Earl Stewart on Cars - 05.27.2023 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Vatland Chrysler Dodge Jeep RAM of Vero Beach

Episode Date: May 27, 2023

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning travels to Vero Beach to visit a local CDJR dealer to see how much they will charge for a new 2023 Jeep Gladiator pickup that is in stock on their lot. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Good morning, everybody. We're back. We're here in the studio, North Palm Beach, Florida. We're telecasting and broadcasting, technically all over the world. we certainly hit the whole United States and some Canada and occasionally we get over the pond and

it's a pleasure to be here I say this every week and I mean it we enjoy this show maybe more than you do it's a lot of fun informal what happens happens

live radio it's exciting I get the adrenaline going and I think you get the best of what we have to do here because of the way we look at it. And one of the ways we look at it is that you truly make the show. I say that every week.

It's true. Your questions, your comments, your emails, your text, it gives us the pulse of really what's going on. I mean, we can read automotive news, a Wall Street Journal, all the newspapers, and all the YouTube's, and all the sources of news. But it's really, when it comes from your lips and you're coming from all over the United

States, you see things, you hear things, and you pass it along to us. I literally learn something new on this show every week and every week, that's 20 years. We've been doing this. Nancy Stewart and I started this show about

20 years ago, a half an hour. Now, we're up to two hours. I think we started out on Thursdays and we moved over to Saturdays, went from a half an hour to an hour, to two hours. So here we are. And it's absolutely amazing what I learned from you. I learned from Rick Kearney, he's sitting to my right here in the studio. And the guy's a technical genius. I mean, I know you think I'm just saying that, but I've done it for a long time over 25 years.

And trust me, this guy knows everything there is to know, or at least more than what most people know about vehicles. It used to be cars. I mean, he used to be a grease monkey back of the day. That's what we call people that fix cars. Now, he's a computer scientist. I mean, I'm not overstating the case.

You really have to be trained in software, diagnosis. The change is incredible. Used to be, a car would come out back in the 50s or 60s and the car next year, the new model

Well, it's not really a new model. They kind of put, we call it new skin. They put some fancy chrome on it. But the car is really under the hood and inside the car. They didn't change all that much. Today, it's amazing. If you bought a car five years ago, you have got an obsolete vehicle. I'm sorry to tell you that.

Now, it might be a good vehicle. It might run well, and you probably should keep it if you really like it. But be prepared for a big surprise. When you trade that in, you're going to be. amazed. And that's what Rick has to stay on top of Rick Kearney. So if you have questions about your car and I guarantee you, you do.

I have questions about my car. I'm a car dealer. If I get in my car, I could write I probably should make notes to the things I don't know about my car. And sit down with Rick or somebody to help me. I tell you one thing, I'm not going to read the owner's manual

because it's like Encyclopedia Britannica for you old folks out there a massive amount of information and there's no way a buyer of a new vehicle today can really familiarize himself with everything so you got a question strange noise strange odor performance not exactly right call Rick and the way you do that as you call 877 960 9960 that's 877 960 9960 Nancy Stewart sitting at my left Rick is to my right, Nancy's got a laptop, and Jeremy in the control room, when the call comes through, flashes Nancy, and we prioritize your calls on the telephone. Text, we get to them, but we maybe don't get to them when you text.

It might be five minutes, ten minutes, might be an hour. Sometimes if we really get jammed up, it might be the next week, but we will always get to your text. And the same thing with the anonymous feedback. Your Anonymous Feedback.com, that's a special channel for folks that have a privacy thing. There's nothing wrong with that. I mean, let's face it, we're a big brother is watching us today. I mean, I just gave up on privacy a long time ago. I just, I said it's too hard for me to maintain my privacy.

So what you see is what you get. But if you have a privacy issue, you go to Your Y-O-U-R-N-O-U-R-N-Y-M-O-U-S Feedback.com. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And it comes through or email, and you are guaranteed anonymity. The company that does that is they have some big blue chip companies out there. I think Google and Adobe and big companies use. anonymous feedback because they like to hear from their employees. And who wants to tell their boss he's a nut, or who wants to tell his boss that somebody

else in the company isn't doing his job right? I mean, there's all sorts of things companies don't hear because of for fear of retaliation. So boot-shaped companies have adopted your anonymous feedback. And I said, hey, why shouldn't we do it? I mean, maybe there's some things out there that you'd like to tell us that you don't want to know, maybe you don't want to tell me where you live or who you are. I mean, I'm not going to come and get you. I'm not going to get mad, but you don't know that. So, total anonymity, your anonymous feedback.com.

My son, Stu Stewart, is with us, and he monitors your anonymous feedback. He also monitors the text. The text number, by the way, is 772, area code. 772 4976530. If you have a time to jot it down, if you can jot it down, please jot it down. 772-497-6530

or the telephone. And I keep glancing over at Nancy because sometimes she'll hit me in the shoulder when the telephone call comes in because I'm yacking. I stop. I want to say that don't forget the sports. by Master General.

I know you mentioned Stu, but not everyone knows that he is a spy master general. And we can't go without mentioning behind the scenes. The guy that keeps us on the straight and narrow,

no shenanigans, Jonathan. And he just keeps things rolling real smooth. At least on my phone, I get a lot of texts from him and he keeps, as I said, us on the straight and narrow. Before I give the phone,

Mike over to Nancy, See, she's already taken it once, but I'm going to take it back briefly here. Excuse me? I'm going to give it to you. But we have a special announcement that we are changing the format of oral on cars starting next week. And next week, a lot of you regular listeners know this, we are advocates for doggies. We love dogs. And we are partners with a amazing group called Big Dog Ranch Rescue.

Big Dog Ranch Rescue is the CEO, the person that runs Big Dog Ranch Rescue, the founder of Big Dog Ranch Rescue, an amazing woman named Lori Simmons, and she is over the many years built Big Dog Ranch Rescue into the largest no-kill shelter, one of the largest homes hosts for doggies that need homes. He takes in dogs that have been abandoned. A dog sometimes have given up because of the financial issues. They can't keep them. Dogs that are just found wandering loss. And she finds homes for thousands and thousands of dogs. She has several locations. The home is here in Palm Beach County.

And starting next week, we are going to have the dog of the week on Earl and Cars. And we will bring a live doggy into our live. show with the live Nancy and Earl and Rick and Jonathan and Stu so we don't need Rick to do the barking next week that's right we don't need don't need to do the bark for the last time that was the last time you know that's so good that's so good maybe I got an idea well maybe we'll have a contest to see if you can tell the difference between Rick and the real dog the dog will be here and we're thinking like 930 in the show with a representative from big dog

ranch rescue and we will feature this dog and we will pay the adoption fees for this dog every week we'll have a different dog we'll have the bio description and you will be able to consider adopting this dog or we also have a foster program and basically explain that about how that works but anyway that is all the excitement I've been talking too much you turn the night the mic back over to Nancy. That's a chickery you've been into the chickory yeah I can tell It's written all over your face. Okay, folks, we've got so much to get to this morning. We're going to talk about inflation.

We're going to talk about car prices, the auto industry, and how it has had an impact on inflation. We'll talk about car insurance. We haven't talked about that since. Gosh, Alan was with us, and he knew so much about it, and he advised us on it. Alan, if you're listening, hi, most importantly, kind of. everything's important but ladies ladies please call last week we had a phenomenal show

and we were it was really it was really something to hear from all of the ladies and we even took and paid each one of them fifty dollars because it was almost like a once in a lifetime you know the situation that happened we were really surprised and very thankful fifty dollars for the first two new lady callers fifty dollars for the first two new lady callers. Also, we have the mystery shopping report that we're going to get to the last half hour of the show, and most of all, you make the show, and we learn so much from you. You're an important part of it. Give us a call. 877-960. Our lines are lit up and have been. We're going to have another busy morning. Text number 772-497-6530.

Now we're going to go to Jupiter and talk to Phil. John and Bob, hang on. Good morning, Phil. Good morning. Welcome. I got something I want to talk to Rick about. I was driving to Orlando on the turnpike the other day, and all of a sudden it felt like every car, every tire in my car went flat.

So AAA took me out to the nearest Toyota deal up in Orlando, and it turned out to be the ignition coils need to be replaced. And I have no idea what ignition coils are, but it cost $1,000. So I just wanted to ask Rick, what is a purpose of admission coil, and why would it go bad? Okay, straightforward. So first question, what car are you driving? 2017 Prius. Ah, okay.

Little early for that one. Wow, six years old, only, man. Basically, if you remember on older cars, we had a distributor, and the coil would send a big charge of electricity through the distributor. that would then go to the spark plug to cause the burn in each cylinder. Now they've changed it over, and each individual spark plug has its own little ignition coil sitting on top of it, and each one of those can be fired individually, so it gives the computer complete control over the spark timing, and eventually those coils will start to

break down. Usually it's only one, and if a car is a young, car. If I see a car six, seven years old, eight years old, and one coil has gone bad, I usually recommend replacing just that one, and you're usually looking at somewhere around $4 to $500 for that one. If, however, it's an older car and one has gone bad, then the others are not far behind it, and I would go ahead and recommend, hey, you know, for the same amount of labor, we'll do all of them at once. you won't have this problem again for a great length of time and quite often that seems to be the better issue if you're going to keep that car for a while so that would then that raises

that price up at six years old they kind of uh they probably could have sold you just one at a much cheaper rate and you'd have been okay but yeah basically what happens when one of them goes that particular cylinder is no longer firing and your car's only running on three cylinders So it makes the whole car shake and shudder like crazy. And it's because that engine is just not running properly. Oh, okay. Well, that's exactly what happened. And it's got 65,000 miles on it.

