’s Five Star experience at the Parc Beaumont Hotel
M and the attainable dream of Historic Racing
A critique of Belgium
Three Men in a Ka
The defeat of the Silver Arrows – and the Nazis – at Pau – by Rene Dreyfus
A digression on Mellaha, the site of the Tripoli Grand Prix
J’s digression justifying his factual incorrectness
A thumbnail on Hermann Lang
Accept – Too High to Get it Right
The Ethics of Banger Racing
Quick fire –
F40 or 959?
F40 or F50?
R32 or Focus RS?
GT2 or 488 Pista?
Manual transmission or rear wheel drive?
You can historic race any car anywhere. What and where?
Eulogy to Spa
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. It’s John Summers, the motoring historian. I might need to change that intro. It’s starting to annoy even me, so maybe as the listener it’s annoying you more, but not to worry. What are you going to be instead? Hello Mark, how are you? I’m gonna, I’m, I’m brilliant, mate.
I’m intrigued now. What are you going to be instead of the murdering historian? Before we came on the line here, literally, I was listening to, do you remember the Friday rock show? The only place Tommy [00:01:00] Vance. Tommy Vance, the music vendor. I thought I might take, just steal his jingles. And then I was like, but you’re the murdering historian.
But then I listened to the, the Saxon one rock with Tommy Vance. Do you remember that one? I might just add some cool ones to it. Now I’ve said it, I’m going to start this show with it. And if the BBC want to fuck me for copyright. Is Tommy Vance still alive? No. No. Um, really interesting guy actually. Really worth reading up on.
And a really, uh, interesting, um, interesting bloke. Um, cause he was one of the original Radio 1 DJs who was like out on, you know, like Radio Caroline when they were like the trawler. Floating in the North Sea, he was part of all of that, which means that he was probably mates with Jimmy [00:02:00] Savile and all of those kinds of guys.
So you wonder what went on from that kind of angle. Um, yeah, I, though he became Tommy Vance because he was interviewed. He was in the States, like in the sixties, in the States, in the sixties. I mean, how cool must that have been? But he was interviewed by radio station. They were like, we’ll hire you on one condition.
You have to take this name Tommy Vance because the DJ we were gonna hire was called Tommy Vance, but we fired him. He’s not joining, but we’ve already recorded the jingles. So you just have to use his jingles and take his name. Is that okay? And Vance was like, yeah, of course, like, you can call me whatever you like, if you’re going to give me a proper salary to work playing records.
And, and yeah, yeah. So he was just open to the, you would put in more with, um, John Peel because John Peel was one of those floating around [00:03:00] in the North Sea guys, but it was in no way wrapped up with that whole Jimmy Savile. Um, you know, taking advantage of, uh, of young impressionable, uh, impressionable people.
The other one was Alan Freeman. And, and, uh, yeah. And, and, uh, I always, I always loved him. He would always, uh, I remember he played Wasp’s shoot from the hip, which has the, my emotions coming down. Yeah. I mean, totally out of order, right? Yeah. And yeah, at the time, I remember thinking, did he know what he was, he knew what he was doing.
Of course he did. And he was, and he was thinking the controllers at the BBC, they’re just gonna, are they gonna say anything? It’s like, you know. Mate, it’s actually mainstream metal, if you will call it mainstream at the time, but it was Yeah, it was mainstream, but that was a deep B side cut, [00:04:00] which Fluff had, uh, pulled out of the archive.
Maybe by the album. That’s why I thought of it, that the song is, uh In fact, I was talking about this with my wife the other day, was that she was saying, Who’s that band? But every time they come on, I just know them and I hate them. They just give me a headache. And Ollie was like, motorhead. And I was like, no wasp.
She was like, yeah, wasp. And Ollie was like, weren’t they the ones that you went to and then got COVID? And Dana was like, yeah, that’s about right. And so, yeah, it was them that I, uh, I love wasp. And that’s, I love wasp as well. There’s nothing wrong with wasp. There’s a sound that they have. that Blackie Lawless has, which is just so unique.
And yeah, they’re excellent. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely cool. So I’m going to jump straight to a quick five question now that I had for you. The that Judas Priest or Iron Maiden?
That’s a tricky one. Um, [00:05:00] I mean, Judas Priest for me. I know Iron Maiden are a better live show now. I mean, the thing with Judas Priest is if you take Judas Priest, you get about four bands. because Judas Priest in the 1970s is very different to Judas Priest in the 1990s. Um, In terms of, I mean, you’re comparing like, you know, staying in class with Painkiller, you’d be forgiven for thinking, oh, the singer sounds similar.
Um, but, um, But that’s the greatness of Judas Priest, right? Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, my mate Neil at university said exactly that. Said like, you know, it shouldn’t necessarily be his thing. He was like, Jesus, they changed so much. He was like, who’s this band? And I was like, it’s Judas Priest. And then the next album, he’s like, who’s this band?
I’m like, dude, it’s still Judas Priest. He’s like, good God. Well that’s why O. K. K. Downing’s so bitter, right? Because although he didn’t name and found Judas Priest, he’s the only person in Judas [00:06:00] Priest as we know them who was like in the band in the early 70s. Like before Halford and Ian Tipton joined, uh, before Ian Hill joined, right?
Tipton joins in the late eighties and writes British Steel and Screaming for Vengeance. So the anthemic cheesy songs that put them. You know that made them front and center and that was part of the new wave of British heavy metal. That was Tipton. So I didn’t realize it for ages. That’s why there was so there was always this tension between Tipton and Halford.
This is future John interrupting. Of course, it’s not Halford and Tipton or whatever drivel it was I was saying. Halford is the singer. Tipton and Downing had the rivalry that I’m talking about. Forgive my factual incorrectness. There’s 20 minutes more of this heavy metal drivel. So you can jump forward if you want to learn about [00:07:00] cars or if you want to be edified by the heavy metal drivel.
Now do you remember, in the album sleeve of Ram It Down, it credits the solos? And that’s that’s the pissing competition between the two guitarists because I’ve never seen that done anywhere else. I don’t know if they do that on the album sleeve of, of Painkiller, but you know, whatever. These are artists at the peak of their form, right?
And if people don’t like heavy metal, they might not see it that way. But if you like heavy metal, you appreciate the fact that these are artists at the, uh, at the peak of their form. Um, and I mean, you get to, you get two bands with, with, um, Iron Maiden, but. You get two singers is probably a better way to put it, I guess.
We still play our own Maiden live now and it totally fits the set. Bruce Dickinson can do everything Paul D’Anno did. Yeah, I’m not pushing Iron Maiden, they’re like a juggernaut, right? And what you can’t underestimate about Iron Maiden, [00:08:00] and I’ve said this to you before, that Indian guy that my wife used to work with, who was like all about Iron Maiden, who is all about Iron Maiden, who’s like, you know, dinner with Yannick Gurs, that guy, right, he loves Iron Maiden because they came to India.
They came, nobody else came. And that’s because nobody else figured out the money. Maiden Find found a way to figure out the money. ’cause Maiden had always done it Maiden’s way, hadn’t they? There was no airplay and yet they were still huge.
They, they, yeah. They found an audience and they keep producing more. Our audience loves. And, you know, they’ve got a really interesting art style, they’ve managed to work for themselves as well. And, you know, they’re catchy songs, you know, I mean, I’ve sort of checked out of buying every Iron Maiden on the basis that I feel with whatever album and volume of albums I’ve got, I’ve sort of got Iron Maiden anyway.
Like, there’s additional Iron Maiden out there and I feel good about that because I’ll get to [00:09:00] it someday. Um, but, uh, you know, I don’t have them on a lot. But I do love the stuff I’ve got, I still write them and I saw them recently and enjoyed them and this tour. They’re on at the moment with where they’re, you know, I’m nowadays you can look at the set list, right?
So what I do is I look at the set list like months before the gig. And then do my best to forget it, right? Because you don’t want to be like, because when I saw them, I thought they were going to play my favorite song, the evil that men do. And then for some reason they didn’t just at the gig that I saw them at, right?
Which normally you wouldn’t have been disappointed by that. It was a great gig, but I was like, are you going to put when, when’s the evil that men do? I know the evil that men do. And then it never came. And that was, uh, that was disappointed. But so I’m going to do, I’m going to do you a spoiler on this one.
open with caught somewhere in time and then straight into stranger in a strange land. Wasted years, the last song, [00:10:00] the land last. So I cannot play with madness is in there as well, which doesn’t quite fit, but he’s totally of the period, isn’t it? It’s, it’s that, that time where their sound was totally in the top 40 and, and where they’d moved away from the rawness of the first couple of albums to this sort of synthesize.
