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
Judas Priest – Running Wild (intro)
Furious Driving, A Mustang in the desert and Auxito, our first show sponsor
Our Auxito Discount link 15% off with code MOTORINGHISTORIAN
Running Wild – Free Wind Rider (intro)
Owatrol – not sponsored, but improve old headlights without needing polishing tomfoolery, as recommended by Chops Garage
Nismo 400 launch party at Z Car Garage
Group C and IMSA of the eighties; an awesome spectacle
Judas Priest – Running Wild (break/2nd verse)
Running Wild Freewind Rider (chorus)
The why of our Company Car Episode
A potted history of the British company car, and its unusual foibles
Sunroofs. Rooves.
The Rise of the Car Allowance
J’s first company car, a white Ford Mondeo
The Importance of the 2.0 Ghia vs the 1.6 L
M”s red ‘97 Renault Laguna RN(?). Base.
M’s silver ‘00 Ford Focus 2.0 Ghia, a eulogy to Richard Parry-Jones
The nineties/noughties requirement to meet customers face to face meaning 50,000+ miles per year (!!!)
Cars with low horse power, but low weight too
Company car policies and bending the rules; M’s Seat Leon Cupra R
Hooligan behaviour on the way to Le Mans (neither M or J driving)
Living in the car; the value of the face to face meeting, especially if the deal doesn’t go your way, because at least they used to tell you why you lost.
J’s “Annus Horribilis”, in 2000.
J’s Vauxhall Vectra S202BVT, understeery as hell
J’s Ford Soapbox. Are you listening Ian “Hubnut” Seabrook?
J’s 2000 Subaru Impreza Turbo, which he never drove (go me)
J destroys M and J’s shared Sierra Sapphire 2.0 Ghia crashing into a ditch
M’s ‘07 Nissan 350Z and ‘09 Honda CBR600RR
M’s Nissan 350Z and 370Z
After the power metal special, today’s Running Wild special
An early and very effective traffic avoidance technology
A wrecked Citroen Saxo VTS
The Uffington White Horse and a rolled car
Not Sierra but Slayer, on the bootlid of E773NKV M’s Sierra 2.0 L
A Red J-plate Subaru Legacy wagon; Gary Lineker, beloved British soccer player, calls J a Motherfu**er.
J’s misses the Green Vectra SRi sedan, dark green V-plate.
Vauxhall speke: SRi vs GSi
J mourns J191RBH, a grey Mk2 Vauxhall Cavalier SRi
Slow cars fast vs Fast cars slow
J has Toyo Proxes on his Fiesta ST. Now it sounds like a Stuka. But the grip is unholy.
M:s Fiesta ST now has a Mounttune catback exhaust
J’s business idea flipping French hot hatches becoming US-legal thanks to the expiry of the 25 year rule
Renault Safrane Biturbo / Monaco
Peugeot 309 GTi, 106 Rallye, 306GTi-6, 306 Rallye
RIP Marcello Gandini, the designer of the Renault 5 Turbo 2 and Cizetta V-16. Among many others.
J on the dodgyness of Car Consignment; the car the money and the title – at no point should one person have all three
Will J’s ‘77 Lincoln sell ? Or more accurately, will it be picked up?
The rise and rise of the Porsche Carrera GT, compared to the Ferrari Enzo and Mercedes-McLaren SLR
M’s eulogy to the Carrara GT; peak analogue?
Running Wild – Riding The Storm
Sportsbikes were bikes when M and J learned to ride. J hadn’t realized sportsbikes were a flash in the pan!
M is tired out by naked bikes and wants some wind protection; J appreciates the artificial speedlimit
BMW S1000R and S1000RR; M’s ‘09 Honda CBR600RR is better than him, and might remain that way
J cannot speak highly enough of Gran Turismo as a virtual preservation and introduction to the world of cars, driving, and motoring culture as a whole, while retaining a Japanese flavour
J’s white Sierra Cosworth RS. In Gran Turismo
J and M do not like mudflaps
M’s digression on difficult computer games
Quickfire
Favourite company car; M’s handbrake turns
J’s black Mondeo, limping up to Worcester using zipties in place of an alternator belt
Car guy reading 101: J: Enzo Ferrari – My Terrible Joys; M: Matt Oxley, a very clever motorcycle writer
Running Wild – Wild Animal (Outro)
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, and welcome to The Motoring Historian with John Summers and Mark Gami. Mark Gami, I mean, I don’t know if this is actually episode 17 because now Eric does all the editing for me, so it might be episode 17, but it’s around that, like, this is impressive. Well, maybe it’s not.
I don’t know. Well, we’ve got enough bullshit to fill 17 hours worth of stuff. I think that was Oh, I think more than I think [00:01:00] more than 17 hours. More than 17 hours. I’ve been editing it out. Believe it or not. All of our Bon Mo on the cutting room floor. What can you say? Yeah. So, get this, right? Get this. I’m watching Furious Driving That YouTuber, right?
Do you know him? He’s probably too annoying for you. He’s in Kent. He has what you would describe as shit cars Let’s just cut straight to the chase. So that’s probably why you don’t watch him His style is a little irritating, but I do like him. I don’t know what quite how I I think it’s because I i’m just Attracted to these youtubers who have large amounts of terrible vehicles that they nobly try and keep going or maybe idiotically Try and keep going but you know, that’s that’s the uh, but look, um, You He has this UNOS, UNOS MX5, whatever, he has this relationship with this company called AUXITO, who do lights, [00:02:00] HED, HED lights.
And it put me in mind of, of something that you may or may not remember. Remember in the days when it was cool to do business, travel, and For a couple of years in a row, you used to do conferences in Las Vegas with whatever tech company, was it brocade? Was it that who you were working for? Oh, I’ve been there with multiple companies.
Yeah. Uh, via yeah. So one of those Christmases, one of those like new years, you were there for a conference and I drove down and stayed with you, I drove down in the Mustang and we hung out and did whatever. And I, I hung out in the room. I remember I was writing at the time. So I did like whatever writing I was doing in your hotel room in the day.
And then like we had time together in the evening when I drive home, I, uh, left late at night and I went straight across [00:03:00] instead of like doing 15 to LA and coming off, like, And going across like 50, I think it is to Bakersfield and then on to I 5 and up that way. I just went the sort of more direct way, which was right across Death Valley.
Went through, but I went out of I’ve driven it, yeah, yeah. It’s a good way. Well, at night. That’s the place where it’s got that famous sign saying, oh, I don’t know if it’s famous, but it’s, it’s impressive. Like, no gas next 200 miles. Yeah, it is that spot, yeah. Um, yeah. Yeah, uh, anyway, um, on that piece of road, having left your place at like, uh, left Vegas like at 10 30 11 o’clock at night, something like that.
Um, I maybe never even told you this. I don’t think I did. That’s why I wanted to save it for the for the pod. I was running not that fast. fast enough, you know, a number that I don’t really want to mention on the pod. And [00:04:00] certainly it was fast enough that we came over a rise and over the rise, the road changed direction.
And I was in the desert. I was off the road in the desert, right? Literally a cactus. Up against the nose of the car, like, it wasn’t like I crashed against the cactus, but I do remember the cactus being like right there, like, and the nose and the corner of the bumper resting on it. Well, luckily it was what had happened.
So anyway, long and short was, so I was off the road so I could find reverse. And you know, there was a bit of wheel spin and I needed to move some stuff around so it could drag itself back onto the road. But fortunately it wasn’t too rough off the road and it hadn’t gone too far off the road. And it’s, you know, a Mustang, not something more delicate.
So, you know, I dare say the tracking isn’t what, wasn’t what it once was, but, you know, the thing still, the motor had never shut off. Um, Because I found reverse and got straight back out onto the road, like without messing around. I didn’t [00:05:00] get out of the car until I, uh, anyway, long and short. Having got going again, I realized that what had happened was I had been running too fast for the throw of the headlights.
So in that moment, I was like, I want proper lights. Always wanted HID brighter lights surely be able to get some could just the bulbs, right? I don’t want spot lights to make the car look like a rally car at the front of it. I just wanted better, better bulbs to go in the same. This is what auxito do. So, and this is the interesting shtick, right?
I, uh, mentioned it on a previous pod. And what I mentioned was that Furious Driving had fitted it. I had bought some on the back of that. On the back of me buying them, they mailed me and said, Did I want a discount code? I said, Yes! [00:06:00] My discount code is Motoring Historian It gives you 15%. I get a kickback.
Of that 15 percent So imagine how surprised I was when I received an email Saying that i’d got a 50 kickback from an order that had been placed just the other day I realized mark that that token payment which my wife Sneered at my son sneered at the pot. It’s paltry nature I put it to you not paltry at all.
I put it to you that we I You There is value. I’ve been paid for this bullshit. That’s awesome. That is an awesome thing. That is a, a milestone and I really want to recognize Auxito in that. Now, all of this, right, I haven’t fitted the bulbs to the Mustang yet. That was my next question. Are they any fucking good?
[00:07:00] We’re wasting so much time. about auxito and the fucking bulbs of shit. I don’t want to know. Well, look, right. We are nothing if not honest. Right. So I was going to just fit them to the Mustang, right? Yeah. And it seems like it being a Mustang, you have to like get the battery out of the wire on one side before you can get your hand on the piece of age.
Cut the back, cut the back of your hand. Just investigating it. Yes, of course. Right. Yes. Um, look, right. I’m gonna, I’m going to do it properly. I’m going to find a piece road and I’m actually gonna you do a test. I don’t give a shit about lumens. I’m gonna answer your question, absolutely applied to a similar case study.
Now I’m not gonna try and crash the Mustang off the road again, driving too fast on a dark road. No. Um, I’m, what I’m, what I’m [00:08:00] going to do is I’m going to position the car on a dark road in front of a sign at a certain measurable distance and take a picture. And then I’m going to do the same thing when I’ve got the Xito bulbs in.
