Earl Stewart on Cars - 06.26.2021 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Hollywood Kia

Episode Date: June 26, 2021

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits Hollywood Toyota to see if she can get the online offer for a new 2022 Kia Stinger. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Good morning, everybody. Your auto experts on how not they get ripped off by a car dealer live in color right here. and we are so happy to be back with you. All you regulars, I know you're tired of this, the recorded intro, and my kind of semi-recorded follow-up to the intro. But hopefully we have a lot of new folks out there. I've been trying to get the ratings on our show for a while,

but have been failing. We'll keep on asking the owner of the station if we can get us some ratings. And I think we're doing pretty good because wall-to-wall phone calls, knock on wood, your phone calls is the heartbeat of our show. And I don't say that just to flatter you.

We have some brilliant callers around the country and the world. I always have to say, I love the fact that we've actually had a call from Bali. And it's just kind of cool. I mean, we like being international. So before I even take my second breath, I'm going to give you that call-in number. It's so important. If you haven't called the show, we appreciate your considering it. And that number is 877-960-99-60.

877-960-99-60. We will prioritize those phone calls, because phone calls are personal. And we hear you, and you hear us, and the world hears you. And it's just kind of a cool thing to be able to have an old-fashioned telephone conversation dialogue. Now, with that said, we have a huge amount of communication digitally, we are in that digital age, right? We have text, we have Facebook, we have Twitter. I think maybe Periscope left.

Bye-bye Periscope. The strong will survive. The weak will perish. But the digital world is very real, and we recognize and appreciate it. Plus, the fact, we're streaming live, and you can see my beautiful face. We do have one beautiful face,

but that's Nancy Stewart. She's my co-host here. She's sitting to my left right now. so you can see us all. Rick Kearney, don't look at him. My son's still, ah, you know. Anyway, we're here in all forms and media around the world and your input. Text, I keep an archive during the show.

Two hours. We're on until 10 a.m. Eastern Standard time. So if you have a question and you know you haven't got time to chit-chat, just shoot the question in. And then you can go back and you can go to our archives for the show and hear the answer to your text questions. So we get to our text questions before the end of the show. I mean, we've got a lot of time.

So it's a continuity we've got going here with answering your questions. One way or other, if you have a question and you hear the sound of my voice now, we'll answer it. Oh, I almost forgot. AnonymousFeedback.com. I always wonder why more and more people don't jump on that bandwagon. Companies. Well, the police do. You know, they have anonymous feedback.

It's just a great thing to do. I know some people say, hey, if you're going to complain, you know, you've got to have the nerve to be identified and be hurt. I think that's nonsense. Sometimes you just don't want the aggravation. You have a complaint. You have a candid comment that you just don't. Maybe you don't want to hurt our feelings.

Or maybe you want to say something nasty. That's okay, too. We're not going to read profanity or vulgarity, but we'll get the gist of your message across. AnonymousFeedback.com, just like I'm your anonymousfeed. Back.com. Y-O-U-R-A-N-Y-M-O-U-S feedback.com.

Love to hear from you in that venue as well. Experiences that you've had out there with car dealers. And I can't fail to mention that it isn't all about buying or leasing a car. It's also about maintaining an impairing car. I've got Rick Kearney, tech guy, super support. Matter of fact, I was asking Rick before the show started, question about pairing Bluetooth in a customer's car with the Bluetooth Apple Play in the car. I mean, Apple Play is a big thing now, and Bluetooth is a big thing, and people use it, depend on it.

I had a customer call me. I'm a car dealer in total transparency and disclosure, and the customer called me because he was having trouble pairing his brand-new iPhone through Bluetooth with the Apple Play in his car. And there's a problem that we've got to fix. Problems like that, you have to fix, and you might be getting the run around. Sometimes the dealerships don't understand it, and sometimes Apple, why I won't say that? Apple pretty, they're pretty good. If it's an Apple problem, you can pretty well rely on Apple to get it fixed. But sometimes the car dealers don't do the right thing.

They don't have the people train properly, and the people that talk to you are not fully versed. That's the high price we pay for high tech. Technology is moving in such a rapid pace. When I said, pace is what I'm trying to say. We're moving so quickly forward in technology that having people to know how to fix things is a scarcity. It's low supply and high demand. So you can get some of your answers from Rick Kearney.

He's the best I know, and I've been a car dealer for over a half century. I've seen a lot of technicians, and this guy is the best of the best. So anything you have, ask Rick. And if Rick fails, we have Colonel Google that we can rely upon. And we have other sources.

We'll get your answer, we promise you. Now, let's get into the show, and I want to introduce Nancy Stewart, who is my co-host, co-founder of the show, going way, way back, two decades. I started out on this different radio station, same location, but different ownership, half hour

long time ago. Now here we are. Two hours. Nancy Stewart is the accolade I always give her is the fact that she's built our female audience. So important. There's so many things that are happening now with the

female kind of figuring out things we haven't been traded exactly equal. And Nancy is trying to rally the female troops and we've got all most equal number of callers now. She has a very special offer to encourage you ladies out there.

If you haven't called the show before, to please consider calling your show. Nancy, please tell them about the offer that we have. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. You are an important part of the show. So you give us a call. We'd love to talk to you. Join the fund. Join the education.

877-960-99-60. And as Earl said, ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. We would love for you to share your car purchasing, servicing experience, anything at all you'd like to speak about. 877-960-9960, and we are going to hit the floor running with Valerie, who is a first-time caller. Good morning, Valerie. Good morning. How are you? Great. Welcome. You just won yourself $50.

I know. How fantastic is that? How can we help you? Well, I just went through some issues with a car. I have a 2007 Kia with 151,000 miles. And I travel from Loxahatchie to Deerfield for work. So, as you can imagine, I do need my car. And it broke down. So I brought it to a mechanic who said that it needs some pedal assemble.

So it went through all that, and it was going to be about $1,200 to fix the car. So I figured, you know, that's not even worth it, so let me go get a new car. Well, credit not being that great and, you know, not much of a down payment. And I went to off-lease only, which was, by the way, a terrible experience. I don't recommend it, but maybe I shouldn't say that, but it was a bad experience for me. So tell it like it is, Valerie. We like being candid. I appreciate the comment.

That's acceptable. It was a terrible experience for me. They kept selling cars out from under me and with my down payment and saying I had it and then I didn't. And I needed a car right away because my job was kind enough to let me work from home for two and a half weeks. But they were kind of tired. They needed me in the office. So I was getting down to the wire. And so then I, you know, the last time they did it was about four times.

They said, oh, we have a car, the down payment. This is it. this is it. And then they called me and said, oh, we hate to tell you this, but the car was sold. So I got very fed up, and I went to drive time. Well, recommend them highly. I did it right over the phone with Greg, who was fantastic there, and I got myself a little Chevy Spark, 17, which is 40,000 miles. So I'm perfectly fine, and it's a good payment, and I'm good now. But I have that other car in the shop, and I need to sell it, which is a problem, because it's not really running. so that's my question

that's a great question your timing couldn't be better if you have to sell a car today's the time to sell a used car very high demand for virtually all used cars and I think the car will not run and I understand you correctly that it will

it's just stopped on you and it's at the dealership well it's at the mechanic it'll run but it'll stall out it needs a pedal assembly or something which is a very expensive part. So, you know, I've called around to some of these car by cash and all those places, and a lot of them will take it. So I'm

trying to work with that to see if they'll just come pick it up. But in turn, the mechanic also wants $160 for me because they said they put a part in which I never authorized also, which is a little annoying, but they're not charging me for storage, so I guess I should be thankful for that.

I think you might be surprised as what your car might be worth just as it's and Stu will remember cash for clunkers going back and used car prices weren't nearly as high back then as they are now I beg a pardon? Cash for clunkers. Well that was a government program Valerie that many years ago and it gave us an understanding of what cars are that are really something that we wouldn't normally retail wholesale cars. So by carefully shopping that car, even if it won't run, you will get a better price than

you ever would. But before I did that, I'm going to let Rick get in here and answer a few questions for Rick about how your car stop and what they told you. And then let's see if we can possibly suggest some things you might do to get it running again. Because if you can get it running, then you can get a whole lot more money for the car. And so, Rick, what do you think? Okay, thank you. Well, my first thought is when you took your car to that mechanic, if you signed any paperwork, whatever amount was authorized on that paperwork,

that is the only thing they're allowed to charge you. If they put any parts in without your authorization, signature or over-the-phone some way of authorizing, they are not allowed to charge you that. Within 10%. I didn't authorize anything to be honest, Rick. So if when you took it in, if you signed anything that says, okay, you're going to approve a diagnostic fee of like $100, they can charge you that amount and up to 10% over it.

But anything else, they can't charge you for it. Well, let's talk about getting our car running. Without knowing for sure what's wrong with it, the only thing I could really suggest on that would be maybe have it towed to another mechanic for a second. opinion or if one of those car places wants to send a tow truck to get it you know any any shop obviously should allow them to tow it out but if they try to charge you anything more than what you signed for that's that's illegal but where's the car

Valerie it's at check one in Boca okay yeah I I would you should always try to get a second opinion and if you can get the car running it's probably going to be worth another thousand dollars so it's important that you uh try to get a second opinion the towing charge is something you might not want to do i'll tell you what let's let's do this uh if you don't mind uh we've got your contact information or we should because we're getting you're going to send you 50 bucks being a first time caller uh with your permission uh we'll have rick uh try to contact the the mechanic that works on your car and talk to him.

And Rick has given me a funny look now, but too bad, Rick. That's what we're going to do. And we'll try to help you out that way because if we can get the car running, it'd be worth more. But if you have to get bids on it from a person that would just scrap the car for parts, you might be pleasantly surprised. And again, thanks so much for being a first-time caller. Valerie, I want to commend you. I want to commend you on that Kia and also remind you, as Earl said, what a great time for you to sell the Kia.

You are going to get more than you think. Absolutely. So getting that up and running will be, well, financially a great thing to do. So thank you for calling. Thank you. Have a nice day. Have a great weekend. Thank you.

877-960 or you can text us at 772-497-6-530 now back to the recovering car dealer I want to say something about off-lease-only by the way Valerie had a bad experience and I encouraged her to say so I mean this is what we do on this show we tell it like it is with that said I have to say that offleys only has a recommended rating on our shopping reports our mystery shopping reports In fact, I know one of the owners, the founder actually of off-lease only, and he's a pretty good guy. They have several locations. Every dealership, including my dealership, you can have a bad experience. My dealership has 160 employees, and you might get one.

