Joe Rogan Experience #2199 - Chris Harris

Chris Harris joins Joe Rogan for a wide-ranging conversation centered on cars, the car industry, and his career. He speaks publicly for the first time about the December 2022 Andrew 'Freddie' Flintoff crash that ended his run on Top Gear, revealing he had warned the BBC months earlier that someone would be seriously hurt. The pair debate electric vehicles, restomods, the politics of EV mandates, and the dominance of Chinese carmakers. The discussion wanders into bears, crabs, fighter jets, F1 cheating, and various conspiracy theories including dieselgate and the Stanley Meyer water-powered car. Harris frames YouTube and podcasts as the future for car enthusiasts, free of network executives.

• Harris speaks publicly for the first time about Top Gear ending after the Flintoff crash and how it left him without a job.
  00:33:30
• Three months before the accident, Harris warned the BBC that without changes someone would die or be seriously injured on the show.
  00:39:53
• After the accident the BBC left him to 'sweat'; he sat at home drinking whiskey with almost no contact from the network.
  00:43:30
• Harris describes a serious alcohol decline after the Top Gear incident, drinking his entire single malt collection within a month.
  01:18:38
• Harris says Top Gear treated Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster unfairly, pretending the car died for a pre-scripted sketch.
  01:36:17
• Tabloid journalists tried to coax Harris's youngest child into a car to get dirt on him.
  01:35:17
• Harris says the Volkswagen dieselgate scandal genuinely shook his faith in large corporations.
  02:30:38

• The Ford F-150 Raptor R does 0-60 in about 3 seconds despite being a giant pickup truck.
  00:03:43
• A Swedish 'beaver' vodka is flavored with secretion from the anal gland of a beaver, and the taste lingered in Harris's mouth for 10 days.
  01:21:48
• Kodiak coastal brown bears can reach 1,800 lbs and 11 feet tall due to their salmon-rich diet.
  01:49:24
• The coconut crab has a claw force of about 3,300 Newtons, stronger than the bite of most land animals including leopards and bears.
  02:05:36
• At motor shows, Chinese engineers would use laser rulers to measure and copy competitors' car interiors and engines in broad daylight.
  01:03:39
• In 1995 Toyota was excluded from the World Rally Championship for a hidden bypass valve that defeated the turbo intake restrictor.
  02:41:34
• Lotus founder Colin Chapman hid his ground-effect skirts and had a man run around with a kettle under a towel to fool rival teams.
  02:44:11
• The carbon-ceramic brake disc was originally developed for Concorde, which kept burning through brakes.
  02:48:19
• An FBI analyst estimated up to 80% of accounts on Twitter/X are bots used to push narratives.
  02:41:04

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