Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 12-17-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

Morning news and tallk then Wheels Up, Auto journalist Eric Peters, Reviews, politics, Mitsubishi has trouble, what about those tiny cars and always your calls!

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausordrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Great having you here. It's 11 minutes after six on wheels up Wednesday. Eric Peters is going to join me. We're going to be talking cars and politics and, gosh, all sorts of things that are going on there,

including $20 billion, $20 billion with a bee. Yes, even in the federal government's world, $20 billion is a lot of money. but that is with Ford canceling their EV truck projects, and General Motors appears to be wanting to double down. Okay, what could possibly go wrong with such a plan? But anyway, we'll talk with him about that, also the latest reviews, too, for that matter. Probably our top story around here. Oh, before we get to some of the other top stories, yeah, it is windy and pretty blustery in some spots.

It's spotty, though. It's just kind of like what Greg Roberts was talking about yesterday. You know, some places are fine. Other places are quite windy, but we have quite a bit of blustery situations up in the higher hills. In fact, we do have some closed roads. I'll get that to you in just a moment because I misplaced it. But I know that Highway 62 is closed east of Prospect. Yeah, that's what I was going to mention.

Highway 62, you're not going to be able to get past prospect because of downed roads, downed trees, rather, in the road. and it's caused just a big mess up there. There's some other roads up there that are also having some problems this morning. I'll get some more information for you on that. But high cascades, not a great place to be this morning. Very high winds. And it was pretty breezy in my front yard. It wasn't exactly blowing the Christmas lights off of anything,

but I suppose if it kicks up a little bit more, sometimes we get some really high winds out in our East Medford neighborhood over by Roxanne. I think the wind hits Roxy Ann and that mountain and just kind of whips around and poof. And usually what it does is blow your neighbor's recycle bin into your front yard. Or at least what's, well, it doesn't blow the recycle bin into your front yard. It blows everything that's in your neighbor's recycle bin into your front yard. And your house ends up being used as a backstop, like a fence.

At least that's the way it's been for me. For some reason, my recycle bin never blows into the neighbors, but everybody else is, it blows into the front yard. Yeah, okay, here's the beer cans. No, you don't put beer cans in the recycled bin. You don't take it down to the recycle. Anyway, you know how that goes. Let's see.

We have another story going out. Joel Caswell. You know, that Jacksonville contractor used to own the Portland Nitro Ultimate Frisbee team. Boy, that's a great sport. Anyway, it looks like he's going to be staying in Jackson County Jail for a while longer. a Eugene judge, a federal judge in Eugene yesterday, indicating that Caswell is coming across as a con man. Now, he's facing all sorts of charges, pandemic era fraud charges, criminal case in Medford, and related to a couple of drive-by shootings.

He was accused of shooting at his girlfriend's house, what he was accused of. and then he was trying to get out and then he had another copy of the of his uh we had a passport there was just all sorts of things going on and so the assumption was made that uh yeah this guy would try to fly if they cut him loose and the judge says yeah i think you're caught in us and he's going to stay in so he is still hanging out in jackson county jail okay all right ashland city council according to kDRV is going to be holding a special session tonight, increasing the electricity rate. Great time to do that, right? About 4%. It's only about three bucks a month for the standard customer. I guess if you're the standard

customer, it's not that big of a deal, but it's how it spills into all the other costs that are already increasing for people. There's going to be another Josephine County Commission meeting scheduled today. Of course, they weren't able to do one the other day because denial of quorum, no quorum. of Ron Smith did not show up. There was another time he did show up, and then they kind of had words, and they were arguing. I think that was yesterday.

They were arguing. And Commissioner Ron Smith did reach out to me, and so I said, great, let's talk about it, and we're going to kick that around about an hour from now. Ron Smith's going to be on. I still don't now.

I still don't know how he is planning to say, well, he's saying that there's a conflict of interest because people are trying to influence him, I think the term that he used in his statement that he read at the meeting the other day was people are trying to do backroom deals in order to get him to choose the right person to be the next county commission, commissioner rather. This is a temporary position, of course, and then they would eventually have to serve out the term and then if they wanted to run.

And this is, by the way, to fill in for Andreas Bleck, who resigned the other day and started this process. Chris Barnett, by the way, he'll be on the show tomorrow morning at 7.30, giving his side of the situation. We'll talk with him about this further. And so that's going to be an interesting talk. I just don't know how you can say that, well, people are trying to do backroom deals with me. And I'll talk with Ron about this an hour from now.

