Earl Stewart on Cars - 08.28.2021 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Wallace Mazda of Stuart

Episode Date: August 28, 2021

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits Wallace Mazda in Stuart to see if she can get the best deal possible on a 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”

WIRK-H-G-3 Indian Town. Programming pay-for by Vic Canales Media Group. Broadcasting from the Robs Studio. Injured recently, call the Robs Law Group where winning is a habit. 561-570-5-700. 561-570-500. Robs winning for you and our community. Oldies 959 and 106-9.

Good morning. I'm Earl Stewart. I welcome you to Earl Stewart on Cars, a live talk show, all about how to buy, lease, maintain, or repair your car. without being ripped off by a car dealer. With me in the studio is Nancy Stewart, my wife, co-host, and a strong consumer advocate, especially for our female business. We also have Rick Kearney, an expert on how to keep your car running right. I dare you to ask a question that Rick can't answer about the mechanics or electronics of your car.

Also with us as my son, Stu Stewart are linked to cyberspace through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Periscope. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our Mystery Shopping Report. report, he dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting self-forwarded dealership. And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. This is Earl on Cars. You've heard the pre-recorded introduction. And we've got the original team in the studio.

We've had some substitution in the past. Now we've got everyone here, Rick Kearney, our certified diagnostic master technician, Nancy Stewart, my co-host and founder of the show. And Stu Stewart, our Spymaster General, in charge of our mystery shopping report, and our hands-on guy, because he's in the dealership every day, doing what car dealers do, or doing the way, maybe what car dealers should do. So I don't want to get personal there, but we have real-time hands-on experience. This isn't a show where we talk about the way things were and the way they automate. this is the way things are today in the car buying, car repairing, car maintaining market. And we've got a wonderful group of folks out there that are listening right now.

Hopefully, the ones that aren't, will be tuning in. You know, we're on for two hours, and we're on until 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. And we have all sorts of avenues of communication open to you. We have the old-fashioned telephone, 877-960-90-90-60. You might want to make a note of that number. You don't want maybe call it, don't write it down if you're driving or something, but a call-in number, 877-9-60-960. Nancy Stewart prioritizes callers.

She's got the computer screen there. If you call, she sees it. And if we're yakking or doing something else, we will get to your call expeditiously. We like the call as a personal touch, and of course we have the necessary text. Where will we be in the 21st century without texting? Texting is the choice of many people, including myself.

If you want to text this, and a lot of good reasons, area code 772-497-6530. Again, if you want to make a note of that, text us. It's 772-497-6530. Your regular callers out there, we've got some people that are just amazing sources of information. Vigilantes, we're going to swear in a new vigilante today. I won't mention his name, but we have a New York representative for our vigilante, of course. and any of you out there with experience and buying cars

like to help people especially if you have to be cyber savvy good with a PC and a smartphone you've got to buy online today if you don't shop and buy online or at least choose your price online you're paying too much so vigilantees out there that are really good

with computers and smartphones love to hear from you if you go to earloncars.com that's our kind of like A heartbeat of what we do, the Erlon Cars. It's the hub of the wheel of all the avenues. You can access the radio show.

You can access the blog. We have thousands of articles, the mystery shopping reports, recommended dealers list. That's the heart of our information center is Earl on Cars.com. And on that Earleoncars.com URL, you can sign up. application. We've got to screen you first. Be sure you have the necessary qualifications. And our vigilantes are extremely qualified. What do they do? Vigilantes are in the field.

We'll have one from New York today. We have them. We're all over. We've got them in Wisconsin. I can't remember. A lot of them in Florida. And what do they do? They help others. They help others find the information that Earl and Cars has. And you act as a guiding hand to an elderly person or a person as maybe English is not his primary language. They're having a deal with English-speaking only car dealerships. Help your fellow man buy a car or maintain a repair car. So that's a team we've got available for you. I love to hear from you.

Oh, Facebook.com slash Earlland Cars. We're out there, Twitter, YouTube, YouTube.com, 4-Sash Erl on Cars. And we monitor that. Rick Kearney monitors to YouTube. Stu Stewart monitors the Facebook. Nancy monitors the telephones, and I don't do anything. We got it all. Yeah. Anyway, let me introduce Nancy Stewart here.

She also does something very special besides monitor the phones. She is our female advocate and the one that has built this show up to near parity with our female callers. Nancy, the mic is all yours. Yes, good morning everyone and welcome. We have a great show ahead of us and you're a big part of that because you are an important part of the show. I'd like to extend to our first two new lady callers, $50 if you give us a call and say hi. Introduce yourself or you know you may have a particular topic you'd like to address and we'd like to join you. So $50. for the first two new lady callers.

You know, ladies, women are a majority of the car buying process. 877-960-99-60. That's 877-960-99-60. And that text number that Earl mentioned is 772-497-6530. And don't forget, your anonymous feedback.com. You can go and do a whole lot with that. you can really put your heart out there and a few other things and you remain anonymous it's a it's a great site to go to we are going to go straight to the phones this morning

where we have don holding from Palm Beach Gardens good morning Don good morning I got a picture to you of your car last week did you get it I did and I am in forever indebted to you for you folks that has the first time we saw it What do you think of the ride? I love it. I was just talking about it. I haven't stopped talking about it since I picked it up.

It's an amazing machine. And I want to thank you personally. I wonder how coincidental it was that you went out there and saw my car. And then I called, oh, yeah, the car's here. So I got it. And I love it. And we're still learning the driver. If there's a negative for a Tesla, if you haven't driven one before,

I know, what's this your second or third, Don? My fifth one, and then I have two of the cyber trucks on order, one, my son, and one for me. I did take that car to the track at the afternoon. Right from the showroom to the track, it went 937, 152 miles and out. Oh, my goodness. Don, did you... Did you use the drag strip mode? No, I did not.

I was just trying to get used to the car. Yeah, sure. Getting real busy out there. I figured it would probably go a tent faster in the launch mode. Yeah, launch mode, yeah. I wasn't concerned about that. The car just performed like any race car I ever owned. I mean, they're just unbelievable.

And you can go get groceries in them. That's amazing. Oh, yeah. You can put a bicycle in the back. Yeah, I mean, that's amazing. A small hot car like that, you look at it, couldn't believe you could put a regular bicycle, you don't have to fold it up and put it on the roof or anything. Did you get a chance where you could run it up quick and see how fast it is?

No, I've just been playing around a little bit. I've been behaving myself, but we're definitely going to get out to Bobby's Raceway and let it out and see what it feels like. I punched it a couple times. I smacked my head into the headrest to it. Yeah, you'll do that Tell your passengers to put their head back Well, Nancy had her head back

I was the one with my head up And bam, I thought I had a mild concussion for a minute I just said, hit it When did you get it? I got it the day after you called me Yeah Oh, really? Yeah, it was out there and quite an experience

So, thanks again We'll stay in touch, you've got my number I got your number Yes, sir. Next time you're out there, we'll try them out together. We'll do that. Enjoy it. Nice talking, Gerald. Thank you, don't. Take care.

Thanks, Tom. You may want to do that soon. Rumor is, Palm Beach International Speedway may be getting sold, bulldozed, and turned in the houses. Yeah, well, it's a long, long time for that's going to happen. But it is under discussion phase. There's a little thing called zoning and it's going to be. Oh, but 1964, that track was first built. Yeah.

Wow. Okay, where were we when the phone call came in? We were getting ready to introduce Stu. Okay. Hi. Cybermester, Sue Stewart. You know, our mystery shop this week, we went up to Stewart doing another Mazda dealership kind of with a little theme because we did a Mazda dealership last week.

And I was thinking about what we basically provided. We provide a glimpse to everyone of what to expect. Because, okay, a lot of you are driving your cars, have not shop for a car, look for a car in probably three, four, or five years. Because not everybody's looking for a car at any given time. So we're speaking to a lot of people who maybe might not find all this that relevant. But when you do, this landscape changes day to day. I mean, certainly the pandemic just turned everything on its head,

ship shortages. It's nothing like, I promise you, it's nothing like it was when you bought your last car. And so if you're even thinking about getting a car, just pay attention to the show because we are, it's like a sneak preview. It's a trailer of what to expect when the show begins for you in reality. Don't get a surprise. I forgot to mention this with Tesla. And let me say it was a, you know, I complained about things and delivery time and some other stuff, but, you know, I'm a complainer. Being in a car dealer, I probably know too much about the way things should be done.

I agree. But I have to say the Tesla experience was a pleasant one, all things being considered. The one thing that surprised me is when I went out there to pick up my Tesla on Monday, at the Tesla dealership on Ok Chubby Boulevard, nobody was wearing masks. And here we are. You probably read if you're a Floridian, maybe anybody read, if you read the headlines, there were more COVID deaths in Florida than anything. any other state the day before yesterday. I don't know how today is. And we rank 75% of everybody

that dies and the USA for COVID is from Florida. Now, the Delta variant is raging here. I mean, not uniformly around the entire state. There are pockets. But certainly, why aren't cardio shifts being more cautious? They told me to us so that everybody was vaccinated. Now, that is a real positive. Somehow it wasn't totally reassuring, because I just had one person's word, the receptionist, and I said, why isn't anybody wearing a mask? She's, I'm wearing a mask. She says, well, it's optional, but everybody is vaccinated. Well, maybe. They sell about 300 cars a month out there, and that's an active dealership, and a lot of people in and out. And you'll see in our mystery shopping report that the issue there is too. So I took the mic away from Stu and then I

ranted, but the point is it is a totally different experience today. And if I were you, and this was just me, before I went to a car dealership, I'd find out if there's, if there's three monster dealerships or three Honda dealerships, find out first which one is, has a mask policy that makes sense. I may at least have the employees one mad, but it was, I was shocked. Yeah, it's very common. We kind of got away from that for a while as the pandemic seemed like it was coming to an end. But then, like you mentioned, Delta came home.

That's why we're wearing them right now in the studio. If you can't see us, you know, you're not streaming us. Everybody in the studio has a mask coming. Yeah, we haven't worn a mask in here since, I think, May or something like that when we took them off. Yeah. So it's kind of neat. So when you're doing your research for a car and your research in the dealer, read Google reviews, go on their website, ask friends, go on Facebook,

but listen to the show because we're giving you like real-time information if you're going car shopping this weekend today's report especially if you're looking for a Mazda or a compact car it's going to be very valuable to you yeah so I'm looking forward to it yeah definitely you're going to find the truth right here and ladies and gentlemen let me ask you a question before we go to our next caller how do you feel about the mask mandate how do you feel about the restrictions that have been put into place I really don't want to get into a debate on mask because there's a hard core out there that have their ideas. And there's no sense in having an argument or getting hostile about it.

