Earl Stewart on Cars - 07.20.2024 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Valley Honda of Monroeville, PA.

Episode Date: July 20, 2024

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning travels to Pennsylvania to visit a Honda dealer in Monroeville to see how much they will charge for a new 2024 Honda Accord Hybrid on their car lot. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, 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, this 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. Well, we're back. We're in action. You guys hear How Not to Get Ripped Off by your car dealer team. I believe we're going to be, have a complete team here. My son, Stu, I should be here momentarily. Nancy Stewart is sitting right across from me.

Rick Kearney is right across from me. Jonathan is to my right. We got a full crew, and we're ready to help you get through your ordeal, which is what it usually is if you're having your car service and maintained. If you're having your car, if you're buying a car. What a time, right? I mean, it's, where did COVID go? Well, it's, oh, wait a minute, it's back, isn't it?

I don't know where COVID is, it's all over the place. We've been through some crazy times. The supply chain shortage, we've had prices on cars skyrocket. I mean, I've been in the business 50 plus years. I've never seen cars selling for $10, 20, $30,000 over stick of price. You heard me? If you've been in a time capsule and you just came out, yeah, we were selling cars a couple of years ago, thousands and thousands of dollars over MSRP. Some dealers are still doing that, but the market settled.

Supply in demand is catching up with each other, and the supply chain is pretty much intact now, all sorts of other problems. I mean, we've got cyber attacks. We got everything is exciting. today folks and it's almost like we're talking about an industry the retail automobile dealers that are frozen in time the Henry Ford era where car dealers are frozen in time and that's it's not good I mean it's quaint especially for an old car dealer like me I I like to reflect on the old times and I look back at the way I used to sell cars, but it's not quaint for you

when you've got to go in and buy or lease a car or maintain or repair your car. So that's why we're here. And we're alive, we're ready to do business. We want you to call the show, all of us here, we're all talkers, a live talk show. I like to talk, Rick likes to talk, Nancy likes to talk, student likes to talk, but we want to hear you talk,

that's what it's all about. You talk, you ask questions, and you suggest suggest things and that's why our show is so successful you the listener and that number will be giving you out many times that number is eight seven and seven six I'm sorry eight seven seven nine six so nine sixty eight seven seven nine six oh nine sixty write it down if you have a minute if you can't do it safely because you might not have a question now you will later we're two show we're on from 8 to 10 Eastern Standard Time 8 to 10 in the morning Eastern Standard

Time every Saturday and nobody sits around for two hours and listens to us yak but you tune in you tune out and a lot of people most of the people that'll be listening in the last hour weren't listing in the first hour so that's the reason I guess I'm apologizing to you rare a few that we love you by the way that listen to a lot of the show. So you hear the number so often you say, my God, please, I'm begging you. Stop giving me that number.

But we doggedly will do it because it's important to make the show work. Again, 877-960-99-60. 877-9-60-9-6-0. Now, the phone number is more important than all the other areas of venues that you could use to reach us. so you've got to hear all those later too.

And it's so important that Nancy Stewart, my co-host, the co-founder of the show 20 years ago, she monitors those calls. One of her primary jobs, because the calls are the most important part of the show, the personal touch, is to throw a brick at me or something and make me shut up or Rick shut up or Stu shut up and just answer the phone, right?

We've got five lines coming in here, and we don't want you to wait. I know sometimes we do make you wait, we've had phone problems, okay, but most of the time we get to you pretty quickly. And if you will call 877-9-60-90-60, Nancy will see that call. It will come in Jeremy and the control room will flash it on her LCD, her screen, or laptop, and she'll wave at me, or as I say, yell at me, and we'll get to your call. 960, 9960. Now for you people that would rather not be on live radio, pretty scary, right? Understandable. Text number, 772-4976530. That's 772-4976530. And the cool thing about text is that we accumulate them. We don't get to them right away, but we thence you go around and say, Sue, do you have any text? or Rick, do you have any YouTube's, and we'll go back and catch up on the postings and the texting.

So if you get an early on the text, we'll get to your text, almost guaranteed. So that text number again, again, I like text. I'm a texting guy, you know, but what can I say? That text number again is 772-497-6530. Now, let me tell you about our working process. We have a working process. How you regular listeners know, we switched over to Zoom, and we're getting there.

We're having technical challenges. Jonathan is doing a tremendous job working with the studio here to get the radio wasn't intended. God didn't want us to have Zoom on radio. I don't know what it is, but we're going to get it anyway. We're going to get it done. And we're getting there slowly and painfully. So Nancy Stewart is going to tell you about a special offer, not only for her first time female callers, but for the first two Zoom callers, she's going to tell you about a special offer that we had a couple of weeks ago, and we reinstated it because we want to test the technical improvements we made to get to Zoom without the echo and without the other annoyances that it had in the past. When we get it, it's going to be really cool, and we'll be able to see it.

to you, you'll be able to see us, it'll be like, you know, you're in the studio. Nancy said the other day, why don't we have some guests come in? Well, if we have Zoom, we could have guests all the time because, you know, it's just a question of how long do you want to be on Zoom? And you've got the face, you get the voice, you get the personality, you got it all.

If you're a, oh, oh, oh. You know who I want to invite. I, who. Oh, you're Ashley Mooney? Ashley is on my mind. Yeah, I do, too. But anyway. The chances of that happening are slim enough.

Let me turn the microphone over to that little thing, lovely voice. Okay. You hear as Nancy Stewart. The mic's all yours. Okay. Earl was talking about reinstating Zoom, and that's exactly what we're doing this morning for the first two new zoomers.

the first two new who have a question do you have a question you can give us a call 926 589 oh 586 yeah that's a Zoom account number right and that is that's the meeting ID number 926 589 0586 that's the first two new zoomers and we would love it if you had a question and you gave us a call and you can win yourself $100 for the first two new Zoom callers. I'm going to share the number with you again. Jot it down. 926-0589. Yes, Rick. We do ask the Zoom callers, please use headphones because we believe that the headphones will stop the echo effect we've been getting. Important point.

Great information. Thank you, Rick. Yeah, if you zoomers, don't know what we're talking about. If you try to use your PC speaker, that's a problem. You've got to plug in your microphone. We're all wearing headphones in the studio. Plug in your headphones when you do your Zoom, and we hope that will eliminate the echo problem.

Back to Nancy. Okay. Jot that number done. 26, 589, 0586. You know, Earl mentioned when he opened a show, you know, about car prices, and they're certainly out of control, you know, but more than that, Earl and I were talking about the surge on repossessions, and it's up 23%. That was during the first half of 2024, so things are getting pretty serious. Also for the ladies, we hope that we've created a, well, a welcoming environment for you right here at Rowan Cars. And if you don't know by now, you know, you influence the automotive, on every level. I'm talking about, you know, renting a car.

I'm talking about service. I'm talking about purchasing. All of it, you really affect the auto industry. You affect it by over 85%. So ladies, take advantage this morning of the $50 that I'd like to give the first two new lady callers. The first two new lady callers, $50. And I am going to ask the young lady that was just holding to give me a call back. Jonathan, did you notice that name on that first female caller?

Okay. I don't have that at my fingertips, but please give me a call back, and that number is 877-960-99-60. We have an interesting mystery shopping report to get to later in the show, and that will be from Monroeville, Pennsylvania. And I think Rick has a question for me. Actually, just want to let you know, Negan 1. from the YouTube channel says he got his check for his participation attempt on Zoom

and he says thank you very much oh you're quite welcome Nugan thank you thank you for tuning you love you YouTubers okay also you can text us at 772-4976530 so we are going to until my first time lady caller calls back I'm doing a balance act here ladies and gentlemen so bear with me I'm going to send it back to you until my lines light up here. Yeah you

mentioned the mystery shopping report and I forgot to talk about that because I keep forgetting it we have so many new listeners we assume everybody knows about the mystery shopping report. Well I got to tell you it's the most important part of the show. Maybe not most important but certainly the most interesting

and entertaining may be frustrating. It would be another word but we go into a car dealership unexpectedly i say we actually is our undercover agent lightning agent lightning who happened to be in monroeville pennsylvania for the last mystery shopper report and she goes in and pretends to buy or lease a car i mean she goes all the way in she talks to the salesman the managers she wheels and deals or she has trade-ins she has demonstration rides all the things that you do when you go and do real really to buy a car dealership.

I buy a car and a car dealership. So we report these to you. As it happened, we name names, we name dealerships. I always say that I know that we're telling the truth because we've never been sued. I knock on what, every time I say that, I don't care, sue me. We tell the truth, and truth is a perfect defense

against libel and slander. So mystery shopping report, you won't see this anywhere if you know of a show that does something like this i'd like to hear about it because i'd like to congratulate them it takes i i don't i hate to pat myself on the back or pat ourselves on the back but we did something that a lot of people would never dare do i mean we trust you have to trust your your undercover agent and we've always had good reliable i have a telephone call we do and uh a great surprise this morning uh from one of our lady callers that we have not heard from in quite a while and i'm welcoming her back this morning lori good morning

trust you have to try hi um welcome you remember me i'm the lady that had problems with ed morse um they they they finally paid me for a a CD player they never installed. Oh, yeah, I remember. I recall. Yeah, and I'm getting letters from them now where they want me to buy an extended warranty.

