The Return of the Return of Listener Mail

If you didn't get the chance to write in before the last listener mail episode, then it might just be your lucky day. Join Scott and Ben for their newest episode of listener mail.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car stuff from house stuff works dot com find Welcome
to car Stuff. I'm Scott and I am Ben Ben.
We're back with more listener mail because they just keep
pouring it, doesn't Yeah. I always talking earlier with our
super producer No Ps Brown about this. Uh. You know,

(00:27):
the title I was thinking was the return of the
return of listener Mail, because we just had so many letters, tweets,
fantastic ideas for episodes, Facebook messages that we know we're
probably still not going to get to all of it,
but we we wanted to give it one more shot
this round while we're here. Absolutely, we're gonna try to
get through as many of these as we possibly can.

(00:47):
Some of them are gonna be quick, some of them
are gonna take a little bit longer because they require
us to read a paragraph or two. And and you
know what, there's some fantastic ideas and here for future shows. So, um,
if you've written in recently, listen up because you're note
just maybe in the pile here. Yeah, absolutely want to
kick it off for us, Scott. Yeah, let's try that.
How about Um, We'll start with one from Kyle A.

(01:08):
And uh, we'll just say Kyle a as a fan
from the internet. How about that? Okay, all right, I'm
not sure where he's from exactly, but he says, dear Scott,
the mad Dog, Benjamin and Ben the face bowling. Oh cool, Hey,
thanks man. The face. I mean that could go as
a compliment or as, uh, let's say, an observation. I
guess I got a face for radio. Well, here's an
observation from Kyle. Kyle says that, Um, in our bus episode,

(01:32):
we were talking about um, you know, we had a
question I guess along the way. So we're about to
do boy Scouts travel via bush? Yeah, I thought they did.
I thought I've seen a boy Scout bus at something,
and you know, maybe I had, Maybe I haven't, He
says that. Kyle says that I can tell you that
they do sometimes use busses to get to events, but
they're not particularly or exactly boy Scout busses. They will

(01:54):
just charter a bus to get there for most cases,
and they typically use personal vehicles and trailers and a US.
They have to go to some type of inspection order
to be able to be something like that. You know,
they have to be in good shape in other words.
But he also went on Kyle also went on to, uh,
make three pretty good suggestions, and we'll listen these here,
um without reading the whole thing. It's a longer email. Um.

(02:15):
The three suggestions were the vehicles of the A Team.
And you know, initially you think, okay, they've got the van.
That's about it, right, That's that's all you would think
that they have. But he's talking about not just the van,
but the planes, the boats, the cars, all that stuff
that came along with it. Now, that series was on
for a while, several years, and I know that if
we combed through some of those episodes, we'll be able
to find some really unusual vehicles from that time period

(02:38):
in earlier So that's probably that's actually a pretty good
suggestion for a television theme show, the vehicles the A Team.
The next would be to dig into the brand Jaguar
or Jaguar as ever we like, I said, Jaguar, Yeah,
why haven't we done that? And that's a good call.
Don't know, that's got fantastic racing history, but I'd love
to do that one. And then the ford Fairlane and

(03:00):
specific so Ford Fair Lane is the third suggestion, and
then there's a Ford fair Lane in my neighborhood. It's
kind of a baby blue color. Yeah, and the the
person parks it on a court that's not far from mine.
If I take a short walk with the dog, I
can walk past this car every day if I wanted
to beautiful car. It's in a really good shape. It's
a driver not you know, like not in show condition

(03:21):
or anything, but it's it's pretty, um, looks nice, has
shiny chrome on it has it looks like new paint. Uh.
The interior looks pretty original, and it sounds really amazing.
When he is leaving for the you know, for work
in the morning, Well, that you know what, man, that
is cool. I want to see it. I'd love to
see some photos if you get a chance to snap
him without you know, getting in trouble. Well, you know,
here's the thing. I usually walk the dog in the

(03:42):
evening and it's late, and my cameras not all that
fantastic as far as like you know, dark you know,
like dark settings. So I'm gonna try to catch it
some weekend. Maybe they're usually during the day the person
is gone, but it's really a cool looking car, and
so I think those are good suggestions. So thank you, Kyle,
and we will look into that. Yeah, and moving on,
We've got a recent letter from Bill H. Bill H

(04:05):
wrote in to say, uh, I just listened to a
book on tape on Route sixty six and thought you
had done an episode on it, but it searched not
reveal one. I'm sure you could probably do multiple episodes
on this. And we've done roadside attractions before, right, Yeah,
I haven't done root Styx is a topic. Surely we have.
Have he done it and forgotten that we did it?

(04:26):
You know, I don't know. I'm gonna have to search
through the archives, I guess and find out if we have. Well, Bill,
if we indeed have not done this, then clearly we
have to. He goes on those guys. He says, I'm
sure you could do multiple episodes on this. You could
even do a mini series on famous American roadways such
as the A one A, the East Coast Highway that
goes to Florida, Keys, the now infamous parking lot known
as n And He's like, when you get down the road,

(04:48):
you could do famous bridges, the Golden Gate, Brooklyn Bridge
bridged up in Michigan, the famous Lake Pontra Train bridge
we have here in Louisiana, one of the longest bridges
in the world. When you complete bridges, you could get
into ton tools, which probably wouldn't make a whole episode,
but there's some interesting stories about tunnels underwater and through mountains.
I like all of those ideas. I do to know
our buddies over at stuff you should know. Recently did

