Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 08-13-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: August 13, 2025

Morning headlines, tragedy in Jo County, are we dehumanizing homeless more? Eric Peters from EP Autos talks the latest Ford Model T mission - yep, more EVs, reviews, harder to get motor oil for vintage vehicles?

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. So glad you were here on Wheels Up Wednesday. It's August 13th, a balmy 70 degrees. And today, probably the end of the super heat, 99 for the high, and then we start leaking away into the upper 80s.

Kind of more of like the normal, you know, the normal way of looking at weather. around here. It's just summer, you know, just summer in Southern Oregon. I was talking yesterday on Facebook. I was mentioning a few things afterwards that, you know, all of the cooling shelters were open here in Southern Oregon, you know, Grants Pass, Medford, Ashland, everybody has their cooling shelters open. And I said that it was a pretty good thing. And I'm glad that they did. And it is something that I'm glad. We have a lot of conversations about about homelessness policy here in Southern Oregon. But you talk about that. different day. You know, the days when you have those extreme temperatures, whether it's

super, super cold or super, super hot. It was so hot yesterday. You know, I always know when it's really, really hot, when you don't have the homeless people hanging out around the fast food places with holding up their signs saying that anything happens or anything helps, you know, all those, all those sort of things. And yeah, we have a lot of those conversations about enabling of behavior, but yeah, it's pretty intense late in the afternoon, especially if you're a concrete camper and it's good that we have these these things to try to be kind to our fellow man i must say though i was a bit surprised on some of the some of the reactions on social media and i know some of the people that ended up saying these things are using

names that aren't uh they're real you're using generic names and you find out there's no you know you don't know what their real name is and i get that that's the the beauty of being online you can hide a lot of your identity if you wish to. And that's a good thing where you're able to speak frankly. But I was concerned on a rising tide of dehumanizing talk. Now, I'm a person of the right. I make no doubt about, you know, where I come from from my point of view. Accountability, responsibility is it.

But I also never want to lose fight or lose, pardon me, I never want to lose. sight is what I'm trying to say. I never want to lose sight of the fact that even our concrete campers, yes, our drug addicts, our drunks, our various other problems that we're dealing with these pathologies in society, they still are human. They are our fellow men and women, sometimes children, too. And it does concern me that when I was talking about how good it was that we had these cooling shelters and the warming shelters to keep people from dying in the heat and or the cold, there's an undercurrent and it tends to be growing of their rats. They need to be almost exterminated like rats.

And I can't go there. I can't go there. And it just seems to me that we need to be focusing on doing our best as society to, A, hold these people accountable for their behavior and not enable any of it and not enable it as much as possible and actually get a path forward, try to help them, you know, help themselves. I see that as our role in the homelessness community. I don't believe, though, that sending millions of dollars to NGOs that hand out needles and drug paraphernalia is the way to help them. You know, that's where I'll tend to break with a lot of the big hearts, so to speak, on the left. That doesn't.

don't want to have any judgment on someone's addictive behavior. You know, you can't embrace the addictive behavior. And no, you just don't want to feed everything about the bears. You know, you feed the bears, you're going to get more bears. You know, I get that to a certain extent. But the bears are here. And I am concerned that there is a rising tide of just nastiness. And maybe part of the nastiness is because of the rising crime that will tend.

and to accompany the concrete campers. But I would just call for, you know, be cool about this. I've never been homeless. I don't know what kind of trauma gets some people into those sort of situations, whether it is self-induced trauma or people that are just wanting drama or people who are just whacked out and came out a bit flawed. I don't know. There's probably a million different stories on the story.

streets here in southern Oregon. What I don't want to do is get to the point where we dehumanize them because, you know, society, you start dehumanizing people, whether it's the left dehumanizing the right, right, dehumanizing the left, left and right, or dehumanizing the homelessness or something. But, you know, bad things can happen in a world that goes down this road of, it's all the them. And we need to exterminate the them. And everything we will be okay. You look back at history and a lot of that didn't end too well. You're saying. 770566337. Okay, MED. It was a big serious story. Last night was the top of the story. It's still top of the local news here. He had a big murder suicide in Josephine County.

