The Grey NATO – 326 – Imperfect Products (Land Rover vs. Jeep)
Published on Thu, 24 Apr 2025 06:00:00 -0400
Synopsis
In this episode, hosts Jason Heaton and James Stacey explore the concept of "imperfect products" through the lens of their respective vehicles - Jason's Land Rover Defender and James' Jeep Wrangler. They discuss how these mechanically simple but flawed vehicles align perfectly with their specific needs and lifestyles. The hosts cover various aspects including practicality, serviceability, community support, off-road capability, and "street cred." Despite their imperfections, both vehicles provide their owners with unique satisfaction and utility. The episode concludes with their usual final notes segment, featuring recommendations for a Land Rover rescue documentary and Speed.co's automotive content, plus a new pen collaboration between Watches of Espionage and Tactile Turn.
Links
Transcript
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| Jason Heaton | Hello and welcome to another episode of The Graynado, a loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving, driving gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode 326 and it's proudly brought to you by the always growing TGN supporter crew. We thank you all so much for your continued support. And if you'd like to support the show, please visit thegraynado.com for more details. My name is Jason Heaton and I'm joined as ever by my friend and co-host James Stacy, north of the border. James, how's it going? You're getting ready to fly off to the other coast in a few days here. |
| James Stacey | I sure am, man. I was, you know, home for a weekend and then heading out for probably one of the last trips, you know, with the baby on the horizon. But that's for the Vancouver Timepiece show, which I'm incredibly excited about. I don't normally let myself get too excited, but knowing, you know, kind of how the team with, you know, Jason Hutton in the lead there executed the Toronto show, I really think this is going to be a lot of fun. I'm obviously super pumped to be back in my favourite city. in Vancouver, gonna see some friends, gonna see some great brands, gonna see some great watches. Yeah, and I think we should have a really good time. So I go out in a couple of days and I'm there for the weekend. Obviously, if you're around and you're attending the show, I'll be there all day Saturday. So please, if you spot me, feel free to come say hi, that sort of thing. I would love to connect. I'll have a pocket full of stickers. So let me know if you're in need of any of that kind of stuff. I'll do my best to fashion and get everybody set up, but looking forward to that very much. And then for those of you who are in the city and will be there Sunday evening, and I've already shared this on the Slack, and many of you have RSVP'd, and it was mentioned in last week's episode, but we are doing an event with Marathon again, like we did in the Toronto show last year, but this is also a co-event with Rolldorf & Co. So that's going to be Sunday night from 6 to 8 p.m. So after the show, a nice time to hang out before people head off to dinners. Assuming you're not leaving immediately to get home on Sunday, feel free to RSVP. The link is in the show notes. I would say we're about 75% full as I record this so we don't have room for a ton more people, but you know try and get in there if you can and And certainly if you end up not being able to to get in you can send me an email And we'll see about a waitlist and that sort of thing but very much looking forward to that event It's gonna be an incredible weekend and like I said if you're there be sure to say hi I'm excited to kind of kick around Vancouver for a weekend and see some great watches, so it should be a lot of fun |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, I would think that it can't be a bad event. I mean, it sounds like we've seen what Jason put together in Toronto and then to do it in a city like Vancouver. And it sounds like the venue is pretty cool. It is, yeah. And the event you've put together with Rolled Orphan Marathon, it all adds up to a good formula. So sorry I won't be able to be there, but I can't wait to hear how it goes and see the photos and that sort of thing. |
| James Stacey | For sure. Yeah, yeah. We'll miss you for sure, but looking forward to having you here for the Toronto show. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, yeah. We have one more kind of bit of housekeeping to mention before we move on. Obviously, if you haven't been living under a rock for the past month or so, you're aware that there have been some tariffs in the news lately. The US has kind of been in a bit of a trade war with various countries and issuing tariffs on imported goods and other countries have been offering their own reciprocal tariffs. We're not a political show. We're not going to get into analysis of that. But as things happen, it does trickle down and we are feeling the impact of that in the form of potentially some costing issues with our own merchandise, which we're still teasing out the details of that and finding things out. But We have gotten some questions from our international audience members, subscribers that have been questioning about ordering t-shirts and straps and things and what will be subject to import duties and higher fees in that regard due to the tariffs. The short answer is we're not sure. We're looking into this. We're talking with our fulfillment company to kind of find out where they exactly fulfill from because they do try to do it closer to where products are being delivered, but we're not always sure where that is or how that impacts import duties and things like that. So thanks for your patience. I guess if you're concerned about it, maybe hold off, don't buy, and we'll certainly try to get more clarity around it and inform you. Hopefully in short order within the next couple of episodes, we'll just give updates and see what we can find out. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, kind of a unfortunate and entirely avoidable scenario. And certainly one that is impacting others a lot more than our t-shirts and NATO straps. So don't worry about us if the if the possible increase or even just the idea that you might be supporting Whatever is a problem. Just don't buy it'll be okay. I promise. Yeah, it's not gonna have a major impact on the show There won't be fewer episodes if we sell fewer t-shirts. It's just a nice way to make a little bit of cash on the side Yeah, and support some of these endeavors like the party in Vancouver and that sort of thing, but please This is a wild time for these sorts of elements, and there are much more serious impacts than, like I said, our merch scenario. So do what's right for you, and as we have information, whether it's from Printful or otherwise, we will share it in a transparent manner on the show, and we'll just keep moving forward as sort of a crew from there. So we'll deal with this as it becomes real and measurable, I would say. |
| Jason Heaton | Well, speaking of not living under a rock, but maybe avoiding current events a little bit, sounds like you got up to the cottage this past weekend. Was this your first trip up there to kind of get away? |
| James Stacey | Yeah, this is the first one. So I had mentioned in the past that there was a major storm that I characterize as a windstorm, which wasn't really accurate. It was actually a buildup of ice and snow on the trees that caused a truly massive amount of destruction in the area. There was up to as many as 30,000 people without power. I think there's still a good portion of that without power in the area. Oh my gosh. My property, the property that the cottage is on, I mean, the trees look like they went through a wood chipper. I don't think there's a single birch that didn't lose 20 feet off the top of it. There's wood and branches and detritus absolutely everywhere, so it's going to be a fairly large-scale cleanup job. I have a friend that works for the power company, Dan, if you're listening, shout out. He was up there for a couple weeks of OT and just he said he saw like a level of just property destruction that's hard to describe for this area because we're not in a tornado alley really. But that's kind of what it looks like. Thankfully no damage to the to the old cottage which is great. I think a branch punctured one of the awnings we had, which I don't know how that's possible. Must have been a terrifying thing. Glad it didn't hit a person. But it punched like a fist-sized hole through an awning next to the house. So I'll repair that at some point. But other than that, we got very lucky. But yeah, went up for a day, flew the drone, picked up a chainsaw for the next time I go up. as there's quite a bit of chainsawing to be done. So that's obviously a little fun kind of side benefit to having to clean up all this wood for the next couple months probably. Summer's worth of firewood, maybe. I mean, absolutely, yeah. And we have a very good friend of ours is at the edge of the property and he lives there year-round and has a lot of use for firewood, so it won't go to waste or anything like that. But between our, you know, weekend fires and his, you know, warming his house, I think we'll get through the woods certainly, but some of it's going to require some, like, engineering challenges. One of the trees kind of prominently on the property is almost split down the trunk. Oh yeah. And would be a huge amount of work to dismantle or move in any way, so we'll have to figure out a plan for that kind of stuff and And thankfully, we have like a wood chipper and some industrial level stuff on the property. So we should be able to figure it out as a group, which will be OK. And it gives you something to do, which is fun, too. You can call the Jeep into service and yank a trunk out or something. It's the Jeep or the tractor, for sure. We've got a small Kubota that does a great job and has the accessory drive and all that kind of stuff. So I'm sure we'll get through it with time, but mostly just feeling pretty fortunate, lucky, whatever term you prefer, that none of these branches landed on somebody's cottage. Especially a couple of them, it would have been gone. The building would be gone. |
