September 1, 2015 • 50 mins
In this episode, Scott brings a surprise topic to the table: What would your non-daily driver be? You know, a utility vehicle, a high-powered exotic, the classic garage darling ... what would you choose? Tune in to see what they pick.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from house stuff Works dot Com. I welcome
the car stuff. I'm Scott and I'm Ben. We are
here with our super producer. As always, ladies and gentlemen
know the mysterion Brown Good. Remember that oldies band question
(00:26):
Mark in the Mysterious? Was that it? Um? Maybe they
did tiers? Oh yeah, you're going a crack crack crack crack. Yeah,
how about um, let's see how you're gonna take an alternative?
How about Noel Nickla? We already used that. We already like, yeah, uh,
(00:46):
well you know, maybe uh maybe, Let's see what else.
There's the nebulous Noll nebulous Brown similar too. We're running
out of the good ones. We're running We're running out
of question Mark stuff. Yeah, well then why are we
running out? Because there's a very specific theme we're following here. Correct, Yes,
(01:07):
we're we're asking each other some questions that are unknown
to the other person. So it's another mystery show topic
day where I asked Ben a question that he has
only has no idea what I'm gonna ask him right now?
You will in three minutes from now, but not right now,
or maybe not. Maybe in three minutes you'll be completely confused.
I'll be even more baffled. But I will shed some
light on this. And now that I think about it,
(01:28):
Tiers was written by or performed rather by question Mark
and the mystery ends not mystery on very close, and
you know it's pretty close. I just go along with
this stuff. I don't really know music. I tried, but so,
oh yeah, you're right, then that's it was? What was
that nine? Playing that game? Nineteen? Isvo S six something like, Hey,
(01:53):
there's a two quick things that I'd like to update
our listeners, one prior to jumping into today's topic, and
we'll do the kind of quick But number one, man,
how did this happen? We've already published our seven hundredth
episode at this point, we did. It's happened so quickly.
I was thinking of the same thing. Well, I was
updating the car stuff site, you know, the car stuff
show dot com, and uh, and I realized, oh boy,
(02:15):
that number. There's a seven hundred on our RSS feed
and we let it come and go without much fanfare.
We tried to maybe ask some listeners if they would
write into some suggestions for what we can but um,
well flew past this, man, it has already happened. It
was the Rolling on Tires episode, the number seven hundred
of you know, out of are what last seven years?
(02:37):
Eight years? Also an episode where we spent the first
few minutes I think talking about Tennessee and creeks. That's right. Yeah,
so we were hanging out. It was pretty informal, but
that was a good episode. That was a fun episode
to record, as most of our episodes really, I mean
not a lot of them are like Plenteeth do you think, No,
I don't think so. Here and there, a few here
(02:58):
and there, a bit uphill. Yeah, jet fuel for one,
the good one, and uh oh, there's that one that
we never aired, oh man, which we shall never become again.
Never name it, will never name it. That was a
weird day. But also we are if if episodes are
going this quickly, that means that we are well on
our way to our one thousand episode. That's crazy, man,
(03:23):
it is crazy. Now there's another thing that uh, I'd
like to alert our listeners to, and that is the
fact that we have now received some limericks in the mail.
That's right, ladies and gentlemen, we have received some limericks
in the mail you're going to hear. Uh. Let's see
you want to do a couple today, I will do
a couple today, and I'm gonna save a couple for
the next episode. Maybe you can read the next one. Uh.
(03:43):
The very first limerick to arrive to Car Stuff with
from super fan Aaron Cooper. Yes, yeah, Aaron Cooper will
be familiar to those of you out there listening who
follow us on Twitter. Uh. He is the guy who occasionally,
uh makes pictures of me engaging with ha Honda Odyssey
(04:07):
in a way that I never would which is driving
it and a fez. And I think he created a
couple of clowns out of you and I when we're
doing the couple scary clowns out. He's a photoshop master, Yeah, exactly,
American pickers things like that, some fun stuff. Very talented
with the with the photoshop and hilarious. Exactly right. I'm
sure he's gonn appreciate that I say, the photoshop tool. Alright. So, um,
(04:30):
let's see the very first limerick that came to us,
and this is one of two from Aaron. He sent
another one the very same day. Um, here we here
we go. It's it's it's dedicated to you, Ben, in
a way, it's about you. You're the subject anyway. Oh,
I know, all right, here we go. There once was
a man named Ben bowing his sweet Monty Carlo was rolling.
(04:51):
He reads at the light with all of his might.
It's time to go Odyssey trolling and he says, true story.
I assume yeah, And I wrote back and said, confirmed
it was. It was a true story. Not bad, very good.
The Honda's trolled me though, point of order, that's true,
It's probably right. And he said, you know, I've been
trying to come up with something for Scott as well,
and trying to rhyme something. And if I don't know
(05:12):
if you guys are Tech Stuff listeners or not, but
I recently guest hosted on Tech Stuff and we talked
about hitch Bot with you know, myself and Jonathan, and
Jonathan kept bringing up this other robot called the love Bot,
and I had to giggle every time I heard it,
because I'm, of course, you know, like I'm like a
grade school kid. I can't I can't help myself. So
(05:32):
he kept he kept saying it. I think he's taunting
me with the term. Later on but I said, every
time I tried to get to the word, you know,
I got to the words Scott, I kept trying to
rhyme it with love bot, and I didn't think that
was appropriate for the show. So uh. He eventually did
come up with a good limerick that we can read
on air, and um, all right, here we go. You
want me to read it, all right, Scott Benjamin skilled
(05:53):
with the clutch and engines and throttles and such. His
car as a beast in theory. At least those whistle
tips though out so much. Yeah, that's why I thought
that was well written. Tie in with the whistle tips.
Oh man, the whistle tips episode was just crazy. And
his sister, I just I don't think her name was
Little Cis, wasn't it Little Ciss. It's just decorative. It's
(06:15):
purely for decorative purposes. Those whistle tips are hilarious. But
but nice work, Aaron. We really appreciate it. And those
are the very first two that we received. There's a
couple more in the pipeline here that we're gonna bring
up maybe in the next episode. And uh, and I
don't have good stuff coming in. Yeah, I'm excited too.
I'm excited to bring those to the air. But now Scott,
I have to tell you, my nerves are killing me.
(06:38):
Where are we uh? Where are we headed with this?
This is a simple one. You're not really gonna have
to sweat this at all. In fact, I want every
listener out there to think about this and and think
about it more than just for you know, just a
quick moment. Think about it in real terms, like if
you were really to do this, what would you choose?
And and here's my question to you been today, you've
got it. You've got a daily driver, right, yes, a
(07:00):
single day the driver vehicle. And uh, if you know
married people, they can extrapolate this to you've got you.
Probably your husband and wife and or wife has a
has a car as well. If you were to purchase
a a third vehicle, and I guess in your case,
a second vehicle, something that you rarely use, you know,
a weekend vehicle, what would that vehicle be? And why?
(07:22):
And here's why I asked this because it's a it's
a deeper question than you think. And added don't mean deep,
you know that it's challenging or anything, but but really
think about it, because there's a lot to kind of
mull over here. Your initial thought might be, um, might be, yeah,
I'd like to get a sports car, you know, something
completely impractical, something with two seats, something I can you know,
take up into the mountains and really uh, you know,
(07:42):
just thrash it through the through the hills. The other
thing would be, well, maybe maybe I want a truck,
you know, something I can go drive up to home
depot and bring home a load of wood because I'm
building a deck this summer. Maybe that's something that I
want to do. Maybe it's just an outright toy of
some kind, you know, maybe it's um, um, you know,
something that's com lately unusual, a classic vehicle of some
kind but complete, also completely impractical, or something that just
(08:05):
takes so much fuel to drive that you know you
wouldn't drive it to work daily. Yeah, there's no way
that you can drive this vehicle sixty miles you know,
you know, thirty each way to and from work. There's
just no way. And it's it's a good question to
what would your what would your second car, your non
daily driver being or second vehicle, let's say second and again,
if you're single, consider this your second vehicle. If you're
(08:25):
if you're married and you have two cars already, consider
this your third vehicle. Good good call good, an additional
vehicle that mainly sits parked in the grade of the
driveway or under the shed or whatever. Now we do
have we do have us uh, single listeners in our
audience who also own multiple cars. Yeah, and this, I
guess this kind of pertains to them too. I have
(08:46):
I'm married. My wife and I both have two vehicles.
We've recently changed our vehicles and you know, we switched
to new daily drivers. So I'd like to talk about
that a little bit because that has changed some things
in the dynamic of of you know, the way we
do things weekends. I guess really, yes, it has. And
uh and I have a third vehicle, which is that
project car that just goes nowhere, the Newport. Yeah, the
(09:07):
Newport which just sits there. I mean I had good intentions,
just like everybody else with any project car, but um,
it hasn't really done anything. And I get a lot
of flak for that from whom from the other side
of the marriage been from that. I don't want to
say specifically who, but it's don't get yourself one of
the two females that lives in my house. I have
a daughter as well. It's not her, and it's not
(09:27):
the bird and the birds. Oh yeah, the bird the birds.
Not saying much about but um, honestly, like, I mean,
I had big plans for that car. I was going
to um switch that switch that I guess flip it.
You know quickly that yeah, no, way didn't happen. But
you've done You've done a lot of work on it,
for sure. And I it's easy for me to say
(09:50):
what I'm about to say, Scott, because I have never
put a hand on the Newport, nor have I helped
in any way. I haven't seen it in personally. I
have never seen in person because I I you know,
i'd have to sneak into your garage. However, with all
that enormous caveat, it's not over yet. It's never over
until you decide to get rid of the car. The
(10:11):
honest truth is that that that car could be running
in ten minutes. Yeah, I mean it could be running, Attendant.
It's a running vehicle. It's just not a driving vehicle
because of uh, well things got the brakes. There's a
break master cylinder issue like the booster, whether there's a
fuel tank issue. It has a fuel tank, but it's
it's temporary fuel tank, isn't it in the trunk. It's
in the trunk. It's a giant marine cell fuel tank.
(10:32):
So it's a big one, but it's it just slides
around in there, and it's terribly dangerous some things like that.
But honestly, it could run in ten minutes. And that's
that's what keeps me hanging onto this thing. But but
I don't dare back it out of the driveway because
I'll take out maybe you know, my neighbor's car and
a mailbox on the way, and your neighbor has some
nice cars. Yeah, right, So anyways, a lot of people
(10:52):
fall trapped to that too, is that they have a
third car that they buy that then just sits there
and does nothing. And and I've I've fallen in of that.
I thought it wasn't going to I've had great success
with that in the past, owning owning a toy vehicle
that is completely impractical. The MG was one um I had.
Um let's see, I had the Testiva that was initially
(11:13):
my daily driver, but then I hung onto for a
while as a as a toy. Um, you know, just
some fun things along the way that um, you know,
I've had that. Uh, it was fun for they were
fun for weekend use. They were fun for occasional use,
but definitely not a daily driver. And and that's the question,
is that you know what fits you best for that
third or in some cases second continue to say a
(11:33):
third car, Um, is it as an suv? Is it
a truck? Is it? Is it maybe an old minivan?
As a station wagon? I mean rarely when you find
somebody that gets a station wagon, I can tell you
a couple of cars later on that clearly would make it,
in my opinion, a terrible third vehicle. And there's very
very few that fit that category. But I think you'll agree, yeah, there, Uh,
(11:55):
there are a couple of categories. It occurs to me.
I'm glad you mentioned categories, because one would write be
the sports car of the high performance, the weekend toy.