We obviously advocate wearing masks. I'm very surprised we haven't had more of that on the show. We've been advocating for masks for two years now, or a year and a half. Yeah, and probably it offends some people, but that's life. I mean, it's a huge number of people that haven't been vaccinated. it. Yeah. Well, I wasn't, you know, encouraging anyone to go and get into a viewbate or anything, but at any rate, maybe you can share your feelings about the microchip shortage and the largest company that's going to raise the prices by probably about 20%. So, they're all hard.

At any rate, 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6-530. And remember, www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We're going to go to Nick, who's been holding, and Nick's calling from Boston. Good morning, Nick. Hey, good morning, everyone. Fancy, Earl, Sue, Rick. Earl, congratulations on your new Modelette plaid. I'm really jealous.

I'm actually calling to share my experience with GM with the Bolt EV recall. And if you'll just bear with me, I'm in the airport right now about to board a flight to Atlanta, so I have my mask on. But anyway, so it's been a real disaster with GM. I have the 2020 Bolt, which was just added to. the scope of the recall at the close of the markets, 4 o'clock Eastern time last Friday. And I didn't get any communication from GM. It was less left to me so far to scope out.

I found out on the CNBC. I got a push notification. Bill LeBow, the transport reporter over there, did a very good job. And, you know, where I'm at now is, you know, just the restrictions of what they're saying. to use it. It's just very onerous for me in my, you know, car commuting patterns. You know, my parking situation is at an indoor garage at home, at work, and my charging situation. And I'm working with them. They have offered me a $46 a day rental car reimbursement plus fuel, which actually right now is workable with what's rates that I found.

But the problem I'm having is they are just not going to give that to me in writing, tell me what the restrictions are, what the terms are. They're just saying verbally that the 800 number, oh, save your receipts, $46 a day plus your fuel, and it'll all be taken care of once the repairs done. So, you know, it's new technology. You know, it comes with the territory. You know, I'm glad she's pulling all.

stops to make these days, but I just thought I gave my first-hand experience since I know last week talked about and you have an opportunity to call. I'm glad you did, Nick. I think that, you know, there's a halo around Elon Musk and Tesla, and part of it is the people that want the Tesla and the genius of the technology blows everybody away. But in the nuts and bolts of selling the cars and the customer satisfaction, Tesla has a lot to learn. Remember, they don't have a real network of retail dealers.

I mean, that's a good thing and that's a bad thing. They have to learn how to do that. And communication with the customer is lacking. But once you get there and you take your delivery, they're very nice. The vehicles are amazing. And so we forgive a lot of people when we buy something that we really, truly love. I hope you get your problem resolved soon. I hope Tesla wakes up, but they just don't have the expertise in place now for their retail network.

Okay, I think, make us off the phone. Let's move along here. Oh, you're still there? Okay, I thought you... I'm here, yes. Yeah. Yeah, well, anyway, enjoy your new car. And, you know, I'll like what you said earlier, everyone.

haven't gotten your vaccine, I encourage you to do so, and definitely wear masks that's the way that we can get through this pandemic and get back to some level of normalcy. Everyone stay safe out there. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, Nick. Stay safe out there. Enjoy that Tesla when you get it. Yes, enjoy that Tesla. It's a beauty. 877960 or you can text us at 772-497-60. You're going to be interesting to take a poll and just see what the consumer takes into consideration when they do go to buy a car if they indeed choose to go to the dealership rather than the internet and if you go to the internet it's really going to save you a lot of money but i wonder with you know investigating and gathering knowledge and everything you need to purchase a vehicle where we're on

that list does it fall that you say hmm let's see so-and-so has, they have to wear meth and so-and-so doesn't and what would your decision be as as far as purchasing a car? Ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers.

Two new lady callers. Give us a call. 877-960-9960. Now back to the recovering car dealer. I've got a YouTube over here. Yeah, Negan 1 has a question for Stu. Can y'all mystery shop a high-end

car that's over $100,000 interested to see differences in dealers and sales people and what deals and tactics they might make versus the average daily driver type car. Yeah, we kind of just did that when Earl bought his Tesla.

But, no, we shop luxury. I don't think we've targeted a car that was over $100,000. I know we've done... Oh, it's not BMW. We've done BMW. Yeah, but I think we were shopping like a mid-range. Mercedes, which is Mercedes. But we stuck around those you know, like, you know, 50,000. We didn't go for the upper end.

To answer the question, the higher up you go, the nicer it is. The better of the treatment. And let's face it, people that have a lot of money are probably more demanding and maybe a little obstinate, maybe even rude. They don't get pushed around in many cases. And because they have a lot of money, maybe they don't squabble about the price that much. So it's kind of a love relationship. the electric dealer loves

they love each other they pay all the money and they don't care they don't care to your you know opinion about the expensive car and well as one of our

callers suggested last week of the cars for the commenters hate to put it that way but anyway so how do you feel Mr. recovering car dealer you bought a high-end car and how were you treated? I just answer that I think

you know, they were... Well, I thought maybe you might have some details or suggestions for the audience out there. They were very courteous. They were friendly. How about the breakdown in communication? Do you feel that you were able to communicate from the very beginning?

Well, that goes back to the online relationship, which is lacking. And what I was talking about when I took delivery, that was more of a personal relationship. It was. That was pleasant. But as I say, Now, when was there a mask of the Tesla dealership, that turned me off. And as far as the online, it was just almost like non-existent.

You would send a student as part of that. He and I were both trying to communicate with Tesla. We ordered the car in May. They told me it would be here in July or August, and they moved it up to June or July. And then they moved up to August, and they kept bumping me a day, a day, a day, until it finally came in. So now have a good retail experience. Yeah, I think the two of you were sort of, well, set back on your heels early on,

but the icing on the cake was Tom, and when we met him at the dealership, it was really everything was worthwhile. Ladies and gentlemen, I would love to hear from you. Any topic at all, 877-9-66-99-60. Rick, do you have any YouTube? That's caught at the moment, although Negan 1 does say, congrats on the new car, the torque has to be insane he says he just came in

says it seems a lot of common people are buying expensive cars with eight-year loans which certainly possible they used to be a really bad deal today the cars are so good quality-wise if you choose the right car an eight-year-old car is

like a three-year-old car used to be 25, 30 years ago so if you don't mind it he's talking about an 84 an eight-year Yeah. An eight-year loan. That's right. Not an eight-year-old car.

Well, I'm talking about it. Oh, at the end of that. Driving a car for a day is not such a bad idea. You don't want to get an 84-month loan and trade it in three months because you have negative equity. If you keep it for eight years for seven years, then you have a, you know, you have a good quality car. And where we are here in Palm Beach County, and me being the childish car that I am, I noticed a lot of the Teslas, the Porsches, the Lamborghinis, the Ferraris, McLarens, even those high-end Jaguars. I mean, we do see a lot of high-end luxury cars, Rolls-Royce, a lot of them.

And so it's interesting to see these different cars on the road. And it seems like lately in the past few years, the number of what I will call as the supercars, the Ferraris, the Lamborghinis, they seem to have increased a lot. Have you noticed that? Well, people got a lot of money. I hope. There's been a... So, how about those people?

Do we have any text over there still? I mean, yeah, I got a bunch. I haven't gotten to them yet. I didn't want to say one thing on the Tesla purchase. Yes, you did go through an experience, but that was a very atypical. I mean, there wasn't, there was some complaints, but basically what you did is what, hopefully the car business is moving to. You bought it truly online.

Yeah. You didn't speak to a salesperson. You paid it online. It was all done. Your insurance, everything, every document was all done like that. And then it showed up, not at your house, because there's a delivery issue there, but it was a pretty modern experience and not typical for what most people go there. And in defense of Tesla, also the demand, I think, I'm not a speculator in the stock market, but if I were going to speculate, I might even consider buying Tesla,

even though it's at an extremely high price. And a lot of people say it's a bad investment. Of course, they've been saying that for a lot of years, and they've just made Elon Musk the richest man in the world. But with that said, I think it's unprecedented demand today. I think we know the car market is going bonkers during the pandemic. I think the Tesla market is going bonkers squared because they are the, I talked to a fellow yesterday.

I mentioned it earlier to Stu that he's trying to get a charger for his Tesla and he's got a six-week wait to buy the charger. I got lucky and bought my charger early, and then I couldn't get it installed. So I think that the Tesla locations around the country are having an unprecedented high-demand. People that order their cars aren't getting them. In fact, the guy I talked to yesterday hadn't got it. You know, we're talking a lot about Tesla. This is a car about, this is a show about how to buy any car and get a good deal,

and how to maintain and repair it without being ripped off. Let's maybe we can get some text or something like it's into the meat of the car. that subject. Oh, yeah. We've got a bunch. We'll start out with Anne-Maris. Are you got a call? Yeah, I'm going to interrupt you, Sue. We'll get back to those texts and maybe some uranonymous feedbacks. But right now, we're going to go to the phones, and

we're going to talk to Warren, and Warren's calling us from Palmino Beach. Warren, you've called before, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, many times. Yeah, many times. Yeah, I recognize your name. Welcome. Yeah, thank you. You know, I enjoy your show. First of all, let me say, I'm up

in New Jersey for the summer. and up here, I've got to say, compared to down here, I'm not running back to Florida so fast, because up here, people have a much higher vaccination rate, and I feel much more secure up here than I do down there. And I don't want to get into politics or anything, but there's been a much more emphasis on getting vaccinations, and I would say a lot of most people have vaccinated here where they're not down in Florida. So I feel much safety than I do down there.

Oh, Warren, what about the stores? Are you saying pretty good mask wearing and obeying policies and rules inside of retail stores, especially cardiology, which you probably haven't been. Well, I've also noticed, you know, it depends where you go. It's up to the store, the individual, where you go is not wearing a mask. But it's a good idea if you do wear a mask, obviously. I went to a mall last night, and most people, 99% of the people wearing masks. But you've got to ask yourself, and I'll ask the car selection,

I live right outside of New York City. If you consider the fact that in New York City, the COVID rate is extremely low in the largest city of the United States. So again, I'm going to get into politics. You've got to ask what they've done right up here in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and the Greenland where they're very, very low. And the politicians have said, let's get vaccinated, wear masks, and everything else, and it's work.

So it's bizarre to me that down there, you have this whatever, you know, anti-vaccination or anti-masking stuff. It makes no sense for me. But like I said, all you have to do is look in New York City. They have like no COVID case, you know, and everybody's on top of each other. So does that work or it doesn't work?

Yeah. Warren, thanks for that input. I'm glad you're in a safer area, and I'm like you. If I were you, I'd stay there until things calm down in Florida. It's a whole scary down here right now. So you'll be safe and stay well. Please call the show again.

Yeah, thank you so much, Warren. Thanks for sharing all of that information. Everybody is always asking questions. Yeah, okay, great. I just had one car question, if you know, Mike. Sure. The car question was, I know you've spoken about this a thousand times, about leasing and buying and all that kind of stuff.

