Season 2, Episode 104 - Motor Trend’s Jonny Lieberman at the Pod Shed

 

 

The following transcription of The Truck Show Podcast was generated using a speech recognition software, and will contain errors. Please review the timestamp and listen to the corresponding audio for accuracy. 

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Jay “Lighting” Tilles (0s):

No way. Holman, this is not Mr. Johnny Lieberman in the PO shed. What the, what? Do

Sean P. Holman (5s):

You want me to start with past emails from listeners,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (9s):

Oh? yeah, I think so. But first, but

Jonny Lieberman (10s):

First I, before you,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (12s):

Before you start getting into that, I do wanna thank you for braving the la traffic to come down here. I I really,

Sean P. Holman (16s):

You live on the dark side of the moon, right? I live

Jonny Lieberman (19s):

Basically in Glendale

Sean P. Holman (21s):

And, and I live. Okay. So Glendale to Huntington Beach in Orange County where I live,

Jonny Lieberman (25s):

39 miles.

Sean P. Holman (25s):

It’s 39 miles and it is about a two hour drive.

Jonny Lieberman (28s):

I left at 5 0 2. It is o’clock seven. There we go. So, and I’ve been here about five minutes, so we

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (36s):

Don’t wanna waste any time because he might just pass out.

Jonny Lieberman (39s):

No, I, I hope the listeners understand the saccr Well,

Sean P. Holman (43s):

Then I feel really bad reading these emails that I’m about to write.

Jonny Lieberman (45s):

No, do it, do it, do it. Oh, I want to, what, what, what’s the context just in general? No, the

Sean P. Holman (49s):

Context is Johnny Lieberman being on the show.

Jonny Lieberman (52s):

Is this from past episodes?

Sean P. Holman (53s):

Yes. Past episodes when you’ve come on. Yeah. Oh. And so this is what I love.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (56s):

Okay. Hold on a second. Do we wanna play the Intro first? Just get outta the way? No.

Sean P. Holman (59s):

’cause we still have to do sponsors and all that kind

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1m 0s):

Of stuff. Oh, okay. All just,

Jonny Lieberman (1m 1s):

Just little Hang on. Look at that board. Damn fancy, right? That

Sean P. Holman (1m 5s):

Is, that

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1m 6s):

Is, I’m fancy, huh? by the way,

Jonny Lieberman (1m 7s):

That’s like a reggae party.

Sean P. Holman (1m 8s):

What do you think of the podcast?

Jonny Lieberman (1m 9s):

This is insane. If you could smoke cigars in here, it’d be perfect. But it’s, by the way, that’s 99%. That’s the second

Sean P. Holman (1m 14s):

Use case for when the podcast failed. That’s going to be a cigar lounge in my backyard. Just

Jonny Lieberman (1m 18s):

So you know. I I think you have ac This is, we do

Sean P. Holman (1m 20s):

We have ac

Jonny Lieberman (1m 21s):

This is insane. Yeah. And it’s

Sean P. Holman (1m 22s):

A heater too, because believe it or not, it’s down in the forties here in wintertime, and he and I freeze out here. It’s

Jonny Lieberman (1m 27s):

Little close to the beach. Well, I was gonna say, I got outta my truck or whatever. Yeah, Sequoia that I’m driving and it’s not what it is at my house. It’s very cool to here.

Sean P. Holman (1m 34s):

No, this afternoon we, I’m like three miles from the beaches. The crow flies. It’s amazing. If that might be two miles. And so we get that ocean breeze in the afternoon. It’s so great.

Jonny Lieberman (1m 41s):

I got out, I put a jacket on. I was like, Ooh.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1m 44s):

You came from, you said you came from Glendale.

Jonny Lieberman (1m 46s):

Basically, I live in g Glassell Park, but no one knows where that is. No,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1m 48s):

Right. And so I just came from Isoa. So I It’s the same. It’s the, the devil’s armpit. You. know what I’m saying? It’s hot is nuts. Oh,

Jonny Lieberman (1m 55s):

Zeus is real hot. Yeah. Zeus is like 15.

Sean P. Holman (1m 57s):

Well, there’s a rock quarry there. So basically the sun reflects out of the rock core. Yeah, it does. It soaks up. And then at night it relieve, it’s like a Vegas parking structure in a Zeus. When

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2m 4s):

You’re flying over LA coming to LA X. See you guys, you outta towners. You’re like, oh, there’s acne on the ground. There’s pock marks. Like that’s a zeuss. Yeah, that’s

Jonny Lieberman (2m 11s):

A Zeus set. Yeah. Zeus is sort

Sean P. Holman (2m 12s):

Of when it

Jonny Lieberman (2m 13s):

Starts turning into the desert. Yeah,

Sean P. Holman (2m 14s):

A little

Jonny Lieberman (2m 15s):

Bit. A little bit. It’s like the Mediterranean climate of LA gives way to done the Mojave. Yeah, yeah,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2m 19s):

Yeah. Okay. So Holman, you have email that came in shortly after his last appearance.

Sean P. Holman (2m 25s):

There’s been a couple of emails and I, I thought you,

Jonny Lieberman (2m 27s):

I’ve been on the show for like three

Sean P. Holman (2m 28s):

Years. It’s been a while. 43. No, I think 21. I think it looks three years.

Jonny Lieberman (2m 33s):

Three. Three years. Okay. Okay, cool. This

Sean P. Holman (2m 35s):

Is great. So I just, I just think these are hilarious. So I pull, I pulled ’em out. So yeah, this one was from Eric Moer, and this is from March 7th, 2019. And tune it up, he says, started listening to your latest episode was shocked when Johnny said the gas engines tie you down and the electric vehicles are so much better. Does he not understand batteries and what it takes to produce these huge battery packs and also the power plants to produce the energy to recharge? I feel like he is truly dreaming of his own utopia. Not reality. Just things he has heard and thinks will be swell. Exhaust coming out of a modern diesel is cleaner than the air going into the intake. We’ll run out of fossil fuels for sure, but his concept of green energy is right there with a OC. He’s extremely knowledgeable and vehicle statistics. But he should have stopped there.

Sean P. Holman (3m 16s):

I’m, this is my favorite part. And it’s funny because the context of this time period and like where we are now is hilarious. Oh. yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m sure he will enjoy his fiesta skinny jeans and all green energy. But that’s not The Truck Show Podcast. And that was from Eric. And then I, I really love this one. So our buddy Clint, like, why

Jonny Lieberman (3m 32s):

That wasn’t that mean. I want like, oh, okay.

Sean P. Holman (3m 34s):

Alright, well, I’m getting there. So then Clint, yeah. Which by the way, Clint used to write us all the time. The flag that’s hanging here came from Clint and, and I, I

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (3m 42s):

Think you pissed him off. I may have because, because I bonded. We went out to the desert. I hung with him and his sons like, we had a super cool time. But he, he’s got a beef with Mr. Holman over here.

Sean P. Holman (3m 50s):

Why?

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (3m 50s):

Don don’t know. No,

Sean P. Holman (3m 51s):

Listen, he gave me the American flag. He gave you the California flag. That’s all you need to,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (3m 55s):

That’s, that’s before you pissed him off. Oh,

Sean P. Holman (3m 57s):

I see. So anyway, he goes, this was from January 19th, 21. And the final paragraph is, and now for the not so good, Johnny Lieberman has no place on this show. He offends every aspect of The truck community and alienates your core audience. Every time you have him on, you get negative feedback every single time. But you’re so personally enamored by him that you don’t care that we all hate him.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (4m 19s):

M

Sean P. Holman (4m 20s):

Like, unlike all my truck show podcasts, listening, friends and family who Wow. Opted out when seeing the guest list. I listened to the entire episode. I did find his Toyota info. Interesting. I think we were talking about Land Cruiser at the time. Okay. But that doesn’t change,

Jonny Lieberman (4m 31s):

Which by the way, was dead nuts accurate. It was.

Sean P. Holman (4m 33s):

Thank you. Was, but it doesn’t change his arrogance or Sation. I’m so arrogant. The fact that he has, the fact that he has so little understanding of our community was demonstrated by how he raved about the defender being so great, the Land Rover defenders and abomination for the entire off-Road community that Oh. yeah. What appreciated the heritage of the most hardcore mark from that historic brand?

Jonny Lieberman (4m 51s):

Oh, what an abomination.

Sean P. Holman (4m 52s):

They neutered that great platform into the minivan of Land Rover. It’s just wrong yet, Lieberman celebrates that fact. He hates trucks, looks down his nose that you fans as unsophisticated rednecks. I beg of you. Never subject us to his arrogance again. He can go back to the Highbrow Park podcast about Lamborghinis where he belongs. Wow. Still a big fan. Five stars Mount of parameter C in the desert, Clint.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (5m 11s):

Wow. Well, here’s what I think of that email.

3 (5m 13s):

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Although it’s kind of so bad that it’s good.

Jonny Lieberman (5m 20s):

Yeah. I mean, at least you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s like the old Howard Stern bit from his movie where it’s like the people that love you, they listen one hour a day and the people that hate you listen to. Exactly.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (5m 32s):

It’s

Sean P. Holman (5m 32s):

True. Yeah. Listen, we, we, we love your point of view and we may not agree on everything in automotive dumb, but we have great conversation. That’s what it’s all about. I, yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (5m 39s):

Look, I I love Ed Low called you Bizaro Johnny, because politically we’re opposite and we do bear a striking resemblance to each other. Sorry.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (5m 48s):

So we, we were, we were talking about this Wait, by the way, hold,

Sean P. Holman (5m 50s):

Hold on a second. Am I coming on the inevitable? Is that ever happening? Like what?

Jonny Lieberman (5m 54s):

That it would bore your audience to tears

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (5m 57s):

Inevitable. Is the podcast all about EVs that MotorTrend has, right? Yeah. Well,

Sean P. Holman (5m 60s):

Well, they had called me and said, Hey, we heard you got an aria and we’re doing some stuff with Nissan, and would, would you be open to it if we decided to go? and I’m like, sure.

Jonny Lieberman (6m 7s):

So, so how do I put this? It’s a political answer and I want to not do it on a microphone. Does that make sense? Fair enough. And. When. you hear what it is? Interesting. All right. You’ll be like, Oh. yeah. Duh. But yeah. All right. Yeah, but it’s, yeah, but I, I’m begging for you, but by the

Sean P. Holman (6m 21s):

Way, Johnny still works at MotorTrend.

Jonny Lieberman (6m 23s):

Yeah, yeah. And Scott Moon is is advocating on your behalf. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. But it’s not, it’s not what you think.

Sean P. Holman (6m 29s):

All right. Fair enough. I, for listeners who are trying to figure out how the sausage is made, I’m no longer at MotorTrend. Haven’t been for,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (6m 35s):

I think they know that a

Sean P. Holman (6m 36s):

Year and a half now. And they called and said, Hey, we’ve got some projects. Would you be interested or open for us to, you know, discuss you coming back to do some of these on a project basis? I’m like, I have no hard feelings. Yeah, let’s do it. So anyway, that’s where that kind of

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (6m 49s):

Comes from. I didn’t know that part. Alright,

Sean P. Holman (6m 50s):

Before we get started, we have to think our presenting sponsor Nissan. So, The Truck, Show Podcast presented by Nissan. And if you are looking for a great pickup truck, dependable, reliable, we love the frontier, you get the Nissan Titan with the industry’s best five year, 100,000 mile warranty. You can head on down to your local dealer. You can go to Nissan usa dot com, where you can do Nissan at homes, Test, Drive program. Or you can go there to build and price the perfect Nissan that fits your lifestyle. Nissan usa dot com.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (7m 15s):

Alright. And Holman, I think it’s your uncle who has the ram.

Sean P. Holman (7m 19s):

I’ve got, I’ve got two uncles with

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (7m 21s):

Rams. Two uncles with Rams. Okay. Did you, have you seen the fuel cap that it comes with? Have you seen, so it’s horrible. The fifth gen ram there has

Sean P. Holman (7m 27s):

No fuel cap on that one? Or is it?

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (7m 28s):

So Johnny, have you seen, if you get a brand new fifth gen ram, so 24 Okay. With a 6.7 liter Cummins diesel. Okay. It comes with a, they call ’em capless, the fuel filler neck. Yeah. Okay. You just open, they call ’em Capless, but it comes with a 1 cent piece of plastic that covers it. Right. Why? and I, I don’t, is that new? No,

Sean P. Holman (7m 48s):

It’s just like that little twisty def thing, right?

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (7m 50s):

No, the twisty def thing is actually a plug. It twists in, it stays, it keeps the debris out. But the, the actual diesel fueler neck comes with a, it actually says dispose of, we don’t know why. So you throw this little 1 cent piece away. Oh,

Sean P. Holman (8m 2s):

It might be for transport work or something like that.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (8m 3s):

Yeah. So it’s

Jonny Lieberman (8m 4s):

Like the pool noodles on the front of the challenge.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (8m 6s):

Exactly.

Sean P. Holman (8m 7s):

So when we get ’em in the media fleet to drive ’em, that’s gone. It’s just a

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (8m 10s):

Straight up. So it’s gone. So it’s called Capless and it’s got a valve about half an inch down or an inch and a half inside. And it, in theory, it’s supposed to keep debris out, but it does a piss board job because if you go to a, an actual fill station, you know, like, you know, what’s the, the beaver place? What is it called? Bucky’s. Bucky’s. Something like that. No, right. Beaver Place. Bucky’s. You know, you just

Sean P. Holman (8m 30s):

Alienated yourself to

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (8m 31s):

Smart audience. See, see I’ve been

Jonny Lieberman (8m 33s):

To the Beaver Place. Bucky’s.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (8m 36s):

No, that’s in, that’s in downtown la. Been the Beaver

Sean P. Holman (8m 39s):

Palace is totally different.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (8m 39s):

We can go to Beaver Palace later tonight. I’ll pay, I heard they were

Sean P. Holman (8m 42s):

Opening up for nevermind. No.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (8m 45s):

So anyway, back boys. It’s hard to keep the debris out. Anyway, long story short is this, you can’t keep all that oily muck out of and all, all that. If you work on a farm, you end up getting dirt in the filler neck. Sure. And it gets into the fuel tank and then destroys your fuel

Sean P. Holman (8m 58s):

System. So let me guess you have a, a solution,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (9m 0s):

Banks Power. Go to Banks Power dot com, type in your year, make and model and get the banks revolver. Bill it fuel caps that are works of art and keep all that crap out of your filler neck in your fifth gen ram. Go to Banks Power dot com to find yours.

Sean P. Holman (9m 14s):

Nice. We also have to take our friends over at AMS Oil. Whether you’re looking for motor oil lubricants and protectants car care and detailing products, filters, clothing, merchandise product information, anything about oil synthetics. AMS oil is the first in synthetics. You can go to ams oil dot com or you can check out everything they offer. and I’m telling you, Whether, it’s car motorcycle at T-V-U-T-V, snowmobile, Marine personal watercraft, heavy duty trucks, tractors, AM oil’s got something they it all for you. They do it all. To get a free AM oil product catalog, head over to am oil dot com and see the vast amount of products and synthetics they make for your vehicle. AM oil the first in synthetics?

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (9m 50s):

Alright. And now when you’ve decided you’ve had some stolen out of your, the bed of your truck and you’re like, I need to lock this down, but I need a really good tunnel cover, whether retractable or electronic. You’re like, wait a minute. Electric electronic, huh? Go to eeg r usa dot com. EEG R makes the roll track. It’s the one that your boy Lightning has on the back of it. T Rx. I’ve got the electric version. It locks with your key fob. So you arm your alarm, it locks the doors and the roll track is shut. No one can break in. It’s even got safety systems built in. So if it feels that someone is trying to break in, it’s jittering it back and forth. It locks itself. All these really cool safety features. It’s watertight. It has spouts in all four corners. So one out

Sean P. Holman (10m 30s):

The T channels.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (10m 31s):

It’s got, yeah, it’s got TCH channels. So you can even get, hell, you can bolt on your lightener rack, which the tonneau cover is so good that other companies are making third party parts for it. So if you’re looking for the most advanced tonne cover on the market, head over to eeg r usa dot com. They’ve got ’em for all the major Jeeps, like the Gladiator, both bed sizes in Ford Ram and GM EGR USA dot com.

4 (10m 56s):

The truck show. We’re gonna show you what we know. We we’re gonna answer What The truck, because truck rides with The truck show. We have the lifted We have the lowered and everything in between. We’ll talk about trucks that run on diesel and the ones that run on gasoline. The truck show. The truck show. The truck show. Whoa. Whoa Whoa. It’s The truck show with your hopes. It’s like, I don’t know what to say. Lightning fine. And Holman

Sean P. Holman (11m 34s):

Everything on this podcast is seat of the pants. All of it. No kidding. We both work like,

4 (11m 40s):

You know, real tell

Sean P. Holman (11m 41s):

Real other jobs. And then we do this in the evenings, then we’re completely thrashed by the time. So full of mistakes of editing. I’m just thrashed from, from my commute down here. So I mean, but how bad could it have been? You were in a $70,000 SUV

Jonny Lieberman (11m 54s):

I’m gonna say this one’s over 80. Is it really? Oh, this one’s real loaded up. This is the,

Sean P. Holman (11m 60s):

Is it a platinum or is it a TRD pro?

Jonny Lieberman (12m 3s):

It’s a, I should know this. It’s a limited. Okay. Maybe limited. Is that, that’s the mid spec. I think

Sean P. Holman (12m 8s):

That’s the one below platinum. I think it’s a right round TRD project.

Jonny Lieberman (12m 13s):

Yeah. I I I haven’t looked at ’em on Ron yet. I got it like two days ago. and I, I’ve, I was jet laggy and the whole,

Sean P. Holman (12m 19s):

I I’ve done it. I’ve come home and somebody said, Hey, here’s a vehicle in your driveway. And you’re like, I know nothing about it. I’ll drive to Yeah.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (12m 24s):

First world problems.

Jonny Lieberman (12m 25s):

Yeah. I shouldn’t, I don

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (12m 27s):

Don’t know what just was dropped off in my driveway.

Sean P. Holman (12m 29s):

Listen, by the way, you have no room to talk their chuckles room to

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (12m 33s):

Talk about. Whatcha talking

Sean P. Holman (12m 33s):

About when You go to the banks factory and you’re like, let me pick out, oh, I love this red dooly

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (12m 37s):

That I’ll pick out. I mean, that, that does happen a little bit.

Jonny Lieberman (12m 40s):

It doesn’t enough thunder. I mean No, it’s I know it starts at $63,000. This one has really, really nice paint. It’s like this sparkle brown, like real Oh, I

Sean P. Holman (12m 50s):

Saw your, I saw your picture on there. Yeah. It’s like almost like a root beer.

Jonny Lieberman (12m 52s):

Yeah. Root beer is a perfect descriptor of it. It’s good. I’m, I’m gonna say I, I was actually a big fan of the last generation Tundra. Did a, did a big road trip, Utah back here in one and was delighted, surprised and delighted because I kind of wrote it off as not a Tahoe basically. Yeah. And it was good. Yeah. Boy, this one’s got some, some lack

Sean P. Holman (13m 10s):

There. There’s, okay, so all you and I have kind of talked about this. Did you

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (13m 15s):

Just say it’s got some

Jonny Lieberman (13m 15s):

Lack? It’s got some lack.

Sean P. Holman (13m 17s):

So Johnny and I were recently on the same drive program together. And then we, we decided to bail on dinner and then go smoke cigars at a local scar. That’s how you do

Jonny Lieberman (13m 24s):

It.

Sean P. Holman (13m 24s):

We we’re like, Hey, I wanna blow this popsicle stand aspiring

Jonny Lieberman (13m 27s):

Journalist

Sean P. Holman (13m 28s):

Out there.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (13m 29s):

So here’s how it’s really done. We’re

Sean P. Holman (13m 31s):

Like, once you’ve

Jonny Lieberman (13m 32s):

Out had one free steak, they all kind of taste the same.

Sean P. Holman (13m 34s):

I’d rather have a expensive cigar. Some ho Exactly, exactly. So we had a couple conversations and so I’m gonna put this in two parts. One is what the f is going on with Toyota’s model lineup. And I’ll explain that in a second. And then also going from the old Sequoia to the new Sequoia. So it’s on the new Toyota platform that’s shared with everything. The

Jonny Lieberman (13m 54s):

Tundra basically. Yeah, yeah,

Sean P. Holman (13m 55s):

Yeah. But they lost their independent rear suspension. Yes. Went back to solid axle. And that actually hurts it in a few, maybe better off road, but it hurts it in rear seat, leg room. How high the rear floor is.

Jonny Lieberman (14m 5s):

There isn’t.

Sean P. Holman (14m 5s):

Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (14m 6s):

Yeah. So, okay. Yeah. So right up when You open the, the, the hatch, it’s like, what on earth? Because when the, when, if you want, if you want to put humans and I and I mean seven year olds in the third row. ’cause it’s, it’s gotta be the worst in class. Third row, the seats are all the way back and you have like half a cubic foot maybe of angled luggage space. Like a, a small roller board would not fit. And

Sean P. Holman (14m 30s):

By the way, not a small vehicle.

Jonny Lieberman (14m 32s):

No,

Sean P. Holman (14m 32s):

It’s huge. Yeah. It’s massive. So the behind the third row have almost no space is pretty crazy.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (14m 36s):

So then Johnny, where’s this space being hogged up? Is it the first row? The second row can’t be that roomy.

Jonny Lieberman (14m 42s):

You know, it’s, it’s, it’s a big vehicle, but it’s not as long as it probably should have been. And, and it’s weird because the tundra comes with a pretty long bed. Yeah. So, so they ha they could have done it. It they just, for whatever reason, you know, they made it as long as they did the, the rear seats do slide forward while they’re up. But if you slide ’em forward, I mean the, I mean six inches of of leg room goes away. ’cause they’re, the rear seats are now touching the back. The loading is really high. Unusually high. Even with the seats folded, they don’t even kind of fold flat. They, they, it’s so it’s, it’s, I gotta imagine if you’re on the shorter side and, and not very strong, like loading a heavy suitcase or whatever is really impractical.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (15m 22s):

Does it need like a loading deck? Like a a box van would have to like Yeah. Put yourself on the ground and Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (15m 27s):

But it’s just, it’s also weird, like, you know, ’cause GM finally with, with the big truck platform for the SUVs, they went independent and, and it pays a lot of dividends. Yeah. It’s weird to go backwards. It’s cost cutting. We get that. But then like, but, but the vehicle’s way more expensive. I mean, I’m sure they’re offsite in the hybrid powertrain. Right? I mean, power train’s good ride quality and it’s like, it’s, it’s so painfully obvious if you know how to evaluate a vehicle like the front end’s. Okay. Yeah. But the rear and it’s, it’s not like, oh, it’s like, because it’s a live axle, you can do a good riding live axle. You know how I know that? ’cause I drove a Lexus LX 600 last week, which rides phenomenal. Yeah. Because they put hydraulic dampers on it.

Jonny Lieberman (16m 8s):

Right. This is not that. And so,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (16m 11s):

You know, so when you’re going over the, like the 4 0 5 and it’s every expansion 11 feet or whatever, it’s expansion joints. Yeah. Is it bucking up? Like it’s kicking you in the back? It’s,

Jonny Lieberman (16m 19s):

You know, it’s, it’s just one of those, it’s, you know, it, the front and the rear end are not doing the same thing and they, they don’t feel it. It just feels like you have two different ends of a vehicle. Yeah. And it’s very obvious. And, and it’s, it’s, it, it’s, again, it’s if it was like don don’t know, real cheap or something, but it’s not, yeah. And it, it’s just You know what do, what do you do with big trucks with that? You probably go on road trips with them. You know, that’s at least once or twice and it’s just, it’s just a bad ride. And you know, the, again, I I, I was fresh in my mind was this Lexus, which is, you know, kind of almost the same size and, but just on a much, much better platform. And then I, I hopped in my rivian to go somewhere and it’s like also a big vehicle with air suspension and hydraulic dampers.

Jonny Lieberman (17m 3s):

And oh my god, the ride quality’s great. by the way, the update that’s coming, probably by the time people hear this podcast, they’re even making it better. They’re gonna put in auto load leveling for not only passengers, but like, so if you have stuff in the gear tunnel, it’ll sense that weight and adjust the ride if you have stuff in the bed. So we,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (17m 20s):

You left to right.

Jonny Lieberman (17m 21s):

Yeah. So we talked about yeah. Camp mode.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (17m 22s):

Well, like if you want my chubby fat ass on one side, will it level pass

Jonny Lieberman (17m 26s):

Out? It should do that with this update. I’m not a hundred percent I know. it doesn’t have camp mode. It’ll level it out so that your tennis is level. Yeah. But it’s just, it’s just, it’s weird. Like, it’s like a big miss by Toyota. And by the way, for everyone listening, I just bought a Toyota two months ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I literally bought one. So what did you buy? It only has three cylinders though. It it, yeah. Three, 300 horsepower.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (17m 42s):

Wait, what did

Jonny Lieberman (17m 42s):

You buy? This is pretty awesome. And actually I just, I just upgraded now it’s got four tailpipes, three cylinders. I saw that. I saw that. that was awesome. I bought a gr Corolla.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (17m 48s):

No way. It

Sean P. Holman (17m 50s):

A fiesta st. Right.

