Earl Stewart on Cars - 01.04.2025 - The Best of Earl on Cars with Mystery Shop of Cochran Kia of Pittsburgh, PA.

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

This is a replay of one of our past Earl Stewart on Cars live shows. If you have a question for our auto expert team, you can text it to [phone], or online at youranonymousfeedback.com, and we’ll answer it during our next live program. “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”

Good morning. I'm Earl Stewart. I 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, our LinkedIn's cyber. space through Facebook, 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.

Good morning, everybody. We're back. We're here in our little group here in the studio, the True Oldies Station, in North Palm Beach, Florida. But we're broadcasting all over the place. We've got a lot of other ways to get to you, the channels, YouTube. YouTube.com forward slash Erlon Cars and Facebook. I love to hear from you.

We love the phone calls. We'd be getting a lot of phone calls. We love phone calls from the ladies and the gentleman. And we have a female advocate by my side, my co-host, Nancy Stewart, that is begging you, you ladies out there to call the show. Got a real special offer for you. And in a few minutes, I'll turn the mic over to her, and she'll tell you all about that. But meanwhile, if you've got a chance, the show just started, it's a two-hour show. It's live radio, folks.

That's about as exciting as it gets. I mean, I know live television or maybe even live streaming might be considered pretty exciting, too. But talk shows. Live radio talk shows is really something that is not too. many left, right? And used to be a lot of them. We make mistakes. We say things that we

wish we hadn't said. That's exciting, you know. It's also exciting to the studio. That's the reason they have the disclaimer at the beginning of the show saying they're not responsible for what we say. So that's the reason we think we're unusual. We'd like you to tune us in.

We do something that's outrageous. And, you know, outrageous is exciting. It's fun. And that's called a mystery shopping report.

Stay tuned. It's toward the end of the show. We're on for two hours 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Toward the end of the show

the last half hour, we have a mystery shopper that has been inside a car dealership somewhere in the United States. Pennsylvania, actually, today.

And we have a live mystery shopping of a Kia dealership in Pennsylvania. So Agent Lightning, that's the name of our, sorry, not the real name, that's the undercover name of our undercover agent, Agent Lightning. I went into a Kia dealership in Pennsylvania and pretended to buy a car.

And she didn't record, mentally she recorded, then she wrote down everything that happened, that happened. We named the dealership, we named the salesperson, the sales manager, everything, real live. And we do this every week, been doing it for 20 years. So if that is enough to get your attention, I don't expect you to listen to two hours of the show, but some people do. I don't think personally that we're all that good, but some people do. But we have a lot of information besides the mystery shopping group. That's kind of like, Remember the old days, folks are old enough to remember the old double-featured movies.

There was always a cartoon, sports, news. It's kind of spice up the show. So the mystery shopping word is not only informative, but it spices up the show. The nuts and bolts, the really important part of the show, is information. And we provide you with a lot of real life, because we're car dealers. In full disclosure, 100% transparency, we have a car dealership. And in fact, I've been a car dealer since 1968. About 20 years ago, I reformed.

I call myself a recovering car dealer now because I look back on the way I sold cars. Kind of shameful, actually. Even read a book about it. And so I tell you how not to get ripped off by car dealers. But in addition to that, we tell you how. to have your car maintain or repaired without being taken to manage of it and also be accurate and be sure you take good care of your car but not too good of care where you're wasting your money so we have Rick Kearney a certified diagnostic master technician he's

sitting immediately to my right here and if you have a problem with your car rather than go in blindly into some repair shop and say here's my checkbook I'll sign right here fix it put your name and an amount in. I know you don't do that, but I mean, sometimes when you go in there and just say, fix my car, that's basically what you're doing. You'll be taking advantage of. Call Rick

describe your symptoms. I don't mean your symptoms, your car symptoms, and is it squeaked, does it rattle, does it roll, does it smell? I mean, there's all sorts of things that are strange about a car. The light's flashing. Why is that light flashing?

and you know what I'm talking about. So describe that as accurate as you can. You can even send us an audio clip if you want to. You can send it to YouTube.com forward slash hurl on cars. And Rick can listen to it or send him a video clip. You'll watch it or the description. And he can save you a ton of money. I mean, we've had a lot of people call in very, very worried about their car,

thinking about trading it in, selling it, or spending a lot of money on it. And Rick says, just don't worry about it. It's not a problem. That's normal. I mean, it's not going to go away, but if you can live with that tick, tick, tick. It's not going to. So you might get really good news. Save yourself a lot of money. On the other hand, it might be the other way. That could be serious. You need to get it checked out. And you'll hear what Rick has to say. Really, really good information. Rick Kearney. And you can call Rick directly at 877-960-99-60. You're calling me or Nancy or Stu, my son, sitting across from me. and ask questions about buying a car, leasing a car. 877-960-99-60. Write the number down, please, if you haven't got time to call and if you're not driving your car. If you write the number down and you're listening,

you'll probably have a question. I mean, everybody's got a question. We have questions. We learn from you. We have a text number, 772-49765-30. A lot of people get a little bit nervous about live radio. I don't blame you. So if you prefer just to text us,

we might not get to it in the next 20 minutes, but we'll get to it before the end of the show, and we will address your text. And that text number again is 772-497-6530. I love the anonymous feedback number. And if I don't talk about it, because nobody else has this, I don't think,

does? Well, that's not true. A lot of blue chip companies use this number or this URL. It's a web link. And you get on this web link and you can communicate with us, ask us questions. You can attack us. You can swear at us. You can give us information. You can do anything we want and we don't know who you are. It's totally anonymous. Ultimate privacy. Privacy is the key word. That's a, that's a, that's a, as a, as a, as a, a, as a, a, we want. We want. And we don't know who you are. It's totally anonymous. It's totally anonymous. It's, it's a ultimate privacy. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a buzzword privacy not enough privacy well we're giving you total privacy with your anonymous feedback.com y-o-o-u-r-an-o-n-y-m-m-o-us feedback.com your anonymous feedback.com and we will address those issues and you can be as candid as you want some people use it just to ask a question they tell us who they are anyway I mean it's a good way to get through it's about like a text if you don't want to be anonymous but we cannot find out no matter if you it when you send it in we don't know where you send it from it goes through a screening machine in some kind that you couldn't beat it out of us because we don't know your name or identity we

don't know where you are who you are your anonymous feedback.com okay I'm going to give that number out one more time because we prefer the number Nancy Stewart to my left she monitors all the calls. They go through Jeremy in the control room and they go on her laptop and she sees who's calling and we have a limited number lines, about five and

so we address the calls immediately. So if we had a call waiting now, Nancy would tap you on the shoulder or throw something at me and I'd look over at her and she would put you on the line so you don't have to wait that long at least we're trying very, very hard. 877

960 9, 960, 877-960-960. And I said, here's a very special offer for you ladies that are listening. If you haven't listened to the show before and you are female, you have a really, really cool offer that Nancy's going to tell you about right now. Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Earl on Cars. You're going to have a ball for the next two hours and learn a lot and we learn a lot from you. You are a big part of the show and we thank you for joining us. I'm going to start off with Earl's latest column that you would most enjoy in its most common mistakes servicing and repairing your car. You can go to Earl on Cars and you can read the column, or you can find it in the hometown news or in the Florida Weekly.

So it's a great read, as always, and there are so many others on that website, oral on cars. Ladies this morning, I have $50 for the first two new lady callers. Give us a call, and win yourself $50 this morning. And, you know, some of the things that I talk about weekend and week out is doing your homework so important because, unfortunately, walking into a car dealership with no plan in place, it just leaves you wide open

for potentially unsave your sales tax tactics. So do your homework, find out what you want, what you can afford, and there's no place like Consumer Report to go to, first of all, and also Edmonds. You can go to Edmonds.com, you can go to Kelly Blue Book. There are just a lot of options for you to take advantage of and to prepare yourself to purchase a vehicle. 877-960, or you You can text us at 772-4976530, and Israel said, don't forget, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We're going to go straight to Howard, who's been holding. I think he's still there.

Nope, he hung up. Okay, Howard, give us a call back. Sorry, I didn't make you wait that long. we're going to go to David David is calling us from let's see, where is he calling us from he's calling us from Southern Arabia

He's calling us from Texas Hi David, welcome Oh hi You're talking to me Yes David, thank you You're in Texas, huh? Actually at the moment I'm in Florida.

I drive regularly between West Texas and South Florida. And I go through, you know, obviously Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, as well as Florida and Texas, and all the way through Florida and all the way through Texas, because where I go in Texas is close to El Paso. And I'm hoping to buy a slightly used Ford pickup. up. And I have some, you know, agricultural interest. I'm just a small time. Just, you know, I'd do a little agricultural type of work. But anyway, I was wondering, is there a best, I'm trying to get the best price.

And so I was wondering, is there a best place between those areas where I might look? What do you think, Stee, Auto Trader? I would think start looking on Auto Trader, but as far as like the actual places that you can actually find in Texas, you know, across your whole route to Florida, it would be CarMaxes. In our experience, when we have mystery shop dealerships, they have priced their cars more fairly than others. There's less games to play. And the fees, the junk fees, they might have a small one, like a $200 or $300 junk fee, depending on the state that they're in. but they're never going to mark it up. They're not going to bait and switch.