(05:10):
an episode on bridges, including I think a lot about
bridge maintenance and you know the dangerous state of so
many bridges in the US today. Well there you go,
instant gratification. You can check that out right now, and
in the meantime we will look into some of the
other stuff and we can cover um, if we haven't
done Root sixty six yet, we're going to search that
how we definitely should we have to. I think it

(05:33):
was a couple of years ago my my father did
the whole Root sixty six trip from Chicago all the
way to the piers. Sound like, yeah, yeah, it was
an amazing trip. So um, he's got like a thousand
photos or more, maybe even um. But anybody that has
written in that has done that trip, and there have
been many people in our listening audience that have written
in over the years, and and you know, said something
about Root sixty six, you know, talking about the mother

(05:55):
Road and and yeah, parts of it that are missing,
and you know the adventure of just finding the original
parts and all that. Um, it sounds like just amazing
topic for us to cover. So yeah, it's it's a
very different drive now because of the changes that have
been made to the infrastructure in the roadway. But Bill,
these are excellent suggestions, Thank you so much. I like it,
all right, so let's move on to the next one.

(06:17):
This one comes from Adrian T, who calls himself an
ex pet brit from Beverly Hills, Michigan. Patty, all right,
so let's see, there's a few different things here. So
I'm gonna kind of quickly go through this. Now it's
a long, long email, so I'll just kind of give
you the gist of what he said he's asking for here,
but um, maybe talking you know, when we do our

(06:39):
Nuts and Bolts episodes, we kind of laughing like, you
can't do a whole episode on just nuts and bolts, right,
this is maybe you can if you do the like
the British Standard, the British Standard hardware versus the typical
American hardware that's used in American cars, and you know
some of the places where like pipe threads have been
used instead of some of the other you know, the metals,
screws and things that have been used. It's just it's
a it's actually an chriesting topic if you dig into it.

(07:01):
I don't know if it would be too um in
the weeds. I guess for us to describe on an
audio podcast. Maybe that's something better for video possible, but
a great suggestion. And then also he mentions metric versus
inch size tires. That's a that's a completely different topic,
and I think that may also be interesting. Um again
maybe video. I'm not sure. I don't know how that
want to work out. Um okay. And then here's one

(07:22):
thing that I that I will read for you. All right,
this is uh, this is He says, one more thing,
going back to the luxury car episode you mentioned then
and have in the past, the Aston Martin signet. Remember
we mentioned how they've badged this was a smart car, right, yeah,
pretty much, it's a smart car pretty much. I mean
there's obvious difference. Okay, he says, this car obviously causes

(07:43):
you some consternation and then it's an overdressed economy car
and and yeah, that's kind of what we've said in
that episode, I believe um. He says there is some
precedence for it within the Aston Martin family, however, and
then he mentions that Aston Martin have owned an old
engineering firm and bodybuilder named eiford Um just after since
just after the Second World War, and there's been there's

(08:05):
been a long tie it between Tickford and Aston Martin,
with several Aston Martin Tickford models before Aston sold Tickford
around the nineties, and he's not sure exactly when that
was about nine, but back in the eighties, while Aston
still on Tickford, they built the Tickford Metro. And if
you look at the Tickford Metro, UM it was a
super luxury model based on the Humble Austin Rover MG Metro,

(08:28):
which was a super mini similar to the size the
original m K one Fiesta or Mark one Fiesta or
Volkswagen Polo. So a very small car. But again it's
badge this Aston Martin Tickford or UM, I guess the
Tickford Metro. He says it had a whopping eighty horse
power compared to these standard cars fifty or so horse

(08:49):
power and the MG Turbo's seventy horse power at the time, So, um,
eighty horse power was pretty good out of a small car.
But it was known specifically for it's it's seriously xurious interior.
It was absolutely covered in leather sumpshus seats, and top
end Hi Fi these last says I wanted to hear
about Hi Fi last. Um outside, it had a distinctive

(09:11):
body kit, paint, wheels, et cetera. And he were actually
seriously cool cars. But at a cost of nearly twelve
thousand pounds. Um. I think that's uh, you know, great
Britain pounds at the time. Um, about nineteen thousand U s.
Dollars at the time, which would have been pretty expensive,
I guess. He said. That's equivalent to about forty seven
thousand dollars today. So you're talking about for for a

(09:32):
small vehicle. But it's very luxurious. Um. He said, it
was massively expensive. And they did other high end conversions
on other you know, like what you call humble cars,
I guess, including the Ford Capri. Oh that's right. This
is where he wrote into his before uh, he says,
which I've written to you about before, how you maliciously
and wrongly maligned it. I remember that episode. It was

(09:53):
I think it was the Worst Fords or something like that.
He made the list and Entering wrote in because he
was angry about that. And we still haven't done our
Capri episode. We have to do that. I have it.
It's on the list all right. So anyways, he says,
I think the tick for conversions could be another episode
topic worth investigating. Um anyways, thanks Adorine for the suggestion,
and thanks for clearing up. You know, the the Aston

(10:14):
Martin tie in with the luxury thing. I get it
now that they've they've done this in the past, but
to me it's still I mean, I know what you're saying,
but it's still a bit silly to price a smart
car that is covered in leather and all these extra
features and bells and whistles. Sure, but it's crazy to
badge it as an Aston Martin and sell it as such.

