Earl Stewart on Cars - 03.12.2022 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Braman BMW of Jupiter

Episode Date: March 12, 2022

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits a local BMW dealer to see what they have on the lot and how much over sticker they will charge for a new 2022 BMW 503i. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Well, this is Earl Live. You just heard my recorded introduction. And we're back at the studio in North Palm Beach, Florida. We're about 100 miles north of Miami or maybe make that 75. And it's worldwide, so I have to, I keep thinking of myself as being a local radio guy, but we're really international and we're talking to you via Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and all sorts of cyber ways, stream us anywhere in the world. And we actually, I think we're, I haven't thought about this.

we haven't actually i haven't counted it but i think we probably get more calls from outside florida now than we do within florida maybe not it's pretty close so uh so it's kind of exciting it's live radio um we rarely rerun a show and uh we can't rerun this one because i just said it was live radio so i mixed this one hopefully isn't a really good show and it won't make any difference but i'm only kidding uh love to hear from you that's a The name of the game is you, our listeners, and our viewers. I feel like a TV guy, you know, viewers, yeah. And in the studio is my youngest son, Josh Stewart.

He's sitting in this morning from my oldest son, Stu Stewart. Josh is also a part of our dealership. And in the way of full disclosure and transparency, we do own a car dealership. And this is not an infomercial. So if you're new, I mean, the old listeners, the regulars, they know how we deal. We're pretty candid. We tell it like it is. The good, the bad and the ugly, the negative, the positive.

We try to just be factual and transparent. So the fact that we do sell cars, look at it as a positive, because we're insiders. And we know other dealers. We know manufacturers. at one time or another in my history, I've had multiple franchises, and I've had multiple dealerships, all of them in South Florida. So I'm kind of an inside guy, and I use that dealership mentality I have to help you as a consumer out there, which is what the show is all about, how to buy, lease a car, or maintain or repair

your car without being ripped off, not being taken advantage of. You want to get the best deal you can. And that's really hard today. If you're new to the show, let me shock you. I'll prove I'm not a car dealer. Don't buy a car today unless you have to. And a lot of my employees have palpitations when I say that because I don't blame them. And Josh works with a dealership every day, and he's praying, please, Dad, change the subject.

You know, the funny thing is, I'll tell you, I'm being self-serving. I'm being totally honest. You know what? I'm totally honest and transparent with people. They want to buy a car from me even more. So it's a win-win for me. I can be honest and transparent and also sell cars. I guess that's the message I'm trying to get out to all the car dealers. But then again, I'm not really trying to get it out. See, it depends on whether I do I have my car dealer hat on or do I have my consumer advocate hat on. I don't know. I don't know where the hat is. All I know is honesty and transparency is what it's all about. And if you listen to the show and actually listen to each other, because when you call the show, I'm going to give you that number now because I'm on a roll and I sometimes get carried away. Call 877-9-60-99-60. That's our telephone number.

Telephones, when I say that, I feel like that's kind of an old word. It's not a cell phone, it's a telephone, we call it. 877-960-1960. We've got about five lines coming into the studio here in South Florida. We try to watch those lines carefully. Nancy Stewart, my wife and co-host sitting to my left in the studio here, She monitors her screen on the PC. And when a call comes in, she waves her arms, she taps beyond the shoulder.

We prioritize those types of calls. Now, other than 877-960-99-60, we've got a text number. We have something called anonymous feedback. We have multiple ways to reach us YouTube. The text number. 772 area code, 772. 4976530, 772, 4976530.

If you write that down, you think of something later on, Texas. The good thing about text is we get to them later, you know. They kind of build up and Josh will be monitoring that. And we might not get your text right now, but we're here for two hours. We're here between 8 and 10 Eastern Standard Time, and we usually get to all those texts.

We got a really cool avenue of calling or texting or, what is it, anonymous feedback. You're on the web. You go to youranonymousfeedback.com. It's a URL. Your anonymous, A-O-N-N-Y-M-U-S feedback. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And we don't know who you are. We don't know where you are.

We don't know what you are. You could be a car dealer. You could be a bad scientist. you could be, I don't know. The point being, you have total anonymity. And people like that. Privacy is... I used to think, back in the day,

I used to like, hey, stand up and be heard, look the person in the eye, and, you know, be identified. You know, I don't believe that anymore. I think if you're more comfortable by being anonymous, by all means, do so. And a lot of you feel that way. We get a large number of anonymous feedbacks.

Hopefully we all today, too. You are, Y-O-U-R, Y-O-U-R, Anonymous, A-N-O-N-Y-M-O-U-S. Anonymous Feedback, just the way it sounds, dot com. And tell it like it is. If you don't like us, tell us so. If you think we should change something, we love constructive criticism, and you won't be identified.

The funny thing is, a lot of times, anonymous feedback people, identify themselves. I don't know why. They do. So, it's your choice. And of course, Facebook, big on Facebook, Josh is monitoring that too. And we're just, uh, earlancars.com, I'm sorry, Facebook.com forward slash hurlancars. And here we are in living color. We only have one pretty person here. And that's Nancy Stewart sitting on my left. And we're, we're, right? The rest of us are ugly. That's okay. We've got our masks off now. Hey, that's good. We have our mask off.

You can really see who we are. And Facebook.com. Forrestless rolling car. And YouTube, another video. And Rick, Rick Kernney, sitting to my right. Rick is our certified diagnostic master technician. He's an auto computer scientist. He's in school half the time because these cars are getting more and more complicated.

And he knows about everything there is to know about your car. You got a problem, click, squeak, something strange, a smell, rattle, vibration. You're worried about something, and you should be worried because if you got something wrong with your car, you've got to go to a place and get it fixed, a garage, an independent repair service, or a car dealer, and you're afraid you're going to get taken advantage of. Call Rick, and you can reach them on YouTube as he monitors YouTube.com forward slash whirlwind cars. YouTube.com forward slash row on cars, and he sees your post right away. And you see Rick.

He's not too bad looking, you know. It's funny, you know, we wore masks so long, and everybody's been wearing masks so long. We took them off the studio about three weeks ago, and I had to look twice as everybody because I keep seeing them with masks, and now I see them without masks. So anyway, those are the avenues of communication, and we will, monitor it. What did I leave out? Anything? I think YouTube, Facebook, the regular numbers, Tech 772-4976530, and then of course the old-fashioned phone number, 877-960-9960. Well, I'll go around the circle. I'll start to my left. I'll go with

Nancy Stewart, who I said earlier, she's my co-host. We started this show about 20 years ago, not quite, but close to. And it was a half-hour show. It was just Nancy and me. And then we went from a half hour to an hour. And now here we are, different day, Saturdays, two hours. And believe it or not, two hours goes by like that. So the show's bigger, it's more interesting, I think, and we have far more people, and we're worldwide.

I can't believe it. Nancy is our female advocate. She's built our listening audience, female wives up to pretty close 50-50. And you ladies out there, she'd live there. You ladies out there, she loves it when you call. She got a special offer for you first time new. First time lady calls a very special offer. It's not BS.

It's real. It's honest. Tell them about it, Nancy. Good morning, everyone. A whole lot of positive energy right here in the studio. And I think I'm going to hold Josh Stewart responsible for that. We just love his company. He always has a smile on his face and he's always positive.

So it's great to have him here this morning and to fill in for Stu. You know, we're here to navigate you through such a volatile time that we're in. And we're here also to thank you for being part of the show. We do enjoy your company. Give us a call to all free at 877960 and you can text us at 772-960. and you can text us at 772-4976530. And for the ladies, I want to mention International Women's Month. And without the ladies, where would we be?

They do make a lot of decisions. This morning, ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. First two new lady callers, $50. We can use something like that these days. So give us a call. and be the first two new lady callers. Let us know what your, well, experience was this past week, whether, you know, it was easy for you to maneuver

and get in and out of the dealership, or if you just went to the internet and whether you were looking at leasing, buying, brought the car in for maintenance, service, whatever. Or just give us a call and say hello, $50, $50, for the first two new lady callers, 877-960. And a special thank you for our female mystery shopper. And Agent Lightning Weekend, Weeket, does such a fantastic job.

And another thank you to Elise Roberts, who is in the control room, helping me to maneuver around the show. Thank you. 877-960 990-60 Give us a call Now back to the recovering car dealer Okay

Actually, I'm going to interrupt you And we're going to go to a caller He's calling from North Pole Beach Good morning, Charles Welcome Good morning Good morning Good morning

I've got a question Which is the dealer fee Isn't that really much A little more than a couple of gallons of gas and a wash. I mean, do these cars arrive in terrible condition from the manufacturer? Charles, you're absolutely right. You hit on something very important there, too, because, you know, Florida and other states don't have a whole lot of laws protecting car buyers, but they do have a law saying that a car dealer in Florida may not charge you for anything that he is reimbursed for by the manufacturer.

And that's right in the Florida statute. It's totally ignored because in many cases, I'd say more often than not, the dealers use the fact that they wash the car and they prepare the car for delivery is one of the excuses for their dealer fees, as you call them. They call them other things. Dealer fee has become a generic term. Very few dealers now use dealer fee because the public kind of figured out what a dealer fee was. So now they call them things like dealer prep fee, doc fee, administrative fee, tag agency fee. And I could go on for about half an hour because there's no law in Florida saying what you must name that hidden charge. So, yeah, next time you go into a car dealership and you see that disclosure, just try this.

I understand my attorney says that it's illegal for a car dealer to charge me for something that the manufacturer reimburse. you for when you prepared my car for delivery and see what he says. Chances are the salesman won't even know that, but you'll have to take it up the line to a manager. Charles, what do you think? Does that answer your question? Yeah, it does. I also want to congratulate you on the work that you do in the Florida Weekly. It's very informative, and actually I hang on to those.

I called you a couple of weeks ago and hope that the work is almost done. your second opus for recovering card dealers because every week I find something I find something that is useful. I'm a guy who always pays, I'm your generation and I always pay for cash with my car. Thank you, true. Thank you, true. And what it turns out to be a stupid thing to do. You know, let me give a plug to the Florida Weekly. It's a brave newspaper. Another one is a hometown news. And another one, of course, is this radio station, true oldies. A lot of the media now are afraid to voice candid opinions.

