Earl Stewart on Cars - 05.11.2019 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Greenacres Nissan

Episode Date: May 11, 2019

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent Thunder visits Greenacres Nissan, to see if he can buy an advertised Nissan Rogue for a low monthly payment and no money down. 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”

Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars with Earl and Nancy Stewart, Stu Stewart, and Rick Kearney. Reach them with your questions at 877-9-6-0-960, and now, here's Earl Stewart. Good morning, everybody. My name is Earl. I'm a recovering car dealer. You're listening to Earl on Cars, and we're a show about how not to be ripped off by your car dealer. Whether you're buying, leasing, maintaining, and repairing your car, this is a kind of how-to-do-it show. We're on the true oldie station, but we're not going to sing to you. We're going to talk to you, and hopefully you'll talk right back at us.

Matter of fact, that's a big part of the show. And just from the get-go, let me ask you to call 877-9-60-99-60. That's 877-9-60. And if you like your text, some people prefer a little anonymity. You can text us. Don't have to use your name. And that's 772-497. 6530.

You can text us at 772-497-65-30. Your questions get us into the important stuff because the reason we're here is to enlighten you, educate you, maybe entertain you a little bit. We have a few laughs on the show. We have a lot of great regular callers. We'd like some new callers. I'm in the studio with a group of people.

I just don't think you're listening to Earl Stewart by himself. The introduction made that clear. but Rick Kearney is sitting on my right. Rick is a certified diagnostic master technician. That's a mouthful, right? He's been in the business a long, long time, but he's evolved and changed kind of like I have. He's evolved and changed mainly to get into the digital revolution,

the computer revolution, cyberspace, and all that kind of stuff, because cars are rolling computers. And Rick Kearney is a computer auto scientist who can answer and your questions about why your car has a problem. Unusual noise, lights coming on, buzzers, bells, whistles. Cars are very complex today. And Rick Kearney can help you navigate that complex field that you have to go through, particularly when you buy a new car. I can't understand half the buttons on my car, and I'm a car dealer in full transparency. And sitting next to Rick Kearney is Nancy Stewart. Nancy Stewart is my wife

and my co-host, she is a female advocate. One of the most important things she does on the show is talk to the ladies out there because we're trying to get a balance, 50-50. We're almost there. And to encourage you, Nancy, tell them what we do to encourage them to have more ladies call the show. Well, good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars, and I'm here to let the ladies know that the first two new lady callers can win themselves $50. Just give us a call.

Maybe with, you know, your car and maybe you needed service, maybe you need to ask Rick a question, anything at all. Earl, Stu, myself, just call $50 and maybe just say hello. And, you know, I wanted to mention that a couple of weeks ago. ago, we, I missed the two, I think, lady callers, and I'd like to let you guys know that you can give me a call or you can email me, whichever is easiest, Nancy S at E.S.Toyota.com, and I'll make sure you get that check. Yeah, we apologize for that. We just dropped the ball.

It was about three weeks ago. Yeah. And we lost, frankly, we lost the names and the phone numbers. but if you didn't get the 50 bucks and we told you you're going to get the 50 bucks please let us know and we will remedy that immediately. I apologize. Yeah, and we all do.

Let me give a shout out to a few of the ladies that have called in. I want to thank you for being part of the show, Samantha, Robin, and Charlene. So give us a call. 877-960-9960. You know our voices must be heard

and in the auto industry, it's a financial disaster if they don't recognize us. And you can also text us 772-49765-30. And let me introduce Stu Stewart. He's my son. Hello. He's the general manager of our Toyota dealership and full transparency. I am a car dealer. I am doing this.

This is kind of like my sideline. This is my night job. And I'm a consumer advocate. But in full transparency, I'm not here to sell you anything, by the way. This is not an infomercial. I do not pay true oldies to do this show. We do it as a public service, and we do it to help you. I've been on the business since 1968, and I've been many types of car dealer.

I used to be a Pontiac dealer, Pugio dealer, Fiat, Lancho, Mazda. Checker. Checker. I mean, I've sold a lot of different cars. Fiat. Fiat, yeah. And I've evolved over. of the past 50-plus years into what I like to think is the way cars should be sold.

That's what we're talking to you. But the good thing about me being a recovering car dealer is the fact that I know all the old tricks. Anyway, back to Stu. Stu is my cyber guy. He is, in addition to being the general manager of the toy dealership, he is putting us in touch with the cyber world. That's YouTube, that's Facebook, that's Twitter, that's Periscope. and you can talk to us and see us we're streaming right now in color

and I say in color because I'm an old guy I remember when Technicolor came back Live and Technicolor, yeah So you can stream us and see us You can talk to us Post on Facebook Post on YouTube Actually Rick is taking a lot of YouTube ups

As we call it It's getting too much to handle all the text And all the engagement we're getting online So yeah And I think we have a caller Bingo that's what Life is all about Is you callers She was a caller.

We have a caller, and she is from Jupiter. Her name is Vivian. Welcome to the show, Vivian. Hi, Vivian. Can you hear us? Hi, good morning. How are you? We're going to great.

Well, nice to talk with you. Again, I was a caller before, probably about two months ago, maybe a little bit less, and I really enjoy your show. I've got a question. The first time I called was to let you know that, I have a Kia, 2016 Sportage, and I had about 47,000 miles on it. I was driving it, and I noticed this kind of like a knocking sound, and I'm thinking, well, usually knocking.

It's either oil or the gas. And I only use really good gas. I use the Chevron, a gas in my car when I get my oil changes. I keep up with it on a maintenance basis, full synthetic. Great. So nevertheless, I took it into the dealership, and long story short, they had to replace my engine. Oh. I believe I spoke with you about that.

It took five months to get my car back. Was that under warranty? They didn't want to pay for my battery. The battery, when I drove the car home the next day, the car wouldn't start. And then I went back to them, and I said, you know, it looks like I got a dead battery. I had to go purchase the battery. Well, they're not going to pay for it. I had to, you know, call Kia Consumer Affairs.

they finally said, yes, we'll pay for it, and I got a check for a new battery. Good for you. Nevertheless. Great story. Now I had this new engine. Let's see, that was installed in August, and then in January, I go to work, and I'm parking at my boss's driveway there, and a girl says, is that an oil leak in the driveway? And I went, yeah, it is.

I said, it can't be my car. I've got a new engine in my car. Well, it was my car. I take it back to the key of dealership, and they said, we've got to replace the engine again. Oh. I said, you've got to be kidding. So they replaced the engine again. Something about the, gosh, what was it now, some seals, nevertheless replaced the engine.

It took a month and a half to get that engine and replaced it. What were you driving at that time? They were giving me loaner cars. Oh, good. Yeah, so I got loaner cars through Kia. So this is engine number two. Wow. Was it a brand new engine or a used one?

I'm sorry, what was your question? Did they put a brand new replacement engine in, or did they do a used one? That's what they told me. I mean, that's what they're telling me is they had to replace my engine with a brand new one. I said, oh, boy, don't tell me five months now. And they said, no, no, it's not going to be five months. You know, it's going to be a little bit less than that. I don't know, probably about a month, I think it was.

And so I went in for that. They just had to work on my engine again, and this time they rebuilt it. Oh. I don't know what my recourse on this is. Do I have any recourse? How long have you owned the car now, Vivian? I bought it brand new in 2016. I believe it was around September of 2016.

16, paid cash for it, it only had like 145 miles on it, something like that. The problem is, and this is one of the things that's wrong with our floor of lemon law, or all lemon laws, is that it's only for, during the period of time, the car's under warranty that you can use the lemon law. That really should be a lemon law, and Kia should really refund your money on that or put you into a different model entirely. That's an interesting question. That's one of the worst.

I've heard a lot of horror stories. That's one of the worst I've heard, and I've been in the business a long time. I would check with an attorney, an attorney that won't charge you for a consultation. I know that Circey Denny, Barnhart & Chimpley, Jack Skoroul, I use him, one of the best attorneys in Florida. You could call a good attorney, describe your situation, and say, Can I discuss this with you with no charge to see if I have a case? Okay. But I'm surprised that you've been this patient.

You must live in fear every time you crank up that key of sportage as to what's going to happen next. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. That's terrible. It's been a nightmare, and I am a very patient person. But this is, it's just things are going wrong. My windshield wiper in the back, the fluid wasn't coming in.

out in the rear wiper. So I took it to Kia, still under warranty, and they have to replace the motor in that. I'm like, oh, my gosh. Vivian, this is Nancy. I'll like to ask you a question. Did you have any problems with your Kia when you bought it? No. First month?

And you know what I owned a Kia Sportage before? I had a 2,000 Kia Sportage before, and I drove that thing probably 160,000 miles. Yeah, so this was supposed... And that was the one I traded in to get this one. And, no, I had minor, minor problems with the 2007. Are you aware of any recalls? The recall I'm aware of is the engine. Yes, I did get a recall on that.

And they, again, this came after the first engine replacement. And it was something to do with the software. They had to do something with the software to alert drivers in the future. If this was going to be happening to the engine, they could get it in for repair or whatever. What a horror story. I had to go in for a software update when they had that recall. Vivian, I was just showing me a consumer reports rating on the key of sportage,

and it varies from year to year. I believe, Stu, he said that 2016 had good reliability. Yes, Vivian, you have a 2016, correct? Yes. Yes, I do. So, in the case here, where even consumer reports was off on that one, but you've got a you know there are lemons and that's the reason they have the lemon laws and there are cars and vehicles that for whatever reason automobiles today are very complex

and sometimes there are vehicles that just will never run right and it sounds to me like you've got one of those and it is a terrible problem and I think I normally wait to the very last before I recommend getting an attorney but I think in this case here you talk to Kia you talk to the manufacturer you talk to the dealer who's been useless but the manufacturer has stepped up to the plate. I think you need to talk to, I think you need to get an attorney, but don't get sucked in with a big attorney bill. Be sure to get a free consultation.

You should get an attorney that might take this on a contingency basis where it costs you nothing except the percentage of the recovery he gets for you. Correct. I would never want to think I had to drive that car for two or three more years. I'd want to have some relief, and you're entitled to it. Yeah, I think you're way overdue. to take some dramatic steps, and I wouldn't take those steps alone. An attorney is great advice.

Yes. I kind of wanted to hear that that was what I was leaning towards, and I thought, let me call you and find out and see if maybe you would agree with me that that's the course that I need to take. Yeah, and I can hear it in your voice that you would never have wanted to make that decision, but at this point in time, you're way overdue. and it's something you don't want to do, but you have to do. This is a horror story.

Absolutely. And I agree 100%. Well, I thank you so much. And, again, it's just a wonderful platform that you have to have the public be able to call and discuss their car issues. I listen to you every Saturday. And I've recommended your show to friends. So thank you.

