Earl Stewart on Cars - 08.12.2023 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Grieco Ford of Delray Beach

Episode Date: August 12, 2023

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning travels to south Florida to visit a local Ford-Benz dealer to how much over sticker they will charge for a new 2023 Ford F-150 pickup Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. To purchase Earl’s book, “Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer”, go to www.earlsbook.com. This will forward to Earl’s Amazon page to complete your purchase. All proceeds from the book go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. For more information or to adopt the dog you have seen today or any of their other dogs, please visit their website at www.bdrr.org. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Now, how do I prove I'm live? I guess I could take a test, maybe a EKG, but I am live, and I apologize for being, a rerun last week. I had a little issue with a root canal, and I just didn't think I could articulate very well Saturday morning last week, so we put a rerun on. I apologize to you that those of you that didn't realize it was a rerun, it was kind of a last-minute thing, but there wasn't much else we could do. I could just come and drool on the air, but I can't do that. So here I am, and I'm good. Got a great dentist, into Donnest, I guess they call them, and did a really good job, and I'm 100% now. So good to be back, and we welcome all you

new listeners, especially all you old listeners. Thanks for being there. The folks that call the station and come in on Facebook and YouTube, thank you very much. You're so important to our show. The call-ins, the new callers, the regular caller. It's very, very important. And I also don't talk enough about the people that just listen. I mean, I'm a listener. I listen to talk shows. I don't think I've ever called a talk show.

If I did, I didn't get through to the person that I was trying to call. But percentage-wise, there's not a lot of callers. First of all, it's scary to be live on radio. I mean, when Nancy Stewart, my co-host and I first started the show, we were both pretty nervous about it. It was the idea of thousands of thousands or tens of thousands of people out there in radio land. You just, it's kind of like the idea of standing up in a huge auditorium or something. You know, we're singing the Star-Spangled Banner at the Super Bowl. It was just kind of scary.

But you get used to it really quickly, and we are. I think we're maybe too relaxed in this show, but we have fun, and that's the key. If you can have fun, you don't get nervous, and we do have a lot of fun, and we enjoy helping you folks how to buy a car without being ripped off by a car dealer. I mean, we've been doing it for 20 years, and it's important today as it was 20 years ago. You'd think there'd be a lot more progress with the regulations and the control of the way cars are sold, but there's just a little bit better, not a whole lot better. But the people that listen and don't call in,

I hear from occasionally they'll call me off the air. And I had a man called me yesterday, and he said he'd been listening to us since we went on the air 20 years ago. Wow, I mean, that is really cool. And it really makes us feel good to know that we have regular listeners like you. And I also have to remember that, I guess, out of every 100,000 listeners, only, you know, a few call in. I mean, just a small percentage. So every time we get a call, live call, I'm thinking about the thousands of people that are listening.

And your calls are extremely important, and I'm going to give that number out. And Nancy and Rick, who is our certified diagnostic master technician, he has all the answers that you may have about your version. complicated car and cars are far more complicated today than they ever were and they're more difficult to understand I mean you know you buy a car today I promise you when you drive at home 25 or 30% of the bells and whistles you don't even know about I mean you you got buttons and levers and you got you have a far more capacity for technology on the car than you understand what's that all about well you do two things either cut down on that cut down on the

cost of the car or at least educate you would you buy the car to know what you have and how to use it but they car dealers don't do that and so if you're confused just call us at 877 960 9960 if you've got an issue with your car you know Bluetooth if there's one if there's one thing that creates more problems is the infamous Bluetooth. I mean actually it's an amazing device and amazing technology. I can't imagine where we would be today without Bluetooth but let me tell you when you have to pair the Bluetooth with all the different makes of cars and models of cars and the types of devices that respond to the

Bluetooth you're in trouble city you're right there in trouble city as a problem And a lot of cardios can help you either. Rick can help you on that, and he can help you on any other technical problem. You have just call us at 877-960-99-60. And as I say that, I look over at my lovely wife, Nancy, and she's got a laptop in front of her. And when the calls come through, she sees it before anybody does, and she starts waving and throwing spitballs at me or anything to get me to shut up or whoever's yakking. and we give total priority. We take the calls as soon as they come in,

or at least we try to. We make a really good effort to get your calls taken care of. We've only got like five lines coming into the studio here in North Palm Beach, Florida, and they light up pretty quick. And then when they light up, you're waiting, and you're waiting, and how long will you wait? So we know that the texting number, and I'm going to give that to you in a second,

or you can also get to us on YouTube or Facebook, All these ways to get to us, they kind of stack up and archive, and we could get them later. I mean, if you text us right now, we could get to the text in five minutes or an hour. We're on the air, by the way, from 8 a.m. Eastern time until 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. So we've got a long time to catch up on the text, catch up on the YouTube for the Facebook. But not the telephone. So if you call us at 877-960-99-60, Nancy. We'll stop everybody, and we'll go right to your call.

And if you're waiting, wait, because we try to limit the time on the call to a reasonable amount of time. Obviously, a super interesting, very, very worthwhile subject is one thing. But if it's just a chit-chat, we can limit the chichet. And we will do that. 877-960-9960. Now, getting back to today and what life is all about in the world of buying. and leasing cars. I have been predicting things

were going to get better for two years, maybe two and a half years. I figured when COVID was through and essentially, COVID is behind us, I thought things would be different. Supply chain crisis, the microchip crisis. There have been so many things.

Electric vehicle revolution, all this kind of happened during the whole COVID thing. So it's just a crazy time. So used cars, you would think they'd have a different place, but they don't. It's crazy, crazyville with buying used cars. It's amazing that the dealers are having to pay so much for used cars at auctions. They are literally sometimes paying the same price that you should have to pay retail. So the dealers are out there desperate for used cars to put on the used car lots so they can

stay in business and the used car business and to get the cars to stock the lot they have to pay retail and guess what that means when you come in you're paying retail plus that's not a good idea so it's uh it's a minefield and used cars is a minefield and new cars we can help you and that's what we're here for um oh have we got any text or anything mounting up here that we could get to, let me get Nancy first. I want to be sure that Nancy explains to the female listeners what special offer we have for the ladies in the audience. We are now up almost a 50-50 lady callers thanks to Nancy. She has a very special offer if you haven't called the show before and she'll explain that to you. But we're coming in, driving into the radio station this morning

And Nancy said, what would happen if all we had were female callers today? And, you know, I had to think a minute, but, you know, 10, 15 years ago, that would have been a joke. But it could happen. We have so many amazing women out there that have begun to watch the show and spread the word with their friends that we're getting a huge number of lady calls. So if you're a lady, you're not all by yourself now. If you call the show, we do have a lot of calls, and Nancy will tell you why that is. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome.

Well, we have a great show lined up, very exciting. We have $50 for the first two new lady callers, the first two new lady callers. And ladies, we now drive the world economy, and we play a big part in the auto industry. and for the dealers not to recognize that is financial disaster. For you this morning, $50 for the first two new lady callers. That's $50 for the first two new lady callers. Any question at all? You know, maybe you were up trying to purchase a used car.

Use cars are in the news a lot recently. And one of the most important things that you could do is to check on the vehicle history. of that car and it's easy to do you can go to auto check you can go to carfax and that's major the other major thing is negotiating you have to be able to negotiate so you have to sharpen those skills before you decide to get on the internet or even if you are going to take a chance and walk into the dealership you better be prepared $50 for the first two new lady callers Give that number out again.

877. 877-9-60-99-60. That's 877-9-60-99-60. You can text us if you'd like, if you have some questions. At 772-49765-30. And we are going to stay with our theme with Big Dog Ranch. We have a beautiful mixed shepherd that's coming in, not coming in this morning, not literally, but we'll be here via a video,

and you want to stay tuned for that. His name is Cowboy. Just a little bit of information on that. It was exciting to have a dog of the studio, but we suddenly realized with this very small studio and with some very large dogs, it became a little dangerous and chaotic. I don't mean literally dangerous, but a big dog is, you know, sometimes also a little clumsy. and so we decided there was too much of a, not so much a strain on us. It was a strain on the big dog ranch people

because they have to come from the ranch in Laxahatchie, Florida and put that big dog in the back seat and then bring them to the studio. We're on the second floor, and you're taking that large dog, and we had some small dogs too, but the point being that we couldn't just favor all the small dogs. We had to give the big dogs a chance. So we finally decided discretion is the better part of valor,

We're going to use a video, and it'll probably be better because we've got some, you can actually get better pictures and the ranch than you can in the studio. Yeah, and information. I think we drew the line whenever the, what was it, the Great Dane that moved in on Jonathan's position? When he took over the computers, we knew. He fell in love with Jonathan. He just wanted to get up there and literally sit in his lap. He was larger than Jonathan. Yeah, that was Sully.

Was that Sully? Oh, boy. And this is Cowboy we got coming on? Yeah, we have Cowboy coming in, and Cowboy comes to us, I think, via Georgia. He's an old Georgia boy. He's a Georgia boy, yeah, and he's a mixed shepherd. So you're going to enjoy the video. We have a great mystery shopping report, of course, coming up.