Another one would be the utility vehicle right inconvenient to drive,
but you can haul anything in it, and likely a
fuel hog as well, and on fuel hog typically because
(12:16):
they're bigger and they typically if you're talking about the
utility vehicle that has a you know V eight engine
and you're carrying weight in that vehicle with a lot
of money on fuel and maybe suspension items, who knows. Yeah.
And then there's and then there's what I would call
them like the Daddy's darling, the garage baby that only
comes out on weekends where the weather is nice. This
(12:38):
is the the the previously restored Austin Healy, right, Yeah,
it doesn't have a cobweb or a speck of dust
on it. And then let's make I would say, let's
make a fourth category and call that miscellaneous. So this
would be stuff like a this would be stuff like
a cross tracket. Okay, so you're talking like motorcycle, Um boy,
(13:02):
I don't. I was thinking cars mainly. But motorcycles are
fine because that's a road going vehicle. But what should
we include boats and things like that? And I don't
think so. I don't think we should include anything for
the air or water. I think it should just be
something you can store at your house right and take
onto from your driveway onto the road. So maybe we
(13:24):
also say they have to be street legal. Okay, fair enough,
that's fair enough. So so so no uh no kick
as race cars unfortunately had no track day vehicles, and
I understand that, you know, the temptation would be there
to to say something like that, But what if it's
a car that you could I mean, this, this would
this would I guess. Let's say that you join a
(13:46):
club like sec A Sports Car Club of America and
they've got a solo event that happens locally, and you
know you like to participate in that one and one
that's if you maybe maybe a state to weigh or something.
But it's a car that you can drive on the
road to the event. And a lot of people have
road you know, I guess street legal race cars that
they drive to local tracks to participate, you know, maybe
(14:07):
once a month in or something. That's totally fine. We
can include that. And that's again that that's again that's
another one of those really impractical groupings of vehicles because
which I think that goes into the sports high performance. Yeah,
I mean, because if they have a passenger seat, usually
uh usually they won't have a third seat. You know,
if you want to bring someone else along with and
you don't typically take your track day car out, you know,
(14:30):
for the weekend. It's not it's not the norm. I mean,
some people will do that, of course, but it's you know,
rare events, you know, like you'll take it out, maybe
you get an ice cream somewhere because it's fun to
do for you know, the cruise up and down Woodward
Avenue maybe or something outside of that. Um, I don't know.
It's it's a pretty rare sight to see a true
race car on the road. That is that is absolutely true.
(14:52):
I would say, Okay, I have thought about this question
before for a long time, and I am torn because
I think there are I think in all four of
the categories we've set up, there are things that I
want desperately. And you know how it is when you
(15:14):
really really want something, this psychological thing occurs in your
head and you begin to confuse that want with a
knee See we're getting we said this many times, emotional
decision because it comes an emotional decision versus a logical decision,
right right, So you gotta balance between you gotta balance
between emotional and logic. Like how cool would it be
(15:37):
to have a t Rex? You know, like where we go?
I've been seeing more of those uh more, um wait,
not specific not specifically t Rex, but but more and
more three wheeled vehicles around Atlanta. You know what, I'm
super glad you said this year. I remember not long
ago I posted on our Facebook page there was a
slingshot Yeah at a local tired Yeah. Yeah. It was
(15:59):
an Into one, a red one or whatever. This this
very morning when I drove by that same spot. Now,
it's a it's a company that will do modifications to
that specific type of vehicles, so it's not unusual to
see it there. It was. There was a white one
parking in the same parking lot, so it's clearly a
different vehicle and a different model it had. It was
maybe an up you know, an up level to whatever
the slingshot is. I don't even know off the top
(16:19):
of my head what that is. Um, but you're right.
I'm starting to see more of those three wheel vehicles
that are open top almost like um, you know, the
kind that you have to wear a helmet when you're
right Where. Where have you seen one recently? I want
to say, let's see where was I. I was driving
from here to Decatur. So for anybody who's unfamiliar with Atlanta,
(16:43):
which I I assume maybe most people listening, Uh, Atlanta
is surrounded by other smaller towns like a lot of
other big cities, and Decatur is a city slightly to
the east, and it's a very short drive, and it
seems almost as if you never really leave Atlanta to
get to Decaturs. You can still ride the train there.
It's still within the interstate circle. Yeah, the Atlanta metro area,
(17:06):
I guess. Yeah, it's definitely close by. So on that
short drive you were able to see one of these
three wheel vehicles. Yeah, and now wouldn't that be a
blast to have something like that or a three or
a third vehicle or second vehicle. Yeah, that'd be fun.
But I still can't you know, it's still kind of
a toy, well absolute toy, sure, I mean, because you're
not going to carry anything in there. I mean I
think there's a what it equates to almost like a
(17:28):
saddle bag, you know, for a motorcycle storage. And there's
a shotgun seat. Yeah, there is. So if you go
to the grocery store in this thing, hard to believe
you would, but if you go to the grocery store
in this um, you know, you can maybe put a
couple of bags next to you, you know, in that area,
and that's about it. Yeah, absolutely uh, covered parking. And
I know, for some reason, I know that the you
(17:50):
could encounter some similar issues with a really nice motorcycle, right,
you want to keep that inside, keep that covered absolutely
and safe and safe. Yeah, but it seems for some
reason a motorcycle seems more uh an orthodox too will
motorcycle seems more appealing than a three wheeled slingshot. You know,
you can say that about almost any one of these
(18:10):
cars that we're talking about. Almost. I mean, I know
that some people are gonna buy, you know, that really
beat up old suv and keep it outside. You know,
maybe maybe throw a tarp on it, you know, throw
a leaky tarp on top of it. And that's fine.
But um, for a lot of people with these toy
vehicles or the project car, like that's stupid project car.
Mine has been in there for five years. I've been
parking my daily driver outside on the driveway. You know,
(18:32):
that's my that's my punishment, Ben and uh and I
when I got outside, it's super hot, it's covered with leaves,
it's got hurt on it, you know, and the birds
their visits. Yeah, so it never stays clean. I mean
I washed my car and it stays clean for a
day and at that and then the next day it's
it's over with. But um, that's one of the things
I keep thinking about, Like, if I do think about
getting rid of it, I think, well, it'd be nice
to park in the garage, But then I don't have
(18:54):
anything in any toy. And that's a crazy thing to think,
because right now it's as if I don't have anything.
I don't even work on it. I don't really get
any enjoyment out of it at this point until I
until I tackle that again. So there's so many like
little traps that you fall into with these things like this,
and that's one of them is that you know you
you you buy it with the best intentions. But let's
(19:15):
say you buy that old pickup truck and you think, well,
it's gonna be a great vehicle for me to run
out to the lumber yard or up to um, I
don't know, the local you know, stone place and pick
up a yard of stone for the for the yard
or whatever. Yeah, it's nice to think of that, but
what if you realize, like, well, this thing is breaking
down me all the time. It's not even reliable enough
to get you know, the the fifteen miles that I
(19:36):
need to go to pick up a pallet of sod
or whatever. Then it becomes just kind of a thorn
in your side. Um, it's it's difficult, you know, do
you get rid of it or do you just you
spend a lot of money on that versus your cars
that you drive daily. Um, all the stuff is things
to consider when you're doing talking about your third vehicle.
And then are we are we thinking of this with
(19:57):
a price range of mind? Or is price no object?
Prices no object? Because everybody has their own level, you know,
what they're comfortable with. You know, you might want to buy. Uh,
the neighbor might be selling his old pickup truck for
five in our bucks, the or or you know whatever
it happens to be. Um, something of interest that that's
a thousand dollars, but somebody else might be interested in buying.
Like we said that old Austin Healey that it's twenty
(20:17):
one dollars something like that. Everybody has their own levels,
so you know, sky's the limit on this bend. Whatever
you're comfortable with. Um, that's what we'll go with. So
before we get to some of our picks, before you
get to my pick, uh, what are what are some
cars that would make terrible oh, you know, third cars.
(20:38):
I was thinking about this on the way end this morning.
And I've been thinking about this topic overall, and and
I'd always been thinking about what would be the best ones,
what would be the best choices or you know, particular
for for us, you know, like me and you, or
what would be the best for um, you know, people
that we know in the office. And I was thinking, well,
I'm thinking about this wrong. There's also got to be
a category of cars that you really shouldn't buy, is
(20:59):
that they're vehicle And it's kind of it'll make sense
when you know, I have a strong opinion that the
third vehicle, the extra vehicle in a family, should not
be a plug in hybrid or an electric vehicle. And
the reason is because it seems like those are what
you would buy for your daily use. That's your bread
(21:20):
and butter car, that's your that's your way to get
it from work, A commuter, a cheap vehicle that's not
the fun one. That's not the fun one. And and okay,
I understand you can get a you know, a Tesla
Roadster or something like that from you know, a decade back,
that's a lot of fun and maybe maybe that's maybe
that's one exception to this rule. But I would say
that almost everybody can agree with me on this fact
(21:41):
that you don't buy a Nissan Leaf as your third
vehicle as I mean, sure, it's it's it might be interesting.
It's an interesting vehicle down the fun one no or
you know Tesla. Sure, that's that's exciting, and it could
be kind of a fun, you know, toy, But that's
a one hundred thousand dollar toy. Yeah, that's that's the
difference than that one. Now, if if it was to
(22:02):
come down in price by you know, third I could
see maybe some people starting to buy them just as
kind of a novelty idea, which is ultimately the plan.
But it's not going to be that current model. It's
gonna be something much more like a much more sedate. Yeah.
And I don't think you'd buy a plug in hybrid
like the Chevy Volt or something like that as a
third vehicle. I just don't. I don't see it. I see, yeah,
(22:23):
I see that point, and I think it's I think
it's a good point. There's also there's also the question
of is this a vehicle that you just have that
you previously upgraded from one and it's just like leftover.
You know, that's a possibility. In that case, I could
see something like not not a hybrid, So I don't
I don't know if enough time has passed yet for that.
(22:45):
But uh, of course, to say nothing of electric vehicles.
But I think a lot of people probably end up
with their third vehicle being you know, like a mid
nineties Honda that didn't that you know, it wasn't broken,
but it was time for a new car, and so
instead of selling it, they kept it. And now maybe
(23:05):
they're waiting for their kid to turn sixteen or go
to college or something like that. Yeah, yeah, and then
it becomes the kid's car. But then you're back to
two vehicles, and then you get and that's when you
get the coon tosh exactly right. Yeah, okay, So you
know that's a that's a good point. And though that that,
you know, a lot of times you'll have an STV
that has a trailer hitch and you realize, well, I
(23:27):
need that for the boat. I have to pull the
trailer that holds you know, the load of wood that
I get every fall. Sure, so you realize, well, jeez,
we can't get rid of that. And besides that, it's
not really cost any much of anything. It's reliable, insurance
is cheap, especially if it's going to be our third vehicle.
We're barely driving it. Um, there's a lot of there's
so many angles to this, but I guess I'm I'm
more concerned with you know, you and I choosing one
(23:49):
right now, Like if we don't have a third vehicle,
if we were to pick a third vehicle, and what
would that be? And just real quick, if you don't mind,
give another minute to think about your choice, Okay, Um,
I had said that I was going to tell you
kind of like what had happened with with my wife
vehicle and my vehicle, and I know how it changed
your routine. And I think this happens often with people,
is that you know you, you change vehicles. And here's
(24:11):
the way I kind of view this is that sometimes
a couple's primary car decision or choice of what they
what they purchased, you know, for that for that daily driver,
is based on what the other spouse drives daily to
work as well. Oh sure, it's like for people for
for people who are not card people, or for people
who are in like a family unit. It's almost like
(24:33):
when you go to the menu of a restaurant, you
don't want to order the same thing. Yes, yes, that's
a that's a very good way to put it into
general terms. Because here's what we had. I I used
to have a hatchback, like a very economical hashback. We
meant for long drives. You know, we could drive it.
