Earl Stewart on Cars - 09.23.2023 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Jim Shorkey Mitsubishi of Irwin, PA

Episode Date: September 23, 2023

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning travels to Pennsylvania to visits a local Mitsubishi dealer in Erwin to see what they will charge for a new 2023 Mitsubishi Outlander SE 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. Here we are in the studio again in North Palm Beach, Florida. Be on the air from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. And we're here to tell you how to avoid being ripped off by your car dealer. uh we're doing this thing because we love doing it i think we have uh more fun and enjoy it more than most of our listeners uh it's just a time to get together and uh we'd get pleasure out of helping you and uh we think uh a lot of you out there uh need some help but actually our listeners are

almost like preaching to the choir uh we're really spreading the knowledge we have with you and sharing it so that you can spread it and share it with others. Educated consumers are in pretty good shape today. If you have a computer and a smartphone, you're pretty well equipped to just about beat down any car deal that's trying to take advantage of you. You can get a good deal on a car, and I want to say a good deal on a car, I'm talking about, relatively speaking, you're going to pay more for a car today than you did three years ago maybe a lot more depending on the supply situation of your particular

making model car but you can still do better if you pick up a few ideas and tips highlight of the show is our mystery shopping report every time I tell somebody that we do this they say no you didn't you don't do that you can't you can't do that you get thrown off the air you get sued you get arrested but we do it anyway and we do it because the The perfect defense against libel or slander is the truth. We go into car dealerships every, every week in different parts of the country. Actually, we are in Pennsylvania this week, but typically we do more in Florida, but we pretty

well cover Florida, focus on South Florida, which I refer to as the Sodom and Gomorrah of the car business. It's just absolutely horrible the way the car dealers in South Florida conduct business. they get away with it. They're uncontrollable. So we go to a car dealership and pretend to buy a car. We have an incredible undercover agent. We call her Agent Lightning. We don't use her real name for obvious reasons. And she does an outstanding job of getting to the essence of the transaction. She goes in, plays the role of a car buyer very well. The longer she's done this, the better she's gotten. So she draws out pretty much all of the, can you call them, habits or style or policies of each car dealership. And we take these car dealership shopping reports and we archive them on our website, earl oncars.com. That's earl oncars.com.

If you want to buy a car, hopefully we've shopped a car dealer in your area. you can use that as a judgment. We have the good dealers and the bad dealers, the approved, and the ones that we recommend you don't buy a car from. And we've got quite a few to choose from because we've been doing this for about 20 years. We name names. We named the name of the dealership.

We named the salespeople, the sales managers, the name of the dealer, if we can find it out. A lot of car dealers now are hiding their names. They use either the names of the previous owner or some other name. They don't want to have their name on the dealership for obvious reasons. So we help in that way

because we can warn you ahead of time. And plus it's entertaining. I mean, let's face it. Live talk radio, I think it's, there's not a lot of it. There's not enough. I used to love it. And there are a few live radio talk shows anymore,

live for obvious reasons, because, you know, you can get yourself lot of trouble if you're not if you're not thinking about what you're saying and uh you got to tell the truth um it's uh it's entertaining so you're being educated you're being entertained and so are we i i'm not kidding i mean i you your regular listeners know that that we all i me especially i i learned something new on this show every every week sometimes it's from rick kearney he's sitting to my right here. He's our certified diagnostic master technician. He knows everything about a car. And he knows a lot about even the electric vehicles now, which are just new on the

scene. And if you got an older car, old combustion engine, you know, maybe going back 15, 20 years, hard to find parts, hard to get somebody that knows how to fix it. Rick can help you there too because he's been working in my dealership for 25 years. And, you know, you go back in 25 years in technology, that's almost like horse and buggy time. I mean, that's way, compared to what we have today with the warp speed advance in technology, you bought a car 25 years ago, you got a horse and buggy. But Rick can still tell you how to fix it. And we ask you to check your YouTube channel as Erlon Cars, Ford Slash, excuse me,

YouTube.com, ford slash Erlan Cars, YouTube.com, ford slash Erlan Cars, YouTube.com, Ford slash Roan Cars and Rick personally monitors the postings there and so if you start posting you will get your answer to your question or your comment will be aired even if you're not going to call the show or comment if you go to YouTube.com ford slash Roller Cars for some reason Rick has the most amazing group of followers you can find

they're they are educated consumers and then some I learn more from Rick's followers on the YouTube channel than I do from just about anything. And I'm telling you, these guys are sharp. So we also do Facebook.com, 4 slash R1Cars. And we're live streamed. You can see all of us.

And the videos that we show, you'll see stream it. And you can also stream it at streamer1cars.com. www.stream earl on cars.com. But, of course, the radio, you can get that just about anywhere in the world. We are international. We have people from all over the world, mainly the United States. I think we have more callers from out of Florida than we do in Florida. I could be wrong there.

What we don't have enough of, and we never give up on this, is lady callers, female callers. Nancy Stewart, to my left ear, has been with me since the get-go. on this thing. When we started the show 20 years ago for a half an hour, an hour or two hours, Nancy has grown that female audience to parody, 50-50, even though she'll tell you in a minute that actually the females buy more cars than men, and the ones they don't buy, they influence. They're a huge, untapped source of opportunity to the car dealers and to the auto manufacturers. for some reason they just haven't caught on about the female listener i'm going to turn the mic over to nancy stewart right now and she'll tell you about an offer that's too good to be true but

it is true about what you female listeners who haven't called the show could look forward to so nancy the mic is all yours good morning everyone welcome to erwan cars we really enjoy your company Thank you for joining us. Ladies this morning, $50 for the first two new female callers. $50 for the first two female callers. Give us a call and let us know how your experience went at the dealership. And let us know whether you began your search for a vehicle online, you know, before you decided to walk into the dealership.

Again, $50 for the first two new lady callers. And our number is 877-960-99-60. You can also text us at 772-497-6-5-30. That text number comes in handy when you want to vote on the Mystery Shopping Report. So, jot that down. Also, we have a great mystery shopping report from Irwin, Pennsylvania, and you're going to love it. It's a Mitsubishi dealership out there. And we also have a video for you later on in the show just before the mystery shopper report, and that's from Big Dog Ranch.

We have a cute little, well, I don't think I call them little. maybe again well he's 81 pounds so a buck is a big boy big buck he's a hound dog there you go and he is only three years old no he's two years old and he'll come to us via video from big dog ranch all that and more a whole lot more especially from you the callers the Facebookers the YouTubers, and it's quite a cult that we have here. I want to give a special thank you to Jeremy that helps that weekend and week out. I don't mention his name very often, except to tell the ladies to give him their contact information, but he's the producer, and he works from the control room, and he keeps us up and running,

just like Jonathan. Jonathan does a fantastic job also. So we have a lot of players here in the studio. Again, that number is 877-9-9-60-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Well, as Nancy just said, and I forgot to give you those numbers,

I'm glad she remembered because these numbers, are critical. Your calls make the show. It's funny because Nancy and I go crazy every Saturday morning early, studying automotive news in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times and everything else and trying to get ourselves up to speed on things like the UAW strike and all the other things. And we want to be able to present some intelligent comments to you. And then we are overwhelmed with the intelligence of the comments from our callers and the questions, which are some things that we frankly have to struggle to get answers to, but the UAW strike is huge.

Here you go. Yeah, it's expanded in case no one has read the newspaper this morning. It's expanded into, I believe, about 38 locations. I know central Florida. their big players and now they're talking about parts they want the parts employees to support them also so that is something to well watch Earl I'm going to go to the phones because Marty is on the line and Marty calls us every week he's from West Palm Beach good morning Marty good morning how's everybody doing great great first thing I wanted to say I wanted to compliment you service manager, Mark, because I had a problem when the car was still under warranty

and I talked to him and they were able to take care of the issue. It wasn't a big issue, but they were able to take care of it even after now that it's out of warranty. So he was very, I just can't say enough good about him. He's a very nice guy. Thank you so much. And I wanted to make sure that you. and Earl, you know, can hear the compliment.

Yeah, recognition is great, and we all deserve it at one time or another, and the guys in service, they work pretty hard, right, Stu? Yeah, and Marty, I was like, it's kind of, it's a good point that you brought up because it comes up time and again on the show. People bring in, call it problems with their car, and maybe they're just out of warranty or, you know, out of warranty for a few months, and it's important to have work with the service department that has a good relationship, the manufacturer because Earl's talked about goodwill a lot on the show and that's when

the manufacturer Honda or Ford pays for the repair that would have been warranted but you're out of warranty by miles or time and maintaining those good relationships are able to get this their favors done for the customers so you you witnessed that firsthand yes yes now also i wanted to say with the uh auto worker strike i guess Toyota and Honda are not unionized. Correct in the United States, yeah. So as long as they're not affected, but the only trouble is they don't have any cars.

Well, they can't take another hit. But you're right. I mean, as far as GM and Ford and Chrysler cars and, you know, that could affect inventories a little bit down the road, so it's not over yet. Yeah, well, as far as Toyota, though, I mean, if your cars were still like the old days, I'd say you'd be booming because people are probably nervous about this auto strike. Yeah, if we had the cars, we definitely have the customers.

There's still a shortage out there. It's getting better, though. I do have good news, and I've watched it. I've looked at the graphs myself, and you can see the production is ever since June, and this is what was forecasted to us by our Toyota people that after July on, July on, we're going to see a lot more production, and it's pretty significant now. They're looking at Toyota dealers in the South having almost a 20-day supply

by the end of this year, and that's close to normal times. Is they a 20-day supply of all cars? I'm only speaking about Toyota dealers in the southeastern United States, but as a group right now, It's about an eight-day supply, and by the end of the year, it's going to more than double. No, I meant Toyota models. Yes. In other words, okay.

