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Imthishan Giado: Veteran UAE Automotive Journalist #4
18 Plays12 days ago
Anwar and I finally sit down in the same room together. On this episode, veteran journalist, Imthishan Giado joins us to talk about all things car.
We talk numbers in the region. What sells, what doesn't, and how are people using their cars? Are Chinese cars really THAT good? What's the state of automotive journalism today? And everyone's favorite topic, what separates car enthusiasts from mere mortals?
If you've got feedback, we'd love to hear it. You can reach us at:
Gulf.specgcc@gmail.com
or
https://www.instagram.com/gulf_spec_podcast/
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:00
Speaker
All right, guys, welcome to another episode of the Gulf Spec Podcast. Clearly, we've hit the big time. We now have a studio. We own it. We promise. No. um But more importantly, Anwar and I are actually in the same location.
00:00:14
Speaker
And along with us, we have Imtushan Gyadov. Close. We've been doing this the last 10 minutes. Do you want to actually pronounce name properly? Imtushan Giardo. It's on the record now.
00:00:28
Speaker
i was going to say Gallardo. but Gallardo is a great name. That's what we should go with. That's your new name. Imtushan Gallardo. The day I own a Gallardo, that will be an interesting discussion. You should rebadge it so it Lamborghini Giardo. Exactly. i like that I like the fact it's also one day. That's a... Yeah. that's like No, I mean, it it's a nice perspective to have.
00:00:47
Speaker
You have some interesting cars. I would love to say the story of one day of how I nicked a Gallardo and didn't give it back. That's episode two. Are you getting a first generation Gallardo or a second generation Gallardo? ah The first gen. Good man.
00:00:59
Speaker
The second Gallardo's don't look as nice. They make more power. The first ones are a bit more raw. But then if you have the Performante or the Superleggera, they are incredible cars. 5 liter versus 5.2. I think firing order. No firing order. Honestly, the early ones are lighter and more interesting. See? You can't go wrong.
00:01:15
Speaker
let Let's just kick off with this, right? We've known Imtashan a while. he is a veteran journalist in the UAE and in the Middle East and just all-around cool car guy. so But that's what we think of him.
00:01:28
Speaker
Imtushan, what do you want to tell us? Who are you? ah Don't get too deep about it. I'll try to keep it short. So um I started off basically as a technology journalist and did a very long stint ah writing ACN, which was Arabian Computer News, possibly the world, the region's oldest computer magazine, which was big deal back in the day.
00:01:49
Speaker
ah At some point, I reached the dream. I achieved Nirvana and I wrote for Car Middle East, which was and remains the best car magazine ever written in the Gulf with my compadre Shehzad Sheikh.
00:02:01
Speaker
Once that completed, we went off and started our own thing called Motoring Middle East and that became its own Colossus and that went on for about seven or eight years. During which I dalliance with everything else. We did a lot of work with the car meet side of things. of The Sahlawis, and etc. who did car meets and so on.
00:02:19
Speaker
We were early pioneers, I want to say, in that space. We were the people pushing through to make those things happen. I'm so glad that they're doing it much better than we ever did. We also did some early work with agencies as Anwar. As I call him, Alexandru. The artist formerly known as Alex.
Consumer Needs vs. Profit Motives
00:02:37
Speaker
yeah i I flipped it around. Went to Europe, went with my brown name.
00:02:40
Speaker
So essentially, we were early in the advertorial space and early influencing, but we had no idea what it was going to become and what it is today. We had idea it was going to end up like that. So apologies for everybody else out there.
00:02:53
Speaker
And these days, I write for Aurelien Golf Business Insight and pretty much anybody who wants a serious take on cars and the industry and the people who buy them. First of all, I, so I've been working a lot with business journalists and publications a lot in my current role right now because I do nothing related to cars.
00:03:13
Speaker
And that's where I started seeing your name pop up again. And I got so happy about it I was like, first of all, he's writing again. Second of all, i think ah if you've listened to the first two episodes, you might've noticed a trend that I actually care more about the industry and like how it functions.
00:03:29
Speaker
sorry seal Yeah, the the business side rather than the actual. Oh, yeah. The the steering feel on the 1945, you know, whatever. um but I care a little less about that. i do care about it, but less.
00:03:42
Speaker
So it's really good to see you writing for like hg a GBI, in my opinion. or A few other people that you'll see them coming up. But look, I think you need to be a driver. I think need to care about the cars. It's very easy to get lost in the weeds and get caught up in the numbers and the sort soulless side of the business, the corporate side of the business. So one thing I realized, because I was kind of the business side of motoring, at least, I was the guy who was always dealing and talking with the agencies and the car companies and so on. I realized what they do, what they want and what they want to achieve is often very much at end. on ah
00:04:19
Speaker
At odds, not at ends, at odds with what consumers want. Car companies want to make money. They just want to make money. Yeah, and but what do consumers want that? Other than Jaguar. Consumers want something that meets their needs. but And that depends from consumer to consumer. Asil, our good friend, he might want a car that feels great, looks great, makes him feel good. Somebody else...
00:04:42
Speaker
let's ah goes It goes hand in hand. But some people might want a car that really kind of is just a box on wheels that they can put their stuff in. Another person wants that, but it goes off-road.
00:04:54
Speaker
Another person wants that, but it takes their whole family up and down hills, you know, and doesn't need to go off-road. Each person has a different box of requirements. Car companies' job is to take that box and make sell that plus 10%.
00:05:06
Speaker
That's literally it. In between, they can be good corporate citizens. They can you know do lots of nice things for the world. They can make some exceptional cars. But really, first and foremost, make money.
00:05:18
Speaker
um My take today is I think we are entering a world where that has become everything, the making money part, and we are losing the art of it. We are losing the things that inspire.
00:05:30
Speaker
And that's a bit dangerous because when you start... only focusing on the money, only focusing on the Excel sheets and the bottom line, and you rub out the people who make cars special, um you are writing your own death warrant, very slowly but surely. And you leave yourself at the mercy of people like the the vast number of Chinese manufacturers, for example, who can make these things
Brand Image and Market Competition
00:05:54
Speaker
cheaper, better, and faster than you.
00:05:57
Speaker
And when I say better, I mean they can produce them more quickly. They're not necessarily better cars. Well, their appliances... Which is not i'm not known as as as a detraction, rather, but is in your equation earlier, that's kind of what most people are looking for in appliance.
00:06:11
Speaker
That's absolutely fine. A white Fortuna is always kind of a bit of a washing machine. But if you wanted a washing machine, maybe you can buy one for a bit cheaper from a brand that you don't care about. You don't need a Fortuna. You Jator looks better than a Fortuna and looks like it can go off-road. And since you don't go off-road anyway, it doesn't matter. Here's a good statistic for you.
00:06:28
Speaker
Land Cruiser, on his previous one, the 200, the big blocky thing, right? ah The new one, I don't have figures on it yet, but the previous one, ah the dealer commissioned a study of how many people went off road. Do you, Jen, get a guess?
00:06:42
Speaker
Of the owners of the total life cycle from 2007-
00:06:47
Speaker
Total, the total number of... Total number of like global, okay. No, no, UAE. 2007 2019. Self-reporting? Because that's also a thing, right? Because i think quite a few people... Well, they obviously are doing market research. So it's not they're not asking every one of the thousands and hundreds of thousands of customers. No, what I mean is that like a lot of people I think would would have bought that... would might be embarrassed about the fact that as you're ah clearly hinting at have not got off road, but that's a segue. Why don't you just answer the question? What's your guess?
00:07:18
Speaker
Well, I look, I, I, what's yours? 15. what's yours
00:07:24
Speaker
fifteen He should play poker because he'd win 5% exactly. Wow, well done. Nice. 5% of land cruisers. Only 5% of land cruiser owners go off-road, which means that's probably even less because that's people, what is off-road, right? it could be just going off a curb, going onto the beach. Who knows?
00:07:40
Speaker
But 5%. five percent That's it. And that is the king of all terrain or the hero or whatever they market it out these days. And imagine that. That's the patrols tagline, hero of all terrain. These taglines are special, but they do convey this. I think they, in other languages, have a certain poetry and symmetry to them. So I don't want to be difficult with that. So I've i've left the region and I've just come back now for the longest time period in a few years.
00:08:06
Speaker
And it's really nice to kind of come back and look at it from a new perspective. And I've actually I had a thought on the way here. And I think that's kind of i want to test what you're saying because I kind of have a different perspective.
00:08:18
Speaker
and don't have the figures to back it up. But what I've what I have noticed, though, is. um There are a lot of more people thinking about their image in Dubai in general. And I think one of the reasons for that is just that there's so many damn cameras.
00:08:31
Speaker
So if there's so many cameras, people don't mean it. Like there's just a more number of cameras. And if there are more number of cameras, more pictures being taken. If there's more pictures being taken, there are more things... there are more opportunities for the aesthetics to matter.
00:08:45
Speaker
um And I don't want to get into too much philosophy, but like, I do think everything, the brandification of life in general has happened and the car is in that part. And in the UAE, I feel like more than anywhere else I've experienced, people really care about their brand image.