It was comfortable, um, but it was it was good
for getting um you know, like in northern Georgia or
(24:55):
something like the shorter shorter drive. Not not the bigger
long road trips by what it means, but um, it
was economical. And my wife had a Honda Element. And
the inside the Element. I don't know if anybody knows
this or not, but when the the Honda Element is
a very deceptive vehicle. Inside it's like a school bus.
It's huge inside. And the the way that they have
(25:16):
designed that vehicle with a flat floor and the way
you can fold the seats up to the windows on
the sides and everything, you can carry just about anything
in that. It's a great car. It's a really good
utility type vehicle, not a truck but close to it.
And you know, we we were comfortable tying the Christmas
tree on top of that. In the wintertime, we were
fine picking up a piece of furniture and putting it
in the back, you know, or whatever it happened to be,
(25:36):
the stuff that we're going to donate, you know, taking
the old lawnmower to donate. You know that there was
no problem. You put it on a blanket and you
throw it in the back. Now she drives a brand
new it's a least vehicle, but it's a brand new
Deep Renegade, and it's it's very very small inside. Now
I know it's a utility vehicle, but it's a small
utility vehicle, sport utility and U like a addically different
(26:00):
inside as far as space goes. And we haven't taken
a road trip in it yet, you know, the long distance,
because we we would do that in the element, because
we had room for luggage. We had rooms for Christmas.
You know, we're traveling north for Christmas. We had room
to bring things back in that vehicle. I don't know
what we're gonna do now, we may end up being
stuck in my car, which is a four door Sedan
(26:21):
which I bought for very practical reasons. Four doors if
you get you know, three or four people in and
out of UM had some trunk space. UM. It's just
more comfortable for cruising around, you know, shorter distance trips
like you know, maybe UM in North Georgia. But I
think this one maybe our our long distance traveler now
as well, because it just seems to be more comfortable
than the Renegade. No, the Volkswagen is a little more
(26:45):
comfortable than the rate. I've seen the Volkswagen and say, yeah,
that's I'm not I'm not saying anything bad about the Renegade.
I'm just saying that, you know, we went from something
that had a lot of interior space and very utility
to something that is uh less space, and it just
it with being a least and everything. I don't really
want to get it to beat up or anything. That's
(27:05):
That's what I was about to say. As we went
to the we used to go to the Animal Safari
that's the south of town here, and it's one of
those places where you drive around with your windows down
and feed the animals and they wander up and they
scratched the hell out of your vehicle with their giant
horns and you've got things like a giraffe with its
head inside the car, you know, licking the steering wheel
and stuff. It's one of those crazy places. We were
(27:26):
totally comfortable taking the Element there, but I don't think
we're gonna take this least, uh you know, renegade there.
And I'm certainly not going to drive my Volkswagen on
that on that you know dirt track that goes around
there with these horned vehicles licking the car all over.
Too good, they grows, So you know what, I am
too good for that too. I wouldn't do that with
my civic hatchback either. I just I just wouldn't stand
(27:46):
for it. But she had no problem letting the you know,
the horns scratched the hell out of the side of
the car. But um, anyways, I've really digressed here. But
I'm telling you that people choose their vehicle based on
what the spouse zones as sure, and that happens all
the time. So where does that leave you for a
third vehicle? Yeah? Why the door is wide open. The
door is wide openly get that point, because you've both
(28:08):
put the time in with your primary vehicles to kind
of satisfy whatever practical needs you have. Maybe it's time
for that accurate NSX, or maybe it's time for you know,
the motorcycle. Do you want it? Sure? Sure? So you
wanted what's what? Let me do you want to give
me to give your choice or your choice first? You
want me to give my choice first? Let's see. I
(28:29):
will give you the choice. I'm feeling right now, but
I'll tell you in advance. You're probably not gonna like it. No,
it's not gonna be a Nissan Leaf, is it? No?
Oh good, come on man. That I don't mean to
seem offended, but well, all right, here's the thing. We're
(28:50):
in a little bit different situation. I live, I live
on my own by myself, and I have one vehicle
and I'm I'm in a pretty fine spot with it,
no complaints. But if I were to get a second thing, right,
and let's just say, the vehicle live now is fine,
satisfies all the other stuff. If I were to get
a second vehicle, it would be something that I it
(29:14):
would I would file it under either miscellaneous utility or
categories against Sports, high Performance Utility, UH garage, star garage,
baby or miscellaneous Scott. I would want something I could
take a road trip in and live in I would
get an RV, probably an airstream. Uh maybe. And I know, guys,
(29:36):
I know it's not high performance embracing. I just since
I was a kid. We talked about this in an
earlier episode. Since I was a kid, I always had
this idea of going on the open road and living
there and there and r vs. I know it might
sound like kind of an elderly person choice. I mean,
(29:58):
let's get the l fit in the room and pointed out.
But the problem that the problems with r vs are numerous. One,
the mileage is terrible, uh, to the handling his garbage.
Three uh parking just transporting it places is more of
a pain. Right. But even in the course of our
(30:23):
time recording these episodes, I've been storing away bits of
trivia to work on this um, this fantasy year long
road trip. You know, I would take this thing down
through Central America if I could, which seems like a
recipe for disaster. Intellectually, Scott, intellectually, I know this is
(30:44):
a terrible idea. It is, but but it seems the
the idea that you could you could drive around anywhere
and just crash when you felt like a poor choice
of words camp when you felt like it is, uh
is to me very appealing. And I know a lot
of people will say have been why don't you just
(31:05):
get a pick up and get a pick up cover
and you can just you know, like sleep and dad
or take a tan out and do that. I get
that too. I just for some reason, I like the
idea of a thing that is an apartment that can
go anywhere. There are much much better choices, and I know,
I don't know if that's cheating, but because you can
drive it on the road, it is road legal as
(31:27):
street legal. And yes, I was setting this up from
the moment you asked the question for to for it
to fit in our conversation. But man, can you imagine
like you could have, um, you you could drive somewhere
and say, oh that it's lovely this time of year
and the fall in New England. Uh so I'm gonna
(31:48):
stay out here, right, I'm just gonna go there. I'm
just gonna go there. And people do the same thing
on motorcycles. Uh So maybe that would be something if
I could get the if I could get the camp
being equipment right, you know, like just a pup tent
and so you know that's that's completely different without a
hard roof over your head. Oh yeah, I know, I
(32:08):
do know. Well, you know what, I think that's a
solid choice. I think, really yeah, I really do. I mean,
that's that's impressive that you know, you you thought about
this for decades, really about doing this, and I know
you talked about custom vans and your love of that
and that you could live in that if you wanted
to know. I think you're don't take this the wrong way.
It seems like you're like one step away from living
down by the river. And I don't mean a bad way.
(32:29):
I mean, like, I mean in a good way, Like
you want to be down there living by the river,
you know, like that's the place to be. And it's
kind of cool that you know you could you could
take it anywhere you want. Yeah, as long as you
have that freedom that that um, you know, freedom from
utility bills and you know, responsibility. If you were maybe
a freelance writer that could just do what you do
from the road, what a lifestyle, you know. That's that's true.
(32:53):
And I'll tell you something here. This is a little
bit of a tangent, but I think you'll enjoy it, Scott,
I think you'll enjoy it listeners, and know you my
actually know the guy I'm talking about. So there is
a venue here in Atlanta, right down the street from US,
right down Ponds, and it's known locally as the Big House.
Not the most creative name, I get it, but it's uh.
(33:14):
It's an older mansion, a legitimate mansion that somehow became
this weird artsy hangout place where they'll do shows. I've
been there for comedy shows before, stuff like that. And
when you go in there, it's hard to find the entrance.
There's a very old iron gate and the people who
(33:36):
live there are let's say, bohemian. Now they live there.
There are people who live or slash squat there and uh.
And right when you walk in the gate, yeah, there's
uh what used to be this really I'm sure beautiful
front yard, but now of course it doesn't look like great.
And there's and they still upkeep it. They just also
(33:58):
use it to park cars. And the most interesting thing
there is a school bus directly to the left when
you walk in, and it has been there, I don't
know how long. It's Bluebird school bus that's out of date,
it's been turned into a shotgun apartment and you walk
in through the door of the bus. There's a back exit,
(34:19):
the emergency exit that the kids would use. And I
have been in there and met the guy who was
currently living there, and of course I said, well, how
did you come to to live in this place? And
he said, oh, I inherited it from the guy who
lived there previously. And I was like, not, you don't
mean like legal inheritance, and it was like, oh, yeah, no, no, no,
(34:39):
he's kind of passed along. He gave. Yeah, he gave
this place to me. And the thing that was strange
was my first thought was like, is this drivable? Because
if it's drivable, it's worth it to me. I was
just gonna have that. Is it mobile or is this thing?
I think it's stuck? I think I think it sucked.
I mean, you would have to change out the tires,
you'd have to do lot of work to get it rolling.
(35:02):
Because you know, you can tell if you go into
if you're in a vehicle like that, just from the
way things are organized, you can tell if it's drivable. Well,
and not only that, yeah, exactly right, I mean, and
they and the engines you know, well, the way you
handle the interior would be completely different versus you know,
on a vehicle that is roadworthy versus one that isn't.
(35:23):
I mean, you know, anybody who has experience with boats
knows that you tie everything down, you put everything away
in a cabinet that locks and something, no matter what. Yeah,
every and same thing with r vs. I mean, it's
all it's all very logical that way. But yeah, that's interesting.
I really I knew that you had an interest in
in kind of that, and it sounds so derogatory. I said,
(35:43):
it's like it's like transient life or something. But I mean,
like the life of a traveler. I guess you know
where you're on the road constantly, and that'd be kind
of fun. That would be interesting. It would be cool
because we could do we do podcast dispatches from the road.
That'd be neat. But granted, the only reason I'm saying
that is because those trailers can get or those r
(36:06):
vs can get pretty expensive, the really high end ones,
you know, because they're at a certain point they're essentially
a bus. Well sure, yeah, I mean we're talking several
hundred thousand dollars near the cost of a of a
reasonable house. Yeah, more more a luxury house or a
luxury house. It depends on how what level you go
do with those, so it would be a lot of fun.
There was one There was this one guy and I
(36:28):
can't remember his name at the moment, who built an
amphibious r V that he had. He had the crazy
name for it, and his goal was to circumnavigate the
world because it was apparently seaworthy as well. That's some
big bodies of water to cross in a in an
(36:49):
r V. I don't think. I don't think it's plausible
to get across an ocean in an r V. No. No,
he started getting into storms in the North Atlanta ac
or something like that, where the swells are right, good, right,
good luck. I think. I mean sure. I mean it's interesting,
you know, to drive on a local lake, you know
or something. It's grealthily big. But when you get out
(37:11):
into you know, the Pacific and the Atlantic and other
bodies across the Pacific, yeah, that's rough. I just I
don't think it's not to not to uh personalized bubble,
but I don't think it's possible. The thing is, though,
that vehicle seems so cool, uh if if it were
(37:32):
not an RV, then I would probably go for a
garage darling and get a night like nice mid fifties
Chevy maybe, and then uh, take it to car shows,
be that Sunday driver who just who who goes way
(37:53):
too slow? So not a trailer queen that you know
never touches the ground. No, you have to drive it.
