The Joe Rogan Experience - #589 - Chris Harris

Episode Date: December 18, 2014

Chris Harris is an automotive enthusiast. He "writes and does low-rent videos about cars".

One of the beautiful things about the internet is you could watch a video, meet someone from that video, and have them in the podcast online right now. Chris Harris, ladies and gentlemen. You're one of my all-time favorite auto journalists. You and Jeremy Clarkson and Matt Farah, both you guys, you and Jeremy Clarkson are really funny. You say some really funny shit while you're driving these cars around you're you and also you're also like very obviously a true car nut you really love cars i have a sort of medical condition with cars really it's a

problem i was just talking to someone earlier about this and um if you look at the upsides of what i do for a living which is basically to to review cars, well, that's how it started out. It's something a bit different now, really. I get free cars. That's the upside, right? So I can basically earn not much money. That's what you do as an auto journalist. You have a line in earning not much money.

But if you want to borrow a GT3 for the weekend, you phone up Porsche, and as long as you can justify it, you borrow the car. So you get lots of free cars, really expensive, nice cars. So what you shouldn't do is buy cars. But still buy cars i've got too many cars and i don't have much money um but yeah it's a problem with your family do you get shit about that i don't know i have a long-suffering and understanding wife who who sort of sees it and actually the car market

at the moment is pretty good as you know so the stuff that i bought the tat that i bought has kind of gone up a bit although it's all on paper and i'm sure that by the time you've insured it and it's broken down you've serviced it you probably wipe out all the upsides anyway um but no yeah i i it's a great subject it's a great medium to work with you know it's no coincidence that top gear is such success because the guys are brilliant they're super talented and if you put them in charge of a gardening show it'd be just as good well those guys made a shitload of money though they really did make a lot of money i mean they're wealthy yeah i mean it's not past tense they're still doing it yeah and um yeah they've they've done a fantastic job but then you know that is

globally the largest television show per views in the world is it really isn't that amazing on cars yeah and that so yeah the top gear phenomenon is amazing i get asked about it the whole time but that's i love it and i celebrate it and i think they're brilliant what they do but that's a bit like finishing the olympic 200 meters and being the bloke that comes second and being asked what it was like to watch usain bolt's ass you know it's kind of it's it's uh it's it i want to celebrate it but it's quite frustrating because they dominate the market like no other genre has a dominance like that so if you if you view television as a series of verticals you know gardening cookery martial arts whatever you want

it to be motoring is is the one that has the fewest players and the biggest dominance i mean if it was a company it would be investigated by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission and shut down. We were at Mipcom. I had someone at Mipcom trying to sell my wares. Mipcom is the big content fairing can. If you want to buy a television programme about anything, you can buy it. I thought, we need to make some money out of this content.

Let's send someone down there and sell some content. You can buy three British TV programmes about baking alone, but you can buy three British TV programs about baking alone, but you can't actually, you know, you can't find many car shows. There aren't many out there, actually, in Europe, certainly. I know you've got some here, but they're all quite tangential. The car's almost coincidental. Well, we have Top Gear US.

We have a version with a good buddy of mine, Adam Ferrara, is on. They're doing, like, a version of, and it's so, I mean, I love Adam. He's a great guy, on they're doing like a version of and it's so I mean I love Adam he's a great guy but they're copying it in some weird way where they even do the thing where they're standing around and they have an audience that's standing around them exactly the same as they do in the UK yeah I'm the one thing we've always set out to do is to never copy Top Gear yeah it's ludicrous it's like sitting down to write a novel and saying i'm going to try and copy bleak house you're not going to do it it's going to go wrong so i think yeah copying the format is impossible because the format that they've arrived at they've arrived at because of the personalities they have and the chemistry they have and it works

but if you're not absolutely on point i think it's difficult to pull it off really does jeremy jeremy clarkson did he take any more shit for that you know he did that eeny meeny miny moe thing where he did the racist version of it well i think um i think all of that was just unfortunate really and uh yes and he's probably dealt with it and taken his pain but then the big one that just kicked off is the argentina one you don't know if you heard about that no oh god where do i start with that that's become a proper diplomatic incident. Obviously, my country, UK, doesn't have a great relationship with Argentina because we had a bit of a war with them in 1982 over the Falkland Islands.

The Malvinas, I think they call them. And they feel quite strongly that we should give them back. And I think we feel that the inhabitants probably should be allowed to have a democratic say in that. And they sort of want to remain British, I gather. I remain non-partisan in all of this. I don't really know or care, actually. So, long story short, they've just filmed their Christmas special. They took three cars, I think V8 sports cars,

and they're going to drive them all the way down through South America and end up in Argentina, I think. And have you not heard about this? No, not at all. This is so ridiculous. It's very interesting because this has been big news in the UK and in Argentina. And when I tell you the story and why it kicked off, I want to see your reaction and your reaction.

Because you might just turn around and go, that is nonsense, you couldn't make that up. So they bought, I think, a Lotus Esprit V8 to drive through South America. I mean, you couldn't get between London and Bristol in one of those that are breaking down. Right. And they bought a Porsche 928 GT and they bought some kind of Ford Mustang,

like a fastback 70s one, I think. And halfway through the filming, they had to remove the number plates on the Porsche because the number plate was accused of having some kind of a reference to the Falkland Islands. It was a normal British number plate, so it had a letter, three numbers, and three letters afterwards. And it was something like J982, so that looked like 1982,

and then FKL, Falklands. But, you know, it was a bit like me looking at your number plate So that looked like 1982. And then FKL, Falklands. But, you know, it was a bit like me looking at your number plate and just using it as an anagram of nothing and just making up the fact that you were calling me a tubby Iranian or something. And I just... So anyhow, a full diplomatic incident occurred. And they somehow, someone on social media or... The information of that number plate was disseminated

in Argentina when they were down there shooting and they got effectively a mob came after them and started throwing rocks at the cars and they were told to leave the country and they did and they basically had to run pretty much as the crew tell it for their lives so they abandoned the cars which just got smashed up

they left this town, they had to nip across the border I think into Chile to get out of the place and they flew back without finishing the show um and it's really kicked off so the argentinian embassy has made a formal complaint to the bbc saying it shouldn't air the program um and it's all around this number plate well the number plate came with the car pretty much i mean if you trace the number plate back that's that's the number plate the car had and they've just drawn a conclusion from it however the question that is asked is does jeremy have the wit and naughtiness about him to identify a number plate in advance and then choose that car because of that number plate and then go out and shoot a whole program around it just so he can poke some fun at the Argentinians.

Now, I think that's so far-fetched that even a comedy genius like Jeremy isn't going to be able to do that. But it really has kicked off, and it's quite an ugly incident. That seems completely ridiculous. Yeah, I mean, rocks were thrown, someone got injured, they had to leave, equipment

got lost, the cars got abandoned, they just left the cars and ran. That's so crazy. That doesn't make any sense at all. No. So I've just told you the story as a casual bystander. Does that just sound ridiculous to you? It sounds completely ridiculous. But unless it's like, Falkland suck, you know.

Do you remember when they did the one through America and they just, and they, and they, and Hammond's car had, I love man, love painted down the side of it or something. And they, and they,

but they'd know they drove through some Bible belt state and they got chased off a petrol four core in a fairly aggressive fashion. It's a very good one. Um, I love man. Love. Yeah. I love man.

Love rocks or something. What state was it? Did they do it? I don't know, but it was somewhere, man love rocks or something. What state was it that they did it? I don't know, but it was somewhere where such things are not appreciated. Well, the United States, we have some differences. If you did that in California, nobody would give a shit. If you did it in New York, most likely no one would give a shit. But if you went to Tennessee and you drove around, there's certain places where you could get in trouble with anything remotely controversial, remotely supporting of homosexuality, or remotely in any way negative towards the Bible

or negative towards Christianity. Yeah, we've got some knuckle-draggers. It's an interesting group of knuckle-draggers in this country. Everyone has a right to their own opinion. I'm not going to say any more than that. I want to make it to the airport safely without being beaten up by someone. You're fine, man. You're in LA. This is as far west as it gets. This is the last outpost before you hit the ocean. Yeah, it does seem pretty laid back here. This is very laid back and very

progressive. This is the most progressive part of the country, for sure. Yeah, this is San Francisco. San Francisco, almost too progressive because they go so far left, they almost become right with their lefty ideas. They get so socialist, so progressive that they're uber supportive of marginalized people to the point where it becomes imbalanced. But that's necessary. It counterbalance. I think all in all it balances out like you take a little bit of you know Tennessee

or Kentucky and you balance it out with Oakland or Berkeley and it all comes together I think most modern democracies are the same aren't they and certainly the European ideal tends to lean towards what you've described as San Francisco you can

as a sort of minority myself within my what you've described to san francisco you you can you can as a sort of minority myself within my country you can start to support minorities to the point where actually you you denormalize the normal yes and then and then everyone's standing around going well what's going on here you know you know where do where do you draw the line i read in the news today that the european union or the european law has just decided to to classify obesity as a medical condition which is very interesting situation not that i know much about it but it's probably endemic of what's going on but you know okay some people genetically just pile on the weight i do certainly yeah and i feel very sorry for people that do but if you just happen to be a fat fucker that eats loads of burgers i don't really see why i should have to support the fact that you eat

burgers oh so medical condition meaning that like you have socialized medicine so that that obviously particularly in the uk you know that we have something called the welfare state which is you know quite foreign to some people the dole yeah, you have the rock and roll doll. And I, as a sort of closet socialist at times, I feel quite strongly about that. I think if you earn a good amount of money and you have a surplus from it, once you've had a good time with your money, then why shouldn't that go towards people

that are less fortunate than you? That's a good thing. Why shouldn't you try and have free healthcare sensibly as long as the money's spent on doctors and not middle management? I agree. That's all great. But if you choose, choose you know i've just had something called a fat burger earlier oh you went to fat burger yeah and i've never been there right over here i don't know where it was it was down near jay's garage jay lennon's garage and um and i i just looked at the pictures on the wall and went and the bloke went just have a large i'm not quite

hungry i'll have the one in the middle the the one like, not the biggest, but the one down. That's what I normally do in the UK. And this bloke basically served me a cow that had been through a mincer and slapped between two bits of bread. And I just looked at the fucking thing. And I, of course, I ate the whole thing. So now I feel genuinely ill. So if I chunder on your desk, I'm sorry. If you're fucking around with burgers, though, and you're in the United States, have you eaten an In-N-Out yet?

Of course I have. I've been in the country since Monday. I've had two In-N-Outs. You can't. You've got to get a three by three. You've got to get an In-N-Out, three by three with raw onions. But this is all under the counter.

I love the concept of a retail outfit that sells fast food that doesn't tell you what you can buy. Exactly. Animal style. Yeah, it's all under the counter. It's a bit like when you were back in the days of VHS, you go to the video shop and go to the guy who's on the counter and can have something from under the counter, like

your blue movie, under the counter. It's the same, isn't it, with In-N-Out? Someone said, have your fried animal style. I'm looking at, nothing about animal style out there. Yeah. So just to come back to that point, I think, sort of socialism works, but I struggle with the idea shouldn't be fucked and saddled down with debt. They're already poor. And I think that it also should be something that society, if we're going to take care of our citizens, we're going to provide good roads.

We're going to provide schools. How can we not provide health care? It seems like a really important thing. But then again, if you're a doctor and you've fucking struggled through school and you've made it to the top of your profession, you should be adequately compensated for your hard work and effort. So I'm torn in a way in that I think that absolutely there should be some sort of socialized medicine and some sort of socialized health care. And it should be a part of the services that a society provides.

I also – I don't want to see doctors suffer and be disgruntled and pissed off because they have $500,000 in fucking student loans. And the government wants to pay them $50,000 a year to take care of people 12 hours a day. I think that's ridiculous too. So I think if we do have socialized medicine, I think doctors have to be adequately compensated. If they're not, you're not going to get the same effort that you're going to get from people that are in a capitalist medical society where the best doctors cost more money and they're better. They're just better. We have a lot of fucking – we have people that fly from all over the world to come to the United States because some of the doctors that we have are the best in the world in their field. And those guys, they should just they deserve money. They've made it to this position by being excellent. So I'm torn in a way. I mean, I don't think anybody should ever go without health care. If they get injured, they should certainly be taken care of they get sick they should get medicine but but you know it comes to a distribution of money it's

yeah it's interesting isn't it because you you can you can't view it as a utopia because there is no single solution but certainly is the health the nhs as we call it the national health service is a is sort of a global freak there's nothing else like it it costs us a fortune um literally i mean as a percentage of gdp i don't know the figure but it's vast um and it is an amazing thing but once you scrutinize the costs and where the money actually gets spent of course naturally in any modern mature bureaucracy too much of the money gets spent not making people better not paying the doctors and not spending it on medical care it's in middle management it's medical care it's in middle management it's in infrastructure it's in waste of course and that's like charity yeah it's just

that's the great frustration with it really um how the fuck did we get there from driving through argentina that's the beauty of this podcast but no we don't have a real structure no and i think it's um yeah it's strange my wife's a doctor and doctor, and I think that one of the frustrations of watching her generation of colleagues and graduates is that they graduated sort of just before the dot-com boom, so late 90s. And their comeuppance, their kind of grinning moment was that when the rest of us had finished getting pissed

and behaving badly at university for three or four years, and they'd had had to work so every time we'd staggered in at five in the morning shit-faced and they'd had to say i didn't go out last night i've got to get up and do something serious tomorrow morning they turned around and they all got jobs straight away fair enough because they'd worked hard and they all earned reasonably good money but then the dot-com thing happened and suddenly pretty much everyone who'd been a loser in a dropout and done no work suddenly started earning more money than them and they're all saying well hang on a minute i've trained i've trained for eight years and i earn less than the person that's working on some reception at goldman sachs so how does that work um but i think if you like anything in life if you

start to plot what happens strategically over time they don't do too badly because they are mostly insured and sort of de-risked against the the boom and bust cycles aren't they doctors can earn money regardless of where you are in the economic cycle um and they should have more you know what what price do you put on someone that can that can save your life it's amazing isn't it you must have asked your quest that question you must have had some something happen to you where doctors really helped you out and if you did a sort of matrix style freeze frame of that moment and said right

given my net worth what would I be willing to give to that person because of what they've just done to me it's a lot of money isn't it I think we've all had moments where we've just thought I'll give you everything I think you're so wonderful

I'll give you everything especially when it comes to life changing things like cancer or you know spinal injuries or something along those lines yeah for sure. And then about 10 minutes later, of course, once it's all subsided,

we all calm down and think, no, I wouldn't give them anything. I'll buy another Porsche. So your green Porsche, the famous Kermit, whatever you call it, the green fucker. Yeah, the green shitter. You built this in 1972? It was on a 72 shell, yeah.

