Sam Abuelsamid (00:01)
This is episode 414 of Wheel Bearings. I am Sam Maboul-Samad from Telemetry.

Nicole (00:07)
And I am Nicole Weeklin. We'll do auto web this week.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:10)
And I'm not quite sure where Robbie is today. I think he might have had a late night. I think he might have had a show last night. So he may or may not join us in progress. in the meantime, Nicole, what have you been driving?

Nicole (00:13)
No.

Yes, sir.

Well, I'm going to do one that I was driving. Which I do the big one first, the little one. I have a big one and a little one.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:27)
⁓

Let's start with the little one.

Nicole (00:30)
Okay, so a few weeks back I had the Nissan Kicks. So the Nissan Kicks is all new this year.

Like all new. We had a big conversation at another event about all new versus refreshed. This is officially all new. The Kicks, I think of it as an entry level crossover. I kind of like this car. I feel like some people love this and some people hate this. But again, it's another case of if you want to buy an $80,000 car that has all of that, this is not that car. This car starts at 21.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:59)
That's the other one

you're going to.

Nicole (01:00)
That's the other one. This car. ⁓ So the S trim, which is front wheel drive, starts at 21,830. That's cheap. It's like really cheap for a car. And it's not like it's fancy, but it's a solid little car for 21,830. So I think this is a good value. You just have to not be looking for fancy. It's a great starter car if you just want a nice, affordable car to get around. ⁓ I had the SR with all wheel drive, which is the top trim, and it is available in front wheel or all wheel. With all wheel drive, $27,000.

And would you like to cast a destination although you're gonna win no matter what?

Sam Abuelsamid (01:39)
I'm going to say $1,400.

Nicole (01:41)
You were ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (01:44)
OK.

Nicole (01:48)
Two liter four cylinder CVT, 141 horsepower and 140 pound feet of torque. It is not a race car. It is not going super fast. So where people start to say like, isn't great is because when you mash the gas, let me just say that number again, 141 horsepower, 140 pound feet of torque. It's not the most responsive car. That's not to say it's sluggish. It just doesn't have a huge amount of pep. If you're trying to get extra oomph for passing on the highway is a little tricky,

Sam Abuelsamid (01:56)
No, definitely not.

Nicole (02:18)
If you're just trying to get up to highway speed, plan accordingly. Don't cut off that 18-wheeler. Let him go. Merge behind. it's... I know. In general, don't try to run out the 18-wheeler, right? But I feel like, know, because I hear a lot of people, like when I said I was driving, they're just like, you got the kicks. I'm like, I don't hate this car. I kind of like it. I think it looks cute, too. It has some personality to it. And I appreciate that, you know, it's a...

Sam Abuelsamid (02:25)
I mean, that's generally a wise piece of advice anytime, no matter what you're driving.

Nicole (02:45)
tiny little affordable car that still looks cute. mean, you can get it like in a two tone, there's one that were like the body of the car sort of this dark gray and there's a red roof. It doesn't have to, it doesn't look dull and boring and cheap. It actually has a lot of personality and now it has all wheel drive, which is something that it didn't have before. In fact, my daughter ended up buying a couple of years ago, a Nissan Rogue Sport when the Rogue Sport was still out there. The reason she didn't look at the kicks, there was no all wheel drive and she was in Milwaukee.

and the roads in downtown Milwaukee are a mess in the winter. And I think, no, I think you need all-wheel drive on there, hun. So that's literally what crossed us off the list. If this had been available then, she might have gotten this one. So overall, I like this. think it has a decent number of features. It's not one of those tons and tons of features kind of thing. But you have a 12.3-inch touchscreen, decent-sized touchscreen. You have wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto on the SR trim, the top trim.

you get a six speakers audio system that's standard. Again, you get a nicer one on the top trim. It's a 10 speaker Bose audio system. There's a couple of USB-C ports up front. There's a wireless charging pad. ⁓ It's not really a tower. I mean, I think it doesn't even, it's not something you can tow with.

Sam Abuelsamid (04:01)
No, mean with

that kind of power, yeah.

Nicole (04:02)
It's a tiny little car, so you're

not going to able to tow anything with it. But you have a decent little amount of cargo space. behind the second row, numbers drop a little with all-wheel drive. But it's 30 cubic feet behind the second row. And if you fold those flat, you get 60 cubic feet. They drop to 23.9 and 50.1 with all-wheel drive. That's still decent amount of cargo room for a little car. I kept thinking about, again, my daughter, when she was in college, having to haul stuff back and forth from a dorm to an apartment and then home for the summer and stuff. This is great for that. It's just enough.

cargo room for that period of time in your life where you feel like you're constantly moving from one place to another. So I think it does what it does well. I like

The kicks, now it's, know, modest performance. It's not the smoothest suspension system. Like if you hit, if you're on really pebbled roads, you're gonna know it. If you nail a pothole, you are going to know it. But overall, I feel like for the value with the style and the technology and what it offers, I think the new Kicks is better than the old Kicks. I think it's noticeably better and I like it. I've always liked this car. Even though it's not a really performance-oriented car, I love this as a first car

or like a college kid car or starter car. I think it's fabulous.

Sam Abuelsamid (05:18)
No, I totally agree. The kicks, for those of us in our community that are constantly driving new stuff all the time, the kicks, cars like the kicks, the Mitsubishi Mirage, the Versa, they get a lot of criticism because we get to drive a lot of much cooler, faster, in some cases more attractive cars. And the reality is,

Nicole (05:44)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (05:46)
You know, there's a lot of people that arguably most people cannot afford those cars. People need, you know, there's a lot of people that need basic, reliable transportation that they are going to, you know, they want to get something new that's got a warranty, you know, that's got the latest safety features. ⁓ They need basic transportation. don't need, you know, they're not taking it to the drag strip on Friday nights, you know.

Nicole (06:13)
Although it might be fun to see.

Sam Abuelsamid (06:16)
I guess, ⁓

they need something that's going to get them to work or to school or even a young family with their first child to home to daycare or to the doctor's office. And so they need something that is affordable, reliable, gets decent fuel economy. And the kicks will address, it'll hit all those points. ⁓ And if you get anything but the base model,

⁓ It's got ⁓ Google services built in. ⁓ So you've got navigation and everything. But even on the base model, you've got CarPlay and Android Auto support. So you can plug your phone in. It does what it needs to do. And it does it pretty well. ⁓

Nicole (06:53)
Mm-hmm.

Right?

I think

it does. And I think, you know what, in general, I mean, Nissan, we're all concerned about Nissan. For good reasons, like the function of the company and how they're going to do. But and people seem to be giving Nissan a lot of a lot of crap these days and.

Sam Abuelsamid (07:10)
for good reasons.

Nicole (07:21)
The thing is, it's not the most inspired car, but they they're really good at building the car to do what it's supposed to do for that segment. Like, you know, their their little truck is great for a little off road truck. Their little SUVs are great as little starter cars. They're like you get something like the Murano. It's just this nice, pretty, you know, nice to drive car that looks good, that isn't super upscale, but still looks really nice. They do a good job of creating a car for a very specific sort of use case and nailing that use case. Problem is, if you're outside of

that.

If you're looking for something more, you know, the case, if just looking for affordable, well, they've got it, but it's gonna, you know, there's things that make it affordable, like a smaller engine. But I think the kicks, I also like the Versa. I guess I like really cheap cars. I think the Versa is a great little car, like, and people hate, ⁓ God, I a Versa.

Sam Abuelsamid (08:05)
yeah, I do too.

Nicole (08:12)
And like you said, Sam, we get sort of jaded, I think a lot of us, because we do have the opportunity to drive such a wide range of cars. some, you know, oftentimes when we get them, it's a nice car and it's also the top trim of that nice car. So it's like the fanciest version of whatever it is. So we very rarely see a base model of a car, I think, unless we're renting cars for some reason. So, you know, it's almost like a check yourself on the behalf of journalists like, wait a minute. Yeah, I know you were in a Mercedes last week. This is not a Mercedes.

have those features, but you could buy three of these or one Mercedes, you know? So I'm a big fan of the kicks. I like it. I liked it all the time. I've always liked it.

Sam Abuelsamid (08:48)
Yeah. And, you

know, and you mentioned, you know, that we're often in the top trims of a car, you know, the the SRs, the top trim of the kicks. Arguably, if someone was thinking about a kicks, I would probably recommend to them that they go for the SV, the middle trim. You know, because on that you can still get the cool two tone paint colors. You know, you can get a, you know.

Nicole (08:57)
Correct.

Yep.

Sam Abuelsamid (09:14)
The base one, a couple of them, a couple of combinations, the ⁓ gray with the black roof are only $350 option, or the gray with the red roof, same thing, $250 if you want. The red main body with the black roof, that's $800. There's a bunch of different combinations. So you can have some fun with it. The SV, I think there's a couple of options that are missing that are standard on the SR. ⁓

Nicole (09:41)
Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (09:43)
The big reason I would actually recommend the SV instead is you mentioned the rough pavement. Certainly here in Michigan where I live, a couple years ago I had a Versa SV or an SR that had the 17 inch wheels with the 50 series tires, not much sidewall. And I had a tire blowout on a pothole.

Nicole (10:07)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (10:12)
and you've got basically the same size tires on the Kicks SR. If you go with the SV, you get, I think it's a 16 inch wheel with tires with a little more sidewall, a little more compliance. ⁓ So, you know, if you're thinking about, you know, basic transportation, you know, if you look at your total cost of ownership, you know, what am I going to be spending, not just on the car, but on maintenance? Am I, you know, if you want to perhaps minimize your chances of having to spend

Nicole (10:23)
Yep.

Sam Abuelsamid (10:42)
money on new tires long before your tires are actually worn out. ⁓ You might want to go with the SV instead. It'll be a slightly more comfortable ride, but the tires will probably be a little more durable on rough pavement. So things like that are things to consider. ⁓

Nicole (10:48)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Well, I misspoke,

the 12.3 inch screen you can get on the SV and SR, that's a seven inch screen on the base trim. you also get a slightly more tech looking dashboard, but again, it's on the SV, that's as high as you have to go. And you can get all wheel drive on any trim. I think recommending the middle trim, a lot of times that's the sweet spot in any lineup. I've sort of found.

Sam Abuelsamid (11:06)
Okay.

Yeah, almost always.

Nicole (11:25)
almost always like the base trim, there's something you really want in that car that's missing. You know, there's like, I really want this. But you have to go one trim to get it. And if you go to the top, it's like, well, now I've spent ten thousand dollars in my budget. But if you go in the middle, you get the things that are sort of like the must haves for whatever your shopping needs are. And then a few little like, well, I don't really need that. But that's cool. I'll take it. You know, so I feel like the middle is the sweet spot in most OEMs lineups.

Sam Abuelsamid (11:53)
And one other thing, on the Kicks, one of the colors that they offer, if you don't want the two-tone, is a deep blue pearl. Yeah, it's a really attractive color.

Nicole (12:00)
Yeah.

Deep blue pearl, is it pretty? I didn't see it.

Now I'm going deep blue pearl Nissan Kicks.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:10)
You can get the

Deep Blue Pearl with a two tone as well. the Deep Blue Pearl lower body with the gray roof.

Nicole (12:17)
Ooh, I

see it. I see it in the two-tone. That's what happens to come up. that looks slick. I love the two-tone roof. Again, I think it makes a tiny little affordable car look kind of snazzy. And that blue color actually is beautiful. I like the blue. So that's the Nissan Kicks, the affordable little Nissan Kicks.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:23)
Yeah.

Looks a little more interesting. Yeah.

So what was

the slightly more expensive car that you had, or the bigger car?