Jonny Lieberman (17m 51s):

It actually replaces an alpha male, Julie. Oh,

Sean P. Holman (17m 53s):

That’s right. Julia

Jonny Lieberman (17m 54s):

Is what? Yeah. Which,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (17m 55s):

So that is a, that is a hypey car. Damn. Yeah. Yeah. It’s great boy racer. Look

Jonny Lieberman (17m 58s):

At you. Hey. I mean, and I, I guess I don’t talk about it a lot, but I’ve had a couple WRX wagons and I had a fiesta st I like fast hatchback things.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (18m 7s):

So those are the highest ticketed per capita, those vehicles. The

Sean P. Holman (18m 12s):

Wx I’ve told my

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (18m 13s):

Every single year, they come out as like the most ticketed vehicle because they’re all driven by like 26-year-old dudes flat. So I

Sean P. Holman (18m 18s):

Said flat build vapers before on the podcast that

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (18m 21s):

Flat

Sean P. Holman (18m 21s):

Build vapers. If I came home with a like late eighties, early nineties Honda Hatchy, that’s the only thing I can buy without my wife’s approval. She w she would, that’s like her car. Like, she’s like, you don’t need any permission. If you find one of those and it shows up in the driveway, like we’re keeping it. So I could bring home the cutest puppy ever and I would be living somewhere else. But I bring home an old Hatchie and like, we’re good. See,

Jonny Lieberman (18m 43s):

That’s, it’s, my wife used to be like that. My wife had this like, I hate SUVs, blah. They’re horrible. And, and when she, when we, when we got together, we were living together before we got married, she started driving my old WRX and she was like, yeah, it’s kind of big W

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (18m 58s):

Thousand

Jonny Lieberman (18m 59s):

Six. Yeah. What

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (19m 0s):

Was she used to driving?

Jonny Lieberman (19m 1s):

She

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (19m 2s):

Had

Jonny Lieberman (19m 2s):

A bicycles. She had a, she had a focus. Okay. And then, so then I got her when, when she started law school, I got her a fiesta st because like, you know, it would be fun for me to drive. On the rare occasions I drove it and it’s tiny and she loved it. Right. And then, and, and, and we, we, we don don’t know how much we’re talk about this, but like, she’s so insane with the rivian, I can’t get her outta the rivian. Yeah. To the point where the thing had 16% battery. She had to go to Pomona and I said, take the Toyota. It’s what you like. Yeah. It’s a tiny little thing. She’s like, I’ll just deal with it. And she, she took the rivian. Oh, that’s funny. So she’s like totally a hundred percent flipped. It’s crazy. Yeah. That’s funny.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (19m 40s):

Yeah. What does she like? She like sitting up top? Or does

Jonny Lieberman (19m 43s):

She I, I look, I, she would never admit that, but I think she does like sitting up top. But she just, I asked her, she’s like, I just love it. I just, you know, don don’t know. We, it’s hard.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (19m 52s):

My wife, before long before I had started this podcast, my wife drove all sedans and, and support coop, things like that. And then I got her into the Tahoes and stuff like that. Yeah. She didn’t need ’em. She ended up downsizing slightly. But she loves sitting higher up and just the vantage point just feels safer. Maybe that’s a false sense of security. But Yeah. don

Jonny Lieberman (20m 11s):

Don’t, I don’t know if, I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s that. I mean, I, I’ll put it like this one time right after Truck of the Year program, this would’ve been like 2010 ish. I had like an, I think it was an F four 50 dually. I mean, you know, the big thing. And don don’t know. For some reason my wife had to drive it somewhere and she, she got back. She’s like, I’ll literally divorce you if you ever make me do that again. She was like, hated it that much. Wow. So I was always assumed she hated trucks Yeah. And everything like that. But now I,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (20m 41s):

She probably tried to go through a McDonald’s drive through, which is what my wife did with her, Julie.

Sean P. Holman (20m 45s):

And then she took off the rear fenders.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (20m 46s):

No, she luckily she didn’t. that was, mine was lifted. Mine was a 12 inch lift on 38.

Sean P. Holman (20m 51s):

I can’t believe she made it over that little roofy overhang with that big rack you had on top.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (20m 55s):

It was, yeah. No, she tried it. She made it. Sorry.

Sean P. Holman (20m 58s):

All right. So I, I want to go over, because we’ve talked about this on the show before, but Johnny and I had this conversation. So when You look at Toyota’s lineup right now, right? Yeah. You’ve got the, the tga, you know the platform TNGA,

Jonny Lieberman (21m 9s):

Right? Oh? yeah. I was like, what? It’s a new one. So

Sean P. Holman (21m 12s):

It’s basically, it, it’s, it’s Tacoma Tundra, Sequoia four Runner, land Cruiser, GX lx. So now they’re, they’ve retooled and revamped the entire truck and S SUV V Lane.

Jonny Lieberman (21m 24s):

I think LX is is the Land Cruiser 300 series platform. It’s not, I

Sean P. Holman (21m 28s):

Thought that, I thought they traded on that too. No.

Jonny Lieberman (21m 30s):

Okay. No, no. It’s definitely the, it’s definitely the, it’s an evolution of the 200, the 200 i under it. And it still has the hydraulic Citron spheres. Yep. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s different. Okay. So here

Sean P. Holman (21m 40s):

This is where I am confused about. So, so Tacoma makes sense, right. That leads into Tundra. Makes sense. Sure. But on the SUV side, everything’s like a disaster. So they came out with the, they came out with the Land Cruiser first, which is not really a Land Cruiser, it’s a prodo. Okay. So GX has always been prodo, but,

Jonny Lieberman (21m 55s):

But it’s not even a prodo anymore. Now it’s a four runner. Now it’s

Sean P. Holman (21m 58s):

A Ting now it’s a tga. It’s a Tinga.

Jonny Lieberman (21m 59s):

Yeah. So it’s a Land Cruiser tinga. So

Sean P. Holman (22m 2s):

The, the Land Cruiser hybrid only, no third row four runner. You can get a non-hybrid turbo Four, no third row. And then you get in the gx, you get the Turbo V six, no hybrid yet. But you can get a third row. And the reason you can’t get the third row in the Land Cruiser is ’cause that’s where the batteries are. Right. For the hybrid because

Jonny Lieberman (22m 21s):

Yeah. ’cause there is a gx, there’s an off-road, I forget what it’s called, but the off-Road version, they lose the third row. Right. But they’re, yeah, they’re saying, and it is a pretty nice cargo area, but if you put a battery in that spot

Sean P. Holman (22m 33s):

That lose three

Jonny Lieberman (22m 34s):

Inches or

Sean P. Holman (22m 34s):

Something. Right, exactly. So the thing that I didn’t understand, so I’m like, okay, what separates Land Cruiser in four Runner. Four Runner will probably be a little bit cheaper because it doesn’t have the hybrid standard. But to me it should have been four Runner is whatever four runner’s gonna be, land Cruiser should have been the third, the three row. Now you have to step up all the way to a Sequoia for the three row. And you, they should have had the V six in the Land Cruiser, maybe Detuned from the gx at least something to make it special. Right. So now you’ve got Sequoia or LX or your three row Toyotas and Lexus. The only thing that I, that I think sort of makes sense is that over Trail plus on the gx. That’s cool.

Jonny Lieberman (23m 10s):

I hope’s that’s what it’s called. Yeah. Yeah. So I hope

Sean P. Holman (23m 12s):

They overlay that on the LX so that we can get the Land Cruisers that we can’t get. Right. If Lexus has an over trail plus on the LX that replaces the off roadie Land Cruiser that we lost the full size the the right. 300 series. Right. Right.

Jonny Lieberman (23m 25s):

So,

Sean P. Holman (23m 25s):

So, but what the hell? It’s like, that’s gonna be so confusing. I I was talking to Toyota dealer. It feels like

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (23m 29s):

They hopscotch each other.

Sean P. Holman (23m 30s):

Well, they do. And the dealers like don don’t know how we’re gonna explain it to people. It’s gonna be like, you like that styling or the style? Ha

Jonny Lieberman (23m 35s):

Have you driven the new Land Cruiser?

Sean P. Holman (23m 36s):

I have not driven the New Land Cruiser yet. I,

Jonny Lieberman (23m 39s):

I drove it and damn it, I gotta say it’s like it’s got, I drove the, the base $57,000 one, which is really like 15 8, 50 9,000 Right.

Sean P. Holman (23m 47s):

With the destination, all that.

Jonny Lieberman (23m 48s):

Yeah. But it was cheap and cheerful in a good way. Yeah. and I know it’s not actually cheap, but like, like again compared to the Sequoia, like just the interiors, like Oh. yeah. Well

Sean P. Holman (23m 59s):

You get in the Sequoia, the Tundra, the Forerunner or the Tacoma, it’s very much like Lego blocks. Yeah. And modular. It feels younger. The Land Cruiser feels a little bit more old school and sophisticated. And then the GX is like next level GX is really has a beautiful interior on it. Yeah. But,

Jonny Lieberman (24m 15s):

But the Land Cruiser and it, and it, it’s, it’s, that’s a hell of a power train. It really does feel quick and I think that’s gonna separate it from the forerunner. Yeah. And like, should it have been a V six? I don’t know. Because the hybrid turbo four might actually be quicker than a V six. Could have been. But I

Sean P. Holman (24m 29s):

Just think maybe you want less hybrid for the off-road machine. I don’t, don don’t know. I Yeah,

Jonny Lieberman (24m 33s):

Maybe I, I just don’t like where the, they put the battery if they, if they would’ve put the battery somewhere where it didn’t impact the

Sean P. Holman (24m 39s):

Third row possibility.

Jonny Lieberman (24m 40s):

Yeah. Because you, you know, you hit the throttle and it’s like, dang, yeah, this is it. It’s again, ’cause you know, in my head I’m like, I’m getting into a four runner.

Sean P. Holman (24m 47s):

It was like 468 pound feet of torque or something like that. was

Jonny Lieberman (24m 50s):

I, I forget the stats, but you know, you, you, I’ve driven a lot of forerunners. They’re pretty slow vehicles. Like they’re, you know, they look good. They’re four point slow, four point slow. And this thing was just like, dang, you know, it was, it was a torque fill. Yeah. It was, it was a very, it was just a very good powertrain. and I got it. Like, I I I,

Sean P. Holman (25m 6s):

4 65, 4 65,

Jonny Lieberman (25m 7s):

I was looking at it before I got in and I’m like, what were they thinking? You know? And I’m like, okay, this is pretty good. Now that said, man, 300 series land crews are now like, yeah. And again, like, oh, we’re getting back to our roots. Well, you know, everyone who’s into your roots is dead.

Sean P. Holman (25m 22s):

You

Jonny Lieberman (25m 22s):

Had, you had three decades of 100, 200 series. Yeah. There is a cult following for these things.

Sean P. Holman (25m 27s):

Eighties are outta control, price rise, you know, the last of the solid axles and yeah. Straight six.

Jonny Lieberman (25m 32s):

But like, man, like I, you know, I’ve, I drew a lot of, in the last couple years, probably again, there were press cars, but more 200 series Land Cruisers and I just, I love those things. Yeah. Like, and I got into the LX and I was like, oh, I remember this feeling. You know, it’s a big

Sean P. Holman (25m 47s):

Car, but it feels cockpit like when You get into a 300 LX series. Yeah. Like it’s, it’s tight. Yeah. And sporty and Yep. And handling really, it really hides the body on frame roof. Oh. Like it’s a really spectacular

Jonny Lieberman (25m 60s):

Vehicle. Yeah. You know, and it’s like, okay, look, the one, the one I just drove was the ultra

Sean P. Holman (26m 5s):

Luxe Oh

Jonny Lieberman (26m 5s):

Geez. Which is a four passenger on that frame. And so it’s got like the crazy Learjet rear seat 130 grand, which is Oh, I mean, hey,

Sean P. Holman (26m 13s):

I mean that almost sounds cheap compared to some of the other things that are out there right now. Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (26m 16s):

No. Again, compared to a my box. What deal? So compared to a, my B like the Sequoia out here. Yes.

Sean P. Holman (26m 21s):

I really, you said my BI just have to say real quick. One of my friends posted a picture of a, my BCH on his Facebook. He’s like, Hey, what do you guys think? and I’m like, why would

Jonny Lieberman (26m 28s):

He think about buying one?

Sean P. Holman (26m 29s):

No, he’s always posting like exotic stuff. And so he puts this, my book and I put on there, it’s the automotive equivalent of a be, you know, a beanbag chair with like nicer materials and stitching. Right. It’s, it’s

Jonny Lieberman (26m 41s):

Blobby. I mean that’s, it

Sean P. Holman (26m 42s):

Doesn’t look gr it look, it doesn’t look elegant. It just looks like gaudy, but not, it’s not in a good way.

Jonny Lieberman (26m 47s):

I, I mean it works for the clientele, but I guess, but this is what the backseat of this LX was like. I mean, it was really ultra, ultra plush. Like the, the front seat completely. Like, you know, the headrest get outta my

Sean P. Holman (26m 57s):

Way James. Yeah, yeah,

Jonny Lieberman (26m 58s):

Yeah. But it just had that feel. And it, because it’s more than like, there’s an unstoppableness imperiousness to the, the the 200 series and the 300 series that, you know, again is present obviously in the 300. Yeah. And like I, I really liked the New Land Cruiser much to my surprise, I didn’t think I would. Especially based after driving the Tundra. Yeah. But there is a whole, and as crazy as many SUVs as they have, they, they should bring the, and I and I by the way, I heard they’re gonna bring the 300 series to the us.

Sean P. Holman (27m 29s):

They, they should, I

Jonny Lieberman (27m 30s):

Think that was, they’re trying to help Lexus

Sean P. Holman (27m 31s):

Out. I know what they did. Right. They They said, okay, we’re only selling a thousand land cruisers a year. 1500.

Jonny Lieberman (27m 36s):

They were selling 3000 land cruises and

Sean P. Holman (27m 38s):

600 Lexus

Jonny Lieberman (27m 39s):

4,000. No, they’re actually selling more Lexuses.

Sean P. Holman (27m 41s):

Was it that much? It was

Jonny Lieberman (27m 42s):

4,000 Lexuses and

Sean P. Holman (27m 44s):

I. Remember when that was switched? But it was a long time ago. Yeah. But the idea was give Lexus that vehicle because there’s more profit for them in it and it gives them that And Toyota kinda lives Exactly right. The long the the lower

Jonny Lieberman (27m 55s):

Level. And that, here’s the other thing, that factory is landlocked. There’s

Sean P. Holman (27m 59s):

No more coming

Jonny Lieberman (27m 60s):

Out of there. And then with that Landlock

Sean P. Holman (28m 1s):

Yeah, that’s called Land Land Cruiser. City City, yeah. In Japan.

Jonny Lieberman (28m 5s):

Landlocked. And you can’t make it any bigger and they don’t wanna make it any bigger because of the quality standards. Yes. Because they have to train the employees. It’s just very costly

Sean P. Holman (28m 13s):

Intensive. Land Cruiser has always meant something more special than a Toyota. It meant extra spot wells. It meant, yeah. Tougher construction hand. Some stuff was done by hand.

Jonny Lieberman (28m 22s):

Third level of durability testing. So like the passenger cars go through one level. The all trucks and SUVs go through level two. Land Cruisers and Lxs and Gxs go through level three. Which, what does

Sean P. Holman (28m 34s):

Hardcore does the new Land Cruiser go through level

Jonny Lieberman (28m 36s):

Three? I don’t believe, I don’t know. don don’t,

Sean P. Holman (28m 38s):

Don don’t think so, but I’m not sure

Jonny Lieberman (28m 39s):

I lost my really good contact at Toyota. She moved on. She would answer like, I was like, Hey, the tundra, the, the, the noise coming outta the speakers. That sounded like the VA eight. Yeah. That’s Lexus va, right? Oh. yeah,

Sean P. Holman (28m 50s):

That

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (28m 50s):

Was, we talked about that. I hate that in fake noise. We talked about that early on. Just own it. I I was in the tundra and I was like, this is not the right sound for this vehicle. Yeah. It’s Lexus it

Jonny Lieberman (29m 0s):

Liter Lexus V eight.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (29m 1s):

And it was way too loud. Yeah. Did you find it to be too loud? It

Jonny Lieberman (29m 3s):

Was I don remember that? I just remember being like, that’s

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (29m 5s):

Not like I’m an audio guy. Like all this stuff. This is just too way overpowering.

Jonny Lieberman (29m 8s):

I just remember going, why do I have, why am I getting 14.7 miles per gallon with a hybrid? Yeah. This sounds like a V eight. Something’s fishy.

Sean P. Holman (29m 15s):

Yeah. Well they, they put that sound in so you wouldn’t feel bad about the mileage numbers that you’re actually getting. Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (29m 20s):

But I, I was shocked by the, the, I mean the, the tundra to me is a very like Detroit 1990s product. Meaning it’s almost like

Sean P. Holman (29m 28s):

They were behind on their, on their business intelligence by like 10 years. Yeah, exactly.

Jonny Lieberman (29m 32s):

Right. There’s a wonderful book. If you ever wanna really understand the way the car industry used to be and I think to some degree it’s changed, but it’s called Car. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (29m 40s):

I actually have it.

Jonny Lieberman (29m 41s):

It’s upstairs, the story of the second gen Ford Taurus. Yes. And like basically first gen Ford Taurus, not only a hit Yeah. Bestselling car in America. And and what do they do? They fire the chief engineer. Yeah. Why? He was three months late and didn’t matter that it was this home run. Yeah. You gotta be on time. You’re fired. Yeah, right. Second gen one, like they and I have this backwards, but they benchmarked like the 92 Camry and then during development, the 94 chord comes out and it’s just a moonshot. Yeah. And they go, well, You know what we’re sticking with, benchmarking the Camry. We’ll launch middle of the segment and it’s like the tundra is like, you know, we did a comparison test with, with the, you know, the, the Ford, Chevy and Ram and like Ram’s long in the tooth, still better than the Tundra.

Jonny Lieberman (30m 27s):

And the Ford and the Chevy are just so far ahead. Yeah. In, in

Sean P. Holman (30m 31s):

Every way. Well Chevy once they updated the interior for 23 or whatever Yeah. With the big screen and kind of that became competitive because I, I feel like the 1500, the chassis already competitive. Cha chassis’s great. Yeah. And they finally centered the steering Wheel, which,

Jonny Lieberman (30m 45s):

Ah, you don’t, you don’t like neck problems.

Sean P. Holman (30m 46s):

Oh my god. So, so it’s funny. So the, the chief engineer is a friend of ours and he calls me one day and he’s like, I’ll see, are you coming out to see the new truck? I said, yeah. She says, okay, I’ll see you out there. I got a, I got a surprise for you. I’m like, what is it? He goes, I straightened the steering Wheel for you. I fixed it. I gave,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (31m 1s):

Didn’t he? I thought you said I fixed it.

Sean P. Holman (31m 3s):

Something like that. Yeah. He said, I fixed it. I mean we, I gave, every time I rode about that truck A or a Hummer G anything GM T 400, GT 800, GMT 900 was stupid. Effing steering Wheel, stupid ev And, but you get to the 900 and it’s even worse because now it’s over and canted like this. Right. And,

Jonny Lieberman (31m 20s):

And it is like one degree. It’s that,

Sean P. Holman (31m 21s):

Oh, just enough to be

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (31m 22s):

Bothered. You cannot see it.

Jonny Lieberman (31m 23s):

But then you go 150 miles and it’s like, why is this shoulder

Sean P. Holman (31m 26s):

De de detached? We started this podcast with me taking him into his truck and showing he’s like, what? I’m like, come outside,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (31m 31s):

You can’t unsee it. And then our listeners were writing us hate mail

Jonny Lieberman (31m 34s):

For a long

Sean P. Holman (31m 35s):

Time. You ruined my truck. I love The truck. And now I can’t unsee the steering Wheel. It’s crooked and offset. I had a guy who’s like, I just got, you know, I get a new work truck every five years. Yeah. and I just got my new Chevy and it’s really nice Nicet work truck I ever own. And now it’s ruined because all I can look at is that stupid steering Wheel.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (31m 50s):

So two questions about, yeah. Yeah. Two questions about like the, the Toyota products. Yeah. So the the the tundra. What do you think is what creates the fanboy outta the t, the tundra, the Tacoma? You can kind of see the tundra not so sure. I

Jonny Lieberman (32m 5s):

Don’t know. Are there fanboy? Yes. I guess there are I don, I

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (32m 7s):

Don’t know. I’m on the Facebook groups and they’re fan boys. I mean

Jonny Lieberman (32m 9s):

It good points for the tundra. It comes in bright colors, which the others don’t. The bed is gigantic. So if you actually are putting stuff in the bed all the time, it’s very good.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (32m 20s):

Towing

Jonny Lieberman (32m 22s):

It. No, it’s not better. It’s not better at towing. I will say rock crawling, the, the tundra TRD pro is very like, especially on slick rock on the, on the whatever weird tires it comes on is real good. It’s real good at slick rock crawling kind of, you know. So if you want a slick rock crawl

Sean P. Holman (32m 40s):

In a giant halftime paper

Jonny Lieberman (32m 42s):

That’s not a zero R two, something like, there you go. But yeah, it’s just, I don’t know. It, it’s very forgettable. And again, it’s the slowest of the four. It has the, I think the wor I think it’s either the worst fuel economy or tied with the ram, which is a 15-year-old motor at this point.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (32m 60s):

Yeah. Well, so based on the price and everything else, if you’re not a fanboy, how is Toyota

Jonny Lieberman (33m 5s):

Alluring you to this?

Sean P. Holman (33m 6s):

It’s Toyota, a name. Yeah. Name

Jonny Lieberman (33m 8s):

Equity. They’ll, they’ll sit here ready. Resale and reliability. That’s what I, whenever you criticize a Toyota. Yeah. They go and again, I, you saw this with the, my post on the Sequoia. They’re like, yeah, the ride now sucks. And the third

Sean P. Holman (33m 20s):

Row’s a joke but reselling around. Hey. And

Jonny Lieberman (33m 23s):

I’m like, that’s

Sean P. Holman (33m 24s):

Why you bought a new vehicle.

Jonny Lieberman (33m 25s):

Yeah. Right. But some people think like that. Yeah. Some people or they’re just Toyota reports. Yeah. You know, and again, I, I bought a Toyota and I’m not a Toyota person. I, I’m, this is so hard for people to get. And it, this is like not the bane of my existence, but like, I don’t care about brands. Yeah. They mean nothing to me.

Sean P. Holman (33m 40s):

So I’ve talked about that on the show when I, yeah. When I first became an automotive journalist, I was a hardcore Ford guy. Oh really? But my why, I don’t know. Nobody in my family owned, I just liked Fords, like reading all the magazines. I liked the way they looked. I liked The truck, whatever. That’s so weird. Liked Mustang. But my mom and dad were Toyota and Honda. People growing up I don know. Weird. And so I was, I love Ford. Love Ford. Love Ford. I got into this job and quickly realized what a shit show. It was over there. And, and like you think like this, oh this, this amazing American tale, this story. Yeah. These guys are pumping out, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions of vehicles a year. They must have it all down. And then you meet the people and you’re like, this place is absolutely dysfunctional. And then you go to GM Whoa and you’re like, it’s worse over here.

Sean P. Holman (34m 21s):

Right.

Jonny Lieberman (34m 22s):

Well you, it’s funny, it’s funny, growing up, we were a GM family until we weren’t. And, and my mom, I remember my parents met, my mom had a Ford Falcon. She had a black falcon with a red roof.

Sean P. Holman (34m 32s):

Okay.

Jonny Lieberman (34m 32s):

Okay. That’s cool. And they lived, they lived in the Midwest and lived in St. Louis and they moved to California and no air conditioning. So my dad went to a Ford dealer and they installed AC and then it just destroyed the car. Yeah. So he was just like, screw Ford. And so we were only gm, but you know, gm, he had five brands to choose from. Right. So, you know, we had Buicks and Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles and Chevys growing up. And then in the mid eighties they got real bad in terms of like, you know, I, my dad actually, he actually Lemon Lu all

Sean P. Holman (35m 3s):

Ha to the Cimarron. Yeah. It

Jonny Lieberman (35m 5s):

Wasn’t, he wasn’t even doing stuff like that. But he, he did in like 17, eight or nine, he bought a diesel Oldsmobile. Ugh. And it lasted like three weeks. And then it was, it was Lemon Lo ’cause of head bolts. But even that was, he still was loyal. Yeah. He didn’t buy another Did he buy? Yeah. No, he bought a Buick. Anyways, the point is, and then it just, it just got to the point where, you know, and, and he also always, like, he, he loved English cars and he had a couple triumphs, but like, they never ran. They were like a sailboat. They just sat there. They’re like the extra car. Yeah. But then

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (35m 36s):

Sounds like you’re describing my father who Chrysler and my, no, that was my grandfather. My father has mgs. He’s, oh, he’s a hardcore English fan. Well,

Jonny Lieberman (35m 44s):

He wanted to like him, but they never ran. So then he got,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (35m 47s):

It’s always a challenge.