I've never had a car this long, so I'm not used to something like this happened. So anyway, I just wanted to check it out with you and make sure that what happened was legitimate, and I wasn't taken to the corners with that thing. Well, all right. They actually did a little bit because they were, They should have really recommended just one. $65,000 on a six-year-old car.

That's an anomaly of just one coil. I would have done just one and said, this is the more financially stable option, and let's see what happens from here. Yeah, well, I couldn't get to you guys. They made me go to one up the closest one, and it was up in Orlando, so that's probably, yeah.

Okay, well, good. I just wanted to check on and find down it. So it's not something specifically that happens to a Prius. It could happen to any car. No, any, any car, every car. Ford, Chevy, Chrysler, Hyundai, Honda, Honda, they're all going to have that issue. Someday those coils are going to wear out. Okay. All right. Well, thanks a lot. I just wanted to get it checked out and see what you had to say about it. Thanks for the call. Yeah, thank you so much, Phil. As our audience, our audience,

has heard this morning, you can hear that, you know, Phil's, you know, his thoughts were confirmed by Rick, and it's a win-win situation. You can give us a call, and you can get, you know, answers to your questions, or you can share something with us that informs us a little bit better. Our number is 877960. As I said, you do make the show. We're going to go to John. Let me jump in here just for a second. I think the moral, the message to this call from Phil and with Rick's answer is a lot of people don't know that just about everybody in a car dealership is commissioned. And commission means you make your money by a percent of what the customer spends. So from the person you meet in the service drive when you pull into a car dealership or an independent mechanic, he's a service salesperson.

He'll call himself an advisor, but he's commissioned. So he gets a certain percentage of what you buy. The tendency there, as you know, human nature, is to recommend a higher purchase than a lower purchase. So you need to arm yourself before you go in for a car repair, because most of us don't understand the intricacies of cars, especially today. So if you can't call Rick Kearney on this show, you can Google it, and Rick will recommend that you go to chat rooms if you have a Nissan or a, Ford. You can Google it. Put in as many specifics as you can. You can go to Google, give the ear-make model of the car, the symptom that you see, and you will be surprised at the number of people that have the same problem. And some of them got it fixed okay, and they'll tell

you what they did. Some people say they didn't get it fixed. They'll tell you why. I mean, you can educate. So when you go in to the technician of your choice, the dealership, the independent mechanic of your choice, at least you've got some preliminary knowledge. And when they over-recommend to repair, in this case here with Phil, Rick said that the recommendation was more than should have been done to the car at that point in time. Therefore, you spent more money than you had to. Back to Nancy. Good explanation.

Again, our number is 877960-99-60. You can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. Don't forget, ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. And do you want to find out whether a Florida car dealer is breaking the law? You can do that, and you can go to www.orgatoprotectingcarbuyers.com. That's Florida law protecting carbuyers.com. It's a big help. Earl wrote a column and a blog, and you can check that out and go into the archives

and go to Erlon cars. Our caller is still holding, John from Palm City. Thank you so much, John, for holding. Good morning. I want to share the good news that happened yesterday. Ford and Tesla signed a deal where Ford cars can use all the charging Tesla stations in North America. I think it's a wonderful news. I think that's the beginning, in my opinion, that the Tesla charging stations will be the standards

of the entire industry. Yeah, definitely. It is good news. This is signed yesterday, and it caused the stock of Ford to go up 5%, and it caused the Tesla stock to up 6%. Were you watching Squackbox yesterday when Becky was interviewing? Jim Farley. Were you watching that?

No, I didn't see that, but I saw this in the morning newspaper today. It's great news. It is. I think. And it's just a beginning, like I say, I think these Tesla's charging stations will be the entire standard of this industry. But I want to, on the negative end while we're on it, too. We need more of the electric battery plants in United States. A big $7 billion plant of Canada outbid the United States for that plant. It's in Ottawa, Canada. of Canada is contributing $1 billion toward that plant. And that we have one already that was proposed,

well, it's being built in central Michigan. That's a factory for batteries. But unfortunately, most of that ownership of that plant is the Chinese company. So I think we've got to get more on the ball. It's here. It's now with the electric cars. And the batteries for them is a much. the most important. So I just want to mention that to allow Canada to outbid United States

for a $7 billion plan. Somebody is doing something wrong somewhere. Oh, isn't that the truth? But this Tesla news with Ford is incidentally talking about the business channel. Last week, not last week, the week before, they interviewed a Ford dealer in New Jersey. I think it was Seqor, so I'm not sure. Secaucus. And he owns six dealers. but only one for dealerships, and he was on the business channel, and he didn't give the reason, but he outright said that he was losing money on every electric car that he would, for the car that he was selling, but he didn't give the reason. You know, they all say, don't believe everything you hear on the news, but it so sounds impossible

that any dealer could say that he's losing money on any new car. I don't believe that. John, one of the reasons that Nancy asked you if he's seen that CNBC, interview. I thought it was very human and interesting with Jim Farley. Nancy and Stu and I know Jim Farley. He used to be with Toyota years ago.

Now he's CEO of Ford. He's a great guy, extremely smart. And he introduced, in fact, the Toyota Cyan, which failed. It wasn't Jim Parley's fault. It was the toilet dealers.

The glasses were too rosy. I think it was before it's time. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. They got a, they have the right idea at the wrong time. But Jim Farley in the interview, the interview person asked Jim Farley, what made you think? Why did you decide you need to consider taking Tesla, calling Elon Musk, and striking a deal to be able to charge for its on Tesla chargers? He says, well, he said, I was on vacation with my wife and my daughter, a young daughter. And my young daughter said, Daddy, why do we have to stop in these alley areas behind buildings with these nasty chargers that sometimes they don't work?

And why can't we go? I see these nice chargers in the gas stations. She was referring to the national network of Tesla chargers. And they're strategically located. They're all over the place. They're clean. They're fast. they are

they work they're maintained properly and the chargers that the other manufacturers are kind of out of the way and where they might be so you don't know where they are and if you find one

there's about a 25% of chance it doesn't work so that's kind of a human thing for a man to say about why he made a huge decision like that Rick Donovan chimed in here says

it's not so much the charging station is to handle itself and anyone can use Tesla's NACS handle if they have that design if one more larger OEM makes the switch the Tesla connector will become the standard

and he says for the caller there are 27 EV battery factories under construction in the U.S. right now yeah so another thing that Jim Farley said that impressed me on the interview was why would you go to your competition? The huge competition in EVs, Tesla, the 800-pound gorilla,

and admit that you didn't have enough chargers and then strike a deal where you could use the chargers. And Jim Farley says, he says, yeah, it's a little bit like Eden Crow that you have to admit Tesla got off the starting block a lot faster than everybody. somebody else and is building a great product but I have to think about my customers I can't be too proud to admit that Tesla has a better charger more strategically located and easier to use and so I struck a deal and in that deal he's going to allow Tesla you'll be able to charge your you'll be able to charge going directly to your card to Ford and he's going to maintain Ford

identity Elon Musk made that deal because Jim Farley asked him so I thought that was kind of interesting, and a great call by John from Bob City. Great, great question. Just remember one thing, Ford was the leader of the automobile industry with the Model T, just like Tesla's the leader in the electric cars. Yeah. Thank you, John. We really appreciate your call.

Okay, guys. Talk to you later. Thank you, John. We're going to go to Bob, who is giving us a call from Lake Park. Good morning, Bob. Welcome. Hey, Bob. You there?

Bob from Lake Park Hello Bob Happy Memorial Day weekend Oh thank you Welcome to the show Thank you is the boot off The boot is off The boots off and I drove

To the studio for the first time Last week I did not And now I am driving a car And I'm hobbling a little bit But no more boot Thank you for asking I heard you used the term last week. I haven't heard in a long time. Slim flam. Where did you get that one? That's a depression error term.

Slim flam. Yeah, floor plan is a car guy term. It's financing. And when car dealers stock inventories, especially pre-COVID, a typical car dealer would have 60 to 90 days supply. if they sold 100 cars a month, they typically have, you know, 200 to 300 cars in inventory. Well, that's a lot of inventory, millions of dollars. Most car dealers don't have the liquidity, the cash available, so they have to borrow it. And it's called a floor plan. Typically, they borrow it from a captive lender, and by that it means owned by the manufacturer.

So a Ford dealer would go to Ford Motor Credit, a Chevrolet dealer would go to General Motors, acceptance corporation or ally now and they typically will give them better interest rates than if they go directly to a bank but the floor plan costs the interest up until as I say now this weird situation with COVID and microchip shortages where the inventories are extremely low back in the normal times which may or may not come back a car dealer would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest a month. And back in the 70s, when the interest rates went up to 20%, I can remember I was a Pontiac dealer back then,

and I can remember the pain of having you write those checks out for hundreds of thousands of dollars every month just to have my Pontiacs on the ground. That doesn't happen so much anymore, but that was the case then. Hey, Bob, I have a question for you. Did you say, this is Nancy, did you say floor plan or did you say flim flam? That's, I said flim, flam. Oh, well, you should have stopped me, but at least it was important.

See, this is where Jonathan fits in at the show. Sometimes the floor plan can be a flimplam, I know. I learned something anyway about floor plan. Yeah, definitely. Whether you liked it or not, I was going to explain it to you. Right, got it. I saw a couple of advertisements on TV. I saw one from Dodge, which I hadn't seen this.

It was a manufacturer's ad, and they said they were going to sell the Dodge Ram, 1,500, at 10% below MSRP. Normally, they don't use a percentage, and it's usually not off the sticker. I thought that was different. And then I saw Toyota of Vero Beach. I think they own a Kia dealership also. They had an interest. They had an advertisement where they say they will pay you base MSRP on your car and sell you their car at MSRP, no add-ons, no fees.