| Jason Heaton | Did the drone footage show the extent of the damage? Were you able to kind of observe from above? |
| James Stacey | Yeah, I can send you a clip of it. But yeah, I mean, that drone is really impressive. I'm still learning how to fly it. But thankfully, the cottage is quite a forgiving scenario, especially now that most of the trees are a bit shorter. you know, just kind of coast around. But I had a great time. The other thing I learned, man, I didn't know this, but we went to the cottage flew the drone. So you get like, I don't know, maybe 20 minutes out of each battery. So you get about 40 minutes in the air. Yeah. Along with that, I got home. You know, because we had we had shot the batteries and had a memory card with a bunch of bunch of footage on it. So I got home and then I was just kind of like curious. I was like, it'd be really cool to try like the, you know, the ones where you wear the headset. |
| Unknown | Oh, yeah. |
| James Stacey | Not specifically to do the acrobatic stuff, which like even watching on YouTube kind of makes me dizzy. Yeah. But more to battle the sunlight. The kit that you gave me has the really nice controller with the big screen on it. Yeah. But I was like, you know, in bright sunlight, you're kind of squinting and you're not really seeing, especially if you're not that close to something, everything's quite small, right? So I connected those Rokid AR glasses I have and they work. It outputs over HDMI mini or an HDMI protocol, so you can put these on like sunglasses and fly the drone. I'm very excited to get more drone footage in this summer. It's going to be fun. I need to figure out if I can fly it off of and land it on a kayak. because i think that would be really fun would be to take it to the north end of the of the bay where there's this incredible like marsh delta yeah which is like full of cool birds and the water's gin clear and with all it'd just be super fun to fly out there but it's a little too it's probably It's further than I would fly the drone just on its own power. Yeah, I think it's very far. It's very far. So it'll be interesting to see if I could put the whole pelican in the in my big kayak, the sea kayak. Yeah. And I guarantee I could take off from the kayak. I have no clue how you would land it. back at the kayak. I think you might have to kayak over to someone's dock and land it on the dock and then put it back in the case, but I'll practice. The first time I ever flew a drone was in Tobermory with you. You were diving and I flew it off the back of a dive boat and when we were done shooting a couple, we just needed a couple of clips. That's it. Like a few seconds even for gifs and stuff like that of like bubbles coming up next to the boat. Yeah. So I'm flying. We're flying over the grotto. It's great. And I go, oh, well, I'll land it. And I pressed the little button to have it come back to where it took off and land. Well, the boat had drifted like 30 or 40 feet. So it goes out about 30 feet off the bow and just on the screen goes, all right, I'm going to land now and just starts lowering. And I'm like, cancel, cancel, cancel, cancel. Was it my drone? It was Houdinki's drone. |
| Jason Heaton | Drones are easy to fly until they're not. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, the thing I haven't quite figured out is the visual perspective of the camera. Oh, yeah, yeah. So it's very difficult to tell how close you are to stuff because it's such a wide angle. Right. Ideally, I don't crash it at a great speed, a great height, or over water, but we'll see. Yeah, yeah. Definitely, definitely a good time. But yeah, it was great to get up to the cottage and, and I'm now the proud owner of my first ever chainsaw. So hopefully I keep all the digits this summer. But yeah, looking forward to putting that to work as well. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| James Stacey | What have you been up to? |
| Jason Heaton | It seems very summery. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, for sure. I mean, man, I need this season pretty hard. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, it's it's been coming slow. I mean, spring has been flirting a bit here with warmer weather, but it's been slow coming. Yeah. So I'm not going to dwell on this much longer here. My sort of home improvement renovation experiences. But I mentioned last week that I had tried my hand at hanging some drywall in this past weekend. Despite saying that we weren't going to do it, my girlfriend and I decided, let's try mudding and taping. I think I told you, we're going to hire that out. You're like, yeah, good idea. The pros can do it really fast and really well. We just decided, let's give it a try. It was as miserable as one might imagine. in a way it's satisfying if you get it right but there's just so much that that can be frustrating about it especially when you get into like angles and corners and oh yeah tight fits i mean if you're just doing kind of a straight line somewhere it's uh it's fairly easy but um anyway so we we did one coat and then i think we'll call in some professionals to tidy up our work and finish it but yeah that was that was this past weekend and then you know speaking of travel I haven't been I guess I went to the Philippines a couple months ago but I've got a trip to Scotland coming up that I've been kind of keeping under wraps for a while but it's been in the works for a couple of months now and it sort of was one of the reasons why I'm not going to Vancouver it was just kind of hot on the heels of this weekend and So I'll be doing a project that I can't really talk about yet over in the Hebrides, so the islands off the west coast of Scotland, and I'm really looking forward to it. It's actually involving a former... teasing is not our usual style here. So I apologize in advance, but it does involve a past guest of the show and one of our listeners is going to be along helping out with this project. So there I'll leave that as a major tease, but you'll find out about it in the future. I'm not too far out, but can't wait for that. That'll be fun. I'll be over there for about 10 days and Contemplating I'm not making any promises yet, but I will be back in Glasgow around about the 17th of May and if If all everything works out it might be nice to put together a little informal meetup for whoever's around from our TGN crew But stay tuned for that. It would just be something informal, you know, meet up for a couple of beers one night somewhere. But so stand by for that. |
| James Stacey | That's great. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| James Stacey | Yep. Stay tuned for Vancouver stuff and also for Glasgow stuff. Yeah. Great city. Fantastic city. Yeah. Full of nice people. |
| Unknown | All right. |
| James Stacey | All right. Well, good stuff. I think it's time for a little bit of risk check and then we'll get into a show topic that kind of flips some stuff on its head. I think we're going to have a good time. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, I think so. I'm wearing a watch I haven't had on in a while. This is the Christopher Ward super compressor. It's a watch that Christopher Ward sent me last year and I've been very tardy in kind of a story revolving around the whole kind of super compressor concept, but I need to right one of these days, but until then I'm enjoying wearing the watch. It is the one with the very colorful, very springy dial. Let's put it that way. It's orange and light blue and kind of this iridescent darker blue. It's a beautiful watch with the internal bezel and I've got it on the bracelet and it's just a really comfy watch. Christopher Ward makes extremely comfortable watches. I think when you tried out the C60 Lumiere, I think you experienced the same thing. There's something, some voodoo they use to get their cases just beautifully sculpted. They just wear really well. It's a really comfortable watch. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I agree. It looks like you've got something appropriate on your wrist. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, I'm in a very Vancouver state of mind, and as much as I've been wearing a ton out of the CWN1, and it's just absolutely going. I also did a couple days with the Explorer 2, which I hadn't worn in months. Oh, yeah. What a great watch. Yeah. Just really, really good, especially coming back after like... I have this sort of developing media theory, like if I'm on a long drive, we did some driving this weekend up to the cottage and I was just kind of zoning out. And we were listening because Sarah was interested and we were getting back through it was the, we were listening to the acquired episode about Rolex. And they're going over the history of the brand. And I'm like, it's all this like deeply tool-ish stuff until about 2010. And not to say that their watches today aren't as capable as anything they made in the past, it's the opposite. They're better made, they're more capable, but they're also, they're less tools. And I don't mean it just in the zone. This is where I haven't completed this meaty theory of how Rolex transitioned from being pretty much like a tool-ish, like they were luxurious, but not in the scope of 90s luxury. And again, this is not a full idea. I'm just sharing it because it's on my mind. but i think it's linked to eventually phones got to the point where you were looking at them all the time and the need for like it was one thing to say like oh we all have the time in our pocket with our nokia or a motorola or whatever right but it became something else when these devices where became something where you were looking at it all day yeah like you and i jason we were old enough to remember where you took a phone out to make a phone call or or to reply a couple of words in t9 via text message but you weren't going to have a whole conversation yeah right and you weren't going to spend you didn't spend the day like we didn't talk about screen time we talked about standby time a phone lasted for 48 hours yeah now you get four hours of screen time on a premium phone, or maybe