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
Special Guest Dinsmore Greep
Slayer – Altar of Sacrifice
c.2010 Mercedes Sprinter 2.2 litre turbo diesel, 5 speed manual
In praise of Mercedes cruise control – stalk
C.2015 Mercedes Sprinter Supermarket refrigerated delivery van, automatic
M beats the governor with a neutral drop
Sprinter vs. VW Crafter
A fiery Sprinter and a ten mile tail back on the A38
A fiery Ford Orion
Slayer – The AntiChrist
A Fiat Ducato, a lost crabstick and a Cornish dry stone wall
Slayer – Die By The Sword
Dukes of Hazzard in a Citroen C35
Driving 7.5 ton trucks on a car license in England; U-haul rentals in the US
The white/work van “get out of the way” effect
2010 Fiat Ducato
2010 Renault Master
VW Crafter, “shat nav”, and narrow Devon lanes
“Floor it and get throught, that’ll be the answer”
“At Dagenham and Dartford”
A can of beer in a Ford Transit
An unintentional burnout on California Street, San Francisco
Judas Priest and Steel Panther in San Jose
J’s bespoke fitting of a velour driver seat from the Econoline Chateaux
A bachelor party LDV duallie taking up 8 parking places
Early noughties Ford Transits – fast!
Gated communities of Cornwall
Slayer – Spirit In Black
Turning in Driveways
Memories of a Rental House in Reading; an Alfa 33 on the lawn; strimming the lawn
Greep’s Corsa VXR
125mph Mitsubishi
M’s BMW M2, Nissan 350Z and Honda CBR600RR: fettling required
Slayer – Behind the Crooked Cross
A sidebar on Slayer
Slayer – South of Heaven
Vauxhall Cavalier SRi
Peugeot 309
Gixxer and potholes
M’s Fiesta ST Broken Throttle body
Dio at the Hammersmith Odeon and Pee in the Radiator of a Ford Sierra
Fixing Overheating by running the Heater
Mad Max Falcon
Ronin Audi S8
Toyota Yaris and Corolla GR
Greep experiences a Tesla
BMW CE04 electric moped
Revel (who have since left San Francisco)
J needs 50mph, not 30mph from his e moped
Slayer – I Don’t Want To Hear It
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. Um, With, uh, his, not just one school friend, but two school friends today, Mark Cammie and, and Deansmore Greep. Um, introduce yourself, gents. Friend was a bit strong. Friend was a bit strong, yeah. Yeah, [00:01:00] I don’t rank above an acquaintance, I don’t think.
Yeah, no, no, but, but really, uh I, I feel like in some ways this, this pod has been a bit disingenuous because really it was always the three of us rather than just the two of us, although the two of us were always more about, more about cars. Hence today’s episode, because Greep, you spent many years driving vans, did you not?
I did indeed, yeah, yeah. Firstly, it started off up in Worcester, working for that, um It’s a reclamation charity that uh, was uh, set up by the guy that owned Worcester Warriors rugby club and um, set up Worcester Bosch, you know, the uh, the boiler company over here as well. Um, but yeah, so that job working for this charity was to drive around [00:02:00] various businesses in the West Midlands and collect stuff that would otherwise go to landfill that we would then like, you know, Take back to the warehouse and sell to schools and clubs and things so they can use them for various bits of arts and crafts.
So, yeah, that was my first experience of driving vans. They were long wheelbase Mercedes Sprinters, which were tasty bits of kits as far as vans goes. I think, Your average white van driver will go one of two ways with their van aspirations, I feel. And that’ll either be like the Volkswagen Transporter, but with alloy wheels and, you know, chrome and blacked out mirrors round the back and all that sort of thing.
Or, you know, the Mercedes Sprinter for your proper working man. But, [00:03:00] you can do 85 in the Sprinter. Yes. Well, okay. So what year Sprinter are we talking about? Well, when I was working there, what have I been down back, back here, what, 11 years now? So yeah, like around 2010. Okay. I mean, I couldn’t, couldn’t say exactly, but around that sort of era, I reckon.
And they were, they were, they were manual transmission. Yeah. Manual transmission. Five speed. Five speed, just beginning to bring in, um, USB ports. And with that 2. 7 CDI motor that normally 2. 2 I think they were but torqued up a what sorry 2. 2 liter engines, the majority of the time, I think, I don’t know, good, good for that single rear [00:04:00] wheel.
Yes. On the sprint and. And, and good for that 85 or good for better than that as the gammy was depending on the load, obviously, but yes, what I liked about it, it was my first experience of having cruise control as well, you know, where you could like, yeah, just set the speed. And what I liked about that is that wouldn’t slow down, but you could overtake, you could put your foot down.
And release the gas pedal and it would go back to what you set your um, cruise speed at but yeah If you braked it would clear your cruise speed and wouldn’t like pick up for you again after that. So did it have um, Did it have a column for that? Yes Yeah, just a little lever on the on on the uh, the steering column [00:05:00] now I don’t know what you found but in my experience, this is a total hobby horse of mine This is one of the things that I think mercedes drivers understand and non mercedes people don’t is There’s little design things that make, make Mercedes better drive.
And I think that cruise control being on the stalk is definitely one of them. I did a long journey in the Mustang, um, just recently, and it has one of these cruise controls where you have to like switch the button on and then push another button to set the speed. And it’s not the end of the world, but it means that you don’t, you, you only use it on the freeway, whereas a Mercedes cruise control, you can use that in the way that you would use an old fashioned overdrive, like cruising between traffic lights, because you can just flick it on as easy as knocking an indicator.
On and, on and off. So that’s my, that’s my aside on, uh, on, on indicators. Yeah, as long as you didn’t hit the brake, it would, like, do the pick up for you, you know, it would [00:06:00] accelerate for you to your set speed and everything. Whereas the Mercedes Sprinter fridge vans that Sainsbury’s had were slow as fuck.
They were not, and they were autos, and they were pants. Uh, they were, I mean, they were usable pieces of kit, but they neutered them so they wouldn’t do any more than 55. Um, I mean, I had 65, 67 out of it, but I did not get into neutral. Then I really love what year was this? What year was this? Like teens, 20 teens.
It would have been a teens. This is a teen sprinter with, with a, with a, with another diesel with that same 2. 2 diesel with the fridge and the freezer bit on the back body. So really bad arrow, really bad arrow. Yeah. Um, Bad handling too? Well, I mean, you’ve got a real load full of, like, refrigerated goods [00:07:00] strapped in cart crates to the side of the back of the walls of the van.
You’re not exploring the limits of grip here. Um, so You mean you never did? Not really. I mean, like, the thing will do 55 miles an hour and handles like a small barge. So, you know, it’s, um But you add 65 out of it by getting into neutral, you were saying. I’m not sure about it. I don’t think I’d wanted to hit 70 just to see.
Um, and they said, Oh, you’re not allowed to do any of that stuff because it’s GPS tracked. And I thought I was, uh, yeah. And cowed by that. And then after about a bit in the van, you’re thinking like, Oh, fuck off who’s checking the GPS trails for that shit. Unless I have an accident. So, uh, that then it became a personal mission to see how fast I can get the band to go.
