Season 2, Episode 64 - The Lilienthals, the Alcan 5000, and an INEOS Grenadier

 

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Jay “Lightning” Tilles (0s):

Holman, you ready to start the show? I think. Oh, hey. What’s up, miles?

AI Miles (3s):

Hey guys, it’s Miles. Your producer here. What’s up On this episode, you’ll be speaking with a husband and wife who will be driving 5,000 miles up the Alcan Highway in a brand new truck. You’ll discuss heavy d Cybertruck on Tracks, the best used truck values and an interesting Nissan patent. Oh, cool. There’s a lot of show to get to. Please don’t waste any time like you normally do

Sean Holman (25s):

Patent patents. How, dare you. You can’t really talk very well, Can

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (28s):

You. No, he’s he’s congested right now. I just, he’s got a cold Before

Sean Holman (33s):

We get too far down the road, I just wanna say thank you four for saving me the shipping and hand delivering this bank’s box here. We’ll get into it in a few minutes. Okay. But it’s, it’s so heavy that it’s on the floor because it bowed the desk when you put it on it.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (48s):

It’s not lightweight. It is aircraft grade die cast aluminum, my friend.

Sean Holman (52s):

I would like to also add that this must be the Gale Bank signature model because it has his signature on the box All, right? Well, we will, we’ll get to that in a minute, but first you wanna recap what our producer Miles

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 4s):

Said. So yes, Mercedes and Andy Lilienthals are venturing up the Alcan Highway, the Alaska Canadian Highway. That’s

Sean Holman (1m 12s):

Something you’ve done in the past that I haven’t. I

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 14s):

Have done it. I know. and I went from Los Angeles all the way up to Fairbanks, Alaska.

Sean Holman (1m 18s):

I wish it was something I, I, I wanted on my, I wanna cross it off my bucket list. And

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 24s):

Dude, I did it in a, a full ranger. Even

Sean Holman (1m 26s):

Better.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 26s):

Yeah, it was super cool. And I did it in the dead of winter. I did it the second week of December and we were in four Wheel drive the whole way.

Sean Holman (1m 33s):

At what point did your windshield crack? Like the second you turned the heater on?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1m 37s):

No, the windshield didn’t get obliterated until the big rigs came by just dusting us with rocks. Oh yeah. That was scary. It was a machine, not a good time machine. No, no. When they would go the opposite way, they would’ve a whirlwind of rocks just chasing them and we would literally just cower and close our eyes and go ba ba all over the windshield. And you just pray that it didn’t shatter

Sean Holman (1m 58s):

When we got back. So you’re saying take a brand new vehicle that someone else owns like the Lilienthals are doing, that’s the way to do it.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 4s):

Yes. Well, this was a brand new Ford gave this to me. Yeah,

Sean Holman (2m 8s):

They didn’t, they didn’t like it when you got it back.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 10s):

So when I gave it back to him, the windshield was So spider cracked and pitted and mangled, but it didn’t bust luckily. So yeah, they’re going up in a brand new INEOS, Grenadier, sorry, grenadine as I like to call it. Jeez. They’re going to put it to the test. I guess not many people have yet. And they’re gonna do it. We’re also gonna discuss supercar, Rons Cybertruck on Tracks. Now this is dude up in Utah that collects Ani and Bugattis and all that stuff. But he, within a few days of taking possession of his new Cybertruck, he handed over to Heavy D Sparks of Diesel Brothers fame, and they put it up on a set of Tracks and the comments are priceless. On, on I, I

Sean Holman (2m 46s):

Think the comments are better than the actual vehicle itself.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 49s):

I love

Sean Holman (2m 49s):

The truck and I love the comments.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (2m 51s):

Okay. We’re also gonna be talking about the best used truck value. So if you’re in the market for a used truck, this could Holman might have some insight for you

Sean Holman (2m 59s):

All. right. And then also Nissan has a cool patent that just dropped recently and it’s on the frontier, so we’ll, we’ll dive into that a little bit. Wow. So all sorts of stuff coming out on this episode of The Truck, Show Podcast. But first we gotta thank Nissan, our presenting sponsor who brings you the show week after week, month after month and year after year. So if you are looking for a new truck, head on down to your local Nissan dealer, go to Nissan usa.com. You can build and price up Frontier a Titan a Titan xd. Show them the same love that they’ve shown you by supporting this truck, Show Podcast support Nissan. Or at least put ’em on your list. If you’re gonna be test driving new trucks, I think you’ll be really pleasantly surprised with what they have to offer.

Sean Holman (3m 40s):

And

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 40s):

Now, Mr. Holman, it’s time for you to open the box that is on the floor. Put it up on your lap or some, yeah,

Sean Holman (3m 46s):

Well that’s hefty.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (3m 46s):

Yeah, that’s big. That’s a big box slice. Open the Banks wrapping tape.

Sean Holman (3m 52s):

All. right. So this is a giant box. I know what It is because I ordered it through you. So I slid into Lightning’s dms. And I said, that sounds gross. I said, Hey, you, you might, you might know me, but I need a diff cover, a Ram air diff cover. And it’s funny because he’s like, but you don’t, you don’t have that truck. And I’m like, well, I just wanna hang it on the wall.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (4m 14s):

You don’t have a Ram

Sean Holman (4m 15s):

Truck. And he’s like, you need to have a lag bolt in order to hang this thing on the wall. I am opening it up. Yep.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (4m 22s):

It’s a box in a box. And

Sean Holman (4m 23s):

It is the banks’s Ram air diff cover in black with the banks’s shiny

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (4m 31s):

Ah,

Sean Holman (4m 31s):

Logo that’s been machined out. Let’s, no, I got it. I got it. It’s good. You got it. Yeah. Comes with all the hardware. Yeah. But the reason we like these, not only do they have scoops that scoop air to actually put it through the fins to cool down for towing and things like that. It’s got a sight glass, so you can see the oil level. It’s got brand new beautiful hardware on it. It’s got a magnetic drain plug you can fill and service the diff without taking the cover off. Right. Which is super awesome. And for those of you who like off-roading, if you are accidentally to smash one of those ears on a rock or something like that, they break away. They will not damage a Yeah. Which is

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (5m 8s):

Very cool. Yeah, you could see where they’re perforated right there. Yeah. So they, they do snap right off. We’ve tested it and Banks have sold thousands of these already. And of the thousands only two guys have busted the ears off. One on a stump and one on some kind of a parking block

Sean Holman (5m 20s):

Or something. And I believe you replaced those, right. Lifetime warranty.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (5m 22s):

Lifetime warranty. Absolutely.

Sean Holman (5m 23s):

That’s pretty awesome. So my uncle buys this 23 Ram 2,500 and he’s like, Hey, what should I get for it? And I’m like, well, we should get some egg parts. Let me, I can probably,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (5m 32s):

You

Sean Holman (5m 33s):

Know, someone slide into some dms and he told me he’s buying this, this travel trailer. So he is got this, this gooseneck, it’s like 752 feet long and must weigh 80,000 pounds. And so I’m like, oh yeah, the first thing you should do Ram Air diff cover because as as mighty as your ram is, that diff cover is gonna make a huge difference in keeping those rear gears. Cool. So

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (5m 54s):

Yeah, it cools four times better than the

Sean Holman (5m 57s):

Stock cover. How many applications do you guys have? Ram, GM and Ford. All the Threequarter and one ton trucks. Alright, well if you need to cool off your rear end because you’re towing and hauling, then head over to Banks Power dot com and go down to the year make model and you can find the right one for your truck,

3 (6m 11s):

The truck show. We’re gonna show you what we know. We’re gonna answer what The truck, because truck rides with the truck show. We have the lifted, we have the lowered end. 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.

4 (6m 43s):

It’s the truck show with your hosts Lightning and Holman.

Sean Holman (6m 48s):

That’s us All. right. So Lightning, you and I were both scrolling on our Instagrams this week and we both came across the same post and we like it for different reasons. So the post was from Heavy D Sparks from Diesel Brothers, and it’s a picture of a brand new Cybertruck on hell Tracks. The comment is when the vehicle is the exact same shape as the Tracks with hardy eyes, this is one of the most ridiculously amazing things we’ve ever built. I’m more excited to drive this than anything I’ve driven in a very long time. So I call Shenanigans on all of that. Why’s why you call shenanigans? The dude has driven some of the best things in the world. He just got his helicopter pilot’s license where he is for, ’cause he’s got an Apache where is Black Hawk rated?