So I don't want to go into all the details. But the leasing part that I find that it's really mentioned, but it's sort of the most important reason. People who are retired like me, and I don't have a lease car right now, but I'm looking for one, is that the leasing thing is just so simple compared to buying for people, especially retired, and it's just an idea of saying, well, I don't have to go to Joe's garage, and I don't really care that in the long run it's going to be better to buy a car and lease a car,

because when I'm down in Florida, 99% of the people who I live with down in the complex or lease a car for one reason, because they just don't want to deal with it. car repairs. Yeah. No, I understand. And you just hit the nail on the head. This is why people inform people that are able to buy the lease, I don't mean buy the lease.

I mean, lease the car at a competitive rate. It's a very simple process. You get used to it. You get a fresh car every three years, and life is good. But the people that are not sophisticated enough to understand the true value of the lease, they're the ones that can take advantage of. The average car dealer makes about $1,000 more when he leases your car than when you buy it. And they love leasing. They can, when you lease a car, and I know you see a lot of people that think this way, they don't think about the true

value and the cost. They think about the monthly payment. Does it fit into my budget? Well, guess what? You might have a nice publicly payment that fits in your budget, but you're double paying for the car. You could have purchased it. for a lot less money and total cost of value. But, yeah, leasing is here to stay what 30% of our customers do, right? 30, 35%. Yeah, we're in the mid-upper-30s. Yeah, so of the cars, Toyota's that we put down the road,

or at least cars, people do it because they like it. And unfortunately, some people do it because they get trapped. You know, once you're in a lease, you're not trading a car with equity. So you kind of have to lease every three years, and that's okay if you love it. if you like, the convenience. Yeah, exactly. Just the last thing on the leasing-buying situation is that because I listen to your show from a period of time, you know, we don't have to go over,

but you have about seven or eight things that you come up and you could ask a car deal about leasing, you know, by the residual. A lot of people, and I see, they have no idea that when they go and lease a car, what the residual is. you know, a lot of things that you brought up over a period of time, you know, that I've written down because if I want to lease the car, I know to go into a dealer, and these are the five or six or seven things, that I want him to answer right off the bat without, you know, you know, the five or six, seven things. And I learned that from the show.

And I tell people, you know, you can tell the dealer, this is what you want, you know, this is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, you give out good information on that, and I think if you know those five, six, seven questions to ask the dealer, You're going to get a lot better price. Thanks, Warren. And they know, you know, and they don't play the games that they might if you didn't demonstrate that expertise. So, thanks very much, Warren. I really appreciate the call. Thank you.

Thanks, Warren. Speak to you again. Yes, knowledge is definitely power, whether you're purchasing a vehicle or you are leasing one. You've got to do your homework. Check out those miles on the lease, number one. So at any rate, I think we're going to go back to the ladies, I have 50. hours for the first two new lady callers, so take advantage of that

at 877-9-60-99-60. We're going to go back to Stu where he has a whole lot of text and some other things to get to. We're going to kick it off as always with Amory's text. Amory says, good morning. I have a few questions for Rick.

Listen up. Number one, based on your extensive experience, which vehicles have been the easiest to work on? Remember that. Two, what vehicles were the worst knuckle busters? We talked about that last week a little bit.

Yeah. And number three, are the older cars or newer cars easier as to work on? Easiest cars to work on. Early 90s, Carolla. Really? Pretty much actually all the way up into the 2000s and even, I'll say up to maybe even almost as late as 2010 Carolla. Just a heads up for everybody out there that doesn't.

know about the show. We're a Toyota dealership. The only thing Rick works on is Toyota, so he's not going to tell you, not literally, but close to it. And he's not going to tell you about a lot of cars out there that are easy to work on and hard to work on because he's mainly a Toyota. What's harder at Dodge Dart or a Toyota Corolla? What was the first one? A Dodge Dart or a toilet carola? A dart? I've never worked out. But, see, it proved your point But are you talking about the old original Dodge Starts or the new whatever you want to call that thing? I didn't know there was an original. Now I, well sure, Dodge Starts from the 60s and 70s.

I don't know these things. However, I'm on a car. He's trying to make trouble. I'm just honest. Obviously. Any early 90s Honda Civic would also be an excellent car for the easier. Is it just simpler systems or easy to access or just? If you're looking for a car for, say, a young kid,

who has some aptitude with tools and they want a car that they can work on and repair. That's something they can do. A Honda Civic, the Corolla would be a great choice because they're smaller engines. They're easy to work on. There's a lot of room around them. For the biggest knucklebuster, any car that comes from a northern state, because you need what's called the blue wrench, the torch. Almost everything is rusted solid because of all the road salts up there.

Let me jump on here with something that maybe can summarize this and broaden the discussion. I've got a consumer report in my hand. You won't be able to read this, but you'll see what I'm holding up yet. And this is the consumer reports of the list the cost, the annual cost of older cars. And that would come to ease of maintenance and difficult. So it's kind of surprising to me. on the five-year basis, the best car out there is a Buick, Lincoln, a Toyota's up there, Chevrolet.

The worst car is a BMW, and then is a Porsche, and then is a Volvo, and then they have a 10-year, if you really want a bad car, buy a BMW. A BMW has the highest cost over a 10-year period. That's why their extended warranties are so expensive. So, again, Anne Murray, I know you subscribe to consumer reports, go online, and you could get the annual reports or the five-year-old cars, anything you want, and that way, you're not going to get surprised with maintaining your car. Yeah, definitely. And, you know, to what you said, you know, about the warranty, there's just a lot of consumers who don't really, you know, take into advantage that what doesn't. doesn't the warranty cover.

That's not number one. And the other is that sometimes when you purchase a car, you have to evaluate the price of the car, at least in my mind, I think, and what it will cost you to keep it on the road. And I have to agree with Rick on the Honda and the Corolla. What great vehicles and what great competition that's out there for both vehicles because they're the right vehicles. Now, I want to show and tell Rick.

I went to arms in the air and I want to see your bruises. Have you healed? You're healing nicely. You healed marks? Oh, there you go. They look better. That's one thing about being, for my advantage as a mechanic. I do usually heal quickly. That was a northern state that brought a car in where you just couldn't get the... Actually, no, that was actually a car that a rat had chewed a whole bunch of wiring.

Oh, I got you. Let's get moving along here. We have a bunch of text. Nancy mentioned something important, though, that I think was important to add on to, is when you talk about getting an extended warranty or a service contract, and we talk about that a lot, you're surprised later on when you find out what it doesn't cover. Make sure you ask for one that's called, it has exclusionary coverage. And it doesn't sound right, because you want it to include things, but a warranty that has exclusionary coverage, it doesn't list the components that it covers. It only lists the components that it doesn't, so it's really clear. So you can see right on there.

And usually it's a small paragraph of things that it will. say it doesn't cover brake pads and it's very specific. So if anything goes on the car wrong, other than those things, you're good. So that's an easier way to understand. Yeah, rule of thumb, don't buy an extended warranty. Buy a good car. Do your research, get a quality car and save your money on the extended warranty. Does the exclusion of, is that on every contract in small print? Well, there's contracts that they're not called exclusionary in which it'll just list what it's covered. There'll be a thousand things that covers and it's impossible when you look at

It's a state law. It depends from state to state. And when you have an extended contract, some states require more disclosure than others. Right. But there are different types of things. So one will say, one will list a huge list, and it's impossible to know what it doesn't. The other ones are more specific. It doesn't cover this, and then you consume everything else it covers. That's great news.

We're going to go to the phones. John is holding from West Palm Beach. Good morning, John. Welcome to Earl Stewart on cars. Thank you. Good morning. Well, I don't have a, I have a question that I'm going to need possibly the listening audience help on. I'm in the process of purchasing a car.

I'm selling the car that I bought from you, and CarMax gave me a great price. Right. And, you know, I got the seven days, I get to turn it in, and then they say they write me a check. You know, and then put it in the bank, and it clears, you know, whatever it is of the bank. but someone said that it's not a check, it's not a cashier's check, it's like a voucher, and you may have to wait until they sell or offs in the car or sell it on their lot to get your money. No, no, that's not the case. That's not the case?

No. Okay, because I called your business office and said, no, it's actually a check. Yeah. It is, okay. Sure, yeah. CarMax is a legitimate company, and, um, You'd be so you have to be careful. You never just go to CarMax and sell your car.

You get a bid from CarMax. Then you check two or three other sources, good sources, like AutoNation, we buy any car, dot com, for room. There's a million companies out there buying cars. Stay away from the car dealer that gives you the solicitation to come in. That's BS. But go to the make dealer that sells your car and get a bid, a legitimate bid from the used car manager.

And then if CarMax has got the best price, sometimes you can get a surprisingly good price from CarMax and sometimes you get a terrible price. They use an analog kind of a sort of a artificial intelligence mode to determine what they will pay for a car. And it's based on supply and demand for all the Carmex stores in the USA. And if they need a car just like yours real bad, they'll pay you a lot more money than you can get anywhere else. Well, that may be the case because I bought my car from you for 22,000 last year on July 4th, and they're giving me 194. Wow. Good price. Your timing was perfect. Yeah, it's timing the economy, and then I take care of the car. There's like no door dings or anything. Yeah.

And then again, it's a genus. It's a high-end cart like you just said. Oh, you want a good car, you know. You buy value or not bad. valuable but buy worthy cards and that and uh congrats congratulations on your uh Tesla my Tesla yeah because we were two days right behind you and uh that's why I got to get rid of this so I can take delivery of ours I hear you all I'll say it we'll wave on the road of each other where it's kind of a club us Tesla owners the transition is amazing John definitely is into the Tesla yeah we My wife, we went and we test drove it, we got, and then I asked him, did Earl Stewart get his car yet?

They said, yeah, you picked up two days ago. And so my wife, you know, so we asked him, do you have any used Tesla? Because we hear all the horror stories about you have to wait months and months. They said, no, we don't have any used ones, so we only have new ones. She goes, we got a truck coming in, do you want one? And we said, yeah, we'll take it. So it was, you know, like two days ago. Interesting. I don't know they do that.

So you could buy a car from there without ordering it? A used car. Yeah, we used one. Was it new? He said used car. No, no one. It's a new one. He says new.

Oh, new car. This is violated the Florida franchise laws. We went in there. We test drove one because we signed up and they gave us a thousand free supercharge, you know, a thousand supercharged things. and John John, excuse me, what location? What location were you in? The Okotovie, the one on Okotovie, where you went to pick up your car.

Oh. We've got to call the DMV. And we're getting the European model where you can charge the battery up to 100% instead of 90. Very good. Well, congratulations, and I'll see you on the road. drive carefully John take care

maybe your wife and I can we can go out to the racetrack thanks that's really interesting that's so if they're selling cars from that location I've heard rumors to that effect I think a lot of that's going on

I don't think it's being monitored carefully what Stu and I are talking about is there's a law that says you can't sell a car retail a new car retail if you are a manufacturer. Now, how does Tesla get around that? It's okay to do it online.

