EP40: Go Out and Enjoy The Open Road While You Still Can

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.

• A ‘99 Honda CBR600F4 and a big gust of wind
• Hot Rods and Caterhams
• Auxito is good, according to Eric The Producer
• 15% discount on Auxito LED bulbs with code MOTORING HISTORIAN
• Ronnie Corbett in the chair
• Average speed checks in the UK are killing driving by slow asphysiation
• I could be mad – Except you can still go out and find it – and I’m enjoying motoring more than ever
• So if this pod has a point, it is to go out and enjoy the open road while you still can
• For M, cars are too big, true personal transport is two wheels
• Eco vs Safe. Which explains 8000lb Electric SUVs
• EV State of the Nation in the UK
• The closure of the Great Highway in San Fancisco; a new park has derailed J’s escape from the city
• Freego and electric bikes; dangerous hooligan machines
• Toddington and Heston Harper, Green Snake Oil Salesmen (allegedly) named after English Motorway rest areas
• Chrishell Stause
• M’s Best drive of year – Toyota Aygo rental on vacation in Crete
• The Tundra impresses J with Mercedes loaded on big hills
• J’s car of the year is his 01 Bullitt MustangJ drives a Ferrari 308; an awesome little sports car
• A lineage from 308 thru Lancia 037 to 288 GTO (and F40)
• The heavily depreciated modern Ferrari seems good value to M
• J rates the Lucid, especially in base trim. But doesn’t want one.
• The organic quality ICE cars have which EVs don’t
• M likes ABS / TCS. But that’s enough tech for him
• J rates Lexus’ contemporary styling, especially the GSF
• M considering a Mercedes S-class….”once I’ve got that, nothing else needs to be practical”
• Putting M’s Nissan 350Z back on the road
• Geoff Buys Cars
• The Ford Model A story, compared to the infamous Jaguar rebrand; what is the future of Jaguar
• M enjoyed a Jaguar F-Type R in the Scottish Highlands
• Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust’s Landspeed XFR – 206mph with a standard engine
• Jaguar’s “69” logo on the side of the new concept in mirror image, spotted by M
• Range Rover discussion (J’s recent road test of one)
• Bentley Perfume
• Vegan leather vs. Russian billionaire
• Bentleys imported to Russia via Kazakstan
• J impressed by a 2024 GMC Denali rental
• The original Seat Leon Cupra R vs. Mk3 Golf GTi vs. young whippersnapper writers
• “Cupra”, from model to brand
• M’s 150k+ in first generation Seat Leon Cupra Rs
• You have retired to Santa Barbara with your millions: what “douche car” are you driving?
• M’s eulogy on S550 5.0 Mustang convertibles
• The value of anonymity
• J’s yellow Cadillac
• BMW M2 owner review – the entire experience has been a nightmare. Fundamentally the platform is good but M’s example had been abused and the dealer shafted M
• M2 disappointment leads M to lean into hot hatches
• By contrast, M loves his Nissan 350Z, although spares supply is slow
• J and M both love their Fiesta STs; Ms now has a Cobb cat back exhaust
• Top Tips for ‘25 – Beware Ethanol Gas!!!

Crew Chief Brad: [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.

Jon Summers: Good day. Good morning, good afternoon. It is John Summers the motoring historian and after a six month absence, I’m sure you audience members were missing him. We have Mark Gamy with us after out of a long, dark COVID tunnel. Mark. Yeah, I am. It’s that a big hello to the listener. Lovely to be back. Yeah.

Yeah. It’s Eric editing, he’s the listener. [00:01:00]

Mark Gammie: Nice, nice to virtually not meet him.

Jon Summers: So given we’re now into 2025, what better time do review of 2024? And given all my episodes are backed up like a sort of constipated bloke who’s eaten too much curry last night, kind of, kind of thing. Um, it probably won’t be released until February.

So, you know, everything we say will be completely out of date because we’re always so topical and punctual and, and, you know, on form with it all. So a review of 2024. And as you know, gamy, I always love to begin where in recent pods I’ve taken to beginning with, uh, with a little story about an activity that I’ve, uh, I’ve participated in.

Um, so I’m gonna begin this time. And help you, uh, settle into, to, uh, to the mood again. Um, we had a story about that black Honda CBR race bike. That, that I have. Did you know [00:02:00] it’s back from the dead? Uh, only ’cause you mentioned it to me yesterday, but No, I didn’t know formally, if you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah.

It’s, it’s sat in the corner of, by the filing cabinet for probably about five years without even moving. And then last summer, Ollie was like, yeah, it’ll never go. And I went, it’ll just start on the button. He went, it won’t, and I went, it will, and wheeled it out. And guess what? I never would’ve said that if it wasn’t a Honda, but it went.

Right. It, it fired up, it ran like shit on the bad fuel, but like it ran, you know, which is a lot to be said for a bike that’s on carbs, right? It is a carbs hell yeah. Carbs bike. Although I do find that these race carbs do better with the ethanol fuel than the non race carbs. But look, I’m not gonna fall down that rat hole.

I’m just gonna tell you the story so we can get into the rest of the, uh, of the episode here. And the story is this, uh, is, so the CBR works again, it had a bunch of fatty little things on it. And John called me and was like, I’ve kind of spent three days on this, which means [00:03:00] that you know the bills I. A little bit more than I was ex probably anticipating.

Right. But, you know, the reason I pay him to do it is ’cause the bloke does such thorough work. So, you know, if he tells you it’s gonna be four days, you just suck your teeth and wish he bought a better example in the first place. Or, or, or you don’t, do you? I like buying the wrecks and I like supporting him in his business of, you know, looking after motorcycles and flipping them in bloody San Francisco.

I, I, I love the way that he’s able to, uh, to do that and, uh. It’s kind of like, uh, yeah, so I, I’m, anyway, so I’m, I’m happy to support him and of course it means that when you throw the leg over the bike, you also, you know that it’s gonna work properly. ’cause he’s thrown the leg over it before and has ridden it and he is gonna ride it not around the block in bloody second gear.

He is actually going to, to ride it. So, um, so anyway, so this is how I justify it anyway, so I paid him to, uh, bring the, the CBR back from the dead. And he called me and was like, ah, dude, you know, it kind of needs [00:04:00] tires and, you know, I would feel better if it had the tires and I won’t bill you any extra time for it.

It’ll just bill all part of the three days and that’ll be completely done. So, you know, at that point he’s like, I’ve probably spent a week working on this bike, but I don’t want to charge you any more money. I feel bad. Anyway, so he, he rode it over and dropped it off, and then he went. This bike’s had work done, hasn’t it?

And I went, yeah, I think it had ca it’s had race cams in it. ’cause I’ve got the original cams and he’s like, yeah, but it’s more than that. It’s like, it’s a full race exhaust, which has been tuned and like, I don’t know what the carbs are, but they’re clearly ’cause it, it really pulls well now I’ve ridden, uh, I ride the same route on my little test route.

And, uh, there’s a point where you can open the throttle properly and, uh, at that point where you open the throttle properly, I know how a liter bike feels versus there’s a seven 50, I’m telling you, gamy for the first, like up to about. You know, 60 miles an hour. [00:05:00] It is like a liter bike. There’s something about the cams.

It’s got a big sprocket on the rear, something like that. It is a scouted cat. Uh, any legal speeds, right? It’s a 600 though. Yeah. And only you know, only in theory on the track. Do you notice that it’s not got the umph of a liter bike? Do you notice that the mid range is a little flat in comparison? That’s the first time I’ve ever felt that, obviously in a track scenario, you know, professional driver, uh, only right?

Yeah. It, it certainly wasn’t immediately after, as I first came up the hill with a throttle cracked open, and as I came over the crest of the hill, there was a big gust of wind and it picked up the front of the bike and pointed me right at the scenery. Oh, man. It woke me up. It woke me up. I literally, because I had the throttle open and all the weight was on the rear tire, it just moved the front of the bike across the road like a pencil on, uh, my word, love the sport.[00:06:00]

Mark Gammie: Uh, you gotta love a sport bike. It is a proper hit in a way that, you know, anything with doors

Jon Summers: kind of can’t be anything with doors is just not thrilling in, in this. No, in the same way. And this is, this is one of the things about, um, I’ve, I’m lucky enough to have ridden in a proper high boy hot rod for banger, but like open fender 29 Ford Roads to pick up.

Uh, you know what it’s like ’cause you’ve driven a cater. The appeal of hot rods is the same as the appeal of, of caters in every way. Yeah. The simplicity, the basic, the honing the form and plus the fact that you are completely in touch with, with the car. You know, you, you look down, you see the front wheel, you place it.

As you turn, you know that that’s, yeah, that [00:07:00] is epic. So the CBR lives again, and, uh, I very much, uh, I very much enjoyed it. As, you know, we really cater to our sponsors here. Yes. And one of the sponsors, which if you go to the motioning podcast website, you’ll see that Eric’s really gone to town with the sponsorship is these guys zeto who do these LED bulbs.

And you might like Eagle Eye listeners. It’s probably just a fucking AI tool doing a scrape nowadays, isn’t it?

Yeah,

Jon Summers: it’s certainly the AI tool will remember that in an earlier episode we talked about ATO and I said, you know, I had a real need for them. And I told that story about crashing the Mustang off the road in the desert after a conference of yours in, uh, Vegas, uh, one day, probably fucking 15 years ago now.

But let’s not worry about trying to hang a time on it. So since then I’ve wanted to fit proper lights. These Xito guys, they’re proper lights I watched Furious driving. He fitted them to his myta, or the Beard and [00:08:00] slipper brigade. Were like, those lights are too bright. So I immediately thought, I’ve gotta fit into my Mustang.

