Earl Stewart on Cars - 04.030.2022 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Toyota of Murfreesboro, TN.

Episode Date: April 30, 2022

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning travels to Murfreesboro Tennessee, to see how much over sticker price the local Toyota dealer will sell her a new 2022 RAV4 Hybrid that is on the 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, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Good morning, everybody. We're back again, and I'm going to change my live introduction. You just heard my recorded introduction. A little bit, Jonathan in the studio here, suggested this. You know, we've been doing the show for so long. I guess we kind of assume everybody knows who we are, but we have, I don't know how many new listeners every week, a bunch. I mean, we've gone from a teeny-weeney show to international literally

and tens of thousands of customers, or customers, tens of thousands of listeners all over the world, mainly the USA. It used to be just South Florida. So who am I, and what gives me the right to give you advice and the people in the studio with me. What do we know that you don't know? Well, this is our business. We're retail automobile dealers in this studio.

I personally have been in the business since 1968. One time I had multiple car dealerships. It's been pretty much my life. And folks in the studio is their life, too, with the one dealership we have now. So we've been doing this for years and years. Rick Kearney, sitting to my right, he's a certified diagnostic master technician, so he's been fixing cars a long, long time.

I mean, 25 plus years, that's a quarter century plus. So we're in the business day by day. After the radio show, Stu goes back as general manager of the dealership. Rick Kearney goes back as one of our top technicians at that dealership. Nancy and I are involved in the dealership also and so we have a day-by-die-hand-on thing.

I started out back in the late 60s and early 70s just like all the car dealers I'm criticizing today. And time passed. I wrote a book about it. I'm buying a second book about it about how we evolved from

a car dealer that's doing things the wrong way, which includes a lot of dealers in the country today, not all of them, but unfortunately most of them, to a consumer advocate. And I started this radio show with Nancy Stewart about 20 years ago, do a newspaper column. I've been doing that for probably 15 years or more. And I wrote a blog, and now we're on Facebook and YouTube. You know, we're just, I have a dual career as an automobile dealer, which I love very much.

It's a family business, and we've changed the way we operate. And we're trying to get the rest of the industry to come along, not just the dealers, but the manufacturers as well. And we're seeing a little progress. This whole past two and a half years or whatever with the COVID pandemic and everything else is really shaking up the world, shaking up the car business, the car dealers, the manufacturers. We'd like to think we're shaking it up a little bit, too.

And with your help, you callers out there in radio and YouTube and Facebook land and all the other streaming lands that we reach are an important part of the show. I say this not to make you feel good or sound good, but you help us a whole lot and you educate us. We've learned something new almost every week on the show from you, the callers. So I ask you to write this number down for you radio listeners It's area code 877-9-60-99-60 877-9-6-0-9-6-0. Love the calls.

We're having a little problem with the technical stuff today and we're going to have to be notified of calls text-wise because our laptops aren't working in here but we'll see those calls. We prioritize them and when a call comes in we give the audio, the old-fashioned telephone I like to call priority. We have a limited number of lines coming in, I think four or five. We don't like it to hold for a long time

and we certainly don't want you to get a busy signal. So if you call 877-9-60, we'll try to prioritize that call. text 772 4976530 I bore myself I know I bore a lot of my regular listeners who have all these regular numbers written out but

there are a lot of new people out there like I said earlier 772 4976530 is our text number and our unique number an anonymous number like when you call to report a crime so that the bad guys don't come and get you when you rat on somebody

We have one of those lines, it's a webline, Your AnonymousFeedback.com. You can go on your computer or a smartphone to Your Anonymous Feedback.com, and you have a totally secure. It can't be wiretaps, you can't be traced, nobody knows who you are. And you communicate with us and tell us anything you like. We get some really good feedback from people on that line. Some good ones today. I've got some good ones, and I'm glad to hear that. They slipped off a little bit, maybe because I forgot to give the web address out often enough.

You've got to plug it. You've got to plug it. And then earluncars.com, you can go to that website. That's the mothership of this whole, whatever you want to call it, consumer advocacy group. And we have a podcast, we have archives of mystery shopping reports, all of our blogs over all the years. Too much information, frankly, our website is so filled with information that it's hard to navigate. But we'll help you, and you can call the show, and we'll tell you quickly how to navigate. So there we are.

There we are launched into another show. Everything is different today in the studio before the show goes on. We talk about how this whole COVID thing has changed everything. You know, some for the good, some for the bad. I have to laugh. I was talking earlier about the current week's automotive news. That's the trade journal for car dealers and auto manufacturers. Almost literally, every car manufacturer employ, certainly all the executives, not everybody,

but all the executives, all the car dealers read, and I'll hold up what it looks like. This is the automotive news for you streamers. They read this. Every week, religiously. And you don't read it, but we do. A lot of the media reads it, and then it gets into the normal media. What I was laughing about is that they announced today that the National Automobile Dealers Association is stopped publishing financial information about car dealers.

They just stopped this week. It was getting too embarrassing. Right. It was too much. Auto Nation's profits doubled in the first quarter this year from last quarter. Doubled, or it might have been from the first quarter last year, but anyway, no, I'm sorry, didn't double, only went up

45%. Forty-five percent. All car dealers, all car dealers' profits went up huge. It's just to the point now, the average car dealer, I think, is making $5 million a year. year. I mean, it used to be 2 million. I mean, it's, the numbers are crazy, the car dealers are getting rich, the manufacturers getting risk, talking to Jonathan before the show started, and he wanted to know how the manufacturer's doing. I said, well, secretly, they're getting fabulously rich because you don't know about their price increases. The only time you read about a manufacturer's price increase is when they increase MSRP. And MSRP, manufacturers, anything. It's the incentives. When they cut out the incentives, they increase their profit, meaning. They pay dealers' incentives to sell more cars. They stop paying dealers' incentives,

which they've stopped, and that money goes in their pocket. They pay customers' incentives to buy cars, and when they stop paying customer incentives, their profits, and the price of the car goes up. So the prices of the cars have secretly gone up hugely by the manufacturers, and not so secretly by the dealers because they're all selling their cars thousands of dollars over MSRP. So it's just a, what's the word is, it's an orgy of profit that the manufacturers and dealers are having. And yes, I'm a dealer, and yes, we're making huge profits. So there you are.

We're transparent. We told it like it is, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I honestly, I feel guilty about that. I honestly do. But we're drawn in line at MSRP, manufacturer's suggested retail price, which is thousands of dollars less than all the other dealers are doing. So we're still lower in price, but I still feel guilty.

Do you really? I do, yes. Let me put it to you this way. Because all the other dealers, most of them, let me retract that, most of them are lying, stealing, and cheating. All of the traffic is redirected to a car dealer. Who sells at MSRP? It's interesting.

That doesn't happen. And it just shows, and this show is necessary to educate the consumers any way we can, but people are still tricked to this day. Intelligent people, I might add. I know.

I have friends that, we assume everybody knows all we know about the car business, but if you look at the advertising, you hear it, you see it, you read it. All the advertising leads you to believe that all car dealers are very honest. And you only buy a car every four, five, six, seven, eight years. I mean, you don't buy a car very often. And when you do buy one, it's a new experience. Things change. And you receive

that ad, the smiling, happy person, and you go in and they take care of you and you sign the papers and you go home. Most people don't know they've been taking an adventure. That's the reason we're here. So, with that said, let us introduce Nancy Stewart. You just heard her sitting to my left here. She's a co-founder of this show with me many years ago when we're only a half an hour. A strong female advocate brought our listening audience of ladies up by almost parity. We're about 50-50 right now. And she has a very special offer for all you lady listeners out there who haven't called the show before.

We know you're listening, but we want you to call. and here's why you should call. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome. We have another exciting show ahead, and you can find out everything that we want to discuss this morning by staying with us for the next two hours,

and I want to thank everyone who's been instrumental in getting us right here, right here to this spot. We love just informing everyone, because like Earl said, not everyone is, you know, keeping up on, and it's difficult to keep up on the latest news in the car industry. Things are changing, you know, all the time. Between junk fees, sticker shock, no addendum labels, transportation disruptions, parts shortage.

There's a laundry list, not to mention gas. So stay with us. We're going to share a lot of information. And we depend on you to share your information with us because we do not know everything. That number is 877-9-60-99-60. So take advantage of that. For the ladies, I have $50 for the first two new lady callers. $50.

Please give us a call, ladies. Please let us know how that laundry list that I mentioned, how did it affect you this week? share your opinion with us ladies let your voice be heard 877-960 9960 I also want to mention

that you can subscribe to Earl Stewart on Cars podcast using any of the following podcast apps from your iPhone from your Android smartphone and you can

subscribe to Apple Podcasts Spotify, Google Podcasts podcast, Amazon Music, Stitcher Radio, and the SoundCloud app. Is this amazing? There are so many options. Take advantage of it, ladies and gentlemen, and please take advantage of your anonymous feedback.com. Now back to the recovering car dealer. I've got a text from Stu about our profits, and our profits are up.

