Earl Stewart on Cars - 12.24.2022 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Toyota of Hollywood

Episode Date: December 24, 2022

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning travels to the Fort Lauderdale area to visit the 2nd largest Toyota dealer in the U.S., and see if they will honor their online ad price for a new 2023 Toyota Camry. 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 link. to cyberspace through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Periscope. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our Mystery Shopping Report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting South Florida dealership. And now, on with the show.

Good morning, everybody. Well, we're back on a very chilly morning here in South Florida. I know we're being listened to and watched around the world, and there's some pretty cold places around the world. But in South Florida, we don't get down this low. We're in Palm Beach County. 41 degrees when Nancy and I got up this morning and went out and did the sunrise. It was in the 30s in other parts of the southern Florida.

It might have even been in the 20s. I didn't check that close, but boy, it's a shock. And it's Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve, and we're here. We're wishing you all. Happy Hanukkah. Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. We've enjoyed this year very much. We hope we've done some good out there and car buying, car leasing land. And we're here to help you do that. It's that time of year where you kind of get caught up and shopping. and my new blog is titled Don't Be a Rip Van Winkle when you buy your next car

and that alludes to the fact that if you haven't bought a car in three or four years you might not know what it's like today but it's a jungle out there folks with the microchip shortage with the Ukrainian war with the hyperinflation we're having a lot of economic factors

And unfortunately, all those economic factors go toward car dealers making a ton of money, auto manufacturers, in most cases, making lots of money, and the car buyer paying for it. So you're paying a lot of money for your new truck or car if you lease one, if you buy one. Maintenance and repairs, they haven't had the inflation hit them as hard as the new cars or the used cars. but it's a jungle out there. Be careful, and we're here to help you. This week, we really, Agent Lightning did an amazing job. Agent Lightning is our undercover agent that does our mystery shopping reports. And boy, if you're new to this show, are you in for a treat?

Every week we send an undercover agent somewhere out in the United States. I say that. Most of them are in Florida. shops are in Florida, but we do Pennsylvania, Tennessee, I mean, we've been all over, mainly Florida. And in Florida, in South Florida,

we happen to have some extremely large car dealerships. South Florida is, there's probably more car dealerships per capita, I'm guessing, than you find in most of any other state. We have the second or third largest

car dealer in the world. in South Florida, and they're in Hollywood Florida, not Hollywood, California. There is a Hollywood Florida. It's right down there near Miami and Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood, Florida. And this is Hollywood Toyota. They're the second or the third largest each year. They never made number one. Number one is in California and Los Angeles, and that's Longo, Toyota.

They're huge. But Hollywood Toyota sells about 1,000 new Toyotas every month. I mean, sometimes 1,100, 1,300, 1,300 per month. I'm not talking about, you know, per year. The average Toyota dealer doesn't sell that many in a year, or maybe just about that many, but Hollywood sells that many in one month. Huge. And it's an interesting report for a lot of reasons.

So if you don't listen to the show for any other reason, tune back in. I'm not asking you to tune out now. But tune back in between 930 and 10 Eastern Standard Time. That's when we usually do our Mr. Shopping Report. And this one was really, it was fun to do. It was interesting, and it shows you a whole lot about what's going on now with this COVID-induced pandemic microchip shortage.

I don't know what to call it, but it's just, worst time, all the new cars you're buying are selling for above sticker. Every now and then you strike a home run, you might get one close to sticker, but if you don't pay 2, 3, 4, 10, 20,000 over a sticker, you're probably doing better than you could otherwise. Stay tuned for the Mystery Shopping Report. Now, before I get all excited about buying cars, that's the glory mode, you've got to maintain your car. And in fact, the best way to avoid having to buy a car getting screwed today, is take good care of your car. I mean, the cars that are being built in the past two or three years

are really quality cars. They will last and last and last. And the maintenance is low. Repairs are low. All you have to do is just be a little bit careful. You've got to check and have your factory recommended maintenance. And it's almost nothing for the first two or three years. In fact, a lot of manufacturers are giving you the factory maintenance.

maintenance for the first a couple years. So it's a easy thing to do. And if you've got a car that's beyond your warranty, then you want to really be careful. So we got Rick Kearney. He's sitting in the studio with us right now. And he's been for over a quarter century doing this. He started out as a grease monkey, and now he's a computer scientist. That's what's happened to the technology in the past 25 years. I mean, he has literally had to relearn automobile, what do you call, electronics. There were no electronics when he started. I mean, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but today they're computers, computers on wheels,

and they're getting more different every day. I mean, pretty soon it'll be autonomous. It'll be all electric. So Rick is in school half the time. I call, I say, anybody's seen Rick Kearney? He works for me. I have a car dealership in full transparency. Toyota dealership in North Palm Beach.