Well, here's another term you might not have heard, BS. That's what that is. Now, the MSRP, the manufacturer's suggestion retail price, especially in the past three years. has become kind of a benchmark. And we have advised people on this show, be sure you know the real MSRP, not the phony Monroney,

the addendum labels and the hidden fees. You should be comparing MSRP. Now, that has been more so in the past three years and ever before. Now, as we exit this pandemic and exit the low supply, high demand, we're getting more and more cars on the car, ground. Now what we're saying is the emergence of incentives. Now there's two types of incentives.

The incentive paid by the manufacturer directly to the dealer. That's secret. Nobody knows about that except the manufacturer or the dealer. If Toyota has a dealer incentive, they tell me and they know it, but the customers don't know about it, and we don't tell the customers. There's a customer incentive, which they advertise somewhat, and you can always find that customer incentive on the manufacturer's website. So the true cost of a car used to be a given percent below MSRP. That's when supply was tight. Now the supply is getting less so, then the true cost of the car has to factor in the

incentives to the dealer and the incentives to the customer. So the MSRP becomes far less of an accurate benchmark, and when the customer starts flouting that as they did in your case and they said it will give you base MSRP on your car and base MSRP is less almost everything

accessories and freight and all the other and we'll give you sell you the car at real MSRP that real MSRP they're going to sell it for doesn't count the $2,000 that Ford's going to give them secretly as a dealer cash dealer rebate or

the $2,000 may be They're also giving the customers directly, but you don't know about it because you didn't see the advertisement, and maybe you didn't check the website. So there's $4,000 floating around that you don't know about and that the dealer can keep in pocket and say, hey, look, I'm selling you this car at base MSRP, or I'm selling the car $1,000 below base MSRP. Well, they said that they were going to offer me for anyone that came in there on their trade. in, base MSRP, where would they get that number from? On the base MSRP on your trade-in?

Yeah, that's... On the trade-in. Yeah, they get that from their Kelly Blue Book or from Cars.com. That information is available to you, but it's usually, depending on the car, it could be a thousand, two thousand. There's a book. How many books are there, though? There's a black book.

There's a yellow book. Yeah. All those books and all, and all that, that's all obsolete now. If you want to get the closest thing to a bulk value, it's called V-A-O-O-O-and the manufacturer, the dealers have this information. You can get it only through a dealer, but you can get it, and V-A-O-O-O is a very accurate day-by-day value of used cars, and what new cars sell for, and what used cars sell for, a great source of data. Right. Okay, one other thing before I go, I was flabbergasted last week when you and Rick told somebody that if their car required premium fuel, that they could put a lower grade in there. And I have to agree with the roadrunner. Be-beat. If the book says you have to use a certain grade fuel, that's what you should use. And if you're not sure, you should add that information before you buy the car. absolutely you should you know you're right about that have a nice weekend thank you Bob

thank you Bob it's great hearing from you 50 dollars for the first two new lady callers remember $50 for the first two new lady callers we're going to go to Cooper City and that is where Stacy has been waiting patiently and she is a first time caller good morning Stacy good morning how are you we're great thank you thank you for calling you won yourself $50 this morning. Thank you for supporting the platform here for the ladies. Thank you. We've been listening to your shows recently the last couple of weeks and find it very interesting.

And we have a 2014 F-150, and there is a, I had a question, there's a ticking noise. It drives me crazy. It doesn't seem to bother my husband, but it drives me crazy. There's a ticking noise coming from the dashboard. Have you heard of this before? I think this is Rick's department. What do you think, Rick? Turn the radio up.

I'm driving a 2013 Tacoma. When I go over bumps, I've got a little ticking, rattling noise in under my dash. And I honestly, it started when I first drove the pickup brand new. I thought about it, and I decided I wasn't going to tear my dashboard apart, even under warranty, which I would have been getting paid to fix my own vehicle. But sometimes when you've got a little noise in a dashboard, disassembling the vehicle to try to figure out what that noise is,

you will literally create more issues than you'll solve. If it's something that really makes you crazy, you'd have to basically just go in there with a stethoscope almost and just try to narrow down to figure out is it something loose that's just rattling something rubbing against something else or is it like a relay that's clicking on it off without hearing it it would be impossible to diagnose but unless it's something that really makes you crazy trust me tearing a dashboard apart you'll build more noises back into it trying to get it back together what Rick is telling you is that if you do decide to get it fixed you need to put a limit on what you would pay you need to get an estimate of what the diagnostic charge is going to be because it's a time-consuming thing and Rick gets paid by the hour technicians are paid by the hour and they have to get paid for all their time sometimes it takes them longer to find the problem than to fix the problem so be sure you get on paper

an estimate of the absolute most they will charge you otherwise you're going to end up paying way more than you thought and Stacy now this is Nancy Stewart I just want to let you know that we have enough out there to drive the ladies crazy

so for you to be listening to a noise in your vehicle you can ask girl what would I do I keep on looking until I found out where the noise was coming from and why whether it meant that I would drive on two or three different roads

there's a number of things that you know that you can do and you can also record that noise if you want to and if you know somebody you can go to them and say hey listen this is the noise the dash makes whenever I'm on a bumpy road

this is the noise that I hear it's even louder when I'm on a dirt road there's just a number of things that you could do but me I couldn't drive with that kind of noise in the car because I have and I fixed it. Take out your hearing.

If you do decide to go to have a technician fix it. Asked to drive with the technician, you drive the vehicle and tell them that's the noise I'm hearing and make sure that they know exactly what noise you're hearing because otherwise they may hear something

totally different. Spend hours finding that and not even realize that your noise is a different one. Yeah, absolutely. And it's not constant. It does happen when the truck is off, and it does happen while the truck is driving. But like I say, it's not constant.

Yeah, that makes it even more difficult to diagnose. So you're looking at the potential, don't be surprised. If you have to pay a lot of money, know it in advance. Don't be surprised. Yeah, and then again, you may not have to pay a whole lot of money. It might be something simple, but it's worth, you know, looking into. Thank you so much for calling. Thank you for, you know, supporting the platform here for ladies.

Your voice must be heard, and you called this morning, and it was important that we heard your voice. So spread the word to your family, to your friends, $50 for the first two new lady callers. And if you stay on the line, Jeremy, who's in our control room, would be very happy to get your information, contact information, and he would pass it along to me and I'll get that check out to you. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Give us a call back and let us know well, with all the choices we gave you

and all the choices you have already taken advantage of that you could let us know what you decided. Okay, we are, boy, are we busy this morning. It's only 842. We're going to go to Bill in Lake Worth. Good morning, Bill. Hello, Nancy. Good morning.

I wanted to chat with Rick. Okay, he's right here and waiting. Rick? Right here, yep. Good morning. Hey, the first caller with the ignition coils, what's the warranty on that Prius? Because I would think the guy said it had barely 60,000 miles.

Yeah. I think it was six years, less than 70,000. Wouldn't that be under warranty? Unfortunately, the coil parts themselves, the coil is an electronic item, and it's 3-year-36,000. But again, like I said, that one, to me, that's an anomaly. We rarely, and I do a lot of ignition coils, we rarely see them at ages of less than 8 to 10 years, 120, 130,000 miles.

Let me jump in here to say this. manufacturers don't always fix things free only under warranty. They will fix things free when they're out of warranty. You have to know about how to go about it. If you have a car that has an anomaly, and Rick just said this is very unusual in a Prius, first of all, that's a plus on your side. And you go to a service manager at a toilet dealership, and you explain, if you're a good customer, that's another.

thing if you bought two or three cars from this or if you bought two or three Toyotas that's good manufacturers like people that bought cars from them before they also are very sensitive about cars that have issues that are not common and it's called goodwill and there's also a customer loyalty accounting category but if you're nice and you're persuasive you can also all oftentimes get something paid for by the manufacturer through the dealer that is out of warranty. Sometimes surprising me, far out of warning.

We had a toilet of the other dear, Toyota Camry that was years out of paint warranty, and it was taken care of. And it was a good customer, and our service manager explained that to Toyota, the manufacturer. They say, listen, you know that paint was bad. You had a recall campaign on that. I know the campaign's over,

but he's bought three cars from us. He might buy another car. take care of them. So sure enough, they said, okay, we painted the car and everybody's happy. Sure. No, I understand that. Kia did that with my wife's

Santa Fe that she used to have. It was actually out of warranty, just barely, and needed about $1,200 on the fuel system. And I just wanted them to lower it a little couple hundred dollars and they actually comps the whole thing for me. Which you talk about it.

You talk about building customer goodwill. Yes. But, and the previous lady with the ticking in the dash, I was thinking it might be her blower fan for the AC, because I have that, it's an intermittent thing. But then when she said it does it when the engine's off or the car isn't running, I don't know.

Maybe there's something living in there. Yeah, that's my mouse. But the only other thing I have, Earl, you mentioned to the other fellow some term I've never heard BS. What exactly is that, Earl? I can probably say it and get away with him. Bulls not. Let's go to George Carlin and seven dirty words.

There you go. There you go. But that's all I had. I just wanted to ask Rick about the warranty business. But he's got me a little concerned with my car with $130,000 on him. And thinking about those going bad on me one day. But anyway, that's all I got. You all.

have a great weekend thank you give us a call again nice hearing from you bill we're going to go to fred and palm beach gardens good morning fred good morning fred hi hi nancy welcome how are you we're well thank you all right this is i think the third time i've called i live in palm beach gardens so you'll remember when i tell you this that i'm going to be driving probably in the next hour east on north lake and there's a big poster of some handsome guy that looks about 50 years old, and he claims he's Earl Stewart. So I get to wave to him every time I go that route. So what I call for really two reasons.

