Earl Stewart on Cars - 09.02.2023 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Rob Lambdin’s University Dodge of Ft Lauderdale

Episode Date: September 2, 2023

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

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

And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. We're back. Fully staffed, as a matter of fact, here in the studio in North Palm Beach, Florida. I have to remember that we're international. I started out here. This is a local half-hour show. 20 years ago and we were lucky to get out of Palm Beach County in terms of reach and now with our

Facebook and our YouTube and other streaming we're able to reach all over and we do. I would say we probably have it almost an equal balance from out of state or maybe out of country callers and local call. Maybe not quite. But we love the calls and that's what the show is all about. You regulars know that you do make the show. We have some incredible intelligent, articulate callers. And it's kind of like preaching to the choir because these folks don't need our help, but they realize for a lot of you out there,

maybe the ones that don't call in may need our help, and you want to know how can I buy or lease a car or have my car service without being ripped off by the car dealer. And the silent group, probably majority, out there, are listening to some very interesting callers. So if you're a person that maybe you're just listening because you like it, but you don't really have to, you're a sophisticated car purchaser. Give us some of your tips and give us a call at 877-960-9960.

That's our preferred method of reaching the show because the dialogue, the personalities, the exchange. It's a more human thing to me than text. or Facebooking or posting on YouTube. But it works. They all work. We wouldn't be able to reach out as far or take as much input if we didn't have all the other sources

of reaching Earl and Cars. We have a text number. I know I'm giving out too many numbers, but you can write them down if one of them appeals to you. The text number is 772-497-6530. That's 772-497-6530. We have one text here to text us every week, Anne-Marie,

and she is extremely interesting and smart, and she'll have a text, I'm sure, in the batch. I'll put yours in and text us at 772-497-6530. Now, I mentioned Facebook. Actually, Facebook has become kind of like an older generation, thing. But we still have a lot of hooks that are on Facebook, and that's Facebook.com or slash Earl on Cars. Facebook.com forward slash Earl on Cars. Even bigger than Facebook is YouTube. And boy, do we have a bunch of followers on YouTube. YouTube.com forward slash Earl on

cars. And are very special, interesting, not used to I wish we would get more use. We have a couple on our anonymous feedback. That is a special line. No other talk shows that I know has this, but it is a venue to come in and make your comments totally anonymously. We don't know who you are, where you are. And a lot of very sophisticated corporations, the ones that are more advanced and are concerned

about customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction. they have this anonymous feedback in their companies because, you know, an employee is going to tell you what you want to hear. A customer, maybe, is afraid to be totally frank. With Youranonymousfeedback.com, that's the link, youranonymousfeedback.com, you can maintain total anonymity, and you can be totally honest. You can say anything you want to say. The only thing we'll do if it gets too crude or rough, we might, you know, put a plea, been there, but you could say just about anything. And we would love to have

your totally candid opinion at Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Before I switch the mic over to Nancy Stewart, my co-host here, I want to mention Rick Kearney. For the new listeners, all the regulars know Rick very well. It's been

with us for many years. He is our certified diagnostic master technician. He's just an expert on how to fix cars. And you have a problem with your vehicle, whether it's a software, whether it's a mechanical, whether it's a computer, electronic, and believe me, all the above are one of the reasons people are having difficulty with their cars now. The more advanced the cars get, the more complicated they get,

and it's just like flying an airplane. It's easy to drive a car than fly an airplane, and our cars now are more like airplanes. I mean, if you really know every switch and button and bell and whistle on your car, you probably ought to be flying the airplane. You're pretty smart. I'm a car dealer. I've been a car dealer since 1968. I can't figure out all the buttons and whistles on my car. So don't be embarrassed to call Rick Kearney. He monitors a YouTube channel, by the way. So if you don't want to call and be live on the air, I'll just go to YouTube.com for slash for long cars. Rick Kearney monitors that. If you want to talk directly, that number is 877-960-99-60.

That's 877-960-99-60. And before, again, I said this before, Stu Stewart is in the studio. He is, I say, we own a dealership, we have a Toyota dealership. He's there every day. He manages the dealership. He knows the current status of the auto stuff.

I mean, a lot of my knowledge is based on what I did when I was more active, and I have a broader spectrum. Stu has a very specific focus on the car business today, so he knows what's going on. So he monitors our text channel, 772-497-6530, and our anonymous feedback. Now, Nancy Stewart, sitting to my left, she is our female advocate, she has raised the listening audience of the ladies out there to just about 50-50, and she tells the ladies some things that they don't hear normally because, let's face it, women are different than men. I know you discovered that probably a long time ago, but I mean seriously, they have a different perspective outlook and in a lot of ways they're more they're more careful they do more

analysis they they're not an emotional purchaser of a car like a lot of men men do so if you ladies would like to call Nancy Stewart right here she will give you that information and tell you a special offer if you haven't called the show before you're not going to believe good morning ladies and gentlemen thanks for joining us you're a big part of the show you make the show our number here is 877 960 or you can text us at 772-49730 first i want to thank all of the ladies that have called and have said me thank you cards and i so appreciate all of you who help me build this platform here because you make up a huge financial number with the auto industry service. I would say that there's probably about 50%

of ladies who come through service. So you're a big part of the industry. $50 for the first two new lady callers. First two lady callers. You can share your experience with us, whether you leased, whether you bought, whether you serviced, whatever. Or if you'd just like to say hello, that'd be great. Also, we are going to start a off with our first-time female caller, and her name is Jean, and she's calling from Boca. Good morning, Jean. Good morning, Nancy. I'm so excited to be here.

Oh, thank you so much. I'm excited to talk to you. So I have a great question that I'm getting mixed advice from my colleagues, but I really need more expert advice. I just moved up here from New York about a year ago, and I had leased my car, my 21-21 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited in New York, but my lease is up here in Florida. Well, the two years is up. And I'm just trying to decide if I should buy it out or if I should, you know, turn it in and just go for something new. My trade in price is 24,0525. I mean, my buy price if I choose to buy

it is 24,500, 525. I've got like under 10,000 miles on it. Was this a three-year lease? It was a brand new lease when I got it two years ago. So it's a three-year lease that you got? I mean, a three-year lease, excuse me. That you got in 2021? Yes. Okay.

I'm trying to think of when the leasing companies would have caught up with the residual value. So for a long time, and I'm not quite sure if it's starting to peter out now, but people that leased their cars before the inventory crunch, that $24,000 buyout that you have, that's part of your contract, so you can buy it no matter what. Correct. Now, during the worst of the inventory crunch, we saw prices of used cars going crazy. So, for example, let's say if you had your $24,000 buyout, the market said that car would be worth $30,000 or something crazy like that. So you were in a great position, and so everybody was buying out their leases.

So my advice to you, get an appraisal on it, or you can do it online without wasting any of your time, and fill out all the information and find out what the current market value is on that. If it's higher than the $24,000 or significantly higher, I'd consider buying yours. But there's other options. Obviously, you can turn it back in and buy another car. Let me jump in there just a minute. You know, Stu says he gives an appraisal. He's like, he means a bid to buy the car.

Appraisals, car dealers give you, don't mean anything usually. they sometimes under appraised or over appraised on purpose but you've got whether it's a whatever category comes under is to describe when after which the leasing companies adjusted their residuals you still should shop it and it's still a seller's market so you've got Carvana I don't know if you're familiar with that they advertise like crazy yes I mean I've never used it but I know of it and I've been on that website and there's a one called for room, which is not as well known, V-R-O-O-O-M, V-R-O-M.com, you also have probably the best one, and the first one I would try would be CarMax.

You can get a buying bed from CarMax, and there's several of them in this area that you, they're going to give me the same price, but the closest one you probably want to call. And then take it to the local Jeep dealers. Go to the used car department. Toyota. Toyota. It's a Camry. Toyota Camry.

Yeah, take it to three. different toy or use car departments and get a bit. You can have a lot of fun with this because used cars are extremely short. There's a big article in the automobile news, that's the auto dealer trade journal right now saying, we can't find enough cars. We need cars badly.

So you got a car, you're gonna sell it, and you're in the driver's seat. So you're gonna have some fun with that. I promise you, if you get five bids on your car, what you're gonna do in one day online or less? I mean, you could even take it into some car places. But you can get five bids on your car. You will see a variance in price, offers, of cash, for at least $1,000, maybe $2,000.

And that's a kind of excitement. And all you do is look for the high bid. Confirm it. Now you know what you want to get for the vehicle. And if you want to trade it in, you want to get that amount. If you just want to sell it, go ahead and sell it. Another thing to consider also, since you're in a lease, do you typically, typically lease your cars excuse do i typically this was the first lease i had prior to that i

owned cars okay good um because right now um there aren't any very um attempting lease programs from toyota um right now um due to the you know the inventory situation um so the lease prices aren't will not be as if nearly as good as what you probably um signed up for so buying a car is probably a smarter, smarter move now. All right. Great, Jean. Well, thank you. I've got lots to do the next time we get one of our rainstorms now.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Student, Jean, say she was driving a Cherokee? No, a Toyota camera. Okay, Cherokee. No, I don't know. Jeep Grand. Oh, okay.

Right. Jean, you know, it was much easier being in the position that you're in a while ago. It wasn't as complicated right up. you're having a lease and purchasing it it was the best way to go but right now things are well i'm going to say they're a little bit complicated uh meaning there aren't as many cars out there as far as the use cars they're concerned but rather than go into all of that the appraisal's very very important and you might come out on top and decide to purchase your cherokee so what the current market value is is really important

And as Earl said, Carvana vroom.com, very important. We buy anycar.com? Another one, you buy anycar.com. So without complicating all of this, let me let Rick add something to this. Tom Steckland kicked in on YouTube. He says, watch out for dealers who charge outrageous fees for lease buyouts. But Earl, at one point, didn't you say that they're not allowed to charge any extra fees from state to state there was a big class action suit in florida and scared the

hell out of a lot of car dealers but i don't think you'll have a problem with that in florida anymore they can't charge you anything to exercise your option to purchase your lease car it's a uh it's a law of 1976 consumer leasing act and it's a violation of federal law so uh but there's always a dealer out there's probably might try, but I don't think so in Florida. Jane, unfortunately, a lot of homework to do here, and anything's possible. You know, Rick mentioned, you know, fees with leases,

and just be careful what you sign and take a long look at everything and all your options, and you'd be sure to come out on top. Absolutely. Well, thank you so much. A lot of really sounded, advice and I greatly appreciate it. Thank you, Gene.