00:09:01
Speaker
Um, the Chinese car does not carry yet the same brand image as legacy manufacturers. um In this market where maybe you have a different experience, but what what I'm suggesting is people really do care about their image and care more and more about it.
00:09:17
Speaker
That seems to be going into loggerheads with this idea of just a Chinese car that is an appliance that doesn't come from a brand that has an image it is portraying. do do you Do you agree? Do you disagree? How do you square that circle or is it wrong?
00:09:32
Speaker
I think Chinese cars, for the vast majority of people who buy them, don't have a negative brand image, right? They have a neutral and neutral, as every good marketer in their deck goes negative, positive.
00:09:46
Speaker
And for a lot of enthusiasts, let's just assume mega highisti generalization it's a negative. But that doesn't matter because that's not a lot of people. And they don't really make the decisions. Otherwise, Digitore wouldn't be part of the number four brand in the UAE. Is it a good car?
00:10:02
Speaker
it's It does
Rise of Electric Cars in the UAE
00:10:03
Speaker
what it says. Does it defend? I'm sorry, last well ah ah last one. i know big Does it defend? Because it looks like it wants to defend. It's a defender. I've gone off-road with it, and it's reasonably okay in the desert. It does the basics okay.
00:10:16
Speaker
um It's better than you'd expect, but not as good as you'd hope. Whereas the defender is a lot better than you think it is. But the defender also has limitations off-road. But both are clearly better than the Ineos Grenadier.
00:10:29
Speaker
That's a tricky one. It is good is a good car. I will say that. What? No. Hold that. I've spent two whole episodes telling people it's terrible. Flander. But but but but to to to the point you made earlier, 5% of buyers of land cruisers, how many G-Tour buyers actually care about that?
00:10:48
Speaker
But then back to maybe I'm saying. Probably not the But they're all giving that image of off-road. Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. So I think there's there's two two things to that. um One is... when you say it has a neutral brand image, it also, when you buy a Chinese car, because of the value for money component, you're automatically getting something that is aesthetically superior if you do not know anything about the brands or whatever, which a lot of people don't. Like it's already a neutral brand. It doesn't matter. Mitsubishi is a neutral brand. Mazda is a neutral brand.
00:11:17
Speaker
um and yeah And what happens is you get something that doesn't look like it's a stripper base model. What you get is something with big wheels, big screens, often leather or leatherette. And I think that makes difference. Sorry to interrupt you, which is not how the Japanese brands operate because there's very clear stratification of those brands. You get to see cars that are like really stripper Land Cruisers and then you get to see really blinged out VXR, or VX, blah, blah, blah things. But is that the dealer or is it the manufacturer? because What's the difference?
00:11:46
Speaker
Well, the dealer orders models, and the manufacturer will want to make a wide range of different versions of, for example, like the Mazda 6, a Lancer, or a Corolla, for example. Many markets, Corolla's a fancy car.
00:11:58
Speaker
But the dealer here will decide how they would like to spec their vehicles for this region. So is it a dealer decision then to decide to bring those models, and are they now suffering maybe... It is 100% a dealer decision. The dealer specs all the cars at every level.
00:12:13
Speaker
The manufacturer gives guidance on how they can be spec'd, but it's the dealers who order the actual cars at the end of the day. So the Japanese stripper models that have no brand appeal because they've got the small wheels or hubcaps,
00:12:25
Speaker
The XLs we used to say in the 80s, XL cars, because they were just, the XL, XLI was a little fancy, but xl is like. When they got injection. No, it wasn't injection. XLI typically meant things like ah you'd have, and I'm talking like really old, like Cresidas in the 80s. Oh, yeah, no. so and next An XLI Cresida, sorry, would be rear window wipers, but it would still be wind up windows. Yeah.
00:12:48
Speaker
That's literally what the I meant. That is 100% the exact example I was thinking of because my dad had a 93 Crescita and he was looking for the GL model in particular. GL had electrics. Yeah, the GL had electrics. It had painted bumpers and door handles and mirrors and it had nicer plastic hubcaps.
00:13:08
Speaker
Yeah, they're a different pop, but that was it. I mean, there were no options, but they all had the same radio, same number of speakers. So they was much simpler. Today, there's so much more stuff that goes into cars. So you can also really make differences. But then why have the same dealers decided to buy nicer Chinese cars? Is it a price difference? Is it?
00:13:26
Speaker
i would I would slightly counteract that. I would say there are some people who are bringing in fully spec Chinese cars. GAC is a good example. GAC brings in pretty loaded cars.
00:13:36
Speaker
But then the vast majority are actually mid to low in spec. Like MG sells probably the most, I would say, rental spec cars. And they're not high spec cars. And that's where the money is made. Because you're spending the same amount...
00:13:48
Speaker
It's a volume game. Yeah, it's a huge amount volume. All right, but counter example, right? MG7. Gorgeous looking thing. It's got the retractable spoiler. I don't know if it's any good to drive or anything like that.
00:13:59
Speaker
But even the base model has leatherette. It has a massive infotainment screen, like decently sized wheels, and comes in at about, like what, 100,000 dirhams or something around that point?
00:14:10
Speaker
If you want something similar from a competitor, not that anyone even makes anything in that segment anymore. Like what are we left with? The Mazda 6, the Camry and the Accord. Which I think is well over each. All those cars are over Or the BYD, Hanna, whatever was called. The Mazda 6 actually starts at about 85k or something. But it is a platform from about 20 years ago at this stage. is archaic. I drive one.
00:14:32
Speaker
i mean I love it. But... I love the 6. I would not have a word. I would have a 6 over any of these Chinese cars. 100%. And that's what I did. but Oh, actually, no, there were no... I think the options were pretty crap when I bought my car. A lot has changed since 2022.
00:14:45
Speaker
but But the 6 is still an excellent car and a pleasure to own. And I don't know if that's the same for these Chinese cars. They're just appliances which lose a lot of money when you go on to sell them. But people are happy with that deal.
00:14:57
Speaker
But I think that's what I'm getting at with the image-conscious thing, right? Like, if you're going spend on an MG7, it looks... um ah ah mg seven it looks the business. Whereas if you want a Honda Accord, you're out of pocket at least 123, think. And you just got an Accord at the end of the day.
00:15:13
Speaker
I think of- have a stigma problem with the Accord, actually. So I wanted an Accord really badly. But I couldn't quite stretch it. But I bought an Orion instead, which was very unusual. The V6 Camry. The V6 Camry from Australia. Australia. Yeah, because I lived in Australia a long time. And I was big fan of how Australians did their cars. They made nice chassis setups.
00:15:34
Speaker
um But the Accord was and is and remains a better car to drive than the Camry. It's closer now. But did it matter because of the volume? And now with the Chinese coming... The owners who bought them, at one point Honda was doing serious volumes, like 20,000, 25,000 cars a year.
00:15:49
Speaker
That time has changed quite
Chinese Car Manufacturers' Market Strategy
00:15:51
Speaker
a bit now. the the current The current accord is, if I recall correctly, in every market it's being sold in, pretty much selling well below expectation.
00:16:00
Speaker
that Not necessarily. It's not just the market shrunk. This is what I recall reading. It's not just that the market shrunk. It's that i think a lot of people do not find it was styled well enough. I think that's the exact feedback Honda has shared. I could be wrong, but I remember a report coming out that Honda feels like they misjudged not just...
00:16:20
Speaker
what the market, they misjudged what the market wanted out of that car. The current accord is in the current model on sale. Yeah. The hybrid. I'm trying to recall here my exact numbers. I will say that in the U S this sell by the bucket load, they do pretty okay in China as well.
00:16:33
Speaker
U S is their market now, so they don't care about anybody else essentially. But it, it underperformed in the U S as well. That's also a more expensive car now because it's more contented. It is a more expensive platform. It's bigger. They're, they've gone to a more expensive mod base model, which essentially they're trying to hybridize everything. They don't want to really do base folds. They don't want to do the volumes. They want to make it more and more expensive, similar similar to what Mazda is trying to do as a whole.
00:16:56
Speaker
So these cars are essentially part of the car maker's effort to slowly move upmarket because that's how you survive when you're a small car company. Honda is the biggest maker of engines in the world.
00:17:08
Speaker
18 million engines sold every year. Bikes as well, I guess. Everything. Generators, jets. Engines, boats, lawnmowers, car engines as well. But generally, they sell a ton of engines.
00:17:20
Speaker
And for them, the cars are a big part of that deal. But they have a very, very tight group that they focus on. And they don't really want to do anything unless they're very, very sure. but They're about to roll out the electric car. And I was in some discussions about it today. And that's going to be very interesting. In but this market? In this market.
00:17:37
Speaker
Howell, can we talk about that for a second? ah Talking about like in Chinese cars, electric cars in this region are a bit funny, aren't they? Coming from Europe at least. Like ha-ha funny? How are they funny? Very simple. This region was made on oil and they don't run on oil. They don't run anything like that.