Remember, car dealers are big advertisers, and they buy a lot of time on radio. They buy advertising in newspapers. And you'd be surprised how difficult it is for the media, whether it's TV or radio or even now Internet. type advertising, they're afraid if they tell the truth about car dealers, they'll lose their advertising. I don't know if you knew this, but I mentioned earlier in the show that Nancy and I started this show back close to 20 years ago. The radio station then was called Sea View Radio under different ownership, and we were only on for half an hour. The car dealers in Palm

Beach County and probably Martin, maybe even some Broward counties, that advertised on Cview Radio when we were doing this show said they went in mass to the management, the ownership of the station and said, if you don't get rid of Earl and Nancy, Earl stirred on cars, we're going to stop advertising.

And they boycotted the radio station. And believe it or not, the radio station had to ask us to leave. First time I'd ever been fired in my life. I got fired from CV radio. But a year and a half later,

Steve you sold out to another owner and the owner came back to us and said would you come back on the air and I warned the owner I said I'll do it I love it I thank you

but be prepared because the dealers are not going to like it and they said we can get by with or without car dealer advertising and they did there's still some car dealers I believe that advertised here

on this station but yeah Florida Weekly read that paper it's a great paper it's what journalism is all about telling the truth and thanks for bringing it up, Charles. Thanks for the information.

Quick other question. What about transportation fee? I'm curious about that. Is that something that you have no control over, or is that something that's some wiggle room? Well, the transportation fee is charged by the manufacturer. It's the freight, the cost of the trains, planes, or automobiles or whatever, they got that car from the manufacturer to the dealer.

And that's included in the price of the car automatically because that price is paid in the dealer invoice by the dealer to the manufacturer. It's also added to the MSRP, the official Monroney label. So when you buy a car, whether you see the transportation fee or not, it's included both in the cost of the dealer and the retail price. So you've already paid for it. Now, where the violation comes, this is a federal violation, and it happens. If you see freight or transportation added to your buyer's order, then that's a double charge. You're being charged twice, and that is clearly illegal by any law in the land. That's basic law.

You know, if you go into publics and they charge a loaf of bread twice, that's wrong, and it's illegal. If you get charged for freight twice, that's wrong, and that's illegal. So if you see it added by the dealer, freight, or transportation, then they charge you twice. Thank you. Well, thanks for the call, Charles. You're very nice to point out of Florida Weekly and hope you listen regularly and calls back again anytime. We enjoy talking to you. Likewise.

Thank you very much, Cheryl. Bye-bye. Thank you, Charles. We're going to go to Michelle. And Michelle's calling us from Juneau. She's a first-time caller. Before we take her call, there was an article that appeared in the USA, and I want to share it with Michelle and the rest of the ladies that are listening,

you know, in celebration of Women's History Month or International Women's Day, whatever applies to you. Did you know it's easier today for women, a whole lot easier? And this is good news for a woman to us. own business. Things certainly have changed in the last 30 years. And I'm always looking for good news as far as the female is concerned, whether she owns her own business, whether she's purchasing a car, anything at all. And we do have to give them recognition. As I pointed out earlier in the show, we are a big part of the auto industry. And for the dealers to ignore that

is a financial disaster. So I want to thank Michelle for calling this morning and welcome her to the show. Good morning, Michelle. Good morning. I hope you can hear me. Mr. Carr. I'll be quick. My question is, growing up,

65 miles an hour was the optimum speed to nut-guzzle gas. Is that true in today's modern car? Rick? Pretty much 55 is a what they consider a sweet spot speed for

best fuel economy but one of the features you'll find not a lot of cars is an eco light there will be a little light that says just ECO that pops up and it's kind of a pat on the back type thing

that says hey you found that sweet spot where you're getting the best fuel economy and the longer you can keep that light lit up on your dash display the better okay well thank you i was curious about it that i thought maybe it was modern technology uh it was higher than 60 well thank you michel um michelle okay uh yes you're breaking up a little bit but um i want to make light of the uh fact that uh with uh you know we're you're hearing a lot about sticker shock and that apply to the price of gas today, and Rick mentioned, you know, a speed limit, and I'll tell you what,

it's more important today for you to slow down a little bit because it does save on your fuel. And also, as far as your tires are concerned, it's a really good idea for you to keep an eye on your tire pressure because not only does it, you know, put your tire longevity in check. but it definitely takes care of your fuel economy. And it's real important with that sticker shock on gas prices today. Michelle, I would really love for you to email me your address. And my email address is Nancy S. at E.S.Toyota.com. Nancy S.

that's right yeah or you can go to Earl on cars if you don't have a pen right now you can go to Earl on Cars and you can get my email address and send me your address and I'll get that $50 out to you as soon as I can thank you very much that's a nice way to start the day spread the work Michelle thank you okay okay um back to the recovering car dealer yeah this call just gave me a deja vu with the last gas surge and we've had a lot of gas surges. And it's very interesting. We get sloppy and careless when gas is less expensive.

And now when it's $4 plus, we start thinking about it. And Rick gets a lot of questions. And I flash back to a few years ago. And I remember that Rick, we get a lot of people coming into the dealership and they say, I need to tune up or I need this. And my car is not getting good mileage. I bought a hybrid and I'm supposed to get 50 miles a gallon. I'm only getting 40 miles a gallon.

And so Rick typically will drive the car. And he likes to drive at home and back and he gets what mileage he sees. And then if it's good mileage or bad mileage or okay mileage, he uses that to guide what he's going to be to fix it. And correct me if I'm wrong, Rick. But in most cases you find out that the car is mainly getting bad mileage because of the mileage because of human error and Rick is probably the best driver you ever want to meet and here's proof to that statement years ago when the hybrids

first came out and we had a Prius we didn't want to do a publicity stunt of the dealership so we got a Prius and asked Rick to drive it to Washington DC and he got from North Palm Beach Florida Washington DC on less than one tank of gas and he did that because he drove it very, very well. Now, anybody else wouldn't have done that, but Rick, give us a few of your tips on what you did and what other people can do now when they're paying $4.20 a gallon.

Well, total transparency, that was a modified Prius. Oh, yeah, yeah. It had a second battery added in that created what is known today as the Prius Prime. It was just a frontrunner of it. But you got far better. A plug-in hybrid. But hybrids especially get their best fuel economy driving around the city at these nice, slow, easy-going paces.

And it's really just a technique of just learning how to drive your car in the smoothest manner possible. Yeah, you anticipate stops. You anticipate stoplights. You go to a steady speed every time. Now, you just said something I didn't think about. You went all the way to Washington. You weren't in the city all the way, obviously. Right.

So when you were, I assume you're on turnpikes and expressways. Well, for that trip, in order to really make best use of that particular car, I avoided such roads as I-95 and the higher speed traveling, because 70, 80, 90 miles an hour, that's that's you're really using a lot of fuel and you have to go that fast so you run over I'm sorry I you're exactly right yeah but by driving on smaller roads slower speeds easy 35 45 miles an hour gentle on the acceleration now this is this is a big one you see with a lot of people the light turns green and they're instantly that gas pedal is on the floor

and they're just off like a rocket yeah that's where you use the most amount of unneeded fuel. If you first let off the brake, take about just a half a second, just slowly move your foot to the gas pedal. It gives your car a moment to release the brakes and actually let the car start to move forwards on its own just for the first split second before you start giving a little bit of gas and just ease the speed up. And you've got to stay on the right lane.

You've got to stay in the right lane because if you're in my lane, I'm going to blow my horn at you. Well, you're, yeah, you're Tesla, you're just going to blow me off the road. You know, you get guys like me that are, you know, pushing you all the time. And that microsecond after the light turns green. Yeah. Yep. And it's a matter of half a microsecond. Once you get going, if you see the light ahead, you know it's going to change red coast up to it.

Let off the gas and coast. So the bottom line is it's usually driver air when you're really worried about your car. and you can Google that or you could call Rick or you can bring it in. I think it's always, typically we say we hear the thing about, well, the EPA on my window sticker said I'm supposed to get this on highways and I'm not getting it. Well, Rick always gets it and maybe even a little better. So, yeah, if you drive right, you can get probably 20% better gas mileage.

Now another thing you can do, open the trunk of your car, anything you have in there that you don't, Absolutely have to have in your car, take it out. A body? Well. You got to get rid of that. What are you got hanging in the back? Oh, Earl.

Any added weight in the car, anywhere in the car, for every pound you take out, you're going to save a little bit of fuel. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'll tell you what, at Costco. Consumer Report really emphasized all of that exactly what Rick just said. And they were talking about, you know, these racks that everybody. most everybody has on their cars now, bike racks, they're dragging this and that in their trunks on their roofs, and it's amazing how that affects your gas mileage. So take a look at

Consumer Report. It's a good referral. Also, I want to mention Charles said something earlier. He was one of our callers and mentioned the Florida Weekly, and I want to mention Earl's latest column, it's a rerun, but it is a great, you know, a great topic, and that's a decline in fall of the 20th century car dealer, and that is a must read. It is very informative, and you can also find that in the hometown news. We're going to go to Marty, who's in West Palm Beach, and he's been waiting. Good morning, Marty. Nice to hear from you. Good morning. How are you? We're well, thank you. I just wanted to tell you, every Monday morning I run in there, And then last Monday, I drove by three gas stations.

The regular was $3.99 a gallon. About an hour later, an hour and 15 minutes later, I drove by the same three gas stations, and it was already at $4.19. Now, to me, no tanker trucks were there. Nobody put in any more gas. And as far as I'm concerned, the American public is getting ripped off. you deal mostly with cars but we're getting ripped off with the gas prices and people have obviously if you drive a car you have no choice

you have to put gas in there and it's really a shame that there's no control over that and you know as far as I'm concerned I mean I don't know if you should be paying $4 instead of $4.30 but you're definitely getting ripped off by the oil companies in the gas station. Well, Marty, unfortunately, you're right. It's the capital of system.