Anybody seeing Rick Kearney? He's in school. A lot of it's online, but he also travels to schools, and he's going to stay on top of his trade. So if you have a symptom with your car and you're thinking about taking it into your local mechanic or your local car dealer, you might save yourself a few bucks.

Call us 877-960-99-60. Rick? Hey, folks, one quick message. We're in South Florida, West Palm Beach, and it's 43 degrees when I got up this morning in my house. Your tires lose air pressure because when tires get cold, pressures go down. That's science. So if that tire lights on, just go get some air in your tires, and I guarantee it'll turn off and you'll be fine. But across the nation, tires are going low.

Yeah, I've got your indicator light and the air, the nitrogen, oxygen, and the other gases in your air and your tires contract in the cold weather. And as soon as you get in the car and you drive it, friction on the road, temperature rises in your tire, you're good to go. So that's the kind of tips you can get from Rick. And the kind of relief you get sometimes when something goes on, he says, well, you don't need to worry about that or you do need to worry about that. and you'll find out.

So 877-960-99-60. Now, Rick monitors our YouTube channel, and that's YouTube.com forward slash Earl on cars. YouTube.com forward slash Earl on Cars. And he watches that. So you could post. He has a regular cadre of followers from all over, and some really good people follow Rick on that.

He's also monitoring Facebook. com forward slash rolling cars normally monitored by my son. Stu Stewart, Stu is still out sick. He's got some back issues and going to Cleveland Clinic next week. As a matter fact, to get them checked out.

And we hope you get better soon, Stu. We miss you here in the show. But meanwhile, the Facebook.com for slash earl on cars and we have another way to get through to us. And that is our old-fashioned

fax line. I mean, our phone lines old-fashioned. Who would have thought text would be old-fashioned. That text number is 772-497-6530. 772 497-6530. Draft the numbers down. If you're

don't have a question now, you will. Later, I promise you. And don't forget the mystery shopping report. The last half hour, we mystery shop under cover agent, went in pretending to buy a car responding to an advertisement in the online, I think it was an online

advertisement at Hollywood Toyota that's in South Florida, the second largest car dealership. It's a Toyota dealership, but the second lecture is car dealership in the world. Very interesting, and you don't want to miss that. Now, we have a secret way to talk to us.

People that don't want to be a dental and that's your privilege. I mean, sometimes I don't want to be identified, but, you know, we all have our reasons for privacy. But if you feel that way strongly about privacy, we respect that. So write this URL down. This is a web link that you go to, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. That's Your Anonymous Feedback.com, Y-O-U-R-A-N-O-N-Y-M-U-S, Feedback.

Now, I'm monitoring that, and I'll try to check my phone. I usually, Stu monitors that also, so I'll have to remember to monitor that more carefully than I did last week. Now, sitting to my left is a very important part of our show, the co-founder of the show about 20 years ago. Her name is Nancy Stewart, and that's because she's my wife, she's the co-founder of the show, and she's a very strong advocate for the female listeners. When we started this show, it seems like 100 years ago now, but when we started this show 20 years ago, it was a half an hour. And the only people that called show were guys,

and it went on that way for a while, and we decided enough is enough. Half the people buying cars out there are women. We'd like to have half the callers be women. I mean, that's only fair. So that's what Nancy did, and she did a great job. So right now we have that. And she has a special offer for our female callers, our first-time female callers.

And then she has an extra special, extra special. We haven't done this before, offer for our female callers that I'll let her tell you about, and I'll turn the mic over now to Nancy Stewart. Thank you. Good morning and welcome on this Christmas. Eve Day Show. We hope everyone is staying warm and you're in a comfortable place where you can, well, take in all the fun, the information, everything that we have to share with you.

And we sit here and we wait to hear from you. You bring a whole lot to the show and you inform us in many different ways, whether you call, whether you text or you FaceTime or YouTube, everything in between. Ladies, this morning, I offer you a special offer one time only, and that's $100 for the first two new lady callers. The stipulation would be that you would be from Broward, from Dade, and Jeremy is our producer in the control room, and he will be waiting for you to share your address.

That's Broward County and Dade County in South Florida. Correct. That's the name of the counties that are in the belly of the beast, we're called Real Extreme South Florida, where really the rough and tumble car dealers dwell. Yeah, that's the Cowboys and Indians down there. Used to be a whole lot of that going on up here, but, well, anyway, and our mystery shop is from,

from Toyota Hollywood. So at any rate, $100 and $100 for the first two female callers. And again, you must share your mailing address with Jeremy. And it must be Broward or Dade. And I'm going to take a moment to thank all of you that is joining us right now, joining us, I think it's three weeks now, and our coverage map of the counties is just amazing, a number of the audience that we are reaching. Palm Beach County, Broward, Martin, St. Lucie, Glades, Hendry, Indian River, and

Okachovie. So we love hearing from everyone. Yeah, if you're in that area, True Oldies, the True Oldies Channel, there's several of them in that area that have really got us a huge, 20 million. extra listeners. I mean, we had a lot of listeners, but 20 million just from the expanded true old these stations in South Florida. Forty million, my goodness gracious. We feel a little nervous. But at any rate, that's the show. Toyota of Hollywood, stay tuned for that very interesting mystery shop, and thank you so much, Agent Blightening. A special mirror.

