Earl Stewart on Cars - 02.05.2022 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Napleton’s Northlake Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram

Episode Date: February 5, 2022

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits the local "bad boy" Chrysler Jeep dealer to see what they have on the lot and how much over sticker they will charge for a new 2022 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Sahara Edition. 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 linked to cyberspace 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. Well, good morning, everybody.

What a pleasure to be back, live and a living color. Recorded announcement. I never know what percentage of people out there have never heard us before. I hope it's a bunch. We have a pretty good listening audience. We're actually worldwide. Started out many years ago

at a half an hour show, and we were really, really local. And now, you know, with the digital media and with YouTube and Twitter and Facebook, I mean, we're all over the world. You can stream us anywhere, of course. But if you're new to you, of the show, and you've heard the recorded

introduction, there's really nothing like it. I ask you just to stick around for a little bit, or if you're in a hurry, I mean, no one's going to sit in front of the radio or the streamer or the Facebook for two hours, I don't think, are very few people. But, you know, pop in, pop out.

If you have to pop in later, you'll hit the best part of our show, which is our mystery shopping report. I guess Mike Wallace in 60 minutes is the closest anybody ever came to this but we're a cutting edge scary if you're worried about getting sued we do a mystery shop every week of a different cartelanship and we branch out quite a bit I mean we go out of state usually we're in Florida and usually we're in Southern Florida and Southern Florida if you're out

state is the Sodom and Gomorrah of the auto retail industry. The car dealers in I'd say south of Palm Beach County down through Dave County, they're a rough, tough bunch of guys. It's like gun smoke and you buy a car at your own risk. We have more deception and hidden fees and bait and switch advertising than you've ever seen. And with the market, with a today. I mean, here, here we are in the most topsy-turvy crazy market. I mean, I've been a cardiologist since 1968. That's 50-some-odd years. I have never seen anything like this. We were just talking before we went on the air. I was talking to Nancy Stewart, my co-host, and my bride, and Stu Stewart, my son, about the prices of used cars. And the fact that

Used cars are selling for more than new cars. I mean, I don't mean across the board, but if you have a late model used car, a current model or a 2021 used car, there's a good chance, but you can sell that for more than you have to pay for a new car. Why? Because the new cars are going for thousands over MSRP.

That's manufactured, suggested retail price. now I've never seen anything like that in over half a century I don't know why people are buying cars on this show over and over again I say please if you have any respect for your pocketbook or your bank account your budget and you don't have to buy a car wait now I've been saying that for too long

I think some people are saying well you've been telling us to wait now for a year Earl and it still hasn't come out I'll admit, I was caught by surprise with how long this hyperinflation in cars is going on. Partly because I believe the microchip shortage issue is being addressed and being solved, and I think the microchips are becoming more and more available. But what's happening is demand is just out of sight. Suddenly, everybody's got car fever. They want to buy a new or a used car.

don't care what the prices are paying are they pay so I was talking to my son Stu and he's driving this is this is a heresy for Toyota people but he's driving a Tesla and I'm driving a Tesla I mean we had to try it huh we had to try it yeah I mean we're trying I mean we love Toyota's a great car but we get them free so so so we should be driving on us but we we both got a Tesla Stu's the one that talked me into it. He loved his Model S. Been driving Toyotas for 30 plus years.

He says, you've got to try this, so I got a plan. Anyway, I was thumbing through, I don't know what you'd call it. I was at Googling, actually, found out that my Tesla plaid, which cost an arm and a leg, I can sell now as a used car. I've got about 15,000, 20,000 miles on it. I can sell today for more than I paid for it, no. you can buy a lot of the Tesla's late model Tesla you can buy a new Tesla for a less than you have to pay for a used Tesla now what's this what's going on well we'll look back

in auto history or just American or you world history 10 years from now and say this will be this will be a chapter this will be not just for COVID but for the economy anyway here we are and not just for Tesla we had a customer bought a new car from us and sold at the car max and made a $3,000 profit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here we are. Listen, contribute. I got off on a rant there because I do get emotional about this.

I mean, this is my wife. I mean, I've been a car dealer so long. I feel like, you know, it's just my life. And we need to hear from you. We need to hear your stories out there and the world, wherever you may be, from Bali to California to New Jersey to, you know, Timbuktu. Our call-in number is 877-960-9960. Now grab a pencil or a pen or something like that, dictate into your smartphone.

I'm going to give it to you again, probably a lot during the show. 877-960-99-60. 960-960. Now, we will prioritize the phone call. I say we prioritize it over the text and the Facebook post and the YouTube post. But we look at all of anonymous feedback. I'll tell you about that in a minute. But the telephone call is personable. We hear you, you hear us, our voice, our inflections. It's just, you know, warmer and more informally, frankly. So we prioritize. prioritize it because we only have four or five lines come in of the radio show here. And Nancy Stewart, my co-host, she watches her screen. And when we get a phone call, bam, we go there. And we try not to let you hold too long. If we do, I apologize in advance.

But we have no calls now, so the lines are open. You call us, I'll stop, I'll shut up, and we'll go right to your phone call. text number 772 4976530 772 4976530 need to get more of those

we like to build a little archive as we go through the show two hours and when we hit a pregnant pause and we're terrifying in radio when no one calls or text so we have to have material and you're the material

you're the entertainment you're the education on this show So Texas, and we'll get to it before the end of the show, 772, 4976530, and the only show that I know of anywhere, everybody ought to have one of these. Companies ought to have them. Politicians ought to have them. Legislators ought to have them. Regulators ought to have them. An anonymous feedback line. Anonymous feedback. You can communicate with us, and we don't know who you know. are. And we get a lot of those. And that's good. You can tell it like it is. You can insult us. You can say anything you want. We'll never know who sent the anonymous feedback. The URL, the web address for this, is Your Anonymous Feedback.com. It's pretty easy to remember, right? Your Anonymous Feedback.com.

We'll get to it before the end of the show, probably, and tell us what you really think about us. Actually, we get a surprising number of nice ones, I guess we have more people out there like us. So if you're one of those people that don't like us, here's your chance. I read it on the air. The only thing I will delete are the expletives, you know, the profanity, the obscenities, and that type of thing. I probably will slip in a profanity every now by mistake, so you can wait and see if that happens. And, but also, oh, I said Facebook, you know, Facebook.com forward slash Erlan Cars. Facebook.com forward slash Earl and Cars and Rick Kearney here, my certified diagnostic master technician,

the auto computer scientist, as we call him, can answer any question about what's wrong with your car. monitors YouTube. So, YouTube.com for slash Erlan Cars. YouTube.com for slash Erlon Cars. And that's where we are. And I'm going to start, I'm going to turn the mic over to Nancy Stewart, who's sitting to my left.

She's watching that telephone line. And when you call, she's going to answer it. We will answer you. And Nancy Stewart's my co-host. We've been doing this together for many, many years. Start out as a half-an-hour show. She's a strong female advocate for the rights of women, especially when it comes to buying, leasing, maintaining, and repairing cars.

And she single-handedly has built our audience from Virtual Zero. This was like an old boys club when we started out. Nothing but guys call them. Guys, cars, you know, they go together. Now we have a nice number of lady callers. So they happen to be pretty damn smart and very interesting, and we want to keep it at 50-50. So, Massey, the mic is all yours.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us this morning. One of the most important things I'd like to mention to you this morning is that Gallup pull. I'll tell you what, it really opens up your eyes. Go to Google and check out honesty, ethics, and in professions. It's real easy. You've got a PC in front of you. enter honesty, ethics, in professions, and you'll see exactly how we're rated as car dealers.

And gosh, we need your help every single Saturday morning. And we're so happy that you join us and that we can share so much information, accurate information with you, because you make the show, and we are here for you. 877-960 or you can text us at 772-497-3-0. The second most important thing I'll mention to you is that Florida law

and how it protects the car buyer. That's you. We can't do it alone. Go to www. Florida Law Protectingcarbuyers.com. you'll be educated, believe me. So there's two sources for you to get to, and it'll help you to get out there in lease, buy, service,

whatever it is that you have to do. Also, the ladies, well, as I encourage you every week, give us a call, toll free, join in the conversation. We'd love to hear from you. $50 for the first two new lady callers, 877, 960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-4976530, but ladies, you have to give us a call at 877-9-99-60 to win their $50. Also, don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. I know there's a whole lot you'd like to share with us and remain anonymous. Right now, we're going to go straight to the phones because we've got a few lines lit up and we're going to go to Marty who's one of our favorite callers from West Palm Beach

good morning Marty good morning how are you we're well thank you I got a couple questions for Earl first question is would he do a mystery shopping report on Southern 441 Toyota sure we've done that's a goal for you know we talked some but you want us to do another one? Well, here's the thing. Today there was a report on the next door website, and this gentleman said he went there. They had a $3,000 over sticker price on the Toyota. He was going to order.

I don't know if he was going to order it or whether they had it in stock. They probably had to order it. And they gave him $7,000 less for his car. for his car. It was a $10,000 difference, and he said he went over to another Toyota, local Toyota dealer and just got ordered one for sticker. So I assume he went over to you. I don't know if he did or he didn't.

I hope so. What did you hear about that, Marty? It was on the next door website. It's that community website for neighbors. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Yeah, so I think you should check them out. The next question I had for you just last week, I went on the Costco website, and I put down,

I wanted to order a Toyota Camry, X-L-E, and the only dealer they gave me was Al Hendrickson. So I didn't know if that's the way they're supposed to do it, or they should have given me you two or what. It's based on the pricing. Yeah, Marty, you just raised my blood pressure when that happened. That's one of the difficulties. I love Costco, and they do have the best auto buying program.

But when you select them, they go, they're not, they should give out several dealers. And how close to... Well, I think it has to do with the pricing. When Costco comes back and you submit your pricing, So if they try to get us to submit a, what kind of car was it, Marty, that you looked at, a Camry? Camry X.O. A Camry, if they're asking us to price it below what we're willing to spend, and apparently they're going below the market value on that car. All the Hendren doesn't have a problem honoring it because they're going to lie and switch you to a more expensive car when you get there.

Well, that's great. See, that's the reason I love calls, Marty. Your call is really valuable to me, and Stu and Nancy and Rick here because. But we're aware of that. Yeah, but you're also aware of the fact that if you're a Costco member and you have a price quoted that they're not allowed, they're not allowed to add to the price, they're not allowed to add their hidden fees or dealer installed accessories. It's got to be the Costco price plus government fees only. And the only way to be sure about that is when you go through it, call Costco. They'll call you, they may.