Like, you know, kind of Hawkwind space rock kind of, you know, Robert A. Heinlein kind of, you know, it was, it was, they were totally, um, in a place of their own sort of visually and thematically weren’t they at that point? And that’s what Connor loves about them. He loves the themes and the storytelling. And, and I think, um.
You know, I think that stands out. The other thing that stands out about them now is that they’re so, like, Bruce Dickinson is so electrifying live, the, and, or the other. They always were. I mean, like, I’ve seen them, I don’t know, [00:11:00] Three, four times, maybe something like that, um, and you know, big enough venues for them to have Eddie wandering around on stage and stuff and have the big, have the, the, um, the, uh, Eddie version of, of the Sphinx.
Well, I remember you were there for that one where he was behind the stage with the Eddie Gold Sphinx there, like shooting lasers out and shit. Well, we saw him on Fear of the Dark, didn’t we? We saw him at Donington the Dark and slept in my Cortina the night before and it rained. Remember it rained and the car leaked and our sleeping bags got wet.
Bring it on. Yeah, it was. Yeah, that’s not what I remember particularly, but it was, um, You remember the mosh pit for Slayer? I remember that. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, yeah, it all sort of separated out. I was going to say, I rate Fear of the Dark. I mean, and it’s the story itself, and it’s a staple of Iron Maiden’s live show now.
And I totally agree. Everyone nice to sing along to it, don’t they? Yeah. Well, I [00:12:00] do. You know, I’m, I’m, I’m genuinely not one for like waving the lighter in the air, you know, generally that’s not my style. Well, you don’t have to do that these days. You can hold up your mobile phone. That seems to be the thing.
You turn the phone, mobile phone torch on. Hold that up instead. Yeah, I only, I saw, I mean, I saw that on a video the other day and I thought, yeah, that makes some more sense. Rather than burning your fucking hands . Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah. So we go to Aerosmith, my 50th. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. So, that’s my second question. Aerosmith or Kiss?
Um, Aerosmith probably. Although I do like some Kiss I would actually go Kiss. I would go Priest and Kiss for uh I don’t think I like as many albums as much as I like, [00:13:00] of Kiss, as much as I like the stuff like with Ragdoll Yeah. Ollie loves that song. Yeah, yeah. Well, he’s got good taste like that. I mean, I always said it.
But yeah, the um, there’s loads of tracks on that album that are really good. Yeah. And, um, the, uh, the one we’d love in an elevator and stuff is pretty good as well. Um, did I forward you that, um, I, uh, that film I had of, um, that my feed just gave me on YouTube of Slayer playing Died by the Sword in like a club in LA in 1985.
Uh, I thought you, I think you mentioned it. Did you actually send a link to it? Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t. I’ll add the link to it for this. Okay. Because just not for nothing. They always were more. Right? We’ve, we’ve talked about, I feel like I can’t talk about rock and roll now without actually putting them in there because not only for, I don’t want to rant about the rock and roll Hall of Fame.
Right? [00:14:00] Because I understand why it has to be diversifying and inclusive. Right? And, and I understand why, no way, no, how can you have Slayer in there? Because Oli was like, why don’t we listen to it? And I’m like, really Oli? Because there’s just, yeah. In every way, it’s offensive. It’s, the, the, the con the lyrical content is offensive, it’s, you can’t appreciate it unless it’s loud and you’re fully focused on it, and, and then I said it was discordant, and my wife was like, yeah, utterly discordant.
No, it’s not utterly discordant, that’s overplaying it. Um, it is discordant in parts, um, but it’s not in parts as well. Die by the sword in this club in 1985. I mean, King is strong. Hanneman’s solo is just beyond. It’s, it’s as if the live, it’s as if he hits the notes better than [00:15:00] in the studio with a crappy production of Show No Mercy.
Because, listeners, if you weren’t aware, Slayer’s first album, Shown in Mercy, and Metallica’s first album, Kill Them All, both suffer from rather poor production, which blunts their enjoyment by people who weren’t there when it first came along, right? I think that’s fair to say. It doesn’t, it doesn’t. I mean, um.
And I, you’re right, because I don’t know whether this is just through the prism of my having been there to listen to it the first time around, if you like, but there are several albums, or bands, and I’m struggling to think of an exact example at the moment, I’m sure one will come to me, where they re release remastered versions of the original tracks, and it’s shit.
Um, there was a remastered version of Clayman by In Flames, and it’s not as good. I think that’s an example. Let me double check. I have to double check. I don’t know. I need my line in flames. I like in flames. They’re cracking man. But, [00:16:00] um, still in the final cut of, uh, the, the pod, uh, your points valid. And if it’s not, You can still be, you’ll hear it.
Absolutely. Well look, it’s, and, but it’s that sort of thing where you’ve got something. ’cause the bit where he goes, ah, and screams in that track, like, and it goes into the sort of the, the whaling guitar in Clayman by, in flames, which if you haven’t missed it, listeners, this is a botting track, it’s excellent.
Um, but the bit where he screams is, is really outstanding. And it’s sort of, they, they’d overproduced it a bit, it lost some of the raggedy rawness, which diminished it for me. Maybe if I’d only heard the new version, it wouldn’t have done. So, I don’t know. Because it’s still good. But it’s, you know, it’s, it’s that sort of thing.
I’ve, they, um, I listened to, uh, Megadeth. I’ve got some remastered versions. Um, Mustaine has put out of some of the earlier stuff, [00:17:00] it’s just not as good, you know, it’s like, well, I didn’t need you to fix it. There was nothing wrong with it. You know, it’s, I think there’s a difference between remixing and digitally remastering.
I mean, for, um, that album, the Megadeth album that came out when we were, uh, when we were students, um, Euthanasia, um, that one. That was a glossly, slickly produced record, which does better with, you know, the latest remastering. If you listen to that now, it has a clearer, you know, it just, it complements the sound more than doing the original recording.
Um, Yeah, I, I, I don’t know. I mean, I, until somebody pointed out to me that the recording quality of Show No Mercy was bad, I hadn’t really noticed. Um, and I was thinking about the whole thing with all of this talk about Motley Crue at the moment and backing tracks and all that kind of thing. Because I feel like when you see a band like Motley Crue now, [00:18:00] Motley Crue particularly, um.
Vince Neal’s vocals are terrible, right? But in some ways, probably no worse than they were. If you saw them at a club in the eighties where the sound system was shit, then his voice worked now, his voice doesn’t work. But the point is that if what you’re there for is the guitars and most rock guys, yeah, the vocals are there, but the guitars are there.
You’re there for the guitars. The guitar sound is better than ever because it’s so well produced. Now, I even thought that with Wasp, bro, um, when I saw them and got COVID, um, because Blackie Lawler says his back injury, so he wasn’t like moving around that much. The back injury or whatever it was hadn’t come out at that time, but he wasn’t moving around that much on stage.
And I was like, you know, I, I was disappointed by the fact that the show wasn’t as impressive as it was when we saw him like 15 years ago or whatever it was in, [00:19:00] uh, was it Nottingham rock city? We saw him out when he did the face, he smeared himself and climbed up on the big speaker thing on the big mic thing that he had.
And, and, uh, yeah, the land out over the audience. When I saw him in San Francisco just recently, the sound quality bang on, you know, The bang on and and that’s really what you’re there for so, you know, it’s uh, it’s a weird, uh, it’s a weird thing how the live experience is changing as you know, every even the live experience is digitized and produced now to a level that it didn’t used to be able to.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think that’s still nice. But yeah, no, it’s just, it was just an interesting version. I mean, I think when you’ve listened to something hundreds of times and then someone goes back and tweaks it, even if it’s to sort of polish off a smudge or a smear, you notice it and it sort [00:20:00] of irritates you because it’s jars from what you were expecting.
Um, it’s like you’ve got, you know, you must have the same. I’ve got the same thing and you often did the tapes for me and vice versa. Um, where You hear the end of a track and you expect a different track to start than the one that actually starts on the next album because you didn’t have it that way in the mixtape you had at school.
It went straight into like Running Wild or something like that instead. And so therefore you’re like, well, hold on a second. This doesn’t feel right. It should go. Now it doesn’t. What is this shit? And then you’re like, oh yeah, this is actually the album as it was produced. Now, right. Because we listened on shuffle or we listened to individual tracks, you know, for, for, for.
Younger people, or for anybody discovering Heavy Metal now, you’re not discovering it as the individual records come out. You’re discovering it, you know, en masse, right? So when you discover Slayer, there’s not like Raining Blood, 28 minutes and you’re like, wow, like what just, what, what on earth just happened?
