Cold Start

Diving into the passion of your average car enthusiast, the guys invited Chucho Shoots onto the show to share his journey of becoming a car enthusiast, an automotive photographer, and to defend his love for Mini Coopers. From building his following by shooting photos of some of the premier cars and collections in the Bay Area to cultivating a community around a forgotten enthusiast car, Chucho has...

Could you imagine if the most expensive, exclusive, powerful, and raw hypercars in the world raced together in a single series? Back in the 1990s, this happened -- one of the golden ages of sports car racing: GT1 Class Racing. The GT1 class was diverse, well-funded, and birthed "homologation special" cars -- racecars effectively disguised as production street vehicles. Sylas and Todd review all ti...

Racing has always been the proving ground to help develop new technologies in the automotive industry – like tires, fuel, and hybrid engines. So it would make sense for manufacturers put their autonomous vehicles to the ultimate test at the limit... on the racetrack. Could motorsports be a feasible testing ground for autonomous technology, and would people actually care to watch it? Todd and Sylas...

The robots are here – and they have come for our love of driving. 🤖 Well, that may not be the complete picture.... Todd and Sylas dive into their first hand experiences with autonomous vehicles, offering a survey of where the technology currently is. They also discuss what the future might be in regards to personal transport and how this growing technology will reshape our current infrastructure....

Sim racing has become a huge part of the motorsports industry in the last 10 years, as sim setups and racing titles have become more realistic. This leads to the question as to how sim racing fits into the development of real racing drivers. Is it just a game that makes it convenient to race in your living room or is there some validity in it being used as a real tool to develop the next generatio...

As car enthusiasts, there are those of us that are mechanically inclined and quite enjoy getting our hands dirty working on cars. Then there are the others that prefer to just be behind the wheel rather than under the hood. Regardless of which category you fit in, it's important to at least have a bare minimum understanding to keep your car working properly. However, there are times when there may...

The 2026 race season is fully underway! Formula 1, IndyCar, and NASCAR are all back on track, having completed their first couple of races. If you haven't been keeping up-to-date with the action, Todd and Sylas tell you why you what you've been missing -- the lead up to and a recap of the biggest story lines in each series so far. IndyCar and NASCAR have also been doing some collab events with the...

Shedding a little light on the cars that are a part of the race but never get to participate, Todd and Sylas talk about pace cars and safety cars in F1, NASCAR, and IndyCar. The guys dive into the history of how these cars become a part of each series with F1 waiting until 1993 to formally require a safety car. They also get into the differences between pace cars, safety cars, and medical cars, gi...

Folllwing our prior episode about the demise of racing schools , Sylas and Todd take a deep dive into a novel racing school which lived and thrived at Sonoma Raceway in the early 2000s into the 2010s, but has sadly passed on: "Simraceway".  A successor to the storied Jim Russell Racing School, Simraceway simultaneously offered a brand new simulation racing platform online, as well as a real life r...

It seems like with more options to get on track through track day providers, fewer people have been going to proper racing schools, killing that industry. Back in the day, it used to be mandatory to have a racing license to get on a racetrack. But with laxer requirements, people are taking the path of least resistance and reshaping the ladder into racing as schools are struggling to stay open. The...

What seemed like a simple afternoon for a professional driver to go to a track day to hang with friends, turned into a deep dive into the mental side of motorsport -- and what it means for a competitive individual to actually have fun at an activity they've spent years training to master. After chasing the high of racing wheel-to-wheel, Sylas shares his insights of what it's like to take a step ba...

As car enthusiasts, leaving our cars stock is simply not an option. We always need to be tweaking and making changes to make our cars our own. Anyone can modify their cars but there is an art to modifying them well. Todd and Sylas talk about what they have learned from their own journeys of modifying cars and what they think is the proper order of operations to make a well modified automobile.  Co...