00:17:52
Speaker
This is interesting. I actually had this conversation with a consultant to Adnok last year at some point. And people like Adnok don't care whether you drive a petrol or an electric car because ultimately the energy grid is still powered by the same thing. Powered by Adnok one way or the other. So even if you are charging your car, where is that charge coming from? You see what I'm saying? So it could be a natural gas thing. There are multiple ways to fuel the grid and they aren't necessarily disadvantageous to Given that we are kind of following the Chinese model, don't be surprised if we see a lot of electric recharge stations pop up over the country.
00:18:33
Speaker
The problem is right now there's a lot of confusion and Diva has got a lot of work ahead of it to make it work out. But people are thinking about it and how to do it. You need to have a Chinese-style grid and infrastructure, otherwise you don't get to that kind of penetration.
00:18:47
Speaker
But I think electric cars out here have gone well, well past the stage of being, should I? Maybe I should to being like, which one should I buy? So back i when I was buying my car in 2022, right, I had the Polestar 2 firmly on my list.
00:19:01
Speaker
But as you know, i commute very regularly between the by and Abu Dhabi. And the range anxiety, because the Polestar 2's range is not phenomenal. It's one of the older electric cars on the market right now. And I was like, I couldn't do it. and i just Why not a Tesla? Long range.
00:19:16
Speaker
I just didn't want a Tesla. Even back then... didn't you want a Tesla? The brand image, right? Even before went What's wrong with the brand image? Who do you mean? I see. He's not an elephant in the room. It's obviously Elon Musk is a bit of a fascist the moment. But yeah, he wasn't in 2022, right? But there was this whole stigma of it being like...
00:19:32
Speaker
the choice of like the douchebag tech bro, plus the- Not the choice of a Pepsi generation, essentially. Yes, it was completely the opposite. Yeah, and it was also, know, the roofs blowing off the cars, the build quality issues. Taxis. Do you remember when they first introduced them here for a long time? I'm not worried about that. Taxi cars never worried me. That's not a stigma that bothers me, right? I'd buy a Lexus ES tomorrow.
00:19:52
Speaker
um I would buy a Lexus ES. I would not necessarily buy a Tesla taxi. I think I've done a couple of rides in Model 3s. That is not a great AC. In the summer, I look at the poor beads of sweat on my taxi driver and I think, oh, yeah, but for the grace of God go I. And this gentleman has to spend all day a Is range, do you think, also? No, no, it's just the car is already uncomfortable to be Made in Texas as well, aren't they now?
00:20:15
Speaker
Yeah. And if you have to then say, okay, that guy is doing it for a living, I don't want to necessarily be commuting to Abu Dhabi and back in a car with bad AC. That's plain and simple because we are from the UAE, and that takes all precedence. That's the real GCC spec, isn't it? yeah That is absolutely right. It's always the AC. It's the AC. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you ask me to make the same decision again today, I live down the street from the NIO house in Abu Dhabi, right? Like, NIOs are quite well-priced. The range looks good. The cars look fantastic. you know I would consider one of those. the b
00:20:49
Speaker
One of my wife's friends just got the BYD seal. Looks great. Bad name. So a lot of people have changed in the Middle East. We've all changed. We're all a little whiter, thicker than we used to be, etc. gray etc And a lot of it is there is a small subject of enthusiasts, which again, don't matter, unfortunately, from a business perspective, who basically... i would love to debate that with you afterwards because i have a point.
00:21:16
Speaker
who want to keep things the way they were, and I love things the way they were. It wasn't always great for people that looked like me, but it was nice for have things the way they were. I have a big fan of vintage 4x4s and stuff like that.
00:21:29
Speaker
But a lot of consumers today, and this is pan-nationality in the UAE, are, as you say, brand image focused, but also very much... slightly hipster, slightly tritely iconoclastic. So what do I mean by that?
00:21:45
Speaker
They essentially say, I want a new car, but I don't want the car my dad had. So if my, the old generation were like, and see you can see where I'm going here. They're like, oh, I had an a Accord. My dad had an a Accord. His grandfather had an Accord. We are a Accord people.
00:21:58
Speaker
And now it's like, hell no, will I not buy an Accord. going buy this Chinese thing precisely because it's in opposition to what my dad did. I absolutely that was that's why I had a stigma against the Accord the Accord and the Camry are two cars I will not touch because they were my dad's cars like you know which is ironic because the today I think those cars are if we ever did a Radwood would be great Radwood cars if you get like an Accord with the pop-up headlights how rare is that or an Accord Radwood would be quite cool an Accord AeroDeck a very rare car but but you know Which AeroDeck are we talking about? There's only one AeroDeck. So you know the station wagons for the American spec cars? They called that the AeroDeck as well, apparently. Well, they're wrong.
00:22:39
Speaker
So you're talking about the two-door, the shooting brake. Yeah, they shoot the weird AeroDeck. But they're basically, those at the time, Honda was doing weird, weird stuff and ever remember the Moto Compo remember the Honda City Turbo 2 with the little motorcycle in the back NSX was them trying to beat Ferrari um i was it a pinnacle i I mean let's not get into the 90s boom on everything yeah the 80s boom really but yeah But they they had a certain way of attacking it and doing it. And that's, I think, what separates them from the likes of the Chinese.
00:23:09
Speaker
Because you don't get that dreamer quality from the Chinese brands yet. um That's the struggle. So find out what exactly they want to achieve apart from selling lots and lots of cars. So so hold hold hold on. I want to own ah ah go on that. And I think this because um my job now at the moment is being focused on motorsport.
00:23:26
Speaker
And Ishiro Honda was always a motorsport man to begin with. And I think a lot of these car companies were set up by people who have motorsport background, hence the the cars themselves having some so you know um more interesting driving dynamics.
00:23:40
Speaker
The Chinese brands do not seem to be set up by people with that same background. there's a lot more mobility focused. So i just find interesting that maybe the thing we're missing is the the simple fact that these companies were set up by men and women who wanted to solve a mobility problem rather than having, like, racing in their veins.
00:23:58
Speaker
Do you guys agree? I mean, I don't know. I feel like Hyundai found their way
Legacy vs. Modern Automotive Innovation
00:24:03
Speaker
eventually, right? And I feel like if you've seen some of GAC's cars, it feels like they seem to be getting the picture, you know? but I think it happens over time because there is...
00:24:13
Speaker
However small a market, there is a slight niche that is profitable in there. have Have you encountered a Chinese enthusiast car or a car that would be appealing to a driving enthusiast? And I don't mean off-road.
00:24:28
Speaker
Pause for a fact. I don't think there is one yet. I don't think there is a single car. That you've experienced it, I guess. That I have even thought about walking into the showroom. There's a lot of product. But it to me, it feels like shopping at Dragon Mart.
00:24:42
Speaker
There's 1,000 vendors, and they all sell the same stuff. And if you don't like this one, you go to another shop, you get the same thing with a different label on it. And it's only about price then, right? It's not about quality whatever.
00:24:53
Speaker
how you use it or any of that stuff. So I think right now the Chinese companies need to differentiate themselves and actually do the thing that they don't want to do, which is have a story, have a brand history, have engineers, have people that are basically okay, why are we building these cars apart from we want to make money? Because they can make money and they're pretty good at making money.
00:25:14
Speaker
And the way things are going, they will... They're already the biggest car maker in the world without doing any of the things that you've needed to do in the past, right? but All this legacy, yeah.
00:25:26
Speaker
But that only gets you to the point where you are able to make white goods cars. So that that allows you to... basically take over the world very quickly. But then you can't keep the world. Just like the Roman Empire collapsed, right?
00:25:39
Speaker
In the same way, the Chinese car companies will all slowly, and I think we're at that stage now because BYD is just under huge financial pressure right now, to essentially, they're all just cannibalizing each other now. Because they've all been subsidized, etc. Well, that's coming to an end, isn't it? that The report subsidies are going to sell because China is in financial trouble as well. So now you can't just keep flooding every other market with cars.
00:26:01
Speaker
You flood the zone, as the American conservatives would say. How long can you keep doing that? Who's paying for that? And somebody is going to stop paying for that. And then you have to survive on your own merits. And then the real value of these cars...
00:26:14
Speaker
Well, there's a couple of things, right? Like one is that, I mean, first going back to the enthusiast bit, I think GAC might be doing something. They've got the MPOW and now they've got the MPOW R. I'm curious, what is the what is the enthusiast aspect of the GAC MPOW? Because I've driven a lot of MPOWs. Not the MPOW, the MPOW R. I haven't driven that one, but I take the regular MPOW. the fact that it's R, it's more powerful, it's got like the bucket seats and the you know the body kit and everything. And I'm like, okay,
00:26:44
Speaker
It's an enticing price. The horsepower looks good. The setup, you know, it basically looks like the ah Chinese equivalent of a Jetta GLI, right? That's what, I mean, I want to say GTI, but it's not a hatchback. It's a great looking car.
00:26:58
Speaker
The GAC M-POW. I call it the GAC. The GAK MPOW and Alex or Anwar pointed out to me, I mean that would have been a different story, pointed out to me that ABT, the German tuning company, now does GAKs.
