Why LA is the Car Capital of the World

All right, welcome to Spikes Car Radio. It's going to be a fun show. You know, as you know, Los Angeles is the car capital of America. And no one knows more about Los Angeles than we did yesterday. No one. I thought Zuckerman knew a lot. But really, Evan Love it. Who's Evan Love it? Everybody knows who Evan Love it is here in L.A. And I think in California, he's loves to talk about the culture of Los Angeles in his segments and show and podcast L.A. in a minute. And what he's done that's genius is he's put it in snackable form. Here he is. Hi, Evan. It's nice to meet you. I'm a fan of yours, by the way. Thank you for having me, man. Your your content really enriches the city that I love. I think I'm saying what, 22 years ago, 23 years ago, I'm double you. Yeah, really? What do you mean? Forty four. Forty four years. Forty four years. You're an elderly man at this point. I am an elderly statesman. That's something I would brag about. Yes. I wanted to have you on to just kind of have a nice Lucy Goosey episode where we talk about the history of cars in L.A. And when we start with the first car. All right. Tell us what you know, when you did a video about the first car, is it the first car in L.A. or is it the very first car? It can't be the first. First gasoline powered automobile in Los Angeles. Erie and Sturgis. They conceived it in 1895. There it is. Exactly. They had $30,000 of investment. That was 1895 money. It was phenomenal. Wow. An outlandish sum. Right. And what's the name of the company? And well, Erie and Sturgis were the two gentlemen's last names. Erie Sturgis. Yes. And I believe it was Erie was from New York. He was a former minor, made his fortune in mining, came out to Los Angeles, lived in the community of Boyle Heights, which great history was actually a Jewish community at the time. That's where the original canters was first located. Absolutely. Not in 1895, but eventually Boyle Heights. But they saw the automobile patented by Mr. Benz, was it Carl Benz? Is that correct? And they said, you know, we're going to build our own. And they put. So these guys were going to rip off Mercedes. $30,000 into it. And this is this is again, keep in mind, Los Angeles was a dusty Pueblo. This was actually the heart of the Wild West. I didn't know that. I was there. Maybe 10,000 people at that time. By 1895, it was closer about 50,000, but still pretty, pretty tiny. And again, I was thinking the Wild West is like Tombstone, Arizona, you know, places like that. But LA was Murder Capital of the World. There it was vigilante justice lynchings going on all the time. We're just coming off the Chinese massacre, all that kind of stuff. So Los Angeles was just becoming a city and not even close to being a metropolis yet, but it was developing. And Erie and Sturgeon saw the horses in the wagons. They were like, you know, this is the type of town that would benefit from having some sort of automobile or motor vehicle, I should say, at that time. Motorless carriage. Yeah. They called it at the time. So they put $30,000 into it, built an engine that was fireproofed via asbestos. The tires were one inch thick. I want to say pneumatic rubber. Yeah, we're looking at them right now. Yeah. That way I can. And they were believed to be puncture proof. So they put this thing together, waited till 2 a.m. one night, I believe is May 30th. And this was 1897. It took them two years to build it. Wow. So they rolled it out at 2 a.m. because they didn't want to wake any of the horses. They didn't want to disturb the horses or wake any of the people. And they rolled it out on Broadway in fifth and drove it about one mile. At no point did it break the speed limit. There was a speed limit for bicycles and wagons at the time, believe it or not. That was eight miles an hour. Speed limit was eight miles an hour. So at no point did it break the speed limit. It was loud. It was boisterous, but it was a ride that the LA Times reported on and said, you know what, there will probably be a factor factory for these motorless carriages here in the future, which they were right about. But what did not end up happening was the Erie Sturgis model. Gain any traction, no pun intended, because that thing was put out to pasture and it was rediscovered in 1902 in a Beacons storage unit and sold for $147 and unpaid storage fees. Really? Yeah. The Erie and Sturgis kill each other. That would be very. L.A. Erie and Sturgis. You know what? So but what, but what happens? Like so, so they've got this car, they steal Mercedes idea. It kind of works. Kind of works. And then they just, they don't, they didn't have a plan after that. It didn't catch on. It didn't again, $30,000. Who's going to be able to afford one? You're not mass producing. So one car was $30,000. So all the, what do you call it? The, not NDA. What's the word? The startup. All the startup capital and all the tooling and. Yeah. So cost 30,000. So they definitely did not have a plan to mass market these things. This was before Henry Ford and the assembly line and all that. And I think that, you know, they are a footnote to history now, but also trailblazers. Yeah. And then at that point, I, you know, I don't know the aftermath if they went their separate ways or what ended up happening. But I know the car was discovered five years later. Go to Hillary. It's the Sturgis Motorcycle Festival. Yeah. There's Lake Erie. And I've never heard of these guys. I think those are, those are probably unrelated. It was also charming to hear that the car overheated and broke down a couple of times. And it's kind of the first, you like car breakdown in LA's, Zekerman. We've all had these breakdowns. It's one of the first ones. If I'm not mistaken, let's take a quick detour to Johnny Lieberman's Instagram page. Cause I think he drove the very first car that was the Mercedes car. Am I wrong about that? He drove a replica of it. Yeah, but it's of that first car, right? We could see it move. Okay. What is this? There we go. Let's see. That's the van's patent. This is the Mercedes car that you were, that they knocked off. In production till 1893. Yeah. A bicycle with an, bicycle wheels with an engine. Point six, eight horsepower. So they're cylinder, iris and sturches, they actually made it better. There's a four wheeler at least. Yeah. You know, so they were trying to advance the science and the art of it. We should make Johnny drive this all the time. You know, if you can't capitalize what you're going to do, I'd rather see that tattooed on his face. Wow. Convert it into a wheelchair for him. There he goes. That is the opposite of driving a cool car though. And say, well, you know, it's so opposite that it actually is cool though. You know, like I think so. I think so. I'm not so sure. I'm just not so sure. It's definitely a story