It’s not like that. There’s like a dozen [00:21:00] albums and you can read and pick tracks and as a playlist and you know what I mean? It’s, it’s the, the whole. Discovery of music is, uh, is completely different now. It does change it up, because I, yeah, for the, for band, I assume, I don’t know this, but I assume bands are still producing albums in a fashion that it will be listened to through, if you know what I mean, or whether or not they’ve adapted to the stage that they don’t expect that.
Um, Certainly, if you look at people like, um, Beyonce and Taylor Swift from a sort of watching the news and being informed, they certainly seem to have a holistic, you know, sort of themes and big stage shows and stuff that all work to a, to a whole sort of theme and stuff. I think Kanye West did one similar where he was like flying around the universe and stuff.
Um, so they, they have that sort of thing. So you would assume they still do it in the albums as well. But you’re right, the, um, the sort of My brother, uh, younger brother is into his heavy metal and, uh, I would say to him, he would say, Oh, I love that Ram it Down track you sent [00:22:00] me. I’m like, cool. Yeah, it’s excellent.
My best solo of all time. Well, at least in my top three, certainly. Um, and I would ask him if he’d listened to the other ones on there. And he’d say, yeah, I listened to like Hard As Iron. I’m like, well, what about the other ones? And no, because he didn’t have the album. He had the, YouTube didn’t select, suggest the next one.
So it suggested something else. So he drifts off onto So, yeah, you don’t get to experience it quite in the way that it was produced by the artists, which is odd. It’s also, there’s something about the, the active seeking out of music, you know, the purchasing, the going into the town centre, Plymouth town centre, the buying of the cassette, the like, bringing it home and put, you know, there’s a whole theatre associated with it, which is just completely missing when it just like, passively arrives in a playlist.
It’s, it’s, it’s why you You appreciate that people appreciate the culture in a, in a different way. But you don’t realize at the time that you’re consuming the media in that particular form. It’s a really interesting, [00:23:00] uh, Well, and it’s, it’s interesting that like vinyls coming back. And I think part of that is it’s big.
And I mean, physically, I mean, you know, you can get a big picture on the front. It’s a, it’s a ceremony, taking it out of the package and like sweeping it down and then popping it onto play. So. I think there’s a sort of, not, there’s a sort of nostalgia for that. There is, there’s a sort of geeky, like, you know, well, what needle have you got, like, you know.
But also, you know, I think a lot of people aspire to do scratching and stuff later on. A lot of people, sorry, a lot of people aspire to do scratching and stuff as well, don’t they? So there’s a sort of, you know. It’s that sort of kid myself that I’ll learn to, uh, learn to mix as well. Yeah, it’s a little bit like the rise of, uh, Ollie was saying he wanted a Polaroid camera.
You know, I, I find myself explaining to him just what a substandard technology it was and then thinking, why are you pouring cold water on, [00:24:00] on his, like, intestines? But it’s, it’s the instant production and now they’re even quicker. Um, so it’s, there you are, there’s a picture. You took that picture, here it is, physically.
You can hand it to your mate. That’s different, when you aren’t enabled with a phone, you don’t need, you, you sort of lose the need for that, I suppose. But at his age, I guess he’s not tech food up like that.
Should we actually talk about cars for a bit? Oh, if you must. If we must, we must, uh, uh, so we have a structure, don’t we? Well have we, yeah. I, I do. I I did send you that agenda and I have a slightly bigger one, and although we just digressed for, [00:25:00] uh, the length of many podcasts, um. We do have, have, uh, so our first topic, um, and I, I’ve got a silly tone there, but, but you know, the reality is this, the, the reason I put this front and center is this partnership.
I think this partnership between Ford and Tesla is enormous. I think it’s the biggest news, um, in the car space. Um, probably of the year, I would say not, you know, I, I’m not like trying to compare new stories. I, I’ve just. So it’s future John interrupting again. Um, this piece was recorded in those couple of days where Ford had made the announcement.
And then it was maybe, I don’t know, that was maybe the Monday and maybe the Friday. That was when GM and Rivian on the same day made, made an announcement. So, um. It’s a moment in time, [00:26:00] this particular piece, because other people came along with those announcements so soon. But I do feel like this fundamental divide that you’re either with Tesla or you’re not, and the points that I make in this piece remain valid.
You may disagree, but whatever. You’re the one listening. I’m the one talking. And we’ve said on the pod before that the main reason to buy a Tesla is probably not to do with the design of the vehicle, but to do with the fact that you can, you know, be in your own special express line. You know to get your car charged up if you’re actually going outside of the range of the vehicle Whereas, you know the dude with the take an has to be in line with everybody else Which and and what they tell me is the at least in america, you know, the tesla ones, you know Nice and feels premium and you know the charging station that you know Electrify america or whatever have done that you’re going to be [00:27:00] using it with your take an and that every Non Tesla person is using a completely substandard.
So what I’m saying is I feel like Ford looked at the actual nub of the problem and fixed it. In a way that is going to leave guys like Toyota and Hyundai and GM out in the cold. Yeah, I suppose. I mean, it makes sense. Uh, and I scanned an article about it earlier on and, you know, the main point of its article was where does this leave the rest of the motoring industry and talked a bit about the different standards of connector.
One which tesla have and one which all the others were using and then now ford’s abandoning Um to go with tesla’s one, uh as a standard I think what they’re saying is they’re going to develop an adapter that allows ford’s to talk to the tesla one So they’re still in [00:28:00] natively on the other one, but then they, the article I read suggested that in future they would be building cars with the, with the Tesla version.
Um, well haven’t Tesla done some full self driving when it’s actually beta self driving, haven’t they done some, you know, Overnaming where they’re they’ve called their proprietorial standard. They’re like Microsoft windows. They’ve called it like the national American standard connector or something like that.
There’s, there’s, um, yeah, exactly that. Yeah. Um, so it’s a land grab, it’s a land grab, isn’t it? And, and you’re right. I mean, the, the key point I think, um, and I read an article, a couple of articles about this deliberately because, you know, electric isn’t necessarily. My thing right now, but I can, it’s going to be, and it’s going to be everyone’s.
And so therefore I’m keen to see the tech advance successfully, um, and excitingly. Um, but you’re right. The main problem, especially in the UK at the moment is there just is not the [00:29:00] capacity charging capacity space for everyone. There just isn’t. If we’re going to stop making cars at the rate on petrol at 2030 and then transition people in over the next 10 years off, even at the rate they’re doing it, it needs to accelerate by manifold.
Otherwise it’s just going to be. You know, over Christmas last year, there were queues at service stations of two or three hours, uh, on specific weekends, driving down to the southwest, because if you’re going to go down to Cornwall for Christmas. You’re going to have to stop a few times from London, so, um, and for a reasonable amount of time, so that is not exciting.
Also, I read an article by a gentleman in Wales who was driving a, a, uh, electric, um, for a, for a piece for the paper, um, and he said that, you know, he, he would didn’t mind some of the places he charged up, but he wouldn’t want his wife charging up at those places, because they were sort of out of the way and around the back and not very well lit and a bit dingy and, And from my perception, at least what I’ve seen, [00:30:00] the Tesla ones tend to be a bit more front and center and well lit and, um, well, if you’re gonna buy something that, you know, your wife’s gonna be driving home late on her own in.
And I want to round the back by the bins with a shitty fucking connection, like, that’s not acceptable. I don’t understand what’s wrong with the vault design, right, where it uses electric power and when the battery’s flat it has a gas motor that powers the, so every now and again you have to put gas in it if you drive a longer distance, if you don’t drive a longer distance, and it’s completely seamless.
I use it around the town, I plug it in, it never needs gas. I drive up to Napa at the weekend. I don’t need to worry about whether or not it’s got charge. It does 20 miles or 50 miles or 70 miles on the electric. Then it goes on to the gas and I just drive it like a normal gas car. I mean, if I can charge it at the hotel, great.
If I can’t, no problem. You know what I mean? It’s, that [00:31:00] seems to me to be The perfect solution. I have no idea why everyone only wants the, the, the plugin to me. That’s like one hand tied behind your back. Yeah. It’s, it’ll be interesting to see what happens because something’s going to have to shift because it’s not going to work on plan at the pace they’re planning.
So did you see the launch of the Faraday future FF 91? this week. Couldn’t I get any more Fs in that? No, I didn’t. Oh, dude. Well, the first thing is, is, is, uh, as you said about the Lucid, it’s like they could have designed anything and they designed a blob. It’s, it’s, it’s a bit of that, but, um, the launch is absolutely fascinating.
It is a one and three quarter hour online extravaganza, right? [00:32:00] You know, we’ve talked before and we’ve said when is the Chinese Skyline gonna come, you know, when are they going to stop copying and borrowing other people’s designs? And when are they actually going to embrace their own culture in some way, shape or form and create something which is uniquely Chinese?
