In this episode of the Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Road Test Editor Zac Palmer. They start off with what it was like to be at the reveal for the 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 out in Las Vegas. From there, they explore news of the 2024 Acura Integra Type S being revealed to have 5 more horsepower than the Civic Type R. And to round out the news section, there's an Explorer EV out, but it's only for Europe. After that, the two discuss the cars they've been driving, including the 2023 BMW XM, VW Jetta Sport with a manual transmission, our long-term Toyota Sienna minivan and what it was like to charge our long-term Kia EV6 on a Tesla Supercharger. Lastly, the pair spend some money to help a listener buy a car for their daughter who is just starting to drive.
Transcript[THEME MUSIC]
GREG MIGLIORE: Welcome back to "The Autoblog Podcast." I'm Greg Migliore we've got a great show for you this week. It's the last call, last call for the really high-powered internal combustion Dodges. This is a Demonic Challenger. Road test editor Zac Palmer was there. Welcome to the show, Zac.
ZAC PALMER: Thank you. Yeah. The Demon Demonic, whatever you want to call it, yeah, this is the craziest challenger yet. Whenever you think that they can't outdo themselves they go ahead and outdo themselves again [CHUCKLES].
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. This is crazy, over 1,000 horsepower, can run on ethanol. It's got a parachute. There's a lot to unpack. And the reveal itself was pretty wild. I watched the live stream. Zac was there. So we'll get into that. We know basically, everybody really wants to hear a lot about that.
We we'll talk about some other things, the Integra type S. There's an electric Ford Explorer in Europe. It looks very different than, really, any Ford Explorer you have ever seen, likely. And then we'll talk about what we've been driving. Zac has been in the BMW XM, the Volkswagen Jetta Sport, and he took the Kia EV6 on a road trip, so he'll tell you how that went. I'm still spending time in our long-term Toyota Sienna.
Finally, we will spend your money. It's a good one. So with that, let's get into last call. This is a crazy car. There is so much going on here. I thought it was kind of interesting that they actually chose to unveil it in almost like kind of a chill shade of gray, you know? Maybe it was just like, let the rest sort of, you know, do the talking for it rather than put it in some crazy shade of orange.
1,025 horsepower. That's what it's running on, ethanol, alcohol, last call. Starts to make a little bit of sense here as you talk about it. 170 is actually the proof, I think, which is kind of wild. Only Dodge would bring something like that up as it relates to the fuel, which is-- it's kind of interesting, but what are your impressions? You were there. What do you think of this thing?
ZAC PALMER: Yeah, man, just the reveal itself was, I mean, unlike anything I've ever seen for a car reveal. I mean, Dodge and FCA, Chrysler going all the way back to the old Cherokee. They've always done dramatic reveals for things. This time, they helicoptered the car in, had it hanging from a giant rope on a platform. They flew it in. We were at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, at the drag strip.
It was a crazy, windy day outside, like, 30 to 40 mile an hour gusts. All the other journalists are like, all right, man. How are they going to pull this off? They had, like, a military chopper bring it in. Yeah, it was a spectacle. And it absolutely should have been a spectacle just because like you were saying, last call, this is it.
After the 2023 model year, the Dodge Challenger and Charger as we know it will be no more. So yeah, they went out with a bang. And this is definitely the biggest bang of them all. I mean, you can option a friggin parachute on it. It goes zero to 60, on a prepped surface, in 1.66 seconds, does the quarter in the eights. Yeah, this thing is utterly nuts.
It's faster than a Tesla Model S Plaid in a straight line, which has been, like, the king of the mountain now for a long while, but get this on the same prepped service as a Model S Plaid, and this will outrun it, both the zero to 60 in and in the quarter mile. So in that way, internal combustion, as it's leaving the building here, is still winning. [CHUCKLES]
Now, maybe the Model S Plaid could match it if it was also on Mickey Thompson slick tires like this thing is from the factory, but this thing is still very, very special. And there's nothing that you can take away from it.
Back to your point on the color, though, yeah, I was also disappointed seeing it roll in in this like, silvery gray. Man, it's Mopar. Like, they're known for their colors.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: Like, I would have loved to see like a plum crazy or go mango, just something really interesting to celebrate that heritage, but I guess that's not what it is. We get a lot of other really neat touches. Seeing the car up close and all, like the new little demon badge on the side, it has a 170 neck tattoo on it. That's just, you know, a really neat touch.
Dodge is always known for doing stuff, like that like the Challenger and Charger red eyes. The little hellcat logo has a red eye in it. This guy has a small neck tattoo and just all sorts of little things with this car that make it a lot more special than any other challenger out there, even the original Demon. So did you like seeing it? Do you think that they lived up to the hype of what the last call should be? [CHUCKLES]
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, you know, that's a great question. I was kind of asking myself that while I was watching it, you know? It was quite a spectacle, to your point. I had my laptop up. That's what I was doing at 9:00 Eastern on Monday night, you know? And it was really, it was nothing else on TV. All the basketball had been done for the weekend. So it's like, yeah, let's watch this new car reveal. And it's also work, right?
But yeah, this was, to me, exactly what I thought they would do. You know, I figured that, you know, Mopar would come at us with, like, this crazy, high-powered drag-style car. Like, I mean, this is, like, basically a drag racer, is what it is. So, you know, obviously, it is street legal, but I mean, it's very extreme, let's put it that way.
So you know, I figured that would be, like, the game plan. And they executed on that pretty well. A little bit of a hot take. I would argue some of the previous last-call models, the different Chargers and Challengers were more creative and, in a way, more interesting.
You know, when I look at things like the Black Ghost, which summons, like, the history of this kind of like Woodward Avenue cruiser from 40, 50 years ago, I thought that was cool. I thought the Charger King Daytona, which I mean, you want to talk about paint, look at that thing.
Just some of the previous editions, while not as high-powered, I thought we were a little more creative with their use of different design elements and their use of history. This, to me, is just, again, like, a street-legal drag racer, which is totally fine. You know, that's what the Demon was before. In some ways, that's, like, the foundation that the Hellcat lineups started to lay down.
And that's not a diss. It's just more like, kind of-- you know, it's not exactly my flavor of brandy, since we're talking about, you know, ethanol alcohol 170-proof fuel here. Sure, I'd love to drive it. It'd be fun to take it down a drag strip, but yeah, you know, I'm OK with it.
I mean, they got all the elements of it right, how you thought they would do it. I thought it was interesting that there's only the fender flares in back, which is a little bit different than some of the other models, stylistically. They had a reason for that. It saved a little bit of weight. Yeah, so, you know, like I said, I'd give it, like, a B-plus. I liked it. You know, I like Chargers and Challengers.
