Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I wanted to try something
Speaker 1: a little different. Uh, you guys know, I'm a bit
Speaker 1: of an auto buff, and so I brought in one
Speaker 1: of my favorite automotive riders right here at Bloomberg. Hannah
Speaker 1: Elliott has been covering cars and luxury goods for the
Speaker 1: better part of a decade um and we just want
Speaker 1: out about all things automotive. If you're at all interested
Speaker 1: in where do I start, Tesla, electric cars, collectible cars, supercars,
Speaker 1: driving schools, racing, just the future of automotive industry, well,
Speaker 1: you're gonna find this to be absolutely fascinating. Unfortunately, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of me and this. You'll just have to
Speaker 1: get past that because once we start talking about cars,
Speaker 1: I can't shut the hell up. Um. But if you're
Speaker 1: at all interested in automobiles, you're gonna find this to
Speaker 1: be a lot of wonky fund So, with no further
Speaker 1: to do, my conversation with automotive journalist Hannah Elliott, This
Speaker 1: is Master's in Business with Barry rid Holts on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: This is an extra special edition of Masters in Business.
Speaker 1: I don't normally bring in guests who are also Bloomberg columnists,
Speaker 1: but today I've brought in one of my favorite people
Speaker 1: to read, Hannah Elliott More. You would say, welcome to
Speaker 1: Bloomberg now, but you have your own desk and badge,
Speaker 1: and you're here half the time I'm here. I'm here
Speaker 1: just across the way. You split your time between the
Speaker 1: East Coast and West Coast kind of my boyfriend on
Speaker 1: the West Coast. And cars are better on the West
Speaker 1: Coast roads, yes, especially during the winter. So I do
Speaker 1: find myself out west a lot. And I'm originally from
Speaker 1: the West Coast, so it is okay, So let's talk.
Speaker 1: We's start with your background. Um, I originally saw your
Speaker 1: bondline when you were at Forbes doing luxury. What's your background?
Speaker 1: How on earth did you find your way to car Well,
Speaker 1: it's a funny story. I have a journalism degree from
Speaker 1: Baylor University in Texas grade school. I went there to
Speaker 1: run on the track team, actually the eight hundred. In
Speaker 1: cross country, I ran the half and and and the
Speaker 1: two mile relay. Hardness is a brutal race. People don't understand.
Speaker 1: It's um two minutes sprints or unless you're good and
Speaker 1: then it's a minute thirty sprint. It really proves your
Speaker 1: worth and your courage as an athlete, because you know,
Speaker 1: they always say, whoever is leading at the end of
Speaker 1: the first lap is not going to be that's right
Speaker 1: at the end of the second. All strategy. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it. But get back
Speaker 1: to you. That was a hundred pounds ago. You're still Yeah,
Speaker 1: you should see my dad. Ye oh yeah, he actually
Speaker 1: ran for Athletics West Nikes Elite marathon training team back
Speaker 1: in the seventies and eighties. Um. Yeah, he's six four
Speaker 1: and weighs about it. What I do, You're that much?
Speaker 1: I'm actually five ten and a half. But I don't
Speaker 1: believe that does No one does towering. I I have
Speaker 1: a doctor's note that says I'm five. You have to
Speaker 1: be well and heels. Of course, I'm probably. I will
Speaker 1: prove it to you. I'll take off my shoes later,
Speaker 1: we can, we can back up against each other. I'll
Speaker 1: try that later. I'll get a photo. Believe it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know it's crazy, so bare by journalism school, but
Speaker 1: led you towards for so I moved to New York.
Speaker 1: I'm writing basically for the same wire service that I
Speaker 1: interned in in Baylor, writing about politics and religion. But
Speaker 1: it's kind of like it's good, but I'm looking for
Speaker 1: the next thing. I answer a Craigslist ad looking for
Speaker 1: a assistant editor at Forbes. I know nothing about cars Gigslist. Yes,
Speaker 1: well this was fifteen years ago, and apparently people still
Speaker 1: use Craigslist. People will use now. I know a ton
Speaker 1: of people who sell cars on Craigslist. Like, so, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about cars later. I can't. I got an old
Speaker 1: s L I have to get rid of what color
Speaker 1: red with the tan. It's a hundred and nineteen miles
Speaker 1: and it's my third convertible. I don't need I want
Speaker 1: to talk about this. We will talk about this in
Speaker 1: a few minutes. Okay. I have some funny car stories
Speaker 1: and I do too great so so so I answered
Speaker 1: and add on Craigslist. I don't know anything about anything.
Speaker 1: I'm such a baby. I don't know a thing. But
Speaker 1: I go in and I just think, all right, Forbes
Speaker 1: is a good brand. If I get my foot in
Speaker 1: the door, I'll figure something out once I get there.
Speaker 1: It's a great brand. So I go in and I
Speaker 1: the guy who hires me is a great person with
Speaker 1: who sees potential in people. And he basically said, look,
Speaker 1: you know, I get hired. He hired me because I
Speaker 1: was cheap. I was just out of college, and really
Speaker 1: I had no bad habits as a journalist. And he figured,
Speaker 1: I can teach this person how to write about cars.
Speaker 1: I can mold her exactly just like any other beat.
Speaker 1: He was used to dealing with a lot of car
Speaker 1: guys who can write about specs and machine car background
Speaker 1: at all, zero and previous interest. No, no, I mean,
Speaker 1: my dad's not a car guy. My brother is not
Speaker 1: a car guy. What was your first car? Buke Skylark nine,
Speaker 1: I mean olive, Olive with black interior bench seats. I
Speaker 1: was so embarrassed of that car. I mean I shared
Speaker 1: it with my sister. We bought it for two hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: We each paid a hundred. She loved it, and she
Speaker 1: she is cool like that. She saw that it was cool.
Speaker 1: But I was mortified of that car. And although so
Speaker 1: you're still too young, my generation cars represented freedom. Like
Speaker 1: you lived in the suburbs. Your parents would freak if
Speaker 1: you went into the city. There was no internet, you
Speaker 1: were not connected to the rest of the world, the
Speaker 1: entire Bruce Springsteen over of I have to get out
Speaker 1: of this place. Cars represented freedom that is no longer
Speaker 1: like kids. Not only don't they need cars today? Oh wait,
Speaker 1: were gonna go great, let's uber there. It's a whole
Speaker 1: different headspace. Plus they're plugged into the entire universe. So
Speaker 1: that sensation of being a white suburban punk a prisoner
Speaker 1: in For me it was plainview Long Island, but that
Speaker 1: was repeated by millions of people. Anyway, My my Chrysler
Speaker 1: three hundred that I paid a hundred dollars from my
Speaker 1: six s price with three hundred that I paid a
Speaker 1: hundred dollars from my uncle, and could chirp the tires
Speaker 1: at any speed. Um was a great first car until
Speaker 1: my mother borrowed it and totaled it. And that was that.
Speaker 1: So so they back to you, they could mold you,
Speaker 1: do you want to mention this person's name? Sure, Matthew
Speaker 1: de Paula, He's he's great. Uh no, he as it
Speaker 1: turns out, actually the next year he was laid off
Speaker 1: because of course he cost a lot more money than
Speaker 1: I did. And this was going into the two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight when everything was just so basically nobody was
Speaker 1: else was writing about cars, and it's like, oh hey, Hannah,
Speaker 1: get over there, do that. So I did that, and
Speaker 1: I kind of, you know, for it took four or
Speaker 1: five years before I finally embraced it. I always was thinking,
Speaker 1: this is just so I can have a job and
Speaker 1: I'll do something else that I actually care about. And
Speaker 1: then I started to like it. I don't know, it
Speaker 1: was very unexpected, unplanned. Um, I started to like it.
Speaker 1: And here I am fifteen years later when you first
Speaker 1: were doing reviews for Forbes. Was it the new Honda
Speaker 1: Accord or was it the was it the super cars?
Speaker 1: It was? It was everything when I first started. Of course,
Speaker 1: Matthew got the good quote unquote the good cars, the
Speaker 1: exciting cars. He'd throw me yes you know, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah exactly, which was great because you have to do
Speaker 1: your time, you have to put put in the work,
Speaker 1: learn the basics. It's not glamorous, even though it looks
Speaker 1: it can look really glamorous, but a lot of it isn't.
Speaker 1: And that's good. That's as it should be. Um. I
Speaker 1: find it a very honorable trade. So yeah, of course
Speaker 1: I would be in the Hondas and toyotas and forwards,
Speaker 1: and sometimes I would ride along with Matthew while he did,
Speaker 1: you know, review something more exciting. Um, and that slowly
Speaker 1: changed over time. Wow, that's really interesting. Let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about your process. First. I want to know
Speaker 1: how you pick a car to review. I want to
Speaker 1: know what the steps are, like, what sort of research
Speaker 1: do you do? Is it a blank canvas or do
Speaker 1: you do some background? Let's start first things first? How
Speaker 1: do you pick which car you want to review? This
Speaker 1: is a conversation I have with my editor a lot. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we try to pick cars that are new on
Speaker 1: the market and exciting for consumers. And by that I
Speaker 1: mean we may not review an outie just because it's
Speaker 1: not as exciting as something else. So we tried to
Speaker 1: keep in mind newness, um, excitement, and also vehicles that
Speaker 1: are pivotal for an automaker at that time, vehicles that
Speaker 1: means something for that automaker either you know, it's a
Speaker 1: do or die. Yeah, the first ever electric from Porsche,
Speaker 1: although not really the first, as we've found out. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there's some hybrids in their history, but um, yeah,
Speaker 1: so new, exciting and a car that means something pivotal
Speaker 1: for the automaker. Really the the criteria. Okay, so now
Speaker 1: it's some random car and I will come back to
Speaker 1: the Taycan later. I want to talk about that. But
Speaker 1: it's some car. How do you go about it? Do
Speaker 1: you approach it as a blank slate or do you
Speaker 1: do a lot of homework? And my fear is reading
Speaker 1: all the research might bias you a little bit. So
Speaker 1: how do you go about that? I don't read any
Speaker 1: other and often I couldn't if I wanted to, because
Speaker 1: the cars that I get are not literally not even
Speaker 1: on sale yet, um, but they're so lots of the
Speaker 1: automotive press, there's lots of this car. Let's let's use
Speaker 1: the Porsche as an example. There was the mission E,
Speaker 1: which we've heard about for years, well good couple of years,
Speaker 1: and then all the chatter that this was going into production,
Speaker 1: and then the early photos that looked very much, very similar.
Speaker 1: I mean, the production cars are never but this one
Speaker 1: is relatively did a very good job. And it doesn't
Speaker 1: hurt that the all the prototype cars and concept cars
Speaker 1: were white, and then the debut car was white. I
Speaker 1: mean even that that's a simple thing, but that is
Speaker 1: calculated they're trying to It had a tighter belt line
Speaker 1: and broader hips and front wheel wells. So you don't
Speaker 1: read any of the stuff. So I I you use
Speaker 1: a good word chatter. Um, I don't want chatter in
Speaker 1: my head. I don't trust it. UM. It has to
Speaker 1: be something real inside me. I trust my own judgment.
Speaker 1: I don't want to read other people's take. UM, And
Speaker 1: often I couldn't if I want to do. Because a
Speaker 1: lot of these cars are have not been driven and reviewed.
Speaker 1: They might have been covered like on data on debuts,
Speaker 1: but not actually driven. UM. I'm a big believer that
Speaker 1: cars should fulfill what automakers promise, and it's surprising how
Speaker 1: rarely that happens. Sometimes. UM, I think a car should
Speaker 1: fit it's what it's intended to do. The state statement
Speaker 1: of intent from the automaker. Should be fairly priced compared
Speaker 1: to others in this segment. Now maybe that's expensive, but
Speaker 1: maybe that's a fair price compared to others in this segment. Um.
Speaker 1: It should be able to do what it's intended to do.
Speaker 1: How well does it achieve that goal? So I think
Speaker 1: by that criteria, you could have a great experience in
Speaker 1: a Mini Cooper that costs, you know, twenty or thirty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars and you could have a great experience in
Speaker 1: a Bentley Continental GT, one of my favorite cars from
Speaker 1: last year. Car the costs over two dollars. Um. They
Speaker 1: both can be amazing cars for what they're intended to do,
Speaker 1: but they're very different things completely. How do you distinguish
Speaker 1: between what the engineers and automotive designers promise and what
Speaker 1: the marketing people promise, because there's often quite a lot
Speaker 1: of daylight between the Yeah, I don't like marketing at all.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think you have to do your best
Speaker 1: as a reviewer to cut straight through that. I don't
Speaker 1: watch car as I I don't have a TV. I
Speaker 1: couldn't if I wanted to. I really try to keep
Speaker 1: all of that out. UM. I often will read the
Speaker 1: press release after I review the car, just to kind
Speaker 1: of check and make sure that I get my facts straight.
Speaker 1: The big thing for me is that I'm fair and accurate. UM.
Speaker 1: It doesn't bother me if people disagree with my take
Speaker 1: as a critic, that's fine. I love, of course, I
Speaker 1: love having conversations. UM. I have sure automakers have said
Speaker 1: that's unfair, but I do try to be fair and accurate.
