Shifting Gears in Automotive and Broadcasting

This is the Let's Talk Wheels Radio Network with Mike Herzing on ESPN 97.5 from the Veritex Community Bank Studios. Here are your hosts, Jeremy Bierenbaum and Mike Herzing. Welcome to another edition of Let's Talk Wheels, your favorite automotive show. I'm Mike Herzing along with Jeremy Bierenbaum, and today we're going to tell you all about about the automotive industry, and about how cool it is. And speaking of cool, here is Mr. Cool and Mr. Hollywood, Jeremy Bierenbaum.

How are you doing, buddy? I'm doing pretty good. The weather's been pretty nice in L.A. over the past weekend. Got out to drive a little bit right between the storms, and now we have a bunch of flooding again. So, yeah. Yeah, it happens every once in a while. You guys need the rain. Every time I was in L.A., you walk out where there ought to be grass. There's dirt. But now you've got grass, right? Sort of? Yeah. No, I'm not complaining, aside that nobody can drive in L.A.

And traffic stinks when it rains. But aside from that, we're doing okay here. Today it was like 74 degrees and sunny and low humidity. We had L.A. weather today, and it's been in the low 70s all week, and it's going to be like 80 tomorrow, and it's going to be a beautiful weekend. The rodeo's here, and it's going to be great. It's just one of those gorgeous weekends, and it's kind of great. This is wonderful.

But also, this is our last weekend on the network. We're moving a little bit more digital. And so it's eight years nationally syndicated, and that's kind of great. But it's time to change things. Digital is good. You'll find us on Spotify and iTunes and some more podcast platforms. And I think that's the way people want to listen to us. Don't you think so, Jeremy?

Yeah, I mean, then they're not tied to a certain time or where they have to be in a car with a radio. You can do it from your phone when you're walking your dog, whatever, which is kind of nice. And anyone who's been listening to us through a streaming network is going to go to it the same way they've been doing it.

So nothing will change. nothing will change just you know the names will stay in the same but there we go so i'll tell you what it's been a great week it's been a great week you know i think that's a zeppelin song that's probably the same you know but it's been it's been a great week and we've had a great run on the network we've had so many cool people and the people over at the sports map radio network have been so good to us and they're wonderful folks and just

there's so many neat stations out there but it's just different. People are listening to satellite radio, and they're listening to their phones, and more and more people, they want to listen to what they want to listen to right then. It's kind of like cable TV. You want to listen to your show, you want to listen to it right now. You don't want to listen to it when the times are.

I remember kind of setting my schedule on a Saturday morning to whatever show was going to be on the radio so I could listen Listen to it. But now people don't want to do that. They want the show to be around their schedule, not the schedule be around the show. So, you know, it's just it's just one of those. You know, I think I think the way that people consume content nowadays is totally different from previously.

You know, previously you would know something's coming and then you change your schedule for it. And nowadays it's like you only fit the content in when it works for you and you don't have to worry what time it airs because you can always get to it. Yeah, I remember, you know, coming home, oh, so-and-so is on TV tonight, and the whole family would be around the television. And now it's just like, oh, what day is it?

You know, it's just, I don't know. But, you know, it was like, you know, in September, all the new shows would come out, and each month, everything was the same. I remember it was always September when the new cars came out and everybody. Now there's no real schedule. Everything is so different. It's just different. And everybody's running around at Mach 10 with their hair on fire. Nobody has time to do anything. Everybody's overwhelmed. And we just kind of

grab content when we can. And it's just the way it is.

And so let's hope it all works out. But as a matter of fact, let's talk about a quick news story. Our buddy Jim Farley, who's actually a pretty cool guy. As far as the CEO of Ford goes, I didn't know Hackett. I knew the CEOs before them. Mark Fields was a very good friend of mine. And, and, but Jim Farley, I knew him when he was their marketing guy and he was just a, just a regular dude. He just, you know, he loves race cars and things like that.

And, you know, he became CEO of Ford and, you know, he, he got all the lightnings thing going on and he realized that the lightning had some flaws with the charging systems and things like that. He took a trip with it. that not many CEOs would do out, take the family on a trip with an electric vehicle and realize that it's hard to find charging and things like that. He's had some ups and downs with the union. And he really got his feelings hurt when the union struck Ford.