Um, I don’t think I ever got 70, but as I say, after you went past 55, it wouldn’t let you accelerate. The accelerator just did nothing. Yeah. So you had to accelerate hard to 55 and then hit it into neutral as you were going down a long hill . But with it. But bird, lip, bird, [00:08:00] bird would’ve been the dream. But I didn’t, that wasn’t in my catchment area.
I didn’t roam to bird lip in the short period. I worked for them in between jobs. Um, but, uh, yeah. Um, I mean, hey, on the other hand, I looked after my vans. I never had any van, let’s say for argument’s sake, burn to the ground. Well, it’s funny because we were talking of doing this podcast, I was like looking back on my time driving vans because I’ve always considered, you know, in rose tinted glasses, driving the vans for as long as I did made me a better driver just all round.
You know, more aware, able to jump in any vehicle and just drive it, you know, and the spatial awareness is much better and that sort of thing. And I, you know, would pat myself on my back like, ah, you know, you know, I really learned from that experience. And, um. Yeah, looking back, it’s, [00:09:00] well, maybe I learnt because of how many failures I had.
And, yes, one of the ones that you, so, uh, just referenced was, I’d been asked by, uh, my, uh, boss at the food firm that I was working at to go and pick a van up from Exeter and drop one off. This is from Plymouth. Yeah, that’s from Plymouth. So I bombed up the, uh, A38 in the M5 motorway to Exeter, picked up this fan that just got a brand new reconditioned engine and then started driving it back to, um, a sprinter again, I think.
Um, it might have been a transport. Um, not the, uh, the crafter was the Volkswagen version on the same Sprinter platform, so it might have been one of those, but I think it was a sprinter. So it was a sprint if it, so the crafter, the Volkswagen crafter was basically a sprinter that [00:10:00] Volkswagen made under license.
Yes, and then, um, So it was their motor, whose motor was it? It was, it was the Oh right, I don’t know, but Fiat and Peugeot had the same sort of deal with their vans. They were the same platform. I think it might be Citroen as well, given that, um, that’s another French car company, so I think the Citroen relay Works van was on the same platform as the Fiat Ducato and the Peugeot, which I forget the name of it.
Boxer driving back, driving back from extra with this, uh, sort of van with a brand new reconditioned diesel engine, brand new reconditioned engine, brand new, yes, driving along and, um, [00:11:00] yeah, just quite happy listening to some music. Putin along, then a, uh, guy in a Peugeot Bippa, you know, one of those little vans on a car platform came bombing past me and pulled up in front of me about 200 metres ahead of me, and he got out and he did the signal from South Park.
You know Yeah, the team america world police, what’s the signal He got out of his van and was running towards me going like that I was like what what and as soon as my foot touched the brake pedal Like literally The smoke the cab filled with smoke and every light on the dashboard came up I was like, oh right and um So, uh yeah, but yeah, so [00:12:00] I dived out of the van and stopped all the traffic coming from behind and uh, yeah, and there we were half an hour later the um, the van was a pit of Melted tar on the road and there was like about it was still in the carriageway I pulled over onto the hard shoulder.
Oh, I should say that I’d lost Yeah, I’d lost power and I’d just gone back past this like parking quarter of a mile sign And so I thought, clever old me, I’ll just coast along the hard shoulder into the parking lay by. So I wasn’t doing, like, full speed along the motorway. So yeah. Oh, okay. So yeah. So, so when you put the brakes on, the smoke came.
I, when was the fire? And when did you get stopped? The smoke was when you were still rolling along. No, there was no smoke when I was rolling along. As far as I was aware, I’d just lost power and was just Because it was all in a big comet [00:13:00] like cone behind you. I was just cruising, coasting, you know, freewheeling at the side of the road.
Ah, you’re on fire! Like a spaceship on re entry, just like Yeah, yeah. I’d say I dived out of the van, um, suffered a little bit of shock, uh, loads of bikers that I picture in my head were all Hells Angels, but probably weren’t given that it’s the, uh, the south of England, you know, they gave me a couple of rollies and stuff.
And then, um, So I called work and said, called my boss and said, Howard, there’s a problem with the van. And he went, Oh, what is it? I went, it’s no longer a van.
It’s a traffic incident. Yeah. Well, he, he, I didn’t know it was a proper traffic incident like that, but at the time, but then, um, [00:14:00] he sent another driver that had just finished his round to come pick me up. He was maybe 10 miles from where I was coming from Plymouth. And he said that you could see the column of smoke from , the marsh, the marshmallows, roundabout
And it was on the, it was, it was on the local news, like a 10 mile tailback on the A 38
Yeah. Yeah. So has someone just not put oil in the fucking engine or something as dumb as that? Well, officially, the story is that it was something, uh, wrong with the engine. Um, unofficially, I don’t know if I maybe hadn’t got out of fourth. That shouldn’t set the whole thing on fire. But, you know, I, I have never, uh, pilloried myself too [00:15:00] much for that one, cause I’m not really certain.
Cause you know, you can drive on autopilot and say, I had just overtaken stuff when the power lost and I was like, I’m in fourth, but I had just overtaken. So. You know, I might not have been in four from it. One way or the other, that, that should not have worked. One plus one in those circumstances does not equal several hours in a lay by, you know, by a barbecued van.
Yeah. It actually reminds me of my mate Neil from university. He drove, he had a Ford Orion, um, and that Ford Orion suffered a very similar fate to your van. What year? What year? Pre facelift or post facelift? Did it have the grill? I don’t know. It was pre university. It was like a year or two before university.
So it would have been like, he had it. So it would have been like, 91, something like that. If it was new, I don’t think it was new. So it would have been like mid 80s at [00:16:00] best. Anyway, I remember him telling me that he was driving along and then he stopped. And when he stopped at the traffic lights. Um, smoke poured out all of the air vents, and he drove, he was like, uh oh, um, drove it across to round the corner and parked it up on the side of the road in front of a terraced street.
Uh, and within minutes, it was a fireball, um, and the old lady that lived in the house there, uh, came out, and he ended up, when the fire brigade arrived, he was sitting on a deck chair that she brought out for him, with a cup of tea, having a fact to calm his nerves, um, whilst the thing was just destroyed in front of him, immolated, um, before him, much like you and your van.
Yeah.[00:17:00]
No, I mean, you never want to say I’ve never rolled a car or I’ve never caught a car on fire because you kind of, you feel like you’re tempting fate. Don’t you? Yeah, yeah, I’m almost on uranate in Bentham since there’s a dam on the museum. Yeah, well, I mean, another of my I wish I’d never was driven through that dry stone wall outside the country estate in Cornwall in, in yet another works van.
I think this, this was a Fiat Ducato. And you know, I said, um, you learn from, or I learned to be a better driver. So this was when I stopped eating. When I was driving,
yeah. ’cause uh, I’d, uh, was reaching into my lunchbox for one of, you know, a crabs [00:18:00] stick to eat whilst driving . And then lost love the way he remembers the exact food that he was eating at the crabs. Stick the cream pot and lost the crabs. Crabs stick in the lunchbox. So then, then looked down and then the road disgustingly.