Agent Lightning always does a fabulous job. and, you know, our thanks to Josh, who is standing in for the mystery shopper report, he wrote it up this week. Yeah, and by the way, Stu, my son, Stu, is out today, and so we'll have to get by. Rick is going to double up with getting the text as the text come in, and he'll also do the YouTube, which we are available on YouTube.com forward slash Earl on cars. YouTube.com forward slash earl on cars and I must compliment the

YouTubers out there that follow Rick and the show. They are among the most educated clever, interesting folks. Isn't that funny? Why YouTube? And I'm not saying anything negative to Facebook. Facebook has got a lot of great people too but this particular group

are just amazing people. Amazing. Yeah. He's in several others that I can't think of right now. Ladies and gentlemen, also, if you're thinking about adopting, you know, today's featured dog, you can do so by going to www.bidog Ranch Rescue.org. You can go to that website, and you can take a look at Cowboy and any other dogs that they have out there at Big Dog Ranch. And, by the way, with this heat and everything that's going on, there's a lot of dogs out there right.

now. So with all of that said, we are going to go straight to the phones and we're going to talk to Howard. Howard, thank you for waiting. Okay. Here's my question. It's for Rick. My cooling reservoir always stays the same level, whether it's hot or cold or whatever it is. And my temperature gauge is normal. So should I add coolant to the reservoir? and how much should I add, then could I mix it with water, or should I get the, they have coolants that's already mixed with water.

And if I mix, if I get the straight coolant, can I mix it with tap water or should it be distilled water? So those are my questions. The best one to use is the pre-mixed. You know you're going to get the proper 50-50, mix with it right off the bat. And if you do get the mixed yourself, tap water is generally

pretty good. Distilled water obviously is going to be better, but tap water will do just fine. You won't be putting in enough to really contaminate anything with anything that might be in the water. You do want to add just to the reservoir, only bring it up to the full line when the engine is cold. Basically does... My reservoir, my reservoir, It doesn't have a full line. It should have a line somewhere on it. Pardon me. There should be a line somewhere on that reservoir for a full and low.

If not, bring it up to where it's about an inch and a half to two inches from the top on the reservoir. Yeah. Okay. My definitely does not have any marking. What type of car is it? Toyota. It's a Camry. 2017 I know your reservoir will have a line on these it's very kind of hidden a little

tight away but it'll be there but basically the the reservoirs there so that when the system gets hot it pushes the extra fluid out in the reservoir then when it cools down it'll suck that back in and draw back just the coolant instead of sucking any air in so your radiator will always stay full the cooling system always be full, and your reservoir is just kind of like that, a holding tank. Okay, but why does it move? It always stays the same, whether the engine is hot or cold. I don't see any movement in that reservoir.

It's just the size of it. You won't see it move very much at all. Okay. All right. Before we had the reservoirs, I don't remember what year it was, I think, at 2002, or even, Even in 1998, I put an extra coolant reservoir in there because otherwise it was just the coolant would just go out, you know, go into the ground. Yeah. That's before, you know, in the good old days, just before your time even, probably.

So I added that and it worked fine. But anyway, Toyota is color specific. It's pink. Is that correct? Yep. That's the Toyota's super long-life coolant. Super long life. Okay. Can I ask you a question about coolants? One of the difference between the various, the Honda coolant, the Toyota coolant, all the different. What specificity does each one have? They're all, basically, when they design a coolant for their particular car, it's just so that they can tell if you've been using aftermarket coolants.

That's why they have their own specific colors. Well, it says marketing and profit. I'll just jump in there. Yeah, that's the number one reason. This is what people, you know, they say Toyota Coolant because they hope you'll buy it from Toyota. And if you buy it from somebody else, they don't make any money. That's the basic answer.

Coolant's cooling. Yep. Okay, now, does Toyota sell a mixed coolant? Yes. Okay. And can you, and what, what, one gallon, two, How does that... It's already pre-mixed 50-50.

It's already all set and ready to go. You don't add water. You simply pour it in. Okay, great. Good information. Thank you very much. Have a good day, everybody. Thank you, Howard.

Bye. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-3-0. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. I have a question for Rick. and it concerns washing my car at home. Do you recommend the good old-fashioned, do-it-yourself, baking soda, dish detergent, and water? And, of course, the ratio has to be perfect. It would have to be 50-50, excuse me, on the dishwashing liquid.

It would also have to be a half a cup of baking soda, and it would have to be a gallon of warm water. Nope. I recommend a professional product car wash like for McGuire or somebody like that because dish soap will take the wax off your car. The McGuire, things like that, they're not going to hurt the wax. They're going to wash your car without removing any of the wax that you want to keep on there and that way you don't wind up with damage to your paint later. So the product that they're selling, say Amazon, is the perfect ratio for washing your car at Yep. Okay. And as far as the rims and the wheels are concerned, a do-it-yourself at home. Earl suggested Oliveville. I'm not going to use that. What is your, you know, do-it-yourself when you're at home with your truck?

Well, if I could get olive oil to clean my wheels for me, I would. Otherwise, I'd get one of those brushes that are kind of cone-shaped. They have the bristles all the way around. That lets you get in all those nicks and crannies and just soap and water. Yeah. It's just like a baby bottle brush. Can I jump in here for a minute? I'm just curious. Nancy and I were talking about this in the car coming to studio. How many people do this stuff, Howard calls. They said, do it yourselfers out there.

I don't deny that. I know that there's thousands of them out there, but there's also tens of millions of people that don't do it. There's a car wash on every corner. Car washes are dirt cheap. You take your car to the dealer. They will do all this stuff for you. You take it to your independent repair stop.

They will do it for you. Life is too short. I'm just curious, as I speak to all you folks out there in YouTube and Facebook and Radio Land, how many of you actually change your oil, wash your tire rims, or wash your car, or fumigate your, all these things? How many of you are actually doing this? I think you're more interested in where to take it and get a fair price and a good job. I will flat out confess. I take my car through automated car washes.

My wife's car, same thing. When I want it really to shine pretty, I will bring it into the dealership, into the shop, and I will have the detailed crew do a good job on it. I give it, make sure that who's doing it gets a good tip from me. A little extra cash in her pocket. and I have a guy that comes to my house and mows my lawn. It costs us a little meat each month, but it's cheaper and easier than trying to get out there

and make sure that long is good. You're helping the economy. You're paying people to do things. So it sounds like as if there's a little bit of convenience mixed in with that. You are in the dealership, number one, and it's convenient because you're working and you can get your truck detail. But the other side of it is there's car washes on every corner.

Now a lot of them have memberships. You simply buy a membership. You can run through that car wash 20 times a week if you want. I've had that membership. Do we have any calls? We do not. Okay. But I will.

Let's get to some text. We've got text. I will get to Rick, and he's taking care of Facebook, and he's also taking care of our texts this morning. Okay, let's see. We're going to go back and catch a couple of them that should have gone through last week. Let's see. We will start with Anne-Marie.

Good morning, Ann Marie. We will follow Stu's example here. She says Good morning. I need to get Rick's expert opinion. I realize that I'm putting him in a difficult position since he can't see the vehicle or run diagnostic tests on it.

However, I'll settle for a best educated guess. As I understand it, I'm speaking in Ann Marie's tone here, my brother was driving his 2013 two-wheel drive Ravrefour along the backwoods roads of Kentucky. He hit a rough pothole. The track off light came on

along with the check engine light. He said he felt like he lost power steering. He drove home, checked his owner's manual, and following the directions, he pushed a button for the traction control, and the track off and check engine lights went out. He has not driven the RAV force since. What do you think happened? What kind of damage might have been done by hitting that pothole. Do you think the vehicle might be safe to drive 40 plus miles to his dealer? Yes, he has AAA, but they're at least 20 miles away. He lives way, way out in the country. What do you suggest? Thank you very much. P.S., my brother's now driving his Highlander to get around. First thing I would suggest, start with the basics. Take the car and just drive it a little bit around,

just around the driveway, back and forth, and see how it feels. If the steering feels normal, and if the steering wheel is still relatively straight and it seems to be running okay and the lights stay off, odds are you're going to be okay. What happens is when you hit a pothole like that, it shocks the entire system. The wheel may actually have tried to turn

in the wrong direction, spitting-wise, and also is trying to fight the steering wheel and the computer sees all these conflicting signals coming in from its sensors and it gets confused for a few moments. So that'll kick on all those warning lights. Same thing if you got, say you hit a bunch of ice and the car just spun out of control, it's going to throw a bunch of warning lights. Rick, let me jump in there too.

The cars today and this vehicle is more computer than car. And I know this sounds silly, but I reboot something two or three times every day. And it's like my coffee machine. I mean, I could go on and on and on. iPhone, forget about it. I do that half a dozen times a day. And it's amazing what turning a device off and turning it back on will do. Absolutely.

You just hit the perfect answer. Odds are by recycling and turning it off and on that he's already done, I think it'll probably be all right. Pardon me. So I would say, yeah, drive it a little bit. If it seems okay, go ahead and drive it. So when you can get a chance to get to a shop or a dealership, have them pull the codes and just make sure that you don't have anything major going on there that might cause an issue.

Is there anything that would be gained in a car? Speaking of, like with a smartphone, you have a reboot and you have a hard reboot. To me, a car heartbeat reboot would be to disconnect and reconnect the battery terminal. would eliminate everything is that a bad idea you're exactly correct on the hard reboot idea however if the car's running reasonably well I wouldn't do that because it might erase codes that you might that are stored in there that you may need to see just to make sure that everything's working normal yeah so if it's running okay and it seems to steer and drive okay right now I would just go with it

for now if it does seem to have some weird issues still then try disconnecting that battery go that hard reboot idea and odds are that may take care of some stuff too I could save somebody a lot of money because when you bring your vehicle into a car dealer and here I am bad-mouthing car dealers again

you've got everybody in the service department on commission and you describe this scary thing that happened and could be a safety issue and you say to them I don't know what to do can you fix it Well, you know, it's kind of like putting the stake in front of a dog. These people aren't commissioned.

