Earl Stewart on Cars - 06.17.2023 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Subaru of South Tampa

Episode Date: June 17, 2023

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning travels to the Tampa area to visit a local Subaru dealer to see what they have on the lot and how much over sticker they will charge for a brand new 2024 Subaru Outback crossover. 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. To purchase Earl’s book, “Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer”, go to www.earlsbook.com. This will forward to Earl’s Amazon page to complete your purchase. All proceeds from the book go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. For more information or to adopt the dog you have seen today or any of their other dogs, please visit their website at www.bdrr.org. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

Good morning. I'm Earl Stewart. I welcome you to Earl Stewart on Cars, a live talk show all about how to buy, lease, maintain, or repair your car without being ripped off by a car dealer. With me in the studio is Nancy Stewart, my wife, co-host, and a strong consumer advocate, especially for our female business. We also have Rick Kearney, an expert on how to keep your car running right. I dare you to ask a question that Rick can't answer about the mechanics or electronics of your car. Also with us is my son, Stu Stewart, our LinkedIn CyberSiber. 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 again, everybody. This is Earl and Cars. This is Earl Live. You just heard our recorded introduction. And we're pretty much up to speed this morning. We've got Stu coming in. We got Rick to my right. the certified diagnostic master technician, very impressive, and he is very impressive.

He knows about everything there is to know, mechanically, electronically, and I said throwing computerized about automobiles. Got Nancy Stewart, my co-host, and also the founder of the show with me many years ago, my wife, and the female advocate. So we're up to full speed here. But every show is getting more exciting to us. We have a new feature. If you haven't tuned in for a couple of weeks, we're going to have toward the end of the show around 9.30, we're going to have the Big Dog Ranch Rescue Dog of the Week.

Very special feature. And we will introduce a doggy that is needing a loving home. And we'll have the camera on him and we'll describe him and ask you to help us find a home for the dog. So that'll be in the second half of the dog. show and of course the major event I sometimes I forget to mention it because we do it every week and we kind of take it for granted which we shouldn't mystery shopping report something very unusual some people would say scary some people

would say stupid if you listen to the show and you listen to the mystery shopping report you know what I'm talking about we actually named the names of dealerships around the country. We sometimes go out of state. We're venturing pretty far. We're in Tampa. The latest mystery shopping report was a Subaru dealership in Tampa. So we're stretching out. Now we're in South Florida. We're in North Palm Beach actually, Palm Beach County. And when we first started out, that was about it. But True Oldies has expanded radically the True Oldie stations around South Florida. We're on most of them. So we're reaching way down.

to South Florida. And of course, that mystery shop, Agent Lightning, she wanders a lot. She wanders out of the state sometimes. And wherever she is, she does a mystery shop. Very interesting. It tells you exactly what you are likely to expect if you go into this car dealership. And then we write it up, put it in our earluncars.com, blog. You can check the archive, and you can get recommended car dealerships. These did better. These did worse. The ones that did worse, we say, don't buy a car there. And the ones that did better, we say, consider it, but still be careful. And the essence of the show, and I know you regular listeners hear me say this too often,

and you already know our phone numbers and our tax numbers and the rest of it. But a lot of folks are new. We're gaining more and more listeners. We're growing quite fast, and a lot of this is on streaming Facebook. And YouTube, YouTube is our big gun. And, by the way, Rick Kearney is the pilot for the YouTube. He watches the monitor. He watches the YouTube posting.

He sees what you say. And votes on the mystery shop, we get more votes over YouTube than anyplace else. So, YouTube.com forward slash Earl on Cars. Facebook.com forward slash Earl on Cars. And, of course, you could just check us out in our archives on any podcast. We have podcasts of all the shows archived. A lot of ways to get to us. But we like the telephone, and I know that's old-fashioned,

but we have some personalities out there that are really, really interesting and very informed. The regular callers, especially, but we like new callers. And Nancy, by the way, will explain why we especially like female new callers in a minute. But our call-in number is 877. 7-7-960-99-60, and I believe we do have a caller, so I'm going to shut up and turn the mic over to Nancy. Thanks for repeating the telephone number to everyone, and just in case you didn't jot it down,

it is 877-960-960. You can text us at 772-497-6530. Speaking of personalities, we have Howard calling in, and he is a regular caller, and he is a regular caller, and he enjoys the show every Saturday. Welcome, Howard. Hi, Howard. Hello, Howard. Are you there?

Good morning. I hope you're all doing well. Yes. That's great. The electric Ford, Tesla, BMW, Volkswagen, and Mazda will remove the AM radio from new electric cars. Okay, now, Toyota is not doing this. I believe it's because of interference. Can you explain why Toyota is not doing this and all the others are doing it?

Howard, that's a really hard question. It's a management decision. It's a every manufacturer has to decide for themselves. A lot of people, a certain percentage of the market, don't even think about AM radio anymore. Now, it's still used for emergency notifications and emergency services, so there's the argument on the other side. It depends, I think, of the demographics of the auto manufacturer. If you have younger buyers, these younger buyers, a lot of them probably have never heard AM radio. They're streaming everything they want.

By the way, if they want AM radio, they can stream it. So my guess would be if you have an older group like Buick has older listeners. Obviously, the electric cars like Mercedes and Rolls-Royce have older listeners. they probably want to hang on. Toyota is kind of in the middle. They're not young, they're not old. But it becomes a study of what is going to help us sell more cars. Everything that an auto manufacturing does boils down to one thing. If we do this, are we going to sell more or less cars? Are we going to make more or less money? So that's the best answer I could give you. I know it's not a very specific one, but that's all I can tell you.

Okay, one other thing I read, that Toyota is developing an EV with a manual transmission. Now, I don't understand why everybody... A simulated manual transmission. What do you mean by a simulator? There's no actual gears. There's not going to be a transmission in it. It's an electric car, but to make it fun to drive, there will be a gear shifter and motor sounds and haptic. feedback that makes it feel like you're shifting gears.

Oh, no clutch. I don't know if there's a fake clutch in there, but it's a fake manual transmission. They're doing it because you know, I mean, a lot of, you know, we hear a lot of calls. Howard, do you hear the squirrels out there on the highway? I know you do like I do. When we pulled out of the studio,

there's some guy with his I would call him straight pipes or no mufflers. Probably not. But people, that's another reason why I think people of lower IQs by these cars. That's just my personal opinion, but it's

they like to make a lot of noise and it's annoying as can be. It's the same. They, when they were kids, they were the ones that put the baseball cards in their spokes on their bike. There you go. Rick, you look like you want to say something. I'm just laughing at the whole idea of

manual transmission in an electric car. I guess I have finally grown up a little bit from my child's who days. All right, let me ask you a quick question. And I would love the idea. I love the idea of an electric car that doesn't ship

that simply goes smooth, quick, and steady, and gets the job. You have graduated. We just want things to be easy. When you're younger, that's not the name priority. It's the fun as a priority. Hey, listen, you weren't around the same age. Did you play video games or anything like that?

Some, yes. Like the racing games. They get really good. Howard, when you were a kid, we have a caller on. Howard, when you were a kid, tell me the truth, Didn't you like to have a loud-sounding car and kind of go away from the stoplight and floor it and everybody looks at you when they hear the noise?

I always had a loud-sounding car because I couldn't fix my muffler. I couldn't go into a muffler, so I used to use this stuff from the auto stores. They used to put, if you had a whole little muffler, you put this stuff on it. It would last about a month, and then we'll make noise again.

Yeah. So my cars are very noisy. But now I want to stump Rick. Rick. I had a car in 1950 that I didn't shift. Okay? Yeah.

And it didn't have a clutch. What kind of the transmission was that? Semi-automatic. Yeah, Volkswagen had that, I remember. I want to say that was one of the crisis. or torque flights maybe that had the push button

transmission for the automatic transmission. No, no. No. No. No. No. No clutch. Yeah. They had a couple of those and what's the other one I'm thinking of. I know what you're thinking of. They had one of those like a two-speed transmission. It's a

fluid drive. Fluid drive. Who made it? Fluid drive. No clutch and you just shifted. Who was the manufacturer? It was Chrysler 1950 Google is Wayfair

Dodge 1950 fluid dry No clutch And it was slow as hell So did you have to take it like back off the gas When you shifted or you just like Just shoved it in the gear I just on the break

I put it in a year And then there were Three speeds so it was sort of like a stick shift that you manually shifted it but it didn't have a clutch you had a torque converter type device that was like the Volkswagen that Earl was talking about for a little while you have a 1971 Super Beetle and that was when you put pressure on the stick

it popped it in the neutral allowed you to shift that was the torque converter yeah kind of the missing link between your automatic and your stick shift yeah that's pretty cool at that time it was called the fluid drive the fluid drive great conversation Howard we appreciate your call

we appreciate your listening every week one more thing from me as far as Ford is concerned did you hear would they reverse the decision to eliminate AM radios yeah they're going to keep the AM radio in their vehicles anyway

just a little bit of information Rick and one quick note here Tom Steckle from YouTube he says DeSoto Fire Dome had a fluid drive as well which DeSoto I believe actually came from Dodge They split off as a faction from Dodge Is that right? Interesting information Howard, thank you for calling

Thank you, have a good day Thank you. Have a great weekend I always say every week You know we appreciate all of you Without you we wouldn't have a show And you're very important to us And we thank you for listening and watching every Saturday morning from 8 until 10 o'clock,

take advantage of the phone number, 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. And don't forget, we're going to have Stevie coming in from Big Dog Ranch this morning, so you want to stay tuned for that just before the Mystery Shopping Report. And also let me get out this information for you, ladies. You're very important to us, and you've certainly helped us build a platform here. Win $50 this morning if you are the first two female callers. $50 for the first two female callers. Just give us a call at 877-9-60-99-60.

Any question at all that you want to ask, or if you just want to say hello. There's a lot of news out there, and you may have seen it this past week, so there's a lot of questions to ask. Again, that number, 877-960-99-60. Now back to the recovering car dealer. You know, there was a little conversation last week. You folks who listened to the show last week, we were talking about why Toyota named their electric car.

What does it do, the BZ. B-Z-4-X. In automotive news, there was an article about why manufacturers naming their cars so stupidly. And it seems the engineers and the designers, the tech people, they're not marketing people, but they say, I've got a great name. And, of course, if you analyze. Well, that one came from an engineer for sure. Yeah, and exactly, because it tells it precisely it's zero emissions.

