Hot Hatch… Volvo?

Secret Clandestine Car Enthusiast! 

Emily claims to “pretend to do car things” but comes from a family of Petrol heads. Listen to this episode to learn more, but also be sure to check out more from Emily, by visiting Garage Riot – the premiere social media platform for Car Enthusiasts.

• There’s a Volvo 480 Turbo taking up a parking spot
• The Volvo 480 Turbo at Radwood NJ

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introduction to Gran Touring Motorsports
• 00:22 Meet the Hosts and Guests
• 01:05 Diving into Vehicle Histories
• 08:18 Emily’s Car Journey
• 14:23 Garage Riot and Car Enthusiast Community
• 17:19 The Mystery of the Volvo 480
• 23:54 The Quest to Import a Volvo 480
• 37:10 Navigating Gray Market Car Insurance
• 38:06 The Struggle with License Plates
• 40:01 Volvo 480 Tech Specs Deep Dive
• 42:35 Driving Experience and Handling
• 50:26 Challenges with Parts and Repairs
• 01:00:09 Future Plans and Modifications
• 01:10:25 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] We always have a blast chatting with our guests about all sorts of different topics, but sometimes we go off the rails and dig deeper into their automotive and motorsports pasts. As a bonus, let’s go behind the scenes with this pit stop mini sode for some extra content that didn’t quite fit in the main episode.

Sit back and enjoy. Enjoy, and remember to like, subscribe, and support Brake Fix on Patreon.

So I heard y’all had a great time without me talking about imported cars and whatnot, but I want to know a little more about your car history and something Crutch called The Compound, which actually sounds very similar to The Mountain.

Nate Burton: Uh, do you want me to go first or Emily? Whichever one!

Emily Fox: Why don’t you go first?

We could

Nate Burton: get out a 20 sided die if you like and do it. Yeah, uh, yeah, I can go. Um Do you want me to, like, recount, like, how I got into cars? Yeah, that would be fun. Or the cars I started with? Sure! Like, what,

Mike Crutchfield: which, uh, so I want to segue real quick. Because, [00:01:00] when I say this, everyone, you know, you’ll understand what I’m saying, but no one else will.

Let’s talk about the compound.

Emily Fox: Oh. Oh. We’re out of the compound, officially. I know, I know, you’re out of the We’re out of the cars! Oh, you

Mike Crutchfield: got all the cars out!

Emily Fox: All the cars are out! It, it was, it was touch and go there for a bit. All the cars are officially out of the compound.

Nate Burton: So I think part of my becoming a gearhead story involves the fact that I

Emily Fox: had an enabler.

Mike Crutchfield: I

Nate Burton: read how many

Mike Crutchfield: Ford Falcons does he own? Sorry, galaxies, galaxies,

Nate Burton: he’s got a shit ton of. So he probably has a handful of Falcons.

Emily Fox: We used to live so Nate rented a property. from somebody that he used to work with who loved cars and loved collecting cars and all matter of decay because that’s what most of them were at the time.

Nate Burton: These were mostly non running

Emily Fox: cars. I said decay, didn’t I? [00:02:00] Highly

Nate Burton: valued replacement parts. Wait, so did you, did you Did you live in a junkyard? Basically, yes. From Google Satellite View, it definitely kind of looks like that. Well,

Emily Fox: if you could see all the cars in Google Satellite View, then yes. But most of them were under makeshift cover or had metal on top of them to protect, you know, the convertible components of them because the fabric had rotted away and had been sitting for so long.

Mike Crutchfield: He didn’t want the patina to change.

Emily Fox: Oh, that’s true. The patina on some of the cars is gorgeous, but still. So there’s, so the compound is a loving place where, uh, most American cars, specifically Cadillacs.

Nate Burton: Ford, Ford and Lincoln.

Emily Fox: Ford and Lincoln, sorry. Ford and Lincolns go to rest to be parted out. Some Mercurys.

And some Mercurys go to be parted out and they go there and they stay. More cars come in than leave. And we lived there for a while. For a long while. Nate lives there a lot longer and it was a, it [00:03:00] was a nice experience to like, make sure that you were up on your tetanus whenever you walked around the property.

Mike Crutchfield: Been there. We

Emily Fox: certainly had access to lots of equipment to work on cars, which was nice if we could get to the equipment cause there were often cars in the way.

Nate Burton: Yeah. The problem, the problem was he, well, he had like this giant,

Emily Fox: Compound

Nate Burton: shop that had like a seven bay car garage and a paint booth and a paint booth and all this stuff.

And a, uh, transmission tunnel ramp. Mostly all that stuff was covered with shit boxes that were rusting apart

Emily Fox: and boxes of parts for those cars. But so at one point, I think we had, how many cars? 10. We owned 10 cars at one point.

Nate Burton: We, yes, we had 10 at one point.

Emily Fox: We had 10 cars while we were living at the compound.

And we’ve, we’ve slowly gotten rid of a lot of them. Um, well a lot of them meaning we got rid of the one that was, like, I don’t even know why you really bought it. [00:04:00] The parts car? The parts car. The one

Nate Burton: that Crutch actually helped, helped me get to my house.

Mike Crutchfield: Towed it from Delaware to Central Maryland.

Nate Burton: Yeah.