Christmas to Stu and his family. We miss you, and we hope that next week brings you, well, somewhat of a pain-free week. Our telephone number here is 877-960-960. You can text us at 772-497-6-530, and don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. We are going to go to the phones where we have a few callers standing by. Good morning, Howard. Good morning. Happy holidays to you and happy New Year and I hope that you well and even though it's cold I like it because I'm from the North originally and once in a while it's good to get out and breathe fresh cold air. I love it. I know. You're a Pennsylvania woman. I know that. So here's my, what I'm going to talk about, Airbags. I'm just going to stick on this topic. I remember many years ago when they first came

out on the visor, it used to say after 10 years, it's the effect that airbags should be replaced or do not work. I don't know if you remember that, Earl, but I remember specifically airbags, according to many years ago, after 10 years, they weren't not viable. Yes. Do you remember that? I sure do. It was when they first came out, they were, frankly, not that good. I mean, they were a lot of problems, and they'd go all, you'd be driving down the street, and, man, your airbag

are going, maybe you had a pothole, and your airbag goes off. Yeah, when they first came out, they weren't very good. Okay, so, in other words, there's been a big upgrade in the quality of the airbag since that time. Absolutely. That's good to know.

Okay, next question. can a person or a dealer or a mechanic disengage the airbag and make it, you know, in other words, instead of having a dangerous airbag, which is a recall, have it completely disengaged. Is that possible? I know it's probably breaking the law, but one of the logistics on that, how much would it cost, and if it's legal or not legal, it can it be done? The simplest method to do that is to simply go to the airbag center sensor, the computer for it,

and just unplug it. Once that's unplugged, the airbags would be completely inoperative. Well, that's a violation of federal law, right? I don't know if it's technically federal law, but it could be considered a liability for the mechanic because then if the, say, the car is driven by someone that is unaware that that system has been deactivated? Well, I'm going to venture forth my legal opinion because I'm a graduate of the law school of Hard Knocks because I've been sued so many times.

And I can tell you right now, it's against the law to disconnect your airbag. Okay. I won't argue that one. I will not. Okay. Okay, so I know there were a lot of recalls on airbags, and a lot of people don't even bother checking it out, but what do you suggest if a person has, like a friend of mine has a, believe it or not,

a 2007 Chevy Cobalt, and he says he checked it, and his airbag is okay. Now, how could his airbag, 2007 Chevy Cova, driving in Florida, how could his airbag be okay? to so many years. It depends on whether or not it was made by Takata, and if the airbag has a, what's called a desicant built into it,

which basically a desicant, I'm sure if you've ever gotten any sort of electronic product that you've bought, and that little paper packet of silica gel, that's meant to absorb moisture. What is that? The desicant. Well, I'd spell it for me.

D-E-S-I-C-C-A-N-T. Okay. And basically it's, like when you buy your iPhone or anything, there's that little paper packet says, do not eat. And it's little, it looks like little plastic bag. You're not supposed to eat at all. I never read that. Yeah, that's, I've been eating them. Oh, that's why you're dried out inside.

Oh. Basically, what these do is they absorb moisture. It's like damp red. Oh, okay. They absorb moisture from the air. Desicant. And this material in the airbag is designed to absorb the moisture that otherwise could degrade the propellant mixture inside there and cause the chemicals to degrade over time. If they have a built-in desiccant in there, then those chemicals are good for 25, 30 years even.

And that's what caused the problem with the cicada because they didn't have it. And the ammonium nitrate was kind of getting down. Exactly. As it got damp, it became volatile and explosive and bam. Exactly. Yeah. And instead of being a controlled burn, it would release the gas and inflate the bag safely, it became a metal pipe bomb.

Great information. I'm glad you called, Howard. Howard, we have a number of calls backed up. I have to ask you if you have one more question? No, my question to you is desicate comes from two words, D, which is undue, and sec, which means secari, and Latin, which means to dry. So that, if you break down to, I was the language professor. You break down the word desiccate, and in the Latin prefix and suffix, you could tell what it is. Okay.

Very good, thanks. And that's it. That's my lesson for today. I will sign off and say, happy New Year to you guys. Thank you. We always love hearing from you, Howard. Okay. Okay, we're going to go to, let me give out that number again, 877960, and the text number, of course, is 772-497-6530.

Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. We are going to go to Mike, who is in Wellington, but I want to tell Kevin, who's calling us from Buffalo, New York, to hold on. Good morning, Mike. Good morning, Nancy. How are you doing today? We're great. Good, good. Nice and warm outside. I love it here. I wanted to talk to Earl because I wanted to commend him on the dealership.

Well, thank you. Thank you. My son needs to buy a Corolla. A few weeks ago we called, and Earl told me that they don't have any new ones, and you probably won't get any for six months. So I was a little disappointed in that because we wanted to buy from you guys. So we went shopping two weeks ago, went to a couple of other Toyota dealers first, because we figured maybe they had them and you didn't. And we weren't surprised because I've been listening to you for a long time now, and they just jacked up the price ridiculously. As a matter of fact, my son almost had an argument with one of the managers.

But I looked at him, I said, let's go, John. And we just walked out. We went to another dealership, and they did the same thing, just, you know, 30, it was a 26,000 mile, 26,000 MSRP, and they wanted $34,000 for the car. So we said, no, I think we'll pass. So, just for the heck of it, I checked the stock at Earl Stewart. And they had a 22 Toyota Corolla SE, which is what was someone looking for. and it was available. Actually, I called there and asked if it was available, still available.

And I think it was Mike that I talked to, and he said, yes, it's still available. So I said, okay, hang on to it. I'm coming to see. So we went there, and actually, Mike passed us on to Kirsten, because I had a couple conversations with Kirsten online, and she told me the same thing. They didn't have any, but found out that they had one that was sold, but for some reason the deal fell through or whatever.

It was actually sitting out front with the same thing. sold sign on it. So we went in, talked to Kirsten, and we made the deal exactly like you've been proposing all this time. We went to the manufacturer's suggesting retail price, a few ad-ons here and there, and we walked out with a brand new 2022 Kurola S-E, and my son loves it. Well, thank you. I want to commend you. I want to commend Mike for being so honest, passing us on to Kirsten, and Kirsten did a great job. She was really good. And, And Andy in finance was also a gentleman, honest, knew exactly what he was doing. The whole, the best deal, the best deal I ever made on a brand new call.

Well, that's the nicest call we've had in a long time, Mike. I really appreciate it. And we'll be sure that those folks that dealt with you and did their job so well, I recognize. I'll thank them personally. And it was awful nice of you to take the time to call. Wellington is a long way for you, folks not familiar with Florida. and well-income Florida is almost as far away, I think, is Fort Lauderdale. I'm not sure.

It seems like it sometimes when I drive it. But thanks for coming so far. Thanks for the compliments. Yes, Mike. Thank you so much. I'm glad that you didn't go down to Toyota of Hollywood, where you would have paid maybe $10,000, $20,000. You don't even have to go down to Hollywood.

You can have that happen right up here. That's what happens when you do your homework, when you pay attention, and MFSP manufacturer's suggested price. It turns out it's a good deal. Well, you guys have a Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year. Thank you. The same to you.

Merry Christmas. Nice hearing from you. Thank you. Okay, we are going to go to Kevin, who is holding from Buffalo, New York. Good morning. Good morning, the Earl Store, to you and Merry Christmas. Good morning. Merry Christmas to you. I have a couple of questions.

One is I'm interested in purchasing a new car, but I'm 11,000 miles away from you guys, so I can't go to your dealership. I listen to another channel. Do the dealers still have stuff coming back to the manufacturers like holdback or floor plan assistance? That's still being offered to the dealerships even though it was a tight car market now. Repeat that, please, Kevin. You know, I hold back floor plan assistance. Yes, now I understand what you're saying.

Yeah, there's a lot of different names for it, but yes, there's a large amount of hidden profit between the manufacturer and the dealer. And this has been one of my main arguments with dealers and manufacturers. It's been that way for decades, and holdback is kind of a general term for it, but they've added a lot of other charges. It's very similar to what the dealers do to the customers, to you, the average guy buying a car. But there's a collusion. There's a conspiracy between the manufacturers of the cars, General Motors and GM dealers, Toyota and Toyota dealers, Honda and Honda dealers, where the manufacturers include profit in the invoice to the dealer.