00:27:15
Speaker
Because there's a market, it's a director, ABT. It's a name, it's ABT. But driven the GAK. ah driven m power not the r did it make you gack uh it did not it's a perfectly fine car it looks amazing it looks like a civic type r it looks so aggressive and then you actually drive it and then you're like huh it's just a car it's literally drive the r right like i've asked about a test i wouldn't get your hopes up these are not companies with huge history of motorsport as you say or sporting cars they're going to take a long time and it's just not a focus for them
00:27:47
Speaker
Can i okay so Okay. The other thing is that with the Chinese cars, I think one of the things is there was this statistic that came out, and I think we talked about it on a previous episode maybe, that almost all of them,
00:28:04
Speaker
The bulk of their sales are done in China with a very, very small piece of their overall sales being sold outside with the exception of MG.
00:28:14
Speaker
MG does enough sales in Europe and in the Middle East two to have a more diversified. The majority of their sales are done outside of China. And it's the most recognizable brand because of its heritage. Because it's not a Chinese brand. I don't know if it's heritage. I think they just market and market. It's a badge.
00:28:30
Speaker
Most people do not care about Morris garages. They don't care about the MG midget. It's just, it has no, this is what Lotus was the dream of Geely to become, right? some A British Porsche.
00:28:42
Speaker
And they were hoping that they would also make the same volumes. But Norfolk, Hethel is not an easy place to tame, not an easy place to bring, ah and to heal, so to speak, and produce cars in that same number and quality.
00:28:55
Speaker
But you never know. Once they close the factory, they'll start pumping them out China. You'll get Lotuses all day long. And people forget. Apparently they're moving the production to America now is the plan to avoid the tariffs. And they've got the hybrid Emeera coming out.
00:29:08
Speaker
I mean, it's all a little bit five days, a day late and a dollar short, as the Americans like to say. it's They need more product. The Chinese are surviving because they have so much product. And people keep asking me, how about this Chinese car? How about that? and I haven't even heard of these cars.
00:29:23
Speaker
And they just keep coming out faster than we can even learn about them. And here's the wonderful cheat code about most Chinese car brands. And I say this, hope without a hint of malice. They're all the same. They're all pretty much the same formula. Two liter turbo, two liter turbo plus hybrid, six speed auto, some so dual clutches in the early days.
00:29:42
Speaker
And then they just have different boxes on top, different... The chassis are very similar. why They did that, right? that The whole two liter turbo thing, for example, they knew that ice was the ice war was already won by everyone else. Right now, they're coming out and they're putting out volumes and stuff.
00:29:59
Speaker
But there was no point in trying to engineer a better, superior ice car when the future was electric. So what they did is they focused on copying what they thought was the best format or most popular format or most, I guess. Most resolved. Yeah.
00:30:16
Speaker
And they took the two liter turbo engine. They thought that was the template. And they're like, fine. They From Audi, But they've been making them. So they've been making them. And they moved they move their best and brightest straight on to EVs where they are supposedly world leading. Yeah. I would say they are world leading. I don't think there's anybody. It's funny because Faraday Future is starting up in this country. And they're Boy, I really hope they loved them i do hope they do something because something because they've been they're older than Tesla. did you They've been threatening to launch a car for many years. They've 16 cars. They used to be owned by Evergrande though, right? The real estate company. That's the problem. I think the real good i think right now they have a huge stake in Abu Dhabi.
00:31:00
Speaker
honestly they predate Tesla yeah and they've sold 16 cars so this is not good they have everything to play for it was a point where they were they were poaching like sea level execs from BMW but like ah Faraday that was oh there's a lot of money in the world we live in a financial financial it's not easy Alex if you look at Anwar whoever you are um I think if you look at the the travails of Rivian the travails of Lucid especially which is always sweating have a Lucid showroom below my office and it's very empty
00:31:33
Speaker
Is it a very peaceful place to work if you were... Oh, it's fantastic. You walk in and need the dust. I feel bad. See, everybody did something a little differently. Rivian focused on that kind of rugged, outdoorsy, hipster thing, but they also marketed and marketed and they really it worked for them.
00:31:47
Speaker
They had a laser focus on who they wanted to get and they got there. I think they have a ah strong, loyal band of eva or evangeians evangelists. Evangelists. Evangelion is a very different show.
00:32:00
Speaker
Evangelists who are... absolute ambassadors for the brand lucid they focused on product to extremely high level but they made a lot of small mistakes which may be dooming them now because they focus on making an incredible product but they didn't focus on the marketing they didn't focus on their brand story and so here they are now right a little bit lost at sea And Tesla is, well, are you an Elon Stan? Have you always been an Elon Stan? Does it, quote unquote, just make sense to you?
00:32:27
Speaker
Then obviously you buy a Tesla. I have a lot of people who are car people who say, oh yeah, I have a friend who commutes to Sharjah every day. And he has a Tesla Model 3. And he loves it and he's excited about it. And I wouldn't dream of telling him that I don't like it. Even a little bead of sweat down his forehead.
00:32:43
Speaker
No, it doesn't care at all because it fills his needs. Again, goes back to the thing I said at the start. It fills his needs. If everybody else can make a car that fills the need as well as Tesla, it would be easy. but But to your point now, that if the Chinese are beating Tesla, it's only a matter of time, especially if they have brand, which is Elon, which is now, let's say, he has a mixed reception.
00:33:08
Speaker
No, he has a terrible reception with most people who want to buy an electric car. um It's quite funny that he's gone for the wrong side of the polar. Did they meet Elon? I will. go There's not much to say. I mean, we interviewed him in na with ah in Dubai for a summit years ago. This is when he was still semi-sane. um he's but He's always a little bit late. he's He's incredibly ADHD. And I will say that he's very dangerous in an interview because he will answer with the absolute truth.
00:33:38
Speaker
If you've asked him, have you had an affair, he'll say yes. you know He he will has no filter whatsoever. And I could see his PR absolutely hiding behind a pillar, hoping that this would just be over very quickly because you have a room full of people asking him questions and he would answer them absolutely directly straight. Unfortunately,
00:33:56
Speaker
The answer to the question, have you had an affair, is very much a question of is it a fact or is it not a fact? And that's his view of the world, if you get my drift. so But that built a brand. That built one of the world's most valuable brands. Because were getting what they and a kind of truth.
00:34:12
Speaker
And to be honest with you, I think he pushed through a lot. He didn't get enough credit for how much problems he solved, right? And how many things that he made simple that were complicated, like the charging infrastructure. Did he make it?
00:34:24
Speaker
Well, the idea of having the superchargers is a darn good one. And he pushed out there and he put the money into making it happen. And he initially, he also, what he did is opened up their proprietary charger to anyone else that wanted to use it. And a few few companies did adopt it as the
Brand Influence and Nostalgia in Consumer Perception
00:34:38
Speaker
standard. I think Nissan being among them.
00:34:40
Speaker
Not that they're a great example of anything. Nissan could have been so much. Nissan were early, early in the electric. I saw the first generation LEAF on the road the other day and I'm like, what a lost opportunity.
00:34:51
Speaker
You know they're race that car. They built one. They built a whole Leaf racing car. Fantastic. Yeah. What a marketing idea. um But it's just a marketing idea and that's where it stayed, right? It's like the GTR racing, etc.
00:35:04
Speaker
it was Formula E? Yeah. Have you been involved in that little bit? Know a little bit the story? They're Formula E champions now, drivers champions. They've sold a lot of Leafs. and They did sell a lot of Leafs. Leaves, do we call them Leaves or Leafs?
00:35:17
Speaker
I say leaves. I think we should leave this topic alone. um Yeah, do you want to? Yeah, so I i think my now, if if you're okay with Anwar, I think now might be a good time to switch gears because I think I very abruptly cut off Anwar in the last episode where we were talking about where he was actually getting very angry and frustrated about the demise of automotive journalism.
00:35:38
Speaker
Oh, is that why I'm here? Yeah. Yeah, so it's actually not. We wanted to talk to you about Chinese cars. We wanted to talk to you about the UA industry. And I think we've covered that in quite some depth. I would like to say that I think I'm hopeful, but I'm a product person. I'm not a numbers person. I regard the numbers as something that you should have because you should have the facts at hand.
00:36:00
Speaker
But at the end of the day, you have to throw caution to the wind and you have to buy cars that you like because you will not build passion through white goods cars. You absolutely will not. You can have a white goods car that you can have, ah watches one second, and you can have a white goods car which has incredible resonance significance to you. Like my family bought a CRV and it was the last car that my mom was ever taken around in. So I have a lot of love for that car, even if it's nothing special.
00:36:26
Speaker
But those station wagons are our childhoods, the places where we bled in, where we loved in, everything. Bled. Yeah. If you are, when you fell down, you follow you go home. so Okay. So I have a question then because I want to just kind of like bring this all back together.
00:36:40
Speaker
um Shapes and stolen valor. So i ah you made a very interesting point. Sounds like a brief. I feel like I'm going to be pitched for something now. It's probably a time shot in my bear. with this shirt yeah exactly you mentioned earlier that and I it's a very interesting point I've never thought of it it's not necessarily brand it's not it's not about brand image it's about image that people like to portray hence this idea of the G tour being a very popular thing and the Lanker everybody's buying it and nobody has too many bad things to say about it that's fine
00:37:12
Speaker
But the Defender had to build the the the image of the boxy SUV for then the G Tour to kind of... Stolen Valor kind of... yeah Do you see what I mean? That like even with your example, Mo, with the... What was the... what's the what's the I don't actually know. What's the the thing you... M-Pow, G-Pow? Gak M-Power.
