Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 03-12-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: March 12, 2025

Morning news, a grumpy Bill with little sleep. What about Elon? Why are so many thinking he is a real friend? That continues with the EP Autos talk with Eric Peters plus the Nissan Murano review and listener calls.

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Clauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clauserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Welcome to Wheels Up Wednesday, or it could be Grumpy Bill Wednesday. I'm not exactly sure how it's going to be, but I'll get back to you. The only reason it's a little bit grumpy is the sleep is precious to me and I had a friend butt dial me this morning at 1 30 and I have to leave the phone on because you know, I'm on call, you know, when you're on call, it's just kind of the way it goes.

So I wake up and then I'm like staring at the at the clock. Okay, 1 30. All right, I can get back to sleep. I can get back to sleep. I know I can get back to sleep. And then Matt, the cat gets in my face face poking me in the nose and purring. In other words, feed me Seymour, feed me. And then, okay, that's happening too.

Do I go back to sleep? No. So finally, I don't know, like 3.30 I throw in the towel and just come in. But it's all right. It's all right. I'm going to be fine and I'm going to be fine. I'm going to be fine and going to be fine. Everything's going to be fine. You know that feeling, right? When you have that little dull feeling in the back of your head. We're going to be all right. You can join the conversation though

and maybe make my headache worse. I don't know. Or better. It just depends on what you're talking about. But join in at 770-563-3770-KMED. Email Bill at BilleyersShow.com. Eric Peters is going to join me this morning. Wheels up Wednesday. We're going to be talking about his Bitcoin again. The one thing I will say about Eric Peters and yours truly is that we are consistent when it comes to Elon Musk. We didn't trust Elon Musk when the Democrats loved him and thought that he was the second

coming of Jesus. And I still don't trust him and or like him even though he's working for President Trump. And now President Trump, I guess what, throwing a sop to him yesterday, going and buying a Tesla. He's like, come on. Yeah, I know. Tesla's lost about 30, 40 percent of it. But Bill, doge, doge, doge.

It's like, I just don't quite get Republicans and conservatives who, when arguably friendly to the Democrat person for years and years and years, decides to roll over because there's a better deal on our side because we're coming into power in this particular case. That's the way I look at Elon Musk. This is a guy that got his money, that got his hundreds of billions of dollars by grifting through the United States federal government, by forcing other automobile manufacturers to pay him for the privilege of them building cars that people actually wanted to buy rather than the politically favored Elon Musk mobiles. And now because what? He decides to flip over and help us out on Doge a little bit?

flip over and help us out on Doge a little bit, all's forgiven. It's all forgiven. You know, don't worry about it. It's just, ah! I don't get it. Now I know that you want people to join your team. I get that. You want people to change and change their point of view and join the team, but I just, it makes my teeth hurt to see President Trump throwing bones to Tesla and sopping up to it and sucking up to it. He was telling the truth a few years ago when he said it was all a scam, just like a few years ago it was also right when President Trump said cryptocurrency, it's a scam. That's all that he gets is a scam. But then they donate $50 million to him. All of a sudden we need to have a strategic cryptocurrency reserve. Ay, ay, ay.

And I was happy to vote for Trump. Don't get me wrong. But is this just the way it is now? Maybe that's the... There it is. The grumpy bill came out. I'm very sorry. We know that the grumpy bill came out. I'm very sorry We know that the grumpy bill came out in this particular case All I have to do is read about that Trump and Elon Musk and got started

I hope they get all those those doge cuts through speaking of doge cuts the Education Department cutting its workforce of some 4,400 people by nearly 50%. They announced that last night. Reduction in force set out. And what they're going to do, every aspect of the Department of Education is going to be affected by it. Nobody is spared. At last count, it was like 1,300 people were being cut.

And because of the reduction in force rules, they get 90 days severance pay plus an extra year for every... I'm sorry, an extra week of severance pay for every year that they had served in the Department of Education. And they are talking about how this is going to return power of education to the state. Now that sounds really good. This is an example in which I would have questioned Republicans' thinking process when it comes to the educational process.

For years and years and years we've talked about we want to get rid of the Department of Education and return education to the state. Gee, doesn't that sound great? What is returning the power of education to the state of Oregon going to do for conservative parents? Does anybody have an answer for me? Oh, you mean that Oregon gets to double down on DEI if they're no longer trying to dance to the federal grant stream funding deal that you would get through the Department of Education?

Maybe, but sorry, that's Grumpy Bill coming out again this morning. I see usually I use Grumpy Bill to, grumpy bill London, you are a news guy. But I'm going to be grumpy bill there. But what do you think that looks like? What do you think that looks like with a Department of Education being eviscerated and going away, which hey, listen, I would love to see all the federal agencies go away. I'm okay with it. I really am.

But if you're going out there and saying we're going to return power of education to the states. Well, the state of Oregon, it's probably not going to change too much, is it? What do you think? Or do you think that because there may be a little less grant stream funding coming through to the Department of Education, what's left of it, maybe we'll be better. We won't double down. Speaking of which, OPB reporting, and I'm going to talk with state rep Yunker about this next hour, Governor Kotech is moving to hold Oregon schools more accountable for academic outcomes.

