THIS CAR POD! with Doug DeMuro & Friends! - Behind The Scenes With Producer Sean! Top Gear Stories, Future Content And More!

Episode Date: April 3, 2026

Have a question you want answered on the podcast next week? Ask HERE https://crsnbds.com/PODQUESTIONS Watch The Latest From Key: youtube.com/watch?v=ObBc_cPfiQA&feature=youtu.be Welcome to THIS CAR POD! Doug DeMuro & Friends offers weekly expert insight and opinion on breaking automotive stories, the car market, and audience Q&A. Thank you to our sponsors!  Claude - Visit  https://claude.ai/cars to get half price Claude Pro for three months WarbyParker - Our listeners get 15% off plus free shipping when they buy two or more pairs of prescription glasses at https://www.warbyparker.com/CARS — using our link helps support the show. #WarbyParker #ad  Saily - Download SAILY in your app store and use our code DOUGDEMURO at checkout to get an exclusive 15% off your first purchase! For further details go to https://saily.com/dougdemuro DRIVE with Jim Farley - Listen to the latest episodes at https://lnk.to/drivewithjimfarleyPS!thiscarpod Chapters: 00:00:00 THIS CAR POD! 00:00:15 Producer Sean! 00:02:20 How We All Met 00:13:42 Key Car Culture 00:19:55 The Early YouTube Days 00:31:09 Sean Talks Cars 00:37:13 Sean's First Car 00:46:36 Sean's Ferrari 360 00:50:22 Sean's G Wagon 00:55:34 Community Questions 00:56:07 What Is The Wildest Thing Nick Has Said? 00:59:06 What's Sean's Email? 01:01:26 How Did You Get Your Car Into A Music Video? 01:03:52 Is Sean Annoyed By Doug Calling His G Wagon A Bad Color? 01:05:18 What Do We Miss By Doug Saying No? 01:08:06 Who Is Sean's Boss? 01:09:44 Why Didn't Sean Buy A 4Runner? 01:12:18 Who Is Sean's Dream Podcast Guest? 01:15:39 If Sean Wasn't Here What Would He Be Doing? 01:16:47 Why Doesn't Doug Love Old Alfa Romeos? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

and welcome to a very special episode of this car pod. We've got Felipeo. We know Felipe. I'm Doug, but today we have producer Sean. I can't believe I agree to this. Producer Sean sits behind the camera. He's made it a life goal of his never to be talent. He's never in front of the camera.

He's never on screen. He's very nervous. And he's here today to walk us through some, some life of producer Sean, background on the Cars and Bids content sphere. He's going to tell us all about his bad-colored G-Wagon, which is behind me. This is a big day.

Are you excited? Look, I've received so many emails in the past few months telling me to do this that I really had no choice. Sean, I've been bullied by everybody. Everybody watching the show by Doug, by Felipe, by Kenon, by Nick. Producing your shot.

Now, this is an unusual episode. We're not going to do the normal format because I'm actually a couple of us are out of town this week. And so we're recording this beforehand. We're not doing the news, et cetera. That's all back to normal. Next week, we figured since we have this special episode, record it early, and we have producer Sean.

This is so rare. I can't even explain to you how rare it is. Be careful not to describe him as talented. Talent, maybe. I have been working with producer Sean now for many years in on and off in some capacity, and he've never had him come in front of the camera. like this. Have you ever appeared on camera? He has. You can find some

clips around on HBO Max or Max, whatever it's called with like Top Gear behind the scenes and some YouTube Stiglap videos. If you really dig deep enough, you can find some some, there's some clips for Sean who's in front of it. It's very rare though. He told me at the very beginning of this. This was

never going to happen. He would never be in any videos, which is funny because Sean I feel like is as when we all hang out and chat about cars like in the evenings and in the weekends, Sean is right there with all of us, but we do it on camera then sometimes, and Sean is never involved. I get to keep my hot takes to myself. Sean's wild hot takes.

Hopefully you'll get to hear some of them today, because we have specific Sean-related questions coming later that were asked by you guys, our community. I want to first get started, though. There's a few things, legitimate things to discuss, but I want to get started with a little bit of an explanation of how and why producer Sean exists. When two people really love each other. 12 years ago, I moved to Philadelphia. I was living in Atlanta, which I love, and I moved to Philadelphia, which I hate. And the only thing that made Philadelphia tenable

was some friends that I made there. These two guys were both friends from that era. And right here, I had announced to my audience that I would be moving to Philly, and a couple of my audience members reached out to me and said, hey, you're moving here, I live here. And Felipe was one of those people. This is Felipe's original email to me from July of 2014, where we first met.

And a couple of weeks later, Sean sent me an email also saying that he was a junior at Drexel and Philly studying film and television. Film and TV. It's been a wild ride. And somehow it's come very full circle and we're all here. So Sean helped me make a lot of the videos that I made when I was in Philly. In fact, go to the... Sean was like the whole thing behind the creation of my famous... video where I ran over a PT cruiser with my home.

You weren't there for that. I was not there. I was not invited. So, Felipe and I met. I don't believe this. I don't remember this. We met twice. We met twice in Philly.

Philippe has no memory. Both of these guys were at my wedding, but independently, they didn't really know each other. They, I don't really remember. I feel like you came first and then you graduated or something. Philippo then sort of came on, like, regardless, this is from, Sean is from back in the day. And so, Sean and I knew each other in 14. Yeah. We knew each other for a couple years in Philly.

You helped me make a bunch of my earliest, earliest videos. The original G-Wagon, the Mini Cooper. Yeah, Mini Cooper. I mean, these were, like, first year, first 12 months of videos. You would, like, come and me to the shoots and help me make them. And then Sean graduated and went off to... Los Angeles. Los Angeles.

I, instead of doing what a lot of people do in college and, like, study abroad, I was born and raised in L.A., and I just wanted to get back to Los Angeles. And so I went into the TV industry making TV shows. And give us some of your credits. So, I mean, Top Gear is the American version. It's definitely the thing I got into TV to make. Right.

And it was my dream to touch that franchise. So actually before I sent that email. There is literally touching. The franchise. The franchise. With the medicine balls. Yes, exactly. That's the BBC corporate office in Los Angeles,

and that's a mannequin of the SIG that exists there. No, no. Well, actually, you don't know. We don't know. Turn them on, and he walks out of the corporate office. But before I sent you that email, I had been an intern at the BBC corporate office, and that studio at the time was making shows like Dancing with the Stars

and all these bigger productions. And as an intern, I was like the only one that cared about cars and, like, wanted to work on this Top Gear USA show. It was on History Channel at the time. And that's, like, how I started. I still work with people. Producer Johnny, who's behind the camera as well here. Yeah.

He was there in those early days, 10 years ago. He was a coordinator, a production manager on that first Top Gear USA. That was your first gig when you got out of school? Yeah, I was like an audience coordinator for the Late Late Show, which is... Like Craig Kilbourne? Craig Ferguson. Craig Ferguson, by there? And there's actually some time.

I did this job with that job and some of my roles. But yeah, I was doing that and an intern at the BBC corporate office. I was unpaid. So I wasn't, what were you doing? So I wasn't allowed to, like, get into the weeds with the crew because it was like there's a bunch of laws. Yeah. But every chance I, so I was like, you know, getting lunch for all the corporate execs of BBC.

And then every chance I had, I would go and sit in the, like, producer room with the top gear producers and just talk about cars. And I thought this is the greatest thing ever. We get to just have this budget to then think of crazy ideas and go make top gear, right? A version of top gear. Which then you got involved doing. Yeah, yeah. So I then graduated.

We did a bunch of stuff in Philly. That Hummer video was like truly my first thing that I produced. He produced. I mean, as I recall, you coordinated it all. you had somehow got us the hook up with that guy, Little Chris. Yeah, my cousin knew this guy named Little Chris, who had this lot that he was going to be fine with us running over this PD cruiser. Do you remember we were terrified the Hummer was going to roll

because there was no second vehicle for it to climb on the other side? So Little Chris that morning procured a Saturn for us that didn't run and he got it dropped off. And do you remember at some point we were talking to some of the junkyard guys asked him about Little Chris? And he goes, yeah, that is Little Chris. He was a little guy. He's like, you should see big places. That's right.

That's right. But it was so fun. That whole video, like, beyond the crushing, there's a lot of, like, really weird beats where we, like, add wood to the side of this PT Cruiser. And it was, like, very fun to just, you know, go around the parking lots, like, trying to think of what we could. There's a moment in that video where you light the passenger seat on fire. Yes.