So, and you might remember I was gonna do this big challenge with them where I was gonna, you know, test the lights before and test the lights after and all of that. Well, it took me ages to organize that, but eventually I did it and I took a photograph of the lights, as you know, the light on my, the Mustang’s headlights on Dip Beam.

And then I took the Mustangs headlights on High Bee and I showed Ollie the photos and was like, can you tell the difference? And he went, no. Is this like some kind of spot the difference? And I went, well, one’s high beam and one’s dip beam. And he went, Hmm. Now it may have been because I had the car pointing down the hill and there were street lights.

But the point is that that car is not a good base case. The lights are shit on it, is what I’m saying. And I was bemoaning that to the producer. I feel like I’m the two. Ron, do you remember how Ro Ronnie Corbert always used to do? Oh, the producer I was chatting with the producer. The producer said to me,

Mark Gammie: he said, Ronnie, he

Jon Summers: said first name [00:09:00] terms, you see?

He, he, he said, uh, I feared the zeto bulbs. They’re good. I put him in my wife’s Jetta or pass out or something and they’re, they’re good. He’s like a VW Audi dude. He went, they’re good. They’re better than the factory one. So there you have it listeners, listener. There’s a genuine test and a, a genuine endorsement and genuinely something that a bloke recommended you in the pub rather than these unreliable sources like Yelp or whatever.

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So there’s a discount code. I think the code is motoring historian, but I’m, I’m not sure. It might be motoring history mightn’t it. I should have known that before we came on air, but, but not to worry. Edit in here. The code is motoring historian, all in capitals motoring historian.

At World Music Gamy. What? [00:10:00] What music? This episode, you should do some banging trance.

Excellent, excellent. Alright. Send me a couple of samples and I’ll do them.

Move on to, you know, matters of moment as they used to call it the motor magazines, which, you know, it’s like quite a good pun, isn’t it? I guess I could have that section. I might just, I’ve subconsciously thought of this section as, as that which is, you know, which you might read as, you know, depressing news about motoring, you know, so I’ve two areas to, to talk about.

One in Britain, average speed [00:11:00] checks are fucking everywhere. Suck balls. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I, I add other examples, but I’m not gonna dwell on this. Driving, dying A slow death by asphyxiation, which I feel that it is. I’m gonna move to my next bullet, which is this. I could be mad about it, but I’m just not.

Because you can still go out and find it. And I feel like I personally am enjoying motoring more than ever illustrated by my silly story about the CBRI. I mean, yeah, I’m enjoying it more and you can go out and look for it. And I don’t mean the, the, you need to, especially on Sports Bus. I used to feel the need to ride really fast and I just don’t anymore.

Now I can really enjoy them just going out and, and staying within, within speed limits. So I feel like I am enjoying motioning more than ever. I feel like you can still go out and find it. You said earlier you could, if [00:12:00] you get up early enough, you, you are absolutely right. Or if you’re ready to do stuff at night, and that’s where org zeto, you know, when the lights come in again or where my original desire to have better lights came from because you really can go out and cover some miles at night and it, and you know, it is easier because there’s not other distractions for your eyes.

You are just looking for light. I, I feel like there’s something in that.

Mark Gammie: Well, for real. Yeah. And, and look, I mean, I, it’s, I think again, it’s, it’s looking at things in a slightly orthodox way. I mean, it, it’s forcing people out of cars. Look, you know, on the one hand, does it make any sense for 90 something percent of journeys to be when you leave the house, do you take four suitcases with you?

You, you don’t. But you know, you take three spare seats and a massive boot and a tin body wherever you go, if you get in a car like that doesn’t make a lot of sense. So I absolutely can understand trying to get us into smaller cars or, but again, follow the logic through, make people ride motorbikes. Yeah.

And then there’s [00:13:00] way more room and way more deeper. That’s,

Jon Summers: that’s the antagonism. Isn’t that, that, that there is with cars at the moment between wanting to be eco, but wanting to be safe. Because wanting to be safe. That’s why a Rivian weighs 8,000 pounds rather than a range road from the 1970s that only weighs 4,000.

Mark Gammie: Yeah, yeah. It does lead to massive fuck you electric SUV bullshit, which is just

Jon Summers: Apex been backwards and forwards about electric stuff since the the pod started. I do feel like it’s, it’s, and partly what I wanted to do with this pod is document the rise of electric. Mm-hmm. So, on that theme, I feel like.

We can, and you know, this is meant to be like a year review, so let’s review sort of state of the nation of, of, of EVs in, in 2025. Hmm. Or beginning of 2025. I think we can say that these big heavy SUV things are just kind of, of the [00:14:00] last century. They’re, they’re just not really good design. And this next generation of EVs that, that are coming where there’s more emphasis on lightness and where we are doing better with battery design and where.

Everyone’s comfortable with regen one pedal braking. So I feel like, you know, one pedal driving, you know, you accelerate and you break by modulating the same pedal. As we move, as we move towards that, I feel like, you know, we’ve, we talked before about the Citro Ollie and the Citron ami, which are two sort of concept D cars, that one of which the Ami, you know, made, made production like city cars.

Yeah. I, I feel like we can see now what EVs are gonna be like and how we’ve carried a lot of the problems of vehicles of the last century forward into the new, this new design. Oh, agreed. You’re [00:15:00]

Mark Gammie: gonna have like electric small cars that produce no emissions at the point of use. Makes a lot of sense. You can charge them up at home, which, you know, admittedly at least a third of the UK can’t do because you have to run a cable across the pavement or things like that.

Or you’re in a flat. So it’s not for everyone. But yeah, I mean that, that sort of thing, a local city runs that absolutely fabulous. That I would be my first choice for that sort of stuff now. But that’s not what people do. They, they get defensive, they want to have the same thing. They wanna have no anxiety ranges.

They want to have the kids in it, therefore they want be up high. ’cause it makes them feel safer. Therefore they need a bigger battery and they want some luxury and therefore they need a bigger battery and then they want the heating on in the winter. And so they need an even bigger battery. And the thing weighs three tons and is fucking five meters long.

I mean,

Jon Summers: it’s, yeah, and, and I tell you, you get, you get addicted to the big gulp. Really quickly. I mean, I, I, as I was doing a school run this morning in the tundra [00:16:00] passing the fiesta parked up at the curb, not, haven’t moved for a week. I’m like, yeah, why am I using this? Not that for, for the school run here?

Well, because I want the wide leather seat. I want the automatic transmission. I can take the dog if I’m trying to change gear. So the fiesta sits at the curb.

Mark Gammie: Yeah. But the problem with that is, what you’ve just given me is a personal subjective justification for taking the mega machinery rather than the already too big machinery.

’cause you’re taking three spare seats and you only need to take your kid to school. Do you know what I mean? Subjectively and therefore. The planet’s gonna burn. That’s the nature of it, which is why governments

Jon Summers: try and call back in no waste. Well, no, because bloody San Francisco has forced you to be progressive.

They close the Great Highway, which is my school run.

Mm-hmm.

Jon Summers: Which for the record, I don’t just use four times a day. I often use [00:17:00] six or eight times a day if I’m in and out on motorcycles as well. ’cause it’s there. And back on the school run, that’s the base four. Mm-hmm. Pick up and drop off. And then if I go out and do anything, just normal errands, not necessarily with a car.

If I go out to the post office and then I ride a motorcycle, I’m gonna have been up and down the Great Highway eight times and it’s been closed and turned into a park and it was voted on by a majority of 55% of the residents of San Francisco. In other words, the people living in the city, the 20 somethings got a ballot that said, do you want a park?

In another part of the city that you can visit maybe once a month. Yeah. On the outside or not. And of course those of us in the neighborhood were like, ah, ah, like up in arms and everyone voted and you know, but no, we were outvoted by the people whose, you know, I’m like, you know, it’s like, I feel like being like Marina Green and Barca, let’s turn them into a park.

Why not? Thus on people on our side of the city wouldn’t [00:18:00] fuck up our lives, wouldn’t fuck up our commute, would it? There’s an article in the New York Times that talked about how this wasn’t about the closure of a road. This was a de debate between Urbanite San Franciscans and Suburbanite San Franciscans, and it showed how the city was changing.

Meanwhile, it passed, but there’s a move to remove the councilman. Who pushed it through. Who in the district?

Mark Gammie: Yeah. People that like review

Jon Summers: gamy. My response to it is to try and get electric bikes. I’ve been looking at this free Go mountain bike. It qualifies as a mountain bike. It’s got pedals, but in, in eco mode it only does 28 miles an hour.

But in like normal mode, it’ll do 50 miles an hour.

Mark Gammie: I mean, I’ve tried one 50 mile an hour mo push bike, that’s quite a lot because, you know, are you gonna remember to like, put leathers on? No, but no, you wanna have like summing on because like, going down at 30 pretty [00:19:00] bad. Anyway,

Jon Summers: dude, I, I don’t think I’m gonna buy one.

Okay. I, I keep looking at them. I don’t think I’m gonna buy one because I just can’t see, every time I see somebody on one, he’s pulling a giant wheelie. It usually, it’s, there’s always a he wait, it’s always a he and he’s always between the ages of like 15 and 20. Right. And if you look at the reviews of electric bikes, the people are like, on the sidewalk, off the sidewalk, you know?

Whoa. I went a bit wide there as they go completely wide on a t junction in the way that I described happening with these bold junctions in, uh, in, in San Francisco. So, yeah. So anyway, um, uh, I, so my response to the closure of the Great Highway is to be like, you know what, and similarly I told you about these fucking cycling lanes.