They do check with a lot of their people to see if you had a satisfactory experience. But if you're a Costco member and you go to a dealership like Al-Hissurks and Toyota and with the Costco price, you should call before you sign on the dotted line and say, this is the price they gave me. They have a list, a price list that Costco requires them by contract to carry that shows their lowest price, which is the price, the lower price, or they would sell that car to anybody. Al Hendrickson, by contract, should have given you a price lower than any price they have sold anybody else a car for, and they are not allowed to add any extra fees to that price,

other than government fees, which would be tax and tax. These are a whole lot of shoulds that Al Hendrins should be doing, but they don't usually do what they should do. My message, I'm not scold, I'm not doing this just to shame L. Hennerson. He's already ashamed of himself anyway, but I'm doing this to alert Costco members out there. Always verify your price with the dealer, who is a Costco member. Now, we'll report this to Costco, and they'll probably go. I can tell you this, Earl. Yeah.

Earl, I can tell you this. I wasn't out, obviously, to buy the car then. And I asked, they had one of their salespeople contact me, and I said, well, what is the price? They would not give me the price either on line or over the phone. Oh. So they had to me, I mean, I bought cars from Al Henderson, so I know there's shenanigans. But they wouldn't give me the price. So I said, well, I'm not driving down to Pompano, if you don't give me the money.

if you don't give me the price. And I said, do you have the car in stock? And they didn't have the car in stock either. So I know that they would screw around, but I just thought they should give you more than one dealer. Well, that's valuable information. And so my tip to people listening who are Costco members who are contemplating joining Costco.

By the way, you could join Costco for 65 bucks a year, annual fee. You'll save that. They're just buying chickens. He can buy a Costco real-scent ticket for $4.99. But anyway, if you can, if you're a Costco member, you've learned from this dialogue between Marty and us, that you need to be sure that you see the Costco price sheet. If they have a price sheet, that Costco requires them to keep on record.

And that price is, on every model they sell, is below, The lowest price they sold anybody else a car for. Now, you're like, Al Hendrickson's, the third largest, or second largest, volume dealer in the world for Toyota. So he sells a lot of cars. If he sells you a car, any, make money, any, you know, whatever it is, Camry, Avalon, you know, Corolla, whatever he's going to sell you. Whatever he sells you, that's got to be lower than anybody else he sold a car to.

He sells a thousand cars a month, some months. and so that should be one doozy of a price and when you get that price be sure to verify it with Costco because they know now you should ask in Marty's case they wouldn't give you anything over the phone

Marty you probably weren't even talking to a Costco salesperson you need to talk to the person on the list on the Costco website that is designated as a Costco salesperson at that dealership. He doesn't work for Costco. He works for Hendrickson, but he has certified Costco sales. You should speak to that person, and then when you go in there, you look at

the price they gave you, and you tell Costco. So Nancy just flag me here, and we've got a bunch of calls waiting. But, Marty, it's one of the best calls we've ever had. I can't thank you enough. You really helped us educate a lot of people, and you're one of our best guys out there. I love your shops and he calls in with the information. Thank you very much. Okay. Have a good day. You too, my friend.

Thank you, Marty. Thanks for being part of the show. And as I all said, bringing all of this to the attention of our listeners, our callers, everybody. I just took a look at the background that Jonathan put up in. Boy, is that a beauty. I just love it. Happy Lunar New Year. Okay, folks, we're going to go to Howard, who's been holding.

Good morning, Howard. Good morning. Nice talking to you guys. Thank you. I have a question for Rick. Is it true that if you have a bad battery and you continue getting a jump, you continue using it, it could destroy the alternator or affect the alternator? Not really, but the problem that you're going to get,

especially on modern cars, when the battery starts getting weak, it's sulfated, and the battery will not hold charge, but it'll also draw amperage away from the rest of the system, and it can cause other electrical systems to begin to glitch because they're not seeing the voltage and amperage that they should be getting. So it's not a good idea to keep going on an old battery for that reason. What do you mean that other systems glitching? What other systems? All right, well, a quick case and point. Cars now, power steering has gotten away from using hydraulics. Now it's all electric. Right. Some cars, if your battery is really weak, your power steering will lose assistance, and you'll actually find it very hard to steer the car.

I love you, Rick. I didn't know that. I've only been on the business 55 years. Howard, great question. Rick, thank you very much. That's scary. You got a little battery. You can screw up your power steering and run into a truck. Well, as slow speeds, like trying to move around in a parking lot, all of a sudden, your car is turning just fine. Suddenly, it's like trying to turn it with the engine turned totally off, and you've got no assist. Wow. So it can get pretty scary. Interesting. I had no idea. Rick, tremendous information. Next question about a battery.

Some batteries are completely sealed, and others you have to add hydrochloric acid to. And the first question is, is the sealed battery better because there's no maintenance? And the second question is, how often do you add the hydrochloric acid? Well, you're not actually adding hydrochloric acid. You're actually supposed to add distilled water, which, believe or not, that's kind of tricky to find sometimes. So what we generally will recommend is add purified water, like the bottled water. If it's listed as purified water, not like smart waters or anything, you might have

minerals or stuff added. You don't want to put that in the battery because that can degrade the battery over time. But purified water, as pure as you can get it. And you only need to add it if the levels below that as caps are low. That's why maintenance-free batteries are sometimes a better choice for most people because you never have to worry about that electrolyte level going low and having to pop it up. How is a pretty knowledgeable guy? He put the still water in, non-hydchloric acid.

Does hydrochloric acid form because of a chemistry? It does. Okay, so that's where the hydrochloric acid comes. You have hydrochloric gas within your battery, but all you're adding is a liquid to allow it to mix with a... The chemical process inside the battery actually converts that water into, well, sulfuric acid technically. Oh, sulfuric. Okay. Okay. Now, my question is this.

At one point, maybe about 30 years ago, they were selling sulfuric acid to add to batteries, the battery was bad to rejuvenate them. Right. Have you heard of this? This was a long time ago. Yeah, that was kind of the old school thing, but that also went along with a lot of batteries back when they were being sold then. They might sit on the shelf for quite a while,

so they would sell the battery, ship it to the parts supplier, dry, and they would give them the sulfuric acid in a separate container, and when they sold you the battery before they would bring it out from the back, they would actually go in and very carefully pour that acid in to fill that battery up and charge it for a little bit and then get you the battery. Matter of fact, a lot of motorcycle batteries now

they're still doing that because they don't sell the batteries near as fast. You don't have the turnover. Yeah, I don't even know where you can get this sulfuric acid anymore. I don't think that's available. A pool supply store. Pool supply store has sulfuric acid

and myriatic acid, which is basically sulfuric. Otherwise, actually, chemical supplies, I'd bet you can find it on Amazon. Yeah. I used to make it in chemistry. I used to dissolve things with it in our garage.

Okay, thanks very much, Rick. I really appreciate your knowledge, and have a good day. Thank you, all right. Thank you so much, Howard. We love hearing from you. Rick, boiling water brings it to the most pure, purified level that you can achieve, correct?

It can, but what you're actually trying to do at that point, you would have to collect the steam above it and condense that steam. That's actually your most pure water. Thanks, Rick. You heard it right here. Or on cars. Give us a call toll free at 877-960-9960.

And ladies, don't forget, $50 for the first two new lady callers. We're going to go straight to Peter, who's been holding from North Pole. Beach. Good morning, Peter. Hey, how are you? We're great. Thank you for calling. Hey, Liz. Yeah, I don't really have a car question, more of a pat on the back kind of a story. I went to Whirl Stewart, well, I bought three cars there over here. I don't call Earl Stewart. I have no relationship with him whatsoever. But I went in one day, and there was a guy to get an oil change, and it was a guy working there. It was a friend of my son who was a fabulous guy. with a fun coast sports guy

and on the feet with my son and I was surprised to see such a good guy working over there and he's a hardworking kid and so I thought well I'll pick up I don't know if he still have it but he had that red phone remember in the shop and you can pick

it up and call him at any time so I picked it up and I called him to say what a great hire he had made and what a good kid and how smart and he picked up the phone immediately like he advertised he was And he was out fishing on his book. And still, he was just, I don't know, just so friendly.

And he talked for like 10 minutes about, I'm sure he wasn't involved in the hiring. He was an oil-cheting guy. But he wanted to know about it. And he was interested. And it was very nice. And that's stuff with me for years that I've been meaning to call. Oh, he's blushing right now. Yeah, you're talking to him right now.

He's blushing. Well, I know that. That's why I called. I've been meaning to say so frequently. gears and you know how you never get around it or that's you know not necessary and that kind of thing but it is really i don't know if you have that red phone anymore but what a fabulous uh yeah i got the red phone here i'm holding up in front of the camera it's somebody it's the dealers that have red phones on my cell phone is what rings when you pick up the red phone so who was the uh

the old change guy they oh he was a guy this would have been years ago now his name was uh jeez Giovanni Delvery. I remember Giovanni. Rick knows Giovanni. Yep. Oh, yeah. Really? He's a coach for a college volleyball team now in the middle.

Really? Wow. I guess he left the industry. That was his thing. He did that, yeah, he wasn't really ever in the industry. No. He just needed funny, I think. But yeah, that was great.

So anyway, congratulations. I got to go to work, but I love you guys. Thank you. Oh, thank you, Peter. Give us a call. Give us a call again. Give us a call again. I'm going to answering the phone thing.

I guess it's people. I don't know. I'm not trying to pat myself on the back. I just love to talk to customers or anybody. And a lot of the dealers wonder why I get interviewed so much. I've had, you know, we just, I was just interviewed by local TV channel and by the Wall Street Journal the past couple of days. And the reason I get interviewed so much is not because I'm famous or a good guy. I'm the only deal that will answer his phone.

Exactly. So if you're in the media, if you're a radio, if you're a newspaper, if you're Facebook, if you're any kind of media type of person, and you want a story about cars, I don't know if you know how it works, but editors are in a hurry, you've got a publication date, you've got to go to press, you've got to go to TV, radio, news has to be current. So you have a question about the automobile business, retail, you've got to get a dealer out there. There's only one guy in the United States that you could call, and I answer my first. phone all the time. So they think I'm crazy. I probably, I'm probably

mentally ill, but I love talking to people. So it's a And folks, I can back up his story. I can definitely back up his story. He could be on the roof. He could be sleeping. Doesn't matter. He answers his phone. No, I don't ask you when I sleep. Well, we got a laundry list here, but we don't have time. We're going to go to Dave, who's giving us a call this morning from Palm Beach Gardens. Good morning, Dave.