Outrageously decided to take a corner. Yeah. Yeah. And you mentioned earlier, like, um, uh, about, uh, not exploring the limits with your van. Cause it could only do well. I, I did explore the limits of grip with this van at that point and, uh, took it through those limits and through a dry stone wall. Which caused the tire to blow out.
Luckily, that was what I told the boss happened. So, the tire caused it, rather than the grass stick. Yeah, so I told [00:19:00] the truth, but just the events maybe not in the right order. Yeah.
I did explore the limits of grip on a different van, the Citroen C35 that we had at Bombard in France. I once took that at full speed round the Amboise Bridge right up towards Limeray and got the back end of that van out, only at about 25 miles an hour, but I was not expecting that. And furthermore, did you know, I know you did because I spoke to you about it, you can pull away a Citroen C35 van in the middle of tour from traffic lights in fifth.
If you put it in fifth, [00:20:00] rev the nuts off it and just dump the clutching kangaroo down the road for about 400 yards. Yeah. He’s doing it. Robotic vehicle. Those C 35 vans, the thing I always remember about them was, do you remember on one side the thread was clockwise on the wheels, and on the other side the thread was anti clockwise.
And the story went that once it had a flat tire and people had spent like ages and got all these poles and all this kind of stuff, only to find that they were trying to turn the wheel nuts the wrong way. And that’s why they couldn’t, uh, they couldn’t take the wheels off them. So there was always, and I’d never, I mean, and it’s so crazy and so French that, uh, that they should, uh, that they should have them like that.
I do remember the, the five speed. transmission that they had. I remember the fact that in one and there were a couple of those C35 vans weren’t there and I remember in one of them, if, if you were in like second, you could see through past the engine onto the [00:21:00] pavement, you know, it was, uh, as you, as you change gear, like the boot or, or, or moved around the other gear lever in fifth gear, you can move it in about a foot square without taking it out of fifth gear.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you remember it had, um, the other thing that I remember about those C 35s was they had a grey Velia speedometer with like a sweep gauge. I loved the sweep gauge, it was like a ribbon, and the needle did a sweep, did a sweep past it, because they were, they were, that Citroen was the same design as the contemporary, um, Fiat Ducato, if that was the, the name, it was an Italian, Citroen.
It was like an Italian French combination, if you can imagine anything, uh Because it’s kind of ridiculous, like, the UK licenses that we’ve all got entitle us to drive. Isn’t it up to, like, three and a half ton box vans, like, with Seven and a half. Seven and a half, that’s right. Yeah. [00:22:00] Um, I mean I don’t think that’s changed.
Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, for good reason. I mean, I’ve driven them, but it, it’s You have to be pretty on your case with your, uh When you met with your sort of, you know, your spatial awareness points because when I was a lad, um, like about Ollie’s age, like eight or nine, um, my dad rented a BRS Ford cargo, like a box truck.
Um, we rented it with a friend or I can’t remember whether he was driving it, but I remember it’s the first time I’d ever been in a truck. And it was one of those where me and my dad were on like the two passenger seats and, and that was, and then there was this. Shift in the handbrake and then, you know, the, my dad’s made driving the truck, but that was huge.
And I couldn’t believe that you could drive it on, on a car license. Um, I can’t, it’s hard to believe now that, that in America you can, you know, U Haul will rent somebody who just got their driving license, you know, driving around the block in Wisconsin, U Haul in New [00:23:00] York will let you rent. A twin wheel V 10, you know, loot and top van towing a trailer on your car license.
But, you know, I guess, uh, as you’ve observed many times before, Mark, it’s about freedom. It is the bombard summer passes by the bombard summer in France, the Mercedes three Oh eight. Do you remember that? It was slow. And the gearbox was a bit reluctant. That was like an 80s Mercedes. One of the ones where they had, where the, the indicators did the wrap around and had the little, like, streaks in them.
But that was the first van where I had that feeling of independence, where it was mine. My domain. I love the fact that you could have a nap in the back of it. You could have a pee in the back of it. It was like your own private, like, private space. Um, I also love the fact that people got out of the way, like it was the first time I’d ever had that white van man experience with, uh, with, with people, uh, with people [00:24:00] getting out of the way now.
Um, that’s, that’s definitely a thing. People avoiding you. Definitely. Yeah. Does the van need to be white? No, uh, a work van either plane. Or in blazing. But if you’ve got like alloys on and things like that, your, your average driver will spot that that’s, you know, not a work van and won’t treat it the same way.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, dense. I’ve, uh, so whilst we’ve, uh, whilst I’ve, I’ve got you on it, let me do these, uh, these questions with you now. What of, of the vans that you drove over the, over the years that you were, what was the best one? Well, there wasn’t really. A best one because each had depending on what you’re looking for each had [00:25:00] their uh, high point Uh when I was working at olympia foods When they got the new fit to kato in was the one that everyone wanted to fight.
Well, yeah That must have been like 2010, something like that, I think. Um, but that the torque on those meant, do you know the Big Hill just outside of Extra where, um, the A three 80 to go down towards Tor key splits off from the A 38 and you go up that hill. Yeah. Holden. That’s Holden Hill. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, um, the Fit Dato could do that with the Olympia Foods display stand. Stuff and, and equipment from, you know, the, the West Country Food show up that 65 70 without needing to drop a gear,
[00:26:00] whereas the sprinters couldn’t, but the sprinters had the USB slot and the, uh, the cruise control and slight, slightly comfier driving position. Um,
yeah, but then and then and then the Renault master was the smallest van, but it had the For your reverse parking Which, when you’re a delivery driver, you know, trying to get into tight spots down on St. Ives Harbour, that was definitely a bonus, having the, uh, the reverse parking sensors. Yeah. Because every other van, every other van, the sensor was, Oh yeah, I’ve hit the wall.
I feel, I feel, given we’re talking about proximity driving, you, you ought to tell the story of your first day in the van. And the fact that the GPS kind of nudged you pretty hard. So, yes, at Olympia Foods, I’d, um, [00:27:00] recently got the job and I’d done my, like, training, which was to go out with the more experienced drivers and get shown various runs and things like that.
And, um, yes, and then one day, two weeks sooner than it should have been, Paul, the warehouse manager, said, Oh, I’m sending you to, um, Dartmouth. I was like, brilliant. Yeah, I know where Dartmouth is and of course knowing where something is and actually, you know, driving in and around it looking for various businesses are completely different matters, you know, and I now know that Dartmouth is actually like a boot, you know, you come down, you go along the harbor, come around the one way street and then out of Dartmouth and that’s it.
That’s all you have to do. Um, but I didn’t know that because it wasn’t a run that I’ve been shown. So I was in a vw crafter hired not not even owned by the company hired for the summer Sent out [00:28:00] into dartmouth and the south hams run which I hadn’t been shown and I had my dad’s old Sat nav which will now call forevermore shat nav Driving into Dartmouth, I imagine, you know, I’m driving down the car for the boot and what I need to do is go down to the heel and then come along the sole.
