Earl Stewart on Cars - 02.22.2025 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Treasure Coast Toyota of Stuart, FL.

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits a local Toyota dealer to see what they have on the lot and how much over sticker they will charge for a new 2025 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid on their showroom floor. 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, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. To purchase Earl’s book, “Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer”, go to www.earlsbook.com. This will forward to Earl’s Amazon page to complete your purchase. All proceeds from the book go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. For more information or to adopt the dog you have seen today or any of their other dogs, please visit their website at www.bdrr.org. “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”

Hello, 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 listeners. We also have Rick Kearney, an expert on how to keep your car running right. I dare you to ask a question that Rick can't answer about the mechanics or electronics of your car. Also with us is my son, Stu Stewart, our link to cyberspace through Facebook, YouTube, text messaging, and our encrypted anonymous feedback service. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our mystery shopping report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting car dealership. And now, on with the show.

Good morning, everybody. Well, we're back, and I have to explain why the meaning of that is pretty important because I, I, I really am back. We've been running reruns of Earl Stewart on Cars for a long time. I've been ill and found some good doctors and had a great nurse at home. We call her Nurse Nancy. And now I'm back, healthy, rare in to go. And I hope we haven't lost too many of you regular listeners out there.

We need to get the word out if you're listening to the show. Spread the word. Earl Stewart on Cars is now live. Really live. Really live. It's February 22nd, 2025. Right. So 8 to 10 Easter Standard Time,

we're going to be on the air this morning for two full hours. And we love our listener base. And we're going to find out this morning how many we won and lost. and if work and spread, we have to have you folks participate because, as I always say, you make the show and your questions. You keep us up to date. We have a YouTube squadron of YouTubers out there

that follow Rick Kearney, and you guys are something else, and gals. You really stay on top of the auto industry, retail and wholesale, and we learn from you. And we learn from all you callers out there. So if we give the number out a little more often than normal, you can understand why. We want to be sure we have a lot of contact points.

Our most popular, and this is Nancy's forte, she's the one that watches the telephone. You know what I'm talking about? The old-fashioned telephone. personality, feelings, emotion, permeate the regular telephone. Something you can't quite get on YouTube or email or text, the telephone has warmth and personality or anger, but it's important that we have you callers jump on that phone.

And that number, which you're going to hear a lot this morning, because a lot of folks are new. That number is 877-9-60-9-60. And I feel so bad for you folks out there that call the number, and we've got a rerun show. I don't know how we can get the word out when we are not live, but we are live right now. And if you call 877-9-60-99-60, Nancy Stewart, my callos,

She has the laptop computer right in front of her, and the control room knows that a caller trumps everything. A caller takes top priority over anything else. So if you're not going to ask a question now, you probably don't have a question now. Write it down. Write this number down, please. 877-960-99-60.

That's 877-9-60-9-9-60. And for you folks, I don't want to be live on radio. We have a text number. That text number is Erica 772-497-6530. That's 772-497-497-65-30. And almost more important, almost, is our YouTube group. We're on YouTube.com forward slash our loan cards. and Rick Kearney, who was our certified diagnostic master technician,

that can answer the questions about the high-tech cars we drive today. In fact, the low-tech, do you ever think? Sandra Wilson says, Earl, you look fabulous and you sound great. Oh, bless your heart. Thank you very much. Well, Sandra, call some of your friends and text them and email them, and we need to get the word out. It's going to take it.

We are off the air for too long, and I apologize for that. I had no choice, and now we're going to be back on for a long, long time. So let's try to spread the word that Erlan Cars is now alive. So, Andrew, thanks very much for the compliment. Now, we have mentioned the YouTube.com. Nancy just waved at me. Yeah, we, good morning, everyone. It's me, Nancy Stewart.

I don't know. We are so happy to be back. I have to say that first. Wow, maybe this is like riding a bicycle. Anyway, we're happy to be here, and first and foremost, I have to thank everyone, every one of you for all of your cards, all of your phone calls, text messages, everything. It was just overwhelming, and we just didn't realize what an audience we have,

and we're so thankful for you, so thankful you make the show as a lot. Earl said, and we're going to move fast this morning, be in light of the fact that we've been out for two months, and we've got a bunch of calls backed up. We've got a whole lot to get to a lot of information. Wow, a lot has happened in the auto industry. Things are changing. Should I say tariffs? Okay, we'll get into all that, Amazon, everything we're going to talk about, but first and foremost, let's get to our callers. That number is 8.6. 7-7-960. Don't forget, you can text us if you're a little bashful, and you can save that number for the mystery shopping report.

772-497-6530, and yes, we do have a mystery shopping report. So, Rick, did you want to say something? No. Okay. We just have so many folks on YouTube welcoming us back, and on the Google Voice text messages, everybody just seems happy. We're back.

And I've got to tell you, I'm glad we're back. I know you are. Hey, one thing I want to jump in with Jonathan told us. Our goal today is to get to 100 live viewers on our YouTube channels. And that doesn't sound like a lot, but it is because it represents, you know, a peak kind of really. But people come and go. But we'd like to get it up to that. So to our faithful listeners, if you can, like maybe.

text the link to your friends. I don't think we've ever solicited a, you know, help to promote the show, but text your friends and say, hey, click on this and watch us for a few minutes, see if you like it. Great ideas. And we can hit our goal. How's that, Jonathan? That's very encouraging. Okay, folks, we're going to get to our first caller, and that is going to be Rick.

And Rick is calling us from Boca Return. Good morning, Rick. Good morning. Good morning. I'm a long-time listener and first caller. I'm calling with some general. question about general information. I'm really impressed with your

philosophy about dealerships, and I've probably been subject to the rip off of the typical bait and switch guys for many years over cars. But I'm interested in buying a hybrid. I've never bought one before, and I've had Toyotas for a very long time, forerunners and Highlanders and others

avalon's, but I wanted to ask you, what you would recommend is trying to shop for a hybrid, and what I should be looking for, and maybe some advice on general philosophical outlooks on that subject yeah there's a lot of information out there for you but let's start with let's start with Rick well I got to admit this is one area of my life that I am prejudiced I am a carist I am I I have loyalty to Toyota simply because I've

worked on the brand for 30 years now and Toyota hybrids when they first hit the shores, the batteries had some issues, and for about the first eight or ten years, I would have said the lifespan of a hybrid battery was about 150,000 miles at the most. Now, that has tripled. My estimate on a hybrid battery, on the newer cars coming out, has reached the point that I think hybrids will outlast most normal internal combustion cars, and this is going for brands across the board, all the brands. Rick, let me interrupt you just for a woman.

And I, because we do own a Toyota dealership and because we don't want people to get the idea that we're doing an infomercial, we're very hesitant to recommend Toyotas over other cars. All the manufacturers out there, virtually all of them, make

some very, very good vehicles. And the only way that we can recommend with good conscience is to take an independent source that we look at very, very highly, almost impeccable is the

consumer reports. So I'm going to let Rick continue to tell you how much he loves Toyota hybrids, but before I do that, Rick, I want to, the other Rick, that Rick is on the telephone here, get a consumer reports.

Consumer reports, annual auto issue, or even some of the the other issues or online go to consumer reports and they have their ranking of cars by type so you can go to consumer reports they will tell you the highest rated hybrid sedan yeah and we can tell you that they rotate in and out you know sometimes Toyota is up there and sometimes other manufacturers are up there from a like a shopping and I guess a sales perspective they're becoming more and more common now. That was Toyota's

a strategy that I think we all questioned in the beginning when they didn't jump in like wholeheartedly with the battery EVs. But yeah, so it's really kind of they're going to be, they're very normal now and like for example with Toyota, which I'm just more familiar with, a lot of

the popular lines aren't being are going to be offered in a gas version. They're all just hybrid. So that's just kind of the way it's going before everything becomes all EV. So I think it's a really natural thing, and they've also been around for a long time. And just for your information, because

there's too much to go into detail, but consumer reports consider Subaru, all told, it's a smaller manufacturer and you don't see as many Subaru's on the road by a long shot as you see Honda's and Toyota's. But Subaru, Subaru

builds an amazing vehicle. Safety, performance, maintenance cost, If I were a buyer rather than a dealer today, the first car I would look at and familiarize myself with would be Subaru. They also have a, there's a coolness factor too. They're kind of considered a little bit like for, they're not just your standard, you know, kid carriers. It's, you know, a little bit, you know, off-roadsy, but they're all low-drive, but it's kind of got that little more rugged appeal. They also have some.

If you're thinking about purchasing a car sometime soon, Rick Stu, myself, Earl, we have, you know, a lot of information. And I'm going to, you know, kind of hop on the bandwagon here with what Rick said, you know, about Toyota. And if you're looking for excellent fuel economy, 57 miles per gallon combined, reliable and well-known, this hybrid is amazing. that's the Toyota Prius that in the very beginning came up pretty strong. And as Rick alluded to, the battery life is much longer now. So Rick, you've got a lot of choices. Earl mentioned Consumer Report. I'm going to send you to chat GBT.

There are so many ways of getting information before you make a decision because this is a big decision. It's the same as purchasing a home. So you want to, as you are doing, checking this out early, Rick. And remember also that most of the hybrid batteries and the hybrid components are being produced by the same company for all brands across the board. There's only a few companies making those components and in all the different brands use them. One advantage to Subaru, I know, is it seems like every one of their cars ranks at the very top for safety factors. and that's something

I would definitely take advantage of and like Earl says he's over here right now leafing through what we call our Bible which is the consumer reports and they unlike me they are totally unbiased they will give you an honest opinion

but I honestly for hybrids I don't think you can go wrong I would however suggest also Google a term called hypermiling and kind of to read up a little bit, watch some of the videos on what folks say about hyper-miling, there are some people out there that they take the EPA-rated mileage of these cars,

which we all know, if it says 60, you're going to get 50 for the most part. These guys take it as a challenge, and they will routinely figure out how to get these cars to 80 miles per gallon just by changing driving habits. and in a hybrid, you can do that so easily. You'd be amazed at how much fun it can be driving a car just by challenging yourself for things like that. Rick, can we give you enough information to get started? I didn't get that.

I think I was very started. I just was really impressed, as I said, on your philosophy of dealerships and so forth, which drew me to become a regular listener. And I've been driving a Toyota for a very, very long time when I was very much younger. I'm an old guy now, but I was much younger. A car mechanic told me, and I was asking about brands of cars, he said, buy a Honda or Toyota because you can get in it brand new, drive it from Florida to California without stopping, and never have a breakdown because they're so reliable.