Yes, good morning. Thank you. I had a question for whoever is best able to answer the question. The question is, is a hybrid vehicle worth to purchase compared to a regular gasoline-driven engine? And how does that compare to an all-electric vehicle? My daughter just got a Tesla, and I drove it yesterday. And it was pretty cool, a little different, getting used to. to it initially, but then I was curious about the hybrid as opposed to the all-electric. And, you know, which one is better or is there a better value there for a hybrid than an all-electric?

In my opinion, I'll let the suit have an opinion too, but my opinion is it's a function of the range of the battery. And right now, most electric vehicles don't have the range that most people feel comfortable with. Now, I'm comfortable with my test. I have a 355, 350 mile range, but I don't drive, you know, I'm a local driver. I mean, if I had to move around the state, that would be a challenge for me. A hybrid has you had your cake and eat it too. You have extraordinarily good fuel economy, and you also have that backup of the gasoline and the tank and the combustion engine.

So you're accomplishing your goal of minimizing your use of fuel, and you're, you're you're also able to do the range. If you have to go, you know, let's say you live in, you know, where I live, Jupiter, and you've got a friend that lives in Hendersonville, North Carolina, you don't have to worry about, oh, I've got to charge my all-electric car, I've got to plug it in, it's going to take eight to ten hours to get a full charge, and then I'm going to have to stop. You could take your hybrid and probably drive damn near non-stop,

or maybe one-stop, with your hybrid vehicle, and you've got gas stations all over the place you don't need to worry about charging stations. Okay, so does do I understand it correctly that when you're driving the hybrid, that the electric is being

charged as you're driving? Yes, when you break or you decelerate and your electric motor is actually charging your battery. So if in city driving, stop and go, your hybrid vehicle actually charges your battery more than when you're on the road.

Rick had a point. Hybrid cars are actually best for city traffic where you're doing a lot of stop-and-go type things because this is where the electric motor on the Toyota design drives the car all the time. The gasoline engine is only there as a generator to provide electricity to recharge the batteries and help provide, help drive those electric motors. So when you're going to stop and go, the gas engine can shut off a whole bunch of the time. When you're on the highway, it requires that gas engine to run almost continuously in order to keep the electric power up to keep you going. It has two functions.

It drives a car and also charges the battery, which the electric motor runs a car when it's on electric. Yeah, so it's a range issue, as I said, when you buy a car, if I was buying a car for my daughter, and a choice between an all-electric or a hybrid, I would just look at her driving habits. And if she's a local driver, and you can buy an electric car, if you've got a 300, 350-mile range, that's probably fine. But when the ranges get up to about 1,000 miles,

then there'll be no more hybrids, it'll be all-electric. Okay, so, you know, is the... Oh, Galley, is it a question? I had two more quick points on that, but I'm sorry. Were you going to say something? Yeah, I was going to think. I don't know if we addressed the question about the price difference between the hybrid and the gas version. And also the battery life of the hybrid is there, you know, how does that tie in?

Yeah, so you're going to pay a premium over the gas version of the hybrid. So I'll just because we're familiar with Toyota, a Camry gas version is less expensive than the hybrid. but that difference has come way, way, way down since the hybrids first came out. And now it's just like maybe a $2,000 or $3,000 difference. The battery life, the battery is warrantied for, it's $150 now, yeah. And we've talked about last week, they tend to last, you start to see them they need to replace probably after a couple hundred thousand miles. Yeah.

And that is pretty expensive. There's, you know, a few thousand dollars. Well, if you're driving around town and that's the best way for a hybrid to perform, Is there a problem with a gas staying in the tank too long that it may be, you know, not being used up? No, not with the hybrid. Now with the plug-in hybrids, that can happen. And I had to deal with that for a while. I drove a Prius plug-in hybrid, and I was able to just go on all-electric power most of the time.

And so there was periods of time where I didn't add gas to that car for, you know, a month or so. Yeah, but your range is extremely short. Extremely short. That was, I only live 10 miles from my work, and that's what I did, was. going back and forth. So, yeah, so Rick has advised, you've got to run the engine at some point and get that gas flowing through the engine, otherwise it can, sediments can settle. But on most cars like the Prius or the Camry hybrid, the Honda hybrids, most of those, that gas gets used soon enough that it's not going to go bad. Because it has like, what was it, like a 20-something

mile range or a 30-mile range or something like that, I can't remember. Yeah, you're going to use the gas. So would you say that gasoline should be used up within a, 30-day period? No, 60 to 90 days. 60 to 90. Yeah, because it's sealed in that gas system. The fuel system on cars now is sealed so well that 60 to 90 days is no problem in all. Very interesting.

That's great, great info. Hey, thanks a lot, guys. I appreciate it. Thank you, Dave. Thanks, Dave. Give us a call again. Boy, do we have a whole lot to get to, folks. And please, don't go anywhere.

What a mystery shopping report we have for you. And, of course, it is from Napleton. And don't forget that $50, ladies, the first two new lady callers. Give us a call. Just have a little conversation with us. Say hello. 877-960-9960. Or you can text us if you would like to, well, well, if you're looking.

little bashful, I'll say, 772-497-6530. And if you're really bashful, go to www.W. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We are going to go to Stu, who, well, probably has a lot of text, and I believe that Rick even has, well, we're not going to Stu. We're going to go to Walter, who's giving us a call. Who's Walter? He's on the phone. We're going to go to Walter, and he's calling. And he's calling him. this from Lake Worth. Good morning, Walter. Good morning. Thank you for

answering my phone call. I have two questions for you. One, I want to make a statement. Last October, I bought a car from Earl Stewart, and it was the best experience I've ever had. He tells you the truth. Everything he said on the program

has been true. I have two questions, though. One question is, on my backup camera, I have a great picture of my a license plate and bumper is there a way to adjust the camera up

it sounds like something got bumped or bent because those cameras don't actually have an adjustment but you'd want to take a look at where it's mounted and see if it got damaged somehow you may be able to actually go in there and very carefully straighten it out yourself

otherwise you're going to want to have a body shop look at it or a technician Okay, well, here's my second question. I purchased the car and I also purchased your premier insurance package that covers everything. Would that cover that? Probably not. If it was not from an accident or if there's damage, but if there was a defect that caused it from the factory, then that would be covered.

How about comprehensive of insurance? without having, they cover some unusual stuff. Probably wouldn't exceed the deductible. Yeah, but your deductible, I think, would be well in excess of whatever damage there might be there. The deductible is very. You can check at Walter and see, but, you know, a lot of people... Well, I'm not talking about my personal insurance. I'm talking about I paid...

Oh, yeah. Oh, no, I understand that. No, I understand. Yeah, for none of the warranties or insurance products that we sell it covered, you know, damage except for the least dent and ding protection. So if it's an accident, that's what Earl was saying. It would be under your comprehensive insurance for your car, but it wouldn't be worth it. If it's been an accident, I'm going to bring my car back up there, and you're going to buy it back.

Because according to CarMax, there was no accident. Okay. But you just see the, you know, it works. Don't get me wrong, but I see the license plate and bumper. Right. Did it ever work? I really didn't notice. I don't think so.

I think it was this way when I bought it. Now, my second question is, yesterday I picked up the nail, and I think it's more on the sidewall than on the tread. I thought it was in the tread, and when I pulled the nail out, no hair came out, but this morning I'm really low on air,

and I have that program that if I go to your place every 5,000 miles and get a oil change and tire rotation, I get new tires. Will I get a new tire for this? No, the tires for a life program

covers from normal wear. When they wear it down, then we replace them. Your replacement tires first. So for a road hazard or damage, you'd have to buy a new tire or pay for it to be repaired. Yeah, the bad news, Walter, wall, you're probably going to need a new tire. Yeah, you're probably going to need a new tire.

If we're in the tread, it would be a different story. But you better let us take a look at it and we'll tell you what it has to be done. Right. Shall I make an appointment for Monday or when's the best time to bring it up there? You're going to have 10 o'clock on Monday. How's up? 10.15. No, don't do that.

No, don't do that. Just you can make an appointment on just give us a call and they'll catch you in at a good. time. Well, I'll make the appointment for you, so you don't have to worry about it, Walter. They'll be expecting you at 10 o'clock on Monday. Can you make it? Yeah, we'll let the other customers at 10 o'clock. We'll tell them they don't have an appointment anymore. Okay. I'll give you a call, make an appointment. Okay. I'd be upset if somebody happened to me like that. Thanks, Walter.

Okay, thank you so very much, and I'll see you on Monday. Thank you so much. Give us a call again. I think we're going to go to Stu while we Yeah, we can kick it off with Amory's first text of the day. And Amory says, good morning. Normally a vehicle drops in value just as soon as it's driven off the lot. Granted, these are not normal times due the supply chain problems and inventory shortages. My question is, which vehicles have actually gained in value when customers drive off the lot or have had them for a year? And the answer to that question is, I don't know specifics, but probably most of them have appreciated in value.

We were just talking about it earlier. We had a customer who bought a vehicle, a new car from us. I think it was a Corolla, and turned around and sold it right away to CarMax and made a $3,000 profit. But when I saw your text, I decided to book out a new Camry and just to see what they're going for wholesale. In other words, what they're selling at the auctions. So a brand new 2022 Camry with five miles on the odometer, I booked out on VATO, and that's the program that we, We use, us dealers used to figure out pricing. And it's very astonishing.

So according to Blackbook, by the way, this Camry SE, 2020, has an MSRP of about 29,000 in change. Blackbook, the retail value on Blackbook is $40,275. So retail Blackbook is $11,000 over MSRP. The wholesale value on Blackbook is $35,000,025, so it's $6,000 more than the end. MSRP is the Blackbook wholesale value. MMR doesn't have very many transactions. MMR just uses all the Mannheim auctions and it gives you the actual sales at wholesale. There is only a couple.