This might be it. This may be, be it, um, the way that you remember the, the, the thing that was in the 1980s was kind of amusing about the Japanese, so they’d have these crazy acronyms for everything. Like, you know, the one I like at the moment is Acura’s S H A A W A A W D. I don’t know. Do other people think it’s shout?
I mean, super handling all wheel drive, it’s ridiculous, right? It’s they, they still do this a little bit in [00:33:00] the eighties. They used to do it an awful lot. This Faraday future has what they call this six by four architecture. And it’s some like, and there’s like six pillars and there’s four values and they multiply to get, and it’s all like.
Absolutely. Like, I, I watched the first half an hour of it up to the fact, up to the way, up to when they started talking about how it, it had three 5g networks available. Like, so the car has one, but then front and backseat passengers can have their own personal connectivity, completely separate from the fact that the car has all these crazy screens and and all this kind of connectivity, uh.
In it. Um, they’re talking about Spire Marketing. I googled it and they seem to have [00:34:00] made that term up. There’s a company called Spire, but this Spire Marketing they keep talking about. And by this I mean, I think they mean Pinnacle. I think they mean that because they’re talking about being better, like they, they, they are comparing themselves with Ferrari and Bugatti, if you can believe.
I mean, um, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t see the, I don’t see any appeal really in these fat, fuck off, great fat SUV, like heavy as balls. Like, you’re still killing the planet. You’re killing the planet worse. You couldn’t make a more, less eco decision if you tried. It’s, I mean, this one is this Faraday has 1050 horsepower.
Yeah, um, you know, it, it has, and, and, you know, I believe them that it has all the, like, you know, feedback and, you know, it drives and I find [00:35:00] this, I’m thinking, you know, the reality is that if, if you, if you look at what cars are going to be like in 2035. Electric cars, the best, you know, the best electric cars now are going to be what, you know, medium electric cars are like in, in, so in, in other words, the cars that you and I are driving at the moment are going to feel very previous generation.
And I feel like, you know, maybe like the way that. 80s cars might feel now and I feel like as we move through the century We’re going to get to a place where just as a 1920s car Like a 50s car you can just about use on the road at the moment if there’s issues, but you can use it Go back to the 20s There’s far more issues It’s even [00:36:00] more inconvenient.
The lack of performance is even worse. The lack of safety makes it even more bonkers to want to do it. You know, the, the, the, the technology has moved on that far. So I feel like by the middle of the century, you will be able to look back. You that’s by the middle of the century, these electric cars that are all able to talk to each other, which is Faraday future three is got three levels of AI.
Right. They’re saying that they’ve developed the car to have general AI capability, a personalized AI capability, and then what they assume Spire users will have, which is their own personal, secure, private AI environment. And they’ve developed an architecture to make all of this Talk together. Um, I mean, this is Chinese.
Yeah. Yeah. I [00:37:00] mean, that’s a lot of information to share with the Chinese government.
Yeah, absolutely. Let’s not mess about. There’s a lot of middlemen, but essentially any information you share with a Chinese company can be accessed by the Chinese government. Um, and then look, you know, I’m not a U. S. citizen, so my emails coming in and out of the U. S. can and be, can be intercepted by the U.
S. government. So, this is not a, an entirely parochial problem that China’s dealing with, although, let’s be honest, they’re doing it more effectively and more sinisterly in lots of ways, but nonetheless, it is pervasive. Um, and a lot of that stuff’s coming out with the face recognition technology being driven by standards by the Chinese government.
Um, so it’s an impressive, uh, amazing piece of kit. And the other thing you didn’t mention, I had a look at the website whilst you were chatting, is their double density lithium ion batteries that allegedly push this huge leviathan to 300 plus miles of [00:38:00] charge, between charges. 381, they record. Um, which if that’s true is an amazing piece of kit, although I suspect not at, whilst you’re giving it full beans at a thousand dollars per hour down the drag strip, um, but nonetheless, who knows?
No, and, and, uh, you know, I, I, it, it, so this week, um, I sat in a Tesla Plaid and, uh, the, the guy that was, was showing it to us works for Tesla. And, uh, one of the students in, in the group was like, uh, um, said to me, what did I think of the, you know, what did I think of it? And, and the Tesla guy made eye contact with me and was like, I bet he doesn’t think it’s really a car.
And I was like, you know what? Absolutely. Because when Tesla’s first came along, they felt like they were so next generational. They felt like [00:39:00] something different from what I’d. Had gone before and I feel like this Faraday, the lucid and now the Faraday, you know, the futuristic blob with the mega technology that can do, you know, the Faraday guys, they talk about it being three kinds of car, right?
They talk about it being an SUV, a hypercar, and a sedan. You know, it’s that whole like that whole thing. This, this whole conception of a product is not as I’ve understood cars to be. And not how people living in the 20th century understood cars to be. So there’s a sort of, of the other thing they said, right.
And I do think this is, this is interesting is they said, we’ve, we’ve lived through the age of the hardware defined and through the [00:40:00] age of the software defined car. We feel we are now entering the age of the AI defined car. I mean, that’s just bullshit. AIs are not that developed. If you watch the launch, one of the most astonishing things about it is there’s a sort of Elon Musk and DeSantis on Twitter kind of gaps between the different presentations they do and the language in the captions.
And the language that the people use is not quite the same. And maybe I’m wrong. You know, maybe I am wrong. I mean, it depends where, what you plug in and how you plug it in. I, I, you know, with 400 miles range, who gives a fuck, right? Nobody’s driving that thing 400 miles, right? Anybody, anybody wealthy enough [00:41:00] to buy that thing is going to fly if it’s over 200 miles.
They’re not going to sit in the car for all that time. Right? So that range is the only way that range becomes an issue is if you know, let’s, I mean, our friends in LA, Santa Monica to Santa Barbara, um, drive the thing around. If you know facilities to charge at the house in Santa Barbara, because it’s a rental house.
Um, so unless you remember to like charge it at the country club that you’re a member at, you know, you have to be a bit careful because you might not have enough charge to get back to Santa Monica. Well, that is, that, that’s what a 400 mile range does for you. A 200 mile range. You like need to charge it every time you, you, you using it.
It just puts you in a totally different, um, kind of, uh, kind of frame of mind. But no, I’m totally with you that these great big, [00:42:00] heavy, fat things. They, they remind me of, um, of the way that the cars were before the model T that you could only really make money out of making luxury cars. So everybody made the, and famously, you know, the Ford.
Ford’s board didn’t want him to make the Model T. They wanted to make him to make the Model K, which was a luxury model that they knew they could make money on. And, and so I feel like we’re at early doors at the moment where, you know, where, but, but there’s, um, I just feel like I feel what was fascinating about Faraday is that the company are a total startup who are.
I mean, I, I’ve not driven the car. I’m not a spire buyer. So I have no idea how, you know, the comparison process of, uh, you know, wealthy oil scion in the Middle East. I don’t know how he’s going to compare this [00:43:00] with, you know, the AMG Benz or the Ferrari or the Bugatti or whatever else he was, you know, I have no idea what his comparison reference point is.
It’s just a. But I mean, it’s, you know, some of the questions that spring to the, you know, beg to be asked, there’s no point in asking. It’s like, you know, like, why has it got the 1, 080 horsepower? Because, is the answer to that. Because if you’re having an all singing, all dancing hotel room on wheels that does everything for you.
Then, you know, when you get the opportunity to show off to your, the, the, the other shake son, you want to be able to blow his other, whatever he’s got off the track when you blast down, you know, for the once in a, in a lifetime when you give it a squirt. So in, you know, have all the horsepower. Um, and I mean, that sort of rocket ship performance is exciting, you know?
Um, so yeah, I mean, there’s, there’s little arguing with that. I was thinking about what it is, is it feels like the wrong direction to be just because it’s so heavy. Um, and. When I think about [00:44:00] the most pure driving enjoyment you get, it’s almost always from stuff like Caterhams, which couldn’t be more at the opposite end of the scale in terms of less technology and add enormous amounts of likeness.
Um, so, but then most people aren’t looking for that. Most people would just want That’s the thing about bikes, isn’t it? The, the, the reason that bikes are so much fun is the shittiest motorcycle delivers better feedback than just about the best car I’ve ever driven. Yeah, it’s a different experience, but you’re on it and that makes it a big difference.
The, you know, being hit by the wind and the flies makes a huge difference. Um, and it takes a while when you haven’t been on a bike to get used to the floor being just there. The floor is always just there. It’s just usually there’s a door in the way. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking that I, I was, um, thinking about how in a lot of cars, um, if you really think about where you sit, you sit very close [00:45:00] to the front wheel.
