Apex Adjacent

Episode 174-Regifting, via Podcast.

It's the holiday season and you know what that means: We phone it in! Our intrepid hosts are scattered about this great-ish nation of ours, two-fisting sugar cookies and using whiskey to cope with having to perform family IT duties.

That doesn't mean we didn't have time to at least get you the regifted tube-socks equivalent of an episode, the second of our two-part Best of 2018.

Yes, we know you've heard it all before. Yes, we understand that "best of" is a relative term. Yes, those are our taffy wrappers and empty whiskey bottles. And yes, we'll probably use this same description for the second part. We love you.

Episode 173-Regifting, via Podcast.

It's the holiday season and you know what that means: We phone it in! Our intrepid hosts are scattered about this great-ish nation of ours, two-fisting sugar cookies and using whiskey to cope with having to perform family IT duties.

That doesn't mean we didn't have time to at least get you the regifted tube-socks equivalent of an episode, the first of our two-part Best of 2018.

Yes, we know you've heard it all before. Yes, we understand that "best of" is a relative term. Yes, those are our taffy wrappers and empty whiskey bottles. And yes, we'll probably use this same description for the second part. We love you.

Episode 172-Ian's Batman. And not the good one.

The Saab TurboX. We could honestly have an hour long weekly show that just talked about the woes of owning a TurboX. No one would listen to it, but the lukewarm content is there to be readily mined. When you basically own the physical manifestation of the absolute reason that an entire car brand is extinct, such content simply produces itself.

After discussing some of the more minor woes, Ian lets fly the metaphorical bomb that could really send him to the poor house, the Saab's engine may need to be removed. To fix an o-ring. An o-ring. A tenth of a cent of rubber on the wrong side of the oil pan. Infinite oooooof.

So we know Ian is poor; as Saab ownership firmly ensures. But! Our intrepid whiskey enthusiast has an idea for a new business venture to bring us back from the financial event horizon. Two words: Parts Tourism. We put you in the place where you can get your parts. And perhaps a hot soft pretzel

Episode 171-So very cold.

Just because the elements of a specific activity don't sound "good" certainly doesn't mean that it won't taste good. To illustrate this point, let's bake a cake (hooray for metaphors!):

Here's our ingredients: Our intrepid podcast hosts, hapless as always. An outdoor karting facility. Winter in Colorado. Sub-freezing temperatures. Add in a dash of mechanical failure, sprinkle in some racing tenacity, a heaping cup of dumb luck, the requisite amount of sunblock, and just a pinch of hypothermia.

You know what the end result is? Smiles that last so long your face hurts, but that's okay because you can't feel it anyway. Enjoy!

Episode 170-You go Yugo, You go.

This week we're incredibly lucky to have Michael Ballaban, Deputy Editor at Jalopnik, on the show. This came about by way of an election night whiskey-tipsy Ian sliding into his DMs on Twitter, knowing full well that when it comes to cars, car culture, and politics in cars, that Michael's a fantastic fit for the show.

We had a wonderful discussion with Michael, ranging from check engine lights, Lexus wagons, Yugo ownership, sending said Yugo through safety inspections, and all kinds of other great stuff.

Apologies in advance for the brief technical interruption, but above all else, THANK YOU MICHAEL. We had a fantastic time talking with you, thank you so much for coming on our show. You're welcome back anytime.

Episode 169 - Nice

It's all planes, trains (spoiler alert: there are no trains), and automobiles in this episode. We start with salad and end up where we usually do. Ian shares Effington One facts with us and Dave ventures into Missouri only to once again survive the trip.

Speaking of Dave's horrible survival instinct, he somehow manages to survive riding on an airplane with two other Saab owners. Let's not overlook the insane unicornish fact that they're a HAPPILY MARRIED MULTIPLE SAAB OWNING COUPLE that has somehow managed to not murder or even lightly stab one another.

Lastly, Ian makes a poignant point as to who the real criminals are.

Episode Hehe...Duty

There's a fantastic Sarah Silverman joke about our duties. She says that we all have them, and sometimes they're big and stinky. She's got a point.

Ian is called upon to perform his duties comma civic and it just so happens to luck into a case that automotive knowledge is of use.

We play some listener FMKCars, show some listener MyEyes, and continue to be a bit slap happy as the oxygen level in the blanket fort steadily decreases.

Episode 167-It's time to fix something.

One hundred and sixty six episodes scattered across more than three years. That's how long TeamClearCoat has been in this here podcast game and we're just now FINALLY correcting a huge blind spot of ours, talking to people that daily drive hearses! WE KNOW! Man, this one really slapped us across the face and left a Rick-James-Unity-Ring-Esque imprint that simply said "DUH!"

Our idiocy aside, this week we talk to two amazing individuals, Erica and Adrian, a married couple that BOTH daily drive hearses. I KNOW! I mean if we're trying to correct our blind spot, there's nobody better! We had a fantastic conversation about all aspects of hearse ownership, hearse culture, and this awesome facet of the automotive enthusiast community that truly makes car culture and culture as a whole a better place to be.

Thank you so much Erica and Adrian, you're welcome back in the blanket fort any time!

Episode 166-Peedah

Look, George Lucas did everything wrong with Phantom Menace. Thems just the facts folks. We don't need to know the backstory to why there are now some weird space tariffs on bleep blorps from planet Bloopatron or whatever, we just want Yoda, those glowy sword things, and wars of star.

That said, finding out the backstory to something isn't always a boring, tedious, awful task that you wait in line hours for to only fall asleep in a theater at midnight. Sometimes getting the backstory on something is fun! Really!

We present Peedah as evidence of such entertainment. Here's a funny, nice guy that happened to have the misfortune of selling Dave a Viggen and now he's stuck in the blanket fort. Let's find out what went in to Viggen ownership and what this delightful individual is all about. Thanks Peedah!

Episode 165-Wheels? Who needs 'em?

Like the proverbial abyss, so much bleakness surrounds the blanket fort this week. Let's go to our happy place, let's visit our island.

Let's think about dusty BMWs in used car lots, let's think of the Lexus GS-F (and we'll continue to do so for the rest of our times in this mortal hellscape), let's think about how hilarious it is that Ian's VW (SPOILER ALERT) passed emissions.