Whole family wiped out. Whole family wiped out. It appears to be the father that did it. 40-year-old Chad Beahey, ended up apparently shooting his wife, 42-year-old Hannah Beahey, and then turned the gun on all three of their children. I don't know what kind of a demon. What kind of a demon gets you into a situation like that? But, yeah, that's the story. And Oregon State Police end up reporting this in a release, and cops had conducted a welfare check over on Hussie Lane in the Pickett,

area Monday morning just after 930 because both mom and dad hadn't shown up to work and it was uncharacteristic and and they ended up finding out. I don't know. Like I said, I don't, all I can say is what a tragedy and oh boy, what kind of demons? What kind of demons drove that? There's a lot of that in our society these days. I'll say that much. 770563-7-0-K-M-E-D. in spite of that you know that story there about that particular family that went through alter crisis they're no longer here and Gus we're going to be talking about that off and on for weeks I have no doubt I was reading a story from Ryan McMaken it was in Lou Rockwell today and it's on Mises.orgie now Lou Rockwell I'm a big fan of that

read it every morning and night two for that matter you know good libertarian slash conservative politics and thinking goes on. A lot of articles end up being featured. But Ryan, and I'm glad Ryan brought this up because it's something that we need to keep in mind that a lot of times the right right now is in the middle of just like, you know, everything President Trump turns golden and it's going to be this new golden age and we're just going to be vanquishing all of these, the leftards, you know, those kind of things. And everything is going to be just like.

everything that Breitbart and the Gateway Pundant want. It's going to be the new golden era. And it's all because of Trump. Trump, Trump. And, you know, we're going to vanquish all these people. And yet he has done many things with his executive action. But remember, executive actions can be reversed next time a different clown gets into the office. And I'm glad that Ryan still put out here that the Democrat Socialists of America ended up sponsoring a panel on the family.

And he's saying that no matter what you may be hearing, no matter what kind of moderation and tone you may be getting from the MSNBC types, and maybe the Oregon public broadcasting types, who knows. But that Democratic Socialists of America at their conference this year, they posed a question, how should the left relate to the family? McMacon, writes socialist analysis makes clear that the nuclear family form is inherently repressive, racist, and heterosexist. In other words, they're still at it. And it functionally reinforces and reproduces capitalism. In a roundtable conversation here of the various panelists, and they concluded that when we, this means Democrats or Democrat socialists, Think AOC, think all, you know, think the usual suspects, right? When we talk about family abolition, we're talking about the abolition of the economic unit.

All of our material needs taken care of by the collective. We argue for the abolition of the family in general. The institution of the family acts as part of the capital system. And naturally, these leftists want to abolish the family because they agree with more. that the family is a bourgeois institution that must be destroyed in order to clear the way for our socialist utopia. Another element of opposing the family comes from the bizarre preoccupation of the left with commodifying sex. And McMacon says it's ironic that these anti-capitalists seek so vehement to turn sex into an economic commodity. You know, sex workers.

You know, we're against capitalism, but we're okay with you selling your body because they figured that marriage is just prostitution, just with a longer-term contract. You know, that kind of thing. And McMacon, it's a great article on Lou Rockwell. No matter what kind of moderation of tone that you may be hearing because Democrats are trying to figure out, hey, how are we going to win elections next year? And they're pretty good at winning elections when they crack down on things,

when they get their forces in line. Let's be honest about that. I would dare say the Democrats are much better at controlling power than Republicans are at controlling power for the most part. all you have to do is just, you know, well, look at the United States for the most part. I have a feeling most Republicans, well, are you conservative, and, well, we want to be liked, and, you know, we couldn't be, we couldn't be mean to people, you know. We don't want to be mean girls like them.

And then, look at our Republicans getting rolled into the state legislature. Yeah, I know that there's a super majority against them, but there's still a big contention of the Republican Party that is the reach across the aisle caucus. In fact, that's what we should rename some of the caucus, just, okay, so-and-so, a member of the Reach Across the Isle Caucus, Republican from Powell Butte or whatever, you know, that kind of thing. Let me go to the phone here, 7705-633. It's wheels up Wednesday. Hi, good morning. Who's this?

My name is Ron Smith. Hi, Ron. How are you? Oh, excellent. I just wanted to call. I recently had an injury, and I spent about a month. and a half in the hospital, and then another month and a half at Highland House, and I've been homebound for two months. And yesterday was my first day out, and I took my truck, which had

forest detritus and turkey droppings on it, and I wanted it to wash, and I took it to Mill Street car wash on F at Mill Street. Oh, this is in Grants Pass, right? I saw my disabled veteran tag, and he let me go through for free, and he just said, thank you for your service. I wanted to say thank you to him. Ron, I am proud to have heard from you this morning, and are you on the men now? You're doing okay, getting better?

are getting better still not 100% it takes a while for us old guys yeah well it's a good thing to get the turkey droppings off the truck too right yes sir i i could hardly see out the mirror yeah it is amazing how how destructive they can be they're they're an interesting bird do you have like a wildlife a wildlife i don't know how i want to put it like um is your area you're it must be in a kind of a rural area My property is five acres, and that's typical for my neighbors. Yeah, well, the reason I was bringing this up is that I was talking with my sister-in-law who lives in the city of Jacksonville, Sherry. And she has a problem right now where she has 10 wild turkeys in her backyard. Let's see, one buck, three does, and four or five fawns that have all decided to set up in her city backyard property. Oh, oh, inside the city. Inside the city.