(10:36):
I think. I mean, you can you can throw a
tiger skin on a pig as much as you want.
No I'm kidding, I mean, no offense to h signets, pigs, tigers,
or Aston Parkin. But that was that was a great
letter and I remember laughing at the uh at the
Larry wrote earlier about the Capri that was chuckle worthy

(10:57):
for sure. Here's one from our friend Hezron and hes
Ron Jay says, hey, guys, I thought i'd share this
with you my own cruise control story have focus standard
cruise control so not adaptive. A few months ago I
went on a little road trip with my wife. I
was using the cruise control for an extended time. The

(11:17):
road I was on had a lot of peaks and valleys.
After one long steep incline, I suddenly had a loss
of power. After brief panic, it was a few hundred
miles away from home in the middle of nowhere, I
realized the engine could not maintain the speed on the incline,
and that deactivated the cruise control. I was irritated because,
as I know, this isn't in the user manual. I
had cruise control my previous car, but that was an automatic,

(11:39):
so that would obviously change the gears even in cruise control.
I also realized that when you do use cruise control,
your foot is slightly further away from the pedals because
of where you now rest your foot, and therefore importantly
further from the break than it should be needless to say,
I don't use cruise control anymore. The car is a
speed limited option, which is far more useful. So Hezron

(12:01):
also is a is a fellow non cruise control fan, right, yeah,
because I'm not a fan either. Yeah, I don't think
either of us are and super difficult to use here
in Atlanta. Oh yeah, yeah, it's I think I can
see the arguable savings and convenience for road trips if
you really trust it. But every time I go on

(12:23):
a road trip with with my girlfriend, we have the
the triple C. I call it the cruise control conversation,
where she's saying, you know, just use the cruise control.
Just put on the cruise control. Your foot is gonna
ache after we finally get to wherever we're going. But
I refuse. Man's got to take a stand, you know.
There's also there's there's little things that you can do

(12:44):
to prevent your foot from aching. We'll get back on
top of here, Andy, But instead of using like the
ball of your foot on the accelerator pedal, like a
lot of people will do around town, use your entire foot.
Put your heel right up to the to the pedal
and use your entire foot on the pedal. That helps
quite a bit, yeah, as far as fatigue goes. And
then there is that most cars now have a dead
pedal UM on the far left. I don't know what
what better to call that, and even knows the pedal.

(13:05):
It's more like a rest, a foot rest that is
an angle and it's actually very comfortable. So if you
use your feet in both those positions, you won't be
quite as fatigued as if you just use the ball
of your foot to to accelerate. UM. You won't be
flexing your calf uh in your thigh, I guess quite
as much. Know it's silly, but if you're talking about
hours and hours and hours of driving, it really does
pay off. It benefits UM so, but I honestly weren't

(13:28):
both not fans of cruise control, probably because of the
environment that we're in right now. On road trips, I
sometimes will use it, but it's very very rare, and
you know, it has to be wide wide open because
I just don't trust myself. I guess that I won't
forget that it's on, or or do something stupid. I
guess if if I'm trying to get brownie points with
my girlfriend on a road trip. Then yeah, cruise control

(13:51):
all day, but it's for very different purpose. Sure, and
a cruise control and manual as u as um is
it has run is referring to you. That's really difficult.
I mean, it's it's it's a different ballgame altogether. Really,
if you have to be smart in the gears that
you select and know that the terrain that's coming up
is gonna be similar to the drain when you select
the gear that you put it in, or they can

(14:12):
handle whatever's coming ahead. You know you're in a low
enough gear to be able to climb a hill, um
high enough gear that you know you're still saving fuel.
It's just a it's always a strange thing when you
have cruise control in a manual transmission. Few. Oh, I've
got another one, really quick, different person. This comes to
us from Twitter. It is uh Joseph. Joseph Harris writes

(14:33):
into us and says, hey, guys, are the terms motor
and engine interchangeable? Or are some engines not motors? And
are some motors not engines? This is a good question one, Okay. Now,
I've seen it many different ways and a lot of
people that are gear heads will write motor for engine.
But now I'm very careful about this now because with

(14:55):
the electric cars and the hybrids and all that, very
careful to either say engine or motor. I say motor
when it's electric, engine when it's internal combustion. That's typically
the way we approach it. So if we talk about
a hybrid vehicle, for instance, you can go back and
you can hear us say the electric motor provides this much,
the engine provides that much, and you have to spell

(15:18):
that out otherwise you wouldn't know which one you're talking
about in that particular case. Now a lot of people say,
I just pull the motor out of that truck and
put it in that truck. In that you know, it's
just used interchangeably in many cases. Um, in older vehicles,
it's really not an issue you can say motor or engine. Um,
it's more I guess it's it is correct to say
engine versus motor. Motor would be the electric obviously, right. Yes,

(15:42):
So there's there's an interesting tail behind your if I
could do just a little bit of etymology. Right. So
it is true, Joseph, that today many people use the
word motor and engine as synonyms right in modern English. However,
they come from very different places. I mean sort of

(16:02):
they It's like they're people. If these words were kids,
they grew up together in the same language, and they
moved to weird different neighborhoods. So motor is you know,
comes from Latin movere, just to move right, And it
first referred to just a propulsive force, and then later
the person or the device that moved something or made

(16:25):
movement happen. And it came through French into English, and
so that's when it started being like the initiator. A
person could be the motor of a plot, which sounds
weird today, but it is how people talk to each
other back then. Uh So, by eight it had entered
the vernacular as the word for these new fangled horseless

(16:47):
carriages that are so popular today that what surprise caught on. Engine, however,
comes from ingenium. That means character, mental powers, your talent,
your intellectual cleverness. Uh. That's why you hear things like engineer. Uh.
The the engine word engineer goes back to thirteen eighties,
way before cars, and it was the people who made

(17:09):
siege engines and catapults and stuff. By the early eighteenth century,
it referred specifically to the makers of engines and machines,
so while they are used synonymously, the distinction Joseph, that
we do on car stuff, for sure is if it's electric,
it's a motor If it's I see, it's an engine.

