Earl Stewart on Cars - 12.17.2022 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of AutoNation Cadillac

Episode Date: December 17, 2022

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits a local Cadillac dealer to see what they have on the lot and how much over sticker they will charge for a new 2023 Cadillac ST6 SUV. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. 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 is 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. Good morning, everybody. We're back. This is Earl Stewart Live. You just heard the recorded introduction. And we're pretty much as represented. We're still missing one of the key members of our group here. It's my son, Stu Stewart.

Stu, I hope you're listening. I hope you're feeling better. And he's got an issue with the back that is, anybody who's ever had a back problem. They're no fun. But he did the mystery shopping rewrite this week. And that shows that he is feeling better. Maybe he'll be back in the next week or two.

So I hope you're listening, Stu. For you newbies, people that haven't heard this show before, were something that I think you'll enjoy, listening to. We're unique. You're always looking for something different on the air. Well, we're definitely different. And we're a show that live, candid. Did you hear the disclaimer? If you were tuned three minutes ago, the radio station every week just before Erlon Cars comes on live, they say, you know, this guy, what he's saying, we disclaim any responsibility for them. that because we say some things on the show that are pretty devastating to car dealers, frankly. I mean, we talk about car dealers out there that are breaking the law, that are tricking their customers into buying cars to pay too much money, overcharging them for things that they

really don't, well, they really shouldn't cost anything, high-priced dealer-installed accessories, exorbitantly high-interest. Did you know that the largest car dealer, and I'm going to exaggerate a little bit, the largest car dealer in the world. Auto Nation, they're the largest publicly owned company. I believe Lithia squeaked by them, another publicly owned company briefly, but for all intents and purposes, Auto Nation has dominated retail auto sales in the world for many years. Do you know that they make over $2,700 for every car they sell in finance and insurance and products like extended service contracts, maintenance contracts, gap insurance?

That's just on the finance end of things. So we talk about these things. People don't know this. the facts of retailing automobiles is amazingly closeted in secret. So we talk about it on this show. So if you haven't listened before, we really would encourage you to get into the show a little bit. Maybe we're going to be on for two hours. We're on from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.

We're broadcasting out of North Palm Beach, Florida. But we're worldwide. We literally are. We stream. You can see us on the video. Facebook.com for slash earl on cars. YouTube.com forward slash earl on cars. You can stream us anytime just by streamerleoncars.com.

www. www.stream earlancars.com. But you don't have to listen to me, Yak, or any, any of the other folks in the studio, who I will be introducing shortly. We have some people here that have specialties that things that I don't know about, that they know about. I know a lot about cars because I've been a car dealer since 1968. And in the way of full transparency, which most car dealers don't like full transparency,

but I do, I am a car dealer, and I also have this show. And I write books, I write columns, I do a blog, a public speaking. My wife Nancy and I are partners, is our consumer advocacy role. But at the same time, we have a car dealership, a Toyota dealership at North Palm Beach. I'm not going to try to sell you any Toyotas or anything else out of that car dealership. But if I don't mention it at all, and you find out, you say, well, there's something going on there. So the fact is the matter, I've been doing this for a long time, and about 20-some odd years ago, I kind of got the idea that I was doing it wrong, that I was taking advantage of customers,

like most car dealers do, and we switched, and we decided to do it a different way. And in the process, I said, let me pass along some of the tips to you, because you can't buy all your cars from any one dealer wherever you are in the country. listen to what we had to say, call in. There, I finally said the most important thing that I can say, please call the show. And you'll hear these numbers and URLs, websites, ways to reach the show

to see it on video or audio. You'll hear a lot, and for a purpose. Nobody sits here for two hours and listens to this show. I'm a realist. You know, you're going somewhere, you're listening on your car radio, wherever you are, you might listen for 15, 20 minutes. And you tune and you tune out.

New people come in and other people leave. But if you can jot this down, if you can do it safely, if you're not driving, 877-9-60-9-60. Very important because the show is you. We could tell you what we know, but what we know may not be interesting to you or important to you, but we know that you know what's important to you. So you call the show, please, 877-960-99-60. And we have five lines. I thought we had three lines.

I know we have five lines. And they light up fast because, as I say, we reach tens of thousands of people. I mean, they're all over the place. We call us from Oklahoma and California and even out of the country, Canada. We actually had a call from Bali not too long ago, so we're international. So we will watch that phone monitored. My wife, Nancy Stewart, she's my co-host, my partner here, and she's sending to me, my left in the studio. She's got a laptop, and every time a call comes in to 877-960-9960, that's 877-960-960,

she immediately alerts whoever happens to be talking could be Rick Kearney our certified diagnostic master technician generally Stu Stewart my son is here but he isn't as I mentioned earlier in the show he has some issues with his back he's out temporarily and he'll be back shortly but if you have a question and you call that number we'll get to you right of what we prioritize the telephone number We also have a text number. That text number is 772-497-6530. I don't want to dazzle you with numbers, but they're important.

I mean, we have some of the most amazing callers, really. I mean, interesting textors. We've got some textures out there. Anne-Marie is one of our incredible textors. And every week, please, Anne-Marie, you've got to be texting us because yours is the gym. typically. Don't forget Donovan. Yeah, Donovan. I mean, we got

it's like friends. We're like a family. We have some regular callers that are really good. And YouTube normally Rick Kearney certified diagnostic master technician, the expert on everything, mechanical electronic

with a car. He also monitors our YouTube channel with Stu Alf. He does a Facebook too. So that's facebook.com 4 slash roll on cars and he does a text, he's doing it all over there, so he's our digital communication guy right here.

So anything you text us or call us, calling will be Nancy Stewart to my left, and because we've only got five lines that we prioritize the telephone. Personality, I mean, we've got some people out there that are just absolutely amazing. The way they talk,

the way they sound, their sense of humor, their perception, the questions they ask. Really cool. So please call 877-9-60-99-60. And the other channels, of course, are always open. Oh, here's my anonymous feedbacks have dropped off. And our anonymous feedback is something we used to really get a lot of.

Maybe I haven't been mentioning the URL often enough, but it's your anonymous feedback.com. Y-O-U-R-A-N-O-N-Y-M-O-U-S, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And we can't tell who you are, where you are, and we can't come and get you. I mean, we don't know where you live. We don't know where you work. Say anything you want to. You can be insulting if you want to.

I mean, sometimes I get mad. I mean, we all get mad. So if you want to vent, vent on your anonymous Feedback.com. Privacy is important to a lot of people. Total privacy. We can't find you. I mean, a lot of blue chip companies use that for input from their customers and also for their employees. We use it at our dealership for input from our employees because sometimes an employee doesn't want to tell the boss the truth.

You know, I'm a boss, and I can tell you from experience of many years of being a boss, people tell you what you want to hear. That's called job security. That's smart. You tell people, you know, I'm Mr. Stewart. I love this place. I love where I work. But you know they don't. Everybody doesn't love everything about anything they do. So we have your anonymous feedback.com. Tell us how you really feel about the show. I'm going to rotate the microphone to Nancy Stewart. She's sitting on my left here. As I say, she's a founder of this show with me, a thousand years ago. ago, not literally, maybe 20, and when we're only a half an hour on the show, oh, by the way, and she just reminded me and I already forgot. We had a big expansion in our list and watchers, I guess, last week, and Victor Canales, who was the owner of this station, True Oldies, we are now heading the True Oldie channels, and there's a chain of them all over. But south of us, Right now we're in North Palm Beach, we would stretch, you know, to Lake Worth, maybe, you know, just 25, 30 miles. Now we're all the way to almost Miami.

We're in Fort Lauderdale. We're in Pompano. All that heavy, heavy population area to the south of us. And this is where we have a lot of really aggressive, tough guy car dealers. South Florida is the tough guy car dealership center of the world. I mean, worse than Los Angeles, worse than Chicago, worse than New York, South Florida, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and that area down there, really tough. And so we'll be shopping down there, and we've expanded the true oldies channels in that area. If you're from that area, we'd love to have you every Saturday morning for some period of time,

and we'd love to have you call the show at 877-9-60-960. Now I'm going to turn the mic over to Nancy, and she'll tell you about what she does, something very important, by the way, for you ladies. Good morning, everyone, and welcome. We certainly enjoy your company, and you make the show, definitely. So give us a call at 877-960-9960,

or you can text us at 772-49765. I'm going to read you something from the Consumer Report, and this is from the December issue. And it's great news. It's great news for the consumer. Did you know that Consumer Report has for more than a decade been urging policymakers to do more to prevent deceptive auto sales tactics? In July, the Federal Trade Commission took an important step. proposing rules that would, among other things, require dealers to disclose the full price a consumer will have to pay for a car. Great news were headed in the right direction with

2023 around the corner, all of us working for the consumer, and that explains all of us here as advocates and what we do every single Saturday. Also, what we do is we reward the female caller. The first two new female callers, you win yourself $50. Give us a call. First two new female callers. Hey, 77, 960, 9960. And Azarel said, don't forget, you're a number.

