It's a very special app this week as we go direct to La to get all the goss on the Megan Fox machine gun Kelli engagement ladies and gentlemen, our Hollywood correspondents, Polly, Oh my good, poorly tell us the latest.
Ah, I'm not going to reciprocate with an accent, because my accent's are shit. Ouse.
Look at you over in La Live in the LifeStyle's.
Beautiful tan on me as well, don't you think?
I'm pretty sure you just look like you've put a bunch of soy sauce and a water pistol and gone nuts.
I've been eating incredibly unhealthily over here.
Have you gotten into the barbecue?
Yeah, we did barbecue last night. I've had in and out too many times, I hoped too many times. I think you're gonna have to roll me onto the plane. It'll be disgusting.
But anyway, Oh, is that the seven four seven you quite enjoy flying as an engineer on his Instagram page was the best post I've ever seen as an engineer. It's such an honor to be on this plane wearing these sensible slacks. Love you. Here's a deal, right, So Paul gets flown over there for I'm just going by what I know so far for some sort of Bentley convention. Give's the deal. You get flown over there first class.
We need to work on your fashion because you posted this photo of yourself in first class as an engineer on A seven four seven, I'm like, what is he doing?
What is he doing? I was meant to be going over on a Dreamliner and they switched it out for the A three eighty and I just love that plane, so as an engineer, So yeah, it was fascinating.
Wow. Yeah. You know what else is fascinating? Just when you thought Rivers was going out of business. No, they're not Paul's dress head to toe. Couldn't you have just thrown on the Conics pj's or something.
You know what's funny. When I used to live in a bit of a shitty area, I threw a set of business class pajamas out and I went down to our shops like the three or four days after, and there was a dude sitting there like begging for money, wearing the Quantus pajamas that I threw in our bin.
And then you bent down as if you were going to give him money, and you just whispered, give those back.
Now, I just took the shirt off that. Thanks.
You ripped the pants and shirt off him in front of everybody.
I will say, though, So I've been over here driving the Bentley Flying Spur hybrid. So here in the States there's huge incentives, especially in California, for hybrids and electric vehicles, and Bentley sells an incredible amount of Continentals and Flying Spurs here, especially in California. Now that they're bringing the hybrid version out. It's a plug in hybrid, which means you've got a little over forty kilometers of driving range,
and it's like the epitome of luxury. So it really blends in beautifully down here, and it's just the weirdest dichotomies. We were staying in Beverly Hills and you'll drive a little out of Beverly Hills and you'll pull up to an intersection where and homelessness is out of control in Los Angeles at the moment after the pandemic. You'll pull up to an intersection where you'll have someone begging for money.
They'll have a cardboard cut out with something written on it, and at the traffic lights there will be like a may Bark, a G sixty three wagon Ferrari, and it's like, this is just so wrong that you've got a dude asking for money and then you're in this area where someone's driving around in a three or four hundred thousand dollars you may buck. It's it is just the weirdest
thing in the world. And I think this is probably like the only place in the world where that happens, where you've got the two extremes of poverty and then just just wealth. It's just so bizarre.
Yeah, I've got friends living over there and they've never seen the divide so big. I can't remember the name of the street, but you drive for miles and it's literally tense city ten after ten after ten.
Yes, skid rows. It used to just be one street in sort of the Los Angeles downtown area that's now become blocks of tents. Now under pretty much every overpass you'll see tent city set up. And I've been coming to the States for two or three times a year for the past five ten years, and I've never seen it this bad. So it is really sad to see. And I know this is a car podcast, but yeah, it is really sad to see. It makes you feel shit driving around in a Bentley that's worth like seven
hundred thousand dollars. You pull up at the lights and there's some bloke there that that hasn't eaten for a week, begging for money, and it's just a I don't know. I'm sure you get used to it living here, but to me, it was just a real odd feeling. It just makes you feel really strange about yourself.
You did tell me that you got over that after half an hour as you scoffed down a lobster and cavia role.