Oh, and also a couple of cats, too, on top of this. And she's not quite sure how she's going to do anything about it because she can't, you know, you can't, you know, when the deer have babies, they're going to kick you to death if you try to do anything. They have practically set up a sanctuary on her property. And I'm wondering if you ever have, if you have something like that over in your five acres. Well, we have, oh, right now three bucks. about four does and quite a few little ones, about three or four little ones that come through. But they haven't given us any problems, but we try to stay away from them. Oh, yeah, sure, yeah.

Let them do what they want to do. There's the source of water here, though. Oh, yeah, oh, that'll be the big attracted, sure. Yeah, so they come and they drink the water and the squirrels and birds and, you know, Everybody shares the water. It's a very important thing to have on your property. Hey, Ron, before you take off, what was the name of that car wash you went to again with your DAV? Mill Street.

Mills Street. Mill Street. Mill Street. All right, Mill Street. Very good. I appreciate the call, and thanks for noting it. That's just a great story. I'm glad you shared it this morning.

Hey, I really love listening to you in the morning and carry on, sir. All right. Thank you very much, Ron. Do take care. Get better. healthy. Yeah, the recovery can be tough sometime. Good morning. This is Bill. Hi. Who's this? Good morning, Bill. Tom here. Hi, Tom. You know, you started out in your show and talked about the internal demons that, you know, it happened over at Grants Pass. One thing I've learned in

life is, you know, you can't judge a book by its cover. And I had a very interesting conversation with a homeless guy. And he told me about his best friend and who's an amputee or whatever. But when this friend was like five years old, the dog was barking. And the father said, make that effing dog shut up.

Here's a gun. And I want you to go over and put a bullet in its head. and said, but the dog's my friend. It says, if you don't shoot the dog, I'll shoot you. Oh, boy. So he made the five-year-old go over and shoot the dog. And then the dad screamed at him. Now take this effing shovel and go dig a hole for him and throw him in it.

And, you know, this guy is, you know, he's an alcoholic forever. You just can't stop drinking, you know, the pain is so much inside him. And not that we're here to diagnose, but one could talk about how early childhood trauma has followed him. Oh, well, yeah, one and the same. But, you know, everybody out there has a story. Yeah, and I know, I mean, I look at these, you know, some of the homeless and, you know, God, go with them. Oh, yeah, and, you know, and I look at him, too, many of them. same way. And this is like, okay, if you can sit out there, you're able-bodied and hold

the sign up all day, you could probably find, you know, some work at some point that might be able to do better and get yourself back into a better situation. I know it. Now, it's easy for me to say that, you know? Yeah. Well, I'm just saying that, you know, we have this balance between compassion and also, you know, say, kick in the butt and get yourself going and so forth. And, but as I say, each person has their own, everyone has a story. Yeah. Every person, good and bad. And so I just, you know, just kind of telling that story that you never know when you look at some of these homeless people.

We don't know. We don't know. We don't know what the story is. And maybe it would help us to do, well, frankly, a lot of times we don't feel like talking because some look kind of scary, right? Absolutely. I'm with you there. Yeah, I know. There's some people, you look at them, and they look like they're just, like you said, two shades of murder and their parents. And we don't know that story, but I just think it's important that when we talk about homelessness situations that we don't fall into the exterminating rats kind of way of thinking. and that naturally comes up, but society going in that direction has a history of doing bad things. That's all I'm getting at.

And you may start with the homelessness and then it turns into something even darker over time. Oh, yeah, you certainly have to do that. This great article mentioned Lou Rockwell, great article by Horbinger about, you know, the government shouldn't be involved in health care and so forth and doing all the good things for us and education because uh you know it gets out of control and i kind of think the same thing about welfare i'm i might and you know i'm considering that uh made me even social securities over the top you almost need a social security system because we have such a correct monetary system but you know that's me yeah you can't uh hollow out a nation industrially with its

monetary policy and all the rest of it and then uh wonder hey what's wrong with you what do you mean Why aren't you working at the age of 92 over at the dollar store in Cave Junction? You know, that kind of thing. Come on. You got it. Get out there, Granny. Okay? Get off my lawn.

Exactly. Thanks, Tom. I appreciate the call. 628. This is KMED. Oregon Truck and Auto Authority is your work truck and van headquarters. Proudly offering Adrian Steel interior shelving packages, partitions, and the best ladder racks in the business. Integrate a bedslider, decked drawer system to boost your.

