Earl Stewart on Cars - 11.27.2021 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Al Packer Ford

Episode Date: November 27, 2021

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s mystery shopper, Agent Thunder visits a local Ford dealer to see what they have on the lot and how much over sticker they will charge for a new 2022 Ford Ranger XLT pickup. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Well, good morning, everybody. You might have been listening to the show for the past three weeks, but it hasn't been me. It's been a recording. Hope I didn't fool you. We didn't try to fool you, and it's good to be back. I hesitate to say that we're live because now we can't use this as a as a repeat show

but I don't plan on being away again for a while Nancy and I took a little long delayed vacation and we were in Key West had a wonderful time for three weeks we're back with the original crew almost we've got my son Stu is running a little late this morning

he'll be bursting through the door momentarily spread the word if you're a regular listener that we are live and we are back and we plan on being back here every week. We have no vacations or anything like that plan. So we're back live and we're going to tell you how you can avoid being ripped off by a car dealer in both the service department and the sales department. Of course, we're living through a unique era in the automobile retail and manufacturing business. We're living, we're living through a unique

era worldwide. COVID has changed everything. A lot of it unexpectedly. You can't turn the news on without finding out something that we didn't expect. And who would have thought that a worldwide deadly pandemic would be a worldwide stimulus to the economy? I mean, two years ago or three years ago, you say that's not possible. You can't have a deadly pandemic and still have a stimulus. Well, here we are.

Lowest unemployment rate practically in our history. Average earnings going up. Unemployment virtually non-existent. We people are employers are looking to hire people. Car dealers are making profits

unprecedentedly. I'm I'm a car dealer and I say that in full disclosure been one for a long, long time and I can't say unashamedly I actually am a little shame how much money we're making

by the way Stu just walked in the door and he pulled up in his Rolls Royce I'm only kidding I don't have to take a helicopter all all car dealers here's an interesting statistics I just saw that in automotive news in 2021 through September

Now that's a couple months ago Through last September Car dealers Had made more money Than they have at any time in history For a full year That's right So here we are

Microchip shortage Manufacturing is impaired For everything Cars are not being built As quickly as they should be The ones that are being built maybe don't have all the bells and whistles that they should have or want to have

and the car dealers' lots are empty and that somehow they're making money hand over fist. Well, I'm glad you're listening to the show because you have to know that if you buy a car today, you're crazy because the prices are off the chart and the prices will come down. Now, if you have to have a car,

listen to the show, and we'll give you all the tips. how not to be taken advantage of. So here we are to help you, and I can't emphasize enough how important your calls are. If you visited a car dealership especially for service or sales, buying used car, new car, leasing, whatever,

if you've seen a car dealership from the inside recently, we'd love to hear from you. Our mystery shopping report, at the end of the show, I say it every week. It's a surprise. Well, this one was really a surprise.

And it was a deal with ships. It's been around for a long, long time. And I'll just hang in there. This will be the second half of the show. We'll do that mystery shopping report. And the deal is breathed easy because we haven't been out live for three weeks. But we're back. And we had a lot of fun on our vacation, but we're having more fun now.

Honestly, we love this radio show. I'm sitting to my right in the studio here, and he's live too, I think. I mean, he moved. Rick just moved. He is live. And Rick. Was a rerun? Right. Your hair's really wrong.

That's an old version of Rick. Rick is a certified diagnostic master technician. And the guy lives, breath, sleeps, eats cars. I mean, he just loves cars. and he loves computerized cars and when I walked in the door I mean it came into the studio this morning

what's he talking about he's talking to Jonathan about a car he's talking about a software issue he's talking about a Bluetooth kind of a thing you know when you're really good at what you do you love talking about it and you love doing it

and that's what makes Rick the best to the best if you have a problem of your car any kind of a problem you call the number 877-960-9960 877-960 and remember

we're live if you heard us last week we were dead no I'm my kidding we were not really here why alive is not the right word is it but anyway Rick is live and in color and he can tell you what that squeak gravel or roll in your car is he might even be able to tell you

how you can fix it yourself or maybe something that's not to worry about, and why take it into a car dealership or to an independent repair shop and let them make a lot of money on you? Everything's going up in prices, folks, even repairs. So if you can afford not to have to go into a car dealership

or an independent repair shop today, take advantage of that. Call Rick at 877-960-99-60 or text, Rick, at 7-7. 472, 4976530. By the way, Rick monitors our YouTube channel, Earl Sterling Cars, Earle on Cars, YouTube.com for slash Earl and Cars, YouTube.com forward slash Earl and Cars. And Rick monitors that, so you can talk directly to Rick, and he'll answer your question.

You'll just haul up his little sign, and whoever is yakkin will say, Rick has a YouTube. and we will get right to it. Or as I say, text us 772-497-6530 and we can accumulate those and we get to them almost always by the end of the show. And of course, our unique and famous line

that nobody else has, nobody has a courage to do this, really, an anonymous way to talk to, or along cars. You can talk to Rick or Stu or Nancy or me, and you can say anything you want. And we'll never find out who you are. We can't hunt you down.

Nope. We don't know who you are. Sometimes you even identify yourselves in the anonymous feedback, which is always amusing. But I think some people dislike it. You feel comfortable. Youranonymous

Feedback.com. It's a web address. You go there. You put the question in, the comment, the attack. Now you can use profanity You can use vulgarity Four letter words Do whatever you want to do

Now we're not going to repeat those On the air So we'll say Something is passable I'll just come up with a random word To replace it with Yeah we'll go bleep Jerky

Yeah right So say you get it off your chest Tell us what you think If you think I'm a wonderful guy Call us If you think I'm a Blankety Blank Blank Blank

Your Anonymous Feedback.com, and we will tell the world that you don't think I'm a good guy, but I'm a blankety-blank-blank. And the same holds true for all of us in the studio. So here we go. We're going to get started. I'm going to introduce my co-host, Nancy Stewart, and we had a wonderful time in Key West, and she's back, and she is a female advocate. She has brought female listenership or viewership.

to this show, which we've been doing for many, many years, up to almost equal, 50-50. And she knows that when women walk into a cardiolarship or get online or whatever, however they contact cardiolships, there's a difference of the way they're treated. And it's not always bad, and it's getting better and better as time goes by. So, Nancy, the mic is all yours. Thank you, Mr. Wonderful. It is great to be back, folks. Hey, I have a question for you, Mr. Wonderful. How'd you like the way I worked at cart?

Maintaining it, checking those tires, adjusting those mirrors. We had like a golf cart. In Key West, we had a good time. You were getting ready to slap me around. I felt like I was in a poor man's Tesla. That was a beautiful ride. Believe me. It was a wonderful ride.

Seriously, folks. folks, we missed you. You are a huge part of the show. And it shows. It shows by a few numbers. And that is, well, from Jonathan. Jonathan has updated us about this. Our show is international. And everybody is from everywhere. And speaking of which, I'm going to get right to the phones because we're going to go to the Bronx. And the Bronx is one of our many, viewers, listeners, and Howard is from the Bronx, but he's in Jupiter right now. Welcome, Howard. Well, it's a great talk to you. Have a happy Thanksgiving. I know you had a happy Thanksgiving. Oh, great. Yeah, and I just want to wish you all the best. You're doing a great job. You're helping people out. And so let me go to my questions now. This is for Rick. Rick, we have electric steering. Why can't we have electric brakes? Brakes are always going to be hydraulic for the simple fact that if the electrical system fails on your car,

you can still push the brakes and they will operate. No matter what happens, even if you have almost a complete failure of the hydraulic system, at least one circuit generally will still operate on the brake. rate on the brakes, and even cars that now have an electric parking brake, they still usually have some way to get that car stopped. I would like to interject briefly, Howard, is that we do have electric brakes on electric cars, because it's automatic braking when you take your foot off the brake. That is true. So you do, and it's quite reliable, and it's not going to stop the car in an emergency, but if you're a careful driver, I, as you know, I drive a Tesla

and I can go miles and miles and miles and never touch my brake. In fact, it's kind of a game with me. If you drive carefully, you can drive on several hundred miles, stop and go, stop and go, never touch your brakes. Well, the cool part about Tesla and any of the hybrids, they have what's called a regenerative braking. Yeah. That when you're coasting, the electric motor that normally would drive the wheels, simply reverse into a generator and create electricity that is sent back to the battery for you to use at a later time. And Howard wants to know why we didn't have electric braking, and we do have electric braking. We do, yeah. We actually do.

Sort of quasi-electric braking. Yeah. But if you had total electric braking, and then you could have a backup cable or a hydraulic system. Right. And you would have to have a, that's why brakes will always have a hydraulic backup system, you know, as for stopping the car, so that you, even if you had total loss of electrical power in the car, you will still have some way of stopping the car. We sure have come a long way from Fred Flintstone braking. Yeah, that's for sure.

We digressed, Howard. I apologize. The mic is yours. Okay, so next question. I had a camry, I think it was 2007, and it had drum brakes in the rear. And I had over 100,000 miles in the car. I never replaced the drums. And the drums, all I had to do was back up and the drums would get adjusted.

So why don't they have that system now? Because I think it's just as good as, you know, they choose, so why do they do away with the drum brakes in the rear? Because disc brakes are much more effective. They don't require near as much power actually to stop the car. And the automatic adjuster on most drum brakes doesn't work very well. That's why cars with drum brakes, eventually that pedal will get a little bit lower and a little lower and a little lower. And the mechanic will go in and adjust it up.

And all of a sudden that pedal comes right back up nice, high and hard. hard. Disc brakes, however, are inherently self-adjusting. No matter how far those pads wear down, they're always going to be adjusted to the exact distance away from the rotor that they should be. Which are more expensive to maintain, drum or disc? Uh, maintenance-wise is really not much of a difference because replacing them, the shoes and the pads between the two costs about the same and the repairs about the same, but Obviously, if you're talking wear on them, your front brakes are always going to wear out faster because the front of the car is doing 90, well, 70% of the stopping power. Okay, so theoretically, if your rear brakes are shot completely and you have good front brakes, the car will stop, correct?

Yes. Okay. All right, so I think you answered all my questions. Be well and keep up good work. Howard, I got a question for you. How do the Bronx cheer come to be? I mean, is that, it's not vulgar, it's just the Bronx cheer. When did you first become aware of that being a, you know, you're apparently born in the Bronx, right?

