Earl Stewart on Cars - 04.18.2020 - The Best of Earl Stewart on Cars

Episode Date: April 18, 2020

This is a replay of a previously recorded Earl Stewart on Cars program that originally aired on March 7, 2020. Please send in your questions to www.youranonymousfeedback.com or text us at 772-497-6530 and we'll answer your question during our next live show. 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. “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”

You're listening to the best of the Earl Stewart on Cars program. If you have a question, text it to 772-4976530 or online at Your Anonymous Feedback.com And we'll answer it during our next live show. Good morning. I'm Earl Stewart. I welcome you to Earl Stewart on Cars, a live talk show all about how to buy, lease, maintain, or repair your car without being ripped off by a car dealer. With me in the studio is Nancy Stewart, my wife, co-host, and a strong, consumer advocate, especially for our female business. We also have Rick Kearney, an expert, on how to keep your car

running right. I dare you to ask a question that Rick can't answer about the mechanics or electronics of your car. Also with us as my son, Stu Stewart, our linked to cyberspace through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Periscope. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our Mystery Shopping Report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting South Florida dealership. And now, on with the show. Well, good morning, everybody. This is Earl Stewart Live. You just listened to my recorded

introduction. And Nancy Stewart is not here, by the way. And since she was here, she's still out with a cast on her foot. And she'll be having that taken off, we hope, Monday, and hopefully be back on the show soon. But we do have Rick Carney and Sue Stewart, got Jonathan over there controls and yours truly. I hope you have listened to us before. If you haven't, I think you'll really be excited about the show. It is unique, truly, and you might be happy to hear about something besides the coronavirus. We're not going to talk about that. We're going to talk about how you can buy a car or lease a car, maintain your car, repair your car.

Without catching the coronavirus. Yeah, without catching the coronavirus. And I do have, I'm not unaware of it. I have a bottle of Purell right here for all the folks in the, and the, uh, But we're going to be talking about something to ease your mind, to take the worry out of buying a car. I always, I don't always, but I should always remind folks that the reason for this show is a terrible image that car dealers have nationwide, certainly maybe worldwide. We're not trusted. I say we, because in full transparency, I am a car dealer, been for over 50 years.

This is not an infomercial. This is a consumer advocacy show. So, car dealers have just ranked at the bottom of the Gallup annual poll on honesty and ethics professions. That's an actual survey that they've been doing since 1975. Every year, they do the survey of the businesses that have the best honesty, transparency, integrity, and those that have the worst. Card dealers, it's a dead last. Nurses, if you're interested, are the top, you know, along with... policemen and firemen probably and teachers, the government lobbyist, the congressman and the car dealers,

and probably attorneys are at the bottom. But the car dealers beat everybody out. I mean, usually they're dead last. In a really good year, they'll be next to last or third from last. That's why we're here. Because we know you're not happy when you have to go out and buy a used car or a new car. You're not even happy when you have to go out and have your car. repaired or maintained. There's something about the industry contamination. I have a theory on that.

I'll talk about it some Saturday morning, but the fact is you know you'd rather have a root canal probably than buy a car. You'll listen to the show and you'll find out there is a way to avoid this. We love to hear from you. That's a key. It's a live talk show. Very exciting. Live radio talk. you can call and say just about anything you want. I mean, we've had some really tough calls. We don't blank anybody out. We even have an anonymous feedback line. If you have something and you want to remain totally anonymous,

you can go to a web link that's called Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Y-O-U-R anonymous, A-O-N-N-N-Y-M-U-S, Feedback.com. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And you can say anything you want. We won't know who you want. are. And we already have a few stacked up in the pipeline, and Stu will be reading those lately. Or you can text us. We love the text number, and a lot of people prefer it. Area code 772 4976530. That's 772-4976530. Why do I say we kind of prefer the text, or people prefer it?

Well, first of all, live radio can be scary, so you don't want to be live on the phone, some people. text things, if you do a text, you're almost assured to have it answered, maybe not right away, but Stu keeps track of those. And the YouTube's, by the way, Rick Kearney, keeps track of the YouTube, so you can do the same thing on YouTube or Facebook. You post your comments, or you can do them by text, and we get to them, almost all of them, usually all of them, before the show's over. There's two-hour show, and so we have time to get to it, and we try especially hard to get to it. Nancy Stewart, not being a... her but she's listening and she's watching on Facebook and she's home with her leg up in the

air and she has to keep her leg elevated and she's going to be texting and maybe calling she is a advocate for female callers and Nancy Stewart has done a remarkable job of raising the number of callers we have in texters and Facebook from the female audience can you believe when we started doing this 17 years ago we hardly ever got a female caller. So what Nancy instigated was the cash reward for the first two new female callers. $50 cash, I mean, no conditions, no strings. If you're female and you haven't called the show before and you call us at 877-960, I'll give you gals a minute to get the pencil out and the paper, because if you haven't called the show, automatic, ka-ching, 50 bucks. First two new

female callers. 877-960-99-60. And we got Rick over here watching the calls to come in. We try to prioritize the audio calls, the old-fashioned telephone, because you don't want to wait for a long time. Plus, it's a switchboard. I think we've only got three or four lines, and we don't want you calling and getting a busy signal. So we'll prioritize the audio calls. 877-960-90-90-60 and 50 bucks for the first two female callers. And by the way, Mark Ryan says, all our best to Nancy as well. Well, thank you. Yeah, she's doing fine.

I'm playing Nurse Earl, and I'm getting her coffee and all the stuff that you have to do when someone can't get around. And I'm doing a pretty good job. Hey, you get to be at the top of that list you were talking about. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So here we go We'd like to have some You want to get started on some text too

Or do you want to go around Well let me say one thing Before we go to Stu Stu is the We call him the Spymaster What do we call you? The handler

No I don't know You don't call me anything Stu is in charge of the mystery shopping report And I got to talk about that Because if there's one thing that sets us Apart from any other radio show Any other TV show for that matter with a possible exception of when Mike Wallace was really doing this thing on 60 minutes,

we send in a secret undercover agent every week to some car dealership in South Florida. And we go in and we pretend to buy our lease a car, and we talk, we tell it like it is. We name names. We name the dealership. We name the salespeople. We name the sales managers. And we tell you exactly what happened. And we've been doing this for 17 years every week.

We've done hundreds of these. and you can access these mystery shopper reports just by going to our blog, earl-oncars.com. That's right. Earloncars.com, and we archive all these mystery shopping reports. So, Stu, tell us a little bit about the shoppers.

Well, we have a very deep bench of qualified mystery shoppers of all walks of life. We have women, men, young, old. We do our best to try to, like, come across as a real customer when we get there. So we usually come up with a cover story.

It sounds a little bit silly. You'd think you can go in there and just kind of wing it, but it's part of the fun, actually, is preparing the shopper. And it hardly ever get caught. No, no. We've been caught like in 17 years, maybe three times, I'm thinking. And mainly it was Agent X, and the reason for that was we start running out of dealerships to shop, and so we might send them back.

We say, well, it's been about a year and a half. They won't remember you. And most of the time, they don't. But it's happened before. Let me interrupt you because we have a caller. Rick just waved at me. We have Betty. Ah, female. Betty.

Good morning. Good morning. Are you a first-time caller? No, I'm not. I have a question for Rick. Okay. Okay. The 2020 Coral Maintenance Logbook

says that it's first 5,000 miles to add Toyota E-F-I tank additives. What is that and why do you have to add that? You don't. We actually don't even worry about that. It's one of the very, very few areas where I kind of say,

Toyota, you're maybe being a little too pretentious here, a little too cautious. They actually sell what I call a mechanic in a can. It's stuff that you pour into the fuel tank, and it's actually supposed to try to reduce moisture or other contaminants and keep the engine burning a little cleaner. But it's one of the things that, although Toyota does say, yeah, you should do this, it's more for places that might have bad gas at times.

South Florida, we don't seem to have any issues with it. And I can tell you for a fact, I have never put any sort of additive like that in any of my cars, and I've had four Toyotas that between the four of them have run over I'll say pretty close to a million miles between the four of them

How much is that cost? Is it manufactured by Toyota? Yeah, it's a Toyota product and it's like $25 for the can, I think. And what are the dealers typically charged to put it in? Nothing. They shouldn't charge anything.

What year's your corolla? She said a 2020? And that's actually required in the maintenance guide? It's, I believe, at the 30,000-mile maintenance. I've never heard of that. There's a EFI additive that they recommend, but it's not something that we even, we don't even bother with it.

We ignore it. Well, that's interesting, Betty, that's a great call. Stu didn't know about it. I didn't know about it. Fortunately, Rick did. But thank you very much for coming up with that. I'm a little surprised that Toyota would recommend that. and Rick is pretty knowledgeable

and if he says you don't need it you don't need it and at 25 bucks a can you know why you have to show that 25 bucks And they recommend it about once a year or every 30,000 miles once every two years Sounds like something that came out of the dealer council

Yeah It's snake oil Yeah Well thank you Betty very much for that And you certainly educated us Please call again Thank you very much

877-960-90-60 is the old-fashioned telephone, 877-960, 960, and we've had one caller so far. And remember, Betty was a previous caller, but if you haven't called the short on your female, $50. Caching, and that's the Nancy Stewart special, Nancy's home right now, betting that we have a caller. With her cash register. Exactly. And the text number is 772-497653. Zero. How are we doing on text? We got something that came in while we were away.

Okay. We'll start with the anonymous feedback. This comes from Your Anonymous Feedback.com. All of them are, of course, anonymous, encrypted, impossible to know the identity of the sender. Hello there. I like watching your Saturday broadcast on YouTube. I wonder why the vehicle shown on the highway can sometimes be seen through Mr. Stewart's body on some of the videos. seems like a mystery.

I mean, there's like cars going by. Sometimes you have a partially transparent effect. You're slightly less opaque than you normally are. Maybe I'm like the invisible man. You're fading off to the background. I've always wanted to be invisible. I guess everybody has wanted to be invisible. I thought it was cool looking.

I can actually get that one for you. It's because your shirt is actually, the color tone of it, is very similar to the green wall behind you. and the ChromaCast program allows to stick through. I don't know about that. I've played with that before. Like you can adjust the settings. This sounds like a bagel thing.

I think we better move along here. Hey, we've got two hours to fill. Yeah, but we're going to work on that. We'll work on that. Thank you very much for the observation. And we have a caller, which is far more important. We have John in Palm City. You're listening to the best of the Earl Stewart on Cars program.

If you have a question, text it to 772-4976530. or online at Your Anonymous Feedback.com, and we'll answer it during our next live show. Good morning to everyone. Hey, John. I have a question to ask, girl. Yeah. I know of a case people have,

the car stays here also, but there's snowbirds from North Carolina, and it stays outside, and it stays in the sun. And there's hardly any miles on the tires, so there's nowhere to speak of. But the tires are actually, I looked at them. They were at dry rot, and it's probably from the sun, you know, sitting, you know, the north and the south side, and the deal that they got it, they didn't say me who from, I don't even know it's from North Carolina. They have the deal with tires of life. So I told them, you know, supposedly the car hasn't been checked regularly, which is a problem. But on tires of life, is it only on threadware that the deal were guaranteed, or,

but it guaranteed also if it's dry rot in the tire and the tire is no good. John, that's a new one. We haven't had anyone raise that issue. The first thing when you started telling me about it was how old were the tires when they bought the car? This was a new car that was bought. It was a new car. Then they put one set of tires on. It's a 2010, and I don't know who the dealer was.

