Earl Stewart on Cars - 02.25.2023 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of KIA Country of Savannah, Georgia

Episode Date: February 25, 2023

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

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

And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. Well, we're back. We're back in full strength. Welcome Stu back to show. He came back once before, but he's had a back issue, and now he's good to go. And he's with us this morning, because we got Stu. We got Rick Kearney, we got Nancy Stewart, and we got Jonathan over there in the control area.

And we're ready to do our show. Help you avoid being ripped off by a car dealer. You heard the disclaimer at the beginning of the show that the radio station disavows any responsibility for my big mouth and the rest of us on this show. And our callers, they say, guests, not responsible for what we say. Well, I tell you what we say is true, and I accept full responsibility. for the truth. You can't be sued. You know, libel and slander, the greatest defense, perfect defense, any lawyer will tell you, is the truth. So we talk about car dealers, we talk about service departments, we talk about actually do a mystery shopping report where we secretly

go into a car dealership. We're in Georgia this week. We go in other states, mainly Florida, and we tell you exactly what happens. It's a real-life experience to help you arm yourself when you go into lease or buy or maintain or repair your car. And I don't want to forget Rick Kearney. I mentioned his name, but I want you to know that I think if he looked at the time of the show and the questions, I think that the service and maintenance may be even equal the sales experience. It's something that not only do you have to worry about disreputable dealers and independent service departments.

But our cars are very complicated, even though they don't require as much maintenance, and they're actually quality-wise quite good compared to the 20, 30 years ago. They're complicated. And a lot of our issues with vehicles today is the manufacturers are, jumping into this technology, and they're building the cars, high-tech, but they're not informing the owners of the how to operate the cars. And we see this at our dealership out of full transparency. We have a car dealership, a toilet dealership, in North Palm Beach, Florida, and we operate that today. So, you know, we're kind of, we're attacking and criticizing

car dealers, and we are a car dealer. So we're trying to let you know, we're trying to let you know that this is not an infomercial. We're not here trying to sell you cars or Toyotas or anything like that. This is a consumer advocacy show, pure and simple. We tell it like it is. And the retail automobile business, as I've said on this show many times, is in the, sometimes I say 20th century. I think it might go back to the 19th century because it's like horse trading. It's where else do you go into? buy a product and you have to haggle and hassle. And not to mention the subterfuge, haggle and hassle is one thing.

Horse trading was kind of like above board. You had to haggle and hassle, but no one was sneaking in horse fees. We have dealer fees. We have hidden fees. But horse trading was far more above board than what should go through when you buy a car. So listen carefully. Our callers, by the way, probably are the most important part of the show. Not probably they are.

Textors, callers, communicators to Facebook, YouTube. We're streaming. I wouldn't be surprised we had more people listening to us with watching us than on the radio. I mean, we are streaming on YouTube. It's YouTube.com forward slash earl on cars. Facebook.com forward slash earl on cars but our favorite

way to communicate with you folks out there is the old-fashioned telephone and that number if you don't already have it if you wouldn't mind jotting it down if you can safely 877 960 9960 877

960 9960 I'm Nancy Stewart my co-host been with me for 20 years on this show not this particular show we start out at half an hour at a different radio station

now we're up to two hours she is going to talk to you from a female point of view half of our listeners are ladies and it used to be that way used to be all men

and then Nancy was able to attract the ladies to the show and in fact we offer a special incentive that she'll tell you about in just a minute if you're a first time lady caller it's it's pretty uh it's almost too good to be true but it is true uh we really have a powerful incentive if you're a woman and you have not called the show before and nancy will tell you about that shortly now uh we have a text number i give this out we used to get a lot of text um i think i think i think uh the texts are good because we don't have to get to it right away.

I mean, if we get bombarded with phone calls or whatever, we can go back and pick up the text. And we try to clean up the text toward the end of the show. Stu is watching the text that come in. That text number is 772-4976530. That's 772-4976530. you know if you text us and you can't stay and wait if we don't answer it as quickly as you like you go to our podcast and our podcast is available it's erwin cars.com our blog and you can check a podcast of any show go back and listen to your conversation or hear your text read that text number is 772 4976530 and my favorite one and I don't know why I like the anonymousfeedback.com.

Your anonymousfeedback.com. I keep hoping that someone will say something that is earth-shattering. Something that hurts real bad. They wouldn't say in person, but most of our, your anonymous feedbacks are just straight messages. We used to be attacked more, I think. I'm not begging you to attack us. I'm just saying if it's the truth in your mind

and you have something, you just are afraid it'll hurt our feelings or I don't know what you'd be afraid of, but try it. Your Y-O-U-R anonymous, A-N-O-N-Y-M-U-S Feedback.com. And we cannot determine who you are, where you are. You know, you have total anonymity. You know, there's a lot of anonymous inputs. I mean, the police have a line, the media has a line

I don't know why we don't get more your anonymous feedbacks we used to people don't like rats no one wants to be a rat that's right that's right I know that

so I'm going to introduce Nancy Stewart and she's going to tell you about our special offer for you ladies out there if you haven't called the show before and she will give you her viewpoint on buying cars and surfacing and maintaining cars

from a female perspective. Let's face it, men are different than women, right? They think differently, they act differently. There's a lot of similarities, probably more similarities than differences, but there is a difference. So, Nancy, the mic is yours. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another

wonderful, great, entertaining, educated show. We enjoy your company. Ladies, I want to take a moment and just to let you know that you've been instrumental in getting us to where we are today. And I don't take that for granted nor anyone here in the studio. And we appreciate your help and how you have moved us in the right direction on Earl Stewart, on cars. Ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers.

$50 for the first two new lady callers. You heard her right. That is real money. Nancy will send you a check There's no strengths I mean there's so much stuff on advertising today Where there's a fine there's no fine print here If you haven't called the show before in your female

We're going to send you 50 bucks The first two callers I mean it sounds too good to be true But it is true Also I just want to let you know If you don't know it Ladies Women represent

A huge opportunity for the auto industry and it would be a financial disaster for them to ignore it share your experience with us did you negotiate this past week did you have your car service you could just call and say hello 877 960 9960 and you can also text us at 772-497676530 and as Earl said, don't forget your anonymous feedback. We love your anonymous feedback. It's exciting, exhilarating, and it really adds to the show. We have the spymaster general in the studio, as Earl mentioned. Stu is right here with us, and we appreciate his company, and it is definitely a long show for him in the condition that he's in, but he's here this morning, and we

really appreciate it. Give us a call toll for you at 877-960-99-60. We're going to go straight to the phones. We're going to talk to John in Palm City. Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone. Have a question for Rick. We know how important it is, especially if you live on the ocean in Florida or waxing your car. What is Rick's opinion of ceramic wax? Does he use it on his own car? or does you recommend a certain brand? I have tried at a time or two. I think it's fantastic. It does take a lot more work.

You know, you really got to buff it in properly. But I think it's well worth it. Is it expensive? More expensive? Yes. Yeah, that's what I thought. Ceramic wax is a bit more expensive. But it does work better, yes.

Okay, now question for Earl. Have a car for you to buy. The plant is closed right now. They're gearing up for late 2023. It's the fastest Corvette that's ever made. It's called an E-ray. Okay? It's a hybrid gas electric and the 6.2-liter V8 powers the black wheel, the rear wheels.

They're very large tires, by the way. It goes zero to 60 in 2.5 seconds. Not fast enough. Is that piece to Tesla? Nope. No, Tesla's one point. seconds. Okay.

All right. And the second one, this is a Corvette, which will probably be, I mean, it's crazy. The price, I think,

is $106,000 for it, the MSRP. Then it doesn't end there. Mustang, in 2024, is coming out. They call it a dark horse. Okay?

It's a Blackton car. It's a gas-powered V8. It's the most powerful. a Mustang outside of the Shelby that was ever built 500 horsepower. Unbelievable. So, it's going to cancel out all those monkeys. Right. Well, the gasoline engines are still here,

and that's a proof of one with 500 horsepower. I have no idea what the MSRP is, but it's not going to be cheap. Well, I eat those corvettes for dinner with my test lights. Right. It's just not even close. Silently. Like the breeze. is coming out with a

super plaid and I can't imagine what that would be. I'm afraid to drive my plaid. If it was any faster, I'd have to hire a professional driver. Get a helmet. It looks like they're all going crazy with this

horsepower race and fast zero to 60. It's out of sight. I mean, they stopped that in the 80s, if you remember, with the horsepower race. And the EPA was after them, but now they have like that, the regular

Mustang that's going to be two or two four. There's only a four cylinder and that's pretty good in itself. That has 400, I say, eight, no, 315 horsepower, which is like adequate enough. But this dark horse sounds like a winner,

500 hourspower. Yeah, man. But John, it's only old guys like us that really love that. I, you know, I think the modern generation, the you know, the Gen X, Gen Y, the younger folks are, they look at, we used to buy cars, you know, when you were a kid and I was a kid, the faster, the better.

It was a fun car. It was really a big part of our lives. Today it's just, it gets you for point A to point B. I think the excitement is being lost in a lot of our cars today. I agree with you, but speaking of the old times, like I, and myself, a good wax in the old days, and Earl remembers it well you had to go I think some of the deals

like Cadillac sold it was Blue Carle It was a cleaner, liquid cleaner And then it was a solid sealer That you put on That was probably the best in its days It was called Blue Coral And it did a good job

But thank God we have these ceramic racks Because everybody Every major company makes the ceramic waxes. You go to your auto store and you see it in all brands. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's good stuff. It's expensive, but Rick says it's worth it. Well, keep those cars wax.