Speaker 1: So to your point about marketing, you know, I'll read
Speaker 1: through the marketing materials mostly as a fact check after
Speaker 1: I write the review, but before it's published. So now
Speaker 1: let's let's I'm assuming you or the editor or somebody
Speaker 1: reaches out to whoever Eston, Martin, Ferrari, whatever, they arrange
Speaker 1: the car. All that's administrative stuff. Now it's review day,
Speaker 1: and let's use um. The Bentley just mentioned one of
Speaker 1: my favorite car is one of the most beautiful looking things.
Speaker 1: They did such a spectactual job on the interior. But
Speaker 1: hold that aside. You and if I remember that was
Speaker 1: southern California, right, So you fly out to California, you
Speaker 1: pick up the car at Bentley, tell us what that
Speaker 1: day is like? The great thing about uh, this job?
Speaker 1: And I admit this is a great perk. Often they
Speaker 1: deliver the cars to me so I don't even have
Speaker 1: to be Do they have the handler with you all day? No? No,
Speaker 1: there there's a third party company that it's a press
Speaker 1: management press fleet managers. Basically, they manage the press fleets
Speaker 1: for a lot of automotive brands. So they'll and the
Speaker 1: guy with the car and then hand it over and
Speaker 1: he leaves you alone. That here the keys, trying to
Speaker 1: mess it up, right, and and with that Bentley, I
Speaker 1: actually it worked out perfectly because I drove that from
Speaker 1: l A up to Carmel in advance of the Pebble
Speaker 1: Beach auto shows, right, and so I you know, I
Speaker 1: had it for multiple days. You really get a feel
Speaker 1: of what it's like to live in these vehicles. So
Speaker 1: you have that car. Is it out yet or is
Speaker 1: this is still it's by now it's out At that
Speaker 1: point versions was probably they were taking they're always taking orders,
Speaker 1: but deliveries had not started. The reason I ask is,
Speaker 1: so you're going to Pebble Beach with a really hot car.
Speaker 1: I know it's but also Pebble Beach is the It's insane.
Speaker 1: Nothing nothing will be shocking there. Nothing, no car will
Speaker 1: be shocking there. I can just I mean, you kind
Speaker 1: of blend in even in Bentley. So so you get
Speaker 1: the keys to the car, Yeah, tell us take us
Speaker 1: through the process. I try to just live in the
Speaker 1: car as I would if I own the car. So
Speaker 1: take it to the store. You know, how does it
Speaker 1: feel to get gas? How does it feel to link
Speaker 1: your bluetooth? How does it feel to go on a
Speaker 1: hill climb up you know, you know, up Angeli's Crest
Speaker 1: Highway highway to in California, and I did take that
Speaker 1: car um up those hills. You it's like an elevation
Speaker 1: of six thousand feet? Did you get to the top?
Speaker 1: They've got not supercharged? Just just love that out right.
Speaker 1: And this is a what Bentley is billing as a
Speaker 1: grand tour, So they're so exactly they're they're saying. It
Speaker 1: has all of the capacities of a car you can
Speaker 1: live in day in and day out and take for
Speaker 1: on a long trip, you know, over a weekend or
Speaker 1: over a week and you're going to be equally comfortable
Speaker 1: in that. But it still has the performance of a
Speaker 1: sports car and a true sports car. So okay, all right,
Speaker 1: I'll take that and do that and live in it.
Speaker 1: So do you work with any sort of checklist and say, well,
Speaker 1: I want to do this, and I like, what what
Speaker 1: do you what sort of paces do you put this throat?
Speaker 1: It's it's more of a mental checklist by now. I
Speaker 1: used to have a list when I was just starting
Speaker 1: out doing just because I wanted to make sure I
Speaker 1: didn't forget anything that I would need for the review.
Speaker 1: But now, of course, um, you look at efficiency, you
Speaker 1: look at acceleration, how is the breaking, how is the
Speaker 1: steering um efficiency? Really does anyone who buy that car
Speaker 1: care about that? But other cars they might. For the
Speaker 1: Bentley No, but V eight versus a W twelve, I mean,
Speaker 1: they do make a W twelve version, and the power
Speaker 1: bump is incremental I really like. Not that I've spent
Speaker 1: much time in it, I know, but the super charge
Speaker 1: of the eight just seems to make so much more sense.
Speaker 1: I will tell you where the efficiency comes in. I
Speaker 1: drove that car from l A to Carmel on one
Speaker 1: tank of gass, which is insane. And half the people
Speaker 1: I tell don't believe that that car has a giant
Speaker 1: it's a giant car. But and it also yes, and
Speaker 1: it cuts out two cylinders when you're cruising to help
Speaker 1: improve efficiency, and that I think we talk about the
Speaker 1: readers of Bloomberg. You know, these people are more concerned
Speaker 1: concerned with saving time rather than saving me. So when
Speaker 1: you talk about efficiency, if you put it in terms
Speaker 1: of time saved difference, it does make a difference. And
Speaker 1: that's where the type of buyer that might buy that
Speaker 1: car actually does care about it, you know, the putting
Speaker 1: putting a bank of cylinders into retirement um temporarily, which
Speaker 1: I know even corvettes and other cars have done in
Speaker 1: the past. Is one thing that is mostly on the
Speaker 1: highway not noticeable, completely imperceptible. And the other thing I've
Speaker 1: noticed so I always used to turn off the a
Speaker 1: lot of cars you'll pull up to a rest start
Speaker 1: and the whole car pet peeve of mine, so me
Speaker 1: too until one of the new truck I have, which
Speaker 1: is the new BMW X four. It's the first, and
Speaker 1: it's really more of a crossover than a truck. It
Speaker 1: looks like a giant car until you pull up next
Speaker 1: to a real truck, It's like it's tiny, although the
Speaker 1: X six seems to be immense. I love the X six,
Speaker 1: and I know that's a polarizing car. And I tell you,
Speaker 1: if you only have one car and you need a truck,
Speaker 1: but you want something sporty, that's the way to go.
Speaker 1: And the old one you had that fastback that used up.
Speaker 1: The new one is more like an extended wagon. It's
Speaker 1: much more rational than the old one. And I think
Speaker 1: it's even better. And they made the interior very, very handsome,
Speaker 1: but hold that aside. Yes, this is the first car
Speaker 1: I've ever been in where the start stop is I
Speaker 1: don't want to say imperceptible, but it's pretty good subtle.
Speaker 1: The whole thing doesn't shudder in that annoying is the
Speaker 1: button to turn this damn thing off? I'll tell you
Speaker 1: where that's really weird when you're in a manual car.
Speaker 1: There are some manuals that also had to stop start
Speaker 1: half the time. I think somehow I killed it. My
Speaker 1: wife's too. My wife as an m convertible, so everything
Speaker 1: but the truck is a stick and the s l
Speaker 1: but um, there's two really interesting features with the start stop.
Speaker 1: If you put the clutch down and put it into
Speaker 1: gear or the start stop goes on, or if you
Speaker 1: hit the sport button, the start stop very unnerving. I
Speaker 1: mean it, I just right. It feels like an electric car.
Speaker 1: It's like, why is this so? But the the I
Speaker 1: don't say older Mercedes, but a five years old Mercedes
Speaker 1: and anything of that era. The whole car just shutters
Speaker 1: and shakes, and it's it's just way too annoying to
Speaker 1: make up a mile per gallon. So so there's that.
Speaker 1: But but BMW seems to have figured that out in
Speaker 1: the same way that GM figured out how to retire
Speaker 1: to bank to It's not too two banks, it's just
Speaker 1: one or two cylinders. And they do it in a
Speaker 1: way that it's really not very noticeable, which is really
Speaker 1: really interesting. All right, So you drive the car around
Speaker 1: for a couple of days. Are you taking notes or
Speaker 1: is it all meant? Or I take notes? I actually
Speaker 1: write emails to myself. I literally am typing emails. You know,
Speaker 1: even how does the seats feel? How do the seats
Speaker 1: feel after eight hours of driving? That's a big deal
Speaker 1: as visibility, you know, the three quarter pillar behind my shoulder?
Speaker 1: How does the bentley? It's terrible, it's bad, but but
Speaker 1: the good news is nobody's behind ye. I mean, how
Speaker 1: does the steering wheel feel? The most tactile? Simple things?
Speaker 1: How easy is the interface with the ent attainment? How
Speaker 1: quick does it? How long does it take me to
Speaker 1: connect my bluetooth? I mean, how easy is the map
Speaker 1: and navigation system? All of those things add up to
Speaker 1: the value of total experience? Yes, right, and and now
Speaker 1: how significant is that relative to Hey, how does this
Speaker 1: thing drive? Was it feel like when I bury the
Speaker 1: great question? I think it's I really do because it
Speaker 1: reminds me of that old quote. You know, people don't
Speaker 1: remember how you treated them, they remember how you made
Speaker 1: them feel some like. I think maybe I haven't thought
Speaker 1: about this, so this is coming out raw, but it
Speaker 1: could apply to cars that you know, um, the when
Speaker 1: you walk away, unless you're really a professional, a truly
Speaker 1: professional driver, you're gonna walk away with more of a
Speaker 1: general feeling about the car. Half of that feeling will
Speaker 1: be a direct result from how it actually drove, but
Speaker 1: the other half is going to be from other things.
Speaker 1: I mean, see comfort, I think is a big deal
Speaker 1: that that goes overlooked a lot. Shoulder room, especially for men.
Speaker 1: I actually think exactly right. I know, let's let's keep
Speaker 1: up in the height. Um My brother six eight, so
Speaker 1: we should talk about that. But I think it's an
Speaker 1: advantage that I'm tall, because I do maybe I'm able
Speaker 1: to relate to more men. It's something to think about. Um,
Speaker 1: all of those things, um impact how you feel about
Speaker 1: a car, for sure, even the engine note I mean,
Speaker 1: let's performance cars sound matters. I could not possibly agree more.
Speaker 1: And the funny thing is, and we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: my stupidity later, but both the so my X four
Speaker 1: is the m X four point out and the previous
Speaker 1: car was the mccon s. You went from Porsche to BMW. UM,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting Well, let's have a digression briefly. And
Speaker 1: so first I call this interface confusion and and you
Speaker 1: know what, we'll come back to this because there's a
Speaker 1: longer story about this, UM. But the bottom line was
Speaker 1: my wife and I both like the mccan and she
Speaker 1: but I liked it and she it was a lot
Speaker 1: of quirky things that went wrong with it, and she
Speaker 1: basically says no facts. So and we had two other BMW's,
Speaker 1: so standardizing on I don't have to look where the
Speaker 1: buttons are and just driving because she screams, I have
Speaker 1: a terrible tendency to take my eyes off the road
Speaker 1: and mess around. And when you go from an s
Speaker 1: L to a Jeep to a M to a it's
Speaker 1: just it takes too long to reorient yourself. The greatest
Speaker 1: little toy that this car has is the lane notification,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't make the horrible noise that not only
Speaker 1: does it vibrate, but I think it vibrates on which side.
Speaker 1: Do I love that? Really? Because I so I don't
Speaker 1: pay attention to the lines in the road. I'm looking.
Speaker 1: I'm looking for the current. No I'm looking for show
Speaker 1: me where the entry to the turn is and where
Speaker 1: I'm gonna accelerate out. I don't And if lines happens
Speaker 1: across that, I'm looking for what's the best line through
Speaker 1: the turn? Which occasionally scares the hell out of oncoming
Speaker 1: drivers or my wife. And so when we got this UM,
Speaker 1: I always had it off in the mechanic because it
Speaker 1: just made this hot, horrible buzzing noise. But in this
Speaker 1: it's a very subtle vibe. Now you could set it
Speaker 1: in the controls soft, medium, hard. I want it hard.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure if this is UM me my
Speaker 1: wishful thinking, but it feels like when you drift on
Speaker 1: the right side, the right hand side five rates and
Speaker 1: on the left hand the left hand and let me
Speaker 1: tell you, it is really, really helpful. I don't know
Speaker 1: if other people like it or don't. The same thing
Speaker 1: with the cruise control. We rented a Nissan Maximum when
Speaker 1: we were in Florida the other day and it had
Speaker 1: the full UM right listen. It's not Tesla autopilot. But
Speaker 1: we're stuck on one of the highways and bumper a
Speaker 1: bumper traffic And I just put that on. Now, if
Speaker 1: you stop for more than three seconds, it goes off,
Speaker 1: which is really dumb because all of a sudden it
Speaker 1: goes off and now you start lurging forward. Is terrible.
Speaker 1: But these little nannies, if you're aware of them and
Speaker 1: you him appropriately, it's only going to make driving safer
Speaker 1: and better. And I think this goes to a bigger
Speaker 1: point that there are two different there. It's a difference
Speaker 1: between commuting and driving. And a lot of the times
Speaker 1: that Americans spend in cars is actually commuting, sitting in traffic,
Speaker 1: not engaged driving. And to your point, I would rather
Speaker 1: just be driven if it's a commute, And if you
Speaker 1: all the all the studies will show that the more
Speaker 1: time you spend in a car commuting, the lower your
Speaker 1: overall levels of happiness and life. I believe that. And
Speaker 1: it's just think about your in California, think about the
Speaker 1: people who are commuting in l a traffic. That's to live.