I'm not sure if it's because they're in the Fort Pierce area. They should. So, I don't know who was there or in North Carolina, but they are dried. I mean, it's unbelievable. We have done that. We've definitely addressed that. It's most of the programs, because the dealers didn't invent the Tires for Life program, was something that the manufacturers kind of, and a few crazy dealers have stuck with it.

But it is on Tread death, but we do run into that because the cars will, Rick can address this, but they can get in pretty bad shape without even wearing. I can tell you for a fact in our dealership, we, and, you. I know you don't like having this commercial for the dealership, but we have replaced tires that are dry-rotted for safety concerns under tires for life, not charged the customer, and covered it under tires for life. I know because I'm the guy that got my hands dirty doing it. Yeah, technically they're not covered, but as Rick says, we did it because we thought it's the right thing to do.

The safety issue. The thought occurred to me that we probably should have checked with the tire manufacturer. if someone bought a car new and it was less than six years old and it had dry rot I think it should be a warranty claim against the tire manufacturer if they kept the car long enough

to where you would have normal dry rot then that's a different issue as far as keeping them outside I got to believe that's probably got something to do with it a garage car probably is not going to have a tire rot as quickly as one that was kept inside And also along the ocean. But a little research that I did, you know, all tires at DOT have to be specifications.

But when I go in like a Sam's Club or something, there's certain tires that's brand new when you walk out the door, they seem to have a bigger odor to them than other tires. And from what somebody told me, by the way, this guy's car, I never even heard of the brand of tires they are. But several, you know, many countries make the tires. And somebody told me that some countries, the amount of petroleum that's used in the manufacturer in the tires, it's either a less or a more content in it. Now, maybe that could have something to do with it too, because that's not regulated by DOT. As Earl pointed out in this show, the big reason with the difference in price of tires is the threadware

and probably the, you know, ratings of A, B, and C on the heat rage. But is it possible that some countries would be manufacturing tires with less of oil content in them? Sure, possible, John. I don't know. The safety measure everybody should take is check consumer reports. They have a number of thorough issues about tires, safety, cost, value. They drive the car with the tires on it.

I mean, they're really, really detailed. They tell you about all weather tires, winter tires, summer tires, high speed. I mean, they cover it in depth. Just go to your consumer reports and take a recommended tire, and you're not going to have those kind of problems. Okay. Well, the second question for Earl or Rick, and I don't want to bring up the virus,

but do you see any shortages so far in automobile reports? placement parts? We haven't seen them in automobile, but we certainly feel the effect. I mean, we're seeing a psychological effect on each other. I brought a bottle of Purell. We've run into a shortage of Purell. We try to order a bunch of the dealership. It's hard to get. And we're having to have a conversation with our employees and our customers and let people know that we're taking all the precautions. But as far as Toyota goes, and manufacturing and availability of auto parts, we've seen nothing yet. Actually, a lot of the manufacturers are really based in the USA.

We import very few parts from China or, for that matter, even Japan, Japanese car. We have Toyota and a lot of the manufacturers have a huge presence in the United States now. So I think automobile available would be one of the least to be affected or if affected will be one. of the last. Yeah, I think the Korean manufacturers, Hyundai, they've run in some issues. I think actually shut down production because of worker. Yeah, Kia and Hyundai are shut down in Korea, exactly. So that's the answer to that one, John. Let's have people check their tires, not only for treadwear, but I have your mechanic or somebody that's an expert, look at them for dry rot, because it's a danger to take a tire, especially on any road, and have a danger of a dry tire,

and get a blowout. You're exactly right, John. Thanks very much for that heads up. Well, best to Nancy. I hope she recuperates real fast. Thank you, John. Have a great weekend. We appreciate it. I'll tell her that she asked about her.

Thank you. Okay, we've got another caller. Yeah, we're going from John and Palm City to John and West Palm Beach. The Johns are calling. Good morning, John. Good morning, John from West Palm Beach. This whole tire thing, if you go back to, you were talking about 50 minutes, but when Ford, the Explorers, when they got in trouble, they had the tire blow out,

The Firestones, yeah. Yeah, the first. Well, what happens is, you know, you may be buying brand new tires, but they found out that you're buying brand new tires that may be two or three years old, and now they have the date of manufacturing stamped into the tires. So you can find out, and I don't know, you've got to look it up on the Internet. You Google it, right? And sometimes tires sit in the warehouse.

He mentioned Costco and Sam, and they could sit there for a while. Same thing with some of the smaller dealerships. So the tires, brand new tires to be putting on, could all already have the start of dry rod or tire rod. John, did you know that the manufacturers design a specific tire? When you buy a Ford with a Firestone tire on it or you buy any new car, the manufacturer of Ford otherwise gave the specs to Firestone to build that tire for that particular.

And you can't buy those tires, at least firsthand. You can probably buy them secondhand. But, you know, Firestone wasn't totally responsible for that problem. Ford bore some responsibility. Yeah. Well, with today's technology, the tires and the tuned suspensions that a lot of the cars have and the onboard computer, they've got to take all that into account. So, like, switching brands, I don't know how did the computer picks,

up, whether it's got Continental or Nito or Jokammer, but anyways, so like I said, you know, especially if you're switching from one brand of tire to another to save money, you know, you may be going to a cheaper tire, which some people do, and I do, and that it just, the tire may have been sitting for a while and already has dry rot, or John, it's a way to becoming dry rot.

There's some pretty good tires out there, John, that don't have everyday names. Michigan has got a great name, but there's some out there better than Michelin, or at least some models of Michigan that you wouldn't recognize, so I keep going back to consumer reports on that.

Well, John, thank you very much for the call. I really appreciate it. You're welcome. Okay, we've got another call. I wonder if his name is John, too. Nope. This time we got Alex in West Palm Beach. Alex, how you doing? Thanks for the call. Hey, good morning. I like your show. Thank you. A couple

A couple of weeks ago, you mentioned, I don't know if I'm mistaken or not, but you said do not buy a Jeep? I say that a lot, but it's kind of tongue-in-cheek because I know people are buying Jeep's hand over fist. They love Jeeps, one of the most popular models. And my point is I'm kind of a practical guy. I'm an analytical guy. And when I see a vehicle that consumer reports pans in every category from safety to reliability to maintenance cost, so on and so forth, I just don't know why.

Well, I do know why people buy it because they love it. It's a sexy vehicle. The style is great. I'm tempted myself from a look standpoint to buy a Jeep, but it's just not a reliable vehicle. Oh, okay. because I bought a, I used to have a full escape, and I had it for years, and it lasted until 300,000 miles. But then he died, so I had to buy a car, and I went to the Jeep.

I bought a renegade. I've had it for like three years. I haven't had a problem. Well, when I say consumer reports pans of vehicle, they're talking about the percentage of vehicles that fail so you could have a thousand jeeps manufactured and if 25% of them had a lot of problems that's not good because your odds are one and four

but you might got one of the 75% that you don't have a problem with so it's a numbers game you're playing the odds and even the worst car manufactured will have a really good car built and someone has no problems with it and the best car manufactured is going to have a lemon You know, we sell Toyota's, my dealership is a Toyota dealership, and consumer reports gives them a very high rating. But let me tell you, we have some Toyota's with real problems.

You're listening to the best of the Earl Stewart on Cars program. If you have a question, text it to 772-4976530 or online at Your Anonymous Feedback.com, and we'll answer it during our next live show. Hey, Alex, this is Stu. This is really interesting on consumer reports for the new news. the Jeep Wranglers. It has one of the highest predicted owner satisfaction scores. People love it, but the lowest predicted reliability

and the lowest road test scores. So it means people are overlooking. It's a fun car to drive, and it looks great, and it makes a statement about yourself. If you like going to the beach and driving around with a German Shepherd and the surfboard on the roof, you're the coolest guy in town, so you're going to love the car. But like you said, well, reliability is a relative term.

So like you said, you might have one and never have an issue with it for the entire time you own it, but it's a little bit more likely than other vehicles to give you problems. Now, let me tell you a problem that I had, though, when I bought it. It was late in the afternoon, and the sale went on through at night. And what the guy showed me was, like, the gate in the back. When you open it, it lifts, like, a cover so that you don't see what's in behind there. Yeah, like a 10-0.

Is that what I'm talking about? Yeah. Cargo cover. so that's what they they he showed me with a cover so when i got home uh my model didn't have that cover so they gave me another car that wasn't the one that i wanted oh but all right so then when i went back a couple days later i said listen uh you know this happened i say i want to talk to the salesman he says well he's not working with us anymore and i'm like what you know and then i explained the thing he says well the only thing we can do is we can

sell you the cover, you know, but then it has to be like retrofit because he has like two strings coming from the gate that lifts up that cover. And, you know, that's just irresponsible. And it's one of the reasons car dealers don't have the best name in town is because of things like that. You should have bought what they showed you. And you shouldn't pay for what they showed you. It didn't happen.

And then they wouldn't make it right. they should have taken care of that if their cost because you thought you were buying it. But I wouldn't go in there and talk to the sales manager or any other salespeople to see if you can get in touch with the general manager or maybe even the owner just kind of escalate it because the salesperson and the salesmanager, well the salesperson is not even there

and they're just going to blow you off and try and get you to spend some extra money. That's not an expensive piece of accessory, I don't think. Yeah, it costs like $295. Yeah, that's probably the list price. They could probably... Cost the dealer $1,500. 50. If that, yeah. They should give it to you. Well, Alex, thanks very much for sharing that with this.

Thank you. You should definitely go back. Okay. 877-960-99-60. That's our regular telephone number, and 772-497-6-530, and we do have a call. Well, we get actually a YouTube one here. Oh, YouTube. Mike and wife asking, why do dealers continue to double charge on the freight and dealer prep and still get away with it? You know, that's one of the most egregious violations by dealers. A dealer fee is actually legal if you go through the disclosure,

which is kind of a silly disclosure that the Florida legislature and other legislatures let dealers get away with it. But freight is a federal ruling. It is a federal law that the manufacturer add the freight to the cost of the car and to the sticker price. So the freight is charged to the dealer in the invoice and it's added to the invoice and the MSRP. So when you buy the car, you automatically, by definition, pay the freight.

So when the dealer charges you freight again, they are charging you twice. I'm not an attorney, and I'm going to say this anyway. I think it's a federal violation when you mess with a federal. federal mandate and trick a customer by making him think they're paying a federally mandated cost that's a pretty serious crime

and I do know that some dealers do it a lot of them don't do it but we've seen it in our mystery shopping reports and same thing for the dealer prep dealer prep exactly right and that's the case

where the state law in the state of Florida says that this is part of the dealer fee is the dealer prep and so they're in a way they are contradicting the facts by the manufacturers reimburse the dealers for the dealer prep. When you get a new car

all the new cars, all the manufacturers they reimburse the dealer in fact it's pretty lucrative reimbursement of the manufacturer. The dealer makes a nice profit the technician that does the work makes a nice A little warranty payment for the dealer. Car dealers love the reimbursement by the manufacturers for the dealer prep.