That's very important, especially in South Florida. Thank you. You got that right, John. I look this up. I'm sorry. Living in Pittsburgh on every Saturday, you could see everyone waxing, well, washing and waxing their car. It was even important.

then because it serves as such a protection. It said that the ceramic wax, it works because it protects against UV rays, contaminants, and harsh detergents better than regular wax. Stu, do you have any idea how long that ceramic wax lasts? It does say, it says it lasts longer and has a higher durability. I didn't get into all the details, but it sounds like it lasts longer than a regular wax. Better than Carinoba. I would say six months at the least.

It does? Even though you're washing your car every week? Oh, well worth it. Most definitely. Thank you, John. You're welcome. Have a great weekend. Thank you for all the information you share with us.

Our number here is 877-960-99-60, and you can text us at 772-497-60. Don't forget Earl's vigilantes. You can go to Earl on cars and get all the information you need about Earl's vigilantes, and you can get yourself a hat. Right there. It is quite a nice hat, and Stu is responsible for putting that together. And I love that hat. That's my brother's dog.

Yeah, I'm finally admitting that. That's Mara. Is it really? Yeah. Oh, great. So at any right, we're going to go back to the phones, and we're going to talk to Mia from Lake Worth. She's a first-time caller, I believe. Good morning, Mia.

Mimi. It's Mimi. Hi. Hi, Mimi. Hi. I have a question. Good morning. Great to talk to you.

Hey, Mimi. I have a question about I was told by my dealer. I went in for a recall. and he told me that when Acres Ford that I need rear brakes. Now brake pads

and resurfacing the two pads and two new rotors and two new rotors. Hmm. So how do I even tell it? Yes.

I think she probably resurfacing rotors. Normally they'll either resurface your rotors or replace them. If the rotors need to be replaced, I would ask them why. How many miles do you have in your car? I'm driving right now, 45,000, 285.

And what type of car is? Ford Edge, 2017, SUV. Okay, so the rear pads could be worn down enough that it's time to replace the rear pads. But those rear rotors, you should be able to have them resurface. that I don't think they should need to have to replace them, not at this point in time. I would ask them why they want to replace them instead of simply resurfacing them, which is actually we put them on a machine and we actually grind the surface of the rotor down to be perfect, smooth, and true again. And this can be done usually two or three times on a rotor, so it saves you from having to replace the rotor.

Okay, so then my question, why two new rotors instead? Why replace them? Right. They'll get a second opinion, Mimi. If one service department tells you something that doesn't sound quite right, and even if they do, it sounds quite right, it's always a good idea to get another opinion. First of all, you'd probably save money on the cost,

and you might find out, as Rick says, you don't need the rotors replace, you could just reservice. So always get a second. opinion on the expense of repair. Or just by asking that question to the service advisor there, they'll probably stop trying to pull anything over if you sound like you know what you're talking about. You said, isn't it an option to resurface them? And if they say, well, yeah, you could do that. Well, then there you go. Okay, okay, very good. Okay. Thank you very much. And one more thing. Should I be able to tell that I need rear brakes by some way that the car is

acting or no? Well, when the brakes get really low enough, You might hear this little squealing sound when you step on the brake. That's a little tab that they put on there. It's called it, we call it a squealer. And basically, when it gets low enough, that tab will rub against the rotor to make that sound and let you know, hey, your brakes are worn out. It's time to replace them. Yeah, I don't hear anything.

Okay. Okay. Mimi? Thank you very much. Yes. This is Nancy Stewart. you are a first-time caller correct yes I am I never get up this early on a Saturday morning that's true

Mimi if you stay on the line you can talk to Jeremy in the control room he'll get your contact information from you that is the only way I can get you a check I write the check and I mailed the check but without the contact information you get nothing so if you'd like to have your $50 you can follow through with that. And also, I want to add to what Stu said about, you know, just not knowing how to take an engine apart, but if you walk into the service department, boy, you can really trick these guys. All you got to know is just to, you know, look it up before you go in, throw a few words around,

you know, that'll make it sound like as if that you can take an engine apart, and it'll take you a long way. good luck yes and uh very much thank you it's a pleasure god bless you and i will listen to your show when i wake up more often thank you so much go to bed earlier in friday okay thanks thanks a lot have a great weekend thank you mimi uh we're going to go to richard in west palm beach and uh welcome richard how are you richard you there Yeah, I'm here. How are you doing? Good morning. Good morning. Good morning.

I have a 2018 Mercedes E-Class, and about six months ago, I stopped getting car play. So, you know, I didn't have the time. So I finally called up Apple, and they said my software on my car is not up to date. So I called Mercedes, and they want. $385 just to put the car on the computer. Oh, well, that was the dealership, right? Yeah.

Okay. That's not right. They're proud of those proceeds. I'd call another dealership. I'd get myself three estimates. Well, what happened was I didn't get a recall on my backup light or something. So if I take it in, it's already on the computer, correct? That's going to depend on what the recall is.

As to whether or not they need to connect the scan tool to do the recall, they may try to pull a fast one on you there. I would ask them what that recall is specifically and say, hey, while you're at it, can you please check for this and try to get them to cut that price down for that. And if they don't want to do it, go to another Mercedes dealer. They're the only ones that can update my computer, correct? Mercedes is, right.

Yes. A Mercedes dealership. But you can go to any Mercedes dealership. I mean, just for example, dealerships choose what they charge for a diagnostic operation, if they don't know what's going on. Some things very complicated involves a lot of time. There's usually a charge. but in some cases, a simple thing, like I think plugging in a computer doesn't require a whole lot of time.

So I think you're more likely to find a dealership that has a more reasonable diagnostic fee or hook up to the computer fee, whatever they're going to call it. Or maybe another dealer won't charge at all. Where are you located roughly? In what area? West Palm Beach. West Palm Beach? Yeah.

Well, there's a Mercedes dealership up in North Palm. Just, I just get on the one. Oh, North Palm, don't go there. You have to go to Delaware. He owns the one of West Palm, too. So if you want another dealer, you'd have to go to Delray. That's owned by automation. They own that one, too. Oh, yeah.

They own the one in Delray. Wow. That's called a monopoly. Any other suggestions? Maybe going online and looking at a Mercedes owner's forum for that topic, and you might find some other Mercedes owners that went through the same situation and found a favorable outcome for themselves, that's the first thing that pops to my mind. Or you could get a phone and just call Mercedes dealers out of the market.

You know, once a dealer knows you're shopping around and comparing price, you can usually accept some sort of an adjustment in the price. But I know you don't want to drive to Tallahassee or Orlando, but if you were to make some calls to areas like that and you find out there's a Mercedes dealer that do it for half what the local dealer is charging you, then that gives you a pretty strong argument to get them to

you know Richard Stu just mentioned something that was really important and that was about these forums. Rick talks about that every week and it's amazing the knowledge that you can gain by going to your Mercedes

forum. These people share so many stories, the good, the bad, the ugly, And it really is an advantage for what you're looking for. And it kind of helps you to decide whether or not you want to go to another dealership. And, you know, they're not reinventing the wheel by updating you. $380, did you say, dollars? That's ridiculous. $385.000, that's ridiculous.

I really think that, you know, if there is a fee, it should be a small fee or no fee. at all, and that's my thoughts. Rick? There is a potential that an independent shop that specializes in Mercedes may be able to do that update for you. They may have the capability to access that through outside software. But you guys can't do it? No, Toyota, I wouldn't be able to do it. I don't have that sort of software. Yeah, they wanted $3.85 plus. Now, Richard, there's a bill before, you know, going before the Florida legislature now.

It's called a Right to Repair Bill, and it's being introduced. They tried once before, and a lot of the states are starting to do that. What that means is that the independent repair shops would have access, to software, special tools, training, anything that a Mercedes dealer or any dealer would have the independent shop. So that would mean more competition. In other words, the bottom line is you'd probably find someone an independent or even dealers because that would bring the whole level of pricing down. So if you want to start talking that up, the right to repair, right to equitable and professional auto industry repair act.

it's being introduced in the Florida legislature right now if you want to look into that and try to support it. I just found something online, and like the disclaimer said at the beginning of the show, I can't vouch for the validity of it, but it looks like there's a product out here. It's called M Mercedes Navigation Update, mbnav Update.com, and their whole thing is that it cost over $300 to update your Mercedes. So you can select your model here, and it looks like it costs between $129 and $219. Give them the link if you can write it down.

Yeah, write this down. Check it out. It's M as in Mercedes, B as in Benz. Wait, we'll slow down. Sure. Okay, got it. Okay, it's M as in Mercedes, B as in Benz, N as in Nancy, A, V as in V as in V, as in Victor,

update.com. So it's mbnav update.com. It stands for Mercedes Navigation Update. Well, that's great. Got it. So apparently their update fees are notorious enough to start a cottage industry. Yeah. Now, what's the other one?

Where do I catch the forum? Oh, I would just Google, that's how you start. You would just Google Mercedes Update fee discussion and just look on the results page and you'll wander into those things. They'll pop up all of them. Yeah, put it in you particularly, you're making a model and then just say forum, you'll be surprised.

You'll have more information than you know what to do with it. You're just going to sift through it and find the best, you know, informing forum that you come across. You'll be surprised. There's almost anything you want to know you can find on Google these days. Yeah, that's for sure. What happens if I call Mercedes-Benz in North America and complain? Well, it's worthwhile.