So there will be a measurable before and after and I will then know whether or not to endorse these auxito bulbs, which pay me a commission. If you use the code motoring historian, when you’re buying these HED uplift, but they do look brighter on furious drivings, by the way. You corporate whore. Yeah yeah absolutely right absolutely and you know I don’t know what we’re going to do because the music in this episode this episode is going to be called company cars running wild right and you said we need to do an episode featuring running wild and we absolutely do.
Need to do an [00:09:00] episode featuring running wild and and this is uh is going to be it and now I don’t know what we’re going to do because we’ve got to you know, I mean because that might mean that we’re demonetized but we’ve got advertising and we do certainly didn’t want to be airing this People ought to buy the running wild albums On the back of this, that’s what we’re doing.
We’re promoting Running Wild. We’re saying like, you make, cause they’re still out there making their like pirate themed cheese. Yeah. Go and buy that cheese. They, him, rock. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I’m sure he has other people like swallowing around time to time on Turnstile. No, no. The most recent album, he just did himself in his personal studio.
Yeah. Think about that. Yeah, exactly. Like this is the, the spirit of heavy metal is still strong. Right.[00:10:00]
And Lou, that’s why I was mentioning people to you like, um, who were those mofos that did that? Um, classic album. It was absolutely amazing. And then they never didn’t know. Well, I mean, that’s a bunch of heavy metal bands. It’ll come back to me. They did like silver Bullet toy and stuff like that. Oh, I’ll look it up on mute on iTunes whilst with Jane.
Um. Uh, I like the idea of supporting albums, RPLA and stuff who did one album that was amazing and then never got anything ever again because people can still buy that album probably if you look for it hard enough, so therefore go out and get it because hopefully that geezer is still getting royalties off of those, you know what I mean?
Oh, RPLA, yeah, because RPLA with the introduction of the Ferrari pod that launched with, it was a monologue one that I did. Yeah. So I took your advice to do our PLA and used the intro to, um, uh, City of Angels. As the intro to the pod. Maybe a little discordant [00:11:00] for Ferrari. In fact, I thought afterwards, but you know, yeah.
Our brand is slightly, uh, is slightly Discord. Discordant. Discordant, okay. Yeah. So gonna test back to Xito. Gonna test the Xito. The other product that I was gonna mention is this. Our trot is this out troll. Product, right? Which this guy chops garage who I follow uses. This is not sponsored by me or anything, but this stuff is remarkable.
You put it on a cloth, you rub it on a foggy headlight. The foggy headlight gets clearer, no messing around with sanding or anything like that. You know, the way headlights on cars like our Fiesta goes all yellow and you can’t see properly that you can’t, and that really blunts the headlights If you put this Our Trolls stuff on it, it clears off that top layer.
I guess it’s good for bringing back plastic, black plastic that’s faded. That’s why Chops uses it to make his cheapy used cars look better. [00:12:00] Chops Garage on YouTube. I like the bloke, he’s in North Devon. Um, uh, but look, right? I don’t need to, uh, Um, but what I’m saying is, so I’m going to do the outro on the headlights before.
So it’s going to be an even test. They’re going to be freshly out trawled before I do the bulb test. So watch this space Montgomery, and we will be able to answer the question, how good are these? Oh, go, go, go, go. There’s a few tracks on the album that are worth listening to. Um, Yeah, it’s one Swedish dude or Scandi.
It’s one dude from that part of the world, from Scanduija, Norway, Finland y kind of a dude.[00:13:00]
Dude, this week I went to the launch of the Nissan 400 Nismo. It was at this place called Z Car Garage in San Jose.
Um, it is a street version of their group four race car and I didn’t even know what a group four race car was until Ollie was telling me about it on Gran Turismo and that’s the the sort of the standard. So the group four race car is a quarter of a million dollars. The Nismo that was there at Z car garage that I sat in, dude, it was like yours.
Right? In the, it, it was, it felt like, Z cars don’t feel like anything. Instead of feeling like Corvettes, they definitely [00:14:00] don’t feel like Camaros or anything like that. A Z car feels like a Z car. So it felt like your 350 when I first sat in it. But the first thing you would have said was it’s bigger and fatter than my 350.
And nice materials inside, suede. This one an automatic. The cheaper ones, and like the sort of middle one with the track pack, so there’s like the Nismo, the track pack one, and then the Basie one. The old Basie one and the middle one, you can get with a stick and three pedals. I obviously checked on them.
They also had some kind of IMSA beast. Not an R390, but some kind of IMSA beast that was in the showroom, and I didn’t notice until I heard a mechanic talking to some, uh, some, I don’t know if she was a journalist or some other, a guest that was, that was there looking, and she had noticed that one of the air intakes didn’t match the other air intakes.
And the mechanic [00:15:00] was saying, Oh yeah, because the turbo is only on one side and they’ve worked really hard to like regulate the airflow because on one side it all goes into the turbo and on the other side it all like sculpts over the body to create the sort of, you know, group C whole car is a wing.
Kind of a thing. And I was, was reminded of, of that when we were talking just before we came on air, so to speak, um, and, uh, about Goodwood featuring Can Am because those cars have that same kind of, the body is just one giant wing. And I think that that’s interesting from a. You know, engineering point of view, but it’s also interesting from the small boy kind of perspective, which is that this is a large surface to have big colors and graphics and branding and the things As small boys, you, you remember.
And I think that’s why my son, um, you know, loves the group Seacar so much, [00:16:00] like they, uh, they have that there’s a visual presence about them, what we at Pebble Beach, you know, what the Pebble Beach judge is call elegance, right? That, you know, there’s that, uh, what wins Pebble Beach is elegance. The group Seacar doesn’t have elegance, but it has the same kind of like Shazam kind of presence, doesn’t it?
Yeah, yeah, no, that’s a fair comment.
All right, so Google this up, right? Gerald Lang.
So, Andy Warhol, the pop artist, right? Yeah. Roy Lichtenstein, the pop artist. Lichtenstein did the dot style. Lichtenstein [00:17:00] develops the dot style with this dude, Gerald Lang, right? Lang is a Englishman, born in Newcastle, Sandhurst, father a major in the army, drops out, goes to art school, mates with David Hockney, goes to New York, mates with Andy Warhol, develops the dot style with Lichtenstein, while all the others circle the plug hole, he buys a weird fortified house way up in the north bit of Scotland, North of Elgin, like that far, like way there, right?
And he’s just up there doing his family and, and generally not doing like the LSD crap that all the others did in the 70s. The muse in the 70s is this dragster. Dragster guy, Don Garlit, with his swamp rat dragsters, [00:18:00] also Jimmy Clark. So it’s Jimmy Clark, pop art. I was asked to help maybe even try and let’s just call a spade a spade, because it’s our pod, sell these paintings, right?
Um, there’s a bunch of them. He did a, he did a lot of them. And I looked closely at his work and at the other work that he did, because he also did pop icons. So he also did like Kate Moss. And he also did, uh, um, Victoria Beckham. Sorry. There’s a couple of Bridgette Bardot, isn’t there? Yeah. But well, Amy Winehouse, I think it’s Amy Winehouse, isn’t it?
Anyway, the point is that he, he did, you know, terrible women and racing drivers. And the, the garlic painting is a life size. It’s basically one to one scale. It’s like 22 feet long and 7 feet high. [00:19:00] Swamp rat 7 it’s called, right? So I was asked to write pieces that might help publicize this art and get it sold.
And I ended up feeling, I said to the guy that asked me to do the work, dude, if I had a house in Miami. I would want that Swamp Rat 7, the 22 by life size drag store. I would want that in, that would be like in the living room. That really is an awesome piece of, of modern art, you know. Bigger is better with art.
That’s not about so you’re talking about both of them. You could buy a reasonably sized house for in either this community or in your community, but you know, um, yeah. So what a cool project to be involved in. What a cool thing to write about and, and what a cool thing to, to, you know, just, uh, yeah. So that was another [00:20:00] little project that I very much enjoy.
But look, right, company cars was the, the theme of, of the episode, uh, today. Yeah. 20 minutes in before we’ve hit the topic that we were really meant to talk about. That feels very, uh, feels very, uh, powerful, of course. Um, Company cars. So I thought I should probably explain that. So firstly, right? Why am I doing the company car episode?
Well, because Eric put this voiceover in front of every episode. That is the fluff that I wrote for the ACARS thing where I described you and I as company car thrashing sales reps. Right. Which is kind of a crossover that we have, but now we’re, now we’re cast and framed. We’re [00:21:00] typecast as that mark. We’re typecast as, so I thought at least we should try and explain what the whole company car thing is.
Right. And, and it is, is this that in England and the rest of Britain. In the 1960s, but especially into the 1970s, a culture evolved where job functions that required a good deal of driving or corporations that wanted to be able to pay People with benefits in kind rather than just cash bonuses, maybe the tax rate was very high.
So it might more say it would maybe make more sense to give somebody, um, something that wasn’t taxable and non taxable asset. And that was really the deal [00:22:00] with, with company cars in Britain, that the originally the idea was that if you were a business person, you were using that car for work. So you could, you would get that.
At a reduced tax rate. However, what evolved into was it meant that everybody, even the managing director, who just sat in the office all day, his Jaguar was owned by the company because that was a 50, 000 or 40, 000 payment that could be made to him tax free or a significantly reduced tax rate. Now, this leaves rise to some really interesting wrinkles in the way that the vehicles were designed, um, a curiosity gammy, um, sunroofs, right?
Beloved by you and I, but then you and I are old fashioned sales reps, aren’t we? It, it, it’s also England, right? And, and let’s, let’s call it a spade a spade. The reason it was ace was because in England, it can often be [00:23:00] sunny, but maybe be a bit rainy or something like that. You don’t want the window down, but if the sunroof’s open, it gives you some fresh air without it being too, too damp.
Especially nice to smoke in. Which again is super of the period, but that was the other reason why the sunroof is, is, is a total winner. Californians hate them. Guy across the road said to me, Why would I want anybody to cut a hole in the roof of my car?
