The best & worst launches we've done, plus the HEAD HONCHO of cars at News.com.au

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
So I should point out that Dave McGowan is here,
He's been here for thirty seconds, has not said one word,
and already he is one thousand times better of a
guest than Trevor Long.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
So he does about cars, which is a good stuff.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Yeah, unless Harry, which is pretty easy when it comes
to Trevor Loong. God, thankfully, thankfully that guy's not a smoker.
He'll drop a bit of ash and start a bushfire
just on his shoulders. Sorry, very very good, good gear
from me. Good start carrying the episode once again? How

(00:41):
we should introduce Dave mccowan's here. Do we give a
little clap? Yay from news dot com dot you ought
to be a lot more professional content director for News
Corp Australia.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
We beg you. Yeah, that's quite the introduction.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
I've known you for ages. Gordy has about five minutes. Yeah,
that's it, but we're already best.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
That's fine.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, that's it. You've kind of moved into a new
role at News Limited. Tell us about what you're doing
now in the car scene.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
Yeah, I've been writing about cars for a long time
and it's a lot more than writing now. I'm They
call it the content director, but basically just get to
get to steer the ship on how we cover cars
as a company, and that's Yeah, it's a huge promotion.
It's a lot of a lot of fun, a lot
of video, a lot of interesting stuff, and trying to
find things that appeal to a really broad audience. When
you're looking at things like news dot com. You've got

(01:28):
thirty million people a month going to the website and
most of them, yeah, and most of them don't want
to watch twenty minute long car videos and things like that,
So we are doing things a bit differently.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah, that is a good point because often our editorial
guys get lost in this world of covering car content
for and not necessarily car enthusias, but it's very niche
car content, whereas news is like you're talking to the
guy down the street who doesn't know anything about electric cars,
and most of those people hate them, which is understandable.

(02:01):
But yeah, it is a much different, I guess scope
to doing that. And you guys are going a lot
on video now as well. And I've been watching some
of the stuff that you've been doing, a lot of
vertical format sort of real type stuff. How do you
kind of differentiate doing stuff for News Limited on the
video front compared to what you would have done previously
at like Fairfax, for example, in a specific car role.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Yeah, back in the day, Drive, you know, we Drive
was very good at video a long time ago. Was
really one of the pioneers for it. I mean back
in the day before there was b roll or anything
like that. There's no video crews attending car launchers. I
used to bring a DV camera and a tripod to
like a Mercedes event at Sandown and then just like
try and move the thing around and shoot my own stuff.
And it was absolute. It was a horror show. And then,

(02:46):
you know, like everyone, we moved with the times and then, yeah,
a couple of years ago, I've been at News for
five six years now and we've really gone down the
vertical video path because TikTok has as we all know,
broken society, and everyone wants to consume just a few
seconds here and there.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Of course quite a lot more than a few seconds,
especially with the.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
It's just because I'm an influencer now. Yeah, to Paul's point, though,
it's an interesting position to now be in. I mean, effectively,
content has changed and in some ways it must be
a cool spot to kind of be calling the shots
because we still want to see epic bird's eye shots
and sweeping drone shots. But also it's very raw and

(03:35):
authentic as well, where like anyone can kind of grab
a mobile and just shoot and have a go, and
that's that's just as interesting. You know.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yeah, it's crazy, that isn't it. I Mean, we do
the vertical thing a lot at work, but you know,
I'm on TikTok and all that sort of stuff as well,
And all the most successful videos I've had on TikTok
have been completely raw and personal, Like I did one
this year that was I've been out for a run,
believe it or not, and and there was.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Sick what were you running from the cops?

Speaker 3 (04:04):
Well, I ran into the cops. There's there this hoiro
atrog guy. I had backed up a cycling lane and
then parked across it, basically blocking this running path and
cycling lane and set up there in an unmarked car
sniping people on a bridge during double demerits. And I
had to chat with him off camera and basically said, hey,
you know, I'm not sure that this is the right
thing to be doing, and he basically took me to
jog on. So so I did, and.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Then did he know?

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (04:25):
And then I thought, nah, I'm sufficiently outraged about this,
but I think other people might be as well. And
so I filmed this little video and it went bananas
millions and millions of views, and which is really funny
because you put all this effort into producing really exquisite
stuff and doing stuff with drones and b roll and
slow MA and all that sort of stuff, and it
gets two thousand views and then you just do a
quick hold your phone up in front of your face

(04:45):
and talk about the cops not looking after people. That
was crazy.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
I think the difference is it's kind of one is
a very authentic, sort of at the moment's story, and
one is a narrative, do you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (04:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah, Well you know the thing I remember when when
you did that, I looked at that and I mean
that is just so shit. Like I get, you know,
you're enforcing speed and whatever. That's that's a different story.
But when you're parking across a cycling lane and the
worst thing, I've said this before on the podcast, it's
just such a shit image when you've got police in
Victoria and New South Wales getting about in X fives

(05:18):
and five series dicking people for speeding. It's like, hold on,
you're in one hundred and twenty thousand dollars card the
look here, and then to just park your five series
straight across the cycling lane because you know I'm better
than you. It's like, nah, fuck that. I find that
highly insulting and I'm glad you stood up to them.
And the best part was that he would have then
just while he was sitting there a bone, someone been

(05:39):
flicking through news dot com today and gone, oh huh, I.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
Think that was me. Shit, that's me. I'm gonna I
better move on myself.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah that good.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
That was absolutely that was such a revenue raising kind
of event, just caught then and there.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
Yeah. Well, now, last episode I teased and teased and teased.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
He did you got where there's out? You teased me
as hard as I like. It wasn't budging. In fact,
at one point I coughed a dust out of it.
I think my penis would sound like Louis the fla
just a little cigar. She come on, you can't teach

(06:20):
me have lee. But yes, so you went on a
secret mission. Yes, I'm going to try and guess was
this mission? Was this mission? Where was it?

Speaker 2 (06:29):
Mission possible? Was this one? Because it all came together nicely. Yeah, actually,
well part of it didn't, which we'll explain in a second.
But Dave was actually there as well. It was the
unveiling of the newness and patrol and that was the
car that I was sort of talking about. They flew
us over to the Middle East. Abu Dhabi was where
they chose to launch the vehicle, and funnily enough, on

(06:49):
the day of the launch, these images leaked of it
and there were these blokes standing around in their traditional
dress and I was like, oh, that's a bit weird.
And then one of my friends, who's one of the
journalists over and in the Middle East, he goes, well,
that was actually delivered to the shake one of the
sheikh's homes because as part of the agreement of them
being allowed to launch the vehicle in Abu Dhabi, they

(07:12):
had to show the vehicle to this bloke ahead of
the launch, and while the car was there, they basically
snapped a couple of picks, sent the brown to a
WhatsApp group and it leaked and even up until ten
seconds before everyone in the world saw this car. They
were wheeling the cars into the area where we were
completely camouflage. They had this thing dressed over the car

(07:35):
so you couldn't actually see. It was a very funny joke,
but I will definitely.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
There's some important people listening to this episode more reframe.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
Yes, So, yeah, they wheeled this thing in and then
the second the car was there on the stage, they
took it off and the unveiling was incredible. They had
like a sand dune set up in this exhibition center
where the car sort of drove out onto and look,
I got I say, we've got a really close look
at the vehicle, and to me, I think this is
a quantum leap forward in terms of interior, what do

(08:07):
you reckon and just design in general.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
Yeah, it looks it looks amazing and you can see
that the thing is basically like a Japanese range drove
and they've gone they've gone for the moon with this
and and under the bond as well, you know, they
ditched the old V eight and put in a twin
turbo six with a.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Little bit of feel about that.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
Well, the other day I had back to back nis
and bookings where I drove a Nissan Patrol Warrior with
its side pipes and it's big O the eight dog.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
It's got a good sound though.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
It sounds incredible.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
And then and then I went back to back with
a Nismo Z and that sounds not incredible at all.
And that's supposed to be the sports car one hundred
thousand dollars sports car that you'd like to take out
for a driving a weekend. And you know, it's better
to get into the family bus if you want to
hear something that sounds good. So, yeah, the new Patrol
will sound like a tractor, but you'll feel pretty cool
inside it.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, I mean even some of the tech like they
had this, I don't think this has been in any
other cars before. Basically biometric climate control and what they're
able to do usee a infrared sensor mounted to the roof.
When an occupant enters the vehicle, it's able to measure
their skin temperature and if they've been out in the
in the searing desert heat, which is exactly what it was,

