Curb and Canyon: A Porsche Podcast
Curb and Canyon: A Porsche Podcast
Porsche 'Special Edition Fatigue' is real but mountain drives heal all
Andy and James dive into a candid discussion about Porsche's new limited-edition models, the ‘Spirit 70’ edition specifically, DIY maintenance challenges, and the joy of mountain road driving.
• Critical analysis of the new Porsche 911 Spirit 70, questioning its price tag and cabriolet configuration
• Celebration of the 992.2 GT3's impressive Nürburgring lap time with a manual transmission
• James details his spark plug replacement process that required partially disassembling his 991's rear end
• Discussion about using ChatGPT to plan the perfect driving routes for upcoming road trips
• Andy recounts his epic Alpine Range Rally experience, including a truck incident with a 944 and driving nirvana on twisty mountain roads
• Debate about a mysterious GT3 in the "Video of the Week" that appears to be a de-winged regular GT3 posing as a Touring model
• Musings on the rising prices of new Porsches in Australia, with new GTS models approaching half a million AUD
Join us next month for more Porsche banter and laughs on Curb and Canyon.
Andy Gawne's. Welcome back, james McGrath. How are you, my friend? I'm good. You're looking uh pretty dapper this morning. For what is it 7 am?
Speaker 2:8 am, aussie time it's actually 9 am Aussie time, so you got your times wrong, but that suited me better because, I'm now up to my second cup of coffee that's a fancy coffee.
Speaker 1:That's very fancy For people listening. Andy's got himself a little shot glass with what looks like a very frothy milky coffee A shot glass.
Speaker 2:That is a very strong cafe latte, my friend.
Speaker 1:None of this.
Speaker 2:Minnesota brown stuff Yuck. Anyway, we are not here to talk about Minnesota brown. We've got a lot to get through today. We've got the Porsche 911 Spirit 70. We've got videos spark plug changes, road trips, rallies, video of the week. Should we get into it?
Speaker 1:Let's do it. Welcome to Curb and Canyon. Yeah, we're back.
Speaker 2:Nice cold entry. Love that Not bad not bad.
Speaker 1:Well, look, I do have to take a sip of drink. So you are going to see what I'm drinking, and I'm drinking Sprite Zero's finest. You're drinking Sprite.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm. Do you know what? Do you know what I like? Sprite in the warm climes. If I'm somewhere tropical, a Sprite is very good, spritely whitely.
Speaker 1:I'm excited about today's agenda, andy. Once again you've selected a video of the week which is kind of making me die a little inside because of how good it is. But we'll get to that soon, we, which is, you know, kind of making me die a little inside because of how good it is, but we'll get to that soon.
Speaker 2:We'll get there, yeah, yeah, yeah, it really does. It really does. Where should we start? Should we start with this Porsche 911 Spirit 70? Oh no.
Speaker 1:See, I was hoping to play bad guy, but it sounds like you're not massively impressed by it either. So are we just going to like rip this spirit 70 to shreds and move quickly onto the?
Speaker 2:new gc3. What are we going to do? It's going to be a lot less interesting the fact that we're going to rip it to shreds, and neither of us is going to have much positive to say about it. But look, I think it still does bear discussing. So let's uh, let's get into this. Just launched at their auto shanghai show. Interesting that they've launched it in china, right, because porsche sales in china are tanking yeah tanking down 40 something percent in q1 alone they are they're in some real trouble.
Speaker 2:They're apparently doing a uh some big pop-up store in shanghai. Uh, not looking great, but anyway, let's. Let's talk about the car. What are your first impressions?
Speaker 1:It looks moldy. They've gone for like moldy green or Brussels sprouts green. I'm not a big fan of the color they chose. I mean, why would they choose that? And they went for a Cabriolet instead of a Coupe. And I've got nothing against convertible cars, but I just think why would got nothing against convertible cars, but I just think why would you have a convertible 911? It just doesn't look like it should, because the silhouette is gone the minute you take the hood down and when, the, when, the when the top's up, it's still just. I just don't like it yeah, I mean, look it's.
Speaker 2:It's one of those cars you know, released by exclusive manufacturer. They need to do something different with it. I get that and the color, you know it looks like some of the colors that Ricoh Customs might do on their sort of cars. So I get it right. It's period, correct it feels, like an early 70s car.
Speaker 2:I kind of dig those 70s safety stripes. I've always been a bit of a fan of them, but it doesn't feel cohesive to me. It it's. It's too much of a leap, like you say, of like as early 70s st or something looks like it's been made to rally. But yeah, it's a convertible.
Speaker 1:It's a convertible and I'm just going to say this Fuck off, it's just, it's terrible. Okay, so not only is it the cabriolet sorry cabriolet owners and my good friend Mark, if you're listening, your cabriolet looks beautiful. 997 cabriolets something about them, they look good. The 991s, the bigger cars, no, thank you. So it's not only the cab, it's not only in shit green. It's got the big circular number on the door which was just featured right on the um st. It's got three stripes on the hood, which is too similar. Oh yeah, the st as well.
Speaker 1:The club sport came out with that as well, right, um, but let's say the st. It's got three stripes on the hood, which looks way too similar to the exclusive series, two stripes. And it's also the gts. And, just to you know, quote my good mate nick murray, and I think they've gotten past this, but you could argue for the longest time. The gts, coming at the end of the run is usually just a collection of all the shit they can't sell and they figure let's just put a bit of this, bit of that, bit of this bit of this boost the power, call it gts and let's just be done with all these parts we're not going to need anymore.
Speaker 2:This time the gts has launched first, which is, which is fine, which is great, but just fuck off yeah look, I don't agree with the cynical take on the GTS, but we'll park that for a second, because that's a separate discussion.