00:37:33
Speaker
Gak M-Power. Okay. The shape of that car. I get it now. M-Power. Oh, my God. We debated... I did this on episode two. Just saying. Oh yeah. head is hurting. I should have got that. What does that car look like? It looks like any other sedan. that That's my point. other fast sedan. Exactly. Like talk about stolen valor. You design something that looks like that on Instagram gives you that kind of look, but it's stolen valor. And that and the, but maybe it's fine. I guess my question is that like,
00:38:00
Speaker
If it's all just about image and it's not necessarily brand image as much as image and again, just going back to the defender, not defender, maybe they don't need to build brand image. They can just kind of continue to sail for some time on the brand image of the of those things.
00:38:17
Speaker
Perhaps I can shine some light on this. Yeah, please. Let's put some nostalgia on that. You can do this and you can be very successful. I'll give you an example of something everybody will understand. Televisions. When you shop for a television now, you go to your local big box store. It's Sharif or whatever the German equivalent is, I suppose. Yumbo.
00:38:34
Speaker
Yumbo. Rolls off the tongue. yeah um And you just, when your TV gives up, you just go in and say, okay, what's the new one? How much is it? Is it... OLED, remember some buzzword, whatever.
00:38:46
Speaker
And then you go, okay, what brand? Then you start thinking, all right, do want an LG? Do want a Samsung? Or do I want a Sony? One of these, right? If you have less money, you're like, okay, whatever is cheap, but has the biggest size. So you don't really think about it. And you go home and you'll have a pretty decent experience. And you'll be like, oh wow, this TV has a lot of apps on it. You can do a lot of stuff on it.
00:39:06
Speaker
I had one of those TVs. And the problem is when those apps start working or when crashes, the whole TV goes down with it. And then you have a new, because everything's software interlinked. Whereas a TV that was just a TV and you've plugged in a VCR or whatever will never fail because it's just a monitor.
00:39:20
Speaker
Cars versus software-defined vehicles, eh? Exactly. But if, and I am an old person, it may I may not look at, but actually I do look at, let's be honest. um When you look at a Sony TV of the 1980s, this was made by people with passion.
00:39:35
Speaker
They were trying to beat what the British were not making in TVs anymore, the Americans were not making in TVs. The Japanese had a point to prove. that It was a bit of cultural pride.
00:39:46
Speaker
And the further they got into it, they all started to go little crazy. But they did stuff that nobody else was doing. And if you look at those TVs today, there some are very collectible, some of the CRTs, some of the products, some of the Walkmans. These are incredibly ingeniously engineered things that have survived over a half a century.
00:40:04
Speaker
And to use those things today, if you were to play a tape through them or play a record or use those speakers or those amplifiers, you would get a kind of analog soul, a presence in the room that will make you think, I couldn't get this from just pressing play on my Spotify playlist.
00:40:25
Speaker
I couldn't get this from just, you know, watching my normal LCD TV or whatever. whatever but these When you watch G.I. Joe for something on on those kind of the flicker, everything has incredible depth and quality.
00:40:37
Speaker
It's not perfect, but it has soul. Now, as time has gone on, we've forgotten all that. And we are going to absolutely forget what nice cars were like to drive because we're like, appliance, appliance, appliance, Right.
00:40:50
Speaker
That's where we're going. And in the same way, we've forgotten those TVs and they're all just, oh, here's my Apple TV. What does it do? I don't care. It just puts the thing on the screen. It just plugs in and does it quickly.
The Evolution of Automotive Journalism
00:41:00
Speaker
And it doesn't do it better than anything else. I think Sony is a good example of a company that still makes really high quality televisions that are probably advancing the game.
00:41:08
Speaker
And the Koreans also really in a battle with them, which is good. The competition is excellent. You know what you get from China in the TV space? Nothing. Nothing. I love my Chinese TV. But essentially the TCLs or whatever of this world, they're all just waiting for what Sony and Samsung did last year. And they'll just have it. They'll just take it and they'll put it out there.
00:41:28
Speaker
But they're competing on price. They're not competing on that stuff. For now? Yeah. I would argue that there there are there are sectors, like for example, mobile phones and um and electric cars, where they're actually leading. They they are trying new things. they are you know i liken some of the higher-end Chinese manufacturers.
00:41:50
Speaker
It reminds me of the Japanese bubble era. I've said this to you before. They're doing like the... floating car, jumping car. The jumping car, the one with the drone attached to it. Yeah, there's like there's the Xiaomi cars now where you can buy any number of Xiaomi modules. And we have quite a few Xiaomi electronics, my wife and I. And what we do, there's an there's an app that syncs to all of that. And you're like, wait, if I got the Xiaomi car, I could also add elements. They're little pieces. It's like um it's modular. It's like Lego.
00:42:21
Speaker
You can add like a dash cam or whatever, and then it's all controlled by the master. So there's some really interesting things that I feel like they're trying out. And maybe maybe i get what you're saying on ah more mainstream level, but I think there's they're they're also trying a lot of new stuff all those cars and all those things that do me, and I'll be harsh are just gimmicks.
00:42:39
Speaker
Like those Japanese cars that had a motorcycle. How often are you going to need to motorcycle and chase after somebody, get off your little city turbo and jump on your motorcycle? How often were you needed, you know, a DVD player or whatever, whatever the equipment was. The horrific navigation that you had from Japan in the late 80s and early 90s.
00:42:57
Speaker
How often would you need four-wheel drive clunking to the rescue in your Tursil, you know, which you had a four-wheel drive. Some of them even had little like transfer cases, whatever. They were nice gimmicks. But they were not the cars that made the legend.
00:43:10
Speaker
Those are cars that are sideshow. Now we're living in a world of sideshows, absolute sideshows. Whereas the cars that built the history of Honda are your Type R's, your GTR's, your RX-7's, cars that when you strip all the hootenanny and gimmicks aside, twin turbo, this, you know, pop-up headlights, gimmicks.
00:43:31
Speaker
I love pop-up headlights. Let me finish my point. When you strip it away, there is substance. There is something underneath that you cannot describe, but that draws you into it every single time, and that makes you buy another one.
00:43:45
Speaker
People often ask me, when i I had a DeLorean, no need to say more, but people ask me, was it back to the future? Yes. 100%. The second question I get asked is, gullwing doors? And I said, and hopefully I can swear. Let's find out. where We shall.
00:44:02
Speaker
I don't give a damn about the Gullwing doors. Oh no no, sorry, hold on, we have recording. I re-edited in sentence. um I don't give a damn about the Gullwing doors.
00:44:13
Speaker
It's of the least importance ever. It's more important to other people, but I don't actually care about it, but it made me feel something. And that car had something that no car ever won ever again will have something like that. And I can talk about it for hours and hours.
00:44:26
Speaker
But that's what those Japanese cars had. That's what the Korean cars, like the N series that we're having from Hyundai, et cetera. Those are great cars. 60s muscle cars. 60s muscle cars were all absolute, absolute something that you can't ever, ever get again.
00:44:44
Speaker
British 50s cars, Italian fifty Yeah, but these cars that are appliance cars, why do I say it's important? You need to drive them. You need to subject yourself to a little discomfort.
00:44:54
Speaker
I don't want to keep but too short. I don't ramble too long. But what's the number one thing people ask me when they want to drive a new car? and or a bang on the table because I have mics. I'll do it. Fair enough.
00:45:06
Speaker
Most people are like, is it a smooth car to drive? Smooth. Everybody's like, want a smooth car. And you say, how was the car? They want to not feel the car. It was a smooth car. What's a smooth car? Defender. No, they'd hit the mic.
00:45:16
Speaker
What's a smooth car? Land Cruiser. Everything is smooth. You know what's also smooth? Pouring toothpaste on yourself. Cover yourself in butter. If you fly down the road, you will be smooth. But you're not actually getting anywhere.
00:45:27
Speaker
The whole point is making a car smooth is easy. Making it interesting making means making it a little bit uncomfortable. Being a little bit out of your comfort zone. And then you start to experience something you go, hang on, maybe I like that.
00:45:39
Speaker
Honda is a good example. I come into Honda a lot. Because the Type R's, I don't know if I describe them for everybody. They are uncomfortable. not particularly talky and hard work.
00:45:50
Speaker
But when you get there, there is a reward that's like anything unlike anything else. That is what you describe about motorsport. That sense of being at the limit, being in your own personal limo every time you're back out of the garage.
00:46:02
Speaker
Or if you are in an AMG, you are a high-powered businessman on your way to ah rendezvous with somebody in Amsterdam, you know? On the Autobahn. On the Autobahn. You are just literally bullying everybody out of the way. If you're a Nissan Patrol, the music is blaring. You only can be in the Middle East.
00:46:19
Speaker
You see, these images flow. When you're driving your Xiaomi Su7, what is the image? The image that I see on their marketing is a blur of color and somebody standing in front of an indistinct space.
