2021 Ford Mustang Mach 1 is coming, and it's trivia time

In this week's Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Senior Editor, Green, John Beltz Snyder and Associate Editor Byron Hurd. The big news this week is the new Mustang Mach 1 that Ford teased as a new track toy. John has been driving a Subaru Outback alongside their long-term Forester. Byron has been enjoying a Jeep Gladiator. Greg has been piloting a Toyota Corolla Hatchback as well as a new Highlander.

Transcript

[THEME MUSIC]

GREG MIGLIORE: Hello, and welcome to another episode of "The Autoblog Podcast." I'm Greg Migliore. We've got a great show for you today. We've got some really interesting news. This morning, it's Friday, we're recording the show a little bit later in the week. And then fortuitously the Mustang Mach 1-- that name, that car, it's coming back for the 2021 model year. That news broke this morning, so we're going to get into that a little bit. But joining me today on the phones-- as always, during this time of quarantine-- is Senior Editor for all things Green, John Snyder, and Associate Editor Byron Hurd. Guys, what kind of coffee are you drinking this morning?

JOHN SNYDER: I'm drinking an espresso Café de Cuba, and actually--

GREG MIGLIORE: Sounds good.

JOHN SNYDER: Pretty delicious. I had one sort of later in the morning yesterday and had trouble getting to sleep last night because of it. So it's some powerful stuff.

GREG MIGLIORE: I could drink an espresso at, like, 7:30 with dessert. It's no problem with me.

JOHN SNYDER: This is actually, like, regular coffee from Nespresso, from the--

GREG MIGLIORE: Oh, I see.

JOHN SNYDER: It's like a Keurig machine but a different brand.

GREG MIGLIORE: I have one of those-- or one like that. It's pretty great. Byron, what are you drinking, man? It's 9:24.

BYRON HURD: I've got some sludge that started as green tea and got a bunch of stuff thrown into it. John's seen me make this at my desk before. It's probably terrifying to him. But it works. It's just a big pile of tea and some water sprinkled on it.

GREG MIGLIORE: Sounds good, sounds good. I've got plain old Folgers. But hey, it's working. It's doing the trick. And let's get into the show because I'm sure everybody listening at home is much more curious about that. We're going to lead off with the Mach 1, break that down for you. Head over to the site. We've got the news, breaking that down. And then one of our contributors, Joe Lorio, handled kind of a sidebar just to look back at what the meaning of the Mach 1 is. So you gotta check that out. But we're going to break it down for you so you can hear it on your phone, whatever you're doing this weekend, maybe running some essential errands or doing some yard work.

Reviews-- I've been in the Toyota Highlander-- excuse me-- and the Toyota Corolla. That's actually-- guys, I'm calling an audible here. It's not on the run sheet, but I went and got some takeout last night, and I kind of want to talk about it, because it's the first stick shift I've driven in who knows when, so it was fun. A lot of fun. It's bright blue, too, so there's that.

John was in the Outback Touring and the Forester. And Byron is in Gladiator. We're gonna run through those reviews. We're gonna play a little bit of trivia-- a new segment I kind of thought up last weekend while I was actually cleaning a bathroom. So I was listening to a podcast where they did trivia, and I thought, we should try that. So I'm gonna torture you guys with that.

We've got a couple of quick debates on best cars-- or cars-- movie during quarantine. It could be a movie of Pixar "Cars" or just any car movie. The Mach 1, that lends itself to a couple, actually. And then best orphaned car brand. And finally, we will spend your money. We've got a bit of a buffet here. A "Spend My Money" comes from a gentleman from the Netherlands. So you really gotta save this podcast, break it up, listen to it all the way through.

But let's go back to Mach 1. I'm excited. This is a really cool name. The car itself sounds pretty interesting. Ford is putting out some teasers. Essentially it's spy shots-- but they're not spy shots, they're just camoed shots-- of the car doing some testing, which looks pretty good. They're sort of billing this as the highest version of the five liter V8 Mustang. The epitome of it-- is one of the words they used-- the most capable.

So they're really kind of giving a very specific targeted approach for what the Mach 1 is going to mean. It's definitely a play-- like, my takeaway here, and I want to hear what you guys think-- is this is a hardcore play at the Mustang enthusiasts. So if the Mach E seemed like blasphemy to you, the Mach 1 is naturally aspirated, five liter, womping V8. This is for you.

So it's kind of a way to bring it back. You know, if one is polarizing, well, the other one can be polarizing in the opposite direction, I guess. No moderation here. So that was my take immediately the way they kind of rolled it out. Obviously I can't wait to drive it. Frankly, a naturally aspirated V8-- I think this thing is going to sound amazing. We don't have any specs so far.

There's a lot of implications about this, too-- you know, what does this mean for the Shelby GT 350? Byron, you were mentioning that that future is-- they haven't really said anything. And trying to read the tea leaves, you know, we've been speculating. And there's always a bunch of different flavors of Mustang. But right now, super psyched, great way to wake up on a Friday morning with news like this. Go to you, Byron. What do you think?

BYRON HURD: Well, so I've owned this generation of Mustang. I had a 2015 for a year. And I'm looking at this as kind of a piece of perfection, if they can pull it off. Like, this is one of those cars where they've always been like 95% of the way to pretty much the perfect Mustang, and they've been kind of dancing around that last 5%. And I'm hoping that this is going to be it.

Because I'm looking at this. It has the kind of classic round headlight shapes, or fog light shapes in the grille, that actually on this prototype look like they might actually be air intakes or something like that, kind of like a Hellcat, which I love. Feed that beast. It's a great engine. And I'm excited about it.

The rumors coming out around the GT 350 came from dealer ordering guides that weren't showing it after the-- I believe it was the 2020 model year. So I don't know whether these two cars could co-exist. They are different enough, I think, to get away with it because you can have the five liter Mach 1 as the attainable track car and then the GT 350 as more of a Halo, and then the GT 500 as the Super Snake type car. That works, I think, in my mind. It might be slicing it a little too thin, but I think those cars could co-exist, and it would be really cool to see the family that large and with that many capable fun cars.

GREG MIGLIORE: John, what do you think?

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah. I mean, I agree. Looking at it, it looks like those air intakes up front, it's just going to ring the most out of this engine. And that is just such a sweet engine, that five liter V8. It sounds good. It pulls really hard from the bottom to the top of the rev range. Whatever they can do to sort of give that what it needs to see its full potential is awesome.

And then, yeah, the Mustang-- the Mustang proper, the stock base Mustangs that you would get, the factory Mustangs, have been inching closer and closer and closer and closer to being actually good on a track for a long time. And if they give it a better suspension, the right wheels and tires, this thing could just actually slay on a track and be so much fun. Yeah, a good Mustang on a track is a wonderful thing. And if they nail this, it's just going to be sweet.

GREG MIGLIORE: What I think is interesting is the Camaro has been so track capable for the last few years. In some ways, I think the Camaro has been more precise than the Mustang, whereas the Mustang has been more of a raw visceral experience, which if you're a great driver you might want that. The last time I actually sort of tracked both of these-- we did a compare quite a few years back. But then more recently, I still found this to be somewhat true, the Camaro can cover up for your mistakes a little bit more, whereas the Mustang is an amazing car, but if you're not quite as good, your mistakes are going to show. Let's put it that way.

