- You may have recently heard about Ford manufacturing respirators, and Lamborghini churning
out masks to fight COVID-19, but car companies have been
making products other than cars for a long time, from
the Aston Martin condo to Bugatti's hookah, to a mechanical freakin'
heart made by General Motors. And why does Volkswagen make sausages? Stick around to the end and
see the most insane products that car manufacturers have made, and find out what sort
of crazy collaborations we can expect to see next. This is WheelHouse, baby. Hey, everyone, today's
episode is brought to you by Manscaped.com. We all know what it's like, right? One moment you're mowing the grass, getting it ready for a big night. The next thing you know, you hit a stick. (Nolan screams) The pain, the embarrassment, the shame. Well worry no more, because
Manscaped has created the world's first
all-in-one manscaping kit that makes manscaping safe and easy. I'm excited to be one of
the first in the world to receive the new Lawn Mower 3.0 water resistant body hair trimmer, the only trimmer on the market made with advanced SkinSafe technology, which reduces nicks and cuts
from manscaping accidents. I genuinely cannot stop talking about the new Lawn Mower 3.0. Everyone in the office is
tired of me talkin' about it in our group chat when
I should be working, but you know what? I'm just happy that I'm
able to do shower trims thanks to the water resistance, okay? I'm happy about it, so keep your lawn trimmed
and in shape, get 20% off and free international
shipping plus two free gifts when you use promo code
donut20 at manscaped.com. My balls thank me, and yours will, too. I actually really love Manscaped, thank you so much for
sponsoring this episode. I really think it's a great product, and I think you guys
should treat yourself, treat your balls. Probably the most common alt car products we see are collaborations, where the carmaker
contributes research, design, and brand recognition, while an outside party
actually makes the product, like the high tech mPiano
from Porsche and Alpha Piano. The M in mPiano stands for mechatronic, like the mechatronic units
found in many car gearboxes, especially in Volkswagens,
Audis, and Porsche. In the mPiano, mechatronic
refers to the actuators underneath each key that
allow you to manipulate the pitch and resistance
through an external app. This isn't even the first piano Porsche's been involved with. They also teamed up with Bosendorfer, (chuckles) I tried, an almost 200 year old piano maker to make a nearly $300,000 grand piano. Okay, sure, that's impressive, but can it play "Runaway"? Ferrari made the jump
from car to lifestyle when they partnered
with Cobra and Puma Golf and released a luxury golf line. They busted out all those
corporate luxury buzzwords, like handcrafted elegance, and
sophisticated functionality, and fugly-ass shoes. But the shoes aren't the
star of the line here. That would have to be the
bright red $2,000 driver made of carbon-fiber
composite, titanium alloy, and perfectly balanced with
internal tungsten weights. You can cart this club around
in your $2,400 golf bag made of the same Poltrona Frau leather you'll find in the Ferrari FF, one of my favorite shooting brakes. The leather is known for
its "supple, spicy aroma," and is described as having "a particularly Italian sensuality." Mamma mia, I want to (beep) my golf bag. Collabs are one thing,
but a lot of car companies actually make their own non-car products instead of using outside manufacturers. A perfect example of this is Nissan, who has wowed us with not one, but two autonomous office chairs. They first started with the
Intelligent Parking Chair, an office chair that returns
to its original position with a simple clap. Then came the Pro Pilot Chair, which does more than just park itself. It self-drives with you in it by detecting its relation
to the seats around it. Now before you get too excited, neither of these chairs
are available to buy. They were developed as a marketing ploy to show off Nissan's new self-parking and self-driving technologies. Not cool, Nissan. You've probably heard about the Powerwall that Tesla's been manufacturing, a rechargeable lithium
ion home battery system that stores solar or grid
energy for on-demand use. It's not the first of its kind, but it is probably the
sleekest one out there. Elon Musk has touted the Powerwall, when used with solar panels, as a way to become totally
independent of big-grid energy, but even a 3,510 kilowatt hours option isn't really enough to power your home unless you're way off the
grid, like Shrek status, and if you're livin' that Shrek life, you probably can't afford the solar panels and power inverter you'd need
to make it all work anyways. For the city-living
Farquaads of this world like you and me, the
Powerwall would be great as a backup supply for
outages, or a way to cut costs. Then again, Musk also named
his kid whatever this is, so I dunno. Okay, we have to talk about
these Volkswagen sausages. Since 1973, Volkswagen has
