Earl Stewart on Cars - 11.2.2019 - The Best of Earl Stewart on Cars

Episode Date: November 2, 2019

Earl and his investigative team along with mystery shopper, Agent Thunder, visit the large Off Lease Only used car dealer in West Palm Beach to see if they will sell a 2017 Mercedes Benz E-Class sedan with a dangerous Takata Airbag recall. Will the car dealer disclose the recall to Agent Thunder? Listen to find out! “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”

You're listening to the best of the Earl Stewart on Cars program. If you have a question, text it to 772-4976530 or online at Your Anonymous Feedback.com And we'll answer it during our next live show on November 16th. 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-hose and a strong consumer advocate, especially for our female business. We also have Rick Kearney, an expert on how to keep your car running right.

I dare you to ask a question that Rick can't answer about the mechanics or electronics of your car. Also with us as my son, Stu Stewart are linked to cyberspace through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Periscope. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our Mystery Shopping Report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting South Florida dealership. And now, on with the show. Hi, folks. Boy, we're here again, our second time, I guess, in our new studio. And, boy, it's very different in here.

When you're doing the same place for 15 years and suddenly you're in a new place. So excuse me if I act a little funny or knock something over or don't know what to say, but we're trying. I'd like to say that a lot of people don't know about the show. For you newbies, let me just say that this is a very different show, something you've never heard before, stay tuned. If you were looking for some Goldie Oldie music, stay tuned

anyway, because I think you'll find this interesting. We are a very candid, tell it like it is talk show, live talk about how not to get ripped off by a car dealer. Now, I did one introduction, but I want you to know that if you'll just

listen, if nothing else, to the mystery shopping report, and that's it toward the end of the show, our mystery shopping report is absolutely unique. on the air. Whether you talk about online or television or radio, you'll never hear anything like this. We actually visit car dealerships every week. We go into a different car dealership. I'll give you a little hint. We went into CarMax, which is the largest used car retailer in this area. They're second, I think, to CarMax, off-leaseonly.com I'm talking

about. CarMax is the largest and off-leaseonly.com is the second largest in this area. So it was an exciting report. We named names of the salespeople, the sales managers, and we've been doing this, as I say, for 15 years without being sued. It came close a few times, but we have never had anybody sue us for telling the truth. And, of course, the law protects me, and Earl Stewart on cars, if we tell the truth, we can say anything we want to. And we do that on the air. It's very exciting, it's candid, and instructive. So if for no other reason, please stay tuned for our mystery shopping report.

As I say, we're in a new studio. We're all a little bit trying to get used to things, like when the calls come in, where do we see them? We get texts. We're online. So we have Facebook. We have YouTube. We have Twitter. We have Periscope.

A lot of you folks out there are streaming us live. My son, Stu, is taking note of that. And Rick Kearney is online also to watch the YouTube. So watch us live. You can go to Earl Stewart on Facebook.com for slash Earl on Cars. Facebook.com. Forrestl on Cars. You can do the same thing with YouTube.

You can do the same thing with Periscope and Twitter. It's kind of cool to look inside and see what we look like. I'm particularly handsome. You really ought to take a look at me. The rest of them, I don't know. Well, Nancy's pretty too. Look at up. We've got to work on the lighting in here.

Exactly. Also, I want to. introduce in person, we'll go around. I'll start to the left ladies first. Nancy Stewart, you know she's my co-host. And you know that she's on the air. She's a particularly strong advocate for the ladies. And she is the reason we have almost 50-50 lady callers.

And Nancy, tell the audience out there, what's in it for those ladies out there if they call the show? Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the show. Ladies, let's support each other. Let's build this platform together. I have $50 for the first two new lady callers. So give us a call at 877-960-99-60. And for the rest of you, you can text us at 772-497-65-30.

You were right. Unashamedly, we're bribing, we're begging. We love the female callers. $50 cash, no conditions, no strings. If you haven't called the show before and you're a female, we'd love to hear from you. Why? Because in the past, we had dominated by male callers and cars and men.

Macho? Yeah, macho thing. You know the old hashtag me too thing is starting to really build a groundswell of interest. And you ladies out there deserve to take half of everything. And we want you to be 50% of the callers on the show. Absolutely.

Tina, we know that you're on the line and we'll be right with you. Speaking of female callers, she's one of the best. Let me go to Stu Stewart, my son. He is a partner in the business with me and full transparency. I am a car dealer. I've been a car dealer since 1968. And this is not an infomercial. I want you to know that.

But Stu knows a whole lot about the car business. And being a younger guy than I am, he is also very familiar with cyberspace and Twitter. and Twitter and YouTube and Facebook and all that sort of thing. So Stu, what are you doing? Well, I'm answering all the texts. I'm checking all our live video streams, making sure that we're communicating on multiple channels worldwide and making sure that you know what people are asking you.

Very good. And he's very knowledgeable on selling and leasing and buying of cars. And we don't know a whole lot, Stu and I, about the repair and maintenance of cars, but we've got a guy in the audience, the audience, in the audience we do have guys. But in the studio, we have Rick Kearney. Rick, been with me for 25 years? Yes, sir. And tell us about your expertise. 25 years of working on Toyotas almost exclusively, Toyota and Lexus, and yet I got a good

general knowledge of pretty much all the cars. Most of the systems are pretty much the same when you get right down to the nuts and bolts. Well, you work more on Toyotas, obviously, because for a Twitter dealership, but you work on a lot of cars. I mean, anybody, when a car comes in, a customer comes in with a car, you're going to work on unless there's a warranty work on another model. How do you stay on top of technology? Now, that's the hardest part, and that is basically spending every minute I can, breeding up on all the new tech on the cars, figuring out all the new systems.

It seems like it used to be everyone was concerned about whether or not the air was cold and their brakes at work, and now everybody wants to know. how well my cell phone integrate with my car. So it's a new challenge, a new world. Yeah, technology actually has reached a point with car ownership that it's become a challenge. The manufacturers are worried, and the owners are even more worried car drivers

because the technology is so complex now that there's some talk about it affecting the safety of driving. I have Apple car play in my car, and Nancy gets nervous when I drive because I'm looking at my little screen there and all those icons, and you've got a little mouse kind of a thing going, and it can distract you from the road. You talk about texting being distracting.

A lot of the technology in itself counterintuitably can be distracting. Well, I think we've introduced ourselves, and I think we need to talk to our first female call. Yes, let me remind the listeners that you can reach us at 877-960-9960, and you can text us at 772-497-6530. Now, on with the show, our most popular female caller. Boy, I'll tell you, she has been a huge part of building this platform here at Earl on Cars. Good morning, Tina.

You out there, Tina? Yes. All good. Hi, how are you guys doing this morning? We're good, but we're stressed. We're not sure everything's going to work, right? We're here. Oh, it sounds like y'all are doing just fine.

What did I want to bring up today? I sent you a text message regarding an affordability formula for people to buy cars. Whenever most people look to buy a vehicle, they forget about the price, and they're like, oh, I really want that. But then when you crunch the numbers, reality kind of hits you in the face. So I think rather than looking for a particular car that you might want, it's best to really crunch the numbers and see if it can work for. you not. And I was wondering what you thought about that affordability formula that I sent you. I think it's very important and you're absolutely right. Most people, Tina, rely on a motion too much when buying a car. Fortunately for us car dealers, emotion causes people to buy cars, but it's really not prudent.

You can allow a motion to guide you toward a general type of car. But affordability and reliability and reliability and safety safety. How can you ignore that? There's so much data available to us today and we should take advantage of it. Online, Google, you know, that's the other half of my brain today. Consumer reports is one of the most valuable tools. In fact, consumer reports in and of itself is probably the single most valuable tool. In a few minutes, maybe a half hour, 45 minutes, you can decide which vehicle is the safest, the most reliable, the most economical, affordable, and that's the way you have to go. If you love a car, here's a good example.

Jeep is an extremely popular vehicle. People come to me and say, I want to buy a Jeep, I want to buy Cherokee, I want to buy a Wrangler. And we sell them on our use car lot. But I have to be honest with you, there are a lot of vehicles out there that are more reliable, that are safer, lower maintenance costs. and consumer reports gives you all that information. I have to be, I have to say this, sometimes people normally buy a car and they know that something is better in a way of safety, reliability, maintenance,

but they buy on emotions. Very difficult for us to overcome one of our basic driving forces, which is emotion and caring and, you know, things that look pretty to us and exciting. You know, sometimes that even affects people getting married. but sometimes we just can't control herself. Yeah, well, I dodged a bullet in that regard a few years ago, but that's a whole other show. Anyway, I like the order.

I like the order that she listed everything, safety, reliability, and maintenance. And honestly, when it comes to cost, I think if you have to spend a little bit more to get a safer vehicle, it's worth it because it may mean your life someday. Sure. And you're right. Safety number one, because

You know, if you can afford it, I know people that drive cars and they know they consume too much gas, they know they cost a lot in maintenance, but they can afford it. You know, that's great. They get a lot of money that they can afford it. But one thing they can afford to lose is their life, and I know they want to protect their family. They don't want to be injured, but don't buy a car that you know that's not safe. And one of the big things we talk about on the show are dangerous recalls and cars that are being sold every day, safety or mystery shopping report today addresses that issue but please you know I don't care how much

money I have or how exciting and sexy that car is be sure it's not dangerous at least be sure it doesn't have a dangerous recall that cannot be fixed cars are being sold today with dangerous recalls that are unfixable you're being foolish and you're being selfish and thoughtless if you buy that car if anybody rides in that car with you friend or family you should definitely not do that. Which safety, that brings to mind an issue that I just went through recently. I got the recall notice, and Germain Toyota over at Naples, they were really good to me, and they got my side curtain airbags all fixed up.

How important, Rick, how important are those side curtain airbags? Well, the airbags today, I don't know how many lies, I'd like to see an estimate of that. I can't believe that I drove cars for so many years without airbags and we have a collision repair shop at our dealership and Alan Napier was on the show last Saturday when Stu was on vacation and if you want to get an idea of how many lives those side airbags save just talk to Alan or any body shop manager they see the cars that come in and the conversation is that every day is I can't believe no one was hurt I can't believe that no one was injured in that accident. We see accidents that 35, 40 years ago would have been absolutely

fatal, and the cars today are amazingly safe, and those airbags will save lives they do every day. Yeah, I was just, I mean, the site carton airbags thing that's been around for what, like, maybe less than 10 years, that's a fairly new safety feature in vehicles now. Yeah, the side airbags, do you remember Rick

maybe 15 years? I'm going to say closer to 15 years. Yeah, they came out and they were like excess, you didn't have to have them, but they would be in certain models. And then gradually they became prevalent, and they're in all models now. Well, as a matter of fact, some of the newest cars coming out right now can have as much as 12 to 15 airbags. Yeah, they're putting airbags on. There's even talking about putting them in the roof of the car. And I believe there's some models that actually have them in the door.

