Show Notes for Podcast Episode #53
Grand Tour Overlanding
Summary:
Matt Scott and Scott Brady discuss the merits and challenges of overland travel by car. They do a deep dive on exploring by classic Mercedes diesel sedans, Porsche, the Bentley Continental GT, Subarus, and more. There are glorious roads on the planet best viewed from the drivers window in a full drift…
This podcast is supported in part by:
Full Transcription below:
[00:00:00] Scott Brady: Hello and welcome to the Overland journal podcast. I am your host, Scott Brady, fresh back from a little sailing expedition. I’m here with my co-host Matt Scott.
Matt Scott: Who kept his seat. Did not get sea legs. I stayed on dry land where I belong.
Scott Brady: That was actually the most bizarre part of it, after almost a month at sea. Getting back on dry land. Now I know why Jack Sparrow walks the way that he does and pirates… like, they talk about a drunken sailor. You’re not drunk. You just can’t walk yet. So yeah, it was… oh and then you wake up in the middle of the night, you know, cause I’ve been on a sailboat for that long. Like, I was in a hotel room and I woke up in the middle of the night and the whole room was moving like the boat was. You don’t get used to it. It takes like about a week to stop falling all over yourself.
Matt Scott: My question is like, how does that translate to going to the bathroom? Like did you like to have your first solid poop on solid ground? [00:01:00] Like did you have to book handicap suites or?
Scott Brady: That would have been a really good idea. Well, because going to the bathroom on the boat is a challenge, right? Yeah. Because it’s all about triangulation. You’re trying to…
Matt Scott: Triangulate.
Scott Brady: Yeah. You’re trying to have many points of contact, which of course becomes complicated when you’re trying to go to the bathroom.
Matt Scott: I would have just went for an Aqua bog. You’re right on the ocean.
Scott Brady: What is an Aqua Bog?
Matt Scott: It is an Australian term for taking a poop in the water.
Scott Brady: Yeah, well, there you go guys. This has been educational for all of our listeners
Matt Scott: Welcome to Australian culture 101 with your host.
Scott Brady: That sounds terrible.
Matt Scott: Somebody who briefly lived there.
Scott Brady: Yeah, but it was… nah, it was amazing. I mean, just, there are so many parallels to Overland travel that we’re going to talk about in a future episode, we’ll get Brian McVickers who. [00:02:00] Is part of our team and was with me on the trip. And for those who want to kind of follow along with what’s happening, it’s on Instagram, it’s @Kailaniexpedition, and the goal was to sail from Long Beach, so essentially Los Angeles. We sailed across the Pacific ocean and we ended up at the Aleutian islands and into the Bering sea and the team continued on after I sit after I flew out and they went onto the island of Attu, which is where they’re at right now, which is both the Western most and the Eastern most point of the United States because it’s across the international Dateline.
Matt Scott: Oh, cool.
Scott Brady: And I think that that’s where Sarah Pailin thought she could see Russia from, but it’s that close. It’s very close to Russia. Yeah, but it was, it was a fascinating experience. It does get pretty rowdy in the Pacific, but it was not that bad.
Matt Scott: I mean some of the videos that you were sending me, I was like… I was getting seasick like [00:03:00] in Prescott from my couch.
Scott Brady: Well, that’ll be my one little tip that we’ll talk about today. And then we’ll get into more stuff on that podcast, but there is this relief. It’s called a relief band. It’s designed by Johnson and Johnson for cancer patients that are having nausea. But it works just as well for people who get seasick or get motion sickness in a car or whatever. It is a FDA approved device and it works.
Matt Scott: I will vouch for it.
Scott Brady: Oh, you’ve used it? That’s right you bought one.
Matt Scott: Yeah because…
Scott Brady: You make yourself sick in your car.
Matt Scott: I now have the ability to make myself sick when I’m driving fast, which is…
Scott Brady: That’s unfortunate.
Matt Scott: I don’t know how that worked out. Like I raced cars for 15 years straight.
Scott Brady: You’re getting old, man, you hit your thirties and things just go down the hill.
Matt Scott: Like it sucks, man. Like I just want to go back to a scooter and a backpack in Asia or something.
Scott Brady: You can, you have that option.
Matt Scott: You know, my scientific, highly scientific, very [00:04:00] scientific test. I, whilst hungover, went and drove with the worst driver. I know, and I was fine. Normally, 30 seconds would have been not a fun time. Totally fine.
Scott Brady: Yeah. There you go.
Matt Scott: There you go. I’m basically the CDC. So… I read it on Facebook.
Scott Brady: Yeah. So it does apply to Overlanding. Those of you who end up being a passenger in the vehicle and things are not going well. And you’re feeling sick. Take a look at this relief band. We have no association other than the fact that it works.
Matt Scott: Laura uses it on stuff now we’ll both kind of switch off using it.
Scott Brady: It’s like a little mini tens unit that goes on your wrist and it basically…
Matt Scott: It looks like a fit bit to me.
Scott Brady: It does.
Matt Scott: Mine looks like a Fitbit.
Scott Brady: And it just kind of excites the Vega nerve in the wrist, which…
Matt Scott: My hand kind of tingles.
Scott Brady: Tingles a little bit, but it just completely takes away the whole nausea thing. So that’s how [00:05:00] I made it across the Pacific without losing my lunch.
Matt Scott: Did you lose your lunch at all?
Scott Brady: No, which was a miracle it’s only because of this.
Matt Scott: I bet Brian lost his lunch.
Scott Brady: He didn’t know. He doesn’t even wear it.
Matt Scott: Brian’s Mr. Sailor.
Scott Brady: He is Mr. Sailor man. Totally. So listen to a future episode when we talk about it. Expedition sailing and how it translates. There was a lot that we learned. There was a lot that we learned that translates over to overlanding as well.
Matt Scott: Saw you guys eating a lot of tuna, fresh tuna.
Scott Brady: We did. That was amazing. We had Sashimi and Nigiri right there.
Matt Scott: It looks like it sucks just as much as Overlanding.
Scott Brady: Yeah. There’s just less dirt and a better bathroom.
Matt Scott: Okay… but waves.
Scott Brady: So you’re just still, you’re still kind of moving around.
Matt Scott: 50% chance of death.
Scott Brady: I don’t know about that. It was rowdy.
Matt Scott: 25.
Scott Brady: It was rowdy, but it was good. It was great. And then in today’s podcast, we’re going to talk about something a little bit unusual, but it actually predates four wheel drive Overland [00:06:00] vehicles, and that is driving in a two-wheel drive or driving in a car or a sedan.
Matt Scott: I’m going to go with the car. Because some of the cars that I’m going to talk about want to drive around the world…
Scott Brady: They are four-wheel drive.