Speaker 1: That's a lot of podcasts. Let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the collectible market, which over the past couple of
Speaker 1: years has gone crazy. Yes, and tell us what you
Speaker 1: see in that space. It's been so interesting. We've seen
Speaker 1: the rise and then kind of the plateau of Portia,
Speaker 1: especial the Porsche turbos from the nineteen seventies and had
Speaker 1: exactly I mean ten years ago, less than ten years
Speaker 1: ago you could buy uh, nineteen seventies era turbo for
Speaker 1: now they're selling for over two thousand dollars. It's not
Speaker 1: it's kind of insane. I think that plateau going at
Speaker 1: least um, you know, the Scottsdale auctions are coming up
Speaker 1: this month. I'll be going and I can't wait to
Speaker 1: see how those do. But that's been interesting. We've seen
Speaker 1: the rise of what they're calling like young timer cars,
Speaker 1: which are basically the cars from the eighties and nineties
Speaker 1: that anyone who grew up in the eighties and nineties
Speaker 1: might have had on a poster on their wall. Now
Speaker 1: these cars are becoming collectible. It's the old thirty year
Speaker 1: cycle of It's it's the math the cars that the
Speaker 1: cars that the forty five to fifth year old who
Speaker 1: now have disposable income, yes, liked when they were in
Speaker 1: high school. Suddenly now my question is that a diminishing group.
Speaker 1: What happens years from now, when that generation has grown
Speaker 1: up not caring about Camaros or or corvettes or even Ferraris.
Speaker 1: We're already saying it. I mean, well, the guy, the
Speaker 1: guys who want the muscle cars, you know, the Shelby's
Speaker 1: and the Corvettes, the older corvettes and um, you know
Speaker 1: the g T I mean g T fourties are kind
Speaker 1: of their own thing. But um, these are not. These
Speaker 1: are really low and really stable across the board completely. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think to your point about um, young
Speaker 1: timer cars, we can we can see what muscle cars
Speaker 1: are doing now and probably project that the same thing
Speaker 1: will happen. But that will happen in twenty years from now.
Speaker 1: I don't think. I don't see them stopping anytime soon.
Speaker 1: I mean, at what point does the like there has
Speaker 1: never really been a big decrease in art collectors that
Speaker 1: from generation to generation you have enough money eventually, I
Speaker 1: wanna roth co or O Jackson Pollock or whatever that
Speaker 1: that seems to be Ramone or whatever the previous hundred
Speaker 1: year thing was that is not showing any signs of waning.
Speaker 1: But it seems like this has got some demographic issues coming.
Speaker 1: It will be very interesting I will say I think
Speaker 1: Ferraris will always be a blue chip by of course,
Speaker 1: you know, Jaguar E types will always be blue chip cars.
Speaker 1: The Aston Martin's from the sixties and seventies will always
Speaker 1: be held very dearly. These are the perennial, but they're
Speaker 1: so vehicles. So one thing that I'm watching which is
Speaker 1: very interesting is these Group B cars. Are you familiar
Speaker 1: with the like the Lancia, Deltas and the Pugos. There
Speaker 1: were rally cars from the eighties that were raised for
Speaker 1: like two years and a very hairball rally. The automakers
Speaker 1: made only two hundred of them, so they're very rare.
Speaker 1: They have been adopted by these obsessive cult of fans
Speaker 1: who collect them, and they're paying six and seven figures
Speaker 1: for cars that are very but are very desirable. So
Speaker 1: let's let's apply that same framework. The sixties and seventies
Speaker 1: Ford Brontos just off the chain. And the car that
Speaker 1: I'm going to import myself from Bogada, Columbia is seventies
Speaker 1: era Toyota f Jack. I really like those. I have
Speaker 1: three people always. I have this grotesque orange crush two
Speaker 1: doors with a stick, and people are always asking me
Speaker 1: so that was a salvage title. I paid less than
Speaker 1: twenty twenty grand all in a flood car as much
Speaker 1: and it was I bought it a year old with
Speaker 1: I want to say, fifteen thousand miles and I now
Speaker 1: have forty miles. The only the only thing I had
Speaker 1: to do is replace a handbrake and that was probably
Speaker 1: my fault. So um, and the radio. The radio just
Speaker 1: got replaced, which is a pain in the neck because
Speaker 1: it's a crappy radio. And the factory it's like eight
Speaker 1: hundred bucks. I found it somewhere for about But um,
Speaker 1: the f J. If I'm going to have an old
Speaker 1: wheel drive thing that I use occasionally, I wanted to
Speaker 1: be a little more fun. And I really like that
Speaker 1: those have gone not quite full blown crazy, but you
Speaker 1: can find renovated versions of those going fort and people
Speaker 1: dropped big V eights in those for no damn good
Speaker 1: room completely And look at land Rubber bringing back the
Speaker 1: Defender I used to And now what have you seen
Speaker 1: the new one? The new Defender. I haven't seen it
Speaker 1: in person, but I've seen pictures. Okay, it's interesting. It's
Speaker 1: a very polarizing vehicle. But I think to your point,
Speaker 1: the automakers are seeing the obsession with these old historic
Speaker 1: models and they're bringing back for the Ford Broncos, the Ford,
Speaker 1: the new Bronco coming. I used to love the Defender
Speaker 1: ninety until I drove it and realized what a piece
Speaker 1: of right that That interior is just so junkie. But
Speaker 1: but those things are pretty bulletproof. They're unstoppable, and the
Speaker 1: FJ has the same, the sort of troop benching in
Speaker 1: the back where you could put four people without a
Speaker 1: seatbelt a cross or six people in the back. I mean,
Speaker 1: I always thought to defend their nineties were really tough looking.
Speaker 1: And you know the British version, of course. I mean
Speaker 1: the British are the ones who started it all. Really,
Speaker 1: I mean the Safari anything, Safari over landing, I mean
Speaker 1: going out on the hunt. This is so British, totally
Speaker 1: so so. The other thing that's interesting in the collectible
Speaker 1: world are these collector clubs where you could buy a
Speaker 1: piece of a car and they financially engineer shares. I'm
Speaker 1: skeptical of that. I'm curious as to yours too. I
Speaker 1: don't know how they make money. And I did the story.
Speaker 1: I did remember there's one called Rally road down here
Speaker 1: in Soho. Nice guys, young young guys. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think the the the oldest person in their on their
Speaker 1: team is under Fording. I mean, they're all young, relatively
Speaker 1: young guys. I don't know how they're making money. The
Speaker 1: real estate alone to have their space on, you know,
Speaker 1: on Lafayette Street and so must be ungodly. I don't
Speaker 1: know how they're making money. Well, it doesn't work if
Speaker 1: you have ten cars and a hundred investors, but at
Speaker 1: a thousand cars and a million investors it scales up.
Speaker 1: But even then that's a lot of mintlemen between an
Speaker 1: investor in a car. I feel like they're banking on
Speaker 1: the idea that people don't It's not an ownership society anymore.
Speaker 1: To your point about millennials not driving right, there's certainly
Speaker 1: a a feeling that people don't care about ownership. They
Speaker 1: care about access. As long as I have something when
Speaker 1: I need it, it doesn't matter if I actually exactly uber.
Speaker 1: So they're the guys are there are hoping. That also
Speaker 1: applies to collectible cars, which I don't know. I mean
Speaker 1: now they're doing it with role Xes too. I noticed
Speaker 1: Rally Road has some role x is listed what you
Speaker 1: get to share a rolex. Come on the the other
Speaker 1: thing I noticed, I forgot the name of the company,
Speaker 1: but it's sort of like Airbnb for cars. You can
Speaker 1: rent cars from other individuals. Yeah, that's it. And you know,
Speaker 1: to me, before I buy a car, I want to
Speaker 1: go out and try and half the cars I'm interested
Speaker 1: and I can't rent anywhere. We should discuss bring a trailer.
Speaker 1: Are you ever on that? Because when when you say
Speaker 1: you want to go out and drive a car before
Speaker 1: you buy it, but would you buy something off bring
Speaker 1: a trailer. So I am on bring a trailer all
Speaker 1: the time. And literally I was on the way here.
Speaker 1: I logged in to look at a sixteen six thousand
Speaker 1: mile Bentley GT that sends Friday. I was high bid
Speaker 1: and starting to get so to me at even so
Speaker 1: the new car comes out, the old cars dropping value
Speaker 1: a little bit, but two year, three year old whatever
Speaker 1: it's it's called three or four year old with less
Speaker 1: than ten thousand miles, I'm thinking that's a d a car.
Speaker 1: I'm high bid at seventy since or whatever it was
Speaker 1: since Friday, and I'm starting to get nervous because the
Speaker 1: last thing I need is a sixth car, and uh,
Speaker 1: this morning I log on, I'm like, okay, someone else's.
Speaker 1: So I've been on a bunch of cars. I won
Speaker 1: one that didn't meet the reserve and I reached out
Speaker 1: to the cellar and he never got back to me.
Speaker 1: But in fact, that was an f J. I was
Speaker 1: willing to fly to Oregon to pick it up. Um.
Speaker 1: But you would buy those cars not having driven them, um,
Speaker 1: Or this one from Columbia you're going to bring in.
Speaker 1: So the one from Columbia is a long, crazy story.
Speaker 1: A buddy who imports defenders from Spain. I was talking
Speaker 1: to him about the FJ. Yes it is, and I
Speaker 1: was talking to him about the f j's and I
Speaker 1: showed him a bunch and I said, listen, I really
Speaker 1: did this car. But I can't pull the trigger on
Speaker 1: a forty something thousand dollar seventiesier car that I know is.
Speaker 1: I don't mind spending money, but it can't be instant appreciation.
Speaker 1: So he looked at a few of them and he said,
Speaker 1: you know, all these are from South America and that's
Speaker 1: where they're renovated. And I'm like, well, let's see if
Speaker 1: we can find one. He goes, I have a brother
Speaker 1: in law in Colombia. Well perfect, So we start looking
Speaker 1: at one fast forward to the end. His red convertible
Speaker 1: ships out this week, and that sort of sky blue
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know the color with the
Speaker 1: white top roofs. Classic. That's the one I have I'm
Speaker 1: a fan of, with the black interior end. So if
Speaker 1: this comes in, he goes, let me be the he goes,
Speaker 1: I've supported dozens of cars. I'll be the test mule.
Speaker 1: Let me bring one in. And the prices like half
Speaker 1: of what you're gonna pay with shipping, So you have
Speaker 1: to be willing to do something like that. But we
Speaker 1: sent somebody to the factory in Columbia. He took a
Speaker 1: video and sent it to it and he's and Columbia,
Speaker 1: Columbia isn't what it was, you know, it's no longer, uh,
Speaker 1: the days of cocaine cowboys in right, and and they
Speaker 1: have all these cars that need to be need to
Speaker 1: be retomed. So funny story about bring a trailer. You know,
Speaker 1: you sign up for a new website, I for years
Speaker 1: have been using my last name and some password, and
Speaker 1: I just forget about it. And I kind of sometimes
Speaker 1: forget you're not that seventeen year old idiot. You were, however,
Speaker 1: many years ago. So if you click the star watch
Speaker 1: this car, or you subscribe to a car, or you've
Speaker 1: been on a car, there was just three different things.
Speaker 1: We have three different So sometimes I don't want to
Speaker 1: be notified every time one of these came up. Just
Speaker 1: let me know what's going on with the comments and
Speaker 1: bidding on this. And the best way to do that
Speaker 1: is to put a bit on the car. So I
Speaker 1: bid a hundred thousand dollars on I want to say
Speaker 1: it was a Dino and I know, listen, these go
Speaker 1: for three. I know I'm not getting that car, but
Speaker 1: you want to be appraised of and I want to
Speaker 1: just keep me in the loop. Yes, in the office,
Speaker 1: we get emails from clients why is Hult's building a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars on cars? And it's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not being a hundred thousand allars on a car.
Speaker 1: I've been a hundred thousand dollars on a half million
Speaker 1: dollar car that there's no way in God, Queen Earth
Speaker 1: I'm gonna win. And if I do, fantastic free money,
Speaker 1: but that's not gonna happen. So I had to go
Speaker 1: change my name on. They were very nice. There's no
Speaker 1: way to do it automatically. I had to reach out
Speaker 1: to them and say, here's the situation. I wish Bring
Speaker 1: a Trailer had an app. I'm shocked they don't, you know.
Speaker 1: I spoke to the points guy who does all they're
Speaker 1: coming out with an app. It's astonishing they haven't done
Speaker 1: that yet. But they've been growing so quickly and maybe
Speaker 1: I mean I've been trolling that site for I don't know,
Speaker 1: two years, it two years. How long has that been around?
Speaker 1: I think yes, So it's and I've kind of watched it.
Speaker 1: It's not just the place to go sell a car.
Speaker 1: It's a very spit right, and it's a really good community.
Speaker 1: People are really really thoughtful in their comments. It's sort
Speaker 1: of like what blogs were like twenty years ago. So um,
Speaker 1: but you wrote about how how they are giving the
Speaker 1: auction houses and run for money because you could sell
Speaker 1: a half million dollar car there and and I a
Speaker 1: giant big on it completely and I know you mentioned it.