Yeah, the door. which is absolutely, you know, the, you don't think about that, but you get a lot of teabones, you know, where they hit you from the side and to have the airbag in the side and even the roof. So eventually our car will be one giant airbag, and no matter where you get hit or where the impact comes from, you're going to be safe. And Tina? All right. Yes, ma'am. To the topic about Takata and this air.

bag disaster. You know, the legislators, if they could just cooperate with us, you know, it would, you know, save so many lives. And we really need everyone's support, you know, and this terrible train wreck, I'm going to call it, that's been going on for so long. And the number of cars that are sold, unbeknownst to the consumer, that they do have a problem with that vehicle. And they're never told, and they drive right off the lot. Okay. Well, call again, please, Jenny.

You are our best caller, certainly our best email caller, and I just fell off the bench. You're watching Facebook. I'm okay. Let me give you a hand. But the camera is now photographing the ceiling. But you're not missing much. Put it on Nancy.

It looks better anyway. Okay. I'm back. We are going to go to Sandy, who's been holding. and she's calling from Palm Beach Gardens Good morning Sandy Sandy I thought I heard

I thought I heard Jerry I think you're there could you repeat what you just said Oh I just said good morning Oh okay yeah we're having Go ahead I hope you can answer it for me Okay I have a 2010

SUV I used to drive I'll drive 10,000 plus a year going to work and back. I no longer do that. I'll drive maybe 20 miles a week. And my question is regarding an oil change. My car has, you know, of course, it's got the digital... Puzzle fuel, regular oils?

Yeah. And it's been over 30% for many, many months. It hasn't gone down because I don't drive my car very much. Sure. So my question is, how often should I change it? Well, Sandy, that's one of the most common problems people have. They don't understand. It's hard for me to understand. Rick explained it to me.

But oil needs to be changed on time basis as well as a mileage basis. And oil, I don't know if the word deteriorates is the right word, word, but oil becomes less effective due to humidity and heat and other conditions just by sitting in your car, even though you don't drive it. And people don't understand that, and it is a subtle fact of life that you should change your oil on your manufacturer's recommended cycle regardless of mileage. And all manufacturers will have a time, and they're typically six months. So counterintuitively, if you sit, if your car sit there, from the garage for six months and you don't drive it at all zero miles you still

need to get that oil changed and that will protect your engine when you do drive the car actually there's some some truth of the fact that sitting still and not driving the car is worse for your car than driving it so my guess is your manufacturer says change that oil every six months regardless of mileage double-check your owner's manual to be sure but my guess says that's probably what it is and you should follow that advice. Okay, Sandy. Sandy, are you a first-time caller?

Well, we're having, I think we're having technical difficulties. Sandy, if you can hear us, we cannot hear you, but we, I believe you are a first-time caller, and we have a $50 check we'll send to you if you can call back. okay. If I move much close to the microphone, I'm going to be making love to it. At least I'll be getting saliva on the

thing here, so I'm sorry I can't do much more at any rate, we will send you the check. Call back 87-960-99-60, Sandy. That's 877-9-60, and give Rudy in our control room your contact information, and because you're a first-time email caller, we're going to give

you a $50 cash. So we still have another $50 for the next first-time female caller, 877-960-90-60, and our text is 772-497-497-6-5-30. And I believe we do have some text over there. Yeah, we've had a few that have come in this morning. We have one from Jordan, and he says, Good morning, Earl and Nancy Stewart. My name's Jordan.

And I'm reaching out to you because I was mailed a fake advertising flyer from the same dealership called Pat Fisher Nissan saying he has a sale event in the outlet Dunlinton Square Mall just trying to see what your thoughts are on that. I think I can, I know what your answer is going to be. Yeah, you've heard before totally ignore all car dealer advertising.

All of it. The lowest form is your direct mail. If you have something that comes in the snail mail, it is typically the most deceptive. The reason being that you can direct snail mail to a particular mailbox, and the regulators are far less likely. You don't see too many car dealers dumb enough to send direct mail to the Attorney General's office or to the county office consumer affairs, so they can target all the people, and it is really terrible, but all car dealer advertising is deceptive. They never advertise a vehicle at the price you can buy it for.

And I would love to hear from anybody in our audience on YouTube or Periscope or Radio or Facebook, anybody that can hear my voice, have you ever bought a car at the advertised price for the advertised price, plus tax and tag only? We'll give them that much. If you ever bought a car, what it was advertised for, and then only had to pay sales tax and license plate. If you have, call the show 877-960-9-960, and we will say good things about the car dealer that did that because it just doesn't happen. Okay. Okay, excuse me, Stu. Sandy's back, and she's on the line one.

Sandy? Yes. Hey, I don't know what happened. We missed you. Yes. Yeah. Well, you just stay on the line, Sandy. We're going to have Rudy.

He'll pick up the phone. get your contact information, and because you're a first-time female caller, we're going to send you $50 cash, so we don't want you to have to give us your address and everything over the air. So Rudy will speak to you, get your information, and within a few days you'll have $50, and thank you very much, and please call again next week. Yes, and a special thank you for me, Sandy. Okay, stay in touch. I'll get to our text, and Stu has another text I just came in. Yes, I do. This came in from, well, there's not a name on it. It's a picture, and I'll try and get this, Jonathan, and we could probably get it up on Facebook or on YouTube later. It's a picture of a crolla and a car dealer's inventory listing on their website. And the question is, what's up with selling or advertising new cars without hub caps or these wheel covers? Is this a new trend? I've noticed it from different dealers. And honestly, I don't have an answer for you because I don't know, well, I can only speak for Toyota. I don't think there's any that come in without wheel covers or hubcaps. But I'm looking at a picture of what looks like to be a Toyota Corolla without hubcaps. So I don't know. My assumption is there's a thing called a pre-delivery inspection,

and that's when these hub caps are supposed to be installed in the car. Some have their distributorship do it. Some do it at the dealership. So maybe they took the picture of the car before they put the hubcaps on. Sounds like a goof up. And kind of silly. I mean, it's not a good way to sell cars. They don't look as good without the... Not at all. Shame on them. And the last one, this kind of made me feel good, and I want you to take this to heart, Mr. Stewart. Guys, relax, and don't worry about the technical glitches. What's important is the show.

We don't need perfection. The show and information speaks for itself. That's very nice. Very nice. Thank you. We're getting grounded a little bit. Let's just take a little. There we go.

A cleansing breath. There we go. Okay. I see here where we have Daryl. He has been holding. Thank you, Daryl. And Daryl's calling us from Pennsylvania. my hometown good morning morning what can we do for you this morning this morning this is darrell con

from pennsylvania good morning darrell i have um yeah i'm not in the market for for toyota or anything but i'm in the market for for ford f450 and there's several dealerships in florida that that i'm considering one is mullinx ford you know them we do yes we have a mystery shop them. In fact, we know them all in X family, and we've spoken to the sons recently, and we know them to be, there are several locations, and they were the origin of, they originated the one price and no dealer fee years and years ago, since they varied from that policy. And, but generally speaking, they have a good reputation. Yeah, they have a lot of, a lot of reviews online. I mean, hundreds.

that are five-star. The thing... The other one is Tropical Ford in Orlando. Do you know them? Is that owned by Mullinux or is that a different... This is a different board.

I don't know Tropical Ford. I don't know Tropical Ford in Orlando. And before we get off Mullinx, let me say this. We found out that Bolanx Ford is expanding by adding partners. And they have partners that operate

a little differently from the Malnix philosophy. So when you buy from Malnix, find out who the owner of the Malnix Ford is. The Malnick's family, there's, I believe, two brothers and a father, and they have other owners out there. But generally speaking, the Malnick's name is a good name. And sometimes the partners we found through a mystery shop were deviating from the dealer fee policy that Malnix was supposed to have.

have this particular case, it was Mullinix Ford on North Lake Boulevard in North Palm Beach, and they were advertising cars with no dealer fee, and we mystery shopped them, found out that they did have a dealer fee, and that's when we contacted the real Mullinix and discussed it with him. He was going to do something about his partner changing that, and shame on us, I don't believe we've gone back and re-mystery shop them, that was too. Not then we wanted to give enough time to let him relax for a little while. We've given them too much time. But anyway, that's the story on Molinac.

And Tropical, as I say, Daryl, we don't know about it. Okay. Well, thanks a lot for the information. Well, thank you. And check with us before you buy. Be happy to give you any advice. Watch out for the hidden fees. The biggest thing you have to watch out for when you're buying a car in Florida is hidden fees and dealer-installed accessories.

Be sure you get an out-the-door price without any surprises, and you'll do just fine. No, I've been listening to your show for a long time now, so I know exactly what to look for. Good for you. You know, so. Thanks for being a regular listener. Thank you. You're welcome. Give us a call to all free at 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. I have a text from a widow, and she points out that she is a recent widow. and what's happened recently is that she had to go out and purchase a vehicle and she had a direct mailer and with that she thought you know all of her problems would be answered she goes to the dealership and in mind she wants to purchase a vehicle and the monthly payment was way too high for her and she just didn't know what she could do it was out of her budget and the salesperson

suggested that she lease and she was very nervous about that and what she did was that she told them that she would have to go home and digest leasing a vehicle the payment was much lower the purchasing payment was about $600 and the lease was about $400

and she wants to know if she should go back to the dealership and sign on the dotted line for the lease. You're listening to the best of the Earl Stewart on Cars program. If you have a question, text it to 772-4976530 or online at Your Anonymous Feedback.com and we'll answer it during our next live show on November 16th. It sounds like this person has not gone car shopping alone and our sympathies, certainly to her husband who passed away recently. But you should go in, whether you're a widow or whether you're anybody, a man, a woman, car shopping alone is not a good idea.

You should go in with someone that can take notes, make suggestions, two sets of ears, two sets of eyes are better than one. As far as a lease versus a purchase, rule of thumb, I always recommend purchase because it's simpler, easier to understand. Car dealers today do push leasing. Manufacturers push leasing because it's simply more profitable to the manufacturer and to the dealer. Car dealers, on the average, will make at least $1,000 more when they lease a car than when they sell your car. And there are a lot of reasons for that. And the complexity and deception is probably the single biggest reason. So I'd recommend you stick to purchasing.