six, right? And I think the difference is we got to a point where nobody was really not, didn't have the time really close to their eyeline because you're looking at your phone or your computer all day. And I think there's a world, and I'm sure it doesn't affect just Rolex, but I think there's a world in which Rolex adjusted to that by making the product more special rather than more sorry by presenting the product as being special rather than presenting the product as being a tool yeah you know what i mean it was a differentiator to to make it kind of a more of a luxury special thing than something that like it's is useful Yeah, and I would say that also it coincided with some timing that I haven't quite wrapped my head around. The extreme, almost unparalleled rise of the Daytona and how quickly that happened all kind of seemed to come at the same time that they were moving to Cerachrom, moving to slightly larger models, moving to... you know, shinier, higher end, higher price points, that sort of thing. And I think, you know, eventually I'll come up with a full idea, but this is what's been kind of kicking around in my brain. And I think the 16570 is a really good example of that, you know, a model that came out in the late 80s. survived the 90s with evolutions, but really it's the same watch in many ways, in most ways. And I think the jump from that one to the six-digit, the 216570, starts to paint that picture. But the big jump is like from your 1406OM to the six-digit subs. I think really, that really paints that if you hold both of those in your hands, I feel like you go from sort of the end of the era where this was a watch made for professionals who do professional stuff, and the start of an era where they took all of that quality and just started to frame it as more of an aspirational luxury, a thing you buy when you've succeeded in some stuff, even if you're not using it to do the things that you succeeded at, right? If that makes sense. less of the, if you were doing this, you'd be doing, you'd be wearing a Rolex or volcanoes and mountaineering and, you know, cave exploration and, yeah, you know, undersea exploration. And I feel like the last little slice of that was kind of like the James Cameron with the deep sea was sort of, you know, we see less of that now than we did. We see more of like a Roger Federer just wearing a watch or, you know, things that kind of dial it up a little bit as far as more of a lifestyle element. And I think it's an interesting story, especially if you go back and if you haven't listened to the several hour long acquired pod and certainly it's been widely praised and it deserves every amount of praise. So we're not the first ones on this, but if you want to learn something about a Rolex, it helps to start where they started and then get to where they are now. don't you i love to yeah i've been i was wearing that but didn't even get to the actual watch goodness sakes james uh today i'm wearing my uh vancouver lee from uh halios and roldorf uh so this is a watch i got back in 2018 when i left vancouver it was a gift from uh roldorf and from jason lim at halios uh who i was quite close with when i was living in the city and it's the black DLC Seaforth with the time-only layout in like a rich metallic green and cream tuxedo dial. There aren't too many of these, especially not in this spec, and it's Vancouver on my wrist, which makes me very happy, and I don't wear it a ton. But when I do, it does make me quite happy and I'll be wearing that along. I'll bring the CWN one for anyone who would like to see it, of course, and I'm sure I'll have it on or with me, but I'll have the Vancouver LE with me in Vancouver as well. Nice. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| James Stacey | Good. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. Good pick. Very fitting for the week. Yeah. Just a quick coda to your Rolex observations. Don't you love to think about modern Rolex and how incredibly superior the watches are and what Edmund Hillary or Reinhold Messner or those guys would have thought of having the modern version back then and how useful and great with the great new loom and the you know, scratch-free bezels and the, you know, solid end links and great clasps. And, you know, it's funny to think how, how much these watches have evolved into these incredible technological wonders. They're so good. Oh yeah. Immune to a magnetism, et cetera. And then, you know, if you give, you know, a modern sub to a, you know, 1960s Royal Navy mine clearance diver or something, it would just blow his mind, you know? |
| James Stacey | Yeah, you have to wonder even like what Cousteau would think of a modern Submariner. Yeah. Like it would just feel, even just the tolerances. Yeah. And like from a guy who understood engineering and had like seen how watches were made, had made dive gear, like all of these elements would, like he would have had I think the like perspective to understand, but it would be wild. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| James Stacey | Imagine showing Cousteau a modern car. yeah right right like it's totally the packaging is so much more intense than it used to be yeah and and that's kind of a part of what we're talking about is cars today we have that's that kind of gives us a link into our into our main topic right uh but i agree it would it is kind of fascinating to think like in 50 60 years how much some of these things have remained the same like there's a lot about a submariner that's the same there's a lot about a Land Rover Defender up until a few years ago, that's the same as it was a while ago. Yeah. So probably time to jump into the main topic. Recently, we did get a message, at least one saying, you know, I think it's time for another episode of Perfect Product. And the thing with perfect product, I would love to do more, but there are so few perfect products. And they kind of have to find us, and then they have to become so entrenched in your life that you almost forget they're there. They're so good at what they do. And you can look back at some of the perfect product episodes we've done in the past, stuff we really love, stuff I probably still love, but stuff I love to the extent that I don't think about them that much. They're just part of my day, the way I move through the world, that sort of thing. That's what makes them perfect. Yeah, it's that whole idea of like the things you own eventually own you. And you don't want that you want you want things that make your life better and allow you freedom and all these sorts of things. And so for a little while, we'd been kicking around the idea of like, you know, highlighting sort of our vehicles, because we both have two fairly specific cars, both not known for their perfection, you know, I would say. But at the same time, they represent a certain type of very specific personal perfection for us, or at least elements of them do. So we thought we would flip perfect product on its head and kind of praise some imperfect products. So this is imperfect products one that we love and that'll be Jason's Land Rover Defender and my Jeep Wrangler. I promise this won't be exclusively about the like the driving experience or the this or the that. It'll be about like a broader scope of how these vehicles and how a vehicle should fit into your life and how you really have to try and buy something that's specific to your needs and that sort of thing. But yeah, I thought we'd kind of give it up. We've got a handful of categories that will kind of bounce back and forth between. Jason, maybe we start with a very brief description of, in your case, why a Land Rover and how did you get to this one? |
| Jason Heaton | It, I think it was, it was years ago. Um, land rovers have always kind of existed in the background for me. I mean, I knew what they were, you know, land cruisers actually, I think it caught my eye earlier when I was, you know, maybe in my twenties or something. Um, and it looked at a few way back then and moved on to different, different. more practical or sportier cars, so to speak, but then I can remember doing a, like a Jeep safari in Sri Lanka, going out and looking at wild elephants and leopards and things. And I remember riding in the back of Mitsubishi's that Willie's licensed to make kind of Jeep knockoffs or, you know, I shouldn't say knockoffs, but you know, Jeeps were made by Mitsubishi for awhile. And I remember just riding in the back of this thing and like, this is so cool. Like this bare bones vehicle that can go anywhere. And. At the same time I I always remembered there was a guy that I used to work with who had an old Chevy like giant crew cab Silverado pickup like from the 80s or something just a absolute piece of junk But like it worked and he always just lent it to people to use to haul furniture or use if they needed and it just ran and you didn't care how dirty it was or beat up it was and So I always had this idea in my head of, I want something like that. I want a vehicle that you can kind of beat up and use for a lot of things, but has this evocative kind of inspirational quality to it. And given my anglophilia, you know, my interest in kind of British culture and history, It was kind of the perfect coming together of those elements in a Land Rover. And so, gosh, it was probably now eight years ago or more that, uh, I found the, an old series three Land Rover. So my, if you've seen pictures of my small blue one, it's an 88 inch wheelbase. So small one, um, from 1976, I got that first off of Craigslist, uh, for, $7,900 and I still have it. And, you know, worked on it. I still have it. It's great. I love it. It might be my sentimental favorite, but it has its limitations. It can't really go on the highway. It's got a max speed of about 45 or 50 comfortably. etc. It's old, not terribly safe, whatever. So the itch remained for something a little more day-to-day practical, and The Defender is the logical extension of that. The Defender is coming up on five years old. And it is a 1993 Defender. So it's a 110 two, two door or three door if you want to call it that long wheelbase with without rear doors, passenger doors, and got that from a local shop that was importing them from from England right hand drive. It's a turbo diesel engine. And It just kind of captured my imagination. It had all the elements. You could camp in the back. You could use it as kind of a rough and tumble work truck if you want. It could go on the highway. It looked cool. It has the spare tire on the bonnet, as they say, on the hood and the front. Yeah. And I guess the rest is history. I think, you know, briefly, you know, just to finish the story, I, when I got it, this shop that imported them was kind of more given to importing them and then zhuzhing them up, you know, really restoring them, doing kind of rest, not resto mods, but like run it, you know, full, full on down to the frame, you know, restorations and then selling them for, you know, 80 to a hundred thousand dollars with, you know, leather seats and wood trim and all this stuff. I didn't want that. You know, I wanted one that was mechanically very good, like gone over really well, but I didn't care about the aesthetics. So strip out the headliner, the carpet, um, you know, I didn't care about faded paint, et cetera. So that's what I ended up with. And currently it is my, it's my other than the series three, which is more of a hobby vehicle parked in the garage. It's my daily driver. So that's, that's where I'm at. |