I’m like, all right, I’m gonna get something where I can go in. The cycling lanes. I’m not gonna, I I’m not about fighting the system. I’m about, you know, this is, this is the mantra of the year, [00:20:00] Dana. It’s like we have a mantra for each year. Last year it was trying new things. This year it’s go with the flow.

So I’m just going with the flow. I’m not getting bent outta shape about sharing the road with no fucking cyclists. I’m not getting bent outta shape about that. No, I, I’m, you know, taking my therapy dog with me and he’s sitting on my lap so I don’t have road rage. Fair enough. But look, right, we were talking about EV shit, right?

Mm. Do you know these people at Grider, the people who are like ee building, like the network of charging stations in England? No. Oh, Gary, this is Epic. There’s two brothers and they’re called Coddington and Heston Harper. Of course. They’re, what wouldn’t they be? That’s right. Their mom and dad named them after service stations, and now they’re rolling out electric charging to those same service station Coddington and Heston Harper.

You cannot make this shit up. If it was in a [00:21:00] novel, it would feel like catch 22 and you’d be like, where’s major? Major? Remember in track 22, I feel it’s like, yeah,

Mark Gammie: yeah. I’m just looking up how much they’re charging just to, uh, to see. Yeah. It’s like basically more expensive than gas.

Jon Summers: Yeah. Well, well, I, I, I, I, I’m not accusing Coddington and Heston Harper.

Of, of anything here. I did just write down around this green snake oil salesman.

Mark Gammie: I’m not accusing Heston, I’m not having it. I mean, to be fair to them, I did read an article, I think I might have mentioned it while back saying that, you know, Exeter services, which you and I both know well, was having to put in, in order to serve the expected usage of electric car charging stations at the services they were gonna need to put in some an a feed from the power station or the nearest, like put node.

Into that, that [00:22:00] was big enough to serve half the city. So it needed to be that amount of additional power to the service station just to provide for expected use as it goes forward. So I can understand if you’ve gotta pay for that sort of infrastructure to put that sort of shit in place, you need to make your money back.

Yeah. That’s economics. That’s how that shit works. And you’ll put it in if there’s demand for it, but that doesn’t fly for the one third of the people in the UK who. Can’t charge a home, you ain’t gonna ever convince those people to move off of gas or diesel if it’s more expensive to run and you have all the inconvenience of like having to only find electric charging stations and it taking 20 minutes even when that longer period is fixed, which it isn’t yet.

You ain’t gonna convince people like that. So it can’t be like this unfortunately. But I’m sure Coddington has got in hand.

Jon Summers: I think Coddington only gives a shit about Feather in his own nest. Those kind of business people are usually like that own. I’m not disparaging Coddington or Indeed Heston particularly.

No. Do you reckon

Mark Gammie: that’s what they were [00:23:00] called Stringham or Union Street? Do you reckon it was um, they were conceived in these service stations? Do you think that’s what it is? Dude,

Jon Summers: funny you should say that. Google up this woman Chris, she staus. How am I spelling Chris? She like it sounds Chris shell this.

Elle spouse, STAI found. Yeah. She looks American. Oh, she is turbo American. She’s as American as a fucking red Camaro. Her mom went into labor in a shell station and the gas attendant Chris helped our mom give birth. Chris Shell. You see, it’s clever like that.

Mark Gammie: Oh, that is that. I wouldn’t have got there.

Jon Summers: She’s beating me already. I’m behind.

Yeah.

Jon Summers: She’s one of the people who had to flee [00:24:00] the Palisades fires. Apparently I learned this morning. Wow. I’ll probably never, never let her up. Let the record show that the bloke that bullied my wife in the office from his Oak paneled office in Pacific Palisades let the record show that said fellow was at CES, flew to CES with a house and came home from CES without a house or a wood paneled office.

And I don’t wanna say that there was a sense of karma for me, but there was, you know who you are, sir. Life is filled with little ups and downs, isn’t it? It it is, isn’t it? And, and I feel bad for his family. He’s, he’s got kids for sure, for sure. Got kids younger than, than, than the boy, Lord knows. His wife has to put up with him all the time.

Just not just some of the time, like his work colleagues. So, you know, guess she’s probably got a shitty end of the stick than anybody. And now she’s not even got a nice house, so, you know. Yep. But, so there’s lots to be mad or sad about, but I’m not, I’m still really enjoying the motoring experience. [00:25:00] And, and I, my next bullet point was that if this pod has a point, it is to go out and enjoy the open road while you still can.

Definitely. And to that end, mark Gammy, I have two quick five questions for you. Here they come. What was your best drive of the year?

Mark Gammie: I

Jon Summers: think,

Mark Gammie: to be honest, my best drive of the year was to and fro in creek. Along the little mountain road, dodging the goats, having gone out and raided the local, I don’t know what they actually are.

I keep wanting to call it a spa. I’m not sure it was a spa, but if you know it’s spas in the uk, it had a very similar sort of independent co-op strike, stroke spa kind of supermarket feel. But driving from the little villa we rented across to them back dodging the goats and the massive, massive comedy style drop offs off the edge of the boat was the most, uh, memorable ’cause it was just so beautiful and so quiet.

And we’d drive along. With the windows down and it being lovely and sunny and then here and there randomly on the [00:26:00] radio one. I think once we got a random ac DC track on the radio and I was a very happy gentleman. Just toggling along at 35 or 40 miles an hour and the I go,

Jon Summers: that’s I think episode 28 cretinous cars sent from God.

Thank you for, for that and what my best drive of the year. I’ve gotta say the most memorable drive for, for me this year was after all the futzing around not buying a duly ram and buying that tundra the whole week of that where I drove to Sacramento and back looking at one truck. Which is just so fucking hot.

This was a all black truck and gamy, when I tried to lie underneath this truck to see whether or not I’d been hit the tarmac was too fucking hot for me to lie on. So I looked at that truck and then the next day I looked at this other one down in Clovis, the one that, that I bought, and then the day after that.

So I, I [00:27:00] bought it, stayed over, paid for it the next day, drove home, then the next day got up, got a trailer and drove back to Clovis to load the Mercedes up to drive home. And the most memorable part about that was obviously when you’re, when you finally got it loaded up and you know, the alarm’s not going off.

’cause at first, every time I moved I, the fucking movement alarm on the Mercedes went off. And Mercedes of that era, they’ve like, uh. Switch on the dash, and I just kept on forgetting to do the, like towing switch so the alarm didn’t go off, like the alarm disabling, uh, uh, thing. Anyway, so, uh, yeah, super memorable.

Uh, with it. Super, uh, most memorable, a of it was 1 52, which is like a big long climb. Like on the climb with the Mercedes on the back. Dude, it just pulled fine on the descent, it juggled gears and didn’t [00:28:00] need me to do anything at all. I didn’t need to touch the brake. It just juggle gears without making the motor screen at all.

And you’re just like, wow, nice. Satisfactory, wow, this, this thing can, can, can, and it makes you think that, that, you know, you could load it up with shit. Like you could have two sports bikes on the back of it and you could have a covered trailer with a race car in and it would have no fucking problem. It would’ve no problem.

The height alone means the sandy loose surfaces, curbs, all of that. It can do that. No problem in two wheel drive. There’s never been a time where I’ve been like, oh, better engage four wheel drive. I’ve done like two, 3000 miles now. Cool. Favorite car of the year? Favorite car of the year? My green Mustang.

We went to Mexico and I mean, it just reminds you how lucky you are. To somewhere where you can have awesome cars. Yeah. I, I, [00:29:00] I would say I’m time and point about the awesome cars as well, right? The, the, all of the new ones, they’re just so not desirable to me. They’re just so not desirable To me, it’s, it’s like now they’re like, I’m not, you know, postman.

Mark Gammie: Well,

Jon Summers: he

Mark Gammie: better defend you,

Jon Summers: dude. He is. The other day we were walking, he saw a postman on the street and he’s like, barking and stradling on the leash and wanted to go fight him. He’s, he’s funny with me, who is this motherfucker and keeps approaching and touching up the front door. It’s totally defending, but, but you know, you can’t knock him for it, right?

We’re walking on the beach, right, and there’s this massive gas cylinder that’s obviously fallen off a ship. Five feet in diameter. Mm. It’s on the beach and it’s rolling. As the waves move and as they approach it, he’s carrying behind me. He’s barking at it. He’s like, he is. He knows [00:30:00] that is not a natural object and it shouldn’t be here.

Mm-hmm.

Jon Summers: So, yeah, so I, I pity these people stuck with Front World Drive four cylinder things and, and you know, my Mustang’s not the mus itt muscle car and it’s not the nicest muscle car and it’s not, who cares, right? It’s, I love steak and eggs and that’s what that car is and it’s just mm-hmm. Just brilliant.

Agreed. I mean, so my neighbor just down the hill there who we’ve become closer to, he let me have a go in his Ferrari 3 0 8 over the course of the summer. Mm-hmm. I have to say, mark, when, when I was talking with him before about it, I was talking about Testa Ross’s with him and he behaved as if I was talking about a completely different thing as if I was talking about like a muscle car or something like that.

It just [00:31:00] wasn’t in his, and I realized I thought of that as I was driving that 3 0 8, because the most striking thing about it is that it’s not a super car is a sports car.

Yeah. The

Jon Summers: feeling of all of the weight behind you and the only weight at the front being like, you know, the lights and the brakes and there’d be a tube frame.

Mm-hmm.