Speaker 2:And look, there's some things I've got to pull you up on, like the three stripes on the hood. That's 70 safety stripes. That is a thing that's not, you know. Whatever the two stripes you're talking about. Boring the kind of decal one can put on their Carrera S gives a fuck. So I think they're trying to hark back, but it feels to me as though one person said, all right, I'll do the interior. Someone else said, yeah, I'll do the color, and someone else said, yeah, I'll do the graphics, and they all kind of did their favorite things. And then there was one guy at the end of the line was like, oh hey, lads, I may not have told you this, but it's a cab, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, fair enough, fair enough, so not madly impressed.
Speaker 2:No, but, and also let's talk about it 1,500 units worldwide. It's been limited to the regular GTS cab cab. Right, the recently launched gts cab that starts at 183k us. This, and let's be clear, there's there's no powertrain upgrade. There's no engine upgrade. It has no additional power, nothing other than some questionable color choices and decal choices. I do like the Pasher interior. I'll say that 240K. I mean, I'm tempted to quote you and say fuck off, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:And here's another thing that itches my crack. Okay, it's called Good.
Speaker 2:Hold up, hold up, there is a cream yeah.
Speaker 1:I'll let you know about it. It's not made in stuttgart, let me tell you that. So it's called the spirit 70. Now maybe they set a bad what's that, even?
Speaker 2:what's that even mean? I don't know, come on, but right, is this a sequel to moana? So, dude?
Speaker 1:the 991.1 911R. How many of them were made? 900. 991. Okay, why are they making 1,500 of this Spirit 70? Wouldn't it have been clever to only make 70 of them.
Speaker 2:Isn't that the launch year of Porsche 1,500?
Speaker 1:Wouldn't it be clever to. I know If they're going to call it the Spirit 70, there are only 70 available Make it even more desirable. And then you could probably say I'm going to charge $200,000 or $300,000 or even $500,000 for this thing, and I bet you there are 70 knobheads out there who would happily part with half a million dollars for this shit, green cabriolet. But no, apparently there are going to be 1,500 of them.
Speaker 2:So no, and look, let's not labour the point too much. But I also do think there is something tone deaf or just a massive misstep, as you keep saying, in doing it with a cab, like if you're going to use all of this sort of early 70s heritage motorsport touches, put it on a coupe, do a coupe. Yeah, I still wouldn't love it, but at least I'd kind of get it. And you know, I was looking on Rennlist this morning and Joe Kaczynski had a piece he'd written on the front page there and I love this quote from him. He said three years ago I wrote about Porsche special edition fatigue, which straightaway you kind of get right.
Speaker 2:The premise was that Porsche builds these great cars, prices them to the moon, dealers tack on ADM on top and the allocations go to the same people that bought the last special edition. Most of the cars rarely, if ever, get driven and then just getting flipped on. Bring a trailer. What's the point? We'd rather see Porsche build us a modern day 944 or something similar that enthusiasts can actually buy and enjoy. Mic drop, joe kaczynski. Yeah, good on, joe yeah, I like it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm down with that. You know, I've actually seen some um ai. I think they're ai generated um visualizations the 944 the 944s, the 928s and there was another one that I saw recently and for a minute there. Of course, you know I fell for the clickbait.
Speaker 2:I was like oh my God, that looks so good, that looks so good.
Speaker 1:But I think they should do something like that. I mean, if they're going to bring stuff like this to us and there are people out there who are going to buy it, just you know, give the public, give the Porsche enthusiasts what they want.
Speaker 2:Well, just be real.
Speaker 1:Not this. No one asked for this.
Speaker 2:Come on, no one asked for this. No, that's it. Just be real about it and go yeah, it's not 240 versus 183.
Speaker 1:Yeah, anyway, so that's a big bop-bbang from both of us, it sounds like. Now we'll put the link to this article, you know, with the episode or whatever on Instagram so that you can see not only the photos of the shit green cab but in the background the beautiful shark blue or whatever. Blue GT3 was launched as well the new 992.2 GT3. As much as I love the gt3, you and everybody who follows me on instagram or whatever know that the gt3 is just my car. I think for the first time ever, I've got something maybe not so nice to say about the gt3 and it's super, super nitpicky. It's super nitpicky. But should I? Should I get to that first, or should we talk about all the awesome stuff?
Speaker 2:well, I mean, I, I think, uh, you may as well get to it, because I think you know the gt3 has been on the market now for a little bit, so there's nothing new, I don't think in this shanghai gt3 fair enough, but the thing that maybe I haven't discussed, or at least I've only just learned about, is that the headrests can be removed with one hand and that, apparently, is a key selling feature for the track.
Speaker 1:Who in the world is tracking a car and fucking around with the headrest? Why do you need a one-hand quick release headrest when you are tracking a car? I don't get it. Maybe I'm just in a really cynical arsey mood today, but that was another crack at you. Do you? Do you seriously not know? No, tell me.
Speaker 2:I've never tracked cars, but, like I can't imagine, tell me why because, because the thing is right, this goes with your whole shtick of like just grumpy old guy. They don't need this one porsche throwing in stupid things that nobody needs. This is actually a very cool feature Because if you go to the track, the problem can be with the existing or previous carbon buckets, that the headrest with your helmet and hands device pushes your head too far forward. So when you're at the track you take the headrest out to create more room. I get the helmet so that you can actually sit comfortably. That makes perfect sense. What are you not understanding? Why? What?
Speaker 1:what even? Okay, let's say that's true. Let's say that's true. What when you are standing outside the car before you start the race? Why does it matter if it takes you two hands and 10 seconds instead of one hand and five seconds? Like, does anybody change their headrest out in a pit stop? Is that why it needs to be quicker and faster and slicker? Fuck off, come on, it's just.
Speaker 2:You're not getting any action at home Because if you're angry about this.