I think that you want to have a companion come in with you, a friend, a relative of someone that maybe is experienced in. buying cars. And I also recommend that you get three competitive prices. Never buy from only one dealership quoted price. Competition is your best friend. Car dealers are furiously competitive. I'm a car dealer and I'm furiously competitive. They send our blood when we become car dealers. And when they know that you're going to another competitor and you say I'm going to two other competitors, they're really going to get serious by giving you the lowest price. Just be sure is the lowest out-the-door price, meaning there's no hidden surprises, hidden fees, or dealer-installed accessories. And Nancy Stewart, my co-host here, has come up with a great idea. It's called

an out-the-door price affidavit, and you can get that on earlancars.com. If you just go to earlancars.com, there's a little link there you can click on on the home page of earlancars.com, and there will be Althador Price affidavit. You can click on that. In fact, you can go to www. www.althorprice affidavit.com. You can download that, print it out, and you can have the car dealership sign it

before you sign anything for the guard dealer. That's his guarantee that he's not going to be sneaking some dealer fees on, hidden fees, or adding window tent or nitrogen in the tires and all these other dirty little tricks and the way of dealer install accessories. You'll be getting in a clean, out-the-door price, and you'll be in a competitive shopping. That is my advice.

Rosalie, I hope we answered your question, and when I was rereading your text, I didn't see anywhere where you were talking about negotiating, remember everything is negotiable, everything, and it can be utilized in such a way that you could purchase a car and have a lower car payment. Stay in touch. Okay.

Okay. We've got some text over here, Stu. What's up? We have one from Deborah and Boka. Deborah says, I bought a new Nissan Maximum in March. Less than a week later, I had a flat tire. How is that possible? They said the puncture was too close to the side to patch, and I had to buy a new tire. I told the dealership manager that I wanted him to pay for it because the car was so new, and I couldn't imagine how it could get flat so soon after I bought it. He said I probably drove over something sharp and refused to pay for the tire,

and then the new tire, what should I do, Deborah and Boka? Deborah, that's one of the most common complaints. One good thing about being a car dealer myself, I live this every day, and I know about road hazards like nails and screws on the road. South Florida has got construction all over the place. There's all sorts of crazy stuff lying out in the road. You see it. I don't drive down 95 without seeing something that I know if I drove over it is going to

probably damage my tires. So it's just a fact of life. And Stu? Yeah, I'm going to say, Debra, technically the dealership manager was right, but I'm not sure if that was the smartest business decision. You know, you just bought a car. It's not going to cost him that much money. I think it's possible he could have done that just to make you happy. I know there's lots of companies. I bought a pair of glasses from Warby Parker, plugging them on the air right now, and I ordered the wrong frames. I complained about it. Well, I didn't complain about it. I brought up to their attention they sent me new frames they didn't have to do it that's kind of a nice thing to do but you know everybody's different great example yeah i think that i think there is

something called road hazard insurance and uh you want to shop and compare the prices there i normally don't buy recommend buying insurance a car dealer sell but all the tire stores and all the car dealers usually have this available it's a matter of where you live really i mean uh if if if road hazards or something you see and construction in your area you might want to consider road hazard insurance you're never going to find a car dealer that's going to be a nice guy likes too suggested and say don't worry I'm going to buy a new tire because you just bought a car from me two weeks ago it ain't gonna happen so I'm talking about utopia yeah utopia and you top you you don't be a Ford would

probably take care of it for you any more text I know we're all cut up right Okay, 877-960-9960, and I'll give that out twice because some of you folks can't write it down that fast, and don't write it down, by the way, if you're driving, 877-9-60-99-60, and you can text us at 772-497-6530, and Rick has got some YouTube postings here. Let's see if I, yeah, I think this mic is working, isn't it? Okay, we had a little issue earlier with my other mic. Actually, we have an anonymous sex first where a fellow asking, he says, I'm considering the purchase of a mint condition, 1985 American-made automobile, knowing that this was a time before airbags were standard equipment,

is it possible to add an aftermarket airbag so I can be driving in a safer vehicle? The unfortunate answer there is no. Airbags are so integrated into the design of the vehicle and they need to be designed to work with each individual vehicle, including the sensors that detect the impact. There's actually a great video on YouTube that Honda produced that basically shows what happens if your airbag is one one hundredth of a second late. And they drop a watermelon onto an airbag that catches it and then one one hundredth of a second late. It's watermelon Armageddon. Yeah, we've got a green screen behind us. You know, what we have to do next week or the week after,

it'd be really cool to project that video. It's the most dramatic, demonstrated video about what airbags do. And we'll try to do that maybe next week or the week after. Especially how powerful they really are and why it is so crucial that they be designed to operate at the timing that they need. Yeah, you can't put your own airbag on, wish you could, but you can't do that. No.

And our other one here is Guy from Ottawa, Canada. He's a snowbird, but he's up in Canada right now. And he says, how come Toyota has not brought in the high-ace or light-ace delivery vans to Canada and the U.S.? He said they seem to dominate the world market? And I equate this also with the Toyota high-lux pickup truck that is available in other markets, but not in the U.S. And I bet Stu would probably have a better answer on that than me. but I think it's due mostly to emissions. I think it is.

I know that they make a lot of vehicles. Well, they have diesels out there in the world. So I know the highlights comes in a diesel and a gas version. I don't really know. It's kind of like a modified Toyota Tacoma. I know. You know. Yeah.

It isn't the airbag or the safety thing because if Toyota wanted to, they could build any vehicle with American qualifications of safety and airbags and emissions and the rest of it. But there are so many proliferation. and combinations of models of vehicles, that Toyota and all the manufacturers have a problem with optimizing their mix. Imagine if there were a thousand different models for one manufacturer being sold in the same market,

it would be impossible to stock the representative sample of those models. The car dealers would not be able to offer the customer a car in every model. So they have to peer it down. They have to reduce the number and combinations of models and equipment in a market. They don't do a very good job of it. Even now, with all the manufacturers, there are so many different models and combinations of equipment. It's almost impossible for a car dealer to stock those. So you're right.

There are cars as a Toyota dealer that we say, boy, we sure wish we had this. And we have people say, why don't you have this? And the answer is, you just can't have everything in every market. You can't always get what you want. Yeah. Okay. Well, we also just have one other that just came in from Tim on YouTube here. He says, Earl, which vehicle does your dealership make the most profit on consistently?

That would be the probably right now, I can tell you what it would be. It would be the Supra 2020. And we sell that at suggested retail price. And that's the most profit we make on a car. Yeah, I don't know if you can call it. that consistently though we're going to have maybe one well that's true yeah typically highlander every dealer including including us you know the highlander in our case here it's a matter of supply and demand and we sell the car that has the highest demand the lowest supply the super is

an extreme example is two set because we've only sold one and we have one we're not selling because we want to have a car to show when people come in and we'll give it about one a month and we will sell it at full MSRP. What is that, what's the profit at full MSRP do we make? Probably around $4,000. So we make about $4,000 when we sell Super but we only get one a month and then when we sell something like a Highlander, what do we make? Maybe around $1,800. $1,800. So that's supply and demand. We sell the other cars, we'll sell cars closer to our actual cost and supply and demand. If you're you you have too many models or too many cars or particular make, you sell them for whatever you can get.

And hadn't we just seen a super advertised at another dealership for a $40,000 markup over MSRP? Yeah, that was... I love that one. That's Al Hendrickson, Toyota, and Coconut Creek. And there was a newspaper article about that marking up their super's. So there's a $4,000 profit at MSRP, but they want to make $44,000. so they market up 40,000. And heads up to you folks out there.

Be very careful when you're buying a car. Be sure that the sticker price is the Monroney label. The manufacturers are just retail price. Deals will add something we call a phony Monroney, which is an addendum label that looks official, but they market up additionally. And cars with a high-demand low supply are typically ones that they do that too.

Our wholesaler guy told us, There's one that actually sold at auction last week for $75,000. It's already made it onto the used car market. Over sticker. Oh, $75,000 was the sale price. Oh, the sale price? Yeah, so that's still over $20,000 over the sticker price. Yeah, so that's like the wholesale value because only car dealers buy cars at auction.

So that'll give you an idea of what these cars are selling for. If a car dealer paid $20,000 over a sticker, what is he going to charge you? And we said Al Hendricks and Toyota is charging $40,000. Let's not pick on Al. I mean, they're all doing it. They're all doing it. Toyota Viro Beach, I think it had one over $100,000 online. Really?

Somebody must have leaned on them because it's back to MSRP online. Oh, great. Okay, Jackie texts, she's confused. She wants to know what dealer fees she has to pay. Jackie, you don't have to pay any dealer fee. Dealer fee is simply profit to the dealer. And they will tell you that they have to charge it. That's a lie. They'll tell you that everybody charges it. That's a lie, too, but it's almost true because very few dealers don't charge dealer fees. I know of none right now. Really, my dealership doesn't charge a dealer fee, but I don't know of any others that don't. Some of them charge nominal dealer fees, and Carfax, CarMax has, what, a $199 dealer fee?

$3.99. Yeah, they raised it. But it's not a dealer fee. It's a car max processing fee. Offlease only has a small dealer fee. They don't charge, what, $100 or $200? Offlease, $1.99, yeah. Should be $2.00. It's confusing.

Yeah. The average dealer fee in South Florida is well over $1,000, and you do not have to pay it. But let me be a little bit more specific. If they're going to charge a dealer fee and they say they have to do say okay just give me your out-the-door price including your dealer fee and let me shop and compare that price with your competition because the dealer fee is not required by anybody to charge they do it because the dealer wants to do it and because it's profit to the dealer so let them

charge it if they want to but just be sure you can shop and compare it because competition will eliminate the dealer fee for you competition will reduce the price of the car for you and then reducing the price, you're reducing or eliminating the dealer fee. But to ask them to voluntarily eliminate it, it can happen sometimes, but usually it doesn't. Okay, Jackie, I hope we've answered your question. If you have a question and you'd like to text it, you can do so at 772-497-60, or you can give us a call at 877-960. We're going to go to Palm City, where we have our most favorite caller, and that is John. Good morning, John. Johnny, out there in Radio Ladder? Yes, good morning. Good morning. Good morning.

Thank you all for being there and educating the consumers. I want to, the Bible of the industry, everybody should have it, pick it up in a library, or even read it in the, you know, you know, the stores. July, Consumer Report, page 12, very simple. small article. And this is a question I'm going to have for Rick. Top tier gas. Okay, they mentioned Rick said it in the past. All gasoline, no matter what

brands, they do have government mandated additives. Okay? That's standard on all the gas. But consumers mentioned top tier gas, namely what that means is Chevron, Exxon, Shell, Mobile.

They have additional additives. For instance, I know for a fact chevron puts texron in it shell has a new additive that they put in and this is for all grades this is nothing to do with octane now this is across the board when you go to these stations and on an average it costs three cents more than it does on your regular stations which is wawa bj sands club marathon speedway etc now what i want to ask you they do recommend it because it's cleaner valves and it's better performance in any one of the automobiles on any grade. What does Rick's opinion about spending two to three sometimes five cents even more

to go to these name brand stations like Chevron or Shell to put it in a car? What does Rick statement say about it? I think the only reason to go to a name brand station is the fact that, that if there is a problem with their fuel, they're more likely to stand behind it and take care of the issue. The reason I say this is a few years back, Shell gasoline had an issue where a lot of their fuels came out with an extremely high sulfur content

that wound up damaging fuel pumps in a lot of cars. And if you had a receipt showing that you had filled up with Shell gasoline recently and your car suffered an issue with the fuel pump, Shell was paying for the repairs 100% no questions asked. Well, Rick, did I understand John's question? His question was that the name brand gas station have specific additives that can benefit. Do name brand gas stations have specific attitudes that the off-brand independence don't have? They do claim to, and I'm sure they put something in there.

