Speaker 1: Welcome back and joining us now is Eric Peters of
Speaker 1: Eric petersautos dot com. Always great to have Eric on.
Speaker 1: He has focused on liberty and mobility because you can't
Speaker 1: have one without the other. It's kind of all what
Speaker 1: Jefferson said about life and liberty. He said, the hand
Speaker 1: of force can destroy life or liberty, but cannot separate them.
Speaker 1: Of course, he said disjoin them. But that's a little
Speaker 1: bit stilted for our language, but it definitely is true,
Speaker 1: and you cannot disjoin liberty and mobility either. So I
Speaker 1: always enjoy Eric's take on things. Eric, I was sad
Speaker 1: to see that we were just talking about this over
Speaker 1: the break. You wrote a piece three days ago. You said,
Speaker 1: our Charlie, what happened in your family?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it's a tough thing to talk about. I
Speaker 2: hope all the people to do this well enough. But
Speaker 2: we had a had about a two and a half
Speaker 2: year old mixed breed German shepherd lab and you know,
Speaker 2: he's been my companion for that whole time and just
Speaker 2: a very big presence.
Speaker 3: In our life.
Speaker 2: Anyway, he got hit by I guess a car truck,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure exactly which, and it was really jarring
Speaker 2: because as anybody who's been through having a pet die knows,
Speaker 2: it's one thing when your pet is elderly and old
Speaker 2: or sick, and you you know, you understand that it's
Speaker 2: going to happen, and you have time to prepare for it.
Speaker 2: But you know, with a with a young pet like that,
Speaker 2: to just be gone instantly, just like that, just what
Speaker 2: happened really difficult, you know, boy, For the last several
Speaker 2: days has happened on Friday, I've been having deja vu,
Speaker 2: you know, certain times of the day like oh, I
Speaker 2: better put water in paces bowl, or oh, it's time
Speaker 2: for us to go for our run. I went for
Speaker 2: a run on Monday, and you know, one of his
Speaker 2: things that he would do, he would carry around him.
Speaker 2: He was a strong dog, a big log in his
Speaker 2: mouth and he would keep it in his mouth for
Speaker 2: a mile or more on our on you know, It's
Speaker 2: just one of those things. And as I'm running by myself,
Speaker 2: which was strange, I saw one of the logs that
Speaker 2: he dropped off on the trail and it just really
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, kind of really I'm being overly emotional about it.
Speaker 3: So I apologize.
Speaker 4: Oh no, I understand, absolutely understand.
Speaker 1: It's like you said, it's the suddenness of this, and
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the things that really magnified
Speaker 1: what happened to Charlie Kirk. But I think, you know,
Speaker 1: when we look at it and how they have taken
Speaker 1: his legacy and they have flipped it completely opposite of
Speaker 1: what he was known for, what he ought to be
Speaker 1: remembered for. They're doing everything they can to make a
Speaker 1: saint a celebrity whatever. There in Oklahoma. They want to
Speaker 1: put a Charlie Kirk statue on every university campus. I
Speaker 1: think the right way to honor him is to support
Speaker 1: free speech, but it seems like the people who agreed
Speaker 1: with him and who followed him want to do just
Speaker 1: the opposite of that. They want to attack free speech.
Speaker 1: I think this gives them an opportunity to do what
Speaker 1: they know the left was doing to them before.
Speaker 4: What do you think.
Speaker 2: Particular Trump, did you happen to ask the interview. It
Speaker 2: was a couple of days after Kirk's assassination, and I
Speaker 2: wish I could remember who the journalist was. It was
Speaker 2: a woman, and you know she was asking Trump about
Speaker 2: the calls to suppress what they called hate speech. Now,
Speaker 2: it's interesting that Trump all people the right is not
Speaker 2: even exactly what they excoriated the left for doing during
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty four campaign season, and it was one
Speaker 2: of the reasons why people voted for Trump, because they
Speaker 2: were tired of having their differing opinions framed as hate.
Speaker 3: I've got a question, Oh, you're hateful.
Speaker 2: You know, we can't discuss that because clearly you're a
Speaker 2: Cretan and you're you know, you're motivated by malicious motives
Speaker 2: rather than Hey, I just have a question. Anyway, This
Speaker 2: female reporter asked Trump about that, and Trump had the egregious,
Speaker 2: vulgar gall to say something like, uh, well, Charlie Cook,
Speaker 2: does he may not think that way anymore or I
Speaker 2: can't remember that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly what he said. We played that clip. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she said, Charlie Kirch said there's no such thing as
Speaker 1: hate speech. I probly wouldn't say that now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's yeah, basically despicable.
Speaker 2: Because again, everything that whether you agree with what Kirk
Speaker 2: had to say or not, I think the one thing
Speaker 2: that has to be universally acknowledged is that he was
Speaker 2: willing to debate.
Speaker 3: He was willing to discuss practically any topic.
Speaker 2: Including even Israel, and you know the influence of the
Speaker 2: Israeli government over the American government, and I think that's
Speaker 2: ultimately what got him into trouble. You know, Trump demands
Speaker 2: lockstep adherents and even worship of himself and his policies,
Speaker 2: and he does it in a manner that's just so
Speaker 2: abrasive and insulting to the people who support him. This
Speaker 2: latest business of doing the parking break one eighty on Ukraine,
Speaker 2: you know, again, it's another example. You know, if people
Speaker 2: had been aware that he was going to do that
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty four, I doubt many people.
Speaker 3: Would have voted for him.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons, small reasons people voted for him
Speaker 2: was we are sick of all these wars. We're sick
Speaker 2: of being forced to finance it through our taxes and
Speaker 2: thereby be complicit in it. You know, the mass in Gaza,
Speaker 2: we want no part of this stuff. It's got to stop.
Speaker 2: That's one of the reasons why people voted for him.
Speaker 2: And now this brazen guy just says, well, we're going
Speaker 2: to back Ukraine. And not only that, he's saying that
Speaker 2: Ukraine has a right to not only sees back every
Speaker 2: territory that it's lost, but potentially even more than that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it takes time back from Russia exactly.
Speaker 2: It's madness. How do they think that this is going
Speaker 2: to be received by Putin? What do you think Putin's
Speaker 2: response to this is going to be. I wouldn't be
Speaker 2: surprised if he amps things up because he believes that
Speaker 2: he's got a narrow window of opportunity now to finish
Speaker 2: this situation before boots that go on the ground, potentially
Speaker 2: American boots.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he is taunting Putin saying he doesn't have much
Speaker 1: a military He could have finished this off in a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, you know, like we finished off Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: right in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: I was having a conversation with a friend of mine
Speaker 2: who stopped by yesterday about this, and we got to
Speaker 2: talking about Putin versus Trump and the difference between a
Speaker 2: serious person and a clown.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, whatever you may think of Putin, you don't have
Speaker 2: to say that you like him. You know, that's a
Speaker 2: childish argument. It's not about whether you think he's a
Speaker 2: nice man or a bad man. He's a serious man.
Speaker 2: He's a serious person with serious credentials. Who is not
Speaker 2: an idiot and who understands history. And look at Trump,
Speaker 2: what do we have. You know, we literally have a
Speaker 2: clown going up against a serious person, a dangerous clown.
Speaker 1: I believe he was installed for that very reason. You know,
Speaker 1: he even had his first Commerce secretary, William Let's see
Speaker 1: Webber Ross, who said that, you know, it was the
Speaker 1: Rothschild bank that he was working for, and he said,
Speaker 1: you know, when Trump was going bankrupt, he showed up
Speaker 1: and he saw this big crowd around him. He said,
Speaker 1: I contacted the Rothschild people and I said, hey, this
Speaker 1: is somebody I think we could use. And I think
Speaker 1: that's exactly why they're doing. They're using him as a clown.
Speaker 1: They're using him to divide people, They're using him to
Speaker 1: create chaos.
Speaker 4: I think that's his.
Speaker 2: Role and also a distraction, and maybe the worst kind
Speaker 2: of distraction imaginable, you know, as everything falls apart internally,
Speaker 2: and you know, potentially, let's say the Epstein thing percolates
Speaker 2: up again, or we find new details about what may
Speaker 2: have been involved in Kirk's murder that could have incredibly
Speaker 2: damaging repercussions. What would be a perfect thing to get
Speaker 2: people's mind off of that, well, perhaps a big war
Speaker 2: in Eastern Europe do just that. That's right, and that's
Speaker 2: what I have, this creepy feeling maybe in the works, and.
Speaker 4: I think it is absolutely capable of it.
Speaker 1: You know, you look at what he's doing with the
Speaker 1: trying to make an excuse that he can blow up
Speaker 1: ships off of Venezuela without even stopping them or verifying
Speaker 1: that they're running drugs. And as I pointed out at
Speaker 1: the same time that he's saying, this is an appropriate response,
Speaker 1: and JD. Vance is saying it's appropriate. Marco Rubio and
Speaker 1: Pete Heigseth are all saying, oh, this is what our
Speaker 1: military is for.