You know, Ford's one of the companies that, you know, they never filed bankruptcy back in 2008. They stuck it out. You know, they haven't gone to the government with their hand out like other companies. And, you know, and they were pretty proud of that. And they've always worked with the union really well. And then the union struck them first. And then they also struck their truck plant where they make the most money, where it hurt them the most.

And they didn't do that to GM or, you know, the other company, Atlantis.

And it kind of ticked him off. And so now they've got a little bit of a contentious attitude with the union, don't you think? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think there's some back and forth that they're doing and now we're having a second strike. And so it just makes it tough for, you know, everybody to go about their business on a daily manner. It's a little tough.

And then there's the new president of the union who's – the other union guys kind of got in trouble, and government got on their butt. And the new guy wants to make a name for himself, and so he's going to be – he was a hard ass and just really threw his weight around and wanted to make a name for himself. And I don't know that that was probably the right thing to do. Maybe he thought it was. But it sure made it tough on the car companies. And so I don't know.

I don't know. It's just going to be a little tough right now because the price of cars are going to go up and everything because of the last contract. But I have a feeling that the next contract is not going to be near. I thought this one was pretty contentious. I think the next contract is going to be really contentious. And I think it's going to be very ugly.

I mean, you just see more and more with the production of these vehicles being automated, and these people just want to guarantee that they have a job and they're not going to get replaced by a robot like we're seeing happen in the fast food industry and so many other worlds. Yep. But they also got to make the cars price them where people can afford to buy them too. And I know that they're saying, well, the executive, Jim Farley makes so much money.

Well, there's only one of Jim Farley and there's 50,000 of the employees. So, yeah, we understand all that. So, but, you know, it's going to be ugly. So there's a little bit of contention. So Jim Farley mentioned something the other day. He says, you know, we're going to have to think about where we build our next plant because –. After this last strike, we're going to think about we may not build it in a union state. And I don't blame them.

You're much better off building it in a right-to-work state. You'll probably go down to the south. Maybe I'd love to see them come to Texas again. They used to be up in Dallas area. And DFW had a parts plant there. But hopefully they'll do something like that again. That'd be great. We'd love to have them. But I think that would be a really fun thing, as a matter of fact. By the way, I see something the other day. I saw California actually saw the

sales of electric vehicles, their sales dropped 10%. First time in forever, EV sales have actually dropped in the fourth quarter. That's crazy. Yeah, you know, we've been seeing that. And I heard some information, not yet some like full-blown stories that maybe some of the manufacturers are going to roll back some of their electric cars because they're seeing that they're not taking up sales as fast as they thought they would. They're not. People aren't buying them.

And I think the people from Toyota and Honda are all going, you know. Because they're the ones saying, EVs are too soon. We need hybrids. And Mary Barra from GM said, we need to rethink this and probably come out with more hybrids and back off on the EVs. And I think that's a great idea. idea. Hybrids are just, you know, we need more hybrids and back off on EVs just a little bit.

I know the government, I even read something the other day that they thought that the Biden administration was going to back off on EVs and maybe go to hybrids. And I think that's really a smart thing. That may mean they're not going to do it because it is a smart thing, and they're not known for that.

But that would be really cool if they did that. I mean, because we could really use something smart. You know, it would be really cool. But I think that would be a really good move because EVs are just, they're wonderful in many cases, but... Parts of the country, they're just not ready for it. They're really not. And for towing and stuff, they're just not there. It's just, it's too hard to make them tow. And then parts of the country,

they're just not ready for the roads. They're just, they're so much heavier and things like that. Of course, once the, like I said, I keep telling everybody, once those new batteries come out that are smaller, the solid state batteries and stuff, problem solved. But until then, it's going to be a little tough. So, all right, folks. folks. We've got a fun show today. We're going to talk to the folks at GM about the huge upgrade they made on the Super Cruise.

The Ultra Cruise is now Nomas. They're just going to call it Super Cruise. That's the new name for it. The old name is now the new name. And I'm going to do a couple of car reviews and then the GMC Sierra 2500 AT4 and then the Infiniti QX60. And then we're also Also going to talk about a lot of things. This also right now is going to be our last show on the network. And we're going to go digital. I think that's going to be fun. So you can find us on iTunes and Spotify right now, right away.