We love, love hearing from Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And also, we have Earl's Vigilantes, and if you haven't been able to, you know, write all this done, you can go ahead over to Erloncars and get all that information. We're going to drop what we're doing right now. We've got a whole lot to get to, but we have several callers lined up already. we're going to go to Bob in Lake Park. Good morning, Bob. Is Bob unclear to you? Good morning. How are you today?

Hi, Bob. Can you hear us? Good morning. How are you today? Hi, Bob. We're doing good. You may need to turn your radio down. Oh, that's what it is. We're on a bit of a delay. I have a question for Rick. Sure.

I'm listening. Bob, whatever you're listening to will interfere with your conversation with Rick. So if you could turn that down. I tried playing around with the fuses. Okay, you got a problem with the Mustang? And I tried the relay also, and I'm a little bit stumped. Yeah, it's an eco-boose. Okay.

What's the problem you're having, Bob? Hey, Bob, I'll tell you what, we're going to have to discontinue this call. There's something that you may cannot hear. We do on the air. But we can't hear a word you're saying. We're going to hang up, and you please call us right back, will you? And maybe we'll get a better connection. Thank you.

Bye, Bob. 877-960-9960, and as you heard, Bob's going to give us a call back. We had a bit of interference there. We're going to go to Daisy, who has been holding, and she is a first-time caller, and she's calling us from Tequesta. Good morning, Daisy. Hello, Daisy. Hello.

Daisy, can you hear us? Hello. Hi, Daisy. Hello. Hello. Can you hear us, Daisy? Hello. Oh, we seem to be having some technical difficulties, side.

Okay, Daisy, if you too would give us a call back, back would be very appreciative, all of us would. We're going to move to the next caller, and that is Jay, who's calling us from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Jay. Well, this is embarrassing. It's raining real hard. Maybe that's the problem, but our phones aren't working.

And I wonder if Jeremy in the studio has got any clue about that. maybe uh little jay can you hear us at all okay i'm going to check with the control room which i'll be right back okay okay okay well my apologies to all you folks that are holding i hope you're still holding we'll try to find out what that technical issue was but we've had bob and daisy and jay who are connected but we can't get through them so please bear with this bob from white part

I think Jay's from West Palm Beach. Daisy, it's important that you hang on and call back because you're a first-time caller and we need to get your contact information so we can pay you $50. So all you folks out there struggling with the phones, we're struggling on this end to find out what's wrong. Let me talk a little bit about Rick Kearney

while we're working on that technical issue. If you have a vehicle now, which you probably do, but you wouldn't be listening to the show. You probably had issues with it. I mean, cars are complicated, mechanical, computerized machines. And part of having the cars, you have a little problem. Is anybody out there that has a car that has no problem? We'd love to hear about that car.

I'd like to buy one of those because I've never owned a car that I didn't have problems with. Right now, I'm driving a Tesla of all things. here I'm a toilet dealer. Here comes the technical report. I think. We do have a problem with the phones and it is going to be

fixed just as soon as we can get in touch with Mike. Oh, okay. Well. And Jeremy is trying to... That could be a long time. Okay. This is every talk show host nightmare is the fact that he's sitting here in the studio for two hours

and nobody can talk to him so all I can do is rotate around the room and I was just going to get into Rick Kearney and you have a problem with your car we have our text venue so you

can text us. I think that's the text is working. 7772-4976530 and of course Facebook.com forward slash Earl on Cars and probably our biggest source of video-type respondents is YouTube, and that's YouTube.com for slash roll-on cars.

And I think by going to Rick, who is monitoring everything, he's also the computer scientist here that knows the answers to the questions you have in cars. Let's get started on some of those. Well, here's one I'm going to have to guess at, and may have to get some help from Jonathan, or hopefully you might know this. This one, of course, our first text is from Anne-Marie. And she says, good morning. I was perusing your dealership's website late at night and noticed that it has a chatbot,

a chat robot. I've noticed more and more websites have chatbots. That made me wonder. Number one, what exactly is a chatbot? Is it some kind of artificial intelligence program? And number two, how does it work? Thank you. And P.S., I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday season.

Well, thank you. I mean, what an obvious question. We should probably should have talked about this a long time ago. Most companies have chat rooms, chat bots, whatever you want to call it. It isn't actually a robot. And that's bot means robot, but it's a service that most companies subscribe to. And they familiarize the employees with the chatbot service. as to what you do, and they have telephone numbers and names and as much material as you can get.

But they're not really, truth be told, be honest with you, most cases they're not part of the company. Now, there are exceptions, and if you want to have a great chat, go to Apple. Apple is amazing. I mean, I swear, sometimes I think I'm talking to top executive. They seem to have all the answers. They're amazing. but most companies can't afford something like that and my company just use the chatbot

you can get angry sometimes because they have limitations of what they can do for you I mean you say listen I want you go to chatbot and say I want to talk to this person here sometimes they can get that person sometimes they can't but that's what it is but it's convenient so you've got to you can text you can use the chat bot

you can call just another venue to get through to the company. Cool. Okay, and this one is from Bob in Naples. He says, good morning, all. I've got a used car question. A person buys a new Toyota, drives it a thousand miles, then sells or trades it into a Hyundai dealership, which then immediately sells that car at auction,

and a Toyota dealer buys it for resale. Any idea why something like this would happen? Gosh, it would vary with the dealership, the market. It is an unusual situation you just described because Toyota is a very popular car, used and new, and they're hard to come by when it comes to new cars or used cars today. And usually when a dealer gets, say, new Toyota or used Toyota, he's going to keep it so he could retail it and make a profit. Why a Hyundai dealer

would take one to the auction I mean there's the mean, nasty ulterior motive that there's a problem with the car that he doesn't want to deal with so he's going to wholesale it and let somebody else worry about the problem. That's kind of unlikely. If

he is a dealer that adheres to what we call a strict inventory control system, which good dealers are supposed to do. A lot of them don't do it. We got ourselves in trouble at my dealership by not adhering to strict inventory controls. And by that I mean you have some cars in your inventory and you, for whatever reason, don't sell them. You can't sell them. And when you can't sell a car, you've got to get rid of it one way or the other. If you can't, you can't. can't retail it, you have to wholesale. The problem is when you wholesale it, you sell it to another dealer for a lot less money than you would sell it to a retail buyer and you take a loss.

And nobody likes to take a loss. So sometimes use car managers and sometimes general managers and a lot of people in dealerships kind of look the other way on those old cars. And then one day they wake up and the owner of the dealership comes in and finds out you got some cars been sitting around for six months or a year, and they're worth about half of what they really could be sold for. And so that's a hidden loss. And that means that he has to be the bad guy and say, look, take that out at the auction and sell it and take your loss. And, of course, that goes against their paycheck. And they don't like that. So that's kind of the story there. There you have it, folks.

We are going to interrupt our certified mechanic and the recovering car dealer. We're going to go back to the phones, and we are going to try to talk with Daisy. Good morning, Daisy. I realize, Daisy, if you can hear me, we can't hear you. You are a first-time caller. if you would take and send me your contact information at 561-386-6-6-4-9-8, you still get your $50 reward for being the first new female caller. Thank you for joining us this morning.

Okay, well, let's go back for you folks out there listening and trying to call my sincere apologies. Some technical problems. We don't know what they are. And Jeremy in the control room is trying to reach Mike, who is up the ladder. And I'm getting ready to call Vic Conallis, the owner of the station, because I don't know what else to do. So let's get back to the text and the YouTube.

If you want to communicate with us, it cannot be at this point in time, apparently, the old-fashioned telephone. So you can text us at 772-497-6530. Now back to Rick. Okay. This one's coming in, Annos, simply says, is it a good time to buy a car, a new car now? That's a real big question. No, it's not a good time.

But the right time to buy a car depends on your own needs. And the individual situation with a car you're buying is a better time that it was six months ago. And it will be a better time six months from. And now we're going through this period of very, very short supply due to the supply chain issues, mainly the microchips, which is impossible to fully build cars as quickly as the manufacturers would like to. So you're going to pay several thousand dollars more than you would normally have to pay. If you need a car, then you have to pay the money. But whether it's a new car or used car, you're just going to pay more today.

So measure your need and the benefits of having to pay thousands of more, and then you have to make that hard decision. A lot of people are buying cars, and a lot of car dealers are getting filthy rich, and a lot of manufacturers are making a ton of money. So it's a seller's market, folks, in spite of the short supply of microchips, it's nevertheless still a seller's market because the car dealers and the manufacturers are making money hand over fist. If you can wait, wait.

Okay. And this one on YouTube from Johnny Z. Freidly. He says, I wonder if RV dealers, recreational vehicle dealers, or motorcycle dealers, charge dealer fees as well. Yes, they do. And they learn from the car dealer. You know, the hidden fee is a phenomenon all over. If you stayed at a hotel, you pay some hidden fees. If you took a cruise, you paid some hidden fees.

