Earl Stewart on Cars - 02.22.2020 - The Best of Earl Stewart on Cars

Episode Date: February 22, 2020

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent Tempest visits Palm Beach Toyota to see if she can purchase an advertised car at a very special price. 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. “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”

You're listening to the best of the Earl Stewart on Cars program. If you have a question, text it to 772-4976530 or online at Your Anonymous Feedback.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. We also have Rick Kearney, an expert on how to keep your car running right. I dare you to ask a question that Rick can't answer about the mechanics or electronics of your car. Also with us as my son, Stu Stewart are linked to cyberspace through Facebook, YouTube, 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. Hi, folks. This is Earl, the recovering car dealer. You were just listening to my recorded voice. And here I am, live and in color, in the studio, with our team, our automotive team. Rick Kearney, Stu Stewart, Nancy Stewart, and me. And as soon as we go live, I just get a shot of adrenaline. Love the show. Love what we do. Love you.

You are the key to the show. You, I'm talking about our audience out there on Facebook, Twitter, Periscope. old-fashioned radio or wherever you may be in the world. I mean, we're really international now, and we're certainly all over the United States. We've had a call from Bali. That makes us international. And we're growing.

We are unique. I know that sounds self-gratifying, but the fact is, I know of no other show that does what we do. We are here for a very important purpose, and that's for the car owners, of the world. Cars are sold differently

than any other retail product. And the people that sell those cars are called car dealers, by the way, in full transparency and disclosure, I'm a car dealer. I'm selling cars. I have a car dealership right now. This is not an infomercial, though.

I have evolved into a consumer advocate. Most of you know that. And for you new folks out there, think about a radio talk show host and a team of talk show host that dares tell the unvarnished naked truth

every week and that's what we do we pull no punches we name names we have a mystery shopping report you'll hear that later on in the show where we visit a car dealership in South Florida

and we pretend to buy or lease a car and we tell exactly what happened we name the dealership the salespeople, the management team, everybody. And we've been doing this for 17 years. We've never been sued. And that's because the truth is a perfect defense against libel and slander. That's exciting.

That's unique. Plus, we answer your questions. Cars are technical miracles now. They are caught up in the knowledge revolution, the digital explosion, the artificial intelligence, all those other crazy. terms that nobody ever heard of 20 years ago. And we have cars now that are very complicated. So I remind you, as I said in the introduction, I've got a man sitting to my ride here in the

studio. His name is Rick Kearney, and he's worked for me for over 20 years. I know him very well. He's still fixing cars, but what he's doing today bears no resemblance to what he did 25 years ago. He has truly become, I call him an auto computer scientist, because he has to be that trained. He spends a lot of time in school, online, and in class, because every time they come out with a new metal car, things are changing radically. You've probably got a car now, this five years old, six years old, seven years old. Those cars are changing every year. If you have some questions about cars, you call call in number is very important. 877-960-9960. Most of you have Most of you have that memorized.

We have a good, really, base group of listeners. But if you haven't, write the number down. If you don't have a question now later in the show, you will. 877-960-99-60. And we've got a huge number of text. We love the text because, well, I think people like texting because you don't have to, it's not invasion of your privacy. You can do it in the confidence.

It's less of a commitment. It's less of a commitment. Yeah, exactly. You don't have to. Exactly. You don't have to get into a conversation. Right to the point. I forget that live radio is scary.

And it's because I'm one of these people. I've been doing it for so long. But you don't have to be scared. You have to just text a 772-4976530. You don't even have to use your name, but 772-4976530. And we get a surprising number of inquiries, comments, suggestions on our anonymous feedback line. This is a weblink, and it's just www. www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com.

Write that down. You can say anything you want to. We get some attacks. I've been personally attacked. Not very often. I'm surprised how little I get attacked. I actually would like to have some more attacks because that proves the veracity of our anonymous feedback line.

So please attack me at www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. I'm only kidding. Your comments. Be nice. But we have a lot of people that do the anonymous just because they can, and it's simpler. YouTube, Facebook, we're on YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and Periscope. We're all over the place, and we'd love to hear from you.

That is the most important part of our show. Let me start out by turning the microphone over to Nancy Stewart. She's my co-host. She's my wife. She's the love of my life. And she's also a very, very strong. advocate for you female listeners. Thank you so much. Hey guys, can you feel the energy in the studio?

Wow, we're on fire. So don't go anywhere. Stay right with us. And ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. And we'd love to hear from you. So many of you have texts me throughout the week and emailed me. And I appreciate it so much. But I want to hear from you this morning. 877-960-99-60 or you can text us at 772-497-2-497-65-30 now back to the recovering car dealer I forgot to mention earlier about our mystery shopping report we have something unique in store for you today we actually taped a car dealer's television advertisement typically with our mystery shopping report we respond to an advertisement.

And this time we did that. Usually we respond to online, but television is difficult to, we see an advertisement on television. We're like you. We don't really know what it's said because we can't read the fine print. And we all know that that's the way the car dealers get you. They're TV ads and a lot of their other ads too. But we actually have a local television dealers, television ad recorded,

And we have it notated. We have it marked up. We separate the audio and then we separate the video. And by the way, Jonathan in a control room, who is our technical genius that makes this show happen technically with synchronizing the sound and the YouTube and the videos and everything. Everything you're looking at now on Facebook or Periscope or YouTube largely is a result of Jonathan's expertise. So he put this together. So we will combine our mystery shopping report today with that television ad that is taken apart and freeze-framed. And so you can see what it really said, not what you thought it said when you saw it on television. You probably did, by the way, because this particular card dealer saturates the airwaves with their television ads. So stay tuned.

And all you car dealers out there, stay tuned too, because it might be your TV ad. and do you want your TV ad taken apart and itemized and the audio compared to the video and the fine print compared to the apparent message of the advertisement? Do you want that done to your TV ad? It might be done. You might be the dealer. Nancy? Absolutely. So stay tuned for that. Very, very important part of the show. We're going to go to John, and he's calling us from Stewart. Morning, John. Hello. Good morning, John. Good morning. Can you hear me?

We can hear you. We hear you loud and clear, John. Okay, I think this is a question for Rick. I listen to you guys' program all the time. Now, this is the second time I called in. Oh. And I have a 2000, I have a 2002 or four, Tota Matrix X-R-S. And we let this girl, or these people, they stay at our house sometimes. They're flight attendants like my wife, and so they drive down the 45th Avenue and get on the tri-rail and go down there. And so it's just used as a commuter. And so about three weeks ago,

the girl was driving it down there. And all of a sudden, when she got past the weights station there, it started jumping and jerking and everything. And so long story short, we took it to the mechanic guy that I have. And she got it. It was out of, apparently it was out of, uh, coolant. And so it fried everything. There's supposedly there's some little plug in there that If you get it over, you know, 300 degrees, it melts or something. And so it got over that. So I didn't know what to do. So I said, well, let's try to rebuild the heads.

And so that's what his suggestion was. So it spent about $650.50. We rebuilt the heads. First cylinder's compression was $100. The next one was $85. The third one was zero. And the fourth one was $35. So we put some other stuff called Miracle Magic in the cylinder,

the third one that didn't have anything, any pressure. And so I'm waiting to see what happens, but I mean, I don't know. Is there anything else I can do because it doesn't have any pressure? I guess the rings or something aren't. Rick knows more about than I do. I'm just trying to figure out what to do. Yeah, unfortunately, my recommendation on that one would have been, to replace the engine without doing any headwork

because what will happen is the piston rings are going to seize up the block is actually going to get warped the head is going to get warped at those kind of temperatures you're going to see so much damage to the engine that the the least expensive way out of that really would be to contact one of the LKQ basically a junkyard a salvage yard and find a replacement engine, a used engine. And believe it or not, you can get some really decent quality engines. And these LKQ yards, it's like-kind quality is how they get their name.

And they will actually give you even a year or either a six-month or a one-year warranty on these engines. And, of course, the price accordingly. But you can get a used engine in for, I'm going to guess, installed, for around 12 to 1,500 and have it back on the road if you want to. Otherwise, you probably would be best just to contact one of the scrapyards and sell it for scrap. Because once that engine's gotten that hot, there's so much damage across the entire thing that it's almost impossible to salvage. Stu, what's the value of a 2004 matrix approximately? Give me a minute.

Okay, we'll check that out. The reason I ask that, John, is that you really are, it's not economically feasible to spend over half the value of a vehicle on a repair, because then you have another repair that pops up later on. But this idea about the used engine is a great idea if you're going to do, if you're going to go that road. And as Rick said, the test of buying a used engine is to they have a good warranty. and this LKQ is one of the ones. Is that LKQ.com if I wanted to look for a used part? That would be the way on. And basically it's a nationwide network of salvage yards.

They're very sophisticated. I hate calling them a junkyard. I used to call them junkyards, but this is a highly sophisticated, a reliable source of parts now, and we use it in our dealership, and a lot of other dealers will use that when all else fails

if they're trying to do an economic repair, the used part is a great economic solution. About how many miles are on that matrix? John, how many miles on that 2004 matrix? I think we might have lost, John. If you're still listening, John, let's just assume it's a lot of miles. I mean, I just put in 125,000.

It's probably 50 light, don't know. It's not worth very much. Average auction prices from Manhattan. time is running around $1,700. Yeah. So you're getting over half the value of repair, and so something you probably just had to pass on

and just find you to try to buy yourself a good quality, later model use vehicles, would be my recommendation. John, I'm sorry. Can you hear me? Oh, I hear you now, yeah. I didn't hear you a minute ago. No, I lost you. I lost you, and I called back because... Oh, great.

I got the, I got the L, where is it at, LQ? LKQ stands for like-kind quality, like-kindquality.com, and it's a reliable source with warranty on the used parts they sell, which is key. And we were talking about the value of your 2004 matrix as such. Yeah, I didn't hear that part. Yeah, the value, your 2000, what was the value estimated? About $1,700. About $1,700. If you were to sell it wholesale, you could retail it maybe for over 2,000.

But the fact that you're going to have to spend, what was the cost installed on the engine? I'm going to say 12 to 1,500. So that's about half the cost or over half the cost, actually, of the value. So you're right now where you're probably better off just to sell the car as is. It has salvage value. And take that, put a down payment on a later model used vehicle. but the I'm sorry that you already spent

650 and I know you're tempted to one probably going to be seven it's probably going to be a thousand a time because that was just for having it milled and everything. Yeah, yeah. So how much do you so it's worse that much?

How much salvage yard give me like $200 or something? Probably more than that. Wouldn't they do? Salbage yard would, what would they pay for that? $500 maybe? Yeah, I think it can get closer to $500. I mean, it's not much, but it's something.