And then I can do all the deliveries around the Harbor and then come back along the toe and then up along the shin of the boot, if you like, to get out of Dartmouth again. I know my sat nav decided why it’s be a much better idea if you drive through all the little You know 17th century fishermen’s village Streets and roads to drop you down into the harbor that way Of course, I was like, alright, yeah, Mr.
Shatnav, I will follow what you say. So, I start driving down these, um, tight ass, [00:29:00] tight ass, like, little, um, uh, streets. It’s a long wheelbase, the crafter’s long wheelbase. Uh, this one actually wasn’t because it was a hire van, so it was just, I mean, it, it, it wasn’t a short wheelbase vehicle, you know, it’s still like, a lot, I, anyway, I was going down these like little lanes, like little ginnels, back lanes, whatever, I’ve only done about 100 meters and I already decided I’m not reversing out here because, you know, some of the corners that I’ve been around, I can’t physically See to reverse background.
So I was like, it’s, it’s forge forward, you know? Um, and so forward, I went and then, uh, maybe two more meters. I then went down some steps. That was a good sign on a road, I feel. Two or three steps on a road and then, and that’s when I really knew I [00:30:00] was in trouble. What’s that meme go? That’s when he knew he’d fucked up.
Yeah, so, so, and I probably would have got away with the whole experience if there wasn’t scaffolding down this street that I was driving down. So, bubba dubba dubba, down some steps. Which you don’t want to do in a work van anyway, you know, like And I’ve already had to wind down the The windows to pull in the mirrors because the street i’m driving down so tight And then I I like get to this little bit and There’s scaffold, a scaffold tower up on this little cottage, but it’s not like traditional because, you know, it’s a really, really tight lane.
So it’s only sticking out about a foot, the scaffold poles, but on the passenger side of the van. So I go, no worries, I line [00:31:00] up, you know, like this, so I can like judge the, uh, the distance, right? And drive along and clear the scaffolding. Absolutely brilliant. However, the cottage on the driver’s side. of the road about three feet up or three feet of height.
It’s stuck out about a foot from the rest of the wall. A little buttress. Yeah. And, um, so I’m driving along. And of course, on the sprinters, it has the slightly Toed in nose on it, make it look a bit more aerodynamic, which leaves just a shoulder of your tyre exposed. And that got caught on the bus for us.
But, unbeknownst to me, who couldn’t see that this was sticking out, I said, I’ll floor it, get through, you know, that’ll be, that’ll be the answer. So, and, it wasn’t, I did get through. [00:32:00] But, um, not without incident because the, uh, the, the two steering wheels, um, where they call it Dagenham Dartford. One of them was pointing at, like, 12 and the other was pointing at, like, 2 o’clock.
So, my, my, the steering wheels are like that. And so, I drove down, got to a, like, a little safer area where I, you know, could park up and, like, not block traffic and stuff. And then, uh, phoned the boss up saying, uh, you know, this is my first day out by myself and I’ve ruined a hire van. And, um,
I don’t think I’m going to have a career here very long. So he sent out one of the warehouse staff to come along and, um, fit a new tire because it had popped obviously. Um, [00:33:00] and he couldn’t because there was no tire fixing, tire replacement. Each van is supposed to have like a kit to enable you to replace a wheel.
But the wrench, the torque wrench handle was about nine inches long. Whereas if you have a professional tire fitter turn up, their torque wrench handles are like, you know, a meter and a half long. So trying to untorque a Buckled wheel with the nine inch wrench handle. It just bent. So yeah, we then had to call the RAC out, but this warehouse driver, he couldn’t get the van out of the space that I’d parked it in, in amongst these garages and stuff like that.
And for me to get out to get down onto the Harbor, call the RAC to come and sort the wheel out. The boss, but they’re pointing at like 12 and 2 o’clock and he went, just fucking do the rub. [00:34:00] So, after about a five hour delay. Um, I got going again and then spent the whole rest of the, uh, I think I drove about another six hours with that van with the steering wheel constantly cranked over as hard as I could manage it, just to drive in a straight line.
Oh, man. Oh.
You remember, you remember I had that transit. For that summer in England, this is a story that, um, my, my, my family know, but, but, but you don’t, this is just a vignette. Um, I, uh, was staying in hotels and when you buy a beer. It’s not very economical, is it, to buy like individual cans. It makes more sense to buy a six pack and, you know, when you go from, there’s usually a, you know, ice [00:35:00] making machine or a fridge or something like that in the room you’re staying in.
So you can chill the beer in your, well anyway, long and short, I had a spare can of beer in my suitcase. Um, when I was, uh, when I had that transit and I only had a suitcase and I just thought at first I tried to, like, attach it to the side of the van, but after a bit, I was just like, because I live in San Francisco where there’s loads of car break ins, right?
This van had a bulkhead. Uh, silver Transit, it’s thumb, the thumbnail of episode two or three. One of those, by the way, silver Transit had a bulkhead, so you, you had to get in to get into the back. You had to get out of the cab. Right? And, and so what that meant was anything that you, any valuables that were in the cab were visible from the, so I put my suitcase in the back so it wasn’t visible right.
And it slid around a bit and I was fine with it sliding around. Well, I thought I was, [00:36:00] you know, anyway, long and short, I, uh, I thought I was fine with it, but it split a can of beer and pissed beer all over all my stuff. So I had all these like nice clean shirts and jeans and things for later in the drip and all of them were There was that there were there were rare books Everything is stinking now of cheap beer and I wish I’d just gone to the hotel bar and not been such a fucking skinflint.
I Can’t believe we’ve got this far through this van episode without mentioning my brown Ford Econoline van And, and one. Teddy said love Anne. Absolutely. Yeah. It does. And, and, uh, and, and just, and I would highlight just, just one story in particular, um, Gammy, when you stayed and there were two streets in California, in San Francisco that [00:37:00] have trams on them, California street and Powell street, and we were driving up California street.
And managed to get one of the wheels. It was raining and we managed to get one of the wheels on, on the, and I remember, I remember, I can’t remember whether you or I were driving, but I do remember the wheel spinning. And I remember being able to see down the hill out of one of the side windows of the van.
There was tiresmoke pissing past and he was like, Nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh, nyeh. The whole time everyone was looking. My other memory of that van is that I got out, I’ve got a video somewhere of it where we were, I think we’d been to see, didn’t we go and see Judas Priest in it? Yeah, we went to see Judas Priest in San Jose.
Yeah, with Steel Panther supporting. Good guess. Um, um, tips for free in the crowd, who knew? Um, but um, that’s the Steel Panther effect. [00:38:00] Um, but yeah, um, we went to sit, and I remember you went in to get, you parked in front of a no parking sign. And I got out to take a photo of the van in front of the no parking sign, which I’ve still got.
I’ll send it to you. Um, and, uh, I did a little caned video of the sort of, the motion control that you had on the seat. I, that it only had one bolt holding the seat down. So you could basically rock the seat around completely all over the show. Yeah, because Mark’s dogs had chewed up the original vinyl seat.