Yeah, he’s not paying. He’s not thinking. Well, I mean, I understand like, you know, that’s been just ridiculously parochial. I mean, like that, that cars are sold in other markets and like for a lot of markets having like the ability to open up the roof. It’s like, it’s a bit like saying, why would I ever want the convertible?
I mean, it’s not quite as much, but it is the poor man’s version. Well, that’s, that’s exactly what it is. And in California, you would, you know, you would either have the full convertible or. You know, that, that’s the, the other thing is, is that, and this is a fun, [00:24:00] maybe this is just a function of, of California, but that old E55 I have, the sunroof channels got all blocked up, right?
The drain channels did, and then it rusted. So that’s why it has the rust around the sunroof because the channels got blocked up and that’s where it rusted and that’s another reason why, why people don’t like that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, cars, cars rust. I mean, it’s, uh, especially if you live next to the, next to the sea.
I mean, it’s going to It is, um, you know, so, so, yeah, so I, I, uh You know, and, uh, basically fuck off sunroofs are cool. Well, it’s my give and take exactly right. And, and I’m pleased that I was looking for a way to segue back to, to company cars there, and you just gave it to me perfectly right. Is that the Sierra two liter with the sunroof is worth a shitload more than the 1600 without.
Right. That’s yeah. Oh, you want all the toys. Yeah. I mean, especially as a rep, all the toys, please. I [00:25:00] want electric windows all round. Obviously I want like, you know, and this is because your base Sierra had crank windows. So this is exactly, and you wanted, you know, you wanted the two liter with the twin with the, with the, with the nicer exhaust.
Yeah. You wanted all that. Well, you do because when you’re hot in traffic, when you, when it’s a sunny day and you’re hot in traffic, if the car’s got crank windows, you can’t put all the windows down. You’re sitting there like a tuna fish in the tink. It’s either blow, blowy, blowy, make yourself look terrible before the meeting, or you Or maybe crack the windows before, but who prepared electric windows or four electric windows, you can set them perfectly.
So there is real value in those, those little trinkets, but that graduation, which I grew up understanding and intrinsically valuing, that was a function of the company car era. Of Britain and and I think, uh, so what we should say is that that tax era went away, right? And if you think of [00:26:00] it, we witnessed it and and I would say I, I witnessed it to the was the end of my time in England and I left England in 2003, because what companies stopped doing was giving you a car.
And what they started doing was giving you a car allowance. So where it used to be that the, the fleet manager would buy like 20 Ford Cortinas. And you know, they would be given to sales reps. Or if you think of, of, you know, my first company car was that white Ford Mondeo, which my boss had had first, but my, the company, at least a new car for him.
So he had the new, you know, and then, you know, it was like, you know, it was like being the littlest. You know, when you were there, when you went, but you know, I, I had a promotion to get that company car, even though my job was still based in the office. It wasn’t a face to face thing. It was, uh, I mean, it’s, yeah, I mean, and you’re absolutely right, but I think also it’s [00:27:00] about dick measuring, because if you’ve got the gear and the other person’s got the, like, the steelies with the plastic covers, like, you know, A cheapie, you know?
And people live to be like one up, then one up in the neighbor center. It’s so funny you say that. ’cause one of the things on my little agenda is, do you remember the Ford Grenada? 2.8 I Gear X? Do you remember the badging used to be so long, it almost went right the way to the trunk lid. It was like the lock in the middle of the trunk lid was the full stop on this absolute chin out Grenada.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, but dude, people love that shit. I mean, look, I mean, Porsche is making a career, an epoch defining company out of that. You know, there’s a reason why they sell the fucking Turbo S first, because if you’re the first person who’s got to have that Porsche when it’s released, you’ve got the money to spend on the Turbo S, even if you don’t need the standard Cayenne would have done you fine, thanks, [00:28:00] but you have to pay 150 grand for the Turbo S, because you want to, you want to show off at the Car Park Grand Prix.
You add those two cupras and, and then didn’t you buy, so this is, this is the area that I wanted to, to discuss with you that the, that would be a company car policy, wouldn’t that? And then, so in, in the days that there was, so, so yeah, so just, so at first, like maybe when I, when we were first working in the late nineties, that was when the company would like give you a car.
And that was in the notion, that was the notion of the pool car. And this is why we should, pay honorable mention to that red Renault Laguna that you must have put. Ah, 269 CNE. I think you must have put what? About
60 to 80 clicks on it. I think. In how long? That was a, that was a company car that [00:29:00] someone else had first and I got. Um, and then later on when I worked at Redstone, it was similar with that silver, um, sort of first of the sort of whatever it was called in design focus. Yeah. Cause I was going to talk about that.
Cause you had that lovely silver, that was a focus to lead to gear, wasn’t it? That was the financial director’s car before she left. And I, when I realized it was the two liter gear, they were like, well, you could have this instead if you want. I was like, yep. Give me that. Amazing chassis. Yeah. Fabulous chassis.
Underpowered, but you could keep up with, well, to quote a random, my mate’s 225 horsepower TT through the back lanes. If you were taking racing lines and you know, using the fact that the chassis was really good, you could keep up with him much to his chagrin. But hey, thank you, Harry Jones for taking the time to put that chassis under that focus because you put You put like 90, 000 miles on [00:30:00] that car and absolutely.
Oh, at least. Yeah. That one I had to from, I think from that one, they paid something like 18, 000 like additional miles. It should have gone back way earlier. I think it should have gone back at 90 and I gave it back at 108. And it was just one of those ones where I said to them, like, it’s done 90. And they were like, yeah, yeah, we’ll get it back.
We’ll get it back. We’ll get it back. And then like four months later, I’d been on another 18, 000 miles. It was just like the patch I had. included Cornwall and some companies up in Manchester when I was living, you know, just, just south of. So we should talk about that, shouldn’t we? The, the, in, in those days, the way that you would, you would sell was that you would talk on the phone to build some rapport and kind of establish a need.
And then in order to flesh out that need, you would go and meet the person face to face. And that was, was. A measure of commitment on both parties that, you know, you were wasting the time out of the office. If, if, you know, I remember that you, you know, you even had a [00:31:00] reseller partner when we were in the South of England, you had a reseller partner up in Warrington that you would drive up and see.
So it’s a four hour drive up there to, uh, to, to, to see people. And quite often those meetings went nowhere, right? Quite often. You just, you know, Well, that was largely relationship with the guys that have a lovely bunch, absolutely cracking distributor. They got bought by, um, uh, crikey. Um, well, they’ve ended up in Aslan.
They ended up over them. I can’t remember who it is now, but yeah, I mean, really, but good bunch of guys. Um, anyway, um, yeah, you’re absolutely right. That was a day up there. So it’d be like four and a half hours up there, about four or five hours up there. Take the, the, the couple of the reps out for lunch, out for lunch and stuff and then drive back in the afternoon.
So, um, yeah. I would do the M6 North and then the M6 South in a day. Um, and yeah, I mean, pretty quickly you rack up chunky miles on the wheels that you were living in. Um, many in audio book, audio books, a great way to travel, except if you get sleepy, [00:32:00] because then it’s like your dad reading you a story when you were a kid.
Then you get the music on because you need something, hanging the windows down and a coffee at you because you need to wake up, you can’t with the audio book, you’ll fall asleep, which is a stupid idea. So it’s a good way to eat miles. Yeah. And we should say as well for, uh, uh, for, for our listeners, if there are any, um, or stick shift, right?
All of these cars are. And, and in this era, um, making probably more than a hundred horsepower, but definitely less than 200. Yeah. That, well, the quoted on that Ford Sierra, sorry, the focus gear was 130. Um, I think, I think the Laguna was probably making about one 18, something like that, if I recollect. But I mean, plenty enough to hustle your ass along.
Is that thing is the, it’s a lot more fun to drive a slow car fast than a [00:33:00] fast car slow, and these cars didn’t have a lot of horse, but they were very light and yeah, flimsy in comparison to, to modern cars without the ABS, without the, you know, and the weight of the ABS pumps and all of that without.
airbags, without, yeah, all of that. So, so the, the dash area is just plastic, right? It’s just plastic of the same grade as you. My boss described the, the, the stereo in the, for, in their Focus gear as a bit Fisher price, quote unquote. Um, and he was right. They did have some big, big swage across the dash, didn’t it?
Which, yeah, yeah, it, it, uh, yeah. And front drivers mostly, right? Apart from your BMW. And you’ve been right. Yeah, absolutely. But no, to your point about the, um, the having the, uh, the, the company car policy. So the first time I got to choose a car, um, I brown nose to the FD [00:34:00] who I got on with particularly well, lovely lady.
Um, and she was, I could, I thought it was going really well in the conversation. Then I realized when she went, Mark, what are you asking me after about three minutes that she just wasn’t listening. And then, and so I broke it down to the nuts and bolts. It was like, look, I’ve called the company car. And for the same money as you were prepared to pay for the most expensive car on your five car list that I could choose from, which was a golf 1.
9 TDI. Um, for the same money as that, in fact, less, I can have a Cooper R instead. Can I have it? And she was humming and harv her a bit. And then presumably probably looking at my sales figures, which were good at the time. And when, and our answer was, if I never hear anything about it again. Yeah. So at which point don’t oversell, hang up.
You’ve got the, you’ve got the bike. Don’t guilt the Lily. Don’t do it without awful poor IBM dude did on the golf course at the 18th where he said to the guy, and you can write this off over the next five years. It’s a great [00:35:00] investment. And he went, I’m selling the company in 18 months. I no longer want to buy your product.
25 million quid’s worth of fucking servers up the Swanee. You’d won the deal. Shut the fuck up. Yeah. Don’t do that. Yeah. So I just walked away and the only time I nearly got bitten by it was two times. One was. After like 7, 000 miles, the Pirelli PZero Rossos that they sold it with were through to the canvas on the front, like with spikes of wire and stuff sticking out of them.