ZAC PALMER: Yeah.
GREG MIGLIORE: I think they're fun. Muscle cars are fun, but just as far as, like, what it is, there's other flavors of Chargers and Challengers that I think are a little more in my vein, if you will. Like, even the, like, the Charger Daytona EV concept, which is a little bit more of a throwback to the 68, and it's an electric car. The vibe of that thing was a little more in my wheelhouse too.
ZAC PALMER: Yeah.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: Yeah. You know, one of the things that struck me as a little surprising at this-- just to sort of like wrap it up here at the end-- was the price.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: It's only-- and I say only-- $96,000. I was expecting something firmly into the six-digit area with this amount of power and this amount of-- I don't know-- just special things added to the vehicle. I mean, like, almost the entire engine is new and different versus just a regular Hellcat to accommodate the E85.
And you know, they've just done so much to this car to make it special, to, you know, have it be the last one that I was a little surprised that it wasn't even more expensive. But that said, even just a quick scan of social media this morning, I'm already seeing markups like crazy, dealers going--
GREG MIGLIORE: Oh, yeah.
ZAC PALMER: --dealers going back and forth. I've seen anywhere between $50,000 to $100,000 in markup already being batted around for this thing. And it's unfortunate because Dodge, I mean, said, like, right in the press release, like, any dealer selling at MSP will receive priority scheduling. You'll get your car sooner. You'll be able to get them to customers, but yeah, I don't know that that is going to happen at all.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: It could just be that this $96,000 Challenger doesn't really exist, and it's going to be a $150,000 Challenger is what it really is.
GREG MIGLIORE: It also has, like, the supply and the demand element to it, you know? Because it is, like, this is it for the Chargers and Challengers. So it's not even like when the Hellcats and Demons came out, you know, jeez, eight, nine, five, six years ago then for the Demon.
Like, you knew. Like, there was no, like, hey, 2035, we're going to pivot more to EVs as, like, a nation or anything like that. It was like, you know, you don't get this one, there will probably be another one coming along next year, you know? So this is it as far as, like, you know, crazy V8 muscle cars from Dodge. So yeah. I think it's interesting. To your point, I think the price is actually pretty fair, but good luck fighting it for that.
ZAC PALMER: Yeah.
GREG MIGLIORE: What were your impressions of the event? I mean, it was quite the spectacle with, like, the choppers, the crowd, Tim Kuniskis gave what sounded like a campaign speech. I couldn't believe how long he went on that. Normally, they're like, this is this, this is this. It has this much horsepower. Pull the cover off or even bring the car in via chopper, but that dude just kept talking.
ZAC PALMER: Yeah.
GREG MIGLIORE: So, I mean, what was the event like to be there?
ZAC PALMER: Yeah, no. To get some sort of flavor from the crowd. So, like, the whole day long was sort of like a Roadkill Nights sort of situation.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: If you're familiar with that in Michigan, just a bunch of people come out to drag race. It was on an actual drag strip at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. So they had that going on. There was an air show happening. There was a car show happening of just a bunch of Chargers, Challengers, Vipers, and whatnot in the big parking lot.
And yeah, so they had that, of course. There was food. There were drinks. So there was a fairly big crowd on hand for, I guess, a Monday afternoon, Monday evening. It was kind of an odd time to bring everybody together. I feel like it probably would have been a lot bigger if it was on, like, a Friday or Saturday.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, yeah.
ZAC PALMER: But, yeah. So there was that. And then, of course, as we neared reveal time, the Dodge PR people started to, you know, just give us a few hints like, hey, there might be a helicopter. This might be happening.
So, you know, sort of got down in there for positioning, to try and capture everything. The security kept throwing us one way and then the other way. The helicopter is going to come in from this side. Now we have to move over there. It was, honestly, a bit of chaos for a short time, just trying to get in position to film it.
GREG MIGLIORE: Wow, OK.
ZAC PALMER: Then they started with a very long speech. They had a ton of guests. Being there, I actually heard almost nothing. It sounds like you guys actually had audio.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yup.
ZAC PALMER: At the event, I'm not sure what set of speakers or whatever they were using, but I could not hear any of the people talking. They had Jay Leno around. I wish I could have heard what Leno said, but I couldn't hear a word of it, but yeah, then out of nowhere, the helicopter appears over top of the big billboard, just carrying a Challenger. The crowd goes wild. They're like, what is happening?
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: And, you know, it flies by. It makes, like, a pass of the stance. He's, like, hovering in place for, like, three minutes or so. Eventually sets it down. They looked like they were struggling trying to set it down, honestly. It was super, super windy. And they had, like, people guiding it in. And oh man, I've never seen anybody try to reveal a car like that. But as soon as they set it down--
GREG MIGLIORE: Oh, wow.
ZAC PALMER: --they drove it down the track strip, turned it around, and then just ripped off a really fast launch, an eighth of a mile run, not a quarter of a mile because that's what they were running at the drag strip right now. But yeah, did that, and then they came back for another just tire-roasting pass and burned rubber the entire way down the eighth mile. And yeah, that was it.
GREG MIGLIORE: Wow.
ZAC PALMER: So quite the show. The helicopter definitely stole it. [CHUCKLES]
GREG MIGLIORE: I'm trying to remember the last time I saw a car reveal with a chopper. It may have been a Ferrari. I'm not sure. It's not unprecedented, but, you know, to their credit, it's not an easy thing to do. Like, you're just watching it like it's on TV, like you're watching some, you know-- I don't know-- some cop show or something.
But then, like, I kind of take a step back. And I'm like, well, wait a minute. I know the PR people. I've interviewed Kuniskis. Like, you know, Zac is there, one of my colleagues. Like, this is, like, real life, you know? This isn't, like, a Hollywood stunt thing.
Like, granted, they had to, like-- I'm sure they used, like, professionals. I'm sure they use professionals and, like, all the stuff that you probably would do to make a movie, but it's like, either they're watching it-- like, in the back of my mind, I'm like, man, I hope it's not too windy. I hope they land that Challenger. Like, let's get it on here, people, you know? Like, let's be safe. And it looked like quite a spectacle.
ZAC PALMER: We were afraid. I mean, so at one point, the car was directly overhead the media pen, basically. Like, if the rope had broke, it would have fallen directly on my head.
GREG MIGLIORE: Oh, wow.
ZAC PALMER: It was, yeah, nothing I'd ever experienced like that before. But it was a fun time. You just got to trust in the military helicopter, that they know what they're doing. [CHUCKLES]
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I guess I didn't realize it was, like, army guys. And yeah, you're in good hands, but whew.