But you can't set up a location and buy cars, put them in stock if you're not a licensed dealer. And because Tesla is a manufacturer, they can't get a license to sell cars from a particular location. But at John's case, they're apparently doing that. So good for John, but bad for the enforcement of the rules and regulations of the state of Florida. and just about every other state.

I think we've got a YouTube over here from Rick. Yeah, actually from Donovan. He says, congrats Earl on getting your Tesla. Have you had a chance to take it to the supercharger yet and get the experience there? Haven't. I checked near a supercharger to where Nancy and I live is eight miles away, and that's good to know.

But I got my garage charger installed the other day, and it's so cool. It's like having my own gas station in my garage come in, plug it in, and forget about it. I get on the car in the morning. I got 350 miles on the range, and where am I going in a day? It's going to take more than 350 miles. And he goes on to say the one in Delray is the best, as it's a fixed cost,

but a V3 250 kilowatt hour one opened recently at the Palm Beach outlet, sealed Palm Beach Mall. Oh, wow. I'll have to remember that. Yeah, it's on your screen. It shows you the nearest location of all the supercharger locations wherever you may be. So if you're on a road trip, the car will even tell you,

hey, you only got 100 miles left or 50 miles left. You've got a charger up here on your right in two miles. You better pull in there and get a charge. I mean, it's amazing. Okay, too much Tesla talk. Yeah, I want to remind the ladies and gentlemen that you are a big part of the show. give us a call. And ladies, I've got $50 for the first two newly callers, so there's something

there for you. And ladies, how would you feel about driving a Tesla? I can't wait. I'm going to do it this afternoon. I was supposed to do it yesterday, but I was a little disappointed. I couldn't get in to the parking lot I wanted to use. Okay, there we go. 877-960. We're going to go back to Stu, where he has a lot to get to. All right. Earl, I see Wi-Fi being offered in new cars as an option. Am I wrong that this is just stupid to me? Doesn't everyone have a cell phone now? Why would you need Wi-Fi in a car? I think it depends on your location in the country. I had a Wi-Fi in my Lexus, and I did not like it. I disconnected it. You're better off just to use the cellular if you're in an area that has good cellular connections, and I don't use my Wi- Phone. That's how the Wi-Fi and a car works.

It's got its own cellular connection, and then it just spreads it out for everyone in the car. Hot spot. It's a hot spot for you. Waste of money. If you have a car like a Tesla, you want to be sure you have Wi-Fi in your garage, and be sure you've got a booster where you could get that.

You've got to update your car. Yeah. Okay. This one is from Lou in Jacksonville. He says, I read that one of Toyota's major suppliers said that the semiconductor shortage will last throughout 2022. They are not the only chip supplier making the same warning. All indications

are that the problem will persist far longer than previously anticipated. And like I said, that's Lou up in Jacksonville. I think that's an overstatement. I think that there will be a spotty shortage. There's going to be a spotty shortage of everything, folks, because we have an unprecedented economy, unprecedented employment, unprecedented high prices. And All the manufacturing, virtually, important word, virtually all manufacturers and retailers and everybody else is making a lot of money and selling cars and everything else at higher prices. So there will be microchip, semiconductor shortages to some extent.

But I can promise you, production is going to go up in the fourth quarter, and because the demand is so high, there could still be somewhat of a shortage. but more cars are going to be being sold in 60 days and 90 days than there are today and we're selling so damn many cars today I don't see how that's possible Sue, would you agree with that?

Yeah, yeah, I think it takes right on. Supply and demand, there's nothing like it. We're going to go back to the phones where John is holding. John calls us from Palm City. He's a regular caller. Great to hear from you, John. Good morning. Good morning to everyone.

Congratulations on getting your car. It's been a long way. But you were the first one spot on that drove that car way lagged, way back when, and you knew it was going to be a winner. What I want to say is, in some good news, and I did the homework, my battery went on one of the cars, three years and five months exactly. It's a shame because today, with the battery technology, you know, you're paying $40,000 for a car, and three years later, your battery goes, and that's not

under warranty. What I want to say was consumer reports made it very easy. It's a style 24, which fits Honda, Toyota's many cars, and consumers recommend for that particular battery to go to Napa. And I did, and Napa, for the fine rating. And then I find at Napa, it's made by a company that's fair. Fantastic. Decker company in Lyon, Pennsylvania. I know that company because in a collector car that I have, which is in 1970, it's been in there for 10 years. That's Decker. And also

in stock, they had this 24, and they also have in stock for that car also, which is a model 27. So I just want to recommend Napa for batteries, and it's thanks to consumer reports that tells you exactly, you know, the rating and where to go and the best price. Well, thanks very much, what is that Sile 24 remain? Rick, do you know what that? Yes. That's a BCI rating.

Actually, the 24 kind of refers to the size of the battery itself, and it will be either a 24F or a 24-O, and that tells you where the positive and negative posts are located on the battery. So the brand is a NAPA, so you want to size 24, but the consumer report says the NAPA battery. I wonder who the manufacturer is. NAPA is not a battery manufacturer, are they? No, they probably buy... It's made by DECA Corporation, D-E-K-A in Lyon, Pennsylvania.

Oh, Deca, yeah, Deca. They're a very big battery manufacturer. Okay. They make all the batteries for NAPA. Oh, so Deca is a quality recommended to manufacture by consumer boards. I did not know that. I love to learn new things. Thanks.

Thank you, John. And also, I checked in, I have a Walmart battery in there now. Walmart no longer, they're made by Johnson Control, which Rick said in the past, Johnson Control was making the batteries for Toyota and Honda and other companies. And also, Walmart did away with, they used to have a five-month warranty. They no longer have that. It's three months now only. So it tells you something that the batteries today, and especially,

here in South Florida with the heat will not last longer than three, three and a half years. Is that correct Rick? Yeah, unfortunately it is. I don't know why the engineers are not coming, figuring out a way to make a 12-volt battery that'll last longer, but

they seem stuck with this stone age technology on 12-volt batteries. You know, if you believe in the conspiracies of capitalism and I don't, but I mean when you first said, John, I I can't agree with you more.

Why can't they build a battery? I mean, your battery lasted three years. We're replacing batteries sometimes in two years. A lot of it depends on your driving habits and the car and the rest of it. But I'm like you. Why the hell if they come up with it, just a normal automotive battery,

it'll last for at least five or six years. You keep the car for five or six years. Why do you have to change the battery two or three times during the ownership cycle of the car? Doesn't make any sense. and AAA checked mine is three years and five months I checked to date and they said it was completely

plates were shorted so it was absolutely no good at all that's not too good at a battery no well thank you John you were always an interesting caller and I always learned something from your calls now I know that Napa sells deck of batteries and consumer reports says they're the best yeah we thank God for consumer reports right

You bet. Amen. Stay safe out there, John. Thank you, guys. Thank you, John. 877-960-99-60. Ladies, $50 for the first two. New Lady Callers, 877-9-60.

We're going to go back to Stu, and he's got a whole lot to get to. Okay, we have a text from Scott and Stewart. He says, do you see the inventory going back to normal anytime soon? Great show. It depends on what you call normal inventory. I think this is almost normal now with 50 cars on the ground, it's been going on for six months. You can't equate the size of a car dealer's inventory with this volume of business.

Let's take the second largest car dealer in the world. That would be Hollywood Toyota in South Florida, if you believe that. But that's true. We have the second largest car dealership happens to be a toilet. dealership in South Florida, Hollywood, Toyota. They sell every month over 1,000 cars. And sometimes soon, even a lot more than that. I don't know exactly what their inventory now is. Stu probably does. I would say, I don't think they have 150 cars on the ground. Do you, would you think? I haven't looked. I can find out exactly. But we are selling a huge number of cars. Typically,

for a car dealer to sell 300 cars, you don't want to have 300 cars on the ground, at least. Today, you can have 30 cars on the ground and sell 300 cars. It turned everything upside down. Exactly. The rule of thumb is you needed a 30-day supply, enough cars to sell in 30 days.

It doesn't even work like that anymore. I think we're going to have low laboratories for a long time, just like a microchip shortage earlier for a long time. But the prices are going to be coming down in the last quarter. I mean, they will be coming down. So, trust me on that.

So, Stu, you're saying that 30 days, you know, in this landscape that we're in, it just doesn't apply. No, not at all. Like, like you all said, like this for our example, we've been selling 300 plus new cars a month, and we've been stocking 20 cars. Now, this is all being fed from prior orders. So what happens is when this started a few months ago in May, people would order the cars they didn't arrive. So on every truck of vehicles we get delivered, 7 out of 10, 8 out of 10 of those cars, are already sold and we're just delivering cars from vehicle deals that we rode up in june we have 30 trucks a month coming in with 10 cars sold that's 300 cars you theoretically you don't

even have any cars on the line yeah the cars we're delivering this month we sold in june okay is that a pretty high percentage at this point because of the landscape uh with that many cars already being sold that are coming in on that truck out of how many how many cars are on the truck about 10 but there it's it's unprecedented we've never experienced this before I didn't think it was possible we all predicted that we're gonna have horrible sales the industry industry wide and it worked out differently so yeah most of the telephone calls that I've received this week or complaints about low inventory or practically nothing I don't know what I hurt you and

hurts the reason people are unhappy about is when we had low inventories and we have our cars pre-sold I say we I'm speaking as a community of the car dealers. You pay the price the dealer wants to get, and we will see this over and over again, a mystery shopping report, which is coming up in the last part of the show. Some of you walk in, you'll say,

we have one of these, and there it is. You want this model, you checked it out, there it is. And you say, how much is it? And the dealer gives you the price, and you say, that's too much, guess what? The dealer says, okay, I'll see you next year, because I have three other people,

waiting for that same car. So what the low inventory is costing the consumer is they're paying a very, very high price. So to answer your question, Toyt of Hollywood, the second largest Toyota dealer on planet Earth, shows that they have 124 new vehicles in stock, but that's likely less than that. For example, we're showing 55 new vehicles in stock and we have maybe 30. 20 of those are actually sold. They just haven't been delivered yet. Remember when you say the biggest Toyota in the world, you're saying the business car dealer in the world. Oh, yeah. Because Toyota sells more cars per dealership than anybody else.

So the number one, number two car dealership volume in the world, it's got 120 cars on the ground. Not even that. I would bet it's under 100 just based on, because I guarantee they have sold cars. And just put that also all tied up together for you. Hollywood right now has 748 new vehicles sold this month, and they're doing this with a stock. of around, I'm going to guess, around 75, 80 cars.

Yeah. Okay. You know, this is really interesting, and we have a lot of people that are listening right now, and it's so interesting to talk about this, something that is always going on, but then since we've got into this landscape of where we are with this big shortage for the consumer to understand that that 30 days just doesn't apply. And most importantly, someone just said here on the panel that if the car comes in and the consumer changes its mind, they sell it to somebody else. There's someone else in line who wants that car.