And my boss said to me like, dude, like you need to pack in, you know, if that carries on, you’re gonna, you’re gonna get in the shit for this. And I managed to persuade him it was just because they were over soft and we put Goodyear Pilot Sport Eagle, something or other, no, we put Goodyear Eagles on the front instead.
And they lasted 15, 000 or 12 and a half to 14. But that time everyone forgotten about the previous time anyway. So it didn’t matter. Um, and, uh, other than that, well, when I lent it to Stu to go down to the mall, cause I told him about it, um, in a pub or whilst we were chatting, cause he’s a car guy as well.
And, uh, [00:36:00] He was like, well, if it’s a company car, can I borrow it to go down to the mall? And I was like, well, you’re the only one that knows. So it would look weird me lending it to you. So we had to come cop some pony and trap about how I, it was my car on a lease, but I was going to lend it to him anyway, because I’m a, I’m a solid geezer.
And, uh, yeah, he rang me up like presumably after they’d had a couple of little toots when they arrived there. And bragging about how his mate Trigger couldn’t lose him in his, in his, uh, E34 M3. Apparently there’d been, the eye widening bit for him had been when they’d been caning it down some French hill and, uh, he realized that there was the line of traffic ahead where they were going to be pulling into had come to a stop.
So he, when he was still accelerating to get past the car, he was overtaking. So he had to keep accelerating, then pull in and then get on the anchors. Um, And, uh, it was so close and so squeegee of tire, but stopped that trigger got out and wandered back to him and went, calm the fuck down, mate, because he was like, [00:37:00] like a cigarette paper between the nose of the Cooper and the back of his Beamer.
But, um, yeah, it was, uh, he couldn’t say enough good things about it. And it wasn’t for a front wheel drive. car with 18 inch rims. Those rims were amazing. The difference between the Cupra and the Cupra R in look was just so much more gangster. Um, where, you know, the proper Coulthard chin spoiler and those alloys were amazing.
The Coulthard chin spoiler. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. The Coulthard chin spoiler. Yeah. I mean, and I like David Coulthard, like, I’ve got no problem with, well, I did have at the time where he was racing, but like, he’s cool. Um, but yeah, no, I mean, it was a, it was a cracking car and having that freedom, it’s the same emancipation you get with having any car at any point in your life, but.
Um, I think that used to be more true than it is now for a lot of people. My, uh, so my, uh, story there, my hooligan behavior on the road to the mall. Um, do you [00:38:00] remember I went with that lad, uh, Nick Riley, who I, who I worked with? Um, and Nick had just finished building a, uh, Replica, like James Dean, like Porsche RSK, like that here, like, but it was a Volkswagen, a Volkswagen Beetle chassis.
And it had like a hot rod beetle motor. And Nick had a mate who worked for one of those companies like Aslan. I mean, it may have even been Aslan. Um, and the mate was like super Ford. His name I remember was, was Ian. Um, and. Ian had a uh, Robin Hood, which had, was like a Westfield, like a Caterham replica.
And it had a Pinto, bored like to 2. 1, with like twin Weber 45s that, you know, Ian’s mate from Essex had like, so you knew this thing was like a fire breathing thing. Well, um, on one of those, you know, long French roads, long French [00:39:00] downhill, um, He got alongside us. We’d been leading and he got alongside us.
So we were like alongside each other, downhill with these two things, absolutely rung out probably 110, 120 miles an hour, that kind of speed. And there was a railway crossing at the bottom of the hill. So the tarmac wasn’t completely smooth. The way it flattened out. It wasn’t as if there was like, you had to like hump across the rails.
It was smooth, but it was still like. Well, over the bump, the, uh, engine mount on the Porsche Volkswagen Affair broke, like, broke, like, it got, like, well, I don’t know if it grounded or, but after that, it was clear that the engine mount was, uh, was, was broken and that, um, I think considerably spoiled, uh, the experience for, for Nick, I remember.
When we’re, when the engine mount was F’d, I remember thinking, uh, well as, as, uh, spoiled things, uh, somewhat. [00:40:00] That year we didn’t, it didn’t have a roof. Neither car had a roof and it pissed out. I remember looking at the puddle when we came to drive home. I remember looking at the puddle in the seat of the Porsche, you know, in the, in the passenger seat where my, where I was about to place my hitherto dry arse.
Yeah. But now I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, the, uh, road trips and have owning a car like that, where it’s, you know, you use it for company, but you also use it for your car as your everyday drive, um, does lend a certain fondness to them. Cause you really live in them. I mean, you know, if you’re doing 30, 40 K a year with work, you know, you spend a lot of time in that car.
Um, and I mean, it also, I think if you want to get macro about it for a modicum of a second, you know, there’s a, there was a noticeable difference to me. In the politeness levels of business now, they’re just worse. [00:41:00] They’re just flat out worse because people are more than happily have several presentations with you over video and then just blank you just blank.
You literally never speak to you again. Whereas if you, if you’ve done that, where you’ve had a meeting face to face at any point in that, You’ll at least get the dear John conversation. You’ll get a celebrity. We went ahead with a different company because of X, Y, and Z. And this is why you didn’t win. And that’s really useful feedback for anyone in sales who wants to be better in sales, actually understanding why you lost and either being able to craft the proposition or often craft your message better in order to perhaps resonate better because you probably didn’t either speak to the right people or didn’t caress the right sort of hot button topics for them.
Yeah, because people don’t always buy the best product. Let’s be clear. Um, they buy a product that they like or they buy from people like them. So that’s how it works. So if you want to craft your message, the fact that people are more than happy to prepare with this video link and social media anonymity and all this sort of stuff feeding into the fact they just feel it’s acceptable to just down tools and [00:42:00] never take your calls again, literally after saying, right, we’re into the last two we’ll, we’ll let you know how it is.
That’s answer enough, apparently, is to just never talk to you again. And that’s pervasive. I’ve seen that, not just me, like, a lot, a lot of people I’ve spoken to in sales have found that. And that’s a very, that’s a, I think that’s a telling drift there. Um, so, not investing in the time to go and see people is changing that dynamic in lots of ways that customers who would then say, who, the same sort of people who would complain to you about the shitness of salespeople, are in ignorance contributing to the shittiness of salespeople by not providing feedback on sales that they weren’t happy with.
So those mofos never get any better.
I realized, putting together like my kind of talk track here, that I had a sort of anus horribilis. [00:43:00] Remember the queen talking about the anus horribilis? I had an anus horribilis immediately after the millennium. Because remember, at the time of the millennium, we were at Loch Ness. And you had struggled up company carless in a Sierra, which had been blowing radiator hoses and lord knows what else all the way.
I had a brand new Vauxhall Vectra that I’d gotten like off the truck with like 14 miles on it or something. Um, Not a great car, sadly, S202BVT, that was, was what I had that, that time, uh, uh, at that, uh, yeah. Yeah, I remember you said it was understeery as hell. It was, it was worse than my dad’s Cavalier, it was, it was, I never, I, I, what I couldn’t credit, and what I still can’t credit, is how, uh, The engineering took a step [00:44:00] backwards from one car to another.
I don’t understand how you can make it worse than the pre, it wasn’t like the Vectra rode much better than the Cavalier or anything like that. It just wasn’t a, uh, so just Hubnut for all you people that were like, Oh, why Ford? Oh, why Ford? Because right? Because Vauxhall’s never handles as well. And Rovers, did you want to look like your grandpa hub?
No, I know you did. I didn’t want to, right? So when people are like, why Ford? Why a Ford worth more now? This is why you were like Gammy. You were like the gear model straight away. You framed it in. We talk in Ford language. That’s why Capris and Cortinas are worth more than Cavaliers and Mantas are and ever will be.
And I’m just going to step off my Ford guy. Uh, yeah, no, I agreed. Um, you can still get parts from as well. My Anna herbalist though, right? I, uh, I went [00:45:00] to remember, I, I went from MTI, who were a small player who’d given me that Vectra, and I went to EMC who I had access to that wonderful pool. And remember, remember I ordered.
A 2000 model year Subaru Impreza Turbo or WRX for our, uh, our American listeners. And do you remember I got them to agree to pay a bit extra so I could have the short show throw shifter. It was native dark blue Subaru rally blue short throw shifter. And it had these Enki look, multi spoke, gunmetal grey.
It arrived the day they fired me. That was a hard, that was a hard one. It was. I remember. It was. Although to be fair, you didn’t order aircon, if I recollect, which was a new move. Well, now I feel better about the fact that I never have had That’s why I, that’s why I reminded you of that. Yeah, I, I went for the wheels and the short throw [00:46:00] shifter instead of the air con.
Yeah, that would have been a, a, Well, no, yeah, I think you were, you were harping on about how it was going to add like 50 kilograms of weight. I was like, yeah, well, you’re going to be sweating 50 kilograms of weight on the M1. Well, it wasn’t me sweating it out, was it? It was some other poor bastard that got the car, wasn’t it?
Yeah, some other poor mofo in there, yeah. So, uh, yeah, so I was fired. So do you remember then I had the Sierra? the white Sierra that we shared. Yeah. And then I busted through that in a ditch like a fucking idiot. Didn’t I? Well, did you also got the nice green Jaguar bag nicked out of the boot with all its DNS?
Yeah. Ouch. Yeah. The loss of the D and D books, the loss of the car, the fact that I truly owed you a car, which made up for the fact that we’d use my Lincoln in America, but I still feel kind of owe you. Can I owe you a car? You know, when the, when the, when I’m Joe Rogan size, when our pod is Joe Rogan sized, I’ll buy you a [00:47:00] Camaro ZL1 to drive around the lanes of England or something like that, because that’s off my celebrity balls, but yeah, three speeding tickets I got in that year as well.
So I nearly got banned. So that was my anus horribilis. of uh, of driving in that, that company era.
So listen, right to move us, uh, to move us on. Cause you know, I love to keep the pace up in our conversation. Yeah. What were you driving 10 years ago? Uh, 10 years ago. Um, I mean, probably the Zed mainly, um, that remind us what it is. It’s a 07 [00:48:00] 350 Zed GT. Silver. Silver with the raised alloys. The post facelift y one with a little bulge in the hood and the raised alloys.
