Max Power Memories, Fifth Gear Stories and AC Hate - C.R.E.A.M. Ft. @TheLateBrakeShow

0:00 Introduction and Background of Johnny Coyle (0:00-7:45)

People would steal cars and turn up in stolen

cars, burnouts

until there were no tires, and then the

police would come

and then we'd get the blame.

And sometimes people would

take their clothes off.

That's why sometimes on certain nights.

Hello John and Spitt, how are you?

Hey, I'm good.

Thanks for inviting me along.

That's extremely kind of...

We've been after you for a while.

We've been liaising.

Pursuing.

Yeah.

We've been pursuing this.

We've been effing patient.

Yeah.

Well, we're here now.

So thanks.

And we're here at Ignition, Cars and Coffee.

Yeah.

This is a very cool place.

And you've got some of your cars for the audio listeners.

What have we got behind us?

You're actually leaning on the Dodge.

I have the charger.

And then we've got the Tokyo Tech.

Maxi Cedric Nissan.

And then we've got my Avenger finish touring car.

Yeah.

Over there.

Did you know that was called Cedric?

Well, you were aware that's what I was.

I didn't know that was called a Cedric,

but that's the funny name.

Did you think it was just a funny name?

It was just called Cedric.

I thought it was another Alex Kirsten special.

No, no, no.

This is Steven, that one Cedric.

No, I don't name my cars.

That's good news.

That's good news.

The car's name is the car.

You're allowed to carry on on the podcast now.

OK.

We've gone through the vetting process.

So for those that may not know,

how would you describe yourself?

yourself at a dinner party, perhaps?

Well, not yourself.

You're Korean.

Bit of a twat.

Yeah.

How would I describe myself?

So, I guess, traditionally, a motoring journalist.

Right.

So I started off as a print media writer,

you know, content creator, but on print,

and then migrated into television 20 years ago.

And then, but sort of by accident,

then started doing YouTube.

But that was because YouTube took off in a

much bigger way.

And as YouTube became a massive business,

rather than a hobby, I sort of saw the

opportunity and thought, I've done a good

stint on the TV.

I'll go into that.

So now I'm, I don't like to call myself a YouTuber.

YouTuber.

Content creator.

Influenza.

Yeah.

I mean, maybe a bit of all of those things,

but hopefully not too annoying.

I don't know.

You've been the judge of that.

You're one of like a very few people on Earth

that has done the whole pipeline.

You've done on motoring journalists into

television and then into online social media.

Yeah.

What, what do you think?

What's next, do you reckon?

Are we going to end up on TikTok doing live?

I was doing dances.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I am on TikTok in so much as I pay

someone to put our material on TikTok.

I'll be honest with you, I don't fully

understand some social media platforms.

I don't know whether it's an age thing or

whether it's just a mental bandwidth.

It's like, I haven't got the mental capacity.

Yeah.

To bring in another platform.

Because you know what it's like.

This is quite a treadmill-less life.

Big time.

Yeah.

And although it's really enjoyable,

it's fast and it's relentless.

So what's next?

It's a really good question,

shit.

I mean, the podcast is now a business and it

wasn't before.

So the Smith & Smith podcast started off as

just a silly video hobby and then went into a

podcast during COVID, which is what,

seven years, six years ago.

And then it's back in as a video podcast.

Could you have to record podcasts now?

Yeah.

'Cause that's the way the world is.

I'd like to do some more video,

like road trippy things with Richard.

We've talked about it.

Yeah.

We just need things like money and time.

I've been searching all over.

Yeah.

I reckon, I think end goal, all of us are

gonna end up use car salesman.

I think that's what we're gonna do.

But selling our own cars, just lists of 40,

50 cars.

I think social media is just gonna end.

I'm gonna go, right, I've got a fiesta.

Coffee.

Car sales when our car thieves,

cream would do well as car thieves.

Would be great.

But I think we'd be quite obvious,

'cause they go, right, who's Nick to Carlton?

It's gonna be them, it's Nick.

Yeah, that's worth it.

I once interviewed a load of car thieves in a

young offenders' institute for max power.

Yeah, it was quite scary.

'Cause there was also the, what was it,

Eddie Jordan's Boy Racers?

Do you remember that?

Yes, do you remember that.

And there was a load of ex-thique car thieves

in there, and I was, the amount of ingenuity,

the old tennis ball trick they were doing,

all sorts of stuff.

I was like, this is crazy.

I'll get a hold of car thieves.

Mark McCandid did it recently.

He was like, I found a car thief.

I'm like, where are they going to find a car thief?

There's no website or forum,

surely.

There's no Facebook group, dodgy pub on a Friday night.

There's a Facebook group where you answer a

load of questions, and it's just that,

are you a car thief?

Have you done time?

Are you the police?

There was always gonna be thieves who are

thick, and thieves who are sly and canny and

wanna stay below the radar.

Site drug dealers that choose to drive a

urus, for example.

But really the ultimate drug dealer car would

be, I don't know, a Nissan Juke with some

dents on it.

Because they're everywhere.

Yeah.

Fully insured.

Fully insured.

Correct, KMOT.

Correct.

A couple of advisories on there,

no red flags.

No, no.

You look at them, you go, all right,

that's just a normal car.

I always think all the car thieves are now

just locksmiths.

They have to be.

Yeah.

That's the best way to develop those skills

into a legal trade.

It's the, trust me, I'm gonna be legal soon.

It's gonna have to be a locksmith.

People now pay me to break into their car.

Our Jag XFR that we had, had no keys.

This was not available to come.

So we rung up another guy, you run my other guy.

And we said, we have this car,

can you fix it?

And he was like, yeah, not problem.

He said, we're a YouTuber and we're filming it.

And he went, oh, no, I can't do that.

I've, yeah, people know me, I've done some

time, I don't wanna be on camera.

People know me, I've done some time.

Okay, all right.

Also, I trust in more.

If you tell me that, I've done,

I'm predicting I was like, you're gonna sort this.

I'm a little bit worried though.

Yeah.

But he now knows the shape of my keys,

where my houses, where things are.

I've fixed it, bad news, car's gone.

I've looked at your house.

He's been honest about the dishonesty.

Yeah, exactly.

Which makes you a trusted voice.

Which is more trustworthy.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, damn.

What have I got?

Let me get the list out.

By the way, if you hear any background sort

of stuff, there is a car on my shoulder,

a 911 GT3RS, it's not mine, sadly,

that's being repaired at the moment.

This is a working garage.

It was supposed to have gone on Thursday,

but some wrong parts arrived.

Yeah, you know how it goes.

And then when they did, they didn't quite fit.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah.

So it's still here.

Yeah, it's Ben Rogers.

Yeah, Ben Rogers is away in Barbados,

of course.

He would love us mentioning that.

He's on his 15th holiday of the week.

Absolute swine.

He hates guests.

He really hates guests.

He hears anything outside the unit.

He goes, my full fuel paper.

Did you mention it was me?

And then he went, yeah, I think I'm in

Barbados, I'm just gonna check.

He booked it after hearing it was you.

I spent some money.

This is almost like a job interview question,

but what was your very first day in

automotive journalism actually like?

Okay, so my first day experiencing what

journalism was gonna be like was actually

work experience, so I didn't have a job of a

16, I was at college, and I got a placement

for a week at a magazine called Volkswagen's,

and that was like my thing.

That was all I cared about at the time,

and I got to spend a week in Croydon,

which was nice.

No one's ever said that before.

Well, I grew up in a rural community,

and yeah, so Croydon was quite an eye-opener,

but I remember being in an office and being

given a task, you know, to phone an owner,

to book a shoot, to write about a car,

and delve into a bit of history,

and the whole process of it,

I was just telling someone this week just

gone of like how exciting that was.

So exciting.

Yeah.

I looked across the office and bear in mind,

this was, what was this, 1995,

magazines were really, really powerful.

The internet wasn't a thing.

It's hard to imagine that now,

but you know, mags were, had huge budgets,

they were powerful, they sold well,

and they were influential.

They were the influencers.

So I remember that being really,

that was the light bulb moment where I went,

that is what I want to do for a living.

I don't know if I can do it for my whole

career, who knows, but that's what I want to

do right now.

And I went back and finished my A-levels and

then went off to university and ended up

getting a job less than a year into my degree.

So I actually never finished my degree.

It was shit anyway.

But if you go into university,

stick at it and do well, but I didn't.

And I got my foot in the door as a journalist.

So that was really special.

And then my first date on a job was really

quite daunting, because obviously new jobs

are quite daunting, right?

But I felt like what was good about it is

they really, they really encourage you to be

creative and to, you're constantly thinking

about how you can put a spin on something,

shed a different light on something,

maybe.

And I thought quickly, I realized quite

quickly, it's like, if I come up with a

shit-hot idea to, I don't know,

drive a long way over there and meet a

person, they'll just go, yeah,

we'll sign that off.

So I started to go, okay, wow.

Maybe we go and meet an owner with a really

cool car that I've never driven,

and we drive that, and then we do this,

and then we do that.

And then project cars, you realize that you

could legitimately talk about a project and

maybe get some parts cheaper.

Ooh, okay.

It's much from a YouTube, basically.

Yeah, it is what happens on YouTube now,

but on paper, basically.

Yeah, you see the YouTube thumbnail

influencer face, like, oh my gosh,

I just chapped my pants.