And then the state of Florida says that's the reason they have a dealer fee. So the dealers in the state of Florida are double dipping on the rebate that we get from the manufacturers. Going back on the manufacturer's destination charge, I'd like to go out on a limb to say, why don't they get rid of that? I mean, it adds so much more confusion and just muddies the little. waters further. Just a quick anecdote. We sold a car to somebody who was referred by a former competitor of ours. I used to run Ed Morris Del Rey Toyota. And Ronnie Fonniero. Yeah, and he's a great guy. And he's no longer a practice. He's no longer a competitor. And he's bringing us

customers, which is really nice. But we gave him a price. The guy went out to shop it because we give him out the door price and spoke to another dealer who pointed out the invoice and showed him the manufacturer's destination charge, which is like, you know, 1,100, whatever it was, and he tried to confuse the customer and say that it was a dealer fee, and his dealer fee was a couple hundred dollars less than our dealer fee, but he was showing him this other, this fee came from the manufacturer. We talked it out and he understood, and he ended up buying the car from us, but it's just more confusion, one more thing.

I believe that's federally mandated. They have to have a destination? Yeah, I believe, see, what it used to be was years ago, every dealer had a different, based on your geographic location, had a different freight charge. And if you lived in, if you were a dealer in Detroit, you probably didn't have any freight charge. And if you were in, you know, Hawaii, you would have a huge freight charge. And it varied all over. So then somebody complained, and they standardized, so all manufacturers have to have the same freight charge no matter where you sell the car.

And I guess the way to verify that was by putting it on the Monroney label, which confuses the customer. Gotcha. But I totally agree with you. Something that should be changed, but unfortunately, it's a federal law. I got something for Betty to follow up on the caller who asked about the electronic fuel injection additive under Corolla. I looked up the 2020 Corolla required maintenance, and every 5,000 miles, it says to add the Toyota EFI tank additive. but only if you live in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or Saipan. Oh.

For real. You have to have the M20A-FKS engine and live in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or Saipan. So, no, you don't have to put the EFI additive. So if a dealer is telling you that, open up your maintenance guide and point out to that state, that territory in that Saipan, is that a country by itself?

Yeah, why would they put that in all the, the owner's manuals when there's only three places. And I guarantee you, Betty was fooled, I was fooled, Rick was fooled. I was fooled. And a lot of people get fooled. And they're just selling a whole bunch of that EFI at $25 a can. Yeah, it's a tough. I guarantee you.

I mean, it's in big print. I mean, it is, it's hard to miss. But if you read it, but if you're not looking at it and a service advisor tells you got to put this in there and shows you flashes that at you, you might go for it. Good find. Stu, good find. Wow. That one's awesome.

877-960. Remember, we still have two female caller $50 bills to mail out. If you haven't called the show before and you're female, and you call us at 877-9-60-9-60, $877-960, $50, no strings attached. That's a Nancy Stewart bonus. Do you know how much that shook my confidence there? I mean, I just would, hearing there's always a little bit of fear

on the show. The E of I thing, yeah. Well, someone's going to call something that you don't know and, like, I can't believe I didn't realize that it was part of the meetings for a Corolla. I mean, it's not obscure. Saipan. Saipan.

By the way, Saipan. Is the largest island of the northern Mariana Islands. So it's basically over, like in the Philippines. But what about Guam? Guam's okay. Yeah, I mean, what is a, what is Saipan? What's the do? difference between Saipan and Guant. They're both

pretty much show... Hey, anybody out there from Toyota manufacturing land? Any of you big shots out there? And where's the headquarters now? It used to be Torrance. It's in Indiana. It's in Texas. Texas. Oh, that's right, yeah. Okay. Why don't you do that? You Toyota guys,

somebody from Toyota, an executive, somebody call me. Okayo Toyota, maybe you're listening. Call us from Japan. It could come out of the dealer counselor. Tell us why. No, Saipan dealer counselor. We need more money on that maintenance.

guys. Give us something to charge the customers. How about some text? Let's go to the text. All right. Well, I'll start with some, well, I still got some some your anonymous feedback together. Okay. The power of no wielded wisely. No is an instrument of integrity and a shield against exploitation. It often takes courage to say it's hard to receive. But setting limits sets us free. And this is a book by Judith Sills, Ph.D. published in 2013. Where can this word be used in a powerful way? To the full extent is described by Judith Sills. That's the dealership. Fabric

protection, no. Paint protection, no. Window action, no. Gap insurance, no. Maybe not. Gap insurance can be good. Source yourself at insurance company. Rear seat entertainment, no. Consider tablets for the kids that are more interactive and mobile to be used in other cars. Roof rack, no. Paint and factory protection, no. Key Fobbit insurance, no. Nitrogen fill tires, no, amen to that. Dealership prepaid maintenance plans, no. ADM, additional dealer markup. No, advertising fee, no dock feet. It goes on and and on and on. And this is from Earl's much younger brother from another mother. I don't know who that is. And I think the spirit of this texture is they're right on the money. Anything that's pushed upon you say no. No, that's really a great anonymous feedback. And it covers a wide spectrum. And the sad thing is virtually everything in that is actually sold actively by a car dealers.

I think we have a real caller here, an audio caller. They're all real. But this one is. on the phone. We have Howard in Jupiter. Hello Howard. You're listening to the best of the Earl Stuart on cars program. If you have a question, text it to 772-4976530 or online

at Your Anonymous Feedback.com and we'll answer it during our next live show. Hello. Hey Howard. Nice talking to you. I have a comment to make about throttle body cleaner.

Many years ago, I was told by a mechanic to buy a product called Techron, and it comes in a plastic bottle, and put it in like every 5,000 miles. You have to run your car, the gasoline down to an eighth of a tank, and we've got to put it into the gas tank. The Tecron, it looks like a big tube, and then it's a body, plastic body. You put the fluid into the gas tank, and you've got to put at least 16 gallons of gasoline.

And I've been using this product for many years. I've never had any problem with the trial body, and I think this thing helps. However, I was told that gasoline nowadays. days, you don't have to put this. Gasoline many years ago wasn't as good as it is today. So I don't know how true that is. Maybe Rick could explain that to me. I'm sure again.

Now, gasoline nowadays have all the cleaners in them that you need, and the refinement and evolution of gasoline has been right up there, along with the cars. Fuel is refined to the point now. Just put it in the tank. You don't need any special cleaners in there. there you'll be just fine. It's steak oil. When do you perform a throttle body service? Now that's a little different story. Throttle body service is actually cleaning the big

plate that controls how much air goes into the engine and there will always be some little bits of carbon buildup on there. We recommend about every two years, every 30,000 miles and basically it's pull the air hose loose. We clean that plate up really well, put it back together, and then we actually have to drive the car for a little while because the computer has learned to adjust itself to run with that dirty plate. So when we clean it up, the engine will actually idle at around 12 to 1,500 RPMs. So we have to drive it a little bit to let the computer relearn and bring itself back down. But it makes your car run much better when we do that.

I never really understood that. Now, you explained it very well. So all cars need the service, or if the car was driven on highways a lot, I guess it would not need the service as much as a car that's driving a couple of miles to daylight, let's say. The owner's manual would tell you, right?

Pretty much. It's about this, highway driving does do a little better for cleaning out the cars, keeping things burned and clean by, I'll call it, but basically it's a good service to perform about every two years, though. What's the owner's manual saying?

The owner's manual actually doesn't address it because they don't consider it as like a maintenance item. It's more considered a repair for a rough idle. Okay, well, if you don't have a rough idol, then you don't want to do it, right? No, if your car is not running rough, then you really wouldn't need to worry about it.

I try, I like keeping things simple and the simplest thing is not perfect to do this but it's as close to perfect as anything. Always do exactly what the manufacturer's owner's manual says and do not do

what the dealer recommends unless it's the same thing as the owner's manual. The manufacturer's owner's manual are pretty damn accurate and stick with that and don't do anything else. Additives and exotic things that you here recommended to you are all

BS. Unless you live in Saipan. Yes. What about a brake fluid flush? No. Should that be done? No. The only time we recommend that is if the fluid has become contaminated somehow. Yeah. You know, everything, all bets are off

if you have a problem. If you have a rough running condition, throttle body, if you have something else wrong, sometimes you need to replace the fluid. But 99 times out of 100 or 999 times out of 1,000,000, you don't have problems with these things.

And the dealers are trying to sell you this because the cars today require so little maintenance. The manufacturers, most of them, are given free maintenance for a couple of years or maybe even three years. So the car dealers cannot make money unless they sell you something you don't need.

And they make up these exotic stories, flushes and all sorts of stuff, and they say this is recommended. They don't tell you who recommends it. They're recommended it. So look at your manufacturer's manual. If it's not in there, don't do it. Okay, one other question.

First question. What's the difference between silicone brake fluid and regular brake fluid? The chemical formulation, but truth be told, again, you want to look at the DOT number because a lot of those silicone brake fluids are DOT 5, not DOT 3. and it is incompatible. If you put the wrong brake fluid in your car, you will need to flush it because it can seriously damage your brake system.

So make sure you only use DOT3 brake fluid, but double check to make sure what your car is required to have. I can't wait to use that in conversation. What caused do ZOT5? Which cars use that? Motorcycles. Oh, I got you. Okay.

And there are a few. high performance cars, but motorcycles actually comes first to mind because I know that they use dot five. They use three. Okay, great information. Thank you very much. Thank you. I appreciate the call very much. 877-960-99-60, 877-9-60, text us at 772-49-7-2-49-6-5-30, 772-4976530, and we do have another caller. We have Aquaf in Hobo Sound. Who? Aquaf.

It's spelled A-Q-U-F-F. Oh. I hope I've pronounced it correctly. Hello? Agaf. Hello. I have a question for Earl. Yes.

Earl, my wife has a 06 Celeric converter. with the original 39,000 miles on it, and it is absolutely spotless. But her dashboard is cracking from one end to the other. Oh, boy. And I've been up to the Toyota dealer here in Stewart, and they said that it's too old. They won't do anything about it,

but they used to replace those. Do they still do that? Rick, are we replacing any goodwill, replacements on dashboards. Unfortunately, the extended warranty the Toyota did on those has run out, and they have pretty much put their foot down and said, no, they're not doing goodwill on them. Where did you buy the car?

Where did you buy the solar? In West Virginia, but we live down here. Yeah. You know, it's just a shame. You know, my heart bleeds for you. I mean, I honestly feel bad because they'd be a bit. Yeah, they built a, yeah, they built a dashboard that just didn't hold up under the heat and humidity. And we actually, my dealership, we were responsible for calling it to the attention.

We got the press on it because these dashes were cracking on Camrys and Abilons and Saleras. They finally saw it as a safety issue. And that finally became a safety issue. Let's do this. I can't offer you a lot of hope but if you would contact me after the show and I'll run it by my service manager

and we'll run it by Toyota and we'll take a shot at it. We might be able to help you at the very least we could have the repair done at cost with not any markup and at most we might get some help I don't want to offer you too much hope but by the way

the good news about that 06 solara with 39,000 miles, that car is worth a lot of money. Those things are high demand, low supply, and everybody wants them, and a low mileage vehicle like that, if you ever want to sell it, you can get a lot of money for it. Got to get the dash fix. But you call me after the show.