00:46:30
Speaker
That indistinct space is the entire problem. What is actually coming out of the mist? Nothing. The myth, the myth, the myth. There is no myth. There is no story. And if you don't know what a good car looks like, or if a journalist hasn't told i'm giving you a segue here. if If somebody hasn't built that storyline for you, then but how will you know what quality is like?
00:46:53
Speaker
On that note, Mo, you wanted to, before I took us on a detour. Yeah, thank you very much, by the way. You cut yourself in butter and just slid on. Exactly, I slid down the road. now we've had this very smooth segue. yeah um So I think, at the end like as I started saying, at the end near the end of the last episode, um Anwar started talking about, very passionately started talking about how,
00:47:17
Speaker
um Automotive journalism was dead. I think you officially declared it dead. as That hurts. No, I mean, I'm looking at it, but the magazine isn't doing terribly well. I think if I could really make it really short, because I'm conscious of time as well. Thank you. I can see the gentleman here checking. yeah We're all okay?
00:47:37
Speaker
Perfect. um Opinion is something that I feel like is dying, unfortunately. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, that's what that's my actual issue, that I miss a bit of something.
00:47:49
Speaker
Are you talking about conflict? no I'm conflict. Or opinion. i Like everything's good or great these days. It's it's opinion. I miss ah miss hearing people talk about opinion.
00:48:00
Speaker
And there was ah there was a fact I heard about that the number of people that work in PR versus the number of people who work as journalists and that proportion moving far. It's punishingly small. Exactly. Well, there's no more money in this. Like I'm i'm the only idiot that still buys these stupid things. And I really do. And they're very expensive, but I very much enjoy it.
00:48:16
Speaker
But there are... I've decided downstairs to give up on this one. Why is that? This is Top Gear magazine. And no one that matters listening to this. But there's no friction. There's no there's no conflict. there's no There's no opinion. Everything's good or great. It's so shit.
00:48:34
Speaker
And i'm i'm I'm so bored of it. And I wonder, again, maybe, Mo, you want to wrap this up. into a But what do you think? i think I think that, yeah, I think where we arrived at this point, it'd be interesting. And this is where we I stopped him cold in the middle of a sentence in the last episode saying, we need to talk. to Yeah, it was pretty harsh. I listened to it yesterday and I was like, could have been nicer.
00:48:56
Speaker
But um we wanted to get an actual journalist to come talk to us because I think what happened with it it was last episode, we talked about resto mods a lot. And we were talking about the eccentric Diablo.
00:49:08
Speaker
And I think that was the one that set me off on Top Gear and possibly when I told him about it, pushed him over the edge as well, is they kept saying how everything was nice, even when it wasn't. like And I'll come back to my favorite, favorite like target. The Ineos Grenadier Quartermaster is has no payload, has no towing ability, but it's nice.
00:49:29
Speaker
And why is it nice? Charming. So, and I think this is where we're getting at is like you've you've moved to this like post journalism influencer kind of driven. PR.
00:49:40
Speaker
Yeah. And everything seems to be nice. So how are people making decisions anymore on what a good car is, which you so passionately and vividly described for us? ahead.
00:49:55
Speaker
I know, right? you up. A little bit. um They ask the salesman. And the salesman, if he's a nice person, will sell you the car. And if he's a bad person, will send you in a totally different direction. I'll give you an example. I bought my Type R. And i I should know all the tricks of the trade.
00:50:13
Speaker
I'll tell you why. I bought my Type R because I was mad. I went to Toyota. I want to buy a Supra. I like BMWs. I don't really give a darn if it's a BMW underneath. ah I just had a BMW sedan manual, which was fantastic.
00:50:26
Speaker
Super tuned up. And I was thinking I'll get a Supra. It does the same thing. It looks great. It suits my image at this age in my life, my brand image. Midlife crisis. Exactly. But no, that was my convertible. I had was now 29. So I had have a constant series a midlife crisis.
00:50:39
Speaker
But I would like a nice Supra because it would suit the sort of loose lean image I'm hoping to cultivate in my old age. However, the person at the counter who paid no attention basically asked me, and this is a quote that I shall never forget.
00:50:52
Speaker
ah She asked me, bless her, are you buying this for your son? And I said, no. Do I look like I am gifting my son a brand new Supra? You must have been dressed very well. ah No, I was dressed like an absolute slob. Because I was trying i was asked to decide, do I want to buy a new Prado or a Supra?
00:51:10
Speaker
And she was like, well, decide. Which one do you want? And Supra, oh, it's your son. And i was like, well, you've completely misread the situation. But that completely killed the car for me, even though I know it's a good car.
00:51:21
Speaker
And I literally walked across the road to Honda and said, give me what you got. And that's what they had to wrap up with the Type R. Of course, it is a great car, but that's the line. That's how single simple the line can be.
00:51:33
Speaker
And that's me who knows how this trade works and how they're good salespeople and bad salespeople. there how What chance a regular punter have? They don't know what good journalism is anymore. They don't know. It's all gone.
00:51:47
Speaker
And I feel kind of partially responsible because there was a point when we were doing motoring, at least when we realized that financially, this is not going to work out. We cannot make ends meet. So we started working by manufacturers to create advertorials. We were very diligent.
00:52:02
Speaker
about saying this is branded content. Not in in the way of actually labeling it in those days, but making it very clear it was an ad. As clear as you can make it, waving stuff virtually in the air.
00:52:15
Speaker
But at the time I did think, what if somebody takes the guardrails off and doesn't try to make unclear, this makes maybe they try to hide the fact that it's an ad. Maybe they try to say it's a review. The number of people who do stuff now and they say it's a review of a car, but Top Gear is a good example. The Lamborghini Eccentric is a good example.
00:52:37
Speaker
It's a review of a car. No, it's not. Have you driven the car? No. Do you have an opinion on it? Have you been asked by a legal team to vet your copy? Which happens. Happened to me with Singer. So a lot of these companies will basically not allow you to honestly evaluate the car.
00:52:51
Speaker
And if you can't do that, you can't really review it. You're just marketing. And if you're just marketing, why would you read me? People watched us and read us because we were funny, because we were entertaining.
00:53:02
Speaker
But I knew... how far you could push that emotionally as a person to be on like that. And I now look at YouTubers in the same space. It is incredibly difficult to do that 24 seven, whole years around. They all burn out.
00:53:15
Speaker
Every single one of them burns out. And then they either start a gang of other smaller YouTubers and they Ponzi scheme their way up. So they're making money out of it. Or they just burn out and transition like Doug DeMuro to like, I'm doing cars and bids now. Good for him. Smart guy. He's a great GT. Smart guy. They build a following and sell a product afterwards. That's what ends up happening. Yeah.
00:53:34
Speaker
But the actual, there are people who have to write, and I'm one of them. We're journalists. We have to have an opinion. I review films, as anybody who watches my Instagram knows. And that is the last bastion of, you can't buy this.
00:53:45
Speaker
You can't buy my review of anything film. But cars now, nobody cares. Nobody cares about good review, bad review. They just want to know, There's no more subtlety. Is it smooth?
00:53:58
Speaker
Is it smooth? and jesus Will it upset me? Look at this. Will it make everybody, if you're, for example, of Asian descent, will it make your entire family happy? If you are individual, you've just landed from Europe and you've come from London, is it better than an I-11? Is it like a Golf GTI? These are only two questions that ever seem to matter, Right.
00:54:17
Speaker
Evo magazine used to have a lot of stuff. They keep talking about it Every time I read it, and I'm still an avid reader, I really enjoy the enthusiast perspective. i am one. um And every single time I read one of these ah group tests, which I think is one of the ultimate space, I love it. You put head to head, whatever happens, happens.
00:54:33
Speaker
Every single time, the the beginning paragraph always says the same thing. 20 years ago, there would have been 20 of these things in this segment. Now, there's barely any. And do you know what's in the front cover of this Evo? And this isn't this isn't like one of these historical mags. There's so many of them, right? Magneto and Octane, all that nonsense. Which are all great fun to read, honestly.
00:54:50
Speaker
This, i hope this is there. This is just a load of old cars. they aren't There aren't any cars anymore. These are modern classics. This is? Brody, hell. No, no, they've done it from the 80s, the 90s, the noughties, and now they're into the teens.
00:55:04
Speaker
But they've kind of run out of stuff to do. So all they're doing now is going and be like, well, let's look at some old cars. Maybe that might good. Because what are you going to review? Yeah. If you were... a product reviewer that was doing, oh God help you, the Xiaomi SU 7, because the new i valey's new iPhone came out this week, right? And I used to be such a tech person. I'd watch the entire keynote and now I couldn't care less because nothing changes. It's a little camera bump here, some ridiculous feature there. Oh, it does landscape this now. Who cares?
00:55:33
Speaker
But when I was a product reviewer, all you could do, and I used to review product, all you could do was, oh, here's this product. Does it do the thing? OK, it did it. Great review.
00:55:45
Speaker
Did it not do it? Send it back. Get another one that did do it. And then say, great review. It was not reviewing. That X factor of good reviewers were like, what is it like to actually, on the subjective stuff, that is way more than, objective stuff of does it work is obvious. It has to work, right? Nowadays, everything works, actually. Everything does work.