(09:12):
it basically will detect that you're you've just come in
the car, you're hotter than everyone else, and we will
increase the fans speed near you. Oh my god, it
cools you down, which is amazing.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
That's so Japanese. Yeah, you know what I mean. That's
that's amazing.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
And for people listening to this driving with their pets,
and you can imagine the dogs of Australia love to have
this implemented. Veterinarians officers.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
Actually I heard Trevor jump to one of those and
the aircond just aims straight for his num.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
I just couldn't find them. But yeah, other cool stuff
pneumatic massaging, and there is a key difference, and I'm
going to sound like an absolute waker here, but if
you get into like a French car and you turn
the massage seats on, it's like, is someone lightly pushing
my seat from behind? You don't feel a thing. Pneumatic
massages it's like someone, Yeah, someone's driving a knife into

(10:01):
your back. So it's got a set of those, which
is great. They released a Pro four X version which
is like an off road friendly one. That twin turbo
V six will be interesting because to me, I have
a look at everyone that buys a patrol these days.
The second they get them, they modify them. They'll lift
big wheels, big tires, snork, they just go to town
on them. The second Nissan goes down this path of

(10:23):
turbo charging this car, it's got air suspension. Now you're
just removing. There was even another thing that was pointed
out by my Middle Eastern friend over there. Basically he
was saying that when they jack up patrols in the UAE,
at the moment, there's enough clearance between the basically the
suspension components and the body fit to fit big, big wheels.

(10:47):
What they've now done though, to meet crash test requirements
for the states where they have I think it's called
the near offset, where they basically crash the car into
what is a parked car, effectively the narrow overlap now
overlap that's in it, but you're only glancing it. These big
vehicles that are on ladder frame chassis, they're designed to
have like a basically a wheel ejector. So if your

(11:08):
wheel hits the side of this car, instead of it
folding into the cabin and intruding into your footwell, it's
got basically a metal component that's attached to the chassis
that ejects the wheel out the side of the car,
so you don't have it in the way, so if
you have.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
A look, gee, you wouldn't want to be near that crash, correct.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
But if you have a look at the chassis, it
basically prevents you from from fitting some of the big
wheels that you can currently fit to patrol. So he
pointed that out to me, and I'm like, oh, I
didn't even notice that. So I'm going to have a
closer look at that because it is going to affect
what you can do to this in terms of modifications.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
I remember seeing this in terms of like the looks
of it. It does look quite premium, like it's quite
a plush looking, almost European car, and I thought, who's
going to put a big sports bar on this? And yeah,
you would, Fat Pogan, But I just thought, like you,
it's actually quite a beautiful looking car. I think then

(12:02):
this in Patrol needed this, and my first thoughts were,
people are going to just modify the shit out of this.
It will be interesting about the suspension, though, because isn't
that under some sort of subscription I think.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
They were talking about They briefly mentioned subscription stuff, but
I think the translating wasn't great because someone asked, what
is the mass, and he said thirty five hundred kilos.
It's like, no, no, it hasn't added a ton since
you've updated it. And I watched a few of the
videos back after and a lot of people quoted thirty
five hundred kilos as the mass. I'm like, that's not true.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
On the subscription run, it does. It's hooked up with
Google as an OS, so you can you can use
Google Play apps and all that sort of stuff in
the big touch green in the middle of the car,
which and they've basically said, yeah, this is going to
be revenue stream forests going forward for this and for
other car companies as well.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
What do you think about subscriptions.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Got a
story coming out about it pretty pretty soon that you'll
see up on news dot com. They're everywhere, you know.
The other day I attended to launch of the new
smart hashtag one and hashtag three fucking stupid. Yeah you
said it. And this thing has has a little digital avatar.
So if you're old enough to have used Microsoft word

(13:15):
back in the day where they had Clippy, the.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Little the little clip, hard guy, can I help you off?

Speaker 3 (13:22):
It looks like you're writing a letter and this this this,
you know, there will be like a little little fox
or a little cheetah in the corner of the screen,
like a little animated animal that will be like, oh,
it looks like you're trying to adjust the air conditioning.
Can I help you with that? And this is this
is genuinely I think that's in the car now. And
you can choose between a fox or a cheetah for free.

(13:43):
But if you want to design your own sort of
advatars in China you can. You can unlock other avatars,
but it's all it's all money. You're paying to do
it all, and then you can pay for accessories for them,
like little hats and wings and looks.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
Like a meat pie on a bean bag, like a.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
Good Saturday afternoon.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
But that's the thing.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
I get. Subscriptions and those little titty bits for kids.
If you're a kid that plays Fortnite and all that stuff,
you force your parents into buying the little upgrades. And
I've never played for they spend a lot of money
on it, though, But it seems to me if you're
an adult, I mean, would you really paid as people?

Speaker 1 (14:19):
There are people out there.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
Really, but there are a lot of them.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
I just can't get it on my genesis. So there
would be that want some kind of cutesy little bloody
raccoon or something like that. When you're clicking on.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
There, it's my raco.

Speaker 1 (14:35):
There is cheeky little Trevor the raccoon. Oh look we
didn't do a little dance. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
I get the concept of it. To me. Subscriptions make
sense for stuff like what Tesla does, where you can
pay to get premium connectivities. You're getting satellite maps, you're
getting Spotify, all that sort of stuff, and if you
don't want it, you don't need to have it.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
But that's the thing with say Apple car Play, Like
Apple car Plays got all that for you and it's
just running off.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
That's why Tesla doesn't let you have Apple Yeah Play.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
But this will be I reckon one to watch because
I've got a feeling Apple car Play or Apple in itself.
That'll be their new thing, will be trying to get
in on car companies. Perhaps I don't know, but that's
what they're doing now.

Speaker 3 (15:18):
Dave.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
You would have seen the demo they had of the
entire Apple car right, it's not a physical car, but
it's a takeover of the infotainment.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
That's the idea is the digital dashboards and cars your
car play instead of it just being on the little
screen in between the driver and passenger, that will fully
take over the dashboard. And there are car companies that
have said that they're going to do it. Porsche's committed
to it. I think it'll be probably in this generation
of kN at some point. It hasn't launched with it.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
Though, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
I think they're close to that because we we didn't
talk about this, but the week before the patrol thing,
I went to drive the ex ninety Volvo in the
States and that car has been delayed now a year,
maybe longer. And it actually follows on with that discussion
we had in the last steps about Rivian, where they've
gone and designed the software stack from virtually ground up,

(16:05):
and the biggest issue that they have when it comes
to stuff like infotainment and the screens in cars is
that there's different vendors for everything. You've got n Video
running some of the graphic systems for your head up
display and the driver in sort of screen. Then you've
got Google, Android Automotive OS running your infotainment system. That

(16:26):
there's a whole lot of stuff there. But you can
imagine if Apple took over everything you Basically, in my mind,
it would be a much smoother experience. Everything would just
work well.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
I mean, think about it. We're carrying this thing around
twenty four to seven. It's next to us when we sleep.
It's kind of.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Anyone who can't see this, he's holding his.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
Phone, sorry, holding not anything else. This is just for
our substacklessness. What that is I don't know, but yeah,
it's basically just like your phone's an extension of yourself.
So I kind of go, it's just such an easier
and cheaper thing, Like you're already paying for the apps
on your phone surely when you just want to plug

(17:02):
it into your car, get it all up and there
you go. I mean, I feel divided about it because
it feels I get the reasoning behind it in terms
of user experience, but I also feel like it's just
a revenue raising kind of tool from those.

