Earl Stewart on Cars - 03.30.2024 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Beaman CDJR of Murfreesboro, TN.

Episode Date: March 30, 2024

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning continues her visit to Murfreesboro TN, to visits a local CDJR dealer she has seen two years ago, to see how much they will charge for a new 2024 Jeep Wrangler EV on their car lot. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. To purchase Earl’s book, “Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer”, go to www.earlsbook.com. This will forward to Earl’s Amazon page to complete your purchase. All proceeds from the book go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. For more information or to adopt the dog you have seen today or any of their other dogs, please visit their website at www.bdrr.org. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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 as my son, Stu Stewart, our LinkedIn cyber. space through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Periscope. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our Mystery Shopping Report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting South Florida dealership.

And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. Here we are, back again. And a lot of you folks are new to the show. I hope you heard the introduction. It kind of explains what we do, but just in case you're just tuning in. I'm not just saying this because I want you to listen, but really, we're unique. We're a consumer advocacy show.

We're on your side, meaning car buyers, car leasers, car repairs, and maintainers. If you're going to spend money with a retail automobile business, meaning independent repair shops or car dealers, you need our help. You truly do. by the way again if you're new to the show we are car dealers on this show we have a car dealership

in North Palm Beach Florida we've had one for a long time I've been a car dealer since 1968 so I've been in the trenches I've done what the car dealers do that we're talking about so I've been there I've done that I know all the tricks in the trade

I probably developed some of the tricks because I've been in the business since 1968, like I said, so junk fees, bait and switch. I could have written a book on that because I participated back in the day a long time ago. And am I ashamed of it? Yes and no.

I'm not ashamed to the extent that I didn't understand what I was doing. I mean, that's not a defense in court, I realize. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. I feel a little bit better when I tell myself that but as I got wiser and older and started becoming a consumer myself and getting into the fabric of society I realized that car dealers were doing business

the way horse traders did 100 years ago and that's about how long ago that Henry Ford came around I introduced the first assembly mass production car and since then it's been all downhill for you, the car buyer. Bait and switch, exorbitant prices. We've just come through a period of the past three years, four years, where you, the consumer, had paid more money to buy a car.

Any way you look at it, as a percentage of your disposable income, you paid more money, thousands of dollars over sticker price, And now we're down to about sicker. Some of the automotive media is claiming that the car prices are dropping considerably. Well, they're dropping, but not as far back as they say they're dropping. So it's buyer beware, and we're here to be on your side. We want you to call the show, plain and simple. We have a call-in number 877-960.

9-960. Please write that down. You probably don't have a question right now. We're on the air for two hours. We'll be here until 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. We started about 8, 8 to 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Every Saturday. Live. Exciting. Exciting. You know, why my heart rate goes up when I sit in this chair in the studio because I know a lot of ears and eyes are on a We stream the show. We stream it on YouTube. Probably our biggest source of that sort of viewing and listening. YouTube.com forward slash earl on cars.

Forward slash that's Earl on. YouTube.com ford slash Earl and Cars and our number is 877-960 9960. Now, we have other avenues

to communicate with us a text number, which we accumulate text as they come in. Now, the text number is 772-4976530. That's 772-4976530. So that way you don't have to get involved, and you can post your question, either on YouTube or text, and we'll get to it during the two hours, probably. If you call, we'll get to it right away.

That's the reason we like the calls. We get a sense of your personality. You know, you can't laugh in a text. I mean, you can go L-O-L or ha-ha, but a hearty laugh on the telephone. You know what I'm talking about. It comes through. Your personality, who you are, how you feel, and how we feel.

That's the reason live radio is so exciting because you never know what's going to happen. We just let it go here in the studio. We yak back and forth. we criticize each other we criticize you you criticize us we laugh at each other it's fun it's like you know get together you know it's nothing party and if you're not careful you might just learn something yeah right right you know you you can't give a person a textbook and say read this and that way you'll know how to do this if you really want them to read something you have to give them

something they're interested in so we want you to be interested we want you to like us or hate us or we want you to be involved with us and feel like you know you're part of the team and and and then once you get involved and you learn and we have a lot of people that have learned and we get a lot of calls and a lot of texts a lot of emails thanking us for helping you avoid being ripped off by a car dealer so don't hesitate. And for those who really hesitate, we have an anonymous way to call us as Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Yeah. Y-O-U-R-A-N-O-N-Y-M-O-U-S, Anonymous, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And you go on that link and you post your comments, critical, complimentary, questions,

whatever it is and we don't know who you are where you are we can't come and find you it is a great way to have total privacy and get off your chest which you'll want to get off your chest. I encourage car dealers to call

because we know there are a lot of car dealers out there listening and watching every now and then one will call and every now and then we'll get a anonymous feedback not enough I mean, we want you to be part of this dialogue here

because times are changing for you car dealers out there. Things are going to be a lot different. The Federal Trade Commission has a regulation that we're trying to help get past combating auto retail scams. Yeah, I love that. Cars, C-A-R-S, combating auto retail scams. The Federal Trade Commission has some regulations

in effect that they are going to hopefully enforce, which is the key, they already have some regulations into effect. Unfortunately, they don't have the capacity to enforce them, but we're on that side. We're trying to get things changed in the auto retail industry. Now, sitting to my left is my wife, Nancy Stewart. It's hard for me to turn around and look at her because I have a crick in my neck. but she's over there. If I swivel my chair, I can see her.

And she is our female advocate. And I say this, I know, your regular listeners. I hope you don't get tired of me saying it, because it's important that 20-some-odd years ago, when we started this show, all we had were a bunch of guys calling the show. No ladies. And we brought Nancy Stewart on board, and she has brought our listening audience,

our watching audience, and our calling audience up to about parody. We're just about 50-50. And we love to have you ladies call the show. So if you're female and you haven't called the show before, of course, if you've called the show before, please call again and again. But if you haven't called the show, we have a special offer for you, which sounds too good to be true.

You have my word. It is not too good to be true. We do it. We have an offer for your first-time lady callers that Nancy Stewart will tell you about, and I'm going to turn the microphone over to Nancy Stewart right now. Good morning. Thank you. Welcome, everyone. And as Earl said, we do have a special deal for the ladies, because we want to reach everyone in our listening audience. So, ladies, first two. ladies, give us a call. You can win yourself $50 this morning, the first two new lady callers. And welcome to our pre-Easter party. We're going to have a great time, and hopefully you're going to join us. Because as I always say, I'll tell you, you are an important part of the show. So take advantage of that toll-free number, 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. And you might want to jot down the text number because you can use that when we do our mystery shopping report to vote on the mystery shop. that's 772-4976530 and we have our dog of the week you want to tune in for that we have a live video from big dog ranch and you'll see our dog of the week and his name is writer he has a whole lot of energy he's a little over a year old and he is a I believe he's a Labrador

retriever that's that's close enough okay um we are going to go right to the phones and uh we are going to talk to bob in lake park good morning bob good morning happy easter everyone thank you happy easter oh thank you i had an interesting experience at wayne acres yesterday they got a vehicle in a mustangian that i was very close to what i was looking for. So I took a ride over there to take a look at it. They brought it out to me. And the first thing I noticed was they put an addendum sticker on there, which I had never seen at that dealership before. It was called the Acres Advantage plan. And it was over $1,700. It included the low jack. And, you know, of course, they get their deal a fee. It's $1,000.

I bought a car from them before. They're fairly decent people to work with, but this is a new thing for that dealership. I've never seen them put addendums on their cars before. I'm surprised. They've been around for a long time. We haven't shops. It's been a while, but if they haven't put them out in the past,

they're one of the few in this area who haven't. Right. Well, the one thing that I thought was very interesting, told me to the salesman there. For some particular reason, all the Mustangs that they get in there are very well appointed. They do a wonderful job of having

different packages and different interior and exterior color combinations. And I told the salesman, I said, you ought to pat that fellow on the back that orders the car, and he told me it wasn't a fella. Yeah.

It's a female. Female, well. Yep. And I think I told them, I said, well, that makes sense because no other dealer in South Florida and I looked at all of them. And most of the

cars they order are very plain. And they just done a wonderful job. They also told me that they also have a problem in the service area. They can't find any mechanics. So they're in the same, they're in the same

position as Molonex. They can't find anybody who wants to work. Yeah, big problem. There's two few jobs and too many people looking for jobs and it's just a of all the trades, working with your hands, you know, those sort of jobs are, more and more people are going for the, you know, the white collar job. And to find really good skilled technicians in any field, especially automotive, is difficult. Right, right. Well, Nancy, did you know that if you order a Bentley, you could get a diamond-encrusted gas cap? I did not.

Well, yes. Somehow, that doesn't excite me, Bob. Well, the reason I brought up gas cap, and I wanted to talk to Rick about it. Toyota, do they use a universal gas cap on all their model, Rick? For the most part, they've modified a couple of them through the years. Some of them are the screw-in, and when you twist it in a certain amount, it'll click, and you'll get several clicks if you need to to tell you that it's sealed. Others have like a kind of a lug system, two big lugs that go in and turns about three-quarters of a turn,

and you get just one click to tell you that it's now sealed in properly. Right. And the reason I asked you is because you had a – I think Anne-Marie had asked you about a gas cap last week. And you had mentioned how to go buy one for $40. And I'm thinking, why don't you just go to the pick-and-pay? You could pull your own gas cap from the, you know, the salvage yard for five bucks. And most likely it's going to fit the Toyota because they probably use mostly the same cap on all their cars. Yeah, there's going to be two different, usually just the two different designs.