No, I'm serious. Yeah, yes. I'm serious. Yes, I can't believe that you're not so, you're not trusting about Governor Kotec. CS Grumpy Bill talking again. Leading Oregon Democrats are pushing two companion bills that aim to set stricter academic metrics for schools and layout steps they'd have to take if they don't meet them. Governor Kotech's been saying for months, OPB, reports that Oregon public schools need more money. Okay, more money. We're at some point where some of these kids have about 15, 16, 17 thousand dollars a year more expensive than going to Cascade Christian.

And somehow Cascade Christian manages to educate the kids. But yeah, Tina Koteck says we need more. Koteck along with a fellow Democrat Senate President Rob Wagner, Speaker of the House Julie Fahey, pushing a couple of complimentary bills forward to the legislators this week. And I guess they carry amendment proposals studying... Oh, it's going to be studying the adequacy of public education and school accountability. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. I'll tell you what, I'm gonna hold my fire here for the moment on this one. State Representative Dwayne Younger has his own education reform bill that he's trying to get some attention to.

And he says it would actually do something about it. And he actually has a number of school teachers within his family within the system. So kind of knows all the problems that are going in here. But it says that Governor Kotec is all wrong about this. So we'll kick that around coming up here in the next few minutes. All right I'm gonna have a little more coffee maybe grumpy bill will disappear and nice bill will return I don't know. 18 minutes after 6 this is the Bill Myers show 7705633 call in cheer me up okay let's have some fun. If your home computer has issues call

5 8 7 5 call Cherise like I did or visit their showroom off Biddle Road in Metford. NoWiresNow.com. Restrictions apply. Call for details. Internet and cell phone service not provided by Dish. Hi, I'm Paul Strandberg with Valley View Nursery and I'm on KMED. Valley View Nursery, Paul, great people. And I love you gardeners. I want you to come over and do gardening at my house because I hate gardening and I'm

bad at it. Oh, wait a minute, that's more grumpy bill this morning. I'm gonna get happy because we have Jeff. Hello, Jeff How are you doing this morning? Welcome to the show. I'm doing great sir. How about yourself? I'm doing fine. I'm doing better I'm doing better. It's good to talk to sensible people. What's on your mind? Well, it is as bad as the federal education system is and I do think it's horrible to go away, I just feel like Oregon's going to sit there and go, you think that's bad, hold my hat, watch what we can do, and make it even more woke. Especially, because Trump says, all right, you're doing any DEI, you're doing any woke stuff, you're not going to get any money. And then Tina Kotec says, well, we need more money for federal education. That's so she can double down, isn't it? Yes. You

know, in the Daily Courier, they listed all of like Southern Oregon, like South Med. I'm in Grants Pass, and Grants Pass schools, the graduates. Was Cascade Christian in that? I don't remember if they were. I don't think it is, because it's not a public school. I don't think it shows up in those stats. So that's why. I was just curious on the stats if they, you know, I would assume they give a much better education than everybody else. Well, and I would assume that if your parents are spending 15, 16 thousand dollars a year to send the kid to school, the kids probably actually going to school, unlike the public school. So, yes. Yeah. I just feel that, you know, once, if it does go to the state, I think a lot of states

will improve. And I don't think, you know, like the education here will get worse, but I think the wokeness and all the DEI crap will just go out the window and just like go really bad. Yeah, because right now the only restriction on it is that, oh gosh, we have to get rid of this stuff because of the grant stream funding. Well, then if COTEX is going to raise school money going into the system on the state side, then they don't have to worry. It could be DEI and LGBTQ and transgender surgeries. They can do everything they want at that point. In fact, they'll probably be like a hall pass to jump on the plane and go over to OHSU and have your genitalia cut off there as part of gender-affirming care.

You know, just make it a lot easier in the public school. They'll probably have a mobile unit that'll go to your school for you. Oh, that's right. Right. Kind of like a portable sawmill, right? You can't come to us. No problem will come to you. Yikes.

I hope we're wrong on this one though, Jeff. Okay. Thanks for the call. All right. Let me go to Jerry. Hello Jerry, how are you doing this morning? Good Bill. Good to hear from you. What's up? Well hey, I can be a little grumpy at times too, so I understand how you feel. Well just talk it through and I'll get through it and the caffeine will hit in and we'll kick in and I'll be fine. I believe I heard this morning on the news that we've given Keefe back intelligence and military aid. That doesn't sound like a real good idea does it? Well I'm assuming that's

true. I believe I did hear that on the shows that are on before yours. Yeah, yeah. I thought I heard something vaguely about the two on Stigol a little bit earlier, that something like that had happened. Yeah, I think you're right. I think it happened, but I haven't looked into it. I believe that that's a mistake. And here's why. I believe the war could be ended if we stopped supplying Ukraine. And if I were Putin, I would tell Mr. Trump and his administration, listen, I'm going to tell you the truth about this war.