And I just have to laugh at it, but I wanted to ask Earl about extended warranties and how do they arrive at a price, you know, four years, 50,000 mile guarantee. And she, how do you look at these things? I mean, I'm not going to do it, but what's the reasoning behind it and what's going on? Well, you have every reason to be concerned because selecting an extended warranty is like selecting a car dealer. It's like Russia roulette.

You get the wrong, you get the wrong extended warranty and you really get hosed. I mean, you can really have a piece of paper that. is worthless and you might pay thousands of dollars for the uh something called an extended warranty on the other hand there are extended warranties uh notably those that are put out by the manufacturers that are better now there are no really perfect extended word just like there are no perfect dealers uh including in ourselves as we know we have a card dealers So I don't want to go off onto a long thing about extended warranties, but it's because it's one of the most common sources of illicit income to car dealerships. I have to get off a little bit on it and tell you that my rule of thumb is don't buy an extended service contract on anything that you can afford to repair yourself, should the

product have a problem bank what would be your monthly cost or your total cost of that bank in your bank and your money and let it earn interest or even put it in the stock market and you get 10% on the average every year and then when you have to dip into that account you've earned money it hasn't been in somebody else's pocket but if you can't afford the repair it would if it would put a hurting on you to get the car repaired then be sure when you get an extended warranty that you read it carefully that you that it's a manufacturer's warranty not one that the dealer sells you and that you find

out what is covered and what is not covered what is not covered is usually the surprise you can you you can tell a person on an extended warranty all the things it covers for example if I told you I'll sell you an extended warranty it covers the engine, it covers the transmission, it covers the axles, it covers the bearings, it covers the, and I go on and on, what I'm naming is all the lubricated parts of the car. Well, if you have a car and you lubricate it and you, according to your owner manual recommendations, you'll never have a problem with those items. So find out what it doesn't cover. If it doesn't cover the computer items like or or even the air conditioner or the sound system then you got a

problem so choose a manufacturer's warranty be sure it's something you can't afford but my general advice is pass loric what a pleasure it is speaking to you this morning you know i'm glad you decided to be part of the show as far as your question and earl's answer you know extended warranties they do bring some peace of mind but keep for me has always been as a real clearly stated what the extended warranty doesn't cover so that's really a major question and do you have any other questions no no i think he covered it okay very good i i have a car with a lot of electronics and they told me to replace the screen would be like a thousand dollars and and and i don't know if that's covered in the manufacturing yeah that's a

very good question i will check it whether it includes electronics or not okay well listen it was great thanks so much and good luck with your show your new show on zoom oh thank you maybe you'll take advantage of that feature that we have we hope so early in the morning i don't like my photo on the screen. Understandable. Either do I. Understandable. Thank you.

You're welcome. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30, and we have a first-time female caller, and she's calling us from Lake Worth, and her name is Sharon. Good morning, Sharon. Welcome. Good morning. Can you hear me? I can loud and clear

I'm not that savvy and I'm in the car with the car on and I didn't go to Zoom yeah well you sound pretty good but I'm a very happy owner of a 2020 Toyota

Camry XSC Great Sharon you won yourself $50 this morning by being the first time female caller if you stay on the line after we're finished talking you can talk to jeremy you can give him your contact information and he'll pass it along to me and i'll send you out that

check and spread the word we love you ladies to call and uh we try to keep you up there at parity with the men callers we're just about there now so uh sharon if you tell all your friends about the 50 bucks maybe they could call in next week and we'd love to hear from a lot more people like you yeah sharing i just want to take a moment and thank you for helping me build the platform here and it hasn't been easy because this is and always has been a man's world and by creating you know a welcoming environment for the ladies right here at erlon cars uh we hope that that will encourage ladies to call us okay i wish earl stewett would run for president in 20 I couldn't pass a background check.

I'm sorry, but thank you very much. Well, background checks have been eliminated from presidential contest now. That's not a good idea, Sharon. Nancy, why don't you run? Not a good idea at all. Earl, I met you years ago when I bought my car. I'm the one that used to be a professional clown. Oh.

My little dog, Kiwit. Oh, really? You passed away. Do you remember? Did he hire you as a clown? Absolutely, sure. We were going to what it never came about. Oh.

Uh-huh. And then the pandemic happened. Yeah. But I love my Toyota. Yeah. I have it in blue. I've written letters to you folks. I interviewed about six or seven, maybe eight dealerships before picking you.

Oh, bless your heart. Thank you. Yeah. And I am very pleased. Thank you. From the body shop to the service to Diane, Sandy, they're great. You're like it. We're going to hire you to do a commercial for us.

You were wonderful. I should help you. I want to ask you, okay, so I have a 20-20, and it's hitting 34,000 miles. And I plan, hold on. to it but I don't know if I should do anything with the warranty and I go to you every time I need anything. Sharon you got a great car a reliable car you don't need a warranty do the factory recommended maintenance religiously and be sure those cars in twice a year

we should at least check the tires the alignment and things like that but you've got a car that last year a lot longer. 2020 sounds like an old car. And 20 years ago, that was an old car. But today, it's a fresh car that can give you a lot of service for a long time. So I wouldn't spend the money. I'm very happy with it. What do you think it's worth now?

I'd have to throw that back to Stu. He could probably do a quick search on that 2020 Camry. Oh, to see how much it might be worth? Yeah, how many miles on it? Excessi. How many miles on it, Sharon? It'll be 34. 34?

Yeah. 34,000? I'll tell you what, Sharon. You've got a long way to go. You've got a vehicle that's going to be, it's only being born, so to speak. You can have a lot of fun, chop that around. I wouldn't, I wouldn't sell it, but if you want to know what it's worth. No, no, I don't plan to sell it.

Yeah, but it's worth, it's worth a well-kept. low mileage to Toyota is worth a lot of money today and you could probably get several bids on that and Stu might give you a rough idea. It's probably in the low 20s, maybe even mid-20s depending on the condition. It's got low miles and it's XXE, which was like top of the line, sporty one. So low $22, $23,000, something like that. And Sharon, what you paid for it and what it's worth now, trust me, you're in the driver's seat. Earl opened the show and he was talking about prices and they have escalated so you my friend are in the driver's seat unless you pay 20,000 of an MSRP for it.

I have done commercials. I'd love to help you guys with a commercial. Oh, well thank you. We might take you up on that. You've got a wonderful voice. Very trusting. People would believe you. Not me, but they believe you. Well, Sharon, it's been a pleasure speaking to you. I've got some calls back up. And stay in touch and have a great weekend. And again, please spread the word. I will, I promise. Encouraging the ladies to give us a call on Saturday mornings.

Have a great weekend. Thank you. We're going to go to Dominic, who's calling us from Coral Springs. Good morning, Dominic. Good morning. You're welcome. I have a situation that I've ever had in my driving life. And I'm going to say, I am the same age as Earl.

Okay. The other day, I went to fill up all four tires. One tire would not fill. I drove the car home, and the next day, the tire was flat. I looked at the tire, couldn't understand why it was flat. tried to put air in it, nothing would happen. Called AAA, they replaced the tire. And when they were replacing it, they showed me that the side wall

had completely removed itself from the tire. The whole, a full circumference of the sidewall attached from the bottom of the tire. and I probably had another 40,000 miles to go on the tire. How old was it? How old was the tire? Yeah. Between four and six years.

Rick, is that something? Could have been a plate of factor? He had a complete separation from the sidewall from the tread. That sounds very odd. Defect in the tire. That could certainly be a defect. but if four to six-year-old tire that you'd have play a hard time

trying to get any sort of warranty factory representation I can I still talk to the tire manufacturer because something is a safety issue even though technically it's not a warranty I know car manufacturers I'm not concerned about the warranty or the cost of the tire

I'm just concerned that this may be a problem for people I replaced all my tires and through the that we said bought all at the same time and they were all very good with tread but I was afraid up by driving on the highway What was the manufacturer

and the model of the tire? I bought it from my mechanic I brought the car back to the mechanic I paid for new tires he told me that because the car is not driven a lot and sits outside that that was one factor and maybe

an alignment was another factor because the ties would kind of go side to die and that was a weak point. No, I'd never heard of an misalignment calls it a blowout like that. What did you say the manufacturer name was?

I think the mechanic said it was a Cooper tire. Cooper, okay. I would also double check the age of the tire. I know you told us there was four to six years. Did you actually look at the stamp on the tire to see the date of the manufacturer

of the tire? No, and I got all four tires at the same time. Yeah, I'd check that. He replaced them all because even if you bought them with an old tire. All right. You can buy a new tire. Exactly, I was

going to say the ones that with the stat you bought that blew out in the one tire you might have bought him six years. ago, but they could have been sitting on the shelves at Tyre Kingdom for six years. I mean, not Tyre Kingdom, but another place. Because that's a factor. The reason we're asking is because...

Yeah. Well, it's the set that you replaced them with, you can check the manufacturer date on the sidewall and Earl can tell you where to find that. And you can see, that way you can rest easy at least the replacement set is new. Because we're asking because an old set of tires, they can begin to degrade and you can have

problems. It's not just the miles. It's time as well. Where can he find the manufacturer date? And so inside and outside of the tire, Rick could tell him, but he's too busy fooling around with my iPhone now. We have a technical issue going on. I'll look it up.

