Earl Stewart on Cars - 08.21.2021 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Mazda of Palm Beach

Episode Date: August 21, 2021

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits Mazda of Palm Beach to see what kind of deal she can get on a new 2021 Mazda 3 sedan. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Good morning, everybody. Wow, I didn't even know we were on the air. Thanks for the heads up, Jonathan. I hope that wasn't too big a lapse. Dead air is not a good thing. My name is Earl, Earl Stewart. and this is the Earl on Cars, Earl Strew and Car Show. You just heard a recording, and I was yacking about my key

and talking to Rick Kearney, our technical expert here on the show. So I'm hoping most of you heard everything about our introduction. We're here to help you buy, lease, maintain, or repair your car without being ripped off by a car dealer in a nutshell. So I've got a lot of regular listeners. And every week, we hope we get a bunch of new listeners. And I say listeners, I'm talking viewers too, because we're all over cyberspace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. And if you need to contact us any way, shape, or form, we have all sorts of various avenues.

And, of course, good or reliable, the one we kind of like, from a personal standpoint, because personality comes through on the telephone. So, you know, I never thought I'd be thinking of a telephone as an old-fashioned thing, but it is. And the number, if you want to call on the old-fashioned telephone, is 877-960-99-60. That's 877-960-99-60. I'd love to hear from you. And in a minute I'm going to introduce Nancy Stewart, my co-host, and she'll tell you about a very special incentive. for our female callers. Now we can also have an old-fashioned text line.

You know I go again. Not as old-fashioned as telephones, but I'm a texter and I prefer text to phone calls personally. I prefer to Facebook Messenger and other forms of communication but you got Snapchat and you got all that other stuff out there. Here's the old-fashioned text number. Very code 772-497 6530. That goes right to us, and that's dedicated to the show.

Earl on Cars.com. That's who we are, Earl Stewart on Cars. That text number again is 772 4976530. So, we like your questions. It kind of is the heart of the show.

We say you make the show. We're not just saying that to flatter you out there because let me tell you, We're on until 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. And it was just us in the studio here. And by us, I mean, Rick Kearney, he's a certified diagnostic master technician, answer any technical questions about cars. And we've got Stu Stewart, who is my son,

a general manager of my dealership. I do have a car dealership. This is not an infomercial, I hasten to add. but he's kind of like the hands-on guy that in the trenches every day he sees the car business in the 21st century and in the current situation

of a pandemic and he gives us a reality check on everything we talk about on this show because everything's changing and the car business is changing very fast and we got Nancy Stewart I mentioned a little earlier

she's not only my wife for many years but she's the founder of this show with me back 20 years ago. That's many too, right? We start out at a half an hour. I think the name was always Earl on Cars, and we just expanded. We went from a half hour to an hour, and now we're two hours. So I digressed a little bit. The point being, we just can't chat among ourselves for two hours. We need your calls. And if you will call, very code 877-960-9960. 877-960-9960, we will prioritize that call.

Nancy is monitoring the incoming calls, and we have a control room, and we go to Nancy's PC laptop. When she sees a telephone call, no matter what we're doing, we stop it, and we take the telephone call. Now, we also monitor another, and I looked it for last, but it's actually a most popular form of communication. And it's an anonymous feedback line that is a web address,

and the web address is just www. Your, Y-O-U-R-Y-O-U-R, Anonymous, A-N-O-N-Y-M-U-S. Feedback, just the way it sounds.com, Youranonymous Feedback.com. We get a large number of feedbacks on that. And I'm, you know, I'm through trying to figure out why. I guess people like their privacy, and, you know, you don't like to be annoyed. So you say your peace, and no one's going to follow up and try to sell you anything or argue with you.

You just shoot it out there, and bam, it's in cyberspace. We see it. We don't know who you are. We don't know anything about you. And it's very popular. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We love to hear questions. That's our favorite. If you have something that you know that we don't know, and a lot of you do, we have some extremely smart people out there, and there's not a week goes by that we don't learn something from our callers. But the questions are good, too, because your question, even though you don't think it's a rocket science question, it's probably something on the minds of hundreds or maybe thousands of people. Some people are embarrassed. Some people don't like to ask questions. Some people think, but if I ask a question,

I'm dumb. You're not dumb. Trust me. This car business is a minefield, and the car dealers are very clever. We'll get into this later in the show about why and how they do it, but let me tell you, when you're buying a car, you've got to have some help, and that's what we're here for. We're here to help you. So, I'm going to turn the microphone over to Nancy Stewart, and she will tell you about what you could do if you're a woman, female caller, that will be a real pleasant surprise to Zemma if you haven't heard the show before. But, Nancy, tell them all about it. I will.

I like that little tilt you have in your hat this morning. Oh, thank you. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, ladies. Would you like to share a purchasing or service experience with us? We would love to hear from you. The first two new lady callers can win yourself $50 this morning. You don't have to share a purchasing or servicing experience.

You can just give us a call and say hello, and maybe you have some advice for us. 877-960-99-60. Give us a call. 877-960-99-60. We would love to hear from you, and I'd love for you to help me. build the platform here for the ladies. Let me assure you, there's no catch or gimmick. Usually, if you listen to a free offer,

you hear, well, there's no such thing as a free launch, and people out there maybe haven't heard the show before women, say, I'm not going to call that show for 50 bucks. Nobody gives me 50 bucks. There's always a string. There's no string. There's no conditions. If you're female and you call the show

and you haven't called the show before, that's the conditions. You just have to be a female and call the show. We're doing that to build the female listeners, and we've done a great job. Nancy's done the job, and we have a huge number compared to where we started, which was zero,

and we're trying to hit parity 50-50. So no conditions, 50 bucks, please believe us, if you haven't called the show before, and you're a female. Back to you. Yes, absolutely. And we'd like to hear from everyone

and how they were able to take control when they walked into a dealership, whether it be service, whether it be purchasing, leasing, anything at all. Again, that number, 877-960. And don't forget, you can text us at 772-497-650. And if you want to remain anonymous, please do so at www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Now I'll hand it back to Earl. Okay, and I'm just going to go to Stu Stewart and a second. I have to interrupt everyone because we have a phone call. Oh, great. And Howard is holding.

Howard is one of our regular callers from Jupiter. Good morning, Howard. You there, Howard? Yo, Howard. Don't hear Howard. Hey, Howard. If we got disconnected, just give us a call back. We'll look for your call back to think Rick's got some...

Yeah, Rick. I'm going to introduce Rick again, then he's got a YouTube, right? We do? And I just want you to remember if you have any kind of question about something with your car, do I need to get this fixed? Is this dangerous? Maybe I can fix it myself. Maybe I should sell the car because it might do... All these questions.

Squeak, rattle roll, smell, vibration, something that you're nervous about, but you just don't want to go into that car dealer and get hosed. So you call Rick. Maybe he can save you some money. And Rick, what's that YouTube got to say? We have Rico West is asking,

Hey, Earl, do you think the manufacturers have learned their lesson regarding the shortage of microchips? Well, I think some of them have, Some of them haven't. And, of course, I don't think anybody learned a lesson about the pandemic effect on the world. Any sort of a worldwide thing is hard to anticipate. So nobody guessed that. And I don't blame anybody for getting caught, pardon the expression with their pants down during the microchip shortage.

Microchips are something that we use and everything. It's in your watches. I started to say your shoes. they probably are in the shoes. I bet they are. Everything you build now is got a microchip, but nobody even knew what a microchip was, most people. And suddenly, with this worldwide surge in demand,

and the microchip suppliers supply everybody in the world, and yeah, we're short of microchips. Probably won't happen again, but the first time I don't blame anybody. Well, you say even in your shoes, look how many, no, seriously, look how many people have special, their shoes are connecting

into their watches and their phones for fitness reports as to how they're doing with running and walking and all this yeah there's microchips in there the shoes that light up when you step on them the ones that the kids have those have got a microchip

okay all right simple as it is it's there so you call Rick you call Nancy and you call the show now let's go to my son Stu

he's in charge of our undercover operation, our cyber undercover agent that goes out every week. And he's also a hands-on guy in the real live world of today automobile dealership. And he runs our dealership, and he is on top of things. So, Sue, how are we doing? Well, it's good to be back. I took a little break at a little vacation in the meantime.

My substitute, Josh, I hope he did. well. I don't know. I didn't watch any of the old shows. Yeah, I think he watched your job. He was the only... Oh, really? Yeah. Well, maybe we can set up a rotation or something like that. That would be nice. It's kind of early for me. If you're tired, don't worry about it. Josh will be back. I'm only kidding. We miss you. We missed you.

No, it was good to get back into the swing doing the mystery shopping reports. Yeah, like you said, it's great information for the show, but... Oh, we got a caller? Yeah, Howard. I'm sorry, Stuart. Howard is back. Welcome back. Howard. I'm glad you called. Good morning. Thank you for taking my call.

Help all of you are fine. And my question is about the 2022 model of Camry that I'm interested in. I guess they're out by now. Is that correct? Yes. How are they different than the 2021? Not different at all. They're just the same body style.

I could be wrong. There might be a small detail here and there. that they might have changed, usually they'll do that between. You know, always little stuff, yeah. But nothing major, same engine, you know, same option packages, same gas mileage. Okay, it started in 2018, correct? It's the same model in 2018, and that was 2022. Yeah.

So how has the camera been improved since 2018 or has it? Well, it's the same body style, so any changes are just typically cosmetic. Toyota and most manufacturers used to do a five-year product cycle with cars and a little bit longer on trucks and SUVs. But they kind of mixed that up in the last decade. Like we've had, I remember we had two different model cameras in 2014. We had the 2014 and the 2014 and a half, and then the change in 2015 again. So it was just Toyota reacting to some of the competitive pressures on design. Steve, let me jump in there a little bit.

