Speaker 1: So I should point out that Dave McGowan is here,
Speaker 1: He's been here for thirty seconds, has not said one word,
Speaker 1: and already he is one thousand times better of a
Speaker 1: guest than Trevor Long.
Speaker 2: So he does about cars, which is a good stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, unless Harry, which is pretty easy when it comes
Speaker 1: to Trevor Loong. God, thankfully, thankfully that guy's not a smoker.
Speaker 1: He'll drop a bit of ash and start a bushfire
Speaker 1: just on his shoulders. Sorry, very very good, good gear
Speaker 1: from me. Good start carrying the episode once again? How
Speaker 1: we should introduce Dave mccowan's here. Do we give a
Speaker 1: little clap? Yay from news dot com dot you ought
Speaker 1: to be a lot more professional content director for News
Speaker 1: Corp Australia.
Speaker 3: We beg you. Yeah, that's quite the introduction.
Speaker 2: I've known you for ages. Gordy has about five minutes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's it, but we're already best.
Speaker 1: That's fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it. You've kind of moved into a new
Speaker 2: role at News Limited. Tell us about what you're doing
Speaker 2: now in the car scene.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've been writing about cars for a long time
Speaker 3: and it's a lot more than writing now. I'm They
Speaker 3: call it the content director, but basically just get to
Speaker 3: get to steer the ship on how we cover cars
Speaker 3: as a company, and that's Yeah, it's a huge promotion.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of a lot of fun, a lot
Speaker 3: of video, a lot of interesting stuff, and trying to
Speaker 3: find things that appeal to a really broad audience. When
Speaker 3: you're looking at things like news dot com. You've got
Speaker 3: thirty million people a month going to the website and
Speaker 3: most of them, yeah, and most of them don't want
Speaker 3: to watch twenty minute long car videos and things like that,
Speaker 3: So we are doing things a bit differently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is a good point because often our editorial
Speaker 2: guys get lost in this world of covering car content
Speaker 2: for and not necessarily car enthusias, but it's very niche
Speaker 2: car content, whereas news is like you're talking to the
Speaker 2: guy down the street who doesn't know anything about electric cars,
Speaker 2: and most of those people hate them, which is understandable.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it is a much different, I guess scope
Speaker 2: to doing that. And you guys are going a lot
Speaker 2: on video now as well. And I've been watching some
Speaker 2: of the stuff that you've been doing, a lot of
Speaker 2: vertical format sort of real type stuff. How do you
Speaker 2: kind of differentiate doing stuff for News Limited on the
Speaker 2: video front compared to what you would have done previously
Speaker 2: at like Fairfax, for example, in a specific car role.
Speaker 3: Yeah, back in the day, Drive, you know, we Drive
Speaker 3: was very good at video a long time ago. Was
Speaker 3: really one of the pioneers for it. I mean back
Speaker 3: in the day before there was b roll or anything
Speaker 3: like that. There's no video crews attending car launchers. I
Speaker 3: used to bring a DV camera and a tripod to
Speaker 3: like a Mercedes event at Sandown and then just like
Speaker 3: try and move the thing around and shoot my own stuff.
Speaker 3: And it was absolute. It was a horror show. And then,
Speaker 3: you know, like everyone, we moved with the times and then, yeah,
Speaker 3: a couple of years ago, I've been at News for
Speaker 3: five six years now and we've really gone down the
Speaker 3: vertical video path because TikTok has as we all know,
Speaker 3: broken society, and everyone wants to consume just a few
Speaker 3: seconds here and there.
Speaker 2: Of course quite a lot more than a few seconds,
Speaker 2: especially with the.
Speaker 1: It's just because I'm an influencer now. Yeah, to Paul's point, though,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting position to now be in. I mean, effectively,
Speaker 1: content has changed and in some ways it must be
Speaker 1: a cool spot to kind of be calling the shots
Speaker 1: because we still want to see epic bird's eye shots
Speaker 1: and sweeping drone shots. But also it's very raw and
Speaker 1: authentic as well, where like anyone can kind of grab
Speaker 1: a mobile and just shoot and have a go, and
Speaker 1: that's that's just as interesting. You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's crazy, that isn't it. I Mean, we do
Speaker 3: the vertical thing a lot at work, but you know,
Speaker 3: I'm on TikTok and all that sort of stuff as well,
Speaker 3: And all the most successful videos I've had on TikTok
Speaker 3: have been completely raw and personal, Like I did one
Speaker 3: this year that was I've been out for a run,
Speaker 3: believe it or not, and and there was.
Speaker 2: Sick what were you running from the cops?
Speaker 3: Well, I ran into the cops. There's there this hoiro
Speaker 3: atrog guy. I had backed up a cycling lane and
Speaker 3: then parked across it, basically blocking this running path and
Speaker 3: cycling lane and set up there in an unmarked car
Speaker 3: sniping people on a bridge during double demerits. And I
Speaker 3: had to chat with him off camera and basically said, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm not sure that this is the right
Speaker 3: thing to be doing, and he basically took me to
Speaker 3: jog on. So so I did, and.
Speaker 2: Then did he know?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And then I thought, nah, I'm sufficiently outraged about this,
Speaker 3: but I think other people might be as well. And
Speaker 3: so I filmed this little video and it went bananas
Speaker 3: millions and millions of views, and which is really funny
Speaker 3: because you put all this effort into producing really exquisite
Speaker 3: stuff and doing stuff with drones and b roll and
Speaker 3: slow MA and all that sort of stuff, and it
Speaker 3: gets two thousand views and then you just do a
Speaker 3: quick hold your phone up in front of your face
Speaker 3: and talk about the cops not looking after people. That
Speaker 3: was crazy.
Speaker 1: I think the difference is it's kind of one is
Speaker 1: a very authentic, sort of at the moment's story, and
Speaker 1: one is a narrative, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well you know the thing I remember when when
Speaker 2: you did that, I looked at that and I mean
Speaker 2: that is just so shit. Like I get, you know,
Speaker 2: you're enforcing speed and whatever. That's that's a different story.
Speaker 2: But when you're parking across a cycling lane and the
Speaker 2: worst thing, I've said this before on the podcast, it's
Speaker 2: just such a shit image when you've got police in
Speaker 2: Victoria and New South Wales getting about in X fives
Speaker 2: and five series dicking people for speeding. It's like, hold on,
Speaker 2: you're in one hundred and twenty thousand dollars card the
Speaker 2: look here, and then to just park your five series
Speaker 2: straight across the cycling lane because you know I'm better
Speaker 2: than you. It's like, nah, fuck that. I find that
Speaker 2: highly insulting and I'm glad you stood up to them.
Speaker 2: And the best part was that he would have then
Speaker 2: just while he was sitting there a bone, someone been
Speaker 2: flicking through news dot com today and gone, oh huh, I.
Speaker 1: Think that was me. Shit, that's me. I'm gonna I
Speaker 1: better move on myself.
Speaker 2: Yeah that good.
Speaker 1: That was absolutely that was such a revenue raising kind
Speaker 1: of event, just caught then and there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, now, last episode I teased and teased and teased.
Speaker 1: He did you got where there's out? You teased me
Speaker 1: as hard as I like. It wasn't budging. In fact,
Speaker 1: at one point I coughed a dust out of it.
Speaker 1: I think my penis would sound like Louis the fla
Speaker 1: just a little cigar. She come on, you can't teach
Speaker 1: me have lee. But yes, so you went on a
Speaker 1: secret mission. Yes, I'm going to try and guess was
Speaker 1: this mission? Was this mission? Where was it?
Speaker 2: Mission possible? Was this one? Because it all came together nicely. Yeah, actually,
Speaker 2: well part of it didn't, which we'll explain in a second.
Speaker 2: But Dave was actually there as well. It was the
Speaker 2: unveiling of the newness and patrol and that was the
Speaker 2: car that I was sort of talking about. They flew
Speaker 2: us over to the Middle East. Abu Dhabi was where
Speaker 2: they chose to launch the vehicle, and funnily enough, on
Speaker 2: the day of the launch, these images leaked of it
Speaker 2: and there were these blokes standing around in their traditional
Speaker 2: dress and I was like, oh, that's a bit weird.
Speaker 2: And then one of my friends, who's one of the
Speaker 2: journalists over and in the Middle East, he goes, well,
Speaker 2: that was actually delivered to the shake one of the
Speaker 2: sheikh's homes because as part of the agreement of them
Speaker 2: being allowed to launch the vehicle in Abu Dhabi, they
Speaker 2: had to show the vehicle to this bloke ahead of
Speaker 2: the launch, and while the car was there, they basically
Speaker 2: snapped a couple of picks, sent the brown to a
Speaker 2: WhatsApp group and it leaked and even up until ten
Speaker 2: seconds before everyone in the world saw this car. They
Speaker 2: were wheeling the cars into the area where we were
Speaker 2: completely camouflage. They had this thing dressed over the car
Speaker 2: so you couldn't actually see. It was a very funny joke,
Speaker 2: but I will definitely.
Speaker 1: There's some important people listening to this episode more reframe.
Speaker 2: Yes, So, yeah, they wheeled this thing in and then
Speaker 2: the second the car was there on the stage, they
Speaker 2: took it off and the unveiling was incredible. They had
Speaker 2: like a sand dune set up in this exhibition center
Speaker 2: where the car sort of drove out onto and look,
Speaker 2: I got I say, we've got a really close look
Speaker 2: at the vehicle, and to me, I think this is
Speaker 2: a quantum leap forward in terms of interior, what do
Speaker 2: you reckon and just design in general.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks it looks amazing and you can see
Speaker 3: that the thing is basically like a Japanese range drove
Speaker 3: and they've gone they've gone for the moon with this
Speaker 3: and and under the bond as well, you know, they
Speaker 3: ditched the old V eight and put in a twin
Speaker 3: turbo six with a.
Speaker 2: Little bit of feel about that.
Speaker 3: Well, the other day I had back to back nis
Speaker 3: and bookings where I drove a Nissan Patrol Warrior with
Speaker 3: its side pipes and it's big O the eight dog.
Speaker 1: It's got a good sound though.
Speaker 3: It sounds incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then and then I went back to back with
Speaker 3: a Nismo Z and that sounds not incredible at all.