Speaker 1:It's just tweaking for the sake of tweaking. Now I tell you, I think the other thing Okay, so hold on, hold on, hold on.
Speaker 2:So the James McGrath spec. Gt3 takes 27 minutes to remove the headrest. The point is, it's easy.
Speaker 1:But why does it? It was already easy. Why does it need to be easier? Why does it?
Speaker 2:need to be one. It wasn't easy, it couldn't be done before you, dum-dum. Oh, okay, fair enough.
Speaker 1:Fair enough, okay, bucket seats, I get it. Yes, you dum-dum, oh okay, fair enough, fair enough, okay, bucket seats, I get it. Yes, there was a fixed head, all right. Yeah, fair enough. That makes total sense to me now, okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, so wait, we're going to talk about one other thing, about the GT3. They've just set a new lap time at the Nürburgring, yay, but in a manual, in a manual GT3. That's impressive.
Speaker 1:This is pretty cool, that's impressive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that they went and did this with a manual. So it's a 656.294, which apparently I haven't got the article in front of me, but I think from memory that is seven seconds quicker than the previous gen GT3 PDK, which is pretty. That's pretty impressive, right, I know people get a bit cynical about Nurburgring times and who gives a shit doesn't mean anything to the consumer, but it is the one piece of empirical data that we have that suggests that car X performs better than car Y in something that is somewhat similar to a real life application.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, that's impressive, that's awesome, that is so they put that all down to aero.
Speaker 2:So the car's basically the same, horsepower, no, no different. But the, the aero, has helped so much that, uh, that the legend that is york bergmeister was able to put it around the ring in 656.3 or thereabouts. Pretty impressive stuff.
Speaker 1:There is an absolutely phenomenal German name Bergmeister.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yes, Like straight out of Central Casting. King of the castle Bergmeister.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, we used to race with Patrick Long back in the day. He's like I don't think he even races anymore. I sometimes wonder about if they put one of their like current day, like a Kevin Estra or someone like that in the car, would they go even quicker. But it seems like he just has this way of getting their road cars to do incredible things on that track, so fair play to him things on that track, so fair play to them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good job. That's absolutely amazing. Well, maybe last thing for me on the gt3. I did start with that thing that I was angry about and now actually think it's quite clever, is, um, it's, it's the perfect spec for me. Uh, like, looking at it, it's, I love the blue, I love the new lights, I love the racing stripe across the top. I love the blue, I love the new lights, I love the racing stripe across the top. I love the carbon fiber on the wing mirrors. The aero looks absolutely just pucker. I mean, it's amazing. I think it's even got the sport chrono in the front, which, let's face it, is the most important thing about a Porsche.
Speaker 2:Wait, what did you just say there, jamie Oliver, pucker, pucker, pucker, piesucker, pies. Yeah, absolutely brilliant, so it's it's. So speaking about that headrest thing is kind of a well, let's call it a little bit of a segue, because that is about making something really really easy, right? Yeah, I just watched your video on changing spark plugs in a 991. Like the fact that it looks like you basically have to disassemble the entire rear end of the car just to be able to change the spark plugs. Like why do that to yourself?
Speaker 1:It's fun. Honestly, that's my therapy Come on.
Speaker 2:Look, I'm telling you, come on, start drinking more alcohol.
Speaker 1:Look, if I'm Martin Lawrence in Bad Boys and I'm not getting any at home, that's what I do. That's what I do. It's no, so in theory and it's proven. You know, I've seen other videos, like Tommy L Garage, for example, you don't have to take off the whole rear end of the intercooler and all that sort of stuff, which I did. That was partly because I was doing the intercoolers anyway. I was putting the machined diverter valves in from flat six and also just to get better camera angles to make the DIY video.
Speaker 1:Frankly, however, before I attempted all of that, I did try the old-fashioned way, and whether it's just because my you know king kong size arms can't quite get up there in the gap between the intercooler and the uh, the uh, the far side, um, coil packs, there's just not enough space, for me at least, to pull the coil packs out and get enough leverage, because they do take quite a bit of force to pop out and they quite literally pop out. So, yeah, so that was it, but what a great job, absolutely awesome job. And I just recently helped my friend ben with his almost identical 99, 1.2 in graphite, blue, metallic, um do the spark plugs on his car, and we did the same thing. We did the air filter at the same time, so we did take everything off, um, but with the two of us working on it, I think, apart from a couple of like minor needless setbacks here and there, um, the whole job probably took us about three hours. That's not terrible.
Speaker 2:Right for a wrenching session to ask what's the, what's the timing like? Do you? I didn't see this in the video, but sometimes, when I work on my car and, granted, I do not have the skills nor patience that you do, um, but equally, wrenching on a 964, things are pretty basic, right, they're pretty agricultural by comparison, um, do you ever reach a point where you think, oh shit, I, I don't know, I can't get this back together? Or you know the, the job that you thought was going to take you an hour, suddenly your car's up on the rack now for two weeks because you can't make it stick I have worry.
Speaker 1:I worry about that scenario constantly, obviously, um, being, you know, a bit bit of a whopper, bit of a bit of a knucklehead, um, and getting stuff like this wrong, um, but no, I was in a very real situation recently, actually, when I was working on another friend's 991.2. I was doing this, the, uh, the belt replacement for him and, um, so, bumper off, spoiler off, air box off, um, and you're looking, you know, down this little two inch crack, basically at all the pulleys and and the, the belts, um, once I got the belt off, trying to get the belt back on, I I actually thought at one point it's like I just I'm not gonna do it, I just can't. Just, how do you do it?
Speaker 1:I've forgotten I've forgotten, like does this one go on top or around? Does it go around this way or that way? And then, once you get like two or three lined up, if you twist it a little bit they kind of fall off, and so it's right oh man, I I don't, I don't enjoy that job, and but there was there was probably about a 20 minute sweat session where I just thought, oh my god, I'm not gonna get this thing back together. What am I gonna tell my mate?