Well, this is this is how ridiculous it is. Like we I needed to get some money out and I had this money. It was just this nightmare of a thing getting money out. And anyway, I said to the hotel concierge, can you just tell me where I can get money out? And he's like, oh, at the right aid, they've got like a money order facility, and he goes, do you need a lift there? And I said, oh, look,
that would be amazing. So he says, I'll get our driver to give you a lift, and he pulls up out the front in a rolls Royce ghost and I said oh god, Okay, So I jump in the back and he pulls up at the front of the pharmacy and I get out rolls Royce to get into the sea.
It's just like a roll of homeless people to yourself, gold plated condoms, anybody. Wow?
So yeah, look look bet Bentley Flying Spur hybrid. Awesome car. The thing I love about it it's got such a clever system. And I don't know why more plug in hybrids don't use this, but it has a hybrid mode and it interacts with the GPS and if you set a location that's you know, five hundred kilometers away or even one hundred and fifty one whatever distance away, what the car is able to do is look at the
topography of the route. So for us, we did a drive sort of in through some canyons and down toward Ventura.
And what the car was able to do is in situations where it was more efficient to run on the electric motor, it would do that, and then in downhill it would switch the internal combustion engine off and then recharge the battery while it was going downhill using region And the end result is you arrive at your destination with no battery left because you've used the most efficient form of internal combustion engine plus EV drive train to
get there. I thought that is a really cool implementation of this technology, which kind of makes sense in a vehicle like this.
That is pretty cool. And so when you start, does that mean effectively you're running on no you're running on no juice.
Yeah, so when you start, the idea is that you fill the battery completely. And what Bentley was saying is that of their owners, something like seventy percent of owners had an EV of some sort, so whether it was a plug in hybrid Bentley or a Tesla or just any other EV. And of those people, ninety seven percent had charging at home. So these are people that have houses. They're obviously not living in a terrace in Sydney or
something like that. They've got houses and charging infrastructure. So a lot of these people will charge when they get home, and they will drive to their destination, which is generally not very far away, and it'll be all on electric. You might be switching the engine on. So it's just a really fascinating setup and I think that they've done a good job there in terms of just making it all work.
You know, once you get to this sort of elite level of cars, I find that they have their own languide in terms of Larks, in terms of.
How they drive.
You know, they say nothing drives like a Bentley, Nothing drives like a Rolls. How's the transition been from say, internal combustion Bentley to hybrid you know what I mean? Like, does it still feel like a Bentley?
Look Bentley. Bentley's interesting because they don't want to be Rolls Royce, and when you think Rolls Royce you kind of think old person. Bentley is really targeting a younger market, a broader spread of people, to the point where you have fifty nine billion combinations of colors, interior specs, trims, you know, anything you want you can customize on the car, and it means that you can really personalize this and it's unlikely that you'll ever see another Bentley on the
road that's configured the exact same as yours. And they've gone down the path with the cabins of just really going to town on luxury and making you feel good whether you're sitting in the front or the back. They've now also gone down the path of eliminating leather. If you don't want it, so you can get a full vegan interior. So yeah, they really have thought about everything here.
And I think that Rolls Royce should be worried because Bentley really is now coming with cars that are as luxury as, if not more luxuriers, but just have a different vibe and image to them.
Yeah, I reckon Rolls was a bit slow to the party with that sort of stuff. I heard this really cool story. I don't know if it's true, but pretty much the head the CEO of Rolls Royce was walking into a cafe and saw Rolls out the front with a black grill, black Spirit of Ecstasy, you know, maybe a Matt Finish and stuff like that, and he said, wow, how did you get that? Looks fantastic. How did you get this sort of car? And he said, oh, Rolls Royce doesn't do it. This driver obviously had no idea
who the guy was. Rolls Royce doesn't do it. So I went out about and saw about getting it myself. And that's pretty much apparently the backstory to how the Black Edition.
Came out interesting because they hang their hat on that basically blacking out all the highlights and just really sort of murdering the thing out, and they have to do that because the mographic of their buyers just wants something that's different, but wants everyone to know that it's a Rolls Royce and if you don't give them the option of configuring that, you're just never going to sell them a car. They'll just go to go and buy Bentley instead.
