Petrol Heads' Heaven: Caffeine and Machine x Michelin

When you started, did you envision all of this? Everyone asks, and it's the scariest thing to say, and you just have to admit, no, nothing. Good morning from the edge of the Cotswolds, and you've probably noticed something. The mid-layer that I said I wasn't going to need until the winter, I've actually been wearing because it may be June, but in the UK, you can never count on the weather, so I actually had to wear waterproofs getting up here and also the mid-layer, but now we're here in the Cotswolds, well, first of all, there's a reason we're in the Cotswolds, and that's because Michelin tires have partnered up with Caffeine & Machine, and if you don't know what Caffeine & Machine is, it looks to me like, and I'll be honest, I've never been, but I did some Googling yesterday, it looks like one of the coolest hangouts for petrolheads, gearheads, as you call it in the US, motorcycle lovers and car lovers, in essence, brilliant hangout place right on the edge of the Cotswolds, and Michelin have partnered up with them, so they've basically painted a huge mural on the side of the building to celebrate the partnership, so I'm going down today to have a look around Caffeine & Machine and see what Michelin have done, and this is a real treat for me because I've never been here, and after Googling it, I was absolutely blown away by what this place is, what it represents, I just can't wait to see, I don't know what to expect, so I tell you what, before we actually go inside, I'll talk about my tires because my tires are the new for 2021 Michelin Road Classics that have replaced the Michelin Pilot Actives, so the Pilot Actives are no more, the Road Classics are the new tires for classic and modern classic motorcycles. I've had the Michelin Road Classics, actually, can you see the tread like that? I've had the Michelin Road Classics, I'll just turn it so you can see that, on my bike for three months, pretty much about three months after they first came out, and what they are is a retro-styled tire with the absolute most bang-on up-to-date modern performance, so when compared to the Pilot Actives, the outgoing model, they represent massive improvements across the board, so whether it's dry riding, wet riding, and stability in general, and I always used to have, especially on my Speed Triple, when I bought it, I can't remember the tires I had, but I decided to, just before a trip to Croatia, change over to a set of Michelins, and I remember riding around Croatia with my friend who had a set of old tires on, and we're usually very evenly matched, but I remember just going around these mountain lanes, leaving him for fun, and ever since then, I've always liked Michelin, but this is the first time on the Bonneville I've gone for a set of Michelins since the Road Classics came out, and we were riding back, Monica and I, from the Isle of Wight, about four nights ago, and it was torrential rain, and Monica said to me, God, you're going fast, and I didn't realize at the time, I didn't mean to be going fast, but I was doing about 75 miles an hour, torrential rain, overtaking, then going back into lane, but it's just that feeling of security that a really good quality set of tires gives you, and often you don't completely realize it at the time, but you just get that peace of mind when riding, and these give that in abundance. I'm a very proud Michelin ambassador, and I really do recommend these tires very, very highly, but that is enough about tires. Let's go to Caffeine and Machine, see what the collaboration's like with Michelin, and see what vehicles there are today. ♪ Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey... ♪ I can't let you go baby ♪ Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey... ♪ I just wanna tell ya that ♪ Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey Hey... ♪ No no no no ♪ Hey Hey Hey Hey ♪ All of my friends say girl you better take care ♪ cause that man is trouble, you best beware We've just arrived and it is so much bigger than I thought they've got to be and so many different ones we'll go over see if we can find the owner have a chat with him and hopefully I'd love it if we can actually show you around inside and outside to get an idea of what it's like but the most eclectic collection of cars that I've seen anyway it's a bit like a car show that you go to but this happens apparently seven days a week well you might be a liar i just can't quicken that because i love you yes i do i can't let you go baby baby let you go there was a time my chance but nobody tells me good things about you baby i can't let you go so i'm delighted to be with the founder one of two founders yeah there's two of us yeah phil who started all of this and was it 2018 or 2015 so oh yeah good question 2015 was where it started in the middle east so it was nothing more than a test event and we were working out of a motorbike cafe called cafe rider and it was just an event it was an evening event and i just grew and then the physical thing is the uk so that was 2018 and when you started did you envision so envisage all of this everyone asks and it's it's the scariest thing to say and we just have to admit that no nothing we had a dream where we kicked a skateboard out and we got on it and we rode it and it just kept rolling and rolling and rolling and yeah what you see now is what it's become so effectively everything that's on this side is our in-house shop where we match up what we're creating as our in-house kind of proprietary brand and then chosen artists and sculptures um the right hand side of the building on the lower side is the roadhouse so it's the cafe the bar and the