Thank you for everything that you do out there. Please call back, Vivian, keep us posted on this. If you let us know how you do with you. the attorney love to hear from you again we would love to hear from you thank you have a great weekend i definitely will enjoy your day and and happy mother's day all the ladies out there happy mother's day okay uh give us a call if you have a question 877 960 9960 or you can text us at 772 4976530 we're going to go to vermont and we are going to talk to mark good Morning, Mark.

Hi, Nancy. How are you? Well, thank you. Thanks for calling. Yeah. If you notice a cold draft coming out of your headset, it's me. It's only 40 degrees up here right now. That sounds nice. This sounds real nice. Here's my question. My son, who's like in his 30s now, stores his sports car here at my place in the winter. and he leased a Jeep for three years, 10,000 miles a year,

and he's had it a year and a half. His job changed, his job title, and his responsibilities. Now he's not driving nearly as much. He's halfway through the lease now, and he only has 10,000. thousand miles on the jeep he's not putting any mileage on and he doesn't drive it in the summer so he brought it back last week got his sports car because you can only drive that sports car up here like through the summer and um left his jeeper i took it to get it serviced and i was talking with the salesman that arranged the lease for him and i told him that in october of 20

let's see, 2020, his lease will expire, and he's going to be way under the miles. And the salesman said it'll have equity in it, and he said when he brings it back to your house next May, 1st of May next year, bring it up here, we'll buy it back from you, pay the remaining lease payments, which at that time will be maybe five or six months. and he'll be done with it. So my question is, I knew it would have some equity, or I thought it would. What's the best way for him to end that lease? I know I'm a year away, but I want to be thinking about this.

Well, it's possible that he would have equity. I hate to say this, but it's not likely. Most times there is an equity in the end of the lease, about 75% of the time. So it's possible. I think you could get somebody that was a used car expert in that, you know, for that market. And you can do a little projecting. Jeeps, strangely enough, do have a high resale value. So they do have high residuals.

But usually the leasing companies take that into account when they set the residual. So your purchase option is a high number. The low mileage, of course, does make it more valuable. And sometimes the low mileage, you know, it could pick up the value a couple thousand dollars. So it's just an arithmetical thing with someone that knows and understands leases. And you could project and see if you would be likely to have that. I wouldn't count on it. I wouldn't bet on it.

Usually it's about a, if you're lucky, it's a break-even thing. Sometimes the leasing companies will make a little money. Sometimes they lose little money. But you can't bank on that equity because used car market, It's like the stock market. What's going to be a year from now, you really can't be too sure. You can guess, but you can't be sure. So it sounded, this is just the salesman talking to me, but like, would you think it would be reasonable

if they bought out the last five or six months of that lease? he just turned it in early, since he's not going to drive it during those months anyway? If the salesman is being honest about this, you could ask him simply to do the arithmetic. He can talk to his use car manager, and you can take the five remaining payments, which is going to be money out of your son's pocket, and then you add that to what, in the calculation, to what the residual value, which is the purchase option number, and then you've got to get the number that they're going to buy it back for. So will the number that they buy it back for pay for the five payments

that he's going to have to pay out of his pocket? I mean, it's got to be full transparency about this transaction. You don't ever want to confuse this with the purchase of another vehicle or the lease of another vehicle because they'll hide things in the purchase of the second vehicle. As a separate transaction, asset salesman to show your son of black and white, how I could take my five payments. and give them to you and then sell you the car at the end of the lease and you buy it back from me at this price that will cover those five lease payments

so that I come out ahead of the game. I'm skeptical about that. I don't think that will happen, but I'm not saying it won't happen. I got you. I really appreciate that. That helps a lot. Thanks, Earl. Well, thank you very much for the call, Mark.

And stay warm up there and send me a pint of maple syrup, will you? Hey, I will. I'll tell you, maple syrup this year was a little scarce. It'll be about the pint is going to cost you somewhere around the first payment on a new Tacoma. Wow. Well, then send us a pint of that green mountain air, please. I will do. You guys have a great day.

Now, that's what I call a negotiator. Hey, thanks so much, Mark, and enjoy that beautiful weather up there. I don't know if any of us in the studio would like to deal with maybe 40 or 50-degree weather, but I know I would. I would. Okay, 877-960-99-60 or you can text us at 772-497-60. And thank you to our listeners. We do appreciate all of you tuning in to Earl. Saturday morning.

Now back to the recovering car dealer. How are we doing texting? Do we have any texts coming in? Yeah, we've got a few, and we're nationwide again this morning. We got hellos and good mornings coming in from Massachusetts. We just had Vermont, so it's pretty cool. We're all over the place. I love it. Okay, let's see.

Our first text is from Steve in New Jersey. He's a regular texter. Calls in every once in a while, too. Hi, Steve from New Jersey. On our May 4th radio show, we said that regular gas can safely be used instead of high test. I looked at the Mercedes-Benz site for the E-Class. Mercedes-Benz says their engines require premium gas due to their high compression ratios. This means using regular gas may

lead to costly repairs. My guess is that Mercedes-Benz might seek to void a warranty repair if regular gas is used. Shouldn't the advice be to check the owner's manual? If it says premium must be used, then I would guess that the use of regular gas might avoid the factory warranty. Steve, you're technically accurate about this. And technically, legally, there's an argument where they could void your warranty. I'm just speaking for 50-plus years of experience. And Rick Kearney's answer this question before on the show, he's been in the business 25-plus years. We know of no instance where a warranty has ever been voided because of the gasoline usage.

So I'm not going to go out on a limb and say that they can't do it, but I will say I never know of them of doing it. And my advice is if you're curious, put some low test in, put a regular in, even though they say it's required and see what happens. If you get a knock or a ping, then put the high test back in again. It's not going to hurt your engine for the one tank full, and you can save yourself a lot of money, Rick. Yeah, all it really will happen is the computer, as soon as the computer detects that knock or ping, which it'll probably do before you even hear it, it's going to start retarding the timing to reduce that knock and ping. So you'll really probably won't even ever notice the difference except a slight change in the actual power output.

Very good. And in most cars, it's such a tiny amount that if you're driving like a reasonable driver, you're not going to know it. Yeah, you can save big money. And if that's important to you, then give it a try. I think we have a caller, don't we, Nancy? We do. We have a caller from West Palm Beach.

and Bob is with us this morning. Good morning, Bob. Hey, Bob. We lost Bob. We lost Bob. Give us a call back. Sorry, we kind of had a problem there. We'll call back, I bet.

Let me mention a mystery shopper and report because we know that it is the high point of the show. We can see more and more people tune in because we do it toward the end of the show. If something unique for you folks are new to the show, we send a secret shopper every week doing it for 15 years or so

different car dealership somewhere South Florida we've actually gone all the way to North Florida and West Coast Florida we've even been out of state by remote shoppers I mean we're covering a lot so be sure to stay tuned for our mystery shopping report I promise you it'll be one of the most exciting things

you've ever heard on radio most definitely give us a call toll free at 877960 9960 and And John is with us. He is definitely a big part of our show, and he's calling from Palm City. Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone, and happy Mother's Day to Nancy. Last week, the good news, good news, it proves there are good dealers and great dealers out there.

And last year's shopping report last week proved it at J&M. If you are good, some people such as myself, if you're treated honest, fairly, and they will come long distances, and they will come to see you and your reputation. And I'm so happy that that was a good report because we do get the negatives, but there was another good report on a used car dealer a couple of months ago, and that dealer was in Seward here, and it was owned by Wallace Auto Group. So there are great dealers out there. People should not get discouraged, keep in mind, and the good ones deserve our support.

And we are privileged here in South Florida. We do have some of the largest deals in the world of the brands. One is Vista, BMW, Gunther, Volkswagen, and I believe O'Rigo, Chrysler Dodge, I mean, is the number one in the state of Florida. Yeah, there's some big... When I lived in the New York area, there was a great deal, a Volvo dealer on Long Island. People came from all over. It was in Amityville.

I don't know if they're still there today. It was called Volvoville, and people supported it, and they came from all over. So I just want to say that the good news, last week's Shopping Report, it just shows you that there are great deals out there, and they deserve our report. J.M. Lexus, if you want to buy a Lexus, buy it from J.M. Lexus. Good economy. There's 7 million people in the United States that are late. in their car payments. It's a record. Late on car payments

means 90 days or more being late. Most of those people have low credit scores and are under the age of 30. So it's just keep in mind you know, payments on cars is very important. Repossessions will be up.

They come after it. They don't let you keep the car. They have devices also. It'll stop the engine from running. And it's very important. that people keep up on their car payments. Yeah, car is more important to a lot of people than their home. They found out that people will miss a house payment faster than they'll miss your car payment

because they need that car to get to work, take their kids to school. You can't take your car to work. You can't drive your house to work. You can live in your car. Yes, exactly. People do. A lot of people are. Finance companies and banks are being maybe too lenient on people.

I don't know, but they're doing everything to do. trying to get you to get into an automobile. Yeah, and the dealers are responsible, too. That's not good news about the 7 million people. Exactly. Yeah. John, thank you very much. I look forward to this chopping report.

Thank you, John. I appreciate that very much. And I think leniency is one of the major factors, but also the fact that there are, you know, a lot of consumers out there that would rather buy a new car than a used car, and they can't afford a new car, and they can get a used car. Cars are lasting much longer. with so many miles on them, and it's a great investment, so you don't have to impress your neighbor by having a brand new car in your driveway.

Exactly, yeah. And you can't afford to make the payment. Exactly. And there's some good prices out there on used cars if you do your shop and you find a certified late model used car, much better investment than a new car. I'd like to talk about something unusual. Nancy and I were both kind of interested in this article in automotive news. the current issue of automotive news,

and we talked about it driving in to the show this morning. Auto Nation, the largest retailer of cars in the United States, a lot of times you're dealing with Auto Nation, you don't even know it. Stu put together a list of Auto Nation stores in this market. I gave up. I was running out of room on my paper. Yeah, a huge amount. I mean, for example, most of your luxury car dealers

that are owned by Auto Nation don't have Auto Nation in the name. So Del Rey, Mercedes-Benz a Del Rey, is an Automation store. Palm Beach, Lexus, is an Automation store. But you know Automation is huge. Here's what is affecting you, the consumer, to the largest retailer. Automation hasn't publicly announced this, but in the Trade Journal, Automotive News, there was an article this week, that they have been methodically raising their prices. They've been raising their prices on all their cars.

They've raised their prices about 10%. And the reason they're doing this is because car dealers, and we talked about this on the last week's show, car dealers are struggling to make profits in their new car departments. Many car dealers claim they're losing money in their new car departments. Some actually are, and the margins are very, very low. So AutoNation, they're a public company. They sell stock. They have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders.