(17:31):
So why don't we call it engine cycle instead of motorcycle?
You know what, that's a really good point. But those, uh,
those electric motorcycles are out right, Yeah, I guess, so
that would be a true motorcycle. Yeah, yeah, engine cycle.
Though I like it. I don't know someone who calls it,
but I don't know if I like it or not.
I mean, you're just still accustomed to hearing motorcycle. I mean,
that's just the way it is, right, Yeah. And then

(17:53):
you know, we can also see that uh, some small
still internal combustion engines, like small two chamber engines are
called motors, like the the motor on your weed whacker
or something. If you have a gas powered weed whacker,
I guess, I mean you can call that. I call
it an engine. You call that the engine. Yeah, I guess,
I mean, technically, I mean, I guess. I never really

(18:13):
said to my neighbor, you know, like the motor on
my my weed whip is not not exactly working correctly,
or I or I said the engine on my weed
whip isn't working correctly. You know what, what do you
do in this situation? And I just never thought about
which way I set it up until until right now. Ben,
I don't know. You're making me think about this, so
that means that's an excellent question. But but I think
I caught an engine on my uh on my lawnmower,

(18:36):
you know, the small gas engine that's there. Um, I
don't know. Well, that's a that's a great question. Listeners.
I'm sure you have some opinions about this as well. Uh, Joseph,
we we are fascinated by this question, and we we'd
like to maybe come back with a little bit more. Yeah,
and I definitely hear some old timers saying motor for

(18:58):
engine all the time. I mean, always the open the hood,
let's check out the motor. That's always that way. Okay,
So let's let's move on to the next one. How
about that? Yeah, let's go all right, here's here's one
that's uh, this is kind of maybe a two part thing.
It is, there's two they're kind of they're kind of
linked together here, and this is the first one is
from Rudy. Rudy Smith, we right in all the time
rights and all the time we need to get some

(19:20):
a sound cue or some t music at some point.
Probably is a prolific writer. And we love all of
his emails because it's really interesting, thought provoking stuff. And
and here's an interesting one that came through recently, not
long ago. Um he says, considering and this is about,
uh the topic, I guess his car collections of the
Chinese rich and famous, and found that's fascinating because I

(19:42):
hadn't really thought about this, but when I started looking
at these links that he sent, He's exactly right. There's
it seems like there's there's oftentimes an anonymous Chinese buyer
of some of these amazing cars that come up for sale.
And here's what he had to say. He said, considering
all the concentrated wealth in China and the popularity of
luxury cars there, it occurred to me that there must

(20:02):
be at least one Chinese ga jillionaire with a pension
for collecting fine cars. I don't know if there is,
but maybe you can use research mojo to find out.
I wonder if the high luxury taxes there have anything
to do with the inconspicuous nature of car collecting. Um, okay,
So here's here's what goes on. There's a there's a
big car collection that's coming up for for sale, or

(20:24):
maybe um, a specific vehicle that's up for sale that's
you know, highly coveted, a lot of people want it,
and then you know, a bidding goes back and forth,
and then suddenly on the phone, uh, someone someone will
break in and say, there's a there's a bitter online
from China who's going to bid X number of dollars.
And it's always way you know, well well above whatever
it is, or it's just just enough to win the auction.

(20:45):
And it's always somebody who seems to be anonymous. And
there's here's one. Here's one example, um, the and I
hope I've pronounced this right, the rat soi uh collection,
which was a this is a I believe the guys
Canadian who was a collector and he had about a
hundred cars in his collection and of all different types,
but he kept This guy ended up keeping about twenty

(21:07):
cars for himself, but eighty of these cars went to
a wealthy Chinese buyer the entire collection um an anonymous
bidder and anonymous acquisition of course. UM. But I think
even to this day, I think that person is still unknown.
They were thinking they were they were pondering the idea
whether or not this person was going to open some
sort of a museum with these vehicles in China. But UM,

(21:29):
I don't know if it's still unknown or not. I'm
not sure if they found out who that was or not.
But there is a long list of um Um cars
that have gone to anonymous Chinese bidders over the years,
and it's kind of interesting the way this works out,
and nobody quite knows who they are, if it's the
same person, if somebody over there just amassing some huge
collection like the like the Schlump collection or something, you

(21:51):
know what's going on. So the Chinese car collector's idea
is really an interesting thought and I think we should
look into that. Absolutely. I can respond us briefly a
little bit, all right. So the the worry of luxury
taxes import taxes is valid. However, there is endemic corruption,

(22:12):
especially in the ruling party and the children of the
ruling party, and there's very much a there's very much
an emphasis on consumption and people. There are people who
do have quite a bit of money in in China
and often affiliated with the government. Recently, uh, the government

(22:35):
of China has started doing some crackdowns on these corruption scandals,
and you hear differing reports about why these happened. But
we do know that it can be dangerous for a
party member, right, someone who's in charge of the government,

(22:56):
to be seen as robbing it blind and driving jaguars
while people starve. Right, Well, imagine paying the luxury taxes
on eight plus museum quality or higher quality cars all
at one time. Yeah, but okay, also are we are
imagine not having to pay the taxes. You see what

(23:17):
I'm saying about the corruption. So it may be possible
that there may be possible that they're getting around this
through entirely illegal means. Would be now that still leaves somebody, though,
with enough money to buy an entire car collection, basically
an entire museum. Yeah, cars of collector cars. I'm skeptical.
I'm skeptical regarding whether it would be a single individual,

(23:40):
but I would love to learn more. We also know
that wealthy, wealthy China based interests are buying up a
lot of real estate around the world, right, not just
New York, but London, a lot in California. Uh, driving
up the plate the prices. Perhaps foreign investors are driving
up the prices of some cities where some of our
listeners live right now. So and that that's also anonymous.