The service salesperson is commissioned for how much you pay for service. And the technician also, same thing. So if you can kind of do a little Googling and maybe listen to this show or call Rick and get some advice of things you can do other than take it into the car dealer before you go. Now, obviously, if you can't get things going, you've got to go to a place that can fix the car. Exactly. And you're exactly right about that analogy of the steak before the dog. We drool at those.

Okay, this one is coming from, it's an anonymous number, but he says, I currently have a 2015 Highlander XLE with 149,000 miles on it. We maintain it regularly, enjoy the vehicle immensely. I'm in the market to buy another one in the future, but I'm hesitant of the change from the six-cylinder to the four-cylinder turbo. Has Rick had the opportunity to actually drive one of the four-cylinder turbos, I'm concerned about merging on the highway or taking off from a dead stop in a hurry because turbos don't usually kick in until higher RPMs.

What's your opinion on the changes as Stewart, or the Toyota has been? made to this engine replacement. Hey, Rick, before you answer that, I'm going to make an announcement to everyone. My screen is not working right now, but I can still get messages on my phone that you are calling, and we can still take your call. So bear with us until we can get that fixed. Okay. As luck would have it, this past Monday, I went up to Jacksonville for a three-day training class,

and one of the cars that I got to drive pardon me folks a little bit of sinus issues giving me throat some issues today was the brand new Highlander with the four cylinder turbo when you get on the road and you punch it

this thing will kick itself in the butt it's got plenty of get up and go I would compare it quite easily to the V6 in my truck and say it might even have a little better acceleration than my Tacoma does. I think a lot of concern of the turbos go way back when the turbo charger was first introduced and they created a lot of problems like a lot of things.

They weren't quite perfected and they sold a lot of cars and made a lot of people angry. Now as you say the turbo is, you know. They've worked a lot of those bugs out and we got to drive them around a bit and I'll tell you uh this thing had some power it it got up and gone so yeah i if you're concerned about it uh try to find maybe you can find a rental place or a dealership that has one that you can test drive but yeah i think you'll be impressed with that four cylinder turbo uh there there's not a problem with those things okay excuse me rick uh we are going to go to jersey mike who's calling us, and he's not in the queue, but we can, as I said earlier, we can still,

I can still get your phone calls and get you on the air. And by the way, that number is 877-9-60-960. Let's go to Jersey, Mike. Good morning. How are you, Mike? Yes, hi there. Question about, on a 2014-A-S-Tatelach, of which the front brakes, locked off

because I found out after the car was towed and then serviced that the brake fluid was dirty although prior to that a few days earlier I went through

Vavilene service and had them do all of their things they do in changing the oil, not the transmission fluid, but all the other fluids. Do I have any recourse do you think with regard to the big expense I had covering the, well, number one, the repair to the brakes plus the towing charge associated with it?

Well, how many miles do you have on that car? 123. I bought it with 108. I put the last, I had other problems with the car when I bought it. I bought it from a dealership on the end of North Lake Boulevard, unremay not Earl Stewart I will tell you that because I did buy a Croft and Earl Stewart one time I told them already it was a 2018 Kia I put 23,000 miles on it gave it away as a wedding present to my daughter and her husband and I never put anything in that car and the air condition was so good that you could get frostbite in that car I was a fantastic car and I got the car fact for it I looked at it it only had

one owner it was never leased so I know why you're buying the right thing. I think it's smart to go ahead and do that. But going back to my problem with the Cadillac, do I have any recourse? You probably do not, because here's the odd thing. I have never yet seen a car have a break issue simply because the fluid was old or dirty. If the fluid gets contaminated with some of their chemicals, say somebody accidentally put oil or water into that reservoirs, and it contaminated it and caused the seals to go bad. That can cause a brake issue, cause things to lock up.

Normally what we see for brakes locking up are the slide pins on the calipers actually seizing up because of rust and dirt and age, and that's what causes the brakes to seize up and lock up damage. The fact that you bought the vehicle used and it does have a lot of miles on it, the manufacturers wouldn't touch that. It would be, used cars are a different animal when it comes to getting help from the manufacturer. If you buy a car from a dealer,

the manufacturer of that car, we'll look at some things and make considerations to give you a break on their warranties. Yeah, I understand. But, you know, the point simply is I did 5,800 miles on that car before I had that problem. So for some reason, it has. happened, and the dealers, the repair shop, has told me that it was dirty fluid.

They didn't tell me they had a pin problem in the, in the, in the, in the, in the brake of alipers or anything like that. So, you know, that's what they've ever, it's, I, yes, my question. I have no recourse anywhere. But, by the way, I mean, they had one more thing, okay? Two things quick, and I'll get off the line. One, that car is falling apart. It's fake leather on the – because, listen, I bought brand-new Cadillac starting in 1978. I would put 65,000 miles on them every year.

In 90,000 miles thereafter, I had to let them go because I basically wore them out, and I would go buy a brand-new one. That's back in a day when they had pillow seats, and the cars were comfortable, and it would track down the road in an ice storm. But the point simply is this, these Cadillacs are for crap. as far as I'm concerned. The door plastic lookalike wood falls off, okay? Yeah. You know, the car is just one absolute disaster that this dealership sold me,

and my mistake was dead. I didn't take it to my own mechanic to have a check, like, say, Peth Boy, or wherever there's an ASE mechanic to go through it and tell me what was wrong with it. That was my big mistake, and I'm going to tell you if you were listening, make sure if you buy a car

that's used, that the guy's going to agree to allow you to take it to your mechanic of choice, not his, to get it until the second. You're absolutely right. It's the best single thing. If I could only do one thing and I had to go buy a used car, it'd be

exactly what you said. Take it to a good independent mechanic, and it might cost you a couple hundred bucks, maybe at best $200 dollars a good. Well, well worth it. Yeah, because just the you know what I had to put in that car? a whole radiator cooling system because it would overheat it.

I'd have to get a towed. I get at the end of my street here 20 houses away, get it on military trail here in West Palm Beach, and the thing would be overheating. And I'd have to get a toad. That was ridiculous. So anyway, they don't build Cadillacs

the way they used to. That's my number one comment. Maybe the new ones. I'm going to be looking at a use to escalate, perhaps, because I don't like, you know, all these here, trucks, they should,

they should outlawed. SUVs in the fast length. It's the same thing like being behind a pickup truck, and you can't see what's going on down in front of you, and that's why there's so many accidents that take place on 95, et cetera. Okay. We got four of the lines holding, boss. Thank you very much for the call.

One last quick thing. He told me that the cooling problem on that air conditioning in that car was because I didn't have enough of refrigerant in it. That was not the case. The mechanics solved it for me up in North Jersey, And all it was, it was $110. It needed a blower on the right-hand side. He said if you put more refrigerant in it, you would have ruined the air conditioning system.

So you could be careful about advice there with regard to just say, if you're not getting cooling, you're getting hot air out of one side and cold air out of the driver's side to go ahead and put more refrigerating because that's not the problem. Absolutely. All right. Thank you. Thank you very much for the call.

Yeah, thank you, Mike. We love hearing from you. ladies and gentlemen we have Barb on the line and she's a first time caller and for the ladies this morning as always on Saturday morning $50 for the first two new lady callers and why we see where they are right now and how women drive the economy and I mean drive it they're in control for about 20 trillion in annual consumer spending it's amazing good morning Good morning, Barb. Welcome to the show. Hi. I just have nothing but wonderful accolades for your dealership. Thank you. Everyone up there is so great.

We bought a 2013 Venza from you through USAA, and we want a new one, and we can't find a new Venza anywhere. Do you know when they will be around? It's kind of a working process, unfortunately. the best thing to do is to decide specifically which, what VINZA you want, and the more flexible you are, and the more willing you are to go to popular accessories and colors, interior trim. Any unusual model you order today and are hard-to-get manufacturer like Toyota, the longer it takes to get.

So we were talking the other day about some of the one to buy, correct. and wanted a particular color, and when they said they would take a white corolla, they got it three months sooner than if they'd wanted the color they'd originally chosen. So you speak with the dealer, and you listen to his advice on what to compromise on. I'm speaking with one of your salesmen, and I told them if anyone comes, anyone, any of them come in, please let me know, but I want a blueprint on. And that's probably a tough caller to get. Yeah, they are. And, Barb, you know, whenever Earl says you have to be flexible, boy, does he mean that if you decide you just want this outrageous color, you're going to wait a very long time. And on an earlier show, Stu, our son had said that the dealership is only getting one per quarter on the Venza.

And that's out of 350 cars. Right. So there is a wait. we have 114,000 miles on a 2013 bronze micro whatever it's a gorgeous color and you were able to get it for us and USAA is no longer having their car buying program but I wouldn't go any place else but you so I just want to let you know yeah 10 you want to you you would you consider a used Venza if it's blue dark blue well you can you can shop I don't want a white car

I don't want a gray car Pardon me I don't want a white car I don't want a gray car I want my own color Blue color There's a lot of them on the road bar You know you did

You did win $50 this morning And if you stay on the line You can give Jeremy your contact information And he'll give it to me And I'll get that check out to you I want to thank you for helping us ladies here

on Earl Stewart on cars for building this platform. I'm 82 years old. Oh, that's wonderful. Very. You sound like you're 50. I know. Well, thank you so much. And I don't look 82 either.

