TUNED Season 1 Finale - TUNED

[VROOM]
MATT: In last 12 weeks, we've been all over the West Coast
and driven all kinds of different tuner cars.
In fact, of all the cars we've driven, the average horsepower
per tuner car is 581.
Just thought you'd like to know that.
[VROOM]
MATT: M3, as we all know, is an
extremely competent chassis.
Nick at GF tends to choose the modified car's whose chassis
out-perform the stock engine.
All-wheel drive so, of course, launch control is now active.
[VROOM]
MATT: Go.
[VROOM]
RANDY GRUBB: However long it takes is how long it's going
to take, and it's going to be the best that I can build it.
It may not be the best that it could ever be, but it's the
best that I can build it.
And I take a lot of pride in my craftsmanship, and I really
try to take the time to create nice things and take the time
to do things right because that seems to be a lost art in
this world we live in today.
[VROOM]
MATT: I feel like I'm in Spaceballs.

Ludicrous speed, go!
[VROOM]
[LAUGHTER]
MATT: I hope you guys enjoyed that as much as I
enjoyed making it.
And believe me, I enjoyed the hell out of making it.
Some of those cars are truly boss, and it's been my
privilege to drive them.
Now what I want to do real quick is get into a little
discussion, a little dialogue if you will, to let you know
that not only do I read your comments and have Zach print
them out for me, I'm here to educate you guys.
And if there's things we missed in the episode or
things that you guys want to talk about, it's my
responsibility to address them.
So we're going to go through all of them.
Cool?
All right.
Don't plan anything for a while, because we're going to
be here for a second.
Let's start the season premiere, the BBI Autosport
Porsche Turbo S.
[INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING]
BETIM BERISHA: One of his real goals were that he didn't want
something, as like you see on the lifts, a full race car.
He wanted to be able to drive this thing every day.
The biggest thing that we did with achieving that is our
exhaust system doesn't drone in the cab.
It won't wear you out on a five-hour driver as this car
does a lot.
JOEY SEELY: The customer's original goal was more
horsepower.
But you have to build a complete car, so it quickly
evolved to doing a lot of suspension tuning and
lightweight body components.
BETIM BERISHA: We are down 120 pounds in weight and up 130
horsepower at the crank on pumped fuel.
[VROOM]
MATT: OK that video was fun to make.
And I'll be honest, we came out swinging with that one for
a first episode.
But you guys had some comments, and let's talk about
them for a second.
First of all, there was overwhelming support for the
F-18 landing on aircraft carrier instead of the F-16.
Look, if you happen to be offended by
this, I don't care.
I don't know planes.
I'm sorry.
I don't know planes.
I got the horsepower of the car right.
I didn't crash it.
But I don't know planes.
Got it?
Sorry.
F-16s don't land on aircraft carriers.
F-18s do.
Win.
Second, a bunch of you said that all-wheel drive Porsches
are not true sports cars.
Now first of all, clearly you people have never driven an
all-wheel drive Porsche, because they're absolutely
true sports cars.
And what this customer wanted was an all-season,
all-weather super car.
OK, he drives this thing every day.
Furthermore, the GT2 Rs not only costs more than this car
but isn't this fast.
You may get a Porsche factory warranty with one and not with
the other, but such is the way it goes.
And this show is about tuner cars, so we can't spend our
time obsessing over warranties and Porsche purist stuff.
This car is fast, and it drives brilliantly.
And the guys at BBI Autosport did an
unbelievable job with it.
Furthermore, in Porsche 997s, at least the Carrera models,
if you pull up the parking brake one notch in an
all-wheel drive car, it makes it rear wheel drive.
Now, I haven't confirmed whether it does it in Porsche
Turbos or not, but Betim at BBI said if you
do that on the dyno--
pull it up one notch--
that it makes about 50 extra horsepower.
So you've got that to look forward to, which is nice.
Moving on.
RANDY GRUBB: You've got two driving stations.
MATT: Yeah.
