Gary Handa: My Dad's brand new 1976 Mercedes, Dressing up to drive Mum's Merc, VW 411, Sporting Bears, S6E10

Welcome to MyDC Talk. Enjoy!

Welcome to My DataCar, a podcast discussing our personal range of automatic Doctor Card. And you know what? It doesn't even have to be about your Data Car. It could be your mum, your grand, your parents, dad, or even a neighbor. If it made an impression, let's talk about it.

Hi Andy, how are you doing?

Yeah, well, not too bad. Thank you. Yourself? Yeah, all good, thank you. Yeah. Have you done many podcasts, Gary? No, this will be my first. Oh, brilliant. Just hoping Paul's gonna join us in a second. These things tend to work really well if we've got three of us. You sort of all bounce off each other. So um here we go. Paul, meet Gary. Gary, Paul.

Hello. Where are you at the moment? You seem to be out in your car and probably in the garage or parked up in a dubious lay by somewhere.

Yeah, sorry, I've just literally been to drop a customer's M6 off to his house, and I've got to do a little MG midget in a minute, and I was a mad panic to get back on time because I've got stuck at a railway crossing. So there's a full rush, and I've just made it.

So yeah, welcome along to my dad's car. We're joined today by Paul Harding, who's stepping into John's shoes because he's caught up with some childcare today. So thank you very much for Paul joining us. I was looking back, season four, episode four. So June 2024, I think your episode went out. And I think we probably recorded it a few months before that.

So um Yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah.

And you yeah, you've been listening for quite a while. So uh Yeah, I always listen to it, yeah, yeah. So yeah, good to have you with us. Um, we're joined by Gary Hander, who um yeah, I think I stumbled across you on Instagram. I posted something about our I think our second year birthday or something like that, and you commented or something along those lines, and I said, Thank you very much. And yeah, would you be interested in coming on? And uh you said yes. So lovely to have you with us. Good to be here, thank you. So before we kind of get really into the nitty-gritty, do you want to um tell people a little bit about yourself, Gary? Um, I think you do some YouTube stuff. You've got is it a Camaro that you do a lot of stuff with?

I had a Camaro ZL1, okay, which was one of the first ones in the country. Um about two years ago, two years ago this summer, I had a serious brain injury. I had um I had a um alloy cyst, which is a tumour in the middle of my head, which had to be removed. Um that resulted in three strokes. Oh god, but I'm fully okay now. Um, the car had to be sold because I spent 521 days not driving, but who's counting? Well, its claim to fame was it's appeared on many YouTube videos. Uh Rory Reid did one, which has now had over two million views on the Auto Trader channel, and uh its final outing was it featured in Fast X, the last Fast and Furious movie.

Okay.

At the end, there's a scene where Brie Larson is rushed off to hospital driven by Danielle Malcoir. Vin Diesel puts her in the car, and they they go off of a bridge, which supposedly is in Brazil, but actually was a was a back lot in a studio just north of Watford. Um, so that would that was its claim to fame. Uh, unfortunately, that had to go. Um, I'm now fully recovered and looking to get back into cars in some way, shape, or form. Um, what I do in the meantime is I'm part of the PR and the social media lead for the Sporting Bears, which is a charitable organization that raises money for children's charities exclusively by offering people dream rides in our members' cars in return for a donation. So that's keeping me very busy this summer.

My friend does that. It always looks good fun. I've always wanted to join in, but I've never had an invite. But if I know you, I could probably get one now.

Definitely, please do. It's so much fun, the camaraderie amongst the drivers, the support staff, the volunteers, and you're knowing that you're actually doing something that's helping children's charities. We try and keep them local to the events, but a hundred percent of what we raise goes to those charities. And for me, it was like an interactive car show. If if you're passionate about your car, you never get bored telling people the same thing about your car again and again and again. I agree with that.

He's got a sort of a kit car cobra, which is really sentimental to him because he put it with his dad, it's a friend Alex. He does the car fest one and a few others, and he says he finds it quite interesting because of it's not always the fancy cars that people go to. He said he gets lots of people going to his car, which when he started, he thought, well, no one wants to go in my old kit car cobra. Absolutely. They're gonna go in a Lamborghini.