Mike Crutchfield: It had to be loaded on my trailer with a forklift. Yeah.

Nate Burton: So that was, that was an E34 that I got for 300 bucks.

Emily Fox: For the engine.

Nate Burton: So that I could take the engine out of it because it’s the M30B35.

Emily Fox: But we kept the whole car rather than just pulling the engine because you know we can make money off of the parts, uh huh.

And it sat. And we never made money off of the parts. This is starting to

Nate Burton: sound, this is starting to sound a lot like the mountain. This is

Crew Chief Brad: what the mountain aspires to be.

Nate Burton: No, no. What is, what

Mike Crutchfield: is the mountain? We have, we have another member. Mountain Man Dan.

Nate Burton: Mountain Man Dan.

Mike Crutchfield: He has, uh, over under 150 Jeddas on his property, it seems.

And Volkswagen Golfs. Holy cow! [00:05:00] I’m exaggerating, obviously. But. He, uh, he has

Nate Burton: There’s 10,

Mike Crutchfield: 20 square body trucks.

Nate Burton: There’s definitely north of 30 cars on the property. Yeah, there’s one Volkswagen. No, no, there’s the domestic section. There’s the import section. There are two and I like, I have to, I have to specify there is a Mercury Sable wagon and a Taurus wagon.

Do not confuse the two because if you talk about them, he gets upset. Also,

Crew Chief Brad: if you call them donor cars, he gets upset.

Mike Crutchfield: He gets really upset when you show up and take parts from his cars when he’s not there.

Nate Burton: That’s very true. That’s very true. Brad and I didn’t do that once overnight. Now, not at all.

Crew Chief Brad: No,

Nate Burton: not at all.

So yeah. So it, the ratio right now is like one car per acre. So, you know, Hey, whatever, but you know, we’re getting there. So, yeah, the compound, uh, uh, my, my landlord’s hoarding habits, uh, [00:06:00] rubbed off on me a bit. And I started with my, uh, Saab 9 5 and then I got the Volvo Amazon. And then when I found out that the Volvo Amazon that I bought was so rusty and the rear axle needed to be replaced and all that.

I ended up finding another Volvo Amazon out in Tucson, Arizona. That was rust free that I got shipped across country using Uship. And then, uh, it showed up with, uh, with no, uh, with no, no running gear. So just, just the body, no front or rear suspension, but thankfully my landlord on the compound has a forklift.

And of course this car was on a, what is that? Like one of those big. Uh, mobile parking garage trailers. The one with all the weird angles that can tilt and double decker, double decker car trailer thing. We had a

Emily Fox: forklift. It came off,

Nate Burton: but it was, how did they get it off? They had a forklift. [00:07:00] The car was put on a big homemade wooden pallet and then.

Forklifted onto the top of this, uh, car moving trailer thing. Then my landlord had a forklift and I used the forklift to forklift it off and then, uh, got it on the property on the compound.

Emily Fox: That one we were actually able to keep undercover for a while. So that, that one was nice and protected and remained rust free.

But the compound certainly contributed to other habits because That you had those two cars plus your other car. So you want to talk about the Mercedes?

Mike Crutchfield: Oh, no, not yet. Oh, do you still have the Mercedes? I do. Well,

Emily Fox: technically not right now That’s it. That’s another fun one. So why don’t we just talk about the Mercedes?

Well,

Mike Crutchfield: let me set this up first. It was a Mercedes station wagon

Emily Fox: No, no, no, we’ll come back to that.

Mike Crutchfield: With rear facing back seats

Emily Fox: All of your dirty laundry for cars is coming out because I have to live with [00:08:00] you. So, this is about the time when we started living together. And I have two kids and he has two kids, so that’s six people.

That’s a lot of people if you want to go some place as a family together. So, this is This gentleman over here decided, well, we should get a vehicle that can seat all of us. Okay, cool. Well, I’ve been looking at this Mercedes W124 station wagon for a while and I think that’s it. And then, hey, I found one for sale on eBay.

What do you think? I don’t know why we’re buying a car right now. Well, there’s this one and it’s only like,

Nate Burton: I don’t even think we were talking about buying a car. I think I was just showing you the car. What do you think of this? That’s the way it looks.

Emily Fox: I did not at all

Nate Burton: allude to buying a car.

Emily Fox: That’s where it gets even worse.

Is he showed it to me and said, what do you think about it? And I said, it was fine. But I was not under the impression that we were buying a car. We took the kids to a park that day. And then the next words out of his mouth as we were sitting on the bench together was, oh shit. I’m like, what do you mean?

[00:09:00] Oh shit. I bought a car. What the fuck are you talking about? You bought a car. Remember that Mercedes wagon I showed you? I bought it. Can we go to New Jersey and pick it up on Thursday?

Nate Burton: So this car was listed on eBay and when I saw it, it was a fairly low price. I think it was like, I don’t know, like high, high, like 1, 800, 2, 000.

Uh, and I’m like, oh, that’s pretty cheap, so let me put a bid on it, and then, uh, not thinking that I would actually win it, like two days later, uh, I actually won it for like twenty eight hundred bucks.

Emily Fox: The moral of the story is don’t put them in on a car unless you’re actually ready to buy it. So he ended up buying it and we ended up making the trip to New Jersey and the trip up was lovely and then we got To the shop where the car was and then we learned about the car.

