Speaker 1: Pushkin, this American, this American. All right, we got cheap
Speaker 1: gas and we're gonna burn it. It's Lee Greenwood riding
Speaker 1: a bald ego, you know, into some like a fireworks finale.
Speaker 1: For the final championship round of our Car of the
Speaker 1: Year tournament, We've brought together one of my favorite car
Speaker 1: guy comedians, Alonzo Boden, who you might know from NPRS
Speaker 1: Wait Weight, Don't tell Me? And my favorite car guy
Speaker 1: public intellectual, Malcolm Gladwell, who you know from his books,
Speaker 1: his podcasts and his unofficial co host status on this show.
Speaker 1: The task in front of us is daunting. How to
Speaker 1: pick a winner from this random grouping of cars. What
Speaker 1: criteria can we use that applies across these four athlete
Speaker 1: different segments. Well, keep listening. Malcolm, of course has the answer.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get out of the way here and
Speaker 1: let the three of us determine once and for all
Speaker 1: the best car I drove this year. I'm Eddie Alterman,
Speaker 1: and this is Car Show. We have our list of semifinalists.
Speaker 1: We have the Chevrolet Corvette zero six. We have the
Speaker 1: Cadillac CT five V Black Wing. We have the Hyundai
Speaker 1: Ionic five as our EV representative and then as our
Speaker 1: SUV semifinalists, the Genesis GV seventy so two from Detroit,
Speaker 1: two from Korea. And if you ask me fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: that's a mere two product cycles ago whether there would
Speaker 1: be two Korean cars and two domestics on this list.
Speaker 1: I just said, you're smoking angel dust. But here we are.
Speaker 1: What do you guys think? How do you want to
Speaker 1: jump into this? I'll start with cars I can fit in,
Speaker 1: which makes the Corvette really tough. So give me the dimensions.
Speaker 1: So I've been in the new Corvette and it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of like two tunnels with a high center. I mean,
Speaker 1: I got wide shoulders, so it is kind of a
Speaker 1: snug fit. But as car, it's phenomenal. You know, it's
Speaker 1: the only one you talk about punching above your weight class.
Speaker 1: Everything it competes with costs at least twice as much. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I actually want to spend a lot of time on
Speaker 1: that very point. But before we do that, I want
Speaker 1: to eliminate one right off that the conversation. Let's see
Speaker 1: if we could agree on the one car of these
Speaker 1: four that doesn't belong. Okay, and I think it's obvious
Speaker 1: it's the Genesis. Really, why, I don't understand why would
Speaker 1: we celebrate just another well put together, overpowered luxury suv
Speaker 1: like it's another version of something that portion vented ten
Speaker 1: fifteen years ago. I see the point, but I think
Speaker 1: the exceptionalism comes from just being so perfectly suited to
Speaker 1: that market. Well. I tend to agree with Malcolm here.
Speaker 1: My issue with Genesis is they make perfect copies of
Speaker 1: other cars. Yeah. I mean, when you're talking about car
Speaker 1: a year, you want something special. So if you want
Speaker 1: it to pick an suv to be special, then I
Speaker 1: think you have to take a turbo Cayenne or an
Speaker 1: X five M, something ridiculous and over the top, you know,
Speaker 1: six hundred horsepower, etc. Like an suv that there's no
Speaker 1: reason for it to exist. Yes, the Genesis is just
Speaker 1: as he said, it's a well executed suv, but it's
Speaker 1: not a special car. Yeah. Also, can I bring up
Speaker 1: Tiger Woods here? Yeah, isn't this the one that nearly
Speaker 1: didn't Tiger? I mean, come on, it's got like a
Speaker 1: shadow of fave Tiger. No, that was the gv ab
Speaker 1: Oh that was a gv Adio. Yeah, Malcolm, that that's
Speaker 1: pretty much anything Tiger drives other than a golf club.
Speaker 1: If anyone who has millions of dollars should hire a
Speaker 1: professional driver, I think we can say it's Tiger Woods.
Speaker 1: He's just his record behind the wheel is just not
Speaker 1: I know, yeah, yeah, I thought about that. That is true.
Speaker 1: I think he can afford a driver at this point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm with Alonso. Like, if it was
Speaker 1: nuts in some really wonderful way, I love that. If
Speaker 1: it had no reason to exist other than to fulfill
Speaker 1: the fantasy of an engineer somewhere, then I would be
Speaker 1: all over it. But it's like another Jennifer Aniston romcong.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know what you're getting. It's really well produced.