They, you know, they're not going to badmouth a dealer to you, but they might give them a call privately and say, or they'll just refer them back to the dealer. Yeah. So, yeah, it's not going to hurt to let Mercedes know what you're doing. They don't like dealers that do that, but they won't tell you that. They'll tell the dealer indirectly, but it's a good idea. Right.

I was the guy I called him before that went to Napleton and got half-synthetic oil and motor oil. Right. And I'm still horsing around with them about it. They want to know what I want to quiet me down. What should I tell them? I don't know. It sounds like the world is your oyster now. You're in the cat bird seat.

Originally I told them I wanted to take the car back, but that's not. well that scares them and then yeah that's a good idea you hit them high and hard and then come down a little bit well then they keep asking me well what do you really want and i don't know what to tell them well think about that for i meditate on that and i'm sure you'll come up with something okay all right great it was a pleasure talking to you guys okay richard thanks for the call thank you richard stay in touch uh girl i have a question for you about this uh right to repair bill that's been correct me if I'm wrong

reintroduced what are the chances of anything happening on this this moving forward and how long has it been since it was introduced well it's sadly the odds are

slim and the automobile dealers and the automobile dealers and the manufacturers are united against this so they have some powerful lobbying pressures on all the, you know, the senators and the congressmen and the whole legislature. So it's very difficult to get something into law that is going to hurt car dealers.

Car dealers got a lot of money. Manufacturers got a lot of money. And when they're together, it's almost impossible to get something past. Rick? And this isn't just car dealers either. This actually started with farmers fighting against John Deere. and other big equipment manufacturers because most farmers have to repair their equipment in the field themselves. If it breaks, it's sitting still. You can't just tow it off to the dealer very easily. So they want to repair it and get it back in action to keep working.

And John Deere says, well, we're not telling you how to fix your tractor yourself. You've got to bring it to us to fix it. It's like that's insane. So that's where that all got. started and it's building out this no doubt this affects your income and whether or not you're servicing you know 10 cars trucks as you whatever a day and whether you service five absolutely so it has a big impact okay folks our number here is 877 960 9960 you can also text us at 772-4976530

Your Anonymous Feedback, take advantage of it, youranonymousfeedback.com. I believe that we're done with some phone calls for a while, so we'll go to other Stu. Sure, we'll go to Anne-Marie's text because I missed Ammarie. Oh, good morning, Ann Marie. Amory says, good morning. What are the most unpopular features on new cars? My nominations are one, the automatic stop-start feature. Well, you stole my idea, Amory.

And two, touch screens that have replaced the buttons and dials that we used to adjust radio and air conditioning. Now, she has a warning editorial consumer comments ahead. One, there are a lot less annoying ways to minimize the burning of fossil fuels than the stop-start feature, like hybrids and EVs. And two, I don't want to have to take my eyes off the road just to turn down the volume, turn the volume down and adjust the temperature. What features do you get the most complaints about? Thank you. Well, right off the bat, aside for glitches and things that go wrong with cars, the actual features that were intentional, the stop-start feature, I think, ranks as number one that I get. And also, it's a personal annoyance to me as well. And I do turn it off whenever I can remember to do that,

but whenever you start the car again, you're back on the thing. I don't know. What's your pet peeves, guys? I think anything that I think agree with Amory, anything that makes you take your eyes off the road about the only thing I can think of is voice recognition, a good, accurate voice recognition where you could just speak a command and, you know, turn on your windshield wipers, you know, lower the volume of the radio, voice recognition is pretty good, but it's not perfect. Yeah, it doesn't cover all those features yet, but it's getting there. Yeah. Because I know we have Alexa in cars now and we have Siri in cars, so you can start talking to it. But they also have limited features. I've noticed that a lot of the things that Siri can do when you're just, you know, standing there with your phone, it knows you're driving and it says, you know, it won't look up things on the Internet for you. The touchscreen is, again, you're taking your eyes off the road.

It's really amazing with any car. I mean, if anybody was being honest, the operator of the car cannot possibly drive the car and adjust the air conditioning, change the radio, put the windows up or down. I mean, you're taking, you're distracting yourself to do any of that. My best tips, and I hopefully most cars have this, and I honestly don't know if they do. Rick probably sees more car other than Toyota than I see, but getting familiar with the steering wheel controls. because you can pretty much hit those with your thumbs. When you memorize, it's better than looking at a touch screen.

I agree. It's better, but it's still, you know, I, on my Tesla, it's really ridiculous because I have a yoke. Oh, yeah. I have a whole bunch of controls on this side. That's why you've promised. My turn signal. So maybe it's my dyslexia, but if I'm, if I'm turning, I can't find the controls. No, it's not dyslexia.

I think that's, I think in the future you're. going to find the yoke not on future Tesla models. I bet you they're going to go back to it or something else because you really can't do steering room controls on a rectangle. Okay. You know, we have some great new features that we just love and there are some features, these new features that have you wishing that they would have stayed with the old features of the older cars. features that I think is beneficial is the high beam headlights that automatically turn on. Can you imagine? They turn on and off when needed. Also, I love the

idea that your PSI on your tires, there's an indicator now. It's another new feature that'll let you know that one of your tires need air. So like I said, there's a lot of good features and a lot of features that make you wish that they would have stayed with the old features. You can take a look in Consumer Report, and you could read all about new car features we love, and some we don't. Rick? My vote for the worst new feature is the parking brake, the electronic parking brake, connected to the door pin switch. What is that? When you open the door your rear brakes lock up and as a mechanic when I'm driving your car onto my lift I open the door so I can look out and watch the tire so I don't hit the lift which can

pop a tire can you disable that only if you come to a stop open the door reach down and hold the pin switch closed with your hand makes it thinks the door is closed so it thinks the door is closed then I can look out to watch you go while going on. Okay, does Toyota know about this problem? So all your mechanics out there, that's our trick. The other one is... Wait, we have you, does Toyota know that this is a horrible, very unsafe thing?

They don't care because they consider more of a safety feature for the car, because what they found was, especially with the new push button start. If people have it in gear. Easy shifters, people were leaving their cars in drive, getting out of the car. and the car would start going. Right. So they connected the parking brake to the driver's side door. So they decided to sacrifice our technicians.

Exactly. And the other one is when you put the car in park, the rear parking brake engages and locks on as well. Yes, yeah. And a lot of people were immediately like, whoa, what is that noise? I shut my, I put my car in park and I hear this, and that was the electric motors engaging those parking brakes. Yeah, very interesting.

We could do a whole show on this, but ladies and gentlemen, pick up that subscription of Consumer Report. That's February. You can read all about it. We're going to get back to the phones. And, excuse me, Stu, did I cut you off? Not at all. We're all cut up.

Okay. We really went on there for a moment. I could see it in Earl's eyes. He says, come on, guys. Let's move it. He hates breaks. Just in case none of you know it out there, Earl Stewart keeps us where we're supposed to be sometimes. And then there's Nancy Stewart who will cut you short on the phone.

I apologize ahead of time. Anyway, we're going to go to Helen, who's calling us from Boca. She's a first-time caller. Henry, Marty, we'll be right with you. We're going to make these calls short. Good morning, Helen, and welcome. Hi. And congratulations for being a first-time caller.

Hi, I didn't even know about this until I just turned on my radio today when I got into my car. You have a nice surprise. Yeah, I had a nice surprise. I wish I had you a few years ago because I had a really big problem with a Mercedes. Ah, I'll tell you. Helen, before you go on, stay on the line when you're finished, and you can talk to Jeremy in the control room, and you can give me your information. That's the only way I can get you a check.

I need your contact information, so I can send you. that check. Okay. What is your call in regards to? Well, it's in regards to a 2014 Mercedes, and I was just wondering if you guys know how long you have to do a recall, because I lead the country periodically. I was married to a British person, and he passed away, sadly, and I live in Boca Raton also, so I go back and forth. And I keep missing, you know, a long time has past since I had this letter about a recall, and I think it has something to do with the bag,

you know, your airbags. Rick, can you help, Helen? Yes. Any limit? Yes. Go ahead. There are a couple different versions of what are called

recalls. If it is what is known as a federally mandated safety recall on your car, it has no expiration date. whatsoever. It is your opportunity, but also your obligation to get the car in when you can to have that recall performed. But if it takes you six months or a year to get that done,

that's fine. It will never expire. They must always be able to perform that recall. Well, she can find out as save her car.gov, right? Yes. And basically on that website, You would simply type in your VIN, the vehicle identification number. That'll be on your insurance card, by the way, so it's very easy to find that number. Yeah, that's what they asked me for, and I didn't have it right away, so I have to get back to them. The VIN number is very important, I guess, yeah. You type that number in, and it will tell you what recalls your cars is obligated to do, and not only must they take care of it, if they need.

have to get parts ordered, they are required to supply you with a loaner vehicle while your car is being repaired. You tell them, I don't feel safe driving this car because of this recall. I want a loader vehicle. You do not pay for the car. You pay for the gas that you use while you're driving it, but you don't pay for the car, you don't pay the insurance or anything else on it, and you use that car until your car is ready. Rick, thanks so much for helping Helen this morning. Helen, I hope that that information is going to help you. And as they all said, safercard.gov is really an advantage for you.

You sound like an educated consumer. Congratulations on... I have one more question. I have one more question if I could. Okay. Okay. I had one of those things under my seat that you can crash your windshield with if you go into a bad scene, like into water or something.

