When it comes to working with your own car, DIY enthusiasts often feel like they can do it all on their own. They try out various methods and techniques that have been suggested by online forums, but sometimes these methods don't quite work as planned. This is exactly what happened when Ryan tried a method for fixing his gearbox.

I tried that once yeah it didn't probably that great it did not go well look you could find forums and i looked online you can find forums where people say like yeah i tow and oh i put this on and yes i'm sure physically mechanically can be done not recommended it seems to be also those forums say good luck with your gearbox uh the his your future of your gear box by doing that you know your transmission so um it'd be interesting to know if it's a fake or a real uh but it certainly does look like right to use ryan's words hokie um our final question comes joe from new jersey who says i'm interested in buying a 2018-2020 honda accord i like the features of the touring but hate the 19-inch wheels too showy and prone to curbing you know rubbing on the curb and getting rash rub you know messed up with swapping them for 17-inch wheels affect any of the touring features like the adaptive suspension would dealers be able to do this at little to no cost uh so ryan our tire expert first jump in on this tell us tell us what he's been giving up or gaining if he does that sure or changing a couple of things

Sure or changing a couple of things so it's great that he recognizes that it comes with these 19-inch wheels um they can be potentially uh a pain i mean they they're more prone to hitting power or to you know having pothole damage they're more expensive to replace we just did a um a story on uh potholes and how a low aspect ratio tire a tire with less sidewall um is more prone to damage there's just less cushion there right unfortunately this honda accord only comes from the factory with a 19 inch wheel so yeah you could put you could probably figure out a smaller size rim you probably go down to a 17 inch rim as long as it clears the brakes um the dealer probably not going to do that it's probably not going to do that for you this car was designed with 19-inch wheels from the factory and we at consumer reports would tell you you should always stick with the same size uh type uh speed rating tire that comes on your vehicle um you know unless of course if you're putting um excuse me putting winter tires on um you know but in the winter you're driving slower and it's colder so there's different um protocol there but um i would the beauty of this is he hasn't bought a car yet and we always tell people before you buy a car to pay attention to what kind of tires come on it because it could be expensive down the road or just not fit your lifestyle

um so unfortunately i would say you probably should look for maybe an accord that has that you know i know he likes the uh touring package but he should look for an accord that has a more realistic uh tire package for his lifestyle as opposed to trying to put on a different wheel and tire on this car um because again it was designed from the factory to perform a certain way like that and you will be changing the handling a little bit um so that's that well you know to that point i i reached out to honda and just you know just kind of like you know is he right you know just wanted to make sure not not you know nothing joe's got something wrong you know he's he's making a big error but i wanted to get their opinion on it and the quote that a honda spokesperson gave me was we do extensive development in tuning for a given model and trim such as the accord touring including optimizing the suspension settings for the original wheel tire setup the change noted below would be significant with a sidewall that would be considerably taller to maintain the same outer diameter and it could affect a variety of vehicle characteristics including handling and nvh noise vibration harshness

so to his question would it affect the adaptive suspension according to honda definitely would and like you said ryan you know the diff you have to swap out different tire size and you know sidewall heights and such aspect ratio so um you're not going to get a deal or joe is going to do this right monty i mean it's unlikely to happen yeah unlikely and i have nothing to add because they're already left on a high note so if i were to say anything it would just hurt my you know my street cred so so we'll come down from the peak and just say joe probably not going to happen with that wouldn't really be a good idea um sorry it's not gonna work out for you but on that note we're going to have to wrap up this episode as always check the show notes below for more information on what we talked about send us your questions your comments your reactions your videos talking cars at icloud.com as always thanks for watching and we'll see you next time

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis week we share our first impressions of the 2021 chevrolet corvette why you might not want bigger wheels and tires on a new car and what could this smart car with a hitch attached possibly be towing find out next on talking cars hi everyone and welcome back i'm john linkove i'm mike monticello and i'm ryan vilkowski and today's episode we have got a car that's not really perfect for the rainy season that we're experiencing here in connecticut but we're hoping uh it gets sunny and warm soon because we have our 2021 chevrolet corvette stingray coupe in the fleet we've all driven it we've spent some time on in it good weather not so good weather um but it's finally arrived it's been a long long time coming the gestation period from bowling green kentucky to get it to colchester uh the the details on it we have a um uh stigray coupe we have with the lt2 uh 6.2 liter v8 engines only engine available um it makes 490 horsepower but because we have the performance exhaust makes 495 horsepower 465 pounds feet of torque for 70 because of the exhaust as you may or may not know eight speed uh automatic dual clutch transmission which is right now the only transmission no manual available uh car starts the base model yeah we see the down but that's not let's we'll save that save that for the talk uh base model starts 59 900 uh which is about 4 000 more than the previous generation car was in 2019 which is the c7 generation this is a c8 um it's actually bigger than the last car in key dimensions wheelbase length with heights the same now we know this car is two times or more at the base uh the price of an average new car you know it it brings new performance characteristics it brings uh new performance standards it brings different technology that we're experiencing but you know we are aware yes it's not something that everybody can can achieve um also disclose uh i have a background with corvettes at six months old my parents put me in the back of their 1965 uh stingray coupe and drove to chicago um my dad used to work at the national corvette museum um i have lots of corvette paraphernalia like ron fellows signed uh z06 in fact uh my dad bought the z06 that we tested um back in the 2000s uh it currently has 151 000 miles on it extensive track duty that's awesome how's it holding up the car is great he had he actually got new heads from someone from a guy who had to put on performance headers you know performance heads and uh they took the heads off his car and they were perfect um so he has you know even slightly cleaner better ones well i remember testing that car and at the time that was the fastest car i'd ever been in i mean if at 505 horsepower it just tickled your stomach when you took off and it was just it's an amazing car and it was i was very i was very fond of it um and years later he brought it back and uh joe veselak and i um another tester that we have got he let us drive it again on the track what's wrong with that guy i would never let you two drive my personal car uh honestly we were thinking the same thing at the moment but we were we were so grateful and um we didn't harass it but we got to drive around the track again and brought back so many fun memories and what a blast that car was i mean you know not not maybe by myself but my dad is he's incredibly generous that car he has had had he's done track days when he worked at the corvette museum he ran their track day program he had gm engineers who he instructed and he had people who didn't have a car he would let them drive it so yeah that car's got a lot of different drivers you know um seen a lot of different tracks on the east coast and midwest and uh it's still going strong and one day it'll it'll make it back into my garage you know at some point i'll come up here to connecticut and it'll it'll be mine i think i think i like your dad more than i like you john that's a lot of people say that it's similar it's you and i are similar um anyway so what we bought the 2lt trim for 67 200 added the z51 performance package added the z51 performance suspension with magnetic ride control uh gt2 bucket seats destination charge 1095 totaled out at seven thousand six eighty so again you know not not cheap we get it um we're gonna jump right in ryan first off no manual transmission but pretty good automatic a great automatic in my opinion um yeah i mean no manual we i know monty's uh upset about that but um it's you know what a car like this when you get inside of this car you feel like you're driving a le mans race car or something um which wouldn't have a manual transmission anyway probably right this this transmission slams gears in a good way i mean it seats you it's actually i think it shifts um even smoother the faster the harder you push it um just the low speed this low speed driving is where you feel it clunk a little bit but i like that i just gives you a raw like race car feeling and that's what this car kind of is right um so i'm not upset about it and honestly i don't know even if they put a manual in it at some point i don't know where they would fit it because the console does not allow for that i don't think well that's not that's not our fault that's not our fault they didn't design it right i'm just saying i don't know if i get my hopes up for one in the future but maybe maybe we're just gonna go you know yeah just sequential just boom boom you know front and back i like that no i think it's a great transmission you put