Jon Summers: You know, the front suspension. Right. That feeling, that’s the most memorable thing about it. And the coolest thing about it, the motor, because it’s that flat plane, it sounds a bit like Roughy four cylinder, it sounds like Roughy four cylinder. Now in the days where they used Ferrari three oh eights for rallying, you looked at that and thought, but that’s, it’s like a beautiful super car.

You know, that’s not for rallying, you know, and escorts for rallying, not a supercar, but actually it was totally for rallying. And actually there is a lineage from the LANCIA [00:32:00] oh three seven. Well, from the, oh, from the Ferrari 3 0 8 to the oh three seven. And then in turn to the 2 8 8 GTO, the three are all sort of the, the same mid-engine, naughty light motor mounted in the middle, driving the rear wheels and nothing else, hardly anything else, like the rest is as minimalist as it can possibly be.

And, and so immediately. Right. I see. Why in les’s mind, Testa Ross something completely different. That’s a big and heavy and it’s a proper grand tour, whereas the three oh eights nothing like that. It’s, it’s like a. Little sports car, it’s, it’s closer to a ca, super seven than it is to a Testa Rosser. And, and I mean that in, in the nicest way.

’cause you know, you are inside and it does have some leather and it can blow hot and cold, which, you know, a ca can’t do. So, you know, [00:33:00] it, it has a lot of, of uh, really cool, really a cool experience. I mean, I still like them. I think they’re great. They would not disappoint you

Mark Gammie: if you bought one. It would not disappoint you.

Yeah. Ferrari’s that weird brand. I mean, you basically don’t want one ’cause they’re too expensive to run. But there is a period if you’ve got where, especially at the moment where not that long after they’ve been out obscenely cheap in comparison to what they cost initially. Yeah.

You can three pound card for like 80,000 cart pounds, like within five years, that sort of amount of depreciation. Yeah. Everything’s still gonna absolutely wallet rake you whenever, you know, anything goes wrong on it at all. But, you know, there is an appeal to getting value for money in that way. I absolutely see it.

And especially if you’re picking up a V 12 and things like that, uh, uh as well. But anything they produce and have produced for quite a long time is, is, [00:34:00] is, is high quality stuff. And I look, I trust the motoring journalists. I trust people like Chris Harris when they say, look, you know, it still feels quite organic even though you’re, you know, you’re conscious, you’re driving with AI informed side slip control and TCS this and EBS this and all that sort of stuff.

But I

Jon Summers: fundamentally don’t want all that. And no, I, I, uh, I mean, spoiler alert, I drove a Basey lucid, recently lucid air sedan, like a sub 50 grand one. I mean, it’s still the best car in the world. I don’t want one, but it’s still objectively, and I defy you gamy to sit in it and drive it and not be like, that thing drives fucking awesome.

Like dumb looks. The seat of the pants thing, it’s, it’s every inch as good as the best crowd. V eight sedan

Mark Gammie: I’m sure, but like I, I don’t wanna pay 150 to 250 grand for someone to take most of the [00:35:00] driving experience away. You know, at least hide it behind electronics when I don’t need any of that.

Jon Summers: I don’t wanna spend any money.

No. And, and this, this brings me back to that green Mustang. That green Mustang has, what, what the lucid can, can sort of never have. There’s a sort of organicness, there is an organicness that is the right word for it. There’s a sort of earthiness, which is, is missing it

Mark Gammie: completely. I mean, and like, you know, it’s like I don’t mind a bit of technology.

You know, there’s always gonna be a technology creep. You know, the Z’s got traction control like admittedly on and off, but you, I’ve got it. The, you know, I bought, I deliberately bought that CBR ’cause it was the first one that came with a BS on a standard on the CBR 600. And I’m like, I don’t regret it.

It’s nice to have that when you’re riding no minutes, you about a pl of rain and, you know, it gives you a little bit of extra confidence on breaking feel on the front end. You know, there’s nothing wrong with that. The more you layer on just, you know, it, it just dulls it for me. And when, when you take, you don’t sort of necessarily notice it until either like the BW.

It’s just been a bag of shit and [00:36:00] not work properly, but also more to the point when you drive something that hasn’t really got it and you’re like, you don’t miss it. In fact, if anything you prefer what you are getting in that organic sort of like, you know, less is more style sort of way less. I, I’ll come to the conclusion.

I don’t really want like, I mean I do want a big auto bun er some sort of middleweight Mercedes automatic gearbox thing for doing that sort of station run for driving international.

Jon Summers: You don’t need, with Mercedes and BMWs you don’t need to do like the air may mg like look at me, I’m the fast. No, if you do like a Mercedes 500, like a remap and an exhaust it, it’s as good as an A MG car anyway.

For sure. And you don’t remap or exhaust or I tell you what I really would do gamy is I think Lexus are doing better styling than any of the others now. I think the three 50 sedan. Really looks good. The IS three 50. I think the, the model that I’m [00:37:00] really interested in was, they did a model probably 10 years ago now f version of the Gs.

So the mid-size sedan, like the E-Class size sedan, but with TRD normally aspirated five liter V eight, 400 horse. And it has like, you know, a little bit of body kit on it. But mo no, I love those because it’s Toyota Bulletproof. It’s also JDM solid gold investible and nobody bought them. Anybody you talk to who knows cars, knows those, knows them.

And rec I, they’ve, they’ve come around for me with three or four different, different people and I just know that they’re like a, uh, an E, they’re like the thinking man’s E 39. Nowadays. ’cause the E 39 is all very well, but it’s still a stick. Right. And California, you don’t want that. Dubai you don’t

Mark Gammie: want, I, I mean, was one of some of the jobs I’ve been advertising for recently.

It’s, it [00:38:00] I looking for recently. It’s um, they’re like two or three days on the road. No, I don’t mind that. I get through a lot of audio books. I quite like on the road Diesel s class. Well, it was Harris did, Chris Harris did a video on the, uh, three, the Alpine B, whatever it is, the diesel version of, of the three series, and was like, look, it’s an automatic, but it’s got like 500 foot pounds of torque and comfy a suspension, and you know it, it’s got all the toys and stuff.

Now the issue with them is ’cause of the limited numbers, actually, they’re that bit more expensive again. But it was like that sort of thing. I’m thinking, look, I, you know, for doing Moway Cruisey stuff and for, you know, Angie going and picking her mom and dad up from the ga from the station with like suitcases and stuff, automatic back doors so that, you know, a dad and mom can get in because like they, they’re getting old, you know, they don’t want to have to fucking have the CX Fiesta seat tipped forward and like crouching through the, like, you know what I mean?

So I need something like that. But that means that if once have got that, everything else can be impractical. [00:39:00]

Jon Summers: Yeah, dude, it’s like when I bought that tundra, I said to Ollie, everything else can be fucking stupid. From here on in, that’s how

Mark Gammie: it’s gonna

Jon Summers: be. My first

Mark Gammie: project

Jon Summers: is getting the Z going again properly.

Yeah, dude, you gotta lean into that. Yeah. You gotta lean into that. The, the, the play, I think to see it is that there’s like skills to learn. Yes. But once you’ve learned them, it’s gonna be easy. There’s skills learn and kit to buy in terms of jump packs and how to do a fluid chase.

Mark Gammie: I’ve got, I’ve got a proper, I bought some three and a half ton like axle stands and it’s like nowhere near that.

It’s like less, it’s like less than half that. So I was like, okay, that’s about the right sort of cover ratio on. I’ve got a trolley jack and all that sort of stuff, so, but obviously it’s Britain so it’s fucking freezing. So went got some light back in the

Jon Summers: spring. I’m not telling you to go out and do it now.

I was watching Jeff buy buys cars and he was at strange some services and it was that kind of super rain where he was like his 11 o’clock in the morning, but it looked like it was about six o’clock [00:40:00] in the morning and the sun was still struggling to come up and I’m like, oh yeah, single England in the winter.

How I you No, no. Definitely not worth missing. I hate on the subject of Jeff buys cars and other silly automotive YouTubers, the reaction to the Jaguar rebrand. Now we’ll position it, right? This is what I think is important and people aren’t. Taken on board in 1926, Henry Ford was at last persuaded by his son Edsel, that the Model T, which was the most successful car in the world, more than three quarters of the cars in the world were Model Ts.

That this design, which had been in production for the last 20 years, was not the pinnacle of automotive design. And in fact, competitors had already stolen March and a new vehicle was needed to take on. Specifically Louis Chevrolet and and Billy Duran and the GM [00:41:00] brands. So Ford shut the whole factory for a year whilst they retooled for the model A, the new model a.

And Malay went into production in 1928, right? The point is that like Jaguar, the whole factory went offline for a year to completely reposition what they’re doing. And I think with Jaguar, what the fuck are Jaguar in this new EV world? Because Range Rover, they fit perfectly in this new EV world. But nobody buys cars anymore.

Everyone buys SUVs. So you know, if I’m tartar, Jaguar needs to make a case for its survival. And if they’re offline for a year, well maybe they’re never coming back. If you are going to do that, you need to have some kind of the splashiest marketing campaign you can possibly have. And I feel like that was what, that was probably the design brief and that was definitely [00:42:00] what was delivered.

Was this really shocking Rebrand your thoughts.

Mark Gammie: The interesting thing for me, I mean, I’ve never owned a Jaguar and now would I own a Jaguar? Yeah, there were Jags I would buy definitely, but. Is that very likely at the moment, no. And when it actually comes down to it, am I likely to shell out the dollars for it when there’s comparable other stuff?