I got a pencil. I'll give you my cell phone number. Yes, I do. My cell phone number is area code 561, 358, 1474. 358. last four digits? 14-7-4. 14-7-4.

Yeah, and give me a call. I'll probably get, probably Monday before I can talk to my service manager, and we'll try to help you any way we can. That sounds great, but the car is absolutely spotless, and everybody that sees us, says, when you want to get rid of the car, I want that car. Yeah, well, don't sell it, don't sell it too cheap. It's worth a lot of money. All right, thank you very much, Earl.

Thanks for the call. Take care. Bye-bye. And we do. We have Warren and Pompano Beach. Wow, Warren. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? We're doing fine. How are you doing? I'm doing great. I got two questions for you.

Actually, Stavon. First question is about leasing. I have two residents. I think I mentioned it at the show. One in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and one in Pompano Beach, Florida. I'm looking at leasing the car maybe at the end of the year. I'm trying to have a fort tourist. I'm trying to get, like, another year out of it if I can. Is it better to look up north where I live in Fort Lee or down by you guys, or it doesn't make any difference whatsoever? Is to where you lease the vehicle, whether up north or down here?

What model car are you buying or leasing? I'm not sure. I'm going to look around. It could be a variety of different things. It could be a Toyota, maybe a Camry or an Avalon, maybe a Lincoln, maybe something else that really don't know. I'm really, you know, going to take a look when it comes to that point. If you're going to lease a Toyota, if you're going to lease a Toyota, be advised that the Toyotas that are sold in the Southeast United States,

Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, are, go through a Southeast Toyota distributorship, Southeast Toyota LLC as a independent distributor. They buy their cars from the manufacturer Toyota, and they mark them up about $1,000. more than you would pay up north for the same car. So that's not to say you're going to buy it for less money, but the dealer's cost will be higher up north.

Stu? Yeah, I'd recommend getting, I mean, since we have the Internet, and it's relatively easily to get compared quotes, get quotes from both. Earl's right, the Southeast Toyota dealers do buy, have to pay a little bit more, about 1,000 more for their cars. But it's a different region, and they have different incentives and a different

lease program. Sure. So, we're only talking about Toyota, but if you're looking at another at a Ford or something like that, you know, get a quote because here's what I, the other factor is, you know, the registration cost. That's like that's going to be different between New Jersey and down here. So, you know, you can sit in your living room and get the quotes, you know, with email or online and compare them, compare both places.

Another question I have about the leasing it. If you have a certain number in mind, should you go into the dealer and say, look, I'm going to pay, this is what I want to pay, $350 a month. I don't want to pay a penny more. Less is fine. You know, you have to put money down. It's different than buying your car. So I said, this is my number and I'm not moving off this number.

Is that a good way to do it or a bad way? No, do not do payment. Don't go in there with payment. You negotiate a price even if you're leasing. What you need to do, Warren, is leasing has got more hair on it than buying. There's more ways a car dealer can take advantage of you. so when you decide you want to lease a car

you decide yourself how much money you want to put down you might want to put nothing down that's the way leasing originally became popular for people who didn't want I have a cousin who just did that he needs a

Nissan and he put nothing down because he doesn't really care about cars he just wants to he just wants to lease payment and they gave him nothing down on it and I don't know if that was good or is that bad but he just

well it's neither good nor bad it's it's your personal decision but you have to compare apples and apples if you're going to put a thousand dollars down on a Ford Taurus for a 36-month lease then you say you pick your Ford Taurus with the same M I with the MSRP that you want to buy and then you go to three Ford dealers and you tell them you want a 36-month lease with a thousand dollars down and you get the monthly payment and then you go to the next four dealer the next four dealer and you compare the payments, but you have to be sure that they don't switch

it to a different model with a different MSRP and that they don't start mucking around with the down payment. You need to be sure you get an out-the-door price. You can't be surprised. An actual purchase price. Exactly. You have to find out exactly what your cash out of pocket is going to be on the identical MSRP. And if you compare that, and then you can go to payments, which is what you want to compare anyway. But you can't compare payments until you've locked down all the other variables. Car dealers thrive. The way they make a lot of money on you is get you to come off the target that you came in on.

You came on in one particular Yermick model car. They'll switch it to another. That way it's a whole new ballgame and they can increase the profit and you're not aware of it. But if you're going to be leasing a car, hold down the down payment, the Yermick model, the MSRP, keep that constant, and buy from the dealer that gives you the lowest out-the-door monthly payment. You're listening to the best of the Earl Stewart on Cars program. If you have a question, text it to 772-4976530 or online at Your Anonymous Feedback.com,

and we'll answer it during our next live show. I got another question about the leases. Now, does this make any sense? Okay. I've leased cars many times in the past okay and sometimes I had to buy the car off the lease because I had too many miles on and I kept it a year or two and then sold it.

Now they have the gimmick when you go into lease because I went with my cousin. They try to sell you like to pretend you know to get scratches or something on the lease you know they pay another $50 a month and then you don't have to worry about that. I wouldn't buy that for anything. But if I go,

if I go in and I say, you know, what is the least amount of mile and thinking I'm going to buy it off the lease anyway? Can you give me the least amount of mileage? Does that change the buyout price? In other words, if you say 10,000 miles instead of 12, will they up the buyout price or lower the buyout price? It's not going to change it at all. Well, no, it's not going to change at all. Your option to buy is based on their residual value. And, well, it will actually. I guess they're still helping me on this.

if you have 15,000 annual allowance and a 10,000 annual allowance, and the residual would be higher on the 10,000. Yeah, so it would. It would, but you want to be darn sure you don't go over 10,000, because the penalty will really kill you. Be sure that you're going to stay under whatever allowance you choose.

Yeah, but like I said, the ace in the whole, and I've done this before, because I went over once, I just bought the car, and I kept it like two years, and then I sold it, so it wasn't a big deal. deal to me. In other words, when they, you know, it weren't going to work with me. I just said, forget, I'll just buy the car, kept it for, I don't remember how long on it. So that's sort of my ace in the hall. I didn't show up, you know, but I don't want to pay

those extra fees. Sure. You know, I tried to tuck my cousin out of doing it, but he just had it in his head that, you know, and it was a lot of money. It was like, I don't know, more than $50 a month or something. Well, be careful when you exercise your option, exercise your option to buy you want to be sure that you're buying it at a good price typically and more often today the option price is too high you can do better by buying the same year-make model on a used car lot and you can buy it for less money sometimes you really get a bargain and you should always check your option price because it can be good but i say probably three chances out of four is it's going to be higher than you want to pay

know if you went over the miles, let's see you got 30, but you had 40, you still have your safety valves to say the dealer, you don't work with me, I'll just, I'll buy it out, and you're not going to get anything on it. So, you know, they won't eat them, if you release another car for the same dealer. Oh, I see what you're saying. If you go way over, that's a good point, Stu. That's your, Warren says, let's say you go way over the allowed miles, you have a big penalty.

If you buy the car, then you don't have to pay the penalty. They don't care. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, good point, Warren. And I hadn't thought about that before. You've been in the business 100 years. I learned something new every week on this show. I never thought about it.

I mean, I've had a lot of people that really got killed on overmilege, and I should have said you might want to consider buying the car if you're going to keep it. And might be a... I actually did that. This was a number of years ago. I didn't realize I was going to go back and forth between New Jersey and Florida, and I racked up the miles away over. So the dealer said, well, I could work with you a little bit.

but this and that. So I just said, you know, what's the buyout price? I said, you know, I bought it out. I just didn't get it. I'll keep it a year or so. And, you know, and then amortized it down to where I can get exactly what I was still owed on the car. And then I dumped it. So that was just the way of saying, I'm not going to pay, you know, all this money and fees.

And then he said, you know, goodbye and good luck. You're a smart guy. And you told the car dealer who's been doing this for 50 years, something, he didn't know. He should have. And I thank you very much. Hey, Warren, call again. You're a great company. I got one quick statement for Rick.

He gave me some good advice about two or three weeks ago. I have a 2010 for tourists. And even though I had relatively new brakes on it, the brakes of mushy. And my mechanic said he thought it was the module, the blah, blah, blah. So finally I gave it and I went to the dealer. I don't remember what he told me, but it wasn't that. They did all the testing on instead of some kind of league, whatever it was. And it turned out to be that was the reason.

I ended up doing it at the dealer. I know I paid through the nose for it, but the car was there already, and I just wanted to start driving it out, and, you know, they charged like $100 to look at it, so they took it off the price. But you gave me good advice because, you know, I would have gone someplace else and told them it was the brake module,

and it wasn't. So that was good advice on your part to go to the dealer. Sometimes you just got to pay the price, and there's nothing you can do about it. Well, thank you, Warren. You know, because everybody was telling me something, you know, Well, it's the brake module, but nothing came out on the scans, no computer stuff, no nothing. So I did go to the dealer, and he ran all, whatever they did.

I didn't have no idea, dropped it off, they called me, and told me they could fix it, this is the price. It was high. I knew that going in, but I just said the car was there, do it, and, you know, I'm not going to start taking it out and going to another place, but it was good advice because now it works perfectly, and, you know, thanks for the advice. Warren, thank you very much. You're a great caller. Please call again next week. 877-9-6-0-99-60, and we've got another caller right here.

We do. We have Jill from Brooklyn, Brookline, Massachusetts. Wow. First-time caller. Hello, Jill. Jill, have you gotten your sandwich from Cuddies this weekend? Not yet. Okay.

We know very good friends with the owners there. The best sandwiches in the United States. Oh, very good. Jill, are you a first-time caller? Yes. Oh, Kaching. You win $50. So before you hang up, stay on the line, and the guy in the control room will get your contact information,

and we will send you a check for 50 bucks because you're a new female caller. Thank you. Oh, thank you so much. My first question is, I have a 2019 van, and sometimes when I go to start it, like it's just dead. I try it, and then I come back, and then I try it to get in the start. Does that mean the battery's starting to go or? What model of van is that? Dodge Caravan.

Okay. When it does crank, does it seem to crank it like a normal speed, or does it seem like it's kind of slow and really working to try to get the engine to fire up? I think it's pretty normal, but it's weird. Sometimes I crank it. It's like dead. I'm like, oh, it's this.