in regular like touring mode automatic mode and it just shifts nicely quietly you can scoot through the neighborhood in the morning without waking everybody up or you can put it in the track mode or the sport mode and it and use the paddle extensively and you just hammer through the gears and it's a blast did you do you missed something i mean i i know we all you know we all like manual transmissions my my the car i have in my garage has a manual you know and getting into it every once i was like okay make the body kind of remember manual because there are none in in the automotive fleets today i mean it's just so rare monty you know did it really take that much away from from the driving experience my pickup truck has a manual transmission that's all you need to know okay i i would never buy a car a sports car that doesn't have a manual transmission which obviously is going to affect my chances down the road buying a you know because everyone's gone and honestly we could get we could have a whole discussion about this and maybe we should sometime but it's all ferrari's fault because racine formula one racing they they introduced the paddle shifters in their form of the one car and then they started introducing them into their uh street cars and they said well it's like half a second quicker around fiorano their personal test track than the main transmission so why would you get the manual uh let's see because the vast majority of ferrari owners lamborghinis corvette owners do not take their car on a racetrack and even if you did you're not racing it you're doing a track day therefore it's still you're still just trying to have the most fun you can right so for me the most fun i can have in a sports car is with a manual transmission now that said ryan's 100 spot on this automatic is very very good and the car um other than a few you know odd ergonomic deficiencies we can get into it drives really well i mean that transmission uh other than being if you if you use the paddle the manual mode all the time it's uh clunky when you you know when you're driving at lower speed but when you're like harder on the throttle it shifts really smooth and as ryan said you can put it in tour sport track and the automatic has different parameters and when you put it into those more aggressive modes the automatic works pretty close to the way you'd want it to work i think it's still a little more fun to drive it in the manual mode but um so yeah i think it's something there's something lacking i think you you got to figure out why people don't want manual transmissions why is this happening and that's like i said another discussion we can have i'm still hopeful that maybe maybe when the z06 comes out it's going to have a manual transmission but i'm probably it's probably a lost cause for people like me but that said the car is a blast to drive even without it but just think how much more fun it would be with the manual transmission and i will say with the corvette i don't miss the clunkiness of that seven speed you know going into seventh you sometimes caught five or you know going to five you know coming down to six or is it six or was it four and some of the the mashing of gear sounds from it which was just kind of um and again my dad owned two c7 so i spent a lot of time in c7s i know that they had that those those issues uh positive i think that's a positive though for this automatic is there's this has eight speeds and i mean you can cruise on the highway at you know 65 70 miles an hour and you're doing like 1200 rpm maybe less like it did it just you know but that's eight gears you can't really have that with a manual i mean that'd be a sea of it's not lugging it that you know i mean and no no it's right there so let's jump though to what we talked about so it's mid-engined historically corvettes all front engine um yes maybe some some prototypes you know uh you know in the 60s they talked about being making a mid-engine one but now this is the first one not a front engine that will play itself out i think on our track track time but monty go into some of the ergonomics uh that that's you know adjusted because corvettes have really been great long distance cruisers too and it changes with this yeah so as you said john i mean the mid-engine corvette has been rumored for forever uh since like the 60s and you know if people don't know what a mid engine and this is considered a rear mid-engine car the last corvette actually in a sense was a front mid engine car basically it's mid-engine if the engine is like toward the center of the car you know if if more than half the engine is toward the center of the car from either of the two axles but the most common mid-engine configuration is a rear mid engine what that means is the engine is right behind your head which if the engine sounds good which this one does sound pretty good that just adds to the excitement right and it also changes the way the car handles it gives it excellent uh rear traction usually fantastic steering and it has all of that so and and of course it also changes the way the car looks i thought when i when i heard they were doing it they truly were doing a mid-engine corvette i thought well that's wrong right corvettes are front engine cars and then you drive it and you're like i don't care this thing drives so amazing the handling is so sharp the steering is is fantastic uh it you know um and the styling because of the mid-engine you know most exotic cars most exotic sports cars whether it's a lamborghini ferrari mclaren pagani you know just go on and on they're mid-engine right and this one now has that super aggressive styling people see it they don't know especially in bright red like our car they don't they honestly don't know if it's a ferrari or lame thing but they're excited and they think it looks fantastic that said there and there's some good ergonomic issues with this car which is that you know mid-engine cars kind of have a sort of cab forward feel to it you know because you don't have to worry about the engine ahead of you so now you've got this you know you're low to the ground in this car you've got a great view forwards you feel like you're close to the road that part is great and actually now it doesn't have what the corvette is known for you you talked about like riding in the back of your your uh dad's corvette my uncle had a 74 corvette and a couple of us would ride in that sort of shelf thing behind them i'm not recommending people do that but it was you know a long time ago and people did that sometimes um we we did the same we did the same so yes even as teenagers like think about the c7 right that has a gigantic trunk well so now you now you you have a mid engine right it does take that away a little bit but there still is a fair amount of room behind the engine you can put luggage in as well as the target top which we can get into later that can store back there which is really ingenious the way they did that and you've got this front trunk or was we call it a frunk which is uh you know holds a decent amount of room so i mean you know you don't have that gigantic thing but you still have a pretty good amount of space to store stuff so so i will interject so the last car 15 cubic feet of storage according to uh general motors chevrolet uh the current one 12.6 cubic feet combined so it is not it's not that's what i would say in the long distance cruiser because again i've taken trips in that c6 and c7 and you could just it's like it kept eating stuff you know there was bags and helmet bags and chairs and like a pop-up tent and all that stuff and it's not happening in this car no the other property the problem i have with this the interior base of this car like when you're in the car in the cabin there's nowhere to put any room to put anything it's there's no interior space anywhere um i found that to be a little bit of a bummer but yeah the cell phone the cell phone thing is pretty cool though you know i think you got some b-roll of it could probably go in right now it you know you pop it back there and it doesn't float away it also keeps it out of your hand for playing of course i have i did forget it in there a bunch of times i got out uh outside out of mine um so so mati a couple of the things the interior right feedback and then ryan yeah yeah we want to get on that okay yeah so there's some when you talk about the interior i mean you know the good stuff is the seats the seats work uh seats do we have the optional gt2 seats uh this is not what the car comes with these are really heavily bolstered seats uh uh and um and they're they're mostly comfortable it has adjustable bolsters it's kind of interesting the way the seat back bolsters work they don't move in and out it's more like a pillow that blows up and and in and out um which actually i had to move the bolsters to their furthest out settings uh i guess i must have giant lats or something because i've been getting yeah you're already out and um yeah and and even then i think on a long trip it might be too tight for me i'm interested to hear what you guys have to say but beyond that you know so it's got this line of of climate control functions it kind of it's kind of neat because it's got you've got this really um separation between the passenger and the driver so like it really kept my girlfriend from trying to hold my hand the whole time uh she's going to icky she's going to kill me if she if she sees that but it's really icky yeah so the problem is you have all these climate control um buttons these small little buttons going all the way so now instead of having like the climate control to kind of down in front of you now you have to look over to the side and it's such a long row it's hard to pick out what you're trying to do quickly while still seeing the road there's other weird things like the volume buttons on the steering wheel uh look like you would hit them with uh buttons with your thumb but actually instead you have to come behind the steering wheel hit it with like your your fingers index fingers and and and it's just ergonomically weird and if you said okay well i want to use the volume knob well it's kind of way over here around the around the steering wheel you know and and the square steering wheel is a little weird too i'm curious if you guys because we aren't driving the car that hard yet because we have to save the tires for testing i you know i