Yeah, I'm in the Bronx. I'm in Jupiter six months of a day. So you know what I'm talking about, the Bronx chair, right? I do it except I did saliva on the microphone. You might get us wet, too. You know, I have to Google and find out where the... Oh, I'm talking about... No idea.

A Bronx syrup. I'll try to do it, but I'll try not to spit on it by this. Okay. I just spit my hand. I'm going to put my mask back on. Okay, Rick's leaving. Am I the only one that knew what a Bronx do you do? I know it was.

I knew it by the name Raspberry, but it's... Bronx cheer. Bronx cheer. Oh, I thank, Aaron. My grandmother was from Bronx. I just forgot. I'm going to be here until January 6th because they're doing my condo. The balconies are down.

The catwalks are down. I can't stay there. My question is, in my washer fluid, I don't have antifreeze. And we're going to get a freeze in the next couple of days. Rick, what should I do? Bunk's chair. On your fridge up with the... On your windshield.

Do I have to drain it? Do I like that alcohol? I would just go, you know, stop at your local parts store and get a jug of the blue stuff and just add a little bit of it in there. Wait a minute. You won't need much of it. You go on the store and say,

I want a jug of the blue stuff? Yeah. Oh, okay. What blue stuff are we talking about? Oh, okay. Is he still drinking mojitos? What? Is he start drinking mojitos?

Or are you still drinking mojitos? You want, you don't know. need a super high concentration of just enough in there that it will help lower the freezing point of that water and you should be fine yeah we didn't have a freeze that Pittsburgh had a freeze but New York had didn't appreciate it okay great thanks for taking my call I appreciate it have a good day I appreciate you Howard Merry Christmas okay back to Mr. Sunrise here yes well folks I'm going to give you a little bit of information one of the things that we ask of you is that you join Earl's Vigilantes.

You don't have to consider yourself a auto expert. You can just help, well, people in your community, everybody, hey, what do you think about that hat? Put that hat back on, Mr. Wonderful. I'm hard to put over my headphones. Take it off. Don't look at. So at any rate, you can do that and go to Earl's Vigilantes and sign up. Win yourself a cute little hat that stew designed.

And also, we need some volunteers for our seniors. A lot of us, sometimes even myself, can't maneuver our way around. And it's a great place to go and, well, go on and do some online purchasing. Saves you quite a bit of money whenever you're looking for a car. So you can also volunteer for that. Our telephone number here is 877-960, and you can text us at 772-497-6530, and don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. There you can share all of your feelings and anything in between. And ladies, yes, $50 for the first two new lady callers.

that's a win-win situation. Tell me how your car buying experience went or let me know all of us whether you're, you know, take on all of our advice and just holding on, holding back to purchase anything, whether it be used or new. 877. Can I jump in there?

You know, we make this offer $50 if you call in if you're female and you haven't called the show before. And every time we say this, I think, this is going to bankrupt us here. We're going to have so many calls, and it doesn't happen. So I find myself compelled to remind myself and you, this is an honest offer. There are no conditions, and we don't have anybody set up out there to call, and we don't really pay the $50. We really want female callers to come in for the first time and hopefully get addicted and love to call the show and tell your female friends.

and build our female audience. So there isn't any gimmick. You know, if you're watching television, if you're online, if you're on Facebook, and you get an advertisement, and it says, free, what do you do? You mentally shut it out, right? I do. Run for the hills. There's no free lunch.

My father told me that many years ago. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Well, it is a free lunch. If you're a female and you haven't called her own cars before and you call the show, we will send you $50. We're not going to send you a coupons. We're not going to send you a discount. It's going to be American currency, cash.

It will actually be a check, but the check will be good, we promise. And Nancy mails them out herself, and you get the check. So it's absolutely insane that we don't get at least two female. Sometimes we don't do it every week. Sometimes we extend it to the third, maybe even the fourth, because we love to have the ladies. call the show. So that $50, if you call the show and you're a female, you haven't called the show before, is a real offer. It's transparent, honest, and we're not trying to

trick anybody. Absolutely. 877-960. Don't forget, ladies, win-win situation. Talk about anything. Give us a call and say hello. Let us know that you are listening or that you, well, listen from time to time. We've got to go back to the phones because the line. are lit. We're going to go to Phillips. Sorry for the wait, Philip. Phillips's calling us from Jupiter. Welcome. Hey, Philip. Are you there? Welcome. Well, yeah, we're hearing you loud and clear. Philip, what's up? Okay. I've got a Prius, and I'm just wondering, the 12-volt battery in the front, when I'm running, listen to the radio, we're running my air conditioner on, what am I running on? The battery in the front, the

12-volt battery or the Prius battery because sometimes you're behind a draw bridge and I just have it in park and I just wonder if I'm playing the radio is it going to drain my battery down? If you're still in ready mode the ready on

then it's running off of the car's electrical system which is powered by the high voltage system. If you have ready off and you just say you shut the car off and you only press the power switch twice without stepping on the brake pedal and ready does not come on,

then you're operating off of that 12-volt battery. Let me ask this question, right? When you're operating off the battery, if the engine is running and the idle is up somewhere and the generator is running, isn't it the generator that is powering the radio? Well, see, in a Prius,

the gas engine doesn't always run, and it doesn't have a generator. Okay, so... So the gas engine, running means that you're getting free power, you're not having to drain the battery. Well, what happens is the hybrid system, the hybrid battery, the high voltage system, the inverter box under the hood will step that voltage down to 12 volts, and it uses that to power your headlights, your radio, all the different lights on the car, and the blower fan

inside. The AC compressor, of course, is run on high voltage. And it simply uses that so it doesn't need an alternator to power the 12-volt system. So you're not worried about your AC. You're only worried about the electric. But when you're in ready mode, then it's just like you're in a normal gasoline car with the engine running. Then your generator's providing power for everything operating in the car. And you're not actually using power from the battery. From any battery.

Right. But if you're in, say you're in a normal car and you turn it off and turn the key just to the on- position without starting the engine. Now, anything electrical that you're running is running just off of that 12-volt battery. So, Philip, the answer is you have nothing to worry about, you're not going to drain your battery at all. Right. You can set that stoplight all day long. As long as you keep it in ready mode. In ready mode, yeah. Yep. In other words, I would have it in park then. Yeah, that's fine, because you're still, you still have the ready on. Ready means you're key turned on so that you're going to be driving.

or the button push. So, Phillip, I have a question for you, when you're in that mode, are you listening to the oldies channel? Yeah, when you're in the, yeah. If you're going to run your battery out, we want you to

run it out on our only cars. The reason I asked that, I had a BMW one time, and I was always listening, when the car was off, when it went to the mode where you can listen to stuff without having an engine, run. I drained the battery

down because I ran the radio a lot. I've been there. Been there, done that. And I had a new battery put in at 50,000 miles, so I've got a new 12-volt battery on it. But, I mean, I just want to make sure I'm going to run down the battery by just

pushing it. Yeah. By just using Park. Can be a concern. No, as long as, when you look on the dash, on your dash display, as long as you see that word ready is illuminated, then you're fine.

Oh, okay. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. You're welcome, Philip. Give us a call again. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-4976530. And I can't mention often enough throughout this two-hour show. Ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. And we have to go back to the phones, but I want to reassure you that Stu is here. and he does have a fabulous mystery shopping report, and he's going to talk to us in just a minute. We're going to go to Warren from New Jersey.

Hi, Warren. Hello. Good morning. Hi, how are you? We're well, thank you. Welcome. This is Marty. Yeah.

Hey, Marty. For some reason, your music came on the phone, but now it's fine. My question is, I was talking to somebody about why Tesla, of course, doesn't discount their cars any, but right now nobody's discounting their cars. My question for Earl and Stu is, do they feel that once a lot of manufacturers come out with electric cars, that Tesla will then have to start discounting their cars?

I don't think they will. I think they're going to keep their price model intact. Have you heard anything different? No, I think they won't. My guess is, knowing Elon Musk's style, he won't. But I think there are a lot of electric car companies that may discount. Competition is good. And, you know, you can look at it two ways.

You can price a product, which you consider to be fair, and you can keep it that way. Some stores do that. I mean, Apple doesn't do a lot of discounting, I don't think. I mean, they build a really good product. They have a good profit margin. They're charging the MSRP, but you don't care because you get the value for it. I think Elon Musk looks at his cars that way. By the way, Tesla's making a ton of money every time they sell a car.

Their margin up until COVID and where the dealers started raising their prices beyond believability. But even before that, Tesla was building every car they could build. They still are. I mean, selling every car they could build, and they're selling it at sticker. And they even have a little dealer fee. I found out when I bought my Tesla. Order fee. Oh, small.

They call it the order fee. Yeah, they call it $100. They make up a name, yeah. But anyway, yeah. So Marty, it's probably going to be like normal. Some people will be big disconters. Others won't, just like it is with the combustion engines. Yeah.

Well, for me, I mean, I've never bought a car in over 50 years. and didn't get a discount so i mean some of it a bit was smaller than others but i just feel that uh i'm not ready to pay full sticker for a car if there's other comparable cars that'll do just as well well if you bought a rolls royce you you wouldn't get a discount yeah yeah the last time i bought a roll so they uh i didn't have any problem so Well, luxury cars typically don't discount like the lower price spread. And there are certain, you get a high-demand car. For example, in this market, BMW is a very high-demand car, even before COVID.

And you might get a discount, but not much. You go into buy a Ford or Chevrolet or Toyota, and you can get a big discount. So it depends on the make, supply in demand, and the style of the manufacturing. and the dealer. You know, if the manufacturer, Chrysler is a good example, typically a lot of smoke and mirrors and discounts and to the dealers and incentives. So if the manufacturers are playing the discount game, that encourages the dealers to play the discount game and competition just pours fuel on the fires. There's always going to be the products and the automotive that are not going to be discounted very much

and there will always be those that get discounted a whole lot even if it's only in the mind's eyes sometimes you think they're discounted and they're not really discounted. Now, just to continue the conversation for a second, do you feel like every, you know, you'll see

and every car I've ever bought, every dealer's always told me only we make $200 on the car. Well, obviously, that's just be, and, you know, I mean, you wouldn't have big dealerships and beautiful buildings and everything if they only made a couple hundred dollars on the car. So what would you say is the average profit in a car? Well, I can do better than that.