Speaker 3: And that's supposed to be the sports car one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars sports car that you'd like to take out
Speaker 3: for a driving a weekend. And you know, it's better
Speaker 3: to get into the family bus if you want to
Speaker 3: hear something that sounds good. So, yeah, the new Patrol
Speaker 3: will sound like a tractor, but you'll feel pretty cool
Speaker 3: inside it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean even some of the tech like they
Speaker 2: had this, I don't think this has been in any
Speaker 2: other cars before. Basically biometric climate control and what they're
Speaker 2: able to do usee a infrared sensor mounted to the roof.
Speaker 2: When an occupant enters the vehicle, it's able to measure
Speaker 2: their skin temperature and if they've been out in the
Speaker 2: in the searing desert heat, which is exactly what it was,
Speaker 2: it basically will detect that you're you've just come in
Speaker 2: the car, you're hotter than everyone else, and we will
Speaker 2: increase the fans speed near you. Oh my god, it
Speaker 2: cools you down, which is amazing.
Speaker 1: That's so Japanese. Yeah, you know what I mean. That's
Speaker 1: that's amazing.
Speaker 3: And for people listening to this driving with their pets,
Speaker 3: and you can imagine the dogs of Australia love to have
Speaker 3: this implemented. Veterinarians officers.
Speaker 1: Actually I heard Trevor jump to one of those and
Speaker 1: the aircond just aims straight for his num.
Speaker 2: I just couldn't find them. But yeah, other cool stuff
Speaker 2: pneumatic massaging, and there is a key difference, and I'm
Speaker 2: going to sound like an absolute waker here, but if
Speaker 2: you get into like a French car and you turn
Speaker 2: the massage seats on, it's like, is someone lightly pushing
Speaker 2: my seat from behind? You don't feel a thing. Pneumatic
Speaker 2: massages it's like someone, Yeah, someone's driving a knife into
Speaker 2: your back. So it's got a set of those, which
Speaker 2: is great. They released a Pro four X version which
Speaker 2: is like an off road friendly one. That twin turbo
Speaker 2: V six will be interesting because to me, I have
Speaker 2: a look at everyone that buys a patrol these days.
Speaker 2: The second they get them, they modify them. They'll lift
Speaker 2: big wheels, big tires, snork, they just go to town
Speaker 2: on them. The second Nissan goes down this path of
Speaker 2: turbo charging this car, it's got air suspension. Now you're
Speaker 2: just removing. There was even another thing that was pointed
Speaker 2: out by my Middle Eastern friend over there. Basically he
Speaker 2: was saying that when they jack up patrols in the UAE,
Speaker 2: at the moment, there's enough clearance between the basically the
Speaker 2: suspension components and the body fit to fit big, big wheels.
Speaker 2: What they've now done though, to meet crash test requirements
Speaker 2: for the states where they have I think it's called
Speaker 2: the near offset, where they basically crash the car into
Speaker 2: what is a parked car, effectively the narrow overlap now
Speaker 2: overlap that's in it, but you're only glancing it. These big
Speaker 2: vehicles that are on ladder frame chassis, they're designed to
Speaker 2: have like a basically a wheel ejector. So if your
Speaker 2: wheel hits the side of this car, instead of it
Speaker 2: folding into the cabin and intruding into your footwell, it's
Speaker 2: got basically a metal component that's attached to the chassis
Speaker 2: that ejects the wheel out the side of the car,
Speaker 2: so you don't have it in the way, so if
Speaker 2: you have.
Speaker 1: A look, gee, you wouldn't want to be near that crash, correct.
Speaker 2: But if you have a look at the chassis, it
Speaker 2: basically prevents you from from fitting some of the big
Speaker 2: wheels that you can currently fit to patrol. So he
Speaker 2: pointed that out to me, and I'm like, oh, I
Speaker 2: didn't even notice that. So I'm going to have a
Speaker 2: closer look at that because it is going to affect
Speaker 2: what you can do to this in terms of modifications.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing this in terms of like the looks
Speaker 1: of it. It does look quite premium, like it's quite
Speaker 1: a plush looking, almost European car, and I thought, who's
Speaker 1: going to put a big sports bar on this? And yeah,
Speaker 1: you would, Fat Pogan, But I just thought, like you,
Speaker 1: it's actually quite a beautiful looking car. I think then
Speaker 1: this in Patrol needed this, and my first thoughts were,
Speaker 1: people are going to just modify the shit out of this.
Speaker 1: It will be interesting about the suspension, though, because isn't
Speaker 1: that under some sort of subscription I think.
Speaker 2: They were talking about They briefly mentioned subscription stuff, but
Speaker 2: I think the translating wasn't great because someone asked, what
Speaker 2: is the mass, and he said thirty five hundred kilos.
Speaker 2: It's like, no, no, it hasn't added a ton since
Speaker 2: you've updated it. And I watched a few of the
Speaker 2: videos back after and a lot of people quoted thirty
Speaker 2: five hundred kilos as the mass. I'm like, that's not true.
Speaker 3: On the subscription run, it does. It's hooked up with
Speaker 3: Google as an OS, so you can you can use
Speaker 3: Google Play apps and all that sort of stuff in
Speaker 3: the big touch green in the middle of the car,
Speaker 3: which and they've basically said, yeah, this is going to
Speaker 3: be revenue stream forests going forward for this and for
Speaker 3: other car companies as well.
Speaker 2: What do you think about subscriptions.
Speaker 3: I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Got a
Speaker 3: story coming out about it pretty pretty soon that you'll
Speaker 3: see up on news dot com. They're everywhere, you know.
Speaker 3: The other day I attended to launch of the new
Speaker 3: smart hashtag one and hashtag three fucking stupid. Yeah you
Speaker 3: said it. And this thing has has a little digital avatar.
Speaker 3: So if you're old enough to have used Microsoft word
Speaker 3: back in the day where they had Clippy, the.
Speaker 1: Little the little clip, hard guy, can I help you off?
Speaker 3: It looks like you're writing a letter and this this this,
Speaker 3: you know, there will be like a little little fox
Speaker 3: or a little cheetah in the corner of the screen,
Speaker 3: like a little animated animal that will be like, oh,
Speaker 3: it looks like you're trying to adjust the air conditioning.
Speaker 3: Can I help you with that? And this is this
Speaker 3: is genuinely I think that's in the car now. And
Speaker 3: you can choose between a fox or a cheetah for free.
Speaker 3: But if you want to design your own sort of
Speaker 3: advatars in China you can. You can unlock other avatars,
Speaker 3: but it's all it's all money. You're paying to do
Speaker 3: it all, and then you can pay for accessories for them,
Speaker 3: like little hats and wings and looks.
Speaker 1: Like a meat pie on a bean bag, like a.
Speaker 2: Good Saturday afternoon.
Speaker 3: But that's the thing.
Speaker 2: I get. Subscriptions and those little titty bits for kids.
Speaker 2: If you're a kid that plays Fortnite and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: you force your parents into buying the little upgrades. And
Speaker 2: I've never played for they spend a lot of money
Speaker 2: on it, though, But it seems to me if you're
Speaker 2: an adult, I mean, would you really paid as people?
Speaker 1: There are people out there.
Speaker 2: Really, but there are a lot of them.
Speaker 1: I just can't get it on my genesis. So there
Speaker 1: would be that want some kind of cutesy little bloody
Speaker 1: raccoon or something like that. When you're clicking on.
Speaker 3: There, it's my raco.
Speaker 1: There is cheeky little Trevor the raccoon. Oh look we
Speaker 1: didn't do a little dance. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I get the concept of it. To me. Subscriptions make
Speaker 2: sense for stuff like what Tesla does, where you can
Speaker 2: pay to get premium connectivities. You're getting satellite maps, you're
Speaker 2: getting Spotify, all that sort of stuff, and if you
Speaker 2: don't want it, you don't need to have it.
Speaker 1: But that's the thing with say Apple car Play, Like
Speaker 1: Apple car Plays got all that for you and it's
Speaker 1: just running off.
Speaker 2: That's why Tesla doesn't let you have Apple Yeah Play.
Speaker 1: But this will be I reckon one to watch because
Speaker 1: I've got a feeling Apple car Play or Apple in itself.
Speaker 1: That'll be their new thing, will be trying to get
Speaker 1: in on car companies. Perhaps I don't know, but that's
Speaker 1: what they're doing now.
Speaker 3: Dave.
Speaker 2: You would have seen the demo they had of the
Speaker 2: entire Apple car right, it's not a physical car, but
Speaker 2: it's a takeover of the infotainment.
Speaker 3: That's the idea is the digital dashboards and cars your
Speaker 3: car play instead of it just being on the little
Speaker 3: screen in between the driver and passenger, that will fully
Speaker 3: take over the dashboard. And there are car companies that
Speaker 3: have said that they're going to do it. Porsche's committed
Speaker 3: to it. I think it'll be probably in this generation
Speaker 3: of kN at some point. It hasn't launched with it.
Speaker 1: Though, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think they're close to that because we we didn't
Speaker 2: talk about this, but the week before the patrol thing,
Speaker 2: I went to drive the ex ninety Volvo in the
Speaker 2: States and that car has been delayed now a year,
Speaker 2: maybe longer. And it actually follows on with that discussion
Speaker 2: we had in the last steps about Rivian, where they've
Speaker 2: gone and designed the software stack from virtually ground up,
Speaker 2: and the biggest issue that they have when it comes
Speaker 2: to stuff like infotainment and the screens in cars is
Speaker 2: that there's different vendors for everything. You've got n Video
Speaker 2: running some of the graphic systems for your head up
Speaker 2: display and the driver in sort of screen. Then you've
Speaker 2: got Google, Android Automotive OS running your infotainment system. That
Speaker 2: there's a whole lot of stuff there. But you can
Speaker 2: imagine if Apple took over everything you Basically, in my mind,
Speaker 2: it would be a much smoother experience. Everything would just
Speaker 2: work well.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about it. We're carrying this thing around
Speaker 1: twenty four to seven. It's next to us when we sleep.
Speaker 1: It's kind of.
Speaker 2: Anyone who can't see this, he's holding his.
Speaker 1: Phone, sorry, holding not anything else. This is just for
Speaker 1: our substacklessness. What that is I don't know, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's basically just like your phone's an extension of yourself.
Speaker 1: So I kind of go, it's just such an easier
Speaker 1: and cheaper thing, Like you're already paying for the apps
Speaker 1: on your phone surely when you just want to plug
Speaker 1: it into your car, get it all up and there
Speaker 1: you go. I mean, I feel divided about it because
Speaker 1: it feels I get the reasoning behind it in terms
Speaker 1: of user experience, but I also feel like it's just
Speaker 1: a revenue raising kind of tool from those.