ZAC PALMER: Mm-hmm.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. All right, well, we got a lot of coverage. We have a roundup of all of the last-call models, so check those out. Joel Stockdale, our news editor, wrote up the initial piece for that. Zac, you were there. It was quite the event, you know? It's last call, you know? Now is, like, literally right now. If you want to Charger, a Challenger, or a 300, there is a high-powered V8 300 out there that I believe is already sold out--
ZAC PALMER: It is.
GREG MIGLIORE: --which if you asked me which one I want, that would be the one I would go for. I was at the reveal of that at the Detroit show about eight, nine months ago now. That's a sleeper car. When I'm thinking, like-- I know the 300's a little bit of a, you know, sedate car compared to, like, where the Charger and Challenger have gone.
Don't forget. That was, like, the original, like, hemi-powered muscle car there for a minute, you know? So, like, it came first. So, you know, if something finds its way into the press fleet, you know, I may call dibs on driving that one.
But all right. Let's move along. Let us know what you think too. Get in the comments. Let us know what you think of this car. You know we'd love to hear from you.
So speaking of more power, there is an Acura Integra Type S. This is very much in your wheelhouse when you think of, you know, things I know that you're very much into.
ZAC PALMER: [CHUCKLES]
GREG MIGLIORE: What did you think of this one?
ZAC PALMER: Yeah, so Acura is sort of dripping out some information on the Type S coming here. I mean, they showed us the camo version of it I want to say, like, two or three months ago. But now they revealed the horsepower and torque, 320, which is 320 horsepower, which is five more horsepower than the Civic Type R.
So you know, it's not the exact same. I don't really know what they've done to give it the extra five horsepower, maybe just a little software tuning, maybe something in the exhaust. But, no, it's just a neat little tidbit of information as we lead up to the launch here, which is going to be coming very soon.
Acura also said, in this little reveal of information, that it would be coming to us at the Acura Grand Prix at Long Beach. So that means that we will have all of the information in just a few weeks, and the thing's going to be on sale this summer, supposedly.
And the other thing with this little teasers they gave us a listen to the exhaust, which is definitely a different exhaust in the Civic Type R. It's popping and banging and just much more aggressive soundtrack than what Honda does for the Civic Type R, which has honestly been one of that car's weak points ever since the original FK8 came out about-- I don't know-- say, like, six or seven years ago now. And even the new one doesn't have that aggressive of an exhaust, but the Integra will. So yeah.
GREG MIGLIORE: OK.
ZAC PALMER: Just a few little tidbits. And like you said, right in my wheelhouse. I am so excited to see what this car looks like and what all they've done for it, especially to differentiate it versus the Type R. We're already seeing the smallest bits of hints that, yeah, it won't just be like a Civic Type R clone. It'll be different in x, y, z ways and maybe appeal to a slightly different clientele. So I'm excited.
GREG MIGLIORE: It sounds like me, quite frankly. Like, I like the Civic Type R a lot, but at times I thought it's been overwrought. I've been excited about the Integra since the beginning, I think. I've liked the TLX. I've actually really liked most of the Acuras I've driven in the last probably four or five years.
The only letdown has been the infotainment at times, but from, like, a design, like, chassis tuning and the power plants have been-- I think they've all been very good. So I think this is just another smart card for them to play.
I think, you know, again, somebody, you know, who perhaps is like, well, I like the Type R, but this Integra Type S, this might be a little more like your flavor of brandy. I don't know how many times I can say that in the podcast. It's turning into, like, a drinking game here. But yeah, I'm excited.
So that'll be coming up pretty soon, April 14 to 16. The Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach is actually-- side note, if you like watching IndyCar, which I do. You know, I probably don't watch quite as much of it as Formula One. Part of it is often, like, just the races are, like, in the middle of the day, it seems like, on a Sunday.
And you know, weekend summer, you know, Saturdays and Sundays are often a premium. You know, you're not usually necessarily inside, whereas F1 is at times earlier in the day or you record it or ESPN does a good job of replaying it at, like, 10:00 at night so you can kind of come down from the weekend, you know, catch the race again. That's actually what I did this weekend.
But side note, my point being is you get cool shots of, like, Long Beach and, like, the Queen Mary, that old cruise ship. And there's different races, especially in F1, but a little bit in IndyCar, where it's like the tracks really make it a little bit more interesting, I think, you know? And this is one of them.
ZAC PALMER: Absolutely. And Acura is making a big deal of it.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Are you going to-- sometimes you go to to mid-Ohio. You think you're going to try to get down to that race this year, if I recall?
ZAC PALMER: No, I'm not doing that, but I do have plans to go to-- man, I want to say-- I think it's the eight hours at the Glen.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, that's cool.
ZAC PALMER: I've got some family and friends that are wanting to go to it. So I'm like, well, yeah, I guess count me in. I'd love to go to that race.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: And I've never actually seen a race at Watkins Glen before. So I'm there.
GREG MIGLIORE: It's on the list. That and Lime Rock are two-- I've never been to either of those. I mean, those are two just very, like, historic Northeast tracks, like, two of the most historic tracks. So yeah, man. I'd be interested to hear what you think. That should be awesome.
ZAC PALMER: I'm excited for it.
GREG MIGLIORE: All right. Real quick, electric Explorer this is for Europe only for now. It looks vastly different. We saw this come out earlier this week, sort of a nice contrast to the latest Demon.
Yeah, I think it looks good. I think it'll be interesting to see, you know, what the broader implications are for this because this is European spec. It's built on the Volkswagen platform, which I believe it's called MEB. They've got a few different versions of this chassis and these underpinnings.
But yeah, they revealed it over there, as they say. It honestly, to me, looks like a Volvo or a Polestar or something. The design is really, really striking. I think it looks good.
It's just for Americans, if you look at that, you're going to be like, wait, that's a Ford Explorer? Because that is not like what we've come to know and, you know, identify the Explorer as. That's for sure, but, you know, we'll see.
There's basically no, like, implications as to what's next for if, when this type of, you know, product could come to the US. But yeah, that's what we know.
ZAC PALMER: It's a weird one when. I saw that they named it Explorer, I sort of did a double take and was like, wait. What? An electric Explorer? Nobody knew that that was coming. I had no idea that that was a thing.
GREG MIGLIORE: Right.