So I went to a pick and pull, and I got this lovely velour seat. They were comfortable. Yeah, for, it was from the Chateau, like, you know, like, shag wagon. Yeah. Yeah. Version of the econ line, and I assumed that the seat would fit. Notice that assumed that the seat would fit. It wasn’t the, the, the mounting points were different sizes.
So I, I could only mount the seat on one side, so yeah, it did, it did swing. But do you remember it had an armrest? It [00:39:00] was that kind of purplish purplish au, wasn’t it? Oh, it was, it was lovely. It was super comfortable. See yeah. Yeah, the other thing that was striking about that van was, um, it was owned by Stanford before me, and so it existed, it was like a 92, so it did sit from like 92 to 2008 without hardly any rust, because it lived down on the peninsula where it’s dry.
Street parking in San Francisco with all the salt air, the bump, the, the leading edge of the trunk just rusted off completely. I mean, that’s how much the rust just completely attacked. Do you remember? It had that scrape down the side and that rusted and, and ran. The rust streaks ran down the, the, the side.
Had moss on the window ledge as well. It did, yeah. Which didn’t blow off. It just stayed there and, and, and kept growing. You know, the other thing that I remember about that Judas Priest night with it was that you said, as we were walking back to the car, you were like, [00:40:00] you know, I get this van. That van is a.
Fuck you to everybody and it really was and that was sort of why I got rid of it because I wanted to To not be that it was to it was just offensive whether if you didn’t like cars It was polluting and took up a lot of parking space When you parked in a parking spot people used to be annoyed because it was so big It meant that they couldn’t open their car door to get out and people didn’t want this Ugly van next to this molestory freaking van.
But it didn’t take up eight spots like, um, The van did on Slater’s Stag Do. What is that eight spot story? I don’t even know that story. That, I actually had that on my agenda of stories to cover. Mainly because I don’t actually know that, that story. That wasn’t a Sherpa that you drove on Slater’s Stag Do.
It was an LDV of some sort, I think. I remember the photos [00:41:00] and it was a Dually. It was like a Dually Sherpa. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was an LDV by then, like the later It was a horrible van to drive in anyway. Like, the driver and the passenger in the front seats sat right on the engine. And so all the hot air just comes up through the floor and just, yeah, chokes you.
So I wouldn’t ever Get one of those vans or drive one of those vans again, but yes, it was on the stag and uh, everybody got tanked up whilst I was driving along and it was decided to stop at a motorway services to uh, for sustenance like ginsters pasties and such like, yeah. Marvellous. Such high class delicacies, yeah.
Yeah, yeah. So we pull into the parking area. It’s not very busy. What is it, about six o’clock in the afternoon, something like that, on a Sunday or something? [00:42:00] And, uh, I just, just to get into the spirit of things, because I wasn’t drinking and everybody else was, I was like, right, watch this lads, and just, I, I pulled up on eight parking spots.
So the van was four parking spots long A crossway and so yeah, and I just did a crossways. So I was taking up Eight spot on the gap between the two rows of space. Yeah, because I wasn’t in the van I was driving in a different car. I remember arriving and seeing me parked in eight spaces Uh, what was the worst van you drove great that one Yeah, what was the fastest van you drove?
The, um, the Ford, uh, transit turbos that the plumbing firm used to have. What, what year transit is that? I mean, that was when I [00:43:00] worked at the, uh, PSS Midlands. So, we’re talking 2000, 2002, something like that, maybe? All right! All right, but the Ford’s like at the uh, the food firm Howard never would never buy the Ford’s because they were more expensive to get than the Mercedes because your entry level transit had more bells and whistles and bigger engine and that sort of thing than the the Sprinter.
Interesting. How many miles were you doing when you were van driving like that all the time? How many miles a year were you doing? A year, I don’t know, but I could do Um, 1250 in a week. Two 50 a day.
Yeah. So I’m not gonna try and do the maths on that, but Yeah. [00:44:00] 60,000. Yeah, that, yeah. 60. Yeah, that is, and that’s on lanes in Devon and Cornwall, isn’t it? That’s no highway miles at all. Uh, going to your delivery area and coming back was obviously on main roads, but then the rest of the time you are driving down.
Cobble streets and to beaches and, um, across fields and things like that, you know, gated communities down in Cornwall that you have to radio in like, uh, and they’ll like open the gate and then you drive a mile over a field to deliver to some, some hippie, um, cafe that only serves people on, that are walking on the coastal path out of their kitchen window, sort of crap, you know.
Huh. Toils out the serpent unwashed Buried beneath your body Deep in the heart of the [00:45:00] dead Spirit is black to the end People get real parochial about fucking bands as well. I mean, the amount of time I remember I was driving, like, somewhere around in Redding. No, was it Redding? No, it would have been Newbury.
And I, I went up this street and I was like, oh bugger, I’m gonna have to turn around. And there was a double paved drive, like, really like two and a half drives wide, like, and I thought, so I, I, like, checked, no problem, reversed into it, only about half onto it, just enough so I could turn around in the road and head down the street.
Um, guy and his wife, out of the house, running down the street after me, screaming at the top of his lungs. I stopped and was like. Is everything all right, mate? I thought I’d run over his cat or something, you know what I mean, it was like that, it was that sort of, you know, absolute apoplectic rage, um, and he just ranted at me, and I won’t bore you with [00:46:00] it, other than to say, he basically affronted that I’d used his drive to turn round on, that was it.
Yeah, yeah, I know, I’ve turned round in driveways where they’ve hung on chains, like across the mouth of the driveway, like, please do not turn here. I always make a point of touching the nose of the car on that sign when I turn. Well, I mean, I don’t think we engaged in, endeared ourselves to the neighbours, because didn’t you, you used to do that, that geyser across the way in Harcourt Drive?
Remember we used to drive into his drive, and turn around after he came out, and he’d look out the window every day. LAUGHTER We’d wave. And I’d have Jason just looking. Was it, was it Harcourt Drive, the one where we tore up? There was like a grass verge, and we, we had shitty cars in front of the house.
Yeah. And the landlord didn’t consider it, they used the garage. And so we had to park our drive in shit. We didn’t know, when we rented the house, we didn’t [00:47:00] know we couldn’t use the garage. I was like, this is perfect, we’ve got a garage and a drive for two cars. We can get stuff in there and work in the garage.
It was only after we moved in, they were like, fuck you, can’t use the garage. I, I didn’t realize that, um, but do you remember that was when we had that alpha 33 on the lawn? Yeah, the neighbors hated us pretty quickly, um, after we moved in with our detritus of cars that never moved anywhere, and we didn’t mow the back lawn.
Hippies use, hippies use the rear entrance.
Yeah, the mowing of the back lawn, I remember having my leather coat on backwards and going at it with Slater’s two stroke streamer, like I would play it like it was some kind of jungle in suburban Reading. Well, you remember the neighbours were good mates with the landlord, so they rang up and grassed us up.