Speaker 3: Car company one hundred percent. Like I was talking to
Speaker 3: BMW about it the other day. The current generation X five,
Speaker 3: you can buy a base model car that has sports
Speaker 3: suspension in it, well, like adaptive suspension that has comfort
Speaker 3: in sports mode to access that it's twenty nine dollars
Speaker 3: a month or two hundred and ninety dollars for a year.
Speaker 3: And I think the idea with this is that it's
Speaker 3: not so much about the first owner but the subsequent owners,
Speaker 3: because people are looking at this exactly like your iPhone. Right,
Speaker 3: so you buy your iPhone sixteen, if you're going to
Speaker 3: get the new one in a couple of weeks, it's
Speaker 3: just going to roll over all the subscriptions and all
Speaker 3: the apps and all the preferences that you had on
Speaker 3: your previous generation phone. And I think the car companies
Speaker 3: are looking at it in a similar sort of way,
Speaker 3: where when you roll from one car to the next,
Speaker 3: as you know, you roll over a lease or whatever,
Speaker 3: it will have all your favorite preferences. It will know
Speaker 3: automatically what your preferred radio stations are, what you're preferred
Speaker 3: you know, climate control settings, all that sort of stuff,
Speaker 3: and other things too, like calendars and all that sort
Speaker 3: of stuff. It's all synced in, so it will have
Speaker 3: that as part of the services. In the same way
Speaker 3: that you know, if I switch from my iPhone fifteen
Speaker 3: to sixteen, it's going to roll over and have Ko
Speaker 3: and Spotify and all the stuff that I'm paying for
Speaker 3: without me having to sign up for anything new, and
Speaker 3: the phone is just a vessel for those digital services.
Speaker 3: I think that's the way they're looking at it from
Speaker 3: a car perspective.
Speaker 1: Apps and stuff I can kind of get because you
Speaker 1: can pick and choose what you like, and it's up
Speaker 1: to you if you really want fucking Netflix in your
Speaker 1: car whatever. But when it comes to stuff like whether
Speaker 1: it be I don't know, suspension subscription so you can
Speaker 1: get like sports suspension or massage seats or you know whatever,
Speaker 1: I just that kind of thing. I mean, I get
Speaker 1: you're kind of paying for that extra anyway, but I
Speaker 1: feel like if it's in the car all along, you
Speaker 1: should just fucking be able to have it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this is KEYA In the US. I've got
Speaker 3: a mode for the EV nine. I wonder who'd buy
Speaker 3: one of those to access to access the cars like,
Speaker 3: it's got a level of performances standard, but if you
Speaker 3: want to go a little bit faster than you've got
Speaker 3: to buy a Boost mode, which is nine hundred US
Speaker 3: dollars again, fourteen hundred bucks to access. But it doesn't
Speaker 3: change anything physically. It just changes the software in the
Speaker 3: motor and the and the battery, the way that it
Speaker 3: outputs energy. I mean, Motor Train did a really great
Speaker 3: story with this where they've got a long term EV
Speaker 3: nine and they went into the touchscreen and bought everything
Speaker 3: that they could find and it was twenty eight hundred dollars.
Speaker 3: There was a lot of shit, So like if you've
Speaker 3: got imagine imagine you know, your your kids footy training
Speaker 3: or something like that, and that you're the parent out
Speaker 3: they're standing with the umbrella and one of your kids says, oh,
Speaker 3: can I just go and sit in the car? Please
Speaker 3: come back to like three grand whether of stuff that've had.
Speaker 2: It's now convertible. They've pressed too many buds.
Speaker 3: Some of it's really interesting, like this idea that you know,
Speaker 3: if you've got a favorite sports team, you can customize
Speaker 3: the car's ambient lighting and the and the theme of
Speaker 3: the dashboard to like the La Laker And that's a
Speaker 3: one off, forty dollars charge over there, But you could
Speaker 3: probably do that anyway by just messing around with the
Speaker 3: ambient lighting and all that sort of stuff deep in
Speaker 3: the menus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because you know, as a as a Forward Ranger owner,
Speaker 2: I've been having a look at the range of forums,
Speaker 2: and they've got this tool that you can basically plug
Speaker 2: into the OBD port and it's called four scan or
Speaker 2: something like that. But you can BA four scar.
Speaker 1: Sure you've got a hel one if you can drive
Speaker 1: a Raptor.
Speaker 2: But basically it allows you to enable all of these
Speaker 2: features that your car has but you don't have. So
Speaker 2: for example, if you drive any ever store or Ranger
Speaker 2: that isn't equipped with it, you only have a certain
Speaker 2: number of drive modes, whereas if you enable these features,
Speaker 2: you can actually have something like a sport mode. Then
Speaker 2: they have a sort of tank turn feature which they've
Speaker 2: released on the Tremor, which all the cars can do.
Speaker 2: You just tick a box and then it appears on
Speaker 2: the infotainment screen. It's just again it's all soft, we're driven.
Speaker 2: All the cars have the same hardware. It's just the
Speaker 2: software is then enabled to allow it to happen.
Speaker 1: So this thing is basically a plug in that kind
Speaker 1: of hacks the system pretty much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's some sort of a license. Someone whiz
Speaker 2: bang has come up with this, but I think it's
Speaker 2: it's like you said, you could do it to any car.
Speaker 2: Really if you know that the hardware is there, it
Speaker 2: will just do it for you. So yeah, it's that's
Speaker 2: fascinating stuff. Now, I was gonna throw a little bit
Speaker 2: of a curveball here. The worst car launch you've ever attended?
Speaker 3: Oh, I haven't thought about that much at all. I
Speaker 3: mean the smart one the other day did miss in
Speaker 3: a couple of places. There there's no video to start with,
Speaker 3: so that's that's pretty hard these days. And this is
Speaker 3: what we're doing, except that I loved it because I
Speaker 3: just shoot everything on my phone.
Speaker 2: And no one else can.
Speaker 3: Yeah, basically knock that one out really quick. And you
Speaker 3: know the lunch was like lobster tail and oysters and
Speaker 3: caviat No, no really it's seafood and that was about eleven.
Speaker 1: As poor bastard.
Speaker 3: I know. Look it is. It is a struggle, yeah,
Speaker 3: but we will prevail.
Speaker 1: Do you find do you find that certain countries put
Speaker 1: on better parties than others, Like like Chinese car companies
Speaker 1: will bring out everything, whereas I don't know, a German
Speaker 1: company might just be like, sit up and enjoy our car.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it depends on how much they want to impress here.
Speaker 3: I remember the first time I went on a key launch,
Speaker 3: there was a sixteen course Deiga station lunch and the
Speaker 3: first time I went on a Mercedes launch it was
Speaker 3: for an AMG product that everyone It was the new
Speaker 3: A forty five when that first came out like ten
Speaker 3: years ago, and that was that was a really hot
Speaker 3: car that everyone wanted to drive. And lunch was at
Speaker 3: a pie shop and then and the pr blow could
Speaker 3: just put his credit card on the bar. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, treat yourself to a milkshake if you love.
Speaker 3: Like talking about bad press launches, I mean, Paul and
Speaker 3: I attended an absolute cracker of one in the Middle East.
Speaker 3: He knows where I'm going with this. It was a
Speaker 3: it was, it was brilliant. It was for the Maserati
Speaker 3: Levante diesel, which I think we can all agree is
Speaker 3: not a great car to start with. I mean they
Speaker 3: launched that thing with a diesel from an old Jeep
Speaker 3: which was really bad. And the later lot, don't get
Speaker 3: me wrong, they were incredible. They put these twin turbo
Speaker 3: v eights in them basically out of a Ferrari for
Speaker 3: it eight and they were fast and they sounded awesome.
Speaker 3: But the original cars were new, no, not that, and
Speaker 3: they wanted to show how capable this thing was off road.
Speaker 3: So we went into the desert with two or three
Speaker 3: press cars and then we were supported by another vehicle,
Speaker 3: which I assumed was going to be a patroll or
Speaker 3: a land cruise or something like that, but it was
Speaker 3: another Maserati and every single one of them shot the
Speaker 3: bed spectacularly, I think the best ones. Like I was
Speaker 3: following Paul at one point, and yeah, like the air
Speaker 3: suspension was dumping out, so these things would have them
Speaker 3: raised up as high as possible to drive in deep
Speaker 3: sand in the desert, and then when the air suspension
Speaker 3: would pack in, they would turn into like la low
Speaker 3: riders and they scrape their bellies on.
Speaker 2: The sand like a shovel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so there was that. I mean, the electric
Speaker 3: parking brakes are basically welding themselves on. The cabins were
Speaker 3: filling with sand and everything was clogging up. I mean,
Speaker 3: I had I've got a video of the check engine
Speaker 3: lights and warning lights on my phone that's about three
Speaker 3: minutes long.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: It was pretty epic, and the support vehicle was pretty
Speaker 3: funny as well, because that thing died and then Paul like,
Speaker 3: we don't get me wrong, we get spoilt quite a bit.
Speaker 3: There is that there is like I'm not exaggerating about
Speaker 3: lobster tails and cavea that happens. We were not spoilt
Speaker 3: on this event though, where we were digging these things
Speaker 3: out of the sand with our bare hands.
Speaker 1: Basically, do you know what the best part about that
Speaker 1: story is the most reliable car there was, the Press
Speaker 1: mini bus to get you.
Speaker 2: You know, that launch was so bad that it was
Speaker 2: so good. You know, it was so bad that I
Speaker 2: had so much fun there because we then did hot
Speaker 2: lapse and this dude bailed us up in one of
Speaker 2: the cars and I'm looking over his shoulder. He's kicking
Speaker 2: the shit out of this thing. I'm looking over his shoulder.
Speaker 2: I'm like, how do we have a full take of fuel?
Speaker 1: And I looked again.
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh no, that's engine temperature.
Speaker 1: It was all the way up.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, mate, I think you need to let
Speaker 2: this thing get some breath because it is fucked those cars.
Speaker 2: One of them, one of the wheel arch guards came
Speaker 2: off from when it fucking dumped its ass, And there
Speaker 2: was just this vision of the boss of Maserati having
Speaker 2: to rip this thing off and put it in the
Speaker 2: boot and there was so much sand inside. They had
Speaker 2: those stupid shifters in the middle. All you could hear
Speaker 2: was crunching as you change it. So that was that
Speaker 2: was something else.