So you're not going to waste time if you see one of their trucks that you see that you like online. You're never going to show up there and they're going to, you know, add $10,000 to it or sell it out from under you. They're just trustworthy. David, the cool thing about auto trader is you can put your zip codes in as many as you want. And that way you'll be able to get a Ford pickup, late model Ford pickup. in the description that you want. So what you want to do with AutoTrader is build a little list of dealers

that have a truck closest to the one you want. Then you shop and compare the price. That way you can go to Dealer A and say, I can buy this Ford pickup truck at this price. If you can meet that price or beat it, and that way you can negotiate online on the, you don't want to let them switch you to a different vehicle. Stick with a truck.

A late model for a pickup truck and you know specifically what you need to have. And then that way you're going to get a good competitive bidding, which is in your favor to get the price down as low as possible. Okay. Thank you. Now, this is, I apologize for my ignorance, but auto trader, that's like a website. Yeah, that's a website. that's a website, you go to AutoTrader.com.

Okay, okay. And it's useful because then you can look, it will list private sellers, dealer sellers, independence, franchise dealers. And so you can see all that. But as far as specific dealers in that area, I would go for an auto nation or CarMax. Any national chain like that

that has like a public company, they're less likely to describe it. I just had a thought because you told us about this long trip you take regularly. You could actually go to timing your trip in there. You could actually go to CarMax anywhere nearest wherever you happen to be, and they're national. So they have an inventory all over the United States,

and you say, this is the truck I want, and I travel from South Florida to Texas. I go on the tin. I go on the tin. I go up to Jacksonville from South Florida, and then I go on the tin all the way. You probably have 20 CarMaxes on all along I-10 between there and El Paso. Yeah, you'd be able to find.

But see, the point is, wherever you light, wherever you're going to be for a while, you can tell CarMax, okay, I want this car, I'll buy it, but I'd like to pick it up here. That's true. And so that would give you a huge advantage over most people, because, you know, the transportation and as long as you're sure you can take care of the car you're driving, and they'll buy the car from you so you can trade your car to CarMax. There. I'm not selling.

I'll have my life. Okay. She can drive. Earl, do you think that Cars.com is also a great place to go? Earl? No, I think CarMax would be a lot better, yeah. Okay. Rick has got a point here that he's been trying to make.

Whatever place you happen to pick, try to find a local independent shop near there. and cut a deal with them to bring the truck over there and have them put it in the air and give it a thorough inspection get a price quote for them is what they'll charge you for it

but any used vehicle a carfax is a great idea but get a good independent shop with some mechanics to have some knowledge and have that just say hey look you know slip the mechanic an extra 20 bucks or a 12 pack of beer or something but say hey I really want you to

this over with a fine-tooth comb and you know as though your daughter was going to drive it that way you know you're going to get a quality vehicle okay then we answer your question yes very much so well thank you very much for the call to you david give us a call again we're going to go to kim who's calling us from michigan good morning kim good morning how are you today oh we're great have you called before kim no ma'am i have not all right All righty. I have a great gift for you this morning. That is $50 for the first new lady caller, and you are the first. If you stay on the line after we're finished and talk to Jeremy in our control room, you can give him your contact information, and he'll give it to me, and I'll mail you that check. Well, thank you.

You're welcome. What can we do for you this morning? All right, so I have a 2020 Cadillac Escalade. I don't even have 25,000 miles on the vehicle yet, but I've noticed on the dash that sometimes when I'm driving it says V4 and sometimes it says V8. So when I looked at the owner's manual, it says, well, sometimes it runs on four cylinders for fuel economy and sometimes it runs on eight.

Uh-huh. My question is, how much wear and tear does it actually put on my engine? Because I would think that when it goes from eight to four cylinders, I'm taking away four cylinders of the power, and it's putting extra stress on the floor. Am I going to have trouble down the line about how much mileage? What's it going to cost? What damage can it cause? No, that engine was actually designed that way.

and the way they work it, they've got a system that when it shuts down that cylinder, it shuts off the fuel and the spark so that those cylinders don't, they're really just kind of along for the ride at that point. However, they're still getting their lubrication, so you're not putting any harm whatsoever on the engine, and it really only shifts into that four-cylinder mode when you're like cruising along into steady speed, and you don't need all that extra power.

and it's it's a very interesting design and it worked pretty well actually it's kind of neat because when you're driving any car all the powers needed just getting up to speed then you have momentum and inertia and it takes very little to keep it going along yeah

well I was just curious I don't have any well now you know nothing's going wrong with your engine now yeah it is a Cadillac acid lid well I mean what does that mean is that a problem engine

No, no, I'm just picking on Cadillac. Sometimes we do that. Now, you're in a lot of half price for $6,000 miles on a flight from plane. Now, you're in good shape with that vehicle, and one of the nice things about those escalades, they hold a lot of resale value from what I've seen. People love the Cadillac Escalade. There's just something about that car that there's a very,

strong following of folks that love them. So, you know, you keep that thing in good shape, keep it clean and tidy, and when you're done with it, you're going to be able to turn a nice penny off of that one. Well, you know, I already have somebody offered me way more than I paid for it, so I'm... Yeah, see?

You're in good shape, Kim. That's right. You're in the catbirds. Definitely in good shape. Yeah, sounds like you have a terrible cold. Oh, no, I just have a really deep, voice number one and I've been on bed rest from a surgery after 11 weeks so I'm kind of like in and out groggy from time to time I didn't get a lot of sleep last night so okay you sound great on the air you're a little raspy but it sounds good that's my normal voice I've always had a kind of raspy

lady voice that's great that's great Kim thanks so much for thinking of us and giving us a call and I'm glad that we could share that good news with you. You've got a great car. Hang on to it. I like that good news. All right, thank you. You all have a very nice Saturday. Stay on the line and talk to Jeremy.

All right. Thank you, ma'am. Thank you. Give us a call again. We're going to talk to Bob, who's calling us from Lake Park. Good morning, Bob. Good morning. Good morning.

Happy Washington's birthday weekend. Oh, yeah. Ah. And I remember when I was younger, when I was younger, we used to get off from school for Lincoln's birthday and Washington's birthday. I remember that as well. Isn't that the truth? Yes, indeed. You can remind them.

It was a tragedy. Yeah. Well, I have another horror story about a service experience. All right. I have a friend of mine. I sent, he bought two cars from Monex, a new, a Ford Ranger truck, and a Ford Edge. and they've had the vehicles for a couple years. They live up in Palm City.

So they're having a problem with the transmission on the edge. And they originally, because they live up there, they went over to Essential Ford first to see if they could, you know, take it in. John Stewart's son bought that dealership, by the way. Okay, is that when they changed it to from Advantage to Central? The name? Yeah, recently it was a name.

change, so I guess that might have gone aside. Yeah, well, it's, yeah, Stoopi's son bought that dealership up there, in Stewart. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so they told them that they were, you know, they really were all backed up. And so they brought it back here to Monarch's where they bought the vehicles.

And they gave him the same story. They said they only had one technician that works on that particular issue. And they had 15 other people ahead of them. Was it a recall issue? because that makes

no no it's a transmission and on an edge the vehicle's a few years old and uh and they had no loan a cause so now they have to go out and uh they had to go get a rental and they rented something around here

because his wife works all the yard uh pGA boulevard but my question is uh is this endemic of all the dealerships they don't have uh people that can work on these cause. I have only one person that can work on transmissions at a dealership. Is that...

Technicians are hard to hire. And that's not an excuse, but it's just a fact. And, you know, it's more and more people now are deciding not getting into the trades. And I guess more and more tend to want to go to

college and get a white collar job. But it's very difficult now to hire skilled technicians. Now, the dealers compete among themselves, and one of the reasons why service prices are higher is because technicians are earning more, and particularly the ones that are skilled. Today's cars are so complex that I call a Rick sitting in my right here in our studio, I call him a certified diagnostic master technician, but he's also a computer specialist. He's in school almost, I say constantly, but two or three times a year.

He has to get recertified, ASC certified, was it every three years or five years? Every five years. Every five years. Now, you know, let's put this way, when you go to the doctor, your doctor probably got his medical degree 20 or 30 years ago. A lot of doctors, that's the last time they see the inside of a classroom. Now, you can imagine have someone, you know, operating on you that hasn't stayed on top of research and operating techniques and a seizure and the rest of it for 20 years or 30 years. When you go into a dealership, if you use an ASC certified technician, he's had to go to school every three years to recertify him and whatever especially was. You mentioned transmissions.

If you go to, so you see where supply and demand goes. Bolinx obviously has having a problem finding a guy to say as he certified in transmissions and therefore the weight. So it's not true of all dealerships, but I wouldn't beat up Mullinix too bad on the fact that he didn't have rental cars or loaner cars available. Most car dealers don't. We don't. If I get one complaint more frequently, it's because I need a loaner car. didn't have any cars. We try to find one, even if we had to take a used car or a new car and loan it to them. Our rental car fleet, we've got, what, 30, 40, 40 cars on that, Stu? Yeah, by 4550.

