All right, now, let's address the elephant in the room. Because you because.
Of your Oh I have one and cruss on, says the guy who munches on a muffin like an alphole.
There's no evidence of that here, there's.
Crumbs all over your tips. Now listen.
Because of your behavior, Neil Young's pulled his music off Spotify. How's this?
I didn't even know who Neil Young was.
Get out or the other person that, Jennie Mitchell.
This is the thing they wanted to make a big look. I'm just going to preface this by saying, I don't care if you listen or don't listen to Joe Rogan. But if you're going to come out and make a big stance, I don't know. Just be somebody that people have heard of, that you know everyone has heard of.
How can you not have heard of Neil Young?
What were you listening to in your Croatian childhood bottle? That is my impression of Crow play school.
You're gonna get us canceled?
Wow, listen.
A video was released a Paul this week, Sady n word we're talking about ni and obviously yes, but yeah, wowo ha. Lucky to be here, Lucky to be here. Yes, I look at you, fresh from the States, looking good, nice and tanned. You always bring up your tan that doesn't exist. You don't have a tan.
No, that's hair, it's a natural tan. It's really nice. I am European.
You look like you've rubbed milo over yourself. Hey, now we've got a mystery car of you coming up, right. So you sent me this challenge of.
Reviewing.
I will say a Chinese car, yes, And then I thought, oh no, And then I looked through all our emails, all ten of them. Nine of them were from Tom Baker trying to call you and cancel you out, but one of them. But no, we did have a lot of requests for this car, so I thought.
Fine, I'll do it. Yes, and we're gonna.
Chat about that very soon. But a car that I am so so excited for kind of is the Nis and z or Z Depending what kind of part of the world you're from, Yes, exactly, yeap my impression. What were your first impressions just by looking at this car?
Well, I like the back more than I like the front. I think the back is iconic styling. The front there and not so much. It looks a bit sort of anonymous at the front there. But I know the guy that's that's I guess developing this to Maroissan, So he's the mister GTR.
Oh do you wanted to pick that game up? You dropped? I know the guy who's just done this as an engineer.
I like him, is a good guy, so he I think the fact that he's behind this means that it will be good. Given the GTR and the last one that I drive, the te Speck, I thought was out of this world as the last GTR for Australia, So I know that it'll be good. And what I'm curious to see though, is I guess how it will be priced in Australia, that's one thing, and how much available
there's going to be with all this semiconductor stuff. Tomroissan has also said that he doesn't want to be involved in anything hybrid related, so he will either step down or the next GTR or the next iteration of this car won't have any hybrid elements, which I don't know will be the case. But yeah, I am excited.
What do you think I like it? I like I'm kind of an ass man, like yourself. I did like I did like the back of it more than I like the front. I used to own a two sixties Z back in the day. Yes, And you know we're just saying, we're chatting off air. It's funny how we have this warped version of history because everyone's.
Like, oh, the two sixties Z. What a car, What a fantastic car.
I would dislocate my shoulder to turn that friggin thing, like the V six in it.
It's heavy as it is a great car, Like I loved it.
I loved getting in there feeling like a rock star, like you feel pretty cool. But it wasn't the best thing ever, do you know what I mean?
But that's that's a thing though, right, I don't think any car really is the best thing ever. It's what it means to you. And this is why people like weird things, you know what I mean. Like a friend of mine who is a car journalist, recently bought the original oud Ett and I think that is the worst looking car in the world, But to him it means something, right, And I think the same thing with the two sixty.
It means something to you. And while you have fond memories of it, if you drove it again, all you do is complain about the lack of air conditioning, on lack of power steering.
The trip from Melbourne to say Geelong would be half a tank.
Yes, it was.
Incredible to go home, it cost me a full tank and fuel.
It was crazy. It was a great car. But back to the twenty twenty two versions, it looks great. Look the front of it. I would have liked to have seen slightly more aggressive styling.
That kind of it just looks vague.
There's not much going on there.
Yeah, it looks it almost looks too smooth, like the originals had that kind of on the bonnet that raised notch and I thought they could have made that a little bit more cuss. But the back looks great. The weird reflectors on the side, you can tell that's there, probably for legal reasons.