We didn't start it. NATO started it for the last 30 years. They've been coming toward us, coming toward us, coming toward us. You know, and then started overthrowing government, the government, and you're creating your Democrat buddies. And then started killing some ethnic Russians down in the Donbass or wherever it was, if you'll recall. Now, Skous Now, you know Joel Skousen, I've talked with him before, he says that that's the typical line that are coming out of constitutional conservative types, and he says we're all wrong because he says that the fall of Russia was actually a fake job,

a head fake job, and that Putin really does have, although I don't know how he can do it, he's not exactly a rich country, but that he wants to expand territory and he's the one we got to worry about. What do you think? Yeah, well, I don't know, Bill. I meant, where are they expanding? That would be my question. You know, I don't see Russia as the former Soviet Union looking to go through Hungary with tanks like they did in the 50s. You know, well, I don't know. What's Mr.

Skousen concerned about? Now they're linked up with China, their next door neighbor. And... Now, see, that's what I'm concerned about. And what Skousen is saying, what's really all about is that China and Russia team up to eventually take us on in World War III once they are thoroughly strengthened economically and militarily. And that makes sense, I can understand that. Which also means to me that national security, one of the best things we could do then, is to kind of drive a wedge in that Chinese-Russian partnership, don't you think? I agree.

You know what, Phil? If it were me, now I'm just speaking for myself obviously, and people will probably disagree with me and that's fine. I would work out something with Russia. As Trump mentioned in one of his interviews by some reporter, Russia has a lot of resources. Why instead of Ukraine, why don't we tap into some of those Russian resources and do business with them? Huh? Win-win.

I know the abstainions on them. Yeah. But you see, the sanctions have caused us problems too, because here it is, Trump says, I know they have sanctions on them. But you see, the sanctions have caused us problems too, because here it is Trump says I want everybody to be using the dollar as the reserve currency. Well, who wants to use the reserve currency if the president, if you do something they don't like, is going to beat you over the head with you using the dollar and then penalizing you? You can't do that.

It doesn't work. Absolutely. And I do believe that tricks will be a force to be reckoned with. As Jim Rickards said, they already have a new currency. It's called gold. Yeah, notice the currency. I notice the price of that still continues to grind up within a pretty $2,900 plus range. If I were Putin, I'd also say, hey, listen, I don't want this to go on, but we're not going to accept these terms here. And these European countries that you went in here to be peacekeepers, no, that's not going to happen. You know why? Because they're the same ones who've been supporting Ukraine, killing us. Fair enough. Jerry?

Keepers right here on our border? Forget it. Alright, Jerry the Bull. Good take. We appreciate your call. You be well. And thanks for helping me be a little less grumpy. Always appreciate that. Alright, let's see what else we got going on here. Senator Jeff Merkley. Oh, Jeff Merkley is my favorite. Absolutely my favorite. you see what else we got going on here senator jeff merkeley all jeff merkeley's my favorite absolutely my favorite democratic committee members say e p a administrator zeldin's illegal plan to

gut the federal agency is poised to torpedo environmental safeguards while undermining the constitution i would dare say the environmental safeguards had been undermining the Constitution for quite some time at this point, guys. That's kind of the way I look at it. Obviously, Senator Merkley and I would disagree here, but he's a senator, I'm sorry, a senior member rather, of the Senate

Environment and Public Works Committee, and he joined all the other Democrats, all the Democrats have gotten together on this one demanding answers from the EPA about his illegal scheme to gut the agency. In other words, the what? Is it going to be the illegal scheme to maybe say that carbon dioxide is not a poisonous gas, is not killing the planet, is actually a part of plant food, that sort of thing, and that you don't have any real evidence that human-produced carbon dioxide is killing the planet. If anything, it's greening the planet. It wouldn't be something like that, would it, berserkerly? I don't know. But then again, I'm not a scientist, I'm just a talk show host, but there we go. All right.

Ontario, Canada agrees to suspend electricity tariffs after Trump threatens to increase the tariffs once again. I would say he's winning on this particular one. Didn't take long. Town Hall reporting the Canadian province of Ontario back down. They threaten to put a big surcharge on electricity to three United States states as President Donald Trump threatened to double the tariffs that he'd already placed on Canadian goods. Doug Ford, remember that guy? Wasn't that the fat fellow that got in trouble a number of years ago? I forget the details. I'm going to have to look that up again. But anyway, Doug Ford has managed to rehabilitate himself apparently.

And the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick released a statement late last night saying they have come to an understanding. I don't know if it was one of those things like an understanding like in the Godfather movie like either your signature or your brains will be on the contract. Remember that part of that great movie? I don't know but still we'll see. We're going to dive into the rest of it here. Eric Peters joins me Wheels Up Wednesday afternoons and I just appreciate you waking up here. This is the Bill Meyers Show. 770-5633 and you can call and talk to Eric if you have some questions and comments. Maybe a car you're looking at too. All coming up.