didn't do too much shuffle steering yet but it is a little weird when you grab like a square part of the steering i don't know it's a little strange right yeah so let's tell monty why he's wrong yeah please i'm told that's all the time inside of him um no i i totally agree with the the strip of buttons on that ridge the console has like kind of a like a wave to it there's like a ridge and to me it's gonna sound terrible but it's almost like it was an afterthought like they had to put all these buttons somewhere and that's where it fit um and if they're they're confusing i think um it's just not intuitive you know there's and then some of the buttons like the the passengers uh seat controls are like really low not that you need to be touching them but like you see like their theirs are here and yours are up here and at first you didn't like well you got to figure out which ones are yours and then everything in between is just it's just in a line so it's it's just it's not intuitive um i'm sure you'll get used to it but um the steering wheel um i didn't i thought it would drive me more nuts um i don't typically like that squared off type of steering wheel but i didn't find myself because it's the rate steering ratio is tight enough i didn't find myself unless you're in a parking lot really hand over handing you know the wheel um i think it might be it'll be better on the track it'll be even less of that um assuming we don't get sideways by accident or anything like that and start counter steering but um the the seating position i thought was pretty good the seats are great but on a long drive the lower body like the lower cushion bolsters were a little much for my legs to just relax my legs and just kind of like sit there relaxed it was pushing into my legs a little bit um but otherwise it's it i mean i'm six too and i fit in there pretty well there's not a ton of room it's very cockpit-like but i fit in there um i mean whether this is interior or not getting in and out of that car is a chore i mean getting in it is one thing because you can fall into it getting out i mean you have to the sill is real high super wide and you literally like i put my hand on the sill and do like a tricep dip to get myself up and out and get your workout in yeah i mean yeah but i'm 34 years old i mean i don't you know some people oh so i'm so old no no no he's saying there's going to be more buyers buying this who might yeah i can't i can't afford this thing never mind it's gonna be an older gentleman or a woman that has the money to buy it it's gonna be a a little bit of a workout getting in and out of it um it'll be a little easier when you have the roof off which we'll talk about i guess but um it's a just it's you know you're crawling in there that when you're in there the floorboards feel like they're maybe five inches from the road i mean you're sitting on the ground it's it's super low um you know i brought up early on the dimensions of it because it actually feels i think smaller yeah it definitely drives and feels as if it's smaller than the previous generation yeah and i think back to when we we had the 911 in the cc and the in the previous generation corvette and like the corvette felt big and even though the numbers you start looking at you're like oh they're both pretty pretty similar size cars um the 911 just felt small and this is to that point um and it's with the mid engine it's with the the low cowl and low hood um i'm with you on the sills you know i use that uh you know the same way of getting out also to not rub the seat not to get my feet on the door well so it's it's interesting um i mean it's neat that it has a target top for one thing and uh so when my girlfriend and i were trying to figure out how to store it uh you know we read the manual but it was still a little confusing as to okay do we put it in right side up upside down how does this go and it goes in the area behind the engine and i'm sure we're showing b-roll as we call it right now of me making it look more awkward doing it by myself than it actually should that the top is quite light um and it's pretty pretty uh pretty easy to move once you get but it's just a little awkward to take it off by one person it really works a lot better with two people um just because it's easier to get it off and then back to the back of the car but when you put it in the the stowage area behind the engine it just kind of like locks into these two things down at the bottom of the trunk and then you just kind of click it into these two other areas at the top and it's it's like so simple and mechanical once you understand it it's like well that's ingenious but at first it's kind of like wait how does this go in there but it's actually i think it's actually really neat i mean i i want to see us do that with with some bags and see how the bags yeah you know well that's that's what i was thinking because now you have that panel in there and it kind of the you know paint facing you you don't want to just lay some hard object on that it's painted it's a painted panel you know the exterior of the car so we'll be scratching also the car just sounds so much better uh when you have that top off you know i mean and without without all the buffeting that you get with a traditional convertible because you've got more stuff around you uh you can hear some of the exhaust kind of like blats there's a tiny bit of decelerative blur burbling someone can say that and burbling which actually i think sure i'm a little surprised the performance exhaust doesn't have more of that you know um and there isn't another exhaust right now that's available you know the last the c7 corvette had this like dual mode exhaust that could be just like crazy loud which was just glorious or um or kind of normal and this one you you know it sounds real actually really only sounds really good when you're really hard on throttling going at higher revs just around town it doesn't it like really doesn't burble much and and i i wish it was a little more you know verbally or something if that's even a word is that a word john uh burglary today today it's the word yeah it's i think that's a soft drink actually um so ryan you know one of the things you and monty were talking about is you know people came up or like oh is that a ferrari is that a lamborghini you know like the 95 96 of society it doesn't follow these things passionately like like we do and and you know other people do you did some research and we you know one of the big things with corvette performance for the buck you know how does this kind of match up in some ways you know yeah no those other brands so the corvette's always been sort of a performance bargain car my my eyes i mean you get a lot of horsepower just playing horsepower for your money right um and you know you mentioned it it looks like a ferrari people when i'm driving it people you know look like it was that ferrari and then i think they realized that it's not and it's actually a corvette and then that they crank their head even more because this is a big deal right and i think the best part about you know when i was showing a few friends the car they're you know they're curious what it costs and it's like this car was like seventy eight thousand dollars and they're like blown away because a for you know a ferrari or a lamborghini a mclaren some of these cars are two three hundred thousand dollars right um and there are different animals they have you know maybe bigger engines more horsepower handmade blah blah blah but some cars that compare with this pretty closely um a porsche 911 carrera s it's 443 horsepower starts at 117 000 it's got a zero to 60 time of three and a half seconds um you know our vet they're claiming it's a lot less than three seconds we don't know yet we haven't tested it um the audi r8 v10 um just the base v10 it has 532 horsepower it starts at 142 thousand dollars um 3.4 uh second zero to 60. so right around right in there um an acura nsx the new nsx um 573 horsepower so a little more 157 dollars uh two point nine uh second zero to sixty that's a lot there's quite a bit more money on all those um and probably roughly the same acceleration can i just touch it yeah can i just add something to that too is that you know i was fortunate enough to have it over the weekend and um i can't tell you how many thumbs up i got you know people would roll down their window and and you know say something to you a nice car great car and a lot of them you could tell they knew what it was other people you know would give you the you know the glance back as if they were walking down the street so look as you can see we can go on talking about this for the entire show we could do two or three shows of this there will be a lot more on consumerreports.org first drive updates the first drive weather gets better we'll be putting it through testing so so you know go to consumerreports.org check out future podcasts where we have our final test results and uh you know if you're interested in the corvette and tell us about your feelings on it in the comments please so before we move on we just want to take a moment of time to let you know about the talking cars donation program if you're not aware consumer reports is a non-profit so all the work we do is funded by memberships as well as donations if you're able to give it really does help us keep doing the work we do including this show you could find more info at cr.org givetalkingcars all right guys so this week we've got four questions some video and some some text ones emailed in to us as always when you have something you want to ask us tell us whatever send it to talkingcars icloud.com video questions text whatever you got send it in our first one is ben from ohio take it away i really appreciate your coverage on electric vehicles and charging but i wanted to follow up with one thing about the rivian adventure network turns out that that's only for ribbians and apparently jeep is going to do something too i think this is going to be really unfriendly for ev owners and for ev adoption i think it's going to confuse people and frustrate people because there's no proprietary gas station for gasoline cars but i'd like to hear your take thanks and keep talking cars okay so monty uh i'm gonna throw this one to you because i think it was it was from from your talk what do you got for ben about rivian yeah so ben's talking about uh