The Drive Turns 1! 10 Car Technologies We’d Ditch + Our Favorite Guests

0:00Welcome to The Drive with your automotive experts and hosts, Lauren Fix and Carl Broward. Each week we dive into breaking car news, share our latest vehicle reviews, and bring you up to speed on what's happening in the automotive world. Welcome to The Drive with Lauren and Carl. This is a very special episode because this marks one year of The Drive. And Carl Broward, my co-host, welcome back to the show together. We have done a lot of work and covered a lot of great subjects. 52 weeks, 52 episodes. Now, if that's not commitment, I don't know what is Lauren, right? So here we are a year in. And I think one of the things that's been most rewarding really has just been understanding

1:02how we can talk about the industry and include so many other voices within the industry, not just ours. Not that you and I don't have a bit of experience in the industry between the two of us, but then you start wrapping in people like Henry Payne or Anton Walman or Al Vesquez or Mike Carly and you end up with a lot of great wisdom and discussion about the industry. And of course, beyond all the things that you see in front of the camera, there's what goes on behind the camera to make these happen, which of course we owe a great debt of thanks to Paul Fix. Thanks for having me. It's been really fun editing for you guys and producing the show. And also because I'm so involved in the automotive industry, you've got brought in to be an automotive journalist at a young age and getting to have a hand in putting out the show with you guys has been a lot of fun. That's great because you have good insight because you bring that youthful perspective. You like cars like JDM's, all those Japanese cars that you know, Carl and I like, but you're like really into them and you own a 944 turbo. So you're into the cars that Carl and I saw we were in high school.

2:04Yeah, I know. We're new and we were much younger and all. But yeah, you're right. Lauren also Paul just gives us great tips and hey, you guys should do this. You guys should try that and all that, you know, that's the kind of feedback you want. You want someone who's seeing everything going on and seeing opportunities to improve. Battery aside, we've seen a lot of changes in the year that we've been doing the show. And it's funny that sometimes we think that the automotive industry moves very slow. And as a whole, it kind of does. But we've also seen it move very rapidly, especially this last year with changes to tire laws which we've talked about recently and gas prices and especially the EV movement that's been really big and not to mention all the really interesting, actually cool concept cars and future production cars that are coming out. So there's a lot of stuff happening which keeps things very exciting and it makes it all, not just the radio show, but being in the automotive industry. It's been keeping it very fun for us. Right. We have block cameras, stop technology, the removal of the laws, the changes of all the

3:08regulations. It's been a lot going on in the last year. I mean, Carl's got to drive some pretty cool cars which we've covered. So make sure to check out past episodes and subscribe to our podcast and our YouTube channel, the Drive Car Show. If you're listening to this, I'm terrestrial ready to get to see everything and see all of our guests. And people like that. I think people are really enjoying being able to see it as well as hear it. No, you're right. And on the data side with all the stuff I'm doing at IC cars, it's just been fascinating to watch. You know, I try to keep telling people how I saw the shift in EV demand before there was a presidential election before there were federal incentive removals and all. We topped out around 8%. We kind of plateaued national new car share for EVs about September of 25. So that was months before we even had the election. And a year before we took away the federal incentive and everyone's like, well, the other reason EVs aren't selling well is because of the change in political wind. It's like, you know, they're selling exactly like they should and exactly like they will. Because as I like to remind people, you can love reality and you're allowed to hate reality.

4:11But you're going to get in trouble if you deny reality. And I feel like I can change that. That's one of my favorite statements. But I feel like I can change that to just market instead of reality. You can love what the market has to say about various car popularity and you can hate what the market has to say about various cars and their popularity. You're going to get in trouble, especially if you're running a car company. If you deny what the market has to say about the popularity of things. We've seen that over and over again and the three of us talk off air all the time and think, this is ridiculous. I can't believe that they're still pushing for all electric and we're like, are you crazy? No one's buying it. And we've seen the results that Volkswagen has taken a huge hits to land. This made some major changes. Honda dropped all their electric vehicles. GM still kind of holding strong. They really don't want to let that go. But Ford has made a shift. And so we're starting to see a lot of different brands. We literally cover every brand on this show because we don't know what you like. And we want to make sure to cover every brand from Lamborghinis and Bugatti's all the way to normal cars that everyone drives. Yeah, it's funny. We're seeing that shift where EVs are the future.