Speaker 1: A lot of the cars that don't sell when they
Speaker 1: don't meet reserve are then sold off of Bring a
Speaker 1: Trailer privately, and those transactions would have been happening in auctions,
Speaker 1: you know, So it's completely changing the dynamic. The beauty
Speaker 1: of the Internet is middle men who get to charge
Speaker 1: a big fat fee. And this is true whether it's
Speaker 1: finance or art auctions or whatever it is. They're under
Speaker 1: pressure because the technology and the share of information makes
Speaker 1: at least pricing middlemen unless needed. I know. And let's
Speaker 1: not forget. Despite a champagne and chandeliers at a Gooding
Speaker 1: or a Southern Bees or Bonham's auction, these are used
Speaker 1: cars being sold by used car salesman. And I don't
Speaker 1: mean that in a disparaging way. I just mean, let's
Speaker 1: be real about what this really is. No matter how
Speaker 1: much champagne or the beautiful trappings. When a two fifty
Speaker 1: Ferrari goes off and it's twelve million dollars and there's
Speaker 1: nine of them left with matching numbers, that's such a
Speaker 1: one off, unique entity and the audience for that are
Speaker 1: all right, which of the twenty seven people you can
Speaker 1: afford this center interested are going to step up? It's
Speaker 1: not a real market, it's not a real car. It's
Speaker 1: it's something completely different, different thing, completely Yeah. So if
Speaker 1: you were going to buy a car to keep for
Speaker 1: the next fifty years. What car would that big? Well,
Speaker 1: I was just given a car for my birthday. That's
Speaker 1: a dangerous present. It's a dangerous present. But you know
Speaker 1: the crazy thing is, here's a fun fact. I haven't
Speaker 1: actually owned a car myself since I was in college,
Speaker 1: which was fifteen is years ago. Um, this car I
Speaker 1: got in November five sixty s L Mercedes black on black,
Speaker 1: and I have admired them for a very long time,
Speaker 1: so to answer, and that car lives in l A.
Speaker 1: So the Mercedes that I have kind of been enamored
Speaker 1: for is the prior generation, the pug to root the
Speaker 1: late sixties, early seventies, depends on you know, a bunch
Speaker 1: of with the stick. You can still find them for
Speaker 1: nice condition. So one just want to bring a trailer
Speaker 1: white on blue, white exterior, blue interior. But it was
Speaker 1: an automatic, which doesn't excite me. Um, and I went
Speaker 1: for about fifty and I've seen spectacular versions, black interior,
Speaker 1: white exterior for about a hundred. And that's a lot
Speaker 1: of wood, but it's just spectacular. So I got my
Speaker 1: s L was a birthday gift from my wife almost
Speaker 1: twenty years. We've got good partners here. I paid five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars for it. Um, it needed some work, so
Speaker 1: we did a top, half engine rebuild, replaced some exhaust,
Speaker 1: did some transmission work. So maybe over twenty years. I'm
Speaker 1: into the car for I don't know fifteen I'll never
Speaker 1: And the interesting thing about the car is it came
Speaker 1: with the heart, so it's a convertible, but it comes
Speaker 1: with the hard top that has the electric sunroof, which
Speaker 1: wasn't I learned later wasn't an aftermark. I was gonna
Speaker 1: say that doesn't sound stock to me now, and um,
Speaker 1: and I actually have two hard tops. I don't know
Speaker 1: how that ended up getting accumulated, but once I got
Speaker 1: all right, So let me back up. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of funny stories about this. We all have car buddies,
Speaker 1: we off people who spend time with and this is
Speaker 1: supposed to be about you and not me, but I
Speaker 1: know you're going to appreciate this story. So a good
Speaker 1: car buddy suddenly passes away and we had kicked the
Speaker 1: top a million cars. I have a hilarious story I
Speaker 1: told that his funeral. He was an appraiser, had his
Speaker 1: leg in a cast, and one day says to me,
Speaker 1: put on what are you doing tonight? Nothing? He goes,
Speaker 1: don't wear anything metal. We gotta go to Brooklyn and
Speaker 1: look at a car, and long story short, I end
Speaker 1: up driving a Ferrari to Sway and he's like, I
Speaker 1: gotta test it. Step on the gas. So ninety miles
Speaker 1: an hour on a Tuesday night shaking felt a lot
Speaker 1: faster than whatever I was probably felt. But anyway, um,
Speaker 1: So when he suddenly and unexpectedly passed away, it was
Speaker 1: one of those It wasn't even a midlife crisis. It
Speaker 1: was life is short? What are you waiting for? And
Speaker 1: so I go out online and I start. All I
Speaker 1: know is I want stick shift, horse power and convertible.
Speaker 1: And I start hunting things down, and long story short,
Speaker 1: I find in Indiana, just off of Lease a M
Speaker 1: six convertible. Right now, now we talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: Bentley as sort of a near sports car. So these
Speaker 1: are five hundred sixty horsepower, but some people dino them
Speaker 1: and their Corser two six, and it's just it's a
Speaker 1: giant monstrosity. And knew, I want to say, it's like
Speaker 1: a hundred and thirty. It's up for you know, low sixties.
Speaker 1: A little haggling, um, I get a good price, I
Speaker 1: have someone come look at it, and I get a
Speaker 1: thirty page report and I call the guy up and
Speaker 1: I'm like, listen, I appreciate the report bottom line for me, dude,
Speaker 1: if you don't buy this car, I will, okay, So
Speaker 1: for the core for the price of like a nice
Speaker 1: Ford Explorer. I have this monstrosity in my garage. And
Speaker 1: now my wife who drives a stick. When we were dating,
Speaker 1: I told her to drive a stick. Um, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: you have too much drink one night. You're gonna have
Speaker 1: to drive the U UM. And she now is a
Speaker 1: better either than I am. So she listen, I enjoy
Speaker 1: driving a car. But it's that if you know the um.
Speaker 1: This model's blue, not not the M three blue, but
Speaker 1: it's like a really rich, almost purple blue with the
Speaker 1: oyster interior. It's pure boy toy. She goes, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a little long, it's a little loud. It's it's
Speaker 1: she goes, I want something. She does. She I said,
Speaker 1: what do you like? She goes, I really like the
Speaker 1: one series and a convertible. They're adorable. And I said,
Speaker 1: tell you what. They stopped making the One series and
Speaker 1: they really updated it for the two series. Let's find
Speaker 1: a two series. So long story short. I find a
Speaker 1: guy in Florida who's back and forth between Florida and
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest. He's got nine cars. He raises a bunch.
Speaker 1: He got the M two thirty five. Now it's the
Speaker 1: M two forty. I um as a convertible in Florida
Speaker 1: when he moved there from the Northwest, And uh, I said, so,
Speaker 1: why do you want to sell this with six thousand miles?
Speaker 1: He goes, it's so damn hot here. I never get
Speaker 1: to take the top down. We're in the truck all
Speaker 1: the time, all right. So and this was done through Um,
Speaker 1: it wasn't through bring a trailer. I found it through
Speaker 1: one of the You know, if you look at all
Speaker 1: the used car sites, they pretty much all have the
Speaker 1: same list thing. I know, it's interesting. And and when
Speaker 1: I put my sl on Facebook marketplace for a month,
Speaker 1: you know there are people who out and scrape your
Speaker 1: numbers and pretend to sell that is something else. So, uh,
Speaker 1: it wasn't auto trader, but it was something like that.
Speaker 1: It was one of those, uh, one of those sites,
Speaker 1: and it worked out great. Um. And the funny thing
Speaker 1: about Florida. Is they in the winter, all the big
Speaker 1: tractor trailers go down there full and they come back empty.
Speaker 1: So bring it back to New York in a covered
Speaker 1: vehicle for like nine bucks, which is really uh. So
Speaker 1: that's the second car, which is which explains why the
Speaker 1: s L has to go. Um. The Porsche we had
Speaker 1: all sorts of weird problems with occasionally. The so first
Speaker 1: thing we got the car within a week the stitching
Speaker 1: on the steering wheel. It didn't come loose, but there
Speaker 1: was the whole thing. But there was this piece of
Speaker 1: like it looks like fishing wire that used to like
Speaker 1: it came out enough that you were it was always
Speaker 1: hitting your hand. It was really annoying, and I called
Speaker 1: on the mind like can I just clip this or
Speaker 1: am I gonna damage it? No? No, let us do it.
Speaker 1: I bring it to them. They swapped the whole steering wheel.
Speaker 1: They don't even clip um. So that was the first problem.
Speaker 1: The second problem was the liftgate sometimes decided not to
Speaker 1: work like, which is a weird thing. Um. And then
Speaker 1: the third thing, which was really a engineering error. That so,
Speaker 1: so the nice thing about the about the cars, you
Speaker 1: have the DVD, you have the satellite you have the
Speaker 1: Bluetooth through your phone, you have the plug in for
Speaker 1: the manual iPod, which no one even uses anymore because
Speaker 1: the Bluetooth on the phone. And then there were these
Speaker 1: two slots for s d RAM cards. And so rather
Speaker 1: than bring the the phone or the iPod in, plug
Speaker 1: it into the computer and update it with whatever I've added,
Speaker 1: I would just throw twenty songs on the on this
Speaker 1: and plug them in, and some of them you can
Speaker 1: move to the hard drive on the car. And eventually
Speaker 1: we so I couldn't figure out why the NAV was
Speaker 1: crashing all the time. Events, So the first thing they did,
Speaker 1: they bring it in and they do in an update.
Speaker 1: The second time they do it, they bring it in
Speaker 1: and they do a full wipe and rein software installed.
Speaker 1: The third time they bring it in and they pull
Speaker 1: it out and put a brand new one in, and
Speaker 1: it's still happening. And then they eventually figure out it
Speaker 1: wasn't the iPod, but it was the s d cards.
Speaker 1: Whenever they designed that system seven years before, the s
Speaker 1: d RAM cards were tiny, and now for eight dollars,
Speaker 1: it's thirty two gigs, and it would just overwhelm the
Speaker 1: memory buffer and crash the whole system, which is a
Speaker 1: really weird little thing for a company that's now making
Speaker 1: a purely electric car. A great point. I'm surprised to
Speaker 1: hear that because the mccan is their best selling vehicle period.
Speaker 1: I love the way it drove, um except for the
Speaker 1: fact that in three years and let's call it thirty
Speaker 1: two miles, I went through two sets of tires and
Speaker 1: a pair of brakes, set of brakes. But I threw that.
Speaker 1: I drove that car like it was a nine eleven.
Speaker 1: I tossed that car and it you know, that car
Speaker 1: never complains about anything. You take that on the highway
Speaker 1: and thrown into a turn at eighty seven miles an hour,
Speaker 1: and it's like, yeah, what else you get? It totally
Speaker 1: was ready for anything. I know people who have done
Speaker 1: the Porsche class whereas Alabama, or the driving in Atlanta
Speaker 1: in the truck and um, they say, you just can't
Speaker 1: imagine what this truck and do And I'm like, but
Speaker 1: it's got such a high No it doesn't. It's it's
Speaker 1: so um. I'd like to take the be I've done
Speaker 1: the Skip barber Line Rock, I've done um, the one
Speaker 1: at Sea Bring. I would like to do the BMW course.
Speaker 1: I bet it's great. What what if those have you
Speaker 1: played with UM from BMW or the driving courses? Yeah,
Speaker 1: any of them UM, well, driving courses I've I've had
Speaker 1: the chance to do a lot of laps with Ferrari,
Speaker 1: Bentley Laborghini. So you have a professional driver sitting next
Speaker 1: to you. It's basically private coaching, which is UM snow
Speaker 1: driving imports. In nine eleven's UM with Porsche with literally
Speaker 1: their their guy sitting next to you saying telling you
Speaker 1: when to turn wind to break you know, gas gas gas, UM.
Speaker 1: So Porsche, BMW, Bentley Asid Martin has got some great
Speaker 1: driving classes to UM. The company's not doing very well,
Speaker 1: but well they they've I think they overestimated, they overestimated demand.
Speaker 1: They were laid on the dB X right. And I
Speaker 1: have to tell you the concept car of the dB X,
Speaker 1: I was ready to write a check, not that I
Speaker 1: could afford it. I love the concept car, the concept
Speaker 1: cars with the mechanic almost was right. It's essentially a
Speaker 1: car that's a little elevated, a little bigger kind of
Speaker 1: a crossover. And now the dB X is kind of
Speaker 1: like a small suv. It's not that Hey, let's take
Speaker 1: a a dB five and pump it full of drugs
Speaker 1: and steroids and turn it into a small monstrosity. It's like,
Speaker 1: all right, it's listen, it's beautiful. Don't be wrong. The
Speaker 1: it just the exterior doesn't excite me. I'm the same.
Speaker 1: And I think if you took the badges off the
Speaker 1: Aston Martin Suv, the Jaguar f Pace, which is not
Speaker 1: a bad car, which is not a bad it's a
Speaker 1: great especially for the money, the Ford Mustang as UV,
Speaker 1: which that's a whole other conversations. If you took the
Speaker 1: badges off, they would look pretty interchangeable, which is really
Speaker 1: too bad. But they're going towards the insatiable market midsize suv,
Speaker 1: which is every year. I keep thinking, all right, this
Speaker 1: is a year we're going to see at a people truck. Nope,
Speaker 1: what do you think about the Bentley truck. It's gotten
Speaker 1: better over the years. I mean, it's giants, it's it's
Speaker 1: giant um, it's it's it's giving an option for the
Speaker 1: Bentley enthusiast to have the Bentley suv. Do they come
Speaker 1: with matching luggage and everything else. Yeah, it's smart of
Speaker 1: Bentley to do because it means that they're devoted. Customers
Speaker 1: don't have to go out of brand to get an suv.
Speaker 1: It just keeps them at home. And it is Yes,
Speaker 1: it's done great, especially in Europe and China. And it's
Speaker 1: it's so expensive though I know it's insane, it's over
Speaker 1: doesn't make any sense. I will, I will. I have
Speaker 1: never admitted this publicly. I love. I'm not a lambo guy.
