Dan Roth  0:04  
This is wheel bearings. I'm Dan Roth, from Forbes.

Sam Abuelsamid  0:10  
And I'm Sam Abuelsamid, from guidehouse insights. And Rebecca is off babysitting a couple of nephews this evening. Are they actually legitimately young nephews was was that well, I saw one picture that that was clearly a young kid. So I'm assuming they're young nephews. Okay. I know, you know, she has an older nephew that,

you know, was living with her for a while living in her house. But he's moved out now. So she just I think she's babysitting for one of her siblings.

Dan Roth  0:36  
Like legitimately babysitting.

Sam Abuelsamid  0:38  
Yes. legitimately babysitting. She can't be here this evening.

Dan Roth  0:42  
Well, Auntie Rebecca will be back sometime soon. Oh, and you know what, it's interesting. The the show that you guys did, I was like, when I edited it last week, I was like, Oh, God, I wish I was there for that. Cuz you guys had a question about a sound meter? And

Sam Abuelsamid  1:01  
oh, yeah, well, we can we can go let's come back to that one. I

Dan Roth  1:04  
was like, I have a sound meter. Broken it out into yours. But the, and the reason for that is that you can just get a sound meter app for your phone and write

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18  
the mic on your I don't know how accurate those things actually are, though. It's depends on the mic. And

Dan Roth  1:23  
yeah, I mean, there's, there's a little variation, basically, it's gonna, it'll tell you kind of Sarah, close enough. But there's, there's a lot that goes into sort of measuring sound and I don't know how good we'd be at it, you know?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:38  
Well, and, you know, there's also, you know, do you measured in decibels do you measure measured and sones? Because they're, they're actually measuring two very different things, you know, one somewhat, one is measuring sound pressure, right? And sounds, you know, decibels is measuring sound pressure. Because sound is made by waves, pressure waves in, in the air in the atmosphere, right. And sones is actually measuring the loudness of the tone and the type of tone it is. Yeah. manufacturers have, you know, over the last probably about 20 years, like, you know, early 2000s, I think, when I was still working at TRW as an engineer, you know, they were doing sound measurements of the ABS systems, they switched from using from measuring by decibels to measured by sones, because it gave you a better indication of the sound quality. Right? Yeah, it is important sounds

Dan Roth  2:29  
is definitely I think, I think a lot of industries use sones. You know, you can convert songs to dB if you want it to. Because the I think the general public, very much understands decibels versus sounds, but sounds is a much more comprehensive measurement. Like you said, it sort of takes the quality of the noise into account. And even with sound pressure, you know, you got to be careful. Is it a weighted, which mimics the response of your ear? Or is it c Wade, which is much more broadband, and then in a car driving down the road? You know, is there are you holding the meter? And so, are you introducing handling noise? Or is the meters sitting on something, which is again going to introduce rumble because it's just going to physically vibrate the mic capsules. So, you know, we could take some measurements, we could play around with some some apps, it's not a terrible thing. But generally cars are when you look at the decibel level, they're not all that different. In terms of the sound pressure. It's more like the quality of the noise. You know, I think that's one of the things that we talked about, and I'll talk about a little bit with one of the cars I was driving but you know, certain brands tend to be a little noisier they may not measure noisier, but they they they have a particularly fatiguing noise quality in the you know, in the way that, you know, the soundproofing lets certain frequencies through and certain certain ones get blocked. So

Sam Abuelsamid  3:56  
yeah, and, you know, I think that that definitely applies to the the toy 86 that I was just driving. You know, it's I think that's definitely a sound, that while it's fun for a while, I think it would be fatiguing if you're driving this all the time.

Dan Roth  4:12  
Yeah. Yeah. My son's versus decibels to like, that's a lot like, horsepower MPs, right, like most of the most of the power measurements in our MPs, right.

Sam Abuelsamid  4:23  
Yeah, although, you know, PS is, is still measuring the same thing. It's measuring the, the rate of torque, basically, the rate of torque delivery is just a slightly different scale. Yeah, cuz it's basically metric horsepower. So that's kind of like,

Unknown Speaker  4:39  
isn't that kind of like, kind of, like,

Sam Abuelsamid  4:42  
Well, yeah, I mean, same thing. Yeah. Yes, it's, it's measured, you know, it's, it's like Imperial gallons versus US gallons. Alright, so metric gluttons or Celsius versus Fahrenheit, you know, same same measurement, but you know, different different scaling.

Dan Roth  4:57  
Yeah. So I'm happy to To grab an app and take some sound measurements if I, if I never met

Sam Abuelsamid  5:04  
be interesting if you could do that and compare it to the sound meter and see how see how accurate the apps are, yeah, see how much impact but

Dan Roth  5:12  
the nice thing about the apps because my son meter is an older one, I use it actually for setting up like my mix position and audio post rooms where you know, there's there is a standard, you know, I would I wanted to mix to a 79 db. I think it was a weighted back in the day. So I put on pink noise, pink noise, and or pink noise or white noise. But anyway, I turn the room. And I'd set up the mixed positions that have 79 db, because I was mixing for TV, not for movies. So for movies, if you're on a movie stage in your editing, you're mixing, it's 85 db, which if you've ever been around 85 db, that's loud. I don't want to I want to be exposed to that for an eight hour stretch. So I've well I mean,

Sam Abuelsamid  5:57  
8085 is that that's the threshold that they recommend not going over,

Dan Roth  6:01  
right for, for particularly, like for long term exposure. Yeah, like, right. It kind of correlates like, give yourself a break after an eight hour workday. Like that, you know, and and something like mixing, I actually tend to vary the the levels. So I would mark out where 79 was. Because there's the way your ear works is, you know, there's the Fletcher Munson curves. So you get up at a particular sound pressure level. And the frequency response if your ear flattens out. And that's the flattest it's going to be so did not mean to turn this into a podcast

Sam Abuelsamid  6:38  
this weekend sound geekery Yeah,

Dan Roth  6:40  
there's a lot to it, though. It's and I'm happy to do it. I think actually, one of the things that would be really cool is if we could be a little lazy and just crowdsources sort of a list of things that people want us to, to measure. Within reason, please. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  6:57  
We don't we don't have test tracks that are at our disposal and, you know, fifth wheels and all kinds of other gear. So

Dan Roth  7:04  
yeah, but if there's something that you always go for on a car and you want us to just you know, consistently take a look at that particular thing. You know, we can create maybe a Google doc or something but in in you know, in the meantime, just email us and we'll we'll get it. It's podcasts at wheel bearings, media wheel bearings, dot media.

Sam Abuelsamid  7:27  
No, actually. Speed feedback and wheel bearings dot media. Okay, okay, dad, Dan's gonna edit all this out and repair the shop. totally gonna edit it.

Dan Roth  7:40  
I'm gonna leave it. Alright, so let's move on to actually the cars we've been driving. And I'll let you go first. So what's the first one you want to talk about?

Sam Abuelsamid  7:51  
The 2020 Volvo XC 90 t eight. And it's funny. When? When I was scheduling cars for this month. You know, the, the young lady at the fleet management company, Dr. shop that was doing this one? Yes. She sent me the list and had the Z 90 on there. I haven't I just recently driven this. I thought I'd driven it recently. She looked back at my schedule and said No, you haven't been in this thing since 2016. Wow. So yeah, I mean, I've been you know, I've been in a bunch of other Volvo's, you know, the V 60. And the XC 60, and the XC 40, and things like that. But I hadn't been in the 90s the XC 90 for a while. And, you know, it's interesting, you know, it in a lot of ways, you know, it's like, all the other modern Volvo's, which is mostly really good. You know, it's just bigger. It's just more, you know, the same thing but more. And, you know, I like the look of it, you know, this, this generation of the Z 90 is going to be getting to towards the end of its lifecycle, as a new one do and for 2022. So, probably about another year, 18 months left on this one before the next generation shows up. And that next generation is the one that is going to get Volvo's new level three conditionally automated driving system that includes a LIDAR sensor. But that's not here yet. You know, what we have now is, you know what, what we've had in other Volvo's for a while. Yeah, so this is the plug in hybrid 415 horsepower total from the, the two liter four cylinder engine, the front with both a supercharger and a turbocharger putting out 315 horsepower, and then a 100 horsepower electric motor on the rear axle, and a big battery down the middle of it. And one of the things I did this time, is you know, fully charged it up, and then took it out. Did you know Did a drive cycle a mix of, you know, urban, suburban, rural, driving A little bit of highway in there, to see how many electric only miles I could get out of it. You know, one of the modes you can put it in is, there's multiple drive modes, you can put it in sport or normal, or what they call pure mode, which forces it into Eevee mode.

Dan Roth  10:16  
So they say you're gonna get Jesus, it's in metric, it's 40 kilometers with

Sam Abuelsamid  10:24  
30. Let's see, it's times points actually rated at 2018 miles at 18 miles on on the window sticker. So that's the official EPA rating. I actually got 22 miles out of it.

Dan Roth  10:38  
Okay, so that's actually like, that's a little closer. Like, because 40 kilometers is 24 miles, right. 5.6. So

Sam Abuelsamid  10:44  
yeah, well, I think I think that 40 kilometers is the wl TP number. So that's the European test. So then you actually do a bit higher.

Dan Roth  10:52  
You did a lot better than then. Yeah. You should have.

Sam Abuelsamid  10:56  
Yeah, no, I did great. And you know, and my overall average, you know, fuel economy for the week was like 99 miles per gallon, because basically, every time I came home, I plugged it in

Dan Roth  11:08  
for something horsepower.

Sam Abuelsamid  11:10  
Yeah. And then yeah, but I mean, most of the time, I wasn't using the 400 horsepower, because you don't really need it most of the time. Yeah. You know, so, you know, the this thing, you know, if you plug it in all the time, you know, for most of your can, you know, driving around town to go to the grocery store, you know, do what run whatever errands, you're gonna be able to run it, you know, on electricity almost all the time, you know, unless you really stomp on the gas pedal, and, you know, then the engine will come on, and, you know, you'll get plenty of performance too. But, you know, it's, you know, it's a nice power train. And this is the same power train that they have in the, in the V 60, plug in hybrid, and the S 60. And the Z 60. And the S 90 and the V 90. So, you know, they've basically got this across all of the 60 and 90 series models.