It reminds me of rooms to go. If they don't find you at home the first time, they say, hey, that's okay. That couch that you ordered, we have someone else on the waiting list because there's such a great shortage all the way around with everything that we need. So that were my thoughts. too. All right. I'm sorry, we have a phone call. Great.

And that calls from Summerfield, and we're going to talk to Ron. Good morning, Ron. Hey, good morning. I have a question for Rick. Rick, I'm considering buying a 2022 Rav4, limited hybrid. And a question, how is it that they can have the same 2.5-liter four-cylinder in the Sienna and the Highlander and the Highlander? and in the Rav 4, I mean, they're way different in weight.

And what do they do to the car to make it, to get the gas mileage from the highland, which must be 1,000 pounds heavier than the Rav 4? What do they do to get that power? Good question. Well, but you're talking about a hybrid system, right? Yeah. Yeah. See, the hybrid is where it gets its biggest difference.

The gasoline engine is only there to create electricity, and depending upon how the car is designed, I mean, yeah, the Rav is going to get a little better fuel economy because of the lighter weight, but the Highlander and the Sienna are going to be very similar in weight, and since the gasoline engine only runs when it needs to, to provide electricity, it comes right down to driving habits as to how to maximize the fuel economy on them.

But, yeah, that same engine, it's going to be tuned the same way because it's running the same hybrid system. The batteries are going to be pretty similar to identical. So, I mean, it's, yeah, the weight does change it a little bit, but not as much as you might think. The engine just charges a battery. He doesn't run the car. Right.

The electric motor runs the car. Right. So the second part of that question is I was also considering the prime. And so what is it that the prime is going to give me, other than 300 horsepower, of course, that, I can't get from the regular RAV-4. I mean, what do they do to the prime? Yeah, Stu's probably a better choice for that,

for what extra features are available on the prime. Well, I mean, as far as, like, options and stuff, they're just, it's just as well-equipped as, you know, just the upper-end versions of the, it's wrong with the Rav-4, right? But it'll run further on just the better. Yeah, so in a situation, and I think I was an ideal candidate for this, I had a Prius Prime, so it did it the same way.

I think the range is a little bit different, But roughly the same thing. If you're commuting locally, you can drive exclusively on electric power if you're driving locally. So I plugged it into a standard 110 outlet out of my garage. I've gotten a charger since then, but you plug it in and you drive to work in the morning and you drive it home all in electric. Now, if you're driving around more, some errands, you might go over that.

And then the hybrid system kicks in, and it's still really, really good gas mileage. So it's mainly designed for short-range commuters. What is the range on the prime now, right for I think it's, I know the Prius was like 40, but I would have to look it up for the actual spec on that, but to me it almost seems like you'd almost, now this is not what I'd call a bad problem, you'd almost rind up in a situation where you're not using the gas enough that it actually almost could start to go bad in your tank. And that was the situation when I first drove it, I was trying to set records how long could go without using gas. And then Rick said, hey, you're going to need to use some of that. gas because it's going to go back. Yeah, you've got to take it out an exercise a little bit. Yeah, so I did that. Unfortunately, because when you're using it, you get like infinite gas mileage, but then it

goes down. Okay. Next. Did we know when the 2022s are coming out? On the primes, I don't know, but I can tell you that they're such a low supply vehicle. They're tough. They're definitely a weight to get them because they're not making a ton of them.

but I would suspect probably either later this year or early next year okay well thank you very much I appreciate it thanks for all around good question okay we have some more text I can get to that alright oh we've answered this question but Gary did ask

in Jupiter Farms hey Earl did you get that Tesla the answer is yes we've talked about that lot okay it says Earl Reuters reported today that car sales have finally started decline as a result of the chip shortage. Are you seeing this trend in South Florida? Yeah, we're saying, we're seeing used car, yeah, a little bit.

Actually, you know, we're talking, we're thinking of our own experience. Our decline this month is more seasonal than it is COVID-related. I think that in terms of we measure our performance, car dealer, all car dealers, based the month because a car dealer will sell more cars and what's the biggest year for us. Biggest month, March. Oh, gosh, I think it was July. Okay, July.

So it's a seasonal thing, depending on where you are. But no, the volume I don't think it's going to start declining overall. I think prices are starting to decline just a little bit, but not much. Use car prices a little bit more than new car. Yeah. seeing, I mean, overall in our region, South Florida, we're seeing a little bit less, the volume is a little bit lower, but that's also... Seasonal.

Yeah, I mean, August is usually a pretty good month, but they're still good. That's the thing. And also, when you look at a month, and that's one of the things that drives Earl and I crazy about looking at your business in a month snapshot, it doesn't tell you a whole lot. And so there's natural fluctuations and rhythms and sales. and this could be part of that. So you need to see if you get a few months under your belt before you, you know, if there's a trend.

Well, yeah. Does that answer your question, Ron? No, that was a text. Oh, text, okay. Yeah. Let me, let me, let me, I'm, the reason I got that messed up is because I was daydreaming. I'm daydreaming about the COVID thing.

And here's an interesting, I don't like to talk about our dealership, but I think it's, to me it's educational. You'll find out later in the show, We had a bad experience with masks at our mystery shopping report. And last month, or last week we did too, right? Stu, we had no mask in the previous shopping report. I bought a Tesla this week, and there were no masks on the Tesla dealership. I'm not sure why I'm saying this, but in our dealership, everybody wears a mask.

And even the vaccinated employees, which most of our employees are, we have 80% of our employees are all vaccinated. and they still wore a mask, and that's because we are in the middle of a variant surge hotspot in Florida. And as I said earlier on the show, 75% of all the deaths from COVID are in Florida. So I don't know what you car dealers out there or your retailers or anybody else is thinking when you have your employees without mask

and your customers without mask, But I'm just saying, our business has been really good, and we still take precaution. So if you think you're going to lose business by making people wear a mask, think again. I mean, a lot of people want to go to a place where they can feel safe. And I don't think Nancy and I would walk into a restaurant if the waiters weren't wearing a mask. Absolutely. And I don't think you would either. Why go into a grocery store or why go into a car dealership?

when people aren't wearing a mask I don't get it I'm not ready to play Russian roulette that's number one and number two is obvious it's science it's well it's wear your mask

that's all I can say and ladies I have a question for you I've got that $50 for the two of you our first two new lady callers you know I talk to more women obviously and it seems that They have masks on their mind all the time, and they do so because mostly I speak to the ones who have children.

So would you want to walk into a dealership without a mask, or would you rather know that they have a sign on the front door? You know, you've got to wear a mask if you come in to purchase a car. Give me a call, 877-960, or you can text at 772-497-60. 4976530 we certainly do have a great mystery shopping report coming up from Stewart you're going to enjoy that and right now we're going to go back to Stu I think I don't think Rick has any thing for me do you actually I got a couple quick ones here Donovan comes in with one he says I have one for Earl on EV battery fires that he had forgotten to mention in the past

he says with the Chevy bolt fires Earl has said why can't they see the battery so that it can't get oxygen so it can't burn. Well, it's not really possible because the anode for the lithium battery creates its own oxygen when it's burning, and it's part of the reason why it takes so much water to put one out when it does catch fire, because apparently the chemical reactions inside is not only creating the fire,

but it's also creating its own oxygen at that point. So it becomes self-sustaining. But it would still be confined to the battery if it were sealed, it exploded. So I'm assuming that these batteries must be exploding because if the confine inside, but it has some sort of a titanium seal on it, they couldn't get out. A titanium seal, you'd have a car so heavy then, you'd have a hard time moving it, but that's one of the reasons why Tesla and the others. Titanium is the lightest metal.

Well, the batteries mounted on the outside of the car underneath. Yeah, no, I'm not talking about, I'm talking about the, I never mind. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm saying that there's got, maybe there's not a way to seal it, but, in fact, that's a good information, I didn't realize that, you know, action it was generated inside the battery, and, but it still doesn't answer my question as to why they can't seal the battery. Totally, yeah, and Wayne Veit says, one thing not mentioned much, when selling a late model car to CarMax or other dealer, you do lose the tax break on your, next new car in some cases seven or eight percent yeah based on the sales tax in your state four to six or six and a half or whatever with the community tax so yeah if you if you've got a car that's worth ten thousand dollars and you don't trade it in uh you're gonna cost yourself 600 bucks so you'll always have to factor that and thanks very much for the heads up on that but

it's a very small percent typically if you really shop your car you'll find out you'll save thousands of dollars and the sales tax isn't going to hurt you yeah definitely great detail there's so many things to factor in ladies and gentlemen 877 960 960 we are going to go back to uh i think we're going to go to stew yep uh we have a text no name on it we have a caller yes we definitely we have a caller from jupiter farms thanks to and he's a regular caller and it's Frank. Good morning, Frank. Welcome. Good morning to you all. And congratulations on the Tesla. Thank you. I had one little short ride one time. I got at church. And boy, the acceleration was pretty phenomenal. Oh, man. It is. It's scary. Tell them about your neck. Huh?

Tell them about your head. Yeah, I bashed my head up against the headrest and I punched it just a little bit. if I really punched that, they're probably got a concussion. Well, I was shocked when your very first caller I was saying he was getting nine second quarter miles and 153. Yeah. Yeah, Frank Texan may just, Frank might make sure he heard right. He goes, did he say 153 in nine seconds? I'm like, that's what he said.

Yeah, yeah. That's just accurate. Yeah, well, that's amazing. But I got to tell you, last week after the show, I said, I got to call that European auto place down the road from you for the service on my older Mercedes, and I couldn't find the number. I called your dealership, and luckily you were not there because of the Saturday, but they did tell me the name, and I'm trying to remember. I think one of your service guys back there looked up the number, but it's most helpful

when you help that. I need to go to the spark plugs, yeah. I said, holy cow, $800 to put eight plugs in. I mean, and my old jades, I would crawl under my barracuda and hook plugs in. half an hour. But then I closed a Mercedes dealership, and they're $1,400. Oh, geez. Is that prestige auto on US One?

Is that the one you're thinking of? No, I think it's European oiled service or, oh, my goodness. In general, Frank, your observation is a good one for a lot of people. If you have a luxury car, don't take it to a luxury dealer for routine maintenance. find a qualified shop that is, caters to all brands, and you will find that the repairs are a fraction of what luxury. Yeah, we talk also about experience when you buy electric car. If you're a BMW or Mercedes owner or a Lexus owner and you go into a dealership, they know that you've got a lot of money, and they know you don't mind paying them a lot of money.

Most people who have a lot of money don't mind it. some do. But you just pay it too much. So you have a Lexus ticket to a Toyota dealer for your maintenance. You have an accurate ticket to a Honda dealer, and you have a Cadillac ticket to a Chevrolete dealer for your routine maintenance. As long as it's the same manufacturer, the maintenance is a piece of cake, and you get the Chevrolet price instead of the Cadillac escalate price. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's exactly. My fiance, Amarid, sees Randy. with her Lexus at your dealership all the time.