You know, there's a rotten apple in every barrel. There's a rotten apple in every car dealership. So when you have a bad experience with a business, period, it might not be the rodent apple. to the core kind of a business, it might be an okay or a good one or a great one, but sometimes you have bad experiences. Offleys only has great prices. It's a kind of a Walmart of car dealerships. There's no frills. You go in there and you get a car as is, and sometimes these cars are not as good as other cars. You have an opportunity to get a checked by a mechanic, and you always should. And buying any used car, you should have.

have a check by a mechanic before you buy it. If you check a Carfax report before you buy it, you should road test it carefully. And if you do all those things, you can get a good value at off lease only. They have to be careful. And if you get a bad salesman who's being rude or isn't knowledgeable, then get another one.

Go to a manager. This can happen at a lot of businesses. The individual that you deal with represents the company, but sometimes the company doesn't know what's going on and you have to tell them. So you take it up to the ladder to the supervisor, the general manager, the owner. So I just wanted to clear that up.

Okay. We're going to go back to the phones. Okay. Looks like a very busy morning. Great. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, your anonymousfeedback.com. We're going to go to John,

who's calling us from Bakersfield, California. Wow. Welcome, John. Hey, good morning. Good morning. what can we do for you I have a question I have a

2018 Toyota Rob 4 XLE and it don't have no transmission dipstick it's got about 60,000 miles on it I was just wondering

it and well I bought it used anyways I was wondering are we supposed to service the transmission on that after so many miles? Nope.

As per Toyota, that transmission has what's called W.S. fluid. It's a lifetime fluid, and the transmission requires no maintenance service at all for the lifetime of the vehicle. That is crazy.

That is Toyota. No, that's reality. John, that's the way all cars are now. All the cars are requiring less and less maintenance and when they try to sell you a transmission flush that's money for the car dealer of the mechanic now it's not recommended by the manufacturer it's not okay all right so I mean long as you don't see no ever see no fluids leaking or anything you really don't have to worry about a level of the

tranny fluid it's okay kind of worry about oil yeah you're exactly correct you have to change your oil and that's about the only fluid that you have to change, although later, later, if you keep a car long enough, sooner or later, you might have got involved in... The coolant is recommended to be changed at 150,000 miles and every 50,000 after that. Is there any danger of having a missing dipstick

that cause problems down the road? Well, no, it's not missing. It's just not there. There's no... Oh, there is no... Oh, there is no... I don't know if that was there for something, you know, unforeseen contingencies or something.

Nope. All right. There you go. One more time about the, now, what did you say, about the 150,000 miles? That's the engine coolant. That's meant to be changed at 150,000, and every 50,000 miles after that. Wow, okay. And then, yeah, so, I mean, I change it.

I use synthetic oil and also how that changed every 5,000. So I guess that's good. So I bought it about a year ago. I really like the cars, and a decent car. And so I was just wondering about the training, you know. Thank you, all good. Thank you, John. I appreciate it.

Oh, what time is it in Bakersfield? Early. It's about 524. You're an early riser. Thank you very much for calling the show. Oh, yeah. Thank you, John. Always have a burden.

Have a great weekend. Thank you for you. Yes, you guys, have a good one. Okay, ladies, I have to remind you. I have to remind you. Lou and Deanna to please give me a call right now on the show. I'm still holding on to that $50 that the two of you won. I received an email, but I do need some contact information. And I have $50 for one more new lady caller this morning. So please join us and win a little

cash. www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com and 877-960-99-60, and you can also text us at 772-497-6-5-30. Now back to the recovering car dealer. I have to be careful that someone just doesn't say, my name is Sheila. Please send me $50. Here's my conduct number. My name is Sheila.

Okay. No, I think we need to get into some text. have any YouTube or text? Let's get started. Yeah, let's kick it off with Anne-Marie. It was waiting for us when we got here. She has great questions. Anne-Marie says, good morning. I realize that not everything on the Internet is accurate, so I'm hoping you can enlighten me.

I read a comment on the Internet that said, technically, Tesla's don't have engines. This prompts me to ask, one, what is the difference between a motor and an engine? Two, what do Teslas have? Thanks. P.S., by the way, Jason Turchinsky is currently writing a three-part history of electric cars on jalapnick.com. So if you're interested in following that sort of thing, check it out.

Cool. I had to Google this when I saw her text. Can I have a... Oh, yeah, absolutely. This will be entertaining. See if I'm right. No, motor is the definition. That's what an electric motor.

And somehow, people begin using the word motor to describe an engine, but an engine is like a combustion engine. An engine, as you know it, and an electric, there's no such thing as an electric engine. It's a motor, electric motor. So I did Google it, and you're pretty much right on the money. They're used interchangeably in modern English, so you can refer to a motor and a internal combustion engine car.

But generally, in common usage, you don't call an electric motor and engine, even though technically you could, it just would sound weird. So, yeah, Teslas have motors. Sometimes they have one. There's a dual motor Tesla. They're working on the newest one. I think yours is a three-motor Tesla. Oh, boy. And Elon declined to do a four-motor Tesla because it would have been impossible to handle.

The wheels would just burn down and melt, I guess, if you did that. But, yeah, I looked it up, so you can't use it. Interestingly, way back in the past, they come from very different sources of the word source. So if you're a geek like me, you might want to Google it yourself. Okay. Can I just say, Anne-Marie, you never cease to amaze me. Questions you ask are just cool. I mean, I'm a veteran car dealer, and I've been doing this most of my life,

and the questions that you ask actually get me stimulated. So you're an integral part of the show. Thank you very much. Yes, thank you very much, Henry. And ladies and gentlemen, where else can you go for this information? Such detail, Stu, a book of knowledge. Give us a call, 877960-99-60. Yeah, actually, Amory takes a lot of pressure off, but I feel like we're putting pressure

in Amory. So, you know, if you wake up one Saturday morning, you're just not feeling it. Don't, don't, we're not going to get upset. You've got to take a day off you can. Yeah, I'm coming looking for you, Ann Arroy. But it does make me feel better because we need, you know, it's not you were sitting up here. We're naked. We're on live radio.

And if we don't have content to put out there, and Amory always give us. We used to be naked, but we started streaming. Ladies and gentlemen, let me say, where else can you go for all these adjectives? Naked, stimulating. Metaphorically naked, of course. Our show is on fire. And again, I can't be sure what Rick's wearing because I get here, he's behind the desk, and I leave,

so he might be wearing boxers. He has no pants on. We don't know. I think Rick has his big boy pants on. I have bad news for Rick, by the way. I think one of his YouTubers have defected over to the text line, so I have a text from Negan. So, I'm stepping on your thunder there.

But Negan, actually, Jonathan can put up a visual aid for Negan's text. He says, good morning, everybody. Negan here, and he capitalized it because I think he wants me to pronounce it the proper way, Negan. Last Saturday, I was having my oil change to my Ford Raptor at a dealership I bought the truck from in Peoria, Ford, in Arizona. I usually do my own oil changes, but this is my last free one I got with the purchase of the truck. As I was wandering around the parts department, I noticed the sign that they take anything on trade. You can see by the list, it's quite extensive and never thought about the items. that could be traded in before.

Do all dealerships do this, Earl? What is the craziest thing that you took in on trade? Just I thought I would share. And before you tell us, before you tell us, let me read you. And Jonathan has it on the screen right now. So here's the sign. It says this would they accept as a down payment and trade. Guns, all styles.

Antiques, collectible, smaller large, art, painting sculptures, motor vehicles, motorcycles, dirt bikes, fort wheelers, ATVs, side-by-sides, large utility vehicles, cars, trucks, golf, carts, tractors, UTVs, boats, jets, skis, kayaks, pontoons, hydro flights, jetboard, trailers, toy haulers, airstream trailers, RVs, pop-up camper. They also take gold, silver coins, jewelry, tools of all kinds, electronics, TV, laptops, computers, tablets, smartphones, et cetera, furniture, all kinds.

How much longer does this go on? It ends in a second. Property, in or out of state, race horses, and money, 401k, and pay advance from work. Doesn't look like a joke, but maybe this. I'm sorry, folks, we're out of time. Thanks for tuning in to Erlon cars. We'll be back next week. Anyway, so you have stories.

Yes, and I think we probably pretty much do take anything on trade still. Yeah, when I first started on the business, I mean, I was just fresh out of Westinghouse, actually. Me high to a grasshopper. I was an electronics engineer, and I'm my first job other than that out of school, and when I became a car dealer. Anyway, a guy from Bell Glade that had a cattle ranch, I think in that area, maybe it was Cluiston. He asked me if we would take some cows on trade for a car. And I said, of course.

To appraise the cows. Well, it's funny because everybody, I was working for my father then. Oh, go ahead. Blame him. And, of course, I think his words were, are you crazy? And I said, well, Dad, we're not going to keep the cows. We're not going to put them on the used cow lot or the used car lot. I said, we'll find a buyer.

And so that's the way all this goes. You could use them for us slaved on dinners. We've taken diamond rings. We've taken, you know, when you stop and think about it, you'll take anything of value. Machete? But you'll lay it off. You know, here's something, as you can remember,

when Bitcoin firstly came out and nobody knew what Bitcoin was, who was the first person to say, we'll accept Bitcoin for bankers? That was us. That's right. Elon Musk finally did it for Tesla. you know, how many years later has that meant? But we were taking Bitcoin 10 years ago?

Wouldn't Bitcoin come out? I can't remember. Within less than a year after anybody ever heard of it. Yeah. It was like it first made the news and we jumped on it and figured it out. So it's an interesting, funny thing. Of course, if you are going to trade a cow or you are going to trade a horse. You want to get three bids.

Preferably one of them. That's what the deal is going to do. The dealer's going to do. The dealer's going to get three bids. Right. I mean, you can't keep the cow, but he's not going to do that. You can't afford the hay and the maintenance. It's like brain-fed.

Brain-fed, exactly. Let's move along here. The weirdest thing I ever took on trade was a boat, which isn't weird. A boat? Yeah, we just called boat dealers and got a buy figure on it, and we placed it somewhere, and that's how we did it. I had a rule against motorcycles, because when we traded in motorcycles when I was early in the business, we had a lot of crazy salesmen, and they would get on a motorcycle, and they would kill themselves. And I was losing salesmen on the motorcycles we traded.

So I had a rule that we would not. That's horrible. That, well, I'm exaggerating. I was afraid that my salespeople would be injured. We lost six of them that summer. Until Earl changed the policy. So I had a rule we will not take motorcycles on trade. But we did accept them.