Absolutely. I mean, it's all it's all about evoking memories. Um, we've just finished a show at the NEC, and uh, one of the most popular cars there was an absolutely mint mini metro of all things. Because it brought back so many memories. I'd go in there. Yeah, yeah, I'd go in there. It was a car that they learned to drive in, or they had the first dating. You know, it's it's all about evoking memories. I mean, my first car, which I've not seen at any show, but if there was one, I would jump at the chance. It was a Mark I VW Shirocco. Yes, yeah. It's such an iconic shape, but I don't see them on the road anymore.

Yeah, they've all rotted away. I went and visit a guy with work actually, and he think he had 12 of them all kind of tucked away. Four of them in a garage that he'd then parked a container in front of so he couldn't get them out. Um, yeah, he'd got a couple of really early ones. He'd got a cabriet version properly into yeah, Marton Sorocco's.

Sounds like I should be friends with him.

I'll introduce you. So, yeah, great to have you with us, Gary. Um, what's your earliest car memory?

Um, 1972. That's probably showing how old I am. Um, I think I was five at the time. My father had a BW411E estate. Wow. And this was before health and safety because my first memory is actually sitting in the back on top of the engine. Because just to let people know, I mean, I'm sure you you'll find a picture. But this was an air-cooled rear-engined estate. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? And sitting there with my sister going, it's quite warm in here.

I know them reasonably well. I've never had one, but my day job's in in parts, in particular, Volkswagen as well. So I've kind of had a fair amount of dealings with them. And uh, yeah, Paul, you've kind of got a number of Volkswagens, haven't you?

I know what they are as well, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I can see why you were hot saying the back.

What colour was it? It was green. I mean, that was a it was a VW green. Yeah, it was it was a great car. Then moving on from there, he had a variety of cars, including uh a midget, original midget, original Fiat 500. And I remember them because he could drive them into the back of the house through the gate, and we would wash them in the back garden. So that was uh that that was quite interesting. Um, that was 72. Jumping forward to about 76. Uh, my my parents were both doctors, and his first Mercedes, I'll never forget how proud he was of this car. It was a 200, basic 200 Mercedes.

Okay.

I still remember the registration number, but he doesn't. It was KTF 933P. It was white, and it was the last of the ones with the arched front headlights.

Okay.

I'll never forget the pride on his face. And one of my favorite memories of that car, I mean, we're talking 76, 77 here, was he had a TV for me and my sister to watch it in the back. I mean, it was it was a big box with an aerial that had to be stuck out the window, but you know, it was any tiny little screen, but it was it was a TV in the back of a car. That's still cool. That was mind-blowing.

Yeah.

From there, he had a selection of mercs. He went through a Merck phase, and um I shouldn't really be saying this, but what the hell? My mother had a chocolate brown 230 CE, which at the age of 13, I thought would be a great idea for me to learn to drive in without their permission or knowledge. So being a 13-year-old, I thought, what does what does a Mercedes driver wear? I thought shirt and tie. I was 13, I had jeans on and sneakers, but the top half of me looked respectable. And I remember the specifically the first time I drove it up to see some friends at the local tennis club. It was snowing. And this is a two-ton underpowered rear-wheel drive automatic. And I survived to this day. Did they find out? Eventually, uh, I think it was a few weeks later, because I was doing this on a regular basis whenever they went out. Uh, and my my father finally clocked that the thing to do was to reset the trip meter so that he could check. And of course, he yeah he had found it, and that put a complete killing on anything legal or or or otherwise. I loved you dress for the occasion. I I was always dressed for the occasion, yeah. Always had a shirt and tie on. You know, could have had, you know, typical sort of early 80s, you know, green stripe, white shirt, button-down collars, but I had a tie. That was the most important thing.

Did you dress for all criminal activities that you did when you were younger? Different outfits for different activities.

Um his last Merck was a 450 SEL 6.9, which is an icon, but he was never into his cars the way that we are. It was all about comfort and ease of driving and you know, just being able to get from A to B as comfortably as possible. Because after the Mercs, he went through a Lexus phase. Um, he had one of the first LS400s in the country. Excellent car. And then a 430. There are a few oddities like Jaguars in between. But um, yeah, I mean, he went from one extreme, well, from one type of easy car to drive to the ultimate easy car to drive. And uh that that's where he's he stayed till till recently, where um I think two, three years ago, he leased a VW Tig one, which he's now happy with. He's retired and it does everything that he needs it to do. So his um his car history now has reached a natural conclusion, I think.