This is a driver. This is a driver. Okay, yeah,
and uh, I don't I don't know. There's something it
goes into collection in general, because there's this idea that
people have when they're collecting, if you're a car collector,
if you're collecting stamps anything, uh, or people who collect toys, right,
(38:16):
because there are a lot of people who do that.
And one thing that always comes up when I hear
about collectors is that there are so many people who
will say, I want to buy this thing, I want
to have it, but I will never touch it, I
will never use it, and no one else can. And
that's versus the people who say, well, I buy this
because I want to use it. For the purpose it's
(38:39):
being used, it seems weird to me. Unless we're talking
about an absolute museum piece, it seems weird to me.
To own a car that you would never drive. I
feel the same, you know what I mean? Yeah, I
guess I'm kind of in that in that position right now,
I'm never driving that stupid But well, well man, you're
making my decision sound kind of boring. What do you
(39:00):
You had a fantastic answer that was great. Oh hey man,
well I have to I have to defend it is
like the one of the most impractical, least cool things
you could get. No, I don't think so. I don't
think it's the least cool thing you can get. And
I don't know what that least cool thing would be.
But uh, I think an RV can be cool. It
depends on maybe what make and model you get. Yeah,
(39:21):
for sure. Well you could also hit your ride too
if you need to head just so you know, and
all that goes for you to Well what about you,
matt o. Um oh, you're saying I could hit your
ride with you? Yeah? Oh yeah, I think you're talking
about just hitch backing in general. Bad idea. What What
about you though? What what what quick car would you pick?
All right? I would uh man, see it's so boring.
I would get a truck. I get a pickup truck,
(39:43):
but specifically I would get a classic pickup truck. Well
maybe a F one fifty from a long long time OK. Yeah,
I would go something classic but durable. So it had
to be useful because I had I had a dream
a long long time ago about owning and I mean
like a a decade long dream about owning a Model
A pickup truck. I really wanted one. I wanted one bad.
(40:07):
And this is when I was having some success with
my third vehicles, you know, when I was able to
drive them and they were actually fun and you know,
I enjoyed driving them on weekends and stuff like that,
you know, maybe the occasional trip to work. Um, And
I thought, well, that'd be really cool to have this
old Model A pickup truck. And there's actually quite a
few of them out there. They made a ton of them,
and they're more durable than the Model T. I mean
I looked into, you know, the reasons to get that
(40:29):
versus a Model T pickup truck, and it seemed like
the Model A was the one to get. So like
early nineteen thirties thirty one, I guess exactly exactly, and
you know that they had the wet the metal wheels
versus the wooden wheels, and you know, you just had
the right, the right everything that I wanted right, And
then I realized that there's still I mean, there's still
a bit fragile, you know. Can you know you can't
(40:49):
really drive that up to the local um uh you know,
the the uh nursery and pick up a yard of
dirt in the back of one of those too much
weight if somebody wants help moving. You can't really pack
that thing up with a bunch of stuff repeatedly and
expect it to not be the worst for wear exactly right. Yeah,
I mean you can carry a limited amount of things
(41:10):
in it, and that's fine. But you know, again, it's
it's more of a novelty at this point than anything,
because well, they're they're approaching one years old. I mean,
they're getting there. That's not that's not a bad choice
at all. No, it's a fun choice. It would be fun.
But but but I think what I would do is
I would probably get something. You know, now that I'm
looking at the more practical side of this, is that
I would probably get something that would be practical, fun, unique,
(41:33):
and that would be like, let's say, like mid nineteen
fifties nineties, even pickup truck, but something that's way more
heavy duty. Yeah, it has a lot of style to
it that can be you know, kind of like almost
like a hot rod look. Uh, something that's you know,
kind of cool, but but still able to you know,
meet those utilitarian needs or tasks that I have for it. So,
(41:53):
you know, maybe going to pick up a few two
by fours at the Harvard stores and something that's out
of the ordinary for me. And I don't care if
it gets crashed. I don't care if the bed is
a little rusty. I don't care if somebody opens their
door into it at the at the you know, the
grocery store or something. It doesn't bother me because every
time you drive it, Um, you know, I'm just I'm
enjoying being and I'm enjoying the experience of driving it.
I'm enjoying working on and keeping it running. But it
(42:15):
also serves a purpose. It's not just like a it's
not just like, well, the car I have now that
you know, is that that four doors. I'm not really
going to take that to the hardware store and buy
stuff in it. And it's fun to cruise around and
like I should maybe take it for a drive up
and down you know the main dragon town or um,
get an ice cream cone on Sunday. But outside of that,
maybe an occasional show. But it's not really something that
(42:37):
you would just drive up to home depot and and
pick up the plumbing supplies you need or whatever bags
of mulch. You don't you don't do that. And with
this truck, I mean, it seems like there's a lot
of purposes to it would served the purpose of you know,
a lot of people what a lot of people use,
like a big suv for um, you could have a
toe hitch on it. You could you drag a trailer
with it. You should get a semi, get the well,
(43:00):
get the whole thing at the common get tractic the
impractical again, right if ye like it, you know with
somebody can't park inside. But yeah, you're right, that would
be cool to do too. I mean, but totally I
pray you have to have the space for something like that,
and I can't do it. It It would crack my driveway.
Well that you park it on the road, so you
crack the city's the city's property, you know, that's the
(43:21):
neighbors curb, not mine. Well, I guess you gotta you
gotta consider that. I mean, that's boring. And you know,
even alternate Joyce and I guess I if I were
to do something alternate, it would be a very small
British roadster, you know, classic roaster. Again, driving condition, not
show conditions, so that I could enjoy it. Because if
(43:42):
I felt like I was, you know, you know, walking
on eggshells every time I took it out of the garage,
I would be too nervous to drive it. But you
wouldn't really enjoy it. No, But if it was something
that I didn't mind, if you know, there's a branch
that sticks out on the road and accidentally, you know,
brush the edge of it or something, I wouldn't care. Um,
that would be fun. All right. So I'm gonna I'm
going to say, and this this occurred to me in
(44:04):
the course of this podcast. I'm going to say a
couple other impractical choices impractical for legal reasons, legal reason,
an ambulance, a firetruck, police vehicle. Right. Uh, you know,
even in this hypothetical situation, I think having a tank
(44:26):
would be ridiculous. I don't think that counts. No, not street.
That's not it's not street legal. Yeah, that's what I said.
So the others are though, and you can do that,
and people do do that to compete in competitions like
sure weekend competitions. They're ambulance races and stuff. Well not racist.
Well I didn't know that. Like shows, I was thinking, like,
(44:47):
you have the reproduction um police cars right right, and
you can get you can get um decommissioned police cars
at auctions, although I think it's a horrible idea because
those things get roaded pretty hard, that's true. But how
much fun would that be to have like a four
or forty interceptor or something you know under the hood?
Ye surprise anybody that pulled up to thee I'd say,
(45:09):
you keep thinking of I think you know clearly. One
of the reasons that this would be so impractical is
that unless they are decommissioned, it's illegal to impersonate a
police officer, a firefighter or e M. You know, the
ones that go to shows. They often have removable well
they have to have removable lights, I believe, yeah, and
decals and things like that so that you can you know,
(45:31):
transport it. I guess you can drive it without looking
like a real police officer, which is important, I mean,
but also Blues Brothers reproduction. You know, you can make
a car look like, yeah, a little raggedy, but fun.
I just I love the idea. I think I mentioned
to you once, uh several episodes back, maybe maybe a
(45:52):
year now, uh, that when I was growing up south
of south of Atlanta, there was a fire truck this
you know, the guy who ran the local Christmas tree
farm was also trying to sell this fire truck from
um I want to say, maybe the sixties, late sixties.
(46:12):
I didn't get to ever get closer, get inside of it.
My parents would not let me near it because that
was like my dream. I had one of those. You know,
you're in high school and no offense to high school listeners,
but sometimes, you know, you you have dreams that in
retrospect seemed kind of dumb. My big dream was, you know,
(46:33):
I thought it was going to be the king of
the high school parking lot with my uh my fire truck,
which which must you know, just the thought of the
upkeep on that probably to get a driving is insane. Probably,
you know, I've seen a lot of old fire trucks
for sale, and you know, things like Craigslist. Yeah, it
was definitely a market for it. One of the places
(46:54):
I used to park my MG in a storage area,
but I had to put it in stories for a while.
It was um an outdoor area. Well they had an
outdoor area that that somebody was selling a firetruck. But
it wasn't anything remarkable. It didn't have like the rolling
fenders and the big, the great, big, you know grill
on the front. It didn't look like you know, the
nineteen forties with the wooden you know, wooden ladders and
(47:16):
all that stuff. It was kind of a it's just
kind of a box. It's a box on wheels. It
wasn't anything remarkable, but still for sale. It's still a
fire truck, but nothing really you know, a standout, cool vehicle.
It would be kind of fun to have that for
just again for yeah, total novelty item, you know, just
something that's that's fun. But wouldn't you feel terrible if
(47:38):
one time you took it out and there was a
fire and you had to say, I'm not actually a
trained firefighter. I mean the tanks are empty. Sorry would
but but it's all that to say, uh, you know,
maybe for us right now, until we complete our volunteer
firefighting training. It's best for you and I and Noll
(47:58):
to take a ridal long in a fire truck. That yeah,
I'd that'd be good. Uh and listeners. This brings us
to one of the most important questions, which is what
about your third car? Right? Yeah? What's your choice? Which
which angle? Do you go with this? Completely? I practical?
You go completely practical with it? Do you take uh?
(48:19):
You know? Do you do you get the uh, the
RV like Ben said, the truck like I said? Or
do you go sports car? Or what what do you get?
I mean, yeah, certainly you wouldn't get a plug in
or a higher or an elector certainly wouldn't do that.
Or maybe you do, you know, tell it right in
and tell us why you would do that, because I don't.
I don't think there's really a good reason to do that. Um.
But what what way would you go with us? I mean,
(48:40):
there's got there's there's no wrong answer to this question.
Is it the is it time for the Bugatti? Is
that where you are in life? Wow? That would be
quite a third vehicle, that's there. Yeah, And you would
have to now talk about being careful when you take
that out. Oh you know, Okay, I know we're trying
(49:01):
to wrap up. I was at an auction house recently
and they had a classic Rolls Royce that was in
very rough condition. But how cool would it be to
say that you own a Rolls Royce. I mean, this
is the kind you know, with the spirit of Ecstasy
on the hood and everything on the great chrome radiator.
Beautiful car. It was rough. I mean it's really in
bad condition that the you know, the the wood on
(49:21):
the interior need to be sanded and refinished. Leather was
kind of cracked. And it was a right hand drive
vehicle and it was big and then had the right look.
Did you go for it? You know? What? What do
you do? There's there's so many choices out there, so
so listeners just tell us what you think, whether you know,
what way would you go with this? Quack right? It? Really?
I think it really depends on how much time you
(49:42):
have to put in it too, So let us know
the context too, uh, And the best way to do
that you can tell us or post pictures on our
Twitter or our Facebook where car stuff hs W both
of those. If you want to check out the podcasts
that we alluded to in this episode. Of course, visit
us at cars Stuff show dot com. Everything we've ever done,
(50:03):
which we both recently found out was more than seven
hundred episodes. And if you want to write to us
directly with limerick like we opened the top, please keep
it family friendly and there's a clean show. Otherwise you
won't make it to air. There's a clean show other
than a few times I curse. We'll still read it
and we'll make it there. We'll laugh, we might mention it,
but the best way to do that is to send
(50:24):
us an email directly. We are car stuff at how
stuff work dot com, so more on this and thousands
of other topics. There's a how stuff works dot com.
