THIS CAR POD! with Doug DeMuro & Friends! - Maserati Is Doomed. Trump Selling His Tesla on Cars & Bids? $45K for an E46 M3?

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Have a question you want answered on the podcast next week? Ask HERE ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://crsnbds.com/PODQUESTIONS ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Thank You To Our Sponsors!  Upgrade your wardrobe and save on @trueclassic at https://trueclassic.com/CARS #trueclassicpod Acre Gold - https://www.getacregold.com 30% off site wide with code CARS - Brooklyn Bedding - https://brooklynbedding.com/ Welcome to THIS CAR POD! Doug DeMuro & Friends offers weekly expert insight and opinion, on the breaking automotive stories, the car market, and audience Q&A. MERCH!  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://merch.carsandbids.com/⁠⁠ CHAPTERS: 00:00:00 THIS CAR POD! 00:00:24 BMW 5-Series Sales 00:02:53 The State of  Maserati 00:04:51 New Ferraris 00:07:44 Porsche 963 00:10:45 Aston Martin Valkyrie LM 00:15:19 The Death of Jaguar 00:18:41 Trump Sells His Tesla 00:21:10 Talk Cars 00:21:23 Manual Swapping A Lamborghini Murcielago 00:29:42 Nick Bentley Arnage Update 00:34:35 Kennan and the BMW 3.0 CSL 00:39:56 Market Report 00:40:24 Audi R8 00:47:02 Mercedes-Benz C43 AMG Wagon 00:48:48 BMW E46 M3 00:50:58 Porsche 964 911 00:54:26 Community Questions 00:54:46 What Would Be Filippo's Million Dollar Garage? 00:58:58 If Doug Could Have One Car What Would You Pick For Him? 01:01:53 What CDs Would You Bring On a Roadtrip? 01:05:02 What Is Better , Newer with More Miles Or Older With Fewer? 01:07:56 Rank Lamborghini's Special Editions 01:14:54 Mercedes-Benz Black Series' Ranked Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another episode of This CarPod. I am Kenan. I'm Doug's crazy friend Nick. And Doug and Felipe are not here this week. They are both on vacation. So we have brought our crazy friend Nick, who has a Bentley and a Mercy Lago and all that crazy stuff to do this episode with us. But we're going to follow the same format as usual. We're going to jump right in with the news, starting with BMW. Now, our favorite. BMW recently released their production numbers for quarter one.

And they say that the 5 series outsold all of its competition. So that's the Mercedes-Benz E-Class, the Audi A6 and S-6, the Volvo S-80, Lexus, all of those cars in Europe. They sold 20,402 units, which is substantially more than all of the other competitors sold together. Now, this is kind of interesting news in the United States. It's like the 5-series is pretty ubiquitous. They're around. But sedans aren't really that hot in demand. but in Europe they seem to be much more so.

And what's interesting to me is that the five series, like all new BMWs was received as enthusiasts, I hated it. They're all upset about this car. It's so ugly. It's new. I hate it. Well, the market disagrees. People are buying these cars.

I agree with the enthusiasts. I hate it. It's awful. Take it away from the screen. Look, everybody says that. And they said that about the E60. That aged and everybody ended up liking that car. This car seems to be largely the same. But there's one car on this list that I noticed,

that they slated as the competition. in this car, and it's the Maserati Ghibli. Now, take a wild guess, from January until April, how many cars do you think Maserati sold? How many units of the Ghibli do you think they sold? The Ghibli is in a tough spot. It wasn't liked when it came out. It's pretty stale by now.

So if this was $20,000. Let's be charitable and say they sold 10% as many, so they'd be, what, 2,000 units? That's interesting. So the Lexus ES, they sold 1,387, the Audi S7, and they sold 1,316. The Maserati Ghibli, 51. Ouch.

51 units is all they could shift in that period of time. I think we may have sold more Monsoramis on cars and vids than they sold. This is the company in general for the Ghibli. It's insane. I think they sold more Fisker Oceans here today than they did Maserati Ghibli's in Europe. But the whole thing, the segment's kind of dead, like a big sedan. Maybe it is more alive in Europe, but even 20,000 isn't that many, right? Like we're analyzing who did the best at underwater basket weaving.

Like it's an absurd competition that no one really tracks. Who cares? So like, I don't know. I still think it's ugly. I wish they had made different choices. I don't think this will translate to U.S. success. I still think sedans are dead. Interesting.

Well, I don't think the market totally disagrees with you on that. But it seems to be that BMW is really proud of having outsold everybody in Q&M. They needed to win. They needed to win. All right. On to the next news story. Ah, yes. Maserati, speaking of struggling brands.

Nick, what do you have to tell us about Maserati? You know, I miss my quattroporte. The new owner text me pictures all the time. And you go to like the historic Maserati's. The brand is pretty cool. Like I have a soft spot in my heart from Maserati. But as you just mentioned, 51 units in Europe. US ain't doing much better.

I think the brand is going to die. And that's what the news is starting to rumor is Stalantis, who's in bad position globally across a lot of their brands. are saying, how do we cut costs? What are the underperforming units we have? Maserati, this was the MC20, I believe, was the car, was sort of their best stab at a success here. And it's been received lukewarm.

They're trading for about half of what they sold for new on the secondhand market. At this point, they've already kind of taken advantage of it. Like, I just don't see a path forward. I think that they are going to be cut maybe by the end of the year. But I would put them very high on my goal pool in terms of, brands that aren't going to be around much longer. Wow, you don't think they're going to make it at all. It is a shame.

They have such great DNA. And honestly, like, I like the MC20 a lot. I think it's a really cool car. Admittedly, for its MSRP, it is a lot to stomach with a car that has mirrors from a, they're just reused from a 458. But it is, it is a wonderful car and it is cool. But they cashed in on the Maserati brand with the Ghibli and the Qualtroporte of the recent generation.

And, you know, those cars are just... And the new Grand Tarismo, remember that. that came out. Yeah, it's hilarious. The running joke in our friend group is, can you tell the old from the new? Or, oh, my God, I can't believe that person paid 200 grand for an electric version of that car. Like, it's, it's like a sign that you have bad judgment. Maybe I should get one if you own a new Maserati. I see you with a heavily depreciated MC20 in your future. Yeah, yeah. Probably not that far out either. Honestly, you just keep waiting. It'll get there. It'll get there. But speaking of exotic brands, we transitioned to another story. And that is Ferrari.

So recently, Ferrari registered two new trademarks for two new models that seem to be upcoming. Now, they said that they were going to introduce six new cars this year. They've already introduced a handful of, a couple of cars. They've done the 296 speciale, and they said the EV was going to come, but now they've kind of pushed that to 2026. So in theory. Keep pushing. Some of us say keep pushing, and the market doesn't disagree. But it seems that there'll be four new spots open.

And they've occupied those with allegedly two cars that would be called the S-Cublishing. C40, not the SC-430. I know you only know cars in 2011. Able Beach Edition, maybe. Right. Right. And this one, which makes less than the CZ-26. Now, I suspect that the latter one maybe will end up being some one-off car

because Ferrari does this occasionally for really special clients. Like the Eric Clapton car? Like the Eric Clapton car. Yeah, the F-60 America. So, like, car that are just very, very, like, for really important people and good clients. But the SC-40 has a nice ring to it.

Now, there is also rumor that Lewis Hamilton is working with Ferrari to develop an F-40 successor. They'll have a manual transmission. So you kind of start to wonder, as like, maybe are they, like, putting that in there? I don't know. But nonetheless, they have a lot of names to register, though. As we know, like, the Testorosa was one that they had to, in the 50s, they had a car called the Testeros. The 250 Testerosa, pontoon vendor car. Then in the 80s, to keep the trademark alive, they had to re-register those old names because they were going to go out of use in,

Italian law and so they had to recirculate them. And so they started doing that. We've seen that with the SP3 Daytona, the Super America, cars like that. They also have other cool names in their inventory though, like Europa, Vignale, and like Brant, like logos like M.M. for Milamia. They haven't brought any of that back. But they've decided that SC40 and CZ26, which just rolls right off the tongue. That's what they want to call these cars potentially. So we'll see. This is so your jam and my eyes were just glazing over as you were spitting out random letters. I think they should bring back the F-150. I don't really care what they do.

I hope that their actual real car and not just the one-offs for the billionaires. They're mildly cool when they do that, but like you and I, we grew up reading DuPont Registry and Googling at, hey, here's a 360, here's a 430. Like, we knew their cars, and now they're just like random letters and consonants. And this one has a deviated stitching on the undercarriage or whatever it is. It's getting a bit much. So I hope that they're real cars and not just like this random one-off. I do too.

We'll certainly see. The trademarks are out there. We'll see if they actually develop into anything. And it better be Supercharged if you're going to go SC. Can you imagine? Have they ever done a Supercharged Ferrari? They've only done turbos. It's time now.