Nicole (12:39)
A slightly,

ever so slightly more expensive car, and I'm so psyched I got these back to back. Last week, remember I had a Lincoln Navigator? I have its.

down market brother, don't know, think only because Lincoln's the fancier brand. I have the Ford Expedition, the mainstream, let's see. I have the Ford Expedition King Ranch. And can I just say the King Ranch, I always think of it as the Wakeland edition because it has a little flying W thing on the seats. I know that's not mine, but I'm like, yeah, I have embossed seats, yeah, they have a W on it. Like I've turned it in.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:49)
Ha

The mainstream.

Yeah, the brand.

I had these custom

custom built for me

Nicole (13:10)
Right,

I these custom built with a W. ⁓ So yeah, so I have the King Ranch. ⁓ I do love that it does make it feel very cowboy. It has a cowboy vibe going on with that, but it's called the King Ranch. What else do you expect? It's got a little cowboy thing going on. So this is huge and it is pricey. I want to start, just go off, what do you think Destination is on this?

Sam Abuelsamid (13:33)
⁓ full size SUV. I gotta say, it's gotta be at least 1995, but I think they might've lifted it to 2195.

Nicole (13:43)
1995 is what I have coming up on mine. So you were right with your first guess. Did it go up?

Sam Abuelsamid (13:46)
Okay. I think, I think it might've

increased since you, since the, since the one that you have was built.

Nicole (13:52)
Since I may have changed,

that could be. Yeah, because sometimes we get things in the, I mean, they can change anything anytime and we're still gonna have the same unrone for the car. So what is it now?

Sam Abuelsamid (13:56)
Let me see.

Yes, they did,

it's $21.95 now, because last week when we were talking about the Navigator, I looked it up afterwards. So this is one of the things, we talked about this last week, ⁓ know, Ford, with all the tariff stuff, Ford's been trying to hold the line on pricing, and offering employee pricing on some models and things like that. ⁓ Great for their advertising, but they,

Nicole (14:20)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:29)
what they did was they snuck in a hidden $200 price increase through the destination charge. So they raised.

Nicole (14:35)
Sam and I have

destination charge issues. Just put in the price of the car, it.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:39)
Yeah, and again, I will applaud General Motors for the last, I don't know, four or five years at least. When you look at their advertising or at their consumer site, the price that you see on there includes the destination charge. So they actually include that because it's not something you can avoid. Automakers, please.

Nicole (15:01)
Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:04)
Fine, if you need to itemize it on the Monroney for legal reasons, go ahead and do that. But do not advertise a price, do not talk about a price that does not include a factor that consumers cannot avoid.

Nicole (15:17)
Right, you can't say, it's not like you can say, I don't want the carpet and floor mats, take them out and give me 75 bucks back. You can't remove this. The destination fee is stuck there. You are paying it no matter what. So you should see that upfront, especially since it's not a $200 charge. It's like in this case, $2,000. That's a significant jump in the cost of your vehicle. So yeah, I feel like it should just be included.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:40)
So how does the Expedition compare to the Navigator?

Nicole (15:43)
So

it was really neat. So Expedition King Ranch, this is the top of the lineup and it starts at $83,975. It's not cheap. The base trim in the lineup, though, starts at... my computer's stuck. It's not going to tell me. I think it's at about $52,000. $62,000? $62,000. For the Expedition, I've got $62,320. My screen is being cranky as I was scrolling across. OK.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:03)
⁓ base price for the net for the exhibition ⁓ let me find it

Yeah, 62, 320.

That's for the active trim.

Nicole (16:14)
For

the active, so it's active Platinum Tremor and King Ranch and there are two different powertrains available but not all of them are available on every car. and I were just running through it. The Expedition has, the Tremor has a more powerful engine. The Platinum offers the more powerful engine. The King Ranch only comes with the base engine which is still plenty of power. It's a 3.5 liter twin turbo V6. It has 400 horsepower and 480 pound feet of torque. It's burly. If you got

One of the trims with the other powertrain, it's 440 horsepower and 510 pound feet of torque. So it's a little bit of a jump. It's just a high output. Yeah, I shouldn't say it's a different engine. It's a high output version of the same engine. So you get a little more oomph from it if you want a little more oomph. I feel like this has plenty of oomph, though. It definitely doesn't feel underpowered. You smash the gas pedal and the sucker moves despite being really big.

Sam Abuelsamid (16:49)
It's still the same engine. It's just a higher output version.

Nicole (17:08)
Okay, noted last week that the retracting sidestep things in the Navigator made it sound like like you had run over something Excuse me. These are quieter. I don't know why but it was the first thing I noticed because I had just gotten out of that I think we let me listen and I like open the door shut the door I'm like, that's quite open the sure shut the door again No, it is quieter because I was super aware of it every single time they retracted when I was in the Navigator I forgot about it

Sam Abuelsamid (17:21)
really?

Nicole (17:38)
in the expedition.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:39)
I wonder if on the navigator that you had, perhaps they had been damaged at some point. Like maybe it ran into a curb or something like that.

Nicole (17:49)
I don't know,

I don't know, but it was noticeable. thought, gosh, this really is quieter. So weird thing, but there you go. This is the all the bells and whistles version of this car. mean, there's nothing. mean, what do you it's got blue cruise. It's got it's like pretty much every feature you could want. It can haul.

Manage a ton of cargo it can tow up to I think it's 6000 with you can either do four by four or four by two so it's up to 9600 pounds with this engine It's a little less if you have the high output it drops to 9000 so you get a little bit less Cargo room is ridiculous behind the third row 22.9 behind the

First row, it's 108.5, so if you fold all the seats down, you can pretty much put your living room back there and bring your furniture to someone else's house. ⁓ So it's big. It's also very comfortable. mean, this is the kind of...

I said anybody can buy any car, this feels like the car you want to get if you have at least three kids because you're going to be using the third row and you want the extra seating and you need the extra space and the family goes on vacation just to have normal amounts of cargo. You've got a lot of suitcases or if you like to road trip. It is so super roomy. It's very, very comfortable. I enjoyed driving this and it it you know, it feels it's not as. Like.

smooth, I would say, as a navigator. The Navigator has that luxury car, like, easiness to it, sort of softness to it. This is a little bit more grunt. Like, I'm a comfy car. I get all your features, but I've got some power to it. I enjoy driving it. I even took it into the city, was driving around Boston. ⁓ And as a note of fact, right?

Sam Abuelsamid (19:34)
That must have been interesting with something this enormous.

Nicole (19:37)
which is kind of a test to how easy it is because you always feel like you don't have enough room because it's so wide. But it handles well in a city, which sounds silly. you know, when you have to make that really tight turn because it handles those turns pretty well, it's it's surprisingly easy to drive in congested city streets. And I even wedged myself into the world's tiniest parking spot at the parking garage this week because it was all that was left. And I was like, oh, can I do it? And even then it was easy to maneuver like I didn't have to do that back up.

back in like 10 times to get it lined up. It was like one good try and I was lined up and backed right into the spot. So I like this overall. I think it's pricey ⁓ but it's a top trim of a three row SUV. It's not going to be cheap. Do I think it's worth it for like for that $83,975? Yeah, actually I would if I was looking for that. If I wanted that kind of

⁓ style because you're paying a lot for the style. If you don't want that whole King Ranch thing, you can get like a more refined style if you want to go with platinum. And for tremor because it's more the off-road one and that gets the high ⁓ output engine you get with that, then you also get like orange accents and things. So there's a very, with these trims, there's very much a style difference. There's the base trim, there's a platinum for the fancy, the tremor for the off-road, the King Ranch for I think I'm a cowboy. So if you want to be a cowboy,

get the King Ranch. You know, and your price between like, the base is definitely cheaper at 62, but when you start getting up there, like the Tremor and the King Ranch are only like $2,000, $2,500 apart. So it's very much like, are you looking for the cowboy thing or are looking for the off-road thing? So overall I like this. I think the Expedition's a good car.

Sam Abuelsamid (21:23)
I think you have overlooked ⁓ one little detail that makes this the obvious choice over the new navigator. ⁓

Nicole (21:27)
What? What? What? What?

no, I haven't. I'll say I know what it is. I can reach out and I can adjust the air vents. I just put my hands straight out in front of me. I grab the little thing up, down, left, right. Yes, that is the single biggest selling feature over the Navigator. You can adjust the air vents with your hands. Just reach the vent. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (21:38)
Wow.

Yeah.

Um, so, you know, one of the things on the, new, uh, expedition is they use the same displays that they use on the Navi, on the Navigator, except that, um, for the display up by the windshield that the upper display. you get, you get the center touchscreen and then instead of, um, the, coast to coast setup they have in the Navigator, you only get the left-hand side of it. Cause the, Navigator display is actually, it's actually two separate displays side by side.

Nicole (22:02)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:23)
⁓ And so the expedition only gets half of it. It gets the left hand half of it. How was that driving that?

Nicole (22:30)
I mean,

it works fine. It's funny, you know, because the steering wheel is also very similar, you know, the way the touchpad controls work to to move things around. I I like here's the thing. I feel like the Navigator being the fancier car, right? Having that very.

large screen because those large screens, let's face it, they make things feel a little more upscale, a little fancier. And so it works in the Navigator. feel like for the Expedition, you could do this in this, but I like this too. It's not a matter of like it doesn't feel down market. It doesn't feel like a step back or it's not as advanced. I think because it has the screen that you do have is still wide. Like it goes. I don't know.

Sam Abuelsamid (23:09)
Yeah, it's 24

inches.

Nicole (23:10)
Yeah,

so it's still it's big enough that it actually as its way back on that dash it goes it's behind the infotainment screen to a point like it's set back so you can clearly see it but it's still very large and then you have a large infotainment screen so it doesn't feel like they've skimped and you have a tiny little screen up there and then this you know so it doesn't it's just a different style and I like how it looks I I'm fine with it either way do you have a preference which one do you like better Sam?

Sam Abuelsamid (23:37)
Well, given how they're using the right half of the screen in the the Lincolns, which is basically you get to pick up to three widgets to throw on there. I would just assume just say just leave it off because it's not it's not really very useful, at least as it's being used today. So it's it's kind of OK, you're adding extra cost. You've got more components there. I would say.

Nicole (23:52)
Right?

Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (24:04)
you know, the the forward approach, you know, just use what use what you're actually using instead of, you know, just having something that's kind of vestigial out there.

Nicole (24:13)
It's sort of like the Lincoln does the big screen because it looks cool and fancy and Ford's like, well, we're just going to like you said, we're just going to do it makes sense. This is what you need. This makes sense. So I don't have a problem with this at all. I kind of like it. So I'm so far like this car.

Sam Abuelsamid (24:26)
One

thing that I'm kind of surprised still that Ford hasn't done on their full-size SUVs on the Navigator and on the Expedition is ⁓ offer the power boost hybrid system from the F-150. ⁓ Because one of the nice things you get with that is the pro power onboard, where can get up to 7.2 kilowatts of power, which obviously, I think, ⁓

Nicole (24:32)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I know.

Sam Abuelsamid (24:56)
You're not going to have contractors using this, ⁓ using the, ⁓ SUVs the way they do with the pickup trucks. But I think, especially in the tremor, the tremor in particular, you know, this is the off road one. You know, if you're going out to a campsite, ⁓ you know, and you want some extra power for your, you know, to power your coffee maker or your blender for your morning smoothies, you know, things like that. Having that pro power on board would be, would be really useful. ⁓ or.

Nicole (25:04)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (25:25)
at tailgate parties in the fall. It seems like an obvious one that Ford probably should be offering in this vehicle, but so far they've chosen not to.

Nicole (25:37)
I mean, it is kind of weird. You're absolutely right in everything you said. I don't know if there's a, there must be a reason that we don't know why they would choose not to do that. Cause it does seem like it would be a great idea, you know? It does have a cool, but you know what it does have that's cool? They has this like cargo tailgate manager thing that makes use of that cargo area where it becomes like a table or a seat back or like makes two levels of storage. So they did think of some kind of nifty features. I like that little thing.

