The Carmudgeon Show

Special Guest Sam Smith joins the Curmudgeons in this episode! Not the singer, but the best writer in the automotive business. Sam also has his own podcast on the Hagerty Podcast Network called "Driven To Fail." This inspires Jason to bring up all the times Sam "failed" while at Automobile Magazine. Jason and Sam both started their careers at Automobile Magazine at 2006, working with the brilliant...

Lots of cars are named after a geographic location. Many cars are named after a place you'd never see them. We discuss them all. In this episode of The Carmudgeon Show, Jason Cammisa and Derek Tam-Hyphen-Scott discuss cars named after places! But first, an update on some of the boys' cars: Derek's R129 Mercedes 500SL finally has rebuilt hydraulic cylinders — and a functioning roof. Jason's W201 Me...

Honda has finally made a DOHC version of its venerable 3.5-liter V-6 and it makes... no more power. This spurs the Carmudgeons (in a post-lunch coma) to a discussion about head design: why are two cams worth it when you only have two valves? Why did Honda drop VTEC from that V-6 in favor of infinite cam phasing? What is cam phasing, anyway? And why use a V-6 instead of a straight-six when it uses...

Back by popular demand, Jason and Derek dig into their vast spreadsheets of automotive reviews. Rather than picking our favorite cars, a Random Number Generator calls up cells in their spreadsheet, forcing Jason and Derek to take a trip down memory lane — and then read aloud their sometimes-embarrassing commentary on cars they've driven in the past. Cars that they'd often forgotten about it. In th...

The Rimac Nevera is the fastest-accelerating car in the world, according to its manufacturer. When asked to verify that claim, automotive journalist Jason Cammisa responded with, "holy sh...excuse me." Derek Tam-Scott uttered similarly unsuitable words not fit for YouTube descriptions, though they were far more colorful. Rimac's 4-motor, torque-vectoring, carbon-tubbed masterpiece is capable of un...

Derek Tam(Hyphen)Scott has waited for years for the chance to school Jason Cammisa on the importance of Lancia. Now reduced to little more than a badge-job, Italian-market joke, Lancia was once an automotive powerhouse. Derek speaks with interest and precision about Lancia's storied history — as if he was there, personally. It's a fascinating story that demonstrates just how incredible this Italia...

In this episode, Jason digs into his storied spreadsheet of reviews of every car he's ever driven. And we learn that Derek has a spreadsheet, too. With the help of a Random Number Generator that calls up cells in their spreadsheet, Jason and Derek take a trip down memory lane, reading aloud their sometimes embarrassing commentary on cars they've driven in the past. One entry of Jason's was so... N...

This episode is all about the Lotus Carlton and Lotus Omega. Lotus has only ever made one 4-door sedan, and this episode of the Carmudgeon show dovetails with Jason Cammisa's "Revelations" episode on the Lotus Carlton. A dream car of both hosts, the Carlt-Omega was based on the Opel Omega A, badged Vauxhall Carlton in the U.K.'s right-hand-drive market. It held the title of the fastest sedan in th...

This week the Carmudgeons address the 48 billion market cap prancing horse in the room: do the younger generations actually care about Ferrari? Cars like the 296 GTB are absolutely gorgeous (and they mark the start of the mid-engine V8 to V6 transition in Maranello), but, if you're sourcing the vehicles from Ferrari themselves, are unable to be compared to any other vehicles that people may want t...

In this podcast, Jason Cammisa and Derek Tam-Scott ("Hyphen") cover everything you didn't realize you wanted to know about the R129-chassis Mercedes-Benz SL. The R129 comes in many forms: 300SL, 300SL-24, 500SL, 600SL, and then the renamed SL320, SL500, and SL600. It had three different body styles and two interiors thanks to two facelifts, three different transmissions in the U.S. — a 4-speed aut...

Now that the Bring-a-Trailer crowd have made 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s cars unaffordable, what happens to pre-1980s cars? Do they just fall out of favor like today's pre-war and brass-era cars? Or is the solution to get younger generations of car enthusiasts interested in pre 1980s cars? And then, how do you best preserve the cars of true interest from those periods so that younger generations can c...

You don't need to be rich to be a car hoarder, but storing your cars is a challenge no matter how much or little money you have. On this episode of The Carmudgeon Show, Jason and Derek discuss a crucial piece of being an enthusiast/having a car collection (of any size or value): vehicle storage! How to take something drab and make it fab, both of their personal vehicle storage solutions and even s...