So the new president of AutoNation's name is Carl Liebert. He replaced Michael Jackson. Carl Liebert did something radical, and he said all other nation stores in the United States, whether you're selling Chevroletes, Lexus, BMWs, or Toyotas were going to raise the prices. And they did, and the volume has plummeted. They have dropped their volumes off about 14%. But their profits went up considerably. So it's all about profit to a publicly held company.

now this is a struggle for the car dealers but it can be a boon to you the car buyer the point of my information here is if you're thinking about buying a car and you're buying it from an auto nation store be extra careful because by they've admitted that they're raising their prices they had to to keep their stores profitable so if you want to buy our Mercedes and you go to del Ray, Mercedes, that's an AutoNation store. I would shop a non-Alternation Mercedes store. I'd go to a Mercedes store and shop and compare prices. Now, that's not to say that maybe Del Rey Mercedes will give you the best price.

They might, but the price that they gave you is going to be about 10% higher than it used to be. So be sure to shop automation stores because of their price raising. It's very interesting. And this whole phenomenon is affecting car dealers all over. Continuing on that topic, one of the reasons that you see so many shenanigans and bait and switch advertising and people being charged exorbitant amounts of money when they finance the car is to cover the cost of the fact that the prices have come down considerably and car dealers are losing money. I was just going to say, you know, how much more could they concentrate on finance and insurance? This is what AutoNation, it's a priority with them. So how much more can the consumer pay?

It's ridiculous. It's a rhetoric question. Auto Nation is making $1,897 in their finance office, and they do it mainly by what they call their branded products, which are things like GAP insurance, the Auto Nation Gap Insurance, Auto Nation Pate, Sailing, Auto Nation, what, Road Has, insurance, Automation Maintenance, All the Nation extended warranties.

So you go into an Automation store or any car dealership, you buy a car, and you say, I finally made my purchase. You're not through with your purchases. You're going to the F&I office, and this is where the dealers really make their money. And AutoNation has always been a heavy hitter in the finance office. They've always made a lot of money in the finance office. Now they're concentrating even more. So they had to raise their prices to survive.

It's helping them. A lot of analysts are saying that it's impossible for a car dealer to raise their prices and continue in business because of the competition and because the manufacturers put a huge amount of pressure on the car dealers to sell a certain minimum of cars. Sue is looking at me knowingly. Well, yeah. I mean, we have some experience in our market, in our Toyota market,

we have an automation competitor, well, you know, down Weston. And last month, they didn't even, they barely did 80% of their sales objective. Wow. And the whole district overall hit their sales objective, so they're off 20% from our district as a whole. And if you don't hit your sales objective and you're a new car dealer, no matter which manufacturer you're a car dealer for, it costs your money. Virtually all manufacturers have an incentive plan, and they have a quota, an objective, each car dealer. If you're in a smaller market, you have a small quota.

If you're in a big market, you have a large number of cars you have to sell. And if you miss that quota, it can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. That equates to profit on every new car you sell. So you're caught between a rock and a hard place. To sell a lot of cars, you have to have a low price. If you don't have a low price, you can't sell a lot of cars. You don't get your bonus from the manufacturer. And if you think you're going to hit your quota and you sell the cars too cheap

and you don't hit your quota, that's when you lose money. in that new car department. So this is insider stuff, folks. This is stuff that the consumer doesn't understand. This is something the car dealers don't want you to know about, and this is something that manufacturers don't want you to know about. Manufacturers are being fought by the dealers. These financing bonuses are financing.

These sales bonuses are known as stair-step incentives. That's one name for it. And they can be on a 30-day cycle or a 90-day cycle or an annual cycle. sometimes all three, and it's a huge amount of pressure on the car dealer. So heads up, AutoNation, be careful. They're going to sell fewer cars to make more money because they have to. I'll tell you what, ladies and gentlemen, you're going to hear the, as I used to say in the old days,

the good, the bad and the ugly, right here, Heteral Stewart on cars. If you didn't have enough to worry about paying too much for finance and insurance, you've got to be careful about all these branding parts, these accessories, and all this other stuff. And we're right here to feed you the information to protect yourself whenever you go out there to purchase a car. Give us a call, tool-free, at 877-960, 9960. And I'd like to take advantage of this moment. to let you know how you can not only power yourself with knowledge, but there's a certain tool that you can download from Earl on Cars,

and that's the affidavit of a vehicle purchase the final, at-the-door price. Go there and get that form, take that into the dealership, and have them sign that, and that's worth its weight in gold. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. I've held that up for our YouTube and our Facebook and our video participants. This is what the forum looks like. It's called the Nancy Stewart Forum, the Nancy Stewart Affidavit. That was Nancy Stewart's idea several weeks ago.

It's a fantastic idea. Basically, you're getting the car dealer to sign an affidavit that he's not going to sneak in any additional hidden fees. and if he will swear to the fact that there will be no hidden fees and he signs it, then you can be fairly confident you've got an out-the-door price. And you can download this, print it out, and have yourself guarantee of a safe purchase.

That's right. Go to earl-oncars.com, and on the right side you'll see these special links, and this is one of the links. Yeah, and guess what, ladies and gentlemen, just in my DNA, boy, could I have a good time with this, but Earl is keeping a leash on me. He doesn't allow me to go in and out of these dealerships. The black widow.

It would be dangerous. He's afraid. How about text? We haven't got a YouTube. Few YouTubers out there. Rick sitting here without any text. We got some. I got some text.

We've actually had several of them just waving in just to say hi so far. So to L.J. Frank, Raymond, Angel, and Dino. Hey, y'all, how's it going? Yeah. Ask a question. Question, do you know? Yeah, we get a lot of highs and good mornings, too. We don't usually read them all, but we respond back online.

Here's a fun question. What is Earl and Nancy's favorite everyday car to drive? I'm a Camry driver, but if the corolla comes out with lumbar support without a sunroof, I may become a corolla driver. Your favorite car? I like the Lexus 500 L.S. How about this? We know what you drive.

Some of our listeners do, too. How about in your history, I mean, in your life, what was your most fun car to drive? And I know Nancy's got an answer to that way. Okay, in all my history, gosh, that might be my 1968 Pontiac judge pour on the floor. There you go. I've never even heard of that car. I was an infant. Oh, no, it wasn't either.

I'll tell you what it was. It was my 1957 Pontiac-Poniville convertible fuel injection, the first fuel-injected car that General Motors ever built. There you go. That's a classic. What's your favorite, Nessie? What was Stugan, I guess, my favorite. Something with a stick shift, I'm picturing you in the 70s, you know, with an 8-track, 8-track player. Right.

My hair pulled up in a bun. A GTO. Yeah, there you go. Another Pontiac. Mine was my first car ever. There's a Celica, 1982 Celica. It has an emotional attachment. Yeah.

There's always that. Oh, that's Celica. Oh, gosh, I remember driving that. Boy, why can't they bring back that celica? Oh, I loved it. And you? I remember my first car better than I remember my first girlfriend. My.

That's another show, my dear. Well, it was a different era back then. Cars were, you know, just emotional. You're not supposed to get too serious when you're a teenager anyway. Yeah, true. Are you serious under our roof at home? Do you know how many times I hear about all of his girlfriends? Come on.

Okay, Rick. My favorite was my 69 Chevy pickup that was rusted out. The passenger door fell off. It had no bumpers. And it had an engine and transmission in it that could wamp a Camaro. It looked horrible, this thing rolling down the road. And it didn't look like a threat so you could see. But it would take off and it would do a 16-second quarter mile.

Wow, man. What was rude? What was your favorite? And Johnny said, what was your favorite? Well, let's talk about some text here. This is interesting. This is from a texter in Atlanta. He says, I wanted to ask you if you knew about a website called the Red Zone, Steve Richards.

He's a dirtbag that travels the country, the dealerships teaching car sales. Car sales people, how to rip off customers. What do you think? Let's talk about it on air. Well, I did Google Steve Richards and Red Zone car sales. He's got a pretty big presence out there. He's got a YouTube channel. He's got a Facebook channel.

And, yes, I'm looking at his things. He's teaching old school car sales tactics, like how to overcome objections. I was just looking at his channel. How do you handle the I'm just thinking stall? And what to say when your customer says they need to shop around. So this is a total throwback to the way things. Well, they still happen. Well, we say a lot of email like that.

A lot of times I'll cut and pay those and put them on Facebook. But because I'm a car dealer, I get all these emails, advertisements about how to sell more cars. And some of them are just blatantly illegal, unethical, terrible. And it's just out. It's an industry. It's a thriving industry. When you look at the language he uses, so here's a,

instead of how to handle when somebody wants to delay the purchase, they call it a threat. He says, defusing your prospects, shop around threat that's the quote shop around the threat to shop around that's that's that's I think we have a caller we do we definitely have a collar but I want to announce to our audience that Jonathan used to drive a 70 Plymouth Roadrunner and it was burnt orange nice pictures Jonathan put him on the video I'll get you later on on Rudy's ride we're going to go to Tina from Benita Springs and she

is definitely part of our show. Good morning, Tina. Tina from Bonita. Good morning, everybody. How are you all doing? Great. Good. Okay, I know that this has probably been said before,

so this is, I guess, a repetitive thing, but the love bugs are out, and I know that last week you guys were talking a little bit about how you can protect your car. I'm going to remind everybody that probably didn't hear it last week, do not spray cooking spray on your car, because there is less than in the cooking spray and it will harden up, and it is a bugger to get off if you want to get it off your paint shop.

So, just an FYI right there. Very good. Very good. And the second thing I want to mention is kind of a public service announcement thing, but we're really starting to get into travel season ever since Memorial Day weekend passed. Well, Memorial Weekend is coming up. So the weather's getting warmer. People are moving around.

They're visiting places. They're more prone to go on vacation. and Florida is a pretty big state. It takes a long time to drive out of Florida. So there's a little thing you want to know about, and it's called Star FHP. If you see somebody driving recklessly on the highway, if you see an accident, if you see illegal activities, please dial Star FHP, and you can be a hero for somebody. You can save somebody's life.

Tina, give me that again, Star, and what is it? Star FHP. S-A, oh, F-H, Florida Highway Patrol. No, no, it's the acronym for Florida Highway Patrol, so R-F-H-P. Well, that's very cool. I didn't know that. So, and then they will talk to you immediately, and you'll say, some crazy guy doing 100 miles an hour passing this exit on the turnpike or something like that.

Yep. Oh, yeah. Wow. Yeah, call in their license plate, and I've done that before, and the guy actually got pulled over, this was quite a few years ago. Uh-huh. He actually got pulled over, and they had it. his hands in the back of his trunk.

Wow. So he was going downtown after that one. I saw a guy about a week ago, and I was thinking, by the time I called the police and the other, he was gone. But Star F-H-A-P, that's very good. I'll commit that to memory. Well, thank you, Tina. Anything else on your mind? You're our most predicted point.