I think that might be a US thing. I know the US has a lot of dumb regulations like that, and that could just be a US market thing. But I am excited because they're bringing the manual back, so it we'll have a six speed manual. It's basically a faster version of the Infinity Q sixty Red Sport, which we used to get here in Australia. But the problem with that car was that it didn't have a limited slip differential, so you had three hundred killer wots of
power going through one wheel. It was like driving a powerful VL Commodore. So they're talking two ninety eight kilowats of power four hundred and seventy five meters of talk three leter twin turbo V six and they were going it could be high four seconds oro to one hundred, so pretty bloody quick.
They're good numbers. What do you make of the interior on it?
Look the interior Nissen and interior just they're not you know, they're getting there.
Yeah, it's frustrating to watch. Yeah, you know what I mean.
It reminds me a little bit of Subaru. It's like, just come on, come on. I think they've done some great elements in this. They've stayed true to the original with the tacos at the front and the dash, and you know, there's some iconic bits that they've redesigned and kind of kept in which I think is really cool. But it's the one I saw had the red leather trim on.
Black and I'm like, come on, don't do that.
Yeah, So look I don't know. I think the interior hopefully it will be secondary to the driving experience, and I'm hoping that's where we'll end up with it.
Now, Paul jan Event Marrek tell me about the Toyota lan Cruse A three hundred investigation. I'm putting your name to it. It's all it's all you. You've gone out and you're like you're digging around for dirt and there's a little bit of hooha going on, a little bit of money to be made in the semiconductor dubacle.
So this is of course Turtle Acruse are three hundred series related. Now, I won't claim this. This is my colleague Mike Costello.
Oh, Mike under the Baroez.
Under the three hundred series. So what we discovered if you go on to car sales and have a look at used three hundred series, there's a whole stack of them there and a lot are listed as dealer used. Now, it would be remarkable to me that if a customer bought the car and said, oh, you know what, I'm sick of this. I'm going to sell it now, and I'll sell it back to the dealer and trade it in for something else. Because that's the only way you
end up with a dealer used car, right. So that then led us to start investigating what was going on here, and what we found was a lot of these vehicles had low k's on them. And what some dealers are doing is there'll be a customer in the queue. So let's pretend Gordy, he has ordered the three hundred series dealer calls up and goes, hey, your car's arriving next week. I'll give you twenty thousand dollars if you don't take it away, and you go okay. So basically what they'll
do is register the car. You've bought it, you've delivered it. It will then get given back to the dealer. You'll get your twenty grand, and the dealer then lists it for two hundred thousand dollars. So they're making an extra twenty forty grand out of this, and they're listing it as a used vehicle even though it has literally a handful of k's on it. And what Toyota said to start with, and they did this with the super as well, that the dealers must hold their test drive stock for
at least six to twelve months. So that means the dealer can't go, Okay, I've got three demonstrators. I'm going to just sell them all immediately. So Toyota said, no, you must not do that. So some dealers are getting creative and they're going, well, if I can't sell that, I was going to take the customer's car and resell that.
And Toyota's come out and said, we're investigating, and if we find any dealer to be actively doing this, we're going to Basically they've got a dealer council, they're going to grill them and this could mean losing your dealer license if they see this as damaging the Toyota brand. Toyota has the right to the license, you as a dealer don't, and I'm sure there will be clauses in
there about reputational damage and things like that. This is reputational damage because the customer you fleece by charging them two hundred grand for a one hundred and fifty thousand dollar car won't ever come back because they're doing it because they need it. And one good example of this is Carnival. Right, A lot of people buy Carnival because it's one of the few people movers that have engineering
work done to them to make them wheelchair accessible. So we've got some family friends who bought an older Carnival and they can basically fit two wheelchairs down the center aisle. So Carnival is one of the few options you have.