been manufacturing currywurst at the same plant in Wolfsburg where they make a bunch of their cars, like the Golf and the Tiguan. The sausage is even considered
a Volkswagen original part, I'm not (beep) you, with
its own part number, 199 398 500 A. VW originally started producing sausages to feed the workers at
the various canteens within the factory, and they still do. But once the outside world
found out that their currywurst was the currybest,
(audience laughing) VW started selling them at supermarkets and football stadiums. They even give them away as freebies to Volkswagen customers. But this isn't just a
cute side hustle, okay? For many years now,
Volkswagen has produced more sausages than cars. We're talkin' 20,000 pork tubes a day. In 2018, they made 6.81 million of them. VW even introduced a
vegetarian option in 2010, but unfortunately Americans, we can't get our mitts on these things because of import
restrictions on uncooked meat. I just hope they don't taste like crayons. It's a Volkswagen joke. A lot of car companies
were making other products before they even got
around to making cars. Case in point, Toyota,
which actually began in the automatic loom business, and it wasn't even Toyota, it was Toyoda. In 1924, Sakichi Toyoda invented the Toyota
Model G automatic loom. It was innovative, because it
used the principle of Jidoka, which meant that if the
machine detected a problem, like a broken thread, it would stop itself do the
problem would be corrected, rather than doing a
quality check at the end and finding out that
you have a bunk product. This system is also known as autonomation, or intelligent automation, and is used in Toyota's
car production to this day. The loom's nifty ability to
detect issues mid-process was a game-change in the loom business, as it cut way down on wasted
resources and overproduction. Obviously, loomheads
at the time were like, "Gimme, gimme, gimme." And Toyoda sold the patent in 1929 to the British machinery
company Platt Brothers, which gave him the capital to start up his automotive business with his son, Kiichiro Toyoda. They eventually changed the D to a T because people thought
Toyota sounded better, but more importantly
because changing it to a T meant the name could be written with exactly eight strokes
in Japanese lettering. Eight is a lucky number in Japan, and they thought it would welcome in good fortune and prosperity, which is the same reason I eat
eight Pizza Rolls every day. Eight times three Pizza Rolls every day. Okay, so Toyota made cars, blah-blah-blah, we don't care about that right now. We care about the fact that in 2009, they also made a brain-machine interface, allowing wheelchair users
to control movements of an electric wheelchair with their freakin'
mind, Professor X-style. An electrode-covered
helmet measured brain waves and picks up when the
user is concentrating on a type of physical movement, and translates that activity into steering instructions
for the motorized wheelchair. How cool is this, guys? How did this happen in 2009 and I'm just now hearing about it? Look, I tried to find an update
on the current technology, and I weirdly couldn't find
anything from the last decade. That's fine, right? Probably nothing to worry about, right, when a multinational corporation developing mind control technology then just goes full ghost mode on it. I'm not worried. Toyota has developed a ton of cool stuff, including a line of humanoid robots that we'll get into later, but did you know that Toyota also manufactures prefab houses? That's right, like hundreds
of thousands of them, and they've been doing it since 1975, which means they were crankin' out homes before they were even makin' Camrys. We just don't hear about
it much here in the U.S. because the residential production is pretty much limited to Japan. There are a bunch of different
models, and price points, and honestly, for a
house that you can order out of a catalog, these
things are pretty sick. Plus, where a conventional construction can kinda drag on, these
puppies can be assembled in about two months from start to finish. That's pretty amazing. For something a little more high end, you have Aston Martin's 66-story downtown Miami luxury condo tower, which they literally call "a
car made into a skyscraper." That's a little much. Aston Martin is handling
the interior design and corporate branding, but they've partnered
with outside developers to actually construct the dang thing. Living in the Aston Martin condo comes with some extremely bougey perks, like a superyacht marina,
multiple movie theaters, and virtual golf. The most expensive unit
is a 19,000 square foot triplex penthouse that'll
run you a cool $50 million. But the sickest part of that unit is that it comes with
an Aston Martin Vulcan, makes 820 buff horses, and it's the last of a run of only 24 cars,
valued around $3 million. So when you think about that, the apartment's only $47 million. So worth it, such a good use of money. BMW, Jaguar, Lamborghini, all of these car companies
didn't even start in cars. Before Jaguar was makin'