Sam Abuelsamid (25:49)
Yeah. All right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and the Expedition

does have the same split tailgate system that they put on the Navigator this year, so you get the...

Nicole (26:08)
Yep. Which I'm a big fan

of. I love split tailgates because then your milk doesn't roll out. Not that that's ever happened to me.

Sam Abuelsamid (26:14)
Ha ha.

⁓ But well, I will be I will step up and acknowledge that yes stuff has rolled out of vehicles on me. So I have dropped things out of a tailgate

Nicole (26:26)
Yep. If you have a tailgate on your vehicle at some point, you're dropping something.

Sam Abuelsamid (26:31)
Yep. All right. All right. I also have two cars to talk about. Well, two vehicles to talk about. ⁓ First off, the Toyota Tacoma Trail Hunter. So this is the most expensive variant of the Tacoma. Well, one or two jointly most expensive because it's the same price as the TRD Pro. So Toyota has to ⁓ offer really, you know.

upper end off-road variants of Tacoma. They've got the Trail Hunter and the TRD Pro. The TRD Pro is more of a Ford Raptor style. It's more desert runner type of thing, high speed ⁓ over ⁓ longer distances. ⁓ And so the suspension is set up more for that. ⁓ If you want something to go off ⁓ on say the Rubicon Trail or Moab,

something like that. The Trail Hunter is probably the better choice for you. ⁓ It's designed more to have that ⁓ compliance and everything that you want for rock crawling. ⁓ And ⁓ the one that I had was in the Oxide Bronze Metallic, ⁓ which is sort of a bronze green color and

Nicole (27:49)
Ooh.

Sam Abuelsamid (27:57)
really nice color. A couple of things that visually set apart the Trail Hunter from the TRD Pro. The Trail Hunter comes with a standard ⁓ raised air intake, also commonly referred to as a snorkel. despite having the raised air intake, ⁓ doesn't unlike ⁓ say when Ford had the Bronco Everglades a couple of years ago, what Ford did and what people

when they do this in the aftermarket, when they add a snorkel like that, ⁓ the idea is to allow for greater water forwarding. So that means that you also have to raise the vents for differentials and other components so you don't end up sucking in water in places where you don't want it. ⁓ Toyota didn't do that on this. So it's just a raised air intake, ⁓ which the primary ⁓ effect of that

is to make a lot of extra noise when you accelerate. If you lower the passenger window while you're accelerating, you will hear the whooshing as the air is flowing through the snorkel. yeah, very much so. It can be quite loud and quite annoying. ⁓ So there's that. ⁓ And then there's also a sport bar on the back above the bed, like behind the cab.

Nicole (28:57)
you

To you really.

jeez.

Sam Abuelsamid (29:22)
to hold lights and sort of other things. It's not really a roll bar, but it's designed for, like I said, for accessory lights and racks and things like that that you might want to put up there. It's got a bunch of really good off-road gear. You've got ARB steel front and rear bumpers. The ARB also makes that sport bar. You've got Old Man Emu.

Dampers really really high-end dampers for that off-road performance ⁓ To give and you know to really help with letting the wheels move around when you're crawling over rocks ⁓ There's a bunch of extra skid plates underneath to protect the underbody when you are crawling over said rocks ⁓ and The ⁓ I think probably the biggest advantage that the trail hunter has over the TRD Pro

is it does not include the isodynamic seats, ⁓ which means that ⁓ you can kind of use the back seats in the Trail Hunter. The Tacoma's back seat among mid-size pickups is one of the tighter ones. ⁓ It's particularly tighter compared to, ⁓ say, the Ford Ranger. ⁓ And if you get the TRD Pro, those isodynamic seats are about two or three inches thicker.

Nicole (30:20)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (30:46)
than the seat backs, I should say, are about two or three inches thicker than the standard seats. And so you basically eat up almost all of your rear leg room if you have those seats. ⁓ The Trail Hunter has the standard seats, which are actually quite good. They're comfortable, they're supportive. I think the Trail Hunter might actually have more prominent side bolsters to help hold you in place as you're rocking back and forth over the rocks. ⁓ get ⁓ four-wheel drive, ⁓ part-time,

four-wheel drive with a two-speed transfer case to get four low and four high. It's the 2.4 liter hybrid max powertrain, which has plenty of power. It's like, I think about 375 horsepower and about 450 foot pounds of torque, something like that. It's not really designed or tuned for maximum fuel economy. It's more for performance.

The label value ⁓ on the Monroney for fuel economy is 22 city, 24 highway, 23 combined. I've never gotten anywhere near that with a Tacoma Hybrid. ⁓ In this one, when I went and did my fuel economy loop, I got just shy of 18 miles per gallon. ⁓ And that's driving it sanely, just driving it on my loop. A mix of highway and suburban, rural, and city streets.

Nicole (32:03)
Mm.

driving it insanely.

Sam Abuelsamid (32:14)
⁓ staying roughly at the speed limit. ⁓ It's never been particularly fuel efficient. I've had the same experience with the full size, with the Tundra and with the Sequoia hybrids as well, which use the same basic system. ⁓ The powertrain has had plenty of performance, not an issue there. ⁓ The four cylinder Toyota engine we've discussed before.

Not the greatest sounding engines in the world. They sound a little rough and coarse. They're strong. They got plenty of performance. They just don't sound very good compared to a lot of competitors. ⁓ What else? There's a 14 inch touch screen in the middle with the Toyota multimedia system, which is overall a pretty good system, but still has the same issue that I've complained about since the beginning in that if you are using the native system.

Nicole (32:45)
Yeah.

you

Sam Abuelsamid (33:13)
There's no way to have ⁓ two panes or two windows on the screen. So you could have your navigation on there and then have the media player beside it as an example. That's the most common use case. ⁓ And so you can either have navigation or your media player or whatever other things they have in there. That's not ideal. ⁓

You do have support for wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. So if you use either of those, you will have your windowed interface so you can have all your stuff on the screen at the same time. ⁓ You also have ⁓ the JBL Flex portable speaker that's in the top of the dash behind the touchscreen. if you're out in the woods, your campsite or ⁓ the beach, whatever, you can pop out the speaker and use it as a Bluetooth speaker with your phone, which is... ⁓

Nicole (33:52)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (34:11)
Handy little, you know, it's not a big thing, but it's a nice little feature to add in there. What else? Yeah, only a few options on this one that I had. They had the towing technology package with the wireless camera system for 850 bucks. The door panel scuff protector for 135. A ball mount for the hitch.

70 bucks and $575 for the spray-on bed liner. Grand total, $66,405. Mid-sized trucks have gotten very expensive.

Nicole (34:49)
Oof. Wow.

I mean, it's a lot of truck, to be fair, but that is a lot of money.

Sam Abuelsamid (34:57)
It is ⁓ and you know that is about ten thousand dollars more than a Ford Ranger Raptor ⁓ Which you know is probably

Nicole (35:04)
⁓ What would you get?

you get the Ford Ranger after or would you get this?

Sam Abuelsamid (35:11)
If I was spending my own money, I would probably go for the Ranger Raptor. Yeah, I mean, you know, 10 grand is 10 grand. You know, and the, you know, the Ranger, you know, has more power. The Ranger Raptor has more power. Doesn't actually get any worse fuel economy, arguably in something, you know, some a lot of tests I've seen, it's some typically similar or a little better. And the back seat is a little roomier than it is in the Tacoma.

Nicole (35:13)
Mm-hmm. You win. ⁓

10 greatest 10 grand, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (35:41)
even without the isodynamic seats. So I would probably opt for the Ranger Raptor if I was spending my money. ⁓ But, you know, this is a good truck. ⁓ I didn't do any off-roading during the time I had it. ⁓ earlier this year or was it last year ⁓ when we were doing the Toyota 4Runner drive ⁓ somewhere out west, ⁓ we

They had the they have a trail hunter version of the forerunner as well and the forerunner and Tacoma are the same same platform ⁓ The trail that the forerunner trail hunter has all the same good stuff the old man emu dampers and ARB stuff ⁓ And we did do some rock crawling with that one. So I know it is very very capable ⁓ So it can it can go places where you know a lot of other vehicles can't ⁓ but ⁓ yeah, I think

Nicole (36:31)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:39)
Like said, I would probably get the Ranger for myself.

Nicole (36:43)
I think I'm probably go with I'd be with you probably do the Ranger. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:45)
Yeah.

But if you are a Toyota fan ⁓ and you like Tacomas and a lot of people do, the Tacoma remains by far the best selling midsize pickup in the market. You know, sells nearly double ⁓ any other midsize pickup truck. So, you know, obviously a lot of people that really like Tacomas and, know, at the, you know, for the more like the SR5, you know, the

The lower trim levels of Tacoma's, pricing is a lot more reasonable. They start around 40 grand, ⁓ which is a lot more reasonable. ⁓ But at the upper end, they do get quite expensive.

Nicole (37:25)
Yeah, they get a little pricey.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:27)
Yep. All right. The other vehicle I had ⁓ also had a Toyota hybrid system in it, but it wasn't a Toyota. ⁓ It was the 2025 Subaru Forester Touring Hybrid. Yeah. So this year for the Forester Hybrid, they've had a plug-in hybrid system in some of the Subarus like the Crosstrek in prior years. This year ⁓ they've

Nicole (37:41)
⁓ a subi.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:56)
discarded that on on the sheet here. It refers to it as a next generation Subaru series parallel hybrid system. ⁓ What this is, in fact, is the Toyota hybrid system, but it has been repackaged because on Toyota's ⁓ front wheel drive or all wheel drive Toyota's with the hybrid systems, they're set up with inline four cylinder engines and mounted transversely under the hood. And so the

transmission, the hybrid drive unit has to be packaged in a certain way to mount on the end of the engine. Well, in a Subaru, they're using their four cylinder boxer engines, which have the crankshaft instead of going sideways across the car, the crankshaft is going forward and back longitudinal. And so they basically took the guts of the Toyota system and put it in a new case, a new package to made up with a Subaru boxer engine and then put that

into the Forester and I think it's gonna be in a couple of other models as well. And what you get is a five passenger, five door crossover. And it's funny, I haven't driven a Forester in quite a long time. And when I walked up to this and had it parked next to a Hyundai IONIQ 9 that I'll talk about next week, I was surprised at how large it was.

Nicole (39:18)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (39:21)
It was larger than I expected it to be. And it's quite roomy inside. Subaru is using their 2.5 liter boxer engine in there. The combined output is 194 horsepower, which again, is not a lot. given the size, Forester is actually,

Nicole (39:21)
Yeah? ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (39:50)
Not crazy heavy, I it's not light, but 3946 pounds. ⁓ It's not ridiculously heavy. And so the performance is good, it's decent. ⁓ And it is ⁓ rated at 35 miles per gallon city, 34 highway, 35 combined, which is in the same ballpark as the other all-wheel drive versions.

Nicole (39:55)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (40:17)
of the hybrid compact crossovers like the RAV4 and the CRV and the Ford Escape and the Hyundai's and Kia's. They're all in that 35, 36 mile per gallon area for the all wheel drive versions. Now, granted, those competitors, you can also get them with front wheel drive to get you closer to 40 miles per gallon. Subaru does not offer this with front wheel drive. It's all wheel drive only.

Nicole (40:36)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (40:47)
So you get, you know, you're to get slightly less fuel economy than you would with a front wheel drive. But with 16 and a half gallon tank, you know, they say 581 miles of range. You know, on my test loop, I actually got 37 miles per gallon with this. So I did a little better than the Minroni.