ZAC PALMER: But then I read, oh, this is for Europe. And I was like, OK, fine. It's still weird that they use the Explorer name, though. Like, it's not a three-row SUV. It doesn't really feel like an Explorer in many ways or, really, any ways at all. It's honestly more like maybe between, like, an Escape or Ford Edge-sized vehicle. But name aside, it looks like a great EV.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: It would probably clash with the Mach-E if they sold it here.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: It has a bit of a, you know, slicked-back look to it. It's definitely not as performance-focused as something like that. This is much more mainstream. The one thing that I saw that sort of caught my eye was it has an adjustable infotainment screen. You can change the angle at which it presents itself. So you can do, like, straight. Up and down or lean it back
And that's just like the Mercedes AMG SL. And the reason that they do that is to try and cut down on glare from the sun. I'd be curious to know Ford's reasoning for why the screen can move so much, but it has a lot of adjustment to it, which I was surprised to see.
And maybe something like that will come to the US. I'd be intrigued to know if that's something they can do, maybe not on the Volkswagen MEB platform, but to integrate it here too.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, I think that's an interesting, kind of clever move. I think, you know, you can always-- I think we can always improve those sort of applications. So I think we'll just see.
And then one thing that I kind of hemmed and hawed at the start of this. To be clear, we did some reporting on this, if you will. Ronan Glynn, our man in Europe, who would know very well, he reached out to Ford PR for, like, you know, comment here.
And it's basically, no. This thing is not coming here. Basically, what they're doing is they're using the Explorer-- because it's a strong name-- on a crossover in Europe. They will-- this is some good reporting on Ronan's part-- they're actually going to stop building the actual Explorer, Explorer as we know it for Europe as well in the middle of this year.
Apparently they sell it in small numbers over there. I didn't know that. That's kind of interesting, but that's going to kind of clear up confusion over there, across the pond, if you will. So that's kind of interesting, I think.
It reminds me a little bit of-- this is not totally related, but like, how Chevy brought, like, the Blazer and Trailblazer names. It used them on vehicles that are not at all like what you would think of a traditional Blazer or a Trailblazer. That was the name they wanted to use because it was the strongest name they had, so they used it. And that, to me, is how it looks like Ford is shaking this out.
Yeah, and I mean, it also, I think, does work for Europe because they don't roll around in hulking SUVs, generally, like we do. It's not like you have one kid, and you buy a huge Explorer like you do over here.
So for them, I think, the Explorer name does kind of translate to a little bit of a smaller crossover-type vehicle that is still relatively big for their roads over there. So it's all relative.
ZAC PALMER: That's an interesting point you make on the-- like, our Explorer that is sold in Europe that will be discontinued like next year. I remember writing a story that I just pulled up on my computer here. They actually sell a plug-in hybrid version of our Explorer in Europe. And it makes more horsepower and torque than our Explorer ST does here.
And I was always a little, like, oh wow, why can't we have that Explorer plug-in hybrid? I don't know. Maybe if they get rid of it in Europe, maybe that means we could beg for it to come here because it looks like it's, like, the highest-performance Explorer you can buy. It has 620 pound feet of torque, which is just, like, ridiculous for an Explorer.
But no more in Europe. We can hope that maybe they'll homologate it over here. I don't know, just some pie-in-the-sky thinking about some weird European cars.
GREG MIGLIORE: Ford sold cars in Europe, all across Europe for a very long time. Like, they're one of the first American automakers to go over there and really carve out a foothold, build a lot of, like, domestic operations. It's interesting.
Especially in the UK, many, like, locals, if you will-- like, Ford isn't like-- it's Ford, it's an American company, but they don't look at it as some, like, foreign company. It's just, like, Ford, you know? Ford of the UK, Ford of Germany. They've been over there for, like, so long that it's-- you know, they're not BMW or Vauxhall or Jaguar, but it's like,
Ford really, over a century, has built up that kind of like, you know, we're here. Your family works for Ford. Like, they have a lot of factories over there. And it's interesting to me, too, some of the product strategies that I think they've done over there that are I think a little more creative than I've seen some of, like, General Motors and Stellantis, a.k.a. Chrysler-- although Stellantis seems to rule half of Europe at this point.
Like, they're willing to try some things. And like, that's where you get those, like, kind of cool looking Mondeo, like, wagon things that we're like, oh man, why don't they do that here? Or the Puma. Like, it is a very, like, tailored strategy for Europe. And maybe that's why they've done a little better over there than General Motors ever did. So all right. Let's talk about car reviews. You've driven a couple of interesting ones. Let's start off with the BMW XM.
ZAC PALMER: Oh, yeah. This was a whole lot to dissect here. I went on the first drive for this about-- a little over a week ago at this point, first drive published on the site on Friday last week. And yeah, this car has probably drawn and just created more dissent, criticism, differing opinions than any BMW I've seen in a long time, even, like, the BMW M3 and M4, with the big grilles, the four series, massive face lift with, also, the giant kidneys.
Just in general the idea, of you know, all right, this is an M-exclusive vehicle, and it's a big SUV that weighs a lot, and it's a plug-in hybrid, you know, those all seem like things that are, you know, the exact opposite of what people think of when they think of BMW. It's a very high-performance brand, and a big SUV doesn't exactly speak to that.
But the reality of driving it is, well, this is my favorite driving of any of the BMW M SUVs out there right now. There are a lot of them, like the X3M, X5M, MX6. There was, like, M sports stuff, like the X7, M 60 I, but I think that this new XM is definitely the king of the mountain, as it should be for $160,000.
And the big takeaways from driving this thing is the fact that it is a plug-in hybrid. And I think it's better because it's a plug-in hybrid. You have a very powerful electric motor. It's just about 200 horsepower, 200 pound feet of torque. And when you smack the throttle, the thing sends you back like you're driving a very fast electric car.
If you're driven, like, a Model 3 Performance or like a Kia EV6 GT or any of those, like-- I don't know-- like, zero to 60 in the mid threes seconds electric cars. That's the kind of kick that you get right off the line.
And then before there's any sort of fade, boom, the 4.4 liter twin turbo V8 has kicked in, and you're flying along, making great V8 noises, popping, burbling, doing everything that you would expect a BMW M vehicle to do.
So the powertrain is great. It's super refined. Even driving around in electric mode is really great. It has about 30 miles of electric range when it's fully charged. And there's enough power to actually just hop off the line real quick. You don't feel like you need to get into that gas engine all the time.
I've driven plenty of plug-in hybrids where it's like, oh man, I'm really accelerating slowly here. I don't know. I feel like I need to dip into the gas engine to merge onto the highway or something like that. Not so with this car. It is quick and gets up to its 87 mile per hour max electric top speed very quickly.