Wait a minute, I have to get him some water. Listen, if you're going to be honest, you're going to be. honest. I mean, nobody tells, the NADA won't tell you the province. Our profits are up 73%. Let's don't read how I wrote that. Yeah, yeah, 73%. So, do you still feel guilty? I mean, why do you keep asking me that question? I do. I know I shouldn't. No. But I do. I can't be responsible for everything that everybody's doing out there. Since 1968, when I sold a car back in the day, oh, actually, in 1968, when I sold a car for MSRP, it was high five. it was drinks for everybody. We celebrated. We had a slam dunk club. We paid big bonuses

to the salespeople for slam dunks. And that's what a MSRP was. And so we always discounted from MSRP and all dealers advertised that they discount from MSRP. It's always been below MSRP. And the funny thing is, it's not funny, the average dealer back before COVID and the pandemic and the microchip shortage and all that, their average profit on a car was, what, $1,000, $800? Now, the average profit on a car is thousands and thousands of dollars. I mean, $6,000, is not unusual. So it's just gone huge

in the province. So, yeah, I guess it's a reflex reaction with me. I feel I justify it. In intellectually, I say, hey, I'm thousands of dollars less than what the other dealers are charging. So that's good, pat myself on the back, but it's still a huge amount of money to make. So that's, we've kicked that to death, so let's move along here. I want to remind you one thing, I get, I'm all caught up in the new car, used car, all that kind of thing. Remember that Rick Kearney, the certified diagnostic master technician, he knows all, knows all,

and what he doesn't know and what he doesn't see, Colonel Google does. We got all the answers either on the smartphone, because we're fast with that smartphone. Or we got Rick, who is very fast, having 25 plus years experience. He knows what's wrong with your car. Call in, give us an impersonation of the squeak, rattle, or roll, tell us about the smell, tell us about all the symptoms, just like you're going to your doctor. And you describe the symptoms of your car. You'll get a pretty good diagnosis from Rick.

and he will also guide you on what it should cost to repair it who you should take to how you should describe it you can probably get your car fixed and save yourself well if it's a serious problem a ton of money

and you might not even have to get your car fixed because it might be something you're misinterpreting or trust me if you have a problem with your car call Rick at 877 960 9960

and you can can get to him directly on YouTube. He monitors YouTube.com ford slash Rollin Cars. Go to YouTube.com ford slash rolling cars and there's Rick

looking at your post and you can communicate directly with him. He'll answer you and you'll also answer you live on the air and that's the way we communicate.

I like that introduction for you, Rick. I like all the animation and your wave to the audience. They love it. Yeah. And Stu Stewart, how are we doing on text and things like that?

Mr. Shopping Report, that's, Stu's in charge all that stuff. Well, we had a nice text from Amory waiting for us. I'm anxious to get to it. It's a little bit long, but I think it's perfect. Let me kick that off. Good morning. Jalopnik and Automotive News report that the state of Texas is pursuing action against Vroom under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act,

which can carry a fine of $10,000 for each violation. The Texas Attorney General's office has filed a 21-page petition, which lays out some damning claims against the online seller of room. Allegations include selling wrecked vehicles without disclosing repairs or accident histories, selling vehicles that needed extensive repairs or showing evidence of flood damage and not giving that information to buyers and never delivering vehicle titles. The Better Business Bureau and the Texas Attorney General have received 4,000 complaints within the last 12 months. in the last two weeks there have been multiple news stories concerning errant Florida vehicle dealers we talked about this on the show

we know about the FTC finding Napleton including two local ones right here on North Lake Boulevard also Jolopnik reported that a representative of champion Porsche we talked about that last week too is missing along with two and a half million dollars in deposits

to contact five from our local station here WPTV reported that several buyers are nearly a half a million dollars, the money, the cars, the exotic car dealerships that seem to disappear from Bocca Raton. But in spite of all these serious reports, the Florida Attorney General has apparently not done anything to bring the light of justice to these cases. So Anne-Marie's question is, if Texas can start policing a renegade company or a renegade industry, when will the Florida Attorney General start policing the renegade vehicle dealers here in

Florida that wreak havoc on Florida consumers. And she wants, Amory notes, and this is important, listen to everyone, this is an election year. The primary will be on August 23, 2022. The general election will be on November 8th, 2022. If you feel that Ashley Moody has done a good job, vote for her. If you feel she's failed to enforce the laws, they're supposed to protect consumers from unfair business practices, do not vote for her and tell your friends to. Thanks, Amory. And she says, P.S. Oops. Sorry, that was she had sent an earlier text, but great, great text from Amory. You know, Ann Marie, the world needs more people like you. You're active. You speak your mind. You're smart. And I really, I can't tell you how much we appreciate your texting the show.

I will say one thing. I will take a slight exception to what you're talking about with Texas. Texas, by the way, is not going after car dealers. They're going after car dealers' enemies and competition. Broom and Carvana, for example, are threats to car dealers. They're independent, used car dealers. When I think of a car dealer, I think of franchise car dealers that are franchised by manufacturers, that are in bed with manufacturers, And also the used car branches of that effort are also part of it.

Carvana and Broome are independent used car, kind of like CarMax. And, you know, the enemy of your enemy is my friend, or something like that. The enemy of my name is my friend. The enemy of the car dealers in Texas is Room and Carvana and the rest of them. So I bet, if you did a little research, you'd find out that the Texas Automobile Dealers Association and a lot of other associations and political action committees in Texas went to the Attorney General in Texas and said, you've got to help us with that competition. And they did that in Florida with Carvana. But that's still good. If room breaks the rules, you need to go after them. If Carvana breaks the rules, you need to go after them. But you're absolutely right about Ashley Moody.

She's in the pocket of the Florida Automobile Dealers Association and car dealers. They support her strongly. And as Anne-Marie said, the election coming up, if you think our Attorney General has really helped you, car buyers, who doesn't own a car? I mean, most everybody needs cars, and cars are controlled right now by a syndicate of car dealers that are protected by the Attorney General. You don't see anybody going after the big guys in Florida

or the small guys if they're a franchise auto dealer. So thanks, Ann Marie. Another fantastic text. Yeah, I am Marie. We really appreciate you and the information that you share with us on Saturday morning and boy, do I agree with you. Let your voice be heard.

We have the power and get her in and reinstate somebody, re-elect someone else. We're going to go back to, we're going to go to the phones and Bernard has been holding. He's a first-time caller from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Bernard. And LP.33,000 miles up.

And when you drive from March, you know, on the dash of the car that I'm sitting in my time, you've got a, uh, you know, code programming in this drive. Even dynamic, you can be mentioned. Transmission, you only have manual or drive. And the dealer keeps all my wife who works at a.m. I don't think about it. But eventually, you know, when you're sitting or trying to take off, I'm starting to start really hard.

And I wonder if you know what that knows. Bernard what's the model again could you could you could you repeat could you repeat the model number please sure it's a 20-20 you say these pads and it's a GLC utility vehicle and it's the model 43 is a twin turbo um six Rick what do you say I would go one of two routes The first one, the first thing I would do, I would go to a different dealer and ask them to drive it. I asked them to have the technician ride with you in the car, and whether you drive or they drive, personally I would have you drive it if I were the technician and show them, hey, this is what I'm feeling.

Is this normal for this vehicle? I don't think it is. And kind of watch your face. If the technician gets this shocked look, it ain't normal. And if they try to tell you that it is, ask them if they have a similar vehicle on the lot that you can test drive to compare it. Even a 21 would be basically the same vehicle. A 22 would be basically going to be the same vehicle.

The transmission should shift about the same. And if they don't have a similar one, I would check another dealer for that. because that's actually one of our go-toes. Occasionally, there is a condition in a car that is simply a characteristic of that car. It's a nature of the beast-type thing, and there's nothing that the technicians can do to change it. So we will demonstrate that by having the customer ride with us in their car, then ride in another vehicle, same age and, you know, a basic car if we can get that one, and show them, no, they don't. all this is the same thing that all of them are doing this and unfortunately it's a design flaw or characteristic it's something that we cannot change as technicians but we can put this

information up to the engineers and they may be able to change something i know what the the tacomas when we first came out with the 2016 model it had a new transmission and they did I think 12 different computer software updates on that transmission over the course of like a year and a half to two years before they were able to get it to shift properly. So go with the squeaky wheel attitude, polite persistence, don't take no for an answer, and just keep saying there's something wrong here, please put this up to the engineers, please show me similar vehicles so I can see that they do the same thing. And just be nice about it, but just keep working your way up the food chain up through the management until somebody says, yeah, there's an issue here, and either the engineers are now aware of it, and as soon as there's a fix, we can get it done for you.

But if there is no fix, then there's really not much we could do until the engineers do something about it. But as software updates anymore, believe it or not, fix a lot of issues with cars. Yeah, Bernard, I'm looking at Google. I googled 2020 Mercedes-GLC Sport Utility Model 43 transmission problems. And there's a lot of comments online about that. So you're not alone. Other people have had issues. And I think you definitely have a legitimate complaint.

Another thing you might ask is when you're at the dealership is all, manufacturers have tech specialists that will visit the dealer. The techs of the dealership are highly qualified, but factory techs are on top of the current designs in engineering, and we do this in our dealership. We have factory techs come in when something stumps us, and we need help. You can request that of the Mercedes dealer. And as Rick said, check with another dealer.

Sometimes it's just a matter of getting a different tech, a different service department. But you have a problem, and it's acknowledged online. Your worst nightmare will be telling you is when they tell you this is the way they all drive, and then you find out they do all drive that way, then you realize that you got yourself a problem. But I don't think that's the case. I think there probably is something that can be done.

Well, I appreciate both of you here. I'm an old guy. well, you know, I mean, while you don't have a year and all, and it's amazing. The technology is different. It's like I wouldn't have a different car now. Yeah, well, you got a problem with that car

and you just hope it's not in all the cars. That's, that's, that's, every consumer hates these words. I'm sorry, Mr. Jones, but all of our cars do that. Then you know, you're well, but even so,

that can change because it's amazing how many problems weird problems I have seen that suddenly we get a TESB or a campaign comes down to do this reflash, a computer

flash and it fixes these problems. It's amazing. That's a good thing to ask. The dealer too Bernard is ask if they have a technical service bulletin from Mercedes. Manufactures issue literally hundreds of thousands,

thousands of these. And they get so many of them going out to the dealers. Sometimes the dealers get behind and they don't stay caught up. The service advisor and the drive, when you go into the drive-through in the service department, oftentimes they're not caught up on technical service bullet. So the technical service bullet at TSB is filed and it will be your make and model of car will be there with an advisory from the manufacturer. If the tech reads it, then he might be able to help you. If he hasn't read it, it hasn't read it, then he says they all do that. So give that a try, too.

And the nice part is those all come up on the computer. Yeah, I'll run on the computer. Gentlemen, I want to tell you both here, I'll just drive to have his wife and happy life. I'm not to be able to make, but if my wife said, I hear him now. Have a good one, Bernard. Thank you, Bernard. Give us a call again. 960.9960. And of course, you can text us at 772-4976530. I think we're going to go back to Stu.