He would do all that in magazine opening

spreads, because you had to have like a bang,

wow, big title, shocked face or car doing

something crazy, little bit of Photoshop.

And I realize now it's the same,

but it's just 20, 25 years later in a

different medium, and a much faster medium as well.

What was your first press car?

Or like first car that you drove that wasn't

your own, that was for an article or something.

It would have been a new, 'cause it was at

the Volkswagen Mag, so although we were

classic Mag, the new Beetle had launched,

or was about to launch, and we got a very

early left-hand drive one.

When I say new, that new Beetle is what,

1919?

Yeah, yeah.

Was it sick green, jazz blue,

or was it yellow?

I think it was yellow.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was wasp's follow you yellow.

And I remember driving that to,

did we drive it to Wolfsburg?

I think we drove it to Wolfsburg and went to

the museum, the auto stat, and I remember,

'cause that, I sat in Hitler's car as well.

Okay.

Part of the, got the hook for the episode.

I don't, we got a lock-in in this museum.

I remember that, and there was the millionth

Beetle and various other Volkswagen's that

were quite historic, and Hitler's sort of

parade car, this convertible military thing

was there, and I did just go and sit in the

back of it, and I wish I hadn't,

'cause it felt creepy.

Yeah, I sort of regret that,

but I did it.

I always love reading some of the,

I'm buying a lot of old magazines at the

moment, just because it's cool to read back,

'cause some of them I remember,

some of them are even older than the

magazines I would have had as a kid,

but just reading the stuff that they were

doing then, it's like, they're just YouTube

videos, they would get a press car,

they would get a Gallardo or a 550 and go,

"Well, you're gonna drive to Italy,

aren't we?"

And

it almost felt like, you didn't need to drive

to Italy, but

you wanted to drive to Italy,

but that's what made the

story, but I almost ended that time of journalism.

But then at the same time, it was at the

AutoCar one, I did 95 laps at the M25 at a

day or something.

Why did you do that?

Why did you go, right, this is what we're

gonna do this week?

You had the option to do anything with that,

you could have just gone right,

we'll go up Evo, triangle, and we'll get some photos.

I'm gonna stick myself in this car for 24

hours and drive the M25 and why not?

I think the thing I miss about it was the

fact that you had more time to do a shoot and

write a feature and piece it all together,

because life is so fast now,

you simply wouldn't get the chance to do it.

They said do 95 laps, of the internal public,

what about nine?

And can you write it by tomorrow morning?

And it's like, no, not really,

we'll still be filming it, not filming it,

photograph.

Plus, I guess the other nice thing is that

you could actually, you could experience the

thing and then you just need to collect your

thoughts afterwards, because you have a

photographer with you, but you don't have a

right, roll the camera and make sure you get this take.

We messed it up right, do it again.

You don't actually, this sounds,

I don't want it to sound ungrateful,

we have the best job in the world,

but a lot of times the experience is

overshadowed by filming the experience.

Yeah.

So you go, you look back at it afterwards and

you're like, oh, that was quite fun.

But in the moment you're like,

right, get that shot, Ben, have you got that,

are you all good?

Okay, go and you're looking at that,

see if the red light is still flush.

Yeah.

And you're going, oh, as your video,

your audio cut out, because if his is a cut out shit.

Yeah.

It is true, there's an underlying stress,

but that's because ultimately it is a job.

Of course, yeah.

And you are balancing the, it's a passion and

it's fun, but it is a job.

And sometimes you can get that a bit wrong by

maybe forgetting that you're doing a job.

getting all the things you needed to,

or taking it too seriously.

Yeah.

But as long as you come away from it,

I mean, I sort of forget, I've got to that

age, I think, which is a bit sad,

where I've sort of forgotten all the things

I've done until someone prompts me.

And then I go, oh, yeah, I've driven one of them.

And I did go then, I did meet that person.

Shit, yeah.

But you've got it on the locker though,

so I mean.

I've got it somewhere.

You just need someone to prompt you and poke

you and say you did this, like a sleeper agent.

Yeah, it is.

1999 Monza, and you go, Lamborghini,

with them doing this.

Of course, I've driven one of those.

Yeah, absolutely.

I have.

Yeah, yeah.

My next question was, how did you go from

writing about cars to someone then putting

you in front of the camera?

So I was really good friends with a

journalist called Tom Ford, who works on top gear.

And he worked on car magazine at the time.

I got a job on car.

And we bonded because I parked in his car parking space.

And I had a low rider for Grenada at the

time, as you would.

And he came to storming into the office and

went, "Who that owns a Jade Green for Grenada

that's on the deck."

And I went, "Oh, hi, it's me."

And it was like my first day.

And he went, "That's brilliant.

Anyway, you've parked it the wrong place.

You need to move it."

And we became really good friends.

He got a job on fifth gear TV.

Now, fast forward, I don't know,

maybe two years or something.

I met his producer at the Geneva Motor Show.

And we were just having a check.

I was there reporting for print media.

And then they went, "Oh, they're looking for

another presenter."

And he'd like to have a chat with you at the

office someday.

I was like, "Yeah, okay."

And then I ended up being invited for lunch.

I've said this story a few times,

but my invited for lunch was a turned-up at

North one studios or their car park.

And he said, "I'll come out and meet you."

And he came out and met me with the rolling

camera and mics.

And I was like, "Oh, right."

And he went, "Right.

So we're rolling.

Tell me about the car that you've turned up

in for 10 minutes.

Go."

And that was my audition for TV.

I didn't really know it, but that was what it was.

What car was it?

Luckily, it was a car I actually knew something about.

It was then just launched Mark 5 Golf GTI,

which is still a really special car to me

because it was a massive deal at the time.

And it was a genuinely good car.

And so I always see it got Mark 5 GTI,

which is probably thought of as as a classic car now.

And I go, I remember that.

I remember it being a really poignant.

It was a white one with tartan,

with the Ninja Death Star alloys,

as I called them.

And it was great.

And luckily, I knew what to say.

If I didn't know what to say,

I don't think I would have got a job on the TV.

You didn't get given a home buy back there before.

And you're like, "Ah, just something I didn't

know or care about."

Yeah, it's just a car, mate.

I don't know.

It got this guy's a bit twat,

don't you know.

Which did you prefer going from writing to the video?

stuff or does it all have its benefits,

you know, each one?

It does all have its benefits.

I felt a bit fraudulent for a while because I

got so busy with TV and I tried to still

write as a freelancer doing columns or doing

the odd bit just to keep my hand in.

Because I thought if I stopped doing that,

then I'm not being true to my original

training and my original roots.

And then a couple of friends in the industry

who'd, again, they'd sort of meandered and

they went, "No, just go with it.

The world changes."

If you're a pig farmer and then you realize,

"Pit no one wants pigs anymore,"

and you're better off storing 9/11s,

just store 9/11s.

There's nothing wrong with that.

So I then went, "Okay, yeah."

So I stopped writing pretty much

and just went headlong into TV and doing presenting.

And now the same, I sort of went headlong into YouTube.

And because it's so all-consuming,

I thought, "If I'm going to do it,

I've got to just do it like full gas."

And that was it.

quit.

I kind of said, "Thanks, but no thanks to the TV."

And when I can't, I know I can't do these two

things together.

So I'm going to risk it and just go through it.

And that there are not many people who go

from doing sort of written journalism into TV

and then onto YouTube and do it quite successfully.

You do see it with some sort of celebrities

or people from TV where they almost get told

they need to be on YouTube and they go on and

it never quite feels natural.

Whereas with you, it does feel quite natural.

You'll probably have some people that might

watch your channel and go, and if they found

out that you were a journalist before,

that would be news to them, if you know what I mean.

They would see you on YouTube first and then

find out about the back story.

So I think that's quite impressive.

I had somebody who watched my stuff on

YouTube for a long time before going,

that's that guy that used to be on TV,

but now he just looks much older.

I'm like, the hell?

Thanks.

Yeah.

Of course I'm older.

Yes.

That's what time does.

That's what time does.

But yeah, I guess that's the thing because

it's a global platform and it's always on.

and people, different demographics of people.

And that's, I'm really interested in that.

You have like, I've got children and my

daughter's going to be driving this year.

Just terrifying.

The stuff they think is old,

old cars, classic cars, interesting cars,

is probably different to me.

And I get to meet people who watch or listen

to the podcast or whatever they might do.

And they have a totally different perspective.

They're a totally different demographic from

an age group.

And I find that already interesting.

And of course, you're always trying to stay current.

Not because you're like, Hey,

look at me.

I don't like crave attention.

But because it's a business,

it's my business.

Yeah, you have to.

I have to come up with things that people

might be interested in.

Adopt or die is the classic adage.

Makes sense.

Same on YouTube.

Yeah.

If you're pulling up like 2016 YouTube car

spotter in 2026, it's time to go out for you.

Top 10 lists.

Yeah.

I love to do a list.

Speaking of lists, you have had over a

hundred 20 cars, you say?

Yeah, it's probably about 160 now.

100.

What's the one that got away?

What that I owned, but I had to sell.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's been a few.

I think one that I regret selling the most is

probably one I couldn't physically fit in it.

So that took the shine off the ownership a

little bit, which is the Honda S600 Coupe,

which is mega, you know, like the godfather

of the VTEC.

But I had a feel, Polsky Fiat 126,

which I sort of bought as a bit of a,

on a whim, as a bit of a laugh,

but I bought it unseen and it was absolutely immaculate.