Pardon me? I don't look 82 either. Oh, I bet. You sound like as if you look 50. Barb, spread the word. Let the ladies know that you know to give Earl Stewart's, a car a call on Saturday mornings and they can win themselves $50 oh I didn't realize I was winning I thought it was only the first person but the first two okay that's nice congratulations look

forward to hearing from you okay we are going to go to Phil who's holding in Jupiter good morning Phil good morning Phil yes I was coming across an article on the on the on YouTube the other day where the CEO of Toyota is making a speech about where Toyota is going to adapt the policy where you can buy your car directly from the manufacturer.

And they said this is going to be probably up and running by the end of the year. You all know anything about that? I've heard anything about that coming on. Yeah, Phil, I don't think that's accurate. I think that there's behind the scenes,

behind closed doors, I'm sure that's accurate, but I'm almost sure that the CEO of Toyota would not have made a public statement like that. The fact is the manufacturers see the handwriting on the wall, and they're not stupid. They're very, very smart business people, and they see the reputation that car dealers have, and they realize that they've got an archaic diamond. of a distribution system, retail system set up in the United States. And nobody gives more complaints and car dealers. Maybe congressmen and lobbyists or, you know, they're last or next to last on the Gallup annual poll of honesty and ethics and profession.

So the whole industry realized it's a problem. Toyota's no different. I, as a Toyota dealer, and I think, you know, we have a Toyota dealers, I would be, probably one of the first to hear a public statement by the CEO of Toyota that I was no longer wanted as a dealer. I mean, the day will come, and anyone that denies that, that's exactly, they're in denial. They're not listening to the facts, but you'll have the dealer networks around for several more years. I would say a minimum of 10 or 20 years, the dealers will still be there. Where are you going to see the change will be in electric vehicles?

And electric vehicle retailers will be direct, and that's what Tesla, you know, Elon Musk and Tesla, they really set a precedent. And now the other electric vehicle manufacturers are dealing directly, too. So no electric vehicle manufacturer is going through dealers, and that's a loophole in the franchise law that protects all the other combustion engine car dealers. So your observation is accurate, but it's just not gone public yet. Oh, okay. And I got one other question. I'm a longtime customer of yours, and I have a Prius, and I was talking to Matt about getting the new 2023 Prius. And I was just blown away when he told me you guys had like over 200 orders backed up, and I can't even get in line to get one. Yeah, it's a sad situation. As you know, because you're a customer from our dealership, we draw the line on selling a car. We will not. not sell a car for over MSRP off the door. Manufactured sensitive retail price.

And because that's lower than all the other dealers, people come to us and we have to order the cars. If you find a new Toyota on a lot somewhere that's been sitting around for a couple weeks, the only reason that car is there is because the price is so high people don't want to pay it. We have people, and we have a lot of good customers, loyal customers that have come to us.

We had one call to this show that waited over a year for a car, and I wouldn't have blamed him if he had gone and bought a car from another Toyota dealer. If you have to have a car, you have to have a car. And we have friends and regular customers that have come in and say, look, I'm really sorry. I can't wait six months for my Ravre for, so I went over here to dealer ABC, and I paid $5,000 more than you would charge me to buy the Toyota. So that's the reason you find cars on dealer lots today

because they're selling them for higher prices and they don't sell right away. If they were selling for a competitive price, they wouldn't have any cars in stock either. Okay. Well, I'll just stay in touch with the guys with Matt and the crew over there and see when I could order one

because I definitely want to get it from you. I don't want to get it from somebody else. I know. I already checked. Other dealers won $1,000. non-refundable deposit, and they're immediately 2,000 to 3,000 over MSRP. And by the way, if you order one from us, by the way, if we lower the price, which we will sooner rather than later, we are going to be selling cars at MSRP.

That used to be a high price. Now it's a bargain, but three or four months from now, it might not be a bargain, and we would lower the price to you that we would sell that car to anybody else. So you could kind of have your cake and eat it too if you don't mind waiting. But thanks very much for being such a good customer, Phil. Okay, well, thanks a lot. Take care. Thanks, Phil.

I look forward to hearing from you again. We are going to, I'm going to go out on a limb here. And, girl, if you would check your iPhone for the anonymous feed, back we have a problem with that also so you can man your phone I'm taking my phone and we have Rick here for the Facebook and the YouTube we are going to go to Marty from West Palm Beach speaking of waiting for cars he is the star of waiting good morning Marty good morning thanks it was only 15 months I waited and then I didn't take the car that even was the bigger kicker right oh my goodness

I got to ask Rick. I called and asked about the electronic parking brake on my car, and every so often I said it sticks. So, and you've got to just turn it off. So Rick said, well, make sure your door is closed, make sure this, make sure that. Well, so far in the last 60 years, I haven't fallen out of the car. I make sure that the door is closed. Well, anyway, it started sticking more often.

so I just push the button down all the way to shut it completely off. So now I don't have that problem anymore. Is there any bad effect to just shutting it off? If I need a parking break, I just pull the button up, you know, an emergency break. How often do you forget to put the car in park? Every time I put it in park When I What I mean is

When you stop your car And you're going to park the car Have you ever forgotten to put it in park? No There you go I mean the whole idea The automated parking brake Is because if you go on

YouTube And you search for videos of People forget to put their car in park That's what's occurring That's why they had to do that, is because there are a thousand videos out there where you see someone, they're distracted, their minds are just full of everything else in the world nowadays, and they go to hop out of the car, and the car is still in gear, and the car just rolls away because they didn't put the car in park. And that, unfortunately, it's become human nature now that these things are all over the internet. internet. Well, when I was under warranty, I've got 43,000 miles on the car now.

When it was under warranty, it happened very infrequently, so I didn't bother bringing it in. Now I was doing it more often. And the only way I can attest this to you, you'd have to go back through all your programs and see when I called you the first time. But, you know, is that a big thing to fix? Did you ever mention it while it was in warranty? Did you ever, when you went to the shop, did you ever tell them, hey, I'm seeing this happen every so often?

I told them verbally, but they never wrote it. They never wrote it into the, you know. Okay. Let me jump in there. Marty, it's worth asking, you know, So what Rick was saying is that if it was a matter of record and it wasn't writing, then you would definitely be covered, even if the dealer had to be us without to pay for it because we should have checked it. And oftentimes the manufacturer will take our word for it that we couldn't find the problem, but it existed. So it's worth a try and bring it in and we'll take it up the ladder to Toyota, see if we can't help you.

But the good thing to remember the message to all the people listening now is if you have an issue with a car, particularly when it's under warranty, and they can't find the problem. I mean, a lot of well-meaning technicians and well-meaning dealers and independent repair for that matter. But sometimes, you know how when you go to a dentist with a toothache and your 2008 calls there, you go to a doctor with a headache and your head doesn't ache anymore, same thing with a car. and if something doesn't actually precipitate the problem, it's very difficult to locate, even with instruments. So be sure they put it in writing on the repair order.

It's digitalized. It's there for eternity. And you could go in five years later. You go say, hey, look, I brought this car in for that problem, and you said there was no problem. So it gives you an argument to get it covered under warranty. Right. The other question is for Rick, is that a big job?

to fix? It's more of figuring out what's going on and why it's staying engaged. The diagnostic is going to be the tough part there is figuring what's going on. However, being as it's considered a safety issue, I would

almost guarantee you at this point. I'd say 99.9% the dealership will be able to get that covered under goodwill warranty from the manufacturer, and it won't cost you a dime. If it's happening almost all the time now, You need to bring it in and have it, you know, get one of us to get a look at it and find out what's going on there.

And I would almost guarantee you it's not going to cost you anything. And for our other listeners, regular warranty is what's in writing. Goodwill warning is that goodwill warranty is at the discretion of the manufacturer. And that usually happens for a customer that has bought more than one product from that manufacturer. So if you bought two or three Hondas or two or three Chevroletes and you're a good General Motors loyal customer, that gives you points toward getting some flexibility in their warranty. So if you are going to try to get something warranted

from the manufacturer that's not a warranty, ask them to check your record, say, this is my third car, I bought from the same dealer, and they use that to get the manufacturer to stretch and pay for it under an extended warning. Yeah, but as far as safety factor, I mean, as long as I put the car in park, there's really no problem.

Right. Yeah. Okay, if I decide to bring it in, I'll, yeah, my next oil change, I'll complain to them. There you go. Great hearing from you, Marty. Thank you. All right, have a good weekend.

Thank you. The same to you. We're going to stay with the phones. I want to thank Lance in Tennessee for holding. We're ready to take your call, Lance. Good morning. Hello. Good morning.

Where have you been? Well, we've been having a root canal. I was out last week, and I was in intense pain. I'm a big baby when it comes to the dentist, so I didn't want to cry on the air, so we did a rerun. Earl, you've been talking this morning about reboot. We live so far up in the hill. of Tennessee that we've been on reboot for 18 years.