We will. We laid them off right away. Yeah, we just let our people drive it. Exactly. We'll call Harley Davidson. You know, I'm looking at Jonathan, and I see tears running down his cheeks. We have entertained him. And by the way, he's stressed.

So you can hear all these stories soon and Recovering Car Dealer Part 2. And if Stu would ever help me with it. No, the Ghost Rider, Ghost Rider doesn't work like that. Okay. We'll talk about it. Here's another text there. It says, have you guys heard about the Tesla quote unquote recall in China? What do you think of that?

I had not heard of it. I had to Google it. I haven't heard it, but I do know one thing interesting about China. Tesla. And that is the fact that the Chinese like Teslas and that we have a really very edgy situation with China now. And in fact, the previous president and the current president are both at odds with China. And this whole thing with the COVID has raised some issues and the trade and the import duties. So it's just a tenuous situation. But for some reason, And the Chinese love their good cars, and they love Tesla's.

And there's a great relationship. And so the future for Tesla and China is quite good. Well, the opportunity for any, that's the world's biggest market. But I did look it up, and there is a 300,000 car recall Model Y and Model 3 in China, Model X. And it's not really a recall because you don't have to bring the car in because it's done over the air with a software update, which is a little glimpse into the future. No big deal. Something else that you probably didn't know, or maybe you did.

They manufacture, Tesla manufacturers, Tesla's in China, in Shanghai. This year's, so they've made $34,000 so far, so that's going to be a manufacturing center for it. They love it because of the quality. And the Chinese build cars, electric cars too, but everybody knows the Tesla is far superior. And so, you know, China's not stupid. They, you know, probably, what's his name, Chi? She. He probably drives a Tesla.

She. Rick is waving on me. I was just going to say, I've heard, saw them several sides that China is really trying to get several of their electric cars over into the U.S. imported in to try selling them here. So they could possibly become a force in the electric car market. That's because they don't like their electric cars. They want Tesla's, and they're going to export their cars to the U.S. Get them out of here. Send it to the Yankees.

Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you have already tuned in. If you haven't, give us a look, and we have Facebook, we have YouTube, we have it all. 877-960-99-60, and also remember with a microchip shortage, I'll tell you what, if you've got a used car, get rid of it now. Now back to Stu. Let's see, Rick, do you have any messages coming in over there? I've got one. Guy Larrabee's asking, why are manufacturers hell bent on taking all the joy out of driving? I enjoy driving and have been driving safely for over 50 years,

and I hate all these installed safety aids that you can't turn off. Guy, that's what my grandfather told me about the horse. And he says, you know, there's nothing like being out on the planes and just cantering along, walk, trot canter. And, you know, horses are the way to go. Well, you do that well. What are these horses, buggies? So that's what we are, guy.

We're dinosaurs. And I love driving a car, too. That's the reason I bought a Tesla plaid, because I love, I love cars. But, you know, the... Tell us about your horse experience. Autonomous cars. Tell us about your riding. Your horse experience.

I don't like horses. No, you were on the horse. Well, a horse fell on me. Oh, the horse fell on you. And he also stepped on my foot. Anyway, I digress. Let's move along here. Yeah, I think what guy, is he talking about, like, traction control?

He can't burn your tires anymore. You can't really just like... No, I know exactly what he's talking about. Four on the floor, two-barre four-barrel carburetes, three-two-barrels, you know, positive traction, zero to 60 in 5.9 seconds. Hey, my Tesla will go zero to 60 in under two seconds. One point nine, I think. One point nine seconds. I'm going to say, but guy, if you've been driving for 50 years, you're probably past,

the stage in life where you should be burning your tires. Don't you think? I'm just teasing you. When they pry my cold dead fingers off my steering wheel, this one they'll take my car. I've got a note from Donovan here that says, Tesla's also opening a factory in Austin, Texas and Berlin, June,

that Berlin, Germany, by the end of the year. Is that coffee he's drinking over here? Marlborough rum and coffee. He's a rum boy. It's very tasty. All right. We talked about this yesterday with some Toyota executives.

What will the, this is the text, this is, what will the maintenance be on all electric cars? There's no oil to change or transmissions to service. How will this affect car dealers? Very insightful question. Oh, okay. You had lunch. Yeah, we had lunch with some Toyota executives. Don't name any names.

No names. And we're talking about everything. And the first question Earl asked of a very highly placed executive and said, what is the future of the car business? He just asked him. You want to hear what he had to say? And we got on a long discussion about electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles and all that. And one of them was this question about maintenance.

And the answer is eventually there's not going to be very much maintenance at all to do. It was interesting to hear their perspective because we always think about the time in five years or 10 years when most of the cars or what percentage of cars will be electric, there will still be a lot of internal combustion engines on the car on the road for many years, so it will eventually decay, but yeah, there's no oil to change, there's no service. Tires, eventually we're going to look at forever tires or permanent tires, so who knows what's going to happen.

It's going to be like a cell phone. How often do you service your iPhone, you know? It's got more moving parts, so there will be something, but not very much. And since you bring up that lunch, it's something that's very interesting. The auto manufacturers of the world are in denial. I don't think they're really in denial. They're afraid to face the fact that the car dealer network, the worldwide network through which cars are sold is a dinosaur soon to be replaced.

Whatever vehicle we drive, autonomous, electric, or whatever is, will, for sure, at 20 years, I'll be conservative, will be sold directly by the manufacturers. And the manufacturers, it'll be like buying an iPhone from Apple. You'll buy an autonomous car or an all-electric car or whatever it may be directly from Tesla or Toyota or Volkswagen. And the dealer network, as we know it today, will disappear. So the dealers are in denial for a lot of reasons.

First of all, it's a long-run issue. It's not going to happen tomorrow. our dealership will be around for another probably 10 or 15 or 20 years maybe more you don't know you're just saying approximately but the way they are distributed will be different but the manufacturers

have to be careful they the manufacturers and this is what came out at lunch we support the dealer network 100% well they have to say that because that's their lifeblood and that's the way the cars are being distributed you can't get on you can't get on national television say, and you're Mary Barra, and you're the president of General Motors, and say, I got some

bad news for General Motors dealers, we're not going to need you pretty soon. Suddenly, their dealerships are worth nothing, and everybody would be bailing out and trying to get rid of their dealerships. But dealers are nervous. I mean, the smart dealers are nervous about how cars will be distributed. And it's going to be, the world's changing, folks. Technology, technology strategically, retail-wise, distribution-wise, it's going to be a wild ride. A wild, wild ride. Earl, speaking of denial, these dealers, what a financial disaster for you to ignore the female buyer. It definitely is a disaster.

And speaking of that, I do have $50 for one more new lady caller. So give us a call toll-free at 877-960-99-60. We are going to be speaking again to Steve, and he's calling us from Jersey. Oh, hi, Steve. Good morning, Steve. Good morning. Welcome. I'm calling to follow up.

Hi, Nancy. Actually, I'm calling to follow up on a discussion that you had last week about female safety in cars. Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to mention that eventually I bought a new car last year. And I basically was looking between a Mercedes and a Volvo and in my research of the Mercedes. What I found out was that the front seats are designed for people who are five feet taller or above. And my wife is only 4'10. And I called up Mercedes Corporate and they told me that, well, technically if you wanted your

wife to ride safely on our car, and this is an E-class car, that she should have, use a booster, a child's booster seat. Oh, no. What? Because basically the front seat is designed for a person, five feet, or higher, and that's not on a seat, but then that's also the airbag and everything else. Oh, my goodness. Well, they don't advertise that, do they?

No, but it's in the owner's manual. See, and everybody can read, if you're looking for a new car, you can, you can, go to the manufacturer's site, look at the owner's manual for that car, and read through it, and I did. I mean, these owners manuals are four or five hundred pages, but I did. Like reading the fine print. Oh, yeah. And the Volvo car that I bought, Volvo designs are front seats for passengers that are four foot eight or above. Interesting. Very interesting. Thank you so much for that information, Steve. The reason I bring this up is because, Nancy, you talked about how

in the test crash where the test crash dummies that don't really use female test dash test crash dummies. Right, right. But this goes beyond that because actually I mean, I have a Volvo now

but the point is that at least one manufacturer recognizes that people that are shorter in stature are going to be sitting in their front seat in her car and design it accordingly. what interesting information thank you Steve I'd mention that it thank you so much you know how many people we have spoken to callers on anyone at all that has gone through that owner's manual congratulations on that alone but bringing this subject to the audience that's listening it's it's just startling that it was only recently that they started

you know paying attention to that passenger seat or even the driver's seat and if you are i'm only five foot three and um it is something to take into consideration and it can be a danger well one of the things is uh well like i say we have the i a hs safety test and whatnot um but a lot of a lot of the car manufacturers um design your cars so that they can pass these tests. They don't go beyond that. And they oftentimes don't redesign your cars until they have to react to poor test results.

Again, that's one of the reasons why I bought my car. But the other thing, though, is while I'm comfortable with my car, with the seat design for my wife, because most of the time she's in a passenger seat anyway, The other issue, though, with shorter statured people, is on the driver's side, even because they have to sit so close to the steering wheel, there are relatively few cars where the brake and the gas pedal can be moved mechanically closer to the driver. Instead, almost all cars, the seat has to be pushed closer to all of that, which therefore means. you're closer to the airbag and the steering column. So there's a long way to go before I think cars are going to be designed more safely

for smaller, shorter, stature people. Sure. And this is really something that really should be looked at. Absolutely. What we can do is keep on talking about it and hope for the best. Absolutely. Cars should be designed for any human being to be safe, whether it's a child, you know, with a baby all the way up to a large,

person and you just have to and if you don't and if you want to design a car that doesn't do that you should make it clear you don't put it in the fine print somewhere your lawyers say hey do this and remember lawyers invented fine print so when you have something you don't want anyone to know about you put it in the owner's manual 350 pages and fine print and if you want to if you want to build a car that isn't safe for women or small people then you know you should say so and it should be fully disclosed so that anyone knows that before they buy the car. You're going to buy a Volvo because you had the intelligence and you happen to have a wife that was unsafe in the Mercedes and you did your due diligence. How many people do that? How many

people buy the Mercedes instead of the Volvo because they didn't know? And the answer is 99.9% of the people didn't know what you just did, what you just did. disclosed. So thank you very much, Steve. I appreciate that. Very, very interesting topic. You know, there's... I just wanted to make one point, though, about it's not just Mercedes, although I was looking at Mercedes. It's other car brands as

well, so... Sure. And also in that, you know, in the manual, I'm wondering, and Rick can probably answer this question. You know, I was, quite some time ago, in an accident and my airbag went off, and I had some pretty severe burns,

and I'm wondering, was I too close? Rick, can you answer that question? It is potential that you were too close, but airbags can cause burns. The way the airbag works, it's an actual chemical burning process that creates all the gas to fill that bag. It gets quite hot. But on the other hand, those burns are a little easier to handle than a face impact into the dashboard or the steering wheel. and at least you're alive to complain about the burns, you know, to let them heal. Good point. Steve, I hope we answered all your questions, and thank you so much for what you just shared with us.