Great. It's a great savings. Awesome. Thank you very much. And I'll just real quick, I don't want to take up too much time on your show. But a few years ago, I decided to treat myself and I still had some money before I had some stupid financial advisors basically steal all my money, and that's another whole story there.

But I went down to the Palm Beach Jaguar dealer, to see about getting a Jaguar. Yeah. You could love mystery shopping those guys. Holy mackle, the lies and the fees they stick on and you can't get any better. I went over to, where I was it, St. Petersburg, got a brand new car, zero down a thousand a month. They said it's impossible. And unfortunately, I didn't buy it out, but they gave me the buyout last year during the COVID thing.

It was an eighth chapter. And then the other one real quick story, way back when I bought a brand new 9-11S Porsche when I was in the Air Force 77, $21,000 off the showroom floor. Five years later when I got married the first time, and I sold it, I got $19,000 for the car. So that's, yeah, yeah, that's those luxury cars, particularly the ones that are high demand, like a Porsche's, you take care of it, but I think a pretty good resale value. They're really surprised a lot of people. Well, anyway, you guys were on a great show.

Thank you so much. Thanks, Frank. I'm going to have, probably I've got to have my daughter call you one time. Real quick for Rick, her RAV-4 hybrid is having all kinds of battery problems. She's in Utah, so otherwise there's time zone. She'll probably touch with you sometime. I've asked some questions on what to do. Yeah, we'll give her any advice we can, Frank, and I appreciate your referral.

Okay, you have a good time. Okay. Frank, before you go, I think of you. Donovan, one of my YouTube guys here, says, check out German Auto World in Del Rey Beach on Atlantic Avenue. He says, they're amazing and they have very fair prices. Oh, good to know. Oh.

Yeah, yours is right down the street from you. It's on US one, but they call Broadway because you're in, right there. Right, yep. And near the McDonald's. Okay, say again, this German, what, down in? German Auto World. Auto World, down in Delray Beach on Atlantic Avenue.

Well, thank you so much. I'll keep that in mind. Okay, thank you, Frank. Yeah, thanks. You'll have a nice week. Nice hearing from you. Great hearing from you, Frank. You know, that is a great detail that you brought up, and that was about you're not having to go to the dealership

that sells those cars, and where were you 50 years ago? You know, I drive into a catalog. dealership in Pittsburgh and I had to get a port or something and I asked him what the price was and he said on your driving a Cadillac he said why would you need to know the price and I said to him you know I really find that offensive and I left but I didn't know at that time that you could go to a Chevy dealer or anywhere else to get that vehicle you know fixed and buy a less cheaper part great free information ladies and gentlemen You've got it all right here at Earl Stewart on cars.

And our number is 877-960-99-60. And you can also text us at 772-4976530. You can also send us by way of via YouTube, speaking of which, Rick is ready to roll. Yeah, we have one from M. Ave. Says, Good morning. A quick question. Ever since I started driving, I was told by my father

to fill up my gas tank when it hits to half. waypoint. His logic was that the fuel impurities float, and if you run your car down to empty, those impurities and dirt can get into the engine. Is this true? Thank you. Well, the reality is now, although, yes, the fuel tanks are in the ground for a long time, so they can get some dirt and impurities in there. The filters in the pumps are amazing anymore. Gasoline quality that comes out of that nozzle is so pure for most of the cars that, believe it or not, most Most new cars don't even have a fuel filter installed in the car anymore. There's a little sock on the fuel intake in the pump, you down in the fuel tank of your car,

but no external fuel filter like we used to have any more. Years ago, it seems to me we used to get more complaints about, I haven't heard a complaint. Rick, how about you in terms of contaminated fuel? The last ones that we've seen are times when someone has accidentally goofed up, grab the diesel pump instead of gasoline, or they've used fuel from a storage container that they had pumped fuel-thinking generators for the... Gas stations are no longer problem, that's... Yeah, from the fuel tanks, no.

Okay, more tax on those two? I'm surprised we didn't have more problems a few months ago when people started filling up the beds of their pickup truck and garbage bags full of gas when we had that shortage. That's not a good way to transfer gasoline. the rush of them to come in, but no, I didn't. All right, this is from Joe. Joe says, when you drive an internal combustion engine,

your driving habits affect your gas mileage. For instance, if you stomp on it at a green light, do your driving habits affect the mileage or the distance on a charge an electric car? Yes, it does. Absolutely. If Earl decides to go do that quarter mile and nine seconds a lot,

he will run out his battery a lot faster. Here's something interesting. I'm making the statement, and I'm going to ask the question, too. The deceleration in a hybrid, or in an all-electric car, charges the battery as you decelerate. Yeah, a little bit. Well, yeah, actually quite a bit. Yeah, but you're not going to. Yeah.

So when you're driving a hybrid or an electric car, more aggressiveness in terms of, you know, typically are the people that are careful and the safety car, wise and fuel economy wise, they see a stoplight, and they draw me crazy, to be honest with you, and they see a combustion engine car, they see a stoplight, and they start slowing down, I'll exaggerate a half a mile away, and you're behind them, and the traffic's heavy, and they're trying to time it, so now they're down, they're doing 10 miles an hour, and they're slowly approaching the red light. For the last half mile. Yeah.

Now, with an electric car, you are better off to continue to accelerate toward that stoplight, Or cruise towards that south side. Not cruise, just accelerate. But as you... Let me maintain your speed. As you maintain the speed, you're charged with the battery. You're charging the battery when you slow down, yeah. And you slow down, yeah, and then you slow down.

So you're... But it's not the same as, like, the amount of energy expended from accelerating, you don't recoup an equal amount when you reduce it. There's a question. If I'm going slowly toward a battery with electric... toward an electric light with electric car, a red light, and I go to a steady pace. I'm not putting any charge on the thing. If I go at my normal speed, say the speed limit's 50, and I get a half a block away,

and I take my foot off the accelerate, I have a sudden acceleration. You're going to reclaim some of that energy. So I'm going to, by aggressively driving toward the light, I'm putting more charge on the battery than if I slow down ahead of time, so maybe traffic will move along more briskly, is my point. I would say the faster you slow down, it's, you know, more current is going in there, but for less time, if you slow down, I think it's the same amount of energy. You can't, energy is not free. You're going to lose the same amount of energy, whether if you take a longer approach.

I think as a physicist, I would say that the inertia that you have from a rapid stop and deceleration is... But the point I wanted to make is that your battery will eventually run out and you're not getting free energy. and it just slows it down. So you're not recouping a ton of energy. It's just better because you're recouping something. Rick, let's talk about a Prius. You know Prius is very well. If you drive a Prius in city traffic,

you get better miles than if you drive it on the road at a study of loss. Am I right? Yes. Okay. I arrest my case. And the reason for that being is that every time you release the accelerator pedal,

the generators are full fielding to use the electromotive drag to slow the car. So it's not completely, it's not all the regenerative. breaking. True. But I rest my case. Harder deceleration by stepping on the brake too hard will not only use

regenerative braking, but then you'll begin to apply the brake pads. And application of the brake pads means you're losing energy to heat, because now you're converting it to heat and blowing it away. That's my fault. I'd be it to death. Let's move along. Let's get another text here. Okay. Well, we're all weighing

in, and that's what we want you to do, ladies and gentlemen, at 877-960-99-60 and we are going to go back to the phones and Henry is calling us from Miramar. Good morning, Henry, and welcome. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. I just wanted to ask the question. I order a call from you guys. It will say it was going to take 110 days. But I said you guys didn't take any deposit, anything for me. Should I expect a phone call from you on the car? otherwise? Yes, and you should probably be getting a phone call before the car arrives just for updates. And if you haven't gotten that, please call me at the dealership and I'll get an update for you.

Oh, okay. But what about if I don't want any access so he's in the car? Should I send an email the other day, but I didn't get any answer. Okay, well, we can check on that. If you can just let me know at the store and I can, because I don't have any specifics, but if somebody has not updated or answered you, you know, promptly, that's that's, that's, you can just let me know, you know, promptly, that's bad, so we'll get the hand. Henry, who's your...

Usually they answer me right away and said, the last time, last Monday, they send me email, no? Okay, you guys are very good about it. Who's your salesperson, Henry? I get, there's two people. I think there's Elaine Johnson is the one I send it. Okay. Okay, I'll make sure that you get updated today.

Okay, okay, thank you very much. Because I've been watching the show for a long time, but I haven't bought a car for like 11 years and this year it's time to end and I say as soon as I'm going to buy a car I'm not going to call anywhere else but that's really nice. Well, we're honored. Eleven years is a long time.

We're honored to be the dealer. Thank you very much. Yes. Thank you so much, Henry. Bye. We'll get back to you. 877-960. Rick, I have a quick question for you. What's the difference in the weight from the Tesla and my Avalon?

Would you say it might be about 1,000 pounds? I'd have to look those specs up, but I guarantee that Tesla is a lot lighter than the Avalon. Right, yeah. I mean, you can immediately feel, you know, exactly how light it is and easy it is to handle. Okay, we are going to go back to Stu. Okay, we can wrap up the remaining text and anonymous feedback before we get to the mystery shopping report. Here's a text. No name says, do you have an idea when the 2020?

22 Tacomas will be built and delivered. They're going to start getting built in October. We already see them in our allocation a handful. So it's about six weeks after that, so by the end of the year. And that's the last text. So let's go over to anonymous feedback. Okay. Hey, Earl, if you take your dog for a ride and your Tesla

and he's enjoying the breeze sticking his head out the window, what happens to his tongue when you floor it in plaid mode? Well, you're going to love this. It extends briefly. Waggles faster I just told Stu about this yesterday and he didn't he didn't even know it

but in the Tesla plaid there's something called a dog mode and it's a complex there's all sorts of good stuff I'm just discovering every day now listen to this dog lovers how many times have you heard about dogs being left in a hot car in the summer

or babies or kids being left in a car well the dog mode would apply to dogs or anybody in the car in the hot car so you put it you put it in a dog mode and when you leave your doggy in the car and you get out and you go into public or wherever the air conditioning keeps it at whatever temperature you want your dog to be at now here's a really cool part how many times have you seen a dog or a kid in the car and you say i'm gonna call a cop What is that? I mean, I get angry when I see on a hot day in South Florida,

100 degrees outside, and it's probably 140 inside, and you see a child. I mean, people call the police. They break the windows. They look at the car. If you look into a Tesla that's in doggy mode, the big screen in the front seat says, my owner will be back in a few minutes.

He left the AC on for me. Thank you. So that's posted on the screen. That's pretty cool. and the doggy will be saved. Now, the same thing would apply. When I leave Nancy in the car, I do the same thing for Nancy. Well, it's not a joke.