Matt Scott: Yeah, but they’re non-traditional.
Scott Brady: But the reason why we want to talk about this is to kind of reinforce what Matt and I do our very best in this podcast to do, which is to come back to this essence of Overlanding, which is vehicle based travel and there have been families that have driven across Eurasia in the sedan that they used for daily commuting in the UK. There are significant trips across the Sahara that have been done with Dushavos. There have been trips around the world that have been done in the same Mercedes sedan that people use as a daily driver. So again, coming back to this idea that there are [00:07:00] times that you absolutely do need a four-wheel drive if the conditions require it, but if you want to just go travel and see the world, most of the world has either paved routes or they have well maintained dirt routes, or they have drier dirt routes. I mean, how many times Matt have you and I been someplace remote. I mean, I’ve been…
Matt Scott: Always a Toyota Corolla. There’s always a Toyota Corolla.
Scott Brady: Exactly. I’ve been in like low range, in a Mercedes G Wagon feeling like I’m articulating or whatever. And then here comes like a bunch of locals and a Tercel. And then when they get to a tough spot, they all hop out and they all push and then they get through it and they keep going on their way. So if the goal is travel, if the goal is to just go see the world and hopefully in as inexpensive a way as possible, a car can be a great solution for that.
Matt Scott: Well, and I’ve kind of touched on it before, not everyone around, you know… I feel that Overland travelers that have not yet left America kind of [00:08:00] get this idea that I have to have a Defender. I have to have a Land Cruiser. Well, no. Those are very expensive vehicles in America, which is the cheapest car market in the world. You know, a Land Cruiser 200 series in Australia is twice as much as it is here.
Scott Brady: It is. Yeah. Very expensive.
Matt Scott: Nearly twice as much. I mean, I’m generalizing. Most people drive cars. Most people don’t even have a Toyota Hilux. Toyota Hilux is like a fancy car. They’ll have a… I don’t know, what’s worse, a Nissan or they’ll have a…
Scott Brady: Yeah, you’ll typically see a…
Matt Scott: Ssangyong or they’ll have a Great Wall or they’ll have… you know, in a lot of those vehicles, like the Great Wall is a Chinese company that buys the tooling from GM out of Thailand when they’re done making the Colorado. So the next generation Great Wall is going to look like the current generation Colorado as the last generation Colorado is now the Great Wall, you know, you see a lot of that stuff. But you also see a lot of people that can’t even afford that. Now I’m not trying to paint this picture that the [00:09:00] rest of the world is impoverished and America’s the shining beacon in the world because we have so much poverty here and homelessness, but you know, Corollas… like what’s that Nissan that’s used, like everywhere for taxis. You know what I’m talking about?
Scott Brady: It’s almost like a Versa.
Matt Scott: A mid 90’s Sentra or something. I’ve seen those things everywhere. Like places that you could barely walk down. I’m not saying that they’re like Extraordinarily capable. It’s just that when that’s what you have and your house is over there.
Scott Brady: And they’re light. Most of them front wheel drive, which is going to be better than a rear wheel drive truck in most cases. Right. So let’s talk about some of the other upsides of the car. The initial investment is very, very low. Very, very low. They get excellent fuel economy. So the cost of your fuel on your travels is much less. The other, the other upside is you’d completely blend in. [00:10:00] Like you no longer have this four-wheel drive that everybody notices, which even if you just think about security and safety aside, just the fact that you could roll into a little village and not create so much attention. Where you can let people just go about their life and they’re not seeing this expedition vehicle descend upon their little town. You’re just another Mercedes diesel sedan that the taxi guy uses in the same town and you come in and you’re likely to be able to find parts for it and it’s going to fly under the radar. You’re not going to worry about the thing getting stolen and I think that there’s a lot of advantages to that.
Matt Scott: I love the old Mercedes wagons.
Scott Brady: Yeah, like the W one, two, threes?
Matt Scott: I know this lovely, lovely Spanish guy. Super nice. He lives in Dubai now and he’s kind of into the classic car thing. He did central and south America. I think he actually rolled his car in like Venezuela or something. He got hit, but he was in a [00:11:00] little Mercedes wagon and loved it. You know, I have to say that it’s a very romantic idea to take a Mercedes wagon or a, you know, a kind of vintage classic car. I mean, you’re not going to find parts for stuff like that. Mercedes is kind of the oddball because you can still… they kind of go further back with servicing their vehicles. And they have that worldwide parts network. That is fantastic. But like Kias, Hyundais, like cheap cars that you can buy here are cheap because they’re the same cheap car that you can buy everywhere and they share the same parts.
Scott Brady: And that would probably be a thing to start with. Look for a vehicle that’s available in the United States that’s also sold in many other countries. That’s probably like an example of one that’s a little older, if you can get these turbocharged and normally aspirated diesel Mercedes sedans. I’ve seen them for sale for [00:12:00] three, four, or five grand.
Matt Scott: They’re made well.
Scott Brady: They have an OM motor in them. They’re made very well. They have an independent rear suspension. You can put a limited slip differential in the back. Not many who listen to this may know of Chris Scott, but Chris Scott is literally OG Overlanders. He has a great series of books. He wrote a series of Bibles about overlanding extensive travels throughout Northern Africa. He did a lot of long trips throughout the Sahara, including sand tracks in Wow, two, three, and other variants of the Mercedes sedans. And he would put a very small coil lift on them, like maybe about an inch or so, a slightly taller tire, steel wheels, and a limited slip differential in the back. He would add some very light skid plating underneath to protect the sump and a couple other things. He drove around Northern Africa in the same thing that the taxi guy drives. So you’re totally under the [00:13:00] radar.
Matt Scott: We did like a hundred or so miles of the old Dakar course in Morocco and I think it was a Dacia.
Scott Brady: Yeah. There you go. Dacia Duster yeah.
Matt Scott: It wasn’t a duster. I call it the African Corolla. It had like a 90 liter fuel tank and a little turbo diesel. It actually had… it looked like a lifted Corolla. It was great. I had fun. It was cool. It was a rental car. It was the most capable car on the old Dakar course in Morocco that day for sure. We saw very few other people.
Scott Brady: What do they say? Every rental car is a four-wheel drive.
Matt Scott: Yeah, what’s the fastest car? Rental car. What’s the best car off road? A rental car. Unless you’re renting from Nina Barlow who’s very nice and please don’t wreck her rental cars.
Scott Brady: Yeah, that’s right. That’s the one exception.
Matt Scott: Yeah. But otherwise rental cars are very capable.