And so I've been a Toyota guy for a long time. That Honda cord is also really highly rated, and you talk about miles per gallon, you know, it's even better, you know, than the Prius at 44 to 51 a mile. per gallon and then of course you have your choice of the rev for which in popularity it's taken I think it still has moved into the slot and it is number one Camry has dropped to number two that is true yeah definitely Rick have we very helpful thank you so much for your time thanks for calling Rick thank you very much thank you Rick spread the word we're back we're live have a great weekend And the number here is 877-960-99-60.

You can also text us at 772-497-65-30. We're going to go to our next caller, and that is our ever-faithful Howard. And I hope that Howard is right here in, shall we say, well, kind of sunny Florida. It's much better than the northeast. Welcome. Welcome back. Hey, Howard. Thanks, Howard.

Thank you. Pleasure talking to you. I'm not going to ask you the politics behind why you got off the ebb. That's not important. The important thing is you're back. A couple of questions I have for Rick. Rick, whatever I got my oil changed in your dealership, the oil is never up on the top line.

It's always between the two lines. And it's not only you, before I was using Toyota, many years ago, the same thing happened. Now, my question is, when oil is change, should it be on the top line, or is it okay to be in the middle between the two lines? As long as it's in that range between the two lines, it's safe, but it should always be a little closer to the top line. And we try to teach the younger techs, you know, to top it off, give it that little extra couple of tents. But with the new modern systems, they've got these computerized guns that, I call it a gun. Basically, it's just an oil pumper. But it pumps a prescribed amount of oil into the car.

And to try to go back and get that reprogram to add that additional, we teach them little tricks like keep an extra jug and pump a little extra in there. so that way you can do that little top off. But yeah, as long as that oil is near that top line, you're good. And we try to discourage them from getting too crazy because you don't want it to be over the line. If the oil gets over a little too full, then the moving parts actually encounter that liquid oil down in the pan because of the way the engines are so compact now.

And that can actually create foaming, and it starts to drag that liquid oil around, and that can cause problems. too. So there's a lot of different schools of thought, but like I say as long as it's in that safe range between the two lines, then you're fine. Yeah, an old

mechanic told me it's better that if it's above the line it's bad. If it's a little below the line, that is bad, but you should put the extra oil in there. Yeah. Other question, my friend has a Subaru, and he has much more

maintenance than the Toyota. And they have to add more fluids, the differential and things. So he's spending a lot more money on his Subaru to get the specific things that he has to do than I have with my Toyota. I wonder, can you explain why the Subaru has many more

things that you have to do when you send it to the dealer? Yeah, the number one reason on that is, that all Subaru's now are all-wheel drive. So if you've got a car that has just front-wheel drive, then you have a transaxil, which is the transmission and the differential is all in one unit and using one source of fluid for the whole thing.

But when you've got an all-wheel drive, now you have a transfer case as well as a rear differential, two more sources of fluid, and that means two more things that have to be maintained. Yes, Stu. Does that apply to even like we have in the Toyota line up some all the wheel drive vehicles? Is that considered? Is there extra maintenance?

I know it's not that common. For the differentials, yes. If they're, say a truck that has four-wheel drive, you have the front differential and the transfer case along with the transmission and the rear differential. So it just basically means more moving parts means a little more maintenance. However, the Camry or Prius that have come out. Well, now those are hybrid, and because they're hybrid, they use electric motors to turn the wheels. Okay. So it doesn't use, right, you don't have the additional parts.

But it comes down to the additional moving parts. But like I say, one advantage to Subaru is the all-wheel drive systems that they have are a lot safer to drive, actually. And even, like I say, as prejudiced as I am towards Toyota, hats off to Subaru, they are probably a much safer car drive on the road, especially when you get conditions like we do with all the rain we get, sand on the road, up north with the snow and ice. Subaru's got the edge on us on that. Yeah, my friend bought the Subaru because of the up north,

because of the snow and ice. That's why I bought the Subaru. right thank you for information and I won't hold you up you're very busy today thank you thanks Howard appreciate our number 877 960 9960 and you can also text us at 772 4976530 now back well I'm going to do a commercial for Toyota I'm going to do a commercial for Toyota here's a picture of my Toyota truck and the ice and snow and it did great and it was like my first real experience doing that can you see that where did you go upstate New York with a dog he went to Woodstock

I'm gonna hold this up so if Jonathan if you can run to our camera each maybe they'll be able to see that one that was just the dusting of snow but I drove through one of those winter storms and that was something else and having four-wheel drive made me feel a lot more comfortable How bad was the winter store? It was pretty bad. I mean, we were getting ice and then rain and then snow and then ice rain and snow all together. And there was a lot of cars that were off on the side of the road.

You know, a lot more than we see here when it's raining. And a lot of big semi-tractor trailers, jackknifed off the road. It's amazing how you can get used to driving in, you know, in clement conditions. and it was just SOP. Yeah, normal for you guys, yeah. Yeah, get on the road. Nobody looked out the window and said, oh, God, it rained. Oh, no, it's ice.

My tip is to look for the local license plates and drive their speed. Absolutely, whatever they're doing, maintain. That's where you should be. Okay. We are going to give that, I'm going to give that number out again, 877-960, 9960, or you can text us at 772-49-76-5-3-0. We're going to stay with the phones. And if you didn't hear, we are back.

We are live, and we are enjoying your company. We're going to go to Ellen, and she's calling us from Pompano Beach. Welcome. Hi. Anyway, glad to hear you back. I received a message on Facebook that you were coming back today. Oh, thank you. Yes.

I'm the lady that had a rest on the underbody of my brand new car, my 2025 hybrid Camry that I've gotten from Al Hendrickson. Well, they told me that these are the things that they told me. They weren't going to help me that I should drive at least 10 miles every day, wash the underbody on bad every day, stay away from salt air, and don't park near salt air. Now, why don't they put this in the manual? Are you moving? Are you going to leave this? Actually, I'm considering moving because my life is revolving around the car. Exactly.

I mean, I'm not laughing. No, that's probably one of the most, you're absolutely right. Living in South Florida is a unique experience. I mean, I don't care whether you've got a lawnmower, a car, a golf cart, anything with metal on it, if you live in South Florida near the ocean. You don't have to be on the ocean, but the salt particles are in the air.

And we see cars because our dealership is, you can see the ocean from our dealership if you go up to the roof and the salt permeates anything within a few miles of the coastline and why they don't put it in the owner's many?

You know, probably because they probably should, but they don't. Yeah, or at least put a, like, a little inset for a certain region. You know, like maybe the southeast region. Well, they should exceed the warranty, you know, for people that live in. Yeah, just stick it on the, you know, put it on the sticker on the car. Watch out. Yeah. I mean, they know to put it in the warranty that they won't anything but salt and not, you know, responsible for.

Anyway, well, corporate Toyota came down to Al Hendrickson to inspect my car. and they surprisingly told me that some brands and models are more susceptible, susceptible to rest. So it made me think if I got a different model or brands, I might not be having this issue. Oh, goodness. Well, you have to compliment the guy on his candid because, I'm surprised he said brand. I know. Yeah, I could understand model. Like he'd say, yeah, maybe with a truck that's, you know, you know, does.

designed to experience that kind of those conditions. If word gets back to headquarters, he suggests you maybe buy a Subaru. I was about to just yuck it up with Rick and say, what's his name now? But we'll just keep that quiet. Alan, I'd like to see some proof.

I'd like to see that statement validated. Yeah, I was surprised. But anyway, so they said that I should try to appeal it to the NCGS, the National Center for Dispute Settlement and CGSP, the California dispute settlement program. Now, I mean, I figure I have nothing to lose, but I don't know, is it a waste of time?

I mean, I think you should run it up, run up the ladder. And then sometimes, and I don't know what the disposition of the service manager that you've worked with, Al Hendrickson, if you get the feeling that he's on your side and he's trying to advocate for you to Toyota, to the Toyota people, you know, at least trying to negotiate something for you. Do you get the feeling that's happening? No. Okay.

Can you, can you, can you, there's a problem, though, see when things are turned down at other dealerships, it's getting it overturned is almost, it started there. and they don't really do that. Ellen, did you buy your last car from Al Hendrickson? How many have you bought? Two. Well, you come under a good customer. That's a loyal customer. It was a word goodwill used in any conversations with Toyota

or with the service department managers at Al Hendonkson. That's a separate category that a lot of people don't know about. Okay. Well, the thing is, the first one was a brand new car, and the same thing happened, and they replaced it with me adding some money,

of course, to the second car. Yeah. So the second car, I guess they figured they're not going to... I mean, I'm in touch with the, you know, the Larry, the owner of all the franchises or whatever, you know, dealerships.

So I may write... Larry. Mary Morgan? Larry Morgan, yes. Oh, that's good. Thanks to you, you gave me the number and everything. You made progress, Ellen, for sure. Definitely. You're a fider.

Well, I also figured, you know, let me at least, since some of those things aren't in the manual, at least your listeners can, you know, let them know. Exactly. You'd be surprised how many people are listening right now. Oh, I'm sure. That information, you know, is really well-deserved for our audience. You know, instead of having this problem like you, have that you've had for a while.

Alan, it was great talking to you. I'm so glad you're back again. Do you have anything else? I'm glad you are back. Thank you. Do you have anything else to ask before we go? No, I guess it's just basically, you know, well, you gave me, you said that you might be a waste that basically maybe nothing's going to happen, but I'll try, you know, to appeal.

Yeah, definitely. I would give it the old college try. Ellen, it was a pleasure. Have a great weekend. and good luck, and please give us a call. Let us know what the progress is like with Larry Morgan. Okay, thank you. That number again is 877-960-99-60.

You can text us at 772-497-6-530. And if you're wondering about the mystery shopping report, yes, we are going to have a mystery shopping report. We're going to kind of go back in time and refresh your memory about Treasure Coast. Toyota. I believe the last mystery shop that we did was with Amazon Auto. So that was quite some time ago, it seems, so you

can stay tuned for that too. Let's go to Barry. He's holding. He's calling from Tampa. Good morning. Good morning, Barry. Good morning, and welcome back, everybody. Thank you. My three-part question is about the allocation system that Toyota and maybe other brands use to supply their dealers with vehicles.