The only drawback with getting them from the junkyards like that, you don't know what condition the gasket or the ceiling portion of that cap is actually going to be in. And for the little extra cost to get one like from Rock Auto or Discount Auto parts nearby or nearby store, you can still save like 20 bucks, pick up a gas cap for $20,25. and you know that it's going to be brand new. You know it's going to seal properly. And believe it not, the number one cause of a check engine light on Toyota's that I've worked on is a gas cap. The gas cap starts to not seal properly and it leaks vapors just enough that because of federal emissions, it triggers that check engine light.

And that annoying little light is staring at you. accusing you of not taking care of your car. It's just not the annoying light because some people bring the car in because the check engine light comes on and if you get a disreputable mechanic or service department, they're going to tell you you need a new transmission. So one of the big problems with all the cars is Rick says most of the times that that check engine light goes on is because of a gas cap. But what an opportunity for the wolves that are waiting to.

sell you something you don't need. Yep. Right. Can you replace is the gasket itself replaceable on the cap? No. No, it's a even, I mean, for the price of it, you're going to

just get a new cap. I got it. Okay. Well, that's all I got, folks. You all have a wonderful holiday weekend. Thank you, Bob. For the show and the Mystery Shopping Report. Oh, thank you, Bob. Thanks for being part of the show

Give us a call again We are going to go to Oh gosh, we do have some calls backed up Excuse me Boy, everybody's got it this morning Hauffin and blown our noses Allergies and pollen There you go

Palm trees and flowers We're going to go to Paul In Lake Worth Good morning, Paul You there, Paul? Good morning. Hi, this is Paul, actually, in Lake Park. Oh, Lake Park, okay.

Okay, I have a 2019 Chevrolet Sonic, and it's, I have an extended warranty on that car. It's in 2019. I bought it like two, two and a half years ago. And yesterday morning, I went to start the car, and it just made, you know, like the sound of a dead battery. Yep, yep. And the battery that I had in it was only about a year old, okay?

And it's like the third battery that I've had in that car since I bought it, okay? So I ended up calling a tow truck. I was going to have it towed to the, to where I bought the car and to the dealership. And the guy in the tow truck saved me a little bit of time by going ahead and just jumping me and sending me on my way to the dealership. and he said, by all means, don't turn the car off at any time, you know, along the way. So I got to the dealership, and I told the service rep the problem, and he said, well, let's go ahead and turn the car off since you're here, and then we'll try to restart it.

Well, we turned the car off, and it just started right back up. And then he ran and then not one of those analyzers on the car. And it came back perfectly normal. Every category said normal. Okay. So he sent me on my way. He said the battery sounds like it's in excellent, you know, in excellent shape. Well, I'm a delivery guy.

So I do a lot of deliveries. and I got through the day on my last delivery, the car would not start. It did the same thing. I popped the hood and that battery was almost ready to explode. It was spewing acid. It was expanded. Yeah. And they did you a disservice.

So what happened? Right off the bat, I'm going to guess that you have one cell in that battery that was starting to short out. And when it did, it just, it went quickly downhill when that battery finally, that cell finally failed completely. their tester should have picked that up. I would have to wonder if they were using a Chevy authorized warranty level battery tester, or if the guy just grabbed one of the quick little handheld testers. But yeah, he did you a disservice. That battery, from your complaint that you had, at the minimum,

he should have said, look, let's get it in the shop. Let's check for a parasitic draw. Make sure that we don't have something that's drawing it down overnight and do a comprehensive test on that battery and the charging system. But that really sounds like that battery was just on its last legs. And it can happen that way. I've seen batteries that we get them out of parts department, install it in the car, and it starts up and drives fine.

And an hour later, the customer comes back, and the battery has failed. it just unfortunately sometimes you get a bad one yeah so um do you believe there's anything that could be um causing that um that wear on my batteries maybe an alternator problem now that is certainly possible um the possible causes there is if your alternator is excessively charging the battery. It's pushing too much voltage back into that battery. That can cause excessive gassing and overheating of the battery. Other thing, and now this one I would take it from the way you described it a little less likely, but a parasitic draw. In other words, kind of imagine like one little light is staying on and overnight it draws the battery,

makes it very weak. So it's hard for that battery to get charged all the way back up when you're driving it the next day. Paul, try some of these remedies that Rick has described. We've got a bunch of people holding online here. And the best thing to do is just be careful. Find yourself a reliable technician that will do what Rick is trying to do here. You need to get independent, probably, rather than a dealer technician. someone with ASE certification in batteries, in alternating electrical certification.

ASE certified in electrical. For AESC, that's American, what is it? It's automotive service excellence. Auto service excellence. It's the name of the game when it comes to choosing a technician, auto service excellence, and find one that will talk to you and help you diagnose it. because otherwise you're getting sold a bill of goods and you'll still going to have the same problem.

By the way, if you have to replace that battery, go to consumer reports. While you were talking to Rick, I pulled it up. I looked at the batteries. There's an Odyssey Extreme battery that's recommended for $359 that has a 99 rating. It goes all the way down to the battery you don't want to buy, which is a diehard silver 35 with a 29 rating, but it's only 200 bucks.

Spend the 359 and get the best battery and get the best auto-certified, the American ASC. Yeah, ASC certified. And they'll help you out. We've got to move on. Thanks for the call. Absolutely. Thank you. Good luck, Paul.

Ladies, this morning, I have $50 for the first two new lady callers. would you be willing to share your experience with us in purchasing a vehicle? Maybe you were in service and you had to get your car serviced for the family. Not only would you be talking to us, but you would be helping our female and male listeners and with your experience, and that will encourage them to give us a call. in turn. We are going to go to Denise, speaking of first-time callers. Denise calls us from Royal Palm Beach. Good morning, Denise. Good morning. Welcome. You just won yourself $50 for the first new female caller. If you stay on the line, you can talk to Jeremy in the control room

and he'll take your contact information, pass it to me, and I'll get you a checkout for $50 this weekend. Oh, thank you. Just in time. Today's my birthday, too. Oh, wow. Happy birthday. How wild is that? Happy birthday, Denise.

Thank you. I got an early present. Absolutely. Four-runner. Great. That's a great present. Beautiful red. I do have a question.

about it I really I really love all the extra touches like the beautiful backup camera and the blind side little light on the side all these little touches are so wonderful but I have a question when you hit the break it's pretty mushy it reminds me of an old Cadillac with it with bad shocks is that is that something that you have to get used to what was your previous car that's on that hybrid Yeah. What were you driving previously? A Dodge Grand Caravan.

Okay. How old was it? My other one? Yeah. 2010. Okay, so it was a bit older. Yeah, newer cars, especially the newest ones, the ABS systems, for some reason, they've modified what they call the spring systems inside.

the ABS module and the brakes just feel a lot lighter in a lot of cases on these cars. It's one of those things where you kind of want to drive it and get used to how it feels. Obviously, your first thing you want to do is get on like an open lot or something, get it up to around 20 miles an hour and give it a good firm stop. And if that brake still feels squishy and it doesn't feel like it's stopping normally, you know, on a reasonable amount of time, then go back and have it checked by them to make sure that those brakes are operating properly. And you may even ask them, is there another one on the lot that you can drive just for comparison for, you know, your own peace of mind?

I was going to suggest that, as I was going to wonder, I wondered if forerunners did have a softer feeling break. I drove my brother Josh's car, Forerunner, drives a new forerunner. I was driving, I'm driving a hybrid Sequoia. And I had the sensation I thought. that's really soft. He didn't think so. I go, why your brakes is soft? They're not. They're normal to him. Yeah, and there's a subjective feel to it. So that's why as a technician, I always like to ask what, you know, what car were you coming out of?

Because a lot of the, especially Dodge, their ABS systems, I don't really like them too much because it doesn't feel like the ABS would kick in very much. You know, antilock brakes is supposed to prevent your time. tires from ever locking up by getting too hard of pressure. So you should be able to step on the brake nice and hard and the vehicle should come to a smooth stop without the tires making any sort of screeching sound like they're locking up. But basically it's just trying, it's getting used to those brakes how they feel. And if they still don't feel good to you, you know, ask you if there's another one you can compare to. And Denise, it's amazing how different, you know, the older

cars are as far as driving compared to a newer car. It's a huge difference, and it takes a while to get used to. I hope we were able to help you. Do you have any other questions? Well, more like what it is is when you're inching into your parking space, you know how you want to go a little bit and a little bit, a little bit so you don't, you know, run into the parking stanch. It rocks, almost like the shock to bad. It bounces. It's not the brakes. It's not the brakes. so much is that the whole thing bounces and it just reminded me of a Cadillac in the past without any shocks you know the shocks were bad I just was one that was supposed to rock like that I think driving another one just to make sure you feel yeah that's not when you before you

drove the one that you bought did you test drive this one oh yes okay the exact one or did you order this one no this exact one okay I would think that's a good idea. Go to the dealer and see if there's another four-runner, just to drive and feel the brakes and see if there's something markedly different. It sounds like it's just a difference of models, but anything we could be wrong. So that might give you some peace of mind. Yeah, Denise, that can- driving, I only have 500 miles on it, so. That comparison drive that the guys suggested, it's a good idea. That'll clear things up for you. I hope you'll give us a call back and let us know how it

went. Oh, I will. Thank you so much. Happy birthday. Okay, happy birthday and stay on the line. Thank you. You're welcome. 877960, or you can text us at 772-4976530. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. We are going to go to Jonathan, who's calling us from Stewart. Good morning, Jonathan. Yes. Good morning. I have a question for Rick. I bought a 2013 Lexus RX 350, and I was getting kind of low on gas. So I drive up to Tenson Beach, and I go to BJs because it's cheaper. So I get out a big long line, finally get up there to do it. I push the button for the gas door to open, and it doesn't open. So I go back and push it. and everything like it, and some guy gets out, tries to help me in, and everything. Couldn't get it, so I take it up to, I googled it, and I took it up to Lexus Dealer, and they say, well, we can take it in here and do all this stuff. They didn't charge me anything at first.

