Earl Stewart on Cars - 01.22.2022 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Johnson Honda of Stuart

Episode Date: January 22, 2022

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits a local Honda dealer to see how much they will charge over sticker price for a new 2022 Honda Civic Sport Hatchback. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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 is my son, Stu Stewart, our LinkedIn 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, everyone. Well, we're all back. We're all healthy. We're wearing our masks this morning. And for you, newer listeners, are from out of the area. unfortunately we're part of one of the states one of the areas actually where this COVID-Omacron thing is peaking but I kind of think it's peaked I think maybe it's coming down who knows maybe next week you'll see my beautiful face and nancy's and stews and ricks and we'll be here you know with a big smile

but right now we've got to take caution and that's what we're doing and you should too by the way I'm not going to give you a commercial on that. You heard the recorded introduction, and we are live in the studio, and we're here to help you navigate through this minefield of car dealerships around the world, especially in Florida, the United States, to buy a car and probably the most hazardous,

dangerous car-buying market that we have ever been in. And I think that if you ever have to be careful going into a car dealership, it's 2021, 2021, and probably back in the tail of the 2020.

So it's going to be here for a while and we have a huge shortage of vehicles, new and used. The car dealers are in Fat City making money hand over fist you may say how I mean if we're out of cars and the dealers lots only have a few cars on them

I mean the typical dealer that would sell 200 cars a month will have 10 cars a lot now how could you be making money well very simple people are buying cars through the ordering process probably the way you really should buy a car anyway but in the past car dealers were up to their eyeballs in cars

or the manufacturers saw to that because if you If you don't order enough cars, they don't like you. And if you're a Ford dealer and the Ford wants you to buy cars and you don't buy cars, you might not be a Ford dealer one day. So, inventories were huge because of the huge inventories and the cost of maintaining these inventories, lack of storage space, you have to be very competitive. And there's two ways to sell cars when you got too many.

You can drop the price or you can lie cheat and steal. Unfortunately, we have too many dealers out there that do a little bit of both. And that's where we are. In fairness to the dealers, because of the huge inventories in years past and because of the pressure from the manufacturers, dealers were not making a lot of money in the new car department. You say, what? I mean, here I am doing a show about how to be careful

not to be taken advantage of by a dealer, but you're saying, and then you're saying the dealers still weren't making money back then? Well, you look at the stats, National Automobile Dealers Association, every year comes out with a report on the profitability of car dealers. And I'm not saying the car dealership as a whole doesn't make a lot of money in years past. They do. They did. But they didn't make that much money in a new car department.

In fact, the average profit in a new car department for the average car dealership, was probably about a break-even. Now, it's huge. I mean, car dealers are all having record years. And this includes my dealership. Full disclosure, we have a Toyota dealership. We've had it for 47 years, actually. And in those 47 years, last year, and my son is my gentle manager, he's sitting right across the table here for me in the radio studio, he will verify. the fact that we had the best year we've ever had profit wise and uh by far and we did it at a time when uh what do we have 20 cars on the lot right now that would be right now we have about 20 cars in the lot maybe 20 cars so uh it's a whole new game a whole new ball game out there so when you go in to buy a car and by the way i recommend you don't buy a car i hear them now the car dealers

listening what car dealer earl steward is telling people don't buy cars? Yeah, I mean, I have a conscience, and I have to be honest with you. That's what we do on this show. We're honest with you. And I wouldn't recommend anybody go out and buy a new or used car today. Now, some of you have to, and some of you want to. So we're going to tell you, if you have to or want to buy a car, we're going to tell you how to be safe about doing that. A lot of this probably applies to repairing and maintaining the cars. and we have Rick Kearney or certified diagnostic master technician, it'll tell you how

maybe you can fix it yourself or maybe you can postpone a repair, or maybe you don't need the repair. If you have to have the repair, maybe how you can save some money on it. So we're here to serve you buy new and use cars, lease new cars, repair

and maintain your car, and save some money. So, you make the show and we have a telephone number old-fashioned telephone number 877 960

9960 again that's 877 960 960 please call the show we prefer the personal phone call

and we will get to you right away when you call but we have a whole lot of other ways to call us, to contact us, lots of ways. A text. Text you're good because you text us the question, rest assured we will answer it, maybe not immediately, and it might even be the end of the show, and possibly the following week. But if you text us at 772-497-6530, that's 772 49766530 Texas

and Stu monitors that my son and when we have a lull when we have a time to get to it we jump in and we clean up the test now Rick monitors YouTube

and that's a very popular way to contact the show YouTube.com forward slash Earl on Cars YouTube.com forward slash Earl and Cars he's watching the post there and we will read your post, answer your questions, or air your criticisms or compliments. We take both, insults, criticism, compliments, we're not picky.

This is live radio and we have a lot of fun. And we have some outrageous things that happen on the show. Because it's not just information and education, it's entertainment too, right? That's entertainment. I try to be funny. Yeah, we all try to be funny. Oh, by the way, talk about fun. I got a, Jonathan, our vice president, what are we called,

vice president of digital communications, he has informed us of some amazing information on who is actually listening and watching the show via podcast. Now, who would you guess? what metro area, what municipality, what city, what area of the country? And here we are in South Florida, you know, we're in Palm Beach County. Who would be watching the most podcast to our show? Delray Beach?

No. Do you know the answer? Miami? You know the answer. You're setting me up. Okay, that's good. The setup is this. Washington, D.C.

Huge. D. Huge audience. Now, why? Well, we trace the IP addresses, and they're coming from the Justice Department. We're trying to figure this out. Is it possible that we're being investigated? Is it possible that...

What is it? Joe Biden really likes you. What is it? 600 people last week of 10 days. 600 people have access a podcast. It could be one person listening. 600 times, though. It's possible. I never thought about that. We may have an insane person.

But he's been doing it for a long time, so he's got to stab him. That's our number one fan. Any theories out there in radio land or text land or YouTube or Facebook land, anybody can figure out why our biggest podcast audience is in Washington, D.C. And this happened suddenly, what, a month ago, Jonathan? Yeah, it's really sore in the last 10 days, yeah. Oh, we have a phone.

Well, we have three phone calls. I'll shut my mouth and get to the important stuff. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome. We're so happy you're here. We do love spending two hours for you with you on Saturday mornings. And quickly, women represent a huge opportunity for the auto industry. Remember that. Ladies, $50 for the first two.

New lady callers. Give us a call. Please. 960. We're going to get right to the phones. Larry's been holding from West Palm Beach, and we'll get to you others that have been holding. Thank you for your patience. Good morning, Larry. Hello. Good morning. Did we still have you out there in Radio Lant? Do we drop you? Crickets. It sounds like technical difficulty. Give us a call back. I know you've been holding for a while. We're going to go straight. to Howard, who has also been holding.

Good morning, Howard. Good morning. How are you doing, guys? Hey, Howard. Great. Everything's fine. Everything's great. That's great. I'm stuck at the Bronx and I because they're working on my condo. I have no balcony, and so I'm really stuck here.

I noticed driving around in New York at night, I get blinded. In Florida, it never happened, but now I was thinking that they're putting their brights on. But then what happened is that a driver was driving next to me and he had his I thought he had his brights on. When he pulled over, I pulled over.

I said, what's the story? Why are you using your price? He says, I'm not using my brides. So I said, well, I don't understand it. Your lights are shining above what they should be doing. He says, I put new bulbs in.

So I want to know what the story is with brights and now Toyota has cars that come out that the brights go on automatically. So can you explain what the problem could be why so many people are having this issue with their

lights? Real quick on the adaptive headlights, Howard, that you brought up. Yeah, there's a lot of cars that have them. I've seen them. I'm not too sure because what they do is they detect the headlights of oncoming cars and then they go to the regular low beams. But they do it at the last second, so I'm not quite sure if I'm really protecting, you know, helping the eyes of the oncoming traffic.

Rick, what say you? Yeah, one of the issues that I see a lot of times is folks will change out their light bulbs. They'll put new headlights in, but they'll go from being the original factory incandescent bulbs that were designed for the car, and they'll put in like I have. I've put LED lights in my truck. However, I also re-aimed them and aimed them downwards more because LED lights have a tendency to throw the light farther out in front of the vehicle, thus simulating high-beam lights. And if you're going to change the bulbs and put different bulbs other than what were factory original in your car, you need to have the headlights re-aimed to make sure you're not blinding other drivers. and if they didn't have that done, then yes, they can quite easily, even though they're on low beam, they're putting out so much more light and at a greater distance that it will cause a blinding effect on other drivers.

How often do you see that? One time you were able to re-ame the lights yourself or the screwdriver. I guess that's not the case anymore. It still can be done, but the controls are a little, the spot you're getting to, are a little harder to get to on a lot of the cars, and they're not all the same anymore. There's some really difficult operations sometimes to aim them. Okay, so you suggest that your car needs...

For example, if a car is wearing, and the tires are wearing, and the front end is wearing, eventually you're going to have to re-ame the headlights, am I correct? Yeah, if a car really, when it's getting a lot older, the suspension will begin to settle in a bit, and things will start to drop a little, and actually you'll wind up with your headlights probably aiming a little lower.

Of course, on the other hand, say you're going to take someone to the airport and you've got a couple of hundred pounds of luggage in the trunk of your car and people sitting in the back seat, that may bring the back end down and raise your headlights up, some in the front. Interesting, yeah.

So they have bodies in the truck? That'll make a big difference, yeah. See a lot of those lights in New Jersey, probably. that oh boy you really went there didn't you're all he was going to say he didn't he want to offend Howard so yeah now it is of course it's also possible that maybe there's rear suspension starting to get a little worn and the car's starting to sit a little lower in the back and that of course will make the headlights come up in the front name hard thanks for bringing up something and i really had not we haven't thought about and i'd like to hear other people's experience

out there i don't drive around that much at night and uh people who do but think of you're a long-distance truck driver or something, you'd be an expert on that but there's got to be some sort of an HTSA regulation, there's got to be some law. I don't know of anyone having been pulled over

because their lights were not focused or aimed properly, but maybe I'm wrong. Rick? Now, one other factor that I see a lot, because I do travel in the dark, I'll let me put that a little differently. I generally travel before sunrise going to work

a lot and I see a lot of cars on the highway with just their daytime running lights on which means only their headlights and they're only at about half power and no tail lights so folks if you're going to be traveling at dark make sure you have your full headlights on so you've got tail lights and you can be seen

Howard thanks for bringing up something we haven't talked about or thought about on this show and anyone else out there that I'd like to know if anybody's ever been pulled over because their lights were not adjusted properly, I think they should be. I mean, it's a danger to other people if you're blinding people, obviously, at night, so I'll let us know if you've ever had that problem.