So we have 4550 cars, but they're all out, so we don't have cars on. I get it. But my question to you is, in this type of situation, I guess his only recourse is to take it to another dealer. Well, yeah, because he can't take it to an independent. person because it's a warranty job right yeah and also it's very common too like you know for like some jobs but the reason i ask if it was a recall because some like recal jobs will specify the technician's training level and you won't and there might be one guy in the shop that could that's qualified to do that depends on the size of the shop but yeah well everything

ear all said is um just is right on the money but um it's kind of tough just find another another dealer that's got a better um situation more techs Right. Did you ever hear back from Mr. Rubio or Mr. Scott on your challenge there to come up with a... Unless it happened last night, Earl didn't tell me. Frankly, we didn't expect it. I would be, you know, it's just politicians, they're not going to go on record with anything that's going to cost them votes. And they have a base that they appeal to.

say whatever they have to say to get votes, and that's the way it is, a political system. And then after I beat up our political system, I say, it's the greatest one on earth, and it is. So it's like everything else. There's no perfect anything. You just want to find the best. We got the best, but it's not good enough. And I can't believe that I'll probably, I probably should keep my mouth shot here, but we've got a presidential election going on between two loose.

losers. And it's embarrassing to me that we have to elect the best of the worst. It would be nice if we had a system, but we don't, that allows us to be more careful and who we select to hold political office. You know, and then I got to go back before I get attacked by a lot of people. I know we have the greatest system in the world. So it's good, but we need to improve it. I was thinking, considering that they are doing this in the Texas courts, maybe you should offer that challenge to Ted Cruz and Governor Habit. Anyway, that's all I got. You guys have a great weekend and enjoy the holiday weekend. Thank you, Bob. Thanks, Bob.

We're going to go to John. First, I'm going to give out that number again. 877-960 or you can text us at 772-4976530. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. We have a long list of politicians that we haven't heard from Ashley Moody, Governor DeSantis, Rubio. Well, maybe somebody will prove us wrong. What do you think? We're going to go to John and he's calling us from West Palm Beach. Good morning. Good morning. Hey, good morning. Good morning.

I wanted to respond to the lady in Michigan about the escalate. I had a 2003 Honda Odyssey with the variable engine, the Eco Boost, where it dropped from six cylinders to two or whatever it was. And no problem whatsoever. The greatest van I ever had. Love that Honda Odyssey. Well, good. I hope she's listening. She's seemed a little nervous.

But after 75,000 miles, the engine mounts had to be replaced. And they told me the reason why the engine mounts had to be replaced was because when the engine made the transition from six to or whatever, you had the vibration in there. And when I think engine and motor mounts, I'm thinking too, because it's old school back in the 60s 70s. Well, the Honda Odyssey has six engine mounts. Two of those engine mounts are like great big round rubber seals and has ball bearings in them, and that's what would take up the vibration or the transition from the six to four to two. And those came in. Now, when I bought motor mounts, they were like $6.50 and I only need two of them. This, I had to replace six

of them, two of the motor mounts were $750 each. That's the only drawback. And I tried. It's like they did that for the dealers. Yeah. Well, we took it to an dependent who changed it for us. I didn't take it back to the dealer because it was already out of warranty.

So anyways, and that's the job that I wasn't willing to tackle on my own. So anyways, the, I don't know. Real quick. Are these, are these, that were the Odyssey motor, mounts, were they, like, the same, you know, as traditional ones? Or were they specialized? There was a reason that, I mean. Just those two, the other, the other four motor mounts were just, you know, connected to the frame. Okay.

And that, but those other two motor mounts that, it was like a wheel bearing and had, like, a rubber seal on the inside with three ball bearings type thing, you know, and those wore out. and those were very expensive to replace. And I tried to get it done under warranty work, but they said, you know, this is just, it's not. And I don't know if they ever resolved it or if they ever had some way of fixing it or because, you know, if I replaced the motor amount, it was because, well, you know, back in the 60s and 70s because the engine broke it because it was twisting.

It's the way I drove it. And so anyways, that was if, anyone that's listening, if you have one of those variable cylinder engines, it's very possible that you could have found later on. Later on. And that's what I was told because of the transition. Okay. Through the things, but anyways.

How long, though, I mean, did it take to get that point? It happened at 75,000 miles. Okay. All right, thanks. All right, got it. All right. And the van would have went under 150, but we, We wanted a new vehicle, so, you know, otherwise it was still kept going.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks, John. That's really cool. You know, some of these things with the cars, like the, like that four-to-cylinder down or the, you know, like that eco-boost and the smart stop that stops when you're there, it's strange for people, you know, the idea that you can tell the computer to turn off a couple of cylinders or stop the engine altogether and then start as soon as you touch. It's very new stuff, and a lot of it is kind of uncomfortable and feels weird. and it makes weird noises in the car. And I hope they do improve on that sort of thing. That start-stop feature to me was, I understand the idea behind it, but in practice, in the real world, that is such a horrible feature.

And the fact that the starter and the battery both have a lifespan that is programmed into the car, and they have to be replaced at a certain time, and it will actually give you a warning that you have to, there's time to replace those. And they're expensive. two or three times the cost of the parts for a normal car that doesn't have that feature. Sounds like the motor mountain issue. Yeah, a small conspiracy. Yeah, definitely.

Hey, John, thanks for giving us a call this morning. You're welcome. All right. See you later. Thank you. Here's an interesting thing on the Cadillac Escalade. I'll hold it up for you people streaming it. It's funny how cars can have poor reliability, but the owners love them.

And it's cars are an emotional thing. You love your escalate, but reliability-wise, it ain't so good. There's a lot of cars exactly like that. The number one car in people love more than anything is a Corvette. Well, the Corvette is not that reliable compared to a lot of others. So when you buy a car, it's 50% of motion and 50% common sense. Well, you love your Model S, your Tesla, but you talk regularly about some of the issues you have with it. Exactly.

You look past it because the cool thing about it is really, really cool. You'd be surprised there's not a day that it goes by. Nancy and I this morning had a problem with the Tesla. The other day, we couldn't get a window down. Well, the reason the window wouldn't go down is because we've been inside a building and we left the car in the parking lot and we had it in doggy mode. We got back in the car and we wanted to put the window back up and the window wouldn't go up. Well, it won't go up when it's in doggy mode. You can't move the windows, a doggy boat. Can you just tell them?

car to go out of doggy mode? Right. I didn't. Maybe can you voice control. I think you probably can. Yeah, you can do a lot of voice controls. A lot of voice control. The point being that you can over-complicate a car. You can make a car that will do a whistle,

Dixie, and tap dance if you want to. But if you make it too complicated, it won't get you from here to the Walgreens. No, I've talked about, I have a subpoia, a big SUV, and it has all these different modes like crawling over rocks and this

load sensing stuff and there's buttons all over the place and I hit them all the time when I'm like putting drinks in my cup holder car will start beeping lights will start flashing and I'm like going

I hope something bad doesn't happen this way screen I've got is absolutely amazing it shows all the cars in front of me all the cars in back of me all the cars

to the right of me left me they're moving around they differentiate trucks pedestrians pylons it's like watching a movie and you can become

mesmerized by this watch the road Right, you can become mesmerized by the screen, so anyway. And you know, the trunk on the Tesla can be popped easily, right? Too easily. Unbeknownst to us, but I have a certain way to close that trunk easily. Yeah, if I try it, it would crush the trunk. That's put it that way.

She sits on it, folks. She sits on it. All I have to do is just sit on it and it closes. Very easy. You're talking about the fronk, by the way, not the trunk. Ah, the funk. The funk. The funk.

Hey, ladies and gentlemen, pick up that latest edition of Mystery, the Consumer Report. I got the mystery shop on my mind. Yeah, the mystery, this Consumer Report is really interesting. It's the March edition, and it has all the top-rated cars, SUVs, trucks, and it also goes into some detail. as far as the most and the least satisfying models in their class. So there's some great information there. Our number here, if you'd like to get in touch with us, is 877-960-99-60.

And you can also text us at 772-497-6530. Take advantage of your anonymous feedback.com. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Okay, I just want to give you a name that you've heard on the show before. It's a Chinese company named B.Y.D. B.D. And we've talked about it. They're a very, very significant electric vehicle manufacturer.

And there was an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning. And it has to do with BYD aims to expand in the U.S. via Mexico. Now, regular listeners will remember we talk about BYD being the number one manufacturer of electric vehicles of the world. Well, you're going to say, well, I thought that was Tesla. It used to be Tesla. It isn't Tesla anymore. So Elon Musk is hearing footsteps. Very exciting. Now, we don't have any BYDs on the roads here because there's a 50% tariff that the United States charges on any cars coming here from

China. So they can't compete. So Elon Musk has immunity. B.Y.D. is killing him in China in other places. So actually he has gone on a record now. It's saying BYD is a

major threat to all auto manufacturers in the world. We got to stop BYD. Now If they open a plan in Mexico, they avoid the 50% tariff. They still have a very small tariff that cars built Mexico out to pay, but a lot of U.S. manufacturers are using Mexico to manufacture cars

because the labor is cheaper there, and of course, labor is cheap in China, too. But B.D can have it, they can eat it too. They can have cheap labor. They can build a car that is outselling Tesla, electric vehicle I'm talking about, about and they also can be competitive now in the United States. So remember you heard it here first, folks. If you're thinking about buying an electric vehicle, but you're not quite ready, be sure when the time comes when you shop around, check the BYD out,

because we'll probably have them in this country in another couple of years. Not yet, but hopefully we don't go to war China. And that's a huge tariff, 50%. Yeah. No wonder you can't. I mean, and Elon Musk is building Tesla's in China with no tariff. And so it's going to be, see, it's your best friend. It's called competition.