But truth be told, with modern automobiles and the modern fuels, just about any of them if your car if you're driving the car a reasonable amount and the car basically you're exercising the car cars need exercise just like people do and if you're getting a reasonable amount of driving in time in to let the car heat up get the engine up to operating temperature good it'll clean itself out for the most part all by itself with any good quality fuel available at any gas station uh like i say even using Marathon or even some of these newer names popping up. Their fuels are regulated by the government.

They have to beat certain quality standards. And those fuels are just fine to run in your car. The only change I see that I would recommend sticking with a good name brand fuel, again, is because that company you know will stick behind their fuel. Plus, the fact, they turn their gas more frequently and it's less likely to get gas to sit and sediment to collect them to the bottom. Right. You're less likely to get sediment or water.

mixed into the fuel? Because, you know, even though gas and water don't mix, once that water's down in the bottom of the tank, as it's getting stirred up, there will be some amounts of that water that stays mixed in with the fuel until it can settle back out. So that water can wind up being in your tank sometimes. Does that answer your course with John? Yes, that answers. It's going to stick to on my Wawa or racetrack. And the reason I like them, not only because of price and cleanliness, but regularly, regularly. They come in and they clean their tanks. I spoke to the company that was doing it in

a racetrack. And boy, I'm telling you, it's a regular basis. There's absolutely no water ever in any of their tanks or they'll shut the entire station down until this maintenance coming. The company comes in and takes care of it. Now, another second question I got. People are going crazy. The new Corvette is out with a mid-engine. This, Crapey-Supra, a deal is with 15. $55,000, and I'm a lot of years following, especially new cars or collector cars, I think anybody that pays anything above list price on any car, I don't care what it is, is out of their mind. They're going to get burnt, and I'll go back as far as when I started high school.

The Corvette came out in 53. People were going crazy until they saw basically what the car was. It was a bomb. Corvette almost went out of business. A sports car with a six-cylinder engine, quality beyond so bad. You can't believe it. The Chevrolet dealer had to fix the fiberglass and repaint actually the cars. But, I mean, I'm going, Pontiac came out with a mid-engine.

It was a bomb that fell apart. People were going crazy. They were paying above list. And if anything that I saw that came out, and it was supposed to be the hottest number, T-Bird and Camaro at the beginning of the 2000s, came out with a model. People were paying $5,000 and $10,000 above the list. And, you know, it was like, Nothing. People want an investment in the car, and should they have the money.

Buy so-called collector car, especially some of them at auction now. They're going for prices that you could not restore the car or half of it. And I just got, for instance, an interesting car is coming up Tuesday on the 6th. Guernsey, an auction company in New York City, is auctioning Liz Taylor's 60 Rolls Royceoff. I saw that. An interesting car for one reason. Or was that Queen Elizabeth? Taylor had seven, I think, at least seven husbands.

The first one, Eddie Fisher, Liz Taylor got married in a beautiful wedding dress. This is, you know, a little off the topic, and it was the most gorgeous color of green. What did Liz Taylor do? She went with Rose Royce and contracted for the same color green. You can see the call on a computer, auctions at gurneys.com.

It's the most gorgeous green I've ever seen. I mean, there's an example. Somebody that has any money and burning a hole in their pocket to buy. something in the automobile field, this is the type of cars that's worth something. I mean, for instance, the record of a New York auction, the United States was a 35 Duesenberg, was owned by Gary Cooper. That said in all-time, a record for American car of $22 million. Now, I'm not saying for people to go and injure something like that, but forget about buying

any car, any new car especially, and paying above Lindo price on it. You're absolutely right about that. I'm a waste of money. You're right. The manufacturers and the dealers often will hype the scarcity. I have no reason to think that the super is going to be available in any supply. But who knows? The controls with the manufacturer, and you know that a manufacturer or a car dealer is going to tell you this is high-demand, low supply, to justify the high price.

But who knows? Maybe supers will be available in large supply in two years. Toyota says no. But it's up to them. Well, the manufacturers hype it up. Sure. I mean, they're pushing this Chevrolet with the Bid engine now. It doesn't sound so exciting.

Pontiac with the Fierro felt flat on their back with it. I sure did. John, thank you very much. You're always a fountain of information, particularly when it comes to antique cars, and those are interesting. Keep an eye on that Rolls voice. It sounds interesting, but just look at the color on a computer.

Yeah, I'll do that. It does sound... Urnesty auctions. Sounds good. Thank you, John. Thank you. Okay, bye. Bye, John.

Thank you for the call. Our number here is 877-960-90-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. And Jackie is still in touch with me. And I have some information for you, Jackie. This is going to, you know, protect you when you go in to purchase your vehicle. You can go to Consumer Report. Consumer Reports.com, and there's a, protect yourself from hidden fees that I was reading from May 29th, 2019. So take a read and let us know how things turned out for you.

Protect yourself from hidden fees, the Consumer Report. Stu's got a bunch of text over there. I do, but John reminded me of something, this thing with the new Corvette, the mid-engine, there seems to be some war brewing out there on social media between Superfans and Corfans. and Corvette fans. I mean, it's getting ugly online. I've seen these posts on Facebook, and they're battling back and forth,

which one's the better car. And it's kind of funny because we are in the car business. I just, I don't get into that. I don't understand how emotional people get about these cars, but they do. It's an important one.

Well, somebody asked me the other day if I'd driven our new Super. And I said, no. He said, why not? How could you? I said, well, for one reason, it's very hard for me to get in and out. And Stu said he bumped his head

the other guy. Yeah, yeah. So you've got to love this kind of thing, and I love our new super because when we sell it, we make $4,000, and we sell it an MSRP. I appreciate the design. I think it's a beautiful car, but it's a little too small for me. It is true. I love the 1993, Supra. Yeah, there's one parked right next to it.

Okay, our text. So this came in from Edgar, and Edgar says, Earl, you mentioned texting the show while driving. This is now illegal in Florida. What is the chance that the auto manufacturers have lobbied state? legislature to force consumers to buy more expensive cars with hands-free features like Bluetooth, and that's from Edgar. Well, in the manufacturers, I think everybody now is taking another look at this technology. Texting while driving is certainly the wrong thing to do.

But think about this for a minute. The reason texting while driving is the wrong thing to do is because of two reasons. You take your eyes off the road. You also take your brain off the road. And what I mean by that is your mind is about as important as your eyesight when you're driving. If you're not thinking, it's just like closing your eyes. So with Bluetooth or cell phones or your Apple Play TV, anytime your brain is engaged on texting or talking or anything

and you're not thinking about driving, it's dangerous. And I think that our manufacturers and car dealers need to think real hard about simplifying the functions on our vehicles so that we don't have to think about driving if we have to think about or think about texting or emailing or anything else uh rick you have a point i was just going mention myth busters actually did an uh an episode on that where they tested their own people to see how they could do using a total hands-free system where all they were doing was talking on a radio and it interfered with their concentration enough that on the test course they did horrible in driving triple A to the study and you just reminded me yeah triple A did the study and they found out that the younger people

and I'm going to make these numbers up but they're close it takes them three or four seconds to navigate or perform functions with their instrument panel and it takes folks my age about twice as long So there's always a time lapse of focus concentration off the road when you're working with your Apple Play or whatever Bluetooth or whatever else texting by voice recognition. All these things are done much simpler and faster by younger people. But folks, my age, are taking way too long. And Nancy will testify to that because she says, stop doing that, Earl, and I'll be looking to buy Apple Play. I'm not looking at the road. So this whole thing needs to be re-addressed by the manufacturers.

Well, it's a proven fact that in a split second, I don't care how old you are, or how young you are, in a split second, your life can change. With that said, ladies and gentlemen, you're a very important part of the show. So give us a call at 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-9-7-6-5-3-7. zero and remember your anonymous feedback.com we'd love to hear from you we're going to go to john in west palm beach who's been holding and uh dug we will get right to you good morning john hey good morning a lot of a lot of static i don't know if it's on my own um we hear you clearly john go ahead oh you can me clearly okay very good yeah i just wanted to comment on the piero uh the reason

why it fell flat was, first of all, the bad rep about plastic body panels that were attached to the rolling roll case, one of the safest cars, because it was all metal underneath. It just had plastic body panels that were easy to replace. But the one thing that heard it was it was underpowered. They were using the old iron dupe for pushrod motor, and it was also the same time that Toyota came out with their MR2, two-seater. mid-engine, but that had the overhead camp. So if you were an enthusiast,

you were going to go with the MR2 because of its peppiness and quickness. For 1984, the deer was underpowered. I remember that. I'm actually old enough to remember that. Well, it's interesting today that all the cars are so unprofitable that

that's the reason you don't see as many sports cars on the road. And you just can't make as much money when you saw a car as a SUV or van. I remember the display in the Pontiac showroom years ago when they were featuring the plastic exterior and there was a big pole with a bowling ball hanging from it and it was for the customers could swing it back and let it slam into the panel. It would dent in and then pop out a few seconds later.

I'd forgotten about that. I guess people didn't like that. And then I was the one that was called back to speak about the Corvette and the values and the other Corvette and the gentleman from the other guy named John before me if he's interested all the dealerships have all their orders are done with for the Corvette

they're all gone. Oh really? Yeah, that's how fast they sold out. I believe it. You know, if you've got the money I know I know people are feeling sorry for these guys that pay too much but a lot of people just they don't care what it costs if I got the first one in the block is worth it to me. They've impressed their friends.

Yes. Very good. All right. Have a great day. Thank you, John. Thanks, John. We're going to go to Doug who's holding in Boca. Good morning, Doug.

Hello, how are you? Hey, Doug. Good morning. Good. I wanted to ask a question about the Super again, and I guess the way it looks is there's a two-year waiting period, which is like, wow, that's crazy. And so I guess I'm going to give up on this until two years from now. You might get a good deal two years from now. Yeah.

It's worth the weight. Certainly if you're going to be paying $50,000 over MSRP. Exactly. The exploitation is the recognition by car dealers that a motion takes over. And whether you're buying a mid-agent Corvette or you're buying a Suprovet or you're buying a Supro, But you're so excited about being the guy that's got one. And I say guy, probably because the gal's got more common sense. The guy just wants to have that thing about, you know, in that really cool car.

And it's okay. I mean, hey, life is short. If it makes you feel that good, you want to pay an extra $40,000 over MSRP or an extra $100,000. And you got the money. You know, people do crazy things. They've got too much the money. Wow. Well, to me, it's a little silly, and I'll just give us what I have now.