Speaker 1: That's what the DBS should have done. Those proportions, which
Speaker 1: is incredibly a punched up small sports car in an suv.
Speaker 1: They did the launch of that car on a track
Speaker 1: outside of Rome. It blew my mind. It was literally
Speaker 1: a tract day for SUVs, but it was. It was insane,
Speaker 1: even that yellow I hate yellow cars and it looks good.
Speaker 1: It's at least say you hate it, but at least
Speaker 1: it makes you feel something. It makes you feel like hate.
Speaker 1: Anyone who says they hate that incredible. I would imagine
Speaker 1: it's the best driving suv period anything, of any suv
Speaker 1: I've driven ever, it's by far the best. And it
Speaker 1: looks good, it sounds good. It's so cool, and it's expensive,
Speaker 1: but it's not insane. It's not insane. It's not. It's
Speaker 1: it's less expensive than the Bentley, less expensive than the
Speaker 1: Rolls Royce. Obviously those are different vehicles, but they're still
Speaker 1: big SUVs for big, big brand. So you mentioned the sound.
Speaker 1: The one thing I will say about the McCann as.
Speaker 1: I have had people come up to me and say, like,
Speaker 1: I parked in the train station and they may not
Speaker 1: see you where the car is, and just know when
Speaker 1: you when you turn it on. And the next morning
Speaker 1: someone said, what the hell are you driving? And I said, mccanna,
Speaker 1: that's a little smallest Porsch truck they make, and he said,
Speaker 1: it sounds like it's a giant. And the X four
Speaker 1: is the same way you started up, and it's just,
Speaker 1: you know, everybody's head turns. I have a friend who
Speaker 1: bought a Plymouth hell Cat because he went to a
Speaker 1: Dodge dealer for something else and something started and he
Speaker 1: says the salesman they weren't there for a minivan, but
Speaker 1: it was something like that. He goes, what the hell's that.
Speaker 1: He goes, Oh, that's our our hell Cat. He goes
Speaker 1: go go bring that over here, and his wife is like, oh,
Speaker 1: dear lord, no, he had a Cayman he just sold it.
Speaker 1: She thinks. Now he's in his dotage, he's chilling out.
Speaker 1: They bring it over. It's purple, they go stick shift,
Speaker 1: they go for a ride. He goes, I wasn't even
Speaker 1: out of the parking lot when the car was sold.
Speaker 1: It was done. Um And it's that sound. You first
Speaker 1: hear that sound, and which is kind of interesting. We
Speaker 1: talk about electric and I know the take can has
Speaker 1: makes a noise, does make a noise. It's like a worrying,
Speaker 1: humming sound. It's cool. It's optional, right, yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: it's fabricated, but you can also hear road noise, which
Speaker 1: adds to the experience. I don't necessarily think younger generations
Speaker 1: are going going to care about a sound because they
Speaker 1: didn't grow up with but the up video games and
Speaker 1: even when you're driving an electric vehicle in a video game,
Speaker 1: there's some futuristic hum that comes. Yes. Yes, So anyone
Speaker 1: who says electric cars are silent, that's not accurate. There
Speaker 1: is a sound. It's just a different sound than you're
Speaker 1: used to. And I don't know, think about Formula a lot.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like Formula one, but with electric cars
Speaker 1: and they're really you know, automakers are really getting behind
Speaker 1: it because it's kind of a testing ground. Sure technology
Speaker 1: is just like Formula one is, and a lot of
Speaker 1: old Formula one guys say I can never get into it.
Speaker 1: It's just not visceral enough for me. Um, which I get.
Speaker 1: But I also think anyone under the age of thirty
Speaker 1: isn't going to care about that as much because I
Speaker 1: didn't grow up with it. So that people I know
Speaker 1: who've driven the take in turbo, I've said it's the
Speaker 1: most plant You're right, and it's the most astonishing acceleration
Speaker 1: they've ever had short of a three million dollars super right.
Speaker 1: It's just um. And the funny thing is we talked
Speaker 1: I'm talked about the M cars. I don't notice the
Speaker 1: supposed piped in sounds that the MS have and you
Speaker 1: can't defeat that. But it's so loud when you're out
Speaker 1: of the car and with the top down. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know who or why they do that. Maybe a
Speaker 1: M five is a different experience. I can't say I've
Speaker 1: ever noticed it over the noise over the engine, over
Speaker 1: the road, noise over the stereo. Um. But that talk
Speaker 1: about visceral sensation two point six to sixties something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's motorcycle fest. That is I I like
Speaker 1: to um. The other day I did this when it
Speaker 1: was warm out, and my wife always rolls her eyes.
Speaker 1: We pull up next to a Tesla and a woman
Speaker 1: is driving it, and I look at her and smile
Speaker 1: and just rev the and she smirks, and I know
Speaker 1: that she knows she's gonna blow my doors off. I
Speaker 1: don't know if she knows that. I know she's gonna blow.
Speaker 1: So the light turns green. I love war rowing my
Speaker 1: way through the gears. She's three carlings ahead of me
Speaker 1: by the time we get to the next light, and
Speaker 1: we pull up and I give her a thumbs up
Speaker 1: and heart windows come down. I'm in the convertible and
Speaker 1: she goes, you don't look surprised. I go, I know
Speaker 1: that car can do. It's faster than a Lamborghini. It's there.
Speaker 1: My favorite videos on YouTube are the trucks. The Model
Speaker 1: X beating Ferraris in a drag strip. That's just hilarious. Now,
Speaker 1: what do you think of a cybertruck? Um, I don't
Speaker 1: think that's a real vehicle. I think that was a joke.
Speaker 1: That's like somebody's shop projects they've got you know, two
Speaker 1: plus orders. Well, but he gets free financing for future projects.
Speaker 1: Is brilliant. Although the day we're recording this, UM, there's
Speaker 1: a short seller whose website is called reality check that
Speaker 1: just put like a sixty page research pizza out on Tesla. UM,
Speaker 1: let's talk about tests. Uh, you know what, We're gonna
Speaker 1: come back to Tesla. I still want to stick with collectibles,
Speaker 1: so for for collecting my whole life, I have been
Speaker 1: this close to buying cars and for whatever reason don't
Speaker 1: and then they run in away from it. So I'll
Speaker 1: give you the four that I really so close and
Speaker 1: never did it. Had a buddy that was importing the
Speaker 1: eights from from Europe when the dollar was crazy strong
Speaker 1: two thousand and one bmw Z eight sixty dollars, didn't
Speaker 1: pull the trigger on it in early two thousand's what
Speaker 1: do they to to and change? Although they've kind of
Speaker 1: become garage queens people around. UM A hundred forty five
Speaker 1: thousand for an oh five for g T which what
Speaker 1: this this ten years ago? So the cars four years
Speaker 1: old with ten thousand miles on it, and that was
Speaker 1: before they spiked. Now, why didn't you go for that? Um?
Speaker 1: So it's funny. Of the four cars, I'm gonna mention,
Speaker 1: three of them came along as we were about to
Speaker 1: buy a house, and so it was always horrible. My
Speaker 1: favorite of which, so the first guy I worked for
Speaker 1: in finance, I won't mention his name, killing me um,
Speaker 1: but he's a bazillionaire and one day I get a
Speaker 1: phone call from him and he says, I need some
Speaker 1: room in my garage. Do you want my five fifty?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, the blue Ferrari that you have. That's
Speaker 1: a stick shift, isn't it. He's like, yeah, I gotta
Speaker 1: I just need some space. He's the very first world problems, right,
Speaker 1: And I said, what do you want for it? Because
Speaker 1: I don't know? When do you want me to pay you?
Speaker 1: Because I don't know. He goes figure out what it's
Speaker 1: worth forgot when you're gonna pay me? And come get
Speaker 1: this thing out of my garage. Okay. I come home
Speaker 1: from work and I said to my wife, Hey, we're
Speaker 1: taking Marty's Ferrari. He's gonna give it to us. She's like,
Speaker 1: you're an idiot. We're buying a car. Go to your
Speaker 1: buying a house. Go to your room, Like that's the
Speaker 1: sort of conversation we have. All right, I guess we're
Speaker 1: not getting Ferrari. But he like when someone says, now,
Speaker 1: the funny thing, how long ago was that this was
Speaker 1: just before they went crazy. So it was about a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand retail at that point. Um, it was a stick,
Speaker 1: but it was that nice. I forgot what that blue
Speaker 1: purple color is called with the coach interior. It was
Speaker 1: an aubergine. Yeah, it was spectacular. Um. And then they
Speaker 1: ran up to three hundred thousand, and now they're back
Speaker 1: down to a hundred. I don't know why that went
Speaker 1: kind of crazy. Um, probably smart that we didn't. Um.
Speaker 1: The other two cars, Ferrari Dino for sixty six, sixty
Speaker 1: seven something like that did have an engine in it.
Speaker 1: It ran, It needed work, but it ran. Um, they're
Speaker 1: three and uh, I call a Ferrari Dino when I
Speaker 1: know some people will knock me and call it a
Speaker 1: Fiat Dino, but come on, let's be Ferrari. The zero
Speaker 1: badging and arguably the most beloved of the ferraris most
Speaker 1: beautif very endearing. You're not. Someone else just said that
Speaker 1: recently and I and I was like, maybe, I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe it's arguable for sure. I mean the idea of
Speaker 1: a six the proportions are the three O eight was
Speaker 1: a pig. Come on, and those are going to go
Speaker 1: up in value. Drivers, They're slow, they're just And then
Speaker 1: magnum p I is not the right panache that you want.
Speaker 1: I don't think it might come around, all right, what
Speaker 1: do you think about the Daytona. I've always loved that.
Speaker 1: It's not I mean, it might could come around. Miami
Speaker 1: bias magnum pi. The Daytona was much prettier. I had
Speaker 1: a friend who had a four hundred um and that
Speaker 1: stick shift was a like bicycle cable. Like we were
Speaker 1: out on a rally with a bunch of one of
Speaker 1: the greatest sounds I've ever experienced in my life. I
Speaker 1: used to live on ninety les, which is Lex and seven,
Speaker 1: and I was a member of some car club and
Speaker 1: they would do these outings. And one day someone said
Speaker 1: to me, you know, while and plan a route, what
Speaker 1: do you want us to do? Take us out east?
Speaker 1: So I plan a route out to the Hamptons, back
Speaker 1: to a place called wolveswarf in in um Bayville. And
Speaker 1: it was a whole day of driving, and uh, one
Speaker 1: of the guys said um, you want to come. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I live in the city, I don't have a car.
Speaker 1: We'll pick you up. So six am on a Sunday morning,
Speaker 1: I go downstairs. There's a line of fourteen cars, um,
Speaker 1: mostly Ferraris, an M five and a Lambo, and I
Speaker 1: get into one of the cars and everybody has the
Speaker 1: whole route, and fourteen of these cars go screaming out
Speaker 1: the Midtown Tunnel on a Sunday morning, the greatest sound.
Speaker 1: Every like everybody had the windows now and it was
Speaker 1: it was just the noodles. So um. Anyway, the Dino
Speaker 1: was the third car, one of the earlier cars I missed,
Speaker 1: and then perhaps the most odd car. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: a fifty nine one s L and for people who
Speaker 1: don't know that car right so exactly, which is why
Speaker 1: I didn't buy it. So the one s L is
Speaker 1: more or less the same body as the three, which
Speaker 1: is the convertible version of the infamous goal wing Mercedes
Speaker 1: Kids Sister, which is perhaps the most beautiful car. I
Speaker 1: did the millimillion that car it was. I did two
Speaker 1: rallies in the Goaling Real Rally in Austria and then
Speaker 1: the Millimilia the next year, and incredible, and we thrashed
Speaker 1: that car day in and day out of fourteen hours
Speaker 1: a day, did not skip a beat, did not skip
Speaker 1: a beat, and we were hard on that thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: that is an emotional car. Incredible, absolutely, I've seen them
Speaker 1: in the wild numerous times. Um. What's interesting is if
Speaker 1: you go out to the wineries on the North Fork
Speaker 1: of Long Island, not during the weekends, not in the
Speaker 1: peak season, but you go out midweek or or during
Speaker 1: like off season, and you'll see various auto clubs out
Speaker 1: there and like it's a car show in the parking lot.
Speaker 1: It's just it's just absolutely astounding. So I the s
Speaker 1: l which was really rough. Um, okay, we go for
Speaker 1: about ten times that today. They're not the three hundred, clearly,
Speaker 1: which go for a million plus. But the shame that
Speaker 1: car so expensive the going because it is so Take
Speaker 1: any of these cars on the list, the g t
Speaker 1: Z eight, um, the Dino or or we'll leave them
Speaker 1: one s L out. People who own those, they don't
Speaker 1: really drive them because they keep appreciating too much. Isn't
Speaker 1: that the nature of the collectible market. That was once
Speaker 1: a car that gave people joy is now an object
Speaker 1: to art that sits in a garage. I was looking
Speaker 1: at the auction catalogs going into Scottsdale, and they've got
Speaker 1: a turbo at nine eleven turbo that has thirty four
Speaker 1: miles on it, three four brand new, never drivened, basically,
Speaker 1: never droned. Yeah, and that's to me, that's sad. That's
Speaker 1: too bad. That's just a hunk of metal. Cars are
Speaker 1: They're meant to be driven, and if you don't drive them,
Speaker 1: they're gonna they're going to um disintegrate anyway. Really, what
Speaker 1: do you think of the Singer? Very well done? Right, Well,
Speaker 1: that's a very diplomatic. Here's here's what I hear. Um,
Speaker 1: there are Singer guys who are bored of the Singer
Speaker 1: Porsche and they're searching for other ways to spend their
Speaker 1: millions of dollars exactly. So. Um. The guy who builds
Speaker 1: that rally car car, T J. Russell, built cars for
Speaker 1: Singer for years, for nine years, and he has said, look,
Speaker 1: I see the clients that go to Singer, and I
Speaker 1: see where they are now, and those guys are a
Speaker 1: little bit bored and annoyed with showing up at their
Speaker 1: cars and their local cars and coffee and there are
Speaker 1: two other singers in the lot. You know. The whole
Speaker 1: reason are they making that? I thought it was they've
Speaker 1: they've up production, which is um translate as no longer
Speaker 1: as valuable as you know, they make that ultralight dls
Speaker 1: UM singer to that goes for over a million. It's
Speaker 1: like a million eight which is interesting. Is it a
Speaker 1: skinny illuminium body? Is that what they do? Are you
Speaker 1: gonna put that on the track for a million dollars?