Dan Roth  12:03  
Well, it's like, you know, it's like, Volvo decided to take a look at its classic formula, when it had very distinctive styling and had one engine.

Sam Abuelsamid  12:11  
Yeah, that's everything. And that, and that's what they had, I mean, everything that Volvo builds right now, you know, still had is built around one engine, one two liter four cylinder engine, that they sell either with a turbocharger, or a bigger turbo charger, or a turbo and a supercharger, or turbo supercharger and a hybrid, you know, so that's, those are your options now, although, just this week, they just started production of the XC 40. recharge, which is the battery electric version. So that's, that's going to be coming soon.

Dan Roth  12:47  
Well, and Julie just introduced a vehicle that has their newest, sort of their newest corporate architecture. So I expect that we're gonna get Volvo's on that architecture at some point.

Sam Abuelsamid  12:58  
Yeah, or at least pole stars, I don't probably we'll probably get Volvos at some point as well. The the next generation, the SP a two architecture, which is the next generation of what's under the 60 and 90 series vehicles, that will have an option for an all electric version. But there's also a dedicated Evie platform that they've developed, which they'll be using for vehicles, like, you know, upcoming pole stars like that. They also showed a concept in in Beijing last week, called the the pole star precept and said that's going to be coming to production in I think about two years. So there's, you know, there's there's lots of electrification, lots more electrification coming from Volvo car group, over the next several years, which, you know, isn't align, excuse me, which is in line with what, you know what Volvo announced a couple of years ago, when they said, you know, from 2020 onwards, all of their vehicles would have electrification, what they, what they actually wrote in the press release was that they were going all electric, which was not true, right, that's what what they actually meant was, they're going all electrified, because as a standard going forward, all their models are going to have a 48 volt mild hybrid, as the minimum and then they'll have plug in hybrids and battery electrics on top of that,

Dan Roth  14:25  
which I think is I think is good. And the new one that I was talking about with julies, the S EA architecture, whatever that stands for sustainable experience architecture.

Sam Abuelsamid  14:35  
Yeah. And I think that's what they're using for the precepts and other Evie models going forward. But I

Dan Roth  14:41  
think it's good that they're gonna actually have everything, get a hybrid because one of the my observations with that the turbo two liter is well, it's a fine enough engine and it's generally powerful enough. It doesn't sound or feel as premium As it could, and so that having a hybrid and the electric motor to give you that torque means you're gonna have to work the engine a little less hard. And I think that will improve the character of the cars by making them feel a little bit more confident from from, you know, stops and stuff like that.

Sam Abuelsamid  15:19  
Yeah, and, you know, with with the plug in hybrids, you definitely get a lot of that because, you know, it always, it'll always launch electrically, you know, and then the engine comes in, so the engine is not working as hard. So even, even when the charge is depleted, you know, when you've just got hybrid charging the battery years, it's still gonna launch electrically, and then the engine comes in, unless you really stomp on it, you know, which case it all comes on at the same time. But, you know, the, the one, the XC 90 I had was the base price for the plug in hybrid is $67,500.

Dan Roth  15:58  
That's, I mean, yeah, compare that to what, like an X five is it's within range.

Sam Abuelsamid  16:02  
Yeah, yeah, it's not, it's not unreasonable, you know, but then, you know, when you start adding on all the options, like this one was an inscription, you know, that had the really nice seats and 20 inch wheels and Park Assist, and wouldn't you know, walnut, in lays in the dashboard. And, you know, that's, that's 6300 bucks for the inscription package. The advanced package is another 2500 bucks for the LED headlights with active bending the corners, the the heads up display, and the 360 surround camera. And then another three grand for the luxury package to get the heated rear seats and the heated steering wheel, which of course you want, you know, especially in the winter time, Ellen, and the massaging seats, love the massaging seats. You know, so all together, you know, it came to $86,790 delivered still not

Dan Roth  16:54  
terrible, when you can no not have luxury you get?

Sam Abuelsamid  16:57  
Yeah, when you when you consider the luxury get and, you know, you compare it to a plug in hybrid x five? Or actually, you know, I guess? Sure, I think it probably might even be closer to an X seven, because this is a three row, you know, like the x seven, you know, you're gonna be paying at least that much, you know, for BMW or Mercedes plug in hybrid, you know, three row SUV as well. So it's it's not, you know, it's not cheap, but it's, you know, it's in line with the rest of the segment. You know, it's it's definitely comparable. You know, for that kind of money. I, though, I think I might just be more inclined to go with the The Aviator Grand Touring instead.

Dan Roth  17:40  
So I did drive an aviator, and I can't remember whether I talked about it on the show or

Sam Abuelsamid  17:45  
not we did

Dan Roth  17:46  
last time. Yeah. And I was impressed with that thing. Yeah. And definitely, that was one of my comments was like, for the same kind of money that the Lincoln actually, to me felt a lot more premium than the Volvo and lavabo is nicely designed, and it's comfortable. And it does have a lot of nice features, but the Lincoln, whatever they managed to do with it, I think just feels really special.

Sam Abuelsamid  18:10  
That does. So you know, and that's, you know, that's gonna run, you know, especially a Black Label grant touring, is going to be about 8788 grand. So it's about the same price and you know, it, it's definitely, definitely more, it feels more upscale than this one does

Dan Roth  18:27  
it. So how is my consistent complaint? About the XC 90? Is that SP a platform just doesn't seem to to have a very plush ride. How was this one? Maybe I just haven't seen I

Sam Abuelsamid  18:43  
wouldn't, I wouldn't call it plush, you know, but this one was also, you know, with the inscription packager on 20 inch wheels. And, you know, I think that that always, that always hurts ride. So it's been, it's been a long time since I drove one, you know, that was a non inscription, you know, one of the lower trim levels with the A teens, or even 19 inch wheels, you know, but I, I suspect the, you know, some of the inputs felt a little sharp, you know, like, there wasn't enough compliance in the sidewalls. You know, I mean, overall, it was, it was great, you know, it was comfortable, but I certainly wouldn't call it plush.

Dan Roth  19:23  
That's one of the things that the Lincoln managed to do was it had that the one that I drove had the air suspension, and so it just, it could get plush it.

Sam Abuelsamid  19:32  
Yeah, it gives you that option of, you know, picking a softer setting, you know, or tightening it up, you know, when you're when you want to drive more aggressively. And you know, that that adaptability that you get with that suspension system, I think is is definitely an advantage.

Dan Roth  19:49  
Yeah. So and you were talking about the XC 90 is at the end of its lifecycle, essentially. And so I expect that that's, that's going to improve So then the next One will have to be better.

Sam Abuelsamid  20:02  
Yeah. And and I'm sure it will be.

Dan Roth  20:04  
I mean, it's it's a five, six year old product now it came out in 15. Right. So,

Sam Abuelsamid  20:09  
yeah, I think so.

Dan Roth  20:10  
Yeah. 15 It's getting getting up there in age.

Sam Abuelsamid  20:14  
Yeah. You know, and this one, you know, the sad the pilot assist system on air, which I tried again, and, you know, it's, it's okay. It's, it's definitely gotten better over the years. You know, each time I've tried it, it's a little more confident it does a little better job of, you know, staying, you know, staying centered in the lane. You know, it's absolutely not a system that you can do hands off, you know, not, not in any way, shape or form. But, you know, it does, it does. Okay, you know, as a really nice Driver Assist system.

Dan Roth  20:46  
Yeah, it's pretty good. I like it and stop and go. It's pretty Yeah, well done.

Sam Abuelsamid  20:50  
Yeah. It's, it's great for that. And, you know, I did try to do most of the driving, you know, around town with that I didn't really go any long distances on the highway with it. So it works really well. And those kinds of conditions. Yeah, census, we've, we've beat that one to death over the years. You know,

Dan Roth  21:06  
it's I was gonna say, I would

Sam Abuelsamid  21:08  
say it's gone. It's gone away. You know, the, the pole star tool is the first one to get the new Android automotive based system. And then the new, you know, the New Generation Z 90, and all everything else follows is gonna get that as well.

Dan Roth  21:21  
It's coming. It'll be here. And we'll have a new thing to complain about. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  21:26  
We always find something to whine about.

Dan Roth  21:28  
Yeah. I mean, it's the Z 90 is it's, it's a really well done choice for its its segment, you know, yeah, still is, and I still think it looks fantastic.

Sam Abuelsamid  21:40  
Oh, yeah. No, I mean, the design, you know, it's one of those designs that that has, that holds up really well. You know, it's not, it's not a fussy design, you know, it's very clean. But it's got some really nice details in it, you know, that, you know, spread across the rest of the lineup. You know, I still like the way they've done you know, that that they did with the the headlights, you know, the Thor's hammer signature lighting in the headlights. I think that's still a very cool touch. That that works. And it's it's distinct, distinctly Volvo.

Dan Roth  22:11  
Yeah. Yeah. All right. So all right, what about you? Uh, well, I got to, I got to try the Mazda CX 30, which I was really excited about. Because in the past, you've driven one and your take on it Was that it? It really, it kind of replaces the CX three, which is good. But the CX 30 just slots right in between the CX three and the CX five. And it's just, you know, modern masters are drivers cars, even this was a driver's car, you know, it. It surprised me, I had to go into the office, which is about 45 miles away. And so on the way back, I have to, you know, do a couple of highway interchanges. And there's, there's one of them, that's a decreasing radius turn. I love those and you shut off traction control, and you're just like, I'm just gonna see how little braking I can do. And the CX 30. It doesn't matter what chassis layout it is to if it's a good chassis, you'll be able to do this where Yes, it's going to understeer, but then you can just balance it right on understeer, and just and the CX 30 did that no problem we got around it. And I was I was very pleased.

Sam Abuelsamid  23:26  
Well, you know that the thing that the CX 30. And all, you know, all the other newer monsters have? Is that g vectoring. system. Yeah, it works, which, you know, it's it's using the accelerometer in the car, you know, and steering angle and, you know, various other sensors. And it's detecting when you're going through curves like that. And basically, it automatically backs off the engine torque a little bit, which has the effect of creating some weight transfer onto the front wheels. It's, it's essentially doing automatic trail braking for you without actually using the brake,

Dan Roth  24:00  
which is good because I suck at traveling.