And then I try it again, and it starts no problem. Hmm. Yeah, because usually if your battery's going bad, it'll seem like it's really having to work to get the engine to crank over, but if it's just that when you turn the key, nothing happens at all. You don't hear any clicks or anything like that. I'd be more looking at the starter for possibly the solenoid not working properly to when you turn the key, it's supposed to pull in this big solenoid that will actually start that motor spinning. And I'd be more concerned about that being the possibility. Oh, that cost to fix, Rick? Ballpark. I'm going to give you a guess of about $4 to $500, depending on how much a new starter would cost. Well, it's not too bad because the car has like 19,000 miles on it,

but I think it was a rent-a-car first in Orlando. Maybe there was a lot of starting stops, but it's not that many miles, but I thought it started would go 50, 60,000, huh? They quite often do, but sometimes something may kind of let loose inside. It's, you know, I mean, things do break. They're mechanical

things, and we've had brand new cars that things break. What year car did you say it was? What year is that, Dodge? It's a 19. Oh, I'd be going to the right to the dealership and saying, hey, this is a

2019 with 19,000 miles, you should be under warranty. I'd be right in there having a discussion with them. I think it's guaranteed for like 36,000 miles for everything. So that's a good idea if it happens again. I'll have to notice if it's kind of rough like the battery. But one other question is, I think the tire pressure says it's like 35, which I thought was low. but how what pressure can I put in to get the best mileage and the best wear and tear on the tire seems like 35 is low well well there's how much can I put in all right there's two numbers that

you're going to look for one of them is really easy to find there's a sticker when you open the driver's side door it should be on the body right there there should be a sticker that will tell you one level that's the manufacturer's recommended minimum level so that should say like 35 and that's the one you never want to go below that level then it's a little harder to find this one but on the sidewall of the tire there will be another PSI rating which could be 35 it could be as high as 40 or 44 PSI that is the tire manufacturer's maximum safe level that you can run in that tire all the time and you can put your tires up to that pressure and that will usually get you the best tireware and the best fuel economy. So if the tires

are rated for 40 PSI go ahead and run them at that level and you'll be just fine. So I guess there's a chance that the side of the tire could say 35 too, huh? It's possible, yes. Some of them do. I didn't know that. You're saying that sometimes the manufacturer

of the tire and the manufacturer car have the same PSI? Yep. I didn't know that. Sometimes they do. Earl, you're learning a lot today. I am. At least two new things. Who says old guys can't learn new tricks. That's great. That's great.

Well, thank you so much for your help. I'll be calling again. Thank you, Jill. Very much. Okay, thank you. Okay, stay on the line so we get your contact information. Okay. Thank you. Okay. We have another caller. And we have Nancy and Jupiter. Nancy and Jupiter. How about that?

I know a Nancy and Jupiter, but probably just a coincidence. Good morning, guys. Hi. It's nice. Nancy Stewart. Feels like you're here in the studio. What's going on, kid? Good morning, Mr. Stewart.

I have a question for you, via. Well, actually, I think it might be for Rick. Okay. And this is via, excuse me, Lori from Orlando. And she wants to know about her cabin filter. And if it's important right now, in light of what's going on, If she changes it more often than you're supposed to. And the second half of the Tex-S does every car have a cabin air filter?

Well, I'll hit the second part first. I would say probably 99% of cars made today, and I know all of them in the U.S. are going to have a cabin filter in them now. And for the first part, no. keep sticking with the manufacturers recommended time for changing it unless you're in an area that is just so filthy dirty that the air is just full of dirt from construction or something and that cabin filter is getting dirty a lot more often

I think the question has to do with the coronavirus and there is no difference you don't need to worry about airborne it's not airborne this actually has to be the touch on your beard just don't just don't eat your air filter. No. Don't eat the air filter or like rub it on yourself or something. Let's not even go there. No. But no, changing your air filter more often is not going to help anything for the coronavirus. You're listening to the best of the Earl Stewart on Cars program. If you have a question, text it to 772-4976530 or online at Your Anonymous Feedback.com and we'll answer it during our next live show.

The reason for that question, excuse me, that I didn't read the other part of it, was because she has so many people in and out of her vehicle. We don't need to go into details, but she thought it might be necessary. You know, I might be a good idea to wipe down, like, the handles and things like that. I feel a lot of people going in and out, like with some Lyside disinfecting wipes. I would see that as a much more reasonable thing. have some Purell handy for them or just use the wipes on it but no changing changing the cabin filter isn't going to change anything at all

but a car dealer can figure out I bet you're going to find car dealer saying you need to change your your cabin filter every week now there are things no listen we've we've been presented with products like a disinfectant treatment on the car but to sell and find they're out there so watch watch these things are going to become popular Absolutely, Stu, on Facebook, there is advertisements all over the place for you to have your interior disinfected. Anyway, back to the texter. She carries the Lysol disinfecting wipes in her vehicle, not the hand, but the Lysol disinfecting wipes are very, they're critical.

I agree with her handles. steering wheel, everything that anyone comes in contact with. Okay, guys, hey, don't forget, everyone. Stay tuned for that mystery shopping report. Okay, stay on the line. You're a first-time female caller, and we'll send you $15. I'm sorry, no. Nancy was in the hospital several years ago and called in.

She's not the first time called. I've heard her on the phone before. Stay tuned for Schumacher, Chrysler, Dodge, G. Graham of Del Rey, Mr. Shopping Report, just about 9.30. okay guys thanks Nancy we miss you you're welcome bye bye bye bye honey

you know Alan might say something about using a disinfectant wipe I think you still should but if you have leather like services like leather steering wheel you might want to make sure that's cleaned off nicely and condition that so it doesn't dry it out or you don't want to ruin like a soft surface in your car

absolutely be careful of using those chemicals that can cause damage don't put hand sanitizer on your steering wheel or anything like that will definitely dry it out and mess with the dyes and all sorts of stuff. When we're setting a phone record today, we have a YouTube before we go to that, I'll give the number out,

maybe we can have an all-time record of phone calls. 877-960-99-60, 877-9-60, and we still have one more, we do it for two, first-time callers, female. Jill got the first 50 bucks, and now we still have an opening for another 50 bucks. first-time female caller 877-960-90-960

and now we've got to YouTube and we've got Don Brown asking does Southeast Toyota install some extra accessories or equipment on their cars before selling to dealers and he says I suspect there is some difference I think maybe he means difference between the accessories they install versus what a dealer might install

I can I'm going to do that probably I'm going to take this one still I can do it too. I know you can, but it's my mission. It's your passion. My mission, my passion is the Toyo Guard that is put on the Toyotas in the southeast of United States. Probably 95% of all the toilet dealers buy this Toyo Guard. It's around $699.

Retail. Retail, $699. And when you consider rebates and kickbacks and over, the dealer cost is probably close. close to 200. Yeah, 250. 250. So paint sealant, fabric protection, road hazard,

concierge service, and a much of other nonsense. It isn't where... Yeah, well, all changes and tire rotations. Yeah, the tangible things are tire changes and oil changes, I mean, tire rotations and oil changes for the second two years. Toyota gives you the first two years free,

and then after that, Toyota Guard. But the point is, the cost to the dealer, is $250, and they're charging $699. And I think that is wrong, and you really shouldn't buy it. But it's your choice. If you're going to buy it, pay what the dealer pays. But remember, Southeast Toyota's making a profit when they sell it to the dealer for $250.

So the actual cost of this, I'm going to guess, is probably under $200, maybe under $150. And that is what... You got to pay the middleman. That's the value, the true value. You're paying two middlemen for this, and you don't need it, and you're wasting your money. And there are other things that they will put on there, too. That you won't use. Yeah.

Be leery of anything that any car dealer sells you on a new car that is not manufacturer or install. Southeasterned distributors is not the manufacturer. They are a distributor. Rick. They also have installed at the port and at dealerships. SET accessories such as Tano covers for pickups, the HomeLink mirrors. There are a lot of other accessories that they will offer up. What I wanted to chime in was there's a whole accessory program that SET tries

incentivize the dealers to load up the cars with as much stuff as they can because they're selling it. And the point, you can get a car. If there's something that you want, if you wanted a Teno cover, you could tell the dealer that you want one and they can bring it in with you. The problem is, is when they load it up, it's no different than having dealer-installed accessories. Now, that's not to say that they're worthless. I mean, they might have some cool accessories, but... Never buy a car with a pre-installed dealer-installed accessory.

When you decide what you want and the accessories you want, buy that. If you want something else, you should have the right to shop and compare prices. And if it's pre-installed, you can't shop and compare. Exactly. And they shouldn't give you a hard time. about locating a vehicle or bringing one in without the stuff. So if you go to a dealer and let's say it's your closest Toyota dealer and you really like the salesperson, you want to buy a car from them,

but they have another $1,000 in equipment on it, just ask them to bring in one without it. And they shouldn't give you a hard time about that. Exactly. Another caller. We have Anna in Loxahatchie. Hi, Anna. Are you a first-time caller?

You there? Hello? Hi, Anna. I'm here. Hi, how are you? I'm a first-time caller. Oh, wonderful. Stay on the line after you get through with what you want to say to us,

and we're going to get you $50. And thank you very much for calling. What can we do for you this morning? You're still with us, Anna? We lost a call. Oh, my. Anna, please call back. Yeah, if you can hear us on the radio,

please call back. You're our first-time caller, and you've got to call back because we want to send you $50. and we also want to hear what you have to say. And actually, our producer's tells us we do have her information. Oh, great. So we're going to send it to her anyways.

Absolutely. We'll make sure she gets it. Even if she doesn't get a chance to call back, we'll make sure she gets it. We're not going to hold you to a technicality. All right, let's jump on to another anonymous seat. She's back? Do we have Anna?

Hello, Anna? Yes, Stuart? Yes, we hear you now, Anna. you're going to get 50 bucks in the mail. Thank you. Listen, I just want to thank you. I'm getting ready to buy another Toyota. I bought Toyotas all my life.

This is about four. This is my third one that I have, and I'm getting ready to buy the 2020, but I'm a little bit skeptical because of all the new gadgets they have. You know, like my husband tells me is electrical and also gas. I think half of it

The hybrid The hybrid, yeah Yeah Yes, it is Well, Corolla does have Do you have any Go ahead Um, no Toyota has a hybrid

Corolla Yes, they came out last year Well, she's looking for the Rav 4 Oh Rav 4 hybrid And you can You can get either a regular gas version Or the hybrid version, either one How is the hybrid

Is there a lot of complaints with it Or is it, no? Not so far. I mean, they came out last year, and it's, I mean, there are obviously things can go wrong, but it's actually, it's a pretty good car. I mean, we're selling a lot of them. If you check consumer reports, I'm pretty sure they have a high rating with consumer reports. Yeah.

Great. So, yeah, I just started listening to you guys. And it's a lot of good information you guys have that way when I go buy it, I sound smart. Well, Anna, one thing, you mentioned something about them being very high-tech and with a lot of new equipment and features, and they do. All the new cars, 2020s especially, have a lot of gadgets. And that's kind of a deprecating term. I don't mean negative. They just have a lot of things.

You need to learn. You need to learn how to operate the car. So when you buy the car, be sure that the salesperson or somebody sits down, with you and takes a lot of time to go over everything, and then you have to have somebody to know to call if there's a question later, because I'll tell you, speaking for personal experience, and I've been in the business a long time, there's things on my car that I'm not sure about how to use them. Be sure you get a full education no matter what car you buy today, because they are complicated.

Thank you. Thank you for your help, guys. Thank you, Anna. Another really great resource, Anna, is if you have something that you don't really understand, pull up a YouTube video for it. There's a YouTube video on everything and you can, I learn stuff off YouTube about the cars. I got a YouTube yesterday on how to unplug

my sink, my bathroom. How to clean a toaster. There you go. Yeah. I completely destroyed the bathroom. It compressed air and blue yuck all over the mirror. Give them a shirt. Give them bad comments. Unlike, dislike the video. Give them a thumbs down.

All right. I got an anonymous. feedback here. There we go. International, from one phone call in Bali, and maybe three from Canada, really, Earl, that's stupid. Get over yourself. Just go back to being a self-serving Florida dealer and leave the rest of the world alone. I'm so hurt by that. You're listening to the best of the Earl Stewart on Cars program. If you have a question, text it to 772-4976530 or online at Your Anonymous Feedback.com, and we'll answer it during our next live show. Well, see, that's the reason I love Anonymous. Wow. But he's wrong.