It's called supplying the man. And so when a car dealer charged your $5,000 over sticker, it's perfectly legal, and that's because he's not getting enough cars because he can charge you $5,000 of sticker. The worst part about it is that the car dealers are making more money than they ever did before. And at some point, you've got to draw the line.

Gas station owners, I feel a little bit more empathetic toward them than I do car dealers. Because these gas station owners, the independents especially, they're not rich guys. And usually gasoline is a lost leader to them. They try to break even on gas so they can sell you the coax and the cigarettes and the sandwiches. And it's not an easy business. So when they have an opportunity to take advantage, I guess they are taking advantage. but it's not as egregious as a car dealer that's having a record profit year more money than he's ever made in his life and then he's still laying it on thick to make an extra five grand because he can. So I agree with you. On the gas station thing also, I would say this, that there are some apps and I hope Rick remembers and some other apps. There are still gas stations out there. that you can get lower prices.

And if you're going anywhere near I-95 or your expressway and whatever part of the world you're in, the closer to the expressways, I'll hire the gas prices. You go off the beaten path, you'll find a significant drop in gas prices. And if you shop around, what's it, gas, give me a... GasBuddy.com. GasBuddy.com.

Put in your zip code, and you can find the lower price. gas. It's going to be high, but it'll be a lot cheaper than that one on the corner of I-95 and North Lake Boulevard. But do the math. I can only tell you this, I can only tell you this, Earl and everybody. I went to Costco the other day. The line to get gas in Costco was so long that they had to take away parking and putting

people, they had to go down another road to get in line to get gas. Well, I'll tell you one thing about Costco. People who stay in line for an hour to save $1.50. You know why that is, Marty? Because Costco has a policy. They will not charge you more than 15% over what they pay for any product. Whether it's a shirt, a loaf of bread, a chicken. Actually, they're selling chickens below that.

But if they pay $4 for gasoline, they'll charge you $4.50 a gallon. 15 cents a gallon. So I agree with you. But that also tells you what the markup is for the other stations, because Costco's probably paying about the same price as some of the bigger chains. Rick had a point. I don't have a problem with getting gas at Costco. I drive right past the one on North Lake at 5.30 in the morning going to work. I pull in, I fuel up, and I'm back on the road in three minutes. I love it. If you go early, you're right. If you go early, you're right. thing is, now, according to Biden, and I don't believe everything any politician says anyways, but anyways, he said the gas companies or oil companies should not use this Russian invasion

of Ukraine as a pretense just to raise prices. Well, that's a profound statement, but www. Ain't going to happen.com. It's human nature. It's capitalism. That's the way it is. We can cry about it. No comment. That's the reason we can complain. We're a free country. We can complain about anything.

But we're not going to change it. It's going to be that way. To Marty's first point, though, it is comical that, you know, the gas station paid a tanker for a load of gas three days ago. It's still in their tank. Exactly. Gas goes overnight. All of a sudden, that their price goes up, too. Well, that's the annoying part.

Yeah. It's the instant increase. And they're all the same. If you're at one corner that's got four stations, there's not going to be one selling it less than the other three. They're all going to have the same price. Okay, we all have a gas story. And I appreciate your observation there, and you're right, it is maddening.

I don't blame you one bit for being angry. Thank you, Marty. Well, have a good day. Thanks, and Marty. Thanks for being a regular caller, Marty. We are going to stick with the phones. I know that Josh has some text to share with you. Rick probably has a lot of YouTube's, and we,

We want to go to our next first female caller. She's calling from Niagara Falls. And Laura, I can't believe it. She's calling from Niagara Falls. And I mentioned to you every single week to our listeners, our show is international. And Jonathan has shared a lot of information with us, and he's been tracking that.

And the podcast that, you know, He started in 2018, I think it was, you know, led him to realize that we have callers and listen from everywhere. So congratulations to Jonathan. Good morning, Laura. Welcome to the show. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you so much.

Can you hear me? Okay. Yes, slide and clear. Good. Thank you. This might be a dumb question. Sorry, if it is. I haven't driven in many years.

My daughter just got her license. and first vehicle. It's a 2017 envoy, if that matters. Whenever we ride, we've been hearing, normally I'd take it to my dad, but he just passed away. So I'm looking to take it to a little mechanic. And when we're riding and taking right-hand turns, we notice it more. The front-and-right wheel makes a loud knocking type of noise, and you can feel it. And I'm just, wondering like before we take it and you have any idea what that could be I'm gonna guess that you get this noise when you're doing a sharp turn and that if you speed up while you're turning it gets a lot faster and usually as you're kind of

going quickly around the corner you'll hear the click click click click click click yeah that's what it is and you can feel it yeah it's most likely the drive axle what's known as the the CV joint or the constant velocity joint in those front drive axles okay well with that cost to get a fixed work I depending on where you go the part is probably going to be around 150 to 200 dollars and the labor I'm gonna say is probably around 200 to three hundred dollars okay so I'm not looking at something in the thousands or whatever that no no but wherever you go get get an estimate

from one place get a second estimate from another spot you'll have a couple of different shops look at it yeah that's great advice thank you i didn't even think of that yeah appreciate it thank you guys so much you know it's all free information laura and i'll tell you what i get three estimates on everything so um i'd like to mention to you that i do need your address so if you could get that to me i'll get that check out to you Oh, awesome. Thank you so much. I had no idea. It was one of the first. You are. Congratulations. I just tuned in because I wanted to call. Thank you. Laura, spread the word. We'd love to build a platform here for the ladies. They are an important part of our show.

So you can give Elise the information that I need. Thank you. Okay, sure. Have a great day. Back to the recovery. How do I get the address to you? you can email me nancy s at e s toyota dot com b f toyota that's a es like earl stewart yes gotcha awesome thanks nancy oh you're welcome laura

all right you guys have a great day if you folks are wondering why i'm passing out my email address you know lately i've really come to uh there's a bit of a problem with me getting these addresses from everyone, and it's really simple. You know, you can go to Erlon Cars, and you can see my email address right there, and I've got to have your address in order to get that $50 out to you. Okay, we're going to go to Warren. He's calling from Pompano. Good morning.

How are you, Warren? Good morning, you know. Good, good, good, good, good. I just had to put from Rick and what he said before about gas noise, because I have a 2010 Ford And I've drove it twice back and forth to northern New Jersey, which is right next to New York City, Fort Lee, New Jersey, too pomp in them. And when you're off-times and you use cruise control, that is really, to me, the biggest gas-saber. If you can use it, and if you're off-times, especially between Richmond and Jacksonville, Florida,

you use a lot of gas models to save on that. Well, yeah, when you're in a normal car, not a hybrid. a normal gasoline engine car, traveling at around 50 to 55 miles an hour at a constant, smooth, steady speed, you will maximize the fuel economy because the federal government kind of ran into this years ago when they imposed the 55 mile hour speed limit, and they suddenly realized, yes, this is a perfect sweet spot where you're getting through the air density. the cars will travel through the air, getting the best speed, but at the highest amount of fuel economy. And so setting your cruise control right at that level and avoiding any quick maneuvers, just driving nice and smooth and steady, you'll maximize that fuel economy. The reason the hybrids get so much better economy doing that stop and go is because the gasoline engine can shut off so much while you're driving in the city, but in a normal car where your engine is running continuous,

that 55 miles an hour on the highway, that's your absolute best fuel economy. All right. And like I said, what's amazing about it when I have the cruise control, I go 65, I'm not going to 60, but I can get no more than 19 or 18 in the city, and I get close to 30 when I'm on the 20, 27, 28, when you're doing the cruise control. And it's just amazing. I mean, you've got to keep your wits about you all the time, but it's just amazing. I got a question for Earl.

Are you there? Yeah. The question is, I know you talked about this on tonight, about leasing a car buying versus leasing. I know you've done it a thousand times. But right now, right exactly now, aren't you really better off leasing the car because of the high prices?

Because I notice the price of the lease hasn't gone up as dramatically as the price of the new car. I mean, a lease is a new car, but it just doesn't seem that it's that much higher than it used to be. It is higher, of course. What do you say about that? Well, you know, the leasing companies and the dealers that are leasing the cars are looking to make as much profit as possible. And, you know, common sense would say you're right about that, but the fact of the matter is the residuals have not been raised by the leasing companies commensurate with the supply and demand

situation. If they were dealing strictly based on the high price of car, today cost and selling price, then common sense would dictate the residuals will be higher. And to give the leasing companies fairness to be them too, also, remember when you lease a car, that car's coming back, they hope, in three years, and not sooner. And who knows what the leasing, what the prices are going to be in three years. So when there were a lot of cars and not a huge demand, but plenty of supply, The manufacturers, most of them use their captive leasing companies, were adjusting their residuals to keep the price down so they could be competitive.

And if you did a good job negotiating a price on a lease, you could get a good one. Today, you're going to pay through the nose if you lease a car, and you're going to pay through the nose if you buy the car. Either way. Yeah, but isn't the fact that the lease price, you know, the per monthly rate or whatever, has gone up, obviously, but it hasn't gone, seemingly to me, am I wrong, it hasn't gone up that dramatically. What about your dealership? Like if you're buying a camera, a moderate camera, how much has it gone up on a lease compared to the bottom? I'll let Josh answer that question because he's

in the trenches every day. What about that, Josh? In my experience, it's kind of, it's gone up commensurate with the retail purchase. If at least it's like $40 or $50 more a month now, than it was, you know, eight, nine months ago, which is probably about accurate. That translates into $15,000 to $2,000 more and out-of-pocket expense, which is kind of what the increase in the retail price is. So it's really, it depends on the model you're looking for and what the best deal, whether it's at least versus finance on that particular model. I don't think there's a blanket statement saying that leasing is better across the board.

Okay, because it just seems to me that I'd rather pay $50 more a month than pay $10,000 over the period of a brand new car. But, again, that's totally valid. If your monthly budget and the payment is paramount to you, then, yeah, I agree, that $50 more a month is a lot easier to swallow than $5,000 over sticker. The best news for you leasing a car is the fact that value of that car, market value, is very high. high now and I'm not sure where you are in your lease but the closer you are to the end of the lease the more profit you can make you can you can exercise your option to purchase and flip the car sell it to somebody else even back to the dealer and make a lot of money so the recent yeah well that's 100% true because my daughter had a Ford fusion coming with a Lisa hybrid and I was going

to buy it but I decided it wasn't going to work but the buy I was $15,000, and the deal he wanted it. And I just said, I didn't look at New Jersey. And I said to her, well, tell a deal if he wants the car to give you a few grand because he's going to sell that car for $25,000. He said, well, I don't want to bother with her son. But father, she went in and said, well, give me a couple of grand, and you could have the car back.