And that's going to be really good for you guys. So you're still going to be able to see Jeremy and I on social media, on Facebook. And that we're going to go into YouTube. We may even get into TikTok if I get Jeremy to learn how to dance.

Yeah i know i think this will give us a little bit more uh the way to connect with everybody differently and we can kind of mess around and do some fun stuff i think it'll be really really fun, okay folks hang on we got more let's talk wheels coming up right after this short break i'm telling you it's going to be a great show stewart foals coming up from gm on segment three but right coming up next is a couple of car reviews hang on.

You're listening to the Let's Talk Wheels Radio Network on ESPN 97.5. From the Veritex Community Bank Studios, here's Jeremy Bierenbaum and Mike Herzing.

Welcome back to Let's Talk Wheels. Mike Herzing and Jeremy Bierenbaum. This is a car review segment. Folks, I want to talk about the 2500 GMC Sierra AT4. Now, that AT4 is their heavy-duty off-road vehicle. The one I have is called the AEV, American Expedition and Vary Vehicles. That is just the coolest vehicle they set up. It is called the AT4X. AT4X. AT4 is GMC's off-road version of their vehicle, their off-road line. It's almost like a sub-line, similar to the Denali.

So what a nice truck. I've been stopped so many times, people going, this is a gorgeous truck. You know, this is this really pretty volcanic red tint coat, it's called. It's kind of like a salsa-looking red. Just beautiful. And the interior is obsidian rush with kind of a, you know, kind of a volcano-looking color inside. It's kind of a grayish black. Beautiful inside. Yes. With kind of a red stitching. It's just so nice, so comfortable.

It's right up there with the Denali, okay? But it's a little bit more off-roadish than your Denali is, Jeremy. Oh, yeah, definitely. With 30, 35 inch tires, a suspension lift with, with all these multi-adjustable shocks, you know, they call it multi-matic. Okay. Great suspension. I mean, you can just run over a curb at 20 miles an hour. You don't even notice it. Hit a pothole. It's not even there, you know. But this is a big truck.

You know, it'll tow like 18,000, over 18,000 pounds. And it's just a beast. It's just a big diesel. And, of course, it doesn't sound like a diesel because it's so quiet.

You can extend these mirrors. you know it's it's this is i mean it's just a beast got these big toe hooks on the bumpers big oh it's top of the food chain oh yeah oh yeah this is like mighty mouse i mean this is just just who cares the at4x the at4 is just already you know a loaded up but the at4x aev is even more loaded okay it has more of the american expedition vehicle treatment has these extra headrests

and all these other badges and things like that but but it's also got these these badass bumpers, and they're all hot-stamp steel bumpers, and it's got skid plates, and it's got –, I'm looking at the bumpers, and it's got these little badges on it that says AEV. But it's just so badass. I'll tell you what, it's just –. It's got the 6.6 liter V8 Duramax diesel, 975 pound-feet of torque. It's 10-speed automatic.

You know, it's just got a big 36-gallon. You look at it, and I've got 700 miles, 600-and-something miles of range. And you're going, wow. You know, it's big. These big 35-inch Goodyear Wrangler territory tires, you know. And they've got 18-inch aluminum wheels. And they look like beadlock rims. And they're just, they're just beautiful wheels and tires just, and people thinking this is an off-road truck, but I'm thinking it's so nice. They don't want to take it off road. It's just so pretty.

I mean, if, if you're looking, if you're looking at, at Ford or, or Ram and you're like, you like the TRX or, or the Raptor and, but you're a GM guy like me, like I, I want to get a GM car. I love a GM car. This AT4X is kind of where you want to be. It has got the off-road chops. It is like, you know, almost Cadillac nice inside with all the leather and accoutrements. Like, it's a really nice truck. Yeah, I mean, and granted, the Chevy Silverado makes the Bison.