RANDY GRUBB: You want to [INAUDIBLE] on the [INAUDIBLE]
up top?
MATT: Yeah, but you got to set if for me first.
RANDY GRUBB: Oh, it's really complicated.
It's super complicated.
Are you ready for this?
First thing, we've got to reach right over
here with your hand.
You've got to take your hand, and you've got to
pull that pin out.
MATT: You mean, you have to use your hand?
RANDY GRUBB: You have to use your hand.
You have to come pull that pin out first, Matt.
Then it's really tough.
Then, you've got to lift the steering wheel off.
See how tough that is.
MATT: Do I take it with me upstairs?
RANDY GRUBB: Of course, you're going to need it.
OK.
Then you're going to reach above your head and grab the
steering shaft which is on a clip above your head.
Now, you reach over and you slap it on
the steering column.
And of course, don't forget to put the pin back in.
Now, as you see how complicated that is, now we
can go upstairs, and I'll show you how we can
drive it from up top.
MATT: Let's just do the land yacht tour of the United
States in this.
RANDY GRUBB: OK, so I want you to notice, although we're
going over some undulating ground here, you're not
feeling like you're being pitched out of the top--
MATT: No, it's really smooth.
Look at this corner.
It's flat.
RANDY GRUBB: Yeah, you're in the corner--
MATT: The corner is totally flat.
RANDY GRUBB: It's about a sculpture that works.
MATT: This is the best.
RANDY GRUBB: It's fun, isn't it?
MATT: I've never had more fun at 28 miles an hour in my
entire life.
[LAUGHTER]
RANDY GRUBB: I'm telling you, it's about
the smiles per hour.
MATT: It is.
RANDY GRUBB: Well, we're doing hundreds of smiles
per hour right now.
MATT: Oh my god, this is awesome.
[HONK]
MATT: And it's so easy to drive.
RANDY GRUBB: I told you.
MATT: It's not annoying at all.
I have zero bus experience, and this is no problem.
RANDY GRUBB: I liken it to a big, '70s American car.
MATT: Totally.
RANDY GRUBB: It's like a big Buick--
MATT: It's like a Galaxy wagon or something.
RANDY GRUBB: Yep.
Exactly.
It's like a big Cadillac 1973 sedan
DeVille, a big giant sedan.
MATT: Not only is that our most viewed video up to this
point, everybody who saw it just fell in love with Randy
and his method and his mantra and, just, his persona and how
that comes out of in his sculptures.
They're not even cars.
They're sculptures.
But people sometimes can't really appreciate that, and
our regular commenter, Richard Ellis XYZ on YouTube, says "an
artist with too much time and money on his hands.
What does he create?
Useless stuff.
Watch out for the garage types who litter the insides of
garages or would litter the property outside their shop.
They are the unorganized creative types.
Too bad he's not an engineer, or he would be creating
something of true value. "
Now Richard, let's be honest here.
Randy took a motor home that was worth, what, fifteen
grand, and using his bare hands, turned it into a
masterpiece that not only drives brilliantly and is
actually practical.
He's gone cross country in it twice, living out of it.
It is the most beautiful motor home ever built in the history
of humanity.
And on a bad day, it's worth a half a million bucks.
OK, so creating something of true value is debatable.
Maybe he's not contributing to society in any way other than
smiles, but I'll be damned if he didn't make a cheap motor
home into a damn expensive motor home
with his bare hands.
Let's go to the next episode, shall we?
Episode three took us to Snoqualmie, Washington, and we
met up with my good friend Forest Duplessis and the crew
of the DirtFish Rally School.
Now I didn't know this at the time we decided to shoot
there, but Bucky Lasek was going, randomly, at the same
time, and we decided to have a race.
Check it out.
[SCREECHING TIRES]
BUCKY LASEK: Matt doesn't have a chance.
I'll bet whenever he wants to bet.
I'll leave that up to him what he's going to lose.