There has been an interesting phenomenon that has been sweeping the nation in the motorsport industry. More and more "country club" racetracks have been popping upper to cater to the uber wealthy car/racing enthusiast. This business model has become so popular that even some public tracks have started to make the transition to go private and more exclusive. The guys explore this topic and discuss...

The guys are back with more difficult decisions of Automotive "Would You Rather?" In this episode, they get a little more... eclectic in their comparisons. Decisions get harder and arguments get fiercer as they try to come to an agreement of which car would be the better choice. Listen to hear how Sylas and Todd made their decisions, and see how your opinions stack up. And remember, if you choose...

The BMW M1 is an iconic car within the BMW lineage because it represented the beginning of ///M and was the first time that BMW created a car specifically for racing and then turned it into a street car. The guys talk about the story of the M1 Procar, the racecar version, and its rise to fame in the late 1970's and how a rule change in homologation almost terminated the project but actually result...

BMW celebrated 50 years of art cars in 2025, so Todd and Sylas decided to reflect on the 20 official cars that make up that collection and talk about their significance in the automotive community. What started in 1975, turned into an iconic blend of art and motorsports throughout the decades but some were more iconic than others. The guys talk about their favorites and even touch on some of the a...

We have all played the game "Would You Rather?", so the guys decided to play the automotive equivalent: pitting automotive icons against one another to see which would reign supreme in their dream garages. See what cars they can agree upon -- easy choices -- and where some more questionable choices have to be justified.  Cold Start Hint: It has a V8 with an accent   Answer to Episode 45 Cold Start...

You took a perfectly good car and did what to it?!? Modifying your car is almost a must as a car enthusiast but there is most certainly the right way and the wrong way in changing things on your car. Todd and Sylas go through a list of the automotive "no no's" when it comes to modifying your car. If Dante Alighieri was a car enthusiast, he would categorize levels of hell based on these horrid modi...

The new age of technology is upon us, and you might be scared to find out how much your car knows about you. Privacy and cyber security are not the first things you think about when you think about cars, but it may be time to start paying more attention to those Terms & Conditions agreements when setting up your new car's infotainment system. Now that modern cars are connected to the internet,...

Todd and Sylas get into a heated debate on whether downforce makes for better or worse racing. There has been a long pursuit of making racecars more efficient through the air and utilizing more downforce to making them faster around a track – but does that make for better racing? There are two forms of philosophy when it comes to what makes racing exciting: the first is that the technology and eng...

A lifelong motorsports fan, Sylas finally made a personal breakthrough in 2025 and became a dedicated Formula 1 racing fan. His connection to F1 started back at the US Grand Prix at COTA in Austin, and his passion for the sport has only increased ever since. Todd couldn't be happier about influencing Sylas into becoming passionate about the premiere league of formula car racing. During this recap...

Have you ever wondered what type of car enthusiast puts their fun car online for strangers to borrow? Todd and Sylas look to answer that question as they explore the online world of Turo rentals. What they found was way more than they bargained for, as the descriptions for fun enthusiast cars all seemed to be weirdly grandiose and heavy-handed. Come along for the journey as we survey the odd lands...

"Track Days Are the Best Days"® is the official trademark and slogan of Flying Husky Racing , a group we assembled for the first time back in 2020, when going to drive at the racetrack was one of only the activities we were able to do under the heavy restrictions imposed by COVID. This group of track drivers and car nerds evolved into a club of automotive enthusiasts, bringing together elements fr...

There are two different kinds of "first cars" for the car enthusiast: there is the car that was legitimately the first one you had when you freshly turned 16, and then there's the first car that shapes your journey in the automotive community. Todd and Sylas tell the stories of their first cars, and relive what it was like being young car enthusiasts -- and how their early choices may have shaped...

With the growing popularity of cars in pop culture, is the car community going too mainstream? Are cars and motorsports becoming over-popularized? If you ask us, it is quite apparent that car culture and interest in all things automotive has changed dramatically over the last 5-10 years -- and many people are just connecting with that culture as part of the latest fashion trends. However, just lik...