Sean Holman (7m 31s):

Oh yeah. And he is like, oh, a stock Cybertruck. And all he did was bolt on these Tracks. It’s the most amazing thing ever. I don’t buy it. He spell this. I get it. I don’t buy it. Dave is really good at being hype mess Mark. Yeah, he’s the hype man. He’s the hype man for sure. We all know that. So get past that. Okay, fine. So look at the actual project. I think it’s, it’s super cool looking. It’s whatever, and he is right. The Tracks are the same shape as the cyber track and nobody has ever put a a set of these Tracks on anything else before it’s like low hanging fruit. Okay, cool. So you have hell Tracks. Yeah, you can get some Instagram. What I like is there are but no less than 1,970 comments about it. Yes. Oh, so This is the entertainment factor before you. Yeah. So also he strapped some Baja Designs lights on it, maybe like 20 lights.

Sean Holman (8m 11s):

Well you saw Baja Designs actually hit him up and said let’s strap some lights on it. Oh, is that true? Oh, I didn’t know that. And they’re, they’re in the comments. Okay, got it. So let’s go through the comments of this cyber Tracks as they’re calling it. And I think this thing is owned by Supercar Ransom, Utah, high-end car collector up there. So it’s not, it’s not Dave’s, but he is outfitting it as he does. So Hold on, I, I was reading the comments, Chris Forsberg 64, who was Chris Forsberg of the Nissan Forsburg package that we talked about in the last, right, the last episode. He’s like, let’s see it happen. And then decked, who’s this sound like? Well, boys, he did it. It’s gotta be chopper, right? Yes, chopper. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s funny when you’re, you’re kind of scrolling through, somebody actually called him up and said, what happened happened for your love for Nicola?

Sean Holman (8m 57s):

Ooh. Because remember Ouched

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (8m 58s):

The badger,

Sean Holman (8m 59s):

He was gonna, he bought the badger and there was gonna be like some announcement that he was gonna,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (9m 3s):

He bought the rights to the badger

Sean Holman (9m 4s):

Something or had something. It was all like sort of sketch, So, I, don’t know whatever happened So, it wass kind of weird. He is like, oh, nothing to see here. But look, Cybertruck on Tracks, nobody will remember the whole conversation about,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (9m 14s):

He’s just jumping on like he’s really, really good at seizing an opportunity. All, right? What,

Sean Holman (9m 18s):

What are your favorite

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (9m 19s):

Comments? So like, he blasted all these lights all over the thing and, and had some custom stainless steel racks made. Well, which

Sean Holman (9m 24s):

Is cool because it matches the stainless

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (9m 26s):

Steel. So, so, so Kenko killer one in seven s. Serious question, dude, how long does the battery last with the Tracks and lights on LOL? And it’s just like four minutes, 2.5 minutes. The bottom line is no one seems to believe that it’ll run more than five minutes at cold ass temperatures and with all the lights and the Tracks running. So

Sean Holman (9m 50s):

A lot of battery comments. One guy says, snowcat Yes truck, no pontoon boat. Maybe. That was pretty good.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (9m 57s):

I do like Baha designs. Now this is a bright idea with a light bulb.

Sean Holman (10m 1s):

Yeah, this is like one of those, how many triangles are in this picture? Riddle All, right? That That one was super solid. Yes. And then of course the comments about breaking the, the internet and you can put a Diesel generator in the back and all that kind of stuff. So this guy, I love when people say this has gotta be the coolest, best, most amazing thing we’ve ever done to date. Every time they do something, you know what that means? That means that they’re pushing the envelope every time they do something. I’m like, eh, eh, somebody wants to get in the good graces.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 30s):

Holman. You gotta love this one. Trevor is rolling his eyes.

Sean Holman (10m 34s):

Trevor,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 35s):

Trevor, Milton. Milton. Yes. Who of Nikola? Well,

Sean Holman (10m 38s):

Former,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 39s):

Former

Sean Holman (10m 39s):

Nikola fame of, of something, some penitentiary somewhere. Now how the Cybertruck should have come from the factory that actually looks way better than they do from the factory. This is how it should have come.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (10m 49s):

This is what 35 minutes of battery life looks like. That’s,

Sean Holman (10m 52s):

That’s pretty solid. One guy just said, take my money. So that’s low hanging fruit on internet comments, time for a ski trip

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (11m 0s):

Halfway out of the garage. You’re gonna need to charge it.

Sean Holman (11m 2s):

Enjoy that four mile range.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (11m 5s):

People are not believing that this is gonna do much out in the snow.

Sean Holman (11m 9s):

He, he’s a great hype man. I think it’s cool. It’s great for photos, but I’m kind of, eh, I’m meh on it. I go, go out there and, and do silly things like by all means, like somebody came to my house and said, Hey, here’s a Cybertruck and a bunch of parts, like bolt these on and then go somewhere and take videos. I’d be like, okay. But for me, I don’t think so. You

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (11m 30s):

Maybe. I love it. I love it. I would love it to drive down the street in this like down Whittier Boulevard on a cruise night. It must make a racket on the street, right? Would it fall apart? Are they pretty durable?

Sean Holman (11m 44s):

Yeah, they’re pretty durable. But you, you don’t want to turn too sharply. You gotta got a manager. You’re turning on those.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (11m 50s):

So yeah, good luck with those ball joints.

Sean Holman (11m 54s):

I wouldn’t take it on my next long range offroad trip or anything like that, but it, it’s cool for Instagram. I’d love to pick up a date in this All, right? Speaking. You’re married. Oh yeah. All. right? So speaking of married and cold weather, why don’t we transition to giving our friends Andy and Mercedes Lilienthals, I’ll call you guys may remember them. They’ve been on the show before. Andy used to work at Warren and, and Mercedes’s freelance writer. And so they are going to, in fact, last time they were on the show they were talking about doing the Alcan and 5,000, except last time it was in their pajero or something, right? Yes. So this time a freak show of a little truck. This time they got a brand new Grenadier from INEOS.

Sean Holman (12m 34s):

And so I’m kind of curious about the compare and contrast between those two vehicles. And I think they’re leaving, like when you hear this episode air, so are you admit that you’re jealous? Will you just admit No, I’m, I’m totally jealous. Yeah. If So I, listen, somebody said, here’s a vehicle, here’s gas drive to the Arctic Circle. I would leave tomorrow. I I would tell my family I’ll be gone for several weeks. Do you think they’re getting free gas or, or paying for it? I don know. We should find out. Why don’t you give ’em a call? All, right? Let’s dial Mercedes and Andy.

Andy & Mereceds (13m 9s):

Hello? Hello.

Sean Holman (13m 11s):

Mercedes. Lightning and home at Truck. Show. Podcast.

Andy & Mereceds (13m 13s):

Hey. Hey. How are you?

Sean Holman (13m 15s):

We are awesome. Where’s, where’s a man? Andy. Where he at?

Andy & Mereceds (13m 18s):

I’m right here. Oh,

Sean Holman (13m 20s):

Hey, there he is. This is the first time we, we’ve talked to Andy since he, he left his old, his old throws over at Warren and went out on his own. And so now he’s like me trying to figure out how to make money now. So Holman is used for adventure or which other one was the podcast? One? Holman at truck. Show Podcast. No, no, no, no. Just the business. Yeah, the business. Oh, truck famous Truck Famous. That’s right. Truck famous. LLC. There’s OVR Mag and OVR Mag and But License Plate Media. Yeah. I gotta be honest though, I kind of prefer Mercedes and Andy crankshaft culture. That’s, that’s cool. You know they have a, a group on Facebook, right? I’m gonna have to join. You should do that. There’s a lot of interesting stuff on there. Will they admit me? Well I also need to figure out why the heck they’re selling the old tractor.

Sean Holman (13m 60s):

That’s a whole other thing we have to talk about All, right? We’ll do that right after we play the intro. Don’t move.

Recording (14m 5s):

Pull up a stool and share, pull up a stool and share a story. Pull up a stool and share. How about you pull up a stool and share with us.