A little hammer tool. Yeah, I had the tool under my seat. I just want to tell everybody that if you have this thing in your car, be very careful where you put it, because it ended up lodging under my driver's seat, and it interfered with my seat controls. You know, I mean, it was stuck in there, and I had to pull it and pull it and pull it.

And now it's made my seat that it's compromised. It won't go all the way back now. And when I press the button, and it kind of goes sideways a little bit. And a guy, a technician man, he might know that it's probably off a track or something. And I just want to know who could I do out of not use the dealer? I'm asking you guys that who could I go to to get this service? I would look online for an independent shop that deals with Mercedes, check them out to make sure that they're properly rated,

and talk to them about it. I'm sure they'll be able to fix that for you. But yeah, it's a very dangerous thing to have anything stored underneath either of the front seats because of the moving parts involved in them. Yeah, I don't think I stored it there, but it ended up there.

That's what I'm saying to people. You're careful what is on the floor because sometimes it goes places you don't want it to be. Absolutely. And that's what happened to me. And it's a very strong piece of equipment, as you know, because it's strong enough to bang the window. out. Yeah, can save your life. Helen, thanks for pointing that out to us. Helen, have you

gone to any of the forums to share your story and get others? No, I'm going to do that. Okay, that's a... I know you're close on time and you're careful on time, but I'm going to call you back another day because I got to tell you a story about what happened to me with Delery Beach Mercedes, and my liquids went into your technician. his eyes will roll. My water from my, from my radiator and my transmission fluid went into each other. And it ruined the transmission. Yep. Wow. Mercedes agreed to pay and Delray made, they agreed to pay half of the cost. They inflated the bill to 10,000. Wow. And Mercedes gave me 5,000, but you can, you can imagine what I had

to pay. Absolutely. Helen, you... I'd love to tell you about another time. yeah yeah helen you have so much to share with us please give us a call again next week we have a lot to talk about i will i have about five calls backed up yep no thank you i just wanted to say that little bit thank you thank you for everything you shared a lot with us remember stay on the line and share that contact information have a wonderful weekend we're going to go to henry in jupiter and we will be talking later to marty marty and marty so good morning Henry. Good morning, Henry.

Henry, are you there? Yeah, I'm here. I wanted to make a quick point about what you talked about a minute ago about the tire indicator on Toyota slash Lexus. Just something that surprised me when I bought my 2015 Lexus is that it tells you that the tires are low, but it doesn't tell you which tires. So that's a bit of a frustration. Each time

the cold weather comes in, we have to play roundabout to figure out which tire it may be. And you can talk about that in a second, but also my second question, I'll let you go on, was the push button start. Years ago, when you wanted to run the

accessories or just listen to the radio, it was quite obvious how that worked, but the push button, it's a bit confusing. So maybe you want to talk about that. Absolutely. That's very simple. If you want to start the engine to normally drive the car, you step on the brake pedal, push the button, the engine will start. If all you want to do is turn on just the ignition to the accessory position, you simply keep your foot off the brake, push the button once, and if you want full ignition on, to have all the power to everything,

push the button the second time just once twice and it will be just like turning the key to the on position but the engine will not start now bear in mind don't do this for very too long of a time you know 10 15 minutes maximum

because you don't want to wear it on the battery got that I think you might have gone already yeah this goes to what I said earlier about complication. And I'm sure all that information you just shared with Henry is in the owner's manual.

The owner's manual looks like an unabridged dictionary, and that's how big it is. And it's just very, very awkward. There's got to be a better way to inform the owners of vehicles how to operate their cars.

I mean, I knew that only because you mentioned it on another show, but I didn't know you could do that. I'm sure it's in the owner's manual, but people don't read owners manuals. They just don't, and we need to get into the 21st century. It's not meant to be read. It's meant to be used as a reference, like an encyclopedia. You look at the back of the index, find what section you're having an issue with, go to that page, read the short section.

If I were door to door and ask everybody in a neighborhood to show me the owner's manual to their car, I'll bet you half the people can't find it. I mean, you don't know where it is. So it's just, it's digital, audio, I mean, this is a modern way to inform people. And I would say, just off the top of my head, if I were an auto manufacturer, I'd come up with a voice recognition that I could do in my car. I say, how do I turn on my air conditioning and radio without starting the car? And then give an answer. See, that's what people are looking for, the ease of educating themselves about how to use their car.

Owners manuals should be obsolete in today's world. Well, then there's my secret, which is YouTube, because pretty much the wonderful creators of YouTube, Oh, man. The content creators have put everything that's in the owner's manual. There's a short video on how to do it. Well, why don't the manufacturers have a YouTube in the car? I mean, you've got to, you know, they can have a Ford tube or a Toyota tube. And then you just say to the screen, please show me how to actuate my accessories without starting the car.

And, Bob, there's a Ford tube that'll tell me how to do it. I had actually tried it one time, but what they did was they put the owner's manual on a DVD, but in order to access it, you had to bring your computers to this are. It was crazy. DVDs don't exist anymore. The bottom line is that they need to reduce. The manufacturers are not staying current with the state-of-the-art technology. They are lagging behind, especially when it comes to educating their customers.

What they're doing is they're turning their cars into extremely, you could say, efficient, versatile machines, but they're also extremely complicated. So they're not furnishing the education to meet the machine that they were so proud of with all these features and benefits. They're making it complicated. People don't know half of them. Yeah, they're making it complicated. They need to do something about that.

People want to learn how to drive their cars. Ladies and gentlemen, I mentioned earlier before. about the Consumer Report and some of the features that we love and some we don't. Here, we're talking about these tire pressure and so on. Many cars go a step beyond, showing real-time pressure for each tire while you drive, typically on the dashboard screen. So there you go. There's something else.

It's simple. We're not reinventing the wheel here. I mean, there's some great new features. They don't have to be complicated. The manual doesn't have to be complicated. It needs to be rewritten. It needs to be downsized. It needs to be burned, and they need to go to voice recognition

and a YouTube type of a device, which is 21st century. We don't want to encourage violence. Okay. Burn the underpin. 877960, 9960, and you can text us at 772-49-6530. I'm talking fast because we have a lot of phone calls. we are going to go to Henry? You just have Henry.

Oh, Henry's gone. How about Marty? How about Marty? Hey, we're going to talk to Marty. Marty's in West Palm Beach. The other Marty, hold on. He's in Tennessee, I think. Okay, good morning, Marty from West Palm.

Good morning. Good morning. How are you? Welcome back. This is a question, I guess. I got to ask Rick. My car is exactly three years old tomorrow. and the dynamic navigation, if you want to keep it, you've got to give Toyota $8 a month.

My question is, which I'm not going to do, does the navigation disappear, or is it just updated as of tomorrow and that's it? It should be just updated as of tomorrow, then it won't update anymore. What model do you have? Camry, X-L-E-2020. Okay, do you have Apple CarPlay? Yes. Skip the Toyota navigation, let it collect dust, and use the Apple CarPlay. You'll find it's much more intuitive in the navigation system from Apple.

The only thing it really costs you is the little bit of data that it's using while you're driving using it. And the best part is it also will show you traffic on the roads you're on, such as orange or red lines to tell you when traffic is heavy or stopping, and it will show you such things as crashes ahead, road debris ahead, and speed traps ahead. Okay. It's head and shoulders better. Unfortunately, or I should say fortunately, I don't need the navigation too much, but this car was all loaded up and it was on there.

So, but I'm not going to pay Toyota, obviously, $8 a month for them to update. Yeah, that's ridiculous. I wouldn't pay it. That's ridiculous. That was absolutely stupid of Toyota to do something like that. I mean, they're just, they're embarrassing themselves because, as you say, Apple CarPlay, or you could just take your iPhone and put on Google Maps, and I see a lot of people using that. So these manufacturers.

Yeah, you run Google Maps right through. Apple CarPlay. Yeah, right. Or Apple Maps. Or ways. The other thing that annoys me is that for the navigation on the car itself, you're paying extra. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, to begin with. Stupid. So to me, they should leave, you know, that should be on forever as long as you have the car. Of course, yeah. Well, you're using that equipment to run the car play on. Well, okay. You just replace them the software. Okay.

And one other thing I wanted to tell you, I'll tell you fast, I went over to Palm Beach Toyota. They had a, they had a, it was either an XLE or an XSE hybrid, but it wasn't as loaded as I wanted. Between all their extras that they add on to it, it comes to $5,000 over the sticker. So they're still charging crazy prices. I mean, I told a guy, Earl, I hope you don't know. I hope you're not mad that I used your name over there. But I told him that Earl Stewart is not charging anything extra, even though they don't have the car I want.

You don't have the car I want. So why would I pay you $5,000 more? They said, oh, well, we can get it for you in a month. I said, well, listen, it's BS. I said, Stu Stewart's, this car has been on order since March of 22, and Earl Stewart didn't get it yet. So I said, you're not going to get it either in a month. So I said, I'm waiting for the 24s to come out. It hasn't been born yet.

Doesn't it's just set your hair on fire? Market adjustment. Market adjustment fee. So you want a car? You're going to pay $5,000 more? You want a car? you're going to pay $10,000 more. It's just totally ridiculous, and it continues.

Marty, you always have something interesting for us, especially how you travel from dealer to dealer, and you come up with all of this information that helps to make our show very interesting. And we thank you for that. I find it very interesting. You got a great show, and for the people that keep buying Mercedes,

I told them they ought to buy Toyotas, because, first of all, you can take even a Lexus. If you bring a Lexus into a Toyota dealership, it's cheaper to services. Exactly. So, you know, people don't realize that just to buy a Mercedes, and they get a lot of problems, too. A lot of maintenance. Have a good weekend, everybody. Thank you, Marty.