You want to sit on top of the, the, the, from the, from where, you know, I was thinking about it. I was thinking about it because of the way that, um, certain vans had that cab over design years ago. Um, you know, vans, I like the first generation of Conline, but because basically there was the headlight bucket and then you.
The pedal box and your feet. So, you know, there was like, that’s why they put, that’s why later economy lines have that little nose on them is just to have a little bit of crumple zone so that you’re less likely to be injured in, in even a small fender bender. And of course, vans like European vans, like the Morris J nine or the Citroen H van, they, uh, they put you even, uh, you know, closer to the closer to the front.
So, um. In the first blog, we talked about, um, 44 Teeth, the YouTube channel that we, uh, that we both enjoy, and we talked about their correspondent, [00:46:00] um, Mike Booth, um, he had that unsuccessful trip to the TT last year when sponsored by, uh, when sponsored by us, um, We should say, um, we sponsored him as part of our, um, literary fantasy, literature, literary venture, the chronicles of, of Halvar and Clarence.
So we had Halvar and Clarence. com on his helmet and then felt bad when he fell off and injured himself pretty badly. But even with one leg, Mark, he is back at the TT this week. Did you see that? I haven’t seen the video, but I saw him. I watched one of the videos where Al was racing that. Or, um, BMW thing, uh, as one of the warm up races, uh, at the, at the BSB Rack Paddock stuff.
I think it’s a BSB, uh, either way, it’s, it’s, there, there’s, they’re, they’re racing these BMW, uh, one make series. And he was having a cracking time, and Boothie was, like, legging up and down the pit lane, carrying tire [00:47:00] warmers and, um, rims and other bits and bobs, because it was sort of wet, dry race. And like looking extremely sprightly and I was delighted to see it.
It’s uh, this is why I wanted to to raise the topic on the pod just to uh, round out the story. And of course we know that this stuff, you know, it’s not just because he seems chipper, that doesn’t mean it’s it’s fixed. Yeah, just because he seems chipper, that doesn’t mean that it’s fixed, but but we can say that the, you know, um, yeah, it’s just good to see him in in good spirits.
Um. On the theme of, of the, the TT of, uh, of a couple of other things. The, should we do the happy news first or the, the Sad Remembrance first? Which do you want? Go, let’s go on. Let’s do the Happy News first. Peter hickman’s. Hundred and 33 Marlin our lap, uh, boys on [00:48:00] Fire. Photograph on Twitter of Michael Dunlop at Hilbury with the wheel right against the curb.
Like using the full width of the road, but you know, the runoff, the only, that there’d be a no runoff, the runoff being a curb with a, with a drain and a double yellow line. Yeah. 20 years since Dave Jeffries was killed. 20 years. Um, which, uh, is astonishing. It’s a reminder of your own, uh, your own mortality that in that 20 years, you and I have gone from being, you know, considering ourselves young, even though we weren’t to, to being like, wow, we’re now not young anymore.
So it’s a remarkable. Uh, transition. And we remember Dave Jeffries. I here’s why I want to remember him, right? Because [00:49:00] those bikes were heavy. Bastards, they were fast and the way that they rode them, they made about as, you know, they were about as fast as modern bikes. Yeah, sure. Down about 50 horsepower on, on modern bikes, but they were pretty much as fast as modern bikes.
But. Heavier with not so good brakes, not so good tires. The whole piece was, was different. And it always struck me about Dave Jeffries that he was good because he was a big guy. And instead of that, like hurting him with the arrow, it helped him actually muscle the bike into the corners and made him faster.
He was just faster. Um, and you know, he, I think it was you, I can’t remember who it was, it may probably you that told me that, um, ’cause he was a big lad, he didn’t do so well or get, get proper rides on the short circuit stuff so much. And therefore we seemed to put in a bit of extra, you know, 110% kind of [00:50:00] cheese on, on the tt.
Um, to sort of reestablish and show out how quick he was and boy did he, uh, he was, uh, awesome to build. Yeah. So, uh, 20 years since the passing of Dave Jeffries.
So nominally we, uh, we’re going to talk about your visit to France and, and the pow. So give me the uh, what was it? Your sales manager used to call that the seven soldiers. The who, why, what, when, how. Give me the, uh, [00:51:00] the SP. Yeah. Um, so it’s Poe as I was informed by the lady whose house we stayed at last time I was down there when I was calling it Poe.
Um, or Powell, whatever I was calling it, but yeah, it’s, uh, it’s quite a little town, like something Batman would do. Exactly, and that’s what she told me off of calling it. It’s Poe rather than Powell, um, but it’s a lovely, it’s a charming little town, um, just on the river, um, down in, um, just north of the Pyrenees, uh, southern France, about two and a half hours south, southeast of, uh, Bordeaux, um, we flew in there and then drove down and got a little, a little, uh, fiesta, um, Yeah.
And we, when we stayed there last year, just to like be in the area and check it out, um, and do some of the mountain passes, which are really beautiful. Um, and there’s some cracking roads. If you go down there towards Spain. Um, yeah, we, we, uh, stayed there and they mentioned that there was this Poe GP sort of race and they do, they do over two weekends.
Um, they do [00:52:00] sort of modern ish stuff. Um, and then they do the Poe, the Poe Historics, which you’re going to see. Um, and it’s about a one and a half mile circuit around the town center. Reasonably twisty. Um, but because it is street circuits, it’s the classic Monaco stuff. So if you book your hotel early enough, and we booked a nice hotel on the corner just above the chicane, you can basically rent a room with a, with a balcony where you can sit out on the balcony all day.
And watch motorsport. Um, and I highly recommend it. On the Saturday morning, we arrived on the Friday night, there was qualifying, there was sort of, um, Uh, there was racing, or at least, um, qualifying, you know, practice on the Friday as well, which we missed. But Saturday morning, at about 8 o’clock or 7. 45, I was woken up by the sound of like V8s and V6s like roaring past, just outside the window, down, down, down a couple of floors.
Which was awesome. Um, so it’s like that scene [00:53:00] in Le Mans, like that scene in, in John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix where Jessica Walters is in the bed with a hangover and the race is going on outside the window and she’s like, ah, I hate the noise. Yeah, although I was loving the noise. I never thought, I never thought of the sheer convenience of one’s grandstand being.
Oh, dude, it is so well. On the side of one’s room, of one not needing to get dressed, of one being able to sip one’s coffee whilst, you know. It is, it is, it is the best. So let me, let me, I will look up the hotel, because they were very nice. And, uh, it’s, essentially the, the, if you imagine the track, the clock face, we were at about, uh, one o’clock, half past one, around, round there.
Uh, and there’s, it comes around the outside of a park on the edge of town, um, and um, there we go, um, it’s sort of, it’s a clockwise, um, circuit, and we, we stay in the, uh, Park Beaumont Hotel, [00:54:00] um, which is just on the outside of the track, so you can, you rent in advance. It’s not the cheapest, because it’s a five star hotel, I wouldn’t usually stay in that sort of thing, but it’s I think including breakfast for three nights, it was like 900 euro, um, for a room with a balcony overlooking the track.
So we sat outside. I don’t know whether we were the last to book, because all of the balconies had sort of floors above with balconies over them, so they had a bit of a roof, whereas ours didn’t, it was just sort of on the end, so it was just open. But most of the time it was lovely and sunny, so we just sat out there with the shades on.
Where they took the stuff out of the minibar fridge and loaded it up with beers from the local Carrefour. Uh, and uh, sat out there in the afternoon having a little, uh, cold one. Watching the, uh, watching the cars zoom by. Excellent way to spend a couple of days dude. That sounds pretty bucolic. I would go to I would I purposely I know you’d been but I purposely hadn’t like engaged with [00:55:00] the whole thing until we talked now and the standout for me I really hadn’t grasped the convenience Of your bedroom and the loo Right there and then the balcony right there and you’re like minibar with the beers in that that is that’s an elevated uh Dude, I mean, the other thing is about it, it’s a five star hotel, yeah?
So, the restaurant downstairs, there’s Le Jeu de Pomme, which is a little restaurant that we looked up. I was looking out the window, and I was watching the cars go past, and down to your right, on the first evening, I was looking through, and it’s the classic sort of stone French building, big shutters, and of course, it’s the end of a beautiful day.
The shutters are all thrown open. It’s a restaurant, so there’s like trestle tables in there, and you can see people like holding forth and drinking their bowls of wine, having a lovely time in there. Well, that restaurant runs the restaurant in the hotel as well. Um, so, on the Sunday night, it was booked for the Friday night, for the Saturday night.
But they do, because it’s a, it’s a five star hotel, there’s room service up until midnight. [00:56:00] So, we arrived on the Friday night and I ordered a burger and chips up to the room and a bottle of wine and, you know. So they do like, you know, I think I had a nice pasta on the Saturday. You don’t need to leave the room.