Scott Brady: Incredibly capable. Off-road. So there’s a [00:14:00] lot of upside to this whole idea of a car and I think that they get underserved in this idea of doing trips around the world and if we go back in time, if we go back historically, I mean Aloha Wanderwell, her 1920s trip around the world. She was the first female to drive around the world. She did it in a model T. Again, two wheel drive vehicles and the roads I suspect back then were pretty rough. They were probably pretty bad.
Matt Scott: Probably not so great. Congestion probably wasn’t that bad.
Scott Brady: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, you didn’t have to worry about traffic as much.
Matt Scott: Probably wasn’t running into traffic.
Scott Brady: But I remember when, and I was getting ready to go on the ferry in France to go over to Tangiers for the Outback challenge race and I’ve got this race prep. Land Cruiser, we’re ready to go do this amazing adventure and all of these little Dushivos, these little Citroen they’re Citroen, right? Or who makes the Dushivo? Yeah Dushivo. And then they all, they all line up on the same ferry and they’re going to go basically on the same route. I mean with some exceptions?
Matt Scott: Are [00:15:00] they just trolling you? That’s kind of, what I want to do is I just want to…
Scott Brady: We should just troll other Over Landers with Dushivos.
Matt Scott: Let’s take Laura’s Subaru and go to the Mojave road. That’d be too easy, but…
Scott Brady: But that’s a Subaru. Now that we’re moving kind of into this idea of the all wheel drives, but we have seen more and more aftermarket support for the Subarus and they, I think they look great. They got fun little motors in them.
Matt Scott: Real cool, but… okay so Laura, my fiance, she has a Subaru Crosstrek. Great car. Does not have enough power to run the AC sufficiently, nor does it have enough power to accelerate in a way that I feel is acceptable, but she loves it. She loves it.
Scott Brady: But if you think so, let’s think an 80 kilometer…
Matt Scott: You got to leave them stock because she gets 30.8 miles a gallon. I know this because it hasn’t changed. But I’ve talked to people that have lifted these to [00:16:00] modest tires or they’ll do bumpers or this. I’ve talked to guys that get 11 miles to the gallon out of a Subaru because they’re just so heavy and dogged down.
Scott Brady: So that’s the key. If you do decide to travel in a Subaru, maybe consider some skid plates, maybe consider a slightly upgraded spring, but definitely keep the weight off the top. When you see a roof tent on a Subaru, it’s a bad idea. It’s just going to greatly affect fuel economy and then you might as well just take it Tacoma with you.
Matt Scott: Take a Tacoma or Forerunner. I mean, that’s the conclusion that I’ve come to.
Scott Brady: Very, very modest modifications are a good idea.
Matt Scott: A lot of people ask me, I want to lift my Subaru. I’m like, what are you trying to do with it? Cause a stock Forerunner is gonna be better at everything and get better gas mileage.
Scott Brady: Yeah. Once you over modify those Subaru’s, then they really struggle and then the transmissions get hot. They don’t have any low range.
Matt Scott: CVTs. Yeah. But they’re fun. They’re great. I get why people do it. I don’t get why people modify [00:17:00] them incredibly extensively.
Scott Brady: But, but isn’t that the case for all of us, right? Like we all, like… I think about my Tacoma, my first Tacoma. I completely over-modified that…
Matt Scott: Your first Tacoma was fine.
Scott Brady: But it was like 7,000 pounds. It was terrible.
Matt Scott: I always run into these Tacomas on the trail that will weigh as much as a full sized truck and then they get worse gas, mileage, fuel economy.
Scott Brady: So I think it’s that same path. Like you start off with a Tacoma. When it’s stock, it’s super capable. It exceeds all your expectations. It gets pretty good gas mileage. It’s super reliable and then you start to try to make it something like an expedition vehicle. And they’re not suited for that. Once they get heavy, if you keep them really light, then take them around the world. Absolutely. But it’s the same thing. I think for the Subaru, if you, like a Forester, have lots of space on the inside, you could easily sleep. Maybe you upgrade the [00:18:00] Springs a little bit to give you just a little bit more clearance.
Matt Scott: See, I look at it the opposite way. I don’t think that you touch the Subaru. I think the Subaru is the factory upgraded car that you want. So if you were to take the Mercedes or the, you know whatever car.
Scott Brady: Corolla.
Matt Scott: Corolla, and you’re like, okay, well I’m going to put a little bit bigger this a little bit more of this, whatever. No, that’s just a stock Subaru. A stock Subaru has eight to nine inches of ground clearance.
Scott Brady: Nine inches, yeah. Amazing.
Matt Scott: So I think you just leave it and then you drive it and then you drive it back and then it’s just another Subaru…
Scott Brady: That you get to go sell on eBay drive,
Matt Scott: You get to drive it into the ground and it goes to like that place in Oregon where all Subaru’s go where they’re fed kombucha and IPA’s. You know, very Oregon. Yeah, that’s where all Subaru’s go.
Scott Brady: I didn’t know that.
Matt Scott: Cats go to the farm. [00:19:00] Subaru’s going to Oregon. Sorry.
Scott Brady: That’s going to trigger some people, some people have had their parents tell them that the cat was going to the farm. It didn’t go to the farm.
Matt Scott: I was told that the cat was going to the farm and then I found out it actually did go to a farm.
Scott Brady: Really did it really go to a farm?
Matt Scott: That’s what my mom told me and I’m realizing that maybe she was just trying to cover her tracks.
Scott Brady: Cats, never go to the farm. I’m sorry.
Matt Scott: So Kitty didn’t go to the farm. She didn’t go to the farm. No, I just like to make fun of Oregon. Mainly because of Caleb Wallace. Who’s a friend of mine that works for me? He’s from Oregon and he’s young so he catches all of the flack in our office.
Scott Brady: All of the Oregon jokes.
Matt Scott: And he drinks kombucha, which is… don’t you drink that crap?
Scott Brady: I do. Yeah. Sometimes. Like when my gut needs a little boost, I dunno. That’s what I tell myself. Because they don’t really taste that good. So you hope that what you’re doing is healthy.
[00:20:00] Matt Scott: I do. I do those Yakult probiotic things because…
Scott Brady: You are getting older, Matt.
Matt Scott: Well, okay. This is because I’m a sucker for advertising. We went to this baseball game in Tokyo, like two years ago and now I’m a fan of the Tokyo Yakult swallows. Interesting thing, every baseball player has their own song and chant and it’s wonderful. They have these lovely Japanese girls that walk around with little beer kegs on their back, and then you get fresh draft beer and like these lovely Japanese people were sharing snacks with us. It was the coolest experience ever.
Scott Brady: So you went to a baseball game in Japan.