Howard, thanks very much. Okay, guys, keep safe. I'll talk to you next week. Bye. Thank you. Enjoy that crazy weather. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30.

Real quick, Rick, how many techs are, well, you come in, have your car serviced, and they say, hey, listen, we have to set your plates at an angle. This will help you on the road, so on and so forth. Is that information out there for every tech? Is that something new? Actually, for aiming headlights, it's kind of an old school talent because a lot of, well, the problem is when we're working and, you know, it's always daytime, We don't know whether your headlights are aimed properly or not. So it's impossible for the tech to know.

And actually the process for aiming headlights now is you have to go quite a bit. We've got to find a spot where you can line the car up somewhere, have marks on the wall that are measured, and be able to set the headlights to the proper level and get them aimed properly. Interesting information, folks. Give us your thoughts. 877-960. We're going to go back to the phones where we're going to talk to Lari from West Palm Beach. Thanks for your patience. And Karen, we'll get right with you. Good morning,

Larry. Good morning. Welcome. I would, yes, I would like to know. I got a letter from Earl Stewart, and I'm a loyal customer saying that they wanted to buy my car back. And I was thinking, If I were to do it, I have a highlander XLE, that I would possibly look at a hybrid. What are the advantages and disadvantages of a hybrid? Well, you know, Stu probably has got the latest specifics, but I could give you the generality of fuel economy. And, you know, the whole hybrid phenomenon, electric power, torque, acceleration, and extremely good, fuel economy. So that's the reason most people buy them. I think you had all the bullet points. I thought you might leave out power. People are surprised

they think getting a... Actually, I think that perception has changed over the years with Tesla. These things get an electric car, you'd get a slower vehicle. But even with the hybrid, all the hybrid versions are typically quicker on the line than the gas powered counterparts. There is a price difference. There is, yeah, they typically, I forgot what the difference is now average but it's probably a couple of thousand dollars on average than the gas version that used to be a lot a lot bigger and it took a long time to see the benefit

from gas savings but right now people see the gas savings benefit in a very short period of time probably a couple of years and are there any disadvantages price it's a little higher price the hybrid battery they are expensive to replace but that they tend to run. Rick, you see them as old as how many miles do you see in the shop on average? I'm going to say lifespan, my best guess, is going to be around 180 to 200,000 miles. Pretty much plan. Right.

You're on borrowed time by that point. Yeah, so if you plan on driving it beyond, you know, 180, 200,000 miles, you're going to look at, you know, several thousand dollar expense at some point to replace the hybrid battery. But that's a long time down the road. Okay. all right Lori one last one last point

you got a letter from us asking to buy your used car all the dealers are sitting letters out and your used car your high lender hybrid is worth an all-time high and if you are if you do decide to part with it

and you are going to sell it you should check with several sources and we found in our experience that these independent sources like Carvana we buy any car.com, Varum, CarMax, and there's probably another dozen out there.

Everybody is going into the buy-the-use car because of the very extreme shortage. So if you don't need your car, if you can get by without, or if you feel like you have to buy another car, for whatever reason, don't just take the bid we gave you, but check around with other sources,

and you will be able to get a top-brose. for that Highlander hybrid. All right. Sounds great. And before you go, Larry, are you a first-time caller? I called one time a very long time ago, but I didn't get in to get anything. I see. Your name doesn't sound familiar.

As far as what Earl just mentioned, I don't know whether you know this or not, but used vehicles are the price of them on the rise by 28%. 28% and Earl mentioned the room he mentioned I don't think he mentioned drive time buying cars and we buy any cars

dot com so you're sitting on something well a lot more than you paid for it so take advantage of that I wouldn't say that but it's going to be up there well it's more of an advantage today than it was three years ago

the lots are well, their inventory isn't where it should be. So good luck with that and give us a call again. And do I get at $50? Yeah, if we didn't pay you $50 last time more, we will. So give your contact information to the control room or directly to Nancy. You can text her at this number, 772-497-65-30. 772-497-65-30.

And that's your contact information, and I can get. to check out to you for $50 and thank you so much for building helping me build this platform for women because we have become well an important part of the auto industry what was your phone again i'm sorry 772 4976530 6 530 thank you you're welcome congratulations spread the word Lori. Thank you. I will. Thank you. We're going to go to Karen, and she is a first-time caller. Good morning, Karen, and welcome to the show. Good morning. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Great to hear from you. Yeah, my question is kind of along the same lines as Lori. I've got a wonderful vehicle. I've got an Audi RS-7. It's 2017, and I've got 30,000 miles on. it and I think it's a great time to sell it I frankly I want something a little more practical because everyone's trying to race me all the time I get bullied you know

and I love going fast and that could be fun oh it's really fun but anyway I feel like I could get a lot of money for this car but I want to You know, I know it's not a good time to buy a car, but that wants something a little more practical that doesn't drink as much gas. Yeah, well, you're right, you know, you will get more for the vehicle than you paid for. Earl, your thoughts? Yeah, she won't necessarily get more than she paid for it new. So, I mean, it happens, but it's hard to say. Yeah, there's some depreciation.

So, yeah, no, Karen, you can have a lot of fun with this because even if you don't sell it, it'll probably give you a a certain amount of satisfaction to see how much more it's worth than you thought it was. And you can go to Carvana.com, C-A-R-V-A-N-A-com, Carvana.com. You can do all this online. We Buy Anycar.com. Just the way it sounds, we buy Anycar.com. I'm sure you've heard of CarMax. I mean, they're the largest retailer of used cars in the world.

CarMax, C-A-M-A-X dot com, for starters. Yeah, I've actually bought cars than them before. And then Varum, that's a crazy name, just like the sound of an engine, V-A-R-O-O-M, V-A-R-O-M-D-O-M-D-com.

V-R-O-M, you can start with those, and then, did you say you had a Mazda? No, this is an Audi, R-S-A-A-O-E-O-E, okay. You could go to the Audi, you could go to the Audi, you're a car department, the local dealers, and let them bid on it too. But you're going to get quite a bit.

Whether you decide to sell or not is up to you, but it's legitimate. You know, the funny thing is, car dealers have been lying to customers for so long, sending those letters out, we want to buy your used car. And the reason they send it out is not because they want to buy the used car. They want you to buy a new car, and they want to get you in the door. Then they'll give you, they'll play games with you. That's the way it used to be. But for the past couple of years, there's a huge, huge car shortage, and yes, they do need your car, and they're competing with each other.

So we're paying unreal money, money that we would have never paid in the past for used cars, and so are the other dealers. And these independents have jumped up like Carvana, we buy any car, and Varum. They're newbies, they're new guys on the block, and they're driving the price up even higher. So as a seller, you're in the driver's seat, you're just going to have a lot of fun. If you do sell it, I'd love to hear back from you and see how much you got for it. But it'll surprise you, I promise. Yeah, definitely, Karen. No, I think I can get $90,000 for this car.

You know, I've toyed with the idea of getting an electric car, but I'm not quite there with it yet. And I don't know, Earl, what kind of car do you have? Just remember, just remember that if you buy another car, you're really going to get, you're going to pay the highest price. So, you know, you can't have your cake and eat it too. You're going to get a whole lot of money for your old car, but you're also going to pay a whole lot of money for the new car. So you have to weigh those. If you're thinking about buying another car, I would price the new car you want to buy first and then find out what you can get for the other one. because you might change your mind.

I'll ride a bike for a couple of years. Yeah, I'll ride a bike. And Karen, guess what? It's a good time to have some fun. And we need a whole lot of that with the, well, environment we're living in. But you have a lot of options, and like I said, you can have a good time with just getting more than three bids. You know, it sounds like as if that you have some time to do this, and it does take time. But stay in touch with us and let us know.

I'm going to let Rick take the mic, but first I want to let you know that you need to send me your contact information. And you can do that through the control, and you can talk to our lovely Elise, who is back there. And she'll take your information and pass it along to me. Now, Rick. The city place down on Okachobi has got a Lucid store, which is one of the new electrical. car show uh startups very nice very nice car okay really okay they're one to if you if you want to even just go to look at them lucid is one of the newer car companies and they uh they've gotten some really good interest in the auto world okay wonderful okay that sounds like a plan

okay thank you Karen thank you spread the word let the ladies know that they're just as important and they can win fifty dollars first two new lady callers. Give us a call again. Let us know how this all turned out. Oh, I will. Thank you. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. We are going to go to Marty, who's in West Palm Beach, and Sarah, just hang in there.

We'll get right to you. Good morning, Marty. Hi, how are you? We're great. Nice to hear from you. Yeah, I've been away for a couple weeks. I missed you when you were off, and then I didn't get back on. I just wanted to tell you a story about the headlights.

In New York State, they have safety inspections, which some of it is a racket. Well, one of the rackets up in, this is in Rochester, New York, when you brought your car in, the guy looks at the tires, you brought it to a gas station. usually. And most of those stations were approved New York State inspection stations. So after they looked at your tires and said the tires were okay and they jacked it up a little and say your tie rod, they're okay, the next thing they did, which was the real racket, they wanted to adjust your headlights. And they adjusted your headlights and charged you. So that was just a racket. Now, I'm sure there's some cars that need an adjustment, but for the most part, nobody needed an adjustment.

So all I could say is people better be careful, and I don't know what your dealership would charge somebody to adjust the headlights. But in Rochester, they used to try to charge a $15, $20 in addition to the inspection fee. What do we charge, Rick? I don't know. I don't think we even have done Headline adjustment in so long I don't know what we would charge for that Yeah Well I'd say probably most cars I'm sure probably don't need it

But like I say that was just a racket And to get some more money out of people You know up north I agree with you That's why I had to move to Florida So I didn't have to get an inspection Yeah I mean there are times that I almost

seeing some of the cars on the road there are times that I think we might would benefit from inspections but unfortunately somebody's always going to take advantage of that sort of situation Marty thanks for the call really appreciate the input okay have a good day

thank you nice to hear from you Marty you know on the headlight thing Alan our body shop expert and insurance expert texted on his tundra and I forgot about this that has a button part of the tow package that lowers your headlights when you have a toe pack when you're telling something.