Speaker 2:especially did you was, was your mate there uh, no, no, he uh just dropped. Okay, he dropped it off and I worked on it for a week because imagine that he's there and he's looking at you and you're giving him the sort of nervous yeah, mate, thumbs up thing and thinking, oh shit, shit, shit, shit yeah, exactly how the hell do I put this thing back together?
Speaker 1:uh, yeah, yeah, very real scenario does. He is this the first he's hearing that you pretty much ruined his car oh no, no, I told him I was pretty terrified at that one particular moment, yeah, and and actually with, uh, my friend ben's car recently, when we were working on his spark plugs. The job went perfectly and we put the car like all back together, um, even got the wheels on it and put it down, started it up and he got a check engine light no and this didn't happen on my car, it didn't happen on my friend, my other friend, uh deals 991.2.
Speaker 1:So I've done this job two or three times now, completely flawlessly. Ben and I are working on it together and he's, you know, supposed to be benefiting from the fact that I've done this a few times before we get this check engine light and there's, uh, we do the diagnostics and it's it's a faulty coil pack or or there's just like a a cylinder misfire and it tells us which cylinder is misfiring.
Speaker 1:Um, so we checked that one out, couldn't you know? We were reaching around replace the coil pack, replace the spark plug still getting the check engine light, just could not figure out what it was. We actually took the whole car apart again the bumper, the f, you know, not the air filter, but the bumper and the intercoolers. We took it, took it off and we said, okay, let's just go around, we're going to double check absolutely everything. And we did put it all back together. He's still getting the check engine light. Decide to call it a day. So this three-hour job that should have worked in three hours ended up taking about four or five. Took it to our friend AJ, who runs Eurocharge Minneapolis Basically, who runs Eurocharge Minneapolis Basically. He just took one look at it and figured that one of the electrical connectors on the coil pack hadn't been clicked into place. So all of that nonsense like taking it all apart and putting it back in, and it was just literally one electrical connector that looked like it was on. But when you give it, an extra squeeze, click.
Speaker 1:I would just like to say for the record that was the side that Ben was working on, not the side I was working on, as I pointed it out to him just to avoid any blame.
Speaker 2:No, that's fair.
Speaker 1:Ben know your limitations Exactly mate, what an amateur, what an absolute amateur.
Speaker 2:So have you got other videos planned at the moment?
Speaker 1:because a lot, of, a lot of cool diy stuff but any, any driving content uh, well, I'm in the middle of filming my uh next exhaust video and I think I'm only gonna have two more exhaust videos, like two. Uh, I've put the cat bypass pipes on. Oh my god, you gotta listen to this thing. When it's on the road, when I'm shifting or I get on the gas, it sounds like shotguns are being fired out of the back of my car. The first time it happened I almost ducked my head, thinking was that a shotgun? Is someone shooting at me? It is insanely loud. I'm not going to. I do have a road trip coming up, as you were asking. I'm going to have to get them off, to be honest, before I go on the road trip. Right, right, right, just insane, insane amounts of sound. I'm not going to dig that at all.
Speaker 2:Is that a setup one would typically go for if they're just setting their car up for track? Perhaps Is there a performance gain to be had.
Speaker 1:I think that extra bit of high flow that the sport cats improve upon but don't fully, don't fully resolve, I think, probably gives you a bit of a boost. But, um, I think, to be honest, unless I was tracking the car I wouldn't want that setup. And this is even before I've got the headers on. So this is the um, this is the bypass pipes, with the sole valve x pipe and it. I mean, it sounds amazing but it's just, it's too much, it's just way too much for me. Um, but yeah, speaking of drives and we're going to talk about your um range rally in a second I've got a drive coming up with some friends.
Speaker 1:We had planned to do a tour of the rocky mountains and we were going to do, um, you know, boulder, over to provo and utah and up to Yellowstone and back around again, but with the threat of winter road closures still in the Rockies and you know, a few kind of competing priorities with other things for a bunch of us, we've decided to sort of scale it back a little bit and we're doing a tour of the Black Hills in South Dakota and a little bit into Wyoming.
Speaker 1:So, mount Rushmore, keystone, custer State Park, the black hills in south dakota and a little bit into wyoming. So, mount rushmore, keystone, custer state park, big horn, um the devil's tower, spearfish canyon, deadwood if you're a deadwood tv show fan, we're going to be going to deadwood. That's going to be great and it's and it's. It's going to be a little easier because we're staying in one place and actually I wanted to ask you about this when you do your rallies, um, are you guys staying in one place and then just like touring different regions each day, or are you on a continual loop and it's like a different place to KIP every night?
Speaker 2:Before I answer that I love that as you're going through the different locations, any one of those that was familiar to me was only familiar to me through pop culture, like Provo. I'm like, oh yeah, I'm pretty sure Chevy Chase goes there in Fletch. Then you said Yellowstone and I'm like, okay, I'm watching Yellowstone at the moment with Kevin Costner.
Speaker 2:Then you said the Black Hills and I'm thinking what is that? Calamity, jane, then Deadwood. So, to answer your question, no, our trip is always, uh, I mean it's only two nights. Uh, the last, the one we did previously, was actually three, but but we found I think two nights is kind of the sweet spot. But we stay in two different places. There's certainly, um that you, there's certainly an argument to be had that that the place, the place we stay in the first night, you could stay there for two nights and do a loop. But no, we move around, yeah gotcha, gotcha.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was what we're going to do in the Rockies and I think we actually worked out we were going to be staying in six different spots over eight nights, so it's actually going to be quite a tour. That's a long trip. It is a long trip and we also figured we were going to be averaging about 450 miles a day. A lot of that like challenging mountain road, which also is maybe a little bit unrealistic to keep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So you know what? I don't know if you used a chat GBT to help you plan road trips. My friend Mark was telling me about this, uh, when we were out driving in the carolinas recently. He uses chat gbt for for anything that requires any kind of plan or novel kind of solution. So I plugged it in and I just basically said give me a three-day road trip of the black hills, taking in as many sites and scenic routes as possible, challenging roads, no highways. Suggest where we stop for lunch. I want to start here and end here and we basically, you know we don't want to do more than four or five day, four or five hours of driving a day. Boom, yeah, and it came back and it was. It was perfect. I mean, like it needed a couple of tweaks here and there, but I was amazed at what it provided for me. So we're going to be doing the ai inspired trip of the black hills she was.