Speaker 3 (17:16):
Car company one hundred percent. Like I was talking to
BMW about it the other day. The current generation X five,
you can buy a base model car that has sports
suspension in it, well, like adaptive suspension that has comfort
in sports mode to access that it's twenty nine dollars
a month or two hundred and ninety dollars for a year.
And I think the idea with this is that it's

(17:37):
not so much about the first owner but the subsequent owners,
because people are looking at this exactly like your iPhone. Right,
so you buy your iPhone sixteen, if you're going to
get the new one in a couple of weeks, it's
just going to roll over all the subscriptions and all
the apps and all the preferences that you had on
your previous generation phone. And I think the car companies
are looking at it in a similar sort of way,
where when you roll from one car to the next,

(17:58):
as you know, you roll over a lease or whatever,
it will have all your favorite preferences. It will know
automatically what your preferred radio stations are, what you're preferred
you know, climate control settings, all that sort of stuff,
and other things too, like calendars and all that sort
of stuff. It's all synced in, so it will have
that as part of the services. In the same way
that you know, if I switch from my iPhone fifteen

(18:20):
to sixteen, it's going to roll over and have Ko
and Spotify and all the stuff that I'm paying for
without me having to sign up for anything new, and
the phone is just a vessel for those digital services.
I think that's the way they're looking at it from
a car perspective.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
Apps and stuff I can kind of get because you
can pick and choose what you like, and it's up
to you if you really want fucking Netflix in your
car whatever. But when it comes to stuff like whether
it be I don't know, suspension subscription so you can
get like sports suspension or massage seats or you know whatever,
I just that kind of thing. I mean, I get
you're kind of paying for that extra anyway, but I

(18:54):
feel like if it's in the car all along, you
should just fucking be able to have it.

Speaker 3 (18:58):
Yeah, So this is KEYA In the US. I've got
a mode for the EV nine. I wonder who'd buy
one of those to access to access the cars like,
it's got a level of performances standard, but if you
want to go a little bit faster than you've got
to buy a Boost mode, which is nine hundred US
dollars again, fourteen hundred bucks to access. But it doesn't

(19:18):
change anything physically. It just changes the software in the
motor and the and the battery, the way that it
outputs energy. I mean, Motor Train did a really great
story with this where they've got a long term EV
nine and they went into the touchscreen and bought everything
that they could find and it was twenty eight hundred dollars.
There was a lot of shit, So like if you've
got imagine imagine you know, your your kids footy training

(19:39):
or something like that, and that you're the parent out
they're standing with the umbrella and one of your kids says, oh,
can I just go and sit in the car? Please
come back to like three grand whether of stuff that've had.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
It's now convertible. They've pressed too many buds.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
Some of it's really interesting, like this idea that you know,
if you've got a favorite sports team, you can customize
the car's ambient lighting and the and the theme of
the dashboard to like the La Laker And that's a
one off, forty dollars charge over there, But you could
probably do that anyway by just messing around with the
ambient lighting and all that sort of stuff deep in
the menus.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
Yeah, because you know, as a as a Forward Ranger owner,
I've been having a look at the range of forums,
and they've got this tool that you can basically plug
into the OBD port and it's called four scan or
something like that. But you can BA four scar.

Speaker 1 (20:26):
Sure you've got a hel one if you can drive
a Raptor.

Speaker 2 (20:30):
But basically it allows you to enable all of these
features that your car has but you don't have. So
for example, if you drive any ever store or Ranger
that isn't equipped with it, you only have a certain
number of drive modes, whereas if you enable these features,
you can actually have something like a sport mode. Then
they have a sort of tank turn feature which they've

(20:52):
released on the Tremor, which all the cars can do.
You just tick a box and then it appears on
the infotainment screen. It's just again it's all soft, we're driven.
All the cars have the same hardware. It's just the
software is then enabled to allow it to happen.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
So this thing is basically a plug in that kind
of hacks the system pretty much.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, so it's some sort of a license. Someone whiz
bang has come up with this, but I think it's
it's like you said, you could do it to any car.
Really if you know that the hardware is there, it
will just do it for you. So yeah, it's that's
fascinating stuff. Now, I was gonna throw a little bit
of a curveball here. The worst car launch you've ever attended?

Speaker 3 (21:31):
Oh, I haven't thought about that much at all. I
mean the smart one the other day did miss in
a couple of places. There there's no video to start with,
so that's that's pretty hard these days. And this is
what we're doing, except that I loved it because I
just shoot everything on my phone.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
And no one else can.

Speaker 3 (21:45):
Yeah, basically knock that one out really quick. And you
know the lunch was like lobster tail and oysters and
caviat No, no really it's seafood and that was about eleven.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
As poor bastard.

Speaker 3 (21:56):
I know. Look it is. It is a struggle, yeah,
but we will prevail.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
Do you find do you find that certain countries put
on better parties than others, Like like Chinese car companies
will bring out everything, whereas I don't know, a German
company might just be like, sit up and enjoy our car.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
Yeah, it depends on how much they want to impress here.
I remember the first time I went on a key launch,
there was a sixteen course Deiga station lunch and the
first time I went on a Mercedes launch it was
for an AMG product that everyone It was the new
A forty five when that first came out like ten
years ago, and that was that was a really hot
car that everyone wanted to drive. And lunch was at
a pie shop and then and the pr blow could
just put his credit card on the bar. I was like, yeah,

(22:37):
I mean, treat yourself to a milkshake if you love.
Like talking about bad press launches, I mean, Paul and
I attended an absolute cracker of one in the Middle East.
He knows where I'm going with this. It was a
it was, it was brilliant. It was for the Maserati
Levante diesel, which I think we can all agree is
not a great car to start with. I mean they
launched that thing with a diesel from an old Jeep

(22:58):
which was really bad. And the later lot, don't get
me wrong, they were incredible. They put these twin turbo
v eights in them basically out of a Ferrari for
it eight and they were fast and they sounded awesome.
But the original cars were new, no, not that, and
they wanted to show how capable this thing was off road.
So we went into the desert with two or three
press cars and then we were supported by another vehicle,

(23:19):
which I assumed was going to be a patroll or
a land cruise or something like that, but it was
another Maserati and every single one of them shot the
bed spectacularly, I think the best ones. Like I was
following Paul at one point, and yeah, like the air
suspension was dumping out, so these things would have them
raised up as high as possible to drive in deep
sand in the desert, and then when the air suspension

(23:40):
would pack in, they would turn into like la low
riders and they scrape their bellies on.

Speaker 2 (23:45):
The sand like a shovel.

Speaker 3 (23:46):
Yeah, and so there was that. I mean, the electric
parking brakes are basically welding themselves on. The cabins were
filling with sand and everything was clogging up. I mean,
I had I've got a video of the check engine
lights and warning lights on my phone that's about three
minutes long.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, it was.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
It was pretty epic, and the support vehicle was pretty
funny as well, because that thing died and then Paul like,
we don't get me wrong, we get spoilt quite a bit.
There is that there is like I'm not exaggerating about
lobster tails and cavea that happens. We were not spoilt
on this event though, where we were digging these things
out of the sand with our bare hands.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
Basically, do you know what the best part about that
story is the most reliable car there was, the Press
mini bus to get you.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
You know, that launch was so bad that it was
so good. You know, it was so bad that I
had so much fun there because we then did hot
lapse and this dude bailed us up in one of
the cars and I'm looking over his shoulder. He's kicking
the shit out of this thing. I'm looking over his shoulder.
I'm like, how do we have a full take of fuel?

Speaker 1 (24:44):
And I looked again.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
I'm like, oh no, that's engine temperature.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
It was all the way up.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
And I'm like, mate, I think you need to let
this thing get some breath because it is fucked those cars.
One of them, one of the wheel arch guards came
off from when it fucking dumped its ass, And there
was just this vision of the boss of Maserati having
to rip this thing off and put it in the
boot and there was so much sand inside. They had
those stupid shifters in the middle. All you could hear

(25:10):
was crunching as you change it. So that was that
was something else.

Speaker 1 (25:15):
When the boss of Maserati is pulling off, mate, it
was a freaking bumper guard and putting in the boot
of a car terrific.

Speaker 3 (25:23):
That would have gone off in the Abidabbi shakes group chat.
I'm pretty sure I certainly didn't.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
Yeah, And it was like fifty degrees outside. It was
properly hot, and I just thought you wouldn't even take
a land cruiser out in this weather one of these things,
all right, Yeah, that was that was memorable.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Fuck what about the best one? What's one of the
ones where you go that was wild?