Jonny Lieberman (35m 48s):

He got a Dotson two 80 z Nice. Which he always described as an engine in a steering Wheel. But it started every day. And then he went away from Japanese cars. And then I, you know, I was reading definitely not motor driven, but like car and driver and automobile and road and track, you know, they were talking about like Acura. And I’m like, dad, we gotta go. Apparently the Acura legend, this is like in 86. I was 11 by

Sean P. Holman (36m 6s):

The way, the, the legend. I just read something about what a moonshot that was for Oh yeah. Honda at the time. Oh. And how they’ve been Acura is still today referencing back to how that program came to try and get back the magic that Acura had in the nineties. I mean,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (36m 20s):

NSX,

Jonny Lieberman (36m 21s):

Well that, well that that’s there too, but also like Lexus and the original Ellis 400, like the greatest

Sean P. Holman (36m 27s):

I would. Yeah. Well, car ever, if you remember the old Lexus commercials with the wine glasses and the, you know, how tight the body tolerances were and the paint, and even on like 80 series Land Cruiser, the Lexus version had way better paint. So if you look at all those in the secondary market now, all the land cruisers, clear coats are roached. And most of the time the Lexuses had better clear, they, they’ve lasted the test of

Jonny Lieberman (36m 45s):

Time better. I mean that LX 400, which by the way,

Sean P. Holman (36m 47s):

Better interior, softer leather. Yeah. But

Jonny Lieberman (36m 49s):

That, but that, that lx that was called the F1, Lexus F1, that was the internal code name. And they spent I think like a billion dollars in like 1985, which is like 13 billion today. Which is, which

Sean P. Holman (36m 59s):

Is like eight or nine new football stadiums. Yeah,

Jonny Lieberman (37m 2s):

Yeah, yeah. And they, they did like something like a, like a million kilometers of development and like, just no other cars ever had in the process. Like, but anyways, so, and I, I, I’m like, dad, you gotta go look at this legend. And then we, he actually drove out and the car I took my driver’s test in was a Acura, Integra and I remember, I remember driving there he is like $20,000 for a Japanese car. Are you, are you nuts? And I’m like, oh, you know, car And driver says it’s so good, you know, and then he, he and he, but he likes sporty things. So he got this, it was a champagne, Integra car popup, headlights, leather suit, 113 horsepower, which was

Sean P. Holman (37m 36s):

Nuts. So at the time, but the way Honda was, so, so if you remember like that late eighties, I had a Honda Accord, LXI was my pass down. Right. So I meant fuel injected. So all of them were carbureated with 4,000 snakes of vacuum tubes going into the carburetor. I had fuel injection. Well all the Acura is the later, well after the, I think the second gen Integra, they all had fuel injection. And then the top of the line one that changed everything on those cars that Oh yeah. And Honda clutches and shifters so good. Were the, I’m almost telepathic short throw. Yep. Snick snick

Jonny Lieberman (38m 5s):

Actually

Sean P. Holman (38m 6s):

Joy

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (38m 6s):

To drive CRX si now today. Right.

Jonny Lieberman (38m 9s):

Not the, the, the civic typo. Ty, not

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (38m 12s):

C rx, I’m sorry. Yeah. Civic

Sean P. Holman (38m 13s):

Typo. The problem is today, so the, the current civic that’s out now. And even the C rv, which is based on that same platform. The thing about Hondas of the golden

Jonny Lieberman (38m 22s):

Era, mid eighties

Sean P. Holman (38m 23s):

To mid nineties, where they had really skinny a pillars, very low belt line, lots of glass. They had a little bit of A BMW with the, you know, the, the hoffmeister kink in, in the rear. But very well engineered cars.

Jonny Lieberman (38m 38s):

Oh, amazingly engineered cars. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (38m 40s):

Super good visibility. Super reliable, a amazing driving. And and that’s when they had, everything was multilink. It wasn’t, you know, the weren’t McPherson struts or Right, right. Everything. It was just a really amazingly engineered cars. It

Jonny Lieberman (38m 53s):

Was, it was, you know, look Rocio, I’m gonna mispronounce his name. Rocio Honda was an engineer and a performance minded engineer. Yes. Like there’s a very famous story where when they were developing the, the, the car that became the Civic, they, they had in testing it had, it had four Wheel independent suspension. And then they’re like, You know what? We’ll save 500 bucks a car on the back in the back. Yeah. And they had the meeting and then everyone got up because one guy didn’t, couldn’t say anything. He couldn’t, you couldn’t contradict

Sean P. Holman (39m 20s):

Right. The chief engineer in Japan. Yeah. Yeah. So it was

Jonny Lieberman (39m 22s):

A respect thing. And you, you couldn’t, you know, it was Mr. Honda, you couldn’t say anything, but he just didn’t get up, didn’t move. And he, and he was looking at him and the guy had tears in his eyes and he said, what? And he goes, I just feel we’ll be making an inferior product. If we go to a beam, we’ll have more car cargo room and we’ll have a better pro handling car and it’ll make our customers happier. And on the spot he changed it. Yeah. So that’s what Honda used to be. Yeah. Well

Sean P. Holman (39m 46s):

No, and I used to say, you know, if you look, it’s not Honda Automobile company. It’s Honda Motor Company. Yeah. And Honda makes motorcycles and generators and jet skis and small engines. And the thing was that Honda was always an engineering first company. Yes. Which meant that all of their products had this amazingly engineered Yep. Like finished the, and today you don’t see, now going back to the CRV and the Civic that I, I brought up a moment ago. Yeah. One of the things that they wanna do is return that low belt line with the skinny a pillars and that flat minimalist dash.

Jonny Lieberman (40m 15s):

Which which is

Sean P. Holman (40m 15s):

Hard with crash, very hard with. Yeah. And they’ve done it a little bit. I mean you get into those cars and it definitely has a vibe of the eighties cars. But there was something special about those Hondas of that era that were some of the best cars ever made. Period.

Jonny Lieberman (40m 27s):

Yes. And, and to go back to what you were saying about the shifter, like I I would say the best manual transmission left on the market is the, the Porsche GT three. That is the, the, the Synchros are metal. You’re pushing metal through metal. Yeah. It’s the best feeling. Second best is the Honda, then the Miata is like just behind it and you know, big price difference. Yeah. But you know, when You driving next to each other, you’re like, oh actually this, this civic type R or it’s also an Integra type s now like damn, that’s a good shift drive.

Sean P. Holman (40m 56s):

I had a 2000 civic si that I bought brand new, I worked at Norm Reeves Honda at the time and I got a good deal on

Jonny Lieberman (41m 0s):

It.

Sean P. Holman (41m 2s):

I remember going on the Test Drive with it. And my mom I think went with me and she’s like, are you sure you wanna buy a stick? You sure you wanna buy this car? Oh? yeah. Yeah. and I, I love that car. I mean that, that car, and that was before they ruined Civic with McPherson. that was last generation of Civic. Right. That had, so that was like independent multi links. Right. So that

Jonny Lieberman (41m 17s):

Was that, that was that 90, no, sorry, the 2002 was the

Sean P. Holman (41m 23s):

2002 was when they went to the new by stall. So this was a 2000. Okay, so this was not the Hatchie, this was the coup.

Jonny Lieberman (41m 28s):

This is gen six. that

Sean P. Holman (41m 29s):

Was, yeah, that was the EK I think or something like that.

Jonny Lieberman (41m 31s):

Oh. yeah. I get lost that fact. The fact that,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (41m 33s):

You know, that is my, I

Jonny Lieberman (41m 34s):

Don’t know, boggling.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (41m 35s):

Yeah. Yeah. But the fact that you just spit out is that gen six, like I don can’t even do that with trucks and I work with trucks every day. That’s it’s, you

Jonny Lieberman (41m 42s):

Know, I, I think it’s just ’cause I write about it and I’ve looked it up at some point. I see You know what I mean? I think,

Sean P. Holman (41m 45s):

I think it’s the EK is what that generation was. and I love that car. and I put a bunch of integrity type R parts on and I used to go race that button willow on NASA track days and stuff. Nice. And it was, that car saw, it was so funny. I had it set up, I had a suspension.

Jonny Lieberman (41m 57s):

What, what year were you doing this?

Sean P. Holman (41m 59s):

Back in 2000, 2001. 2002. Like right in that area.

Jonny Lieberman (42m 2s):

God, we might have been in 2002 is when I got my first WI got my first WRX in October of 2001. Yeah. And a little bit in 2002. I was at Button Willow doing that.

Sean P. Holman (42m 13s):

Wouldn’t it be funny if like, we crossed paths on the track, you know? And then years later for something else, we became

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (42m 18s):

You bought that new or used? We,

Jonny Lieberman (42m 19s):

Oh, I bought it new. Okay. I bought it new. I,

Sean P. Holman (42m 21s):

Well, I remember the now I’ll

Jonny Lieberman (42m 22s):

Tell you a great story about that. Go for it. Oh, so I at the, okay, so remember, remember the dot com bubble? Of course. I, I had a software job. I worked for a software company. I was, I was in my twenties.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (42m 32s):

You made some stock

Jonny Lieberman (42m 33s):

Money. I was making, no, I was making cash. I was making like six figures a year, like software company money. Right. So I, I was, I was doing All right. Were you a programmer? No, I was, what was my title? This is why the Bubble Burst. I was a junior technical evangelist, was my title. So you were like

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (42m 50s):

A, a brand guy,

Jonny Lieberman (42m 51s):

Basically. I would show up. We, we had you want to Yeah.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (42m 55s):

Level.

Jonny Lieberman (42m 56s):

Let’s do, let’s do it. So we sold ETL software extraction, transformation and load. What does that mean? Okay. You got a bunch of spreadsheets and you want to, and you have some like mainframe data, right? Actually, let’s reverse it. You have mainframe data and you wanna put it into a bunch of spreadsheets for sales guys. Well, you gotta extract it off this old FORTRAN mainframe, and then while you’re extracting it, You know what Y 2K, you know? Yeah. You want, so you want to transform it. You want to add one nine before every date, right? So extract, transform, load into Excel. Ah, so it was very, it was like a $500,000 piece of software. Wow. And there’s a couple companies that made it. So my, I did like pre-sales.

Jonny Lieberman (43m 36s):

Essentially. I go out there and be like, look, here’s what our does. We have WY wig programming for the transformation part, you know, and it was just

Sean P. Holman (43m 43s):

WY wig. I’ve heard that a long time.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (43m 44s):

You see, see what you get, what

Jonny Lieberman (43m 45s):

Get, yeah. So that, that’s what I was doing. So I, I had some cash. So I was, I wanted an Audi S four wagon. That’s what I wanted. Badass. So, on Saturday, I go to the Audi dealership, and I had, I remember, I, I had 25 grand. There were $45,000. and I had 25 grand in the checking account to spend on a car. and I, I remember I was wearing, it was Alice Donut, t-shirt. Alice Donut’s a band. It was like, like a OD prostitute on it. and I was wearing like camouflage. I love it. Camouflage cargo

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (44m 14s):

Shorts. And tell me they wouldn’t give you the time of day

Jonny Lieberman (44m 15s):

And AstroTurf flip flops, right? Yes. I remember when I was wearing, and guys wouldn’t even look at me, they wouldn’t even look at me. Oh. So I literally, I was like so enraged and I, remember Jamie Kitman had wrote a story about how great the WRX is, and I walked to the Subaru dealer, bought like the, I didn’t even think about the color. I was just so mad. I was like, take my money. I want, you know, if I would’ve thought about it, I would’ve got a blue. I got a black one. and I drove back to the Audi dealer and just pulled right into the con. And like, all the guys came out. I’m just like, you, dude.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (44m 48s):

And just left. My buddy did the same thing with, with an NSX. He went in and he was wearing flip flops and the whole thing. Yeah. And he was, he was different. He was selling drugs, but he had the money. So what, so he was it green? And he walks in with flip flops and the whole thing. He’s like, free country. And he is like, I, I, I’ve got this, I wanna buy it. And they’re like, I got the cash. And they’re like, they wouldn’t even talk to him. He went down to Newport Beach, bought it, bought an NSX, drove it back. Yeah. Then did donuts. No, in the lot. Didn’t did Donuts Stop. And then flipped him off and he’s like, I want this guy fired. Had the guy’s card, went into the manager. He was, he was

Jonny Lieberman (45m 17s):

Pissed. I was, yeah. I, I, I got, after I started flipping wrong, I got real scared and drove away. But, but I, I can’t remember her name. Really nice lady. But she’s, she’s the number one Roll Royce sales salesperson in the world. Palm Springs, rolls Royce. And is that really where the number one is? Number one? I guess that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Every bedroom community where you drive one mile. Yeah. Rolls Royce Perfect. and I, I said, where every rolls is a Sunday driver? Yeah. and I said, I said, You know what, what’s your secret? You know, roll. I was on a rolls trip. Then she goes, she goes, it’s this, if somebody walks into the Rolls Royce dealership wearing a suit, they’re selling, oh, if some guy comes in sweatpants and a greasy white T-shirt, he’s buying, he’s buying, he’s That’s a Rolls Royce customer. Yeah. Because they don’t want you to know how much money they have. So they dress down. I’m sure.

Jonny Lieberman (45m 57s):

No, they’re so rich. They just don’t care. They don’t care. They don’t care. Yeah. And especially in Palm Springs. Yeah. You don’t, what’s, it’s too hot. What? Yeah.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (46m 4s):

I, I wanna circle back, if you don’t mind, Oh. yeah. Yeah. Because I, you said something earlier that fascinated me. You are agnostic to brands.

Jonny Lieberman (46m 11s):

Yeah. Models only. Okay. and I will say, I really like Lamborghini.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (46m 16s):

Okay, that’s cool. Which

Jonny Lieberman (46m 17s):

Is a really fancy Audi. So

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (46m 18s):

Now it is now. But let’s, I I wanna talk about Lamborghini I. don, I want it bad. I wanna try to stick to this topic for just a second. There’s no

Jonny Lieberman (46m 24s):

Way we can stick

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (46m 25s):

To one topic, but I’m gonna try. So, a lot of our audience like me, so he was a Ford guy. I was a, I was a hardcore Honda guy, then I became a GM guy, then I’m, I’m not sure what I am now. Okay. But he Holman before I bought my, I have a T Rx, which I’m excited for you to lambast me for. I have

Jonny Lieberman (46m 41s):

For a year. A year. I love the

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (46m 42s):

T Rx. It’s just so, but I, it’s

Jonny Lieberman (46m 44s):

Just slow compared to a Rivian. But I

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (46m 46s):

Love the T Rx. Yeah, I understand that. I understand that. So then everyone thought I was gonna get another GM product, and here I am. I’m like, You know what? And Holman had one for a year as well. So, and I fell in love with it. He was, he was doing launch mode and all that stuff. I’m like, they’re awesome. Yeah. I, I need this. And he also professed that we were gonna have the, it’ll be the last of the gas guzzlers, the last of the big v eights. I thought, You know what? I’ll go out with some hoorah. Yep. But anyway, what makes you so much of our audience and us? We are, whether I wear quick, silver, rusty, Stussy, Billabong, I wear, I wear a certain golf brand. I only do Callaway Polos. People have their brands. Yeah, sure. Not everyone, but so many dudes, especially women, probably have products thereafter that, that they, they obsess over.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (47m 30s):

But we are You’re a GM guy. You’re a Ford guy. Yeah. You have a Calvin and Hobbes pissing on one of the other two brands. Right.

Sean P. Holman (47m 37s):

I had that sticker in the back of my ranger. Nice.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (47m 39s):

So

Sean P. Holman (47m 40s):

Why pissing on Chevy? What,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (47m 43s):

Why not you?

Jonny Lieberman (47m 44s):

Well, I just, I think that I would be pretty bad at my job if I went into it and one car had an advantage. And like, you know,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (47m 57s):

Do you look down and I understand that from a business point of view, you have to be agnostic. No, you don’t. You, well, there

Sean P. Holman (48m 3s):

Are plenty, there’s plenty of journalists who

Jonny Lieberman (48m 5s):

Are Yeah, there are. But, and look, you know, again, like, you know, if you’re like, do you want the Ferrari? Actually now the Ferrari’s are a little bit better. So I

Sean P. Holman (48m 11s):

Gotta, well, exactly. when You put him on the lift, and you realize Mario was drunk on Friday when he welded up the frame, holy

Jonny Lieberman (48m 16s):

Crap. Mario had a Slack. And Mario, you know, he was cheating on his wife, and his wife got back at him. So

Sean P. Holman (48m 21s):

Slack everywhere and just like, ugly weld. And I’m like, man, yeah. But

Jonny Lieberman (48m 25s):

They drive nice. There’s a

Sean P. Holman (48m 26s):

Dude down the street. Yeah. But they who welds in his garage with like, don don’t know, spoons or something, and his wells look better.

Jonny Lieberman (48m 32s):

Truck show listeners, if you can get your hand on a Ferrari 2 9 6 GTB, do yourself a favor, drive that down. Do it. But, but I’m sorry. So do I look down on whoa,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (48m 40s):

Loyalists guys who are like, I’m down for gm, man, GM for Life Roads. They got a tattoo. Or tho they got the Cummins tattoo on their pec.

Jonny Lieberman (48m 47s):

I, I wouldn’t say I look down, but I’m also like, why are you a fan of a multi-billion dollar multinational

Sean P. Holman (48m 53s):

Corporation?

Jonny Lieberman (48m 54s):

You know what I mean? Like, it’s kind of, but

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (48m 55s):

Is it any, any different than the guy who wears, I only wear Billabong. Like Kevin, the guy that I used to work for, he wears Billabong tops. That’s different though. No, I think it’s the same.

Jonny Lieberman (49m 5s):

It’s a little different. I mean, like, you know, look, I wore Levi’s forever until I found this company called the Perfect Gene, or Perfect Jeans. And like, eh, they fit better, you know? Yeah. So, and You know what I did. I stopped buying Levi’s, and now I like my jeans 2% better than I did, you know? And so

Sean P. Holman (49m 21s):

2% happier when I put ’em on a morning. But, but

Jonny Lieberman (49m 23s):

It does blow people’s minds. I’ll give you an example. So when the, now

Sean P. Holman (49m 25s):

Is it true somebody helps you put your jeans on every morning because you’re better than most mortals? I

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (49m 30s):

Wish I would when he steps out of the rolls,

Jonny Lieberman (49m 33s):

If

Sean P. Holman (49m 33s):

I so guy pulling up his jeans. Exactly. If I

Jonny Lieberman (49m 34s):

Could have a butler. So remember the real bad Ford Explorer, so not the current one, but the one before that was based on a Volvo, A two row Volvo. They,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (49m 43s):

Is that the one that rolled?

Jonny Lieberman (49m 44s):

No, no, no. It was after the, but it’s a, it was such a bad car. So anyways, we did, we, we did a review, we did as a comparison test. Do

Sean P. Holman (49m 51s):

You remember the police version of that? That had Yeah. That had a composite, basically radiator core support. And so the, they had to go to a steel one on the police cars, because in that model, they found out in the Midwest where they have those big ditches between the lanes, the police would make a U-turn on the highway and, and hit the cross ditch and they would crack and break the radiator on it. Yeah. And, and so you’d be out of that. that was it. Out of the pre it

Jonny Lieberman (50m 11s):

Was a cast. I actually talked to someone who was in the room when they made the decision, and, and I’m gonna leave names out of it, but this person is now at another really big company. But they were like, they were like the person that made the decision to take a Volvo sedan Yeah. And make a three row SUV out of it. Like literally knows nothing about cars. And we were like, no, don’t do this. Go figure. And she was like, now we’re doing it. Anyways. Did it did, it was a bad vehicle. And ours also kind of fell apart while we were testing it, like the A pillar came off the trim, stuff like that. But, you know, so I, I believe I said it was an intellectually dishonest vehicle because yes, it had the interior space of the longer three row SUVs. And they did that just by making it wider.

Jonny Lieberman (50m 53s):

So then I bought a fiesta st. Why did I buy a fiesta st Well, I was writing my, you know, we always do these click Beatty 10 best cars you drove this year. and I was like, all right, paani wire number 1:00 AM G six by 6 2 3 Fiestas St. And then I was like, why don’t I just buy one? Like, what am I, what? Like, that’s a $23,000 car max. And, and then I can’t remember the guy’s name, but PR guy at Ford called Scott Evans didn’t call me, call Scott Evans and goes, is it true? Did Johnny buy a Ford? And he’s

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (51m 25s):

Like, where?

Jonny Lieberman (51m 25s):

Scott Evans, he’s like, motor

Sean P. Holman (51m 26s):

Driver, oh, writer at MotorTrend. Okay,

Jonny Lieberman (51m 27s):

Call Scott. Is it true? And Scott’s like, yeah, you what a, you know, orange Fs st. He’s like, but Johnny hates Ford. They, they couldn’t understand that. I just hated the, the, the, the, the model. Yeah. Ford don don’t care. Yeah. Make a good car. Ill buy it. I’ll buy a good car. I’ll buy it. I’ll buy it if it’s good. If it sucks, I won’t. You know?

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (51m 45s):

So, but you,

Sean P. Holman (51m 46s):

I went through that, by the way, with my EV thing, right? Yeah. Like, I bought my Aria. Yeah. And I’m like, I want, and they’re like, well, you hate EVs. I’m like, no, I don’t. I just didn’t, there wasn’t one. that was my use case. And here it is. Well, you tried

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (51m 57s):

To set everyone for the longest time. Like there is a possibility. A world in which Holman, I could have one, but like, no one thought you

Jonny Lieberman (52m 6s):

Actually were, I remember also when we did that Rivian trip. Yeah. and I was the way Trans America Trail, Transer Trail. And I’m texting you, I’m like, dude, this thing is so good. And you were so like, eh, I doubt it. And then like, I think you texted me like, this thing’s pretty good.

Sean P. Holman (52m 19s):

And I still, I still believe Rivian is the best truck out there. I I think personally that in the EV space, there’s a point of diminishing returns when You get bigger than Rivian. Like Ford Lightning, to me, that’s like the, that’s the very tip. I mean, I, that’s an edge case for me, right? Yep. I think the Silverado is somewhere else, but Rivian at that size and that performance is sort of the sweet spot. And then anything smaller than that from a, because you get diminishing returns on your efficiency. Right.

Jonny Lieberman (52m 44s):

Although, you know, I I, I haven’t spent any time with it, but like the, the, the max pack, you know, like I’ll do like over 350 miles. Like, it’s, it’s, the things are pretty incredible. But yeah, I mean,

Sean P. Holman (52m 54s):

I meant 220 miles on my aria and it’s fine. I, I’ll go a week and a half without having to charge. ’cause I’m just running it around town. It’s perfect. I

Jonny Lieberman (53m 1s):

Mean, look, I I, I got in a fight with a bunch of journalists the other day where I was like, listen, like you shouldn’t be reviewing EVs unless you have a home charger. I hate to say it, but you’re not all you’re doing if you don’t have a home charger. And look, if that sounds elitist and snobby, okay? But it’s, you’re, you’re not getting the experience of an EV owner. You’re just a hundred percent, you’re, you’re getting the experience of a guy who goes to Hertz and rents a model three.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (53m 22s):

Although, hold on a second. Hold on a second. We’ve got a guy at work who has, who does not have a charger at home. He’s one 10 only. and I just met a guy the other day where his sister just bought one. She, yeah.

Sean P. Holman (53m 34s):

But, but they’re not automotive journalists.

Jonny Lieberman (53m 35s):

And those are outliers. Those are outliers. Most people that own EVs, you know, and look, it sucks because if you live in an apartment, they won’t let you put in a charger. Charger does suck. But I’m just saying the, the, the 92% of EV owners, they can plug in and charge at home. And once that happens, like people’s like, well, how do you charge it? I’m like, what? It’s always charge. Yeah. Or, or, or,

Sean P. Holman (53m 57s):

Or they charge it once a week when I want, when I need to get it between 20 and 80. Yeah, exactly. You know, that’s, that’s where you live in it. Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (54m 4s):

And so, so it’s just like, anyways, I I I and these, they’re, you’re like, oh, you’re, you’re a jerk. You’re a prick. and I’m like, no, I agree. I just, you don’t, you don’t get it.

Sean P. Holman (54m 12s):

So we have a plugin hybrid, we have a four by E I’ve got the Aria, which is a full ev I’ve got my V eight Wrangler, which is obviously a V eight Wrangler. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, you know, Lightning and I have talked about, I said, I, I feel, and I’ve got a Honda crv. Yeah. I feel like I can talk about anything because I have the ownership experience of all of those things. Right. And, and that, that changes how you write and how you deliver your thoughts to people.