Yeah, because I looked at a crown, and I wanted the bird's-eye view. Well, now the bird's-eye view you can only get, according to your sales manager there, he said the only way you can get a bird's-eye view now is you've got to order the highest-priced crown. Yeah, they usually come in the... It's a pretty cool feature, though. Yeah, it's a good feature, yeah. I've got it in my Camry, so I really like it. But he said that we're going to start eventually, probably said in 2024,

making it in the limited version. But right now he said it's only in the platinum version. So, you know, you know, you've got to stay up to date on those packages. Yeah, yeah. But as long as I just wanted to, again, just compliment your service man. and your dealership. All right. Thank you very much.

I'm going to give Mark a hug when I see him on Monday. Give him a hug. Okay. Absolutely. Thanks, Marty. I'll give him a hug too. All right. Thanks for me.

Have a good weekend. All right. Bye-bye. Let me, can I jump on there quickly? I just want everyone to realize that, you know, we do have a cardiolorship, obviously. And this is not an infomercial. We don't do this to promote our cardiolship. Cardiorship is an asset to someone that can be critical of cardiolus because being insiders,

having been in the, uh, retail automobile business, my life, more than half my life, about 50 years. And so, but we've been there and done that. That's reason and it's an asset, but we don't, we don't self-promote. But we have to admit we love it when people compliment us. So Marty called up. He's a customer, and he was talking about our service manager, and we love it. But it's not what we do on the show.

We try to help you decide how you should buy a car and where. Yes, that's great information. Ladies and gentlemen, when I were I, you know, sent out that message to all the ladies to give us a call, the first two new female callers. You know, it's amazing that I still sit here and talk about the same subject week in and week out. And that is, you know, how much women represent this huge opportunity for the auto industry. We're a huge part of it. Financially, I'm talking about. And just recently in the automotive news, I had to read it a couple of different times

because the headline read, automakers are missing an opportunity to sell more EVs to women. And they go into, you know, the numbers and, you know, everything you've heard before from me about how influential we are. And most importantly, you know that women have a long, long been influential in new vehicle purchases. And it goes on to say that somehow the EV market, the electric vehicle market, is sidestepping. And, you know, it all has to do with communication and how we all want to be treated equally and with respect. rather than go into the whole article, I think those are two major words right there.

Respect and recognition, information, not being condescending. You hear us talk about the Mystery Shopping Report and how sometimes that still happens. So at any rate, it's an interesting article in the automotive news. and they give all kinds of numbers. And these electric vehicles, you know, they're becoming more affordable. People are becoming more educated as far as how much a cost to keep the car on the road. And so many benefits. You can save up to $3,000 a year just on, you know, fuel.

So at any rate, ladies, give me a call. Let's discuss this. 877-960-99-60 877-960 how do you feel about all of this give me a little input our text number is 772-4976530 now back to the recovering car dealer I just got a call Lance is calling from guess where Tennessee Tennessee Good morning, Earl, Nancy, Rick, and Sue from the hills of the great East Tennessee. We got a call from Appalachia.

Yeah, just let me say that I like to call and kid you, but the work and the research at the time that you put in to give this, make this such a quality show, does not go unrecognized. Thank you. We all appreciate you very much. It's a, it's a, you do a great job, and I can tell, all of us can tell, that you have a good time to. He doesn't, he doesn't let us have too good a time, though. He shushes us when we start getting, when we get goofy. Well, Earl, I couldn't let the morning pass without a little tune.

I was wondering. And, um, and, um, I'm hoping that my, uh, singing will propel me. to another career in politics. I don't know about politics, but it'll propel you. You're a brave man, Lance. Well, hello, Earl. You're a Pearl.

Earl. You're up, Earl. Earl. Keep giving us good advice as soon as you can. And just remember, Earl. Take me be the tall, Earl. This two rural Stewart on cars on Saturdays. I'm thinking Broadway.

Broadway would be a... I've heard that tune somewhere else before you. Did you write that music? I think I've heard it elsewhere. Hello. Hello, darling. Given my future in politics, I'm not going to exactly right, man. I'm glad you didn't say hello, Earl.

early but that's uh I'll take the earl yeah thank you do that next week yeah I'll save that for another show thanks Lance thanks thank you Lance 877 960 960 give us a call 772 4976530 that's our text number and please jot that done because you're going to need it whenever you vote on the mystery shopping report ladies I'm going to say it over and over again. I'm waiting to hear from you. I want to know what you did first before you went into the dealership. Did you go online? Did you pick out a model vehicle that you wanted? When yourself $50 this morning, first two new lady callers, $50. Earl? Well, let's get to either the YouTube post or the text. I know we got Anne Marie always has a text.

She's waiting. Good morning, Emery. Good morning, Emery. I'll speak as Emery. Good morning. There have been many advancements in automotive technology over the decades, such as seatbelts, anti-like brakes, cruise control, better suspension systems, all-wheel drive, etc.

Which ones do you feel contributed the most to the safety and welfare of the public? I have a thought, but we could go around the table. Rick is probably more qualified than the rest of us. Anni-lock brakes. I was going to say airbags. I think anilock brakes simply for the idea that keeping the car under control keeps you out of an accident versus something that is actually only used when you're in an accident. So like in the old days, I'm trying to remember back when I used to like before analog breaks.

So if there's an accident in front of you, you have to slam on your brakes, people are just spinning out of control, trying to avoid accidents, and colliding with other cars. I remember being taught to drive when... Pump the brakes. People would say, pump the brake pedal. Pump the brake pedal. Well, they weren't telling you how to pump the brake pedal,

which is the intention there is that you are supposed to... As fast as you can. No, actually, you're supposed to step on the pedal hard to the moment that you feel like the tires are going to lock, up, then release the brake, then step on it again. And never did that once. And yet we all thought it was bub-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-bbbb, which didn't really do effectively what you were looking to do.

Antiloc brakes actually uses the computer, and the reason it feels that fast pounding, if it activates, is because it's actually activating right at the moment when the tires begin to stop moving. and the moment the computer sees that it immediately releases the pressure lets the wheels start to move again then applies again and thereby slows the car keeping the absolute maximum amount of traction

at the same time it's allowing you to still have traction for steering which... I knew that was the most important part being able to steer away from an accident is going to save your life and also the other things some of the things that Amory mentioned

are possible by analog brakes like the vehicle stability control and this in this uh exactly all the stuff that's grown out of it all right i know i know the right because you googled it yeah was i right was airbags it's not it's not it's not no it's not something that you could talk about for a long time but seatbelts duh the first we're right you know i was in my mind i thought that it was like seatbelts are just ubiquitous and then the last 30 years we got all the safety equipment I go back pre-seat belts, only one in the group here that was the car business back then, but I have a vivid recollection of my resentment for a seatbelt. I mean, just, you know, how dare anybody say I got to wear a seatbelt?

And I was a Pontiac dealer back then, and when the first cars came in with a mandated seatbelts, we hid them. we would we would stuff them back in the seats away from the customers at least you didn't cut them out with like exactly in your way when you're trying to clean the car out when you're getting in it and they flop around and they're hard to put on i mean think about it before that the backseat probably looked like a beautiful couch and suddenly you just mucked it up with all these as the scraps and of course when the federal government said you got to have them uh there wasn't time to do for the cosmetics you just had to have to make them and stick these silly look at belts they didn't and they probably didn't even match the interiors at first. And so that's what we did. We hit them. And nobody wore them. I mean, you were a real jerk if you wore your seatbelt. And if you wear your seatbelt, you probably couldn't get out of that.

Oh, our argument was, you know, if you wear seatbelts and you're in a wreck, you're not going to be able to get out of the car. I mean, they're not only not safe, but they're dangerous. We fought car dealers. We fought tooth and nail. and then just when we finally got used to them they came up with these damned airbags you talk about a problem they cost too much they're no good

and so those are the two things how many millions and millions of lives have seatbelts and airbags saved over the years that's the seat belts are number one I will admit my second car was a 71 Chevy Bel Air that the front bench seat was literally bigger than the couch in our living room I mean it was massive

and I had to wear a seatbelt in that car because if I went around the corner too quick on a left turn I'd slide all the way to the center of the seat and suddenly I'm holding the wheel but my feet are nowhere near the pedals because you literally would just slide right across the seat it was so huge I remember those days at any rate my answer would be seat belts

and the brakes they're equally as important and I remember sliding across the seats And we, my sisters and I, it was like my dad was driving, my mom was up, and there was all this room, but we were in the back and we'd go, we, we, we. I don't know where this would rank, but I think something that, and I didn't Google this, but it's kind of counterintuitive,

and a lot of people today don't understand it, but whoever the engineer that came up with the idea that you want to have collapsible cars, You want to have flexible metal to absorb the energy and the impact. And before that, we build them like tanks. And, you know, the first car my father sold when he went into business was a 1937 Pontiac. We have it restored on our showroom floor at the toilet dealership. But you go up there and you knock on that fender, it is like a quarter inch thick.

There are no crumple zones in that Pontiac. And you don't worry about dent in your fender. you worry about didn't anything he hit with the vendor but the bumpers and everything was just rigid very heavy heavy steel now it's uh you know you can crinkle the fender very easily because it's meant to absorb and and the message here there's always a moral on message the message is that when you wreck a car today and you have it fixed your insurance company is not going to uh is not going to recommend the safety-tested crash parts.