Better than electric. It'll be better than electric. But moving on to the next new story, sticking with high performance. So Porsche recently released their 963 RSP. Pete. Now, this was, they would tease this a little while ago that, they did a road going version of the 917. They did

one example of it and they kind of teased it like, what if we did it again? And so they recently built this car. They built a, but it's a one-off example. Now, Doug was concerned as a owner of a career GT in the lineage of the 959 Curate GT-19 and this would become the new thing.

Seems like that's not going to be the case. Portia says that, you know, it's not a, it's a situation where they're saying, never say, never. We could do this again, but they built this one for Roger Penske. Now, Roger Penske is 88 years old. This car sits a quarter-seater off the ground. Good for him, man.

So I don't think he's going to be using it. Timo Bernhardt was the one who drove this car around. They drove around LaMalle with the road registered 917, which is built for Countrosi, and this car, which is to see the two of those together. Can you imagine? And they did this to like, you know, we're getting closer to LaMont, and so they wanted to get people excited,

and it felt like the right time to do it. But it is interesting, like the interior of it has, like your traditional deviated stitching, like Porsche nonsense that you and I can't stand. Hound's tooth. But it is cool. I mean, it has the, you know, twin turbocharged 4.6 liter V8,

which is largely shared with the 918, and it has, like, an extract gearbox and all that stuff. I mean, it is a racy car. It is the spiritual successor to the 917, but just wild that they're doing this. Can you believe that? Like, that's on the road. I mean, if they saw Aston Martin putting out Valkyrie,

I have to imagine someone over product planning and said, why can't we do that? We have more racing pedigree and more credibility in the space. And let us not forget, you know, I love that we're doing enthusiast stories here. But my era, the 90s and early 2000s, we had the 996 GT1. Imagine if they were selling that the customers and there was more of those hanging out today. Like that, I would freak out over any other Porsche more than a, like I can think of, like a career GT, GT, any of the new models, the 918 Spider. yawn. But give me a 996 Gt1, I would lose it.

Or COK GTR. I mean, and this kind of is that modern equipment. They're trying to do the new version, yeah. Yeah. Now, granted, it's not for homologation purposes. They're just doing this because they can. Right. They also, they built it. This car was actually built in the United States, or I think just fascinating. And they built it in a factory. They like partition part of it off and kept it secret from normal employees. They didn't know what they were doing. Wild stuff. But if they, it is interesting. They say never say never. And there could be cars like the COK GTR and the GT1 and stuff like that, they come back.

That would be pretty cool. That's the modern. If I were David Axelrod with Axe Capital, I would, I'd want something like this. Nice. Just flex. Nice. Love of good billions. That's a cute, you know, 992.4 GT7.

I got the real car. Okay. I don't know what numbers and letters are on now, but. Oh, yes. But it's funny you mentioned the Valkyreary because that's actually our next new story. So, Aston Martin has announced they're going to build. 10 versions of the Valky, and they're going to do the L.M. So Assemorne is taking this car to Le Mans this year.

Very exciting. It's going to have an NAV-12 at Lamont. Legit. But they're going to build 10 cars that they've allegedly, they're currently on sale. I don't think they've sold them to customers. They're track-only models. But the thing that's interesting about this is,

this is very much like some other cars that they've done in that this isn't built for a race series. They can do whatever. It's track-only, but they can do whatever they want. No restrictions. And so these cars might actually end up being faster than the cars are going that we'll race at L'Amol. But nonetheless, it is a, it's, I just, I love that manufacturers are doing crazy stuff like this. And also, as if the normal Valkyrieor wasn't insane enough.

It's like, how rich do you have to be to, like, you need this level of drug to, like, scratch your automotive itch? Yeah, I was going to say that the feedback that I've heard on the Valkyries, it's too soft and unfocused. So I'm glad they're listening to their customers here and making it more hardcore and extreme. But it is really cool. I know you strongly disagree with this, but we both love the F40. I love the F40 LM. I like the race car version of the RDI over the top one. So just from a pure like the halo to the halo car, this is a cool move by them.

It's going to have a very limited market. But even think of the FXX versus the regular Enzo and cars like that. Well, it's interesting you mentioned that. So they were very specific to point out that customers can just take these cars. These don't have to live at the factory. But of course, if you want the factory come and prep your car and do the whole track day thing, they will send people out to do that. And to be clear, I don't like when people put F40 LM stuff on their normal F40. You like the pop-ups.

Yes, I like the pop-ups. I like the normal, the wheels in particular, the standard F-40 wheels. I'll put a good five-spoke. Good five-spoke. No, but the LM has the cool five-spokes. Yes, but it just doesn't look right to me. It's like, and the thing with the, but I get it for the brake upgrades because the normal F-40 brakes. Some of us like some boltons, if you know what I mean.

You mod things and I don't. That's one of our great differences. But nonetheless, pricing hasn't come out of these, but a standard Valkyrie is a $3.2 million car. So you have to imagine these will be far closer to five. Who knows? But nonetheless, it's cool. It's cool that Austin is.

I think this is the future for Aston. I think producing mid-tier V8 advantages and like sort of everyday cars with AMG engines, people are going to get bored of. But if you just go more and more extreme, this gets people talking, it's desirable, and I'd rather see them sell a couple cars for $3 million each than like a bunch of cars that are worth $35,000, 10 years later

because they're fancy Jaguars. And who knows if the racing car is successful at Lamo? I mean, that might make these cars even more appealing. It's like that's what happened with the McLaren F1, you know what I mean? It won Lamaul. To the Aston Martin people, if you're listening, for the press launch, you need to have Alonzo in the regular Valkyrie.

and stroll in the LM and see who's faster around the track. Well, I can take a wild guess. I don't know. I don't know. He's got some down force. Yeah, but stroll put it into a wall. Today's episode is brought to you by True Classic, the makers of really, really nice shirts and other garments that actually fit.

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Grab yours at Target or Costco or head to True Classic.com. slash cars to get hooked up today. Again, that's trueclassic.com slash cars. But on us, move in speaking of English brands, we move on to Jaguar. Nick, you want to talk about Jack. Oh, good thing, Mike. Oh, no, it's not English.

Yes, Jaguar, another favorite brand of mine. I love the XKR, XK-120, the E-Type, and nothing made sense. So they had this disastrous rebrand. They were going to go into $100,000 plus EVs. obviously the EV market has cooled considerably, to put it mildly. The ultra luxury segment is kind of in a flux, and everyone made fun of Jaguar. Now, I work in advertising, and as someone in an ad execs type position, I could see what they were going for, right?

There's been so many hot takes of, oh, they just needed to get attention and change a conversation and what they were doing wasn't working, yada, yada, yada. I think they looked at a, like, GQ magazine and said, how does Louis Vuitton or Dior or Gucci, they have these like weird sort of sexually ambiguous models in like high fashion and that's how they portray luxury. So I think they were trying to go with like a very ultra luxury mode. But this was a failure. All it really did was get people talking about how bad their ideas were, how bad the brand has fallen. Like it was all negative publicity. And I think you'd be crazy right now to be building all EVs. There's no one doing that successfully. I can't believe Lucid is still around

other than they have very deep pockets from their investors. You look at karma. I can't believe they're still around. Tesla is clearly not doing well for reasons both in and out of their control. But the EV segment is really tough. So I think jagged through a Hail Mary pitch, it got intercepted and ran back to use the sports analogy there all the way. I think they're done.

I think they're probably going to private equity right now and trying to find investors and saying, look, we'll roll out a new ad campaign. will rebrand again, but I can't see coming back from this. So you think Maserati is going to die. You think Jaguar is going to die. Yeah. And you think that maybe some modern EV manufacturers are going to.

Yeah, all the modern EV brands short of Tesla. And then Tesla is not in a great spot either, but I think a lot of them are going to die. Rivian will be okay. So not all. So there are. And like B.D, anyone that's heavy in A-PAC and doing well in A-PAC will be fine. Yes. Any of the Chinese manufacturers that seems like this.

This is just the beginning of how great they're going to do, it seems. I think more than that. Like, Chrysler's down to one model. That's not looking good. Alpha Romeo, to the point on the earlier podcast, the local dealership there is pushing used Mercedes harder than they are the new Alpha lineup. I think they'll come out of the U.S.

I don't think they'll die entirely. I think Aston has a little longer runway, but if they don't get some traction somewhere soon, I think they could be in a tough pickle. Jag is obviously dead on a run. rival. I think there's a few others I wrote down in my notes that don't look very good, but it's getting tricky out there. It is interesting. And this, it is true, this ad campaign did get us all talking about Jaguar, but none of it was positive, like you said. So I don't know.

It would make me sad to lose Jag for the cars that we love from their past. But, I mean, when was the last time you got excited over a Jag? Realistically, I mean, it was the recession. Those cars, yeah, were so long ago that everyone's forgotten and moved on. Yeah, that's true. I don't know. We'll see. The future remains uncertain for Jaguar. Kelsey Priese. Ah, yes, moving on to...