Can we jump over to Rick? Rick has a YouTube also. I've got one here that I'm going to read this verbatim. This is from Joe. He says, why do you talk about every dealership when your people does the same thing the Toyota store has a bunch of thieves and they lied to me and signed my name this podcast is

about exposure of everyone else dealership but your dealership is just as bad if not worse well I'd love to have you call me personally what is his name? Joe Joe. Joe. Joe call call me personally and you can respond to that so you can see the YouTube.

Give them my cell number, 561-358-1474. That's my personal cell phone number. One more time? Five-six-one. And you don't know my personal cell phone number? I've got it in the memory. It's not a phone. I don't remember my own number.

561-358-1474. And Joe can call me, tell me about the crooks that I have in my dealership. and we will call the police and have them arrested. We need evidence, though, Joe. We're going to ask you to help us with the evidence. Evidence of the forgery. Yeah, absolutely. The forgery is easy.

I mean, we can get a handwriting expert and FBI. We can handle that easily. So, Joe, thanks for the information. And as I say, if you're nervous about being exposed on YouTube, remember we have your anonymous Feedback.com that you can go to, online and be totally anonymous. So anybody else out there that wants

to say some things that they're nervous about me getting angry about you can just use your Y-O-U-R-A-N-Y-M-O-U-S Feedback.com and you can make accusations, you can call me names, you can tell the truth, you can tell lies, you do anything

you want to, I'll never know who you are. Nothing worry about it. This is Earl Angry right now. Yeah. This is it. You should hear me when I'm happy. I mean, I'm angry right now. And my cell phone number, I'll give you my cell phone number, so you can call me personally. Yeah, 561, 358, 1474. Excuse me.

I won't answer it during the show, though. And my phone's sitting right here, but I will not answer it during the show. That would be rude. You'll leave me a message. Okay. You can give me a call, 561, 386, 6498. If you can get Mr. Seward. We're going to go to John in Palm City.

Or Joe. call the show yeah that's a good idea Rick good morning John good morning to everyone have a couple of fuel questions for Rick first one is some of the modern cars have a permanent attachment to the rear it's a black non-manufacturer it says flexed that you see on the trunk or that trunk area and it says flex fuel let's explain what that technically means we just get out on a yeah it was a great idea too bad it didn't work flex fuel is basically a vehicle which is designed to be able to run up to 85% ethanol fuel so when you see gas stations that are advertising fuel that is quite often much cheaper than the regular 89 octane gasoline you'll see it as e85

And these cars were designed to run this E85 fuel, which is 85% ethanol, which is made from corn. The problem is that ethanol fuel does not have the same thermal properties or the same power-producing ability of gasoline, straight normal gasoline. and it also does not have the same mileage capabilities. It's not as strong of fuel. It's just a very weak fuel. I think it's also a greater pollutant. It is slightly a worse pollutant, but the biggest issue is that if your vehicle has not been designed to run E85 fuel, first of all, it's not going to run on it. Once you try to run it, it's going to shut that car.

down but it will also begin to to corrode and degrade the fuel lines and the injectors in your car and the fuel pump in the housing because those items are not designed to handle this ethanol fuel it's it's actually you have to have special parts made to handle it so if you see that E85 if your car's not designed for it do not put that in your car be very vigilant at the gas pumps because it's very easy to accidentally grab the wrong pump. The first thing you want to do, look at your fuel cap. It'll say up to E10 or up to E15

and make sure that that's the pump you get. We'll start a second thing, mentioned the E85 resident last month authorized E15 we have to be allowed to sell now. And on my opinion, even the 10% that we have now, if you can propose, the ethanol is extremely dangerous.

It doesn't even get the gas cars, the gasoline gets. I mean, if you think that a vehicle like Earl has, you put in the 37 Pontiac, and you've got big problems. Anything with a carburetor on it or a fuel pump, they will rot and eat into it, especially when the car sits like some of the snowbird cars

are here, and they don't use it. I mean summertime, and they sit here, and ethanol cannot be transported to a pipeline. It's so corrosive. Yeah. Yeah, when Biden made that comment, he was criticized because of the fact that he's a very strong advocate for, you know, for a clean planet. And more ethanol is a greater pollutant. He was just trying to get the prices of the gas down. You try to, you know, the more ethanol.

ethanol you use, the less gas you use, and price of oil and price of gas is very high now. So there were a little politics being played there, but as Rick said, you have to be careful. And the people out there that are really, truly looking for, you know, a cleaner atmosphere, more ethanol is not the answer. We have REC 90, REC90. Can I explain for what REC 90 is? Rec 90 is for recreational. And that basically is describing the vehicle that you would want to run it in.

90 is the octane level. It is 90 octane fuel. And it's intended for vehicles that should not run ethanol fuel. There is no ethanol in rec 90 gasoline. outboard motors, boats, lawnmowers, lawn equipment, ATVs, ATVs, leaf blowers. I love those leaf blowers. I have an electric one. It's almost silent. What kind of fuel miles do you get on that one? I don't know how they measure that. The electrons are good. Basically, any small engines, anything that should not be running ethanol in it, run REC 90.

In their cars, you know, I don't blame, there's been a chance to play back and forth with the price of the fuel, diesel fuel, particularly. It's gone up like 50%. You recommend when they keep their car here that they don't use, like for most season, you know, for the summertime. I know this doesn't recommend bad for the product called stable, written, say that that's a good product that's a good product that's in the gas bank, while the car is sitting here waiting. in moderation i would recommend filling the tank completely up add the stable uh the proper amount read the bottle add the proper amount spell spell that product it's s t a b i l is a brand name of one that i'm familiar with and it's basically it's a fuel stabilizer is to help keep the

fuel from breaking down over when it's going to sit for several months i and and drive the car for a couple of miles so that it'll mix into the gasoline thoroughly before you go ahead and park it for the winter time okay thank you for that you know I I'm not a part of you not going to gasoline but one other simple way to because they're worried about going into the reserve I say I'll go up several seven cents a gallon that will back some gasoline another way but we also a little bit to try to The problem with that, John, the problem with that, John, is that the gas station operators are just like the car dealers, where they see an opening, they fill it with raising prices.

So, if you knocked off the taxes, you're saving 30 or 40 cents a gallon, and how long does it take a gas station to raise their price, 30 or 40 cents a gallon? So you're making the gas station operators and the oil company is richer, and you're not helping the driver. But like you say, I'm not a politician either, but I know that's a political football going back and forth to knock off gas taxes. I personally think it's just enriches to oil companies and the gas station operators. Well, thank you, I for answering the question. Thank you, John. Thanks, John. Thanks for being part of the show every week.

unscrupulous, outrageous, illegal dealership fees. How do you feel about all that? Give us a call toll-free at 877-9-60-90-60. Ladies, you too. Let your voice be heard. Give us a call. You win yourself $50 for the first two new lady-caller's. 877-960-99-60.

For your others, Texas us at 772-497-6-5-3-4-7. zero now back to you have any more youtube i got one other here from uh patrick hines he says can you share any thoughts on vehicle inventories and where deals can be found i would love to buy at msrp but it seems difficult at least without a substantial weight considering other used brands i have a suggestion for you hey before we get into all this um with this new system because of our software having to be updated i missed a phone call and Marty has been holding for quite some time. Marty, good morning. I apologize. All right. How are you doing today? It's nice to hear from you. I kind of ask, I got to

roller school. Well, I've got some questions. The first question is, why would anybody buy a car, or did a truck come, drops the car off at your house? You haven't driven it, you have any know how we can buy cars, I mean, apparently, don't do that. When you buy his car, the when you buy his car, the condition should be that you have been inspected, and the condition of sale is you have it inspected, and the condition of sale is you have it inspected and you don't drive it yourself. You want to be sure that you're not buying a pig and a poke. So absolutely. A lot of online business going on these days, new and used cars. We buy used cars online all the time. We buy most of our cars that we retail offer a lot online, but we have an agreement

with the seller that if it's not what you told us it was, you've got to give us our money back. You should do the same. And that's, it goes back to like the earliest days of selling anything online. that was kind of like the big hesitation. How can you trust the person selling you the product? And over the years, you look on reputation and you look at policies.

I think Carvana has a return policy. It gives you a period of time. I don't know what the terms are of it, but something like that would have to be critical to be able to give it back if it wasn't what you expected or how it was represented. Every week our buyer, Marty, buys a bunch of cars online, and

he'll tell us, I bought this I bought a, you know, a 2016 Honda Accord and it wouldn't back up. And we forgot to test drive it and we're stuck with it. So, you know, you have to, even car dealers can get fooled and you have to be careful. If you don't drive the car, if you don't have a full return guarantee, you're going to get trouble with the used car. Okay, here's my second question. question that I don't know if somebody in your deal when you got fooled. I was over there, I got a new

wiper play, which I have to ask you right why they said they couldn't go in the winds or because I more ahead if I had to hold the play. It's not a third question. We got that beautiful cars sitting in your showroom, in the new car showroom, your sales and seats, we can't move the car. They either use it hydrogen or nitrogen, whatever. They said we bought that car, you know, with the business of California. Yeah, it's a Marai, Toyota Marai, a hydrogen-powered car. So I asked the salesman, I just did Earl fire the guy that bought there. Well, no, he wasn't fired, and we're going to sell that.

That's going to be an online thing, and that will probably ship to California or one of the states that have the special emissions. But we don't want to drive it because there's no, we don't know how to put any more hydrogen in it. whatever the hydrogen is in there, it's got to last. Yeah. In other words, it's not where in Florida they would drive there. No, no. And the intention was to sell it online anyway. That's a, yeah.