Stay on the line and talk with Jeremy. He's in our control room. He'll get your information, contact information, and I will get that check out to you for $50. And all the ladies out there who are listening right now, thank you for calling the show and being part of this platform that we're trying to build for the female audience. Well, thank you, Nancy. Thank you, Earl. Thank you, Rick.

Thank you, everybody. You're quite welcome. Please give us a call back and let us know what your choice was. Oh, I will. Thank you. You're welcome. 877-960 or you can text us at 772-49-60. We're going to talk to Meg, who's calling us from Delray Beach.

She is a first-time caller. Good morning. Welcome, Meg. How are you, Nancy? I'm well, thank you. The question I have is kind of two-pronged. I heard Earl talking about the future of dealerships and the effect that the electric car has had on them.

And I've been looking and reading about the hydrogen cars. And I wondered if you have any opinion. Maybe your panel would give me some ideas about what these. think of the future of the hydrogen cause and if they become very popular would that affect the dealership owners or how would

that work? Actually I guess not the future of the dealership has to do with the fact that electric vehicle manufacturers have been given a pass on having to sell through

dealerships and And for that reason, now, hydrogen cars are still an iffy thing. They kind of got put by the wayside. The only serious manufacturer candidate for hydrogen cars would be Toyota. They put all their eggs in the hydrogen basket a long time ago when everybody else was jumping onto the electric vehicle bandwagon. Now they fell way behind. And they haven't dropped the hydrogen project, but they jumped on to the electric vehicle program.

So if all the manufacturers are manufacturing all the cars as electric vehicles, the way it looks now, they could choose to go directly. Like if you want to buy an iPhone, you buy it directly from Apple. You don't have to go through a dealer. They have Apple dealers, but the dealerships are. owned by Apple. So virtually all the manufacturers now have that electric vehicle in production or almost in production. And the question will be, do they elect to go direct? I'm betting that they do. Publicly, they won't admit it. When they get interviewed, they always say, our dealer body is vital. We must have them. We will always sell cars, new dealers. But frankly, I think they're

lying because if they alienated their dealers now, the dealers would fight back. It's not unusual, Meg. Oh, my goodness, they lied. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I've been a dealer for a lot of manufacturers. I've had multiple dealerships, including General Motors and Fiat and Pujo and Mazda and Toyota. A lot of manufacturers, and I haven't dealt with one that was ever totally honest with me. So I think especially when it involves their existence.

Matter of fact, there's not very many people that are totally honest when it involves their existence. The manufacturer said today, as soon as I can, I'm going to drop all my dealerships of franchises. I'm going to cancel the franchises and I'm going to sell direct. but the dealers would put the manufacturer out of business. So I just don't think we're getting honesty from them. Yeah, well, that's par for the course today as far as honesty is concerned. By the way, I've always appreciated the values that your dealership works on and the fact that they support the animal rescues.

I just think that's wonderful. Thanks, Meg. We have a whole lot to say about Big Dog Ranch this morning, so don't go anywhere. Stay on the line. Before we go, what's your reason for looking into hydrant? Are you trying to decide? The second part of my question is are you deciding between hydrogen powered and electric and the hydrogen, I believe, can take you further? Yes. Well, there are a lot of this. Several things. And also, I think about. You know, the byproducts of the hydrogen car, it's water. You know, it's not car, you know, other nasty things that gasoline and even... Oh, you're talking about polluting the air. Oh, yeah. Right.

Yeah, polluting the air. And also, you know, electric cars, I just don't, I feel like what makes the electricity that you charge the car with? Well, that comes from, you know, from power plants. And, you know, not all power plants are environmentally. They're not all equal. Exactly. But the hydrogen. It's a lot of, yeah, it goes further.

You know, it's a cleaner emissions. It just seems to me, you know, I think they haven't perfected any kind of battery that's safe, though. Maybe that's the region. I don't know. Yeah. But I think it would be wonderful to have a choice between gas. electric or raw hydrogen cars, you know? Correct, Meg.

And we always have a choice, always. And I want to thank you for calling the show and being a part of our platform that we're building here for the ladies. And if you stay on the line, you can talk to Jeremy in our control room and give them your contact information, and I'll mail that check out to you for $50. Spread the word.

Oh, $50. Ooh. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you for being bubbly and happy and calling the show. We look forward to talking to you again. Yeah, I hope so. Thank you.

Hey, 77-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-2-497-6530. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. We are going to go to Phil, who's calling us from Jupiter. Good morning, Phil. Hey, how are you all doing? Yes, I think I got a Rick question here. I've got a 2017 Prius. It's got 72,000 miles on it.

And I was just wondering, is it better to get an oil change more often when the car gets older like that instead of waiting 10,000 miles to get an oil change, do it maybe every 5,000 miles? I mean, would that help the longevity of the car? Not really on the Prius. The main factor that you've got to understand with the Prius, is you as the driver really have no control over the gasoline engine. The computer runs the gasoline engine as a generator, so it has total control and determines when it's going to run

and how fast it's going to operate, whereas on a normal car, you can over-rev that engine any time you wanted. So by doing that, the computer actually keeps a better, tighter control on the engine, and it actually doesn't run for the full 10,000 miles, maybe about three quarters of it or less because it's shutting that engine off so often. So you're perfectly safe to stick with that 10,000. However, as the car does get a little older and higher mileage,

it becomes more important to check your oil often enough just to make sure that it hasn't started to burn oil. We do see on the Prius engines Because they do shut off quite a bit They don't see at that full operating temperature And they sometimes at higher mileage Do start to tend to burn a little bit of oil And consume a little bit

So you want to make sure you check it About once every couple thousand miles Just make sure you're not getting low on oil ever Or just go with the factory owner's recommendations Well that is 10,000 But it also says to check your oil At least every thousand miles in the owner's manual Oh, it does?

Oh, I didn't know that. Wow. Interesting. I didn't know that. You mean just look at the dipstick and check it? Is that what you're talking about? Exactly. Yes.

Is that only in the Prius? All cars. All Toyotas. It'll say in the owner's manual to check your oil often. Usually it recommends it at every fill up of your gas tank. And it also says in the owner's manual for Toyota's. Every fill up of your gas tank. So you go in and you fill the tank up yourself and then you're going to pop your hood.

And check your oil. What a joke that is. I mean... Well, it's most of them... Everybody who checks their oil every thousand miles raise their hand. Well, that's why I say you don't need to do it as often as every fill-up. But it even says in the factory owner's manual that Toyota's can use up to one quart of oil per 1,000 miles. Oh, yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, they put their weasel notes in there. So just to make safe. but yeah that's why I recommend when they start getting up there they put that in there because they put that in there because they build some engines that are so far almost out of tolerance that they burn way too much oil so if you buy a car and it burns an oil a quart of oil every thousand miles you've got yourself almost a lemon but technically they got you because they put such a wide tolerance on there that you they can say oh no

that's a range You have a range Now your next door neighbor Who bought a car that was built The exact same car that was built Exactly on tolerance He's getting 20,000 miles Before he burns a quart oil

Exactly So if that doesn't make you want to throw up I don't know what will But they're trying to hold The driver The owner's responsible For their sloppiness And manufacture

In my humble opinion Didn't mean to get you in the middle of a battle on that one. There you go. I learned something I didn't know that Toyota is actually telling the owners to check their oil every thousand miles. Maybe they put that in there in 1950 and they just forgot to take it out. I think they probably did, yeah. Well, it's one of those lawyer weasel notes. They put them in that way they're covered just in case.

Well, one of someone's being conscientious and wants to go by the book and they actually have to go through. that we have four customers like that yeah we have four yeah I actually that's right Rick doesn't okay let's move along here you got to check me if you got Rick does it hold on a second Rick just admitted he checks his oil's dipstick at every gas fill up well not every but every other yeah he doesn't know he does it you know he said every other okay I think Phil's trying to talk yeah is it better to do it while the car is warm to check your oil or cold does it make any difference to get a true reading Not really, because there's a, as Earl says, there's a range on that dipstick, but it's, as long as you make sure you're up near that top mark, and when you check it, you know, just give it about 20, 30 seconds, let you make sure the oil has drained down into the pan, and make sure you're on a relatively level surface.

Oh, okay. And when you check it, if it's near that top mark, you're going to be fine. Okay. And now I've got one other question about the availability of the new Chris. Has it improved, or can you order one yet? Yeah, the new one is you can order it. They're already on the road they're arriving. The production is slow, but picking up now in the second half of the year.

But it would be best to, well, it depends. There's some dealerships that might have one or two on the lot. I don't know what they're marking them up for, but find one that doesn't do that. or put in an order, because they're getting enough just a couple of months right now. If you want one for Christmas, order it today, and you'll have it for Christmas, 2,24. Possibly, but we'll see as it picks up. Well, we, you know, there are, I mean, supply is definitely increasing.

I just got a message from someone asking me to look at a Sun Toyota over Newport-Ritchie or Holiday of Florida. They have over 400 cars in stock. that's kind of suspect the websites aren't usually very good information like even our website which is primarily controlled the inventory is controlled by Toyota it can be deceiving that's why we have a big disclaimer saying most of these cars that look like they're available aren't available but we're seeing the change right now so I just I would like like we say to everybody is go out get some quotes from

multiple dealers online so you don't have to waste your time and go for the lowest price. Are y'all taking orders now? Could you order one from your dealer? Yes. Yeah, we have a list. I don't know, you know, from here how big it is. The best thing to do is just to be to call in and speak to one of the sales managers

and ask with the wait-tenders and they can give you an accurate. I'll do that. All right. Thanks for calling. I appreciate it. Thanks a lot. You got it. Thank you, Phil.