Give us a call again. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-49-30-40. going to go to Marty who's calling us from Tennessee. Good morning, Marty. Good morning. Thank you for your patience. Sure, no problem. The reason I'm calling is we do have a 21 Highlander that we bought at your place, which we really like, but we've since moved to Tennessee. We've been here about three months. So we needed a second car, so we went to a Toyota dealer here in Tennessee, and we found a route four that we'd really like, and we were going to buy, and we sat down, negotiated, and so on, and there's not much negotiation.

But anyway, so we're going to buy it, and we wanted to finance $10,000 and paid down the rest, and they refused that. They told us that we had to put down, the most we could put down was $10,000, and we had to finance the rest because they don't make enough money on $10,000 or finance it. So we disagreed and agreed to walk out and leave. and we ended up, we had recalled that you had talked about a Nelson, Mazda, and Mercury's Borough, so we went there, and we had a wonderful experience. They do charge a dock fee, but other than that, there's no other fees. There's no commission to the salespeople, so there's nothing trying to upgrade you and so on and so forth. So we ended up throwing there.

We bought our Mazda. We live 120 miles from them. They delivered the Mazda to us at no charge. and it's been a great experience. So, yes, thanks for your business. Hey, I was like, that's so good to hear. We did the shops up in Tennessee, and I was like, you know, we don't have many friends up there,

so we don't know what the effect of the report was. It's really good to hear that we help someone out. That's fantastic. You really did. So we really appreciated it, and we've got our Mazda, and hopefully we like it as much as we like our Toyota. Oh, I hope you do too. That's fantastic.

Thank you, Marty. You're welcome. Thanks for sharing. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. We're going to go to our favorite person in Jupiter Farms, and that is Frank. Welcome. Well, good morning. You guys are so nice.

Morning, Frank. I guess whenever I don't feel good, I could call you guys. The accolades are well appreciate it. But I got to give you a praise report because in a couple of weeks that I told you I was smelling gasoline up near the back of my Mercedes-Benz in 2012, E-350. And you said, you better get to checked out. And I'd actually listen to you, as I hope all your listeners do. And we went down also to another place you recommended me to a lot ago, call foreign auto service on US-1 South of you guys heading towards blue herring.

And then I think the road becomes Broadway. Right. I mean, U.S. one, but I mean, very nice folks. They took the car on Monday morning, and by Wednesday I was able to get it. It was not one, but two fuel pumps that were in that car under the back seat. Made up plastic. I mean, German engineering sometimes mystifies me. But they basically said from the heat we have down here that the plastic starts having some crack.

issues and it's not uncommon. I mean, there's 125,000 miles on the car over 12 years sitting in the Florida sun. So anyway, they did. I mean, it's getting back nearly $2,000, but I go, oh, well, and this is safe, and I'm not going to be one general tools.

It's on fire, right. You're not going to be roasted. Yeah, so, yeah, thank you for recommending those folks. And you guys have a great show, and it's nice to see that Stu's back and doing well. It's good to be back.

I think I might have missed that show. Was that when you called in the Bethlehem Mercedes? Yeah, I said a couple weeks ago. Yeah. Okay. And I did stop by your dealership yesterday. I was in the area to see

an eye doctor and I said, oh, let me go. We don't have any eye doctors at the dealership, though. You know, I found out. I was kidding. I was too. Okay. I'm sorry. It was like they leave.

I got a cup of coffee. You have so many people in there, and they all seem happy. and the bagels and the atmosphere it's really a very refreshing place to go. Thanks, Frank. You all have a great weekend, and I'll talk to you. You too. Call us next Saturday.

Nice to hear from you, Frank. 877960-9960, Texas at 772-49-6530. Don't forget, we have that mystery shopping report coming up the second half of the show, and it is from Savannah, Georgia, and Agent Lightning did a great job. And, of course, Stu, our wonderful writer, made it quite interesting, so you don't want to miss that.

We're going to go to texting or Rick. You've got a couple here. Okay. Let's see. The first one here from Kyle in Pennsylvania. He says, good morning. I just bought my fifth car from Earl Stewart, Toyota. Thank you so much.

for the way you operate. Lionel is great. Question, I know dealers can mark up interest rates to increase their own profits. If the loan is through Southeast Toyota Finance, Toyota dealers aren't allowed to mark up those rates, are they? Also, how much does the Toyota dealer make off of using Toyota Finance as the lender?

I'm not talking about other charges just for originating the loan. And Sue, it's good to have you back. I hope your back is feeling better, and you have some relief. Thank you very much. Well, we do mark up rates for the Southeast Toyota. They limit it. You're restricted. And this is a reason you should always check with your bank or credit union first.

Just generally speaking, though, with Toyota, and I'm not sure how prevalent it is with other captive lenders, you know, manufacturers' lenders, on those special rates, the ones that promoted the, And those are not marked up. Oh, special rates, yeah. Yeah. And that, on most vehicles that have any kind of financing incentives, those are special rates from to it, and those aren't marked up. The standard rates and other banks will be marked up. And it's up to the dealer really to limit themselves to what that spread's going to be.

We do that. We have a standard thing, and it's just a, but some places there is no limit. They could add 10 points to it. Well, there's usually, usually the linting. institution has a limit. Sure. I mean, there was a time many years ago when you could mark it up all the way. See, the legal interest rate max in Florida for a new car is 14.5%. So, you know, there's no bank that I know of now that will allow you to charge 14% on a new car. But so they limit, we call it the spread. It can be 1%, 2%, or maybe as much as 3, but

typically no more than one or two percent okay and this one from Donovan he says Green Acres Nissan has been advertising lately no payments for six months how does that work they can't be just extending out the loan first payment for six payment Dave for six months from now or can they well well I mean if it's from if it's legit I don't know I'm not filming with Nissan's current incentives if it's from Nissan, that's just part of the incentive, and it's an incentive that's spread out, basically applied on the first six-month loan. If it was from the dealership, I'm not sure.

They're just basically... They bake it into the price. I mean, you're paying the interest one way or the other because they have a certain amount of profit they have to make or want to make. And usually if you read the fine print on these interest things, they'll accumulate the interest and you end up paying it one way or the other. And from Lightning 351, good morning, guys. Earl, I keep hearing dealers are hiding inventory to keep prices high.

Is this true? That's possible. Not that I know of, but I would think that most of them, because the inventories are pretty low anyway, are showing the cars. So, you know, seeing the car, getting in the car, maybe driving the car isn't the same to sell it. So they probably wouldn't hide it in that sense. I think, yeah, I think most dealers would rather have the vehicles on the lot. Yeah. Now, I mean, you know, maybe they keep them in their parking garage or something

and out of the public eye to have the impression, but then they might have the ability to pull one that just suddenly became available. It's usually the other way around. They tell you they have the car, but they don't. Right, yeah. They don't say we have the car than hide it. And I'm sure they just rather have a lot. packed full of cars right now is what most dealers would want.

Makes sense. And from Steve Mags, here are the features I like that are in my car. Voice commands for temperature, radio, and phone, heads-up display for speed and map data, blind spot monitoring, backup, and 360-degree surround camera, heated and ventilated seats. and I got to tell you, all of those are awesome. And by the way, the new BZ4X, the electric car that's coming, heated seats are one of the big features on that because it's easier to heat your seat

than to heat the entire inside of the car. And in cold weather, it would use so much electricity from that battery that they try to limit it just to the heated seats rather than running the actual heater. I'll tell you one thing on a cold day and I have that heat seat around. I like that better than that stifling feel of the hot air. Yeah, it's really a feeling of being claustrophobic.

Makes my back feel good, too. Exactly. And talking about the back, I would love to see some improvements on the lumbar and every car that I have driven in. And I've actually heard that heated steering wheel in cold weather. That's great. The heated steering wheel is a great feature to have. So for manufacturers, if you're selling cars up north, think about these little things.

And again, from Donovan, he says, Tesla has YouTube in the car on your screen with all of your features, explain to you. They do, yeah. How to work your car. When I was talking about YouTube as being something to educate the owner of the car instead of the owner's pan of your life. I didn't mean literally YouTube. You know, YouTube is just a technological technique that is amazing. Just a tube. The manufacturer, yeah, the manufacturer should have their own YouTube.

You know, Ford Tube, Toyota Tube, you could call it what you want. But be able to say, with voice recognition, please show me, where is my turn signal? You know, how do I adjust my, you know, you could just, anything that you can think of, you ask, the car and the car will either give you a voice or maybe a video telling you if the car stopped it'll give you a video well the first time that i had to work on your car i'm up in the parking garage it was on the second floor and i'm looking at this car trying to figure out how do i even get into it and i pulled out my phone to youtube yeah to learn how to open your door and how to get in and start the car so that I could even bring it down just to fix its attire.

It's, YouTube is my friend as an auto mechanic. Tesla's guilty of, just like you said, Rick's talking about my Tesla. But when we first got our Tesla, I mean, it was, you know, I think, I'm remembering the first, I sat in the car and I didn't know how to make it move or how to turn it on. So I did the same thing. matter of fact resetting a maintenance light at our dealership we have all makes and models of cars coming in

just to reset the maintenance light I have young techs come to me all the time and the first thing I do if it's one I'm familiar pull on my phone YouTube it real quick here you go that's it you know and they look at me they're like well I could have done that it's like yeah that's this is your learning experience

That's exactly like, and I'm at a point now where I think of that about 75% of the time. Most of the time now, way, yeah, a long time ago, you didn't. No. You would call me and I'd say, well, did you Google it? And you're like, ah, damn it. Yeah, yeah. But now you just have to get in the habit. I mean, Google is your friend.