As a business owner, you likely do a lot of driving around town, so turn your business vehicle into an attention-getting rolling billboard. The Wash Buggy, Rap Lab, Brands and Restyles. Excludes tax license title and 250 dealer dog fees. See dealer for details. You're hearing the Bill Meyers show on 1063 KMED. Now Bill wants to hear from you. 541-770-5633. That's 770 KMED. It's golden years. Golden years, we're always talking about that. The Trump administration, we're going to be digging into the golden years with Eric

Peters, epautos.com, automotive journalist and genius. Eric, welcome the heck back to the program here on a grumpy bill wheels up Wednesday here, but I'm doing okay. I opened up the show this morning saying that you were going to come on and talking about how my teeth hurt when I'm looking at what's going on with the Trump administration and Elon Musk. I am glad to have waste, fraud and abuse detailed up, right? I'm fine. Let's go ahead. Let's rip it out by the roots. He's doing good work on that particular sort of thing. But I think where I have lost my faith, I guess, I don't want to say faith, I never had any faith, is that I've been really consistent that I think

that Elon Musk is a wolf in sheep's clothing. He was a wolf in sheep's clothing when the Democrats loved him, and I still think he's a wolf in sheep's clothing when he's working with the Republicans. But just because he's working for our team now, I'm not just going to... I gave Trump my... I guess honestly here, Eric, I gave Trump my vote, not my brain. Okay? That's very well said. Okay. Yeah, boy, where do we even begin with this? I guess we should preface this by saying or by talking about this really interesting inversion where four years ago the left absolutely venerated Elon Musk. You

know, Musk was their guy and of course conversely people on our side, the right loosely speaking, despised him because they regarded him rightly as the archgrifter of the Green Griff. Well, all of a sudden fast forward and now the left despises him because he's allied himself with the bad old orange man and at the same time the right all of a sudden regards This guy as some kind of avatar of capitalism and as you say it makes my teeth hurt and then just yesterday We find out that apparently orange is the new green Trump comes out not only in defense of Musk but in defense of Tesla and he calls it the great American car company.

And he announces that he's going to buy a Tesla, which tells me that he has absolutely no comprehension whatsoever of the Green Griff or he's the most cynical hypocrite imaginable. Okay, or he understands how cynical it is, but he's helping him so much in his administration with Doge it's almost a a sop almost a sop to To Elon Musk because he he sees him in big trouble You know here in Oregon We're smashing windows and throwing fire bombs that they had Tesla dealerships and things like that night And I think that's horrible that I'm not in course, you know

I'm with you destruction of property private property is criminal and ought to be prosecuted But I think a good way to understand this is to look at what also happened yesterday, which was Trump attacking Representative Massey of Kentucky because he didn't toe the Trumpian line. And what that tells me is that loyalty matters more than principles. If you, you know, obsequiously worship the orange man, then everything is good. But if you question anything the orange man has, the guy turns on you and will shiv you in the back just as quickly as any leftist would for deviating from the orthodoxy.

Okay, well we're only going to be doing a few more months of experiments turning the frogs or the mice gay or whatever it is that Alex Jones was talking about. Okay, well... Yeah, that's all great, but it's just so exasperating. You know, I'm with you. I'm very happy that Musk has been publicly exposing the fraud at USAID and elsewhere. That's great. That's wonderful. I'm glad that Trump came out and said something that had become controversial, which is that if you're born a male, well then you're a man, and you know, wearing women's clothing does not turn you into a woman. All of that is

great. It's a refreshing breath of sanity. But at the same time, it doesn't mean I'm just going to stand there like a clapping seal for whatever Trump says and does and say, orange man good. And I think that's where I am too. And that's where I get myself sideways with some people too. Because like I said, I gave him my vote, I didn't give him my brain. And the point being though is that Tesla is still the grift and he has an agenda and a lot of people on the right I don't think understand that really the main reason that Elon

Musk wants to cut government spending is not because he has any problem with government spending before because it didn't really matter to him I think the whole idea is that the next grift for him is going to Mars he's been very open about it and he wants the United States to pay for it and get involved with SpaceX and going to Mars. That's his thing. This is the same guy that would like to implant Neuralinks on all the people and have us just join the singularity. I think. Yeah I think people ought to take into account and consider that Musk has yet to repudiate the whole climate change narrative or his stance on carbon taxes.

He was one of the people who came out and said that carbon ought to be taxed. If he still believes those things, how can they possibly entertain the idea that this guy is a friend of ours? He's not. He's a dangerous guy. He's a smart guy who has bull-weibled himself up to Trump. And he's doing some good things right now, but that does not make him a friend. And the right... doing some good things right now, but that does not make him a friend.

It's almost like the right wing is so desperate for friends in the famous world, whether it's a Hollywood or someone in the big captain of industry like Elon Musk, that sort of thing, that they'll overlook these realities. And I just, hey, you can't trust the guy. All right? Well, I think it's probably part of a broader issue, which is that people have been beaten down now for so many years, especially during the last four years, that they're completely desperate to hear or see anything that indicates to

them that, oh, look, a savior is here. It's going to get better rather than worse. You know, it's the Stalin's chicken thing. You know the story about Stalin's chicken, right? Oh yeah, when he kept plucking the chicken and then the chicken ended up buddying up to him to stay warm, right? He did it in front of the other apparatchiks, if I recall. Yeah, yeah. He would roughly pull out the bird's feathers and of course the bird would run away and then he would sprinkle a few grains of feed at his feet and the chicken would come back to peck at the grains that were put at Stalin's feet. That's a bit the way the right wing has been treated for a long, long time.