They were all over MSRP, $33,000, $32,000 and prices like that. So, Amaray, to answer your question, even just run-of-the-mill cars, like Camry is a bread-and-butter car, they're going up in value. The question is how long it lasts? This could come down in a big crash or it could ease down. know how it's going to go. Deals are taking their new cars that are set to them by the manufacturer, and because the amount of cars they get depends on how quickly they sell the car, if they have any cars left over at the end of the month before the next allocation is calculated,

some of the dealers are cheating and setting the cars to the auction, and they're actually making, as Stu just described there, thousands of dollars over what they paid, Honda or Toyota or Jeep for the car, a brand new car. Other dealers are buying it from the people at the wholesale auctions for $3,000 more, or $10,000 or $8,000, because we're talking the invoice is what the net cost is what the dealer pays. And then they're selling them to you for God only knows how much. And it's crazy, crazy, topsy-turvy market out there. But if you have a lease car that's about ready to come in, you've got solid goal there

because you're basically a used car because you can exercise your purchase option. And if you have a used car, you're on the driver's seat too. My blog this week, and Nancy was going to remind you of this anyway, as entitled, leasing or owning a vehicle today, is a valuable hedge when it comes to buying a new car. and the footnote to that is if you don't have an off-lease car that you can exercise your purchase option or you don't have a used car, you're really going to get hosed when you buy the new car. Now, if you have a used car, then you can get enough extra for the used car above what the normal market would have been to offset some of the gouging you're going to face if you have to buy a new car.

But if you don't have an off-lease or you don't have a used car, God help you. That's all I can say. You know, that article that you and I were talking about in the Wall Street Journal that appeared this morning. Price is sore for used Tesla. What an article that is. I finally turned that page and finished reading it. But Stu, what model Tesla do you drive? The Model S.

The Model S. Okay, they were quoting the three or four different Teslas and the used model three, you can expect a pocket upwards to $4,500. And then it's the, the, the, the price is sore, as the headline said, whenever they mentioned the different models that regular people are driving out there. And we see more and more Tesla's on the road. Yeah, they're everywhere. You know, as Stu said, they're everywhere.

Ladies and gentlemen, your thoughts. Give us a call. 877-9-60-99-60, and we are going to go to Frank, who's a regular caller, from Jupiter Farms. Good morning, Frank. Well, good morning, Nancy and Earl and the rest of the gang. It's always a pleasure. Hey, Frank. Show.

A couple of things. I've got a bunch. I'll try and go quick. it was nice to see you guys on the news yesterday, Channel 12 News, interviewing Stu. That was Josh. That's Josh. It was Josh. No, I know.

They started out saying Josh, and then they turned it to Stu. So who was it really? That was Josh. I was off yesterday. He's a natural. Actually, they filmed it Thursday morning. It's a family resentment. He's a star.

They first said Josh, and then they kept saying Stu the rest of it. I don't know that. I'll get to tease him about that. We share 47% of our DNA, according to 23 and me. So that's why we look similar. They were saying, Stuart, I heard the same thing, they said, but Stuart said, yeah. Oh, going by his last name.

The last name, yeah. But anyway, that's always interesting seeing you guys on the news and giving them, you know, vice, but his size on Saturday mornings. Yeah, that's like Frank, like Earl said, that's because he answers the phone and the reporters call him, like, every time there's a news story,

in the industry, in the car industry, you can count on Earl's phone to start blowing up. And New York Times, Wall Street, Journal, Local, he starts calling him. And he answers. Oh, no, I know. You guys are great for that. And you talk about Tesla. The other day, we saw a whole tractor trailer loaded Tesla's gone by us on 95. And I guess they turned down Okachovie.

That's where they must go out at the dealership there somewhere. Yeah, on the Okochabee Boulevard. That's where I took delivery of my plan. Okay, yeah. It was interesting because I was with Ammarie, and we were still looking in car shopping slightly because it's a crazy world. We're not stupid right now. But you guys have to go by Aldo, West Palm Beach, a Brayman dealer. It's amazing.

It's amazing. There's an R.SQ8 in their showroom, and it's marked up for, what do you call it, whatever, market value, market value, a $100,000. $100. $100. I mean, this is not a joke. And if you look on their website, the total MSRP is $154, so it's really a $250,000 car now. But the dealer sex the actual price to whatever the market will bear. Wow.

That's true. And the exterior color, they don't even list it. It says it's an Audi exclusive exterior, and it's purple. It reminds me of the 60s with the Plymouth, you know, Roadrunners and Charger and the beep beeps. beeps in it's a purple purple? Purple? One crazy purple? It is purple. I mean, it's

enjoying. But all their other cars are 10 to 20,000 above MSRP. That's amazing. $100,000 addendum, $100,000 market adjustment. That is really, that's got to be a new record. I think I'll call out of the movie news and have

them go in there and take a picture of that. They should. I mean, it's worth the people just drive. You're just right off 95 on Oakland, like in blocks. But it's not like your dealership where they got nice stuff. And they got a little coffee pot and, you know, a few crackers. But in any event. So that's that.

So I was there twice that week. One two with a friend of mine that, you know, likes to look at cars like I do. You know, future whatever we call us, like coyotes or something. Not coyotes. Whatever you got us. Oh, God, I can't think right now. Anyway. But then we went down to Jaguar.

West Palm Beach. And they actually had a bunch of cars on the showroom, and they were actually all new cars. I mean, Raymond has a lot of used outies in there that look pretty good. When you see at 2019 on the showroom floor, you go, I thought they're normally outside, but there's no, there's no inventory, as you know. Jaguar, West Palm Beach, we walked around in there for probably seven minutes, and no one ever approached us. Really?

And I said, no, they were sitting in their offices and doing their things. The two of us, I guess we didn't look dressed apart to afford their friends. prices so we walk down you know that's one of the first things that a salesperson should learn or a dealer should learn is that usually the people that come in there that are pretty casually dressed are probably more inclined to have to be able to afford than a lot of other people and I've heard that story so many times of people millionaires going into dealerships and being ignored because they were wearing flip flops and a t-shirt but whoever was schooling the salespeople

at Jaguar at West Palm Beach isn't training him very well. Yeah, well, I got to, real quick, I'll get off before I ever talk too much. I'll give you a personal story that occurred in my own life, oh, I guess about 20 years ago. I had just made captain in American Airlines on the 727, and this was like around 2001.

The new twin turbo 9-11s were out. couldn't buy them here the best way to get them was European delivery and you paid a premium but you took it then they brought them over here instead of waiting six or eight months so my wife and I and our young daughter went down in our station wagon she had an old beat-up station wagon she liked down to the Porsche Diro and ok chobie and they had one out there in the lot and as we walked over here click click they locked the doors from inside because we'd look like the clamp it's probably coming so we go to the to the front door and I walk

inside I just wait there no one approaches us for about a minute. Then this young guy comes and his first question to us, do you need directions? And like we're looking, I said, yeah, we're looking for the Goodwill store. You know where it is? I said, no, actually I'm here to buy a Porsche. He said, oh, a Cayman or something? I said, no, I bought a Twin Turbo 9-11 European delivery that's $8,500 over MSRP. And as Joel drops, he's, how do you know that? I do an airline captain. I just made captain who felt like spending my money. I got my check before. Well, let's sit down.

I said, no, you know, if you treat me this way before I buy the car, I can only imagine how you're going to treat me after I bought the car. And then, Kim. Good for you, Brian. But anyway, one other thing, forget about the stock market. Why don't we start buying new cars from you guys that don't charge above an SRP and resell them in pocket? The money is safer than the stock market.

The trick is to find a car. That's the whole trick. I know. Anyway, as always, guys, we really appreciate it. Thank you, Frank. You're a great call. Thank you, Frank. Got the calls back up, don't we, honey.

Yeah, please. We love all your stories. We're going to go to our first-time female caller, Cecilia. And, John, please hold on. We'll get right with you. Good morning, Cecilia. Good morning, Nancy. How are you?

Welcome. You just won yourself $50 for being the first female caller. Leave your contact information with the lease in the control room, and I'll get to check out to you. How were you this morning? I am doing quite well, thank you. My question is, I have a 1998 Pontiac Sunfire. Wow.

It has about a, yes, I love it. It's got so much speed when you first step on that gas. I'm leaving people at the stop sign or red light. You know, they're in my dust. So anyway, my question is it has about 130,000 miles on it. you know we have fixed little minor things that have gone wrong with it over the years but it's in desperate need of a paint job is it worth spending probably what's a paint job for that

because the sun has damaged the dealer part of the paint I guess you know from an economic from a mathematical standpoint no sounds to me like you love that Pontiac I love Bonniac because that was my first franchise when I started in the business. So, yeah, if you love it, it's only got a $130,000 miles. You take care of it. It's probably going to cost you far more than it percentage-wise than it should. But, hey, you only live once.

So if you've got a car, you're in love with, take care of it. Yes. It sounds like it's a beauty, Cecilia. And I'll tell you what, what a great investment. You really have to travel. Well, you have to move carefully when it comes to a painting. job because you can really mess things up depending upon who you go with right any suggestions on that well you just I would I would chop around you can Google collisions

repair centers paint shops you can you know check them out with a bit of business bureau and references and things like that one of the one of the problems you're going to find is that most car dealers today don't have collision shops. It's a profit squeeze between the insurance companies and the dealer and the cost of parts of paint and everything else. So most dealers consider body shops not profitable. But I would check a few out. I mean, I'll mention we do have a collision shop. This is not an infomercial, so I hesitate to recommend my dealership to anybody but we would certainly be glad to look at it and tell you what we would charge you and then you should check with two or three other body shops and see who could give

you the best deal well worth your well this would be yes this is a you know totally out of my pocket you know there's nothing I just wanted to you know really get the question answered is it really worth it I I love it but it does It's in desperate. Mathematically, no. And it's white. Probably no. Even though I'm going to drive it until I die,

and I've already been retired. There you go. You might want to let somebody look at it. Maybe it doesn't need paint. Maybe a good wax and wash and a few minor repairs. Earl, this really needs paint, because there's places on it where it's down to the black and then a little spot that's actual the metal.

What color is the car? It's a white car. White? Yes. Uh-huh. Well, like I said, you want to be real careful. Yeah, definitely not covered under warranty.

Yes, yes. Rick? Yeah, because it's been paid for years ago. Yeah, Rick has a boy. Just for the fun of it, my own pickup, the clear coat, has delaminated in spots to where it just

looks horrible. and so I've been I asked a couple questions a couple folks around and I receive just now this is just off the cuff type quotes you know nothing official but I've heard numbers anywhere from five to $10,000 to really get a proper paint job done where at the high end it would be stripping all the trim and everything and and having it professionally repainted perfectly and then all put back together correctly. Correct. And, of course, and even then, you're looking at another eight to ten years, and it's going to be right back in the same condition. Okay. Florida's just all right.