Like it was so good.

And I paid not a lot for it.

And it was like, wow, all I've got to do is

clean it and drive it.

Miraculous.

And I got told to sell it at a few years later.

And I

regret it because I don't think I'll ever

find a better one.

Yeah.

And although they, of course,

are a bit shit.

They're enjoyably shit.

So yeah, I really miss that car.

There's been a, yeah, there have been a few

others where I've had to sell in order to trade up.

To get the next one.

Always been trading up.

And that's why I own so many cars when I was

in my 20s mostly.

I'd be buying a car probably every two weeks,

two to four weeks.

And flipper, you'd say flipping now,

I probably would.

But this is the early days, like the Gold

Rush era of eBay.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's not yet.

Asterisk, look at this, Asterisk.

I mean, I used to buy stuff out of the print

paper, you know, like the Ad Mart and the ad

trade and all those things, the yellow papers.

And then I would go and buy it,

take digital pictures of it,

take forever to upload the digital pictures,

write a really good description using my best

journalist mind so that nobody had any other questions.

And they would have questions of course.

They would have achieved like

this.

And then, and then I would double my money.

So I would always be like, right,

100% profit, 100% profit, 100% profit.

That was always my model.

And I did that on the side because didn't

earn that much money from journalism.

So it was, but it also allowed me to own

stuff that I could just take off a list and

go, yeah, yeah.

Alfa said, yeah, I've owned one of them.

Yeah.

I only owned it for four weeks,

but I owned it.

Yeah.

You got the ownership out of it.

Yeah.

And I missed doing that.

I've got too many responsibilities now and

too many out going.

So I don't do it so much.

I'm gonna call it up to that question was,

what card you wish you still had for YouTube reasons?

Like what would have been a great content car

from one of those 120?

Oh, shit.

It's probably the EV that I built into the

world's quickest street legal electric car,

which I got that record 10 years ago.

And I think I probably was a bit early.

I remember watching that, but this was a car,

yeah, it would have been an early days car

throttle and seeing it.

didn't that much coverage on the car?

No, I know.

Yeah.

It's criminal, really.

It took me a long time to build that and it

was a lot of trouble and strife.

And so I bought that car in 2012,

took three years to get it on the road and

finished and powered up.

And a lot of our, like, shed R&D.

And then, yeah, just decided to try and get a

record with it and really enjoyed the process of it.

And I missed that car, but I had to sell it

to recoup the costs of racing it.

Really?

Yeah, because I run out of money.

Elon Musk wasn't going to give me any money.

Elon Musk didn't even have the Model S out

when I first started that.

Yes, it predates the Model S.

It predates Formula E.

Any kind of proper, proper electric racing

that anybody knows about.

So they owe you royalties at this point?

Yeah, they do, actually.

Well, Musk didn't beat my record for at least five years.

Really?

Yeah, no.

What did it take until the later Model S,

the dual motor Model S?

Yeah, and I think in between that,

Ford or GM, I think GM bought a hot Camaro

EV, which was just a prototypy PR stunt.

And that beat me, but I found out that was

running on Slick, so it was like,

"That's not a street car then."

But it is in Vegas, but hey,

not over here.

And I always said it has to be street legal.

Yeah.

Because if it's street legal,

it's more ballsy and there's more parameters.

Yeah, it's not just unlimited.

You can't just wind it all up and just go,

"Yeah, whatever."

So this thing had to be a street car.

And I missed that car because it was unhinged.

It has worked and it did.

It was mega fast.

That's also, I guess, kind of a perfect

essence of you.

It shouldn't have worked.

We're willing to do EV stuff wherever and

else we'll try away from it.

Because that's one of your mottos,

right?

You say your bridge between a charger and an EV.

Yeah.

But in some old hat that no one really knows

what they are anymore.

No.

And yet there it is doing silly,

silly times down a drag strip.

Well, I guess that was the idea.

was, if I'm going to drag race an EV and

ruffle some feathers, what car am I going to use?

And I thought, I don't want to use a car that

had a piston engine.

I'll find a car that was an EV that nobody

remembers or cares about.

And then try and anchor the whole thing on

this underdog, this weird little ugly

duckling underdog, which was what it was.

But then I delved into the history and became

a bit obsessed with it.

And then when I found out that it had a

really strong link engineering link to thrust

to the fastest car in the world,

I was like, this has got to happen.

And I contacted the guy who the engineer that

worked on both projects.

And he was like, oh, yeah, this is a great idea.

He said, you'll find it's really

aerodynamically stable at probably the speed

you're going to go at, because I overengineered it.

I went, OK, well, we'll see about that.

Also, why?

He's for like 40 years.

He's probably sitting there going,

nobody knows about that.

And then he broke up one day and he went perfect.

Great.

Honestly, he was a lovely guy,

bless him.

He's no longer with us.

But he wrote a book.

bought a copy of him and he wrote the really

nice letter inside it when I started racing it.

And yeah, so I'd like one day,

if I could, I might buy it back.

That'll be cool.

And like revamp it.

Get some plaid motors in it and go silly.

Yeah.

But of course, the boundaries have been

pushed even further.

Exactly.

So 10 years on, I'm going to have to go seriously quick.

It's just going to need to be an exoskeleton

of cage around it to keep yourself safe.

Yeah, because my car was medium safe.

safe, not extra safe.

Medium res safe.

If I was really small, it's like the

packaging of a tall person in that car was difficult.

Yeah.

If I'd been five feet tall, it would have been better.

But that's not the way it goes.

Quick surgery beforehand, but then you're all good.

Yeah.

And my R&D consisted of sometimes bits that

did actually fall off it.

And we were like, right, so that fell off at 100.

So over 100, we're going to have to make sure

that that doesn't fall off again,

because I lost a window and it went into a fun fair.

It was an election window, but nevertheless,

it did frisbee off and it went into a fun

fair and we had to find the guy in the fun

fair who found it.

Of course.

How many times did you go into a fun fair go?

One of you's has got my car window.

It's plastic one here.

That's the one.

The one that has impaled this child.

That's not my window.

That's not my window.

It's not mine.

How did the relationship with Rich Porter and

the podcast come about?

So me and Rich Porter, which your viewers

listeners might know, Rich, obviously been on

top gear for years.

I met him at a Geneva Motor Show press

evening like when all the journalists would

gather in together the night before the big press day.

There was a lot of drinking and that was it.

We actually met at a bar and I think we were

talking about people soiling themselves.

We do read something really stupid.

One thing led to another and we started to

email here and there or text one another here and there.

We always said he was wedded to top gear and

I was wedded to fifth gear.

We'd love to work on something at some point

but it won't be formal, it won't be informal.

But I think our personalities did mash.

We had a lot of connections and it took a

long time, like four years to even do

anything and then we just decided to do a

prototype dick about on video.

Which was actually at Pebble Beach,

which I think was 2009, which sadly all the

footage got lost.

That's how useless we are.

We lost probably the most crucial piece of

footage, which was us and a golf cart going

around a Pebble Beach golf course and getting

it stuck in the sand on the beach and then we

had to get adults to help us dig it out.

And I was going to do it all and set it all

to the theme tune of the Thomas Crown Affair

where Steve McQueen is going across the feet.

With the beach buggy and all the sea girls go

everywhere, but alas, it didn't happen.

And then we decided to do a video of us

together, which was just us sitting in a car,

driving around like a kind of carpool,

I guess.

Or I said, my best hopes always were if

you've seen the trip with Steve Coogan and

Rob Brydon, it's like a rubbish,

more car-centric version of that.

That was always my hope.

But then COVID came along and we decided to

go straight to Wardio only through necessity.

And it became vastly more successful.

We did that to try and get a sponsor so that

we could, because it lost us money.

We paid for it out of our own separate

earnings from our main jobs.

And then it took us about a year and a half

to go, this is costing us money every month.

Why are we actually doing it?

We didn't know why we were doing it.

We were doing it because we just enjoyed it.

And then gradually, it went like,

okay, people start to actually pay for it

now, and we have Patreon and advertising.

We actually started a business.

It took a long time.

So years.

But I think that's always, you find that with

YouTube a lot.

It's nine times out of 10.

The things that start out with people just

wanting to do it tend to pick up better than

the people go, this is a business,

let's start a business podcast,

or there's too much pressure behind it.

Whereas when it's just dicking about,

and then you go, oh, there's actually some of

you idiots are listening to this.

Perfect.

And people quite like that as well,

because they look at it and go,

well, they're not being forced to do this.

It's not a job for them.

I'm just getting this because that's what

they'd be doing anyway.

The podcast for us was always just a bit of a

release, because it was not take,

we never did anything serious.

As you know, a lot of car podcasts are quite serious.

They talk about the latest news and analyzing

the review of a new car or whatever.

And we were like, nah, we talk about buying

trousers from service stations and stuff.

And so we just went off on this weird

tangent, never expecting it to be successful at all.

And I think in the darkest moments of all of

what's happened over the last five,

six years, I found it to be like a really

nice hour of mental cleanse of life.

Well, I can't go to the pub because of the

constraints of coronavirus.

So let's just, I'll just talk to Rich.

And I was drinking probably most of the time

while we were recording.

I think people thought I was at home constantly drinking.

I'm not like, I don't have a problem every day.

This was just my hour off.