| James Stacey | Yeah. Okay, cool. Good, good backstory on that one. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. How about you with the Jeep? How long have you had that now? |
| James Stacey | I bought the Jeep in September of 2019. Okay. All right. Yeah. I bought it with 171,000 kilometers. It was about... This is the one thing I couldn't go... I definitely have the receipt somewhere. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. |
| James Stacey | What year is it? It's a 2011. Okay. So it's a JK, a JKU if you care. It's an unlimited, so it's a four-door. I understand some Wrangler people feel that sacrilege i'm okay with that i have two kids so you have to make concessions uh i also prefer a slightly longer wheelbase if you've ever driven especially driven hard a short wheelbase a standard um in the snow i like the longer wheelbase especially again for moving my family around safely i don't need to be sideways all the time if it's a little slippery i don't mind it but i don't need it um You know how it is. But yeah, so mine is a Sahara from 2011. It's a little rusty. It's an Ontario car, so you're going to deal with some rust. But for the most part, when I got it, it was in decent shape. It's been in a couple of scrapes since then. uh it got hit real good in philly and lost a couple fenders and damaged some doors and deep wheels and rocker panels and all this but you know i put two new fenders on it for a few hundred bucks and uh and you know i'm sure they kind of stay on it's every it is a vehicle held together by little plastic clips If you're familiar with how Chrysler was making vehicles in the, you know, around 2010, then I think you'd know that there's goods and bads to these. Yeah, I paid about 20 for it. You know, the funny thing is, is I do sort of come from a Jeep family. My dad has had a couple. He actually had a green TJ, two-door. And he's had a handful of others over the years. He went into WJs, which are the Grand Cherokees and that sort of thing. So I was always comfortable with the platform, but really when I buy a car, when I need to buy a car, I really try and be intentional about what the car needs to have, its features. because I'm not so much a brand guy. I actually don't care one way or another about Jeep or the culture of Jeeps. It just doesn't matter that much to me. Canadians like Jeeps because they're capable and easy to drive in bad weather and can do a lot of stuff. And it kind of aligns with the Canadian. So they're a very popular vehicle here in Canada. But I don't, you know, I'm not going to Jeep meetups and that sort of thing. It is a car for me, and in many ways I see it as a car that I don't worry about. Mechanically, I keep it running as best I can, but I don't care about the body. I don't really care about the rust. I don't really care about the dent in the fender from that Maxima or Altima that came out of nowhere, as Altimas like to do. You know, that was in a parking lot, so it could have been worse. It was pretty bad for the Altima, a little bit of a dent for the Jeep. But yeah, I just don't worry about it, which I think especially if you're if you live in a big in a city like Toronto. Also, for those of you who don't spend time driving in Canada, the quality of driver here is very low. So it's kind of a scary place to have a car you really care about. Yeah. And I don't really want to have a daily that I care about. I want to have a daily I like, but I don't want it to ever be precious. Yeah. I just want a car I could park wherever I want to park it. I can leave it unlocked if I want. You know, I definitely aspire and hope to be able to have a car that I have just for the fun of having it at some point. But I'm not at that point in my life. You have to be realistic. So this is a tool for all the other stuff that my family likes to do. And that includes a lot at the cottage, which is why the Jeep makes sense. But really, like when I when I first got to Toronto in the very early or really the last couple days of 2018. I took like seven months before we bought a car just to kind of kick around and decide what I needed and that sort of thing. And I decided I definitely wanted something with a stick, a six-speed manual preferably, and I wanted something you could take the roof off, would be great. And then I also wanted something that was amazing in the snow and could carry my family. And pretty quickly, you're down to one vehicle, a Wrangler. There aren't so many vehicles that are still available with a stick. There aren't so many vehicles that you can treat the way you treat a Wrangler. So I'm not part of the cult necessarily, but I do really like these cars. And I think if you're realistic about your expectations, they can be a great vehicle for you too. But But they're not perfect. You know, they're kind of a grab bag of problems and things you have to take care of. And, you know, Jason, I've been in your Defender. It might actually be more agricultural than than than the Jeep. But certainly if you're used to the experience of, say, a modern Honda. Yeah. this is like going into a tractor. Or if the Jeep is the car, the modern vehicle, the Honda is a Rolls Royce in terms of its noise floor, and the vibrations, and tire noise, and wind noise, and fuel economy, and all that kind of stuff. So I kind of grew up knowing something about Jeeps. I've talked about my extreme love of Jurassic Park, and obviously the presence of the Wrangler in there. And I just kind of like the vibe that the Wrangler gave off for most of it. Eventually, nowadays, they're quite expensive. They have more of a lifestyle thing. You see a lot of people that are treating them like supercars and covering them in lights. And look, I love the fact that we live in a world where people will take any vehicle, whether it's a tuk-tuk or a K-van or a Jeep Wrangler, and do crazy things with it. But I just want mine to be mostly stock. Really, if you buy one, the thing you have to change immediately is the headlights. They're almost useless. So LED or whatever is a good option. And because there's so many Jeeps out there, and because there's such a culture of modding them, the options are kind of endless. You can spend nothing, you can spend thousands of dollars from all sorts of different ones. So yeah, that's kind of how I found it. Sorry, how long have you had the White Lander, the Defender? |
| Jason Heaton | Well, I was counting State Park annual stickers on the windscreen the other day, and I think that's kind of the best way to tell. I think I have five on there, so five or six years. |
| James Stacey | Oh, six years, okay. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, the old, the blue on the Series 3, probably eight years, but this one, I think five or six years. Yeah, it surprised me that it was that long, but yeah, it's been, we've had a good run so far, yeah. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, so the first category that I think we'd get into after having the backstory and what we paid for it and that sort of thing is like, how would you find... And then again, we're doing this from a very personal standpoint. This is not a review or us telling you to buy these cars. In many ways, I want to be very clear. I think the Jeep follows the same rule that I would say for dogs and babies, which if somebody came up to me and said, hey, should I buy a Jeep? I'd go, no. And if they still buy it anyways, they're probably the right type of owner. Same with a dog, same with a kid. This is not the same experience as having a Honda Civic. So I'm curious, with your Land Rover, over the five, six years, has it aligned with your expectations? Is this a vehicle you find practical and easy to use as a daily vehicle? you know, up, you know, until recently had a fairly modern Volvo, which would be a great example of a quiet, comfortable, capable, fuel efficient, nicely made, fast, safe, all these things that like Land Rovers and older Jeeps aren't. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, yeah, it was a stark contrast to go from one to the other. And just since last, Last summer, the Defender has become my only, kind of my daily, and in terms of daily practicality, it's yes and no. It's incredibly practical for a number of things. I've found that it acts like that old pickup truck I was telling you that a friend of mine used to have, this guy I used to work with, in that it's just so easy to just, I carry 10 foot lengths of lumber sheets of drywall on the roof of the full size door in the back and hold mulch and fire 800 pounds of firewood. In the back it's like a pickup truck with a topper because there are no rear seats it's just this long bed so. For those people out there, and there certainly are a lot of them that own pickup trucks, you know how practical a pickup truck is for that sort of thing. It's also nice that if I go swimming at the lake down the street or kayaking and I get wet or whatever, full of sand or mud, I get in with vinyl seats and no carpet. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. So in that, in those regards, it's very practical. Um, it also happens to get, you know, surprisingly it has a four cylinder, you know, two and a half liter four cylinder turbo diesel engine that has good torque, not much horsepower. Um, but it's incredibly fuel efficient. I mean, I get 25 to 30 miles per the gap per gallon. So that's, that's, those are all check boxes in the positive for practicality that the downside of it is. to to pump a very heavy clutch pedal in you know city traffic is is tiring and and just all the amount of shifting it's geared so low that like you just you spend a lot of time shifting and it's it's tiring so it's just tiring to kind of get around town it does not have it doesn't even have a it has a heater blower but it doesn't have a fan so like you don't get any vent air blowing on you in the hot weather. There's no air conditioning, certainly. So in terms of like, you want to go out for a nice dinner in the summer, in the evening, you're going to show up with your back soaking wet, sweaty. It's very loud. So if you're you know, riding with a passenger, um, having a conversation, you know, anything above, you know, 40 miles per hour is kind of shouting at each other. Um, and you know, so in the, in that respect, it's, and I guess I'm, I'm leaking a little bit into our driving experience category here, but in terms of daily practicality, yes and no, I guess. And if we're scoring things, you know, on a scale of one to five, I would say, I would probably put it right at like a 3.5. If we're talking utilitarianism, it would get a 5 out of 5. But with all the other things considered, let's go kind of right down the middle and say, let's just say a 3 in that category. Right. OK. How about you? I mean, I've driven in the Jeep, and it's definitely, you can carry on conversations. It's more comfortable. It's faster. But I'm sure you have plenty to say about its practicality. It seems like a practical vehicle. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, I mean, for my uses, it's basically perfect. I don't drive enough for the fuel to matter. Like, it's not good on fuel at all. I would say we're getting loosely V8 fuel economy. It's a six that I drive fairly hard. These are engines that I firmly believe require to be driven. This is not an engine I care to baby. It's an engine I like to rev, I like to keep it I'll make sure that I check the boxes in terms of service, and then I drive it hard as much as I want. And this vehicle, since I bought it, has never actually let me down, including having two fenders ripped off of it, and we just drove it home. But yeah, I mean, it's been such a reliable vehicle. straightforward thing that hasn't really cost that much money to keep on the road. I'm trying to think if I've done anything that wouldn't be classed as a strict consumable that wasn't an upgrade. Upper control arm bushings. I had to have a shop do, and they were kind of expensive because of the labor, but they wore out. It's not a new vehicle. I really like vehicles from this era because they're modern, but they're not full of computers. I got in a brand new Land Cruiser not too long ago, and just the number of things that it was constantly beeping about kind of turned me off the whole appeal. if i'm honest yeah it was just you know you've got lane departure and attention this and you know it's just beeping and it needed something from from the driver like with some frequency yeah and with the with the wrangler like you know we put a we put a head unit in it so i have carplay and that that makes it as modern a vehicle as i require I wouldn't mind something that was safer in a major accident, it really isn't. And especially with the family and that sort of thing, when the next vehicle will have more of a focus on one, you know, something Sarah would like to drive, but also something that's quite a bit safer than an older, mostly rusted out Jeep. But as far as like normal practicality goes, like man, it just, it starts, it runs, it doesn't matter what the weather is. I drove it back quite comfortably Christmas Day, two years ago, which is one of the biggest storms that went through Buffalo. So much so that I was driving along and, you know, we knew the storm was bad. We were driving through heavy, like, sitting snow. And we got to the border and they're like, yeah, every road you took to get here is technically closed. I was like, I mean like yeah, we were only going 40. Yeah, but like it was fine. Yeah, no big deal I think we were in two-wheel for most of it. Yeah, but otherwise, you know, you're it's a pretty easy Reliable car the the it's got heated seats because it's a Sahara. It's got cool AC Yeah, so it does it does the it checks the basic boxes and does it pretty well? Yeah, and man I could take the roof off of it. I |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, it really is the sweet spot of eras of cars. And it's a Jeep, so four-wheel drive, you could tow with it, you could yank a stump with it, you could get it dirty and hose it out and all that. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, if you want to go to the dump and you hit a rock, nothing really matters. I love not having to be precious about it. And look, I know people who have Their daily is also their baby. And it's... Stressful. You know, like, it's, well, it's like a mixed bag. Every time you get out of the car, you look back at it, which is awesome. Yeah. Because it's cool and you love it. But also, like, you're at a dinner or they parked in a parking spot they didn't love, and that's all they're thinking about. Right. And, like, I get it. That comes from a passion that I definitely have, but I just, I've avoided putting myself in the position of having to worry about such a car. Yeah. But yeah, I think for daily practicality, it's... really easy to move stuff around. Seats fold down, big space in the back. If you need something really big, you take the roof off. If you want it to be like a beach cruiser, like a convertible experience, you can do that. Mine's modern enough to have what they call the freedom panels, which are just the two fiberglass panels above the front seats come off. So like I did that just the other day to take my daughter to volleyball. It was nice and sunny. It was 15, 16 Celsius out. We went for a drive and it's just nice. You get the sun on your face. You get to hear the exhaust a little bit more, but at any moment you can just grab those from the trunk and put them back on. And it's like two heavy screws, like, you know, with a plastic bit. So you can turn them with your hand and a couple toggles. It's great, but obviously They're not known for their practicality in general. They're not known for their efficiency in general. They're definitely not known for the build quality in general. And yeah, I would say the build quality is pretty poor. But it's not port on any of the really important stuff. The engine absolutely drinks oil, but you go into the manual and that's spec. So I carry oil. It's not that big a deal. You just do what you got to do for the vehicle. So it doesn't bother me. And again, would I recommend this to a general audience? No, not at all. It's a more specific experience. I've owned cars that had more generalist appeal, and that experience led me towards something that has a lot of flaws. But on a sunny afternoon driving up to the cottage with the top down, And you know, you can't hear the music anyway, so you're just enjoying the wind and the sound of the exhaust. And if I take my shoes off, I can heel-toe pretty effectively. And you've got, you know, it's not a sports car by any extent, but I get 10%, 20% of that experience without any of the downfall. So yeah, for me, it's... I mean, we're talking about personal practicality. It's great. Yeah, I like it a lot. And if someday I don't have it, I will miss it, I think. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, yeah. Well, I think we've kind of covered practicality and driving experience kind of in one. So how about serviceability? Because I think that is something that in terms of, in this respect, we're talking about, can you fix it yourself? Yeah. I think that is something that is so lost in modern vehicles. We both kind of talked a little bit about the age of these vehicles and that we like kind of that more analog era. And I think, you know, for me, it's been a really key feature of owning both of these Land Rovers is it is It's not only necessary for me to fix them, because there just aren't shops that repair them here. These are imported vehicles that really largely don't exist in the US for all intents and purposes. And so I have had to learn how they work. And they're extremely simple. There's no electronics to speak of. There isn't a radio. There's nothing. There's about eight fuses in it. And it's, it's just all very mechanical and, and largely the same build as they were, you know, when, when Land Rover first was introduced in 1948, there was just this very slow evolution. And so for me, the serviceability is something I've had to learn and was a little intimidating at first. And I remember, you know, driving it and thinking, this is going to break down at any minute because they don't have a very. good reputation for reliability, but it doesn't. It really doesn't. It hasn't left me stranded. And I've had to learn so much along the way that it's actually empowering to have to learn how to fix it and then to do it successfully and then get in the car and drive it. And for the Defender specifically, since that's the car I'm talking about, I've you know, prop shafts and, um, you know, just, just last week I was developing a pretty bad oil leak and I had to replace the, the oil breather and the, and the hoses for that. And the oil pressure sending unit and, you know, gaskets and diesel piping that I replaced and, you know, put fog lamps on it and rewired lights and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, There's a good support network around the world. There's a lot of support for fixing these vehicles because there were so many made, even if they didn't come to the US. So it's easy to find information about it. The parts are a little trickier to get, but they're available. And then most of it is just basic hand tools to fix. There are very few special tools required. And the cliche is that Land Rover has been turning owners into mechanics since 1948. And I agree wholeheartedly with that and I don't begrudge it because it's something I knew what I was getting into, I signed up for, and it's part of the ownership experience that I actually enjoy. Some people might say, why would you own a vehicle that you have to be fixing all the time? But for me, it's actually something that has bolstered my confidence, not only in terms of the vehicle, but When you can do things yourself in one area, it oftentimes empowers you to try something else, like replacing a light fixture in your house or building something out of wood or whatever. So I think it kind of extends beyond the vehicle itself. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, I would agree for sure. And I think the important part there is being is knowing what you're getting into. Yeah. There was a time when even I would say when you like when your vehicle was made. Yeah. Unless you had a Land Rover buddy who had the book and maybe the other book and maybe another book. Yeah. you're kind of screwed but now with the internet yeah you can learn everything you need to know about a car you can buy the correct year you can i mean if you get really granular especially into performance cars enthusiast vehicles you can know the build date and whether or not it would have certain characteristics or not. This is more common in the Audi space, the VW space, that sort of thing. But I agree that it's important to know kind of what you're getting into with these things because setting expectations, if you buy a Toyota, you kind of expect it to be like a Toyota. and any problem you have with it's gonna feel crazy because it's a Toyota. But if you buy a Wrangler having read, you know, spent a few hours on Wrangler forums, nothing's gonna really surprise you. Maybe if it doesn't start. But I mean, not running well? That's kind of, I mean, par for the course, right? That sort of, you know, weird electronic stuff, especially if you decided to modify it? Yeah, I've done that. I've killed a couple batteries. Yeah, with the fog lights or with the sorry, not the fogs, the totally auxiliary lights I added, which I eventually removed, because they seem to just like to leach battery and destroyed an alternator and all this kind of stuff. But for the Jeep, I think it's largely similar, like this is a vehicle I kind of feel like it's probably still the same with a truly modern one. Maybe not the four by E with the batteries and everything. But for these gas powered ones, I just don't think they're that complicated as far as modern vehicles go. But for the most part, man, it's a very simple vehicle that's definitely not built to the standards of the era in which it was made. Where my limitation these days is probably I won't take the wheels off of it for service. That would go to the, simply because of the time. Yeah, that's required. And also I'm not really, especially as like a solo, purely solo mechanic, I'm not super interested in being underneath the vehicle when it's off the ground. But I mean, beyond that, I've basically been able to figure out anything that came up, whether it was upgrades, headlights, fog lights, the entire interior and all lighting I upgraded and rewired for LED. Well, so we I mean, we've served we've done a lot of service on it. Yeah. And with the exception of breaks, which I can do, but it's, you know, at a certain point, it's just I'm at I'm at the stage of my life when I don't do my own breaks currently. And I would love to have the time to do that do my own oil changes, all that kind of stuff used to do that. when I was a younger guy. But these days I would take it in for something like that. But otherwise you're able to do it kind of, you know, in the driveway or at the cottage. It never like break breaks. You know, I did some bad wiring and messed with the electrical system and then it broke. So I broke it, which is different than it breaking. But yeah, I have found it to be easily serviceable and the few times I have paid to have it serviced, inexpensive to service. uh there's a lot of room there aren't a lot of engineering challenges or weird tools needed so most dealers you know most mechanic can work on these vehicles yeah which is a big plus i think and parts are so easy to find and if you're if you want to do the job yourself You can also, there's like, there's a cheaper version. There's the OEM version. There's an OEM plus version. There's an insane off-road version. You've got tons of options. Like when I lost those two fenders and needed to replace them, I looked around and like, sure, you could spend four or five grand and get, it's a Sahara. So it came from the factory with color matched fenders. And I just went and bought these like Bushwacker 4x4 like replacement fenders for off-roaders and they're fine. They snap on, they've stayed on so far. It doesn't look non-OEM despite it being non-OEM and that sort of thing. So yeah, I think the serviceability of this, and I think this bleeds into the next part we can jump into, which is sort of the community support. These are two vehicles and look, I will never own a car that doesn't have a community around it. yeah because you want to be able to service it but if you're me and you know very little about the deep mechanics of a vehicle like i have i can explain the basics of how a car works but like if i open the jeep now and point it apart i can't necessarily tell you what that part is i'll tell you what it does probably but i don't know the name for it yeah And it means a lot when you go on and there's huge forums, whether it's for your Land Rover, your Honda EX, or your Jeep, or whatever it may be. I think having that cult for your vehicle is huge to having it be a different sort of experience. And for the Jeep, I mean, the cult's huge. It's a literal cult. It truly is. Yeah. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, there's the whole rubber ducky thing that I didn't quite get. But super strange. Yeah, yeah, it's it's true. And I think we both own vehicles that have huge cults behind them that are, there's some overlap and kind of similarities and some differences. And I think there's kind of a friendly competition between the two, you know, Jeep versus Land Rovers. And it's funny, you know, driving the The Land Rover around, I get a lot of people saying, hey, nice Jeep, which is kind of funny. I love correcting them with a chuckle. I'm not super weird about it. You're right, though. The community support is tremendous. There isn't a huge community around where I live here. I think in other parts of the country there are, maybe in the US, but certainly in the UK. whatever. But what I love is the people that I do run into that have them are always really willing to kind of lend support or parts. I was out tinkering last week actually doing this fix that I was doing with the oil leak. And this guy pulls up in an autobiography Range Rover from 20, I don't remember what year it was, mid 20 teens, whatever that. Oh yeah, like a L322. Jumps out and he says, He says, I've got three of those. And I was like, Defenders? And he said, yeah. He said, I've got this, this, and this. He pulls out his phone, starts showing me pictures. We're comparing notes. Suddenly, we're trading phone numbers. And he says, if you ever need any parts, I've got a spare motor in my yard. And it was just that sort of scenario. Yeah, it totally is. And then beyond the local element, which is fairly sparse, although I've made some friends, In fact, one of my best friends actually owns a 96 Defender. So we share work with each other a lot. But yeah, the online community is huge. And there's just so many videos and collectors groups and whatever. And I've even had the opportunity, like going to the UK, like meet up with different Land Rover owners there and kind of compare notes about the one I've got back home and whatever. So yeah, you're right. Community support is massive. |
| James Stacey | yeah it's it's a big part of it i think it's a huge part of any enthusiast vehicle is not not and i don't necessarily mean being able to go on drives but that's important but i don't think that needs to be brand or even model specific usually yeah uh you know with all due respect to the porsche community but you know it's have having the the like online forums that are about your vehicle where everyone's already tried to do what you're doing whether it's a fix or an upgrade or a modification or whatever I think it's huge to living with vehicles that aren't perfect, and sometimes gloriously imperfect, as we're covering in this. I've got an option here that's tool-capable. How good is it at not being a car, but being a tool for other things? We can be really quick on this one. I'm not sure you could buy two better factory off-roaders as at least as building points for for an overland rig or a rock crawler or that sort of thing they just they have all of the basic features and yeah with mine you do better with a Rubicon for sure like easily you would but you go a long way with with any any of them with any Wrangler and there's nothing technically more proficient about a Sahara than a Sport, to my understanding. You get the bigger off-road benefits with the Rubicon, but that was never what I was necessarily going to use it for. I love driving it around the property at the cottage. We've taken it off-roading a couple times, not on the cottage property. It doesn't get stuck. Yeah, it does a great job in deep snow, sand, mud, all that kind of stuff. I mean, look, all of these things, especially with Jason, yours and mine both being manually driven vehicles. Yeah. You know, with with manual transmissions and not a lot in terms of traction control, which the minute that I'm anywhere slippery, I have to turn mine off because it's so aggressive. on what it does to the throttle response. So it's a lot easier to just use your right foot as the traction control in these sorts of vehicles. But so a lot of it comes down to technique. And what I like about the Jeep is it's an incredibly forgiving car to learn with. You're not going to break something because you drove it too hard. I mean, obviously, if you hit something, sure. You could snap an axle or bend a control arm or that sort of stuff. In theory, I haven't been able to drive it that hard. But I just find it to be like, you know, it has a very forgiving, very agricultural sort of clutch. The flexibility of the vehicle, I think, does give it a good option. And I mean, these are vehicles designed first, both the Jeep and the Land Rover, designed first to be off-roaders. And then they kind of slowly bent them to be modern-ish highway driving cars. And I would say that where the Jeep feels literally at home, you know, driving around the fields at the cottage, it feels a little out of place at the highway on the highway. Oh, sure. Yeah. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah. There has to be a compromise to do both with these types of vehicles. |