One is I am a customer service manager for 40 years. We sell office furniture chairs. I happen to have read for the first time, Earl and Nancy, and of course, Rick and whoever else is on the show, you're like 10 things for your people that work there and I adhere to all of them and as good as the people are that you have and I am good at what I do it all stems from the top if the owner of the company does not back you up and profess that you do a great customer service and bend over backward it's never going to work so I give all the

the kudos to Earl and Nancy and anybody else at the top of the level, the customer service. I think that is incredible, but the one thing I will say that I learned in business and in life, you don't want to win the battle and lose the war. And a lot of people in customer service, whether it's cars, chairs, medical field, or anything, they take things personally and they want to prove that they're right. And what you said is, I do the same thing. I analyze everything from my customer, and I don't believe the old thing the customer is always right, but I do agree with what you said, Earl, if there's any part of it that you believe is right or makes common sense, then they're right. Yeah, yeah, it's a,

that one code is, it doesn't make any difference if the customer is right or wrong, but if the customer believes she's right, if the customer believes they're right, and even though they're dead wrong and you turn them down, they tell 10 people about it or 20 people. Those 20 people tell another 5 or 10 people each and I call it a pebble

in the pond. By the way, my son Stu Stewart is a big part of this. He's a general manager, a dealership and we have that code posted all over the dealership and that's the hardest thing to me. You're wrong about something now. You're wrong about something. They don't tell 20 or 30 people.

they literally tell thousands because they put it on their Facebook page and reviews. You've got social media now. You didn't have it 40 years ago. The other thing is, and then I'm going to go on to the next question, is that whether it's a car business or my business of office furniture chairs, is it's not easy to get a customer, but it's very easy to lose one. Very true. There's some stats on that.

How many thousands of dollars it costs to acquire one customer? and it costs nothing to lose one customer. I mean, you lose them cheap, and you get them very expensively. Okay, so here's my question that I never asked anybody, and I'm hoping you can answer it. So my wife worked in the car business in New York for about 20 years before different dealerships. I'm totally familiar with what you say all the time,

that there's hardly any money that's the right word in selling new cars, leasing cards. So I don't know if you're able to give me, and I don't mean in dollars, but in your dealership, because I guess you can't really speak about anybody else's, but I'm sure you've been around long enough to have an idea. What percentage, if you had, if you made a pie, whether it's profits or sales, how much is based on new cars? How much is based on use cars? How much is based on service? How much is based on parts after market I sometimes scratch my head, listening to this and go, where do you guys make the money?

Even though I know where you make the money, but I just want to know if there's any real numbers that you can share with people. Yeah, the numbers apply to the vast majority of the history of the car business, but that majority of the history doesn't include the last three years. For the last three years, the big gun, the big profit generator, has been new cars, and that's simply because cars are so short supply and the dealers can charge anything they can if they want to virtually. And that condition is mitigated a little bit,

but we're sure not back to normal. Let's say prior to three years ago, most car dealers broke even or lost money in the new car department. And the percentage they made was negative. They made their money and the used car department, the service department, the parts department, all the other departments is where they made their money.

A lot of dealership's goal was to break even in the new car department. Now, there's a question about the finance as to you include the finance in the new car department, but even so, the new car department was just, you know how cell phone, people sell cell phones so they can charge you to use the cell phone. If you want to go to AT&T or want to go to Verizon, they'll give you a cell phone because they're going to charge you for the rest of your life for using that cell phone.

Car dealers, look at car dealers prior to three years ago, I'll break even or lose a little bit of money on this new car because I know that car is going to come back to me for service, for body repair, for parts, and as I say, the financing has always been quite profitable if they consider that separately. Half of them give you a trade? Yeah. Exactly.

So, yeah, it's when we return to normal, and I don't think it's going to happen. I think the manufacturers and the dealers learn their lesson. I don't think you're ever going to see lower prices like we had prior to three years ago. I don't think that's going to happen again. I think inventories will be lower, profits will be higher, not as high as they have been, but it will not be unusual for a dealer to make three or four thousand dollars on a car and today they're making even more than that and prior to three years ago the gross profit on the car in our dealership was about what $1,100, $1,500 prior to three years ago and now

it's probably three or four times that so it's a good question but it's it's very dependent on the time and when you want to know the answer well I thank you I love listening to this show. And Nancy, you've got to get a billboard with your picture so all the guys could look at you. It's not fair that all the women get to look at Earl. I know. I told her all that this morning. Thanks, Fred.

I'll look you up and we'll work on that together. Give us a call again. Have a great weekend. Marty from West Palm Beach. Our regular caller, are you there, Marty? yes how are you good tell me marty please tell me you got your head rest fixed no oh marty do you think you'll have to wait 15 months yeah i'm already asking when can i order 24 better get on the list but here's here's a question that i have how come camrys do not come with a memory

seat, whereas I remember in the beginning, for the times I had avalanes, if you bought the higher end avalon, you got a memory seat. So I figured they didn't put them in a Camry because they wanted you to buy an avalon. But now that there is no avalon, and as far as crowns, that's probably a 10-year wait to get a crown, why don't they put a memory seat in the Camry, and I cannot figure it can't be I mean you just put it in I think you already you know you nailed it

already with the fact that it was it's supposed to be a walk up to the next level I don't know if this was part of the planning you know the crown was coming out if they planned that before the inventory situation that we're in I don't know if they plan to have such a low supply of these vehicles

but you know your guess is as good as mine I guarantee they get a lot of feedback from customers that would like that Rick does dealer product reports. We could always put our two cents in. Everything's yin and yang with the manufacturers. The positive is that when they add something,

it costs more money. They can make more money. But the bad thing is if they add it, maybe they price themselves out of the market. So, you know, Toyota's got to worry about Honda and Ford and all the competition. And the Honda Accord, I don't know if the Honda Accord has a memory seat. I doubt it.

I doubt it. So if Toyota added a memory seat to their camera, the Honda cord suddenly is priced much lower because it costs money to put that in there. And there you go. So it's complicated. You know, you don't understand it because you love the idea of the memory seat. Some people don't even want a memory seat. If you're the only driver for your car, you don't need a memory seat. Yeah, I don't want my car thinking about me.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, the point I'm making is, I haven't to know people that have gone to one car, but the husband and wife have different positions than the seat. So now every time they get in the car, the other person gets in the car, they've got to switch around. Tell me about I'm 6-2 and my wife is 5-2. And so I was almost strangled by the steering wheel one time. Yeah, there's a bigger height difference between you guys, I think. Yeah, exactly. Like 6-4 and 5-3.

Now that I'm not, well, I'm driving, but I'm not driving all the time, thank God. But when Earl first got into the Tesla, it had, you know, it was clearly set up for me. Well, he got in and he was strangled. That's how he broke his Achilles tendon. So I assume the Tesla has a memory seat. Oh, yeah. They have a whole driver's setting thing. It's really nice.

Okay. Now, the other thing, I think you should tell Toyota, which I have a whole, which I found that some people didn't like. In a Honda, when you had the blind spot monitor go on and you turn your turning light and you're going into the lane. Yeah. Obviously, on a Toyota, it blinks in the mirror. Yeah.

However, on a Honda, you also get an audible sound. You should get an audible sound in the Toyota. If you cross the lane? crossing the lane yes okay but not in the blind spot monitor oh okay so somebody comes up in there and it makes a noise too yes and even though i always look i don't just wait for a noise or that but i know some people that didn't buy toyotas because it didn't have the noise now as you get older. I'm just the young 78, but

it's easier for an older person to also hear an audible sound. Yeah, that makes sense. So I will pass that along too, yeah. So I don't know if they could hire me for quality control but I would make, but

the other thing is, like I'm saying with the Camry, all they got to do is put it in the high end Camry the memory seat. Yeah, that makes sense, especially if I don't know how complicated it would be to add it at this stage in the game

but you know it definitely would be a nice feature I agree because right now unless you go into an SUV you don't have that option. Isn't it funny? Marty, isn't it funny think back over the years you know you never needed anything like a memory seat 20 years ago

in fact if you go far enough back you didn't even need anything except a heater and a radio and now I can remember selling a lot of cars without air conditioning and a lot of cars without automatic transmission it was an accessory so now think of all the stuff we got to have it was oh my car doesn't have a memory seed oh my god what am i going to do so it's like i get mad if there's not Wi-Fi on an airplane yeah now i got to ask sue when do you start taking orders for 24s so i can find out if the

headrest is going to hit me hey i'll give you a serious answer you know there's nothing formal to it All you got to do is call Jason Lady. All right, yeah, I deal with Jason. Hey, but seriously, he's a very nice guy. You might. If you're serious, I mean, I don't know. We know we're going to get some more cars after July. It's going to be better, but it won't be normal.

So it might make sense to be the first one for the 24 if that's what you want to do. Yeah, well, I'd like to try it out, but I got to see one first. They're supposed to be a little bit different design, so I don't know if there's. if it's going to make any difference. Yeah, that's the key word. You want to see it. You know what, Marty, I was thinking about you the other morning, and you stirred my interest last week whenever you were talking about your headrest,

so I decided to take mine apart in my Avalon. You know, I'm still trying to put that thing back together. I had Avalon. I've had Camrys in my current Camry, which is at 2020. No problem. So I'm still thinking with Toyota, but I don't know if I have to wait 10 more years. Yeah, the good outweighs the bad. Okay.

Hey, morning. All right, well, have a happy, good Memorial Day. Thank you. Good weekend. It's always nice talking to you. You'd have a wonderful weekend, too. God bless you and your family. 877-960-90-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530.

And don't forget, I have $50 for the next first new female caller. $50. Give me a call. $877-960. I think we're going to go to Stu. Yeah, I'd like to read Emery's text because I missed her last week. Emory says, good morning. She's got a two-part question.