Well, you don't even have to identify yourself. I can tell by your Tennessee accent when you call in. And, Earl, let me ask you a quick question. You and Nancy, especially Nancy, is about got me convinced into buying a Toyota Avalon. and I've been I've been looking at some vehicles that have they allege have been returned on lease is there any assurance or guarantee that you can have that that vehicle was actually on lease you mean an extended warranty you're talking about when it comes back from lease

yeah it has been because this car is about a year old maybe even two years old they're very very low mileage from down there in in florida and they say and in the in the i'm using cars dot com and they say off this owned by a little old lady who's owned an orange grove well we had a caller earlier and i i'll repeat what we discuss with him. If you're going to buy a used car and you can only do one thing, make the purchase conditional on approval of that car by your mechanic. I stress you're not their mechanic. Someone that's a loyal to you, beholden to you, and that you pay, and you take it to your mechanic and you say, what will you charge me to go over this car with a fine

tooth comb? I'm not asking you to fix it. I'm asking you just tell me, what's wrong with it and then you may get to fix it and I'll pay you for that later but what is this car in good shape or not if you give a seal of approval from a good technician who's loyal to you that's better than the Carfax report that's better than auto check that's better than consumer reports for that matter I mean that car is checked by somebody that knows what he's doing plus I can't let this opportunity pass without saying to you a quick tune that I came up with.

I know how you and your Rick and Nancy and Stu wait with baited breath to hear these things and and and here it is

if you're looking to buy a car in the near future and looking real to see I don't know where to go to yourself a favor and listen to Earl Stewart on the radio. Hey, Lance, I want to sign you up.

Will you do a commercial for me? Okay, Lance. If you'll get that recorded, and I'll pay you for it, and we'll run that as a commercial. Thank you very much. Okay, our number is 877-9-60-99-60. Give us a call on that number. are having some problems with my X-screen, but that isn't going to affect your phone call.

I can still take them. Jeremy and Jonathan are feeding me the information that I need. Earl is going to take care of your anonymous feedback, and Rick is going to take care of the texts, the YouTube, and the Facebook. So as you can hear, we all have our hands full this morning. Our text number is 772-4976530, and I do. have $50 for the next new female caller first time caller 50 dollars so give us a call i've got an anonymous feedback here okay um i'll just read it from my iPhone a couple of weeks ago

i think i heard you say something like when it comes to getting your new car faster the squeaky wheel gets your oil and that if someone communicates and complains to you and nancy that you can push to them to get the car faster i've been on the list for a rap for over a year. Not fair. Now, there's two points I want to make here. When you respond by anonymous feedback, unless you tell us who you are and where

you are, we can't contact you because that's why it's anonymous. So hopefully you're listening. What we do, any dealer that has a car and order should do, when you're waiting, waiting, waiting

for that car, has been weeks and months. The dealer will have a conversation with you. We would have a conversation with you and say, you know, you wanted a green car with a blue interior. Now, I don't mean that because no one orders that, but if you did, you'd never get the car. So we would say, would you be able to be flexible on the color? And you can say, well, I'll change that to a white car with a tan interior. So now instead of having to wait a long, long time, it's possible. It could go from five-month wait to a two-month wait. Same thing through with options. You might have a hard-to-find option. It could be a sunroof. It all depends on what the manufacturer perceives

to be the cars that are most in demand and will most likely be bought. The oddball car, the oddball model will surely take months longer. So oftentimes the salespeople, they'll take an order, submit it, and the order gets put in the order bank, and it gets forgotten about. The reason I say the squeaky wheel gets to oil is when you call the dealership and you ask a manager, say, I've been waiting for five months for this car, I'm going to give up, I'm going to go buy another car from another dealer, I'm going to compromise what I want.

If he's got any brains when you tell that to him, he will say, well, listen, let's see if we can't modify your order in some way. Do you absolutely want a green car? And you say, no, I like silver, I like tan, I like white. He says, great, because we can get you a white car in two months. So that's the conversation that the squeaky wheel will have. The dealer himself should know that and be ahead of you on that issue, but frankly, They're not. That's the reason. If you're waiting for a car, call the dealer. Don't speak to the salesman. Oftentimes, they don't get back to you. Speak to a manager and say, what can you do for me? What can I change to get my car sooner? So anonymous feedback. I hope you're listening because I can't call you and tell you this directly. Great response.

877-960-99-60, and you can text us at 7-7-2-497-6-5-3-0. We're going to get to Rick in just a couple minutes, but we are going to go to Lake Worth and talk to Mark. Good morning, Mark. Good morning, Mark. Hello, Mark. Good morning. I'm here. Hi, Mark.

Welcome. Good morning, all. Good morning. I have a cosmetic question, if I may. Okay. I have a 2016 Rav4XLE. Overall, the body and paint still look very good. However, the rear bumper has developed brown spots.

The bumper material is plastic, not metal. So I don't think these are rust spots. And there is a clear plastic adhesive strip across the bumper. It appears to be factory install. These spots are underneath the strip. I'm tempted to try peeling off the plastic strip in order to clean and polish the bumper, but I don't want to risk any damage. Can this be done safely, or is it not something I should attempt?

I don't think it's worth replacing the bumper. It just bugs me. Any insight would be appreciated. It can be done. Not necessarily easy. because that adhesive was not meant to come off easily. My suggestion is a heat gun. You can try a hairdryer, but it may not get hot enough.

Heat guns, you probably can rent one from like an auto zone or something. They're the ones that are used when they're doing like those vinyl wraps on cars. And basically you just want to gently heat it from a distance, slowly getting closer. And as it starts to soften, use a place. plastic spatula, and don't tell your wife that you stole it out of her kitchen, and just gently scrape and rub at it, and as you're working it, be very careful, you don't want to damage the paint underneath, but as that plastic softens on that adhesive, it'll start to loosen up and come loose, and then you can use a product such as Googon, which is

G-O-O-G-O-N-E, or the old standby, W-D-D-40 with paper towels. will usually take off just about any leftover glue residue that might be left underneath there. And if you're not real comfortable, as a do-it-yourselfer, I would look for one of the places locally that does automotive vehicle wraps, you know, the vinyl wraps, and have them take a quick look at it and see what they would charge to remove it. A vinyl wrap, okay. Do most body shops do vinyl wraps? Not really, but you'll find a lot of them,

on the internet like uh there's i don't know i don't know if you're local to us here in west palm or not uh yes i'm in lake worth okay yeah on on north lake boulevard uh coughs does vinyl wrap there's a place there that's the old coughs towing uh they they're still in business for doing vinyl wraps but you can find places all over a lot of them that are doing those vinyl wraps you find one of these guys is working out of a storage unit place, he may charge 50 bucks to get that off and make it look fantastic. Hmm. Another question, please.

The heat gun, how do you know how close to apply it without melting the plastic bumper? And how much would it cost if you got too close and melted the plastic bumper? Yeah, that's the drawback. That's what I'm afraid I'm going to do. Yeah, that's where you got to go, trial and error. You got to stay way, way back, hold it way back. It's okay with a trial, but the error is what's kind of forward. Slowly come forward a little bit, and as it looks like it's starting to soften the plastic a little bit,

don't get any closer and just work it gently with a plastic spatula type thing. It may almost be something. You might want to talk to a detailer or somebody that does his reps because they just have the talent. And the better guys at that, they could pull those off so easy. Well, since the plastic strip is obviously supposed to be there, and I should replace it, sounds like this is something for a professional shop. Wise decision, I think, yeah. Although I did want you to buy the Gugon, I thought that was a town in North Korea.

but at WD40 though if you've got any adhesive stickers on your car that you want to get removed and you peel them off and it leaves that glue residue

WD40 on a paper towel and just soak that in to work it in gently that'll take that stuff right off it's amazing I know you shouldn't use WD40 on rubber does it do anything

to plastic No, it won't hurt plastic. Okay, that's very helpful. I will take that under advisement. Okay. Thank you so much, Mark. Give us a call. Let us know how that all turned out.

I'm going to, you know, rely on Jonathan and Jeremy. Are we caught up on the... Okay. We do have another one, but no. have another one, but no name. Okay. Welcome to the show. Mary in LaBelle. Okay, Perry. Mary. Mary. Good morning, Mary. Welcome to the show. Good morning, Nancy and crew. I have a 2011 Honda CRV with about 125,000 kilometers, miles on it. And I got the error message, check fuel cap. And after After, you know, putting that off, I eventually went to AutoZone and got a new fuel cap,

and the message went away. However, when I checked my owner's manual, it said that the message may return, and it has. Now it comes on and off periodically. And I'm wondering whether that's indicative of there being a problem other than the fuel cap. There is a potential that aftermarket parts can be, shall we say, not the best quality, but usually they're pretty good. The message that you're getting basically is that the emission system is seeing what's called a small leak. In other words, it's not sealing like the government wants it to. If it's really bothering you, then the best choice would be to go to a dealership or a mechanic and have them test it for emissions leaks. But being as Florida does not have any state emissions laws anymore, we're not testing for it, if it's not that important to you, I wouldn't spend the money on it.

Okay, wonderful. Because the guy at AutoZone said, well, you know, this is the cheap solution. You know, if this doesn't work, then it may be a problem for, you know, between the fuel tank and the gas cap. Right. And that I know. I know that would be very important. So if it's not going to create, you know, a stall problem or anything like that, I'll follow your advice and just quietly ignore the message. Yeah, because it's basically what it means is that the fuel system,

the evaporative vapors that the government wants to keep sealed in there so that they're then, you know, run through the engine and burned later. There's a hose, maybe has a little pinhole crack in it or something, and it's just losing a little bit of that pressure. And it's not an important thing. Your car's not going to break down. It's going to drive completely normal. It's just that annoying message is going to pop up now and then.