Our thing, our right wing, independent, if you want to call it that, feathers getting plucked, feathers getting plucked, in the moment something looks good, all's forgiven and you just rush right over. Is that kind of what you're talking about? Yes, absolutely. You know, I would like to see Trump come out and say, you know what, Elon Musk and Tesla will have to compete on the merits with other car companies. No more subsidies, no more federal regulations that favor electric vehicles and punish vehicles that aren't electric.

And Musk, by the way, said he's in favor of getting rid of the subsidies. But of course, it's easy to do that after you've got your hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies from the taxpayers over the years to build your company. Right, exactly. It's astounding. Until the regulations are taken away, it makes no meaningful difference because right now the regulations are set up such that the automakers are essentially forced to produce these EVs, whether they can sell them or not.

Until that changes, nothing is going to change. Okay. So that part was still some rough justice here. You have to wake people up to understand, hey, I'm going to be happy to see the dough stuff and I hope he's successful on that. And then after that, get out. Okay? You know, that's kind of the way it is because his agenda is to get taxpayers to pay for

his space trips. He's been open about it. And it's like people have sort of ignored that I guess. Isn't it a front-erisks? How much is he worth? What 60 billion something like that? Why doesn't he want to go to Mars? I allotted that. That's great. Use his own money. You know, get some investors. Line them up. You know, that was my critique with regard to Tesla. I don't have an issue with electric cars. Look, if he thinks that there's a market for electric cars, if anybody thinks there's a market for electric cars, line up investors, people

who want to put their money into this project, make the things, offer them for sale, and if people buy them, I'll clap. That's great. That's America. Exactly. But, you know, modern-day capitalism has decayed to the point where capitalism is getting taxpayers to pay for your sunk costs and then you keep the profits. I mean, that's- That's not capitalism though. It's really important to not use that term in this context. It's rent seeking cronyism is what it is. It's corporatism.

It's the merger of the state and big companies. That's all it is. It's got as much to do with capitalism as the vaccines had to do with preventing the spreading and getting of the rona. All right. Hey, we got some great news though, when it comes to the Hemi.

We'll talk about that here in just a moment. So we had that part, which is that's the irritating grumpy Bill and grumpy Eric part of the program. And then we'll continue into the good stuff about the Hemi and a bunch of other stuff, including car reviews. And if you have a question or comment, 770-5633, this is the Bill Meyer Show on KMED. Wipeout hunger is over. We're going to schedule your free consultation.

You're hearing the Bill Meyer Show on 1063 KMED. Wheels up Wednesday with Eric Peters, the number 7705633. Got a car you're looking at? Question about a car? Maybe a comment on what is going on with the new vehicles. Hey, before we get into the good news on the Hemi here, Eric, some headwinds for the automakers that we wanted to mention. This has to do with an article you have on EP Autos. It's called Epic Default. What is going on there right now? How could you kind of set that out? This is

the financial side of the world. What are those canaries in the coal mine having to do with defaults on car loans, both new and used, and they're up significantly, and not just among people who are on the margins and who have poor credit. And it's completely understandable because in addition to the fact that the average new car payment is now about $734, the cost of everything has exploded. And I think a lot of people weren't prepared for that. And so, you know, they assumed that whatever they were earning would cover all of their expenses not just their car payment and now of course they're paying significantly more for

things like food, utilities, car insurance and all of these things together make it such that they're no longer able to make their payments and so there's probably going to be a big wave of defaults on car loans coming shortly and that's another piece of bad news unfortunately that'll make us even grumpier this morning. Yeah well you know I don't like to talk about this going on but this is reality and I'm wondering though if do you think that given the situation given the the challenges in the economy right now that the dealerships or the loan companies maybe it be the loan companies really making

this decision right? I don't think the dealers are mostly doing their own financing, do they? No, no, no, because they pawn that off generally unless it's, you know, finance through the manufacturer. Okay. The lender that comes in and, you know, assumes the loan and at that point the dealer washes their hands of it. Is there a possibility that maybe these, whoever owns the note on these cars, given the economy right now, might be more willing to work with people Because almost the last thing you want to do is try to foreclose and then and then sell in a situation like that I don't know. Well, they may but you know, it's interesting to me because everything has a lag time built into it, right?

Yeah, so what we're experiencing right now is essentially something that was set in motion several years ago This is a hangover from the Biden administration really is what we're looking at Yeah, yeah. The reason why everybody's paying 25 or 50% more for car insurance has to do with the Biden era pushing of electric cars that dramatically increased the cost of the average new vehicle, as well as the cost of replacing and repairing it. And that is manifesting now in our car insurance policies. And all of these things are tied together and making things unaffordable.