There is a market there. Well, we're going to find out if there's a market, but I didn't know about the car until you told me, Marty. So thanks for that information. I'll be sure keep an eye on that car and see who did. Yeah, Marty, keep checking on it, for us. who did appraise it and how much we paid for it and how much we sell it for it we bought it online yeah we bought it wholesale we didn't we didn't oh i know no no i know that yeah yeah i understand

yeah yeah yeah i wrote around in one years ago a marai it was only sold in california and uh it's it's pretty neat i mean you know the only uh waste product it produces is water had literally dribbles out of the tailpipe. It'll be a collector's item one day because that was one of Toyota's biggest mistakes was trying to make the standard hydrogen powered cars and

everybody else went the other way and Toyota said, well, I guess we screwed up and now they're back on the EV bandwagon. If you have one of those on a Tucker and what are those other cars that didn't quite make it? Exactly. Edsel.

Stanley Steamer. If nobody else right? Is Rick why they could insert? Sure, Mark. We can answer that. Pretty much the only reason that I will replace the blades and not do inserts is if the blades have already been replaced once. And if they've had aftermarket blades or some other type of blade put on, then our inserts won't fit in it.

Well, maybe that was... They did change once. They might have I was out of town I put it on it and I noticed They might have switched over to a different set of blades

And then you can't put Just replace just the rubber insert then Okay No blades Excellent Right, fine Thanks, Marnie Okay

Thank you very much Thank you, Marty. Give us a call again. 877-960-99-60. Ladies again, $50 for the first two new lady-callers. Anything at all. Just say hello. 877-9-60-99-60.

And you can also text us at 772-497-6530. Don't forget, your anonymous feedback.com. We're going to go to Stu now. Okay. With more anonymous feedback. Is there a difference among Toyota hybrid vehicles and the Prius? If not, what are the advantages of the Prius? I'm sure Rick can get into a lot more detail,

but the Prius has the highest fuel efficiency of all the hybrids that Toyota makes. Let me give my perspective that's to, or Rick can give the technical perspective. My perspective is the Prius is a great car because it's been built for a long time. It's like anything else. The Prius has been, when's the first Prius in Japan? 97. So there are very few model cars that have been around that long. And every year you improve it, you improve it, you improve it, you find, I mean, you can never get a perfect car.

But the Prius is as close to a perfect vehicle as Toyota ever had. Unbeknownst to a lot of people, the Prius is not only, we used to sell Priuses, mainly because it got great fuel economy. And they got popular, and that was an eco thing, and you want to be driving a Prius. It was the in thing to do. But now people that are in the know, they look in consumer reports, and they talk to friends and drivers, and they find out that the Prius is the most trouble-free car, Toyota, has ever built. And that's just because they got it right. How many years has that been from 1997?

Almost 30 years? Yeah. Long time. And Rick, technically. Pretty much until the new tundra, they've all been pretty much the same. Electric motor that drives the car is powered by a gasoline engine to create electricity to drive the car. Excuse me. The new tundra is the only one that's really different, and its hybrid system is actually intended to increase the amount.

of torque and power available for acceleration and low-end torque type situations. The new tundra is actually not, although it's a hybrid, they have a hybrid available. It's not actually intended to be a fuel-saving system on the tundra. It's actually intended more to be an increase in torque for towing situations or for getting a heavy load moving and for higher speed operation. So pretty much, other than that, all our hybrid systems are essentially the same where they're designed to maximize fuel economy. Yeah, I don't think his question was so much about hybrid.

It was the better, which is the better car? I think if you ask me whether the tundra or the Prius was a better car in terms of maintenance and repair, et cetera, the Prius. The Prius is the best car in Toyota's. line. Other than that for a hybrid, I like the new Venza. No, it's for all cars, Rick. He's talking about

all cars, yeah. No, he was talking about just Toyota's. Toyotas, yeah. Yeah. All Toyota, hybrids versus Toyota Prius. The questioner. Oh, Toyota well, Prius is a hybrid. Yeah. Yeah, he just said he was saying of all the Toyota hybrids, what's the difference

between Prius and the other ones? Yeah, Prius is the best. The really only the biggest difference is that Prius has never had a gasoline-only counterpart that was a non-hybrid. Prius has always been hybrid. That's right. Camry hybrid's been around for 15 years, but we'll move on from Toyota hybrids. Avalon, same-lid, same-hbhbats.

You know, it's an interesting topic because I could ask the same question, and what the three of you just exchanged, the Prius, the hybrid, the hybrid, the hybrid, the pre. Is it the same? blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, back and forth. It can be confusing And 1997, wow Okay, let's move along All right, got some more anonymous feedback

When you see a cluster of salespeople Hang it out in front of the dealership Run This is the first sign that your best move is to run away That's from, did you submit that anonymously? Yeah, it's funny they still do that It's a comic lie Well, we encourage our salespeople to gather in front of the dealership

But to sing barbershop quartets And do what It entertains people. people. I don't call them, I call them wolfbacks. Wolfbacks, yeah. Are they singing in a cappelow? Yeah, over a burning garbage can. There you go. There's another anonymous feedback. The Clean Technica website has an article about South Korean researchers who are developing technology that, in theory, could fully charge an electric car in

one minute. Can you see what I'm saying? Yeah, I got to look at it. Technology is so amazing. Yeah, I'm a tech nut and I just love stuff like that. I mean, we have people call and, you know, we hear feedback. There's anti-EV people out there, a bunch of them, and they just hate the idea of electric vehicles and you don't even want to say autonomous to them. They get hysterical about that.

Changes are coming, folks, and technology is just so cool to think that you can, they're working on a battery. you can charge you in one minute. You can't fill up your gas tank in one minute. I mean, that's amazing. It's going to be, I tell you, the problem, the bottleneck is going to be gas stations. That's where you're probably. See, I'm not going to the gas station.

It takes me five minutes to get in there and get out. Yeah. I don't want to. I'm time for a gas station. Oh, here's a totally unrelated thing. I'll just throw it out there because it's a technical thing. Now they've come up with fingerprints

for all parts on cars. If you are, if you're, when manufacturers now, they have a process so that a piston, of course I'm talking about combustion parts, but any part on the car, Rick Liston of this, will be unique. And it has a fingerprint. Every part because of the tolerances

and the variable weight, just like a human fingerprint, every part. So imagine if you have a problem with the car and you can look to the fingerprint of the car, you can actually track that part back to the machine that was made on. And you might, and instead of having to recall every car with that part, you only recall the parts on that machine. I mean, just amazing.

I just, I'm blown away. Technology, if you can imagine it today, it's going to happen in the conversation. Yeah. That's amazing. Each part has a fingerprint. Yeah. Wow. Okay.

I have a nice anonymous feedback and a not so nice one first one says Earl and crew please don't give up the fight you are a bright light in a very dark industry it doesn't have to be that way and the next one says Earl stop interrupting Rick

with an exclamation point I started to forward that to Rick I say this we have internal problems here I'm the coach I mean I'd like it or not I mean, sometimes it's not fun being the boss, but what I try to do is maintain a flow,

and I try to maximize the calls and the text, anonymous feedbacks, and this, that, the other. Now, Rick's problem, and this is a great problem, he's a mechanical genius. And he's asking him a question, he just knows too much about a lot of things. And what happens is he gets, he loves what he does, That's the thing I love about Rick most is a lot of people do what they do just for the money.

Rick does it because he loves it. And if I'm embarrassing you, you deserve it. He comes to work because he loves what he does. I'm passionate. He is. And so people ask him a question, and Rick gets into so much detail that if I didn't say something and interrupt him, it would be a two-hour answer, and then the show would be over. And a lot of people would be deprived. But I love Rick.

He's a genius. I learn more. I learn more personally about the mechanics and the computerization of cars just since this radio show has had Rick on it than I ever had. You should hear me in a conversation. It does too.

It does too. You should hear me in a conversation with my brothers on a technical thing that I've picked up in the radio show. I'll start talking about it like I know what I'm talking about. And they're like, you don't know. I go, I know exactly what I'm talking about. I don't get it from me. And then I text at email Rick all week. long. How many emails and text

do you get from me in addition to what your teacher's on the show? So you're right, I am rude when I interrupt Rick. I try not to be too rude but we've got to have a flow in the show and it's important to get as many callers and we're going. I simply

take it as constructive criticism. I appreciate that. To me that's simply I'm trying to learn from that and learn to try to be more concise in my answers. And I do the same thing with some callers too. I mean we have callers that are great callers. And I sometimes have to hurry them out a little bit for the good of the show. So I have, I wear the bad guy hat, and I expect criticism, and I expect people to be annoyed.

But I hope I make more people happy than I annoy. And I interrupt Nancy. You should hear us on the way home from the show. Why wouldn't you let me talk? Well, I'm the coach. And I have to keep a flow of the show going. One of the best things about this show is that we're not a professional radio show. No.

We are a professional car dealership owner, a car manager, dealership general manager, Nancy, the woman's advocate, me, mechanic, and we're professionals in other areas that are coming together simply to spread knowledge. We're just really good looking and have nice voices. That's all. Yeah. And we have fun with it. And we're all brilliant. Right, we're brilliant and made for radio and television. And hey, listen, nobody said anything about Jonathan.

Does they all have to interrupt Jonathan? He's the power behind the throne. Jonathan is a super glue that keeps us together. Exactly. Exactly. I'm glad you said. We belong to a mutual wolf at Maration Society. Okay, let's go.

We have 10 hours and 52 minutes until the sun sets. Let's get rolling. Let's keep going. I want to actually, I forgot to finish answering the question that Rick on YouTube about how do you find out working you find a dealership that's not charging over MSRP and I'd like to direct you to Earl Stewart on cars we put up a web link to YouTube Kevin Hunter who's I think very familiar to some of our listeners we get text all the time and call the same list in Kevin Hunter he has two videos a two-part video series on his

channel on YouTube dealer is not charging over MSRP and dealer is not charging over MSRP part 2, and they're getting crowdsourced information from all over the country, and so they're going through and listing all the dealers that you can get a deal at and not get overcharged. But let me warn everyone about this. There are dealers that don't charge over MSRP very, very, very few, and there are those that say they don't charge. Well, it's only a 13-second video. No, I'm kidding.