slick, speed-punching E-Types, they were in the business of manufacturing motorcycle sidecars. Mitsubishi started in ship building. SAAB started in aircraft. Even Peugeot, the world's
second-oldest automaker behind Mercedes-Benz didn't start in cars. Peugeot started in the early 1800s as a steel foundry that made
things like coffee grinders, umbrella frames, and band saws. They still make salt and
pepper mills to this day. My mom actually has a
Peugeot spice grinder. Pretty sick, put some nutmeg in there and put it on your whatever. The iconic lion you see on their badge actually first showed
up on their saw blades. Armand Peugeot added it to symbolize the toughness of the saw's teeth, the strength of steel,
and the speed of the cut like a bounding lion. Dude, it's just a saw, man. It's not just a saw, it's a Peugeot saw. One of the wildest
entries into the car world came from Ferruccio Lamborghini,
who only got into cars to spite Enzo Ferrari, and if you haven't heard
this story before, allow me. Lamborghini was a mechanical whiz who after serving in World War II started a company that built tractors out of surplus military vehicles. His business took off. By the 1960s, he was
manufacturing oil-burning heaters and air conditioners too. With all of his hard-earned cabbage, Lambo bought himself a
bunch of sports cars, one of them being the Ferrari
250 GT with a V12 engine. But he kept having issues with the clutch, to the point that he brought the complaint to Enzo Ferrari himself. Ferrari felt insulted. He got all aggrums, like "the
problem's not with the car. "It's with the driver. "Now go play with your
little tractors, okay?" And Lamborghini was like, "Hell no. "I'm gonna make my own sports car "and hire ex-employees to do it." And then everyone was like, "Damn, son." And then, Lamborghini did it. He founded an auto factory. He built a V12 engine. He dropped it into his Lamborghini 350 GT, and watched it rip to 158 miles
per hour in Ferrari's face. It's amazing to think that
if Ferrari had just known how to take some constructive criticism, we would've never gotten
the Aventador SVJ. It's a pretty wild story,
and if you wanna know more, check out the Up to Speed on Lamborghini. It's an oldie, but a goodie. Everyone knows that the white and blue on the BMW badge is a
propellor in the sky, right? But did you know that the three points on Mercedes-Benz's logo represents mobility on land, sea, and sky? Land is pretty obvious. You've got everything from
your 1950s Gullwing coupe to today's C-Class. On the open ocean, you had
the 46-foot luxury motor yacht that Mercedes developed
with Silver Arrows Marine. The Arrow 460 Gran Turismo
was released in 2017. It fits up to 10 people
and has a max speed of 44 miles an hour. But this yacht isn't just a
boat made by a car company. Look at this thing. Look at those automotive proportions. It really does look
like a car in the water. Just a tad more expensive at $1.7 million. Okay, so land, check. Sea, check. Sky? Look no further than the
Mercedes EC145 twin-engine, turbine-powered luxury helicopter. Mercedes didn't manufacture this aircraft. A company called Eurocopter did, but they did design the interior, modeling it after their luxury class cars. This sky-whip will run you
a horrific $8.5 million. War, what is it good for? Havin' car companies manufacture military
vehicles, that's what. Chrysler, GM, Fiat, Subaru,
BMW, Volkswagen, Dodge, they all lent their manufacturing
skills to the war efforts. It's super interesting. I actually can't get into it now or else this will be a
two-hour long WheelHouse, but if you wanna learn
more about the tanks and bombers made by your
favorite car brands, let me know in the comments and we'll see what we can
do makin' a video about it. Making a military grade
destroyer is one thing. Car manufacturers sending
their cars to space like Tesla did with their roadster takes a whole other level of engineering. But did you know that Tesla wasn't the first car
manufacturer to go into space? Ford, Chrysler, and GM
all played a big part in NASA's early Apollo missions. After Ford acquired the battery, radio, and TV company Philco, the
newly-branded Philco-Ford built NASA's Mission
Control Center in Houston, implementing new
technology that allowed for way more sophisticated communication between the astronauts in space and their counterparts here on Earth. Chrysler built the first stage of the Saturn IB rocket booster that helped us blast to the Moon, and in 1971, GM and Boeing teamed up to make the Lunar Rover,
churning out an electric vehicle long before the Chevy Volt or Chevy Bolt. Their creation was such a success that NASA used similar
models for the Apollo 16 and 17 missions, and all
three of these GM Rovers remain on the Moon to this day. Talk about "Dude, Where's My Car?", right? Love that movie. Some car collabs are just downright weird, like the Mustang cologne by Estee Lauder that my friend Cody used
to wear in high school. Love you, Cody (laughs). But there's also Isaac
Mizrahi's Chevy Malibu-inspired women's fashion collection, which I can only describe as "going to a meeting at the beach." This lavish lady can get her tootsies on some $110 driving moccasins,