when we when we were discussing rivian and their adventure network which was episode 302 if you folks want to go back and watch that uh and and ben's correct that you know and if we didn't make that clear we should have that the the this uh rivien adventure network is only gonna be for rivian evs but uh they are also in the process of building up charges around the country they're also going to have uh something called what they're calling waypoint locations and those are for going to be for any ev you know it's funny because when you think about it this is this could be a bit of a problem um you know tesla has their specific chargers you know rivian's gonna have their specific chargers so if you have all these uh ev companies doing their own chargers like with any internal combustion engine car you can go to any gas station shell exxon mobil whatever and it's going to work with your car you don't have to worry about oh is this specific for my for my vehicle so it's a bit of a problem but just to be clear rivien is building these other locations and i i did talk to rivien a little bit they said that the reason why they're doing this big buildup is obviously because they want it to be ready for their car when it comes out their truck when it comes out but they say accessible charging is the key to ev adoption which i'm sure they're you know right about that and one of the goals of the riving adventure network is to supply riven customers with energy in locations and areas or states or parts of states where ev charging is either limited uh or not yet available so that's what they're really working on and that's why they're also kind of doing this kind of unique thing where going after remote areas state parks campsites locations near trailheads and and so that's what they're trying to do but yeah it's you know it's interesting what's going to happen with all these different electric vehicle companies if they continue to do their own specific charging locations true yeah jeep's going to be doing something at trail heads with them yeah for their evs correct yeah they are correct so interesting sd card versus sony memory stick uh you know we'll just go back to the to the 90s or so our next video question comes from jackson so we're going to roll that one now so i have a question not for me but for someone i know so she is a mom of two kids one early middle school one elementary school they are planning on buying they go on semi-frequent road trips and it needs to fit a pair of skis she's between a model y xc40 recharge audi sq5 and kia telluride i'm leaning towards the telluride but i wanted your opinion love the show keep on talking cars and uh you know to that we'll say welcome back jackson it's a it's a good question um so each of us have our own ideas i'm gonna throw this one to ryan first so ryan what's the recommendation that you have well i want to say one then i think about it and i have to say the other um so the audi now it's just um you know you mentioned skiing um you know hauling a family the key italia ride is um absolutely wonderful suv it's bigger it's roomier than the others the sq5 audi sq5 is a fun car but you know you're going to have to make sure you have the proper tires on it i think it comes from the factory with summer tires you can you can get a no-cost option for all seasons but um it's a smaller car um so i'm gonna say kia tell you right okay so size matters and for this one size over sportiness uh monty what uh what works for you yeah so you know you wouldn't we wouldn't recommend the tesla model y because we don't recommend the tesla model y it's not a cr recommended model right now yeah it has a great road test score but it's you know it has poor reliability poor predicted reliability so that one's out personally haven't driven the xc40 recharge so i can't speak to that uh but i would say it comes down to kind of what ryan said it's do you want a smaller two-row suv that's super fun to drive that's the audi sq5 349 horsepower turbo v6 or do you want more of a family haul or three or three-year-old suv that's bigger and is you know uh just kind of drives like a normal vehicle if you if you're really thinking about driving fun go with the audi otherwise you know uh the telluride is a more practical roomier vehicle for sure yeah so uh the the two evs i looked at it this way um the recharge has a 208 mile epa range which is very limited i don't know where exactly the family lives um i don't know if they're going to jpeak or they're going to you know butternut on the east coast or you know they're going there they're butternut dressing they're driving you know you know all through colorado wyoming and utah or if they're going to a local ski ski area but you know 208 miles is going to be a limiting factor particularly in the winter um you know tesla model y 326 miles in the in the non-performance version it drops down around 300 depending on the day of the week um you know they're constantly making updates um those two cards are priced similarly around 53.9 for the volvo 50 900 base for the tesla tesla likes to folk add in gas savings to their prices but this is what you're paying in cash um the volvo does get tax credits again mike monte says i mean i would possibly say the model y if you look i would say the model y if you're going for the ev um or the or the sq5 if you're a family of four i don't know how often you'll be using those third rows unless you really want to keep the kids skis in the back of the tell your ride um or maybe fold down have the kids sit on a you know a 60 seat and fold down the other seat so you can keep all the skis inside then maybe the telluride but you know what you're likely if it's a family of four going skiing you're getting a roof rack you're getting a pod um you know get the sq5 if it you know it's a little it's more fun but a little more manageable size you could fit all the bags in the back you put a pot on the roof you're done um you know it's right size unless everyone's you know your kids are six two and you know mom and dad are six four uh you know it's it's i think the sq5 is a fine fine one to go with though can you telluride better reliability that's where we are you know that's that's the answer let us know what your friend buys uh it would be very interested to hear their decision process on it our next question comes kristen from queens who asks can someone on the crs cars team explain to me what this smart car would be towing i mean am i not giving enough credit to the power of the smart car so as you can see on the image we have here kristen submitted a picture of a smart car with a tow hitch and we went into our csi uh deep space nine super james bond born identity computer to enhance and then enhance and then enhance and it looks like something that you'll get the jc whitney catalog like that you would stick on but underneath it looks like a like uh you know the multi plug for like a trailer hitch you know for the lights and and brakes and such ryan what's up with this do you tow with a smart car i mean i think we know the answer this is a little interesting go you know yeah what's your thought on this one it's very interesting um so this this to me looks like um something that was um put on in a garage somewhere with the good old boys so the smart car the um at least in the us wasn't rated to toe at all um so you shouldn't be you shouldn't tow with it um and this isn't just this isn't like a one and a half inch uh receiver that you could put a bike rack on this is a tow hitch ball um now granted from what it looks like it looks a little hokey i'm gonna say that um could it be attached to something rigid underneath behind that plastic bumper sure um not recommended i mean it's pretty comical to look at though so yeah it sounds like it's a dumb idea to tow with the smart car there we go we're out we're out um while monty does a parade lap around his his living room um look in europe the smart 4-4 the four-seater kanto in europe it seems like anybody could tow anything you know they put a a camper caravan on the back of something i mean top gear you know they go up the swiss alps with a you know a smart card a camper um look it's not recommended just like it's not recommended to replace the battery in your apple phone by yourself or your you know whatever i tried that once yeah it didn't probably that great it did not go well look you could find forums and i looked online you can find forums where people say like yeah i tow and oh i put this on and yes i'm sure physically mechanically can be done not recommended it seems to be also those forums say good luck with your gearbox uh the his your future of your gear box by doing that you know your transmission so um it'd be interesting to know if it's a fake or a real uh but it certainly does look like right to use ryan's words hokie um our final question comes joe from new jersey who says i'm interested in buying a 2018-2020 honda accord i like the features of the touring but hate the 19-inch wheels too showy and prone to curbing you know rubbing on the curb and getting rash rub you know messed up with swapping them for 17-inch wheels affect any of the touring features like the adaptive suspension would dealers be able to do this at little to no cost uh so ryan our tire expert first jump in on this tell us tell us what he's been giving up or gaining if he does that sure or changing a couple of things so it's great that he recognizes that it comes with these 19-inch wheels um they can be potentially uh a pain i mean they they're more prone to hitting power or to you know having pothole damage they're more expensive to replace we just did a um a story on uh potholes and how a low aspect ratio tire a tire with less sidewall um is more prone to damage there's just less cushion there right unfortunately this honda accord only comes from the factory with a 19 inch wheel so yeah you could put you could probably figure out a smaller size rim you probably go down to a 17 inch rim as long as it clears the brakes um the dealer probably not going to do that it's probably not going to do that for you this car was designed with 19-inch wheels from the factory and we at consumer reports would tell you you should always stick with the same size uh type uh speed rating tire that comes on your vehicle um you know unless of course if you're putting um excuse me putting winter tires on um you know but