I'm just, I'm gonna have some wine.

I'm gonna talk to Richard.

That's that.

Yeah.

Going back to the fifth gear thing,

obviously, like growing up, it was,

you had fifth gear on top gear and there was,

it always felt like there was some kind of like rivalry.

Top gear was always like the more like broad

appeal, my mum would watch it,

you know, that kind of thing.

But fifth gear, if you went to cars,

that was kind of the thing you watched.

Behind the scenes, was there ever any kind of

rivalry of some sort?

No.

They, when Jeremy mentioned about the,

was it the cool wall got burnt down?

The studio, yeah.

So yeah.

And he casually said, oh, well,

we know who it is.

Yeah.

It's fifth gear.

Obviously, that was just a little quip.

Yeah.

And the number of people that thought it had

really happened.

Yeah.

We got hate mail.

We got people saying you're just jealous of

their success.

But of course, the industry is not that big.

So a lot of the camera operators and sound

operators and researchers worked on both teams.

We had cameramen who filmed for Top Gear one

day and then two days later,

they were filming with us.

Yeah.

So the, you know, the game was,

looked like a huge industry,

but it wasn't.

And, you know, Tiff and Vicki had worked

extensively with Jeremy to their friends.

And so no, there wasn't.

I mean, I've still never met Jeremy.

Never really.

I've never met Clarkson.

It's weird.

I mean, like my podcast partner,

like, wrote everything that came out of his

mouth for 25 years.

I've still not met a guy.

It's ludicrous.

We've been in the same room and stuff.

And I'm sure he doesn't give a flying shit

about me, but it'd be nice to meet him

because he changed our game as we know.

Yeah.

And he was one of the few people I was

allowed to stay up late and watch when I was

a child, watching old top gear,

like 90s top gear with Tiff.

And that was the weird thing for me about

when I started working on fifth gear was I

was working with Tiff Nadal.

Yeah.

Like as a job.

And I never thought that would happen.

And he's such a nice guy.

I was going to say, is that one of the first

times you felt a bit, not necessarily

starstruck, but was that one of the first

kind of big stars that you kind of?

Yeah.

Him and Vicki, because it's like,

they know what they're doing.

Yeah.

And when you get a slight imposter syndrome,

you're like, I don't quite know what I'm doing.

I've got a bit of an idea, but shit,

I don't really know what I'm doing.

I felt that.

And I knew I couldn't drive anywhere near as

well as them.

Yeah, exactly.

It's like, when you got Plato,

you got to think about it.

See if they're all proper helms people.

Yeah.

I can't do that.

I didn't cart when I was kid or anything like that.

We actually found a, we've been sent it a few times.

It's an old fifth gear.

I think it is Tiff Nadal, isn't it?

It's yeah.

the, I'm trying to get in a spree to hit two

miles an hour.

Oh, wow.

And it turns out that that was done at our unit.

Yeah.

So our unit, it looks very old and a bit,

you know, sort of, you know,

worse for wear back then.

It looks like an older question unit,

but it cuts to a shot where this is free

comes in and there's TV hours everywhere.

And that it's our unit.

Well, it's actually just next door,

but it's the same set of units.

That's brilliant.

Cause I think the, there's, is it fifth gear

classic or something?

I can't remember.

They've just started like posting sections of

fifth gear on YouTube.

Oh, wow.

And then all the comments are like,

hang on.

That's not the TDC unit.

It's very odd.

The, there was a, one of my vivid memory was

the W124 that you tried to kill,

the, the unsinkable or the one that you sunk.

Oh, yes.

You then bought that afterwards,

right?

Or that was your car.

Wasn't there something to do with that,

that becoming yours?

I had a W124, the one that I ran on vegetable

oil on chip fat.

Yeah.

And that was a saloon, a red saloon.

And then we bought a one, two,

four, date, which have got a monster truck went over.

I'm pretty sure Vicki, I didn't,

I really was angry about that shoe because I

had a one, two three at the time,

or a one, two, four, my brother had a one,

two, four, I had a one, two,

three, we had numerous ones.

And I was like, that's too good.

Yeah.

That's too good to do that.

But of course, TV being TV like,

oh, well, we just need to get it done.

It's fine.

We only paid.

Cover 100 crib.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you're like, yeah, but I'll buy that off you.

And so, but I did buy the one,

two, four, which was the very first thing I

did on fifth gear.

Really?

are showing people that you could run it on,

on chip fat.

Yeah.

And that was 20 years ago.

That was 2006.

Wow.

Which is terrifying to think that I did that

20 years ago.

But do you, do you ever watch,

do you ever watch them back?

Or do you ever see them come up and you sit

and watch them and go, all right,

that's actually really cool.

I have this, this moment of my life captured.

Because I think about that a lot for this.

Yeah.

You know, in 20, 30 years, be able to look

back and go, that's when we did that.

That's really cool.

I have that footage.

I think, yes, I am.

If I get the chance to see fifth gear stuff,

yeah.

I think, 'cause it's quite a long time ago

now, I don't like watching my own YouTube stuff.

It's still too new.

Yeah.

And I never listen to my podcast back.

I genuinely can't remember what I talk about.

It's like sleep talking and then someone

going, do you remember that time you were

talking about the thing?

And I'm like, not really.

What was that?

It's terrible, really.

But so Richard often listens to them back

'cause he does some like, admin and cuts out

any horrible things, which is,

there's not a lot, most of it stays in.

But I never hear it.

I never listen to it.

So, but I think, yeah, I'm proud of it.

I'm proud of the stuff I did on the TV.

I was lucky.

I was fortunate to get that job.

And I was fortunate to keep it for more than six months.

You know, I genuinely thought I've got a shot at this.

If I get two or three or four or five

episodes on the telly, that's great.

A lot of people might not get that chance.

And then it went on.

It went on and on and on.

And I got 18 series.

I did 18 series.

Which again, is a lot of series.

Yes.

I genuinely can't remember all the things I did.

I cannot remember them all.

There was some bad ones.

There were some good ones.

Well, that was going to be part of the next

question is what, whether it was for TV or

beforehand on the magazine or even on

YouTube, what's the most ridiculous thing

you've done in the name of content,

other than maybe the jump?

Yeah.

The Duke of Essex jump, which gets talked

about probably that bonnet up there for a

Cavalier, the Goldie-looking chain,

Cavalier.

Did some stuff in America with BBC America

with Tom Ford.

We did a series called Mud, Sweat and Gears.

And again, I've never watched any of that stuff back.

And we did, I had a Pontiac Aztec,

which we modified and we did a big jump in that.

And it still ran.

Don't know how it ran after that big jump.

It definitely was gradually losing automatic fluid.

So we did various things like that.

And there were a few moments on fifth gear

where we were like, this is quite,

this could be a bit dangerous.

Should we have done this?

And how many people are there telling you not

to do it or what the sort of limitations there?

Because YouTube, although there is a general

consensus for things you can or can't do,

but there's no one usually above you saying,

no, you can't do that.

Because you're not pitching an idea to

someone and then saying, I'm going to jump a

car off of a block of flats.

If we want to do that tomorrow,

we probably could.

But Ben is our, Ben is the only person.

We should do this, I go, yeah,

and then we should do this.

And we go, yeah, and Ben goes,

whoa, okay, you're going to die.

You won't be alive at the end of this.

Yeah, I mean, that is a thing.

That's the great thing in a way about YouTube.

YouTube can have an idea and 10 minutes

later, you can stream it to the world if you wanted.

But then, yeah, there were a few layers,

like insurance, most of it was insurance.

And actually, after Richard Hammond nearly

died in the, Vampire drag car,

the game changed very quickly.

So even for you as well, it changed your side as well.

Yeah, we were pulled into a meeting.

Wow.

The industry changed overnight.

Wow.

Probably because of insurance and liability

and all that kind of thing.

So, yeah, we had to, even if we were buying a

car to intentionally crash with nobody in it,

so when we used to do the crash test on fifth year.

Yeah, the focus one is the--

The focus, right?

So that focus, we knew no one was going to be

in it and was going to get absolutely

launched into a war.

But we had to prove for insurance purposes,

we were buying it with an MOT.

So it was a road legal car.

Right.

So this is just ludicrous.

So we went and bought a really ropey focus.

It had an MOT, it also had like junkie

needles in it.

Really?

Yeah, it was properly ropey,

that car's horrible.

I didn't want to get in that car.

I did drive it very short distance,

like to the bit where you prep a car to die.

But yeah, so you had, there were more

protocols than ever after that.

And I still can't believe that Hammond survived that.

And made a pretty full recovery as far as I know.

Gradual, but yeah.

And then did another crashy thing.

He was in a

few crashes.

He was in a few crashes after that.

Just everyone doing other TV shows going,

"Oh fuck, can you start?"

We're not going to do anything,

no.

Just trundling down a runway at 20 miles an hour.

It would be like a like carful karaoke,

where it turns out they're not driving it.

It's on one of those rigs, like all of you,

just on the rigs driving around.

There's been magazines and things,

and I always like the dangerous stuff.

I don't take unless ridiculous risks,

but I do like taking risks in cars and stuff.

That's where the content is,

because otherwise people can do it

themselves, if that makes sense.

If there's someone else who's willing to do

it, if the reason I always think Jackass did

so well, because no one else was willing to

go and do that, so it's interesting to watch.

Yeah, completely.

I love Jackass at the time.