And he did. He did it without even blinking an eye. I don't know what he gave her. He gave it like $2,000. He said, he'd bring the car to me. I'll give you two grand right now. He's going to sell for at least five. He was only 15,000 miles.

Yeah. And I think my brother just got more, but, you know, she knew the dealer, and she didn't want to go shopping him around. He had all the paperwork and, you know, all that stuff. So I think he ended her a check for $2,500 in here. You know, I'll take the car back, and I don't know, he'll get all the paperwork on it. So that's 100% true. Yeah, if you're leasing a car or own a car today, you're going to be able to offset that huge increase in price on the new lease or a new purchase. So that's the good news.

The bad news is if you don't have a car to trade and you're not in a lease, you're going to pay thousands of dollars over a sticker. It's a bad time to buy a car. Wait, prices will come down. When do you see the last question? When do you think that? The million dollar question. Yeah, it varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. Certain manufacturers are doing fine. Prices are coming down. Other manufacturers, prices are going up.

It depends on where you are in the world, what your microchip situation is. Tesla, for example, doesn't have a problem with microchips. Nobody can figure out why that is. Actually, I think it's just good management. But other places, like we talk about, Nancy and we're talking about BMW the other day, in their situation, they have a huge microchip issue. And so you have to kind of decide what you're going to buy, and make you're going to buy, and then decide when the price is going to be right.

Redden Automotive News is the current issue. journal for car dealers and manufacturers that the decrease in manufactured cars today is less than they thought it was going to be so it's positive on the horizon it's positive that supplies coming up and when supply comes up prices will go down all right thank you very much guys have them done nice you're welcome a great place to read all about buying and leasing is in you can go to Erlon Cars and there's a great read there, you know, buying versus

leasing and also a whole lot to be said about the car dealers and the manufacturers and why they want you to lease a car. 877-960 or you can text us at 772-4976530. Don't forget your anonymous feedback dot com. And also

I haven't mentioned yet, but there's a great website for you to go to, and that's WWW Florida Law Protecting Car Buyers. Take advantage of that at Erlon Cars. Gives you a whole lot of information before you step out the door and purchase lease, do anything at all. And he breaks it all down in the terminology that you can understand. I think we're going to get back to Josh.

Yeah, I have the kickoff text from Anne-Marie. Oh, hi, I'm Marie. And, of course, she's touching on a subject that is on everyone's minds, the gas prices again. So some of this might have been addressed already. But she says, good morning. The price of gas of regular gas at my local Costco has jumped 92 cents since February 24th. And that's the cheapest fuel in my area that I could find. This isn't the first time fuel prices have shot up quickly, as painful as gas prices are.

At least we don't have the long gas lines like we did back in 1973. I don't remember that. You're a pure baby. Rising fuel prices prompt the following questions. Have you noticed a change in which vehicles your customers are now looking at to buy? For instance, are they abandoning their dreams of owning a tundra and going with a Prius or maybe a Raffir hybrid instead? I could quickly answer that. They might be wanting to jump quickly into a more fuel-efficient vehicle, but just given the crazy inventory shortage, that transition is not as easy to do as it once was.

Well, I was going to ask you, Josh, because it's funny, I had a reporter from the Wall Street Journal calling me a couple days ago, and she left the message, and she was on her airplane going to National Automobile Dealers Association Convention, and I was going to call you, and I forgot. So it is interesting. The manufacturers have cranked up the SUVs and the trucks, because they're the most profitable to the dealer and to the manufacturer. huge supply, I mean, low supply, huge demand. So that's the big stuff is what the car dealers, the manufacturers, make the most money on. Now we have these soaring gas prices. So my question to you was going to be pretty much the question of the Ann Marie, is what are people saying would they come into the dealership now when all we have, if we have a few vehicles,

they're always the big stuff, the gas guzzler. I think there's more of a lag now because of how slow the supply chain is moving. So we're not, people aren't coming in and making these transactions. There might be more inquiries on some fuel efficient vehicles, but we're not, the cars that we're delivering are still big trucks and SUVs. People, when they order a car, what Josh is talking about is if we sell 300 cars in a month, those cars were ordered three, four, five months ago. Exactly.

And so the truck comes in. All the cars were ordered months ago, and we deliver them to the customer. So here we are in a huge high-priced gas situation. The few people that trickle in, that call in, are they saying, I'm thinking about buying a Corolla or a hybrid. I'm thinking about buying a Prius instead of buying a tundra. Are you hearing any of that? Well, we're starting to hear it.

It hasn't really started as quickly as I would imagine. We are seeing a cool off in some of the V8, like on the wholesale market trade-in values on like a big, you know, heavy-duty trucks and as such. That's starting to cool off, but there hasn't been an immediate effect on the demand of hybrids yet. There has been, of course, this increasing demand for electric vehicles. I get lots of questions about when's the BZ4X coming out and things like that. But I'm sure we're going to find a, you know, a greater demand for hybrids and electric vehicles. And nobody said, I'm not canceling my tundra order. Not yet.

Not yet. As a matter of fact, the tundra is selling, I mean, especially we have a redesigned 22 tundra, so we're selling more tundra's year over year. I believe that's the only pickup right now that's actually seeing an increase in sales, F-150 and the rest of the other big trucks because of the supply chain issues. They're down, but tundra's actually up. Very good. Love Anne-Marie's text.

Yeah, she's great. And she didn't, in her second part of the question, is just once again, Can you give us tips on how to get the most fuel efficiency out of the vehicles? And I think Rick covered that well. A wise man once told me, drive like there's an egg on the bottom of your foot. I like that. That man was Rick, Gurney. Yeah, just drive gently.

So thank you, Anne-Marie. We love your text. Hey, Anne-Marie. Keep him coming. Did you know that in, I think, 1970, gas was like 36 cents a gallon? Notice I couldn't get that out. I was watching. You couldn't buy it.

They were running out. Pardon me? But back then, they were running out of gas. You couldn't get the gas. Okay, back to Josh. You got it. I have another text here. This guy's in a good position.

He says, hi, I'm looking into buying a McLaren. Apparently, it's a used one with little miles on it. The Carfax says it was a corporate-owned vehicle. Should I be worried about that? You know, I don't believe so. I don't think that's a very uncommon thing to see nowadays. In the old days, they thought if he saw a rental vehicle, or something on the Carfax.

It would be the kiss of death. But in this market, it long as the car is sound and has a clean title. Even a police car. Police car, lease car, rental car. They used to be pariahs and they would get thousands of dollars less in appraisals now.

We find other corporations and police departments and they take good care of the car. Probably better than the individual. Yeah, right? But wouldn't that simply mean that maybe somebody that owns a company bought the car under their company name so they could drive it as their personal vehicle

simply because that way they could maybe save on the taxes or something. You're a very negative person, right? Why would you say that? I'm only saying, but that way, this car was probably still driven just by one person and taken very good care of and probably driven, even in McLaren, you're going to drive that car a little bit carefully because that's not a car you're going to get crazy with. I imagine the McLaren wasn't like a runner vehicle for a company going to the bank and back. No, I would imagine that car is probably going to be in extremely good shape and well worth it.

So buy with confidence. All right. Here's another question. This will be in Rick's Wheelhouse. Good morning. My question is about my 2006 Mustang v6. When using the AC as it cycles to engage the compressor, the engine idles roughly for a second or two. This happens when the car is at stop, like at a got a stoplight. And this is from Bob. Okay. What you might try first off, cleaning the throttle body. One of the things we found is that throttle bodies on cars will get a little bit of carbon buildup. How much will that cost them, Mark? Average shop should be about $100 to $150. Basically what's happening is when the air conditioning

turns on, the engine should increase its idle speed a bit to compensate for the extra load. and if that throttle body is dirty, it won't compensate properly because it has to open further to overcome that carbon buildup. So that's probably what you got going on there is it's got a momentary delay because of that carbon buildup. Otherwise, you're going to need to have them check out whatever system Ford uses to increase that throttle speed. And when you take it in, wherever you take it in, don't tell them, please clean my throttle body, tell them, describe the problem to them. tell them the symptoms, test drive the car with them, and be sure you take a reasonable test drive and then ask them to diagnose it. Exactly.

Because no matter what you tell them is wrong with your car, even if it's not wrong with the car, they'll charge you for it and your car won't be fixed. So make it their responsibility when they diagnose it. After they diagnose it, you can say, well, I had a friend that said he thought it was a throttle body, but if you think that's what will fix it, go ahead. Be careful. Rick is being a technician, appreciates that more than anyone. He likes our customer who will call him or come in and say,

if the car goes, beep, beep, beep in the right-hand side and let him worry about what's causing that. If you come in with an idea what's wrong, you make the technician start from scratch. He needs to know the smell, the vibration, the location of it, blah, blah, blah, and then he'll fix it for you. One of the greatest things I've had with odd noises and things like that

is a customer comes in and they've used their phone to get a recording of it. And sometimes it's hard because the microphones aren't the best. Yeah. But believe it or not, that can make a big difference. Great idea. Yeah, I just had somebody send me three videos of a strange buzzing noise from the inside of their corona.

Great idea. Yeah, good stuff. Okay. All right, I got some more here. Rick, you're all warmed up, so we'll just go right back to you. See if you can handle this one. Hello, Rick, I have a 2005 Toyota Camry. When I checked the oil on the dipstick after the car had been sitting overnight, the oil was at, quote, at the full mark.

Then I drove around for 20 minutes, turn the car off, and let the car sit for 10 minutes. After that, I checked the oil again, and the dipstick seems to be very wet by the low mark and only slightly damp around the full mark and nearly dry. which one do you think is a correct reading do you think my oil is low depending on what you're looking at because what you want to look for is that dividing line where the actual oil level is and if the oil is real clean sometimes it's hard to tell on that stick where it is driving around the oil splashes up all over the stick so you need to pull it out wipe it off wait a few moments so that the oil that's in that tube has drained back down, then put it in and check it again.