I'll look it up and I'll take it out. It's a coded date that gives you the week of the manufacturer and the year of the manufacturer and you have to know the code to tell what the date is, but it's always a good idea to be sure when you buy any tire that you check the code people there's there's no federal law on that you

can sell a tire that's 100 years old there's no federal law that says you can't sell an old tire but after six years the tire fabric begins to crack oh what is that code yeah it's going to be only on one side of the tire you're looking for the DOT number and what you're looking for the DOT may be on both sides but you're looking for on a one side it'll be the last four digits and those digits will be something like the first two will be 52 or lower from zero one to 52 and then the last two digits are the year so like if it's 19 then the tire was made in 2019 now those of those four digits the first two the zero one through 52 is the number of the week of the year that that tire was

made. I don't care about that. I just wanted to the year. Yeah, so it's like 04, that means this is fourth week. So you can pretty much ignore that. Look for those last two numbers, and if it says like 23, the tire was made in 20203. If it says something like 13,

run away. That tire was made in 2013, and it's way too old. You don't want to mess with that tire. I wish I called you before I bought all four tires. I would have checked that I would mess. Or maybe 1930. That's certainly possible.

Yeah. I think you could tell, though. I would hope so, yeah. Thanks for calling. I'm glad we could help out. Thank you guys. Yeah, Dominica Hopewick answers your questions. Give us a call back.

You most certainly did. Thank you. All right. Call us again sometime. Okay, we're going to go to Howard. He's been holding. Thanks for your patients, Howard. Oh, that's okay.

I have a lot of patients. I'm a doctor. You're a psychiatrist. Okay. All right. Here's the story. I bought tires, and I checked the code. And the code showed me that the tires was six months old. So I googled and I was told that six months, it's okay. Yeah. Because you never get a tire that. like a month old, two months old. Yeah, so what do you think of that? Did they do the right thing?

Yeah, because what will happen is the week is put on, the stamp is put on that tire, the week that is processed, that it's made. And wherever it's made, it may take two or three weeks for it to get through a warehouse in the country where it's made, put on a ship and brought to America, maybe, or even if it's made here in America, It's still got to be shipped to a warehouse here for storage. Some are held for quality inspections.

Yep. Just randomly. And then it's going to be shipped out to whatever big conglomerate buys it, whether it's Tire Kingdom, Tire Rack, Good Year, Firestone, whatever. Then it gets shipped to the store. And when it gets shipped into the store, they're going to stack it at the back of the pile to bring the older tires to the front,

so they use their old inventory first. Now, it's just like a gallon of milk in the store. in the supermarket. The newest stuff is always going to be at the back. That way you use up the older stuff first, and you get to the new stuff when it comes up. But, yeah, it can take a couple months because it may sit in a warehouse,

depending on how common a tire size that is, it could sit in a warehouse for several months. If you, say you drive an odd-sized car, like a Toyota Supra that has a very odd-sized wheel and tire, those tires don't get used very quickly. Earl's Tesla. These tires might sit for years before they get around to use them.

Here's an interesting thing that happened with tires. It hasn't anything to the Tesla's. During the pandemic, there is a big period of time where cars just weren't driven in large portions. And so tire sales were affected by this because no one was driving during the pandemic. Exactly, yeah. They warehoused and got older.

So that was something in the post-pandemic period to look out. And nobody ever looks for that code. I mean, see, the sad part about this whole situation is here is our government is supposed to protect us out there. They're supposed to be rules, regulations, tires are an extreme safety item, and to think that in all its wisdom, our government hasn't figured out that a 20-year-old tire is dangerous. The manufacturers figured it out. They say six years old is an old tire. And they send them to another country. Yeah.

But, and then when they say, okay, then you got to put the age of the tire, our government says put this obscure code that it would take a code expert to Alan Turing. To figure out what the code was. So it's a big joke, and it's serious because it's a safety item. Okay, Rick, I got one fast question to you about batteries. Did they still sell unsealed batteries? that you have to add the still water to?

There might be some companies out there to still make those, but most of them now are sealed maintenance-free. Well, what is the advantage of a sealed battery? You don't have to maintain it. No, but I was told that it's easier to charge up an unsealed battery. Now, modern batteries, they're going to last the life of the battery. over long it is. I mean, here in Florida with our heat and humidity, three to five years is about the lifespan. You get up north where the temperature fluctuates a bit, it's still going to be

three, four, five years. Yeah, you're really not going to see that big a difference, even if you go to a deep cycle marine battery. You know, it's my advice on batteries. Check out consumer reports, look for the brand that gets the highest ratings that will match up to your car for the size and go with that. And especially if you're using a common-sized battery, like a 24F, a 35-F, these batteries get circulated through the stores because so many cars use them that they're never an old inventory. You're always getting a relatively fresh unit, and it's going to last as long as it's going to last. Okay, last question, very fast.

What's the difference is the 24F battery and a 35 battery? The size of the battery, the actual physical size of it. But they both can be used in a Toyota. Yeah, depending on the car. Because it, like a Corolla uses a group 35, a camera uses a group 24. Oh, they can't be interchanged? No. It depends upon.

the size of the battery to what size battery physical size is meant to be in that car okay thank you very much yeah i welcome howard okay we're gonna go to uh well let me mention uh zoom again and if you have a zoom account uh give us a call you can uh use the meeting id number which is nine two six 589 oh five eight six and uh for the first two new zoom callers you can win yourself a hundred dollars this morning and by calling and asking a question

and being part of the show hope you'll take advantage of that we're going to go to the roadrunner and he calls us regularly good morning everybody hey Steve good well I just learned something about

tired that's interesting that's what we're trying to do the other thing was Ferrari electric cars are going to be going for $500,000 for the price. Yeah, that's Trump changed. We're not going to see a lot of Ferraris. Yes. Now I have to go to work. On my road walk, I went for a drive, and when I started to call up,

I went from park into reverse, and I heard a bang. Okay? You ran somebody over. From reverse to drive, I heard another bang. Okay, and what's your car on this one? What's your road run a year? Could have been a bank robbery nearby? Oh, did you hear about that robbery?

Too close can't tell up a pair of pants. They can't pass the roadrunner, though. Yes, the roadrunner. I'd be looking at your U-Joints. Correct. Is that what it was? Most likely. No, but I took it down to three things.

The U-Joints, the drive share, or the rear end. And have you had it diagnosed? No, I have personal things to take care of, but I'm taking it to where the transmission was rebuilt, performance transmission. in no way. Yeah. So I like those guys.

Yeah. U-Joints would be my first call on that because when you're shifting it to that other gear, especially going from Park into reverse, you're getting a twist on the drive shaft opposite the direction that the drive shaft might have been sitting in. And so that's the free play in that U-Joint is going to make that thunk, that noise. And it can also be free play in the rear end because the brakes are actually holding it still out at the wheels.

So there can be free play in the rear end to cause that movement and noise. And then when you shift into drive, you're reversing that torque direction and that's going to use up that free play in the other direction, which again is going to cause that noise. But yeah.

Well, I'm going to have it checked out from the front complete to the back. Those are original parts in that car yet. Oh, it's dry. It's you, you joints. If they're original U-joint, it's the U-Joints. The rear ends on those things were bulletproof solid. I mean, unless you're drag race in that car,

you're not going to hurt the rear end on one of those old roadrunners. Those 383 gears. I'm too old, the drag race and too nervous to go to jail. Yeah. Yep, yep. With that. Okay, everybody has a safe day and a good weekend. You too, sir.

Thanks. Nice hearing from you. May I mention again our Zoom number, where we have a special meeting number, and that is 926-589-0-586. Give us a call for the first two new Zoomers. You can give us a call, ask a question, be part of the show. Win yourself $100. Win-win situation. Our text number is 772-497-653.

zero and we do have your anonymous feedback.com so take advantage to that too we have the cutest little dog coming to us about 930 her name is anesthesia and she's from Puerto Rico anesthesia anesthesia oh anesthesia it's a very anesthesia also she's just over a year old and she's so cute and you're just going to want to see the video she has a very special name Yes, it is. Thank you. Nancy has a daughter name, Anastasia. Anastasia. Anastasia.

Okay. Again, that number is 877-960-99-60. We have no callers. Rick? Stu. Well, real quick, like Donovan says, the Ferrari is going to come at the end of next year. It'll use the same batteries as the new Porsche-T-CAN GT,

and it will have a 400-mile range, 400 mile plus range and charge in about 10 minutes. Sounds like they're using the Toyota battery. That sounds to me like they're charging it Marty McFly style by lightning bolt. No, no, no. It's a solid state battery, I bet

because Toyota has developed that as well. But you know, here's one of the people that buy Ferraris don't they buy it because of the sound? I mean, the sound... I have a big speaker on it making it go, They probably have artificial. I mean, every Ferrari driver I know, I mean, that's part of the reason they do it.

It's got to be red, and it's got to make that. Of course. Yeah, but I have a sense of humor. If I had one, my Ferrari would make the chitty, chitty, bing-bang sound. One of the few Ferraris that I actually got up close and looked at, the guy who was showing me, the hood for this rear-mounted engine is clear. was totally clear plexiglass so you could look in to see the engine

like a fine time piece it was showing off and it just is that's crazy wow all right speaking of going fast Ammarie sent us a text and it's pretty good I didn't know about this so I had to do a little little Googling but I think we have somebody on the phone right now

Amory hang on I will not forget you yeah we'll be right back with you and we're going to go to Marty he's a regular caller from Westbone Beach good morning Marty good morning good morning I have a neighbor. I'm getting an echo just on the regular phone. That's because Rick just sprayed some of that red juice into his throat. I thought I was going to blame Rick.