Let us know what you think. Send an email to
podcast and how stuff works dot com.
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from house stuff Works dot Com. I welcome
the car stuff. I'm Scott and I'm Ben. We are
here with our super producer. As always, ladies and gentlemen
know the mysterion Brown Good. Remember that oldies band question
(00:26):
Mark in the Mysterious? Was that it? Um? Maybe they
did tiers? Oh yeah, you're going a crack crack crack crack. Yeah,
how about um, let's see how you're gonna take an alternative?
How about Noel Nickla? We already used that. We already like, yeah, uh,
(00:46):
well you know, maybe uh maybe, Let's see what else.
There's the nebulous Noll nebulous Brown similar too. We're running
out of the good ones. We're running We're running out
of question Mark stuff. Yeah, well then why are we
running out? Because there's a very specific theme we're following here. Correct, Yes,
(01:07):
we're we're asking each other some questions that are unknown
to the other person. So it's another mystery show topic
day where I asked Ben a question that he has
only has no idea what I'm gonna ask him right now?
You will in three minutes from now, but not right now,
or maybe not. Maybe in three minutes you'll be completely confused.
I'll be even more baffled. But I will shed some
light on this. And now that I think about it,
(01:28):
Tiers was written by or performed rather by question Mark
and the mystery ends not mystery on very close, and
you know it's pretty close. I just go along with
this stuff. I don't really know music. I tried, but so,
oh yeah, you're right, then that's it was? What was
that nine? Playing that game? Nineteen? Isvo S six something like, Hey,
(01:53):
there's a two quick things that I'd like to update
our listeners, one prior to jumping into today's topic, and
we'll do the kind of quick But number one, man,
how did this happen? We've already published our seven hundredth
episode at this point, we did. It's happened so quickly.
I was thinking of the same thing. Well, I was
updating the car stuff site, you know, the car stuff
show dot com, and uh, and I realized, oh boy,
(02:15):
that number. There's a seven hundred on our RSS feed
and we let it come and go without much fanfare.
We tried to maybe ask some listeners if they would
write into some suggestions for what we can but um,
well flew past this, man, it has already happened. It
was the Rolling on Tires episode, the number seven hundred
of you know, out of are what last seven years?
(02:37):
Eight years? Also an episode where we spent the first
few minutes I think talking about Tennessee and creeks. That's right. Yeah,
so we were hanging out. It was pretty informal, but
that was a good episode. That was a fun episode
to record, as most of our episodes really, I mean
not a lot of them are like Plenteeth do you think, No,
I don't think so. Here and there, a few here
(02:58):
and there, a bit uphill. Yeah, jet fuel for one,
the good one, and uh oh, there's that one that
we never aired, oh man, which we shall never become again.
Never name it, will never name it. That was a
weird day. But also we are if if episodes are
going this quickly, that means that we are well on
our way to our one thousand episode. That's crazy, man,
(03:23):
it is crazy. Now there's another thing that uh, I'd
like to alert our listeners to, and that is the
fact that we have now received some limericks in the mail.
That's right, ladies and gentlemen, we have received some limericks
in the mail you're going to hear. Uh. Let's see
you want to do a couple today, I will do
a couple today, and I'm gonna save a couple for
the next episode. Maybe you can read the next one. Uh.
(03:43):
The very first limerick to arrive to Car Stuff with
from super fan Aaron Cooper. Yes, yeah, Aaron Cooper will
be familiar to those of you out there listening who
follow us on Twitter. Uh. He is the guy who occasionally,
uh makes pictures of me engaging with ha Honda Odyssey
(04:07):
in a way that I never would which is driving
it and a fez. And I think he created a
couple of clowns out of you and I when we're
doing the couple scary clowns out. He's a photoshop master, Yeah, exactly,
American pickers things like that, some fun stuff. Very talented
with the with the photoshop and hilarious. Exactly right. I'm
sure he's gonn appreciate that I say, the photoshop tool. Alright. So, um,
(04:30):
let's see the very first limerick that came to us,
and this is one of two from Aaron. He sent
another one the very same day. Um, here we here
we go. It's it's it's dedicated to you, Ben, in
a way, it's about you. You're the subject anyway. Oh,
I know, all right, here we go. There once was
a man named Ben bowing his sweet Monty Carlo was rolling.
(04:51):
He reads at the light with all of his might.
It's time to go Odyssey trolling and he says, true story.
I assume yeah, And I wrote back and said, confirmed
it was. It was a true story. Not bad, very good.
The Honda's trolled me though, point of order, that's true,
It's probably right. And he said, you know, I've been
trying to come up with something for Scott as well,
and trying to rhyme something. And if I don't know
(05:12):
if you guys are Tech Stuff listeners or not, but
I recently guest hosted on Tech Stuff and we talked
about hitch Bot with you know, myself and Jonathan, and
Jonathan kept bringing up this other robot called the love Bot,
and I had to giggle every time I heard it,
because I'm, of course, you know, like I'm like a
grade school kid. I can't I can't help myself. So
(05:32):
he kept he kept saying it. I think he's taunting
me with the term. Later on but I said, every
time I tried to get to the word, you know,
I got to the words Scott, I kept trying to
rhyme it with love bot, and I didn't think that
was appropriate for the show. So uh. He eventually did
come up with a good limerick that we can read
on air, and um, all right, here we go. You
want me to read it, all right, Scott Benjamin skilled
(05:53):
with the clutch and engines and throttles and such. His
car as a beast in theory. At least those whistle
tips though out so much. Yeah, that's why I thought
that was well written. Tie in with the whistle tips.
Oh man, the whistle tips episode was just crazy. And
his sister, I just I don't think her name was
Little Cis, wasn't it Little Ciss. It's just decorative. It's
(06:15):
purely for decorative purposes. Those whistle tips are hilarious. But
but nice work, Aaron. We really appreciate it. And those
are the very first two that we received. There's a
couple more in the pipeline here that we're gonna bring
up maybe in the next episode. And uh, and I
don't have good stuff coming in. Yeah, I'm excited too.
I'm excited to bring those to the air. But now Scott,
I have to tell you, my nerves are killing me.
(06:38):
Where are we uh? Where are we headed with this?
This is a simple one. You're not really gonna have
to sweat this at all. In fact, I want every
listener out there to think about this and and think
about it more than just for you know, just a
quick moment. Think about it in real terms, like if
you were really to do this, what would you choose?
And and here's my question to you been today, you've
got it. You've got a daily driver, right, yes, a
(07:00):
single day the driver vehicle. And uh, if you know
married people, they can extrapolate this to you've got you.
Probably your husband and wife and or wife has a
has a car as well. If you were to purchase
a a third vehicle, and I guess in your case,
a second vehicle, something that you rarely use, you know,
a weekend vehicle, what would that vehicle be? And why?
(07:22):
And here's why I asked this because it's a it's
a deeper question than you think. And added don't mean deep,
you know that it's challenging or anything, but but really
think about it, because there's a lot to kind of
mull over here. Your initial thought might be, um, might be, yeah,
I'd like to get a sports car, you know, something
completely impractical, something with two seats, something I can you know,
take up into the mountains and really uh, you know,
(07:42):
just thrash it through the through the hills. The other
thing would be, well, maybe maybe I want a truck,
you know, something I can go drive up to home
depot and bring home a load of wood because I'm
building a deck this summer. Maybe that's something that I
want to do. Maybe it's just an outright toy of
some kind, you know, maybe it's um, um, you know,
something that's com lately unusual, a classic vehicle of some
kind but complete, also completely impractical, or something that just
(08:05):
takes so much fuel to drive that you know you
wouldn't drive it to work daily. Yeah, there's no way
that you can drive this vehicle sixty miles you know,
you know, thirty each way to and from work. There's
just no way. And it's it's a good question to
what would your what would your second car, your non
daily driver being or second vehicle, let's say second and again,
if you're single, consider this your second vehicle. If you're
(08:25):
if you're married and you have two cars already, consider
this your third vehicle. Good good call good, an additional
vehicle that mainly sits parked in the grade of the
driveway or under the shed or whatever. Now we do
have we do have us uh, single listeners in our
audience who also own multiple cars. Yeah, and this, I
guess this kind of pertains to them too. I have
(08:46):
I'm married. My wife and I both have two vehicles.
We've recently changed our vehicles and you know, we switched
to new daily drivers. So I'd like to talk about
that a little bit because that has changed some things
in the dynamic of of you know, the way we
do things weekends. I guess really, yes, it has. And
uh and I have a third vehicle, which is that
project car that just goes nowhere, the Newport. Yeah, the
(09:07):
Newport which just sits there. I mean I had good intentions,
just like everybody else with any project car, but um,
it hasn't really done anything. And I get a lot
of flak for that from whom from the other side
of the marriage been from that. I don't want to
say specifically who, but it's don't get yourself one of
the two females that lives in my house. I have
a daughter as well. It's not her, and it's not
(09:27):
the bird and the birds. Oh yeah, the bird the birds.
Not saying much about but um, honestly, like, I mean,
I had big plans for that car. I was going
to um switch that switch that I guess flip it.
You know quickly that yeah, no, way didn't happen. But
you've done You've done a lot of work on it,
for sure. And I it's easy for me to say
(09:50):
what I'm about to say, Scott, because I have never
put a hand on the Newport, nor have I helped
in any way. I haven't seen it in personally. I
have never seen in person because I I you know,
i'd have to sneak into your garage. However, with all
that enormous caveat, it's not over yet. It's never over
until you decide to get rid of the car. The
(10:11):
honest truth is that that that car could be running
in ten minutes. Yeah, I mean it could be running, Attendant.
It's a running vehicle. It's just not a driving vehicle
because of uh, well things got the brakes. There's a
break master cylinder issue like the booster, whether there's a
fuel tank issue. It has a fuel tank, but it's
it's temporary fuel tank, isn't it in the trunk. It's
in the trunk. It's a giant marine cell fuel tank.
(10:32):
So it's a big one, but it's it just slides
around in there, and it's terribly dangerous some things like that.
But honestly, it could run in ten minutes. And that's
that's what keeps me hanging onto this thing. But but
I don't dare back it out of the driveway because
I'll take out maybe you know, my neighbor's car and
a mailbox on the way, and your neighbor has some
nice cars. Yeah, right, So anyways, a lot of people
(10:52):
fall trapped to that too, is that they have a
third car that they buy that then just sits there
and does nothing. And and I've I've fallen in of that.
I thought it wasn't going to I've had great success
with that in the past, owning owning a toy vehicle
that is completely impractical. The MG was one um I had.
Um let's see, I had the Testiva that was initially
(11:13):
my daily driver, but then I hung onto for a
while as a as a toy. Um, you know, just
some fun things along the way that um, you know,
I've had that. Uh, it was fun for they were
fun for weekend use. They were fun for occasional use,
but definitely not a daily driver. And and that's the question,
is that you know what fits you best for that
third or in some cases second continue to say a
(11:33):
third car, Um, is it as an suv? Is it
a truck? Is it? Is it maybe an old minivan?
As a station wagon? I mean rarely when you find
somebody that gets a station wagon, I can tell you
a couple of cars later on that clearly would make it,
in my opinion, a terrible third vehicle. And there's very
very few that fit that category. But I think you'll agree, yeah, there, Uh,
(11:55):
there are a couple of categories. It occurs to me.
I'm glad you mentioned categories, because one would write be
the sports car of the high performance, the weekend toy.