Speaker 2:I love that it's. It's pretty. It's a pretty handy tool for that sort of thing, isn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 1:yeah, I can't take credit, obviously, uh, but it does look like I did create the roots because it's on my website. Auto amateurcom forward slash 2025 spring tour.
Speaker 2:If you want to join us, love it, love it, and you know what ai is, a bit like most other things. You know, put shit in, you get shit out, so it's only as good as the only, as good as the prompts it gets there you go exactly give yourself some credit, my man yeah, it hasn't yet come up with photos of jennifer garner in lingerie, draped over the front of a classic 911.
Speaker 1:It refuses to make those images for me, but one can hope.
Speaker 2:I feel like there's more than a kernel of truth in that. Oh, it's completely true. It's completely true.
Speaker 1:Are you now thinking about which neighbor's star you would like to see draped over the back of a ute or whatever it is? You guys call cars over there.
Speaker 2:Not so much. I mean, I always think about this is a kind of weird jump. But I love when the F1 driver, valtteri Bottas, did a thing out here this year where he had a ute that you could rent. That was basically his signature ute. It was unreal because he's kind of become this, what he's like a we've adopted him as an Aussie because he's got an Aussie girlfriend and he spends a lot of time here and he has a mullet good lad.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yes, indeed indeed hey, I've got to say and this is another aside and a tangent into my, my private life, but I have been watching the, the Australian version of Alone. Do you get that show over there? I'm sure we do so it's basically a bunch of wilderness survivalist freaks who get drop, shipped out into the middle of nowhere and they've got to survive for as long as they can. Long story short, the American one they survive forever. They're out there for like 50 days, 60 days, 70 days. It's a little boring, frankly.
Speaker 1:The Australian one it's like Celebrity Big Brother. It's swearyary, it's trashy. It's just this one guy like basically took an axe to his tent or whatever, because he was just pissed off that he couldn't catch any fish. Um, there's another lady that's basically walking around naked because she feels like she's close to the, the, the you know nature or whatever. And dude, you guys are. You're a fun, you're a funny bunch, I'll give you that much. You know nature or whatever. And dude, you guys are a funny bunch, I'll give you that much Do you know what would be funny?
Speaker 2:Because I think you said that was filmed on the west coast of Tasmania, which is where Tasmanian trips take place.
Speaker 1:Is that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, if in one episode one of them just kind of stumbles out onto some road and 20. Porsches go flying by.
Speaker 1:Oh man, it looks absolutely beautiful out there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I remember seeing your video and the footage from when you guys did a trip out there. But yeah, wow, that's some pretty spectacular bush and I'm not talking about that lady. Hey, so I've got a question for you. Yes, as we go back to talking about Spirit 70 and you know all these fancy new cars that Porsche keep coming out with Are they getting more expensive in Australia right now? Like the price of cars getting more expensive as the market around the world tanks in, thanks to great part to our country. But you know what's that like.
Speaker 2:Look, I don't know how prices have been affected post trade war, how prices have been affected uh post uh trade war uh, but look, certainly over the last couple of years the price of new Porsches uh has just moved into a realm that is insane. I mean I could find, I could find a used 991.2 uh GT3 not touring but regular3, between 350 and 380K Australian. A new GTS is getting up towards half a million Australian. So it is massive, massive dollars. Yeah, prices of Porsches are kind of nuts, I think. But you know that certainly helps protect that recent modern second-hand or used market.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like you know, I was on the configurator yesterday. I rarely go on the configurator these days.
Speaker 1:Is it just depressing?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, Also, I don't think there's anything really other than a GT3 in the range that I think I could see myself buying. But I can figure it up a GTS. It was a bit of fun, but yeah, that was close to half a million bucks.
Speaker 1:So, as far as the used market goes, I had a question from somebody the other day that said if you have a choice between a bit of a beaten up 964 that you'd probably have to look at as a project car um, but ultimately you could probably turn it into something spectacular or, for the same money, a completely clean, highly specced 997.1 turbo, both coupes, both colors that you like. What would you go for?
Speaker 2:that's a really difficult question because that it's. It's about as far from apples and apples as you could come Right. Look, personally, just in terms of headspace and what I've got, the willingness and time to throw into something. If they were my two options, I would go the 997 Turbo, and actually I really like a 997 Turbo. I think they're a car we don't talk about that often, but they look stunning. Yeah, there's a lot to love in that. So, no, I wouldn't want a Project 964.
Speaker 1:How much money do you think you'd need to sink into a high mileage 964 that had seen better days? Assuming you don't need to like fully swap out the transmission, the clutch, the engine, assuming you don't need to like fully swap out the transmission, the clutch, the engine. Let's say you've got I don't know suspension, maybe shifter, cosmetic stuff.