I mean, remember that. I still, I think you qualify for a ride in the Tesla with your dad in the passenger seats. That's been a long time. Oh, you can bring your legal pad with you or you could bring a recording device and you could learn these new words that your dad uses now. Ha, ha, ha. Anyway. I see where you're going with that.

And it'll be a long time before I get in the passenger seat with my dad. Last time I was in the passenger seat, my dad, he was driving a much slower vehicle. It was only a V8. You haven't lived. Rick, how did you like, you said you were in the Tesla, tried to get in the Tesla. How did you like the fact that you had to find out that you had to press on that handle to get inside? Because that's one of the new features in the consumer report that they talk about. And there are a lot of people who don't care for that feature.

It seemed okay to me. I didn't mind it. You know, once I learned what I had to do to operate the vehicle, and even then when I got finished with it and took it for a drive down the block back nice and gently, did not want to mess up his score. Yeah. I thought it was a pretty cool car. A lot of people, a lot of consumers that I spoke to to have a problem with that repetitive

movement, and these are people that are, you know, 60, 65, 70 years old, they have arthritis or whatever. Okay, we beat that up enough. We're going to talk to Howard, who's calling us from Jupiter. Good morning. Welcome. I hope you all well. Thank you very much.

And here's the question I have. You probably never got this question before. The original seat covers, the leather seat in my car, if I want to replace them, does Toyota make it and can be installed by a Toyota dealer? Howard, hey, Stu. Toyota doesn't do that directly, but through a Toyota dealership,

most dealerships have relationships with, they call them trim shops and leather installation companies. and you can place the leather on the seats. It's pretty reasonable. I don't know what the prices are right now, but I know it's considerably less than the, you know, probably would you pay for the leather in the first place. Yeah, you can call around.

I mean, we know people if you want to call in. We can point you in the right direction. Okay, that's good to know. One other question. Nissan gives zero money down. three years you have to pay off the car do they do that do they check up the price before they could

they do that not the manufacturer if that's a Nissan factory program then it's a legitimate deal dealer advertises it's probably not yeah okay but how do you know if the deal

advertising or it's the Nissan itself well you have to you'd have to just ask you'd have to go probably go online and you go to the manufacturer's website. Right, that's especially the local, like if you go to just like local

Nissan deals and you'll find the actual manufacturers or their, it'll come from their, not their distribution, but just their local representation in the market. And it'll be the same for all dealers. So, but if it's just one dealer doing it, it's chances are, it's just

something that he cooked up. Well, that actually is my question. If it's one deal of doing it, then it's not legitimate. I mean, like I said, just apply all the same things that we've talked about on the show and ignore the advertisements, and then you should be fine. But if it's legit, I mean, if it's coming from Nissan manufacturer, then it could be a good deal. Okay, good to know that. Welcome back, by the way.

Thanks, Howard. You miss you. Come by and visit sometime. I will. I'm there all the time. I know, I know. I haven't been there. there, then. Thank you, Howard. We love hearing from you. 877960, or you can text us at 772-4976530. And I hope

Stu has some anonymous feedback for us. We love hearing from... Yeah, I got some text, too. We have one from Bob for Earl. He says, good morning, Earl. In the past, you've explained everything you need to know about using Costco to purchase a new car. My question is, do you have information about the Costco certified and pre-own program, and how does it work? It's not as good as the new car program. They require that you give a discount from your regular price. And so if you do like we do, in my dealership, we have our lowest price on every car anyway. So I believe Costco requires that you lower your price by $1,000 from your asking price.

so if we did that then we wouldn't be genuine in our asking price being a fair price so the dealers that have max markups on all their cars so they can show a big markup or a big markdown I should say

the program works through them but even then it's not as effective the new car program is totally legit because with Costco new car program you have to have the lowest price on every new car that you would sell the car actually a lower price than you would sell the car to anybody else for. So that's real

simple. That's a great deal on a new car. The use car program is a little wishy-washy. I mean, I would rather go to a Costco dealer to buy a used car, but it's not nearly as advantageous to you as the new car program. All right. I'm going to jump over to some anonymous feedback. I tried to click the link on this, but I didn't have a subscription. But it's about, this is from, it's anonymous, but it's from Roy in Denver, Colorado. It's a story says Tesla drivers balk at the plan. It seems that some Tesla drivers are concerned about allowing other drivers to use Tesla chargers. Blows a link, it's in the Wall Street Journal.

So I think we talked about it a couple of weeks ago. So Tesla is opening up their supercharger. and their charging network to all electric vehicles. I think that's the condition of them getting the benefit of the tax credit from the government. So I guess the Tesla owners have had their own private network of charges. And I guess as Tesla owners, I'd like to ask you, how do you feel about everybody moving in and getting access in your chargers? It makes your weight longer.

That was a big story last week in the automotive news on the supercharger and them opening up, you know, the service to other, you know, car owners. Right. Now, you can use the Tesla at other charging stations like charge points and things like you just have to use. There's a connector that you think. So you guys could have used the other ones as well, I think. Oh. Yeah, you don't have to go to Tesla.

The nice thing about Tesla and locating chargers is you have that information in your car's computer comes up on your display. And when you get low on charge, it tells you the nearest charger. It'll tell you the nearest supercharger and the regular charger, and it'll also show whether there's a weight or not. So the cool thing about it is, you know, if you're being conservative and you've got maybe a fourth of the charge left, you've got plenty of time if you're on the road to find the nearest charger without a weight. And if you want a supercharger, which you would want, you can find the nearest supercharger without a weight, pull in, get your charge, and go.

it would be, you know, it would be fewer available if everybody could use them so I can see why the Tesla owners would be against it. All right, well, we have a few, actually from Roy here, and I'd like to kind of go through them. One, I don't know if it was acknowledged, this might have occurred after last week, showed that Satira Toyota, the grandfather of the grandson, wait, the grandfather of Akio passed away.

He was the chairman of the board of Toyota. Yeah, yeah. And he was instrumental in just making Toyota what it is today. And that was a rest in peace, Svichiro. Here you go. Show everybody. Oh, yeah, they have an automotive news. Yeah, they really, they really advertised well his legacy and what an impact he had.

Dr. Toyota. I think he actually flew a fighter plane in World War II. Was it a Japanese? But it was a Mitsubishi. It wasn't a Toyota Also, Roy points out Brings us up in the last few weeks Prices for used cars have been increasing

As mentioned by MMR Any thoughts on why the prices reverse Their direction are now increasing My thought is Like anything Well, yeah And there's going to be fluctuation I think the trend is still

Towards a price decrease with used cars I don't think we've like Corrected as much from where they went after the pandemic and the inventory stuff. But the lease returns are a big factor because people are wising up to realize that they should exercise their purchase option on a lease, whereas before they were all going back to the dealers.

So that's still playing a part. But yeah, I think it's still going to fluctuate. We saw the same thing, Roy, in the auction. For once we did, we actually made a little bit of money at the auction instead of the... Yeah. We've been bleeding out for the last few months. It's just business.

And one other thing that's a little bit more concerning that Roy is sending in is more auto payments are late exposing cracks in consumer credit. And car market is a bellwether. I mean, you can see a trends happening before they go macro and you look at things that secondary finance banks, you see more repos, things going bad that shows an indicator of other things going on in the economy. Doesn't feel like it, but that's something to keep an eye on. Yeah. Economy feels pretty good right now. Yeah, absolutely. Hughes cars have really been in the news a lot, and that spike.

I was talking to someone the other day about it, and if you can believe it, I believe it's 33% increase. So buyer beware. Stu, I think I have to interrupt you. We have a caller. Good. And he energizes our studio. this is. And everyone here knows who he is.

Beep, beep. Roadrunner, Steve, welcome. Good morning, everybody. We're going to get you a drum roll. No, that's okay. You're talking about Costco before. When you buy a car from Costco, does Costco also order you,

you know, you get car insurance to them also? You can. and they have an excellent car insurance program they have a excellent they give you service discounts too uh Steve they've got a 15% discount on service uh at Costco participating dealers so it's a I have nothing nothing bad to say about Costco at all okay and now we got a little car movie trivia for you I just found this out yesterday let me put Google up real quick Vanishing Point. Everybody remembers that?

The 70 Dodge Challenger? Vanishing Point. No. Yeah. Vaguely. Vaguely? How old are you? Rick and I are early 54.

Oh, well, okay. That's one of the top car movies around. Okay. Chrysler wanted the Dodge Challenger in this movie. They had five of them, but the deal was they couldn't really destroy them because Chrysler wanted them cars back. In the final scene where Kowalski is driving that white 70 challenger into the bulldozer, that car is taken away and they use a white Camaro.

Oh, no. Because they did not want to destroy those challenges. And who cares about those Camaros? That's great trivia. I'll have to remember that. Vanishing Point. The movie is Vanishing Point? Yeah.

Okay. I'm going to look that up. The Challenger vanished into a Camaro. Yes. And the Challenger was towing the Camaro on a long chain, like you would hook up something like on a jeep to get that Camaro up to speed. Then the chain was let go. And the Camaro just went flying into the bulldozer and blew up in frames.