And so, anyway, I googled it, and it's like a spring thing. You open, when the door comes up, and we pride it open, pushing the button at the Lexus Dealer, but that little button thing there is, because when it shut the door, it opening on the door, outside the door that slot that you get the button goes in there so is it

what do you think it is? I mean because I can't drive around with the thing open just I'm willing to bet it's that spring clip now the easiest way to get that door open is take like a if you can find this sounds crazy

find a small hard stick or something a popsicle stick or something a popsicle stick or something even in something thin enough that you can wrap a paper napkin around at a time or two, put it in the gap around that field door opening and push it in so to get some pressure on it. And then hit the button and that stick, keeping the pressure on it, will cause that door to pop open.

And if you've got two people, it's even easier because you can catch you with that stick and get some pressure and then have them push the button and it'll pull. pop open without hurting your paint. And then inside there, there's a little, you'll see a little plastic piece, and it's supposed to have a metal spring on it. It's like in the shape of a V. And the plastic clip for that right at the hinge, it breaks, and that little metal V falls off and is gone.

Do you have popsicle sticks in your toolbox? As a matter of fact, I do. Antip cleaners. I could go get so. It might be fun getting to the stick. Yeah, well, you can, I mean, you can break a stick off a nearby bush. You can just wrap a paper napkin around it. I saw you out the other day breaking sticks off a motion.

Yeah, you can run over the seven seven and get an ice cream bar, enjoy it, and then you've got a stick. There you go. Most gas stations have a convenience store right there. That's right. Grab a popsicle, go to town. Fudgesicle. But, I mean, it's basically, it's getting some pressure on that door to simulate that spring action. and once you get it open, leave it open until you can get a replacement.

And that replacement costs like $5 to $6 retail. I mean, it's very inexpensive, but it does require a little pocket screwdriver or something to pop the old one out and pop a new one in place. And once you see the design on it and how it goes in, it's very obvious how the one end will wedge under and the little clip snaps down and you've got that spring clip. But if you brought it to the dealer for that work, what would they charge you?

About 50 bucks? 50 bucks. How do you save yourself, 45 bucks right here? Okay, Jonathan, it sounds like an inexpensive fix for you. So do you have any other questions? Yeah, okay, so let me just ask, make sure I understand it, because when I Googled it, I saw that little clip on the left-hand side.

I'm looking at the door. I got it open on the left-hand side. there's that clip thing. Yep. But I'm trying to think... Little V. Yeah, you little popped it. But on the other side of the door

is that little button that goes in and out. There's a little thing that you can push in and out. I've got a spring in it. So which side am I going to put the stick on the side where the spring thing is? It's on the side where the hinge for the door is. It's on that left side where the hinge is. Okay, so kind of...

right behind it. Yeah. Okay, got you, buddy. Thank you guys so much. Call us back and let us know if it worked, will you? Yeah, good luck, Jonathan. As a matter of fact, most places like a discount auto parts, O'Reilly's are that, if they have, a lot of them will carry that spring clip in stock, and if they have it, I guarantee the employee will be happy to come out and help you get that door open to help you pop it in place. Oh, great idea. Great idea. And then again, it's five to seven dollars and you're back on the road inexpensive fix thanks so much jonathan yeah i'll let you know yeah i'll let you know what flavor of popsicles i got too bye i like cherry give us a call next week uh have a great weekend and a happy easter jonathan we're going to go

to mike in fort lauderdale good morning mike welcome well good morning and thank you for taking my call what i want to call about it's not about our problems although i have a lot I got 2006 Cadillac, many problems. But what I'm calling about is to tell you how informative your program is. Oh, thank you. I listen to a lot of talk radio, and some of it is insincere and dishonest and confusing, especially the politics, you know. But your program is, boy, do I learn a lot about junk fees, about the strike, the autosarcker strike you talked about recently, how long dealerships are going to last,

car repairs, of course, and the state of the industry. And it's amazing. I like to listen to learn something, and I learn a whole lot from listening to you people, so I want to thank you very much for that. That's really what I have to say. Well, you made our day, Mike.

Thank you so much. Oh, also you saved me some money. You said about buying out a lease for a call, my brother's buying out his lease. And I told him, Earl said, you have to pay the contract price, not a penny more. And he did. And I said, you know what? I think I'll buy that car.

So a 19,000-mile car, Buret, with three years, 19,000 miles on it for a very, very good price. So I learned a whole lot. Hey, we're having an effect. Well, you make getting up at 5 o'clock every Saturday morning worthwhile to us, and I thank you very much. I appreciate that a lot. You know, when you listen, if you find, the secret of radio, if you find out information that you can use and it's helpful to you as far as a lot of nonsense stuff that goes around.

So you did a wonderful job for 5 o'clock in the morning. It's only 8.30 years. Thanks so much, Mike. We appreciate your call. And you're right, it's a win-win situation. Free advice. So give us a call, Toe. free at 877-9-60-99-60, and you can also text us at 772-497-6-5-30.

I will mention again that I need one more new female caller. She can win herself $50 this morning just by calling in, maybe sharing her purchasing, servicing experience, and as I said earlier, It will help other listeners that have tuned in to the show. 877-960-99-60. We're going to go to Howard, and Howard's calling us from Jupiter. Thank you for calling, Howard. Nice to hear from you.

Happy Easter, everybody. Happy Easter. My question is the seatbelts. My passenger seatbelt works fine. Great. Pasty gets in, puts it on, takes it off, it goes right up. Mine, it stays down a little bit, and I have to nudge it a little bit, then it goes all the way up. It's a lazy seatbelt.

How could that be fixed? Basically, you've got two causes of that. Number one is, you know, it's because the driver's side, it's the one that gets used all the time. Your pastor's side gets about 50% of use by comparative in most places. So the seatbelt webbing itself, over the years, it's getting dirty, it's getting wet and drying out. And you'll notice that that seatbelt is not nearly as flexible anymore. That webbing material is starting to get stiff.

That makes it harder for it to retract in. And the spring that's inside the seatbelt that does that retraction is also getting a little bit weaker over the age. So over the years, it's losing a little bit of its tension. What's the cost to replace a seatbelt? Depending on the vehicle, the part can be anywhere around $150 to $300, sometimes more on certain luxury vehicles or more expensive ones. Labor on that, I'm going to say, is usually going to be about an hour and a half, so figure about $200 to $250 in labor. You know, there should be a lifetime warranty on all seatbelts, when you have a problem, if it's difficult, as Howard describes, when it's difficult to put

on it, and I go through this all the time, I end up putting my seatbelt on, because that's me, but there are a lot of people that just say to hell with it, and if it weren't for the warning beepers and the buzzers and the rest of it, but why wouldn't the government, the NHTSA, have a lifetime warranty on seatbelt replacement? Well, they don't go lifetime, but. Seatbelts are covered by federal law under the safety portion of the vehicle. So it's eight years, 80,000 miles by law for the operation of that seatbelt. Does that include difficulty of putting them on?

In the retraction mode, that's kind of a gray area in most cases. We need to investigate that. If the technician words it and the service writer words it properly when they write it up, then that seatbelt can be replaced under warranty. Howard, do you want to be our guinea pig on that? We'll try to get your new seatbelt. Absolutely. I'll come in Monday.

Okay. Will that be okay? Yeah, Kaching. And I get paid by Toyota for that too. That's great. It's great doing something together with you. And we have a conspiracy against Toyota live on radio on the air. I think I better be careful, but we'll do our best.

Howard, how old is your vehicle and how many miles do you have on it? 2017 Camry, I have the 60,000 miles. Okay, so you're within that eight-year, 80,000 miles. Yes. So should I see you on Monday? Yes. Tell them that you do not feel safe because it does not feel like the seatbelt is retracting or locking up properly when it's being pulled out.

Bingo. Be sure they write that down. I feel unsafe in the car because. and then describe the problem with the seatbelt. That's the way we got a national recall on dashes on Camry's and other vehicles which spread to Honda and all the other makes. When a car owner has a safety issue, that is a red light. The NHTSA, everybody jumps on board safety. So it's unsafe.

Say so. We'll get your new seatbelt. Okay, one thing about that, 10 years ago, when I bought a car from you, I was driving down from New York, and I was in North Florida. And I got out get gas, and the seatbelt didn't work at all. So I called you, and you told me, go to a Toyota place, and they'll take care of it. So I went to the first Toyota. I had to wait two hours, and they changed the seatbelt for me. But the car was only like a year old.

Great. It was 2007, 2007 camera. Wow. And you tell me, personally, I spoke to you personally, you said, go to this Toyota, I forget the name of the place, and they will take care of you, and just said that, tell them that I called you and everything was, and when I got there, there's no questions. They took care of it right away. I had to wait about two hours ago, so, you know, it worked. But thanks for your help. You've been a great guy, and Rick, you're also a great mechanic.

I appreciate you help, and I'll see you Monday. Sounds good. Thanks, Howard. Look forward to seeing you. We are going to go to Marty, who's calling us from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Marty. Good morning. How are you doing?