Speaker 4: No, it's not.
Speaker 1: We had our military was stopping ships, inspecting them. If
Speaker 1: they find drugs, they would take the drugs, they would
Speaker 1: arrest the people. They didn't line them up on the
Speaker 1: side of the boat and machine gun them. And so
Speaker 1: this is an extra judicial killing. I told the audience
Speaker 1: earlier on the program, I said, Dutarte did this in
Speaker 1: the Philippines. He said, you know, you think it's a
Speaker 1: drug dealer, shoot to kill. And he's now in the
Speaker 1: International Criminal Court and they're looking at him for those
Speaker 1: extra judicial killings. It's a crime. It's a war crime
Speaker 1: that he's doing, so he's perfectly capable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a psychopathic elaboration of that old if you
Speaker 2: see something, say something.
Speaker 3: Now, if you see something, kill something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are acts of war and they're also the
Speaker 2: acts of a coward bully in that Venezuela. It's just
Speaker 2: another example of big old Uncle Sam throwing his weight
Speaker 2: around and you know, extraditionally extra judicially killing foreign nationals
Speaker 2: outside of the United States with impunity because you know,
Speaker 2: we can do it. What's Venezuela going to do about it?
Speaker 4: That's right?
Speaker 2: You know, I think at some point Trump is going
Speaker 2: to whack the wrong guy, and Putin could be just
Speaker 2: the guy who's the wrong guy to whack.
Speaker 4: That's right, That's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very concerning, you know, even escalated saying yeah,
Speaker 1: we should shoot down Russian jets if they get any
Speaker 1: more close to the borders and things like that as well.
Speaker 1: It's a dangerous time that we live. And of course,
Speaker 1: very much like the Chinese curse, isn't it may you
Speaker 1: live in interesting times. There's never a shortage of thanks
Speaker 1: to report on it. It's like and now for something
Speaker 1: completely different from Trump than he said yesterday.
Speaker 4: You know, it's like mightey Python, I'm glad.
Speaker 3: You brought up China. It just I happened.
Speaker 2: I needed a break the other day, and so I
Speaker 2: was just watching some random YouTube videos, and I was
Speaker 2: watching some videos of depicting scenes in China around, for example,
Speaker 2: their train stations and their airports, their infrastructure.
Speaker 3: Which is immaculate and modern.
Speaker 2: I looked at their bullet trains, and I compared it
Speaker 2: with what's going on in this country. You know, China
Speaker 2: is actually concerned with China and trying to build up
Speaker 2: its own internal society and improve itself, where it seems
Speaker 2: that the US is de industrializing and rapidly descending from
Speaker 2: second to third world status, you know, to the extent
Speaker 2: we can actually see the change from.
Speaker 3: Day to day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's and it's by design, and it's by the
Speaker 1: same people that are running Trump, even though he pushes
Speaker 1: back against the climate and that I call it still
Speaker 1: it's the deliberate de industrialization of the West. And there's
Speaker 1: two sides of that. They want to de industrialize the
Speaker 1: West while they give China the advantage in terms of
Speaker 1: manufacturing and the huge advantage that they have is in
Speaker 1: terms of energy costs. But as Gerald Clenti has said
Speaker 1: many times on the show, he said, the business of
Speaker 1: China is business. The business of America is war, and
Speaker 1: that's not serving us well.
Speaker 3: And constructiveness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I saw something also related to China that talked.
Speaker 2: It was a person talking about how in China the oligarchs,
Speaker 2: the really rich people kind of do what American.
Speaker 3: Oligarchs did in the late part of the.
Speaker 2: Nineteenth and early twentieth century when they did things like
Speaker 2: the Carnegie Library. You know, they funded these these vast
Speaker 2: things that were good for Americans, you know, leaving aside
Speaker 2: the question of corporate oligarchs. At least they put me
Speaker 2: back into the country, whereas now the oligarch class in
Speaker 2: this country just flaunts its gratuitous, egregious theft wealth, you know,
Speaker 2: with one mcmanson after the next, and yachts and lavish lifestyles,
Speaker 2: thumbing their nose and rubbing our faces in it.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And to make it clear, you know, when you look
Speaker 1: at somebody like Henry Ford, who had his issues, he
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure that his workers could afford to
Speaker 1: buy the product that he has. Who's going to buy
Speaker 1: these products when they replace all of us with robots.
Speaker 1: That's what their goal is. They will replace everybody with robots.
Speaker 1: And I said when Trump did his tax cut in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, because it was all targeted towards corporations and
Speaker 1: he was going to incentivize them to bring to onshore manufacturing,
Speaker 1: I said, that's not going to happen until they've got
Speaker 1: the robots to replace the workers. I said, that's why
Speaker 1: they've got the open border immigration. And once they have
Speaker 1: robots to that point, they'll get tough on immigration, and
Speaker 1: they will pay these oligarchs a lot of money to
Speaker 1: bring factories back, but it's not going to bring back
Speaker 1: any jobs. They're just going to be incentivized to build
Speaker 1: the factories and they'll brag about the fact that they've
Speaker 1: got manufacturing in the United States, but they won't be
Speaker 1: using it to raise the standard of living of anybody.
Speaker 1: And I think that's really what is what is happening
Speaker 1: and what is going to happen.
Speaker 2: I think so too, And I'd like to focus in
Speaker 2: on something that you mentioned, which has to do with
Speaker 2: that word about owning things.
Speaker 3: You know, they're not concerned about that.
Speaker 2: It's not it's not that they're you know, well, how
Speaker 2: are people going to be able to afford these fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars vehicles that they're pushing out right now? They
Speaker 2: know that the end goal is for you to not own.
Speaker 4: The vehicle exactly.
Speaker 2: The end goal is for you to rent the ride,
Speaker 2: to rent everything, you know, sort of like the way
Speaker 2: that you pay for a streaming service so that you
Speaker 2: can watch TV. That's what they want, Serial debt. They
Speaker 2: want to completely disconnect us, you know, the typical average
Speaker 2: American from owning anything in order to control everything.
Speaker 4: It isn't like they didn't tell us.
Speaker 1: They constantly it's like, you will own nothing, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: you'll be happy. And I thought about you this way.
Speaker 1: Why I wanted to get you back on because, yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't talked to Eric for a while. I saw
Speaker 1: that Portia was having problems, and Portia, of course owned
Speaker 1: by VW and the two of them are having to
Speaker 1: pull back because they can't sell their evs. And I remember,
Speaker 1: I said, and I talked to the audience, I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: Eric's been saying this for the longest time. They should
Speaker 1: have hired him as CEO of Portie. They wouldn't have
Speaker 1: had this issue. Because you knew, and of course common
Speaker 1: sense would tell us that they have a huge advantage.
Speaker 1: These companies that have been making internal combustion engines for
Speaker 1: a long time, they had a huge advantage to China
Speaker 1: or to other potential competitors that had to be destroyed
Speaker 1: by saying no, now we can't use internal combustion engines.
Speaker 1: We're going to have to do the the skates of
Speaker 1: the evs, and China's got the advantage with the battery technology.
Speaker 1: They've also got now a manufacturing advantage in terms of
Speaker 1: cheap available energy. Energy is so expensive in the UK
Speaker 1: they're shutting down all their manufacturing and in Germany it's
Speaker 1: very expensive. They can't be cost with it. But now
Speaker 1: they're saying, hey, we're going to have to pull back
Speaker 1: a little bit. We've mal invested billions of dollars in
Speaker 1: the EV industry. Nobody wants these things, nobody's buying it,
Speaker 1: So now we're going to have to pull back and
Speaker 1: try to have a cottage industry of maybe being allowed
Speaker 1: to sell some internal combustion engines. But it's going to
Speaker 1: break the back if it's even allowed of these, if
Speaker 1: they even allow them to sell a few boutique things
Speaker 1: to the rich. It's still going to break their back.
Speaker 2: It will, and this is a general problem Stillantis, which
Speaker 2: is the parent company of the Dodge, Ramjeep and Chrysler brands,
Speaker 2: announced about a week ago that they were not going
Speaker 2: to produce the electric version of the Ram fifteen hundred
Speaker 2: pickup that they had planned to bring out in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty six because they understand that it would be a disaster,
Speaker 2: that nobody's going to buy it. And so rather than
Speaker 2: just build these things and then shipping them to dealers
Speaker 2: where they're just going to sit and then having to
Speaker 2: give them away a fire sale prices.
Speaker 3: Which is what Forms had to do with the fighting.
Speaker 2: They figured it this one thing to do is to
Speaker 2: cut bait. I've practically destroyed the Dodge brand already by
Speaker 2: getting rid of the engine in the charger and getting
Speaker 2: rid of the Challenger altogether and replacing it with this
Speaker 2: electric charger, which has been an epic flop.
Speaker 3: I mean, it is.
Speaker 2: Even worse than the Adds, a disaster back in the fifties.
Speaker 2: It hasn't been remarked on, but I mean it's that bad.