Speaker 1: Like is your life really immeasurably improved by seeing the
Speaker 1: seventeenth you know, romcom where she thinks she's being left
Speaker 1: to the altar? Well, okay, taking the opposite position. There's
Speaker 1: so much value packed into this thing that for the
Speaker 1: average SUV person, this thing is like a Mercedes for
Speaker 1: half the money. It's one hundred thousand dollars interior in
Speaker 1: a fifty thousand dollars vehicle. It's probably going to be
Speaker 1: more trouble free and cheaper to keep on the road
Speaker 1: than any of the German makes you highlighted there, and
Speaker 1: this is their second SUV and Genesis wasn't even a
Speaker 1: brand fifteen years ago. And it's like way better than
Speaker 1: I think the Audie or the or even you know,
Speaker 1: the Mercedes in the BMW in some way. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: stop you right here, but I'm gonna tell you why
Speaker 1: your statement just eliminated that car. Okay, you use the
Speaker 1: word it's a great value. When you were a kid
Speaker 1: and you looked at cars and you dreamt of the
Speaker 1: car when you grow up, at no point did you say, man,
Speaker 1: I can't wait till I'm old enough to buy a
Speaker 1: great value. That's not the card a year the car
Speaker 1: of the year is. I want something excited. When you
Speaker 1: were a kid, you wanted to grow up to get
Speaker 1: a Corvette or if there was a Cadillac with five
Speaker 1: hundred horsepower like that didn't even exist back then. But
Speaker 1: that's an aspirational you want one of those. Nobody's like, man,
Speaker 1: if I could only get a great value, right, you know?
Speaker 1: I want to also Also, Eddie suddenly gotten religion, you
Speaker 1: know alone as I don't know if you know that
Speaker 1: Eddie and I have a beef that goes back how
Speaker 1: many years now, like ten years, ten years or more.
Speaker 1: I wrote a piece with The New Yorker where I
Speaker 1: took issue with a comparo that the car driver had
Speaker 1: done Porsche Cayman versus Lotus Elise versus Corvette. They compared
Speaker 1: these sweet cars, and the subject to price never came up.
Speaker 1: And my point was, the Corvette appears to be as
Speaker 1: good as the other two cars in every conceivable important respect.
Speaker 1: It is twenty grand cheaper on account for something. And
Speaker 1: and he was completely blind to this idea. And now
Speaker 1: all of a sudden he's turned around and he's talking.
Speaker 1: He sounds like Consumer Reports. Well, I might be able
Speaker 1: to extricate myself through some deft, you know, rationalizations and bullshittery.
Speaker 1: You've gone from the editor of Car and Driver to
Speaker 1: the editor of Consumer Reports. All you're concerned about is
Speaker 1: how far I can struct my suburban dollar, what how
Speaker 1: my tacy case. I keep my feet on the ground.
Speaker 1: I keep reaching for the stars from Malcolm. So the
Speaker 1: idea that you raised, Alonzo, that the Corvette is great
Speaker 1: based on you know, it's a third to half the
Speaker 1: price of Lamborghini Orican or you know Ferrari Fate or
Speaker 1: a Pista or something like that. I think value is
Speaker 1: part of the Corvette equation. But the Corvette is a
Speaker 1: still a high performance car. It's a supercar. As a
Speaker 1: side bonus, it costs less, but it's still unto itself.
Speaker 1: It's a supercar. That's the difference. The Genesis, it isn't
Speaker 1: a super suv. It's an suv. It's it's a nice
Speaker 1: luxury suv. The Corvette steps up to supercar level, and
Speaker 1: the fact that it costs less is like a bonus.
Speaker 1: You know, when I evaluate cars in the Corvette category.
Speaker 1: You know where I live in upstate New York, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of guys with a lot of money. On
Speaker 1: the weekends they take out their special automobile. I will
Speaker 1: driving into town on Saturday morning see ten amazing automobiles
Speaker 1: on a good day. There's a guy who lives when
Speaker 1: Naby who has a Lamborghini. Every time I see him
Speaker 1: as Lamborghini, my first thought is what a jazz? I mean?
Speaker 1: Come on, so you dropped whatever it was three on
Speaker 1: this thing which is basically undrivable, and you're only doing
Speaker 1: it because you have some kind of adolescent fantasy that
Speaker 1: you're fulfilling. At this point, when I see someone in
Speaker 1: a new Corvette, I don't think Jack has really now
Speaker 1: to follow up. At a Lotza's point, there's some element
Speaker 1: of discretion involved. There's a certain judiciousness. It's like, all right,
Speaker 1: I want a world class autobile. I could go all
Speaker 1: the way to one hundred percent and get a McLaren
Speaker 1: or it can go ninety five percent or ninety eight
Speaker 1: percent and get a Corvette and save myself two hundred grand.
Speaker 1: Who is it? That's an admirable position. Yeah, I see that.
Speaker 1: There's a nugget of rationality in there. And you're also
Speaker 1: saying like, yeah, I probably could have a three hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars car. You could have it, but you don't.