in the winter you're driving slower and it's colder so there's different um protocol there but um i would the beauty of this is he hasn't bought a car yet and we always tell people before you buy a car to pay attention to what kind of tires come on it because it could be expensive down the road or just not fit your lifestyle um so unfortunately i would say you probably should look for maybe an accord that has that you know i know he likes the uh touring package but he should look for an accord that has a more realistic uh tire package for his lifestyle as opposed to trying to put on a different wheel and tire on this car um because again it was designed from the factory to perform a certain way like that and you will be changing the handling a little bit um so that's that well you know to that point i i reached out to honda and just you know just kind of like you know is he right you know just wanted to make sure not not you know nothing joe's got something wrong you know he's he's making a big error but i wanted to get their opinion on it and the quote that a honda spokesperson gave me was we do extensive development in tuning for a given model and trim such as the accord touring including optimizing the suspension settings for the original wheel tire setup the change noted below would be significant with a sidewall that would be considerably taller to maintain the same outer diameter and it could affect a variety of vehicle characteristics including handling and nvh noise vibration harshness so to his question would it affect the adaptive suspension according to honda definitely would and like you said ryan you know the diff you have to swap out different tire size and you know sidewall heights and such aspect ratio so um you're not going to get a deal or joe is going to do this right monty i mean it's unlikely to happen yeah unlikely and i have nothing to add because they're already left on a high note so if i were to say anything it would just hurt my you know my street cred so so we'll come down from the peak and just say joe probably not going to happen with that wouldn't really be a good idea um sorry it's not gonna work out for you but on that note we're going to have to wrap up this episode as always check the show notes below for more information on what we talked about send us your questions your comments your reactions your videos talking cars at icloud.com as always thanks for watching and we'll see you next time or something if that's even a wordthis week we share our first impressions of the 2021 chevrolet corvette why you might not want bigger wheels and tires on a new car and what could this smart car with a hitch attached possibly be towing find out next on talking cars hi everyone and welcome back i'm john linkove i'm mike monticello and i'm ryan vilkowski and today's episode we have got a car that's not really perfect for the rainy season that we're experiencing here in connecticut but we're hoping uh it gets sunny and warm soon because we have our 2021 chevrolet corvette stingray coupe in the fleet we've all driven it we've spent some time on in it good weather not so good weather um but it's finally arrived it's been a long long time coming the gestation period from bowling green kentucky to get it to colchester uh the the details on it we have a um uh stigray coupe we have with the lt2 uh 6.2 liter v8 engines only engine available um it makes 490 horsepower but because we have the performance exhaust makes 495 horsepower 465 pounds feet of torque for 70 because of the exhaust as you may or may not know eight speed uh automatic dual clutch transmission which is right now the only transmission no manual available uh car starts the base model yeah we see the down but that's not let's we'll save that save that for the talk uh base model starts 59 900 uh which is about 4 000 more than the previous generation car was in 2019 which is the c7 generation this is a c8 um it's actually bigger than the last car in key dimensions wheelbase length with heights the same now we know this car is two times or more at the base uh the price of an average new car you know it it brings new performance characteristics it brings uh new performance standards it brings different technology that we're experiencing but you know we are aware yes it's not something that everybody can can achieve um also disclose uh i have a background with corvettes at six months old my parents put me in the back of their 1965 uh stingray coupe and drove to chicago um my dad used to work at the national corvette museum um i have lots of corvette paraphernalia like ron fellows signed uh z06 in fact uh my dad bought the z06 that we tested um back in the 2000s uh it currently has 151 000 miles on it extensive track duty that's awesome how's it holding up the car is great he had he actually got new heads from someone from a guy who had to put on performance headers you know performance heads and uh they took the heads off his car and they were perfect um so he has you know even slightly cleaner better ones well i remember testing that car and at the time that was the fastest car i'd ever been in i mean if at 505 horsepower it just tickled your stomach when you took off and it was just it's an amazing car and it was i was very i was very fond of it um and years later he brought it back and uh joe veselak and i um another tester that we have got he let us drive it again on the track what's wrong with that guy i would never let you two drive my personal car uh honestly we were thinking the same thing at the moment but we were we were so grateful and um we didn't harass it but we got to drive around the track again and brought back so many fun memories and what a blast that car was i mean you know not not maybe by myself but my dad is he's incredibly generous that car he has had had he's done track days when he worked at the corvette museum he ran their track day program he had gm engineers who he instructed and he had people who didn't have a car he would let them drive it so yeah that car's got a lot of different drivers you know um seen a lot of different tracks on the east coast and midwest and uh it's still going strong and one day it'll it'll make it back into my garage you know at some point i'll come up here to connecticut and it'll it'll be mine i think i think i like your dad more than i like you john that's a lot of people say that it's similar it's you and i are similar um anyway so what we bought the 2lt trim for 67 200 added the z51 performance package added the z51 performance suspension with magnetic ride control uh gt2 bucket seats destination charge 1095 totaled out at seven thousand six eighty so again you know not not cheap we get it um we're gonna jump right in ryan first off no manual transmission but pretty good automatic a great automatic in my opinion um yeah i mean no manual we i know monty's uh upset about that but um it's you know what a car like this when you get inside of this car you feel like you're driving a le mans race car or something um which wouldn't have a manual transmission anyway probably right this this transmission slams gears in a good way i mean it seats you it's actually i think it shifts um even smoother the faster the harder you push it um just the low speed this low speed driving is where you feel it clunk a little bit but i like that i just gives you a raw like race car feeling and that's what this car kind of is right um so i'm not upset about it and honestly i don't know even if they put a manual in it at some point i don't know where they would fit it because the console does not allow for that i don't think well that's not that's not our fault that's not our fault they didn't design it right i'm just saying i don't know if i get my hopes up for one in the future but maybe maybe we're just gonna go you know yeah just sequential just boom boom you know front and back i like that no i think it's a great transmission you put in regular like touring mode automatic mode and it just shifts nicely quietly you can scoot through the neighborhood in the morning without waking everybody up or you can put it in the track mode or the sport mode and it and use the paddle extensively and you just hammer through the gears and it's a blast did you do you missed something i mean i i know we all you know we all like manual transmissions my my the car i have in my garage has a manual you know and getting into it every once i was like okay make the body kind of remember manual because there are none in in the automotive fleets today i mean it's just so rare monty you know did it really take that much away from from the driving experience my pickup truck has a manual transmission that's all you need to know okay i i would never buy a car a sports car that doesn't have a manual transmission which obviously is going to affect my chances down the road buying a you know because everyone's gone and honestly we could get we could have a whole discussion about this and maybe we should sometime but it's all ferrari's fault because racine formula one racing they they introduced the paddle shifters in their form of the one car and then they started introducing them into their uh street cars and they said well it's like half a second quicker around fiorano their personal test track than the main transmission so why would you get the manual uh let's see because the vast majority of ferrari owners lamborghinis corvette owners do not take their car on a racetrack and even if you did you're not racing it you're doing a track day therefore it's still you're still just trying to have the most fun you can right so for me the most fun i can have in a sports car is with a manual transmission now that said ryan's 100 spot on this automatic is very very good and the car um other than a few you know odd ergonomic deficiencies we can get into it drives really well i mean that transmission uh other than being if you if you use the paddle the manual mode all the time it's uh clunky when you you know when you're driving at lower speed but when you're like harder on the throttle it shifts really smooth and as ryan said you can put it in tour sport track and the automatic has different parameters and when you put it into those more aggressive modes the automatic works pretty close to the way you'd want it to work i think it's still a little more fun to drive it in the manual mode but um so yeah i think it's something there's