And almost gone full circle. He's back with the Volkswagen brand.

Funnily enough, uh I never thought of it like that, but yes, he is.

So if we go back, yeah, we'll go kind of back to the beginning, we'll sort of start picking it. Um, do you know what got him into the 411? Was there anything in particular that sort of swayed him that way?

I mean, yeah, going back to when I was four or five, but purely function, I think, because it was a large, reliable. Uh at the time it was seen as as large.

Yeah, yeah. Today it wouldn't be, obviously, but it was the Passat of the day, I suppose, wasn't it?

Yeah. Um can't remember. I think I think there were four doors. I can't remember if they were sorry, five door. They did both, I think. Yeah, it did do both. Yeah. Yeah, they did both. Yeah, I think from a practical point of view, it would have been a five-door.

But it might have been a three-door station wagon and five-door hatch. Because they did the 4-11 and 4-12. And I never remember which way around they are.

Yeah, it was 4.11E, if that means anything. And you lost all the boot space because some numbers put a big engine in there.

Well, not even big. Big is a red space.

You just had half the you lost a lot of the boot space because there's an engine in the back of it. You might as well let a Red 05 Turbo 2 for boot space.

But it was it was a great bum warmer.

Yeah.

So if you were in the car, did you do any kind of long journeys in that, do you recall? Or did you have music on the go?

Um, I mean, I I'm probably jumping forward a bit, but but I do remember because of my my fascination with um with stereos and and and car audio stuff, and that's what got me into cars.

Okay.

He had an old Phillips radio cassette player where you could actually record the radio onto the cassette. So you press a button and it would in the car. In the car. Betsy.

All the toys, TVs and a recording tape. Yeah. I've not come across that.

So yeah, I think it was an old Philips had a big green button on it where you pressed it and it would actually start recording, much to his annoyance and distress if I was recording over, you know, cassettes that he had bought, and all of a sudden there was some, you know, some charts on there or pick of the pops or whatever it was at the time.

So he had that. Um then you mentioned he'd had the midget as well. Yeah. So was that a toy, or did he have Yeah, very much so.

I mean, I I think the the midget and the Fiat 500 were just fancies that that he fancied at the time. So he went out and bought them.

Yeah, fair enough. And you recall those as a child, would he take you out in those as well?

I I don't have any memories whatsoever. I mean, we're talking we're talking early 70s. Yeah, yeah, fair enough.

He's obviously a proud to be able to because you're your dad owning those cars at that time. That's the time when you had to be able to afford the cars. Like you said, he's really proud to have his Mercedes. That's because if you saw another man in that car, you knew we had to buy that car. Like a man in a Rolls-Royce in the 80s was a rich man. Absolutely. Not a man that just got finance like today. Oh, uh absolutely. I mean So that's where that pride would have come from for him, I assume that was a real achievement for him.

Yeah, he absolutely saved for it, bought it cash outright. Yeah, yeah. Um, at that time, you know, PCPs and PCHs just did not exist. Yeah. If you wanted something, you you had to have the money to buy it. Yeah, badge of honour. And he earned all his money. I'm Indian, my parents are Indian. I remember when when they first came to the country, he had £300 in his pocket.

Yeah, so to go from that to be able to drive that car, that's some achievement, isn't it? Exactly.

Such a big deal.

Yeah, yeah, huge.

Absolutely. Yeah, really cool. Was it um was it always gonna be the Mercedes for him, do you think?

An Indian doctor, it's got to be a Mercedes.

I probably can't make those stereotypes.

But I I think he saw I don't say he saw sense, but he saw better value for money in the Lexus. That's what got him got him going that way. And you know, the LS400, when that was new, wasn't a cheap car, but it was considerably cheaper than an equivalent Mercedes S class.

Yeah, yeah.

He never considered the E class to be a proper Mercedes, and that's that's why he went up to the S.

The 400 is even good today, though, an LS400. Oh, yes, absolutely. If you're getting one today in 2025, they're lovely cars.