What some dealers are doing is the same with Carnival, where they're charging ten to fifteen twenty grand more for this vehicle, and you then have some customers who actually need this vehicle to transport a disabled child, and you're going to then take twenty grand off them, which I just find disgusting. So I think in this instance, Toyota is doing the right thing by investigating. And if you're a dealer that's doing this, I mean you have to
you have to have rocks in your head. You have to be really too dumb to realize that you are going to affect your reputation long term. You might be making some money now, but when the market starts drying up, yeah, I guess where people won't be coming back, and that is your dealer.
It's yeah, you're right. It is such a dumb move.
I don't see any difference between say a dealership and say a normal like a franchise, like a McDonald's franchise just dicking around with the burgers and selling them for a machine Laker prize.
At the end of an AFL game, the McDonald's next to the stadium all of a sudden charges you twenty dollars for a big Mac. It's like, yeah, so yeah, I think that that really they need to have a good look at themselves. And you just you can't be a very good business person if you think that this is a long term play.
So should we get into the mystery car review?
Girl?
Should we do this?
Yeah?
Okay, our New Zealand voiceover lady is about to reveal. The Chinese car we have picked is the Heavile H six.
Prices from thirty two thousand, nine and ninety dollars with the Premium Edition to thirty ninety dollars for the tops big all wheel drive vent To Edition. The one we reviewed is the Luxe Edition at thirty nine and ninety dollars.
Drive away have al aged six.
And Okay, first of all, I see what you've done here, because I think your intention was to sort of say, hey, you go, I go crap on about how much I love European cars, Porscha and Ferrari and stuff like this. Try a Chinese made car, and I've got this feeling you'd be pleasantly surprised.
It's all right, yes, okay, I was a little surprised.
Okay, good in a good way or a bad way.
It's funny like the name, Like I remember when Great Wall hit the market, I was like, one, what a weird name from motoring company.
Would be like us having a motoring company called Ularu.
Yeah, it's like that's a bit offensive comment. We'll get bloody cans. Oh there we go. Oh it's even worse.
Got a big rock alfie INDI's just pulled this music Spotify. When I think Great Wall, I'm like, I always think, I don't know. I don't really have much of an education on the Gray Wall. I think that old guy who was like, you know, the kid in the back of the car during that ad where it's like the telsrad, Yeah.
Why they make the Gray Wall of China.
Like Zimpur Naji goring to keep the rabbit at What that kid should have asked is why is my dad one hundred and eight years old?
The dad was disproportionately older than the child.
Dad had a bench.
In his card. Are you sure it wasn't the grandfather?
No, it was his dad.
How did you check that?
He should have been asking? And why is my mom only seventeen years older than me? Because I've been to school and done the mouth.
This doesn't work out anyway? What are we talking about? Have will age six?
Okay, So the one that I reviewed was the Luxe version YEP, which I love lux which is I guess it's like a midspec it's mid spec, right, I guess it's even now they've introduced the Ventra.
Yes, yeah, that's so Inventor.
Yeah, Venta, thank you. It sits to that bottom mid range. I've got prices here? What are we talking? Oh that's it just under thirty six k for one of these and seventy warranty, five years roadside assist. What else are you getting? Five years capped price servicing as well? Okay, let's just one. Let it sit in that thirty six k for this. It's a mid size, but it's on the larger side.
Well that's drive away as well. Yeah, often when we quote prices, it's not drive away because you're not have had to talk driveway prices unless you know where the person's from or unless it's a national offer. So thirty six grand in a Mazda six five will get you. I mean, I don't know this exactly, but roughly right. It will be a manual transmission in cloth seats. I mean to think that you will get a vehicle here that is so incredibly well whipped for that kind of money.
It means that someone who doesn't have a huge amount of money to splash can actually get what is I would term a pretty luxury vehicle. I mean that that luck speck brings with it the leather, sort of appointed seats, You've got power, driver's seat, duels, owned climate, eight speaker sound system, radar, cruise control, privacy glass, three sixty camera, led lights, like it comes with pretty much everything you need.
Just doing a quick walk around in this car, you look at it at the front and that big imposing grill it's got looks fantastic. The car I was driving was black with the sort of chrome grill if you like, it was big, it was imposing. It makes this car look like it's got presents wrapping around the side. It looks good. I mean, it's a great looking car. The back with the one led strip that looks cool, and that's what I.