Wait two years. You get a really good deal. You have a big selection that you use from, too. Maybe. All right. Well, you guys have a great day, and thanks for being on the... Thanks for having the show. Okay.

Say hi to Ali. Yeah, say hi to Ali for us, scratching behind the ear. Okay, I will. Meow. Thanks, Doug. You're listening to the best of the Earl Stewart's on cars program. If you have a question, text it to 772-4976530 or online at Your Anonymous Feedback.com and we'll answer it during our next live show on November 16th.

877-960 or you can text us at 772-4976530 and don't forget the mystery shopping reports coming up and that'll be from off-lease only in West Palm Beach. So stay tuned for that, the last half hour of the show. Text her backing up over there, Stu. They're coming in. We have a question from Barbara on Facebook. She says, hi, what is a CO2 sensor on a car? Looking at you, Rick.

A CO2 sensor? It says a CO2 sensor. I have not heard of a CO2 sensor. I know of an O2 sensor. A2 sensor, yep. That's an oxygen sensor that's in the exhaust pipe, and it helps determine, tells the computer, how well the engine is burning the fuel

and whether it needs to adjust the amount of fuel or air coming into the engine. Okay. Let me ask you this. I know that's right, but it just occurred to me that one of the problems we have in our atmosphere is carbon dioxide, which is CO2, and cars do, you know, we exhale carbon dioxide and so on and so forth

and plants eat it and exhale oxygen. But with all that said, Is there any regulation on cars in terms of emission of carbon dioxide? I know carbon monoxide is, but there's no regulation on carbon dioxide. No, there actually is not a regulation on carbon dioxide because actually they kind of go with the lesser of the evils. In an absolute perfect, perfect world, if an engine were it able to burn the hydrocarbons in the fuel and the oxygen, in the air absolutely perfectly the only thing coming out of the tailpipe would be carbon dioxide and water h2 o unfortunately not in a perfect world so we still have the hydrocarbons the hc coming

out nitrogen there's a whole bunch of different things that come out of the tailpipe but the safest ones to have coming out of the tailpipe the lesser of the evils is the carbon dioxide and water Now, in a hydrogen car, it's just water, or is there also some carbon dioxide? There's also carbon dioxide and there's also hydrocarbons because the hydrogen is a hydrocarbon at that point. Very interesting. I actually saw a few of those Toyota Mariahs, the fuel cell ones, in California. You can only get them out in the West Coast. Yeah.

Pretty cool. I'm not sure if we got to this one. This came in on our anonymous feedback website, which is Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We have a few coming in on that. It says, good morning. I'll have a question for Rick. Some mechanics have advised me that 0W20 motor oil is meant for colder climates and that in the heat of South Florida,

motor oil should have a thicker viscosity to better protect the engine. What do you recommend? In the older days, the older engines did need that thicker oil and warmer climates, but with 0W20 in engines that are designed for 0W20, It's completely fine in just about every environment on the earth, with the exception of the extreme cases of, say, the middle of the Sahara Desert or up in the Far Arctic Circle where you would need to make adjustments because of an extreme climate. How about the Gobi Desert? There again, yeah. It's a cold desert.

Well, but it's also not quite as hot as the Sahara or that Middle East region where we're seeing temperatures now. they're seeing daily temperatures over 130 degrees Fahrenheit. So there's a number on the oil like 20 and 30 and 40. Does that correlate with temperature? It actually correlates with the thickness of the oil. Yeah. But generally, thicker oil in the heat will run thinner. Yeah.

And as it gets colder, of course, it feels thick as thicker. So the lower the number, the thicker the oil. Actually, the lower the number, the thinner the oil. Yeah. Okay. So you want to go. Okay. You can recognize. So what are the numbers?

10, 20, 30, 40, how high does it go? It starts at zero, and you can get as high, used to be as high as 70 weight oil, and gear lube actually goes as high as 95 on a viscosity scale. Interesting. Okay. We have another anonymous feedback. I was watching a past video where you mentioned Ford and the faulty transmissions they knowingly sold. Are you going to mention the Corolla hatchback and there are transmission problems that Toyota is trying to hide?

And what about all those infotainment systems that are going out after four years that Toyota is trying not to fix? I do know that there was a recall on the Toyota Hatchback, I think, in December for the transmission. I checked it out while you're on vacation with Mark, our service manager. And the transmission issue was a technical issue. What do you call it? A computer refresh. Yeah, computer refresh. And there were only a few cars involved.

About 4,000, I think. Yeah, and that was caught immediately, and there were very few they got on the road. And actually, the reflash was done on a lot of new cars before they were ever forward. That recall came out shortly after the, as soon as they came out, it was in December last year. And so it was a total different issue. And it sounds to me like an anonymous feedback from a Ford dealer, which is okay. I mean, I'm not saying that toilet is without sin, toilets done things that I never liked. I've never known, we've never known of Toyota to do something in the way of premeditated concealment of a problem.

They were accused of that back during the sudden acceleration, but they were exonerated because NASA and some other official agencies checked. There really was no sudden acceleration in terms of an electronic or computer issue. It had to do with formats and so on and so forth. But I don't know of any premeditated things. like Ford got in trouble with by Toyota. Unless they're really good at concealing stuff. Well, they may be. They never know.

That's just speculation. As a matter of fact, because we are not a commercial for Toyota, I'm going to throw one thing right out. Right now, the 2019 RAV-4s, which I own one, has an issue with the transmission with a shifting situation, and Toyota's aware of it, and they're working on a fix. But sometimes these things take a little bit of time. for them to find them and for them they might not have realized it was out there and it takes time before they can figure out how to get it straight the key is if it's a safety issue and the manufacturers like it or not if it's just a driveability problem as they consider not to be a safety issue they'll keep them on the road and there'll be technical bulletins to go out and they're I don't like the technical bullets because oftentimes they're secret in the sense that they're not publicized so you don't know so you get to the dealership and they even tell the dealers Don't discuss it with the customer unless the customer brings it up.

I don't like that for Toyota or any manufacturer. But the unconscionable thing, unforgivable thing, is to know there's a safety problem. And Ford in this case knew there was a safety problem. They have emails and conversations. They have people that have confessed to knowing. And so it's like Volkswagen did with the emissions. It's not quite as bad because the emission is. isn't as serious is a safety issue, but to lie to the customers and the lie of the federal

government is unconscionable. And a manufacturer, I think, should be prosecuted for that, and I think the CEO ought to go to the slammer. There you go. Yeah. Okay. We're going to go to Barbara, who's been holding, and she's calling about her engine light that stays on.

I think Rick can take care of that one. Good morning, Barbara. Hello? Hi, Barbara. Good morning, Barbara. Hi. Hi. I've been listening up about a month on my way to work.

It's a long drive. Yeah. My check engine, my VSA and trial back, I took to a dealer, and they said they couldn't find out what was wrong. Recently, my starter went out and I had that replay. And then the gentleman said something about CO. sensor being out causing that. Oh, okay, Barbara asked on Facebook, yeah. Okay, so the starter went out and he mentioned the CO2 sensor to her.

Okay, yeah, I think he might have been talking about that O2 sensor. And if the O2 sensor is starting to have an issue, it will turn on the check engine light. However, even if those sensors completely quit working, your car will not stop running. because it'll actually do what's called go into a safety mode where instead of the computer adjusting the fuel trim based on how it's running, it simply will use a set of charts that it has in its memory and it will just go with a straight signal.

So your car will still run pretty normally. It'll just have that check engine light on. I would suggest when the light comes on, go straight to somewhere and have them pull the codes on it and write down what codes you're seeing and then take that to the dealership or to your mechanic and they should be able to straighten it out from there. I'll ask you, I'll put a thousand fire to you over Highlander.

It is an older car, but it runs very well. He's just something about I have four sensors. Would that be correct? Yes, it is. Rick, tell of the independent places that don't charge for pulling the codes. Places like AutoZone, I believe discount auto parts, most auto parts stores, the big name brand part stores, we'll have these little generic code pullers.

They can come out and plug it into your car, and they'll tell you what trouble code it's detecting, and they usually would do that for free. It only takes a few minutes to connect one in, and it just plugs in right under the dash, takes about five minutes to do it. Okay, I have an overloady, and sometimes I feel like these places plug on. They look older, they, you know, like they can, you know, the same thing. Yeah, they, that's... We don't know much about cars.

We've got to throw them off. Yeah, well, that's why we're here, you know, make sure that people are aware of the, uh, the pitfalls. They can't listen to is, uh, be listening very much. I think we're in a bad cell area, Barbara. It's kind of hard you're breaking up a little bit. Yeah, I can't understand. So, I thought it was our technical.

no it sounds like a cell phone reception problem yeah I think we're only getting about every other word but Barbara the best option is when you find what that code is I just send us a quick text on Facebook and we can help you define just you know just what you need to have that fixed and then just call a couple places and ask tell them you have that specific code and ask them how much would they charge to install that sensor and call like a couple different pep boys a couple different auto shop and go with the all long as it's a good reputable shop just go with whoever's the cheapest price thank you I appreciate quite welcome thank you Barbara Barbara are you a first-time

caller okay Barbara I'll stay on the line and pass your contact information to me and I'll get a check out to you for $50. Thank you for listening to Earl Stewart on Cars. Okay. Okay. Thank you. 877-960, or Texas is 772-497-2-497-30, and Sue's got some more text over there. Yeah, let's get caught up.

This is from Mark. It says, I kind of agree with Mark. Hydrogen cars do not produce hydrocarbons. They burn H2 and O2. There is no carbon in the fuel. Gasoline has carbon and hydrogen. That's why gas cars produce hydrocarbons from Mark. And I said, that's what I thought.

I'll smack Rick in the face with this. BAP. He is completely correct. Okay. I was wondering about that. I just didn't want to say anything. Okay, the next one we have, this is from our anonymous feedback, your anonymous feedback.com.

Hi, Rick. I once dated a woman who told me that, using the air conditioner while being closed off from the outside air was bad for the engine. Is there any truth to this? Also, I think I remember you saying a while back that before turning off the car, it's a good idea to allow the outside air in and turn the fan on high to eliminate the chance of mold. Is this true? And that's from Britt and Los Angeles. The first part, no. You can run that AC on Recirculate as much as you want to keep it nice and cold. Won't hurt the engine at all. Won't hurt anything at all. The second part

If you have an issue where you're in a humid area and you notice you're starting to get kind of a musty smell, that's the easiest thing to try is about two or three minutes before you get home. Switch over to that fresh air intake and put that fan on high and it will help to get some of the condensation off of the evaporator core and leave it on fresh air so that the air can circulate a little bit and it will reduce that moisture and reduce any mold or mildo buildup. All right. And our last one on Your Anonymous Feedback.com, hi, I love your show. I'm considering buying a new car from your dealership, but I live about 250 miles away.