And you use, we went to the grocery store and bought, like, barbecue, like charcoal, lighter fluid, and douse the seat in it. And so I'm filming, holding the camcorder with one hand and holding the fire extinguisher we bought with the other hand. And as I recall, we actually filmed that in the parking lot of the grocery store we bought the later float. It was in Northern Liberties, right? Yeah.

It was that one with the two-story parking. And so we just, do you remember this place? Of course. We just, we drove to the top, like, away from the other cars. We lit the passenger seat on fire. In the video, you can see that the very final moment of that frame is like the camera jumping forward because I was like, so ready to put the...

This was actually even harder than that, though. Do you remember? We had to go back to Home Depot a hundred times. We thought just like nails, we could just with a hammer and nails. We get through. Nails do not go through a car sheet metal. We had to find, like, we had to spend. And then we had to get, we had to like rent power tools and all this stuff.

And even that was like the sketchiest thing. Again, behind the Home Depot and the parking lot, just. That's the right place. When you went off to L.A., we kind of, I mean, I saw you a couple times. We mostly lost touch. I probably hadn't talked to you since maybe 2018, 2019. I knew I was paying attention to your, I'm washing a passenger seat

so let's pause it I was paying attention to your career but we you came to my wedding which was in 17 and then I knew you were out there doing stuff we like filmed a testarosa and a Jeep pickup conversion I want to say that was 2018

yeah I think that was 18 but then yeah life got extremely busy making car TV shows I worked on a show called Wheeler Dealers that was a British format where Mike Brewer and at the time Aunt Ann said we would buy a car, fix it up and then sell it. It was a big discovery show. Whenever I'm with Sean and he tells people who worked on Wheeler Dealers,

that's where they get the most excited. I love Wheeler. Oh my God, you worked on that? And Sean was like running that show. I was with Mike and we were buying all the cars, selling all the cars, and it was very much a reality show. We had to get these cars done and we did a ridiculous number of episodes in a year. And it was really fun.

It taught me a lot about the car business as well, where it was like we were having to buy and sell these cars. And every episode had to be different. We couldn't repeat a car. Right. So every year we were doing 27 unique vehicles. Right. Nobody is better at finding cars online than shopping.

We then when we hired you three and a half years ago, where would we pluck you from? So I was at Motor Trend at the time, which Motor Trends had a lot of significant changes since then. And it was just kind of wild. I had this run of 10 years producing almost strictly automotive TV. And I was traveling a lot. I was working on actually one of the favorite shows I've ever got to work on, which

was Roadworthy Rescues. Host is another YouTuber, Vice Group Garage. There's another very minimal gear kind of guy, like just film it on an iPhone and run with it. And we were traveling weeks at a time going between L.A. and Nashville. And you called them and were like, you want to come work at Cars and Bids and Run this content with me. And I was like, that's a very interesting idea.

It would be so full circle. So I drove down here. Every time I drove down to meet with you guys, it was pouring. I was like, this is a sign to not do this? But no, it's been awesome. And it's been awesome having you back in our lives. It's been fun. And it's been so thrilling.

Sean is like reintegrated with the friend group that I had here in San Diego. We're all like car people together. We go to the cars and coffees and car events and everything. And it's been so great having you in our lives again. I can't imagine a world without producer Sean at this point, both personally and at work. I'll be honest with you. Claude actually helped us write Viz ad, which yes, is a little meta, but also kind of proves the point. At Cars and Bids, we've got the whole team using it now.

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That's 15% off when you buy two pairs at W-A-R-B-Y-Parker.com slash C-A-R-S. Tell them that we sent you. And now producer Sean is embarking on his very next. next quest, which is the only way that I was able to convince him to come on this podcast today. Tell us about Key. So Key is here. Key is a new channel from Cars and Bids. There's a lot of really talented people that work on the content. And we're looking for a place to tell elevated stories. This is a very much an experimental channel. We have broken air conditioner unit Ryan Lopez in front of the camera for these videos. My dear friend Joe Barry, who's a,

been a producer on the grand tour, all the real top gears, is the quintessential British car journalist man. And we're really excited. It's going to be a channel for beautiful documentaries, good storytelling, just the kind of thing that is maybe missing from our current library. There's always been an implication since this was being developed. There's always been kind of an implication that my content isn't good enough for producer, Sean. Producer Sean

with his television background feels that what I do is sort of at a lower level. And so key that's very false. That's very false. But I think there's room for more. And also, sometimes you get invited to some really cool stuff.

But you're busy. You're with your family. And so the idea certainly not at work. I appreciate that. Sean's really late at all out of it. So the idea is that we're going to have a channel that has some momentum that when there's cool opportunities, we can send Ryan out into the world and get some cool videos. It's the kind of thing that I, as a car enthusiast, as a fan of automotive content, want to see.

It's something that I think is currently missing from the landscape of YouTube where we have this opportunity to have a little bit of budget to make some really interesting documentary stories, films. And by the way, Ryan is an excellent host presenter in this show. He's been absolutely fantastic. Same with Joe. I'm totally bought in. I think that it is really, really good stuff. I've seen a lot more videos than what has gone live right now already, and I think it's fantastic. And I'm thrilled that you're able to be able to make some of these things that sort of speak to your talents, your cruise talents, your presenters' talents in a pretty impressive way.

It's super exciting. So right now we have a JDM documentary that's been live for about a week. and then this morning, this Friday, Seattle, arrive and drive. It's Joe Barry going out into Seattle and meeting with local enthusiasts and really experiencing what it's like to be a car enthusiast in this town. So this is going to be hopefully the first episode in a long series of him exploring different car communities, different car enthusiasts. If you have a good story to tell email Sean at Carsman.

You're giving it out freely. Somebody on our team described it as Doug does such an incredible job of going deep on a specific car. Like what makes that car interesting, what makes that car special? And so many of the documentaries are about what makes this piece of car culture, of car community special. It's a deep dive on that. And that's really exciting. And they're just so well done. And so for anybody who's complained to me about the quality of my production, which has been the primary complaint for me for 15 years,

Sean has finally arrived to create some high-quality automotive stuff. And I think there is some of that missing in the YouTube, especially in the YouTube, in general, in the automotive content world. You don't see that on TV anymore. And there were some YouTube shows sort of like that. They're gone. It'll be exciting to see all this stuff come out.

And to be clear, Doug's not allowed to stop making car reviews. They're not going anywhere. They're not going anywhere. Sean, it's going to all be great. We're just pilot on more. It's delightful. Sean is now running a content empire. He's got key with beautifully produced car documentaries

doing all sorts of looks at car culture. He's got my YouTube channel we're still the number one individual car of you're on the planet. And then he's got the Cars and Bids channel where we play poorly thought out games. You can watch it all. And make sure you subscribe to the Key channel.

Hit the, what do you say now? Hit the bell. And remember, the only reason you got producer Sean on this is because of Key. And so Sean is here to promote, just like a good guest, is always here to promote. And so in order to,

support Sean's existence here, you have to subscribe. You must. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. Well, that was the first good advertisement you've ever done. Well, I believe deeply in producer Sean. And I believe deeply in what he's doing.

And I love this idea. And I want to see, you know, Sean, the thing that happens when you're in this film and TV world is that you have ideas, but you're the guy who gets lunch. And then you have ideas, but you're the guy who does this or that. And then eventually you get to a point where you can actually un-examined. unleash your ideas on the world. And this is the first time Sean's ever been able to really do that in a huge capacity. And I really want it to work for on his behalf. That's very kind.

And so true. It's the film and TV industry is just, you know, climbing and staying connected with friends. It's so funny how it's full circle. Yeah. All this is and how it, where it's gone. Sean has brought some great people to our office to work with us. And he himself is great. And we're thrilled that he's here.

And we're thrilled to have key. Key. Key. Key. Ryan will be on the podcast soon to dive into some of the adventures he's been on filming this, but we like Key, the name Key, just because it's the part of the driving experience you always have with you. It's in your pocket, it's tangible. It's the first thing you pick up to go for a drive.

Ironically, of course, Ryan has a Tesla, it doesn't have a key. That's true. He'd like a known that, oh, nope. He reached for a key. He's also got a dusty drift car, though. He's got a hub swap. Okay, Key is here. Sean is here.

Go subscribe to Key. Watch our videos. You're going to love them. The first one's out. There's going to be a lot more coming. You're absolutely going to love them. And they are all courtesy of the brilliant baseball cap mind of producers. Not just baseball cap.