Sam Abuelsamid  24:02  
Yeah. And it does it really, really well. And seamlessly. I mean, you can feel it, you know, just tracking wherever you know exactly where you want it to go. Without it without actually feeling like it's doing anything.

Dan Roth  24:17  
Yeah, it's not it's not oppressive. It's not magic. I mean, if you overcome that turn, you're going off the side of Oh,

Sam Abuelsamid  24:21  
yeah. I mean, physics is still physics, right. When, when I was when I was working on ABS systems, you know, one of our, you know, the general rule of thumb was, you know, Newton was right, yeah, physics, physics ultimately wins over everything else.

Dan Roth  24:35  
Yeah. And, and with understeer, like that just means like, understeer safe, because it plows nose first, so you get all that front impact protection. I was not able to test that. So that's a good thing, actually. But I was really pleased with just how it it'll you know, you'll get some of the body roll because because Mars does not. They, they know how to tune the suspension. So you get that sensation of have, you know, the carding and it'll take a set, it'll, it'll, it'll carve around that decreasing radius. Turn, and you know, where the exact limit of adhesion is, and so you know, where to sort of go, you know, steer into it and out of it, and just, that's the kind of entertainment you can do without having to go fast. And so that's really pleasant, because a lot of cars these days, like that Volvo you just had, its limits are too high, you know, and I'm sure it would be unhappy, if you if you tried to do that. But, you know, with with large wheels, big tires, and there's just too much grip, and you can't do that sort of thing without really being too out of control. So I appreciate that. I appreciate a car that feels elemental that way, and there was the real steering feel. It rode really well, it wasn't harsh. It had a really nice balance of sort of suppleness and and, you know, adhesion, I guess, or just control. And it looks great. It was that nice, like crystal red color. Oh,

Sam Abuelsamid  26:08  
yes. All crystal red. Yeah, that's just that's the best color,

Dan Roth  26:12  
it looks so good. I don't know whether I think it's like a base coat. And then a tinted clear something too. I don't know exactly what they do to get that particular color, but it's very distinctive. And it had a light tan in light tan seats and stuff. So it really looked and felt premium. And it drove sporty. You know, it drove like, It drove like BMW C's do. And I hate to use that kind of cliche, but it really does it, it feels like it has that that soul of a premium sort of sporty car, or just like a performance mindset to it. And in some way, it's not, it's not really all that fast. It's a doesn't have a turbo, yet, it's getting the turbo and my initial thought was what needs it, and then I thought about it, and it's, it's gonna be fine with or without it. It's not exactly slow without the turbo but you, you do wind up sort of actively planning your moves a little bit, sometimes.

Sam Abuelsamid  27:15  
It's 195 horsepower, it's adequate.

Dan Roth  27:19  
Yeah, it's, it's adequate. And it's really like, it's enough to get in trouble, I worried that the turbo is going to have just that much more punch. And it's, it's going to allow you to kind of upset the balance of the car. Because turbo power delivery is nonlinear. And the nice thing about this engine is that it's it's linear. If you you want the power, you wring its neck, if if you're in the middle of a turn, and you put your foot down with a turbo especially the turbos now where they spool so quick, all of a sudden, you're you've got too much torque, and you're boiling the inside tire, where's not naturally aspirated engine, you know, you learn by feeling by hearing where that power is going to come. So it's, again, if you're actively driving, you don't necessarily need it, but for the way most people drive, they're going to really appreciate the off the line torque and the extra performance of the turbo. And it's I don't think it's going to hurt cx 30, it might might make it a little bit more of a challenge to drive in a irresponsible manner.

Sam Abuelsamid  28:24  
Well, you know, that the, the turbo is the same engine that they have in the Mazda six, the 2.5 liter turbo, so it's 250 horsepower. And it's great in the six I've driven it a couple of times now. And it's it's a really fantastic engine very, very smooth and seamless, you know, lots of, you know, good, low end or good torque all the way through. And I think, you know, with all wheel drive on the CX 30. And it's also going to be it's also coming to the Mazda three. With all wheel drive in those models. I think it'll be fine. I don't I don't anticipate any issues with it.

Dan Roth  29:01  
Yeah, I think it'll, like I think it's gonna make it have a good impression in the market. You know, when when you consider all this competition probably offer something that feels punchy. They kind of can't not. They can't omit it. You know, I think it compares the CX 30 compares to the escape, right?

Sam Abuelsamid  29:22  
Or is it slightly? Uh, no, it's smaller cuts. Well, I mean, the only thing Ford's got that's close in size to that is the Eco Sport and it really isn't. There's no comparison. I it's not even in the same class. No,

Dan Roth  29:38  
it's definitely not. Um, but the Eco Sport is one of those other ones. It's surprising. I really like to throw that thing around by the scruff of its neck too. It's definitely not a premium feeling product.

Sam Abuelsamid  29:49  
No, no, not at all.

Dan Roth  29:51  
But it's surprisingly fun to have to fling around. So yeah, but it's a little bit on the smaller side than that and it'll have some more power. I think it's gonna occupy a niche in the market. And it you know, it just feels really nice. It's just a non premium premium field which like that's, that's the thing, you know, you don't have to go to a luxury brand to get the the luxury features if it just, it makes a good impression in the trim that I had it in. And it wasn't super expensive. It was in the 30s, but not not high 30s.

Sam Abuelsamid  30:29  
And it really doesn't get much over 30 fully loaded.

Dan Roth  30:32  
Yeah, and it's just pretty fully loaded. I'm not a huge fan of their infotainment. I don't mind the remote controller knob I that's fine. I just think that there's too many, too many menus, too many clicks, and they need to sort of flatten out that structure and the control wheel is fine. That works really well. It's just the actual software and that the user interface is kind of tedious. And that makes it confusing to get what you want and go back and forth. So they got some work to do there but the rest of the car is lovely. It's a very good size. You know, we had I think if we had everybody in it or not, but at least in in my use, there were no complaints about it feeling cramped, and just everything feels good and looks good. The engine when you are sort of ringing it snack. It's a really classic Japanese four cylinder it's it's it's a, you know, smooth, good sounding engine so you don't mind revving it out. Where you know, some some engines don't sound all that pleasant. Right? When you're done.

Sam Abuelsamid  31:46  
It's not it's not a CVT, which also rice that has expeed

Dan Roth  31:50  
Yeah, it's it's not it's a really good it's a really good little compact CV and I kind of it doesn't matter that's the CV it's still fun to drive, you know, so and that's where we're at, like, we're not going to stop losing sedans for cross.

Sam Abuelsamid  32:06  
It's it's basically a Mazda three hatchback. That's been lifted a couple inches.

Dan Roth  32:11  
Yeah. And so come on, how can you? How can you deny that it was a good time. So they took that one away, and they gave me a Lexus ES 350. f sport, which, that's another one that you know, the common complaint about the S 350. And the Lexus obviously in general is that the cars were a little sleepy, and not really all that capable on a performance sensor. They just didn't like to be hustled. This is a little different. Id it doesn't mind being hustled. The sport has a little stiffer suspension, a little more aggressive look. And it actually was a really good looking car. It's comfortable. It has sportier seats, and they were it was blue, dark blue metallic on the outside and red leather sun. That's a nice combo. It's hard not to enjoy that. It it, it you know it has all the elements kind of together. And it has that 3.5 liter V six that snarls real nicely and has plenty of power. It's they've done enough on this to make it feel appropriately aggressive. And so I was surprised by that. You know, the the expected traits are still there. It's still very quiet and refined. But there's like that little bit of not too much. You kind of hear the word of the machinery, which I appreciated that you know you can hear the engine a little bit more than you might think you would. And it's almost like a throwback like there's this little guttural sound from the V six and it kind of Thrums through the through the steering. I'm not saying the steering column shakes or anything. It's a solid platform. But yeah, I so I was either I'm getting old, or they did a really good job on the es 350 this time around.

Sam Abuelsamid  34:11  
Well, I wouldn't rule out that both of those are true.

Dan Roth  34:14  
That's true. That's true. I mean, it's a big city. It's based on it's not camera now. Right? It's Avalon, and it's all kind of same thing, but it's bigger.

Sam Abuelsamid  34:25  
Yeah, I mean, the camera in Avalon, you know, are both, you know, variations of the tnga platform. You know, the the larger third third the larger end of that platform architecture.

Dan Roth  34:39  
Yeah. And and the no problem with the room in the backseat is spacious. big trunk. The tnga always has always kind of impressed me. There were a couple of sort of creeks and not not rattles, but it makes mix a little bit of noise when you're driving it, trying to explain that performance from the big wheels and the stiffer suspension in a sport to your tires, I don't I don't know that I would say that they all do that. This is a press car. Yeah. They tend to sometimes get beaten.

Sam Abuelsamid  35:21  
No, yeah, that doesn't happen.

Dan Roth  35:25  
And, you know, I think too. It's one of those cars that around town. It has the right mix of performance and tuning. I think if you're to try this on a track day, you quickly find that it's not the car for that, you know, it's gonna fall apart in terms of its performance. But it's one of those cars that on the street feels really good. I mean, because there are a couple of times where I found the limits as I go, Okay, there we go. So at the end, it's really good up until the limit and then all of a sudden you have found them it's it's not not scary, but it's it's just it it sometimes it fools you a little bit, I guess. To just like, cuz it looks so so aggressive, and it gives off these vibes like I I am a I'm a driving machine. And yeah, then you're attempting to go Nope, nope, there. There it is. There's the understeer. We're gonna be careful here. But yeah, it's it's a pleasant, pleasant car that has a little bit of an edge to it. So it's it's hard to really complain about the ESP 50 it's very luxurious. It's very well done. The infotainment still sucks. It did have Apple CarPlay so that was a plus. But it's not there their infotainment is not that well done. And I I hope that they have been giving Toyota a pass on this for a couple years now saying I'm sure they're working on it. so damn it they have to be done working on it. Now they have

Sam Abuelsamid  37:06  
to upgrade this it's Yeah, it's it's not good. Just the does the S have the trackpad? Or

Dan Roth  37:13  
Yeah, what's Yeah, I didn't find the trackpad terrible. But it's, it's not. It's not as good as the old the little mouse thing a little joystick these days? Because you can't really orient yourself on it. So this wasted motion there and it's, you know, when you're driving you're trying to move the stupid highlight around to what you want and you don't you miss it. And and there's this like extra clicks, there's like three extra?