So suppose I build my perfect car on Toyota's website, and then I discover that no dealer within 500 miles has it in their inventory. What are the chances that a dealer can obtain such a car in their upcoming factory allocations, and does the dealership have a say or does it have to take what it gets from the factory? That's part one, and maybe I'll pause. Okay. I can answer that. Um, if you find something that you, I mean, if you can see, you've built a vehicle online that

does not appear in any, any, any inventory, um, the first thing I do, if you, I don't know if you can expand beyond 500 miles. Um, where does that take you? Five, if you get 500 miles, is that, are you out of southeast? Barely out of Florida. Barely out of Florida. I'm saying you could, those vehicles that you will see on any dealership down here, um, it's part of the southeast Toyota distributor ship. So you can look, there's five southeast states. that you could expand the range to if you're willing to do that. But if you don't see it anywhere within 500 miles, the probability is that it's not a commonly built vehicle

with the packages that you selected. Okay, and you've probably already figured that part out. So, but I'm saying there is a chance if you expanded the search area. But if you go to a dealership with the built vehicle and you say this is what I want to get, the first thing I think that would happen is there could be comparable packages I'm saying with the same equipment

that they could help you reconfigure to make it more accessible. They'll find out why. Like what is the reason? What's stopping this from being possible for you here in the normal distribution system? If it just turns out that the region doesn't get these, there is a system called the dealer pipeline management system

and there's another system called a preferencing system. Okay, the preferencing system allows you to put your priority on the vehicles that you want to get for stock and for customers, but it only draws from the existing, the available pool of vehicles. So that doesn't help you. So a dealer would have to do something called a DPMS, and that's the dealer pipeline management system. And it's really a request, and it goes up to TMNA, which is the Toyota National, company and it is a crapshoot and there's no guarantee

there isn't a way to have them individually build a vehicle because it's just a big system of cars and if that's the case you could wait and you might wait a very long time and you might not ever get it. We're talking up to a year or beyond that I know there people yeah they're because it's the vehicle's not going to get

it's not going to get built and no one in the system is ever looking at your request as an order. It just can't happen like that. So the best bet is to either look at alternatives, get it as close to the build that you can, or look at another manufacturer that has a vehicle that has a package that you want. And I ran into the same thing. That truck that we just showed the picture of, I wanted to tow a traffic. trailer, a camping trailer, and I got it built as close as I can, but I can't get it with the towing mirrors, which was really frustrating to get the towing mirrors.

I would have to sacrifice something else. So I experienced firsthand the frustration that everybody does. You can't get what you want. Exactly, right. So I gave up the towing mirrors, and fortunately, the technology within the vehicle with cameras and the towing assist stuff, I found out I didn't need it. and so it turned out to be okay, but in some cases, some people will just leave Toyota. I hope that answers your question.

Yeah, we've got five callers backed up. Yeah, I'm just saying, I know you had a second part. I'm going to finish that. Boy, that was great information, Stu. Yeah, thanks a lot. I just, one other quick thing. Suppose, okay, then you get to the Toyota part and then Southeast Toyota gets involved, and they want to add their stuff on there.

Can you short circuit that before they do that? Yes, you can, but you have to speak to whoever you're talking to, with the dealership because you're talking about a car that's not it's never going to hit a lot well the day it hits a lot is the day that you're going to take it so um say insist on it because you can know all the port accessories are optional and i and they'll tell you that it comes in automatically but the reason it comes in automatically is because they've checked a box on their computer that says i want this if they uncheck the box they unchecked the toy guard box please and uncheck the whatever accessory is on their box before it gets to the port before it gets

work ordered. And that's the work, that's how you get around that. You say, before this thing's work ordered, I don't want anything on it except for the Toyota factory stuff. You got that? Yeah, Barrow, we got a run now. We got stacked up on the line. Thank you. You got it. Thanks for the call. Give us a call again. Our number here is 877-9-60. You can also text us at 772-497-6530. And I forgot to mention this earlier. Your anonymous feedback. You're anonymousfeedback.com. We got a couple. Take advantage of it, and Stu will entertain you with what he's received, and also Rick's

going to be up, and he'll give some attention to YouTube. So we'll go back to the phones quickly, and everyone that's holding, please be patient. We're going to go to our old favorite here, and he's a regular, and he calls us from Jupiter Farms. That's Frank. Good morning, Frank. Well, good morning to you all. Hey, Frank.

Hey, Frank. Hey, welcome back, Stu. I know no one's going to say that to you this morning, but I will. Thank you. Thank you. Anyway, real quick, as you know, the wife had had Alexis RX350. She bought at Palm Beach back in 2007. She would take her to your dealership, see Randy.

She's real happy. Unfortunately, I traded in for an Audi, SQ5 three years ago. which is a nice car. She likes it. She is missing her Lexus. And so we actually went by up in a, I'm trying to think of where it is now, Fort Pierce, just stopped in there. And it was interesting. Into the door, we're under my Mercedes.

I had a lunar blue E350 at the time. And this gentleman opened the door for us, a black gentleman, and he's very polite, who you're here to see. And I told him the salesman we were looking for. And I said, I needed a restaurant. and so he took me back, showed me where the restroom was. He made a cup of coffee for my wife. And, I mean, I go, wow, what a greeter.

I said, you don't find anyone like this at Walmart. Anyway, they had a beautiful 500 on the showroom floor. And then they told me about an ES 350, they had certified use with only 600 miles. I said, oh, I got my intention. Anyway, it was a radium, and it had a very nice Alamino interior. But anyway, as it turns out, the gentleman knows your Earl. I guess he owns that Lexus dealership. And as everyone up there, they have just high regard for you and your family.

Sandy? Yeah, Mr. Woods. There you go, Mr. Woods. So anyway, we were really tempted. I was really tempted. I put the ES 350 Lexus next to my E350 Mercedes. They almost look identical. They were, you know, shape and size.

And anyway, but I decided to think about it. So then I start making some calls, down to J.M., up in Orlando, Winter Park, and eventually we went to Palm Beach, Lexus, on a Sunday afternoon, Super Bowl Sunday it was. And they had a, what I really liked in there, they had the Mika, or Midnight Mika, blue with the Palomino interior with a brown walnut trim. Pretty. It was unbelievable. It was just like my Mercedes. Unfortunately, a couple weeks ago, I had gotten new tires.

the Mercedes. So here I got, you know, $1,500 of cars on the Mercedes with 200 miles. And the trade in there were giving me on my, my Mercedes was like $3,000. I go, that's crazy. Anyway, so we start to leave. And a gentleman by name of Derek. I don't know if you know, Derek. He's been there 20 years. He's like the sales manager. And he says, what can we do to, you know, have you buy that car today? I said, well, I need more from my trade and I don't want to pay a sticker. Because most every place is sticker. I feel like your mystery. shopper people going out there and all the different things. So anyway,

what if he takes $5,000 off the sticker? I go, really? I say, you got my attention. Which sticker? No, the real one on the window. I go, yeah, because I've seen all this toys and different things.

And then you'll give me another thousand more for a trade. And I said, well, you got my attention. But I got to think about it. You go home and sleep on it. So we went back there on Monday, late evening. and the car was all ready, and we went ahead. I tell people I now have a new Toyota, the high end Toyota. You came back under the hood.

But, yeah, like I said, it's really good, but it made me think because we just took the Audi up to back to Stewart where you mystery shop three or a couple years ago. And I had the oil change done. And I noticed that you're right. I like that large dollar. The oil is not up to the floor. mark. One, there's no dipstick in that car.

You've got to look through the computer, but it's in the middle, in the middle. And so, Hamry, because we were up there at the air show last year, and the light comes on low oil, low oil, and I go, oh, you've got to be kidding me. Is this on the 500? No, on the, excuse me, on the Audi of SQ5. Okay. So on, anyway,

we, um, Frank, we got five callers waiting, so. Okay, okay. We'll let you go, yeah. Let me see, there's, real quick, you've got the law on cars yeah is there anything you know about boats my son and all bought a brand new Boston oil for about 150,000 it's just piece of junk let me uh I'll look that up and then I'll keep listening I'm going to give you the answer break out another

thousand great hearing from you I'm really glad that you tuned in and I'd like for you to spread the word that we are live and we are oh yeah I've been telling the dealerships I said, you listen to Earl Stewart. I said, you guys are unbelievable. And even all your competition, thanks for a world of you, but they try and cut you down somehow. They have you high dealer food. They're very smart, very political of them.

Have a great weekend, Frank. I'm going to get to the next six callers. Have a great weekend. Thanks for calling. We're going to go to Laurel. She is calling us from Stewart, and she's a first-time caller. Good morning, Laurel. Good morning.

Welcome. Hi. You're a first-time caller, and I want to let you know that for first-time female callers, we offer $50. If you stay on the line out and give Jeremy in the control room your information. That's your contact information. He'll pass it to me, and I'll send you out that check. What can we do for you this morning? You're welcome. Hi. My husband, this is to your show regularly, and he suggested that I call. I have a 2020 Jeep Grand Chair. Cherokee, six-cylinder, and I'm having a problem with the starter, and it hasn't been accurately diagnosed, and I don't really know what to do or where to turn. So what happens is when I go to start the car, it makes the noise like, ah, like it's trying to turn over, but I have to take my finger off of the button and my foot off the brake, and when I do that, it stops, and then it'll start. Many times it starts rate up, but like every maybe six, eighth time, it will do that

where it just doesn't turn over, and I have to try to restart it again, and it starts right up next time. So I had taken it into Jeep to be diagnosed, and my dog had put his pawl repetitively on the door and broke the lock, so the door on the passenger side wasn't working. So when they diagnosed it, they said it wasn't starting because there was a problem with a switch in the door, and they fixed that door lock. And, of course, I took the car, and, you know, the next day it was doing the same thing. So anyways, I took it in one more time, and now they're telling me that they think it's the fuel pump, but I'm paranoid that that may not be the issue, and I just don't know what, you know, you would suggest or advice. Did you say that it was a Cherokee you were driving? Yes, it's a 2020.