though, at the very least. No. What do you know about this, this Beverly Hills racing history? Do you know it much? Yeah. You know, I reported on the Beverly Hills Speedway. Beverly Hills Speedway is the reason why Beverly Hills became Beverly Hills. They had built the Beverly Hills Hotel in the middle of Lymanbeam Fields prior to that, probably, I want to say, 1913. It was just an outpost, little vacation and look, it's a regal. It's a gorgeous, gorgeous building. But nobody was going to Beverly Hills. It's on the outskirts of town again, because you didn't really have cars. You did have trains. Los Angeles was the mass transit capital of the world. But they weren't going through Beverly Hills because Beverly Hills was basically just the hotel at that point. So there's a lot of land. They built the Speedway. And this was when LA was the capital of auto racing. And it was a crazy, huge, tremendous track that drew people from all over, not just LA, but all over the United States would come to watch the races. And that was the first true tourist attraction in Beverly Hills. No way. Yeah. And then people start staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel, realizing what a great hotel it was. And then Beverly Hills Pick Fair came next, you know, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, they built their that was a pick fair states and sort of put Beverly Hills on the map as elite living, estate living, the pool. This is before people had pools, really. So, you know, they had photographic spreads in the in the LA Times and in the magazines of the time and people got their first look at celebrity culture and associated that with Beverly Hills, which was mostly known for the Beverly Hills Speedway. But lo and behold, Hollywood sort of took over oil discovery in Los Angeles, changed the complexion of the city. And then people realized, hey, this land is is worth much more as residential slash commercial than it is as a speedway. So the speedway sort of disappeared. But yeah, that was the real first tourist draw to Beverly Hills. And it put Beverly Hills on the map. It's more it's more than a speedway, though. It was a wooden board track and all the whole track. There it is right up there. That wouldn't. Oh, that's Beverly Hills. Yeah. That's so crazy. So you're saying the Beverly Hills Hotel was the first hotel. First hotel in Beverly Hills. The first draw at all. And the weird move is we want to get more people here. So we're going to build a giant racetrack. But that was bizarre. But think about this, right? Because who would go to auto races at the time? You had to have money. You had to be a real healed in society and all this kind of stuff. So it was that draw where you want to get money into your town. And you know, that was the way it was such a novelty, right? You're talking beginning of the 20th century that auto racing wasn't ubiquitous. It was really a novelty and people wanted to see this. And these are the fastest cars in the world, right? Which to this day, you know, faster and faster is a huge draw. Who doesn't want to see that? Right. Yeah, this is Beverly Hills. This looks like towards the end of the speedway a little bit because you see a lot of development going up around it. There's still still a lot of fields in agriculture, but you know, you kind of tell that it's getting encroached. This is going on in Newport, too, Zuckerman. We were talking about Audrain and their history with racing and the Vanderbilt and the Asters. There were these just new things that were just invented. And these people are like, let's race these in Newport. And there were these just races on public streets where these rich guys were just taking these new types of vehicles and just blasting them around. And, you know, you could just buy the win with the fastest new thing. The very beginning of it. Very cool. But isn't that by where Santa Monica and Wilshire Cross? Yes, it's Wilshire Boulevard, South Beverly Drive, Olympic and Lasky Drive. If I'm not mistaken, including the three quarters of what is now Beverly Hills. Yeah, it is. That's right. It was massive in the complex of mass. I want to say 90,000 people at its largest. Amazing. It was the biggest event that they had there. I mean, it's like the Super Bowl, man. So, yeah, people were coming from all around. And that's how Beverly Hills started. And it's so funny because you go to Beverly Hills. Now you got to drive and all this kind of stuff. You're like a speedway. It seems like such a juxtaposition. I think about it. I think about it all the time when I'm on a street like sunset, which kind of defies logic, you know, when you're driving from Hollywood to the ocean, you're like, why wasn't that a straight line? OK, it's funny. You bring that up and I'm glad you brought that up because the streets of Beverly Hills are meant to reflect the nature of a track and they're intentionally that track. They're intentionally not flat. They're undulating sort of hills, curves like that, because they wanted it as they developed the city to be sort of reminiscent of the speedway. Really? Yeah, that's exactly why. Like the Beverly Hills, when you go through, shoot, what's that intersection? The five-way. Oh, the five-way. All right. The nightmare intersection. I call that the Ho Chi Minh City intersection. The intersection in Ho Chi Minh City is like that. Is it really? Oh, except there's no stop signs. You just mesh, you go through and it works. Good. That's Beverly, that's Beverly Canyon. And that intersection where five roads meet. Yeah. And everybody stops and you just close your eyes and go. I guess I'm going. Yeah. That is based on this. It's not based on, but they're all sort of influenced on. And that's how like the the streets were designed with that in mind, where you pay homage to the speedway and everything. That's why you don't have a lot of streets. You could pull that you could pull that up on the Google Maps and show everybody. It's one of the weirdest intersections. Every time I'm there, I'm like, how did this happen? Like in this most notorious intersection. Look at that thing. There you go. Every time you're in it, right? You go, I call it to be a triangle, really, an intersection. And I at least while I'm in it, I go, why did this happen? Like this was the best plan. Most notorious intersection Los Angeles. But here's the thing, there's surprisingly few accidents. Right. Yeah. Because people just stop. They actually don't go. And you have enough time. It's like so massive in the middle that you have enough time to, I guess, see what somebody's coming from. Who knows what direction. Yeah. Do a Ho Chi Minh City intersection and see what comes up. There's all sorts of great videos of this. The first day you're there, you just lose your mind because people are just blasting into an intersection with no traffic lights. And around in Ho Chi Minh City, by the way. On motorcycles. There you go. All same thing. It's just it's like, you see that? It's really cool and it works. You know, everybody just goes. Look at that. That's what you want right there. Everybody just goes and it meshes somehow. Yeah, no choice but to figure it out. Because you have it's like the Beverly Hills one. You pay maximum attention. You give it full focus and everybody's kind of cool. You know what this reminds me of is leaving Dodger Stadium. You're a long game right there. Because you're like, how is there not more swapping pain in that parking lot? Oh, yeah. No, you're exactly right. Swapping paint. All right, let's do an ad. We're going to talk about our friends at McGuire's. And what's new for 2026 McGuire's luxury collection. Whole car air fresheners. 