inside restaurant and then all the bedrooms are upstairs and everything else is is outside oh my god there's a bike in there as well yeah yeah there is yeah so we've got a it's your taste so we've got a we've got a custom ice racing harley inside without its ice studs cool so yeah this is ant from goblin goblin motor works motorbike which he built to go racing on ice so it had massive huge studs coming outside this is the co-founder and co-creator this is what happens when you short step what's the story with this this won the africa rally on the front of a 911 yeah um and it's made its way here carer of francis tuttle motorsport did i see a story about you in the next day 220 you took a photo of it or something got in trouble uh yeah that's where my yeah that's when my life changed yeah so i was uh i was working for jaguar cars uh and at least i was traveling in and around all of these markets um and i saw the car and i took photos of the car with a friend um and i got asked to leave my job um and he was told to leave his job um and then three weeks later i was asked to pitch for the digital media job so i built a website i'd had a lot of fun on my left but i also had a job so i did i did jump a line a little bit it changed my it changed my tack of my entire career yeah i went from being a guy working in corporate to i had a website and a social media agency and a content agency and off i went out in dubai started in the middle east yeah yeah alpine that's cool i love these yeah they're wild have you driven driven one yeah this has been with us for like a week and a bit um litchfield very kindly lent us their hot rodded one so this has had a bit of play um i always think these look more fun than ferraris or lamborghinis on real roads you know they're just they look perfect yeah i spent a day with it and i got out and i very proudly projected to a mate of mine that this is in my top 10 i've ever driven it's a thing i'm not totally sold on seriously yeah it's so good so good and you have to book a ticket on friday saturday sunday purely because you've been so busy it's become mad yeah but the when's the wednesday night tickets were driven by the fact that we were doing events so the every wednesday night is uh we talk to as much of the market so we do a japanese night we do a hot hatch night we do a german night and we do an and you can kind of scoop up everybody you know air-cooled could be everything from an early bmw motorbike or a triumph or a harley or a duke all the way up to a vintage 911 with everything in the middle can i ask what do you drive or ride what do i drive i'm currently my daily oddly is that burgundy cls mercedes you can just see the nose of it all the way down there um by the wiper yeah i've always struggled with new stuff yeah i love it but i like the old stuff as well and i like the fact that i've got so much value out of relatively little deployed cash um i think it's because i came up the classic car side i had a when i was 17 i had a beetle and then i navigated my way through beetles and buses and got into early 911s and there was always this like all my money and all my love went into that so my daily was effectively just a taxi but i wanted something so yeah i roll a big banana slammed on 20 inch wheels and really love it yeah i absolutely love that later um and it's a big five liter v8 and it's great yeah perfect yeah um but yeah i love my classics but it's mostly v-dubs and early porsches yeah um yeah i always had a big big love affair of air-cooled stuff and are you are you happy to be back in the uk after being in one of the first people to ask that question um difficult really really difficult middle eastern way of life islamic cultures it's very different and i spent 25 26 years there and wow did you cumulatively from child big gap adult um both of my children were born over there yeah i found myself over there so there was a bunch of these you know it was more pertinent like the first time i ever went to los angeles as an adult and i'd spent all these years in the middle east where the peaks and the troughs of life are hidden from you a little bit you know you don't see people on the beach wearing bikinis and you don't see people sleeping on the street you know they're the extremes kind of thing but you don't see someone naked in public and you don't see someone sleeping on the street in the middle east and i walked out as a 28 29 year old into la and was blown away by what i saw and it took me a while to refocus what the differences were from the life that i had and the life that many other people were living and then i come back to the uk and it's so vibrant and so different but there's so many so many different blockers here that weren't present there and there's so many things you can do here that were blocked there so finding this level playing field it's not been it's not been the easiest thing personally yeah there's there's british sentiment sensibilities that i struggle with yeah yeah yeah it's uh i don't know whether i'm too liberal or too utopian but i think there's a level ground to be had we're trying to do it here you can see it right yeah liberalism of anybody's welcome it doesn't matter what financial belt you're in it doesn't matter what you drive or ride at the core of it you've got love affair for the same thing full stop that's it on a saturday with with blue skies yeah what's it like for bikers you get kind of we've we've got about a 70 30 split in terms of volume um so yeah 70 cars 30 bikes it gets full so you'll get a lot of bikers here yeah they either run we run a section at the front and we run a section all but they're a bit shy with the uh the clouds the minute it rains when