Another one would be the utility vehicle right inconvenient to drive,
but you can haul anything in it, and likely a
fuel hog as well, and on fuel hog typically because
(12:16):
they're bigger and they typically if you're talking about the
utility vehicle that has a you know V eight engine
and you're carrying weight in that vehicle with a lot
of money on fuel and maybe suspension items, who knows. Yeah.
And then there's and then there's what I would call
them like the Daddy's darling, the garage baby that only
comes out on weekends where the weather is nice. This
(12:38):
is the the the previously restored Austin Healy, right, Yeah,
it doesn't have a cobweb or a speck of dust
on it. And then let's make I would say, let's
make a fourth category and call that miscellaneous. So this
would be stuff like a this would be stuff like
a cross tracket. Okay, so you're talking like motorcycle, Um boy,
(13:02):
I don't. I was thinking cars mainly. But motorcycles are
fine because that's a road going vehicle. But what should
we include boats and things like that? And I don't
think so. I don't think we should include anything for
the air or water. I think it should just be
something you can store at your house right and take
onto from your driveway onto the road. So maybe we
(13:24):
also say they have to be street legal. Okay, fair enough,
that's fair enough. So so so no uh no kick
as race cars unfortunately had no track day vehicles, and
I understand that, you know, the temptation would be there
to to say something like that, But what if it's
a car that you could I mean, this, this would
this would I guess. Let's say that you join a
(13:46):
club like sec A Sports Car Club of America and
they've got a solo event that happens locally, and you
know you like to participate in that one and one
that's if you maybe maybe a state to weigh or something.
But it's a car that you can drive on the
road to the event. And a lot of people have
road you know, I guess street legal race cars that
they drive to local tracks to participate, you know, maybe
(14:07):
once a month in or something. That's totally fine. We
can include that. And that's again that that's again that's
another one of those really impractical groupings of vehicles because
which I think that goes into the sports high performance. Yeah,
I mean, because if they have a passenger seat, usually
uh usually they won't have a third seat. You know,
if you want to bring someone else along with and
you don't typically take your track day car out, you know,
(14:30):
for the weekend. It's not it's not the norm. I mean,
some people will do that, of course, but it's you know,
rare events, you know, like you'll take it out, maybe
you get an ice cream somewhere because it's fun to
do for you know, the cruise up and down Woodward
Avenue maybe or something outside of that. Um, I don't know.
It's it's a pretty rare sight to see a true
race car on the road. That is that is absolutely true.
(14:52):
I would say, Okay, I have thought about this question
before for a long time, and I am torn because
I think there are I think in all four of
the categories we've set up, there are things that I
want desperately. And you know how it is when you
(15:14):
really really want something, this psychological thing occurs in your
head and you begin to confuse that want with a
knee See we're getting we said this many times, emotional
decision because it comes an emotional decision versus a logical decision,
right right, So you gotta balance between you gotta balance
between emotional and logic. Like how cool would it be
(15:37):
to have a t Rex? You know, like where we go?
I've been seeing more of those uh more, um wait,
not specific not specifically t Rex, but but more and
more three wheeled vehicles around Atlanta. You know what, I'm
super glad you said this year. I remember not long
ago I posted on our Facebook page there was a
slingshot Yeah at a local tired Yeah. Yeah. It was
(15:59):
an Into one, a red one or whatever. This this
very morning when I drove by that same spot. Now,
it's a it's a company that will do modifications to
that specific type of vehicles, so it's not unusual to
see it there. It was. There was a white one
parking in the same parking lot, so it's clearly a
different vehicle and a different model it had. It was
maybe an up you know, an up level to whatever
the slingshot is. I don't even know off the top
(16:19):
of my head what that is. Um, but you're right.
I'm starting to see more of those three wheel vehicles
that are open top almost like um, you know, the
kind that you have to wear a helmet when you're
right Where. Where have you seen one recently? I want
to say, let's see where was I. I was driving
from here to Decatur. So for anybody who's unfamiliar with Atlanta,
(16:43):
which I I assume maybe most people listening, Uh, Atlanta
is surrounded by other smaller towns like a lot of
other big cities, and Decatur is a city slightly to
the east, and it's a very short drive, and it
seems almost as if you never really leave Atlanta to
get to Decaturs. You can still ride the train there.
It's still within the interstate circle. Yeah, the Atlanta metro area,
(17:06):
I guess. Yeah, it's definitely close by. So on that
short drive you were able to see one of these
three wheel vehicles. Yeah, and now wouldn't that be a
blast to have something like that or a three or
a third vehicle or second vehicle. Yeah, that'd be fun.
But I still can't you know, it's still kind of
a toy, well absolute toy, sure, I mean, because you're
not going to carry anything in there. I mean I
think there's a what it equates to almost like a
(17:28):
saddle bag, you know, for a motorcycle storage. And there's
a shotgun seat. Yeah, there is. So if you go
to the grocery store in this thing, hard to believe
you would, but if you go to the grocery store
in this um, you know, you can maybe put a
couple of bags next to you, you know, in that area,
and that's about it. Yeah, absolutely uh, covered parking. And
I know, for some reason, I know that the you
(17:50):
could encounter some similar issues with a really nice motorcycle, right,
you want to keep that inside, keep that covered absolutely
and safe and safe. Yeah, but it seems for some
reason a motorcycle seems more uh an orthodox too will
motorcycle seems more appealing than a three wheeled slingshot. You know,
you can say that about almost any one of these
(18:10):
cars that we're talking about. Almost. I mean, I know
that some people are gonna buy, you know, that really
beat up old suv and keep it outside. You know,
maybe maybe throw a tarp on it, you know, throw
a leaky tarp on top of it. And that's fine.
But um, for a lot of people with these toy
vehicles or the project car, like that's stupid project car.
Mine has been in there for five years. I've been
parking my daily driver outside on the driveway. You know,
(18:32):
that's my that's my punishment, Ben and uh and I
when I got outside, it's super hot, it's covered with leaves,
it's got hurt on it, you know, and the birds
their visits. Yeah, so it never stays clean. I mean
I washed my car and it stays clean for a
day and at that and then the next day it's
it's over with. But um, that's one of the things
I keep thinking about, Like, if I do think about
getting rid of it, I think, well, it'd be nice
to park in the garage, But then I don't have
(18:54):
anything in any toy. And that's a crazy thing to think,
because right now it's as if I don't have anything.
I don't even work on it. I don't really get
any enjoyment out of it at this point until I
until I tackle that again. So there's so many like
little traps that you fall into with these things like this,
and that's one of them is that you know you
you you buy it with the best intentions. But let's
(19:15):
say you buy that old pickup truck and you think, well,
it's gonna be a great vehicle for me to run
out to the lumber yard or up to um, I
don't know, the local you know, stone place and pick
up a yard of stone for the for the yard
or whatever. Yeah, it's nice to think of that, but
what if you realize, like, well, this thing is breaking
down me all the time. It's not even reliable enough
to get you know, the the fifteen miles that I
(19:36):
need to go to pick up a pallet of sod
or whatever. Then it becomes just kind of a thorn
in your side. Um, it's it's difficult, you know, do
you get rid of it or do you just you
spend a lot of money on that versus your cars
that you drive daily. Um, all the stuff is things
to consider when you're doing talking about your third vehicle.
And then are we are we thinking of this with
(19:57):
a price range of mind? Or is price no object?
Prices no object? Because everybody has their own level, you know,
what they're comfortable with. You know, you might want to buy. Uh,
the neighbor might be selling his old pickup truck for
five in our bucks, the or or you know whatever
it happens to be. Um, something of interest that that's
a thousand dollars, but somebody else might be interested in buying.
Like we said that old Austin Healey that it's twenty
(20:17):
one dollars something like that. Everybody has their own levels,
so you know, sky's the limit on this bend. Whatever
you're comfortable with. Um, that's what we'll go with. So
before we get to some of our picks, before you
get to my pick, uh, what are what are some
cars that would make terrible oh, you know, third cars.
(20:38):
I was thinking about this on the way end this morning.
And I've been thinking about this topic overall, and and
I'd always been thinking about what would be the best ones,
what would be the best choices or you know, particular
for for us, you know, like me and you, or
what would be the best for um, you know, people
that we know in the office. And I was thinking, well,
I'm thinking about this wrong. There's also got to be
a category of cars that you really shouldn't buy, is
(20:59):
that they're vehicle And it's kind of it'll make sense
when you know, I have a strong opinion that the
third vehicle, the extra vehicle in a family, should not
be a plug in hybrid or an electric vehicle. And
the reason is because it seems like those are what
you would buy for your daily use. That's your bread
(21:20):
and butter car, that's your that's your way to get
it from work, A commuter, a cheap vehicle that's not
the fun one. That's not the fun one. And and okay,
I understand you can get a you know, a Tesla
Roadster or something like that from you know, a decade back,
that's a lot of fun and maybe maybe that's maybe
that's one exception to this rule. But I would say
that almost everybody can agree with me on this fact
(21:41):
that you don't buy a Nissan Leaf as your third
vehicle as I mean, sure, it's it's it might be interesting.
It's an interesting vehicle down the fun one no or
you know Tesla. Sure, that's that's exciting, and it could
be kind of a fun, you know, toy, But that's
a one hundred thousand dollar toy. Yeah, that's that's the
difference than that one. Now, if if it was to
(22:02):
come down in price by you know, third I could
see maybe some people starting to buy them just as
kind of a novelty idea, which is ultimately the plan.
But it's not going to be that current model. It's
gonna be something much more like a much more sedate. Yeah.
And I don't think you'd buy a plug in hybrid
like the Chevy Volt or something like that as a
third vehicle. I just don't. I don't see it. I see, yeah,
(22:23):
I see that point, and I think it's I think
it's a good point. There's also there's also the question
of is this a vehicle that you just have that
you previously upgraded from one and it's just like leftover.
You know, that's a possibility. In that case, I could
see something like not not a hybrid, So I don't
I don't know if enough time has passed yet for that.
(22:45):
But uh, of course, to say nothing of electric vehicles.
But I think a lot of people probably end up
with their third vehicle being you know, like a mid
nineties Honda that didn't that you know, it wasn't broken,
but it was time for a new car, and so
instead of selling it, they kept it. And now maybe
(23:05):
they're waiting for their kid to turn sixteen or go
to college or something like that. Yeah, yeah, and then
it becomes the kid's car. But then you're back to
two vehicles, and then you get and that's when you
get the coon tosh exactly right. Yeah, okay, So you
know that's a that's a good point. And though that that,
you know, a lot of times you'll have an STV
that has a trailer hitch and you realize, well, I
(23:27):
need that for the boat. I have to pull the
trailer that holds you know, the load of wood that
I get every fall. Sure, so you realize, well, jeez,
we can't get rid of that. And besides that, it's
not really cost any much of anything. It's reliable, insurance
is cheap, especially if it's going to be our third vehicle.
We're barely driving it. Um, there's a lot of there's
so many angles to this, but I guess I'm I'm
more concerned with you know, you and I choosing one
(23:49):
right now, Like if we don't have a third vehicle,
if we were to pick a third vehicle, and what
would that be? And just real quick, if you don't mind,
give another minute to think about your choice, Okay, Um,
I had said that I was going to tell you
kind of like what had happened with with my wife
vehicle and my vehicle, and I know how it changed
your routine. And I think this happens often with people,
is that you know you, you change vehicles. And here's
(24:11):
the way I kind of view this is that sometimes
a couple's primary car decision or choice of what they
what they purchased, you know, for that for that daily driver,
is based on what the other spouse drives daily to
work as well. Oh sure, it's like for people for
for people who are not card people, or for people
who are in like a family unit. It's almost like
(24:33):
when you go to the menu of a restaurant, you
don't want to order the same thing. Yes, yes, that's
a that's a very good way to put it into
general terms. Because here's what we had. I I used
to have a hatchback, like a very economical hashback. We
meant for long drives. You know, we could drive it.