And the original name for that was holdback, but they also have other forms, advertising kickbacks. They have interest rate kickbacks. They have insurance kickbacks. They have incentive to dealers. There's a large number. So the last time I checked the statistics on that, the average profit

and the invoice of a car. I mean, what do you think when you get an invoice? You get an invoice from the gas company. You get an invoice from the electric company. An invoice is an invoice, right? It's the cost, and that's what you pay. Get the invoice, you're right to check out,

and you pay your bill. A car dealer gets an invoice from a manufacturer. He doesn't write the checkout and pay that because there's an extra $4,000 on the average in that invoice, packed in hidden for the dealer. Goes in the dealer's pocket. So when you, Kevin, from Buffalo,

go into a dealer up there, he can take his invoice on whatever vehicle you're looking at, new vehicle, and say, Kevin, this is my invoice from General Motors, and this is what I paid for that car. I'm going to do you a favor. I'm going to sell you this car

for $500 over my invoice. Now, he is. selling to the car for $500 over an invoice, but that invoice has got a hidden kickback of $4,000. So his profit on Kevin is $4,500. That's been going on since car dealers started, practically. And if that is not a federal violation of some sort of a conspiracy, price fixing, I don't know what it is.

all right so they get extra profit or back-end profit or something that they sell then okay what is the difference between a dealer installed option and a port installed option I would like to know something like that because they like to put a lot of dealer installed options on it I'm really interested in them I'm sorry I'm having I got a back I said the difference between a port installed option and a dealer Oh, yeah, oh, no, yeah. Yeah, this is as if they don't have enough with the whole backs. Now the dealers have got to get some more money.

So they will take a car from the manufacturer, and they will put on their own accessories. Now, typical accessories would be something like nitrogen and the tires. Nitrogen in the tires, it costs the dealer practically nothing. You buy a tank of nitrogen, very inexpensive. It might cost them a couple dollars plus the labor to put the nitrogen in there. They'll charge you $200 for that. They'll put on stripes, plastic stripes that might cost them.

$25 will charge you $199 for that. Everything they add. Window tent. Window tent is a beauty. So basically, the dealer install. accessories are pre-installed, meaning when you come to buy the car, it isn't like, would you like to buy the nitrogen and the tires, would you like to buy the pinstripes, would you like to buy the window tent, would you like to buy the mudguards?

They're going to tell you they're already on the car and we can't take them off. So I've got $1,500 worth of dealer-installed accessories added to the price that you saw when you came in to buy the car, the online advertisement, newspaper, TV. that advertised price has an extra $1,500 worth of dealer installed accessories, then it's got $4,000 in holdbacks, and then it's got electronic signing fees and things like that. So when you buy a car, it's like a science fiction novel. The advertised price is pure science fiction.

You can't buy the car for the advertised price. I've said this many times on the air. I would like anyone within sound to my voice who bought a car at the advertised price to call and tell me if you bought a car

at the advertised price it's like you're one in a million and it just doesn't happen and what is dealer destination and processing for a handling fee is another line item for that tool

well you sound like you really know we're talking about Yeah, there really is a destination fee, and that destination fee is included in the cost of the car to the dealer. It's also on the MSRP Manoni label on the car. So every car you, every new car you buy, the destination fee is automatically included by the manufacturer. Now, what some dealers are doing, several in this area, we've come. doing this, they will add it twice. Let's say the destination fee on the Mononi label and on the dealer invoice is $975, which is way too much anyway, but at least it's legitimate.

The manufacturer did charge the dealer that, and the dealer did pay it, and it's included in the Mononi label in the invoice. Now, on your buyer's order, your vehicle buyers order, they'll add another $975. So you're being double-dipped on the destination fee. And that's a federal violation, by the way. The destination fee is a federal law that is they standardized it. So it used to be, here's a go, the destination fee, depending on how close you were to the dealership, I mean to the manufacturer. So if you're in Detroit, there was no destination fee.

But if you bought that car, it was manufactured Detroit, and you're in Florida, there would be a bigger destination fee. So now they standardize on the destination fees. all right earl and your whole team I enjoy listening to your show every Saturday I look forward to it and I have your book

and thank you for donating to the big dog rescue because me and my wife we have a dog from a rescue well God bless you thank you very much for that Kevin thank you and thank you for all bye bye bye bye

hey Earl you said you wanted to have someone tell you if they got a price a car for the advertised price Johnny Z. Fraidley says I did from a place called Earl Stewart Toyota I'm just saying he's right here on YouTube.

Yeah. And this is not an infomercial, folks. We've had a couple of compliments like that. Some very nice people that have called in and said they got a fair shake from us when we sold them a car. This is not an infomercial. This is a consumer advocacy show. And we tell it like it is.

There are cars on the road that are better than Toyota's. Honda builds a great product. Subaru builds an incredibly good product. Some Toyotas are better than some cars, and some cars are better than Toyotas. We're a Toyota dealer. So this is not a commercial show. This is a consumer advocacy show to help you buy the car of your choice. And we will tell you the truth and the way we see it.

We will not try to sell you a car from our dealership, I promise. And we have actually seen dealerships in other parts of the nation and even here in Florida that they walk to walk and they talk to talk. They stand by their price. And the only thing they add are the government fees. And they, you know, they're honest. We've seen it. Yeah.