Jonny Lieberman (54m 34s):

And it’s, it’s like, imagine if you reviewed cars for a living and you couldn’t use a gas station, you had to get a Jerry can. And you had to like, hold up the fuel can, that’s what it is. If you don’t have a home charger, I if you complain about how you couldn’t charge Yeah. Is like, well, yeah,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (54m 50s):

We’re not realistic. I think we’re

Sean P. Holman (54m 51s):

Past that. It’s just not realistic. Yeah. I think it’s okay to say, I went on a cross country trip and it was, it didn’t meet my expectations. Or there were broken charges. They getting better. I know they are. I know they are. Is Evie,

Jonny Lieberman (54m 60s):

I know you Enemy now. I know you hate him. E Evie goes the enemy. Eeb B

Sean P. Holman (55m 2s):

Go has been great for me. Oh man. I haven’t had a dead one yet. So, but Electrify America, you’ll,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (55m 9s):

If anyone is keeping track of how many conversations we’ve had in the last No, there’s

Sean P. Holman (55m 12s):

No way to do it.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (55m 13s):

50 minutes. You can’t, you’re just saying if you, if you, I didn’t even get to finish my conversation about

Sean P. Holman (55m 17s):

No, you’re not going, if

Jonny Lieberman (55m 20s):

You go to Baker, California right now. Yeah. Yeah. And you go to the Evie Go,

Sean P. Holman (55m 23s):

Which is on the backside of thermometer, which is

Jonny Lieberman (55m 25s):

On the backside of the thermometer. No toilet, no trash can, no, no restaurant shade. There’s six chargers. Four of them are 50 kilowatts, which is real slow. And, and, and two are broken. Okay. If, if the Petersen Museum ever does like an ev exhibit, like the history of the ev, that’ll be that you just, you literally pick up, you

Sean P. Holman (55m 44s):

Scoop it outta the ground. Corona flatbed.

Jonny Lieberman (55m 46s):

This is the state of charging in America. 2023. Totally. And then across the street

Sean P. Holman (55m 52s):

Supercharger network, it looks Private America, super Charger,

Jonny Lieberman (55m 54s):

70 spots that, that electrify America. They have 12 things that work. And they’re all, and Tesla has like, and Tesla has 88. 88. I counted. Yeah. Don’t ask why I was

Sean P. Holman (56m 4s):

Charging You’re bored while you’re charging. Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (56m 6s):

But, but yeah.

Sean P. Holman (56m 7s):

But going back to you. So like, I think you can say, I drove cross country and it didn’t meet my expectations where I had to plan my trip or I had to stay. So that’s all valid. But to say that around town was too hard to charge is not That’s that We’re past that conversation in journalism, I

Jonny Lieberman (56m 20s):

Think. Yeah. Oh, totally. And, and look like, you know, I, I, I’m, I, I have a, I have my Rivian. I like my Rivian. I had to drive up to Monterey. It was a fucking nightmare. Now what? The Rivian was fine. Yeah. How so? It was showing, oh, I, okay. I showed up to the Electrify America station where it told me to go four chargers, two broken. The two, the two that were the, the two that were not broken were charging. And there’s people charging to a hundred percent.

Sean P. Holman (56m 45s):

And then Right. And then there’s the four people waiting in line behind those a-holes.

Jonny Lieberman (56m 48s):

And then, I can’t remember what it was, it was like, it was like a, it was a Dodge Daytona or a, a stallion or something, or whatever. The Chrysler version was. Caught fire to the Chargers. and I was like, I I was, it was such a sketchy area. It was like on the 46 somewhere. I’m like, all right, I’m, I’m outta here. That’s it. Yeah. ’cause this is like, why did that car suddenly catch fire? Dude,

Sean P. Holman (57m 8s):

That was like COSO Junctions when they were building it out where that Chevron is on your way up to Mammoth. Yeah. Yeah. So I’m going up 3 95. Right. and I had the Rivian, because we did that Rivian, Sierra Gordo deal for that content thing that we did with Vivian. And so I was meeting the guys up in like Lone Pine or something, and I had to charge in Coastal Junction. Well, turns out they were building stuff. They only had two chargers available at that time. One of ’em was broken, right. Was Electrify America. And as I pull in, the dude in front of me pulls out and I’m like, oh, thank God. And then I just sat there for like an hour. Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (57m 39s):

And it was just, it sucked. And then I was like, You know what? I’m gonna keep going. I’m just gonna go to, I know there’s a charger in, in Paso. I was gonna Paso Robo no problem. And then like, oh boy, I’d been going like 80. And like, and I’m like, easy to do. and I was right at the point of no return. and I, I made a U-turn and I went back. So I added, you know, I added an hour of my own unwillingness to wait again. The truck was fine. Yeah. It was just the infrastructure that, that sucked for this road trip. Did, did I make it? Yes. Did it take three hours longer than it should have? Yes. Yes. Yes. Do I love my truck any less? No, it’s a great truck. How’d you decide on the Rivian? Well, Transamerica Trail had a, that was huge. Very profound impact, profound effect on me.

Jonny Lieberman (58m 19s):

’cause I went, look, I love the, I loved the Ram. TRXI had one, not only I had one for a year.

Sean P. Holman (58m 26s):

Well, I will even say that Johnny was the fanboy amongst the MotorTrend people who was like, f all of you. I’m taking the ram home. Yeah. And fought like, I think he brought out a, a, a shiv and started stabbing at people in the office

Jonny Lieberman (58m 39s):

And wouldn’t give us. And so,

Sean P. Holman (58m 40s):

So you are, you feel differently than Matt

Jonny Lieberman (58m 42s):

Farrah then. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. And and I was like the least interesting part of the T rx is the engine. I was so impressed by how it handled. Yeah. And we, we were, you know, we were, me and this guy Scott Evans, we were flying around on some dry lake bed, like, oh my God. Like, you know, so I love the way it handled. Right. and I love the 707 horsepower. Well guess what? The Rivian handles two or three times as good and it makes 835 horsepower and it makes 300 more pound feet of torque. Right. And then, you know, we went offroading and like it was better than the T Rx was off road,

Sean P. Holman (59m 18s):

You know. Well, a lot of the TXs problems were the fact that it was so big.

Jonny Lieberman (59m 21s):

Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (59m 23s):

Yeah. And, and you guys were on the forest part of it. I ha I was in the mountain part of it. Right. But we had the, we were on Black Bear. On Black Bear, yeah. Where we literally had two or three inches to spare with the fender not hitting the rock wall wall on the Chelsea wall. Is this the one where you had T RXs the chase truck? Yes. Okay. Yeah. that was Johnny Ti Rx.

Jonny Lieberman (59m 39s):

Got it. Got. Yeah. But so the Hummer H one right. Is like 86 inches wide. Sure. T Rx is 88 You. know what I mean? It is a big old thing.

Sean P. Holman (59m 48s):

Well, it’s funny when You see it next to an H one, if you ever see one parked there, you’re like, I remember an H one being giant. Oh

Jonny Lieberman (59m 53s):

Right. It

Sean P. Holman (59m 54s):

Was a military. Right. And then TX is parked next to you going, what is that funny micro machines in right

Jonny Lieberman (59m 59s):

There. I gotta tell the story taller. I gotta tell the story about the, the, the, the, the TRX and the forest. ’cause this is this. I think your listeners will really

Sean P. Holman (1h 0m 6s):

Like the, they the, they’ll like the story.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 0m 8s):

I wrote an article about it called The Tree. And so what happened was, we’re in Mississippi and we’re on the trail and there’s a washout and it’s like just a four foot sheer drop. There’s no way to go down into the wash. Bunch of people, locals riding around ATVs with like AK 47 shooting rattlesnakes as you do in Mississippi. And we like, we’re like, Hey, what should we do? And they’re like, oh, you know, we, there’s a little path maybe you could get through, but if not, you gotta go back. And like, we couldn’t go back ’cause it would screw up everything because we had had just planned this trip, so Well. Right. Tell me, you got out

Sean P. Holman (1h 0m 41s):

And you shot rattlesnakes

Jonny Lieberman (1h 0m 42s):

With their AK 47 show down? No, there was no, no shooting, no, there was no machete did come out. And the reason the machete came out was that I think these people had had like cut some trees down so they could get their at vs. Through. So the two rivian fit and the ram just wouldn’t fit. And we bashed in the rear fender and we tried everything and we just couldn’t do it. So we, we brought a chainsaw, you know, Christian Siba, who works for MotorTrend, who’s from Brooklyn, he bought an electric chain.

Sean P. Holman (1h 1m 9s):

Electric chainsaw. An

Jonny Lieberman (1h 1m 10s):

Electric. I know. Which look You know what I sometimes, if I go Offroading, I carry an electric chainsaw ’cause it’s, you know, it’s just, it’s convenient and it’s light and whatever. But yeah, if you’re going 70 in the woods, 7,700 miles

Sean P. Holman (1h 1m 22s):

Off

Jonny Lieberman (1h 1m 22s):

Roads through Mississippi and hickory trees. Yeah. You know, which, which

Sean P. Holman (1h 1m 25s):

Is like the hardest wood known to man. So this is

Jonny Lieberman (1h 1m 27s):

Hickory trees,

Sean P. Holman (1h 1m 27s):

And turns out this is what they make walking sticks and, and you know, spikes

Jonny Lieberman (1h 1m 31s):

Out ’em stuff. So, okay, all right. We gotta do it. We gotta cut, we gotta lose this one tree. Right. So we plug it into the Ram one. Nothing, nothing. So the rivian are through, so I’m like, Hey, bring a rivian back here. We gotta plug this chainsaw in, plug it in. It’s got a big inverter. Totally cut the tree down. And then I made a post about it on, on Instagram. So we’re driving about 45 minutes later, I don Dunno if you met Lily from Rivian.

Sean P. Holman (1h 1m 55s):

She, no, she was my way.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 1m 56s):

She, she won the rebel rally in the, in the RT

Sean P. Holman (1h 1m 59s):

Oh. yeah. Yes, yes. We had her in our OVR Elliot Auto Show display Super.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 2m 3s):

She’s great. She’s like, we have a little problem. I go, what? You just talked about a tree being cut down. You cut down a tree. And I’m like, and yeah. And she’s like, well that’s not really the message that Rivian wants to put out there. I’m like, but it’s realistic. I’m like, yeah, but the TRX wouldn’t fit. Yeah. So we use the rivian to operate an electric chainsaw and like, whoa. They’re really, yeah. But you cut down a tree as bad as eight tree. And so I’m, I’m, I start freaking out. I’m like, let’s knock it off. Like, like, come on man. Yeah. And then she’s really like, I’m getting a lot of pressure and I’m like, Google, I’m like, you know, there’s 86 billion board feet of

Sean P. Holman (1h 2m 38s):

Lumber in Mississippi. You’re fine.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 2m 40s):

It’s one tree. Like, and then I’m looking at the Rivian, it has a wood dash. I’m like, where the did

Sean P. Holman (1h 2m 45s):

This come from? You know? And it’s, by the way, it’s a real wood dash. It is a real wood dash and I. Because I asked them when I’m like, is this real? Or just split in their nose? It’s real like, drink came from a tree. You know, that, that is, that is, don’t kill animals as you’re eating

Jonny Lieberman (1h 2m 57s):

Hamburger. I remember, I, I think I actually got outta the vehicle and got into another one because I was just like, tell ’em we’ll hold a funeral for the tree. You know? I I it was just so insane. But anyways, yeah, it was so that, so that’s when I really, I I did they finally like, what, what, what came of that? Just nothing. It just died or they ran into my stubbornness and Yeah,

Sean P. Holman (1h 3m 17s):

We had one of those on ours where they thought that maybe we went too fast and we in the mud, its muddy field. And it was like, eh, it’s off-roading. Like Yeah. At some point you guys had, so I don’t, I haven’t told the story before and I think everybody is, so do you remember the picture of me and the Blue 3 92 on two Wheels Oh? yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Jim Morrison, who was head of Jeep at the time, is not there and probably still listening to the show. So I’m going to, hopefully he’s not mad I’m telling the story. But I feel like statute of limitations are probably up. So we get this photo and I’m thinking this is an awesome photo. So back in the day, there was an another journalist who by the name of Ben Stewart, right?

Jonny Lieberman (1h 3m 51s):

Yeah. Ben Stewart Oh. yeah. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (1h 3m 53s):

So back in the day in Four Wheeler, there was a famous photo of a yellow Nissan exterra on two wheels at the exact point of going over. But he saved it. And it’s this crazy photo that Forever will live in the annal of Four Wheeler. So I posted me in this blue 3 92 and I, I texted Ben, I go, who did it better? Right? And we were laughing about it. He was like, oh, you gonna post it? I’m like, don don’t know. Should I, so I post it and it’s up there for a little bit. and I started getting phone calls from people and the PR team Jeep, that Jeep is like, Hey,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 4m 21s):

Yeah,

Sean P. Holman (1h 4m 21s):

You know, we’re our safety people don’t really like that because, you know, it’s, it, it shows it’s a lot outta control and it might be a roll. I’m like, yeah, but nobody rolled over. Oh, well, well, you know, and I have I pushed back? and I said, no, it’s a great photo. So Jim calls me and, and I can’t remember he called or texted me, but he goes, are you gonna take that down? and I said no. And he goes, why? and I said, because right now nobody’s talking about Bronco and there’s an awesome photo of a 3 92 and in 24 hours it’ll be out of the news cycle. And he was just like, relented. And was like, like, if you’re my friend, you would take it down. You a-hole butt. Okay, I get it. Because I think, I think Jim, part of Jim was like, f Yeah, great picture.

Sean P. Holman (1h 5m 3s):

And the other part of Jim was called me, I think he said, Hey, headache or something like that. Oh. yeah. ’cause well, hey, headache

Jonny Lieberman (1h 5m 9s):

Mean that’s corporations, right? So this is why I have a hard time when people are fans, like, get another Stellantis story. When the TX came out, the press photos, a guy that works at that company sent me pictures of this thing like 10 feet in the air. I mean, it was a flying truck. Wow. And then the press photos come out and it’s the, it’s the same photo shoot. Yeah. And I’m like, oh,

Sean P. Holman (1h 5m 30s):

It was from the Reno. Yeah. Race course. Yeah. Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 5m 33s):

And I’m like, no, no, no, no, no. It wasn’t, it wasn’t

Sean P. Holman (1h 5m 36s):

It, it wasn’t when they were doing the big jumps.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 5m 37s):

No, no, no, no, no. It was, it was just like in the desert Joshua Tree area. Area area Desert. Yes. Yeah. Joshua Tree. It was, you know, it was Johnson Valley.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 5m 46s):

It’s 10 feet in the air. It doesn’t matter where it’s, it

Jonny Lieberman (1h 5m 48s):

Was just a rad, a couple rad shots. I’m like, post that. They’re like, we can’t do that. I’m like, what? And they’re like, that’s, you guys can do that. You can jump and take the picture. But like, we can’t. I’m like, but you built a jumping truck. The thing is designed to, designed to

Sean P. Holman (1h 6m 1s):

Land. It has

Jonny Lieberman (1h 6m 2s):

Couldn’t do it. Lawyer said, no way has

Sean P. Holman (1h 6m 4s):

JCOs in the front. I mean,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 6m 5s):

Come on. Yeah. It’s so weird that

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 6m 6s):

They can build it, but they can’t show it.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 6m 8s):

It’s insane. It’s just,

Sean P. Holman (1h 6m 9s):

It’s how litigious everything. Is

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 6m 10s):

It like they bug Gotti makes a car that’ll go 200 miles an hour, but they can’t really,

Sean P. Holman (1h 6m 14s):

So they show it in shop and go traffic

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 6m 16s):

At lx. The journalists have to do it.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 6m 18s):

No, I mean, they, they let their owners do it.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 6m 20s):

Well, the owners

Jonny Lieberman (1h 6m 21s):

Doti Bugatti does. They top speed their cars. But, but, but it, it’s just, it it’s, it’s like the, it’s just the lawyers like, like gm, you know, they, they can test Corvettes at the Berg ring. Yeah. And they can test Corvettes like anywhere in the entire world except for Laguna Seca because it’s a public park. And their lawyers are like, eh, you can’t do it there. So when we used to do our best driver’s car, we’d have like 17 Corvette engineers show up because they might have the chance to do one lap at Laguna Seca. ’cause they’re all racers and they wanna drive their car in Laguna Se where they’re not allowed to test any other track in the World Fair game. They can go drive it. The lawyer Ford, you can drive Fords on Laguna Se you know, like, like the engineers can do it.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 7m 3s):

Every other car company. Sure. GM for God knows some lawyers said no. And they just, okay. We, we got

Sean P. Holman (1h 7m 8s):

In trouble at Four Wheeler back in the day with gm. So when the GMT 800 trucks were out, we were in a sand bowl out in the desert and we were doing rips in the sand bowl to get the, the wheels turned sand flying the best. And we did that on each truck about five times to get the shot. Brew Baker was shooting it and Robin Stover was driving and

Jonny Lieberman (1h 7m 27s):

Boom, airbags go off. Oh, what?

Sean P. Holman (1h 7m 29s):

And everybody’s like, what? And Robin pulls over and he’s like, his ears are ringing. He rolls down the window like all the smoke is coming out. And we’re like, dude, are you okay? And he’s like, I don’t know. And so what ended up happening is, don don’t know how Jim does it now, but back on those trucks, what would happen is you would do something. And, and so the way it was explained, ’cause Jim sent a bunch of engineers out to the same spot in the same trucks and duplicated it and then figured out what it was.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 7m 54s):

Oh, that must have sucked. Oh, imagine knowing the airbags didn’t go off. So

Sean P. Holman (1h 7m 57s):

We’re a helmet. So they told us like, oh, you were abusing The truck and you were this, that, and the other. And we’re like, no, we were literally just doing something We’ve done, by the way, a million times, by the way,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 8m 5s):

If your airbags go off and there’s no impact damage, then it’s GM’s fault. Right.

Sean P. Holman (1h 8m 10s):

So, so that’s how it was. So what happened was, man,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 8m 12s):

You bust your nose,

Sean P. Holman (1h 8m 14s):

The air system goes into like an awake mode, right? So it’ll Oh, it’s touchy. And so if it senses that you’ve gotten to a point where you’re close to rolling. So we were in a deformable surface. The sensors, the yaw sensors were freaked out. It puts the airbags into this like awake mode. And so we had 99 alerts in one deploy. And what it was was that extra half a degree or whatever on that particular one side impact bags freaked out. ’cause I thought we were going over, but they were able to replicate it. And they came back to us and they’re like, okay, yeah, we, you know, we, we were able to do it and we’re gonna adjust our software recording.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 8m 49s):

I mean, it’s bad software because when the Z 28 Camaro, the fifth Gen Camaro came out, and it just had, it could pull like, you know, 1.17 or whatever. Jeez. Airbags were going off. It thought it was crashing. Really? It was getting so much stick. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (1h 9m 3s):

We had that on our early Hummer H three, same thing where we, we were out in, I think Durango, Colorado or Aztec, New Mexico. They’re right over the border from each other to do wheeling. And somebody had driven and then landed on the frame right behind the front Wheel and boom

Jonny Lieberman (1h 9m 16s):

And I guarantee, if you grabbed those three vehicles and you pulled out the airbag software, Johnson Controls wrote it in 1998. And it’s the same software. And it

Sean P. Holman (1h 9m 26s):

Wasn’t for off-roading or track or

Jonny Lieberman (1h 9m 27s):

Anything. Yeah, no, it was, yeah, it was, it was for when cars had no capability. Now that cars had capability. Well, Johnson Controls doesn’t care. No. This is why you write your own software kids. Yeah,

Sean P. Holman (1h 9m 35s):

Yeah, yeah. Exactly.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 9m 36s):

What are, but, but, but real quick, back to the Rivian thing. Why’d I get a rivian? I had narrowed my two choices down. I was gonna get a Lexus GX because I want, I wanted my own offroad because as you know, in this business right now, I could be like, Hey, can I get like a G 63 tomorrow? And they’d probably drop it off my house. Yeah. And I’d been doing that for years and years and years. And When, you go on rocks, you tend to scratch one thing

Sean P. Holman (1h 9m 57s):

And then you gotta do that full paperwork form ’em. That’s super annoying. It just, you

Jonny Lieberman (1h 9m 60s):

Gotta make the call. Yeah. Like, and they go and they’re always, it’s FiNet worry about it, but you’re

Sean P. Holman (1h 10m 4s):

Running boards or scratch. Oh my god. You

Jonny Lieberman (1h 10m 7s):

Know, you know, I, for me, for whatever reason, I never got that. But it was just, I just, you know, after years of it and I just wanted my own off roader. And then, and then my kid, we started taking him skiing and we had a situation where, you know, I was, I can’t remember exactly what it was. I was supposed to go up in a Ram Day before we was supposed to leave. It’s like, oh, You know what got in an accident. No Ram. So I was able to get something else, but what if I wasn’t? You’re like, I need my own, I wanted my own. So it, it was between Lexus gx. Oh, actually at first it was a 3 92 Wrangler. And my kid, he’s outgrown this, but he used to talk real soft when he sat in the back of a Jeep and I remember like trying to talk to him, going down the two. Yeah. Had the crew set at 75 and I couldn’t hear my kid. I love the two. You can halt. Well, but, but,

Sean P. Holman (1h 10m 47s):

And you, you had the one touch Sky Soft top on that one, didn’t you? Yes. and I hate it because the worst of both worlds, it’s louder than a hard top. And it is all the drawbacks of a soft top. Right? Like, it’s just, it’s it’s everybody’s like, oh, this is great. It’s a full length. Ver no it’s not. It’s horrible. Don’t get that. So,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 11m 4s):

But I, I’d even called Scott Brown and said like, Hey, like I, you know, I’m thinking about getting one. He’s like, oh, you know, they’re gonna be in production for this long. Yeah. Anyways, so I got rid of that. So it’s Lexus gx and then I drove the Rivian and I’m like, oh my God. Like, and they were a lot cheaper when we went. And by the way, the Rivian build quality is really fantastic.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 11m 22s):

So tell me about buying the Rivian. Did you call up a bro? Oh, was a nightmare at

Jonny Lieberman (1h 11m 26s):

Rivian. Oh no, that was a total, I’ll get to that in a second. But, but, but, but the final piece of the puzzle was we were up in Big Bear and there was a blue rivian. And my wife was like, what’s that? I was like, that’s that thing that I drove across country that I really like. She’s like, could we get that? And I’m like, yes. Really? Yeah. So no, the buying process totally sucked the whole like, oh no, dealership Oh. yeah. It’s nice in theory, when I bought my Alpha Rome mayo, here’s how it went. I walked in They said, you have to drive around the block. At least I said, I said, I, I said, see this, this is the MotorTrend Car of the Year article. Yeah. I wrote about the Alpha Mayo. I know about it. Yeah. They go, we just, you have to drive it. Just, that’s their

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 12m 5s):

Policy. Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 12m 5s):

Huh. So I literally pulled out of the lot, went to the stop sign and U-turn drove back in. So 26 minutes from walking in to walking out, I was on a Rivian website in my mind for two weeks. It was probably less than that, but it was just, there was eight steps you had to do online. Nothing works. I was doing it on a Sunday. You had to, you couldn’t buy it unless you gave ’em your insurance. I don’t have an insurance agent. I’m freaking out. I want to buy the thing. So I like sign up for whoever they’re partnered with. And I’m mental note, cancel this within 30 days immediately.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 12m 36s):

It would’ve been awesome if you got Tesla insurance. ’cause I guess I heard that you can have Tesla insurance with any car. Maybe

Jonny Lieberman (1h 12m 41s):

Have You Heard that don don’t know. It was just, I was just like, I, I literally wrote an article, I can’t remember what they called it. You, you could Google it, but it’s like, I bought a rivian and it was a total nightmare. Something like that. And everyone’s like, oh, you’re being a drama queen. And I’ve had friends since that bought one. They’re like, dude, you were like a hundred percent right. and I was like, I love The truck. I’m trying to give you my money. Yeah. Just take fucking money. How come I can buy an alpha in 26 minutes? Yeah. And it was like a weekend project with the, you know, and it’s like you get stuck. So you have to like text a rivian guide and they don’t know

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 13m 13s):

Anything. So there’s no chat bot on the right hand corner where you

Jonny Lieberman (1h 13m 16s):

Can, there might have been a bot, a live chat. I’m, so I look, no. Yeah. But, but that’s, I can

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 13m 23s):

Feel your frustration now. All these, that was time later.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 13m 25s):

That sucks. P-T-S-D-I. Oh, and the other thing was, at the time, you couldn’t lease it. ’cause I, I have my own business so I wanted to lease it through the business and you couldn’t. So I was like, oh my God. Like I have to buy it. Which I’m glad I bought it. ’cause it, I’m probably never gonna get rid of it type truck. Didn’t know that at the time. But yeah, it was, the buying process sucked. But, but we’ve been super happy.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 13m 45s):

Is it any better now that, I mean, have you talked to guys who have bought them in the last couple months? Has it changed or is it so

Jonny Lieberman (1h 13m 49s):

Awful? Oh, I can, I can pull up a text chain. Oh, it’s worse. Really? Oh my God. My friend, my friend Steve, like literally canceled it. He’s like, I’m so frustrated, I’m done. I’m, I’m walking away. And then like, they called him back and were like, alright. He was putting five grand down on a lease and it was XA month. And he said, Hey, what if I put eight grand down and then lowered that? And they were like, oh, we can’t do that for whatever rea Like why can’t you, you know, don’t

Sean P. Holman (1h 14m 14s):

You have RJ the founder Rivian, like text message

Jonny Lieberman (1h 14m 17s):

Oh? yeah. No.

Sean P. Holman (1h 14m 18s):

Hey, I’m trying to buy one of these things and support you. Dude,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 14m 21s):

At the time I didn’t have it. Yeah. And he’s, he’s not like, you know, c you I know it, they’re very nice until they stop talking to you. Right.