Sean Holman (14m 18s):

Now did you say something about a tractor? Well that’s just what they call it. It’s not an actual tractor. What are you referring to?

Andy & Mereceds (14m 25s):

No. Well it’s a 1992 Mitsubishi RO with a two and a half liter turbo Diesel engine. We call it the rally tractor. Ah, the rally tractor.

Sean Holman (14m 35s):

That’s the one we spoke to last time about. It’s a Ros a two-door also, by the way. Which makes it short Wheel Basin. Super Rad

Andy & Mereceds (14m 41s):

It is, yes. It’s one of the two, two-door Paros. We have. We’re going to, we’re gonna become a one Pajaro family.

Sean Holman (14m 47s):

So wait, why now? You can’t have little poros.

Andy & Mereceds (14m 52s):

Well, we have a, we have a Mitsubishi delicate van as well, so there might be some Yeah. Action happening under the carport. Still All,

Sean Holman (14m 59s):

Right? All right. Well

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (15m 0s):

You guys are running a freak show

Sean Holman (15m 1s):

Over there. No, no, they totally, all their vehicles are freak shows except for the, the latest one that they actually, well there’s one that they’re borrowing. We’ll get into that soon. And they also just picked up a, a Subaru, which is a fairly normal person’s car. Yeah,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (15m 13s):

That that delicate. I, I wanna know, will that delicate make a tighter turning radius than those old Toyota vans that are like, the wheels were so

Sean Holman (15m 20s):

Close to each Wheel. My mom had a 1984 version of the Toyota Toaster van. I feel

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (15m 24s):

Like you could turn on like literally a

Sean Holman (15m 26s):

Die. You realize those things. You sat on the engine. It was on a short Wheel base Toyota pickup chassis.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (15m 32s):

My neighbor had one. I

Sean Holman (15m 32s):

Loved it. Oh, It was great. We had it for Boy Scouts and stuff like that. You load everybody in there. It had the cool like RV style sliding, sliding windows in it and Yep. Yeah, that thing, that thing was cool. So the

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (15m 43s):

Delicate, good, bad,

Andy & Mereceds (15m 44s):

Excellent. Oh yeah, it’s love it. This is a delicate space gear. So it’s not the star wagon. Like well we had one but the star wagon was the cab over style. The the star school Boxy one. Yeah. The space gear is, well, let’s put it this way. We’ve had a lot of people ask us at at some of the shows like, is that a lifted previa? I’m like, no, not a previa.

Sean Holman (16m 4s):

We also had a previa growing up. Of course you did. We had a 92 previa with captain seats. Yeah. Egg. It was awesome. Oh nice. Love that thing. You

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (16m 11s):

Were so white Huntington Beach. Yeah,

Sean Holman (16m 13s):

You’re right.

Andy & Mereceds (16m 15s):

Nice.

Sean Holman (16m 16s):

My mom could never have anything super nice. It had to be really practical. And she’s listing right now probably going seriously, why are you outing me? But I remember they spent a lot like hours at the dealership trading in the, the blue toaster van to get the previa. Right. And so, you know, it was like the new car was coming home and So I was like probably 14 or 15 at the time. And I remember it was Pearl White And, it had chrome wheels. And, it was the alloys. And I’m like, Oh, my God the minivan’s rad. Right. And my mom literally walks in the door and goes, the chrome wheels are going back tomorrow. Oh?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (16m 50s):

No, she has deleted

Sean Holman (16m 51s):

’em. Yeah, she had ’em, she had their regular alloys put on, but it was So late. The service department was closed. That’s so late. So they had to go back. So that’s so late.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (16m 58s):

I’m like,

Sean Holman (16m 58s):

My mom finally got Chrome wheels on the family, on the family Don. And Nope, they went back. That’s

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (17m 5s):

So funny that you guys were so practical.

Sean Holman (17m 7s):

It’s just, I know my, my parents, we grew up, my dad had like six Honda Accords in a row. Yeah. You know, I think after the pre my mom had a Ford Explorer. I mean it was like just normal, you know, middle class cars. Awesome.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (17m 18s):

Just pedestrian vehicles. Yeah. Yeah. Not like the Lilienthals.

Sean Holman (17m 21s):

No, they, they have, well then you guys have to worry ’cause some states don’t even want your delicate on the roads.

Andy & Mereceds (17m 28s):

Yeah. I actually, I broke that story, believe it or not, about the Delicates in Maine. And then first we saw some people getting the letter from the state of Maine in, in the Mitsubishi Delica Owners club group on Facebook that I’m admin of Mercedes and I, because Andy’s pretty much the godfather of all the Delica and Jiro groups online everywhere, but yeah, Maine. Maine. Oh, one

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (17m 49s):

Of one. I was gonna say, that’s gotta be really easy to censor seven members.

Sean Holman (17m 53s):

Hey

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (17m 53s):

Bob, what’s

Sean Holman (17m 53s):

Up today? But there’s also seven groups. You quite a bit. There’s seven groups and all seven of those members are in each group. Yeah. So they just say they just share it all each other all the time. So All, right. How is business now that you’ve gone out on your own? I don’t think we’ve really had a chance to talk since you decided to jump out of the corporate world and give it a swing. Yeah, why don’t we talk

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (18m 12s):

About the Alcan 5,000 Oh no, no. Nos later. Entrepreneurialism.

Sean Holman (18m 15s):

No, we’ll catch up with Andy.

Andy & Mereceds (18m 16s):

This, this is good. We’re busy. We’re headed to Montreal, Quebec tomorrow for a drive event. And then yeah, we leave for the Alcan 5,000 on the 21st, like two weeks away. Yeah. And yeah, we got a, we got a bunch of stuff planned. So, but we’re busy and, and we’re doing well and you know, we’ve got clients. We’re doing a lot of writing and Awesome.

Sean Holman (18m 36s):

IIII love to hear it. Obviously Mercedes has been out kind of freelancing for a while now, and now you guys get to get back to tackling some stuff as a, as a couple, which is cool. And I know you guys love traveling together. Haven’t

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (18m 48s):

We seen your names Yes. In OVR

Sean Holman (18m 50s):

Recently? Yeah, we’ve, we have had the Lilienthals in in OVR Mag. Absolutely. And yeah,

Andy & Mereceds (18m 56s):

Absolutely.

Sean Holman (18m 57s):

You guys are clearly getting to go do cool stuff still. So the big news is we, I think the last time we talked to you on the show was when you guys were preparing for last year or two years ago on the Alcan 5,000. And we wanted to know what it was like to drive a, a vehicle to, you know, I guess the Arctic Circle, right?

Andy & Mereceds (19m 13s):

Yeah. You know, we did the, we did the 2020 Alcan, which was in one of our freak show vehicles in, in 2020. And then in 2022 we did it in an Outback wilderness. We didn’t go quite as far as the Arctic Circle in 2022. And then for 2024, we’re gonna be in an INEOS Grenadier and we will, we, we will hit that Arctic circle.

Sean Holman (19m 37s):

I’m, I’m excited to find out, I know you posted some initial thoughts on online, on your, on your Facebook and kinda said, Hey, we’re, we’re kind of getting used to it. And I maybe made a little bit of a snarky comment about build quality is good, but lots of quirks to, to, to get over. I I recently had a chance to drive it, and this is probably one of the more excited I’ve been about a vehicle coming out lately. Long story short, for those who are just, you know, coming on the show now and haven’t heard the backstory is a billionaire who’s an oil tycoon said that he wanted to purchase basically the old defender blueprints from Land Rover and put it back into service as a newer vehicle updated instead of the defender that we get from Land Rover, which is a, a minivan with swinging doors and is an abomination to the defender name, but that’s a whole other conversation.

Sean Holman (20m 25s):

And Land Rover told him politely to go pound sand, so he took his billions and said, I’m gonna just go build it myself. So think of a INEOS Grenadier as the modern version of a true defender one 10. And you kind of get the picture of what this vehicle is. It’s designed in the uk it’s built on the German France border where the old smart cars used to be built and it’s got German engineering such as the BM BMW drive train.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (20m 50s):

And so good engine, but really piss poor wiring.