Yep. Because it'll pull the back of the vehicle down. Yeah. Okay. Okay. 877-960. We're going to go to Sarah, who's been holding from Boonton Beach.

Good morning, Sarah. Good morning, Nancy and Earl and all of you. Are you a first-time caller? Well, you know, Nancy, I called once before, and I wanted the money to go to Jackson. You were going to buy them a new pair of sneakers. Oh, hi. I did that.

Yes, that's very good. Thank you, Sarah. I'm actually calling to say how grateful I am about the information on the battery because I have a hybrid. So I'm just calling to say thank you for the knowledge of how long the battery lasts before it has to be hauled over. Because I have an extended warranty and I was debating on whether keeping it or not. and that kind of helped my decision. We are a font of information.

We're really thankful that you've called and let us know that we did help. That's what the show is all about, just really trying to help the consumer. Love you guys. Oh, I think, have a fan the other day. Thank you so much, Sarah. We love you more.

Thank you so much. There's so much love. We need more love. You too. Bye-bye. 877960 or you can text us at 772-49760 real quick I'm going to mention something in the consumer report and this is really interesting it got my attention and it's about car thefts a car part thefts and how they have risen I mean sharply this catalytic converter that we've talked about in the past

Thus are on the rise by guess what? A hundred a month on an average in 2018 to more than 1,200 a month in 2020. And you know why this has been on the rise, why it's fueled. It's because of, you know, precious metal. Precious metal is the prices have skyrocketed also. So just a little interesting tidbit from Consumer Report. Pickup, if you can, or go to consumer report.org, and you can read all about this. There are so many interesting articles that will help you lease by purchase parts, so on and so forth.

So it's a good avenue for you. 877960, or you can text us at 772-49-30. And don't forget, W-W-W-W. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Okay, Earl. Okay, what? You're on. Oh, okay.

We got any text, too? We do. We got an Amory's text has been waiting for us. Amory says, good morning. Granted, no one likes to being told what to do, but there are times when regulations and laws are necessary. I agree with that wholeheartedly. Don't speed through school zones, obey traffic signals, etc.

What do you feel are the most important and necessary laws concerning car dealers? That's from Anne-Marie. I don't know. I'm starting to think that the laws don't apply to car dealers. Well, I think the most important thing is to enforce the laws we already have, for starters. And I did a blog two, three weeks ago, about the Florida statutes, been on the books for years and years. and if that statute the title of the blog

if you want to go to our website is how to know if a Florida car dealer is breaking the law I say Florida car dealer because every state has different laws and different friends on the car dealers so yeah they're not enforced

the reason being Ann Marie is the fact that they are very powerful lobbyists and that's our system Like it or not, we have the greatest system in the world. I love the United States of America, and I love our political system because it is the best. But it's also very frustrating because if you want to get around the rules, you just hire a bunch of lobbyists and you send them to Washington. So speaking of Washington, D.C., they're the number one listener on our podcast.

So I don't know if there's a link there, maybe the lobbyist or listening to our podcast. I'm not sure what. I forgot they're listening. Yeah. Say, hey, well, listen, but, Amory, there's a ton of laws and regulations that federal and state that the card dealer has to pay attention to. We do, and we keep it clean. But like he said, it feels like no one's watching or no one's caring when car dealers do run afoul of the law. Well, here's a simple example.

Virtually every dealer in the state of Florida advertises cars at a price that you can't buy the car for. Why? And this is even before the pandemic and the ridiculous addendum labels and thousands of dollars over MSRP the car dealers are charging. But even before that and after that, car dealers are adding hidden fees to the price of the car. Florida statute specifically the law in Florida says if you advertise a price you must sell the car for that price and every dealer in Florida with a few exceptions is violating that law. Now why does the Florida Attorney General and all the other regulatory agencies allow that? Because if you want to get elected to office in Florida, you have to have the support of the Florida Automobile Deals Association

the National Automobile Dealers Association, if you're in South Florida, the South Florida Auto Dealers Station, and the Tampa Auto Dealers Station, every, I mean, there's, there's so many political action committees and lobbyists in Tallahassee, Florida, that you'd be afraid to push and enforce along. So that's the way it is. Now, I'm blaming car dealers, but you know, to some extent, let's talk about the National Rifle Association. How about big auto? How about big oil?

Big tobacco. Big tobacco. Look what happened there. They're still selling cigarettes. Yeah, exactly. It should be illegal to sell cigarettes, right? Well, it isn't. Why?

Well, big tobacco. So that's our system. Now, before you get down on it, where else do you want to live? I don't want to live anywhere else but America. I don't want to live in China. I don't want to live in Russia. I don't want to live anywhere else. It's a great country, but we have our problems, and that's one of them.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, next text. Oh, we have a caller? We've got calls backed up. Busy, busy. We're going to go back to the phones, and we're going to talk to John from Palm City. Good morning to everyone. Good morning.

The female call that I call is saying she's got a hot rod, remind me of a car that I just heard a brand new. It's a Cadillac CT5V. It's a black wing. It's a four-door sedan, and it's got 668 horsepower. It's got 659 pounds of torque. I didn't even know this car resisted. 600 pounds? I met in high school, and it has a base of $87,000.

Now, they say that that is not selling well. So the CT4V will continue, but after I think this year it will stop. it. But I was kind of shocked because it seems like Cadillac, and I followed Cadillac history, it looks like Cadillac was always a leader in high-engine. For instance, in 1930, Cadillac came out with a 16-cylinder. But through the years, up until 1940, Cadillac had a V-8, a V-12, and a V-16. So a good friend of mine that I met in high school, he's a Cadillac historian and a collector. He was born in 1940.

He has one of those last 1940 V-16s. They only made 61 cars. But it's unbelievable. What kind of mileage did that get? As a leader, for instance, in 1970, Cadillac came out with a 500 cubic engine

on an oldorado. So it's just kind of shocking that Cadillac, of all people, would be a leader. You would expect Chevrolet, Ford's, you know, but she corvettes. But here's a Cadillac brand new now

with 668 of his power. By the way, not only that that will be discontinued, Chevrolet with this big bomb, and that's a bomb, in the vault, okay? There's another recall on them.

They've changing the batteries, but they also have to install a monitor that the battery doesn't get overcharged. And because they've had the fire problems. But here's it, General Motors' story of cars that discontinued throughout the years, and General Motors did not have it put together with this electric vehicle. Interesting.

Well, one of the reasons that Cadillac especially liked to go to those higher-capacity engines, the 12, the 16 cylinders, is if you think about the lower the number of cylinders, the more vibration you're going to have because they're pounding against each other, more cylinders means actually a smoother running engine. So if you can get a bunch of smaller cylinders using, you know, you're using about the same amount of fuel or maybe a little more. But, of course, in those days, fuel economy wasn't that big a concern. And if you could afford the Cadillac, what you wanted was that engine.

And instead of going brr, you wanted that nice smooth acceleration, that smooth sounding engine that, you know, if you see like the, your local Harley Davidson motorcycle going around two cylinders. We're talking about a dinosaur. Cadillac is down for the count. That's what I was going to say. I was going to say they're looking, people aren't driving big giant, so they're looking for a car that's going to resonate.

Tesla is challenging BMW for the number one luxury car, and they're way ahead of Cadillac. So how many cylinders do you have to put in the Cadillac to make it run as smoothly as an electric car? 48 I agree with Earl 100% I did drive my friends V-16 and it's very smooth

but I wouldn't say it's the fastest thing on the road and it's some gas burners so my Tesla has over a thousand horsepower so you're talking 660 horsepower and I got a Tesla that's almost twice the horsepower and it doesn't have you know a whole bunch of cylinders

but Mark Smith on YouTube just came minutes is a 16-cylinder Cadillac would require 100 octane avgas or aviation fuel so I mean in order to keep it smooth and quiet you'd have to run some pretty good fuel in that thing

that's why most of them are in museums and not being used good reason well I just thought that this was interesting because I wasn't aware that they made a Cadillac a brand new one with 668 horsepower that's an awful a lot of horsepower. That's not needed.

And that Tesla will run rings around that car, I'm sure. Yeah. Well, you can't blame them for trying. The General Motors is struggling Cadillac. You know, if we all went to sleep and woke up in two years, I don't think Cadillac

will be here. No. They're going away of Pontiac Oldsmobile. Yeah. I agree with you 100%. Exactly. So many judges that they've had. Maybe if they get lucky with their electric SUV.

It's coming out next year. Exactly. I'm pulling for GM. I'm going to get a shopping report. Thanks, John. Thanks, John. Great to hear from you. Hey, John, we didn't talk about my barricotta.

I'm hurt. John, call back so we can talk about the barracuda. Did you know that I could go 155 miles an hour back then? Mm-hmm. My children did. I digress. Okay. 877-9-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530.

We're going to go back to the phones where Ward is holding, and he's calling us from Hope Sound. Good morning, Ward. Good morning, morning. You know, you guys might have to turn a show over to Rick because this country might turn into like a cue boat where we're just going to hold on to our cars forever. I'm just keeping up there on them because I'm not going to be a thousand dollars.

The average price is $47,000 for a car now, and I paid a lot less for my first house. Yeah, isn't that true? I just don't see it. I mean, I think dealerships are dinosaurs. You know, you have any other plans, Earl? Because I hope you invested well, because I don't think you, I don't see, you said you don't see Cadillac down the road. I don't see car dealers down the road. I'm sad to say I agree with you.

I think that car dealerships, as we know of them today, are dinosaurs like Cadillac, and it's going to be a whole different way of distributing transportation. And, you know, I'd love to be alive to see that happen. I think in 20 years it'll be a whole new landscape out there. But you're absolutely right. It's just a shame that the high school system, the school system, this country doesn't still have the tech schools that they used to. Exactly right.