[TIRES ON GRAVEL]
[BEEP]
[TIRES ON GRAVEL]
MATT: Now, when me and Bucky had that race, we had exactly
the same amount of rally driving experience--
one day.
And actually, Bucky stayed an extra day, and I let--
well, I let--
the agreement was the crew got to drive the next day.
So Tom and Matt and Zack went driving, and I sat in the
truck and did nothing and watched.
But Bucky got an extra day of practice, and he beat me by
one second in the first challenge,
which was really good.
By the next day, he had shaved five more seconds
off of his lap time.
So Bucky was doing really well.
And he is a super cool guy.
He's really fun to hang out with.
And the DirtFish experience was good.
And I got pretty damn close to him, actually, too.
But a commenter, Geinusha8G, from YouTube asked, during the
race, why was I holding both hands on the wheel more often
than Bucky?
And he never saw me shift.
And that's actually true.
I didn't shift the whole race.
I did the entire race in second gear.
Bucky went up to third a few times which made him a little
faster at the top end, but he also spent a
lot more time shifting.
And and by the third day, he was going a lot faster in
third gear.
But the first day, both of our strategy--
or at least my strategy--
was to keep it in second.
And that's what Winston, my adviser, told me I should do.
So that's why I didn't take my hands off the steering wheel,
because I didn't have to shift.
Thank you Geinusha8G.
And about driving styles when people drive different ways--
on a course like that, I would just assume saving time and
not shifting if I didn't have to.
Now as I got faster and faster and was going into a higher
gear, then maybe.
But you're always, on a track, thinking about the tradeoff of
the time it takes to actually shift, versus how much revs
you've got left and how fast you can get around the track
in the same gear.
And there's instances on certain tracks where I
certainly bang the rev limiter for a second or two instead of
wasting time shifting up and then right back down.
DirtFish is honestly the greatest place on Earth.
The people there are so cool.
It's so beautiful, and you can get private lessons.
It's not as rigidly structured as other racing schools.
It's a really, really fun place, and god,
I love it up there.
Let's move on to our buddies Art and Craig Morrison.

The one upgrade that could do the most for your car is
oftentimes the one completely overlooked.
I'm talking about the chassis.
And for the last 40 plus years, if you wanted a chassis
upgrade for your hot rod, there's only one
name you need to know--
Art Morrison.
Inside this unassuming building, the chassis
engineers at Art Morrison are hard at work
reverse-engineering old cars to make them stop better, go
better, and most importantly, turn better.
Inside, you'll find modern tools and skilled craftsmen
with one goal in mind--
make your car do everything better.
This was the third stop on our Seattle road trip after
visiting a Blastolene and Dirt Fish.
And up until this point, we had been blessed with
fantastic weather.
But not this day.
This day it was a combination of rain, sleet, and hail, and
the 600 horsepower 1968 Camaro on drag slicks that we were
supposed to drive was just too terrifying to even get to the
shop from the guy's house, which is why this is pretty
much the only video we made where we don't drive anything.
Nevertheless, Art and Craig invited us in
and showed us around.
And that place, I wish I could convey through video
the smell of it.
It smelled like history.
It smelled like people had been making things out of
metal in there for 50 years.
And Art and Craig also, by the way, both have full bars in
their house.
And when I say full bars, I mean full bars.
They love drinking up, which is why I love
hanging out with them.
And they build some of the best street rods, Restomods,
pro touring, whatever you want to call it.
Art's Corvette is just bananas.
But the main comment we got on that video over and over was
why didn't we drive anything?
And the answer is because there was pretty much a
blizzard going on outside all day.
Even in that shop we were filming, it was about 30
degrees, maybe.
And I was, as usual, totally unprepared for the weather
with just my leather jacket and freezing my ass off.
So we'll go visit them and drive something else again.
Until then, if you want to check out, we've reviewed two
of their cars on The Smoking Tire.
You can go check out those videos.
Moving on to a video that has had a mad
commenters being irate.
Mad commenters.
It's crazy.
Let's take a look at.