Think of the time you're saving and the aggravation and never knowing if you're going to have another repair on top of the first repair. And you've got good use out of that vehicle. You know, 2004, and 16 years, I think it's time to move up to a litter mile. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we've got 250. So, yeah, okay.

Is there a junkyard or a salvage yard or whatever you would suggest or something? I live in Stewart. Yeah, we can get one local for you. I don't have one off the top of my head, but I can get that and we could probably announce it before the show's over. Yeah, well, I'll tell you what, you can just text us on our text line. Can you write this text number down? Yeah, sure. Go ahead.

I got a pen. 772 area code, 772-497-6530. 772-497-497-6530. So text us your contact information, and we'll email you or text you, recommend a salvage yard. We'll give you two or three so you can get some bids on it. Okay, buddy. Thanks so much. You guys have a great day, and I really appreciate your show.

Rick has a comment, John. Hey, John. Just a quick search on Google came up, LKQ Atlantic. Pick your part, which is in Riviera Beach. They're actually on Dyer Boulevard, pretty much at the intersection. of Blue Heron and Military Trail just a little way south of there and then a little west.

And I'm sure they'll have a tow service that they could come and pick the vehicle up for you, even. I don't know, I'll give you a couple more on top of that. Okay. Thank you, John. Yeah, Google search. There's probably 20 of them just right here in West Palm Beach area.

Okay, I'll try that one there. Thank you so much, guys. Good luck, John. Thanks for the call. Thank you so much. Can you go anywhere else and turn on a radio show like this? Accurate information. We're working with you.

You're working with us. What a fantastic show. So don't go anywhere. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. And our show wouldn't be a show with our Tina, who calls us from Benita Springs. Good morning, Tina. Good morning, y'all. How you deal?

doing. We're doing great. Good. Oh, Tesla is in the van again and not for a good reason. If you look on jalapnick.com and it's also on the verve, you'll pull up a news article about Tesla. Apparently, there's a gentleman who bought himself a used Tesla thinking it had everything on it and it was sold as having all the software updates, but it turned out that one of the

features that was sold to him was not a little. available. And when he got a hold of Tesla, Tesla says, well, you know, you didn't buy the feature. So if you want the seat here, which wasn't over-the-air update, I do believe, you have to pay $8,000 for it. So, you know, this is my thinking. My thinking is, say, for instance, I go to a use car dealer or a car lot that sells new in these cars, which would be my preference. And I bought a car that had cruise control and it had anti-lock brakes and had four-wheel drive. Well, it's not by the vehicle and they say, well, you can't have those parts. You have to pay extra for that.

Well, I already bought the vehicle and you're charging me extra for the parts that it was already advertised for. It just doesn't make any sense to me. But it brings about another question. A lot of these modern cars are going to have over-the-air software updates. do we really want the manufacturer of our cars to have that much control over what we're driving? Yeah, I just back on you on the Tesla thing, Tina, this is a little out of character for Tesla and things may have changed, but, you know, we've shopped Tesla. In fact, we, Nancy and I were almost on the verge of buying a Tesla.

They've got a reputation for being very transparent and honest in what they do. I know there's a lot of controversy, a lot of people either love or hate Tesla. But in terms of their sales practices, they actually are a breath of fresh air compared to the average car dealer. And I do know that sometimes you have to pay extra for upgrades in your car, and that's what they do. It's part of their pricing solution. You're basically buying the car online, and they manufacture every car. pretty much to specification. They don't have inventories of cars that they sell from.

They sell from pre-orders. So if you pre-order a car without a particular option, even though it's a software option, they will charge you for the software update, and that's just their price structure. It's kind of a new thing with the way cars are being built today. But the thing is, this was a used car that somebody had purchased, and it already...

Oh, okay, they didn't buy. from a Tesla dealer, I see. Yeah, that's what. You didn't pay for it, so you're going to have to pay for it. You're going to have to pay $8,000 to the market. Oh, I'm glad you clarified that. That's bait and switch, and that doesn't surprise me coming from a conventional car dealer. But, you know, if I were going to buy a, I don't know, I don't think Tesla cells use Teslas.

And I think they only sell new ones. I've never checked to find out. But you would think they would. But maybe they don't. Anybody know? Well, the thing is that Tesla themselves told the customer. It wasn't the used car dealer or the wholesaler. It was Tesla itself that told the customer,

hey, listen, if you want this, you're going to have to pay for the update, even though the previous owner had already paid for it all. Oh, that's strange. I don't understand that. What was the source on that information? Tina, where did you read that? It's a lot pick Shenzai L-O-P-N-I-K

and then it's also on the verve V-E or V-E Yeah Well if that happened That's wrong and shame on Tesla But I think it's a fluke And my personal opinion I don't think to my knowledge

It's the first time I've heard of Tesla Directly flim-famming anybody But it could happen And things change When Tesla first came out Everybody thought it was a perfect car and then two or three years later they found out some of the cars weren't so good after all.

So things do change. You can't just form an opinion about any vehicle, manufacturer, or dealer, and figure it's going to be that way for a long time. Things do change. Yeah, and consumer reports have never been a fan of Tesla, as we all know. So if you want more information on Tesla,

just pull up Consumer Report. Pay is very nominal to you for description and you find out more information as you want to know. I got you. Well, thanks, Neen. That's very good information. What else is on your mind this morning? Well, the other thing I wanted to mention kind of a follow-up is my mom. She went online last weekend and looked up and make the model of their vehicle,

and they are not under the airbag recall, so they're okay. Good. Everything worked out as far as that went. You pick up the paper every day? There's another recall. I just found one on Hyundai, $540,000. Hyundai's recalled or something like that because they're catching on fire. And it was on page, I think, 18 of the Palm Beach Post buried on page 18 of the paper.

The interesting thing about this is the Hyundai's, the cars will catch on fire even when the engine is not running. So how'd you like to buy a Hyundai driving home, park it in your garage, go to bed. And at 3 o'clock in the morning, the fire department knocks on the door, says your garage and home are on fire that's one hot vehicle yeah and they don't even people don't get excited about it that's what amazes me is it's a SOB it's life yeah hey Tina

this is a matter of a public safety now but if you smell smoke or if you see anything coming up from under the hood of your car get out immediately because cars touch fire and they'll be engulfed yeah stop the car first though yeah we have a couple of comedians here jump out and roll hey Tina back to your original topic Tesla you as we all agreed you can

buy a used Tesla but you better be serious about it because you're not going to get your deposit back you have to transfer that to another used Tesla just a heads up that's good to know it is Tina thanks so much for your call and thanks for supporting the ladies to call here. And what do you have to say about that? Wait a minute. Rick has something to say first. Can I read a quick thing from Jalapnik here about this particular story?

I just found it was looking at it. Let's recap this. Let's recap a little bit at this point. A Model S with enhanced autopilot, which includes the summoned feature and full self-drive capability, is sold at auction. A dealer buys it. After the sale to the dealer, Tesla checks in on the car remotely and decides that it shouldn't have autopilot or full self-drive capability. The dealer sells the car to the customer based on the specifications that they were aware the car had and were shown on the window sticker and confirmed via a screenshot from the car's display showing the options. and later, when the customer upgrades the car's software, autopilot, and full self-drive disappear.

Apparently, Tesla, in that software update, decided those features shouldn't be available on that car anymore, and they took them away. Well, theft. Again, we have one source, and we need to check the validity of that. I would think that if someone were to go to Tesla on this, there might be a different story. but you never know. It is worthy of mention. Either way the customer, either way the customer got screwed, yeah.

Here's the response from Tesla. This is from Tesla customer support. Tesla has recently identified instances of customers being incorrectly configured for autopilot versions that they did not pay for since there was an audit done to correct these instances. your vehicle is one of the vehicles

that was incorrectly configured for autopilot. We look back at your purchase history and unfortunately full self-driving was not a feature that you had paid for. We apologize for the confusion. If you're still interested in having those additional features, we can begin the process to purchase the upgrade. Okay. I think we beat that to death.

Okay. We have a call waiting. Okay, and we have... Thanks very much, Tina. We're going to do a little further deep dive investigation on that. And thank you very much. for the goal. And we have another call. Thank you. And you're very

welcome. See you later. Thanks, Tina. Bye, Tina. I know what you're going to say, Tina. I'll say it for you. But we're going to go to John, another one of our favorite callers from Palm City. Good morning to everyone. I have the answer to John from Stewart Wrecking yard in his area.

Oh, great. It's on Salerno Road. It's called Snake Road Recking Yard. It's a very big place. It's been there for years. The question I have for Rick on tire sensors, we have a cool day today, and some cars, you'll see the light go on for low tire pressure. Now, I was told how true it is, if you're more than two to three pounds above or below, the sticker that's on your car door, that recommended manufacturer, that that light can be affected. Is there any truth in that two to three difference from what the door sticker says that that light can come on for low tire pressure? Is that true? Very close.

It actually is going to depend on what's called the threshold. The electronic sensors, you can program this either with the scan tool or there's some cars. There's ways to do it with the reset button where you set the level, the air pressure that you want that, light to come on. So you can set it to come on, say, at 25 pounds, at 28 pounds, at 30 pounds, 35, whatever. And when the pressure falls below that level, that's when the light will trigger. So if your threshold is set close to where your tires are, and we get a nice cold day, of course, typical physics, low temperature, lowers pressure, and that air pressure effectively comes down a little bit. That is Avogadro's principle.

I got his principal. There you go to Stu. Yes. Physics. Okay, now I have an exact example. It's a 10-year-old car, 2010. Okay, and the man that I spoke to, it says that he was told that one of the batteries is completely shot inside. I guess the entire sensor and a computer combined. I don't know what it looks like. And he said that it has to be replaced, and there's another one that's weak. They do some kind of testing on it. Now, what I want to ask you is that an expensive process. They say the tire has to be taken apart

because the computer is inside the tire near the valve stem. So he said that the car is 10 years old, and he said, I may not even fix it. I may just put a piece of tape on my dashboard. I said that's not very smart because it's a safety feature. You know, you do use the car on 95. even though he doesn't put a lot of mileage on it. But I said if it's one that's shot and the other one is weak, put all four on.