You know, you could go to a tech school and become a, actually, you know, a technician can make quite a bit of money now. No, any technician can't hire, we can't hire good techs. We, for a body shop. I was talking to my body shop manager, Al Napier, used to be on the show the other day, and we're two or three tech short in our collision department, body repair. We can't hire anybody.

I mean, a good body tick can make close to $100,000, $80,000. And there's somebody out there. All the body repair guys are my age, you know, and knowing the young people are going into it, and the vocational schools aren't turning them out fast enough if they turn out any. So I wonder what State Farm, Allstate, Guy Co, and the rest of the insurance companies

are going to do when one of their clients says, I wreck my car when there's nobody out there to repair them. So it's going to be an interesting world for the next 20 years. Yeah, it's kind of, you know, it's kind of sad. I mean, I know you said this is still the best country to live in, and I agree. It is, it is, yeah. We are falling behind on a lot of things here. But anyhow, let's not get too serious.

I'm just saying, I understand. I got, I got a Tacoma, I got 300-some-thous-thous-thousand-my-wife's got a Ford. It's got up 200. So I guess we're just going to hold out to him until the thing blows over. Yeah. I don't see. Not a bad move. It will blow over, but it will never be back to normal.

It'll be different, but it won't be this bad. It'll be different. Well, I appreciate you and your whole staff and crew and everybody. I enjoy listening to your show, and we'll give you all the respect in the world. Thank you, Ward. Please call again. Thank you for listening. Cheer up, Ward. Okay.

That'll be all right. Pull yourself together. Ladies and gentlemen, just recently there was an article in the Palm Beach Post. Earl had shared that with me yesterday. And it's about GM. You believe this? GM, ready to sell thousands of its vehicle parts directly to customers. Users are going to be able to buy accessories over the air.

Yeah, it's going to be a pretty interesting time. This is all from the chief digital. office wrote would you care to elaborate all the car dealers out there and when I hear that it'll raise their hair on the back of their night because it's competition you know car dealers have a monopoly on selling parts and cars new cars and new parts and they are every state has their their laws baked in thanks through strong lobbying as we talked about earlier now here's gentle motors coming out and say hey I'm going to go in competition with the

gentle mother's dealers, I'm going to start selling parts to your customers, meaning the car dealers, four dealers customers, and I'm going to sell them online. You say, well, what's the big deal? Well, car dealers don't have any competition, really now. There are a few sources of parts. Nancy and I were talking about this on the car driving in the studio. A lot of people have never heard of rock auto.com, R-O-C-K, like a rock, rock-auto.com. great place to buy new parts. Amazon. You can buy a parse online from Amazon. Now where they get

the parts, I'm not sure, probably from dealers, because the laws currently support the dealer. Nobody can sell a new car except a franchise dealer. And really up until now, nobody can sell a new part unless you bought it somewhere else. You can't buy it directly from the manufacturer unless you're a dealer. So this is a crack in the dike for the franchise system and for all the car dealers around and I know there are a lot of people out there that are listening are getting very nervous about that. Gentle Motors is a major move. It's interesting.

The manufacturers competing with the dealers, it's not the first time, and I'm sure Rick has a whole lot to talk about as far as this is concerned, but you're going to be able to take a look at catalogs, over 45,000 different repair and maintenance parts, and it's going to be an interesting time. Rick? All I can see is when people start goofing up and they're amateurs that don't know what they're doing and start just putting parts on, when they come to me,

oh boy. Well, Earl and I talked about that. Well, Rick, how about this? Supposing they buy the parts online, save a lot of money, and bring them to you and say, now please install this for me or fix my car with these parts. Or do they go to you first and find out what parts do I need. Instead of buying it from the dealer as some sort of a ridiculous markup, they

go online, they buy them and they bring them to you in a box. You put them on, right? No. No? Because that would be a conflict of interest between me and you. Oh. Because if they're not buying the parts from your parts department... It doesn't mean you literally. And they want to come to me.

It didn't mean you literally. He means... Now, if I was an outside mechanic, then I was an independent shot. Then I'll give them the Glenn Ballard and he'll put them on. But if you don't want the job, he's an honest man. But, I mean, the point being, though, if they were to come to an independent mechanic, what you're going to see is the independent mechanic now, instead of buying the parts from discounted out of parts or someplace,

and having a middleman, he's going to be able to buy parts for, say, I as a customer, come to a mechanic, say, with my Camry, and I need an alternator. Instead of having to get one from discount that may be a cheap alternator, going to last me eight months to a year. He can get me a nip-and-denzo alternator straight from Toyota at a huge savings from not buying it from Earl Stewart, but getting it straight from Toyota. He can get a huge savings. I get a top-quality part put on my car at a lesser price and everybody wins in that end. But unfortunately, you as the dealership owner lose out

because you didn't get your middleman markup on it. Well, yeah, I understand that. But this is a this is a radio show for consumer. Right. And I'm not saying that... That's what I'm just saying. That's what we do for two hours every Saturday is show people how they can save money on cars and parts and repair. And by saving money, the dealers don't make as much money.

And let's see, I wear two hats. So we're seeing the change is coming. You can buy a car online right now from mock auto.com below the recommended list price the dealers charge and that's a great place to buy a part. So this show for the past

two or three years or more has been recommending rockato.com. A point of this is that General Motors is now getting into the game. The General Motors gets into the game then Ford May and Honda May and Toyota May and it's a crack

in the dike of the franchise system for dealers. So let's move along. Yeah, well at any rate The launch date is definitely not been mentioned yet. 877-960-99-68-772-49-6530. A website that I mentioned last week that really needs to be put out there is www. Florida Law Protecting Carbuyers.com.

That's what we're here for. We have no more calls for the moment. Stu, do you want to help on? I got a text here from Dax and says, Hello, good morning, Earl and everyone. Glad you're back. Happy New Year. I have a question about my lease vehicle that's going to be maturing in July,

and I want to buy it. The leasing company is offering, it's my wife's car, the leasing company is offering her to return the vehicle right now, and they'll pay the remainder of the lease for like six months of payment, six months worth of payments. How true is that coming from them? I don't believe it, do you? I do believe it, Dax.

but we'll get to that in a second. How soon or how should I do the process? I have the docs and the price of the vehicle and the option to buy at the end of the lease. Can I negotiate that price or is it set? And what should I be preparing to pay legit amount when I buy out the vehicle? Price, dock fee, etc.

And so please advise so I don't overpay or get taken advantage of. On the first point, yes, if they're offering to pay the remaining six, five, six payments for you return the car early, that's not too good to be true because your car is worth a lot more right now than it's ever been. And they want that car because even after taking care and absorbing those remaining payments, they're going to still sell that car at an auction and make a whole bunch of money. If you buy the car at the end, you'll be able to do the same thing too, if you like. You could buy it because that residual, your buyout option is set in stone

and that's the price that you'll buy it for. Fortunately for you, I can almost guarantee that that amount is way below the true market value of your car. But really, what he should do is establish the market value today and see what the payoff is today. So that's the true comparison between their offer to make all the remaining payments.

So it's a matter of an arithmetic comparison. You find out how much, how many dollars are you ahead with one course or the other, and then you make your choice. And then the other question has to do with what should you expect to pay? And that's where the bad news is. I'm pretty sure it's almost exclusively you have to go through the selling dealer or go through the selling manufacturer dealer. It might not have to be the same dealership.

But you have to go through the dealership to buy the car, and this is where things get sketchy, especially in. Florida. I don't know how it is where you are, but the dealer can charge whatever they want on top of that car. They can add dealer fees, add denim, all the same garbage on your own car. I don't think addendum. I think they, I don't believe. Well, I'm sorry, but they can charge inspection fees and servicing and dock fees and prep, they can add a whole lot of garbage to the price of your own car. So what I'd look around for if that's the case is if you can take it to any of the

any dealer of that manufacturer, call around and find out what they're charging if you buy out the lease, because you might get lucky and find one that's not doing it as egregiously as another dealer. Whether it's a manufacturer, the dealer, or anybody offers you a price on a car,

you're driving a day, a lease car, use car, whatever. You've got to look at multiple prices. And back in the day, before COVID, I always recommended to get three quotes. Now I'm telling you to get six or seven quotes, because there are so many opportunities out there

for high prices on buying a used car, whether it's off-lease or just the car you're driving. I think of it as being fun. I almost wish I had a used car I wanted to sell. I'd just love to go around and see how much more money I could get for the car than what it would have been worth a year ago. Nancy said earlier, it's like 30% difference a year ago, And if you go back two years for what used cars were going, it's even higher.

Used car prices are climbing every day. New car prices are plateaued, I think. I think they're coming down a little bit. Okay. All right, let's get on to another text. This one's from Joe, who has got a question about the rear window on his BMW convertible. And here's the text. It says, Earl, I have a 1998 BMW convertible that is in mint condition.

The only thing negative about it is that I haven't addressed, that I haven't addressed, is the rear window on the convertible on top for 10 years it's yellow very difficult to see through it's possibly a safety a dangerous safety issue what would be the best product to restore and what steps would you have to take to do a professional job i've tried to google a product recommendation by consumer reports but haven't able to find anything is it adequate to rub it out only by hand or would you get a much better job professionally if you use a buffer are there any tips you can give me. So, Joe, I don't know for sure. I mean, Rick, are you familiar this? Rick, I'll have the answer, right? Well, there's two types of windows that I've seen.

Some of them, very few, actually had a vinyl window, a clear vinyl window. Yeah, I don't think there's anything to do with that. That you'd need to replace. Yeah. If it's a glass window, however, there are quite a few models of convertibles that have an actual glass window. I'd be surprised that's discoloring. Yeah. Yeah, he's specified. It's plastic. Okay, yeah, I would find a trim shop somewhere local to you. Check the reviews, make sure you get the highest quality. Because a car like that, I wouldn't skip on it. I would find the highest quality shop and then have them replace that window.

Especially that BMW is describing a mint condition. Like I say, I would look around, shop around, maybe talk to the BMW dealer and see if they have a trim. shop that they use and find someone that just flat out has the highest quality and has your best interest wants to really take care of your car and get it done by someone who cares for it. Yeah, you're going to make such a big profit on the BMW of the window is going to be a chunk change compared to the profits you're going to make on it. I'd hurry up.