5:12I promise. And then at the same time, they're cutting their EV production and discontinuing cars. I have a couple of friends that have bought EVs and they're very happy with them. And I'm happy for them that they are happy with their cars. But as we know, it's not ready for prime time. We're still trying to get the stuff off the ground. And we'll continue talking about it here on the drive as we go forward. Absolutely. All right. Well, this was a good, your first opening salvo into our annual show here that's celebrating a year of the drive with Lauren and Carl. We will be right back after this break. Welcome back to the drive with Lauren and Carl. And this segment is brought to you by IC cars. That's of course where I am executive analyst and where we are providing a lot of studies where you can see what's going on in the automotive market before you buy your car.

6:16Of course, the site has all the vehicle listings you'd expect close by across the country and anywhere in between. You can filter for everything, make model year, mileage price. But if you want to understand maybe which models are holding their value the best, which colors are holding their value the best. Which cars are the longest lasting? We just did that one, longest lasting cars. Any and all of that on iccars.com or check it out. Now we've got a special guest, another person helping us celebrate our one year anniversary Lauren. And this one of course is Michael Harley. He's been in the industry a long time like the two of us has a lot of perspective. Also has a lot of history with performance cars. And so I think what we wanted to talk about for this segment was the challenge as a performance car brand or any brand producing a performance model in a world that increasingly seems to want to kill performance. But that's my perspective. What do you think Mike? Congratulations on the one year anniversary that's put in milestone. And hopefully you guys invite me back when you do the one decade anniversary show.

7:17I don't know what kind of medium will we talk about. Hopefully I'll be invited. I'm a car enthusiast and a lot of people are convinced that the car makers are the ones that are making it so they're no more driving enthusiast vehicles. And the truth is the enthusiast vehicle has been squeezed out to a bunch of stuff. Basically changes in regulation and the industrial system that now optimizes pressure avoidance, emission compliance, electrification, automation and mass market convenience. So basically the industry has moved on and left the audience, you and I, the driving enthusiast behind. And first thing I want to talk about the things that have really changed and those are the most obvious things. First, the industry has moved towards safety and crash avoidance. You have much stronger vehicles now and you have heavier chassis, you have airbags, you have crash avoidance systems like radars and things like that. They add a lot of weight. And you guys all know that a car that used to weigh 2500 pounds 15 years ago, now weighs

8:203500 pounds of 4000 pounds. Enthusiasts don't like mass. We also have emissions requirements. Remember those big burly V8s of the 70s? Well, they've all been replaced by 4 cylinder trims which are engines these days, which are nearly as visceral and exciting to the enthusiast. You have eight ass requirements, advanced driver assistance safety systems that intervene. You know, the old days you held your vehicle on the lane and if you swayed up, you hit the dots and then you jump back in the middle, you know your car correctly, which once again taken the control away from the driving enthusiast. You also have electrification batteries are extremely heavy. There are electric motors everywhere in a car which has more mass. And lastly, I want to talk about efficiency with that electronics. You know, we joke we used to have power window lifts if you were lucky to have a crank of windows. Now we have power window lifts. We have power fuel pumps. We have electronic power assist systems for the steering racks and you also even have electric water pumps. All that stuff adds weight. So the bottom line is that the enthusiast car, you know, the lightweight visceral engaging