Living in San Diego, buying an L.A. Dodgers hat. Okay, I want to discuss other Sean related things. So let's just start by you guys were participants. I don't know how much the audience cares about this, but you guys were participants in like the very earliest days of my YouTube channel. This was before I was doing car reviews. This was before, I mean, my channel started in the fall of 13, and we were putting out these videos, Sean, together.

Probably the very, I mean, I did the first year I did it in Atlanta for six months. But after I moved to Philly, which was basically there, you were involved. You were involved in this one. You were involved in this one. I did that one. Philippo did. Did you do something? I did an intrusion to the Hummer.

You were involved in some. so many of these. Do you remember those days? Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, the reason I was so fond of your channel was the Ferrari 360. Oh, yeah. Tip frog for mine, but gated. Which Sean has a Ferrari 360 now. It's very full circle. That 360 has always been my favorite car. And so, you know, I was always looking for content about Ferrari 360. And here was a guy who like bought one who was doing crazy stuff with it.

Did you ever spend time with that car? Because I sold it. No, it was gone before, before we met. It was like right, right after. I was so disappointed. I was so disappointed. I was like, oh, I thought this guy's gonna have a 360. No 360? It's not a Hummer. Hummer in the L322, which I was very fond of.

Yeah, that's right. I had that range over. You know, I hope people get a sense of like having car friends from this car pod because it's very much like the conversations we have, but it was really, like, special in college to meet someone that was just as much into cars as I was. And to be clear at the time, I wasn't like Doug Demire.

I was just a guy. Like, Felipe, I was writing on Jalapnik, and so if you were reading Jolopnik, you would have known of me, but that wasn't a big, like I was just a guy. I had maybe 100,000 subscribers. We were just kind of strewn around.

There was no thought that this ever would go anywhere. Or really, I mean, I don't know. I wasn't thinking that. I don't know if you guys were. We were all just kind of screwing around trying to get a video up every week, just having fun. I remember we were like sitting in a park one day

and like a reality TV company had emailed you saying like, should I go do this like this TV show and we were like, what is this? And I tried to figure out what it was. And, yeah, it was super, super early days of your career. You must have been around for the skyline stuff. Yeah, yeah. When did you leave

Philly? 16? 16. 16. I was, I was So you saw it a little bit of Aston Martin. A little bit, but, so Drexel was like a co-op system. So I was six months in Philly and then I believe my junior year, six months in L.A. doing my internships. Was it you who came with me to the brat?

Philippo ended up, I think, doing a lot more. I'm looking back at these. You were at the dragstrap, right? No, no, it was not the drive-trip, but I was at the race-trap. Were you at the dragstrip, Sean? Someone went to the dragstruck. That one. Who was in the Marano?

Was that you? Yeah. Felipe was... I made it, literally. Literally in that video. You went to Manhattan, winning in a Hummer. God, that Hummer was terrible. That was so bad.

That was such a bad car. The fuel economy challenge was quite something. We were going to Princeton, right? We were like trying to hypermile, like taped cardboard. It worked. It worked. Sean, do you remember how well scripted Doug was? Like, he would have a piece of paper that had every beat.

he wanted. Yeah. Yeah. Which as a result, the videos are a lot shorter. And the four-minute script is like three pages. It's like, oh, that's all I'm going to be able to write. The G-Wagon review, I remember, your script was so incredibly tight for that. And you had this, like, we would mess up lines and, like, go back and do it again, do it again. Yeah, it was incredibly, incredibly scripted. You were there. I mean, I consider these sort of the, especially, the G-Wagon video is particularly special if you really think back on the history of the channel, because it was one of the first, like, true car reviews. The YALPutt also, but the Gwagon and the Yalpa were like some of the very, very, very beginning, like,

borrow a random car from a dealer kind of stuff. Yeah, that cool dealer. He had a bunch of interesting. Yep, Selden. Alex Seldon. Sell them motors. He sells on Carson Bidson. It's awesome.

He happened to be my neighbor in Northern Liberties, and he had a dealer outside of Philly. And we bumped into each other, and he was like, hey, if you ever want to shoot a video. And so we borrowed that ridiculous convertible G-Wagon. Also a bit of a full-circle thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. It's also four minutes and 58 seconds.

It's such a short video. Back then, there was no, there was no, YouTube didn't really reward you for making longer videos. There was no advertising, I don't think, in these videos at all, so it didn't matter to me. And then at some point, once I started doing actual car reviews, that changed. Well, what was the first 10-minute-long video? I remember it at the time.

I remember, I remember for a long time thinking that 10 was a barrier I couldn't cross because the audience was not interested in watching videos that were that long. I remember thinking that. Oh, look at that first 10-minute video. Wow. CurrG-G-T. Fitting. Another full circle.

That's crazy. And I remember when I was editing that video, thinking to myself, like, this is going to go too long, but it's such a special car. It's going to be worth it. It's a career-G-T. Career-G-T. It's one right there. Yeah.

Those were the days. Those were the early days, the Sean days. Absolutely wild. It can't believe that you and I never met. But, Calipo, we did me. We're good friends now, but it still drives me crazy every time we talk about the show. Sean and I must have lived a mile apart at the most. Oh, yeah, for sure.

And Sean flew back to, when my wedding was in D.C. and 17, and Sean flew back from L.A. for them. Yeah, Felipe was at UPenn. I was at Drexel. But they basically share on campus. They're like right next to each other. We wouldn't admit to that. So those were the days.

So that was the early days. Filippo, do you have any early days memories you want to throw out? I think there's so many. You agree we weren't like trying to launch a YouTube channel. You were, you have always been, I think it doesn't show on camera, but you've always been like the most planned, deliberate person I know. And so I think there was, oh, wow, I'm in that shot. There was some sense of like, no, this is going to be something.

But I don't know that I've thought. I do remember through at least this era, I was thinking more about writing than I was thinking about making videos. I still prefer your writing to your videos. When I was pulling up the first email that I had sent to you, the next thread was about cameras. And even then, you were not interested in spending anything more for the extra features. And I was like so desperately being like, if you want to shoot a lot of videos, this model is like, the one to buy. And you're like, well, do they really need, do I really need that? Okay.

Quite last question on the old day's topic for both of you, what prompted you to write the email, to like initially reach out? It was life-changing for all of us. Yeah. Yeah. But what do you think prompted it? Interesting. I mean, I was truly a huge fan of the 360 videos and thought this is like really cool. YouTube, again, wasn't this huge thing. And back then, not many people were making videos with exotic cars. I remember one of my hooks with 360 was that there weren't a lot of people out there doing this kind of thing. But I've always, I guess maybe just because of my age, I've always been a huge fan of automotive YouTube.

Like from early days of like FastLine Daily, I was like super into watching automotive content on YouTube. And your style of just doing crazy like top gear style challenges with the 360, I thought was like super interesting. And then I was following your writing and saw that, you know, you had moved to the town I was going to school in. And at the time, I've been obsessed with cars. It's been a huge part of my life forever.

But in college, I didn't bring a car to the East Coast. And so I was like, this would be really cool to make videos and do this and be connected to the car world. Yeah. And looking back, it is unbelievable how full circle, like 10 years later. Right, here you are. It's still helping make YouTube videos, trying to start an Alfa Romeo with a fire extinguisher. And you're still ignoring his camera advice.

What about you? It's so out of character for me. So out of character. It makes no sense. I don't know what happened that day in July. July of 2014. I actually, to this day, I remember reading your email. I was at Chipotle.

Wow. We then got dinner sometime like October, November of 2014. And I was, my wife now, but at the time girlfriend, and I had been dating like a month or two. And I was like, I'm going to go get dinner with this random person from the internet. And she was very concerned and very confused. But in the time since, it was at your wedding. You were a groomsman in my wedding. We clearly had worked out.

We had... We did that I loved. Still love if it's there. Is it there? I don't know. Haven't been affiliates. I haven't been to Philly. So it was unusual.

I do remember, if you go back to the channel, I made a video announcing that I was moving to Philadelphia. And it probably would have been a couple of further up here somewhere. Knowing myself, it would have come from your writing, not your... YouTube. Oh, yeah, maybe that. Maybe it was a, I don't remember. Ferrari moved to Philadelphia. Yeah, something like that. But regardless, I made that video

and I remember I got flooded with people who reached out after that. And you two have stuck. Our usual friend Matt Boyer, I'm also still in contact with. He was also one of the people who reached out in the early days. But other than that, not a lot of the initial Philly emailers are still around. I used to have dinner

like three times a week with random Philly people. And And Felipe and Sean stuck around. And yet, Sean, I never met. And Felipe didn't work with us for a long time either, but eventually we got convinced in both to work with us and to live here, which we all know. Although in my case, it's been six years.