And so how do we deal with this? What do we do? I don't know. You know, vehicles now are out of hand expensive. You can't practically buy anything any longer that's not a tiny little nothing for less than $30,000. And that's not counting the cost of insuring it and all the other things that go along with owning it. It's really bad news out there for both the industry and for us. I think a lot of folks haven't realized just how expensive insurance has become because of the expense of the new vehicles and because, and the way they're designed in many cases that even

minor parking lot dings, they're designed to absorb lots of force and so you get quite a bit of crumpling pretty quickly. It protects the people inside the car but it also leads to higher collision damages for what would be a minor accident, really. Wouldn't that be fair? Well, you don't even get crumpling anymore because the front and rear end of these cars are now made of plastic and they just tear right off.

And the really exasperating thing is that, I'll give you an example, a personal one. I don't own one of these vehicles. I have an O2 Nissan Frontier. I haven't gotten a ticket ticket i haven't filed a claim nothing but yet my insurance costs have literally double in the in the last two years why not because of anything i've done but because of these vehicles out there where if i happen to you know bump into one of these vehicles that has

a plastic face yet that's what they call them out bumper and it tears off which it will could tell them by clips and all the little cameras and little plastic pieces there have to be replaced you know it's four or five thousand dollars for that. That's driving a lot of this then yeah. Yes absolutely. And you look at the way the cars are designed now in which you have the the very specific model glass headlight when you used to have like the you know the round or the rectangular headlights that cost 20 bucks apiece when you replace them now if you hit someone's headlight it's several hundred dollars to get that fixed isn't it yeah and got help you if you know stone-chip a windshield I had one

of my readers post that they had that happen to them can't remember what the make and model was but it was a new vehicle and because the windshield is part of the advanced driver assistance system and has stuff embedded in it, the cost to replace the windshield was about $2,000. That's unbelievable for a piece of glass, huh? Does it have electronics embedded in it, like the heads-up display sort of thing? Is that what that's all about? No, not the heads-up display, but if you look at a typical new car and what you'll see is not just glass.

Up toward the roof line, you'll see typically this black box with things coming out of it embedded into the glass that's part of the bill typically have sensors in there and it's part of the advanced driver assistance stuff which by the way is no longer optional it's all mandatory now in all the vehicles not mandatory by the government but mandatory in terms of the automakers just decided to anticipate the mandate and make all this stuff part of the standard equipment package. Interesting stuff over on epautos.com. epautos.com.

Eric Peters with me. Let me go to line three. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Well, good morning. Strangely enough, it's deplorable Patrick. Hello, DP.

What's your question for Eric or comment? Go ahead. Well, I'll tell you, I was up really late last night and I'm sleeping in today. In fact, I'm asleep right now, but I'm not too bad at talking in my sleep. So I just want to take it on a different direction and talk a little automotive trivia and combine it with a complaint and I'm kind of flying without a net while I talk in my sleep because I'm gonna... Okay, if you could just get to it though that would be nice, okay? Well, back in the late 50s and early 60s these Dodge cars had a wide brake pedal, like 8 inches wide? Do you guys know why that is and why they don't have

it now? The 8 inch wide brake pedal? No, I don't know. Do you, Eric? Well, as a general thing, cars with automatic transmissions have wider brake pedals than cars with manuals. For example, my 76 Trans Am, it's an automatic and I've had the exact same car with a manual and the manual version has a brake pedal that's probably half the size of the one with the automatic just because there's only so much room for the pedals. Okay, so what do you say about the reason why they're gone? What do you say? I was a kid in the automotive shop when we were talking about that. That was because they had power brakes, and in case the power brakes would fail, a woman could put two feet on the pedal and

still stop the car even if power brakes failed. And now, you still get a narrow pedal even with power brakes in and screw it if your power brakes go off, which we've had happen. Don Thumbler and I were loading the car by coasting it downhill to load it on the trailer one day. When he got ready to put on the brakes, it went right over the front of the trailer. We had our hands full with that. Well, the good news is that since I think it's either 64 or 65, I can't remember the model year, but after that point, all new cars had dual reservoir master cylinders, which simply means that the front and rear brakes were separate so that you might lose

the front brakes, you might lose the rear brakes, but you wouldn't lose both of them at the same time. I think what Patrick was talking about though, Eric, was the power assist going away and having to use much, much more force on it. Oh yeah, sure. Yeah, point well taken. ADP, thanks for the trivia on the wide brake pedal. Let me go to line three, or no, four rather.

Hi, you're on with Eric. Who's this? Good morning. Yeah, this is Pete from North Valley. Pete, what's up in North Valley, huh? Yeah, driving a Datsun 70, Datsun 240Z, and I don't drive it every month during the winters, so I store it a little bit. What fuel would be best to store in that tank, winter or summer fuel?