Over MSRP. But what they do, the dealers that say we don't charge over MSRP can be more decisive. than the ones who do. If you charge over MSRP and you put a denim label on the window and the customer comes in and when you say we charge $5,000 over MSRP, you're honest. You're not dishonest. I don't like it. You're doing it. But if you say I don't charge over MSRP and they've got $5,000 in hidden fees and dealer and sole accessories, then you're dishonest. Just so you know, the information is not from the dealers. These are from customers who bought the cars and brought in the information. Not necessarily the customers that bought the cars. Customers that went in to buy a car, they may or may not. No, they're showing information. This is Kevin Hunter.

He's like an advocate guy. Okay, well. So it's a little bit more. But, yeah, but of course, IRB were, when you go in there, I mean, keep your eyes open just because there's one, it looks good. Yeah. Even this show, Earl Stirling Cars, our mystery shops, we never know for sure what would happen, because we don't buy cars that often. We have bought a car, I think, once or twice. haven't we still? We bought a car.

One time we bought a car. And we probably ought to do more of that. I mean, it's just, you know, just a lot more trouble to do it. We get our money back. I mean, one way or the other, but the only way to find out what you really paid is to go through the sales process and the F&I process,

the box. You really don't get screwed completely until you go through F&I. And the F&I, where the dealer makes as much or more money, as they does in the front end they call it the back end that's where they really get you and they hit you with reams of paper sign here sign here sign here and intelligent people attorneys sometimes you know nobody reads everything they sign i don't my attorney doesn't read everything he signs uh nobody read it can it's impossible to read everything so until you

go home and then you do read you don't know what you paid so let's not be flipping about who really is charging over MSRB and who's not. Well, I've got one here for you, Stu. Donovan is asking, do you know how long before you will start to receive the BZ4X? Yes. It seems to be getting pretty close, and have you had any customers asking about it? Yeah, we have a few people on a waiting list. The first one's going to get here this summer, and it will likely be the last BZ4X.

4X we'll see in probably a year. The dealers in outside of California will be getting one BZ4X electric vehicle and then they'll wait to find out when they might get another one. Wow. Yeah, so it's a

if you want a BZ4X, it might be a little bit easier if you lived in California and I think maybe Oregon and Washington State, I'm not sure, but that's the way it's going to roll out at first. Toyota is getting into the EV market, but very slowly. Wow. Yeah. Okay.

folks and one other quick one regina downing says thank you for your show i absolutely love the wonderful working relationship and respect amongst your team oh thank you that feels good right and i have a text from gary it says i read everything i sign really no i'm just kidding impressive that's our lawyer no you know that's an interest you know i'm going to start asking a lawyers that i know if they read have you ever thought of I get stuff, I mean, of course, I pass it down the line. I tell Stu to read it or Janet or somebody else. I just don't like to read long, fine print.

I mean, and people know that. If you can read it, if your eyes will be able to focus on it, you just, you fall asleep reading it. And if you want me to not read something, send me a really long email in small fun. Yeah, I had a, yeah, Jamie and they sent me a thing the other day. Oh, the docket sign? Yeah, and they kept calling me, call me, and so I sent it to Janet and show. on and said, should I sign this? I just can't. I haven't got the time. I mean, you know,

to read pages and pages of fine print. So folks, the system is set up to take advantage of you legally. So be careful. Yes. Okay, we're going to go back to the telephones where Charles has been waiting. Good morning, Charles. Hi, good morning. I've got a couple of questions that's pouring a car over the summer, I'll be heading back on port in the not too distant future. And I'm going to just sort of run through the things that I do and I want to get bricks, gross, everybody's ideas on whether that procedure is probably flawed or good. So here's what I do. Okay, number one, change the oil.

Number two, pull the tank fully with the stabilizer. Lived a car for a couple of miles and that's how they washed. Then what I do is I have the battery terminal disconnected in the negative and then I cover it. As I cover it is not so much because I said I want to take the outside but it's actually the inside here in Florida and we seem to have an awful lot of parts and last year when we had back and it was covered literally

under the hood and moldy odor of your head coming out of your out of your condition the moldy odor smell is going to be from the condensation that builds up when you're driving the car so when you're taking it on that last test drive the for fresh air intake, you know, the air from the outside, put the blower on high, and for about the last mile or two, turn off the AC button so that the air conditioner itself is turned off so that the free on to quit flowing, the temperature will get a little warmer, but that air blowing across the evaporator core will help dry all the water off, and with no water, that will reduce that mold and musty smell.

Are you using any sort of a trickle charger on the battery? I can't. I live in a condo complex, and they do that up north. Mm-hmm. Garage of my condo up north, but I can't do it down here. What you might, I know you don't have a place to plug in, obviously, for that. What I'd recommend, try looking into maybe one of the ones that hooks up to the battery and uses a solar cell.

because the modern solar cells now can produce enough power that'll produce a couple amps of power and that's really all you'd need for a trickle charger is just something that puts just enough power to kind of bring that battery up in its state of charge just a little bit. It's going to be outside, right? Right, if you're outside and...

I'm not sure how much sun I could have got. You'd probably still get enough sunlight that it would work. I mean, because it's even the reflected sunlight will still charge on a solar charger. It doesn't actually need direct solar access, but even reflected light coming in. Unless you're in just a pitch black, pitch dark area, or real super heavy shade, then it might not work. Is there anybody you trust enough to drive that car once a week for you? Well, that much, another question. If I have somebody to drive my car a couple of miles, does that really make a difference?

Yes. That actually makes a huge, huge difference. Even if all they do is they start the engine, they drive it, say, 5, 10 miles, park it, but let it run for a little while. And, again, do that trick with the air conditioner so that it gets all the water out of the evaporator. core you would see a vast improvement in the lifespan of the car just from that little bit right there turn turn the AC off set the outside fresh air intake and put the blower on high fastest blower speed the max amount of air coming through it but with the fresh air so that

outside air coming in, and air conditioning actually turned off. You know, I had one question about something you said about covering your car. Years ago, when I was evil, and I had a motorcycle, and I lived in a condo on the ocean, I used to cover my motorcycle, and it completely rusted away. And I hypothesized that I did that because I was close to. the ocean, I hypothesized that without an airflow, that the salt that was sitting more, settling more down than, I had never noticed that before, I covered the motorcycle. When I covered it, it seemed it rusted faster than when I didn't cover it. Do you have a thought on that, Rick?

Well, modern car covers are supposed to allow an airflow through without letting, like, the moisture and the salt get through it. Maybe that was my problem. This was a problem ago, yeah. But then also with, when you're close to the ocean like that, all bets are off. You're right. Anything can happen at that point, especially if you get a really heavy offshore breeze, that wet salt air can actually come right up under the cover. So he should cover. And now it's collecting in there.

He should cover his car. Yeah. For the best way. And if possible, if you have a choice of parking positions, if you can put a building between you and you, if you live near the saltwater, put the building between you and the saltwater. would reduce that salt air that's actually getting to the car and reduce a lot of that corrosion. Yeah, I've often thought that would be something desirable if I could move my car a little bit, but we all have a sign parking spot.

Right. Well, you know, thanks for that question, because you and about 10,000 other people are worried about that. It's really a challenge. You have so many people here that go back north over the summer, and then it'll be a lot. what happens to your car when it's sitting there for that period of time. Everybody worries about that. So your question really enlightened a lot of people. I thank you very much for the call.

Another thing just quickly is on that N-stabilizer, and here I found that they sold out on Beach County. Everybody was grabbing it off the shelf. There wasn't any of the ads. So if you're planning to go north, it's a stabilizer, clearly. Or Amazon.com. Yep. Amazon is always a good source.

Thanks for it all. You know, it was amazing how much attention we gave to that motorcycle, and it was in a great location, but we're talking back in the 80s, and it was protected by a wall. And I want to tell you what, I had never seen anything rust like that Harley-Davidson. The guy that came down from Harley stood in front of the bike, and he cried. Oh. Yeah.

Okay. Okay, we're going to go back to the phones, we're going to talk to Eileen, who is a first-time caller. Good morning, Eileen. Hi, good morning. Welcome. I was everyone today. You won yourself $50, Eileen. Oh, just by being the first new female caller.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh, great. So you send me your, email me your information. Okay. I will thank you. You're welcome. What can we do for you?

Well, my question is, I'm just debating on a Tesla and I'm not sure. I'm trying to figure out what the biggest benefit of an electric car is as opposed to not. You know, the distance in which feels like it's more of a, I don't know, it's more of a half a cold than it's worse, or what you're not far on it. What, how much driving do you do, Eileen? Per week, how many miles do you drive on the average? I would say probably, I'm mainly a local person, driving around pretty local and in the Jupiter area. However, I do go up to Orlando quite off and down to Miami.

It's concerned me that you're in the middle of the traffic Well, if you, be careful which car, if you, be careful which car, if you're talking about a Tesla, that's not going to be an issue for you. You may know that I drive a Tesla and my son's still used to, and they have an amazing system for having a car charge. I have a charger in my garage at home, but even if I didn't have, when I drive the charger, they're, Tesla charger is all over the place in Florida and pretty much the whole United States between here in Orlando. Your dash will tell you, your readout will tell you you're getting low in charge. The nearest charger is here. The nearest fast charger is there.

A fast charger will completely charge, will charge at 80% in 20 minutes in a Tesla. And you're never going to have a problem of not being able to get there. you'll have probably 300 plus miles of charge, fully charged. As you're going to Orlando, you can get all the way from where you are to Orlando on one charge, charge up when you're in Orlando, and then come back home. But I love it. I love passing gas stations. I love the whole electric car experience.

And I think Tesla is coming out with a new low-price model. they have a complete line so like every other car you're going to have to wait a long time to buy one because there's a waiting list but Stu and I are very high on electric vehicles and do you highly recommend

the electric like the test that was a high race by the car not necessarily I happen to I'm kind of a tech guy I mean I like the high tech of the Tesla and a lot of other bells and whistles on it.