And so that's, you know, it's, it's reasonably fuel efficient, particularly given the size of the vehicle. ⁓ And, excuse me, one thing that ⁓ I found particularly noteworthy, you know, I mentioned earlier the sound of Toyota four cylinder engines, you know, because this is a Toyota hybrid system, it behaves, it has the same kind of control strategy as Toyota's. So

Nicole (41:30)
you

Sam Abuelsamid (41:41)
You get that motorboating effect, you know, where when you're accelerating, it'll often rev the engine up to about 4000 RPM and it'll sit there and, you know, just rev at constant speed as the CVT, the ECVT system is gradually changing gear ratios and getting you up to whatever speed you're going to accelerate to. Um, in a Toyota hybrid, like a Camry or Prius or Corolla, it's not the most pleasant sound in the world. The Subaru on the other hand.

Nicole (42:08)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (42:12)
actually was both quieter and the sound I did get was much more pleasant to listen to. It did not have that kind of groaning sound that you have from the Toyota four cylinders. ⁓ So this was actually a much more pleasant vehicle to drive than, you know, say a RAV4 hybrid and, you know, got decent fuel economy to boot. So there's there's that. As said, it's roomy. It's got plenty of cargo space in the back.

Nicole (42:17)
There you go.

you

Sam Abuelsamid (42:42)
⁓ Probably my biggest complaint about it ⁓ is the infotainment system, both the software, know, which is it's Subaru's older Starlink system. You know, it's been around in Subarus for better part of a decade. ⁓ But more importantly, the display that they were using. Not a great display. ⁓ Yeah. So, you know, if you look at most modern devices, most modern

Nicole (42:58)
Mm-hmm.

Really?

Sam Abuelsamid (43:12)
screens and cars or tablets or your phones. The way, you know, the display is actually a stack of a bunch of components. You've got the there's the digitizer on top, which is actually sensing when you drag your finger across it and there's the glass. And then the display is actually underneath that the actual LCD that that renders the stuff that you're looking at. And on most modern displays, those are all laminated together really tightly. So it looks like the display is

Nicole (43:31)
you

Sam Abuelsamid (43:42)
pretty much at the surface that you're touching. When you look at the display in the Subaru, you can see where the display itself is actually set well back from the top surface that you're touching. And on top of that, it doesn't have the highest contrast, it's not the brightest screen. It's not as bad as some of the old Nissan screens, Nissan's gone away from those, but it's not a great display.

Nicole (43:45)
Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (44:13)
So hopefully, you know, certainly in a vehicle that we drove this week that we will talk about probably next week, I think, you know, that one has a much better display in it. Hopefully we'll start seeing Subaru adding those to some of their vehicles as well in the next couple of years. What else? Yeah, eight point seven inches of ground clearance, which is really good. You know, again, for a vehicle this type, it's better, better than pretty much anything.

⁓ in the class. Most of them around 8 to 8.3, 8.2 inches. Some are even less. Some are well under 8 inches of ground clearance. ⁓ fact, a lot of them are. Let's see. The eyesight ADAS system ⁓ doesn't use radar. ⁓ It uses ⁓ stereoscopic cameras mounted behind the windshield. ⁓ Worked pretty well. Had no issues with that. Did a decent job at lane centering and

Nicole (44:53)
Hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (45:12)
adaptive cruise control. Let's see, what else? Yeah, those are the main things. It ⁓ does have support for wireless car play and Android Auto, as ⁓ most other vehicles do now too. ⁓ USB-A and USB-C ports. There's a wireless charging pad for your phone. It's ⁓ a good car to do stuff if you have an active lifestyle.

Nicole (45:28)
you

you

Sam Abuelsamid (45:42)
We loaded it up, it to ⁓ the lake, took Morty out to the lake to do some paddle boarding last week and put the seat cover in the back there. ⁓ Lots of room in the back for a couple of beach chairs and the paddle board. ⁓ It's good vehicle. ⁓ I quite liked it. ⁓ And as I said, it's quite fuel efficient. ⁓ Base price on the forest, total price $44,000.

Nicole (46:05)
you

Sam Abuelsamid (46:12)
and $5. You want to guess at the destination charge?

Nicole (46:17)
Um, let's go with 995. Oh, that was way off.

Sam Abuelsamid (46:24)
1420

yeah uh bass price for the touring trim is 41695 um and i'm not sure off the top of my head what the bass price is let me see bass price for the

Where is building price?

Subaru website. Let's see, Forester.

Nicole (46:48)
Do find it?

Sam Abuelsamid (46:50)
Let's see premium. Okay, so Subaru is a little unusual ⁓ Oftentimes on many of their vehicles the the base trim level is actually called premium ⁓ Yeah, there actually is a base Forester, but that's the gas only version that starts at 29 995 ⁓ And then there's the premium and then the base price or the

Nicole (46:56)
huh.

Which I think just messes with you, like how many people can we trick? No.

Sam Abuelsamid (47:18)
base level for the hybrid is the premium hybrid, which is $36,595. And the touring that I drove, actually, looks like since the Monroney that I had with the car was initially printed, the price has gone up. So it's now, the touring hybrid is now actually $43,295 plus the $1420 destination charge. But.

When you compare that against ⁓ the top trim levels, mean, when you compare any of the trim levels, the 36 for the premium hybrid is in the same ballpark as what you would pay for an all-wheel drive RAV4 hybrid or CRV hybrid. They're comparably priced. yeah, mid-40s for the Subaru Forester hybrid. ⁓ And that... ⁓

Nicole (48:03)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:15)
Let's see, let's move on to some other stuff. ⁓ So, Ford had some big news on Monday, last Monday. ⁓ Did you ⁓ watch the reveal or the announcement or anything? Was it streamed from Louisville?

Nicole (48:17)
Okay.

I did not

actually watch the reveal, I know of what happened. Wait, my light, everything just closed on me. ⁓ I am aware of it, the great big electric pickups news.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:44)
Yeah.

Now the, you know, if you were actually writing down those words that you just said, you would probably have some commas in there, ⁓ or maybe rearrange the sequence of those words, because what we're not talking about here is great big pickups that are electric. We are talking about great big news about electric pickups.

Nicole (48:50)
I know.

No, it's just great big news. Great. Yes,

it's because it's not going to be a big pickup. It's going to be a small pickup and they're saying it's going to start under and about 30,000 or do they say under 30,000? So $30,000 they're going to make it at the Louisville, plant. I said Louisville, right? I think. ⁓ And it sounds cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:13)
at about $30,000.

Nicole (49:26)
But it's still a ways off. Like they're saying production is planned to start at the end of 26. That's over a year from now, because it's only August of 25. And we'll go on sale in 2027. So that's still a long way off. I feel like when these OEMs make these announcements that are just.

We're going to build this. ⁓ awesome. When? Three years. What? Like, I just feel like there's a lot of wiggle room in there for things to happen as far as what consumers want and what pricing does. And now we have things like tariffs and all these other things to worry about and the cost of the, I don't, I don't know.

Sam Abuelsamid (50:08)
So ⁓ as you mentioned, this is gonna be a smaller truck. first talked about this, first brought it up ⁓ about a year ago ⁓ when they were announcing some shuffling of their EV plans. They mentioned that, they've talked about this Skunk Works program they have in California to develop lower cost EVs. And this is the first product of that program. ⁓ And a year ago they said, yeah, we're doing a mid-sized electric pickup from the Skunk Works program.

Nicole (50:21)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (50:38)
⁓ And that's the first product first of several products from that program and they're now calling officially calling this platform their universal electric vehicle platform ⁓ Because it's it's gonna be it's a flexible system that can support a bunch of different form factors And even though they call it they've been referring to it as a midsize I was on a call with some executives on Monday morning a couple hours before the announcement and I asked you know, so

Nicole (51:06)
you

Sam Abuelsamid (51:06)
You call

this a midsize, but you know what, what is the actual size of this? Is it closer in size to ⁓ a Maverick or a Ranger? which is, you know, Maverick is considered the compact truck and the Rangers, the midsize. And they said it's about the same footprint as a Maverick, but because it's an EV, they can package things better. and so they're, you know, the terms of the cabin space and everything. They said it'll have.

⁓ more passenger volume than, ⁓ the new RAV4, which is roughly a hundred cubic feet. so it's going to be fairly roomy, passengers passenger cabin. It's going to have a frunk. it's going to have a bed. and that's about it as far as specs that they've told us. They have

Nicole (51:46)
Mm-hmm.

So we

have the loosest of details about this at this point, which is not surprising given that we're looking at the end of next year before they start building the thing, because things could change between now and then. So it makes sense that they haven't really given the nitty gritty on this just yet.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:01)
very, very loosest of details.

But my guess is that at that $30,000 price point, that base, they are probably, I'm guessing they're probably gonna have two battery size options. That base truck will probably have a range of about 250 miles. And then there'll probably be about a 300 mile version that'll probably be about three or $4,000 more. And what's unique here, I mean, they have told us a bunch of other technical details without getting into specific specs.

⁓ so, ⁓ a key part of how they're getting the cost out of this thing is that, ⁓ they're following the pattern that was initially set by Tesla in 22 with their, Texas built model wise, it's now been copied by a bunch of Chinese automakers where instead of the body being built up from a bunch of steel stampings, ⁓ they're using a couple of large.

aluminum die castings for the front structure and for the rear structure. ⁓ And then joining those to a structural battery pack in the middle. And ⁓ the big part of the announcement on Monday is that they're adopting this new production system. They call it an all new revolutionary production system. They talked about going from, you know, the Model T style assembly line to

Nicole (53:30)
you

Sam Abuelsamid (53:36)
⁓ what they're now calling their universal EV production system or an assembly tree. And the rendering that they showed us, know, it had ⁓ showed, you know, just a single transfer line is the old style assembly line. And then the assembly tree was three branches, three parallel branches, one making the front structure, one putting together the rear structure and one putting together the central section that then all come together to be joined together into a finished vehicle.

And the particular arrangement that they're doing here, you know, and the combination of the way the vehicle is architected is new, but it's not entirely new.

Nicole (54:21)
Not quite as revolutionary, maybe.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:24)
Yeah. So,

know, as I said, the diagram that they showed had three parallel branches, you know, for these three sections of the vehicle that then joined together. Well, if you look at the Rouge Electrical Vehicle Center, which is the plant where they build the Lightning today, it's a separate factory that's adjacent to the main F-150 plant in Dearborn, Michigan. The way that plant is arranged,

is at one end of the building, you have the cab and bed that are built in the body shop next door, along with all the gas F-150 bodies. They come in, they put them down on an automated guided vehicle. And as it starts to move down the assembly, as it starts to move, because it's not actually on a line, the AGV just moves from station to station. So it's basically an automated cart. And the people on the line are adding parts to it and are installing the dashboards and the seats and everything.

and ⁓ it moves towards the center of the building. From the far opposite end of the building, they bring in a frame and a battery pack, and they put those onto an AGV, and they join them all together and add the suspension and the high voltage wiring harness as it moves towards the center of the building. When they get to the center of the building, they flip that chassis over, put the cab and the bed on it, turn 90 degrees,

and then continue down another branch back parallel to the original one to put on the wheels and all of the last components before it rolls out of the building. ⁓ So it's kind of like the assembly tree, but with the branches, instead of being parallel sticking up, think of it as being flattened out. It's the same basic concept. The specifics of the arrangement of where the branches are is a little different, but it's the same basic concept.

Nicole (56:11)
You

Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:20)
What

is different is that when they do that on the Lightning, when they put in the dashboard, they have to go through the door openings in the cab. When they put in the seats, they go through the door openings in the cab, ⁓ which makes it really awkward to maneuver all these big parts in there and then get everything bolted down. ⁓ What they're doing for this universal EV platform is none of that stuff is going in through door openings. Instead,

They're doing what Tesla does with the Model Y in Texas, which is they have the battery pack actually is the floor of the car. So there is no floor in the body. The battery pack forms the floor. And so on one of those three branches, they put down the carpet, they bolt the seats onto that, they bolt in the console, they bolt in the dashboard, and then they lift all that up.

into the central structure of the car through a big hole in the floor and then bolt it into place. And that makes it a lot easier to build. There's a lot fewer parts. The process can go a lot faster. The ergonomics are a lot better for the workers. ⁓ It takes a lot of cost out. It can improve quality ⁓ if you do it right. So I think that there's a lot of potential for Ford.