Thank you, our Florida son. Yes. Let us know. Well, you know, my gentleman and Nancy, I might as well just go, you know, the hippie style, here and there with different colors of paint, right? There you go. Make it a board of art. Yeah.

Or talk to coughs up on North Lake Boulevard about a rap. There you go. There you go. Okay, well, you sound like an educated consumer. It was great talking to you. Thank you. Thank you. I loved it. Thank you for calling Earl on Cars.

And please, spread the word. The ladies are very important here, and they do have a voice. I'll get that check out to you. Thank you very much. All right. You're welcome, honey. Thank you. You're welcome.

We're going to go to John in Palm City. Good morning, John. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome. Tesla is on everybody's mind, including today, first mentioned by Nancy. Well, people have to be aware how fantastic. They're opening their official plant outside of Berlin this month.

It was supposed to open in December, but they had some water problems and union problems. And it's a $7 billion, not million, billion dollar plant. It's going to eventually have 12,000 employees to the future, and they're going to make only the Model Y, Sport Utility, Tesla, and they predict that $500,000 a year will come out of that plant. Unbelievable, fantastic. And that's in addition of the Texas plant that's still being built and the cars that are coming from California.

So this almost reminds me, studied automotive history, the original when the Model T came out and entered the Model A Ford, well, this is Henry Ford all over again, and Tesla is the company. And also, I happen to notice, if you people know, on the Northeast, especially the Wawa gas stations, for three months almost, they've been working on the one here in Stewart, and I thought they were putting some kind of powers. I didn't know what they were doing. They're superchargers. They're finished now. They were all charges. It looks like at least maybe eight, eight or seven of them. John, I was up in, I used a supercharger at a Wawa up in Orlando, and it's pretty neat.

they bring food out to your car while you sit in the car and charge your Tesla. No kidding. Is that right? Yeah. Wow. Do you charge her? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

But, yeah, they had a row of 12 chargers of the super fast superchargers. And so where was this, John, did you say? It was up in the one in the one on Route 1 and Canada Highway. Okay, that's good news. That's close to your house if you ever need a supercharged day. Stu, are these select 12ers? Fowah is noted for Pennsylvania Dutch food, and their food is out of this world. John, do you know if...

Not only gasoline. John, do you know if Wawa has like an agreement, like to put chargers and more stores? I mean, it's more than a coincidence, I guess. Well, what I heard, yes. They're going to continue on that. That's great. And it's a good place not only to get gas because the gas is always fresh and the price is right and the food is excellent out of this world.

Yeah. But how's the beginning? You can see it. be going, somebody told me 7-Eleven is going to start on this also with the charging station. So, Tesla was here to stay. Yeah, I also let you know. Earl doesn't know about this. I got a call yesterday.

Toyota's TMNA, Toyota Motors North America, has an EV team, and they're going around. The dealers are coming out to our dealership on Wednesday to assess our need for chargers for the future of EVs. But I told them that we already have four set up and with their infrastructure for more. and he goes, oh, we're probably already set. But everybody's paying attention to it and charge it. You're going to see these things going up everywhere. One other fast thing, too. Did there still water?

You won't probably find it around, but it's in the drugstores. And they use it for baby formulas. And the thing that shocks me, they still don't have it for three months, is windshield washer fluid. For the Walmart that I go to, completely out of stock on it. And they don't understand why. It's not an import. it must be used in the ingredients

or something else but it's not it's hard to find and it's a simple thing we don't need that I'm all out yeah I'm all out too John and I'm not sure where I should go to find it Rick we got some at the dealership right

we should be good it's three months he called me in Walmart Stash John if you need anything to give Rick a call he's got to see her in stash all right well keep the one show going to do me and use rainex use rain X

instead of water use rain next absolutely All right, guys, I'm waiting for the report on the shopping report. Thanks, John. It's a good one. You better sit down for this one, John. Yeah, this is a doozy. That is the mystery shop of Napleton, North Lake Chrysler Dodge Jeep and Ram. Or that's cheap ram.

Okay, we're caught up on calls. We're going to back to Stu. Do you have anything over there? I got one over here. This is probably one for Stu, actually. Okay. We're going to go to Rick. Tim in Florida, he says, a used car dealer here, how can you find out the volume of other dealers?

Is it published somewhere? Thanks. It is. There's a publication called the Cross-Sale Report, and you can subscribe to it, and it has the registration data in any county in Florida, probably in the country, but we look at local ones. So if you find the Cross-Sell Report, Google it, and then get a subscription, and you can see. new and used car sales all over the place cool it's a pretty accurate yeah oh yeah it goes on registrations so the only time if you if you're selling out of your market and you're looking at sales in a market for example like you know we're in Palm Beach County if we sell a bunch of cars to North Florida or Key West that won't show it won't count as in

our numbers because they weren't registered in where we were looking if we're looking at Palm Beach County they're registered elsewhere so yeah it's not it's accurate but it varies you heard it here folks, great information. Give us a call tool free at 877-960-99-60. We're going to get back to Stu. It's got a lot of texts. Let's see. Where are we at here? Let's go over to anonymous feedback because I think we're caught up with text. Here's an interesting question. It says with the current used car shortage, is this making flood damage cars more marketable or dealers more willing to hide this damage in an effort to find used car inventory?

And I would just guess, yeah, I think that disreputable, non-ethical dealers would get whatever inventory they can because it is hard to get, especially if they can get it on the cheap. What do you think, Earl? I think that it's a boon to the crooks. I mean, when demand gets out of control like it is now for new and used cars, you'll see from our mystery shopping report today. And from our caller, we just had a caller. was it Frank that said that Audi in Braymond Honda in West Pond Beach has got a $100,000 increase over MSRP on a Audi on the shoulder floor. So yeah, you'll take a flood car and you'll doctor it up and unless you have somebody that's

smart can really look at the places where you have to look for flood cars, they can wash the title, meaning get a clean title, even though the car was totaled by the insurance company, they get a clean title, they clean the car up and they sell it, and you pay $1,000 over what you would for a normal use car. This is a flood car, which is absolutely almost worthless. All right. Okay, the next one is an anonymous feedback. says your discussion of V Auto is interesting. We talked about that last week. I thought many

dealers use Blackbook for price analysis. Is this a changing trend? So yeah, last week, and we talked about a little bit this morning, V Auto is just a web-based program that's used by probably most car dealers, and it does a bunch of things. It combines all the appraisal tools, so the question is Blackbook not being used anymore? Blackbook is still being used? but no one's ever using those little handheld books. It's all computerized and online. But most dealers are using a suite of tools like Blackbook, Mann High Market Reports, which actually shows the dealers

the actual transactions that cars sold at auction, among other resources. But it's also used, and this is what we were talking about last week, to get a market snapshot. And it goes out there and it takes transaction data, it scrapes information off websites. And so it gets all the prices. of all the used cars out there in whatever radius you want to look at.

So you can look at a 20 mile, 50, mile, 100 mile, unlimited radius. And it'll show the average price any given car is selling for. It tells you the equipment, the color. And so you can see what we can get a pulse of what the actual market is like. But it hasn't replaced it. It's just made a lot easier to use some of the tools that we already had. And what Stu is talking about, of course, are for dealers, used car dealers, new car dealers. You can find it.

You can find a dealer friend or you could probably even maybe deal directly, but it's difficult because it's a tool meant for the auto retail industry. One that's available to you just with your smartphone or computer is Truecar. And Truecar is a national company, their business for profit. They deal with dealers. And part of the contract with a dealer is that they're allowed to access your transaction So they know, True Car knows, if you're selling Audi's, they know what you sold your Audi's for, what you sold, you're used and new cars for, and you can go to the True Car,

that's TRU-C-A-R-C-A-R.com, I mean, T-R-U-E-C-A-R dot com, and they have a bell curve. And in any given month for that particular, make-a-car, let's say you're looking at Honda, and you're looking at a particular marketplace, you only put your zip code, you can say, this is the lowest price this car I want to buy sold for in that 30-day period. And then you'll see to the right,

you'll say, this is the highest price that exact car sold for in that marketplace. And it's a bill curve, so you can see the average too. It tells you it gives you some really good guidance when you're shopping in that marketplace for that specific car. True car tells you,

you'll want to say to the left, side of the middle curve. You want to try to buy the car below average, and you definitely don't want to buy one on the right side, and it's highly unlikely you'll be smart enough, good enough, negotiator enough, or whatever the word is, to have the lowest price. You're probably not going to get that lowest price, but you get someone between the lowest and the average. The funny thing is, if you do that now, though, and you pay on the left side of that curve, you're still paying over MSRP. Yeah, it's, you know, right, if you get the lowest price,

now you are. The lowest price on the bill curve would be the MSRB. Right. It would be in that little tail on the left hand of the thing. Very few dealers live there. Little too. Remember that, true car. We haven't talked about true car in a long time.

True, T-R-U-C-A-R-com. Truecar.com. And it's a really good tool. Whether you use them or not, and whether you actually go to the dealer or not, the data that you will see when you, input your car will give you a really visual

current real life idea of what you're going to have to pay and VOD is a really cool tool we also use it to buy cars from the auction it's kind of like the it's a used car department on a web page and it's really neat on the pricing

because I mean I've had conversations with customers who have discussed a price on a used car we've had and they've said oh there's There's tons of them a lot less than yours online, and you can look on Viato and say, actually, there's only one less than mine online, and it's about 75 miles away, and it has 15,000 more miles. We can actually see the actual vehicles that are being sold, so it's a pretty useful tool.

Excuse me from Ms. Stu, you know, we're talking about cars and, you know, how the times have changed, and I'll tell you what, be careful whenever you go out there, you purchase a car. Here's a, I can't let go of this story in the Wall Street Journal, but back. to, his name is Mr. McGee, who has this Model 3 Tesla, who bought his Tesla seven months ago, seven months ago for $48,200. Guess what? He's offered seven months later $55,600 for his car. And he said, I couldn't pass that up.

Folks, let me take you down in Memory Lane. Do you remember purchasing a vehicle and driving off the lot and the depreciation that took place in a blink of an eye? Those days are over. They're way over. Mr. McGee, are you interested? As anyone out there are interested in what Mr. McGee is driving right now? He's driving at 2015 Hyundai.