Speaker 1: When the boss of Maserati is pulling off, mate, it
Speaker 1: was a freaking bumper guard and putting in the boot
Speaker 1: of a car terrific.
Speaker 3: That would have gone off in the Abidabbi shakes group chat.
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure I certainly didn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it was like fifty degrees outside. It was
Speaker 2: properly hot, and I just thought you wouldn't even take
Speaker 2: a land cruiser out in this weather one of these things,
Speaker 2: all right, Yeah, that was that was memorable.
Speaker 1: Fuck what about the best one? What's one of the
Speaker 1: ones where you go that was wild?
Speaker 3: Ah my reflex reaction. I did it. Did a Ford
Speaker 3: Mustang thing in America last year that was just incredible.
Speaker 3: So we so for the it was a new generation Mustang.
Speaker 3: It's just launching in Australia now and this thing is
Speaker 3: the face of motus board around the world, so it's
Speaker 3: used in supercars, it runs at Lamon, runs in NASCAR
Speaker 3: and all that sort of stuff. So we did a
Speaker 3: bit of a NASCAR trip We drove them flat out
Speaker 3: on a NASCAR roval, which is like half oval on
Speaker 3: the banking, half road course. And this was like, I've
Speaker 3: never known anything like this before. I've driven them track plenty,
Speaker 3: but you know, I had to wear hands device that
Speaker 3: you know, embraces your neck against your body so that
Speaker 3: if you have a huge crash and you don't snap
Speaker 3: your spine.
Speaker 1: And it was on Christopher Reeve yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, basically, and I realized that I was in trouble
Speaker 3: because I was on the banking doing like two hundred
Speaker 3: and forty k's an hour, realizing that I didn't need
Speaker 3: to look left, I needed to look up because that's
Speaker 3: that's that's how the banking works, because you tipped on
Speaker 3: your side and the car is basically it's like heading
Speaker 3: uphill the whole time. And I couldn't crash down in
Speaker 3: the seat enough to look up through the windscreen because
Speaker 3: I was restricted by these these hands cables on my helmet.
Speaker 3: And then that was another one that was forty degrees.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we you know, we did those, and then
Speaker 3: we did like a road trip across the States through
Speaker 3: you know, through the South, and you know, stopped for
Speaker 3: like fried chicken and waffles, and I went to went
Speaker 3: to Penskes went to a NASCAR race now cars, Like
Speaker 3: I was really dismissive of it before going there, and
Speaker 3: then you see these guys racing packs. It's it's an
Speaker 3: incredible sport. Like one of their best drivers had a
Speaker 3: huge crash in the in the race last weekend, guy
Speaker 3: named Kyle Larson, because his car snapped on him because
Speaker 3: he's driving it right on the edge. He's cornering it
Speaker 3: like three hundred odd kilometers an hour on the oval
Speaker 3: and the car like fifty meters in front of him
Speaker 3: has just shifted over half a lane. And what it
Speaker 3: did was it changed the aerow balance of his car
Speaker 3: mid corner. It took a bit of took a bit
Speaker 3: of downforce out of the front end basically, and it
Speaker 3: just changed the balance and it just snapped and sent
Speaker 3: him into the fence at like three hundred and this
Speaker 3: this sort of stuff happens all the time. The cars
Speaker 3: roll and all that. They're not just turning left. The
Speaker 3: guys that are like and a lot of the time
Speaker 3: they're oversteering, like basically drifting.
Speaker 2: You know the dude that rode the wall all the
Speaker 2: way around.
Speaker 3: Was that a NASCAR It wasn't it was. That's that's
Speaker 3: a test, But yeah, that was. That was like a
Speaker 3: race to stay in the championship.
Speaker 2: Last year, they basically, I don't know if you saw it,
Speaker 2: they basically he raced as the championship. He had to
Speaker 2: get around all these cars and he basically so with
Speaker 2: Venascar Oval, you've got the wall. He basically just went
Speaker 2: up close to the wall and just nailed it and
Speaker 2: then used the wall to hold his car all the
Speaker 2: way around overtook a whole shiploader cars.
Speaker 1: That's amazing, unbelievable.
Speaker 2: But they've now banned that.
Speaker 3: I think they have. Yeah, they've got a couple of
Speaker 3: rules in there like that. I mean, it's an incredible sport,
Speaker 3: like they're so specialized in what they do. But then
Speaker 3: also you send someone like Shane ben Gisberg and over
Speaker 3: there and he brains them because none of them, none
Speaker 3: of them use a clutch when driving the manuals, which
Speaker 3: is really weird, right, So they would just basically put
Speaker 3: have their left foot on their break and the right
Speaker 3: foot on the gas and just never use the clutch
Speaker 3: on downshifts. And this is why Bean Gisberg and scooed
Speaker 3: them all in the rain because these guys were coming
Speaker 3: into breaking in the wet and trying to downshift a
Speaker 3: couple of times going into a corner pressure and just yeah, compression,
Speaker 3: you're just like smashing it down through the gears and
Speaker 3: snatching the rear wheels, whereas like Shane, Shane's using the
Speaker 3: clutch as a tool to modulate the way that the
Speaker 3: talker is hitting the rear tires on downshifts and you know,
Speaker 3: heal and towing and all that sort of stuff, which
Speaker 3: is like a really old school technique going back forever.
Speaker 2: He's such a good driver, he's you know, he's proven
Speaker 2: here in Australia that he's that he's he's made of it,
Speaker 2: because he's now up in another category over there. He
Speaker 2: got promoted, is that right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. So he's been racing in their second
Speaker 3: tier just called the Xfinity Series and doing the odd
Speaker 3: drive in the in the top class which is called
Speaker 3: the Cup Series. And yeah, Van Gisbergan is going to
Speaker 3: race full time in the Cup Series next year, which
Speaker 3: will yeah, it'll be great. I mean, like the race
Speaker 3: that he won in Chicago, I think there was eight
Speaker 3: million dollars in prize money involved something, So it's like
Speaker 3: more than any any supercar driver's entire career earnings in
Speaker 3: one day. Wow, that's pretty great.
Speaker 2: It's almost quite funny. There was commentary this is how
Speaker 2: useless my memory is. There was commentary I think was
Speaker 2: over the weekend with one of the NASCAR drivers saying
Speaker 2: that he would be he would school the stap and
Speaker 2: at a at a NASCAR trip.
Speaker 3: That's last and the guy that had the big snap,
Speaker 3: And I just I love that that they actually don't
Speaker 3: really give too much of a ship.
Speaker 2: They're not Formula one drivers, like it is so big
Speaker 2: over in the States, and maybe it'll be a little
Speaker 2: bit different now that Formula one has kind of taken
Speaker 2: off in the States as well. But I just think
Speaker 2: that they have Yeah, they've just got this huge ego.
Speaker 1: Oh they've got a status over there. What was that?
Speaker 1: Remember that Will Farrell movie.
Speaker 3: It's a documentary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he just walks around like he is king
Speaker 1: of the world. And you kind of like it's funny
Speaker 1: because I don't think I would have been interested unless
Speaker 1: I went myself. But you look on the outside and
Speaker 1: you kind of go, these dudes are just like Meadhead celebs.
Speaker 1: It's incredible.
Speaker 3: Oh, there's there's NASCAR Drive to Survive. It's called NASCAR
Speaker 3: Full Throttle. It's on Netflix as well, and it's and
Speaker 3: the opening shots is basically it's pretty much Ricky Bobby.
Speaker 3: The guys like piss excellence and you know, he drives,
Speaker 3: drives to drop his kids at school with them sitting
Speaker 3: on his lap while he's driving, because he just doesn't
Speaker 3: give a ship. Yes, I've seen the first episode of
Speaker 3: Thunder and then it shows it, you know, it shows
Speaker 3: his mansion, which is just massive. That's actually one of
Speaker 3: the great things. One of the drivers bought the man
Speaker 3: from Ricky Bobby's bought Ricky Bobby's mansion from Talladaga Nights. Right, Yeah, anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 3: so the first episode of this NASCAR series shows the guy,
Speaker 3: you know, with his jet and his helicopter and his
Speaker 3: massive mansion.
Speaker 1: And yeah, his tracker cap and he's got his daughter
Speaker 1: on the I do.
Speaker 3: Know that none of them want to do Formula one
Speaker 3: because it's it's really well done, because they don't. If
Speaker 3: you go to a NASCAR race, there's no support stuff,
Speaker 3: there's no you don't watch qualifying or anything. You show
Speaker 3: up the fans can walk around on the track literally
Speaker 3: walking on the track surface like until ten minutes before
Speaker 3: the race starts, and then when the race finishes, they
Speaker 3: the pits and everything are all temporary. It's like it's
Speaker 3: like camping equipment basically, and they and they put it
Speaker 3: on their truck and they hit the road and the
Speaker 3: guys are all home for dinner basically.
Speaker 2: Travel the world like it's well, I don't know if
Speaker 2: you know the answer to this, but is how does
Speaker 2: the prize money compare in NASCAR to Formula One?
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Formula One, like NASCAR, has actual legit prize money which
Speaker 3: they issue based on based on you know, where you
Speaker 3: finish in race. The Americans do it like that. You
Speaker 3: win the five hundred, you get X million dollars. Everyone
Speaker 3: knows it. It's like a published figure before and I
Speaker 3: remember it off the top of my head. If one
Speaker 3: doesn't really work like that. But the drivers are incredibly
Speaker 3: well paid and then most of them will have performance
Speaker 3: bonuses in their courses. It's the same in the supercars.
Speaker 3: There's no prize money in supercars per se. If you
Speaker 3: win pop position, you get like a grand yep, but
Speaker 3: you win the bat this one thousand. There's no prize
Speaker 3: money for that, except that all the drivers have it
Speaker 3: written into their contract. Like if you're driving for Red
Speaker 3: Bull or whatever, like you win Bathist, you're going to
Speaker 3: get a nice payday on top of your salary.
Speaker 2: It's interesting there. I'm curious to know your thoughts on
Speaker 2: Chinese cars. We talk Chinese cars pretty much every episode,
Speaker 2: and we get a lot of people raging and emailing
Speaker 2: us telling us how shit they are and all that
Speaker 2: sort of stuff. There's a whole stack of Chinese brands
Speaker 2: coming to Australia. What is the limit to this? Do
Speaker 2: you think that we'll see more or less over the
Speaker 2: next sort of three to five years When you look
Speaker 2: at all the stuff that is coming, I think.