Would that be a very expensive process to install new tire sensors, four of them? Well, the tire sensor itself with its battery actually is the valve stem now. And we basically, we drove cars for 100 years without them. If your tire sensor goes bad and you don't want the expense of replacing them, just ignore the light and check your tires once a month for air pressure or maybe a little more often. Replacing them requires actually breaking the tire loose of the bead, replacing that sensor, the valve stem, but then on Toyotas it has to be reprogrammed by way of a computer

so that it let an outside scan tool computer that tells the car to accept these new sensor codes and read those sensors and ignore the old ones. Some cars can now, you simply replace the sensor, put it in a learning mode, and it goes right through. And yeah, it can get expensive because the sensors are over $100 each. Okay, does the tire afterward have to be rebalanced? Only if it's completely removed, which we don't do that. Oh, I see. It has a way that you can break the bead and just...

stick the new sensor in, I imagine, right? Yep. But there's no way that is that a battery combined with a computer, but there's no just changing the battery, right? No, it's all one unit, just a sealed unit. Well, I also pointed out to him, another fact that he's a snowbird, and the car gets transported back and forth to the New York area,

and I said, you know, by truck, deliver door to door. I said, also, just remember one thing, you have a mandatory safety inspection in New York, and if you try to go through that with a piece of tape on the dashboard, you're going to fail tremendously. So that's another factor, but it's safety more than anything that's involved. So my advice is to fix all four.

And by the way, I said to him, I'm not sure I think he has a full-size spare. If it's a full-size spare, that also has a sensitive tire sensor in also. Some do. Oh, okay. All right. Thank you for the advice. Thank you, John. Appreciate the call, as always. Glad to have you back with us. Always great to hear from you. I'm glad you could get through. Have a wonderful weekend, John. Give us a call toll free at 877. Welcome back, Nancy. Welcome back.

Thank you so much, John. 877960, or you can text us at 772-497-60. And don't forget, W.W.W. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We'd love to hear from you. We have a caller from Tampa. Welcome to the show. Tampa caller. Good morning. Hello? Good morning. Good morning. Could I have your name, please? My name is Sidney, Mondevi. Sydney. Thank you for calling. What can we do for you?

I have a question for a week. Okay. I have a Toyota Highlander, 2013. I got $143,000 mileage on it, and it started burning oil at $121,000. I don't know why, and there's no oil leak, nothing, but it's burning a lot of oil. Yeah, unfortunately, sometimes engines do wear a little quicker than others. It comes down to just Sometimes it's a problem with maintenance

Have you owned the car since it was new? Or did you buy it? And you've had the oil change Every 5,000 or every 10,000 With the synthetic oil? Every 5,000 mileage The oil change, the air rotation, alarm it. Mm.

Yeah, unfortunately, sometimes the engines just start to wear funny. The piston rings may start to seize up or gum up with the oil. Do they say 42,000 miles? 1402. 142. Okay, that makes me out.

Probably with that engine, the best bet that I would recommend would be to have it overhauled. It's not as super as expensive as replacing the engine even with a used one. Basically, the mechanic would remove the engine, take it

apart, replace the piston rings, and the bearing and put all new seals in it and that would probably get you straightened out and back on the road and good for another 200,000 miles or more. What would that cost him, Rick? I'm going to guess

somewhere around 2 to 3,000. But even a used engine, just the engine alone is going to be 3 to 4,000 and a new engine, you're talking 8 to 9,000. And that's

just the part. Then installation is going to probably another 12 to 1,500. When you do a... I'll see 900 to 1,000 for installation. Would there be a warranty on that repair? Overhauling the engine, every part that gets put into that car would get a one-year unlimited mileage warranty from Toyota. On the parts, right?

Yep. It's a fourth cylinder. And why is morning oil so early? Unfortunately, I couldn't answer that, you know, exactly to tell you why. It could be that one of the piston rings is broken or, you know, just broken down. And, of course, that lets the oil get in a lot easier into the cylinders to where it burns oil. It could be bad, what they call the, oh, man, sorry, I'm having a bit of a brain issue here this morning. The seals for the valves, but most likely it's going to be a piston ring issue.

About the PCV vibes. I'm sorry? The PCV valves, do I need to change it? Generally not, because PCV valves anymore, there's really no maintenance to them, and the only thing that really happens with them is that they get plugged up, and then that would actually stop it from having oil burning, or even having those extra gases. You could give that a try.

It may help improve that oil burning a little bit, but if it's going through a lot of oil, then you may need to have it overhauled. I have another question for our. Recently, I bought a Subaru Legacy in 2019 and September, and I went, I just, it just has 5,000 mileage, and I went to Subaru to have a maintenance. They tried to charge me over $100.

Why? And I told them I got three years, $36,000, a mortgage warranty, and this is not free anymore. Why should they change it? Oh, I don't know. I'd be writing the manager's office saying, wait a minute, because if you've got paperwork that shows that you should have paid maintenance, especially on a 2019 Subaru, I'd be taking that paperwork and be in the manager's office

and saying, hey, what's going on? And put it in the writing. I would email them first and let them know that you were misinformed. and now they're reneging on what they told you. Taking it up the ladder anytime you're mistreated in a car dealership is always better. If you can get up to the general manager

or even the owner, often you'll get a complete satisfaction and you're dealing with somebody in the online there that are on commission. Suddenly they change their mind when their boss finds out about it. And the problem I have, they didn't tell me before about the car and they give me a number of call.

When I call, I tell the guy, if I knew I would have paid for that, I would not buy the car. And I tell him, you're lucky, I cannot return it. If I can return it, I will buy a Toyota. Yeah, it's one of the reasons my, one of my latest columns was never go car shopping alone, because oftentimes it's a salesman's word against yours. If you come in there with a friend or an advisor, it's at least two against one. And unfortunately, the way cars are sold today, salespeople will deliberately misrepresent something to sell a car, and then they'll deny having said it. I would take it up the line, as I said earlier.

And if he's had previous complaints, I think they might side with you the customer, especially when you commit it to writing. I send him an email, and then I would follow up verbally. Thank you. Well, I'm sorry that happened. and thank you very much the call from Tampa. We love to hear from you again someday and see how things go with that Highlander. I hope you can get the problem resolved.

That is a little bit early on a good vehicle to have the problem. And I know how you feel. You feel bad, and we feel bad for you. But let us know how that works out. Give us another call. All right. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir.

Thank you for joining us this morning. Ladies again, $50 for the first two new, lady callers. So give us a call at 877-9-60-99-60 and more positive news about ladies. You know, I read in the automotive news that what they're doing,

the auto group, what they're doing is that they're attracting female talent by using videos to tell their stories of the women who work there. And guess what they're doing? The strategy has helped put more women in the customers, new clients, new customers, it's just a win-win situation.

So, again, I'd love to, I always like sharing positive news with you about the ladies and what they mean to the auto industry. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 7772-497-9-7-2-497-6-5-0. and we are going to go to Rod. He's calling us from the Smoky Mountains. Wow. Welcome, Rod. Hey, Ryan. How do you see?

Oh, old crad of me here, as we used to say. So we've got to see everything's getting a little cool for you all down there and all. You know, I want to wish them to call and wish you all the best. I haven't talked to anybody in a while. Thank you. So I just wanted to take a quick call and say a good about you all. And most being down there's coming. Well, it's always good to hear from the Smokies.

That's right. I love that place. Beautiful. I'd like to retire there. Yeah, well, I'd love to come up and visit you, Joe. We love the mountains in the Carolinas. Yeah, every time. Thank you.

I just want to do you on a part. I'm sure you're busy, so carry on, and thank you for you all. Sounds good. Thank you, Ron. Appreciate hearing from you. Thank you. We are going to go to Warren, and he's calling us from the Pompanoes. The Poconos?

No. Warren, where are you? People are calling from Mountain Rangers. I'm not in Pompano Beach. Oh, Pompano. Nancy said you were in the Poconos. We just had a call from the Poconos. I figured you were up there skiing.

We have Jerry from the Catskills. What's going on, Warren? Yeah, this is a question for Rick. Yeah. Yep. Rick, I have a 2010-4 tourist with 150,000 miles on it, and it's still going pretty strong. However, I had a break job maybe a year ago,

and the brakes are so stoffed a little much, And the mechanic I had it done with, he looked over every possible thing. It had a master cylinder replaced a couple years ago, said he wasn't that. He said he can't find anything. Nothing comes out on the computer scan. He said he thinks it might be the ABS module, but he said nothing comes out on that. And he says probably the only place you could go is the dealer, and maybe they have more sophisticated equipment.

But they're like mushy, and he says he can't find anything wrong with it. What do you think that could possibly be? Going with that kiss method, have they tried bleeding the brakes? Does that keep it simple, stupid? That's the one. Okay. Yeah, yeah, he did. He tried, he's a pretty good mechanic, and I trust him.

He's tried every possible thing, and he said he did the computer scans. He looked in the engine. He said he just can't find anything other than his guess was, but nothing comes out on the computer. And when light doesn't go on, nothing. comes up on it. He said he can't find anything. He says, other than taking it to the dealer and maybe going through a whole thing on it or something. Would you have any kind of guess on that or what it possibly could be? Well, you've got no external leaks for fluid leaks anywhere, so the fluid's not going out of the system. That loss of pressure then would have to be either

the master cylinder or the ABS module getting an internal loss of pressure. It's, it's seeping past a valve somewhere, and that probably is going to be a bad unit on one of those two. And the reason I ask about bleeding them is because air in the system, obviously when you step on the pedal, if there's any air in the system, air compresses, but fluid does not. That's why you get a mushy feel to it when you have air in there. Rick, if he went to a Ford dealer with Ford's diagnostic equipment, would that pick up either of those two?

It's possible. It's possible. And what would be the diagnostic charge to do that for approximately? Because I know, you know. I'm going to say probably between $100 and $150 would be just a base diagnosis.

And if any competent dealership for that amount should be able to give you a reasonably solid diagnosis of what's going on, one of the big advantage is at this point of going to the dealership is their guys have probably seen this issue, especially because Taurus is such a popular car, they've probably seen this 50 times over. And so they can say, oh, yeah, we know what that

is. Good point. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Anytime your local mechanic, even though he's a good guy and smart, can't diagnose a problem on a car, you're always better off to go to a dealer. But buyer beware, ask him ahead of time, I need to find this, I have to have to have this. I have to have problem diagnosed, put your diagnostic machinery on it, what are you going to charge me? And you can maybe go to another dealer and find out what he'd charge you and get the best price and then let

them use their factory diagnostic equipment that the independent will not have. So he is probably, he says it's not the master's cylinder that that was replaced a couple years ago, but the ABS, his guesses, he said the ABS module, although it's not coming out on any computer scans. He said

that's his guess. He's probably only the Ford dealer could probably hit it on the head, only the Ford dealer could probably come out and give you the right diagnosis on it. Yeah, like Rick said, he's probably seen it 20 times. You know, with a Ford dealer, they work 90% on Ford's, and they see all the

problems, and the Independent probably hasn't seen it before. Yeah. Okay. All right, guys. Thanks, Warren. Appreciate the call. Thank you. Thank you. Give us a call again. 877. Thank you, I will. I like you still. Great show. Oh, thank you so much.

