Sam Abuelsamid (00:00)
This is episode. What episode is it? This is episode 436 of Wheel Bearings. I am Sam Abuelsamid from Telemetry.

Roberto Baldwin (00:03)
436. 436.

Nicole (00:09)
You

And I am Nicole Wakelin from Top Speed.

Roberto Baldwin (00:15)
And I am Roberto Baldwin from SAE International and the SAE Automotive Podcast. Give it a listen.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:21)
Outstanding.

Nicole (00:21)
Is it really you?

Are you there? Do we have you? Your audio is here. We're going to have you the whole time this week.

Sam Abuelsamid (00:24)
Yeah, I've listened to it.

Roberto Baldwin (00:26)
I

mean, I think so. Well, I'm also recording locally. ⁓ So, even if things go horribly wrong within the ⁓ system we use, I still have my audio that I can send to Sam when things go horribly wrong. Also, it's probably my fault because I have about 15 to 20 Chrome windows, not just tabs. Within those tabs, there's like billions of little tabs that also windows open, because I'm one those people who like, can't, I will have tabs open for articles I've written like two weeks ago.

Nicole (00:37)
Yeah.

Hehehehehe

Roberto Baldwin (00:56)
because I have so many tabs open and I haven't gone through and like, wait, this is, I don't need any of this information anymore. This article's done.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:04)
You're just like me. I have tabs that have been open for months and months.

Nicole (01:07)
Gosh,

I'm the reverse. Everything, all the tabs are closed. Unless I need it, it's not there. I throw it away as soon as I don't, I have the cleanest, tidiest little desktop and everything. Yeah, I'm the reverse.

Roberto Baldwin (01:12)
⁓ see? That's the way!

Sam Abuelsamid (01:14)
Hmm

Roberto Baldwin (01:17)
⁓ see not I my brain

Sam Abuelsamid (01:19)
I bet your physical

desk is also very clean and tidy.

Nicole (01:22)
It, you don't know me? Yes, it is. It's very, very tiny. When Russ uses it, I get all distraught because I'm like, I'm sorry, you moved my notepad a half an inch to the right, dude, put it back where you found it.

Sam Abuelsamid (01:25)
Hmph.

Roberto Baldwin (01:26)
My... Okay, so...

Mine is

chaos. There's like notebook, there's all, tons and tons of notebooks with articles that I'm working on. There's a keyboard, there's a mini keyboard. There's an audio recorder, like a high end audio recorder. There's a card from my wife that she made for me. There's a little, there's an owl. There's a four track tape recorder, like cassette tape. I haven't used this thing in like 20 something years. It's sitting on my desk. It's just chaos.

Nicole (01:58)
my gosh. Now,

none of that clutter on my desk. have my desk the... I have exactly one piece of clutter I have that doesn't belong on my desk. I have an Oswald stuffed animal that my daughter gave me and he sits there and keeps me Oswald the lucky rabbit. That's it.

Roberto Baldwin (02:04)
GoPros.

Aww.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:13)
⁓ nice. That's

a, what? Gen four iPod.

Roberto Baldwin (02:20)
I got a 40 gigabot 40 gigabot. Yeah, I have the charger for and everything and I'll plug it in. I'll listen to it because you listen to music without a thousand like it's like a time machine of what I was listening to when this iPod was was out. I got my.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:23)
Heh. Heh.

Nicole (02:23)
What are you going to do with that? Do you ever use that, Robbie?

⁓ my

Mm-hmm. Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:36)
I have

Nicole (02:37)
Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (02:37)
a couple of iPods in a drawer in my office as well.

Roberto Baldwin (02:40)
I got my 7-Eleven watch.

Nicole (02:42)
Where

the heck did you get a 7-eleven? Did you actually buy that at 7-eleven? Where does one get us? You, you...

Roberto Baldwin (02:46)
No, you have to order it. 7-Eleven

has a whole, like, because they realized that people love 7-Eleven, especially in Asia, so they created a whole line of 7-Eleven stuff. They have watches and clothes. It's actually really cool stuff. It's weirdly cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (03:01)
But

Nicole (03:01)
Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (03:02)
for but for those since since those of you can't see the video the 7-eleven watch the only two numbers on the watch are seven and eleven That okay. they are they are there

Nicole (03:10)
That's it. Are they actually? we can't

Roberto Baldwin (03:11)
Well, the other ones are really, really faint, but it has like a...

Nicole (03:15)
see them in the picture. I believe you.

Roberto Baldwin (03:16)
⁓ And it glows

and when it glows you see the seven in the background I don't know why I'm this is a visual gag for an audio podcast. I apologize everyone

Nicole (03:20)
Ooh, it's fancy.

Sam Abuelsamid (03:22)
Very nice.

Nicole (03:26)
Yeah

Sam Abuelsamid (03:29)
All right. Well, and I want to sincerely apologize for last week's show when Robbie's audio for reasons that remain unknown, Riverside just stopped recording his audio. It was transmitting it to us. We could hear him the entire time as we were having the conversation. And you guys could tell from the emails I got that trying to pick up what we were talking about because as Nicole and I were

Nicole (03:39)
Mm-mm.

Yeah.

from the...

my gosh, we're so sorry.

Sam Abuelsamid (03:56)
responding to Robbie, but...

Roberto Baldwin (03:57)
Again,

I'm 100 % sure it was my fault. And right now, Riverside's only uploaded 1%. I don't know what's going on. I've updated Chrome. I tried to... Yeah.

Nicole (04:01)
So.

Well, but we have recordings now. So if Riverside fails

us, we have backups for all of us now. This is never going to happen again. Sam's like, everybody record on locally. Yeah. Right. Famous last words. Hopefully never going to happen again. Yes, sir. I am driving and it's the perfect week to have a vehicle like this. I have the Land Rover Defender Octa.

Sam Abuelsamid (04:11)
Ha!

Roberto Baldwin (04:14)
never happened again. Famous last words.

Sam Abuelsamid (04:14)
Famous last words.

⁓ All right, ⁓ Nicole, what have you driving?

Nicole (04:31)
Which feels like I feel I think of Doc Ock every time I see this. I feel like it should be his car. I'm like you call it Octa belongs to Doc Ock. So this is the it's crazy, stupid, powerful, more powerful than you. Four point four liter twin turbo V8 six hundred and twenty six horsepower. Well, but I mean, it's a big it's more power than you need in this thing. Five hundred fifty three pound feet. I know. So it's.

Sam Abuelsamid (04:48)
That's not very powerful.

Well, wait till we get to some of stuff we have later in the run down.

Nicole (04:59)
It's got some oomph. ⁓ So the Okta is also really expensive. Let's start right off there. Price is $158,300. I know, you felt that, right? Like bam! Well, what do you guys think the destination is?

Roberto Baldwin (05:07)
⁓ I felt that in my gut

Sam Abuelsamid (05:11)
Ha

$1,200.

Roberto Baldwin (05:21)
$1,100.

Nicole (05:23)
Sam wins, but he's way low. It's $18.50. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (05:26)
⁓ Ooh, see

Roberto Baldwin (05:26)
⁓ we thought it'd be

high.

Sam Abuelsamid (05:28)
that this is is this is unusual for premium brand because premium brands usually don't hide their price increases in the destination charge. They just put it right up front and so here's how much you're going to pay us.

Roberto Baldwin (05:34)
Ahem.

Nicole (05:38)
Well,

actually, the funny part of that is too, this is $158,300. Just make it like a thousand more. Nobody's spending money at that level cares about an extra thousand dollars in the sticker. You know what I mean? Um, so this is great, big, fancy, expensive SUV.

Sam Abuelsamid (05:51)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (05:51)
Yeah.

Nicole (06:00)
We have had snow. We've had so much snow here. The snow keeps coming and they keep saying it's going to be a dusting of snow. And last night, our dusting of snow was enough that my husband was snow blowing this morning. There's probably three inches of snow and the rain that we're getting today is going to be half a foot. So I have the perfect vehicle to have when the roads are absolute garbage, which is what they are. They're just covered in ice and snow and a mess. You use your little drive mode thing. You pick the one that has a little snowflake on it. It just drove like a champ. ⁓

It's got plenty of power. It's really comfortable. It's a high step in. So the downside is if you just step up, like if you have someone like kids, you have a parent or somebody who has mobility issues, it's a little tough to step up into. Once you're in it though, it's gorgeous. It's beautiful. It's super comfy. has that.

cool mix of being a luxury car with all these leather trims and everything and beautiful styling, but also being rugged. It doesn't look like I always think I love Mercedes, but they look very delicate to me inside. Like I'd be afraid to have a kid inside of a Mercedes because everything is so pretty and fancy and delicate. This is not a delicate car. It's like a art and the color on this. What is it called? Petra copper.

Oh God, the color's so cool. It just looks so neat from the outside. It's a metallic, but it somehow is sort of a matte kind of a metallic. It's really cool. I love how this car looks. You get wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. You get a charging pad. You get USB-C charging ports. You can tow up to 8,200 pounds in there. It's got great cargo room. There's 34 cubic feet behind the second row and 78.8 if you flip the second row down.

I love driving this. was super fun and it's very easy and very intuitive. Oh, and this is really cool. So on the steering wheel, the little paddle shifters, the little up and down, they're sort of like clear plastic with a plus and a minus on them. At night they glow. So the little plus and minus glow. So like the first time I sat down and I'm like, oh, that's kind of cool. It's just completely unnecessary, but a nice little touch. Again, you spend $158,300 in a car. You want it to look kind of nifty and that makes it look kind of nifty.

Roberto Baldwin (08:00)
Ooooo

Nicole (08:14)
I really enjoyed driving this. I was happy that I got to drive it in the snow because it proved so stable and handled so well because the upside to having a heavy, great big heavy SUV is that it gets through stuff. But the downside is when it gets icy, it's also, it's a lot of weight. So if you have a lot of momentum, you're gonna go.

And go and go. Yeah, exactly. So if it doesn't if it if it doesn't handle the roads well, it's in some ways worse than driving something smaller. But this actually was great. It had no problem handling the snow. It stayed very composed. Didn't get stuck in it. We'll see how I do in the next six inches of snow. It looks like snow out there. It looks scary. ⁓ So I thoroughly enjoyed driving this. I've always been sort of a land rover fan. I love this vehicle. If I had one hundred and fifty eight thousand

Roberto Baldwin (08:37)
Wheeee!

Nicole (09:06)
$158,300. I don't, but if I had $158,300, this would be on my list. Even though, you know, Land Rover doesn't have the most fantabulous reputation for not needing to be in the shop. But you know, as we all know, that doesn't matter to me.

Sam Abuelsamid (09:22)
But

they don't typically leave you with a dead 12 volt battery repeatedly. It's usually something more expensive to fix.

Nicole (09:26)
They do not. there's that. It's right. It's going to be like, this is $5,000

Roberto Baldwin (09:27)
That's true. Yeah.

Nicole (09:32)
to fix this thing. So I really do like it. this is the biggest, burliest of the Defenders. If you go down the line in the Defender 110, you can start at 63.5. So I think that's sort of important to note. The Octa's the fanciest.

It's very fancy. It's very upscale. It's it's got all the stuff if you want that and it makes a heck of an impression as you're driving. But if you want a defender, you can get it all the way down to 6335. So there's some room in there depending on what you want. So it's not like you can't afford a defender because they're all over six figures. You can get one for under six figures. You don't get some of the bling that you get on this, but you're still going to get a fabulous car. You can still say you're driving a Land Rover, Range Rover, Defender like it's the longest title.

⁓ Yeah, so overall I really liked it and I'm super psyched that I got this during a snowy week because I normally get things like this and it's like, it's the January thaw. You don't eat it. The next week I get, you know, a compact hatchback and we get a nor'easter. So I'm glad the timing worked out this time to actually give it a go.

