Earl Stewart on Cars - 02.11.2023 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Mike Maroone Chevrolet of West Palm Beach

Episode Date: February 11, 2023

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits a local Chevrolet dealer to see if she can get the huge discount featured in their newspaper ad for either a new 2023 Chevy Equinox SUV or a Chevy Silverado 1500 pickup. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Good morning, everybody. We're back, almost all of us. Stu is having some back problems, so he is going to miss today. Hopefully he'll be back next week. And we're about to do what we love doing most. and I'm not just saying that we love this show we love the relationship

we have with our listeners we have some great callers out there that we just think of as our friends regular callers we have lots of new callers and oh we the team almost all the team was

at Valencia Falls in Del Rey the group down there we want to thank Jason and Jessica and Sam Rick and Nancy and I were down there spoke with us Thursday night and we're we just love that group of people.

They're a computer club and they like the technical aspects of what's going on with we talked a lot about Tesla like we do on this show and autonomous driving electric vehicles had a really good time. So hopefully some of you folks at Valencia Falls are listening today. We'd love to hear from you. Call the show at 877-9-60-99-60.

As I said, if the meeting, you know, your questions are what's most important. We can talk all day long about what we like to talk about, but it's what our listeners want to talk about. So please make a note of this number, even if you don't have time to call right now. We're on for two hours. If you're listening elsewhere in the world, we're on 10 from 8 to 10. That's Eastern Standard Time. That's Florida time, East Coast time.

8 to 10. So if you're driving and you can't call now, write this number down, please. 877 960-90-960. Actually, I don't want you to write it down if you're driving, but try to memorize you. 877-9-60-99-60.

And we've got Rick. We'll be monitoring all the other venues to reach us. A text, 772-4976530. That text number again is 772-497-6530. You can also reach us on Facebook. Facebook.com forward slash Earl on Cars.

Facebook.com forward slash rural on cars. And our YouTube, which is just a lot, we have a huge following on YouTube. It used to be Facebook. And I think we get more YouTube than, phone calls, at least it's close but YouTube.com forward slash roll-long cars.

You can see us in the studio. It's streaming, live-streaming. YouTube.com forward slash earlorn cars. Lots of stuff in the news. You're hearing how the car industry is coming back

and this is good news for you. It's not all that good news for the manufacturers and the dealers. The manufacturers or dealers, at least most of the manufacturers, but I think all the dealers had record profit months last year. So as the

supply increases, the prices are coming down. So for you, the car buyer, things are looking better in 2023 by far. Use car prices, I recall in the automotive news this week, will be down another 11% in

2023. So they came down in 2022, and they'll come down more in 2023, and we've already seen the new car prices coming down. So we're back to whatever the new normal is going to be. I don't think they're ever going to come down as far as they were pre-COVID, pre-pandemic. But maybe they will. I don't know.

Manufacturers are very competitive. Dealers are very competitive. And competition is your best friend. So who knows? I mean, we might get back to the crazy days of dealers selling cars it costs, near cost, if you're shrewd, if you're armed intellectually, if you understand how to go about it, you can really buy a car pretty close to dealer cost. Dealers, before the pandemic, actually lost money in their new car departments.

I mean, you were considered a good dealer, whether you're talking Cadillac or Honda or Toyota, if you broke even in the new car department. And so a lot of people really got to take advantage of, but some really bought cars very, very low. So you listen to this show, we'll give you some good tips on how you can do that. You can negotiate. We mystery shopped a dealership,

and we do our mystery shopping report. That's where we send an undercover agent in to some dealer, usually in Florida, but we've been out of state, Tennessee, Pennsylvania. But we send a mystery shopper in. and they negotiate the best they can to buy a car. And we shopped a dealer locally in South Florida that was advertising discounts of thousands of dollars

of all MSRP. So we just said, what's that all about? I mean, right now, if you buy a car at MSRP, consider yourself lucky. But the prices are coming down. So I just don't believe they've come down that far, this particular dealer, I think he advertised one car at $5,000 off MSRP and another one at $8,000 off MSRP. So we said, we got to check this out. And Agent Lightning, check

this dealer out, you're going to love this report. We do the mystery shopping report the last half hour of the show. So even if you can't watch and listen to the whole show, tune back in around 9.30 and you can cast the mystery shopping report. It's very interesting. We look for anomalies around it just we see something that looks a little strange we we send agent lightning in to try to find what's going on i think i mentioned that my son stew i did not make it in today his back is acting up he's been out for a long time but he got back last week and uh he's uh going to be missing this week but he'll be back next week uh i've been to introduce my co-host here nancy stewart uh she's uh she's uh she's

the founder of the show with me 20 years ago, sort of out half an hour, an hour, two hours. And she's also a strong female advocate. She's built our female listing audience up to 50-50. We started out 100% guys. You know, cars, guys, motors, engines is a guy thing. Well, no more. In fact, it never really was because the ladies of the world

really buy about half the cars. They don't talk about it, but they, buy them. And so the manufacturers and dealers were trying to figure that out how to market to the women. And Nancy Stewart found out how to inform women and get them to call the show. So I'll turn the mic over to Nancy and she'll tell you about a very special offer we have for you first time lady listeners. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us. You are such an important part of the show for the ladies this morning. If I'd like to give us a call and share your servicing experience, possibly your purchase, anything at all. We'd love to hear

from you. And as usual, we will extend $50 to the first two new lady callers. I do have to add to what Earl said about the advertisement for Mike Maroney Chevrolet. It certainly was inviting, and I'm sure it generated a lot of traffic into that day. dealership. And we'll get into that mystery shopping report. It is very interesting. So stay tuned for that. And also, I really have to mention again and remind everyone how we have grown here at the Old East Channel. And I mean, really have grown. I'm looking at the coverage map by counties. And it is just unbelievable how far we've come. Palm Beach County, Broward, Martin, St. Louis, St. Lucie, excuse me, Glades, Hendry, Indian River, Hokicobie.

It's interesting. So you have stayed with us a long time right here at the Oldies Channel. So give us a call. Let us know how you feel about the long wait if you ordered a vehicle. and anything else you'd like to discuss. The number is 877-960-99-60. And, of course, the text number is 772-4976530. And an interesting website that you would want to go to

to help along the way with everything that has to do with car buyers is Florida Law Protecting Carbuyers.com. Take advantage of that. It's a great read that Earl put together. You can go to Earl on Cars and take a look at that, and he really broke it down in the kind of terminology that all of us and you could understand. Also, take advantage of your anonymous feedback,

your anonymous feedback.com. Again, that number is 877-960-99-60. And again, you can text us at 772-4976530. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Now, we've been talking a lot about selling cars and buying cars. A big part of your budget on transportation is spent on maintaining and repairing your car. And there's not a lot of talk about that. The good news is that newer cars require much less maintenance and much less repair.

I mean, I give the industry a lot of credit. The quality of the vehicle, I've been retailing cars since 1968, and I sold Pontiacs back in 1968. And by today's standards, I mean, they were junk. I mean, the cars that were built back in that era are just absolutely. You know, you wouldn't own one today. You'd rather buy an old-use car than a new car. And they've come a long way in quality.

So I pat the industry on the back. They really have helped lower your cost because transportation cost is, you know, and then you've got insurance and fuel and the rest of it. Rick Kearney is here in the studio, and your questions about maintaining and repairing your car can be directed directly. Rick, if you're a YouTube person, he will monitor.

In fact, he's monitoring Facebook now with Stu out. So if you have any questions about a car, particularly an older car, and you have a, maybe you've taken it to a repair shop, and they say, well, we can fix that for you. I mean, it's going to cost you a few dollars. Be careful when they say that. It can cost you a lot of money. So before you take it in and say, here, please fix my car

and hand them a blank check, you might want to call the show 877-960-90-960 on the telephone or you can do on YouTube, go directly to Rick, YouTube.com, 4-slash, or on cars. But Rick can tell you,

and I don't know what this batting average is, but it's got to be 800 or 900% as far as helping people that call in. I mean, the best thing you want to hear is don't worry about it. That's not a problem. You don't have to have that remedy the car will be safe and run just fine just the way it is.