It's like, where would General Motors and Ford be without each other? One time I would say Chrysler, now I'd say Toyota, Toyota Ford, General Motors. Thank God we have those three manufacturers selling cars here because competition keeps everybody on this. Competition keeps the prices down, and it keeps quality up. So competition is a consumer's friend. Yeah. During Trump put a 27.5% tariff on Chinese-made cars, and then in the next administration, Bidens, they toughen that in the Inflation Reduction Act. So it might be a while before you can get an affordable one. Yeah, exactly. You get a really expensive one. 877960, 9960, or you can text us at 7.

472-4976530, and I was reading where China's B-Y-D outpaced Tesla in Total Electric Vehicle sold. And Elon is, he's not worried about it. Okay, Rick. I've got one here that I think is going to interest you. Oops, I just, where'd it go? Ah, sorry, I suddenly minimized my window somehow. Okay. This is from Donovan.

He says, Shell Oil Company last week closed all of their hydrogen fueling stations abruptly and permanently. After these closed, there are just 47 stations left, and about half rarely have the hydrogen fuel. This apparently is California. A lot of Toyota Marai and Hyundai Nexo owners are now really not happy because they're struggling to find fuel for the vehicle they bought. A lot of them say that Toyota and Hyundai need to buy back these vehicles because they were sold something that they cannot refuel. It's another example that hydrogen may not be the fuel of the future for consumers. Hydrogen has gotten very expensive over the last 18 months as these problems have come in. Today, it costs about $150 to refuel a Marai.

And he goes on to say, let me get down to this next section where he's got, he says, speaking of BYD, BYD will be the largest automaker by the end of the decade, he's predicting. Yes. They're going to build in Mexico, and they're already a top seller in South America. BYD has their software development in California. They're not stupid. They make some of the best batteries and make a very good product. That's where they started, yeah.

He personally drove a B-YD seal in Europe, apparently one of the models that they have. I've got to say. And Donovan has been like right on the money with a lot of his information. So this could be something to really watch for. Yeah, I think the CEO is named Wang. He's Chinese.

He's a scientist by education scientist and engineer. and he was building this amazing battery, the best battery in the world. That's what got Warren Buffett interested in B-Y-D. And Warren Buffett, as you know, is probably the greatest investor that ever lived and also probably the richest investor that ever lived. And he bought B-Y-D stock years ago, 10, 12 years ago, when they were just a battery manufacturer. So they decided, well, if we can build these great,

electrical batteries then Wang says let's try to build a car so he built a car and they laughed at him because it was kind of a piece of junk but he kept on persisting and now he's got something that's gonna possibly knock Tesla right out of the saddle and and the cars just get the whole world on his side and the cars are cheap they're small it's a good strategy yeah competition competition thanks Donovan Donovan always says a lot of information to share with us. 877960

or you can text us at 772-497-6530. We have a regular caller online from Jupiter Farms and that is Frank. Good morning, Frank. Well, good morning to you all. Welcome.

Thank you so much. It's always a pleasure hear your show and have a Saturday morning and have a little talking to be listening. This last week, we went in out of the wife's SQ5 Audi as two-year service, which is included in oil change and checking things out. Car has only 14,500 miles. And they're already saying, oh, by the way, it's an automobile drive. So here's our first question.

It seems the front tires have worn out quicker than the rear tires, and they say now we need to replace tires. At 14,500 miles, I thought that was pretty odd. But the front tires were down to two-tenths of tread while the rears had four-tenths. So anyway, is that indicative of all-wheel drive that the front tires? Because I'm not really sure how that. I knew like front-wheel-drive tires sort of ran out quicker. Well, even with the all-wheel drive, the front of the vehicle still got the majority of the weight for the engine and transmission, the way they're located.

So when you're driving the car, that's where all the weight is. It's mainly under the deceleration that as you're slowing down, the weight of the car is coming forwards, just by inertia, and of course, that's putting more force on those front tires. So it's not so much the acceleration or the continuous driving that's wearing on them. It's slowing down is where you really get most of your tire wear occurring because that much weight pushing down on the tire while it's slowing down causes that increased wear. Have you been rotating the tires regularly?

Well, I would have thought they did that during the first service, which was last year. But I don't believe they did. And I took it upon that that's what they do during one of these, you know, very expensive oil changes and things like that. Right. And they didn't rotate them this time either. Yeah, one thing to bear in mind as well is when you get a car brand new from the factory, all manufacturers do this. They have certain tires that they get from the tire companies.

They're ones that you cannot buy. They only come on the brand new cars. And they're a softer compound tire so that when you drive that car off the lot, it's like riding on a marshmallow. It's smooth. It's soft. It's comfortable. It's nice. and then you've driven the car for a couple years, you've got some miles on it,

now your tires are worn out, it's time to get new tires, and now you're looking at the price of those tires, and you want the best quality for your money, so you're going to get tires now that the tire manufacturers have designed to get the highest miles that you can get, and they're a little bit harder compound. They don't ride quite as nice or smooth, but you don't really feel it because you're concentrating

getting the best bang for your buck on those tires now. So it doesn't matter that they don't, they aren't that soft, squishy, brand new car feel because the car's gotten broken in a little bit. So the first set of tires are always going to wear out a little quicker anyways. But what I would recommend is actually, now this does bear in mind, the tires front and rear have to be the same size.

And there are some few cars out there. The back tires are front are different sizes. As long as they're the same size, you can rotate them and just stop in it like a tire kingdom. And it's like 20 or 30 bucks to have your tires rotated. And by doing that like every 3 to 5,000 miles, you'll increase the lifespan of those tires quite a bit. Oh, okay. Three to 5,000. Yeah.

Okay. And Audi, of course, is going to charge you an arm and a leg for their oil change and their tire rotations. They're very proud of their service, they're very proud of their people, and of course they, you know, they're outy, so they want to charge you everything. You can go to a local independent shop and have that exact same work done at a much, much discounted price and get the same quality. Talk with the shop, make sure they're using a good quality filter and quality oil, and that they're going to stand behind their service and always save your receipts from it. So that way, if something occurs with the car in the future, and you have to go in for warranty work, you can say, hey, look, I had my oil change here, here, here, here. I had these services done. Just because they weren't done with your manufacturer, your service department, they were properly done.

And that protects you in the long run. Okay, here's one more question with this, you know, checkup. They said the EFI, the engine, I guess, the fuel injectors, it needs that cleaning service. And it said immediately, it requires immediate attention. The system injects fuel, well, you know what EFI is. How can that, if I mean, we're buying our gas to Costco. So I would imagine that that gas must be all right. It's not shell super maximum cleaning formula.

But is that something that could actually be cleaning that early in a car's life? Costco is a top-tier fuel, perfectly safe to use. And what I would recommend first is look in your glove box for the manufacturer's recommended maintenance schedule. And if that EFI service is listed in there, that factory Audi says it should be done, then you should go ahead and do it. if Audi, the manufacturer doesn't say it, is the dealership just trying to throw some fluff on you? They're just trying to squeeze some more money out of you. Frank, thanks for the call.

We've got a couple of callers waiting here, so if we've answered all your questions, we'll move on. You did. You all have a wonderful day. Thank you, God. You too, Frank. Thanks, Frank. Have a great weekend.

We're going to go to Howard. Howard gave us a call earlier, and we were unable to take his call. Howard, good morning. Thanks for calling back. Good morning. Nice to talk to you guys. I hope you all well. I know it's going to rain later on, but so far we can enjoy the morning. I have a question about tires also. We used to criss-cross tires. Why don't we do that anymore?

Radial tires. Steel-belted radial tires, if you swap them side to side, you're changing the direction at that tire is spinning, and it's very likely you will create a pull to one side of the other. We have cars come in all the time to the shop. They say, my car is pulling left or it's pulling right, and I go for a test drive and say, yep, okay, it's definitely got more than it should have for that road crown. Describe specifically what a radial tire is versus the previous design. Okay. It used to be the body of your tire.

You have the rubber tread, and then underneath it. you had these polyester belts and then you had another rubber seal inside that would keep the air inside the tire. Those polyester belts were laid down basically in just a straight pattern and when they switched over to what were called steel belted radials, they actually have them in sort of a criss-cross pattern and the tires will develop a set and as it's rolling, it'll actually begin to drift one way or the other. and there's also something that's called tire conicity and if you were to look straight down on the on the tire straight at the tread although you really won't be able to see it one edge of the tread is going to actually be a larger diameter than the other it's kind of looking down like at a cone shape you'll is so minute you won't see it but what happens is when we put the tires on your car as you're rolling down the road if both them are cone shaped and going in the same direction that pointed end it'll make the car drift or pull

so we'll cross those tires that reverses that cone shape and quite often we'll even switch the tire around on one wheel so that the two will cancel each other around and the car will go straight steel belted radials ride a lot better they are more durable for the road but they do have that tendency that they can create a pull

so we have to set those tires up in a way that it will go nice and straight down the road. There is a full science behind it. But it's always best that we rotate from the front to the back, back to the front. Okay, one more fast question about the corolla. I hear there are two different types of corollas coming out, and one has a seat that falls down, the other doesn't. I think it's called a cross.

Yes. Corolla cross is a small SUV, sport utility vehicle. so it's got the big hatch in the back and the back seats can fold down to give you a lot of extra storage area. That's great because I'm not going to be traveling to New York too much and I don't need

a trunk because where I live you have to have a trunk otherwise they could break in. So that's good news. Thank you very much for you. Yeah, Howard. The Corolla's boy, I'll tell you they have really come a long way, haven't they?