A 1970 Datsun 240, great car by the way, wonderful car. It's one of the early ones, right Eric? Yeah, it is. That's a classic that's rapidly appreciated. They're just great cars, but the best gas to put in that car or any car from that vintage is not even all gas uh... go to what's the name of the site uh... pure grad pure gas dot com i think it is and you should be able to find somewhere in your area a station that

sells one hundred percent gasoline in other words not ten percent people all you don't want you from all in the tank uh... i'd use that and you know ideally put a tap on the fuel system so that you can run the carburetor dry when you decide to store it for several months if you're going to do that. Okay great I appreciate that because like I said I don't drive it you know in the winter very much and I just don't want it to deteriorate any anymore than it has to. I know that the rubber lines seem to have a problem with any of the fuels that have been storing it but I haven't found that route. Oh yeah

the ethanol stuff is really bad news for those older cars and it's not just the the carburetors and the fuel pumps it's also the steel lines the fuel lines and the tank the ethanol will rapidly rust them from the inside out and then you get rust inside your gas that gets sucked into the fuel system and it's just a nightmare. You want to avoid that at all costs. Yes, so what you want to do Pete, definitely pure gasoline and I know that in Medford is an example, the town pump has non-alcohol gasoline. They always put it up there. It's a, you know, it's a what, 50, 60, maybe 70 cents more a gallon, maybe a buck more a gallon. But you know, this is a classic that's not being

driven all the time. So you know, you top it off, you know, fill up the tank. And that's another thing I would advise filling up the tank so you don't have a partially full tank, which will accelerate the accumulation of moisture in the tank. Eric, do you have a favorite fuel preservation Eric, do you have a favorite fuel preservation formula for cars like that? I'll use stable sometimes, but I find that just avoiding the ethanol gas and when you're dealing with things like a portable generator or lawn equipment, I try to run the carburetors dry before storage so that it's not sitting there with the fuel in the carburetor. Absolutely. Hey Pete, good luck with that 240Z.

Bring it by the station sometime. I love those vehicles. I had a friend that had one in high school when it was still maybe five, six years old at that point. It was a great car. I can see why it got so popular at that time and then was underappreciated there for a while. I don't think the later iterations like the 380z's and stuff like that, I don't think people are going to care about those to the same extent, do you? No, not at all. You know, they got really expensive, they got very heavy, and like so many things that are new, overly complicated. Whereas the original Z cars, they had that great inline six, you pop the hood and there it was, readily accessible.

And almost anybody who was interested in learning a few basic mechanical things could service the car completely and wouldn't have to pay somebody to do it. Now up on EP Auto's today, brand new article, Return of the Hemi. This is some good news. I'm really glad to hear this because we were wondering what was going to be going on with Stellantis, which is what Dodge and Jeep and Ram truck and all that kind of stuff, because a lot of them have been kind of circling the drain because of the EV

mandates that they were doing and people just weren't buying the EVs from them. That's just the way it is. So what happens then with the Hemi? Well it looks like it's coming back which it couldn't come soon enough. Stellantis is kind of in the same shape the Titanic was after it hit the iceberg and this is an attempt to patch the hole before the whole thing goes under. They made the disastrous mistake of pulling the V8 out of the lineup and of course turning the Charger and the Challenger into a device called the Charger and they're not selling for the obvious reason. People don't want devices especially from Dodge. Yeah you don't buy a

Dodge Charger to have a go-hump. That's just not it. Right exactly and you know the Ram truck when it got redesigned, I guess it was in 2019, I think, the current iteration of it, it was really well received. People loved it. They started selling really well. And then last year, they decided to pull the V8 out of it in favor of this new inline-6. And I'm not maligning the inline-6. It's not a bad engine by any means. It's beside the point. People who buy that truck want a V8, period. You also want the grunt of the V8, right? You also don't want it to have to have the turbo charger to make the power, right? Again, in defense of the 6, the 6 makes more power than the old V8 did,

and it's perfectly capable of pulling a heavy load and doing all the work, but it doesn't sound like a V8. It's not a V8. That's's the bottom line the people who want those trucks want that kind of an engine and that you know that that's a case of of Stellantis trying to force fees something to their buyer demographic but their buy demographic doesn't have to buy yeah they can go to they can go to Ford or they can go to GM and they can still get a v8 truck and that's what the many of them have been doing now the interesting thing is not only are they bringing back the Hemi they're bringing back Tim Kaniskes who is the guy who used to be in charge over at Dodge and who

departed after the V-8 left. So he's been charged with trying to save RAM from the abyss, and part of that plan apparently is bringing back the V-8. That kind of reminds me of those old George Bush signs, Miss Me Yet, right? Right. I guess they did. All right, return of the Hemi. Wonderful. But, you know, at the same time, the worry I have is that it's going to still be extraordinarily expensive. It's probably going to be the case that a V8 Ram is going to cost you 60 grand, and that's not going to help. I think what they really ought to consider doing is bringing something back like the old Dakota, which was, you know, they considered it a mid-sized at the time, but it's still a full-size truck by historic