We're great. Happy Easter. Same to you and everybody there. What I wanted to tell you, this is a DMV story. I bought my wife's Honda CRV last week, so I had to go to. to the Palm Beach County, one of the DMV offices. Well, first of all, now you need an appointment, which is a good thing. They give you a, and once I went at the appointment time, they give you a number.

Now I went in line, and it only took me 20 minutes to do the title transfer. But my point is to tell people this, I lease the car under my name, and my wife's name, was not on the title. So I wanted to put her on the title. And what I did before I went there, I called the DMV's phone number. And the woman there was very nice. And she told me, well, if she's not going with you, we've got a power of attorney letter that you don't need a lawyer or anything. It's really just a power of attorney thing just for the DMV. And, and, you And my wife had a sign it, and I signed it, and I could leave her home. She's not too thrilled with sitting there.

So going to the DMV, I told the guy what I wanted, and the first thing the guy said to me, oh, she's not here, you need a power of attorney. I said, geez, I just so happened to have it. Gave it to them, the whole process took 20 minutes. Nice. That's amazing, Marty. And the whole cost was $82. So the guy said to me, if you want, I can print the title out right here.

It's an extra $10. So I said, well, go for us. Interesting. I don't want to wait for the mail. Yeah, save you some time. So it came to $92. $2 of that was a credit card fee. But it was very fast, very quick, very efficient.

And if you go to most dealers with one of their junk fees, they charge about $300 to do that process. Sure. So for anybody that wants to do that, that's the way to do it. And don't buy the lease through the dealer. Send your check directly to Honda, wherever the car was. That's a great message. That's good to know. You know, the Department of Motor Vehicles can be your best friend.

It's a government agency, but in our experience over the years, they're set up by some pretty good people. And of all the government agencies, which I hate government agencies in general, but the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Florida particularly, I haven't dealt with all of them, obviously, but they seem to do a pretty good job. they also have the power of life and death over car dealers and car dealers know that most people don't but if you don't have a license from the car from the DMV and you're a car dealer you can't sell cars I mean in fact nobody can sell cars unless you have a license so a letter from the Department of Motor Vehicles to a car dealer saying

you're doing something we don't like please change you know Marty just came in and talked to us and told us what you did and that's not right, please correct it. You'd be surprised how quickly the dealer will jump into the right mode of operation. They go directly to the dealer, the owner of the dealership, and they give them a warning. And when a franchise car dealer gets a warning from the DMV, they salute, stand, and attention, and take care of it right away. So it's a good agency for people to know about, and what you just told us is something even nicer than they. can take care of this type of work a lot cheaper than the dealer will charge you for.

Yeah, now when you do it in your dealership, since you're honest, what do you send a person in, like in other words, you're not doing one car at a time? No, we use a service, a computerized service, and it costs us, I think, about $10 bucks administratively and they do all the registration and tag word for us. So the other dealers, they spend the 10 bucks and they market up to 500 and charge it as a junk fee, but we consider an overhead cost of doing business. I mean, 10 bucks. When we used to do it ourselves and work with a DMV and go back and forth, we had to pay

a full-time person to do this and work with a DMV. and so the $10 is a huge savings for us we don't mark it up and call it an electronic filing fee and charge you $500 for it Right, right Well, I just wanted to say

they were very efficient, very friendly and they got about I went to the one on military trail because that was the first appointment I could get and they got about 25 stations and they tell you when you

walked in if you're doing title they tell you set by stations one through four and you know very efficient now good information marty thank you very much yeah marty it's amazing just to let you know the guy credited covid yeah with with being more efficient now absolutely changed a lot absolutely it sounds like a marty you really reached a lot of our listeners this morning that was uh this is a great call and uh as i said you've reached a lot of our listeners who you know had a lot of questions you answered them have a great weekend good holiday thanks marty thank you uh ladies and gentlemen did you pick up the florida weekly this past uh week uh that is the uh march 28th i think it's the march 28th april 3rd

edition. It is one of Earl's great columns. Car buyers pay thousands more in hidden junk fees. What a great read this is. And if you haven't heard him talk about cars, if you haven't heard him talk

about cars, this here will fill you in on what he's trying to do. to make things right. Combat auto retail scams, the Federal Trade Commission, a new regulation that are trying to get through. There you go.

Combating Auto Retail Scams Rule, known as Cars. It is a great read, pick it up, and if you didn't get the Florida Weekly, you can find it in the hometown news or at Earl on Cars. You can read all of his columns. we are going to go to Frank, who is calling us from Jupiter Farms.

Good morning. Hey, good morning to you all. Happy Easter, of course. Happy Easter, Frank. I got to tell you what a small world this is. A night ago, no, maybe Thursday. Yeah, Thursday. We were heading up to Stewart to meet some family members for celebrations and birthdays up at a restaurant called Nostalgia.

But before we went there, we had to go by the Audi dealership that you guys mystery shop a couple years ago and actually gave them a good grade because the key fobs was showing that our batteries were getting low. You could try and go in the car and say, key fob battery low before you've got to go through that. And we stopped there at the Audi dealership and they said bring both fobs, you know, the one you use and the one you got spare. They put new batteries in and off we went, no charge. I go, what a nice dealership.

And as we were sitting there, because we had a reservation and nostalgia, so we killed a little time drinking some of their coffee instead of going up there and sitting there. We were talking to some employees on Saturday. Every Saturday, the general manager treats them to pizza or subs or something. I go, holy cow, what a nice incentive for their employees. Yeah. And the employees are happy. Like when we go to Earl Stewart, employees are happy.

So you guys got it right, and I've got to compliment you. for, you know, very few dealers have happy employees, at seems. All you need is some pizza, and, no, I'm just kidding. No, that helps, though. That definitely helps. That's a really good thing to do. Yeah, food is definitely an incentive. Yeah, so we're driving up U.S. 1, and we go by Wallace Chevrolet,

and I go, I remember that. That was on your thing last week or so. And they got all these trucks with this big $20,000 off. Oh, no. Sales signs on $20,000, $20,000. And Amrigo's me, that sure? I said, no, they've really got mystery shop a week or so ago. You can't believe the hoops you've got to jump through to get, you know, 5,000 off, let alone 20,000. And I said, well, if we had more time, we might just go there and play and see, and you do a little, you know, a second mystery shop. But anyway, I'm seeing, like, I was noticing on TV, the huge discounts are back. Mainly on the, like, the domestic dealers, but I haven't seen 20,000 on TV, but I saw, I've seen 10,000 with different manuscripts. manufacturers. And this is on the digital TV. OTT, if you're watching streaming TV. It's

becoming more and more, it's a very popular advertising avenue. As a matter of fact, we're doing it there as well. And it's reminding me the old days with the big discounts and the quick little glimpse of the fine print. Exactly. And then so I went online this morning just to make sure that was what, and I called them. They said, yeah, it's the end of the quarter. So it runs out today, today's the last day, because we're closed tomorrow for Easter. And I said, oh, okay, that's All right. He said, well, let me go check the manager. No, come in and ask for a manager.

We'll give it to you next month, too. But there's a up to 22,500 MSRP, and there's 100 silver grottoes to choose from. They're 2023s. And then there's a little, by the way, if you want another thousand, just show us your Costco card when you come in. New 22s? No, 23. They're calling you off. But do you hear that?

He said, for another $1,000 off, bring your Costco card. That's come on. That's abusing the program. it is it's truly an amazing how you bring it to lighten so with that i better let you get to other callers and thanks frank thank you frank i'll tell you what i'll i'll send you on the on the text thing we had a nice birthday party here at the house and we had a chef come over and cook paella seafood paella for the whole crowd where do you find those oh god i'll talk to you i i come in this week and we're going to do that title thing my name's my son's truck but i'll give you the

the guy's name. I don't want to do some advertising on the radio. I'm getting trouble, but no, it was unbelievably delicious. So, again, you all have a great time. I'm glad your turtle nest made it through. And actually, I've been over near Ranch Colony where you guys live. Not a colony. Yeah, anyway.

When the policeman had lost something, they wanted me to bring my metal detectors and do some search and recovery mission. So, yeah, it's a very nice, interesting place. I guess, let me think who the guy was. Roy Root. Was he in there with you guys at one time? Yeah, sounds familiar. We have the nicest police force of all time.

It's like Mayberry. Everybody knows the cops. The cops knew everybody. Nice place. Yeah, I saw they had one bullet. Everyone had one bullet. So that's what I'm nice. We got to run, Frank.

Thank you very much for the call. Thank you. Bye-bye. Was he referring to Gomer Powell? In my head, man. 877-960-99-6. and give us a call. And you can also text us at 772-4976530.

And don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. We are still in Tennessee doing another mystery shopping report. So you want to stay tuned for that. Now we can go to text. We can go to YouTubers. I got an exciting one from Ann Marie. Yeah, you had fire in your eyes. No.

Because sometimes I think I've, I think we've made a whole show without getting to a text before when we get really busy. And I feel bad for Amory, who she gets in really early. She's good morning, Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge Claps Tuesday. The one was struck by a 948 foot long, heavily loaded container ship, lost power and steering. Port of Baltimore was the busiest U.S. port for car shipments, having handled over 750,000 vehicles. in 2023. Reportedly, GM, Ford, Stalantis, Subaru, Mercedes-Benz used the part of the port that is now bottled up.