This gives you an accurate idea of what the oil level really is. I think what you're also saying is that probably can't happen that your oil would be real high and after a short drive be real low. There's something wrong with the way you're looking at it. Yeah, and it may be that you may have checked it with the car on a slightly different level, the spot where you're checking it. You need to have as flat a surface as possible and check it on that exact same spot each time. And also remember that some oil

is going to be up in the engine slowly dripping its way back down into the crankcase. So it can come back up by even another couple of millimeters on that stick. You know, I don't want to make cars more expensive, especially in today's market, but there's got to be a better way. It seems like such a primitive way

to check the most vital fluid in your car. See, that's why there's... The Earth's rotation is throwing it off. But most dipsticks have about an inch and a half range that is the safe range, from low to high. As long as you're somewhere in that range, up closer to the high mark, you're fine. There is a better way. It's called an electric vehicle. There you go.

I mean, really... I stepped right into that one, didn't it? Yeah, the combustion engine is a dinosaur, and it won't be around with this much longer. So hang on to that 2006 Mustang, you know, it'll be an antique, it could be a collector's item. Yeah, they said 19% of buyers now are ready or likely to make an electric vehicle their next purchase. Two years ago, it was only 5% of buyers. That's an amazing statement because we talked about that right here. I was attacked on Facebook recently on my personal page because I was bragging about the fact that I looked at buying all the good stuff I have on my Prius app.

And after 31 days, I look at it, and it tells me how much electricity I used. And I used $29 worth of electricity to charge my Prius in the last 31 days. Tesla. Tesla. People would be like, you traded the plaid on the Prius? And I saved 75% had I bought gasoline. So $29 that cost you to drive your car for the month? For a month, yeah.

Yeah, we were dropping. You know that everybody? Yeah, exactly. And then, and then, but you have, there are people that are clinging to their combustion engines. And I was attacked, you know, by people that, it was tells me that that's not true. It came down and blah, blah, blah. I mean, folks, changes change is going to happen. And I promise you, and by the middle of this century, you're going to have an antique if you're driving the combustion injured car.

So nothing wrong with them if you've got to like to buy a lot of nit for gas. but they're fun to drive for a lot of people. Yeah, and you and I had this discussion yesterday. I'm going to put this out there for everybody, everyone to know, and I do apologize to you, Earl, for having to, well, put your test while on hold for a while. We're driving, or I'm driving the Avalon, and Earl drove the Avalon this morning, and we were talking, I was complaining about what it cost me to fill up my tank on my Avalon, and Earl shared with me that information.

$29 for the month to run his Tesla. Of course, it only went three miles. And Nancy just spent, and Nancy just spent $70 throwing up her tank. So it's kind of dramatic when you look at it that way. You know, the Tesla is just a great car, but it definitely is a sports car. I'm a bit elderly and my back, my back, my back, my back. Anyway, the shock that it just takes that cervical thrott. Saccharoliac, boom, and you're in a lot of pain.

Anyway, I'll get better soon. 877-960-99-60. And you can text us at 772-4976530. Now back to... I'll take it. Okay. I got one here. This is a familiar topic.

I have a 2014 Corolla S-plus. The paint is coming, peeling off the roof and hood corners. car always goes to get washed at the dealership and hand wash always had Toyota never had this issue before I wonder if there are other Toyota owners with the same issue there definitely are yes and it's in 2014 so I think they're they're squarely in the in the range on Corolla's there I think it goes up to 14 Corolla I believe right can I have a few seconds to vent Rick you can have four seconds I am furious at Toyota for the crappy quality of their clear coat on these cars

and the delamination of paint because even my 13 Tacoma that I tell you it had more wax put on that truck in the first eight years of its life than any vehicle ever deserves and the paint is delaminating everywhere on my truck.

Are you in the campaign? My truck is not covered because it's the nautical blue, the dark blue, and I am furious with Toyota. over this. It looks horrible. I'm on treat that like a phone call because what you should do is go to the service manager and you should tell them how loyal a customer you are. Now you've bought and how many toilet you bought and ask them to get it covered under goodwill and to at least,

at the very least, reduce the cost to you and if that, if Mark can't get that, that's our service manager doesn't get that paid for under goodwill with with the manufacturer then then we we play our trump card which is we will do the work at our cost pay the technician what it cost to paint it pay the cost of the paint and all we're asking the manufacturer to pay is for that which will be a great reduction and and i appreciate that immensely but and i've actually already been speaking with Alan Napier about it for getting this done. We'll draw that line there. But yeah, Toyota and a lot of other manufacturers too. Alan Napier can't get it bought.

Yeah. Okay. But I have noticed a lot of other cars too are having this issue. We're talking personal stuff. Yeah. No, but I think there is a message here to all of you. All the manufacturers and almost all the dealers, if you have anything out of warranty, paint especially, you're going to get a no. So anticipate to know when you have problems with paint on any car you have. Typically three years, 36,000 miles is the paint warranty, which is silly. Especially if you take good carrier car, as Rick did with his waxing it every 20 minutes. So he should have had more respect shown him by the dealer and the manufacturer.

So you have to go and you have to start with higher up at the dealership. You have to go to the manufacturer and you have to negotiate. And I found it in nine times out of ten with our customers, you can get an adjustment. It might be a discount. It might be done at cost or it might be completely free. But we've seen cars painted, whole cars painted, that have been thousands of miles and years out of warranty. and it can be done. So that's the message.

Don't give up. Choose the right dealer and then go to the manufacturer or let the dealer go to the manufacturer on your bequest. And 90% of the time you'll get something on an adjustment. Great advice.

Okay, let's move on. Okay, we're going to move on, but I'm going to talk about Denise, and if you don't remember who she is, she was a caller a couple of weeks ago, and she discussed with you her 2022 Volkswagen Tahoe and she is looking for reimbursement on her rental expense. I mean, it was a 22 and she only had the car seven months before, you know, she had all

these problems with the engine harness and we suggested the Lemon Law to her. Denise, give us a call. Give us a follow up. We'd like to find out how that all turned out for you and whether you were able to take advantage of that cell phone number, you know, that Earl gave you. So 877960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6-530. And for those other people out there that might have a lemon law issue, you can Google, and that's what I did for Denise, all I did was Google Lemon Law lawyers, and there's a lot of them.

And you get one that'll take it on contingency. and the lemon law is pretty clear. They know the law, and the dealer knows the law, and the manufacturer knows the law. Typically, they're decided by arbitration at the Better Business Bureau in Florida. And if you have a case, you're going to get a reimbursement of some amount.

If you've driven the car longer, it'll be a lower amount. If it's a relatively new car, you'll get a higher amount. But if you have a lemon law issue, which means you took it to the dealer and they couldn't fix it or they wouldn't fix it,

and you give them, You give them three tries. You do it in writing, and the Lemon Lawyer will advise you on that. Again, great information. We're going to go back to the phones where Julie is holding from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Julie. Good morning. Welcome.

Hi. Hi there. I had a comment and a question. I have a 20-21 Corolla that I did not buy for your dealership. I wish I had after reading your column and watching and listening to your show. before the car was even a year old, the battery died. And, you know, when I bought my car, I asked the car dealer, where's the emergency brake? And he said, when you park, it engages it, when you, you know, put the car in power, it disengaged it,

which is all fine and well, and so your battery dies. I called up a tow truck company, and they couldn't put it on the flatbed because they couldn't disengage the brake. Then they sent another tow truck out, and they lifted up by the wheels and towed it. and I asked the tow truck driver, is this a problem? And he said, you wouldn't believe. Is that just a Corolla or a Toyota or all new car manufacturers doing that? That's a whole lot of new cars are going to the electric parking brake and electric park to where you cannot even put the car in neutral.

If the electrical system is a problem, you can't even shift into neutral to be able to... That I found out. Yeah. And like with smart key cars, cars that have the, just the little remote fob and a push button start, even if you put the car into neutral, if there's an electrical problem with the car, the steering lock will not disengage. So again, you can't push the car. Like if the car were dropped off in the dealership and we had to push it inside the shop, we can't steer the car to push it. it's something that the engineers never happened to stop to think about is what happens when there's a problem with these cars they didn't put in a backup system a redundancy if there was anything but I guess there is nothing the new cars they'll make they'll change but yeah Julie let me let me say this I first of all I didn't know that and I learned a lot from Rick I think that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard what the menu

factors are doing. And I hope there's some lawyers out there listening because, you know, there is a warranty on the car. The warranty on the car, you're got a 2021. You're completely covered under warranty. So here you had an issue. There's a warning on the battery, a virtually new battery. There is something in the law called consequential damages. So you had to pay a tow truck and you shouldn't have had to because of the bad design and the lack of forethought by the engineers that designed that car. So the manufacturer should be liable for that toe and any other damages. So I'm glad you told me about that. I was certainly, were you, were you compensated for the toe? No. Well, you should be. And you go to the dealer and demand it. And she should. She should

have a Toyota care, which is a two-year Rosite Assistance Program. Good point. I did use Toyota for one of my toes, and of course was free. The other problem I encountered was this was back in August of last year, and, you know, there was a shortage of everything, and at first they said they didn't think they had a battery, and I said, how long would it take, and they said, well, it could be a month or more. Luckily, they found one at the dealership, because I don't know if I would have had to pay for the rental for all that while, but it was even a problem of obtaining a battery at that point.