Absolutely.

They're so over-engineered, brilliant cars.

I I never saw the fascination because to me it was it was quiet and it kind of did everything. I remember the first time that he actually had a colour TV as well. I looked at it and went, it's colour. He looked so crestfallen. It's like it's colour, exactly. What's the big deal? But you know, your brain when you're that young doesn't work in the same way. No, no, I get that completely. Yeah. He's a guy for gadgets, is he, your dad? Yes, he has been in the past. Um, he would always be the first person to get um, you know, I guess a mobile phone, probably, that type of thing. Not phones so much, but anything that he could he could share with other people. So banging off some stereos. Okay. Um, he's still got one of the original ones with the Star Trek type doors where you wipe your hand in front of and the glass doors open to put your CD in. He's still very proud of that. I remember those as well. But yes, gadgets that would actually do something. Okay. Stuff with the house, stuff with the garden, you know, smart TVs going back over a decade, um, robot lawnmowers, anything like that.

When he always optioned the car, good car stereo, because you said you're into car stereos. Did he always tick the box?

No, bizarrely, no. I mean, it was always whatever the car came with. I mean, I mean, the Lexus do come with significantly uprated stereos anyway. I think the Mark Levinson was standard fit in that one. But no, he wouldn't tip boxes to option a car with anything stereo related going forward. I mean, comfort creatures, you know, to make your life a lot easier, absolutely, but stereo wouldn't have been a cost-effective option for him. Okay, yeah, I can understand that.

And does he have a colour of choice when he was kind of buying though? Would he would he go for a particular thing or no? Was it whatever's on the forecourt or yeah?

I mean, the his LS400 was hearing aid beige. His Tig one is also a brown derivative. But no, I mean the the first Merck was white, the SCL was blue, really whatever took his fancy.

And is he uh is he nostalgic about any of those? Do you think he'd go back and have one again? Or equally, is there anything on that list you're thinking actually, yeah, I'd like to get into one of those?

Not really. I mean, if I had the money uh and uh the ability, I would buy him a 76 Mercedes 200 because that memory of his face and his pride in that car is something that I'll always have.

Yeah, yeah. But for him, those ships of sale actually he's not.

Yeah, I mean he's he's in his 80s now, um, in its function now. Yeah. So a car will bring back memories, but not something that he'd want to spend time driving.

That's fair enough. And your mother, obviously, you alluded to the the brown Mercedes. Anything else she was pottering about in?

Um she had a an original SLC, um, which was her last car before she got ill. Um she died two years ago.

Oh, sorry to hear that.

Yeah, sorry to hear that. No, thank you. So I uh yeah, I I think just from a from a from a mental point of view as well, I think my dad's interest in cars and everything has waned since then as well. But uh no, she had a she had an SL what's it SL? Not an SLK. It was the two-door convertible, the old shape, you know, quite quite a long square.

Well sort of Princess Diana type Merck.

Yeah, very much so.

Yeah.

And that was her pride and joy. Although, being at the time, you know, middle-aged, she'd never take the roof down. It always used to bug me and irritate me that you know, you've got this lovely convertible which is made for cruising, but you know, you don't want to take the top down. Um, but she loved it. Might ruin her hair. Yeah, absolutely.

Good point. Do you remember either neighbours or children at school or whatever with kind of interesting vehicles?

Not really.

Um, because I wasn't really into cars at the time. Okay. So actually the whole concept of the school pickup and what people were driving really made no odds to me at all.

Oh, fair enough. What was it? What flicked the switch for you with cars?

I I think it was actually the ability to realize that you could have a TV in the back of a car. But it was it was actually car stereos. And visiting Wembley Arena in I think the late 80s and seeing what people were doing with cars and car stereos. And if you know about sound offs, you realize that actually there's two sides of it. There's sound pressure level, uh, which is all about making a car as loud as it can go. And there is a science behind it as well, things like making sure the car doesn't vibrate so you don't lose any of that volume. And I've seen cars where people have poured concrete literally around the car.

I've seen the same concrete floors, yeah.