(24:03):
We don't know they're different holding companies, things like that.
It's a very exciting idea, Rudy, and thank you for
recommending it. And this kind of led me to another thought.
And and before I even read what my thought was about,
you know, it's kind of a spinoff idea from this,
right and uh, and I wrote this down. I had
this written out here at the bottom of this email
to read this. And then another email came in that
has a similar suggestion, or at least as a as

(24:25):
a secondary thought. So someone who wrote in his name
is Stuart L. And Stuart L wrote in and said
he's a long time listener to the show, but the
first time emailer. And he says, as a fellow gear head,
I've always been fascinated and highly entertained by your podcast.
Thank you very thank you appreciate that. Stewart Um. He says,
keep up the great work. But I have to admit
I knew nothing about the history of the U Haul

(24:46):
Company and couldn't believe just how dramatic some of the
events were. Also, you mentioned of um all the trucks
having Arizona plates. I'm up in Canada and it's the
same thing up here. So that was our question whether
or not the Canadian trucks had UM the Arizona play
UM alright, so he mentioned some other things there, and
you know, at the end he says, cheers and great stuff,

(25:07):
by the way, and at the end of it adds
a ps and uh, he says. And this is where
my idea came in as well. UM. I was recently
watching a Top Year episode from a few years ago
where they traveled to China and observed the massively growing
car industry, and as an idea for a future podcast,
I was wondering if you could cover the topic of
cars made in China that are practically identical looking to

(25:31):
official auto brands like Audi, BMW, etcetera, that are created
under a myriad of knockoff names. Now, that was exactly
what I thought when I read Rudy's email. I was
thinking about the Chinese knockoff cars, the ones that look
like a Rolls Royce that are not named Rolls Royce,
that that looked like a BMW exactly. They have a
badge that looks very, very similar to BMW's badge, like

(25:52):
maybe the uh, you know, the the crest is tilted
just a little bit, you know, maybe like ninety degrees
and it's a different vehicle. Um, there's a there's a
lot to this whole thing, the knockoff cars from China. Um.
I would love to cover that as a topic. I
think we should. Yeah, not a bad idea at all. No, Scott,
do you have another one you want to knock out? Okay,

(26:14):
how about this? I'll do a quick one here from
Phil c And uh, let's see if I can read
this here. He says, Hi, guys, I'm a new listener.
I love the show and I've been binge listening for
the last couple of weeks. When when time allows, uh
listening more every day. Well that's good. Good here, thank you,
thank you, Phil. We appreciate it. Recently, I heard an
episode that somewhere along the way someone mentioned, uh spotting

(26:36):
a Cadillac E l R. And that was me. I
saw a Cadillac E L R. I guess it's about
a block from where we work. And it's a beautiful car,
really stunning, but very small for Cadillac. Um. He says,
I know they're rare and they haven't sold very well,
but I did see one today and I took a
quick photo in the parking lot. Um. He says, I
didn't know people were so inclined to throw money away.
Here's the picture, and he sends a picture of and

(26:58):
I think it has new Jersey plates at this this car. Um.
But anyways, Yeah, you're right, it's right now. It's kind
of a rare bird to spot everywhere in the United
States so far, Uh, they just haven't sold well. He's
exactly right. And he does come in with another good idea,
by the way, he says, um, it's another ps. He says,
I love the top ten lists, So how about an

(27:18):
episode on the top ten fastest zero to sixty new
cars under thirty thousand dollars. Um. So that's a great idea,
the top ten fastest zero to sixty new cars under
thirty love the specificity, Yeah, and he says he loves
the top ten lists, which, okay, there's a little back
and forth year about this because we have people that
right in and say they can't stand the top ten lists.

(27:40):
We gotta quit doing those. Yeah, it's not for everybody. No,
not everybody. And then other people right in and say,
you know what, every time you do a top ten list,
I I spend half the rest of the week looking
up all the stuff that you mentioned on the top
ten lists. So keep doing those. There's are really a
lot of fun because they lead to other thoughts, other
other investigations. We'll do it in modern ration, yeah, moderation,

(28:01):
And honestly, we do them because they're fun to do
and they're they're they're pretty easy as far as like
we could just come in and read a list and
we can, you know, add to it. We have a
fun conversation along with it. We do some research ahead
of time on the makes or models, or the costs
or whatever the list involved. We don't talk about this
a lot off air, but whenever we get to do

(28:21):
those episodes, what I love the most is I always
feel like I am, at least once I feel like
I'm on the verge of buying a new car or
buying an older car. Yeah, even when we did the
ten worst sports. I was I can't remember which what
it was. I thought, no, it was not the Capri.
It's not the Capri, Sorry, Adrian. I was thinking of

(28:42):
there was one of them on the list where I thought,
you know what, that's the least bad one, and I
guess that's the one I'll buy. And then I came
back to earth and I thought, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, no,
you know we do this all the time, though, I mean,
it's it's tough when you start digging into a brand
or a a type of vehicle, maybe talking about, um,
you know, pony cars. Sure you and I get the

(29:02):
fever to buy a pony car right away or to
rent one, or do something we need we need to
get our hands on a pony car, or we feel like, um,
you know, we dig into a brand, it's like, man,
it wouldn't it be nice to get even an older
like let's take Jaguar for an example. If we were
to dig into that one would be great to buy
a Jaguar that maybe is a few years old and
just kind of have fun with that because now you
know the whole history behind it. You know what what