Have a great weekend. We're going to go to Marty, who's holding. He's a regular caller from West Bone Beach. Good morning, Marty. Good morning. How are you? We're well, thank you. I have a question.

I intend to buy my wife's lease out in March. She's got a CRV. And when I brought her car over there to you have your back on Morris, gentlemen, he said in order to buy the lease out through them, they have to sell the cars, a used car. So they got to add on their dealer markup in home. all their other stuff. Now, I can't sell that car to you and get a Toyota because you can't buy a Honda.

Right. So that's another complicated deal. But the salesperson I talked to at Moore said the best thing is buy it directly from Honda. So do you think it's true? If you go into, like, your dealership, you still can't buy it, right? he's giving you good advice no the they're not cooperating i mean as far as we know right now you can't get a payoff um and i don't know how long that's going to last the salesperson gave you good advice um you can buy it directly um from um the from the manufacturer from honda and you

won't be charging any other fees the other thing you could possibly do i don't know which one would be easier is just uh you know give brayman a honda a call or another honda dealership johnson Honda up and Stewart and just, you might want to mention that, you know, the big expose in South Florida just recently of dealerships getting in trouble and getting fine for charging people fees on their lease buyouts. It's against the law. You're not going to convince the salesperson at Moore's Toyota of that or anybody there, really.

Only Teddy can make that decision. But there's other, you know, other dealers that might not do that. but we'll see I mean you got to call around but your best bet might just be going through Honda that way you're just dealing with the kind of like the Hans bureaucrat they don't care it's going to be through the mail and it might be simple

now Toyota is doing the same thing now right you can't get a payoff somewhere else yeah I think it's just that you can't get a payoff quote and I'm not sure if the actual sale part's forbidden I'm not quite sure but yeah but you know at our dealership we don't we don't charge anything to the to the buyout well we'll collect the sales tax for the state of florida and we'll transfer the registration for you

and we'll just charge you what state charges us or the county right yeah now the other things where ed morse has the advantage they have a also in delray they have a Toyota dealer yeah so they communicate right you're no absolutely right i think they can help facilitate facilitate you know cross lease purchasing so that's right but it's not advanced to you it's not for you though marty we got three calls holding so okay uh thanks but yeah i'll have to buy it directly do that all right thanks very good great hearing from you have a great have a great weekend uh we're going to go to bob who's holding in lake park good morning bob good morning happy labor day weekend everybody oh thank you the same to you happy labor day weekend thank you i'm waiting for that new hydrogen model come out i think it's

called the hindenberg you wait for that one oh the horror the horror don't wait for that one that's funny i believe that's a german model by the way it's not yes no yes polkwagon good news the new mustangs have arrived look at uh 24 mustangs the bad news is the dealer markups. Alpaccair is marking the four-st-under up over $2,500. Wayne Acres is marking up the eight-sinder, G-T-5,000.

And if you want to buy the dock horse, which goes for about $65,000 MSRP, you have to give them $100. Wow. Did you check to see what Mullinax Ford was doing? I was over there to look at the car. They had one in there, a couple of them. that came in and

what's happened is they put when you go inside the car it's one big iPad that's what it is it's a giant iPad the salesman didn't even know how to turn on the radio

we couldn't get the radio on there's no volume to it probably well there's a volume button but that's it everything else is touch screen and I'm I was confused because how are you supposed to be driving the car if you have to go over the do something on the screen

I would think you'd have to take your eyes off the road. Yeah, you've got to feel something. Right. Yeah, physical touch helps you find things. Right. I didn't even know that about the car. Did he say anything about their pricing? Are they going to mark it up? I'm really curious. I'm waiting. Right now,

I'm just doing my due diligence and, you know, looking, you know, because they're just, cause they're just coming in. But they also have the owner's manual on the iPad. now. Oh, okay. I think Tesla has that as well. If you want to get, yeah, to get the owner's manual, it's on the screen. Right. Well, I saw something that was very interesting. The number of cars, the number of models, excluding Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Rose Royce that sell for $100,000 or more,

four years ago, there were 12 models. Do you know how many there are now? No. A lot. A lot. How many? How many? Over 40. It's crazy. It's crazy. I wasn't going to guess that high, but I knew a lot of the electric cars, and it's just the average price is, what, 50,000 average MSRP? Over $100,000. Over $100,000. $100,000.

Mortgages. They should start doing a 30-year loans. Well, I think some of the cost, I think they are extending. There are some loans now that you can get that go out quite a long period of time. I think they are not. Those aren't a good idea. No. No, I'm not. Everybody. I don't know, but... Do you have any other questions, Bob? No, I can get off.

Our information to share with us. Yeah, sorry to Russia. We got some calls backed up. I'm waiting for your door. You got a dog coming in today? Yeah, we definitely do. Nataliel. Right. I forgot his name. Jonathan. Thank. Hey, where are we? Yes, Bob, we have Tank And she'll come to us via video this morning I'll talk a little more about it later

And I'll also talk more about the veterans program That they have out there Wonderful, okay, I'll talk to you next week Have a great weekend, everyone We'll look forward to hearing from you Let's go to Jersey Mike from West Palm Beach He is another regular caller Good morning

Good morning I love your show I even recommended it to some other people, and I think they've gained a lot of knowledge, so I thank you for that. Oh, thank you. You're welcome. I got a few questions. What would cause dirty brake fluid in my 2014 ASP Cadillac? Just age.

The brake fluid cap is actually open to the atmosphere, and you get so much dust and dirt under the hood that eventually some of those particles are going to work their way. into the fluid. So it's going to get a little bit dirty. It's also going to pick up a little bit of moisture from the air. It's completely normal. Could it be enough to cause the brakes to lock up? No, no. I... So if they lock up, it's something else. Yeah. Usually what happens in South Florida. I was told it was dirty break food that caused them a lock up. No, usually it's these slide pins or the calipers the way they're designed and mounted rust is the biggest culprit on that okay um can i top off my refrigerator and the without the equipment no not safe to do so will not work very well at all what you'll usually wind up doing is making it worse it'll it'll blow even less

cool air you'll wind up making it hotter uh the proper way to do it is to have a machine that can evacuate all the refrigerant out and actually draw it down into a vacuum to make sure it's completely empty and then recharge it. Yep, I understand that. One more question. You recommended cleaning the throttle because when you stop at a light, I had a lot of shutter going on. My engine was like shaking. And I did clean it thoroughly with a lot of cleaner. And it helped out, but it's still doing it to some degree. Could it be

something else going on? Yeah. As cars get older, one of the big things we see are the rubber motor mounts, they begin to settle and compress a bit with time. And so the natural vibrations of the engine now are being transmitted more through the car, and you feel them a lot more. than you would have before when they had that fresh soft rubber isolating it. I appreciate you answer my question. I would point one thing out to you. A long time ago, I'd say probably I'm 77 years old, but when I was in my early 40s,

I went ahead and built my own hydrogen engine with a water tank in the trunk. It wasn't that difficult to do because at that time, corroboration was simply, you know, a four-battle carter carburetor. And all you had to do is run a line over and pressurize it with that tank of water in the trunk. And you had, it was only good upon, after you're up to speed, you've got momentum going.

You know, it wouldn't work when you start, when you start off from accelerating, you know, from a stop position. But it did cause probably, I'd say, a 25 to 30 percent reduction in gas fuel consumption. And it can be done. All you got to do is go ahead and. You should have patented that and sold it for $100 million. No, that was right. All the motorheads were doing that back then. Yeah, but if you've tried to patent that, the big three would have come along, bought up the patent.

You've disappeared. Nobody have ever heard from you again. I think that actually happened. I think that actually happened, what you just said, that they would buy it up. I think that's what the place. But you could still do it yourself. No one's going to stop you from doing it. As long as they didn't find out about it, yeah.

Well, I'm not going to go advertise it. Yeah. But the guys in my neighborhood, I had a 427 Corvette that I worked at, did a racing head job to it, put a cam in it, put sidepipes on it, dinoed out at about 490 horse. So I was doing 060 in 4.0 seconds. Okay, so you were getting about three miles a gallon anyways. Well, I was having fun with that car.

I don't know if I would only take it on the weekend. By the way, let me just tell you one thing. But every way I take it out, I would race, I'd beat them all. One day, one day, I'm on Route 80. I'm from this in North Jersey. I'm in Route 80 coming out of Patterson. It's late. I'm in the middle lane.

I've got to get off in about a mile or so. And a guy comes along with me on the right-hand side, and a slow lane down shifts. And he's got a fee green, dodge-dust. This is a nanny car that you take to go get your groceries, okay? So I slowed down. I looked at the back of the rear-ed. No tax hitting on the window.

And guess what? He dusted. We got down to about 22 miles an hour. That's my power curve at 4,600 RPS. I nailed it. I went through it. Got up to about 105. He was like 12 cars ahead of me. Just disappeared.

That's what he had in the car. Probably at 440 Magnum. Mike, you sound like me talking to Nancy. He had nitrous oxide in the trunk. Oh, yeah. Look out, Mama. Mama, me. Okay, thank you.

Hey, Jersey, Mike, I'm changing your name to a wild. and crazy guy from Jersey My friends hear that they're going to laugh their ass off Thank you. Great talking to you. Oh, always a pleasure. Have a great weekend. Okay, 877960

or you can text us at 772-49760. And your anonymous feedback, it's out there. You can use it and take advantage of it. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We're going to go to John in Palm City, who is a regular caller and always has great information for us. Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone. We need some good news after the Hawaiian fires and the hurricane in Florida.

Oh, Lord. On live cable TV, they showed a pickup truck helping a woman, and he had to go into floodwood. to tie a rope to her Chrysler Pacifica. He actually bent down in like a deep-sea diver to tie the rope onto the Chrysler, and he pulled her off the flood part of the road with his pickup truck and a rope. Now, I just want to mention about a rope

that people should have, and it's from weather tech. It's a recovery, kinetic recovery rope. It's inexpensive. It holds 9,000 pounds, and it's 20 feet long. So it's a good idea to have that, well, you know, handy. You never know when you need it an emergency, and it's reasonably priced.