It doesn't. Australia, Santa Domingo, Saipan. He does. See, you can vent, you can say anything you want to us. And that's what we do that. I say the mystery shopping report makes us unique. The anonymous feedback, you can say anything, and we will read it unless it's really vulgar, you know, if it offends somebody.

I'll figure out a way to read it. That doesn't offend the FCC. Okay. Let's move along. All right. Do most people with convertibles run the air conditioning with the top down? How are we supposed to know that? You know something?

I confess. Well, I think if I don't know, I'm going to guess. And I guess yes. And it feels good. You want the top down and the cold air feels good. And you're wasting it and you're probably using excess gas. but my guess is most people do run the air conditioning.

I would. I would at a heartbeat. Well, there is a certain temperature out there. I don't have a convertible with the windows down. It feels good. Yeah, unless it was cold outside. You would say when I was a kid,

were you air conditioning in the whole world? Okay, sorry. I think you did that with the refrigerator. Question for Earl and Rick. The Toyota Ravre 4 hybrid is getting a lot of press with reference to a design flaw in the gas tank. Uh-oh, we just told her it was a... I'm just kidding.

design flaw in the gas tank. Does this design flaw also occur in the regular gas power 2019 round four? And then they sent a YouTube link to coverage of that issue. I wasn't aware of that. I wasn't either. I'm learning a huge amount on this show. In fact, I'm coming across as kind of stupid, actually. But I've got to tell you, if I don't know something, I'll tell you.

A few things of ignorance. It's okay. Today, I don't know. Okay. So far, I think that is restricted. to the hybrid because they do have a site, some modifications in them. What's the problem with the last time?

I believe it's a recall coming out that it's something with the fuel pump and it's part of that big fuel pump recall it's coming. There's a whole bunch of investment one. Yeah, there's a lot of cars going to be involved in that one. Is that when the car stops?

Yeah, they just added a million to that one I believe. That was the one that came out a couple of days ago. I don't know if that's the same one. Basically, yeah, the car could stop. because the fuel pump stops working. Can I tell you something that will probably shock you and maybe make people not like me? But I just, I have this, I'm a radical transparency guy

and I just can't help myself. Car dealers love recalls. I mean, I got to admit that we don't like people to be hurt, at least I don't, and we don't like dangerous things. Or people will be scared to buy cars. But when we get a recall, like on this fuel pump and other things, or on dashboards or whatever it is, we get paid by Toyota handsomely to fix the car.

And service business can be a little slow because the cars are really good today. Sounds contradictory, and I'm talking about recalls and good cars, but overall they are really good cars, and the maintenance is so little that car dealers can't make a lot of money in the service department. So when there's a recall, we do high five. We high five each other.

And I feel guilty about that, but I just got to tell you the truth, I can't help myself. You know, it's funny, and the whole universe of recalls and defects, I mean, obviously, cars are getting better, you know, over the years, over the decades. Much better. They're just, the only entity doing a really good thing really is the manufacturer, because no one's going to build a perfect car. No. The fact, they're the only ones actually doing anything about it. I mean, a new car dealer, basically, I mean, a new car manufacturer, they're announcing the, these things. They're trying to get ahead of it. They don't like the bad press. The downside is that

there is a fatigue. People hear these things. It's, you know, a million Toyota's added to this recall list this week, and granted the coronavirus was dominating the news, but it really didn't make much of a splash. Nobody cares. There's an apathy about recalls. I think we have a YouTube. We got a couple of them, but this one's really good one, is give me five bucks. I love this guy's name. If the key fob batteries die in your smart key remote is there another way to get the car started he says i have a honda civic now i'm going to go a little bit on a limb and bet that the honda's probably got the same design as toyota for the smart car if the remote battery dies but your car is still fine the car battery

all you got to do is hold the remote up next to the power switch and usually they want you to hold the back side of the remote which is where the the transmitter chip is hold it right up against that power switch when you step on the brake and push the button and it should start your car up just fine. But that's if you have a little bit of juice left of the battery, if there's zero juice. If it's zero juice even, because it's got the coil

I am getting an overwhelming education. How many things have I learned today? Did you know that, Stu? I knew that. No, you didn't know. Rick said we're lying. I always thought, I knew if you held the remote closer to the

lock, it would work but I thought because there's a little bit of juice and you're telling me that there you have a I could take the battery out of the remote you have to move it back and forth really fast and create a current now you can't unlock the door that's why you've got a little key that can be removed from the remote to unlock the door start the car but to start the car you hold it right up against there and it's just like having a key with a regular chip in it okay there's no battery at all okay let me sell everybody out there something that proves how smart I am. When you are way away from your car and you want to lock it, if you hold it up to your

head and hold the remote on your head, your head or under your chin acts as an amplifier to the signal. And I have tested this out myself. Well, you have a giant steel plate in your head. That's true. The plate. Don't tell the height. It gives me an extra 50 feet radius. I can go, I can be 50 feet further from my car and lock it when I hold it up in my head. And I'm not kidding. It sounds like I'm kidding. It also helps that you're six. Or under your chin. You're 6.5.

I used to be 6.5. I'm 6.3 now. Okay. It really does work. Yes. Okay. Let's move along. Another text.

All right. This was interesting. It's anonymous feedback. And you're going to start, you're going to pick a fight with me. I'm going to be skeptical about this one. Okay. I just bought a new 2020 rev for Ellie. I want to see if I got a good deal.

I paid $21,999. out the door with fees and everything. No sales tax because they live in New Hampshire, and that is true. The MSRP was 29,902. So the MSRP of this 2020 Rav4LA was 299, and they went 2199 out the door. They also got a 3.3% interest rate on 72 months. And he said he took two weeks of pushing dealers against each other. They had five dealers competing for the deal.

I'll see his Costco. want to know if they got a good deal. Now, my question is, was there a trade-in? That's a very good question. I would love to see if it's possible to send in. You can redact your personal information. And my second question would be, do they finance the car with a dealer? They did, 3.38% percent of the two months.

But here's the reason I'm, the only reason I'm skeptical is, so I did a little math while you guys were talking over there. And even taking out sales tax, even taking out the sales. Northeast Toyota administration fee that's in the southeastern United States, taking it down to the cost and then just saying, let's say they lose $3,000. It would still be around $25,000, $24,5 out the door. That's not to say it didn't happen.

I'm just saying I would love to see the paper. What was the day of the purchase? Well, it's a 2020 rev for L.E. And that's current in the stock, so it has to be in the last six months. And did he buy it in the southeast or up north? No, up in New Hampshire. Yeah. But I accounted for all of that.

Yeah, the reason I asked that question is that they don't have stair-step incentives. I count it for everything. Out of Southeast, too, yeah. If he bought it in the southeast, and they bought it at the end of the quarter, when they had to hit their number, it's possible they would take a losing deal. It is, right? Anything can happen. It could be on the last day of the month, and they said, hey, what the heck, let's lose $5,000 to sell the car.

Yeah. But, I mean, not to make it, I mean, that's considerably less. I mean, at our dealership, and I know we're doing a fair price. We don't want to take anything away from anybody. If you did it, God bless you. Congratulations. If you really, really work. They might be missing something, though.

They might be missing. If you traded the car in, I ask that because they will undervalue your trade and sell you the new car ridiculously cheap, but they'll take the new car in $5,000 below the actual cash value. If they financed a car, in this case, it was a good interest rate. Possibly they loaded it up with after-sale products. there's a lot of way car dealers can get you. People, a lot of people think they get great deals and they don't.

That's a really scary part about it. It's one thing to get taken advantage of and then realize it because then you bad mouth the dealer, you never go back and so on and so forth. But when you think you got a great deal, you spread the word, other people go in and the same thing happens. It's so unusual for a car dealer to sell a car below what it cost them. Yeah, it is. I mean, and it happens.

That's just so far below that. I'd be curious to see the buyer's order the final paperwork that was assigned to delivery. And if you can, you can take a picture with your phone and text it to 772-497-6530, and you can cross out your name and stuff. We don't need to know who it came from, but be useful. Next.

Okay, I don't know if this is for real, but okay, here we go. Anonymous feedback. I got fired, my wife divorced me, my two children hate me i can try to blame me but i blame you life was good not perfect just good why do you stick your nose in places it doesn't belong why did you have to shop my dealership you may be trying to help everyone else but you ruined me in my life well you know it sounds it sounds like it's not uh factual uh on the off chance it is factual um give me a call you deserved it i'm sorry give me call we'll be glad to talk to you and if you're looking for a job

selling cars and you want to do it honestly we'd certainly take an application yeah but if we ruined your life you probably didn't do that good job i can't help you with a wife no i'm saying if if it if it ruined his life then he probably had a bad shopping report i don't know if we want him work i don't know why would his wife divorce him just because he got fired huh i don't know there wasn't real love there to begin yeah so we don't know tongue and cheek uh if it's true then i feel terrible for you uh if it's not true that's why we have anonymous feedback we read everything that you send us. So you folks out there that want to embarrass me,

www. www. Youranonymousfeedback.com. Your anonymous feedback.com. You can call, you can send in a lie to make me look bad, and we'll read it on the air. Rick? On that issue with the RAV-4 hybrid fuel tank, this is one that almost got by me. I hadn't really heard much on this.

Apparently, there's a concern. with the 19 and 20 hybrid raves, that the fuel tank, although it's rated to be 14 and a half gallons, will only take 10 gallons of fuel before the pump automatically shuts off, and the fuel gauge will show less than full between three quarters or seven-eight's full. Well, see, I feel vindicated because I'm admitting, and I don't know stuff. And I'm learning too. Rick learned too. And Stu didn't know.

I knew all this. So nobody knew any of it. So we're all learning. And it's an ongoing issue where Toyota says they're investigating it, trying to figure out what they've got to do. And there's actually a class action lawsuit has been started over this. I don't blame them. Where they're really working.

I mean, that's really dumb. Yeah. People are saying the driving range of the vehicle, how far can go on and tank of gas, is being drastically reduced. Of course. Because you can only put about two thirds to three quarters of a tank of you. I got two hybrid rap fours in my driveway. Is that right?

Have you ever tried to put more than 10 gallons of gas? Yeah, we're not having that issue on ours. Okay, let's go to it. We have some more text, I bet. Hello, this is Tim from Amherst, Ohio. I leased a new 2019 Tacoma last August. I understand the updated the software for the shifting to improve the sluggish shifting in the 2020.

Can that be done on my Tacoma? Thank you. Love your show, and watch on YouTube. That's from Tim. That's very possible. The only way to tell for sure is you'd need to go in and asked a dealership to hook up a scan tool to see if an update's available for your vehicle.

Okay. Okay. And that should just be no charge, right? It should be covered under factory warranty for, I believe, most reflashes are eight years, 80,000 miles, and obviously no charge to the customer whatsoever. And plan on, depending on how busy they are, between one to two hours for them to get your car in a shop

and get it done. Okay. Amherst, Ohio. I love it when we get these calls from all over. International. Yeah. That's kidding. Well, at least it's interstate. Yeah. All right. Good morning, Erling Company. This is Ben from Pennsylvania, another country.