I'll just tell you where I'm coming from on this. This is a situation where you're paid to make the decision. and just because people are trying to do backroom deals, well, it doesn't mean that you do the backroom deal. You have something like in the neighborhood of 30 people who have applied for the job, choose the most qualified for the job, and let the chips fall where they may. Now, just because you say that, well, people are trying to,

or that it would look bad to make a choice, well, that's the job of the county commissioner. If somebody quits or somebody resigns or somebody is, recall, you have to do something. You've got to replace that. And I'm still not quite sure what Commissioner Smith is thinking about this one other than trying to look clean, I guess, is the deal, because, well, you know, I had nothing to do with this dirty deal of politics. Well, when you become a county commissioner, you have to deal with the dirty politics. And if someone's trying to influence you or if someone is threatening you, now threatening you,

with a recall is not the same as threatening you. I mean, threatening you with a recall is just what happens in Josephine County. I think what happens is that there are people in Joe County that just wake up in the morning and said, oh, okay, who do I hate today? And what can I do to help make the Democrats start to look like a good alternative? Who do we recall? Who do we recall today? Jackson County Commission, so boring. It's so boring by, you know, there, Jackson County Commission is not entertaining at all like the Josephine County Commission. Gosh darn it. Why can't we get, you know, a little more WWE kind of activity with the Jackson County Commission

and have, you know, Colleen Roberts and Randy Sparicino getting into a mud wrestle over, you know, some kind of thing. And then Rick Dyer coming out there and say, hey, listen, I cannot make a decision on this one because I have to stay above this. By the way, Rick, I'm just kidding you. You know how it goes just. But yeah, it's so quiet in Joe County and so noisy and, oh, man, you just want to shake your head sometime, but I just don't know how you can claim a conflict of interest with people trying to influence you. Now, it might be a conflict of interest if you're buying into a corrupt, corrupt process, or you're going, oh, okay, someone's going to, someone wants to give you. you $50,000 to get on the county commission or something. Okay, well, that's not a conflict of interest that's someone trying to commit a crime.

And if they're committing a crime, we'll then report that to the sheriff's department. But other than that, I don't know how he makes this stick. You know, under this guise of, now the position means that you're supposed to be the one making a decision. If you're a county commissioner, you're an executive, you're a decider. And you have to decide. I don't think you can punt that, but we'll see. Maybe he has a good explanation for that. Happy to have Ron on.

I've always thought Ron's a good guy. So, but I'm just scratching my head on this one. It's 20 minutes after six. Join in at 7705-633. This is the Bill Meyer show. Appreciate you wake it up on Wheels Up Wednesday on KMED. An intelligence solution is influence. It's your lifeline.

Hi, I'm Matt Stone from Pressurepoint Roofing, and I'm on 106.3, KMED. By the way, the Norpack people, good people. They've done some work from us. The station's off and on over the years. And let me tell you, as someone has been doing a lot of generator repair lately, they're worth every penny. I'm going to tell you. That is an interesting skill. And if you're in parts of Josephine County, you're probably running your generator right now.

About 175 customers last time I checked with Pacific Power. Jackson County, relatively clear on outages, no problem there right now. But Josephine County, we have 150, 160 or so. Merlin, parts of Murphy, New Hope Road area, and a few in the city of Grants Pass, too. Last time I checked, okay? All right. Hey, got here. Chris is calling me Joe County.

Hey, Joe. Chris, rather. How are you in Joe County? Go ahead. Well, I'm fine. I just commenting. I met the guy, and I don't think you. Okay, okay, okay.

All right. Start from the beginning. Met who guy? I met Chris Barnett and Ron Smith when they were just newly fangled commissioners. And I just, seriously, can you really trust a commissioner that, you know, he's a realtor broker and he wears skinny jeans, you know, just one of those type of thing. Okay. So you're telling me, I should not trust Chris Barnett because he wears skinny jeans? that's correct and um okay okay now hold on a minute i would be more concerned of chris barnett

wore mom jeans then i think there would be a problem but but skinny jeans what's the problem with skinny jeans not that i wear them but it's kind of feministic feminine we're just really tight like you got a body to you know um show off to the world i mean i've seen him at the meeting when they were doing the property for the fire fire map. Yeah. And I wasn't impressed. Okay. Well, I didn't really...

You know, as far as I'm concerned, I think you're looking at Chris Barnett's pants too closely. You're paying an awful lot of attention to Chris's pants. I was actually... I couldn't help it. I was sitting in the front row with other ladies. Yeah, I think there's a little latent stuff going on there, Chris. I would watch that. Hey, in the county, I would just want to

say, you know, people are, we're going to hell. I mean, the social media is corrupting everybody. In our day, Lassie covered all the commandments. You know, that was our social media. Be kind and tell the truth, you know. Hmm. Okay. Well, we'll see. He's going to come on the show tomorrow, and we'll have a conversation about that. All right. And I'm going to ask him if he's wearing skinny jeans, because if he's wearing skinny jeans, I won't be able to trust a word he says. Yeah. Okay. Now, if he's wearing dad jeans, you've got to be wearing dad jeans, that's like,

now, Dwayne Yonker, he wears dad jeans, right? Yeah. Okay. So dad jeans are okay. Yeah. He's just a normal, be a normal dude, just not trying to wear some hip-huggers. Yeah. All right. Well, you know, I've never thought I'd be talking about county commissioners and elected representatives of gene choices. But, Chris, thanks for being a first-timer on that, okay? All right. You bet.