877-960 or you can text us at 772-497-7-7-7-272-497-6-5-30 and back to what I was trying to say earlier to the ladies I just want to remind you that the automotive news had an article that was really important and I was trying to tell the ladies that the strategy has really helped put more women in customer-facing rules and win over a lot of clients. So, ladies, I'm going to remind you, $50 for the first two new lady callers. Give us a call. Again, that number, 877-960, 99060, and please stay tuned for the mystery shopping report from Palm Beach, Toyota.

It's a doozy. We've got a lot of texts backing up over there. Oh, yeah. We have like 12 anonymous feedbacks. Oh, wow. like 10 regular texts. We'll get through them. We'll have to get at an hour to the show.

That's what we've got to do, starting in the 2021 season. Okay. What is stopping Toyota Ford, General Motors, et cetera, from setting up shop across the USA with a Tesla-styled model, boutiques featuring a vehicle or two, allowing the customers to order online right from the store. This wouldn't technically violate franchise agreements, would it? Something like this could happen overnight before car dealers could even react. Once these boutiques are in place, it would be too late for dealers to fight this in court

because consumers would flock to this style of selling. Well, it is blocked by the franchise law in all 50 states very carefully, very thoroughly, and very completely. And that's the only reason we have a dealer network today. It was built over the past 100 years, and they are very, very strict laws. You cannot sell a car unless you are a franchise automobile. dealer in any of the 50 states. Very good. Hey, Earl, what happened to the quote you used to read every show about doing what's right, even if you don't have to? Wasn't that quote from Achiro Toyota?

No, that was from Jim Press, who used to be on the board of directors of Toyota. He was the only non-Japanese that ever served at that time on the board, and he was in charge of Toyota for all of North America. And Jim Press said, it's what you do for the customer when you don't have to, that's the test of true character, kind of like sticking up for somebody who can't defend himself. And that was a great quote. And I just thought I beat it into the ground and decided to quit saying it. But it's very true.

If you ever have an experience with a business anywhere and you have a complaint, and legally they don't have to do anything for you, but they do it anyway, you found yourself a good businessman. Very good. Oh, Brick's got something there. I've actually got one for you, Stu. This one definitely is right for you. Steve E says, question.

Hey, Steve E. My mother is looking for a new Toyota SUV, and I'm helping. I've looked on the Toyota website, and the question is, why is the land cruiser nearly twice the price of the forerunner and Sequoia? Probably because of the reputation for the land cruiser. they comprise it, it's considered a, you know, a luxury SUV. Supply and demand. It is, I mean, it is put together pretty well.

It's a big, heavy-duty thing with every feature you can imagine. There's very, very few land cruises available. And low supply, and then when somebody wants one, they want it real bad. Yeah. So to give you an example in the southeastern United States, we just checked this out in preparation for our mystery shopping report. I think there were about 100 land cruisers. It looked like they were on the ground out of 174 dealers, so not everybody has them.

And how many forerunners would they be? Thousands. Yeah. There you go. Supply and demand. Yeah. Okay. Okay, here's a good one for Rick.

Is it true that the solid lines that appear between the lanes as you approach a traffic signal indicate the point you need to apply your brakes? I think I remember Rick talking about this a few years back. I don't know if that's actually a rule that's, somebody put in place, but I think it's a fantastic rule of thumb. My opinion is if you're traveling at the speed limit and you're coming up to an intersection at the point where the center line goes from dotted to solid, if the light turns yellow before you get to that solid line, then you should have plenty of room to safely stop your car

and you should stop for that yellow light because you're not going to make it through the red light. The answer is that is no. I wouldn't recommend I'd say I go, apply your brakes that moment your gut says, oh my God, drive, everybody, folks. Please be careful out there. We're testing out. See what happens today. If it's a light turns yellow

before you get to that solid line, then you should stop. But if you're already at the solid section, and it turns yellow, it means you're close enough that you should continue through. And what exactly do you do? I drive carefully. Let's move along. We've got a bunch of text here.

all the traffic laws. Earl, you've made your opinion of Jeep abundantly clear. What, in your esteemed opinion, is the worst vehicle Toyota ever made? The worst vehicle Toyota ever made? That's an interesting question. I have my guess. I'm going to write down what I think Earl's going to say. I'm going to write down what I think Earl's going to say. And then we'll see if I'm right. Well, you know, it's not a fair question.

I've been a Toyota dealer for 47 years. It says ever made. You can go back to 1968. if you want, or 75. Oh, it was probably the cargo vans that we used to sell back in the late 70s and early 80s. You mean just the Toyota minivans? And also the original land cruisers were terrible. They would rust fast as conveying.

I was wrong. I was going to guess FJ. Cruiser, that's what I thought you were going to say. Oh, yeah, it was not a quality car, but it was like the Jeep and the fact that charisma was there. High resale value, people love them, and you could never sell enough of them. From a mechanical standpoint, what do you think the worst Toyota was ever made? The new Supra. Really? I disagree.

And that's only because I am a Toyota guy and it's a BMW. That's a BMW. Okay. Good morning. This is from Bob and Stewart. My question, is there a time frame on airbags? I mean, maybe a shelf life on older vehicles when they may or may not work correctly. Talked about it last week.

As questions come up several times, the answer is there is no time limit, and there should be, and that should be federally enforced, and if you've got a car with a 20-year-old airbag, you have a problem, and I think that you should be aware of that. It's just there's no...

Sometimes you don't know when an airbag is going to fail. I mean, if there's something in there that's going to fail, but you just won't know about it. Federal government, take heed, do something about it. This is from Brian on the west coast of California. I have a question that might be aimed more towards Rick for today. Last week, my father took delivery to that 20-20-Croll XSC, and he told us what a great experience he had,

and that was actually at a frontier Toyota out there near Pasadena. Brian says, I notice immediately that the car, this is talking about the corolla, that the car is a slight vibration while slowing down once the car hits about five miles or less, then that same vibration feels relevant when accelerating up to about five miles per hour. Any idea what that might be? I've never felt this in any car before.

Thank you and looking forward to the show, as always. Hmm. A vibration. I'd actually have to play with that one because I've never heard of something. Yeah, slowing down and speeding up. That's probably going to... Especially at such a low speed. That almost sounds like something's loose,

but it wouldn't occur only for that short time. Brian, I'd say your father had a good experience at Frontier Toyota. They seem to be like an honest dealership. I'd take it right back to the service department there and let them know. Let them test drive the car. And I'm sure it's probably a nothing. They should test drive the car and then they've got to fix it. I mean, it's going to be a puzzle, though.

Okay. But Brian, ride with the technician and show it to them. Yeah. Good advice. Excuse me, guys. I feel a little left out. Nobody asked me what I thought was the worst Toyota built. Would you like my answer? It's a little delayed.

Tell us about your barracuda, though. I'm going to knock you off that chair. Hey, Tersell. The Toyota Tersel. Worst Bill. Okay. Thank you. Okay.

Next text? This is anonymous feedback. Oh, good. It says, how come you don't give Nancy the respect that's due on the worst Toyota question? I'm just kidding. That didn't say that. That might be coming in, though. Dear Earl, I just listened to your show.

This came in after we concluded the show last week, and we're just catching up to it. I have two questions. First, do you have a Twitter live link that I can get to your show in real time? The answer to that is yes. It's Twitter.com forward slash Erlon Cars. We're live on there right now. Second question. I just went to the Consumer Reports that you mentioned on the air on the 1st of February.

It was the Consumer Reports with a yellow magazine cover with a smiley face. I looked up the brand rankings you spoke about. Not only as Nissan ranked above Honda, but so is Dodge and Minnie. That just doesn't seem right to me. How could Dodge, as a manufacturer, be rated as number 8, and Honda be rated as number 12? What the heck is going on? Well, sometimes you get surprises in Consumer Reports, which is the reason that you should read it. Consumer Reports is, without doubt, the most reliable, honest source of information on car quality

and safety, even pricing. Sometimes you get vehicles that you have in your mind as not being a good vehicle, and they improve. You can have a manufacturer, Nissan, and they might have 20 different models, and one model

is extremely good, and the rest of them aren't so good. Consumer reports carefully with experts test these vehicles. They do extremely good surveys, unbiased. They don't accept advertising, money from manufacturers, dealers

for anybody. And you get surprises. I have to tell you, when you say to me, a Nissan had a higher rating than a Honda, it makes me raise my eyebrows. But my money would be on consumer reports. And if you go into the detail, and you can get the detail on those tests,

you will find out that they're accurate. But nobody's perfect. And sometimes they do make mistakes. Rick's got a YouTube question. Richard Popliss is asking, how much do dealerships markup cars posted on the internet? When I gave them an offer, 500 to 1,000 lower than their price,

they acted like I had two heads. Part of the game. They want you to feel guilty about trying to get a discount. You should always ask for a discount, and they should respectfully accept or decline, but the psychological warrant of shaming you into being embarrassed to ask is exactly what it is. They want you to back off and take the price they quoted.

There is no markup established for dealers to advertise online. Online price is typically a better price than the one you get from the showroom. When you walk in and say, how much is that car? They will post their best price typically online. What you need to worry about is that an Althador price, meaning are they going to sneak in dealer installed accessories and are they going to add hidden fees? and they will answer is yes, in most dealerships, they will do both.

So the online price is a lower price in the showroom, but it's also a price that's full of hidden fees that you have to pay when you actually try to buy the car. You're listening to the best of the Earl Stewart on Cars program. If you have a question, text it to 772-4976530 or online at Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And CHJ-229 is asking, where do I check to see which dealership is on your recommended list? AlanCars.com.

On the panel on the right side of the web page, it says important links, and among those important links are the recommended dealer list. Yes. And we update it every Saturday as soon as we pass or fail our mystery shopping target. And remember, buyer beware, even on the recommended deal list, we grade on the curve. So we have no perfect dealers, including our dealership. Nobody's perfect. Always be careful when you buy from anybody and always shop and compare the price,

the out-the-door price with other dealers. Never fall in love with a dealer and decide that he's such an honest person and he gives you such good prices that every time you buy a car, you buy it. Shop and compare every time you buy a car. That is because a car dealership is a beast with many heads. You got the dealer's head and you got about 20 salespeople's heads. Exactly. And anybody can do their own thing.

Jay wants to know, or aren't the solid lines, the intersections indicative of a no lane change zone? Yes. Next. I remember from my driving test back when I was 15 years old. Okay. This is a follow-up on anonymous feedback to the Consumer Reports comment. The same issue of Consumer Reports has the Nissan. Rogue listed as the second most reliable and the Toyota RAV-4 listed as the fifth most reliable.