No, I was just going to add. I was just going to add to your conversation earlier about all of these sales tactics that. car dealers are trying to come up with to get you into the showroom floor, I think the summertime heat has gotten to them because they're just coming out with more and more outrageous things every day. It just makes me shake my head. You know, we talked earlier about AutoNation raising their prices. I'm not trying to make excuses for car dealers, but here's what they make as an excuse as to why they have the dealer fees and the hidden fees and so on and so forth. They say that they have to do it to stay alive

to make money to make a profit now there's a there's a grain of truth there that's about all because car dealers make a lot of money in their service departments and their parts departments and their in their use car departments uh maybe not so much in the new car but the more pressure they have put on them on the profit margin of new cars the more they feel compelled that they have to come up with the hidden fees and the bait and switch this is truly their excuse i talk to car dealers all the time. I talk to the car dealer associations, and this is what you hear. If you had

a bug in a meeting room with a bunch of car dealers, they'd be talking about why they have to resort to these shenanigans to sell a car. And it's just a BS excuse, in my opinion. Well, if enough people vote with their feet and with their

dollars, then car dealers will be forced to be more competitive with one matter. Exactly. Exactly. Well, thank you very much, Tina. Hey, Tina, I have a question for you real quick before you go. Yeah. Do you know what other way there is to wipe your, get your blood bugs off the windshield, your car, or anywhere at all on the exterior? Beings, we don't have a whole.

I've heard that dryer sheets can work. Okay, you answer. Open water and the dryer sheets can work. Yeah, you answered my question. I like the suggestion of using a good carnago wax. Yeah. Well, that's without a doubt. Without a doubt, that's great. But hey, throw a box of bounced dryer sheets in your car. Not only is it going to make your car inside of your car smell good, but it's going to clean off the residue on your windshield. And hey, guess what? If you've got a pet who's out in the rain and is getting in the car, those dryer sheets, unbelievable. How clean they make your dog, and it's good for them. Tina, thank you so much for calling in. us a call again oh i certainly will have a great day everybody thank you have a great weekend we're going to go to john in west palm beach hey john hello hey john you're on the air

how can we help you hey oh good mine is just short uh my favorite car that i had was a 70 gtio judge oh what color was it i think girl was mentioning his gtio i think he had a 69 GTO judge, but he bought it in 68 when it first came up. What color? Mine was orange. Mine was orange. Yeah. I had the polar white in. It was

1970 with the reflective shirt. But anyways, there's something I learned the other week, and I want to see if you guys are doing, I know you're going to Google it real quick. But do you actually know what the Toyota symbol, that emblem is on the car? Isn't it a flower pedal?

It's three ellipses. And I forget the exact, Toyota actually has a definition for each of the three ellipses as to what they stand for. It's the unification of the hearts of our customers and the heart of Toyota products. I Googled. Oh, no, that's not what I had learned because they were actually saying that Toyota was actually, before they started building cars, they were actually a industrial sewing machine manufacturer. And that's actually a needle and thread. And that was similar that they used, you know, before they started making cars because they were actually a sewing machine manufacturer.

Well, that is true. That is true. And they got that needle and thread insignia. That is true. They started out making a weaving or sewing machines. Actually, I think it's Ichiro Toyota actually developed this very special loom that was like an automatic feeder. So it was a much more efficient way to weave cloth. Right.

Yeah. Well, thank you, John. That's good. Interesting. Yeah. See you late. Take care. Have a good one.

You actually got a chance to see the actual loom on the trip I took to you. Yeah, stay in touch, John. We love hearing from you and all the trivia you have to ask or to offer. And by the way, before we finish up our favorite cars, Rudy was driving a Shelby Cobra. Uh-oh. I didn't picture that. I was thinking Volkswagen Beetle for. you.

877-960 or you can text us at 772-49-30-60. You know, my favorite thought were they were asking about Toyota is Lamborghini started out building farm tractors after World War II. And as the story goes, Ferrari was building these sports cars and Lamborghini went and he drove one and he sent a letter to Ferrari and he said hey here's a couple suggestions for things you could do on your car to make it better and Ferrari basically just sent back meh you go build your tractors let us worry about the sports cars so Lamborghini said all right buddy and he started building Lamborghini supercars he gave him a run for the money oh crazy okay we're going to

Connecticut hey let's go we're all over the place Steve, good morning. Hi, good morning, guys. How are you? Great. Well, thank you. Thank you for calling Earl Stewart on cars. Yeah, so I've been watching Earl for a while. Now he's got some really good information for, you know, buyers' tips and, you know, ensuring that people get good deals.

Thank you. And so, first of all, thank you for, you know, supplying that information to the public. And so why I'm calling you is, so I love Toyotas. I've owned about four or five different ones. And we just purchased a 2012 rap four in Blizzard Pearl. And after we purchased it, it's a great car. It's got the V6 engine in it, and we love it. But a couple of days after we purchased it,

we found out that there was a possible defect in the Blizzard Pearl. And so there's a Facebook group about it, and there appears to be thousands of people with blizzard pearl problems. The paint literally strips right off the car, and it goes down to bare metal, which then rust. And from what I understand, many of the people who try to call corporate and try to, of course, get this problem fixed, some of them are able to get Toyota to repaint the car, but the majority of my group members have not been. and able to get Toyota to repaint the car. So my question is, are you seeing this problem with the white cars?

And if you are, you think that Toyota is eventually going to issue some sort of service bulletin or extended warranty on the paint or anything like that? Steve, the pearl is what threw me off a little bit. Toyota is having problems with white paint, but not the, extra cost white paint, which Blizzard Pearl sounds like the ones that we haven't had problems with for the code, the paint code is

040 for the plain white paint. And we've had a lot of problems with that, and it's been a particular source of irritation to us. The lack of uniformity of response and responding to customers has also been an irritate to me as a Toyota dealer. We try to advocate for our customers, and sometimes we have to take it up the ladder on their behalf.

A lot of car dealers, toilet dealers, or, you know, any make, it's easier for them to turn down a request to do warranty work than fight on behalf of the customer. You have to find a dealer that will advocate for you and take it up as high as you can. Sometimes parallel efforts will work. You go directly to the manufacturer, and then you let the dealer work through his sources, and a dual approach sometimes work. Stu, you have a point? Yeah, so you mentioned 0-40 paint, the plain white paint.

So the problem with that was it oxidized or just started wearing. There is a problem with delamination. As, Steve, as you said, I'm sorry, as you said, it's actually literally peeling off. And there's a big problem with that, and the older ones. Texan Allen, who's usually here to jump on this. But I just asked him if he's having an issue getting toyed to cover it. So I have the text bubbles percolating right now, but he is aware of it. so we've had some issues that we've seen.

Yeah, Steve, my advice, now that I'm brought up to speed on this, and I wasn't aware of it, that was Alan Napier, who was a part of the show. He comes in about once a month, and he's been my body shop manager, collision repair for many, many years, very knowledgeable. He says, yes, there's a delamination where the paint does peel, and Toyota, obviously, as you said, is aware of it.

So the same thing applies. you just have to be kind of persistent and find a Toyota dealer in the Connecticut area that will be your advocate with Toyota try to here's another little inside secret for auto manufacturers and dealerships if you have bought a number of cars from that manufacturer if you bought several Toyotas if you've been into that dealership on a regular basis for service there's a loyalty stamp that goes by your name. There is a person in Toyota that is called the loyalty manager, and they're supposed to take extra good care of the people that have been loyal to Toyota,

and this would apply to Chevrolet, I assumed a Kia to Cadillac, whatever model. The manufacturers and the dealers will take special care of their loyal customers. So approach Toyota, and hopefully the people that are having the problem have bought more than one Toyota from the fact that they are good, loyal Toyota customers. There's a different person that rules on that, and that's the customer loyalty manager. The other people that deal on it are warranty, and they have to make exceptions called goodwill, and they have to make it just on the basis of do I want to do it or do not want to do it, and they get turned down often.

We've had remarkable success because our service manager has had the, intelligence to go to the loyalty person in Toyota and we've had virtually every claim that we've made honored if they have been a good loyal Toyota customer. That's my best suggestion to you.

I'd like you to check it out, try it, and then call us back if it works or if it doesn't work, and I'll try to come up with something else. Yeah, well, thank you so much. I mean, you know, some people say, oh, I won't buy another toy or after this, but you know, of course, I'll always buy Toyota. The car is great. It's just so

disappointing that. You know, the paint, of course, is doing this because it makes the car look like it wasn't taken care of. Exactly. It just devalies it so much. But those are all good points. Thank you so much. If you can get the owner of the dealership,

and I've done this on more than one occasion, if you can get the owner of dealership up there, the Toyota dealer in Connecticut near you, to email to support you and send it up the line to one of the executives of Toyota and just make a case for why what I usually say is Toyota built this car the paint's defective you admit it your paint warranty is only three

years that shouldn't be long enough a coat of paint or less a lot longer than three years especially if they take care of the car garage and wax the car so I say you've got a defective product you should honor this to keep Toyota's name whether the car is out of warranty or in warranty it's should be taken care of. When the owner of the dealership does that, it carries a lot of weight. See if they'll do that for you. Okay. All right. Great. Thank you so much, Earl. Thank you, Steve. Thanks for being part of the show, Steve. Give us a call again. We love hearing from anybody from Vermont. Wow, beautiful Vermont. 877-960 or you can text us at 772-497-6530. and don't forget, you can go to your anonymous feedback.com, voice your opinion.

It's a great site. You are completely anonymous. We're going to go to Howard, who's been holding. He gives us a call from Jupiter. Good morning, Howard. Good morning. It's a pleasure talking to you. And Earl Sue is the only person, the only dealership that would mention this manager, loyalty manager,

and goodwill. No other dealership would do it because they figure a lot of people would start complaining and they would be losing money. So, kudos. Toyta is not crazy, but I'm not plugging this. I'm not getting any money for this, you know, but I just want to mention this to you because

I've been dealing with world for many years. Okay, my question. Okay. I have a Camry with the white paint 040. Now, there are two different types of white paint. There's 040, and there's the pearl, which I think there's no problem with the pearl of white.

Am I correct? Well, we have this delamination problem that we talked about with the caller from Vermont. I wasn't aware of either, or Connecticut, but apparently it does exist, and our body shop manager, Alan Napier, you know Alan, Howard, and he says he's checking into it right now, but we have had instances of delamination.

Delamination means the paint peels off, and the O-40 fades, two different problems. But the pearl paint is high price. You pay extra for it, and it ought to be a lot better than the O-40, which is just ordinary white paint that doesn't have clear coat on it. Okay, now the clear coat, the pearl white, I try to touch it up. You have to have two separate applications for that. You have to touch it up, and then you have to put the clear coat over it.

It never comes out right. but that's a that's a story for another time here's my question this is very important I had my tire repaired in Costco

and I asked them to put a plug not a plug I'll ask them to open up the tire and patch it from the inside and Costco said because it was at the edge of the thread near the side wall

they could not do that but they plugged it and they assured me that it's safe. So I want to speak to Rick to see how safe that tire is. I would replace that tire at your earliest convenience, if not sooner. Truth be told, plugs are old school and not a very safe repair anyways. The best repair is an internal patch,

and actually the absolute best repair is what's known as a plug patch where it's a patch put in from the inside that actually has a small plug that seals the hole up all the way through the thickness of the tire. Now, Costco told me they could not patch it because it was all the way over to the sidewall, not on the sidewall where the tread ends at the sidewall. They said it would be impossible to patch that

because it, you know, the curvature of the tire. And that part is correct to you. That part is correct. we do not patch tires if it's in the last section of the tread on the outside edges. If a nailer screw is in that outer edge of the tread, that's in the no-no zone, and we will not repair that tire. We say, no, that tire should be replaced for safety safety. The no-no zone.

