In this special The Weekly Driver podcast episode, Michael Kahn takes the reins from longtime hosts James Raia and Bruce Aldrich in an interview with Raia, who reflects on the journey in automotive journalism and podcasting over the past seven years.

Raia leans forward and with a bit of a journalistic tone, he casually shares, "After reviewing cars every week for 21 years, I still find myself asking, 'What’s the story behind this car?'”

With candid humor and heartfelt anecdotes, Raia shares the story of how he and Aldrich built the podcast from scratch, interviewing everyone from car enthusiasts next door to industry giants like the CEO of Fiat.

This conversation covers career-defining moments, memorable guests, and why cars are more than just machines—they’re connections to our history, personalities, and even families.

"Some of our best episodes were just like having a coffee with a friend—it’s like you forget the mic is even there," Raia reminisces fondly.

Whether you’re a car lover or just love a great story, James Raia and Michael’s final chat offers a look back at the people, places, and stories that made "The Weekly Driver" an enduring success and where it is going from here.

Michael Kahn and James Raia driving the 2023 Lucid Air Pure.

Transcript

Michael Kahn: All righty. Well, weekly driver podcast final episode with James Raia being taken over by myself, Michael Kahn. What are we doing here?

James Raia: We're doing a final podcast of the weekly driver Bruce Aldrich and I started it more than seven years ago, and I think we're, we went past 275 episodes. We mostly did it weekly because the site's the weekly driver, and that was corresponding to the fact that I test drove cars for each week for about 20 years before you purchased the site. And Bruce and I decided to do this podcast on a whim and we just had a blast that we got to meet a lot of important people in the car world some internationally famous, some locally famous, people with used cars, people with vintage cars, people with new cars, book authors, all kinds of different people. Analysts, anybody who was marginally related to the automotive field; we interviewed a lot of people.

Michael Kahn: Yeah, in listening through all of your episodes over the past seven years, you have such a diverse array of subjects and people you've talked to, friends you've made, and just the way that you ask your questions and tell people or let people tell their stories. It's a really good podcast.

James Raia: Thank you.

Michael Kahn: And I know that I'm taking over and of course I have my own personality and my own direction, which is fine.

James Raia: Sure.

Michael Kahn: But I'm excited just to leave these episodes up and let people continue to listen to them. And also they're, they're timeless. The things that you talk about aren't relevant to whether they were published last week or seven years ago, they remain very interesting and they're certainly worth revisits and I'm sure you have plenty of favorites.

James Raia: Oh, absolutely. I think, before discussing some of the favorites, one of the things that made the podcast work, at least as far as I'm concerned, is that Bruce and I have been friends for a very long time.

Michael Kahn: Yeah, how did you meet Bruce?

James Raia: Bruce was a Triathlete, a pretty prominent local triathlete, and I worked at the Sacramento Bee years ago, and I did a story on him.

Michael Kahn: Sacramento Bee, being the Sacramento based newspaper.

James Raia: Yeah, back then Sacramento Bee was it was the daily newspaper in Sacramento for a long time and now it's six days a week. And it back in the day, you know 30 years ago, it had a large budget and I was interested in endurance sports, I still am. And Bruce, I'd heard about Bruce and we met, did a story on him. And, we struck up a friendship and, Bruce inherited from his father a 1959 Volkswagen bug, and I had an old Volkswagen bug.