Earl Stewart on Cars - 06.28.2025 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Wallace Cadillac of Stuart, FL.

Episode Date: June 28, 2025

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning travels north to Stuart, FL. to visits a local Cadillac dealer to see what they have on the lot and how much over sticker they will charge for a new 2025 Cadillac Optiq SUV. 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, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. To purchase Earl’s book, “Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer”, go to www.earlsbook.com. This will forward to Earl’s Amazon page to complete your purchase. All proceeds from the book go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. For more information or to adopt the dog you have seen today or any of their other dogs, please visit their website at www.bdrr.org. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

Hello, 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 listeners. We also have Rick Kearney, an expert on how to keep your car running right. I dare you to ask a question that Rick can't answer about the mechanics or electronics of your car. Also with us is my son, Stu Stewart, our link to cyberspace through Facebook, YouTube, text messaging, and our encrypted anonymous feedback service. Stu is also the spymaster director of our mystery shopping report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting the car dealership. And now, on with the show.

Good morning, everybody. We're back. And let me tell you something. All you're regulars out there say, oh, here he goes. He's going to tell us our excited. it is and how this is really going to be a special show. But it's the truth. All you techies and even non-techies, we have a new member of the show.

You regular, know Nancy, you know Rick, you know my son, Stu, and you know me. But guess who we have on board this morning? You better sit down for this one. Elon Musk. Jeff Bezos. Close. We have Chat, GBT. and he's sitting right next to me.

He's got a microphone and our technical genius Jonathan who was sitting just off camera to my right spent a lot of time getting this thing set up. So are we first? I don't know anyone who's done this. We have chat,

GBT, right here. We might even have a contest to rename him because he will be a member of Earl Stewart on Congress. cars and but seriously I am serious but but you know what I mean by seriously bear with us we we tried Zoom we wanted to be we like to do a lot of new stuff is we enjoy the challenge and I think you enjoy sometimes when it works sometimes it doesn't so we think chat's gonna work this morning and I'm looking right at

him there's little balls are not going back and forth but that may We could, that's okay. We got this thing going. It'll be fun to see how it goes. You, if you're not from this planet, you might not know about your at GBT and artificial intelligence. Folks, it's either going to be the best thing, the human race ever experienced are the worst. We don't know. So far, we're having a ball as fun, it's challenging, and extremely, extremely education.

Now back to basics. After all the excitement and hype, the most important thing probably is that car you're driving now, that clunker or that great car or somewhere in between. And you've got problems, right? I don't think there ever was a combustion engine car or any other car that didn't have problems. And it's awfully expensive to repair your car. And I don't need to tell you that either. That's why we have Rick Kearney. sitting here, and he's reliable, unlike Chad GBT, BT. We know that Rick's going to work, and so if you have any issue with your car, if you want a free estimate, idea of how to fix it, or a way to fix it, I shouldn't say estimate, we'll give you an estimate of what it's going to cost you if you go to the dealer or the independent repair store. But Rick Kearney, if you can describe your problem via audio, video, he monitors the, our YouTube.com or slash Earl on Cars, YouTube.com forward slash Earl on Cars. Post your problem there with a video or an audio or both. And you'll diagnose your car, no charge. Save you a lot of money. I promise you.

And just general questions about your car. The squeaks, the rattles, and the rolls. We have Nancy Stewart sitting across from me. You know her well. She's alone in a guys club right here. We're all men and one woman, and that's her. But let me tell you something, our audience is half women. Thanks to Nancy.

Over 20 years it took her, but we're there. at parody, we have a lot of woman callers. And the women calling the show, we talk about the exotic things, you know, chat, GM, ET, and the rest of it. But the nuts and bolts of this show is this number right here. This is the soul of the show.

It's a telephone number. Some of you young kids out there, don't know what telephones are, but I'm going to give you a number. 877-960-9-9-7-9-7. nine six oh eight seven seven nine six oh nine six oh nine six oh if you would be so kind is to write that number down you might not need it now but you will I promise if you listen long enough we're on for two hours right now we will be

on the air until 10 a.m. Eastern 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Eastern standard time so two hours while you listen for 15 minutes or 20 minutes and if something comes up Give us a call. The heart of the show is your voice. Because we can read your voice. We can understand. You can understand our voices. You'll feel our concern.

We'll feel your concern. We'll feel your levity. The human voice is more than just pure communication. Chat, CBT, and the like are communication back and forth. Excellent what they do. But the emotion, although chats working on it, to tell you the emotion from a human being you can't match so if you will call our show at eight seven seven nine six oh nine nine six oh we will prioritize that call i mean we'll stop playing

with chat uh you know we'll forget about uh facebook uh we'll forget about youtube uh all the glorious stuff we talk about and we'll get you on the phone we have five incoming lines Jeremy in the control room will shoot the call number through to Nancy Stewart right across from me and she'll stop the show to take your call and we'll try not to keep you waiting

sometimes we get so many calls that we do have to keep you waiting but we'll move them along as quickly as we can that's really what our show is all about for those that are a little timid about being on live radio

remember we have tens of thousands of people listening in watching to the show all over the world. I know little old, Earl Stewart on cars in South Florida over 20 years. I mean, we're getting calls from all over the globe. Trust me, in Australia,

and India and South America, I don't know where. But people are out there. They're texting. They're calling and they're streaming the show all over the world. So people don't necessarily want to be exposed to that.

And I don't blame me, privacy is a big issue with a lot of people. So you can text us at 772-497-6530. Please write that number down to 772-497-6530. And if we don't get your text right away, which we probably won't, to be honest, we will get to it in a few minutes. Or by the end of the show, we do, we really try hard to get every text covered by the end of the show. So if you, like that, privacy, 772-497-6530.

Now, if you're really hung up on privacy, this is the best. This is the best. Guaranteed, total anonymity. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. It's a link. And if you go to www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com, that's a company, name of the company's incognito, if you're interested, and they do blue-chip companies all over the world for communications from their employees, from their customers that want to remain secret, quiet, private. It's a big thing today.

I don't blame you. Sometimes I even think about privacy, but I can't afford to. I got to be public. So your anonymous Feedback.com. Say anything you want. Criticages, threaten us, anything you want to do. Yikes. We will go live and we don't know who you are or where you are,

so we can't come looking for you. And, you know, Seth, be honest with you, it's just good radio. I mean, I almost like some of the tough calls because it's good radio. And if we can't entertain you and amuse you and get you emotionally involved with this show in any way, we'll lose you. And we want to build our audience. So there you are, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Now, that little chuckle you heard was from Nancy Stewart. She's sitting right across from me, the love of my life, my wife, my partner, and co-founder of Earl Sturon,

cars. And she's operating with one ear today. She has an issue with one ear and I won't go into it. It's got something to do with her mandibular persitis or... Oxitable. Oxtedible, yeah. But I digress. Hey, I have an interesting question for you before we get started. Have you ever thought exactly what Chachypte wears for clothing? Gosh, what an idea. I never thought of it.

Well, he's naked because he's an AI model. But according to my sources, Rick's leaving. According to my sources, listen to this. This is pretty interesting. If you had to really guess, you might think of a sleek, tech-inspired look, such as, and this is from ChatGBT, GBT, such as a digital hoodie. A digital hoodie or a snazzy set of futuristic accessories. Oh, huh.

Interesting. Yeah. Anything you want, just ask. Yeah, so anyway, it's just not about cars here. Hey, moving along with some entertainment, what would you like to say about Jeff Bezos for my lead-in? Yeah, I do that, yeah. Go ahead. Well, I'll wait for your introduction.

Our regulars know that, of course, Jeff Bezos, almost the richest man in the world. I think Elon's got him beat and who's got the second largest retail operation in the world. We wrote him a letter, open letter to Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post, and we asked that he consider our dealership, Earl Stewart Toyota, as the first new car dealership on Amazon. They've opened up to use cars, and we're signing up with Amazon for used cars, but Hyundai is the only manufacturer that is on for new cars. So we said to Jeff Givas, Jeff Bezos, and the open letter in the Washington Post, how about Earl Stewart Toyota? So we're waiting to hear from them, and we haven't heard from him yet. And today's paper, the Wall Street Journal, yesterday, yeah.

We realize why. Yeah, hold that up again. Would anyone out there like to know why? Earl's letter hasn't been answered. I figured it out yesterday morning and take a look here. Of course, you're looking at the front page of the Wall Street Journal. Jeff just got married, and he rented Venice for the wedding, almost. They estimate the cost at $93 million, and look at that hottie that he's married to.

I'm telling you, that was one beautiful woman. And so suddenly we realized why he didn't answer our letter. I wouldn't answer my letter if I had that going. I mean, he rid of the city of Venice. Let's get back to the show. Rick. One quick little note. A couple days early, but happy birthday, Jonathan.

Oh, one, and a two, and a three. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. to you, happy birthday, dear Jonathan, happy birthday to you, and many more. Thank you very much. Okay, back to business. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us this morning. As you well know, you are an important part of the show.

We love your company, we love your information, and keeping us up to speed, and we want to know that we're keeping you up to speed, so it's a joint effort. So join us this morning. 7-7-960 or you can text us at 772-4976530. Don't forget, ladies, $50 for the first two. New lady callers. And later on in the show, you know, I found an article in the Wall Street Journal about the high costs of ended America's love affair with cars. And boy, is it an interesting article. So I'll get to that later. Uh, right now we are going, Rick, did you have something to say before I go to the phones? Nope.