Yeah, to make them sound, you know, to minimize that vibration so that all of the sound goes comes out. But that never really appealed to me. What appealed to me was the sound quality side of things, which is all about trying to recreate the most realistic listening environment in the most acoustically challenging one there is, which is a car. Because if you think about it, speakers on the right-hand side are very close to you, speakers on the left are really far away, and typically space for bass is normally in the boot. And what then happens as a natural addition to the sound quality is people will start to stylize their cars and start to customize them so to draw even more attention, and that's what really got me into it. So I started with an E34-5 series, which was utterly over the top. I mean, there was almost 20 stone of MDF, you know, it was just the most over-the-top, but it suited the car because what I then did was after pouring all of this time, effort, and money into a sound system which would blow your socks off, is I then contacted a at the time we're talking uh mid-90s, um, there was a company in Germany called Riga that had produced a Mercedes-190 DTM replica body kit, you know, the teardrop arches. So I contacted them and the UK agent and said, look, can we get that kit to fit an E34 5 series? And after quite a bit of head scratching, they said, Yeah, we'll just chop it down the middle and we'll make it wider to fit. So we ended up in '96 with a five series BMW wearing a Mercedes DTM body kit. And Ryger was so impressed with this that they took it to the Essen Motor Show from the UK and developed it and manufactured it as a kit for a five series. And I believe there are still one or two of them floating around today.

Oh wow. I want to see a picture. I'd love to see a picture of it.

Yeah, I'll flesh them up. Yeah, and the number plate was all bad. I mean, it was embarrassing now, but yeah, it was AY1BAD. But yeah, that's what got me started into the whole car modding scene.

So you mentioned the Camaro is gone. What would you replace it with?

So the Camaro I had for almost five years, and that was in my eyes the evolution of the muscle car. Because there was so much high-tech on it. Magnetic dampers, electronic limited slip diff, 10-speed automatic gearbox. It ticked all the boxes. It was a fantastic car. I don't know, honestly. I mean, I got that car up to 770 horsepower and over a thousand nm of torque. So it didn't hang around. And it handled, I mean, the uh the one LE version of that car has done a 716 around the Nurberg ring.

Okay.

Even the standard one, which mine is kind of in the middle of now, did a 725 or something. So, you know, it was the first American car that people were taking notice of because it could handle. Yeah, yeah. What's next? I don't know. I mean, it's it's a long way off. You know, the the daily is a poor 1.6 TDI C at Leon ecomotive. It does a job. I've got an emotional attachment to that car because it transported my wife to the hospital every day that I was in having surgery.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it'll it'll die soon. I mean, it's it's done 160,000 miles. But next car to replace it, if I told you that I've got a spreadsheet that's this tall with cost of car, cost of fuel over 10,000 miles, road tax, potential maintenance, and I've got practicality to think about. You know, I've got adopter transport on a weekly basis, and um, obviously my son. Um the two cars that are top of the list at the moment. One is the uh Mark II Audi TT TDI, okay, and the other is a very late BMW E90. The coupe A's a one, isn't it? E91. Or is it E92?

That's Paul's department.

I don't know on that one.

Uh or is 90 the saloon?

90 is the saloon. 92 is the coupe. Okay, 93 is the convertible. Yeah. No, it's not. What's 94? What's the estate? Anyway, it's the it's the estate one. Yeah. It's a late 2013 325i, because the 330 is out of my price range, but the 325i is still a three-litre straight six. Whereas the the Audi is four-wheel drive and does massively low fuel consumption. But the two completely different cars. If the maths works out, it'll be a three-series coupe, preferably with a six-cylinder petrol engine. Yeah. But who knows? That it's a while off.

Cool. Well, um, thank you very much for joining us, Carrie. Been good fun to hear about your yeah, your father's Mercedes. And uh, as Paul said, that's kind of yeah, pretty seminal moment, really, for him. Obviously, coming over with not a lot in his pocket and yeah, making it.

Yeah, I'll never forget that. He probably has already.

Yeah, but that's also kind of installed, I imagine, kind of a sense of value and potentially purpose or whatever in your life as well, because you saw him kind of working hard, working away, and yeah, and then he had something that he was really proud of to show for it at the end of it. Absolutely.

It's definitely installed something in you because you've just said that you've got a full spreadsheet with everything you're choosing, is where most blokes will choose the car and work out how they can afford it afterwards and then justify the reasons of why the dog, the wife, the child will foot into it, but you just you work it out in your own head.