We get that question from a lot of people with older cars. If you're driving an older vehicle, I mean, the car might not have a market value of more than $5,000 or $6,000, and you don't want to spend $5,000 on a $5,000 car, so you might want to live with a little squeaker rattle or maybe a warning light that isn't that important. Things like this were you, I mean, if you're going to take a vacation, you don't want to take a car on the road that's doing something you don't understand. So if your car is doing something you don't understand or don't like, or if you smell something or feel a rattle or a vibration,

give Rick a call and Rick Kearney will answer it for you nine times out of ten. And if we can't answer it here, we'll Google it and we'll get an answer one way the other. So Rick will be here for the full two hours. And anytime you have a question, you have a question, question, just give us a call. One thing I want to talk about briefly, we got a phone call? Okay, let's do the phone calls. Priority to our phone callers, by the way. We're going to go to the phones where Charles is waiting from North Palm Beach. Good morning, Charles. Good morning, Nancy. I've got a couple of thoughts. And first of all, Rick was talking about storing a car for six months last show. I got cut off. I apologize for that. I don't know what happened. But he didn't mention. fuel stabilizer. What are your thoughts about fuel stabilizer, Rick? And at what point do you

suggest adding it, or is it just junk? Up north, when you've got small engines that you've got a store, it's a necessity. My real preference on any time that you've got to leave a car for any length of time is to find someone that can come and run the car every so often and exercise it a little bit. Because there are so many factors that you're just, there are so many factors come into play on that that can be damaged just by sitting still for too long. But if the car does have to sit for up to six months or so, a fuel stabilizer is not such a bad idea. Basically, it's a chemical that acts as like an alcohol additive on one part to help absorb moisture and prevent water from puddling in the bottom of your tank, which can cause problems

from condensation. It also helps to prevent other issues with the fuel breaking down and chemically changing over that length of time. But again, the really best, best option is to have someone come in and drive that car, take it out and drive it a few miles, top up the tank once a month, and just make sure the car gets some exercise. Great. My next thought is, Earl, if you were listening to you.

to the State of the Union on Tuesday, the President was talking about junk fees, and he was talking about resort fees and hotels that really aren't resorts and airline fees, et cetera, et cetera. But he didn't mention car dealers, and I'm thinking to myself, hmm, I wonder if he's been hit up by all these car dealers who are supporting his campaign or something, but, well, maybe one day we'll see junk fees outlawed. Yeah, it is amazing when you think about it. I mean, the media open, only goes after a rental car companies. They'll go after, they'll go after hotels.

They love to talk about the resort fee and the Wi-Fi fees and all the other things in the fine print. They go after the airlines. But you're right. You know, the president or the media, for some reason, give the automobile dealers a pass. And your theory is kind of like my theory.

I think that they are so well organized. I mean, there's no other retailer in the world that's better organized than car dealers. They have a national association, they have state associations, and they have local municipal. There's a Jacksonville, in Florida, for example, there's a Jacksonville Dealers Association. Tampa, there's a Tampa. There's a South Florida Dealers Association. There's a Florida dealers association, of course, the national. And you might as well call these things political action committees

because the dealer associations, they charge the dealers heavy dues. I'm a car dealer. I pay a lot of money to the Florida Automobile Deals Association. The South Florida Deals Association, I'm a member of two. I don't pay that much money because they make a huge amount of money off their annual auto show. But they take in hundreds of millions of dollars. I don't mean Florida, but cumulatively the associations, And it goes where they get the biggest bang for the buck.

And the biggest bang for the buck is not to warn the consumer that there are thousands of dollars in hidden fees every time you buy a car. So I subscribe to your theory, Charles. I think it's probably follow the money trail like so many other problems we have. And then my final question, actually, is for Erwin and your group, but also the audience, because it seems to me that there are an awful lot of well-connected intelligent people listening to the show, and I think about Donovan and some of the others who come up with stuff, teaches you guys stuff.

I live in a high-rise here in North Palm, and we're wrestling with what to do about the oncoming onslaught of electric vehicles. And in a high-rise building, the question is, you know, what do you do? Do you set up charging stations on kind of like a dandelion mushroom basis? They just sort of pop up, and individuals have them. Or is there a template or a suggestion by the automobile manufacturers? I'm thinking back on when cars started coming out and how did Ford dealers, or how did Henry Ford coerce suggest, encourage cars to have a lot of gas stations nearby?

Is the Automobile Association or the companies, are they doing anything to suggest if you live in a high rise, this is a suggested plan on setting up charging stations. Is there any guidance coming from the industry, or do they just plan to dump all of these EVs on the market, and it's every man, woman, and child for him or herself? Charles, to my knowledge, there is no effort, and you're absolutely right. That's probably the single biggest problem. I mentioned at the beginning of the show that we spoke at the Valencia Falls in Del Rey. and they live in a planned community

and the comment was made you know if you have a garage it's no problem you can put your charger in your garage that's what Nancy and I do with our Tesla and I plug it in every night even if I don't need a charge because it can communicate with the car

better download software if you have it plugged in I think that's going to be a huge there's so many people living in condominiums and that's going to be a problem Short of building a kind of menu, but the infrastructure so that you have the chargers in the garages. But a lot of them don't have garages per se. And they usually, if they do, they don't have enough space in the garage for everyone.

So if you have two or three cars, yeah, that's a big challenge. It will come about. As time goes by, though, it won't be as big a challenge because the frequency of charging won't be much. I see within five years the average EV getting 1,000 miles instead of three or 400 miles. The battery technology is going at warp speed, and there's going to be some breakthroughs in batteries that we just don't see today. And that might solve the whole problem there just, you know, if you've got 1,000 miles on your battery, who cares about the charger? You'll, you'll find one at Publix or you'll find one just about everywhere. You don't have to have one in the garage.

Sounds good. I'll keep my fingers crossed. Thank you very much. For sure, Charles. I'll tell you what. That was a great question. And sometimes now I even wonder, sitting in these meetings that, you know, the condos often have exactly how many of the guests really, you know, think about EVs and what's going to happen as far as the charging stations are concerned. and with their suggestions are to solve this dilemma.

So it's here, it's now, and electric vehicles, you know, whether you like it or not. But you do have to be accommodated, you know, where you live. Charles, thanks so much for your input, and we certainly thank you for tuning in Daryl Stewart on cars. Our number is 877-960-99-60. And you can also text us at 772-497-6530. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Another thing of interest that might stir some questions is I'm seeing as a dealer, this advantage of having a dealership, I mention that often because I don't want people to think this is an infomercial.

We have a toilet dealership in North Palm Beach, Florida, and this is not to say, help us sell. Toiladas, in fact, we don't need any help selling Toyas now with a low supply, high demand. But it gives me the experience of hands-on to see what's going on both within the industry and outside the industry. And so one thing I see that's going on now is that there's a growing animosity between dealers and manufacturers. And the electric vehicle revolution is is stirring a lot of that. Something that is very fearful of a car dealer

is we're locked in with a franchise which is a lifetime agreement to retail cars. There are no termination in Florida if you are a car dealer in Florida and this is true in many of the other states there's no such thing as a five-year agreement or a 10-year contract

or a 20-year contract. They're in perpetuity. You have a contract for as long as you want, to be a car dealer and the grounds to terminate that contract are practically zero for the manufacturer. So the manufacturers don't like that. They don't talk about it. They tell the dealers, say, we're their customers. I'm a Toyota dealer and my customer, you know, I'm Toyota's customer. I buy all the cars from Toyota and then I sell them to somebody else. That's you. So the manufacturers are not going to bad mess.

me too much at least they haven't but now you're starting to see this controversy between dealers Honda is a great example Honda and there's a lot of hondas on the road as you know Honda has formed a new company it's go with Sony it's called Sony Honda mobility now you probably haven't heard of that but so Sony Honda mobility is a company separate from Honda that they formed to sell electric vehicles. And they made the statement that they haven't decided

how they're going to channel those to the public. They don't know if they're going to let a Honda dealer sell an electric vehicle. Interesting. So it's got the Honda dealers all stirred up and the chairman of National Honda

Association is very upset about that. Could you repeat that again? That's Sony Honda mobility? Yes, Sony-Dash Honda mobility. And I hadn't heard of it until recently. And they are, it's, it's a, if I'm a dealer, if I'm a Honda dealer, I'd say, that's pretty Mickey Mouse, because you're getting all your design from Honda engineers, you're getting your manufacturing from Honda, and you formed a separate company, just so you can say this company isn't bound by the rules

that Honda's bond by. Well, you know, it's, that's, that's going to. on now and the other manufacturers okay we have a phone call I believe we do you know the continued battle between manufacturers and dealers why okay folks we're going back to the phone

and phones and we are going to talk to our first time female caller and she's calling us from Sunrise and her name is Madeline and Marty we'll get with you in just a moment good morning Madeline good morning Nancy

Welcome. You've won yourself $50 this morning, Madeline. Very interesting. I have a grand marquee. It's a 2008, and it has 62,000 miles on it. And I was just wondering, I have a little problem with it. The doors are totally closed, the car doors, but sometimes the light is on, saying the door isn't closed. closed properly. Well, I can answer to that, I believe. Yep.

What they have is on each door, on the body of the car, there's a little thing called a pin switch. And these pin switches, when you close the door, it's supposed to push that switch in and open the circuit so that the light will turn off. If that light is coming on, it means most likely one of those pin switches has started to short a little bit, And instead of working properly, it's telling the system, hey, this door is still open, but it's usually just a bad switch. A good automotive shop should be able to find that. Yeah, a good shop will find that, take them probably about half an hour maybe to diagnose it, and they're not very hard to replace. You'd probably be looking at less than $150 to get that repaired. Oh, okay. Well, I'll definitely do that. And with my marquee, I must say something about it. I love my car.

Any time on park somewhere, let's say I'm in public. Well, not any time, but I would say at least twice a month, someone will come up to me and tell me what a great car I have. And some people ask me if I want to sell it, which I'm happy to have it. I don't want to sell it. well you're right it's you know Nancy and I feel the same way when we were traveling more we would always try to rent a car you know where we traveled to because the trunk space in a

Grand Marquis for example or a Lincoln Town car a huge amount of trunk space into these cars you know if you got three or four bags forget about it there's just no place to put them so I know exactly what you mean and some people hold onto those cars

and take care of them like you do and I think you're doing the right thing because there's nothing out there on the market that will be where you can put a week's worth of public's bags in the back of the it's just they don't make them like that anymore it's a great vehicle I don't really do that much driving and truthfully even if I did I'd rather be safe with a big car I feel very confident in the car because it has a long front you know what I mean I don't bump into anything because the front is so long, and there's a lot of space between the curb and the front of the car when I park. Yep.