It was comfortable, um, but it was it was good
for getting um you know, like in northern Georgia or
(24:55):
something like the shorter shorter drive. Not not the bigger
long road trips by what it means, but um, it
was economical. And my wife had a Honda Element. And
the inside the Element. I don't know if anybody knows
this or not, but when the the Honda Element is
a very deceptive vehicle. Inside it's like a school bus.
It's huge inside. And the the way that they have
(25:16):
designed that vehicle with a flat floor and the way
you can fold the seats up to the windows on
the sides and everything, you can carry just about anything
in that. It's a great car. It's a really good
utility type vehicle, not a truck but close to it.
And you know, we we were comfortable tying the Christmas
tree on top of that. In the wintertime, we were
fine picking up a piece of furniture and putting it
in the back, you know, or whatever it happened to be,
(25:36):
the stuff that we're going to donate, you know, taking
the old lawnmower to donate. You know that there was
no problem. You put it on a blanket and you
throw it in the back. Now she drives a brand
new it's a least vehicle, but it's a brand new
Deep Renegade, and it's it's very very small inside. Now
I know it's a utility vehicle, but it's a small
utility vehicle, sport utility and U like a addically different
(26:00):
inside as far as space goes. And we haven't taken
a road trip in it yet, you know, the long distance,
because we we would do that in the element, because
we had room for luggage. We had rooms for Christmas.
You know, we're traveling north for Christmas. We had room
to bring things back in that vehicle. I don't know
what we're gonna do now, we may end up being
stuck in my car, which is a four door Sedan
(26:21):
which I bought for very practical reasons. Four doors if
you get you know, three or four people in and
out of UM had some trunk space. UM. It's just
more comfortable for cruising around, you know, shorter distance trips
like you know, maybe UM in North Georgia. But I
think this one maybe our our long distance traveler now
as well, because it just seems to be more comfortable
than the Renegade. No, the Volkswagen is a little more
(26:45):
comfortable than the rate. I've seen the Volkswagen and say, yeah,
that's I'm not I'm not saying anything bad about the Renegade.
I'm just saying that, you know, we went from something
that had a lot of interior space and very utility
to something that is uh less space, and it just
it with being a least and everything. I don't really
want to get it to beat up or anything. That's
(27:05):
That's what I was about to say. As we went
to the we used to go to the Animal Safari
that's the south of town here, and it's one of
those places where you drive around with your windows down
and feed the animals and they wander up and they
scratched the hell out of your vehicle with their giant
horns and you've got things like a giraffe with its
head inside the car, you know, licking the steering wheel
and stuff. It's one of those crazy places. We were
(27:26):
totally comfortable taking the Element there, but I don't think
we're gonna take this least, uh you know, renegade there.
And I'm certainly not going to drive my Volkswagen on
that on that you know dirt track that goes around
there with these horned vehicles licking the car all over.
Too good, they grows, So you know what, I am
too good for that too. I wouldn't do that with
my civic hatchback either. I just I just wouldn't stand
(27:46):
for it. But she had no problem letting the you know,
the horns scratched the hell out of the side of
the car. But um, anyways, I've really digressed here. But
I'm telling you that people choose their vehicle based on
what the spouse zones as sure, and that happens all
the time. So where does that leave you for a
third vehicle? Yeah? Why the door is wide open. The
door is wide openly get that point, because you've both
(28:08):
put the time in with your primary vehicles to kind
of satisfy whatever practical needs you have. Maybe it's time
for that accurate NSX, or maybe it's time for you know,
the motorcycle. Do you want it? Sure? Sure? So you
wanted what's what? Let me do you want to give
me to give your choice or your choice first? You
want me to give my choice first? Let's see. I
(28:29):
will give you the choice. I'm feeling right now, but
I'll tell you in advance. You're probably not gonna like it. No,
it's not gonna be a Nissan Leaf, is it? No?
Oh good, come on man. That I don't mean to
seem offended, but well, all right, here's the thing. We're
(28:50):
in a little bit different situation. I live, I live
on my own by myself, and I have one vehicle
and I'm I'm in a pretty fine spot with it,
no complaints. But if I were to get a second thing, right,
and let's just say, the vehicle live now is fine,
satisfies all the other stuff. If I were to get
a second vehicle, it would be something that I it
(29:14):
would I would file it under either miscellaneous utility or
categories against Sports, high Performance Utility, UH garage, star garage,
baby or miscellaneous Scott. I would want something I could
take a road trip in and live in I would
get an RV, probably an airstream. Uh maybe. And I know, guys,
(29:36):
I know it's not high performance embracing. I just since
I was a kid. We talked about this in an
earlier episode. Since I was a kid, I always had
this idea of going on the open road and living
there and there and r vs. I know it might
sound like kind of an elderly person choice. I mean,
(29:58):
let's get the l fit in the room and pointed out.
But the problem that the problems with r vs are numerous. One,
the mileage is terrible, uh, to the handling his garbage.
Three uh parking just transporting it places is more of
a pain. Right. But even in the course of our
(30:23):
time recording these episodes, I've been storing away bits of
trivia to work on this um, this fantasy year long
road trip. You know, I would take this thing down
through Central America if I could, which seems like a
recipe for disaster. Intellectually, Scott, intellectually, I know this is
(30:44):
a terrible idea. It is, but but it seems the
the idea that you could you could drive around anywhere
and just crash when you felt like a poor choice
of words camp when you felt like it is, uh
is to me very appealing. And I know a lot
of people will say have been why don't you just
(31:05):
get a pick up and get a pick up cover
and you can just you know, like sleep and dad
or take a tan out and do that. I get
that too. I just for some reason, I like the
idea of a thing that is an apartment that can
go anywhere. There are much much better choices, and I know,
I don't know if that's cheating, but because you can
drive it on the road, it is road legal as
(31:27):
street legal. And yes, I was setting this up from
the moment you asked the question for to for it
to fit in our conversation. But man, can you imagine
like you could have, um, you you could drive somewhere
and say, oh that it's lovely this time of year
and the fall in New England. Uh so I'm gonna
(31:48):
stay out here, right, I'm just gonna go there. I'm
just gonna go there. And people do the same thing
on motorcycles. Uh So maybe that would be something if
I could get the if I could get the camp
being equipment right, you know, like just a pup tent
and so you know that's that's completely different without a
hard roof over your head. Oh yeah, I know, I
(32:08):
do know. Well, you know what, I think that's a
solid choice. I think, really yeah, I really do. I mean,
that's that's impressive that you know, you you thought about
this for decades, really about doing this, and I know
you talked about custom vans and your love of that
and that you could live in that if you wanted
to know. I think you're don't take this the wrong way.
It seems like you're like one step away from living
down by the river. And I don't mean a bad way.
(32:29):
I mean, like, I mean in a good way, Like
you want to be down there living by the river,
you know, like that's the place to be. And it's
kind of cool that you know you could you could
take it anywhere you want. Yeah, as long as you
have that freedom that that um, you know, freedom from
utility bills and you know, responsibility. If you were maybe
a freelance writer that could just do what you do
from the road, what a lifestyle, you know. That's that's true.
(32:53):
And I'll tell you something here. This is a little
bit of a tangent, but I think you'll enjoy it, Scott,
I think you'll enjoy it listeners, and know you my
actually know the guy I'm talking about. So there is
a venue here in Atlanta, right down the street from US,
right down Ponds, and it's known locally as the Big House.
Not the most creative name, I get it, but it's uh.
(33:14):
It's an older mansion, a legitimate mansion that somehow became
this weird artsy hangout place where they'll do shows. I've
been there for comedy shows before, stuff like that. And
when you go in there, it's hard to find the entrance.
There's a very old iron gate and the people who
(33:36):
live there are let's say, bohemian. Now they live there.
There are people who live or slash squat there and uh.
And right when you walk in the gate, yeah, there's
uh what used to be this really I'm sure beautiful
front yard, but now of course it doesn't look like great.
And there's and they still upkeep it. They just also
(33:58):
use it to park cars. And the most interesting thing
there is a school bus directly to the left when
you walk in, and it has been there, I don't
know how long. It's Bluebird school bus that's out of date,
it's been turned into a shotgun apartment and you walk
in through the door of the bus. There's a back exit,
(34:19):
the emergency exit that the kids would use. And I
have been in there and met the guy who was
currently living there, and of course I said, well, how
did you come to to live in this place? And
he said, oh, I inherited it from the guy who
lived there previously. And I was like, not, you don't
mean like legal inheritance, and it was like, oh, yeah, no, no, no,
(34:39):
he's kind of passed along. He gave. Yeah, he gave
this place to me. And the thing that was strange
was my first thought was like, is this drivable? Because
if it's drivable, it's worth it to me. I was
just gonna have that. Is it mobile or is this thing?
I think it's stuck? I think I think it sucked.
I mean, you would have to change out the tires,
you'd have to do lot of work to get it rolling.
(35:02):
Because you know, you can tell if you go into
if you're in a vehicle like that, just from the
way things are organized, you can tell if it's drivable. Well,
and not only that, yeah, exactly right, I mean, and
they and the engines you know, well, the way you
handle the interior would be completely different versus you know,
on a vehicle that is roadworthy versus one that isn't.
(35:23):
I mean, you know, anybody who has experience with boats
knows that you tie everything down, you put everything away
in a cabinet that locks and something, no matter what. Yeah,
every and same thing with r vs. I mean, it's
all it's all very logical that way. But yeah, that's interesting.
I really I knew that you had an interest in
in kind of that, and it sounds so derogatory. I said,
(35:43):
it's like it's like transient life or something. But I mean,
like the life of a traveler. I guess you know
where you're on the road constantly, and that'd be kind
of fun. That would be interesting. It would be cool
because we could do we do podcast dispatches from the road.
That'd be neat. But granted, the only reason I'm saying
that is because those trailers can get or those r
(36:06):
vs can get pretty expensive, the really high end ones,
you know, because they're at a certain point they're essentially
a bus. Well sure, yeah, I mean we're talking several
hundred thousand dollars near the cost of a of a
reasonable house. Yeah, more more a luxury house or a
luxury house. It depends on how what level you go
do with those, so it would be a lot of fun.
There was one There was this one guy and I
(36:28):
can't remember his name at the moment, who built an
amphibious r V that he had. He had the crazy
name for it, and his goal was to circumnavigate the
world because it was apparently seaworthy as well. That's some
big bodies of water to cross in a in an
(36:49):
r V. I don't think. I don't think it's plausible
to get across an ocean in an r V. No. No,
he started getting into storms in the North Atlanta ac
or something like that, where the swells are right, good, right,
good luck. I think. I mean sure. I mean it's interesting,
you know, to drive on a local lake, you know
or something. It's grealthily big. But when you get out
(37:11):
into you know, the Pacific and the Atlantic and other
bodies across the Pacific, yeah, that's rough. I just I
don't think it's not to not to uh personalized bubble,
but I don't think it's possible. The thing is, though,
that vehicle seems so cool, uh if if it were
(37:32):
not an RV, then I would probably go for a
garage darling and get a night like nice mid fifties
Chevy maybe, and then uh, take it to car shows,
be that Sunday driver who just who who goes way
(37:53):
too slow? So not a trailer queen that you know
never touches the ground. No, you have to drive it.
This is a driver. This is a driver. Okay, yeah,
and uh, I don't I don't know. There's something it
goes into collection in general, because there's this idea that
people have when they're collecting, if you're a car collector,
if you're collecting stamps anything, uh, or people who collect toys, right,
(38:16):
because there are a lot of people who do that.