Speaker 3: We're going to see more. And then let I think
Speaker 3: what's going to happen is this, We're going to reach
Speaker 3: a saturation point and the ones that don't have a
Speaker 3: strong following, that don't have strong backing, are going to
Speaker 3: dip out pretty quickly. So some of these I don't
Speaker 3: want to name the brand that I think is going
Speaker 3: to fail, but you look at some of these things, yeah,
Speaker 3: you can see that they don't really have the back
Speaker 3: in the way they should. I think they all look
Speaker 3: at things like BYD, which came in with basically no
Speaker 3: support from a big manufacturer, but they also timed it
Speaker 3: to perfection BYD coming in right on the cusp of COVID,
Speaker 3: right when there's the semiconductor shortage, right when people are
Speaker 3: you know, there's this ev leasing thing comes in which,
Speaker 3: by the way, it costs the government five times more
Speaker 3: than they thought it would and it's just blown up.
Speaker 3: So BYD they knocked it out of the park. And
Speaker 3: then so everybody else has gone, oh shit, we could
Speaker 3: do that. I'm not convinced that they can though, and
Speaker 3: there certainly is. Yeah, there's a lot of competition there.
Speaker 3: I mean, would I personally buy one, No, not not
Speaker 3: many of them, A couple maybe, But it also I
Speaker 3: think if it all depends on your expectations. Right, If
Speaker 3: you love cars and you're a petrol head and you
Speaker 3: love the way cars drive, and you know you've got
Speaker 3: yourself for like a Mustang or a golfer or something
Speaker 3: like that, you're not gonna like many of these things.
Speaker 3: But if you if you've been driving around in like
Speaker 3: a you know, like an old camera or something like that,
Speaker 3: and you're looking for something, something new you get into,
Speaker 3: even like a Cherio motor or something like that. Like
Speaker 3: I just picked up one of those today, and the
Speaker 3: amount of stuff they jam into one of those things
Speaker 3: for forty grand is really impressive. And it's like the
Speaker 3: video you did the other day with the perfume in
Speaker 3: a car, Like you're not like, what Toyota has perfume
Speaker 3: in it?
Speaker 1: But you know, just an update on that. He's exhausted
Speaker 1: all the perfume. He's a sweaty bastard.
Speaker 2: And at least I small goods.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's actually the It's funny you say that because
Speaker 1: I had a Seal the performance and also the long range,
Speaker 1: which is I think about six fifty, and I thought
Speaker 1: to myself, this feels like a really good commuter car,
Speaker 1: the Seal, do you know what I mean? But then
Speaker 1: there are Chinese brands that without naming names, that just
Speaker 1: miss it in so many ways.
Speaker 3: Oh they all, I mean, there's no there's no perfect car.
Speaker 3: What I find really interesting about this is an enthusiast
Speaker 3: like my car at home, I've got a I've got
Speaker 3: a Reno Sport McGain that have done a few mods
Speaker 3: with and the things really well set up for track work.
Speaker 3: So I really love the way that car handles and
Speaker 3: brakes and all of that. And it doesn't have a
Speaker 3: lot of powers one hundred and ninety five kilowats, but
Speaker 3: it's got you know, big fat prairie trafe tires. It's
Speaker 3: actually got bridged on Ari seventy one irs on at
Speaker 3: the moment, shameless plug, thank you for the big tires
Speaker 3: for But it's got it's got semi slecks, it's got
Speaker 3: race brakes and all that sort of stuff, and it's
Speaker 3: fantastic and it's not that fast and a straight line.
Speaker 3: But then a lot of these, a lot of these EV's,
Speaker 3: particularly the Chinese ones, are in the opposite direction. Like
Speaker 3: you drive a Volvo Ex thirty dual motor and the
Speaker 3: thing does naught to one hundred and roughly the same
Speaker 3: time as a Ferrari of forty. And it's on like
Speaker 3: just pretty ordinary eco minded tires. Yeah, and the suspension
Speaker 3: set up to ride well and doesn't necessarily you know,
Speaker 3: corner and steer, and the you know, the by D
Speaker 3: seals is a bit like that for me as well.
Speaker 3: The cars that impress on a brief test drive, you
Speaker 3: get into them and you've got all the features. You
Speaker 3: got heated and cooled seats and big touch screen that
Speaker 3: tips on its side, and all that sort of stuff,
Speaker 3: but they don't really feel like they've been engineered in
Speaker 3: the same way.
Speaker 2: They've been engineered very quickly. Yeah, that's one of the
Speaker 2: key differences. They will release a car to market very quickly,
Speaker 2: and they take a lot of off the shelf parts
Speaker 2: and they don't do the level of tuning to stuff
Speaker 2: like the ride and the things that you would expect.
Speaker 2: But and in saying that, a lot of people don't know.
Speaker 2: You know, when they go by let's say that cherry, right,
Speaker 2: you're getting all the stuff inside, and if you're just
Speaker 2: driving around the city, no one's ever going to know.
Speaker 2: But it's only when you head out to the country
Speaker 2: you hit some choppy roads and you're like, holy shit,
Speaker 2: this thing is all over the place. But at that
Speaker 2: point you know it might not be something you do off.
Speaker 3: So I had this with the MG three Hybrid, which
Speaker 3: is a really interesting This little MG three hybrid has
Speaker 3: and has a lot of power. Actually it's one hundred
Speaker 3: and forty kilo, so it's like a ten year old
Speaker 3: GDI or something, but it only has a fairly small
Speaker 3: battery and you can deplete it you absolutely carry So
Speaker 3: I had this, you know, if you know Sydney. I
Speaker 3: drove it down the M five and turned off at
Speaker 3: Picton and there's a country road loop that I like
Speaker 3: to use there where it's in one hundred kzon and
Speaker 3: it's got a few you know, rocking hills and some
Speaker 3: off camber corners and things. And yeah, I was driving
Speaker 3: it up a hill and it just stopped accelerating. And
Speaker 3: what's really crazy is there's a figure on the dashboard
Speaker 3: that tells you how many killer what's the car is making,
Speaker 3: and usually that's useless information, but in this case, you
Speaker 3: see the thing go from one hundred and twenty whatever
Speaker 3: KILLO wats to like fifty to help me, and yeah,
Speaker 3: it feels like someone's knocked the car into neutral. And
Speaker 3: then I went and repeated it a couple of times
Speaker 3: and rang them up and was like, what is going on?
Speaker 3: I had no idea about.
Speaker 2: That same experience, we did half a lap of the
Speaker 2: right and handling track of the proving ground and it
Speaker 2: got to the point where your foot would be through
Speaker 2: the firewall and the speed I would not be increasing,
Speaker 2: it would just not move and then you let off
Speaker 2: the throttle, you give it a minute, you go for
Speaker 2: it again, and then you get thrown back in the
Speaker 2: seat for another twenty seconds. Then it disappears and they've
Speaker 2: got this I can't remember if it was THEMG three
Speaker 2: or if it was maybe the jolly On. We've got
Speaker 2: like a two speed transmission as well. So it gets
Speaker 2: to a point where like one hundred ish kilometers an
Speaker 2: hour where it changes into its other gear and there's
Speaker 2: like a five second delay, and then it dips down
Speaker 2: in speed, gets its next gear, and then it goes
Speaker 2: goes up again and it's like like, what are you doing? Yeah,
Speaker 2: And that's actually my concern. I know ten thousand tangents here,
Speaker 2: but that is actually my concern with plug in hybrid uts.
Speaker 2: If you look at that bid, if you drive at
Speaker 2: longer distance, get to the point where you've drained that
Speaker 2: thirty kilo what our battery and you're towing something, you're
Speaker 2: going to get to a hill where you deplete the
Speaker 2: reserve energy and you're going to have a little one
Speaker 2: and a half lead to trying to tow two and
Speaker 2: a half tons plus your vehicle plus it's wait up
Speaker 2: this hill. It is going to be potentially a horror show.
Speaker 2: So that's the first thing I'm going to be testing
Speaker 2: when I get one of those, or the Ranger as well,
Speaker 2: because I get the concept of it. It all sounds
Speaker 2: great on paper, but when you actually put it to use,
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be just like that MG
Speaker 2: three where you deplete the battery, which you will do
Speaker 2: to driving.
Speaker 3: You know that's not potential. Doesn't imagine getting a wobble
Speaker 3: on with a trailer and the car deciding now is
Speaker 3: the time to throw the brakes.
Speaker 2: On you got to overtake. I mean, it's just there's
Speaker 2: just so many situations there where that doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2: I want to ask you about a story that you
Speaker 2: broke it at News about the novated lease incentives that
Speaker 2: the government has. So for a lot of people that
Speaker 2: are listening, they might have an electric vehicle under the
Speaker 2: luxury car attacks that they've got on a novated lease.
Speaker 2: It means it's FBT exempt, means you get to take
Speaker 2: hard more money at the end of the day. Plug
Speaker 2: in hybrids also eligible for that as well. Can you
Speaker 2: run us through what the government thought this would cost
Speaker 2: and what it actually costs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this was a really fun story. Actually they didn't
Speaker 3: really want me to write it. There's a bit of
Speaker 3: back and forth about this, but essentially, yeah, there's there's
Speaker 3: an EV discount that was put in place by the
Speaker 3: Albanezi government to encourage people to lease evs, not buy them,
Speaker 3: because they wanted people to lease them and then trade
Speaker 3: them in at the end of the lease. And they thought, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: there's a few people seeing evs now, and we think
Speaker 3: this will encourage a bit of take up. And they
Speaker 3: their original forecast was that the first four years of
Speaker 3: this would cost about two hundred and forty million dollars,
Speaker 3: and what it actually cost in lost tax revenue over
Speaker 3: five years it was one point eight billion.
Speaker 1: Just a little miss. Theres got to carry the one one.
Speaker 1: Sorry about that album.
Speaker 3: They claim They claim that they change the way that
Speaker 3: they calculate things as part of this process, which which
Speaker 3: might be true. Shit yeah, but also but also, I mean,
Speaker 3: but you can see it with your own eyes, like
Speaker 3: how many white Tesla model wires are out there, like people,
Speaker 3: people are buying these things. And also anyone that is
Speaker 3: in an EV really is doing this and it's it's
Speaker 3: it's well more than half of EV's on the road
Speaker 3: these days, at least you'd be mad not to really,
Speaker 3: because like I mean, there have been times I keep
Speaker 3: an eye on this. There have been times where the
Speaker 3: cheapest car de lease in Australia has been an EV,
Speaker 3: where it's like hundred and thirty bucks a week.