I can tell you exactly it. I'm thumbing through my automotive news here. I should have marked the page. But the average profit now with COVID especially is over $3,000 a car. and remember that's the average that means there's some a lot higher some a lot lower but the average profit

the dealers used to make was under $1,000 a car now they're making many times that and they're getting at least MSRP and I posted on Facebook last week a toilet dealer in Oakland, California that marked up a

route 4 $40,000 over a sticker In fact, Rick Kearney sent me that And by the way, I should have given you credit for that Because it was a prime though, right? I shared, it was a prime, yeah. I shared that Rav 4 sticker And I have never had more comments

And it was really It was amazing, Rick, and I shared it And you know how many other people shared it? It was amazing And people, everybody was shocked Did you notice, by the way, the ceramic coating installed, whatever that is, $2,500, lowjack, $1,800. But who cares when they're mocking it up $40,000? It's like, jump change.

In Visasield, $1,400. And this is the great one, nitrophil, $500 to put nitrogen in the tires. And Marty, going back to your question, here's the exact number that you asked for, and this is the November 15th Automotive News. The average retail gross profit per new vehicle this year is $3,778, and the average retail gross profit on a used vehicle is $3,592, which I would say, I think Stu would agree with this, it's at least triple with the average used to be. Yeah, I would say, like, when we told people the net profit, this is after all the bills are paid and the salespeople were paid on a new car, nobody believed what it was before. It was in the hundreds of dollars. Now it's in the thousands and thousands of dollars. And it's definitely true because a lot of dealers routinely lose money in the new car department.

You know, the net profit is after you pay your advertising, your sales commission, your phone bill, et cetera, et cetera. The gross profit is the profit that you mark the cost that you paid the manufacturer up to the buyer. From what you pay your bills. Yeah, and so that gross profit is marked up now, close to $4,000 on the average. So that goes for the cheapest car, the most expensive car, to the highest demand, the lowest demand. But it's still a record, all-time record, gross profit and net profit, the dealers are making now. They're a bunch of fat cats. yeah is the uh is the profit also higher or a lot higher percentage wise on a higher sticker car

yes okay yeah there's a much bigger spread the lower the cheaper the the car like you look down in like the the subcompacts there might be only uh you know well there's holdback but you know a thousand dollar spread marty you'll find this interesting having been in the business and all these folks out there that know something about the retail out of a mobile business. Last month at our dealership, because we put our lowest price on the car, we don't pit the salesman against the customer to try to get as high a price as possible. And all other dealers basically pay 25% commission until the car salesman sell that car for as much as you can. Well, we don't do that. We put our lowest price on every car.

Our salespeople actually were hurting because we pay them. Essentially, his salary. It's based on how many cars you sell, but it's not a percent of the profit. So we actually had to guarantee them their average wage from earlier when they were selling cars, more cars, selling fewer cars, and you don't get paid on the percent of the profit. Car sales people don't make much money. But the average car sales people today in the dealerships that do pay 25 percent of the profit and pit them against you, because every car you buy is sold a different problem. Marty, you walk into a dealership today. You pay a price because you're a good negotiator. And meanwhile, a little old lady comes in behind you. Her husband died two years

ago. She never bought a car in her life. She walks in there and goes, oh, she pays a $10,000 profit, and you buy the car for much less. So it's a crazy world. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks for the information. I just felt that Tesla would come down in price, but I guess not. So I'm going to stick to Toyota. Thanks. All right. Have a good week.

Thank you. We actually know dealers that are averaging $7,000 net profit per new vehicle. That's what they're doing. No surprise. No surprise at all. Okay, we're going to go to Warren. I believe Warren is still there. Good morning.

Warren. Oh, hi. How are you? Thanks for hanging on. okay great I just said a couple of quick things I wanted to get out a couple weeks ago you were talking about in the highway

that you know you need special lanes for trucks or something the Jersey Turnpike has that where well because I drive from northern New Jersey near New York City down to near Philadelphia and my daughter was in Perry Hill and there's a special four lanes with the cars

and they have four lanes to cars trucks and buses and it's a pleasure when you're driving down and there's no you know semi-trailers on your tail so they do have that and they spent billions of dollars to do that over about 20 years ago okay I was not understanding exactly what it is you talk about the the lanes Warren on the turnpike on the turnpike yeah the turnpike on the lane they had special lanes for trucks in Jersey in Jersey in Jersey on the Jersey turn bike. I wish they do that here. That would be great.

Well, yeah, unless it's at 95, what they do on the Jersey turnpike is when you get towards New York from New York City from New York Airport, they go to special lanes, only cars are allowed. On the other side, only you could go cars and trucks. But when you're driving in that special car lane only, you don't have to deal with the huge, dude. Yeah, down here they only, they say the trucks can't be in the left lane, but they could be And that's not everywhere. It's on the serpent back in certain areas. Like in around Palm Beach County, all the trucks can be in the left lane.

Can't be in the left line. Well, when you go to Fort Line. There's a difference. When Nancy and I drive from here to Broward County, there's a difference when the trucks can be in the lane. Well, Warren, Santa up in New Jersey, they have to be in one particular lane. They don't have three lanes to choose from. They have four lanes for cars, yeah. They have the same thing here.

And then on the other side, they got four. lane just for trucks. Yeah, gotcha. And it's really great when you're driving and you don't have to deal with those semi- trucks going 70 miles an hour ready to smash your car to smith. Well, when we're all self-driving,

then we won't have to worry about that. Yep. They'll all be nice. I got a question. I got a question to the world. Do you think come the end of January and let's say a cold weather climate, you're going to get a better deal on the car?

because they don't sell that many cars up here in the end of January. Do you think that's going to be the case to blow out the window now? I think it definitely will get a better price at the end of January. And I think you'll get a better price at the end of December, and I think it'll even get a better price at the end of February. This thing is fueled by a lot of different aspects. The COVID factor and the microchip factor are just some of them. The economy, the fact that everybody's employed that wants a job,

the fact that wages are going up, that they're bidding up wages, the fact that there's a huge stimulus from the government, money pouring into the economy. So we have all these factors. And it's like any kind of a flash fire. you know, it's going to come down. And the longer you can wait to buy a car, newer use, the lower the price is going to be. And there's just a question of what you decide personally you want to deal with.

But you will pay thousands of dollars more today for a car. At the end of January, you asked the question was, I'd say you'll be at least a thousand dollars better off. Maybe two. Because I want to hold out a bit. Oh, yeah. I want to just call back. You're doing the wise. Okay, great.

And I want to be quick because other people want to call. I got a quick question for Rick. Okay. Rick, are you there? Right here. Okay, quick question is, I'm coming down to Florida around Christmas tonight. And before the end of the summer up here, the stand that cools off the motor and the air conditioner broke, and I don't have it. I got to get a sick.

and I got a guy who's going to do it for me when it'll come down it doesn't matter you know like where the part comes from the fan you have to use it at the fort course do I have to get from Ford or could I get something or he said you know the kind of fan that I need because I'm not planning to keep the car long what would you recommend that to get to fix it if you're not going to keep it very long I would just get one from a local lot of parts store. But if you were planning to keep it, then I would find out what the manufacturer of the fan is. Like on Toyota's Nippendenzo makes a lot of our parts. And quite often at various different places, you can find the exact same Nippendenzzo part as you would get from

the Toyota dealer for about, oh, 30% less or more on savings. So say if it's a specifically Ford made fan, you may not be able to find that except at a dealership, but if it's made by, say, Gates or something, you may be able to find that at another auto parts store for a cheaper price. And Warren, don't forget online, rock auto

dot com, R-O-C-A-U-T-O-com, rock-auto.com, amazing online source. They have far more parts than you will find at any independent brick-and-mortar store or dealership and they also have dealership parts. I mean, I don't know how they get them, but they got them.

And parts are supposed to go straight to the dealers and not go through independence, but Rock Auto sells genuine Toyota parts, genuine Chevrolet parts, and they carry aftermarket the price you want to pay and do the research first, like Rick says. If you want a quality part, be sure you do the research, and then check the price on Rock Auto, they'll probably deliver it to you in two or three days. And, Rick, what would be the labor cost on it?

Like, how much should I expect to pay in labor to do? If I got it, if I brought on the part and said, here it is, it's a Fort Worth, 2010. I don't know if you're familiar with that exact car, but how much labor do you seem would be reasonable to pay to put the part in? What model was it again? it's a 2010 Fort Torres SEO

oh Fort Torres I'm going to go out on a branch and say somewhere about a hundred and fifty to two hundred dollars labor for probably about an hour to an hour and a half to two hours time to change that out okay

so that would sound translate that in the dollars for them we have about 150 to 200 okay yeah because I had somebody said to me that they would charge me between 2 and 250, depending what they were kind of doing. So he was in the ballpark. I'm not, you know, I'm not going to quibble about 20.

So you see, you say about two. If I got the par, he said he would put it in for about 200 to 250, whatever. He didn't know exactly he had to look at. Yeah, that might be right in the ballpark because I don't know for how they're set up. Some cars are very simple to change out a cooling fan. Others can be a serious nightmare. Okay. all right

okay guys all right so you got my answers and thank you very much and I look forward to hearing the show for the rest of the show yeah it was nice hearing from you Warren thanks for the information

hope we helped you hope to hear from you again don't forget ladies $50 for the first two new lady callers please give us a call you know any question at all anything at all

or if you want to share something with us $50 for the first two new lady callers. And, you know, I was looking at our consumer report that we received while we were away, the December edition. And this is really, I can't believe it, this here is, they have the worst list, and it's short. It's the subcompact SUV, and it's the Fiat. It comes in at 31. The rating on it is 31. It's not a surprise, surprise, but there it is, top of the list.

And then the luxury SUV, land rover, range rover. That's a surprise. Not really the name, but comes in at 41. It's amazing that I see these land rovers on the roads, and you see these, they're a fat cat car, and people, it's a prestige car. Everybody has one. And if you're making a half million dollars a year, you've got to have a land rover. And the product quality is just terrible. But people buy...