But the only people that understand that are the people that gave it the name. And to market a car, you have to have a memorable name, but some of the names out there today are very forgettable. For example, let's talk about the Tiguan. Earl and I have just sat in the car driving through Palm Beach County, seeing the Tijuana. So, it depends on who you're talking to. That sounds like a body part. Tijuana. So, does everybody know how they came, how they, you know, how they came up with that name?

Yeah, it's the thing that hangs down in the back of your throat. It's a T1. We're talking the iguanas. We're talking tigers. And all of it has meaning as to how the vehicle. operates in what it can do to calm you and what it can do to accelerate you

it's a striped iguana known as a T-gwan. There you go on. Very good. I get confused by the Tesla names. I mean, honestly, I mean, we're Tesla kind of folks around here. You know what they are? You know what they are? They are, it was some little

apparently Elon Musk who's got a strange sense of humor. Yes, sexy. And so he wanted to, sexy. That's putting it mildly. Yeah, right? Model S and then the E. And he couldn't do a Model E because there was already taken, so he had to do the three back with the three for the backwards E.

But the thing that drives me crazy about Tesla is they don't have the model name on the car. And I have a hard time telling the difference between a Model Y and a Model 3. They're kind of similar. Of all the things. There's no writings on it. If you have a sense of marketing, you know how important a name is. And how the manufacturers, these geniuses, these multi-billion-dollar corporations, and they can afford to hire anybody they want.

Why do they allow these names that no one can remember? Before we go too far, I'm not going to criticize the Tesla names because somehow they became the number one. In spite of themselves, yeah. Yeah, I mean, maybe it was like it's part of the mysterious marketing. Like, what is that? There's no name on it? They talked about it, got buzz going.

But now they're the number one car manufacturer in the world, at least for now, and they could probably put the names on their cars. Yeah. That's my opinion. Exactly. Okay, Rick. Johnny Z. Freidly came in with an interesting comment here. He says, I heard that Florida passed a law that car manufacturers aren't allowed to sell directly to the consumer like Jim Farley wants to do with Electric if they have existing dealers.

Tesla and other startups can because they don't have contracts with dealers. And also dealers can't do one price or maybe they can't advertise one price. I didn't hear about that part. I heard about all the other parts. Well, yeah, I don't think, I don't think that's entirely accurate. I think they said to the manufacturer cannot set the price on the car with a dealer. And, of course, they never have been able to. The dealer can set any price he wants.

Yeah, the law was just almost, I think it was just to get some attention to it. I don't know, because it's been the law forever. And they just basically, I think, actually explicitly said you can't have. had a previous franchise contract. Yeah. It's, like Steve says, the law has been in effect for many years. And an interesting story I've told on the show before. Jim Moran, you car folks out there, everybody knows Jim Moran.

He's passed away, and he founded the distributorship for Toyota back in the late 50s, early 60s. And one of the wealthiest men on earth and Jam family now is. one of the biggest corporations in the automotive business. But he had a toilet dealership. A lot of people don't know that. He owned a toilet dealership in South Florida. And they made him sell it because it was a violation.

Back then, I'm talking about early 60s. They made them sell it because a distributor or a manufacturer cannot sell cars directly. They have to have, according to state law in Florida, In all 50 states, you have to have a dealer to sell your cars. That's how strong the dealer lobby is in the state legislatures and the federal legislature to be able to get that law into effect. So here was the Battle of the Titans now,

the manufacturers and the dealers and Jim Moran. So he went ahead and he built a Lexus dealership. Well, the law is he couldn't sell Lexus. That's J.M. Lexus in South Florida. Lexis dealership in the world. So Jim Moran lobbied the Florida legislature. There is one exception to the dealer franchise law that says only the dealers can sell cars, manufacturers can't, and that's J.M. Lexus. So there's only one in the world, or at least one of the United States. J.M. Lexus. It's owned by Jim Moran, actually, the Jim Moran group now because Jim Moran passed away.

but only dealers can sell cars. They get away with anything they want to do. Manufacturers can't tell them a lot of things, and one of those is the price. A dealer can charge you a million dollars for a car with an MSRP of $50,000 if he wants to, if he can find somebody dumb enough to pay the million dollars. Yeah, definitely happening right now today, market adjustment.

We're going to go to Stewart and Walter would like to chat with us this morning. Welcome, Walter. Good morning. I have a 2008 Toyota Yaris and the antenna mast broke in two. I've managed to tape it back together, but I was reading that either through rain or going through a car wash, there's a possibility that water could get into the headliner. Is that true? there is a slim possibility depending on the design of that if it's just a threaded on mast and the base is solid then you're okay but if the base has been cracked or damaged I would either get that fixed or try to use some sort of an epoxy or something to make sure that it's sealed so you don't get water getting in through there just Toyota still make that because the dealership I brought it to was supposed to order the part and I never heard back from them.

Now, that's a difficult situation because one of the rules is that dealers are supposed to, or actually the manufacturer, is supposed to make sure that replacement parts are available for a minimum of 10 years after the ending of that car or the ending of that part. And unfortunately, if that part was discontinued, you know, if it was from 2008 and we're in in 2023, 15 years, it may not be available any longer. Well, what I recommend you do is Google it. In fact, we'll do that for you here. Absolutely.

You want to Google that? You can find, I have found, in fact, think about these people that have antique cars. We had a, my father, the first car sold in 1937 Pontiac, we bought parts for that. And if you really dig deep and you got this, now we got artificial intelligence. and Google, you can usually find a part to just about any car. You might have to pay up for it, but you'll usually find, and sometimes even on Amazon. Any luck on the...

I wasn't Google when I was responding to someone on Facebook. I would look Google the part, but also look on eBay, and rock auto.com. And also, believe it or not, J.C. Whitney, sometimes, even as old as they are, they sometimes have sources for different parts that can be used that can repair. that as well. See, my only concern is I would prefer to have the Toyota dealer put it on such that

I don't run into a water leakage problem. Right. Well, that's probably wise, but you could buy the part if you found it. You said the dealers you called didn't have the part, but if you supply them with a part, then they'd have to charge you the labor

for the installation. So really what you're saying is the mast itself, even if it's snapped into, chances are it's not going to leak, but it's around where the connector part is could leak. Yes, if there's any cracks or damage on the base, where it's mounted on the roof there, that's what you want to look at.

As long as that part is solid and secure, then you can replace that antenna mask. You should be able to find that mask for like $10 or $12 online, and it simply threads in. If it's just the mast itself. Walter, I just Google it, and there's a number of places, including Amazon, that carry Yara's parts. So there are a lot of people like you that are having the same challenge, and there's a part out there, just a question to find the right price. Okay, and I've got another quick question.

On the top of my roof are two rubber parts that go from the windshield to the tailgate. On the left and on the right, the last time I went through a car wall, it sounded like somebody was sitting the top of the roof with a hammer, and I found out the right rubber part was separating from the paint or the roof. How do I get that back on? Just put some like a gorilla glue on there? That's called the drip, the roof drip rail molding. And what I would recommend in that case, it take a little bit of work. You may want to get someone to do. this for you, depending on how comfortable you are with DIY, but local shops or even somebody local can do it, you just pull that molding up.

Basically it's a snap in place, but you're going to want to clean the bottom surface of it and the area in the track where it needs to go. And when you put it back down at the very ends of it, you want to put some 3M type double stick tape, just say a couple inches on each end so that it will kind of have an adhesive to hold those ends down, and the rest of it will snap down in place in that railing, and that'll lock it in. But you want to make sure that those ends have got some adhesive to hold them down in, and they'll lock into place that way.

So it was designed to snap into place. Yes, but with an adhesive on each end. Okay, one thing real quick, and then I'll let you guys go. About three or four weeks ago, I saw online that GM is recalling over a million SUVs, for airbag issues. Well, that's a big, this whole airbag issue has been going on for years and years. They're jumping on the bandwagon again.

There's a fight down between an HTSA and the manufacturer of these airbags that is, they're fighting it. But it's a sad situation. They're currently building cars with defective airbags. Manufacturers are doing that. And it's just an unfortunate situation.

And it just keeps going and going and going. The NHTSA own dictate is that they will make a decision on a recall within one year. They've been talking about this particular airbag for eight years. So finally, another government agency is going after the NHTSA saying you can't be doing this. So it's a sad situation. If you're concerned about it, I would definitely, before I bought a car, I would go to safercar.org. It's say f-r-c-r-c-r.org, and you can put your VIN number in the car you think about buying.

It'll tell you what recalls are outstanding out there. But in the case of this airbag, the NHDSA, it's not issued the recall. So unless the recall has been issued, you're not going to find out. That's a sad situation. We've got to run. We've got callers holding. But thank you very much, Walter, for a call. Yes, thank you, Walter. Our number is 877-960-99-60. Remember ladies, first two new lady callers. You win yourself $50 this morning. We are going to go straight to Palm City, where we're going to talk with John, who is a regular caller. Good morning, John, and welcome.

Good morning. Speaking of obsolete parts, I want to mention that people don't know. Mercedes-Benz has a division. It's in Long Beach, California, run by Mercedes-Benz, with generally. genuine, Mercedes-Benz replacement parts. I'm talking about anything and everything. I spoke to a man that had a 77, and he couldn't get the engine bearings. He got them through them. It's Mercedes-Benz directly, but it's a separate division. 866-6-2-2-7-7. On Instagram, it's at Mercedes Classic Center,

and it's practically anything that you want over 10 years for Mercedes cars. What does that again? Give me that number then, please. 866. 866. 622. 5277. Well, thanks. That's really interesting. That is the genuine Mercedes authentic parts and replacement parts, and it goes, you know, over the 10-year limit, which they're required that you dealer to keep. Well, how smart that is.

That is really great. And it's directly Mercedes parts. Now, one of the question I have, too, the world was in business, and he remembers. We were going crazy in the 80s, maybe late 70s, on sunroofs. I mean, it was nothing but a headache. You would a dealer would order a car, and there were companies that would actually install the sunroof.

There was leaked problems. It was unbelievable. But it was a trend. Everybody in their grandmother, instead of a convertible, which didn't make anymore. They wanted the sunroof. Well, one company is ahead of all of it now. It was just announced that a Prius Prime has a solar-powered sunroof, $610 extra.