It's a really nice vehicle. Don't get me wrong. The ZR2, it's beautiful. But this thing is just nicer. It's got these bumpers, these AEV bumpers and the skid plates, big tow hooks and everything else. I mean, granted, the Denali is my favorite truck, period. Okay. But, you know, GMC says about 40% of the trucks are going to be these AEV trucks. Okay. It's just the interior is so nice. But, you know, you got to understand. This is a gorgeous truck to begin with. Granted, this thing is $100,000,

folks. Okay? But that's just what they sell for. Okay? That's just the way it is. Now, if you get it without the diesel, you could save about a little under $10,000. Okay? So that helps a lot. You know, these things get like 16, I think I got 17, 18 miles per gallon. If you drive it 65, you can get 20. But this is a beautiful truck. It's got heated and cooled seats. You know, it's got all these adjustable things. It's got all of the off-road gearing and all of the goodies you want to go.

Crawl control and hill start and all these goodies you can do this. You could do so much with this that even if you don't know how to drive off-road, you can with this truck. If you don't want to tow with this truck, it's got all of the cameras everywhere. You've got, you turn on your left turn signal and the screen in the center, this big, huge screen will light up and it shows you on the left side of your truck. You hit your right turn and it'll show you the right side of your truck.

You know, if you push this button, it'll show you all the cameras around. You can do this invisible trailer thing where you put these cameras back there on your trailer, and you can make it look like your camera. You can see through your trailer, and you can see anybody following you and things like that. It is so nice. It's got adaptive cruise control. It's got everything that you would ever want on a luxury truck. Then you can take it.

It's got the open the doors and these rock rails, which are the running boards, will open up. You can step down, you know, the wife can step down. If you're a short person, you can get down easily. You can take this to, you know, to a nice dinner on date night, but then you can also take it off-roading in Moab. It's so versatile. You know what I mean? Yeah, definitely. You know, it's definitely like for you out in Texas, it's a, it's a one car solution, right?

You get the luxury and the truck aspect all in one. You gotta, you, you gotta purposely do something to get this thing stuck. Like, you know, it's not going to get stuck is what I want to say. Just it's off-road chops are really well designed. Yeah, it even has 16-way power seats. Come on. That's up there with the Land Rover. It's got everything you'd want, including 120-volt power outlets in the bed and all the other good stuff, all the stabilic track and trailer sway control

and all the goodies and stuff like that. So it'll help you tow. It'll help you do everything else. It'll tell you it's got blind spot control for the trailer. You can get this with all of the, as we talked about, as we're going to talk about in the next segment, about Super Cruise and all that other stuff.

You can get all that stuff with this vehicle. vehicle, it's got all the surround vision cameras, it's got all the backup monitors, you got blind spot monitors, you got a camera in the front of the vehicle, a camera behind the vehicle. You've got so many things about this. All you got to worry about is somebody stealing it from you because it's so nice. You got to spend a hundred grand, but then again, it's going to last 500,000 miles because it is a diesel. And if you want a great vehicle.

Top of the food chain, doesn't get any nicer than this. You need to go to your GMC dealer and say, I may not want a Denali. I want to look at the AT4, and I want to look at the AEV version. And they're going to show you one. You may have to put your name on a list to get one, but I promise you, if you do, you're going to fall in love with it. Check out all of the GMC trucks because they're all very nice. Wouldn't you agree? See how you drive one? Yeah, no, GMC is definitely my favorite brand.

You know, it's been my family has been using GMC trucks, you know, before I was even around. And, you know, somehow it's in my blood. I got stuck with it and I'm pretty happy with the way it's been. There you go. All right, folks, let's talk about cars a little bit.

You know, we were talking, we've been talking the last couple of weeks about V8s and all that kind of stuff. And we have, I've had so many people email me questions. questions. Don't forget, folks, you can always email jeremy at classic.com, C-L-A-S-I-Q. You can always email me, Mike, at Let's Talk Wheels. That's never a problem. We will always answer. I will always get you the answer you need. Even if I don't know it, there are things I don't know, believe it or not.

I was just teaching some kids the other day about some top-end problems with engines, and I didn't know all the answers. So I had to actually talk to a friend of mine and They say, hey, what's the latest on this stuff? So some of these cars, you know, there are some problems. So these car companies are not perfect, and neither are we when we're taking care of these cars. But the best, we do the best you can.