Yeah, probably not. You have that do, so the Scottish Islands for a dip,

Jon Summers: tell us about

Mark Gammie: that. Oh, the F type R? Yeah. Two things about that that stand out. One, when you get an internal, the, the ignition vent, the vents like of the leather dash, the, the whole leather dash at the top bit underneath the screen rises up so that the air vents can appear, which is kind of theater and it sort of squeaks a bit ’cause it’s not fitted perfectly ’cause it’s leather as well, which is quite funny.

And it’s got a loud button for the exhaust. It, it, it opens valves or something. But like, basically it is always open when you turn the thing on because [00:43:00] fuck the neighbors and because if you have it on, even you forget when you’ve been driving through the country and you’ve been enjoying the exhaust and it popping and banging and all that sort of stuff, which it did with like much gusto.

When you then roll up to the traffic lights or the zebra crossing. And you breathe on the throttle just to go the last couple of feet. And the old granny walking across, carrying her suit, pulling her shopping along in one of those little tartan wheelie bag things like nearly shits herself because, because he goes bang, bang, bang stuff.

And he went like two miles hour. So, and it had, it had personality. Yeah, I liked it. And you could pick it up for not a ridiculous amount of money, given how much horse, I mean, 523 brake horse per. It’s a lot, you know, and like it revs out to like 7, 2 50, like something like that. So we, uh, when we were

Jon Summers: in the, when we were in the Jaguar, Daimler Heritage Trust, they had this, uh, XFR, the XFR version, which mm-hmm.

I think is the bargain. [00:44:00] Used bargain at the moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s the look brand. 500 horse, 510 horsepower or something. Um, a lot of ’em are white, believe it or not. Can you imagine the kind of person in Atlanta who’s buying a white one? Uh, anyway, point about I was gonna make about this FR was they took it out to Bonneville.

They didn’t make any changes to the engine. They just de restricted it. Then they lowered it, put some arrow on it, fucking thing went 206 miles an hour.

Mark Gammie: Yeah, I can believe it. It is a powerful lump. And look, I mean, that was a cracking car. I really enjoyed it. I mean, when we went to Sky in it, and like, I’m sure I’ve said on the pod before, I booked a three and a half liter V six.

And when I arrived, good guy checked me into the vehicle, took me out to the vehicle. And as we we’re approaching, I’m looking at it going, that’s not a V six. That’s not a V six. It’s got quad pipes out the back. That’s a fuck. So anyway, we got in the ding and drove away and I said, Angie said to me like, it’s quite loud, isn’t it?

I said, yeah, it’s the wrong car. Don’t accept any phone calls for the next hour until we’re out of mobile cell coverage, because this is not what we booked. And just, and it had a weekend on Sky and it was amazing, but it was a bit rainy, but like [00:45:00] it gripped like shit to a blanket even in the rain. And it had that sort of, you could make gangster progress never going above 5,000, 50, 200 revs.

So when you really pressed on into the sort of five to seven and a half thousand revs, like holy shitballs was, you really mo you were really shifting at that point. So look, I mean, I, I would like Jaguar products. Yeah. Especially when they’ve got their sort of Ard Aviv going on. I think the interesting thing from a sort of macro perspective, zooming out again from their rebrand, is that there’s lots of ways to do a, a sort of do a wacky rebrand.

Not wacky, but you know what I mean, to do a sort of an out there rebrand. There’s lots of ways you can make it funny. You can make it sort of shocking artistically. You can do art, cast style, BMW takes on things. There’s all sorts of different things you could do. And there’s two things, two sides to it. I think.

There’s the model car that they produced, which is, you know, big bonnet sort of looked like something out of like Batman’s fucking Gotham City. Really long bonnet, really high grill. Why I sort of [00:46:00] get the sort of heritage I want to look cool and that sort of thing. And have road presence. Got spades of that.

But part of the benefit of an having an electric vehicle is the fucking, it’s all under the floor, isn’t it? So you can have more usable space. Why have you got a massive bonnet? What’s, that’s the

Jon Summers: challenge with this. How, what’s the point of Jaguar, right? Yeah.

Mark Gammie: Like what’s that gonna be a sort of huge trunk or something.

You can have a pool in there. I mean it’s got a pool in there. I’m just sort, I’m back on. So there’s that sort of things and then there’s the sort of, if you look at the sort of the rise of populism and without going to get too political, I. That sort of movement against climate change and RY and diversity and being nice to people, leaning into sort of a bunch of sort of albino, tele tubby weirdos sort of be like the people wandering out into in neon colors to your fucking weird tune with the car in the background like it’s on.

And also, can I just say, I think I benched you in the email about it when I sent the link across and I [00:47:00] made a comment and no one really understood what I’d said on the bottom of Harry’s Garage video. When you see that car inverted, when you see it mirror imaged, the, the two js on the um, on the logo on the wheels are flipped.

So it says 69. So on the front and back wheels, when you look at it flipped and the bit pictures and it is on the image of how he’s garage’s review of the, of the where day went to the factory. It’s basically you are rolling past and you’ll see that from the inside of the car whenever you see it in like glass fronting windows kind of thing.

You are gonna get the mirror image version, aren’t you? Yeah. So therefore you are gonna be 69 ing all the way down that way. You massive. Anyway, make me smile. They have to do something, don’t they? They do. I mean, I’m not sure that’s gonna save the company. Uh, and I saw again, cars, old fuddy duddies, uh, talking about, and that someone, one of the guys saying like, look, I’ve owned multiple jaguars, and it sort of feels like they’re saying we don’t want your customer again.

And that’s a bold strategy. That is a [00:48:00] bold strategy when you haven’t really established a new market to go. We don’t want the old one. But that, I think, I think the point is somewhere,

Jon Summers: I think the point is that there’s not enough of those other people and too many of those people that, and that person who’s like, oh, you know, you’ve lost me as a customer.

They’re still likely to buy rangey. There’s nothing else. Oh, really?

Crew Chief Brad: Yeah, dude. Absolutely. I

Jon Summers: drove, I drove a rangey recently and, and, uh, yeah, it was the most expensive car I drove of these like 20 cars. I drove back to back, dude. It was really a thing I didn’t expect to be like, oh wow, this range is a thing.

I literally drove it for a bit, got out and walked around it and thought, Jesus, am I a farmer? It’s like, and I’ve, for the having after I drove it, that’s the first time I’ve ever found myself thinking I might actually like a Range Rover as a, as a, you know, a Beatle.

Yeah. I

Mark Gammie: think there’s a reason why, you know, Clarkson loves his Range Rover.

Harry, Harry Metcalf loves his Range Rover, [00:49:00] and you know, there’s there, there’s, there’s a sort of executive premium feel to ’em that

Jon Summers: people like. Yeah, I mean the leather in this one that I test drove was just on another level.

Hmm.

Jon Summers: It had five driving modes. Only one of them was on road. There was no stupid performance mode or, you know, range

Mark Gammie: River, was it Discovery?

I can’t remember which one. I think it’s Range Rover they both got, isn’t it? I I, I’ll make sure I’m right on that one. Can’t remember. Whatever. Yeah. Again, I, I, I, I struggle with the whole thing and just find it a bit like, don’t want, you know, it’s too big. What the fuck is it for? Google this one? Bentley perfume.

Oh, is it actually perfume or is it a car? Oh, for fuck

Jon Summers: sake,

Mark Gammie: qua. What’s the

Jon Summers: reaction? I was, I was looking for, is this something that you as a guy buy for your girl? Uh, wi you know, wife, significant other. I, I met a bloke from Bentley recently, and, and he was sad. He does interior design and, uh, he said, you know, [00:50:00] these people from product are like coming to me with this vegan leather and I, what’s, what’s that?

Vinyl? And he went, well, no, but yeah, like, and I’m like, again, if the leather’s good enough, don’t kill the cow. I don’t care. And I’m looking doubtful, and I’m like, and, and he’s like, it’s all right. You don’t need to try not to be negative. Can you imagine what the Russian billionaires would say if we tried to sell them Bentleys with vegan leather?

Yeah, that wouldn’t go a long way, would it? That’s the challenge, right? That’s the challenge. There’s a real challenge around modernizing these old brands.

Mark Gammie: Well, of course what he means, just to be clear in life, say with the legal people, is Kazakhstani billionaires who definitely aren’t gonna then sell it onto the Russian billionaires ’cause they’re not actually supposed to be selling to Russian billionaires.

’cause they’re a war mongering, bunch of cunts. So they have to get round these things by selling them to people who are totally unrelated and, you know, demands gone massively through the roof in these old Soviet states. So, but that’s incidental. It’s just a coincidence that the [00:51:00] Russian to demand seems to have migrated about 500 miles off the border and then they mysteriously don’t have a life in Kazakhstan anymore.

I mean, I’m, that’s just a coincidence. Interesting,

Jon Summers: gamy. Interesting. Uh, aside that one,

Dana’s German friends came, visited over the summer. They had this GMC Denali. It was like a late model GMC Denali, so like a gussied up Tahoe. Obviously for European roads, absolutely bloody ridiculous. But for American roads, oh dude, what a vehicle directly related to the conversation we were just having about the Range Rover, because this is a vehicle which is about two thirds the price of the rangey, less obviously if you buy a used one, but it has all of the things that were cool [00:52:00] about the Rangey, but it will go on forever and ever and ever and can be fixed at every Chevy dealership.

Unlike the Rey. A lot to be said for that kind of vehicle in America. Indeed. Yeah. I’m gonna get rid of the absolute odor par farm now from my, yeah, some months ago we had an exchange about a piece that, of journalism that I’ve lost, and I don’t wanna throw the journalist under the bus so it, so it doesn’t matter, but it basically, it was a piece talking about, say a lay on Coopers.