9:25vehicle has been pushed aside by regulation and an industry that's moved on. Wow. So what do you think? I know you're a Porsche guy and you gave me great advice when I bought my car, which I still own and I still love carols of Porsche guy too. So what do you think of something like a Hyundai Alontera N? What's your thoughts on that? I mean, it is kind of performance, but it's a two liter. It's not a V8. It's not a Porsche. It's not a Mustang GT. It's not a Corvette. It's not a TRX. What's your thoughts? That's a great question because it actually brings up another topic, the CVT transmission. And it continues to be a little transmission. But the combustion engine and the ideal torque and RPM setting for efficiency. Once again, you're not running through the gears. And one thing driving enthusiast like is this sound of a combustion engine running from idle all the way up to red line, back and forth over and over again. And the problem with the high performance electric vehicles is you're missing one of those visceral things that are driving enthusiasts is looking for. So yes, they accelerate quickly, but there is no audible sensation. There's no visceral feeling in your gut.

10:27There's no vibration. It's a different experience. Yeah. Now it is. And to me, if you need confirmation on where kind of the market wants to go, or at least the enthusiast and the people with money, look to the used car performance market and specifically to cars that have three pedals in the driver's foot well, the same two cars that are performance vehicles. I was watching an auction earlier today for a 9972 Porsche Turtle. And out of Turbo S like I have, they were all PDK, but a turbo and that can have a six feet or a manual. This thing was a manual shift, cool color, and the price was through the roof. And you just see this across the used car market right now for performance cars with three pedals. So that's the world we live in now. And hopefully we'll get to maybe curve back toward more visceral cars, but it seems like right now we're going to, it's going to be tougher and tougher for them to produce cars that are really fun and elicit emotions like you're talking about, Mike. All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with the drive with Lauren and Carl.

11:36Welcome back to the drive with Lauren and Carl and our one year anniversary show. This segment is brought to you by ClassicTube. You're keeping your collector car, maybe an older car and you really need some replacement brake fuel or transmission lines. Check out ClassicTube made in America. They're bent on perfection. Hopefully everything from the 30s to current production cars, they can get you replacement tubes that you probably can't get at your favorite auto part store or your dealer. So now into the next segment, we have a very good friend and also one of our favorite guests Anton Walman, who is a man of the world. I would think they could call him the man of the world because you live literally everywhere. But you have an interesting perspective on things and that's what we want to have you join us back. You know, this is exciting. We're glad to have you. You're going to be here. So I think the most important thing here is to realize a lot of people who do not follow the automotive industry very closely.

12:38The most important factor realize when you're looking at the automotive industry, as opposed to many other industries, whether it's the clothing industry or the whatever, any other little widget industry, is that the automotive industry is regulated in a way that most other industries are not. The automotive industry has some other heaviest regulations of any industry and it comes for so many angles. It comes with safety. It comes from emissions. And what we've seen over the last decade in particular are these so-called mandates and mandates are basically requirements by the government that a certain product is sold as part of a certain mix. And if you don't basically adhere to this mix, if you sell too few of the particular product with the politicians of determined at any point in time, then the automakers pay a huge set of fines. And this has become a huge problem in the automotive industry over the last five years because what has happened is that the prescribed mix that the governments, both in North America, especially in the United States, as well as in Europe, simply the dog wasn't eating the

13:41dog food. The consumer said, you know what? You told us to buy these things and despite all of these discounts and push pull mechanisms, we're just not buying enough of it. And then what happened is that regular automakers that are going to have to navigate this mix, or GM, Chrysler, too, to all of them, they are essentially having to pay enormous fines into the billions, and the tens of billions of dollars to the favored companies. And the favored companies have been the electric-only companies that have been reporting on their quarterly income statements, hundreds of billions of dollars and millions of dollars. And then in some cases up to a billion dollars or more per quarter in just net cash coming from these other automakers, and the companies that are having to sell both gasoline vehicles as well as electric vehicles, they are then having to price their gasoline vehicles higher to make up for the losses that they encounter in selling electric vehicles.