standards. Bring that back in a work truck form with the V8, sell it for 27k and they won't be able to make them fast enough. Exactly, I would agree with you and I know you know plenty of men and women would want those and especially work trucks. You got it. Let me go to next line here on Eric Peters Wheels Up Wednesday on KMED. Hi, who's this? Good morning. Hey, Tom. Question, comment, go ahead. Good morning. Yeah, I have a couple of Z cars, 280Zs, 77 and a 78 and a 79. That may be a ZX and a 79. The 79 that I have still burns the regular leaded fuel. It isn't restricted to unleaded only. I have a part in a garage. Yeah. I think it's garage. So it sounds like you're the go-to guy if

somebody needs their vintage Z car repaired, huh? You're the guy? Well, I did have had a whole bunch of Z cars, that's for sure, over the years. You know, you talked about that brake pedal. My dad invented that brake pedal, that low brake pedal, wide brake pedal. Oh yeah? Back in, yes, he had a Cadillac Coupe De Ville, 1950 Coupe De Ville, and he modified it. He didn't do the modification he had it done, but they cut a hole in the floor. They put a rod, they even had to cut a hole through the frame,

a round hole to put a rod to somehow... And the reason he did go through this whole thing was you can get your foot on a brake pedal that's lower to the floor for one thing and you could easily use your left foot on the brake. It sounds like there was actually some interesting developments to get that wide brake pedal so that way you could give it extra oomph if you needed needed it back in the day. Hey what's your favorite part about driving the vintage Z though? You don't mind me asking. Well I guess the questions you could ask the people spot the car with original paint that's beautiful. Never been out in the sun. Wow. You know what one car's got 17,000 miles on it and the other car's got 32,000 miles.

Great story. Hey, I appreciate you sharing that, Tom. Thanks for the call. You know, Bill, that car, by the way, was kind of a poor man's alternative to a Jaguar E-type. And that's what everybody said back at that time. It's like it was the same kind of look, but still, you know, the one thing I do remember, last time I drove a Z car, because I'm really broad of shoulder, I don't

know if you are, but I'm really broad of shoulder, it did feel a little cramped for me at that point. Yeah, yeah, but you know, again, it was a sports car. You know, I've been in a Jaguar E2 and, you know, it's not exactly the most roomy thing in the world, neither is a Miata, but they are all such fun to drive. And that's it fun capital F for sure. Hey what did you think about the Nissan Murano and that's what you put in the in the car review section for this week. Yeah there's there's good and there's bad the Murano is all new for 2025. Now the Murano is one of the oldest of the cars

in its class it dates way back so i think two thousand three you know when there were that many crossovers that whole especially in the mid-sized class of the lexus are access kind of first the came out so it's been around a long time and they're trying to refresh it and renew buyer interest in it and on the upside you know if you look at it in terms of what it comes with its features of

equipment you can get it was quilted leather and massaging seats for $10,000, $20,000 less than a luxury brand crossover. So it compares very favorably to something like a Lexus RX. On the downside, it's afflicted with a compliance engine. It used to come with a V6 just like the Lexus RX 350. If Lexus RX 350 no longer comes with a V6, it comes with a little turbo, a little four-cylinder turbo. Now this thing comes with not just a turbo four, but a variable compression turbo four.

So the challenge could be complexity and longevity, right? Yeah, you know, and what's the benefit? You know, I appreciate the engineering brain sweat that went into it. It's a very interesting engine design. I've got some details in the article as well as some schematics that show people how it works. But what's the upside? It makes less horsepower than the old V6 and it doesn't get any better gas mileage. But it does put out less carbon. There you go.

That's the only reason. That's it. You know, because they can comply with federal so-called emission standards that increasingly have nothing to do with pollution. It just has to do with this boogeyman about carbon dioxide. By the way, has the EPA been tamed yet by the new Trump guy or not? Do we know? Not, not, not as far as I can tell, nothing substantive.

What's happened is it's kind of idling now. You know, Lee Zeldin, the new EPA guy, hasn't done anything aggressive, but have the regs been dialed back, let alone removed? No, not yet. So until that happens, all this is is a temporary pause. Yeah, our Senator, one of our senators, Jeff Merkley, out there, is denouncing the scheme to cripple the EPA. The environment will be destroyed if anybody tries to rein in the regulatory apparatchiks there. Oh, boy. Yeah, just like, you know, your kids are going to become illiterate and enumerate if they get rid of the Federal Department of Education. Wait a minute, gee hasn't that already happened? Yeah. Yeah. Have you looked at the school rankings in the state of Oregon?

We'll get back to you on that one Eric, okay? Hey for next week, what are you going to review? Do you know yet or has it yet arrived? Yeah, I do actually. It's an interesting new car. It's a new car literally. It's a Kia K4, which is the vehicle the Kia is going to replace the Forte with. And here's what's cool about it. It's an affordable car. And it's a car. It's not a crossover. It starts around $21,000, which is a breath of fresh air in these times, isn't it?

I'm really looking forward to getting a deeper dive into it. And we'll have some more about that up on the site and we can talk about it next week. Alright, we'll do that. Looking forward to the review. Thanks so much, Eric. EPautos.com. Drive freely, my friend. We'll see you next week. You bet.