Okay, I have a neighbor who has a warranty with Car Shield, and they have a $4,000 problem on the car, and Car Shield refuses to pay. Tell them to call iced tea. Yeah. And, Marty, you mentioned, didn't you mention this last week? We were talking about a car show? No.

No. Okay, that was probably another caller. The reason I ask is because Earl and I were talking about that yesterday, this commercial that is over and over and over again. I mean, and they make it sound like as if, as Stu just mentioned iced tea, they make it sound like as if it is the perfect solution. Yeah. This lady said she's paying $125 a month.

So I told her she's getting ripped off. Oh, that's totally. How long how long she paid the... I was going to say for the rest of her life, probably. Yeah. Yeah. That's not good. So anyways, I told her she better get another car. Yeah. Got to read that fine print, folks.

Or just ignore any. I'll tell you. Marty, you're out there working, you know. You're out there working, helping us. And, you know, you have your own club. Marty's vigilantes. That's what I'm going to call it. Marty's vigilantes.

But I want to know, why am I getting the echo on a regular phone? Oh, geez. Is your radio turned on? I got you on YouTube, but I got a town. No town. I don't know what's going on. Are you in the Grand Canyon? Yes.

I got one other thing to tell you. Okay. On my new car, the XM radio wasn't working. Is that the Crown? Yes. Okay. So I called XM and they said they'll send a refresh signal. Well, anyways, after talking about three or four different people, it never worked.

finally I got a guy in Cairo Egypt and I said oh you're in Egypt I said so you probably can fix this he said first of all you can't talk on your cell phone while you're what you're trying to fix that's in your car radio so I had to use the landline and then he Then it worked. He sent the refresh, and then he told me there's another thing to do. He said, turn off your radio, shut off your car, open the driver's door for one minute, shut the door, and then restart the car and everything, and it worked. He told you to put a ham sandwich under your pillow and turned around three times.

Well, what you're actually doing is you're rebooting the radio. But what's the door got to do with it? That's what turns off the memory-keep feature on the radio. Okay, so he was right. Apologize to the guy in Cairo. Sorry, sorry, guy in Cairo. And he was very smart. Yeah.

That's fantastic. It works. So any of your lists, there's a problem. It's still funny, though. Yeah. It's still funny that you know why the guy in Cairo had it. Why he had that information. that knowledge.

Uh-oh. Here comes our dad joke. No, it's because the pyramids are drawing in all the cosmic energy and spreading that knowledge into their brains. That's where it's coming from. The pyramid's cosmic knowledge. Rick believes in Alanis, too. That's positive.

Hey, Morty, how are you still enjoying your crown? Oh, I'll tell you. I know Earl doesn't like info commercials. I've had about 15 or 20 people compliment the way that car looks. Yeah, I'm looking at it right now. Yeah, I got a lot of compliments when I drove it, and everything was positive. But, you know, I never see it advertised on TV.

Well, they're not doing a lot of advertising in general right now, but you'll see more. You know, you know that new Crown's insignia is coming out, too, so keep looking for that. I'm still going to get the past 37 miles per gallon. Fantastic. I really appreciate the call. All right. Yes. Thanks, Marty.

Thanks so much, Marty. Thanks for two. Have a good. Have a good week. All right. You're welcome. Have a great week. We are going to go to, we have a Zoom caller.

Excellent. Yeah, so we're reinstating. What is the Zoom number again real quick? Fingers crossed. It is of 926-589-0586-086-9-0-586-9-8-6-9-8-9-8-6. So Rick has his fingers crossed. We are going to go to Dick, who is calling us on Zoom. Good morning, Dick.

Hello. Hello? dick no echo anybody see anything i don't see dick no see dick i don't see dick i see no i see no i see no zoom oh wait a minute i'm getting him on one channel here here he comes oh there is we can't hear you we're getting dick on zoom can you hear us oh i got okay Stand by, folks. History is being made. I think Dick tried last week, or the week before.

This could be the start of something big. Yeah, you keep singing. Yeah, so we don't have silence. I'm just trying to avoid air silence. We have video. We have no audio. I'll tell you what, how about I start reading Amory's text, and if we hear Dick speak, I stop speaking.

Okay. Headphones, says he have his headphones. on. He does. I can see the headphones. All right. Here's Amory's text. And also, David, we'll be right with you also. David just popped up. You can go to Ann Marie. Okay. Guys, Amory said, good morning. Roads are getting congested and getting

cars to merge safely into traffic and high-speed roads. Like, the interstate is vital. Right now, cars can just come down the entrance ramp and merge in the traffic. This is about the change in Palm Beach County. Did you know about this? No. Okay. I looked it up. It is true. The Florida Department of Transportation will be adding traffic

lights, the ramp signals, to All of the on-ramps on 95 here in Palm Beach County. So only one vehicle per entrance ramp will be allowed to enter. Oh, I heard about that, yeah. We'll be allowed to enter at one at a time. Now, I want to add something here that was left out. It's only during periods of high congestion, so it's not all the time. That scares me a little bit.

However, and I looked it up, Jonathan can put up, well, let me finish with her text. Each vehicle will stop on a red and go on green. Only one car to time will go. This means each vehicle should be standing still. That's no problem for Earl with his plaid model. less Tesla because he can go zero to 60 in less than two seconds. However, there are vehicles that are, they're much slower vehicles. I'm going to summarize this.

They are using them in Miami-Dade and other places. Do they really work? Does it make it easier? I looked it up and Jonathan can put the visual aid up on the screen. It's called ramp signaling. And what it does is it's only during super high congestion. There is a signal that tells when it's safe to go in that lane. And what it does, and it's really interesting, it prevents,

what they call platoons of cars. You know what I call them blood clots. And they come in clumps and this spreads it out and where it works it provides for an easy smooth flow.

It sounds like a great idea. I bet it's going to be a total disaster. They're already using it. I believe it's going to work. Well, it's working in Miami. What am I looking at it? That's the image

that Jonathan has on YouTube screen right now. And there's a sensor farther back that indicates. Yeah. but it works. It's used successfully in other places.

We'll see. Dick is still on. Yeah. Dick is still on. That's it. Okay. Well, then Amri also had another question because this is concerning. She wants to be able to pick a vehicle that has enough acceleration in a situation like this, and she wants to know

on our website if we could list how fast cars could go to zero to 60. Unfortunately, we don't have, even Toyota doesn't publish or the manufacturers. I don't publish the zero to 60 information. that's usually done by... Usually not. Yeah, it's usually on a magazine or a YouTuber

and they test it out. So I don't know if that's something. I know technically I don't think we could manage that. It would have to be something done by Toyota. All right, so how's a... One quick note, Donovan says that they had those traffic signals at Palmota Park Road in Boka.

They lasted about three days before the FDOT turned them off. I told you so. I told you so. Because people ignored them. them. Oh, okay. But that may be boca. That just might be boca. A bunch of genius is sitting around a room, but these are the geniuses that plant our lives, folks, the government. And they says, I got a great idea. They don't test these things. Well, we don't know that. You're speaking out of that. I predict it's got to be a miserable failure. Well, I mean, that's valid to predict that,

yeah. To say it doesn't work anywhere. I don't know about that. Okay, we've got calls. We've got Dick on Zoom, shall we proceed? Do they have volume? Do they have vocals? Shall I speak for you? Yeah, let's try it. Give it another try. What am I doing here?

Can I hear you? I hear you. I hear nothing. Raise your hand, raise your hand, Dick. No, not you, Earl. Can you see you? I see him.

raise your hand if you can hear us raise your hand you know what i say let's move on did he raise his hand rick okay um yeah he's waving i oh it is okay so he can hear us um stew um i like your idea you get the hundred bucks anyway yeah yeah we're going to go back to the phones and uh we are going to speak with david from north palm beach Good morning, David. Good morning. Welcome. Have a question for Rick, please.

Oh, right. Have a 2011 sonata problem with the key fob. I can, key fob works to open all the doors. It works for the trunk. It will not stop the car unless I put the key in the slot, the slot that's in the glove compartment. Both keys work the exact same way. So the car won't stop unless I put it in this slot.

Okay. Now, when you say the key works for the doors and the trunk, I'm assuming you're pressing the buttons to get those to operate? Correct. All right, if you have the key in your pocket and the doors are locked, and you reach up and put your hand in the door handle, does that open the doors? No, it does not.

Okay, so something is affecting the actual keyless, entry, the, shall we say, the keyless portion of it for the immobilizer and the door lock system. This is probably going to be something in the car's computer itself that may be turned off for some reason. Toyotas, I know, have a feature where you can turn off the remote start and the remote entry to where your key remote will now work just as a simple lock. and unlocked by the buttons but the hands-free operation does not function it's turning off the what's called the oscillators that are actually looking for that key so uh you're going to need to get someone to look at your car and see if that has been turned off for some reason i'm not sure how that would be how to tell you to do that on a on a hunday

they're you know their programming system is probably a little different you can look in the Sometimes in the infatainment system, you can go in there and look for settings and see if there's a way that it will turn that off, or look in your owner's manual and see if there's a switch maybe that turns off that smart key function. Okay. Like Toyota Prius used to have a smart key button down below the dash that you could turn that off, so if you parked your car at the garage, it wouldn't kill your battery constantly looking for that key over the course of several weeks. Okay, giving a lot of help. Let me go from there.