Oh, I love that car. I seriously thought about building one of those. Alex from Shark Works kind of talked me out of it. We talked about doing an older air-cooled car. And his thought is once you have one of those GT3 RSs with the 3.9 liter, 502 horsepower engine, he's like, you're just not going to be able to deal with that little car. It's just not the 3.9 liter 502 horsepower engine. He's like, you're just not going to be able to deal with that little car. It's just not the same. But I think there's something pure about those little tiny lightweight cars.

Yours was like, what, 2,200 pounds or something like that? In English money, it was just over a ton, so just over 1,000 kilograms. So 2,200 pounds, which is extremely light for a car. And then probably 340 horsepower, and a proper Porsche of 340 horsepower, so that's like a Ferrari, 400 horsepower. It was a mega thing. They're interesting, aren't they? We can get geeky now because you've got some car people that listen to this.

A lot. And people are very excited to have you on, by the way. The difference between the car you've got and the older cars is definitely one of size and interaction. It's strange with a motor vehicle. You can add very small amounts of girth to a car, and that sort of becomes exponential on the road, the feeling of size. You only have to make a car 20, 30 mil wider, and suddenly you feel that you're taking up more and more of the road. You have fewer options fewer lines you can take in a turn and so it becomes less wieldy yeah and you become

conscious of that and i think you're driving adjusts accordingly so the smaller cars the older cars definitely have that about them of course they are more tactile because they don't have assisted steering they don't have you know they have floor hinge pedals they have there's lots of other things that are a bit idiosyncratic about them they you can give them brakes but as standard they don't have much brakes um and they tend to what they tend to do is they tend to offer a lot more interaction and fun at lower speeds that's that's what i what i would say i'd say in a in a nice 2.4 s from 73 you can probably get your kicks and feel that you've had something from the car by not driving it that hard um and by just mooching around you you're probably busier whereas your car

you kind of need to get up it and and there's a personality about particularly the gt series porsches from 99 onwards where they goad you they goad you the engines if you drive if you don't rev it beyond three you really feel that you've missed out. Basically, you've taken the hot girl back to your room and you've made her a cup of coffee and gone to sleep. And I think you really,

whereas I think the older cars offer a little bit more. The green car was complete folly. I mean, it was developed with a friend of mine, Richard Tuttle, and they make amazing rally cars. I mean, you ought to go in one of their things there

off the scale. Well, you didn't even have a key. You had a switch. Yeah, we just had a toggle switch. We didn't see any point. To turn it on. We thought that was really cool until I found someone sitting in it.

Just probably ready to steal it. But I mean, yeah. You found someone sitting in it? Yeah, yeah. Where was I? Bristol or somewhere. What happened? I just politely asked him

if he wanted to get out of my car and he did and walked off. Did you ask him what the fuck he was doing? No. He looked like he had probably done far too many Class A's, so I don't know what he was going to do. Class A's? Drugs.

And he was kind of... It made me realize that the coolness of the lack of security probably wasn't the cleverest thing we could have done. We ended up actually hiding an electronic cutout on it somewhere a bit sneaky, so then it really worked, because you could just lean in and give it that one. I just like the simplicity of the toggle. It was nice. I also hate starter buttons in cars, don't you?

I think they're the most pathetic invention. I have a BMW M3 that has a starter button, and I like it because I just get in and have to use a key. But you don't have to use a key, do you? A lot of them, like a Ferrari, you get in it, you turn the key on, and then you have to hit a button on the steering wheel that seems stupid why would you do that yeah i like the fact that i have my key in my pocket i grab a hold of the doorknob that works really well opens i sit down in the car i press the button it starts i love that i really do love that i think what was liberating about the the green car was it was a bit like um it was a bit like a food critic being told to cook a meal because i'd spent at that stage probably 10 years criticizing everyone else's work i was the critic and the critic's

quite a low creature actually in in in the scheme of things you just go along and you say i don't think that's very good i don't think that's very good i think that's not bad and you that's based on your experience of the cars and you hope that people think those are valid opinions but you've never actually done it yourself so i wanted to do it myself i wanted to make a car that i thought roughly approximated to what i wanted in a driving device in an aesthetic object and i really enjoyed the process it was really really enjoyable and i was amazed at how wrong we got at times we just got it so profoundly wrong and it was so eye-opening the process to work out where the money goes i mean it was just hopelessly inefficient and

richard and i are really good mates and we neither of us has really got any clue with money at all and he'll admit that and we just the bills just racked up and up and up we got this bloke to do the trimming inside the car i wanted not too much trim but whatever was there i wanted to be of exceptional quality so i wanted the stitching to be by hand on the panels on the dash and i wanted an alcantara roof and i wanted the recaro seats trimmed and we got this bloke in from jaguar who does all their um their show cars so does those beautiful interiors and when the bill came in i just said to richard was clearly wrong there's like two extra noughts on it what's he doing he's putting too many zeros on the on the bill and we we couldn't work it out

trimming cars like that just costs a fortune yeah and i didn't know how expensive was that so oddly enough that then altered my perspective so when i next got in a small volume sports car rather than going god that's a bit shit that trim there why have they done that i immediately thought i now know why they've done that because actually for the money they could have had spent on that trim they've actually probably given us a better differential they've done that, because actually, for the money they could have spent on that trim, they've actually probably given us a better differential. They've probably given us better dampers. There were probably five things about the car dynamically they could have spent that money on that made the vehicle much better than if they'd gone for the fancy panel on the dashboard.

Well, that's why something like Singer is such an interesting approach. Like, they've gone all high-end. If you don't know what Singer is, Singer vehicles in California, they take a 964, which was a 1989 to 92, 93, something like that, Porsche. And they strip out everything. They take all the body panels off. They replace them with carbon fiber body panels that mimic the long hood models between 70 and 73. Is that what it was? The long hood ones?

From the very start, they were long hood. So you could say from 64, actually. Right. And they put this incredible Cosworth engine in it. They put this amazing, beautiful interior. Everything carbon fiber. Everything hand-stitched, everything bespoke, and the cost is staggering. They start at like $300,000 US, and they get up to well over half a million for a 964. Really dynamically, the way it drives, it's a 964 with a souped-up engine and a good suspension.

And both you and I agree that if we had half a minute to spend on a car, we'd have one, wouldn't we? Because they are just amazing. I was with Maz last night. Maz has got a hangover at the moment. Sorry, Maz from Singer. Yeah, you've got to be careful about the Singer. You can't say Singer 911. I just did, so I didn't say it.

For legal reasons. It's a very careful legal position so it's a reimagined 9-11 that happens to be made by a company called Singer so is there an issue? there has to be straightforward Porsche don't like anyone playing with their IP too much so they've just got to be quite careful with that

how do they feel about Singer? big pause they feel about singer um he says he says yeah um they i think on an engineering level and a car enthusiast level they love it but i think also they they view it as their thing you know that is the most one of the most recognizable products on the planet someone else is playing with it so in a big way yeah i mean it it looks like a 73, but it's a 1989. It's a stunning thing, though. I think of all the cars I've driven in the last three years, that's one of the top few that I'd put my money into. I just think they're gorgeous.

They're absolutely gorgeous. It's a beautiful car, that's for sure. And they do drive brilliantly as well. And I love the story behind it. Rob, British guy who's, you know, spent six months messing around with modeling clay to get the shapes on the fenders right. And he was a lead singer in a band. Yeah, yeah. Well, he's the cousin of Bruce Dickinson, who's the lead singer of Iron Maiden.

So there's rock in the blood. What band was he in again? Was it Rob in? I don't know what band Rob's in. Rob, I've forgotten've forgotten your band name sorry he was in a pretty good you know well known band um and i just love the story and i think any product is is naturally enhanced by the by the narrative behind it isn't it the singer the singer story yeah is lovely and they're just wicked blokes but they're they're cooking on gas now so to start with it was crikey can we build three of these right now it's you know how do we build all the cars we've got orders for i mean

they've they've really taken off what a weird world we live in where they can't fill enough orders of half a million dollar cars well the car market is bizarre isn't it and it has it's taken on a new form that has shocked even people like me. Because I've always felt confident that people will spend money on cars, big money on cars. Because we all bump into people that have resources. And it seems that the motor car is something that more often than not they like. And yet I'm staggered by the fact that McLaren can build 395 P1s and they just sold out a couple of days after they announced it.

And the P1 is how many million? It's a million nine or some crazy shit? Probably. Yeah, probably is. That means that a LaFerrari is over two, isn't it? Jesus Christ. But the one that actually is baffling is the Porsche 918 because they've built 918 of those.

And I sat several times in interviews with Mr. Hatz, who is the boss of Vaisak in Porsche, the R&D development place, and the man that makes those decisions and has to stand by them. And I just sat goading him, saying, you'll never sell 918 of those. You just won't. And, you know, look at McLaren and Ferrari. They've taken a more sensible attitude. I think there's 499 LaFerraris and there's 395 P1s. Those seem like realistic volumes. But 918 of a vehicle that's, I don't know, what's that over here? It's a million quid. More than a million dollars.

Yeah. So it must be 1.4 million, I would have thought. They've just sold them all. They've just announced they've sold them all. So I've basically got to wear a T-shirt that says, I'm sorry, I was wrong. Next time I see him. Wow. there there is this huge appetite for it and also there is um i suppose there's a parallel with the advertising photographer from the 80s which was you almost couldn't sell yourself if you were too cheap could you you know if you if you if

someone approached you and said you know you're a great photographer how much for a day's shoot and you went it's five thousand pounds they'd go no you're not expensive enough and you go oh damn why didn't i say i was fifty thousand pounds and it's the same in the car world i think if you if you try and sell something at 200 grand now sterling so let's say 250 to 300 thousand dollars you're slightly in no man's land you're not bespoke enough to be really special but you're probably more expensive than the average r8 911 buyer wants to spend money on so you're in no man's land so you've got to sort of take yourself out there and if you take yourself out to that weird place where the billionaires look and just

say there it is it's a million to two million just five million i'm just making it up they just buy into it and of course if you can then make that stick at that top end you can bring the volumes down that makes you more exclusive and then they buy into the exclusivity as well um it's a mad world when you follow it and also the great thing about the three hypercars that everyone's talking about at the moment is that quite a few of the blokes that have them have got all three you know so the number of people that have got a 918 and a LaFerrari and a P1, there's several of them. That's insane. I saw a big Bugatti Veyron in public. And when I saw it, all I could think, the number one thing I thought, there's a million dollars. There's a million plus dollars in a, you know, whatever, 10-foot little segment.

But did you want it? No. It's an ugly car. It's ugly. That's not the kind of car I like. It's a big, heavy, an ugly car. It's ugly. I don't, I don't, that's not the kind of car I like. It's a big, heavy, super powerful car. It's like, it's not intriguing to me. You know, it seems like a wild rocket ship and it's kind of interesting, but it's so

over the top. Would I drive it for a day? Yeah, it'd be fun to drive. But to own it? No, it just seems, it seems ridiculous. Yeah, the Veyron is a really weird thing. I wonder how history will remember it. It's sort of a piece of engineering for the sake of a piece of engineering.

That's what it is. It's a demonstration of what the Volkswagen Group could do at the time. And for that, it's fascinating. And it will be remembered technologically for several things. It was the first really fast car to use a dual clutch gearbox that was that was the thing that hit me when i first drove it because before that you either had those shit actuated manuals the sort of original paddle shifters like the ferraris f1 and whatever lamborghini called it um shit tronic or something i don't know i mean they're just audi r8 up until recently right yeah yeah so you had you had these transmissions sort of limited the experience.

They got in the way of it. Whereas you got in the Veyron and you suddenly just had this little paddle and you just pulled it and you had instant gear shifts. So that in conjunction with its four-wheel drive meant that, yes, you had a claimed power figure of over 1,000 horsepower, but that doesn't really matter. You can claim any number. It's what you can actually put onto the road at any one time that matters.

Net usable performance or power,'s say so if you had a thousand horsepower in the mid 80s if you had a car that did have that power you probably only have 30 of that available at any one time by the time you had shit tires a shit transmission and everything else wasn't working you wouldn't have the performance the what struck me with the varum was that even on a slightly damp road in nearsheim where the factory is, you could kind of use 80-90% of that performance. And that created a lot of other problems, which was that I'd never driven on the road that fast before. It was just crazy. You were so far out of sync with any other piece of traffic.