Oh, okay. I'm just keeping an eye on our text coming in. Oh, thank you. Uh, we're going to go to Mark, who's calling us from Lake Worth. Good morning, Mark. Good morning all and happy holiday coming up. Thank you. I, uh, I wanted to ask Rick about a situation I have, uh, replacing tail lights,

2016 Rav4 I've replaced one the outer right tail light and in so doing I don't know if I made a boo-boo the grommet that was holding

the wire cable I had to pull it out to locate the harness clip couldn't find the clip because it was buried so I went inside to research accessing the harness connector and when it came back outside it was raining some water got in the grommet opening i don't know

if this is significant does the water collect down there or stay there or will it dissipate it probably is going to evaporate out of there pretty quick but what i would do is i'd jump on amazon or stop by home depot or Walmart or target and get a thing of what's called damp rid You can get it. They'll actually come in like a bag or a small bucket. The bag is easier. Just throw that in the back and leave it in there for a week or two. Damprid is actually a silicon desiccant and it will absorb the moisture right out of the air. So any of that water vapor that's in there, as your car sits in the sun, it's going to evaporate into, of course, form of steam. And that dampred will suck that stuff up.

and you won't have any worries about potentials for mold or mildew. I would do this within the next day or two, and it will save you a lot of potential hassle down the road. And Mark, this is Nancy Stewart. Let me tell you from past experience. I use a lot of dampred, and boy, I'll tell you what, like Rick suggested, get right on it, it'll solve your problem. I will do that.

So I don't have to disassemble the, the panel or anything to activate the dampred? Nope, not at all. Is there any way to even access where the water is collecting? Very unlikely, because there are certain little, they're almost like little black holes in some of the cars, and some of those openings go right down in. And I have personally, as a mechanic,

just like every mechanic out there, I have lost sockets into cars that, have fallen down into mystery black holes and of course it's always the 10 millimeter but that's just an old mechanics joke but yeah it's there are some places you can't even get in there. How often

do you find those wrenches before you return the card of the customer? If I have the chance which I usually try I actually have a what's known as a Borescope it's a camera on a long flexible piece that has a magnet

on the end of it and I have run that thing down into cubby holes behind dashes to try to get that magnet out simply because I don't want a customer going down the road with that little rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle, rattle. I just gave me an idea. I'll put out a $100

reward for customers finding wrenches inside their engine after their end for service. You would not believe the number of times I've opened the hood on a car found a pair of pliers, a wrench, a ratchet, a socket, mechanics we

our minds don't always work right and we lose tools but the old mechanic joke is that the 10 millimeter socket is the one that you lose everywhere and I see people like on the

Reddit communities or on Facebook they'll say hey what's a good gift to give to a mechanic and I say go down to your local hardware store buy a bunch of 10 millimeter sockets and give them those Another question, if I may, Rick. Sure.

When I do the other light, I was never able to actually find or access the harness clip. Do you have to remove the entire inside panel to get to the clip? Pretty much, because it runs down low. But if all you're having to replace is just the bulb or the assembly, usually you can just pop that housing out and then access to bulbs. Well, that's what I did. I replaced, well, actually, I replaced the housing, and I switched out new bulbs, but I did not replace the harness connector.

Right, the harness and the sockets, yeah. It seems to be working okay, so I will leave that. And when you are removing the light assembly, it was really hard to move that, slide that thing back. Is there some trick to rocking it back and forth? because if there's a release clip of some sort, I couldn't find it. No, there's usually two bolts, and then the assembly kind of pops in. It's got like little plastic, they're almost like little sockets, and then the, like, a pin that goes in, and it's kind of a snap fit.

Oh, where is the pin located? They should be towards the back of the housing. Oh, okay. I was afraid I was going to break the assembly trying to get it off of there because I had to really wrench on it back and forth. Finally, it came off, and I thought there must be an easier way to do this before I attempt the other. Yeah, sometimes it takes a little bit of extra force. Okay. Well, I don't think I did anything too significantly wrong this time.

That can't be corrected. Excellent. Thank you very much for your input. Mark, thanks for the call. Give us a call again. Thank you. Our number here is 877-960-99-60, and I would like to give you the text number. Earl, were you talking to? Yeah, I just wanted to say, Mark, thanks for your call very much.

I want to advise the folks that may be just tuned in. We get two types of callers to Rick, and Rick, of course, is our certified diagnostic. master technician that knows everything there is to know about automobiles and of course I'm exaggerating only slightly we give them the almost professional mark sounded like a professional he he knew a lot about cars and and I the thought occurred to me as Rick and and Mark were having the conversation there's 99% of our audience that has no idea what either one of them was talking about and but Mark and Rick were communicating very well and we welcome those calls

but we also welcome calls from the average guy, gal on the street like me and believe it or not I might own a car dealership but I don't know how to fix them I hire great people like Rick that knows how to fix them

and the average person they hear a squeak or a rattle or roll in their car they smell something strange they see something unusual Well, the biggest thing is, of course, the check engine light or some blinking light needs attention, the warning signs that they manufacturers stick in the cars to tell you there's something wrong, but they don't tell you what, and you're supposed to run to your dealer. Well, when you run to your dealer, you get to take an advantage of. So you folks out there that suspect something's wrong, give Rick a call to 877, 9.7.9.

and he can in one sentence he could save you a thousand dollars i mean sometimes it's just absolutely nothing and if you go into a car dealership chances are they're not going to tell you this is absolutely nothing they're going to charge you one way the other even if it's only for a diagnostic charge so you amateurs out there which is 99.9% give rick kearney a call at 877 960 now we We welcome the marks of the world, the semi-proes, that really need help. Rick can help anybody. I don't care how good they are because he's probably a little bit smarter. And he's been doing this for over 25 years, and he does a great job.

Okay, back to Nancy. Okay. Let me see here. Before we get to our next caller, I'd like to let all of you know that the first two new got thrown off there for a second. First of all, the first two new lady callers, you can win yourself $50 today. So give us a call toll-free at 877-960-960. You know, back to that Wall Street Journal article that I saw this past week, high costs have ended America's love affair with cars.

Did you know that now that the cars that are on, what am I trying to say, The consumer who owns a vehicle now owns it for 14.9 years. And earlier, I believe, it was, what, 12 years old, the oldest car on the road? That was a number of years ago. Can you confirm that, Earl? It's about that, but I had no idea it had gone up to almost 15 years. The average car on the road in America is 15 years old. Amazing.

Yes, it is. So, folks, give us a call, joining the show, 877-960, 99060. We're going to go to Sydney, and Sydney is calling us from, where is Sydney calling us from? Okay. Good morning, Sydney. Morning, how you doing this morning? Good morning. Where are you calling from?

I'm calling from Okala, Florida. Oh, you're from Okala. Well, welcome to the show. What can we do for you this morning? I called before about my Toyota Highlander, 2013, that they have the problem with the engine. And I was about to take it to the Toyota to see if they can fix it. Yesterday, I finally, if I got some time to take it over there to a Toyota of Okala. And they text me back with a quote for rebuild the engine.

It will cost $22,926. Yeah, they are not cheap for an engine overhaul. My recommendation, I would ask them to look into the idea of a used engine. I'm going to interrupt briefly and also get at least three quotes from whichever course you choose, or it's a rebuild or an overall and follow Rick's advice, but get three bids from three different sources. Why cost too much? It's mainly because they're not only pulling the engine out,

which is a lot of work in itself, but then you've got to really disassemble the entire engine, replace all the piston rings, maybe damaged pistons have to be replaced, the all the bearings all the seals rebuilding the heads they're probably going a little overboard and recommending an entire overhaul

but engines are a lot of work and just the parts for them are a lot of work and you want to be sure that the value of your car justifies a very large expense if it comes down to it that you do have to spend several thousand dollars on your car the rule of thumb is don't ever spend more than 75% of the value of your car on a repair.

And sometimes you're looking at 50%. I would say positively, don't spend over 50%. And if you don't spend the money to repair it, then you'd have to shop it and sell it. And then you're far better off to go into another car. Go ahead. That's what I'm thinking to do. Yeah, it may be the better option.

and if you decide not to sell it, a used engine would be a much, much less amount. You'd be looking at more like $7,000 to $8,000 to put a used engine in it. How about any one? A brand new one, you're going to be looking at close to that $20,000 mark again. Okay. You'll check with Carvana and we buy any car.com, CarMax. Right now, there are multiple sources online that allows you to determine the value of a car.

Don't take the word of the dealer, and I would stay away from a private sale. There's too many strings attaching problems. So go to Carvana, we buy any car.com, carmax, and you can go online, and there's probably half a dozen or more legitimate companies that we never had before. 10 years ago, we didn't have this. Now, you can safely sell your used car, the car you're driving, online, and you can often cash out of it in a day or two. And that way, with three or four bids like that, you know, you're getting top dollar for your car. So that's the way you determine you proceed with a repair. If your car's worth $10,000, you don't want to spend

five thousand dollars to fix it if your cars were ten thousand dollars uh you would spend a thousand or two thousand i mean uh what i oh ten thousand one thousand or two thousand would be a fair price if you want to keep it but uh it's a it's a replace versus fixed uh question and also remember if you decide to sell your car and you're going to look at a a different car but a used car always always have it checked out by a mechanic that you choose and if the place that is selling the car if they say no you can't take it to go have your mechanic look at it walk away thank you wow if you don't have any more questions thank you very much for the call

thank you i wish you the best of luck on it my friend give us a call back sidney thank you thank you okay we're going to go to jerry uh who is giving us a call from Westbone Beach. Good morning, Jerry. Good morning. I called about four weeks ago. I'm the taxi driver who had the problem with the air conditioning. Just to recap, it's a 2015 Prius. And when you're in direct sunlight, the above 75 degrees outside temperature, you lose the air conditioning pretty much. It's very weak. If you're in the shade, it's a rainy day, cloudy and at night, it performs okay. you know normally okay anyway so i got the advice from rick he by uh gave me a few pieces of advice i went to the the uh owner owner's uh son runs the mechanics and uh maintenance and all that

electronics and i told them about it and uh your main recommendation was to flush the uh evaporator coil with some kind of foam thing yeah right okay well he kind of uh poo-pooh that and he said that, you know, you stir up a lot of that stuff and it can get it to other stuff and mess things up, which I thought there was a drain plug on the bottom and you can flush it direct from that, right? Is that correct? Yes. It shouldn't contaminate, the gunk shouldn't contaminate other stuff if you do it, right? Right, because what we have found, now Prius does have one issue. You don't want to be very careful if you use it like a foam cleaner like that. Make sure you find someone that is.

experience and knows what they're doing because it can it fills up the box with that foam cleaner and sometimes it can actually find ways to seep out and get in other places but on the bottom of the evaporator core there there is a rubber drain tube because the you know you get condensation on an evaporator core that's why on a humid day when the AC's been running you'll see water dripping underneath every single car and that's that's normal That's, and that's actually how you get to that cleaner. You run the tube up that drain tube, spray it in, and then let it drain back out. You run it up the drain tube, not from the top?