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creating a comfortable, relaxed, stress-free environment. Are you looking for friendly, compassionate, personal care? Come and join our excellent dental family. family. Call 541-779-6170 today for free consultation. Dental excellence. Dental of excellence, changing lives, one smile at a time. Hi, I'm Deb with Father and Son Dori, and I'm on KMED. Afternoons, Eric Peters will join me with Wheels Up Wednesday conversation from ePautos.com.

Great sight. Every Wednesday we like to kick it around. It's one of my favorite, favorite times of the week. not all politics. He is talking about how difficult it is to find oil for a classic vehicle. He had a great article about that. I was thinking, yeah. The days of finding 10W40 everywhere are just about gone because everything's got to be like 0 W10, right? You know, that kind of thing? Pretty soon we're probably going to have negative viscosity.

It'll be thinner and thinner and thinner. And I don't know, but we'll talk about that in the latest review. and a whole bunch more. By the way, you know, and Tom and I were talking just a few minutes ago about this, you know, trying to find this balance of when you're talking about homelessness and other people under stress, the balance between compassion and also accountability, you're really talking about the challenges between a largely female view of the world and a male view of the world or society and in clash.

And arguably, the left has been a very feminized ideology, very, very feminist, very risk-averse kind of thing. Government needs to be doing everything and being daddy. And Republicans are kind of taking the other side of that coin, so it's good that we find some balance. But I want to give you a heads up, though. Tomorrow I'm going to be talking with Dr. Gilda Carl. Yes, it is a she, she, her. I imagine all the pronouns on the email. But anyway, she's a spokesperson for the International Council of Men and Boys.

And she wrote a book, Real Men Don't Go Woke. And we're going to talk about this trend which has been going on, especially growing ever since Trump has been more on the political scene. And I think this has to do with the hatred of daddy, bringing more of a daddy point of view instead of just a pure old mommy and me kind of culture, which is what the United States has degenerated into. I mean, you need both. You need the mom and you need the dad.

You need both sides of that. You need the compassion when needed and you need the, you know, the slap upside the head, supposedly, from dad, you know. That's the way I kind of looked at it. Okay, this is what mom says. The dad says, okay, junior, I'm going to show you how the real world works, you know, that kind of thing. But the trend has been that crazed women increasingly going into progressive activism. And you see it all the time, and they display it on social media. And she's going to talk about this quite openly tomorrow.

We're going to have a talk about it around 730 on Conspiracy Theory Thursday. So I just want to give you a heads up on that one. Eric is on the way after news next. Two Dogs Fabricating has the resources to transform your rig into the most efficient configuration for your trade. Two Dogs is your authorized North Star Service Dex dealer. North Star features service beds, flatbeds. Mean roofing season? Sure.

Montana Roofing's gutter division wishes you a wonderful gutter season. season. Visit botanoroofing services.com. You're hearing the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. 638. Hit the Roadhouse Blues. Keep your hands on the wheel. Eric Peters is here. Automotive journalist and genius at E.P.O.O.S.com. Eric, welcome back. How are things in Virginia? Oh, they're great, Phil. Thanks for having me on, though I'm still kind of staggered by Ford's Model T moment that happened the other day.

I was reading that last night, and it was just kind of shaking my head. And I know that this is this all part about we're going to make more vehicles in America. I'm fine with that. I completely think that's a wonderful thing. But they're still whipping the EV, still, and even Ford in its model team moment, is doing this. And why don't you go ahead and break it down, what the story is, huh? Yeah, you know, it's even broader than just the EV thing. So there was this much anticipated announcement that Ford C.E.

you know, Jim Farley had out in Kentucky the other day. They advertised this as being the Model T moment, you know, and everybody waited with beta breath, oh, my gosh, are they going to bring out something like the Model T? And the answer is absolutely not. They're bringing out something that's everything that the model team wasn't, i.e., not only electric, but unaffordable. Well, you got to remember, though, if you know your history. Now, I grew up in my little Ohio.

I've told you about that. That's the birthplace of Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison made electric cars for a while back then. and then he became friends with Henry Ford, and he said, young man, you've got the right idea. He's because he knew it made much more sense, and now they're calling the Model T moment the reverse of that, almost, right? Isn't that right? Boy, there's somebody fast to deal with here. They're trying to imply that this new electric vehicle platform that they're coming up with is going to be essentially a modular skate.