There's some amazing roles out there, like now that you can. They have allowed a lot of customizable options and stuff like that. There was a black one for sale in Sydney and it was sort of like a gun metal gray there. It was a black addition convertible, completely bright orange interior and they had this line on the outside of the car that was matching the interior, so this kind of hand painted orange line on the outside. I
think they valued it. It was up for sale for just on a million bucks and I'm just like, wow, what a what an insane car? I can't see. I mean, to me, that's you wouldn't see an old person driving that sort of car. I mean that would be that would be your wrapper or whoever. But yeah, very cool, I like Paul from Yeah, but yeah, hey we should talk before we talk. I twenty n we should talk a quick bit of car news actually before you before
we proceed. Is there anything really interesting that you've seen over there apart from homeless people.
Oh my god, I've just seen so much random stuff over here. So I'm driving at the moment outside of the Bentley stuff. The update at F one fifty. Yeah, and god, this thing is just a technological masterpiece. And head to my instagram if you want to just see some of the random stuff that it does. But they've got like a seat that will fold completely flat, so you can technically sleep in it if you want to. The gearstick is electric and it moves out of the way so that you can set up a work bench.
It even has an onboard generator that allows you to run seven point two kilo wots of energy out the back of it. These things are absolutely remarkable. They're not just a standard work sit anymore.
I saw that, and what I loved about it was they're doing stuff that you just don't see in workites and they've really thought about it. Like the load on the of the tray there, Yes, the tech will tell you how much you're loading in and same with the tail lights.
Yeah, it's got like four LEDs on the tail lights and as you put more weight in, it just comes up and tells you when you're at your limit. I mean it's so cool, and you know, I just think it's just a really interesting vehicle and you can see why it's the best selling vehicle in the US, like it's for a long time running. They've sold like a million of these a year.
Yeah, we used to have one as a family, and I mean, obviously they've come a long way. But god, I hope they really bring the new one out to us because it looks sensational.
Yeah, absolutely, And just in terms of other stuff, Yeah, the driving here is just crazy. The speed people drive is just absolutely ridiculous. So it's just interesting to see how little enforcement there is when you've got such a big volume of drivers on the road. It's impossible for them to enforce really anything. And some of the stuff
they drive on the road as crazy as well. Like I took a picture of this van that was literally like a meter and a half two meters off the ground and I don't even know how you'd get into this thing, And it's just stuff like that you would never be allowed to drive on the road in Australia.
Yeah, pretty cool, Pretty cool. Hey, some big news, kind of some interesting news hitting as this week, which was the Porsche ty Can outselling their infamous iconic nine to eleven. Which did that surprise you? It surprised me.
Yeah, it surprised me as well, like I know that they've sold a lot of Tycons, especially in Australia. In Australia it was the third best selling EV in the country and that was behind the Tesla Model three and the MGSS. Here in La, you see so many Tycons, and a lot of them are the turbo Wes just literally the most money you can spend on one. But globally, Porsche sold just under forty thousand nine to eleven's the ty Can out sold it at forty two, just under forty
two thousand Tycans in total. So that's a big bit of news for Porsche because it's it's just signaling change. We know the new mccahn will be full electric, and down the track we'll see Boxer and Canan go electric as well. Obviously, McCann and Cayenne are still the best selling Porsche models because they're SUVs. But when Porsche does an electric suv, I reckon this is going to blow
stuff like a Tesla model way out of the water. Yes, it will be more expensive, but it means that you can have a Porsche brand a vehicle that is that is EV powered.
You know, when the McCann and the kN entered the scene, I remember there was such an uproar, but in hindsight they were the vehicles that essentially saved Porsche. This is really going to change the game once again. This is an important car for them and I think it's going to take them to new places. I mean, and we're looking at early days for this car really too, and only big things can come from now, you know what I mean.
Yeah, one hundred percent. I'm excited to see what it brings because the Tykon was good, fun to drive, and I think that if they can translate that to McCann as well, that it would be cool. The one thing that Bentley's working on is by twenty twenty five they will have their first EV out and that EV will sit on a brand new platform that I suspect the
ty Can will eventually go to. So car companies are now building EV only platforms and I think once that starts happening, and they're not sort of hybrid platforms with internal combustion cars. Once that starts happening, we'll see we'll see a real diversification of the cars you can buy and how good they are. I think that they will simply go to the next level when these guys really get stuck into building EV specific platforms.