Speaker 1: You're more intentional about the Corvette zero six than you
Speaker 1: are about a Hurrican. The thing about like ferraris as
Speaker 1: distinct from Lamborghini's is the Ferrari guy he's planned his purchase,
Speaker 1: he's been fixated on, you know, with a four thirty
Speaker 1: spider for twenty years, and he wants to get he
Speaker 1: wants to get it, and he does and he keeps
Speaker 1: it forever. The Lamborghini guy falls into a bunch of money,
Speaker 1: buys his thank and he's dead in eighteen months or
Speaker 1: he's broken eighteen months, and it's just way more impulsive.
Speaker 1: Whenever I see a Lambeau in La, I'm like, if
Speaker 1: I'm dropping three hundred k in La, I'm going to
Speaker 1: get a Rolls Royce because I'm only sitting in traffic.
Speaker 1: I might as well be comfortable. Yeah, but again, getting
Speaker 1: back to our point about the Genesis. You notice the
Speaker 1: cars we're talking about are all exotic, aspirational cars, and
Speaker 1: nobody's feeling that about the Genesis. But Eddie, if we
Speaker 1: gave you, how about this, put it this way, All
Speaker 1: four of those cars are available to you tomorrow for free.
Speaker 1: You can pick one of the four for free for
Speaker 1: your own personal use. Which one are you picking? You're
Speaker 1: not picking the Genesis, no, no, Now, I will tell
Speaker 1: you that there are times definitely where I choose comfort,
Speaker 1: Like if I have a Genesis or a BRZ, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna probably go with the Genesis. But I'm sure there's
Speaker 1: gonna be if an M three is up on the board,
Speaker 1: that'll do. And I didn't even bring in the sex
Speaker 1: appeal factor because again that you know there is a
Speaker 1: sex appeal to these cars, and nobody's walking up. Hey baby,
Speaker 1: you know what kind of value I got here? But
Speaker 1: Malcolm's point is a great one that cars are about context, right,
Speaker 1: and a Corvette in the Hudson Valley has a kind
Speaker 1: of outsider cool factor to it, especially as Zo six.
Speaker 1: You know, we have this thing in Detroit called the
Speaker 1: Woodward Dream Cruise and it's basically just quarter mile runs
Speaker 1: all day long. You have gasers in there, you have
Speaker 1: hot rods, you have all this great domestic iron. Somebody
Speaker 1: shows up in a Lamborghini. They just look like a
Speaker 1: complete asshole, you know, like, what are you doing with
Speaker 1: that car going in a straight line. Yes it's got
Speaker 1: good quarter mile times, but you're just so out of place.
Speaker 1: It doesn't even look right. You want like big Impaua's,
Speaker 1: you want tea bucket forards. Those kinds of cars really
Speaker 1: fit in and Woodward and exotics just don't. But the
Speaker 1: but it can code switch, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It can be kind of everything to everybody in a
Speaker 1: really really cool way. It's not just the traditional The
Speaker 1: Corvette has a lot of baggage, you know, because of
Speaker 1: all the Corvette shows and guys in their lawn chairs,
Speaker 1: you know, rubbing them with diapers, and cars with chrome
Speaker 1: wheels and yellow cars with purple stripes. That's not what
Speaker 1: this new zero six is. This new Zeo six is
Speaker 1: every bit the international exotic right down to it's crazy
Speaker 1: naturally aspirated engine. I mean, there's kind of nothing like it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the way you know, I saw that Corvett's thinking
Speaker 1: of spinning off as a brand and coming out with
Speaker 1: an suv. If we had a Corvette SUV in this lineup,
Speaker 1: that would be my hands down winner. Really, Oh so
Speaker 1: you're four, You're four a Corvette suv? I am so?
Speaker 1: Are you? Who? Wait? Alonzo, Yeah, that would be that
Speaker 1: would be fun. I have to say, Eddie, if the
Speaker 1: new Corvette was not badged as a Corvette, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: fit in there either. It would be too exotic. And
Speaker 1: it's look, the reason it fits in is because of
Speaker 1: the name Corvette and the history you talked about is
Speaker 1: why it would be accepted amongst Detroit muscle. Otherwise it
Speaker 1: would look like another international, flashy exotic car and people
Speaker 1: would be like, nah, that doesn't belong here, because it
Speaker 1: certainly doesn't look like an American muscle car. Even though
Speaker 1: it has the ultimate American muscle engine, right, It's amazing
Speaker 1: how much they can keep working the small block and
Speaker 1: just keep getting it better and better and more and
Speaker 1: more power. But that car, if it wasn't badged as
Speaker 1: a Corvette, it would look as out of place as
Speaker 1: a Lamborghini or a Ferrari in a quarter mile. But
Speaker 1: it's that power of the brand that allows them to
Speaker 1: spin on. Yeah, yeah, totally. When we come back more
Speaker 1: with Malcolm Gladwell and Alonzo Boating, let's talking about the
Speaker 1: Black Wing because my first thought on long these lines
Speaker 1: is another car that would be a hands down winner
Speaker 1: in a study different configuration is if the Black Wing
Speaker 1: were a station wagon. Now you're talking like a real
Speaker 1: automotive journalist, Malcolm, the shooting brake version of the CT
Speaker 1: five Black Wing. I would mortgage my house to buy
Speaker 1: that car. I would buy that so fast. It's it's
Speaker 1: like that we achieve and also an extended version, like
Speaker 1: a shooting brake version of the CT five in the
Speaker 1: same way that the take on Grant Rismo Sports Grant
Speaker 1: Resmo and also the Panamera. Both of the shooting brake
Speaker 1: versions of those cars are infinitely better looking than the
Speaker 1: way more desirable, way more desirable. You know, in that form,
Speaker 1: that car becomes such a slam dunk. I mean you
Speaker 1: can legitimately, you know, justify it to your spouse, spice
Speaker 1: by pointing to its practicality. It's only six hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty eight horsepower. You don't mention that. You don't mention that.