Sam Abuelsamid (10:37)
Well, the Defender X that I had in December when I was out on the West Coast, ⁓ that one, that was 96,000, which still is not cheap, but that was with the supercharged V6. ⁓ And that was also really nice. I liked that one a lot. And I think even if you go with one of the Defender ⁓ S,

Nicole (10:42)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, right.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (11:06)
or even the X Dynamic SE, which is 75. That's for a premium, really off-road capable SUV. I think Wrangler or Bronco, but with a lot more luxury than you get in those. And if you put the right tires on it, you can basically do pretty much anything you can do with those vehicles.

Nicole (11:25)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, it's I've I've long been a fan of the Defender. This makes me more of a fan and which makes me wish I had one hundred fifty eight thousand three hundred dollars to spend on one because it's super fun. ⁓ Yeah. But it's a versatile car. It's you know, I think it's something worth looking at. I wouldn't you know, I just think it's important to to realize that you have a range on this, you know, it's it's definitely a vehicle that you've got.

cheap ones and you got stupidly expensive ones. So don't just like I can't afford one of those. I mean, you need to have some kind of budget. It's 63, but maybe not as out of reach as you think it is.

Roberto Baldwin (11:59)
You got options.

Maybe. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:09)
Well, actually, I think probably the one I might go for if I was buying a Defender would be the trophy edition in the Sand Glow Yellow. That's 87.4. So it's almost half of what the Octa costs. But yeah, you know, but if you, if you remember the Land Rover trophy ⁓ thing that they did back in the 1980s and 90s.

Nicole (12:14)
Yes. Oh, that's cool. How much is the trophy edition? 87. Okay, so still.

Right? You could buy two of those.

Sam Abuelsamid (12:36)
You know, those, you know, they had this yellow, you know, they were all painted in this yellow finish and they, they did these annual adventures, you know, and they got, you know, serious off-road people and went to all kinds of crazy places for the Land Rover Trophy. ⁓ And so, you know, they've now got the, trophy edition, you know, which is basically that concept, you know, in those days they were doing it not with defenders, but with the first generation ⁓ discoveries.

And so, and actually, think originally with even with Range Rovers, the first years were with Range Rovers before they got, you know, crazy luxury and then went to Discoveries. And they have the Defender Trophy Edition, which is inspired by those Land Rover Trophy vehicles from the 80s and 90s.

Roberto Baldwin (13:07)
Hmm

Nicole (13:27)
Yep, so there we go.

Sam Abuelsamid (13:27)
All right,

cool. Well, it's definitely sounds like a good time to have a Land Rover this week in New Hampshire. Yeah, I saw in my newsfeed this morning, I don't know why it brought up a weather story about Boston, but you know, I guess they're expecting like nine inches in Boston today.

Nicole (13:33)
Yes, it's the perfect week.

I'm a little nervous because when they say it's like this one, they said it was a dusting. We're probably about three inches of snow. This other one like, well, it's not going to be anything. you guys, it's probably going to be an inch. you know what? You might get. we're at half a foot. So I feel like every time I walk away and I look again, the forecast goes up, which either means we're going to get nothing or we're going to get absolutely clobbered. So I don't know. We'll see what it is tomorrow.

Sam Abuelsamid (14:10)
Well, this week on Wednesday, were here in Detroit, Nicole, for the Detroit Auto Show. there wasn't really any snow in the forecast for that day. And by the time we left Huntington Place, there was several inches of snow on the ground. I mean, you came in, it was overcast, but it wasn't looking like it was gonna be a snowstorm.

Nicole (14:14)
⁓ my lord. I was.

Nope.

It was I was actually flying back after that out of Detroit back to L.A. to drive the Kia K4 hatchback. And my flight got I changed flights. So I still get out the same night because my original flight coming in was diverted to Columbus, Ohio, which is chilling in Columbus. I'm like, that's that's concerning. So I switched to another flight. My original flight, they quote, delayed it to the following morning at nine a.m. That's when it took off.

Roberto Baldwin (14:49)
Oof.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:00)
That's that's when it got from Columbus to Detroit.

Nicole (15:01)
That's

when it got, I guess, from finally got from Columbus to Detroit and then took everybody who remained on that flight for people to L.A. the next morning. So I was very glad that I that I decided to change flights. Otherwise, I would have missed the Kia drive altogether.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:10)
Oof.

Roberto Baldwin (15:18)
Woof.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:18)
Well, the vehicle that I had that I drove to the auto show and to some several other events this past week ⁓ was the Porsche Macan electric 4S. ⁓ So the first time I've had a Porsche in my driveway in many, many years, and ⁓ I really enjoyed it. So the Macan is Porsche's entry level ⁓ SUV. This fits in down below the

Nicole (15:36)
Okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (15:48)
below the the Cayenne and it's relatively compact, not too small, but more on the compact size. And the you know, as is the typical of Porsche, they have, you know, about sixty three thousand variations of it, ⁓ including ⁓ five, five different electric variants from the base McCann electric that starts at eighty thousand three hundred dollars.

Nicole (16:09)
you

Sam Abuelsamid (16:17)
the Macan 4 and that's a rear wheel drive version. Then they've got the Macan 4 electric, then the 4S, the GTS and the turbo. And those go from 355 horsepower with that rear drive single motor version up to 630 horsepower with the turbo. ⁓ The 4S is in the middle of the range. So with the overboost power with launch control,

you have about 509 horsepower, which for a vehicle this size is more than adequate. Yeah, it'll do zero to 60 in under four seconds, which is quite good. The base power setup that you get all the time is 442 horsepower. And like I said, there's the overboost mode that will briefly pump it up to 509 horsepower and 604 foot pounds of torque.

Roberto Baldwin (16:52)
A lot of horsepower.

Nicole (16:55)
It'll do.

Sam Abuelsamid (17:15)
When you use the over boost ⁓ so that's that's a lot ⁓ It's it's a very quick vehicle ⁓ I like the size, you know, it's like I say, it's fairly compact But it will still hold for adults reasonably comfortably the backseat isn't huge But you know I could sit behind myself, you know five ten five eleven And I can sit behind myself. It's got about 19 cubic feet of cargo space in the back, which again

Not the hugest for a vehicle of this type, but it also has, even with the dual motor ⁓ all wheel drive version, it still has a two and a half foot, two and a half cubic foot frunk as well. That is, ⁓ can use the butt, you don't have to go inside the vehicle like you do on say a Mustang Mach-E to pop the frunk. You can do it from the key flop. ⁓ And it's a power lid on there.

And so that's big enough to hold a couple of decent sized duffel bags, couple of backpacks. You can put your charging cables in there and assorted other stuff. A couple of bags of groceries will fit in there. you get some decent sized storage up front. And one of the events that I went to, ⁓ they had valet parking there. And so instead of leaving my backpack inside the vehicle, I put it in the frunk.

So it was out of sight and out of mind The the one that I had was finished in the frozen blue metallic Which is kind of a pale a little bit maybe a little bit lighter than a typical Robin's egg blue But you know kind of a more pale blue color Which when it was clean which was not for very long. It was for like the first day or two that I had it

Roberto Baldwin (18:45)
nice.

Nicole (18:53)
Mmm. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (19:09)
And as soon as it arrived, I took it out and got it photographed before the weather turned nasty. And we were in one of our ⁓ brief warm spells that we've had this month here in Michigan when I got it. ⁓ so when I photographed it, there was no snow on the ground. And then within a couple of days, we started getting some snow. And then on Wednesday for the auto show,

⁓ It was a heavy snow day. ⁓ so the Macan, you know, is equipped with the usual array of driver assist features. And as I was driving from Detroit back to Ypsilanti, ⁓ within about 10 miles or so, I got the alert coming up on the ⁓ cluster screen, you know, assist features unavailable, please clean your sensors. ⁓ And it wasn't the camera behind the windshield that was the problem. It was all the stuff in the front.

And when I got home and got out, you could just, there was this like caked, probably almost half inch thick layer of ice ⁓ across the radar sensor and the other sensors in the front fascia ⁓ and covering the headlamps and everything. So fortunately it was still daylight hours when I was driving it because otherwise I would have had basically no light from the lights. Yeah. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (20:34)
you

Nicole (20:34)
No big deal, it's okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (20:37)
Fortunately,

they did deliver the car on a set of snow tires. It was on Pirelli Scorpion Winter 2 tires. ⁓ have several available. When you when you go to configure a Macan, they have ⁓ wheels and wheel and tire combinations ranging from ⁓ including 20, 21 and 22 inches in diameter. ⁓ This Macan had 21s on it, so the midsize. And you can actually when you order the car.

You can order it with a winter wheel and tire package. So you can actually get the same wheels. ⁓ So you can get two sets of the same wheels. And if you are someone that switches out tires a couple of times a year, ⁓ it's handy to have an extra set of wheels. So ⁓ the winter wheel and tire package.

Let's see, the 21 inch ⁓ set with the same wheels, are the 21 inch McCann design wheels. So set of four wheels and four winter tires, ⁓ $7,022.

Roberto Baldwin (21:48)
That's Porsche money though.

Sam Abuelsamid (21:49)
Yeah.

Exactly. Yes. You, you will, when you buy a Porsche, ⁓ you will, you will pay. And it's funny for, this is one of the rare instances where I did not get a Manroni with the car, but going through and going through the configurator and building it up. ⁓ you know, so they've got lots of colors available on this. ⁓ you know, so there's the basic white and black.

Nicole (21:52)
Yeah, it is.

Sam Abuelsamid (22:17)
that you can get for free and then everything else costs extra. The Frozen Blue Metallic is $1,300. They've got the Legends colors, which includes the Oak Green Metallic Neo, which looks fabulous, for $2,600. And then they have paint to sample. So you can bring a sample of literally anything to your dealer and they will match the color and paint the car to that exact same color.

That is a $13,870 option. Yeah.

Nicole (22:48)
Wow.

Roberto Baldwin (22:48)
Yeah, I

mean you have to make the paint and the paint's only gonna be used once and blah blah blah. So yeah, it's like I it's

Sam Abuelsamid (22:54)
Yeah, you I mean,

you're talking, you know, maybe three or four gallons of paint. You know, when you go to Lowe's and you take ⁓ a color sample, you know, they'll do the color matching. It's, know, they don't charge you anything extra to do the color match. ⁓ But fourteen thousand dollars. But, you know, again, it's not so much because they have to make the paint, but because they have, you know, it's they're basically going to be hand painting this thing. They're going to hand paint the body shell.

Nicole (23:13)
Oof.

Sam Abuelsamid (23:22)
rather than going through the regular paint process at the factory. Let's see, what other crazy ⁓ option prices we got here. ⁓ yeah, you can also get your wheels painted in various colors. ⁓ There's front fascia accessories. you can get, ⁓ there's an off-road design package for the front fascia. And keep in mind, this is not an off-road vehicle. This is very much a street SUV.

but you can get an off-road, you know, the exclusive manufacturer off-road design package, which gives you a lower bumper area that's kind of get ridges. It looks kind of like a skid plate, but it's very much not a skid plate. So do not take this off-road. That's 1600 bucks.

Nicole (24:07)
Do not get confused. Do

Roberto Baldwin (24:10)
They're

Nicole (24:12)
not get confused about this.

Roberto Baldwin (24:13)
not.

Sam Abuelsamid (24:14)
There's the sport design

facia package, which is $4,300, and it goes on and on. If there, you know, if there's one thing that Porsche has become, you know, absolute experts in, it's figuring out how to separate customers from their money. ⁓ As much money as you are willing to spend, Porsche will happily sell you something to take that money from your from your bank account. ⁓ Let's see what else. So.

Nicole (24:29)
Ha

Mm-hmm, they will.

Sam Abuelsamid (24:41)
The Macan is built on the new PPE platform, which is the performance platform electric. this is after they did the, the Tycon, ⁓ that was a platform called J one, which was used for the Tycon and for the Audi e-tron GT. And then Audi and Porsche collaborated on a next generation platform, which they used for, for this, for the Macan it's going on the new Cayenne.