Thank you very much, Rick. Thanks for the call. You're welcome, David. Give us a call. Let us know how that turned out for you. We're going to go to, uh, to Questa where we're going to talk to Doug. Good morning, Doug. Uh, yes, no one.

Thanks for taking me. I'd like to know. Two thousand months ago on. Just saw that card for that car. You're breaking up, Doug. I'm sorry. I have a Yeah, I got it going on

I don't know You're still cutting in and out Yeah, maybe he's just upset He could be Or he could be Let's give it one more shot And then try calling us back Let me

Let me go quick I'll give me once Sing Sing Sing I got something real quick to say I was thinking about the previous caller I'm going to tell Chuck to hold on John to hold on everybody that's waiting to talk to us be patient

I'm thinking in terms of a couple of the calls we've had and this big outage we had with the national outage we're approaching the point of singularity and complexity, which where machines are becoming so complex, humans can't fathom the problem. So here is Microsoft, of all places, where the guy that did the protection for Microsoft, software glitch. CrowdStrike, right? Yeah, and so we've reached that point, and get ready for it, folks. It's going to happen in cars. It's going to happen everywhere.

You're going to have technical problems, and no one's going to know how to figure it. it for a while. It's getting scary. I hope they keep planes off that system. Skynet is here. Get ready for complexity. Because as smartest people in the world are not nearly

as smart as the machines. It's very scary. It was strange when I was kind of disconnected from the news, and I wasn't at work, so I wasn't aware of what happened. It impacted us to some degree, too. We had some banks that couldn't operate, and even Southeast Toyota went offline yeah okay Jonathan did you say that we have a new zoom

caller okay did I understand you to say it was des okay does if you're if you're listening I'm gonna check to see if I can visually see you can you see anybody there Rick not so far I am looking okay it's a It's a little slow, and it finally does kick in. But until then, what we're going to do is we are going to go to Chuck, who's calling us from Oklahoma. Oklahoma. Chuck. Good morning.

Good morning. Good morning, Chuck. What can we do for you? I can see. I'll get my case. I bought a scan from the auto parts because nobody could do a computer relearn on my throttle body that I put in my own hands to get the scanner and do it myself.

So when Earl talks about these cars are scared, well, yeah, because they got computers. Yeah, well, what it comes down to is the days back in the 70s when every 5 to 6,000 miles, 10,000 miles, sometimes earlier, you had to take your car to the mechanic and he would go under the hood and adjust your idle speed, adjust the fuel mixture on the carburetor,

you know, little turns of the screws here and there just to get things fine-tuned just right, adjusting the timing just a little bit, you know, little adjustments here and there. that nowadays those computers are doing it a hundred times a second. Yeah, so here's my question, the guy who sells automobile. Why in God, doesn't the car come with a scanner, or why can you just put it in the system so I could just push a button on my dashboard

and it scans everything going out of my car and tells me what the cart is, and then I don't get it. Great question. well that would work in a lot of cases but bear in mind that mechanics have to understand that sometimes when you get a code that says hey you know we're getting bad information from this part it may not be just that part there may be something else causing it I mean there are so many sensors and so many actuators on the car we have to be able to interpret that data yeah Chuck on my on my on my Tesla that's as a great you're questions are great why why can't you capture to understand the issue that you're having with your car because like the doctor says you know you go to the doctor and and and and and your cough goes away your ear rate goes away I mean when you're there the the symptoms are gone and it's a great question in my Tesla when Nancy

and I are wherever we're going if if and we're on fully autonomous if there's an issue and it goes off autonomous the Tesla asked me, why did the car go off autonomous? So they're asking me, the human in the car, they don't know, the computer doesn't know, and it would take the computer a long time to diagnose it, but I'm there. For example, I was coming in this morning

in the Tesla and autonomous, and it made a couple of weird moves, and the reason that made the rear moves and my diagnosis, my opinion, is the angle of the sun with blinding the cameras on the outside. So yeah, it's a complexity issue. and we're just going to be living with this for a long time.

Well, the dealer had the car three weeks, so I had to rent a car for $1,000 after he threw $1,000 more worth of parts. He still didn't run. And his experience was, well, my mechanic really can't figure it out. Now, the last time I called Chrysler Corp. What's up with your deal? They're telling me they don't know how to fix the car. You know what the Chrysler Corporation said to me?

Well, we're working in conjunction with our engineers and the dealership to try to figure out a problem. I'm not, holy close. Why the heck would be a Chrysler that the leadership won't fix it, and a corporation can't figure it out. So, my thing, you know, I don't want to be negative, Nellick, but the guy's like, why don't you get dunk your car by a new one. Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. In fact, your phone's breaking it out now, so I mean, the high-tech world we live in, you've got to roll with a bunches. I mean, if you let every technical glitch get you down,

you're going to end up in the funny farm because it will break us all down. I fixed it myself. I'm literally in my car doing my test drives. I'm glad you were able to find the problem and get it solved that easily. that that's a point in your favor definitely absolutely yeah yeah what's called it's called youtube yeah god bless youtube and the YouTubers God bless have a great weekend okay we are going to try John from West Palm hold on for a second we're going to try DES that's trying to come in on Zoom so I think I think we're going to go to John in West Palm Beach.

Good morning, John. Hello, John. John didn't wind up on Zoom, did he? No, this is John from West Palm Beach. Hi, John. Hi, John. What's up? You told me, hey, not much.

Hey, I'm getting feedback from the coach. Um, I have a 2002 Avalon, and the, when I go to set the date and the time, I can only go to 20, uh, 20, 16, uh, and that any way to get around that? Nope. Nope. Unfortunately that, that was one of the things that we discovered, uh, 2002 is the first generation Avalon, uh, when they first came out, and that had that fancy electronic display, all LEDs, running like three-quarters of the way across the dash. And as mechanics, when we would reset the year and the date and time on those, we noticed that it ended in 2019. And a lot of us asked, hey, what's going to happen in 2020 when these people can't get

the next year? And all the engineers in Toyota was like, what do you mean, 2020? That's 18 years. The car's not going to last that. It's like, excuse me, it's a Toyota? Yeah, 30 years from now, this car is still going to be on the road. See, we've been talking about complex machines. Now we're talking about dumb humans.

It's just there are dumb humans out there. It comes to mind the Prius, when they first came out with the Prius. You imagine living in Michigan, and you're right on the Canadian border. People buy cars on both sides of the border. They don't care where they are. They might live in Canada and work in Detroit. And if you bought it on the Canadian side of the border,

all you had was kilometers on the car. If you bought it on the USA side of the border, all it had was miles per hour, and you couldn't flip back and forth. So it's just engineers not thinking when they design things. well and also when they designed it as well i had called you before it i'm the one that changed out that whole display unit not even thinking about the odometer being in there and i changed my car from 60,000 miles to 200,000 miles you know i called on it before but i was just going but the reason

my real reason why i called is a little bit of nostalgia for the uh young lady that's calling about displaying the car speeds of, you know, from zero to 60. Yeah. And right away, my mind went to 1966, the Paniac 421, Catalina 2 plus 2. Oh, God. A 4,500 pound car, 3.6 seconds from 0 to 60. You know, it was just engineered designed and in balance, which allowed it to get to that speed, especially with that motor.

Now it used to be one of the fast, now it's not no longer one of the fastest from zero to For a long time, it held that record. Yeah. It's kind of a shame now because with electric, it's kind of like the technology is going to change everything. It's no fun anymore to talk zero to 60 when you talk about an electric motor because it's a whole different animal. But, you know, back of the day, if you could go zero to 60 and in six seconds, you were a hero, you were a, I mean, you were a legend. and now they're talking about under one second. So it's just, you know, it's not fun anymore.

Yeah, I'm not going to enjoy one second. You'll black out. I will black out. That's not going to get a concoation. I blacked out on roller coasters and that would black. Oh, well. Yeah. Okay, guys.

We are going to, are you still there? Are you still there, Joe? Okay. We are going to try to make contact. with Dez, all right, Jonathan. And I think that I saw a peak of... Are you here? Right, Rick.

I did see him, yep. He's wearing a pink and gray shirt today. If you're still on, raise your hand that you can hear us. Can you hear us? Are you with us? Are you with us? And we'll send out your check for 100. for being the first Zoom caller.

Okay, we're going to go to Doug in Tequesta and Frank, hang in there. Good morning, Doug. Yes, this is Doug from Tequesta. Good morning, Doug. Hello, can you hear me? Yeah. I can. Yes.

I'd like to know. I have a 2001 twirl to Avalon. I'm glad it's not a 2002 now. How long can I get parts for this car before they say, I'm sorry, we don't make them anymore? That's actually going to depend on the parts themselves, because... There's a law on that, too. There's a federal law, and then there's also the reality of it.

The federal law is that when that model, that body style, that generation of your car has not been produced for 10 years, then they can start phasing out those parts. They have to have them available in good supply for 10 years past the last production of that particular body style or that generation. And in reality, they will be available for a lot longer than that because people will stock those up.