In terms of practicality, a good hybrid today is a really good investment. I mean, you can't go wrong. I would check consumer reports, look at the hybrids available and choose

a model style that you like. That would be your safest course. I have to be honest about Tesla. The quality in the Tesla is not what the quality is. and some of the other cars that are out there available for sale. It has its challenges. And what I just said about how much I love my Tesla is tainted by my tech thing.

I'm amazed at what the Tesla, the high tech, the things it'll do. And unless you're a tech nut, you probably wouldn't be overwhelmed like I am. And, Eileen, it's just a personal preference, actually. We ride in the Tesla. I've driven the Tesla, and Earl's right about the technology. It's unbelievable, but there's some things Tesla failed at, and for that, I drive the Avalon, and we kind of take turns back and forth, but Earl on any day will tease me.

I didn't have to get any gas today. How much should it cost you? So we have the luxury of having both vehicles, but it is definitely personal preference. The Prius, you simply can't go wrong, that's for sure. And most of the cars that I'm dealing with are, well, they're hybrids. The RAV, I mean, I could go through a whole laundry list of cars that are just amazing. You have a lot of options today. Yeah, I just kind of stammering, you know, kind of put my feet in.

in it right now. Inside, it's just that's all gas on to that, you know. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, Aline, if we have answered all your questions, I want to remind you again, you did win $50 for giving us a call this morning, and I'd love for you to spread the word. Our platform here is very important, as your voice is.

Well, thank you so much. I'll be glad to. You're quite welcome. Have a great day. Have a great for you. All righty. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. And don't forget one more.

I'm waiting for one more call from a female caller. She can win herself $50 this morning. Now back to Stu. All right. It's a text says, I have a question for Rick. I have a 21 Camry. I want to get my brake calipers painted, but was told that they're not high-performance. and that the paint would not look how I wanted it to.

I was told to try caliper covers, but I have seen bad things about them online and they could damage your car. What are your thoughts on caliper covers for a camry? Caliper covers are basically just a decorative thing. I don't see any issues with using them. I mean, unless you're like doing a lot of really high-speed performance driving, you're not going to have any heat issues from that.

painting the calipers, same issue. If you want to take the time to clean it all up really well and paint it, sometimes they look really nice that way, if they're done properly. Yeah, I think I had red calipers in that Super I used to drive. Very fancy. A lot of the fancier high-end cars, they paint the calipers, and I think it's just more of a cost-saving feature. The only reason the factories don't usually paint calipers

because they're pretty well hidden by the wheels. All right. Next one, we have another text from Anne Murray, and she just wants to say that your show is a valuable resource. I always learned something new every week. Thanks for giving a wider picture of the vehicle selling business. The average car buyer doesn't necessarily know that Carvonne and Room are not dealers, and I learn something new every day. Thank you. Thank you, Anne Murray. Moving along. Good morning all. This is from Bob. Good morning, all. I will be leaving in a week to return to Cape Cod or a summer for five months. I understand that the Toyota dealer in my little town, way out near the end of the Cape, is one of two dealers in Massachusetts that

advertises he's selling it at MSRP. I need a truck and we'll be visiting that dealer within the next three weeks and I'll give you a call after I go there to tell you how we make out. That's good. And buy that's from Bob and he lives within a walking distance of our dealership. Hey, won't you walk over and buy

a truck from us? Let's do an online shop of that guy. Well, it's the dealership is Ira Toyota in Orleans, Massachusetts. Ira Toyota. Ira Toyota. It's not Jaffarian Toyota. Yeah, we'll do a little way up. We'll do a little online shop.

And we got a text from Frank in Jupiter Farms, one of our regulars. And I forward the pictures. I'm not sure. He sent me some pictures that look like some car parts and some tanks to Rick. I don't know what they are. What are those? Strat Towers. One of those looks like some sort of like a job.

jackstand and then a couple of antique fuel cans. All right, I'll send them with a John. Maybe you can put it up on the screen so you can see what we're talking about. And one more text here. This is from Liz in Stewart, Florida. She said, you were just talking about Prius cars. Are the hybrid Prius a good electric vehicle, or is the RAV-4 considered better? Better in maintenance of miles per gallon, or better for a first car for an 18-year-old.

Well, I can tell you that the first car, for my son was a Prius and my first car for my older daughter was a Rav4 hybrid. And as far as safety goes, I felt safe putting them both in both cars. Liz makes a point. She says, Prius is a smaller vehicle and a Rav4 is bigger so you have more vehicle around you. I can tell you right now, all new vehicles right now, whether it's a Toyota or any other new make, they come loaded with safety equipment, passive and active safety safety. systems that are really making a difference in injuries and traffic deaths. And if they're wearing their seatbelt, I would say I would be comfortable putting an 18-year-old first-time driver in both vehicles. Perfect car.

That's just my opinion. It is perfect car. The cool thing about it is, you know, and I think back when I was a teenager, when I was a teenager, I like acceleration, and now if I were a teenager, I could have acceleration and fuel. got to me. Okay. Could you imagine you in a Tesla Model S in 1958? Yeah. Yeah. You'd be a dangerous. Right, you'd be in jail. I was just going to say he wouldn't be sitting here. Well, he'd probably be like, you know, serving time. He'd probably be like abducted by the Pentagon and want to know how he had this magical car in 1958. That'd be a real good question.

Yeah, you'd be in custody for sure. All right. We have an anonymous feedback that came in giving us another source for crowdsourced information about dealers that sell to MSRP and like I'll point out before take this with a grain of salt investigate yourselves but it's a website and I went there it's called

Y-A-Y-A-A and actually the website name is join Y-A-A-J-O-I-N-Y-A-A-com slash on I lost my spot I'm going through multiple tabs slash dealers join YAA.com slash dealers and it's supposed to list dealers that are not selling over MSRP.

And here's the last anonymous feedback I'm going to read this morning. Earl, you are guilty as you admitted. 70% profit is ridiculous. It's 73%. 73% profit is ridiculous. You are back to your old ways in the auto industry. Nope.

Well, I'm not saying now you made me cry. I already told you I felt guilty and now you're picking on me Yeah, that's called kicking the guy when he's down I mean, my defense is that I'm selling cars For less money than all the other dealers And there's no surprises

And I say on this radio show To cleanse my conscience Don't buy a car I'm telling you Today is a terrible time Don't buy a car from me Don't buy a car from anybody until the prices come down. Nancy just gave me some tissue.

Wipe away your tears. And so you just don't believe me. I'm telling you. Everybody's crying. Look at Stu. Oh, Rick. So, anyway, I am a, I work too heads. Consumer advocate, I say,

don't buy a car. put my car dealer head on. I'm a car dealer. I will sell you a car for less money than the other dealers. And I'm selling to you at MSRP. But remember what I said with my other head on, don't buy a car. So I'm ambivalent. I know that. But I don't know what else to do. Right. Yeah. It's a tough situation. Would I be foolish if I were to cut my prices to? I mean, I have no cars in stock now. We have no cars. We have over 900 cars in our order bank. They're ordered cars.

Another two or three hundred filled. And what would happen if I start selling it $1,000 below MSRP? I wouldn't sell more cars. I might not. I must have money, but would I feel better? See, I think I'd still have guilt. I'd feel guilty about... Let's move on.

Let's move on, yeah. I don't like where your head's going. You're right. You're right. I'm okay with the MSRP. Hey, we have some comments on Facebook. Let's see. Chuck says, wants to know what's the best way to clean the headlight with smoky plastic? He's trying lemon and baking soda.

That sounds delicious. What do you recommend? I prefer my headlights barbecued. Actually, a lot of the commercial products available from the local auto parts stores will do the job quite nicely. I've tried quite a few of them over the years, testing them on various family members' cars. They all seem to work about the same, well, you'll get about another year before you need to do it again. It all depends on how much effort you put into basically scrubbing them clean with these various products. The more effort you put in, the longer they're going to last.

How long, on the average, does it take you to do the headlights? For the ones that I've done, I spend half an hour to 45 minutes total on the two headlights doing all the scrubbing and cleaning. Disassembling, cleaning, and put them in them back together. Yeah, pretty much. Well, we don't even really disassemble. I just use masking tape on all the areas around it. And then they usually, most of these kits have like a scrubby pad with a, like, a cleaner chemical and abrasive chemical that will clean away the outside layer. You're almost polishing that layer off, and then you have a spray that goes back on that makes it come up nice and clear and clean again.

And like I say, most times doing that will get you a year to a year and a half of a relatively nice, clean headlight, and then they're going to start fogging up again. And you go back and do it again. Yeah, there you go. I'm actually planning personally, I'm going to replace my headlight assembly soon by a brand-new one. ones. And when I do, I'm going to take them to a local place here and actually have a clear plastic 3M vinyl coating put on them, the stick on coating, so that it'll probably last me two or three more years before I ever have to try to touch them again. Great idea. We're going to go back to the phones where Rosie's holding from Singer Island. Good morning, Rosie.

Good morning. Welcome. Hi. Glad to be accepted at your show. Oh, you're, we're glad to hit. What I'm calling about is your opinion on a Corolla Cross is supposed to come out. Yes. Those are, it's a Coral Cross, it's like a crossover version of the Toyota Corolla, and they are being made now.

But similar to like, I meant, I don't know if you were listening earlier, I mentioned about the new electric vehicle. It's such a low production car right now. So it's very, very hard to get. All new vehicles are hard to get. About six months, right? Yeah, probably. Or at least six months. And that's one of the ones, usually we say three to six months for, like, cars like Camry's and Corolla's.

Once you get up to Corolla Cross, it could be six months or a year. It's a really long time. Super Reports doesn't really give it a really great breeding. Then I wouldn't get it. I didn't realize that. That's disappointing as a Toyota dealer. I hate to see that, but that happens. But not that crazy for like a brand-new model.