Yep. Because that's a safety factor. I've been in there before. I've been in the no-zone. Sorry. Oh, stew. Well, Howard, you're going the right place. Costco is a great place to buy tires,

and you get the best prices there, so it's a great outfit. I'm not complaining about Costco because I think they're great. But as soon as possible, I'm going to change, according to Rick, I have to change the tire, so I'll do it. My question to Rick is, do I have to get the, it's a front tire. Do I have to get the exact same tire that I have on the right side and put on the left side the exact same tire or can I have a

different tire, a different make? Rick, what do you say? You can do it technically but I would try to match the tires because otherwise you'll get a difference in what's known as the rolling resistance and the tire will pull

excuse me well Rick, it will pull to one side of the other Rick what if they had the exact specifications? In other words if you had a Goodyear and a Michelin with identical road resistance, tire wear index, and all the other specs. If all the specs are identical, can you have two different make tires?

You can. It just, the issue is the difference in the tread patterns in that is what changes that rolling resistance. And believe it or not, you can have two tires that come off the exact same assembly line, identical tires and they can have a slight difference in rolling resistance and if you put one on the right side of the car and one on the left side of the car it'll pull and if you simply cross them to the other side of the car the car will run straight as an arrow so it's rolling resistance is the big issue there and that's that's why we don't recommend mixing brands or even the model of tire

on the same axle okay last question so the two ties, the two same tires should be in the front. Can you, and the rear, can you have a different tire on the left side rear or on the right side? I don't think there would be a problem with the rear, am I correct? Again, I would recommend having the same model and brand of tire on the axle because what's going to happen when you go to rotate those tires? They're going to go to the front anyway, so you're going to get that pull. Well, there's one thing you could do, not rotate the tires.

rotate the tires. How about that one? And then you would have increased wear on those tires, and they wouldn't last near as long. I mean, if you want to get the best life out of your tires, for the money that you're going to spend, they need to be rotated every 5,000 miles. Great. Thank you very much. As you, you imparted a lot of knowledge into me, which I don't have that much knowledge. Thanks, Howard. You're the maven of the show.

Thank you again. And have a good day. You too, are. That's our Rick. He's a book of knowledge. Okay, give us a call toll-free at 877-9-60-90-60. Any question at all is a good question. Our Ucon, Texas, at 772-497-6530.

Don't forget we have that mystery shopping report coming up and so much more. A lot of, I'll tell you what, we've covered a lot of information today. We should have. Hello. Hello. Hello. Okay, we're going to go to Frank, and Frank's calling us from Jupiter Farms. Well, good morning, and as one other gentleman said, happy Mother's Day early.

Oh, thank you, Frank. It's good to hear your voice. Okay, there's a multitude of things. I'll try and keep it down to a minimum. On Tuesday, I got to drive up to Patrick Air Force Base, where I retired many years ago, and I heard a brief when I was in another room and I missed the rest of it

about the love bugs is there a preventive I know not to do the cooking spray I heard that part of it and then when I walked to the other room I lost something heard something about fabric sheets that's more for cleaning

but is there anything you can actually do for the front of your car other than maybe a screen to help prevent all those love bugs to prepare it ahead of time you mean before the love bugs yet wash it well and get a good coat of

any brand of wax a good quality brand wax that has a good carnuba content in it and it's the best you can do as a matter of fact rain necks on the windshield or you know if you don't want to go with the rain necks use simple car wax on the windshield

it will help to reduce unfortunately you know for like all those the nooks and crannies the headlights you know in the grill I mean, really, I guess those nets look terrible, but maybe that's the only thing that keeps them out of the nooks and grannies. That's pretty much it. And then when you get where you're going, swing in at one of those coin-operated car washes and just use that high-pressure rinse to really blast them off of there and get rid of them quickly because their innards can start to eat into the paint. So you don't want to leave them on there very long.

Well, the other option I was thinking about, and the rates are high right now, is just going to rent a car for the day. Or I know you guys are very liberal, and your car test drives for a whole day, so, I mean, I'm just teasing, but then it's. Just by and return it. Back to the cars. I love hearing Earl talk about his GTO judge and things like that. And one of my first cars I really liked, I was a cleaner at Eastern Airlines cleaning the floors

and the mechanics from the Air Force. And I was in ROTC University of Miami. So one of the guys took me for a ride in his Porsche, an old 3.56. And I was used to cars who went in fast and straight lines. This car went fast and turns. When we came up to 836 on the Palm Meadow, I thought, I'm going to die. I just sat there, I didn't scream. I just said, I'm prepared to die.

And when we lived through that turn, I go, wow, that's a different feeling. It is, isn't it? I treated myself, my first Porsche was a 70-9-11 T, with six carburetors, you're trying to psyched up with the unison. By the time you had the fifth one going, the first one was out a lot. Anyway, I was at Air Force in Duke Field, and I treat myself a brand new 9-11S off the showroom floor. That was probably my neatest car. That's a good one.

The visibility up the front, the cornering. Once I learned how to drive it, you know, once you never let off. But anyway, enough for cars. Another thing, I just came back from Italy, and I saw the coolest little Toyota. And I was trying to get a picture to show you because it was the smallest Toyota ever saw. The best description I have, but you're going to love this, is absolutely comical. The color was blue. Wow.

What type it was, I really don't know, but obviously they got different cars over there. Smurf blue. Yeah, I know. But I'll try and find a picture sometime. I wanted to go to a car dealership and see if they had dealer fees like we got here in the States, but that didn't permit. Wow. You know, in Japan, they sell a car. One million euros.

They knock on the door, and it's a completely different system in Japan, the way cars are sold. Yeah. No, it's the one thing that really obviously struck me again because I haven't been there for a while. It's the price of the gas. It was well over $8 a gallon. Crazy. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's sold by the leader. The story about the Lamborghini and the Ferrari, very true. Many years ago was at a farmhouse buying some cheese. The Parmesan cheese up there is fabulous. And you see this guy. his coveralls and you know this and that and somehow we were talking about cars you want to see my car you go in the bar and he has a nice beautiful Lamborghini sitting in among the hay bales and they like their lambos and they all obviously like their um ferrari's but that's a very true

story about the deal about tractors and stuff frank do you know who owns Lamborghini now i don't Chrysler yeah if you want to have some fun to pull up alongside a Lamborghini at the stopline and say, hey, that's a nice-looking Chrysler you're driving down. Whoa. Hey, Frank. You're killing me. You're in Italy. You're talking about Parmesan cheese.

I'm checking out. I'm not going to do the rest of the show. I'm going to go get a pizza. Hey, where were you in Italy? That's not a bad idea. We flew into Milan for a week. My heartbeat still. I do metal detecting.

I sell metal detectors, and I help people find their loss rain. and Keys on the beach. And the company that makes the machines called Mine Lab from Australia. And they had their convention last year in Arizona near Phoenix. At a share in a ranch, 400 acres of horses and coyotes. This year, it was in Sardinia. I have never been to Sardinia. Wow.

Oh, my goodness. Beautiful. You got to put that on your bucket list. I am going to change my job description. Frank, I didn't hear you say anything earlier about. these laundry sheets that they use for the love bugs, but that's one of the, well, a more efficient way to get rid of them in the residue. Frank, thanks so much for calling. We love hearing from you.

Okay, no problem. We'll chat later. You have a nice day. Thank you. You too. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. That's some text here. Wonderful. And we've got some YouTube's too. Yeah. It must be the humidity. Maybe it's the temperature, but every question is about love bugs. We'll choose.

And we have to answer Anne-Marie. Amory is our longtime regular texter. She says, good morning. Happy Mother's Day, Nancy. Happy Mother's Day. It is love bug season. So she has several questions. Number one, I think we've addressed some of the things, but we'll just move through it quickly. If you use a dryer sheet to knock off the worst of love bugs right before washing, could that harm to finish? I think the consensus is, no, we're okay with dryer. sheets. Okay, which are our sheets?

Can I give my little trivia on Lubbugs? I didn't know this, but Rick said earlier the innards of the love bug eats away of the paint. It's very acidic. Not true. Really? No. It's the innards of the love bug

are no problem. The bacteria that attacks the innards of the love bug after the love bug, inners have been pasted on your car for a while. So if you wash it off any time within a few hours of the incident,

you have no problem. So that smell is... When you let it sit there for a day or two, that's the bacteria that come up to eat the innards and also eat your paint. So if we could get some love bug antibiotics into it. Probiotics. That would solve it.

There we go. There you go. Okay. I'm really grossed out now. Next, is waxing the car and washing the bugs up promptly helps protect the paint, but what can be done to protect the windshield for better visibility?

Would Rain X help? and yes it will. So try some Ranex. Raynex is a miracle product. Should a driver carry a gallon of windshield wiper fluid to clear those nasty smearing bugs? You know, I've got to say, I think, I'm an overuser of my window washing function in my car.

That can't hurt on a trip. Nope, definitely can't hurt. Can't hurt at all. I have one in my trunk. Yeah, if you got room for it, put it in the trunk. There's an idea for an after-sale product. You'd have a huge jug to sell people during Lubbock season.

Yeah. In charge him $1,000 for it or something like that. Just stand there on the, at a Turnpike Plaza and, you know. You car dealers. There you go. You'll see me right out there, guys. There you go. And then Nancy, Nancy, sorry, Amory chimed in.

She said her most fun car to drive was a Fiat Spider 854 on the floor, two-seater convertible. I had one of those. Did you? We used to sell it. I was a Fiat dealer, yeah. That's right. Unfortunately, it started seeing the mechanic more than me, so we had to part ways, but boy, was it fun when it was running.

And you know what? They're easily picked up. That's true. I have a funny. My youngest daughter had that car, and she went off to John I. Leonard to high school, and she parked her car, came out, and her car was gone. Her high school friends decided to pull a prank on her. And they just carried it away.

And they just carried away, and they put it in another location. Oh, that's funny. Okay, so we have Linda, who is one of our top fans. and she's there every single week. She just wants to chime in. She says, I love my Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Burgundy with White and Teener,

1975 Cutlass Supreme. That is a classic car. And then also, Linna also wants to know a question. We were talking about tires. Can I jump in as an old guy? The Cutlass used to be the number one selling car in America. Oldsmobile Cutlass was number one for one year. Used to be Chevrolet and then Pontiac was struggling.

And Oldsmobile came along and the Cutlass was number one. Yeah. Well, you know what? I will never, I am constantly told about buying a cutlass for my middle daughter. She was devastated that I bought her a cutlass. She said, this is a piece of. Linda would disagree with you. Linda, we were talking about patching tires and all that.