I'm sure that you got the attention of all of our listeners. Thank you. You're welcome. Have a wonderful weekend. If you didn't tune in last week and didn't listen to Nancy's comments about car safety test. It's kind of like one of these dirty little secrets of the National Highway Traffic Safety Association and the insurance companies. When they test cars, they use male models. The dummies you see in these slow motion movies where they hit the wall and the dummy goes flapping around

and cars roll over and they, those are male dummies and they don't use a female model to test safety. So if the average size male is safe in a car, then it gets a high safety rating and the car manufacturer advertises, the dealer advertises it, say, hey, we have a really safe car. And if you have a woman who happens to be a small statue,

it's not safe for that woman, but you don't know that unless you read the fine print in the manual and half the people driving the cars are women. They also don't use, like, child-sized dummies. They don't use dummies of varying shapes and sizes. Or dogs. Or even dogs.

They use just a single, like a single generic, six-foot-tall, 170-pound. So that commercial, they show the family of crash test dummies, that's just all made up for the commercial. Yeah, pretty much. Interesting. Another interesting point. Yeah, they have a whole family. They got little kid dummies, daddy dummies, mama dummies. It's all marketing.

Puffery. Ladies, we, as you can hear, have become a, well, a powerful voice. So let your voice be heard. I'm going to offer one more lady, $50. If you are a new caller, give us a call at 877-960-9960. We're going to go back to the phones where we have Marty calling us from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Marty. Good morning.

How's everybody doing? We're wonderful. Thanks for giving us a call back. I just wanted to mention what Earl said about car dealers that they should look to the future because I'm from Rochester, New York. I haven't been back there for about 15 years. I don't miss the weather. But nobody thought Kodak would ever go down the tubes. Everybody thought Kodak would be around forever. Yeah. You know, they missed the boat on digital. digital photography, they were still printing film and pictures and missed the boat.

They went from 60,000 employees that registered down to about 5,000. Their original stock went down to zero, and because they didn't have the foresight to look ahead. And I mean, right now, like Earl said, I don't think regular cars are going to go out of business for quite a while because you've got so many gas-driven cars it's, you know, and they would have to come out

with something real electric that everybody could afford. But you have to look ahead and you've got to be, you know, proactive in that. Sure. A Polaroid camera. Who remembers Polaroid?

Polaroid was going to put Kodak out of business and now digital put Polaroid out of business. It's like a little, it's a little niche thing. Kids buy them now. You can buy them in like clothing stores. Is that right? As an old, yeah, my kids have some.

And what about Jake? Well, Rochester, the other day when you were saying for the gentleman that passed away, there was a car dealer, I really never realized that he was from Rochester or in that area. Huge. And I never bought, in Rochester, I only bought, hondas or Toyotas. When I used to have Buick's, I had problems with their transmission all the time. So I went to Hondas and Toyotas, and I have to say, I don't think Toyota's going to go away for quite a while. And even though you came out saying that Tesla, I guess, was worth more.

I assume there was a stock, in stock, but not in volume. Correct. Funny you should mention that because the executive will rename Nameless that Stu and I had lunch with yesterday, I mentioned the fact that Tesla was worth almost twice as much as Toyota, and he bristled and said that, you know, Tesla is only profitable because of the carbon credits that they get, which is true. They would not be profitable today if we're not for the carbon credits. They build and sell all electric cars, so they earn a huge number of carbon credits. If you don't know what those are, the government uses that to incentivize all manufacturing. to build stuff that maybe costs them more money to build than they should,

and they give them a credit toward their earnings. And you can have too many carbon credits that don't offset your taxes, and then you can sell them. And so carbon credits are bartered back and forth. Tesla is a total seller of carbon credits. So someone like General Motors is building a lot of combustion engine cars that are violating the, rules on emissions, have to buy the carbon credits, and they pay Elon Musk, and he puts it in

the bank, and that's the reason Tesla is profitable today. Now, they're twice as profitable as Toyota, but not in real money in carbon credits. Yeah, I still see more Toyotas around than Tesla, so I don't think you have anything to worry about. I think you're going to be in good shape for many years. I hope you're right. I believe you're right. Yeah. All right. Have a good day, everybody. Thank you very much.

Give us a call again, Marty. We really enjoy talking to you. Hey, 77-960, or you can text us at 772-497-9-7-6-5-30. I think we're going to get to some YouTubes. Well, I do have one comment in from Donovan again. He says, it's not true there's no oil to change on an EV. There is oil and an oil filter. It's used to cool the oil.

electric motor stator and the reduction gear differential. You have to change it every 100 to 150,000 miles, and Tesla Model 3 and Model I have a traditional screw-on-type oil filter to make this change easier. You know, Donovan has become a regular on our radio. He is. And he has filled us with so much information. Thank you, Donovan. Who said there was no oil changed on a... There... Oh. There isn't. I'm looking at the scheduled maintenance guide right here. There is, I don't say anything like that. I'll keep looking, but I'll have to investigate that. Yeah, there's no.

I wonder what Donovan's source was. I'm wondering, because he, from the comments that he makes a lot here on YouTube, I'd love to have him called in. Donovan, if you, call in, buddy, call the show. We'd love to talk with you. They recommend every year lubricating break calipers, an AC desk in bag every two years. You test loaners out there, call the show,

and let us know. Do you have oil that you have to change on your Tesla? We said no, and Donovan says yes. Tesla says no, too. Wouldn't be the first time we've been wrong? Tesla says no. He seems to have a lot of information about cars. I wonder if he's in the automotive business somewhere. It seems that way. Donovan, please give us a call at 877-960-99-60. We have a lot of questions for you. Stu? I'm at the source information. But anyway, let's move on. This is from Bob, and you texted He says, what do you think of Kia regarding reliability?

First thing it is, I went over to Consumer Reports. There you go. Because I don't know, but if you have a consumer reports account, you can get it. So I looked up the three most popular Kia models. Jonathan can put it on the screen. The first one we looked at is the Kia Forte, 20201 Kia Forte. And if you can see it on the screen right now, it has a one out of five on predicted reliability. That is the worst that you can get.

And it's got an overall score of 42. It's not a recommended. So that's the answer on that one. The next popular vehicle is a Kia Soul. It also gets a 1 out of 5. This is a 2021 Kia Soul gets a 1 out of 5 on reliability. That's really bad. It's got an overall score of 48.

And then the Kia Sorrento, which is the SUV, and it's got a 3 out of 5 on predicted reliability. It's in the yellow. It's a little bit better. Overall score is 76, but I would caution on the new Kia models on the reliability ratings. If you're new to the show, I'm holding up the annual issue on consumer reports, auto issue is just worth its weight and gold, and consumer reports, period, is the ultimate source. They take no advertising, they live on donations, they will not even

buy a car to test other than sticker price or they buy it from a dealer. They won't take it. They take no kickbacks or gratuities or anything and all. They're strictly objective. Now, back on is a Kia, a good car, you take any manufacturer, they have, almost every manufacturer has some recommended cars on Consumer Reports, models. Now, Kia probably doesn't have a whole lot of them, but I'm sure they have models that I recommend it. So no matter what you're buying, just don't take the whole brand and write it off because someone told you it got a bad consumer's report rating.

Look at the model, because individual models vary greatly on consumer reports, and that's our Bible on quality. Absolutely. All right. We will jump over here to, well, somebody in California says oil prices continue to soar. How will this impact hybrid in EV sales? Are you seeing an increase in hybrid sales the summer? And then follow-up text says gas is $4.30 here in California.

We have so many hybrids out there now. Everybody's jumped on the hybrid bandwagon, and when I think about demand, I think about Prius when it first came out with Toyota back in the 80s, and that was the only hybrid. And so we would see the price of, it was almost like a direct correlation between gas prices and Prius sales. Once Prius became available in quantity, now there's so many hybrids, it's kind of muted, so we don't see an extreme variation. In normal times, we'll see a little bit, but you're right, exactly. So when everybody jumped to hybrids, we would have these enormous spikes in the hybrid sales. So it gets spread out amongst the other manufacturers. But now, even though gas prices are going up and everything,

it's just because the inventory situation, it's really hard to measure this. So there's not a whole very many hybrids to sell. So that's the problem. By the way, just speaking of that, the microchip manufacturers, and this is the reason for the other than the COVID phenomenon, The microchip shortage is what's causing new car prices to spike and indirectly used car prices to spike. The microchip manufacturers have notified the auto manufacturers,

and this was just in the news a couple days ago, that they're going to have 30 to 50% more microchips available in the second half of this year than they thought they were going to have. So remember, you heard it on this show before. we're going to have a surplus of new cars at toward the end of the year. Tremendous buying opportunity for you. You don't have to buy a car today.

Wait if you're going to buy a newer used car and you will see an overreaction by the auto manufacturers. They will build too many cars and they won't have enough buyers and the prices will come down significantly. So good news on the microchip manufacturers are going to be able to supply more. You know, as far as gas is concerned,

You know, I've talked to so many people about them rethinking how they drive because with gas prices, just like California. As a matter of fact, my sister lives out there, and she was telling me they're really rethinking how they drive because it does affect your fuel. So we're going to go back to the phones, and we're going to be talking to John from West Palm Beach. Good morning, John. Hey, good morning. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you.

You know, talking about the Tesla and whether or not it requires an oil changer or not, you know, by rule of thumb, what I've always grown up with is if it's a moving part, there's friction, friction causes heat, and it breaks down the oil or the grease. I mean, we even have to grease the car doors, you know, to keep them from squeaking. So there's moving parts on that Tesla. I guess the big question is the interval. What's the interval of something that has to be maintained with oil or grease? And does it need to be changed or added? Well, I'm going to stand corrected on what I say, because Donovan emailed something. This does not appear in the Tesla owner's manual or in the maintenance schedule.