You just have to look a little harder. But legally, you'll be able to give them pronto in 10 years. But I'll let you in on a little secret here. The engine that's in that, that car and the transmission in that 2001 Avalon were made so many of them and for so long and across many models that engine and transmission parts are going to be available for at least another 10 to 15 years yet to come such things as brake pads break parts suspension parts there's enough aftermarket supply on those the only thing that you

might find a hard time is if there are some of the computers or internal sensors like under the dash some of those components may get a little scarce in the next five to ten years maybe 15 years but you're going to have still a very good supply of those you'll always be able to find out of always for a long time yeah always the internet will will always be here until it crashes at the singularity how old are you how do you I'm 68

your car at this point might almost outlast you your kids could probably still find parts for that car I don't mean to be indelicate about it but I'm serious there are certain models of these cars that Jonathan and I were talking about this before the show that they just they keep going well we have a 1937 Pontiac on the showroom floor at our dealership and we had that completely restored

with and I repeat original original parts so that and that was about 20 years ago so 1937 we found original parts on a 1937 budget so if you look hard enough and don't mind paying out sometimes for the parts

but they're always there just a question of time and money and if you see a listing that says NOS capital letters NOS that means new old stock in other words it's an alternate that was originally made for your car that's been sitting on a shelf in a warehouse

for 20 years and it's still good and it's still ready to go and it's ready to be put in that car and function just as perfect as the day it was made and they will sell these and list them as NOS. It may not be produced anymore but it's just as good as the day it was made and it's ready to go for you. New old stock parts. Okay. You're great. I appreciate all your information and y'all Have a great day. It's pleasure. You too.

Thank you. Hey, real quick, Rick. When I walked out, there was a guy asked about his battery on his key fob. Did he change the battery? I didn't hear the answer that Marty wants to know. I don't know as he changed it because he said the key was still remarking the fob by way of the buttons. Right. So it was actually the smart functions of the key fob that weren't functioning.

The actual wireless was still functioning. So it was getting power. So it's got plenty of battery power. There you go. It's that smart sense. signal was where he's having an issue that's not functioning okay there you go Marty okay um we're gonna go to uh jupiter farms where frank has been patiently waiting and then uh after we speak to frank we got a whole lot to get to we'll try to squeeze it all in good morning frank well good morning

guys from jupiter farms i'll keep it kind of quick because i don't want to take up too much but I have a friend that then call you on your Zoom number. And he says it goes through, but he puts in his ID, but it doesn't connect. Just to let you know that I have some of my friends trying to get through. Thanks for them. Thanks for that. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Frank. Yeah, other than that, I'll let you get back to the other folks. Okay. We're having some different qualities, but we're trying to iron them out. Thanks for the call, Frank. Have a great weekend. And we have an assortment, an array of things to get to. Would you like to talk about Ted Smith?

I would, yeah. Let me do that. I have a confession and an apology to make to the president of the Florida Automobile Deals Association. And you've heard me mention the FAA, the Florida Automobile Dealers Association. This is a blog that I wrote, and it follows a conversation I had with Ted Smith, the president of that association. I've been blaming Ted and the FADA for a lot of things that they were not entirely responsible for. And a lot of times we talk about the Attorney General Ashley Moody and the fact that she doesn't enforce the law and the Attorney General is in bed with the Florida Automobile Dealers Association and its politics, blah, blah, blah.

Well, the fact of the matter is I was wrong about that. The FAA and Ted Smith have been working with Ashley Moody to start enforcing the law that you've heard us talk about on this show for 20 plus years because the law on regulating Florida car dealers has been on the books for 20 plus years, but it's never been enforced. And a letter went out, a certified letter went out to me and 900 other car dealers. This is the letter right here.

There were meetings of attorneys of the Florida Automobile Association with the dealers to explain the law saying, This is a law, folks. It's been that way for 20 years, and we haven't enforced it. Ashley Moody has not enforced it, but on September 1st, it will be enforced. And Stu, and we had a conference call. The key people at our dealership heard the presentation, and they're doing a lot.

And Ted, I hope you're listening, because Ted and I go way back. I used to, I hired Ted. And I was on the committee for the Florida Automobile Deal Association that hired Ted Smith 25, 30 years ago. Ted, I forgot how long it's been. We were friends, and then suddenly we weren't friends because I got stupid, and I said some things that weren't right. And I have apologized, accepted my apology, and my blog is online. It'll be in the week after next, I guess it'll be in the hometown news and the Florida weekly.

But Ted, if you're listening, call in, by the way, or text me or let me know what's going on. But I'm glad we're back on board together and we're working together to get the car dealers. September 1st, folks, the car dealers, especially in South Florida, you will see a huge improvement. Now, don't expect perfection. And I allude to driving on 9.95 of the turnpike, the cops will give you nine miles an hour over the speed limit. and you're good. So the dealers are still going to have nine miles over the speed limit.

But if they go 25 miles and over the speed limit like they do in South Florida, they're going to be in big trouble. So if you live in South Florida, rejoice. Thank Ted Smith. Thank the FAADA. Thank Ashley Moody. On September 1st, the

boys that are really pushing in South Florida, watch out. You're going to be fined or maybe even have your licenses take it away. was surprised at the tone. I really thought, because the FADE exists to protect and help car dealers, that the tone

was, guys, get serious, it's happening, it's time to clean up Dodge, and there wasn't any equivocation about it. They didn't say, hey, you're going to get away from it. What I got from the analogy of the speeding analogy was, it's basically who's doing the worst. So, you know, nine miles an hour is okay, but if you're the only

guy doing that and everybody's doing the speed limit, you're still the guy that's going faster. So there will be a cumulative effect of not being wanting to be that guy who gets caught because the fines are huge yeah so good news for south florida the northern florida dealers are much more civilized and the further north you go and even you'll see our mystery shopping report coming up soon on pennsylvania anywhere we go other than south florida our dealers are better but they're not perfect they're still making mistakes you'll see that the mystery shopping report big big you know big

cities, things like that. The big, Los Angeles is pretty bad, too. I'll bet, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The other thing is for the talk was they also talked about the cars rule next year, and they said, even though it's held up in federal court, and Earl

has started the amicus briefed in support, and is trying to get more signers to get on that. But they talked about it as, they said, listen, it's 50-50, how it can go. They advised their dealer, is to assume it's going into place

and assume it's going into place in the first or second of quarter of 2025. And so, and even if it doesn't do in its entirety, some version of it is probably going to make it on the federal side too. And if you add Amazon into the equation, you've got a perfect storm of decency and reform

affecting the whole auto-buying community. So this is good news overall. Hey, Earl. T-Cash would like to know what's your stand on the Federal Cars Act? It is a great idea that we hope will be enacted. It's being fought tooth and nail by the car dealers, and we're supporting it, and it's going to be up to the courts. Unfortunately, the Texas Court, Circuit Court, will make a decision on whether it goes in or not,

and we hope that the Texas court will allow it. That's pretty good. That's a great question. What do you think about this? Well, I filed an amicus brief with the federal court. T-Cash, I'd say he's 100% behind it, right on board. Sounds good. Okay, guys, FaceTime.

YouTube, do you? That's the last, well, let's see. Well, Nican had a comment. He did. yeah okay let's see let me bring it back a little bit here he says now back on the highway thing with the cameras for the highway the ramp traffic lights

he said this is done in Arizona freeways and it does work and he said like the software issue like with CrowdStrike he said software as you won't allow people to punch the clock at my work the last few days and yeah because a lot of the time clocks are now on the internet oh does stew have a comment down there yeah as a matter of fact is someone stew guru 68 I wonder who that might be says thanks Deegan he says Earl is being curmudgeonly sorry I think he even spelled it right I am I am a good speller

All right. What do you else you got over there? Let's see. I do have one comment in here from Donovan. He says, now this is going back again to the CrowdStrike thing. His crowd strike is not just one guy, laugh out loud, but it's another perfect example of why companies need to not put all their eggs in one basket. Computers are not scary. People who don't know how to use computers in positions where it's required, that is scary.

And he says, to the caller about the Chrysler situation, his problem with getting his Chrysler figured out, and he says, you have to realize Chrysler is on the way out. They only have a few hundred people left in the U.S. at the corporate level for four brands of cars. They don't care anymore. Yeah. They're in trouble. That weren't spiral. You've been saying that for a couple of years now.

Myself personally, on issues where you're dealing with a problem child car, a lot of technicians, and I'm going to say this without pointing any fingers, but I will say, a lot of technicians are not interested in working on those diagnostic problems, the problem child cars. They want the quick, easy cars to come in, the maintenancees, the brake jobs. They're paid on commission. Yeah, they're paid on commission. They want the quick, easy work to pay some a lot of money so they can flag huge hours, get a great paycheck,

go home and just leave the shop at the shop, and they're out of there. There are a very few technicians who will step up and will take on those problem child cars. And, yeah, I am one of them. Well, it's a good technicians, because where they get taken advantage of, technicians feel they get taken advantage of is in diagnostic time. So if you're sharp as a attack and you stay on top of your trade and you're educated a technician on top of things, your diagnostic time is much shorter than the guy that has only been on the job for six months.

So you've got to make a living. So if the dealer, dispatcher, whoever assigns the work gives a complex job to a rookie, you're asking for trouble. The complex job should go to the veteran tech who knows what he's doing, and you've got a better chance to get it to fix it. But even those veterans, we sacrifice a lot of paycheck to spend time to figure out those problems. Yeah, depending on how busy it is. And those best technicians, they're working on that car. When they leave for the afternoon and they're driving home,

they're still thinking about that problem child. and there are times that I'd get home and pull my computer out and just sit and study diagrams trying to figure it and in the middle of the night I've had solutions come to me at three in the morning and freak my wife out

when I suddenly sit up and go oh my God and I realize what I had missed or where I needed to go next and it just well you have an aptitude and also a love and enjoyment for it because I see it as

you know like some doctor it's an exploratory it's a puzzle. It's the Sherlock Holmes attitude. You have to solve that problem. Don't we have a dog? Bulldog it. Don't we have a dog?