Sean P. Holman (1h 14m 29s):

You know what

Jonny Lieberman (1h 14m 30s):

I mean? Yeah. Like, like I, I had dinner with Ola Colius a little while ago. Who’s that? He’s a CEO of Mercedes-Benz Swedish guy. Oh, okay. We were up r plug Sweden Electric. gwa. I’m feel embarrassed not to know that. Okay. Greg, he, look, he’s the first non-German to run race. He’s a big deal. But he is a really cool guy. But I, I watched him ’cause he was, he was very loosey goosey at dinner, but he had one and one third beer. And then he’s like, bye. And because, you know, the beer’s kicking in and, and I, I forget what it was he was saying. So we were asking him something that would’ve been controversial and he had a whoa kind of answer. Yeah. And then he was just gone. I’m out. But good dude.

Sean P. Holman (1h 15m 4s):

Did they buzz him? Like did he have the dog collar or

Jonny Lieberman (1h 15m 6s):

Something? No, I, I

Sean P. Holman (1h 15m 7s):

Walked

Jonny Lieberman (1h 15m 8s):

Get outta there because I, because it was like, you know, we had our beer. It’s like, yeah, let’s go to the round. And he was like, okay. And then like, and then,

Sean P. Holman (1h 15m 14s):

You know, so there’s a new CEO of a brand that we may have talked about at some point. Okay. Who I met at a certain event. And we, I said, listen, I’ve been tied in with this brand for a long time. You’re the new guy. I’d really like to get to know

Jonny Lieberman (1h 15m 27s):

You. Oh, I know who this is. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (1h 15m 28s):

Yeah. And he’s like, he goes, I live in Orange County. Oh. When I’m not in this other place where my company is, let’s get together for lunch or something, I’d like to sit down. Here’s my personal cell phone number. PR person looks at me. He goes, please don’t cut me outta the loop when you’re talking to him on his personal cell phone. So we were texting back and forth for a month. Hey, these dates. Yeah. I’ll be in, ah, my trip got moved. Yeah. Yeah. Let, let’s do it next time. Back and forth. This is the president. Yes. And back and forth, back and forth. And then nothing. It’s like so close. and I was like, we were gonna go grab lunch and, and catch and I. I was gonna talk about the brand and what, why it’s important and da dah dah, dah. And he’s like, this is great. I I really need to know who the friendlies are and you live by where I live.

Sean P. Holman (1h 16m 9s):

Let’s, you know, it’d be great. And then silence.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 16m 12s):

I i’s like a a, a guy I know started working at Rivian and in, in communications and PR and I was, you know, talking to him and I go and just so you know, like I, me and RJ communicate. Yeah. He’s like, oh God, please don’t, by,

Sean P. Holman (1h 16m 26s):

That’s how all the pr p they are def Oh. yeah. They’re deathly afraid of a journalist. Oh. yeah. Having executive’s phone number Oh.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 16m 32s):

Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (1h 16m 33s):

Yeah. which I love because, so there, there’s another executive who would text me in meetings and he’d be like, Hey, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. and I would be Oh, yeah. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then I’d have a product planner text me go, Hey, did so and so just text you? I’m like, yep. He goes, ah, I thought that sounded like you. He’s like, Hey, thanks for backing me up. and I’m like, oh, thank God I didn’t like, you know, tell him not to do it until

Jonny Lieberman (1h 16m 53s):

It’s all fun. Until they get mad at you. and I the story, I can’t quite tell yet on the air, but I I don know if I ever told you this story, but I had a, a president of a very big car company, like send me a very mean message. and I was like, I’m like, this person could actually have me killed. I,

Sean P. Holman (1h 17m 10s):

I think I do know this

Jonny Lieberman (1h 17m 11s):

Story. Yeah. They might told you this story and I was like,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 17m 13s):

Did you write something Ill about this person or

Jonny Lieberman (1h 17m 15s):

The company? No, no, nothing. Like, I can’t tell it. But it was, I They said something to me that they thought was in confidence. I thought they were just saying it out loud. Yeah. and I. And then he wrote about it and I wrote it and it was like, how could you

Sean P. Holman (1h 17m 26s):

Screw us like that?

Jonny Lieberman (1h 17m 28s):

Yeah. It was, it was

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 17m 29s):

Were you apologetic or were you like, sorry,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 17m 31s):

I just, I dropped my phone and I sat there and I was like, literally that’s going through my head. I’m like, this person could have me killed. Like they, they have that kind of, well that was like

Sean P. Holman (1h 17m 41s):

Me with the Raptor stuff when First Gen Raptor, when we broke that and I was waiting for like, you know, four people in black suits and crowbar to come to my front door.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 17m 48s):

Well, so what happened, I I I can leave out names and brands. What happened? I’m sitting there and I’m like freaking, I’m like, oh my God, what do I do? What do I really up this end of my career type thing? And then his personal PR person calls me and is like, I think we can all agree that Mr. X is a classy guy. I’m like, absolutely. Mr. X is, wow. What a great, and you know, in the heat of battle sometimes things are sad, are sad and he really likes you and respect. And I’m like, he’s not gonna kill me. Cool. Alright. I’m in. I’ll take it to my grave.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 18m 19s):

I promise.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 18m 21s):

So meanwhile, The, Truck, Show, Podcast.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 18m 23s):

Have you had, have you had run-ins like that before? No. Obviously this one left an impact on you, but No,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 18m 28s):

I’ve had, I’ve had, look, I’ve had three PR people. I’m very proud of this. Yeah. I’ve, I’ve been, I’ve been banned for life once by Ferrari. I’m, I wanna get to three. Peter Robinson famously was banned for life three times by Ferrari. Okay. Alright. I’ve had three different PR people say never in my career over stuff I’ve done. So, but the PR people don’t frighten me. I mean, if you’re listening, I love you all, but you’re just not scary. You’re, you’re, you’re my, you’re, you’re, you take away

Sean P. Holman (1h 18m 56s):

My parallel my meal ticket for a little while. But

Jonny Lieberman (1h 18m 58s):

You’re, you’re, you’re a you’re a flack, I’m a hack or

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 19m 1s):

Whatever, you know. So back in the day, I don’t know, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies. Was there a time then they would have a journalist whacked? No, I’m

Jonny Lieberman (1h 19m 10s):

Serious. No, I mean, think about like what happened to Ralph Nader, right? I mean, GM like tried to entrap him with hookers. I mean You know what I mean? Like they did like that. Yeah. Why did they do that? Because he wrote a book saying, Hey, you know, by the way, it wasn’t just the Corvera, the first chapter was about the Corvera. Everyone has short intention spans. by the way the book came out in 65. They had totally redesigned and fixed everything he’s talked about with the Corver by in 64. So he was just saying, this is how bad it was. And then, and DeLorean in his book, on a clear day, you can see General Motors, he said, by the way, you know, GM executives, I think like two had lost children in Corver and one had like horrible brain damage. And they kept their mouth shut because their company men.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 19m 53s):

So Nader just said the, the Corver, which they’d already fixed, they’d already fixed it, it wasn’t on sale. They, they tried to entrap him, which by the way, not only did they have to apologize publicly, I forget the name of the CEO at the time, but they had to give him a lot of money to start whatever NAS foundation’s called, which led to him running for Green party leader in the nineties, which led to Al Gore losing Florida. So causing effect. There you

Sean P. Holman (1h 20m 17s):

Go. Butterfly. A butterfly. Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 20m 20s):

So yeah. So I, I was, I was, I had about five minutes of panic and I didn’t really think he’d kill me, but I really thought he could end my career. So,

Sean P. Holman (1h 20m 27s):

So I’ll I’ll bring this up. ’cause you’re asking about kind of journalist stuff. Yeah. But you know, back in the eighties and nineties, manufacturers would send a non-compliant car to testing that had a hotter tune, different suspension. And if you look at ’em, like, there’s been times where we’ve gotten cars where the axle tag says, made for MotorTrend, made for Four Wheeler or something like that. Because Oh really? They built that car.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 20m 49s):

I can specifically for a test. Not, not in the nineties. I’ve never heard of that. I mean, recently I remember a guy, I I, I love telling this story. Marlon Goldberg. Marlon Goldberg is, he has a, is a tuning company in, in LA called Workshop 5,001. He is a Porsche. Hot rodder makes million dollar nine elevens. They’re awesome. When I met him, he goes, MotorTrend, he goes, do you remember that yellow 4 5 8? I go, yeah, that was one of the best cars I ever drove. He’s like, yeah, I built that. I go, huh? He goes, oh, I was doing Ferrari press car engineering at the time. He’s like, yeah, I chipped that thing a hundred horsepower. I put challenge suspension on all four corners, fooled you idiots. And I’m like, god damn. And then like some, I can’t remember what it was, but we had a Z 28 for best driver’s car.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 21m 29s):

That’s dirty Oh. yeah. That’s straight dirty Ferrari’s the dirtiest and they’re just brazen about it. But we had this Camaro Z 28, which we loved. And apparently this thing, instead of 500 horsepower or 505 made 540, apparently it had a very non-factory alignment that would’ve eaten through tires in 2000 miles. We were eating through tires anyways, so we didn’t Yeah. We didn’t bother to check. Yeah. You know, and yeah. And we, one time we had, we had an Audi A six, which is, you know, garden variety, nice German luxury car and you know, zero 60, let’s say at the time, like five and a half seconds. And then a week later we had one that went four and a half seconds. That’s big. And we’re like, called Audi did

Sean P. Holman (1h 22m 7s):

Just come down from 10,000 feet.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 22m 9s):

Yeah. And we called Audi. They’re like, oh, that one has a different interior trim. So it’s lighter. No, it’s not second lighter. No. So, yeah,

Sean P. Holman (1h 22m 17s):

I, I, I remember even when I started my career in the early two thousands, so there would be spies, certain manufacturers would spy on you and they would record your own conversation. So I was dating a girl who worked in the internal media for a car company. So internal media is the one that after a press drive would send a, the newsletter out to all the executives of what the journalist would say. Right. And she’s like, Hey, you made our internal news. and I was like, great. I I’m reading it. I’m like, I said that when there were no people around, oh, they say, you gotta bleep that. I said that when there was no no people around. And she was like, Oh.

Sean P. Holman (1h 22m 57s):

yeah. They, they record what you guys are saying in the cars and then use it internally. No way. Yeah. So I always, I I still to this day, I am always looking for like microphones or cameras pointed at me. Well, they’re too

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 23m 8s):

Small today. Like,

Sean P. Holman (1h 23m 9s):

What am I do pick my nose. And all of a sudden they’re like, well, we got nose picker number four going on here. Well,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 23m 14s):

We found build sheets kinda like what you’re saying. Build for MotorTrend. But we found like I don know build sheet’s the wrong term, but it’ll be like a big, you know, like three foot piece of paper that’ll, that was like a big spreadsheet that’ll say like, you know, rear right quarter window at 70 miles per hour, 60 hertz buzz fixed. Yeah. And so the, the press cars and, you know,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 23m 41s):

Wow. So they’re going through

Jonny Lieberman (1h 23m 43s):

Everything and here’s the,

Sean P. Holman (1h 23m 44s):

Especially the of the year ones, like the standard press cars are kind of like, whatever. They, they get a, they get a little, a little extra, but not a lot. But the of the year cars got,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 23m 52s):

Yeah. To, to, to Tobias Moore, who used to be the CEO of a MG, who replaced all the clean, just to title all back together. Tobias, when we had the A-M-G-G-T-S, they had 12 of them in Spain, and he was at a track, and he drove all 12 and said, send him the yellow one. that was the best one. Interesting. Now he didn’t, they didn’t do anything. Now, according to my source, they didn’t do anything to it. He just drove 12 and said, that’s the best one. Well,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 24m 15s):

How does that, how does that, obviously that changes your opinion and they know you’re gonna, the reason They

Jonny Lieberman (1h 24m 20s):

Said they’re all doing it type thing. Okay. You know, now, now look, the Ferrari’s a real outlier. I’ll, I’ll give another, I can, I can talk, well, I

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 24m 27s):

Wanna hear about Ferrari and I wanna hear about Lamborghini, but I can’t wrap my head around the fact that like, you’re gonna go and get this whatever the vehicle is, and you’re gonna drive it. It’s super quiet. There’s no envi. H it’s just wonderful. And then you hop in weeks later, months later, a friend buys one and you’re like, damn, this is noisy. Or

Jonny Lieberman (1h 24m 45s):

That usually doesn’t happen. You know how it’s usually like, oh, my car made a rattle and I took it back to the dealer and they fixed it. It’s just unique to that car. It’s not representative of the way the car’s supposed to be,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 24m 55s):

Except when they’re changing suspension and stuff like that. No,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 24m 58s):

I agree. I it is a real outlier. But here, I’ll give you another one. So we had, we had a, we had a Ferrari four, eight. Eight, I can’t remember. Whether, it was something after that. It was a four eight. Eight. and I, my friend, I have friends that have stuff like that, and I’ve driven ’em, you know, and Ferrari’s real bad about giving you a car when it’s new. Usually it’s like two years later and they’re like, ah. So I’ve driven them before and they’re, they’re nice cars. You know, I forget exactly the horsepower, but 600 ish horsepower. Well, this had 800, I mean, it was like, so blazingly, blindingly fast. And I’m like, Hey guys, everybody, this is not stock. I’ve driven stock. And, and no one else there not only had ever driven a 4 8 8, a lot of people that particular year had never driven a Ferrari before. Mm. And I’m like, this is not,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 25m 39s):

Not the norm.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 25m 40s):

Yeah. So then we take it to Laguna Seka and Randy Popes, our, our pro driver at the time, he did a lap, did like the 4, 4 8. Eight did a minute 30. The 4 8 8 is replaced by a car called the F eight, which has more power, 700 and some horsepower, blah, blah, blah. We had it during the early covid, it was like the 2020 or 21. Right. Meaning that Ferrari couldn’t really get the advanced team on it to cheat it up. Right. So we take it back to Laguna Seka, same program, you know, but, and it’s slower than the cart replace. And it’s like, it’s a lot, it’s a problem. And like the PR guy pulls me aside. He is like, I, I don’t know what to do. Because at, at that point, Randy’s like, I’m not taking that. Does he literally say that?

Jonny Lieberman (1h 26m 20s):

I don’t know what to do. He’s, he’s like, what do I tell Italy? And I’m like, you tell Italy if he has stopped taking steroids, you get weaker. If you take steroids, you gotta stay on the roads, you gotta have the juice. And he just looked at me, he doesn’t work there anymore. And he’s like, so, so yeah, that this, this happened. And we write about it. I mean, that’s, that’s why I was banned from driving. You know, it lasted until they,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 26m 42s):

What did you say? Do you like they, it’s on Roys or you say like, they chipped it, or what’d they do?

Jonny Lieberman (1h 26m 47s):

I said, I think we said they forgot to cheat You know what mean? Yeah. that was, but the reason I got, I got banned was we had a F 12 and they, they gave me the car and They said, okay. And, and you know, sometimes they’ll say, Hey, we have one. Are you interested in driving it for a week? Yes. Okay. Listen, you can’t weigh it. You can’t test it. You can’t put it on a track and you can’t compare it to any other vehicles. What? And this, yeah, it’s real common, especially in the upper echelon things like Rolls Royce, no comparison test. You can’t do it. You know, you agree to it. So you don’t wanna go back on your word. However, this was like the fifth F 12 that we’d had as an organization. And it’s like, how many more first drive impressions do you want?

Jonny Lieberman (1h 27m 29s):

So I said, Angus is what? Angus was editor in chief. I was like, what if we broke every rule they gave us? That would be a great story. He goes, let’s do it. So we rent Laguna Seka, we get a Corvette and we get a nine 11. And turns out Ferrari said the thing weighed 3,500 pounds, weighed 4,004 pounds. They said it hit 60. And I’m making this up, but like, you know, three seconds. It took three and a half. It was, everything was wrong. It was a 10th. And this is a 400,000 car. It was a 10th quicker than a Corvette stock. Z 51 C seven Corvette. And it was a second quicker than a nine 11 Carrera s And and, and to Ed, Lowe’s credit Ed went in the car and he found the GPS tracker.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 28m 10s):

And then we went to Home Depot and we bought like, lead plates and like aluminum duct tape in Fairday Cage. Yeah. We case to the little transponder. So they didn’t know we were at Laguna. don don’t know if it worked. They, but they were like, they were so mad. And then the, the kicker to the whole story is I was in, when the story went live, I was in, let’s say Spain or P Spain. I was with Camisa, who at the time was at Road and Track and I show ’em my phone. I’m like, we waited and he doesn’t even like look at me, just gets on his phone, just starts typing away. Rodent Trek gets the car. Two weeks after we had it, it weighed 3,800 pounds. Yeah. What did they take out of it? Door beams and airbags. I would guess I don know, how do you pull 200 pounds out of a leather lined spare tire? Probably doesn’t even have a spare tire. Right.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 28m 50s):

But it was like, you’re banned. No more Ferraris. You know? And, and, and Ferrari didn’t talk to MotorTrend Ferrari jokes on you. I’ve never had one. How was like 18 months of like, I think we drove, we went on a one launch, but it was was like, they put us on the last wave.

Sean P. Holman (1h 29m 3s):

It was miserable. The bad driver of the wave. How do,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 29m 5s):

How do they listen? Switch to questions? How do they get away with it? And, and B how does Ferrari you

Jonny Lieberman (1h 29m 8s):

Still need

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 29m 8s):

Beforehand? You do. Oh, that’s right. Okay.

Sean P. Holman (1h 29m 10s):

Yeah. That’s how you get the car. And how

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 29m 11s):

Does Ferrari still need press?

Jonny Lieberman (1h 29m 12s):

They don’t, they don’t need us. Why?

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 29m 14s):

Why do they do that? So we’re

Jonny Lieberman (1h 29m 15s):

Very aware of that. You know, I, they have PR people

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 29m 19s):

Go,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 29m 20s):

No. You know, I mean they, you know, they want, they

Sean P. Holman (1h 29m 23s):

Need their customers still be able to brag about it.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 29m 25s):

Yeah. You need, you need to have some record of the car. Like, you know, there’s a thing called a Aston Martin 1 7 7, 1 of $77 million car back in 2009, let’s say. Had this brilliant idea, like the car’s so special journalists can’t drive it. And so now no one really knows anything about ’em. Yeah. So it’s like the resale is like not high because nobody ever read a story growing up about, like, you read about the F 50, like this is the greatest car, the

Sean P. Holman (1h 29m 53s):

Greatest car ever. FF 50 was like, oh my God, you posters on our walls

Jonny Lieberman (1h 29m 57s):

And I’ve been an automotive journalist for 30 years. This is the best car I’ve ever driven. And guess what, that 12-year-old, well now he’s got a widget factory. Yeah, yeah. And he’s got $4 million burning a his pocket. Pocket. And he, you know, is he gonna buy a 1 7 7 or an F 50?

Sean P. Holman (1h 30m 12s):

So, can we talk about Tesla for a second? Yes. So, so MotorTrend has had a, a really close relationship with Elon. Had

Jonny Lieberman (1h 30m 20s):

Had

Sean P. Holman (1h 30m 21s):

Oh

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 30m 21s):

Really? It went sideways. Where that

Jonny Lieberman (1h 30m 23s):

Was just no relationship. Well,

Sean P. Holman (1h 30m 24s):

There was a point where like Ed Lowe at MotorTrend would text Elon about something about the car and he would send back a eggplant emoji. Yeah. Right. Like on, on Twitter back before he had it was X and whatever. Look,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 30m 36s):

I mean, I don, don don’t think I’m spilling any beans. Like when, when they were developing the model s because they’re, they were in Hawthorne testing at the Hawthorne airport, we would have guys go over and kind of drive it.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 30m 45s):

So MotorTrend is within five miles of that

Jonny Lieberman (1h 30m 47s):

Building? Three. Yeah, three.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 30m 47s):

Okay.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 30m 48s):

Yeah. So yeah, we were super close and then we got one, we named it our Car of the Year. and I was, I was, I, I always tell the story. It was the first, as far as we know, and it’s hard because, you know the history of MotorTrend, but as far as we know, it was the first unanimous vote for a car of the year since it used to be before Angus showed up. It used to be it had to be unanimous vote. But they would just keep ’em there for like 12 hours until, until, yeah. Somebody gave in

Sean P. Holman (1h 31m 11s):

Beat brow beating each other down.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 31m 13s):

But, and I, remember I was one of the 11 people that voted. 11 hands went up, you know, and I, and I and I remember asking the room and there were some real Veterany guys in there too. I said, has anyone here either, you know, professionally or personally called this thing vaporware. And 10 of the 11 hands went up. Yeah. The one that didn’t was Ed Low. And he was just like, yeah. My mom said, if you have nothing nice to say, like, don’t say anything. ’cause we just thought it was bs. Yeah. And the car was actually really, really good. But yes, so we, we used to be close. We are no longer close.

Sean P. Holman (1h 31m 46s):

Well, and so a couple things, they got rid of their PR department. So in like every single other car company, they literally have no PR department. So I can’t call and go, Hey, what are the specs on this vehicle? Can I drive a cyber truck? But they

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 31m 57s):

Clearly have brand ambassador or not brand ambassadors.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 31m 59s):

They’ll

Sean P. Holman (1h 31m 59s):

Call you and determine if you’re someone they wanna work with those things.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 32m 2s):

Yeah. They’re calling you and Marquez, Brownley and whoever else. Well,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 32m 4s):

Hang on. Well that guy left. So don don’t know who’s doing it now. Interesting. He left recently.

Sean P. Holman (1h 32m 8s):

So now, now there’s nothing. And when we got in to see Cyber Truck early, so it was Kim Reynolds, Mark Williams, edlo, myself and Christian sibo,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 32m 17s):

MotorTrend people. MotorTrend people.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 32m 18s):

All

Sean P. Holman (1h 32m 18s):

MotorTrend people. Yeah. I was the only non-motor trend person. ’cause I was at Four Wheeler for some

Jonny Lieberman (1h 32m 22s):

Weird reasons. Well, Mark Williams was, yeah, that’s true. Yeah. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (1h 32m 24s):

So They said, Hey, we’ve got this opportunity. You’re a truck guy, we think you should represent truck stuff at MotorTrend and let’s go. So that was fascinating and I’ve told you that story and kind of the background and all that kinda stuff. But I feel like after that it just, like nothing. Yeah. Like I, don Dunno if it’s like talking into a, well, or,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 32m 42s):

I mean, we had, like the first time we drove a cyber truck, Eric Tingwall, who’s our testing director, he texted me, he’s like, Hey, you have a big social media following, could you ask your fans? Yeah. We can’t get one to test. That’s how we got that one. Yeah. And then we tested the Cyber Beast. It was Kyle Connor from outta spec reviews lent us his, we, we nothing. We got nothing. Yeah. Like, and, but they, they did give like certain journalists, or not journalists, content creators, let’s be honest, content creators. They gave them, they gave them cyber trucks, but just three or four. So yeah, as far as I know, there’s no more relationship with Elon. The only one who really talked to him. Well, Angus did, but I don’t think Elon ever like had a personal relationship.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 33m 22s):

Yeah, ed did, did for a little while. and I think that’s, as far as I know, it is completely gone. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (1h 33m 27s):

Which is weird considering that they won Car of the Year a couple times. No,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 33m 30s):

Just the one that, that was, that was a big sticking point, was that we didn’t give it to Model X. Yeah. We didn’t give it in retrospect, model three. Maybe we should have given it to model three, but it was just, it’s one of those things where we had a real buggy one. Yeah. And the

Sean P. Holman (1h 33m 44s):

Early ones weren’t great.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 33m 46s):

Yeah. It was just, this one was just buggy and it was like, and we were just, and I and you know, I was a little freaked out by like the autopilot, which was like, you know, tried to put me in the dirt several times, like really aggressively. Like, you know. So I was like, I don’t think this should be our car of the year. It’s danger. Safety’s one of our criteria. Sure. and I fought. I fought pretty hard against it, you know, so a anyways, yeah. So as far as I know, there’s no relationship, you

Sean P. Holman (1h 34m 13s):

Know? So how does that make you feel with your a hundred dollars still safely tucked away at Tesla?

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 34m 17s):

Yeah. I mean the, the night that they did the debut and the glass broke and all that stuff, I threw down my a hundred bucks. So did this. Yeah, it’s still there. Yeah. And it’s still there. don don’t know what’s happening with that. They didn’t offer to return it. And I’m don don’t even know if it’s, I think it’s refundable. It’s

Jonny Lieberman (1h 34m 30s):

It’s refundable. Yeah. I was gonna do it. And then I think, I think it was Ed, we were talking about Ed on the show, but I think Ed was like, no, no. Keep it. Like, if you don’t, if you don’t want it, you could sell it to somebody for 200 bucks or something, you

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 34m 41s):

Know? Yeah. and I didn’t, my wife was like, it’s the ugliest thing. She, I’ve, she had like a, like a really adverse reaction to like, when I, when I saw her, when I, when I showed it to her, she’s like, that’s very visceral. I, she’s like, no, don’t. Like, I realize she’s like, sometimes you’re ironic talking to me. She’s like, I know you think it’s, it could be funny. It could be It’s for good, for the good for your podcast, blah, blah. She’s like, that’s bad for me. She’s like, don’t buy that. She’s like, I don’t like that at all.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 35m 7s):

It, it’s funny, I I wanna ask you this Sean in a second, but like, when I first saw it, I was like, wow. I was like, that’s amazing that they’re gonna do that. What, what was, what was your reaction?