And so in that sense, similar to the Model T and that the Model T was a very simple vehicle that they're coming up with, were able to then make other vehicles on the same platform, including Ford tractors, as an example. But the whole parallel is ridiculous. You know, Model T Ford cost, I think, $400 when it was new. And granted inflation, but the point is it didn't cost, you know, they're estimating only $30,000 when this thing supposedly appears sometime in 2027. And, of course, being an electric vehicle, as is the case with every single electric vehicle that has been announced as going to cost X. It always ends up costing Y, E, i.e. a whole lot more than what they told you it was going to cost. Yeah. What was that truck manufacturer that said that they were going to come out with

a really, really cheap electric truck, too, and it failed miserably. What? Clay, Jeff, Jeff Bezo's operation. That's right. That's right. An affordable electric pickup truck that is going to cost, you know, $30,000 on the low end to start. They just don't get it. And I think it's because kind of like politically these people live in a bubble, only this bubble. is an economic one. A guy like Farley or somebody like Mary Barrett, GM, basically anybody who is leading a major car company right now is somebody who has paid double-digit millions annually. You know, let that sink in and think about what that means. In the course of, say, three months, four months, a guy like Farley will be paid more than you and I will ever accrue in our entire lives.

And they would tend to look at what is affordable through that lens. In other words, they can't really relate to, I think what was it, a state senator was telling us that Josephine County, as an example, Josephine County, Oregon, the next county org over from Jackson County, where we are, the average income is, maybe it's median, I don't know, but it was like $30,000 a year. $30,000 a year at the same time that you have Ford talking about, a vehicle is affordable at $30,000, right? Yeah. You know, I'm trying to give these people the benefit of the doubt and that they're not malicious, and they just don't get it because for them, $30,000 is to you and I what finding some pennies under the sofa cushion is.

You know, it's an irrelevance. And maybe in their bubble, they think, wow, what's $30,000? That's really affordable. That's a whole lot less than my, you know, $250,000. So whatever the heck it is that they're driving. So they may think that that's affordable. But it isn't, obviously. And especially when you factor in all the peripherals, you know, you and I have talked before on the show about how insurance costs have exploded. Because you have a $30,000 car that has to be insured to, well, to be able to pay for a $100,000 Tesla cyber truck if you hit it, right? That kind of thing. And just even if you leave that out, you know, it's a $30,000 vehicle. So, you know, they factor in the replacement cost hypothetically if the thing gets total. Whereas in the past, if you had a $12,000 vehicle, it was half the price to replace it. So your insurance was lower.

So all of these factors are driving up the cost of vehicles to the point where increasingly people just can't afford these things. And, you know, another aspect of this that just kind of irritates me is that the Ford was designed to be owner serviceable. You know, it was designed to be something that it made you independent from the dealership, whereas these EVs are designed to tether you to the dealership because they're totally unserviceable by you. You know, you're utterly dependent on the dealership to keep this thing going and utterly dependent

on the centralized grid, power grid, just to get the electricity to keep the thing moving. So there are all sorts of things which are against this. And it would have been really interesting, I thought, had Ford come out there and say, hey, we're going to have hopefully a $30,000 electric skate that we can put any kind of body on. It's like, okay, I can go with that. Oh, and we're also going to find ourselves a way to do a $16,000 pickup truck, let's say, for the masses, which is, you know, which is small and light and ready to go, right? And then we could have been like going, all right, I get it.

But there's really nothing then for conventional power. And they're still going down the electric deal. And it doesn't get rid of the problems with the electric vehicle. It has strengths and it has big disadvantages for many Americans the way they use their vehicles. It does. And I think there's a backstory here. You know, product development time. People in the business will know what I'm talking about, meaning they don't just announce today we're going to build something tomorrow.

they, when they start deciding that they're going to make something, it typically takes three to four years of development time before the thing is ready to be offered to the public. So my suspicion is that this EV truck that they have announced, they were probably developing that in the early years of the Biden regime when they thought that they were going to have produced more of these things. Oh, so they were probably already locked into this and they're stuck, right? I believe so. I mean, I don't think this is something they just decided to do in the last year. That strikes me as absurd. I think they've been working on this for a number of years, and they were working. on it on the assumption that the regs were going to remain in place and, in fact, get more onerous and this is what they were going to have to manufacture. Of course, everything has changed now. And, you know, rather than just pull the plug, literally, and so, you know, enough of this, we've wasted enough money on the F-150 Lightning and all these other EVs.