something lacking i think you you got to figure out why people don't want manual transmissions why is this happening and that's like i said another discussion we can have i'm still hopeful that maybe maybe when the z06 comes out it's going to have a manual transmission but i'm probably it's probably a lost cause for people like me but that said the car is a blast to drive even without it but just think how much more fun it would be with the manual transmission and i will say with the corvette i don't miss the clunkiness of that seven speed you know going into seventh you sometimes caught five or you know going to five you know coming down to six or is it six or was it four and some of the the mashing of gear sounds from it which was just kind of um and again my dad owned two c7 so i spent a lot of time in c7s i know that they had that those those issues uh positive i think that's a positive though for this automatic is there's this has eight speeds and i mean you can cruise on the highway at you know 65 70 miles an hour and you're doing like 1200 rpm maybe less like it did it just you know but that's eight gears you can't really have that with a manual i mean that'd be a sea of it's not lugging it that you know i mean and no no it's right there so let's jump though to what we talked about so it's mid-engined historically corvettes all front engine um yes maybe some some prototypes you know uh you know in the 60s they talked about being making a mid-engine one but now this is the first one not a front engine that will play itself out i think on our track track time but monty go into some of the ergonomics uh that that's you know adjusted because corvettes have really been great long distance cruisers too and it changes with this yeah so as you said john i mean the mid-engine corvette has been rumored for forever uh since like the 60s and you know if people don't know what a mid engine and this is considered a rear mid-engine car the last corvette actually in a sense was a front mid engine car basically it's mid-engine if the engine is like toward the center of the car you know if if more than half the engine is toward the center of the car from either of the two axles but the most common mid-engine configuration is a rear mid engine what that means is the engine is right behind your head which if the engine sounds good which this one does sound pretty good that just adds to the excitement right and it also changes the way the car handles it gives it excellent uh rear traction usually fantastic steering and it has all of that so and and of course it also changes the way the car looks i thought when i when i heard they were doing it they truly were doing a mid-engine corvette i thought well that's wrong right corvettes are front engine cars and then you drive it and you're like i don't care this thing drives so amazing the handling is so sharp the steering is is fantastic uh it you know um and the styling because of the mid-engine you know most exotic cars most exotic sports cars whether it's a lamborghini ferrari mclaren pagani you know just go on and on they're mid-engine right and this one now has that super aggressive styling people see it they don't know especially in bright red like our car they don't they honestly don't know if it's a ferrari or lame thing but they're excited and they think it looks fantastic that said there and there's some good ergonomic issues with this car which is that you know mid-engine cars kind of have a sort of cab forward feel to it you know because you don't have to worry about the engine ahead of you so now you've got this you know you're low to the ground in this car you've got a great view forwards you feel like you're close to the road that part is great and actually now it doesn't have what the corvette is known for you you talked about like riding in the back of your your uh dad's corvette my uncle had a 74 corvette and a couple of us would ride in that sort of shelf thing behind them i'm not recommending people do that but it was you know a long time ago and people did that sometimes um we we did the same we did the same so yes even as teenagers like think about the c7 right that has a gigantic trunk well so now you now you you have a mid engine right it does take that away a little bit but there still is a fair amount of room behind the engine you can put luggage in as well as the target top which we can get into later that can store back there which is really ingenious the way they did that and you've got this front trunk or was we call it a frunk which is uh you know holds a decent amount of room so i mean you know you don't have that gigantic thing but you still have a pretty good amount of space to store stuff so so i will interject so the last car 15 cubic feet of storage according to uh general motors chevrolet uh the current one 12.6 cubic feet combined so it is not it's not that's what i would say in the long distance cruiser because again i've taken trips in that c6 and c7 and you could just it's like it kept eating stuff you know there was bags and helmet bags and chairs and like a pop-up tent and all that stuff and it's not happening in this car no the other property the problem i have with this the interior base of this car like when you're in the car in the cabin there's nowhere to put any room to put anything it's there's no interior space anywhere um i found that to be a little bit of a bummer but yeah the cell phone the cell phone thing is pretty cool though you know i think you got some b-roll of it could probably go in right now it you know you pop it back there and it doesn't float away it also keeps it out of your hand for playing of course i have i did forget it in there a bunch of times i got out uh outside out of mine um so so mati a couple of the things the interior right feedback and then ryan yeah yeah we want to get on that okay yeah so there's some when you talk about the interior i mean you know the good stuff is the seats the seats work uh seats do we have the optional gt2 seats uh this is not what the car comes with these are really heavily bolstered seats uh uh and um and they're they're mostly comfortable it has adjustable bolsters it's kind of interesting the way the seat back bolsters work they don't move in and out it's more like a pillow that blows up and and in and out um which actually i had to move the bolsters to their furthest out settings uh i guess i must have giant lats or something because i've been getting yeah you're already out and um yeah and and even then i think on a long trip it might be too tight for me i'm interested to hear what you guys have to say but beyond that you know so it's got this line of of climate control functions it kind of it's kind of neat because it's got you've got this really um separation between the passenger and the driver so like it really kept my girlfriend from trying to hold my hand the whole time uh she's going to icky she's going to kill me if she if she sees that but it's really icky yeah so the problem is you have all these climate control um buttons these small little buttons going all the way so now instead of having like the climate control to kind of down in front of you now you have to look over to the side and it's such a long row it's hard to pick out what you're trying to do quickly while still seeing the road there's other weird things like the volume buttons on the steering wheel uh look like you would hit them with uh buttons with your thumb but actually instead you have to come behind the steering wheel hit it with like your your fingers index fingers and and and it's just ergonomically weird and if you said okay well i want to use the volume knob well it's kind of way over here around the around the steering wheel you know and and the square steering wheel is a little weird too i'm curious if you guys because we aren't driving the car that hard yet because we have to save the tires for testing i you know i didn't do too much shuffle steering yet but it is a little weird when you grab like a square part of the steering i don't know it's a little strange right yeah so let's tell monty why he's wrong yeah please i'm told that's all the time inside of him um no i i totally agree with the the strip of buttons on that ridge the console has like kind of a like a wave to it there's like a ridge and to me it's gonna sound terrible but it's almost like it was an afterthought like they had to put all these buttons somewhere and that's where it fit um and if they're they're confusing i think um it's just not intuitive you know there's and then some of the buttons like the the passengers uh seat controls are like really low not that you need to be touching them but like you see like their theirs are here and yours are up here and at first you didn't like well you got to figure out which ones are yours and then everything in between is just it's just in a line so it's it's just it's not intuitive um i'm sure you'll get used to it but um the steering wheel um i didn't i thought it would drive me more nuts um i don't typically like that squared off type of steering wheel but i didn't find myself because it's the rate steering ratio is tight enough i didn't find myself unless you're in a parking lot really hand over handing you know the wheel um i think it might be it'll be better on the track it'll be even less of that um assuming we don't get sideways by accident or anything like that and start counter steering but um the the seating position i thought was pretty good the seats are great but on a long drive the lower body like the lower cushion bolsters were a little much for my legs to just relax my legs and just kind of like sit there relaxed it was pushing into my legs a little bit um but otherwise it's it i mean i'm six too and i fit in there pretty well there's not a ton of room it's very cockpit-like but i fit in there um i mean whether this is interior or not getting in and out of that car is a chore i mean getting in it is one thing because you can fall into it getting out i mean you have to the sill is real high super wide and you literally like i put my hand on the sill and do like a tricep dip to get myself up and out and get your workout in yeah i mean yeah but i'm 34 years old i mean i don't you know some people oh so i'm so old no no no he's saying there's going to be more buyers buying this who might yeah i can't i can't afford this thing never mind it's gonna be