Without the leash. Honestly, it's true, because we tried to figure us out that Tesla, I'm driving. I had my brother in the car, and I'd run into Starbucks or something like that. I'd get back, it was that couldn't, the air conditioning went off when you left. I'm like, oh, so I started leaving the key in the car, and it still, we had to learn how to get the touch the question. It sounds cute, but think about this. How many children and dogs. have died, especially in Florida, as a result of unthinking, harried parents and others.

And so here's a simple solution to a problem that I'm sure everybody's going to start copying. Why not have a doggy mode? That's a great idea. For me, I've had to carry a second key so that I can leave the engine running and then use the key to mechanically lock my pickup. So that way if my dog is in the truck, she's got full air. conditioning while I'm not walking around in the 90-degree heat. Exactly. I think it won't be long

before technology just takes a dash forward on little details like these that, you know, provide us with safety and protection for our animals and for our children and our loved ones. Give us a call with your thoughts. 877-960. Actually, we're going to be shutting the phones off shortly. We've got a couple minutes. So we're going to go back to Stu where he has some anonymous feedback and techs. Yep. Okay. Next anonymous feedback. This is Earl, are you getting

in on that Rivian IPO? They already have a $28 billion evaluation. Valuation. Which IPOs are? Rivian. It's that electric truck company. They're going to the production this month or next month. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not in on this. I'm not

a speculator and a lot of these IPOs There's a record number of high-tech IPOs jumping on all the time. And one of my gurus, a guy I follow on CNBC, is named Jim Kramer. And he says, if you're going to speculate on these IPOs, buy a bucket. You buy a, decide how much you want to play with, your Las Vegas money or speculation money, and go out and buy 10 or 15 of these IPOs and just put a little bit in each one. If you hit one or two, it's like hitting the jackpot.

So you hit the number on the roulette wheel, it offsets the loss on all the other ones. Yeah, good investment advice from Earl Stewart. And Jim Gramer. Earl Stewart on your money. Okay. And we have a nice but a critical anonymous feedback that just came in. It says, good morning. I am a faithful listener for several years.

Love your show. But during the pandemic, I have tended to be turned off by the constant COVID-19 discussion. I tune in for car talk. You have an opinion on masking, vaccinations, et cetera. I get it. If you include a dealer mystery shop report that includes whether the staff is masked, fine. If you must address your COVID-19 opinions, perhaps you could open the show with your advocacy for mass vaccines, et cetera, then move on to cars and the car buying process. Thanks.

I totally agree. I apologize. You're right. And we're wrong. And I accept responsibility for that. we have to stay away from political things and we have to stay away from subjects that are totally

well not totally but largely unrelated to buying automobile so that was my fault I let us into that and I don't think you know my opinions on masking and you know other people's opinions on masking I don't like name calling I don't like calling say somebody's a bad person because they do something different than you do

I happen to those smart people that decide they don't want to wear a mask I don't understand that but I'm not going to get angry and name call I think you have the right to do that and as the call is the texter said anonymous feedback this is about cars and we should not get into

other stuff like that okay like investing advice investment advice yeah this means we're now all caught up with text and anonymous feedback and I don't know if Rick has any stragglers over there but I'm done.

Well, unless you want to hear a little advice from Donovan on running your Tesla for maximizing that regenerative breaking. I would love to hear that. Can you vaccinate your Tesla? I'm just kidding. I'd love to hear that.

He says, bear in mind from reading Donovan's posts over many, a long time now, he has a lot of knowledge about Tesla. He seems to, I think he owns several. So he says the peak regenerative breaking on a Tesla, dual motor is 76 kilowatt hours.

With three motors like your Tesla, it would be a little bit more. You don't want to actually slow down. You want to simply lift your foot off the pedal slowly to bring the car to a stop to let it coast, basically. He says, on your Tesla, there's a line under the mile per hour number that shows your energy use and regenerative system. Lifting slowly will allow the region to slow you down and maximize the amount of energy going back to your battery. Cool.

You can see the line turned green. The longer it is green, the more free energy you're getting. Yeah, and that's what you said. Rick, you said that if you pull it off subtly, you're not getting the same. Well, you're still getting as long as you don't hit the brake. But the brake automatically cuts in if it has to, if it sees a stop sign or whatever, it'll. So you don't want the brake. You want purely a regenerative.

If you drove entirely with your accelerator as a break, you would maximize your gas mileage. Exactly. I mean, there I go, gas mileage. Maximize your range. Your range, yeah. Same is the concept. Your Tesla will also not let the interior get above 104 degrees Fahrenheit. It will run the AC in a very low-effective mode so that it does not ever get too hot inside your car.

Yeah. Yeah, I noticed that because I had my, I couldn't get my charger going because I had the, well, never mind, I'm talking about the Tesla too much. We're all good to go. If you're ready to get to the mystery shopping report? Okay, let's do that thing. It's a mystery shopping report and send some text in and some anonymous feedbacks in and YouTube's in because we're going to be through this before the end of the show and we can take some more text and anonymous feedbacks. And the audience can also, they can vote on this mystery shopping report. And the mystery shopping report is from Wallace Mazda of Stewart.

And you can vote and we look forward to getting your votes. So you can text us at 772-4976530. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Okay, mystery shop of Wallace Mazda of Stewart. Stewart is in Martin County, Florida, southeast coast of Florida. We are international, so you know the location, geography. It's probably 150 miles north of Miami, maybe 200 miles. The Wallace Auto Group has done better than most car dealers

when it comes to selling used cars with Dakota Airbag recalls. It was a Wallace buy-here pay-here lot, easy-pay cars, an amazing little place in Stewart, Florida, that had the honor of being the first to pass the Dakota test with an A-grade. And Nancy and I were chit-chatting on the car, coming in this morning to the studio, and I'm thinking of myself, well, I remember what Takata was a topic, a conversation, and now with a pandemic, everything dwarfs. You know, hurricanes,

floods, Takata, this pandemic thing is just absolutely grasped us by the throats, and it's a crazy world. Anyway, this is not to say the Walls dealerships have all been perfect. Most of the Half dozen or so Wallace, Mr. Shops, have resulted in an average to above average passing grade. Keep in mind, we grade on a curve in Earl Stewart and Cars. And I, full disclosure, I know Bill Wallace, I consider him a friend. He's a third or fourth generation. He's a third generation dealer. I've been around for a long and long time.

So he's a good guy, bottom line. He's got a lot of dealerships, probably too many, to keep an eye on as closely as. as he should. We had one Wallace store failed completely, that was Wall's Hyundai, but that was back in 2018. We see a lot of inconsistencies when we investigate larger dealer groups, whether we're looking at the kind of airbag recalls or sales practices. The more locations the dealer has, and I go I just kind of just said that, the more locations the dealer has, the more difficult it is to manage the behavior his or her managers not

employees. And you can say the thing, same thing about a lot of businesses. You know, you've got to keep an eye on the store. I mean, you've got to be, and there's an old saying we have, inspect what you expect. If you expect your people in your, in your company to do something this way, you better check it out every now and then. So it's hard to do if you have 25 stores, it's hard to do if you have one store. But if you have 25 stores, forget about it. Where am I? We see a lot of it in a sense that we're in larger deal groups. Okay. This problem should not be allowed as an excuse for car dealers, though. I mean, you know, if you're, it's common sense, right? The more car dealerships, the more businesses you have, the more you have to stay on top of things. Though it may be harder to maintain a consistent customer experience with multiple locations. But it isn't impossible.

And Stu wrote this, and he couldn't have been able to be. and he couldn't have picked two better examples. Starbucks, Costco, especially Starbucks, there's a Starbucks everywhere. I mean, where in the world can you go and not say a Starbucks? And do they do a good job? Yeah, they do a great job. I haven't been to a Starbucks in a while, but when I did, the service was exemplary.

It was really amazing. Costco, my favorite store. And they got a lot of locations, too. So you can manage large number of stores, but you've got to get the right people in the right place. The last time we were at Wallace Monster was in January 2020 before the pandemic. It's strange to imagine time before the pandemic. Stu wrote that. And it is.

I mean, we are so embedded in this thing. You almost forget what was life like before. Hard to remember. That time, believe it or not, they passed. our decontas and stayed on a recommended dealer list. The sales experience was a good one, too. It was time to go back, and since we shop Masta at Palm Beach, last week, we thought it'd be a good idea to shop another Mastra dealership,

so we called Agent Lightning, and here's her report. I'll speak in the first person as if I were Agent Lightning, female, by the way. I arrived late morning, treated by a salesman named Bruce, just outside the front doors. He asked me, what brought me in? I said I was in a desperate need of a new car. There's nothing a car salesman wants to hear. Anyone say, I mean, you just, he probably had palpitations.

I got a live one. They're in desperate need of a car. I recommend that you don't use that phrase, even if you are a desperate need. You're better off to be a little coy about whether you're going to buy a car. If they know you have to have a car, well, common sense. They're going to have to give as much money for them as they can, and that's what they're going to try to do. He asked me what brought me in. I said I was in desperate need of a new car.

I shouldn't say that. I said I'd done all my research. I said I've done all my research. I've done all my research down to two vehicles, the Monster 3, and the Toyota Corolla. And that's just what we did last week. So here we have two identical shopping things with Mazda. See what happens this time. Neither Bruce nor anyone else were wearing masks.

I've one amendment to that. Okay. She said the guy that was going around spraying and cleaning, like sanitizing everything, was wearing a mask. The guy that came to clean up the dealers here. Well, a lot of the big show with the Santa, because it doesn't really spread that way, but yeah, one guy was. That's interesting.

One guy heard about life or death. Bruce said he would explain all the features of the Mazur 3 to me, and he would lift the vehicle shell itself. He held the door for me, he led me inside. There was a Mazda 3 in the middle of the showroom floor, just like last week at the other dealership. And Bruce said he believed that was the only one they had stock, and last week they had one other.

And so you can see how short cars are. One Mazda 3 and one dealership, and the competitor, two Mazda 3s. So how good a discount you think you're going to get, especially when Consumer Reports just gave them a high rating? You're not going to get a good discount. folks. I promise you, you wait till November, December, you get a monster three for a hell of a less money. We walked around the car on the shore, while Bruce explained the features

specifications. The MSRP was 301,000 of E40. I think you skipped a couple of paragraphs. Oh, sorry. Oh, yeah, that's right. I asked if this one was available. I said you're kidding. Oh, okay. Okay, yeah. I mean, I did. I said you were kidding, and Bruce replied he would, you could make sure he said he'd be right back, then left. He's back quickly confirmed that there was only one in the showroom, and that was it. We're looking at it. He said they're getting more in on Tuesday. I asked if this one was available, and he said it was. I was quite great. I'm interested in getting this one. So it kind of goes back to what Stu and I were talking about earlier in the show.