A 2020 Jeep Cherokee. What do you think? Your first mistake right there. Yeah. The door lock switch, they were kind of grasping at straws, I think, there. Now, granted, the electrical systems on cars, if one system gets a weird short, it can cause other systems to act funny. That I have seen. But a broken door lock switch.

which generally would not be able to affect the actual engine starting. Now, from what you're describing, I think I'm hearing that the engine is spinning, so it's cranking over, but the engine is not actually starting, which means that it's either missing the fuel or the spark, and that's generally computer-controlled. So it's possible the fuel pump has,

what's happened is the fuel pump is leaking the pressure back to the tank on a, occasion so that when you try to crank it, it has to pump that fuel and recharge the system, get that pressure back up before it has enough fuel pressure that the injectors will spray properly and the engine will start. My advice really on this one, because it's obviously out of warranty, I would wait a little while and kind of keep track in your mind or a notebook or something, how often it's occurring. And if it begins to occur more often, especially if it occurs immediately after the car

has been sitting for like six or seven hours, and that's the only time that it occurs is that first time after it's been sitting a while, then, yeah, the fuel pump would be much more of a suspect to me. Otherwise, I'd be concerned that it's possible that the engine immobilizer, the computer, is not detecting the right signals to tell the engine, okay, I know you're cranking over. I know you're spinning, but I'm not going to give you fuel or spark

until I have authorization that this is the right key starting the car. That would be my second choice. But like I say, my first one, I would be looking at the actual, at the fuel pump. But like I say, keep a little notebook and keep track of that. And if it does start to get worse,

or if you verify that it's only after the car has been sitting for a while, take that in and tell them, look, it occurred this date and time, this date and time, this date and time, and it had been sitting for several hours each time, and that will give the mechanic. Basically, it gives him a background, an idea of, yes, let the car sit for a while with a fuel pump pressure tester on it and see if it's dropping that pressure back again. Great. Okay? And Laurel, some of my sources tell me that did you say that when you turned over, when you started the Cherokee, that it just made a clicking sound or a grinding sound?

No. No, it's almost like the sound that it makes when it's out of gas, like it goes, oh, and it just never actually start. So it's not a clicking noise. And I was reading, you know, about a faulty starter and the signs. And Rick, one of the signs would be a fuse, isn't it? Yeah, but if the fuse is blown, then nothing's going to happen. And if the starter itself were bad, then the car wouldn't, the engine wouldn't spin. See, the starter motor, all it really does is make the engine spin over. And once it's spinning at a certain speed, then the computer will activate the fuel and spark going into the cylinders to actually create that combustion.

And George on YouTube here says he wondered if they had checked for codes in the engine computer, the power control module. I'm sure they checked that first because Chrysler's are actually pretty easy to test, but hopefully they did look for that. But unfortunately, a fuel starvation like that generally does not set codes. I've learned that just about every manufacturer for some reason they don't have a code that can trigger if you're not getting that fuel spray into the cylinder.

But, yeah, again, my first thought here for what I'm hearing described is I'd be looking at that fuel pump. Fuel pump. Laura, do you have any other questions? No, thank you so much. You've been a big help, and my husband really enjoys your show, so thank you so much. Well, you know, I'm very, we're very thankful that your husband listens to the show,

but we're even more thankful now that he, you know, shared with you that, you know, oh, maybe you should call the show because we want to hear from the ladies. And this platform that we continue to build here, pretty important for the ladies. And I ask you to just spread the word and let everyone know that they, too, can give a call. And it's a win-win situation. $50, you know, everyone today can use an extra $50. For sure. Okay.

Well, it's great to be able to get an objective opinion when you're a woman. So thank you so much. Isn't that the truth? That's what's really important. And that's where we are here as far as supporting the female audience. Give us a call again, Laura. Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome. I'm going to give that number out again if you didn't jot it down. 877-960-99-60 or you can text us at 772-4976530 Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And don't forget that's real important too. We're going to go to our favorite, John, from Palm City, that stayed in touch with us. You know, the letters, the cards, the thank yous, John and his family. They're phenomenal, and they have been with us for a long, long time. Good morning, John.

We're so glad to be here live. Welcome back. Welcome back to everybody. I just want to be fast on a lot of calls. Within the next two months, snowbirds are preparing to leave, and ones that leave their cars here. And I just want to ask an important question to Rick. There's an additive that you can put in a tank,

and the gasoline doesn't go bad. is called stable. Does Rick recommend that? I know he doesn't care for additives to the automobile. What does he know about that? No, I do not. Simply for the reason that if you're going to leave the car sit for more than a month, you should have a person available that can run this car and use up a little bit of that gasoline. So do you trust. Yes, stable is good if you're storing an engine with gasoline for six or eight months but for a car to sit for that long, it's more

than just the gas in the tank and the engine itself. You need to get that car out and have a little exercise. What if you have new friends? Well, you don't have much of a life. I'm sorry, Stu, I know with you. I'm thinking about what's going to happen to me when I become a snowbird.

Yeah, well, oh boy. So you're going to go north in the winter, yeah. That's pretty cool. No, no, no. It's too hot down here. Continue. No, it's really, it's up to the idea that keeping the battery charged and keeping the fuel good is good, but you've also got all the seals on the engine, those dry out from sitting, your brakes will start to rust and they will season in place, and that creates hassles

when you're coming back and first start to drive the car again. Your tires get flat spots. Cars need exercise, and you really need at least once a month, get the car. out for 15, 20, 30 minutes driving time just to keep things exercise. You know, pretty soon with all cars become autonomous, you won't even have to worry about

that. You just leave in the garage and program it so that every week the car goes out by itself. Takes a drive. It goes down the B-line comes back. Sure. Well, for those that don't have anybody to start it up for them and they leave it like six months or more,

it's an important point to tell you that The flat spot on tires, it's a recommendation to put old rugs underneath the four tires or old car mats, and it helps on the flat spots when you start the car up again after six months. And also the battery tender, that people mix that up, that's not a triple charger. Battery tender stays on 24 hours a day. It doesn't hurt anything, and it gives the battery a shot. When it needs it, it has a red and a green light on it, so don't mix the two up.

Another thing is, it's not a bad idea to have glue traps around the car. You buy it at Home Depot or Lowe's. And just in case, especially on the old car, that if any rodents get caught in there, they will not eat the wires on the car. Surround it with rat traps and ant traps and road trap. Just make a circle around that car. Right. And would it be a good idea, the last tank of gas that you put in it to get a non-ethanol gas? What does Rick think about that?

It certainly can't hurt. It is what they call the rec 90 or the non-ethanol gas is a bit more expensive. However, I would also make sure if you're going to store the car, store it with a full tank of fuel. Because that way you have less airspace, less chance for corrosion, and less fuel evaporation. Okay. One of the fast thing, too, nobody realizes it. If there's a refrigerator in that garage or a freezer, disconnected, do not have it running. Why, the ozone in the room has a tendency to dry all rubber parts on the automobile. I guess a lot of people don't know that. But that's a fact, including the tires and rubber hoses. So make sure the refrigerator is not running in that garage where the car is kept like for six months. Wow. That's a unique information. Thank you. That is great information. We didn't know it. But, John, that's solving the problem by disconnecting the refrigerator. Now, keep in mind, there's a refrigerator in the garage for a reason.

It's at any time. It's not a good idea. And it's filled with food. Because the car that sits and not get used, the ozone from the refrigerator has a tendency to dry rubber. Take everything out of the fridge before you. How I'll, that's silly. Hey, John, let me ask you this over a period of what time will I find the deterioration that has taken place? It doesn't take very long, especially if a car sits five or six months. Uh-huh, interesting.

Well, John is usually. Yes, and any collector garages, that's a number one thing people know, and they avoid leaving out refrigerator in that room. One more thing to think about. Okay, John. Welcome back, everybody. Thank you. Thanks, John. It was great talking to you.

Have a great weekend. 877-960. And you can text us at 772-497-2-497-6-5-3-0. And we're going to stay with the phones because, boy, I'll tell you what, we sure are popular today. So we are going to go. Let's go to Ken. I think Ken is calling us from Michigan. I'm not sure I can't read this right.

Hey, Ken, good morning. Hello, yes, I'm calling from Ann Arbor, Michigan. Oh, you are from Michigan. Oh, boy. Yes, I'm the person that bought the 2016 Prius that Toyota said you can't convert it to kilometers. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes, yes. Earl went to executive management, and they said, buy a new Prius.

to replace your new Prius. But I thank you for trying. Cold-hearted people, aren't they? They are. You have to deal with them. I don't. But since I'm a firefighter and paramedic and on the hazmat team,

we just had a seminar about electric vehicle fires that decide to self-immolate while they're sitting in a garage. And so they were going through suppression techniques such as buying a fire blanket to cover the whole vehicle. So one question that I had was for Stu, have you had an electric vehicle fire that you had to move? Me personally?

In the dealership? In the dealership? We've had fires. I don't think we've had a EV battery combust ever. No, we recently had a fire, but it was on a regular, ICE convention engine car. It wasn't that recent. It wasn't that recent.

Okay. It wasn't the popcorn machine. It was actually on a Prius, but it was the battery wasn't. The gasoline portion. Right, right, yeah. So, no, we haven't, no. But I've seen, just the only thing I've ever seen that was just in the media, you know, just, you know, it's pretty sensational when it happens.

Well, there's a lot of information that your listenership can now get to, such as Fire Safety Research Institute, part of UL, and they inform how to put out these type of fires. Because if it's inside of building, you want to get it out of the building because you can't just put them out and you'll have a carburequeue. So that requires different techniques. But the fire blanket seem to be effective, and unfortunately they're about $3,000. Well, at a dealership, I think that's something, you know,

dealerships that have you know EV batteries there should definitely have that on hand and that's something a dealership can afford generally individual for a homeowner's that's yeah it's kind of pricey yeah well it is I agree there there is a company in California that does specialized training mainly for first responders on how to handle hybrid and especially the new electric cars with the much larger lithium batteries because remember for a full electric car like a Tesla, the Toyota BZ, the Rivians, and that, those lithium batteries are five times the size of the battery used in a hybrid.

So they're much, much larger. And one of the biggest issues they have with them is that once the fire starts, it's almost impossible to get any sort of suppression, fluid, or foam into where the fire is. So the recommended and accepted method now for handling that is simply to flood. the thing with water and constantly try to cool it to remove the heat that then will obviously extinguish the fire. I just found a fire blanket on Amazon for $16.99. Yeah, we have those.

That won't work. That won't work on a hybrid bed. It won't work on a? No, it's for a home. We have them in our house. Oh. And my kids have them in their apartment in New York. But, yeah, it's for a stove.