One, what would you recommend for a teenager's first car if money was no object? And two, what would you recommend for a first car of money is very tight for the teenager? really needs a car. Well, the first thing I did is I went over to consumer reports. Stu, should I answer that? No. No. Wait, we're assuming that the decision has been made to give a very, very deserving teenager

with great grades, their first car. And the first question is money, no object. So I just went to consumer reports, and this is my opinion. I believe that the number one consideration when you're getting your kid's first car should be safety, above all. And so I went to consumer reports, and they have the safest cars of 2023. And this would be a mid-sized SUV, which I would think would be the safest car of the different car types. And the safest mid-sized SUVs of 2023, according to consumer parts, is the Hyundai Palisade, the Kia Telluride, the Nissan Pathfinder, the Subaru Ascent, the Toyota Highlander,

and the Volkswagen ID4. These are all mid-sized SUVs probably priced somewhere in that $40,000 to $50,000 range. And the very safest cars. These are the safest cars that you can get. Great answer. But that's if money is no object. Not everybody is going to drop $50,000 on their kid for their first car. My recommendation in that case is to look for these cars in the used version,

but don't go any older than, say, 2017, or 2018 is when we started seeing most of these great safety features become a standard equipment. So if you could find a 2018 key a tell your ride or a Toyota Highlander, that would be something a lot more affordable than the brand new ones.

And what you said is so important, you know you'll want to save his car. It's a question of what you can afford. And too often, we get calls all the time. And some people think without thinking I want a car for my

16 or 18 or whatever it is your old person in my family and you think in terms of price only and you want reliability but you can't forget about safety I mean it's so I would prioritize I would put the safety over the reliability if it were my child

so that's the reason I think Stu had a I was surprised that the road four was among that list it's on the well that's in the small SUV category but on the small SUV category it did not make it in this year's CR report

there's a Lexus UX which is kind of its cohort on the Lexus side but for small SUVs which are also very safe too a Honda CRV a Honda HRV which is I think the hybrid one the Lexus UX and the Subaru Solterra and those are those mid-sized smaller

SUVs which are also very safe as a class of car, but consumer and porches identified those models as being the safest. Yeah, and Marie, I was just teasing when I said, buy them nothing. Back in my day, you know, back in the 70s, 70, having three daughters. It was pretty crazy, you know, with each one of them driving. Very expensive. You should drive a brand new bus to get a ticket. That's a good idea.

Also, Amory sent a high and lowest cartoon, which I hope Jonathan can get up on the screen. It's a cartoon that says, a little picture of a kid talking to his dad, and he says, a teenager, he says, we should get a sports car. And then the dad says, you'll be lucky if I let you drive a four-banger rust bucket. And then the other one says, their friends are talking. He says, what do you think your first car would be? And the kid says, embarrassing. so it's okay to embarrass your kids with a nice safe car we've got no problem with that are we doing we got phone calls

no we're good okay um this is uh paul uh saw an ad on tv for toyota kia of verro beach and they're advertising an msrp for msrp event so i'm assuming that means uh we're going to give you msrp for your uh for your trade in and you're going to pay msrp for our new car and so i don't think jondon has the pictures up there, but they have these big explosions and MSRP for MSRP, and then a big thing says no hidden fees, but Paul zoomed in on right below that, on the screen below that it says, plus tax, tags, documentation fee of $899.50. I mean, no hidden fees.

These dealers are smart. They, you know, they know that they've been, you know, for years, for literally years, three years on this show, we're saying if you can buy a car at or near MSRP, you've got a good deal. Well, guess what? things changed. Well, people don't listen to this show, and there's a lot of other things people don't inform themselves about, but over three years it's been permeated in the consumer's minds, MSRP, if I can buy a card MSRP, that's a good deal. If you want to buy, for example, this is a surprise, Jeep, the Stalantis, Chrysley Jeep Dodge, Jeeps are in

huge supply. They're one of the, I don't know I think maybe it's because they don't have as many microchips, which is probably true. But I was surprised to see what the inventories of Jeeps were. And our mystery shopping report this week is at a Jeep dealer. And it's very interesting. And it goes right to this point about MSRP. And I'll just, I'll give you a little hint. If you're going to buy a Jeep today, you want to buy it below MSRP.

And you'll find out when we read the... mystery shopping report it's being done I also got a text from oh we got a phone call coming in we do we have an important phone call from Boca and her name is Cal and she is a first-time caller good morning Cal welcome good morning how are you we're great this is Nancy yes this is Nancy Stewart hi Nancy how are you dear I'm well thank you thank you for calling when we're finished Cal don't forget you can stay on the line talk to Jeremy, give him your contact information, and he will give it to me, and I'll mail you out that check for $50.

I want to thank you for helping me build this platform this morning. What can we do for you? So I'm interested in buying. I love beamers, BMWs. So being down in Florida and with the ocean and with the corrosion, I have a question about how would I maintain the car, the body, the engine, any recommendations with the, what could happen to the finish? Tal, do you have, will you be keeping your car in the garage? No, it won't be in a garage.

You would be in an open space. I see. I'll just hand this call over to Rick. Hi. Thank you, nice. You're welcome. Do you live near the ocean or the intercoastal? I am not that close, no.

So that is a savings grace in a way. Bonus points. The best thing I can recommend is find a good detailer that you trust and at least two to three times a year have a really thorough wash and wax. Wash the car often, obviously, but find a place that will really do a good thorough wash and wax a couple times a year. Somebody that you trust, you know, check the reviews of that

and even go online with BMW clubs and check out the guys that they recommend and follow their recommendations on it. And the best thing also is get someone to do like the Ranex where it's got to be

really buffed in properly. These things will definitely help keep your car in clean shape. What about under the skin? What about the brakes in other areas that succumbed to corrosion. What can she do to help that? Washing again is the best thing for those, but being as she doesn't live right near the salt water, she will have to worry too much about that.

Washing is going to take care of the brakes? Because it washes the salt off, the salt that might stick on there and get the corrosion in there. If you're right near the ocean, you're going to get corrosion anyways. There's no way about it. And depending upon the car wash, you go to, that undercarriage, that really gets, you know, that really gets a washing. And, Cal, I'm a big believer in Rainex. I use it, and we do live near the ocean. And I, you know,

wash off the Tesla and the Avalon, and it makes a big difference. But following Rick's instructions, I think you'll be on the right path. I will. Thank you all so much. I appreciate your help. Thank you. Cal, don't forget to spread the word. Yes, I love your show. Thank you, dear. I don't stay on the other. Thank you.

Thank you so much. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-9-60. Now back to, I guess we'll go to Rick. Well, I've got one interesting one here. Excuse me. Donovan came in to say that the corolla is no longer number one. The Tesla Model Y has outsold the corolla by over 15,000 units in, let's see, in quarter one, 2003, and the Tesla Model Y is now the best-selling automobile in the world of any kind.

And if you don't think that really upsets Toyota, here's the, you know, we're a Toyota dealer in full disclosure, okay? And we have been for 47 or 48 years. So we know Toyota, we know all the troops there, the manufacturer, the distributor, and we feel like we're part of the family. We also feel that Toyota has been on and off the largest manufacturer, seller of vehicles in the world. We also think they're one of the best manufacturers.

They treat their dealers extremely well. They treat their customers. This is all, relatively speaking, very well. But boy, did they make a mistake with electric vehicles. And, you know, you play the blame game. I don't blame anybody. Akio Toyota was heading things up during a lot of this. But they just made a huge mistake with electric vehicles.

And to lose the number one selling spot, to Tesla is got to be a total embarrassment. But Toyota stakes in the long run, and here I am criticizing them. They could be right in the long run. I don't know. They're talking about hydrogen-powered fuel cells. They're talking about rebuilding combustion engine cars

and converting them into hybrids and to electric vehicles. They have a lot of crazy ideas out there, which seem crazy to me now. But right now, they are really in trouble. If you look at their ranking in electric vehicle sales, the last report in automotive news, they didn't sell any last month. None.

Damn, I'll try to sell that BZ4X, a promise. It's in the showroom. Exactly. Okay, where are we? Where are we? Yeah. We are in Palm Beach Gardens on the corner of military trail

and North Lake Boulevard. You got a couple of comedians in here. I got another ad that we can share. Yeah, Frank texted in an ad. We were talking about that a second ago, especially if you're buying a Jeep. This also applies to RAM. You're going to be able to find something below MSRP.

But Frank sees an ad for 10% below MSRP. He refers to as the Ram dealership on North Lake. That's the Napleton dealership on North Lake. league. So they got an ad up there. It says 10% below MSRP for a new RAM Big Horn, 1,500 Big Horn and Laramie. So he called the Ram dealership to confirm the ads price, and they said that he had to come in to get the price. Well, you know, the most common violation of all the laws in the land from the Federal Trade Commission to local laws is when they tell you the selling price of the car. Every week on the

mystery shopping report, they say this is a selling price. Well, the selling price is a price you can buy the car for, but you can't buy the car for the selling price. So why they allow, why does the Federal Trade Commission or the Attorney

General's of the 50 states, why do they allow car dealers to lie about the selling price of their cars? That's why in the mystery shopping reports, we differentiate the real price. So we'll say the selling price was, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then after we add up the everything except for the legitimate things that effectively raise the price, that's the real price.

Hey, I got a question for Rick, if the phones are quiet, says, good morning. What might be the worst thing that happens on the road with my 20-year-old Explorer, which after 10 miles of city driving, downshifts with an accompanying tachometer increase from 1,200 RPM to 2,200 RPM. dealer says trans is shot he wouldn't attempt repair that's from D in West Palm uh yeah with transmission issue uh most dealerships nowadays don't even get into trying to repair them we replace them with a re-manufactured unit it actually turns out to be less expensive for the consumer in the long run than a repair in a lot of those cases because once you start tearing apart a high mileage transmission you're going to rebuild it any And they re-manufacturer, the companies that we send these out to the old ones, they strip them down, reuse only the good, hard parts, and recycle the transmission.