Sean Holman (20m 54s):

No, I I I think they probably left that to the Germans too. Oh, okay. Hopefully

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (20m 57s):

All. right. So what I don’t know about this guys, and maybe Mercedes and Andy, you can fill me in as a, as a, an enthusiast, but not in hardcore offroad space and certainly not in the upper echelon of like the English or German off roaders, like the GWA stuff like that. I don’t feel the Grenadier in my marketing. Like I don’t, I’m not seeing it on my feeds. I’m not seeing it on ESPN during football games. I’m not feeling it anywhere. What’s, do you have any idea what that’s about?

Andy & Mereceds (21m 27s):

Yeah, actually it’s funny you mention that because today on, I believe it was car buzz.com, it was announced that INEOS has all of the INEOS 2024 allocations have been, have been sold or have, or at least are, are available. So they’re not making any more 2020 fours. They had a, a fairly low expected to sell like 8,000 a year. So they weren’t, they weren’t going after, you know, 240,000 sales. And I think globally when, when I went to their launch last year in, I think it was January of last year in Scotland for the global launch of the Euro circuit that I drove both at the Diesel and the petrol.

Andy & Mereceds (22m 8s):

And they said globally they wanted to have their take rate of being 30,000 out of the gate. So this is a lot more of a boutique manufacturer. So of course, you know, first year manufacturer, first year model, you know, of course they’ve got their quar quartermaster coming out right afterwards and they’re gonna have their ev coming out in about two years after that. You know, of course we see it all over the place, but I think we’re a little bit more embedded with it. And we, you know, we’ve been writing about it extensively. We’ve been doing social media on it. So, I think it’s, you know, the, the AI has been kind of catering more towards us, but North America has been becoming a powerhouse as far as reservation holders, as far as sales is concerned. And it’s been surpassing some of the other markets like Australia or Europe, which has been what they were expecting and is what they’re seeing

Sean Holman (22m 56s):

And hoping for. Right, because you want to have a strong presence in the North American market. You said around 8,000, just so people have a sense of scale, the Toyota Land Cruiser, which was discontinued in 2022. In 2021, they sold 3,711. So selling 8,000 of these is more double what Land Cruiser was selling before it got canceled with the older platform here in the, in the US and went to Lexus only. So that’s saying something. The other thing is they, they’ve only been really on sale here for, you know, probably less than a, a real year and I’m starting to see ’em pop up. I I drove Bernard

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (23m 32s):

On sale. Meaning for order They’re just now delivering, correct?

Sean Holman (23m 35s):

Yeah, they’ve just been delivered here in what, the last four or five months, something like that?

Andy & Mereceds (23m 40s):

Two, two or three weeks. They literally only about two or three weeks.

Sean Holman (23m 43s):

Oh, well even, even short So I I got got into one that Bernard Lightner had picked up and he let me drive it. Yep. And there’s a lot of things that I liked about it. Like, I like the styling. I think they did a good job. I like the, the build quality seems really solid. The doors sound like granite when you thunk them, but there’s a lot of like stupid little things like what’s under the fenders, above the front wheels. Is that wasted space? Could you, could it have possibly been a compartment for like an onboard air compressor or something like that? I know they have the stadium seating in the back that has like the spare batteries and a bunch of room for auxiliary components under the second row. That’s cool. Except you can’t lay flat the backseat so you can’t sleep across the back without a pad or something.

Sean Holman (24m 25s):

And then the way they mount the spare door, it’s like a 70 30 rear door and where they, or where they mount the spare tire, it’s like a 70 30 rear door. And if you put anything bigger on, you get to a point where you almost can’t open the door like one tire size up because the tire right gets too close to the edge of where the other edge of the door the opposite door is. And then for 80,000 it’s a regular key. There’s not like a a, a keyless key fob and the screen is really small And, it shares a lot of functions. It does the maps, it does the radio, it does the camera, it does the speedometer, which I hate, I know why they did it, because you wanna have a driver and a passenger be able to make it left and right hand drive super easily.

Sean Holman (25m 5s):

So everything’s on the center stack, but once you start driving and everything’s on there, it just takes up a lot of real estate. And so you’re kinda, look, you wish the screen was bigger. I wish, I wish they had like a little screen just for the driver information stuff like speedometer in front of the D driver so that center stack screen could be used for other things. But other than that it rode nice. I thought it, it’s very similar suspension to like a Wrangler jl. And the only thing I didn’t like about It is the steering doesn’t self-center, there’s like, the caster seems way off for me. So the first curve you go around, it’s like, oh, you gotta kind of unwind it. Well could that have been just Bernard or you think that’s No, no, that’s all of ’em. Oh, It is, yeah. No, it’s in fact it,

Andy & Mereceds (25m 40s):

It takes some getting used to for sure. Yeah. Steering was one of the things that took some getting used to, ’cause it doesn’t self-center quite as much, you know, and as far as the, the, you know, okay, it’s $80,000, you don’t get a push button. I could care less personally. Like give me a key. I don’t care as long as it starts every time, that’s all I care about. And one of the things just to, just to note is that INEOS wanted to make sure that they could try to have as much field fixable as possible. So their whole mantra was to have as much mechanical as possible and technologically enabled only as necessary. So they wanted to have as few e ECUs as possible onboard so that there goes the push push button, there goes the blind spot detection, there goes all of the fancy, you know, wa you know, the, all the things that are, you know, where the Land Rover defender goes through that, you know, where all of the other you, the GBA and the, you know, all these others go to for the technology bits because they don’t want us to necessarily, you know, go in the lymph mode immediately because some, you know, ECU decides to trip and they’re, you’re stuck on the trail not being able to go anywhere because some simple thing just decides to go to pot.

Andy & Mereceds (26m 45s):

So,

Sean Holman (26m 46s):

So So, I get that. I’m just spoiled. I have a 3 92 that has adaptive cruise control, blind spot and all the all the things. Right. And, and I’m soft, I’m, I’m just gonna be honest with you, I’ve gotten soft over time.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (26m 55s):

So Andy, Mercedes, how do you or not represent INEOS? You got the vehicle to go on the Alcan 5,000, did you buy it? Are they giving it to you? And what do they expect out of you?

Andy & Mereceds (27m 7s):

So for us, they’re giving it to us on loan. We did not buy the vehicle and we are journalists. So for us we have a very benign, truthful, unbiased opinion no matter if they give us a vehicle or if we buy a vehicle and we review it or, or or whatnot. So Andy, I don’t know if you have a differing opinion, but for us, we are automotive journalists. So, it doesn’t matter if they give us a vehicle and say, here you have it for a month and if you, if you drive it or, or if they, you know what or what have you. So for me, there’s never gonna be a perfect vehicle. There are going to be things that we’re not going to like. Yeah, there you go. Exactly. So we’re, and there are things that I do not prefer on the Grenadier and there are certain things that I absolutely love about the Grenadier.

Andy & Mereceds (27m 52s):

So, and we’re going to write about those things in, in detail. I think it’s important, so, okay,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (27m 58s):

Great. I just wanted to make sure that you guys were impartial

Sean Holman (28m 0s):

Here. No, no, no. I I I think that, oh yeah, I think it’s a fantastic, that’s important. A fantastic first swing. There’s some preference things that bug me from what I look for in a vehicle. Well this

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (28m 9s):

Is their first go at

Sean Holman (28m 10s):

It, right? That’s what I’m saying. This is a, this is an incredible first swing. Like I am, I’m really impressed with the vehicle, but I’m also a journalist and so if there’s people who are looking and cross shopping, you have to understand what you’re getting yourself into. This is made for long range backcountry travel primarily. So you’re, it’s not gonna be the, it’s not

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (28m 27s):

Made for all the creature comforts. Yeah,

Sean Holman (28m 29s):

Correct. But it still costs 80 grand. Right? So depending on your trim and model and all that kinda stuff, So, I, I, but I think like the way they have the switches wired, the way they have the mounts for the, the, the roof rails, all that kind of stuff. They’ve got the cool little dual sunroof over each of the front seats. That’s kind of neat, you know, and, and then It is a little bit of a parts bin car in the sense that it’s got the BMW electronic shifter that has the BMW head on it. And then the transfer case shifter is like a Q ball, like a black Q ball. And So I hate that BM BMW shifter in any car. It’s not an INEOS thing, but having it in the INEOS to figure out the stupid thing you have to do for park and reverse and drive is just as irritating in that as It is in A BMW.