We all now live, what, within four miles of each other? Just like back in the day. Yeah. Traveling internationally is great until your phone bill shows up. That's why I started using Saley. It's an e-sim app that gives you affordable data in over 150 countries.

So you land, turn it on. on and you're connected. No sim swapping, no hunting for Wi-Fi, no surprise charges. I used it on a recent trip with Emily, and it just worked. Data was fast. Set up took like two minutes, and I didn't have to think about it again, which is exactly what you want when you're traveling. What I like is how flexible it is. You can pick a plan based on where you're going and how much data you need, and it's way cheaper than roaming through your carrier. If you travel at all, this is one of those things that just makes life easier. I use this and you should

too. Download the Saley app or head over to saly.com and use the code C-A-R-S to get an exclusive discount on your first plan. Stay connected wherever you go with Saly. Okay, I have to tell you about a podcast I've genuinely been enjoying lately. And look,

there's no shortage of car content out there, but this one's a little different. When's the last time you got to hear the actual CEO of Ford just have real conversations about cars in life? That's a rare thing, and it's called Drive with Jim Farley. The guests are incredible. Formula One driver, Daniel Ricardo, Sir Chris Hoy,

who is somehow both one of the greatest Olympic cyclists ever and a racing driver. The conversations go deep. What drives these people? What they actually get behind a wheel of? What success means to them? It's a kind of car content that doesn't feel like a press release. It feels like a real conversation between people who genuinely love this stuff. For a car person, having that kind of access to someone in Jim Farley's position,

Somebody actually shaping the future of the industry, it's pretty special. To listen to Drive with Jim Farley, just search for Drive with Jim Farley in your podcast app. That's Drive with Jim Farley. Okay, so those are the early days. I want to move on. The talk cars segment we typically talk about cars. Since Sean is here, I want Sean to talk about his cars, starting with the Bad Color G wagon. Well, first off, how about you just tell us what you have right now, and then we'll get into the Bad Color G?

So currently, I have a beautiful, gorgeous, immaculate. Immaculate. Beautiful, metallic, Mystic Red. Is that the color? Yeah, I was trying to remember the name of the actual color. It's Mystic Red 2014 G550, Galando Wagon. And the brake lights do work. And the breaklights do work.

As of this week, after three months of the breaklights hour. Nick fixed it. We're good. Look, Nick asked me to not put in my taillights that I ordered to do it on his channel for content. So I risked my life for a couple days. That's definitely what happened. There is a thread in our group that Sean can't quite handle his GWG. I think it's been said on this podcast.

It's the most insane thing. I've never owned a normal car. But he's just, he hasn't been able to wrap his, like, self around. He's, the taillights have been working for months. The brakes squeak and he cannot figure out how to stop it squeaking and just complains to us about it bitterly. Good news. Changing the brake lights, remove the squeak.

The real thing, Sean. last week. Oh, okay. This week is back. But, yeah, the G550, which is sort of my daily. I don't really have a daily. So we got the G. Yeah.

2001 Ferrari 360. Frii. Tripp Frog. Tip frog. Argentin. Rerbergring. Argentina Nurebergring. Definitely remember the name of that color.

And then a 1974 Alfa Romeo GTV, which is, I want to say I'm the oldest car of the San Diego cars and bids employees. Yeah, that's an interesting point. Because my kuntosh is probably next or damn close. There's not a lot of classics in our group. Yeah, no, 19703, 4 that's 250. One interesting thing about Sean, Sean has trouble letting go of things. And when I met, when Sean and I would hang out after you left Philly and moved to L.A.,

I remember I visited you in Hermosa Beach, and you had your Cayman. Yeah. And he had that came in for like eight years. And finally, when he came to this business, he had it for another year and a half. Yeah. And we convinced him to sell the Cayman, which he sold on cars and bids, and he bought the Ferran. I regretted selling the Cayman. I love this car.

So this car was actually very much inspired by a Range Rover. It was a CarMax purchase. So I did the CarMax Max Care warranty, which absolutely paid for itself. I want to say, probably more than the Rangerover. Yeah. Maybe not on a dollar level, but like on a percent. I mean, they put a trans in the car. I paid $26,000 for the car in $26,000.

2016 and with 59,000 miles. Wow. And during the warranty, I want to say close to $30,000 overseas. Those are almost exactly the numbers from my range rover. But the difference is you put on 75,000 miles on the car. 80,000, almost 90,000 miles. Wow. Yeah, yeah.

And a lot of that was done after the max care ended, which, mysteriously, the issues just stop. Everything works. Suddenly things were able to be ignored a little bit more. Yeah, no, the Cayman was a great car. was a great car. It really did everything I needed it to do. It was a super light, really engaging sports car that was actually quite practical. I was, I lived all over Los Angeles in this thing and, and street parked it at times, Daly drove it and put a ton of miles on this thing. Remember how proud he was of those roof racks? They were like Porsche equipment roof racks. You didn't even use them. I never saw them once being used, but it rode around with them always proudly on display. One time. he posted on his Instagram a photo of them being used.

Yeah. That's the closest we've gone to use. I loved the Cayman roof racks and I desperately searched for them because they're hard to find. And when I found them, I was so happy that I decided I was going to leave them on and just drive proudly with my roof racks

for years. Oh yeah, there's a photo. Yeah, see, my Bianchi bike on top. For the photo. Sean is a man of accessories. This is one of the things that I've learned about, Sean. Like, when we played tennis,

I have no idea what racket I play with no idea what my strings are. And Sean will be like, I just got my strings done. And I switch from polysynthetic to synthetic Fleckman-Bavin. And also, I'm going to change to this racket, which I saw in a video, Nadal's best friend's cousin uses this racket. I got two of them, and one's a little lighter than the other. And then he can't hit a backhand. It's like, Sean, maybe work on a move away from the accessories and, you know. Look, that's cool.

That's cool. And this photo is on Angelus Crest Highway where I didn't go slow. That roof rack held that bike on there. Okay, so he didn't take the bike out to go biking. He took the bike out to throw it off the car to take to Angeles Cress. Obviously. I had the stress test the roof rack and make sure that it could actually withstand for the proper speed.

That's ridiculous. So the coolest thing, the coolest car thing you've ever had that was your very first car. Well, before we move on to the first car, I just want to point out that I drove this colored Cayman. Macademan. Damia Metallic. Every, another very divisive color. You deviated stitching man now? No, no, no.

But this group doesn't seem to like cool colors on cars. What? Don't. Do you like the Kaman? Of course I like the Kaman. You also like the Jue Wagon color. Doug, Doug, you didn't like the brown. The brown came in, no.

I think it's a little bit of a pretender thing. Like, oh, look it's brown. Like this is all people do with these Porsche events. They talk about their colors. But this wasn't PTSD. This was just like a color. that they were offering back then. It's speed yellow, not silver.

It's like, oh, okay, airs. How does it drive? How does it drive? I thought it was cool. It's a good color. It's cool. I love the color. It's nice and cool and all that.

But I think Sean was always a little bit self-congratulatory about having a brown car. I mean, maybe. In fact, I drove this car around with this color. Yeah, Sean, manual. Must have been real hard. Anyway, let's talk about that other car. Let's talk about Sean's first car,

which was, of course, the most ridiculous. Pull up this thing. Sean, tell us about your first car here. This is an insane story and is absolutely something that I will always just cherish as being my first car. It's completely insane. So this is a 1985 Ferrari 400i. However, I purchased this car when I was 16. I just turned 16.

So for those of you who don't know, the 400i has always been kind of the cheapest, I don't want to say crappiest, but the most. affordable for a people know about the Mondial but say crappiest no I actually kind of like the 400 I to be honest

I think it's beautiful and of course it was Enzo's last driver as we all know yeah and it was hated it was hated this is 2010 2009

2010 this is the four-seater lineage that predates the FF and the GTC 4 Luso and the 612 and the 456 that lineage

traces back to the 400 I at the time there was zero interest in this car however I was a Ferrari obsessed child

when I was eight years old, I went for a ride in a Ferrari 360, and it changed my life. It changed the course of my life, right? And I was dead set on, you know, getting a Ferrari. And it was an insane thing to say at 16. However, I spent way too much time on my computer looking at, at the time, the only auction site was eBay, right? And so I would sort, I would go to eBay Motors and sort by lowest price. And sure enough, what's there is this Ferrari 400-I, and I haven't got to the good part of the car yet, it has a Chevrolet LT1 engine swap in it, right? And so I'm looking at this. This is the C4 Corvette motor, more or less. This is the C4 Corvette motor. Right. The Opta Spark,

like the worst, again, one of the worst Chevrolet Vs of all time. However, the transmission in these is a GM3 speed from the factory. So what a lot of people did in period. This one was a theft recovery car. And after it was recovered, someone took the Colombo V12 out of it and most likely put it into like one of those P4 recreations because the V12 is pretty close to what all the very desirable cars. It basically runs a similar block as the 365s, which would have included the Daytona and cars like that. Yes, yes. So Sean didn't get that part of the car. No, no. The Daytona motor, that was gone. Yes. So I found this. And it was, I want to say it was, the bidding was at like $8,000, right?