Absolutely. Madeline, thank you for the phone call. You won yourself $50 this morning. If you speak with Jeremy in our control room, he will take care of you, and he will take your contact information. Just stay on the line, wait for him to pick up, and you'll be able to give him your contact. Thank you very much. I'm going to continue listening. Thank you so much.

Give us a call and let us know how that turned out. I will. Okay, 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. We're going to stay on the phones where Marty has been holding from West Palm Beach. He's a regular caller. Good morning, Marty. Good morning. How you doing today?

We're well, thank you. Thanks for the call. I wanted to first give you a little mystery shopping report. I took my wife's car over to Ed Moore's Honda for service, and they had four CRV hybrids on the lot. Each one stickered for $34,000. They added $3,9.95 is their adjustment price. Plus, I didn't even go into the detail.

they also have a dealer fee there. So apparently Ed Morris didn't get the message that the prices should start coming down. Well, he's got your back, doesn't he? I see that TV remember, he's got your back. And your wallet. Yeah,

that individual, by the way, I don't know if you knew that, that's Teddy Morris, which is the grandson of Ed Morris. Ed Morris, he started the firm years ago. In fact, he I think he started National run a car and then he got in the retail business and then he had a son Ted who passed away Ed's passed away and the grandson has got your back he wears a leather jacket and rides a motorcycle

right and the other thing I was going to say when your other caller mentioned the state of the union I forgot what Biden said about it only 10 years 10 years to go on gasoline or whatever kind of fuel. I would say he was off by probably 30 years. He was off. I don't know how many years, but yeah, it'll be a while. Definitely off. When I say that, Earl, you've got a whole lot of used cars, and I'd say all your used cars are gasoline, probably. Most of them, sure. And take a thousand dealers in the United States that got the same situation. And out of your 2,000 orders, 99% of those 2,000 orders are gasoline cars. Exactly.

So my opinion, of course, not as good as yours, my opinion is gasoline is going to be around for a long time, and I think people should buy hybrids before they buy just electric. Well, there's a good argument for that. In fact, Toyota is pushing that. As you know, the CEO of Toyota suddenly, retired, surprised a lot of people and the new CEO now is

taken over. But Toyota's taken the path of hydrogen fuel cell and hybrids being the short-term answer. So as far as the comment in the state of union addressed, in 10 years there might be a whole lot of hybrids out there

but there's not going to be no combustion. There's not going to be all the EVs for sure, but it's going to take a long time to make that transition. Yeah. Now, with used cars, prices are all coming down, but new car prices as far as I see aren't, so I don't know when it's going to take place. Well, they're coming down, too. The new car prices are coming down. We're tracking it. You know, if you'll think back a year ago when dealers were selling cars for $10,000 and $20,000 over MSRP. I mean, I can't even say it without gulping, $20,000. over MSRP. We actually talked to people that paid prices like that

when the shortage was so intense. But it's coming down now close to MSRP. The mystery shop that you'll hear at the end of the show had a dealer that advertised two vehicles, big ad saying it was, one of them is I've got the advertising in front of me now. Equinox, a Chevrolet Equinox, that's $5,000 of MSRP,

and Chevrolet Silverado, that it was advertised at $6,000 off now. You'll have to wait for the mystery shopping report to find out what really happened, but I think you've probably got a good idea right now, don't you? Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. And when they say MSRP, they don't say MSRP based on the window sticker. No, they throw that number around pretty loosely, you're right. Yeah, that's a loose term for car dealers,

because when they put those addendum stickers on, they consider they had MSRP too. I did a column on that a blog called Beware the Fony Monroney and that's a window sticker that they counterfeit to make it look like

the official federal mandated Monroney label I mean they use the printers print these out with the same colors the same font the same style and they add it alongside of the official label

and unless you redefine print which you need a magnifying glass to do, you think it's part of the Monroney label, but it's not. There's dealer list price, and then there's the Monroney official MSRP. MSRP is definitely not anything to do with

the dealer calls list. Right, right. All right. Have a good day. I just wanted to give you Ed Morris, who's not behind you at lowering their prices yet. Thanks, Marty. I appreciate it. I'll tell you, you give us a lot of great information.

Marty. We enjoy your calls. Continue to watch Earl on Cars. Thank you. I will. Have a great weekend. Enjoy that Super Bowl. Yep. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Sorry the bills aren't in it, but what can you do? There you go. Okay, folks, we are going to stay with the phones, but first let me remind you of Earl's latest column, and you can pull up all of his columns at Earl on Cars, and his latest is don't play use car roulette and i'll tell you what it can be easily done do your homework we're in some crazy crazy times i can't emphasize it enough hey 77 960 9960 and you can also text us at 772-4976530 would love to hear from you from your anonymous feedback dot com we're going to go to john who's calling us, he's a regular caller, always a great call from Palm City.

Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone. I have a question for Rick. I'm hoping I haven't been doing anything wrong. Tuesday, I'm bringing in Toyota Corolla, which I've been buying since 1976. To me, it's a number one car. And Earl mentioned that they were number one selling cars since 1974, I believe, except now that Tesla has beat them. For Rick, the question is, I'm needing a water pump, which is on order,

and they're going to fix it on Tuesday. Have I been doing anything wrong by not changing the antifreeze? I know antifreeze has a water pump lubricant in it. Did I make a mistake by not flushing the radiator? I'm 102,000 miles. Nope. depending on the year of the car excuse me

sorry about that Toyota recommends replacing the coolant at about 100,000 miles and then every 50,000 after that so unfortunately it just you kind of got the luck of the draw that your water pump started having an issue right about at the time

when the coolant should be replaced anyways So, no, you didn't do anything wrong that would have caused that. It just, at 100,000, your pump just decided it was time to give up the ghost, and time for a new one. Okay, the reason I mention that, I'm not complaining, but I've never had anything on a Toyota Corolla replaced through all the years I've been buying it. And I just, the mechanic even told me not to feel bad because he said he's had other problems with, water pumps when they reach above $100,000 on your year, Corolla. So I just thought I'd ask you, and I see now the antifreeze, if people have one, it's good to flush it out after the 100,000 miles.

One thing I was going to just say, because this is a con, I have the issue myself. I wonder about when something fails on my Tesla, we had to have the, when she'll wash your motor replaced, the technician said this is the first one he'd seen. You know, when something happens to you, you don't think about it as being only one in a million, because you're the one. So water pumps, as Rick say, they usually don't fail, but everything you have in your car was manufactured, you know, and it was manufactured by human beings, designed by human beings, and human beings aren't perfect. So even if you take the number one quality car in the world, whatever that may be, and you buy that car, you might have a car that's got a lot of problems

because statistically, you know, one in a million, if you only had one in a million water pumps fail, you're building a damn good water pump. But if you're the guy that got the one in the million, as far as you're concerned, you'll never buy that car again because it's junk because my water pump failed. But it's statistically somebody's going to have something fail, even transmission, things that last forever,

not literally, of course, but things that you think are so much better today everything will fail but it's a statistic thing not hopefully it doesn't happen to you okay second part of my question my battery test good but it's four years and two months do you think I'm automatically just get rid of the battery because in south Florida batteries only last like three three and a half years would it be a good suggestion just to throw in a new battery automatically no waste of money at this point at this point You know, obviously you're going to be coming in for service every six months. We test the batteries automatically.

I mean, every car that comes in our bay, a lot of us have our own testers. Toyota's given us several. And we test every single battery. And when it shows signs that it's getting weak and it's time to replace it, do it then. But if that battery is passing a load test, leave it be. I'll agree because I have AAA and I have the service So they'll catch me wherever I would break down So I'd no reason to worry that way

Yeah Thank you for the information about the pump No problem And you'll notice the little warning signs with the battery Like when you get in first thing in the morning It's been sitting overnight You turn the key and it just seems like it's a little bit slow To crank that first time in the morning

At that point Get into a shop soon and get it tested because those are those little warning signs that are saying, hey, now's the time to look at this before you get stuck alongside the road. Well, thank you for your information. That's what we're here for. You're welcome, John.

877-960-9960, or you can text us at 77-497-497. That's 7-7-497-6530. Another column that would interest our listeners, everybody all the time, is that this secret that is kept among the manufacturers and the dealers. And the name of the column is don't let dealers steal your discount on a new car. These incentives are paid directly to the dealers, and they're kept a secret. The customers don't know it. And unless they take and interrogate the dealership, that's the only way you're going to find out, and it will save you thousands and thousands of dollars. So grab that column, take a look at it.

It's in the hometown news. It is also in the Florida Weekly, and you can go to Irwin Cars, and you can read all about don't let dealers steal your discount on a new car. 7-960-90-60 or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. Mimi is back and she's calling us this morning and we love hearing from her. Good morning, Mimi. Good morning. Thank you so much. I wanted to give you a little continuation of my knock sensor.