Sean P. Holman (1h 35m 16s):

There’s a photo of all of us are MotorTrend sitting next, next to Franz, who’s the lead designer. Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 35m 21s):

Franz on the whole house.

Sean P. Holman (1h 35m 22s):

Yep. Yep. And Franz said, this is basically something I drew when I was in elementary school. And Elon said, let’s build a truck. And I’m like, can we build this? And he said, yes. And so it was one of those things where we walked into the Quo Hut design center there at the airport. And they had it, and it was on a turntable, or it was on a platform, I think above every, the floor. And then around were other competi competing vehicles and full-size line drawings, like engineering drawings on the wall, one-to-one scale of the trucks. And this thing was sitting there and we all were like, oh man, that, look at that. That’s cool. Hey, where’s the cyber truck? They’re like, yeah, that’s it. And we were like, I’m sorry, what?

Sean P. Holman (1h 36m 2s):

And honestly, the first time I saw it, I, I thought it was a joke. Like, I, there’s no way that that could be. That’s

Jonny Lieberman (1h 36m 8s):

Kind real. What I like about is how,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 36m 11s):

So I, and that’s why I bought into it too, because it’s so ridiculous.

Sean P. Holman (1h 36m 15s):

And I get that. It’s ugly, it’s polarizing, it’s whatever you wanna say. But there’s everybody who sees one. It has crazy road presence when it comes down the road. Oh. yeah. Yeah. It sable. Yeah. It looks like it came out of a video game. So kudos to them for like breaking the mold. And it was strong on, honestly, the build quality is pretty good. Like when You slam a door on those things, it’s like big

Jonny Lieberman (1h 36m 33s):

Driven

Sean P. Holman (1h 36m 33s):

It a big one. I’ve been in and out of it. I haven’t driven one yet.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 36m 36s):

So I’m, if I, if I may, yeah. I’ve driven one. It is neither as horrible or as awesome as everyone says. Right. It’s right in the middle, right down the middle. It, it’s a, it’s a luxurious vehicle. The interior’s nicer than other Teslas. Yeah. Much. The bill quality is much better than other Teslas. It rides incredibly well. ’cause it’s got huge Wheel base and big tires and air suspension and big tires. But it’s, it’s, it’s like, you know, again, compared to the Rivian, which is real similar. Yeah. It, I

Sean P. Holman (1h 37m 4s):

Feel like the Rivian has more soul and the cyber truck is emotionally cold, if that makes sense. and I, I walk, I did a a a reel where I was up at Unplugged. They’re like, Hey, we got a cyber truck. It was like right when they first came out, Oh. yeah, yeah, yeah. You wanna come up and just take some’s

Jonny Lieberman (1h 37m 16s):

Photos? That’s what I drove.

Sean P. Holman (1h 37m 16s):

Yeah. Yeah. So I, I walked by drinking Dr. Pepper and it was in the background and I put on my reel, like, oh, just out for a morning walk, you know, nothing to see here. And there’s the cyber truck. So like, blew up my Instagram. Right. It, it was funny, but I, yeah. I was more impressed with it in person than I thought it would be.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 37m 29s):

Yeah. But here’s my thing. So, so that’s our buddy Ben. Yep. Ben Schafer. So, you know, he, he had it and he’s, I don’t think he’s ever thought about a pickup truck before buying a cyber truck. Right. And so we were at his house. He’s like, it’s just, it’s so great. And like, and I’m like, and know, and I’m, and I had my Rivian and I’m just like, well, let me show you one thing. Yeah. and I, I had a water bottle. Yeah. and I, I rolled it against the back of the, the cab of the cyber truck.

Sean P. Holman (1h 37m 52s):

And you go, how are you gonna get it now?

Jonny Lieberman (1h 37m 53s):

I’m like, go get it. ’cause I’m not gonna get it. I’m not, I’m not crawling in there because it’s a six and six foot eight inch bed on your knees and we’re in our forties. Yeah. And then I was like, watch this. And the Rivian, like, I did the same thing and I reached in and grabbed it. I’m like, see

Sean P. Holman (1h 38m 6s):

Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 38m 6s):

That’s a big, you know. Yeah. It’s

Sean P. Holman (1h 38m 7s):

Just, well, and then the, you know, when Cyber Truck came out, it was actually 20 to 30% bigger than it is now. And one of the things, so yes, the,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 38m 15s):

The original was monstrous

Sean P. Holman (1h 38m 16s):

And big. It was ginormous. So Elon and I, we had this conversation, and I won’t talk about everything, but one of the things he asked for was feedback. Good or bad? Are we batshit crazy? Tell us what you know, should we do it? What are your thoughts? And so, I know Mark Williams and I, we sent them a novel. But one of the things I asked Elon, as I said, he was very proud that it was as wide as a raptor for stability. and I go, so do the doors. Are they Falcon doors? He goes, no, no, they’re regular. They don’t, they’re not scissor doors. No, no, no. They open. I go, how do you get in and out of it? And Elon looked at me and Elon’s interesting. when You meet him, the dude is thinking in 3D. It’s really a, it

Jonny Lieberman (1h 38m 53s):

Drives me crazy. It takes him 30 seconds to answer a question.

Sean P. Holman (1h 38m 56s):

’cause he is got other things going on. I’ve never, like he walks into a room, he’s

Jonny Lieberman (1h 38m 59s):

A or it’s a real pretentious move, or

Sean P. Holman (1h 39m 1s):

I get it, I get it. But, but there’s no denying he has charisma when he walks in a room, you know, he’s the guy. And when you’re having a conversation, he’s doing other things. He’s processing other things in the background while he is talking to you. And it’s freaking like odd. But it, you, you,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 39m 15s):

He’s like writing Gosling in what, what that the driver movie where like, it literally takes 30 seconds to, to respond. It’s really

Sean P. Holman (1h 39m 22s):

Weird. So, so I was talking to him and he goes, well, it says, why is the Raptor? I said, okay, the, the body of a raptors as wide as a regular F-150, it’s the track width that’s wide. What you guys did was you made the entire body as wide as the track width. So yes, it fits. You can’t open your doors, but he won’t be able to open your door. And Elon like sat there and thought for a second. And then he’s like, and then there people are scribbling notes down. And when he was on I think Jay Leno’s garage, he talked about how we scaled it down 20% or 30%, whatever it was. And I’m like, dude, that’s me. I

Jonny Lieberman (1h 39m 52s):

Didn’t get that right.

Sean P. Holman (1h 39m 53s):

But that was like one of the conversations he, because they even told us, we’re not truck experts, but we think we solved all The truck problems. And I’m like, seriously? You guys like, come on.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 39m 60s):

Well, so did they, did they build a truck for truck people? Did they build a truck for No, for

Jonny Lieberman (1h 40m 6s):

For Tesla things? Well, I, I mean, I would just say like real quick, like, man truck person is a, is a big, like, what does that mean? Look, if you wanna haul a lot of stuff, eh,

Sean P. Holman (1h 40m 17s):

It’s got a big bed.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 40m 18s):

You know, you don’t, maybe, you know, it’s really gotta, it’s big

Sean P. Holman (1h 40m 21s):

To me. It’s not a pickup truck, it’s a lifestyle vehicle. And it’s the same way, like the ridge line is to Honda people. Yeah. As the Tesla cyber truck is to Tesla people. Right. You wouldn’t, you’re not a traditional truck buyer, but you may need some truck utility. So you’re gonna stay within that brand and be, do something familiar. To me, that’s where it makes sense. Right. That’s the core of their market. Yeah. I

Jonny Lieberman (1h 40m 38s):

Again, it’s like assuming they turn on the, the lockers, all the off-road potentials there, it’s like, well, okay. It’s kind of like the rivian, you know, where like, it, it can do a lot of The truck stuff, you know? Yeah. And, you know, know you can off road and it’s, you know, whatever. It’s real quick and all that. Again, it, there, there’s nothing like the stuff that’s wrong with it is mostly ’cause it’s shaped like a triangle, you know? And it makes, it makes getting access to the bed really hard. Yeah. But You know what full-size trucks have that problem too. ’cause they’re so tall now. Tall. Yeah. You know, so it’s like they’ve trucks are just kind of in a weird spot in, in terms of using the bed. Like Yeah. In terms of hauling, we’ve never had,

Sean P. Holman (1h 41m 18s):

One of the reasons the Gladiator has the size of bed that it does is Mark Allen, who is the des head designer of Jeep for forever, he wanted a bed that when he walked up, he could palm the floor from the side. Perfect. Brilliant. That’s why you can brilliant. Easily access a gladiator. Whereas if you go on a super duty, same cab as an F-150, but the bedsides lower because The truck is so much higher to, to help you get in. And now Chevy and forward both have those side steps on the bed to kind of help you reach over.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 41m 43s):

And again, side steps are nice. Unless you gotta take something heavy out foot. Yeah. And

Sean P. Holman (1h 41m 45s):

Then you don’t have two feet.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 41m 48s):

So it’s, you know, look, and, and, and, but, but, you know, but the problem, like with, again, I’m gonna keep going back to Rivian, which I think is just a better electric vehicle. But like, you know, the, the air suspension drops. If you really have to get something heavy out, you can lower it. The cyber truck also has air suspension. You still can’t reach it because it’s a triangle. Yeah. Which it, it’s novel, but it’s, it’s, so again, it’s, it’s, it’s not horrible. It’s not super awesome.

Sean P. Holman (1h 42m 9s):

It’s just different.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 42m 10s):

Yeah. And it’s, it’s right in the middle. You

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 42m 12s):

Know, it’s funny that you don’t think that truck owners are monolithic. I tend to, I tend to see it the opposite way, but it probably,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 42m 19s):

Because as a truck owner, I,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 42m 21s):

I know, but I know, but you, you, I feel like you, you kind of break the mold, kind of like Honda regional line owners kind of break the mold. The The truck thing. I, it’s funny ’cause where I work, I see all truck buyers as gm, Ford, Ram, and then a little bit of Toyota. Yeah. A little bit of Nissan, you know, that type of thing. And they’re just, it’s, it’s the middle. It’s all the middle of the country from San Bernardino Alta to, to Eastern Florida or Western Florida. It’s like that’s, that’s The truck guy. Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 42m 45s):

But again, but it’s sort of like a, I mean, you said the cyber truck’s a lifestyle vehicle. The number of Raptor owners I know personally that are like, I’ve never gone off road. Well you

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 42m 55s):

But so, so I just saw the other day,

Sean P. Holman (1h 42m 57s):

Johnny and I had this whole,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 42m 58s):

The Raptor is the modern day 40. It’s so you, you 40 year, instead of buying a Porsche Right. You buy a Raptor.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 43m 3s):

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Totally. But it’s like, it’s like, you know, people are like, you know, oh, you’re not a truck guy. It’s like, well, I own a pickup truck. I go offroading with it. I haul garbage to the dump with it. Like, I, what do you want

Sean P. Holman (1h 43m 13s):

From me? Well, and you and I talked about this. ’cause we were in the vehicle on the Raptor R and the Tremor Drive. And we both think tremors the sweet spot, the F-150 lineup. That’s, that’s the best truck that you can get in the F-150 if you’re not looking for very specific use case.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 43m 24s):

Yeah. Look Raptor r like all day

Sean P. Holman (1h 43m 26s):

Bad. It’s

Jonny Lieberman (1h 43m 27s):

Amazing. Amazing. You’re talking about doing Rooster Tails. Everyone found we had like literal

Sean P. Holman (1h 43m 31s):

That was

Jonny Lieberman (1h 43m 32s):

Awesome. They were like, you have 10 minutes, like B children.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 43m 35s):

That’s pretty cool. The four does that. Well,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 43m 37s):

Yes, but then the same people Yeah. With the tremor, which is like such a great offroad

Sean P. Holman (1h 43m 43s):

Put on, let’s go on a dirt

Jonny Lieberman (1h 43m 44s):

Road. Put us on a dirt road. I mean, like, you coulda, you coulda, my 7-year-old,

Sean P. Holman (1h 43m 49s):

A two, A two Wheel drive exile would’ve been fine on that trail.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 43m 52s):

A civic would’ve made it. Yeah. You know, it was, it was so I was like,

Sean P. Holman (1h 43m 55s):

And they’re like, oh, halfway through there’s a mound of dirt. We’ll crawl up. You know, and you’re like, oh, hey. Yeah. But the reality is, is is that for most buyers now, the only thing that sucks about that is a loaded tremor is like $2,000 away from a base raptor. And the base raptor has a lot more equipment standard. And so you start getting really close and

Jonny Lieberman (1h 44m 14s):

You’re like, well, and then the other problem is the zero two exists.

Sean P. Holman (1h 44m 16s):

Yeah. The

Jonny Lieberman (1h 44m 17s):

Zero two and like, you know, damn, I like that truck. Yeah. It’s a great truck. I really like, again, Raptor R is, you know, it’s, it’s a jet ski. It’s just, it’s all fun on

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 44m 26s):

All. So someone, you’ve got your rivian and someone hands you a blank check and says you’re gonna buy an internal combustion engine powered truck, whatever you wanna buy. You can’t, it

Jonny Lieberman (1h 44m 36s):

Can’t be electric truck. I, boy that’s, that’s a good question. It

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 44m 39s):

Could be gas or diesel would be it,

Sean P. Holman (1h 44m 41s):

It would be, it would be a street or off road.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 44m 42s):

It would be a 0 2, 1500. I haven’t, I haven’t driven the hd. The, my only hesitation is like the, the 1500 tremor and not the heavy duty tremor. I really do like that 1500 tremor. And it is better on, but you know, I, I think I take a zero two, I think I take a gas zero two. I don’t, I, I hate towing. I’m not a tow. I have nothing to tow. So it, I, I, gas engine’s fine for me. I like the GMV eight and I just, I went offroading in the zero two by myself and like just had so much fun. Like it was, I’m like, I I think I texted you. I was like, this thing’s incredible. Yeah. Like, it’s just such a great truck.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 45m 22s):

So maybe, maybe ZR two that said, I like the TRXA lot too. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (1h 45m 27s):

You know. Well, I’ll be interested. I haven’t driven an RHO yet with the new hurricane, so I’d love to drive that. Yeah. So being lighter in the front end and all that with the same chassis, with the new updated tuning, I think that could be really good. And honestly, I still like the seven three superduty tremor. I mean that for, for doing heavy stuff and still having off-road capability.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 45m 44s):

Yeah. But it’s such a clunker offroad. It’s so, such a cl it’s just so heavy. Yeah. But you know, the other thing, you know, we, we talked about briefly was, you know, we were on the, the the 2024 Raptor R refresh. But we did a, a thing with the, with the Raptor r the, you know, 2023 and the TRX and like, yeah, I guess Raptor R maybe sounds better or something. But I kind of like the, I just like the way I don know

Sean P. Holman (1h 46m 10s):

I

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 46m 10s):

You back and I way you were disappointed Holman that the, that it didn’t sound as good. Well,

Sean P. Holman (1h 46m 14s):

So no, I thought the rap rap

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 46m 16s):

R was just kind

Sean P. Holman (1h 46m 17s):

Of thought the Raptor R was docile was muted until you got into it. Oh,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 46m 20s):

Well, you know, by the way, you weren’t, you weren’t there, you left. But at dinner, they, I I, some of the engineers They said, yeah, there’s a guy named Steve and Steve will not let any supercharger wine through. It’s wrong. Steve’s the guy. So, and they finally let, they let like 10% in with a 24.

Sean P. Holman (1h 46m 36s):

So do you remember the Chrysler crossfire? Yes. And that was built on the Mercedes SLK that had the compressor six cylinder. Yes. It was the K. And so when You get into the, I can’t, I think it was the Crossfire or the, or the CLK or SLK.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 46m 51s):

Well it was the CLK. No, it was the SLK. It became the CLK.

Sean P. Holman (1h 46m 55s):

Okay. So when You got into it, the best thing about it was a V six that was supercharged. There was no supercharge wine at all. and I asked ’em about it. I go, this is a performance car. And they go, the Germans don’t, like, you don’t want you to hear the supercharge kills. and I’m like, are

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 47m 7s):

What? I drive an, I drive an SL 55, an oh seven SL 55 and, and I. But I can’t hear the fricking blower. And by the way, it’s quite true. This tri me out. Like they design their own blower.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 47m 18s):

What a great car,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 47m 18s):

By the way. Thank you.

Sean P. Holman (1h 47m 19s):

Well, not his, but all the

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 47m 20s):

Rest of it, dude, by the way, my chair, he doesn’t like it creeks. It’s got some

Sean P. Holman (1h 47m 23s):

Creeks. It’s the Mercedes leather and Interior Creek that they all have. It does all

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 47m 26s):

That stuff. But dude, it is it it’s a good car though. I’m, I’m giving a crap. Great.

Sean P. Holman (1h 47m 29s):

It’s,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 47m 30s):

I drove a 1927 W oh six Wow. Mercedes. And so that’s the, I think it’s a 6.8 liter, straight six with a supercharger. And the supercharger, when You get to the kick down point of the pedal that clutches it in and they call it, I forget you say it in German, but the elephant. ’cause it makes the most

Sean P. Holman (1h 47m 50s):

The literal, most

Jonny Lieberman (1h 47m 51s):

Insane noise. It is, it is. Because it’s such a big supercharger and it’s, and it’s not going all that fast by supercharger standards. Yeah. But like, oh my God, does that make a weird noise?

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 48m 2s):

I was stunned to find out kooky. Like I, I, when I first got the car, I’m like, I wonder who, who’s, it’s not a Magnus hand. It’s not, you know, one of the American brands. Like who and I dug as far as I could. And it’s all Mercedes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s all them. It’s a MG. Yeah. It’s, it was, I was, I was like, how much did this cost to develop?

Jonny Lieberman (1h 48m 18s):

It’s a MG. That’s what we did. All of it. It

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 48m 20s):

Is incredible.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 48m 21s):

Yeah. That’s such, that’s such a That’s a beautiful car too. Yeah.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 48m 25s):

And I may have straight Yeah. Hey,

Sean P. Holman (1h 48m 27s):

You should bleep that out. Yeah,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 48m 29s):

Yeah,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 48m 29s):

Yeah. So

Sean P. Holman (1h 48m 29s):

It sounds good. Where you live

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 48m 30s):

Sounds, sounds really good. Is fine. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (1h 48m 32s):

Yeah. In Mexico,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 48m 34s):

Yeah. Oh. yeah.

Sean P. Holman (1h 48m 35s):

I mean, you definitely hear when it, I’ll be in the shed and he’ll pull up and I’m like, oh, Jay’s here. What

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 48m 39s):

Do you think the future is, Johnny? Of full-size pickups in electrification?

Jonny Lieberman (1h 48m 46s):

Oh, it, they’re all going electric. I mean, look, the industry’s going electric. Like Yeah, it’s gonna, it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be hard to sell pickup trucks in Nebraska that are EVs, but like, it’s just, there’s, there’s every advantage to ev you know,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 49m 0s):

At what point though. But you said you, you admitted you’re not hip to towing. ’cause you don’t have a boat, you don’t have a travel trailer or whatever. Yeah. You’re not towing hay. We’ve seen all this stuff from TFL truck and everybody else who are doing these gauntlet things, towing trailers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it absolutely murders. Yeah. The, the distance you can travel when you’re towing. Yeah. So,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 49m 20s):

But You know what, here’s the thing. Battery technology will get better.

Sean P. Holman (1h 49m 24s):

Sure. Well, and I tend to think that it’s not gonna be fully ev I think it’ll be electrification. I think there’ll be heavy hybrid trucks will probably be hybrids. Hybrid.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 49m 30s):

Hybrid. I don’t like plugin hybrids for a couple reasons. Now, again, you know, if it’s talking about the new Ram charger thing, I gotta drive it first. Yeah. But like, my, my, my thing with plugin hybrids and I wrote an article, which they, and I, they changed the title too.

Sean P. Holman (1h 49m 43s):

And I read your article because I believe I have the opposite, the

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 49m 46s):

Opposite view. So that’s a, a good, and I was gonna say, I’m just, I was disappointed so far in this episode because I haven’t disagreed with anything he said to tonight.

Sean P. Holman (1h 49m 53s):

No, he is a very reasonable guy.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 49m 55s):

So I, I just, my, my look, I, I drove the, the new Toyota Prius Prime and as a Toyota owner, and I’m just kidding. So I drove the new Prius Prime, that’s the plugin hybrid one. and I. and I was like, God, this thing’s great until the battery went dead after three, six miles and a two liter Atkinson cycle CVT powertrain kicked on. And I’m like, this absolutely sucks. It sucks. That’s why I don’t like Priuses. Yeah. So I feel you get the worst of both worlds. I feel Occam’s Razor tells us. And the other thing I would say,

Sean P. Holman (1h 50m 18s):

And I feel, you get the best of both worlds because like in the case of our four by E my wife’s commute is 10 miles and she has 25 miles on charge. So she can be on ev for her short trips and then get, we can go to Colorado tomorrow if we want to.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 50m 31s):

Yeah, yeah. But I could go to Colorado, you know, like, trust me, I got, I, you can go to Colorado in a, in a, in a rivian just, or whatever. Ev just, the other thing I would say is plugin hybrids are supposed to be this bridge technology to get us from internal combustion to electric. Well, guess what? EVs are outselling plugin hybrids already. So it’s like, if, if the end of the bridge is more popular than the bridge, what the, you need the bridge for now again, is is, you know, totally legit. Like, it, it’s towing kind of sucks for a lot of reasons in ev but you talk to people that like move their horses around. Boy nothing’s better than like a rivian for that. There’s no transmission. You have instant torque.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 51m 11s):

The animals love it. They’re not, as long as

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 51m 12s):

You’re going short distances,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 51m 14s):

Well, what’s short? A hundred miles. You can do a hundred miles easy You know what I mean? It’s a, it is a vehicle with a 300 mile range. Even if you cut it in half,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 51m 20s):

Could, could you do a hundred miles towing? I mean, uphill terrain with, with like Clydesdales. Yes.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 51m 26s):

Okay. Yeah. ’cause it can tow 11,000 pounds. It’s mostly an arrow. It’s not the weight, it’s the arrow effect. You know, and, and by the way, you know this, I mean, diesel trucks get their range cut in half too, and they tow Sure. You know, however, infrastructure, the infrastructure’s

Sean P. Holman (1h 51m 41s):

A little easier. Right.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 51m 42s):

And, and, and like, you know, here’s the other thing like Tesla, which is crazy to me. Like, you know, the cyber truck, well you gotta nose it in to charge it. You can’t do a pull through.

Sean P. Holman (1h 51m 51s):

Well that’s what don don’t understand is they want to sell EVs to truck people, but They don’t have pull through chargers. It’s insane. So, so when You have a a trailer, I have never seen a pull through charger.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 52m 0s):

Yeah. The, the closest would be like, like I think like some of the the Rivian adventure networks. A couple of ’em. Yeah. But no, you’re a hundred. Look, the towing is the most legit thing criticism you can make about EV truck. Yeah. But you know, look, internal combustion we’ve had 140 years. Right. You know, it’s, it’s a mature advanced technology. Real modern software defined electric vehicles we’re in like the, you know, top of the first, bottom of the second. I mean, You know what bottom of the first top trying to make a sports metaphor failing bad.

Sean P. Holman (1h 52m 33s):

Well done. Yeah. Bottom

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 52m 35s):

Second.