BMW and Volkswagen also used the port, but they use the Trade Point Atlantic Terminal. It's located at the mouth of the harbor before the Fallen Bridge. Those manufacturers don't expect any shipping impacts from the disaster. I didn't see Toyota mentioned in the news report that I've read so far, which prompts the question, which ports does Toyota use for importing and exporting the cars here in the U.S. and number two, will Toyota be impacted by the disaster? Not very heavily. They use, I looked this up, I didn't know.

We didn't get any notifications from Toyota, which usually means that probably it's not a big impact. Most of our cars are manufactured for the United States. Right. And they mainly use Baltimore for a small amount of exports. We were exporting cars that we build in the United States out to other countries. Probably hurt Japan because Toyota exports, Toyota's to Japan. Right, yeah.

From the United States. But it's not a big one. Like a big one on the East Coast is Newark and Jacksonville and just, I guess, lucked out. We didn't have a big, you know, we're not a big, big activity at Port of Baltimore. But, yeah, the other ones are going to be hurt. I don't know how it's going to impact. I wouldn't be surprised if it's used as an excuse for higher prices, maybe availability. Yeah, well, psychologically, they might use it for some.

It's not. The dealers are probably having an addendum label about the St. Francis Bridge. The dealers will. Right. The dealers will, the manufacturers won't. They're going to reroute their traffic to other ports. Yeah, definitely. And I read that it's going to have a minor effect on the auto industry.

Definitely nothing like it was during COVID. When I first started with Toyota, they used to send us for training in Jacksonville. And that was where a lot of the cars were coming in. We were right at the port. Yeah. And we could go to the cafeteria there for lunch before 9-11. It was like Toyota land. There was literally parking lots that seemed to have like 10 or 20,000 Toyota's.

It was all Toyota's as far as you could see, all directions. And it was insane. And sometimes as we were driving cars as part of our training, we could drive down through all the way to the river front. And it was just Toyotas everywhere. It was the weirdest feeling is it was just all these new cars. When did you say that happened? That was before 9-11 of 2001 because after 9-11, they got super strict on anyone allowed to get in that port area. Boy.

And as trainees, we weren't allowed to be in there. What a sight. Okay, folks, give us a call to all free at 877-960-99-60. And Stu has more text for you after I take this call. And Rick has some U-Tubes to share with the audience. We're going to go to Mark in Lake Worth. Good morning, everyone. Good morning.

Welcome. Thank you. I've got a question for Rick regarding a pesky engine light. On my 2016 Toyota Rev 4, the engine light came on yesterday. I had the code read, and it triggered the fuel cap, which I thought was odd because I actually replaced the fuel cap a week ago, and it was driving fine with the new fuel cap. So, and I've also cleaned the neck and the housing around the spout area, and I can't figure out why I can't get the the light to go off. It sounds like you were listening

to the show, the earlier part of the show. We were discussing just that. So you most likely have codes P0 440, P0441 or 446. That's what I was going to say. It's actually

P0455. 5.5. A gross leak. Okay. First thing I would be looking at is the purge valve under the hood. Basically what this one does is when you fill your car with

gasoline, the vapors, the gasoline vapors that are in the tank are not allowed to be let out to the atmosphere. Those are sucked into the charcoal canister and they're actually stored there in a vapor state. Then when you start your car up and the engine's been running for about a minute and a half to two minutes, the purge system will come on and it will

suck a vacuum in that charcoal canister and pull all those vapors into the engine and let them burn through. Now, if that purge valve is staying open, if it gets stuck open, that will cause that P-0455 code, which is what's known as a gross leak. That's a big leak that means either your fuel cap has totally failed or that purge valve or somewhere else under there, you have a really big hole in one of those vapor lines or in the charcoal canister itself you could possibly have had a rat get up on top inside there and chewed through a vapor line and that would also cause that code so it's something that you're going to need to get checked by the dealership if you want to try just the quick do DIY those purg valves are going to be running right

around 50-60 and the way you tell it is it's up near the air cleaner and one hose is going to come off of it and go to a metal pipe that goes back underneath the car heading back towards the fuel the your fuel tank area and the other hose is going to come off of it and go to the throttle body and then you're going to have a single electrical plug to it so if you want to swap that out it you You could do that yourself for no charge and you just kind of, if you want to throw the guests at it, about a $40-50 part that you can get from Pet Boys, O'Reilly's AutoZone, any of those and give that a try.

And obviously if that doesn't cure it, then you'd need to get the system vacuum checked and they would actually run a smoke machine to look and see where those leaks might be occurring. Hmm, that doesn't sound like fun. Well, I guess my next question is, how serious is it because I need to do some driving yet before I can fully repair it? It means nothing. The only thing that those codes mean is that if Florida still had an emission state, you wouldn't be able to pass emissions. You could put some black tape over the red light and that way. They're not bother you anymore.

The only other drawback to it is that if something else on the car were to have a problem, some other system, you wouldn't know it because that check engine light is on. So if you simply take and you check the codes like once a week, if you got one of those little inexpensive code pullers and you pull those codes and clear them out just once a week and look, if anything new comes up, then you check that out. But otherwise, you could just leave that thing alone. And like Earl says, a little bit of black tape over that, check engine light, so it's not staring at you, and you're all good, you know, because

we don't have emissions testing in this state. And, you know, yeah, it's maybe not the best ecological answer, but financially it's a lot better. So the canister purge valve is replaceable by myself, possibly. Yeah, because like I said, it's right under the hood. Anything beyond that, probably not. Yeah, because the charcoal canister, and those lines, they're buried on top of the fuel tank, backed by that back axle area, and those can be a lot, much

more difficult to get to. If your conscience doesn't bother you about the possibility of polluting the atmosphere a little bit more, then you have nothing to worry about. Well, that's a fair point. One other question, please. Am I correct? As long as the engine light is not blinking, it's not a critical failure?

Well, a blinking light, usually it's going to have one other indicator your car's going to be running rough that usually indicates a misfire and if it's a severe misfire then you're going to feel that but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but but

but a blinking light is generally means that it's a misfire or it's something that's something more serious right if that condition continues it can cause more damage okay I understand all right that that's very good to know

And I have a quick follow-up for Earl. A few months ago, I called asking how I could get rid of some brown spots that were on the bumper, that were underneath the decal. And it was very frustrating. Well, it turns out you've got a guy at your shop, Ricardo. I had a chat with him, and he took care of it. Wow. And it was very reasonably priced, and he did a great job on it.

So tell others if they've got the brown spots under the decals, Ricardo is able to pull that, clean it up, and replace the decals, and it looks great now. Thanks very much for the plug. It's not very well known that Ricardo is Rick's alter ego. Okay. Don't, dump, don't. Just kidding.

Ricardo runs our tent and accessories department, and he does a great job with that. So good job, Ricardo. Well, he did for me, and I appreciate it. Great story. Thanks so much, Mark. Thank you. Have a great weekend.

Have a great weekend. Happy Easter. We are going to go back to either text or YouTube. What I'd like to do is get that. Can you put that up for me? Before we do that, I had something I wanted to cover because of the combat auto retail sales. scams. There's a lot of conversation about whether or not we should be pressing the dealers

for cleaning up their act. And this is an advertisement that is on local, and I say local in South Florida, from a car dealership by the name of Palm Beach, Toyota. And it's so typical. I say this with a slight amount of hesitation because, as I say, we have a toilet dealership. But it fits into what this whole issue of combat, auto retail scams, federal trade commission

regulations are all about. The car dealers that want to be honest, the car dealers that want to treat your right and be transparent, are prohibited from doing so because of the competition of advertising by dealers who don't want

to be honest, like Palm Beach, Toyota, and on the screen, if you're streaming us, you will see an advertisement for a new 2024 Corolla, new $2,024 Toyota Corolla, $99 a month. Now, all you'll be able to see from this is, oh, $99 a month. I'm going to go get me a new Toyota Corolla for $99 a month. I make a $9 a month. Exactly. So I took the ad, and I blew it up, and I have it, I'm holding it in my hand here.

You can't see it on the screen, but I'm going to, after looking at the fine print, here's what this $99 a month Corolla really means. First of all, it's not a purchase, it's a lease. Secondly, to get the $99 payment, you have to come up with over $9,000 in cash. Who's running that one? Palm Beach, Toyota. This is a classic. They love the $99.

dollars. Now, you say that I'm preaching to the choir here because the listeners and the viewers of Earl on Cars are the you're the crem, you're the educated consumer. You ask questions, but they're intelligent questions.

You are not victims. The victims are pouring into Palm Beach Toyota and they're buying they're making them one of the largest toilet dealerships in the country. they are a prime example of how difficult it is for a toilet dealer to run an end. Now, if I ran an advertisement for $300 or $400 a month,

which would probably be a fair price for this transaction, nobody would want to come into my dealership and buy the car for me, and I'm only 10 miles away from Palm Beach Toyota. So they go into Palm East Toyota for $99. They get flim flammed. They get sold the car. They don't get out without less if they want this car. They spend over $9,000 out of pocket.

If they lease the car, they're out of their minds because they could have bought the car and put $9,000 down and owned it at the end of their payments instead of having to give the car back. So it's a typical example as why the Federal Trade Commission, And if they could stop this kind of activity, then I'm an optimist. I like to believe that most car dealers, I choke when I say this, but I'll modify that.

