Welcome to Spikes Car Radio. We have a terrific show for you. We do. I wanted to go through some of the stuff from last week just to... Zuckerman has to issue a correction here over his Alfa.
I didn't quite know. I don't know Alfas that well.
But someone, I guess you said the Alfa was a Junior, and it's not a Junior because someone told you it was a Junior.
Some Alfaisti. So, first, when I first posted about the car, I called it a GTV, right? 1750. And somebody said, 'Oh, no, no, no. The Veloce are only this kind of car, that kind of car is a Junior.' And stupidly, I believed this guy.
A rando. And then so I figured this guy, being an Alfaisti as he termed himself, knew better than me.
He didn't know better than me. And so that's why I always say to stop talking to people on the internet.
You got to stop. But I figured maybe I could have learned something. This is my first, you know, the first time I'm getting this car. I was going to say first. That's true.
But I had an Alfa for two minutes, but before... But you're looking for little pieces of gold and information. I'm willing to learn. Generally, I'm willing to learn.
But this guy, see, this guy sold me out. This guy [__] me over.
Why do you tell him? What do you... Why do you say his name right now?
I don't know. I don't remember his name. I mean, I think he was with goodwill. I don't think he was malicious. I think he was just misinformed.
Misinformed. Wow. Pretty good. All right. Well, now that we got that out of the way, I don't want to spend too much time on this, but Jerry McGovern from Jaguar has announced he is indeed leaving Jaguar. You just catch up to this story.
Hello, sir. Remember, remember they said he was fired and then Jaguar said, 'No, he's not. He's not leaving the company. He plans on staying.' Well, no. Now he's leaving again. I mean, if you somewhere teach PR out in the world of colleges or universities, this has to be the poster child for some of the worst PR handling I've ever seen in my life. This whole thing, this is a disaster that just continues to get... they had just... wait, they had been quiet for so... like for what months now? For two or three months.
And it was working. The quiet was working. Just be quiet.
Jerry, we love you, but you should have just slipped away and not said anything. And now here we are again.
It's not that he's the... he like kind of... I don't really want to comment on a past... but he never designed a Jaguar. He was appointed the JLR design boss.
So he got [__]... No, he just quit. He's like, you know, he's like old. He's done. He's retired.
Doesn't look old in that picture. What? It's good hair dye.
Yeah, guy's like 70. I don't believe he exists. I believe this is AI.
Is he... Is he the same as the... Jaguar is just on a whole another level. We're making fun of them and really they're... they don't exist.
No, they don't exist. They're like Fisker with his... This is a fake person. There's no guy named Jerry McGovern who wears red velvet blazers with a black turtleneck. Look, it's fake. It's clearly fake. A friend of mine who works at JAG was like, 'You know, we spent like $200,000 making that video and we got $1 billion worth of promo out of it.'
Well, there's no such thing as bad PR. By comparison, we spent $50 on Jerry's red velvet blazer.
It was a rental from Frier Talk.
He does dress like that. Frier Talks and we got $10 billion of free press from Spikes Car Radio.
So, who's laughing now? Yes. We're going to revive the Prior Talks brand.
I'm ready for Prior Talks. I've got no problem with Prior Talk. I like those guys.
That's good. Before we get too deep in the show, Jim Farley, the CEO of Ford is on. Here we are making fun of with Jerry McGovern. We'll have to ask Jim about Jerry McGovern. Get his take on this whole thing. Get his take on Frier Talks.
But he has a new season of his podcast. He always has the greatest guests in the world. Like I have pretty good guests. Not today, but most shows.
What do you mean not Jim? Not you guys. And not Muire and Nor Frier Talks and not that far. I love who's on the show. It's always the people I just want to... He's always got... you look at his lineup is always like Matthew McConaughey, Jimmy Fallon. He gets access. So, I'm excited to find out who's going to be on this next season of the show. One other program note to mention. And I don't know. Oh, you can see it right there in the background. There's an orange car right there.
Oh, you're poking it. Stop poking my car's... car. Oh, no. That feels so good.
Zuckerman and I have decided to fund this car by selling this car. And here it is. We've alluded to it. You maybe have seen it on the internet. It is our Zagato 356. And I know... big news. I know it hurts everybody. I could have brought it to the studio today, but it's god damn it, it's hot. I didn't want to drive it. It's really hot and I didn't have time. But we feel like... sucker that this is a... we have this special car. We just found this next special car.
Right. This is... this is okay. From inception if you recall we were flying down to beach.
No, we were going... we going to SC... were we going to Pebble or Scottsdale with?
We're going to Pebble and we were landing and I had been offered this car and I had passed on it. We didn't know what it was and then we were reading the Porsche magazine and they had seven pages on it and you said famously buy that [__] now.
And I forgot famously, but that's 10 year... almost 10 years ago.
10 years ago. So a decade of this car in our lives which is a pretty long time and it's a wonderful car.
One of nine from Zagato. The only one we feel that's properly sorted. I think maybe Ben Climber's... I think he went through the process of properly sorting too. We had Will Hoy go through this car.