Everybody thought Colossi was dead and the Challenger was ruined. But Christen made it a point they want those fire. I've called back. How'd you know that? I just found this out yesterday. That's so cool. On YouTube. I'm going to watch.

On YouTube, exactly. Our collective brain. All right, everybody. Have a good, safe weekend. Talk to you soon. Always nice to hear from you. Always nice to hear from your, Lord of Honor, Steve. God bless you.

Have a great weekend. Hey, you want to, I'm going to take a moment to, you know, share some information with you. It's serious, but it's a little funny. And that's about the catalytic converter and the theft of it. And a little play on words. This might give you a hint. That's the worst.

W-R-S-T. Not even the 27-foot-long hot dog is safe. Just. Anyway. Bear with me. Anyway, the 27-foot-long hot dog is not even safe from the catalytic converter thieves. They vandalized the Weinermobile. The Oscar Meyer WeinerMobile was victimized by thieves in Las Vegas this month.

A giant Frank Fetter was parked outside the hotel of the strip when someone cut the catalytic converter out from under. The bun, if you could believe that. Those villains. I'd want to hang out with those thieves that night in Vegas. That's it. Enough is enough. What a heist. In Vegas.

They're all probably dressed to the nines, and then they went to the casino afterwards and gambled their... Anyways, monsters. I'm telling you. If that isn't enough, I mean, is anything sacred? Oh, my God. Okay. That's a great story.

Do we have any time for Rick and for Stu? I'm all caught up. I don't have any messages on any of my channels right now. Your Nono's feedback? There's a lot of spam in there right now. Some of the stuff I can't read on the, how do they get the accent? Rick. Well, Johnny Z. Fradley's asking,

how is the inventory doing at Earl Stewart Toyota? It's a little bit better. We have a little bit more vehicles on. the ground, I'm going to say in the 60 to 70 car range, and that sounds great, but when you consider all the models and the typical amount, it's a very sparse scattering. It's not exactly the pick. Nothing wrong with the vehicles, but you've got to be very specific if you want to pick one of those. But yeah, I think nationally there's, I think the day's supply on the Lots are increasing.

It's not a flood of vehicles, but I think we're on the trajectory that we talked about before. As we get towards the end of the year, we're going to start to see it normalizing more. Use car inventories. Cars are out there, but it's still really volatile, and they were going down, and now they're going up. Well, the day supply is bigger nationwide. For everything. For everything. So we're looking at 19, 20-day supply of cars.

which is pretty good. I mean, I mean, typically it's 60. I mean, when you consider it was zero, not too long ago. So the inventories are building back up. Okay. And from Kirk in West Buy God, Virginia. Yeah.

A little late with his comment here, I'm getting to it now, but when we were talking about the interest rates, he says, always asked to see the buy rate so that you know what you're getting. Exactly. And if they won't show it to you, move on. Well, that's great.

I mean, you embarrass the F&I manager because most people don't even know what a buy rate is. But buy rate is, of course, what the dealer pays, and that's what the interest rate by the bank, and that's what the rates you could get if you went directly to the bank. So the dealer is simply buying the rate at a lower figure, marking it up to make a profit.

And they make more money financing the car than they do selling the car. Well, maybe not today, but back in the normal times. You can do it two ways. You can ask for the buy rate before you go into finance with the finance manager. Or if you want to embarrass them, you ask them after they give you the interest rate. It'll probably pretend like, I don't know what you mean. It's probably the most likely of the salesperson would probably say that. Exactly.

Okay. And that's got us caught up on. YouTube. Okay, folks, I believe, Earl, would you like to start the mystery shopping reporter? You want to go to the automotive news? Well, no, I was just going to, here's one little tidbit of information that just astounded me. I couldn't believe that the number one selling car in California, and that's, you know, the biggest volume state for vehicles, is a Tesla, Tesla 3. I mean, just hard to imagine.

I mean, I mean, more than Camry, more than RAV-4, I mean, more than Corolla. It's just hard to imagine if, you know, driving around Florida, I say, boy, there's a lot of, see a lot of Teslas. I've got four friends out there in Southern California, I'll drive Teslas. Yeah. I mean, it almost makes me want to go to California just to see. To be among your people? Right. I don't know.

My other thing that I meant to say during the show on and off, we had a call earlier in the show about brake repair. And every time I drive my Tesla, I came 15 miles, whatever it was, 20 miles from home to the radio studio. I never touched the brakes one time. I don't use my brakes. And unless you've driven an electric car or higher, hybrid, you don't understand that, but it's just, well, they called Rick, the braking.

Regenerative braking. Regenerative braking. So, it is, there's two things about it. First of all, you just don't use your brakes. The other thing is, the speed of a stop, think about it, your accidents are in hundreds of a second. I mean, whether you hit a car, how hard you hit a car, everything is a tense, or hundreds of a second. Now, you're driving along with your foot on the accelerator.

Now, you see a car ahead of you pull out. If you have a normal car, you have to take your foot off the accelerator, move it over the brake, and then press the brake. Now, I'm not sure the time that would take, but it would be tenths of a second. Tenths of a second translate into hundreds of feet when you're going 60 miles an hour. So imagine how much safer

I haven't seen this advertised. You'd think that the electric car makers would be doing this. How much safer it is to break just by taking your foot off the foot of the accelerator. I mean, that's almost instantaneous. It's really a neat. I mean, I don't know if you remember this, but when I was young, the radio control cars had his toys, and you squeezed the trigger, and the electric car would take off super fast,

and as you take your finger off the trigger, it would break. that was the same thing, and it was a really neat way to do it. And it was instant braking that didn't use pressure on the wheels. So if you haven't driven an electric vehicle, even if you don't buy one, that feature there to me is worth owning one. I mean, from a safety standpoint, I would think the EV makers would be advertising it more, but they don't. And it takes a while to re-educate yourself when you are driving that electric vehicle. Trust me.

Yeah. Re-education. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to go to the Mystery Shopping Report, and as I always say, you are very important, and we love to hear from you. We want to hear what you think of the Mystery Shopping Report, and your vote, and you can vote at 772-497-6530, and Agent Lightning went back to Savannah, Georgia, where she mystery shopped Kia. and again, please vote at 772-497-6530. Now back to the recovering car dealer. And that dealership is Kia Country of Savannah, Georgia. Asia Lightning hit the road again this week with Erlon Carr's first visit to historic Georgia.

Savannah, Georgia. She'd been in Georgia before. Yeah, last week. Yeah, she was in Cummings last week, right? Was that? Last week, she was in Cummings, Georgia, right? Yeah, I thought so to you. What makes this mission extra special

is that Agent Lightning really needs a car and plan to actually buy a new Kia telluride in Savannah. If successful, we get a rare glimpse inside the secretive going-ons inside a car dealership. It would really be cool. You could go with the F&I experience the whole thing. If we could get her to do that, we need to do it ourselves. We've talked about this,

but a lot of the hanky-panky in car dealerships happens in the finance and insurance department. We call it the box, you know, the dealers call it the business office. But that's where the sneaky stuff goes on. So you actually have to go through the actual purchasing and financing process to get all that information. So we hoped this would happen. Okay, here's the report, speaking as if I were Agent Lightning.

I arrived at Kia Country of Savannah late in the day and began checking out the selection of teleguides on the lot when I was greeted by a salesman named Brian. He asked if anyone who was expecting me today, when I said no, he joyfully agreed on me. He said they had it, they just received several new 2003 tele rides fresh off the truck,

but in full transparency, they don't have the final window stickers yet. He also mentioned a market adjustment, which surprised me. Doesn't surprise me. Brian explained that their prices have always fluctuated with the market, and all their cars have them, including the teleride,

which is one of the highest. Brian asked if I would like to go for a test drive. I said yes, and he went to get the keys to one of the specific test drive vehicles. We walked outside, found the vehicle. It had an MSRP of $40,405. It had an addendum for the Kia Plus package for $5,995.995. Can we just say $6,000? Six thousand.

We had a nice test drive, and Brian went over all the features on the telly ride, then we went back to the dealership and returned to his desk. When Brian collected my information, he asked if I would be financing the car, and if so, would I want to run my credit now? I decline to run my credit at the moment, but mentioned that I have great credit. Brian then handed me a sales sheet, which had a breakdown of the cost. The market value selling price was MSRP, $40,000, $4,000,000, which is I don't know why they did that

because it's not the market value selling price. Otherwise, they wouldn't be marketing it up, so they're confused. But they added the Kia Plus package for, can we call it, 7,000, 6,995, and a 998 delivery fee. These are junk fees. 698, dock fee, another junk fee,

and $76 in taxable fees. The real price was $49,712, a whopping $8,767 over MSRP. That's a lot of money. Keyet Country. Why did that Kia Plus package go up $1,000? Yeah, that's what he said. I pointed to the Kia Plus package,

remarks of the price had gone up on that between the test driver and now. It was now $59.95, and now it was $69.95. Brian said that was the Kia Plus package and a $1,000 market adjustment. Got an answer for everything. Making them up as fast as you ask the questions. When I asked Brian about the delivery, he explained that they choose expedited delivery. Now, that's a whopper.

Right. There's no... Well, I'm not a Kia dealer, so I can't say for a fact, but I can't imagine if Kia would charge a dealer more money for a car because he was expedited delivery.