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Those four things. And of course, Giorgetto Giorgiaro did some of the design work and he's one of the most famous car automotive designers in the world. Designed sidewalls of the very tires. They're now on my Tesla model Y demand a better tire. Demand Wrettestein. Check them out at Wrettestein.com. All right, we're back. All right, let's talk about more early driving history. Where should we go now? What do you want to talk about? Can we talk about the transition from Los Angeles being the mass transit capital world to being the car capital world? Please, we like that. I think that's the most astounding stat of Los Angeles, because right now, one of the biggest narratives is we need more public transit. We're building the K line. We're building the People Mover at LAX. You know, how are we going to get people from here that were spending billions van eyes, the whole Sepulveda Pass project was supposed to go through. The Sepulveda Pass, was it going to be a monorail? Is it going to be underground? Is it going to be light rail? And then lo and behold, after years and EIRs and discussions amongst city council and mayors and leaders above that, they ended up moving it to Van Nuys Boulevard, which wasn't even one. There were six options. There was public comment time for public comment, blah, blah, blah. And then they ended up moving it to Van Nuys Boulevard, which wasn't even one of the options. But my point is it's can I curse on show? Sure. It's a clusterfuck, right? Yeah. And mass transit, people love it. People advocate for it. But if you ever get around the thing that I laugh at and I don't want to laugh, I'm not laughing at anybody, but in Los Angeles, when you need to get somewhere, right, it'll be and you'd go to the maps, the drive, oh, 55 minutes. But then you look at the mass transits like an hour 48. Yeah. Well, because I'd rather say it's happening faster. So it's really difficult and to implement something that would be an effective mass transition in Los Angeles, I say is near impossible. It would take 100 years from now and look at the investment billions of billions of billions of billions. But the thing is Los Angeles through the 1920s was the mass transit capital of the world, not Paris, not New York, no, not San Francisco, anywhere else. There were 1500 train depots or railway stops more than the subway stops in New York right now. There were miles and miles of tracks everywhere. Cities developed. A lot of the cities in Los Angeles developed around these mass transit stops because it was developing and building the trains went hand in hand as the city was growing, whether it was Gardena and Watts to Luca Lake, Lankersham, which became North Hollywood. The list goes kind of on and on of cities that really developed because they built tracks and they built trains. And it was this beautiful. Yeah, the red lines or the red cars, you had the yellow lines and mass transit really defined Los Angeles. So then what happened? Right. We know about what who frame Roger Rabbit, you know, that kind of put it in a neat box. It was a conspiracy. And that's sort of true because you had National Car Lines, which was this private organization made up of folks from Goodyear, Firestone, Penn's Oil, I want to say, you know, and they ended up buying all the rail lines and then eventually putting them out to pasture in 1953, 1963. So people look at it as a conspiracy, but here's the thing. I look at it as something different when you and you guys, this is your life. This is the world here. When you're in your car, man, you have autonomy. You have the joy of especially Los Angeles. You have mountains like we get to stay. Yes, we're in traffic. There's no other major metropolis in the United States that has mountains running through the city. Tell me about Denver. No, that's outside the Rockies. Tell me about Albuquerque. No. Tell me about any city you do not have. It's a beautiful thing. And of course, you have the beaches. You have the canyons. You have Mulholland Drive. It's a great place to drive. And Los Angeles is I remember Shaquille O'Neal said, you know, he's a big motorcycle, you know, he rides his motorcycle. He said there's nowhere riding his bike that's better than Los Angeles because our roads, because our views. And this is the thing is that people really do enjoy driving. It is a pleasure. It is a joy. And Los Angeles was the pioneer of freeways. Right. Imagine that where you're making the evolution from gravel and dirt to, you know, kind of poorly maintained two way lanes to these beautiful, smooth freeways that could take you anywhere while you're looking at this beautiful scenery in this endless coastline and the beaches. And you know what else you had that kind of term? You this is going to sound like a funny conflagration. That's the wrong word. A funny, funny association is you had the drive through and you had fast food. And I think that that's an underrated aspect as impetus as to why people really embrace the car. And fast food in its modern sense, Los Angeles is the biggest exporter of fast food. You know, McDonald's, Taco Bell, Wienerschnitzel, Del Taco, in and out, Fat Burger, Tommy included Wienerschnitzel. And we have a snitzel. Wienerschnitzel spells more hot dogs anywhere in the world. Really? They sell the most dogs of any. I've never seen anyone go into a Wienerschnitzel. One of the saddest days of my life was the one day I ate at Wienerschnitzel on Torrance Boulevard when I had five dollars in my pocket. Yeah, you want I don't want to port on Wienerschnitzel because I like to support LA business today. Good origin story. But here's what's funny. I did an episode on Wienerschnitzel and I was with this guy, Hungry in LA, Eddie, great guy. He's a food videographer. He does he does Dodger Stadium. He does Wolfgate Pockets. Like real deal. And he's like, I've never actually been to a Wienerschnitzel. LA born and raised and he's never been to. But here's