Is there still a break-in period for the first 1,000 miles? Don't do something for new cars. I don't want to cause damage to the new car while driving highway on the highway to get home. Thank you. And keep up the great work. Break-in period. And the answer there is no, because the engine companies now, when they build the engines, they actually put them on a dynamometer, and they do the break-in for you.

Sounds great. So, those cars are, as soon as you get in that new car, you're ready to drive along in a nice, safe manner. Okay, great. We're going to keep Rick busy. Here's another one. What would be a good additive to add to gas to keep the engine running clean? And that's from, no name on that.

That's from, I'm sorry, that's from Bob and Stewart. None, in my opinion. I would stick with a good name brand fuel company, and I really would. wouldn't put any additives. I don't use any additives in my own personal vehicles at all. Well, think about it. It's a very competitive market place out there. If there were an additive that would put in gas, it would do something significant, like better fuel economy, less pollution, greater power, anything. The oil companies would own that in a heartbeat. If somebody was selling it in a store, they'd buy it from them for $100 million, and they

would put it in their gasoline. So there is no add. that you can buy in the store that's going to make your gasoline any better. Okay, great. Hey, by the way, Mr. Hand says hi on our other YouTube channel. Oh, good morning. Hi, Mr. Hand.

Okay, Jerry in West Palm Beach has texted us. He says, I plan on buying a used car next month, and I'm going to use the information I've learned on this show. I'm going to negotiate online. In the original email, is that when I should mention

that I'm shopping multiple dealerships? Also, is that one I should, should include the out-the-door price affidavit. I would say you can. I think that you probably should wait until you get a price. I think if you tell them ahead of time that you're going to be shopping multiple dealerships, it's going to be more difficult for you to get the price. Car dealers don't like, if they think you're going to buy a car from them,

at least you'll get a price. It'll be a high price, but you will get a price. but you will get a price. And I would start out, and then I would say, I'm going to take this price and shop and compare it. I want to be sure this is your best out-the-door price plus government fees only, and then I will shop and compare it.

What do you think, Sto? I think that's the best way to do it. I mean, there's nothing wrong with letting the dealers know right up front that you're shopping and comparing. I think the out-the-door price out-the-door price out-a-dave it, David, is maybe comes a little bit later in when you actually get to the dealership. But actually, you know, I mean, you can download it.

You can send it as a PDF in an email. It's really up to you. As long as they know that you're serious about looking, that you're comparing other dealers, that's probably going to be the best, the most effective weapon that you have. I'm thinking about, you know, typically, let's go back to the old days, you'll walk into a car dealership and you want to buy a car and say, I like that one there, how much is it? And the dealer says, or the salesman says, are you going to buy the day?

and if you say yes I'm going to buy today then things start to roll and the deception begins but you get a price if you say to a salesman I'm not ready to buy yet you might get this answer well when you're ready to buy come back and see me or go out and shop around

get your best price and bring it in and I'll beat it and that's the game that likes to be played by the car salespeople and that's the only reason I say say that you might be better off to play the game with them up to the point where you get a price and then hit them with the fact that you'll be shopping and comparing this price. At least you've got one price. They might say then, well, if you get a better price, come back and see me, and you have to say

then, if you don't give me your best price now, you'll never hear from me again. Yep. Well, it definitely works. Yeah. Okay, we're all called up. Okay, folks. This is from Christina, who is texting me about her tires, and she wants to extend the life of her tires. And I think that Rick can probably address this.

But I can tell you, Christina, I learned that going to a gas station, the gas gauges there are really abused and sometimes unreliable. So I just check my own air pressure on my tires. but we'll send it over to Rick and let him explain a few things to you. Number one thing I'd recommend, put your car on a diet. If you're carrying a lot of stuff around in the backseat or the trunk or the back of your vehicle, stuff that you don't really need all the need at that time, take it out. Less weight in the car, less weight on the tires, less wear and tear. Keep your tire pressures where they're supposed to be and buy a good quality.

tire pressure gauge so to check your tire pressures at least once a month if not a little more often and other than that just try to avoid hard starts and hard stops and hard cornering gentle driving will make your tires last a whole lot longer thanks so much rick we're going to go to dave in lake park good morning dave hello david yes sir how you doing we're doing good what's up That's great. I'm from Lake Park, but I'm on a work trip out of state at the moment. And a friend of mine asked me a question. I told her I'd go to the expert and get back to her. She's got a Chevy Cobleau, 2006, and she wants to sell it to a relative.

She was wondering what the approximate value of that might be. Anything, can you give me a rough idea? I'll get back to her. Yeah, we can Google that for you. There's a couple of companies out there buying cars directly. One of them is we buy any car.com, just the way it sounds. and we buy any car.com. And there's also, what's the other one? Carvana.

Carvana. Carvana.com. Carvana.com and we buy anycar.com. Our two places, you can get a pretty good idea there. We actually check with those companies ourselves when we're buying cars or sometimes trading in cars. The other way is to take it to a dealer, the best way probably, take it to maybe three dealers of that make,

vehicle, go to the used car department and say, I want to sell the car. What will you give me for it? I'm going to go to two other dealers and get their price, and that's the best way to get the best price. That would be Chevy, of course, right? Yeah, go to Chevrolete. Don't let them think you're buying a used car or new car. Just say, I've got too many cars in the family. I want to downsize, give me your best price, take it out, drive it, give me your best cash price, and do it twice. And then you got CarMax in Boynton, if you want to,

want to drive the car down there. They do this routinely, and they'll give you a price that's good for five days, and you can shop and compare it around. And that gives you the exact market value of the car. Okay, well, I'm in Ohio. Is Carmackson, Ohio, too, or just Florida? They're all over the United States. Boynton, in this area, there's probably three or four.

We shop, mystery shop, to most of them in this area. But, yeah, they're all over the USA. Gotcha. All right. Well, thanks so much for your time. Mr. Stewart. Have a great day. Well, Sam Dio. Thanks for going. Thanks, Dave. We're going to go to Marm. Okay, ma'am. Thank you. We're going to go to Marv in Loxahatchie. Good morning, Marv. Good morning. Thank you for taking my call.

You're welcome. I have one for Rick. My wife has a 2007 Honda Civic, and yesterday the malfunction indicator lamp came on. I'm looking in the manual, it says that this indicator comes on while driving. It means one of the engines' emissions control systems may have a problem. Even though you may feel no difference in your vehicle's performance, it can reduce your fuel economy and cause increased emissions. Continued operation may cause serious damage.

Now, my wife drives this car very, very slightly. She doesn't drive much at all. And I was wondering, and our mechanic happens to be out of town. and I was wondering if we could wait a couple of weeks before bringing it over to him. Well, the first question I have, did you recently fuel up the tank? I'm sorry? Yeah, yeah, it went on to say that to it. It went on to say that check the fuel cap and we did check it and we tightened it and we heard a couple of clicks. We know we know it's tight.

Okay, so the fuel cap was on nice and tight. yeah yeah uh the next thing i would do if i would stop in at local auto zone or discount auto parts any good parts store and just ask them to pull the trouble codes they have a little scanner they'll come out and they'll plug it in and they'll tell you what that trouble code is and if it's something like just a simple gas cap code i would ignore it i wouldn't worry about it at all odds are it might it's going to be that uh potentially it could be one of the other sensors on the engine but even then you'll be just fine for a week or two until your train your mechanic gets back into town i'm assuming this is someone that you trust really well and you'll be just fine

waiting until he gets back in to get that checked out and solved but well for peace of mind auto zone will pull that code and tell you what it is i appreciate that we have a couple of weeks that was very concerned about it. I'm surprised about the language Honda used. Would you read that again, the part where they said something bad would happen if you didn't do something? Well, it said, at the end of the paragraph,

it said, continued operation may cause serious damage. Yeah, I'm really surprised at that. I agree with Rick. And I've never heard that language from a manufacturer before about a sensor indicating an emissions problem. We know of no emissions problem that can damage the car. Well, if it were a misfire in the engine, say the coil had gone bad or spark plug had quit working, and the car was misfiring, that could potentially cause damage to the catalytic converter by getting too much fuel in it

or cause other parts to fail. But that's in a very rare case. I could tell you that the car is running fine as far as we're concerned. It's running fine. We don't see. any problem with the running of the car. But the light is on, and you see that idiot light on, you know, you get scared, you don't know what it is. Right. That's a 2007, what? Hydrocytic, yeah.

Yeah, I'm going to look into that because, you know, we hear this all the time. One of the standard things we advise people when they call about mission problems is that fixing an emission problem is a matter of conscience on your part because, you know, you're polluting more and it's not good for our environment. but in terms of affecting the cars from a safety or I'm going to damage my car kind of a thing,

we've never heard this language. So I'm going to investigate this thing with Honda and see what I can find out. But thank you very much. That's a very interesting call. Yeah, just to point something out to you, the paragraph goes on. If the indicator comes on repeatedly, even though it may turn off as you continue driving, have the vehicle checked by your dealer as soon as possible. That's what it said.

Well, you should get a check as soon as possible from the emissions standpoint, but what bothers me is the implication that your car is going to blow up and you're going to be looking, yeah, and I think if that's not true, I think a Honda should have to answer for that because they're trying to scare you into having that emissions fixed by the dealer. I don't like that. But we want to investigate anyway, but thank you very much for that call. Right, and we thank you for the peace of mind you're giving us. Have a wonderful day. You're very welcome, Marf. Ladies and gentlemen, I just want to thank all of you for tuning in to Earl Stewart on Cars. You're a very, very important part of the show. And you can give us a call at 877-960, or you can text us at 772-49-6530. And I believe Stu has some texts that he has to get to.

You're listening to the best of the Earl Stewart on Cars program. If you have a question, text it to 772-4976530 or online at Your Anonymous Feedback.com, and we'll answer it during our next live show on November 16th. Let's jump over to Rick, because I think he's got some piling up over there. Yeah, we do. From YouTube, Ernesto is asking, he has a 2014 Camry, and he's asking, when does the coolant need its first? change and how often after the first change for engine coolant. And Toyota specifies 150,000 miles and every 50,000 after that for most of our cars now for engine coolant. Let's see, who we got next year? That's almost like never. Yeah, 150,000

miles is well actually on modern cars, that's just a little past teenage getting to where the car is adult level. So, yeah, because now these engines are lasting 200,000, 300,000 miles easily. So, people are kicking their teenagers out of the house earlier and earlier. True, very true. Sometimes I want to. And he also, Ernesto also brought up a little issue where he says, and I just lost my page there, he has an 04 Mustang.