I'll link in links in the show notes to a couple of articles where I talk about this in more detail. But I think there's a lot of potential for this to I think Ford, if they if they execute everything correctly, which is the key caveat here, ⁓ then they could potentially build a $30,000 electric pickup truck ⁓ profitably. ⁓ And after the pickup, there will be crossovers and perhaps sedans. They showed an animated GIF that showed a

Nicole (57:57)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:15)
bunch of different body styles on this and you know this kind of architecture is pretty easy to do different body styles off of it. ⁓ So we'll see. The other component of course is you know they've got a new zonal electronic architecture which means all new software. That's where things are probably most likely to to go sideways. Yeah. Yeah. So we'll see what happens. ⁓

Nicole (58:31)
Mm.

to go a little sideways.

It'll be interesting

to see what happens and it'd cool if they can build a truck. think that, you know, I feel like we have lots of promises for a truck that maybe that price point they don't really happen.

Sam Abuelsamid (58:51)
Yeah, well, know, like I said, this is the kind of approach that, you know, a lot of this is what Chinese automakers are doing to build their 20, $25,000 EVs. And we'll see if ⁓ Ford can pull it off. Ford will be, you know, based on what we know so far, Ford looks to be the first legacy automaker to take this approach to building EVs. Yeah.

Nicole (59:15)
Yeah. It'll be interesting. mean, I

feel, you know, it would be cool if can do it. And I think it'll be interesting to see. Hopefully they give us some information as they're sort of moving along so we can follow how this all comes together.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:27)
And if they can execute it, think Slate's done.

Nicole (59:32)
you do. You think Slate will be done if they do this. Yeah?

Sam Abuelsamid (59:34)
Yeah,

because for $30,000, you're getting compactish to midsize electric pickup truck with probably 250 miles of range. It will have four doors, seating for five. It'll have power windows. It'll have an infotainment system, none of which are included in the $27,000 slate two-door pickup.

Nicole (59:47)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:01)
You know, I think you there will be some people that will want the minimalist slate But I think there'll be a lot more people that would be you know The number of people that will want to pay $27,000 for a two-door slate with no radio in it and manual windows versus the number of people that will say $3,000 $3,000 more to get a truck that's painted already that I don't have to apply the wrap to that I don't have to stick a radio in and it don't have you know that I can you know

Nicole (1:00:23)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:28)
Carry my friends and not have to spend the money to install extra seats or you anything else I Think I think slate is gonna have a really hard time competing with this

Nicole (1:00:38)
I think it'll be a

challenge. Yeah. I thought this when I saw the slate, I thought it was neat. It's a really interesting idea. The thing was people who were excited about it were just super excited about everything. So I don't know. I couldn't tell those, you know, like when people who are like the early adopters of any new company, any new whatever, always super excited about it. I remember guys feeling that way about Fisker. Look where that went, you know.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:05)
Yeah, well we'll get we'll get the Fisker a little bit later ⁓ Or ⁓ the the descendants of Fisker ⁓ Okay, so yeah, I mean it's gonna be interesting to watch ⁓ I I think it I think Slate's gonna have a hard time Unless unless they can sell that truck for if they can sell it for 20 grand. Yeah, I mean their original plan was based on having

Nicole (1:01:11)
Hahaha.

Ha

Yeah, I think you might be right.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:32)
tax credits, which would have brought the base price down to about $20,000. With those gone, Ford designed this to be sold at $30,000 before credits. I think Ford is probably going to have a lot easier time selling their trucks than Slate will. Especially if it's a Maverick-sized truck. Look how popular Maverick is.

Nicole (1:01:35)
which it's not gonna have, yeah.

Right.

Yeah, I think you're right.

Yeah, absolutely. No, it's a it's a that's a great size and you know to have an EV in that category would be that's affordable. That's the key having an EV that's affordable. That would be a big deal. They can do it if they can do it.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:12)
All right, Cadillac announced a new program this week called Curated by Cadillac. So the German automakers ⁓ all have these customization programs. Porsche does it, BMW does it, Mercedes-Benz does it, Audi does it, ⁓ where if you don't like the color options that are available,

⁓ or you want a different interior on your car, ⁓ or pretty much anything else, ⁓ they will build it for you. It'll cost you, but they'll build it for you.

Nicole (1:02:51)
But and it's only on the CT5, 2026 CT5V Blackwing.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:59)
Right, well, yeah, to start with for Cadillac. Like I said, the Germans do it on most of their models. have, you know, there's ⁓ BMW individual, Mercedes manufacturer, I forget what Porsche calls their program. ⁓ But now ⁓ Cadillac is doing this and they're starting with the CT5 Blackwing. My guess is if it's even reasonably successful, they will add this to ⁓ other models in the next year or two.

Nicole (1:03:02)
Frick yeah.

Right.

Yeah, they all have one.

Yeah, they'll roll it out.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:30)
⁓ So what you end up with is a CT5 Blackwing that is essentially hand-built and ⁓ they will ⁓ customize it for you. You can have a palette of more than 160 colors.

Nicole (1:03:47)
And it included high gloss and frost, each hand painted by artisans to show quality standards. You have a hand painted gar.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:56)
Yeah, so they're gonna be building these in a separate facility from the normal plant in Lansing. ⁓ And instead of going through the normal paint shop, they will build up the body and they'll have guys out there spraying, painting these cars by hand and buffing them and painting or finishing them off. ⁓ And they will have an expanded selection of colors and materials, can be mixed and matched.

Nicole (1:04:01)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:26)
⁓ access to elevated client experience. basically...

Nicole (1:04:31)
Yeah, so this was

that was kind of this client experience. They talk about the concierge, and it's not just a random person from Cadillac. They're saying these are true, like design experts who've worked in where they say fashion, entertainment, fine arts, design. And they're the ones who are going to be helping you advise on your curated by Cadillac, presumably so you don't think that two things look great together. The designers going to say that might not look the way you think it will look right.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:55)
They'll provide some feedback for you.

But I think ultimately, the goal is to have the customer be, let the customer have what they want. they will.

Nicole (1:05:07)
It's important

to note what the starting price is to have what you want. Did you see that number, Sam?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:13)
Yes,

it's ⁓ it is elevated from the standard CT five blackwing. It's $158,000. Yes.

Nicole (1:05:19)
That's the start. So depending

on how fancy you get with your interior, that's the start, but it does include the destination fee.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:29)
Yeah. ⁓ So

yeah, they're going to build these in ⁓ Warren. There's a building at the GM Tech Center in Warren, Michigan, which is where they also assemble the ⁓ Celestic. That's where they're going to be building these Blackwings, the CT5 Blackwings.

Nicole (1:05:45)
And they do have a couple of images, presumably of one of the ideas you could get. It's a what is they they're calling it? They have an interior in Morello red that looks incredible and an exterior in deep amethyst metallic. They look cool. mean, people it's going to let you come up with some pretty slick looking cars. And I always thought it was cool to make your own car, like to really pick like I don't just want one of these three color schemes you have. I want this. That's kind of neat.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:13)
Yeah, these one-of-one programs, I think, are pretty interesting. ⁓ Dodge did it with the last run of Vipers, the last few hundred Vipers a few years back. They did a one-of-one program, so each customer could order and customize theirs however they wanted. then whatever combination they picked, that was off the table for any subsequent customers. So no other customer could order the exact same car.

Nicole (1:06:41)
wow. So nobody could ever duplicate. You literally were driving a 101 that could never be done with anyone else. That's kind cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:44)
Yeah. And,

and, you know, they just, also just announced that they're doing the same thing now with the Durango for 2026. They're offering a one-of-one program with the Durango. ⁓ forget what exactly what they call it, but you know, they've got a bunch of special colors that you can order, ⁓ different color combinations and stripes and different other, other things. and now Cadillac's doing this. I don't know if the Cadillac program is exclusive.

It's not clear if they will let multiple customers choose the same combination.

Nicole (1:07:18)
Yeah, it doesn't

say anything in there about them saying once it's designed, it's that's it. So it's not it doesn't look like it. It has any way to keep that. Although the chances are pretty slim that you probably get two of you who picked exactly the same crazy design.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:35)
you know, unless you wanted, you know, his and hers or his and his, you know, for you and your partner or hers and hers. ⁓ yeah. ⁓ let's see, what is the CT five black wing start at anyway, right now? ⁓ sedan, the CT five, ⁓ V series black wing, ⁓ starts at $99,000.

Nicole (1:07:40)
yeah, okay. Yeah. Could do that.

the straight up one.

That's a good chunk more for this. That's $60,000. Oof.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:06)
Yeah. So you're about 60 grand, $60,000 more to start with.

⁓

So maybe you might want to consider ⁓ ordering one of these two as your next vehicle.

Nicole (1:08:22)
You know maybe for $158,000 maybe I'll order two, you know, who knows?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:08:26)
As

long as we're talking about your vehicles, do you want to provide us any potentially final update on the Wegener S?

Nicole (1:08:30)
Yes.

⁓ At

the moment, the Wagoneer S ⁓ is going as it should. It is in my driveway. We actually took it on a big ⁓ little road trip yesterday up to the beach to have lobster rolls and it charged when it was supposed to charge and unplugged it and it was ready to go. So it's going as it should. I just got it back this past week and.

I there's there's still a couple of issues that have nothing to do with the battery. ⁓ But we're working on those and but for the moment she runs the swag and here's going she runs so. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:14)
Is sir

is is it going to be in your possession for much longer?

Nicole (1:09:21)
I'm unsure. How about we leave that? There could be a further update. So I am unsure how things are going to roll out at this point. ⁓ But yeah, there will probably be one more update, at least one more update on the state of the state. But it's running right now. I drove it all day yesterday. It was fabulous. I do love it. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:22)
Okay, having finalized, so there could be a further update.

Okay.

That's good.

That's important. Because even when your car is frustrating you, if you still love it, at least you get something out of it.

Nicole (1:09:45)
Yes.

I do, which is the hardest part of

this, Sam, is that I don't hate the car. I love it. I love this car. I just hate when it doesn't work, but I love the car. I love driving it. It's really fun. It's really quiet. It's really peppy. I love the car. I feel like I have a little bit of an abusive relationship with my Wagoneer ass. you know, I keep going back.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:09)
I am familiar

with that. We had the same scenario with a couple of Volkswagens over for many years.

Nicole (1:10:14)
See? You're like, I

love it. And you keep me like, oh gosh, I know it's going to do this to me. And I love it anyway. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:19)
Yeah, yeah,

especially with our 2000 Passat, we had exactly that kind of relationship.

Nicole (1:10:23)
yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So we'll we'll see. Things are a little bit up in the air, but I'll keep you guys all updated on how that rolls out.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:32)
Okay. ⁓ Let's talk about some of the stuff that's happening at Monterey this weekend as we're recording. Let's see, a lot of the events at Monterey Car Week are winding down. The Concours at Pebble Beach is still going on today. ⁓ But ⁓ at least here in the US, ⁓ Monterey Car Week has actually kind of in many ways become the most important auto show. ⁓

And this is where we see a lot of, least at the higher end of the market, a lot of debuts, a lot of interesting concepts ⁓ that, you know, if you happen to be, well, probably by the time you hear this, it's probably too late, but, you know, they were, they were actually showing one of those CT five curated CT five black wings ⁓ at at Monterey. But there's a bunch of other stuff. Let's start with Acura. So.

Nicole (1:11:08)
Mm hmm.

Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:31)
Last year at Monterey, Acura showed off a concept. They called the precision electric concept. That was, ⁓ it's funny when we saw it, you know, they had already launched the ZDX. The original ZDX was Acura's first SUV coupe, you know, the first fastback utility vehicle. And it seemed like if they were going to build something like this,

That's the car they should have called the ZDX, but they didn't. They put that name on a car, on a utility based on the Cadillac Lyric, a more wagon-like vehicle. And then, know, ⁓ in earlier this year, they released an image of a camo-wrapped prototype that Acura announced would be their first in-house built EV. ⁓ And now this week in Monterey,

They have showed it as ⁓ the RSX prototype. ⁓ So, you know, in Honda and Acura's terminology, when they call something a prototype, ⁓ as opposed to a concept, what you are seeing is effectively the production vehicle with only very minor tweaks, like in this case, you know, probably the mirrors, you you'll probably get, you know, standard optical mirrors instead of the digital mirrors that are on this one.

Nicole (1:12:53)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:00)
But otherwise, what we see here is basically the new RSX that will go into production late this year in Marysville, Ohio, go on sale early in 2026, ⁓ based on the new Honda EV platform that will also be used for the Honda Zero Series vehicles. ⁓ What do you think?

Nicole (1:13:24)
I like it. This color that they have, they're showing us in is sort of a yellowy gold color that's actually really cool. And it looks neat with the black accents in the car. I think it looks good. I like the design of it. I like that it's not too fussy in the front. Like it's it's got just enough angles. I think it's a sleek looking little car. What do think?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:45)
I agree. I like it a lot. And, you know, I'm generally not a huge fan of these SUV coupes. But, you know, I think this one's pretty well executed. The main difference, you it's actually stuck surprisingly close to last year's concept. You know, it's been toned down a little bit, but not a whole lot. The biggest difference, I think, you from looking, I was looking back and forth at the images the other day of the last year's concept and this one.

Nicole (1:13:54)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:15)
⁓ And the concept the greenhouse was smaller So the roofline was a little bit lower and the whole greenhouse area was kind of squished down a little bit to give it a more out-there appearance But other than making the greenhouse a little bit bigger, know, so you actually have some volume for passengers Which the concept didn't have to accommodate ⁓ It's it's not bad ⁓

Nicole (1:14:19)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And I love the profile. Like it looks

good for my, you know, it's nice in the front, good three quarter rear three quarter, but that profile, I love how they've done, how they've done that. Like you said, the coupe hatchback, the SUV coupe thing. I like how this one is executed. It doesn't look, sometimes they look like you just took an SUV and messed with it. Like we have this as a perfect little SUV. Now it's a coupe. This one just looks like it was designed to look this way. It looks good.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:06)
Yeah, it does look like it was purpose designed for this profile. ⁓

Nicole (1:15:10)
Yes. Mm-hmm. It doesn't look like

they messed with something they had and tried to make it work.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:16)
Yeah, I expect we'll probably see the final production version of this, perhaps at the LA Auto Show in November. ⁓ Maybe at CES, but I think it'll probably be at LA is where we'll see the actual production version. But it's basically going to be what you see here. This is it.

Nicole (1:15:25)
Mmm.

Yeah, I like it. I it looks good.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:42)
⁓ Next up from Monterey, let's do Infinity. ⁓ So Infinity showed a couple of different things. They have the QX65 monograph and a couple of QX80 concepts. So QX65. Yes. ⁓

Nicole (1:15:45)
Okay.

QX65, which

is another sportback SUV which you don't generally like, right? Doesn't that in your category of not liking? What do you think of this one compared to the Acura?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:06)
Generally, yeah.

It's not bad. I actually saw this ⁓ almost two years ago for the first time when I was in Japan. When I ⁓ went to the 2023 Japan Mobility Show with Nissan and they took us to their ⁓ headquarters, their design center, ⁓ Alfonso Baia, who's the head of design for Nissan.

Nicole (1:16:16)
yeah?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:36)
global head of design for Nissan, basically walked us down this row of ⁓ prototypes and clay models and fiberglass models of everything that Nissan had planned for its global lineup over the next four years. ⁓ And among those, ⁓ we've now seen ⁓ several of those vehicles come to market. The Kix was there. ⁓ The new Nissan Micra that is launching overseas.

Unfortunately, we don't get ⁓ the the ⁓ Murano was there ⁓ and ⁓ Now the QX 65 is the latest one. and the leaf they showed us the new leaf, which will be driving in a few weeks ⁓ For the first time but the QX 65 This is basically the QX 60 which is Nissan or infinities version of the Nissan Pathfinder ⁓

Nicole (1:17:19)
Mm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:34)
with the third row removed and the roof chopped off at the back to give you a coupe. What do you think?

Nicole (1:17:42)
I like how it looks. think the girl's a little on the aggressive side. From the front, I'm not, it's a lot. Did you look at the front picture? Just a right on it. It's a lot.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:53)
It is a lot. But

I think, you know, this is this is the direction they're trying to go with infinity. You know, to make it bolder and stand, you know, set it apart even more from Nissan.

Nicole (1:18:05)
It definitely makes

it bolder. makes it stand out more. I think it gives it more.

Distinctive character, especially the lighting across the front. I feel like they're really trying to give it something that's distinctively Infinity, which I think is a good call I think it needs that like like other than the grill being a little bit on the out there side Like even the lighting pattern in the back when you look at it They've done a lot with lights Which you know who does that Kia does so much cool stuff with the lighting signatures on their cars It just becomes such a neat aspect of their vehicles It looks like infinity's doing something kind of similar with that ⁓ and I think that's a good call the vehicle overall

like the dimensions of it and the profile and everything. looks a little more traditional SUV coupe profile, I think. But I like this one. I actually like the Acura is sort of sloppier. It's a smoother back to the Acura just talking about than this one. But I do like what they did with this. What do you think, Sam? How do you feel about it?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:02)
Yeah, I

agree with what you said, like the roofline, you know, it's not cut down quite as aggressively as the Acura. The Acura, I think, is going for even more of the coupe thing, you where they're less worried about backseat headroom, ⁓ whereas in this one, ⁓ you know, there's a metal trim piece that goes across the top of the side glass that...

kind of gives you that sort of profile. But then the actual metal, which at least on this concept, ⁓ is done in black to contrast from the rest of it. It's similar to the idea that Ford did with the Mustang Mach-E.

Nicole (1:19:37)
Mm-hmm.

for the first time since

2001.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:47)
⁓ which was ⁓ to have contrast in color for like a black for the roof ⁓ and to kind of hide the fact that the roof line actually extends back a little bit more. So you have some extra rear seat headroom. ⁓ So this one I think will probably be a little bit more usable for multiple passengers than the Acura. aside from that, and I think this one,

Nicole (1:20:02)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:18)
A few years ago when they launched the QX55, they talked about it being inspired by the old Infinity FX from the early 2000s. ⁓ I don't think it ever quite really fit with that. I think at least from a design perspective, I think this is a lot closer to the sort of feel we had from the FX than the QX55 was. ⁓ Although, from a...

Nicole (1:20:26)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:46)
From a performance standpoint, I don't think this will match what the FX did because the FX was built on a rear drive platform with a longitudinal V6, or it was also available with a V8 engine. ⁓ This is based on the Pathfinder QX55, so it's a front drive, all-wheel drive platform. ⁓ So I think it'll do fine, but ⁓ I think the design's pretty good. I think they've done a decent job on it.

Nicole (1:21:14)
Yeah,

it does look good. I like it too.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:17)
All right, then the other thing that infinity was showing there's a pair of QX 80s Which also have very large grills by the way

Nicole (1:21:25)
Very

large girls. That's that's kind of the theme, isn't it? I like it, but I don't mind it as much on the QX 80 or at least the track spec one. The terrain spec one is wild. The track spec one I actually really like. The terrain spec is. That's wild. The front end of that car. Look at that between the lights that are the lights on the roof and the lights that are just the lights. And there's so many lines and then there's lines going. Nice, it's lines, lines everywhere.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:27)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, a lot of vertical and slightly diagonal lines.

Nicole (1:21:53)
I do like the track spec one though.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:58)
Yeah, my problem with the track spec, okay, you the QX80 is a big three row body on frame, full size SUV, not much different from the Expedition you were driving. The idea of making a track spec version of such a vehicle just seems anathema to me. Why would I want a vehicle like this on a track?

Nicole (1:21:59)
You're like... Yes?

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Correct.

Did they too?

Well, well,

well, well, well, there was the, there was the Durango SRT Hellcat, right? That's a three rows, isn't it three rows or is that two? Okay. So the Durango, that's a track worthy car. Did you like that one? you didn't like it.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:32)
Yes.

It's a three roll, yes.

I'm

not a huge fan of

Nicole (1:22:47)
⁓ see, then what else was it the Cherokee or the Grand Cherokee that they did it?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:51)
There was the Grand Cherokee

Trackhawk.

Nicole (1:22:54)
Okay, which isn't a three row,

but it's still big.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:22:58)
It's just, you know, I mean, this, this one, even compared to the Durango, this is a larger vehicle in the Durango. You know, the grand Cherokee, you know, was, was the smallest of that group. Uh, you know, and, know, I think that's probably, you know, that is probably a reasonable, a more reasonable size to have a high performance model. The tracks back, this tracks back.

Nicole (1:23:05)
Yes, it is.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:27)
⁓ QX80, I don't know, just, doesn't do it for me.

Nicole (1:23:31)
What about, so do you like the terrain spec better?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:23:33)
I think

the terrain spec makes more sense for this kind of vehicle. It's basically an overlanding version of the QX80.

Nicole (1:23:41)
It probably

makes more sense, but I don't like the there's so many lines on the front of the grill. It hurts my head.

There's little diagonal lines on the grill. They go a different way, the lines that make up the headlights. There's a different set of lines in the trim at the edge of the hood. There's lines that go a different direction underneath. then the, like, uh, looks like there's lines that are on the, um, skid plate possibly. And then there's lines along the There's so many lines. It's like I'm having like a visual aura from like in a migraine. There's lines everywhere.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:14)
That's fair enough. Well, I mean, you can have the track spec. I'll take the terrain spec. Yeah.

Nicole (1:24:18)
This is fair, we'll get one of each, we'll

just trade off and see which we like better in the real world. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:23)
There we go. That works. ⁓

OK, let's see. ⁓ What else? ⁓ Cadillac. ⁓ In addition to showing the curated CT5 BlackSpec, they had an actual concept. ⁓ Quite a wild concept, too. The elevated velocity.

Nicole (1:24:31)
Yes.

Okay, the first thing I think about this when I look at this in that main picture is the DeLorean. That's all I see when I look at this, like DeLorean for 2025. Do you see it? Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:24:50)
Ha

I do, I do, because it's

finished in silver. ⁓ It almost looks like it could be bare stainless steel. It's not, but it's got gull wing doors, gull wing doors, like enormous gull wing doors. ⁓ Well, and they're also very long. When you look at it from the side profile, they're very long doors because unlike a DeLorean, which was a two seat,

Nicole (1:25:03)
Mm-hmm. It's not, but the color, yep. Giant, look at how thick those are. Look at the thickness of that door. This is up in the air. Yeah. Gosh, those are.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:24)
vehicle. ⁓ This is a ⁓ big four seat utility, know, technically an SUV. You know, I thought something that was interesting when I was on the briefing call, the background for this on Monday. ⁓ And when when they showed us these images, I thought, you know, it took me back to New York this year when we saw the Genesis concept.

Nicole (1:25:28)
or seat.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:54)
which I mean, it's a very different vehicle from this, but it's also, it's got some interesting similarities in that these are both very large, ⁓ very high riding, lots of ground clearance, big wheels and tires, very long hood profile. In the case of the Genesis, the greenhouse is more upright, more boxy, ⁓ whereas this is much ⁓ sleeker.