Crash parts are things like the bumper, the hoods, the fenders, if you're in the doors, anytime you're in a collision, what might crush and kill or injure you? So they buy the cheapest ones, and they alibi that they are, I was a cafe certified,

or they have a, they have a group that they got together and formed a company that test fenders and things, and they say, Oh, high quality, the paint's good, you know, they won't rust. They give you everything about the safety, because they're never safety tested. So when you put a fender on from your insurance company, and that fender comes from Taiwan, and it's not made by the manufacturer of that vehicle, and you're in a heading collision,

you are in danger of that hood crumpling too slowly. Now, why is that a problem? For two reasons, first of all, you don't want them to crumple much at all. but they have to to absorb the energy and when they do that the airbags are timed to the microsecond nanosecond about one thousandths of a second can make a difference between the airbag opening correctly and not because your head has got to hit that airbag at the same time your car hits the brick wall and if if you have a hood that it's out of sync with your airbag you're in serious

trouble so shame shame shame on insurance companies Honda actually did a fantastic video that shows airbag deployment as they drop a watermelon on it yeah yeah and if it goes a tenth of a second too soon yeah or a tenth of a second too late it becomes a watermelon smoothie oh yeah that really gets your attention yeah that's out on the internet you should you folks you should look for this Honda airbag watermelon yeah it's watch the video Oh, it's awesome. It is definitely.

Okay. That number again is, well, I'll let us to finish Annarie's. Oh, we're all done with Amory. Are you? Even though we have some interesting anonymous feedback. Yeah, let's hear it. All right. Well, there's a follow-up from last week.

We had someone who had on our anonymous feedback channel, which is www. www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com, told us about a terrible experience at a Honda dealership, and it was a Morgan dealership and afterwards we talked about how did it doesn't say Morgan on the outside of the dealerships we have a follow-up I just listened to your show and my feedback on my horrible Morgan dealership experience was aired you asked what dealership it was and how I would know it here's a follow-up it was West Shore Honda I was looking at a CRV a 22 and the salesman bragged that they just got a 2023 CRV and they're the only dealership in town who

will have a handful of them this is that at the end of 2022 He said they were the largest dealership in the area, and basically that translates to clout and the ability to get these hard-to-find cars, I guess. Since he brought up the largest dealership network fact, I asked what the name is and what other dealerships they owned. He told me the name Morgan, and they own the dealerships next door, different brands, including the Toyota dealership. I was talking, I was taking my car, including the Toyota dealership, I was taking my car to regularly. This is when my eyes opened or open to how dealerships work, and it makes sense that different brand dealerships would be on the same street side by side, they're owned by the same company.

So when my search resumed, after being insulted at West Shore Honda, I did research to make sure the dealerships I contacted were not Morgan. How you treat customers makes a big difference. Yeah, as a matter of fact, think about this, when you have competing dealerships quote-un-quote on competing and they're owned by the same person doesn't that open the temptation

for price-fixing? I mean, if you've got all the dealerships in town, a good example, legalized price-fixing, was Saturn. General Motors came up with this great idea. We're going to have a new car. It's going to be a great car

and we're going to call Saturn and we're going to have the same dealer own all the Saturn dealerships in one market. Well, why would you discount a Saturn when you're going to make the money? So the rule was fixed price, one price, it's one of the few times that cars really had the lowest price on every car. Saturn, and General Motors did that, what, 40 years ago? Yeah, yeah. So 40 years ago, and in Palm Beach County, I think it was Roger Dean, one of the older dealers,

who had some, yeah, I think it was Roger Dean, because he had the Chevrolet dealership, and he knew all the top execs at General Motors, so they came out with this hot new car. He says, I want all the ones in Palm Beach County. It was either him or Ed Morris. But anyway, price fixing. So the only good thing about the dealer,

the franchise system now is competition, cut-throat competition. So if you're an educated consumer, and you want to go from Chevrolet dealer the Chevrolet dealer to a Chevrolet dealer, and you can hold your own, you can get one heck of a low price because car dealers are insanely competitive.

This is where being a dealer helps us do, and Nancy and Rick know this. When we think that our competition sold the car to one of our customers, we get livid. Why did we lose the deal? And so to take away competition is really anti-consumer.

All right. Moving on, we have another anonymous feedback. It says, since your program suggested the banning, my computer, oh, here we go, since your program suggested the banning of the term Old Wives Tale, should it also be banned from the Bible? Timothy 47 King James Version of 1611. Well, I didn't suggest we banned the term. The question came up is, I said, I think it might evoke negative stereotypes is what I said.

You know, I couldn't, I can't resist the temptation to get off our mission here, but, you know, the Bible was written a long time ago, and it was written by human beings who, who, you know, were inspired to write, and, but the world's changed in the past, what, 10,000 years? When did the Bible come about 5,000 years ago? No, not even, I don't know. About 5,000 years ago. Yeah. 4,000. Anyway, you can see what's happened. A lot of things have changed in the past 4,000 years. So back then, you know, men were show over this. Women were like chattel. Chattel, exactly. So I could easily see a biblical statement saying that, you know, referring to the inferiority of women 4,000 years ago.

But, you know, we weren't the brightest sharpest stick in the box 4,000 years ago. We're kind of like a bunch of, like, hundreds and gatherers or something. Oh, you go out, 10,000 we were. Yeah, but I was thinking about that, trying to drag up some Bible verses that would be, to make a point. But then I realized nobody said we could rerun the tape. I don't think anybody said we're going to ban anything. So settle down, settle down. Yeah.

Earl, I disagree with, this is another anonymous feedback. I disagree with your grade on the mystery shop of Subaru. South Tampa ripping off the customers should never get a passing grade I'm with Nancy they get an F well maybe you don't understand if you're listening maybe you don't understand that we grade on the curve now in school most schools as colleges in particular grade on the curve and that protects a student I guess against bad teachers I mean the curve says if you're the smartest student in this class, you should get an A. If you're the dumbest student in this class, you should get

an F. So we adopt that system, whether you like it or not, because you have to buy cars. Cars are not a luxury anymore. I guess maybe a hundred years ago, it was a luxury out of them. Today, how are you going to get to the pharmacist, the doctor, to school, to your job? I mean, you've got it. And they're parts of the country where if you don't have a car, there's no mass transit. You've got to have it. So it's just a matter of, you know. Yeah, just thinking about this, I mean, it is kind of tough, you know, because we do, we shop them multiple times.

And when you say it kind of denigrates the A's that we have on there. Because usually when we see an A, it's spectacular, right? So we have one. There's no fees. We hate to give it an A because when we give an A, It is, means that's the best dealer and that's a perfect dealer. That's the thing is, but that goes and it contradicts our graving on the curve because when you're great on the curve, we're saying we're prefacing with everything. It's saying it's a cesspool.

And so if you see an A, that's the best or the worst. We have a dealership and we do our very best. We really try hard. But I would, I, you know, if someone said give yourself, would you give yourself an A plus? I'd say no. I'd be embarrassed to give us an A. I don't know what we get it. Maybe an A minus.

And we get on a curve, on the curve, I think we would. On a curve, yeah. I'm talking about abs. Absolute? Absolutely. What will we be? I don't know. I give ourselves an A or something.

Yeah, I won't. Not an A plus, though. When you give yourself an A, it's not a good A. You've got to have somebody else give you the A. A, you asked. That's it. So we're caught up. I'm sure that Rick is just overflowing with questions and comments from the fans on YouTube.

Well, I got one question. That's a good start. Johnny Z. Freidly is asking, does Earl have a cyber truck on order? You know something? That is, I'm glad you asked that question because I'm almost finished now. I've only got a few more chapters in Walter Isaac's biography of Elon Musk. And I am actually thinking about buying a cyber truck. Now, the cyber truck is the ugliest thing I've ever seen.

I mean, it's almost like a joke. I agree with it. It does kind of beat out that, what was the Pontiac? Aztec. The Aztec. But anyway, when I read about how it evolved, and when it evolved, everybody hated it except Elon. And, of course, let me show you a bumper sticker that Stu gave me. Nancy and I drive a Tesla plaid, and we bought it, what, a year and a half ago?

Two years. Two years? Good Lord, time flies. and we started out with just love and everything and then we got into picking it a little bit and criticizing constructive criticism and it's a fully autonomous we have activated and or I should say Tesla has activated our fully autonomous

and we have a bumper sticker on the back that says Tesla plaid fully autonomous we do that Nancy doesn't like it but I do it because I want people to be aware of that is a dangerous car. Stay away. I mean, if you have your Tesla on full autonomous and you're not really on top of that with your hands on your wheels and your eyes on your everything,

the outside, everything, I mean, it's really a challenge because that car will do some crazy things. So here's what, here's a bumper sticker that Stu got for me and they gave it to me this morning and I'm going to put this on the Tesla when we go down after the radio show because it's true. Elon Musk

is a nut. I mean you read the biography and part of the nutty thing he's done is telling everybody every year that the car is almost totally safe and by the end of this year, it's been saying that

year after year it's going to be totally safe. Well, it's not totally safe today and so tongue and cheek now I still love Elon even though he's crazy because two reasons first of all he is the he's the brightest person I've ever heard of he's the smartest brightest person I've ever heard of and that takes in a lot of people and he also is the most successful person I know I've known he came from South Africa when he was 17 years old and in seven years

he was a multi-millionaire. Now, he came from South Africa, didn't have, he had $3,000 in his pocket that his mother gave him, and he landed in America, and he, 11 years later, was a multimillionaire. So he also is on track to become the large Sletto manufacturer of the world, and just about the only serious

electric vehicle manufacturer in the world. And he is also taken over NASA for putting satellites in orbit, and he will, I fully believe, put men and women on the moon and colonize it. So if that isn't a successful entrepreneur, so for those two reasons, I confess that I like and admire a crazy man.