We shouldn't have you want to. They're feeding far between, but we have seen it. Correct. Yeah, definitely. To what Earl and Rick we're talking about, you know, there's no reason for you to have to fall prey to market adjustment. I'm sure everyone has seen it and heard it. 10,000, 20,000, hey, and whatever they want.

So it's great, you know, for two reasons that we hear from, and Ezrell said, this is not a commercial of any kind, but to hear someone went out to purchase a car, and it was a great experience because that's what it's supposed to be. There's two things you're going to do in your life, you know, that can really change everything for you. It's a real game changer, purchasing a vehicle and purchasing a home. And you just don't want to, you know, fall prey to these vultures. So thank you for calling in and sharing your stories of a great car buying experience.

And earlier in the show, Rick mentioned tire pressure. And he also brought to everyone's attention. And by now, everyone knows what the temperature is at there. But it's something we don't pay attention to too often here in Florida, but if you don't know about the colder temperatures and what they'll do to your tires and how the pressure will drop, it's about a pound per, it's a PSI or a pound per square inch. So check those tires. You should check them once a month anyway.

877-960-99-60, and you can text us at 7. 172-497-6-530. Don't forget your anonymousfeedback.com. We have a first-time female caller from the Miami area, and her name is Barbara. And Barbara, welcome. Hi. Hi, good morning. Merry Christmas, everyone. Good morning, and welcome, and Barbara. I'm sure you heard earlier what I said was that you had to stay on the line, and you had to talk to our producer,

and his name is Jeremy, and he's in the control studio, and he'll take your address, and he'll give it to me, so I can mail you a check for $100. Oh, great. Thank you so much for that. I appreciate it. You're welcome. What can we do for you today? I have a silly question. I have a 2020 Toyota Route 4. I love it. Best car I've had, but it has the on and off ignition switch. You know, like when you stop at a light for so many seconds, it turns off. And in order for me to disable it, I have to constantly turn it off. I don't like that feature at all. Is there any way that I can manually disable it?

What was your car again? 2020 Route 4. Okay. There is a, you can turn it off, but it's either there's, on some of them, they have a manual switch, either on the center console or to the left of your, you're, your steering wheel, you're looking for one that looks like a capital A with a circle around it. And that's the auto start-stop feature. Yeah, that's what I see.

That's what I have, and I have to turn it off every time I don't want to. Because to me, I don't like that feature on a car. That's just me. But every time I don't want to use it, which is all the time, I'm always constantly, you know, turning it off to turn it off. But I want it off completely. Unfortunately, for some reason, and I'm calling Toyota out on this one, they goofed up big time with that. They should have put a feature in where it could be turned off totally, but they didn't, they left you with just that switch, and the only way is you have to turn it off manually each time you start the car, push that button once, it'll turn it off for that entire trip, but then when you shut the car off and start it up again, it automatically resets. And even with my scan tool, I can't go in and tell it, turn that feature off totally.

It just, it's an option they did not allow. It's one of their, oh, biggest screw-ups that I've seen in a long time because so many people hate that feature. They come in and they complain, they say, hey, there's something wrong with my car. It just, it dies and it shudders and shakes and starts and stops. And they, it's a horrible feature. I understand some people like it, but it should have a way for those that don't want it to turn it off totally. That's pretty distracting, annoying, and dangerous. It is. It is.

That's a lot going on behind the wheel. And unlike hybrid cars that have that as a built-in and a hybrid, this system actually, you feel it. It's an aggressive shutter and shake when it starts and shuts off like that. and the other side of it is that the battery and the starter both have a recommended lifespan of when they need to be replaced and both of them are much more expensive than a standard battery and a standard starter for that same model of car. So it's the engineers.

And Barbara, I always try to catch Rick on a mistake so I googled it and here's what I found no automotive brand enables consumers to permanently turn off auto stop. However, it can be temporarily disabled, as Rick just explained. So it isn't just Toyota, but all the manufacturers have done that, and we all agree it's a mistake. It was a bad product, and they should just eliminate it. I agree.

Well, thank you so much, you guys, for that info. I wish we had a better answer for you. That's okay. I appreciate it, you guys. Barbara, thank you for calling. Spread the word. We're building a platform here for the ladies. Yeah, the true all these stations down there in Broward County are tune in.

And the next first new female caller, we have one more $100 bill to pay out. Yeah, definitely. And it's so exciting that we have 40 million listeners in that area. Yeah, 4 million. I'm sorry, 40 sounds much. 40 sounds much better. Thank you, Barbara. Thank you, guys.

