Good morning, good afternoon and good evening wherever you are. You are listening to the AllTalk Car Podcast from America. We're all excited. Hello, and Ross aren't making it tonight because they got held up at the border.
They will not let them in America. So I'm with tonight, my friend, Joe Campese. G'day, Joe. Good day, Peter.
How are you? Good, mate. Good. We're in America together.
We flew into Los Angeles, big place, America. Everything's an extra lane on the side. We thought we'd make an episode about the observations in America and the car culture here. So we went to the Renikar desk.
Those of you who have not been to LAX, it is a massive airport. Don't compare it to any airport in Australia. You can probably add Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane Airport together and still won't be the size of LAX. So what happens is when you hire a car, you get off at the terminal and you basically catch a dedicated shuttle bus for that rental company.
So if you hire a neighbors, you catch the neighbors bus and if you hire a hurt to catch the hurt to hurt to us, then you'll literally drive about two miles out of the terminal into a massive car park for the cars. You walk or a valet brings it to you and voila, there's your American Yang Tank and we got a Ford Expedition. This makes the Ford Territory look like a Ford Focus. So everybody's listening.
It's how big was it, Joe? Oh, we had all the luggage in the back and we could still have the third row of seats up. So you had three rows of seats as well as a boot in the shape of it. It's like the old Ford Explorer that we used to get, the Expedition is one size up.
It's an eight-seater. Yes. And there were four of us in it. And this thing was like a lounge on wheels.
But it suited America. Like we said earlier, the lanes are big enough. Parking was not a problem. They fit.
It was a bit long. It stuck you up and set it up every third or fourth car along the parking spot. So they had no troubles opening the door. Beautiful car, but I don't think it would work in Australia.
No, it's just too big. Too big. You would not get into the tight parking circles you've got in the car park, say in Westfield, anywhere in Parramada Bould or anywhere like that. You just wouldn't get into the tight seating circles.
Yeah, it's a big car. But like I said, it's a design for these countries. The first thing we noticed, as usual, price of fuel, it's all going crazy and sitting with a dollar 80 a liter in Australia, some servers, a dollar 90, I saw before we left. Today we saw the cheapest was $3.35 US a gallon, a gallon's four liters.
So $3.35 is roughly four bucks Australian dollar a liter. Yeah. Not bad. So we drove the Ford Expedition and we went to the server to fill it up the server.
You've got to pay first in America and the service station attended said 40 bucks. You do the job for half-take. Yeah. We finished them.
We still had a quarter to go. So it was 80 bucks, 80 liters, 20 gallons, 80 liters and half-way. So at this month they had 160 liters. You don't want to fill up 160 liters.
In Sydney. No way. It was a great drive. It's about four hours from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
But they are mad drivers on the road. What do you think, Joe? Oh, the etiquette on the road is appalling. They all hog the right lane and just the other taking lane.
Yeah, sorry. The left lane. We used to a city. So, yeah, they hog the high speed lane and nobody moves.
It's just they just sit there. And the non-obotain, the slow lane is free. So everyone races up, what I did, along the slow lane, until you reach a truck, then you cut in. So if this was in Europe, that would all be run off the road.
Nearly in Germany, that would all be run off the road. So it's a different drive here to get here. I mean, LA itself driving in the city, well, we're doing on average 10 miles an hour. So you could probably walk quicker.
There's a lot of traffic. You've got these seven lane freeways with no movement. But we again had the transit lane. What's the transit lane?
What's it called? The two or more people lane. So we duck into that. They could equivalent up to the two or two three lanes in Sydney.
So here in LA, if you've got an electric vehicle, like a hybrid, you can use these lanes. Because everyone in LA has got four seaters with one person in the car. They're sure we'll just ride motorbikes. There's a lot of cars in America.
There's a lot of traffic. There's a lot of lanes. And there's a lot of cars that we don't get in Australia. My wife fell in love with the Challenger.
For those of you not sure, it's like a Mustang, Camaro. It's a Chrysler's version of a Mustang. And these things are weapons. We saw a hill cut and they are loud and they are fast.
I saw my first Tesla Model 3. Yes. What do you think of that? The front end looks a bit weird, because there's no grill, there's no, it's all just look.
Looks like a duck face. Yes. Yeah. And the rear looks like a tiny, a smaller model, that's the rear looks hard.