the thing is Harry and Esther Snyder, 1948 in Baldwin Park, they have their hamburger stand called In and Out. And they knew that, you know, they saw the freeways developing. They saw people driving. He's like, people are going to want to eat in their cars while they're driving. People thought they were nuts. You know, they had car hops like Bob's Big Boys, the pioneer of the car. And that was a big thing that died the googie diners and getting together and all that kind of stuff. And people are like, yeah, people like eating in their cars, but they like sitting and parking. How can you eat while you're driving? He's like, no, man, he's like, people love driving and they want to keep driving. They want to keep going. Give them a give them a box in a lap mat and like let them eat while they're driving. So Harry Snyder was a tinker and he invented he invented the two way sneaker two way speaker box in his garage, which became the first drive through in and out in 1948. And think about that. You're like, OK, drive through, but that facilitates driving. And it's like you can eat the pleasure of eating with the pleasure of driving. Think about, look, we all do. I love a drive through, man. And like eating in the car. So I think there's something really attractive about it. It was it's it's freedom, right? At the end of the day, it's kind of like it comes down to the freedom. So I think that, you know, with the we were the pioneer of freeways, pioneer of fast food, the beautiful coastline, the mountain, the canyons, the beaches and Los Angeles people in LA just love to drive. And why would you drive? I mean, why would you take public transit? Yeah, you can drive. I want to be on my own schedule. I want to have my own climate control. I want to pick my nose. I want to fart. I want to turn on the radio. I want to listen to music, roll the window up, roll the window down, sink. So I mean, my fear was always like, you know, being in New York and using public transit, which which I like was going underground in LA, like in an earthquake zone, going into a tunnel was just like, I'm not. I'm not doing that. So funny. And, and, and, you know, my kids used when they couldn't drive, they would use the buses. I think like mass transit in small, like small lines, like when on the west side, when they would go from school or Santa Monica back to Redwood, you know, it's very, it's very useful, but I totally get what you're saying. And that's the difference. LA LA San Francisco, San Francisco is a more successful mass transit system. But it's so much smaller. Yeah. Yeah. And this was the funny thing to go to LA 28. I remember in France in the Paris Olympics, they were the LA folks were trying to say, we're going to have a no car Olympics. Sure. And man, I was cracking because you're talking the difference between Paris with its is I think LA is is six to 10. Paris is I forget the exact number, but you're talking about going from Long Beach to the IE to the Valley to Exposition Park. And you're going to and again, I don't want to be an anti-mass transit guy. Like you said, we took the we take the life of my brother and sister in law live in West Adams. So when they were season ticket holders to LAFC, it's a straight shot over to Exposition Park. And it's great when you're on the train, it works. It's good. Right. This is great. But let me get in my daily life when I'm driving from Silmar to San Pedro, to Boyle Heights, to Mission Hills, back to Studio City. How am I going to take mass transit? So it's not realistic and commuting. And one last comment, I used to live in Valley Village and commuted to El Segundo and it was an hour 10 there, hour and a half back, terrible nightmare, traffic, blah, blah, blah. So I was like, you know what, I'm going to see if taking the train works, you know, because you could read, you could catch up on work, you could take a nap. It was two hours and 20 minutes to take. And I'm like, I just don't want to invest four hours a day. It's not anti-mass transit. It's just that Los Angeles is so geographically huge. Right. That it just doesn't make sense. There was a funny thread about Tell Me You Live in LA without Tell Me You Live in LA or tips for if you've lived there, I'm about to move there. And someone wrote, we don't, we don't measure a trip in miles. We measure it in minutes. Yeah. It's like, it doesn't matter where you're going. It's a minutes. Yeah. I've got to go. I've got to go visit Suckerman in town. That's going to be 45 minutes. Well, tell me. He's only three miles away. But on any given day, that minute changes. Is it really elsewhere? You're talking miles? Is that the truth? Because I've lived in Seattle and D.C., but yeah, but do you really just say, like, oh, that's 10 miles away because it really is minutes? No, when you get to La Quinta or Palm Springs or something, you're driving miles. That's where I really feel miles when I go when I go to La Quinta. And I'm like, oh, man, it's 10 miles away. That feels like forever for some reason. But we're very, we're all in LA, very oriented to how long is that going to take? Yeah, in the car. Isn't that an interesting thing? And what time are we going to go? When are we going to go? What day of the week? And and so it's a very it's something that's very thought of by everybody. And everybody says, here's something. I have a lot of appointments at my office as a lawyer and people will always show up late and they'll say, oh, the traffic was bad. I want to say traffic. I never heard of that. I mean, what is it? OK, why didn't you leave at the right time? That's that's the thing that yeah, that people don't get anywhere on time and we'll blame it on the traffic when we all know there's going to be traffic. We have information now. We have ways. We have predictable data and apps to tell us when to leave. But I think you're right, because I saw something recently that's like it was on threads and threads. I don't even want to get into that. I'm on all the platforms or whatever. It threads a weird, weird culture over there. But the point is I like somebody put out somebody put out this thing that was like, why is everybody in Los Angeles 15 minutes late everywhere? I don't get it. I don't understand. That's interesting. But I think I'm not built in. I think that's great. And my wife is prompting. Her family is you can be prompt. It's not hard. I'm propped. But oh, there's a late. I think that in LA, it's part of the culture because you have a built in. You got to build in excuse. You can always. There you go. Even if I'm staring at Google Maps, seeing that your route is green or whatever, you could say, I'll try. I will. The one or two times I've been late, I will confess to the there was an accident lie. There was an accident on the freeway. It was terrible. Can I can I interject just because you