Speaker 2:Look, if it's that sort of stuff, if it doesn't need a new trans, new clutch or engine rebuild, then really you're talking about cosmetic stuff and chassis stuff, a lot of which I've actually done on my car. So if it's that sort of work that requires doing it, it probably needs things like oil lines and all that sort of stuff done. That's not horrifically expensive. You know, in Australia I don't know If you wanted it to be amazing, I would say 10 to 20 Australian would probably get it somewhere pretty decent. 10k would get you suspension refresh and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, you don't need to spend crazy money. I mean, if it's an absolute beater it's going to cost you. But as long as it's in decent running order, things like getting the chassis up to speed and all that sort of stuff doesn't have to be insanely expensive. You could do some butchers, put some lowering springs on the existing suspension and you'd probably be off to the races.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, because, comparatively, if you're thinking then about a clean 997 turbo, but you wanted to, you know, dial it in maybe with a full sports exhaust, you know, aftermarket exhaust, maybe some coils, etc. Etc. It's probably about similar money, right? Yeah, probably.
Speaker 2:I mean another sort of maybe 10, 15 australian oh yeah, I mean exhausts on things like 997s and 991s, as you well know uh, insanely expensive. You shouldn't need to do anything suspension wise to a 997 turbo. Maybe you'd put some lowering springs on it, but that's just. You know, ibark or h&r, they're not going to be expensive and you know, straight out of the box you've got a weapons grade 911 I like it.
Speaker 1:I like it. You know that that's going to be the next bumper sticker. Someone's going to come up with a good sticker weapons grade, um. So I got a question for you. How's little green? I haven't heard, I've seen much of little green. I'm waiting for a youtube video to drop. Have we seen the youtube video yet?
Speaker 2:uh, there is a youtube video that dropped a week ago. Thanks for not noticing, uh, what it did yeah, how did I miss that?
Speaker 2:all right. Well, what you know I'm glad you did because it gives me the opportunity to promote it. Yeah, no, no, we did. My friend Gerard and I did a drive up one of our local mountains. He was in his 901.2 Carrera T with me in Hot Pursuit in Little Green. A lot of raw audio, a lot of great sounds. Actually I got some really incredible sound of the 964, you know, high up in the rev range. It's a bit different from my typical video content, but one I really enjoyed making. But no, look, overall Little Green's terrific.
Speaker 2:We've got two little issues with it which I've spoken about before this little grinding sound in the steering, which we've not quite yet worked out what that is, and then also a vibration in the shifter. But you know what? I'll use this as a segue to talk about Alpine Range Rally 11, because you know I had three days in that car. I think we did somewhere in the order of 1,500 kilometers, almost all of it on twisties, and can I tell you the car was so good like there was, there was there was a lot of times. I just thought I'm so lucky to be able to do this kind of trip in this car like I can't. I almost couldn't imagine a better car for the job, because it's just modern enough that it's comfortable. You know, for the few sections of highway that we had, it's okay. It gets along really well. It does remarkably well in the high-speed stuff, but, you know, in the tighter, more technical stuff it's just brilliant. And to backtrack a little, bar one really disappointing and sad event, it's one of the best rallies I can remember.
Speaker 2:So day one we were driving, there's a road that we only discovered a couple of years ago and it's an out-and-back road. So you have to drive into this tiny little town with nothing but a general store. We have lunch there and we drive back out and it's super tight, super twisty and the road surface can be a little bit sketchy, but overall it's a pretty great road and we're driving in and on the way in. Uh, it was, uh, this small ford truck came towards me. I was leading and he had a orange flashing light, he had a wide load ahead sign on on his car. So I slowed down and, sure enough, this huge truck was coming in the other direction. So we all I got on the radio and said to everyone hey, pull over, watch out, huge truck. Which everybody did, and that was great. So then, uh, on the way back out on that road, we're driving along and again I was in front and I come flying around a corner and there's a truck the same size as the one we'd passed on the way in, but with no support vehicle coming around a bend in the other direction. Oh no, so I had to take, uh, I had to take a little bit of evasive action to avoid this thing and I jump on the radio and again say to everyone hey guys, massive truck, massive truck, you know, get off the road. So everyone gets off the road.
Speaker 2:Anyway, we continue on. We have this incredible drive, we get to the end of the road and we all just kind of pull over to wait and and let the the group sort of regroup, if you like. And after a couple of minutes, uh, three or four of the guys still hadn't joined us and we thought this is, this is a bit weird. And then my phone rings. My phone rings and, uh, it's my mate, erwin, and he says pj's car got hit by the truck. No, no, and I said, is he okay? The phone cuts out. No, I'm like fuck. So I jump on the radio. I say, hey, guys, we've got to go back. You know, pj's been hit, he's been hit by the truck. So everyone of course is like, oh, my God, yeah, so we go driving back. Finally I get back onto my mate, earl, and he says no, no, no, he's okay, he's okay, everyone's okay, like okay, phew.
Speaker 2:So yeah, basically what happened was the guys saw the truck coming, they all pulled over to the side of the road and stopped to let him go by, and the truck cut the corner and his trailer basically hooked onto the side of PJ's 944 and just grinded along the whole side of his car and nearly pushed it off the side of the road. So he bent a tie rod, so one of his front wheels was pointing in the wrong direction and so we managed to do some roadside repairs and he said listen, I'm going to head for home. He was only going to stay the first night anyway. So we drove with PJ, he headed off home and he was okay. The car wasn't badly, badly damaged. I don't think PJ will mind me saying it's not the cleanest example of a 944. Right in the first place. And he's got you know, pj's got some great cars and that's not necessarily one of them in terms of being clean.
Speaker 2:So, okay, at least it wasn't. You know something else in his mix of vehicles, but anyway, it was a really disappointing thing that happened on day. One thing that happened on day one.
Speaker 2:Day two however, I think was the best day of driving I have ever had. One of the things we usually do is we stay in a little coastal town on the first night and then we get up, we have breakfast and then we get on the road, and what that means is we don't get on the road until about 8.30 in the morning and typically you start to, there's just a bit more traffic around, right, yeah, so we decided let's get on the road before breakfast and we'll have breakfast at our first stop. So it was still pretty dark in the morning. We left at quarter past seven and a storm had come through early in the morning, around 5 am. So it was, it was pretty wet in the morning, but we had we we had much, much better traffic.