Put the money in your car, yeah, absolutely. Plus, I've seen what you're talking about. It's that plastic rear video and it yellows, and I think they have to do it. age thing. Yeah. Okay, let's go to Al. I'll send us the text says, hey, Earl, good to hear you all back on the tube. Sorry to hear some of your staff dealing with this COVID mess. Hope we get through this soon. Earl, I have a question on financing. When my new Lexus arrives at the dealership, maybe in the next two weeks, I'm planning on doing Lexus financing. 0.29%. He says, is this a good rate? Yes, that is a good rate. That sounds like a subvented Lexus rate. Anyway, so it's 0.2209%. 29%, the sales price is $48,700. He says, do I have to give a down payment? You don't have to give a down payment, depending on your credit. If you have a good credit, you don't have to give a down payment.

Also, what would the cost of interest over 60 months of financing? You're going to make me do math. You can do that on a simple online calculator. Just say interest charge 60 months at 2.29%. You'll be pretty close. What's the approximate payment? Same thing. Don't make me do math right now. Tell you, when I'm done reading the text, I'll run

the payment for you. But here's the thing what you don't know. It's charging you $48,700 for the car. There's going to be some fees in there, too, so we don't know what the dealer's going to charge on top of that. So it could be thousands more, we don't know. And there might be an alternative cash

discount to usurp the subsidized interest. Exactly. Check that out in comparison. You might, anybody buying a car because of zero percent or one? percent or in this case point two two percent anybody buying a car because of the super low rate remember this all interest rates are super low right now so if you got really good credit you can finance a car two or three percent so having

one percent or point two percent is not such a big deal as when standard rates for like five and six percent and then you have to decide how long you're going to finance it if you're not going to you're only going to be able to take advantage of that interest savings while you're paying your interest on the financing. And you might want to take maybe a $1,000 or $2,000 rebate in lieu of the subsidized entry. So you've got to do your homework and put a pencil of paper and figure it out. Okay.

I'm just trying to calculate the interest right here, but this online thing will only let me use integers and not decimals. Okay, so let's see. We have any text? I think we're all caught up on text right now. How about YouTube? Are you tubes? We're running kind of clean on YouTube today.

What I said earlier in the show, and I was a little disappointed. Maybe it doesn't fascinate anybody else as much as it does us. But we want to know why everybody in Washington, D.C. is listening to our radio show. And I don't mean that literally. The podcast, the highest number of podcast listeners of any place in the world to whirl on cars in the past few weeks is suddenly exploded to Washington, D.C. Anybody got a theory of why are we under investigation by the FBI? Is there some sort of a political thing going on?

Why are people in Washington, D.C., listening to Earl Stewart on Carr's podcast? Any clues, text would be welcome. I don't know. Are you interested? Are we having anonymous feedback? We have anonymous feedback? Yeah. I'm going to get to this.

I'm not going to touch it. Okay. This just came in, then we'll go back, back to get through a few of them. Anonymous feedback from on your anonymous feedback.com. We don't know who you are, and we can't find out even if we tried. All right, here's the comment. If I wanted to build a new Toyota with the exact options and colors that I want, can I do that at your dealership right now?

Does that take up one of your allotted cars, or is it like an additional sale for Earl Stewart Toyota? Do you like when customers do that, and about how long would it take to come in? Well, you can do that online or at a dealership and you can pick out a model of a car with the color and the features and options that you want. But unfortunately, everything is being ordered now. So you would be able to put in an order and the wait time is anywhere from three to maybe six months on average for vehicles. And I'm just talking about Toyota's other dealerships might be longer or shorter.

But that's about how long, and no, we don't mind, you know, putting together the exact car that you want. You know, it's a customer choice, and you can, they're only limited by what the manufacturer says you can make. It's a smart way to buy a car today, and there's a lot of thought that this is going to be a sea change, it's going to be a watershed moment on the way cars are retailed. And I think if you're going to spend average price, $47,000 for a new car, if you're going to spend $47,000, why not order exactly what you want? and wait six weeks or if that's the time to do it because in the past you'd go in there and maybe you wanted this car with these these features but they didn't have in a lot so you sell them for something less you got to wait anyway so you might as well order that your perfect car I think

this is the way it's going to be from now on I think I think especially for your educated consumers and we have more and more educated consumers than we've ever had go in and order the car you want I mean the game the dealers play now is they advertise the bait and switch, they get you in the door, they got two or three hundred cars sitting around there, and the marching orders to the salesman is get that customer in a car, get them over the curb, get them down the highway, and if you don't have what he wants, find something that you can put them in that he thinks he wants, and that's the way cars being sold.

It makes no sense, and I think we're going to see, get used to it. This is the way cars are going to be sold. Instead of having too many cars in stock and the manufacturer building too many cars and shove them down the dealer's throats, which is the term I've used all my career as a dealer, you have a representative supply, and you can see and drive a car of the making, you know, model you want,

and then you order the exact car you want, because the proliferation of colors and options and accessories and a car, car is huge. I mean, if I had to have a car in my inventory as a car dealer that method needs and taste of everybody that came in to look at a car, I'd have to carry what's due? A thousand cars? Yeah, I mean, that's actually like one of them. I mean, the goals and stocking, now it's different but in the past, yeah, we're trying to get as much as you can. So, yeah, we carry 500 cars and we, but we don't sell them all every month. It's just kind of, it's a dumb way to do it.

Yeah, it is. Stu, I have a question for you. I was asked this past week about waiting for a vehicle to come in. Is it, in fact, six weeks? Has the time shortened? Oh, no, no. It's longer than that. I would say three to six months.

I heard you all mentioned six weeks. I was just curious. So it's about the same as it was previously. No, no, no. Six months, not weeks. Oh, six months? Yeah, three to six months is a typical wait time. Okay.

The other question I was asked, this is for Rick, I was asked about synthetic oil and by a young lady she was asking me if she should pay extra whenever she does get her oil change. Just a confirmation from you, I told her she should, you know, she should really go to her owner's manual first to find out because I don't think there really is that many cars coming through service that request synthetic oil. Well, most cars actually now are required for synthetic, the newer cars. Older cars, to me, it's a cheap insurance. Synthetic oil is refined to a much higher quality, and although you should stick with the recommended mileage that your owner's manual calls for, it can't hurt to spend a little extra if you want that engine to last longer if you're planning to keep driving that car until the wheels fall. What can she expect to pay, $20, $30? Most synthetic oils now are running around $10 a quart, $8 to $10 a quart.

$60, $80. Yeah. Some cars, it can go as high as $25 to $30 a quart for the oil, and conventional oil right now is around $5 to $6 a quart. She was quoted $30. Stu, what did you just quote? For a synthetic oil change, they run about $60 to $80. Interesting. Okay, folks, to Cynthia, I hope you were listening this morning. That's your answer to your question. 877-960 and you can text us at 772-49-30. Don't forget, we have a mystery shopping report coming up from Johnson Honda of Stewart. We're going to go back to Rick or go back to Stu.

Yeah, we got some more anonymous feedback. The next one came in a couple of days ago, probably referring to last week's show that I wasn't on. Isn't wearing masks in a studio a little over the top? I don't think you can catch anything from callers or YouTubers. Well, you know, I don't want to get to that discussion, but yes, it is precaution with the Amicron virus. It's analogous to measles,

which is something that you can get, If you, somebody at measles looks at you because it's carried in the air, it stays in the air. And the mask we're wearing are 95% efficient. And that still gives you a chance. You never know when you've been exposed because often people are asymptomatic. They carry the virus and they don't know it. And everybody, children, older people, middle-aged people. That's the reason we have a pandemic.

Plus, it hasn't been proven that you can't catch it from YouTube. Exactly, yeah. No, no. Never know. We're looking into it. I'm worried about Rick, because Rick goes to the clubs. But we, you know, we don't like to get on that subject because everybody wants to talk about it, and this is Earl on Cars, and not Earl Sturl on Omicron.

And if you don't want a mirror mask and you don't want to take precautions, knock yourself out, just don't knock me out or my family or my friends. Stay away from us, but do whatever you want to do. I'm not going to try to talk you out of it. And nobody can see Jonathan. Guess what? He's in a huge plastic bubble. That's why Earl carries a long cane and people get too close.

He holds them in bed. Yeah, exactly. All right, next anonymous feedback. This will be now Earl on climate change. Lots of talk in the media that we must stop using gas and diesel vehicles because they're causing global warming, among other things, yes. Many years ago when the ice ages were ending and the glaciers covering North America started melting to create the Great Lakes. and the Mississippi River. I wonder if the media was writing

on their stone tablets that the world was doomed as they are now. Actually, they did. There's a stone tablet that was uncovered. Right in the path of the brand new Mississippi River. And they say, guess what? There's a giant flood of water coming.

Exactly, yeah. And so we think we're going to have an ice age. So, yeah, there was. That answer is that question. Let's move along. Yeah, there's a lot of folks living where the Great Lakes are now. Yeah, I've got one here on YouTube for you.

Richard says, I suggest you check out the Now You Know channel on YouTube. They aired a show yesterday expressing great concerns about Tesla's service network and practices. Do you have any thoughts on that? I know you, with your Tesla, I know you've been keeping up on Elon Musk's adventures lately. Yeah, one thing I've learned about Tesla through the experience of buying one and driving one is that they aren't the best when it comes to selling. they are better than average by far their service I haven't had it in for service

so I can't comment about that quality of the car is not as good as some other cars Lexus has higher quality than Tesla in a lot of respects and so Lexa is not supernaturally amazingly good

but they are a leader and they have a product that is highly desirable and extremely well engineered and not perfect. So I think they have competition and everybody agrees

that there will be competition. Yeah. Okay. Got some anonymous feedback again, just came in. It says, Are you serious about waiting six months for a new car?

That model will not work. I would wait a few days, maybe, weeks, but not that long. I believe that buyers will not react well to waiting six months. Most of us will not be... Okay. Well, it's not really a model.