Matt Scott: Oh yeah. We love going to baseball games in Japan. That’s like one of my things that I’m doing post COVID. Baseball game in Japan.
Scott Brady: I would love to do that.
Matt Scott: I have like all these obscure Japanese baseball shirts, like one of them is green and it has like the Yakult swallows little bird on it and it has all this Japanese. It could be like… I don’t know what it says. It could be saying something very derogatory about me and I wouldn’t know, kind of like the, [00:21:00] you know, the tattoos that people get in Japanese or Chinese and it’s like…
Scott Brady: Silly American, whatever it says on it. That was my politically correct interpretation of that. Back to Subarus. So I do think that Subaru is a good idea. And you see them everywhere in the world.
Matt Scott: Get a stock Subaru. Make sure it doesn’t have terrible tires on it.
Scott Brady: Quality tires. Put fuel in it. Go. Yeah, exactly.
Matt Scott: It’s really actually quite simple.
Scott Brady: So what other practical solutions would there be on the car side? I mean…
Matt Scott: Get the continental GT.
Scott Brady: Yeah. We gotta get into the fun car ideas.
Matt Scott: I don’t want to talk about boring stuff anymore.
Scott Brady: Okay.
Matt Scott: No, no. Let’s talk about boring stuff a little bit more.
Scott Brady: Because there were some Tercels that were all wheel drive. You know, there’s…
Matt Scott: Astro Vans.
Scott Brady: Yeah. People have done some serious Astro Van travel.
Matt Scott: People wax poetic about taking a two wheel [00:22:00] drive van somewhere, but like my friend Zach has this lifted Toyota Previa. He was like 18 when he got that thing probably from his mom, because it’s a Toyota Previa. He’s done Smiley Rock. He’s done like all these trails. He comes out with us. You can get a Toyota Sienna for like, I don’t know, 50 bucks and a PS three, and you could sleep inside of it.
Scott Brady: And they would probably still run forever.
Matt Scott: Forever because those cars are meant to be neglected, because when you have like 12 screaming kids and like…
Scott Brady: Not thinking about oil changes.
Matt Scott: A kid is like, oh a door handle. Let’s pour milk into it. That is what the Toyota Sienna is made for. Therefore it can’t break.
Scott Brady: Yeah. That’s probably true and the fact that it’s survived Zack to this point. Yeah.
Matt Scott: Zack is a lovely young man.
Scott Brady: He is a lovely young man.
Matt Scott: Yeah. Sucks that he’s leaving me and he’s going to school to be a forest service ranger, which sounds [00:23:00] awesome. National park ranger.
Scott Brady: I know it’s going to be a sad state of affairs.
Matt Scott: We’re losing Zack. Zack works in our complex. What else is practical.
Scott Brady: Yeah, I know we’re struggling with this one, but there are all wheel drive cars that are practical.
Matt Scott: Today on asking impractical people practical questions, we are asked about practical cars. We don’t know anything about practical cars.
Scott Brady: Yeah, we tried.
Matt Scott: We tried.
Scott Brady: We did try.
Matt Scott: Okay. Bentley continental GT. Okay, so seriously, that’s what I want to drive around the world. You can buy a very nice Bentley continental GT right now…
Scott Brady: For less than the price of a Gladiator…
Matt Scott: With 30,000 miles. For less than a Tacoma with 30,000 miles. I’m just saying that.
Scott Brady: Then you just put like two Russian flags on the front of it, and then you just drive around the world like a Russian oligarch.
Matt Scott: Or Jeremy Clarkson. Did you watch that, that Madagascar special?
Scott Brady: No, I should have. Did he take a Bentley continental GT?
Matt Scott: He took a lifted [00:24:00] Bentley, the continental GT with Four Max Tracks extremes on the top across madagascar and now he has it on his farm show and it rips around the farm and apparently it’s been flawless. It’s amazing.
Scott Brady: That is amazing.
Matt Scott: And I want it, If only I could have a continental GT.
Scott Brady: But maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s… Because people look at something like a continental GT or maybe an Audi all wheel drive car that’s like a really nice performing vehicle and they seem kind of out of reach. But the reality is a lot of those things depreciate so quickly that you could buy this beautiful driving sedan that is designed for bad roads. I mean if it’s going to be sold in Russia, it needs to survive bad roads. So something like a continental GT, I bet you with some good tires, you know…
Matt Scott: I think for me, Bentley is like a sentimental brand. You know, when you look at Peking to Paris even the modern recreation’s there’s always, you know… [00:25:00] probably not Bentley Blowers, but you know, three liter Bentleys and twenties and thirties stuff. They were used as Overland vehicles way back when, because he didn’t have the infrastructure.
Scott Brady: Well, if you look at Lawrence of Arabia…
Matt Scott: Rolls Royce.
Scott Brady: That was a Rolls Royce. Two wheel drive.
Matt Scott: You can get a Rolls Royce… it’s not the Cornice, it’s the Silver Shadow Two. For like five grand if you look. Like what some people pay for rooftop tents, you can get a Rolls Royce.
Scott Brady: There you go.
Matt Scott: So maybe that’s the direction we should go in this. Like, what is the most obscure, crazy thing that you can drive for the cost of an outfitted Tacoma. An outfitted Tacoma.
Scott Brady: But that’s a lot of money.
Matt Scott: An outfitted Tacoma is 60 grand now, realistically.
Scott Brady: So that opens up pretty much any car.
Matt Scott: I [00:26:00] had some people telling me in Southern California that they were selling Tacomas for $20,000 over stickers for the TRD ones.
Scott Brady: Yeah. Because they just aren’t available.
Matt Scott: It’s crazy. Like the local Ford dealer has like that bronco sport, which is really just a Ford Escape and Drag. They wanted a $5,000 market premium for that. It wasn’t even like the cool one. It’s just like a car that you can currently actually buy and it was $5,000 over.
Scott Brady: Yeah. They say 28, 30% increase in used car prices in the last year.
Matt Scott: My friend Yusif sent me this graph of everything. Yeah. It’s 37% year over year.
Scott Brady: Well, when I just got the GMC AT4, they were just not available in any close configuration, so I just figured I’m going to order it and then I waited the couple months and it showed up exactly how I wanted and I think given the fact of use prices, you [00:27:00] just buy a new one and wait and get exactly what you want.
Matt Scott: What I would love to see happen from this. Regular listeners of the podcast will know that I buy and sell cars all the time. I’m good at seeing market trends and I’ll buy a car, driving it for a little bit. Particularly lately cars are going up. Buy something desirable before it’s desirable and you have a free car. That’s what I do. But I hate buying cars from dealers. It is the worst experience.
Scott Brady: It’s very rough.
