In this episode we are driving around after another 45-minute presentation and we talk about the worn-out phrases automakers use to promote their newest models, and how most of that only confuses customers..
Total Car Score
S5E49 - Are there really any "All-new" cars out there?
Have a question or need how to advice? Just ask MetaAI. Whether you want to design a marathon training program, or you're curious what planets are visible in tonight's sky, MetaAI has the answers. It can also summarize your class notes, visualize your ideas, and so much more. It's the most advanced AI at your fingertips. Expand your world with MetaAI. Now on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] [MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to the Total Car Score podcast. Bring you the world of cars from inside the car. And now your hosts, Carl Brouwer, Lauren Vicks, and Javier Mota. Well, today we're driving, as you might be able to hear from the road. We're in the car that we're going to talk about for next week. On that one, I'm here with Carl Brouwer. How are you, Carl? I am doing well. We're here in the lovely Midwest, high in the Midwest, Minnesota, thankfully, the time of year, when it's nice to be here versus cold. We were saying, we're driving through these neighborhoods. Everything is green, it's been raining a lot, obviously. And they were saying, yeah, it's beautiful. And he said, yeah, this time of today. But it's not snowing. Yeah, I just keep picturing all those nice houses that you can get for such a competitive price, compared to Miami or Los Angeles. And then I have to picture them, blanket it in snow. Because for half the year, they are. So anyway, we have a long route today to drive. So we decided to take the advantage of the time and talk about our topic, cars, in general. We can say that we're driving the new GV80 Koop, Koop, the sportier version of the SUV. But more to dozen that later. And we were having dinner last night and just talking about how the industry uses a lot of phrases and cliches and stuff like that. OK, let's talk about it on the podcast, because a lot of people-- I mean, we know a little bit. You know more than me, I guess. But a lot of the regular consumers don't know a lot of what happens behind the scenes with brands, even like Genesys, for example. Even though they're being a separate brand for almost 10 years now, most people don't know that they're part of the Genesys of the Hyundai Group. And the Hyundai also owns Kia. So all the Korean cars are the ones that are sold in the US. They're all the brands that are not here. But that kind of thing, right? There's a lot in the automotive industry that through the casual eyes goes by very easily. Yeah, I was on my call yesterday with my co-workers. And they were like Genesys here, and at Genesys. So what's Genesys again? And I'm like, well, it's the-- Really? --premium version. I've heard the name. So they're like the high and luxury division of the Hyundai Motor Group. And they're like, so they're like premium cars? And I'm like, yeah, they're luxury cars. I can't believe they didn't even know about that. Yeah, and they pulled up the website. They're looking at them and all. So they're kind of like Lexus for Toyota. I said, exactly. Oh, you know what? I'm just like, wow, man. These guys have been around almost 10 years, and they're still people who are in the auto industry, some of my co-workers who are like, oh, that's what Genesys is. It's like, yes, that's what Genesys is. So anyway, for example, we're talking about this car that we're driving. It's just like by coincidence. But for example, car companies come up with a new model. And they say, this is all new X and X. There's no all new AKA, right? Like from the inception of the auto model. In '18, when was it? '98 by Mercedes Benz? I think it was like 1886 was the first-- '88, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was the 100 and 40 years almost. Every car, since then, has something of that car. Yeah, we're saying it's a bit like to say that, at least. Yeah, it depends on how you define all new. You know, I think within the industry, I like to think that you're not all new unless the chassis has been substantially, if not completely-- Yeah, but like, redone. But like, there's going to be a screw or two that are going from the older version. So it's not all new at all. Yeah, well, what's more common is that you get like mid-cycle refreshes and they'll call those all new. And it's like the mid-cycle refresh is a standard part of every car's kind of-- Life cycle. Yeah, life cycle, that's the exact word. And it's typical for most cars to get completely redesigned about once every seven years, give or take. Sometimes as little as five, sometimes as many as like 10, but 10 or 12. And when they have this mid-cycle refresh, as it's called, what it basically is is-- They fix whatever they couldn't put it or what's it available in the first of these-- Yeah, they often address issues that they should have probably had the first when the car was redesigned. And then there's otherwise, though, it's like the same exact recipe, OK? Headlights, fenders, and-- Technology now. Grill and taillights, and then some technology additions. Like, it's always the same. So that's just like, OK, we've got a mid-cycle refresh. And because those are things you bolt on. What can you bolt on a car quickly? A fender, a grill, and new headlights and taillights. Maybe some colors or a different variant. For example, we can talk now about one that I went last year, exactly the same example, the Ford Maverick. So the Ford Maverick debuted in '22, right in the middle of the pandemic. A lot of production