When you buy the car, the basic price on that car is $32.350. And it has the electric solar power, which, you know, turns into, it could, may your, actually into your system or any other use that you want on it. And it was just newly announced last week. It's called Prius Prime, $610 extra solar-powered sunroof. Wow. Well, you always have something for us, John. That's just amazing.

But I do recall back when everybody really wanted a sunroof, even people, you know, they purchased a vehicle with a sunroof, but then there were the crazies who decided they wanted a sunroof put in their car. and there was nothing but problems. It was a company called American Sunroof in California. The stock went crazy, the company went crazy. They were putting them in for the manufacturers on sedans and coops. That only kind of fell out of favor in the 2000s.

There's a company down in South Florida called Sun Auto Tops, and they did all the sunroofs for all the dealers down here. And, yeah, we had problems depending on the car and how big the roof was. It's like they'd have these, they'd cut a big old roof, a whole one, and yeah, there were a lot of comebacks, as we say, in the business with those. But they branched out into other accessories, dropped the sunroofs, and now they're just an accessory company. Well, Toyota beat Elon Musk, because why didn't he think of a solar-powered sunroof?

Well, you know, John, Toyota had a solar roof on the Prius a long time ago. I didn't know that. Yeah, it had actually only one real function, that solar roof would power a fan that would circulate air through the car so when your car was sitting outside in the Florida sunshine it would stay about 15 to 20 degrees cooler inside yeah it looked pretty neat and I'm looking at this thing so this we're talking about sunroost now this is a literal sunroof this is the Prius thing so yeah it's I don't think it opens up but it's um but it does charge the battery it trickle charges the batteries I don't know how rapidly it does but looks pretty cool

it's or you can order it now for $610 extra it is a $610 upgrade yes John but you can order it and you would probably get delivery about three years from now it's the slowest produced and all of them the ones well it's all over in California there are most of the allocations of these like really tech things are going to the emission states so um and it's a low production thing anyway so it's a really long lead time okay like I'll pull customer calls in now a year and a half waiting for Toyota. Yeah, we, if somebody calls and for something like that, we talk about other options, but give them an honest answer.

It does take a long time. All right. Well, it's good to know about this Mercedes-Benz because they're genuine parts and they're available. All right. That's really good info. Thank you so much. That's 866-622-5-277 Mercedes parts.

And it's on Instagram, too. Is it? Okay, very good. Yes, MB Classic Center. M.B. Classic Center. We enjoy your information every week, John. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you guys.

You're welcome. We're going to go to Fitz, and he's calling us from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Fitz. Yes, hello. I have a question about an issue with my vehicle. Okay. Okay. Yeah, it's a 2009 Hyundai Sonata.

And on the dashboard, the lights, and the ESC electronic stability control light stays on. Before, it used to go off. When you first start up the car, it would come on and then go off. But now it's just staying solid on the dashboard, saying EPS off. It's broken. And there's a switch on the left side on the lower section of the dashboard. when it's on and you try to, I'm sorry, when it's off, it says off on the dashboard. I try to push it to turn it on, but it's not turning on.

From my little research I did online, that that could be like a switch or something like that close to the brake pedal or under the brake pedal. There's a lot of different problems that can cause the stability control to shut down like that. Basically what happens is anytime that the computer sees a malfunction, whether it's a speed sensor in the brake light switch, in the actuator unit itself for the brakes, anything like that, the system's automatically going to go into what's called a backup mode, where it shuts down the electronics portion so that you still have normal hydraulic brakes. but the whole stability control and the anteloc brake system shuts itself down so that it doesn't cause further problems. You'd want to get that checked out by either someone that's very familiar with Hyundai or at a Hyundai dealership. And it sounds like an expensive diagnosis of so many possibilities. What would you guess the diagnostic time charge would be?

Most places are going to start at a base thing of one. one hour and that includes cooking up the scan tool pulling the codes and getting a basic idea usually when you pull the codes from the computer on it it's going to give you a pretty definite idea of what the problem is 20 150 bucks about 120 to 150 yeah for the initial diagnosis and and that's just the initial diagnosis which might not fix it and they have to keep on going so you have to ask yourself you know how much do you want to spend on this 2009 Hyundai yeah it's worth it for the initial diagnosis because if it's just one little sensor that say the sensor's a hundred dollars and another 150 to put it in then that would usually that'd be pretty worthwhile and a lot of places if you

have the diagnosis done and you have the repair done there as well they either waive that fee or where they put the diagnostic fee towards the repair of the car. Right, right, right, yeah. Well, it's something that I'm definitely, you know, but I'm not going to try to spend a huge amount of money, but I'm going to get it fixed because it bothers me with it being on, you know what I mean? Right, and it is a good safety. It's something that safety concerns in the car,

breaks especially, Anilac brakes to me. Safety concerns are one of the first things that I look at and say, you really want to concentrate on getting that taken care of because if it's the radio or something like that, hey, that's a nice thing, but safety concerns to me are a number one factor. Right, right, yeah. Anyway, thanks for the information.

Thanks for your help. Great show. You're very welcome, thank you. Look forward to hearing from you. Stay in touch. 877-960. Don't forget that we have a special guest this morning and that's from the Big Dog Ranch,

rescue and his name is her name is uh is it her stevie stevie text her name because there was a little confusion earlier him her his she anyway she'll be here and she is going to uh well dazzle us with her presence so state's room for that again the number is 877 960 9960 and you can text us at 772-4976530 and don't forget ladies don't forget 50 dollars for the first two new lady callers back to the recovering car dealer let's check on our text we're going to text over those too yeah i got one from anne-marie um of course good morning every so often i'll read an article and it will mention paddle shifters i can't say that i've encountered them what are paddle shifters and what are they doing?

What are they used for? That's what memory. Aren't they those things on the steering wheel that you can kind of like shift through the gears for the people like to drive fast and go of room? Exactly that. Okay, so there are little levers on either side of the steering wheel and you can

shift like you're driving a manual like we were talking about earlier. It's kind of a fun thing. It's for sports car enthusiasts. For 16 years old, that's a lot of fun. Room. The Toyota MR2 spider that we had out for a few years, just a little bit back. That little convertible. There was one model of it that actually was a manual transmission with paddle shifters up on the wheel, but you had no clutch.

Yes, I remember this. So that when you were driving it and you hit the upshift, it would hydraulically and electronically apply the clutch, shift it to the next year up and release the clutch to let you go. It did it all electronically. And it was basically a copycat of the F1 racing, the F1 series race cars. And that's how they shift? That's how they shift. It's with paddle shift up on the steering wheel.

There go, Amory. If you like to put an order in for a car with paddle shifters, it's a four-year wait. I'm just kidding. All right. All right, we have another text here. It's from Roy in Denver, unless we have a call. just double check. I'm good. Thank you.

Roy says Toyota's been behind the power curve with respect to supplying inventory to their dealers. Yep. Have you seen inventory rates picking up lately to reconcile from the shortage? A little bit. Not much, though. I mean, more compared to other manufacturers. And we learned something just recently. It had to do with, like, the chip deals that the manufacturers were doing with the chip suppliers.

And I think Toyota refused to get kind of bullied into these. long-term chip agreements and wanted to keep these shorter ones because it allows them to be more price flexible. So it's a strategic decision and some of that has to do with why it's slower to get back up to speed. But the good news, and this is according to insiders at Toyota, that it will in the coming years when they get seriously into the EV market, which they plan to in 2025 and 2026 to have a significant, like a structural price advantage because of their deal with the chip manufacturers. And there you go.

You got it from an insider right there. But in general, the whole, if you look at the industry, the supply, day supply, we call it, the car dealers call it. There's more cars on the ground now than they have been in a long while. So we talked about the day supply thing, like GM manufacturers, those dealers have about a 40-day supply on the lot. Toyota still have under a 10-day supply. It's like, you know, six or seven-day supply. And there are a couple manufacturers out there that have 60-day supplies. A Jeep is one of them. Oh, yeah. I picked a bad example for me. When you're shopping for a car, be sure you get that

information in terms of availability. Big inventory means lower prices. So if that's going to be a factor in what car you buy, then you're going to shop around and see which cars have the higher inventories, then you can negotiate a better price than if you go to a... If you, if you If you've got a dealer that's only got 10 cars on the ground and you want to buy one of those 10 cars, you're going to pay through the nose thousands of dollars probably over MSRP. All right. Let's go back to the phones. Yes.

Thank you, Stu. Hey, before we go back to the phones, I have a question for the ladies. How likely are you to buy a Tesla, an electric vehicle? Recently this year, Elon has cut the prices six times. How likely are you to purchase an affordable electric vehicle, ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers? Give us a call. Plenty of time, 877-960, 9960. We are going to go back to the phones, and we're going to talk to Howard in Delray.

Good morning, Howard, and welcome. Good morning. Thank you for calling Errol on cars. Oh, I bought a Toyota Camry, and it's from an auction. I bought it from a private person. He said that it has to be inspected or it should be registered. Not true in Florida. There is no state inspection.

It used to be many years ago, but Florida does not do that. Now, some of the other states do. Maybe that's why the confusion. Yeah. He said that he has to bring it down to Miami. make sure the numbers are right. That sounds that you're talking to, it sounds like you're talking to a con artist,

or somebody who is really severely confused. Yeah, that's not accurate. On this state. Be real careful. Have you already bought the car and paid the money? Yes, yeah. There's no, there's no state law. You know, why he would want.

To register, you just bring the title and your sales paperwork to the DMV. There's a remote chance of some municipality, may have passed a law, which would be silly if they did, but it's possible, you know, West Palm Beach or Miami Springs or someone's down. I don't think Ron DeSantis would allow any other. But I don't think so.

Do you have the title? He has the title. He was going to bring him down. Okay, get the title. You've given the money? Yeah, I gave him the money. Get your title. That's your number one priority above all.

I could do it myself. Yeah, get the title and rents through the car. and don't let them tell you any other. Yeah, it sounds to me. I agree with Stu, now that you told me that you paid the money and don't have the title, you better bring this to a head quickly because it could be a flimflam, yeah.

Be careful. Bring your buddy with you. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. I appreciate it. Okay. Okay. Good talking.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. 877-960-9960, and we're going to talk to Lance, who's giving us a call from Tennessee. Good morning, Lance. Well, Earl, bad news on Earl Stewart Day 24. Several of the committee members have been arrested.