Sam Abuelsamid  37:35  
Yeah, I always thought you know that that little mouse, stubby joystick thing was a lot more precise control than what you get out of this trackpad.

Dan Roth  37:43  
Yeah. And then just the fact that like, so for example, I wanted to turn the AC off. And so you have to click into climate. And then you can see AC and you can see that it's on but you can't select it. Because you have to actually hit the bottom the hard button on the bottom of the trackpad. You got you have to hit that and then it brings up a sub menu which then can see

Sam Abuelsamid  38:08  
that's that's exactly wrong. I was there should do that. If you want to turn off AC there should be a button, a physical button that you press off. Yeah,

Dan Roth  38:17  
I understand here too. They just want it to default to auto and I get that but

Sam Abuelsamid  38:22  
yeah, but even in most other cars, even if you have automatic climate control, there's usually one button that turns everything off turns off the AC the fan everything I probably couldn't turn the chart on. Yeah.

Dan Roth  38:36  
But I just wanted to shut the air conditioner off. I wanted the vent still blow like, you know, it's just I'm not sure what the decision making processes with this stuff. But it does, I don't get it either. Like why do I need to press three things just one function? Like that's to me. I it's inexplicable, I can't, I can't understand why it's so difficult to use. And then just to go back and forth, you know, there's multiple it has a decent sized screen, but you can you can get confused about, you know, what you're actually trying to select. And so I wound up having like two different NAB screens up at the map and the map and it was like what the hell

Sam Abuelsamid  39:24  
yeah, I've, I've struggled with that system on multiple luxa. And it's just, it's just not a good design.

Dan Roth  39:31  
Now, no, and like, I'm sure you could probably use the underlying hardware and software. But you've got to clean up the user interface and make it better. Because it's just not it's not great to use and that's, you know, these days, that's a real selling feature of a car, especially a premium car like this, like somebody is going to try that car out. They're going to test drive it they're going to plug in their devices, it should come up. It should be easy to use, it should be easy to get the functions that you want. And I know that at this end of the market, you set everything up to your preferences and then it kind of it becomes an extension of your other devices to so the car just knows what you want and does it. It's not easy to do that here. Some cars, it's really easy to set them up this one is not so. But to drive it was fine. I appreciated the driving that that 3.5 liter V six and the automatic transmission they have on that man Toyota does good powertrain.

Sam Abuelsamid  40:30  
They do. They do they do that? Well.

Dan Roth  40:35  
Let's keep talking about powertrain. Because the saddest news I've heard in a long time, is that the Ford Mustang GT 350, they get all the names. There's the Shelby GT 350 Shelby GT decent, the Shelby GT 350. It's ending production. So that Voodoo v eight, with the flat plane crank is done. There's one final addition you drove Did you try out the heritage edition

Sam Abuelsamid  40:59  
we did. They brought out some heritage additions last week. And they they did a little local drive program here near Ann Arbor, over a couple of days, and got a chance to spend a bout two and a half hours, just tooling around in that thing. And it's glorious. You know, when back in 2013, I was actually working for an agency that was supporting Ford communications. And, you know, I actually wrote the the press kit for the 2015 Mustang and, and most of the, the 50th anniversary of Mustang press materials over the course of 2013 in the early part of 2014. Before I before I left there, and took my my current job and admitted some somewhere around mid 2013. Actually an early 13, I had been in the design studio for, you know, for what they call an immersion, you know, where they had a group of us. And we went through a bunch of different stuff, getting a deep dive on the new car on the 2015 car. And one of the things in the studio was the clay model of the GT 350.

Dan Roth  42:16  
Pay attention to that.

Sam Abuelsamid  42:17  
Yeah. No, I mean, I mean, you know, they, they told us what it what it was, and you know, they didn't get any details at the time. And you know, later on talking to, to somebody in engineering, you know, I learned what was special about the GT 350. You know, up to that point for the previous decade, they had been doing Gt 500 with a supercharged V eight, which they now have again, but the the GT 350 was going to have a naturally aspirated V eight. And at the time, I didn't know that it was going to be a flat plane crank v. And a couple months later, I was out on Oakwood Boulevard across the street from the test track, the Dearborn Development Center, which is Ford's main Proving Grounds. And I saw a prototype Mustang coming out of the gate. And then I heard it as it was accelerating away. And it's like, I had never heard a Mustang sound like that before. Right. And you know, then when I sat down with the with the engineers that what was at the time still SVT later renamed to Ford Performance, I learned all about what they had done on that engine. And you know, there's a flat plane crank 5.2 liter and learned that you know how to read line of at 250 RPM way higher than any Mustang ever.

Dan Roth  43:38  
I know that's that was the thing when I drove it. I was like, you cuz you know what a muscle car sounds like when it's time to shift. But then you realize like, I'm not anything just

Sam Abuelsamid  43:50  
nice shot going. It

Dan Roth  43:52  
just feels so weird. Cuz it basically It revs like a V tech Honda. Yeah, like Exactly. And it does not sound like one No, no, no, no, no.

Sam Abuelsamid  44:02  
Yeah, it's funny. You know, there there are other flat plane crank VH you know, usually in high performance European cars.

Dan Roth  44:08  
Yeah, the M three HMI, what was it the E 46. m three or e 993. had one, I think it's

Sam Abuelsamid  44:14  
the 90 I got the 92 m three had a flat plane crank v eight. And so you know, the, but they tend to have a very distinctive sound. That's quite unlike a typical v eight engine. Although the, the one in the Mustang, the Voodoo VH, as they called it was different was a little bit different from those because it actually it had a different firing order from what you typically get on most flat plane crank v eights. And so it still has a little bit of that classic, you know, big rumble mixed in with that at higher pitch sound from revving and it just sounds amazing. And this is the thing you know, I know we're going electric You know, everything's gonna be electric. And you know, they're gonna be faster than this thing. I mean, help the, the Mustang Maki GT is gonna be faster than a GT 350 you know, 60 and a quarter mile

Dan Roth  45:12  
and we'll write it, but it's not

Sam Abuelsamid  45:14  
the same. It doesn't matter you, you missed. You missed that visceral feeling of the sound. And the, you know, the vibration, you know, I mean, VHS are smooth, but they also they're still an idol. They have that. They have that little bit of one little daughter. Yeah, that little that little rumble. And it feels like it's alive. And you don't get that from EBS. I remember back in 2008, when I first drove the Tesla Roadster for the first time, and same thing, you know, it's, you know, it's incredibly fast and great handling and everything. But it's quiet and something's missing. You know? Yeah. And, you know, you don't want a synthetic SAP or, you know, you don't want a synthesized version of a naturally aspirated engine. In that case, I don't think but

Dan Roth  46:01  
no, I I like the whale. I like to hear the whale of the engine and the engine, the motor, the inverter? Yeah. All of that hardware, and you get to hear the the gearbox see so I think Yeah. gears. Yeah. A lot of noise.

Sam Abuelsamid  46:16  
And that's, that's what they do on the formula. E race cars. Yeah, there's no straight cut gears. That's what makes the Formula E car sounds so cool. They sound like Thai fighters. Yeah,

Dan Roth  46:26  
these are waves. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  46:28  
Yeah. You know, and they actually sound really cool. Yeah. But you don't usually get that in street cars. But anyway, the GT 350 is coming to an end, you know, they're in production. Now with the GT 500. The 350 is done this week, they should be building up the last of them, they should the last of them should be rolling off the line in Flat Rock, either this week or early next week, they'll finish up the last handful of them. And this last batch that they built are what they call the heritage edition, they decided, you know, they're coming to the end of the line, they wanted to do the same livery that was on the original Gt 350s back in 1964, which was Wimbledon white, the same kind of slightly off white shade that they had as the kind of the standard color on the regular Mustangs at the time. And with these guardsman blue stripes over the top and along the rocker panels. And the thing is, Ford wanted to replicate that guardsman blue. They knew how to do Wimbledon light, because they've done that on various Special Edition Mustangs over the years, including the 2015 50th anniversary edition. But they've never, they never actually had painted guardsman blue because those were painted at Shelby American out in California in Venice, when they were being built. Yeah, who knows more than that before Ford had no paint master. But they they went out to the Shelby archives in Las Vegas at Shelby American. And they actually found the paint master for guardsman blue, and they brought it back to Michigan. And they, they they managed to get it matched, they got a match for it. And the company, the the stripes on the GT 350 are actually vinyl, they're not painted on. So the company, the company, their supplier for those stripes, they worked with them and went through a few iterations and finally got a perfect match of the stripes with the the paint master. And they had they actually brought out a 65 Gt 350 you know, had it parked next to it and see that was the same color. So the the other the other thing, the other main thing that they changed on the the heritage edition is the the Cobra badges on the the tail, the grill, and on the the instrument panel. Typically, traditionally those red on all the other Gt 350 s have been read. For this one, they actually made them guardsman blue so it matches the stripes. But other than that it's you know, basically standard Gt 350. And they were available either as the base Gt 350 or 350 R, I actually got to drive a 350 r for a couple hours and which is great because that's got the carbon fiber wheels on it and, and the really nice Recaro seats and everything.

Dan Roth  49:21  
The other one I drove was a 350 er, I think and it's been a few years. That's the only press car I've driven that I had somebody pull up to me and a light and he asked me to rev it up. And of course I go I had it in like, you know, completely open as open as you can get most you could hear the thing. And I said absolutely not so good.

Sam Abuelsamid  49:45  
Car. If you ever have a chance to drive a GT 350 what you need to do is like ticket in a parking garage. Yeah, or, or drive, you know, under a stone railroad bridge like I did a couple of times. You know the place we're driving, there's this old stuff On railroad bridge and yeah, really rev the shit out of it as you're going under this and just feel that echo off the stone tunnel.

Dan Roth  50:08  
Yeah, it'll get a little overrun.

Sam Abuelsamid  50:11  
Oh, yeah, it's fabulous. It's

Dan Roth  50:13  
it's one of those cars. I'm sad that's going away. I understand why it is and and I'm sure that Gt 500 is performance wise, better. But I'm just it's, it's

Sam Abuelsamid  50:25  
faster? Yeah, I would think I would that says that's about to say I don't know that I would necessarily say it's better because it's also heavier. Yeah, you know, it's quite a bit heavier. I mean, it's the GT 500 is by far the best Gt 500 they've ever built. You know, unlike the past, you know, this is the first one with the independent suspension and everything. And it's, it's definitely a better handling car, but it is, you know, a couple, like 400 pounds heavier than the GT 350. Er, yeah, the 353 50 er, even with those massive brakes that are on it, is 3700 pounds. And the you know, the GT 500 is about 4100 pounds.