Matt Scott: You know, and I wonder if the auto industry was smart, why not just go on the website? I want this truck and it shows up at your house like Tesla’s does.
Scott Brady: Yeah, that’ll happen. Isn’t Carvana that way.
Matt Scott: Carvana’s used cars that do that. There’s a few like that and people are having great experiences with that stuff.
Scott Brady: They’re buying off lease vehicles that are in good shape, low mileage, they show up on a truck. [00:28:00] On a tow truck, and they put it on your driveway.
Matt Scott: If you take it for a test drive, if you don’t want it, they’ll take it back for you. I think there’s like a small fee or something, but it beats getting put into the room with the little finance guy who’s like. Well, if you don’t buy this protection package, we’re not gonna be able to give you a good interest rate. Like all of that, just crap games come along with it.
Scott Brady: There’s gotta be some expiration date to that torture, I think.
Matt Scott: Like having a service department I mean, what happens when cars are coming more and more and more reliably. Like when I was working for Land Rover over 10 years ago, even at that point, they were basically realizing that they needed to redesign how a lot of their dealerships function. Because they were used to having so many mechanics and so many cars working on them, using Land Rover as the obvious example. Well now Land Rovers become a lot more reliable and they don’t have as many service [00:29:00] guys. So cars continued to get more reliable. When’s the last time your cell phone quit working? Like we used to see all of those cell phone repair shops. You don’t really see those that much anymore.
Scott Brady: Because they’re waterproof now.
Matt Scott: Phones are waterproof, you know, they have crazy glass. Now, when we start looking at electric cars, like what is the point of the dealership going to be.
Scott Brady: It’s going to be very different. I mean even like you said, with Land Rover, I remember talking to Reden Ardie from Landover, Las Vegas. He said that…
Matt Scott: Great guy. If you’re going to buy a new car, buy it from Land Rover, Las Vegas.
Scott Brady: Exactly. And I remember talking to him about Land Rover reliability and he’s like, Scott I have one third, 30% of the techs I used to have. So that means if you just take that as a simple translation, that Land Rovers are now two thirds better in reliability then they used to be. So cars are so much better and that’s why I think even this idea of taking cars around the world, I mean, we’re seeing… [00:30:00] think about all of the two wheel drive vans. Like you said, the Vanagan. Like, I don’t think that we have to wrap our heads around so much. If you want to drive to Ushuaia, you can drive all the way to Ushuaia without needing a four wheel drive. That is guaranteed. Now you may get into a little bit of snow, so you have to pay attention to that. So drive it at the right time of year. But the reality is if the goal is I want to go see South America and I want to do it as inexpensively as possible. You’re probably better off doing it in a car.
Matt Scott: On the exact opposite of the affordable spectrum Ferrari actually did the Pan-American highway, maybe in 2005 in 6 12 Scaglietti, that’d be another obscure choice. You can buy something… Now don’t do that with a Ferrari. That’d be bad. Then no one would buy it, but I’m just saying in 2006 it was possible to take a very long wheel [00:31:00] based, four seat, front engine, V12, supercar from Ushuaia to the United States.
Scott Brady: Yeah, totally. And the thing is there’s also some really great roads along the way. So, I mean, I think about…
Matt Scott: You’re changing what you’re doing.
Scott Brady: You’re going to focus on the coastal routes and these beautiful… I mean, I think about the time that I rode some Moto goosies in Italy and we did some dirt with it when we were in Sardinia, we did some dirt, but I don’t even remember. I literally don’t remember the dirt because the roads were so magical. It was… like it was a high point travel thing for me, it was just absolutely glorious. And to do that, like in a Bentley continental GT or in a Subaru, would be super fun. You could haul butt going around there.
Matt Scott: Yeah. I mean, there’s the list of obscure vehicles that have done, you know, traditional Overland routes [00:32:00] is pretty significant. There is an auto journo in Australia that takes an R8 to Birdsville.
Scott Brady: That’s right. We featured that in Overland Journal years ago. They even did big red with it.
Matt Scott: There’s all kinds of crazy things that you can do. I mean, obviously, like that’s not… we are delving into the world of an exhibition.
Scott Brady: Total esoteric stuff.
Matt Scott: Yeah. Like it’s… but you know, again, let’s work on that $60,000 budget of, of a Tacoma and all of the stuff that you need. I guess the benefit is that you then have a place to sleep. But oftentimes you’re paying for places to sleep. Especially if you’re in populated areas on the Pan American. Like when I ran around Panama passage, like that was the place to camp in Panama city if you needed to do all your stuff I don’t know, 911 could be cool.
Scott Brady: I’m sure there’s been a lot of around the world trips done with 911s.
Matt Scott: The guy behind Four till Four [00:33:00] Coffee did the Peking to Paris in a 912, which for the Porsche unwashed, that just means it’s a four cylinder, 911 from… I dunno, I guess those are sixties, seventies. Yeah. There’s a lot that you can do.
Scott Brady: Cause they’re kind of like…
Matt Scott: They’re a Volkswagen beetle!
Scott Brady: They’re kind of like a Volkswagen beetle, right? They’re a rear engine rear wheel drive, very lightweight. We’ve even seen the modified, which you know, that starts to look ridiculous.
Matt Scott: That’s why you start to see 911s, like Safari. Like Kevin Marshall has that safari 911. They just did that whole several hundred mile off road trip with all 911 air cooled Safaris.
Scott Brady: So fun.
Matt Scott: No problems. Because they’re very well engineered cars. Now 911… If we were having this conversation five or 10 years ago, you could have bought an air cooled 911 for like the gum on the bottom of your… For this used Birkenstock, [00:34:00] I could have gotten an air cooled 911. Now they’re like…
Scott Brady: A hundred grand. Yeah.
Matt Scott: Yeah. Like a good one is just crazy. But there are also not so collector 911s that you can still get for a bargain.
Scott Brady: Like what? What would be some good examples of that?
Matt Scott: Well, I mean right now it’s tough, but you know the 944 is still reasonable… even though it has quadrupled in value. It’s quadrupled in value from like $2,500 to 10,000. You know, the 912 is still a decent value in that space. The 996, which is a water cooled car, is going up in value. I think they hit this point where they were old enough where they weren’t cool and then they still cost a lot to maintain. So they dipped and people maintained them and the prices kind of have gone back up. Well let’s talk about not necessarily cars, but these crossover SUV’s. I mean that is… If you think of… [00:35:00] if in the 1980s, the average shape of a car probably looked like a Crown Vic. Well, now it looks like an Audi Q3 or a Volkswagen Tiguan.
Scott Brady: They all look the same.