And you read the book, you'll know why I say he's crazy. Truly, I mean, he's off. He's off. There's something amiss. Yeah. I just quick mention of another video I saw on the net recently showed a Tesla where the customer had activated the come to me feature so where the car was out of the parking lot of the parking lot and drive to him and the car literally blew off a stop sign just did a rolling stop right through it making a right hand turn and a police officer pulled over the car the car The police officer walks up. The car stopped.

The car stopped and there was nobody in the car. That's great. And the guy is recording this from a little ways back. Apparently he was showing off this feature. And he was, the cop is just all amazed. There's nobody in the car. And the interesting part is they actually used this on a TikTok where it's a lawyer reacting to this stop

who said, even though the car did totally blow off the stop because it was in a parking lot on private property, he wasn't able to give him a ticket. Yeah, that's true. Brilliant. It was awesome. I did that feature. I've been to tell them to answer that for a long time, but she doesn't believe me.

It's true. It's true. You can tell, like, if you're at the Palm Beach Gardens at the mall there, the font on the stop signs is Helvetica. It's not a regular stop sign. I did that summon feature in the parking lot at the dealership, and it worked perfectly the first time I did it, and it was unsettling.

And one day it's going to be completely normal. Well, Vance and I did at a public set, you know, in Tequista. And... It worked good? No. We came out with a shopping cart on the sidewalk, so we hit the summons button. You waited for a lot. And the lights came on.

It backed out of the parking lot. It started to the road where it had to come toward us. And all of a sudden, a crowd gathered in the street or in the parking lot. You're kidding me. No. everybody's looking at this and and I'm embarrassed now I don't know what I'm going to do and and so when the car got when the car got in front of us I hit the automatic truck release we ran out and put the groceries for the truck and never did it again be it

my god I believe my words she's mortified pardon me mortified not quite I can't tell you how I felt on the air okay moving along my last words as we left the part parking lot was that we wouldn't be able to come back here again. You know, that takes me to, you know, this sticker that you're going to put on the Tesla, and the sticker that's on the sign that's on the back of the Tesla, I found that in my two years of driving the Tesla, there are some people that are very infuriated by the Tesla's presence, and I'm not sure exactly why. and putting signs on a car, I think that it just stirs up some negativity with some people that walk around.

And you talk about Elon Musk and you talk about craziness. Gee, don't we wish he was the only crazy person? I think the bumper sticker will protect you from those people. Because the people who are, like, you know, hostile towards the Tesla, they don't like Elon. And you're kind of taking a little dig at Elon. and they'll think that you're allies and they won't be hostile to it. And what about the original sign that's on the Tesla?

Oh, the one about the self-driving thing? Autonomous. I have time you bring that up, I break up the same thing. When you see a student driver, law says that if you have a driving school, you have to put warning student driver. And I'm glad they do that because I'm not going to be falling too closely or try to pass a student driver without really being careful. And if I have a car that I think is fully autonomous, which for a while I did, I put the bumper sticker on the rationale.

And I wouldn't want, I'd give myself a wide range. But if I didn't know it was on fully autonomous, I wouldn't be able to do that. I have a different philosophy with the student driver's sign. I see that. They need to get real-world experience. So I put a little pressure on them. You know, I kind of tailgate them a little bit. And then you're supposed to, you're supposed to, no?

I wasn't supposed to do that? No, no, no. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And so, with that said, with that said, you know, we just have really, I have any calls. I have one thing to say, maybe two. The hand gestures is what I can't get used to while we're on the road. That is just, you know. Just out of the blue, just people are gesturing. That's right.

And I can't do that on the air. There are people that are just sharing their IQ with you, that's all. No, if you do it, it pixelates out. Okay, our number here is 877-960, and you can text us at 77249-9-70. Ladies and gentlemen, if you didn't pick up the October edition of the subscription of Consumer Report, you should. There's some great articles in here and some fabulous test. that they do all their tests are so fabulous you know they purchase so many vehicles I'm not sure if anyone knows that or not but they go to great lengths to

keep us safe and make some suggestions at any rate the safest cars are in the October subscription Rick you know I thought you're gonna say something and what makes cars safer right now we are going to first I'm gonna tell the ladies again that you can win yourself $50 for the first two new lady callers and just give us a call, give us a, you know, chat, say hello, nothing, you know, out of the ordinary. 877960, 990-60. Texas at 772-497-60. We're going to go to Walter, who is calling us from Stewart. Good morning, Walter. Good morning. Just a couple of quick questions. things. Mitsubishi has quit making the mirage. Secondly, General Motors is going to be

introducing two new vehicles that are going to be manufactured in South Korea. Under the name of Buick and Chevrolet, the Chevrolet model will have the same engine as the Buick, which is a three-cylinder turbocharged engine at 138 horsepower. The Chevrolet will retail for $20,000. The Beuluk will retail for between 22 to 23, and they're looking to export these vehicles. How that ties into the UAW situation, I don't know. But also, third point, Elon Musk was recently in India

talking to higher-ups there about building a plant and producing an electric vehicle in the 24,000 range. I think what's interesting about this whole subject is that in regard to GM and South Korea and the low price point, they pointed out the creditworthiness of the American consumer continues to decline as car prices continue to rise. Did you say that the Buicks and the Chevys manufacturer in the South Korea, is that begun already, or is that it just in the works? That is the source on that is CNBC.com. Yes, I was just wondering how, I don't think it would impact the UAW strike.

It takes a while to get a factory up and running. but one of my points is that I think the people in the auto industry are starting to realize people are being squeezed financially and for instance if Toyota doesn't have anything underneath a Corolla to offer then they might walk over to the Chevy dealer at $20,000.

Well that's a heck of a price and I think that I think diversification by having manufacturing facilities in other areas, you're right. I think it could be an anti-union tactic for the manufacturers. I think the UAW and union workers are seeing the handwriting on the wall with electric vehicles because there's a fear that the electric vehicles could create a whole new tide in unions. as to whether or not auto manufacturers were primarily unionized. As you know, Toyota is not unionized at all in the United States. Tesla is not unionized.

New manufacturers are the trend on new businesses. And if the automotive industry can create either the fact or the appearance that the EVs that they're building is a new business, then they won't be unionized. So I think the unions are very nervous, and I would be too if I were a union worker, because it's obvious that EV is a way of the future, and is that going to be unionized or not?

I don't think so. Well, the only comment I would make about the Mississippi Mirage, apparently their sales were horrible, so that's probably the reason they, drop that vehicle. But if we're talking about 138 horsepower of vehicle, especially a smaller vehicle,

that's going to be a pretty quick accelerator with a turbocharger around there. And if you could buy that for 20 and then step up to do a Buick at 22 or 23,

that's a bargain. Tesla's goal is to have a $20,000 electric vehicle and and if you follow what Elon Musk has been doing when he says he's going to do something he usually does it not you not all the time when he says he's going to do it but eventually it gets done so I think EVs are going to be the threat to everybody in terms of price they're going to be they're going to have the they're going to have the volume they're going to have the simplicity of manufacturer and they're going to you talk to acceleration there's nothing that accelerates like an

electric vehicle. So I think that what you're seeing now in Korea with General Motors is an interim step, but it's certainly not the final step. To survive General Motors is going to have to be a factor in the EV business. Yes, and one thing I failed to point out on the Buick and the Chevy, it was pointed out in the article that this would be their last gasoline production engines, cars exactly yeah yeah that's it that's uh the combustion engine is a thing of the past and uh those that don't want to accept it uh you know it's going to happen yeah so anyway i just wanted to point that out to your audiences to what's happening there thank you walton that's very good information oh okay you guys have a good day thank you walter have a break weekend

877 960 9960 or you can text us at 772 4976530. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. And ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. We're going to go to a roadrunner who gives us a call from Mointon Beach. That's Roadrunner, Steve. Meep, me. Good morning, everybody.

Boy, you're hard to get through to us, but I finally got through it a few weeks. Okay. Nice to hear from you. Yes. What else said, student driver, he stays away for those cars. My favorite sticker was mother-in-law on board. I'd stay away from driving next to them. Also, a little bird allergy.

California Desert Cuckoo. That is a roadrunner. So I couldn't imagine they'd name the planet, would name that, California Desert Cuckoo. Okay. The third thing is, how much in Teslas, do they have varying cars?

Are they rated with horsepower? Yeah, yeah. They're huge horsepower. Rick, do you have any horsepowers of some Teslas? I'd have to look them up, but... A thousand horsepower would be... The main thing to remember is

horsepower is not the really best factor for a car to determine anything because horsepower equates to how fast it can eventually go. It's torque. Torque is what gets the car moving. Good point. So the higher torque value you have is how fast that car is going to go

from, say, zero to 60 or to get it, you know, get the power to the ground as long as it's got good traction. Yeah, people don't usually understand torque of all the manufacturers of hot cars, talk horsepower. You rarely hear of torque mentioned, but typically a high horsepower car has a lot of torque. Absolutely. But I learned that because I'm sitting here.