Yeah. So we saw a few Model 3s around, there's a lot of Teslas around. Didn't see many of the SU-V-style. If you're going to get four trucks, F-150s, F-350s, there's trucks with, they've got the axle in the rear tray.
They're almost like mini city trailers. They're using these car carriers, or they use them to carry the mobile home slash trailer. You can get those things that are huge. And they're on the freeways.
They've got the RVs and some of them got cars towed at the back. So they go to RV parks, park at the edge of the city, pull out their cars and drive around, wherever they're saying. A lot of my things. A lot of my stuff here.
A lot of Camaros. Camaros are nice. A lot of SUVs. Not many Japanese cars, they're still, America rules.
They've got a lot of American cars. But I was here 13 years ago in 2005, and there was a lot more American cars on the roads back then. So you notice the difference? There's a lot more hybrid, the Toyota's.
There's a lot more 4-cylinder cars going around now than they were back then. I saw the Hyundai Sonic, which is a Hyundai version of the Prius, and I think that's coming Australia. So they're out here as well, making some kind of whiny noise. Yeah, no, because a lot of cars, a lot of mixture, if you're a car spot, there's a wide variety to look at.
So it's quite interesting place for car spotting. We drive down a day of drive. Yes. We saw a hideous yellow convertible Rolls Royce.
Ah, with matching yellow leather interior. I'm not sure where store it is. It's the owner's store, and that's their color scheme. Because what we hear about seven years ago, and you had a Bugatti Veyron in that hideous banana yellow color.
And the bonnet was a brown, and it was personally colored because it had some kind of logo etched in it. So I think it's the same way that he parks his yellow convertible Rolls Royce. And I'm good at you for listening. Whoever you are.
And then we did a bit of Hollywood. Yes. That felt like there's no going on there. No, absolutely not.
It was like a King Street, New Town, or Chappas Street, to Iraq, which is the barrier with stars in the footpath. Yeah, it's an interesting place, LA, it's Peterson Museum. There's the Porsche experience south of LA where there's a racetrack, you can drive Porsche. And pay some outdoors depending on none.
Sounds like fun. Yeah, they start off in Atlanta, the Porsche experience, and they've now built in LA. That's less than a year old, so we might do that on the next occasion. But, LA, it was fun.
We had a great day there, and then jumped on the freeway and drove into Vegas. Now, there's a big group of us in Vegas, so I booked a people carrier. We got a Toyota Sienna, which is like a Tarago, but an American version. Those of you who are fans of the modern families, with the mum drives that slide indoors.
So we had a bit of a hiccup at the rental terminal. We dropped the expedition off and then walked to another rental company. The guy at the counter tried to upgrade. He said we've also got a Cadillac Escalade, or a Chevy Suburban.
And I said, yeah, we'll take one of those. He goes, no, they're the premium solution. You have to pay extra for that. So we said, I will stick with the Sienna.
So we went upstairs and the lady said, we were meant to have three Sienna's during a couple of hours ago and they haven't arrived unfortunately. We've got a Chevy Suburban for you. So I played the victim and was all upset and basically, said to all those, there's a lot of us, there's eight of us and we purposely got that all along. We knew we were getting the Suburban.
It's a better car. We want to be in America. I asked my wife just look at the back seats because I'm driving. So everyone look at the back and see if you guys are going to fit in the back.
And I've got the not of approval, but still carried on about it being not the right car. But look, we took it. And she said, look, if you're not happy with it, bring it back. We'll give you a Sienna, a four-cylinder Sienna versus a V8 Chevy Suburban.
We're not taking it back into the rental expires. Guys, if there's always act unhappy. And to tell you the truth, we fit eight people in there. Comfort in the back.
Yeah, right at the back. In the dog boxes we call it back in Sydney when you've got a seven seater. You're in the dog box where there's no doors. You've got to jump in right at the back.
Ed conditioning works. Ed conditioning works beautifully. And you can actually sit down comfortably in the back. These things are huge.
It's similar to the expedition. The Ford was, the suspension is quite soft, but you can drive comfortably. And the typical V8 engines, they're not high-reaving. They're, excuse the punt, all torque, down low.
There's adequate power if you accelerate. It'll move, especially on the freeway, moving off the mark. But the fuel gauge, I turned it to metric on the Chevy Suburban. And the average was 19 litres, Mokk.
They're quite thirsty buggers. They're a great car. They're very similar between the Chevy and the Ford in size. They're pretty comfortable at the back.
Scampos, TARDIS. The Econ works at the back. Yes, very well. Great.