Some car dealers are honest and transparent, and they're afraid to come out of the closet and be honest because it'll cost them their livelihood because they can't compete against the dishonest dealers, Rick. Johnny Z. Freidly wants to know how much down to get my payments down to $9 a month. I think there exceeds the allowed amount you can put down in the fine print they have

$7,000 down on a lease plus the first month's payment and then they charge a 10 cents per mile when the average driver is 12,500 miles so that's another big shot at the end of the lease, $695 acquisition fee,

a dealer fee of $1,000, and there's administrative fees that are undefined, but they're not for tax and tags, so they're probably more junk fees. So you're looking at close to $10,000 out of pocket

and it's all hidden in the fine print and you don't know about it until you go in the door. So this is why I'm looking for a few honest dealers out there to join me, and we call it an amicus. Some lawyers will know what I'm talking about. It's a friend of the court appeal to the circuit court in Texas

to get the Texas Automobile Dealers Association and the National Automobile Deals Association to stop their protest against the Federal Trade Commission combat auto retail scams. If we could stop the scams, then the honest dealers would come out of the woodwork. and be able to do business and give you a price in an advertisement or a quote that you can actually buy the car for. So you honest dealers out there, contact us, call me directly, use anonymous feedback, text us.

Let us know. I'd like to have you join the amicus. I'm paying for the amicus, the acquisition fee, with my appeals attorney, and you can come on board for small fee like two or three thousand dollars and join the amicus and if we get enough honest dealers out there in the amicus we can get this federal trade commission regulation pass that's combating auto retail scams rule and that's known as cars and as often as we saw this ad that girl just spoke about this week you know it just doesn't cease to amaze us that there's so many unsuspecting consumers

walking in with one thing on their mind. It works. Lying, bait-in-switch advertising, cheating, dishonesty pays because people come in and make bombage to a very large salina deal show. But you're not kidding about the dealers out there that do it and feel bad about it, that there's no other way to survive. We heard it in our old groups with the Toyota dealers

that say, hey, what am I supposed to do? I'm going to die if I don't compete. I've got everything I own, invested in this car dealership. I have 100 employees or whatever it is. I've been in the business. Maybe my kids are in the business. What am I going to do? Sell out because I can't compete with my dishonest competition.

No, I got to play the game, and that's what they do. So if you could just get the rotten dealers out of the picture, then the honest dealers would be able to come out and do business and that's where we ought to be. That's right. And I'll tell you what, folks, this is extremely important, and things are heating up out there as far as leasing, buying, and there is a lot of unsuspecting consumers

just walking into these dealerships, like the one Palm Beach Toyota that Earl just mentioned. We are going to take Kevin's call. He's calling us from Buffalo, New York. Good morning, Kevin. Are you there? Yes, I am with Sunny Buffalo here. The daffodils are shining. Oh, nice. You know, I did something a couple weeks ago when I never did before.

I had key lime pie in St. Patrick's Day, but my key lime pie was in Key West, so that's why it tasted so much better. Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. Two questions, one comment and one question. I have a 2019 Ford Transit van for work, and the map sensor went, and they started to make and the car started going funky. What is the map sensor and what does it do? The dealer did fix it, and it works fine now.

But two, I couldn't believe a front brake job on a Ford Transit van is $900 by the dealer. There are 10 bolts to get the rotor off on each front wheel. That's really the way they injured it, but that's the way it goes. Yeah. The map sensor, what does it do, Rick? Map sensor is manifold, absolute pressure. And basically what it does is it compares the air pressure outside under the hood to the air pressure in the engine's throttle body in its air intake and reads what the difference is. And the vacuum, the lower pressure going into the engine, increases when you step on the accelerator.

When you give it more gas, it actually is drawing more air in. and this system compares to two to determine how much air is going in the engine. Once the computer knows how much air is going in and it compares it to the information it's getting from the other sensors, it uses a chart to know how much fuel to inject into the cylinder to try to get the perfect burn each time that spark fires. It's kind of like the old days with a carburetor where you could adjust the carburetor to get just the right amount of gas going in. But what it's doing is it's making that adjustment

every single time that cylinder fires. So when you're doing, say, 3,000 RPMs, those 3,000 times that that engine's going around, that cylinder's firing 1,500 times. And it's in one minute, and the computer is making an adjustment to that fuel amount 1,500 times a minute. and it uses information from the map sensor to be able to do that.

Well, sounds interesting. I almost saw like the transmission was going, but I was so glad it was just a $500 part. So that's pretty good. Thank you. And I also like your show that I can listen to it on YouTube, and when I walk my dog out there, I live as a rescue dog,

so I enjoy listening to your show on YouTube after the show is over. Thank you for time and enjoy the sunny weather. How's the dog like the show? not really because well it does like the dog he and I are out of the eye and barking at things well tell him to stay tuned we got the dog of the week coming up so he probably would be interested in that

and Rick's barking why he doesn't bark too loud they don't start barking back we have our special effects from Rick well no the best effect that Rick's barks though I can't have two competing barks There you go, Kevin.

Thanks so much for calling. We're going to go to Rick or Stu. I've got an interesting one here. This one was kind of an odd question, but it's one I kind of wonder about. Cliff's Pick says, when you go online to a car dealership and it has that little pop-up for a chat, the chat person, are these chat people at the dealership and their employees? Probably not. Or is this a, just like a...

Probably not. They can be. Run. No. There's a thing called in-house chat and managed chat. Most dealerships item managers don't have the staff or the department to do an in-house chat where to be effective, you have to have somebody sitting there, or at least on their phone, ready to chat all the time.

Manage chat is done by a service provider, and they have call centers, and they're giving basic amounts of information about the dealership and they'll answer they'll answer nothing right nothing of any of substance all they have is their dialogue they're you know their hour the hours of the dealership anything that's important but there's there's a little there's a little bit more to it they can send you information like for okay i'm not trying to do a commercial dealership like us that's a one price um you can send a listing of a car to them our our listings happen to have our price on it. So they can send examples of cars or of our inventory. But to get a real conversation, you need to actually contact a dealership employee, the managed chat.

That's not like Apple chat. If you're, if you're not going to fix anything. If you chat with Apple or a good company like that, you have a knowledgeable person. And if you have to wait to get online with a chat, you're probably going to get a knowledgeable person. When you don't have to wait, you got 2,000 people out there and they just pop up. And they have a script that they read from. There's two levels of chat. Like in most places, even like Apple or things like that, there is an automated thing gives basic information. But then if you need a real agent, this will stand by an agent.

And most of the chat companies, even for car dealerships, have that ability to do that, to have the AI handoff to a human. Well, Johnny Z. Freidley came back, said to At Cliff, he says, you should ask the chat right away, is there a dealer fee or forced add-ons or any other junk fees added to your price? You know if they're going to answer exactly? They'll say, let me get your name in number. I refuse to answer on the grounds of my tend to incriminate me. Actually, they'll just say, great, we can answer that for you. Can I add your name, address, phone number, social security number? Because most of them are done.

Most of them are done through an independent contractor. So Stu's absolutely right about that. Real quick, Marty texted us real quick, says 9,000 down, this is back on the 99 payment. 9,000 down divided by 36 months equals 250 a month. So the 99-month payment is really $3.49 a month plus tax fees, et cetera. Very good point. Yeah, there you go. I want to take a look at that.

As a matter of fact, and when Earl said, he goes, if it was $350, that would be if you're a normal payment. And that's exactly what it is. You're just, you're fooling people up front. Yeah. Out of the woodworks, if we ever got this combat auto retail scams thing through the courts, If we got through the courts It'd be interesting to find out Who is really honest or transparent out there

I don't know what the percentage is It could be a huge percentage I mean I don't think so But it wouldn't it be nice if suddenly Overnight We had a Civilized auto retail Group of dealers out there to sell your cars

I would say about a third of the people in our group We're decent We're good But most of them were like We're pushing the bad stuff. Donovan had this on that one. He says, that regulation is badly needed. I've been shopping for a Mustang Mock-E,

and the amount of junk fees being added today from any dealer on used cars is insane. I'm seeing some adding $4,000 or more in my shopping across the state. The west coast of Florida used to be better. But they're learning from Broward and Miami dealers. As they grew, exactly, the southwest area in Fort Myers. There's some pretty tough dealers there, too. They got a while to catch up to southeast Florida. I'll tell you something.

It's kind of humorous. Nancy and I were going through the automotive news this morning. And one of the major articles in this week's automotive dues, I'm kind of thumbing through here. I don't see it. But basically it says that only 18% of transactions in the last quarter were above MSRP by car dealers. Now, that's a BS.

Right. They're not count the fees. This is because even, that's a J.D. Power survey, because even J.D. Power and the manufacturers don't know what the profit is that car dealers. Let me give you a perfect example. We sat down in our meeting and we looked at this thing, we call it the door, we don't call it, it's called the door report where we compare our performance financially to a, a group of dealers. They don't identify their names, but they're the group, and they average

them out. They actually consider the profit made by the junk fees. They call it additions to income, and it goes off to the side. And so when they compare us to the performance of other dealers, it looks like we're doing terrible, but they're adding this thing on. They don't even recognize it as profit. And the manufacturers are culpable in that because they do have the right to demand a financial statement. They do have the right for the dealer's actual accurate accounting numbers in the transactions for their service and their sales and cars and parts. So they allow the dealers to take the junk fees.

Now I'm talking to all the manufacturers now. The auto manufacturers, GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Toyota, they allow the dealers to take junk fees and hide them in miscellaneous. expenses. Those junk fees should be added to the price of the car on the financial statement. That way, the car, the manufacturers have knowledge that the dealers are charging thousands of dollars over MSRP. The JD Power Survey proves that they don't know that. Of course, we do that anyway. Because it would be 18%. It would be 37% or something like that now.