Than the than the Genesis, but there's this idea of these high-end luxury SUVs very long hood You know very big wheels ⁓ lots of ground clearance is it's going to be interesting to watch in the next Three four or five years to see if we actually start seeing vehicles of this form factor start to come to market

Nicole (1:26:46)
Yeah, because this is a concept, so this doesn't exist. it's not even a it's not like a prototype like you're talking about earlier. This is purely a concept, which means we could see something kind of sort of maybe like this or not even remotely at all.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:26:59)
Yeah, and Cadillac over the last 20, 25 years has been less inclined to ⁓ bring concept ideas like this to production than I think Genesis has. Genesis, more of the concepts that Genesis has shown have filtered their way into production in some form. ⁓ So I think...

If either company, if either brand is likely to do it, seems like it's more likely Genesis will do it. But both of these are also electric, which is interesting. ⁓

Nicole (1:27:37)
Did you see that there is a bespoke polo set in the rear of the Cadillac Elevated Velocity Concept? It's literally a polo set in a little light case. Okay, when I first look at this though, it makes me think of Harry Potter with the snitch that's in a little thing, like the little, the red, I think that's actually a helmet, that the helmet should sprout wings and fly away.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:27:48)
Yeah. ⁓

Is

that what that's supposed to be, the helmet? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And sunglasses and...

Nicole (1:28:00)
I think it's gloves because the polo set, right? So there's gloves, a helmet, sunglasses,

the polo balls. And then there's this, guess those two other pieces, do they make the mallet together? Do you need both those pieces? I think that's those make the mallet. Yep. So I feel like that piece in the middle has to be the helmet or the golden snitch for Cadillac. It is.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:08)
that's supposed to be the mallet and extend an extending mallet.

Okay.

Who knows? ⁓ It's an interesting concept. think

if nothing else, even if they don't build a vehicle like this, ⁓ there's some interesting design ideas that I think we will see filter into future Cadillacs. When you look at the back, the lighting, ⁓ especially in the center section, it's got this depth to it. It looks like there's a tunnel that's lit up ⁓ when you look at it.

Nicole (1:28:40)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:50)
You know, it's got these light bars in there. Actually, you know, Honda did something very similar last year with their zero series saloon concept, had a similar kind of idea there.

Nicole (1:28:51)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, that's really the takeaway from the concepts. You don't generally see something that really looks like this coming to production, but you'll see elements of it. It does show you what the designers at a given company are thinking. It shows you what they're putting a focus on and where they might. So you might not see this, but you could see something that has that sort of lighting in the back or has that sort of curving to the sheet metal. It does give you a hint at where their minds are. This would be their wildest ideas here, but tone that down and you can get bits and pieces of this in production cars, which would be

sort of need to see.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:29:34)
Yeah, I think it's going to be very interesting to watch Cadillac over the next five, 10 years. ⁓ cause you know, in a couple of recent, ⁓ briefings I've been in with them, you know, they've talked a lot about like, you know, a few weeks ago I was on one with John Roth, the president of Cadillac or whatever his current title is, the head of Cadillac. And, you know, he talked about, you know, wanting really, there's a lot of emphasis on expanding the brand globally. ⁓ you know, Cadillac.

You know had some good success in China, but that is faltering as it is for all nine non Chinese OEMs And so they're looking okay. Where can we make up for that lost market share in China? You know looking at the rest of the world looking at Europe South Asia and everywhere else and You know, this is part of what's behind their their strategy with ⁓ with racing as well You know they in the last couple of years they've

gone into the World Endurance Championship ⁓ with a GTP car. are running, they're gonna be joining Formula One next year. There's gonna be a Cadillac Formula One team starting in 2026. ⁓ Those are not insignificant investments. And the reason why you do that is to promote your brand outside of the US. You're not gonna go into Formula One and into World Endurance Championship.

⁓ just to sell more cars in Omaha. That's something, where does that come from?

Nicole (1:31:09)
Welcome back to Car...

I don't know, did something open up behind me maybe? I was watching the screen, maybe that was a bit of an ad, because I had windows open looking at all this stuff we were talking about.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:19)
⁓

So, yeah, it'll be interesting to see what other sorts of products Cadillac comes out with over the next few years.

Nicole (1:31:31)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:32)
⁓ And then finally on the US side, ⁓ you remember the Fiskars Karma.

Nicole (1:31:41)
I do remember the fisker karma. came before the fisker ocean, the first iteration of fisker that failed, before the second iteration of fisker that failed. Is this the third iteration of fisker? What is this?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:31:52)
Well,

so ⁓ when Fisker Automotive, which was the company that built the Fisker Karma, went bankrupt, unlike Fisker Inc., which built the ocean, Fisker Inc. just got liquidated. ⁓ Nobody bought up the assets and ⁓ tried to keep the company going. Fisker Automotive got acquired by a Chinese company called Wangshan Group, which is a major Chinese supplier.

Nicole (1:31:59)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:20)
And they have kept the company more or less in business for the last 15 years or 12 years, 12 years since they bought it. was 2023, I think that 20 or sorry, 2013 when they acquired it. And they have continued to build cars based on the Karma ever since then in very small volumes. But, you know, but they're still there. They're still kicking. And.

Nicole (1:32:24)
Ha!

Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:48)
Last year, they showed a new variant of this. They had been selling a modified version of the original Karma as the Karma Revero. So the company is called Karma Automotive now. ⁓ And they had the Revero, which they were selling for a number of years. And then that transitioned into the GS6, which was a further modified version of that. And now the latest iteration of the original Karma.

is called the Gaia Sera, which when they first showed it, you know, it's got some styling updates to it, new interior on it compared to the original Karma Fisker Karma. And when they first showed it last year, they talked about it being all electric. Well, as the market has shifted around a little bit, they have opted to, at least for now, keep it as an extended range EV, which is what the

The original Fisker Karma was the first really somewhat volume production EREV. ⁓ It had ⁓ at the time originally a GM four cylinder turbo two liter engine ⁓ that was driving a generator and had a battery and a couple of electric motors driving the rear wheels. The engine was not in any way connected to the wheels. ⁓ And they still have that same basic powertrain architecture, although

They don't really get much into specs on the new one, but I'm guessing when I, the last time that I drove one, I drove a Reverro back in 2019. ⁓ They had switched from the GM engine to a BMW 1.5 liter three cylinder turbo as the range extender engine. And I'm guessing they're probably still using that because that engine is actually still available. Unlike the GM engine that they used to use. ⁓

Nicole (1:34:18)
No.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:34:44)
And so, but when you look at this, you can clearly see the lineage, especially in the center section of the car to the original Karma. ⁓ What do you think of these updates?

Nicole (1:34:52)
Mm hmm. Yeah.

I mean, I think it looks good. I like how it looks. I think it makes for a neat looking sitting in. I don't know if I've caught the starting price in there, right? It's like hundred and sixty five thousand dollars. Not four hundred sixty five thousand dollars. That is a lot. That is a lot. And then the Ameri Amaris, Amaris, I don't know, Amaris Coop, that's going to be next year. hundred thousand dollars. I.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:35:08)
Yes.

Ha

Yeah.

566 horsepower for the the geyser or however you're supposed to pronounce this geyser.

Nicole (1:35:27)
I don't know.

I know, Serra.

Guy Serra works for me. was, was pronouncing it in my head. I was trying to figure it out. I mean, yeah, that's great, but $165,000 for a car from a company that is sort of in flux. And I mean, I don't think there is in the same kind of flux that Fisker, the recent Fisker Inc. was in before it became Fisker done. ⁓ But I...

It looks okay. The picture's the limited number of photos that they have here. It's a pretty looking car. What do you think? The interior's better. It has a nice interior. Nice and streamlined. It's one of those very clean EV style interiors that just doesn't have a lot of fussiness. They can either look plain or they look sort of pleasantly... ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:11)
The new interior is much better. ⁓

Nicole (1:36:27)
pleasantly uncluttered depending on your point of view. It looks like there's things to move the vent, Sam. When you look close up.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:32)
Yeah, I know.

And

it's got 80 miles of electric range. I did, before we started this morning, I went in and pulled up the sales numbers for Karma Automotive over the last four years. Let's see, in...

Nicole (1:36:40)
Not bad.

gosh.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:55)
In 2021, they sold 102 cars. In 22, they sold 195. And then in 23, they sold 39. And then last year it was 52.

Nicole (1:37:03)
that's a big increase.

Well, that's not really the direction overall you want your sales going.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:14)
Well, this is why they need to refresh it. Bring out the Gaiazera.

Nicole (1:37:18)
Do you think that this year it's gonna bump them back into the 100s?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:23)
Maybe? Who knows?

Nicole (1:37:25)
⁓ We have to revisit

in August of 26. So how many they sell last year? Yeah. It's I think it's a neat concept. But you know, I think

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:32)
Yeah, we'll see.

Nicole (1:37:37)
The challenge with the Fisker and just the brand has gone through so much and, you know, two companies with almost the same name. And it's it's hard to get back what you've lost when people feel like you've had a car and not made it, you know, and to. So even though it's not the company that actually went under the Fisker Inc, it still has a little bit of a black stain on it, I think.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:59)
Yeah, although, you know, the basic design that Henrik came up with back, it's almost 20, you know, probably 18 years, 17, 18 years ago now when they first showed it. You know, that basic design is actually holding up pretty well. I mean, it's still a good looking car.

Nicole (1:38:08)
Yeah.

It is, from a design point

of view, it was never design that was the company's problem. Design and style was not the problem, everything else. But yeah, that was never their problem. Yeah, designs do look good. Fisker, Henrik can make a nice looking car.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:20)
Yeah, exactly. was pretty much everything else.

⁓ All right. ⁓ one one last one from Monterey that I forgot about I missed it here on the list the the Lexus sport concept

Nicole (1:38:38)
Which one?

like this sport concept. Let's see. Oh yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:46)
So this is a

vehicle, ⁓ back in 2022, Toyota first showed a concept called the GR GT3 concept. So this was a concept for their next generation GT3 race car. So currently in the GT3 class, sports car racing, they run the RCF. ⁓ And that car is, the RC is going away, it's kind of old now. ⁓

So the original GT3 concept was this long nose front engine car, pretty wild looking, almost Batmobile like. ⁓ And ⁓ they have been working since then to develop a production version that ⁓ at the Goodwood Festival of Speed last month, they had the ⁓ race car and the production, the road car ⁓ wrapped in camo.

that were shown off at Goodwood. And now they're showing the road car in its, ⁓ you know, un-camoed form. ⁓ You know, they're calling this a concept, but I think this basically is the new Lexus sports car. This is probably gonna replace the LC. ⁓ And, you know, sort of a spiritual successor to the old LFA. ⁓

And this is going to be the basis for the new race car as well.

Nicole (1:40:15)
I love this car. It is such such a good looking car. It's beautiful. It's so sleek. This is all the random concepts and stuff we've been looking at today from on Ray and such. This is my favorite. I just I just absolutely love how this looks from every angle to when you're looking at the profile in from the front. Oh my gosh. It is such a pretty car. It looks like it should be mean and fast. It just looks fabulous.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:17)
It is pretty spectacular looking.

Yeah, in the announcement it says, this progressively styled, future-focused yet truly authentic sports car signals the way forward for Lexus design. And there's elements of this. ⁓ First of all, it looks like they're moving away from the spindle grill.

Nicole (1:41:02)
Yeah, which I was never a big fan of, I can't, I'm not sorry about that.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:41:04)
Yeah.

And you, but you still have, you know, the sort of L theme in the, uh, in the headlamps, uh, or the, you know, the, the daytime running lights anyway. Um, and then, the, but some, you know, some of the design elements like the sharp crease in the side, uh, and the, the vent behind the front wheels, some of that, you know, we've already seen already in the new Lexus ES.

Nicole (1:41:10)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:41:33)
that's

coming next year. And I think there's more from this car that signals the direction of future Lexus models that we're going to see.