Do you reckon that Bentley's going to keep a petrol car?
Well, they've said that the V sorry, the W twelve will exist up until they kill they kill the internal combustion engine, which is twenty thirty, but it will see transitions within all of their models, will see transitions towards plug in hybrid and then eventually full electric, and then it'll be the end. I mean that there's just no space for this in regulations in Europe, and that's where they sell a lot of these cars. So the second you cut them off at the feet there, it'll just be EV only.
Hey, so should we talk twenty Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it.
The twenty twenty two Hyundai I twenty in this pocket rocket only comes in a manual transmission and you can drive it away for just over thirty six thousand dollars, preferably fast.
I got a week with the car that I have been looking forward to for a while. I finally got in one.
What did you think of I think, Oh, well, no, no, I'll go crazy. Look beauty.
Okay, do you know My first impressions of this car was sheese, it's been a while since I've driven a stick shift like it has been a while. It has been a hot minute. And yeah, I missed it driving in in full on, busy Sydney traffic in this thing. Oh geez. It was different, and I gotta be honest, I didn't enjoy it that much. But yeah, look I took I took it for a proper rip around and it probably nearly killed me a few times. But I think, all up, this was a small bag of fun. This car.
It's interesting because it's comp is what the Apolo GTI the yeah for fes st. I was going to say, the Toyota G a Yaris.
Can you compare technically it is?
Yeah? Can you compare a four wheel drive to a two wheel drive? I think you definitely can.
Yeah. Look, I mean technically it is. It is significantly more expensive, but I mean they sit within the same segment in terms of size and comparatively doing what they do, which is being an entry level hot hatch.
Look, I'm gonna say I loved it. Here's the thing you look on the outside. It's brilliant what Yanda are doing with their design language. I'm all about that. The folds, the creases, the sort of I don't know, origami. Feel about it if you like very cool eighteen inch black alloys. The red brake calipers look very cool. They totally pop, very body, very strong. You know, it's weird in photos. The exhaust doesn't look that big, but Jesus, when you're
behind that car, decent. It is decent and it sounds brilliant, and it's my favorite part of the car, which we'll talk about more in a second. But interior is interior is an interesting one because I think at first glance, it is very simple. The seats are comfortable, you know, they've got enough support. They're plastic y. Parts of it I thought were a bit cheap. It looks good, but it's kind of there's a lot of sort of plasticly tough scratch.
The interior looks really cheap, like it's good that they have the two twelve point five or two point two inch screens. But yeah, the rest of it is just this nasty plastic from top to bottom. And you know, it is thirty two four ninety plus on costs, and it's like, guys, let's make this not look as as cheap and cheerful as it actually is.
The razzle dazzle is definitely in the tech in this car, like the steering wheel, and yeah, the screens for sure. I kind of thought to myself, you know what, I'd probably throw an extra couple of grand down if they boogied up the interior a little bit, you know, got rid of those much the exterior, right, yeah, you know,
and gave it some real kick. I think the I thirty End Sedan or the I thirty Sedan End, which we'll talk about in a future a the seats are probably better in that, you know, with the illuminated n and stuff like that. I just kind of thought, yeah, look, it's a very simple, striped back interior. Great. The wow factor is definitely obviously in the tuning and the tech and all that sort of stuff. But what were your first impressions before we talk driving?
Yeah, well, look, I reviewed it at the same time as the ConA End. So we had it at the proving ground and yeah, look, I think that I did enjoy it because it weighs twelve hundred kilos, it makes one hundred and fifty kiloots of power two seventy five new meters, so it is it is a hoot in terms of those figures. It actually uses a similar engine
to the end line version of the I thirty. They just have different turbo charges setup and different suspension compared to the normal Eye twenty, it sits lower as well. We of course don't get the normal Eye twenty in Australia, so this is the performance version. It's got a limited slip differential front, which is good news if you're into
your type fun cornering. What I found with this is that you can drive it very quickly, and it's surprising for such a tiny little car how quickly it moves along. And it's really comfortable in and around the city too. With the ConA end it is extremely firm, whereas this has that good balance. Ultimately, though yeah, I was disappointed
by that interior. I did love the fact with launch control you can customize the RPM that it launches from, and I just went straight to the maximum five thousand rpm and you literally just dump the clutch and the thing just does this, and the thing does this enormous burnout. It's just a really really cool setup, even the fact that you're getting a little bit more bump on overboost as well. So look from a handling perspective, it's really nice.