At the time I had like a business converting people's like analog film into digital files for them. And I had saved up about $10,000 for my first car. And I went to my parents and I was like, hey guys, look, I really want this car. And they're not car people. They didn't really understand, but they understood my love of Ferrari. Like every birthday they would buy, like the knockoff Ferrari. like a soccer ball, you know, whatever. But so they understood how much, like, this would mean to me as, like, a first car.

Had no idea how bad of an idea this would be on all levels. So we bought this car. It was in St. Louis, Missouri on eBay, and I bid. I think the winning bid was, like, $12,000. My parents, like, helped me chip in and pay covered shipping. And sure enough, off the truck came. this Chevrolet-powered 1985 Ferrari 400-I

that is beyond the weirdest first car that I could have possibly ended up with. Every car since that has been more reasonable. Oh yeah, yeah, this is... That's so true. No, that can't be true. Sean. It's quite true. He had a Mustang after this. He had a Mustang. An engine swapped.

Yeah, you're right. 80s Ferrari. And so, I told my parents, look, it's a Chevrolet motor, like, that's the expensive part of Ferrari. Anything goes wrong. Yeah, I can just just take it to the Chevrolet dealership. Which... Where were you living? Davis.

It's in Davis, California. Near Sacramento. Davis, California. And this car unlocked a lot of really crazy experiences that taught me a lot about what it meant to take care of a car, work on a car, and what the amount of energy and effort it takes

to have something like this at 16. I mean, I remember taking it to the Chevrolet dealership because it had a terrible electrical draw. Like, if you didn't have it on a charger for more than 20 minutes, it would die. The first drive I did, which maybe I'll give Sandin our editor some footage of, oh, Scott. Small Sean in this 400 eye with my mom freaking out, being like, why isn't it turning on? I'm like, the battery's dead, man, just stone cold. What happened when you went to the Chevy dealer? What did they say?

They were like, you're insane. However, we have a fleet service service. across the street that the manager there can work on weird stuff. Wow. This guy Brandon, and he ended up helping me with this car for years. I, between classes, I would go to the shop and he would teach me on some customer cars, like how to do oil changes, and I would like do trade-off work, like sweeping the shop and all these, like, random favors for them, like picking their lunch up, and then they would like help me handle this insane thing. Did they get the electrical draw solve?

Yeah, yeah, they did. They did. And then the LT1 had this crazy, like, backfiring issue that they helped me fix. It was so bad the exhaust. Like, it backfired so hard, the exhaust mufflers blew out, like, from the back of it. The one crux of this car was, like, the Ferrari, like, window regulators. Yeah, and from that era, they were all terrible. So slow, and the windows would stick.

And so, like, that was, like, the final nail. It was, like, they couldn't help me with this window regulator. I took it to like a specialty shop in Sacramento for, you know, luxury cars. And it was like the bill was like $2,500. And my parents were like very unhappy with this whole situation. And the car had to go. How long did you have it? I did for a probably, but two years.

Two years. Now the other problem with the car, of course, a car with a motor swap like this, you can't title in California, which Sean didn't know what he bought it. No. So what did you, how did you drive? You drove this to high school. I did. I did. And this was the era when legit paper plates

were like a thing in California. So I just from that Chevy dealership had a like I just bought this car and taped up a fake little new registration in the window and drove it, never got pulled over. But I did that because I took

it to the DMV at first to register this car and they were like, you have to take it to the referee station. I never, didn't know what a referee was, which in California, there's only, I think, three or four locations, and they, like, really look over the car. And so they took the car away for, like, an hour, and it came back with, like, the thickest stack of papers. Like, this is everything you have to fix to get this to pass smog, and it was, like, everything.

Everything. Like, swap the motor, like, install all the evap systems. And so, from that moment on, I drove it. So, road dirty. So what happened to the car? So I sold it, and it was sold to the underbitter on the original. auction. This guy named auto. Two years later, you're kidding. Yeah, it's guy named auto. How'd you sell it on eBay also? Yeah, put it back up on eBay. Actually sold it for about what I bought it for plus the window regulator. So I got out okay from the car and he still has the car today. Wow. The same LT1, he's taken such good care of this

car. He's repainted it. He's done a new new interior, new suspension. It's like one of the most complete and like clean 400 eyes that probably exists, but he hasn't changed the, the, the, the, LT1, which I think is pretty fun. Wait, it's going to be, every year it gets more expensive for him. He's now stuck, basically. He's never going to be able to put a V-12 back in it. Yeah, yeah. He did he put an L.S in it or something?

That's what I wonder. I wonder if it's something to do with the transmission and having you change that original transmission, but like, you think Right, put an LS and into a transpline. Yeah, right, make it happen. Yeah, but it's such a cool thing. I hope that one day somehow I end up back up with this car.

He's in Florida, right? Yeah, he's in Miami. Yeah. Yeah. If you see a black 400 i ask him to pop the hood those were the uh the early days of Sean then you had a Mustang yeah but that 400 i like was pivotal in getting into tv like in my interview with the bbc people they're like why do you want to work here i was like i really want to work on top gear and they were like do you have experience with cars i said well i have a story for you my first car was is is 400 i with those engines swapped and i think that had a lot to do with getting that first that first get in the door with this weird car.

That does lead some credibility. Totally. And when he went to work on with Ant and Mike Brewer, that was the same situation. Sean had already been down that road. Yeah. What happened to Brandon at the Chevy dealer? You ever talked to him?

Yeah, yeah. He recently just messaged me on Facebook. He was like, what happened to the Ferrari? Is he still at the Chevy dealer? No, no, he's not. He's scuba diving now. So the tip frog, the 360 that you have now, have now, which we call it TipFrog, because it's Tiptronic and it looks like a frog.

That's not your first Ferrari. Insanely. Tell us about your TipFrog experience. The 360's been great. Tip Frog, you know, everybody here, mostly, I shouldn't say everybody. Doug makes so much fun of the way the 360 looks, despite having launched his career with the 360. You don't make fun of the way to 360? However, I think there's a lot of similarities in the design of the Career GT to the front of the 360.

I don't think that the career gt is an attractive car. I think that if we call the 360 a tip frog, I think the career gt is the V10 salamander. I've never felt the career GDs is an attractive car. I think it looks weirdly stretched. I think the career GDGT is a precision purpose car that is an amazing, like, unbelievable, like scalpel driving experience,

and the design is okay. It still looks pretty cool. It doesn't have some of the driving experience benefits. I love the driving experience of the cars. So the 360 was like top of my list of cars I wanted to experience. I just needed to own one for a period of time. I personally loved the way the 360 looks. I love the challenge grill on the back.

And the car I, again, I rode in that kind of snowballed me into being a car person, was a Argento Nurembergring silver Ferrari 360 with the F1 paddles. And I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. And so for a couple years, I was looking for the right one to buy and just got very lucky finding one locally that was on a classified website and jumped in. And when I first bought it, the F1 transmission was a problem. So apparently they got better in 2002.

I bought a 2001 that had like the original programming from like when the car launched in 99. So like leaving a stop sign was like it was super spongy, not like not a. good driving experience. Yeah. And my friend Eric at Goodkind Designs got me in touch with a transmission tuner who... You buy any of this? I remember this happened. Do you... And so the car... So anyway, he... we swapped in a Challenge Tradale, TCU. So now it has like the latest version of the shifting. Again, a super gear, gear guy thing. Are you not manual swapping? I am. I am. But I just have to say that like the T-C-C-U- PCU from the Challenge for Dole made it infinitely better.

Like the downshifts are just like super aggressive and it's very fun. However, the next step for that car is doing the manual conversion. We're manual kinds. What will we call it? Because we can't call it tip frog anymore. Formerly tip frog? I'm still going to call it a tip frog. Yeah, why not?