And I was reminded of Cooper’s because this Cooper brand as, as it’s now a standalone brand, John Garcia’s rent car in Ireland was a Cooper, not a sayer. When I was like, was it a say? He was like, no, it was Cooper, whatever that is. Yeah, it’s, it’s like it’s own brand now. And you had those two Coopers back to back.

I mean, I always felt at the time they looked better than golf GTIs. Yeah. [00:53:00] You felt I I, well, I’m gonna ask your opinions in a minute, but what this bullet point is Coopers versus golf versus whipper snapper writers, and this is really the point that I’m making, is the bloke that wrote that article was some young whipper snapper.

He wasn’t some 50-year-old bloke who caned about 150,000 miles on two coopers and drove a bunch of golfs in period as well. So have the floor. Are the Coopers better? I know the answer.

Mark Gammie: Yeah, of course. I mean, to be fair to the dude, like you’re absolutely right. He was a young chap, I can’t remember what it was, road on track or so, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t an article about the Cooper, it was an article about the period golf, GTI.

It was an article about the period golf, GTI, that 130 horsepower baggy sack of shit didn’t deserve to wear badge that golf GTI. And he was saying how he’d driven it again, like as if he drove it the first time. It wasn’t an itch in the Milkman’s ball bag at the time, do you know what I mean? Like not [00:54:00] alive.

He was driving. Yeah. So he, he, he’d driven it and he was like, look, you know, it is quite good. It’s quite snappy and like, look Okay compared to the, you know, the standard 80 horsepower, 90 horsepower golf y. Yeah. But my point was, what the hell is this bloke talking about on an out? And I can’t remember. It was, I mean, I only read a couple of you like US motoring websites, so it would’ve been like Road and Track, or it would’ve been maybe the Ars Technica cars section, or it would’ve been maybe one of the other ones.

Um, the one that, um, that, that, uh, Victoria Beaver writes for? No, she writes for provoking tracks and she. Um, but anyway, there’s another, there’s another, um, uh, US one that I sometimes read, but nevertheless, it was pointing out that, you know, if you compare the two, they were at the rateable at the same period and they were shockingly different.

There, there were two versions of the Cooper. The, uh, in my period there was the 180 version horsepower Cooper in the original version. And then there was the 210 horsepower Cupra R and they had a different body kit and the Cooper looked like better than the standard lay anyway. [00:55:00] And then when you put the Cupra R body kit on, I mean, it was really like a David Tard chin spoiler and all sorts of aggro wheel arch blistering and all sorts of cheese and like a big ass central exhaust at the back and things like that.

A big ass exhaust pipe that was two in one at the back. It sounded mean. It looked mean and it was aggressive. My boss once came in with him, me in in, in it with me after I’d, not long after I’d got it. And I went, there was a sort of like, you know, a sort of slight riff in the road and he, it banged over it because it was suspension and he was like, bloody hell, what do we do?

Just run over a fox or something. It was probably a 50 p sized indentation on the road. So you know, you did have to put up with some discomfort for your pleasure. But I led it to my mate to drive it down to uh, Lamar. The first one I got was a Wangled company car and then the second one I bought my own one.

The one that came out with the 225 horsepower one. ’cause there was still nothing in that space to compete with it for sort of looks [00:56:00] or usable VA group performance and reliability with four seats in a decent sized boot. And that looked great. Had more punctures in that car, I think, than any other car ever.

’cause it was on 18 low 18 inch wheels with fairly low profile rubber on there. And it was peri P zero rossos when it came as as standard. And I went through to the canvas on the fronts on those in six and a half thousand miles. On the first set. So I agreed with my sales manager that they wouldn’t be put back on it and that I would get like Goodyear Pilot Sport Cups or something like that instead, which would make 15,000 miles on the fronts and therefore wouldn’t, uh, cause issues with hr.

But they, you know, my, my original point, again, zooming back out. At a macro level, I think we like to be a sweeping, it was a sensational car in period and the golf was an embarrassment in the range. It was the absolute nadir of golf. After that, they had the sort of different letters with different horsepowers and one of them like had, had like [00:57:00] 180 horsepower, vaguely getting back up to speed.

But it wasn’t until the one with those sort of pepper potty sort of, uh, alloys that came out with the white one with a little bit of lipstick underneath the spoiler, uh, underneath the sort of the grill. It wasn’t until that one where they went to 210 horsepower in a proper six speed box that the GTI was r was sort of dug back out from its death that it was going through for the previous decade plus.

And so therefore, to write in articles, eulogizing essentially a piece of shit on the brand logo felt to me like you were celebrating failure. Whereas within the same group, there was another part. On the same platform with the same chassis. You fundamentally the same company producing something dynamically, completely different and way more purposeful as, as I was saying, like I landed Dispute going outta the mall.

He chased his mate in an M three and he mate in the M three couldn’t lose him. He rang me up slightly worse for, uh, well, let’s call it alcohol, um, later on that evening, telling me [00:58:00] in no uncertain terms about how amazing it was, and, uh, he couldn’t believe that the two things were produced within, uh, Sten to be the same building.

Would

Jon Summers: you Ga is that guy the TVR guy? Yeah. Ah, he does kind of owe you a beer,

doesn’t

Mark Gammie: he?

Jon Summers: Yeah, I mean, it was a company car, but I had to lie. I just, I just feel like if you were, I might edit this bit out. I just feel like if you were gonna make money flipping cars on the 25 year rule, TVRS will be the way to do it and the place to buy them is England.

And the way to do it with somebody who knows car, knows the cars really well. And what you need to make a business like that work is people in England and people in America. And you know, I, I feel like there might be a, a kind of business opportunity there and I

Mark Gammie: definitely find out from him. I could have a chat, I could meet him for beer at some point and have a chat with him and say like, ’cause he knows all the garages and knows the people and it’s,

Jon Summers: it’s more.

It’s more that, that you make it worth his while to go look at cars. I [00:59:00] would, if I was, came to England, or if you were looking at cars and we were gonna split whatever money we might make from flipping it or something like that, or I was gonna pay you for your time to go look at it or something like that, which, that I have to do the maths on that to see what it would work, what I could actually, where if the car was landed here in California and if I was able to.

’cause for me, the, the only time I know the real cost of it is when I am landed here with it, I can drive it around a little bit and give it to John to sell. You know, that’s the Yeah,

Mark Gammie: no, absolutely. I mean, look, there, there, there’s definitely expertise there.

Jon Summers: Awesome.

Hypothetical. Scenario. I’ve retired to Santa Barbara, I’m considering getting a douche car. That was how he described it. A douche car. I can tell you what he, what he was considering, if you like. I was gonna ask you what you would do [01:00:00] for your, as your douche car for rolling around Santa Barbara. So it’s lovely weather to the country club, bit of school run edge, you know, just, just for like bit of beach age, bit of to the supermarket where you have to fit in a car, normal car park, you know.

But like, so, um, would you wanna think on it and then, uh, I’ll tell you what I would do in a minute. Yeah. All right.

Mark Gammie: But to answer your question, I would probably just guess something like a nice Mustang GT Cabrio. Because then you can roll around like four seats. You can have the roof down. It’s nice. You got four, five, you know, five, 400 plus horsepower. It’s nice and cheap. It’s fairly low key. There’s a lot of ’em about, you can get a nice one, get all the toys in it.

It’s not that much money and you can do burnouts and

Jon Summers: stuff. You just do like a modern, go down the local Ford dealership and find a loaded [01:01:00] convertible 5.0.

Mark Gammie: Yeah. Having driven that a lot around America, different versions of it. It’s anonymous enough. But people who know go, yeah, that’s the nice version.

It’s fun enough and it’s got enough toys. But you know, the key thing for someone like that with lot of money is it’s anonymous enough and it’s fun. You know, you could rev the nuts out of it. It sounds good. And you can do like burnouts and stuff. And also if you wanna upgrade it, you can put all the bits from the GT three 50 on it if you want to.

And like no one need.

Jon Summers: No, yeah, you’re right. There’s so many color combinations.

Hmm.

Jon Summers: Where you could really do a good color.

Yeah,

Jon Summers: exactly. Like distinct color. Yeah. Again,

Mark Gammie: as soon as you lean that way, you are more noticeable. ’cause you know, the, the, the, the nice alloys that I did on the M two, you are more noticeable.

People notice the cardboard. It looks cooler, but do you wanna be more noticeable? You know, I think rolling around in California is pretty non noticeable. I. But as soon as you’re rolling around in the slightly more Trumpy areas, this is a bit more noticeable. So, do you know what I mean? It depends.

Jon Summers: Yeah, no, I, I, uh, I do know, uh, I do know exactly what you mean.

Uh, my [01:02:00] douche car, I, I would do a mid sixties Cadillac convertible. How that We both went rag top though yellow probably. Yeah. Yeah. Santa Barbara, you’ve gotta go wrapped up. That’s what I thought. He’s gotta lean into it, you know? Yeah. I mean, and, and I love those stack headlight ca I love stack headlights, period.

I love pair of headlights love stack. Those mid sixties Cadillacs. The just awesome does he

Mark Gammie: awesome. Reliability. I’m not suggesting it wouldn’t be. I’m just saying, you know, but you’d have to make sure it was, but does he want classic car ownership? That’s why? No, he does. No, that’s why I went for the, like the, the less than five years old Mustang GT

Jon Summers: with

Mark Gammie: all

Jon Summers: the

Mark Gammie: toys.