Oh yes. Great car. And just to mention on that, most of them do have a small tonne cover so that when you have stuff stored in the hatch area, you pull that cover over, nobody can look into the window and see what's back there. Exactly. Ladies, I have $50 left here for the next new lady caller. And I have a question for you.

Did you understand your financing costs before you even went into the dealership? It can be very confusing, and it's a good thing to look into unless you're paying cash. So give us a call, 877-960, 9960, and we're going to go to John in Palm City. Good morning, John. Good morning. The topic came up this morning of hydrogen. I have a question for Rick. Did you ever hear of an ammonia-powered call?

ammonia? Yes. That is a new one on me. Well, some ships and some trucks have already used it. Toyota and Chinese motor company called GAC are experimenting with it. It has a lot of advantages. It's carbon-free. There's no CO2.

It can be toxic, though. That's the one negative about it. And if it's deadly, if it's exposed in the air or, in gasoline, liquid, it can be dangerous, but it is be experimenting with, and it is ammonia-powered cause. So I just want to mention it. Wow.

The negative is, though, that can be toxic. Yeah, yeah. Toyota has some prototypes. I just Googled it. John, I'd never heard of an ammonia-powered call, but that's breaking news. Toyota is working on it. I'm a Toyota dealer, and I didn't even know about it.

With the Chinese auto company called GAC, they're working on it together, so I don't know what the future is, but I just happen to mention. I mean, the mere thought of having a smell of ammonia when you're driving a car, I mean, that'll bring you down. I can't stand to be around monia, but I imagine they've got it sealed in there so tightly. You probably don't smell it, but it would be a marketing challenge. you know, come in and buy the new ammonia-powered car. I just, I don't see it.

Well, for a while, when we had R-12 in the air conditioning, a lot of companies were trying to get, and obviously the government was cracking down on R-12 because of the ozone problems, they were trying air conditioning that had a propane-based gas as its refrigerant. And the problem that they found was most times when a leak occurs, it occurs in the inside, in the evaporator core,

So you'd have to worry now if someone lit up a cigarette inside their car, they could suddenly be driving a fireball. I agree with you. I just want to mention fast tomorrow there's a big race. Daytona 500. And there's new race cars involved with Toyota and Ford. So it should be very interesting, brand new race car divisions of them. And if it's going to be rained possibly, but they'll run it on Monday.

So just want to mention it to me. I like it better than even the Super Bowl, and it's held tomorrow. You're an old guy like me, so we can digress a bit to Daytona. You probably remember that started, I think Daytona race started around 1956, 57. And one of the early superstars of the Daytona 500 was Fireball Roberts. Do you remember him? Yes, I do, Earl. We're both in high school at that time.

Wow, Powerball Roberts really put Pontiac on the map. You know, my father started a Pontiac dealership in West Palm Beach in 1937, and Tom Pontiac was just a so-so car, you know, everybody outsold Pontiac. And finally, they decided to start building more performance cars. So Pontiac started building a couple of faster cars, and they'd get three, two-barrel carburetors and dual four-barrel carburetors and four on the floor. and then they put one into the Daytona 500. Fireball Roberts drove it and won the Daytona 500. And from that point on, Pontiac soared in sales from nowhere. They were at one time challenging at that time, this is how long ago, Osmobile.

I think they got number two to Chevrolet. Pontiac was third in sales probably from 14th to 3rd just because of the Daytona 500. And for many years, they'll go number three car, seller, Pontiac. Yeah. And you bring a nostalgia. My favorite car ever, ever, and I think you owned it, is a 57 Pontiac tri-powered or fuel-injected compartmental. Oh, yeah. Yeah, triple two barrels.

Well, I had a, I had a 1961, four on the floor, three two-barrele carburetors. And at that time, I think I was the fastest wheels on the road. I said, I'm reliving my childhood now with my Tesla by having the fastest wheels on the road. Those were the days, my friend. Hey, John, did you see the mature men that they interviewed on the out of Daytona yesterday? And they were talking a lot about Bobby Clark

and the good old days. I didn't see that, but it's the youngest people now that are drivers if you looked at the lineup. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The youngest people, I think, in history, which is great. Yeah. The youth is involved, and it's very important that racing is for safety.

A lot of things, seatbelt and all have been developed. I used to remember when I was a young person, I went out to the Star Car races, and in those days, the Star Cars had seatbelts in them, and nobody else heard of it, and they weren't required by the automobile manufacturers. Amazing. All right, guys. Thank you, John. go into this stop and we put it.

Thanks, John. Have a great weekend. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-49-2-497-6-5-30. Ladies, I do have $50 here for the next new lady caller. Give me a call, and you can win yourself $50 today, and you can share some information with us, and we would love to hear from you. going to go to Brian who's calling from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Brian. Good morning. First time caller. I've been listening for a couple of years. Thanks for taking the call. Thanks for

listening. So I have a 2018 Chevy truck and a 2019 Chevy truck, and both infotainment screens have failed. And speaking with many of my friends that also own Chevy trucks, there's got to be one not every two. Unfortunately, I have two out of two failures on the infotainment. There was a class action suit that was brought and failed. So my first question is, what kind of makes a successful class action and why did this fail? All as far as what was going? What makes a class action lawsuit when you've got a common failure? in a vehicle okay okay and they they had a class action lawsuit but it failed yeah yeah yeah what typically that causes class action lawsuits to fail is you can't get enough people on

the class action that you have uh you the the court the judges require that you have a certain minimal number of people i for a long time have been trying to get a class action suit against car dealers for hiding fees and adding them to the advertised price the attorney general and the regulators won't do anything they won't enforce the laws are already there so i talked to a class action attorney in fort lauderdale and he said i'd be glad to handle the case but you need to get me some people that will sign up a representative sample the lawyer himself is not supposed to do that. If a lawyer, there's an ethics question with lawyers soliciting a client. Of course, they do it anyway, but apparently I have an ethical class action lawyer. He says, I can't

do it, but if you will. So on this show, and I'll repeat the offer, I said, I'd like to do a class action suit. You lawyers listening out there, if you give me your contact information, we will put you on the list. I will give it to my attorney who will do file the class action and he will try to get you money back because on the on the basis of all the people that had to pay if you're in florida you probably paid a thousand to three thousand dollars in hidden fees when you bought your car okay so uh the class action lawyer would be able to get back hundreds of millions of dollars and that would be divided up among anybody that was hurt. But we can never get

class action losses off the ground because people don't want to come forward and give them their name and say, I want to participate. Well, I definitely participate in a suit on this again. But thanks for that info. And just a quick second piece,

being that the repairs are $1,200 a piece, I was going to do it myself. Who would you recommend for obtaining the infotainment screens from. So kind of secondary market, I think what they're doing is acquiring these, and you send in yours, and they send you someone else's that they fix. Is there anyone that you would recommend to source the screens from?

Well, as far as repairing your car, how do you, where do the $1,200 come from? Who quoted you that? Dealers, multiple dealers. Well, the first thing is you need to get competitive bids, and you need to get two other repair facilities, independent or dealer, to give you a quote. Get the quote in writing. The reason for that is that when they work on your car, Florida law says if the quote is in writing, they have to remain within 10% of the amount they quoted you. So that protects you there.

Competition will probably bring the price down below. $1,200. I would be sure that the technician assigned your car, you should know who he is. Don't just take it into a dealership or a shop and trust the shop or the dealership to choose a technician, tell them you'd like to know who's working on your vehicle, and is he ASE certified, and that's an automotive service excellence. It's a national foundation company, Rick Kearney, for example, sitting by right here. He's ASC certified in all the different skills, and he has to go every five years to be re-certified.

And every five years, trust me, with technology moving the way it is now, it's like a whole new ball game. So he's staying on top of the game. So get three bids, get the court in writing, and be sure that an A.S. certified technician qualified in that particular skill is assigned to your car. Well, thank you for that information. I appreciate it. You're very welcome, Brian. Thanks for the call. Have a great day. Thank you, sir.

We are going to go to Dawn in Palm Beach Gardens. Good morning, Don. Good morning. I just wanted to know, did you ever shop Al Packer on Southern Boulevard? You know, we have, but it's been a long time. Al Packer has been around for a long time in this market. I remember, I don't know how long you've been here, but when he first started out in business, I'm going to say 40 years ago, his son's in it now, his daughter, I believe. But when he first began, he used to do these TV commercials, and they called him Granny Packer, and he put an old lady's wig on, and it was...

It was really funny. But we haven't shopped in a long time. As I recall, the last shopping report we did was pretty good. Why, have you had an experience, Don, with an alpager? Yeah, I did. I traded in an expedition of 21,

but contemplating that I'm going to get a cyber truck sometime this century and I was wearing it out. So I brought it in there and ended up buying a new one, a 24-mile. and I paid sticker price for it. I want to say that their sales man was great.

His name was Goody. The sticker price was what they quoted. The dealer fee was $500, which I didn't mind. And I got the full price I was asking for my 21. I mean, it was a great experience. It just took a while to... Well, that's great. I really appreciate you on that.

We don't get too many phone calls for probably obvious reasons, commending dealers but we we want to be unbiased we you know we're not here to put dealers out of business to embarrass them we're here to help you the consumer find a good dealer and when you find a good dealer like Don did his experience with alpacker Ford and West Palm Beach was quite good and so that we will put alpacker on our mystery shopping list to to check them out verify and we will also So, say, based on Don's recommendation, you definitely ought to compare Alpacker Ford if you're going to buy a Ford. The recommended dealer that comes to mind for buying cars is Mullinx, although we've had a couple of calls from the same person whose friends have had bad service experience with Malenx Ford.