Matt Scott: They all look the same. Right? And they depreciate so much. I mean, you can get a Porsche Tyann for 10 grand that has all wheel drive and low range and air suspension.
Scott Brady: You can get them with lockers even.
Matt Scott: Rear lockers and they’re actually made pretty well. There’s a lot of nontraditional things that you can look at.
Scott Brady: But I think the crossover makes a lot of sense. It’s kind of in that Subaru category where you can get a Honda CRV and if you look at the element, like the element I think was probably the best example of this. You could get the little topper on it.
Matt Scott: The E-camper from Ursa Minor.
Scott Brady: Yeah, that’s right. They had this cool little pop top that bolted onto the top of [00:36:00] an element. They were boxy little, all wheel drive.
Matt Scott: Super cool, super functional.
Scott Brady: I know of people who’ve driven them all the way down through South America, including some off-road stuff.
Matt Scott: They’re Hondas. I mean, Honda makes very good stuff. Their stuff may not be marketed towards me, cause I’m not a Honda Odyssey buyer and I’m not a Honda Accord buyer. There’s nothing wrong with those vehicles, but they’re very good vehicles.
Scott Brady: Very good vehicles, very high quality. I mean, think about it like a Honda 650 motorcycle. It’s like a classic Thumper that runs forever.
Matt Scott: Until the end of the world.
Scott Brady: Yeah, exactly.
Matt Scott: 30 years or something with all the fires that we’re having. You know, so yeah, it’s interesting right now.
Scott Brady: But I think if you were to… okay if you were to, let’s say we take any sedan. Even for me, I would say that the thing that first comes to mind is one of [00:37:00] those diesel Mercedes sedans or the Bentley continental, that would be my two choices.
Matt Scott: Cause one’s just a centric, but also still a very well made car.
Scott Brady: So, and the reason why I would pick that Mercedes is when I first got into software consulting, I showed up. They had a new Impala, Chevy Impala, that they were going to have me drive as my company vehicle. And the guy who ran the office drove this old W 123 Mercedes diesel. And I’m like, well… cause I did not want to drive the Impala. Well, I’m the new guy and I probably shouldn’t have the new car. Does he want the new car? And I’ll take the old Mercedes and of course he was like, yeah, I’ll take the new car and I ended up exactly what I wanted, which was that he got the new car and I got exactly what I wanted, which was this old Mercedes sedan. And other than the fact that occasionally the door locks didn’t work because they were vacuum [00:38:00] operated. This thing… It had been part of the company for decades so long that the odometer stopped working like a decade before I started driving it and I drove it for years and years and years, and it was absolutely wonderful. Like everything about it.
Matt Scott: That’s like your sentimental car.
Scott Brady: It is. And if I was to say, I’m going to go buy a car and go do like a fun Overland route in an obscure car. It would be that Mercedes little diesel, you know, little turbo diesel, classic 1980s, Mercedes sedan, or maybe the wagon, because you could sleep in the back of it. But that would be my choice. But if I think about what I would do to it, I would probably just put a couple skid plates underneath just to protect the soft bits and then make sure that I’ve got the islet tow points on it, just in case I gotta get pulled out of something, throw some max tracks in the back you know, have a couple of duffle bags and then [00:39:00] maybe you sleep in it every once in a while. But for the most part, I would just go into little villages and stay there. Just make it all about, not make it nothing to do with the car. It’s literally like taking a taxi all the way and you just make it literally about the places that you’re going to go to and no one’s going to know. They’re not going to notice you at the border crossings. The cops aren’t going to pull you over. Yeah, I think so for me, other than the Bentley continental, cause there is a lot of appeal to that. I think that it would be the Mercedes. So what would be your cheap solution and what would be your Uber solution?
Matt Scott: You have to think of this, cause like I joined an expedition portal when I was like 14. So my entire life has just been Overland trucks or stupid sports cars. What do we define as cheap? Like, what’s my ceiling here?
Scott Brady: Let’s call it 12 grand.
Matt Scott: 12 grand.
Scott Brady: Cause I think that’s about what you can get those Mercedes. A nice clean Mercedes car.
Matt Scott: And it has to actually make it to [00:40:00] let’s just say you Ushuaia… Miata.
Scott Brady: That would be fun.
Matt Scott: A hundred percent.
Scott Brady: That would be perfect.
Matt Scott: Pick the thing up. If it gets stuck. Treat it like a motorcycle trip. That’s probably what I would take.
Scott Brady: That would be so fun and then just stay in cool little hostels and hotels and eco resorts.
Matt Scott: Oftentimes when traveling I’ve found probably the cheapest way to do it is in hostels and the occasional hotel with, you know, augmented with a backpacking tent. All of that is 100% doable in a Miata and they’re very reliable. They get crazy gas mileage. If you’re Emmy Hall, you can lift.
Scott Brady: She does have a cool lifted one. That’s right. Yeah, you guys got to check out Emmy Hall on Instagram. She’s got this lifted Mazda Miata and she’s an amazing human being, a journalist we both know.
Matt Scott: Accomplished racer, accomplished journalist writes for CNET. So what would make me crazy…
Scott Brady: I liked the Miata one. That’s good.
[00:41:00] Matt Scott: My, my, my expensive car that I would take around the world would be a 911.
Scott Brady: That would be sweet. That would be so sweet. So legit too.
Matt Scott: Yeah they’re very practical. They’re very well-made. That would be it.
Scott Brady: Is it… you would want a recent one or you’d want an older 911?
Matt Scott: They’re all good. That’s the thing.
Scott Brady: If they were all good, what do you think would be the solution?
Matt Scott: I have very little experience with air cooled cars. I’ve never owned one. It was actually the first car I drove that was air cooled, 911 with my uncle. But the last time I drove one was when I was very, very, very young. So I would probably go with a 997.
Scott Brady: So what year time frame is that?
Matt Scott: 2005 to 2012. Okay. They’re a little bit higher. Okay. Their overhangs are a little bit less.
Scott Brady: Are they coil sprung cars? Or they are… or how do they set the suspension?
Matt Scott: They do have coil Springs. [00:42:00] No 911 to my knowledge have ever had air suspension. Although some of them have that front. You press a button and it usually raises it at about 50 millimeters. If some of the newer nine Eleven’s are just so low to the ground that that would be a problem like a 997. You know, you could, you could buzz around in one of those pretty easy.
Scott Brady: And you’d go coop or soft top? Where would you go?
Matt Scott: I would do a coop because I’m not a psychopath. I don’t, I wasn’t aware of that. I don’t know anybody who drives Cabriolet 911s. They’re driving the same car, but they’re not the same people. It’s like, okay…
Scott Brady: We’ve learned so much today on this podcast.