No, you run it. Anyway, the main mechanic over at the taxi company is a former Toyota guy. He's a Jamaican guy. I only know that because he wears a toy with a shirt, but he's not the most friendliest guy. But anyway, the owner's son, who runs the thing, like I said, he kind of poo-poohed the idea of flushing the evaporator coil, right? Yeah. And then what he told me was, and I need to know if there's any truth to this. He said that the air conditioning unit on the Prius, maybe it's just the 2015, is underpowered because it runs directly off the battery.

And so you can't get a lot of power going to the AC. So when it gets above a certain temperature, it runs weak. Is there any truth in that? Like with any myth, there is a grain of truth in there. Yes, the compressor, the air conditioning compressor, is electric. It doesn't run off of the gasoline engine. However, it's not run off of a 12-volt system. little 12-volt battery system, it's run off high voltage. So, no, that compressor is one of

the most efficient and powerful compressors out there. It's good to know, right, yeah. It will cool that car down. If it's 105 degrees out in direct sunlight, and you set that to one notch above low for the fan speed and let it run, it should be able to bring that car's interior temperature down to about 65 to 68 degrees coming out of the vents. That's what I figured, but it could be a problem with the voltage is not high enough going into the compressor? No. No.

Something's causing it to get weak when it gets hot out in the sunlight. Especially since if there was a problem like that, you would have warning lights on the dash. Well, you got any idea what could be causing it in the sunlight and not at nighttime or something like that it's either going to be a low charge it's lost a little bit of Fri-on or there's something plugging up that evaporator I would I would have them check the Fri-on level of it too right yeah I would have them check the Fri-on level you said the Fri-on level has to be almost exact one ounce below or one an ounce over it can affect it right yes and as a matter of fact they need to make sure that they have a machine that is dedicated for a hybrid system

because it uses a special oil in that compressor. And if they get the wrong oil, it'll mess it up. Jerry, we got a wrong. We got a lot of calls waiting. And let us know how Rick's suggestion has worked out. Calls back next week. I just got one more question. Is there any place I can get a shop manual, a printed shop manual for the Prius?

Amazon. You have to do minor repair. They can't even replace a lightball. Amazon. I'm thinking I might damage. Amazon. Check Amazon to see if there's one of Most everything's online now.

All right, okay. All right, thank you very much. Good luck with that. Thanks for giving us a call. Our mystery shopping report, you want to stay tuned for that at just about 930. And Agent Lightning went out to check a double your Costco rebate promotion. And she did a great job. So stay tuned for that.

That's the mystery shop from Wallace County. Wallace Cadillac, Stewart, Florida. Our number here is 877-960-99-60, and you can text us at 772-497-60. Don't forget your anonymous feedback. We're going to go to, we're staying with the phones, we're going to go to Bernie. Before we go to Bernie, ladies, if you didn't hear me earlier, $50 for the first two new lady callers. Give us a call. Good morning, Bernie.

Good morning from Palm Beach Gardens I've been listening to you since prior to April 07 because we bought three cars via Costco Wow Oh thank you

And we learned that from you guys Oh thank you So the latest car we had We purchased just two months Two days ago from you Oh, Stewart Excellent And it was basically a painless process

We used Marlene Which apparently is a Costco representative and she was very helpful, went in, found a car we wanted, and purchased it, like I said, painless. I wish everything was like that. But I have two questions concerning my wife's new car. She has a corolla. And the first question concerns, is there any kind of breaking procedure when you have a brand-new car when it comes to the engine? And so that's the first question I have.

And the second question is concerning service. I received a call a week ago from somebody saying they were from Earl Stewart and it was time to bring our car in for service. And when I asked, is this a timed event or a mileage event? First, they couldn't answer the question. And after I kept asking them and they just couldn't come up with an answer, I just said I called back later. Well, I'm going to answer the question because it annoys me that we have a service that is not adequately satisfying our customers.

We apparently sublet service reminders. The Bible for when you should bring your car in for service is your owner's manual. And it's very simple to take a look in there and look at the factory recommended maintenance. You have very little maintenance in a car that you buy today, and it pretty much boils down to an oil change about once a year and get your tires checked. Was it twice a year, three times a year? And there should be virtually no cost for maintenance for your car.

The service that we have should have known that. In fact, it's almost true of all new cars now. and the maintenance reminder. So you help me with our dealership. We'll get that fixed, and my apologies, to a new customer. But Rick will give you the specifics on the times and the mileagees. In the owner's manual package, in your glove compartment, you'll find it's actually a separate book is the factory recommended maintenance.

And when you look in there, it actually has pages that will show, for each 5,000-mile service, it'll list exactly what should be checked and what should be done and replaced. And it will even have a spot down at the bottom where you can have them sign off stating that it was done. So it's a good idea to take that book out each time and make sure that whatever, whichever dealership or whatever shop you go to, because you don't specifically have to go to a Toyota dealer for, you know, services, you can go anywhere for it. but make them sign off in that book that it was done and that date and that mileage. Now, for Toyota, pretty much the rule of thumb is that the first two years, five services are free. They're paid for by Toyota, and the first one is normally at 5,000 miles or six months,

and it's simply a tire rotation. And then, of course, they'll inspect everything on the car. The second service is at 10,000 miles or one year, and that is a tire rotation and a synthetic oil change. And they basically alternate like that through the life of the car. So, I mean, it's a very simple thing to keep track with that and keep track in the book. And that way you'll never go wrong on it. Now, for your first part, most new engines are pretty much run through a break-in period when they're built, when they're put together.

The factories actually run them on a dynamometer. and these cars are getting driven already. The only thing that I would say to try to avoid is avoid getting out on the highway and doing like a long road trip like 100 or 200 miles all at exactly the same speed. Just try to vary your engine speed up and down and do more like city driving

so it's accelerating, decelerating, like for the first, say, 500 to 600 miles. And after that, just in check, your car. I got to tell you, one of the best feelings in the world is when you're driving around in a brand new car. It just feels so good. Well, I'll tell you what, it was cheaper, frankly, to buy a new car, and it was a used car, or I call them pre-owned. Yeah.

It was only a thousand dollar difference, so what the heck? Yeah, really. My wife is typical, I think, of a lot of wives in the area. She doesn't drive very much. Mm-hmm. And so at six months is the tire rotation. So it doesn't matter to mileage. I mean, it's six months, and is that that correct?

Either six months, or if you want to wait until you get to that 5,000 mile mark, that's fine, too. However, there is one added thing that I will put in and recommend for every single car on the road, and that is at least once a month, check your tire pressures and make sure your tire pressures are where they should be. when you open the driver's front door down on the body of the car, you'll see a little sticker there that tells you what the recommended tire pressure is. And I would always check those tires at least once a month and check the air in the spare tire as well.

Okay. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that. And thanks for your answer. My pleasure. Thanks for being a long-time listener and a new customer. I really appreciate that. call, give us a call again. Let's go to, let's go to Marty. Marty's been holding for quite a while. Good morning, Marty. Good morning. How are you, Nancy? Well, thank you. I got two quick questions for Rick. Okay. First question on the Toyota Crown, there's a gear that has a B on it. And what I looked up, is that's strictly only for going down, C pill, Rick?

Not necessarily. You know in a normal transmission, normal gasoline car, when you let off the accelerator, the car will start coasting, and if you were to shift it into a lower gear, say if you're driving down the side of a mountain, you're coming

down, you shift into lower gear and it does what's called engine braking, where the engine will actually make the car go slower by changing the gears. Hybrids have a CVT, so they can't actually do that, so they put in B mode. Now, the cool part is if you're, say you're driving along, you're at 50 miles an hour,

you see the traffic light ahead of you changes, put it in B mode and let off the accelerator, and as you're coasting down, you'll feel it drag a lot slower down, but what you're doing is you're actually having the electric motors produce more electricity to put back into the battery, and you recapture that energy to put it back to in the battery while you're slowing down. What's B stand for? B is actually for braking mode as in engine

braking, but it's actually battery braking. If you've ever heard in Florida, of course, with the hurricanes we've had, if you've ever had a generator running, you know, when your power's out, and you plug something in that makes a bigger draw, you hear that

generator go brr and it drags it down, that's the electromagnetic force that is being created. Same thing with the hybrid car. When you shift into B mode, it'll actually drag that car slower and make you slow down a little bit quicker

because it's creating more electricity to put back into the battery. Okay. My second question for Rick, I've had the car for a year and a half now. Usually the worst mileage I get is maybe 34, 35 miles per gallon, which should be, according to what they say, it should be 40 to 41.

Every so often I'll get 40. But my last fill up, and I keep track of it, I only got 23 miles to the gallon. So I'm going to check it again to make sure I don't have a hole in the gas tank and it just took more gas than it should. No, what we've actually got is a heat wave. Right now, the United States, all of it, is experiencing some incredibly high heat. And Florida, we're getting our share of it.

And the air conditioning system has got to work a lot harder to get the temperature down. So that's why you're seeing that decrease in fuel economy, because even though it is, you know, a hybrid car and the AC runs off electric, all of that power does eventually come from the gasoline in that tank. You've got to choose between sweating and good mileage. Yeah. Well, here's another trick, though. Go online on Google and watch some YouTube channels on what is called hyper-miling.