[VROOM]
MATT: A great seat is so important in a muscle car.

When you're driving an old muscle car, it feels like
you're going even when you're not.
And obviously, some of these modern cars are showing me
what fast really is right now.
I'm not embarrassing myself, but I'm definitely not hauling
ass like I would if I was in a new car.
I'll be totally honest with you right now.
And I'm probably going to get another point by soon.
[VROOM]
MATT: [INAUDIBLE]
I got the old muscle car out here.
The fact that I'm not in the dirt right now
is pretty damn amazing.
Normally, when we review cars on a race track, we get the
track to ourselves.
This time, we didn't do it.
We were invited to a track day with lots of other cars, and
many of them were very fast.
This challenger, even though it looks cool and even though
it goes around corners well given its age, is
just not that fast.
Furthermore, it's someone's very expensive car that I
don't want to wreck on the track.
Furthermore, we were driving in a group of 50 other cars,
and I'm trying to give my first impression of the car.
If you don't think that's hard, try it.
I dare you.
It's really hard and really scary.
But I will tell you something-- for a 40-year-old
car, the Hotchkiss Challenger handles good.
It's fun to drive.
It's easy to drive.
It's not fast.
It's just not.
That much power in that much car on a track
isn't all that fast.
I'll be honest with you.
It isn't.
But it's a fun muscle car to drive and showcases
Hotchkiss's suspension tuning capabilities quite well.
Moving on--
Stillen.
S Check out the video.
The whole point of this car is that it's well-rounded.
It can be a daily driver.
It can be a canyon car.
It can be a track car.
It could really be all of them at the same time.
And I like it because of the balance, because it doesn't
feel overdone.
There's no weird squeaks or rattles because things have
been gutted and rebuilt so many times.
There's no strange noises from the suspension
because it's a race car.
It's a street car.
It's just a really good one.
[VROOM]
STEVE MILLEN: There's such a nice linear powerband, and
with the centrifugal super-charger, the boost
matches the revs.
So the harder you rev the engine, the more boost you
get, the more power you get.
So if you just want to cruise around town, lower RPM, not a
lot of throttle response, it's very, very docile.
But you start to rev that engine and get into the
throttle hard, you'll enjoy it.
[VROOM]
MATT: Now, we go back with Stephen Millen and Kyle Millen
a couple of years.
We went for a ride with Steve Millen in his
GTR back in the day.
And it was nutty--
predictably nutty as it was a fully gutted racing car.
Now the 370z--
very cool car.
Great platform to start with.
Great upgrade package.
Very balanced, very easy to drive.
The interesting thing about this car is that it never
really felt fast.
You'd look at the speedometer, and it was going crazy and the
car was hauling ass.
And you'd be like, oh my god, I just did 90
through that corner?
Wow.
But your eyes and your brain didn't register 90.
It was weird how that car slowed things down.
And I don't think they were messing with the speedometer,
so knock that crap off right now.
It was a good car, and a great upgrade package from them.
I genuinely enjoyed driving it.
Were there any problems with it?
The front splitter was really low and would
scrape a little bit.
But that aside, very enjoyable car to drive and to film.
Look at that.
The shots came out beautiful.
Except that one's blurred because I'm going really fast.
Because the Stillen 370z shared a lot of parts with the
VF Engineering M3 we drove the following week, people asked
me to make more of a comparison about what those
two cars were like to drive.
And I will do just that after you watch the VF clip.
[VROOM]
MATT: Even a regular M3 is fast, but it's
muted a little bit.
This car, on an otherwise stock engine, all it's got is
an exhaust plus the supercharger.
Leave the internals alone, and it just wakes it right up.
It's amazing how much seven pounds of boost
can do for a car.
Normally, the M3 is a total balanced package.
And while this does retain some of that, it's also a
total freaking animal.
[VROOM]
MATT: Now, Nick from VF really came through for us on this
one when the Lotus Exige that we filmed
last week broke down.
And we didn't have a car, and we had to have an episode.