Well, do the testers have models with different amount of batteries like 12 batteries would equal a 4-cylinder, 24 batteries would equal a 6-cylinder, and 50 batteries would equal an 8-cylinder? Does it work like that? They have the number of electric motors they use typically describes their power. And for example, in the Tesla plaid, the fastest production car on Earth, they have three electric motors. The S has two electric motors and the standard Tesla just has the one electric motor.

and the Tesla S-Plad Tesla is advertising it as 1,020 peak horsepower for the S-Pladd model. Yeah, so it's... That's the two motor? Yeah. Wow.

Yeah, it's so fast that you absolutely can't even use the power. I mean, Nancy and I, when I are driving that Tesla Plaid, You just don't want to slam the accelerator to the floor. If you did, you'd hurt yourself or somebody else. It's way, way overpowered. And I've never thought that as a drag race of power, you know, racing nut.

I never thought I would ever be in a car that was too fast. But this is too powerful. And it's really kind of silly. I mean, what are, and in what scenario are you going to have, to go from zero to 60 in 1.9 seconds ain't going to happen.com and with top speed of 200 miles per hour it makes no sense yeah well it was it was nice hearing from your roadrunner Steve do you have a question everybody safe and well oh thank you thank you so much it's always great hearing from you sorry to rush you i got a lot of calls back up have a good day everybody bye bye bye steve

bye we're going to go to john in palm city and i ask everyone to be patient i have you up on the screen and I'll be right with you. Good morning, John. Welcome. Good morning. I want to point to an article in today's New York Times in the business section. It's called the average cost of owning a car. These are AAA figures. They estimate it's up 13% over last year or $12,000 a year. Cost per mile is 81 cents. That's on an average of 15,000 miles a year. So it's scary figures, but it's AAA, which is very reliable. Yes. And it's frightening to read that.

That's up 13% from last year. Very information. That's a lot of money. Yeah. Great information. And you heard earlier, John, that I had mentioned, you know, would it cost to keep an EV? I mean, I'm not pushing EVs for everybody just listening, but, I mean, it's just, it didn't make sense. before it makes a whole lot of sense now you're talking about $3,000 a year not to mention the tax

break not to mention maintenance it's just unbelievable the savings that's out there and they're making the EVs affordable you know I'm looking at the same article John it's crazy I mean it's it's a thousand dollars a month it's up to $12,000 a year all of that it's also it's insurance, it's just the higher car payments, and also they're in depreciation, too. They're considered depreciation. Wow. Just a fast question for Earl. Now the strikers have hit 38 part suppliers. I looked at the map in the paper. One of the big ones for Florida is here in Orlando. And how do you think that that will affect, you know, cars that have been an accident or replacement for use cars, this is parts that won't be available, and it's going to continue.

So besides the striking manufacturer plants, they're hitting the suppliers. What does Earl think about the supply of parts? That's a whole other dimension, yeah. I mean, because most car dealerships keep a pretty tight on-hand supply of parts, and so if the part suppliers join the strike, it's not just the manufacturer. it's going to hit the dealer network and consumers right away. Well, the thing to remember, John,

is that right now, it's just the big three. And, you know, if you take all the cars sold by Toyota and Honda and some of the other large Japanese and Korean manufacturers that are not unionized, and then you take

Tesla, which is the largest auto. I mean, it's going to have a big impact, certainly on family and people, you know, and communities that are, you know, a lot of union workers. So, but it's not going to, a lot of areas that are lucky that won't be affected that much. It's, the unions have less and less power than they used to. And they're, they have a duty to their members not to commit suicide. I mean, you don't want to, you don't want to win the argument and lose the war.

and when the battle lose the war. So that's what I think in the, I really believe this thing's going to be settled quickly. I just don't think, not because the, not because the union leaders or the union workers want to, but because they realize the consequence is

no job. Absolutely, I agree. Well, thank you, John. I appreciate to call. Anything else while you're on the line? Well, side-by-side dealerships. I can comment real fast about that. One of the most successful was I lived in New York, and there's still there, was the Atlantic Auto Mall, which is owned by the South Florida, but John Saloupie in Suffolk County, every brand of car that's all together.

You just walk next door, and there's Chevrolet, Pontiac, I mean, not Pontiac, but GMC, or Cadillac, or it's all together in one spot and very successful. So it's side by side. Dealers all together. in one spot. Call the Atlantic Automol, South Suffolk County, New York. Didn't he start the Palm Beach Automol? I believe so. Yeah, he's a local guy, as you will know, John.

He's down here, and he's right there near Carmines Russo. That's Palm Beach Gardens. No, he's right across the street from us. Well, that's his shop. But he lives off prosperity farms. He lives on the intercoastal waterway between Donald Ross Road and P.J. Boulder. Last year, he bought the Chevrolet dealership and Stewart for one of his sons. Yeah.

He's big. He's big. I think he's got his first dealership in Las Vegas, and he's got a, the Stilipia Auto Group is huge. Yes, tremendous. Yes. All right, guys, I'm waiting for the shopping report. Thanks, John. Have a great weekend.

Let's go to Charles. Charles is, he's from Connecticut, and he lives right here. and where's Palm Beach now. Good morning, Charles. Good morning. Enjoyed the show for a long, long time. Just a quick shout out to a fellow. You may want to write his name down.

Neal's N-I-L-S-B-O-H-L-I-N. I don't know if that rings a bell with anybody. Niels Bolin. If you Google it, you'll find it in 1959. He had Volvo, he's an engineer, invented the three-pearlane. point seatbelt and recently there was an estimate on the number of lives that that saved one man is his invention and also what Volvo did after it patented the three point seatbelt it made that an open item and anybody could use it yeah way ahead of their time way ahead of

their time was Volvo yeah remarkable guy but the other thing I want to ask you about is and maybe just leave this to open listener discussion is the possibility of EV fires. And here up, I'm up in Connecticut for the summer, and there's been a lot of unfortunate tragedy about EV fires, first on a container ship or a ferry boat or something like that in Newark, where a fire began with some cars that were being, I guess, sent overseas. and two firefighters or one firefighter lost their lives. These things became practically impossible to put the fires out in the local fire department, the Newark Fire Department, didn't know how to do that.

EV fires also popping up on these electric bikes and things like that. Open discussion about EV fires, if you park your EV in your garage or in a, well, a large, parking area. Is there any concern about that? I think there is, and I think it's a very legitimate concern. It's the whole lithium battery issue is something that surprised me that has taken so long. I mean, you know, Sony laptops catching fire 30 years ago or whenever they first started, we started realizing it lithium was dangerous, and they keep building more and bigger

lithium batteries and I I'm surprised that science hasn't really come up with a solution well I know that the solid state EV battery is Toyota announced that they had a breakthrough and they'll start producing it in 2025 and it's fireproof yeah there's not a there's no fire there's no liquid in it it's so it's a it has the as a 600 mile range yeah what's that with all the other stuff that makes up the other goo they put in there.

Yeah, so there you are. I didn't know that there had been that breakthrough, but I just, I'm glad somebody Toyota this case has come up with a fireproof electric battery. Problem is, it's nowhere yet. I mean, it's a couple years away.

They're working on it, so that's good. Unfortunately, they don't have a car to put it in, but they'll have a... I saw a few, they got some coming. But anyway, yeah, Charles, thanks. for bringing that up. That's one of my pet peeves.

Every time I read about an electric vehicle fire, I say, when are they going to figure out how to make a, not just an electric vehicle, but how about a laptop or an iPhone? I don't want my iPhone catch them on fire in my pocket. Also having the first responders running into a situation that they're not trained to handle. Years ago when the hybrid vehicles first came out,

Rick would host groups of firefighters to show them how to safely avoid. being killed by the high voltage and the hybrid vehicles. And so it was really interesting how that happened. So I guess we're just one little local area here, but I assume other departments across the country go seek these things out for training. There is also a company in California

that specifically does training for first responders that they can send responders out to this training course in California. And they will teach them, everything they need to know about handling all the electric vehicles and the information that they need

that they then can bring back and pass that training back to their own departments. Of course, the caller's point is they shouldn't get you on fire at the first place and we shouldn't have to have first responders from California coming out to put the fire out. We can't ignore mitigation.

They've seen issues with these ever since like the kids' hoverboards cell phones. I don't I mean, and now, however, the newer technology are towards these dry cell batteries that will not have that effect. Charles, you know, he was great talking. I'm still on the line, yeah. Great talking to you. One more point, just quickly, I want to thank girl for that first book and the show, and there I ask, when is the second book going to be available?

Okay. He's thinking about it. he's considering his answer he has he has just i i was thinking oh he wants to know how much longer he has to wait before you can buy your new book yeah it's it's i'm embarrassed by the delay and uh i says to somebody the other day that uh the auto industry is changing so fast it's been and one thing after another. And here we are in a automotive revolution. And essentially, as a car dealer,

my dealership is an auto revolution. And I'm finishing a book that as soon as I publish it, it'll be obsolete because we'll be talking about maybe something that developed that I didn't even think about at the time. So how's that for a good excuse? Hence, there might be a third book. But Charles, to answer your question,

and Earl and I will be finished and we can guarantee you by the first of the year that'll be available for purchase I promise the first of last year and Nancy's promising the first of this year show next year you can promise by the way that that book too all proceeds will go to Big Dog Ranch Charles thank you thank you so much let's see if we can't get let's see if we can't get it out before Christmas because they make great Christmas presents this is very true Yes. Although the confessions of a recovering car dealer would still make a great gift. Oh, they've already been given. So, and we have plenty of them, and so does Amazon. Charles, thank you so much for calling. I look forward to hearing from you again. Okay, bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Have a great weekend. We're going to talk to Ron, and Ron is from Somerfield. And Ron, is that in Florida or North Carolina? No, it's in Florida. In Florida. Oh, well, welcome to the show. Yeah, good morning. I wanted to tell you this week I had a chance to go to the International Auto Show in Detroit. Oh, cool.