Z car garage, poster on the wall, the launch poster of that car. Your car, but in gold, raised alloys, and uh, I, I, I really believe that is peak 350. Oh yeah, I wouldn’t change it for any of the ones that came before or after, to be honest. Of that sort of 350, 370 or anything. I mean, I’ve had a 370, I smashed that one up, didn’t I?
But um, uh, And it was fine, but it wasn’t as good in so many ways. It was just less, um, even down to little things that should have made you happy. Like the fact that he had a button on there for like synchro matching on the down shifts, like fuck off. I mean, it’s a three 50. I’ve been, I’ve done like a hundred, 120, 000 miles and I don’t need your help.
You know, I mean, I understand why it’s there. [00:49:00] But it’s yeah, I didn’t want it. But it’s I mean, it’s so I didn’t feel that bad when I smashed that one up. I did anyway, because I smashed up any car I was feel bad about and it’s not really happened to me before. So that one felt bad. But no, yeah, that I think, obviously, I’ve still got the same motorbike as then as well.
So I still have both the vehicles I owned them. They’re both in the garage. Yeah, you know what I had at that time, and this is when it was forgotten. The stinky Subaru. I had that. Impreza wagon that leaked oil everywhere and it leaked oil from the heads onto the exhaust. So it’s smell of oil I I had that that was uh was my car 10 years ago.
So we touched on this earlier today’s music running wild Right. And we actually began this episode. Obviously we haven’t, because you and I haven’t listened to it, but the listeners will have heard this episode begin with the Priest song, Judas Priest song, Running Wild, which is of course [00:50:00] what gave the band Running Wild their, their name.
And we got onto Running Wild because a couple of episodes ago we were talking about the, uh, the German power metal, weren’t we? And you were like, If we’re doing Power Metal, what about Running Wild? And I was like, they’re getting their own bloody episode. Um, so yeah. Um, and I want to say, right, we didn’t talk about what this Power Metal thing is, but really it’s like Iron Maiden never changed from like 1984, isn’t it?
It’s like this, this, the German bands, they, they listened to what Iron Maiden had done in the early 1980s. The lyrical content, the way the music was composed or everything about it. And they just sort of fossilized that and mined this one silo. Um, there’s whole bands that are themed around Lord of the Rings.
Oh yeah, yeah, dude. There’s loads of that stuff. The Scandiwigi region likes that shit a lot as well. So, um, you’ve got your dragon forces and all that sort of [00:51:00] stuff. We’ve sort of remained. Sort of true to that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So running wild pirate themed songs, cheesy lyrics, monster riffs is how I wanted to, uh, to, to frame that.
Yeah. Um, 20 years ago, what were you driving?
Um, Oh, four. Hmm. Probably one of the Cooper’s I suspect. Uh, I think that’s what I had. Well, that’s what I had before I got the Zed and I got the Zed in 09.
So yeah, it probably would have been the second, the 225 horsepower Cooper R. Um, the first one I think was 210. Notable changes being it had the little, like, central line in the steering wheel for the sort of rally flavour feel. Um, a slightly better stereo. [00:52:00] Uh, oh, and I managed to get thrown in on the weird deal that I got through my bank to buy it.
They would put this little, this cool little sat nav thing, which has a titchy little screen in it. And it had this weird subscription service where you just rang up everyone and again was paid like 50 quid And they’d give you X number of drives on that, but it was the best one I’ve ever been on for up to the minute updates, four or five times in the course of six months, it told me to get off the motorway with a sort of flashing urgent, get off the motorway.
And as I got off the motorway, you could see the, you could see the queue beginning at like just down the way and amazing. So that was the, in fact, that was the one. That took us on that cross country route to Alton Towers where Denz had his company car and I led in mine. You remember that day where the three of us drove up there?
I do remember that. And it took us straight in and then to the side exit and we literally turned in from a back alley road and missed the entire queue into Alton Towers. Yeah. You remember those poor bastards [00:53:00] that wrecked that Saxo VTS up against the stone wall as well? I do remember that, yeah. That was a cracking back road, and that told you that the locals knew it was a cracking back road as well.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know the other one of those, that VTS one, always puts me in mind of, do you remember that time we went to the Uffington White Horse, and there was, we’d been out all night, like at a gig, and in the morning, as we were leaving the Uffington White Horse, There was like somebody on their way to church or something, some old lady who’d overturned in the lane.
Do you remember? Oh, vaguely. Yeah. The ambulance and everything had already been called. We weren’t first on the scene, which given our circumstances at the time, if you remember that we were, uh, we’d just been practicing our banger racing technique in the car park near the Effington white horse. Hadn’t we like hanging out the tail in your, uh, in that same old gray Sierra E seven, seven, [00:54:00] three N K V.
The Slayer, because I cut up the badge, no, I cut up the Sierra badge, so it said Slayer on the boot instead. Remarkably good, it’s easy to do with the Sierra, you only have to cut a few cuts, and like nearly taking the tip of your thumb off because you weren’t paying attention properly, but it was uh, you know, it was well worth the effort.
Yeah. Yeah, so instead of Sierra it said Slayer, but in the Sierra script. Yeah, very cool. I’d, I’d forgotten that. Yeah. By popular demand, The Chronicles of Halvar and Clarence will soon be released as a series of audiobooks. Join me Halvar, the world’s greatest, most brilliant, strongest, toughest, sexiest, and most modest barbarian as I crush wizards and kick ass.
And yeah, Clarence might bother to show up. He’s a gnome thief, the smallest member of the crew. Ha ha [00:55:00] ha ha, a real tinky winky, ain’t that right, Titch? Very true, big man. However, I can always introduce a comely wench to a truly massive cock, now can’t I? Ha! You can! I, of course, have a, hey, hold on, hey, hey, fuck you!
Come back here, you little bastard! Double or Quits, by J. D. Gammy. Available now on iBooks, Audible, and everywhere that’s cool. So, um, much beloved British soccer player, Gary Lineker, called me a motherfucker once. Do you remember? You weren’t with me. Um But Uh, no, I don’t, but, um. He looked me right in the eye and said, Well, I didn’t hear him say it.
It was through the windshields of our cars. Do you remember when I was at EMC, before I was fired from EMC, when I had the pool cars? Remember, I had a Volvo S40 for a little bit. [00:56:00] Terrible thing. Do you remember I also had that red Subaru wagon? Subaru Legacy wagon. Yeah, it was only a four cylinder, but like all Subis, it loved to rev.
So it was slow, but it gave what little it had very willingly. And I was happy with it. Lovely shift. Subis always have a nice, nice shift. They’re, they’re probably better to drive than a lot of Hondas, I reckon. Well, anyway, my boss had invited me to her house, right. As for like a, you know, you’re going to get fired if you don’t sort it out kind of conversation, right.
She lived in one of those like nicey villages. Ascot way, right? And I guess Lineker lived there as well. And, and I guess it’s one of these where there’s like a tree and there was a lane and you had to go around one way or something. Anyway, I was going the wrong way. I knew I was going the wrong way. He was coming the other way and there was a screeching of brakes.
And that was when he implied that I had sexual relations with my mother. Or at least I think he did. So, yeah, they don’t put that in the crisps [00:57:00] advert, do they? No! No, foul mouthed!
On the theme, we’re talking about company cars here. Do you remember, just for a hot minute, when I was working for MTI before EMC, and they were those ones off the Hogsback, the office was in Guildford, just where the WWF was. Officers are now, um, or where they were there. I don’t know if the W2F is still there.
Anyway, long and short, um, they gave me for a little bit before I had the blue Vectra that we just talked about having the terrible understate. They gave me a, uh, green Vectra SRI. It was a two liter. I remember. It was still V6 one. Yeah. But it was green and it was a sedan and it was not quite, but it only had about 1500 miles on it.
Loved that car. That car made a huge impression on me. That was why when I first was, you [00:58:00] know, shaping to come to England and was looking at buying cheap cars for like an England summer trip. That was why the first thing in my mind was a Vectra GSI. Because I love that green Vectra SRI so much. In Voxel land, SRI was warm.
GSI was, was like Cosworth level hot, like approaching like 170 or 190 horsepower as opposed to like 130. Yeah. Yeah, I did like, um, do you remember my boss? Um, that terrible recruitment company I was at my boss, Alan had a, uh, gray Cavalier SRI like mark two Cavalier SRI with no wheel caps. J191RBH. Um, sadly it’s gone.
I did look it up. If there’s one car I would, would love it was that it wasn’t that fast, but it was so willing. It was so much better than my dad’s Cavalier. [00:59:00] CD that was the same design like two liter CD. That was like a G play.
What happened to the M2? Oh, nothing at the moment. I’m going to get rid of it. I’ve got it serviced on a few other things. Um, I can’t trust it. It’s not a trustworthy car. Um, so I’m going to get rid of it. I’m basically waiting until I got, I get this audio book done and then I’m going to be full tilt getting onto a job.
And as soon as I got a job, I’ll swap it out for a, at the moment. Uh, the, uh, Yaris GR. I think it’s what I’ll go for. I don’t, I increasingly I don’t feel the need to have like four or five hundred horsepower at all anymore because like even that BMW, it’s [01:00:00] not as fun. I have more fun in the 350. I’m more fun in the hot hatches.
I’m more fun in my wife’s Fiesta ST because you actually have to pay attention and It’s you can drive closer to the car’s envelope and closer to a, you know, a reasonable speed on the road, you know, I mean, I mean, I accept that it’s speeding on occasion, not in a sort of built up area and not in where there’s anyone like to be inconvenienced by, um, by, you know, my, if I was to make an error, which I’ve consistently not done him across my career, other than like a hedge in my ego.
So. I’m not taking any risks with any people, but the trouble with any of these modern cars is I don’t see, I mean increasingly I don’t want to become like an old, like, you know, your dad and a complete old fart, bless your dad at least, lovely bloke, um, just using him as an example of sort of, you know, uh, sensibleness creep, if you will, um, um, that, uh, You don’t, you just don’t need it.