14:42And then what happened here just over a year ago is that the US on the federal level started loosening and indeed abolishing most of the regulations that forced the automakers to sell a particular mix. In the US, we still have a mix requirement in California and so on, there are states that follow them, which is currently basically being adjudicated in the court system, and we don't know really where and when that is going quite yet. In Europe, we have had a similar problem, except that they have been much slower in terms of loosening their regulations. Basically, baby steps compared to the US in this regard. But there, the automakers are just loosening, enormous amount of money. Not just by the way in terms of the automobiles, but also on trucks. Only 2% of the trucks sold in Europe are EVs, and they are required now to make 20, 30, 40% of them as EVs. And this year alone, they're going to have to pay several billions of dollars, the dinelers of this world that are making these big heavy trucks in Europe.

15:43And if they have to pay all these fines for not selling enough electric trucks, they're going to go under. And this is becoming a huge problem in Europe with unemployment, closing factors. You've seen Volkswagen has reported they're laying off 100,000 people and closing four factors. You can imagine the political problem here, but at the same time, the politicians cannot get out of their own way to actually abolish these hugely destructive rules. So that's where we stand right now for anybody who is watching the automotive industry from the outside. This is the most important thing to understand is that the automotive industry simply isn't about smart product planners and executives figuring out how to make the best product that the consumer wants. They are forced to make products that the politicians have dictated in a certain mix. And if they don't do it, there are billions or tenets of billions of dollars in fines, which is why the earnings of these companies are going down and their ability to employ an expander is going down. That's the main message. Well, that's 100% true.

16:44Everything you said, Anton, and to me, the irony that just as China is becoming this incredible, global threat to every automaker that's not Chinese, the Europeans are engineering the destruction of their own automotive industry. It's just the timing literally couldn't be worse. You've got China just waiting in the wings, you know, looking their chops, waiting for Volkswagen and some of these other massive players in Europe to go wonder. And you talked about like the US and the trucks situation and the domestics here in the US are able to always fund a certain amount of stuff, including money losing EVs because they're selling superbens and rams and expeditions and explorers and navigators. And these are high profit internal combustion vehicles. Though, like you said, they've had to raise the price even more on those and everything else to help pay and fund this. Europeans don't have that option. They're not selling a million plus full size trucks every year in Europe that they can have massive profit on. So it just looks like it's going to get ugly. I mean, what do you think? Yeah, and also a car basically what we have in Europe is that the input costs because

17:46they have another energy problem. And that is that they got rid of their nuclear plants in Germany and have to pay so much more for the cost of electricity and these auto factories, of course, run like most things heavily on electricity. So it costs them so much more to make these cars. They're getting hit from all sides over there. Yeah, it's true. What do you think, Lauren? I think we're going to be right back after this break and I thank you Anton and we'll have a link down below and where you can find more of his information because he's awesome. Thanks so much. We'll be right back after this break. This is the drive with Lauren Fix and Carl Brower. Welcome back to the drive with Lauren and Carl and for this segment since we have a string of special guests during this episode, we have got Henry Payne from the Detroit News who

18:48is like kind of the center of the universe when it comes to like domestic automatic factors and not just them because he's good at comparing them to what's going on for the foreign automakers and he's got this great perspective on the whole industry. And you know, Henry, I feel like the domestics have had some whipsaw activity between we are so in on all EV. Well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well, we're not really all in on EVs and they've kind of aborted that to a large extent. But what I always says because they've got so many big trucks and SUVs and explorers and suburban and F-150s to sell, they can kind of play around in the EV world and not live or die. And they have a lot of European's where when they go all in on EVs and it blows up in their face, they have to lay up 100,000 people and close more plants, for instance. So, oops, yeah. Yeah, that's a bigger oops for them than it is because you know, for better or for worse, our folks here locally can kind of play around and still have a money train paying for everything. But I feel like China is kind of waiting in the wings.