Now, see, that is scintillating political analysis for the day. All right. So Caswell's going to stay in. Chris Spardette wears skinny jeans. Ron Smith is, I don't know. We'll just have to see what Ron has to say. I'll talk with him next hour. Speaking of, now see, all the news, all the noisy news seems to be coming out of Josephine County this morning.

There is another story. about a county commissioner in this case a former county commissioner and this was in capital press capital press dot com request to cancel water right in southern oregon rejected by regulators and this has to do with andreas bleck andreas and carol black now andreas was uh on the josephine county commission he resigned last week right remember this because of the recall i think andreas was looking hey i was looking for a job before this came up i don't think he cared You know, just, okay, I'm out. Fine.

Smart guy, and I guess it just wasn't for him. But this is interesting. So he has a 65-acre property. He and his wife Carol have this property, and an environmental group failed to convince Oregon regulators to cancel a water right associated with this property that Andreas and Carol Bleck own. And Andreas and Carol want to change the water rights point of diversion

place of use and its purpose, from irrigation to sand and gravel mining. Now, the transfer opposed by all these Enviro groups, they claim that the sand and gravel mining, which, by the way, is very necessary to build homes and also to build roads. I mean, aggregate is something which is extremely valuable and extremely important around here, and there never seems to be enough of it. But anyway, the envirose claiming that mining the sand and aggregate would pose risks to water, wildlife, and communities upstream of a stretch of the Rogue River that's federally designated as wild and scenic.

I will translate, when Water Watch says something like that, that translates as, wait a minute, Andreas and Carol Blecker are trying to do something useful with that property. That can't be. The only thing we're supposed to be doing, the only thing, sustainable tourism. Where's the Grand Stream funding? Hire a few more fishing guides. A few more low-dollar fishing guides. Get a few more low-dollar hotel rooms in there.

Of course, they're under low-dollar hotel rooms. They all seem expensive except for the flea bags. But, yeah, that's what's going on, I think. Somewhere, somebody's trying to do something useful. Andreas Bleck actually trying to have sand and gravel. We can't have that. Must be wild and scenic. It doesn't matter how many miles away you are.

A disparate impact on some endangered species. Well, the law judge was having nothing to do with it, and so it looks like they're going to be able to change the zoning or the use of that or the water diversion point of impact, et cetera. Water law stuff kind of makes my eyes glaze over, and that's why you have people like Cliffbentz that were into water law, and his eyes take a long time to glaze over, I guess. If you're going to be a water attorney, I think that's part of the deal. But congratulations, Andrea. So you quit the Josephine County Commission, and at least you'll get to keep your water. water right. And the way they were trying to do it was making the claim that the Blex weren't using the water right. You know, if you don't use the water right, you end up losing it,

you either use it or lose it kind of thing. And the judges are saying, you know, these pictures you're taking that you took up of this from overhead. It doesn't really mean anything. It could have been taken at any time. It's only one time. And so anyway, they skated. Andres Blex is going to get to change the water. So good. All right. As far as I'm concerned, anything which makes a gangrene cry out on the wild and scenic is probably a good thing for the society at large. 629, catch up all the rest of the news. Wheels up Wednesday, we're getting into it.

Out of the road with Eric Peters next. It is the season at two dogs fabricating to build custom flatbed. News Talk 1063, KMED. You're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. And out on the road, Eric Peters, E.P.O.O.S.com, automotive journalist and great talk, great articles, great commentary at two on E.P.O.O.com. We talk with them every Wednesday for wheels up. Eric, welcome back and, oh my goodness, it only took $20 billion to figure out that nobody wants the EV, huh? Welcome back, only $20 billion, only cost $20 billion to figure out nobody wants this stuff, right?

Yeah, apparently Ford has decided to finally cut bait or rather pulled a plug on the F-150 Lightning, which has been their epic money-losing EV for the past three years. they losing something in the neighborhood of 100,000 or 130,000 on every copy that got sold? At least 20,000. The amount of money is staggering that they lost on the thing. And it was also just a huge PR embarrassment for them in that they sent these things out to dealerships and they would just sit there. You could probably still find a brand new 2023 Lightning on a four-dealer lot somewhere and get a fire sale deal on the thing if you'd like. But the interesting thing to me about the news isn't so much that Ford supposedly pulled the plug. It's that they didn't really.

So Jim Farley, who's the CEO of Ford, says that while they're going to cancel the entirely electric version of the F-150, they are going to try to sell people on one with what they call a range extender. Well, isn't that a hybrid? Engine in the thing. You know, RAM is doing this also. They're going to have a carry-it-with-you gas engine generator that doesn't actually turn the wheels. All it does is run continuously to try to gimp the thing along and give you the electricity so that you don't have to stop and wait, you know, every couple of hours at a sheets for half an hour in order to keep on going. Okay, okay. I want to make sure I understand this perfectly. All right.