When electric cars are actually towed to a storage yard after. an accident, they are, the tow truck drivers are even told, do not put this near any other vehicles, you must have a safety gap around it because a fire and electric car can actually reignite up to three days later. And it can ignite up to two weeks later. Yeah, in a lot of cases, yeah. It's like white phosphorus. Yep.

They're very dangerous for that. So it is something for the first responders certainly have to be aware of. Well, I don't want to, we don't want to debate this live on radio, but I pulled up again a fire blanket for electrical fire, and the highest price one I could find is $39.99.98. So. There's a difference when an electrical fire and the battery fire, that lithium ion battery fire. Yeah, that's, that would work for, you know, like if your toaster, you know, start spark and then caught on fire. Yeah, just look up fire safety for batteries and electric vehicles, and you'll find all the. information you should need but just wondering about what happened there so yeah avoid those carbicues oh my god yeah they're going to become more common as the uh very yeah and if you're in an electric vehicle or or in a collision with an electric vehicle and it you know you do have an accident

get out of the vehicle and move away to it from it to a safe distance yep and if those little cells are all over the road which they typically are after an accident you don't want to pick those up with your hands because it's like a firecracker. I did find some that are way cheap than the $3,000, though. $1,400. These are EV-carve fire blankets. I don't know if they're certified or, you know, I can't endorse them. But, yeah, the ones, yeah, so there's some, but they're over $1,000, easy, yeah.

Correct. Well, I got one right here for $500. Anyway, I price about. Prices are coming down. Yeah, definitely. That's interesting. Well, thank you. Thanks for the call.

Yeah. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we have a whole lot of callers that we're going to get to. Let's see, we just talked to Ken. We're going to talk to, we're going to talk to Roadrunner, Steve, then we're going to get to Kenny, and we're going to get to Jake and all the other callers. So, guys, I'll just be patient. Hey, 77-960, or you can text us at 772-497-60, and take advantage of a... Your Anonymous Feedback.com.

Good morning, Roadrunner, Steve. Meet, meet. Oh, thank goodness. You're back. I got a life again. You mean you did? I was getting ready for Sean and Mooparton or Silver Alert on the phone with that. Okay, you brought up that lady's fuel pump.

Well, I had mine changed on the roadrun. It was a crappy one from China, so I went out and bought a carter fuel punt made in America. One's a lot better with that. And we had, in my community, we had Cobrook come in and talk about electric vehicles. And they said the main thing is, the number one thing is do not charge your electrical vehicle at night. So everybody's looking at them, like, why is that? because if it goes on fire, you're sleeping. That's the best time to charge your EV.

Yeah, this is, you know, we charge our electric vehicles, you know, because the rates are less expensive at night. I think, Earl, is that after midnight? At midnight, you know, that's what it goes on. And so we get all these updates and everything's a little less expensive. But you're going to be ordering some fire blankets. Well, you need to. It's funny you mention that because on occasion there's been a few people who have taken a look at two electric vehicles in the garage and they have said, wow, aren't you afraid?

The house is going to burn down? And I've heard it like three times recently. And I think that's kind of a stretch. I think it is. It's not the right condition. without me going a long time i go yes they can um i suspect um in a lot of cases that there's a reason for it and it's not that they just i know it's possible they don't just spontaneously like in on scale do that if you hadn't if you didn't have a professional install this charger or if there's

something else going on but you guys have a professional installed superchargers and uh yeah and now we have two of them yeah you're good it's just something to think about it is most of the He's in the garage, at least. Yeah, they have, yeah, they're wired up with the proper protection. Yeah, everything was put in professionally, and the electric vehicles don't stay on the supercharger all the time. But I get your, you know, point about evening, Rick. Well, from Donovan, he says, look up the stats. Your gasoline car is more likely to catch on fire while you're sleeping than your EV.

A V, an EV is 66 times less likely to catch fire spontaneously than an internal combustion vehicle. And there have been multiple studies done by the insurance industry showing this is not as big an issue as people think. It's sensational. It's just that when it happens in the very rare case, it makes all the headlines. And when an internal combustion engine catches fire, everybody's like, I've seen that my whole idea. That happened when? Where?

Yeah. The sparks are flying when an EV goes up. That's like fireworks. Yeah. Touch fire with gas. There's more gas vehicles than electric vehicles. But rates. But rates are the same.

When you're looking at a percentage. Right. Yeah. So there's more gas than electric. So the percentage is always going to be hot. Nope, that's not how it works. Mathetic. With the refrigerator in his garage there, if you want to unplug it, make sure you leave the door on the freezer and the refrigerator open.

Oh, geez. Yeah, I'm sorry to tell John, we looked that up to, there's, your refrigerators do not produce enough ozone to damage components. Command for sure, complicated that. Yeah, don't think about so much stuff. All right, I'm glad everybody's back. Everybody can have a good time now. We're having a great time. Thanks, Steve.

Bye-bye. Thank you so much, Robrunner, Steve. Let's go to Kenny. Kenny has been holding patiently, and he's calling from Boynton Beach. Good morning, Kenny. Hey, good morning. It's Kenny Z. Hey, Kenney Z.

Hey, welcome back. Thank you. I've got a couple of quick questions about I'm looking to buy a new Volvo X-C-40, the SUV, and it's called a mild hybrid. It's got a small battery. for something. I have no idea. And my question is, is it better to lease it or buy it? Now, let me mention I have two cars, a 2019 Volkswagen Jetta and a 2013-44. I'm going to get the money from those. Should I trade them in at the dealer or should I go to CarMax or I don't want to

sell them by myself? So what are your suggestions as far as? I think you're better off to lease it the leasing program at least it as things to stand now there's a lot of talk with our new president about changing some of the rules but currently if you're going to buy an electric vehicle you're better off to lease it than to buy it or hard you're only a mild hybrid I prefer them a little spicier but I'm not even sure what a mild hybrid is I don't know either or maybe go ahead it's got a battery small battery not like you don't have to plug it in or anything okay i got you it's a it's a hybrid so it's kind of like i get it's just a hybrid um it's yeah a leasing is a good way to go just there just don't um well i'm going to address your trades in a second

but um you know i let me jump in there i think i misspoke i i was thinking electric vehicle not hybrid so if you're going to if you're going to if you're going to you're going to you You want to drive an electric vehicle, you'll want to lease it, not buy it, but that doesn't apply to the hybrid. Yeah. And so it really just depends on if they have a good lease program and you're comfortable with the payment. Just be aware of the pitfalls. You know, if they are telling you a payment but requires a large down payment to get there, that doesn't make any sense. You don't get that money back.

You don't build equity in a lease. It's easy to trick a buyer. Car dealers make more money on the average when they lease a vehicle than when they lease a vehicle. than when they sell it. And if you're an educated consumer and you sound like you are, as long as you look at it in detail and are sure they're not slipping, it's easy to high junk fees in a lease. It's easier than it is to hide them in the purchase car.

The best way to do is that Earl has preached all along is like get a out-the-door price as if you were purchasing it first and use that when they calculate the lease. And then onto your trades, treat that as a separate matter altogether. Don't even mention it at first. Just get a price, their best possible out-the-door price, sale price on the Volvo, and then say, I want to lease that, use this as our starting point. And then after the fact, I have two cars I'd like your use car manager to take a look at.

And you don't have the salesman driving off with. It asks to speak to the used car manager. You know, you'll come across as, you know, kind of know what you're doing, and just get a buy figure from these guys. What would you write a check for for it right now? And then you get that information and say, all right, now apply this to the lease. You know, that's, but, but, but, hold on a second.

Let me just, I'm sorry, let me, let me back up a little bit. Do not trade those in and give them, if you have equity, do not put that on the lease, I'm saying. You can sell it to them and you can, you choose to use some of those proceeds to maybe pay your first payment and tag or a small down payment. But, but just you're in control. If you get a sale price that's independent of any lease calculation and then purchase figures for your vehicles separate. And then you build the lease from there.

I got you. Okay, because I don't want to use that money for my trade in. No, if you just traded it in, and I don't know your situation if you're, but if you have equity in those trades, and you put all that, say you had, I'm just making this up, say you had $10,000 over the equity between the two trades, and they put that in the lease, you just put a $10,000 down payment on the lease, and you're not, you don't keep that, doesn't become part of your equity. That is now gone. They've used that to get you a nice low payment, but they're keeping that money. They're making a ton of money if you do that. apply the trade into cash on a buy on a buy that's different tax on the big number yes they only pay the tax on this smaller amount correct that is correct and and in addition to that you know that's you've just you're only you're getting a loan on a smaller amount so you're you're starting off with equity if you if you put the cash on a purchase on a lease it's us I don't know if you could see that but it's I wouldn't do it on the other one gone gone yeah

Thank you very much, guys. Appreciate your stuff. Oh, you're so welcome, Kenny. You're welcome. Let us know what you decided on, and give us a call back. Here, our number. We are live, just in case you tuned in. We're back.

We're all here, the whole staff, everybody. Shall I name everyone? Must leave it. Thank you so much for tuning and Earl Stewart on Cars, and again, we want to thank you. Our number here is 877-960, 99-60, and, you. And you can also text us at 772-4976530. We're going to go to Jake, who is calling us from Aboka. Good morning, Jake.

Morning, guys. I too am so happy you guys are back. Thanks. Really, we miss you. I'm so happy. So the hybrid plug-in, they have it in different styles. I like the premium one, the higher end, and it only comes front wheel drive. I went on their website.

Isn't that weird that it's only front wheel drive? Which plug-in hybrid? You cut out right when you were saying the brand. Oh, it was the Prius XSE Premium model. And it looks like all of them are only front-wheel drive. Is that correct? I don't know. It's really kind of off our radar because,

in our region we get so few of them so we just they're we get one zies or twosies most of the production is allocated to the states California that have the stricter admission standards and maybe it has to do just with the you know

an all-wheel drive maybe up in the northeast or you know somewhere a little bit San Francisco and LA maybe you don't need it but there's lots of yeah no there's I'm kidding no I don't think that's accurate because You know, California is a very diverse state geographically. It's not all city and all sorts of weather.

And there's mountain driving. And so I don't think. Yeah. I was just joking around. I would think so, too. It's an interesting question. Yeah, it's a really interesting question. You know, it also doesn't have hill hold.