19:48There's rumblings about them coming into this country, Henry, which I think could get very interesting from the domestics. But even without them, with Honda and Toyota, especially Honda back on the track of the right cars to make, Toyota never really got off of it. And of course, the Koreans coming on strong. I feel like the domestics still have plenty of challenges ahead of themselves, even now that they're figuring out slowly the EV thing. The Germans as well. They've got some headwinds as well. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. It's always fascinating and first of all, Lauren, Carl, congratulations on episode 52, one year of the drive, but tremendous program. And I'm honored to be a guest as always every 50 years or so. The Washington tries to kill its domestic auto industry. So in 1970, it's no sense. Yeah. Washington tried to kill Detroit with the KFA laws. Detroit was making big cars that Americans like station wagons, things like that. And so Washington put in place mild prudel and restrictions that favored for manufacturers

20:52like Japanese, low and behold, Chrysler went bankrupt a decade later. And it was only Ronald Reagan and the restriction of KFA laws that saved the industry. They went back to making SUVs, a famous SUV, loophole, the truck loophole that saved them. So here's spot on, Carl. I mean, the Detroit automakers know how to make what Americans like. They live here. They're in the United States. They're in the meat of the country. They're not on the coasts. These coasts wants to be more like Europe. The West Coast wants to be more like China, but the meat of America, which is where Ram Dodge Ford GM sell their cars. They know this territory. So let them make fossil fuel-powered trucks and SUVs in Americans want. So here we are 50 years later from KFA and Washington's trying to kill the domestics again. They didn't learn their lesson the first time around, I guess. That's right. So, you know, life is cycles. So we've gone through this, you know, horrific five years of EV mandates.

21:58And the Ronald Reagan of our time, Donald Trump has now come in and said, no more EV mandates. Let the domestics make what their customers want. And guess what? Ram comes back out of the V8. Their sales go up by 20%. You know, the General Motors is free to make what they want. So they come out with bigger displacement of V8 engines for their pickup trucks. And then just yesterday we heard from Ford. And Ford is upping the displacement of their IC engines for pickup. So that's where the market is. That's where the market is. You can't tow 10,000 pounds very far with an electric truck. Well, we learned that. As I said in the past, I think that we were all lied to. We went to a lot of these EV truck events. Oh, yeah, you can haul a wine barrel and all these stuff. And we did. But we didn't realize that either they lightened the loads or there was something definitely not was being delivered to consumers because like TFL because we've had Roman Mike on our show.

22:58So you got like what 80 miles or something. It was ridiculous. You spend more time. They let us they let us tow things for like 50 miles. It's like see how good it did to. It's like, yeah, as long as they never have to go more than 50 miles while I tow, that's fine, which isn't very far. Yeah. El Maya, aha moment was here in Michigan. And I had to tow a sailboat up north. And a Ford lightning had 300 miles of range. That gets cut by two thirds if you put a trailer behind it. So it's range was 100 miles. That's nothing. The chargers here in the state of Michigan. I'm not in California. I'm in Michigan. The fast chargers in Michigan were 120 miles apart. So you could not get from one charger to another. What did you do? General Adorama. I'm excited to the road for the last 20 miles. Yeah. And the customers figured that out and, you know, fortunately we're back in a good place. But again, you know, these governments are determined to kill the domestics and Dodge stop making V8s because the federal government find them a billion dollars for making V8s

24:00back in 2022. In 2026, if you didn't sell 35% of your product in California's EV, they were going to find you billions of dollars. You can see that. I put them out of business. Yeah, you can see the corner that these Detroit makers were in. Yeah. Lots of changes. I think you as a consumer get to have the say. And I think that's what's really important. And people don't realize that if you don't buy it, they're not selling it. So they can have it sit in the lot. All they want is plenty of electric vehicles that are there. And we just saw that just a slightly different. General Motors was pushing their own interface. And then suddenly they're like, you know what? People do want Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. I guess we're going to switch back. And that just happened just a few weeks ago. So that's really good to know that your demands are being listened to because they have no choice. Yeah, that's really fancy. Yeah. I mean, that's how entrenched the phone is in our lives. But GM could not convince customers to use that interface native to the car.