But yeah. Random Mach 1 trivia-- it was in "The Rockford Files." I did not know that. But yeah, I mean, those air intakes upfront-- I mean, we're kind of assuming they're air intakes-- I think that looks pretty awesome. So we'll see. I mean, do you guys have a favorite generation of Mach 1? This was a name that was actually used somewhat ubiquitously throughout the different Mustang lineage. Do you guys have a favorite generation?

JOHN SNYDER: You know, I don't know about how good it was to drive, but I just love the way the first one looks. But yeah, I don't know that that was the best driving one. But I haven't driven any Mach 1's, so--

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. I haven't driven any either, but--

JOHN SNYDER: I'm going by looks. I'm going by the first one.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. I mean, hey, that's totally reasonable, actually. How about you, Byron?

BYRON HURD: I kind of like the 2003, 2004. But those were formative years for me as an automotive enthusiast. That's when I was getting into buying cars and stuff like that, when I was actually learning how to be a financial disaster when it comes to vehicle purchases. But I was actually talking about this with Greg earlier. Just the competition orange on that new edge Mustang-- it just worked. I never really loved that body style at the time, but it's grown on me over the years. Even though it's effectively still a Fox underneath, they did so much with it, they made it look so modern, and in those bright colors, they just really popped. And I think that, and with the Bullitt revival they did right around the same time were just really cool for what they were. And I don't know. It's that little soft spot that's never going to go away.

GREG MIGLIORE: I actually kind of like the early '70s Mach 1's. I think, you know, '70, '71, '72, '73, those were good-looking cars. It was like--

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah, they really are.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. I mean, it was a different, really roided up version of Mustangs. They were in different-- like, I remember they were in a lot of movies at that time, too. I just fell down this total rabbit hole looking at the IMCDb car database of movies. I'm like, oh my god, I can't believe how many movies this was in. But yeah, I haven't driven any of these. But from a design standpoint, I love that one. The '68, '69 one was certainly iconic, just because that really sort of set the tone, if you will. '69, not '68.

Yeah. And Byron, like you, I'm kind of partial to the '03, '04 model as well. I mean, that had that 4.6 liter V8 that was just really amazing. One of my neighbors has one, and you can just hear it rumbling at night when he rolls around the neighborhood. And I think in some ways that's what heightened my awareness of remembering the Mach 1. Because they actually haven't used it in-- by the time this comes out, it will have been 17 years. So that's a while.

And I think-- my sense, too, is they're going to probably let some of these Mustang variants fade away, too, at the moment. Like, that's always been the playbook. We're gonna bring the Bullitt, we're going to bring the Boss 302 in, they're we're going to take it back out. Then we'll bring-- we'll play up one of the Shelbys, and that'll be the standard bearer, if you will. You know, the flagship sort of is a moving target, too, for the Mustangs. But yeah, this is good news. This is exciting news. It's summer here, so hey, it seems like a good car to cruise around in a couple summers away maybe.

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah, Ford has a really good way of paying fan service to different time periods, depending on when you started driving or the cars you remember. Yeah, I remember when the new, air quote, Boss 302 came out, that was such a big deal. And that was a fantastic car. But all the people who remember the Boss were into that. And then now the Mach 1, it just serves people throughout time. And I do like the idea of bringing one back for a little bit, and then that name is gone again. Don't clutter the field with it. Just have one really good Mustang. At a time it had to have its own personality.

GREG MIGLIORE: I don't think there's any real danger for this, just because everybody who loves the Mach 1 will know what it is. But Mach E, Mach 1, that cause any heartburn for you guys?

JOHN SNYDER: No. No, I'm good. I'm good with it. I like the Mach E.

GREG MIGLIORE: All right. There you go. Well, we're going to get to it later in the show, actually. Spend my money, there's a Mach E question. So yeah, not bad, not bad. So total random side note, you remember the Boss 302. I remember when they brought it back, the last generation, because I interviewed Parnelli Jones at Laguna Seca. And he was just talking about that car and his involvement in the development. And it was out at Pebble Beach, and it was at, like, 6:00 AM.

And it's just like-- you remember formative things you do in this business. And that's pretty hard to forget stuff like that. Dude was, like, 70, he had crystal clear blue eyes. When you think of race car drivers, guys you would want driving a Mustang at its limit but also being totally in control of their emotions and surroundings, that's the guy. You know, you're not supposed to be nervous when you're driving a car really fast or something. You're supposed to be excited. But just the ice cool fighter pilot demeanor, all that stuff. So anyways, I digress. That was a total indulgent side story, but it just came to mind.

And yeah, let's talk about some of the cars we have been driving. John, why don't we segue over to you-- Forester and the Outback. Compare them for me.

JOHN SNYDER: Sure. You know, I started by-- these are both sitting in my driveway. I started by diving into the size of them. I always think of the Outback as being a segment larger. But really, you know, on the inside, they're very similar on paper. They're within one or two cubic feet of each other, max cargo space, and similar passenger volume.

The biggest difference in them is just how they're sort of laid out, how that space is used. The Outback, you know, it's a longer vehicle. So it's got that longer load floor, even though the cargo area is sort of the same. The Forester is taller, but that length also plays into how they drive. The Outback feels more car like. And it drives like a legacy. It's more stable on the highway with the wheel base I think about three inches longer than the Forester, while the Forester can be a little twitchy and whatnot.

The biggest thing, though, is both of these with the 2.5 naturally aspirated engine, it's a way better fit for the Forester. The Outback, they're only a couple hundred pounds different. The Outback is a couple hundred pounds heavier. But man, it feels a lot more sluggish than the Forester. I mean, the Forester doesn't feel quick, but it doesn't feel-- you know, you're not trying to Barney Rubble it with your feet, trying to get it to go.

The Outback, man, it just takes its sweet time getting up to speed if you do anything more than one third throttle. It just does not respond. But that said, you can get it with the 2.4 turbo, which is really nice. And that's a really good fit for the Outback.

GREG MIGLIORE: I like that 2.4 turbo. I think that really, really makes a difference in Subarus.

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah. And I miss it in the Forester. The Forester was so good with the turbo. It was really fast. So yeah, I don't know. Those are my initial impressions. I'm diving a little deeper into everything in a comparison that I'm writing up, so that'll be available soon. But yeah, if I were gonna live with one, jeez, I would probably rather live with the Outback, even with-- even if I am stuck with the less powerful engine, just because the rest of it is so nice.

It feels higher quality, the tech is better. I think it drives a little better. And just the footprint of that rear cargo area is more useful for day to day. As long as you don't have anything super tall back there, you're fine. You can have a bunch of groceries. Anything that's less than two feet tall is going to fit fine, covering the entire footprint in the cargo area in the Outback. You can pack a ton in there.

GREG MIGLIORE: Now, you did an unconventional test, as I recall. I think you tried putting your son in the back of these vehicles according to a tweet. Which one did he fit better in? If he went into both of them, I don't know.

JOHN SNYDER: He could disappear under the cargo thing of the-- the cargo cover of the Outback. He was just gone.

GREG MIGLIORE: Wow. OK.

JOHN SNYDER: But no, I was outside sort of measuring things when he and my wife got home from my mother-in-laws. And he was just like, oh, you got these open? I'm gonna check them out. So he helped me out there for a little bit.