You know, when we talk about changes from a 20, 21, 22, we talk about features that options and accessories and things like that, safety items. Every car that comes out, Hondas, Subarus, whatever they are, the first year and the third year of that same car are are quite different in terms of changes that you maybe don't even know about. what happens when you build a car today, I don't care who the manufacturer is, they're glitches. And we see them in the car dealerships, and sometimes they're not advertised and you don't know about them. But I always recommend, if you can, take the latest model car, if you're going to buy a new car, buy the latest model. You won't find any 2020 new cameras, but you'll probably find out 20-20-1s, maybe that. that many during the shortage. But go with the current model. The current model, even though you don't have the major changes, you have the kinks are out. Right, Rick? I mean,

you know, you see the technical service bulletins and you see people bring things in sometimes on recalls. In two or three years, that's pretty much washed out. And you get yourself a good reliable car. So I'm sorry, Stuart. I didn't mean to interrupt. Oh, that's okay. Yeah, but I think you made the point right there. It's not really a major thing. So usually when you to see there's a big model, the model changes. That's when you see the major changes to the, you know, the more important things like engine and size and design. What's on the horizon for the 2023?

I don't know. They kind of keep that close to the vest. We don't give us a lot of sneak, a lot of leeway time when we get to sneak. We read about the newspaper like you do. Most of the time it is. Somebody leaks it and it's in, it comes out in like Motor Trend or somebody puts a picture on the internet. It's usually within a couple of months of a launch.

They will give us, like, sneak peeks at dealer meetings. They have one, and I don't know if they're going to keep doing it. It's scheduled for Las Vegas. I don't know if they're going to do with COVID. But they'll show, they'll have the car show, and they'll roll them out on stage. Sometimes they're not even real cars. They might not be an engine, and they'll roll them out with wheels, and they'll show a concept or a close-to-production design.

Howard, they don't like car dealers to speak out about things. And, you know, if they have a new model and they share it with the dealers, If a dealer shows that to somebody, like in the press, they get criticized. And I get criticized a lot because I get a lot of calls from reporters. I had a Time magazine reporter called me two days ago. And I get calls from the media because I guess I've been around a long time. And I've been admonished on more than one occasion when they thought I was blabbing something to the press. So, yeah, we have to.

When we do find something out, we're not supposed to tell. you. But it's usually in the press because no one pays attention to it. And you read about the new developments. And I'll have my customer call, oh, I hear the Camry's got this. Oh, I hadn't heard that. And then I call Toyota to find out for sure. Is it true that the Camry picks up from the Lexus, if something's, you know, an option on the Lexus? Yeah, we see that a lot. Camry will pick it up. Is that correct? We always, yeah, they always let the, especially on the luxury features, they usually will put them on the Lexus first, and then we'll see it, you know, a model or two later, or usually the next model. Okay, you know what, I'm interested, I don't know if there's a possibility that's Toyota.

I know certain luxury cars at the availability is if you're getting, you're driving, let's say, 50 miles an hour, and you're getting too close to another car on the right, it pulls you away. Yes. Does Camry or Toyota have that feature yet? They have it with a lane trace assist and lane keep assist. I don't think it works directly with the car. I think it's just with the lane. Rick has his finger up. What you're talking about is the adaptive cruise control, the radar cruise.

Yeah, we have. And every model of Toyota right now has that available. If a vehicle moves close to you, it's not going to move you away. No, I thought you meant if you're coming up behind them in a lane. Oh, yeah, adjust your speed and we'll adjust your speed. Now, a vehicle approaching from the side, it won't adjust for that. But if you start drifting towards the edge of the lane, the lane marker, or out of the lane, it will pull you back into the lane.

And we're talking autonomous cars. That's part of an autonomous car. We take it for granted now. It's been out for a long time. And they're kind of creeping up. And one day you want to walk out and sloatling, the whole damn car is going to be autonomous. It's not going to happen overnight. I can't wait.

But it is just a matter of time. And that's why you... I have a question for you, Stu, in reference to what Howard mentioned about the 2018 to the cars now, is there been a great advancement in the safety features from the Camry 2018 to today? No, Toyota started, and I know that Earl will not want me to turn this into a Toyota commercial, but I think every manufacturer has their own version of this. Toyota calls it Toyota Safety Sense 2.0. And they began introducing, as standard equipment, all the latest technological safety features.

And now, not every car got all of them, but as we've moved along between 2018 and now, and I couldn't be 100% sure what year it was, but pretty much right now, and I'm just talking about the Camry, just about everything offered safety-wise is on the car as a standard feature. There are some things that you move, can you move up to that they consider luxury safety features like Bird's Eye View, where you can see all around the car, and that's not standard on every car. But basically all the important safety features, and I'm going to probably go out and live and say most manufacturers have these as standard equipment right now because it's insane not to.

That's interesting. You're using the word standard, so that's a great, great feature when you purchase. Yeah, a few weeks ago we were on the show we were talking about. I remember when side airbags were an option on the car, and I was a salesperson at the time, and it was hard to, actually convince people to spend $700 to upgrade, you know, and get side airbags, even though it seemed like it was such a good idea, but now the manufacturers got with it. Howard, thanks very much for the call. You always have some interesting questions that everybody has on their mind,

and I hope we answered all of them for you. Yes, you did, and keep safe. Thank you. You too, my friend. Have a great weekend, Howard. Always nice hearing from you. 877-960-99-60 or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Don't forget Earl's Vigilantes. We love our volunteers and we're still looking for more and you can go to Earl on Cars and you can take a look and sign up. We also would like to, well, gather more volunteers for our seniors helping them to maneuver you know, the internet, and there's a lot of purchasing power right there. So go to Roan cars.

And the free hat. And Earl is wearing the free hat. Very. Ridgelani hat. So you can go there and sign up and help us out. 877-960. I think we're going to go back to Stu. Yeah, we got our first text of the day is from Anne-Marie. Hi, Anne-Marie.

Hi, Anne-Marie. She says, in normal times, Are there any aftermarket modifications to a vehicle that will increase its value other than it being owned by a celebrity? The only thing I can think of is leather, honestly. I don't see, like, you can upgrade wheels and do all sorts of stuff, to put spoilers on it, but that actually kind of limits the audience that a reseller has a chance of selling it to. You have to be careful because if it's an after-the-fact addition, they're very suspect. And with leather, as Steve said, that's an exception because after market leather, if it's a good company, they do a good job, it really enhances the value.

But most of the dealer-installed stuff is pure junk, and be careful about adding anything to a car that you think is going to help enhance the value. Like even replacing, we've experienced this before in the past, you know, somebody's replaced the factory radio or headset with it with an upgraded one, with a fancy one. and it might have cost them a lot of money, but then you have somebody looking at the car considering buying it later and wondering about the installation or the warranty and it just keep it simple and don't over-modify your car

because you're not going to get value for it. Yeah, it really gets you in a whole lot of trouble. Excuse me, Stu, we're going to go back to the phones. We're going to go to Minnesota where Bob is calling us. Good morning, Bob. Good morning. Welcome. How were you?

I was talking to my local toilet dealership yesterday and looking at ordering in Camry. And he said they're no longer ordering cars because the plants are shut down in this country. Is that true? No, it's not true. Toyota did announce that they are cutting back production in North America by 40 percent, and that's going to affect availability. Availability is already affected. I mean, if they're telling you they have very few new cars,

they're probably telling you the truth. But, no, they haven't shut down entirely. You know, our dealership, we're taking orders. It just takes longer to fill them now with the shortages. Well, they won't even take an order up here. They said, don't bother giving us an order because we're not going to, you know, I could get the car this year. I don't know what your options are,

but I would definitely contact a different Toyota dealership. Okay, I just thought I'd check on exit. No surprise. Yeah, how many Toyota dealerships in your town? We're in Minnesota. Do you live? St. Paul, Minneapolis, so they get quite a few dealership here. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I'd make a go online or make a few calls. Online is the name of the game, but get online, and you could even go to AutoTrader and put in 2021, 22, Camry, and that will show all of the new vehicles at different dealers based on zip code. So the best thing for you to do is get a price online and then go back to one of your local dealers and see if they'll match it. And if they can't, then you just have to make the trip. Sometimes the dealers are delivering cars now, so.

The shortage, interestingly enough, and this is very strange, but the vehicle shortage of all vehicles is greater in terms of supply and demand than we've seen in a long, long time. And yet, the total sales are extremely high. And the profits to the individual dealers, are even higher than that. And the profits to the manufacturers are even higher than that. So all the grief that you read about,

the shortages, the microchip, the fact of the matter is, cars are selling like hotcakes. And at our dealership, we've got about 30 cars on our lot. Typically, this time of year, we'd have 300 cars on the lot. And yet, we're still selling more cars than we've ever sold before. But you say, how is that possible? Well, we sold the cars today that work there

They're going to be coming in in two months or three months or 30 days. And every time a truck comes in, there's still a lot of trucks coming in, but every time one comes in and unloads, the customer that bought that two months ago is waiting to pick it up and take it home. So it's a very interesting. I've never seen this before. And I've never seen... It's almost like we're Tesla now.

Yeah, it's not. I mean, is it a car shortage when you're selling a lot of cars? I mean, everybody's selling a lot of cars. It's unusual time, for sure. Yeah, very crazy. Well, Bob, I hope he answers your question. Yes, I have one more comment to make. I'm concerned about the Chinese problems right now with the

owning, they're going to be owning Afghanistan and all the electric cars are coming out in 2030. That's been a requirement. And they're going to take over the entire market, aren't they? No, I, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, The Chinese are great manufacturers. They build things cheap, and cheap in the good sense. They're manufacturing as quality,

and because the people get paid very little and they're efficient. I mean, I've got to say that too. They do that very well. But in terms of design and engineering, the Germans, the United States, really are the leaders in that category. So the Chinese have very few cars that I know of that are popular anywhere else in the world except China. And although a lot of cars are sold in China,

these are cars like Tesla. You mentioned somebody who had made earlier that are manufactured there. So they don't design and engineer cars as well as we do. I guess what I was referring to, they're going into Afghanistan. they're going to control all the mineral rights in Afghanistan. And that's where all you got your lithium batteries.

I haven't heard that. I didn't read that. But that's an interesting point. I'll Google it. Yeah, it came up the last few days that they got Afghanistan now. They're going to move in there and have all the mineral rates. And they're going to be providing all the batteries for the whole world. Yeah.

I would fact check that if I were you about. I'm not sure about that, but I'll definitely invest. I'll put that on snope.com, S-N-O-P-E-S dot com. That's a good fact-checker. And you might Google that and get some cooperation. But frankly, I'd be surprised if that were factual. But there's so much fake news out there, sometimes it's not fake. So something you need to double check on. I'll do that and report. back on the show what I find. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Great call from Minnesota. Yeah, thank you, Bob. Stay in touch. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530, and don't forget to take advantage of Your Anonymous Feedback.com.