It's a cult. They buy it because they're perceived to be successful. And that's more important than having a car that will stay together. Reliable. Because Consumer Reports basically says they're just not a reliable car. Yeah. I think you put more money into it, maintaining it, than you do purchasing it. And number three is the mid-sized SUV.

B, Ford Explorer, comes in at 42. So, pick yourself up a consumer report. Boy, there's all kind of information in this baby, and it covers a lot of different subjects here. It's really worth your while. Speaking of books, I do have to advise everyone about Earl's Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer. This is something you want to put on the shelf, and it, is, you know, a most reliable source of information, covers a lot of information,

and it's quite an investment. Nice Christmas gift, and all the proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch. That's Confessions of a recovering car dealer. Great bark. You're getting better at that. That dog is stronger, stronger. So give us a call.

Please, ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers And we are going to go back to the phones Where Mark is... Are we ever going to let Stu talk? I said... I mentioned Stu is here, but we do have a call. Oh, no, we got a priorities. And I'm going to say it again, Stu is here.

Do they hear me? And he has a whole lot to say about the mystery shopping report. And we're going to go to Mark and Palm Beach Gardens And then we're going to go to Stu. I promise. Good morning, Mark. Good morning, Nancy. Hey.

To Earl and Rick. Hey, Mark. Welcome back. Thank you. We're here. Hey. You want to welcome you guys back from vacation, or at least two of you are on vacation. I wouldn't.

I noticed, Earl, you looked this morning at sunrise, like you had a little extra skipping your step. Yeah. So you've enjoyed the time down in the keys. You're both, actually, and I'm not blowing smoke. Both have you looked a little bit younger in your appearance as I'm watching you on TV this morning. You know what, Mark? He's like a, you know how puppy dogs get in this kind of weather? Well, that's Earl.

He gets like, you know, he's got a pep in a step. He got a head of sweater on. He was down there, and he was singing. and sharing all kinds of things with us, paying attention to those sandpipers. We had a good time. Hopefully you didn't wake up to Navas. I'm sure you may even be a little light in the hip pocket to, who knows.

Yes. You've got a couple of things here. Earl, or maybe Stu can answer this question. I guess on the service ends of your business, with all this shipping delays, that everybody's hearing about trucking, shipping it, the ports, unloading, all that stuff. Is that affecting your ability to get service parts? Yes.

Yeah, and are you running into an issue with your customers in how to explain a delay, whether you're getting into having to put a little tip into the hat for covering a run expenses same side same thing since i'm on body shop end of the business um you know getting body parts i i'm sure that uh that's probably becoming a bigger and bigger headache and i just wanted to throw that out there for service and body shop um if that was affecting uh your business right now well it is um but we have a pretty good idea that parts that are um are on back order and we're having a hard time getting. So it's easy to communicate with the customers up front. And yeah, Toyota is stepping up with extended, you know, rental coverage for parts delays. But some of them are crazy.

I mean, we have some that are back ordered for months, so we don't, we just don't know when they're going to come through. I'm not aware of that many with, with body shot parts. It's mainly been for mechanical repair. I'll check with Alan if there's anything, and if any metal is, is, is held up. But it tends to be more of the mechanical parts. Well, you know, I know that the, you know, the idea of Earl Stewart Toyota is, you know, customer service being number one, which you guys not only talk to talk, but you walk to walk, and where other dealers don't really do that when dealing with customers. But, you know, I know that before it was a COVID issue, but now with the COVID as well

as the shipping and distribution of automobile parts. I was just wondering if before it was a headache. I'm just wondering if now it's a migraine for the business. You know, I'll jump in there on that. One of the big problems we have is personnel. And anybody looking out there for a career, everybody's looking for good people. And we're pretty selective in our hiring.

a lot of companies are, but we just have a labor market that doesn't exist, and you can't hire good people. We have a lot of people that, for whatever reason, have decided to move into other areas of work or retire early, or they like working at home and found a job where they can. They move around. but every company we talk to, whether you're talking a car dealership or a restaurant, everybody's looking for good people. So our customer satisfaction, if it suffers today, it's probably less for parts availability. And the COVID issue directly is it is a fact that, you know, people don't like to wait.

And they come into the service drive, and they have to wait for someone to come and talk to them. and I think it's their car fix, technicians got to work on it. We don't have enough technicians and we don't have enough service advisors. So it's personnel. The single biggest problem we have is personnel availability.

Good people are hard to find today. You know, I know good people are so hard to find, but, you know, it's really hard for me to understand why there's a labor market problem with how expensive things are getting. You know, how even with the federal $300 issue that I think is pretty much behind us now, but how people can sit on their couch and afford to pay their rent for their mortgages. I don't think that's the issue.

Are people evaporating, I mean, like, what's the issue? Yeah, it's a mystery. Mark, you know, we found whenever we were in the Keys, you know, it was just amazing, you know, how the lack of employees affected everything. And, you know, we found, you know, everyone's apologizing, but it definitely was obvious. It was obvious in the restaurant. It was obvious in the hotel. And there are some people that are not real patient, and they're, you know, they come in, they're on vacation. and that's just the way it is.

And, you know, we kind of accepted it for what it was. And we're just glad we were on vacation. And, you know, we did the alternative. And that is to be a little more patient. But you wonder how, you know, they're surviving because you still got to make that car payment. You've got to pay the rent and got to get a job. Yeah. Mark, there's definitely the labor market.

A lot of competition, like wages have gone up significantly for tax, for loop tax online stuff, trying to attract people in there. So that's going up. So that's kind of helping out like with, you mentioned inflation, but it is hard. I mean, it's a very depleted labor market. That just can't help the people that aren't working. You know, that's just ridiculous. Ridiculous.

But anyway, that's a little bit outside the car market or what? the emphasis of your show is, so I won't spot anymore. But anyway, I've been really bored the last few weeks on Saturday mornings. I don't know what to do with myself. So I'm glad you're back. Oh, thanks, Mark. Thank you. All right, you guys have a wonderful weekend, okay?

The same to you. Always nice to hear from you. 877-960-960, or you can text us at 772-497-60. We're going to go right to stew. Hi, we have a text from Anne-Marie. Oh. It's been waiting here for three weeks, and then she re-texted to make sure I hadn't lost it, but I had already bookmarked it.

I was getting to it, first thing. First thing at 9 o'clock. Good morning. In case you missed my text from three weeks ago, here is again. I've seen some astonishing sites in I-95, which prompts the following questions. Rick, pay attention. What is the proper way to tow a vehicle? Two, are different techniques necessary for front-wheel drive,

rear-wheel drive or all-wheel-drive vehicles. Three, does it make a difference if the vehicle has a manual or automatic transmission? Four, do electric vehicles require a different towing technique, or is it the same for an internal combustion vehicle? And five, I've read an electric car with a totally dead battery essentially turns into a brick and is difficult to move. Can this be true? That's from Anne-Marie. Thanks, and she says, P.S., welcome back. And glad that we are only on vacation and not abducted or anything like that.

Great questions, Anne-Marie. Great questions. All right. All right. We're going to start with the last one first. Yes, that's true. If a hybrid car or an electric car actually, well, I'll stick with hybrid. I won't try to get into electric because I don't really have a lot of experience on the systems of those.

Once that 12-volt battery goes completely dead, the car is locked in park because the park mechanism is controlled by electric motor and you cannot put it in neutral. There is no way. So, say a Prius, if they want to tow it, when that battery is completely gone, they literally have to drag it onto the tow truck with the tires just basically screeching. Towing a vehicle, and I'm assuming she's meaning towing behind like a motorhome or something like that, the safest way is on a trailer. And obviously the best way for any tow truck is on a flatbed. The wheels that might drive the car, say like with an electric car, even if you put it in neutral,

if those wheels are spinning, they're turning those electric motors, and that actually can generate electricity and can actually burn up the entire system. The whole electric system on that car, meaning the inverter and the electric motors on the high voltage. So like a pre-uses front-wheel drive, so if you're going to tow that, make sure you tow the back wheels. Right. The back wheels would have to be, well, the front wheels would have to be. to be off the ground. No Toyota is actually recommend to be what's called dingy-toed. In other words, pulled with all four wheels on the ground. I've seen that. And most manufacturers do not

recommend that anymore. There are companies that will set up devices where they have an actual electric motor that will circulate the transmission fluid so that it can keep it cool and you can dingy tow it, but it's not safe to do that and you can damage the car. The best way is check your owner's manual and find out if there are any recommended ways for towing your car behind another vehicle and follow those rules. Tesla says do not tow the car under any circumstances flatbedded. Right. In that case, you would get a simple trailer. You haul and all those make them that you would simply drive the car onto this trailer and tow it behind your vehicle that way. What if you can't drive it?

The car can do itself. Summon it to the top of the trailer. That's a fair question. My Tesla manual says, do not tow this car, flatbed it. My car won't, I'm off the side of the Sawgrass Expressway, and I call someone to help me. How are we going to put the Tesla on the flatbed? Basically, they're going to hook a cable on to your Tesla and drag it on there. Oh, not my Tesla.

Well, the other option, that's what they're going to do. Somebody else is that's one of that. The other option, which I've seen this done, actually the tow trucks have these devices that they will jack the car up, raise it up a little bit of wheels, and put these pieces under your wheels. That is a dolly, and then they can tow it up to a certain hour. It's amazing how far we have come, and I learned that the hard way in Pittsburgh. I mean, you better know a professional tow truck company and the drive.

driver because they can really mess your car up. At the shop, we actually have a set of these devices, basically, that it's a metal square with wheels under it. You raise the car up and you put one of these under each tire, and you can push that car in any direction. Any way you can spin it in circles. And it's a great way to move the car around. Sounds good.