He says back in 06, he saw an issue with the fuel. causing a problem and he said Ford was able to solve this under warranty for him he said but he wound up they sent him a technical service bulletin recommending that he use either Chevron or Texaco fuels and I'm kind of surprised by that that they would specify a specific brand of fuel that they wanted him to use but hey sometimes car manufacturers like to say this is what we want but you know that's That's amazing we have back-to-back calls that worry me a little bit about our knowledge. And I'm, this Honda thing, I'm going to have to investigate, but this thing here was Chevron and Texaco fuel.

We need to Google that and do a deep diet as to why that was. I don't believe a manufacturer would recommend two specific oil companies, gasoline companies, without a reason. Could be that they own stock. in their Chevron in Texaco, but that's, I'm being facetious, but let's find out. It's certainly possible. There has to be a reason. It's either a good reason or a bad reason, but there is a reason, and we want to investigate that.

And Donovan has pointed out that Mullinax Ford in Lake Park has no dealer fee, although did they come up with a small one, or have they gotten rid of that again now? Well, they said they had no dealer fee. We missed result to him. they did have a dealer fee. Yes. And then we called Mullinix himself in Northern Florida. We talked to him.

He was a little surprised by that. He talked to their general manager who was also a partner. And I spoke to the general manager who was a partner. And we had a conversation which was never quite satisfying to me that he accepted the fact that it was a dealer fee and we told him we were going to mystery shop him again and we dropped the ball. So we will go back and find out. But they were advertising that they had no dealer fee and it was not true. They did have a dealer fee, albeit not a large one. It's $53. It's printed on their bar's order and it's called a dealer delivery fee. Yes. Dealer delivery fee by any other

name is a dealer fee. A dealer fee is just additional profit to the dealer by adding to the price of the car, charging the customer for things that they should be paying for. themselves called profit yeah and donovan also points out off-lease only sells a lot of cars with major damage having been done to the car and that we have found is true in the past that cars that have been in severe accidents and then repaired you might find them on that off-lease-only lot so keep your eyes open and you'll find that our mr shopping report coming up very shortly because we did shop offlease only.com that they fully disclose that to their coming customers and they say these cars have been in accidents and we buy a lot of cars that have been

accidents and you'll hear the rest of it. That's right. And the last one I have is from Patrick and he's saying the Toyota Rav4 hybrid versus gas models properly maintained, which do you think has a better chance of longevity, 10 years plus? I would say the hybrid, you've got the battery issue, which we all know that I think they're guaranteed for 100,000 miles or six years. Eight years. Eight years. So in terms of the vehicle itself, the battery has to be replaced at a certain point. And, of course, the gasoline model doesn't have a hybrid battery.

I would pretty much agree with you on that. And, of course, as the technology is getting better and better on these hybrid batteries, they're going to be lasting a lot longer. No. All right. You all caught up, Rick? We are. Okay, great. We have a text here from Everett. And Everett is referencing our earlier conversation about the RAV4 transmission technical service bulletin. Good morning. Is the issue with the RAV4 transmission something that toy dealers have to disclose to customers before purchase? The answer is no, toy does not require them to disclose them. Usually when there's a recall, they'll do a stop sale. But this doesn't rise to that level.

So, no, actually, it's not really being disclosed. I don't like that. I don't like it either. But at this point right now, Toyota doesn't really have a fix for it. I've been watching for this. And that's what the disclosure would say, this car's got a problem, and we don't have a fix for it. And they're not requiring the dealers to do that, and they should.

And just for full disclosure as to what we're actually talking about, in a 2019 RAV-4, the four-cylinder, I know, specifically because that's what I'm what I have my wife is driving it if you're coming to a stop and you get almost to a dead stop but then traffic starts moving and you step over and hit the gas pedal it the vehicle will actually jerk and shudder a little bit before it finds its gear and it's almost like it's hunting for the gear and it'll shift a couple times before it gets in the proper gear to take off and you'll you'll feel it actually shake and jerk the vehicle a bit okay we Well, I can't help but say that we try to be transparent and equal, and we have to say Toyota is doing the wrong thing by doing that.

You know, if you want to sell a car with a jerky transmission and you're going to fix it later, that's good. You can't fix it now. That's good. That's okay. Just tell the customer about it. And I'll ask you a question, Rick. had you known that when you bought this car for your wife, would you have bought that model or a different model?

Be honest. Total honesty, I think I probably would still have bought that car because we had really researched them and I'm kind of, I'm throwing a bit of trust at Toyota, hoping that yes, they'll come out with a fix very soon because I've seen them fix other models. It takes a little bit of time sometimes. times until they get the proper programming, but once they know there's a problem, they do

jump on it. They do try to get it as quickly as possible. But you wish you'd known about that before you bought it, right? I do. And as a matter of fact, my wife, when it had occurred to her several times, and the first time that happened that I was in the car, she actually got a little nervous thinking that I would get angry that it was her driving. And I'm like, no, this is something with the car. And so it, you know, I caught on pretty quickly that I knew it was the problem with the car and not with her driving but okay still we got some more text yes we do we have a question from steve who's watching us on live facebook video uh steve wants to know to do the code readers from harbor freight do they work are you familiar with those i actually i let's see

i i've got a little generic one that i purchased it like auto zone or something but yeah you can if if you get it from harbor freight because all it really is is just reading the information so it's not going to hurt your car to plug it into plug in and test it it. If it doesn't work, tell them you want your money back. But yeah, it's all right. They will work just fine. Thanks, Rick. We have one. There's no name on this one. It came in on our text line. It says, it's funny the way trends and technology converge to points where seemingly unrelated systems suddenly become symbiotic. Consider the explosion vehicle infotainment systems. While this trend steadily makes vehicles less safe, a parallel trend in autonomous vehicles is getting

to the point where it will mitigate and then eliminate the danger posed by distracting infotainment communication systems. Crazy how things work out that way. That's interesting. Very intellectual and intelligent question there. We have a very, very, varied audience. I like that. That's great.

Autonomous is the name of the game, and it eliminates everything we're talking about of the show now. No more problem once you have that totally all-electriced out of his car, and as long as you don't like to drive cars, it'll be a lot of fun. We have one last text, and it's a quick answer, and then we could probably get to the mystery shopping report. Good morning, Earl. When do you expect the new Toyota Super will come out, and what will be the expected price range?

It's out, and anywhere from $58,000 to $300,000. Yeah, we sold one for $58,000, and the other dealer, that was the sticker price, and we sold it to the restaurant owner at Cotton Caper. That's right. And North Palm Beach, and he says he loves it. He paid sicker. We made $4,000 approximately. on the car. Fifty-eight thousand sticker price. That's right. And we wholly endorse cotton capers in

North Palm Beach for a delicious seafood meal. Exactly. There you go. Ladies and gentlemen, I wanted to bring to your attention, Earle's column in the Florida Weekly. That is the top 10 cars ad scams. And also in the hometown news, car dealers make more money financing your car than selling it. And if you didn't pick up those issues, you can go to Earl on Cars.com. And you can find those columns and so much more. Also, I wanted to let you know our lines are, well, we're not taking any more calls right now. We're going to address this mystery shopping report, and the mystery shopping report comes to us from off-lease. Well, off-lease only in West Palm Beach. Now, back to the recovering car dealer.

Now, Rick just handed me this device. Where did you buy this? This is from, I believe, AutoZone or PEP Boys, and I think this one was around $30. Yeah. And you can see the little plug. There's a connector under the dash on every car. It's identical on all modern cars since about 2000, actually I think about 97 even. And you simply plug that in and the little tool will light up and it will just say, read the code. You just push that and it will come up with a code.

and you can Google that code and it will tell you what your engine is seeing and from there you can solve a lot of your problems with your car save yourself a lot of money. Save yourself a lot of money. Exactly. Absolutely.

I got an idea real quick. Why don't you take that with you when you go to the dealership and say, no, use this. Don't charge me. That's a great idea. I'd like to let you know about the USA Today in the money section. It's the Weekender.

Earl and I were both looking at this and here are the 20 most stolen new cars. So take a look at that. It's very interesting. Okay, and you car thieves take a look of that too because apparently these are the ones that are easiest to steal. Okay, mystery shopping report. Mr. Shop of Off Lease Only in West Palm Beach, Tacata Test. Last Saturday, we received a question from a listener in Cambridge, Massachusetts through our anonymous feedback website. your anonymous feedback.com. The listener pointed out that it had been

over a year since we mystery shop off-lease only, the chain of used car super stores here in Florida. I suggested we send an Agent Thunder to check them out. Ask and he shall receive. We dispatched Agent Thunder yesterday to the West Palm Beach location of

off-lease only before getting into the report little history. Earl Stewart on Cars is mystery shop off-lease-only may be a half dozen times, but we've had mixed results. Currently, they hold the coveted spot on our recommended list. We have good dealer, baddealer, list.com. We recommend folks dealers you can deal with, but you still have to be careful.

And then we have the ones that you don't deal with. Don't even try to be careful on those. And off lease only has been on our coveted spot recently. I've repeatedly endorsed them as a great place to buy a use car. However, I have also advised caution when shopping in off-lease only because the type of vehicles they purchase for resale. Now, when a car's been wrecked, it's devalued. People don't want to buy a car that's been wrecked, even though it's been fixed just fine. Sometimes when a car's been wrecked, it's been wrecked too bad, and it's not even safe, and you shouldn't even buy one.

Offleash only says that they only sell the ones that are safe to drive. but in full fairness they do disclose that fact and that is essentially what you have to be aware of however if you buy a car that's been in a wreck

say a big one several thousand dollars and it's been fixed and it literally looks good cosmetically it's just fine and you believe it's safe when you go to trade that car in it will be worth significantly less

they call that diminished value and that's another show that you need to talk to insurance companies about and maybe your lawyer. So it's a little bit of a dangerous thing when you buy a car that's been in a significant wreck. But the reason it's okay, they say off-lease, because they sell cars for less, and they do. They sell cars for less, and we do recommend them. I've also advised caution because they failed a couple of ticotata tests we subjected them to in the past.

because of this incidentally a minor legal matter arose between me and off-lease only and they basically sent me a cease and desist letter which is a threatened to sue and we wrote them back our attorney wrote them back and said we told the truth that this was a case that your salesperson did not disclose the to cut airbag and I'm not going to cease and desist desist, I mean, from telling the truth. So once again, we maintain our perfect record, knock on the wood, after 15 years of never being sued. Being threatened, but we haven't been sued yet.

So you folks out there to think we're not telling the truth, you can make a lot of money if you sue us. They tried us on. Yeah, try us on. At any rate, that was four months ago, and we've not been sued by all police only. So this week, in the spirit of our renewed focus on the Takata Airbag issue crisis, we went back and we were prompted by a loyal listener to return, and we have done this. It wasn't hard to find our target vehicle, 2017 Mercedes-Benz E-class AMG, coop, with a no-fix, Takata Airbag recall. I repeat, no fix.

inflator device that goes into the dash or wherever that in the invent of an accident the inflator blows the airbag up and these inflators are in short supply and they can't build them fast

enough and a lot of secure took out of airbag recalls they don't have inflators so that's a no-fix situation and if you buy one of these cars you're just out of luck you either park it and don't drive it or you risk your life and drive it until the inflator becomes available.