Speaker 2: They can't sell these things. I have yet to see
Speaker 2: one in the wild. I have yet to see one
Speaker 2: on the road. They haven't even sent me one to
Speaker 2: review yet. Because it's not just that they're short range
Speaker 2: and all the other problems that electric vehicles have. It's
Speaker 2: not well made. It's a problematic, problem prone vehicle that
Speaker 2: suffers endless glitches such as bricking, to the point where
Speaker 2: they have to send out a technician to try to
Speaker 2: figure out why it won't move. Now, the other thing
Speaker 2: is that you brought up I find this endlessly fascinating
Speaker 2: with regard to portion these other manufacturers that are no
Speaker 2: longer run by car people, because any car guy would
Speaker 2: tell you that a Porsche there are intangibles when it
Speaker 2: comes to a car like that. It's not just about
Speaker 2: how quickly it goes to zero to sixty us right
Speaker 2: the fatal error and thinking, well, we'll just basically produce
Speaker 2: a Tesla that looks like a Porsche essentially, you know,
Speaker 2: and somehow we'll sell that feeling. To understand that one
Speaker 2: of the big reasons that people buy Porsches is because
Speaker 2: they love that six cylinder boxer engine and they love
Speaker 2: the sound that it makes and the emotional visceral feeling
Speaker 2: that you get that is lost entirely. Electric vehicles are
Speaker 2: fundamentally homogenous. Say what you will about you know, will
Speaker 2: the reply it and this and that? But they're fundamentally
Speaker 2: when you drive one, you've driven them all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, and.
Speaker 1: Don't they does Porsche and some of these other sports
Speaker 1: car companies when they make their evs, do they take
Speaker 1: the Tesla approach in terms of instrumentation, because that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that is also a part of the field.
Speaker 1: You know, how does the controls feel? Does it feel
Speaker 1: solid or tendsy? I hate the idea that I've got
Speaker 1: to use a touchscreen while I'm driving. How is that safe?
Speaker 1: You know, you're you're supposed to use hands off of
Speaker 1: your phone or we'll give you a ticket. But hey,
Speaker 1: it's a wonderful thing if we take all the controls.
Speaker 1: Even on Tesla, you can't even adjust the direction of
Speaker 1: the air vents without using the touchpad that is attached
Speaker 1: to the dashboard.
Speaker 2: Yep, And they're all doing it now right now in
Speaker 2: the driveway. I have a brand new twenty twenty six
Speaker 2: Kia Sportage, which is a nothing special little crossover that
Speaker 2: stickers for about twenty eight thousand dollars and it's got
Speaker 2: a full width, single sheet LCD screen for everything, you know,
Speaker 2: the main instrument cluster, and then off to its right
Speaker 2: is the thing that you have to tap and swipe
Speaker 2: through in order to operate functions such as, you know,
Speaker 2: changing the station.
Speaker 3: That you're listening to. And you're right, And it's just an.
Speaker 2: Illustration of how disingenuous the government is because on the
Speaker 2: one hand, they say to people, ah, you can't use
Speaker 2: your cell phone while you're driving, because it's dangerous to
Speaker 2: be looking at your phone and swiping and tapping a
Speaker 2: screen while you're trying to drive. You can't keep your
Speaker 2: eyes on the road. But it's no problem if you
Speaker 2: build the thing into the car.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's okay.
Speaker 1: We need to have some controls that I have to
Speaker 1: take my seat belt off in order to use.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So one of the you know, to get back to
Speaker 2: circle back to what we were talking about, the great disaster.
Speaker 2: In my opinion, it's another one is that this homogeneity
Speaker 2: of appearance in the interior of cars that has been
Speaker 2: that has been bequeathed to us by this obsession with
Speaker 2: reproducing the smartphone in your car, the look of a smartphone.
Speaker 2: So now you've lost that individuality too, instead of having
Speaker 2: this kind of neat array of gauge.
Speaker 3: Is a really good example of this.
Speaker 2: A couple of weeks ago, I had the latest Mini
Speaker 2: Cooper and it used to be that one of the
Speaker 2: cool things about the Mini Cooper, which is owned by
Speaker 2: the Germans, it's owned by BMW, but nonetheless was that
Speaker 2: they replicated the feel, the look and the function of
Speaker 2: the sixties minis. You know, if you've ever been in
Speaker 2: one of the models, they had the cool little chrome
Speaker 2: toggle switches, you know, and it had a vibe to it,
Speaker 2: that feel, and it was like no other car. Well,
Speaker 2: they did what everybody else is doing, and they got
Speaker 2: rid of essentially all of the physical tactile controls, the
Speaker 2: switches and knobs, and in lieu of that, they put
Speaker 2: one gigantic pie.
Speaker 3: Plate touchscreen, you know, in the middle, in the center.
Speaker 2: Of the and it looks cheap, it looks homogeneous, and
Speaker 2: it's also in a way, in my opinion, it's anti human.
Speaker 3: It's antiseptic cold.
Speaker 1: You know, they shut down the last UK factory for
Speaker 1: the Mini BMW did am I correct?
Speaker 4: I think they just should.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 1: I saw something because again, you can't do manufacturing in
Speaker 1: the US because hair Starmer. The Nazi doesn't want you
Speaker 1: to have any energy, so they shut it down, I
Speaker 1: don't think, you know. And it was an article out
Speaker 1: of the UK UH and they were saying, you know,
Speaker 1: this is something that was fundamentally British, as you point about,
Speaker 1: very any idiosyncratic.
Speaker 4: And now it's not going to be made anymore in.
Speaker 1: Britain because of the cost of energy that's there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if nothing survives any longer except the brand, you know,
Speaker 2: that's what you get label.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, inside the same when.
Speaker 1: You talk about the design of these cars and how
Speaker 1: we've lost so much of this around this area. You know,
Speaker 1: we're not too far away from Pigeon Forge and last
Speaker 1: week they just had big classic cars show, and that's
Speaker 1: when it really hits home. You know, when you see
Speaker 1: one of these cars, which it never really valued. I
Speaker 1: mean it might have just been like a family sedan
Speaker 1: or something, you know, fifty years ago, but you look
Speaker 1: at it, it's like, wow, that's really quirky, that's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting looking. Look at those colors, you know, and
Speaker 1: all the rest of this stuff. Look at the colors,
Speaker 1: look at the chrome. It really is entertaining to see
Speaker 1: cars that were just ordinary cars or ordinary trucks half
Speaker 1: a century ago, to see them and to see how
Speaker 1: different they were and how.
Speaker 4: Unique they all were.
Speaker 1: And so it really kind of drives it home here
Speaker 1: in the Pigeon Forgery. And they have these car shows
Speaker 1: that happened frequently. The big one was last weekend they
Speaker 1: had that. But you've got some articles at Eric Peters
Speaker 1: Auto's dot com about some of the difficulties of keeping
Speaker 1: these older cars running.
Speaker 4: Talk about ethanol blues. What's that about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I have to, as the saying goes
Speaker 2: in the hood, cop to something which is barrassing for me,
Speaker 2: because you know, I shouldn't all of all people, this
Speaker 2: should not have happened to me. But I was lazy
Speaker 2: one day, and this is several months back, probably about
Speaker 2: eight months ago, when I was out driving my old
Speaker 2: muscle car. I have a seventy six trans Am and
Speaker 2: rather than go all the way into town where they
Speaker 2: have a station that sells unadulterated pure gasoline, which is
Speaker 2: normally what I use to fill the car up with
Speaker 2: because it sits sometimes Fore I get preoccupied with work
Speaker 2: and other things. Sometimes the car unfortunately, will sit for
Speaker 2: several months before I have time to drive it. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I filled it up with E ten, which is only
Speaker 2: ninety percent gas and ten percent ethanol, and I left
Speaker 2: it to sit, and it sat for about three months.
Speaker 3: God helped me. You know, I deserve to be beaten
Speaker 3: for that.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I went, I went to start it, and boy,
Speaker 2: I barely got it to run and it was going,
Speaker 2: you know, smoke pouring out of it. A long story short,
Speaker 2: I ended up having to take the carburetor off the
Speaker 2: engine and completely disassemble it and clean out the ethanol
Speaker 2: gunk inside the carburetor because the fuel had gone bad
Speaker 2: over the time that I kept it in storage. Basically,
Speaker 2: And you know, this is a problem with these older
Speaker 2: vehicles because you know, my car was made in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy six, and in nineteen seventy six, when you bought gas,
Speaker 2: you actually got gas for your money on hundred percent gasoline.
Speaker 2: Most people don't understand that most pomp gas is ten
Speaker 2: percent ethanol alcohol. And if you own a vehicle that
Speaker 2: was made before that came into being, that vehicle was
Speaker 2: not designed for alcohol. Alcohol is a different fuel than gasoline.
Speaker 2: It has different properties. It attracts water, among other things.
Speaker 2: It's corrosive.