When they send it back out, it's as good as a brand new one. So, you know, I had a flashback two years ago, and the common expression was, speaking about a mechanic, and say, he's not a very good mechanic. he's a parts replacer and and so now we're saying we're admitting that we don't fix transmissions anymore we replace them and it's kind of a you know the whole the whole mechanical thing of a car is become a different category and we what we're what we're repairing is software in many cases in a lot of cases yes and so so you have to be a software you can tweak the software software gets changed and tweaked all the time.

Oh, you can't replace the software. You have to fix it. You can't replace it. The software is the software. But the hard copy, the, you know, the transmissions, the engines, the rest of them, we replace them now. That's, it's interesting how that's changed. And the difficult part for the mechanic, though, is because the cars are so integrated

and all the systems work together so tightly now, it's, we say part replacement. but it's knowing which part to replace, figuring out which part, because as crazy as it sounds, we actually had a case where taillight bulbs, a simple light bulb, was suddenly causing a code in the car telling us that the engine computer was bad. And we had technicians replacing engine computers over and over because a light bulb had gone bad in the back of the car. I mean, this is how integrated these systems are. The computer said to do it.

And it's, you know, you're following the exact diagnostic procedure in the book until somebody started thinking outside the box and say, why are we doing all these computers? And we just started discovering this other problem. I bet all the dealers went back and refunded the money on that because we did it wrong. Well, Toyota actually had to step up covering because it was. Oh, Toyota came in and said, no, okay, now we know what's going on. That's because they got caught.

Yeah. Well, they got caught in big way. I'm glad we're stuff like that only happens on cars and not like airplanes and probably just it was freaking out. As a matter of fact here. I could discuss my body parts. They all need replaced. Donovan's asking what do we see as a normal cost today on a remanufactured transmission?

Say for something like the average Camry, they're around $2,500 and $3,500 for a remand transmission. Now, it's not including the core charge. You know, obviously we've got to have the old transmission to send back to them. But that's pretty much, yeah, the labor is probably about another thousand on top. It's like getting an engine, basically, a used engine. Hey, here's some anonymous feedback here. Someone who cares about you, Rick, says,

I noticed a couple of weeks ago that Rick has stopped drinking Diet Coke and switched to water. I did that and feel much better. How you feeling? I actually about six months ago stopped drinking all soda and plain old water, lots of it. Any difference? It seems to me having a nice effect. That's great. And about two months ago, stopped drinking all my vodka had now.

It's just plain old American water. So, yeah, I'm trying to get a little healthier here. Hey, Rick, thanks so much for sharing your vodka with me. Nobody really knows that, but these water bottles. I thought I'd tell everyone I don't smell anything either This is absolute It smells just like water

Another anonymous feedback Says why did you stop talking about Big Dog Ranch Rescue On your Saturday radio program You know that anonymous feedback Was one of the reasons That we decided to do what we did With bringing the big dog

Because you're right And that's the reason I love anonymous feedback See it was kind of a criticism But it was a justified criticism I don't know why we stopped. We used to, I bring the book out, and I always say, it's kind of like

a, you know, buy the book on Amazon, 100% of the proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch. I get the answer, and this is not a, it's just, when we usually bring up the book, when we have a lull in phone calls. And so when it's really busy, and I can, when it's really, it's an excuse, but when it's really busy,

we don't resort to the things that we have ready to kind of show. You tell all the truth. That's exactly right. That's what happened. Same with a hat. You have a sitting underneath the television hat. Yeah, yeah. That's right.

Yeah, if there's not a phone call, we have some more anonymous feedback. Okay, well, we're going to go to Frank real quick. He's calling from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Frank. Good morning, morning. I just tuned in when I heard Earl say about electric cars,

they didn't sell any of this year. I was wondering which one was that. Oh, the Toyota, the Beezee, 4X just in the last couple of months arrived at Toyota dealers every dealer got one it's a very it was a very limited rollout hours is still at the dealership we had a waiting list of several people and they all all of them backed out probably based on the i guess jota busy got some port got some bad press had an embarrassing recall and and some of the reviews are coming and just are kind of nobody really likes it and I feel bad to say that but um

plus who ever heard of a bz4x it started with the name for me listen my opinion is I hope nobody gets mad at me at Toyota I go for me it started when I heard the name I said that's a terrible name for a car yeah now I could be wrong listen you know if somebody told me hey what do you think of this name for a company it's a search engine I'm gonna call it Google I probably would have said call it Shirley that's dumb but I so I don't know they're smarter than me at Toyota I know that but I don't know what happened

Well, but remember Google started It was as jeez Oh, that's right, okay That was What a dumb name that was Yeah Sorry Frank I saw the one at your dealership

Yeah One of your customers On one of the shows He got his But he didn't want to take it Right yeah As a matter of fact He was the first one on the list

And he called You know he felt bad And I said Don't blame you Some other people had dropped out before you did. Well, part of it is the fact that because Toyota doesn't have any electric vehicles to speak of, I mean, one per dealer, that's a joke.

So technically we have an electric vehicle, but we really don't. So the dealers that have one probably started out holding out for a huge amount of money because they only had one. And then they said, and then the salesman said, we only got one. I'm not going to worry about learning about that product. Why should I spend two hours? getting expert on this electric vehicle when there's only one of them. And so nothing happens.

That's exactly right. It's a spiral that they can't get out of, right. I do believe that Toyota is going to come up with some gray electric vehicles in a couple of years, but they're going to be entering the market hurt. You know, they're entering coming from behind and trying to play catch-up. Well, that's good. I'm talking about electric. What do you think about the lucid?

it's a great car it's a hell of a car it's faster than uh it's uh faster than a lot of the teslas uh a greater range than a lot of the teslas uh gorgeous car but you know they're losing money hand over expensive car they haven't got through the quantity and the demand is not up there for a 160,000 dollar car uh so uh you know that i don't think they're going to make it Rivian truck's pretty cool. We have one of those, and that's a great look, in my opinion, great looking, and really fun to drive. Yeah, we shopped a lucid dealer, which is the manufacturer a couple months ago, and it was a beautiful shopping report. I mean, the ancient lighting was treated like a queen and the salesperson who had all the answers and polite, courteous demonstration, everything you'd want to do.

You can't have a, the average car of the average Luceusus is probably over $100,000. I mean, it's not a big market out there for those cars. Wow. Well, I got to tell you, I have one. Did you like it? I love it. Good. You got a great car.

I hope Lusid lasts as long as your car. I mean, you know, I just, they're hemorrhaging money. What? Emerging money Because of who's backing it Since the people who are backing it Are never going to run out of money That's what I think

That's hopeful Okay Thanks again I'm just a little bit older than you I still have my raft for it No worry Oh do you? That's great Yeah really

Thanks for the info Thanks Frank give us a call again Have a great weekend or Rick? Donovan just came and he says the problem with the BZ4X is the name, the cost and the insanely slow

charging. I saw that. It's a great car. But when you have cars today that charge it under 20 minutes for less money, that makes the BZ4X a hard sell. At the Toyota school that I went to for the BZ4X they said if you drove

that car until the battery was as depleted as it would go, which they actually did this at the school. They ran it right down to the point when the computer said stop now, or I'm going to stop you. And they plugged it in on a 110 charger outlet.

Two days. 48 hours for full charge. And that's on a straight 110. I bet you'd miss your plane. I bet you'd miss your plane. Yes, yes, you would. You'd be sitting for two solid days to charge that car.

Now, what is it on those, the higher voltage DC chargers? Because we're getting a couple of those. Yeah, if you had the higher voltage. Can you hear all the factory Toyota guys listening to the show now as we bad mouth their car? Take notes, guys. Hey, hey, Charlie, there's a Toyota dealer in Florida telling people what a bad car Toyota made for the electric vehicle. What should we do about that? I wouldn't be surprised if I hear from Danny Boss before the weekend is out

or even by Tuesday, from my FTS and from others in Twitter. It feels what happens if you rush something. It feels almost like they had to get something out there. And that's the product of kind of like... But even the fastest charging you, so it would be about five to eight hours, five to eight hours to fully charge that battery. Wow. You know, the other thing that we can move on from the,

because we have some anonymous feedback, but the other thing, not many of people are going to experience this, but when you lift the hood on this thing, if you lift the hood on the Tesla, it's a frunk. It's an empty space, and you can put things in it.

I open up the hood, expecting to see a fronk of some sort, and it looked like a tangle of tubes and wires, and I shut it right away. I'm like, I don't want to look at that. It looked like some, I'm sure it's very high tech, but it didn't look space,

like the Tesla it requires two different types of coolant right and there's three different cooling systems the air conditioning system can actually we picked on we picked on Toyota now let's move on okay you better put some dead bolts on your front door Rick I know they're coming anonymous feedback I have a dog from Big Dog Ranch Rescue I'm safe that's true all right this is for you Rick my Lexus ES 350 steering wheel is not returning to center when turning, which makes it harder to park. The dealership shifted the cross-member to fix castor issue I was having. You're following so far? Okay, good. But it still slightly goes off to the left on the highway. I recently had to replace the axle

on the driver's side. It was completely broken in half, and the dealership originally sold it like that. I'm wondering what's causing the issue. At first, I thought it was off-tracking, but I think that it's more related to the steering wheel handling. Thanks. What do you think, Rick? Okay, you've got multiple issues going on here. A broken axle, completely broken drive axle,

major, major issue there. I'd be concerned about possible damage to the differential. First thing I'd be looking at is if you've got to shift the underside carriage of the car to try to compensate your castor,

there again something else is bent that needs to be put back square to rights and we need to get an alignment done on this car to find out what is bent and why your caster is so far out there's pushing this car

to the left but returnability on the steering wheel is going to be an issue between the power steering rack there's currently a broken axle is that basically the axle is broken right now right he says it was broken, but apparently replaced.