Oh, Pennsylvania. I love it. This is Ben from Pennsylvania. Sorry, I am a podcast listener, and I'm always a few days behind. This text is for Rick, and specifically the reset, the tire pressure monitoring system sensor. And wait 15 minutes, the technique he had mentioned, few times in recent shows. I'm not sure that this will work because if there is a button to reset the system, it is an indirect system and uses the car's ABS to monitor pressure by counting and comparing tire rotations. The car's computer won't learn the reset pressure rotation rate

until it is driven. So I don't believe adding air 15 minutes after the TPMS button is pressed will do anything unless the vehicle is driven before more air is added. Please elaborate. Oh, oh, Rick. I think he caught you. Nope. The older... Sorry, Ben. The older indirect systems. You're listening to the best of the Earl Stewart on Cars program.

If you have a question, text it to 772-4976530 or online at Your Anonymous Feedback.com, and we'll answer it during our next live show. Well, I'll try to keep this as short and quick as possible. Older indirect systems, every time you rotated the tires or replaced the tires or changed your air pressure, you had to reset it by holding that button so that the computer could recalibrate based on where those tires were. Tell them quickly what the whole original thing was, so we got a lot of people out there to know what you're talking about. The new portion, what people are concerned about is the sensors in the tire now, that is the direct system that actually tells the computer exactly how much air pressure is in those tires, this system, you can set what's called the threshold. In other words, the level at which the tire light will come on. And you do this because

your tire light's coming on and it really shouldn't come on for temperature fluctuations. So you change your threshold so that doesn't happen. Well, like our earlier caller that said she wanted to set her tires, run her tires at a higher pressure. She might want to have that threshold set a little bit higher. So if she starts losing air in the tire, she'll know sooner. Versus someone that wants to run a lower pressure can reset the threshold a little lower so that they don't have the light coming on for no reason. Okay. I have a little tip on the same subject. So it got colder last week until I got cooled off this weekend. Last weekend, my tire pressure light came on. It even happens to me, folks. And I assumed that it was just the temperature. Now, my last two cars, and I, and I

just in disclosure I drive, you know, current model cars, so not every vehicle has this. But on the car I'm driving right now and the car I drove last time, you're able to actually see the individual pressures on each tire. And so my assumption would be, and I think this makes sense, if it cools off and the tire pressure goes down in your car, it's going to be relatively equal. I almost just chalked it up to the temperature, and I said, let me just double check, drill down a little bit, and I saw that all my tires are at 34 pounds per square inch, but my right rear was down at 19, and I had a screw in my tire.

So if you see it and it's chilly out, don't assume it's the tire pressure. It's best to check it out. And if you do have a more recent one, you can actually look on the dashboard and see which tires are individual tires. Very good. Do you have road hazard insurance? I don't need it. Okay. I'm self-insured. Next.

Good morning. This is from Anne-Marie, our regular textor. Good morning. I hope that Nancy will be back on her feet very soon. My questions for the morning concerns car colors. What are the most popular colors and what are the least popular colors? Why do red cars have lower resale values? Just wondering, thanks.

I think it varies a little bit. You know, you think about sports cars, flashy cars have flashy colors. And, you know, a red convertible is a good color for a convertible or a red sports car. And black and white are the staples. You can't go wrong with black or white. and silver and still, what else? I think black, white and silver, it's just because they have a larger audience, that's all.

Yeah, I think you get a crazy yellow or obscene orange kind of thing on a spiffy, like a Jeep or something. If you go crazy on color, go crazy on the model car. But if you're going to buy a sedan or just a normal SUV or whatever, stick with a conservative color. If you're getting a camera or in a cord, don't get bright racing blue because most people want. And it is a big deal.

Every day our appraisers are asked to replace cars over the phone. One of the first questions they ask is what color is it? Don't say purple. If you've got a purple Camry, you've got a bright green Honda Accord. You're the only person who likes that color. Yeah, it devalues that car by at least $1,000, maybe more. So if you love the color so much, you've got to have it.

bear in mind you'll pay the piper when you trade it in. Yeah, imagine you're a used car customer, what would you pay to drive that goofy-looking purple car? You've got to be pretty low. Exactly. Give me a good deal. Hi, Earl, this is Steve from New Jersey. Concerning the coronavirus in the coming months, what impact do you estimate on new car sales and the manufacturing prices?

Boy, I wish I knew that answer. I can make a fortune on the stock market. I know one thing I'm glad I'm not in the airline business or the hotel business, but we don't know what's going to happen to the automobile business. I think people, we were speculating the other day that people may be buying more cars online. They may be having cars delivered as opposed to going into the dealership.

You know, who wants to go in and shake hands with a car salesman or have a car salesman sneeze on them. We're struggling with that. So, yeah, we're struggling with that. We don't want to offend people, but we don't want to shake their hands anymore. Yeah, exactly. And so it's a whole new world out there. I like to believe that it's being hyped a little bit out of proportion,

but you can't say that until time passes, and the media are enjoying themselves. And so, part of it bothers me is the fact that they ignore dangerous recalls entirely. Entirely. They don't talk about them. You can have a car recalled with airbags, and the notice will be on page 21 in the newspaper. and you pick up There's like 400 cases of coronavirus in the United States that there's millions of recall vehicles

Yeah and you got Who knows how many people are dying from these ancient recalls Because they don't talk about it But it is exciting to come to work these days With this whole coronavirus That's one way to put it Yeah All right

Here's another text You're an old guy like me Yeah no it's actually I mean you should be You know, don't laugh it off But this is a text from Bob says Costco adds additives at the pump. Is this another nitrogen-filled tires gimmick? Costco adds additives at the pump

when you buy gas from Costco? That's what he says. I don't know what that means. I do know that Costco gas is extremely cheap. It's good gas. I don't mean cheap in a negative sense. In inexpensive. And they have, in our market here,

they're building a new gas station at the Costco on North Lake Boulevard in Palm Beach Gardens. And I'm all excited about that because you can save a lot of money at Costco when you buy gas. As far as adding an additive when you buy gas, I don't know what that means. Maybe you could text

us again. Maybe it's like that what's the one that adds tecraline They might sell you an additive. And if Costco's selling an aditives, I would say don't buy it. No, no. Costco's my favorite store. Now, I was thinking, like, all the different mobile and Exxon and all that, they always talk about their special chemical they have and their fuel that makes it better than anyone else.

Well, I thought Costco sold a regular brand. Do they have Costco gasoline? Costco brand? Yeah. Oh, they do? Well, I always thought it was just the fuel that they bought from whoever their supplier was. I didn't think it was any special. Well, check it out.

I can't answer that question. Very interesting. Okay, we have a texture. This is something, I don't know if you'll know the answer to. It just wants to know if there are canvas seat covers available for a 2017 Camry. I'm going to guess, yeah. I mean, there's like pep boys and all these parts stores. Amazon.

Put it in the search. Canvas seat covers for Camry, and you'll have a whole bunch of them. I mean, I found a company that made heavy canvas seat covers from my Tacoma. Yeah. Okay. I think we're all caught up on text. I got one YouTuber left here, so Jose Huertas asked, Hi, guys, if I get a price on the net,

can I still negotiate when I get to the dealership? Thanks. Of course, and hopefully you don't have to. I always believe in making the quote, an out-the-door quote, and you explain it this way. Okay, is this the outdoor price? Salesman, yes it is. okay, my definition of an out-the-door price is I'm going to bring you a check for this amount or a briefcase full of cash.

And I'm going to hand you the check and I'm going to get my car and I'm going to go home and you'll never see me again. That's an out-the-door price, okay? I don't want any nitrogen in my tires that I didn't know about. I don't want any electronic filing fees. I don't want any, you know,

formats. I don't want window 10. I don't want pinstripes that I have. didn't know about I want to be able to write shadow check give it to you get my car and go home that's an out-the-door price if you do that you're probably not going to have to negotiate again but what the heck give it a try okay mystery shopping report time I'm ready let's do it mystery shop of Schumacher Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram of Del Rey Schumacher bought this dealership what two three years ago yeah he got a lot of dealerships.

They got to do something about that name, though. Schumacher, no, no, no. The Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram. Yeah, I agree with you. CDJ. They don't mention Fiat. I wonder why. I know why. Automobile safety recalls continue to make the news.

This week, Toyota added over a million vehicles to its list of vehicles recalled for faulty fuel pumps. At this base, 2020, may be shaping up to be a record year for car recalls. I'm sure it will be. Yeah, I mean, we're already, it's just turned March, and there's millions of them. The Toyota fuel pump issue is serious. The fuel pump could fail and cause an engine to stop. I mean, can you imagine being on a 995 at rush hour,

and your car stops? KD. Barlador. But not nearly as scary, as the Cotter Airbag recalls. The idea of a car's airbag exploding, sending shrapnel, literally, steel shrapnel through the, When we say passenger side, driver's side, let me tell you, that shrapnel doesn't know whether you're a passenger or the driver, or maybe even the back seat. It's like a grenade going on. So it's terrifying.

There's something obscenely ironic, I like that, Stu, about a vehicle safety feature becoming the thing that kills you. I mean, that should be in the dictionary about irony. A safety bag, a safety bag, an airbag that can kill you. Yeah, it's not supposed to do that. Yeah, a lot of them out there, sad to say. The idea, okay, there's something, okay, I just did that. If exploding airbags are the worst that could happen, surely the second worst would be airbags that failed to deploy

when we needed them in the crash. The failure of a critical safety equipment that we've come to rely on to save our lives is a chilling notion. In reading this, because Stu does these reports, I just read them on the air. Reading this, I made me think about this,

how many defective airbags have killed people? How long, and I'm not just talking about Takata airbags, I'm talking about airbags that don't go off, that go off too fast.

When you have a deadly crash and you have a tangled mass of iron with human beings inside being peeled out of a car. And I'm sorry I'm being so graphic. But when you have a terrible accident, how do you know what killed

the occupants with the car or seriously injured them? And I've mentioned this before. So how long have we had airbags? 40 years, 50 years? In the 80s, right? I mean, they started, they'd be widespread in 80s. Okay. Yeah, I'm going to say they started about mid-80s.

Now, how many fatal 83? Thanks, Jonathan. In 1983, so all these years, we've had these deadly accidents with cars with airbags, and the airbags go off in most cases with the deadly accidents. How many times was the airbag part of the problem that we didn't know about? Now we're talking about it, and suddenly we're getting a lot of airbag recalls. Before Takata, I don't think we had airbag recalls, did we? I don't know. I can't remember any. So suddenly we're seeing other airbag recalls. There could have been hundreds of thousands of people killed by defective airbags that we never knew about.

Anyway, that's speculation. The possibility is the subject of yet another Toyota recall with 3 million toilets are now in a recall for a potentially faulty electronic control unit that may cause your airbags to fail to deploy in a crash. As of today, Toyota hasn't announced a remedy. We're told it will be soon. That's kind of nerve-wracking, isn't it? Soon.

Many of those recalls to us are currently owned and driven by consumers who are unlikely to be notified about this problem. And many of them are currently being sold on the used car market. You're listening to the best of the Earl Stewart on Cars program. If you have a question, text it to 772-4976530 or online at Your Anonymous Feedback.com and we'll answer it during our next live show. Okay.