Yeah. So talking of electric cars. Moving on to Trump's Tesla. Yeah. He's submitting it to cars and bids. It'll be no reserve going live on Monday. Yeah, that's... So Trump has said that he's going to sell his Tesla.

The quote, you wanted me to read around this because I think it's great, which I will happily do. I mean, I may move the Tesla around a little bit. I have a lot of locations. I have so many locations. I don't know what to do. do with them all? Well, he should sell it here. That's what he should do is sell it on cars and videos. Based on how well the ex-Trump Diablo did, I think he'd do really well as a business

model to just drive it around a little bit and flip it, kind of like I do with the Bentley and all of my cars, right? Like, he could film some content. Like, I'd be all for this. But yeah, he doesn't, there's a little bit of a breakup in case you're not paying attention to the news. I don't think the prompt that, I'm sorry, the president, not the Trump. The president's allowed to drive his own car, is he? No. I mean, Biden did that. thing we drove his C2 Corvette, but it was on a closed airfield? Yeah, just in the driveway, wasn't it? Or did you go to an airfield?

For the Seinfeld thing, I think they drove like, or that was Obama. Obama drove. Liability reasons, they don't want him driving because what if he hurts himself or whatever? Well, exactly. But no, that they closed down an airfield and he did it with Jay Leno and drove like around this airfield. And it was the first time he'd driven a car since before he. Dude, that would be all of my executive orders. Let me just close down airfields and race.

Drive your mercy. Yeah, that's right. But what I'd like to make the point is to, to the president, if he's listening, you know, Biden's ATSV sold with us. Are you going to let Biden beat you? Are you going to let him sell his car with us and you're not going to do it? You have to bring it here. It's the best place to sell a car. The other place is losers.

But nonetheless, I think this whole situation is crazy. The whole Elon bus thing and it's all insane. But I did that quote this week was wild. The other famous quote was, there's screens everywhere. And that's exactly how I feel when I get into a modern car. My newest cars are 2014. And it's like when navigation was an option, people paid a lot extra for it to have a screen. So I feel the same way.

Screens everywhere. Screens everywhere. That's extraordinary. But not a surprise. Some time soon, someone will buy his Tesla. You think they'll make that quiet? I don't think so. I don't think so.

He should, like, ending in 4-5 or 4-7. I do wonder if he had a special bin. should have. That's the least Elon could have done. The very least, but, yeah, alas. All right, that concludes the new segment. We have to move on. We want to move into the talking cars segment. Now, you have a lot to talk about when it comes to your car. So let's start right in. Let's start with the mercy. What's going on with your mercy route? All right. I've kept it a little under wraps, but this is a great opportunity to talk about it. So I've had the mercy now, two and a half years a little more. It's an eager car. I'd say I was, I've wanted to swap it since

I've gotten it. That technology basically didn't exist or wasn't finalized until mid to late last year. And I've talked a few times on this podcast about doing it. I've probably spent six months talking to everyone that does it, getting quotes, talking to them. I finally pulled the trigger. And so the car was shipped out about a month ago. The swap is done. Done.

They've driven it a couple hundred miles. They've cubated it. And it's supposed to get shipped back this week. so I'm going to soon be a stick mercy owner. I drove another converted car as well, and like, oh, it's so sublime. But this actually all started, because I wanted to sell the mercy. And I was going to sell it on cars and bids. The E-gear values are still, like, pretty weak.

And the manual values are still 2 to 3x. And you just look at it and think, this is so dumb. Why would someone pay that much more for a manual, especially if you intend to drive it and not just put it in a, you know, a collection? somewhere. So the manual conversions are expensive. I got quoted anywhere from 40 grand to 100 grand to do it. And that's what everyone wants to ask. And I think the delta and the values between an E gear and a OE stick are more than 100 grand easily. To double, triple that. However, if you look at the Ferrari market, a converted car never gets what an OE car gets or even near it. But it should get back what it

cost to convert it or a multiplier, or either a good chunk of that, if not the whole thing. Yeah. I think that your reasoning makes a lot of sense. I also think the Lamborghini market in particular is less sensitive to modifications than the Ferrari one. Yeah. Ferrari people, they do not like modifications at all. Agreed. And also, like, the Lamborghiners do drive their cars more, generally speaking.

And so I think the stick conversion makes a ton of sense in your car. And like you said, the spread is, like the chasm is so large. It's irrational. It does not make sense to be paying over a million dollars for the same car that you could buy for 200K with the main difference being a click-clack. Right. And granted, I prefer gated manual transmission.

I love it. The eager, I have to say in your car, was pretty fun to drive, honestly. I don't think you lost that much of the experience. It's still insane, every aspect of it. No, I mean, I was an eager apologetic. Apologist? Apologist, thank you.

It is fun at high speeds when we do our canyon cruises. It is unbearable in first and unbearable in reverse. If you're trying to parallel park somewhere, if you're using it as a normal car, it's really annoying in those capacities. And it still is like it's always more fun. So when I was thinking of selling it, I was looking at a Diablo. I love the Diablo. I was just like fascinated by it.

And then I started to wonder, how much of it is because I'm shifting my own gears? It's certainly that it felt more analog. was like the primary attraction. But I know. They're so cool. They're so cool. And I think you and I both, this car imprinted on us from an early age that like, it's wed shaped.

It's so neat. But dazzled the movie with Brendan Fraser and Elizabeth Hurley, the devil, she plays the devil and she drove a banditia diablo. I really want to think memory serves me. Or gone in 60 seconds. Gone in 60 seconds. They're boosting cars and Nick Cage is the famous line, Angelina Jolie. Yep, exactly.

I won't repeat it in case I get censored again. but nonetheless. So I may end up still selling the car when I get it back. I want to drive it some and then have it be the first public sale of a converted car. That was originally my pitch. But after driving even just one converted car, I'm like, oh, this might actually be a keeper. So I'm pretty excited. I went with Machina Motorworks.

They're in Austin. Basically, they have been converting Ferraris for many, many years under a different brand name. And then there was a whole split. But they got a lot of experience doing that with. the Ferraris. And I think the other thing you mentioned was the Ferrari purists are a little weird on conversions, but some of the early Ferrari conversions, they used, instead of using like a solid rod, they use cables. The cables were notorious for getting stretched and needing readjusted and not being great. I think with the Lambo, they're taking a lot of those learnings and developing it right with

2025 technology. Is it a shift rod then in that case? Yeah, it's all solid as far as I understand. That's great. And like they're, and it's an engine out. I mean, it's a, It's a pretty substantial service, but I think that they're, like, even the factory cars at this point are out of calibration in terms of their e-gear. So, like, you can actually make it ship better than an OE stick, or at least that's what everyone says. So I'll get the car back hopefully next week. I'm going to drive a ton on it and then produce some videos for cars and bids going over the whole experience. And then maybe, just maybe we'll be selling it. Maybe we'll be keeping it.

That sort of remains to be seen. I suspect you hold on to it for a little bit. I mean, you should drive it and get the experience of driving a manual mercy around. Yeah, no, I definitely want to do that. I'm keeping it the whole summer regardless. Yeah. I was texting with Ed Bolian about his Diablo SV, and he didn't want to trade because he's got two Diablo SVs and doesn't really need another Mercia Lago. But I've been kind of like quietly shopping around just to see what's out there.

There's a few cars I got my eyes on. But for now, a stick mercy is going to be pretty killer. It's insane. Yeah. It's such an insane car. I'm so excited for you to get it back. I'm glad you took the plunge. You did a lot of research, like looking at a number of different conversions,

and this one seemed to be the one you settled on. I'm still terrified. I'm still terrified. The guys at Mocken have been great. He texts me every day. We're going over things. I made them keep it an extra week and just drive it a ton. But there's still a lot of unknowns, right?

I think the total number of converted mercies is probably 20 across everyone who offers it, maybe 30. So, like, no one's, like, had a long-term ownership experience yet, which makes you nervous. But it's the same trans. It's the same clutch. Well, this isn't exactly cutting-edge technology. Yeah, they're all taking the OE cars and basically reverse engineering it. The main hurdle, the reason why these didn't exist up until recently was just the TCU programming, which someone finally cracked the code on, pun intended. So I can't see why this would be problematic long-term, but time to drive it.

And that's a nice thing. My car is miles, so, like, what's driving in a couple of times? couple thousand more miles. It's the one you want to do that too. Ultimately, it's the right use case for this. I'm very excited. I can't believe it's happened that fast. Like, I thought this would,

Doug and I both thought you were an, you're an idiot and it's gonna, this car won't be back before. Car weekend, admittedly, it ain't back now. They were basically done in two weeks. And then there was a delay where one of the guys got married or something like that. But like, it goes quick once they get it up on the left and start. They had the engine in and out in the same week.

And had all those things done. And then the next week was waiting for the new carbon center council to come in and a few odds and ends to put it back together. But they've done enough now that it's not, they're like, it's not hard. It's just time consuming. Man, that's what I found with Ryan from E3-9. So when he started doing conversions on the E-60, the first one took like two and a half months. Now he can do it in a week. Yeah.