I think

Nate Burton: the trip overall was lovely

Emily Fox: It was lovely until you learned about the car

Nate Burton: What was it the? fuel gauge [00:10:00] didn’t work What else did we

Emily Fox: found out that the fuel gauge sender was actually missing

Nate Burton: Was there a hole in the

Mike Crutchfield: tank because

Nate Burton: of that? The guy who sold it to me just said the fuel gauge didn’t work and then when we actually got it home and dug into it there was no fuel sender in the tank at all.

Like somebody had like, it had probably broken at some point. They had taken it out and just put the lid back on. It was gone. Uh, so the fuel, the fuel gauge didn’t work. I feel like something else that, Oh, the locks. Yeah. So we pick up the car, we buy the car, uh, we, we, uh, drive it away and go to some parking lot where we can like actually check it out after we bought it and figure out all the things.

Emily Fox: We went to White Castle.

Nate Burton: Um, and after we checked it out, we then went to White Castle and then we were in like some shady part of New Jersey. As every White Castle is. As, as probably where every White Castle is located. And the locks didn’t. I’ve been there. We’re like car, were you way up the,

Mike Crutchfield: were you way up the turnpike?

[00:11:00] What were you, way up the Jersey turnpike? Yeah. It was like

Nate Burton: right outside

Mike Crutchfield: of New York City. I’ve probably been to that same White Castle. Yeah. You don’t wanna be there without locking your doors.

Nate Burton: Yeah. So we’re like, okay, we need locked car. We get outta the car and I lock the car and like the alarm starts going off.

Um, and so then I had to unlock the car and the alarm thankfully stopped going off. But, uh, the Mercedes, at least the W124 and probably some of the earlier models used a vacuum actuated locking system. So, uh, don’t

Emily Fox: buy a car with a vacuum actuated locking system, please.

Nate Burton: Are you saying

Mike Crutchfield: they suck?

Emily Fox: No, they don’t

That’s the problem.

Nate Burton: Well, when, when mice invade a car and let, that’s an chew on the hard plastic vacuum lines, and they then they know. So let,

Emily Fox: let’s talk about the mice in the car minute. We live with a compound. We’re, we’re in a rural part of Laurel. and mice have been attacking this vehicle. And you’d think that at this point the mice have probably vacated the premises, but no, they did not.

We [00:12:00] found more mice or evidence of mice in said Mercedes and then all of a sudden we didn’t start. Seeing any more mice. We were kind of curious as to why there’s no more mice in the car because we didn’t really do much to get rid of them. Well, we were working on the Mercedes. We were, what, changing the oil.

We, it has, it has a protective cover underneath of it. So we’re both laying on the ground. We’re removing the screws to pull the protective cover off of the bottom of it. And this coil drops down. And we’re like, that’s really weird. And then the coil

Nate Burton: moves. Where did this hose come from? Where did the hose

Emily Fox: come from and why is it moving?

It was a snake. So we both, like, roll away from the car, across the asphalts, at the compound, and there’s a snake in the engine. I’m like, how the fuck do we get the snake out? So I put on gloves and long sleeves, and I ended up pulling the snake out of the engine as it tried to drive back into the chassis to get through to the cabin, which is not fun.

I got bit. [00:13:00] It’s not poisonous. But that was the first snake in the Mercedes. There was another snake, which he’s outside doing an oil change on the Mercedes. And all of a sudden he comes hauling ass into the house. And this is not the first of problems with Mercedes. This is the second. Several of them. Tom Holland asked in the house.

She’s like, Oh my God, I found a snake. What do I do? And I’m like, you gotta be kidding me. I scared the last one. The snake had decided to coil up on the oil containment.

Nate Burton: It was in an oil pan.

Emily Fox: Yeah. It was in an oil pan.

Nate Burton: So that

Emily Fox: one I ended up killing because we didn’t know what kind of snake it was and I was not willing to get bit again.

That

Nate Burton: one was a much smaller snake. It was a baby, but it

Emily Fox: was smaller. The first

Nate Burton: one was like massive four feet long. It was huge,

Emily Fox: but this is all. After we got the Mercedes back. So this genius just like, [00:14:00] no, no, no, no, all the, all the dirty laundry. So this genius, we get the Mercedes and we need to get it through the inspection.

So what does he want to do is he wants to replace the aluminum strips on the door. So, because they didn’t look quite right. This wasn’t related

Nate Burton: to the inspection. It was related to the inspection, getting it ready to go to Wolfson. We had to get

Emily Fox: it through the inspection first. So he’s out in the garage, by the way, compound, large area, multiple out buildings, he’s down at the back part of the property in another building at night after driving what eight hours to take your son to your parents and then back home.

And he’s, he’s scraping away at the aluminum. So molding with a brand new exacto knife and decides to slice open his So we made a trip to the emergency room. He has a lovely scar to show for it, but we had what one week to get the car past inspections and now he can’t work on it. So this, this was my, uh, Hey, honey, can you help me?[00:15:00]

Can you do the brakes? Can you do the rotors? Can you do the emergency brake on the Mercedes? That way it can just pass inspection. That’s how I learned how to do brakes and rotors was this guy with a bum hand.