She wanted to know, what about Tire Kingdom for purchasing tires? It's a good place. Like all tire manufacturers or sellers, retailers, there's, you have to be careful. Tire Kingdom threatened to sue me one time because I did a mystery shopping report on tire sellers. Who hasn't? Well, people threatened. But you notice, they never sue me.

They threaten because the truth is my defense, and I tell the truth. So, actually, the owner, I was very impressed. The owner of Tire Kingdom called me. And then he wrote me a letter. I had done a shop on a Tire Kingdom store several years ago. and the column got re-run and since then they cleaned up their act I'd like to take credit for the fact

that they may not have cleaned up their act had not I'd done the mystery shopping report so I believe Tire Kingdom has has cleaned up their act but when you buy tires you want to get an out-the-door price just like you get an out-the-door price on a car you want to be sure okay the tire costs this much what's it cost to mount it

rotate it balance it what about road hazard insurance and all the other Mickey Mouse stuff, this tax, that tax, say, if I wrote you a check for those four tires that I want to buy, what is the amount of that check? And you can divide that by four, and that's what the tire cost. But they won't give you that.

They'll just give you the raw cost of the tire. So buyer beware when you buy tires. That is true. All right, so I did the fun ones first. Here's one. In the end, this is from a guy named FRIER. Fred, in the end, Earl, actually charges more than other dealerships. I got a 2019 Corolla L.E. for $16,000 out the door.

Go to his website, yours. You pay around $18,500. Well, that's what competition is all about. I don't believe that, but if it were true, then you should buy the car from the other dealer. And I put all of my prices online. We quote them on the telephone. don't even have to come into the dealership. We have posted prices on all New Year's car.

So you take the car you want to buy from me and then you compare it with all the other competitors and you buy it at the lowest price. And if you can save $2,000 over my price, you should do it. It's called the Free Marketplace. And that's your right is an American to shop and compare. I'm the only car dealer that will give you that right.

So I've got to be careful because I'm lapsing into an infomercial and I apologize for that. He got my diar up a little bit. Yeah, not exactly. And let me add to this. There isn't, I can guarantee this, ladies and gentlemen, is there another car dealer who would share such transparency? You're infomercialing. No, it's just being caring for the consumer, caring for the consumer, and you out there, you have the control to go anywhere you want and purchase a vehicle.

I'm just sharing transparent. Cairancy. Pull yourself together. We love you, Daddy. Okay, we're going to, you wait until after this show. You wait. Okay, how are we going to do all the text? We're good, but we've got Dave and Boynton's on the line.

We're going to go to Dave and Boynton. Hi, Dave. Hey, good morning. How you doing? We're doing good. How are you doing? That's good. I'm doing pretty good.

I was just wondering, you guys, are you at the dealership? Because all the construction work pretty much finished, or you got more to go? Yeah, yeah. It's almost finished. Almost finished. We hope. Okay. It's been going on a long time.

That was a week, yeah. Oh, go ahead. No, we're all done. We're just putting furniture in right now, so, yeah. We just got a few more weeks. Yeah. The finer points. Is there any chance if you got radio listeners or customers that were interested,

are you guys going to have any kind of a walking tour to show what's available now or anything like that? Well, we'll take you out of tour anytime. I can't wait until the 22nd of May because that's when our giant 1,000-gallon fish tank. We have a fish tank that is so tall it reaches through the ceiling. You can bend over and walk in and get inside the fish tank and see all the fish. 1,000 gallons, the world's largest fish tank, and it will be installed on the 22nd. That's right. We guarantee you an exciting tour.

Called an aquarium, actually. We're calling it an aquarium, Mark. Yeah, that sounds good. One other quick question, because I was listening last week, and I was just making sure I was hearing you correctly, when your salespeople speak to customers, do you guys have a no-haggle and no-dickering format, or do you just have one-set price from the start? Or how's that go? Yeah, Dave, we put our lowest price on every car, market on every car.

We put it online on every car. Our out-the-door price, we only add government fees. There's no hidden fees. You've got to pay sales tax and a license plate. That's it. So we encourage people. We realize we're not always going to have the lowest price. We had a caller or a texture earlier.

The city found a car at a much lower price. And I said, more power to you. You're an educated consumer. You shop and compare. The thing you have to be careful of is when the other prices are quoted to you, are you getting truly an out-the-door price. But, yeah, that's no-haggle, no hassle, lowest price on every car. And do you find your salespeople,

enjoy that better than the old method of haggling and stuff and going back and forth to oh by far they don't have to explain the prices they don't have to apologize for the bait and switch advertising our mystery shopping reports almost every week we have a salesman that says i'm sorry but that's not a price you really have to can pay uh that's a price to get you to come in this is what the price really is so it's a lot of pressure on the salespeople trying to explain a way there yeah oh yeah that's what i was thinking Yeah, the only other comment I just wanted to make was that there's a billboard across from Hobby Lobby on North Lake Boulevard, was saying you guys have the best-rated new car department and sales and service department, a service department, rather.

Yes. Which is pretty impressive, so congratulations on that. And that was a Palm Beach Post survey that surveyed all that. Yeah. Yeah, that was quite an honor. We're very proud of that. Yeah, well, I'll definitely take you up on stopping in after May 22nd and take a look. Look at the fish.

Come on. Check the fish out. Thank you, Dave. Yeah, we're also getting Google photographers to come through and do like a 3D walkthrough as soon as everything's in place. So you don't have to drive the dealership. Everything's online. How did this show turn into an infomercial? That would be great.

A virtual tour. I'm going to have to pay the radio station. I'm going to raise all our prices. Okay, let's get back to business here. Hey, it's free speech. Well, we do have one more question on the topic. Linda on Facebook wants to know if, Earl, if you are getting in the fish tank with your speedos. No, I'm going to answer for Earl.

That's not going to happen. I'm answering for Earl. No. Linda, Linda is a Facebook friend, and she is always goading me into embarrassing myself. Okay, I have something to say. Linda's an instigator. Yes. I'll tell you what I'll do.

If you'll give $5,000 to Big Dog Ranch Rescue, I'll get into the fish tank and my speedo. How much water do you displace? $5,000 to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. Okay. Okay. Well, hold on. second we're going to have to have an auction a thousand dollars isn't going to do it it's going to take a whole lot more than that five thousand five that's peanuts uh-huh okay we'll have an

auction okay we should have an auction let's move along 50,000 dollars we're caught up we're good we're caught up but we have some youtubes here Rick says what uh huh oops I'm just hanging on that's all what's going on here Raymond is asking how long is Earl and Nancy been married? 17 years. That's confidential. I'm going to take off my ring here. Okay.

We've been together 30. You're coming up on yours. And we've been married for two weeks. I can tell you, you don't have to check your ring. 16 years. Okay. Thank you, sir. I'm not good with dates.

Thanks, too. The reason I know, I've been married 17 years. But you guys have been together since the beginning of time. Yeah, Last Supper. We were at the Last Supper together. Let's get to the YouTube. So we got some of that. Dino is asking, he says he was looking at a new Lincoln MKC for his wife.

But he says he's heard they have issues with the Eco Boost Motor and wants to know what would we recommend as a luxury small SUV. And just as they're commenting back and forth here, Angel also was stepping in. to say, hey, he's owned a 14 Ford Escape and a 17 escape and had no real issues with the 2.0 Eco Boost engine. Says he's now on a 19 edge with a 2.0 and hasn't had issues. But Dino has said he's seen quite a few horror stories on the internet about the 2.0 turbocharged Eco Boost Ford Motor. So he's wondering, is there a small SUV that we would recommend as a, a whole SUV that we would recommend

as a luxury vehicle. Lexus. Lexus. I like the Lexus R-X's. Consumer reports Lexa me. That's even more important. They rank Lexus the number one luxury car. And so you can't go wrong.

I'd be nervous about a Lincoln luxury car. I mean, buying a Lincoln, I'd be nervous about a Cadillac, to be honest with you. I trust a Lincoln more than a Cadillac, though. I'd say so. But you can't go wrong with Lexus. I would say maybe even Infinity. So our consensus, pretty much Lexus or Infinity, maybe Accura?

Accra, too, yeah. Accura, I think Acura being a Honda product, I think they make a fantastic quality vehicle. Yeah, number one luxury car per consumer reports, year after year after year, is Lexus. Well, there we go. There you go. And let's see. My last one here. Oh, M. Ave, just commenting to say, he says, last week he had asked us about an issue we had where his car was pulling to the side.

He'd had an alignment done a couple times. He was still pulling. We recommended to cross his front tires, and he says that's all the issue. Fantastic. And then we have one other here. L.J. says he was in the Auto Nation showroom, was looking at a car, and he says, they told him that they had three people in the showroom looking at the car he was looking at. So you kind of wonder about Auto Nation, if that would make four people looking at the same car.

He doesn't say whether he bought it or not, but he was looking. Audition, as we said earlier, has announced to their stockholders anyway, and the trade journals, they haven't made a public saying about this, but they've raised their prices. You won't ever hear an auto nation car dealer tell you that, but if you're buying a car from an automation dealer, and chances are you might be because they're the largest retailer of cars in the USA, you're paying more money.

Auto nation, so enough is enough. Our profit margins are too low. We have a duty to our stockholders to make a profit, and they actually accepted the fact of selling, fewer cars at a higher price. So beware if you're buying from an donation store. Great advice.

Excuse me. Ladies and gentlemen, don't forget that you can go to Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We'd love to hear from you if you'd like to share any of your suggestions, opinions, how we can make the show better,

whatever. And you do remain anonymous. Your anonymous feedback, And don't forget to pick yourself up a copy of the Consumer Report. Been a lot of questions about a lot of cars and their popularity. Consumer Report, it just has reviews, ratings, everything. It will do you well. 877-960-960, and we've got a mystery shopping report coming up soon from Green Acres, Nissan.

So stay tuned for that. Got a couple of texts coming in, too. Yeah, we have one. It says, is there a difference between an all-season tire and an all-weathered tire? I don't think so. Sounds pretty much the same to me. Yeah, I think those are meant just as interchangeable terms. And those are more for southern states, areas where we don't see the big drastic changes.

Like up north, where a lot of places you need to switch to your winter tires versus summer tires for some of those really bad winter months. I agree with you. Boy, it was nothing like it. Everybody was talking, oh, I got to switch to my winter tires. The snows come, you know, that kind of, like yesterday. Those studded snow tires. Never had to deal with that.

How about those chains? Like I said, the answer is no. The answer is no. I never had to mess with the chains. Didn't ever mess that. Earl can't appreciate it. This Florida boy finds this an alien conversation. Yeah.

All right, here's one. This is from Glenna in Waycross, Georgia. And it's a sad one. It says, this Mother's Day is a sad one for my family. We recently took the keys from my mom, and she resents me and my sisters for doing this. It's a hard part of life that we all have to deal with at one point. That's Glena and Waycross, and that's true. That is a tough one.