And one thing that always comes up when I hear
about collectors is that there are so many people who
will say, I want to buy this thing, I want
to have it, but I will never touch it, I
will never use it, and no one else can. And
that's versus the people who say, well, I buy this
because I want to use it. For the purpose it's
(38:39):
being used, it seems weird to me. Unless we're talking
about an absolute museum piece, it seems weird to me.
To own a car that you would never drive. I
feel the same, you know what I mean? Yeah, I
guess I'm kind of in that in that position right now,
I'm never driving that stupid But well, well man, you're
making my decision sound kind of boring. What do you
(39:00):
You had a fantastic answer that was great. Oh hey man,
well I have to I have to defend it is
like the one of the most impractical, least cool things
you could get. No, I don't think so. I don't
think it's the least cool thing you can get. And
I don't know what that least cool thing would be.
But uh, I think an RV can be cool. It
depends on maybe what make and model you get. Yeah,
(39:21):
for sure. Well you could also hit your ride too
if you need to head just so you know, and
all that goes for you to Well what about you,
matt o. Um oh, you're saying I could hit your
ride with you? Yeah? Oh yeah, I think you're talking
about just hitch backing in general. Bad idea. What What
about you though? What what what quick car would you pick?
All right? I would uh man, see it's so boring.
I would get a truck. I get a pickup truck,
(39:43):
but specifically I would get a classic pickup truck. Well
maybe a F one fifty from a long long time OK. Yeah,
I would go something classic but durable. So it had
to be useful because I had I had a dream
a long long time ago about owning and I mean
like a a decade long dream about owning a Model
A pickup truck. I really wanted one. I wanted one bad.
(40:07):
And this is when I was having some success with
my third vehicles, you know, when I was able to
drive them and they were actually fun and you know,
I enjoyed driving them on weekends and stuff like that,
you know, maybe the occasional trip to work. Um, And
I thought, well, that'd be really cool to have this
old Model A pickup truck. And there's actually quite a
few of them out there. They made a ton of them,
and they're more durable than the Model T. I mean
I looked into, you know, the reasons to get that
(40:29):
versus a Model T pickup truck, and it seemed like
the Model A was the one to get. So like
early nineteen thirties thirty one, I guess exactly exactly, and
you know that they had the wet the metal wheels
versus the wooden wheels, and you know, you just had
the right, the right everything that I wanted right, And
then I realized that there's still I mean, there's still
a bit fragile, you know. Can you know you can't
(40:49):
really drive that up to the local um uh you know,
the the uh nursery and pick up a yard of
dirt in the back of one of those too much
weight if somebody wants help moving. You can't really pack
that thing up with a bunch of stuff repeatedly and
expect it to not be the worst for wear exactly right. Yeah,
I mean you can carry a limited amount of things
(41:10):
in it, and that's fine. But you know, again, it's
it's more of a novelty at this point than anything,
because well, they're they're approaching one years old. I mean,
they're getting there. That's not that's not a bad choice
at all. No, it's a fun choice. It would be fun.
But but but I think what I would do is
I would probably get something. You know, now that I'm
looking at the more practical side of this, is that
I would probably get something that would be practical, fun, unique,
(41:33):
and that would be like, let's say, like mid nineteen
fifties nineties, even pickup truck, but something that's way more
heavy duty. Yeah, it has a lot of style to
it that can be you know, kind of like almost
like a hot rod look. Uh, something that's you know,
kind of cool, but but still able to you know,
meet those utilitarian needs or tasks that I have for it. So,
(41:53):
you know, maybe going to pick up a few two
by fours at the Harvard stores and something that's out
of the ordinary for me. And I don't care if
it gets crashed. I don't care if the bed is
a little rusty. I don't care if somebody opens their
door into it at the at the you know, the
grocery store or something. It doesn't bother me because every
time you drive it, Um, you know, I'm just I'm
enjoying being and I'm enjoying the experience of driving it.
I'm enjoying working on and keeping it running. But it
(42:15):
also serves a purpose. It's not just like a it's
not just like, well, the car I have now that
you know, is that that four doors. I'm not really
going to take that to the hardware store and buy
stuff in it. And it's fun to cruise around and
like I should maybe take it for a drive up
and down you know the main dragon town or um,
get an ice cream cone on Sunday. But outside of that,
maybe an occasional show. But it's not really something that
(42:37):
you would just drive up to home depot and and
pick up the plumbing supplies you need or whatever bags
of mulch. You don't you don't do that. And with
this truck, I mean, it seems like there's a lot
of purposes to it would served the purpose of you know,
a lot of people what a lot of people use,
like a big suv for um, you could have a
toe hitch on it. You could you drag a trailer
with it. You should get a semi, get the well,
(43:00):
get the whole thing at the common get tractic the
impractical again, right if ye like it, you know with
somebody can't park inside. But yeah, you're right, that would
be cool to do too. I mean, but totally I
pray you have to have the space for something like that,
and I can't do it. It It would crack my driveway.
Well that you park it on the road, so you
crack the city's the city's property, you know, that's the
(43:21):
neighbors curb, not mine. Well, I guess you gotta you
gotta consider that. I mean, that's boring. And you know,
even alternate Joyce and I guess I if I were
to do something alternate, it would be a very small
British roadster, you know, classic roaster. Again, driving condition, not
show conditions, so that I could enjoy it. Because if
(43:42):
I felt like I was, you know, you know, walking
on eggshells every time I took it out of the garage,
I would be too nervous to drive it. But you
wouldn't really enjoy it. No, But if it was something
that I didn't mind, if you know, there's a branch
that sticks out on the road and accidentally, you know,
brush the edge of it or something, I wouldn't care. Um,
that would be fun. All right. So I'm gonna I'm
going to say, and this this occurred to me in
(44:04):
the course of this podcast. I'm going to say a
couple other impractical choices impractical for legal reasons, legal reason,
an ambulance, a firetruck, police vehicle. Right. Uh, you know,
even in this hypothetical situation, I think having a tank
(44:26):
would be ridiculous. I don't think that counts. No, not street.
That's not it's not street legal. Yeah, that's what I said.
So the others are though, and you can do that,
and people do do that to compete in competitions like
sure weekend competitions. They're ambulance races and stuff. Well not racist.
Well I didn't know that. Like shows, I was thinking, like,
(44:47):
you have the reproduction um police cars right right, and
you can get you can get um decommissioned police cars
at auctions, although I think it's a horrible idea because
those things get roaded pretty hard, that's true. But how
much fun would that be to have like a four
or forty interceptor or something you know under the hood?
Ye surprise anybody that pulled up to thee I'd say,
(45:09):
you keep thinking of I think you know clearly. One
of the reasons that this would be so impractical is
that unless they are decommissioned, it's illegal to impersonate a
police officer, a firefighter or e M. You know, the
ones that go to shows. They often have removable well
they have to have removable lights, I believe, yeah, and
decals and things like that so that you can you know,
(45:31):
transport it. I guess you can drive it without looking
like a real police officer, which is important, I mean,
but also Blues Brothers reproduction. You know, you can make
a car look like, yeah, a little raggedy, but fun.
I just I love the idea. I think I mentioned
to you once, uh several episodes back, maybe maybe a
(45:52):
year now, uh, that when I was growing up south
of south of Atlanta, there was a fire truck this
you know, the guy who ran the local Christmas tree
farm was also trying to sell this fire truck from
um I want to say, maybe the sixties, late sixties.
(46:12):
I didn't get to ever get closer, get inside of it.
My parents would not let me near it because that
was like my dream. I had one of those. You know,
you're in high school and no offense to high school listeners,
but sometimes, you know, you you have dreams that in
retrospect seemed kind of dumb. My big dream was, you know,
(46:33):
I thought it was going to be the king of
the high school parking lot with my uh my fire truck,
which which must you know, just the thought of the
upkeep on that probably to get a driving is insane. Probably,
you know, I've seen a lot of old fire trucks
for sale, and you know, things like Craigslist. Yeah, it
was definitely a market for it. One of the places
(46:54):
I used to park my MG in a storage area,
but I had to put it in stories for a while.
It was um an outdoor area. Well they had an
outdoor area that that somebody was selling a firetruck. But
it wasn't anything remarkable. It didn't have like the rolling
fenders and the big, the great, big, you know grill
on the front. It didn't look like you know, the
nineteen forties with the wooden you know, wooden ladders and
(47:16):
all that stuff. It was kind of a it's just
kind of a box. It's a box on wheels. It
wasn't anything remarkable, but still for sale. It's still a
fire truck, but nothing really you know, a standout, cool vehicle.
It would be kind of fun to have that for
just again for yeah, total novelty item, you know, just
something that's that's fun. But wouldn't you feel terrible if
(47:38):
one time you took it out and there was a
fire and you had to say, I'm not actually a
trained firefighter. I mean the tanks are empty. Sorry would
but but it's all that to say, uh, you know,
maybe for us right now, until we complete our volunteer
firefighting training. It's best for you and I and Noll
(47:58):
to take a ridal long in a fire truck. That yeah,
I'd that'd be good. Uh and listeners. This brings us
to one of the most important questions, which is what
about your third car? Right? Yeah? What's your choice? Which
which angle? Do you go with this? Completely? I practical?
You go completely practical with it? Do you take uh?
(48:19):
You know? Do you do you get the uh, the
RV like Ben said, the truck like I said? Or
do you go sports car? Or what what do you get?
I mean, yeah, certainly you wouldn't get a plug in
or a higher or an elector certainly wouldn't do that.
Or maybe you do, you know, tell it right in
and tell us why you would do that, because I don't.
I don't think there's really a good reason to do that. Um.
But what what way would you go with us? I mean,
(48:40):
there's got there's there's no wrong answer to this question.
Is it the is it time for the Bugatti? Is
that where you are in life? Wow? That would be
quite a third vehicle, that's there. Yeah, And you would
have to now talk about being careful when you take
that out. Oh you know, Okay, I know we're trying
(49:01):
to wrap up. I was at an auction house recently
and they had a classic Rolls Royce that was in
very rough condition. But how cool would it be to
say that you own a Rolls Royce. I mean, this
is the kind you know, with the spirit of Ecstasy
on the hood and everything on the great chrome radiator.
Beautiful car. It was rough. I mean it's really in
bad condition that the you know, the the wood on
(49:21):
the interior need to be sanded and refinished. Leather was
kind of cracked. And it was a right hand drive
vehicle and it was big and then had the right look.
Did you go for it? You know? What? What do
you do? There's there's so many choices out there, so
so listeners just tell us what you think, whether you know,
what way would you go with this? Quack right? It? Really?
I think it really depends on how much time you
(49:42):
have to put in it too, So let us know
the context too, uh, And the best way to do
that you can tell us or post pictures on our
Twitter or our Facebook where car stuff hs W both
of those. If you want to check out the podcasts
that we alluded to in this episode. Of course, visit
us at cars Stuff show dot com. Everything we've ever done,
(50:03):
which we both recently found out was more than seven
hundred episodes. And if you want to write to us
directly with limerick like we opened the top, please keep
it family friendly and there's a clean show. Otherwise you
won't make it to air. There's a clean show other
than a few times I curse. We'll still read it
and we'll make it there. We'll laugh, we might mention it,
but the best way to do that is to send
(50:24):
us an email directly. We are car stuff at how
stuff work dot com, so more on this and thousands
of other topics. There's a how stuff works dot com.
Let us know what you think. Send an email to
podcast and how stuff works dot com.
CarStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.