What was the other one?

Was it Welsh?

That was like the British version of that.

It was more extreme in many ways.

Yeah, semi-related.

What is the worst bod you've done to a car?

Or best, depends how you read that.

Yeah, well, I've driven that with no brakes.

I wouldn't say that was a bod,

you're late to a shoot.

I was late to a fifth gear shoot,

and I had full brake failure in that,

driving to grunting Thorp, proving ground.

And I had to, I bought the mission and go

straight into a field, 'cause there was a

corner which I knew I couldn't get around,

and luckily the gate was open.

It was just been cut, it was like a cornfield.

So I just went straight into it,

like some sort of shit, jigsaw hazard.

And went around in a big circle to scrub all

the speed off, and then came to a halt and

was like, "Right, that is not cool.

"What's gone wrong here?"

I lifted up the bonnet, it was looking

around, and it chafed through a brake hose,

and it's not dual circuit.

Oh wow, single circuit.

So it just bled out.

It was a little bit away on the handbrake,

but the handbrake's one of those ones you

press on and pull off.

Oh, absolutely, yeah.

Absolutely, horror.

I mean, so I just, it was really awful,

the whole thing was awful.

I got there, just whiter as you see a little bit late.

Directed is like,

"Come on, we're late."

Well, I nearly died.

Do you know

with it?

Yeah.

You pull handbrake into it.

Yeah, it was really horrible.

So it's funny again.

(car honking)

Yeah, jumps.

It falls out.

That was bird.

Repair wise, any notable ones on repairs?

Trying to think of some repair,

I've done some terrible ones when I didn't

have any money.

Yeah, that's there.

Yeah.

I mean, I remember my brother's bought things

like brake pads out of scrap yards,

rather than new brake pads.

Not a great idea.

I have driven on some quite questionable

bearings, wheel bearings that were very vocal.

Yeah.

Extremely vocal.

I'm doing that right now.

My 1.59 is, or it's humming.

Is it?

Yeah.

And I just crack the music up and hope that

the wheel doesn't just lock solid and come off.

Okay.

And watch your wheel come past you.

Oh, mate.

I think that car, the Goldie-looking chain

Chavalier, I had to drive it into London to

promote the single they were releasing.

Your mother's got a penis.

And not often you get to say that anyway.

And as part of the promo, we were moving from

one location to another.

There were lots of people dressed up in sort

of Burberry gear and I had the manager in the

passenger seat of the Cavalier.

And we, someone ran a red light and drove

straight into the back of us at quite fast speed.

It was a

van driver who was looking the wrong way.

I hit my head on

the steering wheel.

I remember that so my belt clearly didn't

retract properly.

I just remember going, "Did I?"

And then

going, "God, that happened so fast."

And then I looked round and he'd done the

same thing on the deck.

And then we were like, "You're all right.

Yeah, I'm all right."

And then I got out the car.

I had to just work out what had happened.

But we'd been hit.

We'd gone into the car in front.

And the car in front had stopped to let an

old lady across the road and had just missed

the old lady because it had been smacked.

Anyway,

the back of this Cavalier was,

it was not horizontal.

It was now vertical.

So it still looked like a Cavalier,

but it had like a tail on his scorpion.

And I was like, "Oh, I can't be bothered to

get it recovered back from London."

is me just being an idiot.

So I just sort of started the car and went,

"Still starts."

Still kind of has lights, ish,

there's some lights that just higher up at the moment.

So I dropped the manager back off at the

record label and I drove it back to

Peterborough with the back of the car like that.

And it had been properly smashed.

So that wasn't a great thing to do.

In a normal Cavalier, okay, fine.

But the car is quite literally tartan.

Everyone's already looking at the car.

is it also being in a crash?

Yes, at a real crash, not just a little one.

I've got a photo somewhere of it,

it was a proper crash.

That car refused to die, but we had to kill

it for legal reasons afterwards.

But I remember we started up with the foot on

the throttle fully down to try and do an

engine blow video.

This is in the very early days where you post

onto a forum 'cause there wasn't smart phones

and social media and it wouldn't blow up.

It sat on the limiter for I think 10 minutes,

a long time from coal.

And there was smoke coming out from under the

car and we're like, it's going to catch fire.

And what it was is it had burned all of its

exhaust hangers, they were all on fire.

But the engine was fine.

It was just going, I'll take it.

Keep punching me, I'll take it.

It was so, so impressive.

10 minutes of it doing that,

it's horrible.

What's the most bizarre owner story hasn't

made it to camera or you deliberately kept

away from camera?

Oh, there was a guy on Witness Protection

once and who contacted me, this was in

magazine days, who wanted his car featured,

but couldn't be featured.

And he didn't tell me why it was being a bit cagey.

It was an older guy, like a sensible guy.

And he had a, I don't know if I should say

what car, it was, but it was quite a

distinctive car as well, which is just,

it was a real sleeper, it was a Ford Cortina,

a state that had like a primer front wing,

and it had an aerial that had been shaped

into a cotton balls.

Like a coat-hanger aerial.

And it was running really high power,

Cosworth YB.

It was like 400 horsepower, which at the time

was enormous for that engine.

But he was on Witness Protection,

it turns out.

We were like, well, how are we going to do this?

Cos you're the owner and you want to drive it.

So we came up with a treatment that we would

put him into prosthetics and pretend to be

someone that he wasn't.

Oh, okay.

As part of a feature.

So, yeah, that's what we did.

But that did make it out, so that is out

there in the magazine somewhere.

That is out there.

A man in prosthetics.

Yeah, it was on Witness Protection.

It's just still, to this day,

it's like, so why would you even risk?

It's contacting me to have a car featured on

what was at the time.

And this is the thing, if you don't know

about Max Power, it was the biggest selling

car magazine in Europe.

It outsold every other car magazine by quite

a large margin.

Now, do you think that's because of the

content or the content that was in there?

Well, it did get a bit skin flicky.

Because growing up, I was born in '97.

And my brother was born in '88.

So my brother had lots of Max Power.

And so I used to steal his Max Power growing up.

And I was like, what's this?

This is incredible.

You weren't

looking at-- I was on the back three pages

with neon kits.

I was usually looking at the event recaps,

which tends to

have the best photos in there.

I'm not proud of some of

those.

It was a different time.

We would go to a cruise night,

which was organized by forums or we'd just

put it in the mag.

We'd print a date and saying,

we're going to be in Liverpool on that night.

Come if you want.

And it was absolute feral carnage.

Some of them were just so feral.

Some of them were so bad or good,

depending on what roads got closed.

People would steal cars and turn up installing cars.

And you always knew those because they were

being donutted and burnouts until there were

no tires and it was carnage.

And then the police would come and then we'd

get the blame, but we don't know who they are.

And sometimes people would take their clothes off.

That used to happen as well.

So it was thinking back, it was just madness.

It needs a book.

It deserves a book.

It's just so crackers, some of that.

But I came onto Max Power probably towards

the end of the madness.

I didn't invent that madness.

There was some much more talented journalists

who came up with this idea of Max Power.

We've got the DVD.

Sorry, we haven't got the DVD anymore.

We didn't.

We got some copies of some.

The DVD that came with our FTO that we bought

that was very Max Power.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, there's a lot of cars in there.

Yes.

There's a lot of other stuff in there.

And there's a lot of naked men.

Naked Men, there's a lot of naked men.

There's a real incredible scene in there that

we were watching.

We were watching it through.

is something I never expected to see is a man

who also you decided to put this in the DVD.

It's made the final cut.

Yes.

Yes.

He moons the camera.

Yeah.

And then spreads his cheeks while they're in the camera.

Like I've just been looking at a wide body saxo.

I'm now looking into a man's anus.

Why is this directly through it?

But then do the moon is gone,

hasn't it?

Yeah.

The mainstream moon is a rarely seen and a

moat, seldom seen moon.

And there were always two versions of them

and we're going off track a little.

There was always the, just pull the trousers

down and show the slots.

Yeah.

And then there was the full like.

That's what this one was.

And the endo top on either.

So he's gone into the fall.

He didn't need to do that.

Just looking like an old dude in a changing room.

Yeah.

It's really rough.

I always wonder where those people are now.

I'm just in a perfectly well to do.

job.

Yeah.

And no one knows about this.

In the back of their mind, they're like,

that's on a DVD somewhere.

Yeah.

Thousands of people have now seen this.

And we gave away

400 of us to people.

That was a, it was an interesting day

to say the least.

The rave era as was.

So what like 89 to 98, probably golden era.

It max power almost lifted some of that

madness from the rave era and mashed it with cars.

And because I think the success of it was,

is because no one communicated on their

phones and there was an Instagram and there

were early forums, but there were mostly magazines.

People just got together to chat and showcase

their cars because I haven't seen your car

because you've been working on it for the

last four months.

Yeah.

So I come to the show to see your cars and

you do the same to me or I'd sold you a pair

of Kenwood six by nine and you need to pick

them up or whatever it might be.

So I just think it was this huge,

storm of that.

And also the car was your first independence,

of course, when you're young.

Yeah.

It's your own personal space.

It meshes with that, like, rave culture

because that's how you get to the race.

That's how you get to the race.

Because everyone passes it over and then goes

on the way there.

Exactly.

So it was very vibrant and exciting and some

of it was wrong and some of it was right.

And I was just a mere observer.