We had two days to make it.
So I called Nick, and I asked him for a car.
And he gave us one.
And you actually saw that phone call in the video.
Actually, that's a lie.
No you didn't.
I called him an hour earlier, had that phone call, and then
asked if I could call back and have that phone call
again for you guys.
So a little bit of theater there, just so you know.
[LAUGHTER]
MATT: All right, so how do the VF Engineering M3 and the
Stillen 370z compare?
Well, they compare in the same way, believe it or not, that a
stock M3 compares to a stock 370z.
With the same parts on it, they have proportional
horsepower increases, they handle like a their cars
they're based on.
The M3 is higher and bigger and heavier, but it's got more
horsepower.
And it actually feels better through the corners
than the 370Z does.
But that's just the nature of the M3.
The 370z inside was still a 370z.
And while it handled incredible and went really,
really fast, the engine never felt as
good as the M3's engine.
And that's because the engine isn't.
So there you have it.
Oh, one more comment on the VF M3--
"Didn't even over-steer it once.
Meh," from GR3B3N.
Well, Mr. GR3B3N, if, hypothetically, I
gave you that car--
it was my car.
I let you have it, didn't even come out there with you--
and I said, you should drive it on that road, the one with
the cool drop-offs so the shots look awesome, and then I
saw video of you drifting my car on that road, I would come
find you, and I would kick you in the right nut followed by
the left nut.
Because when people let you borrow cars, you treat those
cars with respect.
They're not press cars.
That's a guy's car.
That's his daily driver.
If I break it, I have to pay for it.
[BEEP]
that.

Ah.
Moving on.
All right, here we go--
the world's fastest DeLorean.
And it has one of the hardest clutches I've ever used.
So Kenny Duttweiler twin-turbo Buick Grand National V6-- now,
I will admit that I have talked to several people about
doing a motor swap into a DeLorean, because I always
loved the styling of it, loved the look of the car, loved the
idea of the car.
But everyone knows the stock PRV engine in this thing is a
pile of crap.
And it's not a pile of crap because is a bad engine.
It just doesn't make any power.
Most people know of the PRV engine as the motor that you
can find in a Volvo 240.
And it makes an amazing 130 horsepower.
This car makes 575 horsepower.
So let's put our foot in it and see what happens.
[VROOM]
It makes a cool sound, that's for sure.
It's not blowing me away with speed right now.
It's not.
In this video, we met Don, who is the God-loving, God-fearing
the owner of DMZ California and is in charge of probably
hundreds of DeLoreans in the Southern California area.
Now, this was an interesting episode because we were
driving not only a very unique DeLorean--
because it had a Buick grand national motor swap in it--
but the car wasn't Don's car.
It was one of his customer's cars.
And Don didn't keep the car at his warehouse.
So when we asked the film it when I found the ad for it
being for sale online, he went up to the customer's house and
got the car and drove it a hundred
miles back to his shop.
Now during that time, the car was running just fine, and he
had no reason to suspect that it wouldn't run fine for us
the next day.
Obviously, if can see this picture or if you've seen the
video, you know it didn't go so well.
And there was some old gas that clogged up the lines, and
the car didn't want to run.
Now, this made me sad because I truly felt optimistic that
there was a way to make a DeLorean go fast.
But the truth of the matter is, when the car was working,
it wasn't very good to drive.
It had the heaviest clutch I've ever used in a car.
It put Countaches to shame.
The shifter was just as heavy.
The brakes didn't work very well.
The steering was numb.
And honestly, if you're going to have all that, you make as
well have a stock motor too because
honestly, what's the point?
But Don did email me a couple of days after we filmed the
video, and he said they flushed out the fuel system
and put in a completely new fuel tank and the car is
running like a top.
So hopefully, if he doesn't sell it and ship it somewhere
inaccessible, we'll get to go back next season and try out
the world's fastest DeLorean again.
Now a couple of commenters said, "This makes
his shop look bad.