Nicole (1:41:43)
Yeah, for that I'm excited because I like how this looks and if the designers take this and incorporate it into some production vehicles, I would not be at all disappointed because I think this is a really just beautifully designed, very sleek looking sports car. It just looks like what you feel like a sports car should look like right now.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:02)
Absolutely. All right, one last one that I want to get to. ⁓ This is a car that's going to be shown in a couple of weeks at the IAA mobility show in Munich. Hyundai IONIQ 2.

Nicole (1:42:07)
Okay.

Another Ionic.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:20)
Another ionic, a baby ionic.

Nicole (1:42:22)
BB Ionic

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:24)
⁓ I wish they would sell this car in the US.

Nicole (1:42:26)
I

was gonna say, this isn't coming here, we're not gonna get this, Why do you tease me with this kind of news now that I have to look at?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:29)
Probably not almost certainly not because

but we do have listeners outside of North America.

Nicole (1:42:38)
Okay,

fine for you guys. You're getting a really cool car we can't have. Super cute. This looks like. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:42)
Yeah. So yeah, this is a little, little four door hatchback or five door hatchback

⁓ tended to be very affordable. ⁓ And I, I like this a lot.

Nicole (1:42:57)
It looks good. It looks good. I think this is good. mean, it's a fun little car. You got to be honest. We don't sell a lot of like this is not a popular segment in here in the US. So it makes sense that they're not bringing in here if they're not. But I mean, if I lived in Europe, sure, it's really cute. It's a fun looking little car.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:16)
I would drive a car like this here.

Nicole (1:43:19)
I would, I'm not saying I wouldn't drive it. What I'm saying is the people don't tend to buy this kind of car here. You know?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:27)
Yep. They say it's expected to have the same or similar setup to the Kia EV3, which we are getting early next year, which will have either 58.3 kilowatt hour or 81.4 kilowatt hour battery pack, ranges 267 or 372 miles. And they're saying this is from AutoCar. They're saying that the price for the EV2

Nicole (1:43:36)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:54)
Uh, is expected to be about 25,000 pounds. Um, which, uh, if it, if it were sold here in dollars would probably be somewhere in the mid $20,000 range, like 25, 24, $25,000. Um, maybe a little bit more than that. Um, that's yeah, I, I like what they've done with this car.

Nicole (1:44:09)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think it looks really quite good. They're on a roll with their designs, so I'm liking what Hyundai's doing lately.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:44:23)
Yep. All right. We have one ⁓ email this week. ⁓ So let's see. ⁓ This is from Rado. I'm not quite sure how you pronounce your name. Sorry. Let us know if you want to show us another email and give me some ⁓ guidance on pronunciation. As Robbie said, some cars just have problems. There is a reason Toyota dealerships can't keep new cars on their lots.

Stellantis has been topping the slowest selling cars rankings in every category for the last you choose how many years ⁓ Please don't talk about things. You can't say or your opinion about ⁓ Every normal person would be done with the crap Nicole bought You still are trying to tiptoe around the fact that Jeep makes crappy cars What I mean is this Nicole's car has been dead longer than it has been undead. I do not think it has ever been alive ⁓ Just say it as it is Stellantis cars suck or do not mention them

I've been listening to Wheelbearing since its inception and been a fan of the podcast. Please get back to your roots and give us your unfiltered opinions. I don't know that we've necessarily been filtering our opinions.

Nicole (1:45:30)
I don't-

Yeah,

I'm not filtering my opinion. I've said very much that I am really sad that the car is having these problems and I expected to have some quirky issues going on with it because it's a Jeep and I knew that when I bought that. have a Wrangler ⁓ P-Hav and it's had problems off and on since the minute we bought it and Russ loves that thing. He absolutely loves that thing. Even with all of its quirks. The difference being that he's having quirks that his car still runs. I'm having quirks and mine is dead. ⁓

Like I said earlier in the podcast, it is running right now. We'll see what we're going to do with it. I don't think I think you're being harder than needs to be. Like Stellantis has issues with with what am I trying to say with quality? But it's not the first Stellantis vehicle I've had. I've had their vehicles before. I had a charger. We had a Cherokee. We had, you know, we've I like the vehicles. I and I'm aware of the.

quality issues. to be fair, I'll just add this in because I have been to several programs from other OEMs over the time that my car has been having troubles. And my car has come up in a couple of those conversations. And uniformly, every single one of those automakers, every single one has said, yeah, you know what? The 12 volt battery is a problem. It's a problem. Not for Jeep. It's a problem.

They all have issues with it. Didn't we just talk about it last week? was the Toyota, or I saw one, Toyota and Subaru had an issue with a 12-volt battery. That's toy.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:47:08)
Almost every

automaker has had 12 volt issues with some or all of their EVs.

Nicole (1:47:12)
Exactly.

And that's not what I'm tiptoeing. If that's what you think I'm tiptoeing around, it's not a tiptoeing. It's more me trying to say there is a legit challenge with EVs with the 12 volt batteries. And it's happened to enough automakers. I mean, you bought a car, Sam, that was.

Recalled and the recall was fixed they took it back and now you and it was because of 12 or battery issues So and I'm not you know, that's great. So that's Kia. That's Hyundai. That's Toyota. That's Subaru. That's Jeep They all have problems with this. So I think what I was trying to point out was that yeah, this Jeep is exceptional Right, so it's not that I don't think that jeeps that like Jeep shouldn't be on the hook for it Like yeah, this car is absolutely not doing what it's supposed to

Sam Abuelsamid (1:47:46)
Even Tesla has had issues with 12 volt batteries at times.

Nicole (1:47:57)
But I think my point was like this 12 volt thing is something all the OEMs are having a little bit of trouble figuring out. None of them have really got it nailed. There's enough problems out there that it strikes you as sort of this like, there's something we haven't quite figured out here yet. Like there's something, enough of them are having problems. Enough, think about all the engineers, all the quality control, all the everything at all of these companies and yet. So it's not in house to one company. It's sort of an EV.

that hasn't entirely been resolved. That was my point.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:48:31)
Yeah, and as you said, know, the Kia EV6, we bought a used EV6 just over a month ago. And I got a great deal on it. And the reason why I got such a good deal on it, you know, I'll be honest, I paid, it had 18 and a half thousand miles on it, 2023 EV6, paid $24,000 for it, which is about four to 5,000 less than the typical price today, right now for an EV6 with that.

Nicole (1:48:36)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:49:02)
23v6 with that kind of mileage on it. Typically they're going for about 27 to 29 for that mileage. The reason why we got it for that price, and before we bought it, I called the dealer and said, so what's the deal with this car? I wanted to know why did it seem to be priced so low? And he told me, they have to put it on the title anyway and on the Minaroni. It was a buyback, it was a lemon buyback.

Nicole (1:49:23)
Right.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:49:30)
The original owner had purchased it in 2023. Had, after some months, very similar to yours, had the 12 volt battery die, had died on a couple of times. ⁓ And ⁓ this is a problem that Hyundai Motor Group, among many other automakers, ⁓ have had similar issues. ⁓ And they had a recall, an ongoing recall, the problem was with.

Nicole (1:49:38)
You

Sam Abuelsamid (1:49:57)
was found to be with the integrated charge control unit that manages, you know, charging of the high voltage battery, it also handles ⁓ charging or, you know, has the DC to DC converter that takes those from your high voltage battery to your 12 volt battery. And ⁓ there were, some issues with it. Hyundai Motor Group redesigned it. They revamped it. ⁓ And they have been doing a recall, replacing the units on cars in the field. And I checked.

on the VIN number of the car that we ultimately ended up buying. It had had the ICCU replaced and that's why, and it also still had several years of warranty left on it. And so decided to take the chance on it. And we figured it would be fine. It's not our only car. ⁓ And so we took the risk of buying that and we got a fantastic deal on it. ⁓ So you're right, ⁓ Stellantis.

Nicole (1:50:51)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:50:56)
has had, particularly in the last few years, has had some significant quality issues. But so has Ford. has had, I think, something like 90 recalls since the beginning of this year.

Nicole (1:51:09)
Right, they were like holding the crown for the most recalls. did like, they were like, you know, one month they have like, there was one month where the number of recalls they have was insane. Can't remember the number.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:51:17)
Right,

and they've had to recall, ⁓ I think, somewhere between one and two million vehicles ⁓ because of cracked fuel injectors. ⁓ Toyota had a big recall on the Tundra ⁓ for the 3.4 liter twin turbo V6s that were failing in the Tundras, and they're replacing all the engines in all of those trucks. ⁓

Nicole (1:51:25)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:51:47)
GM had a big recall on their 6.2 liter V8s. you know, we don't talk a lot about recalls just because there are so many of them.

Nicole (1:51:57)
It's like practically a daily occurrence. So there's a recall on some vehicle, the number of them that are out there. I think it's not, I think like, I'm not trying to defend Stellantis, but saying that their vehicles are crap because there's problems with this one, well then you could say that, you know, Sam's Kia, Kia's crap. You could say that anybody who's ever had a problem with a vehicle, it's crap. To make it, like that's the thing that automakers fight, is that someone has a bad experience with a vehicle, it's not indicative

of every car, every owner, every experience. You can have good experiences and bad experiences with an automaker depending on the car and even depending on the one that you get. You can have one that's a lemon. That might be what the issue is going on with mine. We don't really know. But I think it's just I would not say that Jeep makes crappy cars. I like Jeeps. I do like them. They have their quirks. They have their challenges. But we've bought more than one. This is the first one that we've really had significant issues with.

been quirky but like my you know Dodge is part of this Delantis brand I had my Dodge Charger I bought that in 2010 that's what I traded when I got this one I think I changed the tires I may have fixed the brakes once and the battery a time or two over the course of 15 years not bad you know what I mean so it's not like I just think I think that's too harsh I wouldn't say any company just makes crappy cars I feel like that's harsh

Sam Abuelsamid (1:53:25)
Yeah, mean, we've had good and bad experiences with vehicles from multiple brands in our household. like you said, every company's built lemons at various points in time. ⁓ And as far as being unfiltered, I think we give pretty honest opinions. I know I do. And I've gotten criticized for my opinions. ⁓

Nicole (1:53:52)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:53:55)
I think we will continue to try and give honest opinions to the degree that we ⁓ hedge on anything. It may be because we don't know. We don't know what the root cause is and if we can find out. And if there's an explanation for an experience we had, will do our best to share that with you. But we do try to give you our honest opinions on everything we drive.

Nicole (1:54:08)
Mm-hmm.

If I was really hedging, you wouldn't know I'd had a problem with it. I would have never said anything. I would have just said, Sam and Robbie would know, and you guys would have no idea. But I chose to say something. So I just chose not to be that harsh, because I feel like I'm never going to say a company builds a car. I love it. I love it, except for the problem system having with the 12 volt and associated issues. So yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:54:26)
That's yeah, true. We wouldn't have talked about it at all.

Because there are a lot of good aspects of the Wagoneer S.

Yeah,

I mean, we, you know, was telling Nicole earlier, we had we had a 2000 Volkswagen Passat wagon with the 1.8 liter four cylinder turbo. ⁓ We bought it in 2000. That car spent more time in the shop and I spent more money on repairs on that engine than on any car I've ever owned in my life. And yet my wife loved driving that car. And, you know, we kept it for nine years despite all the problems.

Nicole (1:55:07)
You

See?

Yep.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:55:21)
And, you know, what did we replace it with? Another Volkswagen. bought, we, we bought a Jetta TDI wagon with, with the quote unquote clean diesel. ⁓

Nicole (1:55:25)
See? There you go.

And you

see, and I've had, I had a Volkswagen Beetle. had a Jetta once and then I replaced it with a Beetle and I never had significant problems with either one. I love them. So I wouldn't have, you had a crappy experience. You know what I mean? It's, it's, yeah. So.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:55:50)
All

right, on that note, let's call it a show and we'll talk to you all next time. Bye.

Nicole (1:55:54)
All right, sounds good. Bye.