Sean Holman (29m 11s):

That being said, I thought it rode great, it’s quiet it, Scott Brady just took from Overland Journal, just took one across the African continent and had a, had a great time with it. What are they

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (29m 21s):

Using for the transmission? Do you know?

Sean Holman (29m 22s):

It’s zf, it’s A BM BMW straight. Oh oh twins. Yeah, twin row, straight six. But it’s D two, I think it’s only something around a 280 horsepower. So it’s not super powerful. But they did that to keep it reliable because those BMW straight sixes are sort of a crapshoot with, with lots of boost as, as the BMW dealer can tell you. I,

Andy & Mereceds (29m 41s):

I would agree on all those, on all those points. You know, the nice thing about It is is, you know, the BMW, you know, it’s all BMW filters and, and all that stuff. It’s easy to get, you know, it’s not, it’s not some, you know, unobtainium that you can only get at one spot. So So I, I’m glad for that, especially if I’m gonna be, you know, out in the middle of nowhere. You know, I’m never, I’m not that far away from a be it’s not like I have to get some, you know, fancy Lamborghini exhaust manifold that’s only available, you know, every three years or something like that. So,

Sean Holman (30m 11s):

Hey Andy, let me ask you, Mercedes, you should explain the toot horn to my man Lightning here because it Yeah. Deserves Its, its, it’s, it’s its own talking point.

Andy & Mereceds (30m 24s):

Yeah. There’s this little red button on the, on the steering Wheel on the right hand side of the steering, Wheel And, it says toot and like it’s got a symbol of a bicycle. So rather than laying on the horn when you know, like there’s something in there, some person in the middle of the road, it’s a much more polite like, excuse me, very cordial suit. I, I kept jokingly saying, give ’em the old toot toot, you know, when there’s so many standing in the road. Yeah. You don’t have to be downtown Chicago and just be like, get the, you know, h out of the way or whatever, you know, or like when I was in, in Scotland and we were on the trails, right? And there was literally a herd of Scottish stag and I was in the back of the pack with the Grenadier and there was one that, I think it was like a 14 or a 16 pointer And.

Andy & Mereceds (31m 5s):

it did not want to get off the trail.

Sean Holman (31m 7s):

No respect for the toot.

Andy & Mereceds (31m 9s):

Yeah, it literally, and And it was steering me down and after it was seemed like, you know, eternity, I radioed up and I said, guys, there’s a stag that’s staring me down and I don’t wanna be like the only North American journalist where all of a sudden he’s gonna literally hit the Grenadier with a stag at long.

Sean Holman (31m 26s):

No, no, no, no. Not only Mercedes, Hold on not only first, that’s, yeah, yeah. That story gets better when you, when you are the first North American journalist to be impaled inside a Grenadier.

Andy & Mereceds (31m 39s):

Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. But you gotta give him the old two. That’s right. Then they said, just, just use a tooth horn. And I’m like, you sure what that guy, so yeah. So just to really soft and he, he looked at me ears go back. But then the thing literally just starts prancing off slowly and I went and I basically, you know, after I sw myself, I went, okay, All right, we’re good. And then we basically kept on going. So yeah, So I was good in the world, so,

Sean Holman (32m 5s):

So apparently the owner of INEOS is a bicycle guy, so he wanted to have a more polite way to tell bicyclists, get the h as Mercedes said, right out of, out of your way. There you go. Toot horn. Let’s talk about the Alcan 5,000.

Andy & Mereceds (32m 19s):

So the Alcan 5,000 rally in a nutshell is a 5,000 mile plus 10 day rally that changes course. So it’s like the Olympics, it’s a time speed distance competition. It’s a road rally where it’s like the winter and then two years summer, then two years winter. And in 2024 this year it’s a 40th year Anniversary of it So it started in 1984 and the root changes and So, it starts typically near Seattle. And this year we’re gonna be going up all through British Columbia, then going into Alberta, then heading all the way up to Yellowknife, heading westward all the way through Whitehorse, then going up into Fairbanks optional route up to cold foot back down into Fairbanks, down to Valdez, and then finishing into Anchorage.

Sean Holman (33m 10s):

So, okay, so question for you guys, obviously going up there in a mostly stocked vehicle, but there are some limited modifications and then gear that you have to bring. So how are you outfitting it for this particular adventure?

Andy & Mereceds (33m 21s):

Yeah, It is mostly going to be stock. So we’re gonna, we love a, a good beef Goodrich, KO two, which is what this comes with. But we are gonna trial master comes with the trial master, which is the, the version we have. But we’re gonna swap out those tires from Michelin excise tires. Let’s give this thing as much traction as possible. ’cause frankly, once you get north of British Columbia in this time of year, oftentimes you won’t see bear pavement again for the entire rally. So we’re gonna put some Michelin excise tires on there. We’re gonna throw a set of Max Tracks up on the roof just in case we need those. We’re gonna have factory supplied or dealer supplied Rhino Rack. Rhino Rack is is INEOS racking partner.

Andy & Mereceds (34m 3s):

We’re gonna have a double Jerry can holder on there. We’re gonna have some antenna mount from Rhino Rack, some rugged radios, antennas and radios Factor 55 recovery gear that we’re gonna have 65 recovery gear and then a couple of Jerry cans up on the roof there. So, but really other than that, it’s, it’s, it’s gonna be stock. So, you know, we think it’ll be plenty capable.

Sean Holman (34m 24s):

What, what do you expect the range to be? So the fuel tank is 23.8 gallons. That’s

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (34m 28s):

So weird. ’cause I was going to ask that question. And the reason I was going to ask the question about range is because I drove the Alcan, right? So, I went all the way up and we went in December right before Christmas and there were spots that sign says last fuel stop for 400 miles. And if you don’t get 400 miles of range, you run out

Sean Holman (34m 46s):

And you get cold fast. Yeah,

Andy & Mereceds (34m 48s):

Yeah. so we anticipate at 15 miles a gallon, we expect about 350 miles of range. But again, we’re bringing 10 gallons of, you know, high test fuel with us just in case. You know, the the other thing that happens up there is you’ll, you’ll be going and there’s the gas station 400 miles later and you’ll pull in and they just might not have power. We’ve had that happen before in 2020 where we pulled in and they didn’t have power so nobody could fuel up. There’s a saying up there that literally all of us say never pass gas. And it’s so true. It’s funny, but it’s true. Never pass gas on the Alcan.

Sean Holman (35m 25s):

We have the, the same rule here in the podcast studio, which is never abided by No,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (35m 31s):

There are this right here is Hold on, listen, This is the bag of wiener schnitzel chili dogs from

Sean Holman (35m 35s):

Before we started Lightning inhaled about four chili dogs prior to calling you? No, just

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (35m 40s):

One. So what do you guys do when you run into the fuel station that’s out of power or that does, hasn’t been supplied fuel, then you just curl up and die Like I mean? Well

Sean Holman (35m 51s):

They’re, you’re still on the phone. So they’ve they’ve made it back barely a couple times. Maybe they

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (35m 55s):

Didn’t, maybe these are the ghosts of Andy and the ghost.

Sean Holman (35m 59s):

Don don’t think So, I, these are really them. Okay.

Andy & Mereceds (36m 1s):

The rally has buddy cars. So each team member has at least two or three different cars that they basically run within a pack. So you have morning time, speed, distance challenges where you have maybe for half an hour to an hour of an actual competition based, you know, part or a leg. and then you have maybe 750 or 780 miles where it’s basically a transit. Then you might have an afternoon leg. So during that transit you can’t really just slow down and like, you know, oh, take photos here, do this and you know, visit this area, whatever you, you have to make time. So, but you’re, you’re in a pack of a couple of different cars.

Andy & Mereceds (36m 41s):

That being said is, if you run out of fuel, there might be another vehicle that has a jerry can where you can swap fuel or this or that, but you’re, you have your own Jerry cans. You have to be self-sufficient up there.

Sean Holman (36m 52s):

I could see it where somebody runs out and the buddy cars all come to a stop and it’s like the end of Reservoir Dogs where they’re all looking at each other and it’s like, who gets the fuel can, yeah. You know, there’s like ro Shambo on the side. It’s like, don don’t know if I wanna give you my fuel, I’m, I’m getting low myself. You, you may have to just stay behind, get ’em in.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (37m 8s):

It’s subzero you die if you don’t have to.