The Ford had a moon roof. The glass sliding roof. The Chevy's got this weird feature. If you rub the top of the nav and press the button.
The nav slides up like erect, standing proud. It's like a little cubby with a USB port. You can hide. Yeah.
Whatever you want. The power. And then you press the button and it slides back down. So that was an interesting little compartment that the Suburban has.
But that's a couple of cars. You can hit a V8 when it started. But it's very quieted idle. It's a smooth revving.
It would look like FBI agents or Trump's assistance in this. We try weird black seats with the E pieces. We're talking to our wrists. With our Apple iPhones and looking like we're spies.
Great car. It's a bit of a great hiring stuff that we don't have at home. It's an American car. We try hard to do.
Things that we didn't use to get in America in Australia. Which we are forced to do now because of the shutdown of the local industry. We're getting a lot more of these American vehicles. If there's any sign of the success of the Mustang, the Camaro's there now.
We'll go from there. Talking about the 40th 150th that the big Ford Utes sell about $850,000 a year. It's the highest selling American vehicle for the last 21 years. They've played out building those and making a mozzar.
So why would they build right hand drive for Australia? We have an interesting day. We visited a number of car museums and sites in Las Vegas. A group of us went out the first place.
We went to was Welder Up. This is a show on one of those. I didn't know what to do. Have you seen it?
No, I have it on the channels. One of the channels. Channels, the cable channels. So Welder Up basically these guys get 50 style Dodge trucks, prime movers, rat rods.
And what they do is they weld them. Obviously they put the spies making them mean they have that rusty, trusted look about them. They drop them and then put diesel engines in them. They get trucks for the rusted old weather paint job and they paint clear over the top.
Yeah, and they're pretty sparting sight. I mean they're all like the ground two seater's. Most of them, the big tyres stick it out of the guards, diesel engines. So Welder Up and then they're open for the public to visit and go there.
It's free getting. A lot of the holes in the bonnet to like they've cut it in a way that looks like it's been ripped open. Yeah, like an explosion. But it could peel them open.
So interesting workmanship if you're into body paneling or that type of... It's almost like a piece of art. Very interesting paint work around that peeling of the panels of the bonnet where the scoop or the air filter comes out. Yeah, so all the turbos.
That was interesting. But we found a surprise in it. I believe they're probably evil, illegal, medieval fans. It was a evil, illegal electric car in the stars and stripes.
It was a rocket drag to the type evil, illegal car. But the biggest surprise there was on a hoist. It couldn't take pretty good photos of it. It was a original Batman, the George Barris version of the one on the TV show from the 70s with the...
The original Batman Bill. The original Batman Bill was on a hoist. So I think they're branching out and collecting cars or keeping them there. So that was an interesting experience Welder Up.
And it's in the industrial area. So it's close to a lot of other type of clubs. Gentlemen type of clubs? Yes.
They were a little close during the day. They didn't see them open. No, they didn't go in there. But we went, then after that, again, the similar areas count customs.
Again, another one of those shows that were on TV and they modified it. Their theme was more like a gothic, Dracula type theme. And they had large choppers with interesting fork designs. And they also had more herses.
Well, they were actually featured on a show. They were saying the bloop's on the museum. And again, that was free to end up. That's 60s and 70s more American type catalax long cars that were custom-on.
Customized. But they also had a bit of an 80s type retro European car display. But I've never seen two lemiguity contouches. Next to each other is a black one.
A matte black. And a white one. There were two contouches. They weren't touched.
The European cars were touched. There was a D to Maseau Pantera. It was an old 80s class Merc at the back. Yes.
There was the last Shelby. We'll talk about Shelby a bit later on. They bought the last Shelby. It was, I think, it was an 80s or 90s design convertible.
What else was there? There was a number of unique cars there. And again, they had a lot of shop. You can buy shirts and souvenirs.
So that's also worth it. It doesn't take long to get around. It's industrial size. Within like 10 minutes or from one to the other.
Half an hour. It's been driving between them. Yeah. So that was good.
There from there we went to the Shelby factory. So that's been there since the early 1960s. There was a new factory in Las Vegas. It was established in 63.
That was an interesting place. It's worth a visit. Again, it was free to get in. They had pretty much a version of every Shelby from the original Cobra.
Cobra was nice. They had, oh, every month they had the Jelly 500 Mustang from the 60s. They didn't have the original Hertz Mustang. No.