Yeah, we're just going to go back and build really good F-150s, which is still the number one vehicle in the country, number one, F-150. Nobody else. It is, and what I would have loved to have seen them do would be to announce they're going to resume building something like the old Fort Ranger, not the current one, but the one that they were making up through 2011, which was a simple little compact truck, kind of like the Hylux champ that you and I talk about. Yep. There would be a huge, there would be a huge market for that. That would be what I would think of as, you know, the suburban truck. That would be probably the best vehicle for the suburban

world, right? You don't necessarily need a three-quarter ton behemoth, et cetera, et cetera, but you want to be able to take stuff to the dump and everything like that. You know, what you would use a small pickup for, right? You know, and this isn't just conjecture. It's not just an opinion. One of four's best-selling vehicles is the Maverick, you know, which is basically it's a hybrid truck, but nonetheless, it's a truck with a bed. And when they initially said they were going to sell that thing for just under $20,000,

you remember the tsunami of interest that generated and how many people were showing up the dealers and saying, yeah. It was massive. They were putting down deposits for it. Get me one. They couldn't make them fast enough. Yep. So, you know, instead of trying to crank out as many of those.

as they could. What they did was to jack up price massively. So now that that thing is close to $30,000, too. But again, part of the reason for that is that it comes only with a hybrid drive train or a turbocharged 2-liter 4 drive train. Why not make it with a simple, basic, you know, four-cylinder engine with a manual transmission and, you know, manual windows and a few other things. And you could bring the price to that thing, probably bring it down to around $17,000 or $18,000. And I bet that thing would sell in huge numbers, especially now, given the economic. the crisis that we're all dealing with. Do you think America, that American drivers as a whole, would be willing to go out

and purchase vehicles that don't have absolutely everything loaded in it from stock? Because there's nothing different that comes out of a Kia these days that comes out of a Mercedes, you know, really for the most part. We're just talking about maybe different levels of finish and software, but everyone's got Lane Assist, everybody's got the backup cameras, everybody's got, you know, 15 to 8. 18 airbags. You know what I'm getting at here, Eric? I do. I do. But, you know, my informal survey, you know, I get lots of emails, letters, and so on from people who read my columns, hear me on the radio. And they say they want a vehicle like that. And I believe that if a vehicle like that

were available, it would sell. The problem is it's not. You know, people express frustration to me when they go to the dealer, and all this there are these highly contented, loaded things that cost a fortune. Now, you know, they're perfectly willing to finance that thing for you for 800 bucks a month for the next seven years. And that may have been sustainable when people were having enough money to make that viable, but they're not anymore. Two bags of groceries, little plastic bags of groceries cost 100 bucks now. And people will say that, well, inflation is still relatively cool. That does not mean that prices have reversed, Eric. And that's where you've got to remember. It's like, you know, it's not like all of a sudden, okay, maybe the stake was $15

during the Biden administration and now it's eight during Trump. No, it's just, it's not longer, it's no longer going up as fast as it was, but it's not going back down. Yeah, we're supposed to accept this as a new normal, basically. We're supposed to be grateful, and I guess we ought to be at some level, that gas is only a little over $3 now, or $4. But the point is it's not $1.50 anymore. Exactly. All of these, all of these peripheral costs are chipping away and eating away people's ability to buy things like cars. And I think that Ford and all the other automakers better clue into this affordability issue before. for it's too late. All right. In just a moment here, Eric, we're going to talk about your latest

latest review, and I think it's really interesting too. Also, happy to take your calls if you had a question or comment for Eric Peters, automotive journalist at E.P.Otos.com 7705633, and we'll dig into more of it with Eric next on KMED. Did you know the majority of Oregon's wildfires are still dot media? This is News Talk 1063, KMED, and you're waking up with the Bill Myers show. Eric Peters, Remy P. Autos, join in if you wanted to ask them a question or comment. 7705, 633. We'll talk cars and more. And the infinity. You know, I was looking at the top vehicles. We were talking about the top vehicle, F150, still the number one, Eric. And there's only one sedan now in the top 10 in America, and that is the Toyota Camry. That is it. Don't you find that interesting? Everything

else is either. Yeah, I do. And I imagine the Camry's not going to be around for much longer either, because most of the things that have made it appealing are no longer available. As you know, they turned it into a hybrid only. You can't get the V6 any longer. So, you know, these elements that made it fun and enjoyable have been taken away. It's a lot more expensive. And, of course, yeah, it gets better gas mileage. But at the end of the day, it's still a mid-sized sedan with a small trunk, and they're just not that practical.

So if you're going to look at it from a purely utilitarian point of view, you're just wanting a transportation appliance, a crossover makes more sense. And that's why there's really been the rise. of the crossover. Now, the latest review that you have up on EP is the 2025 Infinity QX-55. That's not really a crossover, is it? Or how do you... Well, it's an attempt to not, it's an attempt to not look like one. Okay. Remember when Mercedes or BMW, one of the two did it first, and now they're both doing it. What they did was they took one of their more upright traditionally styled SUVs or crossovers and gave it this sort of a swoopy, swept back roofline and