I think you can do with more sound outside. The sound inside I think is fake through the speakers, but the sound outside I think could just be a little louder, especially when you compare it to things like the I thirty N and the ConA and have cracks and pops and all the emotion. For me, it came down to this. So I found the Ford Fiesta st a little bit
more raw and just exciting to drive. And then you've got the Polo GTI, which is the perfect daily because you can get it in a duel clutch automatic as well. So this kind of splits the difference between the two, and I think that it sits in a good little middle ground. Yeah, I just a lot of people raved and raved and raved about it. I just I thought it was fun, but yeah, I just didn't feel that it had the sort of nice daily feel that the
Polo GTI has. And then equally, it wasn't as sort of raw and crazy as the Fiesta st was, So I was kind of in that sort of middle space.
Yeah, I'm glad I'm not alone on this one because I was pretty similar. I feel like in terms of the drive with this six speed manual, it's got a lot of grunt to it. It's direct. There is refinement, probably not much as say maybe the Toyota gi Arris, but or a Polo for instance. You know, it's direct.
It is very direct. That's a good way to put it.
Yeah. The problem I have is would I want to drive this as a daily No. I think if you're gonna buy this car, you need to one live in an area where you're able to chew up some road every single day, and two, I reckon you're going to need to be able to track it. I don't think there's any point in owning this car if you if you're not gonna bother tracking it. Because it's got amazing tech, it's got it's got like tracks set in there so you can obviously set times and you know, do all
sorts of things. There is no point in owning this car. If you're not going to have fun with it, and there is no point if you are going to be sitting in bumper to bumper traffic every day, you won't enjoy it. It would be uncomfortable. I don't know. I kind of like to have a coffee on the way to work and if you're stuck between first and second for thirty forty minutes, it's just a pain in the ass.
Yeah, one hundred percent. I think that's the that's the point of difference here. But it's just not quite the daily and I think if it's a weekend car for you and you're really sort of going to enjoy track driving as well, fair enough. But if you're not, I just I think there are better options out there. So it did get a lot of rave reviews, and certainly
on the track it's good fun. But yeah, if you're going to be doing it daily and track driving, I think it is just worth perhaps looking at other options as well.
So that was I twenty end. That was fun. That was a good car. I'd like to know what our listeners think we should review next. I think we should throw it over to the.
People, Yes, definitely, Yeah, let us know what you think. What would you like to know more about and we'll see what we can conjure up.
Yeah, I'm going to say whose doors I can kick down and still still.
There and get arrested?
Still their keys? Yeah, so far what we've done is is kind what we're picking cars I feel like are interesting, the Ionic five, the I twenty n lan Cruise, the three hundred was kind of a big fan boy car, so we went with yart. But do you want us to go more exotic? Do you want us to go more plain? Jane? We could do a key sportage if you want. Oh, kid eating six would.
Be fun, Yes, definitely with the Australian open around the corner. I think that would be very fun.
Yeah, well that's going on right now. That'll reach you because you're in LA. That'll reach you in about two weeks time. There's a delay.
Well, let us know contact at the Drive show dot com today. You send us an email, let us know your thoughts about the show as well. What else do you want to hear outside of which car to review? We're always keen for your feedback.
Yeah, and what Rivers products Paul should be wearing next? Maybe the shirt with eight pockets that would be good, maybe the slacks that he wore on his seven four seven, you know, as a as a professional, also subscribe.
Right, yes, well, the subscribe and make sure you leave us a rating, because by doing those two things, you're pushing us up the charts. So yeah, make sure you subscribe, follow whatever it's called on the Apple iTunes thing or whatever platform you listen to this on, and leave us a rating as well, because that also helps move things along and get a scene by more people.
We're everywhere, by the way. We're not just on Apple. We're on Spotify, believe it or not, We're on iHeartRadio, We're on everything. Yeah, I'm live. I'll just be on like in a park on a box sometimes like the olden days, and I'll roll up a newspaper and just talk about my opinions.