Speaker 2:Uh, driving all the way to this town called omeo, and by the time I got to omeo, when we left, it just the the clouds cleared, the sun came out and then the rest of the day we had nothing but sunshine. And the road from Omeo to this little town called Mitamita is 66 miles, 107 kilometers, and it is nothing but insane twisties all the way.
Speaker 1:All the way Wow.
Speaker 2:It is incredible. So we leave Omeo and my friend Simon, who's in a hot rod at 911 SC. He and I led for a lot of the trip. Between the two of us I think we probably did 80% of the upfront driving. So Simon went out in front and I was right behind him and we kind of left everyone because the start of the road is super tight and technical and these little air-cooled cars were just perfect for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we were ducking and weaving through this tight technical stuff. It was just nirvana driving nirvana. I can't tell you it was so good. Then we had a little stop and then we keep going to Mittermitter. The road between this stop and Mittermitter again is technical, but it's a lot more open, really undulating up and down and left and right, just stunning. And there's a point at which you're looking at the maps and you're thinking I've still got 25 kilometers to go, like I'm already cooked.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So anyway, we stop. We get to Mittermitter. Everyone's just tired but just buzzing at how good this drive was. Right, yeah, yeah. But so one of the things I decided to do on the route was, instead of we usually continue on from Mittermitter and there's this kind of around a lot of back roads, b roads, to get to our final destination. But I decided instead that we would then do the road in reverse, the same road we had just done, and drive over Falls Creek, which is where the alpine component of the trip comes in. So my mate, cale, said to me hey, do you want to do a car swap on this next leg? Now, cale was in his 73 911e. Kale, I'm sure I got that right. Don't kill me if I didn't, but I'm pretty sure I did he always.
Speaker 2:He always gets annoying because I call it a 72t or anyway, it's a 73e, I know it. Um, so we did a car swap and I'm driving these twisties in this car and at first I was quite trepidatious, right it's it's it's another nearly 20 years older than mine, but after a while you get comfortable with it, and I was hustling the hell out of this no way it was a fucking riot.
Speaker 2:I cannot tell you how rewarding this car was to drive, because if you made a mistake in it you knew all about it. But if you got everything right, if you got every input perfect, it was perfect and the car's really torquey. It's amazing to drive and I mean hats off to Kale for doing the entire rally in this car, because it's a lot of work to make it work. But what an incredible, incredible machine. And then when we swapped back I mean little green again I was just marveling at how tight the chassis is, how direct the steering is. The chassis is, how direct the steering is. And there was this. There was this moment where we ended up on top of falls creek, which is one of the ski uh, ski mountains in victoria, and it was about four o'clock in the afternoon. There's no one around, it is still. There's not a breath of wind, sunshine.
Speaker 2:You can see forever yeah I just thought to myself how good is this yeah, yeah, life is good, is this?
Speaker 2:yeah, like a hundred percent. And then, and then from there I, I, I got in behind my mate rocco. He's got a, he's got a cayman gts 4 liter in carmine red at just beautiful, what a car. And I followed that all the way down the mountain. And then the last little section is. There's a mountain that you have to go over it's quite small, called Toowonga Gap, before we end in the little town called Bright and Rocco's in front of me and climbing it. It's quite steep and I just kept thinking, okay, I've got to get everything perfect here because he has got so much more torque than my little 965.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But somehow managed to stick with him and we had just this run, then down the hill into Bright and it was all of us in a line. It was just perfect. And then the way the day ended, we decided we arrived just in time to watch the Formula One qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix, and so we said, hey, let's go to the pub, maybe they'll put the Formula One qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix. And so we said, hey, let's go to the pub, maybe they'll put the Formula One on for us, knowing there was Aussie rules football being played, so they probably wouldn't want to put it on. We walk up to the pub, there's a bunch of tables outside the pub and there's a big screen TV outside and they've got the Formula One on. And there's this group of women sitting at this one table right in front of the tv watching it. And I said look at you guys watching the formula one. Do you mind if we join you? And they said, no, absolutely not. This is oscar piastri's mum.
Speaker 2:And I look at this woman and I'm like, yeah, that's oscar's mum, so we watched oscar doing the formula one qualifying no way yeah, yeah, and we had, we had, look, we had great food on the trip. We tried a few new restaurants. That was brilliant. It just I don't know. As I say, I was gutted for PJ. I was really disappointed for him that he experienced what he did. That's just. You know, that's really gutting and you know, I look forward to seeing that car back on the road. But that second day of driving was the biggest day of driving we've ever done.
Speaker 1:It was huge, but uh like I said, there was just something special about it. Yeah, yeah, well, um, so your video dropped five days ago according to youtube, which is monday my time, so no wonder I haven't seen it, because this has been an absolute fucker of a week and I'm now glad it's Friday, but I can't wait.
Speaker 1:I can't wait to check that out tonight on the big screen once I put my kids to bed, and I'm sure it's going to be Andy Gaunt quality with some epic cinematography. But you know, I don't want to embarrass you and put you on your spot, because you know you are a wonderful content creator, andy. Let's talk about video of the week. I am first off surprised, therefore, that your 964 video hasn't been proposed for video of the week.
Speaker 2:Well, I nearly proposed your, your spark plugs video is video.
Speaker 1:How modest and magnanimous of you, good sir. Um no, but you've actually. You've actually done me a favor this week. Not only do we have a gt3, we've got a GT3 Touring the 991.2. It is my dream car, or do we, do we not? We do.