Oh, I don’t remember that, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s why that biatch of us in estate agent rang us up and was strobing us, because the neighbours had rung the [00:48:00] landlord, who’d rung them, who didn’t know anything about it, and had rung us to rant at us, and we were like, well, we’ll get the garden cut before we move out, what’s the deal?
They were like, you’ve gotta cover out of the grass. We were like, oh, it’s like kneehigh now. I mean, it’s like a meadow . Yeah. I remember you saying, I remember you saying that it needed to be done and me agreeing that it needed to be done and not doing it, and you being like, mate, it’s gotta be done. And me feeling an ass for not doing it more promptly.
Um, I do remember that. Well, it wouldn’t have been an issue if it wasn’t for the snitch neighbours. Well, looking back, it was out of order that it was a nice suburban house. And I remember some of it being above my head. And this was like the back garden. Yeah, it I mean, in these days, we just put up a little sign calling it an eco grove or something and Lloyd get win an award, get rewilding, win an award or something.
A Titchmar should be down there doing a documentary about it, past the rusting Sierra and [00:49:00] behind the Capri. Well, both of those would be super collectible and valuable now, wouldn’t they? Yeah. I mean, a bloke, do you remember a bloke knocked on the door of that house to try and buy that Capri off? Me. I, you know, you shoulda, well, I fucking should have, shouldn’t I?
Because it probably would’ve lived on and now, uh, and now it’s, it’s gone to the DVLA. In the, uh, in, in the sky whilst we pivoted onto cars, um, uh, GRIP, you run that Corsa VXR in that rather lurid blue. How is it treating you? Yeah, I do. Well, having been driving it quite a lot just recently, cause I’m back in the office say about 50 percent of the time it’s been treating me well.
It is, uh, it’s a. It’s a lovely little car to drive. Punchy. All the poker that I’ll ever need. Um, couple of decent corners both to and from [00:50:00] work where you can like, you know, properly power through them. Exit speed. When you join the A 38 from, uh, Lee Mill. Yeah. You know, you come in under the bridge and then the Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, and then up the on ramp. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good corner that, that corner. We all know this bit of road really well. Yeah. That is a good bit of road. Yeah. Go on in. Well, and then the same coming off if you get and saying, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah. If you get the traffic lights coming up, marshal, you’ve got the on-ramp up there as well.
Yeah, if you get fortunate with it, you need to be late into the first one, don’t you? So it’s gone green for the next two, yeah.
That, that climb up Marsh Mill, um, one of my, uh, salient teenage memories is, is doing that in, um, Remember Muir’s girlfriend, Andrew Muir, his girlfriend, her [00:51:00] dad had a used car lot and he had a brown Mitsubishi Starion
off that lot one time. And I remember that was the first time I did more than 120 miles an hour in a car up Marshmills. Because it was, it was off the roundabout and Muir just launched it and I was like, fucking hell, I’d never been in a car that pulled past 100 miles an hour like that before. It was a, it was a life changing.
A life changing moment for me. Um, Mark, that M2, how’s it treating you now? There, there was, we did, uh, I haven’t touched it, to be honest. It’s, it’s my project for, I’ve got a bunch of stuff on car related issues I’m working on this week. So the batteries flatten it, because obviously with Angie’s illnesses and stuff, I basically didn’t drive it anywhere.
So it’s, um, uh, it’s batteries flattening, it needs an MOT. So that’s happening like as soon as they can book it in. Um, I needed to get. A new battery in the Zed and get the Zed running [00:52:00] to get that out of the way to get it into the garage to charge it. Um, so that’s how, that, which has now happened. The Zed lives again, which is great to, it was nice to hear it finally.
I put this, I put the battery in it and it just went, no. I thought bollocks and I thought on set. I bought that battery like a few months ago, so I whacked it on charge and the next morning it was like, oh, yeah, yeah, no problem. Straight up. So, um, so yeah, so I’m gonna do some work on the z uh, just some fairly basic stuff.
I’ve gotta get the, um, that under tray thing ordered from Nissan. Um, and there’s a, I looked under the bonnet. There’s loads of like, bolts on there that are just like little stubby, sort of like nut and washer bolts. That one piece jobs, they’re all rusted and they look awful and they’re all rusted and they’re like nothing.
So I’m just going to buy a load of those and get that replaced whilst I’m doing some other bits and bobs to it. But now the M2 is going to get fixed or I’m going to flog it because I’m not enjoying it. Um, and uh, then I’m getting the CBR fixed up as well because that just needs a, I’ve got a battery for that and MOT and I can [00:53:00] start using that again.
So, um, yeah. We, I will report back next, next pod on how we got on with it and how well BMW have serviced me with my extended warranty, whether they’ve actually fixed the thing. Yeah, I think, um, I do think I do feel bad for you with that M2 with the juddery brakes. That’s the thing that’s stuck in my mind from you moaning in the other pod.
Well, that’s the major structural problem that ruins the driving experience. There’s loads of other tinkery issues that don’t work on it that have just been a bottle of cake, but they’ll, I’m sure they’ll fix all those. It’s will they fix the big one? So we’ll see. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I’m jumping around here, Greek, but I watch these like used car channel guys, and they’re always like, Oh, of course.
They’re timing chain. So is that, I mean, does it. How many miles does yours have on it now? Uh, coming up on 35. Oh, alright, yeah. Alright, yeah. [00:54:00] Yeah. Because apparently the timing chains stretch and rattle. And I guess I have some empathy with you because that also happens on Suzuki GSXRs. And, uh I have a bike like a fairly high mile one that recently had some work done to it and the idea was it fixed that and it’s as rattly now as it was before and you’re like, well, that’s marvelous.
I spent thousands of dollars to get exactly the same thing as I, uh, as I had before. When I put my foot down in the, uh, the Corsa, it still gives me the, uh, the goose pumps that it did on the test drive. Which is why I bought it. I mean, prior to the test drive, I was, which ST am I going to have? Am I going to have, you know, go back to, um, I focus ST, you know, the, uh, the old 2.
5 cause I, um, I’d found a fairly decent, I think it was nine grand one up in Tavistock, [00:55:00] but I drove it and it just felt floaty and heavy. Yeah, it had the, the good noise, the 2. 5 turbo engine and you know, when the, uh, when it dumped, it gives you a little semi every time, you know, um, and then I drove, um, Angie’s not, not Angie’s one, but the, the, um, Fiesta ST, and that felt tighter and, oh, and Dana’s got one or you’ve got one as well, but I did enjoy that, but then when I got in the, the Corsa, so yeah.
It just felt tighter. It felt more like a, um, a racehorse that you’re like, it’s on, it’s on the bridle sort of thing, but it’s all pumped up and ready to go. Alrighty,[00:56:00]
we’ve talked for over an hour now, so, uh, I’m going to go under the quick fire. Phase now, but but before I do that you you probably you’re probably aware I break up episodes now when we pivot from one topic to another or when I do a choppy edit I break it up with a little a little bit of heavy metal I was gonna do only Slayer for for this episode Um, I don’t need to explain to you boys.