Speaker 1: I think the problem they have with those it's the
Speaker 1: same that they had when they had the CTS V
Speaker 1: Wagon and all people like them in theory, but then
Speaker 1: they don't buy them, you know, I mean the Panamera
Speaker 1: that was it, the Grand Turismo. Yeah, yeah, it looks
Speaker 1: really cool, but but I don't see them on the road.
Speaker 1: People aren't buying them, and they're you know, they cost
Speaker 1: a lot. I mean I looked at it. It's it's
Speaker 1: an expensive car. So from a manufacturing standpoint, you know,
Speaker 1: getting back to Eddy value, that's what I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: you from that, just the Eddy value. You know, marketings
Speaker 1: like we should make it, but but sales is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but we can't sell those, I would Eddie. Do you
Speaker 1: know the sales numbers on the the take on Shooting Brake,
Speaker 1: Is that one selling Well? No, it's a tiny percentage
Speaker 1: and it's a bit of a Haywell vehicle for the
Speaker 1: Tykon brand itself. Same with the Panamera. But you know, Alonzo,
Speaker 1: your point about you know, the ctfive v Wagon that
Speaker 1: nobody wanted when it came out. Now if you look
Speaker 1: on bring a trailer or something, they're going for a
Speaker 1: ridiculous amounts of money. Yeah, now now people want them.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of cars that people didn't want when
Speaker 1: they came out and then later they're like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: a phenomenal car. But as as you know, manufacturers don't
Speaker 1: look at it that way. Right, there is something about
Speaker 1: the United States and we love SUVs. We don't love wagons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's what we love. We love SUVs. I mean
Speaker 1: you look at BMW right, they have high performance wagons.
Speaker 1: They don't sell any of many United States. They sell
Speaker 1: us the SUVs because that's what we that's what we
Speaker 1: tend to buy. Any white On the question of the
Speaker 1: of the C five Black Wing, you chose the CT
Speaker 1: five Black Wing and not the CT four Black Wing
Speaker 1: because well, I think the CT four is really brilliant too.
Speaker 1: And like I said, we have that M three in
Speaker 1: the office. But I'm driving the CT four. More than that,
Speaker 1: the CT five to me is sort of the the
Speaker 1: last will ever get of that format of the V
Speaker 1: eight sports sedan with a stick rear drive. It is
Speaker 1: so incredibly animalistic. The driving experience is much more vivid,
Speaker 1: I think, even than the four. The four is great,
Speaker 1: but the five really feels like that nine to eleven
Speaker 1: sedan that Alonso was talking about, which is the ideal,
Speaker 1: which is like, that's what your M five is, Malcolm.
Speaker 1: It's like really a sports car sort of in drag,
Speaker 1: and the five, to me, it's just more desirable. It's
Speaker 1: more more. It's like, Okay, how much horsepower can we
Speaker 1: throw out this thing and still make it totally totally livable,
Speaker 1: usable rides great. It's utterly sophisticated yet utterly animalistic at
Speaker 1: the same time. So to me, it just maxes out
Speaker 1: both of those things. Now I haven't driven the CT
Speaker 1: four and CT five, but I've owned the M three
Speaker 1: and now I have an M five, and I tell
Speaker 1: everyone the M five is more comfortable in comfort and
Speaker 1: more powerful in sport? Is it the same thing with
Speaker 1: the CT four and CT five, same deal? And what's
Speaker 1: so amazing about the CT five is the ride quality.
Speaker 1: CT four two, like the BMW's are very harsh now,
Speaker 1: they're like that macho stiffness, whereas like the CT five
Speaker 1: V Black Wing. To me, that's the car for Like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this guy is like a world renowned pediatrist. He's got
Speaker 1: a bomb ass collection of Hawaiian shirts, he listens to
Speaker 1: Steely Dan on homemade speakers. He's like a true enthusiast iconoclast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he wants the maximum of everything. So that's why
Speaker 1: I chose it. What's your take on it, Malcolm? You know,
Speaker 1: my daily driver is is a CT five V, so
Speaker 1: one step down obviously not a manual. Part of me
Speaker 1: has been jonesing to swap that for either the Black
Speaker 1: Wing five or the Black Wing four. Kind of like
Speaker 1: the Black Wing four conceptually more. I like the idea
Speaker 1: of all that power in a little tidy package, and
Speaker 1: I like the look of the four better than the five.