I mean these [BEEP]
get a guy to show them a car, then they [BEEP]
his over by making a video of how his car broke.
Why didn't you guys cut that part out or use another car?"
There isn't another car.
This is the car.
There's only one.
There's no other car.
Secondly, why didn't we cut that part out?
So you're suggesting we film a car that didn't
work, Andres Hates--
great name--
you're suggesting that we film a car that doesn't work and
then we try and pretend like it did work?
That's just retarded.
That doesn't make any sense.
But it wasn't Don's fault.
He didn't know about the issue.
Obviously we didn't know about the issue.
We filmed this on a Saturday, and we had the air
the episode on Monday.
We're on a schedule.
When you're producing a show like this, you have
to get a video up.
And if the car breaks, that's the story--
the car broke.
And I'm sorry to Don.
I hope we made his shop look good, because on an engine
stand in that shop, they had a 500,000 mile DeLorean engine
that was still running just fine.
So I have confidence in Don's ability to work on engines, as
long as he knows there's a problem there
in the first place.
But most importantly, this car did not destroy my quest for
DeLorean ownership.
I want a stock one.
I want to cruise around LA in it looking like will.i.am,
except not a douche.
And it hasn't deterred me one bit.
But I do not want a DeLorean with a Grand
National engine in it.
If I want a Grand National engine, I
will buy a Grand National.
Next week, we went to the Trona airport runway shootout,
where for the first time, I thought I
wouldn't be driving anything.
Well, wait, we didn't drive anything at Art Morrison.
So for the second time, I thought we
wouldn't be driving anything.
But it turns out I found someone to race.
You may notice I'm in my truck.
You may notice I'm at the end of a runway.
This is not a tuner car, but we figured we'd
have some fun anyway.
So I'm going to face a Toyota Prius down the runway.
That's right, Toyota Prius on tarmac--
Raptor on dirt.
So shall we do this?
Here we go.
Ready, and go.
[VROOM]
MATT: First gear, there we go.
Come on.
The Prius is actually in the lead right now.

And I'm catching him.
I'm catching him.
I'm going to make the pass I think.
Here we go.
It's dead even.
It's dead even.

Oh!
And I get the Prius.
I got him.
Yes.
[LAUGHS]
What was my consumption right there?
3.1 miles per gallon.
MATT: This was an interesting video.
We always have a weird time when we're trying to do
standard motorsports coverage.
And I couldn't stay out of the car.
So I just had to race something.
Now, a lot of people were commenting that the Prius may
have actually had 1,000 horsepower.
Take a joke people--
it was a thousand written on the side of a Prius.
It was a Prius.
It's a Prius!
Nevertheless--
by the way, that was a Prius.
And overwhelmingly, people said that they wanted more
coverage, more in-car, more me shutting up and just shooting
the cars, more whatever--
more of everything pretty much.
They wanted more of everything.
But here's the thing, there are four people on this crew.
When you're at a runway event, you're either at
one end or the other.
And you can only move between the two so often,
like once an hour.
So for a crew of our size to accurately get good shots of
every run and then match them up--
and oh, by the way, there was a hundred cars there.
I don't know what half the cars had in them.
I know what the ones the tuner shops brought
had, but that's it.
So I'm sorry we didn't get more in-car coverage.
The way the time schedule works in the event like that,
we could get one shot per hour from each
of our mounted cameras.
So that's just all we could do and with four people.
Now on the other hand, that was a fun event.
Not only because I defended my Raptor's right to beat a
Prius, but it segued us perfectly into our next
episode, even though I had met the owner of the car I was
going to drive that day.
[VROOM]
MATT: It shifts hard.
It shifts a lot more like a Lamborghini
than it does a GTR.
Could be due to Switzer's upgraded transmission
components.
[VROOM]
MATT: That sound, it's not like anything I've ever heard.
It sounds kind of like Steve Millen's Nissan GTR did, but
it's very unique.
It's raspy.
It's throaty.