And we're trying to get bail up right now. There you go. Were they sampling on that white lightning again? Earl, first of all, let me just say, One thing that I listen to some to Zach and Ray, and they talk a lot about inquiring about the buy rate when you go to see a Joe to purchase a car. I experimented just a little bit with that, and I couldn't find one dealer, not one. Because unless I'm wrong, I don't see that it's something. it had to be disclosed?

I honestly don't know if it's required. It's not required to be disclosed. They can say, hey, this is what we're selling or this loan for, this interest rate, and take it or leave it. Yeah, most people don't even know about the buy rate. You're a step ahead because you know that's the case. And typically there's at least a 1% spread sometimes more than that, which can make a whole lot of money for the dealer for like an 84-month loan, 1% spread. That's thousands of dollars, typically. But, yeah, I don't think they're required to do that.

I mean, if, you know. If they're required, it would be under the truth and lending law, and the truth of the lending law does not require it. If there's some other law that was passed to the state, that I don't know about it's possible. But there's no federal reason that the dealer has to disclose the buy rate. I just think they're wrong, you know, not buying if that's not disclosed. it's not being disposed.

Yeah. Now there's other, like a lot of new car dealerships if they're selling a vehicle and they're financing it with like an incentive of a manufacturer's, you know, subsidized rate. Like, you know, you see, you don't see these days because interest rates are so high. But back in the days of normal interest rates,

you'd see like 0% financing, 0.9. Those buy rates are not even in the picture there. That's just something that's subsidized. But right now, it's a very important thing to, if you can get that information, that would be pretty good. But you can, you help yourself just the same by getting multiple quotes for your financing anyway, by getting credit union, your bank, another dealer. You always got to get the credit union rate and your bank rate. The dealer can play all sorts of games. It's not worth getting into a discussion with a dealer about financing.

Go to the bank, go to the credit union, that's where you're going to get the best rate. years ago, back when I was an evil dealer, one of my tricks was I would actually offer an extremely low rate to the customer, lower than the bank rate. I'd advertise if the bank rate was 5%, I'd offer 4%. Then I'd go to the bank, and I would pay them money, and I'd buy the rate down by the bank and add the cost of my buying the rate down to the price of the car. so it's a dealer's game and they know the rules it's like going into a poker game and you look around the room you don't know who the sucker is that means you're the sucker so don't play the dealer's game go straight to the bank go straight to the credit union and if a guy is trying to whack you over the head with a big spread you'll see it because

he's going to have his rate's going to be much higher than the other quote you're getting Carl and Nancy please don't lose sleep over this over the depiction of something of our committee members. We'll get them back. It might be 60 to 90 days after they serve just a little bit of time, but we'll get them back on the committee soon. I'll keep my eye on Earl and Nancy, and I'll counsel them and give them all the comforting and sympathy they need.

Thank you so much, too. We knew we could depend on you. Lance, thank you so much for calling. We've got, like, so many calls backed up, and we appreciate your call. And thank you for listening, and we love hearing from you. from Tennessee. You've encouraged a lot of callers out of Tennessee

to call us, so we appreciate that. We are going to go to Jersey Mike. Jersey Mike in West Palm Beach. Jersey Mike, that's a submarine sandwich. Yeah, I'd like to get the stickball special and a bag of chips, please. I'm waiting, I'm ready. Hi, Jersey, Malik.

Hi, Jersey, are you there? Yeah, I'm here. Hey, Jersey, Mike, welcome. Or should I call you a mic? yeah that's good listen i uh how you fix for subs i want to compliment earl stewart okay i bought a 19 uh about a 2018 uh kea from him with 11 000 miles on it and he gave he he impressed himself at that time of the dealer for some reason coincidentally handed me the crossbacks on that car now i ran that up to 33 000 miles and i gave it away

a wedding gift to my daughter up in Tennessee where I'm traveling up to today Bali even or not. In any case I didn't put anything into that car and that air conditioner could give you a frostbite okay? I mean it was perfect. Thank

Kia. Earl didn't build that car. I have to compliment Earl Stewart because they do a thorough inspection of what they're selling out of the lot there and I've been very very happy with that even though he said you'd be better off buying cars not in Fort Lauderdale, Miami, or West Palm Beach,

but you should go north if you want to get a good bar. But it doesn't matter. I got to compliment him, I think. Thank you very much. Thank you. We're in the middle of the war. We're down here. It's not easy being the only honest guy in town.

You're right. For sure. But let me begin to my technical question, okay? Now you're not going to believe what I got it with this one. I got a 1995 Cadillac, big car, about 4,500 pounds, okay, all metal, no plastic, like my 2014 AST that I bought that stuff, mostly plastic, okay? And I've always been a Cadillac man, or I've got over 2 million miles under my rear, and what I used to do is an entrepreneur many years back. But I bought this, and that's a collector's item today. Now, it was on my pad, alongside my house, behind the fence,

and somebody broke into it when I was away, and they tried to steal it. I'm sorry, it wasn't on a pair, but it was on the front of my fence in my driveway. And they broke the column. Now, I had that car towed to Auto Nation here in town, and their report was, sorry, can't help you, it's too old. So far as repairing it, we're putting a whole new steering column in. Now, I'm in a real deliver because I don't know where to find it. My insurance company will back me and pay for it if I can find it.

And there's no, I've looked all over. I've gone to Rock Auto. I've gone to LQT or LQB, whatever it is. Yeah, like LKQ. Yeah, all these different places. And if there was a junkyard to have it, I'd go and take it out because I am a motorhead, all right? I've been not since I was 17 years old.

I'm 77 now. So I've seen a lot, you know, during that time. Professional restore maybe? No. Mike, let us do this. Let us research that for you. We've got five callers, and we don't have the answer. But we'll get the answer, and if you'll give your contact information to Jeremy and the booth,

we'll call you today or tomorrow and try to get you that information. Yeah, I really appreciate that. And, you know, Earl again, I want to compliment you. You got one of the best deals ever going, I think. Well, thank you very much. Hey, Jeremy. Cadillac Society.com. You have five callers holding here.

That's Jersey, Mike? Yep. Cadillac Society.com. Check that website. I will. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jersey, Mike. Give us a call again.

We'll follow up on that and get that information from, not Jeremy, but Mike in the control room. We're going to go straight to Mark, who's been holding in Pompano. Thank you for your patience. and Brenda will be right with you and Marty also and you others.

Good morning, Mark. Good morning. How are you? Welcome. Good. I've got a drivability issue. I got a 97 Tacoma V6. $197,000. 97? Uh-huh.

And keep getting a check engine. Check it out and it keeps free enough for the idle control. and I've had a lot of work done on it to try and get rid of this code do intake manifold and I even had it at

one of your other Toyota dealers and they had it for almost two weeks they said they took out the computer and they tried to clean up the computer and they could never get anything right it runs fine but every now and then I get that I don't control the check engine light.

And have you had the throttle body replaced? Yes, throttle bodies were replaced. Hmm. Because the 97 Tacoma used an idle air control valve on the bottom of the throttle body. And this basically would duty cycle to let air past the throttle plate so that it can control the idle speed. If that little valve has gotten dirt or debris in it, that usually was what would trigger that code. And they were very difficult to clean out because anything that you sprayed in there would just cause horrible issues with them. So we usually wound up recommending replacing them.

What would happen is somebody would go in and try to clean the throttle body with that butterfly plate, and they would spray too much chemical in there, and it would drip down into that idle air control. valve and gum it would have to be replaced but if they've replaced that already and you're still having an issue then it's either got to be the wiring to the computer or the computer itself and I would suspect more likely it's something to do with the wiring maybe a rat has gotten in and chewed on one of the wires causing just a little high resistance in there what they're going to do is somebody's got to go ahead and do a voltage drop test across that

wiring to try to figure out what's going on there. Are you talking about the spark plug wires? No, it's the wires to the idle air control valve and to the throttle body. Okay, now last week I had it, I was getting a really bad pulsating when I drive it with the RPMs. I took out the air cleaner. The air cleaner was really messed up. I put in a new air filter thing. It seemed to run five. So, I don't know, like I said, I'll plug it in the check for the code. Once you clear the code, it'll run fine for a while, and then it'll start up again. Mark, listen, let's do this.

We'll have to call you after the show. Rick can call you, but we've got five callers here. And my only, my part in comment would be. You need to rethink hanging on to that car truck that's a quarter-century old. I mean, everything wears out. You've been driving that thing, or someone's been driving it for 25 years, and you're just going to be pouring good money after bad if you keep on trying to fix that. But we'll talk about it, or we can talk about it privately after the show.

We've got five calls better to get to. You can leave your information with Mike in the control room, and he'll pass it along to us. we definitely appreciate it You're quite welcome Thank you so much for calling Earl on cars Sorry to rush you Okay have a great weekend We are going to go to

We're going to go to Brenda in Boca Good morning Brenda Good morning, how are you? Thank you so much for your patience Are you a first time caller? I am Congratulations, you won yourself $50 this morning And if you stay on the line

after we're finished talking, the control room will get your information. His name is Mike, and he'll get your information as contact information so that he can pass it along to me, and I can write that check-out and send it out to you. Again, congratulations and thanks for helping us build a platform here for the ladies. What can we do for you this morning, Brenda? I've recently purchased a 2017 Lincoln MKX, and I was hoping you all could recommend a good, reputable Ford or Lincoln dealer in the Boca area. We can recommend for sure one, if you don't mind driving about 20, 30 minutes up north to North Palm Beach, and there is Mullinac's Ford, North Lake. Boulevard in Palm Beach Gardens, Lake Park, North Palm Beach area.

It's only about 30 minutes from you. They are one of the true honest dealers. They consistently pass with flying colors and our mystery shopping reports, and we never hear complaints about them. Family owned and with a lot of integrity. No dealer fees, too, if you want to buy a car. North Lake Boulevard, yeah. It's Mullinax, M-U-L-L-L-I-N-A-X.

A-X, okay. Super, thank you. And would you recommend possibly getting an extended warranty on a Lincoln warranty? I would be careful. I would spend the money that you're contemplating on a warranty and just have a really good technician, maybe at Mullinx, check the car out and see if it's in pretty good shape. Extended warranties typically don't cover the expensive problems that you have with a vehicle.