Check out page 59, something is amiss. I did check out the consumer reports and like you just addressed before, that's the way they called it. It is what it is, folks, you know, full transparency, we are at Toyota dealership. The folks in this room are affiliated with Toyota dealership and we think we have to sell a good product. To be totally honest and transparent, there are other products that are better than Toyotas. If you go through the entire line, Toyota has, what, 25 or 30 models? All the other manufacturers have 25 or 30 models. So if you love Toyotas, that's a nice thing to say, but you might find a Honda model that's better than the equivalent Toyota or a Nissan model.

Things happen flow. Even some of the manufacturers out there, with bad reputations, we'll have a model that's pretty good. So you can't paint any manufacturer with the same brush. Go to consumer reports, and even consumer reports can't be mistaken. Could be. I know. I hate to overcomplicate things, but you do realize that...

There's no magic bullet. No magic bullet, and if you can buy a car that's rated high by consumer reports and find out you have problems with it. And you can buy a car that's rated lower by consumer reports, and you won't have any problems. Why? Because every car that comes off, the assembly line is a little different.

And Rick will tell you this. He works on these cars, and he'll find the exact year-make model Toyota that has an oil consumption of half of what the exact same year-make-model Toyota

has. Cars vary when they come off the assembly line. And there are lemons that come off the assembly line. So it's a crapshoot. It's also a matter of degree when you rank things. Like, for instance, on consumer reports, the Nissan Rogue is recommended on not just reliability,

overall higher than Toyota Rad 4 in the 2020 model. It's close. They have a 75 score, and Toyota has a 72 score. But the other thing to bear in mind is a lot of the repairs that we see that would maybe a consumer reports tester might see is fixed with a software update and things like that. So if you buy one that's not rated as high, doesn't mean it's going to be the worst car. and conversely, like you said, you buy the highest rate this one, you might have a problem with it. Unless you're highly anal, obsessive, compulsive, like me,

I would just go with the recommended cars on Consumer Reports. In general speaking, I would not buy a car that was not recommended, but if it was recommended, I'd feel safe. Even though there was another model that was ranked numerically a little higher, I would go with the one I like the best. You can't go wrong that way. And also something that I don't think that consumer reports addresses is the likelihood of a manufacturer helping on the consumer if is something's not technically

under warranty, things like that. And you've got to find the right dealer. You've got to find the right manufacturer. Yes. Okay, good day, Earl. I would like to know from all the crew, Nancy, Earl, Stu, and Rick, if they were sending their kid away to college and a car was necessary for them, what car would you choose? And, FYI, no SUV, even small ones, as the kid driver is only comfortable driving small cars. Thank you and love the show. Let me jump in because I'm sending a kid to college. I want to go first. And I'm not going to plug the car that my son, Jake, who is 17 graduating this year from Dreyfus. He is driving a vehicle that has all the safety features. And so that's what's most important to me. I mean, I guess the old rule of thumb was, you know, get a kid,

you know, a cheap use car, and you can still do that. And that might be a reality for probably most people. but if you can afford it definitely look at something and not to overdo the consumer reports thing but you also want to find the consumer high safety rating by consumer reports so that's what I did so my son is going to college in a car

with an extremely high consumer report safety rating also with good fuel economy and some other things but safety is paramount for me. Rick what were you going to say? Toyota Corolla it's simply if you watch today and count the number of corollas that you see on the road any year, Toyota Corolla is

everywhere. Those cars last. And if you really want to go and do a research, I talk to some body shop managers, collusion body shop managers that see hundreds and thousands of cars. And they can tell you when a car comes in and it's like in a wheelbarrow, just smashed and nobody was hurt, he'll say, boy, that's the car I'm going to buy. And if you have a car that can be totaled and nobody was even scratched in the car, you're looking at a safe car. Yeah.

They look ugly after the crash, but if the passenger cabin is intact, then they did a good job building that thing. All right. Each week, this is more anonymous feedback. Each week I hear you talk about the Takata airbag recalls. Is there any way to know in a fatal accident if the airbag exploding caused the accident or did the airbags activate after the crash happen? Maybe you could discuss that.

That's a great question because it's something we don't talk about often enough. They come up with these statistics. 25 people were killed or 10 people were killed or whatever. It's impossible to tell in a bad accident what the cause of death was. Maybe not impossible, but the fact is there are no autopsy performed. When you find a terrible accident on the turnpike or interstate somewhere, the people are taken to the morgue. I mean, that sounds a very, very terrible thing to say, but they're so clearly dead and terribly dead.

You don't know if it was the shrapnel from the inflator of the airbag indicator or not. There should be some research done into all these accidents to find out if the inflator did, in fact, blow up. Rick? And I was just wanted to mention the only way to really determine if that inflator detonated like that is to actually disassemble the dash or steering column to get to the inflator because they're buried down in there. Good point.

So it's tough to get down to them to see them. And there's something else for the federal government, folks. There should be a law now with this huge, to cut airbag recall, that exactly what Rick just described is done. In every fatal accident or every accident with an injury, there should be a law that the insurance company or the, I don't know who would be responsible,

we'll take apart the dash, inspect the inflator in the airbag. If the airbag deployed, that should be inspected. And it wouldn't even be that hard because you can just go with a saw-z-all and just cut it to get to see it. Okay, folks, I just want to remind you, I'm still here. Telephone number is 877-960-9960, and you can text us at 772-497-30. And if you want to check out that terribly built Toyota, the Tercell, Google it. And as far as my answer is concerned for a safe car for your grandchildren or your children, I pick the Corolla, Camry, and the forerunner.

But my grandchildren and children are all grown. Okay, with all of that information, we're going to go to our next caller, and he is calling from Lake Worth, and that's Rich. Good morning, Rich. Good morning. How are you? Well, thank you. Welcome to the show. Thank you very much.

I have a quick question. I'm in a bit of a pickle. I bought in December a 2019 Toyota Highlander, Ex-L-E, X-L-E, excuse me. And for the life of me, I cannot find a comfortable position in the driver's seat. When I had taken on a test drive, it was not an issue, but it is just, the driver's seat is just killing my back. And I'm just wondering if that's an issue you've heard before, or is it just specific to me? You know, the seat is a safety issue. We have customers with different reasons for asking us to change their seats.

Because as part of the safety structure of the car, there are limits to what we can do. We usually just recommend cushions or things like that. Even then, you're risking affecting the safety of the vehicle. Rick, you probably hear no more about that than I do. what um it's going to depend upon what what sort of pain you're feeling and where but i'd recommend trying some of those lumbar cushions uh that go at the small of the back i did get a lumbar cushion and it does help but quite frankly it's just it's annoying me in uh having a lumbar cushion in my new car because previously my last new car that i bought was a 2004 Accura mdx and to go

back to what you folks were saying about consumer reports The main reason I didn't go back to another Accure MDX was because of consumer reports, and they rate it so poorly, I believe, a one out of five, and it's pretty low on a numerical scale. Whereas the Highlander is a, you know, similar vehicle to, not similar, but in size and utility to the MDX. And I liked it, and I like everything about the car other than the lack of comfort. But I don't find much online about folks complaining about the comfort of the seat. And as a matter of fact, consumer reports rates the comfort of the comfort of the comfort of the comfort. seat five out of five. So I didn't know if this is a problem you folks have ever addressed

or even heard of with this particular model. Well, this isn't going to make you feel any better, but I always recommend that people drive the car at some length before they buy it. And even if you were driving Highlanders before, you know, next year's model is a little different. And as a car dealer, the good thing about being a car dealer is I hear all the complaints from customers and we commonly have complaints with people that will buy

the same car they bought before they thought but it's the current model and there's something about the car that is a little different that you really can't feel or discover until you drive it and we encourage customers to take a car for a day or two and drive it under

the same conditions they normally drive sit in the seat the way you normally sit give in and get out. But that isn't going to help you any. This is after the fact. But for the folks that are listening to you, it's just, it's got to be frustrating. I don't blame you. You did all your homework. You're a highly educated consumer. You check with consumer reports, and you did exactly the right thing. But now you've got a seat that's a little bit different, and it's affecting you. And I'm so sorry that happened. I mean, if you're anywhere near our dealership, we'd love to have you come in and we'll help you any way we can, make any suggestions we can. But, It's something that hopefully the folks who are listening will listen to this and be very careful before they buy a car they haven't even driven in. We have a lot of people buy cars today, and they don't drive the car before they buy it. And even though you drove the same model four years ago, the new car is different. And Rich, I want to let you know that I, too, agree with Earl, and there's so many consumers that take that issue last. They don't even consider it.

They look at everything else on the vehicle. They get home, and they find out that that front seat, that driver's seat, is so uncomfortable. And I'm very sorry for you. Well, thank you. And Earl, you're exactly right. That does not make me feel better. Unfortunately, like Earl says, if the dealership won't allow you to do like a full-day test drive, I would even consider finding a place that rents that model of vehicle.

And rental car, you know, if you pay $50 or $60 to rent it for one day to drive that thing around and really run it, it's unfortunate because the problem is even sitting in this room right now, we've got four different people in here with four vastly different sizes and shapes to the four of us. And nobody can make one seat that's going to make it comfortable for all four no matter how many ways there are to adjust it. Exactly. It's tough.

And if a dealership wants to seal a deal with you, you know, most of them will let you take that vehicle home overnight where you can really check out the comfort of that driver's seat. Right. Now, may I ask a follow-up question? Sure. Just based on what you were previously saying just moments ago about consumer reports and the main reason why I stayed away from another MDX,

would you because it gets such a low score on the consumer reports rating stay away from the MDX now I had the other MDX I still have it actually um and I have had it pretty much trouble free for 220,000 miles um and I guess that bucks the trend of consumer reports as well on that particular model but should I be scared because I quite honestly I mean if I can't resolve this problem I'm going to have to you know probably either get another car or figure something else up but I think it might be another car. I'm just wondering, should I be so scared away from the car just because of consumer reports? My answer to that would be, it's just statistics and probability.

You could get that, that's an Accura, right? You get the, going back to the Accra. You could buy that car, and you would love it and never have a problem with it. But statistically, the odds are higher. You will have a problem with it based on the Consumer Report testing. Let me ask you this. This testing that you're talking about, about is on the current model, new car, NVX, right?

Yes. Okay. Well, it would be 2019. 2019. You know, I hadn't looked at the 2020 because I was looking for it. Consumer reports does two types of testing. You know, they do the testing on the new vehicle. They probably did that in 2019, and they gave a rating.