If you rented a car, boy, did you pay some hidden fees? Hidden fees are becoming part of our culture. It seems to me, and I've been a car dealer since 1968, but we car dealers invented the hidden fee. We probably didn't. But to me, any fee that's not included in the advertised price of the car. Or if you're quoted price, if you call a company and say, how much is that doggie in the window, you know, and he gives you a price,

and you come in and the doggy cost $25 more than he told you, you know, that's a dealer fee, that's a hidden fee. Why the Federal Trade Commission, why the Attorney General's of the world let people do that, by people, I mean sellers, and some sellers don't do that. Costco doesn't do it, Apple doesn't do it, Target doesn't do it, but there are a lot of retailers that do do that. Okay, keep feeding me with questions here. Well, I've got one last one here from Guy Larrabee on YouTube.

He says, I'm headed north for the holidays. Can I put just two snow tires on an all-wheel drive SUV? And my best opinion there is, as long as the tire sizes are the same, You have the correct tire size. I don't see where you'd have any problems with that. I think any advantage you've got when driving in the snow, I would go for it. Of course, I don't have a whole lot of experience with snow. I've only driven it just a couple of times when I've been on vacation up north.

We don't really get a whole lot of it down here in Florida. But we do see a lot of sand and rain down here that create similar conditions. So, yeah, anything, as long as you've got good, tread on there and obviously your tires are the most important part of the car really because that tiny little contact patch on the tire is the only thing connecting you to the road so it's any advantage you can get go for it I just had a thought not being a snow car driver I don't drive in the snow that often been a long time since I have but when you're driving in very bad

had wintery conditions. Should you deflate your tire a little bit? I mean, to get more, what you said that made me think about it is the contact between the rubber and the road, and the less air in the tire, the more contact. Well, I don't know as I would want to deflate them too much, especially since the colder air and colder temperature of the tire, that air is going to be more dense anyway, so it's going to deflate the pressure, reduce pressure anyways. Let's say the fact you recommended pressure and a tire was 40 pounds. What if you deflated to 30 pounds? I might go down as low as 35, but I don't know as they'd go all the way down to 30.

Because then you'd be taking a chance on really causing edgeware, and you would lose some of the center of grip of the tire, because as the outer edge is pushed down, the center of the tire actually lifts up some. Yeah. And I think you'd be creating a bit of an issue there with that. That's a great answer, Rick. And just in case you tuned in, that is Rick, our certified master technician, who can answer all of your questions. And that text number is 772-497-6530. And Jonathan has reminded me that, well, you should listen through the phone, not the radio right now so I think

Jonathan thinks that was the case with the last caller so bear with us excuse me we're going to try to get a hold of Mike and I am going to step out of the studio again to try to

I just call with Victor Canales and I got a busy signal okay I'm going to step out so you can take over again ladies and gentlemen 772-4976530 that's how you can get in touch with us well let me do what I can do best which is yak and we're if you just tuned in our apologies to our callers our telephone calls because our phones aren't working matter of fact the owner of the station's telephone isn't working either I got a busy signal so and we're having difficulty there we still have

YouTube.com forward slash Erlong Cars available. And, of course, we have our old-fashioned text line, 772-4976530, I think, is working. 772-4976530. Yep. We've got a couple coming in. Well, let's do it. Okay.

Let's see. First one here is from Frank. He says, good morning. It's the Grinch that's stealing your show with the phone problem. Merry Christmas to you And a happy new year From Frank in the Jupiter Farms Oh, thank you Frank

I appreciate that very much It's a wonderful time of year But it's a bad time It's rolling cars with no telephones Yeah This one coming in anonymous It says I have an ES 350

A Lexus With 160,000 miles And in pretty good condition The issue I've had Has been with the power steering I brought it to my mechanic numerous times with the power steering leaking. They told me it was the motor, which I'm guessing they mean the power steering pump, and that it was a bad seal, and I've still had issues with it.

Is this a problem with any of the models with the Lexus? I'm almost ready to start looking for another car, but I would like to try and put another $40,000 on this one before I do that. Most Lexus ES350s are basically just a Toyota camera, It's the same drive line, the same power train. It's uncommon that we see issues, multiple issues with power steering on those. Sometimes the pumps do leak and the power steering rack, and there is one particular return hose for the fluid that occasionally leaks.

Unfortunately, if yours happen to catch the trifecta, and you wound up with all three of those issues, yeah, that can get a little pricey. but once those are straightened around additional 40,000 should be nothing on that car I would trust that car all day long and I'd almost consider keeping it a little more as compared to some of the newer cars especially with some of the issues we've seen

with the newer ones coming in and with the prices on them and you can Google it I was just doing that Hey excuse me guys we have Victor who's on the line and hopefully we'll be able to communicate. Good morning, Victor. Hello, Vic. We can't hear you. Okay, Victor, is that Victor Canales? It is. Victor Canales. If you can hear me, we thank you for calling in.

And Victor is the owner of the Oldies Channel, and he is in the process of trying to fix our technical difficulties. Thank you, Victor. Thanks, Vic. We appreciate you working on it. Victor, you can text us if you'd like at 772-497-6530. Okay. I've got one here from Casey on YouTube. Says, Earl, do you have any thoughts on what market Toyota was targeting when they decided to bring the Crown to North America, the new Toyota Crown?

Well, that's a good question. And, of course, they haven't done that yet. They are in the process. I think that the Avalon, of course, was retired, which we are very sad to hear it because it was a great car. I mean, Nancy and I drive one, and we love it. They decided to drop that line. The crown is a luxury car.

So I guess they felt in their portfolio of models. They want to be able to offer a top-of-the-line car. and from what I know the crown's been around for a long long time when I first became a Toyota dealer back in 1975 there was a crown and then they retired it to other than

the USA and now they're coming back so the pictures I've seen of it beautiful look really nice beautiful absolutely yeah and this one from Tom he says I noticed that the Atlanta dealers include the

dealer fee in their advertised price around Atlanta, Georgia. That's a pretty cool thing. And he also says, deflate tires and lose all that $500 nitrogen? Oh, boy. Well, I'm amazed.

You just told me, was this Bob? Tom. Tom, Steckle. Tom, thank you. I didn't know they were including the dealer fees. Somebody must be doing their job in maybe the Attorney General's office in Georgia

or somebody in the Atlanta metro area. someone actually got the deals of digital. Because Atlanta used to be a terrible place in terms of advertising. It was like Miami. I mean, it was the belly of the beast. If you really want to get taken advantage of,

buy a car in Atlanta, Georgia. So that's good news. I will definitely verify that. And we can go online and look at some prices and see if they do include the fees. The problem is when you go online and when you, you know, read an advertisement,

you only know the fees they, you can see that they include. It's the ones that you don't see when you come into the dealership that really, really, here's a little trick that some of the dealers are using now. They will say either we include our dealer fee in the price of the car or we don't charge a dealer fee. Now they're playing on words, they're playing word games with you because dealer fee doesn't mean anything. If you go to the Webster's and look it up,

it's not going to give you a lot of information. They call their hidden fee. I prefer hidden fee to a dealer fee. They call their hidden fee all sorts of things, like joint filing fee, administrative fee, doc fee. You know, they call it a 20-Pi fee. They call it anything they want to. But we'll double check.

Thanks for the input on Atlanta. So basically, any fee charged that is not part of the advertised price of the car isn't added on hidden fee. Except for government fees. Except for the government taxes, title. If I had my way, if someone made me the head guy from all consumers in the world, I would say that wherever you sell in a product, the price includes everything, including government fees. I mean, well, why are we playing the game here? I mean, you know, it's what you have to borrow the money for or write the check for or reach in your pocket to take the cash out.

I mean, it's what you have to give the company to get the product that's important to you. Exactly. So why have stuff that you don't put in there? The government fees are sometimes a little complex to calculate. In Florida, for example, the state. sales tax is 6% and then some municipalities local regional areas have a half a percent and your license plate at your registration depends on your

birth date and whether you transfer at a plate from one car to another why why should you have to get a headache worrying about all that put the burden on the seller and the seller should have a law that says if I don't do this they're gonna come and cuff me and take me away I'm a to have to put the full price on every vehicle I sell. But as it stands now, they let them get away with government fees. That's okay with me. Just don't add anything that goes to you in that advertised price, meaning the seller. If it goes to the state of Florida or Wyoming, then that's okay. Yeah. Okay, folks, you are listening to the recovering car dealer and Rick,

and they were discussing fees and you can always go to rural on cars and you can read his column I have several times but I remind you fees are okay it's the hidden fees that are illegal very illegal it's taking advantage of the consumer I'm going to remind everyone we are having telephone issues but because there's so many options on how to to get in touch with us. We have Facebook. We have YouTube. We have Your Anonymous Feedback.com.