Okay. There's an interesting note on Tesla. We're talking about. back the story. Tesla is in retail. Elon Musk is a genius, and he is a great businessman. He's a great

engineer, a scientist. His profit margin on Tesla is 23.5%. He makes 23.5% on every Tesla he sells. Now he's selling him below the market because Nancy just told you about being able to take

a used Tesla and sell for more than the new one. You know what, General Motors profit is when a car? 4%. 4%. So Elon Musk is selling more cars but the amazing thing is he's

selling it five times the profit margin of General Motors. And he's selling them below the market, 20% below the market. I'm saying he's selling less lower the market. It's still making a huge market. But all the all the manufacturers now could raise

their prices. And a lot of them are doing. We just don't know it. And Tesla is raising their prices, too. So everybody's raising their prices. We're looking at hyperinflation here. Well, here's, you were talking about GM and Mary Barra. Barra, she appears in the automotive news this week. And her reign for the last 90 years, it's over.

And her direction and her future lies with electric vehicles. And boy, is she going crazy as far as that's concerned. The production map is all over the place. Another article that's really worth reading in the automotive news. The automotive news came out before the profit was announced for General Motors, and they missed their profit forecast, and the stock plummeted. And I go back to what I said before about manufacturers and what the landscape's going to look like.

10 years from now, I don't know General Motors is going to be around 10 years. And Ford, Ford stock plummeted, too. So here the rocket Gibraltar of the domestic American car manufacturers, General Motors and Ford, and forget about Chrysler. Chrysler's hanging by a thread, they always have been. So the Big Three, the Detroit Big Three, financially, is pretty scary. Yeah, and another. thing that you and I talked about on our way in was the latest edition of Consumer Report.

You know, take a look at the back page and the information that's on there. I expected a little more from Consumer Report. Here it is. Save money. Access our pre-screened network of dealers and see Consumer Reports' recommendations along the way. The deal you want is out there. In fact, car buyers save an average of $3,217.217. off MSRP when they use the build and buy car buying service. That's up. I'll get beeped. I won't say that.

Rick U.S. Derek Lopez just popped in on YouTube. He says, I went to Toyota Aviro Beach last week. They had a 22 tundra on the site with a $19,995 market adjustment, 20,000 over sticker. and a $2,995 addendum, the poor sales manager said he had to charge it due to the market. What did you say about addendum? Can you repeat that? A 22 tundra, which is the new redesigned tundra with the Twin Turbo V6 engine in it, $20,000 market adjustment, and a $3,000 addendum.

of weird added stuff. Just to remind you, that's the same Toyota dealership that sold 40 new Toyotas at the auction a couple of months ago, and sold each one for thousands over MSRP. That's just crazy. I wonder if someone's going to

buy that tundra. Oh, yeah, sure. Oh, I mean, I'm sorry. Someone will buy the tundra. I wonder if someone's going to pay the $19,000 market plus the additional agenda. Well, this goes on and on. Excuse me again. Stu. Hey, let's take a second and talk

about Earl's vigilantes. He's had his hat on him. I failed to mention. Well, what an important part you can play in volunteering for Earl's vigilantes and you can help us with these

outrageous prices, the shenanigans that's going on. You can help people in your community and it's a great hat. It's free. You can receive it by volunteering. And it's right there. sitting on right in front of Earl and you can also you can also help us out by signing up

go to Earl on cars if you want the rest of the information I don't think I have time it's 919 I don't have time to get to all of it also you can help us with a lot of people that we know that really can't maneuver their way around the internet and you can volunteer for that and you can also go to Earl on cars and see exactly how you can help us out. We can't do it alone, folks. Also, a great book that is out there. We're helping Big Dog Ranch. You're helping Big Dog Ranch. And this is Confessions of a recovering car dealer. And I think Jonathan has that up there, but just in case, here it is right here in front of me. Confessions of a recovering car dealer. And the proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch. 100% and little dog 100% little dog

that's a little dog that's a little dog that's a sad dog that's a sad dog very creative okay he had a dying dog that's a dog with indigestion that's a dog with our breakfast

hey 100% of the proceeds big dog wrench back to stew actually we are all caught up with text and anonymous feedback. Wait, something just popped in. Just nick of time. And we got a phone call.

How do things work. Okay. I'll be waiting after the phone call. We're going to go. We'll be right back with Stu. We're going to go to Paul, who's calling us from Lake Worth. Good morning, Paul. Welcome to the show.

Oh, good morning. First time, Paul, and I met Earl many, many, many, many moons ago when he first started doing the show. And I believe it was at this state. Oh, that was a C-view? Pardon me? Yeah, it was a different station because they sold out, but we're in the same physical location. Yeah, C-Vue Radio was the name, yeah. Oh, absolutely.

So, anyway, I had an interesting experience. I know the supply chain is all messed up. I understand that if you want to buy a car today, you pretty much have to order it, and that's just a factor of the marketplace. I have a friend who is looking to replace an old tired 2011 Hyundai Tucson, and I just happened to be in the neighborhood of your dealership on Thursday. I stopped in, and I wanted to just see the new Toyota Cross. So the salesman met me very friendly, very nice, and I said, do you have one at least that I can, you know, do you have one that's being delivered something that I can just see? And the response I got from salesmen was, well, when you buy a dishwasher, do you wash dishes in it before you see it?

And I said, no, but at least I can walk into Brandsmark and see one on display and say, I want one of those. Long story short, why do car dealers right now not have at least one of each model in stock so a buyer can just, Look at one. Oh, you're absolutely right. And the answer is profit agreed. And there's actually such a proliferation of models that it would require quite a few vehicles. That would be, yeah, I think it would be impossible to do. But I think, I think, no, no, no, no, I understand.

But, you know, nowadays, floor plan obviously is no longer a problem for the dealer. It's getting the cars. have the base model of each car you sell at least one that you can walk in the store and say, hey, oh, it's going to take me three months to get one, but I want one of those. Yeah, Paul, Paul, you're under one misimpression that so many cars are being sold by order. They're not. Now, in our unique case, we do that, but that's a different story. What most dealers are doing is they're deliberately not taking orders because they know that the impulse to buy and the immediate gratification syndrome that people have today with this insane demand and high and low supply is the best way to make a lot of money.

Now you take a car like this Audi that we talked about earlier, Frank called in and said that there was an Audi on Brayman Showroom in West Palm Beach with a $100,000 markup. when a person comes in and they will buy that car, they might buy it for a slight discount from the $100,000 markup. Sure. And they see the car. They don't want to order that car, and here's the reason. First of all, if you order a car, you should be very careful about what happens to that car. Let's say you negotiate a good price on an ordered car.

I mean, a good price relative today's craziness, a good price today would be MSRP. So if you bought a car and you signed in at MSRP, and then two months later or three months later, the car came in, I think the chances of you actually taking that car to MSRP would be slim, because suddenly that car would be accidentally sold to somebody that would pay thousands over MSRP. If you get a good price on an ordered car, you would really have to stand there in the dealership of the showroom and watch for the truck. otherwise it would get away from you so that that's what I was sorry that's what I was I would say as far as the having one model of each they don't do that or the even the popular models because they don't have to you're you're an intelligent consumer you would want to drive the car you would want to see the car but people are buying these cars that they don't want because they have to

have a car what the average deal are not here in Florida has probably got 20 cars, if that, in inventory available. The average number of models and colors and combinations is probably 200. So the chances are you finding the car you want today in stock are practically negligible. And there's a little bit more complications to it, Paul, keeping cars, the way we get cars, the inventory to fill all the, we have over 500 orders right now, and we're desperately trying to manage these and get these orders filled for the customer. customers are waiting for them. Toyota has 20 models. And to have a reasonable sample,

we're getting our cars, our allocations of new vehicles based on how fast we're selling them. And so cars that we left on the ground is actually what would hurt the other customers and our ability to earn the cars to fill the orders that we have. So for every car we have sitting in there, these are vehicles that we don't earn based on the allocation system with Toyota. So it gets a little complicated. Yeah, so there's some other considerations. sure and I'll hear here here's another question if you have a trade in and say it takes two months to get the car that you just ordered to arrive what happens to the value of your trade you're going to get the value that it's going to go up and that's what has been doing so we're going to give you the higher the two if it went down we're going to honor the appraisal that we gave you or if it goes up we're going to give you the appraisal that now that's not most dealers aren't doing that so we're speaking for ourselves most dealers it's going to be the appraisal at the at the at the the time of delivery and and and that's actually fair because the market is is pretty volatile and so you can get a good idea of your trade at the beginning

you know when you order the car and then it will be appraised at the time Paul you don't want to share you don't want to trade your car to the dealer you buy it from necessarily you should shop and compare it you should get several prices on your used cars or wherever you buy the car get the best deal on the trade end that that dealer will give you they go to two or three other sources like We Buy Anycar.com, Frum, or Carvana, and get bids on the car, and then make the deal that gives you the highest price. And, Paul, this is the time. You do have an advantage.

I can understand, you know, your passion for wanting to look, feel, sit, touch, a car, a truck, whatever. Because a car for most people is a very personal thing. Very personal. Very, you move into it, into the vehicle. about let me tell you something you have an advantage right now if you have a trade-in I mean you can take it like Earl said

to three different places used car prices are soaring you can get so much more if you have the convenience of having one or two cars because if you get rid of your used car you've got to wait

you know I'm not sure exactly how long but I've had this conversation with so many customers and they just you know we are here for you and so many other car dealers are also and we're in an environment right now that we certainly can't control yeah oh it's just unbelievable and for example oh i'm personally i was shopping for a friend of mine and i personally don't need a you know a new vehicle i have a five-year-old Nissan also that only has 38,000 miles on and it's been you know

dealer service since new. So it's not, you know, it's not even an issue of me even wanting to sell that vehicle. But I will say one thing. When I, and on my way home from North Palm to Lake Worth, I stopped at another Toyota dealer just to see if I could see a Toyota cross. And he had one that was already sold. But at least I got to look at one. And I've got to tell you, I fell in love with the car.

I think that's going to be a Toyota home run in ways that they can't even imagine. Another thing, just real quick, will we wrap it up and move on? The Krola Cross is a pretty new car, and it's a fraction of the number of regular Krola, so it's a pretty rear vehicle right now. Anyway, thanks. It was great talking to you. Thanks for the questions. And, yeah, call us again.

Thank you, so much, Paul. It was great hearing from you. I see by the clock that we're going to freeze our lines, but I do have to emphasize to everybody. your vote is extremely important. We love hearing your opinion. And we're going to be, we shopped Napleton, North Lake, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram. Now back to the recovering car dealer.