I'm not saying if you take your car to him. The thing is you always run into other stuff. Did you run into any other things? Motor mounts were toast, which I guess is fairly common. There was one other minor thing. Everyone's going to have some while you're in there, so it's just a matter of how deep you want to go. Right.

Yeah, it's a Lamborghini at the end of the day. There's always something. A 20-year-old Lamborghini. This episode of This CarPod is brought to you by Acre Gold. Now, you all know that I'm all about finding value, whether it's a pristine 964-911 or an immaculate E46M3. But let's talk about a different kind of asset. Acre Gold.

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That's getacregold.com. But this isn't the only car you have, not really interesting. I'm looking at the front of the very stately or not. What's the latest with the Arnache? A video went live. The video went live today when we're filming this. So Wednesday for you all in the future. On the Cars and Bids Channel.

On the Cars and Bids channel. Actually, it's I think the sixth in the series. So if you haven't, check it out. It's a lot of fun. It's not getting the views that some of the other videos do. But we brought it back from the dead. I mean, it showed up. It was an $18,000 car that a door didn't open, a window didn't go up.

It had every light illuminated in the dash possible, which is impressive. You had to turn the brights on and the cruise control. on to get all the lights, but we could get all the lights. I mean, just absolute basket case. I have spent 10 grand on it on an $18,000 car. Yikes. It is so nice now. It gets like literally someone like as I was leaving my house gave me a thumbs up like a random landscaper. Like it just it's like stops people in their tracks when they see this purple Bentley just like putsin around. And it drives great. I haven't it hasn't broken down in a while. It's it's a normal car.

When you showed up with it for the first time here at the office and I got to see the car in person. I was, I, just like Doug was like, I don't think you've realized what you've signed up for here. It smelled like cool.

And it was, it was rough. Yeah. The thing was beat. But in the end, it does seem like you've done better than we had any of us had anticipated. I thought you'd need an engine.

I thought it would need all kinds of stuff. But it doesn't touch wood. Doesn't seem to have needed that. And you have turned it around. If this car hadn't ended up with you, I think it would just end up for parts to be totally honest with you. And even then, it would have been a stretch. It's like the old land rover.

It needs to go to someone willing to get their hands dirty and also look for parts. Some parts are NLA, no longer available. But there was a viewer sent a clip to a Mr. Gadget guy, I think his name was. He reviews electronics. He bought an Arnaj at a mecom auction in similar shape as mine. Like, he did a lot of stuff. He didn't even look at it. He sent it immediately to the Bentley dealer and Browler.

or Palm Beach and said, spare no expense, fix everything you can find. And they spent $73,000 on the initial round of repairs. He picks it up from the dealership and drives it home 100 miles and doesn't make it home. The transmission goes out. He sends it back. He's basically into this car over $100,000.

Yikes. The list of stuff that he fixed and the list of stuff I fixed is almost identical, both in terms of the failure points, as well as just like the number and severity of issues. So just paying dealership prices and paying for both the parts and the labor is the difference between spending 10 grand on the car and 100 grand on the car in terms of your refurb. He did a few things too. I wouldn't recommend. But even my wood trim, right?

That was my most expensive fix, $3,500. I got a quote for $12,000 to redo it. And that's where the dealer would have sent it. So like, and then you can imagine they probably also charge five hours of labor, removing the trim and installing it. It's like you're suddenly getting to like $15,000 and wood trim. Man. It just, it adds up really quickly if you aren't trying to be smart about the cost. And this guy, for better or worse, just told the dealership, make it new.

I don't care. Man, Bentley taxes. It's insane. Heavy. Heavy. But if you're an enthusiast, that wasn't that bad. I'm in it under 30, barely. And it's for 30, that's a pretty cool daily.

It is. Now, admittedly, you could buy, probably buy a decent one for 30. All the dealers ask 30 to 40. All of the online results are not supporting them. those comps but i i suspect anyone you buy is going to need stuff no one's no one's oh absolutely other than mr gadget guys who i can't imagine he would let go of it now that he's a hundred grand deep into this 30 grand car but yeah he's got to get oh i hope he enjoys driving it's got to get a lot of miles yeah he better he better well so i'm glad to hear the bentley's

coming to show i can't wait to borrow that thing i've dreamt of driving in an rs it's yours next week oh i cannot wait to report back on that hopefully no issues again touchwood yeah but uh touch polished rice veneering. Yeah. But nonetheless. It's such a special car. It is so special. I'm glad you're going to hold on to that one for a little bit and enjoy that car.

Man. God, your garage. I was maybe going to sell it earlier to get a multipla. I put a deposit down on a multipla. My dude showed up. It was so rusted he could bend the frame. So we're back to the drawing board on the multiple. But until I get the next project car in, I'm keeping this one.

So I'm on the lookout for an appropriate level of project car, not too far gone, but not too nice. So it could come or go anytime. Yeah, if you have a multiple, a holler. But I think there's like two people in all of North America. Yeah, that's very... Ideally, if you're in like Poland or Netherlands, that would be ideal. Very true.

So I'm glad your cars are doing well. Seems that all was good on that. I can't wait for the mercy to come home. I drove an interesting car last week. So we're doing a special film in a car that's coming out very soon. So I drove a BMW E-9 CSL. Now, you know vaguely of this car, the Batman. You drove an E-9 at Car Week last year.

I did. And all of us were like, this is such a Canon car. It's handsome. It's a little slow. It's just perfect for you. It is. Now, this one, I need one with the M-Strike. But this is a special version of the E-9.

Correct. The E-9 in general is a really wonderful car. And it gave birth to the BMW big coupe. So the sixth series that came after the 8-series. But the thing about the CSL was it gave birth to the M-division. Because it was the first car. cars the Motorsport division built as a dedicated as a homologation so before the m1 before the m1 this was what the team worked on it was actually bob lutz brought in a bunch of it was at bmw

yeah yeah and brought in a bunch of engineers to start this brand and i got to drive one that would just finished a beautiful restoration and i have to say i drove it last week on the eighth of of june which is carson bids anniversary day and so i got to drive down p c h with the sun going down and an e9 CSL five years after I was at Doug and Blake and I were sitting on sitting out of Doug's patio starting this thing freaking out over the number of submissions we had and all the work that we had to do and it was like it was so surreal to have it come like full circle like that of like I cannot believe we're going to have a car like that on the site and now we do I dreamt of having cars like that and I hope it continues to go that way and maybe next year it'll be an F40 I'm driving on

the PCH who knows it should be but nonetheless this car was amazing the thing I found that we're striking about it was it drove, you know, it's a classic. It doesn't make a lot of horsepower either. The road-going versions of this car, I think only made 207 horsepower. It's not a lot. It doesn't weigh that much, about 2,500 pounds is what it weighs, which is heavy-ish for the era, I guess, but not that heavy, all things considered. Very usable. Super smooth, gave you the vintage experience. Yeah. And, like, just to drive genesis of where it, like, all started, as someone who bleeds the BMW-M colors, it's just, it was amazing. So cool looking.

Like, again, I just... So cool. It's an icon just in terms of both its looks and it's just, its whole vibe. Yeah, that was the thing that blew me away. Because I drove this in, like, on Newport Coast, like kind of around Crystal Cove and down into the laguna, where you see crazy cars all the time. Yeah. People lost their minds.

Right. Like, the number of people that were taking pictures, I stopped to get gas in it, everybody came up and took a picture of the car. Right. And I guess, to me, it is a very crazy shape. but to other people who don't even know what it is, it was like a spaceship. And again, in a place where there are really special cars all the time,

it was like to drive what probably maybe was the most special car driven on that road that day was a cool experience. I feel like I'm getting more turned on by older cars as things go on. Like, I look at that. Like, I don't know what the values of these are, right? But like, if you've got a bunch of money and you're like, oh, I get a new McLaren and everyone thinks I'm some kind of a. capitalist

can I say D-bag? I'm a capitalist bad guy or I drive this car and I'm a connoisseur and champagne falls from the sky. You would be a self-indulgent weenies or your vehicle. Exactly. Thank you. Thank you. It's so

tasteful and so special on a way money cannot buy that today unless you maybe bought the Valkyri LM or that weird Porsche thing. Like you need that level of crazy to match what you could get here with like an E-type or 3.0 CSL.

It's just, it's so different and so special. It is, and I think it's one of the things that differentiates people who are rich versus people who are rich and interesting. Like, car enthusiasts who are rich and interesting, have something like this. Whereas if you just get money and you're not that sophisticated when it comes to knowing about cars, you go and you buy. Every Ferrari and yellow, maybe. All right, that's a bold claim.

But nonetheless, like, that, you hit the nail on the head, and I think it was, and it was clear based on how people reacted to it. And that's not the reason to own a car. is how others react to it. But admittedly, I felt that it was very cool as someone who I feel is... I like to consider myself kind of a steward of the brand. Yeah.