I have a question real quick. It's about the cyber truck, and I'm curious about the cyber truck. I think I'd like to drive it. Rick. The windows break too easy for me. Pardon me? Pardon me? The windows break too easy for me.

I wouldn't want that one. You need some thicker and tougher. It's really, this styling is very interesting. And I was just wondering what kind of safety features, if you knew what kind of safety features it has. They have released nothing about that. Nothing? I couldn't find anything.

It won't be around. for two years. So if you order one. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I just, the information is very limited. But I wonder how many ladies, if they could, would drive it. Interesting. Interesting thought. Did you know our neighbor ordered one, Russell Bourne? Yes, he did. But I wonder if Nancy would drive that. At any rate, we're going to go back to the phones where we're going to be talking to Marty. Good morning, Marty. morning how are you well thank you my wife leased we got rid of the car ready but a 2019 camry s e and we had to buy a little better model to get the blind spot monitor so the first thing i want me ask is did they make that on all the camrys now the blind spot monitor standard already still have to get to get to a little better model for that i have to look that up marty let me give me a minute um do you have another question while i look that up yeah now on my camry i've got a i've got an xylee that was the

top of the line of 2020 i've got a feature on mine which i know is not standard but and i'm not talking about just rear cross traffic alert if you're backing up and somebody really gets in back of the car the brake goes on by itself right that's the pedestrian um and that stops the car going in reverse so i mean that's a good feature but i mean on my camry i have a 2020 i happen to like it because the screen is right in the dash i don't particularly like the uh iPad look on the newer ones. I think that's the only cosmetic thing that I really notice

on a newer Camry is that everything is more like you get an iPad sticking up in the front. But as far as the blind spot monitor, I think that should be standard on every car. I wouldn't buy a car without it, Marty. I think that's almost... That should be like ABS brakes.

They should have that as required on every car. It's saved me. many times. Yeah, since I didn't hear the beginning of the show, did you get your Tesla yet? I don't think so. No, the Tesla hasn't come in yet. I'm starting to get, you know what I'm thinking about doing? You paid for it?

I'm thinking about, I'm thinking about contacting an attorney and having an attorney write Tesla. I paid for that car three weeks ago, 100%. They have all my money, and they've been telling me I'm going to get the car in three days for the past three weeks. And every three days, they move it up another day. And they have my money. They won't talk to me. They won't return my phone calls.

They won't return my text. And they got my money. So it's starting to irritate me a little bit. Yeah. Now, I just heard this. I don't know if this was on the news, and I'm sure you heard about it, but somebody had the automatic driving on a Tesla.

And I think the guy either dropped his phone or something. Yeah, I read that. and the car hit into somebody and killed somebody. Yeah. I mean, you know, I thought the car's supposed to stop on its own, too. Yeah, I can speak to that real quick because I'm going to have to help train Earl when his gets in, make sure he is completely safe.

The underlying rule at this point in time with that kind of autonomy is don't trust the car. It's still an incredible amazing thing. I drove up to Orlando and back on all autopilot, It's really cool, but you have to, it's just something that's assisting you, because it does weird things sometimes. It'll suddenly stop or swerve, so you have to have your hands on the wheel. I was just going to ask you that, Sto, where your hands on the wheel. My hands are, well, one hand is.

It's important that it is. Yeah, it just asks you every minute to wiggle the wheel to make sure that you're paying attention. After all the reading that I did. Yeah, but it will do some strange things. So I think anybody who gets to an accident with the autopilot on the Tesla is probably doing something your responsible. Exactly. And also, Let me ask you up.

Well, real quick, I have the Toyota Safety Sense 2.5 is the Toyota suite of safety equipment, and all the Camrys have that, and that includes the lane departure alert and lane keep assist. In the blind spot? Yeah, that's what that is. The blind spot monitor is the lane departure alert. Oh, yeah. And also it beeps when somebody comes into the turning when you're about to change lanes.

Okay. So that is different than the current than older. camera. Yes, yes. Because right now, if somebody comes into your blind spot and say you're getting ready to turn, it doesn't beep. Yeah. Well, I do know on the LE, it's part of a package for the XSD and the XLE. It's standard. So I do think, yeah, there's a package, but it's available on it. You don't have to go up to the higher model. You just have to get a package with their blind spot on there. Yeah. I test drove a Tesla Y, and I don't know if the one you have did the same thing, but if you take your foot

off, I'll call it the gas. I don't know if it's really the gas or you call it the motor. Just accelerator. But the accelerator, yeah. The car itself started slowing down. It didn't, like, it just didn't cost like a regular car.

Yeah, all Tesla do that. That's like the automatic braking and that's, you can actually drive a Tesla without ever touching the brake. I mean, you could stop all the time just by taking your foot off the accelerator. That's a setting you can adjust, though. If you're not comfortable with it, you can adjust it to where it rolls,

and it feels more like a regular car. Oh, okay. I just wondered if there is an adjustable adjustment. It's really cool. I'm sick at the camera. I'm sick at the cameras. Well, I got some good news for the Camry. The Ling Trace Assist, which is part of that package,

is almost as good as the Tesla autopilot. It does almost all the same stuff. Yeah. I'm going to save my money and stick the cameras. There you go. Thanks, Marty. It's a great car. Have a good one.

Thank you, Marty. You know, let me jump in here. And we love Marty and we love people talking about their cars. But I get nervous. Stu sees me squirm when we start talking on and on about Toyota's because we're Toyota dealers. And I don't want people thinking this is an infomercial. But the same token, when someone ask the question, we're obligated to answer it. But I just, if you have a Honda, if you have a Chevrolet, if you have a Lamborghini, we love to hear from you, too.

I don't care what you're driving. Any Saturn's out there? I love to hear. Are any Saturn still on the road? I like to hear from a Saturn. I see them. I haven't seen one. I see Saturn in a while.

But, yeah, we do not try to sell you any cars on this show. Except for Toytas and Tesla's. That's what we talk about. It just seems to be, you know, it's out there. one's interested in what a great product the Camry is and the Honda is we've had we've had our audience call about the Saab which has been discontinued so it's just a matter of curiosity and our listeners our callers are interested in the information at any rate we're going to stay with the phones and we're going to go to Don who's calling us from Palm

gardens. Good morning, Dawn. Good morning. I called a couple times before, but since you're talking about a Tesla, I've owned four of them, our fifth ones on order. I don't know why Earl's having that trouble. I have not, in the four that I bought, and they told me a delivery date, it was usually within a day or two. Yeah. And I just, I just, we ordered a flat, we're trading in X on a plaid. I'll give you, I'm a semi-retired race car driver, so I like speed. All my

Tesel have been insane or ludicrous or now with the plaid model. Anyway, we ordered that three weeks ago, and as Earl knows, you have to custom build your car, so they're not in stock. They build them. And we're taking delivery on this plaid today at

1.30. Oh, my. Why are you getting yours? I'm not getting mine. I don't know. I don't know. I don't understand that. But I've got to agree with you on one thing. Elon better tighten up to the ship

because I'm a good customer. I also have two cyber trucks on our. Well, put in a good word for me, will you? Don, let me ask you this, Don, do you have the full, does you get the fully autonomous feature on your plaid? Yes, I pay for it.

And I got that of mine. And I have had mine paid for, and they keep, the delivery date now, what is today, the 21st, the delivery date is 21st, 22nd, or 23rd. Yeah. And it ain't going to happen.com. And then tomorrow it'll be the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th, and they keep moving me forward. So I don't know. I don't understand that because my neighbor, he ordered one the same time we did, and he ordered a gray one, I ordered a white one. His is sitting on the lot over there.

Well, maybe you're right. Mine's red. That's a special red. And maybe that's it. I don't know. Don, how was your process, Don, was it completely smooth? It was great. I have never had a problem except not our customer service went totally to hell.

I went in there yesterday on another issue and see where my neighbors was doing. And while there's three people sitting behind computers there, they're all young genius, you know. And they have no idea how to treat the customer. I was the only one in the showroom that's bare. It's like, have you been in there? Not a long time. Are you the one in the Gardens Mall? No, no, no, the one, their new one on Okachovia.

Okachovia. I haven't been in there, no. They must have 150 Teslas there, but the showroom is very sterile. There's nothing in it except a couple desks with three computers and these so-called salespeople sitting there. And I had asked, when I was there, I asked them about our cyber truck, because there's a million, 500,000 of them on order.

And we ordered ours two years ago. And I got a follow following on Facebook, and these people are like 100,000 in line or 200 or 300 or whatever. That's because of the deposit. That's because it only costs you $100 to deposit to order the car. Right. So I'm trying to find out what number we are in line. and, you know, we're not going to be the last one.

It's not going to be the first. But we're right around $113,000 last time I checked. So, Don, are you saying that your Tesla is going to be delivered to your home today at $130? No, we're going to order to pick it up at $130. We have to bring in a trade, and we're trading on the X. So you're going to go back down to Okachovie Boulevard? Yes, at 1 o'clock. We're picking it at 1-130.

I see. So, but I asked one of the girls buying a computer, could you get my phone number and looked up my order on the cyber truck? And she said, we can't tell you what number you are. And she was very snoddy about it. Hey, Don, listen. Don, will you do me a favor? When you go to pick your car up, ask him to call me, please. I would love to do that.

I will do it, but I'll be lucky if I can get an answer. Yeah, I just say what. I got a friend of mine, and he got the same car, exactly. that I got, and he ordered it in May, and he's already paid for it, and you keep moving his delivery date up, and maybe they can give you an answer, or maybe they can give me an answer. They won't talk to me. I call out there. They won't call me back. They won't text me back. Don, when did you order your Tesla? Three weeks ago. Oh, me. Oh, Lord.