Was saying to you, Like, if you showed that to a person that didn't know what brand it was, you were just assumed it's a European or a Japanese branded vehicle. I'm seeing so many of these out on the road because people are going, hold on, why would I pay ten or fifteen twenty grand more for the equivalent Japanese or European vehicle when I can just buy this, So if you're not brand conscious, they're actually not a bad option.
And my thing with all of these cars is to make sure that I guess you're buying a car that is safe. So this has all the safety sort of bells and whistles, but it hasn't been crash tested yet.
But it still hasn't.
So that's the only thing that I'm wary of that you just need to be careful when you're buying these things to just make sure that they do have a safety rating. Often they will be crashed in China and will have a safety rating there. But I don't mean this just sound probably the way that it's going to sound, but I wouldn't trust I would prefer it to be an independent crash body that isn't based in their own country.
Crash testing these things often with other brands. You'll have it crashed in Europe, the US and potentially Australia as well, and that gives you a really good idea of how it performs. Mustang was a good example. It got glowing crash safety ratings in the States, and then when they crashed it in Europe, the thing was appalling.
So so you heard it first.
Paul doesn't want this crush tested in China, and the Food Fight has just just pulled their music off Spotify, thank you. But yeah, I get Look, I get what you mean. Everything in this car is great. The leather interior. It's got these kind of cuts.
In the seats if you like, I don't know what i'd call them cutouts, or.
Like the diamond quilting type stuff.
Well, there's no quilting. It's more like this sort of I don't know. It just looks like there's separation in the seats. There's not, but it just looks like it the way they've stitched it. Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, I'm looking at it now, I see what you mean.
Yeah, it's there's no diamond quilting.
Is that a design thing?
Yes, a design thing, thank you. The screens are great. I'm just going to call it a digit dash because I hate a digital instrument cluster. The digit dash has got everything you need on there and nothing you don't. The infotainment system's pretty good. I am going to say that this thing pissed me off because the Apple car Play didn't work in it.
Yes, so let's talk about that for a second. So the infoteme system I think is Android based, so it's quite fast and sharp and very good. But you had issues with getting car Play to work on it.
Yeah, and the one of the dealers came in and helped me out, and it sort of worked. And then I drove away and it paused and it didn't. And then I turned the car off and left it for a bit, turned it on and it worked.
Obviously.
I don't think this is a thing across the board. I think this is just a one off, but not great for a press car. I'll say that. Not a great look from them, but probably in oversight. You know, if you're going to spend if you're going to spend any amount of money on a car, whether it's thirty six K or one hundred and thirty six K. You'd expect something like that to work. And given that, I don't think it's got built in navigation, does it know.
A lot of these don't because it's one less thing you have to worry about upgrading and annoying a customer with there's less components insides, and I don't think.
They can ever really compete these days with Google Maps or all Ways and that sort of stuff. So I think that's a smart move. Driving from where I was in the absolute outskirts of Sydney into back into it, it.
Was like, oh no, come on. I was really relying on that and I'm shit with stuff like that.
But other than that, if you've got if you've got a family, and you know you don't want to spend a hell of a lot of money, you're getting you're getting banged for your buck.
I think if I was going to.
Get super critical on this car, things like maybe the suspension could need a bit of finessing. I think the breaks as well, a little bit a little bit of the handling. Where I'm getting at is Havil are in a brilliant spot for a new car. They've got a bit to go, but they're going in a great direction, do you know what I mean?
Yeah, look, I completely agree, and that was one of the things when we tested it, and our video is live on YouTube with this, the suspension was very soft and across our sin waves, which is the continuous undulations at highway speeds, the thing almost left the ground like it is way too soft and probably the only other thing that I would call out as the dual much transmission, it's it canbe a little dicky at times.
Yeah, yeah, I don't think the normal person would kind of be bothered with it.