OE, it was tip. And OEE, it was definitely a frog. I am proud of Sean for driving that car, what, like 8,000 miles at this point? I've driven a lot. I've driven a lot. I drove it to Laguna Seca, did a track day in it. I was terrified the entire time. I was going to take a rock chip to the front lens.

You did the PPPF it? I PPPF the headlights. Our friend Kevin said, you should PPF the windshield. I said, nah, I did get a rock chip on the way up to the track day. I'd PPP all my windshields now. Terrified me. So many problems. But it's been great.

It's been like very bulletproof. The only issue I've had was been like self-inflicted with like a, I backed on to like a parking block and bent the oil fill. And there's like a company called Hill. I think Hill Engineering that makes like a stainless steel piece for that instead of the aluminum one. It was like 100 bucks and the 360s been the cheapest car for me to own out of any of my cars. All of my cars have required more maintenance

more service. Especially the G-Wagon. The G's been expensive. The G's been expensive. Sean, do you want to tell us the story of purchasing the G-wagon, which is one of the most favorite stories? Do we even have time? Look, I love the hunt. I love hunting for a car. The benefit of cars and bids is that we present all these

amazing cars. I spend way too much time looking on cars and bids, but I like going out and hunting the deep dredges of marketplace for these cars. And so... For just poorly presented trash. Yep. Yeah, totally. You get so many links from Sean every day. It's very true. Very true. And so I want to say about a year, maybe a year and a half ago on this podcast, Doug, you were talking about there was a green G500 that was for sale on the site. And you made the point that everybody should buy one of these early G-wagons. They're reliable. They hold their value, and they're just cool.

Great off-road, little driveable. Yeah, I believe I was the underbitter on that green G. So I was looking for a color. And anyway, this is the car. It's pretty cool color. Yeah, no, I disagree, but people might think that. What color is this? Everest Green.

Everest Green. Wow. Everest Green. Let's make any sense. Anyways, through the research, I saw that 2013 to 2015 for the first gen, or this gen, W463, is like the sweet spot of the years. Because in 2013 to 2015, with the G550, you got the NA, the final iteration of that 5.5 engine with the last, the latest interior updates. You got heated seats, cooled seats. You had an infotainment system that could be easily swapped for Apple CarPlay.

Which Sean did. Chinese Apple Carplay. Driving around. Whatever background you want, you want flowers, you want babies, you want babies holding flowers, it's all there. It's awesome. And radar cruise control. So it was like, it was a, I've, so what this replaced was a Mercedes W-123, 300 diesel. I've had two one-two-threes over the years. I love the feeling of driving an old Mercedes. They're just, they're just such tanks, right? It's such an analog driving. experience, and that's actually very usable. But the 300D is pretty slow, especially San Diego. Like, my commute, I have to get right on a highway cold, and I was tired of being foot

to the floor every morning. And so I thought, man, if I could find one of these G-wagons, it's like kind of still falls into that camp of 70s Mercedes with a modern drive train. Right, yeah. Old school, solid. Yeah. Similar feel of this car. Yeah.

Like a cool driving experience. and through many, many late nights on Facebook marketplace, we found this mystic red G550 that was being sold by someone in the Portland, Oregon area. A very sketchy person in the Portland Oregon area who had horrible Walmart aftermarket rims on it. The wheels were a problem. I was negotiating really hard, like, you know, Nick Roshan, Crazy Nick levels of negotiation with this guy. It was like a two-week thing. And finally he, like, said yes to my number.

It was, like, Friday at 3 p.m. I was, like, on a Zoom with Felipe. And it was like, I got to go. Like, rush to the bank, like, try to, like, pull out funds to go fly up and buy this car. I get to the airport and he's like, well, we're actually not sure if we want to sell this car. And I'm, like, sitting, like, on the runway being like, like, I'm already on a plane coming up there. On the way up, our plane hit a bird. Like, we had a bird strike landing.

It was like this whole journey to get up there. And when I got up there, it was really cool. It's a really cool car. The interior has all the carbon fiber trim options, and it's just like a cool, it's a cool spec. It's a cool thing. There were two other things that I recall from this, which is number one.

At one point, Felipeo called to see how things were progressing, and you said, Felipe, I can't talk right now. I'm in the ultimate race. Yep. I was then Photoshopped into like a marathon. That photo was like... And then when you showed up, The guy swore up and down.

There was no rust on the car. There was a little spot of rust on the windshield. I lost my mind. And I asked for $2,000 off, like, on the spot. I was like, and it was already a very good price for the car. Don't tell him that. And he said, yes. But I had got a cashier's check for the exact amount.

So I just was trusting this guy to, like, send me to Grand. After the fact, and he did. Shout out to him, he did. And I drove it straight back down to San Diego. And he's been driving a bad-colored G-wagon ever since? Yeah. Everybody that sees it likes the color. So that car's a bit uncomfortable to drive around because it gets a lot of attention. There's not many red G-wagons, and a lot of people are really into it.

I can't believe it. Like, compared to driving the 360 around, I get so many more compliments and just people asking me what it is with the G. And it's insane. It's insane. So that's Sean's bad-color G. Most people do like that color, I admit, and some people even have it on one of their own. cars. And guess what? One time, one time Doug said, you know what? I saw you come around that corner and it looked pretty good. Should we get to some questions? I want to go to the questions because the questions, we had asked you guys to ask questions specifically for Sean, and there are dozens of questions here that are Sean specific. We've covered some of them already. I can't

believe how many questions people have. People have Sean questions for the Sean podcast. There's Sean sitting in the S-2000 up at the Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. Which you can also see in the Key Channel video live right now. Oh, how exciting. So, these questions are, there's a lot of production-related questions and a lot of how you came to this world questions, and we are thrilled that we got so many Sean questions. We're going to start with Wyatt R, who says, question for Sean, what is the wildest thing that Nick has said or done that has made you cut a piece of content?

And seriously, how many hours of content have you had to cut because of Nick? We cannot, definitely cannot say the wildest stuff, although I think we're all thinking about the same thing. There's so many moments. We have the greatest collection of Nick moments. But yeah, can't really say those on air. We have advertisers now, and there's a certain

standard of decorum that we have to maintain or else they'll drop us. Also, we're not comfortable with some of the things that were said. That is true. There have definitely been some stuff that Nick has said that has been just absolutely out of this world, not acceptable. I'll give everybody a Nick action, though, which is when we were filming the $18,000 desert series challenge videos,

it was his first time having to, like, follow a camera car. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. So, you know, we have this, like, big briefing about, like, what we're going to do. We're going to drive up this mountain. We all have walkie-talkies to communicate with each other about what we're going to do. And Nick had no ability to follow the direction of, like, following the camera car. And at one point, we were trying to get a hold of him on the Waukee.

He had not turned on his Wauke or forgot about the Wauke's existence. And so I resorted to hand signals out the window. And I pointed to a turnout because we wanted, I think it was Filippo to pass so we can get shots of Filippo's car. So he was in behind the camera car. Instead of turning out into the turnout, Nick proceeded to try to pass us in the turnout through the corner. Thinking that it was a point by.

Thinking that it was a point by it. There was actually a better story that came. out of that. After that, there was some harsh words to Nick at the next meeting, like, dude, you have to turn on your radio and you have to pay attention. Like, we had gone over step by step, everything that needed to happen for that sequence of shots. We get into our cars, and because we hadn't gotten any shot footage of Nick's car going, we were like, Nick, you lead the next section behind the camera car so that we can get shots of your car. And once again, he goes in the wrong direction and gets lost and doesn't do what he's supposed to. We have to have

another complete stop, another get out of the car. And Sean, let's talk to him again. And Nick says, I can't, it's very annoying you guys that you've done this. You've made me lead. And he was leaning in the sense that he was the first film car, but the camera car was ahead of him. And Kenan was like, that'd be like one of the, that'd be like the third car of the train being like, damn, I can't believe I'm forced to lead this train.

Nick, like, he was so pissed and we made it to leave when all he had to do. was followed behind the camera card. He couldn't handle it. We love Nick. Absurd things that has ever happened I have ever been bought up. We were could not stop out. It's completely lost it. Problematic, honestly.

He's a complete idiot. Nick is a treasure. Next question from April email on. Question for Sean, what's your email? Every week or so on the pot, I shout out Sean's email address, which is, of course, Sean at at Cars and Bids.com. I think a better

question would be, what has come from your email being so public? Hundreds of thousands of people watch this podcast every week. I can't say everything, because I also don't want to give anybody any new ideas of what to do with my email. However... This is Sean's actual work email, by the way. Some interesting stuff comes through. I've had some chats with some people. If you have something interesting, shoot me an email.