It's being used by Audi for the Q6 e-tron, the new a6, and bunch of others. And it's a multi-energy platform. But ⁓ the electric version of it, it's an 800 volt architecture. ⁓ It has the capability of charging close to 300 kilowatts. When I did take it to the Electrify America station, ⁓ was at one of, and I stopped there on my way back from, driving back from Detroit. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (25:17)
Multi-Energy.

Sam Abuelsamid (25:37)
they, I, when you, there's no, in the, in the settings, there is nowhere to manually, ⁓ enable battery preconditioning. ⁓ like as you do, look, for example, on our, EV6, you can go into the settings and you can turn on preconditioning manually. There's nowhere to do that manually, but it does it automatically. So if you use the built-in navigation and you select a DC fast charger as your destination, it will automatically do the preconditioning based on

how far away you are from the thing. And in the cluster, it actually shows you the battery temperature.

Roberto Baldwin (26:14)
mine just has a little thing it puts over the battery. It looks like a little coil, like it's warming up my battery.

Nicole (26:15)
that's nice.

Sam Abuelsamid (26:18)
Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't show you a coil.

It just shows you a battery icon and shows you the battery temperature. So by the time I got to the to the charging station, it was around even though it was about 15 degrees Fahrenheit, 15 or 20 degrees Fahrenheit. The battery was at about 70 degrees Fahrenheit, which is getting into its optimal range. I plugged in at at about

15 % state of charge and it jumped up and started charging at about 250, 255 kilowatts, which is pretty good, especially at that temperature. ⁓ And charged it up to about 50 % and then had to run over to discount tire to pick up the new tire for my wife's car because the day before she picked up something and got a puncture. And of course, instead of being right in the middle of the tread where they could just stick a plug in it for $5,

Roberto Baldwin (27:13)
Uhhhh...

Nicole (27:14)
Womp Womp.

Roberto Baldwin (27:15)
Sidewall.

Sam Abuelsamid (27:16)
It was

it was well it was on the shoulder. And so not repairable. So that was a couple hundred bucks for me. But

Roberto Baldwin (27:19)
⁓ yeah.

Nicole (27:24)
Oof.

Roberto Baldwin (27:25)
don't

think I've had, I think I've had one puncture in a tire that was repairable and the last like eight punctures. It's just like always right in the side wall. I'm like, son of a.

Sam Abuelsamid (27:37)
Yeah. But the cargo area of the Macan is big enough to hold the 19 inch wheel and tire combination from a key EV6. So again, nice, good size cargo area. you know, the before we started getting the snow, I took it out on Saturday morning last week, took it out for a nice long drive ⁓ out near out near Pinckney, you know, on some nice curving roads and even on the the winter tires.

⁓ It was a lot of fun to drive. ⁓ This was great. ⁓ the one I had had the ⁓ variable, it's got air spring, I think it's air spring suspension, but it's variable height suspension system. So highway speeds drops down a little bit when you put it in, it has an off-road mode, but like I said, this is not an off-road vehicle. ⁓ This off-road basically means that it's an unpaved dirt road.

is about the limits of what this can do. But when you put it in off-road mode, it lifts up a couple inches. ⁓ And it was fantastic. I really enjoyed driving this car. Again, the temperatures during most of the time I had it were quite cold. So I was using the heat, using the heated seats, using the heat, using the window defrosters and everything. ⁓ There is no standard rear wiper.

Roberto Baldwin (28:35)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (29:03)
on the Macon. You there is it is available as an option.

Roberto Baldwin (29:08)
also kind of come on.

Nicole (29:09)
How much

is that?

Sam Abuelsamid (29:10)
⁓ To be honest, I'm not sure I don't I didn't see it in here. It's probably here somewhere. ⁓ But it's you know, it's a Porsche, so it's not going to be cheap. ⁓ here we go. Rear wiper trim in high gloss. No, that's the trim. See, where's the wiper itself? rear wiper. it's only three hundred and ninety dollars. That's shocking. So.

Nicole (29:12)
Ha ha ha ha!

Okay, okay, okay.

Roberto Baldwin (29:32)
⁓ hmm seems seems

less yeah ⁓ all right

Sam Abuelsamid (29:37)
So, you know, if you

Nicole (29:37)
Hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (29:39)
live somewhere that gets winter weather, I would strongly recommend that you spring for the 400 bucks for the rear wiper, because otherwise, you know, when you get a lot of snow coming down, the airflow across the rear window, not gonna cut it. It's not gonna keep that window clear. You know, the defroster, you know, it'll heat it you'll have stripes of ice that'll be sagging across your rear window.

but you're still gonna have obscured visibility. So definitely get the rear wiper. ⁓ So all in ⁓ as configured. ⁓ So I'm give you two prices. As ⁓ configured ⁓ without the winter wheel and tire package, $103,540.

Nicole (30:34)
Ouch.

Sam Abuelsamid (30:35)
And, uh, with the, with the, uh, the same wheel and tire winter wheel and tire package. So if you order this extra, uh, it, jumps to 110,000, $562. Like I said, base price of the McCann electric is just over 80,000. Uh, so you're looking at, uh, uh, an extra almost $30,000, uh, for the one that I had. And, uh, let's see, where is, oh, delivery.

Nicole (30:47)
Mmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:04)
Take guess at delivery charges.

Roberto Baldwin (31:06)
$900.

Nicole (31:08)
$12.95.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:11)
Nicole gets it, but she was not close. $2,350.

Roberto Baldwin (31:15)
my gosh.

Nicole (31:15)
Gosh, we were

way the heck off, okay.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:17)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (31:18)
Wow.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:20)
Yeah. So

Roberto Baldwin (31:21)
23.

Nicole (31:21)
That is

Sam Abuelsamid (31:21)
the,

Nicole (31:22)
a lot.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:22)
four, the forest starts at 89, nine, uh, $11,290 worth of options plus another $7,000 for the winter wheel and tire package and 23 50 for the delivery processing and handling fee.

Roberto Baldwin (31:37)
That's so much money.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:39)
It is, but you know, Hey, it's a Porsche.

Roberto Baldwin (31:42)
Here's the thing, when you get in a Porsche and you drive it for like a block, you realize, oh, that's where all the money went. It really does. It, it, it always feels like, oh yeah, okay, I understand. I know.

Sam Abuelsamid (31:48)
Yeah. ⁓ yeah. Totally solid.

Nicole (31:55)
It's definitely

not a car that you get in and you think like, I don't get it. Why is this so much money? You're like, ⁓ this is why this is so much money.

Sam Abuelsamid (32:01)
Yeah, I mean, beautiful

materials, you know, really solidly put together. It's got manual vents so you don't have to go into the touchscreen to adjust the vents where the air is flowing. Heated front and rear seats. The only slight downside really on the center console where it's got some some touch controls for a few things. The.

Roberto Baldwin (32:14)
Look at that.

Sam Abuelsamid (32:30)
There's like it's like one panel if you're old enough to remember the Blackberry storm smartphone Blackberries first attempt at a touchscreen phone It ⁓ they wanted to give it the clickiness of a keyboard. So the the panel actually pivots a little bit So when you press the the touch buttons it clicks and you can you can feel it don't feel that whole panel pivot a little bit which is

a little off putting, it's, you know, it's not a big deal. And the other thing that's ⁓ not, not so much a functional problem, but a little odd is just the position of the shift selector for the transmission. ⁓ So it's, it's on the dashboard to the right of the ⁓ instrument cluster. ⁓ And it's kind of hidden behind the steering wheel. And so there's just a little lever there that's instead of being a stock on the steering column.

Nicole (33:01)
Hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (33:29)
It's actually mounted on the dashboard. So you push it down for drive up for reverse. And then there's a button for park. ⁓ And it took me a couple of days to get you to remember, get used to that's where it was. ⁓ And once I got used to that, it was fine. There's all of course, you know, different drive modes or sports sport plus ⁓ the comfort mode, which is what I ended up leaving it in most of the time. Once the weather got worse.

But I did use on my Saturday morning drive, I did use the sport sport plus mode, which gives you some more little more noise and stuff like that. But overall, really nice car to drive.

So that is the Porsche Macan 4S electric or electric 4S or I don't know whatever sequences are supposed to go in. Yeah.

Nicole (34:16)
Nice.

Roberto Baldwin (34:19)
Whatever.

Nicole (34:19)
Whatever order of operations they want you to use.

Roberto Baldwin (34:22)
The Macon

4S has electric motors, that's what it is. You know what you're getting when you get, when you leave.

Sam Abuelsamid (34:28)
Yeah.

All right. ⁓ So ⁓ the ⁓ let's start off with ⁓ some stuff, some news that came out ahead of the auto show ⁓ Ford, you know, as, has become their tradition ⁓ does not show their stuff off at the auto show itself. ⁓ They do separate events before the show. ⁓ And so, excuse me, Monday morning.

In Dearborn at their new product development center and world headquarters first time I've been in the building looks really nice They showed us a couple of new models that are coming out starting with the Ford Mustang Dark Horse SC so this this is This is effectively a replacement for the old Shelby GT 500 so

You know for this current generation for the s650 mustangs ford has ⁓ Ended their licensing relationship with Shelby American so they're no longer paying Shelby for every one of these cars that they sell paying them a license fee And you know, that's why they brought out the dark horse branding ⁓ for the previous you know above the GT model and now they have the dark horse SC which

is as the supercharged 5.2 liter V8. ⁓ Ford was very, Ford basically wouldn't give us any specs on this car other than here's the displacement. They told us some of the features it has, but no specific details on performance. ⁓ But for reference, the previous generation GT 500 that ended production two years ago now, ⁓ that one,

Nicole (36:11)
Huh.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:22)
had 760 horsepower from its 5.2 liter supercharged V8. The current Mustang GTD, which costs $400,000, has 815 horsepower. So this one likely going to be somewhere in between those two, probably closer to 800, but somewhere in that range because it's almost, let's put it this way. If I was a GTD buyer,

Nicole (36:33)
Gulp. Gulp.

Sam Abuelsamid (36:51)
I would be really, really angry at Ford if this had more than 815 horsepower.

Nicole (36:57)
Yeah. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (36:57)
Yeah, if at 800 horsepower,

mean, I'd be, I mean, also if you're buying the GTD, I don't know what you're doing with your money, to be honest. I guess.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:01)
Yeah.

the

Nicole (37:06)
You're having fun with it. You're just loving in loving life.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:09)
If

you got $400,000 to spend on a Mustang, yeah, whatever. Be happy.

Roberto Baldwin (37:14)
It's like you bought a burger

and then you're like, I would like bacon on that burger. And the burger itself costs 10 bucks, but the bacon costs $400. That's what the GTD is to me.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:25)
To be fair, the GTD is barely a Mustang. You know, it is shaped like a Mustang. Yeah. Okay. ⁓ the, they, you know, there's the base dark horse SC, ⁓ which again, we have no pricing information. This is going to go on sale. ⁓ they're going to start taking orders in the spring, start deliveries in the summer. ⁓ but

Nicole (37:28)
So the GTD is $400 bacon. It's basically $400 bacon. Okay.

Roberto Baldwin (37:32)
$400 bacon.

Sam Abuelsamid (37:52)
the, uh, the current dark horse, the naturally aspirated five liter dark horse of 500 horsepower that, uh, starts at about, uh, 60 ish thou $65,000 I think goes up to if you load it up with all of the options, you can get it up to about $90,000. So this dark horse SC probably going to start somewhere in that $90,000 range. Um, and then you can get the

Roberto Baldwin (38:18)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (38:21)
Dark Horse SC track pack, which throws away the rear seat, gives you carbon fiber wheels with Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 4 tires and Brembo carbon ceramic brakes, forged control arms for the suspension. With the track pack, they say they took out about 120 pounds of unsprung mass.

car and 150 pounds total. between the four corners with the carbon wheels, carbon brakes, forged control arms, they took off roughly about 30 pounds from each corner of the car, which will help with handling and ride ⁓ and acceleration. And then they also threw out the rear seat and some other stuff. ⁓ And then

It's got a big carbon fiber wing on the back, the front fascia of all the SCs, ⁓ like the last GT500, a lot more open area for breathing so you can cool that engine down. ⁓ There's a big carbon fiber vent in the hood of the car. ⁓ The SC is about an inch wider, so it's got unique fenders, different from other Mustangs, because it's got

more wider track. If you get the track pack, the trunk lid is also different. It has a little ducktail spoiler on it, and then there's a carbon fiber wing that stands above that. And the reason why they put the ducktail on there is ⁓ they found that during their wind tunnel testing, they got a lot more downforce with that in there while they were able to keep the carbon fiber wing

at a reasonable angle so it didn't completely obscure your view to the rear. ⁓ And they say at 180 miles an hour, it generates 620 pounds of downforce. ⁓ So, you know, this is gonna be a quick car. And then there's also going to be a limited edition version of the SC that has painted stripes ⁓ on the hood and the deck lid.