25:01The customer still wants to come in and have their phone run everything. I think that's a really interesting inflection point in how people interact with cars. And think about how they tried to integrate it too, right? They were like, anytime a car maker says, we're going to do this and it's going to be better. Oh, cool. What are you doing with Hills? Like we're making sure you can't use it anymore. Well, if it was better, you wouldn't have to kill the old one or take it off the table because I'd use the new one because it's so much better, right? Exactly. They're slowly learning that looks like. It's been a great segment. Thank you, Henry, for coming on. It kind of illuminating the motor city and how things were going there. We will be back in a few minutes after this break with the drive with Lauren and Carl. Welcome back to the drive with Lauren and Carl. And this special segment is brought to you by Carl Broward Cars.

26:02That's my YouTube channel where I'm putting up at least a couple videos a week, sometimes they're Nissan versus sometimes they're Lamborghini Revolto's. So you got everything from a $30,000 car to a $800,000 car and everything in between. Check out Carl Broward Cars on YouTube. I just did something with the one plus million dollar Bravis, the Bravis Voto and it's a pretty amazing car. I started out as an aster Martin vanquish, not a bad car and what it looks like today, oh my gosh, check it out on my YouTube channel. So we have got a long line of people who've been recording the show with us this episode because it's our special one year anniversary, but we can't have a special one year anniversary of the show without the man who had I think thought 33 years anniversary's before we took the show. And that was Alan Taylor, the show that drive with Alan Taylor has been around for a long time and we're trying to carry on his tradition as well as we can. And Alan, thank you for joining us and helping us celebrate your show that's been our show for the last year. Well, congratulations to both of you guys because it's not as easy as everybody thinks it

27:05is. Although, once you get in the flow, you can't live without it. So I'm glad to be back. And especially for this particular episode. And I, of course, tune in all the time and laugh my butt off a lot of times. You know, how snarky both of you guys are and unafraid to speak the truth about the auto industry because, you know, I've listened to shows for years and years and years and years. And a lot of these shows are, you know, like, not scripted, but you can just tell there's something going on there. And over the, yeah. And I will contriot. Yeah. I love the fact that, first of all, I know you too. And you're both very good at what you do. And I, that's why when it came time to like, well, all right, well, how do I pass this to somebody that I don't like and love? You know, that I, that because I've always been kind of a wild and crazy guy. But who was going to take over for me? Or do I just kill the damn thing? And I thought, I can't kill it. It's too much fun. We wouldn't

28:08have to. You were on the show all the time. And I thought, well, you guys were the perfect couple, you might say, to take it over because yes, it does take two to replace me. I get it. Yeah. You were that good, Alan. But then, yeah, it's, yes, son, and every segment, which is a lot of work as Carl and I have learned, which is sometimes, yeah, I know. You do the show ourselves because it's easier. No, it's the banter. And whether it's a guest or it's the two of us without a guest, you really want that banter. I think the listeners enjoy hearing from more than one person and more than one voice and more than one perspective and speaking of that. Let's jump into this topic that we're going to do for this episode because we knew you'd love it. And this is the top 10 questionable modern day automotive technologies. And I'm using questionable kindly. There's other words I could have used, but we're going to just call them questionable. And I think all three of us have the perspective. We've been around long enough to notice these technologies aren't pure upside. In fact, sometimes there's a lot of downside, but what are you going to say, Alan? Well, I see one here, electric assist power steering.

29:12And I do believe, I think I've got a recall on one of my vehicles that has this. And so I get this thing from, I don't know, maybe it was Carfax or somebody and I get something from the manufacturer. And I'm like, all right, all right, I know, but I don't think they have a fix for it yet. And so every time I'm looking, I keep getting these reminders, there's still no fix for it. So it's like, what do you do? What am I supposed to do? Exactly. And you know, a system, and you know, I both know Alan, if that was like a hydrocassisted steering system, and there was a leaky hose or even a bad, you just go replace it and you go on with your life. You don't need like a special like brainiac coating thing that we're not, we haven't figured out, you know, all right. So that's a good one. And by the way, it screws up the steering feel too. I mean, my big thing is you tell and all. And it's much better than it was 20 years ago when it started to come in, but it's still not hydrocassisted steering. Thank you, McLaren, for continuing to use it in your supercars. Let's knock a couple of these out really. I'll take a couple and then Lauren, you jump in, but okay, cabin-based cameras that are watching you, they're watching you in your passengers and all and they're deciding whether you're behaving properly in the car.