Oh, thank you, Rick. I can deal with a little annoying message. Better to keep the money in your pocket where it belongs. We can get used to almost anything, Mary, correct? That's right. That's right. Women are pretty powerful. Mary, I want to take a minute and thank you.

I know that you have called before from LaBelle, and we always look forward to hearing from you, and I hope you'll spread the word about the show and the fact that we do give $50 to the first two new female calls. callers. But thank you for being part of our show. Well, and thank you for giving such very good advice. I really appreciate your service. That's really important. Have a wonderful weekend.

Thank you. The same to you, Mary. Okay. We are going to, we're going to go back to anonymous feedback, and then we'll get to Rick, and he's going to take care of some texts, Facebook, and YouTube. Okay. Here's another's feedback that just came in based on a conversation we had earlier in the show, someone taking issue and disagreeing with what I had to say. All coolant is not the same. There are three main types of coolant that car companies use, inorganic additive technology, IAT, organic acid technology, OAT, and hybrid organic acid technology, HOAT. Well, excuse me.

I've been wrong before. I'm afraid to take issue with that because it looks like you really did your research. My only question would be, do the manufacturers get that granular when they talk about coolant? In other words, to me, the original coolant was water. And that got to be a bad idea in Minnesota and some other areas of the country.

So they put alcohol in it. And I suppose over time, there have been other refinements in additions and deductions. But I somehow never thought of the coolant as being organic. I mean, for me to be criticized because I don't have organic coolant in my car, I would be a little surprised. Rick, what do you think? alcohol comes from sugar sugar comes from sugar cane therefore it's organic

works for me h-o-a-t hybrid organic acid technology I mean and then of course the organic acid but that's really interesting I wish Mr. Anonymous

would communicate again and give us some more examples I'd like to hear what any manufacturers out there have specified in the way of cooling. Well, you specialize as chemical engineer in college, aren't you? Yeah, physics.

So I'm just an old auto mechanic. I like the idea that when Toyota says, put this coolant in my car, and it's going to work just fine. That's the safest question. I like that simple answer there for me, and I can say, Mr. customer, this works. And fortunately for you and Toyota, that a lot of people feel that way. But we know, because we're on the inside, we work for Toyota, not really work for them, but we're part of the Toyota team. We know that there are products out there without the Toyota name that are manufactured by the same manufacturer that Toyota buys their products from, and then they put their name on the box.

Absolutely. So when you buy something that has Toyota's name on the box, that might have been manufactured in Gu-Guan, North Korea. But Toyota bought it and then branded it Toyota. So if you want to be absolutely safe and don't mind paying extra for that privilege, I can tell you that a lot of dealers that will buy parts will shop around. and look at if they're a Nissan dealer, they'll see what Nissan charges for a particular, you know, could be a brick pad, it could be a fan belt,

and then they go around and they find out, oh, this is the manufacturer of that fan belt, or this is the manufacturer of this product, and they go directly to the manufacturer, and they buy it cheaper than what Nissan is charging them. So, as Rick said, if safety is primary importance over cost, then by all means just buy the brand that your manufacturer recommends.

Okay. Okay, Rick, do you want to give us an idea of how many texts or Facebook or YouTube you have? We've got a couple of them yet. Okay. Let's see. Marty, he was just asking last week if we were live that day. We were not. This one's coming from Roy D in Denver.

Denver, what are your viewpoints on the UAW's, excuse me, what are your viewpoints on the UAW's position on the union contracts with the big three automakers, the UAW being the union? What impact do you think this will have on Toyota products? Earl, any thoughts on that? I wasn't listening. I was reading my phone. Read it again. This is from Roy D. in Denver. He says, what are your viewpoints on the United Auto Worker, the Union, position on the union contracts with the Big Three automakers, Ford Chevy Chrysler? What impact do you think this will have on Toyota products? I don't think it's going to have much effect. I think that union negotiations, possible strikes are part of life.

I mean, it's been that way for a long time. There's great arguments on both sides of that equation. But I think that the unions are far more sophisticated and are far more reasonable, and the companies are far more sophisticated and reasonable today than they were 30, 40 years ago. And I think the days of long, long strikes are behind us, and I think calm minds and smart minds will prevail. So I wouldn't worry about it. Okay, and this one coming from Vito, he says, hello, is the money factor on a lease negotiable? I have top-tier credit, and a dealership here in St. Petersburg is telling me that it's not.

Your thoughts, please? No, that is the interest rate. They call it the lease factor, and you have top credit. It is not negotiable. It's part of the lease. And they don't even like to talk about it. They should call it an interest rate, but they don't. And I guess by not calling an interest, they don't have to do the disclosure under truth

and lending. And when you charge interest, you have to go by a federal law of full disclosure. If you call it a lease factor, you're kind of pretending it's not really interest, but it is. But it protects them, and they can just lock that interest right in. The best thing with leases is don't get hung up on lease factors, capitalized cost, and all the other. A lease is so complicated. If you're trying to negotiate and you're trying to find the lowest lease, get the payment. That sounds almost stupid, but get the payment.

Just lock in the term of the payment and the capitalized cost, meaning the full amount that the lease is going to, the car is going to cost. If you know the term of the lease and you know the capitalized cost, you don't care about the rest of it. Just look at the monthly payment. Okay, and this one is coming in from Mark. He says, apparently he had a comment. from two weeks ago, he says, hi, Stu, did you not get my vote for this Saturday's mystery shopping report, or did you not feel comfortable reading what I typed? Laugh out loud, have a great weekend, Mark.

So I'm going to read Mark's comment just because we're that way. Okay. He says, watch up for the, quote, customer shaft lubed with a $6,000 safety package. Uh-huh. Whoa. Well, that's, uh, that, that question is definitely, you're pushing the edge there, but, but he did vote him a D-plus, so, uh, whichever mystery shop that was from two weeks ago,

yep, we will read your comments on the air, mainly because I figure, hey, what the heck, what are they going to do to me, you know, come on. Exactly. But Mark, glad you got your comment in. We got our chance there. Okay. Let's see. What else we got?

Ammarie says, a quick update here, many thanks. My brother has now tried to drive the RAV-4, and he says it's driving normal. Thanks again. So, Amory, excellent to hear that. Hopefully, he won't have any other issues with it. I think he's probably going to be okay. Just like we say, watch out for those potholes. Honestly.

Because, oof. That's great news. That is. That's fantastic. And this quick comment in from Paul, He says for the adhesive removers, he likes to use 3M adhesive remover. And I got to say, yeah, 3M, it's a little more expensive. Better than Gugon?

Better than Gugon, even. But if you're looking for any sort of a product and you want some of the highest quality, if you see 3M on it, you know you've got, that's a top quality product. Especially if you're looking for like double stick tape, adhesives, themselves. 3M, they make the best. They are great quality. I've used that double-sided 3M at home. It is great stuff. It's fantastic. Okay, that's got us caught up on the text messages. Okay, what about the YouTube? Do you have anything from Facebook, YouTube? Steve Mags is saying, good morning. In my opinion, people are holding on to cars longer,

plus less recent that lease returns the fewer lease returns new car prices are too high and lack availability the result less used cars in the market to sell and less desire to purchase and I got to say yes we've seen that because my wife's driving in 19 Rav and our own use car managers, send me text messages and emails, even personalized right to me, where they're, if you're interested, they're trying to buy my RAV away from me. It's the use cars, they're desperate to get cars. Here's the average age, consumer reports, at least consumer reports. The average age of cars on the road now is moved up from 9.7% three years ago to 12.5 years.

So, you know, it's really crazy. It used to be people were, you know, I think I can remember it was like six years or something like that. So it's gone from six years to 9.7 to 12 and a half years. Part of that's good news because the cars are better made and they require less maintenance and repair. So it's just kind of when a car's been on the road 12 years, that's a long time. A lot of things can happen in 12 years. So we just need to be more and more careful of checking cars out before we buy a used car now. Yeah.

And the quality is there. So a 12-year-old car can be just as good as a 5-year-old car. Yeah. Very true. Yeah. And one last one here from Casey says, hey, Rick, can you touch on the fact of the situation that Toyota is selling brand-new cars, but they're only able to give you one key? And how long that shortage will last? Well, that's their chip shortage coming in.

Right now, Toyota has it where if you only received one key with your car, check with a dealership, and when the key comes available, they'll keep you on the list, and as they're getting them in stock, they're ordering them in. Once they arrive, they'll contact you, you bring your car in, it'll take a, and maybe an hour to an hour and a half total time. Here's an even better idea. And get it programmed for you. because I had a personal experience with that this past week. It's a squeaky wheel theory.

If you don't have that extra key, and a lot of customers don't have that smart key, they only got one key because the chip shortage, it's a squeaky wheel theory. You call your dealer, and you don't speak to the salesman. I mean, I'm not trying to run down salespeople, but their job is selling cars. Get up the ladder.

go to a service manager or a general manager, go up the ladder, speak to somebody in authority. The higher up the ladder in a dealership, the more likely that person can communicate directly to the factory. So that general manager can call the Honda Zone Manager or the Honda Regional Manager and say, listen, we've got a really good customer here. They bought this Honda Accura from us six months ago. They only have the one key. They were promised two keys, and they can get it. The squeaky wheel with you, well, I did that with Toyota for a customer last week.