Sean Holman (37m 10s):

If you Yeah, yeah. Like I, I wanna call you guys, I wanna call you guys after the Alcan just to find out if the defroster worked on this thing.

Andy & Mereceds (37m 18s):

Well, and and that’s and you, you raised a really good point. I mean, you know, there are lots of tips and tricks and, and we’re gonna be writing a lot about that. You know, one of the things is we have anti-fog spray that we’re gonna be using for the first time in the inside of our windshield and our, our our glass and, and all these different kinds of things and, and you know, all of these different things that you learn along the way each year that you do it that you’re taught. So, you know, you had asked about modifications and, and it’s not something, when I think of modifications, I think of tires and suspension and all that stuff. Winches, two things that we’re gonna be doing.

Sean Holman (37m 52s):

Oh, winches kind of like a what? Smitty built or Harbor Freight. See what you did there? So it.

Andy & Mereceds (37m 58s):

Yeah, it actually has a red win, red win on

Sean Holman (38m 0s):

It. Oh, interesting. But

Andy & Mereceds (38m 2s):

Two modifications we are making is we’re taking out the factory windshield wiper fluid and putting minus 50 fluid in there because that stuff will freeze up real quick. The other one is changing to a 60 40 antifreeze mix. So instead of being good down to about 36 below Fahrenheit, 38 Fahrenheit from the factory, it’s gonna be good to minus 62 Fahrenheit. So it’s little things like that. Fluids do weird things at 50 below zero. Your plastic does weird things at 50 below zero. So we’re, we’re making some modifications there. Not big sexy modifications, but necessary bits. Yeah.

Sean Holman (38m 38s):

Motor oil, gear oil, things like that.

Andy & Mereceds (38m 41s):

It has zero W 20, which is next to water anyway, so not worried about that. It’s all synthetic fluid too. So I’m not too worried about that.

Sean Holman (38m 48s):

So here’s my next question for you guys and it’ll become apparent after with my follow-up. Obviously people on this show, especially the two hosts in here, are thinking about restroom stops and what do you carry with you if you, if you have a common man’s bumper dumper or something like that, you’re exposed to the elements and I can’t imagine that, I would think that gasoline stops and serviceable restrooms are probably at the same interval. So how the heck do you go when you gotta go?

Andy & Mereceds (39m 15s):

So if you’re lucky enough, you might be able to find a rest stop. And most of the times it might be four pieces of plywood, slightly GED together that may have an outhouse roof ish kind of slightly put together. Andy’s got a really good photo that has made its way online in parts with the toilet in there that you can hover above and yeah,

Sean Holman (39m 41s):

You don’t wanna put your, your cheeks on it ’cause it’ll be like that, that scene in a Christmas story with the flagpole. And you’ll be taking a, a whole porta-potty with you when you get up.

Andy & Mereceds (39m 50s):

Yes. Yeah. No, no, no. Yeah, you hover, you hover. But most of the time there literally is nothing. So you, if you need to go, you literally pack it in, pack it out, I mean you go and you pack it out. So that, that is what It is. And as far as women, hey, you just gotta breathe, brave it and be quick.

Sean Holman (40m 5s):

So I have gotten to the age of where, you know, dumping in the desert, if you will. It’s not comfortable. My, my knees don’t like it. Right. What’s the necklace that you and I bought with the, the the, I have what’s in, that’s gram from Pula Hoop. Oh yeah, Pula Hoop. I have one of those toilet paper around your neck. Yeah. Yes. So you don’t have to sit in the dirt, it just hangs around your neck. Well no, that’s the toilet paper I’m talking about like the actual act of squatting. I understand like getting up and like making sure you don’t poop down the back of your pants or, you know, fill up your boots or something. Or, or on a, a particularly bad moment where you’ve got, you know, the piles growing. You have to move laterally to make room for yourself. I realize all these things are bad.

Sean Holman (40m 45s):

There’s no way that Andy and Mercedes thought they were gonna talk about. No, but this is important show. This is super important. So I’ve been looking at the, the thunder box and the bush toilet from Iron Man and they fold up and they’re like two inches thick folded box come That’s awesome. Right. Thunder box. And I was, I’m looking at those and I’m going, one of these two things has to be the best thing ever made because you can actually unfold this thing, sit on it, do your business, you do it into the, the normal bag that has the packout gel where it neutralizes everything. But do you guys have any experience with any of these? Because if I’m going on a epic cross continent adventure, I wanna be comfortable when I poop. I’m just gonna be honest with you. So,

Andy & Mereceds (41m 26s):

You know, I, I own a Luggable loo, but I’ve not ever had to use it. You know, we’ve, you know, I have, I I have more experience than I’m willing to admit with wag bags, but you know, on the Alcan, I guess I’ve just been lucky enough it’s, I, you know, I feel like, you know, people that have dogs, it’s like, oh, it’s so cold out dogs. Like, I’m not going outside. It’s too cold. So, so I’ve been able to usually have no problem with making my stops when I need to. High

Sean Holman (41m 55s):

Protein diet. Yeah. I mean eggs and steak for breakfast. Is that what we’re doing?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (41m 60s):

No, chili dogs.

Andy & Mereceds (42m 0s):

I mean, I guess, I guess call me, call me. Lucky as well. I mean, I, I just, either that or call me extra hardcore. I’ve never, I’ve never had lucky or you know, oh man, I’ve never had an issue, but I, you know, if It is

Sean Holman (42m 12s):

The travel gods are listening to you guys right now, don’t let your luck run out. Yeah.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (42m 17s):

Can we go back to the rally for a second? The rally specific? Yeah. I don’t, I don’t really understand this time based distance thing. Like how do you win? What do you, or is it just, is it just an exercise and hey, let’s go and we’re all gonna rally. It’s like, sounds like a caravan and not a race. What’s, do you win anything? What’s a rally? Does anyone win anything? Yeah. Like what’s, other than the adventure, what else is up?

Andy & Mereceds (42m 40s):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a part of the Alcan 5,000 is It is competition And, it is time, speed, distance. So time, speed, distance, rally. It’s not like stage rally like, you know, in a Subaru sliding sideways through the woods and all that stuff. Time, speed, distance is all about accuracy. So you get a route book and in the route book there’s a bunch of directions. So they’ll say like at, when your odometer reads 0.5, you take a right on a main street, change your average speed to 38 miles an hour. And then at 2.1 miles take a left onto, you know, Elm Street and change your average speed to 22. And then there’s checkpoints throughout that stage. They’re all GPS marked and they won’t tell you where, right?

Andy & Mereceds (43m 20s):

So they give you the mileage and they give you the distance, but they don give you the time. So you have to figure out when you’re supposed to be going through these checkpoints as accurately as possible. And there are a vari variety of different classes depending on your level of expertise and equipment. So we’re in the SOP class, which stands for seat of pants, which means we don’t have any computers or anything like that. There are equipped and unlimited classes that run com rally computers where you basically put the directions into this computer and it’ll tell you speed up, speed up, speed up, or slow down, slow down, slow down. I have Mercedes to tell me speed up or slow down. so we Yeah, exactly that thing.

Andy & Mereceds (44m 2s):

Yeah, we, we sort of jokingly say that the Alcan 5,000 is, by the way, there are, there are ridiculous long division equations to figure out the time that you need to incremental, incremental times between checkpoints. so we jokingly say that the Alcan 5,000 is an exercise in sleep deprivation and long division in hunger.

Sean Holman (44m 20s):

Well, okay, so, so let’s be honest, you guys own a Pierro rally tractor, you’ve got a delicate two, you’ve got a, a Subaru YY 22 miles, an hour Hour feels just at home for you guys?

Andy & Mereceds (44m 33s):

Oh, pretty much. Yeah. That’s almost top speed of the, of the rally tractor.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (44m 36s):

It’s weird though that if you, so if you go too fast, you can lose, that’s the bottom line, right? Lose accuracy

Andy & Mereceds (44m 43s):

Go fast. Too slow. Absolutely. It’s literally all, it’s a precision based rally, so you have to be perfectly on point on time. On course perfectly. Yeah. It’s a, a zero is a perfect score. So you show up early, you’re penalized, you show up late, you’re penalized. If you get stuck behind a tractor or you get stuck at a train crossing or something like that, you can take what they call a time allowance, which allows you to say, Hey, we are here for 30 seconds, we’re gonna add 30 seconds to our time. And the biggest thing is that it’s all on public roads. So you have natural things like, oh, there’s a stoplight or like a tractor or oh there’s a train or whatever. Usually they’re within towns so it’s not like on a highway or something like that.