Well, I think we have some time for some text. Yeah, some more came in while we were on the last call. This one says from Robbie and Stewart, Florida. It says, good morning. I keep hearing about the appreciation of Tesla's. We bought a new 2019 Toyota Forerunner Limited from you exactly three years ago this month. The other day I checked Carvana, as you suggest people do on your show. They offered me more than I paid for it brand new.

So it's not just Tesla's appreciating so well. And no, we didn't sell it. That's from Robbie and Stewart. Everything is crazy. Well, that's what the Wall Street Journal called me about the other day was the crazy prices of car, crazy car prices. and we gave the reporter. Our name was Nora Eckert, Wall Street Journal,

a list of customers that had had outrageous success stories with their trade-ins. So, as I said to Paul earlier, you're going to buy a car, you have to have a trade-in to get a fairly decent, break-even kind of a price. If you have that used car, don't take the word of the dealer you're buying it from. It's not that he's lying to you necessarily, but everybody has a different opinion. If you talk to five different buyers have used cars today, you will see a range in values into thousands of dollars.

So that one person you didn't have time to call by the Ben Carvana who would pay an extra $2,000 over the best price you got earlier. You're in the driver's seat. Yeah. All right, we have a text that came in from Enrique. It says, good morning, everyone. and just wanted to thank you for practicing exactly what you're preaching.

I ordered a Toyota, Sienna Limited All-Willed Drive last May from Earl Stewart Toyota. Last Friday, I got a text from Elaine Johnson with a few pictures of the van. She said, if the car is here, when can you pick it up? I said I can pick up tomorrow. When I got there, I couldn't negotiate. There was no dealer fee, no dock fee, no hassle, no electronic filing fee, just MSRP tax and tag with a question, how do I want to pay for it? No extra cost for paying cash.

I wrote a check. Shake hands. That was it. Earl Short makes buying a car easy. I bought many cars. This is the first time my wife and I left a dealer without a headache. Just a smile. Thanks again. You are changing the world. Thanks. Well, thank you. I have tears rolling down my face

as a result of that call for two reasons. The compliment and the fact that I know if I'd screwed you and taken that car to the auction, I could have sold it for $3,000 more than I charged you. So sometimes being honest and transparent, $5,000. Sometimes being honest and transparent, it costs you a lot of money. But we believe in the long run, and we believe it's... The long game, that's right.

Yes, exactly. Who was it? It was Sewell. What's the guy's name? I'm blanking. Carl Sewell. Carl Sewell, yeah. It was a little crude, but he did say you can shear a sheep for many years, but you can only skin them once.

Yeah. Carl Sewell, I mean, if you can pick up that book, there's another book as a great investment. Oh, yeah, Customers for Life. Pick that up. I'm telling you. Customers for life. Frank texted us about the Brahmann. He says the salesman actually bragged. This is when he was at Bramon out. He says that their $895 dealer fee was actually the lowest dealer fee in town.

It was a Bramon gift to the car buying public. Frank said that there was no dealer fees at Earl Stewart. He said that wasn't true. Yeah, well, they like to say we hide our dealer fee in the price of the car, which, of course, right. That's where it's supposed to be. All your costs are supposed to be. Well, everybody's entitled to their opinion, you know, dealer fees are okay. Yeah, opinions are like belly buds.

There you have it. Everyone has. Dealer fees are okay. We're going to get to the Mr. Shopping report. Hidden. And before we do that, I have one more thing that I haven't got too yet. are illegal. And that is the Gallup, Honesty, and Ethics and Profit. We're fighting over the

mic. And I talked to the I talked to the Wall Street Journal reporter about this too, and we were wondering why I used to talk about the Gallup Honesty and Ethics and Professions Report, as he mentioned earlier of the show. And I

used to do it almost every show because it validates this show and what we do. And the worst thing about this is the honesty and ethics and professions report has been out since 1976. Now

that's almost 50 years isn't it? Yes. 1976. Every year car dealers have been at the bottom or near the bottom. You can go to just Google Gallup, G-A-L-L-U-P you know, the Gallup poll.

I got the latest one, by the way. This is the latest one right here. Is that car salespeople are no longer at the very bottom. And that's what I was going to say before you and Nancy were discussing. We're very excited. And lobbyists are dead last, salespeople, our car salespeople, are next to last. And it's interesting because above that, we have the bottom ones here.

We have advertising practitioners, members of Congress, car salespeople, and lobbyists. And the reason that car sales people are down there is because of the lobbyist and because of Congress and because of the advertisers. It's all a motley crew. It's like a giant conspiracy. So if you want to have some fun, Google Gallup, honesty, ethics, and professions. And you'll get the current list of all the professions. Guess who the number one is? Nurses.

Always nurses. Who doesn't allow a nurse? And Rick, auto mechanics fare quite better than car sales. I do, yeah. Yay. You're in the middle, though. You're not that great. You're better than bankers, though.

Here's, I'll give you the top five because we're so negative on this show. Nurses, medical doctors, great school teachers. Oh, I love Mrs. Newell. Pharmacists, military officers, police officers. These are the good folks. And at the bottom, I just read them to you. I think some things have moved around. Were business executives always this low?

Yeah, they were pretty low, yeah. Always? Yeah. And you know something, these legislators, these regulators, they're afraid. They're afraid to take action. We can't do this alone. I mean, we put a big dent in this, what is it, this minefield that's out there. But we need your help.

And these legislators and regulators need to be written to. It should be just a Jeep because who buys Dodgers any. more. And, you know, Chrysler, do they still make a Chrysler? I don't know. Anyway, the Jeep is who we shopped, and it was Napleton, North Lake, and here's the story. How is it that during the greatest free-for-all car business has ever seen, we've neglected to mystery shop, Napleson's North Lake, Chrysler, I'm going to call it Jeep, North Lake Jeep. if anyone was cut out for this crazy time it was Ed Napleton

regulars to the show know what I'm talking about new people don't know Ed Napleton he's just a dealer that he's typical and he's the worst the typical and we don't shop

in often because we know what we're going to get like we've known before Naples was born for the automotive before it was born for Yeah, the automotive apocalypse too wrote this. And that's true. His dealerships have been price gouging for almost a century.

His father was a dealer, and I think they started business in the early 30s. 1933. Yeah. You can't say the 30s anymore. You're going to confuse people because we're coming up on the 30s right now. You're exactly right. The Naples sales force is no stranger to addendums and market adjustments. I mean, they invented them, I think.

When the world turned upside down and these additives became commonplace, almost acceptable, well, they are, because you've got to accept them, because everybody's got them. Naplesham was already well practiced in this type of selling. Over the years, our most entertaining, and I put quotes around entertaining, because I feel guilty when I say entertaining. They are entertaining. I'm not saying that they're not. But I feel guilty that we laugh about it, but we do, and that's the way it is. Entertaining mystery shops have come out of Napland dealerships. We laugh at how outrageous the fees or the sales tactics are. But investigating the likes of Naplesland is serious business for us.

We make fun of a realtor rebate or auto but these schemes hurt real people. Usually the people who can at least afford to be ripped off and we call them victims. And a lot of people are buying cars these days are doing so because they have no choice. In fact, you shouldn't be buying a car if you have a choice. So if you have to have a car, they know prices have gone through the roof. If you have to have one, it's a terrible time to buy. But maybe their car was totaled. How are you going to get to the doctor? How are you to get to the drugstore? How are you going to get to the public? How are you going to take your kid to school? You got to have a car. So they no longer extend their lease. People like

These make up an all new class of victims for dealers. Desperate people, like Dapleton, to pray upon. And that's exactly what we're seeing. They joined the very old, the very young people. You know, the first-time car buyer, boy, they get hammered. The very old, never bought a car before a widow. The husband and the family, you know, they're in their 70s, 80s. Husband always made the choice.

The husband passed away. The widows buying a car. Bam. $10,000 over sticker. so everybody's in the same boat now as the widows and the orphans and people with poor credit orphans don't buy cards the orphans are good though and these are the people get

and we don't talk about the lack of education out there let me let's face it everybody doesn't have a PhD and we got people at a high school dropouts we get people you don't want to talk about folks not the not who's listening to the show you're the educated consumers We know we're preaching to the choir.

But think of the people. He doesn't want to say, defend them. He doesn't want to say dull people. If you find yourself in a situation which you have no choice but to buy or lease a new car, this show is for you. We're identifying the safe places to go. Please don't.

Get your hopes up about Napolton Jeep. We have very low expectations. Agent Lightning. We sent in Agent Lightning. She's the best we've had. The best shopper we've had. Here's a report I'm speaking. where Agent Lightning, our female shopper, arrived at Napleton Jeep in the middle of the afternoon,

exited my car, and I began to explore a lot. I wanted to find a Jeep Wrangler for the mystery shop. I found a black 2022 Wrangler, unlimited, high altitude, unlimited high altitude, four by four that I fell in love with. What did they come up with his names? The MSRP was 56,000-150. like manufacturer suggested MSRP, 56,150. Now, listen to it as we climb Everest from 56,150. Right next to the Moroni label was an addendum for dealer installed options.

$1,195 for a xylon silver level, whatever the hell that is, 1699, that's 1699 for a lowjack, low jack and what's that 500 bucks yeah I think so you're buying directly for 500 bucks they're jacked it up to

$1,700 $399 for shadow mark God only knows we don't know that is sounds like eye shadow $299

for splash guards what do they think is that a truck $1199 for nitrogen the air they're putting air on the tires folks

and $129 for wheel locks. All this stuff added up to $4,720 bucks. It brought the list price to $60,000, $1870. But wait, I found another addendum label on the dash

that added $11,995 market adjustment. Okay, let's do the arithmetic here. The Napleton list price, Napleton, $73,345, $17,000.

thousand over MSRP and I haven't you talked to a salesman yet I waited for someone to see see me had come out but no one did I went inside I found a woman sitting at a desk I asked here if any of the Wranglers particularly the black high altitude were available she told me that I asked the right person and said she was a Wrangler expert her name was Sammy salespeople have really interesting names only Sammy I say am I. Sammy said she was almost positive it was available. She asked for my driver's license, said we'd be able to test drive it. It's been a few minutes if Sammy entered my info into her

computer. Then she excused herself to get the key. On the way back outside, Sammy asked if I had anything to trade in. I said no. I told her I'd been looking at jeeps for a while. I'd hope to wait longer, but I was in a situation where I had to buy now. Sammy said there was a car shortage because manufacturers were just not making cars right now. Very simplified explanation, but sure not. Well, yeah, I mean, it's just, what can I say? I mean, she avoided a lot of chit-chat. In fact, it's actually very young.