And the reason, you hit on, the reason is accurate, Rick, or the reason is because of the microchip shortage, they're diverting the microchips to build new cars. They'd rather put the remote with a new car so they can sell the new car of the dealer to make a profit. But if they give the remote to, someone they promised the remote to four months ago, they're not going to make very much profit. They're going to make any profit. So the squeaky wheel is a really good way to go. I like that anonymous feedback we had.

Yep. And remember, folks, there's also one other side to that. They have to keep a certain number of keys available for, say, the person that bought a car, only got one key, and something happened and that key got destroyed. Yeah. they're stuck now with a car that they can't even drive so there's got to be a few keys available

that they can sell to them there's always a key somewhere it's like the old joke the guy checks in the hotel and he says I'm sorry we don't have a room available he says well what do you mean you know I have a room available he says no I said we're totally sold out

I said if I was the president of the United States would you have a room for me and of course they would so there's always a room available there's always a remote available. There's always something available if you get to the right guy and explain it the right way.

The squeaky wheel is a great way to go. Polite persistence. Yes. Encouraging words right here on Earl Stewart on cars. I see by the clock that we are close to Big Dog Ranch Time. We also have a mystery shopping report that you're going to enjoy.

Let me ask you a question talking about the mystery shopping report. Did you read just recently about the three Rhode Island Graco dealerships that were fined for $557,000? $557,000. Chump change for these guys, but it's all about deception. The reason I mentioned that is because we have our mystery shopping report from Agent Lightning from Graco, 4.

board of Del Rey. We'll get to that in just a second. Right now, before we present the video of Cowboy, our dog that is the dog of the week, I'd like to tell you that if you want to adopt a dog at Big Dog Ranch, you can simply go to www.bidog Ranch.org. And you can see all of the dogs that they have out there. And if you, if you so choose to go out, boy, I want to tell you, it's just a fantastic place to visit and you'll see exactly how the dogs are treated out there. You may not want to leave. They have a pool, a spa. They've got everything out there. And Cowboy is our dog of the week. And Cowboy comes us, a cowboy's been out at Big Dog Ranch, I believe for a year and he is a mixed shepherd Rick is that correct okay that's what I read in it

okay so at any rate I'll tell you a little bit about cowboy as I said he was a mixed shepherd and he he'd love to he'd love to go to another ranch but if there isn't one available he'll take anything because he's been out of the ranch just a little too long And he says here that, you know, people have passed them by. They haven't said hello to him. And he's just a loving soul. And he loves children. He loves hugs.

He loves walks. And it sounds to me like as if that cowboy would be, I can see his big brown eyes right now. Oh, he just looks like a lover boy. So we are going to roll on the video. And Jonathan will take care of that. So take a listen. This is Cowboy. He's a beautiful three-year-old Shepherd mix with the softest brown, fluffy fur and sweet little black snout. Cowboy is the sweetest boy and has actually been here with us for a little over a year now,

so we're really eager to get him adopted out into a home that loves him just as much as we do. Cowboy is great with kids, so I would love to be in a family home, and he is just such a crowd-pleaser. He comes to a lot of events with us because he's so well-behaved, and everyone loves to pet his soft, pluffy fur, and he's just a great, great dog with a sweet demeanor. He was actually rescued from Georgia, and he has very little flaws. As you can see, he's just an absolute sweetheart. If anything, he can be a little vocal when he doesn't want to come in from his walk, but we'll, would love to go on any adventure with you and your family, and it's just a sweet companion, and anyone really would be so lucky to have Cowboy here.

So thank you. That's so nice. As you can see, he's just as sweet as they come. Yes, aren't you, cowboy? Just look at him. He's a treat. He's so loving. He's like a big...

So if you're interested in Cowboy, please come over to Big Dog Ranch and see him, and I'm sure you'll fall in love. Absolutely. Thank you so much. So there you have it, Cowboy. Go to Big Dog Ranch. It's very special,

and we've been affiliated with them for many years. When I say very special, they do what they do out of pure love, and care for the dogs. They are the only no-kill shelter that I know of. And one of the reasons that we are taking care and tried to help find homes for dogs like Cowboy. There are some dogs that are just not easily adoptable.

Everybody loves a cute little puppy. Puppies aren't a problem. There are certain types of breeds and types of dogs that get adopted. But some really, really good dogs like Cowboy. Cowboys only problem. only problem. He's maybe a little bigger than the average dog. And just little things like that, that we have to push because we don't ever euthanize dogs. We take dogs from the public

shelters that by law have to euthanize the animals after a certain amount of time. It can be as little as 30 days or 90 days. They call us at Big Dog Ranch, and we take the dogs. and we've been doing this for years and years, and we always find homes. And this show is an appeal to all you folks out there that care and really love dogs and would adopt a dog. Maybe that you could go to the store and buy a cute little puppy, but here's a dog that otherwise, if it weren't for Big Dog Ranch, wouldn't be with us today. And Cowboy doesn't deserve to be put to sleep, and he won't be.

He will have a home. we hope you will consider Cowboy adopting him and just as a matter this isn't an advertisement if you want to help out 100% of the proceeds of my book Big Dog Ranch Rescue

I'm holding it up now it's available on Amazon Amazon.com 100% of the proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch it takes a lot of funding for Big Dog Ranch to stay in business they have hundreds of dogs

they have to house, feed, take care, vaccinate They had a huge overhead expense. So every time you buy a book, everything, I don't get a nickel. It all goes to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. Go to Amazon.com and buy it. So you've got a how-to-do-it book, how to buy a car without being ripped off by a car dealer, and you're going to save somebody like Cowboy because he needs a home.

And Nancy will give you that information out. The Big Dog Ranch Rescue. Yes, big dog ranch rescue. dot org. Big dog ranch rescue.org And ladies and gentlemen like Earl was saying about confessions of a recovering car dealer

his book. The book's priceless. It can be put up on the shelf and taken down in six months or next year. It's filled with so much information and it's 1999 and it's not much to pay for a book. Especially as Earl said, all proceeds go to

Big Dog Branch. So go to Amazon or you can go to Earl's Book and you can make that purchase and is for definitely a great cause. Don't forget about Cowboy. Go to www. www. Big Dog Ranch Rescue.org and you can read all about him and so many others and Rick. We got a text message came in and also a message on Facebook asking, had we had

We heard the story about this fellow that bought a Ford Lightning electric pickup up in Canada, and he decided to take his family on a vacation. They fully charged up the truck. They had located chargers within range. And when they stopped first one, it charged up just fine. The next charging station, it wouldn't charge. They found another one nearby. It wouldn't charge the truck either.

They finally reached a point where they could not get the truck charged up. They towed it to a Ford dealership and had to rent a Toyota four-runner to be able to finish their vacation and go home. And they are quite displeased. apparently these charging stations had a couple of malfunctions and suddenly they were left stranded by their electric vehicle. It happens a lot, Rick.

Okay, thanks for that, Rick. I saw that text. That's an important issue. We are going to go to the Mystery Shopping Report and as I said earlier, that's from Greco Fort of Del Rey and Agent Lightning did a great job again. I want to thank Agent Lightning and Earl you can go ahead.

Yeah, the reason we dispatch Agent Lightning to Grico was because of the article that Nancy talked about earlier. Rhode Island and the Attorney General in Rhode Island had the, what is the word, the courage to go after a crooked car dealer. I mean, I can't put it more elegantly than that. He saw something that was being done wrong by the Greco dealerships in Rhode Island, and they went after this Greco dealership, and I read the article. The Attorney General's name by name is Peter Naronha, N-E-R-O-N-H-A, N-R-O-N-H-A-N-H-A, and they went after them for unfair to set be trade practices. As you know, if you're a regular list of the show,

the Graco dealerships that we shop are also guilty of that. And when I realized that this action had been taken by the Attorney General in Rhode Island, I thought that maybe, maybe the owner, the Graco family that owns these Graco dealerships. They're a large group, by the way. They have, I got to believe, a couple dozen dealerships. They had dealerships in Florida, Rhode Island,

several other states. So they're a large chain privately owned by the Grico family. So I dispatched Agent Lightning to a local Graco dealership to say, hey, maybe that'll help because when you get spanked and you get fined and you get embarrassed, the negative publicity and all that, you would think that the Gricos would say, hey, let's get our act together and be sure that this doesn't happen again. Well, one of the problems is, we have Ashley Moody for Attorney General, and she hasn't been very active in going after any car dealers. Well, I won't say that.

There was a little issue in Fort Lauderdale that she addressed about a year ago. But she's been really delinquent, in my opinion, in going after car dealers to keep them obeying Florida laws. So here's our mystery shopping report of Grico Ford in Delray, Ford. Florida. Speaking of the first person is if I were Agent Lightning are unbelievably cool and subtle and clever Mr. Shopper. I arrived at the dealership of the mid-afternoon and stood of the front desk waiting for a few minutes for the customer service lady to say something to me. She just sat there looking at me blankly, feeling a bit frustrated. I asked her, do I need to talk to you to get someone to help me buy a new truck? She glanced around and mumbled something about

someone being able to assist me, but it was evident that she didn't want to be bothered. Again, if you just tuned in, this is a mystery shop of Greco Ford in Delray, Florida. Decided to take matters into my own hand, I walked over to the truck I thought I saw online. After examining it for a few minutes, a young salesman named Huntley approached me and took my hand and shook my hand while introducing himself. I showed him the ad and asked him if this was the truck in the offer. So this is, we responded to this ad.

I'll hold it up for the camera. Advertised truck. And we responded directly to that advertisement. Ford F-150. And if you're not watching this or streaming it, it said, Grico's sale price, $42,783.