Andy & Mereceds (45m 24s):

But yeah, like Andy said, you could be stopped and it’s a, you know, it’s like for majeure. Majeure. Oh sorry. You know, but there are time allowances. Yeah. Like we’re an act of God. Hopefully it’s not a blizzard I mean, which has happened up there in 2020. But you know, it it, it’s like, hey, sorry, sometimes. So

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (45m 41s):

What do you estimate you’re going to spend in gasoline?

Andy & Mereceds (45m 46s):

Lots.

Sean Holman (45m 49s):

I think that’s fair. You

Andy & Mereceds (45m 49s):

Have an estimate, didn’t you have an estimate? Oh God, you know who, who knows with covid and with the price of fuel increasing up there, I, you know don don’t know. So if we’re going 5,000 miles, 5,000 miles and I think the Grenadier was in between 15 to what? 17 miles per gallon? 15. That’s,

Sean Holman (46m 12s):

So how much Grenadine does it take through for what you did there? Oh? no, the Grenadines actually used

Andy & Mereceds (46m 17s):

Much just Grenadine. Grenadine.

Sean Holman (46m 18s):

Do you guys use don don’t

Andy & Mereceds (46m 19s):

Even know how much we’re thinking.

Sean Holman (46m 21s):

I think they used Grenadine in the alcohol that they pour in their windshield wiper fluid to keep it from freezing So. It’s red. Yeah,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (46m 27s):

Well

Andy & Mereceds (46m 27s):

Andy, you and I had priced out 87 Octane and I think it, it takes premiums honestly. We say premium. Yeah.

Sean Holman (46m 33s):

Oh. my God. That’s gonna bankrupt you guys.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (46m 36s):

Do you have

Andy & Mereceds (46m 36s):

Financial,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (46m 37s):

Do you guys have a financial sponsor? Lots.

Andy & Mereceds (46m 39s):

That’s why I said lots. So well listen a few thousand effectively probably a few thousand. I have an idea. Well over 2 2500 at least. I think.

Sean Holman (46m 49s):

I guarantee you if you open up one of those back seat seating positions, Lightning will be happy to donate 500 bucks to the cause and he will be perfect for pushing when you run out of fuel because your range is less.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (47m 3s):

I don’t think I’m gonna push

Andy & Mereceds (47m 6s):

Thousand pounds. Two of them. I was, I was gonna say we, we’ll, we’ll tell you. I will tell, I, I am very good about keeping meticulous records of all of my receipts as we go, especially fuel receipts. And, you know, if you follow Crank Cheff culture on our social, we actually have gotten a couple of press association reward or awards, I should say, rather with our previous Alcan 5,000 rally coverages and with the different reels and stuff like that. And one of ’em I know that I did of daily reels was, I think it was like day nine or something. It was like day 9, 22 tanks later or something like that. And I flipped back and forth the receipts of all the fuel tank receipts, like of all the gas stations.

Andy & Mereceds (47m 48s):

And I’m like, I think it was like 21 or 22 tanks of like nine days later or something like that. It was pretty wicked.

Sean Holman (47m 53s):

This is gonna be, this is gonna be epic. I I, I’m excited for you guys. I’ll tell you as a, as a longtime journalist, one of my favorite things is picking up a brand new unproven vehicle and driving it very long distances. I’ve had a chance to do that many times in my career. Maybe not quite to the Arctic Circle, but there, there’s nothing finer. If you guys want to follow along, I know you’ll, you’ll be posting@crankshaftculture.com and then what social will you guys be posting? The adventures on

Andy & Mereceds (48m 21s):

So? I will primarily, since I’m the navigator, Andy’s the driver. I will be posting on Crha culture via social media. So that will primarily be Instagram. I’ll be doing a lot of stories and they’ll be doing hopefully daily posts as service will allow. And then also on Facebook and then LinkedIn as well. And then on our social media, just, you know, with our names Andy and Mercedes Lilienthals. But most of the stuff that’s gonna be at cranks cheff culture. Yeah. With the exception of Twitter, if you’re still doing that, which is at cranks Cheff Cult. Right. Cool.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (48m 50s):

You, you know, it’d be so funny, Holman, they get all up there after 5,000 miles. They’re tired. It’s, they’re dreary

Sean Holman (48m 57s):

And they realize they left one of their gold bricks at home. They pay for fuel on the, on the return trip. They’ve

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (49m 1s):

Spent all this money on fuel. They’ve, like, they’ve, they’ve done the best they can, but they’ve, they’ve not come in first. They’re like second or third, but still it’s a good job. And then they finally get to the last destination. And you and I are just standing there smiling. ’cause we flew up on the Alaska Airlines for 280 bucks.

Andy & Mereceds (49m 19s):

Hey, and I gotta tell you that right away, you better have a magnum of champagne waiting for us. I,

Sean Holman (49m 26s):

In this case, there is champagne in the champagne room, All, right?

Andy & Mereceds (49m 30s):

That

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (49m 30s):

I be for

Sean Holman (49m 31s):

It. You guys will be on the adventure from February 21st through March 1st, and you guys can follow along at their socials. Awesome to you. Catch up with you guys. Andy, congrats on jumping out and being your own boss. It, I, I can tell you the, the awesomeness and fear that comes with that and I’m excited you guys are out doing stuff that you love. It’s, it’s amazing and, and great to catch up and talk to you guys.

Andy & Mereceds (49m 53s):

Yeah. Appreciate you having us on the show. Thanks for having us

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (49m 55s):

On. Awesome. Thank you guys.

Andy & Mereceds (49m 57s):

Thank you All.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (49m 58s):

Right. Bye. All. right. It’s been a minute since we played this shingle, but I Think we should dust it off and just roll around in it.

9 (50m 12s):

Some people want to go off road, so the better have that four Wheel mode. Others need to carry a load or something else that’s gotta be told. We don’t care if you drive a heat. We don’t care if it’s a brand new Jeep. We put the G in the GMC all shs. Let’s talk trucks.

8 (50m 43s):

I love that.

Sean Holman (50m 47s):

Do people realize that if The Truck, Show Podcast would’ve been no more because of the previous ownership, that that would’ve been our new podcast and that would’ve been our jiggle? I don’t think people know that. No, they don’t. That would’ve been the, the truck Show Podcast version 2.0. And unfortunately, for all of you listening, we’re still on 1.0, maybe 1.5. God bless Mr. Alcan Goldman Yeah. For putting that jingle together. I, I, that is literally one of my favorite ones I wanna talk to you about IC Cars, which is a car study and research company. And they put out this really interesting, I guess, study on the best used cars and trucks for the money in 2024. And we’ll, we’ll focus on the trucks. But here’s what’s interesting.

Sean Holman (51m 29s):

They, the, the methodology for figuring this out was kind of mind blowing to me. I’m like, oh. And the more I read into it, I was like, I don’t get it. And I got to the bottom, they explained, it was like, oh, that actually makes sense. So how are they, they’re calculating the value of the vehicle based on what? So this, this is from them on methodology. Okay. They analyze the price over 1.1 million five and 10-year-old cars sold from September to December, 2023. And then the odometer readings of over 312 million cars on the road. From that, they fed the odometer readings for each vehicle into a proprietary model that estimated the probability that each vehicle would survive to various mileage thresholds.

Sean Holman (52m 13s):

So basically they said, okay, we’re gonna focus on five and 10-year-old vehicles only, but we’re gonna use all this mileage in the industry so that we could see how long those models typically last. Mm. So they, they input those mileage numbers that, you know, this many Toyota Camrys reached a million miles, so the likelihood of all of them reaching here is this or, or whatever. Right? Okay. So then they took, they call it a survival model, which is pretty cool. They use that to calculate the average life of each vehicle as well as the average mileage after five and 10 years of driving. And then the average prices for each five and 10-year-old vehicle was then calculated by comparing the remaining lifespan expressed as a purchase price per 10,000 miles.