It was cool to see, like, normal people react to like, wow, what is that thing? You buy a car because of how it makes you feel, right, as you're dropping it. And this car makes you feel special and, like, you're preserving history and just, like, so connected with the machine in a way that no new car really can.

Totally. I'm so glad you got to drive it. It is such a Pete Kennan car. I hope you get to own one one day, even if it's not the CSL. Maybe it's just the regular, but like it should totally be on your bucket list here. Totally. Like you said, I drove my friend, I drove my friends last year at a car wake in it.

Like, in his, I think it was a built 3-5 engine. On this 17-mile drive or whatever, like that was so cool. Yeah, that was really cool. I'm very, very grateful to him letting me borrow that car to that moment. What a generous guy. It was a crazy nice guy. And it was wonderful. And this just reaffirmed, it's like, still drives like a BMW, still feels like a BMW.

and that straight six sound is just wonderful. Experience matters, and this card delivers that the vintage experience is cool. Life was better in a classic, as they say. That's right. But yes. So what my wife tells me every day. That's exactly right. Okay, so that's enough talking cars.

We now have to move on to the market report, which is brought to you today by Nick's Bentley keys. He even has a cars and bids. A little landing on it. Complete with electric tape to hold in the unlock button. As you do. You want to hear, hold on, this thing beeps. See, the thing.

Traditional Bentley form. It's not beeping exactly. It should beep. It beeps really loud when it beeps. It's insane. That's, yeah, I have no doubt. But we are going to talk about a couple of interesting cars that you wanted to note. And we want to start with R8s.

Now, you had a V8 R8 coupe, six-beep manual, lovely car. I had one. What do you want to say about R-AIDS? The current owner is now selling it and using some of my photos that I sold it to him with, which is totally fine. something that I took. Everyone's pinging me. Be like, hey, dude, it's your old car. It's your old car. And, like, I think his ask is

in the 60s. If you look at the cars and bids results, a V8, 6-speed R8 can be had in the 60s. You can spend up for a little bit lower mileage one or nicer one. If you want the V-10, you've got to spend up a little bit more. But in these

60s, or less, for some of them, it is an insane value. Mid-engine. It looks amazing. It feels amazing, much like you described with that 3.0 CSL, people around you react to it in a way that's just strictly favorable. No one's like, oh, that guy's kind of a jerk or like here to fire my dad. No, they think like, oh, it's Iron Man or oh, that looks so cool. I remember when that came out. Like, it's a almost 20 year old car now, but it's a V8 from an RS4. Mine has or has 86,000 miles

on it, like driven, like a normal car, not like a 20,000 mile Ferrari. And it, it holds a up really great. Yeah, I have to say we had this red one. That one was awesome. Just this sold, yeah, it was a red six-speed V8 coupe. And it just sold for 66 grand. Doug did a video on it and all that stuff. I drove it around for a little while to do videos with it for the photo guide. And exactly what you described. There was somebody who came out to me, this woman was driving a gladiator and pull up next to me. I thought like, the car was really loud. Had an aftermarket exhaust. It was crazy loud. She pulled up next to me and I thought I was like, oh, I was in this neighborhood, which hates cars.

And I thought she was going to yell at me, but she was like, I had to turn down my music to listen to your engine. And I was like, I'm sorry, it's really loud. She said, what are you talking about? It's an R8. It's supposed to be loud. Like, she was like, into it, like, really excited. And everybody freaks out over it.

But all of it was positive. I didn't have anybody who, like, cut me off. Like, everybody lets you in in traffic. People are just, like, into the car. And to your point, this one had, was 47,000 miles on it. But it was tight as a drum. Like, it was so good. Like I said, it's one of the few times when I've been like,

I could get rid of the M5 and just drive one of these all day. But in the end, I made the decision to keep the car, of course. But nonetheless, I agree with you. And I think they are tremendously underbide. If you're an enthusiast looking for a car under 70, that checks all the boxes. The V8R8 is hard to beat. Also, the RTRonics, not the greatest transmission,

but it's easily swappable. There's a guy, third pedal LLC in Alabama. He does it over a couple cold ones in a weekend. I don't think he actually drinks, but you know what I mean? Like, it's so swappable that you can pick the spec you want. So, like, you can be like, like, you guys had an amazing Samoa orange one recently. There's purple ones. There's that light blue color people really like.

There's so many cool specs. I don't know. That's an Estronic, I believe. But, like, Audi did some pretty cool stuff back in the day. So you can also just shop around for the right car, the right spec. If they're out there, they were available enough that it's not, like, impossible to find one. so you can be a little choosy, but there's a lot of options

at a very reasonable budget. You hit it on actually a really interesting point there, I think with conversions in general, I'll tie back when you said to your Lamborghini. It's a little off topic, but I think these conversions open the opportunity to own spec.

A lot of the F1 equipped cars and supplies to Ferraris two were, it was an expensive option to have. And so if you did that, you tended to do more interesting things with them. Now the idea of being able to take that, remove the transmission, that hasn't aged all that well,

all aspects of the transmission that haven't aged that well. Go back to a 6B manual. Pretty appealing. Now, I will say, do you cover your spread as much with an R8? No, because the manuals are pretty close there, I think. But nonetheless, they're cheaper to swap than, like, say, a Merciolago. But, yeah, the R8 GTs only came in automatic, but it's swappable. That's the one.

Yeah. That's the one you swap. That's the one I would want to do personally. But there were some that came in, like, Purple's or that third pedal LLC company, they've done, they'll take a preface, like, the one, they'll facelift it, they will manual swap it. And he's done it on an orange one as well. And like a purple one, he's done something pretty crazy spec.

So yeah, you buy the car you want regardless of the transmission, rather than saying, oh, I want the transmission and having a narrower pool. Also means if you only got like less money to buy the car, you can buy the car now, drive it as an auto for a year like Sean's doing with his 360, and then swap it as funds become available. Right. Let's put some pressure on our producer to swap his car by manual. No pressure.

But no, that's a great point. Rates are great value. Buy it. Yeah, buy, buy, buy. There are only a few objects in your life that are absolutely essential to your well-being just because of how much time you spend with them. For me, it really comes down to two. My beloved E39M5 and my mattress.

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It's really cool. C-43 laggy-wag. This car is so cool. Now, by the time this airs, this car will have ended, it's currently sitting at 12 grand. Look, this generation of C-Class in general, the C-43, I think, is an incredibly special car. You can kind of see it in the shot of Nick when you pan to it, that there's one in the background there, right? There it is. And it is, I am astonished with how much, how solid that car.

feels, like considering the E-36 was its competition at the time, that car is just in a different league, and the wagon is so damn cool. Yeah. And now they're, we're seeing them more frequently. And over here with U.S. titles, look at that. How cool is that car? Total sleeper. I love the photos they took here with the dead grass.

Yeah. Yeah. Photos definitely matter. I agree. But I mean, you get the point. You can look, yeah, there's been like two that have sold. as far as I've seen. So the market still hasn't been set yet, but it seems like they're pretty good value for the money. Yeah. And way more special, way cool. Like, again, this is a car.

I would freak out at cars and coffee, but you could use it on a daily basis. No problem. Totally. I agree with that. I'm eager to see more of them come into the country, but also finding them is not particularly easy in Europe. They aren't that common of a car to begin with. But I think this generation C class is generally underrated. The aim, G-1s are particularly desirable. You could do a 6-speed R8 V8 and this for under 100 grand as your ideal two-car solution and find me a more tasteful, interesting, and enjoyable two-car solution for that money. Pretty good.

Pretty good. Pretty good. One car I wanted to call out this week that I thought was kind of insane was this E-46M-3. Now, you like the E-46M-3. You've kind of said that you might consider dabbling in one. This one I found was interesting. So this was... That's what she said.

This is an 04, so a late production E46M3 coop. Oh, a modded one. 50,000 miles and 6-speed manual, Imelored. But mods. And when I look at this car, I'm like, I mean, yeah, the mileage is low, but, you know, it's like I don't know about what you should go for based on the worker would take to unmodify it. But it went for 45 grand, which is big money for like an E46M3. When I looked at the most expensive ones we have sold with manual transmissions because they were offered as SMG2,

This is the fifth most expensive E46M3 we have ever sold. All the other ones we've sold that were cheaper or more expensive than that did have lower mileage. This one in particular was sticks on the line with 2,400 miles. The fourth most expensive was 25,000. So this had double the mileage and modifications. But it, I mean, it sold for serious money. And I think that it speaks to the benefit of taking to an auction. It's like somebody wanted the car with the upgrades that it had because in addition to some of the aesthetic mods,

it had real stuff. So if all of you and Cherry intake system, which is a must on that car, the Bison, the Bison Vanos upgrade, you know, it had stuff like that. So like really desirable stuff that sold for real money. Like I was just blown away by that result. And it was quite a bidding war at the end. It was two people who really, really wanted it. And they just went back and forth and back and forth for a long time.

The bidding war is the greatest. Love watching them. It's the best. Don't like being part of them. Nope. But congratulations. It's a Hawksford on taking this one home. What a car. I do like the color. I'm sure that helped a lot. A 50,000 mile, a mola, or emola, as you would say, red E46M3 is not easy to find.