You just have amazing food delivered to you all day. Um, and breakfast is included downstairs. So you can go downstairs, wander outside and stand by the pond where all the grunwy, the little frogs. That later on in the evening, you think, What the fuck is all that racket? It’s the frogs. And they are going for it down there, having their springtime shenanigans, and letting the world know.
There’s all these frog chorus the whole evening. But, you know, up until about, I think, 9. 30 on the Saturday night, there were still cars thrashing around. At one point on the Sunday, I wandered off to the Carrefour to get some, some bread and cheese, and a bottle of, a bottle of badoir, and some wine to sit on the balcony and eat that for lunch.
Again, don’t, don’t overcomplicate these things. French bread and cheese with a bottle of wine on the balcony, as Clotaire would have us do it. Is the way to do it. Don’t fuck about, just have it awesome. Um, and uh, [00:57:00] I was walking along, and uh, that guy parked up next to me as I was carrying the rucksack with the stuff back from the thing.
And I was like, oh wow, an original Alpha GTV, like that’s, that’s a nice car. Really red, like really nice, like proper Alpha GTV. Um, and then behind him, I was like, hold on a second, have I stumbled on something? The next car was like a 430. The next car was a 488. The next car was a, was a, um I think it was a McLaren and then there was about nine Porsches in a row of like 911s.
There was a nine, because I thought, hold on, there was like a white Carrera GT4, then there was a white 911 GT3. Um, and then a whole bunch of different boxsters and stuff as well. And it turns out when I got back up to the room, they were doing laps of the track. So it was a big sort of SQ of people who’d obviously on what I didn’t know if you have to book or have a certain amount of cars, but I think you have to have a certain period of car, a notable car, and you have to register in advance, but if you do so.
You can go and drive the truck. So on the Sunday they were [00:58:00] like, had a half an hour where the, these hunters were taking their sort of, their pride and joy around the track that they just watched people thrashing about. So, it’s like, I think it’s like 40 quid, 40 euros for the day for paddock access. And you can sit in any stands and the stands weren’t particularly busy.
Um, on the Sunday for the sort of the big races in the afternoon, the stands were, well, I could see were moderately full, but most of the rest of the time, because there’s so much of it, it wasn’t all that busy. So, you know, we didn’t get, unfortunately, annoying me, obviously, partly because Angie’s struggling with mobility at the moment until the operation, but we didn’t get out and about too much.
And I didn’t want, I could have gone over on my own. She was happy, more than happy for me to get to it saying I should, but I didn’t want to leave her. We’re only down there for the weekend. I want to leave her for like four hours while I wander off to the, to the, uh, other side of town to look at cars on my own.
So, um, and I would, you know, at the end of the day, they drove more past the window. You know, it’s quite easy to be passive when they’re delivering you your auto porn, um, about 50 [00:59:00] feet below you. So, um, and yeah, just being able to sit there and watch it. I mean, next year I’ll take. a better camera, uh, and the tripod in the luggage.
And then I’ll be able to set up and do, like, really cool video, and I’ll get a just slightly different rooms, I’ll get a better view of the chicane, because there was a tree in the way. But, yeah, you’re nitpicking, I only booked it, like, three months before the event, and I still got a balcony overlooking the, uh, The track, the people in the hotel were absolutely lovely.
Um, really charming. When we arrived, there was no parking spaces except the disabled space. So I just parked in it, went in and told them and they, and the guy went, it’s fine. I was like, well, there’s no other spaces now and there’s no disabled space. He went, it’s fine. That was the end of that. So no problem.
It’s like when I had parked in Italy and I asked if there was a hotel parking space and they said, yeah, definitely. And then I got there, there was about 20 spaces and I think there was at least 20 people in the hotel. So we did get one, but I ended up parking underneath the hotel in what looked like the sort of actual owner’s place, just rammed in against the [01:00:00] walls, hoping that he’d get out.
And when I told one of the ladies who worked there, um, she just shrugged and went, is it on the hotel grounds? I said, yeah, she went. So they were pretty tranquil and continental about that whole thing. Um, so yeah, I mean, it was a little bit expensive, um, but for the access you got, you can’t knock it. It really is just a mini Monaco experience.
So bunch of different races. I had a look at the timetable and we’ll put a link in in for that. Um, from your. Perch on the balcony looking down from on high, um, did his majesty have any cars that he would have been particularly interested in taking home or driving or just that he would like to offer comment on?
Uh, I mean, I would have taken home probably half the 911 field. The Porsche field would have probably, my garage would have gone from none to [01:01:00] lots pretty quickly. Um, I liked the AC Cobra. Um, I liked I think it was a 275 that was in that field. I rather liked as well. There were several cars milling around the place.
I would have taken it. I mean, it was, it was, it was really an eclectic event. Um, and You know, the, the little, um, I don’t even know what they were, that little one make series of cars that I sent you, the ones of them like hustling it around, um, the ones that look like something that’s a mini version of something out of, uh, the anthill mob kind of ones, those little ones with, um, you know, they’re sort of legends where it’s like, got a, it’s, yeah, I know those where it’s like a midget, like a modern midget racing series.
Tony Jardim has one. Yeah, either way, those things that they were, they were rinsing them and, uh, plenty of, like, opportunity to see them, like, slithering around the S bends outside, um, that, like, cracking entertainment, um, and it’s, [01:02:00] it’s one of those ones where, again, I was looking in the classifieds afterwards and, um, You don’t have to look very hard in the back of a copy of Motorsport to be finding cars you could pick up for less than, you know, less than a ridiculous amount.
So, you know, 20, 30 grand for a car that is pre Goodwood qualified or pre Porsche Historic Classiche certified and stuff. So these sort of things are available to people if you can go out and do this and sort of get yourself through the, um The eligibility requirements and stuff. So I don’t know whether that’s actually feasible, but I like the idea of it.
Um, so it sort of retains a sort of an attainable sort of distant perhaps, but, um, participatory sort of nature that might be something that one can explore. So I don’t know, it’s unlikely, but you never know how these things pan out. It’s not a ridiculous amount of money to get in and it’s sort of, I like, I like the racing, it was, um, the whole, the whole thing has a sort of really sort of [01:03:00] warm and friendly kind of feel.
But again, as I said, the lady that we spoke to that we stayed with last year, she said that this town sort of split, some people are interested, some people are just annoyed that it limits access around the town center and is noisy for about a week and a half. Um, and they have to sort of go around building up the barriers and putting stands in place for like months beforehand.
So. You know, I can understand why that would irritate you. I do a conference with, uh, with a Belgian academic and, uh, um, you know, he made the point that obviously academia is a fairly left leaning kind of, of environment anyway. Um, and maybe his point was maybe Belgium’s a left leaning country. Um, but the attitude of other Belgians to automobiles is he said it’s best compared to smoking.[01:04:00]
So in other words, it’s something that was once socially acceptable, but is now not socially acceptable is positively and is looked on as, as harmful and how the P and, and if it’s, if you’re somebody who is still, you know, who is still a smoker, you’re willfully damaging. The environment of the people around you and you know, are you people wonder at the mindset and, and he, he, he rounded out the conversation and I’ll never forget this by saying, so that’s why my mom and dad live in Scotland and my dad has a stick shift, five liter Mustang and new GT.
And that was the I mean, I’ve been to Belgium. I’ve been through Belgium on several occasions. I’ve been aiming to go to Belgium once with you and Chris. Um, and we milled around Belgium town centre for a bit and decided that we were better off renting a [01:05:00] car and going to Amsterdam. Yeah, Brussels was boring, wasn’t it?
It was boring, yeah. There were the cows. Even the Naked Ladies place wasn’t very good. We were still of an age where we went to Naked Ladies places, weren’t we? And even that wasn’t very good! No, we were better off renting that Ford Ka and sleeping in it. Three of us. Yeah, I can’t believe we did that. I was looking at, I was watching one of the YouTube channels that I’ve watched and there was like a Ford, a car show and there was a Ford Ka or Ka or however you say it, still don’t know.
Um, and I’m like looking inside it and thinking, yeah, it’s roomy inside, but roomier than you’d expect from the outside, but roomy enough for three men, like. We, but yeah, but we did manage it, didn’t we? Yeah. Yep. Maybe that was why we didn’t have the energy for the naked ladies or, um, Mark. Remember when we parked it, like, someone nicked the aerial off the top of the car as well.
I’d forgotten all about that. Yeah. We had it on the outskirts of [01:06:00] Amsterdam, didn’t we? We did the John Stammers patented street park. It’ll be fine. Yeah. And it was, apart from the fact that someone nuked the aerial. But the rental company didn’t notice when we gave it back. So that was alright. Um, so there is a really famous motor racing history story in which I, if I’d have been prepared.