Speaker 1: If you make the Black Wing the car of the year,
Speaker 1: it's a middle finger to the entire automotive world, right,
Speaker 1: because you're saying everything you guys have been trying to
Speaker 1: transition to over the last five to ten years, we're
Speaker 1: not interested in. What we want is rear drive manual
Speaker 1: V eight old school, Like, you know, I'm increasingly convinced
Speaker 1: the cars peaked fifteen years ago and everything's been downhill
Speaker 1: ever since. And the CT five Blacking it's basically the
Speaker 1: better version of the fifteen year old car. The corvettees
Speaker 1: the same way the Corvette's like, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: a four or five eight specialty Ferrari from fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: ten years ago. And this thing is like naturally aspirated
Speaker 1: M five although it's supercharged, but it's it's not turbo charged.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have, like, you know, that feel free steering
Speaker 1: that all these new cars have. It's not remote and
Speaker 1: distant and clinical feeling like a lot of new cars.
Speaker 1: It's got a ton of feel. And I think what
Speaker 1: the CT five V Black Wing says is that he
Speaker 1: can't just take a car out of the box and
Speaker 1: release it into the wild. You have to really work it.
Speaker 1: You have to to develop it and hone it and
Speaker 1: hone it and hone it. And that's what the engineers
Speaker 1: on the Black Wings, and I think on a lot
Speaker 1: of Cadillacs are doing now. It's just really making them
Speaker 1: very driver oriented, full of feedback, and to me, like,
Speaker 1: I want to sports adan that can really calm down
Speaker 1: when I wanted to calm down, and can really go
Speaker 1: hard when I want to like take an on ramp,
Speaker 1: burn off ramp, and I want to have that bandwidth
Speaker 1: that you know, I think only a car like the
Speaker 1: CT five V gives you. Well, I think the V
Speaker 1: series Cadillacs have always been like the ultimate version of
Speaker 1: a muscle car. Like you go back to the muscle
Speaker 1: cars of the sixties, right, and they had these giant
Speaker 1: engines and they had all this horsepower, but they were
Speaker 1: bad cars. They were just brutal and harsh. They didn't
Speaker 1: handle this. So now they're like, Okay, we're still gonna
Speaker 1: give you that feeling that you can only get from
Speaker 1: a big V eight rear drive like muscle American muscle.
Speaker 1: But like you were saying, Eddie, we're gonna make it comfortable,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna make it handle, and we're gonna put
Speaker 1: in all the modern conveniences. You know, my buddy Chris
Speaker 1: Titus hot rod lover, and we we had this argument
Speaker 1: long ago and he was talking about hot rods. I
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, I like my hot rod
Speaker 1: with heated seats and navigation. I'm okay with that, all right.
Speaker 1: I don't need it to, you know, to be as
Speaker 1: brutal as they were back in the day. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a big fan of the V series, all
Speaker 1: of them, all of the VS. It is what Malcolm said,
Speaker 1: it is the middle finger. Like, no, it's not even
Speaker 1: the middle thing, you know what. It's like this American,
Speaker 1: this American, all right, we got cheap gas and we're
Speaker 1: gonna burn it. It's Lee Greenwood riding a bald ego,
Speaker 1: you know, into some like a fireworks finale. It's funny
Speaker 1: to go back to what you said at the beginning, Eddie,
Speaker 1: about how fifteen years ago someone had told you that
Speaker 1: the four semi finalists were two Koreans and two Detroit products.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is how the position of BMW and Cadillac
Speaker 1: has flipped in that period, right, because fifteen years ago,
Speaker 1: it would have been two BMW's and probably two Japanese
Speaker 1: cars on that list, right, it would have you know,
Speaker 1: it would have been the the NSX, the M five,
Speaker 1: you know, like you guys in philipp Yeah, and like
Speaker 1: that that kind of like is super I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a separate and larger conversation. But that idea that
Speaker 1: an American brand has re emerged as the engineering paragon
Speaker 1: is super interesting, right, It's like it says something about
Speaker 1: the new direction that American manufacturing has gone in in
Speaker 1: that period, Like where where the Germans? I mean the
Speaker 1: Germans now we're you know, this is kind of another
Speaker 1: stunning blow to German pride. Right, they don't have a
Speaker 1: carn list. It's unbelievable. But my feeling isn't like they're
Speaker 1: They're like, there's something that's gotten very kind of fussy
Speaker 1: about German cars and this this kind of like almost
Speaker 1: cynical attempt to broaden and broaden and broaden their base
Speaker 1: and while pretending to hang on to their performance enthusiast roots,
Speaker 1: is getting really annoying. I have a different take on that.