| James Stacey | I think definitely of that age. |
| Jason Heaton | Yeah, for sure. |
| James Stacey | Until you get into the stuff with the really remarkable computers. Yeah. You know, but even even if you get into the brand new. So if you look at something like an Ineos Grenadier, it's still the solid axle. So you still get some of the driving characteristics that that you would you would link to uh, you know, body-on-frame off-roaders. My feeling is that, you know, you see lots of jokes online of stuff like the death wobble in the Jeeps, that steering shake that people can get, and that's usually because they've modified the vehicle. I find, you know, I'm running it on factory-sized tires, factory wheels, that sort of thing, and I haven't had any of those issues. But yeah, I would say from the tool side, it's probably much more capable than what I'm using it for. I'm not quite into the ball-crawling status, but I'm not far away from it. |
| Jason Heaton | You know what I mean? Yeah, I had the Defender. I did an off-road driving class a couple years ago. I think we even did an episode about it, or I talked about it. And I was the only non-Jeep in the whole group. Well, there was one Tacoma TRD pickup, and the rest were Wranglers. And there were a few Rubicons and various trim levels of Jeep, of Wrangler. And mine was probably older by a decade than the next oldest vehicle. And mine was the only manual transmission as well. And I kept up with all of them. It did just fine. So it made me think. They were doing something right when they made these. I mean, obviously, I mean, you look at any old footage of camel trophy stuff with the defenders and discoveries and whatever. And it's like, these were made to do this. And a lot of it has to do with I'm not patting myself on the back for being a superior driver, but a lot of it just has to do with like, your feel for the vehicle and your ability to kind of gauge the terrain and all of that sort of thing. And it's, It did great. And I don't really have aspirations to be rock crawling and towing it up to the, you know, the Iron Range in Northern Minnesota and doing this every weekend because it's my daily driver and I can't afford to like break an axle and have to tow it home and deal with, with that. So I, I don't baby it and I, I love how it goes around in the snow and I don't mind fire roads and that sort of stuff. Um, and I was glad to do the off-road course for kind of some skills and fun, but, uh, yeah, it's, it's, it's just, it is what it is. And I love it for that. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, that's fair. And I think that makes sense. The next category I've got here is where, you know, it's turning into a bit of a longer episode. I'm having a good good chat. Yeah. Next category we've got here is street cred. I mean, you're getting a scenario where people, other Land Rover owners are like coming up to you to talk about it. Yeah. So there's got to be a cool factor. I think definitely of the two, yours is the coolest, but it's by a very wide margin, I think. |
| Jason Heaton | Well, it's just more rare. I mean, I think that that there's that too. Yeah, there's a novel factor. There's a novelty to it because you just don't see them. And with especially with mine, with the spare wheel on the front, you just don't see that at all. It's such a I'm so used to it now, but it's such a funny look. It's like such a weird place to put a spare wheel. It's like almost an afterthought, like some engineer just thought, well, we're done. Oh, wait a minute. Where are we going to put the spare wheel? Oh, just set it here. You know, we'll bolt it on the on the front. So it has a look. It has a certain look. And What I love is the people around here that tend to smile and know what it is and stop me to talk are the Twin Cities has a fair number of kind of East African immigrants in the community, you know, from Somalia and Ethiopia and Kenya. without a doubt, those are the people that when I pull up to a stop sign or whatever, like their window comes down, their big grin on their face, they're like shouting, I remember that from home. And you know, I just, I love those exchanges. I mean, they know exactly what it is. They, they love it. It's, it's a bit of nostalgia for them. It's that, or, or, you know, British expats that live here, you know, it's like in the Home Depot parking lot, you know, some guy and there's the British accent. He comes over and he says, Oh yeah, I know what that is. I used to have one back home. And People just smile. They just they smile when they see it. |
| James Stacey | They immediately think it's like a safari vehicle, you know Yeah, I mean that's what is literally just what to say the I think the major difference between The jeep and the land rover is there's less baggage in north america for the land rover Yeah, so that its nature its sort of natural personality shines through Whereas I think the Jeep is a lot more about the Jeep owner than the vehicle often. And with the Land Rover, it's such a friendly thing to see moving down the road. There aren't a lot of vehicles that look like it. Like you said, it's rare here just on nature of being right-hand drive, being an import, that sort of thing. But yeah, I think there's a friendliness to the Land Rover that persists into your generation that for mine probably kind of went away when they started making them everyday vehicles. Oh, sure. Rather than, you know, CJ7s with chrome roll bars and cool graphics. Like, I think that was the era of the Jeep being the most kind of cool and friendly. Yeah. And I think now the cool factor for the Jeep in my mind is almost zero. Like I just I think especially if it's not modified, like if you're driving mostly a stock Jeep in Toronto. Yeah. It's not remarkable. You are part of the scenery. You will only be noticed by other Jeep drivers who want to do the Jeep wave. |
| Unknown | Yeah. |
| James Stacey | Nobody comes up and talks to me because it's a stock vehicle like there's no yeah, no other element to it I think kind of like with a Honda Civic you don't notice a standard one even if it's a nice vehicle or whatever But you might notice the one that has all the upgrades the wheels the paint job that sort of thing Yeah, and and then you know, I think the other thing and you definitely experience it I think I experienced it more online than I do in real life, but like Jeeps have a baggage. Yeah, I They're not always driven by the most calm, patient people on the road. They have a bit of a monster energy vibe. If I'm going to play into the joke, the average assumed Jeep driver has the vibe of a guy who occasionally punches a hole in some drywall. yeah that sort of thing like it's it's you know it's it's not always the nicest look but you know i think with an older one one that's a little bit beat up i'm not fixing the dent in the bumper that sort of thing i'm okay with it yeah and i try not to drive it like a jerk i try i i guarantee that's not always the case uh people drive real strange where i live here yeah and i do find it frustrating at times so often i just have to chill yeah a little bit um but that's more of a me problem than the jeep but yeah i don't i don't think the a stock more than a decade old Jeep has any real cool factor. I think if I wanted mine to be cool, I could cover it in mud and put some more scratches, make it look like I was using it on the weekends for something more than going up to the cottage and hauling stuff around the property. That's where I think these things are still cool, is when I see a cool TJ that's covered in mud and is on 37s, and clearly this is somebody's weekend toy to get out of the city, that for me is more cool. Alright, so I think the next thing is sort of, we've kind of covered how these things found us, how we found it, and driving them for some time. What's the longevity? Do you think this is something you're going to have for a while? Are you thinking of a different version that might be something closer to what you need, or this is kind of doing it for you? |
| Jason Heaton | I think it's the one. I think it's the one I just keep. Owning two and owning the older one, I've thought I probably should consider getting something more practical at some point. This one, the Defender, it's a two-seater. There are no seats in the back. It's like a pickup truck. Yeah, the bread van. Yeah. And so it's, you know, thinking about getting something more practical, et cetera, you know, safer airbags, anti-lock brakes, that sort of stuff would be nice. And maybe I could see selling one of them and getting more of a practical daily driver. On the other hand, every time I drive the Defender, it puts a smile on my face. I love what it can do for me and how it kind of reflects my personality and kind of taps into so much more than just a car for me. And for that reason, You know, I say that today and I could have some frustrating breakdown tomorrow that'll change my mind, but I kind of just see driving it until I just can't anymore, until it just becomes, you know, so unserviceable or breaks down or gets totaled and, you know, there's just no real hope of getting it fully repaired or back up to snuff that I would just let it go. But yeah, it's a long-term vehicle for me. I truly love it and I'm going to keep it as long as I can. How about you? Now you have some family changes coming up. You talked about getting something a little safer. Will you keep this and get something else or is the Jeep kind of having its last days? |