Speaker 1: Or which is that the whole four point? That car
Speaker 1: will not be driven. I can't imagine that it will
Speaker 1: be driven, will sit in a garage somewhere, which is
Speaker 1: too bad. So singer really well done. I think the
Speaker 1: guys that we're buying singers the real first adopters of
Speaker 1: that beautiful, amazing thing. They did really well. They're already
Speaker 1: onto the next They're already looking for other ways to
Speaker 1: spend their money. What else in the collectible space catches
Speaker 1: your eye? Um? Then the ferraris from the nineties, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like they have forty Yeah like there, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they watch those. I would really watch those
Speaker 1: coming up. UM. And I also think, like the International
Speaker 1: Scouts UM harvesters. Back to our conversation about Broncos and
Speaker 1: throw those in my brother one Lebroncho. I'm like, yes,
Speaker 1: and um also land Rovers from the early nineties. Watch
Speaker 1: watch that space. I was just reading through all this
Speaker 1: haggardy data I'm telling, which, by the way, is a
Speaker 1: great site. You reach for free access for a ton
Speaker 1: of stuff. So it's just numbers. It's completely straight, unfettered numbers.
Speaker 1: It's really good. I was just looking at all their projections.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, land Rovers from the early nineties, huh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's really intriguing. So before we talk about the future
Speaker 1: of the automotive industry, you kind of duck the question.
Speaker 1: Pick any car you want, what would you buy to
Speaker 1: put away from the next thirty to forty years. That's
Speaker 1: a great question. And PS. Part of the reason I
Speaker 1: ended up with e M six was the fear stick
Speaker 1: shifts are going away if I don't buy one. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, you could get Jeeps and Porsches with them,
Speaker 1: but an increasingly smaller number of Porsches, um and BMWs
Speaker 1: but they're kinda and any Honda or Toyota in Japan,
Speaker 1: but they're going away here. So what would you get
Speaker 1: for yourself if within a reasonable budget. Well, but you know,
Speaker 1: you can get any type. There's a lot of beautiful
Speaker 1: cars you could get for under a quarter million dollars
Speaker 1: or well under a hundred thousand budget. Of course that's
Speaker 1: a huge The other car I was um bitting on
Speaker 1: on bring a trailer that I was afraid I was
Speaker 1: gonna win. Um was a thirty seven Chord, which is
Speaker 1: the most spectacular, those Auburn cords with the metal pipes
Speaker 1: coming out of the side and the coffin nose, and
Speaker 1: some of them had the fish tail boat tail back. Um.
Speaker 1: And for like a week, I'm like, when I now
Speaker 1: win this car? And then it ran up in price
Speaker 1: the last twenty minutes. Um. You know another car that
Speaker 1: I really like a gain. I don't think this is
Speaker 1: going to going to be a great investment, but but
Speaker 1: it's not like it right, I'm not talking about your
Speaker 1: grandkids inherenting, and I'm like, you're gonna drive this, and
Speaker 1: the last thing you do before you go into the
Speaker 1: home is yeah, do something with this. I just looked
Speaker 1: at one Car of the Year nineteen seventies six. I
Speaker 1: think European Sports European Car of the year. You are
Speaker 1: we talking the like early nineties with the the S
Speaker 1: plus S four plus center and the long Well you
Speaker 1: can do that too. I mean it had kind of
Speaker 1: a long run. But I'm talking. I'm talking late seventies.
Speaker 1: But great, great car. Which one did you look at? So?
Speaker 1: I think they're fun. I want to say this. I
Speaker 1: want to say it's a seventy nine. I remember my
Speaker 1: brother was looking. My brother was looking at a house
Speaker 1: and the guy had bought a car from him and
Speaker 1: he goes, oh, at my nine. I gotta guys, ninety
Speaker 1: I it's still driving a stick shift and he goes, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that's how I want to go out. And uh,
Speaker 1: he says, um, you want this car? I look them up.
Speaker 1: They're like four grands. That's the thing. You can get
Speaker 1: them for nothing. They don't cost a lot to make
Speaker 1: drivable and runnable. This is this is I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think they look really cool and spacey. They're very
Speaker 1: like seventies risky business, completely exactly good reference. And um,
Speaker 1: they're so comfortable. I've done a lot of desert drives
Speaker 1: and some that are just like you can drive for
Speaker 1: all day long and it's just kind of amazing. You're
Speaker 1: in like basically a bubble visibilities. And the irony is
Speaker 1: when those cars first came out, the purest hated them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: total elaboration is completely, completely, you know, totally just disgusting.
Speaker 1: And the car world is so snooty sometimes. I mean
Speaker 1: when you talk about that one nine Mercedes people people
Speaker 1: get so uptight or like a portion nine four teens.
Speaker 1: They always want to make sure that you've got the
Speaker 1: right you've got the right in. Well, there you go.
Speaker 1: I mean they are it's so snooty. I mean I
Speaker 1: just think by what you like and drive what makes
Speaker 1: you happen, right, I think that's really good advice. All right,
Speaker 1: So now let's talk about the future of the automobile
Speaker 1: industry where First, what does this deal with influencers? Wrote
Speaker 1: about that not too long ago. Are influencers really driving
Speaker 1: car sales? What do we sell sixteen million cars last year?
Speaker 1: How much of that is impacted by influence? I have
Speaker 1: yet to see numbers pointing to car sales. I have
Speaker 1: seen a lot of never numbers being driven pointed to
Speaker 1: brand awareness. So um, because nobody knows what Ferrari or
Speaker 1: Mercedes is, right, well, some people don't. You'd be surprised
Speaker 1: for McLaren you know, people may not know which what
Speaker 1: the new McLaren is the new If it's a G
Speaker 1: G T is in then also great car. I so,
Speaker 1: I tweeted this weekend, I went to pick up my
Speaker 1: family over for brunch. I go to my favorite little
Speaker 1: bagel store and I pull in. I pull in with
Speaker 1: the truck and I get out of the car and
Speaker 1: the truck next to me and I hear this noise.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what is that? And the truck next to
Speaker 1: me backs up and there is a guy McLaren Um,
Speaker 1: not the GT. It's it's running. There's nobody in the car.
Speaker 1: It's idling, and it's just that idol is insane. And
Speaker 1: I'm like, this is the most North Shore of Long
Speaker 1: Island thing ever. Picking up bagels. Take the McLarens. Yes,
Speaker 1: because it's you have the front. You can throw a
Speaker 1: dozen bags. It's a horrible. But influencers. So back to influencers,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've definitely seen them change the way
Speaker 1: automakers interact with media and press. I can tell you
Speaker 1: stories of out um being seated at different tables and
Speaker 1: I would have been sat at during press dinners, and
Speaker 1: you know, I usually usually humbly, I say, I'm seated
Speaker 1: next to the CEO Automi Automotive dinners because I can
Speaker 1: talk to him, and it's part of your readers by
Speaker 1: their car, completely, not an Instagram influencer whose readers are
Speaker 1: fifteen year old boys in the surfing the web. And
Speaker 1: I humbly say that. You know, Bloomberg is a great company. There,
Speaker 1: there are proper standards of journalism. This, this doesn't happen
Speaker 1: by accident. We have a very good brand and reputation
Speaker 1: and ethics policy, etcetera, etcetera. Um, there have been some
Speaker 1: press things where I've I'm not sat by the executive
Speaker 1: and instead there's an influencer sitting there, and and I
Speaker 1: didn't really think anything of it, but I noticed it.
Speaker 1: And then um, a few weeks later, I was talking
Speaker 1: with another journalist of mine, someone from Motor Trend, and
Speaker 1: he's like, did you notice how all of the actual
Speaker 1: journalists were not sat next to the executives at that dinner?
Speaker 1: And I said, wow, that was I thought that was
Speaker 1: just me and I didn't want to be a diva,
Speaker 1: but yes, I did notice. It's very subtle, the shift,
Speaker 1: and it's it's only happened once or twice, but we
Speaker 1: do notice it. The other thing I noticed is that
Speaker 1: influencers and are now being given first looks at cars
Speaker 1: really where um, normally it would have been a journalist.
Speaker 1: So I don't know who's an influencer and who's a
Speaker 1: journal a journalist. That's especially with the vloggers. But there
Speaker 1: are two people I follow, one of whom I honestly
Speaker 1: don't even remember his name. But the person whose videos
Speaker 1: I watched pretty regularly. Let's see if you could guess
Speaker 1: who that is. Um, I don't know, oh really so yeah,
Speaker 1: So if there's a car I'm interested in and he's
Speaker 1: covered it, it's a pretty thorough Yeah. That's the closest
Speaker 1: thing to a strive without taking a test d completely
Speaker 1: And the insane thing are his videos get Like, I know,
Speaker 1: it's crazy, it's crazy, and you can't argue with the numbers. Like.
Speaker 1: These people definitely perform a much needed service. They're great
Speaker 1: at what they do. They don't do cameras in a course,
Speaker 1: so they're doing Bentley's in In fact, he just did
Speaker 1: the new band. Yeah, I read your review and then
Speaker 1: I went and watched and some of the quirks he
Speaker 1: does the quirks and what have you and some of
Speaker 1: the funny little things that he picks up. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I would never have found that it's good. The only
Speaker 1: but you have to commit the thirty minutes. Yes. The
Speaker 1: only difference that um I talked about in that story
Speaker 1: that I just am so aware of is the fact
Speaker 1: that journalists do not accept payment payments or free gifts
Speaker 1: from automakers. The minute you accept a payment, you're therefore
Speaker 1: employed by them, and that kind of implies that you're
Speaker 1: not free to say anything negative and that becomes marketing.
Speaker 1: And I noticed that Doug will occasionally be critical about stuff,
Speaker 1: which I like, Yeah, that's good. I take that as
Speaker 1: a good sign. It's scary when you can't tell the
Speaker 1: difference between someone who's literally paid by the automaker and
Speaker 1: someone who is paid by a third party like Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: So is not Beholden? Who is Spree? Who is the
Speaker 1: other guy you mentioned me? Tim? His name's Tim. He
Speaker 1: is British UH influencer car guy um I've seen google him.
Speaker 1: He has he's very popular as a lot of following.
Speaker 1: I've seen some British reviewers but kind of randomly finding
Speaker 1: them doing you know this is the old days of
Speaker 1: top gear, when it was fun. Um. People have now said,
Speaker 1: all right, let's just take a car out and show
Speaker 1: you what you can do. The other guy, I'm Joronah
Speaker 1: blanc on his name Chris Harris. Now, the other guy
Speaker 1: that I whose videos I occasionally watch, will go out
Speaker 1: and buy Salvage title Ferrari's, Lambo's Bentley's, and he's just
Speaker 1: a very articulate mechanic and he will put them back
Speaker 1: together and either keep them or sell them. But it's
Speaker 1: it's if you really want to get into the nitty
Speaker 1: gritty of what goes into And I bought a couple
Speaker 1: of Salvage title cars when I was looking for the
Speaker 1: stick shift them six there were two for sale, the
Speaker 1: blue one in Indianapolis and then a Salvage Title Red
Speaker 1: and coach one in Florida. And that car is just
Speaker 1: so chock full of electronics and everything else. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to mess with the Salvage title. My jeep. It's
Speaker 1: two hamsters on treadmill, it's right, that's right. Um. So
Speaker 1: the Salvage title was was more or less fine. And
Speaker 1: I just replaced all the electronics, all the electronic harnesses
Speaker 1: and the entire fuse box. So it's three different it's
Speaker 1: the the engine electronics, it's the fuse box, and then
Speaker 1: it's everything else, the lights, the brace whatever. So it
Speaker 1: really was not expensive to replace those pieces. And eventually
Speaker 1: you had to replace the brake pads. We had some
Speaker 1: rust on them, and I'm pretty sure I broke the
Speaker 1: parking break sometimes. I just I'm pretty sure your hand, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that was that was my but but basically, um,
Speaker 1: watching someone by, uh, what was the last car he did? Um? Oh,
Speaker 1: he brought a Rolls Royce, not the Wraith, but the
Speaker 1: car before that that. I think he paid eighty tho
Speaker 1: dollars for it, put about allars worth of work. And
Speaker 1: it's a two hundred and fifty used, two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollar car, and it's just spect I've I've seen.