Jon Summers: Because I know and, uh, and, and I’m sad. It’s sad to say that. I think the issue with that would be the, the image associated with Mustangs. You know, I think

Mark Gammie: in America

Jon Summers: it’s kind of anonymous. It’s completely, that’s why you are so right to say that a night that the right [01:03:00] Mustang would really be a great car for him.

Four Oh horsepower is a

Mark Gammie: lot. I’ve raced that thing up and down mountains and through many a national park in America and at a whale of a time, you know, you know, uh, the standing joke with Angie and I is that, you know, we went up to Mount Hood, I think it was like just above the Colorado River and before we left the motel, we’d like booked on hotels.com.

Uh, about three in the afternoon as we were driving down the river, like she checked with the rest restaurant to say like, you know, when are you stop serving food? And she was like, oh, well, like at like eight 30 or something, and it was like six o’clock. I’m like, well, I want to go and drive up the mountain.

It’s a nice sunset coming and due and stuff. Let’s go and drive up the mountain. And of course you drive up the, into the national parks at that time of day everyone’s going the other way. So you’ve got the road to yourself. So you’ve got some probably really quite nicely maintained asphalt by the National Park Service tip of the cap to those boys and girls.

A lovely time of day, golden sunlight and stuff. And there’s nobody going your way. So you can absolutely spank the staying up and down. Yeah, it’s great fun. It really lends itself to those sort of things. But again, when it’s [01:04:00] there hot and ticking over and pinging in the car park and the brake discs are smelling a bit, eh, it’s just a guy likes driving his stank.

You, when we drove the stag back through, um, Napa, um, from that scenario that, uh, vineyard that we did the wine tasting at, I’ve done that road multiple times ’cause it’s really good and fun and twisty. And it really actually showed why you want the gt, not the, the four cylinder. ’cause I had that red four cylinder that year.

And the bumps and humps really upset the suspension on it. When you were pushing on, I, I was one of those ones. I said to Angie at one point, I’m gonna stop driving this car so fast. ’cause he doesn’t like it on these roads. It just got too unsettled and just too out of like ju jalopy about a bit. But the gt ate it up.

Absolutely loved it. My point is, three times people saw me approaching at high speed in the rear view mirror and just indicating, let me go by, he’s just a boy in his mustang. Most of the man mustangs, one in a Mustang. Oh, my mate’s got a must. The, the, the attitude of the road user is, oh yeah, you go and overtake and enjoy your A and driving your Mustang.

Or at least it seemed to me as a white bloke in a Mustang with a white [01:05:00] wife. So I, let’s caveat it that way. But in the areas he is gonna be driving in, if he gets a bit enthusiastic and overtakes people, they’re less likely to call the cops for you and your sue or whatever shit might. Especially these days, he was thinking about Maseratis, like a Maserati convertible.

A Grand Cou. No, not a Grand Cou. Um, uh. They’re quite reporting.

Jon Summers: No, no. A convertible one. Is it a grand cou or a grand whatever. They’re old though

Mark Gammie: now.

Jon Summers: Well, I know, but like they also

Mark Gammie: only did paddle shifts. If I recollect. They might have done autos for the us. Yeah, that’s, I know that’s immaterial. That’s me thinking about you and me owning it, not about him owning it.

Jon Summers: Um,

Mark Gammie: but I’m just saying

Jon Summers: for the record, this is why the whole question of what would you do? Like Yeah, my Cadillac could get fuel vaporization, but I wouldn’t let that put me off. It, would I? I’d still have it.

Mark Gammie: No, I’m just saying like, you know, for, for that, I, I think as a sort of Swiss army knife, ’cause he says that I, you know, I want

Jon Summers: low, the right mustang’s really, really good.[01:06:00]

Mark Gammie: You get a nice, like dark green one. You even get some sort of nice coppery alloys or something like that on there.

Jon Summers: Yeah. You really, you really could.

Mark Gammie: Yeah. Yeah. And you wanted to give it the old, like snap, crack and pop, then just put like the full system or something like that on the back.

Jon Summers: Yeah, well, all, uh, the, the stuff you can order straight from the Ford dealership, which would work for him.

The other thing is, is that he, it would feel very well priced in comparison to the norm. Oh

Mark Gammie: yeah. Yeah. I mean, don’t, yeah. Can I have a, can I have a cut of the a hundred grand? We’ve just saved him by not buying the masie. Yeah, yeah.

Um, but

yeah,

Mark Gammie: I mean, look, it’s each of their own, isn’t it? But I, I think, you know, driving the, the M two through little French, poor French villages, sometimes you are like, uh, it’s just a little bit loud and a little bit sort of like, you know, drawing the eye of the local youth. And you don’t always want that.

You often want to just roll through town, and it’s quite nice when you know you are rolling. I was rolling out a car park one day in the Mustang, and I, the, the [01:07:00] webcam, the, the, uh, the GoPros like stuck to the windscreen. And so Angie said she heard a little boy asking her, asking his dad like, what’s that on the card daddy?

And he was like, oh, it’s a, it’s a camera. So he is like filming it. He’s out to driving his Mustang. He’s like, yeah. Cool. It is cool kid. It’s good fun, but it’s not ostentatious.

Jon Summers: So you mentioned the M two. Mm. Let’s do a little fleet update. And that’s, uh, it begin with that M two. So I’ve, I’ve a load of like quick fiery things, uh, that will cover everything about the car. What was the best thing about that? M two Gamy. What year is it? 2016.

Yeah.

Jon Summers: What’s the best thing about

Mark Gammie: it? It’s difficult for me a judge, to be honest, because it’s been such a, an absolute nightmare of an ownership pros proposition.

Everything around it’s been awful. The only [01:08:00] thing that was good about it was the first two weeks where we drove it down and had a good fun in it with, in around France before the random things that were wrong with it and like just ruined the ownership experience for me. And I’ve barely driven it in the last 12 months.

So next up is get it on the road and sorted and had gone. But as fundamentally, when I was rang Pon, pushing around the Pyrenees, it was good fun. But even then, uh, early doors, it’s like, okay, they just overloaded the air con. That’s why there was vapor coming out and within a week it’s not like pushing air con, right?

So that why have they done that? You look it up on your phone in the hotel that evening because it’s too expensive to replace. The AC and AC won’t be covered on the warranty they sold you and on and on and on and on and on. The whole thing has become just a pain point, you know? I don’t even think about it anymore.

It’s been so awful.

Jon Summers: It’s less about, but, but really that’s less about the, the, the fundamentals of the car and more, more about the particular car you had and the way it was prepared. Is that fair? Um, prob probably,

Mark Gammie: I’ve just been [01:09:00] extremely unlucky on all fronts, but the dealership didn’t do a good job.

They bod a car and sold it to me while my wife had cancer, so I wasn’t really able to address it and I was back and forth to the hospital, didn’t have a lot of time to be going over there and chasing them up and arguing with them about stuff. And it sat off the road for quite some time. So by the time it’s, you know, you are getting around to re-looking at it again.

It’s beyond the three month initial warranty and. You try and use the other warranty that they sold you and oh, we don’t cover that and we don’t cover that. So I was never able to really get to grips with fixing it and fundamentally addressing all of the things that were wrong with it. Is it as a platform fun and usable?

Yeah, it absolutely is. It’s a nice little car. It feels dynamically poised. Probably more power than you need if I’m honest. And it’s only 3 75, but it did really start to open my eyes to the fact that how much do you need? Because like, I don’t want to be driving so fast that you are in licensed losing territory every time you breathe on the throttle.

Anything above the sort of zed level horsepower you sort of are. So you can go and hustle through B [01:10:00] Roads and sea roads and things like that and have your own little bits where you know, there won’t be people at times a day and have a great time in your car. But that in those terms, you’re hardly ever doing more than 70 or 80 miles an hour at max.

’cause to be is sea roads, you know what I mean? They’re, they’re small, they’re canid. It’s probably like one or two or one or lane with passing places, one lane. That sort of road. So you are not doing, you know, a ton plus, I don’t wanna be doing that sort of speed unless you’re gonna take it on track. I don’t see the point in it at that point.

And most people don’t take it on track in a way, the way most gss never go off road, it, it’s one of those things. So at some point it becomes a numbers game and dick measuring and top Trump, um, heights and speeds and feeds. And actually less about the fundamentals of enjoying your morning drive on a Saturday.

And so really it sort of cemented my view that the, the technology has ceased to enhance for me and has sort of started to dull the experience. So the last car I’m really interested in driving is that Toyota Yaris gr. But again, you’re back to hot hatches and a little rally spec hot [01:11:00] hatch with proper four wheel drive and like, you know, no usable rear seats.

And you know, they, ’cause the roofs is like custom and smoke snakes down. So it used to have headroom in the standard DRIs, but not anymore. But again, where’s the technology that the technology gone there into A tricky dicky, you know, WRC thinking four wheel drive system not into lane assist and you know, eight levels of traction control and eight levels of all these, that’s too much.

You know, it’s, it’s, yeah, I dunno, it’s, it’s sort of been an interesting car to own it. I really wanted to own BMW. It’s sort of put me off BMW and I’m trying not to let it do that ’cause I feel that’s a bit unfair to the brand. But I certainly will be getting a Mercedes instead as the cruiser car ’cause I’d like to try them out rather.

And I think it also fits their sort of brand ethos a bit better anyway. So yeah, it’s been, it’s been a bit of a poison pill. How many miles you do it? Oh, this last year. Hardly any, I think less than 500. Just don’t wanna drive it. It makes me miserable. Everything about it’s been awful. This is not a long diatribe, just due to bullet points.