GREG MIGLIORE: Very cool. Very cool. Obviously I wasn't a part of this comparison, but I always tend to land on the Outback. It's just a car that I am a big fan of. I like the dynamics. I like how it looks. I like the Forester. If I was in the market for a crossover in that space, it's in the top five I would recommend.

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah, if I didn't have a kid and dogs and have to drive up north all the time-- and if I lived in the city-- the Forester would be the way to go. But just the amount of sheer space in the Outback-- even though they're, like, the same-- in terms of cargo space, in terms of volume, they're essentially the same-- it's just more useful in the Outback.

GREG MIGLIORE: I like the wagon vibe, too. So it's just there's something about it. Byron, tell us about the Gladiator. But real quick, Forester or Outback?

BYRON HURD: Outback.

GREG MIGLIORE: OK, all right.

BYRON HURD: Yeah, definitely Outback.

GREG MIGLIORE: All right. Fair enough.

BYRON HURD: I didn't have to think about that very long. Yeah, so the Gladiator-- I've had mixed feelings about the Gladiator. I like it on spec. And I've driven it a couple of times but mostly off road up until this week. So this is the first time I really had a chance to take it on the highway. I did a video taking the roof off, which was super easy to do, even without having any extra tools. You just need an extra set of hands.

It's a lot of fun to drive that thing around without a top on. Had a fun interaction with a Metro Detroit bus driver who was very amused by the fact that I was driving around in what he called an $80,000 Jeep without any doors on it. It wasn't $80,000, but it was a fun moment.

I really fell in love with that thing, having it for the week. The footprint of it is deceiving. I actually pulled up a comparison, just to see how big it is versus the Ranger and the Colorado or the Tacoma. And on paper, it's narrower than the Colorado, which isn't surprising. The Colorado feels huge. But it's about the same size as the Tacoma and the Ranger, kind of give or take here and there on some of the dimensions.

But it feels so much smaller. It actually feels like a compact truck, and especially inside because it is effectively a Wrangler on the inside, and there's not a ton of interior space. But the doors are tiny. If you're like me and you have a house with a narrow driveway or you have a narrow garage space, getting in and out of that truck next to another vehicle I wasn't concerned about dinging the doors on the Challenger and stuff like that. It's actually a much more practical size and shape than its dimensions suggest. And I found that very charming because in my mind, it's maybe the least practical of the midsize trucks, even though the numbers are competitive or even superior in some cases. When you look at it, you're like, eh, that's a toy. That's not a truck. But driving it, I was looking at it, I was like, man, I own a Wrangler. It's an older two door. And I could easily see myself replacing it with a Gladiator down the line, just for the extra utilitarian value of it.

The only real hiccup is the cost. It is an expensive truck. It's not an 80,000 truck, but it is expensive one. I mean, the one I had the window sticker on, that Rubicon, was 61,000 and change. That's a lot of money for any truck, let alone a small and midsize truck. And I could not see myself buying one of those new. I priced out some lower ones, some Sports and Sport S's, and you can get into them for $35,000, $40,000 with kind of the options you would want.

And that's realistic, I suppose, especially considering what people spend on trucks these days. But for me, I'm looking at it, I'm like, man, this would be a great little utilitarian vehicle if it weren't for the Jeep Premium, which you just can't avoid that. And even for used ones, the resale value is insane. But I could do things with it that I can't do with my Wrangler. Like, my neighbor put a grill out that he was getting rid of. And it was like around the corner. I probably could have just walked over there and grabbed it. But I was driving home from buying groceries, and I saw the grill. So I just pulled up, threw it in the bed, drove away. And with the Wrangler, that would be a chore. Obviously a pickup is more convenient for that kind of thing. And I could just so see myself owning it. It would fit my lifestyle perfectly. But I couldn't justify the cost.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. Well, two things. One, if you need a lawn mower and you need to swing by, let me know. I've actually got two of them. And I have two snow blowers. So next time you have a Gladiator or anything--

BYRON HURD: Ooh, a snowblower. OK.

GREG MIGLIORE: One's electric. That's the one that's sort of up for sale, just because I don't really trust the whole corded system. I have a long driveway. That's not how I want to leave this world is being electrocuted. I digress. I'm curious, Wrangler or Gladiator, though.

BYRON HURD: Um, well, if you care about offroading, then the Wrangler is the only answer, because the Gladiator is too much vehicle for trails, in my mind. I mean, if you're going to offroad in a midsize truck, then the Gladiator is the one you want for that because it's the best at it. But if you want to offroad, period, get a Wrangler, look at a new Bronco, that kind of thing. The short wheelbases, the shorter overhangs are far superior for that kind of thing. And I've offloaded this Wrangler and other Wranglers many times, so my comfort level with them is incredibly high, and even I think the Gladiator is just too much extra truck for that kind of thing.

GREG MIGLIORE: How about you, John? Just curious.

JOHN SNYDER: Wrangler.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yep. I've actually used that five times on the podcast. But--

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah. I mean, one thing I'm going to do with it is go offroading for sure if I have anything with a Jeep edge. And yeah, that length, the extra length of the Gladiator, we offroaded in it. And like you mentioned Byron, it feels like a small truck when you're looking at it. That actually really helped on the trail. You could see the corners of the vehicle. I knew I wasn't hitting anything. I just wasn't sure if I was going to hit that breakover angle. But yeah, Wrangler.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. I would go with Wrangler as well. I was super psyched when the Gladiator came back. We were really psyched to test it at our first comparison test, full-scale comparison test. It was about this time a year ago, Northern Michigan. It barely lost. We're talking decimal points to the Ranger. My sense is if we redid that, the Gladiator would win. I think we dinged it more for price than I think in hindsight we probably would have. I don't know. That was a year ago. You don't rewrite history. My sense is--

JOHN SNYDER: No, I think the Ranger still stands.

GREG MIGLIORE: Really?

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah.

GREG MIGLIORE: Fair enough. OK.

JOHN SNYDER: I'm standing by those numbers.

GREG MIGLIORE: Well, I too am standing by, and I wrote a column telling everybody how we got it right. But I am kind of re-autopsying it a little bit. Like, well, I don't know, man.

JOHN SNYDER: Well, we can always do it again? Do you want to do it again? I'll do it again.

GREG MIGLIORE: That's true. Yeah, I think we'd get a lot of people to show up for that. We could do it outdoors, everybody pitches their tents six feet apart, and away we go.

BYRON HURD: I did a very similar comparison early last fall with a different group before I was with Autoblog, obviously. And my conclusion was for the offroad part, you really can't beat the Gladiator. But once you want to get on the road and use it as a more practical truck, the Ranger, and the Colorado especially, offer more utility for the money, especially for the money. They also just offer more utility, period. But when you're offroad and it really matters, you want to be in the Gladiator.

GREG MIGLIORE: Another thing, just for my lifestyle, I always fall back to the Wrangler because the SUV layout fits me better. You know, you could do a good weekend trip with the family. And it's just like, I need that enclosed capability versus the, "hey, let's start trying stuff down in the Gladiator" capability. So that's usually where I tend to fall. Boy, that kind of veered offroad into a Gladiator-Wrangler debate.