I arrived around, I'm going into the off-lease only now. I arrived around lunchtime to a very busy dealership. They are busy. They sell a lot of cars. Largest retailer of use cars in Florida, maybe second only to CarMax. Oh, yeah. I mean, in our area,

I know that the local off-leash-only out-sells carmacks. I fill over a thousand used cars a month. And if you look at the nameplace to the back of these cars on the right, road, you see a lot of off lease only. They're a very big factor in our market. I was quickly greeted by Javon, Javan. I think Javan. Javan. I was quickly greeted by Javan, J-A-V-O-N, a polite, very young salesperson. Javon shook my hand, said he would be assisting me today. He led me over to a cluster of computers that were currently being used by other salespeople with customers. We waited for one to become available. That is busy. I can see this. You know, wow.

we talked a little while we waited Javon asked me told me he was a brand new to the business and it had only been an off lease a very short time a computer became available we claimed it Javon asked me for my vital statistics

and I typed my answers on his keyboard oh actually had me oh he did you type to know I told him about the Mercedes I saw online and he pulled it up on the computer screen Javon went on to describe the off-lease-only process. The price was a price. There was no negotiation.

That's refreshing, really. I mean, who likes the haggle and hassle? Some people do. Some people. And Javon explained they do buy vehicles for resale with accidents, but all of them are fully repaired and safe prior to sale. Now that's I don't think they used to do that

But now they do Because there's a lot of conversation about them Buying these wreck cars They owned it They stood up to the plate And they owned it They stood up to it He said they do not sell flood cars

Or cars with major issues Now a major issue is a relative term Pretty vague Yeah pretty vague And you'll see why we're worried about that Later in the report He also explained They sell them

as they get them meaning that if there is a scratch or damage to a leather interior they won't fix it if they get a car with only one key that's the way it is in other words everything is sold as is

and that is a very common car term as is means what you see is what you get and the disclosure is refreshing and if every off lease sales person or if every car salesperson did what Javon did, that would be a great thing

for car buyers everywhere. They don't do that, but Javon did. So far they're doing great. So far it looks real good. But stay tuned. Javon said the benefits of all this means that their cars are cheaper than anyone else's. And that's why they sell more cars than anyone else. Another true statement. Almost true. Well, CarMax does sell more cars, but none of this market. then he asked me if I was comfortable with all of that

boy this really sounds professional I said I was and I said let's get started Sharon said that before looking at the Mercedes would review the Carfax report everything really looks good this is when like low ominous music should start playing yeah you hear me Rudy exactly right away he pointed out

the accent that appeared on the first page of the report that's good look at this an accident He said there had been one with just minor damage. Now, we get into verbiage here, that it had been completely repaired. Note the Carfax report did not specifically indicate minor damage. Javon said minor, but not the Carfax report. The Carfax report indicated that vehicle was functional and airbags did not deploy. Estimated the cost of the damage was in excess of $1,000.

Now, one could argue that if the damage was, you would, was in excess of $1,000, it might not be considered minor. But that's, again, you know, a judgment. Furthermore, the summary section of the report indicated structural. Now I worry a little bit. Structural damage. Right on the Carfax report. Exactly.

Javon moved on and commented about the service history, emphasizing that the previous owner took good care of it. As he read, I noticed the recall on the carfax. I noticed it, but remained silent. Javon finished and said, it was time to see the car. I asked him if that was it? Were there any other issues? No, we give Javan another chance. Javon said, no. I wanted to give him another chance and ask him, so nothing, no recalls. Specifically asked about recalls. Exactly. Yeah. I debriefed Agent Thunder. I'm like, wait, you asked about recalls and he says, yeah, and it was right in front of you. And there, Javon saw it.

I, as a shopper, saw it, asked him twice. And Javon said, no recalls. This is really bad. You know, it's really sad. I gave him every opportunity to catch what was obviously missing, but he clearly said, there were no recalls. John asked me to wait. He said, you get the car for me,

and after maybe five minutes they returned, let me outside, gave me a great thing. presentation of the features and benefits, and we took it for a test drive. On the drive, he'd tell him a little bit about life and off lease only. He said he enjoyed it, but it was tough. And the hours were long, he said there was a lot of salesperson turnover, and we hear that in most car dealerships. He said that he'd only been there a short while, but was already feeling a little burned out. That's a term we hear often at car dealerships. I sympathized with him and told him to hang in there. I asked it was okay if we could get the numbers right away and I'd be back

this afternoon to buy the car. Javon said that was okay but he couldn't hold the car and they don't. I said it would only be a half an hour or an hour or so Javon said that shouldn't be a problem and the car would probably still be there. Back at the store we went inside and Javon asked me to wait for him to get my purchase order. He came back and in a few minutes and had me the buyer's order, which by the way was not really a buyer's order. It was a worksheet. Big difference. Buyers order is a legal document. The worksheet is a worksheet. Selling tool. On purpose, they do not want it to be legal. By the way, the price was just like Javon said, but they added a $299 pre-delivery service charge and a $79 tag agency fee.

and these are other names for dealer fees, the generic term, which is additional profit. So CarMax does add additional profit after the quoted price. Offlease only. Offlease only, I'm sorry. But so does Carmx. They all do it. They all do it. Yeah, they all do it.

CarMax didn't used to, and then they went back and did it. Off lease only does it. And that's a violation of state law, by the way, because the advertised price must include the dealer fees and they didn't. They're too small dealer fees albeit $378. Epilogue, they failed. And it's very sad. And as I go through the mystery shopping documentation, I look at all three of the test that prove that they do have an open recall that's unfixable. The Carfax report clearly states that and I can show that to the camera there. And then we'd go to the next page, which I believe is the NHTSA,

which clearly says, no, this is Mercedes-Benz website. It says, remedy not available, airbag recall. And, of course, then there is the NHTSA, which is safercar.gov. And it says here that the recall is there and it's not fixable. So this car, Carfax, this all three. lease only car salesperson, I have to say deliberately misrepresented this car as being safe, is having no recalls, and in fact it has a recall, and the worst part is you can't fix it. He would have sold this Mercedes to me as a shopper, and I would have in good faith thinking

he was telling me the truth, driven it off the lot. so car off lease only attorneys off lease only if you want to sue me let's go i'm telling you that you did something terrible something dangerous you misrepresented you lied to a potential buyer you thought was a potential buyer sue me yeah and this was a much more egregious incident than last time and we pushed we pushed and we did everything impossible to get giovon jvon jvon jones last name in full disclosure and off-lease only in full disclosure lied to a customer tried to get them to buy a dangerous car that could kill him and you are a very large retailer and I would have to speculate that if it happened once with Javon Jones and the mystery shopper on the Mercedes-Benz

it has happened before and will happen again. Is it true that off-lease only is looking to go public? I've heard the rumor. I don't know. I've heard that they were possibly for sale, and I heard that they were going public, and it's a moneymaker. They saw a lot of cars, and that's another thing that makes it scary, because when a large retailer does something this bad, you wonder how many of these cars are being delivered. Correct. Yeah. So we got some grades coming in. We do. From listeners, yeah, we've got quite a few. We have,

So we have a no name, gives him an F, another no name, a D. Sandy gives him an F, Linda, hi Linda, gives him a huge F and a shame on you. Gil gives him an F, Mary D, gives him a D, and Doug, and Olly gives them two Fs. Two F and F. There we go. Okay, how about our online over here for you, Rick? Frank says F for the salesperson, and more importantly, the dealership for even putting this car up for sale. Yeah. And Mr. Hand says, count is full. Pitcher winds up. Fastball to off, Lee's only strike three. You're out, you bums.

You're listening to the best of the Earl Stewart on Cars program. If you have a question, text it to 772-4976530 or online at Your Anonymous Feedback.com and we'll answer it during our next live show on November 16th. It is. I mean, it's a black and white issue. Let's go around the staff here. Okay. You know, you think it might be helpful if we just pass all these mystery shop reports on to the Attorney General, Ashley Moody. Anyway, it's kind of a rhetoric question. Guys, don't forget Earl did a column, deaths from dangerous recalls are the fault of the legislators. So read that, and I give them an F. That's true. I got to concur.

I mean, everything was going so good with the disclosure on the accident, even though it was a little iffy, but it was really good. And then, boom. And listen, when I was talking to Agent Thunder about, was he being deceptive, Agent Thunder's got a big heart, and I do too. He thinks that Javan just didn't know how to read the Carfax report. I think he was trained well on the whole accident disclosure thing. And he said he kind of.

to look like it's fumbling through. So benefit of the doubt, I just think it was more poor training and ignorance on Javon's part, but they got to do better than that. Back when they wrote that letter, the attorneys, their argument was, well, we gave a Carfax report or we had a Carfax report online, that's a disclosure. And we say, no, that is not a disclosure. It's a confusing document to a lot of people. And if it just handed it across a desk, it's not going to, it doesn't emphasize the danger that the consumer is going to face. Exactly. And whether Javon was being honest or not. the fault lies with the fault lies with the company and it is your responsibility

especially in a life and death issue to train your people they should have the maturity and the training to know to tell someone they're buying a car that can kill them and it goes higher than that how about the used car manager how about the general manager when you put that car on your lot before it was deemed safe for sale, you should have not put that car on your lot. If the car had a fixable recall, then you can make an argument about disclosure. And it's not a good argument, but it's some argument to say, okay, we disclosed in writing that this car had a recall and you should take it to the Mercedes dealer to get fixed. But this car did not have a fix. So you bought the car, you can't

take it to the Mercedes dealer. There is no disclosure you could have possibly made that would have made anybody by that car. Nobody would have bought that car knowing the car could not be fixed and it could kill them by driving it. Nancy? Two minutes. Yeah, you can't be careless with this. Everybody fails them, right? Mark and Ernesto both agree F and F and myself, I got to go with the F. Yeah. We're almost out of time. And I just want to say to the legislators listening, the lawyers listening, Are you hearing what we're saying here? Someone get excited about this, will you?

Governor DeSanti of the state of Florida, Attorney General of the state of Florida, the regulators, folks, this is going on right now. I know all you care about is getting elected and getting re-elected, but think about the lives of the Florida citizens that are buying these cars. And this is real life. This really happened,

and off lease only won't sue me. because I told the truth. So there's some responsible people out there. Politicians, legislators, regulators, do something about it, will you? Help us out. Please help us save lives. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in, Earl Stewart on Cars. We're at the end of our show, and we truly appreciate you and your dedication to us.

We'll see you next week. Vendor, too. Vendombe. Vendom. Thank you. Thank you. Oh. Oh, my

way. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. And do you. Let's come.