Now, as far as handling-- and, you know, this is a 6,000 pound SUV-- another one of the big problems that people have cited with this thing, it doesn't handle like a 6,000 pound car at all. It feels, you know, like a very high-performance, focused SUV.
It has, you know, the electromechanical anti-roll bars. So this thing stays, like, flat as a board when you have it in the full sport-plus mode. The chassis has a lot of really great stiffening all throughout it that, you know, just makes it feel like it weighs-- I'd probably say like 500 to 1,000 pounds less than what it is. The brakes are stupid good. You don't really feel the weight in amongst the twisties.
And you're not really penalized with it in the ride either. That's one of the areas where this thing is so much better than, like, an X5M or X3M. Those things will just punish you on a poor road. This thing, on the other hand, it won't. It actually rides really, really well, surprisingly so for how well it handles. So for all those reasons, like, this thing is, without a doubt, like, my favorite driving M SUV.
The looks all right. And I'm sure that everybody's going to have their opinions. I like the way it looks. I think that you like the way it looks too, Greg, from our past conversations about it.
GREG MIGLIORE: I do?
ZAC PALMER: I think the interior is spectacular. All around, just, like, a really, really great car, one of the best efforts from M that I've seen in a while. And in my conclusion for the review and all, like, it is better because it's a plug-in hybrid. And I think that that's really good for the future of M because we're going to have a lot of plug-in hybrid and hybridized and even fully electric M cars coming. So this is a good first bout, I think.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, I agree with you. I like how it looks. It's got some character, some style. I think that's the kind of-- it's a larger grille, but it's not the largest, if you will that we've seen on some of the BMW models. And I think it works on the SUVs, maybe better than it does on most of the cars. It's like you said, the plug-in hybrid, it's very versatile.
I think it offers you a lot of, you know, different, like, ways you can live with the vehicle, which I think is important, especially for a vehicle of this size. So I'm excited. I'm excited to drive this. I think it's going to be very interesting. And, you know, I don't know. It's a little flashy, let's put it that way. And it's expensive, you know?
So it's definitely something where, you know, look, whenever we kind of kick around these cars, I like to read what other people have written. And "Car and Driver" call it "a buffet of excess." So you know, there's a lot to eat here, let's put it that way. So yeah.
ZAC PALMER: It's definitely a buffet of stuff. There's just, like, so many new and, like-- all right, this is the first time we've seen this on a BMW before sort of thing. I mean, a lot of the details, like the crazy, like, geometric Alcantara headliner, like, the natural leather on the dash, you know, it takes the level of a luxury up to and, honestly, even past what a lot of things are coming from, like, a Mercedes Benz or Audi these days.
GREG MIGLIORE: Mm-hmm.
ZAC PALMER: It genuinely feels special in there, as it should because this thing, I mean, on price, performance, and all those metrics, it legitimately competes with things like the Cayenne Turbo S hybrid, like, a Lamborghini Urus or a Bentley Bentayga. It's sort of like a budget version of, like, the Bentayga or the Urus.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: But, you know, it has--
GREG MIGLIORE: That's a funny sentence.
ZAC PALMER: Yeah. I know, right? [CHUCKLES]
GREG MIGLIORE: If you're looking to cut costs, the Urus is just a little too much, let's look at this BMW, you know, which has probably been done before a few times.
ZAC PALMER: But yeah, no, as a flagship SUV, this thing really gets the job done by wowing in pretty much every way.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: Yeah. [CHUCKLES]
GREG MIGLIORE: All right. Sounds good. Now, speaking of-- let's see. Well, why don't we do plug-in hybrid first-- or excuse me, stay with things with a plug, and go over to the EV6.
You did a pretty long road trip in it. You charged at some Tesla chargers, which is-- breaking news-- something you can now do. Not everybody even, probably, knows that. Where did you go, and what was the charging experience like?
ZAC PALMER: Yeah. So I recently just a road trip with our EV6 here. Tesla has opened up their charging network, to a certain degree, for non-Tesla EVs. So I want it to go charge an electric vehicle on one of their chargers, see what it was like. I drove to Fredonia, New York, which is the closest charger to our home base here in Detroit that Tesla has opened up.
Right now, it's mostly limited to just New York and California. And a few other states on the West Coast, I think, have opened up spots. Yeah, so I drove the EV6 there. It's super simple to get things going. You just download the Tesla app, upload your payment information, and it prompts you, like, right away. Like, the first thing on the app, charge your non-Tesla EV. You just click into that, find your station.
GREG MIGLIORE: OK.
ZAC PALMER: It knows where you're at. You back into any of the stalls. Like, they had, man, I want to say it was, like, 14 or 15 stalls there. Talk about a difference between Electrify America or, like, an EVgo with, like, three or four stalls. They had 15 choices to choose from. That was awesome. There literally were no other cars there, but that's great to see that if there were a bunch of cars there, you'd absolutely have a place to be at.
But as soon as you find your stall, you just go into the app, tap a little button that asks you to unlock the charger. You press that. It prompts you to push in the charger, and then it pulls out the Tesla magic dock, which is the adapter that you need to actually plug in the Tesla charger into something like the EV6 with the CCS connector.
And you plug that in. As soon as you plug it in, the app just tells you, OK, it's plugged in. It could take up to two minutes to start charging. And yeah, but it started within about 15 to 20 seconds, and it was charging away.
GREG MIGLIORE: OK.
ZAC PALMER: So that was all very seamless, easy, and great. The only downside, which is a pretty big downside for a lot of people with EV6's, IONIQ 5's, and a number of other 800-volt architecture vehicles is that it's slow charging. So you max out at about 42 kilowatts, unfortunately.
The reasoning for that, the Tesla superchargers and all Tesla vehicles run off a 400-volt charging system and electrical architecture, whereas the EV6 and a lot of other new EVs run off an 800-volt system. So those don't talk to each other. Those superchargers are not made to charge 800-volt vehicles, so they cannot take advantage of the speed. If you had your 400-volt architecture Tesla, it could charge it up to 250 kilowatts.
GREG MIGLIORE: Wow.
ZAC PALMER: And without going into too much more technical detail, yeah, you're just going to be charging fairly slowly if you have one of those 800-volt vehicles. Some of them work better than others because some of them have slightly better internal chargers that allow them to take a higher charge speed, but yeah, it's sort of like a mixed bag of, like OK, now these Tesla superchargers are open. And you can charge there, but your experience will differ based on the vehicle that you have. There's no doubt about that.