Doesn't have what? Oh, the hill hold on the hill. They'll start a cyst. I thought that was weird too. That would be weird in San Francisco. You would need that. And you know what really bothers me about the car's rating with the safety? the driver's side only got four stars, but the passenger got five stars.

Why is that because there's a steering wheel there? I don't know. I don't think you typically see that among vehicles and all vehicles have steering wheels. You know, it's amazing how things change from state to state, Jake, and your mention about the front wheel drive. I see here where Toyota Prius S.E. hybrid is a front-wheel drive, and this is somewhat of a funny story. My grandson at the time was leaving Florida in his forerunner, of course, he doesn't have a front-wheel drive, and he was headed to Colorado, and when he got there, there were, you know, it was a guy saying, I guess, they were all teasing him that he better look into a front-wheel drive, because he's not going to get to. around very well. So to my point about state to state and what Stu said in San Francisco.

Earl had looked it up and it does have to do with a fuel efficiency. Yeah. So a front wheel drive, all the drive is going to kind of, so I guess in those states where, because Toyda, it feels like right now, you know, Toyda is building Prius Primes, the plug-ins for California. It's like its own little country over there. And I imagine it probably has to do those requirements and they have very strict emissions requirements and fuel efficiency standards so by keeping it not going to all-wheel drive you're going to is it all-wheel drive we're talking about the front wheel? Most Priuses are front-wheel drive yeah I'm saying but the all-wheel drive on the plugins it's a fuel efficiency thing because all the manufacturers are trying to reduce their

total gas consumption yeah and their fleets for cafe so if you sell 10,000 thousand cars and you can save a half a mile a gallon that saves the manufacturer a lot of money and potential chargebacks from the government for exceedingly yeah yeah all right do you know if there's any incentives for the for that model the pre-us plug-in yes that's the premium well there's still it's just just federal tax credits um that's oh that's it okay nothing from the all right thank you guys and i'm so glad to hear you all right thanks me made my day thank Thank you. That makes us feel great.

Thank you, Jake. Okay, I think we're going to take a break from the phones, and we are going to go to Stu and Rick, and we're going to get to all the Texas, YouTube, your anonymous feedback. So sit back and take it all in. All right, I got a quick anonymous feedback. All right, we don't know who sent it. EVs may be cheaper to own and operate but the extra 9,000 hours it takes to charge

over the course of five years definitely makes it not worth it unless you just don't value your time. If you broke down your salary into an hourly rate and factored that into your calculation, EVs are much more expensive. Well, you didn't think about the charging that night thing. And I argue the fact that we waste one-third of our lives, asleep all the time anyway.

Well, I'm saying, yeah, most of the charging, if you have an EV, takes place at home. You come home from work and you plug it in and you make dinner and you do your thing, you go to bed and you wake up, and it's charged. And only a few of us get paid for sleeping. Yeah. Yeah, professional sleepers. Exactly, yeah. I haven't been into a gas station in two years.

Yeah. Add that up. And one of the things I hate most in life is, standing in line or trying to understand how to use a new pump. They change the dials around. How about the smell on your hands when you get done pumping after the person ahead of you spill gas all over? How about the credit card skimmers that rip you off when you stick your credit card in the pump? I miss those days.

A frozen hands, frozen tongue. They don't even know what a gas station is like again. But you're missing out on Slim Jims and Sunflower Seats. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There you go. You know, there's so many savings as far as driving electric. And, you know, as recently with us being out of the studio, I've been a designated driver. And I'll tell you, I have really come to admire driving autonomously. And also the fact that I'm not in a gas station, the savings alone per year to take care of a vehicle. There's so many things you can factor in, and when it's all set and done, let me tell you, there's no other answer except, you know, electric vehicle, whether you want to go hybrid electric, but we're moving. We're moving in another direction, and we're moving fast. Let's talk about AI.

I mean, there's so much going on as far as that's concerned. So I could go on and on, but we won't. We're going to go to Stu. We're running out of time. We've got to get to the mystery shopping room. report, and we've got to get to Rick. Stu. Well, I won't get into the, it's a little too long,

but just somebody who really doesn't like Origo Chrysler Jeep Dodge. They said they're the biggest price gougers, yada, yada, yada, yada. They really upset somebody. And, of course, that's not owned by the O'Rego brothers anymore. It's owned by, who's that now? Larry Morgan.

Larry Morgan. He owns everything. And how about all those commercials, too? Oh, I love the old commercials. Are they creative? My gosh. Rick says if you maintain your power train correctly, it will never fail, question mark, question mark, question mark. I've had three transmissions fail, L.O.L. I had the maintenance done, but yeah, those long-term power train warranties for 2K is baloney. I'm sorry that you've had that much trouble with your Chrysler, sir. I'm guessing he didn't say what kind of car it was. I'm just making it up. It does depend on the manufacturer. Not every car is reliable as others. So you should have qualified that on, you know, on well-made. cars yeah well yeah well-made car you got to maintain it and it'll serve a long time it was a

nissan cvt it was i'm just i'm just guessing it just nissan has had a very bad time of it in the last eight or ten years with their trans axles in case we do run out of time you just woke me up with the nissan comment nissan headline on automotive news today is survival on nissan is they aborted their engagement considerations with Honda because Honda wanted to take them on as a subsidiary, but they basically, they're laying off thousands of people, they're cutting expenses, and the CEO of Nissan said,

we're trying to survive. So if you're thinking about buying a Nissan, you might want to think twice. You don't want a collector's item. And that's what's going to happen. Have they decided on the merger, or is it a no-go? It's off. Honda got coal-of-feet.

I was wondering when the first rumor came up about Honda and Nissan, I'm saying to myself, why would one of the best manufacturers in the world want to affiliate themselves with one of the worst, which is Nissan? And sure enough, I think Honda backed out. They basically said, look, we don't want to merge, but we will buy you as a subsidiary. But that was apparently not the financial benefit that Nissan needed.

And when you admit publicly that you're trying to survive, that's a red, you know, it's a red part. There goes your stock. So they're good. They're in the game. And they're surviving without the merger? Well, they're trying to survive. With that screeching sound you hear or there are fingernails on the slippery slope of, I think what's his name Makoto the CEO yeah and see the guy that replaced Goshen or

Goshen yeah I'm not good at Japanese we have a caller oh we have I'm going to go back to that Jonathan is that a have you shut down or a let through we have about six more minutes okay great we're gonna we're gonna go back to the phones I notice here where we have Tricia and Tricia has been a regular caller. She calls us from Boca. Good morning, Tricia. Hey, Tricia, are you there? Are you still there? Yes. Yes, yes. I am here, and I'm so glad you're here. Oh, thank you.

I'm telling you, okay, the first two weeks in January, I thought, okay, they're taking a vacation, you know, a nice two-week vacation. And then when it went to three, four, five, six weeks, I'm going, wow, something's wrong here. No one takes that long vacation. Right. I'm telling you, I was sincerely worried about you guys so much so that I called your dealership to see how everyone was. Oh, no, nice. I was so concerned about your welfare.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Trisha. You're very welcome. That's how concerned I was. I don't have any questions today. I just wanted to tell you how concerned I was and how so glad you're back and healthy and doing your awesome show.

Thank you. I have to say, Nurse Nancy is the one should take all credit because she's the one that better than the doctors has me back in operating condition again. So thanks for your comment. That's a near concern. Yeah, Trisha, it was so telling. It set us back on our heels of the response that, you know, we received, like I said earlier when we started the show.

It was just amazing. The popularity was just, it brought a tear to our eyes, actually, you know. I mean, because we heard from so many of our callers and some people that were just coming into, you know, the dealership. But, you know, we have a way to go. and but we're much better off Earl is much better off today than he was and this last year has been on well I didn't think that we would be in this position and it is a good position and it feels good like I said we have a lot of work to get to to finish out our journey with this illness and we're ready we're strong but we're going to be in the studio from now on and you can expect us to be here just yacking away. Well, I don't know what was going on. I don't know if you want to share if that's too private, but whatever it is,

I'm just glad you're better. Well, take a look at Earl's statement that he made to the audience. You can read that. He went to great lengths to put that piece together, and it was quite touching. Thank you, Tricia. Okay, I will do that. You're very welcome. And give us a call again.

Thank you for listening. Sure, always. Thank you. Okay, let's get back to which one of you want to go first. Rick or Stu, are you finished? Turn over to Rick, yeah. Because he's got the text line over there so he can get on that. Well, I have the very great honor.

Actually, I have reading Anne-Marie's text. Oh, okay. Welcome us back. She says, good morning. Welcome back. I was worried about you. So glad to hear your voice again. again and see you on YouTube.

She says I'll start with an easy question this week. What is the difference between a moon roof and a sunroof? Thanks. Sunroof, you don't see them too often anymore, are opaque. It's just the metal top of the car you can't see through it. And then at some point, I'm going to guess in the 80s, somebody said, hey, let's make these out of glass. And I don't know. So now you can see the moon.

I don't get it. It's nice because you can open it at night. But the difference is a moonroof is glass. A sunroof is solid material, usually steel. And I think that was just somebody's arbitrary decision of how to call it, what to describe the sliding roof and whether it was seethrower or not. Because a sunroof everybody knows what a sunroof was. And then you come around, well, this is a little bit different.

We've got to market this. Let's call it a moon roof. Yeah. There you go. How much maintenance have there been paid to? as far as, you know, leaks with the, you know, it was just unbelievable. I thought it was so important to me when I moved to Florida that I had a sunroof or a moonroof or whatever. All I had was problems.

You know, that's a really good point because we can turn this into an advice thing. I don't think it's that common anymore, but I think they're still out there. Aftermarket companies that will give you a sunroof if you don't have one or a moonroof, don't do it for exactly what Nancy just said, because they're going to leak and you're going to get corrosion, and it's always a problem. The factory, they've kind of dialed those down. You get most cars, or at least the higher trim levels, will have a moonroof, and they're very reliable and they're fine.

Well, here's the fact a lot of folks aren't really aware of. All the, even the factory ones, especially the factory ones, they leak. Water comes in past that seal when it rains, when it's just water sitting there. There's channels, right? But there are drains, rubber hoses, installed on the frame of that. of that sliding roof assembly that direct that water down and let it drip out through the bottom of the car. Right.