And WeatherTech is a company not only with the floor mats, but they have a new item now with pet barriers so the pet doesn't come in the front seat. They have mats, mud flaps, and they have a new tunnel cover that covers the back of most pickup trucks. It's an excellent outfit and highly recommended. And, again, hats off to people. Many people that own pickup trucks, and it's America's vehicle. I mean, Rick will tell you, some areas, people just have to have it. Pickup trucks, some of them are so beautiful.

They look nicer than some of the automobiles. And usually in a pickup truck, people carry emergency equipment like flares, and they can help people. And most of the people that drive pickup trucks are very cooperative, and they're willing to go out of their way to help the public. Yeah, they really are. And that company that you mentioned, I've heard of them, and I've seen their commercial. Boy, they have everything. Yes.

Everything to accommodate you. In a coffee cup that goes in the front that you don't spill your coffee, it's weathertech.com, 800, 441, 6287. That's 1,800, 441, 6287. 6287. Okay. Yes, great company. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.

I hope you stick around and see the video of our dog of the week and also our mystery shopping report. Look forward to it. Thanks, John. You and the family have a happy Labor Day weekend. Okay, we're going to go to Lance, who is a regular caller, and he composes and writes songs from time to time and he's making his debut again. Does he have his guitar this time?

I'm not sure what instrument he's paying this morning. Hey Lance. Oh. Good morning, Lance. Welcome. Good morning. Good morning from the hills of East Tennessee. Look at it. Where it never rains and it never snows.

Uh-huh. I've got a little quick tune for you and a quick question. First of all, I, I, And I apologize. I'm tuned in a little late today. Have you discussed the potential UAW strike? No, we did last week, but we haven't talked about it yet.

So I'm starting to get kind of serious. Yes, it looks. I think they will strike. I just watching, I kind of keep up with all that for a business reason. And I'm telling you, I think they will strike. What does they have two weeks, Lance? September the 14th. Yeah, soon.

Hmm. So what is your, I guess, I guess the concern for a car buyer or anybody looking to be in the market is if we didn't have high enough prices now, you get a UAW strike. We'd be right back where we were a year ago with $8,000 over a sticker. Now it's only about $2,000 over a sticker. I think it will climb exponentially. Yeah, it is a scary thing to think about. Of course, there are some manufacturers out there that are non-union, not many, but they certainly wouldn't be able to be able to supply the demand.

Oh, I'm curious, you've been talking about hydrogen cars now. Is that hydrogen peroxide? No, that's what some people use in their hair, I think. But no, it's pure hydrogen gas. Okay, I wanted to get that clarifying because I felt like there might be a run-up here at the drugstore on hydrogen peroxite, and I didn't want to create that. Nice. Well, here's the tune. Fly me to the moon.

Okay. Let me play among the stars. If you want to buy you's car, listen to her on-cour-it-on-car. What? I'm going to hire you. Are you available to be part of my marketing agency? I'm available for anything. It's legal or illegal.

I'm available. Well, Lance, you may be getting some phone calls. There's a lot of people listening to our show this morning, and no one has said that they are available for anything. So be prepared. Good morning. Have a happy Labor Day. and it's a great treat for me to listen and to call in.

Thank you very much. Call again. We'll rely on you now, Lance. We'll talk to you next week. Thanks so much. Happy Labor Day. Folks, you know, in the automotive news this morning, Earl and I were looking at the same time at one particular article, and that was about dealers struggling.

They say that the struggle is real to find good used cars to sell. And this goes with, you know, without saying that with all of the rain that everyone has had, flood cars are going to be just everywhere. And you really have to be careful. And Earl wrote a great column, how to avoid buying a flood car after the hurricane, the tropical storms, the tornadoes that we have, everything. all over the country. Those flood cars, I'm telling you, they have such a musty odor, the watermarks,

the stains, the rust, the corrosion, the mud debris, everything that's almost noticeable, you know, to the nose or to the eyes or to the feel. And you really have to be careful this time of year any time of the flood cars. So just a word to the wise. Our number is 877-960-9960, and our text number is 772-497-6530. We also have Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And I want to thank everyone who has joined Earl's vigilantes, and what a great job everybody's doing out there. It's remarkable, and you can still volunteer.

You don't have to, you know, know how to take an engine apart. and you can not only help others, but you can help people, you know, right in your neighborhood. So go to Earl on cars and check out Earl's vigilantes. Earl, we're out of calls. Maybe Stu has, and Rick has some. Can I just jump in here? Rick, should we correct this thing about the 1,000 mile?

I've been looking for that, and I have not been able to find it myself so far. Toyota simply says to check the oil They say to you Yeah, right It says in the owner's manual It simply tells you how to check the oil But it does not specify

How often Yeah, I think we said that earlier So anybody You have to apologize to Toyota That would be feeling compelled To be checking their own oil Every thousand miles That isn't accurate

It's just You should check it Occasionally, in my opinion, I think I would just let my mechanic, my independent, or dealership person check by all when I came in for my maintenance. But if you want to be more conservative, you could have a check more often. But I check with Chat, GBT, the AI app, my favorite AI app, and they said no manufacturer is requiring that you have to check your oil every 1,000 miles, including Toyota. Now, however, with Toyota's current maintenance schedule for their cars, they have it where you come in at 5,000 miles for a tire rotation, and at that time, all the fluid levels should be checked. Right. So that would include checking the oil level by the technician.

And then again, at 10,000, your oil would be changed. So that actually makes it a very good time at that midpoint. Yeah, 5,000 miles makes sense. So change that original recommendation from checking your oil every thousand miles to check it every 5,000 miles would be a good idea. And then if your car, when you're hitting high on mileage, if the technician recommends that you should check it a little more often, I would follow that advice. Yeah, if you've got one of these cars that burns a whole lot of oil because the manufacturer sold you one that came off the line at the extreme end of their tolerance level, then you've got a problem. So you probably should check it a lot. Raise hell with a manufacturer, too, and make a lot of noise

because I think that's one of these secret little, dirty little secrets that the manufacturers have. They have a goal for what they want their tolerances to be, and the goal is a good number. But they also have a variance. They have a very wide variance on their manufacturing challenges. So if you are manufacturing cylinders, in your plant, and you have two wider variants, that means the ones that come out of the extreme end on either side

are really kind of sloppy. And that means you're going to be burning one hell of a lot of oil. If you're lucky and you've got one that's in the middle, then you could go 10,000, 20,000 miles before you burn a cord oil. If you got one end or the other, you can burn a cord of oil in 1,000 miles. And they say that's okay. I say that's crazy. Well, here's something new that we got.

I think you're going to like this one. This is coming from Donovan. Tesla this week showed off the updated Model 3 at a random event in Norway. The car has 50% new parts and gets 12% more range with the same size battery. The car is one of the lowest coefficient of drag of any production car to get the longer range. Plus, they were able to drop the price of the price of the car. the Model S and the Model X this week by $20,000 each. Where was this?

This is a random event in Norway. Norway. Tesla has announced they're dropping the price on the S and the X. Hopefully this isn't just in Norway, but worldwide, by $20,000, which is kind of insane, he says, and it now means that the X model will now qualify for the $7,500 tax credit. Now you've got yourself, you can buy your car in Norway, your Tesla, and pay for the vacation and still come out of the head. You're saving $20,000? You want to go to Norway on a vacation?

Maybe skiing. What's the right with Norway? I don't know. It seems kind of icy. I'd rather go to Iceland myself. That's not as icy as Norway. No, it's a beautiful green country. But anyway, the idea that Tesla is now dropping the prices that much on those vehicles, especially the market.

Model X, which is their one with those flip-up doors, that's a pretty big step. And the Model 3 with increased range. Thanks, Donovan. You're the greatest. If we have a, well, you're definitely, of course, our YouTube call is all good, but you're the best of the best. Thank you very much. Oh, he says the price drop was here in the U.S. Oh, great.

So, sorry, Earl, your Tesla just depreciated by 20 grand. Nah. We don't compare the X as the S. I don't have an X or this. I have you. I have an S. You don't compare those two. Those are totally different, especially the Pled. Orange is an apple. Well, the S and the X, both got a $20,000 price.

Wow, mine did appreciate that, yeah. He didn't specify for Plaid. He just said they don't. Yeah, they don't, I promise you they don't take the premium models and drop it like that. Probably not, but still, Model S, 20 grand cheaper, folks. That's right. When the roaster comes out, the... If it comes out.

Yeah. Well, whenever the roaster comes out, I'll be driving the bike. By the way, I looked, I searched a Toyota 2022 Camry owner's manual maintenance guide using the search function, so it's a PDF. There's nothing in there it says you have to check your oil level every 1,000 miles or anything like that. Right. I was looking. I haven't found it. Yeah, the only thing about checking any oil levels is when you bring it in for your regular maintenance.

Yeah, so we have a, Amory has a text for us. Good morning, Ann Marie. So Rick's got to pay attention. Good morning, I was wondering, when and how often should you get in alignment? When you often drive rough roads, when you hit a bad pot hole or a curb, when you get your tires replaced, or when your vehicle starts to shimmy. And that's from Amory. Great question. Not everybody knows.

I get my tires replaced about every week. Well, you have to because you're burning the rubber. off of more than your Pontiac GTO. I have a tendency to like to drive over curbs. Oh, okay. You're not burning the rubber. You're destroying. You're just assaulting the rubber. Shredding.

And the answer is, all of the above except the last one. Oh, when your vehicle starts a shimmy. Exactly. Because that's not an alignment problem. Right. Basically, an alignment issue on the car is if it feels like your car

is doing what we call dog tracking. In other words, if you look and see some cars when they're going down the road, it almost seems like the car is turned a little bit sideways when it's going down the road. That's called dog tracking. You ever watch a dog sometimes when they're walking. They literally

their back end will start to go sideways. That's where we get the term. I love that. Dog dragon. Why do dogs do that? Just because they're a little off that way, a little weird. Which, it fits for the car. And that means that the

thrust angle of the alignment of the car is incorrect. Also, if your steering wheel is off center, when you're going straight and your steering wheel isn't level. So you see that. You're actually going to see the, your steering wheel looks like it's turned a little. Exactly. Where you're going straight. And one other factor is look for a road where it's hard to find in Florida, because our roads have a lot of what's called road crown. Yeah, they're humped so that the rain will drain off. But if you look for a road where the more center lane looks relatively flat, and when you're driving, do not take your hands off the wheel. Folks, keep your hands on the wheel, but lessen your grip just to where you're holding the wheel gently and count the reflectors in the road as you're driving. If your car stays relatively centered in the lane for more than 10 of those reflectors, you're good.