I’d have read up on it so I could give you the full song and dance, but, but Po, Pow, is the only place where the Silver Arrows, the original Nazi era Silver Arrows, were ever beaten. This is the, the story. Um, so you might say, well, where they dominate. So, so what period is this? This is 34 to 39. And, and, and at this time, Po is a non [01:07:00] championship race that occurs early in the year.
So this one particular year. Auto Union choose not to go. Mercedes Benz send two cars. I think the story is one car was binned in practice. The other car was not geared for Pope. It was geared for Spar or, well, it wouldn’t have been Spar, would it? Because I always came late in the year. But it was geared for like the first race of the season.
It might have even been Tripoli. The malhala circuit, which, and I just want to say I’ve rambled onto this, but this is why I do this, this pod so that I ramble onto these things. I’m just going to ask you now when I’ll add some pictures is Google up some pictures of the Tripoli Grand Prix circuit. And specifically, the circuit was called Melhalla, M E L H A L L A.[01:08:00]
It was all like fast sweeping turns in period. It was faster than spa as it was faster than another grain faster than Monza. I mean, it was and it was like all, you know, Mussolini’s. Like continental, you know, Mussolini’s imperial ambitions. So it had these like one, these wonderful pits and palm trees and, you know, sweeping turns.
And it was meant to be the showcase where people could come and see, you know, how marvelous the Italian empire. Was really, uh, uh, an interesting piece. So anyway, so my understanding is, is the car was geared for that track or was geared for another track. Anyway, this is the, the, the story and it’s all wrapped up with, and I can’t remember how, and this is why I should have done some reading around it, but have you heard of this, that the million [01:09:00] franc prize, if you, you heard of this before?
You’re not heard of it. Yeah. I mean, this is this big deal in the 1930s where the French government put up a million dollars for anybody who could beat the Germans. So the first thing they did was have these speed trials, uh, modelery, you know, the bank track just outside Paris and, or the different French manufacturers went and competed.
And then one manufacturer, I can’t remember who, uh, the whole story of the winning of the million franc prize is better than the story I’m going to tell, but I forgot that one a lot. It was a race and the guy who won, you know, it was, Yeah, it was a race to the race and then in the race, the guy that was going to win didn’t win.
And, you know, it was all super dramatic. Anyway, the winner of the million front prize was this, I think it was a [01:10:00] Della Hay that was kind of a sports car and kind of anyway, this one day in Poe, this Della Hay driven by a French bloke who later opens a restaurant. in New York and is a good raconteur and storyteller.
Dreyfus, I think his name was, um, beats the Silver Arrow, beats the Nazis. And I think the really interesting thing about the story, for me, the interesting thing about the story was the, the way in which Uh, the, you know, the Mercedes factory version is all about, you know, the car having the wrong gearing and whoever it was bidding it in practice, whereas the French version is, is this sort of patriotic kind of, and, and the story has sort of gained.
I guess [01:11:00] I first encountered the story when I encountered that collector, Peter Mullin, and was doing that work for his museum, because part of that work was looking at each of the cars and understand the story of each of the cars. And if this beating the silver arrow story was really true, then that made that car, uh, worth talking about a lot more than, than, than, than the others.
But, you know, I just, um, Yeah, I, I, I suppose, uh, maybe I did remember the story quite well. I’d remember the story reasonably well. I’ve probably, I, you know what, you might, it’s Maha, by the way. ME double LAHA. I looked it up. Thank you. I’m only saying that for the, for the listener. Yeah, no, thank you. I mean, this, uh, this, these pods are riddled with this kind of factual incorrectness, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And this is because. [01:12:00] It’s meant to feel like a conversation, right? I could edit out the facts. I can edit out all the bits where I’m wrong, but they wouldn’t be natural anymore, would it? Right? So what’s unnatural is you listening to it maybe 15, 20, a hundred years after we’re saying this, what’s unnatural is you holding me to some factually correct.
Standards. The internet can do that for you, right? Can’t it? You know? Yeah, yeah. It’s just literally for the person who might have looked it up on that spelling. I thought, well, I looked it up on the spelling. But as you say, the gooks is there in the background delivering the goods for you without you having to re spell it.
So it’s, uh, it doesn’t really matter. So look up the Tripoli Grand Prix and it’s exciting. Yeah, yeah. It looks pretty impressive. It’s, uh, I can see why it was fast. And this is your, and this is the value add that I’m, how about this? Old Herman Lang, raced motorcycles in the 20s, then the Weimar Republic collapsed, he had no money, didn’t know, you know, struggled around, didn’t know what to do, took an [01:13:00] apprenticeship at Daimler Benz, happens to be a, um, uh, he was Fagioli’s chief mechanic.
He was that good a mechanic, he was Fagioli’s chief mechanic. And the story is that there’s, they’re testing. at Monza and on the train back from Monza, one of the Mercedes Benz designers is in the same carriage and there’s banter between Lang and another mechanic, who had also been a motorcycle racer in the 20s, about some oil that had been borrowed and never returned.
So they’re bantering backwards and forwards. Oh, did you know that Lang used to race? Yeah, I didn’t know that Lang used to race as a driver. Oh, it says the designer. Oh, says the other mechanic. Like he was really good. He’d I won everything, which he did, right? He had like a super dominant period that was completely derailed by, by what happened to the economy and the fact that he wasn’t like rich or well connected in the way that say von Brauchitsch was to be able to, you know, to, to, to, to jockey, um, [01:14:00] uh, lost my train of thought.
Remind me. Uh, we were talking about the Tripoli Grand Prix, and then you went on to talk about her and Lang. Oh, Lang. Lang. I was talking about, I was talking about the greatness of, of Lang. And I was in the railway carriage on the way back from Monza, wasn’t I? Where the designer and, and, and so it comes out that Lang has this incredible history of, of motorcycle racing.
So from that point on, the designer works to overcome the fact that Lang is working class. And a mechanic to give him a chance to drive the cars. And of course, Lang. So, so literally Lang goes from being having never raised, never raced in any other series before. And he first becomes a team driver in 1937, that Grand Prix car, that Mercedes Grand Prix car was more powerful than.
Any Grand Prix car until the Renault turbo [01:15:00] cars of the late seventies, right? 646 horses that stat, I think it depended what fuel and whether you had the carbs, right. And all of that, but you know, I, uh, more than 500 horsepower. We can, we can comfortably, uh, we can comfortably say on that circuit, on that Tripoli Grand Prix circuit, these are, these are epic stories.
And this is what I want to draw. Uh, attention to and, and, you know, this is what I would have wanted to do where I at the post circuit was my have a sense of, I mean, is this story about the gearing? Is it a slow circuit? I feel like you could, it is, it’s a twist. I mean, there is a straight, but like the bit around our place, it was reasonably curvy and stuff.
So it’s not a massively long. So I think I said one and a half. It might even be like something like 1. 2 miles. It’s not hugely long. It’s a pretty circuit. I mean, it’s, it’s kind of cool. It goes down along the front, along the river, and then doubles back, and then comes up towards the sort of go round, the big loop [01:16:00] around the park, and then through some chicanes and stuff.
Um, it, it, it’s a cool little circuit. Uh, it, it’s, um, yeah, no, I, I would like to give it, you know, thrash a car around, around there myself. But no, I can see how, if you were geared for, because, yeah, that circuit looks a bit like the, uh, that go circuit that we went to up at Rance, or Ream, as we would pronounce it, I suppose, but the French would, wouldn’t.
Um, where they were racing their sports cars in the fifties and stuff and I mean, it was, it was fast. It’s a big wide curve circuit. Um, yeah, Reims is, Reims is your classic three, you know, three town triangle, which, you know, which was a classic of, of, it’s, it’s a feature of French and Italian road race circuits.
It’s a feature of Irish. road race circuits, the motorcycle stuff that we talked about them having those insurance problems. Those are often, you know, three villages that are joined. joined together. [01:17:00] Um, but, but you’re right, Reims is, is fast and open. It’s, it curves in places and there are those sharp turns, but, but it was, um, different from, uh, uh, I think different from Poe, which, you know, Poe is more twisty than.
Oh yeah, definitely, definitely. I mean, it’s a street circuit, so it, it feels different, you know, it’s, um, I mean, Reims goes through the villages, but it’s, It’s not, uh, it’s not the same. This is like quite tight and twisty in places.
So I’m going to change gears completely now.
Banger racing. Loved it as a boy, loved it. [01:18:00] Realized the other day that there’s these series for like pre nineties bangers, right? So in other words, cars, which are now considered collectible. Being, you know, banger race to destruction. There’s even competition between, you know, banger races. And this is, this has gone on for a long time.