or chance a $260 tote bag. Who bought this? If your mom did, tell her to hit me up. Perhaps the most
egregious of these collabs is the Bugatti hookah, created alongside luxury
shisha pipe maker Desvall. Now, Bugatti isn't the first car company to put out these Middle
Eastern-style pipes. The Porsche-designed shisha
came out in 2011 for $1,950. Then, two years later, Bugatti
was like, "Oh, dude, sick. "We could do that too, "except we're gonna jack up
the price by literally 5000%." That's right, Bugatti's
hookah cost $100,000. It's insane. If anyone tries to convince you that a pipe is worth 100 grand, they're blowin' smoke
up your ass, am I right? (audience laughing) Now let's talk about beeps. I'm not talkin' honks, I'm talkin' about beep-beep-boop-bop beep,
'cause it's robot time. Who remembers in '05 when
Toyota debuted an entire series of humanoid partner robots
that were in a band that slaps? ♪ We are falling into the circle ♪ (beep) - Toyota is truly out here
with human support robots, a basketball robot, and a
whole line of assistant robots that were set to debut at the
2020 Olympics and Paralympics. I guess we'll have to wait 'til
next year for those things. In 2013, Toyota helped develop Japan's first robot astronaut, and first-ever companion
robot in space called Kirobo. Kirobo is a high-functioning mini robot with a range of capabilities. It's got facial, voice,
and speech recognition, speech synthesis and video recording. Sounds like everything
an iPhone can do, right? Wrong, because Kirobo
is specially designed to navigate zero gravity environments and assist Commander Wakata, the first Japanese commander of the International Space Station. He helps with all these
different experiments all while being cute as hell. I actually don't think
I've seen a cuter robot, oh my God, there's a mini Kirobo? Toyota's not the only carmaker
toying around with robots. Honda bopped on over to the beep-bop zone way back in '86 when
their R&D Robotics Team set out to develop a robot that could move and walk like a human. They went through the E-Series, P-Series, and 11 iterations later, arrived at ASIMO, which stands for Advanced
Step in Innovative Mobility. ASIMO made its U.S. debut in 2002 as it rang the opening bell at
the New York Stock Exchange, and made history as the
world's only humanoid robot that can go up and down
stairs independently. Now obviously, the Boston Dynamics robots have completely eclipsed ASIMO, but it was pretty awesome at the time. In 2010, Honda was able
to apply the same sort of mind control technology
from the Toyota wheelchair to ASIMO, thereby allowing a user to think of a limited number of gestures, and ASIMO will do it for them. He'll just freakin' do it. Since then, ASIMO has
learned sign language, mixed drinks, and even
conducted orchestras. It's awesome to see automakers
use their power for good, especially now at a time
when we really have to take care of each other. I'm talkin' Ford and Peugeot, who are manufacturing
respirators to fight COVID-19. Lamborghini, they're
manufacturing masks and shields. Volkswagen, who teamed up
with fabric company Faurecia, Faurecia? Faurecia, to make medical gowns. GM is helping produce 10,000 ventilators and 1.5 million masks every month. But this venture into medical equipment is nothing new for them. In 1952, GM worked with
Doctor Forest Dodrill to create the first-ever mechanical heart, which made open-heart
surgery on humans possible. That's a really huge deal. So many people owe their lives to this 12 cylinder engine-looking device and the foundation it laid for advancements in heart
surgery, it's so cool. So what's next? What insane, technologically advanced, generally unnecessary car
collab is on the horizon? Porsche and Boeing are teaming up to explore the world of autonomous
electric luxury aircraft with vertical takeoff
and landing capabilities, kinda like a quadcopter for humans, but even a flying car
feels like small potatoes compared to Toyota's Woven City. That's right, Toyota is
creating an entire city. They're building it on a 175-acre plot that used to be the
site of a Toyota factory at the base of Mount Fuji. The high-tech metropolis will be powered by hydrogen fuel cells and function as a living laboratory for Toyota engineers to implement and study various technologies, including autonomy, robotics, smart homes, and personal mobility. That's just insane. Let me know which of these
products you wish you had, and which ones you wished did not exist. Thank you for watching this
episode, it means a lot to me. A lot of work goes into these things. This is actually the second
time I had to film this 'cause I messed up the first time. Very aggravating, but a lot of editors spend a lot of time making
these videos really good, and would just mean a lot for us for you to drop a like at the very least, and maybe consider
subscribing to our channel, and we really love doin' it for you guys. Thank you for watching. Be kind, I'll see ya next time.