Speaker 1: So I'm not a giant fan of the BMW I eight,
Speaker 1: but it's an interesting because of how it looks. I
Speaker 1: love how it looks. Needs a real engine, right, So
Speaker 1: if you're gonna make an electric hybrid and you know
Speaker 1: that should be an m car, do you give it
Speaker 1: credit for being really the first sports car hybrid? W
Speaker 1: really did beat pretty much everybody. But that's like a time.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a three cylinder, some silly little engine
Speaker 1: in I know, and they didn't have to go crazy.
Speaker 1: Just give me that M three straight six from the
Speaker 1: late nineties and he's happy. Right, I'll sign on there.
Speaker 1: So right, that would be a fabulous car. And it
Speaker 1: is spectacular. Um, I gotta ask you, since we're talking
Speaker 1: about future cars, what do you think of the new Corvette?
Speaker 1: Looks awesome? Yeah, I haven't driven anything a little busy.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of creases and curves in this and
Speaker 1: that I haven't driven it. I hope to drive it
Speaker 1: a month. Yeah, that's an interesting choice. A mean Lambeau
Speaker 1: and Ferrari say, I get it. I get it, and
Speaker 1: the uh looks cool. That's I'm waiting waiting to see.
Speaker 1: I hope to drive it. But I imagine that it's
Speaker 1: a Ferrari at half the price. Yeah, that's kind of
Speaker 1: I was actually I think it's eighty It was No.
Speaker 1: Nine and you're gonna want to just add a couple
Speaker 1: of things to it. I mean, you can take it
Speaker 1: up to a buck and a quarter. It's not necessary,
Speaker 1: but you go, that's a lot of cars and that
Speaker 1: is an icon and if you look back, I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: you've got the nine eleven, the um Ford Mustang, and
Speaker 1: the Corvette. Those are like the longest running sports cars
Speaker 1: in all all time that have been running continuously since
Speaker 1: they started. Like so, you mentioned the Tesla pick up,
Speaker 1: which I don't think look anything like that. I think
Speaker 1: that's a joke. Um, But let's talk about the Model
Speaker 1: three that is supposedly hurting BMW and Mercedes. I'm surprised
Speaker 1: to hear that their numbers. It's the best selling luxury
Speaker 1: car in America. I don't consider a model, but that's
Speaker 1: how a lot of people qualify. Yeah, okay, what do
Speaker 1: you think? Well, let's talk about Tesla. What are your
Speaker 1: thoughts on Elon Muskin? What Tesla has accomplished. I'm ground groundbreaking.
Speaker 1: And when I was at Forbes, I did a cover
Speaker 1: story on Elon and Spence. I read that Yeah six
Speaker 1: months basically, Yes, that's how I found you really got covered. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was a phenomenal thing, and I couldn't believe the
Speaker 1: amount of access I had. I mean I was playing
Speaker 1: video games with him. That was early days before his
Speaker 1: team got wise to media. I mean I literally met
Speaker 1: his kids and was playing video games in his basement
Speaker 1: for a day in bel Air, and he was great.
Speaker 1: You know, we went everywhere. We drove around in the
Speaker 1: little Tesla roadster that they had way back, exactly way
Speaker 1: back when. Um So, I like Ellen as a person.
Speaker 1: I found him really likable and interesting and charismatic and funny.
Speaker 1: Um he's obviously brilliant. I don't think he's a con man.
Speaker 1: A lot of people there are a sub sect of
Speaker 1: traders and investors who would disagree with I know, I know,
Speaker 1: um you know I and the Solar City acquisition was
Speaker 1: a disaster. Yes, if we're talking only about Tesla, I
Speaker 1: think we have to give it full credit for changing
Speaker 1: the industry come completely. I have described Tesla as having
Speaker 1: already won get the stock. The world has changed because
Speaker 1: of full stop. The Porsche Taykon would not exist if
Speaker 1: Tesla didn't exist. Period. There's no way that Porscha would
Speaker 1: have been forced quote unquote. I don't think to come
Speaker 1: out with an all electric sports sedan unless they were
Speaker 1: unless for the precedent that was set. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about the Tykan. As long as we're we're talking about Tesla.
Speaker 1: UM actually back to Dunk Tomorrow had did a review
Speaker 1: of the car, and he talked about first of all,
Speaker 1: he lost his mind off the acceleration, but people said, hey,
Speaker 1: this turbo at five is an insane amount of money.
Speaker 1: But then he said, he goes, take the nicest Tesla
Speaker 1: you can find. There is a world of difference in
Speaker 1: the finished complete you get in this car. You know
Speaker 1: you're in a high end luxury car. It dry is great,
Speaker 1: it feels great, everything works. He goes, the Tesla is
Speaker 1: a very nice car, yes, but it's not this caliber
Speaker 1: of quality. It's the difference between UM tech guys, first adopter,
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley guys, um driving a car that they like
Speaker 1: and a car that true car people who are adults
Speaker 1: who know what real luxury and German engineering for the
Speaker 1: past seventy plus years have created. It's it. There is
Speaker 1: a difference. That Porsche by far is much nicer inside
Speaker 1: it just feels better. I love the idea of the
Speaker 1: auto updates over the air for the Tesla, the autopilot,
Speaker 1: what do they have five billion miles of auto pilot
Speaker 1: that's amazing. And then the concept that I at least
Speaker 1: as of today, it looks like Tesla's first to market
Speaker 1: with this that like your phone on a pad, that
Speaker 1: eventually there's a pad in your garage and you pull
Speaker 1: in and you're not even plugging the car and it
Speaker 1: just charges automatically. I remember when I was doing that
Speaker 1: story with Forbes. Ellen came to New York and we
Speaker 1: were driving around in a prototype of the Model Less.
Speaker 1: It hadn't even been to debut, which is which is
Speaker 1: still handsome, and he was talking some crazy to talk
Speaker 1: about how a car is really just a computer and
Speaker 1: the car is going to be And at the time
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't even really okay, but now
Speaker 1: he it is happening what he said, which is that
Speaker 1: cars are appliances in a way that a computer is
Speaker 1: an appliance. UM automobiles have been the second largest consumer
Speaker 1: of semiconductors for like fifteen or twenty years. I mean
Speaker 1: cars are rolling computers for a long time. The question
Speaker 1: is which comes first? You want him abible of the computer.
Speaker 1: He said, let's make the computer first and put it
Speaker 1: on wheels. Right, And the guy believes what he says. Now,
Speaker 1: other people may not believe him, but he is a
Speaker 1: true believer in what he says. So when he says
Speaker 1: he wants to colonize Mars. That is a genuine thing.
Speaker 1: For that's that's not gonna work because because the reason
Speaker 1: Mars is a desolate wasteland is they're liquid iron core
Speaker 1: cooled and solidified, and without a magnetic field around the planet,
Speaker 1: the solar wind just blows everything away. That's a longer
Speaker 1: digression we can have. So until you figure out a
Speaker 1: way to protect the planet from the ongoing radiation from
Speaker 1: space and gamma wis and the solar winds, it's a
Speaker 1: waste of time. Yes, My point is that he believes it.
Speaker 1: You know, whether or not we believe it, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm just spitballing here. Yes, yeah, completely um. And so
Speaker 1: when he talks about, you know, like electric cars for
Speaker 1: everyone at a relatively affordable level, he believes that he
Speaker 1: is here on this planet to do that. But he's done.
Speaker 1: If it hasn't happened yet, it's in the process of happening.
Speaker 1: And like everything from a BS to air eggs to
Speaker 1: crumple zones, it's going to start in the luxury cars
Speaker 1: and work their way down. Speaking of electric luxury cars,
Speaker 1: what do you I know you like the pull Star?
Speaker 1: What would you love it? Very fantastic, great looking car,
Speaker 1: very good looking, very good looking, very well put together.
Speaker 1: It's a Volvo car with Chinese money. So that's a
Speaker 1: great combination made in Sweden. Um beautiful. And now let's
Speaker 1: not forget yeah I think alright, So for forty dollars,
Speaker 1: would you go with the Taken or do you stick
Speaker 1: with the pull Star. I do Pull Star just to
Speaker 1: be different. That's not a knock against the Portie at
Speaker 1: all at all. Yes, a great car, that's not a
Speaker 1: knock at all. I would just choose the poll Star
Speaker 1: to be contrarian. But you know, let's not forget. The
Speaker 1: Pool Star is a hybrid, so it does it's not
Speaker 1: completely apples to apples. How long do you think we're
Speaker 1: gonna still have gasoline engines for? That's a great question.
Speaker 1: Years and years and yeah, at least at least I
Speaker 1: would say thirty years. All right, So let me rephrase
Speaker 1: that question. How far off in the future will half
Speaker 1: the cars on the road be. That's that's a good question.
Speaker 1: If you listen to automaker executives, they say five years.
Speaker 1: Porsche has already said half of their uh, half of
Speaker 1: their v sorry, all of their vehicles are going to
Speaker 1: offer a plug in option. You can change the X.
Speaker 1: The reason I won't pull the trigger on the X
Speaker 1: six is they won't even give you a hybrid option.
Speaker 1: And that's a giant car that gets three miles a gallon. Although,
Speaker 1: to be fair, the M six. The first time I
Speaker 1: saw an M six on the road was in um
Speaker 1: Quogue outside of this little brunch place. And I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: I asked the guy. I said, what is that? He goes, Oh,
Speaker 1: it's an M six, So how do you like it?
Speaker 1: And I swear this guy said this exact thing to
Speaker 1: my wife and ice. It's gotta be like fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1: He is, it goes very fast from gas station to
Speaker 1: gas station to your Bentley and um, it's absolutely true.
Speaker 1: And I love the program will settings and put it on.
Speaker 1: I call it um. I can't say it on the air.
Speaker 1: The you have two different programs settings. If you put
Speaker 1: it on the most aggressive sport plus on everything, you
Speaker 1: could literally watch the gas line go down. So the
Speaker 1: other electric car have to ask have you seen the
Speaker 1: Ribvian in person? They look really interesting, don't they do.
Speaker 1: And the other one that's very interesting to me is
Speaker 1: the Bollinger truck too. I haven't seen so an all
Speaker 1: electric truck. Electric trucks are very interesting because if you
Speaker 1: think about the fact that the best selling vehicle in
Speaker 1: the United States for the past thirty five years has
Speaker 1: been and everything is going electric, When are those two
Speaker 1: worlds going to collide? They already are that that is
Speaker 1: the world's class. Although we're seeing an endless run of
Speaker 1: electric supercars coming out at three million dollars. I know
Speaker 1: I can't that the batist is beautiful. Leave it to
Speaker 1: them to make the most beautiful electric car ever made,
Speaker 1: and they're unashamed saying, we just want to make a
Speaker 1: beautiful car, right. I love Italian. Yes, we have been
Speaker 1: speaking with Hannah Elliott. She is the Bloomberg columnist for
Speaker 1: automotive and supercars. If you enjoy this conversation, be sure
Speaker 1: and come back for the podcast extras, where we keep
Speaker 1: the tape rolling and continue discussing all things automotive. We
Speaker 1: love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us at
Speaker 1: m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. Check out my
Speaker 1: weekly column on Bloomberg at Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion.
Speaker 1: Follow me on Twitter at Ridolts. I'm Barry Ritults. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast, Hannah. Thank you so much for doing this.
Speaker 1: I've been I've been looking forward to this for while
Speaker 1: because friends and family who aren't crazy hardcore car geeks
Speaker 1: can only listen to me. The sickness isn't it. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit of an obsession. It's like, if you
Speaker 1: don't get it, you don't get it. And if you
Speaker 1: do what sickness, you just get sucked. Right. My mom
Speaker 1: has said the first word I ever said was car.
Speaker 1: And then I've had people say to me, wait, you
Speaker 1: got a Giant V eight, I go twin turbover you
Speaker 1: and they're like, aren't you concerned about the environment. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm very concerned about the environment, but I waited decades
Speaker 1: to be able to afford power. I will do carbon
Speaker 1: offsets elsewhere, but I am. And it's not like this
Speaker 1: is my daily driver. I put two thousand miles a
Speaker 1: year or maybe more, maybe four thousand. It's the weekend car,
Speaker 1: and that car means something. You know something This weekend
Speaker 1: it's going to be sixty five degrees and I will
Speaker 1: have this car out with my line in the sands
Speaker 1: is fifty degrees, my wife's sixty. But top down, top scarf.
Speaker 1: Are you a scarf person? Um? I have a scarf
Speaker 1: with me, But what I will do is dress appropriately,
Speaker 1: like I'm not snoopy chasing the red bar. But um,
Speaker 1: for my birthday, I have these beautiful my wife got
Speaker 1: me these beautiful British racing gloves and I you know
Speaker 1: the problem with those is that all the cars have
Speaker 1: heeded steering wheels, so you don't you don't really need
Speaker 1: them as much as you used to. But the heated
Speaker 1: seats the so the one thing this car doesn't have.
Speaker 1: The air scarf is with the class Mercedes, and it's
Speaker 1: just because that's where it makes a huge difference. I know,
Speaker 1: I've been in that car and I'm like, wow, I
Speaker 1: know it's really it's really kind of genius. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: kind of the thing that pops up over the top
Speaker 1: of the windscreen. I don't know if that really does much.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you what makes a huge difference in
Speaker 1: in the six and the two. So there's this interior
Speaker 1: screen that you put across the back scenes and it
Speaker 1: pops up because that little back window that comes up
Speaker 1: is like five inches tall, and that's good for ten degrees.