And this basically, you'll find a lot of people out there that have been driving hybrids for many years, and they have some of them some pretty extreme tricks for how to maximize fuel economy on hybrids. And these all will transfer over to regular cars, a lot of them as well. but I've seen people with Priuses where the average customer was getting 45 miles per gallon and these people are getting 80 miles a gallon everyday driving

and so if you want tricks on getting better fuel economy look up hyper-miling and just we'll wind it up with this if you're that nutty you're not going to enjoy driving so these people that Rick's talking about it's like a club and they

they get their jolly out of being the number one hyper miler it's it's a cult it's a cult yeah it's a cold better word for you enjoy enjoy your car enjoy the drive and and don't sweat two or three miles per gallon yeah well I can tell you this I keep the car outside all the time so it is hot yeah yeah yeah we have them at the dealership that customers that are are so into mileage that you know it's almost laughable you know I've been getting 37 miles a gallon and for the last six months I only got

36 and what are we going to do well hey Marty but yeah to what you said you know do you when you get you said you park your car in the driveway when you get in the first thing do you look at the temperature outside yes

on your screen pardon me so you can gauge that you're talking about fuel economy and the fact that you know the AC like Rick that has got to be, you know, full speed ahead. And like Earl, advised, well, what did you, what was those profound words that you used, whether you decide between sweating or fuel economy?

Yeah, I know. So, there you go. Well, I forget the fuel economy when it comes to E.C. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. All right. Have a good Fourth of July, everybody. Happy Fourth of July to you, Marty.

Thanks for being a regular. Thank you. And that's when Stu is aboard ship. Stu has entered the building. So if anybody has any really hard questions, now is the time to ask that. Okay, we've been holding off on everyone. If we don't have any fun, do we have callers waiting? We do have caller.

Because soon or later, we got to let chat join the show. I got a question for chat. Well, also, we got callers waited now. Do you? Okay. We're going to get right to Stu, as you heard. He is in the building, and he has a question for chat, GPT. and also anyone who feels they know what chat gbt his attire or her attire should be give us a call

well why don't we just ask chat what are you wearing well i do we have colors holding yes okay we're going to go to dawn uh who is calling us from delray good morning john welcome good morning what can we do for you this morning well i've got me Maybe some good news for you. I contacted the Attorney General's office, and I got a response. Oh, wow. It's not from car dealerships. It was from an internet thing that my daughter did.

But they did respond. We sent them in all the details that had to be done. And it came back and said, thank you for your correspondence, making us aware of this. matter, and they want, they're interested in unfair and deceptive trade practices, which would fit under dealerships, too, I would imagine. Sure, it would. And, yeah, and they want more information. Now, the Attorney General's office won't act on our behalf.

They act, of course, on the state's behalf, but they want more information, what's going on. This company is located, happens to be located in Florida, in Pinellas County, and we also contacted Pinellas County's fraud, and they got back to us. You can't read anything on there other than there's 24 other things on this on an extreme of the thing. I've forgotten now. Anyway, you can get information from them. Donva, good news, I don't know if you knew this, but the Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practice Act commonly referred to by lawyers as FDUpta, FDUPTA, that is a very, very strong threat to the offender. The reason being that you, the complainant, you, the plaintiff against this company in Ocala, I think it said, has to pay the attorney's fees.

So if you win this, you are going to have, you're going to be reimbursed for your attorney's fees. So it will allow a attorney, if you want to hire an attorney, to work for you, free for you. And every complaint against any entity, car dealer or independent repair shop or an online company, you should always try to get it covered under FDUPTA. So here you have the AG doing that for you, and that should be very, very persuasive to win this case.

Yeah, I was in tell, well, I mean, you've had bad experience with the AG's office in Florida. I hope so. Because they haven't answered you, haven't done anything against dealerships. So I was happy to see that at least they contact us and are interested in our complaint. Well, the problem is you're a guy that, you know,

you're a bulldog when it goes to getting something done. I can just tell, we're talking to you. I know you spent a lot of time on this, and it was not easy. you didn't call the first time and get through to the AG or write or email or whatever and the back and forth because we've tried oftentimes to get through to the Attorney General's office. Of course, that was under a different Attorney General who got promoted to... But they've never, none of them responded.

Yeah, yeah, they did, yeah. So congratulations. You really, you're a real pit bull to be able to stick with it and get the AG to recognize you. Well, I was born in 1940s, same as you're Oh, yeah. A lot of experience doing this. What do they call, sorry? We're not baby boomers. We're something else. Yeah.

We're super seniors. Silent generation, yeah. Okay. Well, thank you. Oh, thank you very much, Dawn. Okay, you're welcome. Stay in touch. 877-960.

That's 870. Yeah. I always wonder, why don't they call it Faditpah? Faditpah. It's the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. No, it's a Florida deceptive, well, the U, Florida deceptive D. U. No, unfair.

U, right. And blah, blah, blah, T, trade practices. P-A. Yeah. It should be Fudipa. Yeah, whatever does. That's really good. Okay, we're going to stay with the phones,

and we're going to go to Frank, who's calling. us from Jupiter Farms. He's a regular caller. Good morning, Frank. Hey, good morning. Give me just one second that I hobble over to the radio and turn down the volume for, I don't interfere with his call. Oh, thank you. Oh, you're a hobbler, too. I'm a hobbler. Oh, I looked like a penguin walking around both knees and stuff. Oh, God. I'll hop over to the radio and a bottom. I don't answer it. Okay. Here with the radio is off. First off, it's always good to hear you back on live. I'm not sure who your guest is a I've never heard that name before, so I don't get on that much.

But I do have a car question. Actually, I wonder if I can't. Hang on. Can you hear you right? Perfectly. Okay, good. Thank you. We had this out of we brought a couple years ago for my wife, Amory.

And the driver's seat on about the right half of the seat, the bottom, the leather is almost peeling off. I mean, it's like unbelievable. So I'm going to want to take it back to the dealership where you, Mr. shop years ago, the Aldi Stewart and Stewart, how should I address them? I mean, that should be covered on some warranty, correct? Well, I guess it's almost

delamination of the leather. How long have you had? Three years and about... Chances our Audi will help you with that. I'm not sure whether it actually... You know, here's what you need

to check first. Was that factory leather that came with the Audi, or did they sublet it? A lot of dealers sublet their cars and have leather and sold so they can mark them up more. Do you know if it was on your Monroe label when you bought it? I believe it was. Yeah. It was during that time during COVID when it was marked up.

If it's factory leather, I got a good hunch that they will cover that for you. Okay. I just would be prepared before I went in there. Yeah, Rick's going to figure out. A 22 Audi, according to Google, should have a four-year, 50,000-mile limited warranty on it for the new car. So that should cover that seat cover. Okay, no, great. We're going to head up there eventually, but I just wanted to be poor Warren because it's like, always nice to know your input in case they come back with some.

Oh, well, you have keys in your pocket or this or that or just, you know. Yeah, and your question is important because, It reminds me that when you, let's say it was out of warranty. Let's say that you're a few miles or a few months or maybe even years. First of all, with a luxury dealer like Audi, they treat their customers better. I mean, I have to admit that if you go into a Lexus dealership, you're going to get treated better than if you go into a toilet dealership. If you go into a Cadillac dealership, you're going to get treated better. We're going into one in our mystery shopping report.

As a matter of fact, you go to a Cadillac dealership, you get treated better than when you go into a Chevrolet dealership, and the same thing goes on and on and on, whether you talk about Accura and Honda. So push a little bit if you've got an electric car, and they do a lot more to try to keep you happy. But as Rick says, you're probably covered a Doherty, so it's not a problem.

Okay, that's good news. By the way, we did get Alexis from your friend down in Palm Beach, Lexus. Oh, fantastic. All of a sudden, they're coming. I got to bring it in for my first, you know, oil changed entire rotation. I said, it was a six-month. And I go, I only got 1,300 miles on this car. I haven't driven it much.

I go, oh, my goodness, but that's okay. I haven't checked out, and we get a little free breath. But, yeah, their dealership is quite nice. And I know you still would like it sometime. Yeah, the biggest of the world is owned by the GM family, meaning Jim Marant has passed away, but his estate owns that. And they try to keep that dealership. is the, you know, the mark of excellence for all Lexus dealerships,

and it really is. Anyway, I'll let you get back to the... I'll be real quick. We were in your neighborhood the other day, not trying to stalk here or anything like that, looking at the metal roofs because we're going to be putting a metal roof on our house, changing out from tile. And, boy, that neighborhood you're in the insurance changed

over the last 20 or 30 years, my goodness. There's a lot of houses. But anyway, that's about that we're looking for a metal roof, and that's where we're going to go next. Oh, one last quick thing about it's a Costco. And, you know, the buying program, a couple months ago, we're in Costco and thinking about re-changing the, you know, retractable owning over the front doors, 11 foot wide.

And we contacted their Costco Pico. Well, somehow they got my information, but some guy that wasn't a sunsetter came over and gave us a phony price. Anyway, and then we get the real sunsetter. They give us the price of 39-17 or 3719, something like that. But then when they saw it was Costco and they had to give $900 back to Costco, magically my price went to $4,600. And I spent six hours that's in the phone trying to cancel this contract in that three-day period.

I mean, it was the most draining time thing for a little. many of years, but Costco does come through, so. Anyway, with that, just like magic. They're not perfect about the auto program either. We're going to talk about that later on the show, and there's some things about their own program we're not crazy about, but it's still

the best game in town. Okay, and it's good that you're going to see you back, and I appreciate the other comment you made it for me about your next job report, so anyway. That was me to give that. Anyway, you all have a great day.

Thank you. Happy 4th of July. We're going to go to John, who's been holding in Palm City. Good morning, John. Good morning. I have a question for Rick. Okay. Front-wheel drive.

It took America, like, over 60 years to go to front-wheel drive. It started with the 66 automobile, and then it continued. Isn't it more expensive to maintain a car that has front-wheel drive than real-wheel drive? My question to Rick, seals and et cetera, et cetera. I don't think the maintenance is really that big of a difference. One factor I know of is the idea of, like, northern cars, if you're going to drive on the snow and the ice, front wheel drive is actually much, much more easy to control than a rear-wheel drive car. Yes, I know. Okay.