You know, I'm getting... Does anything actually fruitful come out of it? A lot of wrong E-55 wagons. I've been the recent results of the emails. Nothing of that much substance yet. Nothing yet. We also haven't asked for a lot yet. Pretty recently, Sean forwarded me an email that he got that was related to me and relevant to me, that he received truly two months prior.

And it was like topical related to something with the truck. He's slow to get through all the emails. That's what you're saying. Don't be upset if he has a lot of emails. It's a lot of emails. How many emails is it? Again, I don't necessarily want to say. I don't want to encourage this.

No more emails to Sean at Carson & Bids. That's S-E-A-N at cars and bits.com. If you have something interesting, I'll have a conversation. Do you ever get, like, threats? No. No threats. People have been nice. People have been chill.

Everybody's been super chill. We do run a car podcast at the end of the day. A lot of some weird like chat GPT, like long diatribes that is like, what is, what is? Right. Just delete. But the, the callback to the late late show was at the end of the late late late show, which is a late-night talk show. My job was to go through the voicemails

that people left for the show because at the end of every episode, they put a phone number on the screen for people to get tickets to be in the studio audience. And I had to sift through hundreds of calls every day, often from the same people that called every day, that nobody wanted tickets.

It was just random calls. And the emails somewhat remind me of the days of the late, late show having to go through these bulk requests. I thought you had actually listened to each one that's before transcription and things like that. Yeah, yeah. Next question from Roe 76.

Question for Sean. How the hell did you get your car into a Gracie Abrams music video? That was awesome. That was awesome. Sean's 300D was in a Gracie Abrams music video. My good friend Dawn, who I produced Top Year with, Top Year America, she was a co-producer with me. She owns, co-owns a production company that makes the majority,

of Interscope record music videos. And so when they need something car-related, often I try to help out. I try to help her out. I got to be a stunt driver in a Billy Eilish music video. I've done a bunch of weird music video projects with Don. And Don called me, it's like, hey, do you know anybody that has a cool-colored vintage car for a Gracie Abrams music video? And I was like, do you want to use the Mercedes?

And she was like, yeah, that'd be great. And so the day was amazing. We shot it in one day and I got to drive for this music video. So it was just a camera guy in the front of the front seat. Pull up the video. You're driving? I'm driving. Can we show it? You can't play the music, but you can probably show the video. Well, this is a commentary video.

But it's, you never see the front seat. Yeah, there is. But we drove around for a few hours with her just singing this beautiful song in the backseat. It was like one of the coolest, like, production days I've got to do. I've got to do. She's, she's, like, selling out, like, Wembley Stadium now. Yeah. And this is, like, one of her hit songs. And so, yeah, it's her brother, her best friend, all in the backseat. We're just cruising around the streets of a town. And she's just singing the song. I'm sorry, I love you. How many views does this video have now?

42 million. 42 million views. The thing that you will forever be associated with, they got the most views was your car. That's true. You were the driver for all their shots. So you must have chatted with her and stuff. Yeah, very cool, very cool. Her dad is JJ Abrams, who I was lucky enough to have dinner with a few years earlier, so we got to talk about that.

I didn't know. Yeah, it's a super cool, super cool artist. And, like, what an experience to have this, like, you know, they have the playback going, but then she was fully belting the song. Really? In the back seat of the car with a, you know. I guess you kind of have to, because otherwise it probably looks fake in a music video if you're not actually singing.

Yeah, and she was a big fan of the W123. It was very fun. Next question from B.B. King 24. Sean, does it annoy you that Doug calls your Gwagon a bad color Gwagon, despite his 993 being a similar color? You know, we drove up together to go pick up the 993 in the bad color G. And I remember when we finally got the 993 out of the dealership and parked in that mall parking lot and parked them next to each other.

I looked at it, and I was like, wait. They were the same color. You know, two things. The color that dark red suits the Porsche better. It does. I will give it that. As a guy who loves the press color, the G-Wagon is silver. It just is. When you say G-Wagon, you're talking about a silver car.

This is true. Silver's boring for the most of it. But here's something I'm willing to concede. I actually don't think Arena Red is that great. I think if it wasn't for the famous ad Kills Bugs Fast, maybe. I don't think we'd all be so. So, oh, Arena Red, Arena Red. Even with the famous ad, and of course,

that's probably one of the most famous ads ever. It doesn't really sell for a premium. And that's because it's not the most attractive of color. It's interesting because on your car, I actually do like the Arena Red. It looks good. But on, like, 9-9-6s, and even though I just saw a 991 GD3 in Arena Red, it looks bad in almost every other car. And I think the only reason we think it looks good on the 993 Twin Turbo

is because it's like such a cultural thing in the car world, knowing that color on that car. Maybe. It's also such a small car in, right? That era just suits that color. Yeah. Next question from Ceylon. Philippa, you can take this one too. Hey, Sean, what are we missing out on?

What content are we missing out on? Because Doug loves the word no. So I very famously kind of say no to everything now. I like spending time with my family. I like playing tennis here. I film a lot of content here in the office too, which is hard to take me away from. What are we missing out on?

What would we be? We don't even know. We don't even know because. We'd be in space. We'd be at the moon. It could be in the moon. We'd have 43 million views, too. Felipe's potentially annoyed with me.

Have anything specific? Because of this. I really don't have anything. Filippo manages the money of this business, and he knows we could be making more if I said yes to everything. We don't talk about that because it's too triggering. It is definitely there's some tension for sure.

There's the Audi TT thing. That would have been really cool. I would invite him to drive that concept car in Germany, that TT, new TT concept car. I actually seriously considered that, which is very rare. I haven't gone to Europe for a press launch in many, many years. I considered that one.

I said, Sean, it's going to be like five, six days. I don't want to do it. I'm going to be away from my family. Sean says, bring your kids. Like, yeah, that's what I want to do. Get my kids on a jet lagged on a flight to Europe with all their stuff so I could turn around two days later and come back, and I had to work one of the days filming this Audi TT video.

But that would have been cool. Would have been cool. There's definitely some stuff that we're missing out on. But like we still have so much good Doug content. You can't really be mad. It's worth the trade-off. And plus, like, you say yes sometimes. Like, I can get you to do the Eurocar adventure series.

Sean is to this day the only person in our company who can get me to say yes to stuff that I wouldn't otherwise say yes to. To this day, the only person. There is a limit. It only goes so far. but when Sean says, will you sign 50 cassettes, I will do it. Shout out to appointment. Will you go to whatever random company's annual shareholder meeting or whatever it was? Yeah, okay, fine.

Sean's the only one. When our CEO asks, I'm like, no. Sean's got a special touch. There's a little special touch there. We pick our battles carefully. We pick our battles carefully. And Sean is a great way of, he tells me about it. I say no to everything.

To the point where he said, he said, the company's going to pay to get you a new iPhone. I was like, no. I still haven't done it. But three, four days later, he'll come back to me. Bring it up again. Three, four days later, bringing up again. He knows the strategies.

And he kind of, what if we did it this way? What if we did it that way? And then eventually I say yes. But still, there's a limit. Mostly evolving travel. He knows. Next question from Stills 400. Dear Sean, who do you report

to is Doug your boss, is there an org chart that you can share? I've never really understood it myself. In a way, Sean is my boss and in a way, I am his. I don't really understand how it works. It's good enough of an answer. I follow the paperwork that was sent to the DMV for press photographer plates, in which it was signed that I was your boss. So we're going to go with that.

We're going to use that as our official document. Sean is my boss, at least according to the people in the DMV who pan out the press plates. But we do have a very cool CEO, Dan, who I'm trying to figure out how to, and when to put him in a video, because he actually does race cars and is, like, very much a car guy. Yeah. It's a really cool part about this company. It's like, everybody's so passionate about cars. Right.

Yeah. There ain't no suits here. That's right. Even Ryan Lopez, who drives a Tesla, he also has his Sesty drift car to balance it out. He's got the most boring and the most ridiculous of any car on this. I don't think. I've ever seen any of our employees wear a suit. Team members, excuse me, wear a suit.

Team members. We got a team here. One time somebody dressed up and in the place of a suit wore like shorts and a polo shirt instead of a t-shirt. Oh, how nice. That was our level of formality. We do have a good team. And so are you saying you report to the CEO? I do.