I go, you know, every year, well, except for the years of COVID. And, Earl, there's two things that I took away from the show. First of all, I think I've been in a time warp or something. Because let me tell you what I found. 20% of the cars were $100,000 or more. For instance, there was a GMC Denali, not even the escalade, that with all the things that they added on to the bottom, was $179,000.

Sounds like a Ferrari. You know, and so I've got to ask you, because there were many, many cars that were $100,000. What market are they trying to get? I mean, these are working people who, you know, make average salaries, and there can't be that many people who can afford a vehicle that expensive. It's aspirational. The average vehicle is over $50,000, and that's MSRP.

And the average dealer is charging over MSRP, so let's round that off to $55,000. So you're exactly right. To buy a product today for $55,000 is just putting it. a whole lot of people out of the competition and that pushes them into used cars and the used cars are way, way overpriced, relatively speaking, historically speaking.

So it's putting a hurting on the public. People aren't paying their bills. They're falling behind on their payments. And, yeah, that's what we do in America. We go through cycles. So we're cycling into a problem and you hit on one of the biggest ones now, the cost of transportation.

Yeah. I purposely go to the show during the middle of the week, so I had plenty of time to talk to the reps. And I had a chance to talk to the Toyota factory rep that was there. And I had a chance to explain to her how angry I am for all of us who have to deal with the additional deal of markups, all the things that you bring out on your secret chopper report every week. Good for you, thanks. And by the way, you didn't ask me that I did put a plug in for you. I said, if you want to set the gold standard for how a dealership should be run,

you should look into your dealer, Earl Stewart. Oh, well, bless your heart. And I've never bought, I've never purchased a car from you, but I've watched you every week. Yeah. And I said, you know, I said, that's a darn shame that average working folks can't go out and be treated reasonably. And I understand that they have to make a profit, but they don't have to gouge. And I was emphatic about that. And by the way, this person was taking notes.

And so she actually, it wasn't just conversation. She took the notes down, and she said, I'll make sure that the right people get this information. Oh, thank you. The thing is, Ron, the right people know the answer. Put yourself in the shoes of the auto and Toyota and all the manufacturers. you know that your dealer network is an embarrassment. I mean, you'd have to be mentally retarded not to realize that the Gallup annual poll on honesty and ethics and professions

put car dealerships at the bottom for the past 40 years. So if you're an intelligent CEO, most of them are, if the manufacturers, they know that the dealer franchise system is broken in terms of the consumer. Consumers hate them. And that is the biggest danger. Now, they'll never tell the press they can't go public with the fact that they dislike their dealerships, but they dislike their dealerships for the way they treat customers. And they know that the consumer will win.

And they're just dying to get rid of the dealer networks and to sell direct just like Tesla does. So that's the best kept secret in automotive history is the fact that the car dealership are really viewed. and distaste and distrust by their own manufacturers. At the Toyota National Dealer Meeting, the general manager, the guy replaced Jack Carter, upbraided for a good three, four minutes about the dealers who were gouging the dealer-installed equipment, the dealer fees.

They started showing pictures of the FTC rulings and all the stuff and all the news that he goes, and it was like a lecture. and he finished to total silence and then he moved on to the next time well god bless him i i'm really i'm really surprised and there was no booze or cat calls there's no booze or cat calls it was silence and then he put a statistic he said the msrp dealers that were not going of msrp saw their collective volume go up and the retention go up and the ones that um or over msrp saw their collective volume go down 2% right i want to thank you for calling and i want to let you know that with

education and knowledge and the computer that sits before you. I mean, it's just like, it's amazing. We are becoming more educated. There are still a lot of people who are being taken advantage of, but we're here to fix that. Do you have any other questions? No, I just want to let you know there's an army of people like us out there who will remember when all this is behind us who treated us fairly and who didn't. Yeah, absolutely. I hope you're right. Thank you so much, Ron. We're going to go to Jersey Mike. Before we go to Jersey, Mike, I want to apologize to everyone. Earlier, our network connection, you know, was out, and everything's back up and running. Also, for Rick, you want to make the announcement? Yeah, we've lost our Earl

on Cars channel on YouTube for right now. We have the Earl Stewart Toyota channel on YouTube. It's operational, but unfortunately, Earl on Cars, it's not coming back up right now. We were having some connection problems. It was sabotaged by the Cardiors. Right. And we'll go to Jersey Mike and West Palm Beach. Good morning, Mike. We're having some connection problems.

Hello? Oh, hey, we have a caller on. Yeah. Yeah, this is Jersey Mike calling from West Palm. Hey, Jersey Mike. How are you doing? We're doing good. I think you've got one of the greatest radio shows I've ever heard, okay?

Get out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here. Oh, thank you. No, really. Thanks. I went down, you know, one of the best places for dogs, and I usually do business with Peggy Adams,

but I gave up on that. I actually adopted a dog from Big Dog Ranch for my roommate. And I have a boxer, and the other one that I just got for him, the two of them are outrageous together. It's like a comedy show. You just laugh and laugh and laugh with these two guys. Are they both boxers or just yours as a boxer? Yeah, mine is 100 percent. It's a service dog. I'm a Navy man, right? And his is a boxer pit bull mix, which is very unusual, and she's a female, and mine's a male. Mine's about 100 pounds. He's still not full grown.

Oh, gosh. And his, and she, her name is Shiloh, and it's about, I'd say, maybe 50 pounds. Wow. I didn't know that they use a boxer as a service animal. Yeah, they russ. Excuse me. I said I didn't realize they would use boxers as a service animals they seem no no no no no the veterans administration is the one who provided me the boxer oh okay I'm saying it's just unusual because they're so high energy you'd think that oh yes I know I know but you know that's what I see that's my six boxers all the rest of my bird had to tail had the tail in the back of my yard here 50 year 1995 oh my god you're like a serial killer of boxers no I'm kidding no no no they usually lived for about eight to 10 years, and this one's probably going to out with me because I'm 77 right now, so we'll see. But anyway, and I've already made provision of my will and in my

living trust to have that dog taken care of by my, you know, lifelong attorney in Jersey City, New Jersey. Great. That's fantastic. In any case, let's go back to the car thing, okay, because I got a few things I think might be educational. I have a, I've always been a cattle, I started buying them in 1970. That's when he used to build Cadillacs the way they're supposed to be built. They were all steel. They had pillow seats. And I used to do about 65 to 70,000 miles on my car in my own business as an entrepreneur doing industrial water treatment every year. So I'd burn them out after three years and go get a new one. I kept on doing that throughout the course of all those years. The last one I had was a 92. They were all cooped the bills. They were all

black. They were all two doors. First one was an El Dorado Brougham, which was a big car, you know, a big 428 engine or something in it. But anyway, the last one had 320,000 miles on it when I gave it away. And I never had to do anything to them other than the maintenance call for an manual. And if you follow that to the T, including the 100,000-mile transmission change. What year? What year again? The last one was in 1992. That's crazy. And that's when they caught him. They cut him down in 92.

Wow. I didn't think they lasted that long. I thought it was like, you know, the only thing that went under the 92 was the air conditioning system. Hey, Mike, we've got a whole bunch of callers hanging on, so we're going to have to move along here. All right. Here's what I want to say.

If anybody's got an old classic Cadillac, like I do, I got a 1995 Seville, and you've got a problem of finding parts to it, and I had to put a steering column in it because somebody tried to steal out of my driveway, go to Cadillac Heaven in South Carolina, because that's my insurance company, is the one who recommended them.

I actually got it, and I hadn't put it in. The only thing I would ask you is this question. They charged me to put a steering wheel column in, they replaced the one I have here, $950 from a local mechanic. It was a miter shop. Is that a fair price you think to change out a steering column? I don't know, what do you think, right, 950 to change it out?

That can be about reasonable because of the calibrations, the alignment and everything. Sounds reasonable to me. Okay, listen, thanks very much, Mike. Appreciate the call. We've got a whole bunch of folks holding. I understand. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

Bye, Mike. We were going to go to Bob and I send my apologies for those who couldn't get through or their calls couldn't be taken. and we've had some technical difficulties. We're going to talk to Bob from Lake Park. Good morning, Bob. Good morning. Happy first day of fall, everyone. Oh, thank you.

I love it. I got my auto insurance renewal came in yesterday, and I'd like you to try to take a guess percentage increase on my car insurance. Stu, would you like to take a guess? My first stab, it went about 18%. Keep going. 30%. Keep going.

Nancy guesses. 45%. No, that's a little, no, just under 40%. Overbid. Under 40%. That's insane. That's just year over year? Well, it's a six-month, you know.

Okay, on the renewals. What's the insurance company? Well, I used to be with Geico, and I went to AAA, and they gave me a really good rate. for a year and now they've you know no accidents no claims or anything now I get my renewal and it went up just under 40 percent that's great you know when Alan was on the show here he used to say that if you've been with them how long have you been with them a couple years or this is well they're just a little over a year yeah this is a new what's your deductible I had pretty low deductible that's your problem you need to raise your deductible that would save you a lot of

premium. Yeah, I understand how it works, but I just thought it was. I did read that the insurance companies for a $3 of premium they took in last year, they paid out $1.20 in claims. And this year, and this year, for every dollar of premium, they took in, they had paying out $1.9 in claims. So apparently they're getting wet.