On this episode of The Carmudgeon Show, Jason tells Derek the sad tale of how Jason's Honda Beat got beat from behind a few weeks ago. Which then segues nicely into how while Jason ended up being ok, the Beat will also end up being ok due to the type of collector auto insurance Jason has on it... and you'll *never* guess which company he uses! All this and more, brought to you by the Hagerty Podca...

On this episode of The Carmudgeon Show, Jason and Derek talk about the Hagerty Bull Market list for 2023 and the companion video piece that Jason and his team created for it. (the tl:dr on Bull Market: Hagerty has a team of folks who nerd out on tracking vehicle values based on an assortment of data that only Hagerty can access. They then make a list of vehicles that they feel are a great value in...

Put on a beret and grab a baguette because on this week's episode of the Carmudgeon Show, Jason and Derek are talking about the French (in name and origin story at least) monster that is the Bugatti Chiron Pur Sport. As well as the Lucid Air Sapphire and the Tesla Plaid. Why? Because all of them were featured in Jason's most recent episode of "Cammisa's Ultimate Drag Race Replay," last week where...

On this episode of The Carmudgeon Show, Jason and Derek riff on a question that came up during a previous Q&A episode: do cars reflect where they come from? Does the country of origin impact how they're designed and engineered? Sweden, Germany, America, Japan, etc. how do these locations influence the end product that you end up driving? As always, Jason and Derek have their thoughts and they're r...

On this episode of The Carmudgeon Show, Jason and Derek discuss the future of Jaguar--the iconic automotive brand struggling to survive in today's market. All this and more, brought to you by the Hagerty Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today’s episode, Jason and Derek are accompanied by a large pile of snacks to discuss the greatest Ferrari driving experiences of all time. Needless to say, all prancing horses have been FAR from created equal. Discussion revolves mostly around the F50, which surprises Derek in its accessibility after some recent seat time with reserved expectations. Jason follows up with his experience in the...

Keep your fire extinguisher nearby, for today’s episode of the Carmudgeon Show covers the beginning and end of GM’s first mid-engine blaze of glory- none other than the Pontiac Fiero. Covered in depth in the latest Revelations video, the Fiero was a troubled car from the start, tasked with delivering sports car performance and exceptional fuel economy but having major challenges achieving either o...

Back by popular demand, Jason and Derek return to answer more viewer/listener questions this week. Amongst many similar discussions from last week, topics of interest include: how to make electric cars fun, what generally hated cars are actually great, why the Ferrari F355 is actually terrible, Z3 vs Miata, and why even the best new analog cars will never match the sensation of old analog.    And...

On this week’s episode of The Carmudgeon Show, your questions become answers! Jason and Derek take a deep dive into last week’s audience questions and cover an array of mostly automotive topics, including but not limited to: driving nirvana in an attainable car, the pronunciation of coupe vs. coupé, cars that belong to the wrong manufacture, drum brakes on EVs, and you heard it here first- the new...

The front-wheel-drive platform is one that has been historically not taken seriously by many driving enthusiasts. After all, given all of the responsibility of moving AND steering the vehicle while stuffing the weight of an engine over the front wheels, who wouldn’t agree that FWD is always the inferior choice to RWD? Today’s episode of The Carmudgeon Show is all about the unspoken glory of front-...

Carmudgeon returns! After a short break, Jason and Derek have returned to discuss the past, present, and future of Maserati- and at the end of the day, should they even exist at all in the current car market? There’s no doubt that the legacy Italian brand has taken a new shape molded by mass-market modern consumer tastes, influencing the birth of the Ghibli, Levante, and MC20. With V6 powertrains...

On this episode of the Carmudgeon Show, Jason and Derek discuss the world’s best sounding cars, embracing the cacophony of cylinder count and alignment, valves per cylinder, and other factors that make each engine a musical instrument of sorts. Following a discussion that begins with the Audi RS3 and a breakdown of five cylinder aural theory, Jason and Derek land on the V10-powered Porsche Carrera...

On this episode of The Carmudgeon Show, Jason and Derek (and their traveling circus) venture to Europe to make memories of a lifetime taking two old German  cars on an incredible 2,000 mile journey through Germany, Italy, and Switzerland via the wonderfully twisty roads of the Alps…or so they thought. Derek’s journey begins with the purchase of a W201 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.3-16 in Italy, a car whos...