Speaker 2: It is so cheap, Like if you're one of the
Speaker 2: people that went on a five year lease and got
Speaker 2: it locked in two years ago when interest rates were
Speaker 2: low and you were getting a low comparison rate, you
Speaker 2: are not paying much for that vehicle. But I think
Speaker 2: we've explained this in previous episode. The issue with all
Speaker 2: of this is residuals at the end. And now if
Speaker 2: you look at car sales, you can no longer do
Speaker 2: an instant off from an electric vehicle. No one wants
Speaker 2: an electric vehicle as in to buy secondhand, so no
Speaker 2: one's buying them as a consumer, and no one is
Speaker 2: buying them as a dealer. Right, dealers will not touch
Speaker 2: electric vehicles.
Speaker 1: Well, I can imagine a dealer not touching it, but
Speaker 1: because I think there'll be all sorts of issues with that.
Speaker 1: But private, I thought the private market would still be okay.
Speaker 1: We sold the Tesla and it took like three days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, private, private market's a little bit different. So you're
Speaker 2: selling it, selling it to some Joe and they'll come
Speaker 2: and buy it. But a lot of trades that happen
Speaker 2: with new car dealers. If you're going to buy a
Speaker 2: new car, they'll trade in your old one. And then
Speaker 2: these instant office services that are transacting hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 2: and hundreds of cars a day are basically sending out
Speaker 2: off as constantly. Well they've all now Car sales has
Speaker 2: stopped doing that, and they had a lot of those
Speaker 2: on their books, so it's telling you that they can't
Speaker 2: flip these things. So dealers don't want to have an
Speaker 2: electric vehicle there because they're impossible to sell. And this
Speaker 2: this thing about selling privately, I've got alert set up
Speaker 2: for Model Y and Model three. Every day there as
Speaker 2: ten or twenty that are listed, so people are flooding
Speaker 2: the market at the moment with them, You're going to
Speaker 2: find that the floor price will just collapse and the
Speaker 2: prices that you see on car sales will be you.
Speaker 1: Know, well, the range is crazy anyway. It would go
Speaker 1: from anything for say a model why, anything from say
Speaker 1: fifty five to fucking eighty thousand dollars, and yeah, you
Speaker 1: can get a brand new one for seventy eight thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. It's like it's wild.
Speaker 3: But watch what happens next year as well, because this
Speaker 3: policy came into effect in twenty twenty two. Yep, and
Speaker 3: no one leases a car for two years. Well you can,
Speaker 3: but at a lot of people, a lot of people
Speaker 3: will go like three to get their payments down. So
Speaker 3: from next year the market is going to be absolutely
Speaker 3: flooded with modern wine model three and these things. You're
Speaker 3: going to be absolutely sport for chores, which I mean
Speaker 3: if it means if you'd like trying to do uber
Speaker 3: on a budget or something like that, you're gonna be
Speaker 3: able to pick up one of these things for like
Speaker 3: twenty five grand.
Speaker 2: If you want it secondhand, you're in a good position
Speaker 2: at the moment to haggle. But I always warned people
Speaker 2: about buying a secondhand electric vehicle that if you are
Speaker 2: getting something that's three four years old, you are dicing
Speaker 2: with the possibility that you're going to have a battery
Speaker 2: that's cooked. You're going to get very close to the
Speaker 2: end of the battery warranty. You're outside of the vehicle's warranty.
Speaker 2: Typically it's just not a great position to be in.
Speaker 2: And it's not as if you can just go get
Speaker 2: a reconditioned engine, which you can do with a lot
Speaker 2: of older cars. This is new battery. Even a reconditioned
Speaker 2: battery is an expensive process.
Speaker 1: I had a mate who did a Tesla what's the
Speaker 1: fucking old thing with the gold model X put a
Speaker 1: new battery in that for seventeen thousand dollars. It took
Speaker 1: his battery power from something like seventy five to eighty
Speaker 1: four percent, So like right, and it's a brand new battery,
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? So it's the strangest
Speaker 1: thing ever he bought. He literally paid seventeen thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: The other part of it, too, is this is one
Speaker 3: of the things in this we're talking about with this
Speaker 3: last week was solid state batteries where it feels like
Speaker 3: hydrogen and then it's perpetually around the corner, and like, oh,
Speaker 3: we're going to do it just just a few weeks
Speaker 3: full self driving. Yeah, they were saying exactly they were saying,
Speaker 3: but they're saying they're going to have solid state cars
Speaker 3: on the road. In a trial purpose this year, which
Speaker 3: there's not a whole lot of twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Four September as this. Don't see that happening.
Speaker 3: That could yeah, could could be tricky, but they're basically
Speaker 3: saying these batteries are so small and dense that they
Speaker 3: could you could pack them within the chazy rails of
Speaker 3: something like a Navara or a patrol.
Speaker 2: You keep hearing this stuff, and it's like, all right,
Speaker 2: if it was possible, why has everyone not done it now?
Speaker 2: I just feel like everyone keeps talking about it, and
Speaker 2: we've been talking about it for years and years. And
Speaker 2: if you think about if she's COVID as an example,
Speaker 2: you had one point where everyone is working on vaccines
Speaker 2: and all the sort of stuff associated with COVID all sorts. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so now you've got the same story. In evs. Everyone
Speaker 2: is working on solid state. It's not just car companies,
Speaker 2: it is private companies, big corporations. No one has come
Speaker 2: up with anything that's viable yet, and if they did,
Speaker 2: it would be in production tomorrow because it would give
Speaker 2: you the ultimate advantage over everyone else. Battery tech really
Speaker 2: hasn't evolved as much as you know cars.
Speaker 3: I just wish charging tech evolved like I had. I
Speaker 3: had a Porsche tykwon turbo last week, which is you know,
Speaker 3: it's not only like the fastest EV you can buy,
Speaker 3: it's the fastest charging EV you can buy. And I
Speaker 3: took it to a place that had had one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty kilo what charges, They delivered thirty eight killer
Speaker 3: charge to the car, And then I took it to
Speaker 3: another one that had seventy five and it was it
Speaker 3: was like in the mid thirties again, and that was
Speaker 3: and in both cases there were no other evs around,
Speaker 3: Like if there was someone right next to you plugged in,
Speaker 3: it'd be even worse. And you just you can't depend
Speaker 3: on yeah stuff Sometimes well.
Speaker 2: You've seen Ampole roll back there targets for installing EV
Speaker 2: charges at fuel stations because they're saying that they can't
Speaker 2: get grid capacity to roll out DC fast charges across
Speaker 2: where their fuel stations are located. So if am Pole,
Speaker 2: a company that has received millions of dollars of government funding,
Speaker 2: can't do it, I mean, what hope is there for
Speaker 2: anyone else? And the other thing, bizarre thing, how does
Speaker 2: a company like Tritium go out of business? You are
Speaker 2: making the thing that is the most in demand around
Speaker 2: the world at the moment. How are these charging companies
Speaker 2: going out of business?
Speaker 1: Another government? What's in charge?
Speaker 3: Fox funded by the government of one.
Speaker 2: Poll, it's partly funded. There's so many of these companies
Speaker 2: that just get lots of money from the government. And
Speaker 2: even the topic of I don't know if we discussed
Speaker 2: this in the last episode, but the topic of Norway.
Speaker 2: Everyone uses Norway as this you know, wow, it's the
Speaker 2: amazing Fountain of Youth style thing. And last month they
Speaker 2: had something like ninety seven percent of new car sales
Speaker 2: in Norway were electric vehicles, and they're all like, great,
Speaker 2: this is where we want to be. What they didn't
Speaker 2: mention is that Norway has something like four billion US
Speaker 2: dollars a year in government incentives for residents to buy
Speaker 2: these electric cars, and internal combustion cars are something like
Speaker 2: twenty to thirty thousand dollars more expensive comparatively to an
Speaker 2: electric car after the discounts. Car market is also tiny
Speaker 2: compared to Australia, So when you add all this stuff up,
Speaker 2: it's like, well, you're spending four billion dollars a year
Speaker 2: to get people into these cars, and the charging and
Speaker 2: all that sort of stuff. You just look at that
Speaker 2: money and you're like, could that have been better spent
Speaker 2: on something else. I don't know what hospitals are like
Speaker 2: in Norway, but they're pretty shit over here.
Speaker 3: The prisons apparently about you just get salient.
Speaker 2: It's some big blonde hole comes through as your body guard.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I just think you look at the volume
Speaker 2: of money we're spending on this at the moment, and
Speaker 2: there is just so much stuff that we could be
Speaker 2: doing as well instead of helping effectively wealthy people buy cars.
Speaker 3: I mean coming back to China and cars, and that's
Speaker 3: that's the really interesting thing that's going on overseas, is
Speaker 3: these like tariffs on evs. You know, if Trump gets in,
Speaker 3: it sounds like he's not going to be easy to
Speaker 3: sell a Chinese car in America. And if you look
Speaker 3: at the EU, you know they've got some pretty steep
Speaker 3: penalties on things like MG. You know, only a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks ago, Volkswagen was was basically playing a game
Speaker 3: of chicken with the European governments to say we're going
Speaker 3: to shut down the factories and things, which is it's
Speaker 3: just not viable for us to build cars here anymore
Speaker 3: at the moment unless unless things change, and that's you know,
Speaker 3: that's they're basically doing what Holden did with Joe Hockey
Speaker 3: like ten years ago, where they're saying, this is the
Speaker 3: numbers just aren't stacking up, We're going to have to
Speaker 3: shut the factory. And Hockey was like, you know, sto
Speaker 3: that lights up the cigar and they're like, go on, yeah, somehow.
Speaker 3: I mean. But Volkswagen is a different thing over there
Speaker 3: because it's partially owned by a lot of the state
Speaker 3: of Saxony or something like that, and then and it's
Speaker 3: just there's so much pride in their industry and auto
Speaker 3: barns and you know, motorsport and all the culture that
Speaker 3: they've got there. It's just a different thing.
Speaker 2: It's an interesting time, yeah, I mean, it's everything is
Speaker 2: changing at the moment, and it's I don't know what
Speaker 2: all this is going to look like in five or
Speaker 2: ten years. It'll be it'll be bloody fascinating.