Why only Slayer? What I was going to suggest was What little clip should I use? I tend to use like 30 seconds. Um, what little clips when I say, you know, if you were going to theme this episode with a break up section, with a few little bits of Slayer, what little bits of Slayer would you boys be [00:57:00] thinking of?
Uh, the intro to Die by the Sword? Yeah. That’s the one where it’s in one ear and then the other ear and stuff, isn’t it? No, I think that’s behind the crooked cross. Is it? Okay, that one then. Yeah. That one then. Alright, yeah. Uh, what’s the one that
south of heaven? Yeah. Before you see the light, you must die. Yeah. That’s it. Yeah.
See?[00:58:00]
All right, well, that’s, uh, I’ll definitely, uh, be able to use, you, you use that bit. All right. Um, quick fire. My first car, that orange Cortina that I had, what’s your primary memory of it? It had a 9. 1 liter engine. Definitely 9. 1. Yeah. So I guess the car was a 1. 6. But the badge kept falling off because the trunk lid, the boot lid had got rusty.
So the badge where it said Cortina 1. 6, it rusted and fell off. So it had been stuck on with sellotape and it kept on falling, whatever. One time my dad suggested that I file the top of the 1 off and then matte black the rest of it because the badge was all black and then stick it on the wrong way up.
So it said Cortina 9. 1.[00:59:00]
Can I just say I know you’re on your quick fire round, but um, can you beat this as a first car story? My first car was a voxel cavalier sri. Do you remember this that I bought off? Jackie and then sold to gav I, I, I do, but it didn’t work. There we go. It didn’t work. No, no, I never drove it. Couldn’t drive it.
Bought it for 50 quid and sold it for Gav for, I think, 200. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Cha ching! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! I didn’t know it was an SRI. What color was it? Yeah, yeah. White. Yeah, yeah. White. I remember it being parked at the back. Didn’t it like have a window that wouldn’t go up or something? No, that was the um Was it 209?
309 that I had. They were just randomly lower the window. You went Peugeot 309? Yeah, that was what I used to come down to visit you guys in when I first passed my test. Wasn’t it red? [01:00:00] Yeah. Yeah. Really? What motor did it have? An internal combustion engine.
Didn’t they have like a 1. 5 or something? Yeah, it wasn’t.
All right, next quick fire. What’s your most recent moment? How am I going first? Yeah, the most recent one for me. When I went to get this K5 serviced with, with John, he was going to put lower clip ons on it, he was going to take the factory exhaust off and put the Remus one on and, and I was worried it was going to spoil the bike’s character.
It was going to, you know, make it. more like the other jigsaws that are too hardcore for me to feel comfortable riding. And, and, you know, I was worried it was going to spoil its, its character. So I thought, but, but it needed the valves adjusting, you know, it needed to service, it needed care and feeding. [01:01:00] So it was, you know, it was going to go under the knife and I was worried his character was going to change afterwards.
Um, so I went out for a little ride and did. Something that I’ve, I’ve not done for a long time, which is really open the throttle on it properly. And I guess because of the seasons here, you know, when it rains, you know, the sun bakes the tarmac and makes it all melt and get all bubbly. And then it rains and the people drive over either way.
The surface of the roads have these sort of quite often quite large potholes. They might be like an inch deep But, you know, with a quite a rough edge on it, either way, the kind of pothole, which would have you off on a sports bike at the kind of speed that I was doing and going in between seeing two of these potholes and being like, Oh, that foot wide area in between them will be fine.
And going in between them at a significant rate of speed. That was the most [01:02:00] recent time where I was like, you know, it wasn’t really a, like a sphincter clencher. It was more of a. Uh, I’m too old to to be doing this and riding in this kind of way and having to make those kind of decisions. So that’s my so my mine is just harking back to what we’re saying.
You know, the entry onto the 38 from Marshmills roundabout, um, you’re coming up the hill to join the main road, and it’s only when you’re about two thirds, three quarters of the way up that you can see. If there’s any platform on the lanes. Because it’s above you, yeah. And there’s always that moment when you get there, and there’s like some sort of like, 18 wheeler juggernaut.
On the inside lane and he’s going to come across you, but he’s 200 meters ahead of you, and you’ve only got 400 meters of the road left. What are you going to do? Ah, floor it, of course. Yeah. And the, the responsiveness of your 200 horses, um, VXR [01:03:00] means that you swiftly undertake that, um, uh, 18 wheeling before it can come across your lane.
And leaving all the other twats behind you that are coming up, struggling up the hill. My reason, my only, I haven’t had any particular issues recently other than that the, uh, uh, on, on the Fiesta ST, the, uh, throttle body split when we were driving for a weekend away really annoyed me. We were going out to watch something at Stratford on, on the, uh, um, and I didn’t get to see the play because I basically, it’s this side going, um, um, um, um, idle.
Um, and then randomly would because it wasn’t holding a steady revs when you were driving along, it would just go after a bit, the fuel injection chip, which is an engine management chip, would just get confused and go, ah, and stop sending anything to the, to the, so you, you just have to coast to a stop and then pull up, turn it off, turn it back on again, and then as long as you could then get going, but with this constant fluttering accelerator and [01:04:00] stuff.
Yeah, because you’re getting way too much air, wasn’t it? Fuel mix at all. So I had to drive that back from basically about two thirds of the way to Stratford and it did occur to me if it had been Well, any of you, me and either of you going to that night out in Stratford, we would have made the theatre and gone and watched the show and just gone, meh, you know, very much in the, you know, writing on a piece of cardboard on the field, Ford Sierra out the back of Hammersmith Apollo.
That car has broken down. I’m fetching assistance. Please do not tow. And then going in CDO, um, having gone at 55 down the hard shoulder through a massive traffic jam in the rain because the car was overheating. Uh, we would have just gone for it. It would have meant driving through the middle of Stratford.
And you know what a nudgery little ass monkey the middle of Stratford is? Because the hotel was right opposite the fucking theatre. Um, it would have just been like, it would have been constantly going, Ram, Ram, Ram, like sounding like the worst kind of boy racer, [01:05:00] Bevan. Every time he stopped. Every time he put up with the fucking And then, you know, the only thing you could do, was just turn it off.
Then of course you’re constantly having to get going again and turning back on it. Now these days, actually, you sort of sound like you’re being eco, and having a, you know, a lot of cars do that stop start, rather than just you’re driving a piece of shit and fucking do what it’s told. So no, as it was, we came home instead, claimed on travel insurance.
That um, D. O. night, well I remember about that D. O. night, apart from the fact that that was, I saw D. O. in San Francisco, but that night in London he was much, much better. We stayed, Ollie and I, Stay just near like with the family. Um, I, last summer when we were in, uh, in England, we stayed just near there. And the first night we were staying Dana had to work on Olly and I like strolled, we like strolled around and looked all around and I was like, Whoa, this was where I saw Dio.
Um, do you remember when we [01:06:00] came out, we bought water, drank the water, peed in the bottles and then poured it into the. radiator. I remember doing that. That’s the only time I’ve ever literally put, put P in. The other thing I remember about that was it overheating and us being like, what the fuck are we going to do?