Your alignment is good. Don't mess with it. If it begins to drift to one side of the other and it starts, or if it literally pulls to one side within three to four of those reflectors, now it's time to have your alignment checked and adjusted. And also when your tires, when you get new tires, good idea to have it adjusted then as preventative maintenance. Okay, I'm still working on the dogs trotting at an angle. So I checked with Chet, GBT. I'm not going to read the whole thing.

I checked with Chet, GPT, AI. Why do dogs trot at an angle sometimes? I won't read at all. Here they are. Muscle imbalance or injury. Structural differences. Confirmation, certain breeds, terrain, energetic behavior,

training or behavior, individual variation. And it's a complete. I mean, I love AI. That's why they do that. That's why they occasionally. They don't always do it. but you see him when they're playing as far as this is dog tracking is concerned doesn't it usually mean that the car has been in a crash I mean that's just one potentially yes

that is very potentially a severely dog tracking car yeah you know severely dog tracking car you have to be a wreck I mean if you see a car going on the street like this could be but also believe trucks are more pickup trucks are more like to have that because this rear axle is solid and if that rear axle is not aligned perfectly to the center line of the vehicle, that's going to cause the vehicle to start dog tracking sideways.

Great information right here at Erlon Cars. Our number is 877-960-9960. You can text us at 772-497-653-0. Don't forget your anonymous feedback. It's interesting. You can just say whatever you want and nobody knows who you are. Okay, we are going to go back to the phones

or we're going to talk to Eric, who's calling us from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Eric. Morning, guys. How are you? Good talking to you. We're great. Nice to hear from you. Fellow car people, fellow dog people. In fact, I'm just driving south on A-O-1A from Jupiter Beach with my puppy. I passed your place, and I think it was time to call.

You know, I was a long-time fan of the car guys. I had an emptiness gap since they were off the air, and then I found you guys a few weeks ago, you know, you're making my day. Oh, great. Car guys was great. Wasn't it? Anyway, the question I have is I've been in real estate finance, you know, my entire

career, you know, and on the real estate finance side, we do some pretty serious qualifying for somebody to get a loan, especially with new rules and regulations. The other day, I was in a dealership, looking at a Jeep grand wagon here, and I'm semi-retired. I know what I can do. You know, and on my application with a credit report, my state application, they came back and said, oh, you can afford this $900. I mean, we'll sell it to you, you know, $5,000 down.

$900 a month payment, which I really can't afford. I could, but I can't. You know, and they were ready to drive out the, you know, drive out of the dealership, you know, with a $900 payment with $5,000 down on an $80,000 car, whatever the number was. And I just, I was mind-boggled at the qualifying, that that's all they did within 15 minutes

because I had a good credit score, is are the car dealerships or the finance people starting to do a more rigid debt-to-income credit qualifying? Because I imagine the default rates are going to start to pick up Because my daughter's got a car loan, $800 a month, and I don't know if she can afford it, but it's crazy, in my opinion. Eric, you're really on top of things. There's an article in this week's Automotive News, the Trade Journal for the manufacturers and dealers. And they're talking about what it is, what we were just talking about earlier, artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence, the lenders have really jumped into that big time because it's really money to them. When they issue credit, you know, and they issue credit to the wrong person, they can't make the payments on time, it's going to cost them money if they have to repossess a car. So they're making much better loans now, and, you know, that's good news for the people that have been, you know, under-evaluated in terms of ability to pay or over-evaluated. it is far more accurate. They've seen now with AI applied, they can tell the average person to a much higher degree of accuracy how much down payment and what monthly payment they can afford. So it's really a good thing.

It's far better than the way we were before where it was a lot of shooting from the hip. Because it appears to me I see a lot of people driving around in some pretty expensive cars, and I looked at them, and again, I hate to be judgmental, but I'm going, how do they afford that you know look i go how can they afford the payment on that car so are they seeing many are they seeing many first payment or six months of cultural i i honestly think that there's a there's a there's a like a cultural thing i was watching

you're going to laugh at me guys i was watching ticot the other day i was just curious to see what other what if card dealers were advertising on it um i did see a lot of car dealership employees with very funny ticotts that are filmed at the car dealerships um one was interesting um it was a guy and I don't even know where this was, it looked like a GM dealership somewhere, and he was walking around asking the employees all over the dealership what they drove and what their car payment was. And I was shocked at the car payments that, you know, a guy working in the parts department, he's paying $1,100 a month

for, like, you know, some, you know, supercar. There was somebody, like, looked like another one in the service department with an $800 car payment on a Mustang, and it was crazy. and BMWs and a lot of luxury vehicles. I think a lot of the young, and they were all young. A lot of these younger people are, I mean, it's a status symbol, and they came out of age in a time where a $800 car payment wasn't insane. And, you know, we have a car dealership,

and I still think an $800 car payment is insane. I mean, I realize it's necessary on an expensive car to some degree, but it's cultural and interest rates are high. and there's just a lot I'm guessing that a lot of lenders actually look at the individuals in terms of how important is this car to them if you have an individual that needs a car and a lot of us do it depends on where you live what kind of job you have and in certain areas of the country if you don't have a car you can't get to the pharmacy you can't get the doctor you can't get to work you can't get to school you can't get to the hospital so the lenders found out that people who need a car will make their car payments more religiously than they will

make their mortgage payments. And they will pay a car back no matter what. So lifestyle and culture, as Stu said, is important. Rick has got his finger up. I was going to say that back when I was a teenager, 20 years old, a five-year car loan was considered like a long-term loan. Now we're seeing car loans of six, seven, and even eight. years I mean so in so many cases though that'll keep them from qualifying to buy their first home right they if they buy the car before they buy the house it used to be you know you joel you drove an old beater so you could buy your house you mean and eventually you caught up yeah but now it's like you got to drive the nice car and afford to buy so the last thing's on topping off you guys are

great but you know I'm my whole life my life has been charlie brown with new cars or whatever if I could buy a car one day and it'd break down the next but a few years ago I picked up used 2013 jet at 2.5, this car's got 248,000 miles on it. It doesn't owe me to nine. Two major, two and up tires, oil changes, an air compressor. And that's, it's a dog car. I've got a big hairy dog, so I've got to have a, you know, second car. But I don't know if you've seen that luck with the 2.5 before. I wish they still made it, but I have nothing. It's a great car. You finally got lucky. I finally got lucky. All right, guys. Have a great Saturday. Thank you, Eric.

You bet. Bye-bye. Have a great weekend. We're going to go to Dave in Palm Beach Gardens. Good morning, Dave. Yes, good morning. I had a question, I think you've discussed it once before, but it's about the interior of a vehicle smelling like smoke. I think you said you can get rid of the smell temporarily,

but then it comes back. And I was just wondering whatever that process is when it comes back and you just repeat the process again. Yeah, well, Rick and I agree with the dampred first and foremost. I can say from experience, Dave, I was a victim of a flood car quite some time ago. Was it smoke? I think a cigarette smoke is what he's looking for. Well, a flood car smoke, you know, the resale value on your car, forget about it.

But I'll let Rick take over and answer this question. In re-conditioning used cars, that's a constant thing. Luckily, today's, it's much less these days. But back 15 years ago, 20 years ago, it was a lot of cars that smell like smoke. The ones that are severely smoked in, there's nothing that can be done about it. There is treatments, there is ozoneators, there's machines that you put in the car overnight. And in my experience, I know that the people that have the, services and sell the machines say they work but yeah if it's a really smoked in car it's it's

i think it's impossible to get the smoke out totally it is just amazing how much your car will do depreciate and you wonder what that person was thinking you know whenever they were driving around and smoking and they had the windows up do you want to hear what a i has to say um this is a summary clean and vacuum wipe down services air out the car use baking soda use charcoal, air fresheners, vinegar solution, ozone treatment, professional detailing, replace cabin air filter. That sounds like something from Seinfeldon. None of that works.

Replacing the air filter is important because, but that's usually one of the, that's the first thing you do on a, I'd go for the charcoal. I just remember that one episode of Mythbusters when they left a pig carcass in the Corvette. Oh, my God. Stu remembers that when he now You can't smell things through a television But you could smell that car And they could not even sell the car afterwards

With no interior Because And cigarette smoke is like that Death and cigarettes Which are, you know Insidious. That makes sense, you know I hope he answers your question Yes, you did, thank you

I think I will not buy the Little old lady's car now Because she, you know, does do that She smokes in it Oh no, no I know her. Her name is Nicotine Nelly. Yeah. Well, it's a great-looking car. It's a Rav-4. It's top of the line. It really looks nice, but she's obviously abused it. I guess I'll just pass on that. Pass on that one.

It doesn't smell very well. It can't smell very well. Yeah, you could damage your smell. Get COVID or something. Give us a call again. We're going to go out to Michigan and talk to Ken. Good morning, Ken. Thank you for calling, Kim. Hi, Ken. Hi, good morning. Hi there. Good morning. You might recall I had the, well, thank you.

I had the 2016 Prius that Toyota could not fix the speedometer because it wouldn't go into kilometers. Oh, I remember you. Yeah. Yeah. And Toyota's remedy was buy a new Prius to replace my new Prius. Oh, geez. Can you believe? That shocked me.

I mean, talking about apathy. Well, they said I'd only lose. about you new Prius? I'm just kidding. No, they didn't. No, they said I'd lose, you know, take about $15,000. For you people that are listening, when this was about

five years ago or? Yes, 2016. Oh, 2016. And you live up near the Canadian border, and so you shop back and forth just like you would if you lived on a state border, and you happen to buy your Prius in Canada, and of course, the odomers and kilometers.

but you live in America. So like Toyota doesn't understand that, that people that are in border countries will be. Same thing would happen with Mexico and Texas and you're on a border with, I guess you don't buy that many cars in Mexico, but you buy cars in Canada. But, yeah, we went to bed for you and struck out, I think.