Speaker 1: I have a different take on that. And my take
Speaker 1: is that with the German cars, it's a given we've
Speaker 1: become so used to the level of performance from BMW
Speaker 1: and Mercedes that it's not surprising that their cars are supercars.
Speaker 1: We're not surprised at the M five at what it
Speaker 1: can do, whereas with the Cadillac because you know, unfortunately, listen,
Speaker 1: American cars destroyed their reputation right through let's say, through
Speaker 1: the nineties, and now they make great cars and a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't even think of looking at that
Speaker 1: car when they're in the market. They're looking at, you know,
Speaker 1: an M five, or they're looking at an AMG whatever,
Speaker 1: and they're not thinking to look at Cadillac. And Cadillac
Speaker 1: can compete on every level and in some ways superior.
Speaker 1: But I think that with the German car, it's been
Speaker 1: so good for so long people take it for granted.
Speaker 1: Like you look at the BMWM, even though it doesn't
Speaker 1: go on these best car lists, it's what they're compared to. See,
Speaker 1: everything's been compared to the M three. Since the M
Speaker 1: three was made, it became the standard, and everything is
Speaker 1: still compared to the M three, even the M three
Speaker 1: is compared to prior M three's Yeah right, Still, we
Speaker 1: kind of take for granted the excellence of German cars,
Speaker 1: and while they do sometimes sit on their laurels. They'll
Speaker 1: make something like that M two and say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we could still do it. We still have some that
Speaker 1: are you know, but that's annoying that they choose not
Speaker 1: to and they do spend more time on like the
Speaker 1: sound of the door chimes than they do on the steering.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous, unfortunate, But I think that is the broad
Speaker 1: level marketing aspect. Let's face it, we're enthusiasts. They're not
Speaker 1: worried about us. Okay, they're they're gonna make a few
Speaker 1: toys for us, but they're worried about the broad level marketing.
Speaker 1: Like you were saying, Malcolm, they're worried about what your spouses.
Speaker 1: But even the enthusiasts Alonzo are turning their backs on
Speaker 1: BMW's and say they're not as good as they were.
Speaker 1: And if you if you ignore that, if you don't
Speaker 1: really serve that enthusiast really really well, then the rest
Speaker 1: of it kind of becomes meaningless. Like you know, the
Speaker 1: center can't hold you have to really It's it's sort
Speaker 1: of like what we talked about with the Corvette, Like
Speaker 1: the Corvette is so good now that they can do
Speaker 1: an SUV. The nine to eleven got so good that
Speaker 1: they could do a cay En you know, and have it,
Speaker 1: you know, have some integrity and not be like some
Speaker 1: kind of cynical marketing exercise. And I think that's where
Speaker 1: BMW is right now. It's kind of in the let's
Speaker 1: cash in on our reputation and sell a lot of
Speaker 1: cars to you know, real estate agents in southern California.
Speaker 1: Here's what my BMW thing is. You know, I have
Speaker 1: a twenty fourteen X one which was based on the
Speaker 1: Was it on the platform of the three series? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It breaks down like clockwork every four months, and every
Speaker 1: time I take it in it costs me thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars. It's like, got too many miles on it.
Speaker 1: It's a pain in the ass. I don't get rid
Speaker 1: of it. Why because the steering is so sublime. And
Speaker 1: every time I drive a new BMW, I am filled
Speaker 1: with rage that they they had the driving experience nailed
Speaker 1: and they went backwards and I just can't. I can't
Speaker 1: get over that hump. I'm like, dude, my decrepit X
Speaker 1: one from twenty fourteen. You get behind the wheel and
Speaker 1: you're just happy. You feel betrayed, right, feel betrayed. I
Speaker 1: totally feel betrayed. The idea that the brand would depart
Speaker 1: from one of their strongest suits for whatever reason, it's
Speaker 1: just infuriating to me. Well, refuting these insinuation that I'm
Speaker 1: an old fogy, I did put you know the new
Speaker 1: Hyundai Ionic five on this list, which to me is
Speaker 1: maybe it's not an aspirational vehicle, but it looks so cool.
Speaker 1: It looks like an eight bit, you know, lancha Delta
Speaker 1: integrally like the styling really pushes a lot of gen
Speaker 1: X buttons for me. Have you guys seen these things
Speaker 1: on the road I have? It's funny, you know, I
Speaker 1: have a friend who is a a classic east Side
Speaker 1: LA progressive, so, you know, long conversations about what she eats,
Speaker 1: progressive politics, you know, blah blah blah, blah blah. She
Speaker 1: emails me and says, I think I gotta get a
Speaker 1: new car because my prius stio money miles on it.
Speaker 1: What should I get? I'm thinking maybe a used Volvo.