It's kind of like a forced situation. We just can't get cars. No dealerships can. And so it's not really a model. But it is working really well, even though it's not planned. If you didn't hear the beginning of the show, 2021, was the number one profit year for car dealers, all car dealers, hands down. And they've been doing this exactly taking orders on cars. Yeah, and the point now is if you don't want to buy a car and you want an instant gratification,

and you go into a car dealership, he's going to charge you far more money than you are going to like to pay. But if you have a lot of money and you don't care about that, then knock yourself out, go in, buy a car on the showroom floor. It'll charge your probably $10,000 over his sticker, and it'll take you 20 years before the value of the car gets down to where you can trade it back in and feel like you've got a fair deal. So, yeah, it's all what you want to pay for. If you want to make a good buy and get exactly what you want, then you're going to wait six months or three months. If you can't wait six or three months, then you're going to pay for the privilege of not waiting. It's everybody's individual decision. What's great is you have the option.

You want to wait? You don't want to wait. You want to buy it. It's an option. Not only are you going to lose a lot of money by buying quickly, you're not going to get exactly what you want. No. Probably. I mean, if you go into a Chevrolet dealer and he's got 15 cars in his inventory,

do you really think you're going to get the exact options and equipment and color of the interior or exterior that you want? No. So if you want to compromise on what you want, and you want to compromise on what you want to pay, you can buy a car today. Anybody will sell your car today for their price, not your price, and you'll have your car. You'll have your instant gratification. And you won't get MSRP. Think about that, folks.

877-960-99-60. Text, 772-497-6530. Don't forget, I didn't mention this earlier, but there's Earl's Vigilantes, and you can go to Earl on Cars, and you can sign up and become a volunteer. Look at that hat. It's a beauty.

Stu designed up. There you go, close up. Free hat. Earl's Vigilantees. You can help. a lot of different people just by having your experience so you can help the people in your community and please we have a lot of great volunteers it's it's great they really become involved and like I said they help people in their community also maneuvering your way around the

you know this digital age that we've been in for a long long time there are a few people that need a little help in that direction. So we're looking for volunteers as well. And you can go to Erlon Cars and get all that information. As I said earlier, we do have a mystery shopping report coming up, and that mystery shopping report is from Johnson Honda of Stewart. So you want to stay tuned for that. And most of all, we love to hear from you.

We want you to vote on that mystery shopping report. And that number is 772-497-6530. wrote where you can vote. We're going to go back to Stu. We have a follow-up text from Joe who asks us about cleaning the rear plastic window in his convertible BMW. He said, this is Joe again.

You did not answer my question. Amazon sells many restoration polishes, and I want to do it myself. Which of those products would you recommend? We haven't reviewed any of the Amazon products. Like you said, we don't really encounter that often. I do know, just

from my experience in use cars, that typically when we see things like that, it's on an older car, and cleaning it is kind of, kind of, it's beyond cleaning. It looks like it's lived its life. I thought we came to the conclusion that you can't clean the plastic.

That the plastic has a yellow coloration. Right, you can clean it. You're never going to restore it fully. And I think the point is if you have a mint condition, 1990 at BMW convertible, your best interest is to restore places. Class window, you can polish and clean. But a plastic window is permeated with the color, right?

My opinion would be, if you really, Joe, if you really want to try it yourself, look at the Amazon products. Go for the best reviews. Pick the one with the highest reviews and the highest number of stars. And I would take a moment and actually read through some of those reviews. Be sure that they're talking about. To see what they're looking at. You're sure they're talking about plastic and not glass, right?

Yeah, well, glass generally doesn't discolor as much, but that's certainly possible, too. I looked at it up. There's a lot of products, you know, rag tops, plastic wind. and do cleaner for soft for convertible tops and things like that. And I'm sure they all clean, but when you have plastic that's been pitted and worn by age and hit with ultraviolet for the time long, it's not going to, it will look like crap until you replace it. All right, so I think we're all caught up there on text.

I've got one on YouTube here. Kyle in Pennsylvania says, Stu, which traded dealership was it that ran dozens of cars to the auction? Was it Vero Beach? Yep. What do you think Toyota is going to do to them, or is there any update? Here's what Toyota will do to them. If they sell the cars before within 120 days and register the cars, they'll be charged back two-for-one, which means that they will not get, for every car that they sold, they will be penalized two cars on future allocations.

Ouch. But that's if they do that. If they keep the cars longer than the 120-day rule, they can sell them, and there will be. no penalty whatsoever. Of course, what you have to look out for is that same dealer advertising current year model, they'll say 2,022 vehicles available at this price. They won't tell you that it's been titled into their rental company and been sitting on the ground for four months until you come in and then, you know,

then they got you in the door. So you decide, do I want to buy this rental car that's been sitting there for four months at the lower price or do I really want a new car? which is what I thought I was coming in for when I saw the advertisement. Right. So there are penalties, but there's ways around them. I think the gamble, there's other dealers that are doing this as well. That was the biggest incident that we heard about,

is the gamble is you're making so much money in these cars right now, and you'll be able to sustain what they hope is a minor penalty down the road. They're gambling that the inventory situation is going to improve, and it won't hurt them that much. You have anything else, Stuart? We have another text from, we have a text from Bob says, where do you find the paint color code on a row four? I think that's on the sticker and the door jam, isn't it?

Yes. Look out on the door jam there, and it usually will say something like, I believe, C-S-T-R, and then there will be letters and numbers following it, and the ones that correspond with the C position will be your paint code. And, or if you have your old window sticker, it's on the, it's on the Monroni label. Bob, you tell me, color your cars, I'll tell you the paint code. Well, and the other one is if you go to your local dealership, give them your VIN number.

They can tell you your paint code. That's right. They can look it up instantly. We've got computers and stuff like that. We can figure these things out. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, you know, back to that wait on that vehicle that you may have ordered, Stu, quoted three to six months.

You know, sometimes these automakers are leaving out some equipment, and it's due to the microchip shortage. So you really want to make sure to check your new car when it does come in and make sure that those features are installed free when you pick up that car. We are going to go back to the phones. We don't have much time left for the phones, but we have two callers here. the roadrunner is a regular caller and Bill hang on we'll be with you in a second roadrunner Steve good morning beep beep hi hi Steve what you go Steve I thought I love Steve he ran off yeah I heard him beep beep okay Bill are you still with us yeah oh good morning Bill welcome to the show

good morning chance to call lately but good news bad news okay good news is that I'm leaving Palm Beach County oh that's good I'm gonna have to try to find you guys online or through someplace else and I'm gonna miss you oh oh we're gonna miss you too yeah you can reach us online just our roll on cars on dot com no stream that's H-T-R-E-A-M-S-T-R-O-O-N-Cars.com. And anywhere in the world, just go to that URL, click it on, and everywhere you are, every Saturday morning. That's just it.

I'm retiring. I'm not planning on getting up Saturdays. Well, congratulations. You could do our podcast. They're all recorded. Every show is recorded. Hey, you have to wake up, yeah. Before you were talking about customers.

bring in their own ports to repair facilities. I'm in and out of shops all day, five days a week. Change shops, independence, little local, you know, mom-and-pop shops. And a lot of them have signs saying that if you bring your own port, we do not warranty anything. Well, that's true. I mean, you could do anything you want. They love to have your cellular park.

They don't want you to buy the part. It's like anything else. You heard Rick, he almost had a heart attack when I said, what would happen is someone came in with parts, say what else were. Car dealers, the manufacturer suggested retail for car dealers on parts is about 40%. Now, that's not a little markup.

The dealers then take that 40% markup, and they'll mark it up even beyond that, depending on the part, some of the high demand of maintenance are not marked up like that. But if you're going to buy something like a camshaft or a generator or an alternator or an expensive part, you're going to pay through the nose because the markup won't be 40 percent, it will be greater. The parts managers and the dealerships have their own little department, their own little

markup system, and they charge the service department for the parts. Service Department then passes the part along to you and they mark that up again. So you've got a Ford dealer, you got Ford marks the park up to the parts department. The parts department marks the part up to the service department, and the service department marks the part up to the buyer. If you want to short circuit that and buy a car directly and get a good buy a part directly, they're not going to like it. They're going to say something like, I won't warranty apart.

but why wouldn't they warranty a part if they came to you, if you have a General Motors product and you bring your in the unopened box from General Motors with a VIN number on it, with a part number on it, proving that it was a genuine part, why wouldn't

they warranty it? They're doing that to discourage you from saving yourself some money. Well, that's just it. It's more money in their pocket. Exactly, yeah. So, if Follow the money. That's all about the money. And I encourage you if you can find the part, check the, you know, when you're having a repair done, you want to check the total price.

That's probably the simplest way. That includes the labor and the part. If you want to break it down a little bit and really do some work, you can compare the parts price, again, with the labor. If you get a too high of parts price, then buy the part directly. be sure it's a genuine part. I'd be very afraid of after market parts. Genuine Ford, genuine Honda, whatever your car is. And bring it to them in the box. Be sure you get the right part because you don't know. You're going to get a diagnosis. You're going to get an estimate. And on the estimate will show you what they're going to do. And you'll say, okay, what is that part?

You find out what the part is? And if the parts, if the part's fair, price fairly, let them use it. If you think you're being gouged, buy the part elsewhere, bring it in, and let them fix it for you. But you need to ask them, like in your case, will you do it? They may say no, then you go somewhere else. And also, if you bring your car to these little repair shops, look out for disposal fees and incidental fees. Yeah. Yeah, that's a... Shop supply.

Yeah. That's the big one. Yeah. Well, listen, thank you very much. Well, remember, stream or roll-oncars.com, we wish you the best of luck in your retirement. And please keep calling the show. You're an interesting guy. Very educated.

We'd like to hear from you wherever you end up. And good luck and stay safe and be healthy. Yeah, very educated, Bill. We miss you. If you can, give us a call. If I get up on time. Okay. I'm going to, I'll start calling you, get you out of bed.

Okay, you've got my number. I got your number. Thanks, Bill. We're going to go to the road road. All right, guys. Stay, stay healthy. You too, my friend. As always, stay happy.

All right, sleep in. Enjoy retirement. Thank you. Yes, too. That's the point. Okay, we're going to go to the Roadrunner. Hi, Steve. Good morning, everybody.

Happy new year. There he is. I was reading this article in the paper about these terms that card dealership shoes. Like they called a person is an ace that's the customer who comes in and doesn't haggle the price. They just buy the car. Then they have another term they called the paper boy. That's a person that comes in with the newspaper ad, expect him to get that price. Did you have any terminology like that?