So they're claiming that they are doing the corporate equivalent of putting a bullet in the head of the electric truck, right? That's what they're claiming because they lost $20 billion at Ford, right? Am I understanding this so far? That's the purely electric version, the one that has the literally, not exaggerating, two-ton battery pack, which is why the F-150 Lightning weighs more than 6,000 pounds. They're going to stop making that one. What they're going to do is make what they call a plug-in hybrid, but it isn't really that. Well, it kind of is.

It depends on your definition. It's going to have a gas engine that provides the electricity. You know, it's like, you know, you're sure you're not writing for the onion at this point. I was going to say, this is. is the actual literal incarnation of what's called a Rube Goldberg device. You know, people who aren't familiar with that, it's this cartoon that dates back forever where they would show some inventor, this wacky, mad scientist guy, inventing an ultra-uber-elaborate way to do a simple basic task. You know, instead of just opening the door, you had a series of levers and pullies

and things that hit this and move that to open the door. So instead of just saying, you know, maybe we should just have a vehicle with an engine and that's it. They're deciding, no, we're going to have one with a battery and motors, but we're going to, you know, solve the problem of this having to stop all the time to get a charge and wait forever to get one. But, you know, we'll carry along an engine as a generator. Yeah, okay, we carry a gas generator as, okay, you know, instead of just having a gas pickup truck that would probably weigh 2,000 pounds less and be able to do more use, and it would probably cost about half the amount, wouldn't it, to do that? Of course, absolutely. So, you know, it's not that they're canceling.

the regular F-150, thank God, because that would be the end of Ford. You know, Ford is in business on the strength of the sales of the F-150. Isn't that still the number one seller in the, in the entire country? They sell about half a million of those things. And that doesn't include the, you know, the heavier duty F-250 and F-350s. Okay. This is, you know, this is the source of Ford's revenue mainly. So what they're going to do is continue to put this other thing into the lineup, why I have no idea. Because again, it's just going to be another embarrassment for them. It's just going to be another money loser. Meanwhile, guess what they're doing, by the way, with all of the surplus two-ton battery packs that were formerly destined to go into the purely electric

lightning. And let's see, two-ton battery packs. You know, if I were for it, I would sell it to homeowners that want to do, you know, solar energy and want to have some good batteries. You know, sell those battery packs cheap and use them for a, for like a home storage thing. What do you think? Well, yeah, if they could sell them cheap, but they won't. So they're going to sell them to industrial and commercial users and specifically to AI data centers as backup for the backup electricity for that. I'm still saying that we should legally find a way to change ourselves legally by definition into data centers so that way we can get cheap, good old boy power too.

What do you say, Eric? Isn't it kind of like The Matrix? Remember we watched that movie back in 98 or whenever it came out and it was great science fiction and oh my God, here we are and it seems like they were telling us what our future was going to be. All right. Now, there's another vehicle that we wanted to talk about this morning. There's an article. I have not read this. I think you just put this one up. But how Trump killed Mitsubishi. Now, Trump, on one hand, is trying to get those little tiny cars or trucks. And we talked a bit about that last week. But what did he do that hurt Mitsubishi? Now, Mitsubishi, very, very small market share,

from what I understand, isn't it? That's correct. And I used Mitsubishi to make a broader point. Mitsubishi is in bad, bad trouble. They, their profits. are down something like 90% in the last quarter. And part of the reason of this is the cost that are imposed by the taxes that Trump likes to call tariffs that are hitting companies like Mitsubishi particularly hard because Mitsubishi does not have any manufacturing facilities in the United States at all. All the vehicles that it sells in this country are made in Japan or other countries. So Mitsubishi is having to deal with this cost and all the manufacturers are having to deal

with this cost, these taxes that are going to end up being offloaded onto everybody who buys a new car, no matter where it comes from. This is an important thing to understand. These taxes are going to, and they already are incurring massive costs on the industry and they're rippling out across the economy. And I think it's one of the reasons why the economy is really looking pretty green around the gills right now. Okay. I didn't realize that Mitsubishi, while I knew they were circling the drain, I didn't realize they were really circling the drain from the sounds of it. Yeah, you know, and here's the thing. I want to mention this because I think it's important. You know, it's easy to be a jingoist about this and say, well, it's a Japanese

company and blah, blah, blah. Well, think about all the people who are employed in this country working for Mitsubishi. I looked it up and there are something like 300 Mitsubishi stores in this country, dealerships. So there are a lot of Americans working at Mitsubishi stores and all of the, you know, the tertiary institutions that interact with Mitsubishi at one level or another in this country. You're talking about a lot of people who's, you know, whose jobs are potentially going to go way. And remember, it's not just Mitsubishi. All the other manufacturers are dealing with this as well. And, you know, you can see it reflected in the cost of vehicles, which continues to go up. And, you know, it's wonderful to talk about the trade imbalance and all of that. And there is some