You're way better off, if you have like an EV6 like us, going to find that Electrify America and plugging in because you're going to be charging at speeds upwards of 200, 230 kilowatts, which is fast versus the 42. I mean, for a little reference on the timing it would take. When I plugged into that Tesla one, it would have taken an hour and 40 minutes for me to get to 80% from-- I was at about, like, 8%. I plugged into the EA right across the street afterwards. It took about 15 minutes for me to get to 80%.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: Yeah. An interesting experience, a learning experience, one that I can't wait to write about.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, that's really interesting. So I had the EV6 before you, and I really did enjoy every minute of it. It was one of the fastest, like, long-termer loans I've had. Sometimes you have a long-termer, you're like, oh jeez. When's this car going to move on? I'm ready to try something else, something a little more interesting, but I loved every minute of it.
And my charging experience is a little bit all over the place. It was very cold when I had it, so the car was cold. The chargers were cold. Sometimes you wonder just how are the finicky chargers working on that day?
But there were a couple of times I was able to, like, get to, like, 82% or something like that, about the same time frame you mentioned at a ChargePoint. It was probably, like, half an hour, maybe a little bit over, but still, like, a reasonable amount of time to hang out at a charging station that is ostensibly a fast charger.
At times, though, it was crawling. And I would spend almost an hour there. Or the ChargePoint's pretty close to my house. And I would just give up. And I'm, like, whatever. I'm at 40%, 50%, that's good enough.
You probably didn't have that option when you were on a road trip. So I think that's a really, you know, illuminating, you know, opportunity, if you will, to kind of do some storytelling.
And I think it's interesting, too, because, you know, allowing the superchargers to be open gives, like, you know, EV owners, like, more of a safety net. And that's really important. You know, like, if you had the time, you weren't going to go home hungry or powerless, you know what I mean?
Like, you had a method to get home, which is one of the challenges of being an EV owner or driver if maybe you don't own the car, but say you're driving one and there's just-- like, you've got this much range, and there isn't a charger for this much range. That's a problem.
So, you know, it's definitely a key, like, strategic play, but there's also some details in there that, like, I think even at the time of the announcement, it's like, well, OK, that's great. That is great. But then you kind of look at it. You're like, well, look at the experience that you had. And it's like, well, that would take a little bit longer.
But it's also-- like, to look at this another way, we're just in such early days of really building out the charging network that, I mean, you know, in two years, it won't take you an hour and 40 minutes, like, I guarantee you. It'll be something different. They'll find a way to make a proper adapter or something and make it 30 minutes. That's cool, man. What'd you do while you were waiting? I guess you went over to the EV-- Electrify America.
ZAC PALMER: Yeah, I literally just gave up. It was, like, I don't know. Probably about 11:00 PM, midnight, raining outside. I wanted to go. You know, I charged for probably, like, 10 or 15 minutes on the Tesla Supercharger, just watched it. Just went and got a bunch of photos.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: Yeah So I charged twice. I did it there, on the way there, and then I also did it on the way back. Same experience both times. And both times, I went in charge at the Electrify America afterwards because you don't get much charge sitting at the Tesla Supercharger.
But to your point, you know, once more of these are open, it is a great little safety net, you know? Say all four of the EA's across the street are taken, you know, you could just stroll across the road to the Tesla Supercharger, go grab a nice long, lunch or something like that and then get back on the road. And it actually isn't so bad if you let it charge for a long time. If you're just looking to do a quick in and out, less so.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. Yeah, no, that's interesting. And using the different charging brands, if you will, you know, you do see differences. And even among, like, one Electrify America to another Electrify America charge station or, you know, I've had different luck with different ChargePoints. And there's a lot of them out there now.
I think just to get, like, the infrastructure where we want it to be, just, they need to be consistent, well-maintained. You know, we still have a variety of electric vehicles out there, you know, that, you know, whether they're, like, fast-charging or not fast-charging that don't work on certain ones.
So that's something that I think we need to set up. And by "we," I mean we as a society, I guess. Greg, the EV czar. And I also think, too, like, you're going to see, like, "slow-charging vehicles," quote, unquote, start to go by the wayside, you know, because I think, you know, to look at our 330e, you know, the way that works is you have a home charger, you know, like, a level-two home charger.
You do it with level one, and takes all night. You can't fast charge it. So it's got to be-- like, that's the solution for that. So but again, it's a plug-in hybrid, so you're probably not going to, like, on your road trip, seek out a charger. Yeah. All right. Tell me about the Jetta Sport we'll do that, and then we'll start to move towards the finish line here.
ZAC PALMER: Yeah. Jetta Sport, this was an interesting one. I was a little surprised when I hopped in it. It was a manual. So yes, you can still buy just the base Jetta with the manual transmission, very, you know, base spec of a vehicle, you know, just for around $20,000, you know? With options, this one was about $23,000.
But no, the reason that I like to talk about this car is just because, like, here's a really cheap car with pretty much everything that you might want on it as a daily that's also kind of fun. It has Apple CarPlay, Android Auto. It has a fully digital dash. It has a nice climate control system. It has, you know, keyless entry.
It has all of these great new things that you want in a new car, and it has a six-speed manual, a 1.5 turbo. It's not fast by any means, but it gets great fuel economy. The six speed is fun to row through. And, you know, there's just not a lot of, you know, fun, cheap cars out there anymore, but this one being the Sport, it has the brake-based torque-vectoring system on it.
I went around a few clover leafs in it. This thing's actually pretty fun and a good-handling car. It feels super lightweight. Overall, like, just a really fun little package that I almost didn't even realize existed until I hopped into it.
I mean, there are still things like the Honda Civic Sport or Sport Touring you can get with a manual transmission, but as far as, like, fun, cheap things out there, you know, this Jetta Sport was just a little bit of a surprise and a very delightful one at that. And I liked it a lot.
James actually wrote a little review for us last year. You should probably go check that out because it's basically the same car as the one that we were driving, and he liked it a lot too. You know, it's not a high-performance GLI. It's not a Civic SI. It's not going to blow you away in any of those ways.
But for somebody that just wants something cheap, it gets great fuel economy. Is kind of fun and has all of the little tech things that you might want. This thing has it. And, you know, that's a rarity these days, when everything is-- you know, you get the average transaction price over $45,000. I feel like we're getting closer and closer to $50,000 every day. And you can go pick this thing up for $23,000. So yeah, just a little--
GREG MIGLIORE: It sounds fun. I mean--
ZAC PALMER: --appreciation for the Jetta Sport. [CHUCKLES]
GREG MIGLIORE: I'm curious too, like, what did you think of just the Volkswagen manual and the regular Jetta? Because it's been a while, but I imagine it's the same manual that I, you know, drove previously. I've always kind of liked it. It's kind of, like, playful. The throws are a little bit longer the clutch is easy. But what did you think? It's also very, like, easy transmission. This is not a GTI or a speed 3 or anything like that, but what did you think of it?