But sales experience has always been excellent. So you've got two Ford dealers, so people out there thinking about buying a Ford, and you're in South Florida area. check with Molnecks and check with Al Packer. And thank you very much, Don. Yeah, you might remember. I was the one that helped you buy, get your Tesla. I talked into what you told me one time. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

The red one, you're plaid. But anyway, after I had this experience, bought this car, guess what happened the next day? I got my notice from Tesla, and I'm going to get my cyber truck in six weeks. Very good. Wow. That's great news.

I just need to hold on to that car another day And I wouldn't have to trade it Yeah So anyway Yeah Don, thanks for the call Okay Thanks for all the information

You shared with us too We're going to go to Rick We're going to get some texts And some YouTubers Well, as our tradition is We will start right off with Anne-Marie She says good morning I was strolling down memory lane

checking out old TV commercials on YouTube and I came across this Midas Muffler ad from 1975 where an old gentleman drives up his Ford Model A to get a new muffler under the Midas Muffler Lifetime Guarantee. The guy's ask him if he'll ever sell the car

and he replies that he wants to keep giving them the business. The ad prompts an observation and a question. Earl, you have a problem. program for Tires for Life, where if a customer buys a car and has it regularly service at your dealership, they can get Tires for Life of the car. Under your Tires for Life program, what is the most sets of tires that a customer has received and on what vehicle were they driving? Thanks. Yeah, I hate to say I don't know. What typically we're replacing the factory tires, which, Rick, you referred to earlier, the tires are on the car from the

manufacturer are not tires that you can buy. So they might be called Michelin's or they might be called Firestones, but they were designed by Toyota, in my case, and the Michelin or Goodyear or Firestone or whomever manufactured the tire to Toyota specifications. When we replace a tire, we're replacing a tire designed by Toyota. And as you also indicated, the rubber is very soft because, you know, all the manufacturers do this. They want when you test drive a new car, and when you buy a new car, they want the soft as smooth as ride possible. So they use as soft as rubber.

You can say that another way, if you want to be facetious, saying, They don't care that you get as much miles on your tires as you should, but that's true, too. It's a trade-off. If you want a real smooth ride, they need to get a treadware index that's very low. If you want a long-waring tire, you want to get a high tread-wear index, which is harder, rubber, and it less longer. So we replace the tires with tires that we check to see has. We focus more on long wear, partly from a selfish standpoint, because we have to replace the tires because we're giving you free tires. So we'd rather see you get 50,000 miles on a set of tires than 20,000.

Well, I can personally tell you from the shop that I have replaced tires on cars, several different cars, several different vehicles. usually Camry's, corollas, ones that people keep for a long time that are in the 200 to 300,000 mile range, we're still putting tires on their cars under the Tires for Life program. So basically that, I mean, if you keep your car for a long time, when you're under Tires for Life, you're going to get them. We can't be doing commercials, though, so I appreciate that. That was just to answer her question. Yeah. Yeah, we've done some really long mile cars there.

And let's see. We've got one here from Steve Mags. He says, Earl, in light of Ford's missteps, Ford Motor Company's missteps, what are your thoughts about its continued ability to remain in business? Yeah, I think Ford is not the only one that has got a problem about remaining in business. I think a lot of these companies that are called themselves auto manufacturers now will either go out of business or become something else. They may become battery manufacturers, they may become software companies. cars themselves are going to become a commodity.

And if you look far enough down the road, and if you're a Ford or General Motors or Toyota or a Honda, you've got to look way down the road. I mean, the average person, I mean, the average age is, what is it, 75, 85, I don't know what it is now. So the average person doesn't look down the road. You look during your remaining lifespan. If you're a company, you have to look 100 years down the road. So I think all the companies now that will be here for a while

will be the ones that evolve. And I think Ford, if they're going to make it, they're going to have to be probably something like a software company or battery manufacturing company, electric vehicle manufacturing company. and if everybody decides they want to be an electric vehicle manufacturing company, guess what? Only the strong will survive. So it's going to be B-Y-D, Tesla, and probably four or five others. Okay, we're going to go back to the phones and we're going to talk to Bob.

Thanks for your patience, Bob. Bob's calling us from Pompano Beach. Good morning. Good morning, guys. I enjoy your show, by the way. I just wanted to let you know about SARS. I got to one place in the town, Tahr Place for years. Last time I was there a few weeks ago.

I have a Mercedes S-class. They replaced the tires. And he said, leaving the place. He says, oh, by the way, you need breaks. I said, oh, really? Okay, well, let me do. You need him bed. So I brought it over to the Mercedes,

it's a, not the dealership of a Mercedes people. I bring the car to me. He said, you don't need any breaks there at all. I know what they're talking about. I mean, it really infuriates me because I've been going to this place for years, and I trust them. And, in fact, I just brought the Corvette I have there, and my daughter brought her two Toyotas there for change tires. I don't know why they do this, these people.

In fact, there's something on there when I change the brakes last. There's like a sensor in each break that lets you know when you're down, the pads are down to replace them. So I can't understand why to do that. Well, unfortunately, some places when they get a younger tech in, the technicians will look at the brakes and the shape of the brake pad can be deceiving. If you don't really have a lot of experience and don't understand how to judge the actual thickness of that brake pad without disassembling the brakes to really get them out and see them, it may look like that pad is like the friction. material is getting very thin, but it's actually that the edges are curved, so it's thinner at the outer edges and thicker in the middle. So that can be, you said, that's one thing that can

happen. And unfortunately... I really impressed these people. I mean, I really surprised. I know the owner, and he's on his way out, and his son has taken over, but I suspect that's what may have happened anyway. One other thing, I went to trade in the car the other day, and I went, and order a new one, Mercedes. They said the S-class, another five years going to be all electric cars. Oh. Yeah, interesting to hear that.

Electric cars are the seem to be the wave of the future. Yeah. But it's just, it's, we're seeing some interesting little doggy steps as it's getting there. It's like to go sideways every so often. Electric vehicle sales are still growing quickly. They just aren't growing as quickly as they were a year ago. A lot of people are,

looking at the statistics and saying, oh, you were growing at, it was growing at 40%. Now it's only growing at 23%, which is, I think, the number. Growing at 23% is still pretty strong. So the, you know, the buyers like me, I bought a Tesla just because I'm one of these crazy people that likes to have something new. Right, right, right. And, but pretty soon, there was an interesting survey done by consumer reports that 34% of the people in the United States They've never seen a car, electric vehicle in their neighborhood.

They've never ridden in one. They don't know. I have a friend who drives one. So more than a third of the people in the United States are clueless about electric vehicles once that happens. That's kind of what happened with me. I started seeing Tesla's on the road. And I said, I wonder what that's like. So Nancy and I went by the Tesla dealership, and we test drove one.

And whoa, the salesman took us out on demonstrations, ride Florida. and I felt like I was a rocket on the way to the moon. And I just, I'm a kid at heart. So I said, we've got to get one of these. So until you experience an electric vehicle, you're not going to buy one. And we still got a long way to go before there are enough on the roads where people can even see one. They're trying to trade mine in for a thing that's called Aquis S. The Mercedes has it now.

The electric car they have. The only trouble is I'm in a condominium. I don't know where I'm going to have charges. Yeah, yeah. That's a challenge. A lot of people have that problem, and that problem we solved in two ways. First of all, there's going to be charges probably on every street corner before you know it,

just like we used to have gas stations. And also, the battery range is going to go probably to 1,000 miles before you know it. And if you've got a battery with 1,000-mile range, who cares about having a charger on every corner? Not to imagine quick-charging. Yeah, and quick-charging. I'm just wondering if the condo could get like a quick charger. Bob, here's a technology.

Rick brought up the first time. He probably talked about this a year ago. In Germany, they have an underneath the road. There's a, call it a grid. There's an inductance charger. So when you drive on that road through inductance with no wires, you're charging your car just by driving on. the road, there's also inductance chargers, very expensive now, too expensive, in your garage.

So imagine being able to drive your car, get out of your car, go in the house, and while you're in the house, you know, you can come back, it's already charged again. So charging and range, all these obstacles will be overcome, and I pray, I won't be here to see it, but in 25 years there'll be nothing to be EVs on the road. question is you have a electric car. Is it true that after, like some people say, I'll charge it every night, I'll just plug in it every night.