Super 90 engine, which is the original chassis and car that it was built on top of. I think I remember the call with Will Hoy when he said he goes, 'Why go to 90? Why not 125?' I go, 'Yeah, sure. Go ahead.'
125 horsepower, 1,800 lb. It is the greatest gentleman racer you'll ever drive.
I remember clearly we pulled out of Cafe Lux one time. I was in my 93 C2 964 which is no slouch.
I would... you were... you floored it out of there and I could not keep up. I was flooring it. I was going through the gears and this thing was going faster than that car which I think at the time did what 0 to 60 in about 5 seconds about that. So this was... this is going... you're in a... in a what... 700 lb car going with 0 to 60 in 4 seconds really. You know I just remember the drive driving with Jerry and he's got his 550 and everybody's taking pictures of this car.
Anyway, this is the first official car that of... that Morris Solomon's is selling. People accuse us of not having a legitimate dealership. Well, here it is.
Don't accuse us. But you left... you part with your money.
It's the most important part. Okay. Zuckerman and I aren't handling the sale of this. Our lead salesman, Scott Ruo, is handling it.
Who's Scott Ruo? Who is Scott Ruo? Who is Scott Ruo? Right here is Scott's Instagram handle and you can DM him and ask him questions and if there's anything he doesn't know about it, he's going to punt to us and he'll handle it. Yes.
He's done some unbelievable work. He's got a network of people that you would not believe and we're going wide with it. Decided, you know, we love Bring a Trailer. We love these other sites. Supercar Blondie wanted this car. Everybody wanted this car, right?
So, Scott will handle all conversations. And... can I ask what the ballpark price range is?
Again, refer all questions to Scott.
It's not inexpensive this.
Oh, I imagine it's not, but it is not outrageous. But when you compare it to say a 4 cam or a 550... I mean that's really what I noticed with this car is I'm driving with Jerry Seinfeld. He's in a very rare famous... 550 is a fast... people are taking pictures of our car.
And by the way, I've driven that 550 and you know it's an amazing thing, but it doesn't drive like this. It does not drive. This is drivable.
What's... what's... what's a 550 worth these days? Like... No. No. No. It depends. But it would be some millions.
Millions. Yeah. And this one.
Yeah. I will comment. We did this one. This is the best looking one. We picked the right color aspect with it. You did too. Boy, the wheels, everything.
Turn key. Ready to go. I would recommend a better photo of it. But yeah, it's... Well, we were going to... Wait, I like that picture. That's... That was in Noblemen magazine. That was a nice... That's a nice photo. It's got a... It's interesting to me. Anyway, yeah, we'll bring it in.
So said the art dealer. I don't particularly care for that photo. I had an art gallery.
Okay. Don't start, gentlemen.
Or I've had over 20 years professional experience taking photos of [__] cars. True. But your own rules about you have your own rules. What do I... What would I know?
What would I know about anything? I don't know anything. I know you know nothing. Jim Farley from Ford is going to be on soon and he's a terrific guest. He's going to be telling us about his new podcast. Let's go to this first. I thought this was kind of interesting because it kind of falls into the comedy and cars category.
That's us, right? Well, how about this? Kramer's ass car in Seinfeld is actually a very rare experimental 73 Chevy Impala. Now, I know this car very well. We shot with this car a lot. And it was the one car that we used for Michael Richard's character Kramer in the show. Do you guys know it was in the Filly Jerry?
Kramer gets this car that's got this license plate by mistake that says Assman, but learns to embrace it when he realizes he can park in doctor spots around New York City and they think he's a proctologist, right? Well, Kramer's actual car is literally one of the first cars ever produced with functional airbag and only a thousand were made. An eagle-eyed editor at Motor Trend...
Not Johnny Lieberman, noticed that interior shots of Kramer's car...
I don't watch Seinfeld. Go ahead.
Show the steering wheel is fairly unique, larger design with four spokes. The standard Impala had a 73... in 73 had a smaller two-spoke design. This indicates that Kramer's car is fitted with an early version of an airbag called the air cushion restraint system.
Wouldn't the ACRS was included? Here's the weird part. Okay. The ACRS was included in about 1,000 Impalas manufactured in 1973 as an experiment.
They must have manufactured 700,000 in that year.
They were only available to government fleet customers for testing. This one was one of the first times a major automaker attempted to include an airbag into a car. In '74, Chevy made ACRS an option in some of their other models, but discontinued ACRS the following year after it was installed only on 10,000 cars. Chevy would not put airbags in cars again until '88. That's right, Johnny. Airbags weren't even legally required in the US until '98.
Lee Iacocca had a whole bonus chapter in his biography which was subsequently removed about how airbags will bankrupt Detroit and then really and then once it was mandated he was like Chrysler's the first with airbags in all their products.
Oh wow, look at that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Kramer's car was there for a little more than a tricked out standard Impala. Most models with ACRS also had reinforced chassis, improved suspension, and the same V8 that the Corvette had at the same time. Kramer's car.
And they, you know, I wish I could shed some more light on how this car was acquired, but it was through just one of those television car, you know, companies that provided cars to us. But they guessed that this 73 Impala was probably sold at a government auction and the company that leases the cars for TV production swooped it on up.