Merry Christmas to you, too. Hope to hear from you again. Our number here is 877-960-99-60, and you can text us at 772-497-9-7-6-5-30. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. We're going to go to our friend, Marty, who calls us from West Palm Beach and educates us, and he entertains us. Good morning, Marty. Good morning. How are you?

We're well, thank you, and you? Good. First thing I want to tell you, my wife has a CRV, and the same thing is with that A button. You've got to press the A button all the time. It's a pain. It was a stupid idea, but I guess what it does is it gives it a little better mileage, and a car company say we've got a better mileage out of the car. You know, Marty, I just, Marty, can I interrupt you, I just realize why they made it that way.

The manufacturers have to comply with the federal government on their gas mileage. And they have a terrible penalty that they have to pay, the manufacturers have to pay the government if they violate their miles per gallon on their whole fleet of cars that they sell. So General Motors has got on the pool number of there, 10 million cars on the road, and their average fuel economy cannot exceed this. So to meet that requirement, and if they violated, the fines are huge, $10,000 per violation. So if they catch them violating it, it could put an automotive company out of business. So some of them got desperate.

They said, oh, well, it's an auto-stop thing when they pull up to a stoplight. We'll put that on there. and say, but it's going to make people mad. Let's let them turn it off. He said, okay, we can let them turn it off, but it's going to turn it right back on again. Otherwise, the government will come back after us, and we get the fine. So here we have the auto manufacturers cowtowing to the federal government's brainstorm idea so they can get votes.

But that's why we're saying the auto companies are stupid. They're not stupid. It's the federal government that was stupid to put a law in. that forces the manufacturers to do something stupid. Right. Here's, I have my question is for Rick. Here's my question. I was away for a week, came home, went to start my car,

2020 camry, wouldn't start. Not only wouldn't start, the key fob wouldn't open the door, nothing. So I got out my other key figuring maybe my key fob battery broke. No. So I got into the car with that little key. and call the automobile club. Guy comes down, starts the car, said, oh, your battery is no good.

He tries to sell me a battery. I said, well, I still have 500 miles left on my warranty. I said, I'm going into Earl Stewart tomorrow and see if, you know, it's covered under the warranty. So when I brought it into your dealership, after the mechanic got a hold of it, he said, well, your battery's good. They said they were able to recharge it, but they said there was something, some kind of software update that they had to do, which means when the car is off for a long period of time, the power goes out of the battery.

It was off for a week. I don't know if that's true or not, but whatever it is, they put that software update in to eliminate whatever the problem was. so far, obviously, I drive the car every day, so I haven't had the problem again. I just want to know, is that true, or didn't they want to give me a new battery? Nope, exactly, it's exactly correct. There is a, the overhead button that you have, that's that SOS button, that when you can, you know, you push it, it automatically connects you with someone to help you and say an accident or you're completely lost or something like that.

That's called the DCM. right off the top of my head I can't remember what the acronym stands for but basically that system Toyota found was actually staying turned on using too much power from the battery when the car was turned off

and so they had to recalibrate the computer to tell it to go into a sleep mode because otherwise it would drain the battery and in some cases, it could actually drain your battery overnight. So there were a whole bunch of cars that had this issue. So when you come in with that, we would simply recalibrate it, reprogram the computer and recharge your battery. Or if your battery failed, we would replace your battery with a brand new True Start battery that are Toyota batteries made by Interstate. And you'd be all set back on the road.

Okay, my other question, Rick, though, but I'm not paying extra for that SOS function. Nope. So is it still doing it, still going up there, even though I'm not paying for it? Right, because that's a free service. You're not charged for that anyways. Okay. Hey, Marty? Marty, can I interrupt you again?

Sure, Rick. All guys like me are able to digress, and you say things that make me think of the things that are humorous to me, probably not to anybody else, but you'll have to bear with me. Years ago, when I was selling cars when I was evil and doing it the wrong way before I became a good guy and a consumer advocate, one of the big joke was, a customer would come in, and back in those days, air conditioning was fairly new, and can you imagine driving a car today without air, but believe it or not, in South Florida, back 40 years ago, we would sell cars 50 years ago, we sold cars

without air conditioning, and it was you save a lot of money. So customers would come in and say, I don't want that Pontiac Grand Prix because it's got air conditioning. And the sales one would tell the customer, well, listen, I'm going to check with the manager. And if you promise not to use the air conditioner,

we won't charge you for it. It's a good one, Earl. Anyway, I'm glad I got one lap. I like to hear him already laugh like that. I never heard him laugh like to. Yeah. And Rick is buckled over. I bought a lot of cars, and I'm telling you, I've heard everything.