Too many of them are just to make money on and take advantage of the customer. It's a real minefield when you're buying extended warranty. So my recommendation would be no. Okay. Well, super. Thank you. I really enjoy your show and appreciate you all. Thank you, Brenda.

You know, Brenda, talking about extended warranties, I always ask what they don't cover. That's the most important question for me, what they don't cover. And the information that you got from Stu. He knows firsthand because he's right on top of the list good dealers, bad dealers. So Malinex Ford is your on North Lake Boulevard is your best bet. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate and hope you have a wonderful day. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Brenda, don't forget to pass your information along now to the control room. Okay. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. We're going to go to Marty who's holding. Thanks for your patience, Marty, in West Palm Beach.

Hi, good morning. morning. I've got a question for Stu. Since I waited 15 months for my car and then ended up not taking it, I'm waiting for the 24, will they be able to order a 24, but I want to know, can you order a car without the sunroof? I think you can order without navigation, but can you order like an XLE hybrid, Camry XLE hybrid, without a sunroof. I'll tell you, well, we'll take the price off if you promise not to use the sunroof.

Well, Earl, I want you to know for the past five cars, I've never opened up the sunroof yet. That was back when I was evil. We literally would tell the customers that it would have air conditioning. We had these Finnish, there's a Finnish colony in Lake Worth back then.

There were very cheap people, I guess in Finland, it's kind of cool, and they don't need air conditioning. So they'd come and say, I don't want the air conditioner. We'd say, listen, don't tell anybody. But if you promise not to use it, we won't charge her for the air conditioner. Yeah. I just want to know, is that there going to be a car that I got to wait three years for without a sunroof. I was sitting and listening, I knew Marty, and I had a joke prepared, but then Earl came in with a better joke, so I'll just leave it.

My serious answer is, I don't know. The joke was going to be, yes, but you'd have to take some. paddle shifters and the roll's joke was funnier um yeah talk to jason i i really don't know um some of the there's there's a lot of um confusing equipment some packages they come in a certain way and um and ultimately we can do like a special order of some sort but then it takes longer the best thing to do is talk to one of the guys in the sales department um yeah i guess you you can order 24 yet they said i mean you can get on the list it's but it's kind of like a it's just You know, if I were you, I think you almost hit the Guinness Book of waiting for a car.

I think if you do this and make it really complicated, you might be able to maybe go a couple years on this next one. Yeah. Is there any way Toyota could put me in an ad saying, you know, this guy waited 15 months? It's longer for his car than anybody that ever bought a Toyota. I think you've got a shot at that. The Guinness World Book of Venice. Who should I call? Should I call Toyota? Well, Accio, Toyota, he got demoted. And so he's got some time on his hands. They'll just call Akio Toyota. Here's the number called 8-1-800-44.

Wait, what is it, Rick? 1-800-4-33. What's the number? Oh, boy. I'm going to have to go right. Just call Jason, lady. Yeah. Can I call it directly to Japan?

Probably not. Oh, okay. Only if you speak Japanese. I can hook you up, Marty. All right. Well, thanks. I hope the next one works out. Hey, you know, we really appreciate you calling Weekend and Weekout, whether it's about you being. Wait, let me interrupt myself.

Have you been on a list before in your life? Have you been on the list? No, no. I've been on a lot of people's list. Yeah. Okay. Well, I won't tell you what a few car dealers told me in the past. Oh, boy.

When I go to make a deal. but this is a family show. Exactly. I can imagine you sound like as if that you know the deal. Yeah, that's a problem. Yeah, exactly. That's a good trait. Thanks, Marty.

You're well. Have a good weekend, everybody. You're well. Happy Father's Day. Thank you. We are going to check out some YouTube and some texts with some time we have left here. What do you got over there, Rick? Well, I got a couple comments from back when we were discussing the Sunroof issues.

Let's see, who was it here? I believe Johnny Z. Freidly mentioned T-tops as well. And Negan 1 also mentioning the T-tops, such as from the 79 Transam. If you remember, Smoky and the Bandit. I forgot all about that, yeah. Yeah. Let's see. Oh, we just got one in from Scott Hunter.

Let's see. Marty ordered a Camry previously, and the headrest was an issue. I'm assuming the model won't change. I think you should consider another model. If I were Marty, I'd be looking at the crown. Yeah. That crown is a beautiful car. Yeah, that definitely is a great piece of work.

But send it before you order it. Right. Because some people have had, there's been mixed reviews of the comfort level, depending on your size. And I forgot how big Marty is. Is there? Is there a? Yeah, I think. bigger people are having

it's harder getting in and out it's less comfortable and smaller people are finding it more comfortable but it is lower it's also lower it's not quite like an SUV either so it's a mixed bag so I've said it pretty good I don't know

yeah I think you'd see I mean I got 6,600 miles on my Avalon and it's a 2021 so I think but I'm hesitant you know I can appreciate Marty's story week in week up But we joke about it, but it's really not funny. But I can't even imagine how long I'd have to wait for a crown.

Well, we might be able to speed things up for you, Ms. Nancy. I heard that before. Okay, back to Stu. Okay, we have some anonymous feedback. I think this is in response to something that I mentioned is, do you really believe that the Toyota inventory shortages due to chip deals? According to your friends at YAA, Toyota is making more money by purposely limiting inventory to the U.S. market

and that they made more cars last year than ever. I hadn't heard that. I'm going on just the information that I got, but I'd be curious to see where that came from. I mean, in the absence of information. It's not true. Conspiracy theories kind of creep up. There's two words, tattooed on every manufacturer's chest,

it's called market share, and all the auto manufacturers go insane. to get a higher percentage of the market. And that's the reason that they, and they don't set the price on the car anyway. All they do is set the price the dealer pays. The dealer sets whatever price he wants to. And that's legislated into law in all 50 states.

So whether you pay too much or too little for a car, that's a dealer's for. There's indirectly, the manufacturer can, of course, affect the cost to the dealer. but that isn't anywhere near as offensive or dangerous to the buyer than what the dealer charges. So there's no truth in the fact that the manufacturers are holding back production. In a way, I wish they would because as a dealer for all these years, for 50 years, my problem with all the manufacturers. I've had multiple franchises, and the manufacturers in the vernacular, they shove cars down.

They call up and they say, these are the cars we're going to build, and if you don't take them, you're in trouble. You know, I've had dealers, I've had manufacturers threatened to cancel my franchise if I didn't accept cars they built. And when they over produce and you overstock cars, then you have to start slashing prices to get rid of them. And that instills the, they still, I mean, it's pretty nice in our area with our Toyota people, but outside. We heard from other dealers outside of our region that still routinely get very menacing letters when this obviously hasn't happened in the last few years, but prior to the inventory stuff, threatening, menacing letters, suggestive letters if they turned down inventory. Now, we just talked about earlier, you know, Tesla sales in the last report were up 58%. Elon Musk, Tesla's been cutting prices across the board. And he said you might not agree with a lot of things, but you got to agree.

a smart guy. And he is by cutting the prices, Nancy talked about this at the beginning of the show. By cutting the prices, he's glomping up market share. In California, the Tesla's out selling the Toyota Corolla, which is like the largest selling car

in the country. Elon has taken over the world, and by the way, I wanted to, that subject, I wanted to tell you, Earl, that Sue did text us, and she said that she's feeling a little insecure about the charging the electric vehicle. So, Sue, text us back and tell us exactly what you mean.

I don't want to assume on that text, but you said that you still feel insecure with charging the electric vehicle. She's a range anxiety. It's a thing. Is that what I mean, it is a real thing, especially people that are like uncomfortable or new to high-time. tech things, you know, it can be pretty intimidating. And then the idea that you could get stranded somewhere if you weren't charged, and it's just going to take time as people becomes more used to it. So that would apply to someone who doesn't have a charging station in their garage. Right. Yeah. There's a lot of people who don't. It's the idea that, I mean, I'll be honest with

with you, you know, like even my wife, we were, you know, talking about something like that. Then the idea of, she makes trips up, you know, out of town a lot. Yeah. And it's just It's something that, like, until it feels like there's a lot of superchargers, like the fast charging ones that are quick, that a lot of people are going to wait until that infrastructure, I think, and gets a little bit more. And you see them everywhere. Does that apply to you? Is that the reason why you're waiting not to install a charger in your garage? I have a charger in my garage. Oh, you do?

Yeah. Okay. A couple of here from on YouTube, Tom Steckle says the Toyota method is just in time so they don't tie it. up so much capital in inventories. That's what they've always said. James Fronte comes in and says, tell Stu, I'm not sold on Toyota, not being cynical and limiting production on purpose and making more expensive vehicles so they can drive up the average transaction price. Also, YAA is now known as Car Edge with Zach and Ray Shevska. Look at the amount of market share that Hyundai, Kia, and T.I.A. Messer extent, to a lesser extent. He's got a couple typos there.

Subaru and Mazda are making against the large OEMs like Toyota and Onda. And happy Father's Day, he says. Thank you. Happy Father's Day, but nope. I respect your opinion, but you're wrong. I mean, I've lived this all my life, and I can tell you, It's a fault that Toyota has and Ford and Honda. You know, the big reason that Toyota doesn't hold back production is one big word is Honda or Ford. The competition among a lot of, there's too many manufacturers. There's too many cars and too many manufacturers, building too many cars, way too many dealers. And so it's a feeding frenzy of market share.

And with any large conspiracy theory, there's way too many people. I mean, throughout this entire ordeal, since the whole thing started, you know, towards in the middle of COVID, when things started getting wacky, we've had real-time reports given to us from the suppliers, not directly, but for this to be true, they would have had to manufacture millions of lying, of fraudulent documents to send to the dealers explaining what was going on, and they're not going to do that. Okay. We got to, is there, is there a dog here? Is there? Okay, I don't know. I'm just getting excited because, you know, we're doing the dog of the week on the show now. Yeah, I see the spark in your eyes. Well, last week...

And your ears come up. Like a dog. Like a dog. Sto has the ability to know when the dog is entering the building, and we're on the second floor. Oh, so the dog's just entering the building. Last week, I felt a presence of the dog behind me. Yeah. And there was.

And I didn't even hear the door open. He's a dog whisper. Yeah, I have headphones on. I can't hear when the door opens. I wonder if Uber would bring the dog to us instead of having to have somebody drive in for a big dog ranch. I think. Will Uber accept the dog? I tried doing, I tried sending my dog to the vet in an Uber and they wouldn't do it.