Speaker 3 (25:43):
Ah my reflex reaction. I did it. Did a Ford
Mustang thing in America last year that was just incredible.
So we so for the it was a new generation Mustang.
It's just launching in Australia now and this thing is
the face of motus board around the world, so it's
used in supercars, it runs at Lamon, runs in NASCAR
and all that sort of stuff. So we did a
bit of a NASCAR trip We drove them flat out

(26:05):
on a NASCAR roval, which is like half oval on
the banking, half road course. And this was like, I've
never known anything like this before. I've driven them track plenty,
but you know, I had to wear hands device that
you know, embraces your neck against your body so that
if you have a huge crash and you don't snap
your spine.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
And it was on Christopher Reeve yourself.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
Yeah, basically, and I realized that I was in trouble
because I was on the banking doing like two hundred
and forty k's an hour, realizing that I didn't need
to look left, I needed to look up because that's
that's that's how the banking works, because you tipped on
your side and the car is basically it's like heading
uphill the whole time. And I couldn't crash down in
the seat enough to look up through the windscreen because
I was restricted by these these hands cables on my helmet.

(26:46):
And then that was another one that was forty degrees.
But yeah, we you know, we did those, and then
we did like a road trip across the States through
you know, through the South, and you know, stopped for
like fried chicken and waffles, and I went to went
to Penskes went to a NASCAR race now cars, Like
I was really dismissive of it before going there, and
then you see these guys racing packs. It's it's an

(27:07):
incredible sport. Like one of their best drivers had a
huge crash in the in the race last weekend, guy
named Kyle Larson, because his car snapped on him because
he's driving it right on the edge. He's cornering it
like three hundred odd kilometers an hour on the oval
and the car like fifty meters in front of him
has just shifted over half a lane. And what it
did was it changed the aerow balance of his car

(27:27):
mid corner. It took a bit of took a bit
of downforce out of the front end basically, and it
just changed the balance and it just snapped and sent
him into the fence at like three hundred and this
this sort of stuff happens all the time. The cars
roll and all that. They're not just turning left. The
guys that are like and a lot of the time
they're oversteering, like basically drifting.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
You know the dude that rode the wall all the
way around.

Speaker 3 (27:49):
Was that a NASCAR It wasn't it was. That's that's
a test, But yeah, that was. That was like a
race to stay in the championship.

Speaker 2 (27:55):
Last year, they basically, I don't know if you saw it,
they basically he raced as the championship. He had to
get around all these cars and he basically so with
Venascar Oval, you've got the wall. He basically just went
up close to the wall and just nailed it and
then used the wall to hold his car all the
way around overtook a whole shiploader cars.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
That's amazing, unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
But they've now banned that.

Speaker 3 (28:19):
I think they have. Yeah, they've got a couple of
rules in there like that. I mean, it's an incredible sport,
like they're so specialized in what they do. But then
also you send someone like Shane ben Gisberg and over
there and he brains them because none of them, none
of them use a clutch when driving the manuals, which
is really weird, right, So they would just basically put
have their left foot on their break and the right
foot on the gas and just never use the clutch

(28:40):
on downshifts. And this is why Bean Gisberg and scooed
them all in the rain because these guys were coming
into breaking in the wet and trying to downshift a
couple of times going into a corner pressure and just yeah, compression,
you're just like smashing it down through the gears and
snatching the rear wheels, whereas like Shane, Shane's using the
clutch as a tool to modulate the way that the
talker is hitting the rear tires on downshifts and you know,

(29:00):
heal and towing and all that sort of stuff, which
is like a really old school technique going back forever.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
He's such a good driver, he's you know, he's proven
here in Australia that he's that he's he's made of it,
because he's now up in another category over there. He
got promoted, is that right?

Speaker 3 (29:14):
Yeah, that's right. So he's been racing in their second
tier just called the Xfinity Series and doing the odd
drive in the in the top class which is called
the Cup Series. And yeah, Van Gisbergan is going to
race full time in the Cup Series next year, which
will yeah, it'll be great. I mean, like the race
that he won in Chicago, I think there was eight
million dollars in prize money involved something, So it's like

(29:34):
more than any any supercar driver's entire career earnings in
one day. Wow, that's pretty great.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
It's almost quite funny. There was commentary this is how
useless my memory is. There was commentary I think was
over the weekend with one of the NASCAR drivers saying
that he would be he would school the stap and
at a at a NASCAR trip.

Speaker 3 (29:51):
That's last and the guy that had the big snap,
And I just I love that that they actually don't
really give too much of a ship.

Speaker 2 (29:57):
They're not Formula one drivers, like it is so big
over in the States, and maybe it'll be a little
bit different now that Formula one has kind of taken
off in the States as well. But I just think
that they have Yeah, they've just got this huge ego.

Speaker 1 (30:09):
Oh they've got a status over there. What was that?
Remember that Will Farrell movie.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
It's a documentary.

Speaker 1 (30:16):
Yeah, but he just walks around like he is king
of the world. And you kind of like it's funny
because I don't think I would have been interested unless
I went myself. But you look on the outside and
you kind of go, these dudes are just like Meadhead celebs.
It's incredible.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
Oh, there's there's NASCAR Drive to Survive. It's called NASCAR
Full Throttle. It's on Netflix as well, and it's and
the opening shots is basically it's pretty much Ricky Bobby.
The guys like piss excellence and you know, he drives,
drives to drop his kids at school with them sitting
on his lap while he's driving, because he just doesn't
give a ship. Yes, I've seen the first episode of

(30:52):
Thunder and then it shows it, you know, it shows
his mansion, which is just massive. That's actually one of
the great things. One of the drivers bought the man
from Ricky Bobby's bought Ricky Bobby's mansion from Talladaga Nights. Right, Yeah, anyway, Yeah,
so the first episode of this NASCAR series shows the guy,
you know, with his jet and his helicopter and his
massive mansion.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
And yeah, his tracker cap and he's got his daughter
on the I do.

Speaker 3 (31:15):
Know that none of them want to do Formula one
because it's it's really well done, because they don't. If
you go to a NASCAR race, there's no support stuff,
there's no you don't watch qualifying or anything. You show
up the fans can walk around on the track literally
walking on the track surface like until ten minutes before
the race starts, and then when the race finishes, they
the pits and everything are all temporary. It's like it's

(31:36):
like camping equipment basically, and they and they put it
on their truck and they hit the road and the
guys are all home for dinner basically.

Speaker 2 (31:42):
Travel the world like it's well, I don't know if
you know the answer to this, but is how does
the prize money compare in NASCAR to Formula One?

Speaker 1 (31:50):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (31:51):
Formula One, like NASCAR, has actual legit prize money which
they issue based on based on you know, where you
finish in race. The Americans do it like that. You
win the five hundred, you get X million dollars. Everyone
knows it. It's like a published figure before and I
remember it off the top of my head. If one
doesn't really work like that. But the drivers are incredibly
well paid and then most of them will have performance

(32:12):
bonuses in their courses. It's the same in the supercars.
There's no prize money in supercars per se. If you
win pop position, you get like a grand yep, but
you win the bat this one thousand. There's no prize
money for that, except that all the drivers have it
written into their contract. Like if you're driving for Red
Bull or whatever, like you win Bathist, you're going to
get a nice payday on top of your salary.

Speaker 2 (32:32):
It's interesting there. I'm curious to know your thoughts on
Chinese cars. We talk Chinese cars pretty much every episode,
and we get a lot of people raging and emailing
us telling us how shit they are and all that
sort of stuff. There's a whole stack of Chinese brands
coming to Australia. What is the limit to this? Do
you think that we'll see more or less over the

(32:54):
next sort of three to five years When you look
at all the stuff that is coming, I think.

Speaker 3 (32:58):
We're going to see more. And then let I think
what's going to happen is this, We're going to reach
a saturation point and the ones that don't have a
strong following, that don't have strong backing, are going to
dip out pretty quickly. So some of these I don't
want to name the brand that I think is going
to fail, but you look at some of these things, yeah,
you can see that they don't really have the back
in the way they should. I think they all look

(33:19):
at things like BYD, which came in with basically no
support from a big manufacturer, but they also timed it
to perfection BYD coming in right on the cusp of COVID,
right when there's the semiconductor shortage, right when people are
you know, there's this ev leasing thing comes in which,
by the way, it costs the government five times more
than they thought it would and it's just blown up.