Speaker 1: Does it degrade faster than pure gasoline, then I guess
Speaker 1: it does. That's what you're saying. Any pure gasoline will
Speaker 1: degrade as well, right, but much longer period of time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anybody who has outdoor power equipment knows that the
Speaker 2: real problem is if you put ethanol in a gas
Speaker 2: jugglet's saying, you put it in your shed and leave it.
Speaker 2: You know, it'll tend to accumulate water much more rapidly
Speaker 2: than regular gasoline. And you can also look at the
Speaker 2: color that change in the color, you know, as it
Speaker 2: starts to go from almost translucent to sort of a
Speaker 2: yellow and then a darker yellow color.
Speaker 3: And that's a clue not to use it.
Speaker 4: By the way, Well that's interesting.
Speaker 1: You also talk about oil and additives and the oil
Speaker 1: that are different now for the older cars.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's not just the additives.
Speaker 2: Again, to get circling back to the transam, after I
Speaker 2: cleaned out the gunk from the carburetor and got it
Speaker 2: running well again, I recognized, oh boy, it's time to
Speaker 2: change the oil. So I went down to the autoparts
Speaker 2: store and I looked at the rack of oil, and
Speaker 2: the rack of oil is you know, it's the whole
Speaker 2: with the store. They have all kinds of different oil,
Speaker 2: but they didn't have any ten forty anymore, you know,
Speaker 2: and my car when it was made was designed to
Speaker 2: have ten forty oil. So that's what specified and that's
Speaker 2: what I used. There's a reason why there's a specification,
Speaker 2: you know, and generally speaking, it's sound policy to follow
Speaker 2: what the specification is.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, if you've been to it, if
Speaker 2: you've been to a car parts store lately and looked
Speaker 2: at the oil rack, you'll see all these exotic formulations,
Speaker 2: you know, zero W fifty this and that because they
Speaker 2: thinned out the oil because it held helps with compliance.
Speaker 2: You know, this is again it offers the manufacturers this
Speaker 2: incremental friction reduction which translates into slightly higher gas models,
Speaker 2: not anything you would notice as a vehicle owner, but
Speaker 2: when you factor it out over say half a million
Speaker 2: vehicles that you build, then it helps corporate average fuel
Speaker 2: economy with the compliance with that federal requirement, and it
Speaker 2: also helps with emissions. And you know, this is the obsession.
Speaker 2: Now that the manufacturers have it's compliance. Their primary customer
Speaker 2: now is the government, not you. You know, you're sort of
Speaker 2: an instidental person. I'm just wanting to buy what the
Speaker 2: government says you're allowed to have.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, because the government put them out
Speaker 1: of business if they don't please the government, and so
Speaker 1: that is their primary customer. In so many cases, the
Speaker 1: only customer that they care about is the government. That's
Speaker 1: really what's going on with social media and with YouTube,
Speaker 1: I think, isn't it?
Speaker 4: It is?
Speaker 2: And so long story short, I ended up having to
Speaker 2: coot online to find a good, high quality ten forty
Speaker 2: for my old muscle car. Now previously I'd also had
Speaker 2: to go online to get there's an additive. It generally
Speaker 2: it goes by the acronym ZDDP, and it's essentially a
Speaker 2: zinc manganese additive. And it used to be president present
Speaker 2: in all the store bought motor oils, but they began
Speaker 2: to take it out and now there's a much less
Speaker 2: of that additive in store BOUGHD motor oil. If you
Speaker 2: have a new or late model vehicle, it doesn't matter,
Speaker 2: the engine was designed for that. But if you have
Speaker 2: an older vehicle, particularly an older American vehicle with what's
Speaker 2: called a flat TAPT camshaft. So essentially, an American car
Speaker 2: made before the early eighties with a V eight engine.
Speaker 3: Typically it's important that you use that additive.
Speaker 2: And if you're going to be somebody to go, if
Speaker 2: you're going to go out and buy one of those
Speaker 2: classic cars from that era, it's something to be aware
Speaker 2: of because if you don't use that additive, you risk
Speaker 2: valve train failure. Those the camshaft and lifters in those
Speaker 2: engines were designed to have that anti friction additive in it,
Speaker 2: and if you use regular oil, you're very likely to
Speaker 2: have a problem that you don't want to have.
Speaker 1: What about the aftermarket, Let's say that you have some
Speaker 1: problems because you didn't have the right oil and fuel
Speaker 1: and things like that. How difficult is it to get
Speaker 1: parts for these things? I'm sure it varies depending on
Speaker 1: how rare your car is, but just something's kind of
Speaker 1: you know, in the middle, or something maybe like a
Speaker 1: you know, a fifties Chevy or something like that. Is
Speaker 1: it really diffinitely? Do they have much of an aftermarket
Speaker 1: for parts with that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, particularly with mechanical things.
Speaker 2: One of the great pluses of owning, say a General
Speaker 2: Motors product or Forward product from that era is that
Speaker 2: they shared mechanical things. Engines, you know, an engine like
Speaker 2: a small block Chevy was used in practically every model
Speaker 2: vehicle that Chevrolet made, you know, from the fifties through
Speaker 2: the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and so there is a
Speaker 2: robust and abundant aftermarket as well as used market for
Speaker 2: those kinds of parts. You'll have sometimes difficulty finding trim pieces,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: For an odd ball make.
Speaker 2: You know, say it was a one year vehicle where
Speaker 2: they only had that that that grill for that one year.
Speaker 2: I have that issue because my seventy six is a
Speaker 2: unique front end for that for that year.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Sometimes, you know, these cosmetic parts will be more difficult
Speaker 2: to find, but generally, if you pick a popular vehicle
Speaker 2: that was made in large numbers from that era, you're
Speaker 2: not going to have any difficulty finding the necessary parts
Speaker 2: that you have to have in order to keep the
Speaker 2: vehicle serviceable and running.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, Yeah, because I guess I certainly do see
Speaker 1: a lot of classic cars right here. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: if you had an Edsul and you got your horse
Speaker 1: collar or a grill.
Speaker 3: You can keep that going.
Speaker 2: One of the greats Volkswagen Beetle, you know to this
Speaker 2: day you can easily find any part that you need
Speaker 2: to keep a beetle running. So you know, that's a
Speaker 2: great choice if you just want a very basic, simple,
Speaker 2: completely analog.
Speaker 3: Non non digital, non data mining, non.
Speaker 2: Connected car that anybody could service, if they're willing to
Speaker 2: turn a screw driver or a wrench and have basic
Speaker 2: hand tools, that's a great choice.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1: There's a huge aftermarket for the Mases, especially the first
Speaker 1: generation of Maza that's out there. They're even doing full restorations,
Speaker 1: and or at least were for a short period of time,
Speaker 1: if they are still doing it now. It's a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago. They're doing full factory spec restorations in Japan.
Speaker 1: They would do it in Japan, and the factory itself
Speaker 1: was doing it, Mazda was doing it. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they're still doing that or not. Now you got
Speaker 1: an article and I'm reaching back now. At the beginning
Speaker 1: of August, Pontiacs were cool. I thought they were as well.
Speaker 1: I was just so amazed that when they decided they're
Speaker 1: going to get rid of an entire make that they
Speaker 1: kept Buick and got rid of Pontiac I thought that
Speaker 1: was really strange because Buick was always perceived as kind
Speaker 1: of an older person's car, or it was a family car,
Speaker 1: something like that, where as Pontiacs had kind of a
Speaker 1: sporty panache to them.
Speaker 3: Right, yep, well there's a reason for that.
Speaker 2: For whatever reason, Buicks are immensely popular in China, and
Speaker 2: that's where they're believe it or not, GM sells a
Speaker 2: ton of Buicks in China, where it's considered kind of
Speaker 2: a status vehicle to have, and all they sell here
Speaker 2: are made in China.
Speaker 4: Is that right? Yeah, we used to use Buick.
Speaker 1: We used that as a new finism for throwing up
Speaker 1: in the bathroom selling Buick's.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: What's really sad though, with regard to Pontiac and Pontiac's
Speaker 2: just one example of many, is that you had a
Speaker 2: once distinctive brand, and in fact, Pontiac actually was literally
Speaker 2: a car company at one time. It wasn't a marketing company.
Speaker 2: It actually had an engineering staff and they engineered their
Speaker 2: engines which were different than Chevy engines. So when you
Speaker 2: bought a Pontiac, you weren't just buying a rebadge Chevy.
Speaker 2: There may have been commonality of the underlying platform, but
Speaker 2: it was a fundamentally different car. I'll again refer to
Speaker 2: my own car. A seventy six Pontiac Transam is a
Speaker 2: very different car than a seventy six Camaro. Even though
Speaker 2: they share a common underthing, their drive frames are different,
Speaker 2: and that makes it worth buying the Pontiac.
Speaker 3: You know. It's not that one's better or worse. It's
Speaker 3: simply that it is different.
Speaker 2: And GM actually allowed Pontiac for a great deal of
Speaker 2: time to be sort of a raucous you know, go
Speaker 2: get them a brand you know that that had had
Speaker 2: had performance and style and attitude, kind of like what
Speaker 2: Dodge was before Stilantis ruined everything. Yeah, you know, they
Speaker 2: just had this great reputation for you know, not just
Speaker 2: crude muscle cars, but cool muscle cars.