Report to the CEO's legit. That's where you want to be, folks. You want to be reporting to the CEO. You don't want to be the CEO. You want to be the CEO. It's better. Yeah. Yeah. Filippo, thanks for letting us know that. This isn't really a great question.

But I wanted to bring it up because it's about your emails from real Aspark, I old dear Sean. I emailed you several weeks ago informing you that I had recently bought a third-gen four runner. So this guy just emailed Sean telling him that. That's great. I love that. No purpose to it. I love that. And Sean responded and said, he learned how to drive in one of them. Why are you responding? That was the first car ever drove. It's a third third. Gen 4-runner. It's cool.

Everybody's been in a third-gen-four runner. If everybody with third-gen-for-runner experience emailed you, your email inbox would be full. This is true. This is true. But also, I'm glad I did. Because now we know that he is not, indeed, not the real Asperg Allo. He's not the real assortle. He's not the real name.

He has a real name. So the Aspergall is still not real. His question is, enlighten us, after you learn driving a third-gen-gen-four-runner, why did you choose a G-Wagon instead of a for-runner? It's actually a great question. It is. Because Sean can't handle his G-Wag. and he can't get the squeaking to stop

he can't get the brake lights to work he can't get the door locks to function the rust spot is growing and I have been sending him forerunner listings did that pro sell that green pro I sent him that one and I said Sean this is the one this one this one

it was a one low mile car and it was it local it was in Utah's close enough and one of the TRD ProColors TRD pro color I said Sean look I said you can't handle your GWagon why don't you step it's not a third gen but yeah we'll accept

The modern equivalent. I said, Sean, why don't you step up and grab yourself a forerunner? Something you can really handle. Something that's like you can accept a little. But you didn't do it. No. Look, there will be a time in my life where I have to make reasonable decisions like forerunners. Yeah.

I'm just not there. I like having fun. And also the drive train. Like the drive train of specifically that gen four runner, my very good friend. The fifth gen. The fifth gen. My good friend and producer, I've done many projects with David Silberman. we scouted the country for top gear

and our rental was off in a fifth gen four-runner. It was like the perfect car to take on these journeys. And having cruise control set, going through Utah, there was like a wind, a gust that came, and the car kicked down gears because the engine couldn't keep going at the correct speed. It's a known problem with the 4-Liter v6. I just am not a fan of that drive train.

The new forerunner looks really nice, and I have a feeling in a couple years when I'm done with the G, it'll probably be a toss-up between like a Rivian R3X if that comes out and a four-runner. As like the more reasonable car. But until then, no, I'm running over parking curbs in my G-wagon. That's all he's doing. From King Burrito 3, Dear Sean, who is your dream podcast guest?

Sean created this podcast. He produced it. He makes it run. He is constantly trying to convince us to have guests on it. Well, I refuse because this is not a guest podcast. That's why you watch. You want to see the news. You don't want to see Jim Bob come on.

here and for no one is new YouTube channel. What's doing right now? Sean, in your dream world, who is your... Who do we have on the pod? For this car pod, nobody. I fully agree. You have embraced no guest on us. I feel like we should just take a step back and talk about how we came up with this. This car pod, you know, I moved here and was trying to think of what we could do to make

some new interesting content and started hanging out with you guys. And the conversations you were having just, at dinner, around the office. You know, Felipe wasn't in much content before we started the car pod. But he was so into the news and had really good insight into car stories. It just needed to be recorded.

And so we converted there as the live show, which was covering auctions. We converted that into the version of this podcast, which is, again, going back to, like, my top-year-roots, is trying to embrace this, like, weekly news element where our audience could come and get what's the current happenings in the automotive world with the same group of friends that are and then we chat about our cars and our car life and it's a pretty good situation it's a great idea

there was a little bit of selling it i remember that people there were some people in other parts of the business who wanted to really focus more on the auctions the live auctions etc which actually is kind of a cool format but we really had this was like what we thought would would sell it and when what we thought would do well and i'm thrilled that so many people love it and that we are on episode 105 i know it's amazing last week of the podcast. It's really cool. Doing a news thing is, again, an idea that I raised my hand at Motor Trend many times and said we should be using this

massive office space to do a CNN-style news daily, weekly news thing, and it never took off. And so to have it be successful on the Doug Channel is so cool. Very successful. I mean, I think we're number one in car pods. And I think the news is, when I get feedback from people, the news is the segment

that keeps them especially. I think people like to hear us chat about cars and stuff after the news, but I think the news is like the most interesting, most exciting piece that gets the most people in. Dream guests, I think Whistland Diesel would be pretty fun. At the moment, in the current, Whistling would be a good guest. Like, I think I'd be nervous. We'd need it. Like meeting your eyes. It's like it's like if Philippo ever met one of his Italian idols, Pavarotti or Michelangelo. That would be something. That would be something. That's true. So, Whistleon, come on the pod.

Whistleon, pop on the pod. I would make, we've made a no guest exception for a few people. We had Hoovian. Yeah. Yep. We had John Tamarian on who was who they named the Lamborghini Temerario for us. Right. Yes. And so we would do it for the right person. Right. We had Arjahe's on.

That was really cool. We've done for a few legit people. But you've got to be legit. You can't just be the real ass park out. We'll talk about as third gen four. You've got to be legit. And if you have, if you're having AC issues, all the better. Do you remember the day that I sold my A class and the guy came to pick it up and I was like, hey man, you want to be on the pod?

This is when we were still doing the live pods. He's just like, all right. I liked him a lot. It was great. Toddley sold it. Next question from Victory Buns. Dear Sean, if you weren't producing the Cars and Bids podcast, what would you be doing professionally? Let's say I hadn't called you out of Motor Trend.

Motor Trend heavily restructured, reorged their content. Do you think you'd still be working there? Probably not. Probably not. I was very much specifically working on Roadworthy rescues at the time, which doesn't have any more seasons. I was freelancing. When you're in automotive TV producing, these shows have, some have good runs, some have very short runs.

But amazingly, the phone always seems to ring for automotive content. There's always something going on somewhere. And I hope that I would be as fortunate to continue working in cars. It's the coolest. It really is genuinely the coolest to be able to storytell and do that with the thing that you, love, you know, it's, or when I get home, I go on cars and bids. It's like, as we all do.

Right. Right. Right. 100%. Uh, there's our Sean podcast. Sean, do you have anything you want to add? We never got to Alpha Romeo's, which I think is a real, real shame. Someone, someone did ask, uh, dear Sean, can you please explain why Doug should be into old alphas like yours. Now, I'm not an old alpha enthusiast. Uh, however, me and you did recently drive,

this Alpha Romeo TZ, tubulari sagado. Yeah, we got this TZ1 in the office, and it was one of the greatest automotive experiences of my entire life. So now I am into old. So special. So I didn't get into this, because we had so much else to cover, but I have a 1974 AlfaMayo GTV that was a massive, massive... Not this car.

Not this car. This is the car that's in the office. This is a TZ. But my GTV was bought super ratty And I fixed it up And it's beautiful It's a very fun car

But I've kind of been on the fence of selling it I think you will sell it It might be on Doug's schedule to review However However Both Doug and I's life changed That was With this alpha MAOTZ

It is like the lightest Most Eager athletic Fun old school It's a four cylinder but it sounds like it's qualifying for LaMah. The steering is direct. The shifter and clutch feel modern.

It was so good. So Sean no longer has to convince me on old alphas. Yeah. I then got home and got in my GTV, and it felt like a marshmallow. I thought it was like this like hardcore, super like a Revy thing. And that is just on a whole other level.

Well, believe it or not, this is going to be on cars and bids. We're actually auctioning this car. This car's going to be sold on cars and bids. I got a review coming with it. It's got a huge reserve. It's a expensive, special, valuable car. We'll cover more of that later.

But I'm glad you got to sneak in Alphas, which you're obsessed with. Old cars. Old cars. Me and you. Filippa will never know the joy. I want to 19773, Ford F2.50. Oh, that's true. Oh.

You're now those truck is up there. Thank you. Finally recognition. I appreciate you working Alphas in. I appreciate you coming on the pod. Subscribe to Key. Send Sean an email. Tell him if you liked his appearance on the pod.

I hope you enjoyed it because it's never happening again. Sean, it's all rightful. You'll never see me again. We'll never be in front of the camera again ever as long as he lives. This was the end of Sean. Undoubtedly, the most time you've ever spent any content of anything you've ever done. Amazing to see Sean. Sean, thank you for joining us on our special podcast. Thank you for watching. Thank you. Bye. Bye.