Sean P. Holman (1h 52m 35s):

I got you.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 52m 36s):

Not even, we’re in the very beginning of that ball score. It’s infancy where

Sean P. Holman (1h 52m 40s):

The thing is gonna go over the line and score

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 52m 42s):

The point. So,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 52m 42s):

So, so, you know, everyone talks about

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 52m 44s):

Solitary matters. Batteries, next time only badminton analogies please. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (1h 52m 48s):

Pickleball.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 52m 48s):

Yeah. So, so you know, everyone talks about solid state batteries. Okay. What does that actually mean? It means that with the current size footprint of a battery, you would double the energy density. So in other words, if I could go 300 miles tomorrow, I could go 600. But

Sean P. Holman (1h 53m 4s):

You double the

Jonny Lieberman (1h 53m 5s):

Weight. No,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 53m 6s):

No, no. He’s saying solid state.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 53m 8s):

Solid

Sean P. Holman (1h 53m 8s):

State. No, I understand footprint, but is it more dense so it weighs more is what I’m asking.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 53m 11s):

No, no, no. It wouldn’t double the weight in, in fact, you could cut the battery weight in half and still go 300 miles. Right. So the same by having it the same weight battery.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 53m 21s):

I agree that once the batteries weigh the same as a full tank of diesel, then it’s game, game over. Right.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 53m 25s):

Well look, they, you know, who knows what the future holds. I mean like, you know, it was impossible. It was lead acid batteries forever until recently. You know what I mean? I mean, even

Sean P. Holman (1h 53m 34s):

18 hundreds had lead acid batteries. Right.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 53m 36s):

Ja, Jalen said the best thing was, you know, in 1906, a third of the car sold in America were steam. A third were electric and the third were, were gas. Gas. You would’ve if you couldn’t have made a bet, you know, just turned out, hey You know what, like, you know, there’s a lot of profit and you know, shuffling oil around. Yeah. And, you know, is is relatively easy. But you know, and, and it, you know, it’s just, I just, you know, it, it’s, I’m blanking on the guy’s name. French guy in 1950s, French philosopher. He, he was, he was talking about, you know, rebuilding France after the second World war and he brings up the Citron ds. Right. And his point was that, you know, back when, you know, churches were really intricate and pretty and all that, the best mines were building churches.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 54m 23s):

And then fast forward to the 1950s, the best mines in France are building the Citron ds. Well, today the best mines are not developing internal combustion engines. Sure. They’re software people. And you know, like, this is, this is Jim Farley’s point. You know, he hired Doug Field. Well, who’s Doug Field? Well, Doug Field was the chief engineer on this. This is an iPhone. Yep. Okay. Then he was the chief engineer on the Tesla model three. Okay. Then he went back to Apple for the aborted car they’re trying to build. But now he’s at Ford. You know, so you have like one of the smartest human beings on earth who’s running Fords electric vehicles. They’re gonna get really good. They’re gonna get really good. We’re we’re early days. Now I, I almost got kicked off the trip before we left because I’m like, obviously this is vaporware.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 55m 9s):

Yeah. This is another biting and we’re all gonna the

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (1h 55m 13s):

And I remember you Whoa Whoa You were saying that about the Rivian before

Sean P. Holman (1h 55m 15s):

We drove it before the trial. Because

Jonny Lieberman (1h 55m 16s):

I was like, ’cause we had a lot of, there’s

Sean P. Holman (1h 55m 18s):

No, we had months of meetings and planning. It

Jonny Lieberman (1h 55m 21s):

Was so much

Sean P. Holman (1h 55m 22s):

Nonsense. They were literally were plopping in charging stations where they didn’t exist to basically be there for this trip and then be left behind. Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 55m 28s):

We were putting in home chargers essentially at hotels. Motel,

Sean P. Holman (1h 55m 32s):

Motel

Jonny Lieberman (1h 55m 32s):

Sixes. Yeah. In, in, in Kentucky or wherever, Oklahoma. Just because, you know, we’d go 200 miles a day in dirt and then we’d plug in when we got to the motel. Wake up with a fully charged battery. But it, but it was, I just didn’t, for a lot of reasons. I remember sea ball was, he’s like, you want off? You’re off. Yeah. and I was like, nah, I kind of wanna do this. It sounds

Sean P. Holman (1h 55m 49s):

Like fun. Well meanwhile they’re like, Hey, nobody’s really comfortable about driving black Bear Pass. Are you? Do you wanna be? I’m like, yeah, I’m in. Because I wanted to experience, I wanted to, I wanted to have that frame of reference. If I’m gonna be a journalist and talk about it. If

5 (1h 56m 2s):

I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die in a flaming ball of lithium ion batteries. We’ll

Jonny Lieberman (1h 56m 6s):

Catch on

Sean P. Holman (1h 56m 6s):

Fire catch. Funny, funny you say that though, because one of the issues with a battery vehicle is on the rivian at that point. and I think they have break hold now when you’re on the switchbacks of Black Bear Oh. yeah. Switching between reverse and forward, it completely decouples the drive train.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 56m 21s):

So they, they did fix that after our drive, so Yeah. We convinced them. There’s a lot of things we didn’t convince them, but

Sean P. Holman (1h 56m 25s):

That was one. Yeah, that was one of ’em. Because what would happen is you’d have to do the switchback where you’d have to do a 15 point turn and it would completely decouple. So if your foot wasn’t on the brake, you

5 (1h 56m 34s):

You off and die. You could

Sean P. Holman (1h 56m 35s):

Right off, off the edge of the

Jonny Lieberman (1h 56m 36s):

Cliff. Yeah. A lot of left. Yeah. We, we ran into that a lot. We, that was, I remember that was we, we made two criticisms metal roof, which they still haven’t done. Yeah. And was it

Sean P. Holman (1h 56m 45s):

Composite? No, it’s glass. Glass

Jonny Lieberman (1h 56m 47s):

Oh. yeah. Dark course. So we’re sitting in, okay, this is funny. So we,

Sean P. Holman (1h 56m 49s):

It doesn’t open, it’s just a dark glass,

Jonny Lieberman (1h 56m 51s):

Huge piece of glass. But, so we were in Georgia and it was hot. We were, I think we, we were in August maybe. Yeah. And like the a a I think they’ve made it better. I know they, they’ve updated, made it better. But like, we’re like, I’m like guys and they’re like, the engineers are in the back. They’re like, oh, it’s fine. Yeah. And I’m like, it’s not fine. Anyways, we got to Mississippi, it was 106. It was like August, Mississippi, a

Sean P. Holman (1h 57m 12s):

Hundred percent humidity.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 57m 13s):

And, and and, and they’re still in the back and they’re like, they’re so miserable. You’re

Sean P. Holman (1h 57m 18s):

Not fine, are

Jonny Lieberman (1h 57m 18s):

You? And yeah, they’re like, okay. But do you remember Shaheen? Yeah. The PR

Sean P. Holman (1h 57m 22s):

Guy. Yeah. He’s over at Scout now. Scout. He’s

Jonny Lieberman (1h 57m 24s):

At Scout. I, I feel a hundred percent vindicated. ’cause he was the one pushing back. He’s like, you don’t understand Ev he’s, he has a software background. Yeah. He was also at Tesla Bay. He is like, people want glass roofs. So anyways, I I love glass

Sean P. Holman (1h 57m 35s):

Roots, which I don’t it because body integrity isn’t as good. Cut a big hole in the metal and then eventually Offroading you’ll get creeks and rattles and I.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 57m 42s):

I don’t care about that. I care about, it’s like, here, look at this hot. Okay. This was, today was probably 80 degrees at my house. One

5 (1h 57m 50s):

17.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 57m 51s):

One 17. And by the way, my roof is tinted as dark as the guys would tint it. ’cause They said if it went black, it might crack the glass. Anyhow, I get, I’m at a car show, I see Shaheen. He goes, Hey, I, because he got the, he was at Rivian. He got the, he got the updates a week earlier and there’s some cool update he wanted to show me. And so I jump in his truck, big giant foil thing. and I was like, aha. He’s like, you, you can’t tell anyone. You can’t tell anyone. So I felt very vate. Yeah. But the other thing we said to change was that, you

Sean P. Holman (1h 58m 15s):

Know, and then for me it was, I I know they got rid of tank turn. Right. that was something that they had talked about. Yeah. ’cause they didn’t want people to like pirouette off a cliff

Jonny Lieberman (1h 58m 21s):

Somehow Mercedes is like,

Sean P. Holman (1h 58m 23s):

Yeah, we’re in your tank turn. But, but here’s what I thought. Yeah. They missed the boat. I thought. So there’s, there’s two things. One is they’re unique in the marketplace ’cause they have a quad motor. So if you look at a Lightning, you look at a a a GM ultium platform, which is a three motor. The

Jonny Lieberman (1h 58m 38s):

Mercedes is quad. That’s the only one. Yeah. Yeah. So

Sean P. Holman (1h 58m 40s):

The uniqueness about that is with air suspension, you could, you know, or active suspension. If you could pull a Wheel up and spin the tires one at a time to clear the tread, you wouldn’t get packed in with mud. And then the other thing that I thought that they didn’t, they didn’t recognize. I said, you know, tank turn is this gimmicky thing, but if you’re stuck in mud ruts, why couldn’t you use tank turn like this sideways to just pop you outta the ruts?

Jonny Lieberman (1h 59m 2s):

Or, or they missed a lot. I mean Mercedes has, they call it the G turn I believe. And it’s what the land cruisers have had where they break the inside Wheel. Yeah. Yeah. Well imagine just spinning the left wheels backwards and the right wheels forward

Sean P. Holman (1h 59m 14s):

And you spin turn inside your, inside your, yeah. You do a

Jonny Lieberman (1h 59m 17s):

Foot blow tank turn. Yeah. The Ford has it now with the locked inside Wheel. But like, so that’s Mercedes has G turn. So you, you can do these instead of having to do a 15 point turn on black bear, it just spins in place. Wow. And it’s unlimited. What you can, like, I, I, I told the story a thousand times, but I got my truck, there’s a, there’s a watch site called Ho Dinky. I’m friends with a bunch of guys that I’m in the watches, but I wrote an article for them anyways. They go, Hey, we’re going out to El Mirage. Do I like bed? Would you bring your rivian? We want to get some, some video of it. and I go, oh that sounds like fun. Cool. And they brought a Range Rover. So I go out in the Range Rover first 550, whatever it is. Horsepower, you know, it’s the BM BMW motor 527 horsepower, twin turbo Range Rover.

Jonny Lieberman (1h 59m 57s):

It’s okay. Rivian. I’ve never felt, I’ve spent a lot of time on dry lake beds. I’ve never felt anything as in control. Like literally 80 mile an hour drifts so close to the camera.

Sean P. Holman (2h 0m 7s):

Rivian suspension’s really amazing. Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 0m 9s):

And, and, and so close to the camera that the camera guys are going back, they can’t believe it. Right. I happen to be on a call the next day with six rivian engineers and I’m like, why was it so good? And they go, it’s Quad motors is the reason they go, because we send X amount of electricity to the motor. They

Sean P. Holman (2h 0m 25s):

Can overdrive one side. Right. No,

Jonny Lieberman (2h 0m 27s):

But not only that, they, they, they send X amount of electricity to the motor, each motor. And based on the amount of rotation they get, they know if they’re on asphalt grass, sand, snow. Oh, they’re looking a slip. Oh, interesting. Mud, they, they lit The truck lit until it gets past 15 degrees of ya. It literally knows the surface it’s on. It knows. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (2h 0m 45s):

Crazy. That’s amazing.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 0m 46s):

Yeah. And that’s what you get with four Motors. Yeah. You know, so it’s just like, oh my God. So the

Sean P. Holman (2h 0m 50s):

Other thing I noticed that I think has been altered too is on the Rivian, they had two modes. One was Rally and one was Drift. They still have those and Rally over drove the rear wheels only. Right. And Drift, I can’t remember if it was one side, but I felt like Rally was way easier to drift than Drift mode was. Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 1m 6s):

I remember liking Rally more. don don’t. Yeah. I remember, remember we were in that weird engineering mode where had like 36 parameters, so they hadn’t finished anything yet. Yeah. So yeah. I I I just, I think they’ve, they’ve improved that. And also since I’ve owned The truck, they’re constantly updating the suspension and the mode and

Sean P. Holman (2h 1m 22s):

Everything. Yeah. And you’re getting new, basically you’re getting a new vehicle every time they do it. It’s almost like your iPhone being updated with new features overnight. Yeah. You wake up

Jonny Lieberman (2h 1m 29s):

And like Oh. yeah. And and I mean there’s, they’re so good that the Volkswagen group just gave $5 billion for their software, which we

Sean P. Holman (2h 1m 35s):

Talked about in the last episode.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 1m 36s):

Yeah. Yeah. But that’s how good their software is. And it’s like, you know, and I tell people like, you know, I, when I bought The truck, ’cause I have the Off-Road tires, it, I, I, you know, I went to bed one night, I had 270 miles of range. I woke up the next day, 285, just from a software tweak, didn’t have camp mode. Now it has camp mode, didn’t have pet mode. Now it has pet mode. It’s just, it’s it is endless. It is. The

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 1m 54s):

Gift keeps on giving.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 1m 55s):

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s, and it’s great. And now we’re gonna get about to get the new update where they’ve added in. If you, if you turn on the blinker, it’ll pop up a camera view on the screen so you can see your blind

Sean P. Holman (2h 2m 6s):

Spot. It’s kind of old Hondas on the, the right camera. Hondas

Jonny Lieberman (2h 2m 8s):

Honda do that. But hey, they’re just at, imagine you bought the cranes and

Sean P. Holman (2h 2m 12s):

Now you

Jonny Lieberman (2h 2m 12s):

Have it. Yeah, they

Sean P. Holman (2h 2m 12s):

Have it.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 2m 13s):

I’ve got

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 2m 13s):

A hack with the taser that’ll do that on my t rx. Do you? Yeah. It’s a hack that’ll do it. Yeah. It’s kind of cool.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 2m 17s):

Awesome. Yeah. And, and but again, like I was saying with, with the, the, the load leveling, you know, they, because when You put weight in the vehicle, it, you know, has sensors it knows it went down. Yeah. So now it can automatically that’s coming in the next update. Like that’s,

Sean P. Holman (2h 2m 31s):

Wow. Well I, I’m super interested. So obviously one of our friends left General Motors and is over at Rivian PR now. and I reached out to him and I’m like, Hey, I’m off the list and I’ve got this off road magazine that I do. Sh we should talk. So he’s like, oh man, we we’re just updating inter media list now we’re gonna get you on it and all that stuff. Nice. Yeah. So I’m hoping I get a chance to, to drive the new truck. ’cause I haven’t driven to Rivian since we did Sarah Gordo, which was after our Transamerica trip,

Jonny Lieberman (2h 2m 57s):

So, right. Yeah. And, and, and the new trucks are insane. I mean, look and I am sure you talked about this, but like going from 17 to seven ECUs removing 1.6 miles of wiring obviously is a win. And when I I, don know if you picked up on this, but, so the, the cyber beast was three motors makes 845 horsepower. The Rivian tri motor eight 50, the Model X plaid 1020 horsepower. The new Quad 1025.

Sean P. Holman (2h 3m 21s):

2025. I love it.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 3m 22s):

Yes,

Sean P. Holman (2h 3m 22s):

I know I know. it doesn’t matter what what the medium is, but, but horsepower wars are always good. Always. That’s,

Jonny Lieberman (2h 3m 29s):

That’s why heavy duty trucks are the greatest thing. Well

Sean P. Holman (2h 3m 31s):

Here’s the thing.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 3m 31s):

Oh, you make 900 pound feet

Sean P. Holman (2h 3m 33s):

Of torque dork. So here’s the thing that I’m like, you know, I, I said this about Hummer. Mm. I think that’s a show piece. It’s not really a serious ev vehicle other than like a tech show piece, right? Like, I don’t know that that vehicle

Jonny Lieberman (2h 3m 44s):

Have you got to like goof off in one?

Sean P. Holman (2h 3m 46s):

Oh they’re fun. Yeah. no party party tricks left and right. It’s funny, again, I think it’s a

Jonny Lieberman (2h 3m 50s):

Showcase. Yeah, yeah. It’s

Sean P. Holman (2h 3m 52s):

Exactly to me it’s like, you know, Hummer got in trouble back in the, you know, when, in the nineties or early two thousands, whatever, when

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 3m 58s):

The dealerships were getting lit on

Jonny Lieberman (2h 3m 59s):

Fire. No, no,

Sean P. Holman (2h 4m 0s):

No. They got in trouble because sentiment in the marketplace changed. They’re like brash in your face American, no apologies. Gas was cheap. And all of a sudden the economy tanks and they’re like, Whoa, Whoa, suspicious consumption. Oh. yeah, here you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But they’re gonna get in the same thing. Once electron efficiency becomes a thing and people understand kilowatt per mile. Sure. And they go, oh, the Hummer’s 1.2 and the rivian is 4.0 or 3.7. Well

Jonny Lieberman (2h 4m 21s):

At best case, Rivian is like 2.7. But I will just say that even making whatever the Hummer does is still more efficient than a, the Prius interesting. Because gasoline engines,

Sean P. Holman (2h 4m 33s):

Although that that Prius looks pretty nice, it does look

Jonny Lieberman (2h 4m 34s):

Nice, but gasoline engines just aren’t efficient and EVs are inherently efficient. But, but that, but that big battery, it is paying dividends with, with the Silverado. And again, I haven’t driven one I don dunno much about it. I, I’ve watched this guy cl O’Connor on outta spec reviews, but like you could tow really far with an EV suddenly ’cause it’s got a massive, massive battery.

Sean P. Holman (2h 4m 51s):

But you also get the point of diminishing returns ’cause the weight and efficiency and unlike a gas tank that gets lighter as you use it, electrons don’t weigh anything. Right. Right. So you’re always pulling around that mass. So I mean, that’s good and bad. So the good side of it is it’s a great tow rig in the sense of stability, but you’re also not getting more efficient as you’re going either. So well,

Jonny Lieberman (2h 5m 8s):

But I’m a tank of diesel. I would eight,

Sean P. Holman (2h 5m 10s):

Eight pounds a gallon times 40 or whatever.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 5m 13s):

Usually

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 5m 13s):

They’re the,

Jonny Lieberman (2h 5m 14s):

It’s like 250 pounds. It’s like taking me out in their mid thirties, not pounds, but it’s not, you know, it’s not that much. But no, it’s, it’s real heavy. It is real heavy. And that, you know, but again, that, I assume what I hear right now is like in a laboratory, you can make a solid state battery work the second you try to put it into production. There’s some manufacturing flaw. There’s some wafer, thin cathode that shatters when You manufacture it in a lab by itself. Fine. And, and we’ll figure it out. and I talked to a, a real expert. This, this dude, NASA hired him to do the batteries on a venous rover where your temperature spread is minus 900 or minus, sorry, minus 200 to plus 900. Yeah. And so he had to come up with three different batteries that work.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 5m 56s):

But anyway, he said by 2020 8, 29, he believes you’ll see solid state batteries hit the market. But even the new gwa, you know, it’s, I forget the size, 126 kilowatt hour battery, probably gonna be EP rated 260 miles silently. Mercedes put out a press release and said, by the way, in 18 months, we’ll have a new battery chemistry where we’re gonna replace the graphite cathode with a silicon cathode increase range by 20%.

Sean P. Holman (2h 6m 22s):

I mean, that’s huge. Yeah. Didn’t

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 6m 23s):

Porsche just do something like that? Massive

Jonny Lieberman (2h 6m 25s):

With the tycon? Yeah. Whole new battery chemistry. And so not only did they effectively add a hundred more miles of range to the same size battery, but it, it’s Lightning fast charging. Like it can, like, like this guy Kyle, by the way, if you wanna anything about it, that’s 800

Sean P. Holman (2h 6m 39s):

Volt architecture or

Jonny Lieberman (2h 6m 40s):

400, it’s 800 volt architecture. But, but it can, it can take in 300 kilowatts. Like he has his, he has his video in Germany. He’s on a big charger and it’s pulling over 300 kilowatts. That’s a lot the whole time. Yeah. It’s just like,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 6m 52s):

And he’s causing a, a brown out in the city.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 6m 56s):

I No,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 6m 56s):

It’s just, it’s just

Sean P. Holman (2h 6m 58s):

No, but the diesel engine behind it, right. Have that wall

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 7m 0s):

Next door. I have so many more questions.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 7m 2s):

There’s still more efficient.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 7m 4s):

So what happens? This is the, what happens when, in 10 years? Yeah. Well, I guess will the adoption of EVs outpace the ability to supply the electricity to the homes?

Jonny Lieberman (2h 7m 17s):

Probably not. And, and here’s, here’s the other thing that’s interesting, right? Most EV owners charge at night. Well, we have a surplus of energy at night, right.

Sean P. Holman (2h 7m 25s):

Especially with batteries. Yeah. With house

Jonny Lieberman (2h 7m 28s):

Batteries. Yeah. But we, we, but just power the way power, they never turn off a power plant. ‘cause it’s a nightmare to get it started again. So they know that between, you know, here in, in California, Southern California between four and 9:00 PM Oh boy. Yeah. It’s real hot. Gotta run the ac gotta wash the kids’ clothes. Gotta by the way, dishwasher,

Sean P. Holman (2h 7m 44s):

By the way, it’s 61 kilowatt hours or a cents a kilowatt hour here at my house between the hours of four and 9:00 PM Yeah. And then it drops. That’s freaking expect then it’s 25. Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 7m 52s):

Right. So you’re charging at night, you know, the last I heard,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 7m 56s):

But what happens with Johnny when every house, so, so on holman’s block is all charging at

Jonny Lieberman (2h 8m 1s):

2:00 AM Okay. So basically there’s a difference between the residential and the commercial grid. So 20% of the power in California is residential, 80% is for commercial use. If everybody tomorrow switched to EV on the commercial grid side, you’d have to increase that capacity by 27%. Only 27% they budgeted, they’re increasing the size of the commercial. Not the, not the, I’m sorry, of the, of the residential by 2% a year, which will be enough. The other thing is, and it’s so, it’s so hard to explain this, we’re, we’re on the cusp of what’s called intelligent charging. So imagine this, it’s four o’clock early September to 110 degrees outside.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 8m 44s):

And instead of saying, Hey, don’t charge your cars, don’t run your washing machines trying plug in your EVs. Yeah. And we’re gonna pull energy outta your batteries. So, and we’ll, we’ll put it back in at 9:00 PM

Sean P. Holman (2h 8m 56s):

So, so they’re calling this virtual power plants of VPP. Yeah. So I’m actually, I’m actually working with a solar company right now to look at my house. We looked at a 7.2 kilowatt system, go bigger, which is, which is 123% of my current usage. Right. Still

Jonny Lieberman (2h 9m 10s):

Go bigger.

Sean P. Holman (2h 9m 10s):

Bigger. I understand. and I, I’d like to get to 7.8 because that’s my upper roof. And 15, that

Jonny Lieberman (2h 9m 16s):

Gives us

Sean P. Holman (2h 9m 17s):

15, 12,000,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 9m 18s):

I think you say. Because you know,

Jonny Lieberman (2h 9m 19s):

I I I got seven point some odd installed and I, boy, I would’ve liked more. So,

Sean P. Holman (2h 9m 23s):

So that being said, the big push right now with NIM three, which is the, the current standard with the utility is they’re rewarding customers who do batteries like Tesla, power walls and things like that. The reason for that is with virtual power plant, to Johnny’s point, they’re talking about intelligent charging where they pull it outta your car. They don’t wanna pull it outta your car because they don’t want, even though it’s partitioned and it’ll only be a certain amount. And if everybody took 5% outta their battery pack, then you could solve that brownout issue. But they don’t wanna leave people with the, the, the thought of, oh my gosh, I’ll be stranded. So what they’re trying to do is switch everybody as solar over to batteries so that during those high peak loads, you would offload your battery for your house and that would supplement the grid so they could turn on what they’re calling this virtual power plant.

Sean P. Holman (2h 10m 4s):

So imagine a hundred thousand homes all at once providing, you know, ba 17 kilowatts outta their Tesla, Powerwall back to the grid. And then again, that would be returned later to you. Right. And there’d be like a wholesale cost

Jonny Lieberman (2h 10m 16s):

That would go, or the, the other thing that’s that we need to get to bi-directional charging, and Jim’s about to, to do that and everyone’s gonna fall asleep. But imagine this, you got this big battery in your electric truck and DWP or whoever does your power down here. They say, Hey, because at night we’re making the power we make during the day. Can we stick it in your battery for a couple hours? We’ll pay you like, you know, a couple cents. Yeah. Just, and then we’ll take it out, you know? Yeah, sure. So you’re making money, you know, are you gonna make a lot of money? No,

Sean P. Holman (2h 10m 45s):

No. It might be 200 bucks a year or something like

Jonny Lieberman (2h 10m 46s):

That. Yeah. But whatever, you know, it’s like, so there’s, there’s all this you can do with, with intelligent charging. So, and, and, and again, we’re just getting started. I mean, this is, this is all stuff that’s about to happen.

Sean P. Holman (2h 10m 55s):

It, it’s, it’s crazy. Like the, even just learning about the, the solar panels, the VPPs, the, the, where the Powerwalls are now, you know, efficiency of panels, you know, all that stuff. It’s, you know, it’s fascinating. How

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 11m 8s):

Are, let’s look at like a taxation. And right now we’re in California. I mean, at, at 4 59 a gallon of gas it over half at

Jonny Lieberman (2h 11m 17s):

$4 and 2 cents is tax. Yeah,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 11m 19s):

That’s exactly right. So, and it’s supposed to go to roads and stuff that it, of course it doesn’t make it to the infrastructure

Jonny Lieberman (2h 11m 24s):

Know this is ridiculous. This is a real problem. So

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 11m 26s):

Then, so then when we all go electric, Matt, we’ve talked about Matt Gamble, one of the engineers at work, he’s like, we should charge a dis it should be a discharge, not a tax, but we should charge you based on your discharge rate. So if you are gonna haul ass around town with your electric car, you’re gonna discharge faster. You are penalized for it rather than drawing ally more gas.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 11m 50s):

I would say this, I’d say that, and I think we can agree on this. Whatever solution our politicians come up with, it’ll be a suck. It’d be

Sean P. Holman (2h 11m 57s):

Terrible. So here, here’s the thing I say about that though. I don, if I’m

Jonny Lieberman (2h 11m 59s):

I don know what else I would say, take the $7,500, you know, ev tax credit and just give it to California. Well,

Sean P. Holman (2h 12m 6s):

Here, here’s my thought on that. The reason I don’t like Matt’s deal is because if I created the solar, I created the energy for free outta my solar panel and it doesn’t come off the grid, why should I be penalized how I drive? Right. Right. Because it doesn’t affect anybody. I made that power myself.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 12m 19s):

That said, if you are thinking about powering your ev with solar panels, you’re gonna need about like a billion. I mean,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 12m 25s):

Work.