Speaker 3: It had some panastu them, you.
Speaker 2: Know, like Catalinas and Grand Prixs and of course GTOs
Speaker 2: and everything, which were a little bit more refined than
Speaker 2: say something like a Chevelle ass which is a great car,
Speaker 2: but it's not the same thing as.
Speaker 4: A Gto, right right, yeah, yeah, And they just.
Speaker 3: Hollowed all of this out.
Speaker 2: And this was, by the way, I think the first
Speaker 2: wave of casualties from compliance the reason that Pontiac ended
Speaker 2: up dying was because General Motors was under enormous pressure
Speaker 2: to try to figure out how to get these different
Speaker 2: brands Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile, all their different divisions that had
Speaker 2: different engines.
Speaker 3: Each one of those engines had to be certified independently
Speaker 3: by the federal government as being in compliance with the
Speaker 3: stuff that costs a lot of money. So General Motors
Speaker 3: made the decision, well, what we're going to do is corporatize.
Speaker 3: We're going to just put Chevrolet built engines in pretty
Speaker 3: much everything that we sell. They did this beginning in
Speaker 3: the eighties, and that.
Speaker 2: Way they only had to certify the Chevrolet engine, which
Speaker 2: they could put in a Pontiac and a Buick and.
Speaker 3: An Oldsmobile, which is what they did.
Speaker 2: But by doing that, they just gutted any reason for
Speaker 2: having a Pontiac or an Oldsmobile or even a Buick.
Speaker 3: It's all you're getting is a Reskin Chevy with the
Speaker 3: identical drive train.
Speaker 4: Over and over again.
Speaker 1: I tell people, you know, the real problem with industry
Speaker 1: and manufacturing and innovation in the United States is the government.
Speaker 1: They are the biggest obstacle. They are far more destructive
Speaker 1: of jobs and manufacturing than any company abroad or any
Speaker 1: country abroad. All this stuff about tariffs is a misdirection
Speaker 1: away from the true source of the problem, which is
Speaker 1: government regulation. And even when they're talking about the housing crisis,
Speaker 1: some people are talking about how expensive houses have become
Speaker 1: because of government regulation, but the government's not talking about
Speaker 1: doing anything of that. They're talking about playing some financialization
Speaker 1: games in terms of interest rates or subsidies or this
Speaker 1: or that, but they're not going to do anything about
Speaker 1: the overregulation and all the green mandates that are there.
Speaker 1: Trump will go the un You'll say, you're destroying your
Speaker 1: country with all this green stuff and everything, but he
Speaker 1: won't take those regulations off of cars or homes, so
Speaker 1: he can't have nice things anymore.
Speaker 3: That's correct.
Speaker 2: We have become as a culture so habituated to the
Speaker 2: government being involved in these things, and really, I think
Speaker 2: that's that's the bone of the matter. Why is the
Speaker 2: government involved in car design?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: You know, a good example of this is, you know.
Speaker 2: The whole I wrote an article about Ralph Nader a
Speaker 2: couple of weeks ago and the core of beer and
Speaker 2: his allegations about the core of air being unsafe. This
Speaker 2: is a matter for the course, if the car is
Speaker 2: unsafe and effective in some way, that can be handled
Speaker 2: in tortue claims. That's the way these things ought to
Speaker 2: be handled, instead of this broad brush, one size fits
Speaker 2: all of the federal government decreem You know, you will
Speaker 2: have this particular safety standard. It doesn't matter what you
Speaker 2: know what side effects that safety standard has, even if
Speaker 2: it ends up being less safe. Good example of that
Speaker 2: being in the mid seventies they imposed a roof crush
Speaker 2: standard on the industry. You know, the vehicle had to
Speaker 2: be able to support the weight of the vehicle if
Speaker 2: it got turned upside down. So as a result of that,
Speaker 2: you got these gigantic A, B and C pillars. Those
Speaker 2: are the things that support the roof. The A pillars
Speaker 2: at the basic shield be in the middle and C
Speaker 2: in the back instead of being you know, these these
Speaker 2: thin and graceful things that you could easily look around
Speaker 2: and you had this expansive view of the outside world
Speaker 2: around you.
Speaker 3: Now you're essentially in a tank. You know, I driving
Speaker 3: new cars all the time feels like you're in a tank.
Speaker 2: You have essentially no visibility, often to the right and
Speaker 2: to the left because of this enormous B pillar that's
Speaker 2: there to support the weight of the vehicle if you
Speaker 2: roll it over. The problem is now when you pull
Speaker 2: out from a side street, you're likely to get t
Speaker 2: boned because that thing is created that blind spot. You
Speaker 2: didn't see the car, but it was coming at you
Speaker 2: from the side.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, I agree. You know, how did we
Speaker 1: wind up still being able to keep convertibles with that?
Speaker 1: I know, I've got all my convertibles. I got some
Speaker 1: really huge A pillars on them, but very cleverly, like
Speaker 1: you know, with regard to some of them.
Speaker 3: You know, with Maza, the audi as you know, they
Speaker 3: built a roll.
Speaker 2: Bar into the backs of the seats basically, that was
Speaker 2: one way that they did it. Uh, And some of
Speaker 2: the manufacturers took that a step farther with pop up
Speaker 2: roll bars. You know, Mercedes did that with some of
Speaker 2: their highest convertibles, and they also managed to reinforce the
Speaker 2: structure of the windshield in a way that made it.
Speaker 3: Supportive of the vehicle if it were to roll over.
Speaker 2: But you know, it's it's just the point is the
Speaker 2: government's involvement in this stuff is just so insufferably obnoxious.
Speaker 3: We are and to put a finer point on it.
Speaker 2: You know, we talk about the government as if it's
Speaker 2: sort of this entity out there, and I like to
Speaker 2: I like to point out to be what you're really
Speaker 2: talking about is a relative handful of micromanaging bureaucrats who
Speaker 2: are the weavils within these regulatory bodies. You know, go
Speaker 2: to the DOT or NITSA. How many people work there?
Speaker 2: A few thousand. So you've got a few thousand people
Speaker 2: in these regulatory bodies who are dictating to three hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty million people.
Speaker 3: You know, the design of the cars that they're allowed
Speaker 3: to have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly right, I just you know, and we have
Speaker 1: spineless politicians who let the bureaucrats rule over us and
Speaker 1: never do anything to push back against them.
Speaker 3: And that's my design.
Speaker 2: You know, they've off loaded this, they'll say, Congress in particular,
Speaker 2: they'll say, well, I can't do anything about it, because
Speaker 2: you know, the bureaucracy is responsible for that's right. But
Speaker 2: you're the ones that offloaded their responsibility under the Constitution
Speaker 2: to legislate. You know, there's legislation and there's regulation, and
Speaker 2: regulation has the force and effect of law, yet it's
Speaker 2: not voted for, which means there's all accountability. You know,
Speaker 2: you can't out, you can't vote out of office an
Speaker 2: epa apparatuip.
Speaker 1: You know, they claim that they're not responsible for it,
Speaker 1: even though, as you point out, they delegate this to them. Yes,
Speaker 1: then you know something gets really bad and there's a
Speaker 1: huge outroar uproar about that, then they can come in
Speaker 1: and say, Okay, we're going to save you from these
Speaker 1: bad guy as a regulator. So it's a very calculated
Speaker 1: political ploy, isn't it.
Speaker 4: And I think we got do We have a couple
Speaker 4: of comments of questions for him.
Speaker 5: Good to talk to you, Ra servis here got citizen
Speaker 5: Draccaka says Eric, would he'd like you to speak on
Speaker 5: the fact they were trying to pass legislation so you'll
Speaker 5: be able to ensure a car that's over twenty five
Speaker 5: years old, which is just utterly ridiculous because of course
Speaker 5: we know that twenty five years ago all calls cars
Speaker 5: were death traps.
Speaker 6: People were dying left and right.
Speaker 5: It's only within the past few years that the cars
Speaker 5: have become safe at all and people can drive him
Speaker 5: without living in constant fear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and on that same line, Eric, California, just you know,
Speaker 1: they wanted to it's missions. I think that they had
Speaker 1: there and it was like a thirty five year moving average,
Speaker 1: and they were trying to adjust that a little bit,
Speaker 1: and they shut it down the huge blow. It's Jay
Speaker 1: Leno's law. Maybe you heard about that.
Speaker 3: Surely, surely punitive and vindictive. Yeah, Leno, I think learned
Speaker 3: a valuable lesson.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I think he, in his innocence, might have believed that
Speaker 2: national considerations and reasonable considerations might cause the California legislature
Speaker 2: and Regulatory apparat to agree that, yeah, you know, vehicles
Speaker 2: that are thirty five years old are constitute a very
Speaker 2: small minority of the vehicles that are in use as
Speaker 2: daily transportation, and so yeah, we'll exempt them, as most
Speaker 2: states do, from having to go in from emissions testing.