Speaker 2:I don't think it is what. So let's get into this, let's talk about this. Come on then Hit me. So it's a film by a channel on YouTube called Night Run Films. They've got some great stuff actually. I really like their content. In fact, they've got some videos of 944s which are amazing, and in fact, I think we may have featured them before, because I think the video we did on the 964RS the silver one I think that's one of theirs.
Speaker 1:There are so many 964 videos of the week, andy, I can't possibly remember them all.
Speaker 2:I was certain we would have featured this before, because this one is on regular rotation. For me it's a 991.2 GT3 in crayon with gold BBS, e88s driving in the Susten Pass, I mean, but it's a.
Speaker 1:Touring. How is it not a Touring? There's no wing, it's PDK. It's a touring. How is it not a touring. There's no wing, it's PDK.
Speaker 2:It's PDK.
Speaker 1:So we have a GT3 owner that's taken off the wing of their GT3.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty certain it's a de-winged GT3. I would love anyone to watch this film and tell us your thoughts on this and, in fact, if you're the Night Run film guys, tell us your thoughts on this. But there's a couple of scenes, because I thought it was a GT3 Touring as well. 100%, that's what it looks like. It's got the Touring badge on the deck lid, but there are a couple of scenes where you see him shifting and he's paddle shifting.
Speaker 1:He does yeah.
Speaker 2:And the 991.2 GT3 Touring was manual only said the anorak. Are you 100%?
Speaker 1:sure of that? Yes, I think. Well, that's some trickery, because I'm drooling over this car. Maybe, if I ever get a GT3, that's what I'm going to do to it. I'm going to take off the wing and pretend I've got a touring.
Speaker 2:Well, so it's funny, you say that because I saw it, and so then I did a bit of a deep dive on what does it take to remove a wing from a gt3 and blah, blah, blah. It's my take on it, based on the research I've done, which, okay, it's not exactly a deep dive, but I think it's quite difficult to do. I don't think it's a simple. I mean, you could probably do it, but I don't think it's as simple as just swapping out three bolts and you're done.
Speaker 1:It's just like on my car it's just four bolts, that's the spoiler and it's off. The whole spoiler is off in four bolts.
Speaker 2:I don't know Well, because think about this right, the regular GT3 doesn't have the mechanism, right, Doesn't have the spoiler mechanism, and then you've got a whole lot of electronics that come into play for that spoiler mechanism, which are not included Buttons to deploy the spoiler, all of that sort of stuff that don't exist in the car. I imagine again with no technical knowledge or background in this whatsoever, that there's probably a standard wiring loom across both, and maybe there are some I don't know what dead ends on the wiring loom. If you don't have a, if you don't have a GT3 Touring, because it doesn't require the, it doesn't require the spoiler mechanism. So I think there's a bit more to it than simply just taking one off, painting an old one and putting it, putting it back on.
Speaker 1:Wow, wow. So I'm going to need to find out the answer to that question, because that's actually quite fascinating. But let's not, let's not have that track from this video, because this is, this is another I'm driving around in the swiss alps and every other video has put the shame around me kind of video of the week. I mean, come on, I I'm so.
Speaker 2:I mean I know I I know I selected a lot, but I'm so sick of European YouTube videos. Those guys have got the most massive advantage on us in terms of the locations you know like the system pass.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's beautiful, it just looks so good, so I wasn't-. So the first like 30 seconds of the video or so.
Speaker 1:Um, you kind of wonder what you're watching because it's like oh, yeah, yeah it's like the start of a disaster movie where you get news feed over news feed over news, future, yeah, and then. And then he gets up, turns off the tv, walks out and there's that just gorgeous dot two sat outside his house and then from there on, it's just the you know porno shots of the porsche driving through the alps, looking absolutely phenomenal, um, but similar to another video we've seen recently. You got halfway through and you've done all the glory shots and you've you know, you've done all of that. The last half of the video is basically just him in the cabin driving and you're seeing every gear shift, every turn, every sound of the engine, every rev, and then it just fades out. And I really appreciated that. I just I don't think I get enough of the driving experience in a lot of these videos, especially my videos, but that makes you kind of feel like you're in the cabin with this guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a hundred percent, would you say. I'd go so far as to say in terms of you know, you and I have spoken at length about the 991.2 GT3 being the halo car, right, the dream machine, I think. For me, that car is literally the perfect spec. I mean, I'd rather it be be manual, obviously, but but color um wheels, yeah pretty much every time I look at it. It is just stunning it is.
Speaker 1:It is absolutely stunning. The interior, from what I can see, uh, it's probably just black, but yeah, it is yeah, it is, it is beautiful. I'm. There's still a part of me that thinks, if I bought a brand new car like that, um, like especially a gt car, I'd go for the lizard green or I'd go for the mexico blue.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, yeah, yeah I see that you know, maybe there's a reason why so many of these gt cars are in colors like this because once you actually get down to handing over that much money, you're like no, I'm gonna do.
Speaker 2:I want to be seen in lizard green.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, exactly. But yeah, man, what a, what a great, absolutely great um video. So that's that's night run films. Got another subscriber here from Minnesota, USA. Good job, guys, Brilliant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, on our Instagram guys, and yeah, check it out, it's well worth a look.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, that's it for another video, Mr Gaunt. And another podcast, another pod, another pod, right, well, I'm going to go and plan, continue planning for my mountain run.
Speaker 2:You and your new friend Chet GPT.
Speaker 1:Exactly. I've got to drive with some of the guys first of the season here in Minnesota this Sunday. That's going to be fun. There's about 12 of us going out in the local cornfields to drive in a straight line four times, just overtaking each other. Exactly, it's been great. Well, thank you everybody for tuning in for another episode of Curb and Canyon.
Speaker 2:I'm James at Auto Amateur and and I'm Andy, at Last Rasp with videos back on YouTube.
Speaker 1:Good lad, See you in another one soon. Cheers guys.
Speaker 2:See you, team. Bye.