And the thing's quite big as well. It's quite big. It's quite heavy. And of course, once you get up to those speeds, you have to get back from them quite quickly as well. So I suppose that was more of a superbike mentality it did stop and the veyron was wasn't always has been just this ridiculous connection of numbers and they continue into the ownership experience as well so you know because of the mag wheels and the tires they will own i think you can only change the rims the tires two or three times then you've got to replace the wheels as well

so that's what that's 25 30 000 why is that just because they they won't they won't allow them to carry on just in case they got cracks in them because they're magnesium everything about the vehicle had to be engineered to a level that allowed maintenance so that you could go and do 250 in it whenever you wanted or whatever it would do 246 miles an hour and that meant some of the top end stuff was really really extreme particularly on wheels and tires and consumables it is the most expensive car of its type to run ever i mean the la ferrari the p1 and the 918 are child's play compared to a veyron and that's why veyron values are so suppressed i mean is it's the value car out there now because you can't just buy one and stick it in the garage and hope it's going to go up you'll stick it in the garage and before you sell it again someone will want fifty thousand

dollars to do something to it right and that's what suppresses the values of them yeah it seems like it's not a car that's going to be valuable in 10 20 years from now whereas like a ferrari f430 is going to be valuable in the future you know will? I mean, I think a manual one might. I think the manual F430, I shouldn't be saying this, is probably the sneaky one out there at the moment. It's hard to find them. They are.

It's the last manual Berlinetta V8 Ferrari. So that's worthy of celebration because there is no manual 458. I could see that being worth a few quid in the future. I mean, the Veyron will be worth money, but I just don't know how you're going to maintain them the 959 is a similar car actually of its era because f40 values just sprung up straight away two or three years ago do you know the story of them in america what did they oh the 959 yeah yeah you had to and you had they had them all sitting in a lot didn't they they couldn't actually distribute they couldn't distribute

them because they weren't crash tested so bill gates bought two and crashed one did he yes wow what a brilliant story crashed one a million dollar classic porsche 959 crash tested it just so that they could get it to pass in america and it was that from the original batch back in whenever i don't know i don't know where he got it from, but I remember it was a big story that he had bought two so he could crash one and drive one. What a wonderful story. Yeah, the 949 was the Veyron of its era because it had advanced technologies in it.

But today, you could buy a 70, 80, well, I guess it's $100,000 plus now, Nissan GTR, and it would bury that car. Of course it would, but that's progress, isn't it? And I think the people that buy into old cars aren't too worried about comparing modern performance with old performance that's the problem with something like a veyron look at the veyron the big thing about it is the fastest car you can buy that's why it's a million dollars it's in unbelievably obscenely fast but if you were on a real track like the nurburgring with a veyron

and a gtr the GTR would probably be. Yeah, but I think the Veyron has never really been a track car. The Veyron's just to stick it in a straight line and go really fast in it car. And I've never driven anything like it still for straight line performance. I think we did, what was it at the time? It was the quickest it had done on the public road. We borrowed one in about 2006. And we had the car for a day. That's the way it worked. You we had the car for a day that's the way it worked you could borrow the car for a day and uh julius kruter hello julius he was the guy that sort of managed

the loan great guy um he was in charge of his job title was brilliant it was sort of he was like an antiquarian bookseller he was in charge of heritage and stuff like that and um and he handed the car over and we shot it in a group test normal sort of magazine scenario and we did it for autocar i think it was and we had an r8 and some other stuff and we did some bits and bobs and then the shoot finished when the light faded but we still had this car and everyone else went back to the hotel and i said well we've got this thing for a day i'm using it for a day you know when it gets dark through the night why would we stop using it let's go and do something and we had a video camera with us we said let's go you know we're near germany we'll just hop over the border and we'll um we'll

go fast on the autobahn i've never been fast you need to have effectively a second key to make the veyron go into its super fast mode where the big wing comes out the back a second key yeah it's a it's a second effectively a second mode it's a bit like the old corvette zr1 where you had this set i think it is a second key and that then lowers the car and puts it into super fast mode because before that would you believe it it's limited to 236 i think or it's crazy speed limiter and then but if you want to do the final 12 miles an hour you have to have have the... We didn't have the special key. But we went out on the autobahn in a...

We had two cars. We had exactly the same car as yours, but stock standards. We had the Porsche Press Orange 997 GT3 RS Gen 1, 3.6. And we had a Veyron, a photographer and another driver. And it got to about midnight. And we waited for the a5 near

carlsruhe which is a great piece of autobahn it's like five lanes wide undulates a bit but there's a good long fast section it's totally de-restricted um we waited for it to clear a bit and we just thought well we'll see how fast the car will go and just so we did a couple of kind of and bearing in mind this is a road where 100 is a cruise 120 is you're moving a bit 140 there's a lot of people doing that and you're regularly having people come past in 160 170 even then that's that's the way of the world in germany um but anything over 170 you're quite anomalous you know there's not many of you doing that and we you the veyron gets from 130 to 180 very quickly and then from 180 from from 180 it feels like at the time it felt like no car i'd driven before because a an lp 670 um murcielago lamborghini that that can get to 190

quite quickly 180 but after that those next 20 miles an hour you watch the needle just creep and you watch the numbers come up as single digits just click click click the very one just goes bang so we did a couple of runs where it just hit 200 and i thought well that's quite interesting so watch the numbers come up as single digits just click click click the very one just goes bang so we did a couple of runs where it just hit 200 and i thought well that's quite interesting so let's see how fast we can go so we put a camera in it and this this did a lot of hits on youtube i remember and we just went and see how fast it would go and there was still traffic out on the road and we did we did 227 in amongst in amongst all these other cars and um and i just kept my foot pinned for a bit longer and just kept it going and the porsche that your car was behind us was following as a sort of a

yeah it was like a support car really to make sure everything was all right and had a camera on the front of it i think and and we had radios and i got so far ahead of it and he was doing that i remember we stopped the port was really really And we stopped at the next services. And I was really frazzled because I'd not been that fast on the road before. And everything looks different. You know, you do tunnel in a bit on the sides. You have to be very, very careful. The car does start to wander a little bit.

You pick up cambers. Everything just behaves a bit differently. And you have to have your wits about you. More than I thought. I thought you'd just put your foot down and go. And I'd done 200 many times before. But the extra 27 miles an hour was like entering a new zone. And it was amazing to talk to someone who'd been driving then one of the fastest sports cars on the planet, the GT3 RS,

and he just said, you went out of sight. We couldn't see you. You got so far ahead that it was like you were in a different type of vehicle altogether. You just went. You might as well have been in an aircraft. Yeah, it was mega. And after that, I suppose, there were a lot of people at the time just saying it's not a mclaren f1 it's too heavy it's it's not fast around a track it'll eat its brakes but when you've done that

speeding one in traffic and then felt the way it stops the felt the way it responds you do have some respect for the car you do and i think you create an emotional bond with it that you you can't really relinquish so i so i am i'm actually a veyron defender because i've felt what it can do and what it was designed to do i think part of the problem with the veyron is that the the design brief for it was flawed you can't blame the vehicle for being flawed if if the reason it exists was a bit flawed that do you see my logic here yes i think if they'd set out to make the best driving hypercar of all time they probably would have done it but what they actually set out to do was to do 250 miles an hour safely and reliably that in itself is bonkers i mean when you talk to the engineers about the engine

it's rated at what over a thousand horsepower but apparently you know it can put out so much more it can you know it could have 1300 horsepower if it needed to without even thinking about it 1300 if it needed to if it needed to so it's a yeah it's a it's it's a strange thing but here's the question is it a more pleasurable drive than your green porsche that has 340 horsepower no that's more that's sort of that's the great debate amongst all of us car people isn't it and i i vacillate hugely between the two and i'm completely spoiled so i'm the last person to ask because what i'll tend to do is go through phases i think all men go through phases you go through car phases hi-fi phases watch phases where your little fad is the thing that you're into and sometimes things are really important then they drop away and you can spot it by the dates of the magazines you've got

in your house aren't you or haven't bought a hi-fi magazine for a bit um and i think i'm like that with cars i kind of need all the fixes so if you gave me if i woke up tomorrow morning i'd probably tell you i'm in a bit of a delicate phase so i'd quite like to have an elise i'd like 118 horsepower basic early elise on original p0 so it's fucking lethal in the wet. And I like the challenge, and I like the fact that it's not that fast. You've got to carry momentum, and I take joy in the long-travel suspension. I'd celebrate everything that's great about Lotus and the purity of it. But then, after a month, I'd probably quite like something just to twat me up the road really fast in this straight line.

So I'd probably want a GTR with 1,000 horsepower, and I'd probably drive that for a month and i'd love it and i wouldn't miss the lotus at all i'd love the performance and i'd constantly get myself in trouble with the law but then after that month i'd probably think god really like a 911 and and i this is the problem with it i don't think there's an answer i think broadly speaking the speaking, the lighter, purist route is where I sit, broadly speaking. But I'm not a purist. I cannot tell you that I can adhere to one single philosophy of the type of fast car that I want. I think it's a broad church, and I want it all. I agree.

I like a light car, and I like a really good handling car, but occasionally I like an American muscle car. I used to have a Shelby GT500, and it was a fun car. I really enjoyed driving it. What year was that one? 2011. So it's a 550 horsepower one? Yeah. Not the big one, the 668, the recent one. But it was fun. I mean, it's so stupid. You don't need anything more than 550 horsepower. Anytime I wanted to, the tires would break loose.

Anytime I'm turning a corner, all I'd have to do is just give it a little extra juice and I'd be sideways around the corner. It was fun. It was stupid. Live rear axle, completely archaic caveman car. But it would make me smile all the time just the sound of the rumble of the v8 and the whine of the supercharger just combined with all that together it was fun stupid fun they shriek don't they they they really do make that shrieking noise

it's so much more retarded than the Porsche. Because the Porsche, everything feels balanced out. Even the Shark Works, 502 horsepower version of it, it seems balanced out. Like you have to rev it up to get the real power. There's a lot of, you know, you get 8,800 RPMs until you hit the red line. There's a lot going on there. Whereas with that Shelby, first gear, stomp the gas, you're going completely sideways.

Wah! The car just, it would just go. It just can't keep up. Narrow tires, it doesn't have the right amount of traction, ridiculous engineering. It's not a car that's designed. They took a regular Mustang, and they just said, let's just get crazy with this regular Mustang.

And it's stupid, but there's something fun in that stupidity that would always make me smile when I drove it. Well, I think, but it comes down to the broad church, doesn't it? The thing I've just explained. If you had to keep that as your only car for three years, it would wear thin. The joke would wear thin. Yeah. You'd want something different. So actually what we're saying is,

to all you men out there, and women that are into the subject, this is your excuse. You've got to have lots of cars. You can't have... You know, I always try and keep things a bit balanced, and I tend to get it wrong, but I've got something that's Italian and stupid, and to make me look like I've got a tiny willy,

and I've got some German stuff which works, and I really appreciate the engineering, and I've got a tiny willy. And I've got some German stuff which works and I really appreciate the engineering. And I've got some old French tat that I really enjoy because it just makes me feel alive and pleasurable and it's light and clever and gallic. And I've got something that goes off-road. And I think you need all of that. And it's just all of these things are excuses to waste money.

That's what it's all about. And once you've done that, you can then cover all the bases off and of course you will always be in the wrong car for the job that's that's the whole point of it all of being a car enthusiast is about shouldering the pain and the burden because you're never in the right thing so if i if i wake up and i go i'm going to go out in my 512 ferrari great and i get the thing started up you know and i can't guarantee it's going to start but if it does start and I go, I'm going to go out in my 512 Ferrari, great. And I get the thing started up, you know, and I can't guarantee it's going to start. But if it does start and we go out in it, that's the day that my wife will phone and say, can you go and collect two of the children from school? And I'll go, I can't.

And she'll go, why? That's just so selfish. So the car's basically caused a social issue at home. So I blame the car. You know, if I'd been in the M5, then I could have done it. But I wouldn't. I didn't, did I? Because the law of Murphy means i didn't have it and then the time that i'm out in the 2cv with 12 horsepower is the time that

i'll come up against some young gun in an evo and i'll want to learn him and i wish i was in a fast car but i'm in the bloody 2cv so i can't do anything about it can i you're always in the wrong tool for the job i think when you go to you just got back from jay leno's garage when you go to jay leno's garage you feel like this guy's got it nailed this is how you go to you just got back from jay leno's garage when you go to jay leno's garage you feel like this guy's got it nailed this is how you do it you just have everything that's ever been built and you put it in a fucking warehouse yeah i asked him about that because i said what a nice man he is i said okay look i've got i don't know i've got double figures cars but they are worth nothing my you know i've got one or two cars that might have some value but most of them are worth a thousand two thousand pounds they're rubbish

and they never work they never start on the key i mean the whole point of having cars is that they work you don't want to have to you know if you get a rare day off you want to drive the thing i don't want to i'm not a natural spanner i don't want to be playing with the thing i want to drive it so i said to him how many cars have you got and And he went, roughly 132. So he's got an idea. And I said, so how do you keep them so they turn on the key? He says, well, we just do. So when you walk in there, there are just batteries everywhere, battery chargers everywhere.