So not vinyl, but actually painted. So that means they got to take it off the, take it off the main paint line, mask it, they spray those stripes and then put it back in and do the clear coat. And on the, on the last GT 500, you had the option of either vinyl stripes or painted stripes. The vint, the painted stripes, it's a $10,000 option.

Nicole (40:43)
Hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (41:06)
Mmm.

Nicole (41:06)
gosh.

Sam Abuelsamid (41:07)
Yeah, so most likely I'm guessing that the limited edition Dark Horse SC is probably gonna be somewhere around 130 grand with all that stuff on there. ⁓ So it'll be a fast Mustang, but yeah.

Nicole (41:25)
It'll be a pricey

Mustang.

Roberto Baldwin (41:26)
It'll be expensive

Mustang, which you know, you know, people are having problems paying for food, but we have a really expensive cars coming out. So I'm really excited about that. You know, the horse looks very, it looks more like a horse of the apocalypse. looks more like it's bringing pestilence or plague. just, it does not look like a fun horse. It is not, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (41:33)
Yeah.

Nicole (41:39)
Hahaha!

Sam Abuelsamid (41:41)
Yeah

Well, it is the Dark Horse.

Roberto Baldwin (41:48)
I guess, yeah, yeah. It's just, yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (41:49)
One

interesting detail on the Dark Horse badging on the rear, ⁓ they have some color options, some accent color options, including one that has, that's teal. So you get teal painted brake calipers and seat belts and accent stitching on the seats, on the Recaro seats. And then on the perimeter of the Dark Horse badge and the eyes, it's painted in teal.

And then, you know, there's also a red package and there's a couple of others. ⁓ so they, actually did some, some cool stuff with the, with the colors, ⁓ on the, on the SC that won't be available on other Mustangs. ⁓ and I had a, had a chance to chat with, ⁓ Sarah Watson, who is the color and materials design manager for the Mustang. ⁓ and so I'm going to drop that in here and she explains, you know, some of the color choices. So we'll have that.

right now. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (42:48)
I have become, I'm big fan of bold colors on cars. I think the world has gone way too far towards monochromatic cars. Yeah, don't want anymore black, white, or silver, or gray. I want interesting colors. And I love seeing, especially adding accents like the teal. what ⁓ was the driving force behind adopting the teal? What brought that out?

Sarah Watson (42:57)
you

Yeah, so actually we had a lot of research and inspiration from our liveries on the track. So your GT3s, the way our drivers wrap their cars in bold colors, you see the teal accent actually all the time. And as we have our standards, like with the reds, we put those two together and it came out this way. So the teal tonic was like to be the loud aspect and then the race was to be tried and true.

Sam Abuelsamid (43:39)
Yeah, because oftentimes on a race team, the cars might have the same livery, but you'll have different accents on the car so you can distinguish them quickly on the track.

Sarah Watson (43:47)
Yeah, when I was looking at pictures, the teal just stood out. It stood out. And then you dig deeper. then like I mentioned earlier, first gen Mustang had the, I can't remember the name of it, but had a teal on there, on the Boss 429. And so we took that and then used the inspiration there, put it on the seatbelt, put it on the calipers, our accents stitched in the center line.

Sam Abuelsamid (44:09)
And I noticed on the Dark Horse badge on the back as well. Right. And then on the limited edition one, it's red instead of the...

Sarah Watson (44:12)
to signal that it's a track car.

Exactly, exactly. So it was like you had the best of both worlds. You talked to a variety of customers, one who loved the standard, loved the traditional, but then we even got a little bit louder and bolder on the beat. But then with the track, we introduced that next-gen look. And this is what we're going to be building off of even more. So this is just the intro.

Sam Abuelsamid (44:36)
So you're going see more of that throughout the Mustang lineup.

Sarah Watson (44:39)
People

want to be loud and bold. They want to be unapologetic. And this was one of those packages that delivered on that.

Sam Abuelsamid (44:46)
So for the limited edition, are the stripes standard on the limited edition? Yes. And what color combinations are you going have on the limited edition? get the black obviously with the red stripe.

Sarah Watson (45:00)
red stripe and then the Oxford white so it comes in two colors only. Again to kind of have that symbolism with the checkered black on the racetrack so we did it in white and in black. ⁓ On the white you get ⁓ also a standard black painted roof. ⁓ You can't see that on shadow black car but that's standard as well so you have that whole sporty motif on the exterior that falls.

Sam Abuelsamid (45:21)
And so on the Oxford white, it's still the same red and gray painted right there. And then what other color combinations you've got this blue, what is there a name for this blue?

Sarah Watson (45:33)
This is Argon Blue. So Argon Blue is a unique exterior color to Dark Horse SD. Our other colors will have the race red, black, white. There's also Adriatic Teal that we pulled from the FX. So that's going to be on here. We have Orange Fury.

Dark matter gray, it's a total of nine colors that we've pulled from, again, our FX, our special cars, and then our base Mustang, significantly coming from Frac. Yeah, thank you. Nice to meet to meet you.

Sam Abuelsamid (46:07)
Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Roberto Baldwin (46:12)
duh duh.

Sam Abuelsamid (46:12)
Okay.

And we're back. And I also spoke with Ari Grunewald, who is the chief program engineer for the Dark Horse SC at Ford Racing. And I talked to Ari a couple of years ago when they launched the Raptor, the Bronco Raptor, because he was the chief engineer on Bronco Raptor. And then after he finished that, he went over to work on Dark Horse SC. ⁓ And so we'll drop that in here now.

Sam Abuelsamid (46:41)
with Eric Grunfeld, ⁓ Chief Platform Engineer, Program Engineer, Chief Program Engineer for ⁓ all Ford Racing or for the StarCourse variants of Mustang.

Arie Groeneveld (46:56)
Specifically, I'm the chief program engineer on the Dark Horse SC.

Sam Abuelsamid (47:00)
okay

that's all uh... yes he is the latest edition the mustang lab kind of completes you know kind of the the type of lineup we've had mustang for probably since the late nineties you know going from base to g t uh... and having something in the middle there and and and and there since at least the mid two thousand had a supercharged one in there and of course now you've got the g t d way up the top of the laptop tell us about come how do you see

dark horse s c fitting in into that lineup ⁓ why ⁓ is why the move away from the shelby

Arie Groeneveld (47:39)
Yeah, so let me address your first question. ⁓ Between a bass, dark horse, and a GTD, there's quite a bit of white space from a performance standpoint. And we took that as an opportunity to really address the success that dark horse has been having on the bass program and how it's attracting more diverse, younger customers. ⁓ And it's really resonating with them. So this is placed right in that white space.

Obviously we push the team and the team pushes themselves quite frankly to deliver as much as we could out of this car in that white space. So that's that was your first question.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:17)
Yeah, so, you know, shifted on the last couple generations away from the Shelby branding to the Dark Horse, Dark Horse R, Dark Horse SC. And does that kind of change, does that contribute, do think, to some of that change in the customer base for this car, for this lineup of cars?

Arie Groeneveld (48:40)
your question is about whether or not.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:43)
having having a new new branding the star course brand has that helped maybe changing the perception a little bit of these higher performance mustangs and bring in a new type of buyer

Arie Groeneveld (48:54)
I do think that's the case, yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (48:56)
So

with the SC, what were your main targets in terms of evolving and moving to a new generation compared to what you had with the GT500 a few years ago? What were you trying to achieve and prove on this?

Arie Groeneveld (49:14)
Yeah, so I think it's really about as we become Ford Racing, you can see the lineage as we had on the screen showing that we've got the race car variants of a Dark Horse, and then we have the production car side of Dark Horse. And really, we're trying to, well, what we're doing is we're sharing technology between the two, and there's that crossover between the two products. So, love Shelby, but that was not...

didn't make sense in that crossover between what we're doing on the race car side and the production car side and that transfer of technology.

Sam Abuelsamid (49:50)
So what were some of things you've done on this car, on the Dark Horse FC, to really bring it in line with the Ford racing ethos of the mid 2020s?

Arie Groeneveld (50:03)
Yeah, so I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that we're tapping into all our motorsports experience. We went through some of the exterior styling changes that were made and how the design of the exterior was really formed by the function we needed. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (50:20)
Yeah,

because you've got quite a bit more downforce now, right?

Arie Groeneveld (50:23)
Yeah, we've got a lot of downforce on here. So whether it was GT3 and learning that we could take the lower grill further down and increase the open area, which we did, and compared to a BayStar course, that's 60 % larger. ⁓ We also opened up the outboard coolers. That's 100 % larger than a BayStar course. Those were some learnings from track time. We've also learned from an efficiency standpoint that some of the tricks that our NASCAR teams were using

to modify and optimize the exterior surface of the race cars. They were using 3D printed tiles and being able to go into the wind tunnel and quickly swap out.

Sam Abuelsamid (51:02)
those those print bring up sections of the that's right for quarter front section of the car

Arie Groeneveld (51:07)
Really?

Yeah, A-pillar forward. They were able to print that out and we thought that is a fantastic trick.

Sam Abuelsamid (51:13)
because a lot more iteration of this session

Arie Groeneveld (51:16)
Yeah, you start off with computational fluid dynamics and that gets you to a point. That's a good starting point, but ultimately you have to go into a wind tunnel to dial it in and make sure you're there. And that trick allowed us to say, okay, we're going to change, we're going to try this, we're going to try this, try this all in one session in the wind tunnel and provide that feedback to design to say, this is what works best for us. And then have the conversation about what the trade-off is for the function.

So obviously very focused on the function.

Sam Abuelsamid (51:46)
And in recent years, Ford has built new rolling road wind tunnels, full-scale wind tunnels. You've got some really interesting driver-in-the-loop simulation capabilities. I assume all of that has been utilized in creating this? Oh, of And gets you closer, have better fidelity in your simulation to get to the track?

Arie Groeneveld (52:07)
We utilize

all the simulation tools that we can. So as we tap into the motorsports side, as we're now one family of Ford racing, we're able to bring that to bear. And ⁓ the fact that the way we're structured, for example, like if I choose the powertrain chief engineer, like my counterpart from a functional standpoint, he's managing both the race cars as well as the production cars.

there's nothing lost between having the organizations not working so closely together. So we have access to all those tools and we're finding, just like that NASCAR example, some tricks that we hadn't ⁓ thought to do previously.

Sam Abuelsamid (52:50)
are there things that you were learned from the gtd program that were also brought into this and obviously we saw some visual elements in in in the cabinet

Arie Groeneveld (52:59)
So ⁓ we would take this out testing with some of the race cars as well as GTD would be on the track on some occasions with us as well. as we're learning, for example, actually our duck tail spoiler, for example, we were out on the track, we realized that, this is really contributing to ⁓ increased downforce. It's effective. I said it's more than 10 % increased downforce as a result. And that translated into

Sam Abuelsamid (53:27)
That's a different rear deck than you have on the standard Mustangs, right? Correct. Is that on the regular Dark Horse or is that unique to the SC?

Arie Groeneveld (53:36)
This is unique to the SC. It's actually unique to the SC track pack. Yeah, so we found that that was very effective and GTD ultimately took that same concept and put it on their vehicle. Yes, so and that's the intent. It's that sharing between, hey, if there's something that we can learn from a production car side and translate that over to race, fantastic. It's a two-way street.