Does that weaken the durability of the battery after a while? No, that's what I thought, too. Years ago, that used to be the case. It's no longer the case with modern batteries. The reason I plug mine in

every time in the garage, I pop it in the charger. It doesn't even begin to charge until midnight. And the reason it doesn't charge till midnight is I've got a program, so I only charge my car when Florida Power Light, our power company,

lowers their charges. So I save a high percentage on charging just by charging at midnight. I heard that's a very, very, very good deal about FD. But the trouble is to $7,000 they told me I can have an electrician hooking in some way.

my um they call it my my uh electricity and just put it by my parking spot i haven't doing parking how much seven thousand dollars wow they go and they they go to your meter and they um yeah where my car is under in inside garage and they they snake it over to your parking spot and they uh they put it there and i guess you put even a lock on it as something that everybody use it yeah what we're having here is people just pulling in and using electricity in the market lot. That's outrageous. I think you'll probably see that price

come down, too, because just think of the percentage of people that are like you. Nancy and I lived on a condominium for years and years, and so to get to that population, somebody's going to come up with something creative, like a mobile charge or something that you can roll up and charge your car

and ain't going to cost $7,000, but that's interesting. Let me ask you, like in a four or five, years. I trade in my car, usually every four or five years. I didn't trade in the Mercedes 16 because of the wacky prices they wanted. I went to trade in. They wanted like a $15,000 over and above the $136,000. They wanted for it as a higher in one. And now I might trade in, but these electric cars, are they with the batteries going bad eventually? Are they, they lose a lot more of their value in the trade in? Well, depending on the generation that you're buying,

Just like the driving range and the charging abilities, all this is improving, with that is the longevity of the battery. So the answer is yes, batteries will always wear out. There's probably going to be a time, you know, when you're going to, but the same thing is true of transmissions and engines and everything. Everything eventually wears out. but the life of the batteries will get extremely long. You know, one little neat thing that I don't think they do it anymore,

but that solve that problem is you don't own your battery. You own the car and you swap the battery out. They did that in Israel. I thought it was a great idea, but it never caught on. Instead of buying a car, you sort of buy an electric vehicle. You buy a car with a battery that you lease or you don't even lease it because when you go into a charging, instead of a charging station, It's like a gas station.

A guy runs out, pops the new battery in, pulls the old battery out, and charges it. So I thought that was a really cool idea. And it worked in Israel. They had one company doing that. They have a lot of Lutcher Cross in Israel. My daughter was six months ago before this problem happened over there. And there are a lot of them. But you have to realize, too, Israel is a very small country.

Yeah, they come up with some creative stuff. I used to go up to New York and, you know, in like two days. One time we did it in one drive, we had three drives in the car. It's hard. The electric car right now is kind of like that's one of the deficits. Yeah, it's not for everybody, and it won't be. It never will be for everybody, but you won't have it in 2025, not 2025, probably a little after that, you won't be able to buy anything but an electric vehicle.

16 or 18 states are making it illegal to sell a combustion engine car. in 2025. Right now, I think that's kind of will work for a lot of people. You really need a car and drive a lot. You can't stop and recharge it all the time at this point, but I think in the future they can, it might work.

Well, listen, you and you do it, I have a great show there. Thanks, Bob. I appreciate your listening and calling in. You're greatly appreciated. Interesting conversation. Thank you, Bob. Give us a call again. We're going to go to Roger and Roger's calling us from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Roger. Hey, good morning. How are you today? We're great. I got a mechanical question for Rick. Okay. I own a 2017 Nissan Quest and basically about a month ago or so I'm a home mechanic. So I replaced the brake shoes and I have

had the, this is the front wheel, the rotors turned. Okay, so I put everything back together, and about a week later, I started getting this noise, a roaring noise, when you push on the brakes, and you don't hear it until you almost come to a stop, and it's getting louder as I go. So I put, it was ceramic brakes, so I'm asking, what do you think is causing that problem? Hmm. when you replaced him the shims you made sure you transferred the shim plates over from the old pads the shiv plates that were on the brake pads right they should be on the back on the metal side of it

not the friction side but on transfer them over it came with them oh it came with new ones yes did you put a little bit of lubrication in between the shim plate and the pad yes okay and when you cleaned up the the little ears where they mount up, did you add a little bit on those as well? Yes. Yes, I did. Now, let me tell you this one thing, and I took it back, and they gave me another set, but one of the shifts came loose. If those shifts come loose, would that cause that kind of noise?

That is possible, yeah, because if it shifted and when you apply the brakes, your rotors are always going to make a little bit of side-to-side motion anyways. so if it's got that little shim plate has moved and it's contacting the caliper when it vibrates of course that could definitely make some odd noises that'd be the first thing I'd be looking at I'd be looking at you think

I'd be checking on those shim plates again to see if any of them have moved out of place okay so it couldn't be the the guy told me when he turned the rotors he said that they were warped a little bit but he was able to turn it out So that couldn't, that wouldn't be the problem, right? No, not if he turned them correctly.

And as long as their thickness is still within specification, then you shouldn't have any problems there because I resurface rotors all the time that are warped, have thickness variations, whatever. And when you put it on the machine, if it's mounted properly on the machine, it grinds a thin layer of metal off and brings them back straight and true. The easiest way to check for that is get up to highway speed on a road where you've got a few moments where it's safe to do this

and kind of give a really good hard almost to a panic stop to where you're almost going to make the ABS kick in. And if your steering wheel stays nice and straight with a good hard application of the brakes, then you know those rotors are nice and straight. Okay. All right, thank you so much. And I'll check the shiz. Can I ask a second question? A real quick one.

Real quick. On the same quest, I mounted a trailer hitch, and it seems like to me it's dropped, it's lowered a little bit since I put it on there, maybe a half inch or so. How can I raise, what would I have to do to get it back up where it should be, or is there any way I can get it higher? Without looking at it, it'd be hard to say, but the, again, first thing I'd be rechecking, recheck the torque on all your bolts, make sure that they're torque properly. Because if something is loosened up, that may be dropping down and creating that gap for you.

Okay. Thank you so much. You're welcome, Roger. Okay, we're going to go straight to the Mystery Shopping Report. Mystery Shopping Report is that we did Cochran Kia in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Yeah, and I remind all those folks out there that we want you to listen to this. and vote on it, and after the shopping report, give us

a vote, A, B, C, D, or F if you fail them. I remind you every week that we score on the curve, and so there are no I started to say there's no absolutely terrible dealers, but there are. No, definitely. Give them an F. A, I sorry,

there are no perfect dealers, that's for sure. But I understand that the average dealer is where we we draw the water line. So if he's an average dealer, we give him a C. If he's better than an average, we give him A or a B. If he's worse than average, we give him a C, D, or F. But I don't think in terms of absolute terms,

because it's very difficult. You can vote at 772-4976530. That's 772-4976530. Or YouTube.com for slash roll on cars. And we get a huge number of votes there. We appreciate all you YouTubers out there. Rick monitors YouTube. So YouTube.com for slash Earl on Cars.

Again, this is a mystery shop of Cochran Kia in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And our Agent Lightning is in that market up there now. I think that's her home. And she's visiting. And so she's having fun doing some mystery shops. I'll speak in the first term as if I were, The mystery shopper, her name is undercover name, of course, is Agent Lightning. I arrived late in the afternoon and was greeted by a customer service representative

as opposed to a salesperson. She warmly inquired, what can I do for you today? Eagerly, I responded. I'm hoping to see if you have any new tell your rides in stock today. She followed up with, is there a certain trim level you're looking for? and have you been in contact with anyone here at the dealership? That's a courtesy to a salesperson that may have been dealing with you, worked on providing you with information,

and also to you because you'd probably like to continue with someone that you've already conversed with and not have to repeat yourself. So that's a positive. I said, no, I haven't been in touch with anyone. after excusing herself, the customer service representative, walked over to a salesman to see if he was available to assist a customer interested in the teleride, a Kia teleride.

They both approached shortly after, and she introduced him. His name is Marty. It's going to help you. Hope you have a great evening. So I'm now on Marty's hands. He says he extended his hand, greeted me and invited me to join him at his computer. He kindly inquired,

which features are you looking at in a tellerite? She's looking for, I was looking for something middle of the line. If you have it, I replied. Marty checked his inventory and excitedly shared. We have 12 in stock. Now, I'll digress a little bit here

because this is a time to buy a car. If you're a regular listener, you've been hearing me for the past three years, say, next year was the time to buy a car and I was wrong. And I'd say again, next year and I was wrong. Finally, we're here. Next year is here. 2004 is a good time to buy a car.

Dealer profits are dropping. The markups are dropping and the dealers are more competitive. Inventories are getting way up there. So now, if you've been waiting, now is the time to buy a car. But be careful. listen to the show look at our own cars.com get the information

you need otherwise you'll still take an advantage of it in the past three years you're going to pay a high price even if you were a good chopper now if you're a good shopper and an informed consumer you'll get a really good price

so he's got 12 telling you guys in stock which that's a lot of one model for any dealer a year ago you wouldn't hear this. Before proceeding to go over all of them with me, I settle on the new 2024 Kia Telluride EXV6, AWD, all-wheel drive, and blue. It just hits the lot less than an hour ago he told me. I'll be right back with the keys and we can go take a look. There was a Moroni label properly affixed to the car. If you're from South Florida, you won't see that

very often. They take them off the car, which is a violation of federal law. But in Cochran Keough, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Monorone label was where it was supposed to be. Very hard to make out because of the glare from the sun. However, I was able to see that the MSRP was $45,675. About three minutes later, he returned explaining the keys are still upstairs since it just arrived, but would you mind coming with me to take a look? Despite the weather, 40 degrees, we walked outside. Doors were locked, but I managed to glimpse inside through the window. I'm already mentioned, if you decide you want to buy it, if you have the time,

we can rush the inspection and get the keys for you to drive it. Back inside, he requested my license. I handed my floral license. It was much different. Up here, he observed, unlike Florida, This is really, I mean, it kind of makes me a shame to be a Floridian, but you regular listeners know it's true. Here's a car salesman in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, telling a customer that unlike Florida, we have mandated fees. We can't overcharge your vehicles like Florida does.

He shared stories of customers who flew in to purchase a vehicle and drive back home. due to the savings. So that's what's been going on in case you're on Mars for the past three years and didn't hit the COVID thing and the microchip shortage and all the other craziness. People are flying from Florida to Pennsylvania. I ran into a person in the parking lot the other day that flew to Michigan to buy a car. I mean it's crazy what people were doing not to get taken advantage of if they live in Florida. And anyway, he explained we're buying this vehicle to keep up here with our son. We're planning on registering and sharing it here under his name and I'll likely co-sign with him.

After discussing financing cash options, Marty, the salesman, filled in a few numbers on his computer, then printed a worksheet for me along with a window sticker. It was hard to see the details from outside. The word sheet was refreshing to me. Usually they're pretty tricky. So this one was refreshing. The top line was MSRP, and that's supposed to be a guideline,

a benchmark, to see what sort of a discount you're going to get. That's what it was designed for when it became federal law in 1958. So the MSRP was $46,000, I'm sorry, $45,000,675. There was a $1,061 discount labeled dealer discount. And it really is a dealer discount. They added sales tax, it's supposed to be, and that was $676, and an estimated registration and fees. Now, I circled fees because there's always a question.

Are they taxable fees or non-textable fees? If they're non-taxable, their government fees are legitimate. If they're taxable fees, they're junk fees. fees, they're junk fees. So I circled that and we'll see about that as we go along the report. An asterith indicated there was some fine but not too fine print. Actually, I looked at the photograph, the print wasn't fine at all on the worksheet, which indicated the estimated fees included, okay, here comes a junk fee, $464. They called it a dock fee. I call it a junk fee.

a junk fee. A $58 notary plate fee, again, a junk fee. Those are both taxable fees, and that would be the asset test. And a $21.90 online registration fee, again, a junk fee. You had all those together. They're about $544. And so the out-the-door price was $48,413. But remember, I'd gotten a discount, a dealer discount, which was a thousand sixty-one. So they actually did discount it about $500 off of MSRP. And if we've been having the show six months ago, that wouldn't have been the case. So prices are coming down. I thanked him for everything.

The Etherdoor price, by the way, was $48,413, and I thanked him, and I left. I thought about my experience as I drove away. Marty was thoroughly professional ensuring there was no pressure on me. He highlighted a $1, $61 discount and confirmed there were no dealer fees. Well, there were, but they were, you know, I don't know why this is in the written report. There were dealer fees, junk fees. He detailed all the fees at the bottom of the sheet and was eager to answer questions I might have. Interestingly, he asked if there was anything about my previous cards that I didn't like,

my previous cards that I didn't like, a question I'd never been asked before. Now, this is a memo to myself after finishing this report to ask Agent Lightning in the future shops to persist a little bit, because even though there was a discount, the MSRP was the MSRP, and even after small junk fees, there was a discount, knit discount off MSRP. I believe had she gone back to the salesperson and say, I'm going to shop this car with another Kia dealer in Pittsburgh. There's probably three or four of them. And if your price is the lowest price, I'll buy from you.

Can you check with your manager and see if he can sweeten the pot? do a little better. I believe she could have done better. So we need to push this a little bit. We just can't take it at face value. Even in Pittsburgh, and I'm not comparing with South Florida or even Florida. Florida is terrible. South Florida is beyond terrible. And Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania and most of the other towns are not as bad. But you're still going to, you're still going to have to negotiate. And competition is the way to negotiate. So there we are. We're going to vote on this. And as I reminded you at the beginning of the Mr. Shopping Report,

average dealers are C, better than average is a B or an A. A is really, really good. We've only got a handful of A dealers on our recommended dealer list, which, by the way, is that earl-oncars.com. Earl on Cars.com. We only have a handful of F's failures on Earl and Cars. if we give a dealer an F, they probably ought to be in the slammer because we only really give terrible dealers Fs.

A D is a bad, bad dealer. And F is a criminal dealer. So keep that in mind when you're thinking about the greed. We'll go out and see. Rick, do you have any grades coming in yet? We are coming in with them. We're going to start with Bob from Maryland. He says B minus for Cochran Kea.

And ah, here they come now. Doug Tesler says Ella gives him a B minus. Tom Steckles says B plus, good sales approach and minimal fees as compared with anything encountered in South Florida. Negan 1, I say a B. Over here we have Tim Gilliland. What? No nitrogen? B. Johnny Z. Fradley, fair price, small fees, no add-ons, B-plus.

Scott H. Senior says B. Mark Smith, B, decent Kia dealership. Guy Larrabee, I rate this as a B-plus on the curve because of the junk fees. The Oz man, discount was greater than the junk fees, not too shabby. A-minus. Brian said LATCO, B. Bill Broadhead says J.M. I'm not sure what that great is, but okay.

Doug Tesler, oh, a Sim says a B from Doug Tesla, getting multiple votes in from Doug. Joseph Kelleher with a B. And Jonathan in Palm Coast, you don't have to fly to Pittsburgh to buy a car. You just have to be educated. Look out for tricks, lies, and scams. Agent Lightning showed us the junk fees for even in Pittsburgh.

The combination of no pressure salesman and junk fees will garner this dealership a B for me. A good dealer bad deal lies in the hands of an informed consumer. And for me, I'm going to say an A minus. I like this place. I think their dealer fees are pretty small. I think it's worthwhile. And from Frank and Jupiter Farms, looks like all dealerships have junk fees. obviously worse in South Florida.

For Pennsylvania, a B-plus. And that's all that we have right here for the... Nancy, what do you say? Well, I think it's... Your hometown, Pittsburgh. Yeah, I'm ready to go back. Ready to go back to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I'm going to give them an A.

This was really a nice mystery shop all the way around. Wow. Am I sure I heard that right in A? You did indeed. Wow, wow. You know a little hometown prejudice? Red Letter Day. A little geographical bias.

I'm going to give them a B minus. I almost gave them a B. I think that I think if we press that a little bit, I think we probably would have those junk fees taken off. If she'd pressed it and take the junk fees off, I might have to give it a bee. I want to remind all of you, if you weren't listening earlier,

that we are recommending that you go into the market and start educating yourself. Don't start buying. Start building your information as the car you want and then start shopping. It is a good time to buy a car. The last quarter profit reports on the largest car dealers, AutoNation, Ashbury, Group 1, Lithia, Penske, these are the big boys. Automation profits plunged 35%. The profit per car has dropped precipitously. The average price of a new car sale has gone down thousands of dollars.

So you had to be desperate to buy a car a year ago. Today is a good time. It's just going to get better. The amount of cars in inventory is soaring. Dealers are looking at three times, four times, ten times as many cars as they had. So all the ingredients for a good deal are falling into place. and just follow our advice and shop carefully. Be sure you get prices from at least three dealers out the door

and you can buy a car in 2024 at a really good deal. Hey, Earl, Frank from Jupiter Farms was asking, please ask Earl if he knows Mark Drusicki, who had a Toyota dealership in Iowa. I met Mark yesterday. Wow. I don't think I know him, although for some reason it sounds vaguely familiar.

You know, dealers get together, and we have a lot, we have national meetings, and we travel these meetings, so you're running into all sorts of people. He'd be from a different group of dealers because the dealers in the Southeast United States are under Southeast Toyota, which is a regional distributor, and Iowa is under the Toyota manufacturer directly. So Southeast Red Stributors buys their cars from Toyota and then they sell their cars to us dealers in the Southeast region. But it does sound familiar. I probably met him at a national meeting or something.

Small world. Yeah. Do we have a quick time for, I know we're almost out of time, but Big Dog Ranch Rescue has been remiss and not getting us a video for a dog. And we spoke to them before the show and they're going to be back providing us with a video for Big Dog Wrench Rescue again next week.

And it's very important to us because Big Dog Grinch Rescue is the biggest no-kill shelter of any shelter in the world. I mean, certainly the United States. They keep dogs there for years and years. They don't euthanize the dogs. And they desperately need to find homes. So if you can foster a dog for a couple of weeks, or you can adopt a dog. We pay the adoption fees, which are about $200.

Sometimes they have sales for less. But Big Dog Wrench Rescue, there are actually locks a hatching, Florida. Look at the website, bigdog wrenchrescue.com or B-D-R-R-R-D-R-R-C-com. .org.org. Dot org. I'm sorry. Dot-org, org-R-G. Yeah.

Okay. I think we're ready to wrap it up. We have a couple of minutes left. Oh, do we want to... Okay, well, let me go. Pick up one of those copies that you shared with me this morning. Yeah, I touched on this last week, but it's an interesting fact of life. In fact, I touched on earlier talking about the Cadillac Escalade.

Just because a car is not a great car and gets a lot of high scores by consumer reports, doesn't mean that you're going to love it. Nancy and I love our Tesla, and quality-wise, it can't hold a candle to other type cars with combustion engines. It's not as reliable, but we love it. And so when we tell you, don't buy this car, buy what you love.

I mean, if you can afford the additional repairs, additional insurance, go ahead and buy it. the best cars, the owner's satisfaction. The highest owner satisfaction is on the Rivian electric vehicle. I mean, a lot of you wouldn't buy those on a bet. The mini, the BMW. So drive the car, look at the facts, look at the reliability, look at the cost of ownership, but also look at, do you love the car?

You buy car because you want to have fun. You want to enjoy your car. So check consumers report, and you can find out not only which is the least expensive, the most reliable, but also the one that you love the most. Yeah, March edition, your top-rated cars, SUVs, and trucks, so pick it up. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us this morning. We enjoy your company, and we'll be right back here next week at 8 a.m., same time, same station. Have a great weekend. Thank you.

Go! I don't know.