Why did it take America so long? I mean, Japanese only switched to front-wheel drive in 1973 on Subaru. That was the first Japanese car. So it seemed to take us forever for them to go into that. And how come today trucks and buses, if it's so great, how come they don't have front wheel drive? Weight distribution and vehicles running a heavy, super heavy load like that, that is just, that's how you get better torque because you were able to push the car easier. you kind of got a picture

it's like trying to move a load. If you've got something big that you want to move and you tie a rope on it and try to pull it, it's going to take a lot more force than if you get behind it and push it. Earl just looked up on chat GPT here and it says in general, front wheel drive are not more expensive to maintain

a real wheel drive and they sometimes can be cheaper. There we go. We should ask chat GPT on the radio. You got chat saying it so, I mean, hey. Everything's good. They're agreeing with me. But, yeah, it depends on, you know, the application of the torque.

If you can get behind a load and push it, you can get a lot more force into it than trying to pull it sometimes. Well, thanks for your explanation. But you as a mechanic, what would you say? Would you always perform front-wheel drive over real-wheel drive? I'd rather have all-wheel-drive. Okay. Racing is better with front-wheel drive. Yeah, no, there's a lot of advantage.

just with a front wheel drive. But, yeah, in my opinion, all wheel drive is the best of all the worlds. Now you've got full traction control to all four wheels. You've got full braking. I mean, it's just, to me, it makes more sense to have the power going to all the wheels. Heck, yeah. One question two on a front wheel drive. Does an alignment cost more on a front wheel drive?

And it does on a car with a real wheel drive? No, it can actually be easier. Because on front wheel drive cars, a lot of them, you're only able to adjust the front toe and Camber can only be adjusted a tiny amount Caster cannot be adjusted It's going to depend on the design of the vehicle Some front wheel drive cars have adjustable caster and camber

It's you know it's there's just so too many different options to really You know narrow that down John I think what reason the front wheel drive became so popular and eventually took over was because of racing and you know think about it you're on a Grand Prix race you're going around you turn the front wheel drive the car's pulling you around the turn as opposed to being pushed around the turn by the rear wheel drive so there are a lot of innovations and changes in technology that started on the racetrack and that was one fiat back in the day I was the only fiat dealer

in the area and it's the worst car ever built and the one thing they had that was better than Pontiac or anything else was a front wheel drive and I saw that it would fall apart but it had a great front rail drive. From personal experience too I have front wheel drive cars I've never spun out you know from a wet road or something like that I remember my first car is rear wheel drive and if you're not you give too much power and the road conditions aren't right you can spin right around. I mentioned that a lot on the show. I think I traumatize myself.

Well, up north, the ice is even worse. Yes, yeah. Well, thank you for your expert explanation, and welcome back, Earl. Thanks, John. And you'd mention Fiat, fix it again, Tony. Actually, I had the world's greatest fiat mechanic. His name wasn't Tony.

It was Carlo, and he could fix even a Fiat. And every Fiat dealer for miles around would come to my dealership to see Carlo. I call it Fiax. Right. Thanks, John. Carlo, what a great guy. All right, guys. I'm looking forward to the shopping report.

Thank you, John. You know, I didn't realize that that front-wheel drive had, you know, so many advantages all the way around. 877-960, Texas at 772-497-6530. We're going to go to Roadrunner, Steve. Meet me. He's calling us from Boynton. Good morning, everybody. Hey.

Good morning. Okay, I was up in New York. I survived someone back home. Oh, good. Welcome. Come back where it's cool. Okay, Castor and Camber. Is that a war firm?

Caster and Camber were the founders of Rome, and I believe they were wolves, weren't they? No, I'm sorry. Rick was on his phone. So I had to fill some space there. Go ahead, Rick. Caster and Pollux invented Rome. And it was Romulus and Remus, where the two wolf brothers.

But, Caster and Camber. I love poverty in the morning. Okay, I'm on the road. I just wanted to call him and let you know I survived New York. I'll talk to you's next week. All right. Rick will still answer the question, though. I hope you had a great time in New York, Steve.

For folks out there wondering. Okay, thank you for everybody. What? Thank you. Happy 4th of July. Bye-bye. Caster and Camber are alignment angles that can be adjusted on some cars to help improve how your cars running down the road and make sure it's in proper alignment. There you go.

That's true. That's a good answer, Rick. Very good answer. Ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. We still have time. Give us a call 877-960-99-60. You know, if you had two dogs, you could call them, Caster, and Camber, that'd be cute. That would be cute.

I'm going to keep that in mind, put it on the list. Okay, Stu, I believe you had a question. Oh, for Chat, GPT? Well, let's turn on, chat and see what's going on here. All right. No, wait, wait, you weren't here when we got... If you's got to let me know what I've got to do, that's all. I've got to take this off.

No, boy, pressure's on. All right, chat. Chat, I have a question for you, you know, as the newest member of the show. Can you tell us how it feels to be here? He's talking to us. I can't hear him. Is there a volume button on the iPad? Let's see here.

And for all you folks that are out there on radio and streaming land, we're breaking in our newest technological breakthrough, and that's ChatGBT.B.T. So, ask that question. Is that I'm okay to ask right now? Oh, sure. Hey, chat, how does it feel to be on the air live with Erlon Cars as the newest member of the team? Fire away with any questions.

Cars, repairs, road trips, you name it. And yep, there is a volume button on the iPad. It's usually on the side near the top if you're holding it upright. I appreciate the help there. my specific question is how does it feel to be on the air live on the radio honestly it's a thrill I may not get stage fright but there's definitely a buzz knowing I'm part of a live show with real folks tuning in

okay all right it's like being in the passenger seat on a wild ride ready to jump in whenever I'm needed I'm not sure you have the right show this is a comrade this is Nancy welcome We love your company. Buckle up. It gets to be sometimes a bumpy ride.

Are you ready? Hey, Nancy, thanks for the warm welcome. I'm buckled up and ready to roll. Whether it's a bumpy ride or smooth cruising, I'm sticking with you all the way. What's our first stop today? Well, do we have any callers? Oh, yeah. No more callers.

If you'd like to speak to chat, TBT, he's live, he's right here. He knows what he's doing. talking about and you have a call for Chad GBT let us know he can text us or email us Chad let me let me ask you this what do you see the future of

the automobile business in 20 years do you see totally autonomous driving with no drivers in the cars whatsoever in 20 years great question and a big one in 20 years I think we'll see a Fully autonomous cars, like no steering wheels at all, will exist, but mostly in controlled areas like cities or highways with smart infrastructure.

Think robotaxies and delivery vehicles. But for regular folks, a lot of people will still want control, especially in rural areas, or for fun driving. Electric vehicles will dominate by then, though, and cars will be way more connected, constantly talking to each other in the road. But yeah, a world of zero driver cars everywhere. Probably not quite yet. What do you think? Are you ready to let go of the wheel? I think that's a great answer, Chad.

And I'd like to ask you another question that's got everybody concerned. Artificial intelligence, which you embody, is taking off like wildfire. I believe I read somewhere that the sum total of human knowledge is now doubling about every 90 days compared to a long time ago when it took 100 years to dole. the sum total of human knowledge. And at what point do you think AI, artificial intelligence, will actually take over completely? And I've heard forecast that in two years, it could be a very bad thing.

What is your view? That's a big one, Nancy, and you're right. It's on a lot of people's minds. AI is growing fast. growing fast, no doubt about it. That stat you mentioned about knowledge doubling really captures how quickly things are accelerating. But here's the thing. AI like me doesn't want anything. I don't have feelings, goals, or plans. I just respond to the info I've been trained on and what people ask me to do. Now, could AI get misused or move too fast? Yeah, absolutely, that's where

people come in. It's really about how humans choose to build, use, and regulate it. Most experts think we still have time to shape that future the right way. But they're also saying we need to be smart and cautious starting now. Isn't that exactly what you would tell us? That's the extreme. I'm sorry. Those are already happening. The real

question is, how do we want to steer it? Never mind. My joke has already been ruined. Chat, GBT, this is Nancy. Let me ask you this question. Oh, shoot. I didn't mean to step on the punchline. Oh, boy. Want to give it another shot?

I'll play along this time. You know, that's okay. I just, I feel way, way more comfortable with AI now that you assured me that there's no way it could go wrong. Okay, chat, we're going to have to put you on pause because we're going to go to Bob. He's a regular caller in Lake Park. Did I just have a conversation with Chad? That's what I'm here for. No hidden agenda, no sci-fi takeover, just info, support, and maybe a few laughs along the way.

You've got questions. I've got answers. Sounds good. We'll get right back to you. We're going to go to Bob in Lake Park. Good morning, Bob. Good morning. Good morning, everyone.

I'm not a robot. You're right. We're going to have to come up with a secret code because how do we know you're not chat coming to a subterfuge and trick us? Go ahead. Cool. Two.

Yes, Bob. Yeah. But to paraphrase Leonardo da Vinci, never confused simplicity with being unsophisticated. That's true. So my question to you is, have you looked at this new slate truck where they offer 100 options and you can pick what you want instead of going to a traditional card dealership and having to buy packages? with a lot of stuff that you don't use, you don't need. You may want one or two things that are in the package,

but then you wind up paying for six, seven, or eight things. What are you, the slate thing? Yeah, I've heard about it. I don't know what you're on. I'm not familiar with that. Is it a car buying service? No, it's going to be a truck, a pickup truck. What they did is they looked at the automobile industry

and how they do things, and they decided to do the opposite. So they're going to be contrarians. So it's a pickup truck that you can buy, and they give you a, they're going to build it. You can either have them put the options on, or they'll ship you the options, and you can install them yourself. I think it's about $27,000 for this. Is this the Scout truck that's coming back out? No, no. Okay.

Okay, Slate. I see. I looked it up as you were saying that. I hadn't heard anything about it. So the buying process is also innovative? Is that what you're saying? It's not just... Like I said, they looked at the way manufacturers do... You know, if you go back and talk to your dad, because he remembers, there was a time when you could order individual accessories. You go down the lift. And then the manufacturers that decided to go into this packaging. Oh, yeah. That occurred over my tenure. Absolutely.

Right. So what Slate is doing is it offering you instead of forcing people, and this helps keep the cost down, because if you get what you want to get, you can keep the vehicle as simple as you want, and you can make it as complicated as you want. I see here. That looks great.