Oh, man. I think Elon doesn't like me. That's what it is. something something there's a breakdown in communication somewhere there has to be really is something screwy there I don't understand you know these are plaids now you got a plaid now you got a plaid too didn't you a plan the special color plaid with a totally autonomous feature and speed you're gonna love it when you get it so yeah you know my background is in racing drag racing and I know what nine second cars are that's incredible. It's insane. It's going to be a great, it'll be worth of wait,

but his cost of service. If I ever get mine, Don, I'll meet you out of Maroso, and we'll have a drag race. I will be out there tonight at 6 o'clock racing that car for $500 to win. Wow. Wow. You're my kind of guy. So exciting. I'll be there tonight. And Don, Don, did you say you ordered the

cyber truck? uh two of one i ordered one of my son ordered one about a year and a half ago a year and a half ago okay respect to get it in the spring so uh don were you in uh were you in uh well communication with the people on okotope boulevard from the time you ordered the car uh and in between the time was there a constant communication between you be honest to be honest with you my son did it and he never talked to it you never what There's talk to anybody. So I don't know.

I'll find out for you. I could call you back later and let you know. Please. Okay, now, thanks very much for all that information. Keep me posted. Call again, please. I'll do that. See you at Marozo.

Bye-bye. Thank you. Ladies, don't forget, I've got $50 for the first two new lady callers. Way in and, you know, share some thoughts with us, or if you have any questions, or if maybe you want to share your experience of a, you know, a purchasing or servicing, anything at all. We'd love to hear from you.

And $50 to the first two new lady callers take advantage. 877-960-99-60. You got any text over there other than Tesla and Toyota? Oh, I do. I got a good one. Good. All right. We got a text says, how can you remove a bad case, a sap on a car? and I got an answer for you.

It's sap remover. You can buy sap remover. Like at Amazon Walmart, auto parts store, you spray it on the car and wipe it off. Oh, cool. Don't let the sap stay on there any longer than you absolutely have to get it off as soon as possible. Right, because you'll get the sap off,

and then you'll see etching in the clear coat on the paint, and that's not sap, but that's just damaged. It's no longer shiny there. Okay. Ask an answer. Ask an answer. There's also something else. I don't know if it's available.

I know our deatil department uses a decon soap, a decontaminate soap. And I don't know if that's, I'm sure that's commercially available, but we use that as well. But they also do a clay. There's a whole process. So if it does etch the paint, if it's not too deep, it can be restored to a degree. But like Rick says. Go on YouTube and look in for clear coat repair and clay bar, as in clay, like the clay, we used to play with his kids. Yeah.

Clay bar polishing. And you will find tons of information. about how to help make your car look better. And ladies and gentlemen, you're going to find tons of free answers right here to all of your questions, and we do appreciate you, so give us a call. We're going to go back to the phones, and we're going to talk to John. He's calling us from West Palm Beach. Good morning, John.

Hey, good morning. Good morning. I have somewhat of a technical question that's been on my mind. When I'm in cruise control, I have a smart car, but when I'm in cruise control and it's got that tracking sensor, you know, and you get too close to cars, you know, apply the brakes. I know that when I apply the brakes, the brake lights come on. But when the car is being run by the computer and the sensors apply the brakes, are they applying brake to the engines? to slow it down or to the trance and build the brake light to come on. When the cruise control system simply reduces speed by reducing engine power, they do not.

However, in a case where it does actually begin to apply the brakes, yes, they will come on. I think it should apply the brake light anyway. I think it's a... Well, it's only... If you're only slowing down just a little bit, it's just like letting off the gas in your car. Yeah, your brake lights don't go on. Yeah, but when you're in gridlock traffic, which you probably should be on cruise control,

but when you're in relatively heavy traffic and you're going along at a good rate of speed. You shouldn't be using radar cruise anyways. Yeah, I know you shouldn't, but I'm just saying some people do anyway. Yeah, but if you're driving normally and you used off the gas a little bit, and your car right now, if you're not in the cruise control,

you're right, I don't put the, you're right. I can't put the brake light on because I only got one foot. And actually, I have two feet, but I don't use one foot. They're not the same size, though. But what I'm trying to get across to everybody here and out there is that from a safety standpoint, I think it's a good idea because you can do it to flash the brake light when the automatic comes off the cruise control. That's just my humble opinion. Yeah.

I mean, the other thing that happens is another way to turn off cruise controls by tapping the brakes, and that would accomplish the same thing, but then you're a control. Interesting thing. I know we're talking about Tesla a lot, but Tesla, when you're talking about how when you ease off the accelerator, it slows down, I was curious about the brake light thing, and obviously you can't see your brake light unless you get somebody to follow you. There's an indicator, and I notice the same thing. If you ease off a little bit, the brake light doesn't come on, it mimics what a car would do if you eased off the accelerator. If you ease it off a little bit more and there's a threshold where it puts on the brake light as if you were braking.

Yeah. Interesting. I mean, Elon agrees with me. No. And the drawback to having the lights coming off, it doesn't come on. Have you ever been behind one of those people to use both foot? They've got one foot on the brake pedal. And even when they're accelerating, that other foot, they're touching the brake pedal.

And their brake lights are coming on even when they're accelerating. And that's not a good idea. Right, because then you don't trust their lights anyways. Of course, that is a good idea because then you get away from them. I see people like that. I go to another lane. I get away from it. Okay, let's move along here.

John, I hope we answer your question. yes you did do you have any other questions no that's no it's too early in the show oh hey it's great to hear from you I would comment on what other people call about

okay all right well thanks for calling thank thanks for calling and don't go away stay there for the mystery shopping report that's coming up from Mastro of Palm Beach it's going to be a doozy thank you have a great weekend

okay we're going to go back to stew. Okay. Got another text here, similar to the caller from Minnesota. It says Toyota is cutting North American production by 40%. Earl, how is this going to affect sales? Will affect your Toyota dealership? I think it'll be a kind of a glitch, a hiccup. I don't think it's going to be, as I said earlier in the show if you just tuned in, the cars that we are selling on a monthly basis, record volume of cars for most car dealers, record numbers of cars. Those are cars that were sold

a month ago, two months ago, and came in on the truck. The reason there's a shortage of cars in dealers' lots is because we're selling them as fast as they come off the truck. And so you go buy a car dealership and there's an empty lot. And you must think, hey, business must be terrible. Well, that's not terrible. It's fantastic. The lot's empty because we can't build an inventory

because people are buying them faster than we can get them in. So that's the situation. Now, this thing with manufacturing, that could be serious. Depends on how long it stays. If they knock off the production significantly for a long time, yes, it will have a negative effect on profits

and sales. But my guess is it will be a temporary thing and one manufacturer slows down, another one doesn't. It's going to delay the time that these pre-sold cars arrive and the customers can take delivery.

Most of these cars that are pre-sold haven't been built yet. So all they're announcing is that at least in our case 80% of the cars that you got coming your way, they're not going to be built yet. Here's the phenomenon. I mean, I just learned this as a car dealer for many, many years. When people want to buy something bad enough,

if they don't have a red one, they'll buy a blue one. If you don't have a Mazda, they'll buy a Subaru. They don't have a Chevrolet, you'll buy a Ford. I'm exaggerating a little bit, because everybody doesn't do that. Some people want what they want, but they can order it, and then the factory will build it, or the dealer. Remember, dealers are selling not just from their inventory, from a pool of hundreds of dealers, or thousands of dealers, because everybody's online.

So the thing that car dealers and consumers are finding hard to get in their minds, how are people buying so many cars when you've got a microchip shortage? Well, because the manufacturers can still build the cars as fast enough to put them in the customer's hands, and that's what's happening right now. huge supply, but it's all in the pipeline and being delivered immediately. Okay. Good point. We're going to go back to the phones, and we are going to be talking to Bill from West Palm Beach.

Oh, good morning, Bill. Good morning, guys. The other day you were talking about deceptive advertising on your shop, mystery shopper. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. The inventor of that, remember Potampkin? Potapkin? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, he was an old-timer, started out in New York, and family operation, and pretty big. Yeah, I remember Patampkin Cadillac in Sportham Road in the Bronx. Uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah. Yeah, they were pioneers in deceptive advertising. You're absolutely right. Yeah, he wrote the book. Well, a lot of guys, a lot of books and a lot of people wrote them.

And car dealers, because of the lack of regulation, enforcement of laws and rules, and heavy lobbying and Congress and other places, they get away with bloody murder, and they get away with deceptive advertising. And if your competition is doing it, a lot of people feel like you've got to do it, and so it spreads. It's a cancer, deceptive advertised, but it still exists. It's almost as bad a day as it was 50 years ago, and that's saying something. Yeah, and Bill, you know, here's my thoughts. You know, it still exists today.

It's alive and well, boy, I'll tell you what, you think by now in the 21st century, there'd be something done about the deceptive advertising because it is everywhere. And this is a rhetoric question. You know, how long ago was what we're talking about right now about this dealer? I mean, many, many, many years ago. So there's a lot of work to be done in that department. Yeah, he was on the top of the west. another one

in terms of maybe not disrespecting the customers but disrespecting his salesmen when I work for him I kept the juror Vaseline Fred Hosak from Palm Beach Dodge

Yeah Fred Hosack Yeah Palm Bay Shows yeah Yeah it was There was nothing just when I think I've heard all the tricks, we find a new one. Sometimes the reason I like the mystery shopping report

and so many people like that second to the show. Every now and then we find a brand new trick. I mean, not often, but there's always something new to take advantage of a customer. If you give it enough thought, you come up with something new. So, Bill, it's good to hear from you, old-timer, like me,

and it's interesting to think about what we did back then and what's being done now, not so different, unfortunately. Just smarter because the customer's getting smarter, but the dealers are getting smarter too, and watch out. That's the reason we exist, Earl, on cars.

Thanks for calling, Bill. That's why I love your show. Thank you, Bill. And I'll try to remember stuff for next week. I appreciate it. Thank you. We appreciate your call. You know, that you're right about that, Earl.

The consumers, they're on fire. They do their homework. They just investigate. Every aspect of a purchase, of anything at all, and the Internet is very powerful. Yeah. Okay. How's the call going? Sure, YouTube's?