truth to that. But at the end of the day, Trump continues to evade discussing the regulatory compliance costs that are at the root of this problem. And until those cost problems are addressed, it's not going to be that, oh, the manufacturers are going to be motivated to build stuff here because it doesn't make any economic sense to build stuff here because it's too expensive to build stuff here. And nothing has been done yet to address that why it is so expensive with regulatory compliance and all the rest of it to build here, right? That hasn't been addressed. Exactly correct. It hasn't even been talked about. You know, just like, you know, people hear the happy talk about the tiny cars and, oh, yay, you know, we're going to be able to buy these vehicles that currently aren't available for sale in this country. Well, unless Trump has somehow negated all of the federal regulations and, by the way, state level, regs that would prohibit these cars from being legally available for sale and as far as the state level stuff goes, something that you could actually get plates for and register.

They're not going to sell these things here if they can't sell them here or if people aren't legally allowed to use them here. So it's in my way of looking at it, it's all just more blather and talk. I don't see any of this actually happening. I would also say that if I were a manufacturer of larger vehicles that was still required to have the airbags, et cetera, et cetera, I would be filing. a lawsuit and I would figure they would be filing a lawsuit. Well, why do we have to? If these tiny cars don't have to have the airbags and all the other safety features, you know, that kind

of thing. Certainly. And it puts these vehicle manufacturers at a tremendous disadvantage because remember, a lot of these small cars, these tiny cars, they were already designed and built. They exist in other markets and they don't have airbags. So it's not like they have to be re-engineered. Whereas in this country, all the vehicles have to have airbags. So even to offer them without would require expensive re-engineering of the vehicle. It's not like you can just take them out. You have to change a lot of other things about the vehicle. So you're right. There are really good grounds here for a lawsuit about, I don't know, disparate impact or restraint of trade or something along those lines. It's interesting. We'll see where this goes. The more people I talk to from

the legal side of things, and they're saying that even though they're supporters of President Trump, they don't think his tariffs are going to survive the scrutiny of the Supreme Court. And maybe that's what he's, you know, prepping. Maybe that's why he wants to talk tonight to the nation. I don't know. He doesn't think. Yeah, he may try to make the case, but you know, it's, there was a great piece. You and I talked a little bit about it on the Oon's report about how Trump is kind of the latter-day colligula. And this is an example that he doesn't have the constitutional authority to just willy-nilly whenever he feels like it, say, well, we're going to impose a tariff of X amount and then the next day change it. This is creating complete chaos in the markets and in the

business world. You can't have that. It's supposed to be Congress. Yeah, well, Congress, and normally the way it worked here is that you decide that we need to change in tariffs and there's nothing wrong with that. Okay, we decide we need the tariffs and we need to be a little more protectionist and try to encourage more manufacturing at home. That's fine. But you work with Congress and you get everything whipped in the shape that way. That's also the way so it doesn't just go away when the next president comes in, right? You actually go and make it a law. You make it a trade deal. And it's not, it's not elegant or I guess it's not quick necessarily. You have to actually do work and craft legislation and get it passed. That's the challenge, I guess,

right? Well, there's structure there, but there's structure there of predictability as opposed to chaos. And, you know, related to this is this chaos of Trump declaring everything to be an emergency, you know, effectively ruling by decree because it's an emergency. But if everything's an emergency, then nothing's an emergency. 645 talking with Eric Peters, E.P.Otos.com, it's politics, it's transportation, and more. I want to ask you about the view of Concor, okay? We'll do that here in just a a minute or two because my wife had an interesting comment about it when I told her about it because I said you're... Oh, I can't wait.

You're going to be discussing this. And if you have a question or comment, cars open roads and politics to 7705-633, always happen to open it up on Wheels Up Wednesday on KMED. At the offices of Fontana Roofing. Eric Peters, Automotive Journalist and Genius EP Autos, and were taking your calls, talking about what is going on. Vicki, you were noticing that they're burning the slash this morning in the rainstorm. That's great.

but you also had a car question. What's on your mind, huh? Yeah, I wanted to ask Eric about gas caps. Okay. I found, like, two coffee cans full of all different kinds of gas caps, and I was just wondering, are there anything I should be looking for antique-wise? Huh. I've never heard of antique gas cap collecting, Eric, but, you know, there's a first for everything.

What do you think? I mean, antique, I guess, like, for example, If I wanted to do a Concour restoration of my 1976 Trans Am, I'd probably want to find a correct original gas cap because it might have the original stamping on it or the original lettering on it or whatever it may have had. So there's certainly a market for that kind of stuff, but again, you're going to have to identify what you have, figure out what model car it came on, what year it came on, and whether it's a common thing and whether anybody's willing to pay you anything for it.