problems, like they were struggling to-- I mean, hide the man, but there were a lot of struggles to make up with them. Yeah, to keep up with them. Yeah. But now, they have the mid-cycle refresh. And that's exactly what they did. Like, you said, fenders, with the lights, a new variant. Now the grill. The grill's always like, yeah, we updated the grill. We updated the headlights. So which is fine. Again, the car companies are trying to maximize interest in the car at minimal cost, you know? They know that if they do nothing to the car for five, six, seven years, it'll just slowly drop in sales. So they've got to do something so they can say, hey, have you seen the giant air quotes? New Ford Maverick, new Honda Accord, new Hyundai Elantra and stuff. And the newness is the headlights and the fenders. Yeah. In the case of the Maverick, I mean, that truck was so successful. Oh my gosh. They won Truck of the Year in the first year. And actually, I think it was the first of four or five years that Ford has won Truck of the Year in Acto. It will really just keep winning. Last year, they sold $74,000-- No, no, no, 95,000 units last year. This year, they're already at $74,000. For the Maverick? For the Maverick. It's insane. And they have solved all the problems. And that's why, as you were saying, people are still willing to buy the original one from three years ago. But now they're making-- Yeah, they didn't need a mid-cycle refresh. They kept selling them. Yeah. But it's always in the product plan. It's the mid-cycle refresh. So that's one of the cases. So whenever you hear all new-- be careful, pay attention, and do a little research. Hopefully, you'll find Carl's story-- All new headlights, all new grill. But anyway, that's one of the things. And the other thing that was at a factory that they were running out cars. And I thought about the idea of people who took a lot about a zero-mile car. There's no non-car on Earth, because they test them in the factory. So they put a couple miles up, please. Yeah. In the factory for those cars, right? Yeah. Cars always have some miles on them. But what are some of the other cliches? So one of my favorite cliches that you hear every time at these events is this car is for the young or young at heart. And it's just like, OK, I'm going to punch the next marketing person that uses that idiotic phrase. Because what that basically is saying is this car's probably for old people, or like, kind of established and family. But what are they going to say? This car's for established old people with a family. Nobody wants to say that, because there's a rule. And among the rules of car sailing is you can sell-- Average age of the buyer. Well, you can sell a youth-oriented car to an old person. But you can't sell an old-oriented car to a young person. So you would never want to say, no matter how much-- I mean, honestly, let's be honest here. If it's like a Buick sedan for 10 years ago and stuff, we know who was going to buy that car. Yeah, of course. But Buick's not going to say, yeah, we've got an aging buyer base, so we're going to sell these cars to our aging buyer base. They're going to say, oh, the all new lacrosse has got a fresh, vibrant design, and what they want is all the old people that are going to buy the car to go, oh, I'm going to buy that new fresh, vibrant design. Even though I'm not very fresh and vibrant, I feel a little bit better. Actually, recently, I learned, you know what one of the youngest average age for a brand is? Rolls Royce with the new rich people, right? The new rich by a lot of those. I remember years ago, I was on a Mercedes event. And I was talking to a guy, and he said he dealt. He was an international event. He said he did Mercedes for North America and China. I said, oh, well, then let me ask you a question. What's the difference between the average Mercedes buyer in North America versus China? He said age. The average American buyer for-- Actually, it was the S-Class. Specifically, it was the S-Class. I said, what's the difference? He said, the average S-Class buyer in the US is 60. The average S-Class buyer in China is 28. I'm like, oh, well, that's-- 28. Wow. Yeah, I mean, I can't remember the exact age, but it was some big difference, yeah. So another thing that a lot of people maybe don't look into too much, for example, is who makes a car for a different brand? For example, last week I had, for the first time, the Honda Prolog, which is the electric SUV from Honda. First SUV from Honda, which is electric. But is it really the first SUV from Honda? I mean, well, the thing is that it's a collaboration. And that, to be completely fair, that's something that happens a lot. Toyota does it with Subaru for the Sultera. Yeah. Also does it for the GR86 and the VRC. And I think Nissan and Mercedes had-- They used to be used to have the GLA, or GLA, yeah, yeah, yeah. BMW does it also with Toyota for the Supra and the C4. Yep. So there's a lot of collaborations, and it makes sense, because a car that is not going to sell huge volumes, companies are going to invest billions of dollar to develop, and they like send-- They have only one version. But they can have multiple versions across multiple broad automakers. Now they can just find the cost. In the case of the Honda Prolog, it's the twin brother, sister, whatever you want to call it, from the Blazer EV, which is made by General Motors. Obviously, so the Prolog has a big plate on the V column right behind the passenger seat where it's made in General Motors in Mexico, actually. So it's a Japanese electric car made in American company in Mexico. I'm not saying that it's bad or anything. I'm just saying something that a lot of