Yeah, they'll find a more financially stable insurance company. I just want to talk a minute about horsepower, and I find it very interesting when you look at these companies, they use that as a marketing tool. Bob, I'm going to interrupt you for a second. I'm going to explain to everybody that I'm unable to take your calls right now, and we're going to finish up, and we're going to speak to Bob, and then we are going to get to the Big Dog Ranch video. Thank you, Bob. I just wanted to talk about horsepower and how the auto companies use that as a marketing tool and how they get to that number. And I probably Rick knows this, but I think a lot of people don't understand.

When they tell you a car makes a certain horsepower, they're talking about the certain conditions. So they're talking about putting in the highest octane gas you can put in the car. And the temperature has to be at a certain temperature, no humidity. You have to be at a certain C level, and then they get to these numbers, and they use it as a marketing tool. True. And the same thing with the zero to 60 times on the internal combustion engine. You know, Rick probably knows this.

What do they do at all, like, on a treadmill or something? It's the same thing as when they're calculating fuel economy. Yeah, that's right. You're absolutely right about that. And I thought it was very good. You know, because a lot of, they use the market the cars. They'll say, well, you know, this car gets 240 horsepower. but if you put the regular gray gas in there you're losing what percentage are you losing how much rick 20%

we got we got we got to go we've got the dog of the week coming up and that we have a mystery shopping department thanks very much for the call we appreciate it uh we are going to uh let's see what are we going to do we're going to i'm going to introduce buck that's number one and uh he's uh two years old and uh he is two years in one month and he is a hound dog. He ain't nothing about the hound dog. He's really cute.

Wait until you see the video that Natalie is going to bring us she's the presenter and I just want to remind everyone that Big Dog Ranch is the largest. It is the it's just amazing

that there's a lot of people that don't realize that it is a cage free no kill shelter is the largest in the United States so they're doing a great job out there they got a little negative press recently I'm sure there are a few of you that read it but if we get a chance we'll we'll share that with you later and we are good Jonathan are we ready for the video okay so you're going to hear from Natalie and The dog is Buck, who's two years old, one month, two weeks, and he's 81 pounds, and he is from Meekam County, Georgia. Georgia.

This is Buck. Buck is a two-year-old hound, and as you can see, I know, he's super friendly, and he loves to talk. That's absolutely adorable. I have treats in my pocket, so as you know, hounds. a great sense of smell. There you go. And he certainly knows where all the food is. One thing with Buck, he is super friendly. He is house trained, so he would make a perfect addition to any home. He's also very dog friendly. He has a lot of buddies here at the ranch. He is an all-around really adorable, sweet-loving guy. His markings are beautiful, and he's pretty mellow.

for a hound he's got like i said a super sensitive shell you want to talk hold on i'll show you his little his little uh couple treat treks sit good boy that's a big dog buff does love to run around but he also is a super cuddler so it's not like you need a a big farm or anything like like that but he really is just an adorable super friendly family guy type of dog so we are really hoping to find buff a loving forever home. Look at those floppy ears. He's so handsome. So he, how old is he?

Beautiful. He's two years, one month, and two weeks. Okay, so for our radio listeners, our non-streaming listeners, I'm just going to say go to BDRR.org. You can search the dogs and look for Buck on the web page. Big Dog Ranch Ranch Rescue or B-D-R-R. Yeah, B-D-R-R-D-R dot org for Big Dog Ranch Rest or come back and watch this video

when you're done driving going to YouTube and watch us this is I could see this dog at West Westminster when in the dog show in the hound category He's so very handsome He's just so adorable

He's just a beautiful dog He's like he's white on the underside White tail a big black saddle He's got that sable color In his face His um he's got years i'm going to say his ears are about a foot long each and he has just got beautiful shiny coat and musculature and uh any any howls like a hound dog

and it's amazing he's just so beautiful and he's a cuddler he wants to sit on the couch with you he's a little bit of an unusual hound dog and what a great pet he would make and uh stew do you want to tell him about the fees that we pay you never go a rabbit either no friend of mine he's um and also he's two years old he is he's full grown now so he's he's 851 pounds now so he's he's topped out so he's not getting any bigger so don't worry you're not going to get a 120 pound hound dog um but yeah so anytime you adopt a dog anywhere um there are cost involved their adoption fees um because they do a lot of stuff for you they do the uh noculations they neuter or spay the animal um and obviously you see the

Big Dog Rans Rescue, all the amenities and veterinary stuff that they have for him. So anyway, we pay all that. And we're paying all that. And we're paying for it. So he's a free dog. So every Saturday, every dog that we highlight, becomes an Earl Stewart on Carr's dog. And, yeah, so that's it. It makes it really easy.

Yeah, definitely makes it real easy. We know how expensive it is out there. And there's a lot of dogs at the shelter that need your love. 500. I mean, talk about a selection. Absolutely. And as I usually say, confessions of a recovering car dealer, you can purchase that on Earle's book.com or you can go to Amazon and you can purchase the book and all proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch on multitask. There you go. I was waiting for that. And it's a $200 value on fees.

Yeah, $200. They do so much out of Big Dog Ranch if you get a chance to go out there like Earl and I did recently. And now that we're into the fall weather, it's the perfect time to go out. We went out when it was terror. The weather was awful. But we still enjoyed ourselves. We enjoyed pumpy land and so much more of the operating room and the, the, you the dental facility that they have.

So Big Dog Ranch Rescue, the dog of the week is Buck, and you can go to www.bidog Ranch Rescue.org. You can see Buck and you can see all the dogs if they haven't been adopted right there at that website. That's right. So all you sportsmen, all you bird hunters out there, look at Buck. He can help you? No. He needs to be, he needs a home with.

a family he looks like a he's just out of the ordinary stew he would fit very well in a home with some AC that's right and I cuddled on the couch watching some football exactly give him some AC yeah all right thanks for watching and share the video come back and go on to YouTube and and forward it to your friends you take him out in the morning play frisbee for a while and bring him in and you have to you know after lunch you go inside and kick back on the couch well it's hot outside that's right great idea you can also track down uh escape convex Yeah, also, if you lose your remote, you lose your phone, you lose your keys, bucks your man. Okay, we are going to go to the mystery shopping report, and as I say, you can vote on the mystery shopping report.

You can do so by going to text us at 772-4976530, and that mystery shop is from, we're out there in Irwin, and Joel help me out. I can't find my... Here it is. Mystery shop of Jim Shorky, Missibishi. Okay. Yeah, Irwin's a population a little over 3,000. It's kind of fun to shop small-town dealerships

and then compare them with, like, Miami, Fort Lauderdale. There's a world of difference between the small-town dealer and the big-town dealer. I mean, it's almost counterintuitive. Typically, you want to buy from a... big volume, big city, you know, you're thinking that's where you get a good deal. With Cardinals, it's the other way around. You want to find yourself a small town. You know, I was amazed at Irwin.

I'm familiar with the area, but there are as many dealerships as there are. They're in Monroe, Monroeville. They're in Uniontown. They're all over the place. I think there may be 18 of them. I'm not sure whether Stu knows the answer. to that question not sure no or not no I don't know the answer oh okay Earl I'm going to read the first person this mystery traveling report Jim Shorke miss Sibishi as if I were agent

lightning our ace undercover agent that goes in every week to tell you what you'll happen if you go into this dealership she sacrifices herself to let you know I arrived at Jim Shorke Miss Sibishi late in the morning and was greeted by Zach The ACH, I mean, there's a small town name, Zach, from the service department. Did you have a service appointment schedule, Zach asked? No, I replied, I'm interested in that outlander, I saw out front, floating towards the car. Oh, okay, please follow me, I'll take you where the salespeople are. He led me to a far corner of the dealership, to a lady who was seated, could you page an available salesman?

Zag asked her, she picked up the phone. A few months later, the salesman. approach extending his hand. Hi, I'm Logan. That's another interesting name. Zach, Logan, he introduced himself. He guided me to his desk to gather some details. I must confess I'm fairly new here and still use a cheat sheet, he admitted. They proceeded to ask my name, my credit rating on scale of one to five. And what I currently draw, interesting, the credit rating on scale of one to five. I like that touch. I think that If you have done a lot of shopping for cars over your life, you've probably found a lot of new salespeople.

Car dealerships have about the highest turnover, meaning people don't like to stay working at car dealerships very long. And I think the average turnover in, I think, the United National Automobile Deal Association, something like 30%. It's people just don't stay around car dealership. So sometimes it's refreshing to get in the salespeople. They're less inclined to be, you know, savage, I guess is the word. He guided me to his desk to gather some details. Zach did. I must confess I'm fairly new here and still use.

Oh, I just did that. I really like the outlander that's parked up front, I said. I mentioned showing a picture of the window sticker I had. The NSRP was $35,670. balance. That's not bad. I mean, that's, you know, average price cars about 50 today. And, of course, this is the MSRP. And there was no addendum. So, you know, in the past several weeks, we found several car dealerships without addendums. If you'd listen to the show a year ago, I can't remember finding any without addendums. Of course, the addendums are the way

they jack up the price on the MSRP. And it's just unconscionable. Some of these addendums are in the thousands of dollars, $10,000, $20,000, in fact. Logan excused himself to retrieve the keys for a test drive. When he returned, he jestered towards the car. Let's go. I got into the driver's seat while he placed a license plate. Walking to the passenger side, he suggested, let me show you all its features.