It's on an internal document with Tesla. It's not on the Model S, but there's a part number and there's a picture, and it's not traditional engine oil, but it looks like there is a casing that requires the introduction of oil, but it's not mentioned to any consumer. It's on the Tesla website. I just found that as well,

and it's a gearbox that uses a traditional screw-on filter style, but again, I looked at Tesla's site as well, and it shows nothing in there about scheduled maintenance for changing it. However, it does say on the one site that there's a dipstick so you can check the oil level.

but it's not a traditional oil it's not flowing through an engine right it's a gear loop yeah but um it's also apparently it's uh it's on the model the picture that donovan sent me it's got a part number model three so it's very interesting and the one i've done here is on the why also john yeah no i'm here like i like i said everything has to be maintained and you know keep it in running order you're exactly right you're exactly right you know i think that uh i think we so when we say zero maintenance we're asking for an argument and i guess there's nothing including uh you know anything you own requires some kind of maintenance yeah that's what's why i said it's not exactly like a phone i mean there's more there are moving parts yeah john thank you oh you're welcome

thank you john have a great week in 877 960 9960 and we are going to go back to the text man. Yeah, I wonder, though, like, the reason for that is it to bolster the mythology of the Tesla? Like, it's not customer-facing, so you don't know, because that's part of the appeal. With the AV cars, it's so different. There's no maintenance. You don't have to do an all-change, but if there is something required, but it's hidden from the cut, it just has done secretly every 100,000 miles when you're bringing in for a check-up.

I don't know. Probably. Time for an expose. We'll do a little investigation. Exactly. Exactly. Let's see here. Let's jump over to, actually, no, this is actually very topical. It was based on the last question that you answered. It says there has to be a clever way to take advantage of the current car market and get a high price for my used car and then waiting until the new car prices come back down is a long-term rental and option. Yeah, I mean, the problem is rental cars are off the chart too on price.

Anything on four wheels today costs you more money. transportation to get you there is going to cost you more. So I was thinking about that same thing. It's a shame. You're driving a used car that's 50% greater value than it was a year ago, but you needed to get to work, and you don't want to buy a new car, because that costs too much money, and you're caught between a rock and a hard price. I'm half serious, Uber or Lyft, how often you use a car.

We have a lot of people, I know a lot of people, that, They don't go 20 miles a day, you know, that's all they use their car for. Some don't do that. I have customers at our dealership that will put, you know, 1,000, 2,000 miles on a car. Now, if you're doing that, you don't need a car, really. You take Uber. And people say, well, I like to own my car and I don't want to have to call Uber. I get that.

It's temporary. But if you're trying to make a big score and you're trying to play the market With the high-priced use car and the little high-priced new car, you could sell your used car, make a home run. And hitchhack. Yeah, and hitchh-ruck. Or bum rides from your friends. Or take Uber, you know, or carpool.

I mean, there's a lot of ways people get around without cars. And if you can suffer for three or four months, you got out of the top of the used car market, and then you jump in at the bottom of the new car market. So that'd be a real home run. You'd be the smartest guy in the room. Yeah. Back to Stu, the comedian. I got a text from Mark.

He says, as far as consumer reports go, must one have a membership in order to gain access to their information in magazines? Yes and no. If you don't want a subscription, just call them to the show. And you can get a library card to any library. Anybody remember what a library? You youngsters out there. There's one down the street from my house.

Libraries are places where they have books. And books are kind of like an iPhone. but, no, no. Now, if you're a member of a library, you have free access online or the heart copy of the consumer report. So go to your local library and get a free consumer report every month and you'll never have to subscribe. Or text me. Text me or the show. I still have my library card from the 50s. Really? Do you still have that book you checked out in 1957? You have a huge fine, I promise you.

Mark has a second question. It says, why did they cancel production of the CyanXB? That was my favorite vehicle and a much better vehicle than the Kia Soul. They shut down the whole Cyan line. And a couple of the cars, IA, became a Toyota. And the FRS became in 86, but the XB did not survive. Maybe it was just too weird for its own good. Who knows?

I always like the XB. Yeah, we don't have time to talk about it on the show, but it's an interesting, it's a long story, and Toyota got ahead of itself in terms of selling cars. They wanted to have a perfectly safe car, and they wanted to have a car that could be bought with no hassle and no haggle without having to go through the horrors that you have to do to buy a car. So they came up with this great idea, and nobody came to the party.

And the car dealers prostituted the car and added his, hidden fees and loaded it up with accessories and haggled and hassled and screwed the customers. And the whole Cyan experience collapsed. Collapsed. Collapsed because of Toyota overestimated the intelligence. Or the ethical, you know, the dealer body. Exactly. The dealer body destroyed the Cyan.

And they just eliminated it. And they even took the signs down. and they took the name away. Even when they were building the Sions, they just called it something else. It was an embarrassment to Toyota. They still survive in the showrooms, but with different names. And what was the name of the guy that headed up Sion? Oh, well, in the southeast, so it was Michael Kennedy, but was it was a Bob Carter?

No, no. It'll come to me. Anyway, he's president of Ford now, CEO of Ford. Chris Farley. Yeah. So Jim Farley was... Jim Farley. Jim Farley.

pioneered. He was the CEO of Zion within Toyota. And he is a visionary. He's an extremely sharp guy. He's a very honest guy. And now he's CEO of Ford. And let me tell you something. I wrote Ford off a long time ago in terms of who's going to win the game with the rapid change in the way things are going. Ford loses the money hand over a fist. It's been a joke

in modern history and just a question of time before they go under but Jim Farley is going to I think save them and I think if he can figure out how to get the dealer distribution network

cleaned up he could be General Motors Toyota Ford Honda everybody except Tesla because they already go direct in terms of marketing forwards and maybe save Ford

but the Scion was ahead of its time Pure and simple. Yeah, he's a visionary. He's also a cousin of Chris Farley, the comedian who died in the 90s. True. I have a question for you. As far as the Zion sound system, did it really deserve the kind of popularity and attention that it received? I think so, because when they first came out, they, this, you know, we know about Gen Z and, you know, and the millennials back before they started calling that generation of millennials, they called them Gen Y.

And so they designed everything to appeal to this young. younger generation that were just starting to buy cars when it came out. And so that was like upgraded sound systems and customizable and all that. So, yeah, they did put a better headstock as a base model and they had speakers and all that. So it was, yeah, kids liked it all that. Yeah, the opinions that I received were about the sound system. They didn't mention anything else, whether, I don't know, Gen Z, Gen Y, Millennials,

whatever, but they loved the sound system. The funny thing they were wrong about that because they thought Gen Y would buy them all, but a lot of older people did, so it was, you know, it was a neat experiment. Because they had a headroom. They usually get in and get out. Yeah, especially that XP, exactly. Oh, the joke. Jonathan texted to say that, just FYI, the price of gas is pretty much the same across the country,

but much higher in California because of their numerous gas taxes, and I've read that as well. Let's jump over to anonymous feedback. We'll have a fun one. I think we've done this question before, but real quick, because it could take a long time. Just out of curiosity, what's the favorite car you all have ever owned? And I'll just start a forerunner. It's my favorite car. No, you have to start with me.

Okay, I'm sorry. Barracuda. We knew that. 1957, Pontiac Bonneville fuel injection. And Richter? My Tacoma. Is it your favorite ever? Yeah.

That's just sweet. What about you, Jonathan? Limith Roadrunner. Llymouth Roadrunner. There you go. Look at it. See, we can be brief if we want to. Do you want me to talk about my barricota?

You can. This is your show. I'm just a guest. I'm going to pull the plug on your mic if you're trying. More anonymous feedback. Can an airbag be installed as an aftermarket device on a car that did not originally have one? No. Okay.

And please don't try this at home. It's a very, very, very... Sophistic thing. ...dangerous, you know, ironically, right? I'm saying it's almost tongue-in-cheek with Takata that airbags can be dangerous, but even an airbag that works can be dangerous because they're powerful things. They explode to save you.

When airbags were first coming out, people actually did get killed by them. There was one case that I heard of a woman was going to her office on a Saturday in the winter. She pulled into the parking lot a little quick, hit a snowdrift, and the airbag caught her in the chest and stopped her heart, killed her. I heard a rumor that in our dealership there were some crazy

technicians that used to like to set the airbags off for thrills and they didn't want the owner to know about it but actually the back then the rule was we could not return an airbag to parts unless it was detonated uh-huh so you all got around

the thing that was Jeff's rule well actually Jeff wasn't even the parts guy this is back in the old shop he just liked the explosion you got to blow that up for me first I was the one they got to blow them all on the craziest thing I ever saw was they're in like service and people doing as pranks.

They play airbag exploiters like under a chair. I saw a guy go through a ceiling. Yeah, I will. I won't let anybody be near him, but that's assault, brother. All right. Mark have followed up again. He wanted to make sure that we knew that the sound system was superior and he's in the 60s and he's talking about the Sions.

But Mark's a hit cat, you know. He likes his high-fi. That's a term you've heard a long time. Okay. Really? Anonymous feedback. we have a critic I don't know if I'm being picky

but I hate how you use the term female instead of woman I think female sounds clinical I never hear you refer to men as males That's a good point I get I'm so careful I try to be careful because I don't want to offend people And I'm as you told me that

I think I think you're right Woman certainly sounds But what's the adjective for women If you say like a female mystery shopper What other option do we have A woman mystery shopper? A lady mystery shopper? A lady mystery shopper? I think that's anachronistic.

But lady can be offensive too, because it's a throwback. Hey, lady. Yeah. I mean, that's not good. So we'd like to hear from the, we'd like to hear from the woman slash lady, fash females. What are your preferred men say, how do you like to be called? Well, first of all, I can't make. First of all, I can't make everybody happen.

You know why? I'm not a bottle of tequila. So there you go. That's what I... That's a good one. That's what I have to see. Another knee-flapper. No, I'm stealing that. I can't make everybody happy. What do you think I have a bottle of tequila? I love blowing buildings up. Excuse me. I digress. At any right, you know, seriously, whenever I say female, it's... I kind of stutter when I say female, and I've wanted to change. that and it just I haven't come up with the solution you know what I just had a revelation

this is part the reason we can't come up with a word is because it's a male world the males designed it and there are a lot of things that are awkward like every time you're not supposed to say actress anymore you're supposed to say actor and I don't know

if you're like me every time I see an attractive woman who was a great performer and I call her an actor, I feel a little strange. I mean, I want to say actress, but actress is a male word designed, and the women don't like it. But we're having a hard time even describing the other part of the species besides males because the males came up with all the words. The language evolved to support the patriarchy.