No. No, it is not. And so even with the mods, it's like, I think, yeah, quite a result. I like the mods. I know you do. I know you do. There's a few I would do differently. To each their own. Yeah, exactly. But nonetheless, I was very proud to have, like, such a strong result with a, what is admittedly, a car that's hard to find. The last result I want to talk before we get over to the question section, we had an interesting 964 that sold on the site. So this, again, I can't keep up with the number of manufacturers that modified 964s, but this is an RWB wide body 964. And it's sold for $171,500. Real money for one of these cars. But, I mean, look at it.

It's just wild to me. Again, what I do it to my 964? Maybe not, but these are really popular with people, and people spend real money on them. Because it doesn't look like anything else. I liked RWB a lot when it was sort of a, if you know, you know, like niche Japanese tuner scene kind of thing. They've now kind of become like a rich guy collector thing.

And I don't get it. Like I would do a singer or something where they're like doing everything to perfection versus a guy flies from Japan and does it over a weekend with a blow torch and sawsaw and all that. It's impressive people like them. I guess it just speaks. It's an impressive result for you guys, and I get that people pay for RWBs, but. To me, what it says is like, I'm yucking that yum right there. I agree with you generally, but to me it says the market does think differently.

Yeah. Like, they clearly value this so. much. This one's actually pretty tasteful for an R2BB too. Some of them are a little tacky. This one, I like the color, the mods are not too... Like, sometimes he does like these quadrupled stacked wings and stuff that are just

like hot wheels, ridiculous. This one has a little... Fairly clean. No, I agree with that. I just thought it was... It was just eye-opening to me. Because I have an ongoing list of all of the people who do this who modify these cars these way. Did you want to hear? I'll run down the list.

So Singer, Singer being the most successful in that, like, their name has become a verb. You singerize a car in there, and that applies to a number of manufacturers. Gunther Works, RWB, Paul Stevens, Theon Design, Emery Motorsports, the Keem Project, whoever likes they built the little Safari ones. Calamar Automotive, I'm putting roof on this list. I was going to say, roof is the only one I care about, so. Kager or whatever, retro, an EvoMax. So that just keeps growing.

I think that's like 10% of the tuners out there. It's every week there. Yeah, but it's the same recipe. Take an air-cooled 9-11, make modifications to it, charge a lot of money for it. Granted a singer, you know,

their choice in a million for their car. So that number one... Singer's doing some really impressive stuff as is Gunther works. I think there are like a cut above the rest of them, but each one will come out

and be like, oh, we're planning only 20, so you better act fast. And it's like, bro, you're going to sell three of these. Like, you don't pretend that scarcity here. Like, there's not that many. RWB, again, has this cult following now that I think they've ascended to almost manufacturer-like status, but... Yeah, or certainly lauded that way anyway.

But nonetheless, a very strong result. I would rather have your modded red E-46M-3 if I had to choose between the two. Dang. Save yourself $110,000. I would take the $110,000, light it on fire, and take the E-46 versus spending the money on that R-D. That's a bit strong. I think what you'd do is buy a C-43-A-M-G-Wigan and an R-A. Yeah, buy all three of the cars we just mentioned over that one, and light the rest of the money and fire.

Or, you know, spend it on Bentley maintenance. But to each out on that one. But now we're going to move to questions. Questions, questions. If you want to ask us a question, click the link in the description below. Or you can go to the Cars and Bids community section where there will be a post where you can ask us a lot of questions. And we got asked a ton of great questions. I spent probably an hour and a half going through these the other night.

And there are so many good ones. But we're going to jump right in with this hypothetical because Felipe's not here. and I think this one would be fun. So the question from Ariel 1194 is answer this hypothetical. Filippo wins a million dollars to spend on cars, but the catch is that only his friends can choose the cars that he can buy. What would we put in Filippo's garage? Now, the question really is how nice do you want to be to Filippo?

Is it stuff that we want him to have or stuff that he would want to have? Let me answer his Filippo first so then you and I can choose. Okay. I would never spend that much money on a car, so I would just buy a $10,000 car and put the rest in an SMP 500 index fund. That's exactly. I can't do his voice well, but just extrapolate. No, my impression of Filippa goes, yeah, legitimately, that's what I would do. He'd be deeply uncomfortable with spending anything more than a reasonable about money on a daily, which I would think, because maybe it's like 40 for him, but he wouldn't, he doesn't like expensive cars.

Never spent that. This would be painful to him to drive it. and inexpensive. He's never spent $40 on a car in his life. Yeah, that is true. So what would we get for Felipe? For a million dollars. I think one car I would get for him,

my car I would get for him, is a $5.50. He'd never drive that. Although he says he's never drive it, it's the one Ferrari, he and I both agree on that we both really love. Yeah. Which for him is saying a ton. And it kind of makes sense. It's under the radar.

You have to know what it is. They're actually relatively reliable. They're relatively good value compared to like a manual 575. So he's got the value thing. And he's a $1.5.50. He'd be like the character in Ferris-Puehler's Day Off, Cameron, where his dad had the Ferrari and he was too nervous to ever drive it. And then one day he snaps and he drives it and wrecks it. That would be

Felipe with a 550. If he'd have a really bad day, go hoon it, and that would be at the end. It could get scratched. Breathe on wrong. A pigeon could crap on it. Who knows? Yeah. I like that choice. Okay. It could be, it could be full. So that's one car. What would be a car you'd pick for him? So he's been talking forever about getting a 9-11. A 9-11? So I'd get him a new one since we have a big

budget to spend, and that way he has a warranty and he doesn't have to worry about wear and tear. So I'd probably get him the hybrid since he's practical. Okay. Okay. All right, that's a reasonable one. That'd be a good getting around town kind of car. That would be a good one. The problem with Felipe is that if we're getting cars that would actually want,

you could get it, it would end up being 50 cars or 100 cars because you could get that for a million dollars. It's like, yeah, I get him like a Fiat Panda, four by four. Oh, yeah. Because he really likes that. The multiple. Yeah.

First Gen Multipla. I'd get him a new E-wagon for the same reason. Warranty and he loves his E-Wagon, even though his is really rough. Yeah. Dented on every panel. Getting rougher every day. Been a nom and back kind of thing. Yep.

I think I would make him keep the 500A bars just because a little torture. I'd get him a couple more. Get him a couple of food A-Bars. We can have like Cletus does, only the race to be with only. Fiat's Fiat 500 A-bars And I think the Rollover rate would be a lot higher

Yeah Top heavy those little cars I get him a Gucci one And I would get him Oh GQ edition one Oh yeah It was on their J-Lo edition As well or something

Am I making that up? Maybe she was in the Gucci ad Is what it was What else would you get him? Would you get him anything crazy? Like you want him I want him to have this experience Well okay

He loves the Corvette I would get him the new Zosex Or whatever it is I think I'd get him a C7 ZR1 he actually, because he talked about it. He likes the C7 a lot. And actually, this one, pretty tasteful kind of under the radar. I think he would actually like that.

That's what we get him. He's starting to really get into track driving. He really got a taste for it. I think he'd get him a spec race car of some kind. Like, a spec Miata for him would be, like, really good. With the trailer and the truck to tow it. He goes to Arizona occasionally, he can blend in more. Factional ownership of a Valkyrie LM.

All right. He can have a quarter of it. So to answer this question, in there, I think it would be a mix of cars he likes and cars who want him to experience, but he is too cheap to do so. I think that's probably how we would end up building that, but some good choices in there,

I think. Okay, moving on to another question. A3PO, asks a question for myself and for you specifically. If Doug had to have one vehicle in his garage, only one car, what would we pick for Doug? And he explicitly says, no Mercedes

Benzwagons are allowed, as Doug still wants to go off road. It has to do everything. One car for Doug. What would you pick? So he, I'll be Doug first. Well, you see, that's the reason I got the Sequoia is that I made the list. I have one car to do everything. It's a Sequoia.

He would argue with the Sequoia because it has three rows, off-road capable. It has advanced driver support so that you can drive itself, basically. Which if you take all of those requirements for Doug, does narrow it down to a very small list of niche vehicles. I am

taking a somewhat fantasy view of this here. A G650 La de laet. He loves his convertible G wagon. He needs three rows and off-road capability. So it's lifted. It's got a convertible and it's got three rows. It's a bi-turbo v-12.

And it would win cars and coffee no matter which cars and coffee you went to. So the only thing you lose is like the Kuntosh levels of like handling and visceral feedback. But otherwise, it's ugly. It's quirky. It fits the whole family. It goes off-roading. and it's got a ton of power and it's special.

I think that's the car. And I'll let you have it. It's still a Mercedes. It's not a wagon, though. It's not a waggy wag, but it is a Mercedes. It's a convertible, actually. And it is a convertible. And it is a same convertible and rear window as his G-CAP.