brought it back? So I was thinking about this on the way over. I have a somewhat of a reputation as a terrible driver, really, which may or may not be deserved. Well, I'm often multitasking. I try to stay off the phone, but this goes back before I just want to start. I just want to tell two minutes. Because I've never told these publicly. Please, if we want to confess, OK, first and foremost, when I lived in Seattle, Afor mentioned, I was in Seattle one year. This is right after we I think when we took out was it Saddam? What year? No, it's because Saddam was in the 90s, so it had to be some sort of post 9 11 Afghan mission. I tie magazine. This is really like before the Internet, not before the Internet, but before cell phones for sure. So I was excited to read this time magazine, true story. And I'm driving through Seattle and I'm I have the wheel and I'm reading the magazine, like holding one of these guys like reading the magazine because I just wanted to get to the story. Anyway, I ended up rear ending a car. No, surprising. Gets out of the car is a none. So I re-rendered a none. Banged it on. I couldn't even make it. I was a reading a magazine as I was terrible, terrible. But that's not even the worst. The worst one. Did she take it? She's nice. She's very nice about it. Yeah. And I didn't tell her kind of card is an underdrive. It was like some Honda said very generic. The church or was it hers? She was that's a good question. Yeah. I don't even remember. It's just 2002. So my memory doesn't go into detail that far back. But an even worse one was my wife and I lived in this apartment. It's our first place. We had stack parking down below. She had a what the heck Toyota was her car Toyota Camry. And I had a Jeep Liberty at the time. So we had to switch cars, right? And I was like, I'll do it. I'll switch both car. You stay here. You chill. We were probably in a fight, to be honest with you at the time. We had a very tumultuous earlier of our relationship. So I was probably like, fuck you. All fucking do it. It was probably like that. But anyway, sorry. But but in the in the revision and stuff, it's chivalrous. I was like, don't worry, honey. I'll do it. No. So fucking. So I back out my car. Right. Because you got back out and then I'm going to switch him, right? Or I back out her car, right? Because I was going to get my. So I back out her car, put it in park, walk over to my car, start reversing my car, my Jeep. And I see her car coming at me. I'm like, oh, shit, I didn't put it in park. Like I must have like put it in drive. So I get out of my Jeep like in a Huff. Yeah. And go run to her car. But I didn't put my Jeep in park either. I left it in reverse. So both cars are rolling at each other and both. And again, it was like five miles an hour or whatever. But I crashed both of our cars in a parking lot. Did you blame her? I probably got it. I definitely fought with her. There's nothing worse than that. Yeah. That's kudos to Bad Drive. But be safe. Seriously. Don't mold it. No, my wife just did that to some curse. You're just now reminding me that of that story. I told you, Zuckerman, right? I was this this friend of mine's wife crashed the her fender at the leaving the Whole Foods, I guess. And I thought I saw the car and I go, let me help. You know, I've got I've got Anthony Lainer over at Exotic Car. He's he's going to be great. He's going to help you out. And I left, you know, after I texted Anthony, I was like, God, I'm glad. This is my wife. And I texted Chris and I'm like, hi, your wife crashed the car. My friend. But 10 hours later, my wife, I come downstairs from a meditation, relaxed, nice 10, 20 minute meditation like this. I'm at peace with the world. She's like this. I'll pay for it. I said, what? Pay for what? She goes, I got a little accident at the Whole Foods. The same spot, the same fucking supermarket. 10 hours later, she crashed into a Porsche. No, took two cars out, hit that car in the same spot. So I had not to this person that I'm helping. Now I have two of those that I have to pay for. Oh, my God. Same market, huh? Same market. What are the odds? I was like, wow. It's like the impressive that the world is doing that to me. Really cool. Is there some part of me that was thinking about this that I can activate to get a billion dollars somehow that I can just will because I will bat into happening. How can I will listen to happening? All right, let's pause for an ad. Let's talk about our friends at RaceTick. Over 20 years ago, RaceTick was invented. 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Anyway, go to getacregold.com slash spike911 to check it out. And maybe you will also be the lucky gold holder of a Hot Wheels collector packaging gold piece. I'd rather have that than the Hot Wheels. I'll tell you that right now. All right, I want to hear about let's talk about this Aston Martin because I know people are thinking about it's in the background. Let's give it a shot. Then I want to hear some more stories. Yeah, let's go. And here we have it last week. Our friend Matt Farah was talking about he said, get the Aston Martin Vantage S. And here it is in beautiful plasma blue. Look at how good that looks on camera, Zuckerman. This is one of the best blues I've ever seen. It's this blue is not as good in person as it is on camera. It just glows like it really does. It's unbelievable. And it's one of those colors that just makes you want to drive it. 670 horsepower V8, eight speed auto, five drive modes with only three that really matter. Sport, Sport Plus and of course, track weighs 3900 pounds. This car is a front engine, two door, two passenger sports car. Can we talk about that horsepower again? What? 670? Yeah. Which I think is exactly a thousand times more powerful than that Mercedes that Lieberman was driving at the beginning of the show. Yeah, yeah, I know. You're exactly right. So I guess these cars, you know, 248,000 as tested. And it's only 5,000 more for the S. But you know, Matt Farrah said that when Aston Martin puts an S after the model name document, it's resorted that they figured it out finally, which is why I asked for the car because I wanted to see if they had done that. And CarPlay Ultra is in this. Do you know what CarPlay Ultra? I have no idea and I don't want to know. I love CarPlay in my car. So you plug it in, CarPlay Ultra is essentially this is going to take longer to set up. So you plug it in, it starts spinning, it's going, setting up CarPlay Ultra. And then like five minutes go by. But eventually what happens as far as I can tell is you get the automotive, the vehicle settings integrated into the CarPlay, which you don't know what that means. I can tell. And I don't care. So when you put up CarPlay on a regular car, you've got Waze, you've got Spotify, you've got your messages and you've got other