00:56:03
Speaker
Your Chinese car, if it doesn't work, just get another one. No big deal. But if your British car didn't work or fail to proceed, that was the entire point. The failure to proceed of a Jaguar is legendary. I had two Jaguars when I did the Millimelia.
00:56:18
Speaker
And both E-types, both of them failed. Lucas, Lucas Electronics. How spectacularly did they fail? so And I still talk about it to this day, that it was just such a magnificent thing when they both failed. And it was just dramatic. And we used Porsches after that. Porsches are great.
00:56:36
Speaker
Well, the Porsche-fication is a real... of The Porsche-fication... Call it the podcast. Yeah, I know. no well i mean I'm not allowed to talk about that. Unward talked me into subscribing to the Intercooler, right? After I sold him on how good Andrew Frankel was, as because I grew up reading Frankel in Autocar.
00:56:50
Speaker
and And, you know, it's still beautifully written. Like, he's he's so good with words and everything, But then he's good with the words. He is good with the words, Andrew. Yeah.
00:57:01
Speaker
But then the the thing, the problem I'm running into with that subscription right now is there's very little actually being reviewed, right? And I remember. but I'm all into cooler subscribers. So what am I missing on By the way, it's always like the 911.
00:57:15
Speaker
then i get this then i i The is a 911. The only thing I read in recent history that got me interested was they did the review of the new Alpine electric hot hatch, right? The Renault 5-based one. Because nobody's making cars.
00:57:29
Speaker
And it takes me back. What you just said about product and like and cars to review and things and things that don't get reviewed anymore or whatever is I remember in the 90s, auto car...
00:57:40
Speaker
for months waxed lyrical about the Peugeot 406 because it was such it was a regular family sedan that apparently drove like the gods engineered it you know like ah the ride the handling and the i mean it it became a centerpiece of ronin the movie right like the end chase scene the 406 and you didn't doubt it for a second because you'd as a car enthusiast you'd read the reviews you knew the lot four six yeah you You knew the regular ass 406 was this gem of a car to drive, even though I've never driven one.
00:58:15
Speaker
But now tell me that about any like what regular sedans do we have? The Fiesta is dead. You know what I mean? So you hit a point there actually. with the Ford, with the Peugeot, DNA.
00:58:28
Speaker
So those companies, they all had like Richard Parry Jones, famously at Ford. I was going to say that the 50-yard handshake, thank you. Parry Jones was a great guy. There was a wonderful gentleman for Peugeot, I forget his name, he's very French. Ah, Le Quiment? he was the designer for Renault. I met him, nice job.
00:58:46
Speaker
ah power Thierry somebody, I think he was. But essentially, yeah, not Hondry, he wasn't doing cars. When you bought a part of that brand story is that the cars had a DNA.
00:58:59
Speaker
So every car you did from the smallest to the biggest, like Mercedes, all have a similar DNA. They're a little bit like we have lots of money, and but we're subtle. We're subtle. That's going away. Mercedes no longer subtle. the Mercedes is crypto bro special cars. Looks like a strip club in every single one. Exactly.
00:59:17
Speaker
But a BMW, Whether you drove a 320i or you drove an M5, they all had a feel. And anybody, mostly the wonderful gentleman from the Levant who drove a 320i, dreamed of his M3 and M5, but he loved it because he could feel it. And when he finally got his money and got that M3, he'd be like, yeah, I remember from that car to drive, there's a straight line.
00:59:39
Speaker
i The newer class, man. We had this discussion on Instagram, man. So when I bought my Mazda in 2022, I was reflecting on my one of my first cars was a 2005, bought a brand new, first generation Mazda 3.
00:59:56
Speaker
And you remember, those were fantastic cars to drive, right? For what they were. Like the handling, the feel, the stability. Like they were great. Underpowered as hell. Mazda never made sparkling engines, but the handling.
01:00:09
Speaker
It's still there in the Mazda 6. And that's when i when I went to test drive the 6 over some of the other cars, some significantly more expensive cars as well, like the Genesis G70, I think it is.
01:00:20
Speaker
And I walked away still wanting the 6. Never mind. huh But you don't know why. It's something. but The feel was the same as the 3. The feel was the same. And it had a special sound. And then you start thinking, what is the feel?
01:00:34
Speaker
Is it the feel just the way they've tuned the handling? Okay, you can copy that, which the Chinese have done very well with all their cars are copies of JLR handling, it's etc. It's not rocket science to figure out how to set up suspension geometry.
01:00:45
Speaker
But there are other things that are not so easy to copy. For example, the way that you sit. You sit very low in a Mazda. It's like a cockpit. The controls form very easily to hand. The engine is very talky.
01:00:55
Speaker
that Everything is in your eyeline. When you sit in a Mazda, after a while you're like... actually like driving this, but because I'm seated right, I'm looking out right. The controls are not complicated. They have limitations. They have the weird stuff with the Apple CarPlay, with the controller and things, which they find. But I actually like it, but a lot of people don't.
01:01:12
Speaker
But then when you drive a Mazda, you're like, I like this car, don't know why. Because you're set up by people who enjoy and love driving. home Zoom, zoom. zoom meant something. yeah zoom zoom They don't do great engines. and They never make great engines.
01:01:23
Speaker
they just and It's not their thing. It's not Vroom Vroom, it's Zim Zim. But Peugeot, etc. Peugeot did that. BMW did that. So, in in this world, did did the death of journalism help contribute... I'm calling it the death of... It's really good to make exaggerating statements in these kind places.
01:01:41
Speaker
Did the death of journalism help accelerate the death of a good car? Because Richard Perry Jones, that you remember that that was that was him listening to journalists at the time of the 90s. What's his name? Kevin Hackett.
01:01:56
Speaker
ah Very famously, his favorite car of all the time. but was it Which Escort was that? Was it the Mark V? That was so bad that it nearly sunk Ford. Yeah, the one right before the Focus. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, but they made one of the greatest cars ever, which was the Escort Cosworth came out of that car.
01:02:10
Speaker
Because it was so bad that they came with something that was largely a reskinned Sierra Cosworth. And then did the RS2000. They did some good cars. The RS2000. But because they cared about the response. The journalist, that's my point. yeah Not just journalist, the journalist then led to people.
01:02:25
Speaker
Clarkson had a very outsized impact because he was just not very complimentary about that escort except the cause worth.
Charm of Classic Cars vs. Modern Vehicles
01:02:31
Speaker
But as a whole, people were kind of, they bought that car because it was the escort. and After a while, they're like, hang on, but it's not like the escort I love. Like you're just not trying anymore.
01:02:39
Speaker
And people start to respond to that. If you drive a Mercedes today or some of the lesser BMW, BMW I think is still trying, but it's very hard under all the Russian nightclub nonsense. But all of their cars are not as special. Whereas if I drive any 70s Mercedes or 80s Mercedes, they feel that that bank, water bill quality. They have the clunks, they have the noises.
01:03:01
Speaker
They feel like baby Rolls Royces. But even more special, because Rolls-Royce, you're like a porcupine. The prick is on which side, inside or outside, right? But with the role with the Mercedes, you're like, oh, I'm good.
01:03:12
Speaker
I'm in a Mercedes. But now you're like, but which Mercedes are you in? A35, A250? Then the number starts to matter because you know people are looking. But if you're in an old Mercedes, you're like,
01:03:23
Speaker
I don't care. I could be in a 230. I could be a 280. It doesn't matter. The baby Benz was designed to not be a baby Benz for that reason, right? It was still designed to be a Mercedes. Whereas the cars that you're getting today, they're dumbing that down.
01:03:35
Speaker
So A250 will not drive anywhere near as nice as an E-Class will. An E-Class will not drive. it It's very, very satisfied. Porsche has been very, very good at that. Porsche will give you what you want.
01:03:47
Speaker
as long as you understand how much you're going to pay for it. And if you want this much, you'll get a Carrera T, which will be a really nice car, which will be enough car. But you'll still be looking at the GT3 and going like, I wish I had the GT3.
01:03:58
Speaker
you know I absolutely do not care. Nobody makes a car that is... in the immortal words of somebody from some anime a long time ago, fire everything.
01:04:10
Speaker
Nobody goes, let's just give it everything. The escort, Cosworth, is everything. They're like, okay, we're gonna make a Ford that is a rally car, and we're gonna give it to people who know how to make rally cars, and it's gonna be fast, and it's gonna be a legend. Oh, and by the way, it's gonna look absolutely insane.
01:04:28
Speaker
Civic Type R, last GTR, everything, every, everything. That's where the Japanese cars are going up in value because people are like, you know what? They put everything into this car. They didn't leave anything on the table. So i have I have a brand which I admire more than any other at the moment, and it's Toyota.
01:04:44
Speaker
Because I think the 86, I owned mine for 12 years. i have the We both had one. The Yaris GR, the Supra, the Land Cruiser. Corolla GR.
01:04:55
Speaker
Grola GR, I genuinely think that deep... And I think it's because there's a Russian expression, right? The fish rots from the head down. But I think it could also be seen from the other perspective. Like the thing works if the if the the top of it is you know healthy.