And it does turn on a key. He manages to do it so that he can use them and drive them. He has a staff. Of course he does. I mean, it's a bloody industry. It's not even a business. It's incredible to view but i love the fact that they are there to start and to work every single one is there to work so we were looking at a gm cyclone which for a brit is a really fascinating vehicle that was i think in 91 it was the fastest vehicle gm made and it is a truck and um such a

cool thing and i'm i i foolishly chose that moment to say to him so you know when did you last drive this and he went this morning and just put his hat he said put your hand on it's still hot damn why didn't i choose something else to try and expose you um yeah steam engine car yeah oh god he's got some amazing stuff i mean there's a i believe that america if they they knew jay Jay Leno just solely based on his love of cars, if he had gotten involved in a car show a long time ago instead of Tonight Show, they would have a much more positive opinion of him. How is he generally viewed?

Because he was, what was the show called? The Tonight Show. Yeah, because it was amazing. We just don't know about that. It depends on the circles that you travel in. The Tonight Show. Yeah, because it was amazing. We just don't know about that. It depends on the circles that you travel in.

A lot of people, they lost a lot of affection for him because he was host of The Tonight Show, and then Conan O'Brien briefly became host of The Tonight Show, but the ratings dropped, and it was partially because he had his own show at 10 p.m., and people watched that, and they weren't watching the 11 o'clock version with Conan O'Brien, and then he reclaimed the Tonight Show and then a bunch of people got angry at him including a bunch of Hollywood people they thought that he stole it from Conan O'Brien I thought the whole thing was pretty fucking ridiculous but he's he wasn't the most real guy when it came to talking with people about some

stupid fucking movie that he really didn't care about or some album release that he's never going to listen to the songs. He didn't give a shit. So he was just kind of like this gracious, very friendly, nice host who really didn't have any passion for what he was talking about. But when you see him talk about cars, he lights up. He loves it. He's wearing a jean shirt and jean pants. He just wears what he would normally wear.

He has Jay Leno's Garage, and he talks about these cars. And you can see his real knowledge and real passion. And it's exciting. It's fun. I love watching his YouTube show, Jay Leno's Garage. But I've always said to myself, if this guy just did that from the beginning, people would have a totally different opinion of him. He would be loved

across the board especially by men who love cars instead people have this sort of like lukewarm opinion of him he's no one gets excited about Jay Leno in America it's a bit it's a bit like me telling you that story about Top Gear in Argentina because I didn't know any of that I didn't know that that was he was that was the perception of him in that space. But what a great bloke. I mean, he's probably the most convincing car enthusiast I've ever met, and I only met him three hours ago. I mean, he's so completely into the subject. He loves it, 100%.

He just took three hours to walk me around all of the rooms in his, you can't call it a garage. I mean, it's a, I don't know what it is. Warehouse. Small town. all of the rooms in his you can't call it a garage i mean it's a i don't know what it is small town yeah and and uh and and he just the way he talks about the vehicles is that he celebrates the engineering within them he's an engineering freak and he has a sort of fetish about weird engineering you know so he's he'll walk past something that has a value of a million dollars and walk up to a motorcycle that's probably worth a thousand dollars because it's got a radial engine housed within the front wheel spokes.

And that when you bought it, you were told, rather than to stop, to just do little sort of circles on it to stop it falling over because the centrifugal force meant it was easier in terms of oil distribution or something. I don't know. And he loves the quirkiness. He he just loves quirky engineering and it's really compelling to listen to so yeah i mean i i think he's fantastic and i think the way that he talks about cars and the stories behind them and and then yeah the narrative behind all of it is fascinating and he loves the story he's a complete sucker for it he admitted he just said like i keep buying stuff because of the story binder i didn't need another one of those

but then i spoke to the guy and he told me what he likes oh shit i better buy it then um and i love that he's he's i love people who who are almost transfixed by their passion and you feel like there's just a sort of there's an invisible rope just dragging them through a process and they don't really have any control over it it's just happening and they're they're along for the ride and they love it and i think that's exactly him um yeah well how interesting that that's that's the perception i suppose as a as a as a brit who doesn't know anything about the talk show all i can say is that your your media business is the most advanced in the world if he was that bad at his job they wouldn't have kept him for that

long he was clearly doing something right it wasn't that he was that bad he appealed in a strong way to middle america yeah okay and middle america is thought to be the dumbest section of this country and they're just a little you know i mean i i don't, I think that's changing in a lot of ways because of the internet. The internet is essentially making the entire country one big neighborhood. And that everyone has access to the same amount of information now. Where it didn't used to be like that. In the middle of the country, you're dealing with the Bible Belt. You're dealing with a lot of people that are very religious and very close-minded.

And they want things very homogenized and pasteurized. And that's what Jay Leno did tonight's show. Come on. And he would tell like, you know. He says hello, by the way. I forgot to say that. He's a great guy. He said hello.

He's a sweetheart. I really like the guy. But his version of the show was the most successful version. And what he did, he figured out how to crack that code. He figured out how to be the guy that as many people as possible would like. And for whatever reason, Hollywood didn't like him. And they tried to move him out a couple of times. And when they finally got him away from the job, he was number one. He was number one in late night TV. It's very strange. The whole thing is very strange.

It's just he never got the respect doing that. But I still to this day think that if he had a show and it was just about cars, he would be like one of the most loved men in America, especially by men who love cars. I think it's Watch This Space, isn't it, really? I mean, I think he's primed for it. The Jay Leno's Garage brand is fantastic. His YouTube following has got 1.2 million subs, I think.

They output loads of content very generously. He was making no money out of it at all. It's costing him money, clearly. Yeah, he could be sort of the latent force in car television over the next few years if he decides to. It's kind of up to him, I think. Yeah, he's like the American version of Top Gear in a lot of ways. He just hasn't gotten into it. But all these other shows, it's amazing that America has this incredible fondness for automobiles,

but very few really good automobile TV shows. Yeah, it's strange, isn't it? But that seems to be the case globally. But there's Top Gear. And is the UK known for its love of automobiles? Yeah, we have a strong relationship with the motor car. It's not as strong as yours. Right. Isn't that strange, though?

It is. I think that car television is naturally a difficult format for broadcasters to get their heads around. Instinctively, people that run media companies tend not to be into cars, is one thing I'd say. They are probably more of an intellectual bent, and therefore don't quite understand the wasteful need to go and thrash cars around and therefore it's not high on their list of priorities and because of that it becomes difficult to commission it's not cheap to make television around cars and for years the audiences just weren't there so most nations and broadcasters have attempted to do some car television but it's

not really worked because it all started out as being sort of car reviews, product reviews, wasn't it? And then you fell into that sort of really grey area of having commercial channels. Because all of your channels are commercials. Most of yours are. The BBC in the UK is that weird anomaly where it's effectively state funded. We pay a license fee to it. There's no advertising around it. But, of course, that's the perfect template for a review program because you can

say anything's bad and it doesn't matter you won't lose you know you say the ford focus is shit you ford can't turn around and go well we're not advertising anymore because it doesn't matter um so the review format was always a bit of a problem i think on on an independent commercial channel because people found it very difficult to watch someone say, oh, the Subaru Legacy is brilliant. Let's cut to a commercial break and it's a Subaru Legacy in the commercial. I think most consumers struggle with that.

And so Top Gear was the first one to turn it into an entertainment format and they were just brilliant. I mean, Jeremy and Andy Willman just sat down and came up with what now look like very simple solutions but at the time no one had thought of them so they clearly were clever and sophisticated they just said it needs to be much more than just reviewing cars because frankly driving around in a small hatchback is pretty fucking dull um it needs to engage the whole

family so it needs to be entertaining um and we need to do stuff with cars you know you if we think a car is too boring on its own let's do something with it let's throw it off a building let's blow it up let's do something with it that makes it interesting um and because of that it just created a momentum very very quickly actually that that meant that i think people were scared to compete with it so you went from having a few players to having this one big player and i think everyone else went sat back and went i don't want to even attempt to enter that space because we're going to look so second or third best compared to top gear that it won't happen and that's when the sort

of internet shows that we've all been involved in sprung up over the last three or four years because no television company would would commission anything because they didn't want to be a second best to top gear and then youtube came along with a bit of money and said well cars are cool people like car videos according to our stats on on youtube so why don't you make some content and that's where we sort of ended up really but it's still there is still a complete lack of motoring content that i'm into and i suspect you're into you know it's everyone has to do something clever with the car it's not enough just to say, let's just have some really nice cars

and do some nice things with them. Maybe that is too simplistic. Maybe that does only target too small an audience. But, you know, you have to basically modify it, or you have to do, you know, the car has to sort of be debased and defiled within the process, which really pisses me off.

And, you know, I've been asked to do a few things, and I don't want to modify a GT-R. I don't want to cut the roof off a rolls royce it just doesn't interest me at all i want i'm into cars i'm not into wrecking them that's what is exciting i mean that that's what's attractive to some people no i think i think modification process i think that's just one part of it i think if you're're a TV executive, you immediately sit down and go, right, cars, what can we do with cars to make them look interesting to people? And what they miss is the fact that inherently at the moment, cars are so cool. Like a LaFerrari, just the story behind the LaFerrari, the numbers, the engineering,

and then just the sheer visceral thrill of driving it and the way it'll smack you up a road, that's enough for me. Whereas 15 years ago, you were dealing in far less exciting cars now the car is the start you almost don't need to do stuff with it i mean you can what top gear now is the barometer for how exciting a car is they they are so nailed down with the way they treat stuff that you can spot when a car is really interesting because they just take it to the track and do the track test in it one of them gets in it and does pretty much what i do don't they just get in it do some talking slide it around and then that's it but the moment they have to deal with something that's a bit less interesting they have to have a treatment don't they you've noticed that

so if you drop down a bit in m3 we probably need to go and race a hang glider with it and if it gets really bad like a toyota i go or some little shitbox let's go and play football with 22 of them because they're so uninteresting that's what we have to do and that is almost a metaphor for the way the car is treated in in mass media i think everyone's looking for an edge or a treatment and maybe there is an audience just for a car show he says massively loaded question but but but uh no i think i think you do need to do something with cars you need to go on an adventure you probably need to explain the context because all of it's fascinating um but you don't need to you just don't need all this peripheral stuff and you don't need to try and be too clever with it and jokey

with it and what's that modification scene i love modifying cars cars. Your car's modified. I think that's brilliant. But the idea of having to have a really convoluted idea around the car to make it work as television is a bit insulting to the motor car. Do you enjoy luxury cars as well? Do you enjoy a Mercedes S-Class or an Audi A8 or anything like that?

I like anything. I like any car. I have medical conditions, as I said at the beginning. I love anything. I'll find joy in a hire car. I'll find joy in a lawn tractor. If it's got wheels, I want to enjoy it. Of course I love luxury cars. And I quite like one. In fact, I'm trying to do a deal with a luxury brand at the moment to run one for a bit because I love wafting around in comfort. I think everything, cars, to come back to the garage portfolio situation, a car needs to serve a purpose. If I want to get to the airport at four in the morning, I don't really want to go in your RS. It's the wrong car. It's too fast.

I can't hear the radio in the morning. I want to hear the radio, and I want to have a coffee. Yeah, you've got a cup holder. Well done, but your ride is so firm, it'll spit the coffee everywhere. So what I'd like is probably an S-Class, a really nice 350 diesel S-Class. That would be lovely. And do you know what? Horror of horrors.

Maybe I'd like someone to drive it for me, and I could just sit in the back and write a story. So, no, I love them. And I suppose I quite like the absurdity and inverse snobbery of old luxury cars. There's something very appealing about faded glory so sort of mid-80s rolls royce's bit of rust bubbling through them um you know i think they're just hugely cool and i'd quite like to knock a bite in one of those but we haven't got always testing cars um i would quite like one at the moment i have to say what would i like i'd quite like a bentley mulsan turbo or something really shit, you know,

that just sort of leaks oil and has hydraulics that break the whole time. You do have a medical condition. You just look like a bit of a drug dealer, and I think it'd look quite cool. I have a lovely story. You've got a bit of time. I have a lovely story

about the coolest Rolls Royce of all. There was a family that owned a company called caterham um and they were great and i'm probably gonna get myself in legal trouble no i'm not um and they had the sons that ran the company had a rolls royce they'd bought from an auction for fuck all money it was like four grand and it was um it was beige or sort of jewish racing gold as they call it in the motor trade in the uk. It was like horrible bronzy beige-y colour. And rather than take taxis everywhere when they're out in London, they bought this shit Rolls Royce. And they met a friendly cab driver that had driven them around a few times.

And they said, right, I think it was called Sultan. Sultan, you get to keep the Rolls Royce. It's yours. You just keep it in the garage. You can use it whenever you want. The deal is, whenever we want you, you pick us up in the Rolls Royce and you take us to places if we're out in town or whatever and that's the way it worked this thing had sort of rust bubbles all down the side and it had an alp a massive alpine hi-fi being fitted through some contra deal i think with alpine so they've got their own fitters to fit a massive amount of hi-fi in it and all it had was acdc discs i remember you were not allowed to listen to anything else and And it had this, between the back seats where the two people would sit in the back,

there was a really crap old cool box. And in the cool box was just Stella Artois, which in England is known as Wife Beater, which is just quite an ugly beer, really. There's a luxury about Stella Artois over here because it's kind of a French brand. But actually in England it's just known as Wife Beater. It's the lowest common denominator. People get a bit fighty on it.

So you used to sit in this thing. Sultan would drive you somewhere. We used to go to the rugby at Twickenham, which is quite dignified. And all the range rovers park up, and people have their hampers before they go on to watch the game. And Sultan would basically muscle his way into the car park with no pass at all. We'd be in the back. Stella Artois, ACDC coming out the back of it.