Okay. Where are we? Okay, if we are going to stay with schedule, we need to go to our dog of the week. Okay. And that is from Big Dog Ranch, and there you go. You're just here a Devin's dog. I don't know about Ryder. You might want to give me, Rick, maybe a calmer. This is Ryder.

He's only a little over a year. He's a little over a year. And he's 34 pounds. you go. That's a sad dog right there. That is another. Anyway, Ryder is our dog of the week. And as I said,

it comes to us from Big Dog Ranch, who we are associated with. And Ryder is a retriever Labador. And he was found on the streets just wandering around, looking for food and

water. And they picked him up. And they took him in and he was also a foster dog so if you can't adopt a dog you can always foster a dog and it's a little you know a layover until someone like rider can get adopted so we have a video that jonathan is going to set up right now and you can take a look at Ryder. Hi, my name is Susan, and I work here at Big Dog Grants, and I just wanted to introduce Ryder to you. Ryder is a 17-month-old pup.

He's been in a foster home before. He loves other dogs. He loves toys. He loves to go for walks. Oh, and he loves water. He would make a great companion for somebody who likes to go out on the boat, the beach, maybe have a swimming pool. He just needs a chance to have a family.

He just needs a family. He looks bigger 36 months. Come take a look at Ryder. He seems to walk well on a leash. He is young, so he does have energy. But, you know, they tend to settle down once they're in a home. So can you give Ryder a chance today? Yes, give Ryder a chance.

writer looks like how old is he's not much A year He's a puppy He's so he's very chill for a puppy Yeah he's a little over a year He's one year one month and three weeks So cute what a beautiful face Yes

And as I said he comes to us from Big Dog Ranch And the dog Of the week The registration fees Are paid And it can save you You know

A couple other bucks. Yeah, it is $200 and it costs a lot to adopt a dog and we want to help. So that is Ryder and you can go

to Big Dog Ranch Rescue and you can take a look at Ryder and all the other dog sets, www. B-D-R-R-R.org. Earl? Let me address that $200. It's It sounds like Big Dog Ranch is making money.

They're not making money. The adoption fee serves two reasons. First of all, it goes into the coffers to be able to provide for more facilities for more dogs and adopt more dogs. Also, if you give dogs away free, so to speak, if you just say come in and grab a dog and go home, what you end up with is a lot of people that come in and they on a whim maybe they've had a couple of beers and say hey let's go get a dog

and then two days later they say the dog just went on the carpet and they leave it by the side of the road you'd be surprised the people that go into shelters and pick up a dog on an emotional whim and then decide they don't want the dog and they release the dog or maybe if they do keep the dog

the dog might be better off they didn't keep them because they don't take care of them. If you have to pay $200 and also, Big Dog Grants Rescue does a thorough investigation of you. Right. I have some very important information. Very relevant. I'm very excited to share it. Okay. The adoption, this is from Big Dog,

and I've never, we've never said this, but it's very simple. Adoption fees are based on the dog's age, breed, and length of stay. And this is what, this is included. This is what, this is going. The veterinary exam is $60. The spay of neuter surgery is $400 to $600. This is what the big dog is paying before you get your dog. Heartworm test is $50. This is all paid for.

All age appropriate vaccinations. Rabies vaccination for dogs older than four months. Microchip for permanent identification. Behavior assessment by BDR trainers. That's another $100. A complimentary BDR group training session, which is new. So you get a group training session when you adopt the dog. Isn't that cool?

And also one bag of starter food for $20. It's $785 that costs. them to give you the dog. And so they're roughly 250 up to 325. Pure Bread Puppies are going to cost you $750. But the idea is not passing along the cost because the costs are much greater than that. It costs millions of dollars a year for big dog ranch to exist. And they have more than one facility. And I said last week and Stu corrected me that they're the only largest They're the largest no-kill shelter. I think from a strict standpoint, they are the only no-kill shelter, truly no-kill shelter,

because what the other shelters do that maybe they don't euthanize the dogs, they can't keep the dog, and they give them the Big Dog Grants Rescue. So shelters can't keep a dog for two or three years. Big Dog Ranch Rescue is big enough because they have the money and they have the contributions and they have the generosity of the founder named Lori Simmons who gives a huge amount of her own money toward the care of these dogs. So, yeah, it is, I'm going to say again, it is the only true no-kill shelter in the country.

Rick is waving a hand at me. Dog food ain't cheap. No, thank you. Not anymore. Most definitely. All those dogs need food every day, so that's huge. And a lot of it. And also, you know, they have a veteran service program out there where they're training dogs.

The veteran comes in and, you know, they pair them up with this particular dog to see, you know, if they get along together, if they're meant to be together. And it is just an amazing place. And if you get a chance, head out to Big Dog Ranch. I've got one last sweet thing to say. about them about the pair bonding what they do. I've never seen this I don't think shelters do this. There are dogs that are parabonded and dogs are emotional

creatures and they have formed relationships. They're buddies. They don't separate them whether or not they're actual siblings from the same litter or they met at Big Dog Ranch Rescue and became lifelong pals they got to go together. I respect that. Yeah they provide a second chance to rescue dogs by training

and matching them up with the military and folks i'm going to mention earl's book why is very important for two reasons number one all proceeds go to big dog ranch and you can purchase uh the book on amazon you can go to earl on cars uh you can go to www w earls book dot com the book's 1995 and all proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch. So take advantage of that. And the book is a great asset to have on... And go online.

At Amazon. Dot B-D-R-R-D-R.org. That too. Hope I didn't give a... That's the best one I've heard. Yeah. That's what happens when Rick clears his throat. Okay, folks, I see by the clock, it is time for our mystery shopping report.

And we're still in Tennessee. And we went to C.D.J.R. Muce Freeborrow. That's a tongue twister. Let's say that really fast. Beeman CDJR. Beeman C.D.J.R. Mew Friesboro.

Mew Friesboro. Tennessee. Okay. Okay, Earl. I'm reading, I were the shopper, if I were Agent Lightning, our ace shopper that does an amazing job. And again, the Beeman family

owns a bunch of dealerships and one of them is the Beeman Christ Dodge Jeep what's the R's name for? Ram, yeah. I decided to go check out the Jeep prices since I was out of town and will someday own a Wrangler. And I

believe Agent Lightning will buy a wrangler. She's a real shopper. She buys cars and that's what makes her such a good mystery shopper. She's a real professional car shopper and she does it because she likes cars and she buys cars for her family. I arrived in the afternoon and was greeted by a young customer service representative who asked how she can help me today. I like the she. I said I'd love to talk to someone

knowledgeable about Wranglers and I saw one online that I'm interested in. She made a phone call and a saleswoman named Karina came up. So two females. A female came in to buy a car. That's Agent Lightning, that's me. And then there was a customer sales representative, a female, and another female, Karina. So that's got to make Nancy happy to see females getting into the auto retail business, came over to walk of me saying, I'm the Jeep expert here. How can I help you? I mean, wouldn't that be nice?

I mean, I believe it. She was a trained product specialist in Jeeps, which, you know, what a great way to be able to spent time with a salesperson, somebody that knows something about their product. So I hope that's accurate, I believe it is. I said I get a little confused looking online with the different models, and I was hoping you have someone help me figure out exactly what I want. Karina said, perfect, let's go over to my desk. She then asked, what features are most important to you?

I said, I really want adaptive cruise control, heated seats, and then I'm not sure about the hard versus soft top or the, 4xE versus full gas. Those are all valid questions. We looked at quite a few options online. Then I decided on a new 2024 Jeep Wrangler

high altitude 4XE, a hybrid bottle with a limited all-electric range of 21 miles. Now that's the region, that's a plug-in hybrid they call them. And that

is the intermediate wave of the future. The future is, or today is hybrid, and then the plug-in hybrid is the next transition, and then the full EV is the last thing that will happen. So, very wise to be looking at a plug-in hybrid. It took a few minutes to find the keys. Our manager had them as he was using this vehicle as a demonstrator for the past couple of weeks. This is common in car dealerships. The higher up the line, the better the car. You get to drive any car you want when you're a big shot, and if you're a salesperson, you get what they give you, and oftentimes you don't get a demo when your salesperson. Managers

do, and they put a few miles on them, and if you could get a big discount for a few miles, it's a good buy. I chuckled and asked, will this save me some money? She promised she'd get me the best possible price, but in the six years she's been doing this, she's only ever seen them mark down one time. The gladiator on the hand is a different story. Those you get discounts on. Same with other Wrangler models. We walked to the car. There was no Mnroni label visible, so I asked Karina. She told me to check the club compartment. Her manager must have taken the sticker off and stowed it there. As I've said on the show millions of times, it's not uncommon not to have the Mnroni label on, but we'll give him a little bit of an excuse. He was driving

the car. He took it off. Not supposed to, but he did. I checked and there it was. The MSRP was $705,455. That's a big fat MSRP. While we're on our test drive, Karina was telling me there was once a huge demand for the Wranglers, but you just couldn't get one. When they finally rammed up production customers seemed to lose interest and now the Wranglers are piling up on dealers' lots. Now that's very strange in our unusual. One could even go so far as to say being honest with a customer to say, hey, we've got too many of these. They do have too many of them, and she told the truth. We drove around quite a bit and went over all the features. The new 2004 has electric seats for one.