She said she was very young, like a 22-year-old. She's a... Yeah. Refreshing, she would say that. She advised that she wanted me to be transparent with me and told me that there were markups on all of their cars, but that didn't mean she wouldn't work with me, okay? We found the Wrangler. Sammy didn't lie. She was a Wrangler expert and gave me a detailed overview of the vehicle.

I asked a lot of questions and there wasn't anything she didn't know. I found out that Sammy put an order in for her own Jeep Wrangler, a pink one, believe it or not, back in October, and it was still waiting for it to arrive. Sammy, good luck. Because when that arrives, they ain't going to be sold to you unless you do. Unless you're paying $17,000. Unless you're paying, yeah, exactly. We took a quick test drive up and down North Lake Boulevard, returned to the dealership.

At her death, Sammy said that if I wanted to move forward, she had to warn me about something. She said she has to come out with a full price for profiling purposes. I thought about that for a while, and I think that means like, they'll peel you off the ceiling, so would they do, they hit you hard?

It's a system. Just to see how you react. Yeah, you can always come out. This is a maximum in the sales business. You've always dropped the price, but you can't raise it. So you hit them real high, and then you come down slowly. That's the way card dealers think. Sammy got some water and left to get the pricing from her manager.

Took her eight minutes to come back with a worksheet, a really long worksheet. Selling price was MSRP, 56150, and they added all the dealer-installed options from the first addendum shadow mark, nitrogen, blah, blah, blah, plus a couple new things. Cahoo. I don't know what that is. I don't care with it. Who cares? I mean, whatever it is, it's not worth anything.

And they're adding $1,699. Let's call all this stuff, Cahoo. Yeah. All this stuff on the dealer, a dentist, a bunch of Cahoo. That'll be, yeah, it's a bunch of cahoo. And, Window tent, $459. $4.50 for window tent. $459 for window tent.

That's insane. Yeah. It should be about 160. What is that? triple the price? Yeah, she should pay $159, $160. Next, they added a $9,995

market adjustment, $899 dealer services fee, $129 e-tag file, $149 private tag agency, and $199 doc fee, and that was four in top of all the other crap, all the other cahoo that they added,

Four hidden fees, and they're all, they tried to make you think these are government fees. Dealer services, that's kind of obvious, but a 129 e-tag, that's dealer profit, 149 private tag agency, that's dealer profit, and 199 documentation field, that's dealer profit, all hidden fees. So the real price before sales tax was $72,5171 for a Jeep. 16,241 over MSRP. The out-the-door price, 77-641. Sammy set the paper down and asked me what number I needed them to be at to make a deal with it. I said it was a huge difference between MSRP and her price,

and asked if they would even come down much at all. Sammy pushed me to give her a number, so I said 65,000. 65. Sammy said she'd do her best. That's what they're supposed to say. I told her I might bribe some other Jeep prices online while I waited for her. Sammy said she'd be...

That was very smart of her. She says while she's waiting, she's going to check out other prices. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Sammy said she'd been shopping around and knows that Arrigo and Wallace are all marking all theirs up over MSRP, as are all dealers. MSRP is a bargain.

She left to speak with her manager and she was gone for six minutes. She said, Chandler, must be the manager, made some adjustments for me. The new worksheet was missing a few items like shadow mark, splash guards. The new out-the-door price was 75, 517, $2,000 less. So, okay, we've made a little progress here. Very little. I said I'd still be paying a huge markup over MSRP. I didn't like that.

Sammy said she'd go get her manager. She left, return with the young man, who introduced himself as, I, I'm the man behind the curtain. He said he'd love to earn my business. I asked him, asked me what number he'd have to be at to get me out the door. Really old school. Where do I have to be to get this deal done?

I said, $65,000 out the door. but I'd still have to clear everything with my husband. Here we are negotiating, and we said we would take $65,000 on a car that's got a sticker of $56,000. What can I tell you? The man behind the curtain asked me to give them a minute. Return with the same worksheet, but with a green Sharpie pen markings. You know, I guess maybe that's a psychological thing. Instead of a red Sharpie, or a yellow sharpie, you use green because it makes sure feel calmer.

So a green Sharpie market said he was offering me 69-270 out the door I told him I take my chances to continue to shop around started to get up the man behind the curtain told me wait Then he flipped the paper over and wrote a new offer in green Sharpie He would come down to 65,000

That's what I told him off the door If Okay, John for Pop City and all of you You gotta be sitting down Be sitting down for this one They said they would meet her ridiculously high price of $65,000 out of the door. He said, where am I? Oh, yeah.

Here's the condition to meet my price. I have to give them two Google reviews, two, and $100, two good Google reviews. 100%. And 100 on a Jeep factory survey. Now, this was not only ridiculous, but it was interesting and it was clever because he was sweetening the pot with the fact that $65,000 was a good price, which of course it is. So when you tell your friends that you bought, they would say, you know, I really got a good price on that Jeep. And I had the promise of sign a paper to give them a really good review. or otherwise they wouldn't have charged me $65,000 for that jeep.

And that was the psychology that the man behind the curtain was using, Chandler. I told her I needed to run out and get something to eat. You may say call my husband. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I have to call my husband. Yeah, call my husband and pretend to call him unsuccessfully. Yeah, did that fake phone call. I told her I needed to run out and get something to eat.

Sammy, she said she would get a runner to pick up some food for her. me. Don't go anywhere. What would you like? T-bone? I guess you have whatever you want. You fillet mignon. She tried everything he could do to keep me from leaving, but I got up anyway, walked out the door. Toward the door. Yeah. The man behind the curtain came running over to me, Chandler, and asked what the problem was. He said he thought we were going to do the deal right now. He said, sternly, this is when they lose it. Yeah, his Chandler, the man behind the curtain, lost his, you know, he was pretty cool, yeah, but now he lost it. He said, that's what you told me. He was genuinely upset and reminded me that I told him that if he could get, do $65,000, I'd buy now.

He was offended. I reminded him, but I also told him, I still needed to clear everything with my husband. The man behind the curtain was argumentative. Never, never, never, never, the argumentity with a customer. I told him I was transparent with them the whole time. and Sammy agreed with me because I was. I laid it all out. I said I was going to stick around and argue.

I was hungry. I was going to get something to eat, the man behind the curtain, offered to have a runner pick up the food, again, another over. You know, takeout. They just called delivery dudes. And that's not a bad idea, really.

That's not a bad, but they probably send, like, the low man salesman on the totem pole go right out to... Exactly, yeah. Anyway, here's in the final flying ointy ointment to this atrocious shopping report, nobody, not one person on this whole dealership was wearing a mask. And if you're from areas other than South Florida... We have a 20% positivity rate right here.

Yeah, 20% positivity rate in South Florida. That means that if there were 100 employees of that dealership, 20 of them probably were carried COVID, and none of them were wearing a mask. So there we are. A lot of COVID. We got some really good documents here. I'll say one thing. They fully disclose all of their, was it Nugu?

VS. Kahoo? Kha-hoo. Yeah. It was voodoo. And here's what it. Voodoo, voodoo. Here's a sign promise to give them two good Google reviews, five stars, and 100 on the factory survey.

So they not only cheat you, but they cheat to people. that are reading their Google reviews. And they cheat the factory. And they cheat the factory by lying to the factory about how happy their customers are. There's probably some benefit, even financial benefit for high survey scores through Chrysler and shame on them.

So when we have these kind of things... This one's easy. You think about... Maybe we need to come up with a different scale. I mean, from A to F is not... I hear where you're going. Yeah. But, like, yeah, a lot of it is very typical.

what they've done. They're pricing that Jeep in the market. But I don't like. There's so many different, I think the pressure, there's a, there's a feeling that I sense from these Napleton shops. There's a little bit more hostile. I didn't like the attitude of the man behind the curtain. And so normally on a shop like this, I'd be inclined to go for like a low sea like we did last week. I want to fail them. I just got a bad feeling from the beginning. And I think that's reflected in some of the grades coming in now. Bob gives him an F. Amory gives him an F minus. Frank

Jeter Farms gives him an F in an attitude. He says they need to rename LoJack to hijack. And overpriced for J-Q and all that if he's F. Attitude is an F. And I don't like that either, because these are common things and they're tripling the price of LoJack. No good for me, F.

That was egregious. I have to agree. Any other scores? I've got Negan 1. F-F F, glad I don't have to buy a vehicle any time soon. I've got Tim Gilliland, who, by the way, is in Yuma, Arizona, watching us here on YouTube. I guess there's something to be said for consistency.

F. Mark Smith, I'm inclined to fail them. F. Mark Ryan, who, by the way, both these marks are in Indiana. F. DSL extreme, F minus. and for myself it's an F as well

and Wayne fight with a big F and Cram 1624 F if you see your shadow do you get charged more if you buy shadow mark wow Martha on Facebook gives them an F too

so I think that's the trend Nancy I know it never mind I can see it in her eyes this is one of those moments that I'd love to be in the show room speaking aggressively speaking what's going on what's your problem anyway I think you guys get it that's me F minus minus minus minus my apologies to my two marks they're in Iowa not Indiana I apologize gentlemen what's the difference that's kidding marks

just kid marks and Tim and Florida go to Napleton And get jacked. I'm assuming that's an F. Wow. That's a J. All right, what's the final ruling, Mr. Stewart? Do we have a Jeep dealer? Do we have anybody on the recommended list?

Give me one second, I'll tell you. I don't think so, but we'll find out. If we have anybody on the recommended list, I'll give them an F, too. Okay. We don't have any. Oh, Chrysler-Jodd. Yes, we do. Jim Shorky in North Huntington, Pennsylvania has an A-plus.

And then, well, we've got to update it. I'm Arrigo. Arrigo C's, Riegues, Riegis, C-minus, Schumacherd as D-plus, Wallis D. And Napleton already had NIF. That saves me work. I don't have to update the site. They're terrible. Okay, I've got to give them F.

Hey, I've got to let, Napleton, if you're listening, thank you so much for all your emails. I haven't failed a deal with a long time because I keep talking curve, curve, curve, but I can't help it. Okay. yeah great hey and treasure Coast Toyota keep those emails coming

I love reading them Napleton thank you for thinking about me ladies and gentlemen thank you for tuning in Earl Stewart on cars we love your company stay tuned next week

we'll be right back here have a wonderful weekend Thank you.