Hopefully, with ride sharing and down the road a little bit, autonomous vehicles might solve this problem. Yeah, Uber. You know, Glenn, if you're listening, Uber is just an amazing, functionary kind of a thing. You know, get a lot of publicity. They had their IPO the other day. I didn't do so well but it's a great service

and download the Uber app on your mom's smartphone if she doesn't have one get her a smartphone One of the coolest things we've seen recently is Lyft and they offered a subscription service It's $299 a month and you get about $450 worth of rides for them and it's great for somebody's just going to the store

back and forth doing errands so you look into that Glenna and it looks like a pretty good deal And a lot of people don't even put 299 miles a month on their car. There are a lot of folks out there, elderly people. They go to the doctor and home. They go to Publix and home and that's it. And they might put 50 miles a month. And Uber is perfect for them or lift. It's one of these things where it seems a little scary at

first, you know, a stranger. And I remember the first time we got an Uber and it was a little strange. And you realize this is normal. This is what people are doing. Millions of people. Well, this is all great advice, guys. Truly it is. But my My heart goes out for this woman because when you have your freedom machine taken away from you, you know, I don't know how you, I don't know how the kids are going to deal with it. And like the guys just said here about Uber, about Lyft, she ready for that? Now, you're right. I don't know. It's going to take some time.

What a sensitive topic, a sensitive subject. My husband, his uncle, he had his freedom machine sitting out in the driveway. He never used it. But it was right there. It was right there. He knew it was there. And it just tears a piece of your heart out whenever you lose your freedom machine. And if I'm talking with passion, it's because someday I know the same thing's going to happen to me.

I'm looking at 80. I'm not looking back at 60. So it's all out there for us and it's sensitive. Happy Mother's Day. Hand him over. We've got another YouTube here. Yeah. Scott Anderson is asking, he says,

I recently got an 07 Camry, and this one falls right in, with only 28,000 miles on a 12-year-old car. It's really low mileage, I know, so any special maintenance I should do since it's age and low mileage. And truth be told, I'm going to stick with the old standby, get the factory recommended maintenance schedule. if the book isn't in the glove box, you can pull it up online from Toyota and follow the factory recommended maintenance schedule for that car and you cannot go wrong. And you'll find out something that will surprise you

that you need to take the car in every six months even if you don't drive the car. So it isn't 1,000, 2,000, 10,000. It doesn't make any difference every six months. And a lot of people, low-mile-less drivers, can't understand that. And without getting into a lot of detail, there's a good reason to change your oil.

Have your tires checked and other things on your car. Time is your enemy just like mileage. And it is actually sometimes worse than mileage. Not driving a car is actually worse than driving it. So six months every time. That's usually a good rule of thumb. It is. That's perfect.

Very good. Okay. Are we anywhere, do we have another text or we got, that was that one there? I have something. wanted to mention on the general side of the nature of the automobile market. I spent some time yesterday afternoon, I took a rare boat trip, which I don't do often, and on the boat was a banker from Comerica, a friend of a friend of mine, and we had a long talk about the industry.

Coamerica is a Michigan-based bank, and they have a huge affiliation with auto dealers, all around the country. They're very, very much on top of the retail automobile market, and they do a lot of floor planning and financing for car dealers. They're very concerned about the future of the automobile business, and we compare notes. Just want you to know that the bankers are thinking about some of the same things that we've discussed on this show is what will happen 10 years from now,

20 years from now, 30 years from now. You're seeing it in the news, you're reading about it, it autonomous cars all electric cars ride sharing this is all happening folks and the way we think of cars the way we drive cars is is changing and your kids and your grandkids are going to have a whole different experience out there think about this it can affect you in the short run we talked about that a little bit earlier with automation and raising prices of cars and how you buy cars we talked about haggling and hassling one price dealer fees hidden fees a lot of this stuff is going to go away because you won't be buying cars anymore you will be

walking out on the street hitting your app somebody's going to pull up and take you to the store and back different one will take you back that took you to the store and the event will be painless seamless and be much less expensive than what we're doing now with cars so heads up and uh it'll be an amazing time it won't be i wish i would be going to be around wouldn't you like to just look into a crystal ball after we're gone and just see how everybody's sort of like buzzing around i'd like to see how the millennials to the gen x all of these generations are going to be dealing with all of that what i think it's funny is like when we people think about the future of cars and going back to the 60s and 50s nobody really predicted what the real

future in the future is amazing. The present is amazing, but I think everybody thought we're going to have flying cars and things like that. It's going to be like the Jetsons. The idea that was self-driving and also the total change with the sharing economy, unpredictable 20 years ago. The average car owner uses his car 5% of the time. Now, think about this objectively. You're spending an average of $40,000 about what the average car costs, new car. $40,000, and you're only using that product 5% of the time. It's like your toothbrush. Yeah. But your toothbrush is changed.

So some people use it. Some people use it 10% or 20%. Some people use it 1%. And so now you're going to be able to do it piecemeal. You'll buy one fraction of 1%

to go to the store and come back. And you'd never use the car again for six months. Well, it's kind of like in Europe they complained about the high fuel price. over there but when you buy fuel in Europe you're paying for your insurance so those who use more fuel spend more for insurance those who only use a little bit only spend a little on insurance sounds fair to me yeah I'd rather have that than paying for insurance while my truck sits in a parking lot doing nothing and certainly doesn't need insurance for that let's get into the mystery

shopping report we shopped green acres Nissan And we had such a good time last week when we missed your shop, J.M. Lexus, John from Palm City called in and congratulated us on finding an amazing dealer, an A-rated, our highest rated dealer ever, J.M. Lexus. I'll say it again. You want to buy a Lexus? Drive 50 miles, drive 100 miles, or get on the phone. They might deliver the car to you. Buy your car from J.M. Lexus if you want to buy a Lexus. I'm going to remind the audience that their vote is really important on this mystery shop. We love hearing how you rate these mystery shops, and we do a lot of work in regards to the mystery shop. So join us 772-4976530. Okay, Agent Thunder investigated Alexis's experiment in honesty and transparency. Lexus Plus. We were skeptical that reality would live up to the promise,

but it turned out that JM Lexus actually pulled it off and delivered a true one price, one person sales experience. Lowest price on every car, you only talk to one person, you don't go back and forth, you don't get someone trying to sell accessories, somebody else trying to sell you a car, somebody else on an extended service contract. It was a seamless, painless experience. The only poor mark they received, J.M. Lexus, was for charging a $59 dealer fee.

They called the electronic registration filing fee, and we just think that was a glitch. I have a call, I meant to call the president of J.M. Lexus to tell him about this. I'm sure they'll change that. But that's nickel and dime stuff compared to the overall picture, A-rated Lexus dealer. To keep things interesting this week, we decided to shift gears, get back into the mud again with the investigation of a too good-to-be-true car dealer on a too-good-to-be-true advertisement. Make things even more interesting. We took us to a car dealership.

We never a mystery shop. I didn't realize that. I thought we'd hit everybody. But we went to Green Acres, Nissan. They're pretty new. Yeah. I was in the Lake Worth Market. They opened just two years ago.

And we think it's partly owned by Terry Taylor Auto Group. Terry Taylor is a name you won't hear, except here on this show. Terry Taylor is the largest private owner of car dealerships. He's almost as big as other nation. But he owns all the car dealerships personally. It's not a publicly traded company. He has partners. It's an LLC, if you attorneys out there know what that is.

It's a sharing sort of a thing where you have a man. managing general partner, and Terry Taylor is the boss of all these dealerships. Amazing thing he's done. I've known Terry Taylor for 40 years. It's general manager and partner, Mike Pinocchio. I thought it was Pinocchio. Is it Pinocchio? No, it's Panaccio.

Panicio. Sorry, Mike. Mike Panaccio is also, he's never heard that one before, right? I'm sorry. Mike Panaccio is also a managing partner at Terry Taylor's managing partner as opposed to general partner. But Terry Taylor, he pulls the strings. This, he owned Southern 441 Nissan in Royal Palm Beach. Greener's Nissan is a pretty buy dealership.

Big, big. I'm sorry. Big. Thank you. What time did you type this report? Don't ask. I perform best under pressure. You asked me that question.

When did Stu type the report? This is what I did in college. Three hundred new Nissan's in stock. That's a big Nissan dealer. It is difficult to determine the size of their used car operation because this store, Pools it with a used car inventory of all the other franchises that they have. On their website, we saw an ad for a new 2019 Nissan Rogue Sport for just $89 per month. That's a good payment.

Do people really believe that? Do people really believe that you can buy a car for $89 a month? I guess so. There's no free lunch, folks. It just absolutely. But it works. So what can I tell you? And the car dealers, no one works.

And we talked about it last week. The average car payment is over $500 a month. So, you know, you see something like that. You've got to check it out. It works for people probably never bought a car. They say, oh, $8.00. No problem. This ad for a super low car payment, it was similar to the ad we investigated Mazda, Palm Beach,

but this one was arguably more deceptive. Definitely more deceptive. I'll say that right up front. I got a picture of the ad right in front of me. It's almost ludicrous how fine the fine print is. And that's actual size. Yeah, that's actual size. I mean, you can't read it.

You need a magnifying glass, and you've got to do a screenshot and blow it up. The most visible part of this ad is the big, bold, $89 monthly payment. The next most visible phrase also in large font and bold right below the payment is $0 down. So it sounds like it's got zero down, $89 a month. It sounds like what it can't be. the ad looks like it's offering an $89 payment with $0 down, but the actual offers is stupid, $89 per month or zero down. It just makes no sense.

You get $89 a month or put nothing down and have a giant payment. And they study this. They spend hours coming up with this advertised agency. You say, that's it. That makes the suckers think to think it'd buy this for $89 a month and zero down. And people come in and they believe it, but I don't know. The ad looks like it's all, okay, the next most visible element appears to be a sale price of $20,710. Of course, there is a nearly, it's invisible.

It's not nearly invisible. It is invisible without a magnifying glass. The other thing I noticed they do, they put everything in all caps. So when you have all caps in the fine print, it makes it even harder. It runs it all together. Now, we blew it up and I'll read it to you. I won't read the detail, but they've got the VIN. plus tax, title, license, and $999 dealer fee.

Lease for 36 months with approved financing through Nissan Motor, Chapplication, includes taxes, title, and license. $4,999 due with signing, includes first payment, $12,000 miles per year, zero security deposit, selling price on lease. That's interesting. $20,210. That is interesting. It's interesting because the sale price,

on the purchase price is $20,000, $3,000 less. So that means they mark the lease price up $2,000. Must take delivery from new dealer's stock, C dealer for details. That's a lot in that phrase. It's only on one car, the VIN number, and it's one in stock. And if that's the car is not there, you can't find it. They're sold. All bets are off, and they can move you to any other car.