called it coop-like styling. Well, you know, Infinity saw that and decided it was a good, idea and decided to take the QX-50, which is a compact SUV, give it that slope-roof treatment so the people who, you know, are willing to give up a little bit of practicality for the sake of some style can get it. So, you know, that's essentially what this vehicle is. Overall impression. A nice vehicle, except for one thing that I find disappointing, and it's the same thing you and I constantly whack the pinata about. You know, here's a vehicle that's $50,000 to start, and you get a 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine, and much,

worse than that, a CVT automatic. And that's the kind of drive- Oh, they put it. To find it a $25,000 Nissan. Hold on. They put a, oh, they put a CVT in a $50,000 infinity. You have got to be kidding. Because I talk with the folks over at Dusty's transmission all the time. You know, I would talk with him off and on it. And they would say they rebuild this kind of stuff. And they were saying that the CVTs still have not become really super reliable. and yet they're shoving this in more and more vehicles.

That's a bit of a dangerous sign, isn't it? Well, it's a depressing sign because fundamentally CBTs are compliance transmission. They're designed to be economical, first and foremost, because they offer a slight efficiency advantage relative to a transmission that has fixed forward gears. Yeah, because you're able to keep the engine in that sweet spot for power and economy, right? You're able to keep it there all the time, right? Yeah, but the downside is it has this weird, slippy feeling. As anybody who's ever driven a vehicle, the CVT knows, you know, you floor it, and instead of, you know, the engine revs and it shifts through the gears, the transmission, you kind of have this sense of a surging forward, and in a car that doesn't have a lot of power, it feels like the transmission's slipping, and the engine's making a racket because it's being rev, you know, close to its red line to keep you going.

And it's really not the luxury car experience at the end of the day is the thing I'm trying to get at here. You know, vehicle like this, really, first of all, it should have a B6 minimally, and they used to. and, you know, not, then it should have a conventional automatic, a six-speed or an eight-speed automatic paired up with it. If it had those two things, you know, I give it an A-plus, as it is, I give it a B-minus. Okay. Now, the Trump administration is really big on removing a lot of these regulations that have got us to the point where everything's a 2.0, four-cylinder with either a hybrid and a CVT attached to it. but are we dealing then essentially with vehicles that were designed and put into the hopper during the Biden administration? Is that really what we're dealing with, ultimately? Yeah, you know, unless I'm, I think I have this right.

Trump did not rescind the CAFE wrecks or the regs pertaining to carbon dioxide. Oh. What he did do was to dial them back to what was in force or what was put into place back in 2020. So in other words, the underlying legislation or regulatory authorities still exist. which is worrisome because it just means that, you know, the next administration will just decide to kick them back up. You know, they haven't killed the creature under the bridge. All they have done is kind of tied him up for a little while. Yeah, right.

Now, in other words, if we really want to help the automotive industry be able to put out more of the stuff that people actually want, you have to kill those regs and really roll them back, kill the whole thing. Yeah, and minimally, I think a very, very strong case can be made for getting the federal government altogether out of the business of telling vehicle manufacturers how many months. miles per gallon vehicles must, must get. That's something that ought to be between buyer and seller. Nobody's being forced to buy a quote-unquote gas on. And if there's a market for very high efficiency cars, the automakers, they've got an incentive to make it. But you know, there's just been this, it's been irresistible to just go all fascism, you know, on it. And I know that when the left talks about fascism, they're always thinking about like Hitler and doing the

goose step. But no, it's that merger of corporate and state power together in which, Yeah, you have the corporation. Technically, it's private property, but it's only able to work according to the rules of the fascistic government. And that's an example of it, right? No, it's very interesting that kids are not taught that. That is exactly what fascism is. Fundamentally, it is about economics. It's not about jackboots and militarism.

It's fundamentally about the merger of state and corporate power, and that's what we're dealing with here. And the automakers don't push back against it, at least not in any meaningful way. They don't make the case, and I've suggested this to several of them, that they buy some PR money or buy some airtime and say, look, why is the government telling you how fuel efficient your next new car will be, regardless of what costs you? Shouldn't that be something that you decide? We're so used to being told by the government that we can only buy what the government says we can. I think maybe we've been beaten down in that respect, Eric. Well, I think so in this circles is back to the problem with the CEOs of the leadership with these companies. They don't

care. You know, they're not in a position of needing to care anymore. You know, back in the day, Ford had to care. You know, if the Model T hadn't sold, Ford would have gone out of business or he would have had to try something else. So it was really important to Ford on a personal level that the Model T be successful. And so he had to do what made that car successful, which was to make it accessible to lots and lots of people. All right. Great article on EP is called Oils Not Well. This is a big one here. If you have a classic vehicle and I have one of them, I guess my other vehicles are soon going to be a classic, but you don't have a 1982 Volkswagen that I'm still able to get oil for because it's a diesel, and there's still a lot of diesel needing

1540. But if you have an older vehicle, another classic vehicle like you and your Trans Am, tell me what has been going on with trying to get oil for these cars. Yeah, this is interesting, or at least I thought it was. It was time to give the Trans Am its annual oil change. So, you know, I ran down to my local auto parts store to get some oil. and I looked at the row and row upon row of oil, and there was almost no 10W40 oil left anymore.