Rust bubbles all down the side of it. And to this day, that is the coolest Rolls Royce I'll ever go in it's just a wicked machine and I love that I like the faded glory of the slightly shit over the top luxury car please tell me you agree I agree now

there's a majesty about them and I think particularly the ones that cost way too much money in the period. We're all a sucker for value. We're all suckers for value, aren't we? We love saying to people, that was 100 grand when it was new. I think people love beginning sentences with that to people that don't really know. I've got this. Yeah, that was 150 grand when it was new.

I gave three for it. Which points the clever response is, that's because it's fucking worth three. Look at it. It's a disgrace. There's a large fetish for old American luxury Cadillacs, like old Cadillacs, like 1970s large ones. I was watching this show, one of those West Coast customs shows where they take an old car and they refurbish it. They did it for Kid Rock, the rapper, musician, whatever you want to call him. whatever you want to call it.

And he did like a 72, 73 Cadillac, giant long hood Cadillac and turned it into essentially like a personal limousine with a slide-up door and a ventilation system that sucks out the smoke from his cigars. And oh, it was amazing, amazing. Beautiful, beautiful car. And just floats like a boat. Like those things just flow like a boat on the highway ancient suspension

yeah you could get me onto a subject where i could become a real bore actually the art of comfort has been completely lost in motorcars completely lost everything has to be firmly sprung have massive wheels on it for the marketing department it's all complete shit it's totally unnecessary more often than not you want to be comfortable in a car so why not take some spring rate out of it have a big squashy tire on it it's lovely you'll float along you get into a 70s cadillac for a long journey on a straight road that's got some bumps in it it's a much nicer car than most modern cars you get into an s-class they're pretty good because they've got clever air suspension but a 7 series bmw or an audi a8 you've been in audi a8 recently god almighty it's

like there's concrete for suspension totally unnecessary your car yes your car needs to be firm it's supposed to go fast around the nurburgring that's that's what it's designed to do but luxury cars are not actually that luxurious it's quite weird because ride is fundamental to luxury they spend all this time making sure there's no wind noise they make the powertrain silent and then you get in them and you're like this you can't see me i'm now, but you're like shaking around. Where's the suspension, guys? Yeah, what is your favorite luxury car? What do you think does the best job of providing that very comforting,

smooth, road bump-absorbing ride? I don't think there is a... I suppose a new S- mercedes on the smallest wheel and tires is getting close but i don't think it's as good as it should be or could be really because of the because of the way they have to have the large wheels and also a lot of its legislation so they need like you know lane changing ability 150 miles an hour if you're going to have a lane change at 150 to pass your euro whatever legislation then you can't have the thing running like a you know 20 kilogram spring because you will just rotate so i understand it's not quite

as simple as i'm as i'm portraying it but i think they've gone too far if you if you drive a rolls phantom which is conventionally probably the best luxury car in the world over a really bumpy road you're still aware of the fact that you're in a really bumpy road. But if I gave you a Citroen DS from 1959 or 1960 that was set up properly and drove over the same road, you would be more comfortable in the Citroen. Wow. So we've gone backwards in terms of comfort. What a fantastically boring subject. I rented an S-Class recently when I was in Washington, D.C., and I loved it.

You think it was good? The new one or the old one? The new one. Brand new one. And I've never thought about owning an S-Class but I rented this for a weekend. Me and a friend of mine

did some gigs down there and we were driving around this thing. I'm like, this is something I can get used to. It's so comforting. It's like floaty.

Like you chill out. You get out of it. You feel relaxed. It's a very important distinction. I think that you do find a level of just karma and you are more relaxed i think you're a better road user i find myself just being kinder and i tend to be i try to be kind on the road you know but you're in an s class you've nothing to prove you're plutocratic you probably own the business you know you you sit in there and you view the world as a series of poorer people

than you and you're quite comfortable with your position and you always drop into character don't you when you're in these cars even if they're not yours i find myself doing that and and because of that you say of course you can pull out in front of the in front of me at the junction or you i don't kind of you want to pull out in front of me there or or duck in you just go ahead and do it because i'm in an s-class and the world's good around me. If I was in a 1.6 Honda Civic, then fuck you, I'll fight you. Not you because you're massive. But I think the S-Class is a work of art. And it's remarkable that generation on generation, it remains the market leader.

It's almost in a market of its own. If you want a car in that space you tend not to buy anything else it's pretty fantastic it's pretty fantastic i mean i've driven the i used to have an older bmw 7 series and i really liked it a lot it was very comfortable what year was that 2007 2007 yes it was a bangle one yeah it was very nice it's very comfortable nice understated you know i liked it because it was it didn't attract a lot of attention but it was a bangle one, yeah. It was very nice. It was very comfortable, nice, understated. You know, I liked it because it didn't attract a lot of attention, but it was a very comfortable car. It had some weird massage thing where it would lift your butt up and down

in some sort of a weird way. And it was designed to never let your body sit in one position, so you never got numb legs, I guess. What engine did it have, 5 liter? I do not remember. Was it a 745 or a 745 it was a short wheel base uh i don't remember that's it i love the luxury concept the luxury car doesn't really matter what engines and as long as it goes yeah well that's a weird thing about the the bends

is this amg thing where they have the amg s class the the 63 and then the 65 which is uh which is kind of weird it's like you know now you have this twin turbo v8 monster fucking rocket engine inside this giant luxury car that you're supposed to be just sort of chillaxing in yeah it's a weird one i went all the way to frankfurt and back from the uk it's quite a long drive in a in one of those in an S63 it's a magnificent vehicle well the S63 is actually one tenth of a second faster zero to 60 than the 65 yeah the 65 fits perfectly into the category I was describing earlier which is make something stupid and then just name your price that's why they do that because the kind of the type of customer that walks into a showroom to buy a 65 doesn't want the 63 because it's not the most expensive.

They just walk in and say, I want the most expensive one. And it's Mercedes' job to provide the hyperbolic statement. And that has to be the twin turbo V12, which is inferior to the 63 in every way. Of course it is. Yeah, it's weird, right? But it's the same with the G65. The G65 is largely unusable but but if you're you know if you're a russian geezer with a lot of money and you're living in london you don't want to turn up to your mates and go i didn't get the most

expensive one well that g65 that g wagon is such a shit box it's just a weird fucking bread truck like a mailbox truck i don't understand it i like the normal one the diesel one is great the diesel one is a proper car that you can use and they go they'll go off-road properly they've got three diffs you can lock you know there's no lying it's a proper car so it's like like to the level of a land rover defender which is sort of oh it'll go places a defender couldn't hope to go really yeah because it's got three lockable diffs so if you put the right tires on a g-wagon they're really proper. Whereas the Land Rover doesn't have that.

But the moment you start sticking, you know, AMG engines in them. I mean, the 63 is ridiculous. But it deserves celebration for that. It's just the traction control triggers so early on and there's ESP. So you could turn into a corner at what you think is moderate speed. All the lights flash up and yeah, it's bonkers. We had a good day at one of those in Germany actually.

I wonder what car gets used, one car that has massive off-road capabilities gets used the least off-road. It might be the Lexus, that big Lexus, which is the very comfortable version of the Toyota Land Cruiser. What we call the Amazon, the Toyota Land Cruiser.

Oh, what we call the Amazon, the V8, yeah. It could be. Was it a 570, I think it is? They're amazing off-road. Oh, yeah. And, of course, the saying goes in Africa that you use a Land Rover to go into the desert and you use a Land Cruiser to come out of the desert because you'll never see a Land Rover product in africa because they just don't sort of last well that was the

thing with the the taliban that all of uh what's osama bin laden's people they all drove around and toyota land cruisers and they were like this is like the ultimate endorsement of the land cruise these people that are involved in the war. Yeah, how does Toyota's press department deal with that publicity? How do you spin something positive from that? They all had snorkels on them and the whole deal. V8 Land Cruiser, as driven by Osama, doesn't really work, does it? No. No, they're remarkable things.

But then all motor cars, really, beyond the most basic utilitarian hatchbacks and you know city cars tend to have a series of abilities or um yeah i suppose engineering solutions that are so far and above what the end user will actually need and you you find that in all areas, you know. And I trade in that personally. And that's probably what earns me my living. If I was to sort of drill down into what it is, that might be it. Because you give me a new M3 and I'll go on a track for the video and we'll rinse the tires and drive it sideways at 90 miles an hour

and do all this other stuff. But, you know, if anyone buys the car, how many people actually do that with it? So few. But they like to know it can do it don't they yeah um and i think that's the that's the point you're making with the off-road thing you know what why do people buy the super duper range rover that's 180 000 and see pictures of it in the desert but they're never going to do it but now they love knowing it can and they like getting into it with their mates and they can point at the button that shows the desert logo

and then the cactus logo. What's the cactus? I love the cactus logo. So I've got an old, I've got the last Range Rover, the 322 with the V8 supercharged in it. I just love it. It's just the nicest thing.

I never go off-road in it because I want to scratch it. And, but it's got a button that's got a cactus on it. It's like, and my kids, I love the way kids feel. One of my kids just said, so is that just in case she that's got a cactus on it. It's like my kids, I love the way kids feel. One of my kids just said, so is that just in case you drive into a cactus?

I can't really answer that, but probably yes. I don't know what it does. So the abilities of all of these vehicles so far outstrip what most people do. Do you pontificate about the future? Because it's kind of a silly situation we're in with the horsepower wars. Like the American cars especially, there's a Challenger

Hellcat that has 707 horsepower. I drove it recently when I was in Denver. It's an amazing, amazing car. Sounds fantastic. It's very comfortable for an American car. And it's $64,000, $65,000. It's an incredible bargain. Jay Leno's just got one and it's 64 000 65 000 it's an incredible bargain jay's leno's just got one

and it was parked there and i yeah i don't want to talk about it really because i've not driven one and everyone's driven one i'm the only person on the planet that's not driven one of these fucking hellcats it's fun it's fun so what okay the the horsepower race will probably continue for a bit um i think there's a i think the engineers are a little bit demop happy because they might now finally be viewing the end of the internal combustion engine bmw made an announcement or someone from bmw last week i think said that um they can see another 10 years of internal combustion engine after that we might be straight into electric um or at the very least your your ice might just be a range extender that supports a you know a platform that's broadly speaking electric so if we've

got 10 years left you know let's let's go for it um almost bucket list style yeah sort of and i i think that we i think we're beginning to see elements of that in what's going on um but i also think that the accessible horsepower is just ripe at the moment people are making big power figures and able to warrant it that's what it comes down to really you know i think we would have had 700 horsepower cars many years ago if people could have genuinely warranted the engines to that power and and not had them blow up but they can do it now reliably you've also got some a lot of electronic systems so you can you can kind of insert your own to come back to that phrase the phrase i use net usable horsepower you can you can insert that really i mean a hellcat's probably got 300 horsepower actually when you're driving it because they

have two keys exactly so you one of them gives you like far less. I believe it knocks down to 500. Yeah, just only 500. I mean, it's ridiculous, isn't it? So, yeah, I think the future is going to be exciting. I think it's worried me for a while. I don't much like electricity. Having once twiddled what I thought were two speaker wires when I was about eight, and they turned out to be just plugged straight into the mains.

They'd come out the back of a plug plug and I've got a massive electric shock. And ever since then, I've had a healthy disregard for electricity. I think it's quite dangerous stuff. And it's silent and it's lacking in passion. And I don't like it. I like burning gasoline. I hate to say that. I do.

And I think we do it in increasingly clever ways. But it's coming. It's really, it's here to stay, whether we like it or not. And I think people like you and I are going to have to decide very soon whether we can carry on being car enthusiasts without burning fossil fuels. Have you fucked around with any of the Teslas or anything like that? I've had a go, not in the new one. No, everyone says it's amazing, the new one.

The new four-wheel drive one? No, apparently it's 60 in two seconds or something. And I've had a go in the Elise-based sports car they did early on, which was remarkable. I mean, just the torque and the thrust of things. The little S. Yeah. And, you know, of course, it would do about 40 miles on a charge. I didn't really see the point in that.

It's ridiculous. What about the balance of having all the batteries in the back? It was horrible. It was dangerous, I thought. It was difficult to manage. Like old Porsche style? no that's a myth, we'll get onto that in a minute that old Porsche thing is a myth, they're really good

they're just about managing where the weight is so I think the I think the future is actually quite bright the i8 BMW is the thing that made me the most excited of all the things I've driven this year I approached the i8 with a heavy dose of cynicism.

I thought, God, is this the future? I mean, if you concentrate on it, and you'll never be able to unsee this now, it looks like it's shitting out a 911. Have you seen that? Look at the back of it, and you'll think it's doing a poo of a 911, and you'll never unsee that.

So I've ruined it for you now. But it's such a clever car, and it somehow takes electricity and fashions it into something that's fun to drive great to be in it's clever you know that's the future i'll embrace that it's not exactly what i want i want to just be in a hellcat i want to be in an rs but if you tell me i can't have that then i need to find a solution and i think i can live with that and electricity has its upsides you know gives you vast amounts of torque, which is really nice on the road.

Torque is what matters on the road, not power. So I get... Does the AED have gears? Yeah. I think the future is really quite bright. And we've got a passion that can continue for quite a long time. There it is. There you go. Look at that.

So if you look at the back of it, or you need a different view. Is that a wide angle lens? Yeah, you've got to sort of super wide on it. Yeah. Where are we? I'm trying to find a better view. Go down, down, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up.