No, I'm kidding. Oh my God. I thought that was really cool. My mom wanted to visit Wally and I, Uber, Uber. No. Okay, Rick. I got one other here from James Fronty again. He says, if Toyota's wife.

Otherwise, they will bow down like GM and Ford did and use the Tesla charging stations. I think they'll at least get on the bandwagon with that. They don't have any electric cars. That's true. They had it all figure it out where electric was just a fad. And they really, really screwed up. They're trying to figure out where to put the plug. I mean, Toyo's not talking about it now, but let me tell you, in the inner sanctum over there in Tokyo and other places.

There's a lot of those. There's blood on the wall to become acchio. You know, Machio really, really messed up. And they're behind, and now they're playing PR to say, well, you know, and I'm still, I think Toyota is so smart. I still think maybe there's something I missed. No, I think that they can afford to, like, turn on a dime. They're not like a startup.

They decide to get serious about the electric. They get plenty of cash, plenty of R&D, and they can change that in a couple of years probably dominate things. I mean, they better pray that they can do that because they really, they're the last of the game. They are the last. I think the sentiment, hopefully, is not to turn this in a Toyota thing, but a lot of people out there are pulling for Toyota. They like their Toyotas and they're disappointed, and they might even leave and buy a Tesla and a Honda and some electric car. But when Toyota gets back in the game, they'll see what they have to offer.

In time, yeah, Eric, you're exactly right. They'll be the largest manufacturer of combustion into your cars in the world. What a distinction in 2023. Craig. James also says, I hope Earl is right, and I am wrong about the greed of Toyota. Well, as I say, I respect your opinion. I mean, I've been long before many times, so that's just my opinion. You got your opinion. Yeah, I'm going for my theory of it would be an illegal fraud that they would have pulled on the dealers in the market. And that's another thing about Toyota. Toyota is, relatively speaking honest. You're talking to a guy that's had a lot of franchises. General Motors were the biggest crooks I ever dealt with.

I mean, they were absolutely terrible, criminal bad. And along the manufacturer's been, I've been a Toyota dealer since 1975, and they, the manufacturer, I'm not going to talk about the distributors right now, the manufacturer, they are extremely honest and transparent, and they still are. Reputable, definitely. One other quick comment here from Kirk in West By God, Virginia. Assume you're in an EV on a trip and your battery goes to zero before you reach a charging station, does anyone have anything like a mobile charging capability?

Yeah, Tesla does. You call Tesla and they put a charger in your car. Right on your app on your phone for Tesla, you just hit, and they say, what happened? You say, I ran out of juice, and they send a... an automatic charger out give you enough to get to the supercharger. It's kind of difficult to carry a bucket of electricity. Exactly.

Like you can a can of gasoline, yeah. We've got a text here. A very good one. A very good point from Mark. It says one home charging issue is a lot of people don't have garages or even homes for secure charging. You know, people that live in apartments and condominiums

and they're going to have to depend on public charging facilities. Yeah, and I was just about to say that, and also I think we will see, well, intelligent renters, and that will become a feature of, you know, in the market of renting, buying homes, having charging facilities and communities, having charging facilities and apartment buildings and companies. And as you said earlier, Stu, a lot of it is your technical awareness. Tesla right now has got such a user-friendly, When you're driving, you start to get low, automatically on this giant screen in front of you, it shows you the nearest supercharger, the waiting time, and when you charge, it goes right to your Tesla account on your app,

so you don't have to look for your wallet or your credit card, and it tells you the range that you have left, and on the map, turn left, turn right, tells you exactly how to get to the nearest supercharger. So, but you've got to be technically savvy to appreciate that. Yeah, and you think, excuse me, Stu, do you think, Earl, do you think that how long will you continue to say that? Because I think that there are more people who are moving forward with technology. Well, that's definitely true, but I think technology is moving ahead faster than the people. You're definitely right, Nancy. I think so, but there's still that group that are still hesitant.

The group's getting smaller and smaller, but there's still. They were going, okay, that is really scary to me to sit inside a computer that's going to kind of determine. How long has it been since, how long ago were we not mentioning electric vehicles? It wasn't even something that we would discuss. Was it five years? Yeah, the Chevrolet was a joke. And before that, GM had it. We talked about more about autonomous driving, the future of autonomous driving, I think more than about electric.

and I don't think we anticipated how rapidly it was going to happen. It just went boom. It just, you know, and Elon Musk has taken over the world. Yeah, he's got, I mean, I can't believe that it's, that, that was the manufacturer that wound up being so successful in really defining what an electric car is. You know, I always thought, like, you know, if you asked me 20 years ago, I thought, I thought Toyota would do it or Honda. I thought it was going to be a Japanese manufacturer that was going to get really,

successful with the cars. Also, he was, excuse me, also look at Mike, this chip shortage. Did Elon Musk have a chip shortage? Absolutely not. He was ahead of the game. Yeah, yeah. Well, he's definitely got some competition now. Well, part of it was the sophistication of his software that he didn't need the chips. He also anticipated a lot ahead of time. Yeah. But the point is, with the more sophisticated of the software, unless you rely on microchips in the car. I'm looking forward with a baited breath just to see what happens over the next 10 years as the rest of the world's car manufacturers are all become EV manufacturers. And how does Tesla, how does he level out in that?

Yeah, I don't want to get too far out about this whole technical thing, but see, we just hit a huge wave of technological acceleration with artificial intelligence. And this AI thing, I hate it. It's hyped so much by people who don't know what it is and don't understand it. But I know enough about it to think that if there ever was a technological gap between the consumer and the manufacturers, this AI is going to increase the gap, not narrow it. hopefully the AI will make it so user friendly that you won't need to be technological savvy

but I agree with Stu is going to be it's exciting to watch. The reason we love the show is because we have too much to talk about every day and we get into things that knew that we don't know and you're probably I think the answer to Stu said earlier it's going to be autonomous you're not going to be buying cars anyway you're going to be ride sharing.

And the car, as we know it today, won't exist. And you'll just walk out of your house or your apartment and you'll hit the app. The car will pull up. You'll take it to wherever you want to go. And when you come out of where you were, it'll take you back home again. There won't be any cars that we now drive ourselves.

It's just not going to happen. And a lot of people out there say, oh, no, I'll never have that. I'll never have an autonomous car drive, be around. But you will. I mean, maybe you won't. But your grandchildren will, I promise you. Okay, we've got the dog of the week coming up.

Everybody's scooting around here. If we have another minute or two. We don't have another minute because there is dog. It is Stevie Tix. Look at that. Stevie Tick says. Stevie. Well, I have to keep the, are you sure?

I had some jokes. Don't make jokes No jokes I'm making jokes Hey how are you doing I'm called her Stevie Nix Okay Steve Nix

That's who I was talking about this morning For you people that are not streaming And even if you are streaming I don't know that we have the camera on you yet I'm going to do my best Bear with us on the confusion You always do really well Let me describe what's happening here

So we're in a radio studio For the people out who are not streaming us on YouTube And there is a beautiful female dog that just walked into the room named Stevie. And it used to be Stevie Ticks, but now it's just Stevie. You know, I think it was a good choice to change the name.

I think, do you guys still have Frankie Fleeze? No, I'm sorry. He hopped off. All right, well, we're going to get you a, let me grab, so I'm going to do the whole camera thing here. Okay, very well, the folks, you're people on radio and otherwise we're streaming

Stevie, a dog from Big Dog Ranch Rescue and Stu has got the microphone and Stu has got the camber We're trying to figure this out. What we're going to do is you're going to get close to a microphone there and you're going to tell us all about Stevie and all the vital statistics Which microphone?

We studied earlier We studied earlier all about Stevie so we know But we're going to have to quiz our Big Dog Ranch Rescue volunteer because this is our sponsored dog of the week and we used to do this at the dealership and we're trying to do a Facebook live video but we're doing it on the radio show because duh why didn't we think of this a long time ago so we got some logistical things to work out like how am I going to speak

to a microphone and if does anybody who knows the dog heimlich so for our listeners we do a sponsored dog of the week, as you know, that we are big supporters of Big Dog Ranch Rescue and Earl's book Confessions of Recovering Car Dealer. All the sales of that go, all of it go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. And we also do a sponsored dog of the week. So every week, we got a pooch from Big Dog Ranch Rescue that needs a home. And we do a little video and we tell everybody about it. Look at that. For the people on the radio, this dog is dancing around, standing up, loving the treats okay so go ahead and tell us all about um tell us all about stevie just and any microphone just go right up to that yeah i'm bernadette and i'm here with stevie i just love

this little girl she is five years old she was found wandering in palm beach she's been at the ranch for a while now and uh i don't understand why i guess maybe because she doesn't get along that well with other dogs, but she is a real people person, aren't she? Yes, you are. And she, she just loves people. Love people. She will sit and love you and just go for long walks with you. She loves to jump. She's a very high jumper. You would need a big fence if you're going to take Stevie in. Okay, big friends. You're going to have a big friends if you want Stevie. Yes, that's right. That's right. But she is just a sweetheart. I would love to see her get a good home. She is a sweetheart and she looks like a very, like a fence jumper. She looks like an athletic dog.

She is, yeah. She's very good muscle tone, very, very, very well-groomed. She is. I got groomed yesterday. I got a haircut. Big difference though, you know. Oh, here, Stevie. Good girl. I hate getting a haircut. And she gives kisses and hugs and just. And she wants to be the start of the show. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. No, that's right. Taking a look at her, she has just a beautiful red coat.

She has got, I was joking around about the grooming because she's a short-haired dog, and she does not need to be shaved or groomed, probably just a sponge bath once in a while. You wouldn't even have to dry her. This is a dog. I got a dog with really long hair, and it's a big mess. this dog would probably jump in the pool, come out, and you just air dry in a few minutes. Yeah. Yeah.

Your dog may be a big nest, but it's beautiful. Yeah, you've got to groom. If you have a long-haired dog, it's a grooming. They got them over there. I don't have any treats over here. It's, uh, so for folks who can't see this, we have a very curious dog who is smiling, knows that Nancy's got all the treats over here. And, uh, yeah. So, please, if you can't, if you're just listening,

and you're at home, go to YouTube.com, just search Earl on Cars, or just go to YouTube.com forward slash Earl on Cars, and you can get a live stream of Stevie here. And I had a whole bunch of jokes ready for bad names for dogs.