The car's been running well, as you said, yes, it would and it does. well I was getting ready to make preparation to have it switched out and then the engine light goes off so I've been driving for the last week with no engine light any ideas what happened yep that knock sensor might have been experiencing just a little glitch and the glitch cleared itself and you're good again I would if the light is staying off I wouldn't worry about it

I've seen this happen sometimes with NOx sensors, also with what are known as the airfield ratio sensors and the oxygen sensors. Sometimes they'll get a little glitch, the light will come on, and you pull the code, okay, that we know what it is, and you wait a little while to see what happens, and it goes away. Don't you have to reset the light? Not necessarily. What will happen is the computer watches over those.

sensors. And if that problem goes away, most times it takes two or three times for the computer to say, okay, yeah, I see it several times. So I'm going to turn on the light. And then if the problem goes away and it doesn't see it for something like 40 times that you've started the car, it'll turn the light off. And then if it does it for about another 50 times and it doesn't see it occur, it'll erase the code away itself. But if you bring the car in, the dealer fixes it and you drive home and the light's still on, that means the dealer forgot to reset. Oh, yes.

Then, yeah, the dealer forgot to reset it. That's a common problem. We've done it at our dealership, so I know it's fairly common. But, yeah, it should go off eventually, but if it doesn't, it might be the fact that they forgot to flip the reset switch. Exactly.

So the reset switch is just a matter really of flipping something? Well, no, we make it sound a little so, but we plug in a computer. a laptop computer basically and then we communicate with the car's computer and we tell it okay we're going to clear this code out but we can also see a lot of information what's known as freeze frame data where all the sensors all the readings that the computer sees I can see those on my computer right in front of me so I know what that computer is seeing and how it's acting and you know what it's doing to run your car that's wonderful wow to have another brain in your car well thank you so much and have a marvelous day thanks Mimi I like the way you put that a brain in your car that's for sure 877 960 or you can text us at 772-4976530 we're going to talk with Ron who's calling us from Lake Worth good morning Ron how's everybody doing over there

We're good. Nice to hear from you. Yes. I bought tires at Walmart. I got a good price. Good years, 65,000 miles. Now, I know I'm not going to get 65,000 miles on these tires. How does this pro-rating work? Is it built in automatically? Do you have to buy a package or what? I'm just not sure. you know if I take it back and I get 30,000 miles on these Walmart good years and then you know I say hey I only got 30,000 it says I'm going to get 65 how does that work you'll need to read the fine print in the receipt that they gave you I know get out the magnifying glass the electron scanning microscope but

unfortunately that's that's where they hide a lot of that stuff basically what will happen is say if you only got 30,000 miles and they look at the tires, they say, okay, it's all clean wear, you know, it's not an alignment issue or, you know, you ran into a curb or something like that that caused damage to the tire, but it's normal wear and tear, and you only got 30 when you should have gotten closer to 65, they will prorate it by giving you, say, 40 or 50% of your money back, usually in a credit towards buying new. tires plus Walmart's also the tire manufacturer and their warranty you're right you know and uh well they're what they're looking for Ron is that you

didn't inflate your tires properly and they can tell by looking at the wear pattern or alignment I mean you know if you don't if you don't take care of your tires you're you're not going to get more than 30,000 miles but if you take care of your tires then you should get the full amount in the guarantee yeah oh very good All righty. Thank you very much. Thank you.

You're welcome, Ron. It's great to hear from you. 877-960-9960, and you can text us at 772-497-6530. Don't forget your anonymous feedback. Rick, do we have any text? YouTube, any... We have a text from Ann Marie. Good morning, Ann Marie.

Welcome. And this is kind of an interesting one here. She says, good morning. Many years ago, I was a Girl Scout. My brother was a Boy Scout. And we did a fair amount of tent camping in our scouting days. Yesterday I saw a story in Jalopnik.com, which great website that one. I love the stuff they have, about car camping.

Not just any car, but this particular one was a $170,000 Porsche Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo. That's a mouthful, complete with an installed $7,000 Porsche rooftop tent. Now, this seems to be a new craze. All of a sudden, every manufacturer or these different companies are making tents that you put on top of the vehicle. Yeah, for that amount of money, I'd buy a Winnebago and just have the whole thing. You would say, yeah. I sent the story to my brother in western Kentucky asking if he'd seen anything like this since camping is very popular in his area. Sure, the Great Smoky Mountains area in Appalachian Mountains.

Much to my surprise, he said he did. A couple days ago, he took his Toyota Highlander to his dealer for an oil change. While he was there, he spotted a Rav 4 all set up with a rooftop tent, a lot less than the Porsche version. My question to do are, does Toyota carry accessories like rooftop tents? Has your dealership had any request for rooftop tents? And which vehicles with those tents fit just for the RAV-4 or some of the larger models? And then she included the link to the Jolopnik thing. Before we get into it, I have a question.

Is there a weight limit on every different vehicle? Right. Now, there's going to be the real question. Most roof racks that I have seen on cars have a weight limit of like 70 to 80 pounds on the roof rack. But if you've got just a flat roof with no roof rack, I'm sure that the way these tents are going to be designed, they're designed to spread the weight and keep the pressure so that it should be safe enough for, say, two average adults to be able to sleep on these. And I've seen quite a few of these. basically it literally is a large tent

mounted to the top of the car with a ladder that you climb why do they say they're camping when they're sleeping in a Porsche and also the other thing is they have electric generators now that you can use so you get yourself a Porsche with a giant tent

an electric generator and you can have a butler and a maid in there and then you go camping well that's that's It's actually a term called glamping, which is glamour camping. Calampic. It's a true term. Is it?

That is a real term. I was a Boy Scout like Ann Marie was a Girl Scout. And I felt when I went camping as a Boy Scout, if I didn't burn my hands and get exhausted to get all my clothes dirty and have ant bites all over my body, I really didn't have a good camping trip. Yikes. I was a Girl Scout. I didn't have...

bites all over my body. Since I was a little boy in South Dakota, my parents, we were out camping in the Black Hills all the time. I bet. And even here in Florida, clamping in the Everglades all over. So, yeah, outdoor, I'm a big one on that. But the interesting part is these tents are actually available for many, many different models of vehicles. And I haven't seen any made by Toyota specifically.

Go on Amazon.com. You'll find all the tips you want, me. But you can get these, and they do make it rather interesting because instead of sleeping down at ground level, you're actually raised up six feet off the ground. That's an advantage. Well, actually, from some of the times that I've been out in the woods, and you wake up with an alligator walking past your tent, I wouldn't mind being six feet off the ground. I use a jungle hammock. Ah, okay, yeah. No, to Ann Marie, they are available, not specifically through Toyota, but through outside manufacturers.

And I would bet just about any SUV, there's going to be a model available for it. But like Nancy mentioned, watch out for just how much weight you're putting up on the roof of the vehicle. You don't want to, like, dent anything in or anything. How long has this been around? I haven't heard of it. Years now. Yeah, really? Interesting.

If you Google car top tents, there's a lot of them. Car top tense. And, Marie, thanks so much for the input into our show, the question. You are definitely a great text. Have a wonderful weekend. We are going to go back to the phones where Howard is waiting, who also is a regular caller. Good morning, Howard.

Good morning. Beautiful morning. And I hope you all well. And I have a couple of questions for Rick. Rick, what's the difference between a steady check engine light and a flashing check engine light? Okay. When the check engine light just comes on solid, it means the computer has sensed a problem with some sensor or something in the car that it needs to bring to your attention. A flashing check engine light pretty much across the board is a danger signal.

Usually what that means is that you have a misfire in the engine. One or more cylinders are not firing properly. And that flashing check engine light means that that misfire is severe enough that it could cause damage to the catalytic converter. A flashing check engine light could also be a defective check engine line. Possible, but very unlikely. Myself, if that light is blinking and your engine's running rough, I would get very quickly to an automotive shop

or even tow it because it could actually cause damage to the car and possibly raise that expense a lot more. So I usually made fun of the check engine lights. I didn't even realize they had a flashing check engine light. So give me an example of what would be an emergency that would cause it to flash. usually like say if an ignition coil stopped working

and it can no longer fire a spark to burn the fuel that's being sent into that cylinder the check engine light will flash to say hey this is a severe misfire because some fuel from the other cylinders can obviously travel in there I'm amazed I give the manufacturers more credit than I thought I didn't realize I learned something new on the show every day

thanks Rick and that extra fuel going in the catalytic converter can cause it to really start heating up, and if it gets hot enough, it can actually melt down the inside of the cat, and that's several thousand dollars to replace. Great question, great answer.

What's you got next, Howard? Okay, catalyter converters. Up north, they were stealing catalytic converters. So I said, when I get back to Florida, I'm sure they're not going to be stealing catalytic converters, and I found out that they are.

My question to you is, if someone steals your Cadillade Converter, the option is to go back to Toyota or whatever car you have, or get an aftermarket catalytic converter. What do you think of the differences between both of them? Six of one, half dozen of another. On an older car, I would go to an aftermarket shop and see if you can get a less expensive one there. Contact your insurance company

because if your deductible is low enough, they're going to cover most of the cost of it because it is theft, which is usually covered in your automobile insurance. Be advised that this actually happened quite a few years ago. There was a real rash of thefts for catalytic converters because they found ways to get the precious metals out of the catalytic converter.