stuff. And then usually there's an icon that will say something like Aston Martin. You press that and that sends you to the car settings on your screen. But for the manufacturer settings, not for the CarPlay Apple interface. This you've got the vehicle settings integrated into CarPlay, which actually does work and makes it easier. That's the Ultra. I'm not sure it deserves an Ultra. I don't understand anything you said. I just want to put, I just want to start the car and drive. I want to have no interface other than my hands. That's it. I like, yeah, I have to have at one point, the monitor did just go out for five minutes and I didn't have any of that stuff. And it's upsetting to me. I need to know where the police are when I'm driving vehicles like that. So I need Waze up and I need to roll calls and I need to roll messages. So it is helpful. Look at the cockpit. I mean, there's not much to say about this except for the car is very well sorted. If you, I think we're thinking about buying something that's not a Porsche 911, this is a nice 911 fighter. Very quick, you know, about three seconds to 60, very fast, very beautiful. I was reading a car and driver's comment section about this, just to see what people said about one comment or said something really funny. He said, and I thought this was good. Good way of describing the car. And I'm sorry I didn't write your name down. But no heavy electric motors, no fake engine sounds, no three screen straight across the dash, not a crossover, not styled by Picasso. At least someone is making awesome cars. And that really sums it up, sums up this car. I know I like a car. It's not going to mean, you know, I like a car when this is the only thing I'm driving all week long. I don't drive any of our stuff. I don't drive any of the stuff in my driveway. I've just been in this car throwing my racket bag in the back. I've just been throwing my groceries in it, but throwing my one kid at a time or throwing the wife in it and driving and just loving it. Just loving it. Show those wheels, go around to the side there. Wheels are a little big, 21 inch wheels on it. Cars hot. Thirty nine hundred pounds comes off spelt these days. Yeah, it's light. It's beautiful. You took a look inside. It's got a little hatch you can open up on the back with without much room or a little trunkey. It's not a hatch that you press that thing there. Yeah, look at that opens the door and then off to the lower left. It's got yellow piping there. Didn't even notice that. Fantastic sound system. Well done, Cameron. You're getting good now. Watch. Then you get a little trunkey right there. Just lift right where the wing is. You'll be fine. Tear it off. There you go. Yeah. There you go. The little strut support back there. Fantastic. You can put the Waymo guy in there. Remember the Waymo guy that was. The people put me in. Do you see the guy in the back of the Waymo? No. This this this. This mom was ordering a car for her daughter and it came with a guy in the back. And he goes, what are you doing? She goes, what are you doing here? And he goes, the people put me in here. What people? Why are you in it? Huh? They just put me in here. Who'll put you in? Don't what? The people. The daughter couldn't get in the car and go anywhere. Still not explained by Waymo. Is that a true story? True story. Yeah. Yeah. We all saw this. Right here in Ascandulous. Wow. The West Side. I don't know how to miss that. It's pretty cool. Anyway, that's the S. DeMartin Vanadjes. It is a terrific car. Would I buy this over 9-11? Sure. Why not? And I'd also buy a 9-11. But this is really good. You know, again, that vanquish that we picked as car of the year last year. It's really got me excited about Aston as a brand again. And what I used to feel when I drove these things, which was anti-ergonomic stress. Right. Wherever you reached, everything was wrong. Very English. The window switches, you'd push them down to lower the window and it would go up and you'd go, ah! They fixed all that. And they've made a nice car now. And I applaud them. Well done, Aston Martin. Now's a good time to talk about Jim Farley, the president and CEO of Ford. He's got a brand new podcast, not brand new, a new season, season four. And of course, he's got the greatest guests in all of podcasting. Brian Cranston from Breaking Bad, fame. Daniel Ricardo. Now Malcolm in the middle, reboot fame as well. Chris Hoy, racing driver and Olympic cyclist. And past guests include Jimmy Fallon. I mean, he's got everybody on this podcast. It's really, and he was a guest on our show last week, where he told a story about driving the Pope around. Fantastic story. And the Vatican, they gave him a Ford Explorer that was made in Chicago. The Pope was made in Chicago. Did you see the White Sox approve the Pope hat giveaway? They did. Yeah, absolutely. Shouldn't that be the other way around? Shouldn't the Pope have to approve that? One more thing. Who's doing it? The White Sox? They're going to give away popettes. Correct. With the insignia on it. I didn't get into full detail on it. Or the hanging. I just saw the approval of the White Sox. That's fantastic. The White Sox tweeted it. Yeah. Well, Jim Farley and driver Jim Farley should get the Pope on. That's the ultimate guest, Jim. Wow. Get the Pope on. Because he was already telling great stories about the Pope, like he was having trouble driving because of all the rings he had. He said, these vestments take a half hour to put on. And then he had to sit down and drive the car. There was a lot of good driving details about the Pope. And maybe share more with them. My vestments are in a ball at the end of the bed. I just throw them on. Anyway, to listen to drive with Jim Farley, our friend, just search for Drive with Jim Farley in your podcast app. That's Drive with Jim Farley. He's not just the CEO of Ford. He is also a race car driver. And now he's a podcaster with a very successful podcast entering season four. There it is. Fantastic. All right, let's get into some more of these stories. Yeah. With so many of them, we're not going to be able to hit all of them. We'll do one or two in the Patreon segment. But what should we go to? Peterson Museum. Hmm. Let's talk about Peterson. Yeah, let's talk about the Peterson Museum. Because my entry point for the Peterson Museum is Bruce Meyer. And the events they have in the parking lot. We just did one with your 356. But I don't really know how the Peterson started or why it started. So I mean, Robert Peterson, founder of Hot Rod Magazine, Motor Trend, obviously the consummate car guy. Peterson Publishing. Peterson Publishing. In a partnership, believe it or not, with the Natural History Museum. I didn't know that. So it was actually, and I don't know the detail, but there was a public-private partnership with the Natural History Museum