Because that's why I also think and it's sad

to say, well, I don't think it's impossible

for it to come back, but when everyone says

let's bring it back, it won't ever be.

It can't be what it was before because there

is too much now of like, we walk around shows

all the time we go, I've seen that car,

I follow that guy, I've seen that build.

Whereas when I was 17 and I'd turn up to the

local McDonald's car park and I'd been

working on my mark for golf,

I had no idea who else would be there.

And some guy would turn up also on Porsche wheels.

I'd go, how do you do it?

I did it by using these adapters and you

actually find something out.

That kind of innocence has been robbed a

little bit by media.

Some people have, I think, a bit more risk

averse because there were people that would

spend 15 grand on a 1000 quid car.

And it's mad, but it was a really interesting

expression.

There was a lot of, it was peacocking,

really.

But peacocking's just changed,

hasn't it?

And we noticed

this shift and it's what ultimately killed

the max power

era is probably abundantly available finance.

A really big shift moment, the EP3,

is it the EP3, isn't it?

When that car came out, it was like,

oh my gosh, it's already mad.

And yes, you can buy some slightly lighter

wheels for it or a slightly different front

splitter or whatever, but it's out the box,

pretty crazy.

I never knew it at the time,

but one of my dad's best mate,

his son was an RC champion.

He was good at racing, right control cars.

And when I was three or four,

he had a Saxo V3 TR, so it's a base engine,

so not a VTS, but with a, it was featured,

it was a max power feature car.

It was repainted ice blue, full kit,

exhaust, like 15 inch, 10, 50,

it was one of the ones that had the whole

bumper was the exhaust.

Yes, yes.

And it was two of those.

And I remember being like, that's amazing.

And he'd built this whole car from scratch.

And then I think six months later,

I went over and he had just a brand new 350Z.

Right.

Orange, one of the first ones of the country.

And then an Exige, and an Astro VXR.

But it was because of that, it was finance.

He had found out that he could get rid of the

Saxo and finance his way into a way better car.

And then he just kept trading up through

those cars without ever modifying them.

But I don't really remember those other cars,

but I do vividly remember walking around the

Saxo, age four going, whatever this is,

this is me now, I'm going for this.

I feel a bit sad that we kind of missed out

on the, I read about it growing up from my

age eight or something all the way up into my teens.

I was reading the magazines and going,

this is what I want to do.

By the time I could actually drive and do it,

it wasn't really as much of a thing anymore.

But you're just reading about Punto's and

Saxo's and normal stuff that they used to be

a car in my local area.

I wish it's probably dead, most of them are

probably dead.

But it might not be.

It might be in someone's garage somewhere

sitting because that used to call it the

bogey car, because it was green.

Me and my friend used to chase it round everywhere.

We would see it and it was a Saxo and it had

huge rectangular exhaust, like a perfect

rectangle twist that took up the entire,

lift of the car and I was like,

"That is amazing."

And it was basically like your TVR green,

imagine a blue but green.

But just the most amazing thing,

I was like, "That's, I want to be that."

Yeah, and I grew up, but then it sort of

started to fizzle out.

It's interesting, isn't it?

I think, but what you're doing on your brand,

your YouTube and some of the other creators

of like encouraging people to actually fiddle

with cars and not just buy stuff and detail

it and go to Turkey and get new teeth.

You know, 'cause that's all too easy.

Yeah.

Exactly.

I really admire YouTubers like you guys

because I worry that that is all just gonna

dissolve and disappear and that everyone's

just gonna be like, "Those people you see at

the side of the road when a tie goes flat,

they're just staring at it like it's space science."

And I worry.

So I love the encouragement of hands on stuff

and long may it continue.

And it means that people will go back in time

and look at older cars and not be afraid and

go, "Yeah, I actually, I fancy a car from the 80s.

I've got no idea what I'm dealing with,

but how hard can it be?"

Yeah.

And just be more appreciative of that stuff.

Yeah, it is always worrying.

Well, I always think about people who are

young now or people who are coming into

learning to drive is like how many of them

are gonna get into that.

I mean, it's a little bit scary,

but it's more people need to take a bit of a,

not necessarily a risk, but just learn how to

do that stuff.

Yeah, not be scared.

And you might enjoy that car way more because

you know you've done, it doesn't mean doing engines.

stops necessarily.

I think that's where people get worried about it.

They go, well, I could never do that because

I'm gonna have to take my engine out.

I'm gonna have to replace my differential,

but it's not necessarily that.

Just understanding your car a little bit more

might make you appreciate it,

just that tiny bit extra.

Or even if it's just so you don't get ripped off.

When you book your car in to have some stuff

done, you've got a bit of knowledge as to

what is going on.

And I mean, I can't do engine swaps.

I got brought up on old shitters,

so I could do basics.

And I enjoy, doing a lot of stuff on cars,

but no, I don't do engine swaps.

And I save up and pay people to do that

stuff, who are much better at it than me.

But there's so many people out there who've tried stuff.

We are lucky now that we have,

back then with sort of max power and fast car

and that kind of thing, they were figuring it out.

Obviously, there were people who had

knowledge, but finding those people was much

harder than that.

Now you can just go on YouTube and someone's

going, oh yeah, I found you can replace this

coil pack with this coil pack.

cost this much or these wheels fit here,

whereas then it would have been,

which is why it was so impressive.

But I miss magazine era.

I also just think something in print is--

Something physical makes the biggest difference.

It's nice to hear this.

I think about it a lot when,

we do YouTube stuff and our views that we get

is incredible compared to most things.

But if someone, if my mom or someone saw a

friend in the news, in the local news,

they were on the news.

It's on the news.

But in your life, when you got half a meal,

it doesn't matter, whereas it's the same thing.

We're on YouTube and I'm like,

yeah, there was a photo of my car in a magazine.

We have got an upcoming thing where we're

touring some car collections and there was a

guy who owns Diablo SV and he's is the express car.

So he's got stacks of magazines.

He's like, no, he keeps opening.

He's like, no, that's my car.

It's just its sideways on a track.

Oh, good.

That's amazing.

You have a physical thing in the world that

is your car.

Yeah, that's cool.

No matter who you are, if you had a photo of

your car in a magazine, that's cool.

It always felt very special.

When a magazine came back from the printers

and it was like fresh, it was almost still

warm, like a loaf of bread out of the oven.

And you'd all huddle around and go,

and you'd hopefully not find any terrible mistakes.

And you'd go through it and go,

yeah, yeah.

And then you knew in about three days it

would go out to the world.

And it always felt very special.

What was the worst mistake you found?

I went, this was quite early on in my career,

the designer had left some big gaps for

captions for (laughs)

for a show, it was like a car show.

And so there's loads of car show photos and

there's like a gap to write a nice caption.

And she had just put down all of the lyrics

for sitting on the dock of the bay.

(laughs) And I had proofread it quickly and I

hadn't clocked 'cause to all of that,

I thought someone else had written them and

gone, "Oh, they've already been written,

okay."

But it was just the lyrics of an,

"Oh, is it Benny?"

It was a very old song, "See it on the dock

of the bay."

And it made no sense.

(laughs)

People saw the magazine went,

"What?"

I'm sorry.

In Magsparro, I'd really go,

"All right, now I'm going for that."

Going for that, this Otis Reading there on

the--

I felt so bad, it was like, I've completely

screwed that up.

Completely screwed that up.

It must be quite nerve-wracking 'cause it is,

it's words and print.

I know with YouTube videos, you can't do that

much to edit afterwards, but you can change

titles and do things and whatever else.

I guess the benefit you kind of have with the

magazine is you don't have a load of comments below it.

Yeah, you've messed that up,

you've messed that up.

You've messed that up, you've messed that up,

you got that wrong.

Get physical letters though.

That's almost, that might be worse.

Which is equal.

'Cause it makes sense.

A YouTube video has a comment below it,

whereas a physical media has a physical media

letter, so it becomes like--

We just get lots of letters from prison.

Prison from Max Power did, not Car--

Yeah, one of the other mags I worked on,

but Max Power had loads of prison letters.

Mostly gun, yeah, we bought the issue with

Lucy on the cover.

Can you get her back on?

Yeah, she's lovely.

We're a lovely lady.

Can you give her a dress please?

It was always relating to girls and a bit of

the cars, and I think that became my problem

with that mag, is it went too girl heavy.

Yeah.

I know it came off the back of the lads era

of mags, FHM.

Nuts.

Nuts.

All that stuff, and it was a moment in time,

but I think it got, the powers that be on Max

Power got too fixated with the sort of

girliness of it.

And I was like, look, if you want that kind

of stuff, if you want porn, just people will

just go and get porn.

Yeah.

Let's not dilute the car

stuff too much, 'cause you're wasting pages

that could get good car stuff,

and people didn't believe me.

They were just like, oh yeah,

of course, yeah, it's funny.

And I was like, no really, people buy their car,

man.

I was like, let's not forget that.

But yeah, sadly.

We've always thought about potentially doing it.

Not necessarily a magazine.

What are you gonna say next?

Oh, no, no.

(all laughing)

We've always thought about that.

We've always thought about something that

goes right on the top shelf.

(all laughing) But doing some kind of cream print.

Yeah.

I look like an annual or a quarterly thing,

'cause just none of you might even buy it.

We have no idea.

We just have something in print that we can

go, this is--

That is the, it would have been really cool down there.

Nice little subsection, Ben's best holiday

locations, as tested.