Well, I know that we had, not paperboard. We had, well, this is in the beginning, in the, around late 90s when the Internet was first getting popular, we called him Internet Warriors. They'd come walking in with, but Earl would know more terms going further back in. I just know the real old ones. Like, we got a pipe spoker. These are the guys that were the engineers and the slow talkers and the overlay. analytic people, pipe spokers, tire kickers, we call them, and then I got some names I can't use

on the air that we used to call people back in the day. The bottom line is a lot of disrespect for the customer, and there's a lot of, you know, I'm on Facebook, and that's, you know, they have a lot of groups they call, and there's a group called car salesman, and I joined the group, and you would not believe. leave. If you have, if you can get on Facebook, if you have access to Facebook, look up the car salesman. It's just like that. They have a huge group, the way it sounds, car salesmen, and you read the comments, and if there's any doubt that the things I say on this show, they say you deprecate car dealers, you insult car dealers, you know, blah, blah, blah.

You go to thousands of car salesmen on that group and read the comments that they have about their customers and the money they make and the price gouging. They are in a feeding frenzy now with this sellers, with this buyer's market, I mean, sellers market, sellers market, they're making, these guys are making hundreds of thousands of dollars car salesmen by price gouging and laughing as a stupid customer. So, yes, it's real, and a car salesman is a group on Facebook. You can join it. All you have to do is click on there, and you can watch what goes on.

It's amazing. And did you ever hear of the term an auto butler? Yes. Auto butler sounds like one of these protection packages that they put on the car and they put on the addendums, like paint sealant and some of that. Okay, junk, in other words, junk. My other question is, who's the person that came up with the idea of a key fob? That was Bartholomew Fob in 1822.

It was made out of brass back then. I always carry an extra key in my wallet in case I leave the key in the car. Now I got to wear a stupid thing around my neck, so I don't leave it in the car. And I just found out there's a key inside that key fob. I guess that's what they call it that. Yeah. That's the little mechanical key in case the battery in your car goes dead. And believe it or not, you can actually buy that little tiny key separate, have it cut,

carry just that little tiny piece in your wallet, and you can leave the key fob in your car, mechanically lock the car, and carry just that tiny little piece with you. Okay, the thing is, I see the key bar opens up the driver's side door. But you can't stick a key inside on the dashboard. It's the push button junk. Right.

That's just to get you inside. Oh, you know what? Listen, I'm from New York. I know how to get inside the car. All right. So you don't need to hang it around your neck. I carry two types of slinges in my car because I held people out when they leave their keys in the car at Walmart.

That's a dying art right there. Steve, you're a real jam. Well, yeah, but once in a while I'll get in. On the older cars I could do it, the new cars I can't. Because you're on AAA, they do it for you. Yeah, the newer ones are blocked. I see that little hydraulic bag that they stick in the window to get the door open. Yep.

They pump it up. I bought one at them at Home Depot for $20. Is that right? Wow. Yes, and it lifts up to 300 pounds. Is that right? It would open the door of about an inch. Wow.

You know, this one, you know, when you pry it open your hand and you can put that in there, you just pump it up. It's like a blood pressure thing. Right. You just squeeze the bulb and... I'm sure that doesn't hurt the car. And then you've got a long rod. You've got a long rod that goes in through that opening

that you then hook the door handle and unlock the door or you can hit the handle and open the door. door and then your door will never shut right way. Well, no, then you just put, you put the window down, you grab the top of the door and just give a little tweak inwards and it comes right back to shape. Do you steal cars on the side? I think Stephen Rick are car thieves. No, but the day that the one of our rescue dogs from Big Ranch accidentally locked

the door of the car and the poor dog is locked inside the car and the woman came in Allegedly accidentally. She was frantic, so I got my little kid out, and I wouldn't unlock the car and got the car open for her. Same to the dog. Same to the puppy dog. Interesting. Hey, Steve, you still there?

Yes. We just love hearing from you. Okay, well, I got a, my friend in Pennsylvania set me a muscle car sale thing for 1970. Do you know a Superbird was only selling for $4,000? A 340 dust mill was selling for $2,800. I was looking at the four prices of the Barakota and the 70 Roadrunner. I wish I was back in those days with money. Oh, wow.

Gasoline was $0.8 a gallon. Yes. Did you say barracuda? Yes, I know. I know. Hey, Steve. I own two of them. Hey, Steve, talking about Pennsylvania, back in my neighborhood,

I'll tell you what, we got in and out of clock locked cars easily. It was a technique that only a Pittsburgh girl could learn in other of my neighbors. It was illegal. It involved a cement block. Hey, it was great hearing from you.

Okay, yeah, because I visit friends in Jeanette. That's on the other side of Pennsylvania. Jeanette, wow, I'm familiar with that place, but that's another show. Hey, Steve, I would love for you to vote on the Johnson Honda of Stewart Mystery Shopping Report. I think you're really going to enjoy it.

Can you do that? How do I get that? 772. Just keep listening. 772-497-6530, just text us. Oh, okay. All righty. Thank you.

I'm cutting on you. Bye, bye, Steve. Okay. Bye-bye. Enjoy the weekend. Okay. Okay, that is our last call. And I can see by the clock, we're at 937.

So I think that we might have to get to the mystery shopping report. We need theme music for the mystery shopping report. Wouldn't that be nice? I'm picturing like news music, like, you know, like important evening news. Yeah, like breaking news. You're like from old TV. theme like i spy or or you know yeah there's a there's a there's a there's a

peter gun there's a few there's a few background uh music that we listen to from madman uh which uh was that amazing whenever they uh don draper walked into the dealership and he was purchasing a car for six thousand dollars okay it's a great series tune in mystery shop johnson Honda Stewart and you know we we haven't we've been out of town and we just got back to South Florida and this is our domestic local shop that we did Martin County Stewart is not my it's my last name but spelled differently toilet Stewart Stewart to you people around the world is in still southeast Florida last week in Nashville we were out of town agent Lightning found a Nissan

dealership that didn't jack up the price with addendums or market adjustments. It was just, this is happening more and more folks. The dealers were starting to see the light, a few of them, and every now and then we run across one, despite having only a handful of cars on the lot in a market, this is Nashville, and a market that justifies sky high prices, action, Nissan managed to restrain itself and cap its pricing. It's pretty close to MSRP. Now think about this.

If you're anywhere, if you're anywhere in Tennessee and you want a Nissan, action Nissan in Nashville. I mean, it's worth the drive. You can actually buy a Nissan pretty close to MSRP, which is nine out of ten dealers won't do that. They did have an $899 dealer fee and hidden fee, but they knocked $500 off that. and I ended up like 300 bucks over MSRP. So if you could find a dealer to the associate a car at that close to MSRP, grab it. I actually had a guy call me about a Lexus dealership in Orlando, and he already gotten an offer, believe it, believe it or not, for $300 below MSRP, and he want to know what he should do.

I said, run and buy that car before it's not. there anymore because that is one hell of a deal on any car, much less a Lexus. By the way, Lexus dealers tend to tow the line more so than most any other dealer when it comes to selling you cars in reasonable prices. Lexus prices were always high, but that was right around MSRP. Now that the prices have inflated so much, they're still selling them pretty close to MSRB. Lexus is a deal, a bargain today. We haven't had much luck finding dealers in South Florida, were refraining from price gouging during the inventory crisis. So this week, Agent Lightning investigated Johnson Honda in Stewart, Florida.

For our listeners, not familiar with the area, the enormous and rough and tumble South Florida car market stretches from Palm Beach County through Miami-Dade County. I would venture to say it probably even goes from Martin and maybe even to some extent sort of poor St. Lucy. it gets far worse the further south yeah

and then when you get to Orlando it blossoms up again so there are pockets of craziness around the state of Florida but nowhere like Dave Broward and Palm Beach County Stuart Florida is located just north

of the hell zone I refer to lovingly as the Sodom Gamora of the car market Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Maybe we'll get the Nashville treatment up and Stewart. So we tried it.

We're kidding. We already have a lot of experience in that area. And very few dealers up there are on our recommended list. Johnson Honda, however, is on our recommended list. They earned up a B-grade when Agent Lightning last visited in December 2020.

Lots of changed since then. And Agent Lightning was to see if Johnson Honda was too. So now I'll be speaking in the first person as if I were Agent Lightning. I arrived to Johnson Honda in the salesman named John. As soon as I walked in the front door, he asked how he could help and said I was looking for either a civic or an accord. I asked him how his availability was and he laughed. They always laugh at that. But he did say they had an available civic. He said they just had one. I came in last night.

experienced games before, so I asked him if he was sure it was available. I'd been burned before and I didn't want to get my hopes up. John said he was absolutely sure it was available. He also guaranteed it would not last through the weekend. And I kind of believe him. I mean, you know, it lasts until he decides he wants to sell it. And of course, you just have to find someone willing to pay the price. And there's a lot of them out there now. We walked over to the civic, parked in front of the showroom. I asked John if I was going to get sticker shock. I told them my new most dealers were

doing these ridiculous markups. John chuckled. So the market was really tough right now. You heard that it could be another year or two before it moderated. I told him I'd seen some SUVs marked up 15,000 over MSRP. We talked about one of the show that was marked up

40,000. That was a Rav4, Toyota. 40,000 over a sticker. John conceded that his dealership was doing market adjustments, but nothing like the ones the dealers just north of here were doing. He said that up there they're adding a minimum of $10,000 to the MSRP. And he's telling the truth. Not everybody, but on the average, that's what we're saying. We walked around the car, 2002, Civic Sport, Turing, with an MSRP of $30,865, okay.

Remember that number. 30,000 865 MSRP. The addendum was $3,314. Now that's BS markup, $3,314 addendum. And I always get a chuckle when I see what they put on there. This is the creative things that they sit around in their management meeting and they decide, what can we charge a customer for this product that sounds good, but we make a whole lot of money on that's a that's a brainstorming session and here's the kind of

things they come up with $299 one year nitrophil protection and this is really crack to be up here which includes high purity nitrogen I mean it's like sell it's nitrogen it's like selling water for $50 a bottle and it's high purity there's a high purity water this is high purity Of course, you know, the oxygen in the air we breathe is pretty pure, too. 78% of the air you breathe are put in your tires is also high purity nitrogen, all right? Plus, road hazard coverage, whatever that means, roadside benefits, whatever that means. And I had to read this, I thought it was a typo. Reforestation program.