Sam Abuelsamid (53:49)
Okay, so it's worth both ways.

and ⁓ one talked about well was weight reductions in particularly unsprung weight reductions to talk a little bit about what what's been done there

Arie Groeneveld (54:08)
Yeah, so on the track pack version of SC, like specifically in the corners, we've made carbon ceramic brakes available right from GTD. So between that, the Michelin Cup 2R tires and the carbon fiber wheels, we're removing quite a bit of unsprung and rotational mass from the vehicle. So from a total vehicle perspective, we're removing 120 pounds of rotational unsprung mass.

which is huge. It translates in the ride, control, precision.

Sam Abuelsamid (54:39)
And the trackback also doesn't have a rear seat. Any other highlights of the SC that listeners to the podcast should be thinking about?

Arie Groeneveld (54:44)
it as more of like a show

Yeah, I like the feature of the variable traction control. Yeah, so that's a lift from GTD obviously calibrated separately for our vehicle. Because in the past you've been able to say all right I'm gonna go on or off right but if when you have a car this capable and you want to push it or if the environment is just a little maybe a little bit difficult to drive on maybe a little slipperier than

Sam Abuelsamid (55:02)
Sure, because you get different tires, suspension.

depends what track the right track to different services some of the reps on

Arie Groeneveld (55:24)
Yeah,

exactly. So you can go through a multitude of settings to control the traction control that you want. So it's not just environment, but it's also the customer's capability.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:34)
And that's just within track mode, right? Correct. ⁓

Arie Groeneveld (55:36)
That's correct.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:43)
So can you control that from the steering wheel, I guess?

Arie Groeneveld (55:46)
No, would be through the center stack button and then bring up a pop-up and you can select one.

Sam Abuelsamid (55:51)
probably don't want to be messing around with that blood going on for a car

Arie Groeneveld (55:55)
I thought,

⁓

GTD? The pop-up comes up from the center stack and then you can toggle through the steering wheel selections. Yeah, so you'd have to hit the center stack and then it pop up.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:13)
Okay, not quite as advanced as what you've got at GTD, but then again.

Arie Groeneveld (56:19)
It's very similar. I think it's probably the same.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:22)
Well, I mean terms of the interface.

yeah okay sorry okay

alright um... well thanks thanks Ari you bet thank you and I just realized we did talk before uh... in Chicago when the uh... think it when the Raptor was the Raptor or the Everglades? it was the Raptor yeah yeah we spoke there so

Arie Groeneveld (56:33)
Thank you.

Sam Abuelsamid (56:48)
All right, we're back. And ⁓ so that's the Dark Horse SC. These probably second most expensive Mustang ever.

Nicole (56:57)
Hahaha

Roberto Baldwin (56:59)
Save up your, save up them quarters people.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:02)
Yeah, you're gonna need a lot of them.

Nicole (57:04)
need a lot. You're gonna need a lot.

Roberto Baldwin (57:04)
So many quarters.

Sam Abuelsamid (57:07)
⁓ And then after we were done looking at the Mustang, they took us over into another part of the building where we got to see the new Bronco RTR. ⁓ So RTR is Von Gittin Jr's company. And they, last fall they introduced a Mustang RTR that his crew helped develop. And now they have a Bronco RTR. There's actually

There's actually been a Bronco RTR available for a while now, but those, the way they did those was those were purchased by ⁓ RTR pre-title from Ford. So they got shipped from Ford's factory to RTR's facilities where they got a bunch of upgrades, ⁓ including different wheels and tires, suspension upgrades and assortment of other stuff. ⁓ And you can still buy that one. And that one's called the RTR Spec.

uh, edition, but, um, now they're actually going to also do these in the factory, uh, here in Michigan, where they build Broncos and it's slightly different spec with the, the, the spec version that you get from RTR, you can customize it more. So there'd be a little bit less customization available with this one, but it's, uh, it's got the, the graphics, the 35 inch, uh, wheels and tires, um,

the lime green bead lock ⁓ rings on the wheels that is, you know, that's kind of RTR's signature color ⁓ and a bunch of other stuff. It's, ⁓ these are all powered by the 2.3 liter four cylinder EcoBoost. ⁓ And it has the ⁓ anti lag system that Ford developed for this, which basically means that when you are off-roading and anti lag only

comes into play when you're driving off-road. ⁓ What it does is that when you take your foot off the accelerator, it actually keeps the throttle open slightly, so it allows air to keep flowing through. It just cuts off fuel to the cylinders. It allows the air to keep flowing through, so it keeps the turbo spinning. So as soon as you get back on the accelerator, it's generating boost more almost immediately instead of waiting so you don't have that lag. Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (59:30)
that's cool.

Nicole (59:32)
Does it say how much this is in here? I'm scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Or is it a mystery? I don't think they give you pricing on this yet, right?

Sam Abuelsamid (59:34)
yeah, no, ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (59:37)
Mr.

Sam Abuelsamid (59:40)
they did talk about pricing and, ⁓ give me a second and I will find it.

Nicole (59:44)
sure. OK,

because I'm looking through the release and I don't see it. It looks awesome. I think it's funny that Ford's going with all these like neon things like the blue on the Mustang we were just looking at and the green here. And then they did the same thing on the Maverick Lobo has like lime accents in it and stuff. We're like channeling our inner 80s child with some of these colors. It looks cool, but it is very 80s. Everything new is old again. Everything old is new again. Is that the saying? ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:05)
Yeah, exactly.

Pretty much, yeah.

So the RTR spec that RTR themselves build ⁓ runs ⁓ close to $100,000. And this is going to be significantly less than that. It's going to be cheaper than the Bronco Raptor, which they actually recently reduced the price on the Bronco Raptor. And it now starts at about ⁓ only

Nicole (1:00:25)
Oof.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:41)
About 90,000, I think. ⁓ Yeah, they didn't they didn't tell us the specific price for the RTR. But I think it's going to be somewhere around 70.

Nicole (1:00:54)
I mean, that's, I mean, it's a lot, but that'd be really cool for that. I bet people will be excited about that. The hardcore off-road. The thing is, I think what's fun about these is, know, that someone's going to buy it. Who's like, yeah, I do this on the weekends. I'm to use every single feature they've got on this. And then, you know, the other 99 % is like, nah, we're going to use any of this, but look how cool my thing looks like. Like most people don't use it all. And if you know what you don't have to, if you like how something looks, but I want to like,

Sam Abuelsamid (1:00:54)
which...

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:15)
Yeah.

Nicole (1:01:21)
I think it's neat that there's gonna be somebody out there who's gonna do that when we're gonna get pictures on the internet of them blasting through the desert. That one guy.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:29)
Yeah.

So the, the, the Bronco Raptor is now, now starts at 79, 995 plus destination. So about 81 or 82,000. Um, so I think this is going to, the RTR is going to start, uh, just under 70, I think.

Nicole (1:01:48)
That's cool. That'll be fun. People will love it.

Roberto Baldwin (1:01:48)
There

you

Sam Abuelsamid (1:01:53)
All right, so let's get back to stupidly fast cars ⁓ The Chevy Corvette ZR1X ⁓ It's you know, it's a little bit quicker than that Defender Octa you were you were driving ⁓ it has 1250 horsepower Yeah, so Yeah, it's a thousand I think a thousand and sixty four horsepower from the ⁓

Nicole (1:01:59)
Ha ha.

Mm-hmm.

I slightly more horsepower too. Just a skosh.

Gosh.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:02:22)
Twin turbo 5.5 liter V8. And then it's also got a couple hundred horsepower from ⁓ the electric motor driving the front wheels. So it's all wheel drive. ⁓ So last fall, a couple of months ago, ⁓ the Corvette engineering team took the ZR1X, ⁓ production spec ZR1X to the US 131 raceway. It's a drag strip here in Michigan. ⁓

to do some performance testing. This thing is insanely fast. Zero to six, sorry, quarter mile time. By the end of the day, they did two days of testing, by the end of the second day, they were down to a quarter mile time of 8.675 seconds. Yeah, and.

Nicole (1:02:59)
Ha ha ha.

That's insane.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:20)
The trap speed was, I think, 159.6 miles an hour.

Nicole (1:03:23)
Mm-hmm.

That's it. And they do have the zero to 60 on there. It's one point six eight seconds. One point not even two seconds. One point six eight seconds zero to 60. That's madness. It's wonderful madness. But it's absolutely madness. But man. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:32)
Yes.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:42)
yeah, no one needs that on the regular. And remember this is

on a prep track, you know, whenever, yeah.

Nicole (1:03:48)
Right, right.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:03:48)
Yeah. So there's a real drag strip. Yeah. And that's, this

is with the rollout and everything. Yeah. So, I mean, this was totally optimal conditions, but you know, even, you know, even, you know, just on regular pavement, you know, this car, you know, because, because it's all wheel drive and you've got, you know, a couple hundred horsepower driving the front wheels. So you're going to get, even as the turbos are spooling up and everything, you're going to get instant response from the front, you know, and by, you know, by the time you've used that up.

Roberto Baldwin (1:03:54)
Yeah, still, ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:19)
the engine's gonna be kicking in and you're just gonna be flying down the quarter mile, you're probably still gonna easily on regular pavement, you'll probably be able to get 10 second quarter mile times, which is just ridiculous.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:31)
Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Nicole (1:04:34)
Mm-hmm.

Roberto Baldwin (1:04:35)
Ridiculous.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:04:36)
Yeah, now that is that's one of the fastest quarter miles ever recorded for a road legal production car. In fact, I think it might be the fastest that's been published for. You know, for a stock internal combustion vehicle, they show they show a table on the press release page. There's only two cars that went faster than that, and they're both EVs.

rematch in the Vera R and the Pininfarina Battista. The rematch went 7.9 seconds at 186 miles an hour and the Battista went 8.55 seconds at 155 miles an hour. and those are cars that cost a couple of million dollars.

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:23)
Yeah. The only, like price wise, the only thing that's like close is, is, and it's, they're almost, they're pretty, yeah. They're so close. You wouldn't know the difference if you were sitting in the stands ever. You would never like, it'd be a photo finishes the lucid air Sapphire, which is an EV.

Nicole (1:05:24)
Yeah, this is you get like, you know, for these or.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:05:42)
Yeah. Yeah. The ZR1X base price is for 2026, $212,195. So this is half the price of a Mustang GTD. And it is way, way faster. And it has a, it has a trunk that you can fit a paddle board into, which you can't do on a Mustang GTD. The GTD has no trunk.

Roberto Baldwin (1:05:56)
There you go.

There you go.

You could just

Nicole (1:06:08)
mean.

So that's a major detraction. ⁓ forget it. Cause that's totally what I'd use my zero one X four is to, know, ⁓ definitely it's kind of a lake adventure, some car forget a Subaru. Let's get this.

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:10)
go... That is a major... Like if it can't... If... If...

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:12)
Yeah, so you can't take your paddle board with you in the GTD. You can in the ZR1X.

Yeah, to go to the lake.

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:21)
Go to the lake.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:24)
⁓ It's all

wheel drive. You know, what more could you ask for?

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:26)
It's a Subaru. It's

essentially just a Subaru. If it's all-wheel drive, it's a Subaru.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:30)
Basically, take

your dogs to the vet, you know, take your dogs to the lake.

Roberto Baldwin (1:06:36)
I took Bowie, he's the German Shepherd, in the BRZ to the vet and he didn't want to sit in the back because those seats are horrible. And so he sat in the front, but he's just a little bit too big so he kept trying to his paws, both his paws on the seat and he looked really weird. So he had to put like his paws on the ground. And so when we came out of the vet, he got in the car and I was texting my wife and some guy was walking by and he's just sitting there in this front seat and the guy was just like looking at us.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:06:51)
haha

⁓ So, know, Nicole, you you could you could still get a zero one X

Nicole (1:07:10)
I mean, could that. mean, you know, two hundred nine thousand seven hundred dollars is only slightly higher than what I had in my. Just I'd have to stretch just the tiniest of bits, just like a little bit.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:21)
And

of course, you want to get some winter tires for it. So you've got all-wheel drive, you just need some winter tires.