people don't know. The other thing with that car is that I did a little research, because it's an interesting topic, I think. And I found out that only 30% of Honda owners crush up Chamberlain. So 70% of the Honda drivers will never know. They'll never go to a Chevy store and sit in the Blazer EV and say, wait a second, this is just like the Prolog. Yeah, I was sitting there. But I mean, both fine cars and both companies do a little bit different. Like same thing as you were saying in the mid-cycle research, is refresh, grill, lights, interior, details, and other kind of things. So they're different cars, but there's a lot happening in the industry. I think it's going to happen a lot more, doesn't you think? Now, they're always looking for ways to cut costs. I mean, think about it, for a long time, there were almost no collaborations. There were far more automotive brands. Remember, we lost half the GM brands about 15 years ago. So there's fewer brands, and that means there's going to be more shared effort across brands to justify the cost of developing all new cars. And that's just going to be a reality. So if you hate the idea that you're driving a Toyota super, but it's really a BMW Z4, get used to it, because you're going to see more. Especially in sports cars. Yes. With manual transmissions. Yes. That kind of gas engine, because nobody-- I mean, I don't think that nobody's developing new high-performance engines for consumer cars. Or cars. You know, I mean, look at the Mustang. They just did a quote-unquote redesign of the Mustang for 2024. But it's not an all-new Mustang. It's the same-- it's the same platform. It's like a serious mid-cycle refresh. You know, they change the shape of the exterior of the car and stuff like that, and all. But the chassis is identical to what came out in 2015, because they cannot justify an all-new Mustang, given the volume that they sell. But now they're going to have to do something, because the Corvette just came out with the CR-1 with 1,064 horsepower, so that the bottle is still there. I think they're going to have to keep doing something, right? Well, we'll see. I mean, I think it's unfortunate that it seems like it's become, in my mind, a bragging rights numbers game. Like, let's be honest, Javier, they added 60 horsepower. I mean, the 0-6 made 670 horsepower, and they added 400 more horsepower. That's a 60% increase in horsepower. What else changed besides that 60% increase in horsepower? And they divided the window in the bucket. Right, right, right. And I think the headlights are different. And the grills are different. It's like, seriously. So they did that, and it's a diminishing return. I'm very aware of this, because I have a 2023 Dodge Demon 170. And that's how different from the 2018 Dodge Demon. Well, the first one had 840 horsepower, if you had the high test gas in it, and you had the ECU upgrade. And the current one has 1,025 horsepower. So basically, they added 25% horsepower. They added, like, it went from 800 to 1,000. Yeah, they didn't drop the 0 to 60 by 25%, or the quarter mile by 25%. They went from a 965 to an 891 quarter mile. That's less than 10% in terms of how much time came off the quarter mile. There's a diminishing return as you increase horsepower, especially with rear-drive only vehicles, when you get past, like, 5, 6, 700 horsepower, all that horsepower's just going literally up in smoke on the wheel, on the tire. It's still amazing, I think, to me. I mean, I don't know, much about engineering. But they can boot out so much more horsepower from the same engine. I mean, that's an amazing engineering. Yeah, it's honestly not that amazing. It's all boost. It's all turbo. Once you turbo charge an engine, literally, it's like, if you had a screwdriver, and there was a big screw on the side of the engine, and you just turned it. Keep turning. Yeah, just turn it. More boost, more boost. As long as the low end of the engine, the rods and the pistons, the connecting rods and all, and the crank are durable enough, you can just keep turning up that boost. Well, that's the other thing, the issues with durability are going to be huge with that. Well, did you notice that the red line, I think, is 8,000 on the ZR1, but it's like 85% or so. 9,000 on the Z06, same basic engine. Because you're making that kind of power. You got to be careful. You can't start spinning the engine that quickly with that kind of power coming out of it. Well, let's see if we have a chance to drive that one in the near future, and we'll talk more about that one, OK? Yes. So we're going to finish our drive here in Minnesota, which is beautiful, again. What's the temperature? 83, a little bit cloudy, no snow. So, nice. And again, stay tuned for Carl's review and mine review on the GV80 Coupe coming up next week on the podcast, also on video and all the platform. So, thank you, Carl. We're going to keep driving safely, hopefully. All right, Javier, watch out for those shifting headlights. OK, I think I see a quote unquote "new accord" behind this. Oh, all new? All new? All new? Honda says it's all new, it must be. OK, yeah. Let's check it out. Thank you for listening. For more, check us out online at TotalCarScore.com. [MUSIC PLAYING] Have a question or need how to advice? Just ask MetaAI. Whether you need to summarize your class notes or want to create a recipe with the ingredients you already have in your fridge, MetaAI has the answers. You can also research topics, explore interests, and so much more. It's the most advanced AI at your fingertips. Expand your world with MetaAI. Now on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Messenger. 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