Well, and they were making a profit on, a big profit. Because it was such a big thing about that, the government came down, the law enforcement came down, and told junkyards and salvage yards that they were not allowed to purchase catalytic converters that obviously had been removed from the car unless they had provenance of where it came from. That way the thieves had nowhere to sell them.

Well, that shut it down for quite a while, And all of a sudden, in the last year and a half to two years, suddenly this has taken over again. Somebody figured out a way to sell them, and now they're making big money on these again. Guys like me that drive a pickup truck, somebody can roll up under there with an electric saws, all, battery operated, and cut a catalytic converter out of your car in about a minute's time. And suddenly they're running away, and now you've got this rumbling, roaring beast that you've got. cannot safely drive, and you've got to have it repaired almost immediately. So it's a big money thing. Cadillate converters or something that really get you stirred up.

You just keep on going. Well, it annoys me because so many companies now are selling these shields to go on them. And I've even seen a picture of one guy that modified the underside of his car by wrapping the exhaust with concertina wire, which is that razor-edged bar. No, I got you going even more. That's taken it to another limit. Absolutely. Excuse me, another level.

Okay, I have two more questions. I've seen the Tesla's on the back it says dual motor. Can you explain what's, what is the dual motor on a Tesla, and aren't all of them supposed to have it? Well, let me answer that one. That's an electric motor, which is what powers the car. and they have single motors, they have dual motors. My car, which is the plaid, Nancy and I, we have three motors, three electric motors. So, you know, three electric motors will make a car go pretty fast.

Okay, and my last question, if you have an older car, is it good to get a rebuilt solder or a re-rebuilt water pump? Usually on new cars, I don't think that's a viable question, I'm talking about if you have an older car. They're fine. Rebuilt basically just means remanufactured. They take the old parts that come back to them, and they use the good components from it and rebuild it into new.

It's basically, it's recycling. And so it's good for the environment that way. And when you're buying use or rebuild, you want to check the warranty. That's what it's all about. If you have a use, you probably won't get a warranty, but you get a pretty good warranty. Rick, what would be the warranty on a rebuilt water pump? Usually one year

unlimited mileage. Okay. Thank you for answering your questions. I appreciate your help. Thanks for a call, Howard. Thanks, Howard. Bye. Look forward to hearing from you again.

877-960-99-60, or, as I said earlier, you can text us. 772-497-6530. we're going to talk to David, who is calling us from North Palm Beach. Good morning, David. Good morning. Question for Rick, please. Okay. Go ahead. Rick, if a car had contaminated fuel in it, somehow it got the contaminated fuel, would it void the new car factory warranty?

It will not avoid the warranty, but the warranty will not cover anything damaged by that contaminated fuel. In this particular case, the car was towed into Napleton, of course, and Napleton said that the gas tank needed to be removed and cleaned and put back in the car. It gave me back the car, not running good, but running at this point. And 10 miles later, the engine seized up. The car had 22,000 miles on it and still warranty left on the 3- or 36 engine. and now they're not standing behind the warranty. Is that legitimate? Something's wrong here because contaminated fuel should not cause an engine to seize.

The only thing contaminated fuel will do is make the engine stall out and not run. If the engine seized up, something else was done. That sounds like something was put in the oil that caused the oil to not function properly. and if that's the case, then yeah, that wouldn't be warranted because that, again, is part of that contamination or damage. But you're saying Naples, Napleson told you it was due to the contaminated gas. Did they comment what caused the injured disease, or do they assume it was the gas? They said the contaminated gas caused the seals to leak, which doesn't, I don't understand this, and that caused the injured disease. and the oil was changed in the car

five miles before the engine seized. No, there's something else going on there. I would be contacting the manufacturer and saying, hey, you need to get somebody in here and look at this and explain to me how an engine can seize because of a fuel issue. Or take it to another dealer. They can get hold of the manufacturer better.

But I'd go to a different dealer and say please fix this under warranty and then see what happens because I think Napleton misdiagnosed it. That's not an easy thing to do because it's up on a rack at Napleton right now

with the engine apart and they're telling me that they have a factory rep coming by to look at it but it's not going to be guaranteed. So I'm hoping for the best. Yeah, go to the 800 number and go on record have a confirming email

in writing with the factory. You'll get a call back from the manufacturer and then at least you have what they told you. If they tell you and they go with Napleton that it's not covered under warranty, they're going to have to have a reason other than the gasoline. Rick is a little skeptical of this issue with making the seals leak too.

Yeah, because it can mess up the fuel lines, it can mess up the injectors. But once that fuel is sprayed into the cylinder, if it's bad fuel, the engine is not going to run. But that fuel should never get to the seals on the engine or anything to do with the actual moving parts of the engine. You need a second opinion. Yes, definitely.

I went to the general manager. I didn't accomplish much. You think my next move is to call the 800 Chrysler number. Yeah. Well, remember, you're dealing with Napleson, so not much you did. that. Thank you very much. Appreciate it, gentlemen. Good luck, David. 877-960-960. Texas at 772-497-6-5-30. Remember, we'll be getting to our mystery shopping report later, just around the corner, and that is from Mike Maruni Chevrolet. I think we're going to go back to Rick and check out our text. tube, et cetera. Okay. Well, we've got some input here from Donovan. He says, Earl laughs about

the idea of the EV, the electric generators and that. But with EVs, you can run the air conditioning for a very long time on that giant battery, so you're camping in comfort. He says, plus, for those of us in Florida, when a hurricane hits and you have no power, you can sleep in your car, in the see in your garage with no concern for the exhaust like you would have with a traditional car. Very true there. And he also goes on to say, if you see a Tesla with the word dual motor and a solid red line under that word, don't bother racing it. You will lose. Well, my plan has three motors. And I guarantee you got that line underneath, that red line under it. I do believe, I recall you saying something along the lines of the first time you hit

the accelerator pedal hard in that car that it almost snapped your neck. It frankly scared me. The car is so fast. And sooner or later, there's going to be some scientific documentation on this, but your mind can only react so quickly. And if you floor a Tesla a plan from 0 to 60 and 1.9 seconds. Imagine going from 0 to 60 in 1.9 seconds. Your brain is still back when you forwarded it

and you're already going to 60 miles an hour. Quarter mile in 9.9 seconds, you go a quarter mile in 9.9 seconds. Your mind is still back about 300 feet from where you left and you're a quarter mile down the road. So you're down the road

but your brain doesn't know you're down the road And I think that's sort of an acceleration as pure insanity, but it's fun. I mean, a lot of fun. Fun to try it once in a while, but you're talking right now, literally almost the level of a professional race car driver is needed to handle that much power. Even a professional cannot grasp that acceleration. It's not the speed so much as acceleration. I mean, your brain cannot, you know, if you go from zero to 60 and seven or eight,

seconds, which is pretty fast for a car. You have seven or eight seconds, and you see the car going as faster. Your reflexes are prepared, but when you don't know you're going 60, you think you just floored it. Right. Well, I'm speaking guys like John Fours, Scott Coletta, champion drag racers that are, these guys, they're in jet cars doing three seconds, but I mean it's... But they're on a drag strip.

Right. And they're going in a straight line. and they have guardrails all around. Well, that's where you took your Tesla to do that, didn't you? You didn't do it on the public road, didn't you? And they have a parachute that automatically goes out. You didn't do that on a public road, did it? You went out to Morosa.

Say that again. Hey, this afternoon, guess what we're doing? Earl and I are going on to purchase race driver helmets, and we're going to carry those with us. Five point harness. We're going to harness up, exactly. I have one when I was 16 years old. You might need one now. My father won my way I got a crash helmet.

As old as we are, definitely. There was a channel on YouTube for quite a while called Tesla Racing, where this guy would, he had one of the original P-95s. Now, that's several years ago. And before the plat had even come out, but it was still a very fast car. he actually raced against a guy on a super bike motorcycle and you know these some of these super bikes extremely fast acceleration the Tesla won okay let's get on some mug interesting useful knowledge we're going to continue with Rick and what he has a accumulated over there

Donovan actually just came and also says there's a model S plaid with minimal modifications that has done a confirmed 8.7 second quarter mile. Are they selling that now? I heard about the super plant or something like that, but I didn't realize they were available. I would say it is. Donovan's in the know on that. Yeah, look out.

Thanks, Donovan. I can't thank you enough. We're going to be out looking for that vehicle. We need to go faster. And this one came in from Guy Larrabee. And he says, I'm worried about Toyota's lateness to the EV revolution. Have they missed the boat? Are dealers also concerned?

There are a lot of people that are very concerned. Obviously, Toyota themselves are concerned, and that's the reason Akio Toyota, the former CEO, left suddenly about a week ago. I tell you what, I have so much respect for Toyota, and I've been with Toyota since 1975. are truly miles and miles ahead of the rest of the industry. And I disagree with them on the electric vehicle strategy. But you know something? I could be wrong.

I mean, they are the chief engineer for Toyota, who happens to be an American, chief engineer for Toyota, has done a study on, he says, basically, folks, what does the world want? If the reason you want electric vehicles is because you want less carbon contamination. If you want, if you're worried about global warming, if you're worried about pollution, all the other things that are so, that will be relieved by electric vehicles, Toyota says that's not the quickest way to get there. They say the quickest way to get there is, first of all, hybrids.