Truck comes in with 10 cars, they're all sold. Another truck comes in, they're all sold. That's the way car dealers are selling cars today. So one Mazda 3, and there's some more coming and then this afternoon. They sell this one now, and they're going to sell that other one this afternoon. I mean, as quick as the cars come in, they're selling. And a lot of them, in fact, most of them, are pretty sold. So that truck that comes into a car dealership today with 10 cars, eight of them are sold, and there's two that go on the lot, and they don't last long. MSRP was 31.340. There was an addendum next to the Bernanee label, and the addendum added, here we go. here goes to price 99

Southeast regional market adjustment that sounds pretty official doesn't it southeast regional market adjustment it almost sounds like they're trying to make it sound like a southeast Toyota fee or something except it's a Mazda dealership

regional south-east it's towing the line there they're ingenious when it comes to making the charges sound reasonable so now we've got a 199 custom pinstripe $5.99 for a wallless protection package, which, here we go. The famous nitrogen filled tires.

And is anybody out there that really believes that you should be paying nitrogen, paying for nitrogen in your tires? If so, a check consumer reports, they say it's worthless. It's worth nothing. And you should pay nothing for nitrogen. And, of course, there's one application of auto-butler. you've got to have... I know what that is. You got to have an interior of protection and they just have a bottle and they squirt it on the interior.

You get one session of squirting and you're done for $5.99. That was the guy with a mask. He was squirting on the automobile. It probably was the automobile. That's his position. Yeah, they pay him $9 an hour and they give him a spray bottle

and then they charge you an arm and a leg $600 for a spray. Bruce finished his presentation by going over the many safety features of the car and telling me that consumer reports named Mazda, his most reliable brand last year. Now, I think he missed the total list price too. The brand, oh yeah, yeah, the total was 1797 over MSRP. The deal of this was 33, 137, and when he added up the auto bundle of $199,99, the rest of it, we're looking at $1,797 over MSRP for the asking

the price. And then he told me about the consumer reports being the number one reliable brand for last year. Now, think about that a little bit, okay? Brand means the whole vehicle. It doesn't mean the Mazda 3. It's the Mazda overall. And with that, and I mentioned this one to show many times. Every car brand has got good and bad models. You might have a bad brand. You might have a bad brand. ranked very low by consumer reports, but it's got a model that's very high. And you might have vice versa. So don't shop by brand, shop by model. And if you want to buy a CR3, what is this, amounts of three, then you want to be sure that model is ranked high by consumer reports.

I declined the test drive because it would have been difficult to get the car out of the showroom. That was poor young rain. That makes sense. I said I would want a chance to drive it before signing the final papers. Good thinking. Bruce said that would be fine. We walked to his desk to go over the numbers and we were in a Masta of Palm Beach. Wallace, Wallace, Mawls, Monson. I'm sorry.

Last week it was Monson. Wallace Monson. We walked over his desk to go over the numbers. Once I said that Bruce asked for my driver's license, which I handed over, he wrote down my information on a piece of paper, asked me some more questions, such as my phone number, email, et cetera. This is all standard stuff. As he wrote, Bruce began lamenting the global chip shortage.

Got to get that in there. And asked me if I had heard anything about it. If not, I'll tell you about it. And because they want you to feel the urgency, feel the desperation of being able to get a car because everything's short. I said I'd heard about it, didn't realize how bad it was until I started car shopping.

So you got him, you're setting yourself up nicely for paying a lot of money. Bruce went on to say that most dealers are charging way over, you're going to love this. Bruce says that most dealers are charging way over MSRP.

And it said it was just like the housing market. They're charged that much because buyers are willing to pay it. But, according to Bruce, Mr. Wallace did not believe in doing that to his customers. They weren't discounting car either yet. So he just said that the Wallace policy was to sell you a car at MSRB.

And he's not doing that, is he? We just quoted a lot of money. He already saw that he was. Yeah, yeah. So he contradicted himself and I don't get it, but people don't think they're emotional and it's working because they are selling every car they can get. He took only four minutes to get his worksheet and bring it back. The top line labeled market value selling price. That was the list of a dealer list of 33,137, not MSRP. He's already over MSRP. Yeah. There it is. Way over MSRP. And they added a 129 filing fee, $79 dock fee. So it was totally 2725 for MSRP. And he just said Wallace said, we don't charge or MSRP. I mean, I know I sound like I'm repeating this, but I'm as incredulous that the salesman

would lie so obviously, and people listen and they don't say anything. I objected right away to the edit items, and he said he'd need to remove those. Bruce said he had to ask Willie, his manager. He's back in a few minutes. He said Willie is willing to make some adjustments for me if I was ready to sign in right now. If you buy it a day, I'll give you my price. If you're not going to buy today, I'm not going to give you my best price. You have to come back to me after you get a better price and let me match it. That's what they want you to do.

Old school, and that's the way car dealers sell cars, folks. You try to get an out-the-door price from a car dealer, and you're talking about a challenge. It ain't going to happen.com. I'm sorry to tell you. I told Bruce that I need to get my husband on board with this purchase, but I could guarantee he wouldn't have these numbers. Too much, too much. Besides, I reminded him, I had even driven the car. Bruce assured me that Willie was a man of his word. Well, yeah. If you say so, Willie's a man of his word. He said he'd give me a better price when I was ready. He

would. He told me to consider the price on the worksheet ballpark. He said he wouldn't go up, but it might come down. Now, at that point, I would have done this. if I were trying to and this is a situation which is difficult. When they tell you this, come back with the lowest price, then here's the little speech you make. Here's a word

track for you. I want the lowest price now and if you give me your lowest price, I'm going to take that price and I'm going to shop it with two or three other dealers. So the chances are you might not give my business, but you have some chance.

Call it a 30% chance or 20 or 40 I mean there's some chance if you give me the price because I will come back if you give me the lowest price compared to the other two or three dealers if you don't give me your lowest price now you'll never see me again you can chase me home you could call me at home you could do anything you want to you're not gonna give me a lower price that I will buy the car from from you I will buy the car a lower price from somebody else now you'll want some chance to get my business or do you want no chance the choice is yours hopefully he says

i got to go ask willie and willy just might have come out and said okay i think if you had done that you might have knocked another thousand dollars off i'm not saying you'd have got a good deal but i think you might have got a little better deal um i thank bruce for his time working with me i said i would go explain everything to my husband he walked me to my car along the way he tried to see if I was interested in buying a used car. They just came off lease for less money. I said no. So there we are.

There we are. Typical pandemic era car business shenanigans. Tactics are familiar with the vagueness and shativeness of the pricing were exceptional. Also, hypocrisy on display. I'll say it again. You heard it before. Mr. Wallace doesn't believe in doing this to his customers. and yet they charge a significant number

amount of money over MSRP and that's against Walsh's ball. Almost $3,000 over MSRP and they had the gall to say he doesn't believe in doing that. Unmitigated goal. I think it qualifies as unmitigated goal. Yeah. You know, last week I recall

in the mystery shopper report that the salesperson referred to the consumer report and now this week in the mystery shopping report, do you think it's going to start being a pattern? Only this week there's not a print out. Last week, they printed out the page from Consumer Report.

We have grades coming in. So we have, what is this from Tom in Winter Springs? Florida says D-minus, addendum items plus dock and filing fees, unwilling to give Vass Alpenter Price, almost Napleton like. That's harsh, harsh.

C for Wallace Mazda. Who's this from? This is I should name all these anyway so that is a C Mark gives him a D-minus for robbery

Jonathan Wellington says I'll give this dealership an F life is too short to have to play such games so dealership is either reputable or it's not and then over here on Facebook Linda gives him an F

a big fat F so I don't know like I said the report is nothing like you know nothing exceptional but I don't like when you're combining if they just came out and said hey this is what we're charged and we feel this is what the car is worth with the shortage

it's worth charging 3,000 of MSRP and just look them in the eye but not say we don't do that so I'm giving them an F for hypocrisy yeah on that issue who knows this just came to me maybe the

maybe the salesperson has been brainwashed by the manager or the company to say that these are not we're not selling the card over MSRP because we're adding our dock fee and our nitrogen of the tires you can't count that

you can't count that because that stuff is worthless how about the auto butler so maybe that's what the salesman was going to say if Agent Lightning had said something but she didn't object to that well the problem is in their addendum there is a there is no value in return for the southeast regional adjustment of a thousand dollars so that's just that's got by definition yeah yeah that's

not true yeah with total compensation brick okay we've got kirk in west by god virginia lies equal f minus mav why does the car industry need to be like this d minus negan f f f f fail i've got two gillaland with ballpark grade after market adjustment and fees d minus mark Smith, D-minus, Brian Siddlako, too many fees, D. Mark Ryan, D-minus, Wayne Veit, Big D-minus, give me five bucks, F. And I think I'm going to go with the trend of these guys with the D-minus. You're going to have to fight, but they're skin of the teeth passing, but wow, so many games. Yeah, a lot of wiles. I think that, as Jonathan would say, it's a typical pandemic air.

My, oh, my, my, shenanigans, as Jonathan would say, shenanigans. I give them an F. All right. What about you? I'm going to go D-minus. I can't fail them because there's too many car dealers. We'd run out of Mastity. You've got to have a Mastard dealer, and they're all desperate today. So it's just the curve, the curve is dropping.

I think Palm Beach Masta did better, though. I think they did, yeah. And we'll have the role of the greater. Yeah. I think we gave them a C something. We did, yeah. We have anonymous feedback came in. We can get back.

We have a few minutes. Yeah. All right, so it says, while I agree that a car talk show should probably focus on cars, but I cannot name another local business leader speaking up publicly and loudly about the need for scientifically approved COVID-Mid

mitigation practices. The loudest voices in this insane debate are cooks and crazies. Having an intelligent, articulate, and authoritative voice regularly speaking about this is something our community desperately needs. This pandemic will end at some point, and you can go back to cars 100%. But until then, we need you to keep using your megaphone every Saturday from 8 to 10 a.m. Well, thank you. And yet, I sat to say to the earlier caller who was critical about making us a COVID show. I think it's a matter of proportion and I think I respect both opinions.

I thank this caller for text for the compliment. But we, I think this comment on car dealers that do and do not wear a mask I think is important and we should continue to do that. Unfortunately, also I have a

text from Moisha. He says he's been trying to call the show but it's been busy the whole time he can't get through. Oh, well, I'm going to talk to him directly and we have some business, Moshe and I have some business and he had the comment and I did expect him to call. I apologize, Moshe. You please call again next week and we will definitely get that and I'll talk to you personally later on. Yeah, hi Moshe, I was looking forward to talking to you. Have a great weekend. All right. Okay. That's a wrap. There you go.

I think by Jonathan's core over there, we've got three minutes left. You know, I want to take a moment and thank all of you for tuning in to Earl Stewart on Cars without you. We wouldn't have a show, and we just love hearing from everyone and getting an opinion and answers from everyone.

So stay tuned. Next week, we'll be right back here at 8 a.m. Look forward to seeing you. Silence of the air. Well, one quick note from M.F. Earl should not apologize for being an advocate for common sense and safety. Thank you for being cognizant. I'll take that job. I'll be back here.

See you next week, everybody. Thank you.