You need it square on from the rear. Yeah, you can sort of see that left, that white one there. Yeah, sort of see. Can you see that? Can you see? I'd buy Stan that. Look at those two lights there. Uh-huh.

Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. That bit within there. Oh, yeah. It does look like a shitting out of 9-11. You'll never unsee that. It does. Yeah, that's ugly. I don't like all the colors.

No. But it's a cool thing. We tested it here whenever it was earlier in the year. And I went for it in an Outburger in it and parked it up. And it was turning up like a rock star. I could have been in a pink F40 and people would have ignored me because that was there. What do you think about these BMW cars that are adding sound? That disturbs me. Sound coming through the speakers

that emulates the sound of an engine. I've taken a lot of shit for this because people feel I've been a bit soft on it. I don't really mind too much. The M3 is the guiltiest party, the new one, because it's got an inline six and they've sort of augmented the noise. And you do get some speaker noise

that comes at you but again is that optional can you shut it off i think you probably can play with it a bit but the really weird one is there's a reno in the uk where you can choose your noise so you're in a four cylinder what have you and you can make it sound like a gtr or a v8 or something that's really weird yeah that's just odd that's disingenuous um yeah so i'm not too i'm not too hard on it i i'm i've always been more about the dynamics of these things and the moment that you start to get too caught up in the noise in an era where turbocharging is going to be the norm you know you can forget about normal aspiration really from now on um there'll be a few last bastions of it but the new 458 will be turbocharged um

yeah the moment you get too het up with noise i think you're in trouble i think you could find things to not enjoy about cars um but noise is it is it's so it's so important but you apply a turbocharger and you totally bollocks that intake noise and then really all you can do is fit loud exhausts and i think i love about your car is that the intake and the exhaust are quite close together the two noises blend together to give you something really really special but it's the intake noise on your car that is actually what does it for me it's what i'm hearing in the car and that is all the top of the engine that's all where it's coming in that's where it's breathing in the exhaling bit you're leaving all that behind right so i am i'm one for more intake noise in cars give me proper intake noise um and i think that's what they're going

to do more and more is they've gone down this route of faking the noise and they've been broadly speaking not not getting a great response from people so what i think i'll start doing is tubing noise directly into the cabin some people have tried it mclaren have done it i think ford did it as well you just take a little chew right off the top of the engine where the intake is and just feed it into the cabin it's quite clever um but yeah noise is very important for me but it's so important that if it's not right i almost want to just forget about it and not get too involved in the in the discussion but what you need to know about the m3 is just brilliant it's just a great car um and they didn't really need to do that the m5 is even weirder we've been in a new m5 or the current m5 well that's strange because the noise that makes

fluctuates with the speakers so it sounds like a different car at different points in the rev range but at low revs it sounds like a four-cylinder because of the firing order of the engine and then when you get up it a little bit it starts to sound like a Subaru Impreza so it sounds like a flat four and then when you go a bit further it sounds a bit more like an Audi Quattro sounds like an Urquatro a five-cylinder and then at the top end it starts to sound a bit like an old E39 M5 V8, which is strange. And I think it really harms the personality of the car because it's a shapeshifter. It has these four different sound personalities, and you don't really engage with any of them.

You just think, well, that's weird. Oh, it's being a Quattro at the moment. What about the M6 Grand Coupe? Oh, that's a car, isn't it? That looks like a monster. I love the way it looks. I like it better than the two-door. Yeah.

I think the four-door Grand Coupe looks, it just has like a personality. The two-door looks goofy. You know, it's like, there's some two-door cars that used to be a four-door. Like, I love the two-door S-Class. The new one is lovely. It's amazing. It looks like a spaceship. I mean, it looks really incredible.

But there's something about the M6 that's always been kind of goofy looking to me. So you don't like the new one? I like the Grand Coupe. Yeah, but not the Coupe. Not the Coupe. Not the Coupe. I don't mind the Coupe.

I think the Grand Coupe is just elegant. Gorgeous. Low-riding. I mean, if you ask me what I thought a modern Jaguar big saloon car should be, I might almost give you a picture of the M6 Grand Coupe because it's just got that sort of low seating position, low roofline, impossibly long, loads of power.

Beautiful interior, too. Yeah, great to drive as well. I mean, the fastest. Fuck. We did, I think we did 8.6 to 100 miles an hour in it. That's just crazy. We did a drag race against all the other competition, and it just mauled all of the AMGs.

Really? Yeah, it's really fast. Very efficient transmission. How about the ride quality? Too much, obviously. Too tense. Too tight. Too firm for me.

But you shouldn't ask me about it. The two things you shouldn't ask me about are ride quality, because I expect really good ride i don't think ride and handling are um you know i don't think they are um separate entities i think they i think you can have one and the other i think they're absolutely workable you know that's to be managed by electronics though well no just it's just expensive suspension components you know the fact is that the bits that you don't see on a car are the bits they don't spend money on. So the damper unit on an M6 is probably not that expensive.

If you took it to a rally team and said, what would you do with it? They'd just laugh at you and go, we'd fit a proper damper to it first. So the green car that we come back to, that Porsche 911 we built, the whole point was it had this suppleness about it. It had World Rally Car dampers on it. So it was firm and supportive when you needed it to be and then the moment that you wanted to you know go over a rough road it had lots of compliance and wheel travel it was lovely um so that's the one thing don't ask me about ride because i'll bore you for fucking hours about ride and and looks come back to what

you just said i can't judge a car's looks publicly privately i can i can tell you what i think is nice and nasty but i'm not the arbiter of what looks good you can see i'm wearing a yellow t-shirt that cost a pound i just don't give a fuck about the way i look and i just i therefore i don't think i have the right to judge the way things look i can tell you do like i mean subjectively you look at a grand coupe that's a beautiful car i do myself i think it's a lot better looking than the m5 but i don't think within my within my trade it's not valid for for me to say this car is a great looking car. Why not? Because it's up to the individual.

Right, but to you. To me, yeah, of course, to me that's fine. But your opinion's valid. My opinion's valid to me, I think, on aesthetics. But there are people out there that think the Pontiac Aztec looks good. And they have every right to think that. I mean, I think they're properly... I have a friend who loves the AMG station wagon.

Yeah. I mean... He wants to get one. Which one? The big one? What the fuck are you doing? I don't know. The E-Class. I don't know which one it is.

See, I quite like those. But a wagon is just so goofy. See, I love wagons. I've got an RS6 wagon. Yeah, that's what I drive. I drive an RS6. Why wouldn't you? It's just the coolest thing. Because I've got a big dog and I've got three kids I drive. I drive an RS6. Why wouldn't you? It's just the coolest thing.

Because I've got a big dog and I've got three kids. I couldn't have an RS7. It wouldn't work. I'm so confused. I don't mind an SUV. You don't like wagons? I don't like wagons. I'm leaving.

We're out. In the church, they call that a schism. So I love wagons. I love combining all those disciplines in a car I like the fact that my RS6 will go on a photo shoot and chase a McLaren P1 for two days pretty well too and then on the way back it will

go and collect three kids from school and then after that I'll stick the dog in it and we'll go up into the hills and go for a walk so I like multi-discipline cars so if I go back to the portfolio of cars if you left me with one car it'd be an rs6 at the moment yeah because rs6 wagon because it just the new one the old one was terrible the new one's brilliant i just think it's genius what do you think of the

um the audi uh s8 the new one yes i've not driven the new it's got, I think, which engine's the new S8 got? Some retarded amount of power. Yeah, I think it's got the same engine that I've got in my RS6. 570 horsepower or something. These VW group engines, it's difficult to keep a track on where they are coming from and what power they've got. I think it shares the Bentley engine. So the engine in my rs6 and the gearbox the whole powertrain is straight out of the v8 bentley continental gt

but it's miles better than it is in the bentley i think really why i don't know it just seems to work better suits the car better i don't know maybe the calibration's better i can't answer that really i think yeah i the s8 have i driven an s this is the thing i'm not getting old am i am i is my brain sometimes i can't remember what i've driven sometimes driven so many cars yeah well some people come and say do you remember the whatever and i go have you driven the s class the mercedes s class coupe yet no we're doing that in january the 63 as well looks amazing i think that's a beautiful looking car one of the best cars they've ever made as far as looks it's incredible looking and the interior is amazing now i think it in some ways it kind of defeats the purpose of the s-class

to not have a usable backseat it kind of has one but you know the the feet are going to be bunched up in the the ride quality i'm sure it's probably pretty similar but it's not the same length wheel base right but that car can that can stomach a slightly firmer ride can't it's a different purpose yeah it's a gt car yeah i think so and and apparently the story behind the rear seats was they just did a customer clinic and said how many of you use the rear seats people that buy our cars and they all went we just lift the seat forward and throw a bag in the back that's what we do with the seats they went okay we'll just not have rear seats then really it's just a classic piece of customer clinicking but you could be very dangerous when you customer clinic cars because you can fuck things up it's known in the past like the 575 ferrari that was a fucked

up 550 because it they went to the customers and said so you've all got 550s how would you know what do you want in your new car when we if we're doing a new one i'm not saying we're doing a new one but if we do a new one what would you like in it and they all said well um we want these paddles because your f1 drivers have got them and they're really cool so we want the paddles and we want more power when we come out of the payage in san rafael we want more power we want to get fast and and also the 550 is like quite bumpy you know when we're on road so can you make it less bumpy and so what ferrari did was they gave it a paddle shift um and they gave it a load more power and torque and they softened the hell out of it to make it a bit more comfortable and of course the thing was just fucking undriveable because it was so loose

it wasn't didn't have nice ride it just had a lack of control and the first time we drove it on the sort of welsh b road it just ripped the front of the car off. It just kept bottoming out and it just tore the front off the car. So, um, the Ferrari didn't like that. Um, and didn't like what we said about it. I remember.

And then about five months later, having said to us, we don't listen to what you say. You're just journalists. Our customers know best. They, um, they have,

they announced this thing called the Fiorano pack, which was like uprated springs, dampers, and just fixed all of the problems. Oh, and a manual gearbox option as well. Well, from uh having the porsche rs the 4.0 and then you went don't remind me would you get a 599 i had a 599 i mean that's that goes down in history doesn't it it's possibly the worst financial move ever i couldn't believe you did that first of all

first of all got rid of like one of the greatest porsches ever we agreed we weren't going to talk about that it's just not fair it's just We agreed we weren't going to talk about that. It's just not fair. It's just not fair. You can't remind me of that. That's like saying, it's like me saying you had a, you know,

your girlfriend was Heidi Klamm or something, isn't it? Don't remind me of that. You got rid of one of the greatest cars ever that's worth so much money now. That's the crazy thing, right? How much are they worth now? I saw one for sale for 275,000 American. Oh, they're worth much more than that yeah in the

uk they're worth well over 350 000 dollars wow um so i did a right out of mine hey look i i take a very philosophical view about this stuff i got to own a four liter rs i did things with it that not many people that own four liter rs's have done i did big journeys i used it a lot there's a video of it still up on youtube of it being driven in a completely ludicrous manner. That was my car. It made me money. That was a pretty nice thing to happen. And at the time, I didn't have any money. You know, I bet the house on that thing. I used the last bit of cash I had to put the deposit down. I didn't meet the finance criteria from Porsche. So I had to beg, steal and borrow to get them to lend me the money. And then the payments were well over a thousand pounds a month and I wasn't earning

much money at the time so I couldn't really afford it I sort of kept going for I think we had it for a year and a bit and then I just had the sellage it was just basic economics I couldn't afford the finance but then after that about six months after that I started earning a bit more money I had a couple of contracts that were quite good I had a bit of money and of course the medical condition means the moment you've got money you go straight out and buy a car don't you i didn't need a 599 it was absolute nonsense it cost me a fortune i lost a load of money i probably lost half the money i'd made on the porsche in it but i'd always wanted a 599 i i'm i view life as a series of boxes to tick okay and it's quite binary it's just a series of ones and noughts and that's what i want to do and the four liter box had been ticked you know i

i don't i don't really derive any pleasure from sitting and telling a room full of people that i've got a four liter rs i wouldn't i derive pleasure from driving it but once i'd driven it quite a bit i had kind of done it you know and i'm i'm lucky in that i can kind of use them to the to the full extent of their abilities that's a nice thing to know that you can do that you've driven a 40 to rs to 100 of its ability is a nice thing to know and i'd done that and then i thought i'd quite like a 599 and then i'd had the 599 for a year and realized it was actually just too big and too fast for uk roads but i'd tick that box and then the next box to tick was for a year and realised it was actually just too big and too fast for UK roads, but I'd tick that box,

and then the next box to tick was probably a 512TR or something like that, or a M3, or a... There's just so much out there. It's a bit like walking to a bookshop. You don't know where to start, do you? And I love that about the subject. I've got endlessly fascinated and looking for the next thing that I want to enjoy.

I've got a massive problem with Mercedes 500Es at the moment. You know, the old W124 shape from the early 90s. I will end up... Really? Yeah, I'll end up having one of those in the next six months because I just can't help it. I mean, there's a few things that will remain permanent in my life. I'll never sell that 2CV because it's just so cool.

And also, financially, I can probably afford not... You know, if I get to the stage where I have to sell the 2CV, I'm fucked it so badly that I'm over anyway. I keep my m5 my e28 m5 I would never sell that and I think everything else 86 one of the very early ones a squared off one um I think everything else is for sale always I don't I don't feel I've got a 205 which is a little little citroen sorry a little peugeot that is uh worth no money at. But I think I'd struggle to get rid of that. Everything else is for sale, always will be. And it's for sale at a loss if I need to move on to the next thing to have a go.