All right. So let's talk about the cars I've been driving. Literally, 12 hours ago, I was in the Toyota Corolla hatchback. Went to get some takeout. Went to a brewery somewhat by our house. Griffin Claw-- you guys might know that. Give them a shout out. It's where we actually did our "Behind the Scenes Autoblog" show about a year ago, just picked up some dinner.

Actually, believe it or not, I already had plenty of gin and Griffin Claw beer, so I just went with the food. So that was fun. They threw it right in the back of the hatch. Fit great. Let me tell you that. It's kind of actually a narrow area back there. To really do anything with this hatchback, you gotta throw the seats down. But for takeout, it's supremely useful, because you smash the hatch down, it kind of catches the bag, and your food doesn't fly around. And it's super useful, especially if you're trying to be socially distant, if you will. So that worked out great.

I was totally psyched to get in this thing and realized it's a six speed manual. Just somehow I didn't notice that at first. I hadn't driven it yet, and it just arrived this week. And I get in there, like, sweet! I have not driven a stick shift in, like, I don't know when, just because the way the car situation has been. Just the manuals have not been coming out that much. So yeah, that was certainly great. It was a pretty good transmission, I'll say. Clutch is pretty solid. The shifts are a little bit long but not too long. Car came in a beautiful shade of blue flame, so it's just like a bright almost Hawaiian blue.

It looks great. It's got the two liter four cylinder, which gives you about 169 horsepower, I want to say. That's nice. It's actually an upgraded engine on other Corolla variants. So there's that. I had a lot of fun. Suspension was pretty tight. It looks cool. Again, it's the hatchback. So I would call this a medium spicy hatch, if you will. Like, medium, not super spicy. Because again, we're only talking about a little under 170 horsepower.

The transmission is agreeable. It'd be a good one to learn how to drive a stick on, to be honest. It's not the one that's going to break your wrists or something. So there's all of that. Chassis is tight. Steering is pretty dialed in. But it's still pretty loose. It's a Corolla, man. I don't want to over-index on this, just because I haven't driven a manual transmission springy car in a little bit.

JOHN SNYDER: No, that's totally fair. That's a fun little hatchback to drive, surprisingly nimble. It's really cute. And yeah, that manual transmission is decent, especially in a car that price. And yes, it's very forgiving. It's meant to be forgiving because it is going to be a lot of people's first manual transmission. You know, it's going to be a lot of drivers' first cars. But besides that, it's actually pretty good to use. But yeah, fun little car. Actually, when I was on the Corolla, the Dan launch-- I think Byron was there, too-- we got to do a ridealong with Ryan Turk, and he was drifting a 1,000 horsepower Corolla hatchback. And gritting your eyes and smoking your eyes-- it was about 9 o'clock in the morning. It was fantastic.

GREG MIGLIORE: Who needs coffee?

JOHN SNYDER: But it shows what you can do with that little platform. It's a good starting point for something fun. Most people will just leave it how it is, and that's fine. It's actually pretty fun and good enough for your daily duties and won't break the bank. So I like that car.

GREG MIGLIORE: What'd you think there, Byron? I didn't realize you were on the launch of it.

BYRON HURD: Yeah, it was fun. That was the one they did at that old racetrack in Savannah.

GREG MIGLIORE: Oh, that's amazing. I've heard about that place. That's awesome.

BYRON HURD: Yeah, I don't think it's actually used anymore. We were on and off part of it. Most of what we were using was the skidpad area, which is where they did all the drifting and everything. But it was fun. And I mean, it's a good little car. And again, it was the sedan launch, so we didn't really get much time with the hatchbacks. But they had them there so that you could play around with them a little bit. It is a great little car. It's not quite as good as the Mazda-based Toyotas, but it's pretty close.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. I would agree with that. I kept thinking to myself, this is great. If I really wanted a Toyota and I wanted to spice it up, this is probably what I'd do. Otherwise I would look at other things. Like, I think Mazda has just a little bit more dialed in with their chassis. Civic, I think, is better. But I mean, so it goes.

Yeah. I mean, but just in the pecking order, however you want to slice it up, it's a really enjoyable car. It was fun to drive. Great thing to get takeout in, let me put it that way. Seems like it was priced fair, too. I mean, this one was just under $27,000, so that's reasonable. Decent fuel economy-- 28 city, 37 highway. That's not bad. It was actually 168 horsepower. I think I said 169.

Yeah. Just part of me wonders, like, who knows what's going on with the economy? Are these cars going to start to come back, and you're going to really see significant volume in them? Are we going to start to shift away from SUVs, things like that? Who's to say? But I just remember the last recession. Car companies were obsessed with making small cars. There was once talk that Chrysler was going to sort of trade the Ram design chassis, if you will, platform to get access to this small car that they were going to call the Dodge Hornet-- which, for them, thankfully that didn't happen. That would have been a ridiculous trade. I want to say that was with Nissan, if I'm remembering my car history right.

BYRON HURD: Yeah, I think so.

GREG MIGLIORE: Man, that goes up there with, like, pick your lopsided baseball trades that didn't happen. That would have been up there. But I don't know. Honestly I don't think, no matter how bad the economy gets, people are going to want smaller cars again. I think they're just going to want cheaper SUVs is probably how it's going to go.

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah. We're too far down that road.

BYRON HURD: Yeah. And there are so many of them, and they're so efficient now. I mean, the little compact and subcompact SUVs and crossovers you can get are just as efficient as most of the small sedans and hatchbacks were in 2006 and 2007. So there's really not much to lose by going in that route, unfortunately.

GREG MIGLIORE: It's true. It's true. All right. Let's move along, real quickly, to an SUV, a large one that I drove. I did this last weekend, put a good amount of miles on it. It was a Toyota Highlander. Very nice vehicle. It was loaded up. It had a beautiful kind of brownish, orangeish interior. Infotainment was good. It had the third row in there, and there was an OK amount of room, I guess is the way to put it.

For hauling a bunch of things, I had to drop the seats to really get the amount of room I wanted, if that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, I would say this. It's competitive in the segment. You have so many different three-row SUVs you can get right now. I'm not sure I would get this one. I might, I might not. I went on a Highlander launch-- jeez, a few years back at Pebble Beach, Carmel Valley Ranch, if that means anything. But you know, there's so many good ones out there. This one didn't blow me away, but I thought it was very nice.

Stickered for about 51,600. So considering it was pretty loaded up, that's respectable. You know, that's fine. Literally, that's table stakes for a big SUV these days. I didn't realize it was built in Princeton, Indiana, just as I was looking at the Monroney. Mine was in platinum trim. That's what I was looking for. That's where I got all these different very nice bells and whistles and things in there.

The leather was very nice. Yeah, I don't know. It has that V6 that Toyota's been using for a while. All wheel drive, of course. I felt very suburban in it, and I was hauling things. And it was fine. I mean, I liked it. It was comfortable. It's a good car to have. It's a good, OK quarantine car, I guess, if you gotta go haul a bunch of groceries or stuff like I did. You know, I wouldn't put it at the top of the segment. I wouldn't put it at the bottom. It's the Highlander, man. That's what it's always been. I don't know if you guys have driven one of these even remotely, recently. But that was my take on it. It's like, it's there. It's pretty good.