You know, you can't build electric vehicles fast enough to sell. everybody on the planet to stop the emissions, but you can build hybrids. So you'll take a huge percentage cut in the emissions with a hybrid. And also the hydrogen fuel cell, we can do that now. Yes,

we don't have the infrastructure, but it's a lot easier to build the infrastructure for hydrogen fuel cells than to get electric vehicles to all the drivers on the planet. So I kind of believe that Toyota is right that if we're

looking 20 years ahead, if we took Toyota's tact rather than all the way out for electric vehicles, I think we would have a better start toward a green planet and without the carbon issue that we have now. But that's not the reason people like electric vehicles. They like electric vehicles because they don't have to stop and get gas. They like electric vehicles because they're fast, they accelerate. They like electric vehicles because there's the new guy on the block, an electric vehicle. So it's, you know, life is so interesting. Maintenance. Maintenance. What about maintenance? Yeah. No oil changes. No air filter. Exactly. Has, has anyone heard of the owl, the fastest car in the world? Chuck sent that message to us and that vehicle, I believe he said, was made in Japan.

The fastest car in the world. I'm going to have to investigate that one myself. This one came in from Bob. He says, good morning. Why do a lot of car manufacturers put the fuel pump and sometimes the fuel filter inside the gas tank? Kelly Blue Book says that it will probably cost $1,100 to $1,300 to replace a fuel pump on the average car. In the old days, it used to be inside the engine compartment. Well, what actually happened back then was in the old days you had a mechanically operated fuel pump. pump that was mounted directly on the engine.

And those fuel pumps were good at what we call creating a vacuum to suck the fuel from the tank up to the engine, then pressurize it into the engine. However, now everything is gone electric. Fuel pumps are now electric. Electric pumps do not work very well for creating a vacuum for creating that suction. They worked much better for pressurizing

and pushing the fuel. So you have to put the fuel pump at the source of the fuel and push the fuel through the line. Then you can run it into the engine from there. Another thought I had with this issue of why do they do this and why don't they do that. I don't want to be cynical, but I've been a car dude long enough where I've got to be cynical. You've heard of planned obsolescence. And you wonder why Detroit didn't build better cars back in the 50s and 60s. Well, one of the reasons is because they could sell you a car every year or two,

and remember how they used to change your styling radically? I mean, if you bought a car in 1957, and by 1961, it didn't look right because the newer cars were completely restyled, and they made you a major restiling. And they also only had 12-month, 12,000-mile warranties, and they didn't care because people like to buy cars when they get out of warranty. I get questions all the time. If Toyota makes such a good car, why do they only have a three-year warranty? Well, if they gave you a 10-year warranty, there'd be far less inclination for you to want to trade out of that car.

So follow the money, follow the money. A lot of times the answer is the engineers had the meeting, and they said, this is the best way to do it. Then it went to the accounting department. The accounting department said, no, we ain't going to do it that way because we won't sell as many cars. It sounds very likely, yeah. Thanks a lot of sense We're going to go back to the phones We're going to talk to Bill

Who is calling us from Palm Springs Good morning, Bill Good morning Welcome Hi, I wanted to talk with Rick Absolutely, he's ready Right here to answer your question Rick

Yeah Good morning The fellow who called in with the seized engine Did I hear him correctly Did he say that the oil was changed Five miles before it? seized. I heard that as well, which makes me wonder if something happened and the oil, the drain plug or filter failed. Who knows? I'm wondering if it even got refilled. That's another

possibility. Yep. If they forgot to put the oil back in, that can certainly cause it. But yeah, there's, you get distracted or something, you know. There's something else going on. with that situation. Something rotten in the state of Denmark. Absolutely. Yeah. That's all I had. Okay, Bill.

Thanks, Bill. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks for bringing that to our attention. Okay, we're going to go back to Rick. Okay. We have a little bit of a lull here in the phone lines. Well, I'm going to read this one right out because we go with the good, we go with the bad.

Absolutely. This is from Paul. He says, I have an old. Lexus that was recently serviced at your dealership. The tires were replaced in 2019. The hand-cooked tire says maximum pressure, the pressure listed on the sidewall of the tire, as 50 pounds. Yet the sticker on the door says 30 pounds. When I checked my tire pressures a few days after the service, there were 45 pounds in each tire. I had been maintaining pressures at 32. What gives? We screwed up.

We're human beings. Whatever technician did the service on your car, he sent the pressures too high. They should have been around 30 to 32 PSI. We normally set the pressures two pounds over what the door sticker recommends. And one thing that this brings to mind we haven't talked about in a while. The manufacturers, they have their recommended. tire pressure, and of course the tire manufacturer has a much higher. And one of the reasons that the manufacturers have the lower tire pressure is because when

you go to buy the car, it rides smoother with a lower tire pressure. Your tires wear out faster, but you've got a new car and they have a lower pressure, and maybe when you take your demonstration ride before you buy it, you say, boy, this is a smoother riding car than my other car, well, maybe your other car had 10 more pounds per square, you know, tire pressure. So the, the tires that came with your car, again, are designed to be smooth tires, softer rubber. And you can get, buy tires after you change the tires on your new car, and you can go to a higher, a harder grade level, and you can also use a higher inflation. If you really want to maximize your tire life, then you want to be sure that you have

higher pressure than the tire and you have a harder rubber treadwear index. Yeah. Also, something a lot of folks don't realize, tire companies make special tires for the manufacturers for that first set. Yeah, Good Year, we'll call them Good Year's, but they only sell them to General Motors. They don't sell them to you. Right. and they're extremely soft compound tires.

They don't last near as long, but when you get in that brand new car and you're driving out of the dealership, it's riding like a cloud. Once you've put 20,000 miles on it, and it's time for new tires, you get the new tires on there, maybe a little rougher,

but you don't really notice it because you're already kind of comfortable in the car now. And you figure, ah, it's a little rougher. But also, then, let me explain on the, tire pressures, the sticker on the door jam is what Toyota will say, this is the minimum pressure that you should run in your tires. Do not go below this pressure. The number on the sidewall of the tire is... I don't think it says that, does it? It just says it manufactures recommended right. It's recommended pressure. It's recommended pressure. But when you say to me, this is a recommended

pressure. It doesn't say that if you go less, your tires are going to wear out faster or won't be a safe. You know, what the manufacturer should do is recommend the pressure that gives you the best compromise between safety, fuel economy, and ride. It shouldn't be the lowest safe pressure that you want on your tires. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. But what they try to give it to where it still gives you that little bit softer ride. Exactly. Yeah. And the tire manufacturer will tell you this is the maximum pressure that you can safely run in this tire. Do not exceed this level because my tire is not guaranteed to be safe if you go above this pressure. Yeah, they say maximum pressure, but the auto manufacturer doesn't say minimum pressure.

Right. So if you go somewhere in the middle between those, you're safe, but the higher you're, you run towards that maximum pressure, the better fuel economy you're going to get. Yeah, absolutely. I'll tell you, it can be pretty confusing folks. So, you know, the door jam, the side of your tire, the side well of your tire, the manufacturer's recommendation, keep that owner's manual out and make sure that you have, you know, the right weight in your tires. It makes a huge difference all the way around. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-3-0.

Jot that text number down because whenever we do our mystery shopping report, that's where you can vote. And we love hearing from each and every one of you, why you make the show. Now back to Rick. Here we have one from Gary in Lake Park. He says, did you know that on the Ford 3? 3.5-liter 6-cylinder engine. The water pump is behind the timing chain cover, which costs about $2,000 to replace on a good day.

And if the water pump leaks through the, what is known as the weep hole, this is when the bear, if the bearing and seals on the water pump start to give out this little hole that the coolant will drip through. Weep? Weep, as in weeping or crying. the water, the coolant actually goes into the oil crankcase.

Great engineering, huh? Well, unfortunately, yeah, Ford has done some rather silly things. And this one, yeah, Gary, I agree with you. That's not a good idea. basically they've designed an engine that if you start leaking coolant it's going to leak into the crank case contaminating the oil possibly damaging more parts in the engine and obviously you're not going to have an easy way to see that because you don't have an external drip that would leave a puddle under your car saying hey there's a problem so bad on Ford for that one that was not right

Not right at all. Top of the list. 877-960. We have a few more minutes for us to take your phone calls. And right now there is no phone calls. We're going to stay with Rick. Do you have some YouTubes? I'm going to take a quick moment and look up this.

Well, let me make a point about the controversy or the adversarial relationship that's building between auto manufacturers and dealers. And this is, I mentioned earlier in the show, that the dealers were afraid that they're going to be thrown out with the bathwater. We're going to be using direct sales from the manufacturers. There's always been a hidden adversary relationship between auto dealers and auto manufacturers.

One of them that's coming up now in I believe it's Virginia and some other states, where the manufacturers are angry because the dealers have lobbied to make the manufacturer pay them the same hourly rate when they do a customer repair, and when they do a repair for a manufacturer, which is a warranty repair. And I can see the cattle boiling now, and there's a lot of legislation around the country that is going, basically lawsuits by the dealers against manufacturers. They see that their

paycheck, the dealer's paychecks, are being threatened. You take, I mentioned earlier in the show, you've got Sony Honda Mobility. They say, what is Sony Honda Mobility? That's Honda Manufacturing, and they're going to build electric vehicles. Guess what? They're calling the new company Sony Honda Mobility

because if it's a separate company they can theoretically go like Tesla and sell you a Honda directly and Edmore's Honda and all the other Honda dealers in the country they don't get to sell your car so this thing is starting to bubble and boil and you will see I think of the next few years more and more manufacturers going direct

which is a good thing for you, the consumer you know when we mystery shopped we mystery shop Tesla which is direct to sale direct to the buyer from the manufacturer. And we take, what was the name of the other electric vehicle we tested? Lucid. Lucid, yeah.