No, Toyota would have covered the rental car, and I know that for a fact, because we have several cars sitting in our parking garage right now with customers out in rental cars because we're still waiting on back-ordered batteries. Thank God. Yeah, Julie, you're bringing up some very good points that are of interest to a lot of listeners. You know, a lot of people still think car dealers are affiliated with a manufacturer. Well, only by a contract called the franchise agreement. car dealers are independent businesses and some of them some of them are good more more of them are not so good and right and when you go to a car dealership and you get a no and you're talking to a service advisor in the service drive or whatever they call themselves he's really a salesman he's

on commission and uh you need to go higher up you need to go to a service manager and sometimes that's not high enough sometimes you have to try to get to a general manager or even the manufacturer So they really took advantage of you, and I'm really sorry that happened, but you should be, get that other toe. You'll get it paid for if you stand up and bring it up the letter. Right. Yeah, I thought you might appreciate that story because I hear you talking about how stupid some of the manufacturers are with things they've done to the car. And I didn't know if, I mean, I didn't know it. I didn't know if your listeners were aware, that is a problem when the batteries or the electrical systems gone for a while.

That's the stupidest thing. I can't believe the manufacturers did that. So has that rendered the most common type of tow truck ineffective on newer cars? No, because if it's simply the issue with overcoming the electric parking brake, you would jumpstart the car, hook up a battery jumper to it, and you can then disengage that parking brake to get it up onto the flatbed of a tow truck. But the battery is dead as a door now? If the battery is totally stone cold dead and the tow truck doesn't have a proper jump starter box or jumpstart cables,

then they would have to get a regular tow truck, raise the car up, and put dollies under the back wheels, or you'd have to literally drag it onto the tow truck. Which could possibly damage. It's going to damage the tires. Determinal to the car. Julie, that is a great call. I'll tell you what.

You not only advised a lot of listeners, you invite, you know, Josh and I and Nancy Rick knew about it, but we didn't know about it. Right. No. So this is great news. because they tried jump-starting my car three times that wouldn't work so it was absolutely dead but if you have to call a tow truck I would say call a dolly

because I waited three hours between two truck and the dolly was the ultimate one so if you were battery totally dead asked for a dolly tow truck if you don't have an e-break let them know yeah amazing Julie I want to thank you for the call and I also want to let you know that you can go to

Erlan cars and pull up a lot of columns at he talks about the manufacturer and the consumer and it's a really they're all great reason very educational but you definitely sound like a very educated consumer i think that might be my next column your call because i now i learned something i didn't know about if i don't know about it and i'm a car dealer think about all the customers out there that don't know about it so i will alert the uh the media thanks julie okay well thank you bye bye have a great weekend We're going to go straight back to the phones, and then we're going to take, and we're going to talk to Rick.

He's got some YouTubes. Frank, a regular caller from Jupiter Farms. Welcome, Frank. Well, good morning, Nancy and Earl and all the rest of the gang. Hey, Frank. It's always fun to say hi. Morning. And after listening to your show this morning with them talking about the gas prices, which I figure everyone's talking about nowadays, and back to the old days of 55-mile-hour speed limits.

so that's very true and driving on 995 you can watch the people flying by you if I'm around 55 or 60 I think the best thing too over the years

of how they go on from two-speed transmissions like in my first car the 57th Chevy until today they have eight maybe 10 speeds my pickup truck has a 10-speed automatic so it keeps it in a nice low RPM range when you're cruising but like they said just keep a steady state

and I notice now while I'm driving down the highway with that new car that we got that has lane assist or lane keep or whatever it's called if you try and change your lane found your turning signal it pulls you back of your lane and the steering wheel vibrates and so when I see cars passing me and if they put on their turning signals which is obviously the thing you should do I realize they probably have the lane assist in their cars and they don't like the steering wheel vibrating and the ones that just cut you off anyway Obviously, our older cars. Back to 95, here's one quick result I've seen over the years, especially now. If people slow down, they'll save gas. But I think when they're on 9-95, they think 95 is a speed limit and not the highway. Yep.

That's a bad joke. No. No, that's very true. That's very true. It is true. I mean, you wonder why people disobey laws. And, you know, it's just like a dog. when they poop on the carpet

and you don't do anything, they keep on pooping on the carpet. You get on 995, you can't go in 55, otherwise you'll get rear-ended. We had an earlier caller talking about how he got good gas pilots by going 55 and I said stay in the right lane,

because otherwise you'll be rear-end. So you go anywhere on an expressway today, if you try to go the speed limit, speed limit, you're endangering your life, other people's lives, and the highway patrol ignores it. The police ignore it. So when you ignore people committing crimes, whether it's doing 75 and a 55 zone, and let me tell you, they totally ignore that, or as car dealers charging hidden fees to people and not prosecuting the car dealer, if you don't enforce the law, you encourage the breaking of the law, and that's where we are.

No accountability. Yeah, accountability, exactly. Okay. Everything you say every week is so well received and so good for your audience. It's a great show you're doing, and I'm glad you keep at it. Thanks so much, Frank.

And I'll be quiet for a change to not talk to you much. Thanks so much, Frank. We really enjoy hearing from you and Mary. 877-960 and you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. And I want to take a moment and mention Earl's vigilantes and he hasn't had his hat on this Saturday morning. You put the hat on. But it looks better on you. I don't know.

I think you win. Okay. At any rate, Earl's vigilantes, let me tell you what, you can help us out. We can't do it all here. And we have some great people that have joined in. And not only are you helping you. helping, you know, a lot of listeners, but a whole lot of people in your community. And you don't have to know how to take an engine apart, but just go to Earl on Cars and you can sign up.

Also, you can volunteer as a, to help, you know, the seniors get around this digital age and not everybody can maneuver their way around the Internet. So you can sign up for that too. So you can go to Erlon Cars and take a look and sign up. Thank you so much. And isn't this the greatest show in the world? I have to say that. I really feel that.

It's so positive. You can call here and get free information. And our callers, they're amazing. They share information with us that we don't know. And everyone here on the panel, I have to thank everybody for all of their, you know, and we're going to go back to, we have no more phone calls, so we're going to go back to Rick. And we've got a couple here.

First one is from High, who is in Southern California. Hi, hi. I used that one. And he says, by the way, he says, fuel prices there are almost $6 a gallon already. Where is this? Southern California. Oh, wow.

Yep. And he says, why are some of the Porsche dealerships so snappy when there are no cars? And I asked him what he meant by Snappy. He said, well, they're just rude, not sure how they make money, just poor customer service skills. It seems post-COVID and the less they care, they just don't feel like they should be customer-friendly. How do they make money when they act like that? Well, that kind of defies our experience with luxury guard dealers. I don't know the answer to that.

We're doing a series of Luxford car shops and at the request of our listeners, because we tell. typically didn't. And our last shop was BMW. So we found that the luxury guard dealers tend to treat their customers nicer than the Hyundai and Kia and the Toyota dealers. I have a theory that like we're in a seller's market now. And in some dealership cultures, it's us versus them, like the customers are the, like they're the enemies somehow. And now that like the dealers are holding all the cards, I think a lot of the evil salespeople and dealers are, you know, now they feel emboldened, and now they can exact their revenge on the customers who've been trying to get a good price. If you don't buy the car, the hell

with you. That guy over there that's pulled on the driver, he'll drive. There's a lot of people who won this car. Exactly. So they're just, I think they're getting rid of a lot of a built-up tension. They, oh boy. Okay. Just a theory. And from our friend, Neegan won in Arizona. He says, a good friend and a neighbor of his is a deputy sheriff and he said they're actually doing stakeouts on various vehicles for catalytic converter thefts apparently they're having quite a wave out there

and he actually have a lot of time on their hands out there with no drugs, murders, rapes, robberies they're sticking out because the safest town of the country watching out for you but remember we had

quite a rash of that here at one point. Maybe the donuts are too high pressure. What is it? There's a gold in their converters? Platinum. Platinum. There's platinum and other precious metals inside catalytic converters.

It was land cruisers and they just, they caused quite a bit of damage. There's some land cruisers. Because the SUVs and the trucks are generally high enough off the ground that someone can simply slide up under there with a battery operated reciprocating saw, cut right through the exhaust in a few moments and boom, they're going. And boom, they're gone that quickly. I noticed they have a nice, like, silver-looking chain. What does that make it up, right?

Silver. Okay, just making sure. Hey, I got some precious metals in my body here, my knees. I better keep an eye on things. A platinum pin in you? All right. And to go along with that, you'd be amazed at some of the photos that I've seen on Facebook and on the Internet from other technicians on things that people have created with steel cages.

built around the catalytic converters on their exhaust. Fascinating. To try to prevent theft. Has anybody had their catalytic converters stolen? I've heard nothing about it. It used to happen a long time ago. There's another big rash of them happening again. I haven't heard about it.

It was a big deal of like 10, 15 years ago, but this is the first life of my sense. It was huge. All right. Let's see. The next one we have here is coming in from our buddy Donovan. and he's saying that checking the oil, in his opinion, you want the dipstick. And one of the classes that I've had recently was with the new Toyota Supra. The Toyota Supra does not have an oil dipstick to it.

And the procedure for checking the oil, it has to go to a dealership, and we actually have to do a certain drive pattern with the car, then connect a computer to a... to the car, and my computer has to talk to the car. And this can take over an hour and a half to do. This has to be a BMW thing. It is. This is coming because Super is made by BMW.

So, yeah, modern cars, that simple little dipstick for checking the oil. Trust me, folks, it's the best technology ever. But now they've made it super complicated on some of these, and it's only going to hurt people in the long run. In the long run, there won't be any dipsticks or combustion engines, so they don't have to worry about it. Again, I think you're right on because Donovan even says, with the increase in gasoline prices, have you seen more foot traffic into the dealership for people looking at plug-in Toyotas? And he's quite up on Tesla technology. Yeah, Josh answered that question a while ago.

Is his Tesla has reported they've seen 100% increase in orders in many locations around the country. Well, we haven't. Josh, you answer the question again because we have new people tuning in. Yeah, no, like I said, we haven't seen the immediate rush into demand for, you know, alternative fuel vehicles. Of course, you know, we have hybrids on the toilet doesn't have an electric lineup yet. Right. Well, I totally agree with Earl on this one.

Electric is going to be the wave of the future for cars. Myself, I just hope I'm young enough now that I'll be able to do. see that wave of autonomous cars come in when I don't even have to own a car. I could just use an app. The car will pick me up, take me where I want to go, and let somebody else worry about all the headaches of it. Well, I can second that because I'm 81 years old, and one of these days, they're not going to let me drive anymore. And I've got to take a driving test in two years. I think I'm pretty good, but you never know.