The one feature that I didn't really like about the 4XE model is when you take your foot off the gas, the Rangular really pulls back and slows down. You love that, though. I love that, and it just goes to show it's what you get used to. You know, you get used to something. So any of you, EV, prospective buyers or hybrid prospective buyers, that's a feature that'll be different from your purely combustion engine car, and I find I like it, because I don't like flipping my right foot around to my brake and my accelerator the way it is now.

Because you don't ever have to touch the brake. It's tough without Achilles tendon. And with Achilles tendon, it makes it even worse, yeah. Right, with that one. Karina said, that's where the Wrangler is working on a hybrid mode to recharge the battery. And that's true. It's a good thing. When that car decelerates, that means it's charging your battery.

And you wanted to charge the battery because that is going to save you gas mileage. There are three buttons for each mode, hybrid, electric, e-save, and a... I don't understand. I don't understand. That may be a feature that prevents the gas engine from kicking in unless you authorize it. Because there's, we used, we had a lot of our Priuses, had an electric only mode that it would stay on the electric battery as much as possible. Because there's some places that you're technically not allowed to drive a gasoline vehicle. Like the sidewalk.

Well, there's, there are certain small towns that. they say you have to have it in electric mode and on the while you're in that area there's not places to do that towns are those mackinaw island uh mackina island actually they don't let cars on mackina island at all there's there's a couple a couple island places um places in in europe uh like down in it we're talking about the united states yeah anyway okay lick i'm gonna google that uh rick i haven't got time to challenge you on that now uh once back at the She had me back it into the spot right up front. This model has the one-touch top that opens automatically.

It slides all the way back. Rick is frantically Googling to say ahead of me here, so if he remains quiet, we'll know why I was right. You do that like seven times a show. John isin's wiping the tears away from his eyes from laughing. Once we're down playing around with taking the top off, we headed back inside to her desk, which, by the way, is right next to the sales managers.

We sat down, Karina says to one of her sales managers, Sam, also a female. Boy, a lot of females are there. Nancy is really going to get excited about this. Most of the people in that dealership, as far as Agent Lightning is concerned, are female. All of them. That's really cool, yeah.

Interesting. Yeah, right. That's a tough business. Congratulations, girls. Hey, Samantha. Are you ready to help this girl right here, make her dream of owning a Wrangler? come true sam replied of course let's do it korena finished putting my info into her system

and noticed i had been back there in 2021 so here's i always i'm amazed that we haven't the agent lightning hasn't been trapped yet i mean nobody's ever caught her we go in we expose dealerships she comes back again they find her in the system and they still don't get her probably because of the turnover of personnel that they just don't know what happened So anyway, I don't know how big our listenership is in Murfreesboro, so Lance might tell him. It could be. I mean, if you were careful, you could flag this. She's a shopper, but they don't do that.

I said, I'm pretty sure you're the one that helped me back then, too. She didn't remember, of course not. She asked me why I wasn't looking closer to home. I told her that I'm not a fan of the one. I'm not a fan of the one by me. Oh, yeah, by the dealership by me. Google Napleton and you regular listeners know

that Naplen is the black part of all car dealers and you'll see why Sam was listening and said she hates to hear that because it really isn't that hard to be honest it is hard to be honest trust me and fair to your customers

I mean that's the problem with the car dealership business is hard to be honest that's the whole point of the Federal Trade Commission combat auto retail scam so I digress she promised to get me her best price up front no playing games I asked about the Wrangler having so many miles on it

and she said we'll take care of you I promise Karina walked over to Sam and I excused myself to make a phone call I came back and Karina pulled up another chair and said I'm going to let Sam have the pleasure of presenting the offer to you today I think he'll be very happy with it Sam handed me a sales worksheet

The top line market value selling price was MSRP, 70,455. They applied a $4,000 discount, making the adjusted price $66,000,455. Then they added NanoCure Griffin Elite for $1,495, a $797 dock fee. They also added 4,648 in taxes and fees, and Stu says it seems to calculate out correctly. Taxes itself is like 4,000 something. So my real price was $68,747, which was a $1,708 discount from MSRP. And, of course, the discount they showed on the paper was $4,000. So in this case, here they were below MSRP.

I asked about putting the Jeep on my credit card. They seemed shocked by those questions. Sam said they allow up to $3,500 of the credit card, no more, and no fees. She basically said the same thing about credit card fraud that prior dealerships have told me. Anyway, I thanked them for their time, let them know I needed to think about this and talk to my husband more after he's done with work. They said they understood and hoped to hear from me soon. So there we have the second, Murphysboro, Tennessee mystery shop in many weeks. And as I've said before, if you shop a dealer in Florida, you're looking for trouble.

If you shop a dealer in South Florida, you will definitely have trouble. And you go further north and you go west and things get better. I'm headed to Murphy'sboro. It's almost worth the transportation cause to go out of state to buy. a car if you live in Florida with that said we got to vote on this we vote on the curve you don't fail a dealer if he's just an average rotten line cheating dealer I hate to say that but the average dealers is non-transparent dishonest and bait and switch and that's average so if he's really bad then you

give him a D if he if he breaks the law and ought to be in jail you can give them an F. A, don't give them an A. I say that. We do have a couple A's, but they are like Hensteath. They're very rare. So great on the curve, and we'll go around and poll everybody and see what's happening. Bob gives them a B on the Jeep in Murphy'sboro. By the way, it was nice to meet Rick at Bonefish Max this week. Oh. All right, thanks. Hi, Bob. Great to be out there and be recognized. I'm refreshing my screen because I don't want to miss anybody's grades, but I'll tell you what I'm thinking. They did really well. They did better than the other Murphy's Borough dealer we did last week. I think a B is in order,

definitely. Rick? Okay. Let's see. I've got, Negan 1 says, I see a D passing by barely, but barely. And let's do a quick refresh here. Wow, Negan. I hear they're coming in. And that was the, Stu, that was the Ford dealership last week. Yeah. Okay. Jodin says, C, the discount on a Jeep should be larger, given the inventory, and that add-on was ridiculous. Mark Smith says, I'll give him a B-plus for honesty and being a decent dealership. Johnny Z. Fradley, not an excellent price.

These peeps are giving. I wasn't born yesterday, so I'll give B-Men a D. man man i'm being way too nice i love it it's a d man oh tim gillaland nanocure is the only hiccup for me b b b b b b b said latko if jeeps are overstock i think you can get a better discount c plus cliff's picks i'll give them a c uh myself i saw some of the old school games there with the add-ons, the junk fees and that. A bit. I'm going to go with the sea,

but I think if you go in there and really work them, you probably could get that price down a little bit. And especially where the vehicle already had some miles on it. Absolutely. Because Agent Lightning, you know, and by the way, it's a very pleasant experience and she was probably inclined to say, okay,

let me think about it and not push back. But I bet you're right, if she pushed back a little bit, she might have gotten something that's taken off. Yeah. And for me, you know, it was a good deal but I think that the ladies could do even a better job

and a greater deal. For that, I give them a C. Okay. And I've got T-Cash says E because Earl says no F's. And Andrew Placinski says B-plus.

Yeah, I'm going to give them a C. I just think they're probably a little above average. I probably should give it to some people. Probably should have given a one. And you've noticed from Rick Silence, he never came back after his Google. So I sent you a link.

I did Google. He sent all of us. I did Google. I went to chat GBT. There are several states that are planning to make combustion engines illegal, but there are no states now. There are no cities now that make a bill. Right. But there are all some places,

like on island towns where you can only run an electric vehicle, no gas vehicles. Well, not according to chat, GBT. So, okay, we got three minutes to go. Is there anything additional we need to cover? The floor is yours. I think it should be interesting to cover the tires that are wearing out on the electric vehicles. Excellent point. And with the drag, well, the floor is yours.

Well, we've talked about it before. In fact, Rick, I think, mentioned it a few months ago, maybe. But electric vehicles have very, very heavy batteries. They're a giant, the ones at 3, 400-mile range. And they are so heavy that they push down on the tires, and tires and electric vehicles do wear out faster than the tires on combustion engines. There are a lot of folks out there that are anti-EV. if you want to be

an IAV, there's a real reason that you can be NIAV because it's going to cost you more tires. That's true. It seems like the manufacturers are looking for tires with a low rolling resistance so as to get the most miles

out of the car, but at the same time, those tires do seem to wear a little faster. And of course, the other side is electric cars, when you step on the accelerator, you've got 100% torque immediately available

so those tires are going to get a little bit of twist and spin and obviously spinning the tires even though you don't really feel it they're moving shifting just a little bit you're going to wear them out just a little bit quicker that way with each spin I think that

mentioning also this F&I data that we talked about this morning Jonathan did you say three three going on two Okay. In fact, that 60% of vehicles sold above a sticker, that's untrue. And she saw all of the news article, and that's untrue because the manufacturers do not account for the junk fees in the miswainting's income.

And they're just a shame. They could if they want it to. They don't do it. Shame on the manufacturers. And ladies and gentlemen, happy Easter. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. as I always say you're an important part of the show and a special thank you to Jonathan for all his help weekend and week out he is definitely an asset and a happy Easter to Rick and

Chris and a happy Easter to you and your beautiful wife and family I got to brag a little bit this this actually was the first time it's ever happened with Bob and his wife happened to be at the restaurant where my wife and I went to dinner at bonefish and they came over and said they'd recognized me from the radio show and it's the first time that's ever happened the first and it kind of made my night it just sounds that's so cool wife said I was blushing right up that makes you feel warm and fuzzy right Rick absolutely I had that happen once okay ladies and gentlemen we'll be right back here next Saturday you can catch us at 8 a.m. the same time right here on the oldies channel. Have a beautiful weekend.