(29:23):
you know the good and the bad you know at all.
So um yeah, it's it's tough to uh, I guess,
really dive into something like that. Most people only do
that when they're really interested in a brand that there
may be pursuing as a possible purchase. Um. You know,
let's say you're gonna buy Volkswagen. You might really look
into Volkswagen, and you might even look at some history
and stuff like that. But typically you're gonna look at
them the model years that you're interested in, and and

(29:46):
research which ones are reliable versus which ones are not reliable,
which ones have known problems, which ones have recalls, things
like that. Um. We do that for just about every
vehicle that we uh, that we present to you. So
it does be come kind of this, uh it becomes
for a while a short time, an obsession and even
some of the like things like we talked about, like

(30:07):
drones we talk about um our c jets, remember we
talked about those. That was I was so sure that
within that month I was going to buy an our
c jet like a park jet to fly and play with.
And then you know, the winter hits and then something
else gets in the way, you know, like a house repair,
and it never comes around, and then by that time
we're onto a new topic and I've I've not forgotten

(30:28):
about it. But um, you know, the fever, the fire
isn't quite there the way it was the previous month,
and that goes away just because topics came to come up,
you know, so quickly for us. We have to do
things so fast here. Um. But yeah, you're right, um,
And I think every top ten list is at some
point where you say, yeah, maybe maybe it wouldn't be

(30:48):
so bad to park one of those of my driveway
for half year so and then I'll just get rid
of it and onto the next thing. Yeah. Yeah, it's uh,
it's I live a very busy carbine life in my head,
gonna make a jump anytime sooner. You have you got
any concrete plans or any maybe tentative plans to to
make a move or would you rather not say? Oh,
no comment, no comment. Yeah, I can't go on record

(31:11):
with that yet. Lead the Tona Jinx myself, lead the
fifth car on the list. Okay, thanks, Writing in Phil Scott,
I'd like to move over to Facebook briefly. Let's do
it alright. So our friend Josh h wrote into us
and said uh. Regarding Dealership Myths episodes, he says, I
brought bought my car used from Summerside, Kia when over

(31:32):
financing and payment plans. When it dawned on me that
my insurance would double. At the time, I was between
postings at work. I call my insurance company, who confirmed
the insurance issues. Since I wasn't going to be able
to afford insurance for the car, I wouldn't have been
able to buy it. The salesman and manager took me
to their office and said, look, what we'll do is
we'll pay your insurance for the year if you're still
interested in the car, and they cut me a check

(31:54):
for a cool grand that's my language. He's had thousand
dollars to pay for two thousand twelve insurance. I definitely
go back. And they didn't add it to the car's price.
They just gave them a thousand dollars no kidding. So
there must have been Okay, there had to have been
a huge incentive on that which discounted the one thousand dollars.
I said, even though we're doing that, uh, you know, Okay,

(32:16):
this goes back to our our Our Myths episode where
he said, yeah, they've got they can make a deal
on some vehicles. They could lose money on some of
the right as long as they hit a certain number,
and then they get the bonus from the manufacturer. And
the bonus can be you know, a hundred thousand dollars
or more or whatever. So they've got this big numbers
game that they're playing on the spreadsheet constantly. And I
just worked in his favor this time. That's that's great,

(32:37):
that's a that's a great story. Yeah, and I like that.
It ties into a very important part of the dealership
car cycle that a lot of car buyers are not
aware of. So let's just reiterate it. There is a
lifespan uh, an ideal time to sell the cars. Right,
And Scott, you broke down the numbers in that episode
where you said, Okay, this car will sit this lot,

(33:01):
and if it's not, if it's sold, the first month,
the company gets this incentive, the second month this incentive,
and the third month this incentive, and then somewhere around
month three or four is when they start losing money
on the car. Yeah, they're just trying to get rid
of that thing they just wanted off the lot because
I want the next round of vehicles to come in.
Then the newer h the ones that have more, well,
greater incentive for them to sell. Yeah. Uh, that's true, man.

(33:25):
I'm I'm also laughing because I'm remembering there was another
thing on Facebook going to read to you, continuing something
from our earlier listener Mail episode. Okay, all right, So
Alan C Writes into us, also on Facebook and says, uh, hey, guys,
let me just say I love the show. Thank you. Allen.
Just started listening to a couple of months ago and
now I'm hooked, usually listening guys on my thirty five

(33:46):
minute commute to work. Recently, I heard you mentioned that
some of your listeners didn't like it. When you have
three parters, I'm gonna go on record saying I do
like them. It will be a shame to miss out
on some of the interesting info. Just to save time.
I will say, though, sometimes you go guys can go
pretty deep down the rabbit hole, but you usually recover
before I lose you. You should does a great job
blending my two favorite subjects, cars in history. Keep them coming.

(34:08):
I'll keep it listening. Thanks Alan. So again, it's kind
of like the Top ten list. Well, yeah, it's back
and forth. This is what we battle every day. Then
this is that this is just how difficult our work is.
Oh man, Uh well thanks, yeah, it's it's fun. We
love both sides of this argument because we get it
all every week. Really, right. We hear about the multiple

(34:29):
episodes versus single episodes. We are about lists. We hear
about um, you know, I don't want to hear any
more history pieces on your on your podcast, that type
of thing, and other people right and say I love
the history. That's what I listened for. Um, So yeah,
it's just back and forth, right, Yeah, yeah, it's back
and forth. And uh. While not every show is for everyone,
we hope that there's a every everybody who listens finds

(34:54):
a show you like. This is my time to go
ahead and plug our website, Cars Stuff show dot com,
where you can check out every single thing we've ever done. Uh,
and that's if you know you don't want to use
the new app. But I'll be honest, there are some
there's some really really really great episodes in there, and
there are a few in the can Scott that are

(35:15):
just not my favorite, not because of you, but because
of me. You're you're being too humble there's Yeah, there's
something that are not our favorite episodes. Let's say that,
you know, we're a little less familiar with the topic. Maybe. Uh,
there's one that we never aired, which we have, we've
we've mentioned that one a few times ever really even
said what it was. I think we should let it die.

