The Exchanges

Q Okay, we've alluded to this amazing machine behind us. Like, what is this thing?

A The Carrera GT, in my mind, is the greatest driving car ever built. And a lot of people actually say that. It's not objective by any means, but a lot of people who have driven, you know, this and a lot of other cars feel that way about this car. It was a true analog supercar, which means manual transmission. There's very few driver aids in this car. Um, like you'd get in a modern car, stability control, traction control, that sort of stuff is either non-existent or heavily dialed down. Full carbon fiber body, like no expense was spared, basically. And the coolest part was that the powertrain, which is a big V-Ten, was shared with, initially it was developed for Formula One racing, and then it was evolved to Le Mans racing. And in neither cases did it ever actually see the light of day. They created a Formula One engine. It didn't work out.

AI assessment note: “The Carrera GT, in my mind, is the greatest driving car ever built.”

Q wild. So we have, we have a model three, uh, and we have a. Uh, Acura TSX sport wagon. Um, you know, which is great. Hauls a lot of stuff. We just leave it on the street and like, I don't care about it. It's fully depreciated. It's fine. But the difference, like these are two different product categories when I drive them. Like, so what's, what's going on here?

A I mean, it's interesting, right? I think the model three is kind of the preview of where cars are going to go in the future. And I think car enthusiasts will be dragged Kicking and screaming into this world. And I'm not just talking about electric. In fact, I'm not talking about electric mostly. Electric is obviously coming, but maybe kind of slowly. What really is coming though, what the Tesla has really pioneered is the technology in cars. I mean, there's so much self-driving capabilities. Well, I'm not allowed to say that. Driver assist capabilities is the politically correct term. There's so much, uh, functionality from the screen. There's so much, et cetera, et cetera. These cars, that's really like the new thing. And so people say, oh, iPhone on wheels is like a disparaging remark. Get used to it. I mean, that's the, that is the future of our lives. And actually, I think it's one of the, for my job, I think it's great because I, I point out all these quirks and features in cars and the more bizarre things cars are getting in them. Like Tesla has the, like a drawing pad and video games. I'm like, bring it on. I can put these in my videos. It's easy.

AI assessment note: “I think the model three is kind of the preview of where cars are going”

Q Doug, can you contextualize what a big moment in, like, world history this is?

A Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting concept because sports cars in general weren't a thing that much. They were, and there's gonna be people who ran and say, no, there were a lot of sports cars before, but it was really a thing of, uh, real enthusiasts, wealthy people, that sort of thing, would buy cars to go motor racing in the era of, you know, brass era and that kind of stuff. The concept of creating like something more affordable littler that was still fun was like, it was kind of an interesting idea that, you know, this was a real, it was a touchstone of a concept that has really been taken obviously by them and refined and others as well.

AI assessment note: “it was a touchstone of a concept that has really been taken”

Q And when you said he had the skill, like what, what, Had he built websites before or had he built?

A Yeah, that's right. He had, he had, he had had some experience building websites and other like startup type businesses and products. So he kind of knew in, in a startup world, like what was going to be the stuff that was going to be challenging. And I honestly, I think my car, I had worked at dealerships before and for an automaker before. And so I had an idea in the, in the car sense of what was going to be challenging. And we were both car enthusiasts who had done transactions on bring a trailer before. And so we kind of got the, I mean, the whole, we had the whole concept kind of down. And so it was like a, It was like a pretty good, you know, way to start this if you're going to start it. And so we started hiring employees and you know, it's funny because one of the things when maybe we'll get into this, but one of the things you mentioned is, Hey, we, maybe we should talk through some like, you know, like different things that people don't realize about the business or whatever. One of the biggest is your audience. We'll realize this, but a lot of my audience and general audience doesn't. We launched this business. We had 10 employees or something like that. I mean, and now it's grown considerably. There's still a large contingent of people who believe that every dollar made by the business goes directly into my pocket. And this is incredibly annoying to me. They're like,…

AI assessment note: “He had had some experience building websites and other like startup type businesses and products.”

Q Uh, but back to the timing, can you explain what is going on? Like what, why is this such an amazing time in the car industry?

A You know, we launched this business in June of 20, which was not like the height of COVID, but it was close. We were planning to launch April first of 20, and we pushed due to COVID. We launched in June. Again, not the height, but like still people were Terrified. I thought it was going to fail immediately because no one wanted to like spend money or do anything, you know, like it was like, but what ended up happening was the car market absolutely blew up. And this is something that nobody could have predicted. I'd love to take credit for this. I talk about how I'm an idiot in t-shirt and shorts and people underestimate me, but actually I'm smarter than I look. This was not a good example of that. This was pure luck.

AI assessment note: “what ended up happening was the car market absolutely blew up.”