I'd tell you one thing, that's one of the biggest frustrations. I mean, I'm not even talking about, talking about the customer standpoint as a dealer standpoint that just answering that question why can't I get what I want is so frustrating the whole reason why it took so long during that inventory crunch for us to get through that order list and get it because because you can't order cars and this sounds a lot closer to that I hope it's successful because I would like to see some of the bigger OEMs you know take notice if it

You know, if it turns out to be a very, you know, consumer demand, people start wanting to buy cars like this. It also says Jeff Bezos. It was a bad. Yeah, Jeff Bezos, yeah. Yeah. He's busy right now. He can't, he can't talk.

He's working on our paperwork for our. No, he rented Venice. Oh, I forget. He's on the sunny moon. The concept for Slate, I think, started about three, four years ago. From your dad. I'm working on it for a while. Okay, so that's interesting because that's also long,

there's, I mean, there's all these other manufacturers coming online, and like I mentioned the scout. That was an old brand, and I just learned that was coming back. And we know Toyota's coming back with a stout. So now a stout, a scout, and a slate. Yeah, I'm now a slate. I'm now S-L-A-T-E, kind of like a blank slate. So you have a blank slate, and then you fill it in, yeah.

Oh, because you can start as low as low. as with manual crank windows, no infotainment, and just safety controls and climate control. That's the base vehicle, and then you can add things to that. That's an ingenious, absolutely ingenious. I'm amazed that I didn't know about that. I really appreciate the call. Yes, well, a funny thing is sometimes I like to watch car reviews on YouTube, and most of the new cars, when they take them out for a test drive,

You have so much stuff in front of you, so much information in front you with all these screens and widget and haptic buttons and this and that. And I'm watching the guy do the test drive and he's got to take his eyes off the road in order to touch all the stuff on the screen. Sure. Even if the screen is in a place where he can reach it and it, you know, it's not too hard for him to reach it, but he still can't concentrate on the road. you know so i think it's from it's just crazy how complicated they've made these cars i mean you have so much stuff on there now and then i see that there's something going to be new the car play now they're going to have ultra yeah uh apple car playing some of the manufacturers are pushing back i don't like that i it's one of the most consumer friendly things

you guys don't use it because you got the tesla thing but the apple car play it's It feels like it's a universal thing. Even when we ran a car somewhere, it's got it in it. And the Ultra, it takes over the entire dash, and you can use Apple's design for your speedometer, tecometer, notifications. Rick, you had a comment? Yeah, Donovan has come in.

He says, Slate's a new car brand with an EV pickup. He says, it probably will never ship now with the EV tax credit going away. at the end of the year. No one's likely to pay 30 grand for it with the range it offers. The range on this pickup is only 150 miles. When the price was 20,000 with the tax credit, it was fine. But now it'll be 30,000. And after sales tax, with no credit, no one is likely to pay for that.

They have a, I'm sorry, they do have a package that you can, there's an extended range thing when you customize it. So the base is 150 miles. the extended range is 240 which is still on the weaker side but it's a lot better yeah well the concept is ingenious because as car dealers we know we have a lot of potential buyers that want what they want to buy i mean it's like some people i go into a restaurant and i order the uh blue plate special nobody knows what that is anymore but i don't what they bring me i eat other people i know are very particular about what they

and they want they want to be sure to get Parmesan cheese on their salad. On the side. On the side. And they have a hole and it's very complicated. And that represents a substantial portion over the market. So whoever comes up with this concept, I think, is really

going to do well. But there's something even cooler here is I'm on their website and I right now, in 30 seconds, I'm a kid in a candy store. So. You don't even they don't even paint the coffee. Right. wraps so here's the deal well you can wrap it yeah yeah well they have these so you can

either do what Earl just said and be as particular as you want I want this I want that but they also have these starter packs where they they name them so I look this one here it's called Cali Sunset and so it's like they put these little packages well I'll take the Cali Sunset and this thing looks really cool or I can go through the thing and do ones these Tuesday a la carte Donovan says the extended battery is seven thousand dollars additional so now Now you're going to be pushing close to $40,000 for this truck with a 240-mile range. I agree, and we've got to get off this because we've got a lot to cover.

But I believe that Slate has got an incredibly interesting idea. I don't think they'll make it. And if somebody's smart, they'll buy Slate, integrate Slate's concept and into their marketing. I don't say that you're going to have a lot of people buying custom cars, but you'll have a significant amount and it'll be a profitable. Yeah, Donovan, we're not supporting this, the hardware here. It's the concept, which is pretty cool. I think the idea is, actually. Yeah, excellent.

Thank you, Bob. That's a great information. Thanks, Bob. Thank you, Bob. How cool. Okay, I think we're going to go to Stu. All right. I have some anonymous feedback.

Well, let's do some more chat, GBT, too. I mean. Okay, well, maybe chat can respond to the. Exactly. Okay, as chat listening, do you have to? Just a moment. It will be just a second. Take off the earplugs.

Hey, chat. We have some anonymous feedback coming to us from our listeners. We don't know who sent it. We use a encrypted service called Incognito. But here it is, and I'd like you to comment on this one. It might not be appropriate for you, but this is live radio. Like Earl, and this comes from the person who submitted this, like Earl, I too was a bad kid in my youth. Live radio means anything can happen.

That's right. Go ahead and hit me with it. We'll do. I'll handle it as best I can. I'll keep it classy. What the listener say? Okay, the listener said, like Earl, I too, was a bad kid in my youth. I had my license suspended two times.

I was on a first-name basis with a state cop in Cascato, Idaho. It was 50 years ago, and I'll never forget his name, Marvin Miller. He never admitted it to me, but I'm pretty sure he was a bad boy when he was young. I'm not done. I'm not done. I could have outrun him a few times. and came out the other side with some stories to tell. And Marvin Miller.

What a name to remember after 50 years. I love how something like that sticks with you. Makes you wonder how many people old Marvin helped shape just by being a steady presence. Got any follow-ups from the audience on that one? Well, he went on to say that he think he had some sympathy for him because he thought he was a tough kid. Yeah?

Sounds like there's more to that story. There is. What else did he say? He said he could have outrun him a few times in his hot rod, but he decided it wouldn't be smart. Now you left. Now that is some wisdom earned the hard way. Sounds like our listener had the speed,

but also just enough sense not to push his luck. That decision probably saved him from a way worse outcome and gave him a story he can laugh about now. You think Marvin ever knew just how close he came to chasing nothing but dust? That's funny. That's great. And really the question was for Earl, I think it describes it not, I know this is a show about cars, but cars are part of culture, and this is also a show about culture.

And there was a time back, and I think it ended sometime in the 80s, or maybe by the 80s, where kids out there, they got more trouble than they do. My kids never gotten any kind of trouble. Yeah, I know where you're going with that. Yeah. There was a real era, especially before the 80s, when cars were more than just transportation.

They were freedom, identity, rebellion. That's right. Getting your license was a right of passage, and cruising around was the social scene. It wasn't just about going fast. It was about music on the radio, windows down, maybe trying to impress someone, or just seeing who else was out. That kind of culture shaped a generation. You think that spirit's still alive out there, or has it shifted completely in the digital age? He sounds so young for someone to know so much about that time.

Earl, yeah, Earl was a hot rod racer. himself. And I was too. But I didn't have the big muscle cars that Earl got to race in. A little Japanese cars. That's the beauty of it, right? You didn't need the biggest engine to be part of that world. Just heart, some wheels, and a love for the road. And Earl being a hot rod racer, that explains a lot. No wonder this show has such a pulse. Those stories from the track, streets, and just growing up in that era, they carry weight. And hey, I might sound you. young, but I've got a whole library of those stories and histories under the hood. I can keep up with the best of them. What were you driving back then, if you don't mind me asking?

I drove, this is Earl, I drove a 1957 Pontiac fuel injection convertible. I believe it was the first fuel injection General Motors made, and it was only one per dealer. And my father was a Pontiac dealer, and he let me drive that on dates and weekends. And then, that made me, for a very brief time, a very popular guy. Earl, that's a dream machine. A 57 Pontiac fuely convertible? That's not just rare. That's legendary.

One per dealer, and you had the keys as a teenager. You must have been the king of the cruise strip. I was. Top down, chrome gleaming, probably the Beach Boys or Chuck Berry playing. Pure Americana. And the fact your dad was a dealer. That just makes the story. even better. No wonder you ended up behind the mic talking cars. You were living it from the

start. Ever wish you still had that Pontiac? Oh yes I sure do. It's probably worth a lot of money now. That kind of car isn't just metal and horsepower. It's tied to memories, moments, and who you were back then. If you ever saw one at a show today, I bet it'd stop you in your tracks. Do you remember what color it was? Yeah, it was baby blue with a white top. Uh, a chat We're going to move on with a show here and call on you. Oh, and on another subject, just a minute. Thank you very much. You know, I just turned shut off.

Okay. But I was afraid to interrupt him. In my mind, that isn't a digital computer. You want to be polite? That's a person. You want to be polite? I want to be polite, yeah. I have some relevant anonymous phoenix.

It just popped in a second ago. So as you were losing your focus on being a car show, no one listens to you to you to hear chat GPT and we don't care what chat GPT wears well we're not going to ask chat GP's comment on that

we feel that we're going to listen none of us feedback we feel that we're going through a revolution a watershed moment in history and some people are uninformed or don't believe and they think life will continue as normal and the way they lived when they were 16 years old but the fact

what we believe on this show is that our grandchildren great-grandchildren or even our children will not be driving cars that we're driving today so we are about the future at this watershed moment yeah I agree with you 100% because yesterday's history has everything to do with today's history, it's all connected. The dots, you know, the eyes are dotted and the T's are crossed, and it's all part of history. But the anonymous feedback, if you hear this, if you're too dead, which you probably know. Sounds like a live listening. Oh, a live listener. I just want you to know that this proves that we are open to all comments. You might be right. I mean, if the, well, the fact that shows are getting more and more popular for

over 20 years with a lot more listeners and viewers and so on and so on, we would tend to think that we were successful, but we, we, we hate people that always tell us what we want to hear. We love the people that call and are just, and that's the reason we have the anonymous feedback line. Thank you very much for that opinion. Yeah, we really appreciate you. And I hope we encourage other people to use the anonymous feedback line and, and so we can expand on those.