Let’s just like get over on the hard shoulder. And then we were like heater on windows down. Do you remember? It was like a rainy night and we drove up the hard shoulder with the B flashes on. And then if you got to the front The police were like, the road’s open. And you were like, top stuff, drop to third and accelerate away, kind of thing, wasn’t it?
We were getting such evil stares from all the poor fuckers in the traffic as we just drove up the hard shoulder. Alright, um. That’s Ford’s. Bash it on the heater, full max, vents on, don’t know why it works. Oh, no, the reason, the reason it works is that the, uh, um, the water normally goes engine to [01:07:00] radiator, engine to radiator, engine to radiator.
If you turn the heater on, it goes engine to radiator to heater matrix to engine to radiator. So it has a longer journey. Oh, so it’s just taking more energy out of it before it goes back in. Oh, I got you. Uh, we mentioned your Cavalier SRI there, um, Greig. Was that the cheapest car you ever bought? That’s my next question.
Cheapest car you ever bought? It was. Yeah. It’s 30 quid. Cavalier SRI. 30 quid. 50 quid. 50 quid, yeah. Uh, I think the cheapest vehicle I’ve ever bought. Was that Honda Cub 90 that I think I bought for 190 quid. You don’t even try and I paid 20 for that Kawasaki KZ that I, I bought. Um, dens. NFL or Premiership?
NFL. [01:08:00] Alright. Easily. It’s the I’m not even asking you why, because I know it’s NFL. It’s the greatest team sport on the planet, full stop. Best movie car?
Mad Max Ford Falcon. Yeah, there’s a lot you can be saying for that. Only because I’ve been recently liking him, I’ll go with that Ronin SA. Alright. After he ported it, invented it, and tweaked it and stuff. That’d be good to get. Or is it the Sucks 6000 from Robocop? Awww, it’s still got the factory sticker on it!
Yes! I’d buy that for a dollar. 6000 SUX. Favorite car of the moment?
Uh, I wanna have a go in one of those, [01:09:00] um, Yaris GRs. We don’t get the Corona GRs over. I’d be interested. We don’t get them here. I’d be interested in that, but you get them in the U. S. We don’t get them, but like that, that is a cool looking piece, piece of kit. That Jerry Harris GR 300 horsepower in a fucking titchy ass proper homologation special.
I know my mate’s Tesla and I know it was my first experience of an electric car. And I just, um, it’s pretty. Fucking far removed from the old definition of a car, but the performance that it could deliver was just on a level beyond anything that I’d driven in, you know, you know, when we sat in the ring taxi and that guy bond us round and like, we were like, fuck, this is like, you know, he’s doing stuff we would never do.
That’s what the sort of step up to the Tesla. Felt like yeah, I mean I [01:10:00] didn’t like the whole rest of it like the the screen and it like telling you when you’re like Not in the middle of the lane and all that crap like fuck off. I’m driving Yeah, they they are I say to people now because I had a clash with a student about five years ago where I’d said look They’re just not cars to me.
Tesla’s are just not cars It’s,
it’s, and I, and so in other words, at that time, I hadn’t yet come to terms with just how revolutionary they were in terms of moving up, moving forward with how we define the car. What I think, what’s been interesting for me is, is, um. With Tesla, the way they sort of were revolutionary and have since then have just done things like improve the build quality and tweak and improve and tweak and improve and where once they were, you know, like Ikea furniture next to a Porsche now they’re [01:11:00] in the same breath as, uh, as a Porsche.
Don’t you think, are you excited by any, like there’s, I mean, electric hot hatches coming out now, isn’t there? I do like that idea. Yeah, I saw that Renault one, that Alpine that’s like the Renault 5 Turbo, I saw some stuff about that, we talked about that on this pod, that is an interesting car. I was going to say, my favorite, my favorite vehicle at the moment, I didn’t have one when I asked you the question, and, but there is something that’s popped into my mind, it’s led me to be surfing on, online, these, these particular vehicles.
I like this BMW CE 04 scooter. This BMW electric scooter is the first electric vehicle. I’ve looked down for that’s bloody cool. And the driver is that around the city. Um, [01:12:00] there’s these, there’s these Neo mopeds that you can rent as part of, of, um. Oh, I can’t remember the name of the service now, but whatever.
It’s like scooter rental and they limit them. They’re neo scooters. They limit them to 30 miles an hour. They’re great fun for around town. It’s a really good idea that, that, uh, um, to, to do these kinds of things, but 30 miles an hour is too slow. These are less. So I was looking for some cheapy little electric thing that could do 50 miles an hour.
I feel like 50 miles an hour is the 50 miles an hour. And you can park easily. That seems to me to, to, to be the, the sweet spot, but those machines all seem to be about sort of 2, 000 the BMWs more than that. It’s like 4, 000, but, um, I saw them when we were on holiday in Paris last summer. Um, I, I’m really interested in a moped environment, 13, 000.
Oh, have I missed, looked at the price? Was it, uh, no, it’s 4. I mean, I, I, [01:13:00] I, I, I, I always thought, oh, I’ll just look it up whilst we’re chatting because I couldn’t picture it. And I thought, oh, I have seen a picture of that. And at the top of the page, I’m on the BMW CEO for 12, 000, from 12, 850. Ah, they’re not as expensive as that here, but they’re still pretty expensive.
They’re still more expensive than I’m, than I’m going to be spending on one. I’m just saying I’m quite fascinated by them. If money was no object. Oh, look, I like the avant garde looks on them. Yeah, that’s what I love. It’s like you were talking about that suitcase one, Ganny, that suitcase moped that looks like a suitcase.
I like that as well, but that’s one of the ones that’s limited to 30 miles an hour, which is all right. If you’ve, if you’ve like popped out of the tube and you just need to go somewhere, that’s. But but for me getting around suburbia on but you need 50 miles an hour and I’m ready to do I’m ready to do two wheels on city streets More than on a dual carriageway because the speeds are too high on a on a dual carriageway on city streets The speeds are kind of lower and I know san francisco and that’s that’s a a use case that I feel [01:14:00] like I could I could use um tesla rosser or gt3
Yeah, I probably would take the GT3 as well. Um, I’m really not sure. Um, on that note, gents, thanks very much for your time. Thank you. Pleasure.
This episode has been brought to you by Grand Touring Motorsports as part of our Motoring Podcast Network. For more episodes like this, tune in each [01:15:00] week for more exciting and educational content from organizations like The Exotic Car Marketplace, The Motoring Historian, BrakeFix, and many others. If you’d like to support Grand Touring Motorsports and the Motoring Podcast Network, sign up for one of our many sponsorship tiers at www.
patreon. com forward slash gtmotorsports. Please note that the content opinions and materials presented and expressed in this episode are those of its creator. And this episode has been published with their consent. If you have any inquiries about this program, please contact the creators of this episode via email or social media, as mentioned in the episode.
Enjoy more Motoring Historian Podcast Episodes!
The Motoring Historian is produced and sponsored by The Motoring Podcast Network