It's quiet over here right now on YouTube. How's it checking? We have some over here on a regular text line, and we also have some anonymous feedback coming in. But we're going to get to that after this caller. Okay, we're going to go to John. He's a regular caller from Palm City. Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone.

nobody talks about the we know used cars are way up in value but nobody says anything about the collector cars the collectors many of them are frustrated because the live auction shows were canceled during this COVID-19 situation so like for 18 months or so Barrett Jackson and all the leaders

they cancel their live shows but actually what happened is it looks like pre-war cars are way down in value and some other post-war cars are way up. So it's like a stock market. But last weekend was a tremendous auction in Pebble Beach, California, run by Gooding & Company,

that one of the leaders in the ultimate cars. By the way, mostly Ferraris, Maseratis, but there was cars there, like Nancy would be interested, a 57 Nash Metropolitan, 57 Volkswagen Beetle, et cetera, 65 Volkswagen. But here's one. happened. The leader was a 1995

McLaren. $20,465,000. God, Lord. A 59 Ferrari, $10,840,000. Now, the reason I mentioned these figures, this is for the terrific high rollers, okay? But it does show

that the interest is still there in collector cars, including like I mentioned, they even put a 57 Nash in there and a Volkswagen. So there was something basically for everybody. But the record was set and people are anxious, major

shows all last year were canceled, including the largest car show in the world, which is held at Hershey, Pennsylvania, but it's on again for this October, and they do have an auction there, which is run by R&M. John, has that a whole-time market

paid for a collector car, for an antique car, 20 million? Well, here's what I started thinking, too. You and I know, Earl, that the average person or a wealthy person, I mean, just picture at these live auctions, you have to pay the sales tax on the spot no matter where it's sold. California, I forget what the sales tax is. But before that call, Lee, so you and I know that the people that are buying this are dealers.

They have a dealer's license, and they do not have to pay the sales tax on it. Yeah, right. But you imagine an average person that buys a car even for a million and has to on a spot pay that sales tax, it's like unbelievable. Well, if you've got a million dollars to buy the car, the $60,000 isn't going to bother you too much. Yes, I agree with you, but maybe not the guy with the $20 million. Yeah. He'll buy it through a dealer who has a resale, and I just want to mention. But, you know, nostalgia, I appreciate the guy that called up about New Hampshire.

I mean, Potamkin, Rick last week mentioned a video about an air condition that he saw, that a car had the Mickey Mouse or added air condition throughout the rear doors. But I'll tell you, I'll go back to the General Motors Futurama show in 1953, and I was there, I was only just started high school. Buick and Cadillac were the first ones that came out with factory air condition. and the air condition came from the trunk, the evaporator, the compressor was in the engine, it looked like the size of a Volkswagen engine, and the ducks were in the rear panel, rear seat above an apostle panel, and there were plastic ducks that bought the air in from the trunk,

and believe it or not, they had, they got, they weren't clear plastic after a while, but they were replaced under warranty. but that was a true story on the first year of factory air conditioning that it came in from the trunk and by the way it took about a quarter up of the trunk and only Buick and Cadillac that year had the air condition from factory just picture a car today that you buy from any dealer and it doesn't have AC in it here in South Florida look out

that used to be one of our favorite bait and switch when I was an evil car dealer back in the 70s and 60s. We would advertise a car without air conditioning because you could order it. And we order Pontiac Grand Prix without air conditioning. And we would advertise. I remember the price back in that day it was $4,99, brand new Pontiac Grand Prix. And of course, when they came into buy it, there was no air conditioning, there was no tint of glass, and a stick shift. We could actually get a Grand Prix with a column stick shift, no air conditioning, no tent of glass and nobody would want to buy it. I mean, that's another story I'll tell you

someday about... But they did. They did. Right? When I first started at your dealership back in the early 90s, we would still get pickups in, Toyota pickup trucks with no air conditioning. And you could buy from Toyota the kit that we would then install and add air conditioning onto the pickup. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. That's a... Well, in the old days, she is, and J.C. Penny and all had an automobile department, and they put added on air conditioning to almost any brand car. Yeah. Those were the days, my friend. You read it up.

In Oregon now, Portland, they're talking about making air conditioning mandatory, and if you can't afford air conditioning, the government will buy it for you because it's considered a necessity. People out there are dying from the heat because of the air conditioning. And we're talking about the days where nobody had it. And, you know, it's a good thing about science. Air conditioning is one of the best things ever hit science. So I don't know how I would be occupied it out. Thank you, John.

It's always good to hear you call. All right. I hope you get your call for soon. It's been forever. Yeah, that's for sure, John. Hey, John, was the car show canceled out in New York a couple of weeks ago? Yes. Uh-huh.

As far as I know, but I'll tell you this much, which is nice about it, every Tuesday, and it's sponsored by your show, your radio show. In Tuesday nights, in Hutchison Island at the Elliott Museum, is a nice car show, and it's pleasant because there's no judging nothing. It's just, you know, cars and coffee, and it's every Tuesday at 530 to 7.30 at the L.A. Museum, and your radio station is one of the big sponsors of that car show. And it's interesting. Yeah, Rick's got something to say, I think. Rick, what were you saying? I think one of my favorite things that I ever saw in history of an add-on for a car was a factory option where they had a turntable for the backseat to play records,

actual, the vinyl records, in your car through the stereo system. Oh, that's interesting. I thought that was so awesome. It was this fold-down thing, came out of the seat, and it actually was a record player. Okay, let's move along here. Thank you, John. We'll talk to you next word.

Okay. Have a great weekend, John. 877-960-99-60. Ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. Give us a call, say hello. 772-497-6530. You can text us for everyone else. And your anonymous feedback, don't forget,

your anonymous feedback.com. Now we're going to go back to Stu. Okay, we have another text from Ann Marie. Ann Marie wants to know if a blind spot monitor can be added to an older car. And I looked it up, yeah, I can't vouch for how good they are, but Rick, you've got some experience with us. I've actually seen a couple companies now that are making the add-on system, and I've seen it installed in one car that came in a while back. and yeah, some of the reports are very, very good, and the feedback from customers has been very good on.

Pull it up on Amazon, see if they carry it, and they'll get the customer reviews. That's my kind of like consumer reports now. When I buy anything, I always sort on Amazon by, you know, four-star plus reviews, and I don't look at anything without four-star plus. Then I look for something with a whole bunch of reviews. Then I read the reviews, and it's almost, like a consumer report. So if you can find

a blind side monitor, I said earlier on the show, I would not buy a car without the blind spot monitor. So if you don't have to buy a new car and you can get one that's highly reliable, that's a great idea to install. Ann Murray, you're a genius. Thank you. There we go. She practically

invented it. All right. Let's see. This is from Sandy in Boka. Says the GM recall on bolts. That's the GM bull electric car. The GM recall on bolts for fire danger. sounds just like another example of how we are rushing to electric cars

before making sure the technology is safe. I would love to get your take on this, Earl, and that's from Sandy and Boca. I think the problem is that the media loves if it leads to sensationalizing. The old thing, if it bleeds, it leads, if something is terrible,

so things get hyped. And if you look at it, you take the test, with the autonomous. If you look at the number of cars that have had a problem with that, it's minuscule in terms of the total number of Tesla sold. The Chevrolet bolt, the fires, is minuscule. No one's been injured in the fires. They're not good. They've got to be fixed.

But everything is a matter of percentages in proportion. And I think the electric cars are a foregone conclusion. conclusion is going to happen sooner rather than later and it's a great thing and the issues that you have with any new technology come with the territory they happen with the combustion engine and they happen with every innovation we've ever had everybody claimed cars and internal combustion cars were dangerous when when the first acts the first time someone got run over but you know a horse carriage I'm sticking with my horse you know I could give me a one of those

horse ladies and gentlemen we are going to go back to the phones and I do have my first new lady caller and she's calling from Royal Palm Beach good morning Tina congratulations thank you you won yourself $50 email me with your email me with your information and I'll send that check out to you ASAP I will that's not really the reason why I was calling, but that's great. The $50 is wonderful. I've been listening to you guys for quite a few months, and I get out here on Saturdays doing my errands, and I'm listening to you, and I started owning a Toyota when I was in 1974, when I was 15 years old.

And my dad bought me a brand new one in North Carolina, off the floor. Wow. And he had a, I had a, I got Toyota Celica at the time. And he had a 72 Toyota Celica and he traded it in for a Toyota pickup truck after I got my little Selica. And then in 1992, I got a brand new Toyota Paseo. I still have the Toyota Puseo. It has 298,000 miles on it.

Wow. Wow. Yeah, it's a beautiful thing. Interesting. Wow. And other than some rust up by the sun shield where the sunroof where the sunroof is,

I haven't had any problems with this car at all. Well, that's wonderful. That's a lot of miles and I can tell you, take care of it. That's the whole thing. If you take care of that car, according to the owner's manual, they'll last a long time. All cars will today. The cars built today are just amazing. All brands, all makes. It's really hard to get a bad car by comparison with, you know, many, many years ago, the way the quality is improved.

Yeah. And, Tina, it's amazing what happens when you take care of, you know, your vehicle, any vehicle, you take care of your car, your car will take care of you. And that's a great story. Yeah, I wanted to share that. I didn't want to share with you guys and tell you out there that I'm a Toyota fan through and through, always, always, always, always. And I'll tell you what, yes, you do take care of it. Tining Belt was done every 60,000 miles religiously. It still is.

The clutch, it's a six-shift and five feet. And the clutch actually lasted to 160,000 miles before I had to change it out. It's, you know, if people just take care of their vehicles, like you said, they take care of themselves. You know, you just got to do the oil changes properly on time, do everything that you need to do. And I wanted to share this story because it's just, you know, it's amazing. I listen to your show, and I hear people with different things, and I'm like, oh, my goodness, I don't know how that could have happened to that person, you know. Yeah, exactly. And I like you comparing the car to your, you know, to us humans.

We don't take care of ourselves. You know what you get, what the end result is. So if you're looking at your car the same way, you're going to have it forever, or almost have forever. Almost. I don't know if we'll live forever, if our vehicles will live forever, but I can tell you what, this little car has never had any issues. Knock on wood, you know, the brakes have been changed. You know, different things have gone from fields here and there. Yes, the air conditioning went out a little bit ago, and I just, I just, I just, I just, I just, deal with that because I don't want to get another air conditioner and there I have my sunroof my windows and I'm okay with it. Yeah. Sound like a real car chick and we do appreciate your phone call, that's for sure. And you're an example for the other ladies that are listening, giving them courage to give me a call because some of them are just a, you know, a little hesitant

to be on the air and I can't thank you enough. Well, you're welcome. You're so welcome. for listening you're welcome i listen every saturday i love your show i love hearing about all the stories about everybody's other different vehicles and that's great and the Tesla don't do anything for me i'm not a Tesla chick you know but um i could afford one if i wanted one but i can tell you i they don't do a lot for me but a Toyota does yes exactly we'll give us a call next week i'll talk to you about the cyber truck and spread the word all righty then spread the word to your lady friends and thanks again and send me your contact information and we'll talk to you next week maybe i will you have been email address you want me to send that you want me to send this to you

yes you can and you can go to errol on cars and and you can just in case you don't have a pencil right now. You can get the information there. Nancy S. at Earl Stewart, Toyota. Okay. That's great. Thanks, Tina. Thank you very much. Have a great day. 877-960-99-60. Or you can text us at 772-497-6530.