an older gentleman or a woman that has the money to buy it it's gonna be a a little bit of a workout getting in and out of it um it'll be a little easier when you have the roof off which we'll talk about i guess but um it's a just it's you know you're crawling in there that when you're in there the floorboards feel like they're maybe five inches from the road i mean you're sitting on the ground it's it's super low um you know i brought up early on the dimensions of it because it actually feels i think smaller yeah it definitely drives and feels as if it's smaller than the previous generation yeah and i think back to when we we had the 911 in the cc and the in the previous generation corvette and like the corvette felt big and even though the numbers you start looking at you're like oh they're both pretty pretty similar size cars um the 911 just felt small and this is to that point um and it's with the mid engine it's with the the low cowl and low hood um i'm with you on the sills you know i use that uh you know the same way of getting out also to not rub the seat not to get my feet on the door well so it's it's interesting um i mean it's neat that it has a target top for one thing and uh so when my girlfriend and i were trying to figure out how to store it uh you know we read the manual but it was still a little confusing as to okay do we put it in right side up upside down how does this go and it goes in the area behind the engine and i'm sure we're showing b-roll as we call it right now of me making it look more awkward doing it by myself than it actually should that the top is quite light um and it's pretty pretty uh pretty easy to move once you get but it's just a little awkward to take it off by one person it really works a lot better with two people um just because it's easier to get it off and then back to the back of the car but when you put it in the the stowage area behind the engine it just kind of like locks into these two things down at the bottom of the trunk and then you just kind of click it into these two other areas at the top and it's it's like so simple and mechanical once you understand it it's like well that's ingenious but at first it's kind of like wait how does this go in there but it's actually i think it's actually really neat i mean i i want to see us do that with with some bags and see how the bags yeah you know well that's that's what i was thinking because now you have that panel in there and it kind of the you know paint facing you you don't want to just lay some hard object on that it's painted it's a painted panel you know the exterior of the car so we'll be scratching also the car just sounds so much better uh when you have that top off you know i mean and without without all the buffeting that you get with a traditional convertible because you've got more stuff around you uh you can hear some of the exhaust kind of like blats there's a tiny bit of decelerative blur burbling someone can say that and burbling which actually i think sure i'm a little surprised the performance exhaust doesn't have more of that you know um and there isn't another exhaust right now that's available you know the last the c7 corvette had this like dual mode exhaust that could be just like crazy loud which was just glorious or um or kind of normal and this one you you know it sounds real actually really only sounds really good when you're really hard on throttling going at higher revs just around town it doesn't it like really doesn't burble much and and i i wish it was a little more you know verbally or something if that's even a word is that a word john uh burglary today today it's the word yeah it's i think that's a soft drink actually um so ryan you know one of the things you and monty were talking about is you know people came up or like oh is that a ferrari is that a lamborghini you know like the 95 96 of society it doesn't follow these things passionately like like we do and and you know other people do you did some research and we you know one of the big things with corvette performance for the buck you know how does this kind of match up in some ways you know yeah no those other brands so the corvette's always been sort of a performance bargain car my my eyes i mean you get a lot of horsepower just playing horsepower for your money right um and you know you mentioned it it looks like a ferrari people when i'm driving it people you know look like it was that ferrari and then i think they realized that it's not and it's actually a corvette and then that they crank their head even more because this is a big deal right and i think the best part about you know when i was showing a few friends the car they're you know they're curious what it costs and it's like this car was like seventy eight thousand dollars and they're like blown away because a for you know a ferrari or a lamborghini a mclaren some of these cars are two three hundred thousand dollars right um and there are different animals they have you know maybe bigger engines more horsepower handmade blah blah blah but some cars that compare with this pretty closely um a porsche 911 carrera s it's 443 horsepower starts at 117 000 it's got a zero to 60 time of three and a half seconds um you know our vet they're claiming it's a lot less than three seconds we don't know yet we haven't tested it um the audi r8 v10 um just the base v10 it has 532 horsepower it starts at 142 thousand dollars um 3.4 uh second zero to 60. so right around right in there um an acura nsx the new nsx um 573 horsepower so a little more 157 dollars uh two point nine uh second zero to sixty that's a lot there's quite a bit more money on all those um and probably roughly the same acceleration can i just touch it yeah can i just add something to that too is that you know i was fortunate enough to have it over the weekend and um i can't tell you how many thumbs up i got you know people would roll down their window and and you know say something to you a nice car great car and a lot of them you could tell they knew what it was other people you know would give you the you know the glance back as if they were walking down the street so look as you can see we can go on talking about this for the entire show we could do two or three shows of this there will be a lot more on consumerreports.org first drive updates the first drive weather gets better we'll be putting it through testing so so you know go to consumerreports.org check out future podcasts where we have our final test results and uh you know if you're interested in the corvette and tell us about your feelings on it in the comments please so before we move on we just want to take a moment of time to let you know about the talking cars donation program if you're not aware consumer reports is a non-profit so all the work we do is funded by memberships as well as donations if you're able to give it really does help us keep doing the work we do including this show you could find more info at cr.org givetalkingcars all right guys so this week we've got four questions some video and some some text ones emailed in to us as always when you have something you want to ask us tell us whatever send it to talkingcars icloud.com video questions text whatever you got send it in our first one is ben from ohio take it away i really appreciate your coverage on electric vehicles and charging but i wanted to follow up with one thing about the rivian adventure network turns out that that's only for ribbians and apparently jeep is going to do something too i think this is going to be really unfriendly for ev owners and for ev adoption i think it's going to confuse people and frustrate people because there's no proprietary gas station for gasoline cars but i'd like to hear your take thanks and keep talking cars okay so monty uh i'm gonna throw this one to you because i think it was it was from from your talk what do you got for ben about rivian yeah so ben's talking about uh when we when we were discussing rivian and their adventure network which was episode 302 if you folks want to go back and watch that uh and and ben's correct that you know and if we didn't make that clear we should have that the the this uh rivien adventure network is only gonna be for rivian evs but uh they are also in the process of building up charges around the country they're also going to have uh something called what they're calling waypoint locations and those are for going to be for any ev you know it's funny because when you think about it this is this could be a bit of a problem um you know tesla has their specific chargers you know rivian's gonna have their specific chargers so if you have all these uh ev companies doing their own chargers like with any internal combustion engine car you can go to any gas station shell exxon mobil whatever and it's going to work with your car you don't have to worry about oh is this specific for my for my vehicle so it's a bit of a problem but just to be clear rivien is building these other locations and i i did talk to rivien a little bit they said that the reason why they're doing this big buildup is obviously because they want it to be ready for their car when it comes out their truck when it comes out but they say accessible charging is the key to ev adoption which i'm sure they're you know right about that and one of the goals of the riving adventure network is to supply riven customers with energy in locations and areas or states or parts of states where ev charging is either limited uh or not yet available so that's what they're really working on and that's why they're also kind of doing this kind of unique thing where going after remote areas state parks campsites locations near trailheads and and so that's what they're trying to do but yeah it's you know it's interesting what's going to happen with all these different electric vehicle companies if they continue to do their own specific charging locations true yeah jeep's going to be doing something at trail heads with them yeah for their evs correct yeah they are correct so interesting sd card versus sony memory stick uh you know we'll just go back to the to the 90s or so our next video question comes from jackson so we're going to roll that one now so i have a question not for me but for someone i know so she is a mom of two kids one early middle school one elementary school they are planning on buying they go on semi-frequent road trips and it needs to fit