I'm just starting to develop a thing for two generations ago's M3. Not the last one, which I have. I have the new one. I have the V8 one, but the one before that. Yeah, the E46. The 333 horsepower one. That have the v8 one but the one before that yeah the e46 333 horsepower one that's the car Maybe I think if you if you wrote down all the disciplines That an m3 needs needs to be good at that's probably the best one they ever made

I think in some respects is nicer than the v8. It's a beautiful car too. I love the shape of it It's a classic shape understated But very nice and And it stands out. So if you can find a nice facelift car with the facelift dash, with the big sat-nav, and the 18-inch wheels, the smaller wheels, and a manual, obviously, get rid of those paddles. And I think that then is a seriously lovely car. You didn't get the CSL here, did you?

Which one's that? I don't think you did. They did a special lightweight car which didn't come here actually because i had a carbon roof um carbon intake a bit more power full track car with pilot sport cups standard they launched it in 03 04 they're now very valuable they're going up that's a really nice car type in m3cs the death of the manuals often talked about subject but a kind of an important one because when we're talking about sound being important, like sound in a car, but shifting your

own gears is important too. There's something that's missing. I have the, my BMW is a double clutch and I like it because of traffic because LA's traffic's brutal. It's a good car to just, it's my commuter car but there's something missing something really missing yeah that's if you get the rear shot of it you'll see it had a special boot lid with a sort of kicked up ducktail on the boot it's a really really good looking car you look at there you go yeah it's different i have seen those at the back and they're really special no the man the manual gearbox is very, very interesting. Manual in America is very common.

It's almost all the big sports cars in America, whether it's a Corvette or the Z28, they all have manual options. The new Mustang, the Shelby GT350 that's coming out, that'll be a manual as well. I think the world owes the u.s a debt for still wanting manuals over here without you guys wanting them there'd be a lot less you've also had some cars fitted with manual transmissions that we haven't so bmw m5 over here you can buy as

a shifter and the m6 yep and the m6 but we can't that's just us only that even the grand coupe is available as a stick i know and i suppose horses okay the manual thing i could talk about for too long so i'll try and be brief as you can tell i get a little bit of stuff so don't worry about it brief okay so the the first the first point is that the manual gearbox is wonderful it's an integral part of driving controlling the vehicle um your busyness behind the wheel the things that you're active doing you know one of the most important is is shifting gear and the process of learning to shift gear is shifting gear and the process of learning to shift gear properly of healing and towing of of controlling a vehicle that's that's something very personal between you and the machine it's something that you can take pride in

and i love that i think that's integral to driving however if you live in la and you're stuck in traffic i wouldn't have a manual i'd want an automatic so it's horses for courses isn't it if i'd say for your hobby car for the car that you enjoy at weekends i can't see why you'd ever want anything other than manual i think you'd be a bit of a masochist if you want to just sit in a traffic jam in a manual 997 turbo with a heavy clutch just be horrible um but the manual gearbox and the future of it is an interesting subject i think that the manual gearbox is and is going to be a bit like vinyl records. So vinyl records have suddenly exploded in sales. You've been reading about that?

So everyone's back into vinyl. There's always been a subculture that loves vinyl. I've always been one of those. I quite like a bit of vinyl. I like the sound. I just like the tactility of it all. It's lovely. It also reminds you of when you were a kid going to buy an album, doesn't it?

It's lovely. And I think the manual gearbox is going to be a bit like that so what's going to happen is you'll see this it will be continued to phase out and manufacturers will make fewer and fewer of them and then someone's going to go do you know what i can see a market here we can make a limited run of manual whatever's so if if say porsche took the 991 gt3 and they've said publicly that's one of the big cars that everyone wants a manual gearbox in but they didn't give one they just gave paddles only and everyone said the commentators said oh no one's going to buy it it's not a manual of course they

sold every gt3 they could fucking make um but if porsche turned around and said we're going to make a limited run of manual gearbox gt3s but they're going to be a hundred thousand dollars more than the standard car and we're only going to make $100,000 more than the standard car, and we're only going to make 500 of them. They'd sell them overnight. They just would sell them overnight. You just know they would, because there's enough people out there. And I think what will happen is that there will be a subculture of manual transmissions,

and some car manufacturers will endorse it and some won't. But I think you'll find that if the numbers stack up, what if they turn around and said, we could engineer a manual gearbox for the new 458 Ferrari, but it's going to cost you $150,000 more. People would buy it. Exactly. Really, it's just market forces.

If they can create a business case for doing it, they will do it. I just can't understand why they haven't. I can't understand why they haven't released the 458 and the GT3. I just don't understand it. So many people want it in a manual two things it's um it's economies of scale these are small volume products and they require quite expensive good transmissions you can't just bolt in your kit gearbox that you've got in five other models you know you've got to have a proper transmission they're expensive proper transmissions um and it's emissions it's a big problem with emissions because you when you the emissions cycles certainly in in europe are they're a bit of a con everyone knows what you've got to be doing at certain points in the rev range

and how you can cheat your way around it and if you've got a seven or eight speed dual clutch transmission that shifts itself you can really work the cycle beautifully to get some very clever results for your emissions whereas if you've got a manual it's much much more difficult to get the results so you you tend to they play slightly fast and loose with the rules and that's why it's it's as much emissions base as it is cost base so i i think we'll probably lose them a bit again okay i'd group manual gearboxes in with vinyl and chronometer you know sort of standard wind-up chronometer watches. In the 80s, who had a chronometer watch? No one did, did they?

Right. But suddenly they were back in fashion now, aren't they? People want watches that cost £10,000 and don't actually keep time. Yeah, they suck at keeping time. So I can see, I think the manual gearbox will become a sort of artisan product that certain brands will buy into and will supply you at a cost. I'm secretly hoping that the RS has a manual option. Do you want to know?

Do you want to be disappointed? Yes. I don't know for sure, but I can... Yeah, it's not. Shit. No. It's too expensive for a series of cars. You know, it's not going to be there.

Have you got your name down for one or not? No. And also, I would want it to be a six-speed. I think that the seven-speed is... From everything that I've heard, seven-speed manual is goofy. Yeah, the original seven-speed manual in the 991 is bad, to the point where I'd actually have a PDK car, I think. Really? And even though I always would want a manual 911, I didn't like the seven-speed.

However, they've just re-engineered the seven-speed in the new 991 GTS, which they launched last month. And everyone I've spoken to who i trust says it's totally transformed the new seven speed is proper they've made it good so what was missing in the old one but it was the shift quality wasn't very nice because what they did is they basically packed a manual transmission into the pdk case so it's effectively a pdk that you're operating manually was not just not dual clutch but it's in the same case. And that meant that the shift was a bit funny. So the first and second planes were good.

Second and third was fine. Once you... So first and second was fine. Second and third and fourth were fine. But when you got to fifth and sixth, it was slightly off angle. It wasn't quite right. So fifth to sixth sixth sixth was back towards

you a bit if you're in a left-hand drive car and then seventh was a way and up it wasn't quite symmetrical and therefore if you wanted to go seventh back to fifth and just plop it back and let the spring then put you up into fifth you didn't always get fifth or weren't always quite sure where it was you could do and sixth god this is a proper geeky conversation isn't it and sick seventh to sixth was quite unsatisfactory a shift it was sort of had a resistance to it now i think they've probably got them all straightened out and it's much more precise and decisive i've not driven it but everyone but everyone loves the shift quality of like the boxster the boxster and the cayman being the six speed like why it's torque rating isn't it's totally those those gearboxes are probably at the limit of torque

and also the obviously the the other way around it's a it's a mid-engined car the gearbox is on the other side so you can't just bolt it on the other side of course yeah um they could do it it's just a money thing it's just a money thing really it just seems so wrong to have an rs and only have paddle shifters what do you think to the shift on your car because some people prefer the slightly longer slicker shift of the cayman and the boxster to the rs you're it's quite notchy the rs gearbox isn't it i don't know it's perfect whatever it is it's just every time i drive another car and i drive that car i'm like this car is like the most tactile the most connected car i've ever driven it's just so fun i just love it is it heavily modded jaws chassis wise yeah it's pretty modded yeah it's a little lower a little stiffer but it's just

it's so awesome it's the best car i've ever owned 500 did you was the engine in it when you bought it what's that did you have the engine done or was it yes did you no i had it done i can ask obviously the painful question how much 60 something for the whole deal yeah so you buy an rs for 100 plus and then you send it to him and spend another 60 on it do they do they modify your existing engine or is it a new engine it's the existing engine 3.6 yeah you take it out it takes it out and bores it out and the whole deal. It takes a few months. I'm going to have headers put on it now that will bump it up another 18 horsepower. Yeehaw. And change the sound a little bit. Does it?

Did it feel noticeably quicker straight away? I didn't even buy the 3.6. I bought the 3.6 and had it immediately sent to them. I never drove it. I never touched it. I had a Gen 2 GT3, the standard GT3. I really touched it. I had a Gen 2 GT3, the standard GT3. I really enjoyed it, but then I found out about the RS Shark Works car, and I was like, I've got to have one of those.

So you sold the Gen 2 3.8 and then bought the white body. I had it immediately sent to Alex at Shark Works. Have you driven the 4.1 yet? I've not driven either of their engines. Everyone says they're sensational. Good golly, Miss Molly. The 3.9 that I have is amazing. The 4.1 is just another 100.

So I'm coming back end of January. Let's go. Yes, we'll go and I'll set it up. Yes. He's on the Twitter, so I see him on the Twitter. He's a great guy. You'll love Alex.

He's awesome. He'll be here on the 9th. Yeah, on January 9th, they're coming to LA. Whereabouts are they based? 4.1. He's in Northern California, like up near San Francisco. So Friday the 9th of January, they're coming down.

Matt Ferrer is going to be here if you guys still get along by then. We'll always get along. But this drive thing. We'll always, I'll tell you what, can I have a cigarette and then we'll have a chat about the drive thing? Sure. Yeah, is that all right? Yeah.

What time is it? 4.30. You can have a cigarette in here if you like we'll just turn on the air filter we have an air filter just disgusting no it's okay people do it all the time yeah have one yeah crank that sucker up are you aching is that what it is you get that achy cigarette thing no i'm a reform smoker who i've just lapsed a bit in the last month or two do we have any more uh coffee jamie no it's fine can i grab a drink that's not yeah what do you want who I've just lapsed a bit in the last month or two. Do we have any more coffee, Jamie? No. No? It's fine. Can I grab a drink that's not...

Yeah, what do you want? I've got bubbles in it because I keep... Water? Yeah, water. There's one there. That's a weird Marlboro pack. They're black. What is that?

They've got that clicky ice blast thing on them. Oh. I love that. Clicky ice blast. You basically get a really strong hit of menthol. Have you tried them? Yeah. Menthol, ice blast, and you do it on demand.

You click it on demand. It's like a little mouthwash. So you quit for how long? And you got back into it. Just have a seat, man. Don't worry about it. We got to... Yeah.

I'm on and off. But I've been good for ages and I shouldn't be saying this because I don't want my children to know that I smoke do you ever try to fuck around with those electronic cigarettes? no I can't see any point in that at all it's like a sugar free drink what's the point?

I like having a beer and a fag in my hand it just seems so natural in America it's known as a cigarette and a fag in my hand. It just seems so natural. In America, it's known as a cigarette. And a fag is a derogatory expression for homosexuality. No, I can call it a fag. I don't wear a fanny pack and I walk on a pavement. I do.

I do wear a fanny pack. Do you walk on a pavement or a sidewalk? What? Pavement or sidewalk? Either one. I don't give a fuck. I'm American. Pavement, sidewalk, whatever you want to call it.

Boot, hood, trunk. I get that. I get that. The whole lexicon of cartoons is a real problem for me because i spend too much time in america i start calling things hoods and talking about sedans yeah it's a fucking sedan saloon car right saloon car yeah i had to learn all that stuff when i watched your shows uh the from top gear on and what about fifth gear does anybody give a fuck about that anymore i hope so i'm on an episode soon so can you give a fuck about it the um tiff's a legend isn't tiff just a legend so i tiff i grew up watching tiff you know he was probably one of the reasons i wanted to do this because he's just mega and i used to remember

watching those top gear skits oh he's the one that can actually drive wow and the woman on the car what is her the woman vicky vb vb she can drive she can drive she's the only woman on car shows yeah she probably that's a shame go sideways around corners if anyone if there's any really really fast female drivers that want to do car videos out there can you drop me an email please because that's the next thing if you could put a really good looking girl in a mclaren p1 that video wouldn't be four and a half million it'd be 10 million would she have to wear like a bikini or no no it doesn't need to be pervy it Would she have to wear like a bikini? No, no. It doesn't need to be pervy.

It doesn't need to be like one of those GTI videos where they're topless and, you know, they're Norc saying them in the face. It doesn't need to be like that. But just I think people prefer the aesthetic of the woman to the man, understandably so. Of course. They're better looking than us. It's a fact. Even women like the way the women look.

But I did a shoot with Tiff. So I did. Yeah, that's another subject. I did. We just done a shoot with tiff so i did um yeah that's another subject i did um i did a shoot we just done a shoot with with um with tiff for fifth gear and jesus what the guy can really drive he is the real deal you know he gets in a car that he's not even driven before and the cameraman says can you put it there sideways you know four feet that way and he just does it on point there done bang gone can i have a coffee now please yeah he knows how to

drive for sure. He's an absolute legend and a wicked bloke to spend time with as well. He's the real deal. Yeah, he seems like he would be. He's fun as well. And so that show, is that a BBC show as well? No, that's now, I don't know, I think it's been, it might be a Discovery show. It's been on Discovery for a while.