And they don't even tell you what the mileage fee is for over $20,000. 12,000 miles a year. So right away, we can see the offer is good on just one vehicle, is identified by the VIN, and the fine print disclosure. We can also see that the offer now requires $5,000 down payment plus another $1,999, plus sales tax on the down payment, another $350,000, plus tax tag and title, $250 or so. Bottom line, we're looking at close to $7,000 in down payment, which is just absurd. On a lease.

On a lease. On a lease. And the ad says zero down. You think. Right. Okay. This is probably one of the most deceptive ads that you'll see. Agent Thunder's mission was to go to Green Acres, Nissan, inquire about the ad.

By the way, that's in the Lake Worth area. A lot of people don't know where Green Acres is. I think of the old show with Eddie Uppard. I do. Green Acres is a place to be. You said you wouldn't sing. That's right. And I think of Po folks.

Play Gellable. We want to know what would happen to the offer when our shopper couldn't come up with a down payment. Here's a report, speaking in the first person. I headed down to Green Acres, Nissan, as soon as I got my orders. On the way, I thought about how I would play things. Would the ad car be available? I parked, walked around a lot, headed inside. I was impressed.

It was modern, beautifully designed. It's a really nice looking. Yeah. Almost immediately, a young salesman greeted me. His name was Emmanuel. He was eating candy. I'm not sure that was pertinent, was it? Why did we have to put that out?

I didn't want to, like, embarrass him, but he said it was hard to understand him because he had a piece of hard candy in his mouth. You know, you get a rattleing around on the teeth. A big jawbreaker in his mouth. It could have been a, you know. They don't make drawbreaker. They've been a Hall's mentholipis.

Okay. Emmanuel asked what he could help me with. I told him about the ad I saw the one for $89 per month. Emmanuel knew the one I was talking about, so just we sit down. he was prepared. Now, that wasn't meant to be like, okay. You better sit down.

Let's sit down for this one. At his desk, he talked to me about the rogue and the ad. He said it was a sport and had a lot of cool features like Apple CarPlay and a backup camera. He stood up and asked me to go with him. We walked over to a black Nissan rogue inside the showroom. It was the one in the ad. They still had it here. Emmanuel walked around it describing more features.

He asked me what I thought. I said, for $89 a month, I'll take it right now. Manual let me back to the desk and showed me his computer screen. He didn't say anything. He just walked me back to the disc. The special page ad was on the website. I can see them rehearsing this in the salesman.

Okay, they'll walk in, they'll see the car, you show him the car. You say that's $19 a month? You say yes. And then you don't say anything. You'll walk them back to death. Then you go to the computer and you pull up our deceptive ad. okay so there we are he said it needed to explain how it worked and pointed to the disclosure he said I would need five thousand dollars down I extract I said I thought

the ad said zero down and manual said it definitely did not say that took out the magnifying glass see now I will say this and this they get no credit for this because now our customers already in the store on their special way he showed him is a little bit more visible. Yeah, it was because of a PC. Right. Yeah. So you have the PC screen.

So that's kind of cool. You go from the screen you see to the screen the cardio issue of has. I said I hadn't planned to put any money down. I said $5,000 is out of the question. And then you'll want to know what I could put down. That's the game, right? Hit them high and keep on coming down a little bit of the time. Honestly, this isn't training.

How much can you put down? I can put down $2,000. Up to? up to 25 if you really had to stretch three and if it was the most perfect car in the world where could you go maybe five grand that's a sales meeting folks these are sales meetings and they study this they're prepared and they're ready for you in most cases i probably i could possibly put down two thousand maybe three thousand dollar tops what do you think a man you all heard yeah a man offered to go work up some figures and he wandered off he returned about five minutes later he had a worksheet in his hand said he had leased and a finance option for me. The worksheet looked familiar. The left side

consisted of a grid of lease and finance payment options. The right side itemizes the taxes and the fees. It's kind of like a derivation of the old four square system. It's kind of like, and they practice this. All these salespeople have been trained and they know this by heart. You have no chance. When you walk into a poker game and you look around the table and you don't know who the sucker is, you're the sucker. and you're the sucker, and you're in the poker game. A manual is showing me with $3,000 down plus taxes and fees, we'd have a lease payment of $268 per month for 366 months and $12,000 miles per year.

This was way higher than I thought I was going to be. Maybe I should have protested, but I was supposed to be gullible. We're being Larry Laydown, pretend to be gullible. I said I was disappointed that I wasn't getting the deal I thought I was, but acknowledged it was as a pretty good payment. I said I paid over $400 a month on my last car. I said I'd do the deal. I stood up, said I'd be back at four with my wife to do all the paperwork.

Emmanuel looked horrified. Folks, they want to sell you the car today. They know if you walk out that door, you probably won't come back. The pressure is on. Buy the car today. Okay? So that's where we are now. That's why Emmanuel is horrified.

He beckoned for me to sit down. No, he asked what he did wrong. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was truly wounded. What did I do? What did I do wrong? Why do you want to go? Because he knew that his manager was watching this, and the pressure was on Emmanuel.

You want to know what he did wrong. There was a problem with the deal. I said there was no problem. I just had to get back to my wife. Going to talk it over. It said for her car. Emmanuel sat down and beckoned me to sit down too. I sat.

He handed me a credit application. and said we should get some of the paperwork out of the way before i came back for i had to come back with my wife i stood up and told him as sincerely as i could that i would be back at four and manual asked me to wait just one more minute so he could introduce me to his manager now this is one of the toughest things on our shoppers and agent thunder is probably new you really have to be hard if you're a legitimate car buyer it's hard it's hard to hold up to this pressure because you're you feel like you're disappointing the salesperson who has ingratiated yourself to him usually you like the salesperson if you realize he's got to make a living too

he's got to feed his family if you don't buy a car you don't want to disappoint him and that's part of the selling psychology and then you involve the sales manager now you got two people you don't want to disappoint standing up and and stick into your guns is a very difficult thing to do Anyway, you went and got Devon. Devon was a manager. Devon asked me if I could take care of the paperwork now. Please, take care of the paperwork now. He could have the car all ready for me when I came back.

Anything to get you to stay for a few more minutes. You'd be surprised how many people cave and say, okay. You can wear people out. I laughed, and Agent Thunder's getting good. I laughed, said I would really come back. I shook both their hands, and I left. You know, you feel like you're getting out with your life. I mean, you just almost feel like sometimes you have to run.

But sometimes you can't run when they break out the handcuffs. Yeah. And they cuff you to that chair. I'll be stopped doing that in the 1950s. We used handcuffs back in the 50s. Here's the epilogue. Just like Mazda, Palm Beach, Green Acres, Nissan, ran a deceptive bait-and-switch ad.

The payment that was presented to Agent Thunder was so high it didn't make sense. The reason I said it didn't make sense was, you know, if you put down, this is a rule of thumb, this is not hard and fast, but basically for every thousand, it depends on the lease program. Every thousand you put down,

figure you're going to get the payment down about $20 a month. So for $5,000 down, you got $89 payment. $3,000 down, that's almost $5,000, and you have a $280-something-dollar. payment it makes no sense they just you're playing their game yeah they know the numbers they know the ratios

you don't uh you take anybody that is a seasoned car person and you go into a car dealership and they don't know you're a seasoned car person it's laughable what they tell you yeah absolutely laughable one other thing to point out is if you remember the fine print in the ad it said the selling price on that lease was $23,000 or approximately um went on this on the worksheet that he got $2,210. Yeah, yeah.

The actual price that they gave them was $24,470. So you'd think that the only variable change was the amount of money down. Now, they raise the price up $1,000. And here's the worksheet. You can't really read that. But the worksheet is what most car dealers are using now. They no longer use a vehicle buyer's order. And you really don't do anything legal until they get you in the box,

which is the F&I Department. And I noticed on this worksheet, they have $999.99. they call their dealer fee a dock fee and they also have $452 in non-tax fees. A non-tax fee, correct me if I'm wrong to, is a dealer fee. That is correct.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I should have mentioned that too. So you're like $12,300, $1,300 in fees. So the dealer fee, in fact, is $9,000, we'll call it $1,000, it's $1,452 in dealer fees that they're adding after the fact. Now, the real rules

now is to, is to actually add additional dealer fees after the advertisement. That's what this did. The advertisement disclosed a $999 dealer fee, but they didn't disclose

the $452 dealer fee until you got to the worksheet. And for all I know, here's the worksheet. For all I know, when you got into the installment sale contract, which is in the F&I department,

they have another, they could have other dealer fees. You just don't know. You don't know. So it is so deceptive and it is so in violation of the law and guidelines and federal trade commission of Florida state statutes that they're getting away with us. It is just mind-boggling. I get overwhelmed and I can't stand to get overwhelmed because I get into my consumer suit and that's the reason I get upset. When I get into my cardular suit, I have my armor on because I've been doing this for a long time.

we got a vote we've only got about four minutes left let's see what our listeners have three minutes it's unanimous we got Vince gives them an F, Haley gives them an F Linda gives an A plus plus for our show but a double F for Green Eggers Needson Oh thanks thank you Lynn Oh and then she reiterated a huge big F

and Ed gives them an F so that's the consensus F F F F I'm with the crowd I'm going with an F okay well Stu voted and F. F. I got to give them an F, too. Old school, folks.

Yeah, it's Terry Taylor dealership and it is managed by one person who manages two. The only thing transparent at that place is the glass on the front of their building. That's a beautiful building, by the way. It is. I drive by it almost every day.

Do you? So, as always, buyer beware. And remember this, too, folks. Even the good dealers make mistakes. When I recommend J.M. Lexus, I recommend them as an A-rated dealer, but you still want to compare their prices. And the nice thing about J.M. Lexus is there at one price. They put their lowest price on every car. You take their price, and you go to Palm Beach, Lexus, and then you go to Lexus of Delray,

and then you go to maybe a fourth Lexus dealer, and you get out-the-door prices. You have to be sure you get out-the-door prices to compare. That's a vulnerability that one-price dealers have. And you can use one-price dealer two ways. You can use them to buy their car because they are good people, honest people. And you can also use them to get a low price to shop and compare with other dealers. Find the dealer that puts your lowest price, their lowest price in every car, and shop and compare. I just want to mention that Frank and Lenny both chimed in a little bit late.

both with Fs, so she's the deal. And on YouTube, we've got three F grades that just came in. Wow. From Angel, Glenn and L.J. So last week, we had all A's. This week, we had all F's. So glad that all of you have

participated in the Mystery Shopping Report. There's a lot of work that goes into it, weekend and week out. And it's our way of keeping you on the straight and narrow. And if you want to have a little bit of fun, go to Erwan Cars and

download that form that I spoke about earlier affidavit of a vehicle purchase the final out-the-door price and don't forget you can list you can read earl's column at hometown news magazine the lowest price car can end up being the most expensive you can go to florida weekly and you can read his column car salesmen don't look or talk like car salesman anymore. Thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen, and a very happy Mother's Day to all you mummies out there, and have a wonderful weekend. Go.