So I hope that I have an autonomous car that I can just hop in and say, take me to Walgreens, take me to Earl Stewart, Toyota, take me to the Sanoco Station, and I won't have to worry about driving. Why would you have to go to the Sanoco Station? You're exactly right. To buy a Coke. Hey, let's get back to hopping. That's where the money is. Let's get back to hopping.

As long as we can hop, as you mentioned. Hop on pop. I just want to be a lot of people out there. You know, I guess I'm more sensitive to the elderly population now that I've joined it. But think about it. Think about what it means to some of you out there who can't drive. Some of you out there who are driving without a license and you shouldn't be. Some of you out there that you're driving but your sons and daughters say, dad or mom, you shouldn't be.

what is worse than giving up that car that you've been driving all your life. Yeah. And we will see it in a few years where you'll be able to have that autonomous car. And the car I'm driving now, Josh and Nancy and Rick know this, the car I'm driving now, my Tesla is totally autonomous. But I can't drive it totally autonomously because the Tesla software is such that I have to be a very, very, very good driving. very, very good driver. In order for me to get, have them before Elon Musk will flip the switch and allow me to say, take me to the Taco Bell and take me home before I can do that with total autonomy, I have to have a 100 score, perfect driving score for 100 miles. And I got up to 96.

And then the other day I was following too close and I got on and I dropped back to 95. I can't get up to 100, but I'm just in my little vignette there. That's all. We all need to vent. I'll tell them we'll come. Now, I've also read an article recently that said that the federal government watching over, you know, the NHTSA has said that, yes, in the very near future, they're also going to be allowing designs of cars that will not even have driver input controls. In other words, the car would be completely autonomous with no way for the driver or the passengers in the car to even control it at all.

Of course. I mean, because the ultimate computer will be far better and far safer than the human. Will they be perfect? No. Autonomous cars, I don't care how good they get. There's always going to be accidents. But here's something new. It'll be autonomous only lanes where they go 120 miles an hour. Yeah. Here's an. interesting thing. I never thought of this. Maybe you did or some of you, how they're listening to it. They just came up with an app that is a pairs with your autonomy thing that pairs with the car and it's available. They're making the app now. And ultimately, everyone will be

carrying this app. It'll be in your watch or it'll be on your iPhone and it will tell the car exactly where you are. This was precipitated by the Uber autonomous car. being tested that ran over a pedestrian so somebody's thinking hey i got an idea the idea was the app you have it the app in your watch if i'd have that app in the watch or the pedestrian that was run over uh the car would have known exactly where you are and and the car would said hey there's a guy 20 feet in front of me i'm going to slam on my brakes and you would have stopped the guy's life would have been safe so that's the kind of thing that's happening that is just absolutely don't forget your watch at home people what's really amazing to me is this all this technology

has come out in the last 30 to 40 years you look back at cars back in the 80s you're wrong most of this technology has come out in the last five years right the sum total of human knowledge after world war two was doubling every 40 years the sum total of human knowledge now doubles every 12 hours. And it's increasing so fast, imagine what we're going to have in another 10 years. We can't.

We cannot imagine. You can't imagine. Okay. Good stuff. I got some couple texts and feedbacks before we jump into the mystery shopping report. Earl, love your show. Curious as to why you picked Toyota

as your dealership versus other manufacturers. I hate to do an infomercial, But I was a Pontiac dealer and the Pontiac was a piece of junk and a gas guzzler and the quality was terrible. And when I experienced the Toyota, I found out it was a far superior vehicle. It still is. It's still one of the greatest cars on earth. I say a lot of bad things about Toyota. I got a lot of big shots of Toyota that don't like me and I got it.

I got all the Toyota dealers don't like me. But I just tell it like I see it. Sometimes I'm wrong. Sometimes I'm right. But it's the Japanese built a great car. Honda now is a great car, the Nissan, the Subaru. Let me read you something about Subaru. And it's in the automotive news. I'll make it brief. Here's the headline. This is from the CEO of Subaru. His name is Tom Doll, D-O-L. Tom Doll, headline says, Subaru's kind of plea, don't be a car dealer. And basically, Dahl sent a letter out. to all Subaru dealers and said, you know, we don't screw our customers. We are transparent

and honest and you're a Subaru dealer. He says stores they charge over sticker price are breaking the promise that we make as Subaru dealers. They're acting like a stereotypical car dealer. Taking advantage of the current imbalance between supply and demand is something a car dealer would do. Now this is from the CEO, and if you think I'm kidding you, here it is right here. There's a CEO, Tom Dahl, the Subaru. Now you can hear the footsteps behind you, you car dealers that are screwing the customers, and the manufacturers, and they're not the first. General Motors has said things like that, Toyota said things like that, Ford has said things

like that. Everybody's waking up to what car dealers are doing, and you're worried about your franchise, worried about your next generation of car dealers, let me tell you something. You don't get your ax straight and you don't start listening. The consumers are whising up fast and they will soon start giving their business to the car dealers that treat them right. And this is what Tom Dole was Subaru. By the way, Subaru is one of the best Japanese cars on the market and they are also, the

dealers also treat you better. if you want to buy a new vehicle, you could do a lot worse than a Subaru, and you'll be treated right in most cases. You know, I like that article, but I like my article. I didn't know you'd written one. I didn't know you had written one. I did. What I wanted to share with the audience was in the automotive news, Toyota's answer to, dude,

where's my car? Great, great idea that they had at the National Automobile Deal Association meeting just this past Sunday and what they're concentrating on is project ETA yeah you ever wonder I mean estimated time of arrival ETA that's really quite a statement well what they're concentrating on is three things and that is to improve the transparency of where a vehicle is in the delivery process number two provide more timely notifications even before the production. Three, improve the accuracy of the data that will be shared with dealers and their

customers. Geez, what a great idea. Have you heard when you purchase the car? You know, it's on its way or it'll be here in three to six months. It's quite a statement to make. So that's the article I wanted to share with everyone. I believe that we are going, do you have another? I have one or two unless we can jump in.

Yeah, let's do it. Okay. Do you need to get an alignment each time you get new tires installed or switching out your winter tires for summer tires? My dealership up in Cleveland recommends it, but I'm not necessarily sure it's required. I can answer that. I know Rick wants to answer it, but I'm going to answer it. The answer is check the alignment.

They should check it for you free. They have very sophisticated alignment machines. machines now, computerized, tell you exactly if your car is in and if it's out, exactly how it's out. Ask to see a copy of that report and that'll tell you. But when car dealers say I recommend an alignment and they haven't checked it, they're trying to sell you something and make a profit. So you should always check your alignment every time you go into a car dealership or a service

department. If you get your cars out of alignment, it could cost you a lot of money. So check it. but only do it when they prove to you that it does need checking. All right. Sounds good. Okay. Folks, we are going to get to the mystery shopper report,

and we mystery shop Bremen, BMW of Jupiter. And I want to point out to everyone, you are an important part of this mystery shop. We'd love for you to vote on it. So vote. You can text us. You can text Josh at 772-497-6-5. That's Mystery Shop of Bremen, BMW of Jupiter.

Okay, the three things, and Stu wrote this, and he's not with us, as Josh is sitting in for him. And as usual, he's done a good job of putting us together, taking the notes from Agent Lightning, who was our best mystery shopper ever. Here are three things I know about Brayman, BMW. It's the only car dealership in Jupiter, Florida. It's been five years since we miss your shop them, and they have a B on the Good Dealer, Bad Dealer, List.com. You want to write that down as important. It's at Earl on Cars.com, but you could go straight to Gooddealer, Baddealerlist.com,

and you can find the dealers that we recommend and the ones we don't recommend. That's mainly in this area. So if you're outside this area, we don't have a list for you. At the request of our listeners, we've begun to focus on. on luxury dealers for our mystery shopping report. Last week it was Wallace Cadillac who did really well. They got a B. That's a high score.

We grade on the curve. So we try not to fail anybody too badly or too often because then you wouldn't have any place to buy a car. They did have a modest addendum markup and some other hidden fees. And all the dealers do that. That's the reason I say we great on the curve. The real highlight was a salesman.

Ted, a former manager. Ted was a professional and never threw up any surprises or apply pressure. First class. And a lot of people buy cars from the salesman, not the dealership. If you can find a salesperson that you know is honest and transparent, he'll tell you things. The sales manager won't tell you. He'll be straight with you.

And if you can find the salesman like that, even if the dealership leaves something to be desired, you're a good shape. Just be sure you read him right. Be sure he is being straight. with you. The results we got at Walsk Cadillac may have been assigned that luxury franchises in this age of car deal excess are avoiding joining the orgy of extreme profiteering that seems to be everywhere, and it truly is. It's really terrible, the prices that we're seeing cars new and used changing hands at thousands of dollars over what it was a short time

ago. We need to take a look at a few other luxury dealers to be sure. And that's what brought us to Brayman, BMW, in Jupiter, Florida. Like I said, it was five years since our last report of them. Brayman, BMW, Jupiter's easy to ignore. They're a little small dealership on Indian Town Road. And there's a little editorial comment here by Stu. He says we feel the road should be renamed Jupiter Boulevard. So it's a pet project of this for some reason.

Stu's a little strange. And we just look the other way when he makes these comments. But I actually happen to agree with them because Indian town, you know, it used to be there's a little bit of Indian town out there. Nobody cares about this except locals. And you used to tell people, if you're on this road, you're at the Indian town. Well, nobody cares about Indian town anymore because it's just a little bitty town. And I digress. As I mentioned, the only one in Jupiter.

They keep quiet without a lot of TV advertising because they're paired with the one in West Palm Beach that she, huge, one of the largest BMW dealers in the world, and they kind of advertise together actually. So if you happen to live on the northern end, you visit Jupiter. Otherwise you go to the big one in the West Palm Beach. Agent Lightning is the energizer bunny of mystery shoppers. Boy, what a nugget we found with Agent Lightning. First of all, it was a female shopper, which we desperately needed.