And I had somebody the other day with a Ford with a gas, with a small leak in the, you know, those little capless gas caps. You know, the ones that have the little flapper valve that GMC uses. Everybody uses them nowadays. Nobody wants to put a gas cap on. They have those Ford. You started out with them at first. And Easy Fill and all the companies call them that just basically there's no gas cap anymore. Those things have a tendency to leak. And that has a problem with them.

All right, folks. We got Let's Talk Wheels. Mike Hersey. Jeremy Berenbaum. We got more coming up. We ran out of time. So hang on. We got the Stuart Fowle coming up next from GM.

You're listening to the Let's Talk Wheels Radio Network on ESPN 97.5. From the Veritex Community Bank Studios, here's Jeremy Bierenbaum and Mike Herzing. Welcome back to Let's Talk Wheels, folks. All right. As promised earlier in the show, Stuart Powell, he is from General Motors. He's going to talk to us. About General Motors working on SuperCruise. Stuart, welcome back to Let's Talk Wheels. I know you've been on before, but tell us more about SuperCruise.

Yeah, thanks for having me on, Mike. We had some great news today. So SuperCruise, our hands-free driving feature, this allows you, your driver is still in control of the vehicle, but for relaxing, reducing stress, you're able to let go and go hands-free on a number of highways and different roads across the country. And through the course of the next year, we'll be almost doubling the amount of roads that you can drive on hands-free from about 400,000 to 750,000 different roads.

That's the distance to the moon and back three times, which is a pretty incredible amount of roads that you can drive on. And this is in addition to some of the features that only we offer, for like hands-free trailering, for example. Well, you know, we all loved cruise control when it came out. It was so magical. You know, it's really great, but people never, you know, we want more. And then we have adaptive cruise control, which slows down and things like that.

And I remember GM came in and going, we're not only going to give you adaptive cruise control, we're going to let you do it with a trailer connected. And that was so cool. And, you know, GM has gotten into this trailer stuff so much, you know, with the camera goodies and everything else. you guys are just make it so cool. People want more. And you guys that came out with this super cruise a few years ago, and it's just been so well received, but it's pretty hard to map this stuff.

So how does this system work? I mean, you don't have to hold on to the steering wheel necessarily, but, you know, there's other companies gotten in trouble for telling everybody they can just sit there and go to sleep. You can't go to sleep. You can't. You got to pay attention. What are the rules on all this kind of stuff?

You can't go to sleep. that's that's a rule number one the way we very simply position our system is hands off eyes on and that's the important thing to remember so we have a built-in camera in the vehicle mapping how the how the person behind the wheel is pointing their head where their eyes are and if the system does not believe that the the driver is paying attention we have a light system on the steering wheel when supercruise is engaged it is green if it detects that

your hands are on the wheel and you're in control but the system is ready to go it'll change to blue to let you know that that the system will will take over when you're ready and if it flashes red that means it's time to take the wheel yourself and and and take over the vehicle again it will do that for detecting that that the driver isn't paying attention. It'll also do it when one of the roads that we have mapped comes to an end.

So one of the really important features of Super Cruise is that we have this map network. So some systems are hands on and eyes on, and every so often you have to put your hands back on the wheel. One of the ways that we can safely deploy supercruise in a broader way is we have a fleet of vehicles that go around with really advanced camera and sonar systems or radar systems and map the road. So they know elevation change is the road on an angle to one side.

So the vehicle needs to counter that in the steering system. All of these different data points. And we go around and map that with really special advanced vehicles and then upload that map data to every vehicle with Super Cruise. And that's what allows it to do such precision hands-free driving in so many ways. So that's the process that we've gone through of adding additional roads is physically going out and tracking all of those roads.

And then for safety's sake, we also work with all of the departments of transportation and we know where construction may be happening and that may cause a shift in the lanes and where you're driving. So we'll disable those sections of road during construction.

But we're really excited about this expansion. expansion think of of someone living in texas the roads between austin dallas san antonio are our main highways but you want to go on a fishing trip not only are there more roads to get you kind of into the the off the beaten path parts of your drive but as you mentioned trailering as well as is now a feature on those same roads and it fits really neatly into other features that we do have for trailering like transparent trailer

that lets you see through your trailer with a series of cameras or some of the lane markers where we'll put a red box in the road next to you and when you put your blinker on the screen shows you if anyone's in your blind spot over there so a whole suite of things.