Speaker 2: This is purely punitive because they want to push these
Speaker 2: cars off the road, and it's particularly egregious in California
Speaker 2: because it's not even a matter of whether you pass
Speaker 2: the tailpipe sniffer test. You know, when you bring your
Speaker 2: car into the inspection station and they put the probe
Speaker 2: in the tailplay and in most states, if it passes
Speaker 2: that you pass, and you get your sticker in California,
Speaker 2: doesn't matter whether you pass the tailpipe sniffer test if
Speaker 2: any of the factory original emissions equipment has been tampered with,
Speaker 2: altered or removed. Now what that means you're talking about
Speaker 2: the thirty five year old car, or how about a
Speaker 2: fifty year old car, and maybe the original smog pump
Speaker 2: or EGR system had to be replaced because it's a
Speaker 2: thirty five year old vehicle. Thirty five year old? Well
Speaker 2: what if there is no aftermarket replacement? And more finally,
Speaker 2: in California, every aftermarket replacement has to have a California
Speaker 2: Air Resources Board number, a certification that it's been approved
Speaker 2: by CAR. So if it doesn't have that, even if
Speaker 2: everything works, and even if the emissions are with inspect,
Speaker 2: they will still fail the vehicle on the basis of
Speaker 2: failing the visual and not having the CARB approved replacement part.
Speaker 2: So this is purely, purely punitive and vindictive. And I
Speaker 2: do see this sort of thing expanding. You know, they're
Speaker 2: going to start targeting cars and they're going to say
Speaker 2: we can't permit vehicles that don't have the latest advanced
Speaker 2: driver assistance technology to be on the road, you know,
Speaker 2: because of the threat that they present and the people
Speaker 2: are going to die. That's the sort of thing that
Speaker 2: I foresee that they're going to start doing in the
Speaker 2: next few years.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah. And it's kind of interesting too, because
Speaker 1: when I was doing modifications to Mimiada about seven years ago,
Speaker 1: the companies I was getting the aftermarket parts on which
Speaker 1: were taking those parts that you just mentioned and pitching
Speaker 1: them completely. But they were based in California, and I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, this is kind of interesting. They can't sell
Speaker 1: their own product. Even at that time, many of their
Speaker 1: things were not CARB compliant, and they couldn't sell them
Speaker 1: and to people who lived in California, only to people
Speaker 1: who lived outside of California.
Speaker 4: But it's getting much much worse, you know.
Speaker 2: You know onmmon thread that runs through all of this
Speaker 2: is that there's no requirement that tangible harm.
Speaker 3: Be produced, in other words, a victim.
Speaker 2: A really fine example of this is the crucification of Volkswagen,
Speaker 2: and I revisited that issue recently in a column. It's
Speaker 2: been about ten years now since Volkswagen got raped over
Speaker 2: the coals for cheating on federal emission certification tests.
Speaker 3: Yes, and you know.
Speaker 2: At the time and even to this day, I continue
Speaker 2: to ask, well, who was hurt by any of this?
Speaker 2: All the The only thing that happened was that the
Speaker 2: government was affronted. You know, Volkswagen, like every other vehicle manufacturer,
Speaker 2: programmed its vehicles to pass the test. That's the whole
Speaker 2: points They made it so they would pass that. And
Speaker 2: not only this is an important point, the federal emission
Speaker 2: certification test. Nobody ever disputed these vehicles when they were
Speaker 2: bought and put into service in states where people had
Speaker 2: to go to get emissions testing, you know, at the
Speaker 2: state level, and.
Speaker 3: Get the tailpipe probe put in. They all passed.
Speaker 2: The only kerfluffle happened after this independent lab subjected the
Speaker 2: cars to an entirely different test that found that, under
Speaker 2: certain operating conditions, oh my gosh, the vehicle will emit
Speaker 2: slightly higher fractionally higher amounts of oxides of nitrogen.
Speaker 3: Which is a regulated emission for EPA. And the amount
Speaker 3: was minuscule.
Speaker 2: It was literally a fraction of a fraction, in other words,
Speaker 2: something that was meaningless in terms of whether it was
Speaker 2: hurting anybody didn't matter.
Speaker 1: It was so draconian. You and I talked about this
Speaker 1: many times. It was so draconian. That it was clear
Speaker 1: that it wasn't about what they said it was about.
Speaker 1: It was really about, as we said, getting rid of diesel.
Speaker 1: I mean, they had criminal charges against executives. It was
Speaker 1: something like four billion dollars if I remember correctly. It
Speaker 1: was outrageous what they were doing, and we talked about that,
Speaker 1: how you didn't see anything at all like that with
Speaker 1: the Takata air bags that were blowing up spontaneously and
Speaker 1: killing people, or with the Pinto you know, and the
Speaker 1: deliberate exclusion of some devices that would keep that explosion
Speaker 1: from happening. So it was something that we've never seen before,
Speaker 1: even when human lives were at stake, and there was
Speaker 1: nobody that was harmed by any of this stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, the reason why they did it, though, it wasn't
Speaker 2: just that it was diesel. It was that Volkswagen uniquely
Speaker 2: was selling a lineup of very affordable diesels as recently
Speaker 2: as twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: You know, it's ten years ago.
Speaker 2: Not even you could have bought a brand new Volkswagen
Speaker 2: Jetto with a TDI engine for about twenty two thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Now that whole car had a seven hundred mile driving
Speaker 2: range and would get fifty plus miles per gallon on
Speaker 2: the highway and could probably be counted on to go
Speaker 2: for three hundred thousand miles or more. Now, it's a
Speaker 2: curious coincidence, isn't it, that around the same time the
Speaker 2: Volkswagen started getting raped over the coals over this emissions
Speaker 2: cheating thing. That's when the big push for evs began,
Speaker 2: right around that time, around twenty thirteen. And I think
Speaker 2: the reason that they went after Volkswagen was because they
Speaker 2: could not abide the comparison. You know, on the one hand,
Speaker 2: twenty two thousand dollars Jetta TDI seven hundred mile range,
Speaker 2: refill it in three minutes, keep it for twenty years,
Speaker 2: drive it for three hundred thousand miles. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: Tesla Model three, fifty thousand dollars car that goes maybe
Speaker 2: two hundred and seventy miles and is going to need
Speaker 2: a new fifteen thousand dollars battery after eight years. It
Speaker 2: just would have been a harder sell. So they had
Speaker 2: to go after Volkswagen. I think, you know, if Volkswagen
Speaker 2: had continued making engines like that, other manufacturers would have
Speaker 2: started to do the same. In fact, Chevy did chevro Letty.
Speaker 2: You could get a Malibu diesel for a little while there,
Speaker 2: and other manufacturers would have done it because it's appealing.
Speaker 3: I mean, I like the idea of a.
Speaker 2: You know, brand new twenty two thousand dollars car that
Speaker 2: gets fifty something miles per gallan seven hundred miles. You know,
Speaker 2: diesel is great. You know, it's a wonderful option for
Speaker 2: people who want a durable, long legged, long lived vehicle.
Speaker 2: So naturally they had to take that away from us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, checked all the boxes in terms of competition with
Speaker 1: the electric vehicles, as you point out, is durability, reliability, affordability, range,
Speaker 1: It was all there.
Speaker 4: So I had to go. It really had to go.
Speaker 1: They've got an agenda, and they don't want you to
Speaker 1: have something that you can afford. They don't want you
Speaker 1: to have a long range because they want to keep
Speaker 1: you on a short rope where they're smart city and
Speaker 1: they're probably geo fencing to make sure that you can't
Speaker 1: buy anything outside of your approved city and that type
Speaker 1: of thing.
Speaker 4: It's just amazing.
Speaker 2: Really, it's a really important thing for people to understand,
Speaker 2: and it's a difficult thing to understand because the undercurrent
Speaker 2: of malevolence that's there is difficult for most people to
Speaker 2: come to grips with, but it's almost axiomatic that you
Speaker 2: cannot have an authoritarian system in which people are still
Speaker 2: free to move about as they like on their own initiative,
Speaker 2: in their own vehicle, unsupervised, unmonitored, and uncontrolled. In order
Speaker 2: for them to impose a truly authoritarian system on Americans,
Speaker 2: they have got to get control over transportation and particularly
Speaker 2: personal transportation. And when you filter everything that's going on
Speaker 2: through that, everything becomes comprehensible.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: I tell people all the time. The TSA is a
Speaker 1: transportation security agency, right, it's not the airport security agency.
Speaker 4: And they want to do that.
Speaker 1: They want to eliminate the private vehicles so that everything
Speaker 1: becomes like the airport. If you like that, certainly you'll
Speaker 1: be able to keep that authoritarian government. If you like
Speaker 1: your authoritarian government, you can keep it, or they'll keep
Speaker 1: it for you.
Speaker 5: With something like geo fencing and the tesla's, they can
Speaker 5: just simply section you off, say oh no, your car
Speaker 5: just simply will not go there.