(33:39):
So BYD they knocked it out of the park. And
then so everybody else has gone, oh shit, we could
do that. I'm not convinced that they can though, and
there certainly is. Yeah, there's a lot of competition there.
I mean, would I personally buy one, No, not not
many of them, A couple maybe, But it also I
think if it all depends on your expectations. Right, If
you love cars and you're a petrol head and you

(34:00):
love the way cars drive, and you know you've got
yourself for like a Mustang or a golfer or something
like that, you're not gonna like many of these things.
But if you if you've been driving around in like
a you know, like an old camera or something like that,
and you're looking for something, something new you get into,
even like a Cherio motor or something like that. Like
I just picked up one of those today, and the

(34:22):
amount of stuff they jam into one of those things
for forty grand is really impressive. And it's like the
video you did the other day with the perfume in
a car, Like you're not like, what Toyota has perfume
in it?

Speaker 1 (34:31):
But you know, just an update on that. He's exhausted
all the perfume. He's a sweaty bastard.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
And at least I small goods.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
Yeah, that's actually the It's funny you say that because
I had a Seal the performance and also the long range,
which is I think about six fifty, and I thought
to myself, this feels like a really good commuter car,
the Seal, do you know what I mean? But then
there are Chinese brands that without naming names, that just
miss it in so many ways.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
Oh they all, I mean, there's no there's no perfect car.
What I find really interesting about this is an enthusiast
like my car at home, I've got a I've got
a Reno Sport McGain that have done a few mods
with and the things really well set up for track work.
So I really love the way that car handles and
brakes and all of that. And it doesn't have a
lot of powers one hundred and ninety five kilowats, but
it's got you know, big fat prairie trafe tires. It's

(35:21):
actually got bridged on Ari seventy one irs on at
the moment, shameless plug, thank you for the big tires
for But it's got it's got semi slecks, it's got
race brakes and all that sort of stuff, and it's
fantastic and it's not that fast and a straight line.
But then a lot of these, a lot of these EV's,
particularly the Chinese ones, are in the opposite direction. Like
you drive a Volvo Ex thirty dual motor and the
thing does naught to one hundred and roughly the same
time as a Ferrari of forty. And it's on like

(35:44):
just pretty ordinary eco minded tires. Yeah, and the suspension
set up to ride well and doesn't necessarily you know,
corner and steer, and the you know, the by D
seals is a bit like that for me as well.
The cars that impress on a brief test drive, you
get into them and you've got all the features. You
got heated and cooled seats and big touch screen that
tips on its side, and all that sort of stuff,
but they don't really feel like they've been engineered in

(36:07):
the same way.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
They've been engineered very quickly. Yeah, that's one of the
key differences. They will release a car to market very quickly,
and they take a lot of off the shelf parts
and they don't do the level of tuning to stuff
like the ride and the things that you would expect.
But and in saying that, a lot of people don't know.
You know, when they go by let's say that cherry, right,
you're getting all the stuff inside, and if you're just

(36:30):
driving around the city, no one's ever going to know.
But it's only when you head out to the country
you hit some choppy roads and you're like, holy shit,
this thing is all over the place. But at that
point you know it might not be something you do off.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
So I had this with the MG three Hybrid, which
is a really interesting This little MG three hybrid has
and has a lot of power. Actually it's one hundred
and forty kilo, so it's like a ten year old
GDI or something, but it only has a fairly small
battery and you can deplete it you absolutely carry So
I had this, you know, if you know Sydney. I
drove it down the M five and turned off at

(37:04):
Picton and there's a country road loop that I like
to use there where it's in one hundred kzon and
it's got a few you know, rocking hills and some
off camber corners and things. And yeah, I was driving
it up a hill and it just stopped accelerating. And
what's really crazy is there's a figure on the dashboard
that tells you how many killer what's the car is making,
and usually that's useless information, but in this case, you

(37:24):
see the thing go from one hundred and twenty whatever
KILLO wats to like fifty to help me, and yeah,
it feels like someone's knocked the car into neutral. And
then I went and repeated it a couple of times
and rang them up and was like, what is going on?
I had no idea about.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
That same experience, we did half a lap of the
right and handling track of the proving ground and it
got to the point where your foot would be through
the firewall and the speed I would not be increasing,
it would just not move and then you let off
the throttle, you give it a minute, you go for
it again, and then you get thrown back in the
seat for another twenty seconds. Then it disappears and they've
got this I can't remember if it was THEMG three

(38:00):
or if it was maybe the jolly On. We've got
like a two speed transmission as well. So it gets
to a point where like one hundred ish kilometers an
hour where it changes into its other gear and there's
like a five second delay, and then it dips down
in speed, gets its next gear, and then it goes
goes up again and it's like like, what are you doing? Yeah,
And that's actually my concern. I know ten thousand tangents here,

(38:23):
but that is actually my concern with plug in hybrid uts.
If you look at that bid, if you drive at
longer distance, get to the point where you've drained that
thirty kilo what our battery and you're towing something, you're
going to get to a hill where you deplete the
reserve energy and you're going to have a little one
and a half lead to trying to tow two and
a half tons plus your vehicle plus it's wait up

(38:43):
this hill. It is going to be potentially a horror show.
So that's the first thing I'm going to be testing
when I get one of those, or the Ranger as well,
because I get the concept of it. It all sounds
great on paper, but when you actually put it to use,
I think it's going to be just like that MG
three where you deplete the battery, which you will do
to driving.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
You know that's not potential. Doesn't imagine getting a wobble
on with a trailer and the car deciding now is
the time to throw the brakes.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
On you got to overtake. I mean, it's just there's
just so many situations there where that doesn't make any sense.
I want to ask you about a story that you
broke it at News about the novated lease incentives that
the government has. So for a lot of people that
are listening, they might have an electric vehicle under the
luxury car attacks that they've got on a novated lease.

(39:27):
It means it's FBT exempt, means you get to take
hard more money at the end of the day. Plug
in hybrids also eligible for that as well. Can you
run us through what the government thought this would cost
and what it actually costs.

Speaker 3 (39:38):
Yeah, this was a really fun story. Actually they didn't
really want me to write it. There's a bit of
back and forth about this, but essentially, yeah, there's there's
an EV discount that was put in place by the
Albanezi government to encourage people to lease evs, not buy them,
because they wanted people to lease them and then trade
them in at the end of the lease. And they thought, oh, yeah,

(39:58):
there's a few people seeing evs now, and we think
this will encourage a bit of take up. And they
their original forecast was that the first four years of
this would cost about two hundred and forty million dollars,
and what it actually cost in lost tax revenue over
five years it was one point eight billion.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
Just a little miss. Theres got to carry the one one.
Sorry about that album.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
They claim They claim that they change the way that
they calculate things as part of this process, which which
might be true. Shit yeah, but also but also, I mean,
but you can see it with your own eyes, like
how many white Tesla model wires are out there, like people,
people are buying these things. And also anyone that is
in an EV really is doing this and it's it's
it's well more than half of EV's on the road

(40:43):
these days, at least you'd be mad not to really,
because like I mean, there have been times I keep
an eye on this. There have been times where the
cheapest car de lease in Australia has been an EV,
where it's like hundred and thirty bucks a week.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
It is so cheap, Like if you're one of the
people that went on a five year lease and got
it locked in two years ago when interest rates were
low and you were getting a low comparison rate, you
are not paying much for that vehicle. But I think
we've explained this in previous episode. The issue with all
of this is residuals at the end. And now if
you look at car sales, you can no longer do
an instant off from an electric vehicle. No one wants

(41:18):
an electric vehicle as in to buy secondhand, so no
one's buying them as a consumer, and no one is
buying them as a dealer. Right, dealers will not touch
electric vehicles.