You know, actually, I'm driving a GM vehicle this week. Folks, we're talking to Stuart Fowle. He is from General Motors. He's explaining how the new Super Cruise works. And I've used it. It's a wonderful system. And the best part, even if it's raining really hard or this or that, the system is such a great help because it knows where the road is without even having to see it.

It knows where you're at on the road. and it's i don't know it's like magic but it's but it really is neat stuff and it holds you exactly in the center of the road and i tried it and it was you know i was like i'm on cruise control and i had a trailer behind me and i'm cruising along and it just like and i had it set at 75 and there's somebody going 70 so it it slows down so i look around i put my left turn signal on, it moves over to the left. And I just put the turn signal on and it moved.

And I went and put, you know, went ahead and put the turn signal on, it moved back over and it just kept going. And I was just like, and I, you know, you have to pay attention, but you don't have to pay attention quite so much.

It's kind of like you only have to give it like 80% of your attention attention instead of 100 and it's nice in a lot of states you know Stuart I know you're in you're in Michigan and and that's okay I know you get choked up just thinking about it but and in a lot of states on the east coast everything's just there's so many people there and it's so close and everything is there's big towns everything I'm in Texas I can go a thousand

miles and not even be out of the state and it's so boring when you go to west Texas and you're just cruising cruising along and you're just going, oh my God, why can't I go 180 miles an hour just to get out of this, you know, this nothing but flat straight roads, you know, in West Texas. And all you see is, is all these turbines and stuff and all these, you know, solar stuff and, and windmills. And you're just like, get me out of here.

And so it's so nice to have some kind of this cruise control. It's really neat. And you guys have mapped so much of it now. That's so handy. Yeah, it's really cool. And those types of experiences, a little bit of relief as it goes a long way. If you don't have to be fully on all the time, you can take a little bit of a breather while still staying focused. I've actually really found in my experience that the harder the driving situation, the more appreciative I am of Super Cruise.

I've done it in LA rush hour traffic. It'll slow you right full stop. So that bumper to bumper when you're just kind of slogging along 10, 15 miles per hour, it's great for that. And then when you think about trailering, I've trailered a fair amount in my life, but when you're When you're trailering, you're thinking about how long of a stopping distance do I have ahead of me? You're doing all these additional calculations in your head that you wouldn't normally do.

So the difference of normal trailering driving versus supercruise driving or the cars doing or the trucks doing all of that thinking for you, it's pretty remarkable. I have a question, though. Now, what vehicles are supercruising? We can't just add it to our vehicle because it is so ingrained in your vehicle. So is GM putting it in more of the vehicles now? Yeah, great question, Mike. It is a hardware change that we need to make. So it's not something you can just add into the existing vehicle.

We're up to about 15 different models now. That includes all of our full-size trucks and SUVs, Silverado, Tahoe, Suburban, GMC, Yukon, and Sierra as well. And we'll be adding it to even more. So we expect to move well beyond 20 and eventually even more models in the future. For the trailering sake, we have new Chevy Traverse and GMC Acadia SUVs that are going on sale in just a few months here. Those will have Super Cruise for the first time.

And some of our new EVs, the Blazer EV, the Cadillac Lyric, we're adding Super Cruise everywhere we can pretty quickly. So it's a pretty dramatic expansion in terms of choices. I don't think I would buy a GM vehicle without it. Even if you don't want it right now, you can always just say it's a subscription-based thing, right? You can always just say, I'll take it. I may not want it right now, but there's going to be a point I'm going to want this.

So I would at least buy the model with it, right? Yeah, it's pretty incredible. It's so intuitive and works so well. I was driving a vehicle that I was borrowing with Super Cruise a couple months ago, and I made it 20 miles down the highway before my wife even realized that I hadn't been the one driving. Pretty amazing. Mine would notice because why are we driving so normal? Why are we driving so smooth? It's too smooth. Speed limit. It's too smooth. What is up with that?

And you're not using your hand signals that you normally use. Well, I'm not cursing at all the people in the left lane that are going slow. Well, that's because I'm not driving. Super Cruise is driving. That's why. That's right. So you could listen to the music and enjoy yourself. That's the difference. You can actually enjoy your trip. All right, folks. More to come with Let's Talk Wheels. Stuart, thanks for joining us today. Thanks so much for having me on, Mike. I appreciate it.