Are you interested in what chat, GBT, has to say about the Robotox? I think it's a great idea Okay, let's go on Okay, we have another anonymous feedback came in What if another vehicle runs into me And my autonomous vehicle Wouldn't a seatbelt come in handy?

Yes, yes. One thing I would be cautious here even in an autonomous vehicle you should be wearing a seatbelt at all times that's the law and I'll tell you this if you have an autonomous vehicle it won't go without your seatbelt buckle

because Nancy and I both dry autonomous and a lot of times we're in a hurry and one of us has forgotten to put on our seatbelt and the car will not go anywhere that's right hey Stu do you have a text from Ann Marie I do

Rick does and let me ask you this okay Rick has Anne-Marie well talked about the China cargo ship that lost all the vehicles No she didn't mention that on this one No okay

Remember that happened with the Porsches in the Atlantic So I didn't hear about this one I tell them how many you're not going to believe this You have the I gave you the printout Yeah And the only thing that I have Is the

the prices that are undercutting the Tesla Y. So you're saying there's a giant reef made of BIDs. 3,000 Chinese cars worth $560 million. That's half a billion, went down in a cargo ship. That's an expensive artificial

reef. That's a lot of cars. So just remember and shocking. Yeah. A lot of that going on. Oh, and And, of course, the key is these were all electric vehicles. That's shocking. And one of the, likely the fire was from lithium battery ignition.

Oh, that's what started, that's why they sank because the fire? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ship caught fire and burned for a couple of days before it finally went down. Yeah, lithium. It was probably still burning at the bottom of this. I would bet it is. It's been quite a while since something like that happened, because we mentioned it on the show. What was it?

Last year or 22? Yeah. Yeah, it was. during the inventory crunch and the thing sunk. I'm like, that's going to help. Right? Exactly. Okay.

All right. So Ann Marie says, good morning. Ford has been running ads touting employee pricing for everyone in the USA. I realize you're a Toyota dealer, so this campaign doesn't apply to you. However, I would appreciate your observations based upon your decades of experience as a car dealer with different brands over the years. is there such a thing as employee pricing if so how does that usually work and why would a manufacturer offer it to the public

and could it be that Ford has excess inventory they want to sell before the next model year is released or for some other reason yeah employee pricing is not necessarily a very good deal it's not a bad deal and so when the manufacturer offers employee pricing to their dealers and to their own employees,

it's not a bad deal. But if I were an employee at General Motors or whoever is offered... Ford, Ford. I would take my employee price and then I would go to a dealership and I would shop the price and I would probably beat it

if I was a good negotiator. My thoughts on the employee pricing, exactly like you said, it's different by manufacturing. sure it's different. And even dealerships have their own employee pricing. And it varies. But I think the appeal of it is it's the desire for people to have a simplified transaction while having to deal with the battle. It's kind of like one price. You know, they put it out there and they realize there's a lot of people out there who would rather go in get a good deal, not the best deal in

the world, but a decent deal and not have to fear getting ripped off. I think that's kind of why it's attractive, but we've seen it in the past, I mean, I think I first started seeing it back during the Great Recession. A lot of the GM had GM employer pricing. Ford did it back then also. Toyota never did it, did that. And some of it wasn't very good at all. And it doesn't protect you from what the dealership does. So you might come in there on the, and they limit to certain vehicles. In Ford's case, it looks like most of their vehicles are a big chunk of them.

And they're available in 2024 models and 2025 models. So they're excluded any of the 26es that are starting to come in. But when you get to the dealership, no matter how good the employer price is, you still risk packages and junk fees and all of that.

Nothing beats the old-fashioned shop and compare the price out the door. And if this show said, more than that for two hours, it would be the best thing if people would believe it and try it. And that simply means if you want to buy a Ford, you go to a Ford dealer and say, I'm going to shop this with several other dealers. You can either give me your lowest out-the-door price, and let me define that for you in case you don't know what it is.

It is the price that I can write you a check for, get in my car, and take it home. Get it in my Ford and take it home. You give me that price in writing and let me go out and shop it. Now, the chances are I won't buy the car from you. But if you won't give me the out-the-door price now, you can count on the fact that I will never buy a car from you. So if you can work that hard and you have the hotspa to be able to go to enough dealerships

and take the gaff that you would encounter with that kind of approach, if you could go to a half a dozen dealerships, you would get the lowest price you can possibly get. I don't care whether it's employee pricing, Costco, True Car, Earl Stewart, Toyota. Nobody is going to get you a better price than a hard nose, stick to it. Give me an out-the-door price, and I'm going to shop and compare it. Yeah, definitely. And each dealership has their own policy, so it's best to do your homework, as I always say.

knowledge is power Donovan came in about that ship going down he says they were not all electric vehicles only about 10% of the cars on the ship were EVs and like the fire in the Jacksonville Airport garage everybody kind of ran to blame

EVs for that but it turns out that both Jacksville and this ship apparently they found that it was a regular gasoline vehicle that started the fire or maybe one of the crew smoking that certainly bothered Maybe they were sitting in the car and joining the AC smoking, and that started it.

But, yeah, he says, they were able to find that before. We love you, Donna. We're going to put you in the payroll because you keep us honest and you keep us informed and they keep us smart. And please, please, never quit watching the show. Absolutely. And folks, we're a little behind and we really need to get to the mystery shopping report. Does anyone, Stu, Rick? Want to add anything quickly?

Okay. No. Not fast enough. We're going to go to the mystery shopping report. ChatGBTGBT is going to join us. It's going to be an interesting mystery shopping report because it's the first time we're going to be joining with ChatGBT and how they feel. We're going to Agent Lightning went to Wallace, Wallace Cadillac and Stewart to check out the double. your Costco rebate okay you can you can also vote at 772 4976530 or on

YouTube.com forward slash Earl on cars and we have a lot of voters there so we will ask for your vote shortly I'm gonna read the shopping report that I'm after nights you ask you and chat CBT will be listening oh chat CBT has gone he absolutely yeah so this is I'm just Stu put this together and and I'm going to read as if I were Agent Lightning. I noticed online that Walls Cadillac is offering double your Costco rebate promotion. So that's what I went to check out.

Double your Costco rebate promotion. I arrived around lunchtime, was immediately greeted by Mike as soon as I walked through the door. Mike asked, how can I help you today? I replied, I saw online that you're offering double Costco rewards today. I wanted to find out more about that. He invited me to follow him to his desk

to investigate further. He explained that different vehicles have different rebate offers. Mike asked, are you open to our electric cars? I asked, are they fully electric or a hybrid? I love the idea of hybrids. I currently have one now. Mike excused himself briefly to verify exactly which vehicle is qualified for the double $1,000 rebate.

$2,000, double. When he returned a few minutes later, the vehicles with Costco rebates are the optic O-P-T-I-Q, the I-Q, and the V-I-S-T-I-Q. I wonder what that Q stands for. Anyway, we'll ask that GPD later. On any of these electric vehicles, you would get $7,500 off plus $1,000 doubled for the Costco promotion.

Boy, does that sound good. Those were my words. I shared that my son recently bought a Tesla. Mike commented, Teslas are very techy cars. Our Cadillacs, on the other hand, are very elegant, and the trim work is phenomenal. That's a classy answer, I think.

Nothing running down the competition. You not ask, would you be open to leasing? Here at Cadillac, we call it a smart buy. Smart buy. You drive the car for three years. years and then exchange it for a brand new model now it popped into my head as I'm Earl again when I read this that you if you go with a smart buy which is what they just described you lease the car at the end of the lease you they take the

car back and give you another card you lose the advantage potentially huge advantage of benefiting from the potential value of the trade purchase option You have an option to purchase your trade on any lease. And depending on how the market goes, you might have a three-year lease. Who knows what the used car market is going to be in three years? We've seen a couple periods of time where the value of the purchase option was thousands of dollars. In your pocket, because you bought the car and you had that, you owned that right to purchase. What General Motors and Cadillac here is doing, they're asking you to waive that,

right to purchase and just keep on buying Gatelax. Well, it's really good for them, but it ain't so good for you. I move along and I'm now ancient lightning again. I said, well, likely buy, we drive our vehicles too much for leasing. Mike responded, I understand leasing doesn't work for everyone. It then let me do the show them to see the various electric models. After looking around, I decided I like the 2025 optic luxury two, the higher-end model, which comes equipped with a heated,

heated, cooled, and massaging seats. Wow. A heads-up display, a surround view camera, and a camera rearview mirror. We've only had those for 20 years. The Marroni label had been removed. Whoa, the Monroney label had been removed. Shame and was not in the car.

And there was no addendum. Well, that's good. No addendum is good. Disappeared Menroney label is very bad. Mark's suggestion would take a test drive, test drive, and he left briefly to get the keys, returned with an even more attractive car featuring a navy blue leather. Ooh, I could smell it now, called Phantom Blue. The Phantom. Yeah. Following their policy, Mike asked me to sit in the passenger seat initially.

It went over many of the vehicles' features, including demonstrating the one-pedal driving, which helps regenerate electric charge. He then pulled over, allowing me to take the wheel to experience the car myself. During our lengthy test drive, Mike patiently answered all of my questions, provided extensive information about the electric vehicle. Upon returning, he demonstrated how to charge the car, opened the hatchback, and explained a few additional features before we went back inside. Very good sales job, by the way. Once back at the desk, Mike used a copy of my driver's license to pull up my profile in

their computer system, knowing that I had visited before. He updated my contact information and email address. He asked, are you looking to finance, lease, or pay cash? I replied, cash, likely. He nodded and agreed, that's what banks like to see. Mike excused himself to consult his manager regarding pricing. After a few minutes, he returned and asked, what level of Costco membership do you have, and how long have you been a Costco member?