Did I cover all the bases there, Stu? Let's see. I think, okay, any difference for towing? a automatic versus a manual transmission vehicle? Again, go to your owner's manual to check and see because even some manual transmission cars are not meant to be towed that way. Okay. How about rear wheel drive versus front wheel

versus all-wheel drive? Front-wheel drive, most cars, if you raise the front end, you can let the back wheels simply spin free. A rear-wheel-drive car, they would normally raise the back end and let the front wheel spin free. however you've got to make sure that the steering wheel's locked because if that steering wheel starts to move a little bit

you get that car wheeling and wagling all over more damage than and all the drive would have to be up on a trailer yeah all right well amory i think we got all the questions answered thank you for a good one you always prompt a great discussion with your questions absolutely that manual is very important if you can't remember any of this uh google it when you're called sorry just say can i tow the how do i tow my car You can tell them what kind of car you've got. Don't learn the hard way. As a matter of fact, Donovan just chimed in here says, Earl, you would use Tesla roadside service in your Tesla app,

and Tesla would send a tow truck specifically designed to work with your car. Oh, that's right. Thank you, Donovan. Exactly. Yeah, that's really cool. Donovan to the rescue. That's our buddy Donovan. He knows.

He's always here for us. I've got to take the attention away from Stu in the text because our lines are backed up again. So we're going to go to Boca. where we have a favorite, and that's Doug, who's calling us this morning. Good morning, Doug. Hi, good morning. Hey, Doug.

Thank you for singing happy birthday for Sam. Happy birthday, Sam. Happy birthday, Sue. Oh, happy birthday, Sam. Nice, awesome. Thank you. So, we have an issue because Sim has been trying to trade in her lease, but they don't have any cars.

so she extended her lease to six months and now we only have four months left and well I'd like to know what you think we could do shop shop the residual which you can buy the car for with the market value which is in an all-time high probably and make a decision I mean you can you can then you got another problem what do I do without a car and you don't want to buy or lease a car today because the prices are too high. But I would start out just for fun. Look at your contract, look at their residual value, and then do some shopping.

You can have some fun. We Buy Anycar.com, CarMax, Vroom, there's probably half a dozen valid third-party car buying sources for you. And then you take it to a couple of dealers. You can have a lot of fun. and find out how much money your car is worth compared to what you could buy it for today.

Four months early, you know, you might want to go ahead and take advantage of it. We're sure. Well, if you say that they want to buy her car because it's worse more than what the payout is. Basically, we can get it for 15.5, and the car is worth way more than that. and I told her why don't you just buy the car and then she looked at me and said well it doesn't have a warranty anymore so what do you think of that well you know if you if you're not going to buy a car and you're going to sell your car then you just have to ask yourself how you're going to cope with between now and the time there would be a good time to buy a car let's say you want to wait till the end of january

can you get by it without a car I mean you can uh you can use uber I use Uber a lot in Key West you can the carpool you can use mass transportation Palm Tran

Brightline We have two cars So Get by with one car There you go And that way We could wait until

The chip thing Whatever that is You have your cake in here too Yep Wait till the dust settles Okay, well I appreciate your help And you guys have a great holiday weekend Thanks, Doug Sam Dioenstein

Thank you, Doug Thanks for taking the time 877960 Or you can text us at 772-4976530 Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com We're going to go to Frank who's been holding Thank you, Frank, for your patience Welcome

Hello Hi, Frank. Welcome. How are you guys? Great. Happy Thanksgiving a day late. Thank you. Happy Thanksgiving to you.

Thank you for next year. We were discussing remote keys replacements. And I think you guys said these hardware is the best place to get a copy. Is that correct? If you're looking for just a regular key that has the metal blade to it, then yes, that would be a great place to get them done. What about the remote ones, the keyless entry things? That generally you're going to want to go with a dealership.

We can buy them online. I mean, the problem is you've got the programming charge, which the cost of the keyless remote is one thing, and then the cost of programming is another. Right, but be careful who you look at for buying online. there's a lot of knockoff parts that will not program to the car. Again, I always recommend, you've got to make sure you find a good quality place. I always recommend Amazon and you look at the reviews.

And if you carefully look at the reviews, if you get a 4.3 or 4.5 or a high Google review, and they actually, not Google, but actually Amazon review, and they actually bought the part, then you can pretty well bank on the fact that it's a good part. and you can read the reviews and find out what the complaints were. I mean, I'll tell you what, if you're careful with Amazon and you read the reviews, you're not going to go wrong quality-wise. And then find out before you buy it what the dealer's going to charge it because he's the only one that's going to be able to program it for you.

Right, right. All right. We were just having a discussion about that. One of my friends lost the key, and I saw, told my thought I heard about A's, but I didn't realize that was just for the old-kerson keys. You call three different dealers, if I make car, and get the programming cost, and you'll get three different prices, and take the lowest one. No two dealers charge you the same amount, and if you're a negotiator, say, hey, cut me a little slack here,

I got my key. I know it only takes you 20 minutes to do the programming, so can you give me a little bit of a break? Negotiate a little bit. Talk to three or four dealers, and then you'll get to the, the lowest programming cost and you'll have the lowest cost of the keyless remote all right thank you very much i usually when i negotiate i usually ask them to you know ease my pain there you know negotiating can be a lot of fun a lot of fun thanks again guys there's a lot availability thanks so much frank it was nice hearing from you we're going to get scaddled back to stew hi he has been neglected no i haven't Some of the texters are waiting.

And I thought that was when Frank called, I thought that was Frank from Jupiter Farms because Frank sent some information. He had, I guess, is it your brother-in-law? Hang on a second. Real quick. Wow, there's a lot of texts here, Frank. I was going to suggest his friend Steve

is in the situation that you've described where he's found himself in the situation where he has to buy a car right now, or at least soon. And he's encountering everything we've talked about on the show markups thousands of MSRP and he feels unsafe. Apparently, I think they got cars through work for most of his career and now he's on his own. With poor experience, Frank has been listening to a long time listener, so Frank is well equipped to guide him.

But I was hoping that Frank can call in and talk about the situation. We can talk about that a little bit. So Frank, please call in if you're listening right now. But we'll move on to another texter here. And this one's probably a Rick question. says, my 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited tires needed to be inflated to 36 PSI, per the specs and the manual. I went to a big box store to inflate to 36 PSI.

When I turned on my Jeep, the display indicated 38 PSI. Is it safe to drive with higher tire pressure or must I return to deflate? Please advise, thank you in advance, for your response. What I would do is I would look on the sidewall of the tire, and you'll see on there where it says inflate up. up two and it will give you a number there. For truck tires is usually going to be something around 51 pounds or 51 PSI. As long as you're below that number, you're totally safe. And having just a couple extra pounds in there isn't going to hurt anything.

That's right. It's really handy when the tire pressure monitors tell you which tire, what the pressure is in each tire because the old version used to drive you crazy. Yeah. Well, it used to be, you didn't have any at all. Yeah. And then they came out with the one that would read the speed of the tires that was rotating. Right.

And it would kind of give you an indicator, yeah, it looks like one of the tires maybe low on air. Then they actually got sensors in the wheels. And now those sensors can tell you which wheel is low. Isn't it great? The technology is getting so much better. It is. It's incredible. It makes my job easier.

I used to run around a car, you know? Exactly. You've been put out of work. by automation. All right. So here's another text from Joe. It says, Earl, last week, and this is from November 9th, so he's referring to several weeks ago when we were last year.

Last week, someone said you should not drive in deep water, especially if a car is coming towards you. And I thought that was sound advice. Absolutely. I thought that was great. Well, I gave that a lot of thought. I think it's the safest thing, is don't drive in deep water. Right.

If you can't swim, definitely don't drive in deep water. I thought I said, don't dive in deep water. You're supposed to dive in deep water, not shallow water. All right, I'm sorry, Joe. Anyway, especially, don't drive in deep water, especially if a car is coming towards you, and they're driving fast because you don't want your engine to get wet. Joe wants to know how is it any different than having someone pressure washing your engine with a pressure washer? Well.

Well, when they're running a pressure washer, they're going to be, hopefully, they're going to be careful about where they're spraying that water. Yeah, it's not, yeah. But it's also a very minute quantity of water as compared to that wave that can wash up. It's not going to suck into the engine. Right. And you're not spraying that directly into that air intake. Whereas that wave of water that's coming up when you get in deep water or when another car comes past you, go in the opposite direction, that just sends gallons of water right into the intake, right into your engine. And water does not compress. And And that's what an engine basically is. It's a big of a compressor.

A great description. Metal pieces begin to bend and break. Yeah, it's really important. They do indeed. It's an important thing. If you have a home pressure, don't pressure washer, don't start washing your engine. You have to be a trained detail tech to do that. It's there are areas that you do not spray.

And we've had issues many years ago where, you know, willy-nilly spraying has resulted in electrical issues and things like that. All right. Thanks, Joe. That's a great question. All right. Okay. Your invitation.

to oh it's frank yeah frank's here from jupiter farms good i couldn't explain it better than you could hi frank welcome good morning frank yes this is the real friends you're not coming through frank i think there's a we have a little audio sounds like you're in a and a suck. Does this work better? Oh, much better, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I'll tell you what, let me call you back on the landline. Okay. Good idea. I'll read this text while you're calling back. Give Stu an opportunity to share some of this text with us. Okay, let's see. It gets confusing when we have a backlog with three weeks. Oh, I can't imagine.

Okay, good morning. Just looking at the numbers due to the chip shortage, and this is from Bob. Just like the numbers due to the chip shortage problem. Example, buying a new car, let's say it's $35,000. Tax is going to be approximately $22.75 plus registration fees. I think a lot of work can be done to bring your current vehicle up to speed. Okay, I think this is in response to something else and it's out of context completely. So I'll jump over to another one.

If anybody has anything to say, I'm overwhelmed. I have to. It made me think about something. We're talking about the high price dealers are charging and the fact that they're making big fat profits. What we don't talk about in the total price that you have to pay is what the manufacturer is making. The manufacturer hides discounts, so even the dealers don't really fully appreciate what they're making on a car. I promise you today, every auto manufacturer, without exception, is maximizing their profit to the dealer. Now the dealers is passing that along, he's got no choice, and then he's hosting you when you come in.

So when we say that you're going to save a ton of money in January and February, if you wait, you're going to save two tons of money because the manufacturers are going to start getting competitive. They're going to come up with dealer cash and customer cash and all the things over which they have control, and the dealer's going to have to cut the price too. So save $3,000, $4,000 if you wait until January, February. Great information. We're going to go to John in Palm City. I believe he is still holding.

Are you there, John? Yes. Yes, I'm here. Oh, welcome. Welcome. Welcome back, everyone. Thank you. I just want to mention a problem.

It's coming back from 40 years ago, and it's not on any national news. Years ago, it was because of the shortage of gasoline. now is because the average is $3.50 a gallon. And what the problem is, especially in the big cities like New York, it's siphoning of gasoline. It's so valuable now. Some shops are even out of siphers, and you don't see about it on the national news.

So I want to mention it because 40 years ago, approximately, they partially solved it by locking gas caps. Now, Rick will tell you today, You can't get around that so easy because of all the pollution standards, the gas cap has to be properly vented. And I don't think any company, I think at that time it was Stant, the company that made the gas caps could handle. Rick, what's your question of answer about that? Is it a locking gas cap would be too complicated because of all the different models and different pollution standards? Yeah, most of the locking gas caps don't really seal proper.

relief for some reason. So folks, they're actually getting hard to find. But most cars now, the fuel door that you open has to be released from inside the car. So most of them are pretty secure that way. And there's also little baffles that they've installed in the fuel intake line. So it's harder to get a hose down inside to that fuel tank. But the thieves will find a way. So, unfortunately, even the best tricks you can get, the best thing you can do is just hope that the guy next to you has got an easier car for them to siphon fuel out of. Well, it's funny because I went to two Walmarts two weeks ago, and both at Walmart, but they say it's because of the shortage and conditions today, not only were out of siphons, but they were completely out from an early question that was asked, that they had no washer fluids. absolutely not one gallon bottle. So it just shows you things that are short.

I know we know that washer fluid cannot be imported. It must be made here. But I thought that was kind of weird about having absolutely no washer fluid. And we had an inquiry earlier today about that. Very weird. So I just wanted to bring that up. And I wanted to bring up also on Radex, which is a liquid spray that they sell, you know with your wiper blades

and they were also out of that but people we mentioned on this show that Rain X liquid spray is fabulous because it's so good on the window you could actually drive in the rain and you don't even your windshield wipers on right as long as you apply it properly what's that Rick

as long as you apply it properly you got to follow the directions on the bottle and do exactly like they say that stuff is amazing yes I want to mention that also and I want to tell you something about electric cars it's going completely crazy completely even Toyota Toyota has a plant in Buffalo West Virginia that's been making engines for 25 years they're hiring 100 new employees they're investing 250 million dollars in that plant just to make one line of electric vehicle engines so and and Tesla completely in Germany they're so worried about Germany going to be competitive to them

that from the Wolfburg plant in Germany, 100 miles east of Wolfburg, they're building a $7 billion plant Tesla to make the Tesla cars in Germany. So it's all going crazy completely and it's the future that's going to be

completely different. Hey John, I'm just while you were talking about Ranex and you couldn't buy it and they were out I just Google I Amazon did and I went to Amazon and you can buy He'll be arriving at your house tomorrow afternoon

today You can buy a 48 ounce bottle of Ranex for $8.27 cents and if you order it now it'll be there today and they'll deliver it to your house

Wow you can't beat that service Yeah, I'm just saying that online is the name of the game. And I think it's one of these brick-and-mortar stores are, you know, they're going to be challenged. Either they get into the game, I was reading the other day, Best Buy, of all places. I mean, the Best buys are all over the place. Best buys are doing more business online than they are doing in the stores. In fact, they're converting their stores over to warehouses.

They're doing what we're doing kind of, taking orders and picking up at the store. Exactly. Well, on your other topic there, John, I recently saw a picture of a car that Lamborghini says maybe their first, what they're going to build for an electric car. And I can tell you, it, you know, typical Lamborghini style. This thing looked like a spaceship, but it was awesome. Interesting. But even Lamborghini wants an electric car.

Look like something from outer space. Yeah. By the way, one other fast thing, too, they mentioned, you know, we know about used cars. they're up. But nobody talks about the collector car market. That was way down, mainly because the live auctions and the live auto shows were cancelled.

I mean, the biggest show that was canceled was October of 2020 Hershey, Pennsylvania. They totally canceled that. That's the first time in 60 years. But they seem to be coming back now, and the live auctions are what people like to

bid on cars. And record's was set in 2018, 35 Duesenberg, Gary Cooper's car, $22 million, and on a foreign car in 2018, a 62 Ferrari, 250 GTOs, $48.4 million. That's it. That was sold at Götting and company. It was a tech company in California, high tech. And the guy bought that car in 2000 for $10 million. and in 2018

got $48.4 million. I'm a little profit, I'd say. Oh, yeah. That's a lot of cabbage. Yes, exactly. It's a lot of coleslaw. The only thing would listen is when I mentioned Gary Cooper's car, a lot of the young

people are listening, don't even know who Gary Cooper probably is. Yeah, we should do. They don't even know what a Dusenberg is. Hey, John. Going back to the... One of the most expensive American cars ever made, but it's American.

People think it's German, but it was a German that designed it. And the expression, that's a doozy. Yep. Yes, exactly. All right, guys, I'm looking forward to shopping report. Thanks, John. It was great hearing from you. Thank you.

We've got to get to Frank from Jupiter Farms. If you're still holding, Frank, are you still there? Frank? Absolutely. I would never hang up on you guys. Oh, thank you. You know, every time your show, I mean, it triggers memories. And, like, the guy was just saying about the gas and siphoning.

Yeah. I recall, and I found a very ingenious contraption that would work even with the new cars. Today, it was a spring. It was like a stainless steel spring that you kind of pushed in there and you twist the spring. It would collapse, but you could push it down into your tube. And then once it got released, it wouldn't let a hose in there. And consequently, that wouldn't interfere with your pollution devices or anything if they're still. out there, but I mean, that was a long time.

It's like memory-laying listening to a show. Hi, Frank, you're an old guy like I am. You remember the old moron jokes? Some of them. Yeah. And here's one. Did you hear about the moron that tried to siphon gas out of a Tesla? Oh, no, I didn't hear that one. That's great.

That's really good. Hang on, let me do something. Oh, I thought that was on purpose. Did he get electrocated? No, I like that. It's very good. I did see something on Facebook, someone showed a Tesla broken down on 95, and they had a generator running, using gasoline to recharge the Tesla. Oh, I had the generator sitting next to the Tesla, running the generator to charge it up. Exactly, yeah.

Oh, really? It's a great photo. Anyway, it's a unique world. But, yeah, the reason I called, this gentleman, a friend of ours, has moved down from Rhode Island. He works at Tarramarsh, the fruit stand near US1 and Donald Ross. And he's in need of a car. He's had BMWs for years and years. He has a 2020-2020-X-3 that's been like a lemon.

He'd be driving down the street. The windows open automatically. Driving down the street, the door cronks pop-umping. So they're going to take it back from him. And actually, he's wondering if he can get his $5,000 depositor and cut the lease early because they're desperate for cars. I mean, they can't believe a low-mile-milege, you know, BMWs coming in. but he needs to replace it.

So he went looking at all things. I don't know why he's looking at the Kia Telleride. But that's what he liked. And there are 15,000 over sticker. And I said, you know, what do I do? I said, no, walk away. That's ridiculous. But he does need to get a car.

So maybe we'll call you off the air and you can give me some hints. But he lets me go with him because he doesn't know how to mystery shop, just car buy. They never had to do it for all these years. any suggestions on what dealers might still be reasonable out there in the day and age reasonable today is probably sticker and I'll give a little hint our mystery shopping report I actually had a dealer that we mystery shop that I actually sold the car below sticker so it's interesting you know we can talk about this on another show but maybe this whole

COVID effect and the fact that dealers are making a lot of money and selling them at a high prices. You know, the prices now are coming down to Sticker. So, you know, my advice to improbably on the air would be, if you can, we've had, what, Stu, two or three D, uh, mystery shopping reports where they actually sold the car at Sticker or close to. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So Sticker's the name in the game. Sticker with a couple of them with some dealer fees. Yeah. And again, they're, yeah, but that's just effective life. Yeah. But he needs a car. That's the, the other question, I mean, he asked me, since they're willing to break the lease, he's going to meet with them on Monday and buy him out early. Would he be able to get his $5,000 deposit back? Is that a

possibility? Well, he'd ask that question. He should. I mean, if they've got a car that's defective, it's a lemon, he's got a, I mean, if they can't fix the car, then he's got a lemon law going for me. Yeah, that's an interesting question, Sue. How does the lemon law apply in a lease? because he doesn't own the car. Yeah, I don't think, gosh, that's really good question. I've never faced it before. I don't think a Lemon Law would apply to, at least.

Or I don't know. Maybe it would. I just asked the question that I can't answer, and we'll get the answer for me. Somehow, Amber has rubbed off on you. You've taken some of her, her e-ness. I always got good questions for you guys. That's a hell of a question.

That's a stumper. We'll get the answer for your first. friend let's yeah google will tell me yeah i have a hunch he will get his money back all of it if he's got a car that cannot be fixed by BMW and it's in warranty he will get one way the other all of his money back let your voice be heard and if he can't tell him to call me i'll give him the name of the lawyer he'll get his money back work leases are covered by lemon law yeah are they yeah it is brain fart and uh frank there's always the easy way and the hard way so He's in good hands.

I try to come and have them come down to your dealership, but when I spoke to your salesmen, you have no cars. I mean, there's just nothing. That's you, I guess, like, the RX or the RAV-4 might be a good, are those coming in or? Nope. Oh, they're coming in, but they're going out fast. Yeah, all the ones that are coming in were ordered about 90 to 120 days prior to it arriving.

So you've got to get in line, or best advice is to wait. Patience. wait a lot of patience well as always welcome back i'm glad and i really appreciate earl because i was getting concerned that hearing all the reruns that you're all right and you text me back yeah i i should apologize to everybody because we really we only thought we're going to be gone for a week and then uh it's so much fun we just had so much fun and we have no excuses we just uh we actually came home and we have some excuses yeah we loved it down there yeah our our home was unlivable.

I got selfish. Nancy and I both. Yeah, we just, we couldn't take it anymore. It was just so much going on, so much pressure. And, you know, if you've ever been subjected to a flood, oh my goodness, I'll tell you, and you're living in it. Oh, yeah, no, that's a stinky situation. Yeah, get out of town.

The one thing that will be in my mind until I leave the surf is the kindness and the love your husband shows walking out of the store there on Indian Town, opening your car door, and you got in, like, the good old days of going open your car door. That's Mr. Wonderful. No, it's a very, very, it just shows the true love and affection that is still out there. Yeah. How about shining your husband's shoes? Oh, boy.

I'm really going to get the ladies to call me. People still shine shoes? Okay, I think there is one lady that wants to call, but I don't know if she can get through. I told her about your show, and she's just very nice. Well, thank you. Maybe too late on this show, maybe next week. Yeah. Well, Earl and I like some of the old-fashioned ways.

And then on the other hand, there's a very thin line. You know, I am a woman, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. But there's a time and a place for everything. But there's nothing like the good old days. No, that's true. And the barracudas. There you go. Talk to you next week.

Thank you, guys. Thank you. Thanks, Frank. Bye-bye. Thanks for tuning in, Frank. We're going to go back to Stu. Yeah, we have a little time for a couple more. We have anonymous feedback to get to.

Good morning from East Tennessee. I've got a question for Stewart, I suppose, or it's me. I suppose Earl. Are you going to start a waiting list for the new BZ4X if you, if so could you put me on that list? We have a list, and guess what? There's one person on it, so you're number two. Just email me or just text me your contact information, and I'll get in touch with you and we can get you on the list.

We're anticipating. 100,000 dollar deposit. Nope. Nope. It would be a refundable deposit and I want to establish expectations. They're getting, it's coming out in March and I think every dealer in the southeast, Toyota dealer will get one for the entire year. So it's a very, very low supply of a vehicle. If you go out to California, I think they plan on having a larger release out in California because the admission requirements out there.

all right you know actually it would be a great buy because you could buy that car and flip it and probably make what 10 grand? Probably double it double it yeah right I think that's going to be priced in the 40 we'll sell it to you an MSRP

and then all the other dealers will be marketing them up 50 grand so you can flip it and make a quick 25 grand do it we'll help it'll be exciting it'd be good content for our next show okay next one in my experience Kia dealers This is anonymous feedback.

We don't know who said this. In my experience, Kia dealers, regardless of where they're located, are usually the worst of the worst. You're a mystery shop of Napleton, Kia, did nothing to change my opinion. $600 plus for nitrogen has to be a record. Yeah. And I think, was that, Napleton did that?

I think so, yeah. Because we saw the RAV4 Prime one that had $500 for them. $500 for Nitro. And that RAV4 apparently was what was, Texas or California? Texas, I think. Texas? Yeah.

Yeah, California wouldn't let those shenanigans go on. Wow. Everything goes on to Texas. All right, more anonymous feedback. Here's some good advice. Online tools such as Carvana and Vroom provide great information to the consumer. I've had my car appraised through these services

and they were about $3,000 more than what the dealers offered. Yeah. That's great. And we, yeah, that's, we've been saying this for even before this crazy, these crazy times, but they're not always better,

but it's easy. It's so fast and they're often much higher than the dealers check Carvana and CarMax and Frum and we buy any car.com because there are significant factors in making the market and they are making the prices of

used cars go up. So it's just it's a buying, selling frenzy going on and we you know, car dealers will actually make a deal because they feel like we buy any car.com gave me $3,000 more than good common sense tells me the car's worth

and so they'll make the deal on the new car and then sell it to we buy any car.com so if you don't check all the sources if you're trading in a car or selling a car you're leaving money on the table. Great information. Folks, I'm going to let you know that we're not taking any more calls right now because we're getting ready for the

mystery shopping report and I'm going to send it back to Stu if he's got any more text to share with us. Got a couple of quick ones. Anonymous feedback. The dealer I leased my car from told me that if I buy my car at the end of the lease, I will have to pay the dealer fee again. Is that legal? Well, yes. It's legal and it's terrible. Shameful. And I would love to have the Attorney General the regulators all the people that allow this to happen in Florida you're being bought off by the car dealers

you're being bought off by their political action committees and you should pass a law that does not allow I mean it's just so unconscionable that you would allow here the leasing company in this case Toyota in my case Toyota

has a contract with you the lessee to be able to buy the car at a price and that's the purpose of that contract has offered you a benefit to buy it at a price if it benefits you

and then in the same breath the dealer's being allowed to charge you anything he wants to add to the price he could charge you $3,000 legally and it's okay it's legal they don't even have to tell you about it when you first start

they don't wait until you're all the way in the box and they don't tell you about it so I mean that's a joke I mean Florida's a laughing stock of all the states in the union there's nobody and from the governor to the attorney general

to all the regulators the senators everybody is responsible for this yeah absolutely and some of you are listening you know and you lawyers out there and you people that support this

are listening and everybody's just saying well huh maybe you'll stop nobody's paying any attention to them so and that's the way it is they're allowing fraud to take place in the state of Florida between car dealers leasing companies and manufacturers they won't listen to us no they're going to listen to the people who are listening to us exactly if they if they get loud and they speak up start making phone calls i'm getting emotional we know we move on the last question is a great transition it could it could be a very long answer but it says what is your advice to buying a new car now with dealers marking up over MSRP. And my advice is to listen to the mystery shopping port we're about to get to

and find a dealer that's not charging over MSRP. That's the only way to do it. Because if you go to a place that's charging over MSRP and you say pretty please or you beg them or you yell at them, they're not going to discount the car. You've got to find a dealership that makes it their policy. Yeah, exactly. And you can do that online. You can do that by phone.

It'll take a lot of phone calls, but you might find one like we found with a mystery shocking report. You can actually buy a Ford from a PowerPoint. Pure accident too. We didn't seek it out. We just were randomly going around and find an out. Presently surprised. Here we go. You ready? You're going to do the report, right?

Oh, no. Oh, you remember that? No, I'm going to let you do the... That's why I wrote it up. Folks, we're discussing a different format and I really wasn't ready to do the new format, more improvisation, but we're going to do the old way. Yeah, Stu does all the work. He does the research. He works with the

Secret Agent and then he puts it together and prose very, you know, he's a really good writer and I read it. So we decided that from maybe next week. Next week I'll improvise it more. Yeah, still we'll do it and that'll be real because I'm reading this and I hate to read stuff but I'm going to read it anyway. And next week we'll go live with Stu and it'll be more natural. I thought about that last night at 2 o'clock in the morning when I sent you the report.

I know why you're late because you're not. No, that's not why. That's not why. Okay. Mystery Shop of Al Packer Ford. Earl Store on Cars is back in the mystery shopping and business. After a brief phase, for three weeks, car dealers across South Florida were able to relax

knowing that our mystery shoppers were standing down, albeit temporarily. Well, we're back, boys. We're back. Wake up. And we're out to get you. And back on Alpaca Ford, they go way back. one of the old-timers. You remember

if you've been around town for a long time, and Stu probably doesn't remember this, and I know Rick doesn't. Granny Packer? Nope. I remember Granny Packer. Yes. Anyway, that was, it was a great commercial, it was humorous, and that

was his figure. It was kind of like what the Arrigo's do now, even though they don't own the Arrigo dealerships anymore. It's kind of a comedy thing. But it was Granny Packer, it was Al Packer. And now the son took over, and I think the sun still has it. But they've been around for 35 years.

Yeah, they're down in West Palm. 40 years, yeah. Military Trail on West Palm. At any rate, I can tell you that while Nancy and I were away, the general conditions of the retail automobile industry did not change. New vehicle production and distribution remain at critically low levels, and so do car dealership inventories. Not that any of this has been a problem for car dealers,

as we've demonstrated, week after week, the inventory shortage have run prices and profits up to historic levels. And I'm talking, well, I just read that from other modern news earlier. The prices and the profits are off the charts. These big, buying a card and MSRP would be considered a great deal. Truly, if you can buy a car, sticker, I mean MSRP sticker, and don't get hosed on dealer addendums and dealer, hidden fees. If you can walk out, if you can get an out-the-door price of MSRP plus tax and tag only, it's a good price on any car today. That's a steel. This is no exaggeration on mystery shoppers are routinely given prices that are thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars

over MSRP. And I mentioned earlier, Rick sent me a picture of a winter sticker over on indication on the Oakland Park Toyota or downtown Oakland Toyota I think it was and picture of the sticker charging $40,000 over MSRP plus some addendum crap and hidden fees on top of that add an insult to injury so folks the prices are crazy the car dealers are raising their prices in response to depleted inventories is not surprising What is surprising is how many customers they have right now, and isn't it funny? I mean, I, people love cars. I mean, people are coming in.

We're selling our cars as sticker, MSRP. I feel bad about that. Well, not too bad. I mean, you know, where am I getting a lot of money? I wondered if there was ever going to be a time in my career where this would happen. Yeah. Well, here's why we shouldn't feel bad, because. We're selling them in MSRP, which is less than everybody else.

So I guess you have to say that in a capitalist system, in a free market society, if you sell a car for a blow your competition and you provide value in transparency, you shouldn't feel bad. The price is just so high. Anyway, I'll just try to live with it. The evil earl bubbles up when I think about this, but I live with it. week we selected a car dealership that we have shot at a while alpacker ford alpacar is currently recommended with a c grade when we grade these so c is average and they were about

average for a dealer and we recommend if you want to buy a for you can buy it from alpacor uh and relatively speaking it's it's the place to go and you check all those cars out at good dealer baddealer list dot com. Good dealer, bad dealer, list.com. We also have a surprise for you this week. The return of Agent Thunder. For you regular listeners, we've been using Agent Lightning, our female shopper, and Agent Lightning is out of town, and we brought Agent Thunder back in and sent him out on a mission.

It's been a while. Agent Thunder's last mission was in July 2020. It was a very different world then. he was investigating Green Anchor's Nissan ad headline Saving So Low Every Nissan's got to go

I guess it worked There's no more Nissan's left Or Ford's Yeah For his return to the field Agent Thunder was asked to select A new Ford vehicle

Of his choice And see if he could get a discount Don't have my mask on I can lick my fingers Here's the report I arrived at Alpaccair with my wife at 11.30 a.m. parked. The plan was for my wife to stay in the car while I shot. Now, I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about I'm first person, Agent Thunder.