Correct. No, you made a great effort, but Toyota said, well, we sent out a few thousand cars with speedometers that just didn't convert. We wanted to push them out the door because I saw it at the Detroit Auto Show, two miles from Canada. And they said, tough, just buy a new press.

Great solution. Anyhow, the reason I was calling today is I was at the 120,000 mile mark and wanted to get an alignment. So I took your advice and went to a dealer and said, hey, give me a written quote on an alignment. And they said it's about a little over $200. but on top of that, there is a 10% surcharge for documentation. And I replied, do you mean you're going to charge me 10% more for giving me my receipt?

Well, yes. Is that a trend? No, that's a, Rick, that's gone. Yeah. They have, we're the only dealer doesn't do that, but they always have miscellaneous supplies and other things that they charge extra. 10% to print out the, to get the printout from the alignment? Yeah, they're 10%. They had the shop supplies at about $30 for the $200 alignment.

But then on top of that, a documentation fee for giving you, apparently, State of Michigan requires everybody to get a receipt for their cars. And they said, well, yeah, that's what we charge. So I went to another Toyota dealer in Dundee and got the alignment for $99, 99. Which is more appropriate for a Pryas. but a $50 surcharge. The thing you just always look at your invoice in any state, and every dealer that I know of on their service invoices

has an extra junk fee. Let's call, you know, there used to be dealer fees and all these kind of fees. The generic term is junk fees. That means it's profit to the dealer, and it's not something that you should be charged for. So look at your service, voice no matter what independent or dealer service department to go through and if you see something

at the bottom with an innocuous sort of a I don't know what that is it's usually at the bottom asks the cashier usually if you ask the cashier and raise a little hell they'll they'll take it off because they know that conscientious people and smart people will catch them and they just say okay we'll waive that for you but if you don't ask you pay yeah oh absolutely And I noticed sometimes they listed as a hazardous materials fee, since I'm a firefighter for a medic. I said, well, give me the hazardous materials that you used, and I will dispose of them. And, of course, there weren't. So it was smart to get a quote ahead of time in writing because then you could avoid problems down the road.

All right. Well, thanks. Thank you, Jim. I just wanted to say hi. Bye. Have a great weekend. I look forward to hearing from you again. we'll go back to Stu

I got a text here this is from Thiago and he says Hi Earl an 89 year old friend of mine was taken advantage of at a dealership this past weekend he went for a service job

on his completely paid off 2021 Kia Seltos which was still completely covered under warranty and left only five hours later after a salesperson convinced him to lease a new 2024 Kia Seltos

which is a lease and having to make a $430 a month payment because he was advised his 2021 could blow up at any minute and he may be on the side of the road. Yeah, that's a very sad fact that we've had other complaints. We've heard this over the years.

We've got a lot of older people in Florida, especially South Florida. And the sad fact is we've really investigated this legally and as long as a senior citizen, citizen has not signed over his rights of making decisions. They could do it to the family or any or someone. The court has to say that this senior citizen is incapable of making decisions and then they have a person that is responsible.

If they take advantage of a senior citizen under those conditions, you could bring the car back because they weren't allowed to sell them the car. But sadly, someone that, and many people, you know, people are living older and older. And 89 is not real, real old like it was 40 or 50 years ago. I mean, so it's a sad fact. I can only advise, you know, the relatives, children's friends of senior people that you feel are not capable of making the right decisions to help them. You just have to be there. But once they sign on the dotted line, unless they were taken advantage of illegally,

if they did something that was illegal, then it falls under the Florida Senior's Crime Act. And that is extra punishment. If you commit a crime against a 40-year-old, the penalty is one thing. If you commit a crime against 88-year-old, it's much more severe. But unless a crime was – I've had calls from people. in Fort Lauderdale, the one that came to mind was Al Hendrickson Toyota. I'll say this without embarrassing anybody because Al Hendrickson sold that dealership

to the Morgan Group. But back then, a very elderly man had bought a car, but taken advantage of just as you described, and his son found out about it and was told that they wouldn't give them the money back, and he never did get the money back. I even called Al Hendrickson on his behalf. So, yeah, if you have elderly family members, be careful, try to help them out.

All right. I got a text from Vito. Are we good on the phones? We are. Okay. Vito has asked a question this morning about leasing, and I also see that when I was out, he had texted. I don't know if he got his question there, but his question is,

are you required to pay the acquisition fee on a lease vehicle? Isn't $5.50 a bit excessive. That's Fido in St. Petersburg. The acquisition fee is passed on to the dealer from the lease company, and it's worked into the price of the lease payment. So it's kind of like the cost to the dealer, you know, so it's built into the lease payment. I think, and your other question that you had before.

Let me enter check there. It's still a junk fee. It just happens to be a junk fee by the leasing company. And it's almost like a transportation fee on a new car. That's a junk fee, too. I mean, you should bake all your cost into the asking price to separate something out in a lease contract. It doesn't come extra, though, so all they're advertised lease prices includes it. It doesn't come in afterwards.

So it is included in there. Yeah, it is included, but it's still... It's not added. It's just itemized. That's the reason of what I was saying. It's not illegal. It's not illegal. It's just frustrating because it should be baked into the least rate.

That should be the thing. And the reason I wanted to jump into that is because Vito had another question about the money factor or the lease rate, and he wanted to know if it's negotiable. And I was about to say no, but yes, it is. because dealers will mark that up. And so, and they'll use that as a hidden way to increase the lease payment. So that's, and that's reason I think worrying about that and the acquisition fee kind of waste your time. You just got to get multiple quotes and go over the lowest payment.

There's a disposition fee too. At the end that you have to pay. So, again, that's a junk fee. Well, that's a junk fee that does kind of surprise you because even though they tell you about it or it's in the contract, you're not going to know about it until the end from the manufacturer. But the only case where the lease factor isn't if they're doing like a special incentivized lease program. And they can show you the lease factor.

And no, they can't lower that. But, you know, if they're playing around with the numbers at a car dealership, most everything's negotiable. All right. Okay, this is, I think we talked about this a little bit this morning. text from Kyle. This is good morning, everyone. Since Stu has the best feel for the current market, I don't know, I think my dad might. He reads a lot more automotive news than I do. So like on some of those macro things. But what do I think about trading values right now? Have they gotten substantially

worse? There are a lot of automobile bubble doom and gloom on YouTube who think it will get worse. MSRP on a new Toyota is still a pretty good deal. But what percentage of customers at your dealership trade in a car also? Historically, about 40% to 50% closer to 40% I've traded in the car that number has dropped into the 30%

not, it hasn't crashed but less than 40%. It feels like right now and like you said it's gone up and down it's gotten a little bit better as far with the prices I mean the last couple of weeks we actually made small profits at the auction and like we talked

out it's a desperation I think need for good cars you can't find them We're going to make a nice profit at the East Card Department. Huh? This past month, yeah. Well, that's, like I said, up and down. Which we haven't been doing. Right, no, I said it's up and down, but, you know, this is the best up they were going to have.

So, yeah, I mean, the behavior, the car dealers are going to reflect their needs, and we need cars, and I'm not trying to turn this in the commercial, but if you got a car, we need it. We're paying top dollar. But that's everybody, that's going to be the message from every car dealer right now. It's a seller's market, boy, you're in the sweet spot. You've got a used car. You want to get rid of? I almost would like to do it myself because you can shop it around and people are frantic. Have you ever sold something that everybody wanted?

You feel special. Yeah, you got a used car. Everybody wants your used car. So you can have a lot of fun, get the maximum dollar out of that used car. Even in automotive news, you know, they talk about the struggle is real. They are looking for used cars. A year ago, I was getting solicitations to buy my house. There you go.

But I said no. Okay. Oh, I got a text from Negan. Oh. Let's see here. Hello, Stu. So I've been keeping my eye on the Ford Raptor R trucks. They seem, these are those with 700 horsepower, by the way.

Seems every one for sale currently is selling as used with 300 a so miles on there. As soon as I read that sentence, I began to laugh. Dealers are selling them to themselves. Yes, that's exactly. at MSRP so their new car department is making some money they drove them for a bit I don't think they're even driving they're going on the back lot and then they go on the lot as used with a huge $30 to $40,000 additional dealer markup above MSRP

MSRP is 109,000 they talk about Hollywood Toyota well it sounds exactly like that this is very common behavior so you're not it's not surprising to us at roll on cars they do this to get around for its corporate Ford Motors saying the dealers will be punished for selling new cars with additional dealer markups. So we went through this many years before Ford, Toyota imposed some advertising rules called the Covenant. And to get around these advertising rules and how you get advertised, a lot of dealers would just buy cars from their new car department.

So it's a company. That sounds really weird. So you can advertise a car below invoice. Right. So they can advertise a car. Now we're going the other way. Now we're going how high can you go. back then it was how low can you go and that was a trick to get around a Toyota caught up and

they amended the rules and I assume Negan that Ford's going to catch up and they'll amend the rules but it is a shady proxy you said it's a shady practice it's causing backlash and the raptor community that's something that dealers should understand that you know a lot of these vehicles it's an important thing it is a community and when you're treated like garbage like that without any regard for, you know, anybody's a financial situation. It's they think, well, it'll go to the guy that can afford it, and that changes the community. So that's really cool. Thanks for that, Negan.

And then a last text I went from Bob. It says, good morning. My question is, what would cost more to maintain for five years a gas version or a hybrid of the same model vehicle? I'm going to go on a limb and say it will cost less to maintain the hybrid. and I'll turn it over to Rick. Yeah, I agree because you would see less wear and tear on the car total. The brakes would last longer. And actually, if you drive it right, the tires would last a lot longer as well.