It says it's a $3,872 savings and $7,900 off MSRP. Now that's the promise in the written advertisement. So I responded to that. Salesman informed me that it wasn't this vehicle, but the one

had some modifications to it, such as larger tire rims. The one I wanted was upstairs in their parking garage if I wanted to see it. So while we were riding up the elevator to the parking garage, he explained that sales specials usually consist of incentives or rebates

that may or not be applicable to my situation. Now that's kind of like a confession. You're you walk into a store to buy something and say, well, there's something I explained to you that the price is not really the price. But that's what he said. So he said there's certain discounts that I might not,

might not work for me. I mean, like maybe I'm not a veteran, maybe not I'm not a college graduate, maybe I'm not a farmer, maybe I'm not a member of this credit union. I mean, it's ridiculous that they do this and then it's almost as ridiculous that they confess it, but they did. I knowledge that this was a hmm and continued up to see the truck. Unfortunately, when we arrived, he realized that the keys were downstairs, so we had to go back down and retrieve them. In the meantime, I decided to explore the truck, a beautiful blue Ford F-150. The window sticker, I think, is the number one selling a vehicle of the world, Ford F-150. A window sticker showed an MSRP of $46,665.

Next to that was an addendum sucker. Here we go. The addendum sticker that raised the price to $57,153. That's a lot of cabbage. Over $10,000. So here's how we arrive at the inflated price. MSRP, as I said, was $46,655 for the Ford F-150. The Grieco VIP Advantage.

I love that terminology. VIP advantage. All weather mats, wheel locks, clear door handle inserts, select protection bundle. And for that bunch of garbage, can we say $4,000? $3,999. But wait, there's more. Something called Recover, but R-E-C-O-V-R. and that's apparently a locate your vehicle anytime that's probably a GPS device

for $1,499 you know you can buy a what's the apple of find me cost air tags for $99 yeah so you can get an air tag which does exactly what recover does for $99 or you can pay $1,49 for this recover But wait, there's more. Added markup, $5,000, wham. Just because. Total price. $57,000, they were up over $10,000 more than the MSRP.

And the ad, as you will remember, said, gave you that it was off the MSRP. When Hully returned, I pointed out the marked-up price on the window sticker with concern, and he assured me that they would take good care of me. me. Yeah, they're only going to take good care of you. We sat at a desk and Huntley inquired whether I would be financing or paying in cash. I explained that it depended on rebates and rates and I'd like to see both options if possible. He asked me to fill out an information form and excuse himself to consult with the sales managers. Return it with two sheets, one for cash and the other for financing. To my surprise, the finance price was significantly

lower than the cash option, but both were much higher than the price online. Now, the motive there, if the finance price was lower, that's because you're going to nail you big time, and the financing would be my guess. Here's the finance price, adding electronic filing fee, dealer dock fee, et cetera, et cetera. the cash price, they're adding the Greco Pro Package, they're adding electronic filing, the dealer dock, these are all junk fees, DMV. He couldn't provide a reason for the discrepancy and asked, I know what is going to say. That's because we could lay away in the finance department and make thousands of dollars, and so we can make more money if you finance the car

and if you pay cash, so we don't have to market up as much. No, he's not going to say that. I express my concern about the online pricing not matching up, ensuring him again the advertised price of $42,0783. The Federal Trade Commission, it's federal law. In Florida, in most states, it's state law that you have to sell the product at the advertised price. His only suggestion was that for me to go to the financing department, have them run my credit,

and obtain the best available discounts based on my zip code. Now, that really got my attention because that is another federal violation. You can't charge a person more interest because of his neighborhood. I mean, this is discrimination in its worst, most stinking form. to say if someone lives in a quote, unquote, bad neighborhood, so we're going to charge you more interest, that is a serious, serious violation. Salesman confessed right there in the dealership. I then inquired about the online savings of up to $7,900 off, advertised, and Huntley explained that it was only for a specific platinum supercru model, not all of them. And it didn't say that in the end.

Feeling uneasy about the situation, I informed him that I wasn't comfortable proceeding and left the dealership. So there we have, we have documentation, copies of all the things that I just read from Agent Lightning's report. And here we have a Greco dealership that's doing the same thing, if not worse,

of the one in Rhode Island, that was nabbed by the Attorney General of Rhode Island. Rhode Island. So, Ashley Moody, Attorney General of Florida, what say you? I think you're going to be pretty quiet about this. The automobile dealers associations, national and state association, the individual automobile dealers are heavy, heavy lobbyists in Florida. And if you want to get elected, Attorney General for the state of Florida, Ashley, you know you have to play ball with the car dealers. And that's what you're doing. You're playing ball with the car dealers. Again, I congratulate the general, the attorney general of Rhode Island for having a nerve to go after car dealers and for slapping down Greco.

And what do I do with Greco? Do I congratulate him and have the nerve to ignore the Rhode Island lawsuit and the half a million dollar plus fine? Because you know you can get away with it in Florida because of Ashley Moody? Maybe. Okay, there we have a report. We have to vote on the report. I know that. I have a question for you.

This attorney general in Rhode Island, would you say there's a handful of attorney generals? Would you say there's a handful of attorney generals that, well, give us some hope, you know, that they will do what they're supposed to do and come down on these dealers? I think New York has got a pretty good attorney general, and now we know Rhode Island does. I'm not sure about I can't name others, but there are Attorney General's in some states a handful, as you say, that do the right thing when it comes

to protecting their state residents from about this reputable car dealers. There is some hope. Ladies and gentlemen, don't forget, we would love to hear from you, so vote on this mystery shopping report from Greg O'Ford of Del Rey, and you can do that at

772-497-6-5-0-0-0-0. Now we're going to go to Rick. They are coming in. Negan 1 says, I'm going to add addendum of F, F, F, F, F, F. Ah, let's see. Kirk in West Buy, God, Virginia, Grico Ford,

yet another deceptive dealer and discriminatory to boot. I'll take it as the advertised price only. Liar, liar, Pants on Fire, Griko. Equals a solid F. Mark Smith, deception equals an

F from me Let's see We'll go with Mark says You had me at hello Not Jello F F F

See Tell the guy Oh And that was on another one Even Toyota advertises Military and College discounts On their website Yeah but

They don't say you have to have All the discounts just to get an advertised price. Let's see. This one coming in anonymous says Big Fat F. Bob says F for Greco Ford, stay away from them. We are going now to Joseph Kelleher. For all the fees of markups, I say F.

Mark Anderson says, Grico is Stinko. Great F. Great F. Tim Gilliland, Grico sounds like the Disneyland of car buying disappointment. F-minus. Johnny Z. Freightly, something tells me Griko and Napleton are golf buddies. I wouldn't be surprised. That's beautiful. I don't know. Maybe they would be afraid to play with each other. I just don't make that odd.

Which one's going to keep score? Donovan says, total F for Grico. Knock it off with the markups already. Brian Siddletko, one word, unbelievable, F. Baby boomer, F plus. And for myself, it's an F. And we don't get on F that loosely. I'm going to go with an F too.

I rarely give an F because I keep talking about grading on the curb. But this is bad from a double. perspective you know that the upper management of Greco Ford knew about the slap I won't say the slap more like a stab of the Rhode Island Attorney General with the Greco stores in Rhode Island they had to know about that I mean if they did nothing more than read the paper you know if they saw it you know in the news it was big news now they knew that and yet they did not modify their their operation at all and the only reason they

would do that because the upper management has a responsibility to protect the dealership, they must not have felt any threat from Ashley Moody, the Attorney General of the state of Florida. And she knows that she has the support of the Florida Automobile Dealers Association and all the dealers in Florida and the National Automobile Deals Association. So you can't get elected Attorney General. I guarantee you Ashley Moody will be running for Attorney General again and again. I don't know how many times what the term limit is on Attorney General's, but I know they go for several.

And so she will continue to run until she can no longer run, and she will always have the support of the Cardinals. There's something wrong with this picture. So I appeal to the regulators out there in anyone in authority to, you know, I wonder why I either don't get sued or arrested, or why do we just get ignored? I don't know. Because they can't arrest you if you haven't done anything wrong, but they can ignore you. Yeah, that's true.

You're exactly right. Okay. Attorney General. If we have a minute. Ashley Moody, I'd like to tell you that, you know, maybe you can take some pointers from the attorney. Attorney General out there in Rhode Island, that's Attorney General Peter F. Norana. Before we sign off, can I say one thing here? This is something that I thought was highly important because of the high insurance cost. A Rivian pickup truck was in the fender bender,

and they were ruined it. Something that would normally be about an $1,800 repair. And this Rivian, that's an electric vehicle, the cost of the repair was $42,000. And the reason being it was an electric vehicle and the technology of the way the electric vehicles are built with the batteries, etc. So just a heads up on you folks out there that are buying electric vehicles. I'm a big advocate of electric vehicles. Nancy and I drive a Tesla, but I'm just saying that cost insurance are going way up. And one of the reasons they're going up is because of this situation with electric vehicles. electric vehicles. I hadn't heard of this before, but a fender bender, $42,000 repair on Arriving. Absolutely outrageous. Folks, thanks for joining us. My vote for Greg O'Pourde of Del Rey

is definitely NF. Thank you for joining us this morning. We definitely enjoy your company. You Make the Show. We'll see you right back here next Saturday morning, 8 a.m. Have a great weekend. Thank you.