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah, I was on the launch for it in December. And you sum it up pretty well. The thing is, there's also the hybrid version, and it's not much more. And it's way more efficient. And you know, it has its trade-offs, but I'd argue it's even better to drive. But that said, people buy a ton of these.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yep.

JOHN SNYDER: That's just the way it is. There might be better SUVs out there in the segment, but Toyota will sell a ton of these. Let's see. That third row is pretty small. I couldn't sit back there. I broke my ankles and had my knees up under my chin. This generation is a few inches, three inches longer, I think, than the outgoing. And that's all in the rear cargo area. So they didn't add any passenger volume to that.

So it's a great SUV if you need to carry stuff around and only use that third row very occasionally for smaller passengers. It's good to have in a pinch. I wouldn't rely on it as a three-row vehicle where I'd be using that third row all the time.

GREG MIGLIORE: I think that's how a lot of-- unless you're stepping up to a Chevy Tahoe or a Yukon, Yukon XL, big body on frame SUVs, I think that's how a lot of three row crossovers sort of get used. That's how-- my family has a GMC Acadia. The third row seats are always down. Although there's actually an OK cargo hold back there. I should say that. There's a little more room. Or it seems like there is. I don't have the numbers in front of me.

But that's, I think, a real-world use of a three-row crossover, if that makes sense. You know, you drop the third row. Maybe you have a car seat in the second row. The dog's laying on the floor. And then the parents are up front. You have a couple of kids in the middle row. And then you just throw stuff in the back. So yeah, I don't know. That's probably enough on the Highlander. I think that's all people need to hear. But yeah, they sell a ton of them.

JOHN SNYDER: Put the Highlander in the headline.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, right. There you go. We talked about the Mach 1 and the Gladiator and this kind of hot hatch and we have trivia and these other cool features, but Highlander. All right, guys. I dreamed this up last weekend what I was doing some cleaning. I'm gonna try to stump you with some trivia. And--

JOHN SNYDER: Ugh.

GREG MIGLIORE: Readers, if you guys like this, drop this in the comments. Hit us up on Twitter. If you hate it, we won't do it again. No, that's a lie. We'll probably do it again until people start to like it.

JOHN SNYDER: You gotta do it with Joel.

GREG MIGLIORE: Joel would be amazing on this.

BYRON HURD: Byron's going to be good.

GREG MIGLIORE: Byron's going to be good.

BYRON HURD: Don't. Stop, don't do that.

JOHN SNYDER: And Zach would be good, too. I am just the worst at any kind of trivia at all.

GREG MIGLIORE: All right. Well, there's only five questions. It's only 10:04 Eastern Time, so you probably don't want to open a beer at this point. But I guess it's trivia.

JOHN SNYDER: I'm ordering some nachos right now.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, there you go. All right. These are very Greg trivia questions, too. They're kind of Italian based. They're historic. Somebody else would come up with one that might fall more into your realm. I don't know. Let's just do it. What team won the first Formula One race?

JOHN SNYDER: I don't know. My gut says Mercedes. But I don't even-- yeah, I don't know.

GREG MIGLIORE: Byron, you want to take a guess?

BYRON HURD: I'm gonna go Alfa.

GREG MIGLIORE: Correct. Boom. With Nino Farina at the wheel, 1950. Alfa Romeo.

JOHN SNYDER: I should have stuck with the Italian clue. I should have applied that to this.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.

BYRON HURD: Well, Ferrari felt too obvious, so--

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. OK. So 1-0, Byron. What team holds the most constructors titles in Formula One? There's a couple of choices here. It may or may not be the obvious, although maybe you don't know what the obvious one is.

JOHN SNYDER: Ferrari?

GREG MIGLIORE: Byron, you want to take a guess?

BYRON HURD: Mercedes.

GREG MIGLIORE: Boom. Snyder comes back and evens the score. The obvious one, go with the Italian. Ferrari has 16. Yeah, they're like the Montreal Canadiens, New York Yankees of Formula One. I'll give you this, John-- the Michigan football. The all-time winningest program in their sport. There you go. John's a proud U of M alumni.

JOHN SNYDER: Go Blue.

GREG MIGLIORE: Let's see. What else do we have here? OK, moving along. Cadillac and Lincoln were founded by the same dude. Name him. If either one of you gets this, this is going to be impressive. Byron, I think you know this. Like, this is like a Byron thing that you would know.

BYRON HURD: Yeah, I should have this.

GREG MIGLIORE: It's not a household name, so I'm really-- there would have been a fair way to-- John, you want to take a guess while Byron is--

JOHN SNYDER: Albert Einstein.

GREG MIGLIORE: That's how my hair looks right now.

BYRON HURD: There was a time when I knew this, for certain knew this, and I've lost it.

GREG MIGLIORE: Henry Leland.

BYRON HURD: There we go.

GREG MIGLIORE: He's not a household name, but I mean, when you think about, this guy founded Cadillac and Lincoln. That's kind of amazing.

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah.

GREG MIGLIORE: There is a street in Detroit that used to have a couple of good bars on it named Leland. And there's a theater or a restaurant-- I can't think of which one it is, but I can picture the marquee. It's pretty cool. All right, moving along. Two to go, and the score is, I believe 1-0-- no, 1 to 1. So Toyota's first car sold in the United States was--

JOHN SNYDER: Was it the Corolla?

GREG MIGLIORE: Byron?

JOHN SNYDER: Byron's thinking real hard. I can see the gears in his head. He knows it.

BYRON HURD: I'm going to throw this guess out there, and it's going to be wrong. But I'm going to say the Corona.

GREG MIGLIORE: The Corona? OK. All right, guys. You've actually-- I don't want to say I'm stumped here. I have it written down, but I need to fact check it. I thought I had this, but now I'm double checking my source here. Let me double check this. I had this. So we've got Corona and the Corona? That's what we're guessing, Corolla and Corona?

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah.

BYRON HURD: Yeah.

GREG MIGLIORE: OK. Well, you're both wrong. It's the Toyopet, 1958. I knew it, but I also-- you had me-- I was going into some doubt there. I'm like, wait a minute. Maybe I went the wrong route. But this is actually on the historical page of Toyota, which was my original source, 1958.

JOHN SNYDER: That's a good one.

GREG MIGLIORE: They only sold it until '61.

BYRON HURD: That's a Joel-- Joel would have had that.

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, there's two or three that are pretty early. The Land Cruiser was around pretty close to then, but it looks like they're saying the Toyopet was the first one, because they sold 287 Toyopet sedans. I guess I would accept, they sold one Land Cruiser. So I don't know if it was the first thing they sold ahead of those 287, but either way, got it wrong. Sounds like I kind of got it wrong, too-- ish. There we go. Boy, the commenters are going to light us up on these. They're gonna be like--

BYRON HURD: You guys are experts?

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, you're experts, and then they're gonna be like, Greg, actually, you got this one wrong. Which actually, I hope you do. I'm kind of doing this to try to get people to comment. So let's do it. Lastly, Volkswagen had a plant in the United States from 1978 until 1987. In what state was it located?

BYRON HURD: I know this one.

JOHN SNYDER: Byron knows it. Go ahead, Byron.

BYRON HURD: Pennsylvania.

GREG MIGLIORE: John?

JOHN SNYDER: Well, I'm gonna go with what Byron said, Pennsylvania.