It's kind of, dare I say, annoying a little bit.
I don't even know if it's a good sound.
It's just a lot of it.
[VROOM]
MATT: It is a damn good thing we went to that event, because
otherwise we would not have had the E900 GTR to drive.
Now I left out the first word there for a reason.
Now in the video, I pronounced it "swit-zer" like
Switzerland.
And that's wrong.
It's actually "swyt-zer" which is funny because Neil
Switzer's brother, his name is Tim, but it's spelled T-Y-M.
So it's not "Time Swit-zer,' it's "Tim Swyt-zer" and
they're reversed.
How weird is that shit?
It bugs me out.
[LAUGHS]
So let's talk about the GTR and horsepower--
950 crank horsepower.
And this car is ludicrously fast.
I did 30 to 150 in about eight seconds, and that is insane.
Of course, it was on a fully-closed road as I would
never, ever attempt anything like that on
a public road ever.
The E900 GTR video is also where we got our first look at
Chris, the car's owner, who elicited rage from many of you
at his outfit or his chains or his tan or whatever.
But let me tell you about Chris.
Of all the guys you've ever seen wear clothes like that,
Chris is one of the very few that can wear clothes like
that, if you know what I'm saying.
Because underneath the clothes like that, he's got bullet
wounds and knife wounds and bat wounds and all kinds of
wounds that he survived.
So Chris can wear whatever Adidas
jumpsuit he wants to wear.
Now, funny story about Chris--
so we get to Chris's house to shoot the GTR, are he rolls up
in his Mercedes with breakfast for all of us.
Super cool thing to do, OK.
He's wearing a blue Adidas sweat shirt and white Adidas
sweat pants and gold chains and the sunglasses.
Now I, immediately, make fun of him a little bit.
And he goes, OK, I'll go inside and change.
He came back out with the white Adidas hoodie and blue
Adidas sweat pants.
[LAUGHS]
He reversed it but was otherwise
wearing the same thing.
God damn is that funny.
I love Chris.
He just wants to have fun.
He's got a crazy media center.
He's got a fuel pump at his house.
And about the GTR itself, many people were saying-- and I
have evidence of this--
"How the F are you going to double the horsepower and
leave the brakes stock?
I understand the stock GTR brakes are pretty good, but
what the F?" And that's from the BearsDKills on YouTube.
Here's the thing.
The GTR has some of the best brakes on any car ever, OK.
So the upgrade the brakes first don't apply the same way
as if you strap a turbo on a Civic CX, OK.
The car will stop, and the car will stop well.
The only real difference is you're entering corners, on a
track of course, at a much higher rate of speed.
So they will overheat faster.
OK, so you want to get some pads.
You want to get some fluid.
Chris had just bought the car.
He'd bought it two months before, and he bought it
complete because there's a six month waiting
list for Switzer cars.
He didn't want to wait, so he bought the one that was there.
Totally understandable if you ask me.
He wanted to drive it for a bit first and see if the
brakes needed to be upgraded.
After he drove it in the canyons, after I drove it in
the canyons, we agreed pads and fluid
would be a good idea.
But the brakes are fine.
It's not like you're not going to stop in time for something.
It's just they'll get hot if you drive it hard.
That's the way it goes.
But GTR brakes are pretty good.
So don't freak out, people.
Be chill.
Enjoy the show.
Let the guys have his Adidas suits and his ready-built
Switzer 950 horsepower cars.
With all those injuries, he's earned it.
For exactly seven days, that was the Fastest Car I had ever
driven, until I drove this next car.
[VROOM]
MATT: The Lotus Exige comes with a supercharger, makes 240
horsepower.
Those who want to go faster, traditionally swap out for a
turbocharger.
Craig was unsatisfied with either of those solutions and
went with both.
[VROOM]
MATT: Now normally with a setup like that, you'd have to
run race gas.
But race gas is annoying and hard to find in California.
So what Frank did is set up a dual-stage fuel system so you
fill up one tank with pump gas and you fill up the other tank
with isopropyl alcohol just like you'd find at a CVS.