Speaker 6: You turn it that way. No, we're going to autopilot
Speaker 6: you back into your safe zone. You're not allowed over here.
Speaker 6: You're not allowed to go this fhe.
Speaker 1: And you won't have enough range really to get out
Speaker 1: of there anyway. You know, it's fifteen minute city.
Speaker 2: That's about how creepy it is. And it's incredible, al Blase.
Speaker 2: So many Americans are, they think even if they're aware
Speaker 2: of it, they will say, oh, that would never happen,
Speaker 2: and they would never do that to us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, Eric, about ten years ago, I went
Speaker 1: to an auto show in Texas. I start, yeah, a
Speaker 1: long Star round up. It's a real big classic show,
Speaker 1: and I think it's got to be an America made car,
Speaker 1: and it's got to be They don't include the it's
Speaker 1: got to be older than the Mustangs. Older than sixty four.
Speaker 1: Sixty five is a cutoff, right, So they didn't want
Speaker 1: to take it at that point.
Speaker 4: But there's a lot of modification to.
Speaker 1: Them, and a lot of rat rods that are out there,
Speaker 1: you know, really grungy cars that people kept going and modified.
Speaker 1: I went around and I talked to all these people
Speaker 1: and they were all different ages. You know, people had
Speaker 1: cars they were seventeen or eighteen years old that they
Speaker 1: had fixed up up to people who retirees and I
Speaker 1: asked them all, do you think the government is going
Speaker 1: to make private cars go away and gasoline cars go away?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they all said, And to a man, they pretty
Speaker 1: much all said, including like seventeen eight year olds, It'll
Speaker 1: never happen in my lifetime. It's like, man, the disconnect
Speaker 1: that was there at that time was just that was
Speaker 1: the most you know, the cars are interesting, but the
Speaker 1: most interesting thing was how these people had lied to
Speaker 1: themselves about the government's intentions and its abilities to rob
Speaker 1: them of their mobility. It truly is amazing.
Speaker 2: The intentions were always there. I think the technology has
Speaker 2: made it much more feasible to fast track things. They
Speaker 2: wouldn't have been able to do what they have wanted
Speaker 2: to do for fifty years, you know, back in the
Speaker 2: eighties and nineties, or even the early two thousands, But now,
Speaker 2: particularly within the last ten years, they have now got
Speaker 2: the ability to utterly and completely control vehicles to a
Speaker 2: degree that most people would not believe until they have
Speaker 2: to deal with it.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: I give various examples.
Speaker 2: One is the illusion that you have in a modern
Speaker 2: car that you're controlling how fast you drive.
Speaker 4: You're not.
Speaker 3: When you push down on the accelerator pedal.
Speaker 2: All you're doing is feeding data to the computer, and
Speaker 2: you're not connected to the engine, to a cable system
Speaker 2: and a throttle any longer. You're sending data to a computer,
Speaker 2: and the computer then is telling the engine, okay, increase
Speaker 2: the RPMs or to a certain amount to give you
Speaker 2: the illusion that you're the one who's controlling the car.
Speaker 2: I had a Ford expedition a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 2: and I was, this is a big vehicle, big SUV,
Speaker 2: and I'm trying to back the thing up in my driveway.
Speaker 3: Now I've lived where I lived for twenty years. I
Speaker 3: know my driveway. There's a big.
Speaker 2: Bush at the one side of my driveway, and I know,
Speaker 2: because again I've been doing it for twenty years, exactly
Speaker 2: how far I can back up before I hit that bush.
Speaker 2: But the Ford slams on the brakes a couple of
Speaker 2: feet before I get anywhere near the bush. Because again safety,
Speaker 2: but you know, read dig down and.
Speaker 3: To think about what that means.
Speaker 2: The vehicle can decide that it's going to stop, you know,
Speaker 2: entering your will. It's going to exercise control, and bit
Speaker 2: by bit they're doing this. I had an article look
Speaker 2: the other day about this speed limit assistance technology. I
Speaker 2: love how they call it assistance technology, Like you didn't
Speaker 2: know you were driving faster than the speed limit, and
Speaker 2: now the car is well, oh, thank you so much
Speaker 2: car for telling me that I'm driving faster than the
Speaker 2: speed limit. And you know, first they try to shame you.
Speaker 2: There's a little icon that pops up in the dashboard
Speaker 2: that shows us a speed limit sign and it goes red.
Speaker 2: You know you're driving faster than the speed limit. And
Speaker 2: sometimes there's a chime that companies it. And this is
Speaker 2: weirdly standard now on all the vehicles. Why is that,
Speaker 2: you know, it's not optional for people who need assistance.
Speaker 2: If I need assistance, oh I love that, I'll buy
Speaker 2: some assistance. No, they're making it standard because what they're
Speaker 2: doing is in classic Fabian socialist style, slowly, bit by bit,
Speaker 2: you know, getting people used to this stuff, and the
Speaker 2: next step will be not just assisting you to know
Speaker 2: that you're driving faster than the speed limit, it will
Speaker 2: be preventing you from driving any faster than the speed
Speaker 2: limit by using the drive by wire throttle, by using
Speaker 2: the electrically controlled braking system to prevent you from doing it.
Speaker 2: And what they're doing with that is making driving such
Speaker 2: a it's no longer fun. You feel like you're guarented.
Speaker 2: You feel like you're a kindergartener again. And that's the
Speaker 2: really they want you to just say, you know, the
Speaker 2: heck with it?
Speaker 4: Why am I?
Speaker 2: Why am I signing up for a seven hundred dollars
Speaker 2: a month loan for the next six years. I don't
Speaker 2: even control the car. The car nags me and pesters
Speaker 2: me all the time, it tells me what to do.
Speaker 3: The heck with it.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to get my app on my phone
Speaker 2: and I'll tap it and I'll get my pride.
Speaker 4: That's right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The comedian British comedian Ruin Atkinson who plays mister Bean.
Speaker 1: He was an engineer before he became a comedian, and
Speaker 1: he's got a lot he loves cars, and he's got
Speaker 1: a lot of very expensive hypercards. And he said, well,
Speaker 1: you don't really drive these so much as you manage them,
Speaker 1: because there's so much drive by wire stuff in it.
Speaker 1: And I remember when Michael Hastings was killed, and I
Speaker 1: think he was killed. I don't think it was an accident,
Speaker 1: and he was He had rented a late model Mercedes
Speaker 1: when that happened, and he was he thought that people
Speaker 1: were after him with the government because of what he
Speaker 1: was reporting on, and he had a lot of death
Speaker 1: threats from the government, and so he going out to
Speaker 1: his car. A landlady said he you go out to
Speaker 1: the car and you look underneath it and all this
Speaker 1: other kind of stuff to see if there was some
Speaker 1: kind of a bomb on it. But they you know,
Speaker 1: when you have the when the computer is able to
Speaker 1: control your acceleration, you're braking, you're steering, and all these
Speaker 1: other things, it's very, very easy to assassinate somebody that way.
Speaker 1: And they have illustrated over and over again at the
Speaker 1: black Hat conference in Vegas how easy it is to
Speaker 1: hack one of these cars as well, because they're also online,
Speaker 1: so everything is under computer control and it's also online,
Speaker 1: so any bad actor, especially the government, can jump into
Speaker 1: this thing and do whatever they wish. They can shut
Speaker 1: you down, or if they want to, they can try
Speaker 1: to make it look like it was an accident. This
Speaker 1: is the type of thing we've been seeing for a
Speaker 1: long time. Yeah, you had your article when you're talking
Speaker 1: about the insurance, when will people decide to stop paying?
Speaker 1: And you talk about the fact that you've got an
Speaker 1: antique car, you drive it three hundred miles a year
Speaker 1: and stay within about a ten miles of your home
Speaker 1: in rural Virginia, And why should you have to pay
Speaker 1: insurance for that? That should be your decision for that.
Speaker 1: But of course it is this corporate government fascism that
Speaker 1: we see over and over again where they force you
Speaker 1: to buy their product, isn't.
Speaker 3: It It is?
Speaker 2: And now they are using insurance to price people out
Speaker 2: of vehicle ownership. Yeah, everybody you probably had this happen
Speaker 2: to you as well, has had their premium increase by
Speaker 2: on average twenty five to thirty percent and in some
Speaker 2: cases fifty percent or more for absolutely no reason having
Speaker 2: to do with anything they did in terms of having
Speaker 2: an accident, filing a claim anything, or.
Speaker 3: Even a speeding ticket. You get the notice in the
Speaker 3: mail and all of a sudden, your premium.
Speaker 2: Is double what it was the year prior. Why because
Speaker 2: they can, you know, because they don't have the option
Speaker 2: to say no. Imagine what a cup of coffee would
Speaker 2: cost if the government said you have to go to Starbucks.
Speaker 3: You caucify a cup of.
Speaker 2: Starbucks coffee at least once a week. You know, we'd
Speaker 2: be paying ten dollars for a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
Speaker 4: That's exactly where we are, isn't it.