in 1994 that why not celebrate car culture in the epicenter of car culture. And so the museum opened in 1994. It got refurbished. I want to say in 2015 is when it had that new facade. There it is right there. Which is supposedly inspired by Googie architecture. You guys familiar with Googie architecture? So I'm nodding, but I'm not. I see it a little. Of course. I see the Googie. The old diners with the big glass windows. The angles. Like pans is my favorite part. Like you guys don't pan. So that's like a Googie diner. There used to be one called corkies in Sherman Oaks van eyes. The ships. The ships. There you go. You get it. It was classic. And it was a very polarizing type of architecture in the 50s, 60s. But now it's beloved in retrospect. Anyways, inspired by that. Although I think it's a different. It doesn't really scream. It doesn't scream Googie to me. No, there's no space age to it. I'll tell you this an interesting story. You know why they picked this building? So that used to be a Japanese department store in the early 1960s. That closed down and became an Orbox in 1960. Oh, Orbox. 69. You know that. And that closed. But they picked this space specifically because there were no windows. So and it was a big, large space obviously in a fake car. So you didn't have the deterioration of natural light and everything. So it was the perfect space for that. But you know, it kind of looks like a department store. Inside. They haven't changed that. It's I mean, you say that now that's exactly. I always wondered like, what what does this feel like? This feels a little odd in here. That layout like that with the different departments. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I had been in there as an Orbox across the street was May Company, right? Wow. That I that's slightly before my time. Yeah, I think it's been here for 80 years. But across your country now is that Johnny's cafeteria. Right. Caring Cafe, the little restaurant that they always do. Filming at. But what about the vault? Yes. What do you got? We got to talk about the I just took my son there for the first time. All the fun. Fantastic. Cool. So downstairs, the Peterson Auto Museum and now open to the public. You can buy a ticket for a tour of the vault. Oh, man. Down there, many treasures. It really looks like just like a parking garage where they're storing stuff that's not on display. But they call it the vault to make it special. That's branding. That's what we did there. We branded it. And when I was there, what did I see? Oh, Magnum PIs 308 Ferrari. Dude, Saddam Hussein's old cars down there. Saddam makes it twice into the show this episode. You have a little bit of an obsession with Saddam Hussein. He was found in a hole. But Ayrton Senna, there was an Ayrton Senna. Yeah. My son was just going nuts over. How old is your son? 12. So he's really any kind of car. We're supposed to go to an F1 race this year. I don't know what he wants to go to Mexico City. Vegas. On his birthday. Well, Vegas where his dad wants to go where I want to go. But did you go to the Mexico City one? You were talking about that. No, we were talking about that. My partner went there and he said it's very important to understand how to do that particular race the right way. That's what I said. Inside tip. Otherwise, there's lots of walking, lots of suffering, lots of doing it through. You can easily do it the wrong way. I'll tell you this. We were in Mexico City in 2019. And again, we know LA traffic. I've never seen traffic like Mexico City. That's all I'm saying. Hour 47 to go seven miles. Wow. And we were like, is it always like this? And they were like, yes. That's just how it is. That was the worst traffic that I've ever been in. But he's half Mexican. My wife's Mexican. So he wants to celebrate, which is also his birthday, November 1st. So it's like this confluence of factors. It'll be his 13th, which is significant birthday. That'd be great. Let's go to Mexico City. Yeah, you got to do it. Yeah. So I was watching. Speaking of driving and crowds, I was watching Coachella last night. I watched, first of all, I watched two episodes of The Boys with Seth Rogen and that he produces. He's not in it. Fantastic this year. Really good. But after two episodes, you're like, I can't watch any more bodies explode in blood and guts. So I go to the Coachella feed on YouTube. And they've got all the different stages. And I'm like, boy, this is great. And by the way, threads. I had been scanning threads. And it said, Coachella, way better in your living room. And I went, oh, it's in my living room. And see, I went. It influenced me. And Sabrina Carpenter's up there. This beautiful blonde girl is up there saying, and I know she's very famous and very successful. And I'm like, I'm going to watch her and figure out why she's so big and she's so great. And Will Ferrell was in a bit with her, Susan Sarandon. Oh, wow. She had this amazing set. Does this incredible performance where she's kind of walking through a movie, almost like a Super Bowl, a big Super Bowl performance. But it's like impressive as hell. The songs, they're not my type of songs. But I recognized a few of them. She finishes this performance. By the way, everybody's just jammed in there. Sardines, talk about like, you know, you got to go to the bathroom. You got to walk a mile through people. And lose your spot. You lose your spot. There's no way for us to survive in a situation like that. Anyway, she gets out. This is how she ends the show. Here, check this out. It was very carculture performance. This is her in her last song gets into this old, what? Is that a thunderbird? And I'm watching this going, she's just doing the drive we do. She's just. Do you make that face when you drive? No, she she she for the next two or three minutes is drives out of the concert playing a song and just grooving it. But it reminded me of what we do, which is on the weekends, we put a song on the radio and we just drive in LA. She and really kind of nails it. And then I started going, well, is that a real thunderbird? What the hell am I looking at there? And so Cameron and I before the show are like, go back to the beginning. I think this is a converted golf cart. Yeah, go back like you watch your hand right here. She does a little turn like that because there's no way they're letting crazy Sabrina Carpenter drive next to all those people, right? I simplify it. Yeah, but she had a whole drive in theater there. I know I sound like I'm I'm fangirling over Sabrina Carpenter. I'm really not. I have nothing but respect for her and her performance. But but it's what we're talking about. LA is the car capital of the world and her show kind of embodied that. They had seven or eight of these cars there. And at different times during the show, they were parts of the performance and not