Okay, okay. That, I must have missed that. I'm like, oh yeah, if that thing is, if it's like, I'm like, I think that's your major problem, but if they replace that, they just got to get to the point what something in there is bent, right? Yeah, something is bent and damaged, and axles don't break. The shaft on that axle is literally almost an inch of solid, hardened steel. Those do not break, except in a massive accident.

So something else is bedded up there. Superman can bend steel. He wouldn't break it. He'd bedded it. But it'll bed before it breaks. I'm afraid to read this one, but hey, Toyota, if you're listening, this is anonymous feedback. And it's just coming in. We can't help it.

I believe that Toyota may be in trouble with brand loyalty. My nephew was looking for a new route four. He went to three Toyota dealers and could not even see one. He was told it would be at least four months to get one. and he ended up with a Mazza CX-5. I've been writing on a Prius for a year. Today I'm purchasing a Kia Nero instead. My daughter was looking for a Krola Cross,

can't even see one, and now she's looking at a Kia-Seltos or a Nissan Kix. And that's absolutely right. Things will balance out. Toyota had, this is going to be a negative effect of the demand that Toyota has, and there's going to be a bump of a competitive intrusion into their sales curve, and they'll feel it.

How long it lasts, how permit it is? But worldwide, they're doing better. I mean, the reason you have to wait a year for some model Toyotas is because it's a great car with a high demand, and some dealers are actually selling them at fair prices. So it seems like a lot of people are buying Keyes when they want to buy a Toyota, but the fact of the matter is... Most of them are staying in a way.

for the Toyota's. Yeah, yeah. But there are some. I mean, there is going to be some brand affections. That's like a Yogi Berra's story that he knows a restaurant that is so busy that nobody eats there anymore. That's exactly, that's the perfect metaphor or analogy. I'm

all caught up, I believe, and let me just jump over for regular text. We are caught up. Okay, we're caught up on calls. We're caught up on text. All right, let's go home. You're on. Okay, we'll get to the... Big Dog Ranch Restaurant.

Yeah, Mr. Shopping Report, and then we can go back and get some text if we have some YouTube's or text at the end. This is a particularly important and interesting mystery shopping report because the timing and a lot of things we've talked about for three years we've been talking about low supply, high demand, microchap shortage, gouging thousands, $20,000 over sticker price, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you can buy a car near MSRP, grab it, because it won't be there tomorrow, blah, blah, blah. See, this is all changing pretty quickly, and it's changing quickly with certain models and manufacturers than others. Now, with Toyota, it's not changing. Toyota is still low day supply, although that amount of inventory has come up in our own dealership. We see it. but not much has come up greatly with Stalantis,

which is Chrysler Jeep Dodge. I hate saying Stalantis because nobody's knows what Stalantis is and why they change their name, Chrysler Jeep Dodge, to Stalantis. I don't know. Anyway, I'll say Chrysler Jeep Dodge. The Jeeps, and this is surprising to me, I said this earlier in the show, jeeps are a lot of jeeps out there, folks, high inventory, high-day supply. Your average Jeep dealer has got a lot of.

of jeeps to sell. Now, that means that the new normal is returned to Jeep. So everything you heard on this show for three years and you want to buy a Jeep, forget about it. Because there's a whole new story now. Jeep has started giving dealers, has started giving customer incentives, big customer incentives to the dealers to sell jeeps. Therefore, that means they aren't selling them fast enough and they got too many in dealer inventory and they do have too many it's good for the consumer

but you got to know about it before it's good for you so I'm telling you about it you want to buy a Jeep you should strike a very good deal MSRP doesn't mean anything anymore by the way MSNRP was a good benchmark

for a long time no more there's two types of incentives I said this earlier in the show but people typically tune in tune out about every 15 minutes, so I'm going to say it again. The one incentive is a dealer incentive. That's a secret kickback rebate that dealers get on certain models because the manufacturer is worried about the inventory building up, and so is a dealer.

So they give them some help to sell the car. Well, the intent, at least their politically correct intent to give the dealer money to get the car sold, is they'll pass along this to the customer. Well, they don't know dealers that well. I'm saying that tongue in cheek. They know dealers very well. You give a dealer money on a car, and it's a secret, he ain't going to tell the customer.

He's going to put it in his pocket. He might not even tell the salespeople if they're paid on commission. Glamat. Yeah, that's the way it is. A gloment. Now, there's the other incentive is the customer incentive. Now, the customer incentive,

you would think the customers would know about it. But they don't. If there's an incentive on a particular car, the only way you're going to find out is if you happen to see the car advertisement, and chances are you won't see it. And if you do see it, you probably doesn't stick with you. You don't remember these things.

There's one sure way you can find about customer incentives. Go to the manufacturer's website. You want to buy a Buick, you want to buy a Ford, you want to buy a Toyota, go to the manufacturer's website, And look at the bottle you want to buy. They will tell you what the customer incentive is. They won't tell you what the dealer is to the business. So here we are, a mystery shopping report at Vatlin-Kresler Jeep Dodge.

That's Vero Beach, Florida. And they have a lot of jeeps, surprisingly, surprise, surprise, surprise, surprise. So with this new normal or old normal or whatever it is, listen to this report and learn from it. If you're buying a car that has a lot of cars, the Jeep is one of them, there are a few others we could cover, but check to see around what the inventory is, and you can find out for yourself. Okay, speaking in the first person is if I were Agent Lightning.

I arrived in the morning. I was greeted by a very friendly salesman named Bruce. I asked them if they had any gladiators in stock. He confirmed they did. That's a Jeep gladiator. And they had quite a few. And you don't hear that very often. Quite a few.

And inquired if I would like to see them. We walked to the back of the lot where I decided on the new gladiator Overland. I'm not sure what that is, but higher price, lower price. I don't know. Bruce congratulated me on my selection, stating that gladiators definitely offer a smoother ride than wranglers. That's another cheap wrangler. He added that for the first time, in a very long time, they were offering incentive money. Now, he said they, notice he didn't say the manufacturer, he said they were offering incentive money,

which could mean the dealership. It was a new, that I'm looking at, was a new 2003 Jeep gladiator. Now, in shopping reports in history, new could mean a 2021, a 2022, But this is really a current calendar year, new vehicle. That'll tell you something about how many vehicles are in inventory. It was an overland four-by-four with an MSRP of $53,620. Now, if you listen to the show two or three months ago, we said, if you want to buy a vehicle and you can buy it near MSRP or below MSRP, grab it,

At MSRB, grab it. Well, this is no longer the case. We have had, in Jeep, a radical change. So the MSRB doesn't mean that much, right? 53,000, 620, it still means something, but it doesn't mean that you can buy it at that price or should buy it at that price. There was, unsurprisingly, an addendum,

okay, they still got the addendum. They're never going to lose the addendums. They will continue, they had them before the crisis, and they'll have them after the crisis. There was an extra charge of $7.99 for Simon Eyes. You got to love that. Simon Eyes, good Lord. That goes back to what I was a kid. Yeah.

Right? I mean... I remember commercials for it, and that was also... Wasn't it just like a rust and dust thing that dealers put on? Do they bring it back, or did they always have it? I don't know. Another charge of $4.29 for Waypoint. I have no idea what that is, Rick.

I tried Googling that to see what the heck Waypoint could be in relation to a gladiator, I think it's vehicle tracking. I found two things. One was something to do with the navigation with possibly a vehicle tracking thing, but that's going to be available anywhere. I don't know why you'd pay $500 for a waypoint to track your vehicle. Well, you know why.

Because the dealer wants more profit. That's the only reason. And the only other thing I could find was a tarp system that actually mounts to the roll bars of the Jeep and then has a special pole so it makes a tent out behind. Well, in most cases, nobody knows what these things are. I can tell you one thing.

If Waypoint is being sold for $429, it probably costs about $50 or $60 for the dealer. Okay, back to the report, we spent a while walking around discussing the vehicle before embarking on an enjoyable test ride. Bruce proved to be seasoned salesman and was quite knowledgeable about his product. Upon returning to the dealership, he entered my details into the computer system and himself briefly to get the print out of the financial details. Before setting it down, he mentioned that

he had found some excellent rebates for me. He just found them. Excellent rebates for me. Right. They were by over by the bathroom. Yeah, they were behind the towels. It was all box of them. And proceeded to present

a sales worksheet containing all the figures. The top line was MSRP 53, 620. There was a discount. who, who, $4,120 discount off of MSRP. You got to buy that, right? That's what we were telling people months ago. If you can find something to blow MSRB, grab it.

Well, isn't true anymore, folks. Discount of 4120, which bought my price to 49,500. Remember that term now, my price. My price doesn't mean anything. Right. My price isn't the price I can buy the car for, as the mystery jopper. My price, I don't know what, it means nothing. It means it's a number that they're going to try to get you to think it's a real price,

but it's not the price. When they added something called a VATLIN plus in the amount, you've already had the waypoint, now we've got the VATLIN plus and the amount of $1,6190, and they got a dock fee for $795. So, k-ding, k-ding, k-ding, they keep a... hitting that my price way up. My price is certainly much higher. Sales tax of about 3,300, which is arguably accurate, and the $3,000 rebate came off. Again, he didn't say, the salesperson didn't say this is the Jeep rebate, this to land is Chrysler Jeep Dodge rebate, he just took

off a rebate. Kind of making you believe it was the manufacturer, it was the dealer rebate. It's not the dealer rebate. So if the dealer is giving you the rebate, his profit isn't changing. He's not giving you a better price from him. The manufacturer is lowered the price

and therefore the cost of the vehicle to the dealer was lowered too. So he's just making as much as if there was no rebate. Then he says, my real selling price, I don't even believe this. My real selling price was $48,000.