And that was based on a survey of customers that had bought the car and their own testing. There's a big difference between testing a car when at first. comes out and then giving the results of having driven that car for three or four years. They test the cars later. That's where they give their reliability and maintenance and cost, a sort of evaluation. So the testing of consumer reports on the new model car is not as reliable as the one on the three or four. If you'll recall, consumer reports gave Tesla a perfect rating, the only time they ever gave a 100 rating to any car when it came out new, And then two years later, they dropped it off their recommended list because it was a great car when it was crispy, fresh, new when they tested it.

And two years later, there were a lot of glitches that were coming up. So not to overcomplicate this, but it's just a matter of playing the odds. The odds say you're better off not to buy it, but you could win the lotto and never have a problem with it. Okay. All right. Well, thank you. I sure do appreciate your input. I guess I'll figure out where to go from here.

Couldn't answer the question, but we try. Thank you, Rich. All right. I appreciate. Thank you. I've actually got a couple interesting quotes on YouTube here on Consumer Reports. Steve E says, Consumer Reports, I'm a subscriber, and I think the issue is that they treat issues with the infotainment and air conditioning the same as issues with the engine and transmission, meaning they would kind of lump everything as their total number. I don't think so.

I think they break that out. If you look at the detail on the consumer reports, they tell you specifically how they rate it, and then they have a cumulative total. Not that the infotainment isn't going to be a part of the rating. It could be inconvenient to get that fixed, but they have reliability and then also owner satisfaction, and then they break it down until a whole bunch of other categories.

And then Gearhead 10 says, customer reports is a joke. Can't believe you all recommend them. They're biased. When scoring a car, they survey their subscribers. Complete joke they are. I'm sure you will disagree because you're obsessed. You're obsessed with them. I have a family member that works for slash with them. It's all biased. Well, that's what makes a horse race, right? Difference of opinion. there are people out there that just don't agree with anything. And I guarantee you can't take a source or a book or anything or person and get 100%. So your opinion is consumer reports.

It's a joke. And unfortunately... Not in this polarized nation that we live in. Exactly. But if there's one thing that has got the most respected... It's better than motor trend. It's better than anything. They're not perfect.

though. They're definitely not perfect. And here's another one that's right just right up your alley, Earl. It's Warhawk Legend 69. I love your username, by the way. That's awesome. Me too. Very powerful. Earl, if a dealer is charging a dealer

fee to one, does that mean they have to charge that same fee to everybody? If not, will they get into legal problems in Florida? No, and that is a lie perpetuated by the car dealers. they will tell you that, that they have to charge everybody a dealer fee if they charge you

or if they don't charge you, they can't charge anybody that is pure bogus. That originated, if you're interested, many, many years ago from the Florida Automobile Dealers Association warning dealers that if they charge dealer fees to a certain class person, in other words, if older people were always charged dealer fees and younger people weren't, or if Hispanics were always charged dealer fees and non-Hispanics weren't, or if Afro-Americans were charged dealer fees and Caucasians weren't, then you could be charged for discrimination. But the dealer fee itself can be selectively and randomly,

and that's typically what happens in some cases. And that sort of thing doesn't just apply to dealer fees if you're doing anything negative to any particular class of customer, and then you can use it for that. I got one other quest had really, this is, actually, for me, a personal side thing, but you got to call in that same line. I'll have to call. Go outside and call.

At a buy-here, pay-here lot that the buy-here pay-here lot is holding the note for the car. And so they're told the note. They're doing it. And they require the buyer to have full insurance, PIP liability, comp and collision on the car. The salesperson told the buyer that it is required by state law in Florida that they have to have comprehensive and collision on the car for the loan to go through and for them to take delivery of the car from the buy-heer pay-heer law. Is that actually a state law?

Is that where they're just trying to protect themselves? I'm going to guess, Rick, that it's up to the lender on the type of protection that they want to put on there. For example, leases require a higher, less sores require a higher level of insurance, and a bank could probably require what they want. Yeah, buy your payers lying to you because they don't want you to drive the car unless you buy and pay for the collision insurance. Because if you can't pay, and erect a car, it costs them money. So that's a lie.

Yeah, that's their choice. Okay. Where we're going? Sure. We got a question from Steve in New Jersey. Hi, Rick. I just had four new tires installed by Costco, and I had four new air pressure sensors installed as well. I asked them if they have to tell the car's computer to recognize those sensors,

and I was told by them that they would be automatically recognized my car as an 07 Lexus, ES 350. Is that true? Lexus and all Toyotas, those sensors have to be programmed to the car by way of a Toyota scan tool. I'm surprised Costco misinformed you. You should go back and correct them. Because I'll bet you anything that that tire light, every time he starts the car, blinks for about a minute and a half and then goes solid and stays on. Okay, and next one, this is for Rick, too.

My trusty weed whacker requires a single fill-up, oil and gas. Wouldn't it make sense for my car to have the oil pre-mixed with the fuel for extra lubrication? That's from Al-Luminum, and I'm going to guess it's a joke question? Well, Al, I'll forge out an answer for you. No, and the main reason that we do not... What if they had a two-cycle engine? Well, that's actually the case of it. The main reason we don't use two cycle engines on automobiles is the lack of power produced by them for moving a heavier vehicle and the absolutely immense amount of emissions produced by two cycle engines.

And so that gas and oil mix is polluting like crazy versus the only somewhat horrible pollution, coming from our four-cycle gasoline engines. Next. All right, picked up by 9-to-5 Mac. I read that blog. Apple accidentally left code in its newly released iOS 13.4 beta for car key. And it's an unannounced all-new service, which has the potential to transform the automotive landscape

by enabling iPhone and Apple Watch owners to use their devices as digital car keys. I read that same article. I also know that Toyota and other manufacturers are all developing, this electronic key thing where you're able to start your car, get in your car. But the reason they're saying can transform the automotive landscape is because it allows for it more easier and ride sharing. So if you can go to a car and use your phone to get in and start it, that's how you start

this true ride sharing paradigm. All right. I'm having a mind blank. There's a car commercial I've just seen recently where the meter made walks up to the car that's parked at a meter. The meter's about to run out. The owner is sitting at an outdoor cafe. He pulls out his phone or his remote for the car

and makes the car pull forwards. Nobody in the car. The car drives forwards into a green zone. The meter made gets grumpy and leans. Then he walks over to the car and uses his phone to unlock the door. And, of course, their tagline is Ford, Honda, Chevy. Nobody else has this. But what is that car company?

I could use my phone to unlock the car. But you can't start it. Yes, I do. Not when you're driving it. No, not when I'm driving it. And you can't go up to somebody else's car and get in there. No. All right, we've got to move along because we've got a long mystery shattering report.

So we're going to start. But we have another one. Earl, have you called Steve Leto or Steve Richards in regards to having them part of your show? No. Okay, this is from Jennifer in Tampa. She says that she is a new listener to the show. And she wants to ask the recovering car dealer, What is your documentation fee?

We don't have a documentation fee. We don't charge any fees that are not applied by the government. And we also call dock fees, hidden fees, which is what they really are, because they don't include them in the advertise price. And, Jennifer, there's an endless list. They have a name for it all, and it's bogus. So I hope you stay tuned next Saturday and become a regular one. our radio show. Our phone number is 877-960. And you can text us at 772-497-65-30. Oh, and that's the Hyundai has that new commercial. Oh, cool. Hyundai-Hundy, Hyundai. Okay, this is another anonymous feedback.

Good morning. Earl. Who are car gurus, NADAs, KBs, and auto-traders, and true cars customers? Is it the consumers? Is it you and me? No, I'd guess that the customers are the car dealers, a wolf in sheep's clothing to attract the uninformed consumer to the dealer's lots. You're exactly right. And you would have to say that all those you named economically exist because of car dealers, the car dealers pay the fee, and you have to be very, very careful. I mean, you know, our true car is one that we've recommended on this show. We say the same thing about true car, car guru, auto trader, all the cars.

dot com. They all get their revenue, source of revenue from the dealer. One of the reasons I go back about consumer reports is they don't take any money from car dealers, auto manufacturers, or anybody else. They are a non-profit. They exist strictly on donations. And you can't get any more squeaky clean than that. Nancy. Nancy. Nancy. That's the, Nancy Nancy. That says, Good morning. I have a mission for you should you choose to accept. I think you might appreciate this callback to your past, a trip to the scrapyard. I recall a show from last year where you mentioned going to the scrapyard. I need a radiator and radiator fluid reservoir for my 2002 Civic.

Can you help me? Thank you. Okay. I think we mentioned a scrapyard, junkyard this morning, and a very popular one because back in my day we called him a junkyard. Rick, can you add to that? LKQ. Here you go.

LKKKK. Like kind quality. That's the only way. I can remember that, like, kind, quality. LKQ.com. Yes. Another one, by the way, I texted our wholesale guy Ted for these. He recommended LKQ.

The number is 800-962-2277. The other one is you pull-and-pay. I'm familiar with that one as well. And that's 561-793-3-808. That's you-pull-A. The one that bothers me is Snake Road Rucking Yard. I do not drive on a state. It's probably a great place, but I just, I change the name if I were then.

Well, Snake Road is actually the road that it's off. I don't care. And the county named it. I don't even want to walk on Snake Road. I've been there. I'm not going to drive on Snake Road. It's a great lot. I've been there.

I'm glad. It's right at the intersection of Snake Road and Spider Boulevard. There you go. Hey, guys, just want to alert you. We're four minutes, well, to the mystery shopping report. Timing is perfect because I got one more anonymous feedback and one more text. This one's going to be real quick. What's Allen's recommendation for preventing you?

your fake leather seats from drying out and cracking. I think Rick was spot on in regards to keeping the seats clean, but I'd also like to maintain their current pristine condition. Isn't a conditioner of search required for this? I texted Alan. Alan said get a commercial, just your regular commercial leather conditioner. That's what he recommends. Commercial leather conditioner on artificial leather.

Yeah, that's what he says. Counterintuitive, as they say. Now two minutes. All right. We're catching up. Hi, this is Steve from New Jersey. I'm ever able to ask the consumer reports author of their crash test biased how male focus testing puts female drivers at risk. The author stated that female drivers and front seat passengers versus males, they're at a 17% greater risk of death and a 73% greater risk of serious injury from an accident.

Okay. Okay, folks, don't forget that column that are all rightes every week. And boy, I'll tell you what, you can't read this enough, and that's never go car shot. alone. And you can get that in the hometown news, and you can read it at Earl on Cars. Florida Weekly. And the Florida Weekly. And to your text, Stu, I talked about that from the Consumer Report because they were recognizing the fact that women and children have not really been recognized their body frame, which puts women in a very vulnerable position. You're listening to the best of the Earl Stewart on Cars program.