But I don't think the one I did airs until April or something like that. But I've done, so what I've done is a track battle with TIFF in a couple of cars at Castle Coombe in the UK. It was really, really good fun to work with them. But it sort of, for me, it was an eye-opener. I partly wanted to do it because I get to work with TIFF. If you'd said to me when I was 15 that I would shoot a sort of extreme driving scene on a work with TIFF that was if you said to me when I was 15 that I would shoot a sort

of extreme driving scene on a circuit with TIFF I just said no way will that ever happen um and I wanted to see how the TV process worked as well because we we shoot a very particular way we're completely renegade I just have this you know Neil who is the guy that I shoot with is like my you know my fifth limb. He's everything. He shoots everything. He edits everything. He's a genius. He's just a great guy.

And we're hyper-efficient. We don't get much time to do these things. We just get given an hour on our track normally, and we just cobble it together as quickly as possible and then fire it out there, and people watch it, and they seem to enjoy it. TV has more time, and it's more laborious. And I think TV could learn a lot from what we do and equally i

think there's still some stuff we can learn from tv and hopefully over the next couple of years we'll refine the process into something that can not only be enjoyable but earn us some money as well so you were you were going to have your cigarette and you were going to talk about drive and for folks who don't know what's going on, Drive is a channel that was on YouTube, and then Drive morphed into Drive Plus, which happened right when I filmed, they filmed the Shark Works ones with my car and the 4.1 liter, and it became a pay channel. Drive Plus became something you paid for, and the internet revolted. There was a gigantic backlash. People got very upset. If you look at the comments of the Drive video that I did,

almost all of them were complaining about Drive+. Even though the Drive video, there's a three, you know, whatever it was, five-minute Drive one, which was free, and then a 15-minute, whatever it was, Drive+, which you had to pay for. Yeah, the Drive, well, this isn't really about drive this is about the internet and this is about content and and whether people are willing to pay for it and whether content's worth anything i mean the internet is an amazing thing but it's also deeply evil for content producers like you and i um because it's created a precedent where people

think everything should be free but there's a cost to producing stuff i mean understandably the overheads for us doing this are a lot less than going out to a track hiring a track wrecking tires putting fuel in a car you know it's not a cheap process it costs money to do it right and because it costs money to do it you need to find a way of remunerating yourself against that so you either advertise against the content and get as many views as you can and if that fails which has happened on youtube now quite publicly you need to find a way of making money so you have to try and charge for the content so how is it how has it failed what happened well i don't think it's failed actually it's still going i just i'm not a part of that now because for my particular type

of videos it was a struggle for me to do it because I needed to be doing a lot of views to keep the car industry interested in what I was doing. And, you know, I go from doing a couple hundred thousand views to doing 20,000 views and then go back to Porsche and say, can I drive the new RS when it comes out? And they'll go, well, you only do 20,000 views, so why would you be on our list of people to drive the car? So that kind of means that I struggle to get in the product. And ultimately, I'm a product reviewer. That's the basis of what I do.

Okay, broadly speaking, it's entertainment. It's just about skidding cars around and having fun. Well, there's a sort of a new world now with internet journalists that didn't exist before. I mean, so the numbers are essentially the only thing that justify this new world to these old school businesses. Yeah, they view YouTube as being something new

and amazing. And rightly so. And we've we've sold it to them as being that. And then we turn around quite early in the process, they've just adopted it and taken it as being something they want to be a part of. And then suddenly, we're saying, actually, we can't carry on doing it this way, we're not earning enough money. I can remember talking to someone at Porsche saying, it must be great. You must be getting what $1 of you? No, no, we we're not so that hasn't quite worked I think the drive I think the drive plus

experiment is ongoing I don't think it's failed and I think actually it might be I think people might view it in a couple of years time as being quite a smart move but it just wasn't smart for me within the portfolio so I had I had to do something about it I had to get back out there again with free-to-air films and find another way of monetizing it um and I think that's what I'm trying to do at the moment that's you know it's nothing evil it's you know so what are you doing now so we've got another youtube channel which sits uh in its own space just called Chris Harrison Cars and I'm just putting my normal films out the way I used to for free. But I've got to find new ways of interacting with brands to get them to sponsor the channel, to get them to work with

us and give us some money so we can keep it free to air. And that means everything from car brands to normal sponsorship. You have a much more sophisticated sponsorship model over here. People are much more willing to come and spend money around electronic content in the US than they are in Europe. It's still difficult to get people to spend money around electronic content in Europe, certainly is what I find. Well, in the United States, in the podcast world, it's only been over the last three years or so that we've had advertisers that are willing to get interested in it or willing to get involved. And over the last year or two, it's actually gotten kind of crazy where they're realizing

the numbers. The numbers are just so gigantic. They're as big, if not bigger than very successful cable shows. So the amount of money that they can spend to reach, especially my show, which I personally pick and choose all the advertisers. I reject as many advertisers as I accept because I just don't want, I don't believe in the product or I don't want to be involved in the product or I can't see it working. It's not something I want to support. Whatever the reason is, if I decide to get behind

something like a Squarespace or whatever our ads are, I know it's a solid product. I know I have no remorse whatsoever, no guilt about uh having that product uh sponsor the show but this wasn't the case just a few years ago there was just it wasn't wasn't that much we were doing it almost all just for fun in the beginning yeah i mean i'm it's it's so much more advanced than it is in the video world i mean i'm now on this patreon thing which that's that's fascinating patreon is like a donation-based thing. So when we did Drive Plus, a lot of people said, a lot of the comments that came back that were sensible

were people saying, look, I love what you do, but I don't want to subscribe. I don't want to feel bound into a subscription. It's not something I'm comfortable with. Have you thought of a donation? And I'm thinking, that's just really weird, because it's a service. It's a product.

If I go into a shop and i want to buy a copy of evo magazine i fully expect to have to pay for it i don't walk into the shop pick it up and walk out again so so the idea of a sort of donation box seemed a bit strange but i have signed up to it in the last three weeks and bless all of you out there that have contributed i mean i think it's up to about three thousand dollars a month is what people are willing that's amazing yeah and it's and it's carrying on and you know we're not going to play fast and loose with that that's going to help us3,000 a month is what people are willing to donate. That's amazing. Yeah, and it's carrying on. And we're not going to play fast and loose with that. That is going to help us fund more content.

That's basically going to pay Neil. So thank you on behalf of Neil. Is the money public, the amount public? Yeah, you can go on there and see. It's all public. You can go on there and see how much is being… So then people can look at it and go, fuck him. He's getting $3,000 a month. I'm not going to give him shit.

Well, yeah. I don't help myself, do I? Because at the end of the day, on the one hand hand i have got a ferrari i can't hide that i'm always wasting money on cars and i'm saying can i have some money to help me make videos but as you know in life personal cash doesn't last long in the commercial world and if you start sort of applying sums of money that you can live off into video productions yes the two don't square with each other they're quite different things not at all um so yeah i'm i think that the internet video space is going to change radically over the next

even 12 months i think there is already a lot fewer players than there were even two years ago you know two years ago it was you know all the buff books in the u.s had their video channels and were outputting one or two videos a week, maybe more in some cases. And Motor Trend were rampant doing some great content and loads of it. Well, they're doing nothing like as much now. Car and Driver were more cautious and didn't do quite as much, but they're doing not so much now as well.

And I think you're going to find a lot of players, big publishers are looking at it and saying, what's in this for us? We don't make any money out of it. We're actually losing money. Why are we going to carry on doing it? And I think the outrage at drive going to drive plus was was simply the fact that we had allowed people to get drunk on on a product for free and maybe it was disingenuous at the start to say this is going to be free forever you know i just i can't see how it could be if you can't earn the money back from it in advertising,

you have to stop. It's quite simple. Yeah, that's just the thing about the internet. If Drive just went away and didn't come back as Drive+, it just became some new entity that charged money, maybe people would have a different approach to it. But people get so used to things being free. I know.

Maybe that was wrong. Maybe we all made mistakes. I certainly made some mistakes in the process. I'm not going to go into that side of things. But I don't bear any grudges to anyone. I think the problem is in developing it, needing money while developing it, like needing to pay a salary while developing it. If you were independently wealthy and you were pursuing this whole thing, then you would probably eventually figure out some sort of a sponsorship model that would make money because

the content is excellent the show is excellent it's a matter of like just getting the right amount of eyes on it to get people to sponsor it where it's a substantial amount of money that can pay for production and salaries and everything it's a flawed distribution model as well that's that's actually the core flaw is that youtube is a wonderful thing um and has an enormous audience but they keep such a large percentage of the revenue that comes in from advertising that it's almost unworkable i mean you know you're giving away 40 straight away um and the sums aren't great and of course then there's a thing called the ad blocker which is you know if you if you dropped an alien down onto planet earth and said this is the business model they they'd say, well, so hold on a minute.

You spend all your money making the films. 40% leaves you straight away. And there is software widely available that allows people to actually block the adverts that are supporting what you're trying to sell. So, you know, you are completely taken away at the shins before you've even started isn't it possible to do ads inside the video itself yes but that's that's you know then then you're into a slightly gray area with youtube because then they're the losers because they're saying well hang on a minute if you're advertising within the show we don't see any of that revenue and yet we're hosting your videos do they do that do they say that they do well there are rules

around it obviously and quite understandably so but they can't police Do they say that? Do they do? Well, there are rules around it, obviously, and quite understandably so. But they can't police it. They'd have to watch every single video on the internet, wouldn't they, to try and spot it. So I think you've got to be quite careful. We'll find a way, all of us. I think what we have proved is that people like those sorts of videos. Yeah. And they will watch them.

No doubt. And we just have to sort of, somewhere within patreon within the paywall within youtube within vimeo within your own media player within selling the content to existing networks within netflix within selling them to airlines you know within all of that there's a way of making this work it just feels like it's taking a long long fucking time you know i've been doing this a long time yeah and i you know it doesn't really make us any money and at the end of the day i don't want to get super rich on it but it would just be nice for it not to be a loss leader this year's cost me money in video i've made a loss significant loss in video and um that's kind of

shocking that's kind of shocking because you have a huge amount of fans. Your videos are very popular. If I type in Chris H.A. Harris comes up, you know, in YouTube, like on cars, like BMW. And then I write Chris. It gives me the option of Harris like immediately. It's a very frequently searched term. Like your videos are very popular. You're one of my favorite all-time automotive journalists. You're very entertaining. You're fun. It just doesn't make sense to me that so many people

can be enjoying you, but yet you're having such a hard time figuring out a way to make it financially profitable that it's actually a loss this year. I'm just going to bask in the glory of those comments for a minute. Yeah, it's a tough situation. I suppose what you could do is just sort of lock yourself in a room with a bottle of good single malt and go oh woe is me and play the violin to yourself it'll turn around it seems like it can't not because the content is there

the audience is there it's just a matter of figuring out a way to squeeze money out of a rock and I think it's going to involve a bit more time and money investment to get to that place and I don't have the answer for it but I'm not as you can tell i'm quite careful to to answer your your phrasing of the drive plus experiment as being a failure i don't i really don't think it is it's ongoing yeah and i and i think i think it was a brave move um but it was actually the only option available to that team of people at that time.

And I don't think it was crazy at all. And I stress that it didn't quite work. Well, it just didn't work for me at the time. And I had to make a call because at the end of the day, I am just a sole trader. And if I'm hidden behind a paywall and I'm not being seen, the biggest problem for me is silence actually if i go away for six months and i disappear the internet it forgets you very very quickly i find and i didn't want to be that person that just disappeared it would worry me

because i think then to sort of kickstart yourself again would take even more effort and momentum i'm not getting any younger i don't quite have the energy I had a few years ago. I'm feeling that suddenly. I'm willing to work, you know, crazy hours still. But I think it just becomes a bit laborious. And the really sad thing is that we're not talking about, I'm not talking here about healthcare or something serious like we discussed earlier. This is not a social issue. This is not the third world debt. We're talking about reviewing fast cars in a way that's actually just raw entertainment. It's not a serious business. It should be about having fun. An editorial product is nothing more than the fun that the people have producing it.

That's what it is. It's an expression. It's a vicarious process. Come and enjoy what we did with this car. Well, that's one of the things that's great about your videos. You clearly are having fun. When you're going sideways around a corner, you're laughing like a fucking banshee. It's fun. When you're going sideways around a corn, you're laughing like a fucking banshee. It's fun.

It's mega. But if you're approaching that with a sort of, oh God, this is difficult. It's costing me too much money. Then I think you should just pack up and stop it and go and do something else. Go and grow tomatoes or something.

You need to stop it. And I don't want to get to that stage. I love what I do. It's fucking brilliant fun. It really is. It just needs to be sustainable. And I think we want to get to that stage. I love what I do. It's fucking brilliant fun. It really is. It just needs to be sustainable. And I think we'll get there. I think in the next year, my YouTube channel will knock along okay.

Well, we're going to send some people to you. Chris Harris on Cars. It's on YouTube. We're out of time here, man. But thank you very much. It's a pleasure meeting you. Really fun talking to you. As much fun as I thought it was going to be.

And thank you so much for all the videos that I've watched over the years because i really enjoy the shit out of them okay thank you very much can we continue it from the driver's seat of your car in about two two months time yes yes for sure good night everybody much love big kiss see you soon