That's got to be nonsense. He says they get their cars right away, and the other deals have to wait for him. That is, well, I won't use the term that I started to use because that would be bleeped. Maybe on the last show that we do, on our farewell show, we'll just. This, I Googled Kia Expedited Delivery, which kind of sounds like an official. Yeah. Google doesn't know about it.

Yeah. Well, if the Dr. Pryor doesn't know, no one knows. I googled it. It's official bolt. Excuse me. It's not our last show. Well, I've flown up with the attention of actually buying a car to drive back to Florida, I couldn't justify paying that much.

Going back to Kia for a minute, Kia is the quality of the car, and they've come way up in the JD Power Surveys and Consumer Reports. I mean, the Kia is really a good car now, and it's a shame that such a good car has such shabby dealers. That happens when a car manufacturer comes into this country, they kind of grab the dealers that they can get

and a lot of the dealers aren't really interested in the new cars that come in. Hugo is an example. But sometimes, like with Kia, it's a quality car. They really build a good car.

Now you have to deal with a low-quality dealer and a high-quality car, which is too bad. Got some nice pictures of all the nonsense, a supplemental and the worksheet here, which is, I always tell you that the worksheet means they don't want to be bound by what they're telling you. This is something that is not a legal document, therefore they don't mind giving you a copy of it. Sometimes they won't even give you a copy of the worksheet, but they'll never give you a copy of the official document that vehicle buyers order.

so that's basically what we have here to me the worst offense there was making up a story about expedited delivery that's a flat lie yeah so use your judgment that's what I'm getting here we mark marks the first one in on my side

lies and deception on price he gives him a D-minus shameful he said I I agree with that we've seen we've seen big markups like that and we've seen lots of fees I don't like it when I see all those fees It's like there's one thing, if you have a $9.99 doc fee or whatever,

and then you have a $9.99 doc fee and a $6.99 other junk fee, and they try to copp it together, that's an extra level of deception. And then just the glibness, how Mark, and I wasn't there. I don't know if he sat there and scratched his head and sweated. Maybe we asked Agent Lightning what he looked like, but it looks like he came right back and said, hey, that's expedited delivery. That guy's smooth. And that also lowers their grade for me.

me, so I'm going to go with Mark and give them a D-minus. You know, just a little aside there because we got some time, but junk fees has become a really popular term. And it's interesting to see the media and

even the Federal Trade Commission or other people going after travel, you know, like hotel fees, rental car fees. They don't want to go after the car dealers. You see more media expose of junk fees on everything but automobile dealers and they're the they invented the junk

fee so it's just it's just a shame that the power of the auto dealer lobby is so is so intense that the regulators won't in the media won't come out because of the advertising they do we have an expedited delivery here from bob he says f and f i'm delivering this fast expedited delivery that's uh I think that I think that this might be the consensus that we're gonna we're gonna see you have grades over there Rick I do um well this first one I'm just gonna read it right out Johnny Z Fradley I'm tired of giving Fs so I'll give them a D dash dash dash minus minus take it as you feel folks Tim Gilliland from Arizona with a cactus emoji

year. It's like their addendums have addendums. F. Their ademes do have addemims. That's actually what happened. I like that, yeah. That's a double addendum. Rocky Blocketeel says D for deception. Mark Anderson, Mark from St. Louis, D minus. Brian said Latko,

Kia is one of the most stolen cars out there. My advice is don't buy one. Yeah, I forget about that. My grain is an F for all the markups. Yeah. Mark Ryan, F, and Negan 1, F, F, F, F, and Kirk in West Buy, God, Virginia, Kia Country, 8,800 junk fees, Lucy Goosey explanations, and expedited delivery fees to boot. Is there a grade less than F minus?

I don't know. I have a big fat F over here who just came in. A big fat F, unfortunately, junk fees. and vehicle transactions is just as bad in real estate transactions. So, oh gosh, yeah. I remember the first time I bought a house, you'd have a lawyer to go over the stuff to eliminate all the junk fees. Amazing.

Literally. Amazing. Just amazing. It's crazy if it's going to get to that with cars. I mean, you think about it, you buy a house because it's so expensive and it's a very complicated, it can be complicated. Cars are now like what? What's the average MSRP now?

or the average transaction price. It's like close to 50. Over. Over 50. And, you know, it's conceivable. Yeah. Higher. 100,000 might be the thing.

And then people start getting 30-year loans on these things. Well, for my grade, I'm going to say F. I just, it's, they played too many games. I don't, I would recommend to walk away from them. I don't know. You know, Earl, what's your grade? You go first. I don't think that's a good idea, but I'll take it.

Okay, last week, last week we were at Chatham Parkway Toyota in Savannah, Georgia, where there was a market adjustment over $3,000. Why? Market adjustment, market adjustment, I hear so much about market adjustment, you know, another way to take advantage of the consumer. expedite delivery please I can't even get a pizza expedited let me tell you what door does you probably could for $698 if you call them I mean come on I thought all these people in Georgia were really happy and wonderful and didn't wouldn't even think of taking advantage of anybody I I I hate to do it again, but I've got to give them an F.

Market adjustment, I mean, and expedited delivery and plus packages and it's just a bunch of bowl. I give them an F. You know, before I give my grade, I should

say this more often when we do a shop, mystery shop, you remember when you go into a car dealer ship, you're dealing with one salesperson, and then you might deal with one manager. A medium-sized dealership probably has 15 or 20 salespeople. A lot of the, you know, larger dealers have 50, 60 salespeople.

And when you go in there, one chance out of 60 or one chance of 25, and there's always a rotten apple in the barrel. I mean, maybe not always, but often there's a rotten apple. So I sometimes feel bad for dealerships. They have a rotten apple, and age of lightning happens to. end up with a rotten apple and it makes the whole dealership. Well, that's true. She runs into a lot of rotten apples.

You had a bad experience at a restaurant or a retail store. You know, you blame the whole store. You just don't go back. You know, one bad waiter in a restaurant could keep you away from going back to that restaurant ever. So

I'm going to give them enough. I'm going to give the Kia. It's a long time since you've done that. I'm telling you. I haven't given enough more time. But I, I I have a twinge of guilt because, you know, it could be a C-plus average dealership, and we're giving up because this one salesman who was really a bad guy. I mean, he's a liar, and he could be the only rotten apple in the barrel. Could be.

So the message to the listeners and the watchers to the show is, don't be afraid to switch salespeople. You go in and you don't like the experience, ask to speak to another. the salesperson, or better yet, ask to speak to the manager. If you talk to two or three people, and it's still a rotten experience, and you've got yourself a rotten egg, but sometimes it's just the one rotten apple that you're dealing with. Now I figured out what I confused everybody earlier.

We were in Savannah last week. I wouldn't hear us. I thought we were going to Cummings last week. That's what Nancy said. And what about Thadius? Was he a rotten peach? Everybody's talking about rotten apples here. We've got rotten peaches in Savannah, Georgia.

It's not right. And we can't go back. Well, maybe we can. But if that happened locally, we're within the immediate range of Agent Lightning. We'd go back and give them another chance. But anyway, I'm going to go F anyway. I'm not going to. Plus, you know, they're so far away.

We're they in due to you. Yeah. And we're really, we're very fortunate that we have Agent Lightning who does such a great job in travels. I mean, how many different. places has she been to is to, Tennessee. She's the entire, like every place east of the Mississippi, pretty much. And you dealers listening out there, listening, but my comments about rotten apples in the barrel, everybody has.

We have rotten apples in our barrel at our dealership, and we shop ourselves. We try to find out, we send in mystery shoppers to shop our own dealership to find out if we have problems. And there's no such thing as a perfect dealership. You're always going to have somebody. flip through. It's people, yeah. It's natural, and that's what happens in the organization. And the real demon behind all this is a compensation plan. I like to think we have fewer rotten apples because we don't pay a commission. But when you're paying a salesperson,

25% of as much profit as he can make off that customer, he's going to try to make a lot of disaster. It's not designed for the consumer, that's for sure. You know, back in the automotive news, Stu mentioned earlier about the superchargers, I want to tell you what I've got to say, again, like I did last week, is Elon Musk a genius or what? I mean, opening these super, you decline to agree. I didn't hear you. I'm sorry. Go ahead. You heard me. Anyway, is he a genius or what? to open up these superchargers. I mean, what an amazing move on his part.

And these electric vehicles are becoming more affordable. He, you know, he's making it more affordable for the consumer. And they're here. It's now. And we are moving forward. Rick? I just happened to look online just for a few moments. There are Tesla Model 3s.

Available right now, Miami, Orlando, Tampa area, you might have to drive for a couple hours to get one, but with the tax credit, the $7,500 tax credit, they're selling for about $32,000. Is that amazing? And that's actually cheaper. We just had the new GR Corolla, the little race carola, came to the shop yesterday, and the sticker price on it's $38,000. And the price that they quote is the price you pay because Tesla dealers are not dealers, it's a manufacturer, and they don't mark it up. So $32,000 means $32,000. Add to cart and checkout. Yeah, yeah.

There you go. I mean, you're going to pay sales tax. And then they also, there was the, I think it was $2.50 for the wall charger for your home. And like $4.25, I think it was for the mobile charger. But other than that. I mean, you could have one of these cars. Are you going to be showing up next week in a Tesla? No.

He wouldn't give up that F-150. One car payment at a time for our household. That's for sure. Folks, thank you so much for joining us this Saturday morning. We certainly enjoy your company. You are an important part of the show. We look forward to talking to you and getting information from you. and we want you to have a wonderful weekend and be right back here next Saturday morning at 8 a.m.