Nate Burton: Oh, how about the transmission needed to pass inspection? The thing that I sliced my hand open on is certainly not at all related to the inspection.

Priorities that are important.

Mike Crutchfield: I like,

Nate Burton: I like the car to look good.

Mike Crutchfield: I seem to also remember stories of the transmission in that car too. So there, there were a lot of stories. So

Nate Burton: she, she had jumped all over

the place, not keeping the timeline. So we’d go get the car in New Jersey. We, it doesn’t have a working fuel system or fuel gauge.

We get it back. Uh, we, we go to white castle. I mentioned that we go to the, Uh, we go to the, what’s the, Statue of Liberty? Yeah. We take the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty. Yeah. It was a good road trip for a random purchased car on eBay. That ended. Um, that, [00:16:00] that has, that has had a long tail of maintenance and car support tied to it.

Emily Fox: It’s like a bad windows install.

Nate Burton: So we, we, we had to do a bunch of things to get it to pass inspection. Uh, the shocks were completely blown. It drove like,

Emily Fox: like, uh,

Nate Burton: like a,

Emily Fox: a

Nate Burton: donk just bouncing down the road. Um,

Emily Fox: yeah.

Nate Burton: Uh, so just, so we put H& R lowering springs, um, and, uh,

Emily Fox: it looks lovely. It’s, it’s, it’s quite beautiful.

Like, so we, we, we. We borrowed Crutch’s, uh, what is it? Fender flaring? Fender flaring tool. So we, we rolled the fenders so that we could put the nice, the nice new wheels on. They look lovely, especially with everything lowered. Fixed the, uh, grille on it so the grille is nice and shiny. Had to pull parts off of a couple of different ones that was nice to put together.

Thankfully

Nate Burton: Mercedes made a shit ton of the W124 [00:17:00] models. So they’re always in the junkyard when you need to go find parts.

Emily Fox: But it eventually got to the point where we, when we drove it back from New Jersey and a couple of times after that, we didn’t realize that the transmission fluid was low. No. So we did

Nate Burton: all that work to get the car ready to pass inspection.

And because we were going to take a road trip to New Hampshire to take it to Wolfscart. Uh, so Wolfskart is this, it’s actually a, a Volkswagen, uh, focused, uh, car show up in Vermont, in Burlington. Uh, it’s a fantastic car show. So we’re going to take the,

Mike Crutchfield: so

Nate Burton: we took the, we took the Mercedes up there on our first big road trip after buying it later that same summer, um, it got up there with, with no problems really.

Um, and then the night before the show or the morning of the show, we go out to breakfast, get some breakfast burritos, come out to the car, there’s a puddle

Emily Fox: under it, there’s

Nate Burton: a puddle of [00:18:00] oil. Underneath the car.

Emily Fox: Not a drip, a puddle. You could swim in it.

Nate Burton: Puddle. Uh, so we, we drove down to the nearest like auto zone or uh, advanced auto parts, I forget what it was, to buy some oil.

I think it took like two quarts of oil. It was a lot. I mean the engine takes like seven, so it wasn’t, it wasn’t like completely down on oil. This wasn’t the trip

Emily Fox: that we had to replace the alternator, right?

Nate Burton: No, no.

Emily Fox: That was a second, separate trip.

Nate Burton: There have been lots of trips where things broke. So, uh, Added oil, bought some extra cans of it, did the rest of the, the show event in Wolfsgard fine, and then kind of drove, drove back to Maryland.

And on the drive back to Maryland, we noticed that the car squealed when we put it in, when we tried to put it in reverse. It’s a, it’s an automatic, and didn’t think to check the transmission fluid. Probably should have.

Emily Fox: Always check the transmission

Nate Burton: fluid. Uh, we, we got home and, [00:19:00] uh, Turned out the car was super low on transmission fluid, running it low on transmission fluid, caused the, uh, torque converter to heat up and then spin the bearing on the oil pump in the front of the transmission.

Um, and that’s what, that’s what caused all the problems. Along that same point in time. We also noticed that there was oil in the coolant reservoir. Not a good sign. Drain the oil, and we had like a full oil pan of like chocolate mix soup.

Emily Fox: It was really gross. Oh, it was nasty.

Nate Burton: Uh, so, uh, the car ended up having a head gasket problem.

Don’t say it. I mean, it probably had a head gasket problem when I bought it. We

Emily Fox: ended up pulling the engine and the transmission out and neither of us having done an automatic transmission rebuild decided, Hey, let’s try it on a Mercedes, not any of the other German or Swedish cars in the history that he [00:20:00] has worked on.

Certainly not that I’ve worked on.

Nate Burton: So my, my car history has been a whole lot of firsts and usually my firsts involve learning hard

lessons and then watching a whole shit ton of YouTube videos. You’ve

Mike Crutchfield: also just described most of our professions too.

Emily Fox: You gotta learn from somebody. Somebody else has gotta screw it up first so you can just screw it up less badly.

Nate Burton: So we sent the head off to a shop to get the head resurfaced. We did a,

Emily Fox: uh, we

Nate Burton: did a redneck rebuild of the block. So, uh, rings and bearings and seals and all that. And we tried our hand at rebuilding the automatic transmission or at least disassembling of the automatic transmission to figure out. What was going on?