Speaker 1: And I said, first of all, if you get a Volvo,
Speaker 1: I'm not speaking to you again, but exactly, you have
Speaker 1: only two choices. I said, you can get a golf er. Well,
Speaker 1: you can get an Ionic. And I said, if you
Speaker 1: can find an Ionic, that should be your first choice.
Speaker 1: I don't know how she found one. Two weeks later
Speaker 1: she calls me, up, I have an Ionic, and then
Speaker 1: I saw her in La was driving around it. It's
Speaker 1: it's a fantastic car. The thing it's baffling to me
Speaker 1: about it is it looks like it's a hatchback. It's
Speaker 1: a big car that somehow I don't know what they
Speaker 1: did with the styling. It's so confusing. The proportion I
Speaker 1: thing is spacious and looks like it's, you know, this
Speaker 1: modest little but it's gorge the size of a palisade.
Speaker 1: So weird. I can't even wrap my mind around that.
Speaker 1: But it is. It's beautiful. It's a beautiful car. It's
Speaker 1: like the future we were promised in the eighties. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: I will say that. In my neighborhood, in my part
Speaker 1: of La this was the ultimate Ionic compliment on the
Speaker 1: next door app. These Ionic people were telling the Tesla
Speaker 1: people to get rid of their test and get an Iona.
Speaker 1: I think it's the same. It was a whole it
Speaker 1: was a whole thing on the app. They were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: get rid of your Tesla, get the Ionic. You're gonna
Speaker 1: love it. And I do see, I do see Ionics
Speaker 1: rolling around here, and it looks like it's the it's
Speaker 1: the car. I was traveling a lot recently and decided
Speaker 1: to rent teslas, you know, rent teslas from her. So
Speaker 1: I was like, I got my whole Tesla experience down
Speaker 1: and was so appalled by the bill quality that it's
Speaker 1: just an appliance and it's so ugly inside, and I'm
Speaker 1: just like, an Ionic is is truly one generation beyond
Speaker 1: the Teslas. So what LUNs It was saying with the
Speaker 1: neighbors telling their tests of people, that is absolutely right.
Speaker 1: Like Testa was a starter car, It's always been the
Speaker 1: car for people who don't like cars, and now we
Speaker 1: have an electric car or the first of a whole
Speaker 1: group of electric cars that are electric cars to people
Speaker 1: who actually like autobiles. But with the lyric lyric net category,
Speaker 1: the Ionic is a couple of others the lyrics in
Speaker 1: there too, and that makes But you know the thing
Speaker 1: about the evs is that the ecosystem around them is
Speaker 1: as important as the car itself. You know your iPhone app.
Speaker 1: The charging infrastructure, and that's where Tesla wins. They have
Speaker 1: the supercharger network that's really Musk's own utility. It's the best,
Speaker 1: it's super reliable. The actual Electrify America charging stations are
Speaker 1: always broken down, they always suck, or somebody's park their
Speaker 1: f one fifty in front of it just to spite you,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's like Tesla really has that part down.
Speaker 1: But I completely agree, like this is a step change
Speaker 1: beyond a Model three, but I still feel like it's
Speaker 1: missing something so big, and that big thing is the
Speaker 1: reciprocating internal combustion engine. Well that's that's a whole different argument.
Speaker 1: I will say. One of the problems with evs you
Speaker 1: talked about it they need to standardize it. It's not
Speaker 1: like cars have different gas nozzles, so you have to
Speaker 1: have different gas stations, you know. Now, I'll throw something
Speaker 1: else out with Tesla that that they have developed both
Speaker 1: through the initial owners and Elon Musk. There's a certain
Speaker 1: douche factor to having a Tesla, like, oh, you're one
Speaker 1: of them, You're a Tesla person, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: And the ionic doesn't carry that baggage. I know, as
Speaker 1: a motorcyclist, when I'm riding around La and I see
Speaker 1: a Tesla, I assume that driver isn't driving the car,
Speaker 1: that it's an automatic, and that that car might kill me.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's a certain baggage that goes with
Speaker 1: owning them, and as far as the interiors they have
Speaker 1: become you know, for the amount of car costs, it's like,
Speaker 1: what is this cheap plastic interior that's going up? Like
Speaker 1: they're not unique enough anymore to put up with that.
Speaker 1: It's not like, oh, you have a Tesla. Now it's
Speaker 1: just another car, especially here in LA and you know
Speaker 1: in some places they're still unique. In La they are,
Speaker 1: they are Diame a dozen, They're everywhere, and I don't
Speaker 1: know who would pay that kind of money for that
Speaker 1: level of quality. Like Malcolm was talking about, when we
Speaker 1: come back our winner for Car of the Year. So
Speaker 1: we've got we've eliminated one, we've been talking about about
Speaker 1: the other three. Do you have Do you have any
Speaker 1: kind of feelings about about about rankings here? Well, I
Speaker 1: think that the Ionic rises above the Tesla and indeed
Speaker 1: many other evs, and it's really kind of important and
Speaker 1: a significant breakthrough, but it's going to be surpassed in
Speaker 1: three years years by something with more range and more power.