We were using male shopper after male shopper. job her. Now we get a female, but we got someone that really, really understands car dealers. And she learned on the job. And she's fearless. She is totally fearless. She tirelessly scours the field for the best target. She picks out the good ones. And we asked her to laser in on luxury dealerships. So we had a classic girl in cars expose in the making. Our expectation was that Brema would continue in its mild manner to ways and maintain a speed grade. It's hard to imagine.

I like this one. Stuart comes up with some of words. The naplitalization. And for the new listeners, there's a Naplesland car dealership chain. Big. They're really big. They're like in the top 25 or 30 in the country.

I think they have like 30 some odd dealerships. The father of the current Ednapleton, I think Ednapleton, started out in 1934 before I started the business of my father started a business in 1937 so a multi-generational dealership and everyone we've ever shoped are terrible I mean they they really take advantage of the customers and we just stopped shopping them for a while because they were so bad we just knew and so So hence, the naplization is the ultimate insult.

And we want to find out if Norman Brayman and Jupiter was naplized, and we'll find out as we read through this. I hope some naploid people are listening. I want to get some anonymous feedback. Okay, speaking in the first person as if I were Agent Lightning, I, a raved mid-morning and found a greeter waiting for me as soon as I stepped in the front door. greeters are people that, you know, be sure that someone walks on the ladder in the showroom is taken care of immediately. A lot of dealers employ greeters. I told her, I hope to see a new car. She asked me to wait while she located a salesperson.

A few minutes later, I was introduced to Sean. Sean asked me, which model interests to me? He said, inventory is scarce, and he wants to be sure we don't want a wild goose chase. I said I was open to either the 400 and 500 series. I shone asked me if I would consider a used car and said we may have more luck finding something today if it were used. I told them I had my heart set on new. And that's truth everywhere, folks. If you're shopping for a car, you'll find the dealer has a lot more used and available.

But the prices are still crazy. So you're paying too much for used. It's like you're paying too much for a new. But there will be a better selection. He told me about a 530I BMW that just come in, still wrapped in plastic, and asked me to follow up to the roof, followed him up to the roof, the parking garage. He wasn't sure if it was there, but we found it quickly. Sean asked me to follow him and back down to the showroom where you get the key and then go up and get the car and bring it back down. He led me to his desk and left to get the car by saying he'd meet me in front with the new 2022.

B&W530I and Phytonic Blue. Where do they come up with these names? They have poets on Retainer, I think. Purely stupid, Phytonic, yeah. What color is your car? Phytonic blue, yeah. Oh, the metallic. It's a fytonic blue metallic.

Can you imagine if the police used that when the car was stolen? I think that's your shirt color is fitonic blue. It's not phytonic, I didn't even know that, oh yeah? That's what I'll say from now on. And said and Sean said that BMW was being directly

impacted by the war in Ukraine holding most of its European production so he can blame Putin for the high price on this car he told me that between the two Brabant BMW locations Jupiter-West bomb they have just 12 new vehicles and I believe

it I mean I don't think we have 12 do we Josh I mean not yeah not that aren't spoken for that aren't spoken for you So two dealers 12 cars. That's what happens. So you don't have to order a car. But this car was here. Sean went over the four-year, 50,000-mile BMW warranty. Let me know my first three maintenance visits. Up to 30,000 miles are paid for. That's not untypical today. A lot of manufacturers are doing that.

And the maintenance, if you did pay for it yourself, it's negligible on today's new cars. Finally, Sean asked if I wanted to see the pricing for this ultimate driving machine. I said I was concerned about the markup, C&E mentioned before, and, hmm. He assured me. I think Nancy Stapled the thing to better together wrong. She tore it apart. I don't know where I am now. Oh, saw me over when I left.

Anybody got one, the right order? There we go. It goes the next page. Okay, okay. Our test driver assured me that he would work with me. They always say that. I'll work with you. That is to make you believe that the salesperson is aligning himself with you,

that he's on your side and that he will be your ally and going after the manager to get a lower price. They'll work with you. The game. The game is played every day. were BMW, Kia, Toyota, the game is played. But there would be some kind of markup, some kind of markup. Fair warning. He left to speak with the sales manager. I wait for eight minutes before Sean returned with a worksheet. Nancy's going to show me that she did

staple it correctly and I was wrong. Well, your notes are on here. I apologize. He enthusiastically told me that his manager agreed to mark it up only $5,000. Oh, that's so generous. Yeah, right. Very. He said the manager was doing this special deal for me because I was a jupor local, and then I asked him why he hated jupor locals. A little joke there.

I'm kidding, I did not say that. The sale price was $65,640, $5,000 over MSRP. Only $5,000. Only, as promised. Oh, man, yeah. So then they added the $998. in optional items, nitrous in the tires, permaplate, protection. The sale price was 66,638, and then they added a $9.89 document prep fee, and a $475 fee that looked suspiciously

like a combination e-filing and tag agency fee. And all those are code for hidden fees and dealer profit. And that's what we talked about earlier in the program, about lack of transparency in selling cars. After having all that, my actual price before taxes was $67,000, now we're up to $6,473 over MSRP. I asked John about any discount. There would be none. I said I needed to talk to my husband, but he would not be available until much later. He asked me to wait for a sales manager, and Sean left.

A salesmanor was back on Jiffy, or he was back on a jiffy with Nick, the sales manager. Nick wanted me to know that the inventory shortage is real. He said he didn't want to be pushy, but I've really wanted a car. He'd love to get it ASAP because he knows it will not last long in the market. And sadly, he's telling the truth. I repeated what I told Sean about my husband, Sean walked the door, and then I left. And there you have it. Remember, we grade on the curve, and that means that we're going to give them a score

based on how does he compare with the behavior of all the other car dealers in the United States with what would happen if you walked into their dealership, and if they did really well with respect to them, they get a higher score, even though they did other things that we know are wrong, like hidden fees and marking up MSRP. So there you have it, and now we throw it out there to a vote. And as Nancy said earlier, we'd love to hear your vote on a scale of A, B, C, D, or F. If it's an F, then we put them on the do not buy list. If they score above an F, we put them on the recommended list, but we put the grade there

so you could get the higher recommended dealers and the lower recommended dealers. Who's got a score out there? I got a couple that came in on text. And I'm surprised. Mark says A for the salesman, B for the dealership. And Bob gives B for BMW. Rick? We're running a little slow on YouTube today, but Tim Gilliland, still pushing nitrogen, C. And Tom Steckle, C plus, high markup, but nitrogen and permaplate could be removed. Brian Sedlaco, C plus, take it or leave it. Let's see. Here we go.

Negan, D for don't buy. I have a correction to make, and I apologize to Mark. I was reading his grade from a previous mystery shop, so he's clearly a D, too many cash add-on and fees. So apologies to Mark. And I've got FHL with a C and Wagle 90 with a C. So it looks like YouTube is coming along with this pretty much a C to D average here

I'm going to go with the C myself and they seem to be pretty open about everything they were doing and weren't really out of the ballpark on compared to the rest of what we're seeing but at least they laid things out they didn't

nothing seemed to be totally hidden away. Yeah and they were extremely short of cars I mean putting things in perspective Brayman BMW is either the number one or number two volume BMW dealer in the world. And so for him to have six cars each or 12 cars between two dealerships,

that's being out of cars. That's rough. So, hey, yeah. And Nancy and I were talking to the car coming in. And I said, you know, a $5,000 markup on a BMW, it's not like a $5,000 markup on a key or a Hyundai. the people that buying the keys and the hundays that extra 5,000 means a whole lot more of them than the fat cat buying the BMW and I mean I don't say that justifies the market but you know

we're seeing luxury car dealers charging huge amounts over MSRP and you know if you're it's kind of if you're a millionaire or a billionaire you know an extra five grand or 10 grand is Trump change. If you're out there hardworking guy and you want to buy a car, extra five grand could just put you right out of the market. Nancy, what's your grade?

Well, I don't like it. It stinks. $5,000 over MSRP, nitrogen. All of these add-ons, come on. I mean, we are living in an element now. Has BMW

sold enough cars? I think they have they have a shortage excuses excuses you know we talk about uh transportation disruptions we talk about microchips everything why do we have to take advantage of everyone i mean just it's it's ridiculous for that they get a d you know i i i hear you nance i i feel like my first initial reaction was oh this is not too bad it's but i think we've been beaten down by the by the by the market in the sad state of affairs where like a $5,000 addendum and a $2,000 in fees is warrants a passing grade but in this market like you said the salesman was up front says there's going to be a markup

he just laid it out and they were very polite so but I can't in my in good conscience give a give a C to this I'll give it a D plus and I've got a couple others here with Wayne and F Kirk in West by God Virginia C because only the excessive ADM and the hidden fees and cram 1624 d i'm not happy with the five grand markup so yeah it seems to be cd range but yeah i you know i i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna go and i'm gonna give them i'll give them a c plus i um i uh if anything they're they're slightly above average um and um among all dealers but among bmw deals i don't know among

street car dealers I'm not so sure but all the offenses we see are just so commonplace if we're true to grading on the curve you can't flunk them and that's where we are yeah they didn't have a little price advertise and then they surprised them with that it was all pretty much laid out yeah the YouTube if we have a second here from West Virginia triggered a current automotive news article in my mind we talk about how the legislature to state legislators are lobbied by car dealers and their associations to make laws, to favor them, to allow them to get away with what they do.

And in West Virginia, they're passing along now saying that when you do a software update on a car that you have to compensate the dealer. So I'm not sure what they mean. A software update like I give in my Tesla, which all I do is draw. the car and it updates the software. I can't imagine that. I think that would have to be it because right now dealers are compensated. When you bring your car in, if we're going to do a software update, whether it's to the engine ECU or any of the other computers or even just a radio software update, the dealership is paid by the manufacturer under warranty for those updates.

So now apparently they're going just to the flashes if they do Wi-Fi. Wow. So, It's amazing what the lobbyists can get away with, and that's the reason you have dealers now that are using hidden fees because they can't arrest a dealer. They can't charge a dealer because of the power of the local lobbies. Absolutely. Folks, we thank you. We thank you for joining us every Saturday morning right here. You're an important part of the show, and it is time for us to sign off, and we want to wish you all a very happy. weekend and we'll see you right back here next Saturday morning at 8 a.m.