Sean Holman (52m 57s):

Oh. And that’s where you get the value proposition. Okay. Okay. So they excluded heavy duty and low volume vehicles and then to guarantee that the recommended models had a meaningful remaining driving lifespan. The requirement was 5-year-old and 10-year-old models had at least a hundred thousand miles or 80,000 miles of remaining lifespan. That’s what that was further imposed on the data to help new car buyers. They basically said, listen, new vehicles are expensive. You might not be able to afford one. You’re looking for value. How Can you get the best bang for your buck per the mileage that’s on the vehicle and what the average lifespan is, what the price of that vehicle is in the marketplace. And then we will rank ’em.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (53m 34s):

Has anyone ever done that before?

Sean Holman (53m 36s):

I’ve never seen it. I’ve

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (53m 37s):

Never heard of anyone rank vehicles based on their usable lifespan. It,

Sean Holman (53m 42s):

I it’s, huh. It’s kind of cool. I’ll just pull out a couple interesting ones. The Honda CR-V is the best 10-year-old SUV for the money with an average price of 15,726 with a remaining lifespan of 111,000 miles.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (53m 56s):

Okay, but does it consider ugly and pedestrian?

Sean Holman (53m 59s):

Nope. That was not part of this. And Honda CV got itself a trophy. I’ve got one of those trophy vehicles in my driveway right now. Yeah,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (54m 7s):

Yeah.

Sean Holman (54m 8s):

Do you wanna do the best 20 trucks, 10-year-old trucks for the money? Or 5-year-old first?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (54m 15s):

I Think. we do, wait, it’s overall 20 and then 5-year-old.

Sean Holman (54m 19s):

No, no, no, it’s five years or 10 years. But top 20 in each category. Oh,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (54m 23s):

Let’s do the, oh, interesting. Let’s do the,

Sean Holman (54m 28s):

The youngers or the olders

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (54m 29s):

First, let’s do the youngers

Sean Holman (54m 30s):

All, right? So this list has the best 5-year-old used trucks for the money. This mixes half tons as well as mid-size trucks. So number 12 was the GMC Sierra. Wait,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (54m 39s):

Hold on engines, do

Sean Holman (54m 40s):

We not included in this? It is just the name plates. Okay. So this is across the average, across all drive, train, configurations, all engines, all cabs, everything. So GMC Sierra 1500. So at a pretty expensive $3,307 per 10,000 miles came out to you. 42,000 oh eight oh, which is the average transaction price had 127,262 miles left. 62.4% of its life. The next one at 11 is pretty interesting. That’s Ford F-150. It’s the only other one that was above 3000 price for 10 K at 3050 $9. But the transaction price drops from 42 to 35 3 0 9.

Sean Holman (55m 21s):

But the remaining lifespan is only one 15 compared to 1 27, 1 15, 4 25 And. it only has 59.8% of its life remaining. And then here’s the top 10. So 10 10 All, right? RAM 1500 at 28 91 per price per 10,000 miles. The transaction price was 35,000 eight hundred twenty four, a hundred and twenty three, nine hundred twenty remaining on the lifespan. Which splits the difference between that Ford and the GMC Sierra that’s giving you 62.5% of life. Left nine All. right? Number nine is the Chevy Silverado 1500. It’s amazing to see what a difference It is from the Sierra at 12.

Sean Holman (56m 4s):

But I think that has to do with the more content on the Sierra and the higher transaction price anyway. But it’s 25 94 for 10,000 miles. Again, the GMC Sierra was at 42 0 8. Oh the Silverado’s 36,524. So you’re gonna get a better value

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (56m 16s):

$36,000. Okay?

Sean Holman (56m 17s):

Yep. Lot better value than going with A GMC. And you get 135,969 miles remaining versus the 1 27 on the GMC that’s giving it a 63%, 63.9% of its remaining lifespan. So

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (56m 31s):

These are all kind of clustered together with the same mileage remaining, which is kind of interesting. Okay,

Sean Holman (56m 35s):

So the truck average comes in here between eight and nine. And that’s at 25 94, 30 4,000 seven oh nine, a hundred thirty 3000 miles. 1, 3, 3, 8, 11 at, and you get 64% of life. Now we start, you know, kind of chipping away. No, the next one, eight is the Ford Ranger at 2399. It’s transaction price. 30,606 927,836 miles remaining. That’s 66%, 66.9% of its remaining life. That’s the highest on the list so far. Okay, now the next seven. Now the next one, number seven, the Chevy Colorado 2392.

Sean Holman (57m 15s):

Now the transaction price over the Ranger drops to 27 8 82. Ranger was 36 69. But you only get 116,542 miles left on the truck versus 1 27, 8 36. That’s 62% remaining lifespan. So the Colorado’s cheaper, but you don’t, you also don’t get as many miles. But which I,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (57m 34s):

It’s not, that’s not like 40,000 less. It’s only like, it’s less than 10,000. Sure. Less six.

Sean Holman (57m 40s):

So six is the Nissan Titan 2362 transaction price. 31,967. You get 135,338 miles. Yeah, that’s better. That’s 65.2%

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (57m 52s):

Five.

Sean Holman (57m 53s):

The GMC Canyon, 2003 54 per 10,000 miles. That’s a 31 1 1 3, you get 132,175 miles remaining. And that’s 66%, 66.7. So the second highest on percentage, now we get into the top four. This is fascinating to me because the value proposition in the miles remaining jump up quite a

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (58m 18s):

Bit. So I was waiting for this, like we’re all clustered around That one 16 to 1 33 range. 133,000 miles. No, it was 1 36, somewhere around there being the best. Yep. Full.

Sean Holman (58m 27s):

That’s right. Toyota Tundra number four. 2070 $9 per 10,000 miles. 39,000 1 53 average price. So the transaction

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (58m 35s):

More expensive. Yeah.

Sean Holman (58m 35s):

Goes way up. But the remaining lifespan, 188,340

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (58m 40s):

Miles. Damn. Damn.

Sean Holman (58m 41s):

That’s the highest on the list out of all of ’em. That’s 71.7% of life still remaining at five years. Wow.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (58m 49s):

180 8 you said

Sean Holman (58m 50s):

180 8. Now the next one’s interesting because the remaining lifespan goes down and the miles goes down, but the price goes way down, which tells you what a value It is. So,

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (59m 1s):

Oh, wait a minute, what could this be? Three, wait, boy, I gotta guess the price is going way down on a Suzu Trooper

Sean Holman (59m 8s):

Oh Yes, Nissan Frontier. 2070 $2 per 10,000 miles. Okay. Transaction price was only 24,834. So that is actually the lowest transaction price on the list. So you get the most value from there.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (59m 22s):

So again, I guess on mileage,

Sean Holman (59m 23s):

Remaining mileage is

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (59m 25s):

1 44 1 19.

Sean Holman (59m 27s):

844. Okay, that equates to 63.2%. Now the number

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (59m 33s):

Two

Sean Holman (59m 33s):

Truck is the Toyota Tacoma. This is the first truck that breaks down below $2,000 price per 10,000 miles. 1894. Average price 33 116 remaining lifespan. Do you care to guess?

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (59m 49s):

Is it better or is it worse? I think it’s better. So I’m

Sean Holman (59m 53s):

1 38, 1 74, 8 31

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (59m 55s):

Oh. my God, it’s, it was way

Sean Holman (59m 57s):

Off 71.4%. And so

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (59m 59s):

Both the Toyota’s crushing it. Are

Sean Holman (1h 0m 1s):

You ready for number one on the list? And

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 0m 3s):

Number one is, I’m gonna guess, can I guess, here we go.

Sean Holman (1h 0m 7s):

I’m waiting.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 0m 8s):

Ford F-150.

Sean Holman (1h 0m 10s):

Nope, that was number 11.

Jay “Lightning” Tilles (1h 0m 11s):

You’re right. It was number 11. Dammit.

Sean Holman (1h 0m 13s):

Number one is the Honda Ridge line.

Yeah. No, that doesn’t count. 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 kh. 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.

13 (1h 16m 47s):

Yeah, me one more time.

8 (1h 16m 51s):

Yeah,

Sean Holman (1h 17m 22s):

I can’t even say shit right now.