And like also what you talked about before in a hybrid, the computer is really controlling how much it is getting the engine so you can jam on it. It's going to respond. Obviously, if you need an urgent need to accelerate, but it's going to detect the movement of the pedal and the computer is going to dictate how much gas gets shot into the carburetor. Which keeps your fuel economy higher as saving fuel. So, I mean, you save a lot of costs there.

Yeah. And also, I think there's also an effect when you get one. You start seeing how much you can maximize your gas mileage. And so there's a thing, oh, wow, because you can see it in real time. And usually in the hybrids, or maybe all the time, there's cool little gizma showing you where the battery power's going and the gas. And so you try to maximize it. And consequently, you're driving the car easier

and doing less wear and tear. You're playing, it's playing a video game with yourself as you're driving. That's amazing. Trying to maximize those numbers. Great information. When I first got a Prius, like, years ago, there's this thing, we all did,

it was called hypermiling. And because you could kind of play around with, there's like these sweet spots you could find with a pedal. Yes. And you could make the car, go into all electric mode for a while or coast and you would just be going down the road because when you're already inertia allows you once you're going at a speed it takes very little energy to maintain it's just getting to that speed so if you could just it was fun to do and

sometimes I would get you know 70 80 miles per gallon you know for a period of time maybe a few days you know it's pretty cool and it's a new world it also teaches you to look for roads where you can avoid the traffic you avoid the red lights it spreads traffic out so it's good for the whole community when you do it in that absolutely you know it's just about 931 and i think that we're going to have to go to the big dog ranch segment and um if we have time after the mystery shopping report we'll go back to stew on facebook and uh rick with youtube but there's you know there's all kind of great things going on out there at big dog ranch that a lot of people don't know the first thing i'd like to share with you

is the um the uh the uh the uh the uh fees out there and they're temporarily reduced these are adoption fees and did you know the two hundred dollars uh for dogs under six months 200 dollars for the uh there's a sale adoption fee yeah they're having a sale and uh also uh for the uh dogs that are over six months old it's a hundred dollars they've been the big dog rage for more more than six months yeah yeah so uh longer than six months oh okay i didn't get that part okay uh so at any rate if you don't have the uh website uh you can go to www www big dog ranch rescue dot org and um we i hope we have time to share our visit out there with big dog ranch we had an absolutely uh phenomenal time out there and even with the weather and everything that went on but today we have Aladdin aka tank

and he's going to come to us on a video and that video will be narrated by Natalie and he's a he's a bulldog now we're paying the adoption fees in American American mixed and he's 60 pounds and I'm not quite sure how long he's been out of Big Dog Ranch but right here at early on cars we make it easy for you to adopt a dog by paying the adoption fees and it they do a background check it's just an amazing place and the the volunteers out there they are amazing people but they're still looking for more volunteers and did you know that they are the largest largest cage-free no-kill

shelter in the United States. Laurie Simmons and everyone else out there what a great job they're doing out there and they have no dogs they've had dogs out there for over five years until they found

a home finally. Yeah exactly and we had recently a dog of the week that was out at the ranch for 520 days and if you didn't know about their veteran program out there, it's just amazing. We were with some of the dog trainers, and what an amazing program that is, where they just pair a veteran and a dog.

And it takes a long time for that to happen. They have to train that service dog for, you know, like six months, and then they bring the veteran in, and, you know, every once in a while is just, magical they just love each other and they just go home very very happy and sometimes it doesn't happen so they work very hard out there with the dog training program for service dogs so at any rate we have Natalie and I believe that Jonathan is ready for Natalie to bring in Aladdin a k a tank on video cue video

Hi, we're here with Tank, also known as Aladdin. He was a boxer, bulldog mix, born here at Big Dog Ranch. And he was adopted as a puppy and has been returned. So he is looking for a home again. He's a big guy with like some active family, a yard to run in. But he just needs a home, pretty calm, passed that crazy puppy phase, and we'll be your best friend. He's a big boy.

He's beautiful. How much you think he weighs? Did they say how much he weighs? He's 60 pounds. 60 pounds? She's small. And it's a pretty young pup at six months and two weeks. That's a puppy.

Okay, so he's not even full grown. So like he's a big bulldog, so he's probably at a year and a half, two years totally fully grown. So he might get a little bit bigger. He'll fill out. Oh, he definitely will fill out. If you've never been, of course, this is if you're local, but if you come to this area or you're local, if you've never been to Big Dog Ranch Rescue, Nancy and I, as she said, we're out there Sunday, or the day before yesterday, and it was shocking to how much they've grown.

I mean, they are growing by leaps and bounce. And I was talking in the studio before we went live on the air. They have, since we've been out there, they have built a puppy town. They have an entire town, I'm telling you, a town of little houses for the puppies. And right next to Puppy Town is the maternity ward. Mama town. So when they adopt a pregnant dog and the puppies are born, they moved to Puppy Town. And so you could either go into the maternity ward and adopt the mama and some of the pups.

after the pups have been weaned. Then you've got to go over to Puppie Town. Go to Puppetown and lie down on your back and you'll be attacked by Puppies. All the houses, each house in Puppetown is a different color. They have a lake, a swimming pool. They also built, this is mind-boggling,

they build a beautiful home out there. So I asked the manager out there, what is, have you finished the home? Well, it'll be finished in just a few. weeks. It looked like it was finished to me. And I said, what's the home for? I thought maybe Lori Simmons, the founder of a big dog ranch, was going to move

out there. It's a home for the dogs. Before dogs are adopted, they're in cages, and I guess it's an acclamation. So they put them in a home, so they can be trained not to wee-wee on the carpet and to go to the front

door and they feel comfortable when they got instead of being moved right from a little bitty closure into a big home you're already in a home and you acclimate it's amazing and ladies gentlemen you're going to adopt

a very healthy dog if you don't know it I mean they have a surgery center they have a dental department they have they have everything you can imagine that a human would you know have and it's just an amazing place if you get a chance

go ahead out take a look around you can spend an hour you can spend all day there's so much to see it's in Loxahatchee grows so if you're in South Florida you just go west on

Okachobi Boulevard off the turnpike just go west on Okachovie Boulevard and it'll take you off from the turnpike about 20 minutes and when you get out there it's worth just visiting

even if you don't want to dog you will see the most amazing facility to house dogs you've ever seen in your life it's just worth going out there and wandering around absolutely and Josh was out there with us and there were a lot going on out there they were taking a lot of pictures and the dogs were just maybe it was because of the storm that they were just so worked up but they come flying out of the door and Josh said something really funny he's we're going to have some really great pictures of you, Nancy, being mauled by the dogs because they came out, and I was holding these treats, and they jumped all over me, and I was, like, near the lake out there where they liked

to play, and there was, too, but the dogs were over there. They were just having a great time. Josh was having a great time. So, at any right, let me mention confessions of a recovering car dealer, and the fact that this book is timeless, and you can purchase this book, and all proceeds go to big dog ranch all proceeds give me a little dog oh isn't he precious so at any rate confessions of a recovering car dealer like I said the book is it's timeless and it goes to a very good cause all proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch. Okay, Jonathan, we're at 940. It's time, I believe, for the mystery shopping report.

Okay. Remember, folks, you can take and you can vote at 772-4976530. And we went to, where did we go? We went to Rob Lamedon's University Dodge of Fort Lauderdale. I've never heard of that place. Never. I've heard of University of Dodge. I don't know.

Maybe they just tagged his name on it recently. Well, Fort Lauderdale threw me off because that's a lot of big places, but there's also so many small mom-paw dealerships there off to sides of the roads down there. So I don't know. University Dodge. Well, it sounds like a small dealership, but like Nancy said, I wouldn't think you'd find the small dealership in Fort Lauderdale. I believe it is because usually the Salanus

you have the Dodge Jeep you know Is it Rob Lambus? Yeah Rob Landda yeah Okay I'll speak as if I were Agent Lightning

and this is the mystery shop Upon my arrival at the dealership at 8.50 a.m. The showroom was eerily quiet much like a ghost town. I guess most dealerships don't open the sales department

until 9 o'clock. like a ghost town, three Hellcats all locked and occupied on the floor. A Hellcat is a super fast car. I think I saw something about Jay Leno buying a Hellcat for his collection. And I think it's because they've been,

this is the last year for the Hellcat. I know what the Hellcat is because it's that super fast supercar. That's a version of an SRT. It's the Dodge Challenger, S-R-T with the massive upgraded motor. So both of these cars you looked at were challengers. Yeah, and then they came out with the very extremely limited demon version

that was pretty much meant only for racetracks because it actually gives your platt a run for its money. After about 10 minutes of wandering, I took note of a group engaged in a meeting. They glanced my way but made no move to engage. later came to my attention that they held roles as finance and sales managers.

Feeling the urge to explore, before I go there, Nancy and I were talking about that. You know, it's just something not smart about holding a meeting when customers are coming into the dealership or a restaurant or anything else. I've had that happen.

Nancy and I've had that happen to us where we walked into a restaurant and when they were open for business and they were all having a meeting and they were all having a meeting and ignoring us not smart it's not devious

and it's not deceptive but it's just stupid feeling the need to explore I made my way to the outdoor lot it wasn't much before an employee approached I already did that and he says because you wait about

five minutes not long after a cluster of eight men appeared from another building brushing past me without uttering a single word. Curious, I followed them in the showroom. I put my return of salesman, munching on something came up to me. He covered his mouth and acquired,

Do you need help? Really laid back. I mean... Well, at least he didn't. It's hard to believe this is at Fort Lauderdale. I mean, I would think this would be a country town. He wasn't like chomping on his breakfast with his mouthgo then. Anyway, I said, I'm quite interested in this Hellcat,

I responded. Did you schedule an appointment? He asked. No, I replied, is not necessary. No worries, he assured us. I'm here to assist you. He then shared, we only have three Hellcats in stock. Due to their limited availability, they're priced above MSRP.

Real quick, I'm looking on their website. They have a lot of vehicles in stock. But not Hellcats. Not Hellcats. I'm saying as far as size of the dealership goes, their stock in 344 use vehicles. Well, that's what they say. That's what they say.

That's what they say. Yeah. The MSRP on the Monroe label said $108,095. Whoa. Who never thought a Dodge for $108,000? That everybody wants to get. Times they're changing. The addendum, hang on to your hats. You better sit down for this one.