Well, you know, get in touch with Jeff. Jeff and Selma has talked with you about this. stuff, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah, you're really going to have to run that by him because Jeff is really plugged in on a lot of those collectors and he's, I think he's still restoring that old Cadillac too. Maybe he'd like one from you if you have a caddy, all right? By the way, you know, Bill, this brings up something that might be of use to people listening. Sometimes the car check, your check engine light will come on in modern vehicles and it may be because you didn't properly tighten your gas cap, believe it or not. That will trigger a code because

So the vapor escape system. And so if you just go and check your cap and tighten it, that might solve your problem. Yeah, something tells me that, Vicki, you're talking about a pile of vintage ones. You're really old ones. It seems like all the old stuff follows you home over there at your place. Oh, my gosh. Well, yeah, hoarder. Okay.

All right. Order. Good luck on that one, all right? Get in touch with Jeff for sure. You know, Eric, that's an interesting point you brought up because I had that happen one time. uh the blowing the code uh the check engine light on the pt cruiser right and so i ended up uh you know going in so i went and bought one of those code checkers and plugged it into the obd port you know underneath the dash there and it said evaporative uh it was like the uh a vapor leak

yeah that that was what it was and so i'm thinking yeah and and so i went back and the gas cap was old and the rubber was starting to get a little bit uh flaky on that one replaced the cap no problem it was done now it happened again later but it was because the service station person didn't put it on very tightly and so it blew a code after a little while yep yeah by the way having one of those code readers uh is really handy to have they're not expensive anymore at least not for the ones that are just basic you know that will give you uh some indication of what's going on you can pick one of those up for well under a hundred dollars and all you do like you said is you know you're just under the dash of every modern car made since the late 90s early 2000s there's a universal port

you plug it in and you turn the little device on and it will give you a code and you can also you can hit erase to you know to delete the code so you know if the thing if the light came on because you didn't tighten your gas cap that's how you turn it off and you can save yourself the hassle you know of going to a a shop to get it taken care of for you kaching and pay for it the one thing i would warn you if you get one of those code uh readers because you're thinking okay i'm going to erase the codes because i have to go get my registration renewed and we're in one of those areas that has to do the smog test? You probably don't in Virginia, do you? We're old Virginia? Well, it depends where you live. My state, it varies by county. I don't have to deal

with it where I live, thank God. But if you lived up in the populated parts of the state, you would. Yeah. Well, we are, and we have to get, you know, a smog test for the newer cars. The thing being, though, if you erase the code and then take it back in and try to make it pass, the state's able to detect with their computers, oh, the code was just recently erased. or that there wasn't enough time to be able to show that it's actually operating okay. So I just thought I would give that caveat about that. Right. And besides, if you didn't fix the underlying problem, the code will just come back on again. The light will come right back on after about 10, 15 minutes of driving.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So let's talk about some of your reviews here, too. And if you wanted to ask Eric a question about anything involving automotive or the open road, just give us a call, okay, 7705-633. Now, the Buick-Encour GX, that was your review. recently here. You were driving that. Now, this is a three-cylinder Buick, right? Correctamundo. Not only is it a three-cylinder, boy, is it really small. 1.2 liters is the standard size. And to give you some context, I've got a, I've got a

sport motorcycle that has a 1,200-cc-4-cylinder in. That's a motorcycle. Something tells me the motorcycle might be more fun, but I'll, yeah, I'll just listen. What happened with this one? That's the thing, you know, Buick is an interesting brand in that you can, you can make a case that it is close to being, say, an Audi or a Lexus. You know, it's a cut above a Chevy. It used to be a notch below Cadillac in the hierarchy. Those types of brands really don't exist anymore, meaning, you know, something that's not quite the luxury brand, but also it's not quite the mass market brand. Anyway, you can pick up one of these things for about 26,000 bucks, which is really cheap. You know, when you look at what it has, I mean, other than the fact that it has a

small engine, if you look at the rest of it, the amenities and the features, it compares quite favorably to outies and lexas small crossovers i mean that are in in the you know much higher expense 35000 to 45 40 something thousand dollar range now how would you compare this 26 000 bueck encore then to what is the hunday that has a has a really small crossover seems kind of similar in many ways santa fe well no it's not santa fe it's a different uh it's a it's smaller it's a smaller uh smaller version of that you remember that yeah i think you reviewed it a while back I must have, but, you know, sometimes I can't keep track of all of these things. Bear with me a minute.

I will tell you really quickly which one it is. Santa Cruz, I think. Is it Santa Cruz? They have all these hominem sounding kinds of names. A lot of times they end up sounding like medications, like you open up the cabinet. I think it's the Santa Cruz or the Santa Fe. Well, no, it was like the least expensive Hyundai. It was the least expensive Hyundai that you could get out there.

Well, the least expensive crossover? Yeah, yeah, very small. Tucson, is it the Tucson? Okay, well. The Tucson would be comparable to this. And it's actually more expensive. It's 28, 28,000 something to start. And again, it's a nice vehicle.

But personally, you know, the Buick is a little bit posher. And the other thing that's nice about the Buick, even though it's a very different kind of Buick from the ones you and I knew when we were growing up, it still has that kind of posh, comfortable, soft feel. They're not trying to make it sporty. And I'm not mocking or deriding sporty. It's just that it gets tiresome that everything has to be sporty, you know, with a harsh ride and wind noise and tire noise. This is just a nice comfortable car.

And that has an appeal to me for its own sake. Now, my question, though, every time I go and look at some of these mechanics and the I do cars, YouTube channels and things like that, they are tearing apart three cylinder after three cylinder after three cylinder. you know, this whole trend of the turbocharged 1.2 cylinder, now 1.1.2 liter, rather, a three-cylinder vehicle. Is it the same 1.2 that Chevrolet sells because they have had a ton of trouble with them? Yeah, it's a corporate engine, just like, you know, they no longer have brand-specific engines. Even though there's a different badge on the fender within the GM hierarchy, they, you know, they share engines. It's not like it was, again, you know, when you and I were coming up. and Buick had Buick engines engineered by Buick engineers and Pontiac had engines in Oldsmobile and all

with that. It's a corporate engine. And of course, I'm not surprised by this because that's just a really small engine for a vehicle that even though it's not hugely heavy for a modern vehicle, it's still weighs, I think, about 3,400 pounds and put that into some perspective. My motorcycle weighs about 450 pounds. Okay. It's a lot to ask of that little engine to move that heavy vehicle. And the only way it can do it is because it has a turbo. You know, my four cylinder engine in the motorcycle doesn't need a turbo. That little engine has to have a turbo in order to move the vehicle decently. And the problem with that is you're literally putting the engine under pressure. That's what turbocharging is. It's boost. You're internally pressurizing the engine. And that

applies more force to the internal parts. And it inevitably is going to result in faster wear and tear over time. Well, I remember talking to my wife, Linda, about this the other day and mentioning the three cylinder. And she said, a Buick with three cylinders? A Buick? She said, because even And she knew that, you know, Buick had that cachet of, you know, kind of the, you know, the big luxury, right? Three cylinders, really? Yeah. I mean, you could fit this, you could fit this little, this Buick crossover would probably fit in the trunk of an Electra 225 from 1970. And that was 225 inches long, by the way, which is longer, significantly longer than a current Chevy Tahoe.

So, you know, that's the kind of vehicle that Buick used to make. And under the hood of that thing, you had a 7.5-liter 455. V-8 engines. Oh, boy. That was the day. Remember it well. Talking with Eric Peters this morning, happy to take your calls too. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Hey, good morning, guys. Keith out of Cape Junction. Keith and CJ, what's going on, buddy? I remember those bea-dukes being known as Duce and a quarters. Yep. Sure do. The reason that I called, I had to use my wife's 2019 Nissan Rogue to get to work. The Nissan Rogue. Okay, great. And yesterday, coming in from C.J. Indigrant's past, foggy, those automatic dimming system on the high beams was being activated by fog.

It was driving me nuts. And then thankfully, I got a fault code on the screen in front of me. I hit the OK button. And all kinds of yellow triangles and stars and all kinds of stuff showed up. and I was able to operate the high, high beams the way I wanted to, and I was grateful for that. But a six-year-old vehicle is already losing its electronic whatever. I mean, you know, you got, Eric has talked about wait until this stuff starts falling apart, six years. Oh, boy, six years. That's not very long before some of that automatic stuff starts failing, wouldn't you say, Eric? Oh, yeah. Yeah, isn't it great driving a cell phone?

and also the way these things peremptorily supersede human judgment. Oh, you know, back in the bad old days, human drivers use their brains. Okay, I'm going to turn the high being on or I'm going to turn it down. Now all of this has been superseded by technology, which constantly does the wrong thing. I drive these new vehicles all the time, and they're constantly doing things that are neither called for nor wanted. Oh, boy. This morning I drove my 72 Chevy, and the only thing I did was burn gas.

I loved it. What kind of 72 Chevy do you have? Just curious. C20. Oh, a truck. Okay. On Chevy. All right.

Yeah. It can't get past the gas station to save its life. But, man, I'll tell you what. It's simple. You guys have a good day. You too. Thank you. Take care.

All right. Let me grab another call here. Hi, this is KMED. Eric Peters here. And Bill. Who's this? Bill is Brad. wishing you a merry motoring Christmas, and good morning to you, Eric.

Morning. Good morning to you. So can we, and this really rubs up against the automotive world, I think, and you guys are common sense and fact-based and all that kind of good stuff. When are we going to, as a culture and as just normal, reasonable people are going to come to the conclusion that there is no oil shortage, and there really is no reason to go through all of these engineering gymnastics produce these tiny little motors.

When we have Canadian hockey players sailing their motor yachts across the Atlantic, and it costs $435,000 just to fill that thing up for one trip, right? I mean, where are we pretending that we have to scrimp and save and come up with these ridiculous engines when we've got all these

motor yachts, you know, burning tens of thousands of gallons of fuel on one trip? Well, let me interject on this. one. Brad, maybe what it is, is that the goal is to save all the fuel for the Canadian hockey players and the Leonardo DiCaprio's and his 19-year-old girlfriends, you know, to party. Because, you know, what's the point of being an elite if everybody else can do the same thing you are? What do you think, Eric? You have an answer for it? Well, I think that this is, this goes much, much deeper and broader than just cars. You know, look how, for example, you have, say, a problem with your home air conditioning system. And the technician comes out.

And even though it would otherwise be a repairable issue, you have to get the whole system replaced because the refrigerant that it used is now out of date. And you can't get it anymore. So you have to, you know, instead of spending a couple hundred bucks to get the system recharge and a little leak dealt with, now you have to spend $6,000 to replace everything. Look at the way they've compelled us to be instead of 75 cents for an incandescent bulb, now you have to pay $7 or $8 for one of these new light bulbs. And has your power bill gone down? all of these energy, so-called energy-saving devices that were being forced to use, I don't know about you, but my power bill is still double what it was. So it's not about saving anything.

It is about insurfing us, diminishing us, making us more and more poor, you know, taking away nice things from us. Obviously, to get to your point about oil, people aren't believing their lying eyes. You know, I mean, God, it's been 60 years since they've been telling us that we were going to run out of oil, the peak oil thing. And somehow we never do. appreciate it's like i don't know at what point you people just start using their brains instead of reacting to the the narrative and the propaganda that that they are fed by the corporate media that is definitely the point eric thanks so much hey brad appreciate your call too

hey erika one question i did have for you here i i figured out what that hunday was that i was referencing and you reviewed this one and it is the hunday venue sce oh venue. The Hyundai venue? Yeah. Yeah, the Hyundai venue. They make a model called the venue? Yes. Yeah. I could swear you review that. Maybe I'm wrong about that. I don't think they make a venue. A venue, venue, venue, venue. Oh, they do make a venue. Holy cow, they do. You are correct, sir. Yes. Yes, you are correct. Yeah. It's just that, that little one. And I think you had maybe, maybe I'm mistaking it for a Kia or something. Maybe it was a key. No, no, no. It's a Hyundai. You're right. And I've forgotten about this. That's my bad. And it starts just a little over $20,000. And it's still available.

Yeah. I was just wondering how the one that you talked about from Buick compares to that, if you can recall, I'm thinking that the Hyundai may be smaller. I could be wrong. It might be probably not much. You know, there's really not that much difference anymore. When you talk about compacts and subcompacts, typically you're talking about a difference in length, a real base of, you know, maybe an inch or two or something like that. It's the really splitting hairs at this point. All right. So why do you go to review for next week, huh? got an interesting one coming for you. And I didn't even realize this was the case until I started doing my background research for it. It's the JAGF pace. And the JAGF pace is the last new Jaguar.

There aren't any other new Jaguars. Really? It's the only thing they still have in the inventory. All of their other models went out of production in 2024. So it's kind of a situation analogous to what's going on over at Chrysler where they have just the one model. And the reason for that is this disaster where they had decided that they were going to go full boogie with electric vehicles. Here we go. back to where we started this conversation. And of course, they had the entire island of misfit humans on the ads. It's a very, very woke advertising campaign. They fired those people. They fired those people, but here's the problem. So they had planned. Their plan was that by 26, they were going to have all these new electrified jaguars out there. But they're not going to do

that because they know that that's not going to sell. The problem is they canceled all that. They stopped building all their other models. So now they just have one vehicle, which is a perfectly fine vehicle, except for one thing. It's another crossover SUV. And Land Rover, which is the adjunct of Jaguar, specializes in that kind of vehicle. And I think most people when they think about Jaguar probably don't think about crossover SUVs. Nah, it's not what they're looking for. It'll be interesting. The final Jaguar or the last Jaguar, we'll talk about that. Hey, is there a chance we can do this next Tuesday instead of Wednesday? Of course. Okay. Certainly. Yeah, we'll do that. It's my final show of the year because I'll be heading out on Christmas vacation. And I have to go home and bake Petitsa

for the family, okay? Lucky for you, I'm going to be sitting here at my keyboard, clicking away like I do every day. All right. Well, we will catch you next Tuesday, this time. It'll be Wheels Up Tuesday, and we'll have a good conversation as we wrap up the year, okay? Thanks so much, Eric. Thanks, Bill. Appreciate it.

E.P.O.com on KMED and KMED, H.D. H.D. H.1. Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG Grants Pass.