Speaker 1 (41:27):
Well, I can imagine a dealer not touching it, but
because I think there'll be all sorts of issues with that.
But private, I thought the private market would still be okay.
We sold the Tesla and it took like three days.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
Yeah, private, private market's a little bit different. So you're
selling it, selling it to some Joe and they'll come
and buy it. But a lot of trades that happen
with new car dealers. If you're going to buy a
new car, they'll trade in your old one. And then
these instant office services that are transacting hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of cars a day are basically sending out
off as constantly. Well they've all now Car sales has

(41:58):
stopped doing that, and they had a lot of those
on their books, so it's telling you that they can't
flip these things. So dealers don't want to have an
electric vehicle there because they're impossible to sell. And this
this thing about selling privately, I've got alert set up
for Model Y and Model three. Every day there as
ten or twenty that are listed, so people are flooding
the market at the moment with them, You're going to
find that the floor price will just collapse and the

(42:21):
prices that you see on car sales will be you.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
Know, well, the range is crazy anyway. It would go
from anything for say a model why, anything from say
fifty five to fucking eighty thousand dollars, and yeah, you
can get a brand new one for seventy eight thousand dollars.
You know what I mean. It's like it's wild.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
But watch what happens next year as well, because this
policy came into effect in twenty twenty two. Yep, and
no one leases a car for two years. Well you can,
but at a lot of people, a lot of people
will go like three to get their payments down. So
from next year the market is going to be absolutely
flooded with modern wine model three and these things. You're
going to be absolutely sport for chores, which I mean

(43:00):
if it means if you'd like trying to do uber
on a budget or something like that, you're gonna be
able to pick up one of these things for like
twenty five grand.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
If you want it secondhand, you're in a good position
at the moment to haggle. But I always warned people
about buying a secondhand electric vehicle that if you are
getting something that's three four years old, you are dicing
with the possibility that you're going to have a battery
that's cooked. You're going to get very close to the
end of the battery warranty. You're outside of the vehicle's warranty.
Typically it's just not a great position to be in.

(43:26):
And it's not as if you can just go get
a reconditioned engine, which you can do with a lot
of older cars. This is new battery. Even a reconditioned
battery is an expensive process.

Speaker 1 (43:35):
I had a mate who did a Tesla what's the
fucking old thing with the gold model X put a
new battery in that for seventeen thousand dollars. It took
his battery power from something like seventy five to eighty
four percent, So like right, and it's a brand new battery,
do you know what I mean? So it's the strangest
thing ever he bought. He literally paid seventeen thousand dollars.

Speaker 3 (43:58):
The other part of it, too, is this is one
of the things in this we're talking about with this
last week was solid state batteries where it feels like
hydrogen and then it's perpetually around the corner, and like, oh,
we're going to do it just just a few weeks
full self driving. Yeah, they were saying exactly they were saying,
but they're saying they're going to have solid state cars
on the road. In a trial purpose this year, which
there's not a whole lot of twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (44:18):
Four September as this. Don't see that happening.

Speaker 3 (44:21):
That could yeah, could could be tricky, but they're basically
saying these batteries are so small and dense that they
could you could pack them within the chazy rails of
something like a Navara or a patrol.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
You keep hearing this stuff, and it's like, all right,
if it was possible, why has everyone not done it now?
I just feel like everyone keeps talking about it, and
we've been talking about it for years and years. And
if you think about if she's COVID as an example,
you had one point where everyone is working on vaccines
and all the sort of stuff associated with COVID all sorts. Yeah,

(44:53):
so now you've got the same story. In evs. Everyone
is working on solid state. It's not just car companies,
it is private companies, big corporations. No one has come
up with anything that's viable yet, and if they did,
it would be in production tomorrow because it would give
you the ultimate advantage over everyone else. Battery tech really
hasn't evolved as much as you know cars.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
I just wish charging tech evolved like I had. I
had a Porsche tykwon turbo last week, which is you know,
it's not only like the fastest EV you can buy,
it's the fastest charging EV you can buy. And I
took it to a place that had had one hundred
and fifty kilo what charges, They delivered thirty eight killer
charge to the car, And then I took it to
another one that had seventy five and it was it
was like in the mid thirties again, and that was

(45:36):
and in both cases there were no other evs around,
Like if there was someone right next to you plugged in,
it'd be even worse. And you just you can't depend
on yeah stuff Sometimes well.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
You've seen Ampole roll back there targets for installing EV
charges at fuel stations because they're saying that they can't
get grid capacity to roll out DC fast charges across
where their fuel stations are located. So if am Pole,
a company that has received millions of dollars of government funding,
can't do it, I mean, what hope is there for
anyone else? And the other thing, bizarre thing, how does

(46:05):
a company like Tritium go out of business? You are
making the thing that is the most in demand around
the world at the moment. How are these charging companies
going out of business?

Speaker 1 (46:14):
Another government? What's in charge?

Speaker 3 (46:16):
Fox funded by the government of one.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
Poll, it's partly funded. There's so many of these companies
that just get lots of money from the government. And
even the topic of I don't know if we discussed
this in the last episode, but the topic of Norway.
Everyone uses Norway as this you know, wow, it's the
amazing Fountain of Youth style thing. And last month they
had something like ninety seven percent of new car sales

(46:39):
in Norway were electric vehicles, and they're all like, great,
this is where we want to be. What they didn't
mention is that Norway has something like four billion US
dollars a year in government incentives for residents to buy
these electric cars, and internal combustion cars are something like
twenty to thirty thousand dollars more expensive comparatively to an
electric car after the discounts. Car market is also tiny

(47:02):
compared to Australia, So when you add all this stuff up,
it's like, well, you're spending four billion dollars a year
to get people into these cars, and the charging and
all that sort of stuff. You just look at that
money and you're like, could that have been better spent
on something else. I don't know what hospitals are like
in Norway, but they're pretty shit over here.

Speaker 3 (47:18):
The prisons apparently about you just get salient.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
It's some big blonde hole comes through as your body guard.
But yeah, I just think you look at the volume
of money we're spending on this at the moment, and
there is just so much stuff that we could be
doing as well instead of helping effectively wealthy people buy cars.

Speaker 3 (47:41):
I mean coming back to China and cars, and that's
that's the really interesting thing that's going on overseas, is
these like tariffs on evs. You know, if Trump gets in,
it sounds like he's not going to be easy to
sell a Chinese car in America. And if you look
at the EU, you know they've got some pretty steep
penalties on things like MG. You know, only a couple
of weeks ago, Volkswagen was was basically playing a game
of chicken with the European governments to say we're going

(48:03):
to shut down the factories and things, which is it's
just not viable for us to build cars here anymore
at the moment unless unless things change, and that's you know,
that's they're basically doing what Holden did with Joe Hockey
like ten years ago, where they're saying, this is the
numbers just aren't stacking up, We're going to have to
shut the factory. And Hockey was like, you know, sto

(48:26):
that lights up the cigar and they're like, go on, yeah, somehow.
I mean. But Volkswagen is a different thing over there
because it's partially owned by a lot of the state
of Saxony or something like that, and then and it's
just there's so much pride in their industry and auto
barns and you know, motorsport and all the culture that
they've got there. It's just a different thing.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
It's an interesting time, yeah, I mean, it's everything is
changing at the moment, and it's I don't know what
all this is going to look like in five or
ten years. It'll be it'll be bloody fascinating.

Speaker 1 (48:56):
I think, getting back to just really quickly your your
prediction of Chinese cars for say next year, I think
there is a bit of positivity about brands that are
coming in, like it will be very much sink or swim,
like you said, But I think to give consumers a
lot of choice. It's only going to get competitive in
terms of price. It's putting families in car. I don't

(49:18):
know if it's just me, but I feel like cars
a new cars, would you say, more affordable now than
they ever were? Family cars or more expensive?

Speaker 3 (49:28):
It's moved around. I think the sweet spot was a
little while ago. Like I remember in twenty eighteen twenty
nineteen doing reviews of stuff like a like a base
model Yaris or a VW Polo. There was a VW
Polo I think it was called The Street or something
like that was sixteen grand drive away and at the
time you could get a Yarras through about that as well.
That was roughly where the market was for a light car. Today,

(49:48):
Yaris starts at about thirty four drive away because it's
hybrid only, and Polo's like close to forty.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
It's Polo's close to forty.