And that’s, that’s, that’s how I found the, the spun bearing on the, on the front oil pump,

Emily Fox: it was, it remained disassembled for a while in the house. By the way, we, we rebuilt [00:21:00] that transmission and the engine in the house

Nate Burton: during the winter,

Emily Fox: during the winter on the compounds. I cleared out space on our porch.

So we had a porch. It was a covered porch. It was an external cold area. So it didn’t have heat going to it, but we had already had car parts lined all the way around the porch for the other cars that we had. So I had to reorganize the porch. So we had a clean space to rebuild the transmission because you can’t rebuild a transmission.

If you’ve got crap everywhere, it has to be clean.

Mike Crutchfield: Is Eric starting to realize why I said we need to have this conversation?

Nate Burton: Well, this is the entire pit stop right here. I’m just going to cut it out. So, so yeah, the nice thing about the compound is there’s plenty of room for cars. The not so nice thing about the compound is that none of that is indoor heated space.

Uh, so, so we pulled the we had to lift the engine into the house. And [00:22:00] do the rebuild inside the porch area.

Emily Fox: And then carry the engine back out of the house. Same thing with the transmission. So we, we ended up rebuilding the transmission. We found first gear because we didn’t have first gear before then.

But then we lost a gear when we did the rebuild. So,

Nate Burton: Well, let’s see. It’s,

Emily Fox: it’s, it’s

Nate Burton: a, I remember, I remember all these with reverse going into the transmission rebuild, reverse didn’t work coming out of the transmission rebuild, reverse worked. But fourth gear

didn’t.

Emily Fox: And we, we were, we drove it like that for a while and then decided we should probably just pay somebody to do a proper rebuild on the transmission.

So we ended up, so we had put the engine and the transmission back in the Mercedes and then we ended up dropping the, our personal rebuild of the transmission out. I still remember Being under the Mercedes when it was jacked up and you’re like, are you sure you want me to take this out? [00:23:00] I’m like, yeah, I got this.

Just drop it. And I’ll shimmy it out from underneath. And he couldn’t believe that I lift the transmission out from underneath of the car like that. And that’s how we got the new one back in was the same way, because you know, we didn’t have a lift.

Nate Burton: We, we, we had to build these, uh, these cribbing blocks out of two by fours, uh, to, to jack the car.

Like, Very two and a half feet up in the air, but they’re, they’re super sturdy and they’re super easy to build just a bunch of kind of two by fours, kind of like Lincoln logs. Um, so,

Emily Fox: so that when we got all that fixed, we thought the Mercedes problems were going to stop. And then you found a hole in the muffler recently.

That’s the

Nate Burton: reason why there are other Mercedes problems.

Emily Fox: There were, but we’re, we ended up replacing the alternator on a hill in a parking lot of an auto zone. On a road trip. On

Nate Burton: the way to the vintage. Without

Emily Fox: any tools to do it. If you’ve seen the alternator on a Mercedes W124. It’s a pain in the [00:24:00] ass to get out.

And it is a pain in the ass to put back in. So if you have. If you are an individual. That is interested in working on cars. Make sure you have a friend. With narrow fingers. Good finger strength and happens to have crocheted hooks and knitting needles nearby because those things come in handy when you’re trying to get stuff out or put stuff in.

And that’s what we ended up doing when we drafted it. We had to jack up the car but it was on a hill and we had to, you know, It was just, it was so hard to do. We were there for a few hours. I think, I

Nate Burton: think, I think that was before, that might’ve been before we lowered the Mercedes.

Emily Fox: Oh yeah. And

Nate Burton: so it was actually possible to like get the alternator out without jacking it up.

Emily Fox: Yeah. Um, but hole in the muffler. And rather than decide to fix the exhaust on the Mercedes and sell,

Nate Burton: you said something that made me think, uh, if you like working on cars,

Emily Fox: buy a Mercedes,

Nate Burton: because you’ll be able to work on them all the time.

Emily Fox: So, the [00:25:00] 1 time that he decided to not work on the Mercedes and take it to a shop, we’ve.

We’ve moved to the country. We are in north northwestern Maryland. We have a

Nate Burton: garage now. We

Emily Fox: have a garage. It’s a wonderful three bay garage. Two stories. Not tall enough to put a four post lift in. But you know, we’re, we’re talking about plans that we can, I I’m

Mike Crutchfield: just, I’m basically around the corner from you, Eric.

Yeah. .

Emily Fox: So, you know the country and you know, the kind of trucks that drive around the country with the exhaust. And so, by

Nate Burton: the way. By the way, I’m the idiot with the European spec golf wagon running around. Oh, nice. Yeah, and I know the guy with the, with the bright orange VR6 right hand. Oh, the right hand drive one?

Yeah, he used to work, he used to work at the Starbucks. He also has a cabrio with the VR6 swap in it. Oh, nice. So, yeah. I probably should have asked you for an exhaust, uh, an exhaust shop that’s decent before I did what I did. Or I just call Mountain Man Dan down from the mountain and he’ll do it. I [00:26:00] usually do all my own work.

And in a, well, he welds. So it’s, it’s a beautiful, well, I have a welder. I know how to weld

too.

I went to, I took a class at Anne Arundel Community College years ago to figure out how to weld. It was great. But, uh, but in a, in a, in a, in a bit of weakness, I decided, ah, I don’t wanna deal with this hole in my exhaust.