GREG MIGLIORE: Oh, man. I should have had more of a double blind here. But you both got it right. So by my count, you got-- it's a 2-2 tie. Byron got Alfa, John got Ferrari in order for answers, nobody got Henry Leland or the Toyota Toyopet. And then you both got Pennsylvania. 2-2 tie.

JOHN SNYDER: What was the name of that guy, Greg? He had a house in Ann Arbor. He worked for Ford. He was like a skull crusher dude.

GREG MIGLIORE: Harry Bennett.

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What trivia question was that?

JOHN SNYDER: Oh, I just--

GREG MIGLIORE: You're just going to bring up this crazy--

JOHN SNYDER: It was just something you would know.

GREG MIGLIORE: That would be a good one, yeah.

JOHN SNYDER: I was driving by trying to find that guy's house, but I don't think you can see it from the road. But he had tigers, lions and stuff in his house.

GREG MIGLIORE: That's crazy.

JOHN SNYDER: The guy was a nut ball.

GREG MIGLIORE: I'm actually reading a book right now. It's taking me forever to get through. It's called something like "Terror in the Motor City." It's about how there was this crazy terror organization in the '30s that just was going crazy throughout Detroit. And it was set against the backdrop of the Tigers, Red Wings, and Lions all won titles in 1935, I want to say. And so a lot of the people were involved, and Harry Bennett was in there, because he was this big Tigers fan. He was, I don't know, somewhat involved with the gang. Yeah, didn't see at 10:12 on Friday morning a Harry Bennett reference flying at me. Where is his house in Ann Arbor, John? I didn't know he had a place down here.

JOHN SNYDER: It's by the river. It's on the river somewhere.

GREG MIGLIORE: I mean, that's probably convenient for a guy who may need to dump a body or two.

JOHN SNYDER: It's off the Getty, I think. It's off the Getty somewhere.

GREG MIGLIORE: I actually went to his up north cottage. I want to say it's near Grayling or Kalkaska in Michigan. And it was crazy. I was in the Scouts. We camped on this campground where it was sort of the land. And the tables flipped over, and the machine guns would go in the table. There was like-- in the hallways there was always knives and axes and whatever. He had a see-through swimming pool, so he could stare at people through a swimming pool, because in addition to being a thug he was a pervert.

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah, this guy was a maniac.

GREG MIGLIORE: Literally, this dude was a maniac.

JOHN SNYDER: This is the question I was looking for from you.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, you know what? Thanks, John. You really loaded up. You took trivia to a new level here.

BYRON HURD: Yeah, no kidding.

GREG MIGLIORE: This was, like, yeah, uber-trivia. Cool. On that note, let's move along. I had this other part I threw in the feature section here. We're actually doing pretty OK on time. So I want to know from both you guys, best car-- I guess we'll call trivia a tie for now. 2-2-1, and then you guys each get two, and then we just randomly discuss Harry Bennett, which is, like, I guess I'll take the point on that. So 2-2-1-- that's like a weird hockey score.

JOHN SNYDER: You get a point for being the boss of it, too, for being a host.

GREG MIGLIORE: There we go. There we go.

JOHN SNYDER: You knew all the right answers.

GREG MIGLIORE: I think I did, yeah. All right, car movies. Best car movie to watch during quarantine, although just whenever is also fine. And I actually put in the line here, best car or best "Cars," so if you want to nominate one of the three Disney Pixars, that's great. Or just what's your favorite car movie that maybe you're bingeing during this odd time in the history of the world?

JOHN SNYDER: I'm going for some lighthearted movies. I need to laugh. So there are two that I've been watching. I've been watching "Talladega Nights."

BYRON HURD: Yes. I love it.

JOHN SNYDER: It's just hilarious. And then we've been playing "NASCAR Heat 4" on the stream. I haven't been playing, but Autoblog has been playing. And it's such a fun game, and every time I play that or watch Eric play it, it just makes me want to watch "Talladega Nights" again. He even named his character Ricky Bobby. It's just fantastic. It's racing taken to the most absurd. And God, I love Sacha Baron Cohen in it, too.

BYRON HURD: He's so good.

JOHN SNYDER: The other one, the other movie that I always come back to, quarantine or not-- and it's not totally a car movie, but there's a lot of cars in it and there's a lot of wrecked cars in it, is "Blues Brothers."

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, that's true.

BYRON HURD: That's a car-- well, yeah.

JOHN SNYDER: It's one of my all-time favorite movies.

BYRON HURD: That's a car movie.

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah, one of my all-time favorite movies ever. And I could just watch it over and over and over. And yeah, the mall scene, the chase scene where there are just tons and tons and tons of cop cars getting flipped over, it's just the best. I love it.

GREG MIGLIORE: Byron, how about you, man? What are you bingeing? Or what's your favorite car movie?

BYRON HURD: My "put it in I can watch any time" car movie is "Rush." It was so well done, and the acting in it is just phenomenal. And the cinematography is phenomenal. If you have a home theater system or a really good set of headphones, the sounds that come out of that thing are just phenomenal. Oh, "Talladega Nights" is such a good answer, I'm a little angry.

I actually really enjoy, on that same kind of line of thinking, I enjoy watching "Days of Thunder." You know, it's "Top Gun" on pavement, and that's all you really need. It's so good, dumb fun, just ridiculous. Everybody in that is ridiculous in the best possible way. Like, Cary Elwes, in some ways, is almost a little bit Sacha Baron Cohen in that movie by accident-- not even like he's intentionally trying to be over the top. It just worked. It's good bad in the best possible way.

GREG MIGLIORE: Cool. What actually got me thinking of this topic here was I've been binge-watching "Cars" with my son. He gets up pretty early, and we will do a lot of early morning movie sessions. Like, you try to limit screen time, but if the sun's barely up, I don't really count that. I think it's totally fine. I will say this. From a car movie perspective, there's a million out there. I actually just started "Senna," but this is going to sound--

JOHN SNYDER: Oh, so good.

BYRON HURD: Yes.

GREG MIGLIORE: It is good. But I feel like it's a little slow. I'm going to take the counterpoint here. I know you guys are probably like, Greg, you're crazy. What are you-- you don't like "Senna"? It's not that. But it's a little slow to watch at 10:00 or 11:00 at night, I'm going to say that.

JOHN SNYDER: Sure, yeah.

GREG MIGLIORE: OK. All right. I was curious if you were going to take my head off there. But it's good so far. So I'm liking that. And then best "Cars" movie from the Pixar studios is-- I'm going to say "1," because it's so iconic, and Paul Newman has a significant role in it. And I think he's such a great actor. I was actually at Auto Week when he died, and I remember, I pulled together his obit. It's under a staff byline, actually, and some of the reaction to it. But that was cool.

JOHN SNYDER: We were talking about this a little bit on the stream. "Cars"-- I've only seen, I think, "Cars 3" all the way through. And I didn't know that about "Cars 1." I didn't know Paul Newman was in it until--

GREG MIGLIORE: Doc Hudson, dude.

JOHN SNYDER: --just last week. And so I gotta watch it.

BYRON HURD: It's really good. It's a really fun movie.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. It really sets the tone. I think it has the best narrative. It's kind of a pretty movie to watch, from just an animation, Pixar perspective.