Oh, completely.

Yeah.

Little postcards.

Yeah.

Yeah, Ben's in the back on the back pages.

It's just got a phone number you can call,

and then Ben talks 30 years.

Oh my gosh.

Don't have a phone call.

Some suggestive photos of Ben,

we'll need to get some of it.

I remember finding those pages as a kid and

being like, what?

Do people call these?

Yeah.

Can you call these?

Those guys made a mint.

Yeah.

They paid some of the most money to advertise in Mexico.

Someone was telling us that it might have

been with the Diablo.

That was someone that one of these cars was

originally bought by someone who ran one of

those companies.

Yeah, I think it was.

And it was like a five or two TR,

or it was a Diablo, and it was someone who

was running one of those companies and just

had money for days.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah.

Just a grotty phone call, Mogul,

or whatever

you would call them.

That's what they, occasionally,

that's

what they are called.

Yeah, that's what they are called.

That's what they are called.

That's what they are called.

Linked in.

That'll be on there, Linked in.

Yeah, it was a different, completely different world.

No, you were, you mentioned a potential,

a Merci Largo story.

Oh, yeah.

So, yeah, I don't want to aid you too much,

but you would have been professionally

working when this car was launched.

That was clean, that was cleanly done,

that was quite good.

Thank you, I appreciate that,

I appreciate that.

Yeah, so I remember being on Car Magazine

when we did Performance Car of the Year,

which was the big shoot with

1:03:56 Introduction and Background of Johnny Coyle

all the heavy hitters of the year from Hot

Hat to all the way up to the Supercar.

And the year, I can't remember the year

exactly, but I remember we had a Mercilago

and the guy who was like, the guy that gave

me the job actually on that magazine,

he turned up at the shoot and rendez vous

with the, whoever brought the then really new

Pagani Zonda.

There was a Bentley Arnage T,

there was a VX, might have been a VX 220.

Okay, so it was probably like 2002 or three.

In the early 2000s.

But the thing I remember vividly,

I walked over to Mark who was in the

Mercilago, door went up and he went,

have a look at this.

And I went, what?

And he went, yeah, so the gear stick snapped

in half while I was driving up here.

And I went, what?

He went, yep, I've taped it together.

We gaffer taped the stalk and we all had to

drive it, shifting really low near the base.

So that it didn't--

Got a short shifter in there.

Bear in mind this was brand new.

It was an absolutely brand new car.

I don't think he drove it too aggressively in

order to snap the gear.

But it snapped, it just snapped.

Do you remember what car?

Yeah, I was going to ask.

'Cause I know there's a few early press cars

on, I'd love to know where they are.

I think it was purple, I think it was.

So it was Y1.

Y1 was the one that was on the original,

on the reboot of Top Gear.

They did the Mercilago racing the Zonda.

So probably even the same, yeah.

And the number plate was Y1.

'Cause there was a few different press cars,

but I've been doing lots of,

I've bought all the magazines that have all

the original Mercilago launch stuff in.

It's just seriously cool looking.

Yeah.

But it's quite funny to read them now.

It's the same with the Galado as well,

where the way people talk about them now,

it's completely different, man.

It was getting a lot of, and that's a lot of cars.

If you read back some of these old magazines,

the stuff that people go, "That car's perfect."

And you read a magazine that goes,

"That was shit."

Or they say, "This doesn't look very good.

"This is boring, how do you ruin this?"

This is bland.

And now that sentiment has changed almost

entirely and no one remembers.

And it's the same with the, the glardo that's

coming up for auction, I think it'd be done by now.

We talked about it last week,

where they've used those of clocks and

comments where he's like, "This is the greatest.

"This is better than any Ferrari,

or mine alone in the world."

But then if you watch the Top Gear review,

he just slates it for 20 minutes,

basically.

So it's just over time how much?

550, when it came out, every single review

I've seen in the 550 says, "It's not a very

good looking car."

Whereas now, people look at 550s and go,

"That was potentially "some of the best

Ferrari styling, 'cause it was restrained."

Yeah, compared to the Tesla roster and

everything we've gone before,

it was this weird, boldest looking,

you know, strange shape.

I think back to some of the cars that I drove

new, and now look at them compared to what

we're being offered right now.

And I do think, wow, that little did I know

it, that that was probably the golden era of that stuff.

Look at things like Audi RS's,

especially.

Aesthetically, this all gone so steroidy now.

I was going to ask you to vapey for me.

Because obviously you're quite into electric

stuff, whereas we're guilty of sort of hating on that.

So I always wonder if there's,

you know, we see electric and then the design

is obviously,

then it's all ruined at this stage.

You go, well, obviously it's ugly,

it's electric when realistically,

it doesn't actually look that bad.

But are there any modern cars or modern car

designs that interest you now?

Yeah, there are a lot of modern cars that

interest me, but it's getting harder.

Yeah.

You know, I stopped reviewing as many new

cars as possible because I realized there's a

lot of stuff which is just not that interesting.

Yeah.

And also, I thought to myself,

well, hang on a minute, you know,

I've got my, my traditionally,

my hobby was always old cars and my job was

new a stuff.

And then there would be a meeting point in the middle.

And that was pretty much how the late break

show channel was born.

I thought, I'll push all this together.

But yeah, new cars, cars.

There's, there is some good stuff,

but it's, it's hard.

It's hard to find what I think to be

genuinely good or interesting cars.

And some of them, I say this to people who

just say no to electric full stop.

I say, well, there's good electric cars and

there's not very good ones, but we're also in

an era where there's a lot of shit piston cars.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

They're being made to fit into it to,

to meet a certain parameter,

which is unrealistic.

Or the longevity of them is questionable.

Or the bill qualities or for me,

whether it's middle age man syndrome,

it's the whole like big car with shit

interior cabin packaging.

It's tiny.

Got a massive car with a tiny boot and the

back passenger space is worse than,

I don't know, a course of from 1995.

That's not progress.

It's absolutely not progress.

And it happens a lot.

It's mostly the Beetleback SUV's.

I've got, I have rage, instant rage for those.

So you can see what you want about EVs and

some of them.

are those Beetleback Pises of shit.

But it doesn't matter what about propulsion.

It's about the packaging of the car.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of people get too caught up

in it's this or that.

You got to pick a side.

Oh, it's so terrible.

It's, there are, you can understand that if

you are, if you live in a city or you don't

do many journeys, yeah, an electrical does

make some sense to a lot of people where a

petrol car doesn't.

But it's, it's hard to also,

like I said, it is, it's tribal people.

It's very tribal.

Yeah.

I am petrol car through and through and I am

probably mostly in that company.

Because the cars that make me feel something

are the ones that make a noise.

Yeah.

But there's 90% of petrol and diesel cars are

fairly boring.

Yeah.

Of the modern stuff anyway.

So.

Especially commuter slash sensible family stuff.

And then on the flip side, there are like,

when the, the Renault 5 came out objectively,

that's a cool looking car.

Yeah.

If you're into cars, that's a cool car.

It is a cool car.

But yet there will still, there are still people.

I mean, when we looked at it and we,

we're not married to the idea of liking or

disliking EVs, we were like,

this is a cool looking thing.

Yeah.

And there are still people like,

no, no, not cool.

If they brought out a one liter three pot,

they'd go, yeah, cool.

I like that now.

Yeah.

But it's the same looking thing.

You can sort of appreciate the design of the thing.

We said it as well with the Grande Panda.

Yeah.

It's a cool looking big little thing.

It is a great car.

Cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It just doesn't have an engine.

You can still like, you don't have to go hate it.

No, no, no, I know it's got a lecture.

I hate it.

What is this sense?

I have people who say you can't be a proper

car enthusiast because you drive electric car

and I go, well, I drive an electric car and

the money that that car saves me,

I spend more on that.

Yeah.

And I buy that over there.

So that is my yin and yang right there.

Would I drive that every day?

No, I saw it in well, wouldn't.

I probably have brake failure at some point.

But also the love would probably,

yeah, wane a little bit.

It would.

I'd be like, I don't want to do another journey now.

A lot of people don't understand that.

No.

It's keeping cars special on a weekend on the

right day for the right thing.

Yeah.

Completely.

When you drive it every day,

you start to go, you start to realize all of

it's, it's flaws start to become a problem.

Yes.

Whereas the flaws when you just go out on a

Saturday morning, it doesn't matter because

it's got a massive V8 or it sounds incredible.

But I still think-- Do women like wearing

stiletto heels every day of the week?

No, yeah.

I mean, they might not at all.

And that's fine.

But those shoes are designed for a certain

feel good fact on a certain night or whatever it is.

That's the same as this stuff.

That's the way I see it in 2026 anyway.

We'll ask Ben about the stilettos.

that you feel.

The C5s are still really cheap as well.

They've really cheap.

I looked at them for sale.

And again, this is probably the worst,

the worst, but they're like sub 10 grand.

I saw one for like seven.

Yeah.

And I think it's because they are just still

it catastrophically expensive to run.

And the parts are gone.

They are no parts.

Audi are dreadful for sort of heritage stuff,

basically.

Well, I was speaking to R.E.

Performance about this, Ricky.

Maybe we should put this to a wide audience.

You guys got big audience.

Porsche know their audience.

You can buy all classic Porsche parts.

BMW same.

Loads.

Mercedes have always made everything for every Mercedes.

What is Audi doing?