Exactly. That's true. Yeah, I have so much more to say about it, but we really don't have time. but thank you for the text yeah well we'll do our best and that's what we're trying to do every day so we all our attentions are good yeah everybody that's listening give us a call what's your opinion help us out 877 960 9960

okay uh and more anonymous feedback has anybody thought about making a rumba for your car um do you know what a rumba is it's a dance right no That's a rhomba. That's a rumba. I know what a rumba is. We have one in the living room, and I stopped using it.

All right. This is a fascinating concept. No, no room does not make one for the car. I think the existing rumbas are probably too big and wouldn't really work, but maybe a very small one that, what do you think, Rick? Rick stare. He knows this is not a serious anonymous feedback, but maybe it is. I don't know.

I mean, it addresses an issue, and that's keeping your car clean, and that's a relative to our show. I have two questions. First off, how is my cat going to ride on a Roomba that small? Does your cat ride on the Roomba? We don't have a Roomba. The cat would kill it.

Otherwise, the second one is, what would you do when that Roomba got up underneath the brake pedal while you were driving? Yeah. That's why it's a terrible idea. Hey, we're going to air everything that comes in. We don't censor very often. And so that was a text.

We're all caught up. I don't have any more text or anonymous feedback. I got another one here from Donovan. When dealing with an Auto Nation dealer, how do you get out of the $800 dealer fee they have that is not in the advertised price? They are a one-price store, so that seems the only way to negotiate on something

is that dealer fee. How about a class action lawsuit against AutoNation, which is a publicly held company for unethical advertising? And any lawyers out there? No, I totally agree. You know, the automation is supposed to go by all the rules. Actually, we recommend automation dealerships most of the time. I don't think we have any automation dealerships on our do-not-buy list,

but I think it's a little misleading to say we're... And they're only one price on used cars anyway. They're not one price on new cars. So they're still from an ethical... honesty, transparency standpoint. All the nation stores are a cut above. Just watch out for them in the FNAI department, the finance department. That's where they really lay you away. They make more money in financing cars than anybody. They are really number one when taking advantage of you in the finance department. Yes, definitely. And ladies and gentlemen,

speaking of Kia, we have a mystery shopping report and Stu is ready for that. He wrote a great mystery shopping report, and that is from Hollywood Kia. Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to go to the Roadrunner, and he is a regular caller. Good morning, Steve. Bebeep. Good morning, everybody. Everybody doing well? All right, beep, beep. Peepee, right.

Yesterday, while having lunch, me and my friend, I parked next to that new electric Mustang. Oh, electric Mustang. The Mach E-X, I believe. Yeah. It didn't look like a Mustang. No, I thought it was an SUV. Yeah. So I'm looking at it.

I said, where the heck of the door handles? There ain't no door handles. So I looked up further on the door. There's a little, because I wanted to see if it was a four door and it was. There's little buttons there and it has a little lock icon on it with that. Cool. Cool. My question is, everybody knows.

somebody has a lead foot, okay? Mm-hmm. Now, let's say you're driving a gas-powered vehicle that's supposed to get, like, 30 miles to the highway gallon, but since you've got a lead foot, you only get like 23. Mm-hmm. Now, is that the same possible thing that could happen with somebody with an electric car,

have a lead foot or a lead, however they, you know, get the car to go? Is that possible? Or the mileage would vary on the drive? with an electric car? I don't think so. And Rick can correct me on this, but you actually charge your battery when you break. And if you have a lead foot,

you have to accelerate and break a lot. The more you accelerate and break, the more you break. Of course, the acceleration depletes the battery and the braking charges the battery. Before I get myself in trouble, I'll turn it over to Rick. Actually, as a matter of fact,

Negan, who came back from the light to the light side, had a question about this, about the brakes on Tesla systems. They use what's called regenerative braking. The electric motors to drive the car, when you let off the accelerator, they reverse into generators to create electricity, and the drag that is created by that generator actually creates more electricity, but it also slows the wheels. So the car will coast, but when you step on the brake pedal, the first thing it does is provide a little more force to charge those generators to make them produce more electricity. His question was about a lead foot. So if I'm driving an electric car and I floor it, it's sucking up a lot of battery power. Yes, you use more battery power. And then when

I take my foot off, it decelerates naturally and it charges a battery, but I have a feeling it's not 50-50. You probably burn up a lot more. So the answer is actually, yes, if you have a heavy foot, you're going to run out of battery power pretty quick. Yeah. Yeah, because I Googled that car and it says

it takes 10 hours for 100% charge. Depending on the charger. Oh, for the Mustang. Who can't wait 10 hours when you got to leave town in a hurry? I see. Interesting. Right?

Yeah. Yeah, if you've got to leave down in a hurry, you don't want an electric car. If you forget to plug it, then you're in trouble, right? And what other things are they said, to get it at 80% of a charge, it's less time. I like to know what the difference is, if anybody knows, between an 80% charge and 100% charge. For 20%, it doesn't take that long. Very good. I told you, I told you a rigorous part.

Well, from what I've heard described on it, it's that first charge, they're supercharging it, so they're really pushing the electricity in at a heavy current rate, a very much higher rate of current and voltage. So what happens is when it hits that 80% point, they have to slow it down to prevent heat build up, and so that way the batteries don't over heat. Just like a regular battery. Exactly, identically. so they could blow up if they do overheat then right yes they could

there is that potential okay last week we spoke about the price of charging I said the one at Walmart was 43 cents a kilowatt and you said it could go all the way up to like 80 cents a kilowatt there's no ruling on that is that right sir he's talking about the cost of charging can you go up to 80 cents

it's really up to the whoever is managing the charging station. So, yeah, you can arbitrarily do it. Like, we have our set to, I think, $0.12 a kilowatt hour, which is, I think, our average, what we're paying. So, but it is up to whoever owns that charger. At your home, it's going to be whatever you pay at home. So you plug in, it's going to be like $0.14, $0.12 a kilowatt hour.

So I can buy a charging station and charge electric cars in my carport, right? You can because it just, I guess, ups the, I'm not a technician, but we installed one. So it's a little bit better than the 110 volt, so it does a little bit faster. But ChargePoint is a manufacturer. They do the public ones, and they also make one for home. So that's what we put our house. It was $700 for the unit, and then we had to pay an electrician to install it. What's the one that going out in my garage?

You're getting the Tesla supercharger. So you paid out a lot of money, so now you've got to make up that money, right? Yeah, I mean, I'll just be honestly. I wasn't really looking at, like, fuel savings over time as more electric. Because my son has a plug-in hybrid, and so he plugs in there as well. And in the future, we'll have more. So we just figured this is not a short-term thing. You know, the next 10 years, we're probably going to have multiple plug-in vehicles.

So we figured to be a good investment. Yeah, it's a great investment. My last question is, what is everybody going to do with their gas-powered cars? Sell them. No, I mean, they'll be worth a lot of money. I mean, I have a 1937 Pontiac on the Shoreroom, Florida, in my dealership. And it cost me a lot of money because I had it happen to restore, and if I were ever going to sell it, I sell it for a lot of money. So if you have a really cool combustion engine car and you take care of it, pass it down to your son, grandson, and it'll be worth a lot of money Monday.

So when I die, they're going to have fun with my money. No, I'm taking money with me. I think we should bury ourselves on our gas-powered cars. It's not environmentally friendly, but... Steve, okay, that sounds good. Everybody have a good and safe weekend. Thank you, Steve. Stay in touch.

Ladies and gentlemen, take a look at Earl's latest column, and it is how to effectively complain to your car dealer. What a great read this is. I mean, there's so many tips, and if Jonathan has me on the camera, you can take a look at... I just love... this woman, lady, female.

That gives me PTSD looking at that. Can I say something seriously about that? Because every now and then I do a blog column, a newspaper column, that I really enjoy. Nobody else does, but I do. But, you know, I have been on the receiving end of more complaints than just about anybody. I've been in the car business since 1968, as most of you know, and I started out evil and mean and did bad things and naturally people complain

but now that I'm trying to do everything right people still complain because we're not perfect and we make mistakes so I just hear it all and I'm totally accessible people call me and I give my personal cell phone number to all of our customers I have five red phones in the dealership that you can

pick up and talk to me and so just ask Nancy who lives with me the phone rings a lot and I hear a lot of complaints I know how to complain and I'm a good recipient because I understand the average person in a business, you don't have to confine it to a cartilagia.

You have to treat like a human being and you have to, if you want to have results, let me preface to that. If you want to have effectively complained, you have to treat the person you're complaining to with courtesy and respect as much as possible and try to be brief. Stu, he gets a lot of complaints from my email,

I do, anybody in business does. When you get a three-page complaint and you're a busy person, you might not read it as carefully as you might otherwise. So complain nicely, nicely. I also make more mistakes on those. It's hard. I mean, I'm a good reader. But when it's that dense and that big, I've missed the point before.

And complain to the right person. You don't want to complain. to the just necessarily the person that created the problem you want to be sure you go up the ladder as high as necessary somebody usually in most dealerships or businesses someone has got a heart has got empathy and will try to take care of you find that person and then complain nicely nicely and briefly and you'd be surprised because you don't want to call the lawyer you don't want to do the lemon law Nancy or yes I have a caller well let's do it okay Briefly, is the operative word, briefly.

Evan, thank you so much for holding. Evan is calling us from California. Good morning, Evan. Yes, good morning. I'm calling because I am in a real pickle, and I need some advice. Here's the situation I'm in. I have a 14-year-old Toyota Corolla,

And basically, it's beat. Tires are gone, the brakes are gone. There's problems with the exhaust manifold. During the pandemic, it wasn't much of a problem because my wife and I were able to work from home, and we didn't use it hardly at all. Now, all of a sudden, what happened was I guess I was naive. I went to my credit union. I got a $20,000 pre-approved loan.

at a pretty good rate. And then all of a sudden, I find out that I cannot afford any decent new cars, except for the ones that have very low reliability ratings. And I'm not really sure what to do. Do I try to fix a car that's worth basically nothing? Or do I buy a car that has a bad reliability rating? or I had one of the thought was, do I go to a service, you know, an auto broker that claims that they'll get you something below MSRP? They'll ship it all over California.

So I'm not sure what to do. That's why I'm calling because I thought, do I pay, you know, $500 to $800 for a broker? Do I just give up the car loan? Do I try to fix? I know there's already queues and lines. Is it driving? Is it running right now? Barely. I only drive it, I mean, literally, like, within, I drive it no more than, like, three miles from my home, because I'm really concerned it's going to break down.