(35:36):
Maybe we should just let it, let it sleep. Maybe. Yeah. Alright, so, um,
how about this, I'll do two more um about noise cancelation.
Remember we did that episode on digital exhaust. Oh yeah,
and it's kind of interesting idea, you know, between whether
your exhaust is a true exhaust sound or if it's
a digital or digitally created exhaust sound. And it was

(35:57):
a fun episode to do. Yeah, it was cool. And um,
let's see Josh B. Josh B wrote in from from
as it tas I always mess this up every time,
And he writes in and gives meetic evanetic expelling, and
then I screwed up the next time. So I believe
it's tays Well. Virginia could be tas well. I don't remember.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Josh. All right, so I says

(36:19):
I enjoyed pondering the thoughts of silent little electric cars
and the future is zipping around and sounding like five
liter mustangs in four Emmy's ever since listening to the
Digital Exhaustion podcast. He says he has a friend that
drives a Prius, which, by the way, is much more
comfortable and more spacious than I would ever have guessed
before riding in one, which is something because I'm a
five ft ten fan of big cars and this guy

(36:40):
is six ft three and a fellow gearhead, and he
drives a Prius. Um, he says, and times I've written
in it the quiet is unnerving, he said, It's like
it's just unusual to be inside this thing. Um, it's
really hard to get used to it first. And he
does say that a few people and this is something
that a lot of people have written in and said.
Ben He says that there are people that drive them

(37:00):
at work, and I've just about been run down by
in the parking lot of time or two because you
can't hear them coming. And we've had so many people
right in over the years that has said just what
we've talked about the safety aspect of these, that you
know you might if you're not looking, you'll step out
in traffic in front of one and by and by traffic,
I mean usually in a parking lot um, you know,
where you can't really hear a lot of road noise.

(37:22):
We're possibly in a city environment. We've heard people that
have almost stepped off the curb in front of one,
like from a bus stop or something. It's a it's
a it sounds a little bit funny, but it is
a legitimate concern. It really is. Yeah, so they've said
something similar, But so he says, I can see the
safety aspect of this, you know, wanting to um hear
the car for shifting purposes or just for the sake
of hearing it, or for the pedestrian safety aspect of

(37:44):
this whole thing. Uh. And it makes sense in that case,
you know, like maybe UM car that has a lot
of sound deadening or whatever you can't hear it inside.
Because what I can't see doing, however, is making my
key or key a rio sounds like an Indy car
or a V eight muscle car just for the heck
of it. And I kind of agree, but it is
fun to think of, you know, like we had people
that wrote in and said, you know, I try one

(38:04):
of these sound racer things in my you know, mini
and it was a lot of fun to make it
sound like a V eight engine because it's it's a
peppy little car to drive, and you could, I guess,
kind of picture that car having a V eight, you know,
because it gets up and goes pretty quick. It does
so okay. So he says, well, we're on the subject
of fakers, and this is the real gist of this, uh,

(38:25):
this email, and it's a it's an episode suggestion. By
the way he says, well, we're on the subject of fakers,
made me think of another instance in the automotive world
where people may not be entirely honest about their vehicle.
And I'm not sure if this would make for a
decent topic or not, but it's nonetheless a fascinating idea
to me at least. Uh. This one is a little
more underhanded and sneaky though. Um. It's about faking the

(38:47):
model or trim package on a car, either to replicate
something that they really want or to just kind of
dupe somebody out of more money when they're trying to
sell the vis And this is a dirty trick that
some people do now, um, he says, including making a
Pontiac tempest into a g t o um he knew,
He says, you know, I'd worked to go into this
email somehow, um making a Forward car into a GT

(39:09):
or making a Chevy car into an s S. And
he says he's the former owner of a seventy three
s S Nova that was bought as an s S
and then later sparked a lot of debates as to
whether it truly was an actual SS vehicle. So that
would make you pretty mad if you bought an SS
vehicle and paid the extra money the premium for that model,
and then other people were to say, I don't really

(39:31):
think that's an s S. I think you've been You've
been swindled in some way. So he says, I have
a tiny bit of personal connection to this one. Um.
But I've also, he said, I've also seen a Yanko
Camaro on a showroom that was purported to be a
clone completely with the four which sound amazing, regardless of
whether or not the car was a clone. And so
the idea is that some people knowingly do this and

(39:52):
say I'm making a Yanko clone, and it's I'm telling
you up front, it's not a true vehicle. It's a clone.
But it has all the parts. You know, everything is
the way it would be as it came from the factory.
But it didn't come from the factory this way. So
clone vehicles or clone cars instead of clown cars. As
we talked about it a couple weeks ago. Clone cars,
I think is an interesting topic. Yeah, I like the

(40:15):
idea of clone cars very much. What else you have?
All right? The second one was on noise cancelation. Um,
and this comes from Ryan from Irvington, Virginia. Ryan writes
in often to us, Um, Ryan G And he says that, um, again,
this is about the digital exhaust. So he said, I
learned good stuff from your recent episodes, so thank you