If you have a question, text it to 772-4976530 or online at Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Okay, folks, we're moving into our very special mystery shopping report, and Jonathan in the control room now is going to put a video on, which is a video of a television advertisement by the target of our mystery shopping report, which was Palm Beach Toyota. And they're located, of course, in West Palm Beach, Florida. And they're on

was it Southern Boulevard? Southern and Congress. In Congress. Palm Beach Toyota, they're an extremely large dealership. I would say the largest in Palm Beach, Martin Broward, not Broward, Palm Beach County, total volume do a lot of business.

They're owned by the Penske Auto Group. So, Jonathan, you're in the other room. I can't see you. You can see me. Let me know if you can play that, or should I start in on my... When we start, we probably get up to the spot in the report where you would... Yeah, we'll do that. Okay. This week, we're taking a break from our Takata investigations and turning our attention to car dealer advertising. Our weekly mystery shopping report used to focus almost exclusive on car dealer advertising, and we've exposed about every trick

in the book. We've seen ads with enormous and two good to be true discounts, ridiculously low car payments, and impossible offers for trade-ins. We've seen promises for guaranteed finance approval and offers for huge cash prizes. At the heart of these ads is a simple concept, bait and switch. Bate and switch. The bait? Attractive offer and the switch, less desirable deal, often far less, that awaits the customer who falls for the bait of the ad. less mystery shops on car dealers advertising lately, mainly because of the shift to digital

advertising away from newspapers. Hardly ever CNN at the newspaper anymore by a car dealer. There were two this morning in the Palm Beach Post. A lot of digital advertising is targeted down to the individual consumer online and on social media. It's a lot harder for us to find them. Did you know that with the, what they call it, geo-fencing, car dealers can find out where the people that they typically sell cars to live and they can put that in that area, that zip code. They can target your home and they could come after one person or a zip code or a multiple zip codes. It is frightening how they can target consumers. So therefore, if we're

looking on our Facebook page and we see an ad, that's because that's what they want us to see, not what you might see. Everybody sees something different. Very interesting. We have also seen a reduction in many of the most outlandish as consumers have wised up and car dealers know it. Car dealers have wised up too. It's kind of like parity. I mean, when the consumers were suckers, the car dealers were stupid. And now the consumers are smart and the car dealers are smart too.

As today tend to be a little more sophisticated than low-key. Some auto manufacturers have established firm guidelines on what their dealers can advertise. Not firm enough. The firm is a relative term. Yeah, is it a relative term. Not rock salad. No, far from it. This doesn't mean it's any safer for consumers.

On the contrary, car dealer ads today seem more believable. They really do. I mean, they can fake honesty better than ever before. It's probably harder than ever to detect the ruse. this example we'll use this week example this week is an ad from a local toilet dealership

Palm Beach Toyota I shy away from Mr. Shopping toilet dealers particularly the ones my dealers competes with directly I don't want to give the impression that I'm attacking my competition to gain an advantage so when I do I'm careful

to treat the investigations of service to the consumers and you're ready to listeners to No, the show, no. We shop everybody. We shop, you know, Hyundai. I mean, we shop everything. Yeah, we can't take Toyota off the list just because we're... Toyota is the largest.

They sell more cars than anybody else in this area. I mean, in Florida and the Southeast United States, they're number one. They got about 15% of the market. And so they outsell all the other manufacturers. So we have to target them from time to time. We'll just squirm a little bit when we do it. We squirm, yeah. I'm squarming right now.

We shop Palm Beach Toyota last September for advertising used vehicles disguised as new ones. I mean, it's pretty low. The ad we looked into was an online offer for completely redesigned 2020 Corolla starting at $14,977. Now, at some point, Jonathan will be. I'll give you. Let me know. I'll give you the signal. I'm just talking now because we have that TV commercial.

is going to be coming at us and you will see what we saw when we decided to try to buy the car that Palm Beach Toil was advertising. Our shopper discovered that the advertised car was in fact a used rental vehicle making matters worse. The advertised car

was no longer available for sale. This is a previous shop we did. Yeah, that was the online ad. The online ad. And not the one we're talking about now. And the salesperson squished our shopper into a more expensive car. Let's let's run the spot now. Okay, let's run the spot. Here we go.

Jonathan. Palm Beach, Toyota. Save on 2020, Corolla. 14-477. Save up to 7,999 off. New Toyota's South Congress across from the airport. There you go. Okay. Back at it. Sounds pretty good. What did you hear or what did you see?

If you didn't see it, what did you hear, and what did you see? That's what the impression is that gets people to come in, And that's the impression we got to bring our mystery shopper in. And we thought we were going to buy a 2020 Corolla for $14,477. I'm just being 100% honest here. Without looking at it and studying it, I would have just thought that it was a new 2020 Corolla. Exactly, yeah, exactly.

At any rate, Palm Beach Toyota is back at it again. This time with a television ad, you just heard promising or maybe saw, if you have YouTube and you're on Facebook, promising a 2020 Corolla for just $14,477, $500 less than they ran last fall, and we shopped them last fall. The price is an enormous 3D red print. And if you saw that, there it is right there. You saw that if you watched the TV ad, we just ran.

And the narrator says, 2020 Corolla, $14,477. Now, this is 2020. This is February. It's only only two months in to 2020, and they're advertising in 2020. How many 2020 used car ads are you going to see out there? A whole lot. It says used on top, but it's literally about one hundredth of the price.

Exactly. Here it is here. Your eyes go to the red thing. This is a screenshot of it. Here we go. I think we should run that again. in. Well, I think we will. The narrator says 2020 Corolla, 14477. He does not mention the word used, but it is displayed in smaller print. What would the average consumer think? It is a year

2020. A 2020 corolla would naturally be new, right? That's what I think. This is the same deception. Okay. The ad goes on to promise to save, listen to this, save $7,99 off new Toyotas. Well, my mind says they're advertising the Corolla. I'm going to save $7,99 of this new Corolla 2020. But the catch was revealed in the fine print. Yes, there is fine print, effectively invisible. And I would say literally illegible. It's effectively invisible, and it's literally illegible.

Okay. Unless you're doing what we did. Unless you're doing. Screenshots. Recrease the screen. Who does that? Record it, play it back. Only weird people like us.

That's right. The 7,000, here's the answer to the mystery. The $7,99 discount was on a new 2020-Land-Cruiser. And we were talking about land cruisers earlier in the show. They had in stock, and they had a stock number for this land-cruiser. Now, land-cruisers are low-supply, high-demand. vehicle and they're priced higher than they should be

and they have a bigger markup and so you can mark up a land cruiser probably what 12, 13,000 and discount of $7,999 on a land cruiser is not a bad discount A 2020

Toyota land cruiser is a very expensive heavy luxury SUV with a huge markup cost to MSRP $799, $799 discount is no big deal. There aren't many of any other Toyoters that could allow this bigger discount, almost $8,000. We did a check on this, right? You went on this later on.

There are very few around anywhere, and Palm Beach Toyota did not have one in stock. Yeah, we were going to send somebody else out to do a double shop to look at the land cruiser, but it wasn't there. So they were advertising a discount on a land cruiser. that they don't have, and we found out later, does not exist, to allude to a discount on a Corolla, which the discount could not apply to. We thought maybe it was at another Penske store, but it doesn't exist in the system at all, so it's been sold.

Exactly. Now, if it ever existed at all. It did. We found the invoice, yeah. Stu said we searched our regional inventory and could not find the Land Cruiser. So we sent in Agent Tempest to see about the ad for the 2020 Corolla, for just $14,477 that was supposed to make you believe at a $8,000 discount off of MSRP.

If you remember from a few weeks ago, Agent Tempest is our female mystery shopping agent who just happens to be about nine months? Yeah, wow. She's any time now. Stand by for launch. That's right. Countdown.

Here's our report here. I pulled into the parking lot at Palm Beach, Toyota. I'm speaking as if I were Agent Tempest early in the afternoon. I took a little time to get my daughter out of the car and collect her stuff. Then I made my way to the entrance. I was greeted by a salesman who said, welcome to PBI. PBT. PBT. PBT. Oh, PBT. Yeah. PBI. PBM. It's right across the street from him, though. It's close. You can be careful. Later, I would learn his name was Gustavo. And just for probably irrelevant. source of information. Most of the customers at Bombay's Toyota are Hispanic, and most of the

staff there is Hispanic. Is that right, Stam? I think so. They definitely have a high percentage of Spanish-speaking. And I say this because we're talking about confusion and smoking mirrors and television ads and fine print and so on and so forth. Can you imagine, imagine yourself in Argentina or Mexico, and you're a native, you're a Spanish. Spanish. Spanish, you're a Spanish, is your native language, and you're seeing an English. I mean, the people that don't have English as a primary language have even more difficulty

in understanding fine print and Baden's, which is. I mean, the number is going to be universal. So if you see a picture of a crorella and it says 14477, but your English isn't great, you might not catch the catch. Exactly. At any rate, I explained to Gustavo that I'd come in because of the TV ad, I

scene on the 2020 Corolla's. Cosabo said, come on in and let me tell you about the car. We walked in the dealership. I headed for an open table. It's a large showroom with a lot of cars, an ample desk. They appeared busy. We sat down and got right to it.

Gustavo used an iPad to find the car I'd asked about. He pulled up their website, tried to find the advertisement. He said he couldn't find the $14,477 offer. That's peculiar because they're advertising it on television. But he couldn't find the offer.

He did find a $15,57 for a 2020-2020 pre-owned certified used car. So he couldn't find the advertised car that was on television, but he found a used car. I asked him, what about the $14,000 one? And I thought it was a new 2020. Are you telling me it's used? Explain to me that it wasn't technically a used car, is it never had an owner. However, it was used as a courtesy vehicle by the dealership.

Now, here we get into smoke and mirrors and fog. What is a used car? The legal definition of a used car is a car that's been titled. In reality, if a car has got a lot of miles on, it's been driven, it's a used car. but now we're tap dancing. This is the smoke and mirrors. Petty foggery. Exactly.

I expressed my dissatisfaction. I told him that this was intentionally misleading. Gastonville explained the new Corolla, L.A. would be around 19,000. Yeah. Man. That'd be a good price. Huh?

Oh, yeah. That's a good price. That doesn't include dealer fees. Right. Exactly. I paused and pretended to concentrate on my situation. Finally, I said I'd be willing to consider the certified one.