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:24)
Yeah, I gotta get the winners.

Nicole (1:07:26)
I mean, it's, it's,

it's unfortunate. I don't have that to drive tomorrow when we get half a foot of snow, because that's going to be better than the defender. have sitting here foe show. Yeah. Right. And it'll be totally fine.

Roberto Baldwin (1:07:35)
Yeah, throw some, throw some Blizzacks on there. Blizzacks!

Sam Abuelsamid (1:07:36)
Absolutely. Yeah

All right. ⁓ Let's see. Honda did a business update this week and one of the things that they announced is that they are ending production of the current generation RD Acura RDX. And that because they've got the new RSX coming this year, which for at least temporarily is going to take the RDX's place. It's a similar sized vehicle, but it's electric. It's going to

kind of take the place of the RDX in the lineup for now. ⁓ But they do have a new RDX coming at some ⁓ future date that they did not specify. ⁓ But the ⁓ next gen RDX will be a hybrid. ⁓ And it's going to be the hybrid system that we got to try out when we were in Japan in October. So it's their new platform, which I talked about back

you know, in early November after I came back from Japan, which, you know, is an interesting new platform for their larger utilities and trucks and vans and so on ⁓ that has some, has a little bit of flex built into it ⁓ to allow for, they claim, better road grip. Certainly seemed to work on the prototype that we drove. ⁓ And it's ⁓ a new version of their hybrid system that has

⁓ two sets of final drive gears so that at higher speeds ⁓ they can pick from the two different ratios and that will ⁓ they'll have a broader range of where they can run the engine at higher speeds to get better overall energy efficiency. So that's coming probably we'll probably see it

you know, sometime in 2027 as a 2028 model.

Roberto Baldwin (1:09:45)
Cool.

Nicole (1:09:45)
That's a good thing. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:09:46)
Yeah. ⁓

and then Honda also announced that, they've got, ⁓ they've, they've developed a new lightweight camper, a camper trailer called the base station.

Nicole (1:10:01)
Okay, I think this looks cool. I love how this looks. I want one. I want one.

Roberto Baldwin (1:10:05)
You could fill it with

moto compactos and have a gang like go places. Yeah

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:09)
the

Nicole (1:10:10)
Look how cute it is. Like it's like it

looks like it's a little just it's just the cutest looking thing. And then the way it opens up where it gets, you know, so you can stand it and has this huge tailgate. Yeah, it's going to pop up. And it has like a lift gate like the door opening isn't just a door, it's this huge lift gate. So it'd be super easy to get in and out of. You won't have to be slamming a door all the time. I love it. I love how this looks.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:20)
It's got a pop top like an old VW van. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:10:34)
And then if

you're camping and it's like raining, you can get under there. You can be under that lift gate and like take off your muddy shoes or whatever and then get into the vehicle without getting rained on, which is nice.

Nicole (1:10:37)
Yeah!

I kinda think this is cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:10:50)
Yeah, and you know, they kept the interior. This thing only weighs 1,500 pounds. So yeah.

Nicole (1:10:55)
They say a CRV could tow this, which is incredible.

doesn't have to like, don't have to have like a great big three row or a truck or something. The CRV.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:05)
And you know, the, the photo, the images they released, you know, have it behind the, new zero SUV. ⁓ and with the, you know, with the top down, ⁓ you know, it's just barely taller than the zero SUV. ⁓ so, you know, you're not, you you're not going to have nearly as much aerodynamic drag as you would with a larger trailer. ⁓ so you could, it's going to have a lot less impact on the range of an EV.

Nicole (1:11:18)
Mm-hmm

Sam Abuelsamid (1:11:34)
But yeah, I mean, the ability to tow this thing with something like a CRV or an RDX would be really cool. And then the, yeah, the, the, the interior, uh, you know, is, is deliberately kept kind of wide open. Um, there's, uh, sort of a bed that, uh, that normally can be a bench, but it can fold down as well, uh, to be a bed for two. Uh, and then you can, they've got it set up so you can add a second bunk.

Nicole (1:11:37)
That's awesome. Yeah. I would like something like this. This is cool.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:02)
up in the pop top area. So it can it can sleep up to four people. ⁓ It's got a nice low loading floor. It's modular so you can put all kinds of different things into it. ⁓ It's it's and it's a slick design. like the design of it.

Nicole (1:12:19)
It really has this very futuristic, curvy, cool design. think it looks great. I really do think it looks good. So it doesn't look like a typical camper. makes me think of what was it? Lost in space with their little their little vehicle they had. I think it was lost in space. That's what it makes me think. ⁓

Roberto Baldwin (1:12:34)
⁓ yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:12:39)
So there's no word on pricing on this yet ⁓ or even when it's going to come out. My guess is probably not, certainly not before next year, 2027 at the earliest. ⁓ But it'll be curious to see how they price it because there are some other small lightweight trailers, ⁓ some of which are pretty expensive. Some friends of ours have one from a company called Happier Camper.

Nicole (1:12:52)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:08)
that

is kind of similarly sized to this, actually probably smaller than this. And that thing was like $55,000.

Nicole (1:13:15)
Cameras can be really expensive. They're not a cheap buy, yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:13:15)
They're very expensive.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:17)
Yeah.

Yeah. So hopefully Honda makes this a little more affordable.

Nicole (1:13:25)
I don't know. I feel like that would make sense if you're making a small little camper and you want it to be something that people are going to be able to haul around with the CRV. It should not be something that's outrageously expensive. That's not the price point of the CRV owner.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:37)
Yeah.

Well, our friends with their Happier camper, they tow it with an Odyssey, Honda Odyssey.

Roberto Baldwin (1:13:47)
Nice.

Nicole (1:13:47)
Okay,

there you go.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:13:51)
All right, ⁓ let's talk Stellantis. So is it working again? All right. So first up for Stellantis, ⁓ after they paused importation of the Tenali for a while last year, it's back again, the Alpha male Tenali, ⁓ but it's no longer available with the plugin hybrid system. So that's another one that they've dropped the plugin hybrid from. So it's...

Roberto Baldwin (1:13:55)
Hey, the website's working. What the f-

Nicole (1:13:57)
nice!

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:19)
just the two liter turbo four cylinder. ⁓ It got a refresh this year, styling refresh, so new front end. ⁓ But the ⁓ Tenali's ⁓ sibling, the Dodge Hornet, ⁓ is dead. It is no more.

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:37)
Womp Womp.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:39)
You could probably still get one for quite a while. I think there's still quite a few of them sitting on dealer lots because it was not a great seller.

Nicole (1:14:39)
I don't think anybody's surprised.

No, it wasn't, unfortunately. It was an interesting idea, but it was not the target market for ye olde Dodge owners.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:14:56)
Yeah, didn't didn't quite fit the the dodge muscle aesthetic.

Roberto Baldwin (1:14:56)
Yeah.

Nicole (1:15:02)
No, no, brotherhood of muscle thing did not, did not quite fit that.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:07)
Not big enough to squeeze a Hemi into, so it's out of there.

Nicole (1:15:10)
Exactly.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:13)
⁓ but Nicole, you and I sat down at the auto show with Tim Kineskis. what did you think?

Nicole (1:15:20)
We did!

I mean, it's always fun interviewing Tim because I feel like you could just put your microphone in front of him and say, so how's it going? And not ask a single other question if you didn't feel like it. And you'd have a straight half hour of Tim just riffing on everything. I thought it was interesting talking to him. He's probably one of the most blunt executives. I don't know how many times did you have to beep him? Don't we have to have a?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:15:47)
Actually when I went

back and looked at it there were none. I just wanted there were some F-bombs in there. I have to listen to it again. It's from the transcript there wasn't anything in there.

Nicole (1:15:52)
Are you sure? I was going to, I would listen to it again because I'm pretty sure that there were some, there were

a

Roberto Baldwin (1:15:58)
He has F-bomb energy. That's what's...

Nicole (1:15:58)
few little. He always has F bomb energy, which is not a bad thing. and it was, it was interesting talking to him and hearing what he thinks the strategy is for the, the different brands in the U S for Jeep, for Chrysler, for Dodge, for Ram. Sorry. I suddenly forgot what brands were talking about. ⁓

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:01)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:16:03)
Yeah.

Nicole (1:16:20)
I thought it was an interesting conversation. And I think he's, you he did a very good job of ⁓ being confident that they have the right strategy and that you don't need to have more. That what was the he has a talk in there where he talks about the number of trucks he has and the number of vehicles that are in Chrysler's lineup. So Chrysler is the Pacifica.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:16:40)
Yes.

Nicole (1:16:41)
That's Chrysler. And he's like, arguably we really don't have, you know, the trucks, you know, I'm like, well, no, you have a lot of different kinds of trucks. Truly, they're not. It's not. And it's not like they have 18 flavors of the Pacifica. got like one, you know. So he has some he's he's going hard on. They have the right mix. They've done the right things. They've done the right stuff with pricing. So I thought it was interesting. What did you think, Sam?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:05)
Yeah, you know, he's because Stellantis sells all four brands in the same showrooms. You know, it's not like with GM, for example, where you've got Chevrolet dealerships and GMC dealerships and Buick dealerships and Cadillac dealerships where you can have a little bit of overlap because they're in different stores. not in the same physical location. Stellantis, you've got all four brands in one location. And so, you know, one of the things he talked about was

Nicole (1:17:31)
Mm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:17:34)
not necessarily having to have every body style, every type of vehicle in each brand. cause you don't, don't necessarily want, you know, the, the same crossover as a Chrysler and as a Dodge, you know, or a Jeep, you know, there needs to be some distinction between them. So it sounds like he be still, least for the time being committed to all four brands. We'll, we'll see, you know, how that

evolves, particularly with Chrysler over the next couple of years. But the other thing that they're focused on right now is ramping up the Hemi production, especially in the trucks. I think you talked about last year they built, they got 30,000 Ram 1500 Hemi's built, about 10,000 of them delivered to customers. This year they're targeting 100,000.

You know between the the five seven Hemi and the Hellcat in the TRX, you know, that's their priority for for RAM for the moment And so, you know between the talk conversation with Tim and talking to some other folks You know the RAM rev the eREV Version is not going to be coming till sometime in the second half of the year after they launched the TRX ⁓ And then there's also the the the wagon your grand wagon year eREV that's that's going to be coming

⁓ that's also going to be sometime in the second half of the year, basically trying not to launch too many things simultaneously. They're staggering things so that they can, you know, and he's talked about this before, you know, they want to focus on the quality and getting, getting these things built right, you know, instead of trying to do too many things at once. ⁓ so interesting conversation. ⁓ and of course, you know, you know, we only had ultimately about 17 minutes.

with Tim, you know, he had 20 minute time slots ⁓ because everybody wanted to talk to Tim because he was one of the only he and Antonio Foloso were the only among the only executives available at the show ⁓ and you know and Tim is unlike most executives, know, was having a conversation with somebody from GM, you know, who had asked, you know, would you help to have more conversations with Mary Barra said

Nicole (1:19:28)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:19:57)
Be honest with you. No, not really. Yeah. Cause I was at a fireside chat with her on Monday afternoon that she did with Kaylee Hall from Reuters for automotive press association event. And, you know, it was about 40 minutes conversation and really didn't get much new out of it. Uh, you know, and, and the thing I told, you know, the, GMPR person is, you know, got a lot of respect for Mary, but you know, she has been at this a while. She's.

very well trained media trained. She is very much on message all the time. You you know, you are almost never going to get surprises from talking to Mary Barra ⁓ in public and

Nicole (1:20:40)
Well, and I

think, you know, there's a point to a point that's good, right? Because you don't want your executive team going off the handle and saying crazy things, and they need to they need to still be professional.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:48)
Right.