Dan Roth  51:08  
I think that's 4100 pounds, that's only a couple hundred pounds lighter than our grand cherokee. Which I do not want to drive around like that, you know,

Sam Abuelsamid  51:19  
but you know, if you put a big supercharged V eight in that Grand Cherokee, the trackhawk, you know, you're up closer to 5000 pounds.

Dan Roth  51:25  
Absolutely. Right. It's probably more than that. Right? Yeah, with all the other stuff they put in there. But it's that that's the thing that like, the numbers are just it. It's, they're pointless, because the it's the way that that card just, it's the way it shakes, honestly, it's just like, has that heartbeat, you know, you that everything sort of sympathetically vibrates with that engine, and the way it sounds and everything is just it makes it an experience and the lighter, lighter weight with 3700 pounds is not exactly light, but all these days, it's fine. But the the way it's gonna handle and the way you can you can manage the mass and sort of, you know, throw it around a little bit like that. It was just a, it was a sports car, not a Mustang. You know what I mean? Like it really, it had finally sort of really come into its own it was just enough engine. And just enough adhesion, more more chassis than engine, I think, which is kind of the the flip side of Mustangs for so long.

Sam Abuelsamid  52:33  
Right? Well, and that was always the the balance, you know, back in the 60s between the 350 and the 500. You know, the 350 was the small block engine, you know, that was the car that was designed to go SCCA road racing. Yeah. And you know, won a bunch of championships. The 500 was the drag car. That's the one you took to the strip, you know, and that eventually evolved, you know, into the Cobra Jet, you know, which is the, the pure, you know, factory drag racing car. So, you know, those were the five hundreds were the big blocks back in the 60s.

Dan Roth  53:05  
Yeah, I mean, think about that. A Falcon with an F a big bucket. That's not a car that like, there's no way to make that actually handle very well.

Sam Abuelsamid  53:14  
No, and they didn't. They were terrible. But, but they could go like go on a straight line. Like, yeah, like nothing else.

Dan Roth  53:21  
Fine. Nothing.

Sam Abuelsamid  53:24  
But you know, compared to, compared to today's Gt 500. You know, it was a dog.

Dan Roth  53:29  
Well,

Sam Abuelsamid  53:30  
yeah, it was that big block. You know, it was only about in sa gross horsepower, probably somewhere around three, three between 350 and 375 horsepower.

Dan Roth  53:42  
Yeah, but it mostly weighed like 3000 pounds to like the Falcon.

Sam Abuelsamid  53:46  
All those big blocks are pretty heavy. Cast iron blocks. Yeah.

Dan Roth  53:49  
But the the rest of the car was like 18 pounds. That was nothing to him. I think so even even though like, I almost want one of the old ones with the big block in it, even though it's gonna be so terrible just because it's gonna be terrifying. And see, like, at least

Sam Abuelsamid  54:06  
always just terrifying. All right, I drove one in December when I was out in Vegas for the GT 500 Drive. They had a 68 Gt 500 out there that Haggerty brought out and you know it you know, I mean, it looked great, but, you know, compared to driving a modern car, you know, it was it was terrible. I mean, you know, the slop in the steering wheel and halfway through the brake pedal travel before much if anything happens,

Dan Roth  54:31  
it's all drums. Yeah. No, it had this. Oh, that's good. It's good. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I mean, but that's, that's sort of a thing. Like you get all this cold competence. And I feel like the the GT 350 had that. That balance of

Sam Abuelsamid  54:47  
they still it still had a bit of riaj Yeah,

Dan Roth  54:50  
yeah. And I like that in a car.

Sam Abuelsamid  54:53  
But it's not all bad. I mean, in the spring, they're gonna have the the Mach one is gonna be available which you know, is not quite a 350, you know, kind of cuts, you know, kind of a blend between a GT and an A gt 350. So, it has the regular five liter crossplane crank v eight, but it's up to I think 485 for 490 horsepower. And, you know, it doesn't quite have the the look of the GT 350. But yeah, it'll, it'll still be plenty of fun.

Dan Roth  55:24  
I look, I mean, we can we really complain about the Mustang like we're splitting hairs here. And like, yes, it's a very special car. We very much like the engine. It's neat. There's not really much to complain about with the gods find VAD or anything like that. That is that's still the Coyote. It's the coyote, right? Like,

Sam Abuelsamid  55:44  
it's, it's based on the coyote block. But it's a modified version of the block. Bigger bores, and it has the the plasma coated bores. Yeah, on it. Like the like the GT 500 stew. So instead of steel liners in there, it's aluminum liners with a plasma coating on there on there to give it the durability it needs to rev to 82,000 at 250 rpm.

Dan Roth  56:12  
Yeah, that's a good time. So yeah, I think it's it's more of just like a thank you for it for, for building it for a couple of years. And I honestly, I don't know how it's sold. Like that might be the other thing too, is like, they're like, we're not we're done losing money on this thing.

Sam Abuelsamid  56:29  
I don't I don't think they lost money on it. You know, they sold several thousand a year over its run, which was which was good. And, you know, one of the things that was explained to me was, you know, back in 2007, when they relaunched the GT 500 the prior to that they had the SVT Cobra. So on the S 197 Mustang, the old the previous generation, they had a rather on the SN 95. Sorry, the, the GT 500 was the es 197 on the SN 95. It was called the supercharged high end version was just the SVT Cobra. And one of the things that they learned from that program is while people liked them, they didn't actually get any extra profit margin on them NEOs, like a couple hundred dollars extra profit margin on them, versus selling a GT. So they're at a higher price point. But the gap between the cost and what they will take the revenue was, you know, was not much different. One of the things they learned was when they put a Shelby badge on it, they could charge a lot more money, people would pay a lot more money for the same car with a Shelby besch. Show me notice that too. Oh, yeah. Oh, he did. Yeah. And so, you know, they, they sell those at a much higher profit margin than they do, you know, standard Mustangs. So they, they certainly made money on it.

Dan Roth  58:03  
Yeah. Well, I mean, good for them. You know, it's not like it's bad for us anyway, they're still coming out with cool stuff. Yeah. I think our point with the GT 350 Gt 500 conversation was that, like, the numbers are kind of, they're not as material as you would think. And with electric vehicles, I think that one of the things that every time there's a new electric vehicle out there new Evie, comes out a it's an electric car. And B, they talk about how scorchingly quick it gets to 60 miles an hour, like, you know, get this one does it in like a half a second. such nonsense. The numbers don't matter. When 260 like, we've proven that, yes, they have lots and lots of torque, and they can get it to the ground very effectively.

Sam Abuelsamid  58:56  
Somewhat. To My point exactly. I wrote a post on our company blog at guidehouse insights calm. And it's it's gotten so ridiculous, yet, you know, with something like the GT 350 I wasn't driving it anywhere near its limits. And I still had a ball with it. That it didn't need to be as powerful as it was, you know, it's 525 horsepower. It didn't need to be that powerful. Just my my car, my personal car, my Miata, certainly nowhere near that it was like 116 horsepower when it was new 30 years ago. Who knows what it is now. You know, I actually recently I found my my old performance timer and stuck it on there and went out and did some zero to 60 runs and it was about nine and a half seconds. And plenty it doesn't matter because it's so much fun to drive. EBS you know, starting with the Tesla Roadster, you know one of the things Tesla did with the Roadster was demonstrated ease could be fun, you know, they didn't have to be, you know, this, you know, slow appliance, you know a golf cart, they proved that it could be an exciting car and the Roadster, you know did zero to 60 and four seconds,

Dan Roth  1:00:17  
four seconds to 60 years. Like that's Corvettes not expect that is fast.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:21  
It's really fast. So, you know what what we're seeing now, you know, with some of these high end ATVs is just getting absurd. You know, we talked a couple weeks ago about lucid and the launch of the lucid air. And at the time, they said one of the things that were claiming was this thing would go do it run a quarter mile and 9.9 seconds. Yeah. Which is I mean, that's dodge demon numbers. You know, for a luxury four door sedan,

Dan Roth  1:00:52  
someone's just gonna plow that into like a Starbucks.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:00:56  
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, you know, we've been seeing, you know, from Tesla for for several years now with the Model S and the Model X and the Y. And we've seen Faraday Future claiming that they're quicker, you know, getting into like the low two second range zero to 60. You know, that, that is just ridiculously fast. We don't need cars that go that fast, you know, unless you're planning to take these things to a track. And this is that's the only place where you should be using that kind of performance is on a track. There's no way you should be accelerating that fast on public streets. It's, it's totally irresponsible. And I'm somebody that likes to drive fast. And I don't do that kind of nonsense when there's, especially if there's anybody around. You know, this is we don't need EBS to be that fast. I remember back in the late 80s, early 90s, there was a controversy in Europe, because a lot of high end German cars, you know, we're getting, you know, they were approaching top speeds of 200 miles an hour, you know, when they had cars like the original AMG hammer and some other ones. And they, the German government actually threatened to impose speed limits on all of the autobahn. And so the industry actually came together and said, Okay, look, don't do that. Don't don't do the speed limits in the autobahn, we will voluntarily agree to limit the top speed of our cars to 155 miles an hour, 250 kilometers. And they did

Dan Roth  1:02:26  
until you took it to somebody like AMG, which we then would remove.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:02:30  
Yeah. But, you know, I mean, they at least did something. Yeah. And I think it's time, you know, for Evie makers, you know, now, you know, last week, the Tesla battery day, you know, Musk talked about, you know, the Model S plan, which is going to be a three motor version of the Model S there's also a three motor version of the the lucid air, you know, they were saying they were they just the day before, a couple days before battery day, they took it to Laguna Seca and, you know, set a record for, you know, a Ford or production car, and, you know, did quarter mile and 9.2 seconds with this thing. And, you know, then the the Model S plaid went even faster. Okay, you've made your point, these things are faster than we could make any production internal combustion cars. Frankly, I don't think we should be making internal combustion cars that fast either. Yeah. You know, 1500 horsepower. Bugatti Chevron's is just stupid. It's idiotic. And I think that we need to back off and stop putting so much emphasis on the, the acceleration performance of these things. Because the reality is, most drivers cannot handle that level of performance, they quite honestly training.