It’s like, it’s ridiculous. Like, because it just means that you have to get out of the gas faster. It just means that you have to go [01:01:00] further away from the car’s performance envelope. It’s the same reason, you know, a lot of these people that are buying these um, desert X’s and stuff like that in the motorbike world.
More power to them. Have fun. I mean, you’re buying it for the, uh, for the cafe culture porn show. You’re not buying it to go off road. So about 5 percent or probably less than 5 percent of these people will actually ever see a fi even a fire road on those things. And good luck to them, that’s absolutely fine.
But therefore, you know, you’re taking these things that should go on a track, not going on the track with them. And not really ever enjoying them or seeing the performance rewards for it, because, you know, you’re not actually balancing the car at the performance limit. I do, I do think that’s a super, um, valid point, this idea that you need to, it’s, you know, it is more fun driving a slow car fast.
Then a fast car slow. Um, if you’re struggling to find some way of injury, and I really, you know, I, I do really appreciate this with the sports bikes that, [01:02:00] um, you know, uh, uh, I’ll do a hundred miles an hour in first gear. The bike’s 20 years old. It has no ABS. It has no traction control. You know, this is a very hard thing to try and enjoy in a, you know, in a, in an everyday, in an everyday kind of, of context, it’s a hard thing to enjoy even, even on a track, right?
And I do think there’s a case for having the wonderful thing, but I also think there’s a really strong case for being disciplined enough to, you know, having the thing that’s, that’s right for you. Um, the Fiesta, you know, I have a Fiesta ST as, as, as well. Um, love it to pieces. It is, yeah, the, the, the right.
It’s amazing. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, um, What I would say, one thing, one warning I would issue to you, um, it’s for a set of tires lasted 19, 000 miles. They were kind of worn out about three [01:03:00] or 5, 000, but, you know, I just, I guess the fundamental chassis is so good that I just got. I just, yeah, I just, I, the handling tailed off without me really noticing and remains so good that it just didn’t bother me, but with the, you know, with it, with the, with the being water about here, I decided I would get a better tire, but then when you’re in the tire shop, you look around and, and the long and short is I’ve ended up with, uh, Toyo proxies, eight, eight, eight.
Which are they’re street legal, but they’re designed for autocross and track work Um, I picked it up and they are so noisy. I was like, what’s wrong? Like have they fitted them wrong? I went round and they’re the right size and they fitted right and they look awesome The car looks awesome car [01:04:00] sits better than it did before not that it looked bad before but it looks terrific now, um I Google up the reviews one review where they’re talking about how noisy it is, right?
There’s five reviews. All of them are talking about how noisy it is. One guy in response to how noisy are there was like noisy, like a Stuka dive bomber, and that is how it is. It’s you approach traffic lights and it’s like a, like off road, you know, like, like when people put big tires on. Like it has that kind of like rolling rubber kind of noise.
Um, so for the first, I would say 48 hours, I was like, what have you done? Like you could have just put pilot sports on it. The pilot sports were cheaper. What have you done? And then it was dry up by the cliff house. And, oh my word, [01:05:00] like. It is transformational. I didn’t think I, my mind has been blown by how much better.
I didn’t think the Fiesta could get that much better. I didn’t think a front wheel drive car could get that much better. The really striking thing is the bite on launch, like the launch bite is just. Unbelievable. Just the, the only thing I will say about them, I suspect, um, because anything like that, when you get, if you go, when you went from Goodyear pilot sports to like Perlo PIO or Rossos, um, the Reds and stuff like that, you do get like 15 ish percent, 20% more.
And if you attune to Kanye and you know it at the back of your hand, you’ll appreciate that sort of 40, 50% rather than the actual 15 or 20%. It really is. But you will get probably about 40 percent higher tire degradation. Now I’ll take that. Don’t get me wrong, but therefore [01:06:00] you’re going to have to change it more quickly.
And it would behoove you to do so because the danger with that is you start driving up to what it could do. And then the fall off will be quite quick. Um, so, you know, you bought into that now you’re, you’re now addicted. Yeah. Like unlucky, you know, you’ve had your first crack rock. You’ve just got to keep having the pain for the crack rocks.
So you just have to bigger and neat more often. So I’m lucky. Yeah, absolutely. It’s like, the noise is annoying, but Ollie said to me just the other day, like, I’m used to the noise now, and I was like, you’re not bothering me too much. It crashes through potholes even worse. It’s a little bit different than it did before, but I’m telling you, Yammy, that the launch in second is just that when it goes through that torque steer that it does at four or five grand, it does that even more.
It’s like you feel it. I mean, we’ve got a man tuned exhaust on anything now because the exhaust went and Ford were like, yeah, no problem. We’ll get you an exhaust. It’d be like 1400 quid. And I was like, I don’t, can I have a quote for it without including fixed fitting and stuff? Because I want to compare it to the aftermarket one.
And [01:07:00] the bloke wearing that isn’t including fitting. At which point I thanked him politely and hung up and called Mountune instead. And the guy was like, yeah, mate, we’ve got one in stock. It’s like 575 quid for the full cat back system. I was like, all right, send it over. So we got it through the post and I got a local mechanic to fit it.
It is boomy. And I checked the reviews before I bought it to see how boomy it is. And it’s not unbearable. And you go through the bit where it’s really boomy, about three and a half. And then you sort of come out the other side and it’s like not as boomy. But it does have that sort of like, start it up in the petrol station, which is quite funny.
Um, but yeah, it’s, um, it was more of a, it was, it was an economy, but be like, what am I going to do? Pay three times the price for a shitter exhaust, like piss off. And also the next step is you can get the cat up and the performance cat for about 600 quid, and you can get the chip and air intake and longer and cooler [01:08:00] filter thing.
For another 600 quid, which then moves it from like 180 to 200 to about 2, 2 5. So I said to Angie, well, like, if you’re gonna keep it, you might as well have those other bits, you know, the next time you’re feeling a bit flush. So she’s gonna do that. I do feel like, I feel like, um, I mean I’ve, I, there is no exit strategy for me out of ours.
Um, well, the une shit didn’t even invalidate the Ford warranty when it ca when they, when they brought it out. So as far as I’m concerned, you might as well buy it. It’s like Ford. If it’s basically doesn’t invalidate the Ford warranty, it’s Ford approved. You know, it’s basically, yeah. Tuna pop. Yeah. Ford didn’t make.
For, I can’t believe the dealership are charging 1, 400. I mean, that is. Dude, it’s like they’re trans, they don’t want to know with old cars now. I can’t, I mean, if I want to cut parts for the Zed, I have to ring them up and like fax it in, in triplicate and then wait for the goddamn boat to arrive from Japan.[01:09:00]
Yeah, that has moved into classic status. Yeah, I know, but like this is, I mean, this is a 2015 car. I mean, it’s like not old. I mean, but they don’t want to know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I got the notice through mine needs to be smogged. Um, for the first time, right? Six years old now, which is fine. Oh, I think so. I mean, it’s not, it’s absolutely boxed down.
I wouldn’t worry about that. Um, just the fact that it’s crossing the line to, to be an old like that. Yeah. Well, I mean, Angie still wants a four door car because she wants to, um, it’s keep her mom and dad are getting on and like, you know, dad, mom’s 80 now and her dad’s in his late seventies and they struggle with a coupe to get into the back seats.
Um, so. I mean, she was like, well, why don’t we Yeah, that was E63, like you were going to. Well, but this is the point, I mean, I’m really helping, of course, by having two, two, two door cars and a one, [01:10:00] and a one seat bike. So, I mean, I’m not really helping with the doors here. Yeah, and E63. I don’t want a fucking great car like that.
This is my point. I mean, I don’t see the need, but I feel profligate driving huge bits of metal around, which are less fun than I can have in a gender little rally car replica that I can spank around the B roads and C roads. That’s what, that’s why I want the Yaris GR. I can’t see anything. That’s going to give me more smiles per mile on B and C roads than a little two 80 brake horsepower, four wheel drive, tricked up homologation special.
You know, the fact that it’s Toyota is an irony, but I’m sort of appreciating that irony. It’s not really Toyota though, is it? It’s Gazoo. It’s like they did the work on it. Yeah, but I mean, you know, I, I mean, fair enough, I’ll let them have their halo glow. Do you know what I mean? They still, Mr. Toyota, it was his passion project that like, it’s gonna be something that they wanna build.
Um, and I respect that. So, you know, but it’s, so, it’s, but I mean, I did say to her like, you know, you could get the, the 1.6 that came after, or the, or the one point, whatever it [01:11:00] is, the trip, the three liter, the three cylinder one that came after. You can get that in a four door, uh, or a five door rather. Um.
But I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s going to have to be a pretty sexy car for that to like go because I’d still rather have it and it just like sit in the corner of the drive and be kept because as I discussed before, if we end up living in France, that is what I want to keep here. So we’ve got a car here all the time because it has multiple advantages.
It’s small, it’s cost effective. It doesn’t take a lot of room and Angie knows it at the back of her hand. So both of us are comfortable driving and not for nothing. And if, if you have, if you do move to France. There is a business waiting to be made around cars that are outside of the 25 year thing, cars that never came here.
So people here, you know, everyone knows the Group B stuff, right? So they know the 205, but they don’t, they never had 205 GTIs. I’ve never been to a Cars and Coffee here and seen a 205 [01:12:00] GTI. I think if you sourced a 205 a dozen of them, filled crates with them, I had them here, I could drive to Cars and Coffees and sell them.
And we could Oh, I mean, I think the 205 might have already left the building, um, even here. I mean, even in France, potentially. Um, but um, yeah, but we know the other stuff, right? We, we, we can always look deeper and, and, and farther. And my experience, you know, that vacation that I had to France last summer, I was poking around.