That was Stuart Fowle from General Motors. hang on folks more let's talk wheels coming up right after this quick break.

You're listening to the let's talk wheels radio network on espn 97.5 from the veritex community bank studios here's jeremy bierenbaum and mike hersey welcome back let's talk wheels mike hersey and jeremy bierenbaum let's do a quick car review and uh this week i was driving, Infiniti QX60, one of my favorite vehicles. It's probably one of my favorite. It's probably my favorite Infiniti. Well, I'll take that back. Maybe the QX80s and QX60 are probably equally my favorite. Wonderful vehicle.

It's kind of the cousin of the Nissan Pathfinder, and they redesigned it a couple of years ago, and it's a really great vehicle. I mean, I mean, if you were looking at this or maybe an Explorer or a Jeep Grand Cherokee, those would be like the vehicles, maybe a GV80. Some people would say, all right, now we'll look maybe a Porsche Cayenne. Well, that's really not, you know, I don't know, maybe XC90. That's a very good, a Lexus GX would be another.

This is probably the biggest market segment of cars. I mean, you also have the Toyota Highlander in there. Yeah. There's a lot of cars within this segment to check out, but this is a beautiful car. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. Or maybe the Lexus RX350, maybe about the same. But, you know, they make it in like four segments, in four trim levels, the Pure, the Lux, the Sensory, and the Autograph. And I think probably the Sensory might be the best deal.

Autograph is really loaded. It's really got a bunch of foo-foo stuff on it. But it starts, you know, in the little over 50 and it goes to about 64, 65 and we've got a nice 295 horsepower V6, nine speed automatic. And that's that Nissan V6. You can't kill it. They've been building that thing forever. And it's a wonderful vehicle. And I like the fact that they haven't stuck a little, you know, 1.5 liter four cylinder in it.

I just think that's so nice. You can tow with this vehicle. It's got three rows. You can fold stuff down, you know, fold seats down and put a bunch of stuff in there. You turn a corner, it doesn't roll over to the side, you know. It's just, it's very roomy inside. It's just a really neat vehicle. I know that the Nissan version of it, you can, you know, do all kinds of crazy stuff. But off-roading and things like that, they make the Rock Creek version and all that stuff.

But, you know, I think I got about 23 miles per gallon overall with it, which is pretty good. You know, you can get an all-wheel drive or front-wheel drive. But the one I had was all-wheel drive. and it was a very, very nice vehicle. I really enjoyed it. I never really used the third row. The second row was captain's chairs, but the one I had had this tan interior, just so nice. And the screen is not obscenely big, which is kind of nice. The infotainment system is easy to learn.

That's typical, you know, Nissan. The center console was nice.

It has, you know, these little drive modes, you know normal and and sport and things like that the the controls on the on the steering wheel are easy to learn this kind of stuff it's just it's a very it's one of those cars you jump in and you kind of go oh feel comfortable at home it's kind of like being in every other nissan on the planet i'd like the fact that nissan didn't put a cvt transmission in here they put one with a nine speed

but and they still have android auto and where and apple carplay just it's just. It's nice. It even has a heads-up display. It's a real safe vehicle and all the adaptive cruise controls and lane departure warnings and backup monitors and all this good stuff. It just works so well. Come to think of it, I think last time I was out in Houston, this is what you picked me up in when I flew into the airport. Probably. The one thing I say about this is you step inside this, and the inside is beautiful.

It's very well thought out, really comfortable. And then you know you're buying a car that is going to last for a really long time with not very many flaws, right? They're well thought out, and they're well built. I just like the dash and the center console, the center stack. It's just well thought out. And I like the way the AC vents are set up. And it's just very, very, I don't know. It just flows. You know what I mean? I just, it does.

Totally. And in a world where you're just actively like blasted with screens and stuff in cars, this, this seems like a really good alternative. Yep. And it has knobs. And not just haptic screens and touch screens. There's knobs. Thank you. And knobs and some buttons. And it's not just haptic stuff.

So, you know, if you want to really check out these things, I mean, if you're looking at Lexus or if you're looking at some of the Acuras or any of this kind of stuff, you've got to stop it and go, let me stop by the Infinity dealer and just check and see what they've got.