Speaker 1: I think, getting back to just really quickly your your
Speaker 1: prediction of Chinese cars for say next year, I think
Speaker 1: there is a bit of positivity about brands that are
Speaker 1: coming in, like it will be very much sink or swim,
Speaker 1: like you said, But I think to give consumers a
Speaker 1: lot of choice. It's only going to get competitive in
Speaker 1: terms of price. It's putting families in car. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's just me, but I feel like cars
Speaker 1: a new cars, would you say, more affordable now than
Speaker 1: they ever were? Family cars or more expensive?
Speaker 3: It's moved around. I think the sweet spot was a
Speaker 3: little while ago. Like I remember in twenty eighteen twenty
Speaker 3: nineteen doing reviews of stuff like a like a base
Speaker 3: model Yaris or a VW Polo. There was a VW
Speaker 3: Polo I think it was called The Street or something
Speaker 3: like that was sixteen grand drive away and at the
Speaker 3: time you could get a Yarras through about that as well.
Speaker 3: That was roughly where the market was for a light car. Today,
Speaker 3: Yaris starts at about thirty four drive away because it's
Speaker 3: hybrid only, and Polo's like close to forty.
Speaker 1: It's Polo's close to forty.
Speaker 3: The tech has just had to ramp things up, so
Speaker 3: part it's car companies wanted to do more profitable stuff.
Speaker 3: They've they've basically they've looked at the market in Australia
Speaker 3: as compared to overseas. I talked to a car company
Speaker 3: MD about this this week, and I don't really want
Speaker 3: to say who it was because it was a bit
Speaker 3: of a background conversation, but he was basically saying that
Speaker 3: companies like Toyota have looked at what's gone on overseas
Speaker 3: where you can charge like thirty percent more for what
Speaker 3: they're paying here, and then five years ago they would
Speaker 3: have said, no, this is a mugs game. Why are
Speaker 3: we doing this, Why are we in this race to
Speaker 3: the bottom. Let's let's let's piss off the base model
Speaker 3: cars that not a lot of people are buying. Let's
Speaker 3: go hybrid everything. We'll make more money per car and
Speaker 3: sell fewer of them. Doesn't always work there, I mean
Speaker 3: Ford Australia tried that on around Focus and things like that,
Speaker 3: and it just, yeah, just fell over. I mean, Honda's
Speaker 3: here still, but Ford of just you know, they've cut
Speaker 3: and cut and cutt and now that's just like they've
Speaker 3: only got three cars.
Speaker 1: Basically, it was it Perga or we're talking in a
Speaker 1: couple of episodes Citron that just completely dropped like the
Speaker 1: price of.
Speaker 2: Their cargo for like twenty grand or something like that,
Speaker 2: and you kind of think, fuck, how much how much
Speaker 2: money are these guys making? Off per car at least
Speaker 2: twenty grand at least I mean that is I mean
Speaker 2: that is such a I get why they've done it,
Speaker 2: but it's such a bad move because it really shows
Speaker 2: your hand. No customer looks at that and goes, oh great,
Speaker 2: I'm getting a good deal. I look at that and go,
Speaker 2: holy fuck, how much money have.
Speaker 3: You sp I mean they need to you look at
Speaker 3: Citra and they were selling one car per dealer every
Speaker 3: ninety days. Yeah, if you weren't making like thirty grand
Speaker 3: on a car, Pergo.
Speaker 1: Like come across as quite a well made, put together,
Speaker 1: sort of quality car. But fuck they're expensive, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Alpha's a little bit the same. It's
Speaker 1: sort of like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I have a Reno.
Speaker 3: I don't mind the French car thing. Necessarily, I'm immune
Speaker 3: to Pergo's charm for whatever reason. Maybe it's because the
Speaker 3: steering wheel sits on my knees. Maybe it's because they
Speaker 3: all have a one point six letter engine. Maybe it's
Speaker 3: because they charged ninety grand for a you know, a
Speaker 3: little less u of ething. It doesn't doesn't really work
Speaker 3: for me, I mean objectively, and see what's going on.
Speaker 3: But subjectively, it's not mine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, So if you're listening to this, so
Speaker 2: that's me eating corn chips. I've been as discreet as
Speaker 2: I can.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Sure, if you're listening to this, still, thank you contact
Speaker 2: at the Drivers Show dot com today you let us
Speaker 2: know what you think about all this stuff. It's been
Speaker 2: quite a quite a sort of interesting chat. Now you
Speaker 2: mentioned before you've got a story going live about subscriptions.
Speaker 2: Where can people see that and give us a bit
Speaker 2: more sort of detail on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely so they can see it in a lot
Speaker 3: of places. That's that's the thing about news courts, it's
Speaker 3: really now well news dot com is kind of the focus.
Speaker 3: The way that we've been structured within the business is
Speaker 3: that car stories shouldn't behind a paywall. They should be
Speaker 3: out there for free and access everywhere. Yeah, yeah, that
Speaker 3: was that was a tough self for a while. They're
Speaker 3: going to toy to Camera launch with forty other people
Speaker 3: and mine's behind the paywall and others aren't.
Speaker 2: Just wait till you read what I have to say.
Speaker 2: It's very different.
Speaker 3: Now so new news dot com that made my butt. Also, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you can find us on all our mastheads, you know,
Speaker 3: daily Telegraph, Herold's Sun Career mail. Even things like the
Speaker 3: Too Woman Chronicle and the towns.
Speaker 1: Were bought in my favorite newspaper.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you like the horoscopes in that one, it's pretty
Speaker 3: good now, thank you, and the dating site on that.
Speaker 3: But I find I think it's a really interesting idea,
Speaker 3: this idea of subscribing to different features in cars, like
Speaker 3: Mercedes will charge you nearly six hundred bucks a year
Speaker 3: to look at the weather, but also to transmit digital
Speaker 3: keys to your friends and things like that, which I
Speaker 3: like that, which are Yeah, that is that is a
Speaker 3: cool feature. You know BMW have got card games in
Speaker 3: cars now I saw that. Yeah, And this is the
Speaker 3: sort of stuff that I'm trying to do, just taking
Speaker 3: taking a bit of a step back. I mean you're
Speaker 3: asking before about what I do as a motoring journalist.
Speaker 3: I don't do and cars one hundred percent. That's that's
Speaker 3: that's the sort of stuff that we're that we're looking at,
Speaker 3: Like I'm not trying to tell you about, you know,
Speaker 3: the tread shuffle or the Jounts tuning or something. And
Speaker 3: I have read those words and I still don't really
Speaker 3: understand them. I've seen this before.
Speaker 1: How long have you been reading car Exit?
Speaker 3: But no, it's it's like it's a broad mass market thing.
Speaker 3: Like the other day I was I was editing a
Speaker 3: video from one of our one of our great contributors,
Speaker 3: and he was talking about the battery chemistry insider inside
Speaker 3: a really fast TV and I just want to ring
Speaker 3: him up and just smack his head against the desk. No, no, no,
Speaker 3: you've lost them, You've lost us. Just tell us, tell
Speaker 3: us you know, how's the car make you feel? What's
Speaker 3: what's what's new about this? And that's and that's part
Speaker 3: of part of my job is that I have to
Speaker 3: go into meetings with people that edit like mass mass
Speaker 3: media stuff right Daily Telegraph, News dot Com and things
Speaker 3: like that, and try and convince them why a story
Speaker 3: should be should be worth knocking things off. I mean,
Speaker 3: the other day we had a we had a really
Speaker 3: great run with a video of the new Zeka electric
Speaker 3: car and it was the third highest rated video on
Speaker 3: the site against Raygun and behind the scenes behind the
Speaker 3: scenes thing on the Olympic Village basically what they get
Speaker 3: up to behind closed doors. It was was the pitch
Speaker 3: something like that, and and to be that's that's that's
Speaker 3: the thing practice. That's the that's that's I mean, the
Speaker 3: way that I'm approaching this job is to not necessarily
Speaker 3: look at look at car expert Cartole's cast guide as
Speaker 3: as rivals. I'm looking at the you know, the Olympics,
Speaker 3: the you know, the Bachelor, whatever's going on out there.
Speaker 3: That's that's that's what I'm going to know. Trying to
Speaker 3: take down like the maps, right, that's a hard thing sometimes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like we need like a ray gun
Speaker 1: in a dat Son.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very wow, what is.
Speaker 3: The raygun of cars? That's it? That's that is good.
Speaker 1: I know, stop do those dances to me again? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is a good question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna have to think about that one, because
Speaker 2: there is there is definitely something out there for that.
Speaker 2: There's probably multiple things.
Speaker 1: If she was selling a car, should be just sort
Speaker 1: of in front of the car doing the bunny hop.
Speaker 1: Those dance moves kind of looked like me paralletic at
Speaker 1: the Melbourne carp.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was like Leo crawling up to the Lamborghini.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's me doing the Melbourne Cup poll a side shuffle,
Speaker 1: trying to find my own fucking betting ticket and also
Speaker 1: make quell ludes. I don't even know how to pronounce it.
Speaker 3: I've definitely done some raygun moves in my car, like
Speaker 3: I don't know, like a you know previous Jen McGann rs.
Speaker 3: To turn on the cruise control, you have to turn
Speaker 3: off the sports mode, which is down by your right knee,
Speaker 3: and then you have to activate cruise control, which is
Speaker 3: down past your middle right where the seat belts are.
Speaker 3: And then to use the cruise control, you're looking at
Speaker 3: a steering wheel that has buttons on it that make
Speaker 3: no sense compared to any other cart. There's an art,
Speaker 3: there's an O what do those do?
Speaker 1: And it almost could be an app that you pay
Speaker 1: for one of these cars, But it's like twister like
Speaker 1: left hand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it feels like that, Like I get into my
Speaker 3: own car and I need Google lens to be able
Speaker 3: to understand what's going on in front of me.
Speaker 1: We do have some questions from the people before you go.
Speaker 1: This is e Envy seventy nine. Here we go, quick opinion.
Speaker 1: Don't want to sound like a wanker with this question.
Speaker 3: My wife has.
Speaker 1: It's a current range Rover Sport with thirty three thousand
Speaker 1: k's and the brakes shudder. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: can say this stealership, I won't do that. That's below me.
Speaker 1: Barrack rangerover definitely it was not. Then Barrack range Rover
Speaker 1: says it's normal. I don't know anyone with a similar car.
Speaker 1: I can't ask the forums because it will just open
Speaker 1: up a can of whams. What's your opinion?
Speaker 2: Can I just say, whenever you get told it's normal
Speaker 2: or characteristic by a dealer, take a car off their
Speaker 2: showroom floor that is the same. It could be hard
Speaker 2: with you if this is an older car and take
Speaker 2: it for a test drive. If that car doesn't shudder,
Speaker 2: because that's not normal, I would be. And you take
Speaker 2: the salesman with you and you say, show me it's shuttering.