Um, I mean, there, there was, there’s stuff at the side of the road, isn’t there? Any, any garage at the side of the road, you just pull over and have a look in their yard. And, and the stuff that hangs out in the yard. I, you know, I saw interesting stuff. I saw what I thought was a Safran by turbo that turned out to be a Monaco, but you know, there’s, there’s, you know, you, you never know what you’re going to, uh, what you’re going to stumble upon.
Oh, for sure. And I mean, yeah, if you know, you know, and like the 205 GTI, you could get the same [01:13:00] engine in the 309 ugly body version of that. Well that would have been a cracking car. I wanted that at the time. We didn’t have the cash for the 309 GTI at the time, but you could get it and it would, it was still on the, on the, uh, the same thing.
I were a GTI 6. That was an absolutely blistering car. The sixth gear, quite a tidy looking little motor. I suppose the 309 to the 306 to be honest. The 309. Cleaner look on the 306, but still, yeah. I mean the 206 GTI, that was a, um, the 106 GTI. Sorry, the 106 GTI was the one that was the absolute five star car, same as the, um, Saxo, wasn’t it?
Same car as the Saxo. Couldn’t you get a 106 Rally as well that came on steel wheels in white? Yes, you could. In fact, Chops had one a while ago now, but Chops had one. So they, the Rallys, you could get a 306 Rally as well. Yeah, you could, yeah.[01:14:00]
Slight segue for you. I mean, so one of, the thing I added to the list earlier on today, was Gandini’s died. Oh, did he? Um, so just recently, um, so I was thinking about him and of course he designed the, the Renault five turbo. Oh, did he? Small French hatchbacks. Um, he did the original Renault five mark two and the Renault five turbo, as well as all the low, all the Lamborghinis that he did.
Um, he did the Cizetta V 16. He did the, um, What else did he do? I was looking him up. He did, yeah, the Lamborghini, um, Harry’s one, the Espada, um, uh, the Miura, of course, um, he did, uh, loads of that stuff, so it’s, uh, worth having a look at some of the shit that that guy did. Well, rest, rest in peace, um, was it Maurizio?
Was that his first name? Uh, I think, uh, it was, um, was it more Marcello? But [01:15:00] Gandini, we, uh, we, we. Marcello Gandini, yeah. Yeah, the like. The one, I chose, I asked my wife to have a quick look at like, what classic and sports car recommended as his top 20. Her choice was the concept car that was, the Espada was based on, which was the one off Bertone Piranha.
The Bertone Piranha, a one off commissioned by the Daily Telegraph and based on Jaguar E Type running gear. Huh, interesting. On the loo, is there anything better to do? Surf on over to Summers and Sons Used Car Trading, conveniently available on eBay. Pick up one of our carefully curated and freshly prepared Hot Wheels, Matchbox, or Corgi diecast models.
Or, indeed, full size real cars. Because, why not? Featured lots include a 1968 Lesney Volkswagen Campervan, a terrific model only missing one single [01:16:00] door, a mere 5 plus shipping. Also on offer is a 1977 Lincoln Town Car. This one is a real car, it is 25 feet long, you can sit in it, and it even runs and drives.
replete with the patina that you would expect, nay demand from summers and sun. It’s a snip at a thousand bucks. We look forward to your bids. Thank you for listening. Now we will return to our regular scheduled podcast. I have a few interesting thoughts to take us home here. Um, car consignment where, you know, you give your car to a dealer and he sells it for you and then he gives you the money.
Um, Number of court cases recently where, you know, People have absconded with money where cars have been sold and money’s not been exchanged. And you know, the, I’m guess I’m [01:17:00] struck by, uh, what, uh, the Vimwiki guy, Ed Bolian always says, which is that, uh, at no point should the ownership document, the car and the money all be with the same person.
However, you work a deal out, you need to remember that at some point You know, one person can’t be holding all three because if that happens, there’s the chance of dishonesty. If you stop that from happening, there can be no chance of dishonesty. And I just think that’s an interesting way of, uh, of figuring out, uh, uh, trading.
Yeah. The Lincoln supposedly sold some fellow in Mexico. He’s paid me the deposit. A truck is coming. I await the details. This is action, Mark. Who knows when it’s going to come. Well, mate, good luck. I mean, get some space back. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah. Yeah, I mean, in [01:18:00] theory, the racing car needs to fit in that space because Scarlett wants it out of Jason’s place.
But, you know Alright, Jason gets some space back. Yeah, well, Alessandra gets a drum kit. That’s the, uh That’s a good reason. That V10 Porsche, the Carrera GT. I just want to underline the rise and rise of that car. I know you love it. I know we talked about it when we were on our Goodwood episode, we talked about what a sort of great crossover car that is.
And we talked as well about how my Pebble, Porsche friend Wayne loves that, that V10 Porsche, Porsche Carrera there. Um, And I guess my thought was that in period it was talked about in the same breath as the Enzo, the Ferrari Enzo, and the McLaren SLR. And at the time when you looked at them. There was the Ferrari with this Formula One kind of [01:19:00] styling.
There was the Yeah. There was the Mercedes Striking, but ugly. Yeah. Striking, but ugly. You weren’t quite sure whether you liked it or not. Yeah, I’m still not quite sure. And that’s like donkey’s years on. I mean, it is bold and it has It is sort of iconic because it’s what it is. Um, but I still haven’t grown to love it, and I wouldn’t want one.
My design students, I side my class with, with Stanford again, and my co tutor uses a, an image of, of it to discuss it. And, and it’s quite interesting because people are like, well, it’s a Ferrari, so I feel like I should say positive things. Yet there’s a lot of negative things to say about it. Now, design guys will pull it apart from a kind of aesthetics perspective.
Um, especially the picture Barbara’s got, cause the picture Barbara’s got of it, it looks particularly awkward in the picture, but here’s my point, [01:20:00] right? At the time that car stole the show with its avant garde ness, whether you liked it or not, you weren’t quite sure. The Mercedes. It had a normal five speed automatic transmission, the same as in my E55, right?
So that didn’t seem that exciting. And the Porsche, that was nothing but a normal Porsche, but with two extra cylinders, right? Sure. It had no roof. It was just, well, you can plug it in and out, can’t you? But yeah. Um, but you, you see what I mean? It didn’t, so at the time, the hype was all around the Enzo. With hindsight, the Enzo isn’t that good looking.
The SLR of any hypercar, they have the highest mileage. Jay Leno put 50,000 miles on his Oh yeah. That was his thing. The fact, yeah. Yeah. That was his thing. Yeah, that, and that is the awesome, and so with hindsight, 20 years on, the Enzo, meh, the McLaren, usable, the Porsche, [01:21:00] oh, now that is truly pinnacle analogue for some people.
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, six speed gearbox, Beechwood’s gear stick like the 917s. Um, lovely little touches all around, frankly. Um, I mean, the only other things to say, I suppose, is, well, a couple of other things to say, they did, the Mercedes did a 722 version of the SLR that was tribute to Moss. Um, that you could get and it had 722 horsepower, um, in that SLR.
So like, yeah, I mean, so the, the, the, the, to say the, the mechanic, it was heavy. Surprise, surprise. But to say it was mechanically robust is an understatement. Yeah, yeah. I mean that, I think it’s, it’s interesting, isn’t it? And just to briefly go back to Gandini to show the breadth of that geezer, why I was vaguely interested in him after I looked at him.
I mean, the guy did the Citroen BX. But he also did the 365 GTB Ferrari. Well, you want a car that’s pretty and minimalist. I mean, there you are. I mean, the Daytona shape is [01:22:00] gorgeous. For me, it never really quite wowed me, because it sort of doesn’t wow you, does it? It’s like sleek and like sort of less is more.
And I think the Porsche sort of falls more into that category. It looks, you know, people who say it looks like a sort of elongated nine 11. I mean, it doesn’t, you’re missing the point. Um, but it really looks fabulous. The sort of curve of the rear arches over the wheel that sort of scoots down towards the front that you sort of notice afterwards is really nice design.
Um, and yeah, I mean, you know, it’s a naturally aspirated V10 on a stick shift from where they were really, really sweating the details. I mean, it’s like 1300 kilograms or something. It’s fuck all. Yeah. Well, thank you for that eulogy, Mark.
On this same theme, right, of perspective changing, when we learned to ride [01:23:00] motorcycles, sports bikes were motorcycles, right? Now, adventure bikes or cafe stuff are motorcycles. Um, I hadn’t realized that that whole ethos was going to change. I hadn’t realized the sports bikes were a flash in the pan, just like I hadn’t realized that rock and roll was sort of going to end.
It’s yeah. It’s, it’s a weird place motorbikes at the moment, isn’t it? Cause there’s the whole desert y sort of like cafe racer y sort of like, there’s a, there’s a bunch of niches that are prominent that were niche and now mainstream. So the, the, the sort of GS style off roader do everything bike, you know, it’s now pretty damn quick as well.
You know, they used to be a bit slow, but not anymore. I mean, So those things are massive. That’s why John, that’s why John Garcia episode, whatever he was three or seven or something like that’s why John Garcia, the Irish guys he rides with, they all ride GSs because those bikes will go up 20 all day long and they’ve got heated grips [01:24:00] and your bum doesn’t hurt at the end of the day.
All of those guys have their R1s still, they just ride the GS. Yeah. I mean, and so there’s that niche and then there’s the. Naked niche, so stuff like the BMW M1000R, not the double R, so it’s the same engine, but with wide bars and no screen protection and that sort of thing. Um, That’s huge. And obviously the KTM, um, 1390 Super Duke R falls into that same sort of category.
You know, wheelie machines, um, and great fun around the tracks still. And if you’re good, you can embarrass Superbike riders and stuff, no question. I mean, my always thought was when I rode nakeds was like, fucking hell, it’s so tiring, you know, and it’s, you, you, you, you, even a modicum of wind protection, you’re grateful for as soon as you’re past about 70, 80 miles an hour, because like, it’s just knackering.