Speaker 2: That's essentially where we are with this. And I think,
Speaker 2: you know, we are getting to a point. You know,
Speaker 2: I have my ear to the ground about things like this.
Speaker 2: And it's also my own personal opinion that everybody's feeling
Speaker 2: pinched because of the cost of everything.
Speaker 1: Everything's going up and they don't include it, and the
Speaker 1: evaluation of inflation either be.
Speaker 2: The this and so you know, when it comes down
Speaker 2: to a choice between you know, obeying the law and
Speaker 2: handing a check over to these insurance mobsters for a
Speaker 2: large sum of money that could be used to pay
Speaker 2: your electric bill, or you know, for your family, what's
Speaker 2: the choice. Well, you know, probably a lot of people
Speaker 2: are going to say, you know what, I'm going to
Speaker 2: buy food for my family instead of sending this check
Speaker 2: to all State or Geicoe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so what.
Speaker 2: You know, I mean, the illegal aliens can with impunity
Speaker 2: because they you know, they can't they can't get blood
Speaker 2: out of a stone, can they.
Speaker 3: You know, they don't have any access disease. So and
Speaker 3: I'm not I'm really I'm not.
Speaker 2: I'm not disparaging people who are in that category because
Speaker 2: I understand people are trying to improve their lives and
Speaker 2: all of that. Just trying to make the point that
Speaker 2: there are no consequences for those people. You know, if
Speaker 2: if they want to go out and drive without insurance
Speaker 2: and hit you and wreck you, they'll walk away from
Speaker 2: it and the state will do nothing about it. But
Speaker 2: you and I we don't hit anybody, you know, we
Speaker 2: haven't caused any problems for anybody. But we didn't hand
Speaker 2: over the money to the mobsters. They'll cancel your driver's license,
Speaker 2: they'll cancel your registration, and if they catch you driving,
Speaker 2: they'll know impound your vehicle and potentially arrest you for it.
Speaker 1: That's absolutely right. Yeah, you're absolutely right. That's the way
Speaker 1: it works. It's a two tier standard already in many
Speaker 1: different areas that we've got in this country. Well, well
Speaker 1: at a time. It's always great having you on, Eric.
Speaker 1: Anything you want to tell us about what's happening with
Speaker 1: your website.
Speaker 3: Oh, well, nothing more than what's on there. You know.
Speaker 2: I posted an article this morning. It's more of a
Speaker 2: thought piece about how we're all kind of in this
Speaker 2: bad marriage situation.
Speaker 3: In this country.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, Trump is the guy who has bad marriages.
Speaker 4: He specializes in that, doesn't he Well.
Speaker 2: Isn't it interesting that for the most part, most people
Speaker 2: will say, okay, you know, if you have a situation
Speaker 2: where a couple just can't.
Speaker 3: Work it out, they're at odds.
Speaker 2: You know, nobody would say, well, they have to stay
Speaker 2: married and be miserable for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 2: People accept that sometimes marriages don't work and you know,
Speaker 2: there's a divorce. It's not a happy thing, but it's
Speaker 2: better than forcing people who can't live together to live together. Well, politically,
Speaker 2: somehow that seems to be off the table.
Speaker 4: Why is that?
Speaker 2: You know, we're at a point in this country with
Speaker 2: the left right and just people who want to be
Speaker 2: left alone chiefly versus those who won't leave people alone.
Speaker 2: Why can't we just figure out a way to peacefully
Speaker 2: separate ourselves and that way end this fractiousness, you know,
Speaker 2: and just instead of going to blows with each other,
Speaker 2: and that includes blows at the ballot box and trying
Speaker 2: to constantly figure out a way to elect our guy
Speaker 2: to impose our will on the other side, how about
Speaker 2: we just figure out a way to go our own
Speaker 2: way and live and let live.
Speaker 3: The problem is that probably half the country doesn't want
Speaker 3: to live and let live.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've talked about that. You know, if you look
Speaker 1: at the Scandinavian countries, they have split apart and join
Speaker 1: together in various combinations many times, and you know, they
Speaker 1: would peacefully join together, peacefully break apart, and there.
Speaker 4: Was never a war over it. We don't have a
Speaker 4: government like that.
Speaker 1: You know, when Marjorie Tail green Star talking about having
Speaker 1: a national divorce, I said, yeah, the problem is is
Speaker 1: that we're married to an abusive spouse who once he
Speaker 1: finds out that we want to divorce him, he's going
Speaker 1: to come kill us.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Ye that I recurrently use because I think it's very
Speaker 2: pithy and it says it all. And it's a picture
Speaker 2: of Abraham Lincoln and the caption reads, if you try
Speaker 2: to leave me, I'll kill you.
Speaker 4: That's right, you know, the ultimate abusive of the household.
Speaker 1: That's exactly the case, especially in a country that was
Speaker 1: formed over the right of secession and self government. That
Speaker 1: was the basis of America's existence from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: How could you deny that to somebody? I'm always all
Speaker 1: about secession, and I would say, if at first you
Speaker 1: don't seceed, try try again.
Speaker 4: That maybe my model for ever.
Speaker 3: It's a safety valve and everybody should be on board
Speaker 3: with that.
Speaker 1: And of course there is one other thing we can do.
Speaker 1: And people at tenth Amendment have talked center I have
Speaker 1: talked about this a lot. There is another avenue of this,
Speaker 1: and that is nullification. That is kind of the middle point.
Speaker 1: You know, we say, well, we're just going tognore what
Speaker 1: you have to say. So there is nullification and non
Speaker 1: commandeering and short of and that effectively can allow you
Speaker 1: to seceed issue by issue if you've got people at
Speaker 1: the state level who have the backbone to do that
Speaker 1: type of thing, and that's the big if we don't
Speaker 1: because they're all on the take. I don't think that
Speaker 1: we're going to get this country back until we have
Speaker 1: a catastrophic economic system that's going to destroy the ability.
Speaker 4: Of our government with US dollars or reserve.
Speaker 1: Currency to just print money out of thin air. Until
Speaker 1: that disappears, we're going to have the same type of situation.
Speaker 3: We do have one power under our control, and it
Speaker 3: is to simply not participate, to opt out on our own.
Speaker 2: You know, with regard to new cars, if you don't
Speaker 2: want to be data mined and controlled, well, don't buy
Speaker 2: a new car.
Speaker 3: You eat the older car that you have.
Speaker 2: Get an older car, fix it up, you know, during
Speaker 2: the pandemic, don't wear a mask, don't pull, don't comply.
Speaker 2: If enough of us is indis, you don't have to
Speaker 2: join an organization, just abide. It's in your own moral compass.
Speaker 2: And you know, if this is wrong, I don't like this,
Speaker 2: I'm not going along with it.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 2: I'm just taking my stand. I'm not going to be
Speaker 2: a cattle and go along moving with the herd just
Speaker 2: because that's what the herd does.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I I'd been thrown out of so many different places
Speaker 1: and restaurants in Texas. I had to move to Tennessee
Speaker 1: because I promised these people I would never be back
Speaker 1: because of the way that they insisted that I wear
Speaker 1: a mask, And so I left.
Speaker 4: Then I said, and I won't be.
Speaker 1: Back, And I kept my word by moving to State.
Speaker 1: That's the only way I could do it. It's always
Speaker 1: great to have you on Eric Eric petersautos dot com.
Speaker 1: Folks had great sight for liberty and mobility and a
Speaker 1: little bit of nostalgia now as well, because that's how
Speaker 1: the only way we're going to be able to keep
Speaker 1: our mobility is with classic cars. Thank you, Eric, always
Speaker 1: great to talk to you.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Travis, Thank you Eric, always a pleasure speaking
Speaker 5: to you. And before we go, ACSA B thank you
Speaker 5: so much that we really do appreciate it. Says so awesome.
Speaker 5: DK and family. Thanks for everything. I wish I could
Speaker 5: do so much more, so much.
Speaker 6: A CSAP, thank you.
Speaker 5: It really is because of your support that we're able
Speaker 5: to continue to do this and we really cannot thank
Speaker 5: you enough.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much.
Speaker 6: Folks, Thank you all very much. God bless you all
Speaker 6: have a wonderful rest of your day.
Speaker 1: Yes, the common man. They created common Core that dumbed
Speaker 1: down our children. They created common past, track and control
Speaker 1: us their commons project to make sure the commoners own
Speaker 1: nothing and the communist future.
Speaker 4: They see.
Speaker 1: The common man is simple, unsophisticated, ordinary. But each of
Speaker 1: us has worth and dignity created in the image of God.
Speaker 1: That is what we have in common. That is what
Speaker 1: they want to take away. Their most powerful weapons are isolation, deception, intimidation.
Speaker 1: They desire to know everything about us, While they hide
Speaker 1: everything from us, it's time to turn that around and
Speaker 1: expose what they want to hide. Please share the information
Speaker 1: and links you'll find at the Davidknightshow dot com. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening, Thank you for sharing. If you can't
Speaker 1: support us financially, please keep us in your prayers. D
Speaker 1: Davidknightshow dot com