And that combination of the two-- once you get over a
certain amount of boost, the alcohol kicks in and it
basically is an E85 setup on the fly.
[VROOM]
MATT: That car was nutty.
That's my buddy Frank's Lotus Exige with an obscene power to
weight ratio and an obscene amount of grip as well.
Now given that those two things are so huge, people
asked over and over and over why didn't I go faster.
And I will tell you why I didn't go faster.
First of all, I don't think you have any idea how fast I
was actually going most the time.
Now secondly, this car has so much grip and is so
sure-footed, that it really slows down on video.
It doesn't look nearly as fast as you're going because it's
completely uneventful.
Being in the car, however, not so uneventful .
This is the loudest car I have been in in a really long time.
And there's so many sounds happening.
Should I do my impression of the sounds?
I should do my impression of the sound, shouldn't I?
It sounds like this-- neeshhwooshhwooshhwoo.

That's what it sounds like constantly in that car.
And it's crazy owner Frank who we love, because he is just
completely mental--
I mean the guys has owned so many Group B rally cars he's
impossible to impress anymore.
He's calling out people on forums.
He's calling out John Hennessy.
I hope that works, by the way, because I really want to drive
the Venom GT now.
But this car is nuts.
But what's crazy about it is how after 15 minutes, it
became totally driveable because the power is so
progressive.

The Switzer GTR is lag, lag, lag, lag, lag, boom.
This thing was--
the faster you went was directly related to how much
gas you put in it.
You could go slow.
You could go fast.
And the power just progressed nicely.
It was great.
But also, why didn't I go as fast as I could
have possibly gone?
This car is one of one.
The body is custom made by Frank.
Parts of it are carbon fiber.
Parts of it are fiberglass.
But either way, it is one of one.
If I cracked this car up in any way, not only would Frank
have to sit there himself and make a new body, but I would
have to pay him to do it.
It's not a press car.
This is this guy's project car.
It's his dream Group B Lotus.
There are four people in the world who
have driven this car--
Frank, Mike, Townsend Bell, and me.
You think I want to be the one who doesn't give it back to
him in one piece?
When I drive these one of a kind machines that are these
people's pride and joy, they put years of work into, the
guy raced to put a new motor in it just so we could film
it, do I then want to drive it off a cliff?
No I do not.
I want to give it back to him in the exact condition it was
given to me.
And if any of you did any different with my project car,
I'd beat the shit out of you.

And that was our season, right there.
That was it.
It went by quick, didn't it?
But that was awesome.
I drove the fastest cars I've ever driven three times over.
How brilliant is that?
And until we come back in three months, you're going to
want to know where we're at.
You can find us at thesmokingtire.com.
You can find us at our YouTube channel, The Smoking Tire.
And we will be posting new videos.
We've got a bunch of them for The Smoking Tire.
And we've got our audio podcasts right now which you
can subscribe to via RSS on
thesmokingtire.com or on iTunes.
It has been the fastest trending podcast in the
automotive genre for the last six weeks, so
doing well with that.
Totally unfiltered.
Totally funny.
And oh yeah, check out this cool stuff Bill Caswell
brought us from his new brand, Build Race Party.
And of course, support The Smoking Tire and our crew by
buying a pair of Dillon Optics sunglasses which are the best
sunglasses money can buy.
Honestly, they're dope.
They're the ones I wear in every video.
And if you buy them using our link at thesmokingtire.com, we
will send you one of these, a free t-shirt courtesy of moi.
So for the next couple months, drive.
Thank you for having us.
We've enjoyed our time here, and we'll
be back in the summer.
Chug!
Chug!
Oh, if you have an idea for a tuner car, if you want to get
your tuner car on our show next season, we are taking
submissions at tuned@thesmokingtire.com.
T-U-N-E-D@thesmokingtire.com if you want your tuner car on
the next season of Tuned.
Peace.
[THEME MUSIC]