BYRON HURD: Yeah, there are so many good Easter eggs in it for car people. Like, the drive-in that they have, the lights light up in the firing order of an old Ford V8. Like, there's lots of cool just little really subtle things. Also it touches on Americana nostalgia, like the Route 66 bypasses and all that, like how car culture has changed over the decades. It's really cool. It's a very satisfying movie.

GREG MIGLIORE: I would say it's head and shoulders above "Cars 2," which is just like the stereotypical sequel. It's crazy. There's all these different characters in it. "Cars 2" is basically a bond movie with-- it's long. Like, Owen Wilson, who is Lightning McQueen, is barely in it. It seemed like it needed more editing than it got, I mean, to be the film critic here. It's glitzy. If you like just looking at cars, it's great from that perspective. There's all kinds of different animated cars in it.

And then "3," they pull it back. They kind of close the loop. They pass the torch. They have some unused footage of Paul Newman, if you will, in it, which is cool, which lets Doc Hudson the character be back in it. It sounds like they put down some tracks just ahead of time. So 10 years later he's in this movie that came out just a couple of years ago, which is awesome. Yeah, that's my random thing. That's what's going on in my life is "Cars" right now.

BYRON HURD: Speaking of Paul Newman, if you need another quarantine watch and you haven't seen it yet, there is a documentary based on a book called "The Racing Life of Paul Newman." I believe it's on Prime. I think it's included with Prime. But it talks about Paul Newman just as an amateur turned semi-pro racing driver, and the people he touched and the people who came into the sport because of him who didn't even really-- like, they knew who he was obviously because of his Hollywood persona, but the people who met him only as a race car driver, usually at Lime Rock in Connecticut, just hanging out, one of the guys in the paddock. It's a really good story.

GREG MIGLIORE: I will add that to my list. That sounds awesome. He raced under the pseudonym PL Newman. And he never put on airs. And if you're wearing a helmet half the time, maybe you might not even notice just because-- unless you're, like, one, a car guy and two, a film buff, everyone knows who Paul Newman is, was. But you see some probably gray-haired tall dude walk in the pits, you might not put it together. So I think that's super cool the way he handled himself.

He came to racing relatively late in life, too-- in his 30s or 40s, even. Did it right up until basically he died. There's a great quote, and I'll paraphrase it, where he said, racing's the only thing that I ever had any grace in-- which is ridiculous when you consider he's one of the greatest actors of the 20th century. But yeah.

BYRON HURD: Yeah, he got into it because he was learning to drive for a film. It was a movie he was doing with Redford, I think, after "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." And he just really took to it, fell in love with it. And actually, he said later in life he identified more as a race car driver than he did as an actor, which, going back to your point there, Greg, it says so much about who he was as a person, because to the vast majority of people on earth, he's a Hollywood superstar, or was a Hollywood superstar. But he didn't see himself that way, and that's pretty charming.

GREG MIGLIORE: I need to get to Lime Rock, too. That's on the bucket list. I've only hit a few of those East Coast tracks. Monticello is one. I was just talking about that this morning with somebody else. But man, I want to get to Lime Rock. That is totally on the bucket list. Cool. All right, so we're going to wrap things up here. Well, a couple things here.

Best orphaned car brand-- I just figured with you two, make your case, put it out there. What's a brand that you wish was still here that you think was unjustly killed off, has the greatest history? I don't care how you justify it. Pick one and justify it. Let's go with you, Byron. Because I know what John's is going to be.

BYRON HURD: Yeah. Well, I think we're both going for GM here, because I'm going to say Pontiac. Pontiac died right when it was about to be great again. Like, it was right on that cusp. They had fantastic enthusiast products. They were poised to be the fun brand from GM. It was all really coming together, and then it wasn't anymore. And so Pontiac, and then by extension Holden, just to kind of bring it together, since that's where a lot of the good product was coming from. But John's going to dominate this one, so I'm going to hand it off.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. If you guys could see what John's wearing-- John what are you wearing right now?

JOHN SNYDER: I'm wearing my 442 shirt.

GREG MIGLIORE: Beautiful.

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah, Oldsmobile. Such a storied history-- you know, 100 years of car making. Just so many wonderful, wonderful cars from the wheeled stagecoaches, the motorized stagecoaches, to even the Cutlasses of the '80s were pretty good. Yeah, that's the one I miss the most, of course. But man, I'd really like to see what Packard would be doing if they were still around now. What would a Packard look like? I kind of imagine it to be like what Cadillac wants to be if it wasn't re-skinned Chevys-- like, ultimate American luxury. Yeah. So I gotta go with Oldsmobile, because. And then, Packard, I think it's just such an interesting brand, such beautiful, beautiful cars. And I'd just be really curious as to where they'd be right now.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. That's a great point. I mean, I love Oldsmobile. I think I will say this. I think from a practical perspective, I can kind of see why GM made the call on both those. I mean, actually, I can. I can totally see why they made the call on that, on killing those off, given the position they were in.

JOHN SNYDER: Oh, yeah.

GREG MIGLIORE: The products were good from an enthusiast perspective-- not so much Oldsmobile by the time they killed it off. But basically right up until that point they were great. But I will say this, I think the Aurora was an underrated car. I love all those Cutlasses. I was a big Pontiac fan, too. My brother had a Grand Prix and was talking about upgrading to the GXP version. But then he decided he didn't want that crazy power to the front wheels.

So then he later got an Impala SS with that small block, 303 horsepower engine in it, just totally random GM-- literally GM, as in me-- trivia, too. But now that I've sort of dinged the practicality of your brands, I'm gonna go even more less practical and say Hudson, I think, is the underrated brand that-- I don't think bringing it back would work. This is a brand that-- they have a car that you consider-- and obviously I'm in this "Cars" phase in my life, Doc Hudson, Paul Newman, the Hudson Hornet.

But I do think that's a great brand. They made some great cars. They dominated NASCAR in the early '50s, even requiring some rule changes because their cars were just so capable. It's an iconic design. I'm just going to say, I think it's a little bit of one that's lost to history that I think really achieved a ton. And maybe they're the ultimate brand that it's better to burn out than fade away. Leave it there.

I mean, could there be a Hudson today? No, probably not, just because when people talk about the past-- and sometimes the past is prologue, if you will-- but there is no modern version of Hudson. You could bring it back and people would be like, what's a Hudson? That's this old school name. The iconic image of it is the Hornet. You know, the styling, the last vision of it anybody would have in their head is from "Cars" or from the '50s. Like, there's no practical way forward to re-bring back Hudson for any modern thing. But I love them. The style is amazing. I've recently gotten more into the history. I think my kid has a Hudson Hornet Hot Wheel or something like that around here. That's my vote.

JOHN SNYDER: I'm bummed that there's probably not going to be an Ypsi Orphans Car Show.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.

JOHN SNYDER: They have the Orphans Car Show here in Ypsilanti every year, and it's out at the Waterfront Park, Riverside Park. And just all these people who just have these beautiful old orphaned brand cars in their garages bring them out. And they're sectioned off. And it's a giant park, and you can walk around and talk to all the owners. And it's a really fun car show. And then they judge each category, too. I was actually a judge last year.

GREG MIGLIORE: Nice.

JOHN SNYDER: And so that was really fun. But it's just such a wonderful car show to help the Historical Society right there in Ypsi. It's a small little museum, but they've got some cool stuff in there. But yeah, that is a wonderful show.