I’ll take it to a shop and I’ll just let them do it. And, uh, they’ve had my car for about a month now.

Mike Crutchfield: We

Nate Burton: went and we got it back after like two or three weeks. And, uh, it

Emily Fox: sounded just like all of the other trucks that come down the road. And it’s a Mercedes. It

Nate Burton: sounded like a diesel pickup truck.

Mike Crutchfield: Nice. It sounded like the TT that one time.

Nate Burton: So I, I call, oh, and they also cut my catalytic converter off, even though I didn’t ask for it.

That’s what they pay for. So that’s still

Emily Fox: the shop getting fixed. So we talked to [00:27:00] the shop. Wait, is it at the

Nate Burton: Mercedes? Is it at the Mercedes shop across the road? No, no, no, no. He did

Emily Fox: not take it to the Mercedes shop. He took it to an exhaust place. Is it the exhaust place across

Mike Crutchfield: the street from the Rofo?

Yes.

Emily Fox: I’m getting it fixed. They’re, they’re very nice people. So we’re, hopefully it’ll be done this week. So that, that’s the latest on the Mercedes.

Nate Burton: So I have a couple other questions, some fun questions for you guys, since we’ve, we’ve talked at, you know, at length about this Volvo, but now that you’re a car, car people and Emily’s always been one, even though she doesn’t want to admit it.

Top three favorite cars of all time? Yes.

Emily Fox: I have

Nate Burton: a list and you can’t say the four 80 . She’s, she’s prepared. I have a

Emily Fox: list. So I like the Triumph Herald, the M-B-G-G-T, the 2002 MR two W, uh, W 10. So the earlier models, the, not like the, the, the later models that are curvy. The, the

Nate Burton: [00:28:00] Toyota MR two W 10. Yeah, he said 2002.

Emily Fox: Sorry. Toyota. MR two. Sorry. I’m just excited. The BMW 2002 touring specifically in 1973 model, 1986 Volkswagen Golf GTI Mark 2, 1990s Peugeot 205 GTI. Sorry, I have like four more. No, go

Nate Burton: ahead. Um, you’re on a roll.

Emily Fox: Uh, pretty much any Gremlin. Uh, there was one for sale on Bring a Trailer that was gorgeous. It was purple and lime green and had a lovely, lovely paint job on it.

It went

Nate Burton: for cheap.

Emily Fox: It went for cheap and we didn’t get it. 1974 Datsun 260Z. Renault R5 GT Turbo, the Studebaker Lark, the two door wagon model, and now the brand new Nissan Z Proto. I’ve been eyeballing that one.

Nate Burton: The 400Z? That looks amazing. Aside from the rectangular front. We have a, we have a member that is Contemplating getting rid of his F Type Jag for a 400Z.

So we’re going to see if that’s going to happen. [00:29:00] Um, he says he has to sit in it first. He needs to know if he fits. So, so wow. That you’re, and yet you’re not a car person, you know, or whatever.

That’s a very, and that’s a very specific list, like 1986, mark two, not in 88 or a 92. It’s like, it, it’s gotta be in 86. It’s like, what? So

Emily Fox: I, so I, being around him long enough, I’ve started to spend time reading through the history with some of these cars and noticing the changes in that are made across model years.

And like some of ’em are very specific, like. If you’re going to get a year, this is the year that you’re going to get because it has the least amount of problems. It has the, the styling that everybody is looking for. So there’s, there’s a return on investment if you’re getting them. I don’t really care about the return on the investment part of it.

Like

Nate Burton: around the BMW 2002 versus the, uh, square light. It’s more about like

Emily Fox: what I like. I don’t care what other people like. I like. Specific [00:30:00] styles. I like the 1980s boxiness. I like the weird cars. I like the ugly cars that a lot of people don’t like. I still think the Aztec is absolutely horrid though.

Nate Burton: And I think, oh, just wait. Just wait, wait. Hang on. Our ugly cars episode comes out. It’s a doozy. , what do you think of the HHR?

Emily Fox: I don’t think I’ve seen it.

Mike Crutchfield: The Chevy. HHR ugly. It is the, it’s the Chevy PT Cruiser. Cruiser.

Emily Fox: Oh. Oh. No . Oh, no. Best car

Nate Burton: ever. So now we’ll flip the coin and go to Nate. So if you had a top three cars and you can’t be the Volvo 480, what would it be?

Huh? I, I, for a long time have lusted after a Porsche 911. I kick myself every day for not getting one like 10 or 15 years ago. Is there a specific year like Emily? Like it has to be a 1972 E model. I do have a specific year, uh, [00:31:00] mainly driven based on potential affordability. Um, I like the, uh, like 86 to 89 911 Carrera.

Right when they switched from, uh, what was it? The, the, the old gearbox, the new one. They went from the 915 and it’s got a 3. 2 liter. Yep. I’m a little bit of a Porsche person. Yeah. So I would love one of those. Um, but the prices are still, oh, they’re only going, they’re only going up. They’re only going up. I really love the Renault R5 Turbo 2.

That, again, is way out of price range for, like, ever affording. Uh, so I would settle for a Renault 5, R5 GT Turbo. Kind of looks like the R5 Turbo 2, but it’s not rear engined. It’s normal front engine front wheel drive. A Peugeot 205 GTI. I kind of like hot hatches, uh, but here’s a weird one, a Lotus Esprit Turbo.