It is. So it could have all of it. Noodle could ride in it comfortably. His kids can ride in it. It is pretty comprehensively insane, but good choice if you had to get rid of everything. I struggle. I would second that choice. A3PO suggested, he suggested a Ford Explorer ST,

like one of the newer ones, which actually is a pretty... It's a dope choice. It's a very good choice. I don't know. I think it would have to be an SUV of some kind. I think it would be... If he could import a new 300-ser-three-hundred-ser that would also probably give him what he wants.

Yeah, it would be so boring for cars and coffee, Canyon Cruises, all that. It would be, but, you know, I don't, this is, this is probably the right answer. A four, five, six Venice. I don't know, it can't be, it doesn't off-road, I guess. You can't be roll it out. A sterato, if you could convert it to a shooting break.

Oh, I didn't think, I didn't thought of building a car. A coach built strato. A coach built strata, hard to fit the kids in. Or if we made a sterato Uris or R SQ8. Oh, that. And a tall design Columbus with like a LS swap maybe. I have no idea what drive train is in that car. But it can be good.

Oh, that's right. That's right. That's right, an F1 engine. Right, yeah, right, exactly. Interesting. I think that the long delay is probably a pretty good choice for Doug on that one. Moving on to the next question, Turtle asks, Turtle from Entourage. Yeah, my boy.

Pretend streaming doesn't exist. Easy for you for most of your cars. What are the three, the five CDs you would have to bring for a long road trip? That's a tough one. For you, I feel like some. Nelly album has. I was saying all my cars have had CD changers recently, so I've had to actually do this. And I picked the CD that matches the car.

So the P-38 I had the Nelly Country Grammar album because down and down in a range rover, street sweeper baby. Yeah. I don't know how much of that song I can actually sing aloud, but you got the best. Your impression, you could sing the whole thing. The Bentley came with a Marvin Gay CD in it, no joke, which is so perfect. I then broke the CD player, so it's permanently installed. I prefer audiobooks and podcasts.

So from there, I listen to 90s punk rock. I think no effects, penny-wise, no use for name, lagwagon. All these bands would get really tiresome on a long road trip. If that's all you had to listen to, my family would murder me. So I would probably just say a good audiobook. Very interesting. I think that's interesting. Or this car pod.

Nice. The whole back catalog. I think for me it would be, I, I won a rock album for sure. Like, I'm a slightly more modern one. I'm from Ohio. So Black Key is my favorite band. So I think having Brothers is still an album that to me works every single time.

Having that for a road trip is really great. Me being me, I like to have some jazz too. Probably like a John Coltrane greatest. Yeah. On there would be kind of nice, especially for evening cruising at high speed. I think that's good. Maybe Brian Simpson is another jazz artist who I really like. So I can see having that maybe.

Then I would want some kind of, for road trips, I love listening to the Eagles. I just think it like, especially in the Southwest, it just fits. Like, you know, I think that it really works. And again, like I really like classic rock, so I'm a big Doors fan. So one of one of the Doors albums, like on, I'm not exactly sure which one I would want. But one of the Doors albums would make me pretty happy. Otherwise, like, usually my phone, when I have it, like, when I'm sorting through, it's a, I listen to everything.

Like, I have, my phone has, like, from. 90s rap to I have like gospel on there too not because I'm like super religious but because it's like it just like really happy music to jazz to classical I mean to heavy metal I have everything on my phone I know so it's hard

for me to like pick CDs it's such a hard question I get into one song and I will listen to that song a hundred times in a month and then never again like I'm on like some 41 kick right now and there's like two songs and I listen to those two repeatedly and then I will suddenly be like I'm over the song I move to the next one so that's a hard

It's a hard question. I'm disappointed. I'm disciplined about that. You know, who isn't? Doug. We launched this company. He played the same song on Loop, and we were all so busy.

He played the same song. I calculated it for eight hours. Or six hours. It was 104 times. We listened to the same song. Ugh. So, yeah, he's not careful about that, but I agree with you.

All right. Moving on to another question, Matt Locke J asks, what is better when purchasing a pre-owned vehicle? A five-year-old car with 40,000 miles where a one-year-old car was 90,000 miles, assuming that the price is the same. What is your thought on that?

I have some thoughts right away. It's such a broad hypothetical. It is. Personally, I would be tempted without knowing anything else, and there's a lot of unknowns here. I would go for lower miles over new. One, because I'd be worried about anyone that put 90,000 miles on a car in one year.

Like, that's just really hard on a car. That means it's driven a ton every day. I would have to worry about oil changes and maintenance and all of that. Like who in the right mind would drive that far and not be a total crazy person? You say that. I will raise you. Yeah, that colonel.

This Rolls-Royce calling it. That was one owner. And in five years, the guy did 114,000 miles. Okay, but do that in one year now. But no, 90 versus 114,000 is that much different. But think of it. Realistically, to do that, you're on a highway. Highway of cars at 2,000 RPM cruising.

That is the easiest thing you can kind of do to an engine, as opposed to ringing it out every time you're using. it. Like Alex Roy's E39M5, I think has 75,000 miles on it. They're the hardest 75,000 miles that have ever put on any car. But so I think that he takes care of it. But like, they were really hard aggressive miles. So I don't know. In either case, to me, you buy the owner. If it is somebody who did 90,000 miles on it, did the oil change like every week when they got home from having to go check windmills or something, whatever they were doing. You know, like, that then I could see that. If it's a five-fro car, 40,000 miles, but the person has had the

oil changed twice. Yeah. You know, that's kind of where I, it really depends on the owner. All of these cars built in the same factories by the same people. It's the owners and the journeys those cars go on to live that are different from one another. So I think it really depends. But nonetheless, this car, this is over 170, by the way. Unbelievable. I want to shake that guy's hand. Cudos to them for driving it. I generally agree with you other than there's a lot of like gaskets and O-rings and stuff in a car that over so many heat cycles go out and at 90,000 miles, like you're kind of getting to the natural lifespan of a lot of parts at 40,000 miles. I would expect to have less of those kind of things.

It just, to your point, I would want to know a lot more history on each, but all things equal I would go five-year-olds and 40,000 miles. Also spoken like somebody who's on a lot of German cars. You know, right around 90,000. You get a better value. Your depreciation curve on a five-year-old car is going to be like, half off versus one year old and same money. Like, you're looking at a used e-wagon or a new, like, Corolla.

Well, this. Maybe not that bad. Although, again, this thing's sticker was $438,000 and it sold for $170. I know. So, I don't know. Good for them. I don't know. But you always buy the owner.

Okay, we're going to do another question. So this is a ranking question. Rank all of the lamb. This one is for you. Rank all of the Lamborghini special edition cars. So that's a pretty. broad list, I would say. I think you and I have disagreements on what we

determine is a limited edition car. Because I looked at what you wrote down. Some wild stuff. Well, yeah, the intent of the question was certainly, because he gave the example of the Venano and the Centenario. Yeah. So he's thinking of those, like, we built 20 or 50 of them or less, but like actual ground up different cars versus

I special addition to me is like the Monterey edition, the Versace edition. Like there was a lot of quote-unquote, like you could consider an SV a special edition. And Lamborghini and Ferrari, for that matter, are so good at milk and Porsche for milking their customers with, towards the end of the run,

we're going to have all sorts of these insane. The LP-654, the whatever, like they just came out with all sorts of ones to push more inventory. Right. Yeah. So it's also, I would say it's the difference between a trim level.

Like the SV I view is a trim more than like an addition. I view these as like they said they were going to produce a certain number of special cars. Sure. And they did. So a great example is the Rebinton. Like I view that at the mercy and knees too. And that is, I don't want to jump in right with number one, but I would say that is probably it. Yeah.

Actually, I'd take that back. I'd say the SE 30 is probably. I would call that a special, or a trim, but okay. I don't know. It's not a unique car. It's just a different color, blue Alcantara. Completely different exhaust. The windows are different.

I mean, yes, Blue Alcantara. I don't want to do an inappropriate gesture here, but I'm thinking it. I don't know. I think SE 30 is probably the most special. It's no more special than the Versace Edition Mercy in terms of its trim level. That is not true. The Versace edition got little stickers on the side. It had blah, blah, blah.

For those of you who are unfamiliar. Everyone knows the Versace mercy. It's got the little patterns. It came in white. Only white, right? Well, the SC30. It was just known for coming in purple. But it wasn't.

It was also offered in black and silver in a bunch of other clothes. They did a lot of stuff to the SC 30 to make it very desirable. They did a lot of stuff to this car. They put a sticker on it. They put an interior in it. And it's a bad sticker. Look at that. It just says RRJ.

That's all it says. You don't understand fashion like I do, okay? Clearly. It's pretty special. I don't know. I would not put that one as high on my list. It's number two on mine. Number two on yours.

I am going to put the, SC30 is number one. The Rebenton is number two. But you went all the way back to the murid. So you've the new, okay, I think we can agree. The new Kuntosh should be pretty low on that list. Disagree. Disagree.