You know the story about the Hertz Mustangs in... You mentioned it. I think of the 1960s. In the 1960s, Hertz started to deal with Shelby or with Ford.
And they created almost drag cars, race cars. You could rent a racer. That was the punchline, the tagline for Hertz. And what the high res, or renters would do was get one of these Mustangs.
Hertz Mustangs take it to their garage, swap the engines out. And as if the person behind the camera hurts new and he wiser. And a lot of these Mustangs hurt Mustangs were engine swapped illegally. It was never done again.
I think that was a failure for Hertz. But they're legendary level. And they had special colors. It was black with gold striping.
So they were unique pack. And there was a retro version done with the Mustang about 10 years ago. So they had one of those. The retro ones, not the original Hertz Mustangs.
But they've had every series of Mustang. They're somewhere for sale. They didn't see prices though. Well, most of the stuff they had there said it could be sold.
But it was... But they had like a brochure rack with prices and I can run through a few of them. They've got a Shelby F-150 that you can get from Ford. Direct, then they start supercharged with 106,000 American dollars.
A 5 litre V8 engine that's tuned to 755 horsepower. It's roughly about 600 kilowatts. So they've got a number of cars. They've got kits for the 40,000, 50s, the bar hard kit.
So you buy F-150 and they're 40,000 US street. And then other kits start from 45,000. And they keep all the parts. That they take off.
Well, yes. They've got a Super Snake in the Mustangs. I'm not sure if they come in Australia. But they're quite the 800 plus horsepower.
And they're from 113,000 US dollars. And that includes the price of the base Mustang. And they've got Shelby GTs that start from 62,000 US dollars. They've got a number of cars in there.
So mainly the Falcons and the F-150s. The Mustangs and the F-150. Behind the screen you can see the factory. It was clean as fan of the floors.
And they had a number of cars in there. So that's an interesting tour. Great shop there to buy souvenirs. So souvenirs or memorabilia or hats, shirts?
Books. Whatever you want. They've got this. That's a great visit.
And then the last stop on today's tour was the Harley-Dates. In Las Vegas. In Las Vegas. And we're on to two wheels now.
They had wide variety of bikes there. That's a good bike. So they're a large number of clothing. I think they rely on half a store's clothing.
So they must do a lot in clothing. And next door you could rent a Harley. They've got a base of an industry where you can hire a Harley bike around America. You can do one-way rentals.
It's about $200 for the 24-hour rental. But obviously the longer you have it the cheaper it gets. So that's something else you can do in Las Vegas. So one with it we noticed that three-wheeler car in the car bike.
That's right. It was a Polaris. It's a three-wheeler vehicle. It's two wheels at the front.
It's a half car, half motorbike. So it was a five-speed manual with a clutch. It was a four-cylinder, two-liter engine. It looked at business.
It had a refat tire at the back that was built, driven. So it's almost like a half motorbike at the back. And half car at the front. No doors.
The seats looked like they made it a place they would go in and out. Polaris Leashot, that's what it was in a red. There's a number of those. You can hire them here in Vegas and drive them up and down the strip.
You have to stand out in Vegas because I mean we've seen how many man baguis. Oh. And they don't really stand out. No, we saw one just before podcast.
But the monster trucks swarmed them. They look tiny and they don't really stand out in Vegas. You really got to stand outside of Polaris Leashot. It's probably a way to stand out in Vegas.
And that truck we saw last night, that orange one, I think it would have been 30-inch wheels on it. Yeah, it was massive. And you're allowed to have your tires outside the guards. We were in the big suburban, which sits well by every other car on the road.
And we were looking up at this thing. We were tiny. And the base was beating. I think that would be a lot.
So we'll try to find out and take some photos. We saw a Jeep Rubicon that was on stills on steroids. And we saw another Ford truck with a motorbike strapped on the back of it. Oh, yeah.
Sitting upright. So it's the weird and wonderful week this week in Las Vegas. And we'll send some, we'll post some photos during the week for those of you on Instagram and Facebook. If not, you can follow us on all talk car podcasts on both Instagram and Facebook.
So we'll post a number of photos and put it back later in the week in relation to the highs and lows of the Seamishia. Joe, thank you very much for helping me out. Oh, nothing at all. Thank you for inviting me.
And howl and Ross to shame that water patrol locked you up and didn't let you wait. I think we'll have to get them out for the next episode. So thank you for listening and we'll check you later in the week. Thank you.