(40:37):
for that. You're reminded me the opposite idea back in
two when Nissan used noise cancelation technology on their Bluebird
model so that the drivers and passengers couldn't hear the engine. Well,
everyone outside the car still could hear the engine. Um,
there's a Popular Science article all about the U Nissan
Bluebird model if you guys want to want to look

(40:58):
into it. Nice good idea, great good suggestion, right ideas
look forward the well, Scott, where are we at? We
got to uh, we got a couple of pretty good
once you want to do one more thing, all right,
I've got one more thing I can do here. Another
listener email. Here's one that I think we've sort of

(41:21):
covered in an episode, but I'm not entirely sure we
have been. Um, it's in a roundabout way. Um, this
is I believe this was a Facebook post and it
comes from a guy, Jeff oh And Jeff says, for
decades railroads have used a diesel electric engine to power
their locomotives. Given the inherent fuel economy of the diesel engine,

(41:41):
why haven't the auto companies brought out a diesel hybrid vehicle? Moreover,
why haven't Why have the semi truck makers or r
V company has done this? Is there some technical barrier?
I also have a suggestion for a podcast episode, since
you just did the U haul episode car rental History.
I have a personal interest in this as the first
car rental companies started an Omaha, Nebraska. Now I haven't
looked that up. I'm not entirely but but Jeff says

(42:04):
that's true, so we'll have to look into that. Um,
he's saying that the first car rental company started in Omaha, Nebraska.
Here in the United States, so I'm checking that. But um,
I wanted to say something about this, uh, this this
diesel hybrid vehicle idea, and I know Volkswagen has been
playing around with this, and I didn't look this one
up ahead of time. I should have. I do recall, though,

(42:25):
the Volkswagen had their one leader car that used a
diesel hybrid. Oh yeah, L one. Yeah, the L one,
which is a fantastic car. And we've talked about that
at length in several episodes before, since it was just
a twinkle in an engineer's eye. Yeah, exactly, And you're right,
I mean, the diesel hybrid is an extremely efficient powertrain
to use. But the reason locomotives are so efficient, we've

(42:45):
we've talked about this as well, I think, and maybe
in our Amtrak episode, maybe in a different one, I'm
not sure. Um, but locomotives are so efficient because the
wheels and the track that they use. Um, it's it's
metal on metal and there's a very very small contact path,
and it's highly efficient once it begins rolling, once it's moving,
it's very very easy to get that load rolling. And

(43:07):
so then you can see numbers for trains that say
and I'm gonna ballpark this. They say, Uh, this train
can travel, you know, and it's it's a huge train
with cargo and you know, loads of coal or whatever
and many many cars. And I'll say this train can
travel four and fifty miles on one gallon of diesel
fuel or something like that. You know, that's just a

(43:27):
ball bar fixture something like that. Well, the idea is
that they have very very low rolling resistance. So once
you get that load rolling, once you get it moving,
very very little friction. So let's say it's a it's
an optimal surface. It's it's metal on metal and very small,
and it's easy to keep it going. But uh, stopping
a train is much more difficult than stopping a car,
which has very sticky rubber tires on a um, you know,

(43:50):
any variety of surfaces asphalts or concrete, even even gravel. Yeah,
I mean, I know there's skidding there or whatever, but um,
it's nothing like metal on metal. Trying to immediately break it.
It's very difficult. Yeah, that was a pretty good episode
into that one. Yeah, that was so you know, the
rolling resistance thing and the friction, um, all that plays
into this whole thing and that's why locomotives are so efficient.

(44:11):
And I do know that car companies are playing around
with diesel hybrid vehicles, so we're bound to even coming
out and I think Volkswagon is gonna be leader in this. Yeah,
they've really put their their flag on the territory. Unless
somebody sam bagging and they're just gonna come out with
the car and say that that's it, it's it's production ready.
I would be so excited if that were the case. Yeah,

(44:33):
and again I haven't looked it up. I don't know
if anybody else has thrown out any kind of you know,
prototype vehicles or anything. Or maybe there's a kind of
a one off thing that's out there that I just
don't know about right now, maybe particularly a European vehicle
that I just don't know about right now. Yeah, it's
quite possible, but we will go look for that. And
unfortunately that means that our time is drawing to a close.

(44:57):
We'd like to thank Kyle Bill has Run, Adrian Joseph Aaron,
Rudy Stewart, Phil Josh Allen, Josh, b Ryan, Jeff and
everybody else who has checked out our website, checked out
our show here and written with in with some ideas,
because the best ideas always come from our listeners, it

(45:17):
seems absolutely. And you know we've got both you and
I have another pile of letters that we just haven't
been able to get to today. So uh, there's even
more than that. I mean, many many suggestions coming in
and keep them coming in. When I say that, you know, um,
we just can't answer all of them. And you know
we've got to do these episodes that the answer listener mail.

(45:37):
That's a good problem to have. Yeah, very fortunate suggestions
and we've got yeah, you know, I was writing down
all these suggestions, uh, keeping a list here. So I
like to ask for a favor listeners out there, if
you guys heard one that particularly stuck in your mind
as something we should cover, uh right away pronto, you know,

(45:58):
then then right in and let us know. You can
find us on Facebook and Twitter. You can also find us,
of course on car Stuff Show dot com. And if
you want to take a page out of some of
these folks books and write to us directly, we have
good news for you. We have an email. It is
our stuff at how Stuff Works dot com for more

(46:21):
on this and thousands of other Topics is a how
stuff Works dot com Let us know what you think.
Send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.
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