Speaker 2: That sounds like it's it needs machine roaders to me,
Speaker 2: But I don't know. What do you reckon?
Speaker 3: Sounds like a good chance for a cove and stremming breakup. No, no, no,
Speaker 3: it does. It does sound like machine roaders and all
Speaker 3: that sort of stuff. Maybe give it the Italian tune
Speaker 3: up that helps it all?
Speaker 1: What else have we got here? Just for Dave? Are
Speaker 1: you ready for this? This is and I'm not kidding,
Speaker 1: this is a legit question, Dave, can you explain why
Speaker 1: you have lowered yourself to the extent that you have
Speaker 1: come on this show that is by Trevor fucking Life.
Speaker 3: I mean, you've always got to have a first time somewhere,
Speaker 3: don't you. Yeah, this is my first podcast appearance of anywhere,
Speaker 3: because really, yeah, I've done I've done stacks of radio.
Speaker 3: I was doing radio stuff today, plenty of TV and
Speaker 3: various other things. But no, none of my.
Speaker 2: Only be uphill from here.
Speaker 1: Actually I do have one quick question, one of my own,
Speaker 1: but let's like talk to the table about this one.
Speaker 1: The super outback. I waved it goodbye. I waved it goodbye.
Speaker 1: I played some Katie Lang what a Wonderful World, and
Speaker 1: I waved it goodbye. And I was I was a
Speaker 1: little bit worried about this because we'll talk about price
Speaker 1: in a second. I was a bit worried about this
Speaker 1: because I'm like, fuck, he's going to find something wrong
Speaker 1: with it, and he's going to come back into the
Speaker 1: house and it's going to be all over for me.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, he's sitting in my driveway for so.
Speaker 1: Long, and I was shooting myself. I'm my please, I'm
Speaker 1: so fucking happy with this price. Please just go, just go,
Speaker 1: just go. I'm looking out the window. Fuck, he's still there.
Speaker 1: He's still there. And then I said to my wife, Fuck,
Speaker 1: he's coming back in. I knew it. I knew, I
Speaker 1: knew it. Fuck, he's coming back in. He's sort of like,
Speaker 1: I'm opening the door high you left your Missy Higgins CD. No,
Speaker 1: but I did leave some stuff in the car. And
Speaker 1: but okay, so here's the thing that car I bought
Speaker 1: for well, at the time, it was brand new retail
Speaker 1: for fifty six I did get a deal from Subaru.
Speaker 1: So in all transparency, I got that for fifty grand, right,
Speaker 1: so on the.
Speaker 2: Road, yep, okay.
Speaker 1: So oh and I remember the dealer going, hey, bro,
Speaker 1: keep this for two years. You'll be able to sell
Speaker 1: this for fifty two grand. They hold their value really well,
Speaker 1: you'll be fine with this. And I was kind of
Speaker 1: like sold on that. I'm like, yeah, fuck it, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll do this. I'll do a responsible thing for my
Speaker 1: family and buy a fucking family car. I won't worry
Speaker 1: about the fact that this is all we'll drive and
Speaker 1: choose up the field, no worries. Less than twelve months
Speaker 1: later that dealer offered me, how much do you reckon?
Speaker 1: Forty eight oh, thirty nine thousand dollars? So close thirty
Speaker 1: nine thousand dollars, And you said to me, He's like,
Speaker 1: why would you sell it privately? Just take one of
Speaker 1: these companies that will pick you up and it picks
Speaker 1: it up in a truck and you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about it. I got three inquiries on this car.
Speaker 1: Oh really yeah within five days. Oh that's car sold
Speaker 1: in five days. I've got three inquiries. The first guy
Speaker 1: was keen asking price and all we didn't budge on
Speaker 1: the price. And then surely, like the day before, Hey mate,
Speaker 1: you're coming tomorrow, he bailed out. He found something else. Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: the worst Yeah, second guy came in, didn't haggle on price,
Speaker 1: bought it straight away. So that was good.
Speaker 2: And was it a dealer or just a private private buyer?
Speaker 1: And the interesting thing was really nice guy. He just
Speaker 1: went from owning an outback for like fifteen years, done
Speaker 1: three hundred and eighty thousand kilometers, so he drove it
Speaker 1: and you just wanted something again. So that was four
Speaker 1: forty nine thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's pretty good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm genuinely surprised by Yeah, yeah, an honest dealer.
Speaker 3: I mean normally, if a dealer asked me to hang
Speaker 3: on to something for two minutes, I wouldn't trust him.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Here's the thing. Actually, I'm the worst with this
Speaker 1: because I got my wife to sell it for me.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, she just like she she's just like
Speaker 1: put on that kind of stoic Asian wife. No, no,
Speaker 1: we're not budgeting on price. And it was and that's
Speaker 1: how it went down. But there was one there was
Speaker 1: one third inquiry from a woman trying to pick up
Speaker 1: my wife. What yes, what do you mean? Car sales
Speaker 1: message was like, Hi, were you the the hot woman
Speaker 1: getting out of the I think I saw this car yesterday?
Speaker 1: Were you on such and such row? Were you the
Speaker 1: hot woman? An old woman? Oh blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: Was it her?
Speaker 1: No, she's not hot.
Speaker 2: You are lucky she doesn't listen.
Speaker 1: To this nobody.
Speaker 3: Dad, Dad, It's like, remember missed connections in MX magazine,
Speaker 3: way back in the magazine. You've gone from there to
Speaker 3: the DMS. Sliding into the DMS in castles is a
Speaker 3: pretty special. Yes, I know a few people have been
Speaker 3: screwed on castoles with most of the journalists.
Speaker 1: Yeah so so, yeah, I have to ask. I'm thinking, like,
Speaker 1: what is for eighty thousand dollars? That's what how much
Speaker 1: I want to spend on the family car? What do
Speaker 1: you reckon? You your secondhand? I'd be care how much?
Speaker 1: How about eighty grand? She is a genesis?
Speaker 3: I mean you might get an next demo Ironic five.
Speaker 3: Then if you play your car like I wish.
Speaker 2: Fun family car, Yeah, well, what are the pre requisites?
Speaker 1: I think it's got to have a little bit of
Speaker 1: it's going to have a fun factor about it, a
Speaker 1: little bit of cred no dag, and ideally not have
Speaker 1: an average fuel consumption of thirteen liters per one hundred kilometers.
Speaker 1: Don't get a Ranger wraptor Yeah, I mean how much
Speaker 1: is your wrap to doing? By the way? Yeah really? Okay?
Speaker 3: What about what about it?
Speaker 1: What about the wild track? How much would be?
Speaker 2: Six days? Okay, there's ten ish driving.
Speaker 3: Golf ours are pretty good, dance all sorts of things,
Speaker 3: isn't it if you like if you like driving, you know,
Speaker 3: they do the family thing, they've playing all that sort
Speaker 3: of stuff. Yeah, yeah, you find one of those that's
Speaker 3: a that's a good gadget. And there's an updated model
Speaker 3: coming very shortly, so that would put a bit of
Speaker 3: pressure on existing stock if there is any.
Speaker 1: And that's a fun commuter m Yeah, not bad but.
Speaker 3: Also but not too much brain damage as well from
Speaker 3: dealing with the driver aids and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: And should hold its value. If I put my dealer
Speaker 2: hat on, Yeah, put your dealer hat on. You'll get
Speaker 2: eighty for it easy in two years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tirely.
Speaker 3: Well, then you can do the thinking men's go far,
Speaker 3: just like the Cooper sort of stuff I found, like
Speaker 3: a Volkswagen spokesperson. Yeah, some of those things basically because
Speaker 3: no one really knows what they are. I can imagine
Speaker 3: you could the demo deals on like a Leon VSX
Speaker 3: and that sort of stuff should be pretty good.
Speaker 1: Maybe I can get a press car for a cool
Speaker 1: pro I should. I should contact them.
Speaker 3: They're well looked after some of these things.
Speaker 1: Good luck. Yeah, I'm sure they'll. I'm sure they'll respond
Speaker 1: to them to my emails.
Speaker 2: That would be so funny. Actually quite desperate to sell them,
Speaker 2: so maybe they will make it.
Speaker 1: Well. Thank you for thanks for joining us. Appreciate you
Speaker 1: dropping by and.
Speaker 2: People find you on the socials. If they're on the
Speaker 2: toccer's where can they what do they search for?
Speaker 1: What would you call it?
Speaker 2: The tockers. That's just the TikTok Club.
Speaker 3: I'm Dave McCowan on most things, Dave mcwn or yeah,
Speaker 3: Dave motoring on TikTok because there's another Dave McCowan out
Speaker 3: there somewhere, but at least I've got a fairly generic name.
Speaker 3: I don't have to put like number eleven or underscore
Speaker 3: tag whatever.
Speaker 2: Two hundred and eighty six.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and highly recommend checking out day's content man, because
Speaker 1: what you're putting out is really cool.
Speaker 3: Oh thank you. Yeah, no, I actually do give a
Speaker 3: shit and try to do good stuff. Yeah. Yeah, there's
Speaker 3: always there's always something.
Speaker 2: Coming long, Yeah, nice, excellent. Well yeah, if you've got
Speaker 2: any questions for Dave, contact at the Drivers Show dot
Speaker 2: com today you will see we can get them back
Speaker 2: on again. And if you haven't done so already, because
Speaker 2: I'm sure there are some of you. If you are
Speaker 2: listening to this, go to your podcasting platform, give us
Speaker 2: a rating on there, preferably not another one star rating
Speaker 2: about forty. Just picture me when you're doing the radio.
Speaker 1: I would, I would urge you to tell any Paul's
Speaker 1: big in the milk department, so that's where it is charged.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, ladies, take a ticket on wait in line
Speaker 1: number forty two. Your meal is.
Speaker 3: He's big in the Middle East as well. Just quietly
Speaker 3: when we're at a patrol event and there's like eight
Speaker 3: hundred and four by four fans there, most of them
Speaker 3: have seen the Car Expert video War two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, dilfs, Yes, Middle East, what a place.
Speaker 1: You're the new supercar Blondie Ye can ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: Supercar Pavla.
Speaker 2: That's a good one. Yeah, thank you for listening, and yeah,
Speaker 2: please do leave us rating and yeah Jinn for the
Speaker 2: next show.