Same thing with Takada, of course. Of course, if you paid attention to this show for the past three years, you already know that there are no laws preventing the sale of used cars with dangerous safety recalls. Every time I say that, I choke mentally. How can it be? How can our legislators, our regulators, how can the media let this happen? Do you hear what I'm saying? There's no law against any car dealer selling a car with a dangerous recall airbag that can kill you.

Go ahead and sell it. Yeah. There's not even a fine. Nope. There's not a penalty. There's no ticket. Not a reprimand, is what I'm trying to say. They're not even required to tell you.

There's not even a dirty look. That's right. Not even a disapproving look. I mean, is there anybody out there, are there any politicians listening to this, are there any regulators, anybody listening to this? There's no law against Rick Kearney selling you a car, or Earl Stewart selling you a car that I know has defective, dangerous recall that can kill you. There's no law me telling you that it can happen. Okay, enough of that. Toyota's position has been to forbid Toyota dealers from certifying recall vehicles, but they have no power.

They say they have no power to ban the sale of a Toyota with a defective recall is certified means Toyota doesn't want to have its name on it. A Toyota certified car, they won't allow you to certify a car with a dangerous recall. You've got to fix it. But if you don't certify it, and you don't have to certify it, you can sell it anyway that's the washing of the hands they don't want their name on it okay nor do federal state or local governments care they don't care if they cared they'd pass a law or they try to pass a law they haven't even tried to pass a law no there hasn't been a bill introduced in the florida senate it would be d o a or the house

yeah what's the fadda the florida automobile deals association position they say nope They know nothing, they say nothing, they say nothing. Okay. So this week we wanted to investigate this particular recall. We applied a ticotocle test to a dealer who was listing a used 2016 Toyota Corolla with a faulty airbag electronic control unit. Schumacher Chrysler-J. What do they go? Shoemaker CDJ.

Yeah, Seumacher CD. Just Schumacher. Yeah, Schumacher in Del Rey. when I arrived at the dealership speaking of the first person as I were Agent Thunder in the late afternoon I found a lot of construction going on and a hard time finding my way around the facility I had to ask someone to guide me to the used car department

I was guide to the used car office where I was introduced to Pedro we name names Pedro I used car salesman Pedro asked what I was looking for I told him about the Corolla I said I was buying a first car for my 16 year old daughter. Wow. 16-year-old daughter. Stu knows all about that.

She, mine just got her first car. Pedro indicated his approval and said, I had a lucky kid. I told him that my main concern was safety, and I chose the Corolla for its reputation as a safe and reliable car.

Pedro agreed with me, and then asked what I had hoped to accomplish today, would I be taking delivery this afternoon? I said, I'd seen a few other 16 corals online, but they were priced higher than Schumacher's. Also, I promised my daughter I would get her a white one with a light gray interior.

I said, if the car checks out and the out-the-door price was in line, I would take delivery that night. Pedro suggested that we go out and meet my daughter's new car. I like that. Yeah. Let's go out and meet your daughter. I like that. It's a good line.

Good sales line. He grabbed the keys in a dealer plate. Made a copy of my license on the way out. Pedro talked a little about the car on the ride. He didn't know much about the Corolla, naturally. He sells Jeeps. He gave general description of the features like, These are the windshield wiper controls.

Thank you. And that's the radio knob. This is the steering wheel. I went right for the safety question. Do you know if there are any safety issues I should be concerned with? I was thinking after I read that, what if we didn't say that? I wonder what would have happened.

But I did say that. What about safety issues? Pedro said he didn't think so, but then issued the standard refrain. We'll check Carfax. The Carfax report. That happens in like in every mystery shop. Every time, yeah. We'll check the Carfax report.

And it's a fair thing. We need to do a shop where we just don't ask about safety. Yeah. You know what? This was the gone way back to the Arrigo lawsuit, and that was the guidance from the attorneys who said that would be a, a good question to ask. And maybe we can mix it up next time.

We made our way to the dealership and went inside, Pedro offered me a seat and said, he'd go get the Carfax report. I asked him he could bring a detailed purchase order, too. And I said I wanted to look at all the numbers. And Pedro returned, with both the Carfax report and a real buyer's order. We hardly ever see these at this stage

of the mystery shopping report. albeit with the numbers not filled in. It was a blank. He started with the Carfax report summary page. He surely announced no accidents, no damage, and one owner. Then he said, and one recall. I asked him what it was about. He said it was about the ECU and the airbags may not work in a crash.

He said that the Toyota is still currently, preparing the remedy and pointing to where he was reading. Pedro said, I shouldn't worry about it. I would just need to take it in to a Toyota dealer when they have a fix. I asked when that would be, and Pedro pointed to where it said Toyota was currently preparing the remedy and shrugged to indicate it wasn't a big deal. We moved on to the numbers.

Now, that's something that I think you with a 16-year-old daughter would feel a little bit more concerned about. I don't think your mind would be put to rest because the Toyota dealer would fix it when there was a remedy available. You would probably just say, I don't think I want to buy that car now. You know, it's funny,

the whole 16-year-old daughter thing changes the equation. If it was just for me, I could see myself risking it. It's the likelihood I'm going to run into something on the way out. But it was a very real fear. My daughter got her license, I'm like, because kids do that. They'll get their license and get in a crash that same day. That's funny how we feel about our kids.

We worry about them more than we do ourselves. Pedro used a blue point pen to fill in the figures of the buyer's order. The sale price on the online was $13,495. He highlighted the pre-printed dealer fees, and there was $6.50 in legitimate fees. there are fees that are legitimate. They're very small battery tax. The sale price

was the online price $13,495. Now, he highlighted the pre-printed dealer fees in $650 with a yield highlighter instead of these were standard. The fees included, here we go,

$98 private tag agency fee, that's the dealer fee, $279,000 electronic registration filing fee, that's a dealer fee. And $995 billing and handling, that's a dealer fee, totaling $1,372 in bogus fees. So the advertised price was $13,495.

Floral law says, the Florida statute says that you must include the dealer fees in the advertising. price. Schumacher did not do that. They held out $1,372,000, $1,3702 added to the 13495, breaking Florida law. But almost every car dealer does that, and we're going to be scoring this mystery shopping report shortly, and we grade on the curve. So I just want you to realize that. Isn't it terrible that all Cardinals do this. After all that, I'm not fond of this terms, Stu. I swallowed my bile. That's disgusting. That's kind of like, you know, you don't want to say. I swallowed my bowel.

And I know what you mean. His picture, you have a picture. I swallowed my bowel instead. I swallowed. That's what I swalleled. You don't swallow your bile. That's terrible. When you birth up a little. Looks good. I'll be back tonight. Okay. I'll be that. I swallowed my acid reflux. Apple log. Pedro didn't conceal the recall, but he downplayed the hell out of it. This would count as a technical fail. And we're going to bring it to a vote.

Let me show you Vigal Buyers for her, because you rarely see these. Yeah. It actually says it, right? Purchase order, and at the bottom it says these are the terms. Yeah. I made a note on my copy. I said dealer fee, very seldom being used. He used the word dealer fee, nowhere in the buyer's order.

And so the point being, all the car dealers now have known, realize a dealer fee, probably we'll take credit. I think this show our newspaper columns, our speaking engagements, we have really terrorized the consumers. I mean, we've alerted the consumers to the word dealer fee. So what they have the Tocard dealers done, they just don't name a dealer fee anymore. They change the name. So they actually advertise now, no dealer fees. We don't have any dealer fee, but we have an electronic filing fee. We have a tag agency fee.

And what was the other one? Billing and handling. Yeah, billing and handling. Billing and handling. You might as well just give them, like, people's names. Like, this is Bob for $9.95. So there we have. We have the Schumacher, Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Fiat, whatever, in Del Rey.

We'll call it, I will call it Dodge, Jeep, Ram of Del Rey. And we have to vote. Yeah, we got grades coming in. Okay, that's true. I'm waiting for Linda's, but Bill gives him a D, John gives him a D, Shakir gives him an F, Mel gives him a C-minus, and I'm going. going to be conscious of the curve, and on the airbag thing, I'm going to say C-minus, and on the dealer fee thing, a C-minus.

Yeah. Curve, you understand that if we went by a strict 100% to 0% A, B, C-D-F, we would have no car dealers to offer in Florida, and so we can't do that, so we create it on the curve. We have an F from Amy and a D from William. F and D. Okay. We've got on YouTube, Wayne F. give me five bucks D Mark Ryan a D minus

and myself I'm going to go ahead with the D and say they pass but you got to keep your eyes open folks Nancy Stewart did Nancy text in the grade

She did not text in the grade Let me look at Facebook She's out there She's usually pretty strict Yeah I'm going to vote for Nancy Nancy gives them an F minus F minus

Okay I'm going to vote and I'm going to give them a D and I have to say generally that the Schumacher dealerships are cut above and I believe most of them are on a recommended list I will say this I know Chuck Schumacher I've known him since he was a kid

I knew him when he worked for his father Dick Schumacher he had the only the Buick dealership at that time on Okotropi Boulevard. And his father was an honest guy. He's an honest guy. Chuck Schumacher's grown his dealerships to multiple. I don't know how many different franchises he has now,

but I don't have to guess, eight. At least. Yeah, maybe 10. And so we have almost all those on the recommend list. I'm not going to fail him. I think that his, I think that his dealer fees are, A little like...

Getting out of hand. Right. He's starting to look like a Broward County dealer now. Yeah. And I think the disclosure on the Tricot Airbag, again, everybody has problems there. So that's the reason we're not going to fill you. But do better. Try to do better.

And we have the recommended list. You could go to Earl Store on Cars.com, our blog, and you can go to recommended dealers, and we will have a list for you. and bear in mind it is buyer beware on the recommended list on the do not recommend list just don't even go in because they're really bad

because when you grade on the curve and you flunk somebody they are really bad recommended list just be careful and do your due diligence and get three competitive bids and watch out for dealer fees by name of everything

except a dealer fee. It's like from Shakespeare a rose by any name any other name is still a dealer fee by any other day. A rose and roses rose. It's still a dealer food. And stay away from it. And when in doubt you can call us and if you have a bad experience, we ask you to call us

and tell us about it. That's right. How much time we got left? Like two minutes. Did you hear that the CEO of Ram resigned over this sales reporting scandal? No. Yeah, so he was in line to become... In Chrysler, Ram? Well, he was the Ram division...

The Ram division. Of Fiat Chrysler, and he was in line to actually assume the the leadership of the whole shebang fiat Chrysler and he became a government cooperator and got federal whistleblower protection for revealing these uh like dishonest sales reporting tactics of ram and then so he reported and then he quit you know why the we have a morality crisis on this country not just in car dealerships but you look at wells fargo and you look at something of pharmaceutical companies you know when when people are rotten and dishonest of the top. What do you expect?

This guy's an honest guy. His name is Reed Bigland, which is a great name for the CEO of Ram, Bigland. But yeah, he did the right thing, and then he got out of the business. Well, you got the CEO of Nissan in jail. He escaped from jail. I mean, I can't believe

what I'm saying that. He's on a beach in Beirut right now. Yeah. He's hiding in Lebanon and Beirut. Yeah. Okay, folks. I think we're at the end of the trail here. Thank you all for joining us on Earl Strow and Cars. Nancy, I'll be picking up garlic at public on the way on, because I know you're going to make me your spaghetti and meatballs. Sounds good.

See you next week. Yes. Oh!