Another $21,397 added to the $108,095. Now, you've got to love a Dodge to pay that much money for a Dodge. He got a love very, very much. Curious, I pose a question. Is the markup really 20,000 above MSRP? No way clarified, we can work with you. Okay. Of course.

And the gas mileage, I continue playing nonchal. What a question. The gas mileage. This is funny, too. The sticker, this is the answer. The salesman says, the sticker might say 13 miles per gallon, but realistically, you get close to the 9.

I mean, I know that the difference between 13 and 9 is 4, but... It's still... Once you go to single digits. As for the SRT, about 15 miles per gallon, he explained, with an adjusting tone. He shouted to a colleague, Hey, Justin, how many miles did your Hellcat get, give? So the salesman, Justin, drives a helcat.

Before Justin could respond to the salesman, smirk, but beware, he drives like there's no tomorrow. In good humor, Justin replied, honestly, about seven miles per day off. Seven. And there's another question. We're talking about car payments and things like that. Justin's a salesman driving $100,000 car. I haven't had, I drove the first Mazda, RX, 3, no, RX, 100.

100 and that got seven miles per gala i've never heard of a car getting that low a mileage not to mention i i knew a person that had a hellcat he sold it because he was putting on all four tires and all four brakes pads and rotors about every seven to 10 000 miles and he was getting a muscle car you're going to have to buy one of these so there are people out there that are still buying muscle cars and uh the hell cat is for a muscle car dying the dying the dying population that wants these cars and they apparently pay up for them I quit to Justin off to the cops pull you over he says only once Justin retorted but the officer let me off told him he'd never catch me if I didn't want him to I don't

believe that but salesman laughed not only does he drive while but he's also bold with the officer I believe that getting back to the business I asked could I get a price for both the Hellcat and the SRT certainly the salesman responded introducing himself as will he hands the window stickers for both vehicles by the way he mentioned

every Friday morning the finance and sales teams have their meetings given there that last month sales didn't meet expectations they'll likely be in there until 10 a.m. They're being accosted and beat up. That's brutally honest to solve this customer that your sales

are not good will continue The SRT isn't marked up as much as the Hellcat, but I'm not trying to make you subtle. I just want you to have all the information. I was given two hand-scrolled worksheets for both vehicles, both included all the markups. Recalling his previous question, he asked, so how soon are you thinking of buying? I need a car, ASAP, I replied, but $40,000 above MSRP is asking a bit too much, even for a Hellcat. will suggest that once some managers are out of the meeting

you can't make this stuff up around 10 or 1030 you should talk to them directly about the price don't wonder they're not selling many cars they're always in the meeting he went on to assure me regardless of the selling price my commission remains the same I don't believe that that's I that was interesting true it's a good thing if it's true it's a good thing well we'll make sure a legient line knows to ask

more when she gets information. We'll find out about that. I mean, what a bizarre dealership. We should have a third category. Buy, don't buy, and you ain't believe in this. And that would be under the third column. If they're putting $21,000 to play with on the price and they're paying the salesperson just a flat commission,

I don't believe that. I don't believe it. Conversation dragged on with rules attempt to fill the uncomfortable time while we waited. Oh, man. I hand it to Agent Lightning for pretending to wait until 10.30 or as long as she did. We should shop them maybe once every two months just for a laugh. I mean. We're at 4 o'clock in the afternoon and they're in their afternoon meeting until 5.30.

Well, first of all, there are dealership selling only Dodge, and that's out of the dark ages. I mean, it used to be there were just... Oh, no, you're right. There's nothing on their website. There's just some dodges. Yeah. I mean, they used to be just GMC dealers and just Buick dealers. He must have done something bad.

And then after a while, they dueled and become... Maybe LAMDIS has been there forever. Or he did, or dodged it, they don't like him, and they won't give him a Jeep franchise. Conversation dragged on with Will's attempt to fill the uncomfortable time while we waited. So I wasn't going to wait any longer. Our conversation drew to an end. And I requested his business card. It's all the save to you.

He offered, why not save my details in your phone? He gave me his name again, Will, and his personal cell number. Now, I recommend you always try to get the personal cell number of your salesperson and your sales manager. So this is a third category. We cannot categorize this dealership. I don't know what to say. Yeah. Thanking me for my time, Express.

I hope to hear from you soon. and got some nice pictures of the dealership. It's just a Dodge dealership in Fort Lauderdale. Very strange. Well, I guess we'll get some very strange votes. Yeah. We'll see what's happening. All I got so is from Mark right now.

He says, what? How much? No need for further information. My grade equals D. And then he texted it again a minute later and says, I mean F. But this is, I think, for me, this is going to be a first for me. They get, I'm giving them an eye. I'm incomplete.

I don't, we don't know what really happens at Lambda's university Dodge. We know what they, what they want to do. They want to make a, I'm going to guess the gross on it, if you sold it, MSRP, is probably $15,000 anyway. So, withhold back and all that sort of stuff. You have $21,000 and you're selling this car for, you're making. making a shy of a $40,000 gross profit. They get an A for the most ambitious deal, I think I've ever seen.

But they get an I because I don't know what's happening. Moving right along to you, Rick. Okay. I've got Negan 1 with a big F. ADM, no go. Joseph Kelleher with an F. Kirk in West by God, Virginia. University Dodge.

This sounded more like an episode. out of stranger things. Silly markups and meetings to boot equals F. Let's see, that's all we've got so far. I got one here from Bob. He says, I'll send my grade for University Dodge

after my meeting ends at 10.30. I have a picture. I have a picture of the new vehicle director. And if you can see there. Is that the guy with a big beard? With a big beard. He's got a long long beard. He looks like a lumberjack.

Yeah. So, there's there and they are Dodge Ram so they have Dodge and they have the ram truck. Okay. Now one other thing that Dodge did by the way you notice there was a Durango on the showroom floor. Dodge

actually put the Hellcat motor and drive line in that truck in a Durango. They only did again a very limited number. Oh that's a SUV right. And they they jacked the price way up on those as well. Is that fun to drive?

There actually was talk. They wanted to try to put a Hellcat into a basically a caravan, a minivan. Oh, really? I mean to sell at their dealerships? To sell at the dealerships. I don't imagine why they would do that, but they were talking about it. Because they saw how well Toyota did with the Sienna S.E. Swagger wagon. Yeah, they just wanted a minivan that could do a quarter mile in four seconds.

Hey, you know, they'd probably have some time on their hands, and they're sitting around like, what can we do with these cars, Yeah. Well, if we start swapping the engines around, we can kill some time, maybe make some money. I don't know. All right. We need some grades from you guys. Okay. Earl.

Earl's, what do you have? I was trying to find some more information off their website. All I can tell you is they have several people with long beards. Really? More than one? Yeah. Is it an Amish dealership? It could.

That's possibility. I haven't heard about that. That sounds interesting. Long beards. I'm in shock because they're not in. Like Stu said, how could you give them a grade? They seem like they're in La La Land. I don't understand.

Lala? Yeah. Uh-uh. You know where they really were? Clownsville. Yeah. Your vote is what? My vote is going to be.

My vote, I'm going to withhold my vote. I don't know how to vote on the deal trip. You're going to give them an eye. Okay. And incomplete. In incomplete. Yeah. It's their fault.

I mean, if they were on the ball, we would have some information to work with. The show is to analyze deception and transparency. And, you know, can you go in and get an honest deal? That's what we're set up to do. We don't know that, but it doesn't look good so far. It's set up poorly. YouTube just caught up to me, and I just got a whole bunch more came in. So Mark Anderson, question mark.

I think he's confused as we are, and he's probably going incomplete like Stu did. Tim Gilliland, 100,000 plus with a 20,000 addendum and 7 miles per gallon, where do I sign? Grade equals, weird. Johnny Z. Fradley, F. Flat commission might be the same, but I'm sure there are bonuses. Brian said Latko, my grade is D for Dodge with a downward thumb. Rocky Blockatiel, 120k Hellcat, hell no. I'll have to dodge that dealership Mark Smith

I give them a solid D-minus Joe did University? No, more like primary school, F Ken Asher, F Mark Smith, I'll keep my Camry X-E-V-6 which Mark told me earlier

he just wound up buying this Camry so he's kind of proud of it. Good for you, Mark. Welcome back to the family. We want to them back from Nissan. And that's what we've got so far. Okay. My own grade, I'm going to, I'm going incomplete.

Incomplete. We're going to have to send her back to this one. Yeah. You know, Agent Lightning never ceases to amaze me. She, you know, emphasized that she was going along. You know, she was nonchalant, even though she could have taken it in a different direction. And for me, I don't need. need any more information. I can wing it from the, you know, material that's sitting in front of

me. And, you know, I have to ask, as Earl did, with the finance managers, with the sales managers, with all these people that were around, you know, why were they even there? And I thought that the customer always came first. And the guy, and the guys here pointed out to me, everybody had a long beard. He's got food in his mouth. He's trying to eat. So, you know, And then forget about it, you know, she asks, Is the markup really $20,000? Is the markup really $20,000? All I would want in response to this salesperson,

if that's what he was, was a yes or a no. But yet he said, we can work with you. I got to turn around and get out of that dealership because it's definitely Clownsville. And I give them an F, F, F, F. F-F-F-F. I don't think there's as many people with long beards as you think. Apparently... Two minutes. Okay, this guy appears more than once...

Well, he appears more than once on the website. Oh, is that the same guy? Yeah, he's under the sales management team as a new vehicle director. It's Kevin. And if you go all the way down, he also appears under a group of people known as the power brokers. And he's under as a sales expert. And Justin has no picture at all. Justin has a placeholder picture. It just says Justin Ferreiro and a little icon.

I think we've got to go, don't we? All right, let's go. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us this Labor Day weekend. We certainly enjoyed your company, everybody involved. And we'll be right back here next week. And don't forget to go to big dog rancherrescue.org and take a look at all the dogs that they have there.

and even more information about Tank. Have a wonderful weekend. Tank is free. Tank is free.