Well just on inclines and stuff like that, but like it's only a minor complaint. I thought it was punching enough. But the thing that standouts for me, stands out for me is how much room there is inside. Like Hughuge is huge, so it feels bigger than the other competitors like the six five and stuff. This feels much bigger. So yeah, look, I'm a fan of it, and look, I would recommend one, but as always I would just
tread lightly until it is crash tested. I know that an cap here in Australia has a huge backlog of cars due to COVID that they need to crash test, and I'm almost one hundred percent sure this is on their list.
So yeah, yeah, I'd definitely go for this as well. Does it deserve to be sitting next to brands like Tucson, Oh sorry, Hyundai or Toyota.
I think it's got a place. I think it should definitely be on people's the top of people's lists.
As I said, there's some finessing to do, but for a brand new brand generally in the market, they're at a fantastic place and what they're offering is amazing for the price. So yeah, definitely should be on your list.
And worth keeping in mind as well that these are the best selling suv brand in China. You know, that's why they feel so good. It's simply because they have a lot of history in China.
Back in the studio together, it feels nice if you say so, How dare you?
I flew down here for this.
I flew I got on a COVID infested plane and flew down.
I told my wife I was going.
For a business meeting, but I was here to hang out with my mate. Of course, I'm not coming down here for a business meeting. I sit behind a microphone for a living and talk into a stick.
Well, that was fun. Anyway, I thought we would have a quick chat about some of the feedback that we've got and it's not good, and it's mainly Paul got the good feedback we got. One of the emails that we got was from George, who said, lads, sheers for answering my question in episode four.
That was cool at Oh George is back.
Okay, loving the show to you make a great duo and the episodes flow nicely from friendly banter to informative and engaging content. Really well, I'm gonna have to point out here that Gordy was indeed incorrect. I was on an A three eighty, not a seventh or seventh.
As an engineering.
You will close one of those people that would have like sat on the bonnot of your car and like plane watched.
Is that your thing? I feel like that is your thing.
That's why you wanted to move Bloody to geelongs it could be closer to Avalon.
Because I like the domestic flights. She was an engineer and river slacks and sensible shirt on. Okay, anyway, he says, I'm a pilot and there's.
Nothing more satisfying than grinding the gears with an OCD engineer by calling things the wrong thing, which I think Gody was potentially doing it on purpose.
What's his George, George shut up?
He does work a good point though. He says we should review the new WRX, and I am looking forward to doing that because it's had good reviews overseas. You know what, we'll be the judge of that.
Yeah, there's a lot of cars that have that have had great reviews and we get in them and we're like.
This is a bucket of shit.
Exactly, So do you know what I mean?
Though, like there is some of these some of these don't trust these overseas journalists.
They're all taking the money.
But yeah, if you want to be like George and send us an email contact at the Drive Show dot com today. You please email us, send us.
Anything, okays As a non engineer, an easier way to do it would be to jump on our Instagram, which is at the Drive Show dot com dot Au and just click on message. That's easy and most most people in twenty twenty two do that, That's true.
Rather than email, please also leave us a rating because that will help promote the podcast on your favorite pod club, pop podcast, whatever it is. Yeah, so I just leave us a writing on whatever you're listening to a good rating hopefully.
Sorry, I'm just ordering one of those cars with the wheelchair access.
Sorry.
It's about twenty grand more than I was opening.
One thing I didn't do was I want to shout out to Steve from Havell because there was a lot of bug rising around and Steve Scottish Scottish Stephen. He came to the party and He's like, God, what do you want? And I'm like, man, I need to have all asaps.
Do you want the Jollian or do you want the Age six.
I didn't recommend the Jollion because it's reminds me of a young boy I used to go to school with well, Julian. I was a castle mover. His mother used to say, Julian, have you got your condoms? I was bewildered. Anyway, godn what's your what car? Do you want your And I'm like, just give me the eight six, the Edge six, give it to you. You got it, don't worry about anything anyway. Shout out to Scottish Stephen.
Yeah, he's a legend. Of a bloke.
Good guy he is.
He's a legend of a bloke. So I'm glad he was able to help out.
He was good, he was a good all right. Please raiders and subscribe and do all that.
That'd be nice.
Yes, yes, please do and we will chat to you guys in a Fortnite.
Tell us what you want us to review and we'll jump on that. That'd be great.