985, which is $46,655 off MSRP, with the help of a Jeep factory rebate. Oh, here's the outdoor. The outdoor was $52,740, and there you have it. Bruce pointed out the Vatlin plus item on the worksheet priced at $1690. He explained that he could remove this, would then have to subtract the total savings of rebates. We recommended this product from. I could take off the $1690, but then I'd have to take off.

off the $4,000 discount and the $3,000 rebate. That didn't make sense. He went on to explain that the Vatlin plus coverage lasts for as long as I own the car, although it is non-transferable. Bruce also demonstrated how it works on his app, which I found impressive. I'm not sure what meant by this, especially as a parent.

She liked it, Agent Lightning liked it. When Bruce inquired about the time frame of my decision, I responded that I've been considering a gladiator for quite some time. I was waiting for the right moment to discuss this with my partner. Bruce was not pushy in the least. That's a real credit there and expressed his anticipation of hearing from me soon. So the whole thing was on what I said before about too many jeeps and more discounts and rebates. But what wasn't in character, which is a positive for this dealer, no pressure.

No, the price is only good today, or I won't really give you my final price, shop around, come back, I'll beat the price. That's old school. So for Vatlin, Jeep, in Vero Beach, the salesperson was intelligent, educated, knowledgeable, polite person. So you've got to give Bruce, was that his name? Yeah, Bruce, credit for what he did. And prices have gone up with jeeps. That hasn't changed. I'm dead.

That's true. Okay. Well, I'm still waiting for some grades to come in, but I have an I think it's going to be an unpopular opinion. I'm going to give them a C-minus. I don't think they don't get credit for a good price. That's because nobody wants to buy the jeeps. And so they have a great rebate from Stalantis,

and then they have, you know, the dealership is discount. him because they're sitting on his lot. So he's not doing out of the goodness of his heart. I didn't like, there's one thing that went, and I just made a joke about it a minute ago, and that was about taking off the Vatlin plus

on the worksheet, the 1690. And it said, he explained he could remove this, but then he would have to subtract the total savings and rebates. And I can't imagine what universe that not buying the deal

installed options is going to disqualify you from getting a factor rebate. So that sounds like a bunch of... Only from a profit perspective. It's not a logical, real... Right. So they don't get that. It's still passable, I think, a little bit below it. C minus from May. And we just got another grade that came in.

C for confusion, but we keep them here. So a C for the Jeep. Ah, I've got Kirk in West By God, Virginia, says, Vatland, a whale of a deal, not so much. So I set my waypoint to a non-Vatlin plus dealer. My hocus-pocus, no-pressure grade, is a solid D-minus. Very brave, but I believe you. Johnny D. Freidly says, D. Sorry, the gladiator is in the top ten for high inventory.

much money. Brian said Latko, D for Do Not Buy. Tom Steckle, D plus. 1690 for worthless addendums and dealer fees, not as bad as Napleton. Tim Gilliland, Vatlin Plus, where do I sign? C minus. Give me five bucks, D minus for giving me a rebate to turn around to put all the add-ons to make the price close to the MSRP. Mark Anderson, a lot of questionable numbers flying around there, C-minus. Rocky Blocketeel, C-minus. We've seen much worse. Mark Smith, C-minus?

Stu, it seems they're agreeing with you. I thought I was going to be the odd man out, but I'm glad, yeah. I think you're right in there, and I'm going to agree with you, C-minus on it. But I still would want to know what is Waypoint? Is this a tent or is it a navigation? What is that thing? Because when I looked up that tent, it was $180. And that was from an accessory website.

But anyways, then that whole Vatlin Plus thing, I mean, what is this thing? What's included in it? But I'll go with the C-minus and say, hey, I bet if you beat them up, you could get rid of that waypoint, get rid of the Simonyes, get rid of the Vatlin Plus, and still get your rebates, and I bet you could get a good price out of that one. Probably, and also you could get rid of the wackadoodles. And they've got a lot of those gladiators, so they want to sell them. Here's something.

I'm not finished. Here's something that we can learn from the Chauten Report, too. And we talk about a lot of jeeps. There's a lot of jeeps out there, folks. Agent Lightning went in, and at least in terms of the mystery shopping report, hadn't shopped and compared, and she went in person. That's not the way you want to buy a Jeep today. The way you want to buy a Jeep today is let your fingers do the walking on your PC or smartphone and let your fingers call, email, text, a whole bunch of Jeep dealers.

I have a feeling that you can get a heck of a good price on a Jeep today. But you, when you go into the lion's den, you give up a lot of your flexibility and the typical person isn't going to do too well in the lion's den. Don't go into the lion's den. Stay home and the safety of your office at home or your living room wherever, your PC, your smartphone. And go to 10 Jeep dealers. You can go 100 miles away. Get the year-make model, get the exact MSRP, so you're comparing apples and apples, and go to 10 different Jeep dealers and say, look, this is what I want to buy.

I'm a serious buyer. I will take delivery of this as soon as I get the lowest price, if yours is the lowest price, and you can go on to communicate to them. If you don't give me a price, you'll never hear from me again. If you do give me a price, there's a chance you're going to lose my business to someone that gives me a lower price. Give me an Althador price that I can write a check for on this Jeep, Wrangler, or whatever I'm buying, to the specific one, MSRP, this MSRP, your best price on this vehicle, and if it's the lowest, I'll come and buy it today. So what's your grade, Earl?

I'm going to give me a C. I could do a C minus, I could do a C plus. I'm going to give me to see. Bruce, I like Bruce, and I like Bruce that he didn't push. I think a lot of what happened, that Lord of the grade was the dealer policy, and I think he got an honest guy. They're a hardworking guy working on commission.

So I give me a C. I'd give me an average. Well, Bruce, Bruce, you know, Bruce isn't going to be making my car payment. So with that said, there's so much confusion here. I give him a D. And I want to know, Rick, is there 18-inch granite wheels to come with this vehicle? Or is that an add-on? That could be part of it. Granite, meaning the color, 18-inch...

The granite crystal aluminum wheels. Yeah. I got a couple of those here. John Strind says, D, not a failing grade because of the lack of pressure. Excuse me. but all the options and fees could have led them to an F. Negan 1 says, D for me, no buy. And Regina Downing, C for courtesy, and surprised the manager wasn't called over.

Well, that's good or bad. You know, when you're playing the back-and-forth game, manager comes in, sometimes two managers. I mean, the old-school, rock'em, sock-um car dealers really working over pretty good. My C was just because it was average in my opinion, but I respect all those grades. Can I brag a little bit? My ego gets stroked every time I get quoted in national publications. And there's an article in today's Wall Street Journal. It was actually yesterday online, and it was a big article on how to negotiate to buy anything.

And they included cars in there. When they quoted me, the advice I gave to the Wall Street Journal reporter, her name was Nora Eckert. And she's actually looking to buy a car. And so she took particular interest in what I told her, and she was talking about her trade-in. And I said, remember, don't tell them that you have a trade-in when you're looking to buy the car. I'm holding up the page in the Wall Street Journal. It's called The Complete Guide to Hagling, and it's in the exchange section of today's Wall Street Journal. And Earl's quoted on B4, I believe, isn't it, from B4?

So heed this, if you're buying a car, is to be sure that you don't reveal the fact that you have a trade, because he'll hold back on the trade or over-allow you on the trade, they will play games with the trade. If you don't have a trade, they're going to have to give you their best price, or they should give you their best price. With a trade, it might not be. And she loved the fact that I told her

the vernacular car dealers called that stealing the trade. And every car dealer always tries to steal the trade. And if you have a customer that you could easily sell the new car to and you got yourself a $2,000 profit, if you steal the trade by bringing you in $1,000 below the real wholesale value, now you get a $3,000 profit.

So your 25% of $3,000 is $750 on $2,000. It's only $500. So the salesperson, when he knows you have a trade, is going to be a little bit harder to bargain with to come down on the... It might seem like he's coming down, but he's not coming down because he's going to steal your trade. Anyway, I really hope that Nora Eckert when she buys the, I'm sure she's not going to tell them

about the fact that she has a trade. If she does have a trade, I don't know if she has a trade. But Wall Street Journal today, interesting article. And also shows negotiation on a lot of different other areas. Said car dealers were in the middle in terms of difficulty to negotiate with the most difficult was method. and very difficult to negotiate with hospitals and doctors, I guess. Okay.

Yeah, definitely was an interesting article. Jonathan, how much time do we have left? Okay, great. Hey, before Rick goes on, I just wanted to mention to everybody, you know, you think that car prices are keeping inflation high, auto insurance. Boy, I'll tell you what. We used to discuss auto insurance an awful lot back in the day. But I think this is worthy of, you know, mentioning it again, and your rates are on the way up more than you would ever think.

And if you have the same policy, you know, if you're with Allstate and all these other places and you've been with them for, as Alan would say, for 25 years, you really need to check your policy and you really need to check your rate. because unbeknownst to you, they can change very, it's like an insidious duration. They just slip that in and you don't even know that your rate has been increased. So I wanted to mention that. And that was in the USA Today if you want to take a look at it. Auto insurance cause on the rise. Now, Rick. mentioning Lucid earlier, Neakin 1, his hometown, is where Lucid is apparently built.

He says, they recently just laid off 1,300 employees from Lucid. So, yeah, that company may be having some issues there. And that may be something to consider for the idea of purchasing a Lucid. Well, that's their living about Lusin. Oh, about Lusin, Lusin. Folks, we've had a great time here this morning. and we thank all of you for tuning in, calling, getting on Facebook, YouTube. You are an important part of the show, and I want to remind everyone to tune in next week

because we are going to introduce a new addition to our show from 8 until 10, and it will be about Big Dog Ranch. The last time you'll hear that, Rick Barkin. One more time. We'll have a real dog. One more time. Okay, so stay tuned next week the same time Saturday morning at 8 a.m. We'll be right here for you.

Thank you and have a great weekend. Have a great holiday weekend.