We did the lucid. Same thing. Great shopping report. The two that we've shopped have had, we gave them A's or B's or high grades. So you have the consumer saying, I want to be treated with dignity and courtesy and respect when I buy a car. and the consumer is getting angry the politicians are hearing that

and then they're bubbling this thing with the anger of the dealers against manufacturers you're going to see a split with not only the public in car dealers you're going to see a split with the manufacturers and car dealers and when that happens

you car dealers like me we're not going to be in business anymore we're not going to have a franchise or a contract such as I asked earlier you know this animosity between the manufacturer and the dealer it's been the conflict has been going on forever and they could have made some you know everything so much easier for everybody involved back to rick okay this aspark owl is an all-electric battery operated supercar

they're producing a total of 50 of them, 5-0, at a cost of 2.5 million euros per unit. So that's probably something like, well, like $5 million each. Is that all? It's been claimed that it can accelerate from 0 to 60 in 1.7 seconds, 0 to 156 miles per hour in 10.6 seconds with the top speed of 250 miles per hour

and they're only making it 50. So yeah, it's they don't qualify as a production car, but you know, back in my drag race days when I was a kid, they actually had rocket dragsters. Now, if you want to put a, if you want to put a rocket it on wheels.

It'll go real fast, but you know, it's just not really a production car. Well, it's like the jet engine. They've got a semi-truck with three jet engines on it. Yeah, I mean, they're knockoffs. They're a demonstration item.

It's not meant to be a real production vehicle that the average, even the average billionaire is going to be buying. The Tesla plan is the fastest production car of the world. Let me reach out to Chuck, who's on our text line, and thanks for helping us, well, stirred our interest, and we checked it out.

Thanks, Chuck. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Back to Rick. Okay. Let's see. Johnny Freedly, I'm not sure what is what, I'm taking this out of context, obviously, but I think he's going along with your idea of, in the older days, ways to get people to buy cars. such things as a free Sony 70-inch TV with every car purchase

not a surprise how about those steak knives oh yeah a free set of steak knives I mean the list is endless the laundry list of back in the days and Egan 1 says that basically the weephole is on the part well excuse me folks I'm sorry I've got a bit of a lung issue going here makes me cough at odd points. The wheat pole is on the water pump.

Normally is there to where if it starts to fail, cool it will drip down and leave a telltale puddle so you can see that you have an issue. And he says, if you don't catch it, it can go into long-term damage, which obviously true, and can cause extra damage to the engine. So it's a very good idea to get that replaced

if you do see that puddle. And hopefully it won't be plugged up with dirt or gunk that might disguise that issue. And that pretty much has us caught up here. Okay, Earl. What do you have for us? Well, you can text. You can do the YouTube. You can do the Facebook.

We have time after the mystery shopping report. We'll certainly get to that. So don't stop the text. We'll hold the phone calls now while I do the mystery shopping report. But please text us or use anonymous feedback. or go on Facebook posting or YouTube. And most importantly, remember, folks, you too can vote on the mystery shopper and report. We'd love hearing from you and finding out how you feel about our mystery shopper and report.

We have got the good, we've got the bad and we've got the ugly. Now back to the recovering car dealer. How we chose the target of our mystery shopping report was basically a full-page newspaper ad. Do all of you remember what newspapers are? I mean, I think Nancy and I are the only one on our block that still reads a newspaper. But I read the Palm Beach Post, and I looked at this full-page ad. I'll hold it up here. If you see at the top of the ad, you'll see the $5,000 and what is it, $6,000 off MSRP.

And that's the only auto ad in the paper, by the way, all the other car dealers, except for Maruni Chevrolet. I think there are a few down south in the Miami, Fort Lauderdale area that advertised the Sun Sentinel. But it used to be the car dealers did nothing but newspaper advertising, and TV was rare back in the day. but do you believe that they would actually give you $5,000 off an Econox off of MSRP or $6,000 off of a Silverado off of MSRP? Well, I didn't believe it, and so we sent in Agent Lightning to do a mystery shop. And you'll enjoy this. By the way, the name of this dealership is Maruni Chevrolet, and Maroonie,

was one of the earlier CEOs of AutoNation. When AutoNation grew, they started calling all their dealerships AutoNation, but in Florida, they're still calling a lot of the Auto Nation-owned dealerships Maroonie. Maroonie is not the owner, it is Auto Nation. And it's a little interesting, too, because I can't find anywhere in the ad.

There's a Florida law that says, if you own a business your name must be in the advertisement. Well, other nation is not in the advertisement or else I missed it. So here we go with the mystery shop of

Mike Maruni Chevrolet in West Palm Beach on Okatchelby Boulevard. I'll speak in the first person as if I were Mr. Shopper. I arrived at Mike Maroney Chevrolet mid-morning, eager to investigate the advertised discounts of all

MSRP. And as I said earlier in the show, if you can buy a car at MSRP right now, it's usually a pretty good price. It was a time where you couldn't even think about it, and now new car prices are coming down slowly.

Upon beginning to inspect the Equinox, a salesperson named Dwayne approached me and introduced himself with a firm handshake. I presented him with the advertisement I saw in the Palm Beach Post that promised $5,000 off a new Econox

and $5,000 off of MSRP. And he immediately checked to see what discounts I was eligible for. Despite acknowledging that I may not qualify for all discounts, he stated that he could provide me with a $3,500 discount. Now, here's the ad.

I'm holding it up again. And here's the fine print down here, by the way. You probably can't see that. Well, I can't see it either. I have a magnifying glass, and I looked. And nowhere in the fine print is there any disclaimer or explanation of why they're not really going to give you $5,000 off or $6,000 off. So right away, I'm surprised that we have a publicly owned company named AutoNation that is regulated by the Security Exchange Commission. and under the watch of everyone,

the public companies are really scrutinized. And it's just not some little privately owned dealership and a little bitty town somewhere, Paducah, Kentucky, they could just get away with anything because he's so far below the radar, you don't know what he's doing. Auto Nation is the second largest seller of cars in the world, I think, certainly in the United States, and they're under the microscope.

And for them to run an ad, like this in violating the law is surprising to me. I presented him with the advertisement. Okay, I just said that. Despite acknowledging that I may not qualify for all discounts, he stated

he could provide me with a $3,500 discount. I said that to him. He recommended that we take the car for a test drive, but since it was out of gas, we'd have to fuel up before going out. Since I was content with just driving around the lot, we opted not to visit the gas station. The MSRP of the Equinox

was $37,895. Okay, now let's see. Moroni label, official, federal mandated monorny label, that is MSRP, $37,895. There was no addendum,

no phony in Monroney. So they're going to give, they're going to give me, a shopper, $5,000 off MSRP. Boy, that is really a good deal. Well, let's see what happens. During the test drive,

Dwayne thoroughly covered all the features of the fully loaded equinox. I inquired about many aspects of the car. He also mentioned that Mike Murny Chevrolet was motivated to sell their cars since the more they sold, the more they would be granted from Chevrolet. Now, that's a true statement.

That's called turn and earn, car dealers, we car dealers call it, turn and there. The faster you sell the cars, the faster the manufacturer fills the pipeline for you. And during a booming market like we have now, a shortages supply and a huge demand, it is mandatory that car dealers sell their cars fast. And if you don't, you're not going to get the pipeline filled and your competition will. Pretty soon you'll have a lot of cars to sell and you won't. When we return to his desk, Duane that he would provide me with a fantastic price.

Okay, that's buffery. Of course, what else is he going to say? And his objective was to make a sale that day, and that's, you know, that's true. They don't want you to come out from under the ether and have time to think about it. So they want to sell you a car that day. Not just that, they want you to drive it home

so that the full legal consideration of a contract has been fulfilled. While we were sitting there for approximately 10 minutes, for approximately 10 minutes of police chase on Oklahoma Boulevard created a lot of disturbance. I was relieved to, we didn't take the car out on the road. That was an aside and our mystery shopper

whose partner had the car parked out of the street was almost hit by a getaway car and the cops were chased and there was really a wild scene there on Okachovia Boulevard. Amazing. So fortunately Agent Lightning is safe as well as

the person that was driving the car that drove her to the running Chevrolet. Duane retrieved all the information and consulted with one of the sales managers to obtain a price sheet for me. He returned after a few moments and asked me what car I was currently driving as well as whether it was titled

and registered at my home address. Kind of a strange question. I found it a bit odd, but he clarified that he was trying to attain the best price possible. Now, you know, roll the tape back what I said earlier, I came in because I want $5,000 off the MSRP

and he said, I'll see what I can do if you qualify for all the discounts. Well, there's nothing in the fine print that talks about the discounts, certainly for $5,000 off. But this is where I'm really surprised at the integrity of this advertisement for a publicly owned company. Dwayne then had me a worksheet and review of the numbers. It showed a $2,815 discount from the NSRP, which was $37,895. But then a $995 junk fee was added, a hidden fee, junk fee, dealer fee, there's a million names for the hidden fee.