Sean P. Holman (2h 12m 26s):

So for, for example, I have a small battery on my aria. It’s a 66 kilowatt hour battery. Even that, and the Teslas, the Powerwalls only hold 17.5 kilowatt hours each, which is fascinating. So you, you choose 17 and a halfs, right? That’s good. With the size of panel that I’m looking at for my roof, that’s good for an high sun, summertime for about three to four days of burning your battery at night and refilling with your solar panels. So think about the small battery on an aria is two times, yeah. Whatever for almost three times what your house needs, bigger than what your house needs that’s in. And then go to like an F-150 battery, which is like 140,

Jonny Lieberman (2h 13m 5s):

40 kilowatt hours. Or I mean, I, I went GM Mobility House, not Mobility house, sorry. The Mobility House is a smart charging company, but gm, what’s it called? GM Energy. Energy. I, they went to Dean Martin’s mansion. No, to be fair, a little bit to the naysayers. It was a 10,000 square foot mansion. They only lit up 6,000 square feet of it. Yeah. Because there was, they didn’t want people in one part of the house other places. Yeah. But, so I was standing there. They had, they had a, you know, the bi-directional charging, they had a Chevy Silverado EV plugged in 212 usable kilowatt hour battery. They cut the main breaker to the house. I watched them do it. I walked with the guy behind the house, shut it off, walked into the garage, 32 second, we timed it. 32 seconds later, The truck started sending energy into the house.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 13m 46s):

117 lights security system, two Sub-Zero monster refrigerators, and three big screen TVs. It was drawing four kilowatts an hour. That’s a 212 hours of

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 14m 2s):

Running

Jonny Lieberman (2h 14m 3s):

Wow. Off The truck. So just

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 14m 4s):

To show you how much, how big these

Jonny Lieberman (2h 14m 6s):

Batteries are, and by the way, you don’t have a 6,000 square foot house with 117,000. No. Right,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 14m 10s):

Right, right. Well, it shows you also how you have

6 (2h 14m 12s):

6,000 square foot lot.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 14m 13s):

It also shows you Yeah, I have 1100 square feet, how much energy it takes to move a vehicle against air. Yeah. Like I, I mean Yeah,

Jonny Lieberman (2h 14m 22s):

But remember, remember with an ev, right? So 60% of that energy in your battery goes to forward propulsion, and then you get to recapture between 20 and 30% of it by regeneration. Gasoline’s, you know, typically 20 to 25% is forward momentum. The rest is heating noise. Right. You know, so it’s super inefficient. And like even the greatest are like maybe 40%. So, you know, EVs are, you know, typically three to four and a half times more efficient than a internal combustion engine. And we’re not even addressing the elephant in the room is like, you know, we wanna stop releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We really want to stop.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 14m 60s):

But stop here before you piss off everyone and our audience. You really want, you really

6 (2h 15m 3s):

Want your grandchildren to have a

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 15m 5s):

Plan. Swear, dude. Swear. I can’t tell you how many Have

6 (2h 15m 7s):

We Hey, land it right there.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 15m 8s):

No, no, no. Hell, let’s talk about deleting your emissions equipment off your diesel. Right. While we’re at it. You You know what I mean?

6 (2h 15m 14s):

I’m just, I think we can all agree. Johnny Lieberman is Penny hates you truck owners. No, no, no, no.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 15m 19s):

I, no haven’t

Jonny Lieberman (2h 15m 21s):

I just, you know, like our, my friend a CP Andrew Con Picard just drove the six wheeled.

6 (2h 15m 28s):

Even his friends have names that sound pretentious I know it

Jonny Lieberman (2h 15m 30s):

Was Canadian acp, a ccp. He just drove. He’s the F1 of the, you know, one of Isn’t that,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 15m 35s):

Hold on. Isn’t a CP the band that was let Right, did you

Jonny Lieberman (2h 15m 38s):

Rap? He just drove to the North Pole first. People in history to drive ve wheeled vehicles to the North Pole. And you know, once you get off the Canadian continent, or you know, the North American continent outta Canada, you are, you are, you’re on sea ice. And you know, and he was talking about how they had to walk in front of the vehicles with spears and like stab the ice to make sure. And then I said, well, what happened if it was thin? He goes, oh, you just fall in. And so he, he he’d fallen in. These are amphibious vehicles. They’re called molas, I believe. And you know, we’re talking to him and he is like, you know, the, the, the thing is like, not only we’re the first, we’re definitely the last because the ice is gone. He’s like, no one will ever be able to do this again. ’cause the planet’s heating up. You know, it’s like, so we just, I just want my grandchildren to have a planet.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 16m 22s):

You know, like,

6 (2h 16m 23s):

See people, Johnny Lieberman has a soul and he just wants his grandchildren to have a planet

Jonny Lieberman (2h 16m 29s):

Again. The planet will be here. It’s, it’s, you know, we’ve seen massive species extinction before. Like, it, it happens.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 16m 34s):

You’re saying we might be the species that it becomes

Jonny Lieberman (2h 16m 36s):

Extinct. I mean, we’re, we are.

Sean P. Holman (2h 16m 38s):

Okay. Greta, calm down.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 16m 39s):

We’re the look I. don.

Sean P. Holman (2h 16m 41s):

Look,

Jonny Lieberman (2h 16m 41s):

Look, I just bought a gas car. I’m a total hypocrite. But we are the frogs in the boiling water. Like,

Sean P. Holman (2h 16m 48s):

By the way, it’s getting hot in here. He just undid that. The whole point of the letters that we’re getting that Johnny Lieberman’s a hypocrite.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 16m 53s):

No, no. I, no, they more can’t,

Sean P. Holman (2h 16m 56s):

Can’t write that letter anymore.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 16m 57s):

Super hypocrite. I’ve been to Europe three times in the last five

Sean P. Holman (2h 17m 0s):

Weeks looking on luxury airplanes. Oh,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 17m 3s):

Business all the way baby.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 17m 5s):

I’ve so many frequent flyer miles. You wouldn’t believe it. Actually, I can show you. What,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 17m 10s):

Can I borrow some? ’cause I’m going to Italy in September. Look at this. It’s expensive as hell.

Sean P. Holman (2h 17m 14s):

You don’t wanna know Yours. Mine.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 17m 15s):

You’re gonna freak out. Look at this Oh. yeah, baby. Oh

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 17m 18s):

My god. A million and a half miles.

Sean P. Holman (2h 17m 22s):

Here’s where, okay.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 17m 24s):

Holy damn.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 17m 26s):

Oh, you got amazing.

Sean P. Holman (2h 17m 27s):

Not bad for not flying last two years, right? Not no. Europe trips in the last two years. That’s all domestic right there.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 17m 32s):

That’s pretty good, baby. I know. That’s a

Sean P. Holman (2h 17m 33s):

Lot. Wow. I think my lifetime’s about seven 50, so, all right. I, I wish I could have gotten a million milers so I could have silver forever, but I got a

Jonny Lieberman (2h 17m 40s):

Million. I’m getting close to 2 million. And it, it is helpful. Yeah, it is. It is. Like, you know, I had this, yeah, that’s,

Sean P. Holman (2h 17m 47s):

I just, I just hope to be as ingratiated back into the European community as you have been. I’ve been banned, I think from Land Rover. ’cause they don’t call me anymore after I made fun of their designers pointy shoes and funny. Oh, well he’s, he’s

Jonny Lieberman (2h 17m 60s):

A lot.

Sean P. Holman (2h 18m 2s):

He’s extra. He’s a

Jonny Lieberman (2h 18m 3s):

Lot.

Sean P. Holman (2h 18m 3s):

He’s a lot. and I don’t think they like me real,

Jonny Lieberman (2h 18m 5s):

Real quick before we end it. Yeah. What’s so bad about the defender? It’s just because it’s, it’s, it’s not body on frame.

Sean P. Holman (2h 18m 13s):

I mean, it’s basically a Newport Beach minivan with swinging doors. Oh, totally.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 18m 19s):

But it’s, it’s, I I did

Sean P. Holman (2h 18m 20s):

Some, here’s what I don’t like about it. And I’ll be, I’ll be totally honest.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 18m 23s):

I mean, I know there’s no transfer case.

Sean P. Holman (2h 18m 26s):

No there. So there’s a, you get four low on zero Oh. yeah. Okay. Yeah. But, but here’s the deal. They said we fixed all of our electronics and then when we had our of the year, all the electric electronics for the screen went out. And there’s no secondary controls. So we could no longer control four Wheel Drive or lockers or any of those

Jonny Lieberman (2h 18m 41s):

Things. Again, the smartest guys in the world are now writing

Sean P. Holman (2h 18m 45s):

Software. Oh. So, so let’s hope that they, and then I don’t like, it’s kinda like Jeep, you can I-R-S-I-F-S everything. Like be modern. Be, oh, I get it. But You know what have the icon be the icon, right? Like, oh, here’s my deal. If they would’ve called that the Defender six. Right. Or or the discovery Discovery six. Yeah. And not the defender. Right. I’d have zero problems

Jonny Lieberman (2h 19m 6s):

With it. Got I, I I, so that’s where I’m coming from. Totally understood. Because I, I, I took the thing

Sean P. Holman (2h 19m 10s):

Dynamically. It rides great, it handles great. The power train, especially the, the turbocharged straight six with V eight are really

Jonny Lieberman (2h 19m 15s):

Awesome. Nice. I just, I did some kooky offroading. In fact, I remember I went to the, up in Mon Carmel Valley at the, at the Land Rover, they have a little, yeah. off-Road, adventure Park, whatever you call it. And they, they had a, a mud pit that was super dry out and they filled it with water and it was like sludge. And they had a dude, third party guy, not a Land Rover guy. And he’s like, bro, you ain’t making it. And I’m like, I’ll make it challenge accepted. Yeah. He’s like, you ain’t making it. I’m like, what do you mean? He is like, we are testing it. And like we all got stuck. and I’m like, I guarantee I make it. and I made it. Yeah. A couple times in a row. ’cause we were shooting video. How, how did you do it? And they

Sean P. Holman (2h 19m 49s):

Couldn’t magic. Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 19m 50s):

Who knows? You just knew how to do it. No, I, whatever the

Sean P. Holman (2h 19m 53s):

Sludge was just riot

Jonny Lieberman (2h 19m 53s):

Or something. I got lucky. Yeah. I totally got lucky. But he, he, I think what he thought was like, I would have no offroad ability and I. I actually have like the first press car I ever drove was a Range Rover when I was 15 and a half. My friend’s dad, big off rotor, he worked for Trail Life Magazine and

Sean P. Holman (2h 20m 8s):

I guarantee you that they’ve added water to that. And so it still had a firm bottom. Whereas if you’re testing over, over again, bottom is Roach.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 20m 14s):

It was super not a firm bottom it, in fact the car was like going about 20 degrees. It was, it sounds like. But yeah, I, I spent a lot of time off anyways, so I was like, I I never got the criticism because it’s good off road. Yeah. Now I, I get what you’re saying about the icon. The only thing I’ll say is if you, if you’ve ever gone to, you know, the factory, the defender line, I mean it looked like a World War ii. I know, like airplane assemblies, I loved

Sean P. Holman (2h 20m 42s):

Every bit of that was

Jonny Lieberman (2h 20m 42s):

Kind of cool. Pulling chains.

Sean P. Holman (2h 20m 44s):

Okay. So then where do You Heard about Grenadier then? Because that’s what should have been the defendant.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 20m 49s):

I would love to drive one. I I saw one, I crawled around one and I’m like, this is cool. Yeah. And it looks like an aircraft, like everything’s a button. It’s,

Sean P. Holman (2h 20m 56s):

The only thing I’ll say is the, the suspension is very Wrangler J so it’s very, very similar geometry, all that. But it’s

Jonny Lieberman (2h 21m 3s):

A wider truck, right?

Sean P. Holman (2h 21m 4s):

Wider. I think so. I mean the, the, the body is wider and then, but it has zero degrees of castor from the factory. So the steering’s super wonky on it. So when You do a U-turn, you have to unwind it. And that, that takes a bit. It’s got a DT two BM BMW six. Yeah,

Jonny Lieberman (2h 21m 18s):

Yeah. It’s an five instead of

Sean P. Holman (2h 21m 19s):

Transmission. It’s next five underneath. Yeah. Yeah. So the, the only other thing I don’t like is, I know they did it because of right hand drive. Left hand drive. Just like, I hate Teslas with this, with the driver information. Like, here’s what I love about Rivian. There’s a screen in front of the driver for the driver only. and I hate that about Teslas. and I don’t like it about the Grenadier because it’s on the center and the screen is super small. So when You have a camera mode, you lose a lot of your information. That’s

Jonny Lieberman (2h 21m 41s):

One of the worst trends in cars. I hate that people copying Tesla when

Sean P. Holman (2h 21m 45s):

They did that in the mini, it was like, okay, nostalgia. Then they did in the Yaris and you’re like, come on. And then Tesla, you’re like, stop it.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 21m 50s):

Well the, the new trend is what they’re doing is they’re getting rid of like a screen in front, a big screen in front of the driver. They put it like where the windshield meets the, the dash. It’s little screen far away. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (2h 21m 60s):

Like the Prius is like that. and I don’t like the way the Prius or the BZ four X is because it, people don’t understand this. when You find a comfortable seating position, the steering Wheel cuts off that screen. Te the Toyota engineers designed it where the screen is supposed to be above the steering Wheel and the steering Wheel, it looks like it’s in your lap, but it’s not. Right. So when You put the steering Wheel up so that it’s be around the, or inside the Wheel rim, like cuts off every other car. Yeah. It doesn’t feel natural to drive. Right.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 22m 24s):

Not only that, it’s got the eyeball monitors. Yeah. Right. So if you, if you put your hand at noon because you’re on a long drive, you do that, it starts

Sean P. Holman (2h 22m 30s):

Freaking, freaking out. Freaking out. Yeah. So my Aria did that. ’cause it wants in a 10 and two, but that little silver ring at the bottom, if you put it on your, that silver ring, it won’t do that. and I was like, okay, good. So for, for Lane keep assist on long trips. that was better. But I

Jonny Lieberman (2h 22m 43s):

Will say like the way Ford did it, where they have two cameras that are like on the dash that, you know, that’s, you know. Yeah. That, that said bring on level three already. Come on Mercedes. Mercedes is selling it. We, what do we need? This eye monitoring

Sean P. Holman (2h 22m 53s):

Bullshit. Yeah, exactly. All right. So before we go, yeah, yeah. You, so we were on our drive. You got to ride my aria. And then you had a press card like Yes. A week later.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 23m 1s):

Yeah. I had, but I had the, the the

Sean P. Holman (2h 23m 3s):

Full tail. Full fat. Yeah. Gorgeous. Interior platinum. So I’m curious ’cause we never debriefed on that. And we were riding around mine and I’m telling you Yeah. You know, this is the base model and I was really impressed. You’re going like, I got one coming. I hadn’t even really thought about it. And so I’m kinda curious, like, what do you think I,

Jonny Lieberman (2h 23m 17s):

Before I talked to you, I was convinced it was a big leaf and I’m, I’m not a fan of the Leaf. Yeah. and I clarify, I don’t like cars because they’re electric. I like good cars. Yeah. Period. And if they’re electric, that’s cool too. Yeah. And,

Sean P. Holman (2h 23m 29s):

And the Leaf gets props for launching a mainstream ev Yeah. But, but they also like,

Jonny Lieberman (2h 23m 33s):

But it’s old. They slept on it and bad battery tech and small range. Just old. And also it, like the previous Priuses, like every single thing was sacrificed in the altar of efficiency, which, which I guess if you want an efficient vehicle, but also it just sucked to drive. Yeah. And so I, this thing I had like, you know, and it just, it just shows like instead of a V six or a Turbo four hook to a CVT, boy, two electric motors suddenly zero to 60 in 4.8 seconds. Yeah. Like, damn, not bad. You know? And it’s got that, the advantage of having the center of gravity just super low. Yep. Kind of naturally handles well, ride’s excellent. Yeah. Like I was, I was, I think so I was blown out by the ride Quality looks pretty good.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 24m 16s):

You know, like the interior is better than Infinity, which Nissan every once in a while they’ll do that. Yeah.

Sean P. Holman (2h 24m 21s):

Which is, and I heard that this was originally supposed to be an Infinity. I’m sure it was. And that’s

Jonny Lieberman (2h 24m 24s):

Probably why I’m guarantee it was. Yeah. And yeah, I just like, damn, this is a great vehicle. And like, you know, if you don’t live in Southern California, or I should say California, you don’t get it. But like, I can’t even, I don’t even register model y anymore. They’re

Sean P. Holman (2h 24m 39s):

So ubiquitous. So my daughter and I play Tic-tac Tesla. And so if we see three in a row, that’s, that’s one score. If you see three of the same model, that’s another score. But if you see three of the same color color

Jonny Lieberman (2h 24m 49s):

And you see that, and we

Sean P. Holman (2h 24m 50s):

Do, they’re prolific. Like they’re so prolific, they, they run into each other. You’ll see an accident on the side of the freeway. It’s two Teslas that ran into each other. We, we Aren’t they charging more for the white now? Because it’s so common. They don’t want Yeah, they black black is a standard color down there.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 25m 1s):

So, so we did a or Gray me and we got a, you should have Scott Evans on, but me and Scott Evans did a thing. We did a, a Hyundai Ionic five versus the a white Tesla model Y The n or

Sean P. Holman (2h 25m 13s):

Just the

Jonny Lieberman (2h 25m 13s):

Regular? Just the regular. Okay. And dead nuts. Even cars, they’re, they’re both really good. Anyways, I was in the, I was following him and I was in the Hyundai and I kept losing him because I don’t even register those as cars are so common. Oh. yeah. And I’d be like, where the hell Scott literally right in front of me.

Sean P. Holman (2h 25m 27s):

Oh, there is, yeah, because,

Jonny Lieberman (2h 25m 29s):

So yeah,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 25m 30s):

We are not exaggerating guys. If you, seriously, if you come to LA we’re gonna have a listener meetup at some point. If you’re ballsy enough to fly out here, you won’t believe the number of white Teslas that are on four five freeway. It’s insane. It’s, you can’t believe it.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 25m 47s):

But, but so my point with the aria, like, you know, it it, like, there, there are a couple things. It doesn’t do, like the software’s not great. The, the user interface software is not great, especially, you know, I wouldn’t even say Hyundai’s not great. Tesla’s real, they have real good software. Yeah. You know? Yes. This screen’s annoying and it’s all in one screen. It’s annoying. But like, you know, if you’re gonna buy a model Y oh, I check out the Nissan. If you’re gonna buy a Hyundai five, oh Nissan Ford Mach e Oh that Nissan, I’d rather have that than the Mach e. And it’s about, it’s, it’s actually quicker. You know, like I just, I just drove the Audi, one of my trips to Europe. I drove the Audi Q six and oh boy, I should look this up.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 26m 28s):

But it was like, yeah, you know, Audi, you know, it’s an expensive one and zero to 60 and 4.9. and I was like, you know, the Nissan is faster. 4.8

Sean P. Holman (2h 26m 36s):

Mine’s smoke your ass. Mine’s a small motor, small battery is still 7.2. Which is, which is fine. It it’s totally fine. Totally, totally fine. But I will tell you that I’ve, so I’ve got 2000 miles on mine now and I’m, I’m not blowing smoke. I know Nissan sponsors are show they have nothing. The EV side doesn’t, whatever. This is straight for me. Yeah, yeah. It’s one of the best cars I’ve ever owned. Yeah.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 26m 53s):

And, and again, there’s just, I I was, I was really surprised by how much I liked it. Yeah. I wasn’t, I wasn’t prepared to like it. I was kind of prepared to, it

Sean P. Holman (2h 27m 2s):

Was, I, I bought it on a flyer. I’m like, well, it’d be great to get an ev take miles off my ring with 3 92. Yeah. I,

Jonny Lieberman (2h 27m 6s):

I love it. Yeah. You know, and, and I also very efficient. It was one of those cars where I, I like, you know, they, they drop it off. They try and get to a hundred percent, you know, they drop it off like 93%. Yeah. Drove around for a couple days. It’s like still at 75%. Yeah. Where like the rivian, it’s just a heavy fucking city stuff.

Sean P. Holman (2h 27m 22s):

So the Ford Lighting in my experience is like, miles per kilowatt was like 1.8, 1.9. The Rivian was like 2, 3, 2 4. Yeah. If I pushed it, I’m consistently getting three, two, if I’m not paying attention. Yeah. I’ve gotten three, eight or four in the aria, which is like, that’s insane. Mind numbing.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 27m 37s):

That’s insane. Yeah. And, and, and again, it shows you how insane lucid it is. ’cause there’re sedans that have a thousand horsepower get five

Sean P. Holman (2h 27m 44s):

And I thing. That thing’s amazing. I I wanna drive one of those just because they’re

Jonny Lieberman (2h 27m 47s):

Oh dude. Oh man. Like if you got Sapphire, if you get a chance, that’s the 1200.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 27m 52s):

Everyone says that.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 27m 53s):

1,234 horsepower. I, you know, I live right next to Hope. You have a tire guy, crest.

Sean P. Holman (2h 28m 2s):

No, you know, they’re not,

Jonny Lieberman (2h 28m 3s):

They’re skinny tires. They’re not that hard on the tires. But I live right next to Angela’s Crest and I go up at least once a week. And that’s my, that’s my little test track. And you know, there’s certain spots on the mountain where I know to look down at the speedometer to kind of gauge. So like, you know, in a McLaren seven 50 s, which is, yeah, it’s, they say it’s seven, 740 horsepower over 800. And it’s, you know, look down this one spot. 127 miles an hour. Look down this spot. 132, the Sapphire. 1 43, 1 45. Oh my God. It’s just a freight

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 28m 34s):

Train. I know. Angela’s crest. Where are you doing? 145? It’s

Jonny Lieberman (2h 28m 38s):

A couple spots in Mexico. Lightning.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 28m 40s):

Oh my god. Angela. I mean, I, I don’t know what as well as you do. I mean, I go couple once every couple of months, but like Yeah, that’s booking dude.

Jonny Lieberman (2h 28m 47s):

It books. It books, it books. Yeah.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 28m 49s):

Damn. Okay, listen, here’s the deal guys. This is, I’m gonna wrap up the end of this episode. And if you like Johnny, you’re gonna come back in a couple of days because he’s gonna be on our short episode. That’s all new. You don’t know this Johnny, but you’re in the next one.

Sean P. Holman (2h 29m 2s):

You’re staying for a few minutes. The truck

4 (2h 29m 3s):

Show. The truck show. The truck show.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 29m 7s):

Whoa.

Sean P. Holman (2h 29m 8s):

Alright. If you wanna follow us on social at Truck Show podcast at lbc Lighting at Sean P Hollen. Or you can give us a call on the five star hotline. 6 5 7 2 0 5 61 0 5,

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 29m 18s):

Right? Yeah, that’s right. 6 5 7 2 5 61 0 5. He has been forever since he gave out the number. Exactly. Oh, he, he’s Johnny’s taking selfies right here. What’s up? Oh geez. You don’t know. Hopefully this will pop up into socials and ours as well.

Sean P. Holman (2h 29m 30s):

And of course, email truck show podcast at gmail dot com or Lightning at truck show podcast dot com or Holman at truck show podcast dot com. Don’t forget to check us out. Truck show podcast dot com on the website, go to our featured products page, get some discounts and see who’s been on the show. We’ve got all of our episodes up on there and we’re still waiting for some, know your notes. We need some more. Know your notes and would love to do that. Do that bit for you guys ’cause been a little bit, a little bit of time.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 29m 54s):

Alright, so this is where we, I normally we take Nissan, but you just did a giant 10 minute chunk on Nissan. You did

Sean P. Holman (2h 30m 0s):

Not You know what they’re the presenting sponsor for like the past six years. So I’m, I’m cool with saying thank you Nissan. So you’re in the market for a Nissan truck or a, or head on down your local Nissan dealer Nissan usa dot com. You can build in price or try out your Nissan at home if you want them to bring you one to, to, to check out and not have to go to the dealership.

Jay “Lighting” Tilles (2h 30m 20s):

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Sean P. Holman (2h 30m 46s):

Right. And Amwell, the first and synthetics, they have the best lubricants for any vehicle, no matter what it is. AMS oil dot com. You can check out their free catalog and figure out the best place to order it. Alright. And last but not least, our friends over at EGR Spectacularly Awesome. Roll track, electric or manual. You need fender flares. You need any other truck accessories like their new V-S-L-L-E-D lights. E-G-R-U-S-A is the place to go. Awesome accessories for whatever you drive.

7 (2h 31m 11s):

The Truck Show Podcast is a production of truck famous LLC. This podcast was created by Sean Holman and Jay Tillis with production elements by DJ Omar Khan. If you like what you’ve heard, please open your Apple Podcast or Spotify app and give us a five star rating. And if you’re a fan, there’s no better way to show your support than by patronizing our sponsors. Some vehicles may have been harmed during the making of this podcast.