The new Kuntosh. I'm the only person in the world that likes that car. It's not at the top of my list, but it's certainly not at the bottom. The Sesto Elemento and Veneno, I think, are kind of hain. Those are at the bottom for me. I like the Eventador in general. The new Kuntas. Kuntash is just a rebodied eventador.

And so therefore all of the special eventador's, the eventador J is my favorite, the one with no windshield, like basically like a weird, ridiculous, crazy eventador is my favorite eventador, then the Kuntash version, and then all the other versions. How many do they build of this car? A couple, probably. A couple probably. About as many as any of those specialty Porsche builders you mentioned earlier. Okay, so is this a one-off or is this a special edition?

We'll define special edition. It was special. More than one. You said it had to be like production, like 25 to 50. Okay, okay. It's, to me, that's the best event to order followed by the Kuntosh. Actually, this lineup here, that and the. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, see. Yeah, that is quite something. Okay, but you also had on that. That guy's taxes must be insane. Just how many loopholes he's taken advantage of, yeah. There's the most wanted by the IRS, whoever that is. All right. You had the Garter Concept S.

They built one. It was a concept. You know what? It does not count. Prediction here, hot take. Windshields no longer in style. Windshield list cars. If you want to make a special edition,

take the windshield off, put a pillar down the middle for no reason at all, I'll buy it. But isn't that just some cynical BS? I'm going to call Machinae and say, before you ship my car back, windshield delete. Windshield delete.

Leave the beveled side glass. Give me some of those pilot glasses with a little leather cap. That's all I need. I think I have a pair of the glasses you can bar for my pre-war car days. Okay, so my list, you have a number on here that I'm just going to say are not eligible, including the Gartero concept. Insane person.

The Gar's so great. Literally. I want it. I want it. I'm going to put SE 30 at the top. Then I'm going to put the Reventon after that. Personally, I'm going to count your Ventador, J. All right.

That might be, they may have only put one of those. Then I would put, I personally think the Sesto Elemento should grow up. after that. That's a very serious, like, track focus stripped out. Yeah. Nothing to it. It's an impressive design. But it's an impressive car full stop in my view.

Like, I think it's a really, really impressive car. So I would put it after that. And then I think at the bottom, one, I don't know. Like, again, I think Diablo SV was a trim. I think Diablo GTR was also a trim. I had the VS edition SV, which is what Ed Bullion to spot, the Victoria Secret version of the Diablo. Watch Ed's content.

I'm a big fan. boy, but they took the SV, and then they took the stickers and reversed the order, so it was VS for Victoria's Secret. That was pretty much the main difference. They crumbed the wheels. They did a couple, and they made it white to match the Angels catalog. How cool of a spell. Like, how ridiculous.

That's so lamellating in the 90s. It's so stupid. It's so emblematic of what they were about. Yeah, desperate for money. At the very bottom, though, I am absolutely putting the New Kuntosh and the Venina. I think the new Kuntosh is at the very bottom. I like the car, but it is a very cynical. I think the other cars are way less cynical than that one is.

I think over time people will go to appreciate it right now. We just view it as cynical. We'll see. We'll see. It's no more cynical than any of the other hypercars we mentioned at the top of the segment. The Valkyrie L.M. It's a way to make money out of rich people's hands and do stuff. You have all of these cars for that.

The Valkyriex car is so ludicrously insane. It's a race car. It's going to be a little more. I would take the Kuntash over the Valkyrie. You'd take the new Kuntash over the Valky. Yep. Okay. Okay.

All right. Just like it'd flex on Doug. Be like, hey, that thing got car play? Didn't think so. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. You got lane assist on that? Nope.

All right. We're going to do one final ranking. Okay. One last one. And then we're going to call it. So we're going to rank all the Mercedes black. So model car Nick asks. Rank all the Mercedes Black.

series models. So to be clear, all of those are, so there's the SLK Black Series, the COK-63 Black Series, the SL-65 Black Series, the SLS-AMG Black Series, the C-63, and then the AMG GT Black Series. Those are all the ones that exist. Yeah. So at the top, I think we agree, or let's decide the worst one, again, they're all really good cards. Starting out with saying if someone says black series, my brain immediately thinks of the CLK black series, right? That's what I think. There's other black series, but that to me is like the black series.

Or if someone just said black series without specifying, I will automatically assume the CLK. That is like, and it's not the most expensive. It's not the most powerful. So if you're saying rank it as best, it's not the best, but it is, in my opinion, the most iconic, the most memorable, my favorite black series is the CLK. I would probably agree. With the manual swap.

And it was the only, well, actually, I don't know if I agree with that. But you like the little dinky, a little, you know, it's just, I actually agree with Doug. It's in, it was built to be an automatic and it's an AMG car. The whole point of an AMG car has got a big motor. You're pointing in a direction. You put your foot down. The tail steps out. And it's just crazy.

With a manual, it's like, I don't, the car was just never offered with it. I'd really like to drive one. And maybe it is that transformative because it's a pretty serious car underneath. Like, it's got very adjustable suspension and all that stuff. But I don't know. I agree the automatic the candidate is awful. I've found manual swapping to be really easy. Right.

To ship your car out, send them some money, and it comes back, all right? That's all there is to it. A couple of cold ones. I would say it's too easy not to. A couple of cold ones. Yeah. So, okay, we agree with that. I think then it has to be the SL-65 Black Series.

Because that legitimately looks like a Batmobile. In black with that crazy wing. And the fact they took the convertible and made it a cool. Yeah. And it's super wide-bodied. Super wide-bodied. It's so over-the-top for Mercedes, and Mercedes is so conservative traditionally

that, like, it's just hard to believe they did that. Wow. And that motors is in, isn't it in, like, Paghanis and... Yeah, I mean, it's still produced today. That bi-turbo V-12 was one of the great engines. And it's odd because it doesn't really suit, like, a hardcore car, because it builds power like a jet turbine. There's a fake one that comes to our cars and coffee every once in a while.

There's a real one, too. Yeah. And it's, so it's weird to be like, is this a $25,000 car with a body kit or is this a, the most special car I'll see all month? Right. Can't tell. Exactly. I definitely put that a second. Right below that for me, I'd put the SLS Black Series.

I love, love, love driving those cars. They are so much fun. And so hardcore. And particularly in, like, in Solar Beam is my personal favorite color on that car. It's a lot. It's a lot, but it looks so cool. And it's such, it's like, Mercedes doesn't often make super cars, right? And this one, they did, and they went full crazy with it, and I just really, really like it.

And it's NA, you know, it's a big, big engine. You know what those trade for? A lot. A lot of money. I can't remember the exact three, but they like if I had that budget for a Mercedes, I'd be getting an SLR McLaren, but. Yeah, but this actually drives well. The SLR is not a particularly nice quarter drive.

The brakes will put you through the windshield. The transmission is the same in the Black Series, the SLOK or SCK Black Series. It's not a particularly fun car to drive, but it is really cool looking. This drives a thousand times better. I don't know. So I would put that next on my list. Then I think I would put probably the C-63 Black Series. Again, last of that NAVV8 engine, wonderful car.

We just sold that red one recently. And then after that, I think I would put the AMG GT and then the S-O-K. Nothing against the S-K was just it was never sold here. It was kind of a weird car for them to start doing this with. So it's never been my favorite car. Feta V8 in that, though, right? It was, yeah, no other than it. So pretty impressive, you auto-sized V8, but.

Yeah, it's a crazy car. It's a bit of a sleeper. Yeah. You wouldn't ever know. You'd just think it's hit some chick car, but... Right. And the AMG GT Black Series is a pretty extreme car, but this just with its N-A-engine edges it for me.

And so I think that's probably my order. I think I agree. I don't take any objection. I maybe would do slightly. I would definitely do C. CLK SL-S-L-65. SLK is last. So then the middle three there.

I wish the C-63 had just a little bit more like flair or panache. Like it's got some canards. It's got some little things to distinguish it visually. But it's just not like the SL-65 where they made the thing like three feet wider. I wish the C-63 had like that. level or the front fenders on that CLK are just like, they're so good. It's the best one. I will forever, I will forever think when I think Black Series.

Yeah, it is a darn shame none of these came in manual. But now that you can swap them, swap the world, baby. Yeah, such a cool car. Well, that's it, Nick. That is our episode. Best podcast we have ever done and was without the two oafs. That's right. We didn't have to talk about any EVs.

Did we? Oh, we talked about the model S selling, but otherwise, no EV talk. No Nissan. No executives were mentioned or harmed in this particularity. I don't know if even Japan, any of the manufacturers were mentioned. No offense to the JDM boys. It was just all enthusiast cars, but that's all. We got maybe a little too exotic and a little too European here, but. Maybe, but nonetheless.

We hope you enjoyed it. Thank you all so much for listening, and we'll talk to you in the next episode. Goodbye. Oh, we got that in harmony. What are you doing? Where are you going? Oh, my God. Don't get, don't touch the, I have the, oh my God.

You're a disaster human being. God, ridiculous person.