Now back to Stu. We have a text from Scott and Stewart. That's Stewart, Florida. Not one of us. Scott and Stewart says, is it a better time now to lease or buy, and that was for Earl. It's not a question of time. Any time

one is a viable alternative. Each is viable. There are pros and cons. You go to Earl and Cars.com I've probably done a dozen blog articles on leasing versus buying. I always sum it up because

we're talking to, you know, 40,000 people out there right now. All things being able for the average person that wants a new vehicle is safer to buy a car than lease a car in terms of getting a good deal. But there are circumstances, and if you do your homework and you're careful, leasing can be the better alternative. I do say this because we have a lot of folks out there that are my age and older, and when you're thinking about buying or leasing a car, and you're not sure.

that your health is going to permit you to continue to drive it for the length of the lease, you're better off to buy it. Because when you're leasing the car, you're fully obligated for every payment. A 36-month lease means you make 36 payments. You might make two payments and find out the doctor says you shouldn't be driving anymore, but you've got 34 payments to the leasing company is going to demand you make. If you bought the car, at least you have the ability to sell it. You don't own the car when you lease it, the leasing company does and they want their money. I think it's a tough call to make.

I know that right now we see use car values are inflated, but we don't know. If you sign up for a three-year lease right now, the nice thing about a lease is that if you're going to drive with a full three years or how long the lease is, you don't have to worry about resale value

that residual is determined in the beginning. Right now, if you're buying a car, we don't know what's going to happen at the other side of this thing. Is there going to be a glut of cars, in the market. I mean, because you're going to overpay for a car with your leasing or buying right now anyway. You're going to pay more than you would have if the inventory was normal. Maybe there's some more stability with leasing, but we just don't know because we could have

a completely unrecognizable situation in a year from now after the chip crisis sorts itself out. Okay. Interesting. We're going to go back to the phones and we're going to talk to Don. He's going to update us on a few things. Good morning, Don. they have my test work well I found out my son who did all the work on the Tesla ordering it and whatnot that how long ago did you order your car

May it was May yeah he said some people are waiting seven months for their car and the reason is some like that depends on your interior or tires wheels whatever you ordered if there was a shortage of that apparently we just we just got lucky

and we ordered ours with $100 down payment July 28th and it's here today I know when we ordered yours they hadn't even started making them yet so that was some of the lead time so if you ordered now they're actually they can start production

well don't let me know you said you're going out to Moroza I'll go out there and at least I can look at a Tesla plan as you whipped through the trap at 1.90 to 60 Yeah, you can come out there I'll let you drive the car Well, congratulations

I'm excited for you Did they tell you that it was at the service center here? No They've been telling you three days or something, right? They just have an arrival time of August 20th to August 23rd So that we're right in the middle of it Well, if it's in the service center, it could be another issue When they get here, they thoroughly inspect those cars

and go through them, there could have been a problem that they haven't been able to fix yet for some reason or other. Yeah. I would suggest that you go down there and, you know, go to one of the people at the computer and they'll get your phone number. Imagine that's how you ordered it. Where should I go, Don? If you just Google, Tesla, it's just about three blocks on the east side of the turnpike, on the south side of the road. It's a big service center. Okay.

That's what I'll do. Thank you. Yeah, you go there and I'm sure they'll take care you, but don't feel bad that some people are waiting seven months. We just got lucky that everything we ordered was they had. I got you. Well, thanks, Dan. I appreciate you letting me know.

You're welcome. Maybe I'll see you out the trap. I hope so. A white Tesla plaid going 920. Okay. We'll have the red and white. When I get mine in, we'll do the red versus white. white plaid.

There you go. Thank you, Don. Yeah, thanks a lot, Don. When Earl's happy, I'm happy. Okay, here's the situation. There's just been too much time spent on your Tesla, and we have not talked about my barracuda.

I am leaving. When's that coming in? That'd be nice. If you could find a vintage, restored one, that'd be making an excellent Christmas gift. I'm waiting for my cyber truck. All right. It's a scary thought.

Me and Don out there, two old guys go on 180 miles an hour. I'm glad you're at Marissa. Okay, we're going to go back to the phones, and we're going to talk to John from Stewart. Good morning, John. Good morning. Welcome. Yeah. I have a 2002 at Toyota MR2 Spider.

I've had it since we had like 10,000 miles on it back to 2003. And I went online, and I got a thing that says, chip my car. It's supposed to give it like 40 more horse car or something. So I put it in, and it does. It runs a lot better. It has more pedal, like at the top end and stuff. But the light, the check engine light comes on, and I was wondering, is that something that's going to be, like, detrimental to the car?

Because I called the company, and they said, well, they'll come in, it comes on sometimes. Is Rick have any idea about that? You've got to get a check, diagnostic check, right, Rick? If you have modified the computer in any manner, there could be almost anything going on there because if there's the slightest little glitch,

you could cause the whole car to just stop running. They'll certainly put it on the diagnostic machine. There'll be a code that'll indicate why the check-intern light's coming on. We could try that. but you've got to bear in mind he's he has changed something in the computer of the car so that I mean automatically avoids the warranty and by federal law that actually can change how the car is running and it can be illegal because of the first step the first

step should see what the code is yeah if if it will respond it could be something entirely unrelated and it's possible so we need it you need to go you get a free check right Rick, you can go, where do you go, Pep Voice or someplace? Yeah, they'll pull the codes for you. Yeah, you can go to Adel's Inn or any of those places. Yeah, pull the code and then call us back and let us know what it says. Okay, but the thing about it is that you have to put the chip into that ECU thing, where you put the computer.

Right, the DLC connector under the dash. Yes, sir, right, exactly. Okay. So I don't know if they still read it if it's, not in the plugged into the car what do you think try it

well if it's a problem with that device then nothing we wouldn't have any system that would be able to talk to that device

right exactly so it's hooked up on the data port that's where the chip is right if he's putting a device into the data port if you pull the device

out is the check engine light still on um great question I don't think it is but I'll try yeah that's uh yeah that's the best answer so far thanks sir i'd pull that device out and drive the car and see if the condition goes away okay yeah but i've been doing it for like six years probably

driving the car with that on there there's nothing happening and obviously it's the 2002 so it's it's got 89 000 miles i've never had any problems with the car so i didn't right but that that aftermarket device can fail pretty easily well say i you know We're doing a lot of rambling here, but Stu's idea, pull it out and see if the check engine light goes off. That'll tell you that there's something that they're detecting that they don't like when you put your ad on device. And the other thing in my mind is a check engine light can mean absolutely nothing. I mean your gas caps lose, so we don't want to panic you into thinking your whole car is going to fall apart because you put an aftermarket device on there

and the check engine line came on. So let's try unplug in it first and then try to get a diagnostic reading on the vehicle and then we'll panic later on. Okay, sounds like a plan. I'll let you guys know what happens. Thank you, John. All right, have a great day.

Appreciate you, you, too. Thanks. Thank you, John. Give us a call again. We're going to go back to Stu. He's got some texts over there. Last, two more texts, then we'll go over to anonymous feedback. This is last week, a caller asked about air conditioning repairs.

Why are these so expensive? Because the dealers can get the money for it and you pay it. And I'm being halfway facetious. It is a lot of labor intensive and the parts are expensive and it's one of the more expensive repairs on a vehicle. But you still need to get competitive bids because if you expect something, You go into Tiffany's and you buy a ring, you know you're going to pay a lot of money. You go and get your air conditioning fix, you know you're going to pay a lot of money.

And the person selling you the air conditioning knows that you know you're going to pay a lot of money, so they try to get even more money. So always get two or three competitive bids on an air conditioning repair. Thirty years ago, when I first started playing with cars, there was a panel on, say, just Toyota Camry, there was a little panel that you could could access and it would take a mechanic about an hour to get to this panel, take it off and remove the evaporator core, which was the most common part of the air conditioner that would start to leak.

And replacing an evaporator core, we would charge about two and a half to three hours labor to change that evaporator core, recharge the system, and you'd have cold air again. If that was the leak, which 90% of time, that's what happened. Now, in order to change the evaporator core, first you remove the entire dash, then the big steel crash bar, then you have a ginormous box that has the heater core, the evaporator core, and everything all in one unit. You pull that out of the car, disassemble it to replace the evaporator core that's in the very center of it, put it all back together and put the whole car back together, and it takes a day to a day to a day and a half, and this is where this cost has come. Because they tried to make them much smaller and more tighter fit and more efficient because the engineers never imagine the idea that that evaporator core could start to leak one day. Right. So complicated.

It's so important how vehicles are built and how easy repairs are. I mean, manufacturers, I don't know if it's something that they strive to make it easier to repair or more difficult, but that definitely drives up costs for consumers. Well, it seems like the engineers, when they design the cars, give no thought to the idea of repairing the car down the road. And if you don't believe it, just look at my arm here from working on a car the other day. I was wondering about that. I showed my arm into places that it wasn't meant to go. And this is from hose clamps.

This is Rick bleeding to make your car safer. I literally, my arm was a sheet of blood. It just, this is what my life is. This is what mechanics do. we make engineers look good because we fix their mistakes. Let's move along here. All right, next one, another text that says,

are there any other stickers that are required by law to be on a car for sale besides the Munrooney label? No. Yes, for use cars. Federal Trade Commission, you have to have the used car buyer's guide that informs you on your warranty rights. In Florida, yeah. In Florida.

Well, no, it's federal. It's FTC. Federal Trade Commission. I don't think so. I'll look it up, but I'm pretty certain I'm right. But at least around here, until we fact-checked me, yeah, for use cars, there is required by law to have a sticker on there. Okay, we're going to go to some YouTube's over there. Go ahead, Rick.