Dan Roth  1:03:52  
There's, it's still rare for a car to be that quick, I wouldn't want to try to exploit that kind of performance. And you know, I've driven a lot of high performance cars. Zero to 60, that fastest, like, that's, that's fast, and then a, you know, something that's going to be able to get up to 130 140 miles an hour without much of a problem. That's really fast. And, well, unless you do it a lot, you you did not have enough practice to

understand

how quickly you're on top of things, how, how tiny your inputs need to be to not upset the car, like, no, don't, don't do it.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:33  
And it's you know, it's all it's only getting worse. Lotus is about to launch the production version of the Avaya, their first electric car. You know, they've been going through Final Validation testing recently. And this, you know, they're only going to build 130 of these, and they're gonna cost $2 million. That's got 2000 horsepower. That's why

Dan Roth  1:04:54  
fine, I mean, you know, so here's the thing that I in the case

Sam Abuelsamid  1:04:57  
of the Avaya, most of those are gonna end up being great. Wash queens anyway, they're they're never going to get driven. This is a flood.

Dan Roth  1:05:03  
Yeah, because I'm sure that actually gonna drive really well, because they're Lotus.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:06  
Yeah.

Dan Roth  1:05:09  
The thing that I just come back to is like, these are about energy efficiency, but they're not really like, I think it's great that it's been proven that they can be fun, they can be desirable, they can be a different niche in the market. Great, all that is really good, because it's created demand, and it's created conversation. And these are all good things. But what if you just backed off the performance a little bit? Well, you know, may be more efficient.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:05:41  
Yeah, the reality is, certainly, you know, lucid has done a lot to improve efficiency Tesla's you know, doing a lot for efficiency, you know, that's, that's great. But, you know, you're certainly not going to achieve that efficiency, when you're using that level of performance, you know, to to get that, you know, to get 500 miles of range, you know, you're not going to accelerate to 00 to 60, in two seconds. You know, you do that you're going to get closer to 100 miles of range. But, you know, at this point, it's really more about the leaders of these companies, you know, it's a, you know, it's a measuring contest, and I'm not talking about measuring the speed of the, the vehicles,

Dan Roth  1:06:21  
yes, I'm Rambo, and it takes a certain kind of person. I'm using the word persons just staying in for whatever, but it takes a certain kind of person to to be the figurehead for one of these companies, partially because I think the the paradigm was set with Tesla, where you have this kind of demagogue at the head of the company. And we've seen some other other ways of doing it, you know, that lucid, for example, is a sort of an all star team of experienced professionals. But you know, rivian and Nicola, they both sort of have their own guy at the, you know, that the top, who's

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:06  
sort of Nicolas Trevor Milton's gone now. Well,

Dan Roth  1:07:10  
yeah, that that's, I don't know, their situation. It's just sounds really messy and whatever. But, you know, like, that's the thing there was, there's a an AV company, and then there's the person who's at the top, who was sort of like the mastermind, right, and that needs to go away. Quite honestly. Like, because it's more of that, like, that hero complex thing, right. Like, it's, it's a it's a sort of tech leaning I paradigm, like Steve Jobs at Apple or

Sam Abuelsamid  1:07:47  
call to personality. Yeah,

Dan Roth  1:07:48  
exactly. That's, that's a perfect way to put it. And, and all set with that. I think a lot of people are, okay, just give us good products and products that don't use a lot of energy in anyway, you know, like, you still have to put the electricity in the batteries. So try to keep as much in the battery for as long as possible. It only holds like, what three gallons of gas worth of energy. I mean, you know, come on, try to try to do a good job with that. I'd be really curious to see, like, if we set, if we said, Hey, we're gonna make an Eevee, it's gonna cost $35,000 it's gonna go zero to 60 in 910 seconds. But it's, it's, you know, it's gonna go 500 miles, I think that's something we could probably do. Or get to pretty

Sam Abuelsamid  1:08:42  
Hey, you can even do you know, faster than that, you know, zero to 60 in six seconds, or even five seconds is fine. Yeah. The Chevy Bolt, you know, we'll do zero to 60, in about six and a half seconds is pretty quick. And that's, that's quick. Yeah, it's plenty quick enough. Yeah. And, you know, for higher end cars, you know, do it in five seconds. That's, that's not crazy. That's not unreasonable. I, you know, I think that's, that's perfectly acceptable. You know, beyond that. Yeah. And this goes for for internal combustion cars, too. I think we need to start backing off on some of the performance and focus on other areas.

Dan Roth  1:09:18  
Yeah, I think actually, it goes more for internal combustion guys, because the, the you can't, you know, with like a with an Eevee. It's just kind of like a rheostat. where, like, if you're not using it, you're not using it, but you can't really dial back. You can use like cylinder deactivation and stuff on an internal combustion engine and sort of dial it back. But there's no way to make it as efficient as an Eevee when you're not using all the potential, you know, so yeah, definitely, like I'm okay with slower cars that are more fun to drive. You know, make them lighter, make them smaller, make them make them slower. It's fine. Okay, fine. I mean, the 630 was, it was not all that fast, but I had a really good time in it. Miata is a perfect example too. So yeah, this episode has been sponsored. Monster

Sam Abuelsamid  1:10:04  
released all the specs, finally, on the power trains for the new 2021 F 150, which will be driving in early November. They're there, they've launched production, they've started production in Dearborn. And about four weeks from now have the first drive of that. And this is this one, this generation is the first one to have a hybrid powertrain, which they for a couple of years now they've been talking about, you know, they're doing things a little bit different with this hybrid, that they're really focusing on people that are using these things as a truck. So the goal is to not sacrifice capability, but to enhance capability while still, you know, maintaining good fuel economy. So it's not designed for, you know, ultimate, you know, fuel economy, but to give you good fuel economy, while still have being able to tow 12,700 pounds, and have a payload of 2100 pounds, and this thing, which is really impressive, you know, it's slightly less than what you get with the five liter V eight, you know, which does 13,000 pound towing, or the three point the standard 3.5 liter EcoBoost, which is 14,000 pounds towing. But the, you know, the the power boost, you know, combines the EcoBoost v six with an electric motor. That is it's Ford's modular hybrid design. So the motor sits in between the engine and the torque converter. Or is it?

Unknown Speaker  1:11:46  
It's somewhere I remember,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:11:48  
I can't remember if the torque converter is before or after the electric motor. But anyway, it's during the transmission. Mm hmm.

Dan Roth  1:11:55  
That's interesting. I was gonna say I would assume as after it, because if you put it before you've got to drive through, you got to lose efficiency through the torque converter, right.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:12:02  
Yeah, yeah. So it's so engine torque converter, and an electric motor, and then the transmission. And one of the cool features that they have with this is electric power generation from this thing. So the standard with the power boost is 2.4 kilowatt power output for two power tools at a worksite or anywhere else, you know, power, any equipment, that electrical equipment that you want. And then the optional upgrade is 7.4, or 7.2 kilowatts, including a 240 volt outlet. So your dryer will run your dryer or, you know, for, you know, for contractors, you know, you can run a welder off of that, or a lot of other a lot of other equipment. And what this does, because this setup is more efficient, compared to a lot of contractors, they will take a gas generator, you have to haul around a gas generator in their truck, take that to a job site and use that to power their tools and you know, charge up their tools. You know, those tend to be dirtier, you know, they don't have emission controls on them, they are not as fuel efficient, this is going to be much more fuel efficient, even, even if you deplete the battery and you've got the engine running, it's still going to be a cleaner, more efficient setup than running a gas generator. And it's

Unknown Speaker  1:13:24  
quiet. Oh my god so much quieter. Yeah, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:13:28  
So, you know, this is this is going to be a pretty impressive setup, you know, for anybody that needs power, to power other equipment. You know, and I think I think that, it's, it's gonna, it's gonna be very appealing. configuration. It's only I think it's like a it's less than $2,000 Premium over the base, the standard 3.5 liter EcoBoost.

Dan Roth  1:13:53  
And what I've seen from truck prices holds true lately though. This is gonna be like a $45,000 base priced. In the I

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:04  
went, I went through the configurator. Yeah, because you can actually get this like on the lower like on the Excel sheet. They

Dan Roth  1:14:11  
have been price up. Is that Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:14:13  
okay. Yeah, it's, it's, it's available now. And I went through it, you can you can actually get the hybrid, you know, for in the low $40,000 range, I think might even be less than that. Which is it's funny, you know, back in the late 2000s 2000 789, when GM introduced there two mode hybrid on the full size SUVs and on the pickup trucks, you know, at that time, it was that system was a $20,000. Yeah, price premium. It was very really stuff. Actually, the price premium was not 20. It was about it was about 10 grand, but the cost to GM was about $20,000.

Dan Roth  1:14:48  
Yes, this is like shooting themselves in the foot with each other like the Sierra c three was the same thing. We had that rear wheel steering and they eventually like sold them off for less than the price of just the parts. Yeah, whatever, we can't make money on that thing. So hopefully they do better.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:15:06  
Yeah. So, you know, this this one, it should, it should do pretty well, i think i think i think it's gonna be a popular option for for customers that need this kind of capability. You know, certainly if you're towing 12 and a half thousand pounds with this thing, you're not going to get 23 miles per gallon, which is what it's rated at. But, you know, it'll it should still do pretty well.