30:15Not a fan. Don't need those watching me and telling me when I'm properly driving or not. So get rid of that, please take a conscious break. You've all seen that. We've seen that for like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you need a break and stuff. No, no, I need something to break. It ain't me, but I do need something to break Mr. Camera. How about cabin microphones for all the same reasons? And by the way, again, I've told the story, but I probably should tell it again really, because I think it's worth it. But the short version is when I bought my Dodge Demon 170 and I actually read a connected car agreement and realized that they could listen to your conversations at all times along with everything else that are going to track in your throttle inputs and your speed and all. I was like, no, and I had to specifically say I do not want this service because I'm worried about privacy concerns so that they not only wouldn't have the service, but that they weren't supposed to. And I'm believing them, turn it off and not be listening to me. No, but did you do? Did you cut the green wire or the red wire? That's all I wanted anyway. My favorite start stop technology. I hated it. I hated it since day one. It never works on Cura. Smooth it is. They've eliminated it through the EPA and then I contacted every brand and they were still keeping it in.

31:17Many brands are starting to get rid of it. Please do a software update and get rid of that. CBT transmissions. I don't know. One person that likes CVT transmissions and neither do the mechanics. Alan, you started the list. The next one on the list was the electronic assistance. What about some other things you don't like? Well, I mean, everything you've named so far, but let's see here. Safety nannies. I'm about ready to buy a new car. Believe it or not, I'm kind of looking right now. A new truck, I should say. I have a Jeep Gladiator diesel and I love it, but it, okay, I'm 66 years old now. So my back's not as good as it was and getting in and out of that thing. So I thought, you know, I'm going to get a little more gentleman truck. And I started thinking about all these nannies. That's like everything. And like you said, they're listening to you. They're watching you. They've got something and they're sniffing the air so they know what you're eating or if you farted, you know, it's like, come on. Okay, I'm a gassy guy, but I don't want to get a bell going off every time. Oh, that was a bad one. Yeah. I agree. They're watching

32:19everything we do. And sometimes we really don't want them to know what we're doing in there. And along the lines of that is the connected cart. Don't forget if they're watching us and they're recording us. And then they're connected. They're getting all this information instantly. So that's scary too. There was a little touchscreen controls. I think Tesla's probably the worst. You know, I want to open my glove box. Well, you better push a button on that. Why would you have a manual hour release? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That works great. Then the screen goes out and you can't do anything. And finally, a big one for me, guys, is these glass roofs. And I've got less on top than the two years. Maybe you guys don't relate to it. But I don't care what they say the technology is when you got UV shining in on you. And they're, well, it's it's supposed to filter out 99% of UV. I don't need 1% of UV hitting the top of my head if I'm driving across the country for four hours. So yeah. All right, that's our list. We're going to come right back to a quick break. And we'll do more with the drive with Alan and Lauren and Carl. We've got all three of us today. We'll be right back.

33:22This is the drive with Lauren fix and Carl Browr. Welcome back to the drive with Lauren and Carl and our very special guest, Alan Taylor, who started this show. But first, I want to let you know that this segment is brought to you by Carcoach reports. It's my news channel. You can check out all the information, including the drive car show at carcoachreports.com. We've got news. We've got car reviews. We've got the drive car show. And our original founder of this show is Alan Taylor. Alan, what the heck are you doing these days? People ask us all the time on social media. What is Alan up to these days? Well, I will tell you that oddly enough, during the COVID, I bought a couple old buildings in my town. I live on the kind of the Oregon, California border in Oregon, southern town called Grants Pass. It's a cute little town. I've been here since 1979.