a pair of skis she's between a model y xc40 recharge audi sq5 and kia telluride i'm leaning towards the telluride but i wanted your opinion love the show keep on talking cars and uh you know to that we'll say welcome back jackson it's a it's a good question um so each of us have our own ideas i'm gonna throw this one to ryan first so ryan what's the recommendation that you have well i want to say one then i think about it and i have to say the other um so the audi now it's just um you know you mentioned skiing um you know hauling a family the key italia ride is um absolutely wonderful suv it's bigger it's roomier than the others the sq5 audi sq5 is a fun car but you know you're going to have to make sure you have the proper tires on it i think it comes from the factory with summer tires you can you can get a no-cost option for all seasons but um it's a smaller car um so i'm gonna say kia tell you right okay so size matters and for this one size over sportiness uh monty what uh what works for you yeah so you know you wouldn't we wouldn't recommend the tesla model y because we don't recommend the tesla model y it's not a cr recommended model right now yeah it has a great road test score but it's you know it has poor reliability poor predicted reliability so that one's out personally haven't driven the xc40 recharge so i can't speak to that uh but i would say it comes down to kind of what ryan said it's do you want a smaller two-row suv that's super fun to drive that's the audi sq5 349 horsepower turbo v6 or do you want more of a family haul or three or three-year-old suv that's bigger and is you know uh just kind of drives like a normal vehicle if you if you're really thinking about driving fun go with the audi otherwise you know uh the telluride is a more practical roomier vehicle for sure yeah so uh the the two evs i looked at it this way um the recharge has a 208 mile epa range which is very limited i don't know where exactly the family lives um i don't know if they're going to jpeak or they're going to you know butternut on the east coast or you know they're going there they're butternut dressing they're driving you know you know all through colorado wyoming and utah or if they're going to a local ski ski area but you know 208 miles is going to be a limiting factor particularly in the winter um you know tesla model y 326 miles in the in the non-performance version it drops down around 300 depending on the day of the week um you know they're constantly making updates um those two cards are priced similarly around 53.9 for the volvo 50 900 base for the tesla tesla likes to folk add in gas savings to their prices but this is what you're paying in cash um the volvo does get tax credits again mike monte says i mean i would possibly say the model y if you look i would say the model y if you're going for the ev um or the or the sq5 if you're a family of four i don't know how often you'll be using those third rows unless you really want to keep the kids skis in the back of the tell your ride um or maybe fold down have the kids sit on a you know a 60 seat and fold down the other seat so you can keep all the skis inside then maybe the telluride but you know what you're likely if it's a family of four going skiing you're getting a roof rack you're getting a pod um you know get the sq5 if it you know it's a little it's more fun but a little more manageable size you could fit all the bags in the back you put a pot on the roof you're done um you know it's right size unless everyone's you know your kids are six two and you know mom and dad are six four uh you know it's it's i think the sq5 is a fine fine one to go with though can you telluride better reliability that's where we are you know that's that's the answer let us know what your friend buys uh it would be very interested to hear their decision process on it our next question comes kristen from queens who asks can someone on the crs cars team explain to me what this smart car would be towing i mean am i not giving enough credit to the power of the smart car so as you can see on the image we have here kristen submitted a picture of a smart car with a tow hitch and we went into our csi uh deep space nine super james bond born identity computer to enhance and then enhance and then enhance and it looks like something that you'll get the jc whitney catalog like that you would stick on but underneath it looks like a like uh you know the multi plug for like a trailer hitch you know for the lights and and brakes and such ryan what's up with this do you tow with a smart car i mean i think we know the answer this is a little interesting go you know yeah what's your thought on this one it's very interesting um so this this to me looks like um something that was um put on in a garage somewhere with the good old boys so the smart car the um at least in the us wasn't rated to toe at all um so you shouldn't be you shouldn't tow with it um and this isn't just this isn't like a one and a half inch uh receiver that you could put a bike rack on this is a tow hitch ball um now granted from what it looks like it looks a little hokey i'm gonna say that um could it be attached to something rigid underneath behind that plastic bumper sure um not recommended i mean it's pretty comical to look at though so yeah it sounds like it's a dumb idea to tow with the smart car there we go we're out we're out um while monty does a parade lap around his his living room um look in europe the smart 4-4 the four-seater kanto in europe it seems like anybody could tow anything you know they put a a camper caravan on the back of something i mean top gear you know they go up the swiss alps with a you know a smart card a camper um look it's not recommended just like it's not recommended to replace the battery in your apple phone by yourself or your you know whatever i tried that once yeah it didn't probably that great it did not go well look you could find forums and i looked online you can find forums where people say like yeah i tow and oh i put this on and yes i'm sure physically mechanically can be done not recommended it seems to be also those forums say good luck with your gearbox uh the his your future of your gear box by doing that you know your transmission so um it'd be interesting to know if it's a fake or a real uh but it certainly does look like right to use ryan's words hokie um our final question comes joe from new jersey who says i'm interested in buying a 2018-2020 honda accord i like the features of the touring but hate the 19-inch wheels too showy and prone to curbing you know rubbing on the curb and getting rash rub you know messed up with swapping them for 17-inch wheels affect any of the touring features like the adaptive suspension would dealers be able to do this at little to no cost uh so ryan our tire expert first jump in on this tell us tell us what he's been giving up or gaining if he does that sure or changing a couple of things so it's great that he recognizes that it comes with these 19-inch wheels um they can be potentially uh a pain i mean they they're more prone to hitting power or to you know having pothole damage they're more expensive to replace we just did a um a story on uh potholes and how a low aspect ratio tire a tire with less sidewall um is more prone to damage there's just less cushion there right unfortunately this honda accord only comes from the factory with a 19 inch wheel so yeah you could put you could probably figure out a smaller size rim you probably go down to a 17 inch rim as long as it clears the brakes um the dealer probably not going to do that it's probably not going to do that for you this car was designed with 19-inch wheels from the factory and we at consumer reports would tell you you should always stick with the same size uh type uh speed rating tire that comes on your vehicle um you know unless of course if you're putting um excuse me putting winter tires on um you know but in the winter you're driving slower and it's colder so there's different um protocol there but um i would the beauty of this is he hasn't bought a car yet and we always tell people before you buy a car to pay attention to what kind of tires come on it because it could be expensive down the road or just not fit your lifestyle um so unfortunately i would say you probably should look for maybe an accord that has that you know i know he likes the uh touring package but he should look for an accord that has a more realistic uh tire package for his lifestyle as opposed to trying to put on a different wheel and tire on this car um because again it was designed from the factory to perform a certain way like that and you will be changing the handling a little bit um so that's that well you know to that point i i reached out to honda and just you know just kind of like you know is he right you know just wanted to make sure not not you know nothing joe's got something wrong you know he's he's making a big error but i wanted to get their opinion on it and the quote that a honda spokesperson gave me was we do extensive development in tuning for a given model and trim such as the accord touring including optimizing the suspension settings for the original wheel tire setup the change noted below would be significant with a sidewall that would be considerably taller to maintain the same outer diameter and it could affect a variety of vehicle characteristics including handling and nvh noise vibration harshness so to his question would it affect the adaptive suspension according to honda definitely would and like you said ryan you know the diff you have to swap out different tire size and you know sidewall heights and such aspect ratio so um you're not going to get a deal or joe is going to do this right monty i mean it's unlikely to happen yeah unlikely and i have nothing to add because they're already left on a high note so if i were to say anything it would just hurt my you know my street cred so so we'll come down from the peak and just say joe probably not going to happen with that wouldn't really be a good idea um sorry it's not gonna work out for you but on that note we're going to have to wrap up this episode as always check the show notes below for more information on what we talked about send us your questions your comments your reactions your videos talking cars at icloud.com as always thanks for watching and we'll see you next time or something if that's even a word\n"