Speaker 3 (49:57):
The tech has just had to ramp things up, so
part it's car companies wanted to do more profitable stuff.
They've they've basically they've looked at the market in Australia
as compared to overseas. I talked to a car company
MD about this this week, and I don't really want
to say who it was because it was a bit
of a background conversation, but he was basically saying that
companies like Toyota have looked at what's gone on overseas

(50:19):
where you can charge like thirty percent more for what
they're paying here, and then five years ago they would
have said, no, this is a mugs game. Why are
we doing this, Why are we in this race to
the bottom. Let's let's let's piss off the base model
cars that not a lot of people are buying. Let's
go hybrid everything. We'll make more money per car and
sell fewer of them. Doesn't always work there, I mean
Ford Australia tried that on around Focus and things like that,

(50:41):
and it just, yeah, just fell over. I mean, Honda's
here still, but Ford of just you know, they've cut
and cut and cutt and now that's just like they've
only got three cars.

Speaker 1 (50:49):
Basically, it was it Perga or we're talking in a
couple of episodes Citron that just completely dropped like the
price of.

Speaker 2 (50:56):
Their cargo for like twenty grand or something like that,
and you kind of think, fuck, how much how much
money are these guys making? Off per car at least
twenty grand at least I mean that is I mean
that is such a I get why they've done it,
but it's such a bad move because it really shows
your hand. No customer looks at that and goes, oh great,

(51:17):
I'm getting a good deal. I look at that and go,
holy fuck, how much money have.

Speaker 3 (51:20):
You sp I mean they need to you look at
Citra and they were selling one car per dealer every
ninety days. Yeah, if you weren't making like thirty grand
on a car, Pergo.

Speaker 1 (51:32):
Like come across as quite a well made, put together,
sort of quality car. But fuck they're expensive, you know
what I mean. Alpha's a little bit the same. It's
sort of like.

Speaker 3 (51:42):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know, I have a Reno.
I don't mind the French car thing. Necessarily, I'm immune
to Pergo's charm for whatever reason. Maybe it's because the
steering wheel sits on my knees. Maybe it's because they
all have a one point six letter engine. Maybe it's
because they charged ninety grand for a you know, a
little less u of ething. It doesn't doesn't really work
for me, I mean objectively, and see what's going on.
But subjectively, it's not mine.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
Yeah, all right, So if you're listening to this, so
that's me eating corn chips. I've been as discreet as
I can.

Speaker 1 (52:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (52:09):
Sure, if you're listening to this, still, thank you contact
at the Drivers Show dot com today you let us
know what you think about all this stuff. It's been
quite a quite a sort of interesting chat. Now you
mentioned before you've got a story going live about subscriptions.
Where can people see that and give us a bit
more sort of detail on that.

Speaker 3 (52:30):
Yeah, absolutely so they can see it in a lot
of places. That's that's the thing about news courts, it's
really now well news dot com is kind of the focus.
The way that we've been structured within the business is
that car stories shouldn't behind a paywall. They should be
out there for free and access everywhere. Yeah, yeah, that
was that was a tough self for a while. They're
going to toy to Camera launch with forty other people

(52:51):
and mine's behind the paywall and others aren't.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
Just wait till you read what I have to say.
It's very different.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
Now so new news dot com that made my butt. Also, Yeah,
you can find us on all our mastheads, you know,
daily Telegraph, Herold's Sun Career mail. Even things like the
Too Woman Chronicle and the towns.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
Were bought in my favorite newspaper.

Speaker 3 (53:08):
Yeah, you like the horoscopes in that one, it's pretty
good now, thank you, and the dating site on that.
But I find I think it's a really interesting idea,
this idea of subscribing to different features in cars, like
Mercedes will charge you nearly six hundred bucks a year
to look at the weather, but also to transmit digital
keys to your friends and things like that, which I
like that, which are Yeah, that is that is a

(53:30):
cool feature. You know BMW have got card games in
cars now I saw that. Yeah, And this is the
sort of stuff that I'm trying to do, just taking
taking a bit of a step back. I mean you're
asking before about what I do as a motoring journalist.
I don't do and cars one hundred percent. That's that's
that's the sort of stuff that we're that we're looking at,
Like I'm not trying to tell you about, you know,
the tread shuffle or the Jounts tuning or something. And

(53:52):
I have read those words and I still don't really
understand them. I've seen this before.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
How long have you been reading car Exit?

Speaker 3 (54:02):
But no, it's it's like it's a broad mass market thing.
Like the other day I was I was editing a
video from one of our one of our great contributors,
and he was talking about the battery chemistry insider inside
a really fast TV and I just want to ring
him up and just smack his head against the desk. No, no, no,
you've lost them, You've lost us. Just tell us, tell
us you know, how's the car make you feel? What's

(54:22):
what's what's new about this? And that's and that's part
of part of my job is that I have to
go into meetings with people that edit like mass mass
media stuff right Daily Telegraph, News dot Com and things
like that, and try and convince them why a story
should be should be worth knocking things off. I mean,
the other day we had a we had a really
great run with a video of the new Zeka electric

(54:43):
car and it was the third highest rated video on
the site against Raygun and behind the scenes behind the
scenes thing on the Olympic Village basically what they get
up to behind closed doors. It was was the pitch
something like that, and and to be that's that's that's
the thing practice. That's the that's that's I mean, the
way that I'm approaching this job is to not necessarily

(55:04):
look at look at car expert Cartole's cast guide as
as rivals. I'm looking at the you know, the Olympics,
the you know, the Bachelor, whatever's going on out there.
That's that's that's what I'm going to know. Trying to
take down like the maps, right, that's a hard thing sometimes.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
Yeah, I feel like we need like a ray gun
in a dat Son.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
Yeah, very wow, what is.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
The raygun of cars? That's it? That's that is good.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
I know, stop do those dances to me again? Yeah,
that is a good question.

Speaker 2 (55:40):
Yeah, I'm gonna have to think about that one, because
there is there is definitely something out there for that.
There's probably multiple things.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
If she was selling a car, should be just sort
of in front of the car doing the bunny hop.
Those dance moves kind of looked like me paralletic at
the Melbourne carp.

Speaker 3 (56:01):
Yeah, it was like Leo crawling up to the Lamborghini.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:05):
Yeah, here's me doing the Melbourne Cup poll a side shuffle,
trying to find my own fucking betting ticket and also
make quell ludes. I don't even know how to pronounce it.

Speaker 3 (56:15):
I've definitely done some raygun moves in my car, like
I don't know, like a you know previous Jen McGann rs.
To turn on the cruise control, you have to turn
off the sports mode, which is down by your right knee,
and then you have to activate cruise control, which is
down past your middle right where the seat belts are.
And then to use the cruise control, you're looking at
a steering wheel that has buttons on it that make
no sense compared to any other cart. There's an art,

(56:36):
there's an O what do those do?

Speaker 1 (56:38):
And it almost could be an app that you pay
for one of these cars, But it's like twister like
left hand.

Speaker 3 (56:44):
Yeah, it feels like that, Like I get into my
own car and I need Google lens to be able
to understand what's going on in front of me.

Speaker 1 (56:50):
We do have some questions from the people before you go.
This is e Envy seventy nine. Here we go, quick opinion.
Don't want to sound like a wanker with this question.

Speaker 3 (56:59):
My wife has.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
It's a current range Rover Sport with thirty three thousand
k's and the brakes shudder. I don't know if I
can say this stealership, I won't do that. That's below me.
Barrack rangerover definitely it was not. Then Barrack range Rover
says it's normal. I don't know anyone with a similar car.
I can't ask the forums because it will just open

(57:22):
up a can of whams. What's your opinion?

Speaker 2 (57:23):
Can I just say, whenever you get told it's normal
or characteristic by a dealer, take a car off their
showroom floor that is the same. It could be hard
with you if this is an older car and take
it for a test drive. If that car doesn't shudder,
because that's not normal, I would be. And you take
the salesman with you and you say, show me it's shuttering.
That sounds like it's it needs machine roaders to me,

(57:45):
But I don't know. What do you reckon?

Speaker 3 (57:48):
Sounds like a good chance for a cove and stremming breakup. No, no, no,
it does. It does sound like machine roaders and all
that sort of stuff. Maybe give it the Italian tune
up that helps it all?

Speaker 1 (57:58):
What else have we got here? Just for Dave? Are
you ready for this? This is and I'm not kidding,
this is a legit question, Dave, can you explain why
you have lowered yourself to the extent that you have
come on this show that is by Trevor fucking Life.