Which version of it? The original [00:32:00] one or the later ones? The, the, the mid 80s ones. Yeah, because the Esprit came out in like the late 70s, so it all depends, you know. Uh, although I know that car would be a horrible car to own. Yes. Yeah, the only thing good about those cars is the transmission and it’s a terrible trans.

So I do like a lot of the Volkswagen, uh, type three styles, like the fastback or the square back ones at 411 to get like a, a square back and like rest of mod it with, uh, like a Subaru engine or something in the back.

Mike Crutchfield: Well, obviously you need to shove a W12 in there somehow.

Nate Burton: 1. 8 turbo. I’m just saying.

Anyway, well that’s cool. So, okay, let’s, let’s do the, the million dollar man question, right? Which is, if you had all the money in the world, and you can only buy one car, what would it be?

Emily Fox: Um, I’m [00:33:00] not sure. That’s a hard one. Well, if we’re talking about all the money in the world, There were no r5 gt turbo.

Nate Burton: No, that’s her turbo too.

The real one the real one rear engine

Emily Fox: Yeah, I think that would be it because it’s all the money in the world and those cars are pretty expensive And it’s really

Mike Crutchfield: cool to look at

Emily Fox: yeah, I They’re yeah I think that would be the one for me.

Nate Burton: Um Trying to think of something we might have seen at Oh,

Emily Fox: what was that?

The

Nate Burton: classic remis Uh, so what was it last year, the year before, I don’t know, it’s been so long. We’ve been

Emily Fox: married for two years. So let’s start with that. So two years ago, we went to Germany and we went to Classic Remise.

Nate Burton: Uh, so in Berlin, there’s this amazing old train station, train depot. It has been converted to workshop.

Slash collector [00:34:00] car storage

Emily Fox: museum slash

Nate Burton: museum.

Emily Fox: Yeah,

Nate Burton: and it’s free to the public to walk in and there’s workshops around the outside edge of craftsmen working on doing like pristine nut and bolt restorations on old Ferraris and Mercedes and things like that. And then there’s cars there in storage. Uh, they, they had one of the, what was that?

Uh, Volkswagen electric car from the 2000s or

Mike Crutchfield: the, what was it called? The, Oh, no,

Nate Burton: that’s the one, the one was that it was also that it was, it wasn’t the three wheeled one, right? I don’t think so. Okay. It was,

Mike Crutchfield: it was like the center seat. Really sleek one.

Nate Burton: They had one of those there. Uh, they had really old Lamborghinis and Porsches.

They had the Lancia

Mike Crutchfield: Stratos. That would

Nate Burton: be a pretty cool car. If I had all the [00:35:00] money, they had one of those there. Speaking of Lancias, I, when I was looking and buying my Volvo Amazon, looking for old car that was weird and cheap. And met those requirements. Uh, I came across a Long Sia beta. Some guy had like three of them down in Virginia and they were all rust buckets.

Oh yeah, so over here they sold the Scorpion and they sold the Beta Monte Carlo. They’re both betas basically. They’re, they’re, you have to like that Panda, I call it the Panda front end because it’s got that, that ring around the lights, kind of like a DeLorean, you know, that whole deal.

Mike Crutchfield: Yeah.

Nate Burton: But uh, yeah, they’re interesting little cars.

The last time I saw one of those that was running is when I watched Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo. So yeah. But uh, but at any rate, yeah, no, so that’s. That’s kind of cool. That’s interesting. I mean, we get answers from all over the place, but one of the ones that Brad usually likes to ask is in your opinion, the sexiest car of all time.[00:36:00]

Cool.

Crew Chief Brad: Volvo 480.

Emily Fox: Okay. So, so I’m going to say this because so Nate probably knows that I’m going to say, I believe it’s the mark two Stingray, the one that’s got the hips for miles. And I say that lovingly, like it’s the curves on that car are just beautiful for the era that it was made in. It was, it was very not practical.

And that’s, that’s my opinion. What makes those cars beautiful. It’s not beautiful by modern standards for car design. What did we see recently that Doug was talking about? And it was, it was beautiful. Yeah.

Nate Burton: I cannot remember, but that was the one that’s stuck in my head right now. Yeah.

Emily Fox: It’s it’s, it’s going to kill me, but Doug DeMuro reviewed a car recently.

That was just wonderful. Was that two? Is it 2020? [00:37:00] Right? No,

Nate Burton: we’ll

Emily Fox: figure out what it is. Like later tonight, wake up in the middle of the night and like scream it. Eventually you might hear it, but yeah, I, I like this thing. Right. I think they’re beautiful.

Nate Burton: I like. I like the old Porsche 356. I think those are some of the most beautiful cars.

Yeah, we’ll, we’ll flip it on its, on its nose. And you guys already kind of, you’ve kind of served this up in some respects, but the ugliest car in your opinion?

Emily Fox: I don’t think the Aztec is the ugliest. I think it is very ugly, but I do not think that it is the ugliest.

Nate Burton: I know. I’ll go first. Yeah. Um, I think one of the ugliest cars is the Nissan S Cargo.

Emily Fox: All right.