Dan Roth  1:15:30  
Yeah, it's, I mean, I just like how far Ford has been with all of their updates to this particular generation. You know, the 2021 F 150. really sounds like Ford is aggressively protecting its its biggest moneymaker, which they absolutely should. But they're making really significant thoughtful improvements that will please the people who use the trucks, you know, in a wide variety of ways, and I saw a hilarious story that tested the engineers took like a stove and a bunch of stuff down to like a camping facility or something, and they had all this electrical stuff in the back back of a truck, which like, that's great. That's, you know, it's so there's the contract to use for the the upgraded, you know, with the 220 volt and stuff, you know, is there? Is there really a practical use for that for the casual buyer of the f150? Because there's a lot of those buyers to like, what would compel you to buy that?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:16:35  
Probably not? Yeah, I would think you you're probably it's, you know, if what you're looking for is the best fuel efficiency, you're actually better off with the 2.7 liter EcoBoost. I think that's actually the most Well, it depends, if you're, if you're towing, your best fuel efficiency option is going to be the three liter diesel. That's, that's good engine, oh my god, it's a great engine, and it's the one that you know, when you're towing, you're not going to lose all you know, it's still going to have decent fuel economy, even when you're towing. You know, you can, you can tow you know, 10,000 pounds with that and still be getting 25 miles per gallon. Whereas, you know, you do that with an EcoBoost v six, you're getting about 14, or 15 miles per gallon for just the average person, you know, if you're not towing all the time, if you're doing occasional towing or, you know, just hauling stuff in the bed, the 2.7 liter EcoBoost is probably the best option that's going to get you the best combination of fuel economy and, you know, price and, you know, affordability and capability. And then, you know, the the hybrid is really if you need you know that that really high end towing capability and the power takeoff capability. That's, that's where you're gonna get the advantage there.

Dan Roth  1:18:03  
Yeah, I have a lot of choices. I'm just looking at now. So the, the standard engine is 3.3 v six, which I didn't, I didn't realize they made.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:11  
Yeah, that you know, they don't you know, those are mostly sold to fleets that want the cheapest possible truck. Yeah, that makes sense. Not Not too many consumers buy those.

Dan Roth  1:18:23  
And they've got the the vijnana of the 2.7 and 3.5. And the looks like the two sets

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:29  
the two sevens the most popular option.

Dan Roth  1:18:31  
Yeah. Which makes sense. That's such a good engine. It's so punchy, and it is pretty efficient. So the hybrid is really a good an X lt like a crew cab. It's just about $45,000 starting price for the hybrid cars. It's it's 4040 to 650 for the crew cab, and it's a 47 145 with a hybrid. So

Sam Abuelsamid  1:18:56  
yeah, you can you can get an Excel with the hybrid with hybrid. Okay, yeah, for like 43 five

Dan Roth  1:19:03  
sets. I mean, it's priced very aggressively. You know, this is this, there's so many options and truck fail. Yeah. But you can get exactly what you want. So as somebody was asking me today to when is the what is the Super Duty coming? Are we and I didn't have an answer other than like, well, we're probably gonna write one.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:25  
They just did a mid cycle update on the super duties for 2020.

Dan Roth  1:19:28  
Yeah, it's okay. So, cycle for 2020, then we're probably not going to like 2023 or 24.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:34  
Yeah, I think 2023 probably.

Dan Roth  1:19:37  
Yeah. So I thought they'd been a little bit sooner. I thought we might see them in in 21 is 20 twos. But

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:47  
yeah, I think I think it'll probably be 22 as a 23. model year. Yeah, like late 22. So a couple of years from now.

Dan Roth  1:19:54  
They're not bad trucks though.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:19:55  
No, I liked

Dan Roth  1:19:56  
the I had an F 350 while ago and it was not gnarly even though it had a, you know?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:01  
Yeah, you know, they just got that new 7.3 liter gas engine in the super duties, and they still have the 6.7 liter diesel. So

Dan Roth  1:20:09  
yeah. Yeah, it's it's trucks or trucks or where there's that sort of all the emphasis right now. Everything else is kind of slacked off. So all right. Do we have any? We did have some questions from Twitter.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:20:26  
Any others? We had a couple of email questions. First one is from Tristan, Ollie. Tristan says, big fan of the show, really enjoy how in depth you go on the industry, as opposed to just talking about zero to 60 times. Rebecca has been a great addition, and enjoy the different points of view you bring from your experience in the industry. My question for all of you is what is the future the manual transmission with most brands planning to electrify their entire lineups? every vehicle I've ever owned has been a manual starting with my 1993 Toyota Celica? Will we see hybrid cars with manuals? Having the fun of a manual with some extra fuel economy sounds like a win? I know the CR z was available with a manual, is there a technical reason newer cars could not use a similar setup or just the market for such vehicles to small? Well, tristin? Unfortunately, the answer is there is no future for manual transmissions.

Dan Roth  1:21:19  
I think though, because the market is too small.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:21:21  
Yeah, exactly. And, and really, you know, with, with electric vehicles, you don't even really need to transmission at all, I mean, electric vehicle most, most ATVs just have a single speed set up, which is nothing more than a reduction gear, you know, to get you down from, you know, the electric motors run at much higher speeds than then you know, then the wheels need to turn. So you basically just have a reduction gear set on there, which is, you know, especially just a final drive. So not really a transmission at all, there's a few like the Porsche Ty con actually has the two speed transmission on the rear axle, and a single speed on the front axle, which theoretically can get you a little better efficiency, because you can get the motor running more in its sweet spot. But, you know, for the most part, you're you're not gonna see manual transmissions with electrics. And even with hybrids, you know, most hybrids don't even use. You know, the CRC was like the last hybrid, the last hybrid with a manual, you know, the the first generation insight also offered a manual.

Dan Roth  1:22:31  
Yeah, well, I think the CR z was kind of an extension of that integrated motor. It was yes. And it wasn't, it wasn't awful the drive, but it wasn't great, either. No, it was, it was not sporty, which is Sears, he kind of sold itself as something that it wasn't it's still I mean, it's a fun car. It's a nice curiosity. But yeah, I think that you really just the the manual transmission is the thing from the past, it's fun to drive. It's a thing that, you know, we all take pride in mastering. Although, I mean, think about it. Now, it's not that hard. We all mastered it when we were teenagers, right? Like that.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:23:13  
There, you know, there is another thing about manual transmissions as well. And one of the reasons why manufacturers have moved away from them, besides just the lack of demand from consumers. It used to be that manual transmissions would get better fuel economy than automatics. And that's no longer the case with modern automatic transmissions that have, you know, seven 810 gears and electronic controls. Now, you know, they can they manage the engine and the transmission together. And it can really optimize, you know, the operation of the to, to maximize fuel economy, at least on you know, the test cycles, but even even real world, you can usually get better fuel economy with a modern automatic transmission than you can with a manual. Just because it's, it's shifts much more precisely, much faster than, you know, then you can shift a manual. And it's because it's, you know, it's operating in its sweet spot more of the time. You're just never going to be able to match that with a manual transmission. And that's, that's part of why manufacturers have moved away from them.

Dan Roth  1:24:26  
Yeah, I mean, like, it's a reactive thing, right, like for for the emissions. And that's one of the reasons actually why a modern manual is kind of unpleasant to drive. When we get them in immediate cars. They're not like the old manuals, you know, there's a lot of electronics going on. And so it's, it's actually kind of hard sometimes to drive certain vehicles with a manual transmission smoothly because there's, it's feathering the throttle for you. It's messing with the clutch and the The emissions need to be so tightly controlled that, you know, you can't just dump it into third gear and you can but you need definitely to third gear and in a short shift and it's it's, it's not like it used to be.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:13  
There's there's a lot there's a lot of stuff between happening between your right foot and the engine. Yeah. And the cylinders that is out of your control.

Dan Roth  1:25:22  
Yeah, there's a lot of filter. Yeah. And and so that makes it less pleasant and less rewarding than it used to be. And, you know, yeah, I mean, I think at the end of the day, we'll probably see transmissions stick around on on EBS as we start going for, you know, more and more range and efficiency, like that's a way to achieve that. But, you know, Tesla had a problem with their first with the Roadster, right? It was supposed to have a two speed gearbox, and they never got that working. Right. So

Sam Abuelsamid  1:25:48  
if they had it, they had a tendency to break after about 1000 miles or so.

Dan Roth  1:25:53  
Yes, that's no good. Yeah. And they're not the only ones that gets it. It's a tricky thing. You know, a gearbox can stand up to that kind of torque is electric motors, they can give you all the torque you want.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:05  
instantly.

Dan Roth  1:26:06  
And that's, that's why you don't really need a transmission so much anymore, you know. So that's, that's, it's not a bad thing, though. Because you wind up with a less complex vehicle less stuff to break. And less expensive. Which, you know, goes into the batteries, which are more expensive. Yeah, I don't know. So unfortunately, I agree. I think the market for males is going away. So hang on to your your car, whatever you're driving now hang on to it if it has manual.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:26:37  
All right. Next up, Joshua brentano is asking. We have two young kids, and we're approaching the age where we can start some extended road trips, so it's time for a minivan. Yay. I have two questions. We want it fully loaded. What is your recommendation for a fully loaded minivan? I've looked over and over at the offerings from all the manufacturers and they all seem sort of similar. I feel like I'm always narrowing it down to Honda and Chrysler, but I'm open to your expertise. We may very well be replacing my dad's question number two, we may very well be replacing my dad's three series BMW, so it'd be awesome if I could soup it up. Soon he's referring to the minivan. Dad would like to be I would like it to be fun to drive and cool to look at. lol do any of these makes have any kind of decent aftermarket or performance parts for minivans? Thanks for finding informative show, Joshua. So, you know I mean, there's there's no longer a whole lot of options for minivans you basically down to for the Chrysler Pacifica, the Honda Odyssey, Toyota Sienna, which is all new for 2021 and the Kia Sedona, which is also getting redesigned for 2021. Certainly, you know, we haven't tried out the the new, the new Sienna yet. Yeah, I have a feeling that it's going to feel very much like the new Highlander, which is fine. Now, it's certainly not something that I would call sporty or fun. But it's you know, it's effective. To be honest, I wouldn't call any of these particularly sporty or fun. But, you know, they're they're designed for a task which is to move people and stuff. And you know, do it very effectively. You know, the, the Honda The Odyssey and the Pacific are both excellent at

Dan Roth  1:28:37  
doing that job. I think my pick for like an actual practical family van would be the Pacifica because it Yeah, it really does it comes down to those two, the Odyssey and the Pacifica because that the CN is not here yet. And I don't know it's been forever since I was last in Sedona, but it looks better than in drives. Yeah. So

Sam Abuelsamid  1:29:02  
yeah, as far as aftermarket stuff I looked around earlier today, and didn't really find any aftermarket performance stuff in the store any of these.