I thought maybe that was really meant to be restoration program, but it's reforestation program. And that's for, they're trying to preserve the planet, right? They go over warming. I don't know. It sounds obscene. They plant trees. Maybe part of your $2.99 is donated to Sierra Club. They're planting trees, right?

Well, Sierra Club does things like that. Yeah, exactly. Why don't? I don't know where this money is going to. You don't know. They don't tell you. It could be landscaping for Mr. Johnson's home. They promise.

We are planting trees. Growing marijuana. I'll show you the tree. I don't know. For the forest of marijuana. $149 for Wheel X, $699 for one year. This is hysterical. $699 for one year of paint and fabric protection,

which is covered in the factory warranty for three years, right? I'm not sure about that, but... Well, paint is. Yeah, paint is. The fabric protection, maybe not by my... Well, yeah, I would guess that if you had, you know, unless you spilled a bottle ink, on the seat.

Yeah, that's what, usually that's what these... Your factory is bumping, your factory is bumper-to-bumper. Yeah, yeah, but usually the fabric protection is exactly for that if you pour a bottle of ink on it, the warranty and we'll cover it there as well. And that wouldn't cover the paint either. I mean, if you had it vandalism. But you only get it for a year for $700. Yeah, one year.

It says two years on there. It does? Rarely do you see something that's totally worth it. Two years. Usually it's worth a little bit of money. But here, $6.99 for one year of paint. It's two, two years, sorry. Oh, two years.

Three. It's three. On the photo. Really? Yeah. Oh, okay. So, typo. Shame on you, Sue.

No. I wasted ten minutes explain on that. $149 for pen stripes. Yeah, you're right. $1,49. Market Adjustment. $199. Door-edge cards.

Boy, those go way back. I used to do storage guards when I was a Pony Act year back in the 60s or 70s. We made a lot of money on those storage guards. And $270 for theft to turret protection. And that's, you know, they etched the glass, cost you $20, and they charge you $270. Anyway, adds up, list price, this is Johnson's list price. Be careful. When you hear list, remember, that's not MSRP.

List is whoever wants to list it. In this case, it was Johnson. And it's 34,000. Johnson listed it. Exactly. $34,1,179. I asked John, the salesperson, if I could see the interior. He asked for a few minutes to get the key.

He ran inside back in four minutes. Aided in lightning, very precise. John gave a brief rundown of the features, and then we left for a test drive. Along his drive, John told me how crazy things were. Every salesperson says the same thing. He said that even employees had to pay full price, even the addendum items. Now that raises a question about our dealerships, too. Normally we sell employees' cars at our cost.

We ended the employee programs on the cars to get to get them. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I could see where this was going, so I told him I had no intention of paying for any extras like that. John replied that the protection package is pre-installed, but he presented my offer when I was ready to purchase. That's the old, you know, back and forth came. I'll see the manager. I'm here to sell you the car as low as I can.

I'm going to go to that mean old manager in there and I'm going to give them a piece of my mind that you're a good person and you deserve a good price and they play the game over and over again. Back at the dealership, John told me where to park. He said, we'd hide the car

and he'd hold the keys so no one else sells it out from under me. Unless they got a lot of money and don't care what they pay. We found a desk inside. John asked if I'd ever been to the dealership before. I said I was there about a year ago.

He asked for my phone number. I found my record on the computer. That made his life easier. He said because it saved him a bunch of time entering all my info into the system. And every time I read that, because Agent Lightning spent a round a long, relatively long time.

She's hit a lot of dealerships. Every time I read that, I keep thinking she'll give her phone number and then this big sign will have shopper, Earl Stewart's shopper, Misty Shopper, throw her out. No, no. But it doesn't happen.

It doesn't happen. And it's not unusual for people to come back and return to dealerships without buying a car for years. Yeah, but we have thousands or thousands of listeners out there. People on Facebook, people on YouTube, the podcast. And Johnson Honda doesn't know. We've had agents made in the field. Once in a while.

But not as often as you think. He asked if I was paying cash when I was financing. I said I was paying cash unless there was an amazing. There was an amazing finance offer. I couldn't pass up. John excused himself. He came back at three minutes for the sales worksheet. The market value...

Which is funny, because they added the market value... The market value is, how much can I get out of you? How much can I gouge? This is the market value. MSRP... Well, MSRP was $30,000, $8.66. Well, the market value of selling price was MSRP. Oh, was MSRP.

Then they added everything else on the... That's a little unusual. the market value was it it's well they called it they always do that they call market of his MSRP then they increase the market value it's stupid okay then they added on 3414 on top of it the total price I thought was 34 179 but he added another 799 for good measure going at a dock fee and you know that's just a flat lie you know doc fee a doc fee is something that you actually have to pay a bank and anyway. So here we are back up with a total markup of $4,113 when you had the talk fee in there.

I looked it over for a few minutes and John asked me what I was thinking. I told him, I don't think the car's worth what you're charging. I railed about the items on the addendum, mocking nitroville. My goal was to shake him up, and I'm sure you do, a little bit. he asked if we would have a deal if he was able to shave $700 off the bottom line getting me to $37,000 out the door. I said I'd have to

speak with my husband about it and then he said he'd have to speak to his manager. Walked outside to pretend to call my husband, looked inside and I saw John talking to his boss. I decided then my mission was complete. Another shop

under her belt. There we are. So, I just, the pictures were extremely good. I, uh, I was thinking about having this put where we could show it to our Facebook, YouTube people, a really clear. I think, I'm sure Jonathan's done that. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, it's kind of all here very, very, you won't be able to read it here, but, uh, very thoroughly depicted on the window.

Good photograph. And all that nonsense, they've got to say for all the BS, they're charging, they did it pretty clearly on the window. A nitrofil, high purity, nitrogen, road hazard, the rest of it. So there we are. How purity. That's a high quality of nitrogen. Yeah, high quality nitrogen. And, of course, for the new listeners, that people are subscribed to the Consumer Reports.

Consumer Reports, our Bible, our Consumer Bible, says that nitrogen is totally worthless. It's worth a zero in terms of anything that will benefit you in a tire. So unless you're a NASCAR driver, in which case, if you're going around 225 miles around the Oval, you ought to use nitrogen. But if you're driving around town, forget about it. Okay, voting time. Votes are coming in. On Facebook, Tim says, Nitrophil, pinstripes, and wheel locks.

Where do I sign? D, because I'm a D. Andrew on Facebook also gives him a D And jumping over here to text We have Bob comes in and gives them an F F for Johnson Honda I think I changed my standard Last time I was on the show

And I can't give them Cs anymore Even though this is typical behavior So I'm going to give my D plus Hmm Who else to go next? Well, I've got Kyle in Pennsylvania F for the fees I know you're great on the curve

But I can't send a family member to the dealer without worrying, they'll get ripped off. It's an F every time. Negan, F, is there a grade lower than that G, as in get out fast? Go. Uh-huh. John Strine, this is an

F, F, F, F, F, Mark Ryan, F. Tom, D-minus, bad, but just ahead of Napleton, would not buy from them. Mark Smith, sad state of affairs at that dealership, F. John says, oh, John Stride, he had

as I tried to get a good price from Johnson two years ago and finally had to walk. A couple more grades came in, yeah. Oh, you got more over there? Oh, I'm just going to say, for me, I would give them the D minus because they did have everything kind of right up front there. They weren't hiding anything except that $7.99 at the end

that they slipped in. That's true. You're absolutely right about them. But so at least they were, they were showing it all to you, but all those markups just come on, yes. Yeah. Frank says Johnson Honda was a good dealer, years ago. Obviously, they've gotten greedy and need to be avoided. He gives him an F. He says, P.S. over a year ago, I bought my son and daughter-in-law to purchase a Honda Ridge Line.

I was supposed to receive a thank-you gift card for $200. They never gave me the money. And Jonathan Wellington says the prices are too high and the X is ridiculous, but I'll give the dealership a C-minus based on the way things are today. Yeah, I remember when they came in, that was back in the day when the Treasure Coast Toyota, Toyota, Stewart was run by John Pearson, and it was really a razzled-addle, slam-bang, rough-and-tumble dealership. When Johnson Honda came in, it was like a breath of fresh air. And, you know, it was just, they were far more decent and good to their customers and far

less deceptive than the Toyota dealers. Since then the Toyota dealership, they changed hands, and they're not nearly as rock'em-sock them were for you. Times like these reveal the true nature of men. Exactly. And I've got one other here from Tim in Florida. He says A-plus. All right. That must be Mr. Johnson. Tim Johnson. That's Tim Johnson. Maybe.

That proves that we got the guys listening, right? So thank you, Mr. Johnson. We appreciate your vote. We can't fault anyone for giving their opinion. Tim, thank you. We appreciate your vote and opinion. Exactly. Thank you, Tim. Rick, to your point about the exposure of the fees, that's interesting. You know, that's a good point. And fees aren't bad.

It's the hidden fees that are bad. And I've got a question this high purity nitrogen. I don't know what that's all about. And also, I really have to question this program of planting trees. Were they planting them? Who's planting them? And are they done by hand? What kind of trees were there?

What kind of trees? Right. And I am going to give them, because of Rick, I'm going to give them a D-minus. Well, actually, that is kind of cool because we found a new BS identity. Restoration, reforestation, right. Reforestation. Amazing. And I thought it was a typo.

I did, too. I had to stare at it. There's no explanation. Yeah, it really is done, and it's done because of these natural disturbances. that we have, and brought on by wildfires and drought and, you know, insect infestation, so it's a, but I question it. Okay, I think we're all out of time, Marilyn. We have, and I want to thank everyone for tuning in.

What a great audience who would like to have a vote from Earl Stewart. I'm going to give them a C-plus. I mean, nothing was hidden. It was BS, but they're getting 7,000 over sticker, And, you know, that's what most dealers are doing now. It's a hot dealership. High demand car. So, I give.

Folks, I really hope that we've given you some hope out there in purchasing, leasing, servicing your car. And we love you guys. Thanks for tuning in. And thank you and have a wonderful weekend. You know,