Yeah, we've got one, Donovan Lewis, who kind of as quite often here, says, there is a Tesla Center on Okachovie and another one down in Delray. But he says, did Earl set up the Tesla app on his phone yet? Also set up the referral program for getting a thousand, I guess a thousand miles of free supercharging. He will get a link and anyone that orders a car with that link will get a thousand miles of free supercharging on your new Tesla. Well, it's good to know. I have the app. I downloaded it, but I cannot activate the app until I get the key from the card key from Tesla.

And I can't get the card key until they give me my damn car. So there you are. All right. Well, I just sent you my fact-checking. It is from the Federal Trade Commission that requires the use cars buyer's guide. Okay, well, I see by the clock that we're going to turn our phones off. And we're going to ask our audience to, well, vote on the mystery shopping report from Mazda of Palm Beach. so we're going to get to that shortly

but we're going to finish up on some texts and YouTube's okay well we have some anonymous feedback first one we'll try and get through these quickly first one just says off lease only are a bunch of scam artists must say must not say more

they have dangerous and deceptive sales practices well let me just jump in there and I know Stu will agree with this they're no, they're certainly not worse than anybody else selling used cars out there. They sell a lot more used cars and they're bigger and they do have actually, in terms of integrity, they're a little better than most of the used car dealers. So volume, you're going to have more complaints because you sell more cars.

we know the owner and he's called this show they do some things that we're not in favor of they have a smaller dealer fee than the average dealer does they sell their cars

that are lower price than the average car sold for and they sell some cars that other used car dealers wouldn't sell because of the damages on the cars when they buy them So it's kind of like the Walmart of the used car lots. You exercise due diligence, you get the car checked by a mechanic, and you get a better price at off-lease only generally than you can at another dealer.

And by the way, today you don't get a good price on the used car anywhere, even at off-lease. Okay. More anonymous feedback. Good morning. The following question is for Rick. I have a 2009 Kia Optima, the battery light turned on for a few moments and my car almost died. It was raining very bad when this happened. The battery is almost three years old. What could be some of the causes? Could it be something besides the battery or alternator?

Most likely, and I'm going to kind of go on a limb here, if it only happened that one occasion, you probably had some water splash up onto the drive belt, and the alternator slipped a little bit. which the computer then sees a drop in voltage and the computer reads that as the alternator possibly having a problem. Now, if it hasn't occurred since then, I wouldn't worry too much about it, but I would have someone look at the drive belt and make sure your belts are in good shape and also hook up a tester, which we have special electronic testers now, that will test not only the battery very accurately, but also test the alternator's output it and make sure it's operating normally.

All right, sounds like a simple solution. Next, anonymous feedback. With the alarming and frankly embarrassing surge in the Delta variant shining an ugly light on the angry divisions on mask wearing, I'd like to know how your business is navigating this. It's tough, it's a challenge. You know, we went to allowing our employees and customers

that have been vaccinated not to wear the mask. Bill of the variant came in, and because of the surge in infections, we went back to mask wearing for everyone, and including our customers. So we're trying to be ultra-careful, and, you know, lives and health trump car sales, and so we just have to bear with it and live with it like everybody else in the world is, and do our best. Okay. Next one. Earl, I know your frustration on not getting your Tesla. Now you understand. and what us common people go through with all manufacturers. I did. I'm humbled. Be patient. No, really.

It's been a pleasurable experience in the sense that I got educated. And here I am, you know, been on the business all these years. I was able to experience, I still am, the emotion and anger and frustration, of trying to deal with a big company and watching this guy, Elon Musk, you know, tap dancing and having fun. on TV and he's the child star of the media and he's going to have this huge business and in my opinion he's not treating his customers the way he should and of course that's what this show is all about and but I am I I I'm more able to serve you and early on cars and have the empathy for the people that are getting knocked around out there by car dealers

because here I am, a car dealer getting knocked around by another car dealer. Okay, here we go. Next one. Would you agree, and Rick pay attention to this one, would you agree that the most reliable car, in other words, a car that will have the highest chance of going 500,000 miles with proper service,

would be a Toyota four-runner of all the new Toytas for sale. The 4.0V6 and 5-speed is very old and proven technology. I wouldn't agree with that, no. I think there are others out there that might have the edge. I think Subaru has got a couple of cars that might have an edge on the forerunner. Honda has got one or two. I was talking about Toyotas, of all the Toyotas. But if you wanted to say just Toyota, then I would say, yeah,

the forerunner would have a pretty good chance of it. Okay. And let me just say this. I don't want to get too granular here, but you can take any model in the Toyota line or Subaru line or any line. And every car that comes off the manufacturer's line, even the same year make model, is a little different. Yes. And you can take any make car and any model car, and if you go through all the production, you'll find one of those cars that's got 500,000 or 600,000 miles on it, and they say, boy, what a great car this is.

And you have another exact year-make model car came off the same assembly line and the car blew up and just right after it got out of the warranty and they say, I'll never buy another one of those. It's junk. So you have, when you look at the particular year-made model car, they're not all the same.

They're all different. And the person that bought it and how he maintained it is different. So there's so many variables, it's impossible to answer that. question. And as silliest things can happen too on the assembly line, we just had a vehicle

come in that when the customer would use the tilt feature on their steering wheel, the car would suddenly act up, and it was because the connector plug wasn't pushed in quite all the way to snap in place like it should have been. I mean, it just a minor thing. Where we see

variation in spades and it's irritating to us in the business. Same year-make model vehicle one will get, correct me, I'm probably, I'm going to make these numbers up, so you find two of me, that will get burn a quarter oil in 5,000 miles, the same ear-make model, burn a quarter oil, and 20,000 miles. Yes. Now, is that amazing?

The same car off the same assembly line. So if the tolerances in the engine that cause the oil consumption to be up or down can vary that much, you just can't say that's a really good Euro-Mick model car for sure on the average you can say but yeah there's always variables I'm not to move you along now we have to move along now absolutely moving along we have a couple more uh this this is another I think might be the same fellow here says does this Toyota Super Super's inline 6 engine expect to be as reliable as a V6 made by Toyota because I know that BMW makes that in line 6 correct yes they do okay so I'm surprised Toyota would use a BMW image.

Oh, they said that BMW engine, their supra. Real quick. Inline 6 is reliable as the Toyota V-E-8, I mean, V6. Again, you're going to have so many variables. Okay. Time will tell. All right. Okay, here's something I think Earl will get into a little bit more.

When a dealer does work on a used car to be put for sale and bill it to their service department, is that the full cost billed or is there reduced cost? How much money will a dealer put into a used car for sale? Every dealer's different. But it is, there's a rate for internal work. So typically that's less. But there are dealers that we know that do charge full price to their use car departments,

the same as they charge with their customers. And that's recommended by a dealer with financial advisors called 20 groups. So when you're trying to make a lot of money with the 20 groups and the advice to dealers is, charge your use car department, the same thing to charge your customer. Right. And then there's guidelines too. So typically a use car dealership is going to put around 1,000. $800,500, I'm going to give you a pretty big range,

but it does vary, depends on the business model. Some dealerships want to fix everything, others don't want to fix anything to sell them cheaper. That's closer to off lease only's model. Exactly. Let's see here. And then, oh, this might from the same person, what are some of the costs to a dealer that are factored into a car price

and how much do service advisors get paid in commission? On the commission thing, a service advisor depends on the dealer, it makes any from 10 to 14% of the profit. on the individual on the repair or maintenance and they have bonuses on customer satisfaction all sorts of stuff and the fox that the cost are factored in i'm assuming this is for use cars it's going to be that amount that they spend um reconditioning the car fixing things getting it ready for sale and like i just mentioned it could run around $1,000 a car all right we're all caught up okay let's move on to the mystery shopping report this is a Mazda of Palm beach and they're in north Palm beach

on North Lake Boulevard, Prosperity Farms, all day 1A. They're on A1A and North Lake Boulevard. And folks, before Earl gets started on the mystery shopping report, let me remind you that we would love to hear from you, would love you to vote on the mystery shopping report, because Agent Lightning did another fabulous job, and I just want to give her a little recognition. We're going to go to the mystery shop of Mazda of Palm Beach,

now back to the recovering car dealer. dealer. Okay, Mazda, Palm Beach. In 2017, Grico, Mazda, is either Grico or Graco, North Lake Boulevard, and North Palm Beach, was sold to Don T. Leia, a car dealer from New York, L-I-A, the Leia Auto Group consists of 22 dealerships, pretty big. New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts. Grico, Massa, was actually sold to a company called Palm Beach Autoplex LLC, which is owned and managed by Leah, and he renamed the dealership Mazda, Palm Beach. All this tells me, as I read this,

is that car dealers are getting bigger and bigger. The individual dealers, one, two stores are getting smaller, and 22 is not really a big group now. You've got hundreds of dealerships and groups, and this tells me and should tell you as a car buyer, you're dealing with big corporations now. you're not dealing with the car dealers, as you used to know car dealers. I don't know whether that's good or bad.

Actually, it's both. Corporations, large companies are bigger targets. They're more subject to lawsuits. They have to be a little bit more careful. But it's a different ballgame. The idea of being able to get through to an owner or someone in charge is more and more difficult when you're dealing with giant corporations. Just think about me trying to talk to Elon Musk about my Tesla.

ain't going to happen.com. Oh, way, back to the mystery shopping report when the Gricos owned this location, Mazda Palm Beach, we mystery shopped it all the time. Our greatest reports came out of, Griko, Mazda, Northland Beach. Graco's got dealships all over South Florida, too.

There are another pretty big group, family-owned, but big, and it's not what you call a mom-and-pop store anymore. We sold the story of the... We've told the story, the famous ghost car. Regular listeners know, Greco had a car that they didn't have,

that they advertised a low ball price on, wouldn't sell the car, and we could never find it. We shopped a couple of locations for the same car. We could never find it. We called it the ghost car. Kind of funny, really, really deceptive, and totally unacceptable.