What has actually gone wrong on it? So there’s a problem with the brakes, um, [01:12:00] which I suspect was because it was either tracked, but anyway, there’s a problem with the brakes and they’ve never addressed it. Um, there was a problem with the reversing beeping that came and went, and then wouldn’t you turn the car on and start reversing and then it wouldn’t stop beeping until you turn the car off again.

That sort of thing, which is a bit inconvenient if you’re doing a three point turn in the road and you have to get out of where you’ve got to, you know, that sort of thing. Then it had, uh, a very expensive service, which costs a whole load of things. They did. They did it. They fixed the, they did the wheels, but they didn’t do it properly, so they didn’t undercoat it properly.

So when you got a scuff on the wheels, you couldn’t repair that color to the right color. You’d have all the wheels redone again. The problem with reversing turned into a problem with the amp because someone had gone in and broken the, uh, stop start on it to turn that permanently off. But the box you need to go into to electronically hack into that CPU, they hadn’t fixed it properly back down.

So Rain got into it and destroyed the amp. So that meant that for about a month, whenever you drove it at random points, it would just start playing screeching [01:13:00] noise at about 120 decibels in the car, and you couldn’t stop it until you stopped the car and turned it off. And sometimes it would come back and sometimes it wouldn’t.

So in order to get that fixed, they’ve had to just disconnect all of the set, all of the SAT nav. Oh, the sat nav. I bought the upgraded sat nav and it wouldn’t load. So I paid 300 quid for that and it won’t, it’s never gone onto the. I’m forgetting stuff, but you get the idea

Jon Summers: I add as bullets, what should potential buyers know and would you recommend?

But I don’t think we need to go there, do we? I think we could just move straight on to your Nissan three 50 Z.

Mark Gammie: Yeah. So the Nissan, um, the biggest complaint about the Nissan is getting spare parts. That’s it. I love that car. It’s amazing. It’s the best car I’ve ever bought. I bought it with 4,000 miles.

It’s got 179,000 miles on it now. I’ll die owning it. It’s amazing. I I, you know, it’s at that age now when you get it running, you get an MOT and you drive it for bit, it goes back in the garage and then you notice that something else is broken like, and you then spend the time ordering that part and fixing that part and then [01:14:00] using it for a bit again.

But my idea is to just, you’re forcing myself to bite the bullet of six months of annoying that shit and just use it a bunch more regularly. So then split driving between it as the weekend car and this Mercedes usable everyday car as the uh, two around journey stuff. And then more bikes.

Jon Summers: Uh, more bikes. I uh, music to it, music to my ears.

Mark Ami, both of us have Fiesta Ts both of us love them. Yep. You’ve used yours much this last year, or your wife’s

Mark Gammie: I should say loads. ’cause I haven’t been driving the BMW. It’s the car I’ve driven the most. It’s amazing. I. We had the, we had the, uh, the, uh, the full system put on this year. Well, from the cap back system, uh, the aftermarket system, um, put on there.

Love. It does change the sort of tone a little bit. It means that driving on the motorway at sort of 75 ish, you sort of wanna be doing 80 ish. Because it’s a little bit droney, but other than that, added a little bit of punch and it sort of prepares the car for the cat, the high performance [01:15:00] cat, and chipping from the same company next time.

It needs those bits. I love it. It’s, it’s an amazing car.

Jon Summers: All right, mark, as a final quick fire here. What is your top motoring tip for 2025? Um, top motoring tip for 2025. I don’t really have one either. Um, we

Mark Gammie: could, we can, I, I’ll give two. So if you’re gonna be traveling abroad, do like two minutes of Googling on where you’re going.

Just so you know when people are randomly driving over the hard shoulder and things like that, what they’re up to. Um, ’cause there might be a method to their madness that’s a local custom kind of thing. And two, I saw. On that geezer on bike world. Uh, he did that rally thing. He said that he’d spoken to Simon Pavy, the Dex Dakar rider, and he is that BMW off-road skills course.

I think that’s him. And he put some insulating tape just around the front brake lever and clutch lever on his motorbike whenever he is doing cold winter east things off road so that if you’ve got your finger on the [01:16:00] brakes or two fingers on the brakes, you’re not onto the metal, you’re onto this insulating tape and it keeps your hands a load warmer, which I thought that was a really useful tip, especially if as he was doing this rally thing, it’s like one degree and it’s like brass monkeys.

Then anything to keep your MITs a bit warmer is, uh, was definitely a good thing.

Jon Summers: I’m trying to think of any, uh, of my top motoring tip. I guess my thing, the thing on my mind, it, it is, uh, beware the ethanol fuel.

Mark Gammie: Oh shit. Yeah.

Jon Summers: Yeah. I mean, I, I’m, I’m on the K five the other day, meant to just go around the block but ended up going up the hill.

Anyway, I split a couple of cars and as it came into the power band, it choked a load of bad fuel, which put the shit up, up me and made me think really the this bad fuel thing, it’s not just inconvenient, it’s actually kind of dangerous. So for sure get the gone fucking ethanol fuel. There’s this stuff you can buy for storing, you know, farm equipment or you know, like your [01:17:00] ride on mower or your streamer or something like that called True fuel that you can get from the hardware store.

So it’s 92 octane, so you know, it’s not race fuel. Nice. But the bikes don’t know, know the difference. So I’ve got a pump and I’m gonna try and empty out the ri the ones that have got remain fuel. Yeah, yeah. No, definitely. Yeah.

Mark Gammie: Again, Harry was, did his roundup of it, was it the, uh, Kash or one of his exoticas.

Where it had got water into the fuel system and it had like, ruined it. Well, it might have been these, um, is nine 30 turbo and it was, I can’t remember exactly how it happened, but there was, there was, there was a science bit like in the, in the, in the L’Oreal ads, but. It was the ethanol fuel that had sort of sucked some of this shit out and it had been sitting absorbed water and it had got into the system and then rusted a lot of stuff.

Jon Summers: It is absolute poison. It, it really is. And at first I was pretty, I couldn’t come up with a [01:18:00] plan for how to get off it and how to get onto something else and how I, what I was gonna do. But I think what my new policy is gonna be, and, and this is, you know, for anybody who’s got motorcycles or even classic cars, is you know exactly how much gas is in the tank.

And when it’s empty and you’re parking it up, you put true fuel in it. If there is remaining gas in it, you put that stable stuff. In it so you have something to stop it from going bad, but you also have as much true fuel or you know, as much like storage fuel, decent fuel that’s not got ethanol in and, and so, but you’re not, you don’t want to be pouring a full carrier of, you know, loads of true fuel in because it’s so bloody expensive.

So that’s not realistic. So for me, what I’ve decided I’m gonna have to do is the beginning of any ride that I do is to the gas station. And at the gas station I put in however much gas I’m gonna [01:19:00] burn about on that ride. So if I’m gonna go short this a little bit in, if I’m gonna go further, I put more in.

And, and the idea is when you get home, you step off the bike, you put stable in, you know, I have fuel system cleaner stuff to try and debunk the ones that have got gunked up and that’s a whole separate kind of story. But that’s how I’m gonna be doing it. I remember what the

Mark Gammie: science bit was now, the science bit was.

He’d gone to a garage that was a bit in middle of nowhere and bought like high octane fuel, the like super un netted or whatever the best thing he could get. But they, when they did the sort of the reverse diagnostics, they thought that it was probably because that garage doesn’t sell much high octane gas.

Because in the middle of nowhere, and therefore it sits around in the gas tank in, in the underground storage tank for a long time. And that there, if it’s there and doesn’t turn over, it’s super, it will absorb water. So it ended up with like 4% water content or something like that. And that’s what fucked the internals on the porch, you know?

So don’t, you’re gonna have to buy it and leave it in the [01:20:00] car, buy it from somewhere where it turns over

Jon Summers: regularly in a busy super, in a busy turn. And, and it’s also, you know, I was thinking this when you were talking about your three 50 is they don’t like sitting. Really. No. And I think if you were to start using it really regularly to like, I’m also

why

Jon Summers: my stuff, I, I am not, you know, I’m very hypocritical as I say this, but you know, if you use the stuff regularly, it, it’s not that it doesn’t need stuff, it’s that the stuff it needs is different.

Like a car in service is different from some fucking thing that’s been sitting for ages.

Mark Gammie: Mark,

Jon Summers: thank you for your time today.

Mark Gammie: Pleasure, bro.[01:21:00]

Crew Chief Eric: 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 week for more exciting and educational content from organizations like The Exotic Car Marketplace, the Motoring Historian, break Fix, and many others. If you’d like to support Grand Touring Motor Sports and the Motoring Podcast Network, sign up for one of our many sponsorship tiers at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports.

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.

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00:00 Reunion with Mark Gammie
• 00:01:53 The Resurrection of the Black Honda CBR
• 00:07:09 Auxito LED Bulbs
• 00:10:32 Motoring in 2025: A Year in Review (2024)
• 00:13:39 Electric Vehicles and Infrastructure
• 00:25:16 Personal Driving Experiences
• 00:40:09 The Future of Jaguar: Theatrical Features & Loud Exhausts; A Powerful Bargain!
• 00:48:19 Range Rover’s Executive Appeal, Bentley, and Vegan Leather
• 00:53:00 SEAT Cupra R vs. Golf GTI: A Comparison
• 00:58:22 Flipping Cars: TVR Opportunities?
• 00:59:46 Choosing the Perfect “Retirement” Car
• 01:07:31 Fleet Updates and Ownership Woes
• 01:15:10 Top Motoring Tips for 2025
• 01:16:20 Ethanol Fuel: A Cautionary Tale
• 01:20:36 Conclusion and Sponsor Message