I don't know how feasible this is. I mean, if there's any way to extend the life of that curl, just a few more months until we get out of the worst of this inventory, because right now, you know, if you go to the option of trying to replace the vehicle, like you said, going through, you're not going to get a good price, you know, anywhere right now, because just the inventory. shortages. There's any way to a Band-Aid or, you know, just something to extend it to the fall or the end of the year, then you'll be a much better position to replace it. And let me jump in there too, Evan. You say you can't buy

a good car for $20,000. There are a lot of good used cars, even at today's high prices that, and depends on your definition of good. By good, I mean safe and reliable cars that you can get for $20,000. But Stu's absolutely right.

You want to try to delay that if you could keep that 2007 Corolla running for three or four months, which you should be able to for a reasonable investment. Whatever it costs you to keep it running would be small in comparison to the savings you're going to have. And you can get a heck of a good used car for $20,000. I'm looking at the Consumer Reports annual auto issue now. and they have it by price category. Take a look at that online, and you'll find a lot of different cars that you can get excellent used cars for $20,000.

But wait until on November, and don't do it now and try to keep that 2007 going. So let's talk about a strategy. I have right now 220,500 miles on the car, and basically it needs new brakes, needs new tires, and I think the exhaust manifold has problems because when I brought it into a dealership before the pandemic, about two months earlier, the mechanic told me that the exhaust manifold had problems. You start the engine, the engine kind of makes sort of like a rah-rah noise all the time

when it's not moving. So it doesn't sound very good. But otherwise it drives. I haven't had any other problems, except I replaced the battery last year. That's it. So what strategy, in terms of keeping this thing going through November or December, would you recommend?

Rick, let me ask Rick this question. Worst case scenario, I mean, you know, the brakes and the tires, you can give an estimate on. the exhaust manifold really only the worst case worse thing that could happen even if it were to completely crack and break uh loud exhaust and obviously depending if you live in a state with emissions laws you wouldn't be able to pass emissions problem by smog is coming up to pretty soon so i don't know it's going to pass that is that how soon is that about three weeks oh okay oh okay What's the 2007 Corolla worth today?

Well, without problems, 3 grand. With 200-something miles on it, yeah. I'd say maybe 2,500, 3 grand. We were talking earlier in the show just kind of half seriously, Evan, about what could you do for three months? How many miles do you drive every day? Not a lot. It's basically getting my wife over to public transportation, which he has to go to the office. and basically the grocery store

if I have to go to the pharmacy so you know we really don't have to drive it too much you can sell that 2007 Corolla for top dollar even in the condition it is now and you could take Uber or Lyft for three months

and then by that time you'll be able to buy a car for much much less yeah Yeah, that is something, you know, I'm really glad that I was watching the show today because I was looking at the Kia, and I hadn't looked at those reliability ratings, and when you showed the Kia, I logged in, and I looked at the Rio, and I said, oh, three out of five, that's not very good, so I don't want to go and get a big, you know, loan at an MSRP or above, and they end up with a car that's, you know, overpride. and you're buried in it. What happens if you don't pass emissions? What's the cost on that? Do you get a fine?

You can't drive the car? In California, I'm not sure. I think that you have to fix it yourself. You have to pay for it. And then there's a procedure if you can't afford it. But basically at that point, I can't renew the car. And then I'm going to have to buy something anyways because I don't want to spend, I don't know what the price is to fix.

the emissions on it. So that's another issue. And my other concern is people going to garages to get their cars fixed. They're a better condition, but they don't want to sell them, obviously. And then I have to wait in line to get the car fixed. And so I don't know how much money that would make sense to spend besides the brakes and the tires on the Toyota to keep it going for another six months. It seems like your bottleneck is the emissions.

Could you take it to a reliable mechanic somewhere and say, listen, if I did want to have this pass emissions, how much would it cost me? That's where I was going. Just tell them what you want to do. I need this thing to cause me no problems for the next four months. Just what's the cheapest way I can get this thing to pass emissions and then see what he says. By the way. Look at the price and see about used cars. You said on consumer reports, they had a section where you can look at prices of used cars.

Yeah, but this is based on previous time. I'm looking at the annual auto issue. You'd have to go to a, and that was in April, so that's, prices have gone up considerably. You go online, and you can go online with the consumer reports, and you can see used cars under $20,000. and they will give you recommended prices, current recommended prices, and recommended cars. And you'll find a lot of really good cars under $20,000. What about auto brokers who claim they'll get you a car for MSRP?

No, they got their cut. Yeah, I mean, there are honest and there are good auto brokers. Unless you know one that you have experience with, you wouldn't want to take a chance today just by looking for one. They're, just like Sue says, there's good ones and there's bad ones. There's more bad ones than good ones. Not even those big, the big platforms. Oh, well, no, you've got, consumer reports. You can buy a new car.

So in that sense, they're an auto broker. You've got true car. You've got Costco. Costco is your, I would, you've got Costco's out there in California. Are you a Costco member? No, it's easy. to be cowboy. Yeah, 60 bucks, you remember, 65 bucks, I think. And they will recommend, but you're going to be doing the same thing. You're going to be paying more today, even though it's a Costco price, because Costco bases their prices on what the dealers are selling the car for. And they're selling the car for 50% more than they were a year ago. So your best bet is to get that thing fixed, get through emissions, live with it, or sell it. Take the money, put it in your pocket, and take Uber. And then wait until November.

That's when there's going to be a glut of cars, and then that point I'll be in a position to get something that at that point will not be ridiculously priced. A lot of reasons to wait. And I'll tell you what, that consumer report will save you an enormous amount of money, whether you need a repair, whether you want to use car, new car, everything. that consumer report is definitely worth picking up, Evan. I hope we answer to...

Pardon me? Yeah. I appreciate your advice on that these are really, really abnormal times. Yes. Yes, definitely. Evan, thanks so much for calling us. You're out there in California. I know how early it is.

And give us a call again. Sure. Okay, it was a pleasure talking to you. Thanks, Heather. You're welcome. Thank you. We are going to go to the, we're going to hold off on the mystery. Shalbry report.

Stu has. I have an obsessive need to clear all these out. So we have one, only one to get to. And it's back on the female thing, but it says when you refer to a woman as a female, you're ignoring the fact that she is a female human. It reduces a woman to her reproductive parts and abilities. Also, not all women are biologically female, and the conflation of female to woman erases gender, non-conforming people,

and members of the trans community. And like I said, we're trying our best. You know, obviously it's very hard to please everybody, but we're going to continue to evolve and learn and thank you for the feedback. And let me just say this too. Woman is a male form of speech because it's got man.

And somehow, other, they put a W.O. in front of man to make woman. And it's like a secondary. You know, first you've got the men. You got a man. That's the standard. And then you've got some, you know... The lesser modified version.

A modified man. Yeah, that's the problem with language. And the language was created by man, unfortunately. And so here we're stuck, and we will work as much as we can to treat all humans out there the same. You know, I think I'd like to go with... And dogs, too, by the way. I'd like to go with... I'd like to go with Lionel Ritchie's famous lady.

I really like that lady. So anyway, we're going to take all this into consideration and reevaluate the situation. How about what to be a lady tonight? There you go. Another. Yes. No, that's not good. Yeah, absolutely. To our listeners, our lines are frozen, but we do depend upon you to rate the mystery shopping report. And that mystery shopping report is from Hollywood Kia.

and I believe that Rick would like to say something. Got just one quick one here. A new member on YouTube here, OSM, is asking Earl, they're looking to buy a new used car relatively soon. What's your opinion on Carvana? It's a good place to check. I may not buy itself, CarMax, Carvana. Sell your car there for sure.

Yeah, it's just, yeah. Carvana is a good source to check. And they'll pay a lot of money for your car. They do? Sometimes. Usually, I mean, more today than ever. before but you still shop it around don't you don't get one big you get three or four bits okay mystery shopping report absolutely read fast shop of a Hollywood Kia in

Hollywood Florida this week we sent our veteran okay so you got that word there woman's mystery shopper veteran woman I use woman as an adjective no use female I did so I'm changed you get to woman our veteran woman mystery shopper agent lightning to the rotten heart of South Florida business Stu, we really did well with this report here, by the way. Broward County, the belly of the beast. Mixed his metaphors there, but that's okay. I do that all the time.

And it's okay. It's okay to mix. Some things change with car dealer behavior. You want to make it south of the Palm Beach, Broward County line. The dealerships get bigger. The ads get bolder and more outlandish. The salesmen get more aggressive.

Very, very true. Just looking at Toyota, my frame of reference, as a dealer. The highest volume stores are concentrated between Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. There are 1,300 Toyota dealerships in the United States, 174 toilet dealerships in the five southeastern states, just 174, and they sell over 20% of all the Toyotas in the country. So this is a big, big, big sales area, a lot of automobile sales in South Florida. The 16 dealers in South Florida, the Toyota, sell 20% of those. So, 7,000 new toilets just last month.

In two counties. Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. Dayton-Briard County, 7,000 new toilets. So big, big, it's Dodge City, it is the Sodom and Gamarro. We got a lot of words for it out there. Be careful if you're that far south and South Florida.

The picture looks the same with the other new vehicle franchise. It's just crazy in South Florida. Maybe it's a combination of the enormous sprawling population. 90 degree temperatures, maybe just because it's Florida. I think it's got something to do with the, we have a lot of immigrants that come into the Latin countries, so Middle America, Middle America. It's just as a international city in Miami.

You have elderly people, you have immigrants, you have farmer, it's just everything there. People that have a difficulty with English, and you have old people, you have a lot of potential victims in South Florida. Yeah. In any case, we chose Hollywood Kia because Kia dealers tend to do poorly on our mystery shops. We want to test our expectations for Kia in a market where just about anything goes.

As always, we researched our subject prior to the mission and discovered some very interesting things. Hollywood Kia is owned by Jonathan Levy. Jonathan and his family... Star, sorry. You've got to be tight more carefully. Star. Star, I know. It's auto-correct.

And many TV commercials with his young granddaughter starring in many of them. Jonathan Levy's son, Josh, is the dealership's general counsel, legal counsel. Very cool. He's also in his second term. I like this. Josh Levy is the mayor of Hollywood, Florida. That's great. Isn't that cool?