Yeah.

It's 10 years, Ricky said.

The moment the car, the last model,

the last one off the line, has reached 10 years old.

Every park gets discontinued.

And then you're just down to what is left at the stores.

It's completely devalues the used car,

especially a car like that.

The R6, we've got the V10 one.

They will keep tanking in value.

Because no one will ever want to maintain it.

When you have to spend 3,500,

3,200 pounds, wherever it is on injectors,

no one's going to want to stomach that on a

10 grand car.

So that it will end up becoming a 5 grand car

and a 3 grand car.

We got until it is...

The arch liner.

The arch liner we got was the last in the world.

The stock.

The four arms that we bought,

those were 1,000 pounds for four tiny little

arms that hold the top cross-membering.

Those are just wearing tear items.

A grand.

You need to make some of that.

And also, PS, I know that profits on modern

cars is hard these days.

So start making profits on all the bits for

people like us.

Because like, I know the original Audi,

you know, you are Quattro.

Some of the bits on that are unobtainable.

And it's a real shame because they're good cars.

And it makes sense because a lot of,

again, we talked about the electric car

versus petrol car thing or sort of newer

cars, but it makes sense to keep an older car

running for a lot of people.

Anyway, I may be not on RX 6,

C6, doesn't make no amount of sense.

But if someone wanted to keep that car on the

road rather than going by a new one or a two

or three year old one, it has to be some

money in selling them some parts that isn't ridiculous.

Yeah, completely.

Well, and that is the greenest thing,

isn't it?

I mean, that's, I grew up in a family where

we, my mum and dad bought a brand new car in 1976.

And we got rid of it in 1999 or Millennium.

I was driving by that one.

I was an adult by that one.

I came home from hospital in it.

I was a newly born baby and I learned to

drive in it.

Oh, that's cool.

And then my dad was like, oh,

I might trade this one in now.

I wish he hadn't because it's gone now.

It's been scrapped to me and my brother like,

damn, that's why I bought that.

It's like a tribute to the car that,

you know, I grew up around.

But the right to repair, the whole right to

repair movement is something which not just

cars is it.

It's everything, all the appliances in our house.

And I think it's, it's, it's such a serious

subject that has to be pushed and pushed and pushed.

And I think it's a bigger thing in the UK

than most people think.

I think some people might look at the UK and

go, no one really likes cars.

But I think if you look at how many people

are driving interesting cars,

I say it's, and then just fixing them,

modifying them.

You go abroad, you don't see anything like that.

I say it's my dad that every single time that

we go over to Holland is you look around and

no one has anything cool.

And it's not even, don't they?

No, it's not such a shame.

But it's not even like that they're,

that they're all just driving new cars.

It's that there's older stuff,

but there's just no one doing anything to the

older stuff.

Because there are too many restrictions.

Same in Germany, you have the two

restrictions that stop you from doing anything.

We have RMOTs and we complain about them,

but we have such lax laws.

You can do all sorts, we're not America,

we're not Florida.

You can't stamp a Vin plate on a microwave

and drive it down the road like you can there.

But you can do all sorts, like you can engine

swap a car, tell the government they go,

yeah, fine.

Do you wanna change the color on the logbook?

Fine.

You try and do that in certain European countries.

of prison.

Yes, it's true.

But if you just drive around like even go

France, Germany, there are you every now and

then you might find a little Clio that's got

a couple of mods on it.

But in five minutes of driving on UK roads,

you see all sorts of stuff.

I was next to a 64 in parlour on the way in

today, just driving down the road,

left hand drive, obviously, but on Dutch

plates, well, although that is on Dutch

plates, but driving on the road,

it was a four door, just driving down the road.

Well, I've got one of them.

And then there was a C63 came past at

incredible speeds past me, but you see all

sorts in the UK.

Go and try that in other countries.

You will find quite quickly,

we have it quite good.

There is a solid car culture,

I think.

And again, some of it is blacked out tail lights.

But it is still doing something,

the cars, where you might not have that in

other countries.

And obviously, we're very lucky that we can

get used cars.

We get messages all the time or comments

where we'll say we've bought an M140i for

nine grand, one says, what the hell?

That's a 30,000 pound car or whatever in my country.

So I think we're quite fortunate in that way.

Well, that's why I always say to people,

it's like, well, that's the trade off.

We have pretty weird

1:17:12 Influences and Inspirations

weather.

But the upside is one of the upsides as few.

One of them is we have an enormous amount of

car people, lots of cottage industries,

plenty of secondhand cars, lots of freedom,

lots of engineering to make you new stuff.

Yeah, like you say, like some of the silliest problems.

I mean, I dread it.

Having an unfinished project,

like the ones I've got, which are heavily

modified cars, and then suddenly you find out

that you can't drive it on the road.

Yeah.

You'd be like, right.

So I just spent 12 years building a thing.

I can't

drive.

Yeah, what's the point of this?

Okay.

Now, Will, you might not know this,

but what's your opinion on air conditioning in cars?

I knew this with cars.

I enjoy it.

Yeah.

Would you like to ask Johnny,

what do you think?

You're not a fan of an AC.

You don't need it.

You don't need it.

I've had, I've got no idea if any of the air

conditioning in any of my cars work.

In fact, if it has it, when I've bought it,

I'm fucked off.

Oh, you want it out?

Yeah, it's just a power on power robbing,

thiefy bastard.

It is a bit on, but on some.

And it's untidy in the engine,

mate.

Always the ugliest cheese.

And it makes horrible noise.

Yeah.

It's always Americans are, yeah,

the AC runs ice.

Blows cold, kick it in the bin.

I'm less windows for the, yeah,

there is some roof.

But there is, I don't have a son roof,

unfortunately.

But when I found out the alpha had a nice AC,

I thought it's actually quite,

it's lovely on a nice hot day,

which is like 13 degrees.

But it's a UK thing, by the way.

Those of you who live in Arizona,

please don't write to us.

I know it's hot over there.

It's, for me, it's more the steaming up.

It helps with that.

It's less of a cold, you know,

getting cold air in, 'cause yeah,

you do have, and a breeze is sometimes a bit

nicer for us.

But it's more, I've been in cars or owned

cars but I have AC that doesn't function and

you don't necessarily want the window up and

it just helps keep everything nice.

Now, I never knew that was a thing.

You're the first person that I've ever seen

do that and it makes sense.

'Cause it dries everything out,

doesn't it?

Yeah.

Otherwise you've just got moisture everywhere.

Just gives me a headache.

That's why I hate aeroplanes.

Oh, yeah, no.

I actually find that.

You just, that's why I don't drink on

aeroplanes because I feel hung over without

drinking in an uncle.

Such a square.

I'd like to--

Be drunk or no, just dicey, like refrigerant.

I think it's quite nice.

Do you like refrigerant?

(laughing)

Completely odd story, but when I worked at

Vanessa, I used to do a lot of stuff in the

freezer to just get given a jacket and I was

like, this is amazing in there.

You love it?

It just smells clean.

Do you know how to do that?

My nephew runs a three-shot.

He's t-shirt in like, you know,

like seven degrees and he's fine.

So he can't live without the con.

Me, it's a con.

It's con air.

Every time I see that film con air,

I just think of air con.

Yeah, I guess in the UK, you probably don't.

Also, no one uses it.

No, that might be the thing that bothers me

the most about it.

My girlfriend is terrible for it.

I tell her, like a window starts deeming up

and she's opening windows and doing that.

I'm like, you have air con.

Just set that to a temperature.

The car is clever enough to go.

I'll deal with this.

I'll do this.

I'll deal with this.

I'll deal with the windows.

I'll deal with all that.

You just pick a temperature and you do the

driving, but there's so many people have the

AC and they don't know what they want.

car that has a zone climate control and it's just off.

Why have you picked that?

You might as well just bought a larder or something.

But you don't use the cruise control.

I've started to use cruise control.

My problem with cruise control is you have to

slow down for someone doing something all the time.

Is a lot of adaptive leg senses.

Yeah, adaptive can be great.

The early adaptive was scary.

You're barreling up behind someone.

That's right, it might not stop.

Yes, I remember being in a Jag that had it

and it was one of the very first cars,

I think Jag and Land Rover and yeah,

I was in this Jag.

One minute I was going up behind a car and I

thought just going to punt it out of the way

so I definitely went in and intervened and

then a second time it did an emergency stop

about a quarter of a mile away from a car

that pulled out in front of me and then it

caused nearly another huge accident.

It was like, I can't live like this,

it's too stressful.

I'll do it with it, I'll twist it back over.

The first time I experienced a proper

adaptive cruise control was quite lucky.

Back at Carthrot, all we used to sometimes

get invited to do some of the sort of press car shoots.

It was mainly for the website and we did

social media but sometimes the extra pair of

hands or whatever was needed and luckily I

was older than Edwin so often I would get asked.

And they did, Matt did a shoot with,

it was a Bentley Continental,

the Humber NSX and a McLaren GT.

That was what it's called at the time.

McLaren wouldn't let me drive that for some

reason, I said I was too young.

But the Bentley they did and the Bentley I

got to drive all the way back from I think it

was Lincoln, back down to London roughly and

it had adaptive cruise and it had a massage

seat and it had the most amazing sound system

and I was like this.

Oh yeah they do.

This is the way.

Is it the name audio?

Yeah it was.

I couldn't, I was like, I haven't,