Matt Scott: Yeah. Opinionated, Matt, as usual. So there’s Land Rover people. Okay. There’s the people who buy Land Rovers new. And then there’s Land Rover enthusiasts.
Scott Brady: And [00:43:00] they’re rarely the same people.
Matt Scott: They are not the same people. Right? That’s the Coop first Cabriolet in the 911 world. They can sell for half as much. I don’t want to say they’re undesirable, but the cheapest 911s are…
Scott Brady: Always the convertibles. Interesting.
Matt Scott: Convertible automatics. The tiptronics.
Scott Brady: Gotcha. Okay. This is good to know.
Matt Scott: Until they went PDK… okay, so Matt’s really into Porsche’s.
Scott Brady: I don’t know what a PDK is so tell me.
Matt Scott: Porsche Doppelkupplung or something. It’s a dual clutch Porsche gearbox in German, because in American we would just say dual clutch. In German it’s 87 words put together.
Scott Brady: So many syllables.
Matt Scott: Yeah. Love those German engineers though.
Scott Brady: Yeah. They make amazing stuff.
Matt Scott: Yeah. So it would be 911 for me. It’d be a manual.
Scott Brady: Did they make a 911 all wheel drive?
Matt Scott: They do, every 911 [00:44:00] sense. 89 with the 993… 964 has been available with an all wheel drive system.
Scott Brady: So would you do that? Would you go with an all wheel drive just because of snow and you want to go skiing?
Matt Scott: Maybe? Yeah. Like a Carrerra 4 or Carrera 4s would be really fun. Again I don’t have much experience. I did drive Brian doors 911 turbo, which is a turbo engine, but it would be the same chassis.
Scott Brady: That’s all wheel drive, isn’t it?
Matt Scott: Yeah. I just like the way that rear wheel drive ones go. I’m only saying this because you already took the Bentley. Like, I mean…
Scott Brady: Well you can pick the Bentley.
Matt Scott: Okay. So let’s talk about Bentley here. Air suspension.
Scott Brady: That’s true.
Matt Scott: The little, the little center council, right in front of the cup holders. You’ve got three different ride height settings. You have different shock settings and this is for the older ones.
Scott Brady: You have a v12?
Matt Scott: Actually it’s a w12. It’s essentially…
Scott Brady: Oh w12, sorry…
Matt Scott: Yeah, it’s essentially two vr6 Volkswagen scirocco [00:45:00] motors with a common crankcase. That engine was actually initially designed to be a w18 for an Audi supercar project. And then it got shortened into production into a w8, w12, and a w16 for the Varon.
Scott Brady: Wow. That’s good to know. It is fascinating.
Matt Scott: The things you need to know in Overlanding. But, okay, so you can put a light truck tire on those cars. They are so big and so heavy they ride on SUV tires. Unless you decide to go for performance, summer tires. I mean, you can put a Pirelli scorpion tire on there. So that’s a huge advantage to that vehicle. You have the air suspension, so you can run up to 45 mile an hour with a two inch lift. That’s huge. They’re very well-made
Scott Brady: They look fantastic.
Matt Scott: They look fantastic. They send all the wrong signals. They are going to be impossible to fix. But they don’t really [00:46:00] break that much. They’re very well made. You know, the Bentley thing is that…
Scott Brady: It’s a 200 mile an hour Overland vehicle.
Matt Scott: That you can get for less money than a used… what generation Tacoma. Are we on now? Third gen?
Scott Brady: Yeah.
Matt Scott: Okay. So I have a buddy at the Windsock in Prescott that I drank at. He just got a 2015, like TRD sport or whatever, nice truck with like 40,000 miles on it for $36,000. Go on Google right now and I guarantee you that you can find a Bentley with less miles for the same or less money.
Scott Brady: And you’d have a w12.
Matt Scott: And you have a w12.
Scott Brady: And you can go 200 miles an hour in it.
Matt Scott: Yeah. If we’re just.
Scott Brady: On a track of course.
Matt Scott: We haven’t given a license on this to be obscure. We’re talking about cars. Like, if you want practical advice, get a Subaru, get a Corolla. We covered that in the first, like [00:47:00] four seconds of this podcast. So when I get tweeted at, Matt you’re so pretentious. Yeah…
Scott Brady: Well, cause we’re talking theoretical. Right? So if you’re theoretically pretentious, that’s just because you’re having fun with an idea. Right?
Matt Scott: I mean, I did theoretically own a Bentley for a while… I theoretically also made money on it.
Scott Brady: Yeah. So it didn’t cost you anything. So it’s not pretentious at all. That’s smart.
Matt Scott: I took it down Last Dollar ranch road at Telluride. That was kind of fun. Did have 22s though. I didn’t like the 22s, but it had Perelli scorpions on it. Like, I don’t know…
Scott Brady: Because it’s a heavy car. They weigh as much as a G wagon.
Matt Scott: They are eligible for section 179 wreckage appreciation because they are considered a commercial vehicle. They’re that heavy. They have a gross vehicle weight of over 6,000 pounds.
Scott Brady: That’s why many people own [00:48:00] them. So we’ve now talked about our cheapest and our favorite. What would probably be the best though? Like if we were to not do the cheapest and not the ultimate…
Matt Scott: The best car that you could buy today to drive around the world. In my opinion, the E-Class E450 all-terrain wagon.
Scott Brady: Yeah, there you go.
Matt Scott: E-classes are sold everywhere. That’s new.
Scott Brady: And Mercedes is serviceable essentially in any country of the world. They’re driven by diplomats. They are driven by taxi drivers. They’re driven by politicians.
Matt Scott: What would the cheap one be? Corolla.
Scott Brady: Yeah, either that or like a RAV4… CR-V. I think those would be really nice choices. Because they are a little bit taller. You can do some Sandy tracks and things like that.
Matt Scott: Or I had a RAV4 when we lived in Ridgeway and…
Scott Brady: Really nice little car.
Matt Scott: I’m going hiking here. Like, Oh you drove up that. Oh, cool you’re at Bridal Veil falls. [00:49:00] So you don’t need a jeep… well, that’s before it opens and you kind of run as far as you want
Scott Brady: But you see Subarus cinnamon and all those pass totally.
Matt Scott: Yeah, I mean, maybe that’s the thing.
Scott Brady: Subarus, CR-V, RAV4.
Matt Scott: I think I’m going to throw an alternative in here for an affordable car is a model three. Purchase prices a little bit more, no fuel, very, very, very little maintenance. You can sleep inside of them. You can plug them in at a campground, so you can go to a campground. And you can get like Bruce Dorn was telling me about this guy that he ran into somewhere on the Navajo reservation. I’m going to say it was a model. I think it was model three.