Now, the problem is, if you park your car underneath trees or an area where leaves or stuff can work in, that debris will work its way in. So every so often, you'll want to go to a shop, basically, and have them clear out those drains. And it's a simple thing that we do, but it does require an air compressor, basically, with some good power to it.

We take an air gun that basically just it shoots a lot of air through it. We open the sunroof, stick that air gun into where the drain is and just blast the air through it. So that way any debris

that's in that tube or if any insects have crawled up through the bottom of the tube, it blasts them right out, clears out those drains and now they flow properly. You don't have the problem.

And you don't have the water spilling into your car anymore. I didn't know that. Is there any more tension paid to the high-end vehicles that have the panoramic a lot more

a lot more especially now cars they have a solid glass the entire roof is actually glass like the Tesla's yeah that's there's a lot more design that goes into that the engineering

and they are sealed so much better but also they have to work in the idea of what happens in a collision is that roof going to be safe in a collision right and yes they are they are a tempered glass but they're also sealed with laminate so it's kind of like the windshield how when a windshield breaks it doesn't just explode in pieces all over you it all stays together because it's

glued together so yeah the the safety factors are there but also the maintenance factors and like Sun Road drains in that it's all designed to work together but that's why you don't want to have an aftermarket installed sliding roof you want the factory system because the car is actually designed so that that system will work with the whole car yeah considering you've been in the industry for a long time what you say it was in general just to stay away from you know the the moaner i prefer to avoid them myself because it is one more thing that allows leakage and allows corrosion and because i'm i'm the sort that i keep a vehicle until the wheels just about fall off.

I mean, I'm driving a 12-year-old pickup right now. He also has very sensitive eyes and skin. I prefer the moon roof. I know you don't like them, but I like it. I drive around with it open all the time. Yeah, I really enjoyed it whenever I had it. You're dead, not so much. He wasn't real happy with it, but I like that freedom.

We're free spirits. Exactly. You know, it wasn't a convertible like we used to have when he drove the Lexus sports sports car. That was really neat. When I first moved here... SC-400. You had an SC-400 about 20 years ago.

Very difficult to get in and out of for him, but for me, being small. But many years ago, when I first moved here, I had the moon roof thing, the convertible thing. I'm from the northeast. I wanted the sun, which we know you can't spend a lot of time in because it's not good for you. This is bad. That's bad. Whatever. Okay.

we're going to continue. Let's change the subject. What do you got for us, Rick? All righty. We will go again to the text messages here. And we have one question here where it came in anonymous and he says, have you ever heard of lug nuts needing to be replaced? Is it common? Well, here's the thing, folks. Most auto manufacturers, now that oil changes have become 7,500 miles, 10,000 miles, 15,000 miles. Tire rotations are generally still recommended about every 5,000 miles. And basically, it's the front tires go to the rear, the rear tires go to the front. And this helps the tires to wear evenly so you get the best life out of all four tires. The problem is those lug nuts are being taken on and off

of the car every single time. The technician is using an impact gun normally. We used to use the air-powered ones. Now they've all switched to these little battery electronic guns, the electric ones. They're much quieter. They're much better. They got just as much power. The lugs are torqued, of course, after the wheels reinstalled. But those nuts are taken on and off of those lug studs over and over and over through the life of the car.

So if you keep a car for five years or so and then you trade out of it, you're not going to worry too much about it. But when you're someone that keeps their car for 10, 12, 15 years, eventually they're going to wear out. And so, yeah, those lug nuts are eventually going to get to where they just need to be replaced. Sometimes the lug studs will break. And here in South Florida, again, with the corrosion we get, you'll get some rust in there. And it may seize up and damage the threads. So, yeah, that is something to be aware of. Now, the nice part is that most lug nuts are a solid piece.

It's a solid metal piece. However, Honda and Ford and Toyota and quite a few others did this stupid thing a while back where they made a lug nut with a thin metal casing on it so it would be shiny, chrome-like pretty. The problem is that casing, as it's built over, it's just simply a thin skin added on that nut, would eventually begin to loosen and it would swell up. Suddenly, your tire iron that you might need, if you have to take the car, the tire off in an emergency, a flat tire, won't fit those lug nuts anymore. And so the mechanics will generally recommend, as we see those lug nuts starting to swell up, that shield is starting to increase in size, they'll

recommend, hey, it's time for new lug nuts. So if that's recommended, Yeah, it's a bit pricey because you're looking at $7 to $8, maybe $10 per lug nut, and 20 to 24 lug nuts per car, you know, that can get pricey. But it's worthwhile to do it, trust me. And you're talking about the two-piece lugnots that they decided to use. Yep. Yeah, that has created, you know, all the problems. Yep.

And didn't you say that was, did you say that was Jeep and Ford? Honda actually had a class action lawsuit about it, but Ford also did the same thing. Matter of fact, I think every manufacturer went to those for a while, and at Toyota, we saw a lot of those. And it got to where we, our parts department kept plenty of lugnuts in stock, and every so often, we'd have to go to the service rider say, hey, look, this car needs 20 new lugnuts. We need to replace them all. Wow, interesting. Okay, do we have anything else? Rick, we're getting close to the mystery shopper report.

I think it's time for the mystery shop. I was so fascinated with lug nuts, so I thought maybe it was just. I bet you didn't know that I knew they were two kids. I'm not saying it was boring, it wasn't boring, but it type of thing, if I could listen to the playback tonight when I go to bed, relax, and it would help me. It's like listen to a bedtime story. Interesting, but soothing. I'll call you tonight and read read Lugness I'll put you on speaker phone

And when you hear me snoring Just hang up, right, okay Will they be the two-piece lugness? Okay, enough fun We are going to get to the mystery shopping report And that mystery shopping report Comes to us from Treasure Coast, Toyota It is quite interesting

So repeat and total transparency Well, no, we've never read it out It's never been read to the public. Oh, it hasn't? So we've had Agent Lightning. I almost added her. Agent Lightning has, we have, I think, three or four backlogged mystery shops that we're getting to. So this actually occurred about two weeks ago.

Oh, great. Great. It didn't seem familiar when I read it. No, we've never read it. It was chilly that day, apparently. It's referenced in the reports. Well, Treasure Coast. Toyota, for folks not familiar with Florida, is...

Excuse me in the moment, Mr. Recovering Card Dealer. Ladies and gentlemen, if you don't know, we are live. Earl is getting ready for the Mystery Shopping Report, and it is very important that we hear from you at 772-4976530. That's where you can vote on the Mystery Shopping Report. Why? Because your vote counts, and you're very important to us. We want some feedback.

to know we're doing things right we're live on february 22nd exactly we're live on february 22nd i can't say 2025 and we take all these mystery shopping reports we post them on earl on cars www www urluncars.com we have recommended dealers and do not buy from this dealer list and you should choose one from the recommended list so you will vote and this will be on one list or the other yeah so go ahead and vote at 772-4976530. Now back to the wonderful recovering car dealer. I waited two months to say that. Yeah, I've recovered card dealer. You're amazing. I recovered twice. You're amazing. Yeah. You're a miracle chow. Okay, speaking in the first person as if I were Agent Lightning, I arrived at Treasure Coast Toyota. That's in Stewart, Florida. It's about,

But it's still in the southeast part of Florida, and it's on the East Coast. It used to be called Stewart Toyota, but there was a conflict and understanding between Earl Stewart Toyota and Stuart Toyota. They changed their name to Treasure Coast Toyota. So I arrived at Treasure Coast Toyota during lunch, was surprised to see a young salesman named Dylan standing out front in the chilly 50-degree. weather do you have an appointment today Dylan asked no I replied I was in the area for a doctor's appointment want to see if I you have any new Rav for hybrids in stock as a matter of fact we do right over here he said leading me over to check out one on the showroom floor there was not a burning label in

the window surprise surprise and this is I'm saying that to you new listeners in South Florida in fact for most of Florida, they don't respect the federal law that says the Munrooney label, the window sticker, must remain a fix to the window and can only be removed when the car is sold by the buyer. Well, there's not one out of ten dealers that sell cars in South Florida that respects his federal law. We've been talking about that for a long time, and so far nobody's done anything about it. So Dylan offered to print one out, meaning the Monroney label. I opened the door, sat in the driver's seat, reached over to the club box, where I found the label rather wrinkled, and they tore it off and wanted it up and threw it in the club compartment. If you zoom in on that picture a little bit, you can see there's a big boot print right in the middle of it. So that was sitting on the floor of the car that somebody came in there and put their big dirty boot on it.

You're a detective. You're exactly right. As a matter of fact, those are North Face Evojah hikers. Okay. Would you like me to get the keys, Dylan asked. He left for a few minutes, returned with a key fob on a plastic stick. I started the vehicle and he went over several features before I mentioned that I currently drive a 2023 model. Dylan pointed out that the RAP-4 has heated and cooled. seats as well as a wireless phone charger, which mine may not have. I agreed. And then he asked, how soon are you looking to buy? Very soon, with the next couple of days, as long as the

price isn't marked up, I said. He reassured me, no, we don't do that. And, you know, the sneaky part about that is that he's so sneaky that not only did he mislead you because they mark up their prices with junk fees and claim that they don't mark your prices up at all so it's a double whammy for you they're trying to deceive you in two different ways I didn't have because all the dealers in the market do that down here I didn't ask about the e-price they advertise online online price you price. He explained, I believe you'll need to enter your information for that. So we headed inside to his desk to go over the pricing. There, I was greeted by another person who introduced

himself as Richard, the sales manager for 24 years. Dylan asked where I live. Jupiter, I replied, oh, we do too, he said. We discovered we're practically neighbors. Dylan is Richard's son. That's very interesting. Father's son working at the same dealership. That's kind of warm and flusk. I like that. I asked Richard about the online price and he replied, the smart path price is generally $500 above invoice. But you'll need to enter your info. I did and this is what appeared. Now, I digress just a bit here because the statement, $500 above invoice means nothing. It's meant to to convey to you in any potential buyer that, oh, that's only $500 over their cost. I'm hovering right around, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, this Walmart, this TV set, this car, costs me only this much money, and I'm going to sell you this car for $500 more than I had to pay. Yeah, I'm going to sell you this $45,000 car. Exactly. And all I'm making is $500. Yeah. So, but our regular listeners all know that the invoice, on a car actually packs in a lot of profit, depending on the total price of the car.