We got to go. Okay. It's just about 931, according to the boss. That's you, Jonathan. How do you like that? Okay. Our dog of the week is Anastasia. And Anastasia is been brought to us from Puerto Rico.

Yeah, she was in Puerto Rico. And she was brought to Big Dog Ranch, and she's having a great time out there. She's a little over a year old, and she is a mixed breed. And she is just so pretty. And Big Dog Ranch Rescue, let me see if I can get my microphone up here so you can hear me. Big Dog Ranch Rescue Dog of the Week, like I said, is Anastasia. So you can take a look at this video and tell us what you think of Anastasia. She's just filled with so much love and she loves to hug and play with the other dogs

and she's just a great companion. So take a look and tell us what you think. Roll it. Hi, my name's Elena from Big Dog Ranch Rescue. I just met Miss Lovey Puppy today. Her name's Anastasia. She's about fully grown. She's a year old.

She's very good on the leash. She loves scratches. And she's a very good hook. One girl. She's a leash walker. She's really friendly and loves other dogs. And she's looking for her new home. So come out today and adopt her.

Anastasia is a sweetheart. Aww. I love all the, they have all these volunteers that go out there. The people that you hear on the video folks are, they're all volunteers, they're young. young. She looks like she's in high school, but we're talking about the dogs. Anastasia is a sweetheart. She's gorgeous. She's a dog's dog. That's such a sweet girl. I know. I love dogs that are assertive, but not, you know, they're just like they hang out,

they feel relaxed, and that's a relaxed dog. Great companion. Folks, you could go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. That's www.bdr.org. And they have an application. there with it, you can fill out prior to going out to the ranch, and it'll save some time. Also, Earl's book, Confessions of a Recovery Car Dealer, All proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch, the purchase of the book where you can go to Amazon. It's 1995. All proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch to rescue and we do pay the adoption fees and it could be pretty expensive um you know adopting a dog so we're here for you once a week to take take care of that that registration fee so anesthesia is waiting for you and there are so many other dogs out there that are so precious and every week

I talk about puppy land and it is definitely worth going out there and taking a look at puppy land Jonathan is that Dez that's on Zoom waving at me he's waving

He's waving But I can't hear him I can't He's off, he just went off I'll show it to you in a second It was Dick I'm on YouTube on the stream So anyway We're being amused here

What do you want to do? Well, as I think about and listen to the big dog ranch rescue presentation, I keep thinking about, you know, what an upside-down situation we have. We have an oversupply of dogs. Dogs breed promiscuously as humans would. We're given the opportunity. And there's too many dogs. And so, and yet a dog is.

probably the single best thing a human can have in their lives. So it's, because there's too many dogs, we have to beg you to come and adopt a dog. I guess I'm philosophizing here. It ought to be that where can I find a dog? I need a dog. And because- Leave me alone.

A human being without a dog is not a full, complete human being. It's just dogs and humans are meant to be together. Yes. So I don't have an answer to that. I'm just saying it's a shame. I walk up to my front door and as soon as I open it, Harley Quinn is right there to greet me. Yeah. And she stays right next to me till I get in the house and get my stuff put down. Unconditional. Until I start petting her and greet her and say hello to her. She's just right on. She's just right on. She'll come out to you. Yeah. But your doggy never comes out to you. Your doggy loves you unconditionally. There is a tasteless sweetest. There's a tasteless. There's a tasteless. There's a taste. this joke about involving a dog and a wife and a trunk of a car. I did that last week. You said, okay. You can do it again if you want to.

No, no, no, because I don't tell jokes like that. Hey, folks, I just want to remind everyone, too, that Big Dog Ranch, they have a veteran service, you know, that they offer out there. And boy, what a service that is, you know, they train the dogs to meet the needs of the veteran and back and forth and it takes a while there's a lot of work put into this so you can go out and take a look around

there's a lot of stuff to look at a lot of dogs and remember our dog of the week we do pay the registration fee which is a big help so take a look at Anastasia and see if she might just

meet your needs I'm sure that she will become part of your family yes most definitely uh we're we're pretty close to making that happen uh we're we're going to do that soon uh we are going to go to the um mystery shopping report unless uh rick or stew have something for me i have nothing new okay uh no we're okay we're going to go to the mystery shopper report and uh agent lightning uh she went out to uh valley Honda in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. I know it well.

And she has been doing mystery shopping reports, I guess for the past month, in Pennsylvania, Stu? Yeah, she's in Pennsylvania. She has family up there, and so that's convenient for her to do some of the shops up there. So she hits around the region. Yeah, and folks, she'll be coming home soon. And we have a bit of a surprise for. you. And without ruining that, you'll have to stay tuned next Saturday when we do another mystery

shop from report. Okay, recovering car dealer. Okay. Benroville, like you said, kind of a small town. And Pennsylvania, it's a different world up there. We have, we live in South Florida, where it's the Wild Wild West. You get into Pennsylvania, things are calmer. And Monroeville, actually, my first job out of college was with Westinghouse. I lived in Monroeville, so I know it well. Kind of a sleepy town, but it's right on the edge of Pittsburgh, so it's not that sleepy. Speaking of the first person is if I were Agent Lightning,

this is their mystery shopping report. I arrived mid-afternoon. I was greeted by a very nice young salesman named Zach. That's a Monroeville kind of a name, Zach. I like that. He introduced himself and asked, What brings you in today? I said, I'm up here from Florida,

and I'm looking for a vehicle to leave here for when I'm home visiting. I'm looking for the best deal you may have available and saw that you have a demo special out front. I was wondering what the deal is on that. Okay, this is interesting. You folks are thinking about buying cars and thinking about demos and executive cars

and blah, blah, blah, blah. Listen carefully. Zach replied, it has 6,000 miles, and the story on it is the owner of this dealership drove it to Florida. So most of the miles are highway miles, and that would be true. There was a piece of paper taped on the windshield. This is kind of small-townish, you know, kind of a cool thing. A little piece of paper taped on this car for sale on the windshield that suggests probably was never driven over a 75-mile. an hour. That's cute. I mean, that's quaint. I like that. Probably.

Zach goes on to say, it's a hybrid and it gets really good gas mileage. I'm sure that's going to be the best deal we have today, and I would believe that. Would you like to take it for a test drive, Zach asked me? I pondered this for a while, looked around the vehicle, a new, quotes around new, 2024 Honda Accord, EXL, hybrid, with an MSRP of 35,390. That's a low MSRP. The Bernroney label was in the right spot. And, of course, if you buy a car in South Florida, the Barroni label is not in the right spot. As a matter of fact, you're going to find the hard press to find the minority label because they take it off the car.

But this one happened to be badly mangled, which I can. can understand that the owner's driving that car back and forth from Monroeville to Florida. He took it off and then somebody had to put it back on with Scotch tape, but they were doing their best to preserve the Monroeney level. I shared, I'm in a bit of a hurry, I need to get back to the hospital with my mom, but I really want to see if this would be feasible for a family to have a car up here while I traveled back and forth from Florida. I don't want to waste your time either. I'm going to pass on a test ride. He was very kind. Zach was and assured me he understood.

I'll get that for you right away. He said he typed my info into his computer, showed me the numbers on the screen. The top line was MSRP $35,390. They took off $2,000 and then added $254 in aftermarket. So that's all it said was after markets. And then a $465 dock fee, and we know what that is, junk, right, hidden fees. They added another $194 in 88 cents labeled total fees.

A general, very inspecific kind of a disclosure we're looking at here. My actual price was $34,303, which is in reality, $1,087 below MSRP on a previously pampered, yeah, that's fair to say, newish, I like that, 2024 accord was 6,000 miles. I asked about the fees, but Zach would only address the charge for aftermarkets. 454, he said, is the aftermarket mudflaps that can't be taken off? That cracks me up. They're on forever.

You can never take... At least they're not... You put these mudflaps on? These are not $4,000 mud flaps. Oh, $4,000? At least they're not $4,000. Oh, no, no, no. Like we have down here.

I'm laughing at the fact that how could there be a mud flap that can't be taken off? Right, yeah. Welded. Yeah. I also ask for a printout that showed me the same detail pricing breakdown. Now, this annoys me a little bit, and, you know, very little compared to, what happened in South Florida, but nevertheless, here we are in Minerville, Pennsylvania.

So I asked for a printout. Zach wouldn't provide this, but said I could take a picture of the screen. That was, to me, the worst thing in the report was right there. Zach wouldn't provide it. I told Zach that was the type of thing I was used to seeing in Florida dealerships,

which is SOP in Florida, South Florida especially, but he said that it was the owner's policy not to hand out numbers before there's a commitment from the customer to buy. Now, that's real old school. I mean, real old school. I would be surprised if this car dealer wasn't there when I was in the Northville. I mean, that is really old school.

And in Pennsylvania, they reformed that usually. This guy has probably been the same owner for so long. They're just doing the same business, the same way they did 30, 40 years ago. So that's my explanation for that. I thanked him for his time. I took a picture of his screen and left. And there you have it. Nancy asked me, how do you want to grade that?