dan presented this to us and said oh we've got these iconic cars and a panda that's now you know i mean i'm not averse to a fear panda but i would not use the word iconic it's wicked i just might not notice that i don't know why it was included yeah that's jake um you know we let we let jake be as expressive as he wanted to be and one of the contestants he wanted so good panda hundred get involved yeah that's big ron it's a bit gnarly apologies and the lowered stance apologies it's a bit gnarly that's slightly my dream car is it yeah always a lot of fun how savage is it yeah way savage and way more way more analog than anyone would ever lead you to believe yeah they clunk and grind and they sound fab you can hear all the diffs working they go like incredible and they sound amazing these things just sound super they just started making what they call it in germany so they've started making like the 80s original tires back so side walls tread patterns so because a colleague a friend of mine has just bought a 205 1.9 and he was saying what tires you put on it and you can still get tires in that size but he wanted the originals and they do it yeah we've started doing it no seriously started remaking them which i think is the same with motorbikes right if you're building the right kind of modern cafe racer or a flat bike you want the right tires and not many people sell them and if you if you have the old classic style tires is it the tire design or the compound that makes it modern it's the compound yeah yeah it's the it's the look the aesthetics that make it classic but you can update it and put uh put modern technology synthetic rubbers in it so you get modern performance from a classic looking tire you know what cross flies were like in the in the 80s and stuff you know if you've got a classic car the last thing you want to be doing is sticking it on sometime okay well actually been here a long time it's just too fun having to stop to think but need to get some food so chill out order some food and see what's going on so we've got i always forget these uh what's that triumph maybe even a rover actually harley's ktm oh mark one gulf so that is an old rover 3500 mark one gulf oh i used to have one of those but not gti i love that new g wagon 911 subaru another porsche behind it modified honda every type every type of car that you can imagine and they keep on coming froyo behind it porsche behind that what's that that is a some kind of nissan it's just non-stop non-stop coming through everywhere just as i think it's starting to get empty a whole another set of vehicles comes in and each one is completely different to the last vehicle that came in just notice that that little mini right there that's so cool you've got people sitting at all the tables and cars just behind it as well baby blue continental just driving along on the back there but everyone just sitting here and watching the cars go by getting some food we've just ordered some food great menu so we're going to chill out now but i can't stop filming i keep going to sit down but then get back on filming and this is something i love look at that just behind the crowds it's just pulled up a slammed volvo i love these things look at that car park is full again so i'm going to give you a little tour of some of the interesting cars that are here today you said monica that your favorite car is here somewhere yeah that is stunning please name the model because i think oh here we go here we go nope it does have a badge on rove volvo sorry volvo 1800 what's this here we go mark one i have said that i'll try and get monica more into the videos but it's not easy any other cars you like look of monica okay over to west 2000 ferrari through there is that a testarossa that one there something like that oh that's a lovely porsche there that's very nice this old range rover that is stunning i look at those mirrors right at the front of the bonnet beautiful this is an interesting car the toyota yaris i forgot the exact name this is very special this has been getting a lot of publicity in the press that's the first one i've seen that looks the business very very nice oh i've just done a double take that is another one wow and look at that oh that's a nice defender that's a very nice defender back where we started the vlog i'm here to drop monica off in the fiat because a three-hour ride in temperatures dropping a bit actually it's just too unpleasant for monica to be on the back but wow if you've never been like us if you've never before been to caffeine and machine i cannot recommend it highly enough it doesn't matter if you're coming from scotland wales or brighton it's worth a huge trip just to see and experience it and it doesn't matter what car or motorbike you come in everyone's just got a common interest in cars and motorbikes in essence it's just full of like-minded open-minded people just a fantastic day out the food is delicious the coffee's brilliant they may even be making a children's play area you can come with the whole family with children you can come with your girlfriend you can come just alone we saw we saw everyone from kind of 80 year old women to 17 year old guys and everything in between you've got the classic classic volvos to the mclarens anything you can imagine i'm actually worn out from seeing so many amazing vehicles but if you'd like to see any more any more content collaborating with michelin just let me know and i'd like to thank actually michelin hugely for making this day possible and caffeine and machine for their incredible hospitality we will definitely be back and that's it please do subscribe to the channel give the video a like and i'll see you in the next one