| James Stacey | I think I'll keep it as long as it fits my life, as sort of bland and generic as that sounds. I don't really want to get rid of it. It's not worth enough money, and it costs so little to insure and keep on the road. Right now, if I bought another vehicle, I only have room for one car. I only have one parking spot. So that would be a problem. But families growing, we are eyeballing houses and that sort of thing. And if there was room, I would just keep it. yeah and keep it as either a second car or as a more of a tool vehicle or maybe you just go full uh overland with it you know put a rooftop tent on it and use it a few weekends a year for like nice family outings and road trips and that sort of stuff yeah uh which could be good but yeah i don't i wouldn't say that i have a specific plan for it um i think we'll we'll use it you know until it's until it doesn't have enough room for for the fam But I wouldn't say we're in a specific rush to replace it. The bigger issue is just that Sarah doesn't like to drive stick. So I do 100% of the driving and have, you know, since we bought the vehicle. And at times that can feel like a strain, you know, busy weekends of cottage and back and there and here and go get this and go and, you know, you're the one driving. So, you know, there would be value in the simplicity and the convenience. of having something automatic, three rows, a little bit more of just commuter class sort of vehicle, which, you know, looking at stuff like Toyota Grand Highlanders and things like that. But no, ideally, this is a vehicle I would have until it, you know, comes apart due to the rust as I drive it, kind of Fred Flintstone style. yeah um you know just pull up to the curb and a ball of sparks and walk away from it but uh we'll see i think that's the right life cycle for uh for a wrangler yeah i don't i don't think these are things people should treat quite as precious as they do yeah but obviously i'm i'm in a position to to use mine the way that i am and i'm quite happy with it so Yeah, would like to keep it, but if it doesn't fit, it'll go. I definitely have family members who would snap it up pretty easily, so it wouldn't be difficult to move it on to a good home. Cool. All right. |
| Jason Heaton | Imperfect products. |
| James Stacey | Imperfect products. Yeah. A Land Rover Defender and a Jeep Wrangler. I think two good examples of imperfect products that kind of can form like a pretty perfect sort of bond, assuming they align with your needs. Look, let's keep this moving. We want to jump into some final notes. Yeah, sure. You've got two, so feel free to go first. |
| Jason Heaton | I've got two. Yeah, the first one's relevant. I'll jump in with this one. I found this on YouTube, and it's about a 20-minute short film called The Rescue of Jemima, subtitled How Far Would You Go for a Land Rover? And it's about this guy who, I believe he's South African, who back in the 90s caught wind of an early 60s Land Rover Series 1 pickup truck that had been driven by somebody back in the 60s who had this vision of setting up kind of a homestead, I believe a school or something, in the bush in Africa somewhere. Got the Land Rover in kind of pursued his dream Things didn't quite work out left and the Land Rover remained and was kind of left derelict somewhere out in the middle of nowhere and this guy had this vision of going in to rescue it with the And so it was, it's kind of this tale of like, as the subtitle suggests, how far would you go for a Land Rover? And this guy went all the way and he managed to extract it, you know, sometimes involving, you know, a lot of people, a lot of people, a lot of people, a lot of people, a lot of people, a lot of people, a lot of people, a lot of people, a lot of people, a lot of people. uh, having it towed with, you know, with a herd of oxen, um, et cetera, and disassembling it to, to whatever, um, to, to get it home and then, and then refurbishing it and rebuilding it and restoring it. And it's, it's, it's quite a cool story. It's, it's, it's a neat story. You know, if you're into Land Rovers and kind of car restoration, but also just, it's, it's a really a nice piece of filmmaking. I thought it was really well done. |
| James Stacey | Oh, that's killer. So yeah, that's a good one. In only 12 minutes, not too much to ask. I like even the first frame is great. Makes me wish I had the doors off my Wrangler. Yeah. That's awesome. Good pick. All right. Mine this week is actually a pretty simple one. I've talked a bunch about speed.co. That's speed with three E's. That's James Pumphrey's project following his departure from Donut Media, another automotive outlet I was very much attached to and enjoyed. And James left Pumphrey, so James Pumphrey left Donut a little while ago and he started this other channel and website called speed.co and then just a little while ago they launched a membership which is like 70-ish dollars a year US. And I didn't just buy it. And I'm now talking about it. I bought it as soon as they launched. I signed up within the first probably week that they were available for the membership as soon as I heard about it. And I've been listening to the podcast. They're up six, seven episodes now. And it's just great. I highly recommend it. If you're comfortable with what you pay for for TGN, I think you'll be certainly happy with what you get from Speed.co. Cars are a big part of it. But the podcast especially is sort of life technology and cars. So they cover a bunch of different scopes and they also do some sort of interesting content making like they did a challenge. It's James and two other guys from the show that I'm just kind of getting to know through the podcast. But it's a video podcast you can watch on the site, you can put the feed in your app or whatever, and do it that way. And you know, they even did something recently where they did like a bunch of health trends all in one month. So they kind of stacked them all together. So they were trying various diets, various ways of sleeping, various things to supplement and various types of exercise and doing it all. And by the end of the month, they were doing a lot. Yeah, right. You start off with one thing, and they're doing dozens by the end of the month or whatever. And it's uh i i just really like it and i think for the money it's great i i really really am a fan of what uh pumfrey and the the guys at speedco are putting together so uh easy subscription for me and just a shout out to those guys i think uh it's a good content for the for the price yeah i love the eclectic uh kind of range that's uh that's really cool sounds great |
| Jason Heaton | absolutely all right well my number two is a quick one um and it comes from our friends over at uh well friends at both places watches of espionage and tactile turn pens this is so cool they've got a uh collaborative pen project that's releasing on the 29th so we're recording on tuesday the 22nd so a week from today um a few days after this episode comes out and uh the pen looks really really cool i mean we we're fans of tactile turn pens very mechanical very tactical um This one, you know, has the typical kind of watches of espionage flourish. I love the little details, the little logo on the push-button release, the kind of texture on the clip, and it just looks tremendous. So just shout out to them. I definitely will be ordering one of these. It takes Pilot G2 refills, so you can easily refill it when the ink runs out, and hopefully you'll be using it enough to do that regularly. Looks great. Congratulations to both our friends at Tactile Turn and Watches of Espionage for what looks like it's going to be a really cool, cool pen. |
| James Stacey | Yeah, I'm down to two pens in my life, and both of them are tactile turn. I have a previous Nautilus in the short spec, and then Ed was kind enough to offer and send me the Groove LP in the black spec. It's just a black pen. It's got a blue cap. It's got this very cool sort of design on the clip for the pen. And I absolutely swear by these. They're definitely expensive, but this is a product made by a small team of people almost entirely by Tactile Turn, including the screws that mount the clip to the pen, they make those. I really like this company. Ed and the team there are TGN fans, which of course is great and we appreciate, but the product is just so nice. And I don't write a ton of stuff, but this year I have made a concerted effort to have like a daily to-do list slash notes. So just one of those like reporter style, Rhodia notebooks and then one of these pens just kind of lives either on my desk or in my in my main bag And I just I think it's an incredible product With a lot of options in terms of style and color and these and they do the the like seasonal releases the limited seasonal releases And they do standard lines and they do these collaborations And I think this one with watch of espionage is one of the best they've done. I think it looks so good Yeah, yeah Really really cool stuff. So if you're in the market for a premium Ballpoint pen, I can't I don't know what else I would suggest. Yeah, I've owned Cara customs. Very nice. These are a level up I just think they make a great product good stuff. |
| Jason Heaton | Good episode. All right. Yeah. |
| James Stacey | Yeah. Yeah Well, hey, thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to subscribe to the show notes, get into the comments for each episode, or even consider supporting the show directly, you can grab yourself a new TGN signed NATO in the process. Just visit TheGreyNATO.com. Music throughout is Siesta by Jazzar via the free music archive. |
| Jason Heaton | And we leave you with this quote from Salvador Dali, who said, have no fear of perfection. You'll never reach it. |