And that's what my car's engine specifies, because back in the day, that's what was available, typically. Now it's all these very, very light zero-w-something oils that are designed for modern vehicles. And while it may be okay to use the modern oil in the older vehicle, I really don't want to risk it. I prefer to use what was specified. I've had some issues in the past.

using modern oils and older vehicles. I think you and I talked about the problem I had with a starter clutch in my 83 Honda, my motorcycle. Yeah, when you put synthetic into it, synthetic oil, I think it was 530 or whatever was, the thing slipped. It was a lighter weight. It was a lighter weight synthetic. And I think because of that, because it didn't have the, I don't know, the thickness that was needed by that Honda engine, the starter clutch slipped. So when I went back to straight Honda 1040, which I could still get at the bike store, problem solved. So, you know, I don't want to mess around with that in my classic muscle car.

And the other factor is, we'll know all about this. They have removed most of the additive. It's called ZDDP. It's basically zinc, and it's an anti-wear compound for most of the store-bought oils that are commonly available. And these old American cars with V8 engines that have flat tappet camshafts, they need that. So it's important that you buy either an oil that does have the high levels of ZDDP, or you can get the additive online. But the point is you're kind of being pushed out of the carpart store and having to buy these things online. It's getting harder and harder to find this kind of stuff for your older vehicle.

Now, for this vintage Volkswagen that I have, that is a flat tappet, right? It's got a flat tappet in there and a standard camshaft. So we would need the ZDDP that zinc in it. I think if memory serves, I hope I'm remembering this because I should know this. I've owned multiple Volkswagen. I think you have a solid lifter valve train in that thing, don't you? Yes, it's a solid lifter. it's not a hydraulic then.

Does that need that? Sure, absolutely. That engine was designed back in the 1930s. Okay. All right. And so it needs ZDDP. Do modern diesel oils that are 1540, do they have adequate levels of that anti-wear to keep that trauma going down?

That's a very good question. I was standing there at the shelf looking at the rotality. You know, I've got a diesel tractor. So, you know, I use that in my diesel tractor. Because they have additives that diesel engines need. And I thought, I wonder. And I haven't yet had a chance to look into whether the Rotality and other diesel-specific oils are a good option for old muscle cars. But I will look into it and let you know.

Yeah, and let me know. Maybe we can talk about that next week because I'm using Rotella T6 on the Volkswagen. That's their higher level of protection or the highest level of their synthetic diesel oil. It's what I'm using. And because, you know, it's old. And I want to just make sure that those things are bathed and lubricated. and especially that on startup we're not doing any more wear on it that I have to. But, yeah, I've heard about the problems of people grinding out their vintage car cams, though,

and they're thinking it's because of the oil, isn't it? Yeah, and now this is particularly relevant to people like myself who own a marquee that's no longer made, Pontiac. You know, Pontiac V8s have been out of production for decades, and my 455 is particularly rare these days. and if I were to do something to damage that block, you know, it's not like I can just go to Jigs and order an $1,800 crate Chevy engine. You're talking about probably $2,000 plus just for a rebuildable short block. All right, but it's a great article,

and you can read up on this issue that we're talking about if you have a vintage vehicle to make sure that you keep it on the road. Oils not well. Read it on eP.autos.com. Eric, we always appreciate it. Happy to help support the site. Glad to talk with you. And do you know what you're going to be driving next week?

for the review. What do you know? Oh, channeling Ed McMahon. Yes, Johnny, for once I actually do. Okay, what's that? It's going to be a Chevy Tahoe, which will be fun. I consider the Tahoe and other big SUVs to be the modern iteration of the big rear drive V8 family sedans that, you know, we experience as kids and that used to be commonly owned by regular American families that are now for the luxury set only. As way, well, the way God intended, in other words, right? Yeah, pretty much, yep. I had a curiosity, do you know, it still has a V8. Yeah, I was going to bring that up.

The one interesting thing about the Tahoe is I think it's the last big SVB that still comes standard with the V8. The Toyota Sequoia now has a turbo hybrid V6. The Ford Expedition, which is the Tahoe's main rival, of course, has a twin turbo V6. And all of the Jeep products now have that inline 6. So the HEMI supposedly is coming back at some point. All right, very good. Well, we'll keep up on this, EPOtus.com. Eric, thanks.

Right? Thank you. I appreciate it.