I mean, can you imagine electing a car dealer, son? That'd be like Stu running for mayor. Josh ran and won the mayoral spot in 2016 is the age of 41, a lot younger than Stu. I didn't say that. A lot younger. That's interesting, but what is really interesting is the other mystery shopping report we found

for Hollywood Kia. The Daily KIA, KOS, I've never heard of this. It's kind of a left-leaning news website, Daily K-O-S. Oh, Coes. Coes, Coes, Coes, Coes, Coss. I'm a subscriber. I don't know. Did a feature story on Josh Levy.

In the article, author described as two poor experiences trying to buy a car from Hollywood Kia. One 10 years ago, and the other one, just last month. Doesn't sound like a very exciting website to me, but anyways, still gave me this link that I haven't clicked on. That's for the readers. That you can read it yet. The author ended up buying a car from the most.

last month, but the experience wasn't so great. Here's an excerpt from the article about Hollywood Kia. So I agreed to view the 2001 Kia Solzone lot. I picked a white one. Carlos got a price quote for me from a manager. I still have the printout with all the initial figures. Some of them kept changing as I felt continued to experience problems with Hollywood Kia.

That print on hinted at possible problems to come. The MSRP sticker price on the car was A. The printout said the MSRP, RP was more than $1,000 higher. The error was followed by other figures, including discounts, selling price, trade allowance, trade difference,

government fees, subtotal, total taxes, rebates, and the total balance due. The author went on to say that despite the changing figures, he decided not to challenge him because he was afraid of getting into a longer, more confusing back and forth with the sales manager, the price was in his range

and he just wanted to finish the deal. The Daily Cause article a harbinger of things to come. You know, what you just read there is about the standard experience at any car dealership. So this guy that wrote the article for cause is just, you know,

he's experiencing an average purchase experience at an average dealer in South Florida, maybe anywhere. Was it a daily cause article a harbinger of things to come the only way to find out. So we sent an agent lightning

into battle. Oh yeah. I forgot to mention the Hollywood Kia calls itself. home of the no dealership fees. An awkward way to phrase the same. Yeah, yeah. It should be the home of a no dealer. I don't know.

So here's a report. Speaking as if I were Asian lightning. Before making the trip to Hollywood, Kiev, found a new 2022. 22, huh? Yeah, the 22s are out. Stinger, by the way. Stinger, yeah. Stu was typing fast.

Gt1, listed on sale for Hollywoodkia.com. The MSRP was 47-170, but the selling price wasn't clear. There was what looked like a $1,400 discount, but this was labeled Ad Kia offers, ad. Like additional. Kea offers, yeah. Clicking the link revealed this was comprised of $1,000 for KMF bonus. We don't know what that is. And $400 for military appreciation, we don't know what that means either.

I guess that means if you appreciate the military, then you get $400. We don't know what that means. The price was actually a starting price. Here's the actual price. They listed as starting. They're starting price. I mean, that's kind of like a talk. This is like we love to haggle.

So we're going to start you at 45,875, then we'll haggle and hassle and come down from there. Didn't say that. If I pulled in the lot, Hollywood Kia, 250 p.m. parked. I walked toward the show of entrants, discovered the 2022 Stinger. We haven't seen any

2022 cars out there. First one. Are you sure? Yeah, positive. We don't have any 22, or any two corridors yet. I didn't think anybody did. I found the line that was parked near the front door.

The first thing I noticed with the MSRP was not 4717, The MSRP was 45, 875. But there was an addendum that tacked on another $1,295 for reinstall-superior car protection. $945, that's for the reinstall, superior car protection. $350 for nitrogen in the tires. The dealer list, not the MSRP, was 47-170, although they indicated this was MSR. on their website. Clear violation of the rules. And the MSRP is SACC. That's a Monroney label.

It's a federal law that the Monroney label has to be on the car and fines, penalties. Bad stuff happens if you don't put the Monroney label. And here they were advertising the Monroney label, which was not. It was a phony Monroney. And you can go to Roll in Cars and read my blog a long time ago about the phony Manoni. I walked inside, greeted immediately by a salesperson and introduced himself as Clarence. He asked how he could help and I told him my next car was parked right outside the front door. I told him I was ready to buy a new Stinger. When you made your typo, how did you repeat it? He kept saying Stringer. You can't, I can't really. Oh, word recognition. No, I can't honestly call it as typo. I started writing Stringer. Oh, okay. It was 11.30 at night. And then

I hear you. Then Agent Lighten texted me this morning. I tried a couple of dealerships in Palm Beach County, but was turned off by the sales games and the high fees, clearance, commiserated, said he hears things like that all the time. He said, stories like mine are what keeps the dealership busy. He asked for some basic info and my driver's license so he could get a key and a plate for the Stinger. He was gone for only a couple of minutes, but he returned, and we took a short test drive. The drive was uneventful and consisted of all business. Parents doing a lot about the car,

explained things in an easygoing way like a cool high school teacher. Back in the dealership, he asked me if I had planned to pay cash, finance or lease. I told them I was paying cash. He asked me if I'd like to see any payment estimates because they have some awesome rates as low as 0%. I said I'd be happy to take a look. I told them to assume top-tier credit. Clarence left for 18 minutes.

She's just very, very obsessive, compulsive. Then return with two worksheets. One featured a finance option grid with terms of 60, 66, and 72-month financing, with the rates as low as 0%, just like Clarence said. The second worksheet featured the cash option. The selling price was $5 over dealer list, 47, 175. over dealer. I mean, come on. Dealer, this is enough. Then they added a whopping $953 in government fees.

www. Ain't going to happen.com. There aren't $953 in government fees, but that's what they called them. Then sales tax on top of that. Out the door, $51,230. I pointed to the government fees and said, that seems like a lot. I asked Clarence, is this really the home of no dealer fees? And Clarence insisted that the fee was legit and not a dealer fee.

He said it was for registration entitled. Ain't going to happen.com. Not true. Now, it might not be called a dealer fee, but there's something else that's not a government fee that they're going to slap in there probably in the finance department. I would be amazed if it wasn't the private tag agency fee in electronic filing. electronic yeah they call it something else he asked me what i thought i told him that i had a very easy experience that was much better than when i went through in westbound beach

and i told him i had never paid full list for a new vehicle before clarence said that given the inventory shortage and the fact this is a brand new 2022 can't get over that uh that just launched the price was very reasonable i said that i needed to get something to eat and think about it I asked Clarence how late he'd be working. He said he'd be there to late p.m. I said I would call him in a couple of hours and left. I called about an hour later to question him about the government fees. Third time, I said there was no way that a new tag agent,

a tag would be nearly $1,000. He insisted that the fee was for a new tag entitled. He said it would probably be less than 953, but could not commit to what would actually come to. Here's the epilogue. Beware walls and cheap clothing. The home of the no dealership fees projects the image of a sanctuary from predatory dealership practices as evidence as how they promote themselves online. By the way, sorry. By the way, you're going to have to sober up when you do these things too. I can't help it. Yeah, Clarence presented the sales pitch. All sorts of

problems. However, right from the moment, she saw the 2020 stinger. parked by the front door. Agent Lightning uncovered the usual tricks of the trade. Misrepresentation, addendums, and a fee. I'm 99% sure that it was the government fee. So there we are. We're getting toward the end of the show, I think,

and we have to vote and decide whether Hollywood Kia passes or fails. If you go from A to 1F, let's hear some chores. They're coming in online. Jonathan Wellington says, I'll give Hollywood Kia an F, charging for the air in the tires, excessive

of dealership fees, and the phony Monroney is enough to keep away from this dealership. Mark gives them an F for a phony Monroney. And back on Facebook, we have a fat F from Linda, and Martha gives them an F as well. It's a tough one

for me because some of the stuff is, like you said, the average experience, it's what it feels like. I don't like, I think it's an additional sin to promote themselves of having no dealer fees, so now it's not, it goes beyond having a dealer fee. They're lying about having a fee in my opinion if Josh is listening I've got bro scientist with an F Tom

Steckle with a C minus Mark Ryan with an F Negan with an F minus and myself I'm gonna give them the skin of the teeth pass with a D minus I mean you got to be on your balls but you got you know really ready to fight them but the nitrophil Yeah, come on, guys. Nancy? Well, first of all, I want to give recognition to our lady mystery shopper, Agent Lightning. What a phenomenal job she does. And for, well, Hollywood, I mean, excuse me, the Hollywood Kia, I'm afraid I have to give them an F.

And ladies and gentlemen, do not let the car dealers dictate. the game plan. You can read that column at Erwan Cars. He has so many that are just unbelievably informative. Well, I'm going

to give them a failing score once we have finally confirmed that the salesperson lied and that the government fees, $973 were all government fees.

give them a benefit of the doubt on whatever he wants to, if they weren't dealer fees, because they could be called something else. I got an idea. I can do a little calculation and see if that sales tax included it. If they charge sales tax on it, it's not a government fee. Well, that would be. But we'll verify that. And we will fail them and put them on the do not recommend list if, in fact, they were,

see, we can't really see the final conclusion until you're in the finance office. Too often the crime is committed in the finance office when you don't see into the paperwork. So when we shop, we don't go through the finance office, and I've often argued that we should do that from time to time. And when we do, we'd actually have to buy the car. And that's one of the reasons we don't do it. Then we'd have to turn around and sell the car and maybe take a loss. But we have to give them the benefit of the doubt, mainly because the son of the dealer is a lawyer, and he's a general counsel for Hollywood Kia.

I'm only kidding. I mean, I have baited the tiger many times, and we're not afraid of being sued. We just don't get sued because we always tell the truth. We tease the tiger. We tease the tiger. It looks like they charge sales tax on the fee, but like you said, we'll get an actual to-the-penny estimate. Okay. And I've got Tim Gilliland with a D, Brian Sadeleco with an F, Fibbibinachi with a D-Minesh, and E.C. Olson with an F.

Wow. certainly a great report and it's a challenge because of the way the salesman looked Agent Lightning in the eye and said three or four times these are government fees

although he did say it could be less than $973 what it sounds like and this is very common because until you put in all the information you can only give an estimate so typically for a new tag we'll give an essence for $250 but it might come in at $1.90.

Very good point very good point and I think that sometimes they do it on purpose that they make it high because if it's not questioned they can get away with it if it's questioned

they can say I told you we'd come in lower and we did exactly now so you got your hand up you have to go to the bathroom I do okay I'll write you a pass I got a whole pass right here

a whole pass I love it ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for tuning in to Earl on Cars and you do know you are an important part of the show every single Saturday. And to Agent Lightning, thank you again, our lady mystery shopper. We are completely out of time. We'll see you right back here next Saturday morning, 8 a.m.

Have a great weekend. You know,