Nate Burton: Looks like a snail. Yep.

Emily Fox: I don’t know. I can’t really think of one right now. [00:38:00] I don’t know. I, cars have to have character, and if it doesn’t have character, it’s, it’s not really a car. Like, a lot of people think of cars as just something to get them from point A to B, and they should really be more than that.

So, if you don’t enjoy looking at it, and you certainly don’t enjoy driving it, it’s not going to be a pretty car. It’s going to be an ugly car no matter what, from the inside out.

Mike Crutchfield: Well, and that’s as an automotive enthusiast, it I die a little inside every day because so many people just want an appliance.

And so we just, the market gets flooded with an, with appliances, you know, other than the, the halo cars or, or some low production models, there aren’t that many truly sexy vehicles anymore

Nate Burton: that you can just walk

Mike Crutchfield: in and buy.

Nate Burton: They’re all fairly bland. Um, I, I think the Nissan 400Z is like the, one of the most recent cars that I’ve seen that actually [00:39:00] Has a fairly attractive styling to it.

’cause it seems like all the other car makers have just been trying to outdo each other with like way too many lines and, and giant grills. and then things Oh, well what, like, like every new BMW these days, the M three, M four.

Mike Crutchfield: Have you seen the, the picture that takes an X seven grill and puts it on the front of an E 30.

That’s,

Emily Fox: that’s

Nate Burton: a new F four. Yeah.

Mike Crutchfield: Well, and then,

Nate Burton: and then it has an evolution of that that takes the X seven grill and just makes it the entire car with,

Mike Crutchfield: yeah.

Nate Burton: I think the other thing that I dislike about current car design is that because of the popularity of SUVs, probably also due to the ever increasing safety standards and everything, cars just become bigger and heavier and like every car these days is kind of a crossover in look.

They all look like. A car that was put into a photocopier and put on [00:40:00] 150 percent zoom, like enlargement. I don’t call them crossovers. I call them compromises, you know, pretty much what they are.

Mike Crutchfield: So I’m going to be in the boat where we’re probably buying our first crossover here very soon. But it will be unique.

Uh, because we, we are looking at buying one of the first release ID force by Volkswagen. So. It is a crossover style. I mean, I’ve, I’ve other than, you know, the trucks and SUVs I’ve had for towing and the truck I had right in college, everything else I’ve owned has been a sedan hatchback or wagon I’ve, I’ve never owned something in the crossover segment.

Nate Burton: Dude. Once you go van life, that’s it. It’s over. Um, another car that I am really fascinated about and, uh, disappointed that like we don’t get a lot of cool cars here in the, in the U S. Being a kind of hatchback lover, you don’t get a lot of cool, small little cars. [00:41:00] The, the Honda e? Yeah, that’s it. Yes! The, are you familiar with the Honda e?

I am, and we just talked about this on the fourth episode of the drive thru. And my sister is a big fan of European hatchbacks as well, but she’s in the Fiat camp. And so recently there was a comparison between a rendering of Of the Fiat 126 electric and the Honda e and I hate to say the Fiat wins every day.

I don’t think I’ve seen that one. I’ll have to look it up. Brad might be able to find a picture of it. Oh, he’s got the escargot there, but I do think the Honda e is pretty cool. Um, I’d like the, the front grill headlight area. I like the fact that they’ve kind of made this the dashboard. And cluster kind of the seamless, uh, screen that goes across the dash.

Yeah. They, they tried that in the nineties, they tried that in the nineties with the prelude. So, you know, and then integrated the side mirrors as cameras, [00:42:00] uh, built into the screens on the dash. I think that’s pretty neat.

Mike Crutchfield: So I’m looking, I’m looking at a photo of the Hyundai right now. It looks like a movie robot from the early two thousands.

Like it has that front end. It looks like it belongs in Wally. Yeah.

Emily Fox: Yes!

Mike Crutchfield: Just straight out of the movie.

Emily Fox: It’s a friendly car. Children will love it.

Nate Burton: It’s different, you know. Uh, another cool, uh, EV

Emily Fox: is

Nate Burton: the Peugeot E Legend. Have you seen that one?

Emily Fox: It’s pretty.

Nate Burton: That one’s really cool. Yeah, you guys want a nerd on EVs, I gotta connect you with my sister cause she She goes hog wild on that.

When we do the drive through, it’s like, Oh God, there’s like a 10 of them we got to talk about, you know, it’s like

Crew Chief Brad: her favorite is the Bugatti baby.

Nate Burton: Two 45, 000 for a kid’s toy.

Crew Chief Brad: If you like what you’ve heard and want to learn more about GTM, be sure to check us out on www. [00:43:00] gtmotorsports. org. You can also find us on Instagram at grand touring motorsports. Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, you can call or text us at 202 630 1770 or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.

org. We’d love to hear from you.

Nate Burton: Hey listeners, Crew Chief Eric here. Do you like what you’ve seen, heard, and read? Great, so do we, and we have a lot of fun doing it, but please remember, we’re fueled by volunteers and remain a no annual fee organization, but we still need help to keep the momentum going so that we can continue to record, write, edit, and broadcast all of your favorite content.

So be sure to visit www. patreon. com forward slash GT motor sports, or visit our website and click in the top right corner on the support and donate to learn how you can help. Can [00:44:00] help.