And I had to think about it because I was a little surprised on the negative. When we leave South Florida, we go, especially to Pennsylvania, we usually expect a breath of fresh air. This was not entirely fresh, but it was still a beached the hell out of Miami or Fort Lauderdale. So when you grade this, keep in mind that we grade on the curve, and there's no such thing as a perfect dealer. A's are like Hens teeth, they're very rare, and F's should be rare. They are if we're grading on the curve. So we have to have Ds and Cs and the Bs because you've got to have a place to buy a car.

Recommended dealer list we have on Earl 1Cars.com. So let's collect the scores as they come in. I'll look for mine to come in, but just addressing this, oh, I got one from Bob. He gives them a D. 6,000 miles and only 2,000 off. Actually, only 1,000 off, really. the owner of the dealership has caught the South Florida dealer fever from his travel south.

Bob, I thought the same thing when I read it because it was like there's a lot of Florida in this report. Agent Lightens, I'm up from Florida. I wanted to get this car, drive it back to Florida. The owner's got a demo and he drives it to Florida. So maybe he was tainted by the South Florida bug. I'm kind of inclined to go lower. I've given really good grades to the dealers up north, but I'm going to, they've got to get a C-My-Mide. because I'm going to grade them on a separate curve.

Those are the Pennsylvania dealers. So C-minus for these guys, and it was for the same things, particularly if they're not taking the picture. Everything else was at least friendly, and the amounts are small. They're not talking about thousands of dollars of addendums. It's like a much smaller scale. All right, C-minus from me. Okay, I've got Tom Stechle with a B-minus.

would be higher without the aftermarket and dock fees a breath of fresh air from what Orlando Honda dealers charge. So apparently Orlando, the Honda dealers, are out of control up there as well. Let's see here, Joseph Kelleher, C-plus, would be a grade higher if they would have given a lot bigger discount on a demo with 6,000 miles. Johnny Z. Fradley, C, could have been a bigger discount. Mark Smith, I give this dealership a C. T-cash, D for destroyed Monroney.

Brian Zedlato, sounds like an average dealership to me, C. And I think for me, I'm going to give them the C-plus. They're about average, but they could improve, I think. Oh, wait a minute. Cram 1624. D plus, what happens when you get in the box? And yeah, that question, well, you never know. And we should go in the box.

We should have Agent White to go in the box. We can always blow out of the box. I'm not surprised at the mystery shopper report. If anybody knows Monroeville, boy, I'll tell you what, they have grown by leaps in bounds. It's just not the same place so many years ago, and they have grown fast. So it's not a surprise that, you know, they may have picked up some, you know, toxic, shall we say, ways of selling. And for that, I give them a D.

Okay. We're pretty close on that. I'm going to go with a C minus. I said, see, in the car, I thought about it, and maybe because I was in Monroeville, and maybe because I had my sight set higher. You're feeling nostalgic. Yeah. Understandable.

You can imagine how much they have grown since you left. You know, the other thing that we didn't talk about, I probably should have mentioned when I was reading the report, is the owner's car, the, owner's wife's car that has a certain charm about it

and usually and I speak from personal experience the car that I drove or the car that Nancy drove usually is in high demand it is and it's presented usually by the salesperson like that and it's not like it's not an organized policy thing like all right make sure they know it's Earl's car

but everybody knows it's your car and they tell the sales be oh Earl drove this one and people kind of want to drive it. Part of it is also because they know it's unlikely to have been driven rough because you're respected, you know, man of the public community. As opposed to, like, a rental car or a lease car with a same. Who knows who drove it? You know the person

who drove it, and he's a decent guy. See, where's your buyer? I bought that at Monroeville. That was the owner's car. Right. And you know people like to tell people that, too. This is Earl Stewart's car. This is John Voight's car. Back in 76, my parents bought Ralph Beulix. Ralph. Oh, Ralph's car.

his Buick. Okay, that's cool. And they probably told everybody, yeah. Yeah, a very nice little Buick sentry, and it was a great car. And you're still talking about it. Is that a Seinfeld episode? The John Voight one was, yeah. So to expand on that, now, when you go into a dealership in South Florida,

every car in a lot is the owner's car. Oh, that's Al Hendrickson's car. Right. How about that's Al? That's his other car. That's a great idea. Every Tesla we get on the Lollison. Oh, this is their old Tesla. You heard about it on the radio.

No, we don't do that. It should be pretty interesting when the cyber truck arrives, and I am fully in charge of Ms. Nancy. You've been roughing her up. I was speaking of the cyber truck. Just me? I finally understand the cyber truck, that everything that, and you probably already knew this because you're fans,

but Elon, everything that he does, all his companies, is geared towards colonizing Mars, and the cyber truck is what he envisions, will be transporting colonists around the domes. So it makes sense to me now. There you go. Now, I want to know if it's necessary for it to look like that to be easily manufactured on Mars.

It might be. What's up with that? I want to know if they can make that sliding tonne cover out of solar panels. Oh, yeah. And as the truck is driving or sitting, while it's sitting in your driveway, that big old solar panel is just chunking it into the battery.

Great idea. I'm tweeting the Elon. I'm DMing Elon after the show. I mean, we've got cell phones with foldable glass. Why can't they make a tonne cover of solar panels that can retract and roll up? But you pull that thing out to close it, and while it's sitting in the Florida sunshine, it's just charging that battery. We're just capturing electrons. Are we going to be fighting over the charger?

Yeah. Okay. Can I forgot to mention something in Automotive News, which is. The headlines, Automotive News. This tells you that this is for all you electric vehicle haters out there and saying it ain't going to happen.com, and it's

surprised me, to be honest, with your headlines and the automobile news, basically, if you look at that headline there, the electric vehicles are actually cheaper to own than combustion engine vehicles on the average. If you look at the average five year cost of ownership, the cost to own and operate. And that was done a thorough

survey by J.D. Power commissioned by Automotive News. So I salute automotive news. I mean, you know, all about the news, obviously is in the pocket of the auto dealers and the manufacturers to have the guts to put that on the headline. But in 49 out of 50 states, if you own an electric vehicle for five years. The cost is substantially less. It's amazing. And in some states, it's $9,000 less over five years to own the electric vehicle. Wow. Yeah. It's hugely significant. And the one question I'm wondering, though, is how many states are going to start finding some way to charge EV owners more to register and own that vehicle? Because they're losing out on the gas tax.

happening now in California right now. I think I think that would be a counter to the effort to incentivize a purchase and I think it'd come eventually yeah but not during this right but I mean think think about how much gasoline you're not using yeah and that is tax money that the state is not getting so yeah that's that's gonna hurt them a little and to add to a YouTuber comment which is very very true about Stalantis they say said Chrysler, but Chrysler just paid $190.97 million to the U.S. government because their gas mileage is so bad. So, uh, uh, Chrysler and I had, you know, Chrysler's going down. They're not even meeting the current standards. Yeah, I mean, uh, challenger.

Heads up. You Jeep owners, if you fall in love with a Jeep, be careful because you might wake up and Chrysler's, uh, your, your, your dealer's not there anymore. Uh, I, I'm surprised at how weak Stallandis is getting. Well, if you look at Dodge's lineup, things like the Challenger, the charger, that, and it's like if you buy a Dodge Challenger and you get the V6 car, people laugh at you. Yeah, I mean, it's too much. Yeah, you got the car that's more economical to drive, but people laugh at you if it's at least got, if you don't have the right one, not has a V8.

Yeah, it's not the right one. And if you don't have one of the Hellcats or the 396 or the, you know, the RT or some of the big ones you know don't you think though like Jeep would be would be bought and spun off because that's the one one successful segment oh jeep yeah yeah so they'll do but the other ones the company's going down but the cars will a couple of the cars will make it you know to that article in the automotive news that's interesting it'll be interesting just to see how things unfold as far as I think it was a couple of weeks ago that we were talking about, you know, service and how most people, you know,

they don't, you know, figure in that it's going to cost so much to get their vehicle fixed. So what they're doing is that they're getting three bids. Have you ever heard of something like that? I mean, they're going through service. They can't afford to get their vehicle fixed. So they're going to their bank, their lender. they're getting three bids on a price. So it's becoming, you know, pretty, I'd say pretty tedious.

So it's going to be interesting how it's going to affect electric vehicle sales. Hey, Earl, here's a crazy thought for you. What do you think would happen if Toyota were to buy the Jeep brand? I think it would be pretty cool. Can you imagine if Jeep all of a sudden became a quality vehicle? Well, they didn't break. Give credit, what creditors do, with the AR. We got the land cruiser, which is a small, a small,

UFJ cruiser. Yeah, FJ cruiser. That was a Jeep. Yeah, basically. A Jeep in disguise. But imagine the Jeep, the Wranglers, and all the people that just love that, the huge Jeep community. Yeah, how happy they would be not to have their cars break down. Suddenly they've got a different drive line, but it's still the Wrangler look that they can customize out the Wazoo like they love.

You can still call it Jeep, Toyota. Wow. We're running out of time. By George, I think you have an idea. Toyota would have the younger generation that they want. Let's do it. Man, you're full of ideas this morning. Earl's ready.

It must be that spot on the table. It could be. It's wrapping off. Okay, folks. Go ahead and talk. I'm going home. Okay, folks. Thanks for tuning in.

We love your company. We'll be right back here next week at 8 a.m. Right here on the Oldies Channel. We'll see you. you then. Have a great weekend.