Anyway, since Leah, the new owner took over, We've investigated twice back in 2017, just a few months after the change in ownership. That mission, courtesy of legendary mystery shopper Agent X, I miss Agent X. I hope he's okay. It puts the dealership back on the recommended list after being off for quite a while. The second time was in February of this year. When Agent Lightning went back, the experience was pretty much the same. Typical car-biz stuff, nothing too outrageous.

They got to stay on the recommended list, and we do great on the curve. We're not looking for perfection because perfection does not exist. So everything is, if you're going to buy a car, this is better than that dealership, but there's no car dealer out there that you don't have to be careful of when you buy a car. We're fulfilling our promise to not let you spend too much time before reshopping a dealership. We don't like to give a guy a grade, a dealership a grade, and just leave the grade there, because they can change all the time. Sometimes it's just the sales budget you get.

So we keep going back, and we keep giving everybody a chance to get on the list or off the list. Recommended, I mean. Agent Lightning was called again to investigate. There was a report, speaking in the first person. I'm Agent Lightning. I arrived in Mazda Palm Beach late morning, Park. entered the show, I was greeted by a salesman named Mark. As soon as I walked in, Mark was not wearing a mask, nor was anyone else.

I have to editorialize here. Shocking, disappointing, and disturbing. There's someone in the middle of this Delta variant with record. Florida is, what, Florida, Texas, and a couple of other states. Or the epicenter of the world. The epicenter of the world. And here it is a business not requiring. anybody to wear a mask. Shocking should be, they should close them down. Salesman asked me what he

could help with, and I told him I was car shopping for my son. I said that my main interest is in safety after the price. And she's talking about car safety, not COVID safety, because I feel bad now about sending her into that situation. And I hope she was wearing a mask. I didn't ask Oh, yeah. She's wearing a mask and vaccinated. Nobody else is, yeah, and she's vaccinated. Mark, salesman, says that the boss of three is the safest car they had. It was equipped with all the safety features we could possibly want. He quickly shifted gears to ask me if I had heard about the chip shortage.

I said, I'd read about it. Mark said he didn't believe it was real, strange. But his first salesman ever said that. but they acknowledged the low inventory. He said they only stock about 20 new cars when normally it's around 200. I'll believe that. He knows they have no cars. He doesn't believe

of the reason they told him. No. There's got to be another reason. Yeah. He went for a while about how crazy the Times were, and he reported that there were only about two miles to threes in stock. There was one on the showroom floor that was price less, and one

with a premium package outside. I asked, Agent Lightning, if they were the same. He said they would. I suggested, well, let's drive the price here, one, but work out a deal on the one on the showroom, the war price one. He agreed. I waited for a little while for Mark to get the keys, mind the car. Met him outside, walked around the car with him. Mark gave a brief presentation before he went out for a test drive, up and down A1A. He was mostly quiet, occasionally pointing out

a cool feature here and there. We returned to the dealership, and Mark led me to his desk. As he was gathering my information, he noticed that I was in their system. I was in the computer. Uh-oh. I had a worry a little bit there. He asked me, who my salesperson was last time. I said,

I have no idea. I've shopped so many dealers yet. Right. She probably doesn't imagine. We can look it up, though. Yeah. I said, I had no idea. It was a while ago. So we got through that. I mean, we worry about our mystery shopper being busted bird. That's an unpleasant experience.

and you know it might happen but it's not uncommon we justify it and we like even at our dealership we have people that come and buy a shop in May don't buy anything shop six months later and yeah we see them all the time but agent lighting then I don't think she fully she had to get a little palpitation there Mark was very interested in knowing if I was buying

today yeah several times and I worked the phrase buying today a few times into her conversation that's by the book that's what they tell you to do Subliminal mind control. Exactly. By today. He did a good job convincing me that

Masta was making a good car these days, and they are. Frankly, I was the first Moster dealer in the Eastern United States, and I'm frankly surprised if the quality of the car today. In recent years, they've really... Yeah, they've really done a job on quality.

He showed me a laminated page from Consumer Reports, showing Monsor to be the most reliable brand. By the way, that's illegal. Consumer Reports doesn't allow you to do that. Everybody does it, but not supposed to. But the fact is, it's true. They are.

And I checked the date on to make sure it wasn't, it was November 2020. Yeah. He complimented me on picking such a good car. He said I'd get a great deal before he left to get the pricing and reminded me that it had all the safety features. It gets 30 miles per gallon. Doing a lot of selling. Yeah. I waited at the desk for 18 minutes, approximately.

No, exactly. Mark came back with a worksheet. The selling price was MSRP, 23, 845. He says it was MSRP. Then they added $269.95 for a window tent. Oh, geez. $495 for Resistall. Who cares what that is?

I mean, it's nothing. $495 for crystal fusion. Sounds like a stripper's name. Crystal fusion My apologies That's a politically incorrect statement That's what I think of

Exactly And $189 for all-weather maths Total purchase came to $25, 293 Then they added $400 in taxable fees And because we know Those are deeper fees

And $99, $999 Dock fee And of course, that's a deeper fee That's for the doctor He asked me if I was ready to buy right now and buy another clothes. I mean, what was his name? Mark. Mark is going for the clothes and he listened in his training very well.

He asked me if I'm ready to buy now. I said I was ready to buy today, but I didn't understand why they added all that stuff, like Resist All. I said I didn't ask for her or want any of it. I said, in any case, I needed my son's approval in the car. Mark picked up a jar filled with liquid and what looks like crystals

and tried to demonstrate how crystal fusion works so the salivine Now when they tell you I'm not going to buy any of that crap You take this jar I'm sure it's like some professional visual aid

You know, some kind of pseudoscience So I stopped it and said All the add-on All of the add-on crap and that's crystal That's Agent Lightning's words. We're deal breakers.

I love that. I mean, no missing words. All that crap is a deal breaker. You've got to get firm. A lot of people can't do that, by the way. He got up and said he tried to do something for me. Came back ten minutes later with another worksheet. This one had only the $400 in taxable fees in $99 in dock fees.

So that's $1,400 in hidden fees. but there was no tent no crystal blue persuasion what was it sorry I just wanted you to say crystal blue persuasion on the air or reinstall

I thanked him for getting those taken off and told them I still thought the price was high I was paying more than MSRP with the fees now car dealers on the average 75% of all car

are sold today or over MSRP. So this is just normal. Mark talked about inventories and prices. Eventually I stopped them and said I would discuss a deal with my family and get back to him. So there we are. And kind of a normal operation. I don't want to put my score in anybody's brain. Score for yourself. Think about it. We score on the curve and the question is, compared to other cardioes, are they good, bad, or ugly? Are they A, B, C, D? And if you give them an F, then they go on

they do not buy this. So let's hear your scores. Well, we only have one grade that came in so far. It's from Linda, and Linda gives them an F. She needs the mask, so she's failing them based on that. Yeah. And then we have a Vincent just commented on all the fees and the add-ons, but

nothing coming in. I'm going to, I feel like this is similar to the last one, and we gave them a passing grade last time. I'm going to give my C. Yeah, I can see that. Rick, do you have any scores? So far, I've got Donovan. They get an F for fees. Tim Gilliland with a C-minus.

I don't see nothing on the other channel just yet. We'll call them out as they come in here. Myself, I'm going to go with a D-minus, barely passing. They're playing the typical game. But, you know, if you beat them up, I think he is there. You know, I really have mixed emotions about the grade and the mask. The fact that they have no mask on anybody in the dealership is shocking to me. But it's not, you know, this is a different matter than their sales practices and their deception.

So I'm still, my mind's whirling as to what my score is going to be. but maybe this will help. We have some more coming in. Mark, a long-time listener, caller, gives him a C-minus for typical add-on crap, and Bob gives him a C. So now we seem to have a lot of C's. And I've got Negan with an F, no mask, D on the deal. RICO West, D for Don't Buy a Car yet. Karen is coming in with a D, Guy Larrabee, a C, Brian Sedlaco, a C, Ernesto, a C, Mark Smith, C, C, Mark Ryan, D. Plus. This is Sunrise, a.k.a. Nancy. I, too, give them an F.

I give them an F from the mass situation. I give them an F for the crystal fusion situation. I give them an F for the weather mats. I give them an F all the way around. They have disappointed me again. You know, what do you say, St. It's up to you. Well, we've already chimed in.

It's a tough one. What was your grade? I gave me a C. I gave me a C. But if I was allowed to give two grades, like two different courses, they failed the COVID course, and they have done this a middling performance on their sales practice. Okay. Let's do this. And let's make a policy change in our scoring because who knows what this COVID thing is going to evolve to or away or what's going to happen, build a variant.

It's scary out there, folks. And if you're in different parts of the country, we're in Florida, and we have a particularly bad situation here. Here's what I suggest. I'm going to go along with Stu's grade. I'm going to give them a C for sales practices because it was just a kind of normal dealership trying to sell cars, and far better than a lot of others who lie cheat and steel. The no mask is unforgivable, but it's during the COVID. situation.

I would, let's put them on the recommended list with a memo that they, nobody in the dealership wears masks. Now, if you're one of these people out there that don't mind shopping without a mask and going in places without a mask and maybe you don't even want to get a vaccination, and there are a lot of people out there like that, too many in my opinion. But if that's the way you feel, go in to Grico, Palm Beach Mastra, not Grico, Palm Beach and North Palm Beach, and you will get average treatment. But memo on the Erlan Cars recommended list, nobody wears masks at that dealership.

There we go. Okay. It'll be a memo. All right. Great show. Okay, we got a little bit of time. Do we have time for another text to... Let's see.

We got one coming in. And nope, we got all caught up. How are you doing over there? Well, we did have an extra note from Donovan here. It says the BMW inline sixes, going back to that question on the super motor, are really well made. But a turbo inline 6 with 400 horsepower versus a naturally aspirated V6, usually the non-turbo engine would last longer, I would think.

That's Donovan coming in with a great opinion there. I got to tell you, he seems very well educated on a lot of the issues that we come up with on our cars and he seems to know Tesla's really, really well. I think he's owned a couple of them. Yeah. No, I like college like that. We learn a lot from these guys and textors, I should say, but we have a lot of extremely informed people out there that I think I have to make a pitch if we got the time for the vigilantes. If you're one of those informed people, go to Earl and Cars, sign up the Earl's vigilante. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us.

We'll be right back here next weekend. Saturday morning, stay tuned for Earl and Cars. Stay safe.