34:22I traveled all around the world just like you guys do. It didn't matter where I lived because I was a radio guy. I could record everything. But I bought a couple old buildings. Now, I think I have like 10 different old buildings. They're all like 100 to 125 years old. Wow. Like restoring cars, I did that when I was at a high school fixing up and restoring cars. Doing old buildings is very similar. I like working with my hands and I like working with a crew of guys. I have this crew of guys. I was literally came over here right now and we were building a wall in one and we're putting a kitchenette in another one. All together with all these buildings, I have 82 rental units. Wow. I am a landlord. You think big. You're like cars. I've done cars before. I want buildings. Now it's building. We're going to talk to you in another 10 years for the shows anniversary and you're going to be fixing like states or something like that. I'm restoring Oregon. I'm fixing all of that. They're always like, you should be

35:25the mayor of town. I'm like, no, I don't want to be the mayor. It's anyway, but I did. I'll cost you money. Not make you money. I'm on the board of what's called Main Street. Main Street is a Main Street organization throughout the entire United States. I am a little bit political about that, but we put on a car show called Cruise the Rogue because we're on the Rogue River. Detroit, they have the Rouge River. It's a little different spelling of Rogue, but it's a really cool river. There was a lot of celebrities here. I always used to come fishing here like John Wayne and all back in those days. This town is kind of, it's a river town. I love it here. I still play with cars all the time and I have probably 10 or 15 different cars, but nothing in particular, but we did the Cruise the Rogue show and it was a huge success. We had almost 500 classic cars and every kind of genre of car and we had a cruise. Cruises are so cool. They are. We had a cruise for many years and then it went away. You get to have a lot of camaraderie with the car community.

36:27We did that and we already have got, we're looking at maybe having a thousand cars next year. It was mid-July and it was fantastic and other than that, let's see, July 4th, I got baptized and everybody thought that was a big, big deal. I'm wearing my shirt, what does it say? Psalm 4610. Be still and know that I am God. I'm in this next phase of my life and it's fun. I'm really enjoying myself and I'm enjoying watching and listening to you guys do the show and I laugh. I laugh at you guys, not at, but with because there they are doing the dog on show and it's so fun and I stay up with things through you guys just so you know because you're working. We love taking the legacy to the next step. We really do. That's right and the fact that I see your son, Lauren and it's continuing it on and Carl even with his stories with his daughter that I remember of the Pontiac, right? He's still like that on. Yeah. I don't know if she'll ever get rid of it.

37:32She got that thing with 75,000. It's like 132, 132,000. She's getting close to doubling its mileage. We got to keep the hobby alive through our children, through our friends and our friends kids and you know this show is a great way to do it and I was just so glad you guys agreed to take it off my hands. It's a lot of work where you're just to bring cows. You know, I'm just glad to hear about the baptism. Alex, it means you finally got a much needed bath. So I mean, swearing, you know, just a few things I needed to do adjustments, you know. Anyway, now I'm just having fun. I'm kind of semi-retired, but you know, I'm just I'm having fun. It's like I'm able to come and celebrate your one-year anniversary, you guys. Very, very happy that you took over for my the show that I put so much time into. Well, we'll continue to keep the positive going and have you back on on a regular basis. And if anyone wants to follow your work, can they find you anywhere? No, no, through you. All right. We'll funnel them to you when they

38:33come to us. All right. Thanks again, Alan and we'll look forward to the next year of the drive with Lauren and Carl. Thanks everyone. Bye everybody. You've been listening to The Drive, your trusted source for the latest car news, expert reviews, and real insight into the automotive world. Thanks for riding along with us today. You can check out the archive of every episode on our YouTube channel, The Drive with Lauren and Carl. Until next time, stay safe, enjoy the ride, and we'll see you right back here on The Drive.