Absolutely, and it's it's keeping mentally active at the moment as well. So that's that's another positive. Or trying to work out a new ratio that nobody's thought of, you know, things like BHP per seat or something completely meaningless.

Yeah, that's clearly from your that's got to come from your dad, it's got to have done because he's obviously achieved what he wanted to achieve, and then you're working out where you can go in the same way. Absolutely, within my means.

Yes, fantastic. Thank you, guys. Thank you very much, Gary. It's been good fun.

Yeah, good to meet you.

Thank you. See you later. Cheers. Cool, thank you very much for joining me, Paul. That's right. Good to have you along. That's no problem at all. It wasn't loads of detail there, but yeah, really nice story with yeah, his dad and Mercedes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's clearly a sense of achievement which you you don't get for most people these days because everybody knows someone with a fancy car, don't they? But back in in the 80s, if someone drove past in a fancy car, they had to buy that car.

I think he said 76 and the registration was P, so yeah, potentially bought that car new.

Yeah.

Yeah, with real life money.

Yeah, yeah. That's that's an achievement, isn't it? He's got the brochures out of whatever he wanted, you know, whether it'd be BMW or Mercedes, and gone, right, this is what I want. I can afford to this spec, because he's clearly still doing the same. I can afford to this level. Yeah, he must have done the same and gone, right, that's the goal. I'm gonna go and buy that car, and clearly that's what he did. And that is an achievement as well. It's a real shame you don't get that these days.

Yeah, I think that I've yeah, is it impulse buy? It's it's I compared it before to a bit like buying a mobile phone, isn't it? You're like, okay, I've got to have this for the next two years. If I don't like it, yeah, swallow it and then I'll get another one.

Yeah, but uh, you know, if he turned to pick him up to school in that, that's an impressive car that you know there's very unlikely someone else, you know, there's always someone that's got something slightly better, but they won't be that far. As where now, well, everyone knows someone with a Lamborghini or something, don't they? But back in the day it wasn't, you know. If if someone drove past you in you know the 80s in a Ferrari, it was a real event. That's how Compass car spotters appeared because it was an event and it's coming less and less and less of the more achievable these things are.

Yeah, definitely. And then, yeah, him obviously helping himself to the keys for his mum's car.

And dress for the occasion, that's the important detail there. Yeah, I like the way he got dressed for the occasion. I'm gonna I'm I'm gonna steal fundamentally it is stealing. I am gonna steal my parents' car, but actually, wait a minute, I'm just gonna put a shirt and tie on.

Yeah, I get I wonder whether that was for I we should have asked for his own self-esteem or whether that was to kind of fool passing police officers that he was slightly more senior than he thought he was.

Yeah, it's like in the in-between is where Will goes to buy alcohol and puts on his giant suit and wants into the off licence to try and pretend he's older. It's the same, it's the same thing, isn't it? I guess because on the outside world, he's his brain's going, right? If I get spotted by a policeman, I've got a shirt and tie on there. I am a man that will drive a Mercedes. Even though, as you get older, you know he looked like a 13-year-old boy in a shirt and tie.

Yeah, yeah. Imagine that playing out as he then gets out and he's got a pair of traxxo trousers on just yeah, newsreader spec. Yeah, why are you half dressed?

Yeah, my friend did exactly the same with his dad's seven series, I always remember it. And he took it up to the end of the road and as an idiot would do as you're younger, flawed it, and he banged the tire and popped it and thought, oh no, mad panic, right? Let's go and get a tire. And it's a seven series of the day when they had 16 and a half inch rims. Okay, you just couldn't get a tire for it, they just didn't make them because it's such a weird size. So he was in his mad panic, and in the end, his dad found out because he couldn't buy a tire. We went to all the local quick fits and stuff and he couldn't buy one for it.

Well, yeah, from that point of view, he was very lucky that yeah, nothing went wrong, really. No, we had a guy on a few months back, his mum had a mark to your golf and he drove it through the back of the garage. Great effort. He thought he'd have a go and put it through the garage.

But that sounded like he only got caught because the miles.

Yeah.

That sounded like his parents clocked the miles going up or less fuel in the car and gone, hang on a minute. They just reset a trip computer to see if it's going anywhere. Clearly, he didn't think to reset it when he put it back in the garage or whatever it was.