This is part of my exit strategy, leaving my wife in the car. I don't like the sound about leaving my wife in the car. The car is running. Leaving my dog in the car. The car is running. The windows are cracked. I'm sort of forced myself not to digress. I get out of the car, begin to walk the near.

empty lot. I saw another set of customers looking at a lone truck park near the showroom. After a few minutes, I made my way inside and was immediately greeted by a receptionist. I told her I was looking for a new truck for work, preferably a ranger. The receptionist called for a salesperson. A few minutes later, Brenda, appeared to greet me. Again, there's definitely a half percentage of female salespeople. Yeah. So that's a good trend. We like that. I told her that I needed a new truck and I liked the forward ranger.

Brenda asked me to follow her to a table where she could get some information around me. Once seated, she asked for my driver's license and personal information. If she entered my info into her computer, she told me she needed to be up front about vehicle availability. This is good. She said they were basically out of trucks. They had no zero F-150s. Does that tell you? it tells you something

F-150 the number one selling vehicle in the world number one and they're not any in stock none at Alpac or Ford and they only had two rangers and one of those was sold

the other ranger was a white XLT crew cab it just arrived had yet to go through their pre-delivery inspection Brenda said she could show it to me I told her the XLT could actually work for me

that I would always buy white work trucks. Brenda was accommodating and said that was nearly all their customers, all their customers were ordering vehicles, and they're waiting a few months for delivery, and this is true, and same at our dealership. If the ranger they had wouldn't work,

she would order one, they would. I told her that I couldn't wait that long after if she was expected to get any more in. She said they had about 70 new fours inbound, but most were already sold. This is all factual, I'm sure. We went outside to look at the ranger. It was the same one I saw when I arrived.

Brenda reiterated, it still needed to go to the pre-delivery inspection, but I was available, it was available for sales, or ordered by another customer, but the deal fell through. MSRP on the truck, 36, 480. There was no addendum. Boy, another plus. Very, very, incur. Plus, plus, plus.

Brenda led me around the ranger, explained the features and the specifications. Then she unlocked it, opened all four doors before continuing her presentation in the interior of the truck. She explained that I could not test drive it because it had not been inspected. And that's logical. I asked her if I could see how the numbers added up in this one, and we walked back inside. We sat down and Brent asked me how I wanted to pay for it. finance or lease I told her I'd be paying cash she asked if I had a trade I said no Brenda laughs said that's as simple as it gets and it is I asked Brenda what kind of

discount I could expect she said I probably would not get anything off MSRP so sincere and genuine but she would ask hey you got to ask if there was any kind of break if she could give me she left for a few minutes and returned with a worksheet. There was nothing on the worksheet with the sales figures. No customer information, no vehicle information. Interesting. The top line labeled market value selling price and it was MSRP, the official Monroei, 36480. Below that, this is a shocker, a $500 rebate came off the price. The adjusted price, 35-980. Now that's below MSRP.

Now, they come back. Here's the $699. I could call it a hidden fee, but she's showing it to you. It wasn't on the advertised price, but it should be, but it wasn't. But it's only $6.99, and they've already discounted it at $500 below MSRP, and another hidden fee with a misnomer, $199 free filing. It's a dealer fee. It's a hidden fee.

Hey, and this is Piquiune. This is, this is nothing. Yeah, you're 400 over MSRP now. Exactly. So, 400 over MSRP. Out the door, I was at 39, 577. Amazing. Brenda was excited to show me the $500 rebate

and asked if we had a deal. I said I was impressed that she charged me below MSRP and I was expecting a big markup. I told her my wife was in the car waiting for me, and I'd have to leave. I let the air conditioning off. I just made that up.

I was expecting a big markup. I told her my wife was the ear car. I'd like to leave with her and review the numbers tonight. Brenda was gracious, accommodating. She said she could hold a deal with a credit card deposit. I declined to give her a deposit. I said if I had if I If the truck was sold for tomorrow morning, I would reconsider ordering one. I said, I appreciate the way she did her business, and I'm sure Agent Sunder did, and we do too. I mean, it was a class act. I'm looking at the worksheet, and just as represented.

And there we are. There we have a shock. Yeah, a surprise. And we got a little bit of time, so I'm just going to opine a little bit. and Nancy and I were chitch-chatting about this in the car on the way in to the studio. I'm seeing a trend here, and nicer dealers and prices coming toward MSRP. Because they're happier. Yeah, and they're happier.

The deals are happier. And the need for the deception, because the dealers can sell every car they get, at least sticker, the need for deception is disappearing. And call me a cock-eyed optimist, but maybe, is this whole thing subsides, and COVID goes all the way away, please God, let it go all the way away, when that happens, maybe the whole dealer body will be a little nicer. I'm a cock-eyed optimist. This is so sweet. And then they'll all come together and hold hands. And so by, you know, that's not going to have.

And they'll get rid of the dealer fees. But if it just gets a little bit better. We can hope. If it gets just a little bit better. Oh, I'm hoping. I think that definitely the dealers are nicer and they're happier because they're making so much money. Yeah. And so they're just so jolly and every walks in the door and they're hugging people and it's a great experience.

It's a love fest. I'd like to teach. Right. I was hearing that in my head too, Rick. I was hearing that one. Sing it, Rick. I didn't see a lot of Black Friday ads. I mean, I don't watch that much TV.

Did you, a lot, mostly streaming? Did you see a lot of Black Friday ads for, because I'm not seeing a lot of discounts being at, because you'd think that they would still be thrown out BS. We were watching Broward and, you know, Sodom Gimora. We were watching the Miami dealers. And let me tell you, Hollywood Toyota is giving them away. And they got so many cars coming in.

They don't want to do with them. They got some advertisements there. Hollywood Toyota has just given them. way. I'm hearing through the grapevine. There's a lot of discontent with the Broward and the Miami, the day toy dealers with Hollywood's behavior with advertising and what they're doing with they're just going insane. Insane. We also found this. Is that what you call it? Yeah, I think so. But we know the dealer who is, he's insane in the good way. He's a really nice guy, Craig Vend. Wow, what a beast they are. Okay, votes. Let's see. Do we have any text coming? Well, I don't think we have

any oh I got one I hear from Frank Frank and Jupiter Farms he gives an alpacker Ford and A and I was definitely thinking they got to move up from the C because they're not typical now they're not average I'm okay with I'm gonna give them a B plus I'll do a B plus that's as far as I'll go and we have Bob is giving a giving them a B he says oh before the alpacker was in West Palm they were in Rockville Maryland I didn't know oh I've been a long time Grammy Packer. I mean, and there was Al Packer Jr. And, but they were the, they were pretty rough back in the day. We used to attack them because they had their bottom line pricing, which really wasn't

bottom line pricing. And, yeah. Anyway, they're, they've really come a long way. And I think an A and a B plus is good. Yeah. Do you have any? Yep. Oh, Granny Packer was back in the days when Chuck Curcio was running Tire Kingdom, and he was doing his commercials that way. Yeah. Yeah. So, They were trying to compete commercial-wise. I think that. And betting barn, the best advertised. A little history. Well, let's see.

We've got Negan with an A-minus. I've got Andrew with an A for Alpacar. Tom, a B-minus, honest and no addendum, a step below Melanax. Brian with a B for Brenda. Mark A for Alpacar Ford. Mark Smith. Oh, he's just coming to saying, really, Ricky. I guess he liked my singing.

Good, though. Mark Ryan with a B plus and Scott with a B. And for me, I'm going to give them that B plus. If they didn't have that dealer fee, the two little dealer fees there, it'd be at A plus on them. Yeah, but no. That's the consensus. We got A's coming in, John on Facebook, A, Doug and Ella, A minus, Amy, a B, Martha and A. So people, yeah.

Well, one of the other four dealers on our good dealer bad deal list is, is that anybody got because McCully I mean Mullinax? Mollinx. Yeah.

So here's who we have on the for Ford right now Mullinx Ford is on the top with an A followed by

that's an Apopka and the Mullinax Ford and Lake Park is a B. Wayne Acres Ford B minus Alpacker Ford C Greco C

Sunrise C Pompano Ford C minus and Essential Ford and Stewart Well you foreign buyers have got yourself some of the honest dealers I mean, compared to Kia or Nissan.

So you Ford dealers, we got a new one here, and we've got two or three really good for dealers. You can't go wrong with Molinax, Alpaca, or Wayne Acres. Can't go wrong with a Ford, except they don't have any F-150s. But Nancy, what have we got over there? I'll tell you what, alpacers come a long way on military trail, and I have that information firsthand. I give them a, that's a great mystery shopper report. Well, I'm just feeling so emotional like I'm in May 2. It probably should be of A minus or both of us.

Don't they actually have two locations? Don't they still have the one out on Southern Boulevard? Oh, they do. They've got two. Sing us too. Yeah, they got Southern Boulevard. There's two Alpecker Ford. We're writing commercials for them now.

Where's your guitar? I'll get that. Yeah, folks. Go see Brenda Alpecker Ford. She's honest. The dealership is honest, and they're not going crazy. They're not charging over MSR. and their fees, they're on the small side.

Hey, we're going to be out of business if you keep it up. You evil dealers, you keep it going out there. Keep us on the air. Al Hendrickson, Hollywood Toyota, Palm Beach Toyota, you guys go. We're never going out of business. Get them hell. Pull yourself together. Hey, listen, I'll let everybody know out there.

Ford's going to take over down here. Ford's going to take over down here. They've got more nice dealers for Ford than anybody else. Problem is three weeks ago you predicted they'd be out of business. Don't go crazy. Don't go crazy. I just want to put this out there. You can hear us and you can hear how, excuse me, how happy we are, ecstatic we are, that we have a great, good mystery shoppering report.

You know, we love it. We love it. You know, blame it on whatever you want. The dealers are maybe getting nicer. Maybe our word is getting out there and maybe the consumers are getting smarter. Whatever the case, we're happy. Happy, happy, happy. I think it's either the Keys or how good business is.

Yeah. It was Key West, absolutely. Would you care to elaborate on that? Okay, folks, we have reached the end of a wonderful show, and we thank all of you for joining us, and we hope that you're enjoying this happy Thanksgiving weekend. We're back. Tell everybody we're live, we're back. We have a lot to be grateful for.

We're grateful for you. Have a wonderful week. and we'll be right back here next Saturday.