You know, something that comes out. Sometimes they don't shake it out, maybe the next year. And I think you've given that advice as well. When you have a brand-new model, don't get the first year. Let them, the Earl said that before in the past about just, don't be the guinea pig. actually i have a matrix which i love oh yeah they don't think them anymore i know

this would probably be the closest thing to that this was that was a matrix was a corolla matrix also so this is uh so i see why you're interested in it so you just got to be a little bit patient and uh maybe let's uh let them shake out some of the bugs do you by any chance know why they gave up the matrix I don't know any particular reasons, but all car manufacturers will cycle in and out. It probably might have to do with sales.

Maybe they weren't selling enough of them, or as many as they thought they were going to sell, or not really sure. Yeah, Rosie, all the manufacturers, Toyota included, has too many models. They make it too complicated for the customer, and they try to please everybody in. What they do is they just don't have enough. When you consider the different models of each make, and you consider the different colors available and the combinations and permutations of options, accessories, and everything else, to have one of everything in a dealer inventory, a dealer probably have to have 10,000 cars on the ground, and that's just not the way it should be, and eventually cars will be not carried an inventory like that, they'll be ordered, but they cut out the matrix because they just had to cut something. I remember when they cut off the Salara convertible, we all cried in Florida, all Toyota dealers and customers, because it was a great car in Florida. But in the rest of the world, they just weren't selling them.

So it's all a business, a big, big business, and the manufacturers make those decisions, and it makes some people angry and makes other people they don't care. Yeah. Yeah, in Rosie, there was a lot of people that asked about the Matrix, you know, but like Earl said, with the silica with the salera. I mean, it's just unfortunate, but they're gone. It won't be like, you know, how you hang out to your old clothes. Eventually, they come around and there's a... Very well put. Very well.

That reminds me to get my bell bottoms out of the closet. Hey, well, I surprised us to know what you thought about the cross, because it looked interesting, but, like I said, see, Let's see how it does it does in the next year. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Rosie. You're welcome, Rosie. Give us a call again.

You know, Rosie said something else that piqued my memory, and this is an internal issue that my dealership has, and Stu and I are working on it. But basically, I had a customer very angry. He called me up and said, I came down from my Marden County to buy Corolla Cross because your website said you had 15 in an inventory. And then we looked and we analyzed, we found out what's happening as I found out, others knew about it, that Toyota nationally is putting cars on dealers' websites with their computer. On our website we have no choice.

And they say, well, we've been allocated in terms of that model, but but they're not necessarily not sold and they're not necessarily on the ground. In our case, as I said earlier, we don't have any cars on the ground. If you go to our website and you don't read carefully, you will find out it says to check with the dealer for availability, but it also says 15, this dealer has 15, but you better check with him to see if he really has 15. So heads up with all manufacturers, I'm sure it's not just Toyota that's doing that. If you go online and you see, oh, and we have, Stu is very, you can't miss this.

Stu is very proud. We have gone above and beyond the call duty, a big pop-up that says, we're lying to you. We really don't have the cars. They're not in stock, and it's about as good a disclosure as we can do. So the word to the people that are online shopping, when you go online and a dealer says he has cars online, he probably in stock. He probably doesn't. Now, in fairness, there are some cars in stock. Some dealers prefer to have their cars in stock.

Yeah, well, some dealers prefer to have in stock because they're selling for $10,000 over a sticker. If they were selling per sticker or less, and they're not going to sell them for less or sure. They wouldn't be in stock. But they wouldn't be in stock. So the reason we don't have any cars in stock is because we have the lowest price.

The other dealers are getting $10,000, $5,000, $3,000, thousands over sticker but call ahead of time and see what is there before you drive 20 or 30 miles and find out the lots empty okay we are going to go back to the phones and this is going to be our last call before we get to the mr. shopper report good morning good morning frank so what was that picture Oh, very good. I'll send it to Jonathan so you can put it up. direct by the other guys. The other guy who are the other guy.

The other guy is going to be in the month. The next question for the entire life. I'm very good piece. You have a couple of them. We have a lot of here. And there's a lot of here. And one of these cars. You know,

right? Oh, the near, where the water they'll blow up. One of the cars. One of the cars with the tire

with the right up here on. And the new and then you know we can figure out the line of the other. I'm going to add a lot of the clean district of yesterday. I was just the only over standing cow. Oh, man. Um, we have a question that's up there.

They're going to be able to eat here with nothing. When you see what's eyes, you can't there, They're all-commanding hard-lock. It's a lot of the station. If you want to be able to help for a lot of the site. And what I did...

...and you've got pretty flight-charley. You've got raised and a very high and the first. I can't be actually all right and a lot of the price of it. And then we've got a lot of the car.

Did you see that? Yeah, you know, I see that? Yeah, you're absolutely right, right, right, right. There are a lot of those folks out there. You got it, Frank. Great hearing from you, Frank. To have a wonderful weekend. We're going to go to the Mystery Shopping Report

and out there in, well, happy land, I hope, because you're watching our show, you're going to vote on the mystery shop, and you can do so by texting us at 772-497-65-3-3-4.5-3-4. zero. We went out to Tennessee and our Agent Lightning is a breath of fresh air. She is just amazing. She's done an amazing job from the start and I hope it won't be the finish for her for a long, long time. Mystery Shop from Merfreyboro Toyota. Did I pronounce that correctly? It's hard to say Murfreesboro. It's a mouthful.

Murphreysboro. My lips get in the Murphy's Borough. There it is. Murphy's Borough. Okay. Okay. Back to the recovering car dealer. After a couple of weeks roughing up the Napleson Auto Group, that was a lot of fun.

We're going to do that some more. It's a lot of fun. Earl's Tourant Cars is turning its attention elsewhere. That's one of the fun things about our mystery shops. We keep all the car dealers out there guessing. and I wish we had an undercut of a agent just in a car dealership to see what they talked about

but that's too much personnel that would be too costly. They never know what we're going to do and where we're going to turn it up next. Much to the relief of South Florida dealers are target this week in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Toyota of Murphreysboro, a Terry Taylor dealership. Boy, I tell you, he's everywhere, isn't he?

Terry Taylor. Unbelievable. He's got several. stores right here and you looked up later on in the report how many dealerships. The largest private owner of dealerships probably in the world, Terry Taylor. We've been to Murfreesboro before Agent Lightning has already mystery shop, Beeman, Chrysley Jeep Dodge, Fiat of Murfreesboro. You just keep throwing that Murphy'sboro and you know it misses my tongue and my lips up. Murfreesboro, Nissan, and Smale Mazda, Murfreesboro.

I put that in parentheses for you. That was optional. All of these dealerships were delightfully superior to the typical South Florida dealer in terms of the customer experience. They're part of a greater trend we've observed once you get north of Orlando. Dealers start behaving better. It's interesting that we have, here's the proof there. We've got Terry Taylor, and we know stores like Southern Nissan and Southern POMS and Southern 441. It's hard to identify which dealers are his.

You've got to know. Terrible, terrible way they treat their customers. And then you go to Murphy'sboro, same owner. So the message, the moral there is it isn't the owners of these dealerships. See, the owners are removed. I mean, whether you're talking Bill Wallace or Terry. retailer or any owner, the less control you have, the more out of control you get, and the worse your customers gets treated. You have a business, a retail business that pays commission. Everybody in your dealerships, speaking to dealers now, is on commission. You know, 10%, 5%, 25%, 40%, whatever it is. They're all on commission. They're all on commission.

When it casts the way the my school play, Terry Taylor owns a dealership in Murfreesboro, and in spite of what he wants to do, it's a nice place. And it's apparently a rural or laid back a cultural thing. And we look at all the different dealerships we shopped and have all been nice. So we'll see what happens here. The truth is dealers start behaving better further away. I said that. Oh, you missed that.

Okay. They get a highly further away you get from high metro areas. That's true. I mean, what's the experiment? You put too many rats in a cage and they eat each other? That was my experiment in 10th grade. And yes, they ate each other and they weren't supposed to eat each other. Yeah.

It was very upsetting. So when you're in Oklahoma or North Dakota, you don't have as many rats. Right. And when you're in New York City. Squeez them together, people kill these other. When you're in South Florida, there are a lot of rats. So we've got too many rats in South Florida. That's what it boils down to.

So lots of dealers mean fierce competition. And I said earlier, you're paying on, it's profit, follow the money, commission. And when you have car dealers on every block and you have competing

same brand every eight or nine miles away, and you're advertising in the same media, in the same marketplace, how are you going to get this customer to come in to see you first? You have to have the lower price. And how are you going to have a lower price when your competition is already lying about his price? You've got to be a bigger liar. So that's the answer.

It's the biggest liars win the game. And that's what we have in South Florida. But not in Murfreesboro. When Agent Lightning gets good treatment in Merphsburg, it's because the salesman's not caught up in the same desperate rat race that a salesman in Hollywood, Florida is, or Coconut Creek. That's why we feel less guilty sending Agent Lightning on missions to places like Greensboro, Pennsylvania, Murphy's Bureau, Tennessee.

Murphy's Bear Toyota is the first out-of-state. By the time I'm through this report, I'll be able to say, Murfreesboro. You better. Yes. And we mystery shops, it'll be interesting to see how they handle a sale during the ongoing inventory crisis.

Down here in South Florida, most, if not all, Toyota dealerships are selling over MSRP plus junk fees. And that's our new word we learned from the Federal Trade Commission, who went after Napleton and some other folks. Thank you, Uncle Sam.

Yes. Operation Report. I'm speaking as if I am, Asian Lightning. We hadn't even climbed out of the car when we were greeted by an enthusiastic salesman named Azeem. His name tape tag read Azeem Z Khan and he pronounced him, introduced himself

as Z, Elling Zoro. It's kind of cool. It's not really, that's what the Russians are putting on their tanks right now. Is that right? Yeah. I didn't realize that. Why? It's a symbol of support for the Russians. Oh. It's not a good name, that. Not a good name. My husband is probably in watching us when we pulled in and we knew we had an aggressive salesperson on our hands. Well, aggressive is a relative term, right?

She noticed our Florida plates asked if we lived locally because Murphy's Bureau of Toyota was not selling vehicles to anyone out of state. I told them we would be registering our new vehicle locally. That's interesting that he would say that. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, why wouldn't he? I don't know.