Nicole (1:20:52)
It also can make for really boring interviews when you can't get it. Like there's, there's a line between I'm making sure I'm towing the party line and I'm not saying anything completely untoward or that's going to make people angry and still being more human and having a little fun with things and being a little bit more and Mary's so on message. She really is. And she's great, but there it's, it's the message. It's exactly. It's so in a box that it's hard to have a really

Sam Abuelsamid (1:20:55)
Yes.

Nicole (1:21:20)
unique or interesting conversation with her sometimes.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:24)
Well, let's start with the big question. Tim, what's your vision for Stellantis in North America? Besides hammies and Hellcats.

Tim Kuniskis (1:21:32)
⁓ So that's probably a question you should be asking Antonio. There's the CEO of North America. I work on the brands. can tell you what my vision is for the brands. your question was very high level, very like, what are you going to do to change the company? Not my favorite. Go talk to him. But on the brands, I think we're doing some fun stuff, most of which we honestly haven't materialized in the marketplace yet.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:21:42)
What do you want to see from the brands?

Tim Kuniskis (1:22:00)
If I look back at last year, most of the stuff that I said we were gonna do and announced we were gonna do looks like unfulfilled promises. I call last year kind of the dog year. It was almost like seven years in one, because we did so much shit, but it doesn't look like most of that has materialized. We launched four new Jeeps in four months. It's crazy. don't think in the 33 years of it doing this, I don't think we've ever done that kind of a cadence of launched four new products in four months. They're literally just arriving at dealerships right now.

Even though we talked about it for six freaking months, just now starting to get to Hemi's a great example. We launched Hemi. I don't even know how the headline of 10,000 orders in one day became this like huge thing. mean, you saw half a million trucks, 10,000 is not a crazy number. mean, it's a great number, but it's not like game changing. It took on a life of its own. But the reality is we launched Hemi and everybody's super excited. Me too. Everybody's excited. You know, to bring back that choice for the customer.

But the reality is we shut down the Hemi line. Even though we announced that we brought it back, we had to bring the Hemi line back up to speed. had to de-prioritize the T6 to bring the Hemi back up and all these things. But the reality is, reason I'm telling you that story is we, in that whole time period, which took 50,000 orders, we only built 30,000. And by the time they got to dealerships, we only sold 10,000. So Ram sales were up last year, retail to customers.

50,000 units increase up 17 % only 10,000 more Hennies. They only tell you that not to say, Hey, we could have done better. I tell you that to say we only built 30,000 last year. We're to build over a hundred thousand this year, three X what we did last year. So all that work that we did is just starting to come to fruition. We made all this noise with NASCAR. We haven't even raced yet. We're going to race at Daytona for the first time. So we haven't been there yet. We talked about the TV show. The TV show hasn't launched yet. We talked about three agent, three agent hasn't launched yet.

⁓ t-rex we'll see rex you're gonna be a little bit of a sore so as a last year we built the foundation tons of work just starting to see it come out one of the things that we're doing your question specifically what you can do on the brands is we're trying to widen the scope of the brands and you see the announcement would be the thirteen billion thirteen billion ties back perfectly to your question because it helps us expand the scope of our brands within the thirteen billion we're gonna increase the capacity of

Cherokee and compass one of the things that we've been constrained on is production capacity the reason that we didn't sell a lot of units the fleet last year for truck We didn't have the capacity Sterling Heights was really strangled Hemi was not helping t6 had to come down while we were ramping up here So we didn't have the production that's gonna get fixed. We're bringing in t4 to Cocoa mode That's gonna give us more engine availability within the 13 billion. We announced that we're going into Toledo to build the midsize truck which

We desperately need a midsize truck because we used to have the most successful midsize truck of all time. In 2019 when we were killing it with Ram. We didn't have a Dakota 19. We had the DS Classic truck. The DS Classic truck sold $40,000, which is the price of a midsize truck, but with a full-size truck. It was an absolute game changer. I need to get back to that with the Dakota. And then we're going to bring in what I think is going to be another big enabler for us is a Ram full-size utility vehicle in Warren.

We were the only ones in the industry trying to go into that very lucrative segment with only one offering. And we were trying to spread a gap of $50,000 with one brand. No one's ever done that successfully, cross $50,000 with, okay, we call it a wagon, you're grand regular. Let's be honest, it was the same car, right? So you don't have enough woods, leathers, and sunroofs to justify a value walk of $50,000. So now we're do it like everybody else. GM's got three.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:25:36)
It was too big of a gap for

Tim Kuniskis (1:25:54)
a Chevy, GMC, and a Cadillac. Ford's got Ford and Lincoln. We're gonna come with our Ram version and our Jeep version, and then your next question's gonna be, oh, so Ram's gonna be the cheap one and Jeep's gonna be expensive one? No, it's gonna be two different customers. It's one of the value of our company is we have one showroom with four different brands, with four different positionings, and we can appeal to different customers within those positionings. It's no different than what we did, and now it sounds like that's corporate bullshit, but just look back at history. We did this successfully with the muscle cars.

I shouldn't say that. We did this initially with Brampton. You had a Charger 4-door and you had a 300 4-door. They were the same crop. They appealed to two completely different customers. It wasn't cheap and expensive. It was two different customers. They didn't cross out and they successfully existed in the marketplace in the same shore. We can do that in the very lucrative UV market as well. So that's a couple of things that we're doing to expand the scope of the brands, which I think is going to be our growth potential because right now we're competing in 55 % of the industry.

When you look at all of our sales, across all of our brands, yeah, we sold one, just the American brands, pressure Jeep, Dodge Ram, we sold 1.8 billion units last year. 1.8, that's fricking lot of cars. It's 55 % of the industry. When I bring out all those other product lines, I'm gonna go up to 75 % of the industry, my long range plan is gonna go beyond 75 % of industry. That's where the growth's gonna be. The 75 is gonna be within the next two years. Yeah. Yeah.

Nicole Wakelin (1:27:12)
I'm going take you to get to that seventh...

How much gold is the Dakota, the new trough to the solar slayings and your numbers for ram?

Tim Kuniskis (1:27:24)
it will be very important to us because if you look at the light duty truck, light duty truck is about a million and a half units and it is the battleground in the industry. Not only is it the most lucrative and all the domestics have to live and die in that segment, it's 1.5 million units. The midsize is, everybody talks about affordability and the cost of vehicles and everything. Well, a midsize truck today is the same size as full size truck was 15 years ago. Well, the shooter carrying around hasn't got,

significantly larger. So a mid-size truck can appeal to a lot of people. The industry, by the time we bring the Dakota into market, will be a half a million units. It will grow to 700,000 units from there. So it'll be half the size of what we consider the battleground today.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:05)
Tacoma alone last year with 278,000.

Tim Kuniskis (1:28:08)
These

are the maze. So now I put that one in a little bit of a different space than I put the domestic midsize drugs. ⁓ Why? It's been there longer. It's got kind of a cult following. ⁓ It's just a little bit of a different beast.

Nicole Wakelin (1:28:27)
I'm

just giving Yeager Dakota to have the same cult father.

Tim Kuniskis (1:28:30)
We're gonna do a very unique positioning of Dakota. Number one, it's gonna be a real credible, a lot of capability vehicle. It's gonna be body-on-framed, which it needs to be to transition to leg-beauty truck. I don't wanna tell you any more about it, but I think our positioning of it is pretty cool. The people that have seen it were pretty shocked. They're like, that's just like, fits up, right?

Sam Abuelsamid (1:28:59)
Technically you've had a mid-size truck with Gladiator. Does Gladiator stick around with Dakota? mean, obviously not. ⁓

Tim Kuniskis (1:29:08)
It's in the segment plot. In hindsight, should we have called Gladiator or Wrangler? Probably. Quite frankly, if we did, we sold 250,000 if we had Gladiator and Wrangler together, and nobody would be sending out a press release yesterday on the RTR, which is a sticker package saying that they'd be Wrangler, because they did, if you include my one that has a bet on it, we'd kick their ass. But whatever, it is what it is. The reality is, though,

Does that compete with Colorado Canyon in Tacoma? It's not really cross shop with it. It's more of a Wrangler. It has all the functionality of a midsize truck. can cross shop with a midsize truck. It absolutely can. But it's different. With the solid axle in the front, it attracts more of Wrangler buyer than it does a midsize truck buyer. And we'll keep that, by the way. We'll absolutely keep it, because I think it's going to be like right here, and it's going to like the 300 and 30. It's going to be two completely different customers.

we're going to execute it completely different.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:07)
So you mentioned Chrysler. What's going on with Chrysler? What's the future of that brand?

Tim Kuniskis (1:30:15)
You know, I don't

Sam Abuelsamid (1:30:17)
I've

heard a lot of different things over last several years.

Tim Kuniskis (1:30:19)
I think it's been since 2011 or something like that that I was working I think it was 2011 actually that I was working on that Chrysler. And that question has been the exact same question forever. Ever since the days when Chrysler had Peachy Cruiser and Sebring and you know had like the bigger lineup. The questions come up over and over and over again. What's going to happen with Chrysler? Are you going shut down Chrysler? Do you need Chrysler? The reality is if I looked at each of these brands

and tried to treat them as a showroom? Yeah, could make that, hell, you could make that case outranked. Because if you call a light duty truck and heavy duty truck a truck, okay. One vehicle, okay, I have pro master in that. I got one vehicle and a commercial vehicle, right? So you can make the same case. The reason you don't make the case is because you go, oh, wait a minute, you sold 550,000 of those, so I'm not gonna ask you that. Of course that makes sense. But crazy, you oh, you sold 125,000 of those. You need that, Brian?

You need that brand because you're in a showroom that's a house of brands. I have pulled different brands in the same showroom. I don't need to have a pickup person, I don't need to a pickup truck for Versa. Now, could I expand Chrysler? Yes, the reason I could expand Chrysler is each of these brands has a very unique position. There are a large number of people in the industry, 17 million in the industry, and we sell 1.8 million of the North American brands. That 1.8 million, by the way, was... ⁓

was global so one point four in north america so one point four out of fourteen million seventeen million unit total in north america it's quite small but within that population that we don't get there is a huge population of people that don't need to go off road whether they go off road or just think that they will someday maybe have the capability to go out there's a huge number of people that could care less about that there's a huge number of people that could care less about doing a burnout and want a muscle car and there's a huge population of people that

don't how to tow a boat. don't care. I don't need to put anything in the bed of my truck. know I don't need that. They need transportation. They need cool, reliable transportation. And within our house of brands, this brand is never going to be for that customer. This brand, if we do it right, this brand is never going to be for that customer. This brand is never. So what do I do? Do I ignore them? No. So can I get them? Yeah, sure. I can go to our suit. But is it my number one priority today? No. So where do we get them, Robert? What is your number one? No, number one priority is where the money is. Brand.

This is my volume, this is my money, this is my fun, and this is going to be something that we have capability to grow in the future.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:32:53)
Cool. So, you know, we put up a call to our listeners for what they would want to hear from you. Yeah. And one of the questions was about affordability. Yeah. And somebody also asked, you know, back when the other guy was still in charge, he talked about bringing a new $25,000 Jeep, a new rampage or a brand new gate to the lineup. Is that still part of the plan?

Tim Kuniskis (1:33:19)
So affordability is a tough subject because you can have this conversation with every industry. Ever since COVID changed everything. Ever since COVID, price of everything's gone up from a Coca Cola to cars. The challenge is the entire industry, I mean, you're seeing it right now. The industry has taken huge write-offs and taken huge write-offs because everybody is deprioritizing a light location, but yet.