Speaker 3 (58:17):
I mean, you've always got to have a first time somewhere,
don't you. Yeah, this is my first podcast appearance of anywhere,
because really, yeah, I've done I've done stacks of radio.
I was doing radio stuff today, plenty of TV and
various other things. But no, none of my.

Speaker 2 (58:31):
Only be uphill from here.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
Actually I do have one quick question, one of my own,
but let's like talk to the table about this one.
The super outback. I waved it goodbye. I waved it goodbye.
I played some Katie Lang what a Wonderful World, and
I waved it goodbye. And I was I was a

(58:52):
little bit worried about this because we'll talk about price
in a second. I was a bit worried about this
because I'm like, fuck, he's going to find something wrong
with it, and he's going to come back into the
house and it's going to be all over for me.

Speaker 2 (59:04):
And I'm like, he's sitting in my driveway for so.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
Long, and I was shooting myself. I'm my please, I'm
so fucking happy with this price. Please just go, just go,
just go. I'm looking out the window. Fuck, he's still there.
He's still there. And then I said to my wife, Fuck,
he's coming back in. I knew it. I knew, I
knew it. Fuck, he's coming back in. He's sort of like,
I'm opening the door high you left your Missy Higgins CD. No,

(59:27):
but I did leave some stuff in the car. And
but okay, so here's the thing that car I bought
for well, at the time, it was brand new retail
for fifty six I did get a deal from Subaru.
So in all transparency, I got that for fifty grand, right,
so on the.

Speaker 2 (59:45):
Road, yep, okay.

Speaker 1 (59:47):
So oh and I remember the dealer going, hey, bro,
keep this for two years. You'll be able to sell
this for fifty two grand. They hold their value really well,
you'll be fine with this. And I was kind of
like sold on that. I'm like, yeah, fuck it, yeah,
I'll do this. I'll do a responsible thing for my

(01:00:07):
family and buy a fucking family car. I won't worry
about the fact that this is all we'll drive and
choose up the field, no worries. Less than twelve months
later that dealer offered me, how much do you reckon?
Forty eight oh, thirty nine thousand dollars? So close thirty
nine thousand dollars, And you said to me, He's like,

(01:00:28):
why would you sell it privately? Just take one of
these companies that will pick you up and it picks
it up in a truck and you don't have to
worry about it. I got three inquiries on this car.
Oh really yeah within five days. Oh that's car sold
in five days. I've got three inquiries. The first guy
was keen asking price and all we didn't budge on
the price. And then surely, like the day before, Hey mate,

(01:00:53):
you're coming tomorrow, he bailed out. He found something else. Okay, fine,
the worst Yeah, second guy came in, didn't haggle on price,
bought it straight away. So that was good.

Speaker 2 (01:01:03):
And was it a dealer or just a private private buyer?

Speaker 1 (01:01:06):
And the interesting thing was really nice guy. He just
went from owning an outback for like fifteen years, done
three hundred and eighty thousand kilometers, so he drove it
and you just wanted something again. So that was four
forty nine thousand dollars.

Speaker 3 (01:01:23):
Wow, that's pretty good.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
Yeah, I'm genuinely surprised by Yeah, yeah, an honest dealer.

Speaker 3 (01:01:27):
I mean normally, if a dealer asked me to hang
on to something for two minutes, I wouldn't trust him.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
Yeah. Here's the thing. Actually, I'm the worst with this
because I got my wife to sell it for me.
I'm like, yeah, she just like she she's just like
put on that kind of stoic Asian wife. No, no,
we're not budgeting on price. And it was and that's
how it went down. But there was one there was

(01:01:52):
one third inquiry from a woman trying to pick up
my wife. What yes, what do you mean? Car sales
message was like, Hi, were you the the hot woman
getting out of the I think I saw this car yesterday?
Were you on such and such row? Were you the
hot woman? An old woman? Oh blah blah blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
Was it her?

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
No, she's not hot.

Speaker 2 (01:02:18):
You are lucky she doesn't listen.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
To this nobody.

Speaker 3 (01:02:21):
Dad, Dad, It's like, remember missed connections in MX magazine,
way back in the magazine. You've gone from there to
the DMS. Sliding into the DMS in castles is a
pretty special. Yes, I know a few people have been
screwed on castoles with most of the journalists.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
Yeah so so, yeah, I have to ask. I'm thinking, like,
what is for eighty thousand dollars? That's what how much
I want to spend on the family car? What do
you reckon? You your secondhand? I'd be care how much?
How about eighty grand? She is a genesis?

Speaker 3 (01:02:57):
I mean you might get an next demo Ironic five.
Then if you play your car like I wish.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
Fun family car, Yeah, well, what are the pre requisites?

Speaker 1 (01:03:07):
I think it's got to have a little bit of
it's going to have a fun factor about it, a
little bit of cred no dag, and ideally not have
an average fuel consumption of thirteen liters per one hundred kilometers.
Don't get a Ranger wraptor Yeah, I mean how much
is your wrap to doing? By the way? Yeah really? Okay?

Speaker 3 (01:03:29):
What about what about it?

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
What about the wild track? How much would be?

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Six days? Okay, there's ten ish driving.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
Golf ours are pretty good, dance all sorts of things,
isn't it if you like if you like driving, you know,
they do the family thing, they've playing all that sort
of stuff. Yeah, yeah, you find one of those that's
a that's a good gadget. And there's an updated model
coming very shortly, so that would put a bit of
pressure on existing stock if there is any.

Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
And that's a fun commuter m Yeah, not bad but.

Speaker 3 (01:03:58):
Also but not too much brain damage as well from
dealing with the driver aids and all that sort of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
And should hold its value. If I put my dealer
hat on, Yeah, put your dealer hat on. You'll get
eighty for it easy in two years.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
Yeah, tirely.

Speaker 3 (01:04:13):
Well, then you can do the thinking men's go far,
just like the Cooper sort of stuff I found, like
a Volkswagen spokesperson. Yeah, some of those things basically because
no one really knows what they are. I can imagine
you could the demo deals on like a Leon VSX
and that sort of stuff should be pretty good.

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
Maybe I can get a press car for a cool
pro I should. I should contact them.

Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
They're well looked after some of these things.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
Good luck. Yeah, I'm sure they'll. I'm sure they'll respond
to them to my emails.

Speaker 2 (01:04:40):
That would be so funny. Actually quite desperate to sell them,
so maybe they will make it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:44):
Well. Thank you for thanks for joining us. Appreciate you
dropping by and.

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
People find you on the socials. If they're on the
toccer's where can they what do they search for?

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
What would you call it?

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
The tockers. That's just the TikTok Club.

Speaker 3 (01:05:01):
I'm Dave McCowan on most things, Dave mcwn or yeah,
Dave motoring on TikTok because there's another Dave McCowan out
there somewhere, but at least I've got a fairly generic name.
I don't have to put like number eleven or underscore
tag whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Two hundred and eighty six.

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
Yeah, and highly recommend checking out day's content man, because
what you're putting out is really cool.

Speaker 3 (01:05:19):
Oh thank you. Yeah, no, I actually do give a
shit and try to do good stuff. Yeah. Yeah, there's
always there's always something.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):
Coming long, Yeah, nice, excellent. Well yeah, if you've got
any questions for Dave, contact at the Drivers Show dot
com today you will see we can get them back
on again. And if you haven't done so already, because
I'm sure there are some of you. If you are
listening to this, go to your podcasting platform, give us
a rating on there, preferably not another one star rating
about forty. Just picture me when you're doing the radio.

Speaker 1 (01:05:46):
I would, I would urge you to tell any Paul's
big in the milk department, so that's where it is charged.
That's yeah, ladies, take a ticket on wait in line
number forty two. Your meal is.

Speaker 3 (01:06:00):
He's big in the Middle East as well. Just quietly
when we're at a patrol event and there's like eight
hundred and four by four fans there, most of them
have seen the Car Expert video War two.

Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
Yeah, yeah, dilfs, Yes, Middle East, what a place.

Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
You're the new supercar Blondie Ye can ladies and gentlemen,
Supercar Pavla.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
That's a good one. Yeah, thank you for listening, and yeah,
please do leave us rating and yeah Jinn for the
next show.

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