parts of the performance. Where'd she go? I guess I don't know. Go back to LA. You go to a shower and then you know, the last wherever she goes. The last time I went to Coachella, Madonna was one of the headliners. And Madonna's exit was a helicopter. Oh, yeah. So I wonder what's what's a better. You know, it's definitely more LA. There's when we were when we were we when when I was following the stones a little bit with a friend of mine who knew them, I was always fascinated with the exit like Dodger Stadium. Oh, man. The second the last on court plays, they go right out the door into the car and this just get out of there. Everything's just a quick get me the hell. Oh, man, I would have been there really quick. Yeah, yeah. Caught up in that. Yeah. It's it's pretty cool. Um, all right, let's do one more of these. And then we got to go. We have to say goodbye after this. I'm going to let you pick. Let's see which one do I want to know about? You guys want to know about the why we say the. Yeah. Yeah. No, we've caught shit about that before. What do you mean? Like the PCA. PCA. Oh, it is not the PCA. That one runs. It's the wrong way. But wait, I don't say the PCA. OK, tell it. Well, it's the valley. No, I don't. The valley. Dude, so listen, so apparently everywhere else, you say, I'm going to take I 95 or I'm going to take 40 or whatever your freeway, your highway is. OK. L.A. We're undeniably saying I'm going to and you've seen the skit. The Californians, Fred Armisen, all this stuff. I'm taking the 10 to the 405, the 101, all this kind of stuff. So why do we say that? And people come from out of town. They're always like, why do you say that? So L.A. of course was was where freeways first developed, right? And when they first came up, it was named after their destination. San Diego freeway ended up ended in San Diego. So you said the San Diego freeway, Ventura freeway and Ventura was the Ventura freeway. But when Eisenhower passed the Interstate Highway Act and tried to codify all the freeways and map all the freeways throughout the whole country, you wanted a numerical system and made it orderly, made it make sense. North, south freeways were odd. East, west were even stuff like that. You've seen that map with all that kind of stuff. But people in Los Angeles were already accustomed to saying the San Diego freeway, the Ventura freeway, the Hollywood freeway. So when we adopted the numbers, it just sub numbers for the names and the is what it became. So why is it incorrect for us to say that one? I correct. It's absolutely correct. The only one I have an issue with is PCH because that's a civic coast and that pre that was a predecessor. That you know what that was originally called? Well, that would have to go through the range. Great. Yeah. It had to go through. They were. Stay at guns. They were sick. It's called Roosevelt Highway. Roosevelt Highway was the original name of PCH. The PCH was called Roosevelt Highway. It's not PCH. PCH is the only one it's not that we don't put the. We don't say that. We can say that. It was not part of the freeway system. Yeah, it never was. Yeah. So I might still say the Harbor freeway. Yeah. As a kind of a flashback. I might say the Pasadena freeway. You say you can't say that. Yeah. You just can't say the PCH. Correct. That's the one we can't say. But now I got to ask, why did you start this? Why did I start? Yeah. What was going so wrong in your life? So LA and I mean, it became the priority. It's a good question. Yes. You know why, man? Because my entire life and I was I'm a native of the San Fernando Valley, especially so it's even exacerbated because that people always said LA has no history and no culture. And then to add insult to injury to me, people would say the Valley is a wasteland. Why would I come to the Valley? The Valley sucks. So all of it all years. But yet at the same time, we got Hollywood and Beverly Hills and the beaches and everybody loves all that stuff. But I'm driving around doing normal stuff with normal people. And I'm like, wait, this is historic. What's the story behind this building? All this stuff had history before that. And then to me, I've always been impressed and conscious of like, and again, it's kind of cliche, but it's the truth, the diversity. My homeroom class in junior high and now they're called middle schools, but it's almost junior high. You know, it's where I had a Kenyan person, Armenian person, Jewish people, Korean, you know, and that's like the Los Angeles story. And you're like, wait a minute, this is a melting pot for the world. I'm not going to say more greater than New York, but there's more than 200 languages spoken here. We have more Thai people outside of Thailand, more Mexicans than any city outside of Mexico, more Cambodians, more Australians, more Ugandans, more Eritreans. So all of these like different ethnicities all come to Los Angeles. Why? Because there is this big history and there is this big culture. And Los Angeles doesn't celebrate that necessarily. You know, I went to Pittsburgh of all places and by the way, Pittsburgh, great city, great city. And every building has a plaque, oh, 1884 and like US deal and all that. Yeah, we like our history. I'm a plaque reading kind of guy, right? I will stop my life. Like, are you seriously going to stop it? Yes, I am going to stop it. But like, so the thing is in Los Angeles, we don't do that. We bulldoze our history. So all future. We're looking at the city of the future, city of tomorrow. But I just love the origin of all those kind of things like why? How did we become this great world city that everybody in the world wants to come from? And the stories are right there. You just need to look for and I'm also a little bit of a nerd, a lot of a nerd. And then, you know, it's only been since what? 2022? 2022. I feel like he's been around for 15 years. What's up, LA? Anyway, like I said in the beginning, Evan, you really enrich my experience. And you just described it very well. You know, you you were curious yourself and now you're putting it out to the world here. And it really does make my daily enjoyment of the city. I already love even better. Thank you for coming on. Thank you, sir. The pleasure to meet you. I appreciate it. We're going to bring you into the Spikes Car Radio family as an expert. I can tell we're going to we're going to be able to use this guy. This guy. Yeah, we're sure. We're sure. And if you want to catch up with him, he's got a podcast, which I'm guessing we can find it anywhere. Anywhere. YouTube, Spotify, YouTube, follow him on on on Instagram. And I promise you, you will learn something. That's our show. If you're a Patreon subscriber, stick around. We're going to we'll talk about how you got Fred Armisen on your show and I can't get him on my show. We'll see you next week. Spikes Car Radio.