I think hidden fee is the best way to describe it, even better than junk fee, as well as $955 in government fees. Now, there's only two kinds of government fees that are legitimate. One is the sales tax, and the other one is the registration or the license plate. Now, you'll see later on in the report here that the sales tax is added separately, and there's another junk fee that's added that shouldn't be. Duane explained that $450 of that was for the tag, and okay, So that still leaves almost half that is unexplained. So in my opinion, and I think this has got to be factual, we know the 995 hidden fee is not legitimate.

And I also believe about half of that $955 is not legitimate. So right away they're having $1,500 back to their advertised price, which was supposed to be $5,000 off MSRP. Taxes were added and the $1,750 rebate came off. Now, there was a rebate. My actual price was $34,825. $3,070 off MSRP. Well, that's still not $5,000. To reach that price,

Murney gave me a $1,3,120 discount, and General Motors kicked in another $1,750, consisting of a conquest discount and the rate of consumer cash. Well, the conquest discount means you have to have a share. way in the family. And that isn't disclosed in the fine print. This deal was $5,000 often equinoxes advertised. It was not, but it was close. Well, it was close if you take into consideration the fact that there's some fees that he said were non-taxable fees, government

fees, which weren't. I informed that I needed to confer with my husband and would be in contact. Before departing, I inquired if Dwayne could also investigate the advertised Silverado deal for my son, and of course that was the one that was a $6,000 discount, $5,000 discount on the equinox and $6,000 off on the Silverado. So he's leading him to believe that we could buy that too. I waited just a few minutes for a worksheet, it was for a 2,023 Silverado, 1,500 with an MSRP of 45,420. The worksheet showed a $4,300 discount. Of course, the advertisement was $6,000.

Then they added $1,500 in junk fees, and half of the government fees, I got the $7,050 rebate again. My real price was $40,000, $870, $4550 off MSRP, and I don't really believe that. it was because they actually had added back something they called government fees, fell short of the promise, a discount by $1,500, but way closer than I thought it would be. I fact Dwaynean left. Now the bottom line here is that prices are coming down because even if it's only a $3,000 discount or a $1,500 discount, it's more than you would normally get off MSRP.

So the good news is we see the prices of new cars coming down. The bad news for Maruni, which is auto-nation, is the fact that they were not honest in their advertising. Even the Federal Trade Commission says that anything that you do in an advertisement that lowers the actual selling price has to be displayed prominently just as if, just as the price is. Now, here's the price, I'll hold this up again, that $5,000 discount and $6,000 discount is in huge type. I mean, it's, you know, it's just, there's nothing bigger in that advertisement than the $5,000 and $6,000 discount. Well, lowering the price because you don't qualify for a discount, according to the Federal Trade Commission, has got to be right up there alongside the $5,000 in the same font and the same type.

style in the same proximity is what you're advertising the price at or the discount. So they violated that. And as I say, I'm a little shocked because they are a public company. And my general advice has always been all things being equal, you should go to a public company to buy a car rather than a privately owned company. I say that even though I'm a dealer with a privately owned company. That's just the way it is for most dealers. the public companies are a little bit more careful about what they do,

mainly because they're in the public eye, they're in the stockholders' eye, they're in the security exchange commission's eye, and when they cheat on something, they're going to get a whole lot more trouble. Well, we've got that. We've got to get the votes in, and we take the time to text us the vote or YouTube us to vote,

and we will go around and pull the voters down. Rick, you want to go first? Alrighty. We've got Mark Anderson, Mark from St. Louis, D. Old School Misleading newspaper ads. Get the ink on your fingers. Negan 1 says F for false advertising. Ah, let's see here. Johnny Z. Freedly says F for a bunch of phony, maroni, baloney. Tim Gilliland from Yuma, not the worst, but still smells bad, C minus. Mark Smith, disappointing, D. Andy Z, D for sure.

Brian said Lacko, false advertisement, deserves an F. Tom Steckle, I'd give him a C-minus, no addems, government fees are overstated, and the ad was a bit deceptive on the discount. Mark Ryan, with a D. Then we've got Mark from Palm Beach Gardens. Deception, lies and dishonesty. Hit the door, Ms. Lange. Lightning. F, F, F. F. F. F. Bob, D for Deceptive Advertising. Where is Ashley Moody?

Jonathan in Wellington. Maruni Chevy gets an F for me. Hidden fees and lies about fees is an immediate fail. And, Anne-Marie, the violating law equals an F. For me, I'm going to say they're actually giving some discreet. counts here. So I'm going to go a little more lenient. I'm going to say a C-minus, simply for the idea that if you're careful and you work it hard enough, I bet you might be able to even get a little better deal on that one. Oh, and Las Caritas 31 F. That's our full collection over here. What do you think, Earl? Well, I'm torn here. I feel a little embarrassed because I've always recommended automation. I'm looking at the fine print with my magnifying glass.

I'll hold it up. I literally can't read it without it. And one of the discounts that was deleted from the price before they realized whether or not you would qualify, you have to have a 2009 or newer non-GM vehicle registered in the household. So that's a nice way to treat your loyal customers that buy GM cars. You give the bigger discount to somebody that has a GM car. And then the other interesting thing here is I see in the fine print,

and no one in the fine print if they talk about the discount of $5,000 or $6,000. But they talked about the payments of the ad, and they would give you 6.5% annual percentage. rate, but you had to have an A-plus credit score. I'm not sure what they call an A-plus, but it sounds to me like you'd have to have like an 800 beacon, which is really unreasonable because very, very few people have that. Well, how are you going to score for? I tell you my score.

I like the way you put that. It sounds like, you know, an 800 beacon. Ladies and gentlemen, for me, I just can't deal with false advertisements. There's too many loopholes in this mystery shop, this deception, and I'll reiterate where is Ashley Moody. There's so much that these dealers are getting away with why I can't answer the question. For me, I give them an F. False advertisement, deception.

I'm holding this up so I can put. point to the fine print. Now, the blue, that's not the fine print. Well, my finger's there. You don't see anything because you can't read it. And not only is a fine print unreadable without a magnifying glass, but it doesn't give the full disclosures. That's a terrible violation of the rules.

And there are a lot of rules out there. There's a lot of laws out there. And I don't know, Ashley Moody, I mean, Monroe, he's turning over in his grave. Wasn't it back in 1958 when, you know, this law was put into order, you know, about a label that can't be removed, a window sticker? I mean, there's so many violations here. I don't like it. It stinks.

Still need your grade, Earl. Yeah, I'm going to give them. It's so hard for me to do, though, I just hate to do this to other nation. I'm going to give them a D. and I think it's the beginning of the show I was talking to Jonathan we're talking about the fact that

this is the only ad, the newspaper, how nobody advertises the newspaper anymore, and then Jonathan said, you know, this could be a demographic thing, and he's absolutely right. The people that read newspapers are old people like me. I subscribe, Nancy and I

subscribe, and we're elderly, and nobody else. I mean, nobody reads a newspaper, and the card dealers don't. So it would be even sadder to think that Maroni Automation is targeting older people. But you could make an argument, couldn't you, that why is everybody else advertising on Facebook and digitally advertising? Why are no other car dealers or anybody advertising in newspapers anymore? Maybe they're targeting old people, and that's not a nice thing to do.

No, and you would recommend auto nation in the day. Absolutely. And for us to get into the studio in the day, I mean, how many newspaper ads did we bring in? Did we prepare prior to the show? Yeah. And it's just inconscionable, and you hit on it, senior citizens, let's take advantage of them. Well, there's a lot of people out there, if you want to go back historically, a lot of widows, I mean, men typically. They pre-decease their wives.

And back people that grew up in the 40s and 50s and 60s, it was a man's world. It's still too much of a man's world, but I'll let Nancy talk about that next week. That's another show. What I'm saying is a lot of women out there have never bought a car before. And here they are targeting widows, if you want to be called a spade a spade. They're targeting inexperienced elderly people to take advantage of by advertising in the Bob Beach Bros. One minor point here.

I've had a couple people have come in to say, let's see, Paul has mentioned, you mentioned on an earlier show that Mike Maruni was not the Maruni Auto Nation. So is Mike Maroonie own, does he own this dealership or is... No. Okay. It's an Auto Nation, the public company owns it. Mike Maruni was one of the earlier CEOs.

He worked with AutoNation and when they first got started they called the a lot of the stores in Maruni and then AutoNation made a policy change and they don't put names typically on their dealerships anymore. Okay, so Mike Maroonie is not... Just a guy. Yeah. He lives in Miami. Okay. And not to be confused with the senator in Oklahoma that initiated the Munrooney label. back in 1958 okay we got two minutes are we going to sign off uh i'm going to tap dance

i want to uh give a special thank you to jonathan and i'm sure everyone by now has noticed the backdrop he's wishing all of us uh and all of you happy valentine's day he does a great job with the backdrops he does a great job with everything uh so ladies and gentlemen uh i want to thank you all for tuning in, Earl Stewart on cars. We'll be right back here next week, 8 a.m. Have a wonderful week and enjoy that Super Bowl. Bye-bye.