And of course the classic car guys have always cried about the banger racing guys, smashing the cars up and the banger racing guys are like, well, you know, if you loved it that much, you should have restored it. Like if it’s not worth any money, what’s wrong with us just racing it and smashing it up. Um, the ethics of banger racing, where do you stand?
Do you give a shit? Um, you could just say no. And then I just have to edit out this whole topic. I suppose I’d not consider it quite like that before, but I might immediate off of the top of my head tape would [01:19:00] be somewhat more towards the banger race. Any kind of guys perspective on the basis that, you know, a lot of the cars you see banger racing, I wouldn’t say, you know, um, even if they were good examples, I wouldn’t be that interested in saving them.
So more often than not, it’s just dross that was about. That would either be propping up other cars in a junkyard or is out there being raced and kept going to race week by week by enthusiasts to, you know, get their, cut their teeth smashing around it. And if it makes them happy, then I don’t care. I think it’s fair enough and it’s quite good fun to watch.
My only, my big problem with banger racing from a purist point of view is it’s not really proper racing in a lot of ways. The banging takes a bit more precedence than I might have liked in terms of actually racing. I’d rather go go karting or something like that and actually be as quick as I can be Rather than worrying about someone t boning me out of left field for the lols Like that it’s got it.
I don’t mind a bit of contact. No. No. Yeah. [01:20:00] I I feel that the the I, yeah, I don’t mind a bit of contact, but where contact is the main thing, that seems not much of a, of a sport. I agree. There’s more banger than, than, than racing. That bothers me. What really bothers me is that I just believe it’s not cool to be destructive like that, like it just feels.
It’s inherently wrong to be destructive. So I could give you an argument that all those Cortinas and Granadas that, you know, you and I sort of chewed up on the banger tracks of the, of Southern England in the nineties, like all of them would be, you know, worth more money now. Well, yeah, they would be worth more money now and more.
you know, Ford guys would go to Ford events and there would be, you know, the sea of surviving Cortinas and Granadas would be, would be bigger. And you might say, you know, well, kind of, it was fine in the 90s. You know, we didn’t [01:21:00] really lose that, that much. Um, I, I don’t know. I, I just feel like. You know, you can’t save everything, right?
And, and I feel like when today’s generation has gone, the Granada’s and Cortina’s that have survived, you know, is there going to be another generation that cares about them and wants to preserve them? I’m, I’m, I’m not sure. So. I, I see your point. They become more like PCs. They become more disposable in the sense that they lose character.
Um, but then I guess the people who are used to their devices turning on and being super reliable, like a PC, would say, I’ll, I’ll lose your character and accept like, you know, flawless reliability. Five nines reliability instead. Thanks. Um, so I, I don’t know. But, um. Maybe character’s another word for unreliability.
Um, but it feels like the more, the less you have to interact with it, [01:22:00] the more it’s like a program where you get in and say, Take me here. Um, inevitably it loses some of its charm because you have to engage less. So therefore there’s less of an emotional attachment to them, I suppose.
All right, quick fire. F40 or 959? F40. Me too. F40 or F50? Well, that’s an interesting question. Evo did a sort of re reprise of their original review of the F50. And said that actually on reflection, it was a much, much better car than they gave it any credit for in the day. And that nowadays on good rubber, it’s an amazing piece of work, you know, full on sort of F1 car for the road as it was built with that engine and all that sort of stuff.
I’d probably still take the F40. No, I’d take the F50. I’d be interested to drive it just because [01:23:00] of the engine. You know what I mean? Even at the time when people were like, it was a bit fat and heavy and all of that, I still It’s still a stick though, isn’t it? It’s a stick with a formula one. I take the F 50.
Part of what people didn’t like was it developed. I, it was, I think it was partially developed by Michael Schumacher. So it has that Michael Schumacher really like sharp turning, which a lot of people don’t, don’t like. So yeah, no, R32 or Focus RS. Which Focus RS? The contemporary one.
No, I’d probably take the Skyline, I think. Oh no, I mean, uh, Goldfarb 32. It’s like Hot Hatch. Fight of the Hot Hatches. Yeah, it’s confusing, isn’t it? All these letters and numbers. Yeah, yeah. I’m not that arsed about either of them, to be honest. I mean, [01:24:00] I’d probably take the Ford, um, on the basis that it’s, if it’s the last one they did, it’s the four wheel drive, 350, sort of, brake horsepower Banzai one.
But the looks of them were a little bit unhappy, and I don’t like paddle shifts, and they both are. Are they? There’s not a manual box in the Focus RS? I don’t think so. The end of the golf definitely isn’t. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I would have, I would have the Ford golf club sport in it with a stick shift, but that’s the lighter version and not the four wheel drive one.
Nine, nine 11 GC two or four eight, a challenge, whatever the like racy. Isn’t it like the Pista, I think? Yeah, whatever that is. Uh, that. You’d take that over the GT2. I wouldn’t, the GT2 isn’t the one I would choose. If I was taking a 911, I’d have the RS. I know, you’d have a [01:25:00] GT3 Touring and so would I. Well, no, I’d have the R if I could get one, but they’re like rockin or shit, you ain’t getting one of those.
Um, I think they’re now commanding about a 200 grand premium on what they were when they came out, and that happened within about six months. Um, so, but it’s the, it’s essentially a souped up version, well, it’s the GT3, but with a stripped out version and sort of street package and a stick shift. Um, So it’s essentially a 911 touring in, in, um, in all but name, but it’s, it’s a different version and I would have that one first if I could, but, um, yeah, no, I, the, the, the, um, I still think all the reviews I’ve seen a Ferrari over the last 10, 15 years is when you get in there, the 430 Scuderia or the 48 Pista, or even the 360 Challenge to Dali, those.
Special editions are gobsmacking and although I would want the, um, 911 probably more often, I think for the occasions when you could use the Ferrari, it would just be biblical, so. [01:26:00] If you could have only one, would it be manual transmission or rear wheel drive? Manual transmission. You could historic race any car, anywhere, what and where?
Ooh, cranky. I’d like to, I mean, I, I, I, it’s difficult to say that you wouldn’t want to do The original Melamelea in the 50s in something. Um, just because it’s such a big race, you know, the, the, the sort of the scale of it is appealing. Um,
we talked some years ago about, in fact, Mark Newton, who we had on the last, uh, on the last pod there found a road race prepared Ford Capri. This was like a Mercury Capri, but it had been built in Southern [01:27:00] California, basically to like. Ford Cologne, Ford, like Capri RS 2600 kind of, uh, specification. Um, he found that car just, uh, just quite recently and was, uh, so that car, that was, I mean, the asking on it was like 60, 000.
So, you know, not in, in my league at all, but a beautifully prepared Capri like that at Spa. That’s what jumps into my mind. I’d rather have a pre mark three actually now I think about it than uh, Than than a mark one. I’d like a as I stop and think about it. I’d do a spice Capri, because I feel like I feel comfortable in a car that’s that kind of size and has got that amount of, of power.
Um, you know, that, that’s the, yeah, that’s really where I’ve, I’ve, I’ve been at recently is, is I guess with all the sports bikes that I’ve got, [01:28:00] there’s many machines that I have where there’s an ocean of performance that I can’t explore properly. Um, interest, uh, the, the vision would be something that I would feel.
Like a Capri I feel on top of that I could attack Spa properly with with a machine that I felt that on top of yeah, yeah, I can see. I mean, Spa is just about my favorite track in the world that I’ve driven. I can’t think of anything. I’ve enjoyed more. So yeah, it’s difficult to argue with that. It’s, we, we, we were talking about this, I was talking about this with my class and they were saying how fabulous, you know, the Nürburgring must be.
And I took the wind out of everybody’s sails by saying, you know, it’s, it’s about, my fear is, is the fallen biker. You know, it’s coming around the corner and coming on a bike, coming upon a bike who’s, who’s lying on the track. And I know you and I have talked about that, that before, um, with Spa, because [01:29:00] it’s the racetrack, not the closed road.
Um, and, and the other thing to say about it is it’s the sheer. Speed in comparison to British club circuits or the sort of technical in a bowl circuits that we have here like Thunderhill or Sears Point or Buttonwillow or Laguna Seca, all of these have that they’re like modern facilities. They don’t have the kind of, you know, five turns with exit speeds of more than 120 miles an hour in a Fiesta ST.
You know, that’s the, the like, yeah, it’s, it’s amazingly fast, but yeah, no, it’s, it’s, it’s iconic as well, isn’t it? But um, yeah, no, it’s that, that one is hard to turn out. Um, Mark, we’ve come to a natural conclusion. I really appreciate your time today. Thanks very much. Cool[01:30:00]
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