Dan Roth  1:29:13  
Yeah, I think anything for most things for an accord would probably fit the Odyssey. And there's some JDM stuff right like there. There's just some people who modify them modify the Odyssey. I don't think there's any enthusiasm for the Pacifica market at all.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:29:29  
Yeah, well, Mopar does make a bunch of accessories, you know, appearance wise for the Pacifica. So you can certainly soup up the looks a little bit. But you're not really going to find any performance stuff for it.

Dan Roth  1:29:43  
Yeah, yeah, I think you don't. You don't want it?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:29:48  
Yeah, not not in a minivan?

Dan Roth  1:29:51  
Yeah, the Odyssey. From what I've observed hits a midlife crisis around 110 hundred and 30,000 miles. We're just like, there's, there's some expensive stuff that needs fixing. On those, I don't know what the Pacific is like. So you should definitely plan to keep it for a very long time and get all your money out of it. Check out sort of the long term reliability, but try try several different sites or whatever. Because like, you know, Consumer Reports, I don't know that enough Consumer Reports readers by Chrysler's, they tend to be very loyal to Toyota and Honda. So I don't know that there's enough data there. So just look around and see what kind of data you might find about sort of long term ownership experience. And, and, you know, bear that in mind, because what parent wants to be, you know, taking a loss on the thing in three years when you have college funds to raid.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:30:47  
But one, one thing you might want to consider, since you're probably not going to have any real performance options, is the Pacifica hybrid, which is a plug in hybrid with like, 30 to 33 miles of electric range. It's and, and for your around town driving, you know, if you plug it in at night and plug it in the morning, you can basically do most of your driving completely on electricity without ever using any gas. And, you know, then when it's time for those road trips, and are you really sure you want to do that. But you know, when it comes time for those road trips, you don't have to really plan you know, where you're going to stop for charging, you know, like you would if it was a pure Eevee you just drive it like a hybrid and it gets really good fuel economy even, you know, in hybrid mode. So that's something to consider. Also, the 2021 Pacifica that's launching imminently. Yeah, it's getting a mid cycle update, it's going to be the first one of the first FCA vehicles to get their new Uconnect five infotainment system, which is thoroughly updated, much, much improved from Uconnect. Four.

Dan Roth  1:31:56  
Yeah, I think I got a walk through that back a couple of months ago. And I was impressed with how thoughtful they were about it, and how they, you know, they did listen to user feedback, and, you know, just to touch targets, and there's a lot of customization you can do with it. And that will be a good upgrade.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:32:12  
Yeah. You know, and then, you know, the both of them, you know, offer a lot of features, you know, you get lots of USB ports all around for charging devices, you know, so the kids, you know, if they've got tablets or laptops or something, you know, what are games that they want to play, you know, they can keep those charged, so they're not pestering you too much. You know, you've got, you know, lots of space in there for, you know, all of the essentials that you have to take along when you're when you're hauling kids along with you. So I think either one of them would be an excellent choice.

Dan Roth  1:32:47  
I think honestly, like the Pacific as the one I would choose, I just think it has the best combination of features. It's the the best priced out there, I think you just you just likely to get a better deal on it. It looks better, drives better around the Honda has a little bit of sportiness to it. But it's I don't know I think as an overall package, the Pacific is really really tough to be the hybrid you do miss out on stolen go. But if you if you don't get the hybrid, you get the stone go seats, which is nice. But that I don't know that's a deal breaker without them. And just, you know, I think they know what they're doing with the van. And that's that's a really well done van. And kids love vans, if you had to put your kids in a van because you know, most cars these days are tanks they can't see out of my kids lost their minds. The first time we had a minivan as a media load, because you put them in and you put their seats in there, you know, and the lads

Sam Abuelsamid  1:33:49  
I could actually see out.

Dan Roth  1:33:51  
Yeah, cuz they're big windows in the side. They were like, this is awesome. So yeah, do it enjoy yourself. It's hard to buy a bad van. But then

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:03  
the other great thing about minivans is sliding doors. Yes, yeah. If you're putting those kids into booster seats, you know, the sliding doors are just so infinitely superior to conventional hinge doors on an SUV. Yeah, because first of all, you know, it's, it's not up. It's definitely generally not up as hot and up as high. So it's easier for you to handle the kids getting in and out. You know, they can move around easier. You know, if they're getting into the third row. It's easier to maneuver around in there than a typical SUV. It was one of the nice things about the Odyssey that is unique to the Odyssey is the second row you can actually move the seats

Dan Roth  1:34:49  
side to side. That's right The matter of the magic slide seat or whatever they call it. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:34:52  
So you know, you can you know if you've got to say how many kids got two kids, you know, so you know If you need to have them physically separated, why you can you can have the seats pushed out to the sides and have a walk through to the third row. Or, you know, if they you know, want to play a game together or something, you can slide one side, either one of them over to the other side and put them side by side. So you have you have a bunch of different options in there. So that's, that's definitely something to consider with the Honda. Yeah,

Dan Roth  1:35:27  
yeah. I mean, let us know what you get. The Pacific if you buy the like, high end, one, two with the screens. It has games on the screens? Yes. They've got built in games, you know, keeps the peace for about 10 minutes. Yeah. All right. So we had a couple of a couple of Twitter questions. One of them was just a suggestion to basically attack each other over nothing but this this is not Fox. So we won't be doing that. Let's see. D Levine. 61 says is my lust for a 6869 Thunderbird with a 428. Ron. I don't find anything wrong with that. Do you have any Any thoughts? Sam?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:10  
Did No. I mean, you know if that if that's your thing, you know, if you like, you know, big, heavy big blocks, you know, in big heavy big cars. That, you know, that can't really go around corners, but you know, it's cool looking car

Dan Roth  1:36:24  
60 I can't remember what a 6869 is that the one with the hidden lights?

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:30  
No, that was before the hidden lights. I think that was the 70s swans.

Dan Roth  1:36:35  
Okay, yeah, I mean, those Oh, yeah, these are the ones that look like oldsmobiles Yeah. Knock yourself out, man. Have a good time. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:43  
Actually, they did have hidden lights. Yeah,

Dan Roth  1:36:45  
I see the first first ones that come up actually. They have the lights. Oh, yeah. That

Sam Abuelsamid  1:36:49  
that was that was actually a cool looking car. Especially the the coupe. But even even the four door. Thunderbird. Yeah, it was kind of neat looking. So yeah, I mean it you know, if it's, if you like that style, go for it.

Dan Roth  1:37:02  
It's not, there's really nothing wrong with the 428. It's just, you know, enough cast iron to make the Titanic. Let's see. Do you think the PSA and FCA merger will be approved by the EU? Also, why is Mike Manley shunned from the Board of steel Lantus? Right now this seems like a PSA takeover of Chrysler kind of like Daimler Chrysler merger of equals.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:37:24  
Yeah, you know, I think it will get approved. You know, I don't see any reason why they wouldn't. Especially, you know, given the way the auto industry is going, you know, it's we're gonna be seeing more consolidation in the industry. That's just a reality. And as far as manly goes, You know, I was reading about this, the merger agreement was because, you know, this is going to be a European based company. So, they have a board of supervisors, which is like the board of directors, but a little bit different. And one of the thing you know, the in the merger agreement, they said that they would only have one. See, what, only one, one representative from each of the companies. So, Carlos Tavares from PSA. And john alkaen, from from the danieli family. That is a major stockholder in PSA. He, he's the chairman of the holding company that owns the biggest shareholder and in FCA, so he's also going to be on the board. As far as we know, you know, Manley is sticking around in an executive role. He's just not going to be on the board. Others, other members of the supervisory board will be outsiders not coming from either of the two companies.

Dan Roth  1:38:59  
Yeah, ah. I think that it's it's more complimentary to than the Daimler Chrysler merger of equals that, you know, Chrysler doesn't have any new car platforms, or small car platforms. And those are two areas where even if they wanted to make a small crossover, they don't have a platform for it. So they could use it. They have, you know, Jeep, and RAM and they've managed to keep

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:32  
FCS got strengthen in commercial vehicles and trucks and SUVs

Dan Roth  1:39:37  
faster than a lot of the the pro masters and stuff. Right,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:39:40  
and piette PSA, you know, more on the smaller and midsize cars and smaller utilities. So, and PSA also has more strength on electric vehicle platforms than FCA does.

Dan Roth  1:39:54  
Yeah, and so it makes sense that FCA is and it's not that FCA hasn't been developing ATVs and hybrids and stuff that just You know, makes sense that if they're going to buy into another company that's also been doing it, they're gonna, they're gonna maybe take the foot off the pedal a little bit and see where they can, they can lash things together instead of committing too much to a technology that's dead end because it can't be used across all the brands. So there's a lot that has to go on. I hope that it works out better than the merger of equals that kind of didn't. There's a cultural clash. I don't, I don't know that the French kind of, you know, cuz they're, and this is this is broad generalization generalizations. But, you know, the, the French, sort of merging their culture with an American brand versus the Germans doing it. Well, you're

Sam Abuelsamid  1:40:45  
merging with Americans and Italians. Oh, man, we're screwed.

Dan Roth  1:40:52  
You know, it all depends on how much they all kind of agree. It doesn't really matter where they came from. It's just a global industry. I mean, man is not not even from Europe, right? Yeah,

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:01  
he's, well, he's English.

Dan Roth  1:41:03  
We see I thought he was from Well, he's not

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:05  
from Europe anymore.

Dan Roth  1:41:07  
Yeah. Why is so complicated? I thought that it was from like, Australia, or New Zealand or something. So yeah. It's a global, global industry. So it doesn't kind of doesn't matter where they come from. It just matters and you know, what they, what they sort of agreed to do. And then if they stick to it, there was a lot of promise to Daimler Chrysler, in the beginning. And we you know, we've got some good stuff out of it. You can still go buy a challenger. So that cars never gonna die. It's gonna be around forever.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:43  
I'm sorry. As long as people keep buying them.

Dan Roth  1:41:45  
Yeah, they still they sell better every year.

Sam Abuelsamid  1:41:48  
Yeah, they sell better now than they ever have.

Dan Roth  1:41:51  
Nuts. Yeah. All right. That's it. Our podcast is done. We have we've spent enough time babbling. So thanks, everybody for listening. send in questions, you know where to find us. It is feedback and wheel bearings dot media. So yeah, keep us keep us on the dial and

Sam Abuelsamid  1:42:13  
see everybody next time. See ya.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai