Earl Stewart on Cars - 01.01.2022 - The Best of Earl on Cars w/ Mystery Shop of Braman Mini

Episode Date: January 1, 2022

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Thunder visits a local Mini dealer to see if he can get a good deal on a new Mini Cooper Clubman. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

Welcome you to Earl Stewart on Cars, a live talk show all about how to buy, lease, maintain, or repair your car without being ripped off by a car dealer. With me in the studio is Nancy Stewart, my wife, co-host, and a strong consumer advocate, especially for our female business. We also have Rick Kearney, an expert on how to keep your car running right. I dare you to ask a question that Rick can't answer about the mechanics or electronics of your car. Also with us as my son, Stu Stewart, are linked to cyberspace through Facebook, YouTube, YouTube, Twitter, and Periscope. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our mystery shopping report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting South Florida dealership.

And now, on with the show. Well, good morning, everybody. I can't believe it's 2020, 2020. Boy, I tell you, it seemed like a future date to me. I was born in 1940, and kind of creepy, actually, but here I am. Here we are, Earl Strew on cars. I got to tell you that if you haven't heard the show before, I can almost guarantee, you can't positively guarantee.

I think you're really going to like it. It's different. You won't find anything like this on radio or television, for that matter. I don't think online, maybe online, I don't know. If you go to YouTube, there's all sorts of stuff, but we're live, which is kind of exciting. My name is Earl. I'm a recovering car dealer.

I've been in the business since 19. Oh, I hate to say it, 1968, over half a century. And I started out selling cars the wrong way, leasing, maintaining, repairing. I just kind of did it the way all the car dealers did it back in the 60s and 70s and 80s. And then around the 90s, I think it was, I started to change morph into an honest, transparent person. I look back on what I used to do, and I say, I can't believe I did that. but I did. And it's like lifting a weight off my back to be able to talk freely and openly about how I used to bait and switch customers and unfair, deceptive trade practices.

You know, we'd advertise a car for a price lower than we knew we could sell the car for just to get you in the door. And whereas I choke up a little bit when I think I did that, it's actually an advantage to me now because I can look at other car dealers, all over the United States. I can read their advertising. And, you know, with the Internet now, I can see car dealers in California, in Texas, and Canada, and for that matter, overseas.

We haven't done too much overseas yet in Europe or Asia, but we might expand. You never know. We'd love to hear from you. That's the main message I'm giving you in my secondary introduction. We'd love to be able to have you contact this because you truly do make the show. I'm not just saying this to flatter.

you out there but we've got some really intelligent callers and we have some new callers that come up with some really new interesting things and so whatever's on your mind this is live radio you can say what's on your mind

good bad or ugly that's our theme song text number is 772 4976530 love to have you text text gives us a backlog last week we ran out of text toward the end of the show and that makes us pontificate and yak and talk too much we'd rather talk about what you want to talk about so if you can get the text in we'll talk about them quickly

as soon as we can get to them but we'll also have a backlog when we get toward the end of the show so do us a favor and text us questions comments recommendations 772 area code 772 497 6530. That's 772 4976530. And of course the telephone. You remember telephones? 877

960 9960 877 960-960. And a really cool method of communication is our anonymous feedback. I don't know anybody that does that. Businesses really should jump on board

this. It gives you a great way to find out what your customers and your employees really think about you because it's a website you go to and you make a comment, a question, whatever you want to do, and total anonymity. And that website you can communicate with us on being totally anonymous is Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Simple to remember, right? Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Tell us what's on your mind. Love to hear from you.

We'll read it on the show. The only thing we will change will be any expertise, profanities, obscenities. We'll abbreviate them. Yeah, we'll abbreviate them. Just the first letter. The big guy said that because there is one coming. Oh, there is a good. An F bomb. I'll just say F.

Oh, okay. And, of course, we're streaming live. Facebook.com forward slash, what is it, Earl on Cars. Facebook.com for us slash We're on cars We're on YouTube We're on Periscope We're on Twitter

We're all over cyberspace Streaming line So you can see what we look like I mean I have my lovely wife Nancy Stewart Sitting next to me She is our female advocate

And she's been with me Since I get-go back 17 years ago This is 2020 We'll have to get the exact date We came on the air I can't remember But we started out

Nancy and I Half-Hour show And then we went to an hour show and then the car dealers after about six or seven years rebelled they banded they did they banned it together i i think it was they formed an insurgency it was i believe it was a illegal boycott you uh lawyers out there know what that is but when a group of people band together to force an economic consequence uh that uh is i guess off the books uh you know a secret kind of a boycott. It's an illegal

boycott, but long story short, we got thrown off the air by the owners of C-Vue Radio. And the C-Vue Radio General Manager came to see me. A real nice guy. The name was Chet Tart. He's still around town. And Chet says, Earl,

I hate to tell you this, but the owners of the station said that we can no longer have you do the show. The car dealer said they were going to stop advertising on C-Vu Radio. And every time I tell that story, I think about how this radio station, True Oldies, has the courage and the moral fortitude to carry a show like this that's got to be costing them some advertising.

Now, car dealers do advertise on the station, but I've got to believe there's car dealers out there to say, are you kidding? I'm not going to advertise on a radio station that Earl Sturt on Cars on because he says bad things about us. Anyway, I'm starting to ramble. Let me introduce. I've got to Rick Kearney to my right here Rick's been with me for over 25 years

just a super smart guy mainly about cars and to be super smart about cars in 2020 you've got to be a computer scientist that's what he is he just can answer any question you have about your car mechanically electronically computer-wise and I guarantee

you if you're like everybody else now driving a roll of a late model car you've got all sorts of questions about what's going on with my car. You can't understand cards today. Rick, tell us a little bit about yourself. Well, I've been an auto mechanic for actually going on 30 years now if you can't when I started training. And I just love working on cars.

I get a real kick out of solving some of the really difficult problems that come up with these newer vehicles. Do you still call yourself a mechanic or do you call yourself a tell? When you're at a party and a guy says, what do you do for a living? tell them. I've actually stepped up now. I use the word technician. Automobile technician. By the way, on YouTube, a blast from the past,

one of our call-in people, said, I called Palm Beach Napleton's Palm Beach Accura yesterday and told them I saw your video. They put me on hold and never came back. Imagine that. Well, we have a lot of fun.

And please think about calling Rick, you know, if you have a squeaker, a rattle, or you've been in to have your car maintained or repaired and the bill looked a little bit out of line, or you just have something which is common today, you have a problem, and the dealer can't fix it, or the mechanic, the independent service department cannot fix it. Rick is a certified master diagnostician, and the diagnosing is the key. I mean, most people can fix things, but you've got to know what it is before you fix it. real challenge. And Rick can really help you out with diagnosing your problem. Stu, we call

him our spy master, because he directs Agent Thunder, and he writes up the mystery shopping report from Agent Thunder's notes. And he is, this is an exciting thing, this mystery shopping report. You'll never see anything like it. So Stu, tell us a little bit about the mystery shopping report. Well, I do love being referred to as a spymaster. Yeah. It definitely tickles boyhood fantasies of wanting to join the CIA and get involved in... Yeah, Nancy and I were talking about that the other day. She said, what would you like to do? I said, you know, I wouldn't mind being in the CIA or the NSA. I mean, that way you know everything. I was a big Jim Bond fan, so that makes me like Q or one of the people back at the home office. Yeah. I don't go out in the field. I'm too old for

that now, but, uh, no, it's, I mean, it's hard every week. We, you know, we kind of, we kind of, we scratch our heads, and we kind of, especially because we realize, I think we've hit every single franchise dealer, definitely in Palm Beach County. You said that in the write-up, and that is amazing. And I thought about it, with the exception, maybe some little bitty places. I mean, yeah, like, well, we, this week, I don't want to

spoil it, but we went to Brayman Mini, and that's at Bramon Motorcars, and I think they have BMW, they might have some other brands, luxury brands there at the same place, same building, but different sections of the showroom. So, yeah, we might have missed, you know, you know, smaller subsections of dealership, you know, like a Jeep Dodge ram, but we hit them all,

I think, and even in Martin County, I think we might have done that as well. Browden County, I think, is still right for the picking, so we might have to shift operations southward to keep it fresh. And it should be said for the record, because I know some folks out there, particularly the car salesman and some of the dealers, most of them probably think it's a bad thing we do. You're wasting our time. You go in there. It's deceptive.

you're fooling us, pretending you're buying a car. The fact of the matter is, we mystery shop our own dealership. And in full transparency, we have a car dealership in Palm Beach County. And we mystery shop ourselves because we want to be sure that we're doing the right thing. If you have 180 employees and you have 30-some-odd salespeople, if you don't think you have a rotten apple in the barrel, you're nuts. So we have to mystery shop ourselves. Well, we shop ourselves probably twice the rate than we shop the other dealers on the show. Yeah, we shop two or three or four times a week.

Yeah, at least easy. And I did get a, I can't remember if it was anonymous feedback, for it might have been a direct email in the last week, somebody asking me if we felt a bad about identifying salespeople, taking up their time, and then then missing out on a real commission. And I said it's something that we should, we would consider doing. But the other thing that we pointed out is even if the dealership does a bad job, the salesperson has stood out in terms of honesty and professionalism and all that,

we give them a big shout out, and we always say something along the lines. If you're looking for a new Honda or whatever, see Bob, ABC Honda, he's professional, honest. So we give them free advertising. We do have a pretty big listening audience. Yeah, one of our points about buying a car is if you can find an honest, transparent type salesperson, oftentimes they exist in a mire of December. at the dealership, and we've shopped dealerships where the salesperson is totally exposed to sham, the scam of the patent switch advertising, and said, you can't buy the car for this

price, this is what you really have to pay, and I'll do my best to get you as lower price as I can. So we name that salesperson and say, hey, go see Bob and so-and-so on a dealership, even if you don't believe the advertising, Bob will give you a square deal. Yeah, salespeople often tell the customers, I'm here to work for you, and they set up an us and them relationship between them and the management. Don't worry, I'll get the sales manager to give you a discount. In some cases, that's actually true.

And a lot of dealerships, you'll have a salesperson who's been there for 100 years, and they're stronger than the manager, and they'll get the manager to do the right thing sometimes. Exactly. Yeah. Well, Nancy Stewart, sitting in my left, she is, as I say, my partner from the get-go, and she has evolved into a advocate for female rights and for women's rights. especially when it comes to buying cars back in the 20th century. In fact, even today in some dealerships,

they're not wise enough to understand how important women are on their success as a car dealer. Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and Happy New Year. We've got a great show ahead, so stay right where you are, and you will be entertained. For the ladies, I have $50 for each one of you. First two new lady callers,

$50. And in this ever-changing auto industry, it certainly is a pleasure keeping everyone, especially women, informed and learning about so many different things that are changing and how, you know, you would protect yourself when going out to purchase a vehicle. So, as I said, we have a great show ahead. So stay tuned. 877-960, 9960, or you can text us at 7-7-2. 4976530. And we may have a surprise guess, so you want to stay tuned for that. We hope that our friend will call in. Justin Lennon, attorney from New York and Florida. And he's a young man that we've known since before he became a lawyer. And he won a very prestigious award from the American Bar Association,

I assume. It's voted one of the top lawyers in the country. You know, under 40, under the of 40 and we have known him for a real long time. You asked about our first radio show. I have it written down somewhere, but, you know, think about Justin. It seems like yesterday he was sitting in our kitchen with a screwdriver and tinkering around with the electrical outlets. He definitely has grown and his career that he's involved in, and his wife are very interesting. Okay. Let's get those calls coming in, folks. And as Nancy just said, 877-9-60-960. That's our audio, old-fashioned telephone, and we love to have calls there because we get a hint of your personality, sound of your voice, and it's just more homie and a lot more fun. 877-9-60-960. But the text are so important because we need to build a backlog. And the text number is 7-7.7. 272, 4976530, that's 772, 4976530. Rick, do we have a YouTube come in?

We do. Don Parsons from California is asking, California at this time of the morning, man. I'm impressed there. Hey, Don. He says, Earl, any word on Mazda going to offer all-wheel drive in the Mazda 6 in 2020 model year? You know, I don't know. I hate to say I don't know because I'm supposed to be the expert. You ask about the Mazda, and I have to digress a little bit because I was the first

Mazda dealer in the eastern United States, east of the Mississippi, started in my monster dealership in 1970. Interesting ride with Mazda. I sold the dealership several years ago, but I was really impressed with Mazda's score in Consumer Reports. They scored right up there with Lexus, Toyota, Mazda was right up there with Lexus and Toyota in terms of quality. And it's interesting because it's a small company. And they've struggled for a while, forward on 30% of Mazda for a while, and they sold that out.

Their quality wasn't all that good back 20, 25 years ago, they've really come up. I guess we can Google that question on the M6 and the all-wheel drive. Personally, I like the idea of an all-wheel-drive vehicle. Here in South Florida, we're not such in need of it. And I'm sure California, most of the areas there aren't much of a need of it. But if you consider anyone that lives up north, when you're getting into some of the snow conditions, like they're going to be experiencing right now and for the next couple months, that all-wheel drive makes a huge difference.

But in the rain, though, I mean, doesn't it, like, if it's on the highway or even just in the, you know, on the roads around the ones are really raining. Doesn't that give you a pretty big safety advantage? Absolutely, because you keep much better control over the vehicle. Yeah, I'd love that. I know that more and more vehicles are coming. I think Subaru kind of got everybody's attention on that. Are all-superoos all-wheel-drive?

Every single model they make is all-wheel drive. And they're, as I last heard, they're still working on trying to get an idea of a vehicle with all-wheel steering as well. Oh, that's where the back wheels turn to? Right. We've had a couple of vehicles that have had all-wheel. wheel steering, where the rear wheels can actually turn a certain degree to assist the front wheels and controlling you in curves.

Don, we'll try to get you that answer, and maybe we Google it, but I can find it somewhere. Okay, well, until then, we're going to go to Tina, and she is our first female caller this morning in this happy new year. Good morning, Tina. Hi, how are you guys doing this morning? Great. Hey, Tina. Hi. How are you? Rick, it's time to talk to you for a little bit. I haven't had a chance to chat with you. I already know what the answer to this question is for my own self, but let's say that you're getting ready to buy either a new or used car. And you have your choice between two options. You have your choice between the stock steel wheels or the factory alloy wheels. Which vehicle would you pick and why, based on that?

truth be told i like alloy wheels i like the look of them i think they balance up better than the steel wheels in a lot of cases um as a technician i think alloy wheels are much easier to mount and balance tires on just because of the design anymore and they've it used to be years ago that alloy wheels had issues with warping very easily, they could easily be damaged, and you'd have issues after a short time, your tires would be almost impossible to balance. But they've worked that now to the point of which the quality is incredible. And I really just think the alloys are the better option. I think they increase the value of the vehicle, and they make it look a lot better. They're a lot more expensive, of course. They are initially more expensive, but when you're

purchasing them on the car it's so many models now come with alloy wheels right from the factory it's actually kind of rare to find steel wheels except on most of the lower level cars oh i say okay yeah they're pretty uh i think uh we can speak for to it as most of them come with that with alloy wheels yeah does that we get the answer right yeah yeah we did and uh that's that's well what i did when i got both of my cars when I had the beloved Miata and now that I have the Yaris. The Yaris didn't come with alloy wheels, so I got them

myself but I was able to get what I wanted and I feel like the price was really fair because when I went to a reputable tire shop and wheel shop over here in Lehigh Acres, Florida the guy was really nice. He showed me all kinds of different options for my car and I picked

out my cars, the black mica color so I picked out black and red ones and they really looked good. But I only I paint like $115 a corner for the wheels, so I feel like I've got a really good deal. Is there any such thing as ceramic wheels? I know. I would suspect ceramic would have a real issue handling the impacts that we get for road debris, potholes, speed bumps.

I thought they made ceramic now that was the strongest deal. They put it on the space shuttle. Yeah. They do indeed. But there's tensile strength, and then there is another kind of strength. I'm not an engineer, but. Well, you've got your hardness as well, because if the material is too hard, like a diamond, it can become brittle. Okay, let's Google it.

We're just speculating here. I am Googling. Tina, what else is on your mind? What are the advantages of the tallow wheels? What do you think about that? Maybe Tina has the answer. What are the advantages? One thing, for one thing, alloy wheels are all in one piece.

You don't have to worry about a hubcap rolling off, rolling off. Steel wheels do tend to rest in certain parts of the country, so you can combat a lot of that by having alloy wheels. I think that would be a couple of advantages as well. And Tina, you know, I think that when I think of alloy, it's a much later material. So another advantage would be, you know, maybe a faster acceleration. Possibly, Rick? Better fuel economy. Yeah, there you go.

Downside is, if you damage them, you can't just slap a hubcap on top of them. It could be a pretty expensive repair of a gouge or a scratch. True, but the nice part is that now there are companies that will repair them. Yeah. There's a whole economy out there for it. Rick, read my mind. Exactly. They're very much lighter, a lighter alloy.

Yes. And another thing I was going to mention really quickly. Anybody that is going to be looking at used cars, I know that Nissan is a really popular brand. I think we may have mentioned this before. We were talking just in general quite a few months ago about CVT transmissions. Well, Nissan is known to have some pretty serious problems with their CVT transmissions. They usually tend to go bad before the 65,000 mile mark. And Nissan is aware of this and has been replacing transmissions, but if you're looking at a Nissan with a CVT transmission, you might want to walk away from it.

Yeah, Nissan's got a lot of problems. Our chairman of the board, Florida, Japanese jail, and he's on the run from Interpol, so I guess Nissan's got a lot of problems. He's centering out some mystery shoppers to find them. Yes. Well, thank you, Tana. That's your always. Hey, did you get your automotive news this week?

No, I haven't. I have to resubscribe online. I have not subscribed again yet. Okay. Well, we're going to brag a little bit. Earl Stewart on Cars was shown a picture on the photos of dealers that were notable for the 2019. And there was about a dozen photos on there. And a picture of Earl Stewart on Cars, Nancy and I were in the picture. And it was about a car dealer. It says the tech said a car dealer that has a weekly radio show. that tells you how not to be taken advantage of by other car dealers. And that's in this current edition of Automotive News under notable automobile car dealers for 2019.

Oh, I'll bet that made you feel really good. You should be proud of that. Yeah, I'll have a surprise. I think that's awesome. Ten years ago, they would have never done that. But I believe there is a change in the morality of the way, at least automotive news, and probably some car dealers are thinking more and more about, you know, changing the way they do business.

So we were honored and happy to see that. Yeah, I would like to think that your radio show has kind of spearheaded a lot of this impact, though. You know, this has kind of started a new trend in forcing, at least on the East Coast and South Coast of Florida, for dealers to be a little bit more honest because you're putting them on blast, as you could say. Yeah, exactly. And that's a good thing. Well, Tina, thanks again. You are a great caller, and you inspire.

inspire the females in the audience to call in, if they haven't called before, to win 50 bucks. And last week, I think we had, gosh, I had to have six, seven lady callers. So between you and Nancy, you're really getting the people, the female people out there to call the show. When first started 17 years ago, we used to have zero female callers. And now we're very close to 50-50. Thanks to you and to Nancy. Yeah, take that male show. and ladies nancy and i can't do this by ourselves we need you so please call in thanks tina thank

you so much tina thank you for supporting us okay give us a call toll free at 877 960 9960 or you can text us at 772 4976530 so i've been googling ceramic wheels the only thing that comes up are pictures of patrick suezian to me more um making pottery and ghost so Actually, I didn't, that did come up, but a ceramic wheel, you didn't think of a potter's wheel. But anyway, I see a lot of ceramic coated wheels. I don't see anything for actually all ceramic vehicle, automobile wheels. So, yeah, I mean, one day there could be an all ceramic car. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it could be, yeah.

So, we got any text? We do. We got a bunch. I'll start with the most recent anonymous feedback ones because you'll like them. Okay. First one says, Earl, your voice is mollifluous, like a Stradivarius, marinated overnight in whiskey and honey. Keep talking and never stop. You got a fan of time, not Earl.

Huh? No, you couldn't have done it. I've been watching it the whole time. All right, there we go. Next one's also really nice. What people don't know about Earl's story is that when his employees need him, like if they have a medical emergency or financial problem, he always takes care of them. My son worked for him for about eight years, and Earl saved him and his wife and kids from bankruptcy. So that was really sweet, too.

Wow. Yeah. How nice. Yeah. There's a whole bunch of them. I don't know if Rick's got anybody on YouTube. I don't want to monopolize the texting conversation. What we're going to do is we're going to go to this next caller first, and that's John from Palm City.

Good morning, John. Hey, John. Hello, John. Good morning. Good morning. This is John. How you doing? I'm doing good.

Okay. Don't look for the ex-CEO of Nissan. He'll never find him as extradition. I'll find them. It's the crime of the 1990s. They smuggled them out of Japan and a musical instrument. And a guitar case. They drilled holes in the...

For his own personal use as much as $80 million. Put that company in a lot of trouble. Unfortunately, hurt the sales and the sales. stock and some Nissan dealerships are really hurting and bleeding from his, you know, maneuver. But he, by the way, he's got no problem. He's worth over $121 million. Agent Thunder will find him. And he's going to be permanently over there.

So I just want to say where he is and we won't see him again because he's perfectly safe. The second thing I want to mention to, it's going on January now is the big month. for collector car auctions. One is going on right now in Kissimmee, Florida. It's from the second until the 12th. There's 3,600 cars, collector cars that are being auctioned off. One of the most famous is a 68 Mustang

that Steve McQueen drove in the... Wow. Bullet. So, yeah. And then actually the big one is Barry Jackson, January 11th. And one that shocks everybody, but it hasn't been publicized much because it's not going to be Barrett Jackson this year,

Stalupi's car collection, Cars of Dreams. The Leak Company is going to auction them off on January 15th, and don't tell Earl, because one of the cars is Earl's favorite, a 58 bonneville fuel-injected convertible. Oh, wow, a 58 or a 57? That's 58.

Oh, boy, wow. Yeah, but it's not publicized much, and it's a funny thing because usually it's something, on R&M or it's on Barrett Jackson and it's this leak auction company but it will be on the you know you can follow it on leak card.com and it's going to be online well I'm surprised this will be selling it's a big selling it again he did it once before he sold all of his collection and then he accumulated another collection and now he's apparently selling that again I guess he just wants likes to start from scratch it seems to

Because of ever going on, and the important key is it's no reserve. Whatever they bring in, that's it. Oh, really? Wow. Very interesting. Yeah. So I just thought I'd mention, but it's unfortunate what the CEO, X CEO of Nissan did to that company, and it's a lot of money that he stole and used for personal use. He had his own dealership, right?

Because it's a good company. By the way, if anybody remembers, when it came to the United States, it wasn't Nissan. Did anybody remember what the name was? Datson. That's exactly right. Yeah, that was one of the biggest mistakes they ever made. They had a pretty good brand name and they changed it. More than escape, people can pull like that in Japan with two guards at the door

and videotape on the way outside, and yet they've maneuvered this to get them out of there. Yeah, that's true. It's not good. You know, it's kind of like a comment on the general morality of especially the auto business. And if you can't pick up, I say pick up a newspaper and today you go online. The news has always got a car dealer or a manufacturer. Actually, more manufacturers than car dealers. And the Volkswagen, that's been a bloodbath over there.

I believe the CEO was indicted. And then you had Chrysler. is in serious trouble they have some serious charges against them and of course the classic is Nissan

with Gone who is not only arrested but then he fled house arrest and as you say he was put in a musical case and flown to Lebanon you can't make this stuff up

via Istanbul Istanbul yeah it'd be a great movie I hope they make a movie out of it. I agree with you and the trial was supposed to be in April and he was going to get a minimum of 15 years

for his, you know, stealing. Exactly. That's unbelievable how he heard that company is still bleeding from the task that he did. Yeah, he did actually, he funneled $5 million from a Nissan subsidiary into a dealership he owned overseas.

Oh, I didn't know that. Wow. Well, John, thanks again for... I want to talk to the shopping report. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thanks, John. Give us a call again. 877960, or you can text us at 772-497-60. We're going to go to Mimi from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Mimi.

How are you today? Oh, good morning. I'm well. Thank you. It is a beautiful day. What I wanted to say was about our dog. the conversion van called about last time. I really have no way of getting into it. It doesn't have a rail for me to put my foot to get into it. And I was looking at vans as I was driving, and I noticed a lot of them don't seem to have the rail.

Like we used to have a nice Ford expedition, and that's a good place to put your foot. I don't know whether you have an answer for me. Is it possible to install something like that after the fact? Yes. Absolutely. Running boards, little step bars, or even they make just a single little, it's almost like a U-shaped bar that has a little traction step on it so your foot won't slip or slide. And any aftermarket shop would be able to install one of those. There's tons of Monline that they'll be able to find many different styles for you. Oh, that's wonderful. How do I start that? Do you?

Google something, or do I have to go to the dealership and have to say that? You could probably Google, you could go to Amazon probably, and just search on Amazon for that product. You would search,

say, for running board for Dodge conversion van of a particular year-making model. And then you would look, I would recommend you look at your Amazon ratings sort by customer ratings. I always saw it from four stars and up, and then you can read the ratings, try to

pick a product that has multiple ratings, hopefully a hotter or more, and try and four plus stars. You can also check out like AutoZone, Pep Boys, some of these other places, supply those and even install them. Yeah. And one other place that you might consider talking to, just to stop in and talk to them, Action Mobility on 10th Avenue by the I-95, they are a company. that actually does all the major conversions for wheelchair lifts and the like in vans. So I guarantee they will have a lot of information about various stepbars and that and such things as grab handles and other ways to assist you for getting in and out of a vehicle like that. Are you near 10th Avenue and I was at Lake Worth?

I'm in West Palm, we're pretty sick, centrally located to go anywhere. So that was, that's great. So then they probably would be able to install it. Yes, absolutely. We used to work on the cars when we were younger, but, you know, over 70 now. Not that I don't want to, but I'm not sure if I could do it anymore. Okay, well, thank you so much. I appreciate the information.

I'm so glad to know I can still get it done. Mimi, thanks for giving us a call this morning. I apologize for the check that you didn't receive. Can you possibly text us your contact information again so I can look into it? Well, you know what? I will try to text you. Give me your number, and I'll try to text you. But basically, I'm sometimes successful, sometimes not, so I don't know what to say about that.

Do you have your text number? 772-497-6530. That's area code 772. 5-3-0-9-7-2-497-6-5-30 yes i'll try again if you have a problem with that number mimi you can always text me at 561 386 uh-huh 6498 this is your phone number i can call you okay yes thank you thank me have a great weekend and happy new year you too thank you Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Okay. Do we have some more text? Yeah, we can jump in the text. The next one we have is from Andreas, who is a long-time listener. Good morning, Earl. My wife and I took advantage of Hyundai's $50 gift card program for test driving a new Hyundai. I'll preface that Earl Ancar's $50 reward for new lady callers is infinitely easier to obtain than Hyundai's $50 gift card. Aside from a seemingly unnecessary Q&A information exchange and entering our info into the dealer system,

The sales rep insisted that we test drive the one car that was blocked in by a host of other vehicles and that also needed gasoline before we took it out on the test drive. We've experienced that on mystery shopping reports. While we were patiently waiting for nearly 20 minutes, I happened to overhear two salesman gorilla lady customer. I could only deduce that the lady was simply interested in perusing the dealerships used car lot without knowing which car was to be her next car. One salesman asked her twice, but what do you want? this seems dismissive and unprofessional. She left without looking at any cars, good for her. She doesn't need two salesmen confronting her just a few days before the end of the year

to corner her into a sale. And that's from Hyundai of Greer in Greer, South Carolina. So that's from Andreas. Wow. Yeah, it's amazing. The freebies, car dealers, you just think that it seemed silly that people would not expect to be put to high pressure when you get something free. And 50 bucks, that gets a lot of people in the door.

And it's a numbers game. And when you advertise that, you'll probably have maybe 100 people come in. And out of those 100 people, there may be, what would they sell out of 100 people that came in to get 50 bucks? Well, that closing ratio, that closing rate you're talking about, definitely is affected by a promotion like that. So typically, you're 20 to 30%, but something like that, I'm going to guess 5%. Well, you sell more cars. It actually, usually it's profitable, not always, but the get them on the door, the more people. It's a number.

Yeah, 5% of 100 is a lot better than 20% of 20. Sure. So, yeah, I can tell you that salespeople, they hate those promotions because it just, I mean, it might feel good for the, you know, for the, you know, for a busy Saturday. Exactly. But a lot of people come in just for the gift card, and I don't blame them. it's free, you know, they put them through the ringer, it sounds like a lot of dealers. Well, the smart sales people realize that buying a car is not a, it's not a cerebral thing. It's a emotional thing.

I guess emotional is cerebral, but you know what I'm talking about. It's not a logical thing. And when you come into a car dealership with a bunch of beautiful new cars, they smell good, they're really, really cool. And you just came in to get whatever chance to win the new car, a drawing, to win a TV set, or 50 bucks cash, you just came in for that, but there will be people that will come in just for that, that we'll buy a car. Maybe not that day, but they saw the car. It gets the endorphins flowing. It works. And the indoor, that's what they call it the ether. So when a customer comes in or a group of customers comes in, they got all excited about the car, the emotions are running

high. The salespeople says they're in the ether, and they've got a strike before they come out of the ether. That means when they come to their senses. All right, we have one on your anonymous feedback.com. I think this is worth addressing here. Hello, many people do good deeds. Many people help one another, but very few put forth a considerable effort and money just for the sake of helping out. They want something in return. I do not believe that your platform is out of the goodness of your heart without the calculated kickback of additional foot traffic at your dealership. Your information is indeed valuable, but also profitable, and I expect that You knew that going into all this.

I think the selfless heroes of consumer advocacy and support are those who do not monetize their YouTube videos and have no potential monetary kickbacks. Thanks. See you soon on the profit side of Erlon cars. Well, the truth is, like so many things in life, everything isn't black and white. Do I hope I'll sell more cars than my dealership because people recognize that I'm honest? Yes. and do more people recognize that I'm honest

because we're rolling cars and the blog and the book and the rest of it? Yes. So certainly it's a two-way street and I do also say that I enjoy being honest it's fun being transparent and I really get more joy out of this show and my blogs and my public speaking engagements than actually working in the dealership

anymore. We have the dealership and we sell a lot of cars and we're successful. But my joy, truly at this time of my life, is in what I'm doing right now. But I do believe it helps in my business. And I also believe that by preaching, as I'm doing now, to the car dealers out there, who all listen to this show, I don't mean literally, but a lot of them do. They know about the show. I mentioned earlier that Automotive News, the trade journal for all car dealers. Every car dealer in the world reads the automotive news. Every manufacturer executive in the world reads the automotive news. And they actually featured Earl Stewart on cars in the last automotive news in this show. So it's kind of like a legacy thing for me. I'm proud of it.

Nancy and I are, you know, this is a part of our life right now. We do this because we love. it. But I've got to be honest, it helps sell cars at our dealership, too. Absolutely. On A77960, where you can text us at 772-497-60. And I have a text from Valerie, and Valerie is out shopping for a new car. And she said she's just completely exhausted. She's been in and out of a lot of car dealerships. And she asks, what would be the most important thing that she should do before making a purchase. Valerie, I truly think that being prepared is the most important. You know, if you think about it, you know, this is, what, a $20,000, $30,000 investment,

and it's important to walk into the dealership being informed. We're researching buying a home. we're researching investments we research all the time so you should do the same thing whenever you are purchasing a vehicle there's a lot of questions to be asked for you to ask yourself and not only is it important to be prepared but the time the timing you know whether you go in in the evening or daytime and be a smart negotiator I hope that I answered your question and good luck with your new purchase. Stay in touch. Next. Okay. Earl, what do you think about the reliability of the 2020 GMC terrain? Scotty Kilmer said not to buy an equinox, which is about the same as

the terrain. I got ahead of you. I went to Consumer Reports is what you should do. And you got to get a membership to get all the information. How much is that? It's not a whole lot of money, is it? It'll save you more money than you'll spend on the Consumer Reports membership. It's like 20 bucks a year or something like that. It's definitely worth it. Yeah. So to answer your question, they get an overall rating of 69 out of 100. And one of the things that jumped out to me was the predicted owner satisfaction score, which is three out of five. Then they show a history of past models. And it has improved over the years. But as recently as 2015, it was considered pretty marginal. So I guess it's a mixed bag. I screenshot of these. I'm going to text them to you so you can read the reviews yourself. But it's worth it. Everybody get it. consumer reports a subscription. I don't. I just use your login, Earl, but that's it.

Well, the previous caller or text or Valerie for Nancy said the most important thing. And Nancy says to be informed, and one of the ways you're informed is by having a subscription to consumer reports. Cars are their big thing, cars more than any other product, possibly because you spend more run cars. And General Motors does not have the greatest reputation for quality. And you should always check a General Motors product out carefully. The Ford or the, what is that the Cadillac Escalade is arguably one of the worst vehicles on the road right now. And they're just absolutely, it's almost a joke in terms of reliability and depreciation and everything bad about the Cadillac

escalates, but with every manufacturer, there's always a nugget or two. And you go to consumer reports and you pick the best vehicle, and then you do competitive shopping. And you keep exactly the car that you want to buy every time you get a competitive price and you buy it from the lowest price. Best way to buy a new car. Absolutely. And don't forget to take a friend with you. That's real important. What do you got, Rick? Well, we've got a couple here. First off, Chris Merkel says on that $50 gift card, he says there might be a dealer fee on it, so watch yourself. Well, there will be.

And as a squirrel is asking, when is the Tacoma going to get rear disc brakes? I don't know. You answer to that better than I could. I've been wondering this because I've owned Tacoma's for the last 25, 26 years, and I got to tell you, like the last Toyota with drum brakes in the rear. I don't know why Toyota will not put disc brakes on the back of the

Tacoma. I do. Too much money? Cost more money. But every other model has switched to drum brakes. You know, you follow the money. You've heard the old joke. It's all about the... Every manufacturer has

those guidelines and they have to fit into a price bar. If you want to make a perfect Tacoma you could do it but it would cost you $110,000 so they have to draw the line somewhere and all the engineers sit in the room and says what do you say about disc brakes on the rear

and they take account and they say we're not going to do it because it's too expensive could somebody customize their Tacoma like a really sophisticated Tacoma owner put disc brakes on their Tacoma? Oh absolutely. People do that? It could be done modified it yeah

What's the biggest competitor to the Toyota Tacoma? Ford Ranger. The Ranger, the Chevy Colorado. Does the Ranger have disc brakes in the rear? I don't know. I bet you they don't. I bet you they're keeping, even with the second. The best way to get disc brakes in the rear of a Tacoma

is to have the Ford Ranger have disc brakes on the rear. So it's all about competition. I mean, the manufacturers don't truly care about building. the best quality vehicle they can for the consumer. What they care about is selling the most cars for the most money. And that's a good thing because it doesn't sound like a good thing, but competition is wonderful. You smart, Daddy.

I would say this, though, from personal experience, because like I say, I've owned Tacoma's now for 25 years or more, the brakes on them are functionally are fantastic. I've never had issues with my brakes. They hold up really well. But the rear drum brakes last like you would not believe. My first Tacoma, 270,000 miles. I went almost 200,000 miles before I replaced the rear brakes for the first time.

No one's asking if the disc bricks are good. The question was, why? And we've answered the question. Because the segment doesn't have it on any of them. Okay, well, we're going to go to Tequesta. and Dave has been holding. Good morning, Dave. Hello, Dave.

Yes, hello. Good morning. I got a question. Good. I got a question about your service department. Uh-huh. I got a 2012 tundra, and I do a little bit of tone with it. I have about 70,000 miles on it,

but I wanted to have that transmission service done. So I went online, and I made an appointment, and I put in all my information. I got it. I know it was an estimate. It was like $119 to have this. transmission service then when I get there it was it was quoted no no no it's like $400 because you have a TH something transmission I would just learn why if you put your information and why can't you get a little closer estimate was it was it were

you online day when you did this or were you speaking with an individual no I was online on line honestly still you might take a look at that we might have a glitch yeah on our appointment scheduler you can put in and the work that you need to get done, and it'll give you an estimate on that. So we do use a third-party scheduler called dealer effects, so we'd have to look in the settings and make sure that what was available actually matched the price.

Well, Dave, all I can say is I'm very sorry, and you have pointed out something that we need to take a look at, even if there were a way that you could have indicated you had the V8, it doesn't sound that we made it clear enough and obvious enough. No one likes to be quoted. What kind of car was it again? A tundra. What year?

A tundra, 2012. Okay. And to get an unpleasant surprise, it looks like a bait and switch, and we don't do that sort of thing. But in this case here, we did it inadvertently, and I sincerely apologize. We'll take a look at our website and the appointment making and see if we can't correct that. What engine was it, a 5-7, a 4-6? No, the smaller, 4-6, smaller one. Okay.

I'm just playing with it now. We can move on with the show, but just want to make sure that we have. Thank you for pointing it out. And this is an example of opening ourselves up to any kind of a call. And here is a customer of ours in our dealership that called up that got bait and switched. One other question. Four-wheel drive or two-wheel drive? Two-wheel, sir.

Okay, thanks. And even if there were a way you could have done it, clearly it's a little bit more involved than it should be. There should be a warning that based on your. equipment, transmission, so and so forth, engine, the transmission cost is kind of varying. We didn't make it clear enough, and we will correct that. Well, thank you. So one more real quick thing, no, and it's kind of funny, though. I was going to get my tires rotate at the same time, and the salesman come out and said,

well, we can't do it because you have swollen lug nuts. Well, I was like, oh, my God, maybe I should go right to the emergency room. So he'd calm me down, and he said that, no, no. But that was kind of expensive. They wanted like $300 for it. I did buy them online for $49, but I was able to get it finished. I just thought I'd throw that in because it was kind of funny.

It was a lot of fun. Yeah, we should address that because Rick, on those types of lug nuts, what's the story? Toyota and Ford. I'm going to call them both out right on the carpet. Y'all need to learn something from Honda. The lug nuts that Toyota and Ford are using on the greater majority of the cars are a steel alloy lugnut

with a chrome thin metal cap installed over it that's a shell that goes over the entire lug nut and that shell over time as you're of course everybody's using impact guns over time that shell actually begins to swell up and expand and it gets an air gap between the shell and the lug nut

and the 21 millimeter socket that should fit onto that lug nut no longer fits. It actually expands up to 21.5 millimeter or in some cases as much as 22 millimeters. So Dave's got a 2012. That's eight years of rotating

and balancing and so forth. And it just wore the lug nuts down. It just wears that material and causes it to expand. Now the problem is that Toyota and Ford are both very proud of those lug nuts and they're very expensive. So go on

and you can find aftermarket lug nuts that are much less expensive. But the nice part is that if you can find the design that Honda uses or that some of the other models use, the lug nut is actually a solid piece that has been chrome plated, and the only add-on part is a little cap that goes on the end. So if that cap falls off, it looks a little unpleasant, but that lug nut will still be able to be easily removed removed with the standard size socket and of course the worst problem is if you get stuck on the

side of the road with a flat tire your tire wrench is not going to fit those swollen nuts and you're not going to be able to get that wheel off to change it right well i was able to go online and i did find this totally steal all the way there's no a cap or anything on they were about only about fifty dollars so yeah it was well worth looking into well dame thanks very much i got one quick question for Dave. I'm trying to figure out this mystery here. What was the service called on the site, on the scheduling site? Was it transmission fluid

service, or was there a different name? Well, it's been a month or so now. I'm pretty sure it was a fluid service because that's all they did. There was no filter change. There really wasn't a filter for 119 box about? That said

119. Yeah, that's the one I found. Okay. That's what I did. Yeah, yeah. We've got to get fixed, Dave. Thanks to you, and hopefully we have a, can we file a product report on those lug nuts, Rick, to Toyota? Over and over and over. I've done so many of those. They actually started sending us notes saying, stop sending these. Dave, great call.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thanks for information. Okay, bye. Thanks, Dave. Well, that's pretty interesting. Rick, they asked you to stop. Yes, I did that thing from the, the, yes.

what was the movie stew with Andy Dufrain? The Shaw Shankredan. Yes. I doubled up the number of dealer product reports for a while. Well, you know, sadly, and again, this is a 2012. We don't know when the lug nuts wore out, but it was probably in five or six

years. Yeah. And the manufacturers they think that, well, they want to sell more cars, right? And they want the cycle to be tighter, and they don't want people keeping cars for 10 years and nine or ten years. So when they're having those meetings about profits and losses, which is the big meeting, they say, you know, we really should put a better lug nut on these

tunders because in eight or nine years they were out and then says, well, they should buy a new car. I mean, this is a sad fact of life, folks. I mean, Toyota, Honda, General Motors, Chrysler, they don't want to build a car that will last forever. They want to build a car that will be as good as their competition or better so they can sell more cars. If they sold a car that would last forever, they'd be out of business, wouldn't they? Yep. So that's life.

They call that built-in obsolescence, right? Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Where are we, folks? We have texts, and we also have, I think we have one anonymous feedback. I'll get with the next text. It says, this question is for Rick.

This is not a complaint at all. I guess I would like him to straighten me out about the cost of a service that was done to my Mazda yesterday. I had the cooling system flushed yesterday. It sure needed it. Slime under the radiator cap plus the ugly looking antifreeze. I got the bill and it was just south of $180. What had me scratching my head was the cost of the coolant. The invoice read two containers of universal antifreeze, $26.95 each.

Is this the cost of the stuff? I was quite surprised. I've been going to the shop for years and have had the, and I've had the, most confidence in them. I'm not accusing them of anything. It just seemed awfully expensive. Maybe I'm out of touch. Thanks. How much does cooling cost? I don't know. Our Toyota factory coolant is about $26 a gallon. And that is one of the things they've done is they've gone away from the old mix it yourself with water to get the proper concentration because you never really got the best concentration. So they've gone to a straight, put in the

And that's probably a 40% markup. And the auto manufacturers give a suggested price to the car dealers with a big fat markup. And you can usually do a lot better online. One of you want to Google that coolant on Amazon right now and see what it costs per gallon. It'll be a lot less. And we have customers at our dealership that bring in their own coolant. And you can buy cooling if you shop it, if you shop it, if you shop, shop oil, you shop coolant, you shop about any auto part, you can buy it for less than the

dealer's going to charge you. I'm seeing prices ranging from about $16 to $24, $30 for genuine Honda, Xerox as low as $16.71 for peak, PRAB 53. So all of dealers will actually sell product to Amazon or to third parties for far less than they charge you as their customer, their retail customer. And then it's up to Amazon or the independents that were sold this by the car dealers as to what they want to sell for. Well, here's an interesting one. Now, I know that our dealership charge is about $25 to $26 a gallon for our coolant.

And here it is on Amazon for $32 for the exact same coolant. You have to be careful. And Nancy and I were buying something on Amazon the other day. Yeah, it was a Costco product. And we found out that the Amazon price was about 50% greater than the. So Amazon will get you too. They'll catch you sleeping. Yeah, they'll catch you sleeping.

They've done that with me because we're going to veer off on a slight tangent, but it's very important. If you use Amazon Echo and you reorder products, which I do all the time, you reorder paper towels, Alexa. and if you're not listening to what she says to you, you might just go ahead and give her your code and it'll show up and you'll get a $40 package of paper towels. Very true. Watch out. But in general, you can beat any car dealer's price on parts.

So if you have a car that you want to take any good fixed, if you want to buy your parts ahead of time, you check with the dealer, cost of parts. You check with online. And as I say, don't take Amazon as the authority. shop around. I can never remember the name of that parts company that is huge. Rock Auto. Rock Auto. You go to rockado.com, R-O-C-K-A-U-T-O, Rock Auto.com, and you can buy parts for far less than the dealer were charged, but you've got to buy it, and then you've got to take it in,

and then they're going to sneer at you a little bit because you've got your own oil or your own filter, and, you know, what a cheap skate. I think you're smart. You're not a cheap skate. You're smart. Just one word of caution, folks, on electronic items, such things, and I'll bring this one up from last week, door lock actuators. We had one of our guys that bought an aftermarket doorlock actuator on eBay for about, I think he said it was $60 or $70 versus a factory cost of almost $300. And the $70 doorlock actuator, when he got it installed, it worked twice. And it it quit. Yeah, well, you want,

so I would recommend, I would recommend you buy the manufacturer's product. In other words, you can buy a Honda alternator online for less than the dealer will charge you.

And if you buy it with a return basis or so you can return it, every reason I love Amazon, you can return everything and almost. And so be sure you can return it if it's not

the right one. And you'll beat the price and you'll save some money. Absolutely. And, of course, not always looking for the Honda name brand, but like with Toyota, a lot of our parts are made

by Nippendenzo. So look for that. You might be, if you're looking for a Toyota, look for Nippendenzzo parts. You want genuine factory part, OAM part, and rockato.com is by far your best source. I don't know about the return policy, but they probably have a fair return policy.

And I would just read over it, check all the fine print. Okay. Okay, we're going to go to Howard, who's holding. Thanks for your patience, Howard. Good morning. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you. Pleasure to talk to you people.

I have a question about lug nuts. I heard what you said about the lug nuts, but I don't think people realize that each car manufacturer has different lug nuts for their car. Is that correct? That is true. The threads, the diameter, the lug stud, the thread pitch. So if you're going to buy aftermarket online, very much. verify that you're getting the proper lug nuts for your specific vehicle. You know, Howard, I was reading about the lug nuts,

and I couldn't believe that there was so much information and so many different lug nuts. And you pose a very good question. Okay, next question. In the shop, when you have a problem with the expanding lugnuts, the one to swell up, how do you get them off? I actually have a special socket that is 21 and a half millimeters or if they're really bad, I'll step up to a little larger size

or in the worst case, we'll inform the customer that we're going to have to use basically a hammer and chisel. That's scary. Yep. We have our ways, but... Go ahead, go ahead. Sometimes I just get out the magic tools and I just, you've got to be patient and you've got to be careful,

and you just hammer and chisel at it until you get that thing loose. Okay. I had a problem up north. I had a slow leak, and I decided to take the tire off and put that little compact spare on. And I did it. Everything worked and had the tire fixed. Costco, by the way, fixed it.

fixed it. And Costco told me something. Rick, I want your information on that. He said the tire could be fixed, but if one quarter of an inch closer to the thread, to the sidewall, it could not be fixed, even though it's in the thread itself. So explain why a tire, even though you have a puncture in the thread, if it's too close to the sidewall, it cannot be fixed. Can you explain that. It has to do with the way the tire flexes on the side walls. And our rule of thumb that we use is when you look at the surface of the tire, from the very outside shoulder of the tire, the very edge of it, as you come into the first groove, if the nailer screw is in that first section before the groove, we will not repair it. It's not safe. From that first groove, all the way across

to the very last groove before you get to the very last section of tread, we will safely repair your tire if it's in that spot and not super large of a hole. And if it's again in that last bit of tread, that we will not do. But in those two outer sections of tread, it is not safe because that's too close to the sidewall where the tire flexes up and down and the patch cannot be expected to reliably hold. So the flex will move the patch around, maybe knock it off. Yep. Oh, very good. Okay, so the tie has to be taken off. It has to be patched from the inside, correct?

Yes. And a special glue that is used on the patch. Yep. What kind of glue do they use on that? It's a tire cement. It's a tire cement that is meant for patches, especially designed to do what's called self-vulcanizing so that the patch will actually adhere properly to the.

the tire. Okay, that's great information. Okay, well, so when I put the tire back on after I had the flat, one of the lug nuts didn't that work? So I was missing one lug nut, and I went to AutoZone, and I picked up a lug nut, and it's perfect. So I have one AutoZone lug nut on.

Do you think I should come by the dealership and change that out or what? No. If it is as long as, if the appearances, a little difference, as long as that doesn't bother you, as long as it torques down properly, I would leave it be. Okay, it talks down. It looks a little different, but you have to really look hard. You know what I mean?

If I didn't tell you about it, you would never notice. Nobody's going to stop you in traffic at the stoplight. Say, hey, you've got a mismatchie lugnought over there, Howard. Nope. I know, geez, I feel terrible, you know. Only when you're stopped at a light, though. Thanks for the information. Thanks for the call, Howard.

Thanks, Howard. Okay, bye. Lugnuts. Rick, if you're missing one lug nut, how dangerous is it to drive? And the second part of the question is, and the second part of the question is, does it affect the wear on the tires? Missing one lug nut will not put a wear on the tire. but I just look at it.

The wheel was designed to have however many it has, whether it's four, five, six, or eight, or however many. And it's okay to go a short time, but I would get it repaired as soon as you can. Does that one mechanics call each other if they think they're not too sharp? He's missing a few lug nuts. Right.

Oh, I've said that at these times. Sure. Okay, folks, a lot of information. It's all free. Give us a call. It's all free. 877-960 9960

And He's got swollen Love nuts If you've That sounded like a serious diagnosis 772 4976530 And I think the guys

have got some YouTube Some text Anonymous feedback They got it all Yeah Well I'll go to Rick He's on a roll Well let's go right to Mark

He's actually asking Any thoughts on the products such as seafoam or gum out all in one for fuel system maintenance? He says like most of the country, we have a fair amount of ethanol in our fuel. My opinion on these, we call them Mechanic in a Can, folks, with most modern gasoline from any name brand station, there are plenty of cleaners in that fuel already. and you're not going to need these additives, the magic chemicals that they all want to sell you. I just want to get your money. That's all about the money.

It's snake oil. Just stick with a good name brand fuel. And the best advice is if you're one of those people that you do a lot of little short driving trips, a mile here, a mile there, then you park your car for a long time. Take a Sunday drive sometime. Hop in your car, get out on the highway. get it up to highway speed, 60, 70 miles an hour for at least half an hour to 45 minutes, charges the battery backup, helps get the oil hot enough to work and clean the dirt out of the engine, gets the fuel injectors all cleaned out and everything, and you'll be just fine.

Yeah, car dealers and independent menu repair shops are desperate because the quality of the cars is a quantum leap beyond what it was 20 years ago. And back in the day, car dealers and independent mechanics could make a fortune, because the cars weren't very good and you had to fix them and maintain them a whole lot. Today, these cars are so good that they're almost maintenance free. And there's a desperation.

Car dealers are reserting to their recommended maintenance pretending is what the manufacturer's recommended maintenance is. Never ever do anything to your car unless you have an expert tell you a good reason for it if it's not on the manufacturer's recommended maintenance. schedule. They'll come up with the snake oil and the additives and the flushes and the washes and all the other nonsense to get your money in the service department. Yep. And the next one I have here, by the way, Donovan Lewis says he just verified the

current Ford Ranger, all models come with four-wheel disc brakes. So, ooh, hey. Do you hear that Toyota? Do you hear that, Google? Yeah. Oh, Google gave me the wrong answer. Yeah. That was the first thing I came up. I saw, Well, you know, it could have been for older models because there was a whole lot of, there was conversion kits being sold to convert the drums to this. Okay. Well, M. Ave has a great question here for you, Earl. It's probably one of your favorite ones.

Any recommendations for trading in a car? I always get offered well below what all the websites, KB, Kelly Blue Book, etc. List is the lowest acceptable price. The argument I hear is, I have to wholesale it. I'm not making any money on it. it. Let me look at what I can get at the auction. How do I combat that in negotiations? Well, you're in better shape today than you ever were with getting prices on your trade-in, and there's a whole industry sprung up. You've got Carvana, you've got We Buy Anycar.com,

name some others to. You've got CarMax. There's three sources right there. Drive time? I'm trying to think, yeah, that's a local, well, yeah, there's a franchise. There's another one out there where you got car like carvana yeah i'm blinking right now yeah we buy any car dot com carvana dot com and carmax uh oh i was thinking about auto nation auto nation the biggest retailer in the country uh they will buy your car without wanting to sell you another one that's not true they want to sell you another one but they they promise they won't try but you can get uh in 20 minutes today you can contact three or four sources that will give you legitimate business

on your car and you can compare the car dealers still today they have a saying it's called steal the trade somebody comes in to buy a car and they do a really good job of researching they get competitive bids on the car they want to buy and finally they negotiate the price of that new car down so low that the car dealer is making virtually no profit what does he do he gives you far less trade in value than you should get so you should always keep the trade trade-in negotiation and sale of your use car separate from the purchase of the new car. They will always undervalue your trade-in. And the next one I've got here is from Steve E.

Says, Earl and Team. I was in the market for a new car last year, and I think I saved a lot of money thanks to your wisdom. Hey, us. Any new issues for customers looking in 2020? 2020 is not a good year for car dealers or auto manufacturers. Sales are down after we've had been on a heck of a ride for a number of years. I mean, unprecedented. So it's a little bit of a struggle.

It's going to be, I'm afraid it's going to be worse for you in 2020 than 2019 or 2018. Because when business gets bad, car dealers get desperate and the deception gets more and more and more. So just stick by the rules that we've talked about for years on the show. Competition is your friend. And being able, there's nothing, the Achilles heel of a car dealer is competition. Even my Achilles heel, everybody in the room here will tell you, my wife and my son and Rick, they know how competitive I am. I can't stand the thought of somebody selling more cars than I do.

or, you know, I'm just a competitive person. And I think it's a typical temperament, personality trait of car dealers. So if you get a really good price from one car dealer for, let's say, a Ford, go to two other Ford dealers and say, this is an out-the-door price. I can buy this Ford Ranger for this price.

And you take it to the next dealer and the next Ford dealer, be sure you keep the same Ford Ranger. Don't let them Mickey Mouse your round. switch through a different vehicle, you will get a great price because a car dealer will do almost anything to beat the competition. First, he'll try to trick you. But when he finds out he can't trick you, and you insist on that out-the-door price, you will get a great price. And let's see.

What else have we got here? Well, as a squirrel is saying Carvanna and Drive Time are the same company. I don't think so. No. Now, Drive Time is a local Florida, yeah. Florida group of used cars dealers

and then Carvana is a national traded on the stock exchange company and they're big and they're honest I believe. We've shopped them, we checked them. And I've got to believe that if you have a used car, you take

it to CarMax and you get a bid and then you get Carvano, you contact them and let them give you a bid and then we buy any car.com and you get a bid. If you want to go to automation and get a bid, you will get a really good price,

the best price you can get on your used card trade in. Okay. And I believe that's got us caught up right now on YouTube. Very good. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, where can you find such priceless information? Right here. And guess what? It's free. It's free. And ladies, I am

still sitting here waiting to hear from you the first two new lady callers you win yourself fifty dollars and you might think it well a little boring talking about lud nuts earlier but i found it intriguing so you must have a question uh if you don't just give us your opinion on something call for any reason at all you win yourself fifty dollars eight seven seven nine six or you can text us seven seven two four nine seven six five three zero And even if you're a customer of ours out there in this area, we've had a couple calls from customers that were correcting problems at our dealership. So if you had a problem at our dealership, Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach,

and when you think you were taking advantage of or a mistake was made or things just weren't quite right, call the show. And that's what I call total transparency. We will bear our souls. And we have, it's like, you know, it's kind of like a test case. We have a real live dealership that we can learn from. And you can learn from our mistakes, just like we can learn from other car dealers' mistakes. Don't want compliments, because if you compliment us.

We'll hang up on you. It's an infomercial. We don't want people to say nice things about us because, well, we really do. But you can call us. When we do it on the radio, people say it's a setup. Yeah, we're suckers for punishment. We are suckers for punishment. Okay.

All right, I got one here, a text says, what do you think about that gooey slime being advertised to de-dust the interior of your car? You know, the one that gets the nooks and crannies clean, does that harm the finishes? What is it? It's a, well, I know exactly what they're talking about because we bought some of that as stocking stuffers for our kids this year. And it's a, it's just a slime. It looks like a kid's toy, and you push it into the, like, the air-conditioning vents and the cup holders and dust sticks to it. And it works. And long term, I can't tell you, but it's a water-based thing.

So I don't think it's going to interact with the finish, the plastic in the car. So it seems to be pretty innocuous. So basically, it's just a gooey thing that you shove in there and it cleans it up. It's like better, it's better in the vacuum cleaner. Does it leave any residue on your hands or anything? I don't feel anything on the hands. No, if it's good for kids, you can play with it. Yeah, yeah.

My youngest daughter is a slime chemist. She creates her own slime, and it's usually, you know, it's pretty safe, you know, harmless non-toxics. What if you put it in your ear or something? If you put it in your ear, I don't think it would really stick. You could probably wash it out. You could cause momentarily momentary deafness, but. Probably safer than Q-Tips. We'll have to Google that.

Yeah, it's softer, yeah. We'll Google that. Don't eat it, probably. Probably shouldn't eat it. We're digression. Okay, folks, we're going to Toronto. We are. Randy is holding.

Thank you for your patience, Randy, and happy New Year. Yeah, same to everybody on the crew Thank you I just wanted to give some feedback on Earl's blog site I was wondering if there was any way that you could get rid of the spectrometer

the metric spadometer that is on the site Oh, the background image Yeah, I thought we were getting fancy with that But that's just a little feature that the blog and when you edit the site, it's a little special effect. If it's making it hard to read, I don't have a problem getting rid of that at all. Why would we have a metric speedometer?

I don't know. I didn't really look at the... I didn't realize we did, so that's shame on me. Well, it's kind of like a background image, you know, it's just there. My son, Stu, is also an artist, and they call that artistic license. Well, yeah. Well, I have... I have the site bookmarked, okay? I have it with under auto news.

I have it with automobile news. I have Dale Pollock. I have a whole bunch of sites. I find it very dark. I find the site dark. Like content is very good, but I find the site is dark, and that the gauge is very irritating. It's not that it's metric.

Maybe you could do a, like, a survey maybe Tina or John from Palm City make some comments to improve the site well I think we should there's tears in Stu's eyes right now because his artists are very sensitive and uh... no there's not yeah but he said he's the content is excellent yeah like I uh... content's mine

but they are a couple days I'll turn this over to you You can do the publishing yourself. Randy, thank you very much. Randy, don't call anymore. Okay, thank you. Thanks, guys. Bye-bye.

Still, were you just threatened? Not at all. Well, first of all I was confused, because I'd be honest with you, when I thought if Randy was pointing out that it was kilometers instead of miles per hour, I would just say, come on, man. But if you're saying the site's too dark

and it's not something that's pleasant to look at, yeah, we take that very serious. and we'll make sure we do we'll brighten it up for randy yeah well thank you very much randy we're here to please give us a call toll free at 877 960 960 and don't forget your anonymous feedback dot com you can tell us what you think as some of the textors have been hurt us that's how i feel this morning we're under attack really really beat up you can just take us down one at a time, whatever. It's completely transparent.

Well, that's as transparent. You know, you've got to take the criticism. Even if it's, even if we don't agree with it. We've got to hear it and we have to weigh it and evaluate it. And, you know, to scare people off saying what they really believe. So I shouldn't have told Randy to never call the show again. Randy, if you're listening, you know, I was kidding. All right, we have some, we have a more benign comments and texts coming.

Let's get to those. Let's get to these from Karen. Karen says, what product can I use to get rid of the awful film that develops on the inside of my front window? That's a great question. What causes that to happen? And I want to know because it happens to me all the time, and it seems to be happening more often. I don't know I'm looking at Rick. It's got to be pollution.

It's got to be particles in the air. Settling and forming a film. I have it in my car sometimes. That's the conclusion I came to, the pollution. we're parked in a garage. It's just amazing what's in the air, inside and outside. You know what my theory is? I think it's the cleaning product that they use, at least at our dealership.

I've talked to our detail manager that it cleans, but then it begins to attract whatever particulate matters in the air, and it slowly fogs up over time. Depending on the humidity and everything else. Well, it looks the best if I take a paper towel with nothing on it and wipe it down, and it clears it off, and it doesn't seem to come back. So it might be the cleaning. Let's Google it. Yeah.

We'll Google it. Yeah, we'll Google it later. Okay. All right. What's for using? Plain old Windex. Windex. Yeah, maybe it is.

I really don't know. Amory. Oh, hi, Amory. Good morning. Happy New Year. Curiosity led me online to check for technical service bulletins for Toyota Camrys. Apparently, this applies to some, I guess, 2012 and 2013 Camrys. Rick, could you please translate the following?

abnormal intune navigation operation for display audio non-hdd type what's up with that this is issued on august 1st 2016 she's really testing your archival memory here okay now notice my hands are not touching the keyboard basically what you're looking at is the navigation system our radio systems in Toyota for the past eight years have had updates available by way of a software update that we download, put on a USB drive, and upload it to the radio. And they're reaching the point where they're updating these radios sometimes as often as every two weeks. And it's amazing. It's made it so much nicer for that way that we can do that. But the customer has to bring the car in.

Customer has to bring the car in. Yes. You do need to bring the car to us. right now and maybe in a couple of years they'll have it we can just do it via the internet via a Wi-Fi or within the next year just about every new model it's simply the updates are just going to come over the air just like when you turn on your laptop or your home computer yeah and it says Microsoft needs to update Windows and it does it in the background boom the radio is going to do that now amazing I just you know it and I talked earlier about maintenance and repair, there is coming a time shortly when car owners

just aren't going to have to go to the car dealer. There just won't be any reason. Almost you'll be driving a computer and every adjustment and fix will be made by software and that'll be done through the ether and you'll just happen while it's in your garage overnight. Well, think when we get rid of combustion engines and you go to an electric vehicle, tires and brakes, that's going to be it. Other than that, your car will have almost no maintenance. And if we ever design a system where they can recharge through the road by way of a wireless charging system, oh man, it's going to be incredible.

The future, folks, is going to be amazing. If you think back, my father was born in 1913, cars were just really getting started when he was born. And you look now, kids today being born right now in this year, the babies being born in 2020, are going to be alive to see the year 3,000 most likely. Imagine what the cars are going to be like when they're 80 years old. Okay. That's more long. Okay. I'm sorry I'm imagining that right now. Pretty cool, isn't it? Yeah. Okay. Excuse me, guys. We have a caller, female caller, Catlin, from, I believe, Waterloo. Good morning, Catlin.

Yep. Good morning. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Good. Great. How are things in Waterloo? Snowy.

Where is Waterloo? It's in Iowa. Oh, okay. I bet it is snow. It's January in Iowa. I'm glad I'm here. got it it's about 78 degrees outside right now are you a first time caller i am yeah you won yourself 50 dollars this morning oh thank you i appreciate that just text us your contact

information please okay we'll do 772 okay 497 6 530 and i got a hey we could you could probably uh um speak to nick in the control studio after we can finish the call, and he can collect that information from you. Great ideas, too. Oh, sir, that would be fine. Yeah. Okay, your question?

So I have a 2009 Camry with 75,000 miles on it. I was wondering when I should be changing the spark plugs on that. Rick, 2009 Camry is going to use the iridium plugs that should be changed, I believe, on that one at 120,000 miles. okay there you got another 45,000 miles to go maintenance is so little

and that's a 2009 too so it's amazing I mean Sparkbook used to have to be replaced what every what going back to the 60s they were done about every 15,000 miles amazing

amazing and they would wear right out too now they don't even look worn any other questions I love Iowa by the way We love the Midwest, and we have a surprising number of callers from the folks in the Midwest, and I appreciate your tune us in. Are you on Facebook, or are you on YouTube?

How did you pick up the signal? My dad watches the show. Oh, fantastic. Well, I really appreciate. Spread the word in Waterloo. Is he, by any chance, one of the two marks? He is a mark. Because we have two marks, one in Northern Iowa, one of Southern Iowa, who are on YouTube with us every week.

Oh, I'm sure he's one of them. Yeah, we're kind of like Northeast, but. Yeah. Well, thanks so much, Catlin. Please call again. We love having calls from far, far away. For a long time, this show just had Florida callers, and now we're all over the United States. And we, especially like female callers, that's the reason we're going to.

going to pay you 50 bucks and we'd like to build up our female listeners spread the word among the females in Iowa and thanks for helping build this platform as they're all said for women and here you give us a call you get your answer you don't have to worry by going into the service department and being taken advantage of most of the time whenever you're getting spark plugs I think Iowa has more honest dealers than south floor you know you you get asked they reach up this laundry list of things that you need to do. So stay in touch with us and have a wonderful weekend.

Thank you. You as well. Oh, bye. You ever been to Iowa? I think I have, yeah. Really? Yeah. What were you doing there?

Shooting birds. Oh, fly fishing or something like that? Something manly. Yeah, manly, yeah. All right. We have a text here. It says, I have a comment. I love your show, first of all,

but I wanted to say that I've been in the market for a use forerunner for quite some time, and I can't believe how much they hold their value. As a side note, I bought one, but I just wanted to comment on how much they hold their value. It's amazing. And I get, yeah, I don't understand that. There's certain vehicles, different manufacturers that that's just, they hold their value. They just don't depreciate that much.

They become, I guess, almost like a collector type of car. Sure. One thing you can check when you're looking for a car with high resale is find out what the lease residual is. the lease residual is just a percentage number and depending on the you're making model car you're leasing three years or four years since let's say a 36-month lease could have a worth 60% of the of the was it the cap cost or the MSRP or it could be as little as 50 or it could be as eyes sometimes close to 70%. So the residuals vary. You want to find, if you think about buying a car, especially, even though you don't want to lease it, learn what the lease residual is. And you

can ask the dealer to do that, or you can go online probably and get it. And it's the gospel when it comes to what the value will be worth in three or four years. Yep. All right, This is from Clyde, North Carolina. I went looking to buy a car in North Carolina, and they had added things to the price of the car, like $199 for Tint, $199 for nitrogen, $250 for Mats, $250 for diggy something, and another $250 for something else.

I can't remember. What do you think about this? Oh, boy, here you go. Well, dealers are only limited by their imagination of the crap that they can charge you for. It has to have a high perceived value. And for some reason, nitrogen does and tent and stripes and road hazard insurance. And, you know, they'll have a, we've had dealers that have even Napleton is famous.

They do something like car washes or loners or what is it? Naples has something that's absolutely silly. Well, they have like snacks, Wi-Fi. you know, like door mats where you're like you walk in, you can clean your feet when you walk in the showroom on the floor. And they're backing on the fact

you won't even see the addendum sticker and they're backing on the fact that you will think it's part of the MSRP. They make the addendum labels look like a Mernoni label official document, but they're not. So, yeah, it's not surprising.

Every dealer in Florida that I know and probably the rest of the U.S., but certainly Florida has dealer installed accessories that are worth maybe one dollars, ten percent of the asking price. Yeah, you're being generous. I mean, you know, I don't think they ever expect to actually sell this stuff. It's just to show a big, hey, look, we discounted the car $1,500, and you're just a little bit over MSRP now.

Exactly. Okay, this is from Jim in Riviera Beach. I have a 2018 CHR. On the mirrors, there is a light that comes on when you open the door, and it lights up the ground. With CHR, well on the driver's side, it's blurry from Jim. So I'm not quite sure. I'm looking at the technician.

Might need just to be cleaned, but we have seen a few issues with those little illumination lights that put the lettering on the ground. Oh, is that? Okay, that's what, okay, I didn't know what he was talking about. Yeah, when you open the door, it actually projects the HR down on the ground next to the car. We have seen a few issues with those

So you might want to just stop in at the dealership Have them take a look at it And if it's just a problem where there is an internal issue They can fix that under warranty for you And maybe we I got a great idea for a modification of that Instead of CHR could say Watch your step

Or hi George I mean you could have Exactly Why advertise the car on the ground when you get out Get away And here we are ideas are born. Yes, exactly.

Hey folks, listen, our lines are shut down right now because we're getting ready for the Mystery Shopping Report, and we would love for you to vote on the Mystery Shopping Report. It's real important that we hear from you, and that number is 772

4976530, and the mystery shop takes us to Bremen Mini Palm Beach. I'll see if we've got some more text, right? Yeah, we've quite a few here. somebody's commenting on the window thing oh I like this person

I comment on the window thing I've talked to a couple of detailing shops and they tell me that the film that gets on the window it comes from the gases that gets released from the plastics around the windows but that's just what they say

I suspected that and that makes me very uncomfortable because that slime that's accumulating on the windshield is also accumulating inside your lungs and I'll see that couldn't be good for you So I thought it was chemical off-gassing, but I hope that's not true.

Yeah, we need to do a deep dive on that because that concerns me too. It doesn't happen with me all the time. It happens typically in the morning. It seems like early in the morning. And it depends on, I guess it's the humidity and the temperature. I don't know. Well, here's another texture says, re the question on the film inside of the windshield, I experienced this here in Pennsylvania

so it accumulates quicker and thicker on cars left outside in the sun. It was explained to me that this is because of off-gassing of the material in the dash that is constructed of, for example, vinyl foam adhesives, more unsettling information from our textures. Here's one, Earl, you don't strike me as a hunter. Shame on you. See, I hesitated because it's kind of like I hesitate because, That's my past life. I was an evil, slimy car dealer. Animal murderer.

And I used to murder animals. I was not a good person. Let me clarify that for our audience. You didn't hunt your entire life. It was like for a brief period of time in your like early 50s. I went through my mid-light crisis and your mother divorced me. Let's get personal here. You took it out on some deer.

And I had no friends. She took my money, my house, and my friends. and all I had was And you saw this deer My buddies that used to go out And I come with us And I became part of a hunting thing And I...

Yeah, that lasts only a couple years I still fished though Yeah And you got rid of all the guns I got rid of all the guns I got rid of all the guns I get them to my sons All right

I don't have any gun What are you talking about? Let's not go there All right Hi Earl I have a 2020 Corolla lease And when I'm driving at night The light doesn't seem bright enough

So I use the brights husband brought the car in for service and was told everything was fine thanks Sharon well I have a very good ophthalmologist I'm just that was a sarcastic terrible thing to say um you know it's worth taking a look at but it looks like you did you know I don't know they don't seem bright enough I don't know well there's got to be a way to test them I mean right Rick well she said it was tested she said it was checked out yeah yeah so I don't know well some folks do have issues at night. Night blindness, even to a minor degree. What you might consider is look into the idea of aftermarket driving lights or added on lights that might sit a little

bit lower, add a little increased brightness directly in front of the car, but something that is aimed close to the road, close in front of you, unlike the high beams in the car, which are going to blind other drivers. You know, you have to be careful with that, but I have the same issue. It's 6 a.m. in the morning when I'm on the road. It's I have to use my high beams and I'm always watching for oncoming traffic because as you said, you know, you can blind them and cause an accident. But why aren't they brighter? Let's get the mystery shopping report and then we can catch up on the text if we still have time. We just have one more. It's a 640. Okay, as Nancy mentioned this is brayman mini brayman motorcars palm beach uh we never shopped brayman many it's always

fun to break new ground and go where no mystery shoppers gone before we may be getting close to the point and we talked about this earlier uh i think we shop just about every uh new car dealership and most of the use car dealerships in in our area certainly palm beach county uh we've investigated other brayman dealerships though agent thunder visited brayman honda just about a year ago before that it was Brayman BMW in Jupiter. In each case, the salesperson and the managers did well, and we passed them with bees. Yeah. The only thing we ding them for were high hidden dealer fees, and who doesn't get dinged for that. All dealers do it. This time around, it was an online ad for a low lease payment that got our attention. $289 a month for a new 2019 mini Cooper Clubman.

Cooper Clubman. Interesting names for the minis. The payment was pretty good. Eye-popping. Not eye-popping, but it was the conspicuous disclosure that we found most interesting. And I underline conspicuous here because the Federal Trade Commission has a phrase called clear and conspicuous. And the Federal Trade Commission says it is the law that you cannot change the payment or the price of a product unless you do it in a clear. conspicuous manner. And that's what you've got to be careful of. Fine print ain't clear and

conspicuous folks. Fine print is what it sounds like. Fine print. And easy to read font, black and white and a size not much smaller than the text of the offer itself. That's the way it should be. And this is what Brayman did. They had at least some of the disclosure. And they said all leases 36 months, 10,000 miles per year. Notice they didn't put the charge over mileage for that there, but it should have been there if they're going to be clear and conspicuous. New 2019 Mini Cooper Clubman, MSRP, 280, leased for 289, 2009, 2,99 down payment, first month's payment, tax tag registration.

They don't tell you what it is. They just say that's going to be added, tell you later. $945 acquisition fee, and we don't know how much of that Brayman gets. It could be half. It could be two-thirds. The leasing company gets a chunk. I didn't like that part that much because standard practice is to all the banks charge that. Sometimes dealers get kickbacks on that, but most lease payments are calculated with that in there,

and they've pulled this out to show a lower payment. That's not right. $845. do it signing available with approved credit offers cannot be combined dealer retains all incentives blah blah blah won't even read the rest of it offer go through January 3rd they do that a lot of course the details are never as enticing as a headline there's a $3,000 down payment plus a bunch of other fees including 845 dealer fee which is just additional profit to brayman everything adds up to about 5500 we found a couple more dealer fees when I looked

the worksheet. I'll show you later on. The lease is also revealed to have an extremely low mileage allowance, 10,000 miles. That's below average. People drive, but we don't know what the per miles would be. Could be 25 cents a mile. Probably. We don't know around there. Do they deserve credit for having a much better than average disclaimer? We could debate that. More importantly, how would Bremen Mini handle the situation in which a real customer tried to get the car at the advertised payment. In this case, Agent Thunder, not a real customer. And he always wanted to own a Minnie Cooper, truly.

I mean, I don't know why. It's his guilty pleasure. I don't know. We tease him about that. It came out during this shopping report preparation. And, you know, to each his own. I may hear a little noise in my headphones. Anybody hearing?

Is it just me? I get it. I hear it. I hear a bleed over. Nick and the control. We got a little bleed over there somewhere. I'm glad the rest of you can hear it. Conversation.

I hear that sometimes. I hear some other radio station. Things were quiet inside the cavernous showroom at Brayman Motorcars. I made my way to the mini portion and encountered a group of salespeople who seemed very bored or tired. A middle-aged man stood up to greet me. His name was Kurt. Kurt was reserved, polite, not an aggressive bone in his body. He asked me how my day was.

day it was, what he could help me with. I told him my story. My true story, how I always secretly wanted a Minnie Cooper, but always felt foolish about it. Well, you should feel foolish in my humble opinion. And excuse me for interrupting you but stude. This creative writing

I have to ask you a question about cavernous. This dark depths of the showroom? Usually I use cavernous to describe the large you know, voluminous interior of the Brehman's showroom. Colossal. Yeah.

Okay, you may go on. My true story, I always think we're one of the many good ones. Oh, okay. My worth told me, I got off because the two of you were having a private conversation over there. That was why I was there, I told Kurt. Kurt nodded. I told him I had run across her ad for a $289 lease payment and was interested in that deal. I told him, yeah, Rick is leaving, walking out the door.

So boring. Stu and Nancy are having a side conversation. Rick's walking out the door. Rick's upset. Jonathan's sitting over there. No, Rick is upset because he also secretly wants a minibupor and we made fun of him. John isn't laughing at us. Okay.

So, Kurt was being honest with me. He says it's going to take more than $5,000 to get the $280 lease payment. It ain't going to happen. They shouldn't do that. And so that's the part I don't like, but they all do that. All the ads are too good to be true. And this was too good to be true. but at least Kurt was up front about it.

Kurt suggested I put down much less money. It didn't make sense to come out of pocket with so much in the lease. So suddenly he's on my side. They advertise with a bait and switch, and then they, Kurt, the salesperson, you know, identify with me. He said, he's crazy to put down all that money. We call that a triangulation strategy. Really?

Well, I mean, it is. It's not in car business, but that's what I call it. Well, I like that. He said he worked out a good payment for a mean or a room. reminded me that it was now 2020. The deals on in 2019 are very good. Well, that's true, because you're buying a used car. I mean, this is a one-year-old car.

Technically, it's not a used car, but it's one-year-old. And three or four years from now, when you trade this baby in... No one's going to remember. Yeah, it's going to be a one-year-old than a 2020. But I bought it in 2020. It doesn't matter. It says 2019 right there. Exactly.

So the moral there is buy the current model car. at least the current model of car. I softened my stance and crossed my arm and says, okay, let's go see the car. We went outside to a line of Coopers. Kurt showed me a few different models. Then it led me to the one in the air. It was my dream car, chilly red with carbon black.

Hmm. Silly. 134 horses. Kurt did a great job with his presentation, and we took it for a spin. Kurt was pretty boring. on the test drive. He hardly spoke so I tried to make conversation.

I think he was tired. When we got back to the lot, Kurt asked me if I thought I'd be taking it home today. I said yes. But I have to be in the evening, if the numbers were right, I had to go home and get my wife. Kurt was fine with that. Kurt said you get the paperwork going

and see if I get some coffee. Porn to the desk said he'd meet me there. After my espresso, I walked back to find Kurt, already seated at his desk waiting for me. He had a worksheet called personalized quote sheet. Very Brayman. Yeah, very Brayman.

With various lease terms displayed. There was also a purchase breakdown, Myers order style, printed on the right hand side of the document. And this is all, of course, so they can get away with things that say, you can't put this on a vehicle buyer's order, so they just rename it. And that's the way they think they can get away with it. Kurt said wonderful and pointed out that he had discounted the car $4,000 to get my cap cost down.

Cap cost is legalese lease talk for what the price of the car would be if you were going to buy it. And he discounted by $4,000. Kurt went over the terms again, 36 months, 10,000 miles per year. Still don't tell you what the cost per mile overage is.

A thousand dollar due with sounding and the payment was $3.42. A smiling sales manager suddenly appeared. They extended his hands. He asked me how everything had gone. and if there was anything he could do to assist with my purchase. I told him Kurt was great, and I'd be back that night around six. The manager said, perfect, they closed at seven, or until the last customer leaves.

Epilogue, was this bait and switch. The disclosure was pretty conspicuous. It was easy to read, not too complicated, but still the low payment of $289 is what gets the attention. The details are secondary and afterthought. Kurt was honest and up front about the requirements. He addresses within a minute or two, within a minute or two of meeting Agent Thunder. So, bottom line, they did as well as the average dealership does. So you can't gig him on that.

Clearly a violation of the Federal Trade Commission. The disclosure was not only not clear as clear as conspicuous as it should have been, but more so than normal. But what was not definitely clear and conspicuous were the extra dealer fees that we found on the worksheet. One of them was a tag processing fee for $229. And there was a private tag agency fee for $75. So another $300. And when you add it on to the admitted dealer fee, the hidden fee, it's $1,089.

So clearly not clear and conspicuous. But clearly about his clearing and speckylus is all the other dealers. So once again, we have the curve that we need to grade upon because if we go on an absolute grading scale, no dealers pass. You have no place to buy a car in Florida. Let's take a score of textures. What do the textures say, Sue? We have four that came in.

Three Cs, one from Neil, C from Valerie. I'm sorry, C minus from Bob. and Danielle gives him a D. I'm waiting for Linda's grade on Facebook. I know it's coming. I think it's going to be harsh, but, you know, I had a hard time with this one because, you know, we've seen horrible bait and switch,

and this was like, I kind of debated myself. I'm thinking, well, it kind of was, but it kind of wasn't. I mean, if you're looking at the ad, you can see what it entails. But even though the fonts were almost equal in size, the payment was in red. The whole point was to get your eye on the pay. Well, they're Bremen dealerships, you know, they sell BMWs and sell minis, what else they sell Hondas.

The Bremen's typically have a more educated consumer, and I think to go the Kia or the type of rough-and-tumble, Napleton kind of thing, would not work with a typical Bremen customer. So I think the salespeople are hardened to the fact that they're not going to get away with a real bait-and-switch, so they fess up at the beginning. Yeah, yeah. I mean, to their credit, I guess they saved the customer time. They don't have to battle for it. But, you know, I mean, then I was thinking, like, you know, what would a car advertise do if it was really what we asked it to do? Could you imagine just like the headline being $5,000, $6.99 down? And then a small payment, it just doesn't make sense. So I don't. Yeah, and they're forced by the competition because Bremen's competition, every dealer's competition, they're doing the low ball advertising. And if you do a legitimate ad, you're not going to get a sale. messy well as you said earlier you know there wouldn't be any place to buy a car you know if you failed everyone so I don't like the report I don't like all those fees and I'm going to give them a C minus okay Rick okay let's see we've got the grades coming in on YouTube here I've got Karen with a D Tim with a C plus

Chris with a D and Steve with a C and I think I'm going to go ahead with a C on it. I think middle of the road there. Yeah, I'll give them a C. I mean, I think that Brayman is a kind of a classy dealership. I mean, they sell a lot of cars. I think one of the largest BMW dealers in the nation.

They do a great job with Honda. Many I don't know about, but I think a C should be a big enough embarrassment for Brayman. And Mark gives them a C as well. Yeah. One thing I want to show the folks at home, we got a little bit of time here, and then we got another text or two over there. I talk about the Federal Trade Commission all the time. I printed out a sheet, a fact sheet, from the Federal Trade Commission,

specifically on clear and conspicuous. And it tells you the law requires, it is a violation of the law, should you not have clear and conspicuous disclosures. And what they mean by clear and conspicuous is the fine print has to be big enough for people to notice and read. And how many ads have we seen where you cannot see it, read it, or notice it, especially on television and especially online. Also, the wording and format, is it easy for the people to understand?

Is it convoluted and smoky kind of, you know, smoke and mirrors kind of, or is it clear and understandable? It's a fine print where people will look. And most all ads, I have an ad here. it's an old newspaper ad and this is I hate I'm picking on Roger Dean but he's the only one that still advertises

in the newspaper here's his ad and it's a huge ad full page ad here's the fine print I mean that is the most unclear unconspicuous

and he's violating the law here's an illegal ad and not just Roger Dean 99% of the advertisements you see even by the manufacturers are not clear in case. When you see this big giant newspaper ads and there might be half a dozen different offers, then you go down and find the fine print and you can't even find the proper,

you know, the fine print that pertains, they have asterisks, double asterisk, triple asterisks. There's little dagger-looking things. I mean, it's very difficult to find that what it pertains to. And also it's called, this is I guess the four piece, prominence, presentation, placement and proximity. Proximity means that the fine print claim has to be near the claim. In other words, if you have a monthly payment or a price and you have the disclosure has to be up where you're looking at the price. You can't have the price here. And in this case here, the price is at the top of the page and the fine print is down here. So this Roger Dean ad fails

every test of the Federal Trade Commission. By the way, Linda chimed in. And she gives Brayman a C, no big F today. Thank you Linda, that was very kind of you. Yes, thank you very much Linda. So, Norman and Bramon, how does it feel to be an average car dealer in Florida? Norman doesn't like that. I don't think Norman would like that.

No, that's a... Do you think Norman knows he has a car dealership? Probably. Yeah. I would guess. He's a big guy. Yeah, yeah. He's a billionaire. So what's his GPA? He's got two Bs and a C. It's like a 2.8. That's not good.

Yeah. You can't even get into U.F. with it. Absolutely. The text, we'll probably wait until next week because we're running out of time, but there was one consumer advice that I read this morning that I think is worth spreading. Okay. It's 2020 now. Do not write abbreviate 2020 to just 20 on your checks or contracts or anything because it's too easy to manipulate. You can easily turn a 20-20 at a 2-1 becomes 20-21 so people can post-ate checks,

and even like retail content, you put a 1-9. Or they could think it was a very old check, 20-A-D. Well, yeah, well, that's what you're thinking, because we're getting, no, never mind, we're getting back there. All right, that's it. My consumer advice, write 20, 20 on your checks, not 20. Okay, folks, we have about two minutes left on the clock, and Rick has something to say. Do we have time for one quick one? Charlie Brown is asking, he purchased a used 2015 Honda Odyssey, but came with a lot of problems within 90 days.

What right do I have to return or swap this vehicle? A new one? A 2015 on the Odyssey. No, unfortunately, unless there was damage to the car that was misrepresented or something of that nature, used cars have no lemon laws, only new cars, and you're just stuck with it. And it's kind of one of these things where you should have taken it to an independent mechanic and had it checked over. But used cars are buyer beware.

Folks, thank you so much for joining us this morning. and I wish all of you a happy new year. We'll be right back here next week, Saturday morning at 8 a.m. Welcome