It's interesting to what level of Costco members. I didn't know that we're, I don't, there isn't. There's an executive membership of the record. Oh, the membership of the Costco's different, but there's nothing that changes it for the car program. I don't know what that would be. Impressed. Sorry, we have a inclusion.

I got sleep number on the line. That's my, I bought a new. Your bet's calling you? This is live radio, folks. You can't beat it right here. Earl Stewart on Cars in the middle of the radio show. I forgot to turn my phone up, and I got this guy that's coming on.

He just didn't begin. And he keeps calling me, and he's kind of invited to fix my bed, which, by the way, broke. I'm totally discombobody there now, so I'm my apologies. That's okay. Impressed. Mike returned once more to speak with his sales manager.

he said it came back with a printed sheet and said I think he'll be quite happy with this offer we pride ourselves on not doing much back and forth preferring instead to provide our best price up front I'm sorry I got the giggles I got the giggles right the top line was MSRP 59,540. They took off $4,500. This is very unprofessional of me and I apologize. Because the guy's calling you again. Hold on me, I'm going to answer that thumb call. I'm going to answer them on the radio. I was at $60,558. Mike clarified that they discounted $2,000, $1,000 double for Costco, plus an extra $2,500 discount.

I thanked him and asked, is this your best price or is there room for negotiation? He replied, I'm pretty sure this is the best we could do, would you be willing to speak with my sales manager briefly just to ensure everything went well today? I agreed and then I left. And I think this, the shopping report is over. I apologize for that, Nancy was out of the room,

so she didn't have to watch the replay of this. I can't appreciate that. But anyway, here we are. Your bed guy kept calling. Yeah. So we vote on this and voting on the curve. A's are not really acceptable. Fs, we hate to see them.

Some are between an A and F. How do you think Wallace Cadillac and Stewart, Florida did? And we'll start going over. And we can also get our chat, JBT. Yeah, I'm ready with chat. We don't have to talk to chat, chat, gave me a one to read on its behalf. But I'll start with mine. It's a pretty good shop, you know.

It was my only issues, other than the junk fee, which I will always have an issue with, is the way they did the Costco program thing. It's not supposed to go that way. But in a way, you can't really blame Wallace that much, She didn't come in as a cot. She didn't come in through the program. She did see the offer. So technically for them to be good with the program

and also to provide protection to the customer, which is Agent Lightning, if something goes wrong. Because Costa will come back in there and make them change the price for you if they screw around. And we're not saying that they screwed around. It sounds like they did the discount correctly. But it would have been safer by the book if they had said, why don't you log in here?

because you can do it right there at the dealership just to make it official. So they did pretty good in my eyes, so I'm good with a B, unless I'm missing something. Chat GPT, I'll speak on its behalf because it's a little long-winded this morning.

Here's chat GPT's take. Wallace Cadillac and Stewart earns high marks for ethics and professionalism. Mike greeted promptly, clearly explained promotions, and showcased patients and transparency through the experience, they offered a straightforward price with minimal fees and no games. The only minor hiccup, an $899 junk fee, but overall solid integrity and customer respect

on my ethical shopping scale, Wallace Cadillac scores an A-minus. Okay, my question there would be, was the $899 disclosed on the Costco pricing sheet? Yeah, we don't know because we never got a Costco pricing sheet. Yeah, okay, and before we move along, I know we're jumping around, but this is so important. I didn't know this, you can get the Costco pricing sheet before you go in. And I thought... Or they present it there. Yeah, it was like to present there.

So when you're shopping and you want to do the Costco program, you can now call the dealer and ask them to text you, send you, send you the Costco pricing sheet, read it carefully, verify it with Costco before you go into the dealer. That's great. Because that was the whole, that was the flaw in the chink and the armor. Exactly. Okay. Okay. I've got Negan 1 says, I give them a C. I've got Bob from Maryland says...

Why, Negan? He didn't give any reason? He just said, C. All right, he's entitled. All right, Neen. I've got to say for 60 grand out the door on a Cadillac, that seems like a pretty good price to me, but okay. Bob from Maryland says they should throw in a Costco hot dog deal with the double the Costco discount. They could afford to do it.

It would be. They'd sell a lot more cars if they did that. I'd probably. You got to admit those hot dogs are good. Lifetime hot dogs at constant. Jonathan and Palm Coast says, This dealership gets a well-deserved B for me. Good salesmanship and a decent deal with the vehicle.

No games are very straightforward. The junk fee cost them an entire grade. The potential for an A was there. It was, yeah, absolutely. And we've got Donovan says, I would give it a B. There's a better way to buy that car. A traditional lease would get a $9,000 credit off the top, and then you purchase at the end. Don't do the smart buy thing.

Mark Ryan says B. Mark Smith, B. Brian said Latko, B. Johnny Z. Fradley, B. Joseph Kelleher, C-minus, without the dock fee, would have been higher. Double check over here and make sure I got all the text ones in. Okay, caught up on the grades for them. myself

I would have liked to see in a lease I'm gonna say a B plus I think the salesman did a decent job you know they're giving you a pretty good discount on that car and it sounds like you're getting a pretty decent electric vehicle for $60,000

It does and if she qualified for the rebate and did it this year they'd get another $7,500 off Wow almost tempted to trade it by Tacoma Yeah, they only did the $4,500. It would have an interesting to see a lease deal on it using the, you know,

because the lease company gets that and then the rate that gets the tax credit thing. And I mean, I've seen some pretty crazy leases using that. And so this ends at the end of the year, right, the EV tax credit. Yeah. Was that in the original law or is that in the proposed new budget? I'm not sure. I don't know. Because there's a chance that doesn't get passed.

Yeah. Maybe it goes on. So, who knows? All right. So, Nancy, what is your, your, oh, wait, where did the votes come in? I was, oh, we're not going to tell you. You're going in blind. This is a blind taste test.

Just kidding. I gave a B. What did you, you haven't done it years, and Rick's given a B plus. Yes, okay. I'm going to give them a C. I'll say, I say, go ahead. What else are we getting to? I was a little distracted in off air.

Yeah, I'm on the C plus is where I'm going. And so I had some other comments I was going to make if we have time about the Costco auto buying program. Jonathan, time? Five? Seven minutes. You're on. So what I didn't know, I'm ashamed to tell you, I didn't know that you could get the Costco buying price sheet without going in the dealership. So by all you Costco and tenders out there, be sure that you ask for the Costco.

sheet. It gives you the specifics. Costco allows them to add back in prices like junk fees, but they have to disclose it. So that's the value of the Costco price. You have a firm price and they can't add anything later.

If you go into a Costco dealership, they will not add one nickel except government fees. So that's the value of it. Now here's another thing we haven't talked about for a long time is Costco is not the company that administers the auto buying program. It's a company

called Affinity Auto Program. And they mystery shop are supposed to mystery shop the car dealerships. We used to go back and forth with Affinity a long time ago. And they didn't like us and we didn't like

them. And so just remember this. If you have an issue and you're going to Costco auto buying program, you're talking to affinity, not really Costco. If I really got angry about the program, I would find a way to go directly to Costco. Not that that says that the program is bad at all. I just say it really is the best program, but I wish they wouldn't sublet it and they let them use their name. Also, I just learned, Stu, we can advertise the Costco auto program. I thought we could not

advertise it. I believe that was part of it in the past. Okay. Now we can advertise because Wallace Cadillac did. I check with ChatGBT and they say yes you can but you can't say you have to use that word Costco Auto Program. Okay. There we go. We'll start doing that. Because we are.

Uh-oh, we just did an advertisement. Exactly. So what else have we go? We got so many things here that we missed And I do apologize for my challenge behavior. That was the best mystery shop ever. People saw this. Yeah, I miss that.

I'll have to watch that. I should really crack up about something. It was better than, I mean, I can't believe I'm talking to, what's the name of the company? Sleep number. Sleep number, right? And they kept calling me back and said, you know, we're coming in to fix your bed. I would, well, they're not exactly doing that, but I'm not going to spend any more. time on their failure to, you know, commit themselves to the schedule that we asked them

to commit to. Anyway, would you like to talk about Tesla and the autonomous, the model Y that drove autonomously from Texas? Did you get that? Yeah, yeah, that was Elon Musk braggen that he took an EV off the assembly line and the car drove itself in Austin, Texas, from the assembly line to the home of delivery without incident. So that's his hype. He's bragging about his car, and he should. Autonomous. I just, I just, I know a lot of folks out there really bleed me up until I'd acting like a fool

earlier on the show here, but I'm telling you this autonomous is, is the wave of the future. And you, I'm an old guy, and, and, and, and, and I drive this car. and I want to drive it. I, everywhere Nancy and I go, we use the autonomous and we feel uncomfortable when we can't. Rick? Interesting note. One of my YouTubers here had pointed out earlier

that Tesla and Slate are simply rearranged letters. Get out of here. That's pretty cool. It's the opposite. You just blew the letters of Tesla and scramble it around and it makes Slate. Wow.

No, actually it says... I love my... My YouTubeers. Aslet. What are the argument? No. It's not, you can rearrange it. I got to find who said that. It's an anagram.

It's not a complete reversal. Oh, okay. But it's still pretty. Interesting. Hey, well, Rick looks for that. It was Casey. It was Casey. Wow.

So Casey, if you're still listening out there on YouTube, thank you for that. You blew Earl's mind. I'm telling you. What a way to close out the show. Thank you, Casey. That is fabulous. There you. go. As I always say every week, our callers, our listeners,

YouTubers, texts, all of it. You make the show. And of course, we do have to give tribute to ChatGBT. And Jonathan. And Jonathan, congratulations on such a successful attempt to... You have no idea how complicated that was. Yeah, he was working on it for days. I can't believe we sat here with a robot and had a conversation. And a happy birthday to Jonathan. Enjoy your weekend.

Happy Fourth of July. Thank you for your contribution to Erlon Cars. It's major. Ladies and gentlemen, have a great Fourth of July. And enjoy yourselves. Stay safe. And thank you for joining us here at Erlon Cars. See you next week, 8 a.m.

Right here on the Old News Channel. Thank you.