01:05:10
Speaker
And I think a key... like a Kia Toyota, thank you, make sure i get his name right. the fact is The simple fact that he was trained to understand how a car is meant to make you feel is the reason that they're they're in this position. And how many of these car companies are no longer being run by car people?
01:05:27
Speaker
And is that a consequence? To go back to the earlier part of our discussion, yeah, it's a lot of people who like the maths, who like the numbers, who don't want to drive cars. You need to have people who are crazy and like to drive cars.
01:05:38
Speaker
Tim Apple versus Steve Jobs. I mean, that think that goes back to... Product guys we sorry product guys versus someone who does logistics. It's always a product. At the end of the day, you can number your way to kingdom come, but you need to have the product. And if you don't have the product, you'll get found out. Why has Jatour done well?
01:05:54
Speaker
Product. Is it a particularly great product? Well, we'll see when the T2.5 or whatever, the T3 or whatever, if people are willing to come and have another one. That's the longevity of it. But our initial first blush, most people are like, yeah, I'll have a go at that. And they seem reasonably happy because, you know, everybody else seems to like it as well.
01:06:13
Speaker
But down the road, I don't know what happens. Is there a road? I mean it.
The Future of Manual Driving
01:06:20
Speaker
The thing I'm thinking about is that but to greater or smaller degree, most of us have worked in cars are around cars.
01:06:28
Speaker
Is there a career path moving forward in 10 years, 20 years? I don't know. In journalism? In the the car. The car, yes. 100%. Mobility will be around for the rest of my life. Mobility, though. Yeah, but that's point. There's a difference between mobility and cars, right? Yeah, but cars will be around.
01:06:45
Speaker
Cars will be around. There's too many roads. Or they may be, you know, I'm more worried about things like Waymo because Waymo actually makes it work to a reasonable level. And it doesn't matter. Once people start thinking, I don't want to drive, they don't even want to use manual gearboxes now, right? So they really don't want to drive. Kind of over them. Exactly. But you didn't grow up with them.
01:07:06
Speaker
I did. But did you, to the point, did you? You did. my So first of all, I'm a lot older than I look. Second of all. In your early 70s.
01:07:17
Speaker
Yeah, in your early 70s. But the second thing is up until the 2000s, every single car my dad ever owned was a manual. But you? You're answering my question. i My first car was a Del Sol manual.
01:07:31
Speaker
Second car was a Mazda 3. Oh, no. It was a Corolla, also a manual. Mazda 3, manual. Peugeot 207RC, manual. Toyota 86, manual.
01:07:42
Speaker
And then what happened? Then first of all, there's not a lot of manuals available. Second of all, I just didn't want to do it anymore. So it changes.
01:07:53
Speaker
It changes. Why does that change? And I don't miss the experience. I'll say that well. I'll tell you why. and i I'm going to be slightly aggressive in my response. If that's why you're both of the table. I think that's why on both sides table.
01:08:05
Speaker
Yeah. You needed to have an inspiration. My father had manuals his whole life. He doesn't drive manuals anymore. And he doesn't know why I do. But there was a Frenchman who I had to fix a computer for.
01:08:18
Speaker
ah His daughter kept, every other week he would come back. He's lovely guy. He was an architect in charge. I'm not sure if he's not anymore with us anymore. um He would come into the office and say, I need you to fix the computer. And I get the computer back and he'd be completely blank.
01:08:33
Speaker
the software system would be like all messed up. And I was what are you doing to this thing? But he's like, I don't know. Just try and fix it. So I would charge him and I feel like bad. I'm like, dude, like what is going on with your computer? Because I'm not doing anything here.
01:08:47
Speaker
And he's like, okay, you need to come home with me and maybe it will make sense. So it's two stories in one to finish off our little chat, which have been wonderful. The first story is when I went out of the shop,
01:09:00
Speaker
on the street was one of the prettiest cars ever seen. I thought it was a Ferrari, but it was 406 Coupe. One of the prettiest. It was a manual three-litre V6. Up till that point, cars are just cars to me.
01:09:12
Speaker
Cars are getting out, going places, and for a lot of people, their mobility, in the purest sense, getting away from your parents or getting back to your parents, depending on where you are, but it's just freedom and the open road or the the wilderness.
01:09:24
Speaker
But that 406...
01:09:27
Speaker
We had we had went back to his house in Sharjah. We get into his car, and we leave Bank Street. I would call Bank Street. You know, Khalid bin Walid Street, right? Absolutely redlining it every roundabout, every signal, all the way back to Sharjah. I've never got to Sharjah so quickly. This is probably 98 or 99.
01:09:46
Speaker
And i was hanging on for dear life. There's a bright red interior because it was actually made by Peneferina, that car. And I will never forget, as long as I lived, the noise of that car, the grin on his face, the way he shifted gears, the way he dived into roundabout shouting mud at every single person who blocked him off, every taxi driver.
01:10:04
Speaker
I was i was like, oh you can drive a car like this. And you need a manual gearbox to do that. He eventually, i think I stayed with him through a few cars, but he had some automatics as well. But that car, every time he called me up and like, can we go for a ride in your car? I was 19 years old. I probably should have been not a child, but I said, I want to do this.
01:10:22
Speaker
And then that kind of informed the cars that I bought as well, because i I traced it back to that experience. I had that moment, which changed me. As to why we had to go to Sharjah, it made sense when we arrived in Sharjah.
01:10:35
Speaker
And literally his road to his villa was like a sandy road. So he had a fishtail across. It was crazy. He was amazing. When I get home, I see the person using the computer is his daughter. And his daughter is mentally challenged.
01:10:47
Speaker
So every time she uses that computer, I don't know if she had autism, I don't know, whatever. There was no proper diagnosis, nobody wanted to explain it to me, but she was a lovely, sweet girl. um Every time she would use that computer, she would just drag and drop and delete things.
01:11:02
Speaker
She would just constantly like, oh, just play around, et cetera. So it was like she had a room to herself and she could just mess around with it. But he didn't know how to fix it, and he would just keep bringing it back to us.
01:11:13
Speaker
So I eventually came up with a very primitive imaging system. So I essentially created a bit of, um this is for old people remember this, there was a software called Norton Ghost, and you could basically create an image of that oh entire operating system, just like you have now as a partitions on your Macs and so on.
01:11:31
Speaker
So if something goes wrong, it just brings it back to factory. That's all it's doing is re-imaging, clearing out the hard drive, and pretty much putting the factory fresh install on it in one click.
01:11:42
Speaker
So I could do that so he didn't have to keep coming to Dubai anymore. Although he kept coming for years afterwards, just chat, etc., and i have a cup of tea. But when I saw his daughter, and I have a lot of i do a lot of work with the handicapped as well, so I thought there has to be some way to make life easier for him.
01:11:56
Speaker
because otherwise he'll just keep coming. He's happy to keep coming back in his car up and down, et cetera. But you've got to do so make things easier for him. And that worked out. And I think he should probably use that computer a lot longer than most people.
01:12:10
Speaker
And he kept that car up to, I think, 120 at least. Because I know, because at 120, he was still coming to me. was still slamming through all the gears. He just didn't care.
01:12:21
Speaker
And ever since then, whenever I drive fast, I think of that guy. I think of how we drive because he was happy, made me happy. And I realized I was happy, too. And I think my dad never, ever drove like that.
01:12:36
Speaker
And when I got in my dad and then my dad was like, why are you driving like this? That doesn't seem like you, Imtishan. You seem like such a boring person. And yet that car unlocked something in me.
01:12:47
Speaker
Oh, that experience. That car, that experience. And I think if you don't have that experience, and I'm not saying that your life is absent of joy and fun and pleasure. Everybody has thrills in different ways, right?
01:12:59
Speaker
But if you don't have there the manual gearbox, it's probably not going to happen at this age. And you nobody can tell it to you. Nobody can force it on you. It just has to happen. But with where the car is going now, how many more people will ever get to experience that ever again?
01:13:12
Speaker
And I can imagine each one of us have had one. Is that dead? Oh, no. It's it's dead. Sorry, do you want to answer
Closing and Guest Contact Information
01:13:20
Speaker
as well, Mo? No, I think, you know, i I couldn't possibly. As much as I'd love to respond to Emtishan about my inspiration, I couldn't possibly top the story that he's just told. Is that okay?
01:13:34
Speaker
And Sean, why don't we close this out with where can people find your work? Where can they find out about you? Is there, do you want them to find you? You know, so I'm happy to be found LinkedIn or Instagram. Just look for my name. itahan i m t h i s h j and you I'm the only one. Okay.
01:13:50
Speaker
One of one. Imtishan Gaiardo. um or You will not find me there. But Imtishan Gaiardo is one of one. i don't think there's anybody else on the planet, and I mean that. This is the opposite, Mohamed Khan. Yeah, there are tons of Mohamed Khans. Mohamed Khans? Don't go looking for me.
01:14:05
Speaker
Yeah. um But yeah, i don't remember our social media handles and emails, so I'm way too tired for this. has been great. But this been wonderful. Thank you for being so generous with your time. Happy to be here.
01:14:16
Speaker
Yeah, going to drive back to Abu Dhabi now. Bye, everyone. Don't do.