Yeah, I was gonna [01:25:00] say, I feel like 60 miles an hour’s it. Um, and I feel like, um, riding a naked bike is a great way to enjoy motorcycling at a lower speed. You know, it means that the We’re not on the M1000R. I mean, that fucking thing’s got 210 horsepower. I mean, good God. Um, but Yeah. But I mean, like, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, um And it being a BMW, it’s got heated grips.
Um, yeah, that was sort of what BMW offered when they arrived with the original S 1000 RR, wasn’t it? It was like, well, we can do, we’ll, we’ll add shift cam technology to all you plebiscite fucking old timers that haven’t got your engine tech proper. So we’ll move the game on by about 20 horsepower and give you like heated grips and everyday comfort and everything.
John always says to me that if I rode, he’s worried if I ever ride an S 1000 RR, I won’t want all the jigsaws. Because that’s how modern it’s just everything’s like, right, you can just like get on it [01:26:00] and ride it yet. It had this sort of stupefying hundred and eighty mile an hour performance, you know, rather again, I mean, it’s again, I’m sure my age, but like the oh, nine are the oh, nine CBR 600.
I’ve got is sort of, I don’t really need much more than that. It’s like, I’m going to write it increasingly on, on, um, dual carry on, you know, tracks as I get older, that’s my next get bet aim with it to have fun with it on tracks. I mean, I’m, it’s better than me and will continue to be better than me for quite a long time.
Um, the boy’s had Gran Turismo now since Christmas time, we’re into April. Has he got good yet? Well, he’s better than me, of course. Yeah, that doesn’t answer the question. What I’m, what I’m struck by is how this really is an introduction to the world of driving. Is he still on the double analog sticks at the moment, yeah?
Yeah, yeah, but they’re haptic. They should be, that’s the [01:27:00] correct entry point. But they’re haptic, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’ve got like accelerate and brake, and then you steer like a real steering wheel. Oh, he’s doing it that way. Okay. Yeah. Well, I’ve been doing it that way. It’s, it’s really, I find it really natural.
I find it far more natural than the, uh, than, than the, uh, than, than the sticks. So, so yeah. So I just wanted to really highlight how I feel like, um, I hadn’t realized how it, Gran Turismo was. Retained this wonderful, very Japanese character. Yet it is this also, it’s this fully immersive world of, of driving it.
It’s really driving and motoring and the, the whole piece. I just absolutely love, dude. It’s awesome. Like the nipping down the secondhand dealer market to see what you can pick up. Yeah. Well, obviously that’s my favorite part of the game is popping out of the second hand car [01:28:00] dealership and I’m spending all my credits there.
And then, uh, you know, and then you have to hot rod what you’ve got. And I’ve got like a signature look of, uh, I’ve got a signature gold wheel that I’ve been, uh, that I’ve been. I remember persuading Matt in, it wasn’t Gran Turismo. I think it was. It was one of the ones, I can’t remember what it’s called. Is it Need for Speed or something?
It’s on an island. Um, I can’t remember what the details were, but he had enough money to buy a posh Ferrari and I persuaded him to buy the 288 GTO. And, uh, cause, cause I mean, cause, and I was a bit worried compared to some of the other stuff that it would be slow. And then it wasn’t, it was so light. It was ridiculously fast.
Anyway. I, uh, I, my first buy down the used car dealership was a Sierra Cosworth. They had a white Sierra Cosworth down there. So I’ve, I’ve got that. Um, And you can do a lot of stuff to tweak the appearance now. So I spent a ridiculous amount of money to get it sitting just right. And, you know, [01:29:00] de mud flapped just right and just like thighs exhausted and, uh, and all of that.
Yeah, really, uh, really most enjoyable. Matt put mud flaps on his i30N. You know, each to their own. It’s in a virtual world. That’s exactly what I said after I’d called him a gaylord. Um, do you remember the Renault Laguna Touring car? The Nestle brand 37 Renault Laguna British Touring car? Yeah, Alain Menou’s you remember they used to have those gold OZ wheels.
Yep. My Clio has, is in the same green and has the same gold OZ wheels on it. That used to, what was it, um, Toka Touring Cars round Thruxton in the rain. That was a bastard, but it was the fastest car, but like it was those the curves out the back of the circuit in the rain Where that was an unforgiving ass game.
I [01:30:00] saw in fact actually on a slight game segue I watched an article the other day So I read an article the other day in pc gamer where they were talking about games that were Where they got the difficulty settings wrong. Um, and they interviewed the guy who created um Tie fighter and x wing the original games that were on the pc that came out when I was at university, you and I were at university, so 92, 90 to 95 kind of time.
And Jazz had one in 93 in his room, and it was the medical frigate. It was an escort mission, and everyone knows escort missions are bastards. Well, this was the one that started the bastard, because they basically made a mission that was difficult for the people who designed the game, and then hadn’t bothered to tweak it before they released it.
And the picture in the article had a picture of the three and a half inch floppy disk, cut up with scissors that someone had then sent back to the guy who designed the game calling him saying this game was too hard. Um, and, uh, I remember that particular mission. I sent the mission and I sent that email link [01:31:00] to jazz on Facebook.
Um, who I haven’t spoken to for years, but I’m still Facebook mate to them. I was like, you remember this? It wasn’t just you and me that thought, well, god damn, this mission’s a bastard. It really was. You were in your A wing and you had to be full chat towards it. Because like, if you didn’t, the thing just died before you got there.
So you had to, and you couldn’t just be full chat. Because you had to take all the energy out of shields and put them into engines and just steam in. And then once you got your speed up high enough, you could take the engine power back from the engines, put them on front shields only, because you’d arrive, like, you’d arrive at the fight like you turned up on a, you know, you’d joust your way through the punching fight and then have to screeching turn to come back in again.
Oh man. So yeah, no, it was um, but yeah, no dude, like, games like that where they teach you, um, You know, the, uh, the, uh, all of the stuff around the culture, um, and generate their own little microclimate of culture as well as Gran Turismo has for years. Are [01:32:00] superb, you know, there’s a lot to be said from quickfire.
What’s your favorite company car? Uh, Favorite company car mine was that green vector. Probably that was that green vector and yours was the red lagooner Yeah, probably that that red lagooner because like we had so many good times in that red lagooner Like handbrake turning it round the roundabout with four up in the rain.
Yeah, um disturbing those horse riders Um, we’ll leave it at that. Um disturbing those horse riders. Absolutely. We’ll leave it at that Handbrake turning it across the farmyard every evening when we arrive back from work every evening. And just to clarify, the approach to the roundabout is that one should approach and one is approaching from a six o’clock position and exiting in a three o’clock position.
So in England, one should drive to the left and then all the way around the roundabout in a clockwise direction. And what you used to do was, was [01:33:00] arrive and then do a quick Scandinavian flick to get the back of the car loose, get the handbrake on. And then the car would be broadside across the roundabout with a front tire scrabbling for grip to exit in the six o’clock position.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Like, good chassis, fair play to it, you know, it used to eat that shit up. It did. It did, it did look like it had taken some punishment though, hadn’t it? I do. I remember we came out of the bowling and one of the suspension struts had just broken. No, I don’t remember that! We came out of Tin Pin Bowling in Worcester and you, you and I were walking back to the car and I was like, what’s wrong with the car?
And you were like, oh yeah, it looks a bit weird, doesn’t it? It’s just hunched down in one corner and one of the suspensions, uh, springs had just broken. Because the guy came out, and the green flag, inevitably, like, the green flag, best UK recovery, as far as I’m concerned, ever. And I don’t know whether this is fair, but [01:34:00] AA2, stick up their arse, not prepared to help you out enough.
RAC can go fuck themselves, after the way they treated my mum. But green flag, always prepared to bodge you and get you home. Which is what you want! I’ll get it fixed next week. Can you bodge it with gaffer tape for me now to get me home? Yes, I can, mate. Don’t you worry. That’s one of the road, the art of the roadside bodge.
I fear they don’t do that anymore. Um, you remember that black Mondale that I had that wasn’t the company car, but it was like a hangover from, from a company car. I’m limping it from Plymouth. up to AIDS place in Worcester. It got the broken cam belt. So I was zip tying the cam belt and they’d last about 50 miles.
Then the zip ties would break. So I’d be inside, but I was driving on the hard show. I was driving in the slow lane. And then when it broke, I’d be in the hard shoulder. Well, I was under the hood one time. And one of those, you know, police motorway maintenance people come up, came up to me and I was like, look, I can fix it in under a minute.
And he was like, if I see you again, I’m getting you towed. And I [01:35:00] was like, what? I was like all excited to show off my cool fix method and he was like, not interested in the fix at all. He was just interested in me not being on the road. So I think he now, I think that’s something that’s changed. I think years ago, they would argue.
Dude, I mean, I agree. But like that, they’re like, they’re like wannabe cops. Yeah, that’s the highway maintenance vehicle. The guy that you slow down for when you see him passed in the parked in the police bit, cause you think he’s got in you and then you’re like, you have no authority here and put the hammer back down and you can ignore those losers.
I remember you telling me that story and thinking that guy can go fuck himself. He just like, wants to be a little bit body harassing you. I mean, look, you know, when they turn up and they’re sweeping up the gravel after your accident and being nice and helping you, I’ve got a lot of time for them, but you know, um, um, On the other hand, I mean, um, car guy reading 101.
You’re not allowed to say Evo magazine.
I can begin whilst you’re having to think [01:36:00] Ferrari’s my terrible joys. Yeah. Um, I always, I mean, I generally speaking, we’ll check in, check in with Matt Oxley for a Moho GP download from, from motorsport. I think he’s excellent reading. Um, Matt Oxley is far too clever for the world of motorcycling. He’s a really good guy.
There’s an American dude called Kevin Cameron who’s similar. Cameron is all technical and he just makes your head spin with all the physics of it. Oxley is like a Formula One guy but motorcycles. Super cool. Yeah. Yeah. So I would, I think he’s, he’s ticked off. So on the theme of Matt Oxley, Thank you very much, Mark.
My pleasure, my pleasure, man. See you next time.[01:37:00]
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