Scott Brady: Okay and they are all wheel drive.
Matt Scott: Yeah. So he’d go and he’d get his 15 or 30 amp service campsite. That, you know, has your showers and your toilets and your [00:50:00] water and all your stuff.
Scott Brady: So less than a fuel tank, a gas. You’ve now got a campsite and you’ve topped off your vehicle.
Matt Scott: That. You’re not when you’re traveling, you’re not driving more than three to 350 miles a day. I mean, if you’re doing that, long-term, you’re blown by everything. And those things also have the ability to put serious range in short amounts. You have an air conditioned and heated campsite because you can sleep in the back and they have this, like… apparently they have this like camping mode. You can just leave the…
Scott Brady: Oh, yeah or like the dog mode where it just keeps it temperature controlled. That’s brilliant because you’re plugged in, so you’re using any fuel and you’re charging at the same time. That’s so smart, but that’s what it’s going to be. Think about it. I mean, we’ve got the Hummer EV, we’ve got Mercedes just made the statement today that within the decade, they’re going to be all Electric. All their cars will be electric,
Matt Scott: TThe new eqs just launched. Bassem was out ,in [00:51:00] Zurich, my buddy Bassem Wassif. He was out in Zurich driving and he’s like, it’s another level. It’s a different motoring experience. I’m so excited for electric cars.
Scott Brady: And they’re coming.
Matt Scott: I’m not saying that I’m not going to still own big, dirty, massive, beautiful v8s.
Scott Brady: Yeah. Or w12s or whatever they may be. But I think that for a lot of us, an Arivian or a Hummer EV, something that has… and they’re going to have 500 miles range. They’re going to get there and there’s no….
Matt Scott: Teslas already there. The world’s fastest production car, zero to 60 right now is the plaid. The model S plaid. Like it’s a Spaceballs joke. We’re going so fast we’ve gone plaid. 1.9 seconds, zero to 60, it’s like $120,000, which is a lot of money. But the car that at that most closely matches its performance… or there’s two, [00:52:00] there is the Bugatti Shiran or a 911 turbo S.
Scott Brady: And how much of those costs. Anywhere from three to a bazillion times more?
Matt Scott: A turbo S I think the starting price is 191,000.
Scott Brady: Okay. That’s closer than I thought it would be.
Matt Scott: But the Shiran like, I don’t know. Were you invited to buy one? It doesn’t matter.
Scott Brady: They don’t have the price listed.
Matt Scott: That car has… The model S plaid has a 520 mile range. So soon we’re going to be at the point where like all electric cars have to beat what humans can drive in a day. So, you know, there’s always that one dude. It’s like, well, when I go to… like my dad, when we were kids and it’s like, I’m not even getting out to go to the bathroom from Illinois to Florida, like you might have to stop. Yeah. But you had to suffer for gas, at these sketchy gas stations.
Scott Brady: You have to stop and eat, you know, so you stop, you plug in your car, [00:53:00] you eat a nice lunch and then you get back in it and off you go, that’s going to happen. So, and then the fact that you could be in camping mode with the AC running the heater, running totally comfortably inside it, that’s going to be awesome.
Matt Scott: Supposedly the cyber truck’s going to have that option for the camper on the back if we ever see that. But you know, the Rivian is very, very appealing to me.
Scott Brady: Yeah and the Bezos space thing that just happened a few days ago, he drove out to the launch site in a Rivian.
Matt Scott: Did he?
Scott Brady: Yep.
Matt Scott: That’s kind of cool. Everybody’s crapping on Jeff Bezos right now.
Scott Brady: It’s a new frontier.
Matt Scott: When you are going to be the world’s first trillionaire, or maybe he already is? Isn’t he already?
Scott Brady: No, I don’t think so.
Matt Scott: You just have different interests, like Jeff Bezos buying a rocket is like an average American buying like Starbucks.
Scott Brady: Yeah. Like he has spent a billion dollars a year for the last decade to be able to go on a [00:54:00] flight into space.
Matt Scott: Yeah. But we have to do that as humanity.
Scott Brady: No question.
Matt Scott: I get into this conversation with electric cars. Electric is a nice short term solution, but eventually we will mine all of the lithium.
Scott Brady: And it’s going to have to be hydrogen or something that has to be renewable.
Matt Scott: It has to be a legit, renewable resource. You know, but in that same regard, we will always eventually run out of this planet. So if we don’t have people that are pushing the boundaries, literally to get us elsewhere as a species, we don’t survive.
Scott Brady: It doesn’t affect our life time but…
Matt Scott: Then the house sparrow will run earth and then in like 12 million years, we’ll have this alien, you know, house Sparrow invasion, that was crazy. It’s a very successful species. People think because it’s ordinary that it’s not successful.
Scott Brady: Yeah. There you go. It has been successful
Matt Scott: knowledge by Matt today. We should probably end this.
Scott Brady: So just think about that. Subaru, no [00:55:00] modifications, drives it around the world. If you do that Matt and I will both find some way to make it very much worth your while to come on the podcast and talk about it.
Matt Scott: So think about that. A Subaru Crosstrek, probably average selling price. $25,000 a loaded one is $28,000. You can drive it out of the box. You don’t have to buy tires. You don’t have to buy anything. I mean, maybe buy some… I think the Falcons got those wild peak crosses…
Scott Brady: Slightly more versatile.
Matt Scott: I’d probably do that.
Scott Brady: Couple little skid plates.
Matt Scott: Couple skid plates, drive it to South America, drive back and then you’re going to sell your $28,000 Subaru you bought new with 50,000 miles. You’re going to sell it for like 27 right now or, or, or it’s a used car. So probably like $800,000. And use all the rest of the money to do your trip. Think of what a Tacoma could cost. Even a used Tacoma
Scott Brady: It’s just worth considering. And that’s why we wanted to talk about this on this podcast is we [00:56:00] don’t always have to have the most extreme solution to an average problem, which if the, if the problem is I want to drive from here to south America and I don’t really need to do a lot of off-roading or I don’t really care to. Then start off with something that’s really comfortable to drive on the road and is going to cost you a lot less money. And you’re going to kind of have a different experience than looking super expeditioning. Which I think is a good thing. And thank you all for listening and yeah. Send us some feedback or ideas if you’ve got your ultimate car or you’ve been driving your ultimate car down to Ushuaia, and you want to send us some pictures and a little update. We’ll talk about it on a future episode, but you can reach Matt @MattExplorer on Instagram, and you can reach me @Scott.A.Brady on Instagram, or you can go directly to @Overlandjournal on Instagram and send your feedback in there and we’ll talk to you guys next time.