You know, and if you're not want to go quite so expensive, a little bit different, you might want to or if you want to do a little more off roading and maybe a little bit more camping type of thing, you can go to the Nissan version. But check out check out anything from Infinity. They're all good. If you need something bigger or some body on frame kind of thing, you could go to look at the QX80, which is similar to the Nissan Armada and the big V8 and all that kind of stuff.

But man, it's got all the everything you'd want. So check out the QX60. It's a wonderful vehicle. Jeremy, don't forget, folks, we're going digital after this, and I think it's going to be a really wonderful thing. I think it's going to be good for everybody. So be sure to find us on iTunes and Spotify. I think that's going to be very, very good for everybody. And you can always win. We've got almost we've got almost 400 podcasts up there on Spotify.

I think what I'm most it is crazy. And we've had some fun times together. We've got to review some fun cars. We've gone to some fun events. But what I look forward to is is the change and maybe not being stuck with this this radio format where, you know, if listeners want to hear more or less of something. Send us a message. Let us know. We can curtail this to you guys now because it's all for you.

We can do this. As a matter of fact, if you need for us to go to certain events, we can actually go to certain events. If we need to bring some people in that go to certain events, we need to maybe actually broadcast from certain events, we can actually do that. That would be actually kind of fun. But that would be a wonderful deal. But also, don't forget, coming up in April, the last, I think, week in April is going to be the paid swap meet.

That's always going to be a really good time, you know. Have you never been, have you? I'm going to try and make it. No, I haven't. So I'm going to try and make it out for my first one this year, which is in Fort Worth, Texas. Yeah, it's going to be April 25th through 27th, 2024. It's at Texas Motor Speedway, and it's technically in Fort Worth right near Alliance Airport. And it's really a great event. I mean, it's going to be great.

And this year, this one year, they may do it more, is they're going to do it alongside good guys. So inside the track, in the garage area, and on the infield, it's going to be good guys. And they're going to be everywhere. And then outside the track, they're going to have hate. Now, we're talking, you know, there'll be 150,000 people there in the three days.

It's a big car show because good guys in its own attracts a lot of people paint in its own attracts a lot of people so having them together is the real i really don't know and paint normally has about 120 000 people i'm guessing maybe another 30 or 40 will go because of good guys i don't know it's going to be a huge event let me tell you what i i'm excited so and this is Like I said, they're 52nd year, I think, and it's going to be huge.

And, of course, it was a scheduling thing, and so they decided the good guys and Pate. So it's going to be a little bit – it's a whole different – the Pate side are a little bit more blue-collar, but the good guys side are a little bit different. They're a little bit more hot-roddish, and they're inside the track. You've got to pay a little bit. I think it's $20 to get into good guys, and Pate's free.

So you have to pay for parking, and that's all. One of the fun things I know they have at Good Guys in Los Angeles, and I don't know if they have it out in Texas, is the autocross, which is fun to watch, even more fun to bring your car and participate. They may do that. All right, folks. You know, it's been a great – we've had a great eight-year run on the network, but I think the network is changing, and so we're going to go digital.

We may be on the radio in Houston. I don't know. We probably will at some point. But right now we're going to go actually just to more digital stuff, the podcast. And while we stay on iTunes, we'll be on Spotify. You can find us there. Let's Talk Wheels. You can always find us there. You can also find us on, you know, the Spotify and iTunes. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram. We're Mike. Like I said earlier, we can find Jeremy to start dancing. We'll get him on TikTok. But as always.

I'll try. And if you have any topics you want us to cover, questions you need us to answer, you can always email myself, Jeremy at Classic.com or Mike at Letstalkwheels.com. We'll always respond. Our emails will always be there for you. As always, folks, on behalf of Jeremy Birnbaum, our awesome producer, Sean Mapes. This is a great young man. If you need a producer, Sean Mapes is the guy. I've never been with a producer as good as this, Sean. He's great.

He's a great kid. And myself, Mike Herzing, we appreciate everything. We appreciate you being with us for all these years, and we hope you continue. Please follow us. Please find us. We'll be around, I promise you. Have a great week, and see you soon. We'll be there. Find us. Appreciate it.