ZAC PALMER: Yeah, it's honestly just like you described it, a little longer throws, a lighter clutch, lighter throws themselves shifting. But, you know, there's still some good engagement. You can still feel it, you know, a nice little confirmation clunk through the gears--
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: --which just makes it's satisfying and fun to drive. I was talking with news editor Joel Stocksdale, who I passed the car off to after driving it. And he was having fun too. We were both just a little like, wow, man, more people need to know about this thing because this is a surprisingly fun car here. Two enthusiasts over here just like weirdly gushing about this $23,000 Volkswagen Jetta.
So yeah, a great little manual transmission. It's not like a manual that you won't enjoy driving. It's plenty enjoyable, you know, if you're just popping around town or slamming through the gears. You really do have to rev it out and slam through the gears if you want to accelerate onto the highway. So like I said before, it's not fast by any means, but that's where the fuel economy comes in.
GREG MIGLIORE: Driving a slow car fast.
ZAC PALMER: Exactly. A slow car fast.
GREG MIGLIORE: There you go.
ZAC PALMER: So a lot of fun.
GREG MIGLIORE: All right. Sounds good. Sounds good. Let's talk about just a quick, long-term update, our other long-termer, that's the Toyota Sienna. I plan to take that on a long road trip coming up, so that should be fun. But right now, I've just been enjoying living with it, daily use.
You know, the family, my son and the dog, they all like it. That's the point of a minivan. The back area is extremely cavernous. We have the third row seats down, and you can put, like, anything back there. You could camp back there.
You know, a couple of things I've noticed just kind of like little-- I wouldn't call them Easter eggs, but, like, features, I guess, for lack of a better term is just how many different ways you can open the doors. That's nice. Like, the driver can do it up front so the kids can, you know, tuck and roll, jump out. The doors have a button on the handle. You can also pull the handle. And then there's another button inside, like, kind of in the cabin, if you will.
So a bunch of different ways to open the car plus the key fob, too. So it's like all minivans, but the good ones give you a lot of different ways to open that door, especially the sliding doors, specifically. So I like that.
The second-row captain's chairs have footstools. That's kind of cool. I didn't realize that at first, but that's kind of comfy. You can slide them back. And, you know, for a long road trip, it's not a bad place to hang out. Yeah, no, just kind of like fun things like that, that you might not discover in, like, a couple of days or even a week-long loan, but, you know, you're with it two, three weeks, you're like, oh, this is cool. This works.
You know, the one thing I would also say is, like, again, I spent a lot of time recently in the 330e and then the Ev6, which are tight cabins. Man, it's still pretty cold out, a minivan takes a long time to warm up, you know? You are heating a lot of air space in there. So, you know, that's another thing to consider.
You know, I'm really liking it. It's a hybrid, which I think is great. You know, 35 miles per gallon, I think, combined is a very strong figure. Drained half the tank and haven't even thought about filling it up, which when you drive plug-ins and EVs, you tend to look at your gasoline-powered vehicles a little differently. You look at range.
But I'm enjoying it, you know? I think again, it's a very capable minivan. I'm looking forward to spending a few more weeks with it and getting to know it better.
ZAC PALMER: Yeah, I'll have to look up-- I'll have to log into the app and see maybe we can open the doors from the app too. It's almost like--
GREG MIGLIORE: Oh, I bet you you can.
ZAC PALMER: There's probably a post in there, like, all right, you can open the doors of the Toyota Sienna, like, seven different ways, even using an app. That would be really cool. I hope you can open it via an app because that would just be the icing on the cake. [CHUCKLES]
GREG MIGLIORE: It's funny. With all the apps these days, like, I just deleted a couple of charging ones because I don't have a charger. I don't have an electric car right now, so I'm trying to save some space on my phone.
The Kia EV6 had an app, so you know, man, it's just like, you know, so many apps these days for everything, of course, but for cars. You know? Like, you get the press car, and then you download the app, you know, which I think is kind of cool. Ford had a good one, you know, when I had the Mach-E a while ago. That was pretty good.
ZAC PALMER: Yeah. It's--
GREG MIGLIORE: So yeah, that's the Toyota Sienna.
ZAC PALMER: Absolutely. Yeah, I was just going to say, like, it's even more important to have the apps running on EVs because you can really, like-- you can monitor the charging progress.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: There's just so much more that you can do with that versus, like, the app for something like a Toyota Sienna, a gas car. So getting more and more important to download those apps and test them out.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. the ChargePoint app was pretty good. It wouldn't take my credit card, which is a point of contention. But, you know, once you get set up with it, it is actually easier to use the app than it is to just swipe your card. You do have to make sure your phone's working and everything's fine. But after complaining about that, I actually ended up kind of liking that experience, you know?
But I mean, I still think they should have that redundant swipe, chip, whatever you have to do. I get that you're probably not going to roll up and drop a 20 into the machine, but, you know, I mean, I don't think app-based is the only way you should be able to charge at some of these places. But it is cool to look at how much juice you're getting.
ZAC PALMER: Who is out there advocating, let's put some little pop-up shops next to EV chargers? We can have some dude in there. You can go hand him a 20, like, I'd like $20 on that charger, please.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: Just imagine that.
GREG MIGLIORE: Just like it's a gas station in New Jersey or something, you know? They do it for you.
ZAC PALMER: Exactly. Oh, man. [CHUCKLES] That would be funny.
GREG MIGLIORE: Well, speaking of money, should we spend some?
ZAC PALMER: Let's do it. I always love it.
GREG MIGLIORE: Let's do it. All right. So Joe writes-- and this is a long one, so I'll try to kind of break it up a little bit. Writing back to ask your opinion about a car for his daughter. He wanted to give an update on a previous spend-my-money question as well.
So first the update. Back in October, November of 2020, he wanted to get a first car for his oldest daughter, who was then 16. I wanted to get a hot hatch with a manual transmission, looked at the C30, Mazda 3, Audi A3, or VW GTI. These were used. The price point was around $10,000.
He went with a 2017 VW Golf TSI with a 1.8 liter gas turbo and an automatic. Let's see. Long story short was his daughter decided she didn't really want the manual transmission, but it worked for, like, her hockey gear and stuff like that.
Fast forward to now. The daughter is a freshman in college with no car, and the other daughter has been driving the Golf. So basically, he needs to get another car at this point, kind of long story short.