You can have an invoice that includes a $3,000 or $4,000 profit or a $5,000 or $6,000 profit. The average is around. Yeah, in this case, we're probably another $1,800 to $1,800 there. Yeah. So, but it's, to me, it's a conspiracy between the manufacturers and the dealers. And I'm telling you, any of you lawyers out there, looking for a really big fat, juicy lawsuit, class action. File a class action against car dealers and manufacturers

because they are conspiring to artificially inflate the perceived cost of their products to take advantage of the buyer. I mean, it's a ready to roll a class action suit worth, should I say billions? Yeah, if you... Billions? If you found a dealer, oh, clearly. Yeah. Oh, because it goes back to the beginning of time, too.

Yeah. If you had a nice dealer who actually print out one of the invoices that they're talking about, the toy is probably better than most. Look at the bottom. He'll circle the invoice price, but there's a paragraph right at the bottom, and it lists those extra holdbacks and things to come back to the dealer. You can add them up right there, and that's the profit. Yeah.

Most of it. Invoice is not cost. Remember that simple thing. Invoice is not dealer cost. I asked, could she show me the total price with fees and taxes included? Absolutely, he said, give me just a few minutes. Both Richard and Dillon, father and son,

stepped away, and a short while later, Dealer returned to ask if I knew my credit score. It's in the mid-700s, I replied. Perfect, he said. A few minutes later, he bought back these numbers. And that included the junk fees and the not junk fees. And the sale price was the same as the SmartPath price, $43,189. They added a junk fee of $898.50.

And the junk fee has various names, if you're a regular listener, they go by any name the dealer chooses. They come up with electronic filing fee, administrative fee. They got anything they want to say they can call it because that's the Florida law. In this case, they're calling it dealer dock. Dealer dock, yeah. Like Doc. Doc. Doc Holiday.

Yeah, Donald Duck. Duck Holiday. Dealer Duck. That's a duck fee. And then they have $873.94 in non-tax fees. And that's the asset test for a legitimate government fee because you don't tax a tax fee. So non-tax fees would be your sales tax, Florida sales tax in this case. It would also be your tag in registration.

So they inflated that. Stu wrote this up and feels it's probably inflated. and that's even, that's double devious to me because they have not even disclosed the junk fees. They don't do it until they get into the F&I office, financing insurance, they call it the business office, and then it pops these illegitimate fees out on reams and reams of paper being spit out of the computer

as they say, sign this, sign this, sign this, and they get so much by the buyer. I hope their computer system fixes this because they're either on this non-tax fee line, they're either screwing the state by not collecting sales tax on these things, or they're screwing the customer for sure. And then the I also might be screwing the state of Florida if they don't have it fixed in their system. The car dealers are huge payers, sales tax. I mean, think about it.

The average car, new car now is around 50. $50,000. So you look at the 6% and then the half percent local sometimes. So it's a huge, huge benefit to the state. And they go out regularly and audit car dealers because they're infamous for, you know, not paying sales tax on everything. There's a long period of time where the state, Florida, made more money in sales tax than we did on our own selling our cars.

They do list the sales tax on here also is $2712. So you can easily do the calculation. Would they, you know, be back into it? How did they, would they apply the rate to? So I thank the father-son team for their help and being up front, and I told them I would discuss this with my husband and get back to them.

And the next day I got this text, which says, good morning, Amy. No, ma-boom. I bleeped out what you just said. Good morning, Agent Lighting. I almost betrayed Agent Lightning's a true identity. We fear for her safety. This is Richard from Toyota.

Dillon's there, the manager. I'm just wondering if you had a chance to speak to your husband about the Raff War. We have an employee looking at it. Oh, ho, oh. But I obviously, but obviously clients come first. A little pressure. Typical follow-up. Typical follow-up.

It's not pressure. It's a little push. Yeah, it's good salesmanship. You stay on top of the customer until they buy or die. Or die. That is what they say. That's a real. Call him to the buyer die.

Stu's laughing, but that is a common phrase. Every car deal has heard it. When the salesman comes to work, maybe if he's new, especially, you say, listen, you keep calling that customer until he either buys or he dies. And that's the reason you get harassed. You mean, yeah, I forgot I was in there 10 years ago. You still calling me? Just see where you're at, what your thoughts were right now. And beware when the phone calls.

stop because there was a time when we would tell our audience I think they locked the perspective customers in the showroom that happened north of us well I throw the keys on the roof sometimes they throw the customers on the roof they they used to throw the customers up there all right okay we got a vote okay I got a V-cd or F 772 49763530 and Rick can check the he can check the all the sources because they're coming into him so say hi to Rick when you send your vote um so i'll just give you a mind um nancy don't throw anything at me but they're getting a C plus for me and and the reason for that is everything they did was textbook sell for a car dealing it's just what

everybody does yeah but not quite as bad um i think they get a little nudge i hate give them a C plus it's but um nothing shocked me there um i didn't like the at And I think that thing with the non-tax fees, it works to their advantage, but I think it's a computer screw up. It's a line on their – when you get those proposals, they come out of their CRM, or customer management program, or a desking tool. And so there's – and it will get fixed in the finance office, and they'll go to the proper lines. And it works to their advantage because it looks like it's official thing. So it helps them with the junk fee thing. So I don't like that.

But they're no worse than anybody else. we've um i think the word of have become complacent right you're right okay just a c then i'll take off the plus no i feel i feel you're just trying to i feel your disdain and i want to just it's a c just a see i promise you i'm not going to throw anything i think that the recovering car dealer has taught me if anything you know it's going on and um if we you know give all the car dealers excuse me an f we've no place to buy Where you're going to buy a car, yeah. So, anyway. Okay, 772-497-6530.

Rick, what do you have for us? Well, first we have Bob and Maryland says, a boot print on the Munrooney label says, Give the boot to Toyota, Treasure Crows Toyota. It's an F. Yeah, a boot to the neck of Senator Munrooney. They didn't like that one much. Jonathan and Palm Coast says,

welcome back. You were sorely missed. And hi, Rick. Hey, Jonathan. How's it going, buddy? I'll give this dealership a C. Any dealer that's not up front with all their fees deserves this grade. Surprises in the box will never get a great grade from me. Over here on YouTube, we've got Johnny C. Fradley saying C for me. Brian Sedlatko says, I also give them a C. Joseph Kelleher, D

Kim appreciates life D and let's see Check in the other channel We have Scott Melamerson says Earl's voice is strong So another

Thank you Scott Thank you Tom Seckle says C minus junk fees And inflating the tax tag and title No addendums So happy Earl is back and healthy A for Earl

All right Scott H. Senior says C, typical fees, but thankfully no addendum. Tim Gillilands says, not the worst, C-minus. Cram 1624 says F, tax, tax, tax, and tax on the Monroney label. George Petrillo says C-minus. They should have itemized and stated the tax tag and title fees. For Florida, that's about $400.

Mark H says, C, typical South Florida. Tip, get a Google Facebook. phone number and use that to go to shop cars. Deactivate after you buy a car. That's not a bad idea. Yeah. Yeah. And let's see. We've got Frank from Jupiter Farm says, interesting shopping report. Typical dealership tricks, C minus. Oh, see if we've got anybody else coming in. And looks like that's it for right now. Myself, I agree with Stu. I'm going to say C. I think. They're middle of the road average. They're not really getting super crazy with the games,

but they're playing a few of the old tricks. So a C. Yeah. And I just want to jump in one thing. It's nice to have in the, there's a folksy thing that was very friendly with the, you know, with the father's son. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's a privately, it's a family-owned dealership still. So they still have that some of that appeal. I'm glad to see that they're channeling it in a positive way. In the past, they've done some, some some terrible stuff It's family owned in the sense Right, it's not owned by Big Smith is still an investor

Yeah And then her, what's his name? Sandy And Sandy, he's like No, no, Sam this is treasure Goes Toyota. Yeah. Does Sandy own the Toyota and the Lexington?

Yeah. Oh, I didn't. Sandy Woods? Oh, that's right. I forgot about that, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, that's like he's not necessarily stroll around the store with a cup of coffee shaking hands, but you know, it's not,

owned by a public corporation. And it has an advantage. They kind of went that very corporate way a while back, but they keep changing directions. Zigzag Toyota. Do I think Sandy's wife, our daughter owns it.

Right, she runs it. I'm sure she has a part of ownership. All right, we have three minutes. Okay, we've got three minutes left. Do you want to vote? I think C. I was very pleased with the voting. C is a number. It's an average. South Florida card dealership

is perfect that's a perfect grade I think you can't give them anything better than that or worse so if you're in that area it's an average card dealer and what was it? C? C. Okay

well I guess I guess I have to be a little gentler I'll call it with my grades considering that we're in for one I'll use the cliche I use hell of a ride

the auto industry is about to change in a lot of different ways and you know although this mystery shopping report turns me you know in an opposite direction I'm going to I'm going to give them a D and well that's it a D I don't need to just

you know give you the details of why I'd We know what rubs you the wrong way, and it's a lot of stuff that we read in the report. It's hard not to do a worst grade. It really is. It really is. It's real hard for me to sit here and say, hey, listen, they're doing it, so it's okay if the guy down the street's doing it. That's a valid point. So, you know, it just, it's very disturbing, and I'm really hoping that the environment in the auto industry gets a whole lot better. but we're here to guide you.

It's important that you say that, though. I mean, because we don't want people to think, you know, especially new listeners, if we grade a C, and you go, oh, that's not so bad, but everything comes with a caveat. And if we remember, we might have official C, but there was definitely a D feeling here. Yeah, exactly.

So there we have it. There's the mystery shopping report, and we, Earl, would you like to get to anything as far as Carvana? that we discussed this morning. Yeah, I'll just say this. Carvana is a good place to get a price on your used car. They came close

to bankruptcy. They made a miraculous recovery. They're honest people. If you're looking to buy a used car or you're looking to sell your used car, check Carvana. They're a legitimate outfit. Yeah, absolutely.

And also, I'm sure everyone has heard, you know, about President Donald Trump initiating actions, you know, to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And we'll have more information for you next week on that and so many other things that are changing in this industry. You might get dicey out there. I want to thank everyone for tuning in. We can't be more thankful.

Earl and I are very, very thankful. And we're very blessed. And we're blessed. We're blessed by you and the fact that you tune in every single Saturday to Earl Stewart on cars. Stay tuned next week, same time, 8 a.m. right here on the oldies channel.