Speaker 1: So I think that's probably our third place finalists. What
Speaker 1: do you guys think I'd agree with that? Here's here's
Speaker 1: the heuristic I would use to evaluate who we should
Speaker 1: who should be number one, and that is five years
Speaker 1: from now, would we understand the ranking. So you know
Speaker 1: how there's some years with the Oscars where the pick
Speaker 1: for Best Picture makes sense in the moment, and then
Speaker 1: five years later you're like, wait they did, Like like
Speaker 1: remember that movie Crash, Yeah, didn't crashin Best Picture. Like
Speaker 1: there is not a person on the face of the
Speaker 1: earth who thinks the Crash deserve Best Picture that year.
Speaker 1: It's or like in basketball, you know there are some
Speaker 1: number one picks. You're like, wait, Anthony Bennett was the
Speaker 1: number of what he was number number two pick or
Speaker 1: something like. It's that kind of thing. So five years
Speaker 1: from now, are we going to be puzzled if we
Speaker 1: put the ionic first? I think yes, we would be
Speaker 1: puzzled because the field is going to progress so rapidly.
Speaker 1: It really does come down to which of these two
Speaker 1: perfect expressions of a traditional model we want to hold
Speaker 1: up to posterity and say this is as good as
Speaker 1: it got with the kind of analog sports dent, which
Speaker 1: you know, it's down to the vet versus the black wing.
Speaker 1: Which which of those is the better? Is the thing
Speaker 1: that would that's five years from now we say, yeah,
Speaker 1: that was man, that was the end of an era,
Speaker 1: and like that was the right car to pick. Well,
Speaker 1: I think using that criteria, it has to be the
Speaker 1: Black Wing, because in five years that doesn't exist exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, there will be supercars from here to infinity,
Speaker 1: small batch supercars. They can slip past the regulators noses.
Speaker 1: But a sports dan like this with this crazy almost
Speaker 1: seven horsepower engine and a stick and all this torque
Speaker 1: and just an absolutely perfect expression of what a sports
Speaker 1: stand should be, which is a sports car with four doors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the Black Wing. And I'd also like to say,
Speaker 1: is there any cooler name than black Wing? It's best,
Speaker 1: It's the best. I want one. Well, another thing is
Speaker 1: m and Malcolm you touched on it is the daily
Speaker 1: driver aspect, you know. That's also the insane thing that
Speaker 1: the Black Wing. I mean, the Corvette is a stretch
Speaker 1: as a daily driver, right, I mean you might have
Speaker 1: to carry luggage one day or you know, and the
Speaker 1: Black Wing is so easy to live with if it's
Speaker 1: your only car. You could live with that as your
Speaker 1: only car, your daily driver, like you said, and every
Speaker 1: day be comfortable and commute and this and that, and
Speaker 1: then every now and then put your foot in it
Speaker 1: and go berserk and absolutely love it. And then bring
Speaker 1: it back down and not so. I think that also.
Speaker 1: That's another reason the black wing goes at the top
Speaker 1: of this It's gonna make it like it's it's gonna
Speaker 1: be one of those cars that really, I think lasts
Speaker 1: to your point, Malcolm, you know, this is a Citizen
Speaker 1: Kane type of car that we talk about for a
Speaker 1: long time. It's like a Citron sm you know, like, wow,
Speaker 1: how did they do that? You know, it's just got
Speaker 1: so much engineering integrity, so much design integrity. It's just
Speaker 1: so well thought out that it's it's just going to last.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of my maxims is that time
Speaker 1: equals value. They spent more time on this car than
Speaker 1: anything else probably on this list except maybe the Zeo six.
Speaker 1: I think that's going to translate into lasting value. We're
Speaker 1: gonna want this car for a very very long time.
Speaker 1: We're going to work back and go. Man, that was
Speaker 1: the peak of something. Yeah, agreed, agreed, Wow, Malcolm, you're right.
Speaker 1: Eddie's going to go to work for Consumer Reports. I mean,
Speaker 1: no matter where he goes, it comes back to value
Speaker 1: all mister value. Edie. He's going to run the car
Speaker 1: division Walmart Car Show is written and hosted by me
Speaker 1: Eddie Alterman. It's produced by Emily Rosstek and Jacob Smith.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Karen Shakerjee. Original music and mastering by
Speaker 1: Ben Tolliday. Our executive producer is Mia lo Bell. Our
Speaker 1: show art was designed by Sean Karney and air rushed
Speaker 1: by Greg la Fever. Our patron Saints as always are We,
Speaker 1: Tom Allad and Justine Lang. Car Show is a production
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