Reinvested a half a trillion dollars in service. I can see two dreads So at the same time you're taking huge red us. Are you to see everybody announcing? Oh, we're gonna cut prices ten thousand dollars. That's impossible It can't you can't take billions and billions and billions of dollars of write-offs and they go Oh, by the way, I'm gonna cut the price But what you can do and you see us doing it. We literally just did it on Jeep So we did a plank of the G preset what we did is we didn't say hey, we're cut the price of juice We said we're gonna make cheap more cheap. We're gonna give you more value. If you look across the Jeep lineup

We just added about $4,000 of customer value to all of our Jeep on average. That's a similar thing to adding or to cutting the price because we took features that people wanted and we lowered the price. 35 inch wheels are now $3,000 instead of $5,500. Is that a $2,500 price cut? No, but everybody wanted it anyway, so it kind of is a price cut. So I can give you more value without cutting the price and give you more Jeep.

at the same time. that is adding value. I think that is something we need to do a better job in the industry. We did it on TRX. Nobody talks about it on TRX because you go, it's $99,000. Yeah, it's a freaking ton of money. But Raptor Arc is $15,000 cheaper than Raptor Arc and it's $25,000 cheaper than the outgoing model and it's on the new platform, so it has more technology and more features. So now you get more value, more features, and a lower price. But OK, it's still a hundred grand, so it's not like it's an affordability issue.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:34:56)
a lot cheaper than a

Tim Kuniskis (1:35:13)
But the more that we can do that, the better. Look at the dodge. Everybody looks at the dodge, oh my god, are you offensive? Well, is it?

420 horsepower all wheel drive now with the new hatchback design. I've got more functionality. I've got 420 horsepower standard and I've got all wheel drive and I'm $49,995. Go back in time and look at what you got at that performance of what the price is. It's less expensive than it was previously, faster than it was previously at the first. Fact, absolutely a fact. The all wheel drive in that car gives you the capability of having all weather everywhere.

In the Midwest it doesn't have to be a toy, you can drive it as an everyday car. So I got that. I also have performance. Now a 550 horsepower T-stick roll-over drive will be to hellcat. So I'm giving it, I'm giving more and more value.

Nicole Wakelin (1:36:04)
Nick has poked me and told me I have one more question. So I want to ask questions. So when you were talking about the, you know, the electrification strategies completely changing for every automaker out there, who's got rid of the key has and that you're introducing a new vehicle with a recon and Jeep. Do you think that's what people want?

Tim Kuniskis (1:36:22)
the Yeah. The reason that the pull off. The question is the definition of people is very vague. ⁓ A percentage of people that the use case works electrification is amazing. You guys have driven tons of electric cars. So she's you. You have a perspective that the average customer does not have. Most customers that are opposed to electric. Never driven by them. But.

Nicole Wakelin (1:36:24)
Like, is the doors and go out.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:36:41)
I'm the only one.

Tim Kuniskis (1:36:50)
in a lot of cases they don't need to because they know that it doesn't fit their use case they know that they live in an apartment they don't have access to charge at night or they know where they live there is no infrastructure for charging or they know, it's too expensive or they know I need to tow my boat and I've read the stats and it won't tow my boat and I'm the bullwether and I'm not all the six promise ⁓ the industry wanted to go to 50-60 plus percent

Electrification adoption customer poll for electrification is probably more in the sub 10 % range now will that 10 % grow as we get better? Yeah, but the cost of batteries got to come down the weights got to come down ⁓ The overall price of the cars got to come down the infrastructure to depend on the question is when's that gonna happen? We were trying to make it happen in one year Is it gonna happen in two years three years five years ten years? I don't know, but eventually it will happen in

We will get to that 50, 60%. I just don't know if it's gonna be three years or 10 years. That's why you see everybody writing down these huge investments because they have warehouses full of batteries and they're like, I'm not gonna be able to use those the next 24 months. Not gonna happen. But we will get there. I fully believe that we will get.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:37:54)
It's not going to be 2030.

last quick one. you gonna bring back a rampage?

Tim Kuniskis (1:38:18)
It's a good car. Looks good. Drives good. I like it.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:23)
Okay. Thank you, Jim.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:38:26)
Yeah. Well, as I said, we weren't the only ones that talked to Tim. There's also a Lissa Priddle from Motor Trend also sat down with him. And I've got a, I'll have a link in the show notes to her story. One of the things that she talked about and talked to him about was putting a Hemi in the new charger. And of course the chargers, you know, available as an electric now or with the three liter hurricane six cylinder. And

Basically, Tim told her that, yeah, probably not going to get the five seven in the charger because, you know, first of all, compared, you know, you 550 horsepower with the hurricane. The Hemi is only three hundred ninety five horsepower and the Chargers standard all wheel drive. So it makes it hard to package that engine in there with the all wheel drive system in the front. And it's just not really worth it.

You know if they're do anything with a V8 in there It's probably gonna be a Hellcat rather than the standard Hemi and even that he remained somewhat non-committal on ⁓ So a lot of that link in the show notes as well But you know as far as our conversation goes yeah, I mean you know covered fair amount of stuff in in 17 minutes But he did confirm. You know, you know Dakota

built in Toledo, which was previously announced, but he also confirmed that the gladiator is not going away. There is going to be a next generation gladiator that is built on the same platform in Toledo. But that, you know, the, you know, the, the customer base for the Ram Dakota and the Jeep gladiator, even though they're similar size and nominally both midsize pickup trucks, totally different customer base. And so, you know, the,

Nicole (1:40:00)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:20)
gladiator is going to be a very different vehicle from the Dakota. ⁓

Nicole (1:40:27)
Yeah, so it makes sense to have both vehicles because small trucks, entirely different small trucks. So it makes a lot of sense.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:40:33)
Yeah.

Yeah. All right. So that is everything I think we have for Stellantis. ⁓ So there was ⁓ also some big news the other day ⁓ from ⁓ actually from from Beijing. Mark Carney, the relatively still relatively new prime minister of Canada, ⁓ went to Beijing this week to talk to ⁓ the Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Roberto Baldwin (1:40:35)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:41:03)
and came back with a signed trade deal that will see tariffs on Canadian products going into China substantially reduced. So they get to sell their canola oil and all kinds of other products at almost no tariff in China. And in return, Canada is dropping the tariffs on Chinese built EVs from 100 % to just 6 % for

⁓ for at least 49,000 units a year. ⁓ so lower cost Chinese EVs are gonna start turning up in Canada ⁓ in the not too distant future probably.

Roberto Baldwin (1:41:47)
Dun dun dun!

Nicole (1:41:48)
Dun dun! Yes.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:41:50)
And

then, and then it was a follow up story, you know, again, not, not really a surprise to those of us, you know, follow the industry. but Canada wants to have Chinese companies building their EVs in Canada. and I, I think it's only a matter of time, ⁓ probably within the next six to 12 months that we hear the first announcements of probably BYD, but you know, maybe Geely or somebody else building

⁓ a factory or taking over a factory in Canada because there's some stuff that is available like Stellantis' Brampton, Ontario plant near Toronto, which was supposed to build the new compass and that's going to be built in Illinois now. so, you know, they got the factory there that's not likely to be used anytime in the foreseeable future. The GM Cammie plant near Ingersoll that was building the bright drop electric fans.

Nicole (1:42:23)
Mm.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:42:48)
That's not being used. ⁓ think it's only a matter of time before there's a deal for somebody, some Chinese company to build EVs in Canada.

Roberto Baldwin (1:42:50)
Yeah.

Nicole (1:42:57)
Yeah, it's the first big foothold for China here and that's in North America and that's it's a big deal. I don't think I wouldn't be surprised either to hear an announcement about a factory falling very quickly after.

Roberto Baldwin (1:43:11)
yeah, definitely. Canadians, Canadians, know, Canadian automakers, know, people working those factories are like, ⁓ okay, well we can't do that now because these, you know, the US companies pulled out. And so they're like, well China's like, yeah, we'll build some cars there. They're like, all right, cool. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:43:12)
Yeah, well, I mean.

Yeah, if you guys want to buy them, we'll build them.

Mexico doesn't have any Chinese factories yet, Chinese assembly plants yet, but 20 % of vehicle sales in Mexico last year in 2025 were from Chinese brands. So they've already got a significant chunk of the Mexican market. so this is, I wrote a blog,

post on the telemetry blog the other day, ⁓ this could be an existential threat for the Detroit auto industry. ⁓ If they continue to just keep building stuff like big V8 pickups and SUVs, ⁓ they are going to be increasingly irrelevant everywhere outside of the United States borders. ⁓ And between that,

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:04)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:44:24)
And the antagonism that's being built up against the United States because of certain policies here, ⁓ people in other countries don't want to buy U.S. products regardless of what they are. And so that's going to make it really tough if the U.S. if Ford, GM, Stellantis don't continue to invest and develop ⁓ competitive products, including electrified vehicles.

Roberto Baldwin (1:44:36)
Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:44:53)
You know, also, you know, smaller, more affordable vehicles. You know, they've got to, they've got to have stuff that is competitive in the rest of the world. And if they don't, they're going to be stuck with just the U S market and nothing else.

Roberto Baldwin (1:45:05)
I mean, it's a big market, also, you know, she, well, maybe Greenland. It's a big market, but also it's, you know, you, you, have, they have, you know, facilities and they have cars and they have people who work in all these other countries. And if you, if you don't keep up, if you continue to sort of like, well, let's just keep throwing Hemis and everything that does not look well and the rest, you know, that's not going to help you in other, in other countries. yeah, sad trombone.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:45:07)
Well, maybe Greenland.

Nicole (1:45:33)
Yeah.

Roberto Baldwin (1:45:35)
Womp womp.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:45:35)
Yeah.

All right, and then finally there was a story that was on, let's see, I found it, it turned up in my search that has your byline on it, Nicole, along with Nick Miles, about cars being up to $6,400 more expensive than before.

Nicole (1:45:53)
yeah, yes.

Yeah, I'm doing some work with Nick and with test miles. And this was actually the first story I wrote. ⁓ Yeah, woohoo. it's basically it's talking about the prices of new cars and the impacts of what's made it pricier. And is it your imagination that you're walking into the dealership and you think, man, these all seem more expensive. And it's not like there was this independent analysis by this ⁓ company and they found that.

Roberto Baldwin (1:46:06)
Yay!

Nicole (1:46:27)
between tariffs and all these different things that are happening, average price of new vehicles up about 13.5%, which is about $6,400.

price bump, you know that it's it's $6,400 that shows up in your monthly payment and does make your new car a little bit more expensive. You know, it's not just the EV tax credit, you know that that was part of it for EVs, but it's sort of an impact to both the used cars and the new cars. Everything is just is a little bit more expensive. And because used car ⁓ new car prices are so high.

used cars are a bit more desirable. So even those tend to be skewing a little bit higher because people can get a more of a premium for those than they could have, say, two or three years ago. So it was about the impact of the things that are making use in new cars more expensive is not your imagination about sixty four hundred dollars.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:47:25)
Yeah, and it looks like ⁓ this was primarily increases on imported cars and parts.

Roberto Baldwin (1:47:25)
for Real Reels.

Nicole (1:47:27)
Real wheels.

Right. Right. So it affects imports more than it does exactly if you're a US manufacturer. So that's why it's an average, because it's looking at, overall what it's, you know, some imported cars are way more than $6,400. It's more expensive. So that's what it comes out to on average is 64. Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:47:49)
Okay. Yeah,

I mean, that's a big chunk of change in just one year.

Nicole (1:47:53)
Yeah, it's not right. It hasn't been like a slow creep like we're saying, oh, know, since, you know, know, 20 2010 since 2015 knows.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:48:01)
I mean, it's on top of the slow

creep we've had already anyway.

Nicole (1:48:03)
Right.

It's like, no, since last year, like that's a very short amount of time for a sixty four hundred dollar price increase. That's not that's not a small number. That's a significant number, especially if you're looking for more budget friendly vehicles. So that that increases is you are going to see it. It's not your imagination. And there's you know, it's the terrorists, it's the lack of incentives. It's a lot of things that are impacting it. But it is genuinely that's how much more it is going to cost you.

Roberto Baldwin (1:48:04)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sam Abuelsamid (1:48:32)
All right. ⁓ Well, thanks all for listening and hopefully you will hear all three of our voices all the way to the end this time. And we will be back next time. Bye.

Nicole (1:48:38)
Hahaha.

Roberto Baldwin (1:48:38)
Woo!

Nicole (1:48:45)
Bye everyone.

Roberto Baldwin (1:48:46)
Bye.