But I cut him off. I've already checked it out. I'm ready to drive. He looked apologetic due to insurance reasons. I need to drive. I need to drive it off. lot, but we can switch places down the road. I can believe that. It makes sense. During our test drive, Logan highlighted the outlanders smooth transmission,

adaptive cruise control, and the surround sound audio system. We cruised through city streets and I marveled as its acceleration on the highway. The comfort of the seating and the intuitive dashboard layout were also cool. Car's impression handling around tight corners, the responsive braking system didn't go unnoticed, I think Agent Lightning might be on to buy this car. I think so. I've never heard of more. She's a lot of detail.

Oh, yeah, she loved that. Logan shared anecdotes of customers who cherish the outlander for its reliability and fuel efficiency. I even tested the parking sensors and rear camera as we pulled into a parking spot. As we approached the dealership, I asked if I could drive the car back on the lot. Of course, you're good to go. He assured me. Back at the dealership, we're going to walk me through the service department. mentioning it would be a place for future services as his desk he offered should I get the

pricing details for you let me add as a dealer as I said earlier and oftentimes on the show we own a dealership and one thing that car dealers do which is one of the few really good things that they do and if you don't do it it's not a good thing is show your customers your service department introduce them to the service manager maybe and maybe to a service advisor maybe even show them the portion department. That's a really good touch. So this new salesperson, Zach, is out learning some good habits, and I hope it serves them well. Okay, I nodded. He left briefly returning with a sales worksheet. There were no details, just the MSRP, as I said before, 35,000, 670, pretty low

for MSRP. With a line crossed through it, then the off. 35,170. So that's a $500 discount. Now, you know, in the old days, we'd say, well, that's an awfully small discount. In the COVID days or the whatever you want to call them, supply chain, crazy days of the past three years, any discount off the MSRP is a welcome discount. And you just don't get them off MSRP. You get them when they jack the price up, $5,000. Then they give you $3,000. dollars off, so you're still paying $2,000 over MSRP. What about a breakdown, I asked, with taxes and fees?

I can get that for you, replied after another short break, your return with a much more detailed document that looked like a vehicle's buyer or buyer's order. It was Jim Shorky's auto group retail order for him. And Nancy Googled Jim Shorky while we're coming in the car. How many, how many dealerships did you say at, 12 or four? I'm going out on a limb here. I'm going to say 18, but I'll check that. A big group.

And if this is typical, and we don't know, so far so good. Price was $35,170. There was a $2,466 in state and local taxes. And $667 in title and registration fees. Stu made a note that that's a bit steep, and I agree. I think there's probably a private tagging stuff in there. See, you understand, we don't go into the business office. I keep saying this, we should.

That's the F and I department, the box. It's a place where some of the most evil, I hate to use that word over and over again, evil profit. Nefarious. Yeah, nefarious is a much more sophisticated. and you got to watch out in the box because you can pay and you generally will pay more profit to the dealer in the F&I department, the finance department than you do any place else. If we bought a car every week, it would get really expensive. Yeah, yeah.

So, and also, that's when the junk fees really pop out at you because they try to hide illegitimate fees in title and registration fees. they come up with names and disguise it. And sometimes they don't even do that. They just hide it in the finance department and you're signed so damn many papers that you sign it as if they had disclosed it to you.

And legally, you have, they have. But from a conscience standpoint, you don't know what you're signing. Nobody knows what they sign anymore. You know, reams a paper. And the people sign things by trusting. You have to trust

the seller today. because if you don't they're going to get you they can cover themselves in the fine print and there's not a damn thing you can do about it he asked me could you wait for a moment I like my sales manager speak with you because I'm sorry I jumped the paragraph I said I'll discuss this with my family at lunch and then he said could you wait a minute I like my sales manager to speak with you I agreed and soon you know it just me to Ian well interesting names Ian promptly required what can I do to earn you

your business today is a standard phrase reiterating my plans i said i'll discuss it over lunch with my family logan and salesman uh ever enthusiastic suggested why not take the car for lunch and enjoy it standard you know they always want you to take the car that's called puppy dog you fall in love with a puppy dog you fall in love to the car i decline saying i appreciate their time as i was about to leave logan tried one last time are you You sure you don't want to finalize things now? You're our only customer in the showroom. We can wrap it up quickly.

I chuckled patting Logan's shoulder. I'll be in touch. Settle down, Logan. That meant a lot to me, because Nancy does that to me a lot. When I get riled up, she smiles and pests me on the shoulder. Settled down. Yeah, settle down. So I tell you, everything will be all right.

It's going to be okay. So, yeah, that's right. And I exit the showroom. I share. So there we have it, a very small town dealer, Zach and Logan and Ian, and Shorty is the dealer, and they're in Irwin, Pennsylvania. And they're family owned and operated. They are. And there are about 16 dealerships.

I will say this. There ain't no way you're going to family own and operate 16 dealerships. And oftentimes, the problems with dealers is not them. I mean, they're probably really good honest people, or maybe not, but I mean, they might be. But when you got 20 dealerships or 100 dealerships or 16 dealerships, you better have a whole lot of honest, transparent people running them for you, or else you might as well be evil yourself because your customers are getting taken advantage. It takes my brother away.

We've got to vote. We've got to vote. We're not a time here. It takes my breath away thinking of having that many dealerships. Okay, well. And we're going on the curve. We talked about this earlier. A is perfect.

There are no perfect dealers. And if you just want the better than an average dealer would get a A or a B or an average dealer would get a C. That's the curve. So here we go. I got one grade. I have one more thing to say to our audience. Please text us with your grade. It's real important.

772-497-6530. Now back to Stu. Got one grade came in from Bob, and he gives an A for, Shurkey Mitsubishi. So the first one came to an A. I don't have any other grades to go on. I'm inclined to give them an A as well. But I'm going to take a little shine off of A minus, just because there was a little bit of pressure, friendly pressure at the end. And it's likely that they do have a small junk fee. Okay. Well, our EOC channel is still down near Earl on cars. But I hear from Earl

throughout the channel we have Johnny Z. Freidly says, Erie, Erie Shortkey. Don't know what that means, but he says, I'll give him an A. Okay. Joseph Keller says B minus, registration and title fees are just a bit high. For me, I don't know. There was a tiny little pressure at the end, but I'm going to say an A. I mean, I

If you don't get them of a, you know No addem, no fees By the way, I think I think the comment is From Johnny Z. Fradley is This Is sure that's not a reggae song? All right, well,

works is choking Joseph Keller on YouTube Gives him a B-minus Registration in title fees A bit too much. Got that one, yeah. Oh, you did? Okay, I repeated that one. Yeah.

What do you have? So that's it for us. And for me, I say an A. Okay. I'm going to go with Stu. I love to give them an A, but I got, I think A minus is a fair, is it. Damn good grade. I mean, look at our recommended deal list.

How many A, anythings do you have? They are rare. This is one out of a thousand. Yeah. And you can go to good dealer, bad dealer list.com and take a look at all of the grades out there. in the dealerships. For me, to the audience, I've turned over a new leaf starting today, the first day of fall. And like Earl always says, you know, you have to go out and purchase a car. And if I week in and week out, which the dealerships deserve, the F from me, you know,

I'm still going to change my mind and just vote on the curve because we all need some place to go to purchase a vehicle and you just have to be educated and it's a mine field out there. But as far as Jim Shorke of Mississippi is concerned out there in Irwin, I just wasn't happy with the pressure. I wasn't happy with the fees. They're warm and fuzzy people. You can look them up. I don't know about the warm and fuzzy but at any rate I am going to give them

I'm going to give them an A minus A minus. Roadrunner Steve texted in he's giving them a B plus Let the record reflect that the highest grade Nancy Stewart has ever given out in 20 years so they got

Oh I think you're wrong I think you're wrong I've already given out in A Oh really? Who Anybody here going to It was Mullinax. Lexus. Jam Lexus.

Or Tesla. Tesla. Ladies and gentlemen, do you see what I'm working with? A bunch of buffoons. Any more grades? No, I think that's it. So the official grade is A-minus. Yeah.

A-minus. Okay, so that is a mystery shop out there in Irwin. That is Jim Sharky, Missabishi. And Jonathan, what do we have left? we have three minutes I'm just not a curiosity I'm going to Google the Sharky dealerships

and check their Google ratings I'm curious to see I'll do that now and they're an auto group they're a Jim Sharky auto group is what they're called we have two minutes left

as long as you have two minutes let me say this the United States is a big place and there are huge cultural differences And we all know this. I mean, we talk about New York, the New York mindset, the California mindset. And then there's a small town.

So that's what we're saying here. We're seeing small towns are just nice places. And you've got to give up some stuff. They don't have the giant department stores and eight zillion McDonald's and that kind of stuff there. But here's what you have. In small town, in the Midwest, you get nice people. and nice retail businesses. So I think that's what works first.

When you're likely to see your, you know, your neighbors are the same people over and over again, I think that has a different effect. There's so many people down here in South Florida. If you screw one person in a small town, everybody knows. Yeah. But if you're in Broward County, Florida, there's, you know, four million people down there.

You're never going to see the same person again. You don't have any word of mouth means nothing when you got a $2 million, two million people. But even the reviews, it gets lost and the noise. Absolutely. You know, the word is, you know, knowledge is power, and it's so important to start that, you know,

that walk through your PC, picking out the model, taking precaution, and you're very protected, you know, by going to the Internet before you start at this journey to purchase or to lease, whatever you have, you're very protected ladies and gentlemen thanks again for joining us sorry about the technical difficulties we'll be back next week at the same time eight a m saturday morning for earl on cars have a great weekend