GREG MIGLIORE: It's one of my favorite shows, actually. I agree with you. They do a beer fest, too-- beer festival sometimes.

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah, at that park. That's been canceled this year, too, which sucks, because that's a great fest.

GREG MIGLIORE: Couple of good Ypsi events. I actually did my undergrad at Eastern Michigan in Ypsilanti, a lot of good brewers out there. Yeah, that museum's pretty amazing, too. It's not big, but it's very cool. And one thing I like about that show is the vibe about it. Like, you go out there, and you can see all these obscure, sometimes very highfalutin, sometimes not, cars. But it's so accessible. It's like, you can get stuff that you might not even see anywhere but Pebble Beach. But it's also just this chill Metro Detroit Michigan vibe. Like I said, you can go to a brewery. It's not expensive. It's like, you could see some amazing things, but the vibe is the antithesis of Pebble Beach in some ways.

JOHN SNYDER: For sure.

GREG MIGLIORE: Which I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm just saying, it's a cool vibe. You don't have to be dressed up to go, I guess, is what I'm trying to say. Ready to spend some money?

BYRON HURD: Let's do it.

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah.

GREG MIGLIORE: All right. Somebody wrote to me from the Hague. This is the first time I've ever received a "Spend My Money" from there. Or is it the Hog? You guys tell me. I think it's--

BYRON HURD: The Hague, I believe.

GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. The Hague. First time, yeah. Big fan of Autoblog. Compliments us for all our efforts. Thank you. "In the Netherlands, due to tax incentives, a lot of people drive EVs." A lot of different things he's working through here. But over the course of this year, he wants to trade in his Mercedes C350e hybrid-- which is a cool car, actually-- for a full electric vehicle. The following choices are-- the Volvo XC40 Recharge, as he calls it; e-tron 50 Quattro, Tesla Model Y, or Mustang Mach E-- he wrote Mustang E. Ford would probably cringe at that. But it's the Mach E is what they're calling it. Here's the criteria, which I love. Two wild boxer dogs that he's got to carry. And yeah, the writer, his name was Bas. So hopefully I got all my pronunciations right there. Down a quart of coffee. John, let's start with you, Mr. Green Car Editor extraordinaire.

JOHN SNYDER: Well, the dogs are the thing that are throwing me for a loop here. These are all great. I would drive any one of them. I would shy away from the Model Y, just because there's going to be a ton of them. There's probably going to be issues with it. I want to say the Mustang Mach E because that's just going to be awesome. But I don't know that that's going to have the space that you need.

The XC40 is very compact. But it's packaged very nicely. And that might be the one I go with. The e-tron is-- you know, that's tough, because it's fantastic. And it has the space. I'd be worried about the dogs messing it up.

GREG MIGLIORE: Shredding the nice Audi seats?

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah. Although, I mean, it's built pretty well. It depends on how you want to carry your dogs. If you have them strapped into seats, yeah, maybe the e-tron, if you're putting them in cages in the back, e-tron. If they're just going to run loose, I'm going with the Volvo. It's packaged well. There's lots of room. You can put dogs and other stuff in there. And yeah, I feel like that interior will hold up depending on the upholstery you choose. They have a wide range of upholstries. I like some of those city weaves. If you can hack it, though, the e-tron is a fabulous vehicle. I'm going with e-tron.

GREG MIGLIORE: e-tron. OK, Byron.

BYRON HURD: Well, John basically took the exact same path that I was thinking. Like, he eliminated them in the exact same order I would have. So yeah, actually, I like the e-tron choice. I want to throw one more out there, though, that isn't on the list. And since Bas is a Mercedes owner, I'm assuming he left the EQC off for a reason, perhaps. But if he didn't, I think he should consider that, because, I mean, for the footprint, the format, I mean, it's basically a GLC that isn't GLC. It's a little bit bigger than the XC40, and the hatch area is pretty useful. So for the dogs, that seems like it would be at least as practical as the e-tron. So between the two of those, I don't know which one I would necessarily pick, but they both seem viable.

JOHN SNYDER: Yeah. At that point it comes down to a personal taste issue between those two.

BYRON HURD: Exactly, yeah. And he may have a reason for not wanting to purchase another Mercedes. So I'm not going to-- I'm not trying to pressure anybody to do something they don't want to do. But I'm just throwing it out there.

JOHN SNYDER: But if you like your Mercedes, check that out for sure.

BYRON HURD: Yeah, why not, right?

GREG MIGLIORE: Very cool. Yeah. I'd say with your head, go with maybe the Volvo. If you're going to go with your heart, go with the Mustang, just because that'd be awesome. It's going to be tight. But I mean, I don't know. My dog and her transportation-- and she's a golden retriever, so she's pretty big. But it's always a work in progress, depending on if she's in our car, what press car she's in, sometimes she rides shotgun, sometimes she's in the back seat, sometimes she lays on the floor. Sometimes she drives. I'm kidding, she doesn't.

But my point is, is you're going to figure it out with a dog. Unless you have this system-- I know some people do have those very official things they use, and that's great, if that's how you want to do it. And two dogs, I'll admit, that throws a degree of challenge in there. But I would probably land on the Mach E. I do love the e-tron, though. That's a brilliant car. I would definitely at least consider that one. You know, those would be the two emotional picks for me.

Volvo is great. It's definitely a stylish play. But it wouldn't be the car that I'd be fired up to wake up and be like, we're going to drive the XC40 today. That would be more of my microwave car. But I do like Volvos, I'll say that. I don't really know how I'd fall on the Tesla Model Y. Kind with you, John. Like, maybe. I don't know. It's going to be tough to get to. It could be tough to get them. Let's put it that way.

JOHN SNYDER: It'll be tough to get them at first. And then after a while, they'll be everywhere. And it'll be tough to get them serviced.

GREG MIGLIORE: I would say it's not worth waiting for either. I'm not totally up on the production cadence of Tesla at this exact moment, this minute, Friday, May 29. But you'll have no problems with the Ford or the Audi or the Volvo, just getting one, getting them serviced. You're not going to have to look to find a Ford dealer or a Volvo dealer or an Audi dealer, most likely. So there's all of those things. Yeah, that's where I'd land. Mach E, and then close second is the Audi.

All right, guys. Good show. This was a lot of fun. We covered a gazillion things. Hope your quarantine is treating you well. Any final thoughts?

JOHN SNYDER: I've got some questions brewing for trivia if you want ones to throw at other people.

GREG MIGLIORE: Let's do it.

JOHN SNYDER: So I will send those along to you. And I should have known Leland. I should have known that one.

BYRON HURD: Yeah, that one's going to haunt me.

GREG MIGLIORE: That's go to haunt you? Is Henry Leland specifically going to haunt you?

BYRON HURD: My buddy Hank, yeah. It's tough.

GREG MIGLIORE: Well, so it goes. I think maybe he can haunt you in the historic Leland Hotel built in 1927 in Detroit on Bagley Avenue. How about that?

BYRON HURD: Perfect.

GREG MIGLIORE: There we go. We're going to end with that. You got a good deal of trivia. It sounds like at least the hosts enjoyed it, so we'll do it a couple more times, see if we can stump our readers. Everybody be safe out there. We'll see you next week.

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