I asked him if I could get that one at the advertised price of $14,477. Gestado said the certified one was only $500 more. More like $1,000 more. And it was $1,000 more. He said it was worth an additional

$500 because it was Toyota certified, and the one the TV ad was not. Excuse me. My hair's on fire. I am looking at this Palm Beach Toyota ad, and I think it's worthy of running again.

This is just unbelievable. Okay, Jonathan, run that out again. Or Ken, he's not ready. Paul Beach, Toyers. Save on 2020, Corolla, 14, 477. Save up to 7,999 off. New Toyotas. South Congress, across from the airport. Listen and weep. Short and sweet.

I didn't ask him, how he knew anything about the one the TV had earlier. He said he couldn't find it. My guess is Gustavo didn't want to find it. Well, I thought it was an interesting point that she brought up was he couldn't find the ad, but he seemed to know an awful lot about the car saying it wasn't certified, but he couldn't find. Yeah, exactly. How would he know what she was talking about?

Good point. If he can't find the ad, how would he know that? Gustavo would not explain the benefits of getting a toilet certified used vehicle, the warranty, the inspection, etc. When he was done, he let me know he was going to bring the Corolla up front and they come back and get me. He asked me if I wanted water before leaving. I said, no, thank you.

Gustavo came back fairly quickly. Then we made our way outside and found the car. It was a used 2020 corolla, as promised, a lovely blueprint. It's the color of your shirt. Oh, really? Yeah. That's my favorite color. Well, sparkles in it.

That was the color of my barracuda. Was it right? Was it really? Yes. Gustavo handed you are the Barraguda Had on their seats too Nancy's making a fist right now

You've got to watch the car Gustavo handed me the keys And asked me to turn on the car I started the engine I looked the vehicle over It looked like a new car That needed to be vacuumed Maybe a car wash too

Gustavo talked about the car And showed me the Carfax report on his iPad It was reported to be one owner vehicle with an accident that occurred last September that's kind of right what a full life this corolla has lived in it's short this car just came out in september

maybe they wrecked it getting it off the truck when it came in i said the accident was a turnoff Gestavo was quick to point out the report indicated only minor damage that's true yeah could be scratch still I asked if I could see the corolla was in the TV ad Gestabla said he didn't think they had it I asked where it was and replied he said out there

I thought that was like a metaphysical thing that he was doing there it's somewhere it's not here it's out there pointed to the road I asked him what that meant and he replied I rent it out

I relented fine I said can you show me how much this one will be I mean this is really I can't believe it Gisabla said we should go back inside where he could put the numbers together for me

He asked a bunch of questions as we walked toward the showroom, finance of cash, tax transfer, or new plate, so on toward. I said I was financing with $5,000 down. I needed a new tag. At his desk, Casabal asked for my driver's license and took a picture of it with his iPad. He asked for my phone number, but not my email address. Then he got up and retrieved a printed worksheet. He started by justifying the price, said the vehicle was originally $21,224,000, but, but but he was giving me a $5,667 discount.

He glossed over the other fees and then stated, glossed over the other fees, then stated that after my $5,000 down payment, I'd be financing $13,733. He said that without running my credit, he would estimate my rate, which he did in handwritten print, 5% for five years for $259 monthly payment. The fees had appeared on the worksheet included,

we go. $999.95 pre-delivery service charge and get this $695 in total finance after markets. That's a new one. I asked Gustavo about the $695 he looked caught

like a deer in the headlights he said it was for a lojack. Why don't they just say lojack? Oh, lojack. It was because I asked him why he included it, and he replied that it could help the police recover my car if it was stolen. He also said, my car insurance would be less with it. I said, I don't want it.

Gustavo said he would take it off. Now, only because Agent, who, Agent Tempest. Tempest. Only because Agent Tempest spotted them. That's a take on the Thunder thing, Storm. Yeah, I was going to say Thunder. Only because Ancient Tempah spotted that, did they take it off. And it didn't say it was low jack.

They didn't even name it. They just said, financeable options or something like that. Total financed aftermarkets. Yeah. As we were wrapping up, I asked him if he could match the $14,477 price. I saw on TV, the one I thought was a new car. He asked me if I was taking it home today. I said I wanted to go over.

I love that. Are you taking it home today? I wanted to go to the numbers with my mom because she has a lot of experience buying cars. I said I would come back with me. She would come back to help me through the finance process. Gustavo said his boss may be a little more aggressive with the price once my mother and I came back to finish the deal. Holding out a little hope, little tease. It might get better, but you've got to come back.

That's right. Then he said that $800 didn't really amount to a bunch. It was just $13 a month on the payment. I replied, hey, $800, is $800. If Salvo handed me his business card, asked me to call him when I was coming back, and I thanked him. And epilogue simply, clear-cut example of bait and switch. Not much more to say about that. They advertised a car for $7,000.

Well, they advertised the car for $14,000, $7,000. 14477 yeah 14,477 right and they said 8,799 799 7999 discount and that's what you saw and that's what you believed and we played that advertisement twice if you have video on Facebook or YouTube and in reality she ended up paying well she didn't pay but they gave her a price of 16-252 plus a thousand dollars in dealer fees so 17-1 that's pretty good and the dealer fees were not included in the the fake price, and neither was the LoJack, which was added without even naming the product. And there's something else that I would have to say that wasn't added. I believe there's another fee, a tag agency fee. Yeah, 129.

And I don't think you see the 129 until you go into the finance office. Not that you see it, but that's where it appears on the computer. It's on the official legal buyer's order. Yeah. So there we have it, folks. Deceptive advertising. bait and switch and you actually saw the TV advertisement what was your reaction if you were able

to see it we'd like to hear from me and we'd like to hear you score Palm Beach Toyota as to whether or not what they're doing is the right thing we have four grades that came in Linda gives him a big fat F I knew that was coming Steve on Facebook gives him a

low passing D he says it's a typical experience at a car dealership in Florida Lenny gives him an F and Shakira is back giving him an F and Shakira, I just want to say I thought your performance on Sunday was pretty good. I've got Karen giving him a big, fat F, and no other's at the moment. Myself, I'm giving them an F. That was just egregious.

Two more came in, two more Fs from Nate and Amy. Both give them F's. Nancy? It's unanimous. F. YouTube. I've got actually a couple of questions. from YouTubers if we can get to them

after the shop? Okay, well I just I'm, you know, I'm... I know you're squirrermen. I'm squirroman. I'm squirroman because Pombie's Toil is a competitor of mine and... All the dealers are competitors of yours. All of them are dealers are competitors of mine. And

they all do bait and switch advertising. And I'm on the fence here because of the fact that we haven't videoed other TV ads. yet. And I wonder how much more deceptive on a curve basis the other ads are. The reason I lean toward flocking them is because I think the seriousness of implying a new car when you're

selling a used car is bad. So I'm going to go with a failure on this, not because of the fine print, but because of the nature of the ad. think when you premeditatedly prepare new cars or prepare used cars, manufacture used cars. You take a brand new car and either you put it in rental service so you can advertise it as a used car and then try to switch people to a real new car. I think that's going over the line. Yeah, they try to get as close to the line as they can. A year or so, a couple of years ago, they were doing the same thing.

But instead of actually using the word used, they use CPO, which stands for certified pre-owned, which the vast majority of the consumers out there have no idea what that means. And so technically they were doing it, they got called out on it and they changed it and had to start calling them used. Yeah, this advertisement actually had used in it in the, not the audio, the audio didn't have it. Oh, here it is right here. yeah if you look here you can see used above the $14,000 and but bear in mind that that was all moving around in this it was like swooped onto the screen turned and went away and it wasn't in the audio if they said used in the audio then I wouldn't have a gig them for it but I think and then they're and then clearly deceptive ingenious I might say smart implication of the seventh $999 discount was on the Corolla when in fact

it was on a land cruiser that doesn't exist if they don't have the car nobody has the car and so they used the land cruiser discount when it's there is no land cruiser

so I think I'm talking myself into the F I flunk them if you're listening go to their website right now look for a land cruiser there's not one there good ideas too Yeah, absolutely.

And you're not going to be able to, yeah, and you can't buy the Krola either for that price. What's even more offensive is the fact that, you know, you don't even have to wonder why car dealers are rated so low on the list. I mean, it's just really unfortunate, but you have to look for the good car dealers, and you can find anything and everything you need to know about the topic, the subject that we're discussing this morning. morning by going to Earl on cars. Good dealers, bad dealers. There are some good dealers. Look at our recommended list and that's on the rolling car. We had a couple of YouTube you said. Real quick one here, Tango, Tango USA says, I'm thinking of buying a new car, Highlander Platinum 2020, but all the dealerships want to play games. I'm frustrated. 10 dealerships, 10 different prices. Any suggestions, Mr. Earl?

You can go to our website We're the only dealer I know That has out-the-door prices On every car they sell You probably live too far Don't want to buy it from me So go on our website Earl Stewart-Torielder.com

Look up the car you want to price on You'll get an out-the-door price That's the lowest price We would sell you the car for You'll get a buyer's order That looks exactly like the buyer's order You would actually get Yeah

So you can write us out a check For the number you see and take it to us, and you could drive the car home. So take that price and go to the nearest Toyota dealer near you and say, I can buy this car from Earl Stewart for this price. If you can beat it or meet it, I'll buy it from you. Take it to any dealer that you want, and if they match the price, you've got a good price.

Countdown three minutes. And Jose Huerta says, Hi, guys, my sister was caught at Elder Ford in Tampa for a 2019 escape, sold to her as new, with 7,500 miles. Is that legal? This happened last June. Look at the buyer's order.

Well, first of all, shame on the state of Florida because the definition of used car is simply one that's been titled. So you could take a new car, put 180,000 miles on it, and you could call it a new car. Mileage has nothing to do whether a car is used or new, according to the state of Florida. It should be a used car, but it's not. So you just check the status, and if you want to know legally or not use, check the status for the title.

If it's been pre-title, it's used. That's right. And Mark Weiss, lower than F, is his grade for the mystery shopping report. He says, however, I am in the Chicago, Illinois area, and I see ads saying executive demo or courtesy loaner, and they have less than 100 miles, some less than 25 miles. Your thoughts? Florida law says that if, and I can't speak for Illinois, Florida law says that if a car's been used as a loaner,

a demonstrator, if it has miles on as a result of the use of the dealership, you have to disclose that fact. But they still sell it as a new car. But there is a Florida state form that you have to sign, and you probably sign it, and you don't even know you sign it, but the disclosure has to be there. It's also on the bar's order in Florida. it says either new user demo will be checked.

Yes. Okay. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for joining us here at Earl Stewart and on cars. We look forward to hearing from you next week. Have a wonderful weekend. Vendom to me. Vendom. Wendom. Wendtum.

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