Like Tony Trashcan and stuff like that. Yeah, we were talking about naming a dog is important, just like naming a car. And Stevie is a really good name. I think it's cute. and very appropriate for this beautiful dog. Kenilkoff Kevin was another one.

I decided not to use that one. Now, Bernadette was talking about Stevie Nixon. And us ladies know about Stevie Nixon. Stevie's a great name. Yeah. Rockstar names are good for dogs. Meatloaf is a good name for a dog. Sting's a good name for a dog.

Yeah. Snoop dog is a good name for a dog. Snoop dog. Now you're talking. All right. Well, back to business. So what's a sponsored dog? It just means that when you adopt a dog from anywhere, including Big Dog Ranch Rescue, there's always fees involved.

When you adopt a dog, this dog comes ready. Spade, neutered, shots, heartworm, everything, ready to go. And there's a cost to that. But with the sponsor dogs, well, Earl pays the cost. So if you adopt Stevie, you know, through us that just let us know or let Big Dog Ranch Rescue know, You can go to their website, BDRR.org, or you can contact us directly, and we'll take care of all the adoption fees for amazing. It's a few hundred dollars, so it's a significant help. And if you're listening to this, and you trust me that it is a beautiful dog, and you trust that, I mean, how old is, is Stevie?

She's five. She's five. This is a dog. This is a prime of our life dog. Oh, yeah. This is a great dog. So trust me, tell somebody. to call in or to go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue website, BDRR.org, or call into the show, make

contact with us and we're going to pay the adoption fees. All right. Well, thanks so much for bringing her in. And I can't wait until next week's dog. We're going to do this every week. So if you call us and we say Stevie's been placed, don't worry, we'll put you in touch with the ranch. We're friends with everybody over there. And we can help just with special situations, whatever, just let us know and we'll find another dog and if you don't want a dog like I said, you know, let somebody else

who might could use a companion like this. I'll tell them about fostering a dog if you can't own a dog now if you could just foster the dog. Yeah, Big Dog Ranch Rescue relies on a lot of volunteers and they are at capacity, they're

constantly expanding but it's so, and it's great for the dogs we have a friend who's sponsor over the years, probably hundreds of dogs. And I went over to, when I adopted my dog from Big Dog Ranch Rescue Oreo, we adopted it through Zara, and she was a foster. And we went to her house, and she had all these dogs all over the place. She was living, love and life with all the dogs.

And it was kind of sad for her to part with Oreo because you get attached to them, but it's a great way to help the ranch and the dogs and have some fun. Yeah, make space. Have some work, too. Have so many dogs out there. Sometimes there's not a room. So we need to foster them to make space available. And you've got to be a dog home.

And having a dog, one dog is a lot of work. And it's a lot of rewarding and fun work. But, you know, just don't, if you can't just do it for the summer for a kick. But if you're serious about wanting to help, definitely consider volunteering to foster a dog. Because I would do it. Yeah. Once my kids are really gone, maybe I'll get some more dogs. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Okay, so, yeah, the book is A Confession's a Recovering Car Dealer. And I've never done this before. I'm never hawking the book, but where's the camera? Boom. There's the camera. Yeah, all proceeds.

All proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue, and Earl's writing another book. Actually, he's already written it. It's just in the final stages. It's coming out. Almost through. That's almost through. Next week. All right.

All right. And that does it for this week's edition of Sponsored Dog of the Week. Back to the Recovering Cardioy. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for doing this, guys. This will be a regular feature from now on. And if you know anybody out there, maybe they don't care about cars, but they care about dogs. Just tell them to turn around 9.30, and we'll have a fresh dog from Big Dog Ranch Rescue.

And spread the word, there's an amazing number of homes. homeless dogs out there. You know, we take in dogs, the big dog ranch from all over the world, literally. And the founder of Big Dog Ranch, Lori Simmons, literally flies airplanes. I don't mean she flies it herself, but she goes on an airplane to China. Now, that's way away. And they got too many dogs over there. They're eating the dogs over there.

So we're bringing dogs back from China, from other countries. Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands. Yeah, and wherever there's a disaster, a flood. That's typically even Florida with the hurricanes. So Big Dog Ranch might be in Laxahatchee, Florida, which is Palm Beach County, and there's another location in Alabama, I believe. But even with those two locations, we're bursting at the seams. I think we can carry like 500 dogs in the Laxahatchie location, but we bring them in anyway. That's the reason we need to foster them.

Okay, that's the end of the dog conversation. Well, I'll tell you, that was a good-looking dog, though. Wasn't Stevie? Something else? She was like, I don't know. Mark texted and wanted to know what breed she was. I'm not sure if we heard what breed. What was she? Yeah, boxer mix. And she kind of looks like, they got a lot of dogs out there that look like Stevie out there.

Just kind of like your general brown dog. Yeah, and she's just the right size. She's just like a medium, you know, she's just not too heavy. She's not too large. Yeah, I mean, and she also said, remember, in the very beginning, getting that it says she didn't get along with other dogs. So it's probably just if you're, you know, one dog home, I would imagine that might apply to cats.

Yes, I would avoid any other pets. Hamsters. Amsters are like snacks to dogs. If I were going to adopt a dog, I mean, I know we're affiliated with them, and I would say this anyway. But the fact of the matter is, a lot of these shelters, the idea is to move the dogs out, kind of like car dealers, they don't care. they don't care who adopts a dog get them out and big dog ranch doesn't do that they investigate you like you're a parent adopting a child and uh i you know i hate to say this but if you if you don't if you aren't considered a good dog owner by big dog ranch they won't let you have the dog so they when they find a home they just don't find a home they find a good home and that's the reason they're so popular so if you're shopping around i would not be going to some other shelter that you don't know

you know, the source of the dog. You don't know the dog was checked over. They actually have a quarantine level quarantine place for dogs. They come in fresh to be sure they don't have any diseases. They're warmed. They're vaccinated.

They're completely healthy. Nudered and spayed before they're adopted. So it's a good bet for you. And Big Dog Ranch, just go to Earlsbook.com. and it'll take you to

Well, it was about 10 years ago this July 4 that I was looking around I went to a bunch of the shelters here in West Palm and I finally went out to Big Dog and they matched me up with my little girl Harley Quinn and I say little she's a 65 pound

black and tan hound and she is awesome. What a beautiful name, Harley Quinn. Harley Quinn that's her name. Yeah and it is magical when you do go to Big Dog Brown to rescue and you talk about you know details and matching you know that personality there's a lot to be said about that with the a real person's personality and it's you know makes a big difference when you get the dog home because you keep the dog and their their facility there is beautiful

and the photos that you can that you have online for the other their other location in shorter Alabama is they're over 100 acres plus there and it is beautiful I mean it's just awesome yeah you have a chance to go out there you can really take in you know every bit

of love that they share with all of us out there. If you want a little dog we have little dogs too is if that was the original name I don't think we're talking about naming cars that was not a good name I say that respectfully to all the folks out there but they have a motto now big and dog we

love them all. Big and small. We love them all. But they're big dogs, small dogs, medium dogs. You name any kind of dog, we got them. They started off with Wimerimers, right? It was like mainly a Wai Marammer. That was Lori's favorite breed. Beautiful dog. And you know, with Stevie being a stray, you can understand the personality that she's acquired. And she's a free spirit. You know, she's able to do whatever she wants to do. And she is, you know, she is, you know, she is, in charge and that's mainly the reason that she wants to go into a home with no dogs no kids just her as far as her being the star of the show and being the only one so go to big dog ranch rescue she's a diva yes go to big dog ranch rescue and you can take a look at all the

dogs they have on that website it's just amazing all the way around and like stew mentioned earlier you know confessions of a recovering card dealer the total all the proceeds go to big dog branch we have got to get to our mystery shop and agent lightning did a great job and stew of course you know certainly wrote up a wonderful uh informative mystery shop and that mystery shop is from Subaru from South Tampa. Okay. We talk about Subaru a lot of the show. Very complimentary is

one of the best manufacturers. Their problem is they can't build cars fast enough, but the cars they build a very high quality. Some reports give Subaru outstanding ratings on most of their models. So I'll be reading

mystery shopping apart that's two put together from the notes from Agent Lightning, speaking as if I were Agent Lightning. I arrived mid-morning and was greeted by a salesman who happened to be sitting on a bench on his phone when I approached. He smiled,

asked if anyone was expecting me that day. I said no. I'd been interested in seeing the new Outback's Subaru Outback and was wondering if they had any in their inventory. He responded affirmatively as if I'd like to take a look. We walked over to where

they were in a lot and I was particularly taken by the color of a new, two 2004 Subaru Outback Turing XT. It was a deep, rich burglary, the MSRP, manufactured retail price

was $44,090. I didn't see an addendum. I didn't see an addendum. I didn't say there wasn't one, but sometimes they're not affixed. He asked if I'd like to go for a test drive, I agreed, and excused himself to grab the keys. As he was walking here,

why I realized I hadn't got his name, he turned and replied, Gabe, G-A-B-E, Gabe, before continuing on his way. He returned a few minutes later, and I sat on the driver's seat with him in the passenger seat. He proceeded to detail the features of the Subaru, showing extensive knowledge about the outback. He gave me more information than I needed, from how the engine functions to maximize gas mileage, to the camera system reminiscent of test. Bill continued to educate me on the cars. We drove around a neighborhood and then back to the main road. Subaru, as I said earlier, it's just a good car. I mean, it's right up there, one of the best cars made. And so Subaru dealers typically use that because a lot of people aren't familiar with Subaru

because there's not that many on the road, but they have got a great product. So rightfully, the salesman was very well trained in presenting business. in presenting the product once back at the dealership he asked me how soon I was thinking about buying I said that if everything went well I'd love to pick it up later that day he seemed enthusiastic saying great let's make it happen we went inside and he collected my information before excusing himself to talk to a sales manager I asked about the packages on the car and explained that unlike other dealerships that perform a market adjustment at a market

adjustment, they actually offer something beneficial to their customers as they drive to avoid financial hardships. Now, addendums, what he said is accurate. There's two kinds of addendum, and he talked about the fact that they just don't throw in an increase in price without giving you something for it. And that's the other kind of addendum where they gave you something for it. But unfortunately, the bad news is typically what they give you for it is worth very little compared to what they're charging you for it.