We have texts 772-497-6530. So we'll continue to get on with the show and ask you for your patience. And if you have an opinion, a question, anything at all. Take advantage of those options that I just explained to you. and again your anonymous feedback.com 772-4976530

now back to the recovering car dealer yeah one of the things I was going to talk about before to me it's interesting to a lot of people autonomous cars and there's a big controversy about that some people think

that they're never going to be totally autonomous cars some people think that it's not a good thing that they would be. And some people, like Elon must, think that their cars are already self-driving and there's a lot of criticism of Tesla of being too, what's the word, aggressive about marketing their autonomous cars. Excuse me. I just got word that Mike has been reached. He's on his way to the studio, and folks, you'll be able to call in shortly. Not now.

I gave you the Facebook, YouTube, your anonymous feedback, text 772-4976530, but our technical issue is temporary. So bear with us. Now back to the recovering car dealer. So we're talking about autonomous cars. Nancy and I have a Tesla. It's a Tesla Plaid. That's the S model, but the Plaid S model. And it has a total self-driving, which finally was cut over.

we could do it. They measured our performance, and now we can do full autonomy. We were surprised. On a negative side, we were really, really high on the idea. We still are, but it's not what it is represented to be. Now, I'm going to hold this up to the camera. This is the rear of our car, and the bumper sticker you see there, we had put on, and it basically makes the obvious that the car we're driving has a total self-driving and it is autonomous. Why did we put that on there? We're not

bragging. We're putting that on there because when we do have autonomous on it makes some mistakes that are a little frightening to us as drivers and even maybe more frightening to the people around us.

The autonomous portion of the car airs on the side of being very careful. And I'll give you an example. When you're driving a car, it's a Tesla, and you have it on full autonomous, and you're driving down the road. Let's say there's a young child with a bicycle, and he's standing on the side of the road.

He might have the wheel of his bike over the curb. Now, in normal times, when you see something like that, you see it, hopefully the child sees it, you slow down, you move your car over, another lane you make eye contact I mean there's there's a lot of things that happen that we don't think about as human drivers now with the a Tesla when the camera sees the child with a wheel over the car over the curb you could be going 50 miles an hour 60 miles an hour speed limit or whatever and the car

stops because the Tesla overcorrects and I'm glad. I don't, they could not afford to have a child hit or killed or injured, something like that. Same thing goes true with heavy construction. We're in South Florida. This show is coming from North Palm Beach. Huge amount of construction around on the roads, infrastructure. And a lot of cones.

A lot of these are orange, bright orange cones and other sorts of construction. paraphernalia. You see lines on the road, center lines, the curb edge lines, painted over, and then new lines painted. Confusing to humans. Well, it's even more confusing to you to cameras on autonomous vehicles. And again, we've got to the point now where we've had to put the sign on the back of the car if we want to use autonomous so people don't blow their horns. And make obscene gestures that Nancy and me, because I think we're, you know, we're more on stopping the car in the middle of the road.

It's been an interesting journey with Tesla and this feature that we so look forward to. And, you know, there's some really major things that have really bothered me, the caution light and what you're supposed to do when you do reach a caution light. but you see folks we're driving autonomous we as human beings have learned how to drive a certain way and we have been breaking the law and we're all doing it in sync so here comes autonomous and she is just like you know reminding the human race that there are laws on the road So if you're the only one that's reinforcing them by driving autonomous, you're in a big, big world of trouble. Because she's stopping at the caution sign. She can't comprehend construction that's going on, whether it's a barrel, whether it's a cone.

So there's a lot of variables here. If you got our own cars and you can look at our blog that we did on this very subject, And it really will enlighten you. If you're thinking about the possibility of buying a Tesla with a total self-driving, it pretty much spells out what you have to deal with. I'm glad that we do it. We will continue to use the autonomous, but we'll do it in safer areas for us and for the other people.

When you're driving an autonomous car, you're now worried about your own driving. And, of course, you always worry about others driving. Now you've got to worry about the car's driving. So it's a little tense when you're driving an autonomous car. It's a transition time. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it took us a little while to get over from horse and buggy into automobiles.

And this will be a transition. But in the future, it'll be a good thing, I think. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Once we get there. But for right now, the best thing for Earl and I to do is to, you know, go to an area that's less travel. because the autonomy part of it, it's intriguing, it's interesting, and you almost feel like a zift. Well, you do.

You've stepped into the future, and it's an amazing feeling. And for you new listeners out there, for your old listeners, again, I apologize for the problem with the telephones, but we have help on the way. Hopefully we'll be kept the phones activated if you've been trying to call, my apologies. You can get in touch with us by texting us. the mystery shopping report is the highlight of the show. I mean, it's, we put it at the end of the show,

to be honest with you, so that you'll listen to the show longer because it's such a cool thing. We pretend to go into a car dealership somewhere in Florida or other states. We concentrate on Florida. We concentrate on South Florida. And we have a undercover agent. We call her Agent Lightning. She was even mentioned in the Wall Street,

journal article the other day. But we sent Agent Lightning and she pretends to buy her lease a car. And she reports exactly what happens. Now you'll be able to hear this on the show between 9.30 and 10, Eastern Standard Time here in

North Palm Beach. And you don't want to miss this. We shopped an Auto Nation store, Apple Auto Nation Cadillac, and we name names, we just name the name of the dealership, Automation Cadillac. They're on 45th Street. and West Bond Beach, Florida.

So we named the salespeople and the managers exactly what the prices were. And if there were any undercover, undercover, I would say, shenanigans, you know, things that you shouldn't be doing that you do. We talk about it. And we name names that we don't get sued.

So we know that if we've been doing this for 20 years, we've been telling the truth. So if for no other reason, listen to the show and wait for that mystery shopping report, between 9.30 and 10. And also, you're a very important part of that mystery shopping report, and you can vote at 772-497-6530. And each and every time we use that word shenanigans.

What do you think of, Mr. Recovering Car Dealer? I don't know. Okay. I do. Okay. We talk about 20 years, 21 years that we've been on the air. And Jonathan blessed us with that famous word, shenanigans. And, boy, I'll tell you what, did it ever, as we were on the air longer, it had more and more meaning shenanigans.

And it's still going on today. So please, be a part of the vote on the mystery shop. And I'm not sure Agent Sprinkles is around or not, but they may get involved too. Text number is 772-497-6-5-30. Now back to the recovering car dealer. We've got one question from Mark Ryan. This is an interesting one. He says, retirement may be in my near future.

What type of part-time positions would be available at a car dealership for a retired marketing professor outside of sales? Boy, I tell you, we'd love to have you on. you know for a marketing professor that we'd love to pick your brain there I'd say coordinate with the marketing company the dealership uses or if they have an in-house agency you could be a consultant I think if you look at most car dealerships advertising is embarrassing and it is almost as bad as lawyers advertising

which is even more embarrassing and when you see a really good ad that really gets you interested in the product and the company. I mean, it's really a work of art. It's a lot of thought and process goes in there. But, boy, there are a lot of car dealers out there that would love to have a retired marketing guy that would be able to be a consultant, advisor on all of their marketing and advertising.

In fact, you know, shoot me your contact information and we might be able to, you know, when the time comes, and you can help us out. All righty. Well, Mark, I hope you heard that one. Contact early. You might be time to move from Iowa down to sunny south Florida.

That's a long way. And this one, Bob that was calling in or trying to call in about the problem on his Mustang, he asked about that, says he's got a problem with the electrical system with the dash and glove box lights apparently, inoperable and he's tested the fuses and relays but not getting any solutions and my next stop is to or my next recommendation for him is he'd need to get a volt meter and start testing where the power is stopping

he might have a broken wire or a loose connector in there but that could really get to be a bit of headache might be time to get a mechanic involved that knows that one so he came back he said also please ask Earl if he has seen any crash data on rear passengers in small SUVs. He says he's seeing very poor results. That is something we don't really see a lot of in the, when they do the testing. You know, they often show what happens with front seat passengers.

They don't really show a lot about what happens with rear seat passengers. The last data I can remember on that because we have talked about that, on the show. There was a time when the, everybody thought, you're safer in the back seat. And then the data that I saw, this was probably five years ago, said that actually you're safer in the front seat. I think the, it's because of the focus of the government on what's required and what's not required. But, I mean, think about it. You know, put your dog in the back seat, put the kid in the back seat. You want, you know, if you want to be safe, sit in the backseat and

last day, as I say, you're better off from the front seat. It shouldn't me that way. I mean, you should be safe. Actually, it seems to me to be easier to be safe in the backseat, but you've got to engineer and design it to make it that way. It's just not going to happen. Well, as a matter of fact, did you know

that Florida state law requires seat belts only for the front seat passengers? Rear seat passengers, it's actually not a legal requirement to wear a seat That's embarrassing. It is.

It's odd. Is it other states other than Florida? I haven't researched others. I just know that Florida's that way. Let's Google that. That would be a... Yeah. That is ridiculous.

I had no idea. So a cop will pull you over if you're in the front seat and the passenger side, not for not wearing a seat belt, but if you're in the back seat, it's perfectly okay. Oh, I beg your pardon. They adjusted it. Okay. The original one was that way. Now it says Florida law requires use of seatbelts for all drivers and passengers

in all motorized vehicles except a person certified by a physician as having a medical condition that causes seatbelt use to be inappropriate or dangerous. Okay, so, and I would bet other states are probably going to follow that way. But I remember when it first came out, it was front seats only. and I always thought that was the craziest thing. It just didn't seem normal. How many folks out there are over 25 years old? I mean, I've been around a long time since 1968.

I'm 82. So I was in the car business before we had seatbelts. And I can't. I go back in time and I think to myself, whoa, what when I'm, how dumb was I? when they came out with seatbells, I said, what is this? This is terrible.

I mean, is it bad enough to, the cars look bad enough, now the seatbed's ugly, and you've got to stuff them down in the seat, and no one wants to wear it. If you've got a seatbelt on, it takes all that time to put on and then take off. Can you imagine how we felt?

And then when they came out with airbags, I mean, some of you old timers out there, think about it. The car dealers, I thought they were going to revolt, when the federal government required airbags. Oh, it's going to raise the price of the car so high, and they'll be able to buy, find a car. And they don't really work anyway, you know.

You get into an accident, they probably wouldn't work. And, I mean, we argued and screamed and yelled and fought about every safety item. I think we finally reached a certain age or a timeless sophistication, where we now truly accept safety items. But if you go back to the 60s or the 70s, we were we were just fighting all the way cars were safe if you made them bigger and heavier and thicker steel than that made them safer absolutely that was exactly the opposite absolutely and because the population has grown because there are so many people on the road

seatbelts they do indeed save lives and if you are in the back seat of a car sitting in the middle is probably the safest place for you. But the seatbelt is extremely important. So buckle up, baby. And this question from Guy Larraby on YouTube, in confusing situations for your Tesla, can you turn the full self-driving off? Yeah, and that's the key. They have a thing on the, if you're streaming, I got my hands up here. I'm holding on the wheel. There's a button right tear where my right thumbs brittling and you have to keep your hands on you on the wheel uh okay you have to matter of fact i forgot to put my hands on the wheel when i first started it and then it stopped the guard says okay that's strike one we give you five strikes if you

leave your hands off the wheel uh four more times we're taking away you're fully autonomous so nancy did the same thing we have three strikes against this anyway so i'm on full autonomous my right thumb, that's it, I just turned it off. And you have to learn how to do that because you're, as I say, you're going down the highway, suddenly the car, the autonomous car sees something, you don't know what is, the car stops. Could be a caution light that no one else is paying any attention to. Yeah, it's a different world. On the side of the road, could be an orange cone or a line paint, some obscure thing. I got into a right lane one time with a left turn. I'd have been there today, you know. I'd still be

there if I hadn't turned off the autonomous because I'm in a busy road with four lanes, heavy traffic, and somehow the car got me in the right lane knowing my navigation was set to make a left turn. So now I'm at the intersection and I got my left turn signal on and I'm just sitting there and the cars are blowing their horns at me and my autonomous car is waiting so there'll be enough traffic so he can go over four lanes and make a left turn. Ain't going to happen.com. No, uh-uh. So you can turn that off real quickly, and that's the key to success.

The interesting part here is comparing that to like the car my wife drives, just a simple Ravrefour at 2019, we have the lane keep assist which the camera watches the lanes in the road

and it helps you stay centered in the lane. Autonomous as part of it. And as you're driving on a highway, we drive her car on trips a couple times to go up to Lakeland, visit family, and you're off on these nice little two-lane roads sometimes, no other traffic anywhere, you're just cruising along, and it's so tempting to just barely hold the steering wheel.

If it doesn't detect enough force of your hand on that steering wheel, showing that you're still holding the wheel, now this is just in a simple round four, it will start beeping at you and alert you that you've got to have your hands on the wheel. Well, they have... Great information. I have, excuse me, I have great information for everyone who's listening out there.

Yes, indeed, we did have phone difficulties, technical difficulties. But right now, our phones are up and the lines are open. I'll believe in my. Weird. And we are waiting to hear from you at 877-960-99-60. Back to Autonomous and Tesla, what you cannot do that you... can do in your truck or anyone's vehicle, chit-chat, talk on the phone, text, and, you know, everyone does it.

It's not right, but they do it. In that Tesla, you can forget about it because if you are not concentrating, if you're not focused on exactly what is expected of you, you can get yourself killed or somebody else. So, and I'll tell you what, I have to color my. hair more often. Ladies, if you're listening out there, yeah, since we bought the Tesla, I colored my hair a whole lot more often. I think I accumulated maybe about 100 gray hairs when we were in Riviera Beach, and the Tesla was in the right-hand lane, and we had to get three lanes over to the left lane. Yikes. 877-960-99-60. Give us a call. If you don't

want to call us, text us 772-4976530. Your Anonymous Feedback. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. I'm not going to believe the phones are working unless somebody calls. 877. I'm begging you. 877-960-9960. We've been here for an hour and a half, an hour and 15 minutes, and we haven't had any phone calls because the phones were broken. Now they're fixed. So please help us test it. 877-9-60-99-60. Just say hello. 877-9-60-99-60 because I'm getting very nervous here

because the phones have not been working for an hour and 15 minutes. Yeah. You have anything else for us, Rick, YouTube, Facebook, texting? We are caught up right at the moment. but I'm sure something will come in here pretty quick but truth be told though I would say that most cars built in the last two years

have got all the features necessary to be able to be autonomous electric power steering where the car can steer itself cameras all around lane trace assist they don't have a number here's a perfect human example when you're driving a car normally without autonomy

and you go, the four-away stop, okay? Now, nobody knows exactly when you got there. I mean, you know, there's a rule that says the guy that got this guy on your right. He takes, people roll differently. What do you do? You look at the guy. Yep. Now, that's the reason I hate tinted windows

because I think eye contact when you're driving is extremely important. Yes. When the day comes, when autonomous car, can make eye contact. And they do have, by the way, cabin cameras that look into your eye. When they look into the eye of the guy that pulled up to the, goes, what do you do? You go like this, if you can't see me, I'm waving. No. You say, go, come on.

Motion, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of humanity. It's the communication. You smile? I mean, if you smile at somebody, I mean, there's a whole lot of stuff, wave at them. So without that human thing, until there's a lot of people, until they get to that human thing, and they'll do it, but it's not there yet. Okay, folks, breaking news.

My computer is blank, so Jonathan is helping me here with the calls that we do have, and my information is that there are five calls. So folks out there, if you can hear me, just hang on. We are going to go to our first caller, and that would be Mimi. Mimi. Mimi. Hello. Oh, good morning.

Congratulations. Thank you. It's so nice to be able to talk to you again. I have a little question about the radiator fluid. Can you mix the colors? I'm wanting to make sure I have the right color in the car for a 2004 Mercury Gramarkey. So when I look at the, I haven't looked at it lately, but. If I look in the reservoir, I should see a color, right?

Yes. Most manufacturers, going back about 20 years, Radiator Flu was all basically a greenish yellow color. And now every manufacturer has come out with a rainbow of colors. Unless it's a specific, certain specific cars require certain coolants, hybrids in that may have special requirements for their coolant but what I would do is I would check the owner's manual on your car and unless it specifically says that you have to have that special type of coolant then you should be just fine using Preston or any of the other brand name

coolants in your car oh well thank you so much yes because I'm wanting to make sure that there's some ready with an old car you never know when you're going to need things oh Also, what about adding water? The man who parks across from me was adding water to his radiator, and I said, oh, my goodness, are you supposed to do that? And he said, yes. I was like, okay. I figured I'd check with you guys and find out about that.

Well, again, the old school method was the old radiator fluids, the coolants that we had, came full strength, and you were meant to mix it 50-50 with water. and the idea was that way it would cost you a little less for the coolant because you didn't have to pay for the water that you added in. Then they came up with the idea, well, it's hard to keep that perfect mixture because the water can evaporate out and the chemicals, the ethanol glycol that is left from the coolant doesn't evaporate as quickly so you'd be left with a stronger concentration than you'd want. So they had different devices for testing that, but generally most manufacturers now have gone to a coolant that has the water pre-mixed, so you don't have to worry about mixing it, you simply would add it in. Double check again with your owner's manual to make sure what type you should have, but if it says that you're okay with other coolants and you get the type that is full strength, you may need to mix it 50% with water in order to get the proper concentration.

Most of it, it'll say right on the jug, whether or not you need to add water to it. Okay, well, thank you very much. Mimi, thank you for calling. I'm glad your phones are working. Bye-bye. Hey, Mimi. Are you a first-time caller? No, no, I've been calling.

Oh, okay. Mimi, this is Nancy Stewart. I want to thank you for continuing to listen to Earl and Cars. We really appreciate our audience. and Mimi, I'll tell you, I can't emphasize enough that owner's manual, it's helped me out a heck of a lot. So it's something that is, if you have it right there in your glove box, it's a great, I have mine on my passenger seat now so I can just go right to it. But again, thank you for calling in. Have a great weekend. Oh, you too. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. And you can give us a call. Our phones are working, and we are going to go to Howard, who's holding, and he calls us from Jupiter. Good morning, Howard. Good morning. I hope you all are fine. I'm sorry about what happened, but I guess everything is fixed now. Thanks for calling.

Okay. Now, they still make steel wheels instead of alloy wheels on cars, and my question is, why are most cars now, a loyal wheel? Alloy wheels, not steel wheels. Certain cars still have basic steel rims that you can put hubcaps on, but it just seems like now the majority of people want that appearance of the aluminum alloy wheels, the fancier, shinier, you don't have to worry about a hubcap falling off, then you're stuck with just that plain black steel wheel. so yeah their steel wheels are still available usually on the more economical cars the lower priced models but it just seems like now alloy wheels are all the rage everywhere

very expensive too they can be certain ones yes you know the advantage and disadvantage and disadvantage of having steel wheels the big advantage to the alloy wheels is that they're lighter weight and they have gotten the strength up quite a bit so they don't warp as easily as they used to in the older days but the reduced weight

makes the wheel easier to balance the ride is smoother that way and you do have the less weight for better fuel economy steel wheels had the advantage of strength so if you hit a pothole good and hard with an alloy wheel there is a chance that it can actually crack or break the wheel whereas the steel wheel is more likely to bend and I've actually fixed quite a few steel wheels that are bent a little bit if the rim is simple the rim of the wheel is bent right up next to the tire bead

you can actually take the tire off and use a big adjustable wrench and actually just straighten it right back out and make bring that wheel right back to shape okay now you know a big disadvantage of steel wheels they rust and you have to keep after that them and I had steel wheels and what I used to do was I used to take them off sand them and

repaint them but I don't think anybody any dealership does that am I correct if a person came in with a steel wheel and said look they're rusting could you paint it would you do that oh we could but anymore it's not really all that necessary because the original coating and paints that they put on them last so much more there's so much more durable the coating that we rarely see rusted wheels anymore. That's very rare, very uncommon. One other advantage, though, with steel wheels. I'm talking about my 1999 Toyota with a steel wheel.

Yeah. It russed like crazy. Well, you can actually buy a paper ring that goes around the rim so you don't get any paint on the tire and paint it yourself anytime you wanted. I was able to mask off the, the tire. Sure.

And spray it. I mean, that's a long time ago. I'm 87 years old, and at that time, I was like a young guy of 56. So there's a big difference. Now I can't do things like that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, one other question. Sure.

Tires and dry rot. I have a tire, two tires, and it's getting dry rot. It's only three years old. And also, I checked it out. it's not wearing evenly

so I want to throw in the tire and get a new one but I have tires for life and the tire condition is not good so I wonder if even though if it's not

you know the tread is not down where you see Lincoln's head is pretty close can I have that tire replaced in tires for life If any part of the tread of that tire is below 3.30 seconds of an inch, then we will replace those tires under tires for life. Okay, now, what about the test with a penny?

I know it's not scientific, but does it actually show if you can't see... Yeah, that's kind of a shade tree method, but that actually comes up when you're about 2.30 seconds. of an inch, which the NHTSA, the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, says when a tire reaches 2.30 seconds of an inch, it's time to replace it. Well, we say, no, we went to 3.30 seconds and gave you a little extra and said, no, when those tires are getting down close to time that they say it's time to replace it, we're going to replace it then. Okay, that's good, that's good to know. Okay, now, my name. last question. Transmission has 100,000 miles, not mine, but what is the maintenance on 100,000

mile transmission? What's the car? Camry. What year? 2017. No maintenance. Really? Nope. It's a maintenance-free unit. It's not meant to be messed with leave it be you'll see that in your owner's manual okay you know how many mechanics if you go to an aftermarket you know a jiffy loo or they they will tell you 100,000 miles your transmission is going to blow we have to replace it we have a machine that we hook it up and yeah yeah so explain about that machine and why it's not necessary uh well the machine can be very helpful for transmissions that do require a fluid replacement or if you're saying if you've got a vehicle that you're doing a lot of towing or hard driving on the vehicle something

like that or some people just say I want to do it anyways regardless what the owner's manual says for maintenance I still want to do it okay well basically this machine connects up to the coolant lines for the transmission and it removes all the old fluid and pumps in fresh new fluid so the entire amount of fluid in the transmission gets replaced. Back 20, 30 years ago, we would do a transmission service,

which was recommended by the manufacturer, where you would simply drain out the fluid from the pan and refill it. Unfortunately, you were only changing about four to five quarts of fluid on a transmission that might hold 12 to 13 quarts of fluid. So these machines they came out with, will replace all the fluid and make sure the whole thing gets brand new fluid.

But you really would only need that if, say, you accidentally got into deep water and some water got into transmission through the breather vent, then we would use that machine to make sure to clean that out and save your transmission, and it cost a couple hundred dollars versus a couple thousand. Okay, my really last question. A friend of mine has a six cylinder of Camry. And he wants to put a tow bar in the back. He wants to carry a small load.

Is that possible, or do you have to do something to the transmission to cool it? Camrys are not meant to tow anything. If you're putting a bicycle rack or something on it, that'd be fine. But I wouldn't recommend trying to tow anything with a Camry. Okay. Thanks, I appreciate the call very much. We'll be called again next week, please. Thank you, Howard.

We are going to, I'm going to give you that text number again so you can vote on our mystery shopping report. And the mystery shopping report comes from Auto Nation. And that is Auto Nation, Cadillac, and West Palm Beach. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Now, one of the comments who were talking about tread, which has been an issue with me for a long time, what is a safe tread on a car? And I've had that conversation with a lot of my customers. I've had it with government officials.

As Rick said, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says 2.30 seconds is safe. We in our dealership have determined that we feel 3.30 seconds is safe. The fact that matter is, from the time you get into a car with brand new tires, which could have, what, 830 seconds or 6 30 seconds? Usually, brand new tires are, for a passenger car, are between 9 and 10.30 seconds. Okay, so 10.30 seconds. Now, that's as safe as your tire is ever going to be, assuming you have inflation and you take care of the tire. Now, as soon as you go from 1030 seconds and 9 30 seconds, guess what?

It's not as safe as it was. And when it gets down to 530 seconds, it's not as safe as it was. So it's a subjective, judgmental decision that, you know, it's not as safe as it was. So it's a subjective, judgmental decision that. Every individual has to make. At our dealership, we have what we call tires for life. As long as you own the car and have your factory recommended maintenance, we provide you with tires, you know, six sets of tires, three sets of tires, whatever it takes.

And the conversation I have with some of my customers is I only have 4.30 seconds on there. I say, we'll replace it at 3.30 seconds. say, well, I don't want my daughter, my wife, my family riding in that car. I don't feel safe. And I can't argue with that. I mean, it's a subjective thing. If you want to be really, really safe, buy yourself a new set of tires every month. I mean, that'll be the ultimate safety.

And I don't know where the NHTSA came up with 2.30 seconds. I'd like to see the date on that sometime. But it's a decision each of us has to make, take care of the tires and measure them and then decide where you feel safe before you replace your tires. And one thing you can do is look in the gap between the treads and about every couple inches around the tire, there's a small raised section so that when those tires get worn out, that'll actually create a line going straight across the tread of the tires, which is your indicator that it's time to put new tires. Would that be 2.30 seconds? That's at 2.30 seconds when that'll show up. Let me tell you, when you get out of 2.30 seconds, it looks like you're riding on slick tires. It looks like a drag race tire with no tread at all. So don't ever let it get down

to 2.30 seconds. Really bad news. Any phone calls? 877, 960, 9960. It's hard to believe. We've got the phones fixed, and we've only had, what, two calls? We do have the phones fixed, and I'm going to send out a few apologies. to, I believe it's Chris and Bob, who called in first this morning. And also to remind Daisy, get me that information, Daisy. That's the only way I can get you your $50. And if you didn't get my number, it's 561-386-6-44-98. That's 561-386-6-4-98.

And Earl's latest column goes quite well with the Mystery Shopper Report. this morning. It is a car dealer's secret profit rapidly rising to record levels. You want to take a look at that and as I said it pairs quite well with the mystery shopping report

and ladies and gentlemen please vote. We'd love to hear from you and we mystery shopped or Agent Lightning mystery shopped auto nation Cadillac on 45th Street. Now back to the recovering car dealer.

You know, we're talking about, Nancy, just mentioned the hidden profit, a secret profit, the car dealers. And I'm referring to the finance and insurance department. We talked earlier in the show, if you're listening about AutoNation, the largest retailer, or the second largest now retailer cars in the world, they think about 300 plus car dealerships. They make over $2,700, $2,700 on every car they sell. So use car or new car, whether they finance it or not, on the average, they make so much finance an insurance profit. They average over $2,700 for every car.

Now, if you don't listen to anything else or hear any recommendation we make on this show, remember this. When you buy a car and you want to finance it, check with your bank and check with your credit union first. Don't ever go into a car dealership and say, can you finance my car for me after you buy it? Because you're just opening your checkbook, giving them the pen, giving them your signature they can copy, and say, fill in the blank. They will make a ton of money. Think about this. Auto Nation, largest retail of cars, averages over $2,700 per car. That's average.

and you know what the average is it's the best of the worst and the worst of the best that means that auto nation is making $10,000 on some cars they deliver in finance and they're making $500

on some other car you don't want to be the sucker that goes in there and pays $10,000 profit in finance and insurance products when you could go to your credit union

for a small fraction of that credit unions have a better deal for you, typically than banks. And by the way, a lot of people don't know. You don't have to be an employee of a company that has a credit union to have access to a credit union. There are a lot of credit unions out there, public credit unions that you can join. It would be a membership fee, nominal. I mean, $30 a year or $100 a year maybe. I'm not sure exactly what it would be, but it would be.

well worth it if you ever borrow money. Credit unions don't have a lot of the taxes and other fees that the federal government charges banks. Credit unions get a pass. Banks don't like that because really credit unions are unfair competition to banks. If you're going to finance a car, do not use a dealer financing. The one exception is when the manufacturer of that car, they have what they call a captive finance company. Honda would have one. General Motors has one. Most of the manufacturers

have what they call captive finance companies. They own the bank, so to speak. Sometimes those captive finance companies, General Motors or Honda or whatever, they'll have a special, you know, 1% financing

or 2% financing. That's legitimate. And if you can take advantage of that, then it's well worthwhile. That's the only time you should finance your car. with the bank. Great information. And folks, I'll tell you what, Earl said it, never, never let the dealership finance the car for you, you know, unless you've gone out and compared and checked,

you know, and you've done your homework. It's a real melting pot for making a hell of a lot of money. We're going to go, we're going to go back to Rick. I got one more here from Charles Reeves. He says, good morning, all. First-armed car buyer, more than ready to pull the trigger. Which do you think would be a better financial decision for a Subaru forest or wilderness? A 2022 lease or a 2023 finance? Well, that's a tough one. I don't have the data on that.

I would get a comparative analysis. I take the car, and I would compare the lease. with the financing. As you know, interest rates are going up considerably, and even though they're lower than they've been historically at times past, it's still much higher than they have been recently. So this has got a lot of people worried, and your monthly payment on a finance is going to definitely go up considerably. Leasing will have the subsidies that they used to have pretty soon. The manufacturers and the dealers are getting nervous because leasing is dropping off to a fraction of what it used to be. It used to be like 30% of every car is released. Now it's like

10%. And when the manufacturer and the dealer lease a car, they usually lease or sell another car to that person. The control they have because they know who you are, where you are. They know how much money you got because they lease the car to you. They own the car so you have to bring it back to them. They have a lot of control. It gives them that ability to get you in to another car of the same make and sometimes from the same dealer. So they sweeten the pot on leases and they have not been doing that since the COVID, the whole economic situation we find ourselves in. So we're getting to the point now where there will be some lease subsidies and you'll be able to lease a car at a heck of a deal so I would say on a

Subaru check them both out it's the best credit union rate from or the bank rate you can from your bank and your credit union and then look at the dealer a lease deal because the banks and credit unions that you deal with don't lease cars but the dealer probably captive or leasing company would and compare and do a Do a careful analysis. If this is just a monthly payment, on the lease, you've got to worry about it. It's the down payment.

And also the option to purchase. Okay, folks, I think we're going to get back to Rick if he's got texts or maybe FaceTime. Or we could do the Mr. Shopping report. You too? That probably might be the good one. Go for mystery shopping. Okay, mystery shop of AutoNation Cadillac

in West Palm Beach. Now, I'll digress a little bit because we have a little bit of time. And I love talking about history because I've been around a long time. I'm an old guy. And when my father started Stuart Pontiac in West Palm Beach in 1937, he knew a guy in General Motors named Bud Schooley. Bud Schooley turned out to be the Cadillac dealer. He'd never been a dealer before, so my father worked with a,

Letts Schooley to show them how to sell cars, how to be a dealer. And the two of them got to be good friends. And Bud Schooley had two sons, Bill Schooley and Chuck Schooley. I know I'm boring a lot of people, but I like to talk about these things. And they ran the dealership for many, many, many years. And of course, with Cadillac and Palm Beach County, that was like a licensed to steal. And my father, who had a Pontiac dealership, he was, you know, he's just making an average private, but Cadillac dealer in Palm Beach County, trust me, a lot of money. Did very well. And eventually, a schoolie sold out to, guess who?

Auto Nation. And Auto Nation, Cadillac is now on 45th Street and West Palm Beach. And with all that said, that is our shopping target. Agent Lightning was dispatched to visit Automation Cadillac on 405th Street in West Palm Beach. In the last few weeks, we've targeted luxury car dealerships. We had Audi and Mercedes most recently. This week, we selected the other American luxury brand, Cadillac. Tesla is also the largest luxury manufacturer, luxury car manufacturer in the world.

But people don't think of Tesla as being a luxury car. And I can see that. I mean, it's not a Bentley, it's not a Rolls-Royce, it's not even. in a Cadillac, but in terms of qualifications, it does qualify. But the Cadillac is kind of considered the American luxury car and America had built. So we went in there. Asian lighting wasn't subjected to anything really unpleasant. This is the sort of shopping experience we've come to expect from the premium brands.

You know, the people that got all the money and buy the luxury cars are usually less tolerant of being pushed around. And the manufacturer, the luxury dealers understand that. And they can afford to buy a car wherever they want, when they want, and so they can't be coerced or tricked

as easily, unfortunately, as the average person said. We usually find pretty good treatment from electric car dealers. Another factor that may make this mystery shop a pleasant one is a dealer. And that is Auto Nation, who as I said a couple times during the show, they're the biggest retailer. Not technically now because Lithia, who I haven't even heard of, they passed them in total number of dealerships. But for many, many years, Auto Nation has been number one.

As you know, they make more money financing cars than anybody. If Auto Nation hadn't, as it cleaned up the retail car business, certainly has come close to standardizing it. When you're a public company and the Security Exchange Commission has got their eye on you, you've got to be pretty careful. I mean, you're a target. You're a big target. The little dealer here, there, and everywhere, he can get away with all sorts of stuff. But when you're a publicly owned company, all it takes is one stockholder to file a stockholder's suit against a public company.

Bingo, you've got the Security Exchange Commission looking at you. So the publicly owned companies have to tow the line a little bit more. than the privately held companies. 316 locations. I didn't realize how big they were. 316 car dealerships, Autonation. Our experience shopping in our nation stores has been mixed, for the most part,

our nation's dealerships behave themselves. Their biggest failures have come on Takata test and proper administration of the Costco Auto Program. And everybody fails those tests. I mean, nobody did Takata. It's the kind of airbag, we call, right? And the Costco Auto Program is just, it's a shame what they do to it. Again, before I just pass it up too quickly, if you're going to buy a car

and you're not a Costco member to join, the Costco Auto Buying Program is the best program out there anywhere in terms of getting the lowest price on the car. Automition also has a decent grade point average on our good dealer bad dealer list.com I know that's a mouthful. You go to ErwinCars.com and we have a sublink there, good dealer, baddealerlist.com. And you can see all of our shopping reports. You find out we grade people on the curve, grade car deals on the curve, and we have some deals with A's, not many. and we have some dealers with Ds and C's.

If you're an F, if you failed, you're really bad, and we have do not buy from this dealer list. So save yourself a lot of aggravation. Check our good dealer, baddealerlist.com at our loan cars and start out with someone that's got a better score and have less of a chance of being taken advantage of. Okay, back to the shopping report, mystery shopping report. we sent Agent Lightning in

to try to buy a new 2003 Cadillac STX-S-U-V Okay, here we go. I'm speaking as if I were Agent Lightning. I arrived mid-afternoon and barely made it out of my car when I was greeted by Abbey,

A-B-I, a salesman. He asked me how he could help and if I knew what I was looking for. He was nice, but kind of overwhelming. Yeah, a little pushing, you know, it happens. I said I wasn't sure I was leaning toward an SUV and was considering the STX, I'm sorry, ST6, ST6, but would consider anything new.

Abbey suggested we go inside the showroom where we could see each of the available models. Obie asked me to sit in each model, just like he said, we started with the smallest sedan and made our way up to the SUVs. I settled on the SD6, which is one I had my eyes on anyway. The MSRP was $59,965. That's manufacturers suggested retail price.

And there was an addendum right there on the window, and that addendum was $1,577. I added for the three-year appearance protection, dent protection, and window tent. So there you have it. MSRP 59, 965, add 1,177. Aubie led me to his desk, asked me to hand over my driver's license. He asked me a bunch of lifestyle questions, like what I planned to use the car for. I said I plan to drive it around town.

Nothing special. Abbey grabbed the keys and drove the SD6 out of the showroom. I met him outside. We took it for a spin. I drove and listened to him, go over the vehicle's features. returned to the lot, Nabi asked me if I liked the technology. I said my husband did more of that kind of stuff than I

did. Then he showed me and then he showed off the self parking feature. And that's pretty cool if you haven't ever seen it before. That's been around for a long time. 2006, I want to say is... No, 2010 was first year I saw Prius.

Yeah, over 10 years, 12 years, yeah. If you haven't seen it, I was amazed as if I were Agent Lightning, and Avi enjoyed watching me experience. I'm not crazy about it personally. It takes too long. Maybe they've improved it, I don't know. Avi put the keys away as soon as he went inside.

He explained to a woman posing his customer. I'm a woman, Agent Lightning is a woman. So, Avi explained that a woman posing as customer has recently stolen a BMW from the Cadillac dealership, Auto Nation Cadillac. And I guess he thought maybe I'm being hit

twice to the same day. Very interesting. It was stolen the same day, or maybe the day before, I'm not sure. Back at his desk, Abbey will want to know if I plan to lease her finance. I said I was paying cash, possibly financing. Definitely not

leasing. Avi encouraged me to think about leasing, and we talked about that a few minutes ago, if you're listening, The dealers are really, really trying to get you to lease again. The manufacturers will love you to lease. Why? Because you're like 50% more likely to lease or buy another car if you lease your first car.

And so the money involved with that kind of a percentage is huge. And we will see leasing incentives come back pretty quick, I think. The one with the addem started with the $59,000. Okay. He also printed two worksheets, one with the addendum items, one without. Now, worksheets are documents that are not legal, they're not contracts. So they can play games a little bit with you, meaning they, the car dealer, and they don't want to use a vehicle buyer's order. Because a vehicle buyer's order is a legal document.

With a worksheet, they can, you know, put a number down, there's not a real number, take a number off. number off. I mean, it says there in the fine print at the bottom, this is not a legal document. This is not obligatory to you or to me. It's just a worksheet, which is what they called. Anyway, the worksheet with the addendum started with a $59,965 MSRP plus the $1,77, which we talked about, which was the tint of glass and some other nonsense, and we get into the hidden fees now. $199 electronic filing fee. You hear that a lot. They like that name because it sounds like a tag agency thing. It sounds like a government fee. But it's not. $199 electronic filing fee is profit to the dealer. And they've got it disguised to be a government

fee. You want to hear another government fee disguised? $995 dealer services fee. Sounds pretty The official does it. The fee. You know, when you throw that word fee out, it really sounds, eh, it's probably a state Florida thing. You know, it's a, maybe a federal thing. I don't know. It's got to be a government thing.

The other one just had junk fees. I chose that one. That was the other worksheet. It was two of them. I went over some estimated interest rates telling me he was ready whenever I was. I thanked him for his help, and I left. And that was it. I had a photograph that you can't read.

I've got my magnifying class here. And this is, I'll hold it up, you'll see you can't really, you can't see the fine print. The fine print is down here at the very bottom. But it basically says that the additional items like the tent and the protection package, You don't have to, they're not required to buy the car. Now that says that in the fine print. Now my question is because it's pre-installed, what are they going to do? Give it to you free?

I don't know. It doesn't get that far. Why? Because nobody can read the fine print. So you don't know it's not obligatory, but AutoNation, as I said before, they're monitored by the Security Exchange Commission, their public health company. So they have to dot their eyes and cross their teeth. The way companies get away with things, they put in the fine print.

Nobody sees it. Nobody's any of the wiser, but when the lawyer comes or the Attorney General sends you the complaint, you say, look, I said right here in the fine print. You don't have to take that. The fact that nobody can read the fine print doesn't mean anything, but that's what they do. Okay, here we have Automation, Cadillac, West Palm Beach, Mystery Shopping Report. from Agent Lightning, and we need to get some votes in. You have the right to vote.

We'd love to hear from you. We will grade on the curve. I always say that. There's no such thing as a perfect car dealer, and therefore we don't give A's out only to people that did everything right. If you do most everything right, on the curve, certainly in Florida,

that'd probably get you in A. We don't have too many A's, but we do have a few. And then we go A, B, C, D, and then we go A, B, C, F is a failure. We don't have too many F's either, really. It's that middle ground. And when you go to Earl on Cars and check good dealer or bad dealer list, pick somebody with a C or a B. If you can find an A geographically close to you, grab that A. There are not too many A's around. Okay, we've got any votes coming in. I would like for you to vote at 772-4976530. Your votes very important. 7-72-497-6-5-30. Your votes very important. That is AutoNation Cadillac in West Palm Beach. We're going to go to Rick, see if we can retrieve any. We've got Negan once, F for Fees.

If they drop the fees, then C for Where's My Caddy? Kirk and West Buy God, Virginia, Auto Nation Cadillac, dang near $4,000 in dealer add-ons and junk fees, and a solid D. Joseph Kelleher with a D-minus. Bob, B-minus for Auto Nation Cadillac, fake fees are an issue. That's still a pretty good grade. Tom Steckle, D, dealer fees and low-value addendums, don't drive pink, drive broke. By the way, Auto Nation's their slogan they've got now, they put a pink ring around the license plate says,

Autonation, drive pink for breast cancer. awareness, which is pretty cool. Tim Gilliland, fees, fees, fees, where's the door, please, and C minus. Brian said Latko, I'll give them a C for Cadillac.

Johnny Z. Fradley, D, $2.99 for window tent is fine, but the rest is trash. Rocky Blockatiel, pretty typical. I'll give them a C. This is Las Catatas, 31, with a C.

And let's see, whoop, ah, why did a sales professional ask Asian Lightning what they would be using the vehicle for? This is anonymous on the tech side. Fees, C-minus. Wayne Veit with a C-minus. And double check in here to see if we got any other coming in. Oh, and Kirk, your West By God, Virginia. Always check for a declination statement on the problem. sold by F&I myself I'm going to go ahead and say I'll give us a C I think pretty

average type thing and if you beat them up you can probably get a little discount get some of that stuff taken dropped off the price yeah but like you say for Cadillac you know they're not gonna play as many games yeah that's the question though that was a good question but why did they want to know why Agent Lightning, want to the car, how to use it. And Abbey, that was the Schooley, I said Schooley Automation Cadillacs, a salesman's name, Abbey. He was trying to do his job.

They trained salespeople to not focus on price. And they don't want buyers that have researched price, that have gotten competitive prices. They want to sell the dealership. They want to sell the product. and they want you to feel like they really were serious about seeing that you got the model within their make of car Cadillac in this case

that would best suit you. I mean, maybe an SUV is right for you, maybe a sedan, maybe a larger, smaller car, whatever the case may be. So when you get your mind off of pricing, that's when they can slip it, do you? That's when the price be, oh, we finally got,

you're going to love this car and you do I mean they find the car that is right for you and you feel good it's easy for you to get in and get out of close the door I mean there is a car that's more right than another car and if the guy spends the salesman spends a time

you feel almost indebted and obligated to him and I want to you don't want an argument with him so when he says this car is and they gives you a number much higher than you thought you're less reluctant to scream and go running somewhere else because you know the shoe fits yeah because you'd have to go through the same

process to go do it all over again so in this case here that's why he did it yeah i think he did a good job i'm gonna i'm gonna give him a c plus i i think the salesperson uh did a pretty good job he he treated the uh agent lighting a woman with with the respect nancy had a bad experience she was when she first came to town from pittsburgh a long time ago she had a little bit happened to go into the car dealership, it was called, what, Schooley then? Schoolie. And they didn't treat your right, did they? No, no, they certainly.

I asked too many questions, and they, you know, responded in a rather, well, negative way. They said that, you know, those type of questions don't come from someone who can afford a Cadillac. And, you know, it goes on and on. Anyway, I'm a little disappointed. We're talking about a Cadillac dealership. You know, all these games, are they really necessary? Forgive me, not games, fees. It's just, it doesn't represent a luxury dealership,

and the fees are just so unnecessary, doing business the right way, living up to the reputation of Schooley Cadillac, which they are now Auto Nation for me I give me a D-minus Well thank you very much for joining us

this evening We're sorry this morning We're sorry about the phone problem We got it fixed But maybe a little bit too late I feel bad about our true Oldies listeners to the south of us Because I know Pompano

Fort Lauderdale We just joined us And we had like an extra What was it 20,000 people in the South Florida market join Erlon cars from the truly old these stations. So you folks down there in

Papineau and Miami and that area. Yeah, I think come back again next week and our phones will be working. Yeah, Palm Beach, Broward, Martin, St. Lucy, Glades, Hendry, Indian River, Okachobi. Gosh, we love you being with us

and listening to us weekend and week out. Rick. And to Frank and Jupiter Farms, Yes, we will be here for the next two weeks, Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. We will be here. Yes, thank you, Rick. So to all of us, we wish you a great weekend, and we'll be right back here on Saturday at 8 a.m.