Yeah, there's so many questions now in hindsight.

How did he know how to drive? Yeah. Like that's um Is it auto or manual? Because most Mercedes that era are probably auto, aren't they?

You'd have thought so. You'd have thought so.

Yeah.

But yeah, he's obviously done pretty well to keep it on the black stuff.

Yeah. He said it was in the snow as well. And not once did he mention going to the local car park and doing donuts, because that's the first thing I would have done. It's rear-wheel drive, yes, it's an auto, but you've still got one and two down there. You can whack it into that full lock and see if it goes around in circles.

Yeah, but he wasn't a car guy.

No.

So I guess just from that point of view, it was a cause I can, or maybe kind of to dine out a bit on his parents' kind of achievements that they've got a nice car and he wanted to show it off to his friends.

But he went from that to then full car guy to build some of the cars that he's saying, that's crazy, especially in that era. Because I used to do sound off stuff, but my sound-off stuff was um effectively three-speaker, so it always had fronts and a sub in the rear. And I know exactly what he's talking about. He's got a Hickston and all that, but he probably did too. And he had to get it to sing off the centre of the steering wheel. So the judging was close your eyes, sit in the seat. Does the voice sound like it's coming from top centre of the steering wheel? And that's where it was judged.

Okay.

And that's where the sound-off stuff was judged. And I assume he probably must have done something similar. Um, but he sounds like you know, back in the day, to get someone like Ryger to get a kit, that's a big deal.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, that's not like now contacting Liberty Walk and go, I've got three million followers, I need a body kit. That's a real back then. That's that's a lot. There's no emails in social media. That's picking up the phone and trying to speak to someone about getting someone to make a kit for your five series. That's why we wanted to see it. I was like, wow, that thing sounds mega.

Yeah, must have been in some magazines, etc., in back in the day, I'd have thought.

Yeah.

So yeah, he's gone from kind of one extreme to the other, hasn't he?

Yeah, all the cars then seem to be heavily modified.

Almost kind of scaling it back now, I suppose, after some health scares. He's had a bit of a rough ride, isn't he, by the sounds of things?

So uh yeah, very much so. But then he hasn't done what a lot of people do, is after they've had a health scale like that, they go, Right, I've always wanted this.

Yeah.

I'm going to set my target, whether it's finance, whatever it is, I'm going to go and get this car. Which he hasn't. He's gone, right, okay. In my current means, you know, fit the dog, fit the child, good fuel economy. I can get a three series.

I yeah, I was expecting something a little bit more ridiculous, but um Yeah.

But in fairness, it's diesel TT is very good on fuel. It's not exciting to drive, but it is very good on fuel.

Probably not great for the dog. No. As long as you've got and got a small dog.

Yeah.

And your small child.

But a TTS is quite quick with a simple tune and stuff. And a TTRS is really quick. But then the BMWs aren't. So they're two incredibly different cars.

Yeah. Yeah. So watch this space and see what happens.

Yeah, yeah. I'm surprised he hasn't gone all. I thought after that and what he's owned before, you'd pick a gold car and try and get your dream car.

Yeah, I was thinking, yeah, it's gonna have V10 or something ridiculous. It's gonna be bright yellow.

Yeah, because he obviously likes the American stuff or foreign stuff, you know, you know, yeah, yeah. All that 'cause Australian, American. And I had a quick look at his Instagram, and he's obviously, you know, done a lot to his previous car. He said it had 700 horsepower things, so it had redhead lamps, but then that seems to be when you get an American car, you have to do American things. Oh really? Yeah, they love redhead lamps and black windows and black wheels and stickers, don't they? So yeah, yeah, it had all those little bits on it. But yeah, uh it's it's it's an impressive thing, and I'd like him to get something a bit more special, if I'm honest. Yeah. Go for it, go for it.

Yeah. Okay, cool. Thank you very much, Paul. Thanks for joining us.

That's all right, no problem at all.

Cheers, mate.

Cheers, see ya, thanks, mate.

Roll the credits.

Thank you for listening to my love cart. I hope you enjoyed the show. Please support us. Basic coffee and subscribe. And tell all your friends.