So I guess if I had to choose between the addendum for nothing or the addendum for almost nothing, I would probably take the one for almost nothing. But addendums by nature are devious, misleading, and not right. Gabe said he would discuss with the sales manager the possibility having it removed, if that was the only thing stopping me from buying that day. He truly wanted to earn my business.

Gabe then offered me some water. before excusing himself again to speak with a sales manager. He turned a little later with a sales worksheet. He started going over to the different elements of the price sheet. Jokingly, I told Gabe, I'm not young like you. Can I borrow your pen to write this down? I'll never remember all of this. Can I remove some of the suspicion that she might be a mystery shopper?

Very clever. He began the selling price was the MSRP, 44,060. why they call this first price, the selling price. The selling price should be the last price, but unfortunately, they put it at the top of the page, and then they just keep on adding on to the selling price. And if they add it on the selling price, it's not really the selling price.

They added $960.49 in government fees, and as Stu noted on the report, there's no car buyer floor. that has to pay $960 in government fees. I mean, government fees are sales tax and license plate. You can't come up with that amount. So in there, there's some Mickey Mouse junk fees like electronic filing is one of the favorite.

Just about every dealer I know has something called electronic filing fee, which is just garbage, is BS. And then there's also another one that relates to what might be a license plate. and that's the tag agency fee and that's just the junk fee. They also added a $999 dock fee more nonsense junk. $99 for Starlink.

Is that the... I think, yeah, well, GM has Starlink or OnStar. So maybe Starlink is their version of that. Oh, I don't know. It sounds like that, but it's being added on. Probably a GPS device. What is it? Rick knows. I tried to Google it, and the only...

Starlink that comes up is Elon Musk's space internet maybe get you hooked up to the Starlink internet maybe that could be a some cars do have internet access now I know we'll check that up then it was $2,495 for mag buyers advantage what's the mag I don't know mag buyer I was trying to make the sense of the dealership's name it didn't it makes notice of mag buyers advantage I mean it would be like Subaru South Tampa advantage but mag i don't know and then of course there's a 784 and 75 cents in accessories uh before adding the sales tax and when you add up the grand total here guess what your out-the-door price is now 52 000 650 dollars 615 dollars and the MSRP was 44,000 so

there was a quantum leap if i ever saw a quantum leap A lot of surprises there. Yeah, yeah, it's just disappointing. You know, the salesperson was extremely knowledgeable on the product, and as I was reading that, I said, here the man has got, the salesman has got himself one of the best cars in the market to sell. And if he resorts to misleading, devious bait-and-switch, junk fees,

and the rest of it, what a shame. I mean, you got a good car. Sell it for a fair price. You got a good brand. I mean, a great reputation. Don't sully that brand. Anyway, as a shopper back, I'm now Agent Lightning again. I took notes, wrote down everything.

He then asked if I had any questions. I asked if there was any way he could lower the price. He asked what a price point would make this happen right now. I don't know what that means, price point, but what's your price that if I give it to you buy it right now. That's all standard back and forth, old school

game that all the car dealers virtually play. I say that I prefer to skip the extras and purchase the car below MSRP. He explained that Subaru's don't really have much room for negotiation, but if it's only a

matter of a few hundred dollars, you could probably make it happen. I'll say this again about Subaru. By definition, there's not many Subarus. They can't build them fast enough because it's such a good product. So even before the COVID issue and the microchip issue and all the rest of the issues with the economy, Subaru has always been a low supply high-demand car. So you're not going to be able to give a big discount below MSRP on Subaru in the best of times. And these are the worst of times. So just a thought if you're thinking about buying a Subaru. He could probably make it up.

I informed him that I had an appointment to get to, but would be in touch. He requested that I wait a moment so as manager could greet me, I wait a few minutes and started walking towards the door. That always gets them out of their chair when you walk towards the door. At that point, the manager came over, thank me for, no, I wasn't the manager, it was just Gabe again. I guess the manager didn't want to bother. So Gabe came over, thank me for coming in.

and said he'd be in touch. And there we have it. I mean, you heard the shopping report on a great car like a Subaru, and what can I say? I know what Starlink is. Oh, what? Starlink is a security feature offered by Subaru. It's optional, so they were preloading it.

So even though it's a legitimate product, the way it was sold was not the right way to sell something. But it's not related to the Starlink. satellites at Elon Musk. No, it says, yeah, this is probably, it came out before Starlink. It's automatic collision notification, enhanced roadside assistance, so it is like the OnStar or the Toyota SOS system where you just push a button or if you get an accident, emergency services are notified.

Okay. Well, we want you to vote, and you can vote on YouTube and Steve season, I mean, Rick says them. You can text or vote in. We would like to see if you would give them an A, B, C, D, or F. Remember, we grade on the curve. So we have very few A's. We have most of C's. And Fs are short, just like A's are short. But we still, if they pass, if they get above an F, they go on the recommended list,

but at the bottom, unless they are, have an A or a B, which you do, maybe at the top of the list. Yeah. So I have some texts with some grades. Mark, text, says, good salesman with knowledge, bad add-ons. Dealer grade is the D, don't blame the salesman. And I 100% agree with Mark. It's not, it's the culture of the dealership, it's the management.

And that was a weird, that's a weird Subaru dealership. You know, it doesn't seem like the usual ones. Yeah, they seem a little more enlightened. I agree. And, but then again, this is Tampa. We haven't really shopped the Tampa market, and that's a big metro area with some, a lot of competition. Some over there, I think. Yeah, maybe we should focus on the West Coast a little bit more

because we might discover some real gems over there. Yeah, I think things are done a little differently over there. Yeah. You know, first, you know, I've heard it a lot from several people who live over there. All right, we have from Bob. We have a G for fake, dishonest government fees for Subaru of South Tampa. And I think Bob's sliding further right on the scale of pass F to G. So that's even worse.

I'm not going to fail them, but this feels similar to last week. It was all in the manner of how it's done. If they want to sell the car for, I didn't even add it up for a couple thousand over MSRP. Yeah, be honest. Say this is the best car. It's a great car. Sell the product. He did a great job selling the product, and he could show him consumer reports.

Everybody knows that they suit, not everybody, but the, The people that do their research know the Subaru is a great product, and they also probably know that it's a limited production car. So if you're going to pay over MSRP for any car, it would probably be a Subaru anyway. So just come up with a number and say, this is my number. And don't play with it. And if the phone stops ringing, your number's too high.

Drunk fees, overpriced dealers, stall accessories. Don't do that. Just be honest. Ask for the price and give them. the price and then go to another Subaru dealer, give the shopper the opportunity to shop and compare your price. That's all. Yeah, C-minus for me. Okay. Tom Steckle says, D-minus, advantage plan and fake fees, Subaru spelled backward is, you are a bus. And I'd take the bus before buying there. That was brilliant. Johnny Z. Fradley, too many fees for me as I give them D's. Way to go, John.

Rocky Blocketeel, D is for devious, old school tactics. James Fronte says, We bought two new 23 Ascent Touring SUVs three months ago from Subaru of Jacksonville, Florida. Here, the dock and tag fees are way too high, and I paid zero for concierge Starlink and got two years maintenance free with no add-ons. D for Tampa.

Brian said Letko, disappointed in all the extra fees. D. Tim Gilliland, I can afford the car, but not the addendums, C-minus. And James comes back to say,

my two cents had MSRPs of $51,000. I paid $45775 plus a $6.53 dealer dock fee. In 2017. Plus my 6% sales, actually, no, 23. Okay. Plus a 6% sales tax

and 140 to try. Transfer each of my current Florida tags. Where was this? This is Subaru of Jacksonville. Okay. It is a great Subaru dealer, he says. Folks, listen, if you want a Subaru, call Subaru of Jacksonville, even if you're in...

California. Yeah, no, I'm in Florida. Or Georgia. Or, you know, if you're within 100 miles or so, I mean, think of what, how far do you have to drive to negate a $3,000 or $4,000 advantage? So that's Subaru of Jacksonville. Let's be sure that we can't put them on the approvalist, can we?

That's not officially certified. We'll have to shop Super Objection. Maybe we'll put them as. Recommended by listeners. Thanks, James. Yeah, that's a good idea. Mark Anderson, D-Minis. Steve W. says,

MAG could be Morgan Auto Group for something to do with that MAG thing. You know what? That's pretty smart. Pretty smart. And that's where Morgan's headquarter over there in Tampa. Larry Morgan I'm friends with the guy and I knew him when he first came into the business

I was on the board of directors with him great guy he got too big he's like number 15 auto group in Florida he's one of the biggest so you get too big you lose control I actually called him one time when they bought you know the you know what he went

origo he bought the rego chain out and I call him because Rigo was ripping people off, and he actually called the store and changed the things around. But you're so big, you can't keep your finger on everything, hasn't it? I bet it is, Larry Morgan. And for me, I'm going to say C-minus on grade. I think you could probably do a little better. And I would go with James Frontie's advice, take a cruise over to Jacksonville.

That's right. Lovely city. They got a great zoo, too. Well, folks, I'm extremely disappointed. Gosh, I love the brand. I truly do. And the commercials, they just touch your heart. And it's really a shame that South Tampa has to do what they're doing.

And, you know, there was a lot of tap dancing going on. And I just, I don't like that tap dance. I don't like that dance. So for them, I give them an E. Nancy. Or maybe a G. Nancy, no, dancy. Nancy, no dancing.

all right i'm waffling between the d plus and c minus argument d plus i think they're the same yeah they are the same what what was your grade c minus uh you see minus official officially c minus yeah okay folks uh we all would like to wish you a happy father's day and we want to thank all of you for joining us this morning and i wanted to say happy father's day to my father Happy Father Day. And also to say how lucky I am as a son, I mean, I'm 55 years old and I still get to spend two hours every Saturday with my dad and hang out. Touching. Not very many guys my age can say that.

Boy, you talk about being lucky. All right, hear the theme song. Definitely are. And so is, you know, Josh and Jason. But at any rate, thank you all for joining us. You're a huge part of this show. and you make the show every single week. And don't forget that you can go to

www.W.Bidog Ranch Rescue.org and you can take a look of our featured dog of the week and see how much fun we all had in the studio. Don't forget Confessions of a recovering car dealer. The proceeds, all the proceeds, go to Big Dog Ranch. wonderful weekend, everyone.