Maybe he wasn't. She asked what we were interested in getting. I told him either a Rav 4 hybrid or a Highlander. hybrid. He said he knew that they had no Highlander hybrids in stock, but he thought he had a Rad 4 hybrid XLE premium that may have been available. See, he asked me my top three color choices. I guess that was in case in stock one wasn't really available. I told him I was open to anything but red. Not the same way. I mean, I wouldn't, I got a red car. But I mean, I wouldn't buy a red rat four. I mean, it depends on what you want. Yeah, a sports car is

Yeah, I'm a special order paid extra for my red Tesla. She asked us to follow him inside so we could get some more information from us. We gave him my son's local address, and he excused himself to find out about the RAP-4 hybrid Z. It was back at three minutes to report that that was the fastest return that Agent Lightning's ever reported. Three minutes. To report that the RAP-4 he thought was here was actually not available for sale until tomorrow because it needs to be reprogrammed. Yeah, I don't know what that means.

Well, it's software issue. It probably had a recall. You know, don't deliver this car. Do not sell this car. Stop sale. Until you refresh, is the tech term. And it was red. How do you like that?

Why would it? I never mind. The MSRP, do we have any, do we order red rats' wars? Oh, that's all we get. No, we get with the customers. We order with the customers if they want. The MSRP was 39,623 with no addendum.

Bum, bum, bum, bum. See, that's not good. That's a stealth addendum. Yeah, that's not good. Well, you'll find out why it's not good at the minute. I asked if it was possible to test drive it because I had never driven a hybrid before. She said we could drive it around the parking lot. He said that Terry Taylor, their owner, who owns 122 dealerships, I guess that's accurate.

That's a lot of dealerships. That's almost as many as AutoNation has. It doesn't allow cars that need to be reprogrammed to be driven off the lot, which makes a lot of sense because the manufacturer says don't do it. Now, I just want to say that that sentence is weird, and I'm reporting what Agent Lighton is bringing, so this is how he presented the reason why they couldn't drive it off the lot, and he slipped in the Terry Taylor owning 122 dealerships in that sense.

No. So I think he was trying to describe the potential liability of something like that. Yeah, it could be. Yeah. It's probably true. She said that this particular car has something going on with the traction and that would be the software reflash that Rick would use the term there. And it could be a liability for the dealership. If anything happened, I agree to drive around the lot.

I could see that potential. It's tiny. It's minute. But there is a potential. Yeah, that's not a bad thing to do. Zee knew a lot about Toyota, a lot about hybrids. He told us he sold many different brands of cars, but Toyota's by far the best. He said that about, that's what he says, about all the brands he's old.

Probably. And fiat, by far, is the best. Let me tell you, this fiat is by far the best car. He said that about 90% of all rafers sold are stolen the road. That's probably true. I don't know. I don't know. I said that was impressive.

That is impressive. We headed back inside, my husband excused himself to make a phone call. He knows, I feel strange when I say my husband was inside, but I'm speaking in the first person is if I were patient waiting. He knows I operate best alone. Z and I found a desk and sat down. See, he wanted me to know, first of all, that there's a severe car shortage. Like who doesn't know?

Well, I guess I shouldn't have said that. Some people don't know that. He said that he didn't want any surprises, so he told me they had a $5,000 markup on all of their cars, and they should have put it on the addendum label, but they didn't. But, okay. I said that was surprising. That was a surprise. I don't want this to be a surprise, but surprise.

I'll let Zee know that we had done some shopping in South Florida, and the Toyota dealers down there was not going over MSRP. Zee told me To believe him All dealerships are marking their cars up Over MSRP And if they say they aren't, they're lying He may have believed that

Right And I just said it on the air About half an hour ago Most dealers They're not selling over MSRP Are lying I'm going on and on I realize that

Z came back with a worksheet But before he reviewed the figures He went over some of the purse, of buying from Murfrey's Borough, Toyota, especially their free lifetime warranty. By the way, real quick, I know you're saying Murphy's Borough a lot. I noticed on his, on the worksheet later on, he referred to M slash Borough. Oh. He didn't want to say it.

Emberra. There's a lot to write, yeah. Merrboro. Yeah, Murphboro. Mr. Taylor is very wealthy, and he is. Probably has millions in the bank. Maybe billions. I don't know.

And that's how he can afford to warranty all the cars. That's just silly. Yeah. He says he's so rich, he's going to give you a lifetime warranty. Listen, Mr. Taylor is so rich, he can sell you the car. Well, if he's so rich, why he wants to charge me $5,000 over his sticker? So rich, why doesn't he give me the car? Right.

He should be given the car. Anyway. You know, I actually had to read this the second time to realize how silly it was. and here you walk in cold, you're talking to a sale, but you believe it all. I mean, our tendency is to trust people, and believe people, I think, most people. I know some that don't feel that way. The top line was labeled market value, selling price, and that's on the worksheet. $44,623, $5,000 over MSRP, as promised.

There was a $790-dollar dock fee that's a hidden. fee, a dealer fee. Plus sales tax and non-tax fees, that's more non-tax fees with the junk fees in Markup. Murphysboro was selling is a Rav4 hybrid per $5,70098 over MSRP. Okay, I told Z, I wasn't paying almost $6,000 over MSRP. I need to find my husband. I said also really didn't want to overpay for a color. I don't like red. I don't want a red. I don't want a red for. I didn't even like. I got up things and walked out. And there we are.

I have the ad on sheets here showing nilidim, the MSRP, and the lifetime warranty. Lifetime warranty, you know, it's a power train warranty. They don't like to talk about that.

And as I've said, over and over again, power train warnings aren't worth the paper they're printed on. and here's the salesperson, Z, telling Agent Lightning that Terry Taylor's so rich he can afford to warranty every car. Well, it doesn't cost Terry Taylor anything because power train warranties,

the conditions that you read if you ever get a copy of a warranty tell you that you have to maintain the car carefully that you have to bring into the dealer, and I'm sure they say at least have the factory recommended maintenance, plus probably more maintenance, And if you do that, you're not going to have a problem with the lubricated parts from the car. Power chain warranties only cover the lubricated parts of a car, and they don't cover the expensive stuff. They don't cover the navigation packages, the Bluetooth, the entertainment centers, the electrical computerized, the modules, and the rest of it.

It only covers the actual, the drivetrain, the pistons, the engine block, this stuff that never feels. Last time you had a problem with the cylinder block and the internal parts that wasn't abused. That was neglected. So, there's a lot of this going on out there. A lot of dealers offer the free warranties. And there's a federal law against that. You have to give full disclosure.

They don't do it. There is no free lunch. There is no free warranty. And a free power train warranty isn't even a free warranty. It's so free nothing. So there we are. Okay, we finished Murphysboro

Toyota's secret mystery shop and we need to vote I'm pulling up some grades here I feel less inclined to give a failing grade Not at all We saw the last two weeks It was far cry from Napleton

Everything was pretty up front They're just doing what They're doing They're doing what everybody else is doing Over MSRP but there wasn't any, no subterfuge or deception. Well, the no addendum was, it was subterfuge by omission. And the MSRP in Florida is considered advertising.

So in the fact, they were advertising the car, although they did disclose verbally, and not disclosing the extra 5,000. So that's a violation. We're not going to give them as good a score, I don't think, as we did the other Murphysboro dealerships. No, I don't think so. So we have some coming in. Mark gives him a C-minus.

Easy, go home. Bob says he said C, but surprised you got an F. I don't, no, I'm not giving them F. I'm thinking I'm leaning towards you, Bob. I think a C, or maybe even C-plus is what I'd give them. Let's see, Frank gives them, says last year we were visiting Connecticut and decided to shop the local Toyota dealership. The inventory is very low due to the pandemic. Nevertheless, at that time, there's no add-on fees.

But when the dealership learned that we live in Florida and we could not buy a car from dealership, strange, he gives him a B-plus. And, yeah, it's where I'm going to settle out. I think I'm going to give him a C-plus. And I've got Kirk in West by God, Virginia. Additional 5K and hidden fee and whose lifetime fee equals solid F-minus. Negan 1 with a C-minus. Bonnie Plasinski F stealing 5,000 from the consumer's pocket

Tom Steckle D minus no nitrogen or wheel locks Wait, it would have been a better grade if they had Nitrogen or Wollocks? I love you, Tom. Awesome one, man. Awesome. Tim, I'll get back to them when they're at MSRP, C Mark Anderson, Willard the Rat, D. Brian Siddlako, hidden junk fee, D.

For me, I'm good, I say D. It's just, you know, a good passing grade, but that added five grand and playing the game with the warranty. I see. I get them a D simply because they were up front and all about cheating, lying, and stealing. you know, buyer beware, give you a D. You know, I might fail them if I were giving him a scoring on the curve just for Murphy's Pro,

but I have to give them a C-minus. I mean, they're certainly far better than they passed, and there are two violations. The addendum label, not being on the car, was a violation. And I just can't control myself on the pitch they made on this worthless warranty, because Terry Taylor was so rich, he was giving away a worthless warning. It was idiotic. Now, I got an interesting thought here from Cramm, 1624, F, but just wait until they get you into the box.

What do you suppose they'd add on in there? What surprise could mean? Some pressure. You never know. Good thought, Cram, good thought. And we have to buy a car to get into a couple of the boxes out there that we know are probably deceptive. and see what's really going on.

That's where they really get you in the finance office. That's one box I don't want to go in. That's like a box full of snakes. Yeah, box full of snakes. And Stu to your comment, you know, them in the mystery shopper report were talking about having more money than God. It just really wasn't worth me entertaining that. But you didn't. It kind of turned my stomach.

He doesn't have more money than Elon Musk. Whatever. Elon Musk has a dealer fee We are at the end of our show We so enjoy your company Have yourself a fabulous weekend We'll be right back here Next Saturday morning

8 a.m. Okay, Johnson Do you want me to do? Yes I'm going to do.