Speaker 1: You could take the car out in the fifties as
Speaker 1: opposed in the sixties, and there's no buffeting, there's no noise.
Speaker 1: It really astonishing little bit of and it's not aftermarket.
Speaker 1: It comes. It comes with the car. So, speaking of
Speaker 1: um crazy cars and and how people respond to the sickness,
Speaker 1: you wrote a really interesting review of what I thought
Speaker 1: was one of the better movies last year, Ford versus
Speaker 1: ferrari Um. It was. You know, sometimes you go to
Speaker 1: a movie and you're disappointed that movie was exactly what
Speaker 1: I expected. Fun all about on them, this that, good tension,
Speaker 1: this that. But you pointed out that the movie was
Speaker 1: filled with these meek little secretary women scarring about while
Speaker 1: all of them males, all of the white dudes, were
Speaker 1: doing their thing. And as I thought, you were dead
Speaker 1: right when I read it, and I remember saying to myself,
Speaker 1: she's gonna get some push about this. What was the
Speaker 1: what was the reaction to that? Um? It was surprising,
Speaker 1: I will I would say I was actually I wasn't
Speaker 1: deliberately trying to be controversial or to poke the bear
Speaker 1: at all. I just thought, oh, this is this is
Speaker 1: what I observed, and so I will say and I well,
Speaker 1: I'll say two things. Number one, I actually wrote two
Speaker 1: pieces on Ford versus Ferrari. One was an interview that
Speaker 1: I did with the car wrangler who directed all of
Speaker 1: the style. I remembered all of the cars and the
Speaker 1: amazing replicas he created. No c g I that was all.
Speaker 1: It was all real. They used to cannon to shoot
Speaker 1: like Ferrari shells out on Willow Springs race course and
Speaker 1: it was amazing. So I I love that and I
Speaker 1: had a great conversation with him, and that piece was awesome.
Speaker 1: And then the second piece I wrote, which was me UM,
Speaker 1: what I thought was just relaying what I observed through
Speaker 1: the movie UM, which was visible to anybody who watched
Speaker 1: right the whole The whole point of that second piece
Speaker 1: was this is interesting. I watched the movie and you
Speaker 1: notice that the decision makers in the room are older men, UM,
Speaker 1: the women are peripheral, and there there are no real
Speaker 1: people of color involved at all, which was an accurate
Speaker 1: representation of the time. And and my point was, let's
Speaker 1: watch this movie and note how it used to be,
Speaker 1: and note that if we want to move together forward
Speaker 1: in the car industry in the future. We are all
Speaker 1: better if we have a variety of voices in the
Speaker 1: room making decisions. The and and by the way, Carol
Speaker 1: show Shelby was a jerk, which is very well documented
Speaker 1: in lawsuits in I actually called the Los Angeles reporter
Speaker 1: who worked for the l A Times, who um uh
Speaker 1: covered him for years. I mean I this was very
Speaker 1: well documented over thirty years. UM. So that was kind
Speaker 1: of my points, like, this is a representation of what
Speaker 1: the auto industry used to be. Let's move forward and
Speaker 1: and we will all be better and stronger, um to
Speaker 1: have different voices in the room, a mix of everybody.
Speaker 1: And Carol Shelby was kind of a jerk, which everyone
Speaker 1: knows to be true. UM. And the response was very strong, UM,
Speaker 1: very toxic. I got a lot of people who came
Speaker 1: up to me in person and said thank you for
Speaker 1: saying what I've thought for a really long time. I
Speaker 1: really thank you. A lot of people did say thank you,
Speaker 1: but there was also, I would say fifty fifty a
Speaker 1: very very very strong backlash of people who um seemed
Speaker 1: to think that I was attacking men, or attacking Hollywood,
Speaker 1: or attacking um white people, UM, which was not my
Speaker 1: intent at all. It's sort of like gamer Gate, where
Speaker 1: the response to the people criticizing the video game industry
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with the basic premise of their response.
Speaker 1: It's just about how dare you? Yeah? And it it
Speaker 1: made me sad um that people felt attacked and felt
Speaker 1: that they should respond in a toxic way, which only
Speaker 1: kind of proved what I was saying, that we are
Speaker 1: all better if we leave behind this the culture. That culture.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. Um, the people who are most likely to
Speaker 1: toss about the word snowflake are the biggest snowflakes there are.
Speaker 1: And I'll just leave it at that. I want to
Speaker 1: get to um my favorite questions that I ask all
Speaker 1: of our guests in our final few minutes, because I've
Speaker 1: kept you here for three hours, it's been off. Um
Speaker 1: I am. I'm having a lot of fun with this.
Speaker 1: So I normally I used to ask people what their
Speaker 1: first car was, but you shared that, so I've moved
Speaker 1: towards I can't even ask you this because you don't
Speaker 1: have a TV. So let's talk about polip podcast I love.
Speaker 1: My My favorite podcast is Fresh Air Terry Gross. She's
Speaker 1: a great interviewer. She is Terry Gross and Howard Stern
Speaker 1: are my favorite. Stern hasn't also become he has. He's
Speaker 1: grown into seriously the best celebrity it's And I come
Speaker 1: from someone who loved watching David Letterman and I took
Speaker 1: his style of interviewing is really brilliant, and I feel
Speaker 1: like Stern has in a way inherited that. It's been
Speaker 1: really interesting. There's a hangover of danger that he may
Speaker 1: go off the rails, so that which is the background. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think that creates attention that wasn't there. He's
Speaker 1: gotten much better, yes, but that's still there and it
Speaker 1: makes it really interesting. He's empathetic and he's so intelligent,
Speaker 1: and um he never was empathetic, I know there. Um So,
Speaker 1: tell us about your early mentors who helped guide your career. Well,
Speaker 1: the first one I have to say is Matthew de Paula,
Speaker 1: who was the editor who hired me as a as
Speaker 1: a young wayward reporter way back when at Forbes. He
Speaker 1: really saw potential um and someone who didn't have a
Speaker 1: lot on her resume yet. Um So he really was
Speaker 1: the one who has guided me through. And also I
Speaker 1: would say second is Joann Mueller, who at the time
Speaker 1: was was the Detroit bureau chief for Forbes, covering the
Speaker 1: auto industry. Um. She now works for Axios and she's
Speaker 1: their transportation writer. And she really was so kind and
Speaker 1: patient and took me under her wing. So those two
Speaker 1: were phenomenal. Um So I'm not going to ask you
Speaker 1: that because I know we're a little tight on time.
Speaker 1: Um So let me just go to number five. All right,
Speaker 1: tell us about some of your favorite books. What are
Speaker 1: you reading these you're traveling back and forth between New
Speaker 1: York and l A. I love reading nonfiction. I love
Speaker 1: reading memoirs. Give us a few times. Richard's Life. It's
Speaker 1: really good and a giant. Yeah, and it's not a
Speaker 1: completely new book, but it's really good. I love music. Um.
Speaker 1: I love freethinkers and creative people. And he's great and
Speaker 1: it really has his voice. Um. My boyfriend's British, so
Speaker 1: I like the British type of guy. Um So I
Speaker 1: love that. Um. I did read Catch and Kill Ronan
Speaker 1: Farrell's Pharaoh's book about the Harvey Weinste. I've held that
Speaker 1: at arm's length. I know it's gonna just really good.
Speaker 1: Is it tough to read? No? No, it's it's Uh,
Speaker 1: it's what I mean is like his behavior is egregious,
Speaker 1: and the Times coverage some of it is really like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is discussed. It's hard to it's hard.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, the worst stuff has already been
Speaker 1: out in the news, so when you read the book.
Speaker 1: I actually put off reading the book cause I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I've already I'll read this in the press. I don't
Speaker 1: need to read the book. But the book adds some
Speaker 1: great context and background and adds a lot about his process,
Speaker 1: and I'm fascinated with that. I mean, he's a he's
Speaker 1: really a brilliant, almost prodigy type of of writer. More
Speaker 1: the future. Yeah, so that was a great book. I
Speaker 1: also just finished reading Um Why Social Media Is Ruining
Speaker 1: Your Life by Katherine Omrod, who's a British journalist. She's
Speaker 1: a friend of mine. It's a great book about how
Speaker 1: social media affects um everything about your your perception, your
Speaker 1: awareness of the world, your interaction with reality. Social media
Speaker 1: is not reality, no, but a lot it still affects
Speaker 1: people as if it were reality. That's kind of the
Speaker 1: crazy thing. It's it's although you know, people used to
Speaker 1: make the same arguments about new television news that it
Speaker 1: creates this really distorted viewpoint. Until people like Pinker and
Speaker 1: Roslyn came along, most people didn't realize how crime has
Speaker 1: been plumbering over forty years. You watch local news and
Speaker 1: it's all stabbings and shootings and what have you. Um,
Speaker 1: I have a So that's three books you gave me.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you one book which you might like.
Speaker 1: Um have you read Super Pumped? The book about uber So?
Speaker 1: It reminds me a little bit about Bad Blood about
Speaker 1: Saras where you have this comm although there's not there's
Speaker 1: no fraud here, there's a lot of criminality and but
Speaker 1: it's really fascinating how this idea turned into a world
Speaker 1: changing thing despite that toxic bro mentality. Just it's it's
Speaker 1: really kind of intriguing and fascinating. Um, So tell us
Speaker 1: about a time you failed and what you learned from
Speaker 1: the experience. That's a good question. I will take it
Speaker 1: back to high school when I was on my high
Speaker 1: school basketball team and you would think, yeah, um, you
Speaker 1: would think I'd be a good basketball player because of
Speaker 1: my high but I really um was coordination and I
Speaker 1: did not. I I felt like I felt the thing
Speaker 1: that I realized about the basketball team, which I was
Speaker 1: on but sat on the bench, which I kind of
Speaker 1: hated the whole thing, but I let um my own
Speaker 1: inferiority and feelings of insecurity work in a downward spile
Speaker 1: role against me, and I really I still can remember
Speaker 1: the feelings of how that felt, knowing that like you
Speaker 1: weren't you weren't, didn't you didn't feel like you deserve
Speaker 1: to be there, and then how that kind of worked
Speaker 1: against you and and with your own feelings of self worth,
Speaker 1: and that felt like that whole thing felt like a failure.
Speaker 1: And what I learned from that is, don't talk yourself
Speaker 1: into feeling like a failure. A lot of it was
Speaker 1: in my own head, um, and I never want to
Speaker 1: go back to feeling like that where I just felt
Speaker 1: so insecure. So so, when you're not taking other people's
Speaker 1: quarter million dollars supercars away for the weekend, what do
Speaker 1: you do for fun? That's a good question. Um, this
Speaker 1: is a really weird answer, but uh, magnus, my boyfriend
Speaker 1: and I like playing music together and we've started a
Speaker 1: fake band called Neon Jesus. We're recording on our own phones. No.
Speaker 1: He he plays guitar and I have a tambourine and singing,
Speaker 1: and I and I write lyrics and we have all
Speaker 1: these singles that we've done. This is a nerdous thing. Ever,
Speaker 1: you cannot hear us anywhere, but the band is called
Speaker 1: Neon Jesus. And we already have like a whole list
Speaker 1: of things that we record. We've recorded for ourselves. That's
Speaker 1: pretty hilarious. So what are you most optimistic about the
Speaker 1: auto industry today? And what are you most pessimistic about.
Speaker 1: I'm optimistic about people. I mean, I'm a big believer
Speaker 1: in as long as there is life, there is hope,
Speaker 1: and the human capacity for growth and creativity is unceasing.
Speaker 1: And as long as we have young, bright, motivated, creative
Speaker 1: people who are allowed to use their talents, that is
Speaker 1: very um uh exciting for me. And I think that
Speaker 1: you know, cars aren't going anywhere. People say that they're
Speaker 1: going to slowly die out, but I don't think so,
Speaker 1: it's just changing. And we and our final question, what
Speaker 1: sort of advice would you give to a recent college
Speaker 1: grad if they were interested in a career of either
Speaker 1: automotive or journalism or automotive journalism. It's a great question.
Speaker 1: I'm asked that a lot um I would say For
Speaker 1: people who love cars, UH, go get a journalism degree.
Speaker 1: A lot of people think because they know a lot
Speaker 1: about cars, they can be an auto writer, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't work that way. It works the other way. It's
Speaker 1: better to become a writer first and then hone your
Speaker 1: craft learning about it at subject so um. For people
Speaker 1: who want to be journalist period, I would say, don't
Speaker 1: believe it when people tell you should go to journalism
Speaker 1: school and get the masters. Start writing. Just start writing,
Speaker 1: because at the end of the day, all anybody wants
Speaker 1: to see as your byline, where have you written? Show
Speaker 1: me something you've written. I did not get a master's
Speaker 1: in journalism. I got an undergrad and then started working,
Speaker 1: and that to me worked very well. Great advice. We
Speaker 1: have been speaking with Hannah Elliott. She is the automotive
Speaker 1: calumnist UH for Bloomberg. If you enjoy this conversation, look
Speaker 1: up an Inch or down an Inch on Apple iTunes
Speaker 1: and you can see any of the three previous such conversations.
Speaker 1: We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us
Speaker 1: at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I would
Speaker 1: be remiss if I did not thank the crack staff
Speaker 1: that helps put this together each week. Paris Wold is
Speaker 1: our producer. My audio engineer is Mark Siniscalchie. I'm Barry Ritolts.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.