He's willing to entertain a number of different preferences beyond his own. Like, it sounds like he's kind of admitting-- Joe is admitting, hey, he likes hot hatches, and that's the car he picked for his daughter, in simple terms. So he's maybe a little more open-minded here on that, and That's good.
Price point is $12,000 to $14,000. His daughter wants kind of a boxy-styled car with a cool color. It could be anything. It could be, like, flashy. It could be ugly. So a lot of different things going on. Let's see. Prefer under 50,000 miles if possible and fuel efficient. It's a roughly 30-mile round-trip drive to and from school.
Here are the top choices. Kia Soul. Lots of ugly color choices, just a lot of choices with the Kia Soul. Let's put it that way. The VW new Beetle. It's the Beetle at this point. Nissan Cube, Honda Element, Scion XB, the Fiat 500, Mini Cooper, and that's it.
Out of the above, he likes the Mini the best, but would rather not get an automatic. For what it's worth, the automatic in Minis, on the rare occasion I've driven them, they're not bad. I mean, you still get all of the fun steering and chassis dynamics, you know? It's just not maybe exactly what you would want, but it's still a pretty fun car, I'll say that. He's also worried about reliability, fair.
Second choice would be the Kia, which I think isn't too bad, but it might be a little bit older and have a lot of miles. Anything else I should consider? Thanks, Joe. Thank you.
So this is interesting. This, to me, is almost like a spend my money from, like, five or six years ago. Like, you know, you're talking about the Kia Soul, the Honda Element, the Nissan Cube. I think it's kind of cool to flash back.
And I remember at the start of my career, these cars were brand new. I went on the Seoul original launch in Miami, back in whatever that was-- '09 or something. So I'm really dating myself here. I was a young pup at that point, let's put it that way. This wasn't, like, some mid-career arc. This was a long time ago.
But these things, like, these sort of like, you know, squared-off vehicles were really, you know, in vogue for a minute there in the 2010s. I think they've still held up well, but I'll toss it over to you, Zac. Which of these cars do you think he and his daughter should go with?
ZAC PALMER: Yeah. You know, the one that sticks out to me, the one that I like myself would probably be the Honda Element.
GREG MIGLIORE: OK.
ZAC PALMER: I long considered one of those is a winter beater myself. You know, they're just so versatile. They're relatively cheap still. It's going to be reliable. And when things break, it's probably going to be on the cheaper side to fix. And this is a car that, you know, I feel like she can take to high school, she can take the college.
If you're going off to college somewhere, you can take a lot of crap in it, even more so than, say, like, a Kia Soul or the Nissan Cube. It's just a slightly larger vehicle than those. And so I think that you're getting some good value, especially if, you know, you're not really caring that much about driving dynamics.
Will a new Beetle or, say, like, a Fiat 500 or Mini Cooper handle a lot better and be a lot more fun to drive? Yeah, they absolutely will be. But I just feel like a Honda Element might be the best choice in this sort of situation. You will have to live with it being a little on the older side.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: But that's the case with a lot of cars on this list. And I think that you'll have the best of luck over time with the Element.
GREG MIGLIORE: All right. Fair choice. I think, you know, the Mini Cooper would be the most interesting, but it is, you know, even in this segment, on the small side. So, you know, that's something I think-- you know, that's a conversation you guys are going to want to have as a family is, what do you guys prioritize?
I would go with either the Soul or the Element. I like the Soul. It's funky. I think the design, which has evolved in the last 10 years, 10, 15 years, still kind of holds up pretty well. They do some fun things with the interior, so that's kind of cool. That would probably be-- that might be my top choice.
Obviously, with the Element, you get all that Honda reliability. They haven't made the Element in a while, so you're still going to be getting a bit of an older vehicle at this point, if you want to go down that road, but I also like the styling of the Element a lot.
One of my neighbors has one, and it has these kind of, like, random wheels on it. I wouldn't say it's slammed, but it's got some aftermarket, like, wheel stuff going on. And I was looking at it the other day. And I was, like, oh man, the Element was cool. I mean, it was kind of a fun, like, crossover thing, you know? Like, they really were going for it back then. So those would be my two.
ZAC PALMER: Yeah. That's the thing with the Element is that it sort of has a cult following. So there are a lot of people that have, like, really taken care of these cars.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: And I bet that you can find one-- in that $12,000 to $14,000 range, you can find a really nice Honda Element, like one with decent miles, looks like it just came off the factory room floor. Like, this is a semi sought-after vehicle.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah.
ZAC PALMER: And I feel like something like a Fiat 500 or Scion XB or Nissan Cube, they're not going to have received the same love and care from a lot of passionate owners. So find that Element from some person that's owned it for a while and has loved it, and I bet that it will treat you well.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah. Looks like the last model year was '11. So now you are starting to kind of go back into history a little bit, but then again, you get that Honda reliability. And you get one that's well taken care of, it should definitely be OK for, like, you know, high school and college, that type of thing.
I would definitely go with a Honda over, like, you know, the Fiat reliability of, really, any vintage, let's put it that way and even the Mini. So yeah, I mean, that's what we'd do. Let us know, Joe. Thanks for writing in again.
So I'll close things out. We started off with ethanol and 170 proof. I'm not drinking anything like that, but I did have an hazy Space Force IPA last night, tangerine. It was good. I grilled some Italian sausages outside. I made the skillet of cowboy beans, cast iron on the grill. It was really a nice kind of Tuesday night.
You're just back from Vegas. You're probably a little jetlagged. I don't know. Did you have a beer going on in Vegas? What is your drink here as we-- it's the first official, like, full week-- not full week, even, like, first week of spring.
ZAC PALMER: Yeah, man. I unfortunately couldn't try any Vegas beer when I was out there. That wasn't part of the event, but at that XTM drive, I got to try some fun Arizona beer. I had this one Scottsdale blonde and an Arizona light lager. They were both fantastic. I honestly wish that I could have brought--
GREG MIGLIORE: That sounds good.
ZAC PALMER: Yeah. Like, the Scottsdale blonde that I had was like a sweet finish to it. It was, like, super tasty, one of the better blonde ales that I've had. If I could have brought some back, I absolutely would have. So if you're out there, if you see any, I would definitely pick that up. It was super good.
GREG MIGLIORE: Yeah, that style of beer is nice, very easy drinking. It's good. You know, can be beach beer, too, if you will. So sounds good. We hope you've enjoyed the show this week. If you've enjoyed the show, five stars on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Send us your spend my moneys. That's podcast@autoblog.com. Be safe out there, and we'll see you next week.
[THEME MUSIC]
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