I had one dealership in Rochester who kept my keys for almost an hour. I told him I was going to call the police to get my keys back and my trade in. So, I mean, there were all kinds of crazy stuff. That might have been my Pontag dealership. Yeah, this guy was a Buick and Toyota dealership in Rochester. And just so people know, with all the snow that hit Buffalo, Rochester and Buffalo were known for snow. Oh, why.

So, you know, that's why I stay in Florida now. That's a good reason. Yeah. All right, well, have a Merry Christmas. Thank you, Martin. Thank you, Martin. And now as long as my car keeps starting, I'm happy. I feel the same way, the same thing happened to me.

Marty, Merry Christmas. We love hearing from you, and God bless you and your family. And again, Merry Christmas. Okay, have a good day, everybody. Bye-bye. Thank you. Hey, 77-960, and you can text us at 772-49-30-6-5-30. Your anonymous feedback.

Take advantage of that. Rick, you really laughed. Your face was so red. That was awesome. That was awesome. Earl really knows how to. That'll be my third book. I know that people will say, where's your second book?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're very close. Easy. My third book, I'm going to have a book of the old tricks, because some of them are really funny. I mean, we, I mean, I have to check if the statute of limitations is up because I don't want to come take me away. You? I'm too old to go to jail. You?

I'm too old to go to jail. I was on one of those corners with you. Rick. Paul Anderson on Facebook just mentioned that he's heard stories of dealers that would throw the keys on the roof. They did. And say they lost them. And then when you close, you can find all the keys up on the roof. I'll tell you how bad it was.

When you bought a car in the 60s, and probably 70s, in the 60s for sure, when you bought a car, the office that you were dealing with with a salesman, was wired for recording. And you know how the game's played. You know, the husband-wife would come in, sit in the closing booth, they call it, a little small room with a salesman, and they would start haggling and negotiating. And then they would say, well, tell me, tell me, Mr. Mrs. Jones, tell me the lowest, the most you'll pay for the car.

What is your price? I will go to my manager, and I will fight for you to get that. price tell me what price you will buy the car at excuse me please and he'll get up and he goes into the door he says I'll close this door so you could have some privacy then he would walk back to the manager's office they turned the speaker on and they're listening to every word that was said and all the car dealerships were doing that back then and until the FBI got wind of it and I think it happened in Texas and they closed down a whole bunch of dealers a bunch of dealers

went to jail but they were they were wiring for sound and that was common practice everybody did it well did you ever see the movie uh national lampoon's vacation oh sure when he goes in to buy the car and the car that he'd ordered wasn't there so he's like oh we'll sell you this other one uh he's like no no you bring my car back out and they bring it out and squash down into a cube i wonder how close that is to real to reality if they ever trying pulling that one on a car. It didn't seem like it was so long ago whenever we heard stories, Earl, and that was north of us, and there were senior citizens that were literally locked in the dealership,

and they weren't leaving for many different reasons, you know, so I could go on and on and on. Folks, this is an amazing show, as you're hearing, and we want you to be a part of it, so give us a call toll-free at 877-960. However, if you're a little shy, you can text us at 772-497-6530. We're going to go to Bob, who's been holding from Lake Park. Good morning, Bob. How are you this morning? Are you still with me? Bob, good morning.

Good morning, Bob. Good morning. Happy holidays, everyone. I hope you have heat in that studio. Oh, a lot of heat. Welcome. I'm sorry to report another Tanaka airbag fatality. And this one was in a Chrysler 300C, and I think it was in Bowling Green, Kentucky. and that's been three in the last few months,

which is very distressing. Yes, it is. You know, especially, I know everything you tried to do to correct that situation, and I don't know how much success you actually had doing it, but I commend you for trying. Well, thank you, Bob. People were apathetic about them.

They just don't seem to care. They're all of the recall campaigns that are out there, only 25% of the owners of the cars respond. A lot of that's the responsibility of the dealers and the manufacturers. But the owners of the cars bear a lot of responsibility, too. There's apathy out there when it comes to dangerous recalls, and Takata was a great example. Right.

Well, I think one of the manufacturers, who was Stalentis, said that they tried to contact the one person 300 times. This is what they're saying. saying. Whether or not it's true, I don't. I'm not quite sure how that works, but that was their excuse. They said they couldn't contact. They tried. They couldn't contact the person. But I want to ask you another question is one of the dealships, Green Acres, Nissan. I don't know if you've ever shopped them or not. Which one? Green Acres, Nissan. Is that the new one on Lakeworth Road, right near Heverhill? I don't know. They're on television, advertising.

under MSRP. This is their new slope because they said they're selling cars, the only dealership in the county that's selling cars under MSRP.

We'll have to shop them on that. That's interesting. I think I know the one you're talking about. I think that's I think that is the same Terry Taylor group that owns Southern 441 Toyota and several other stores

in the area. and they recently jumped on that MSRP thing. I don't know if they are selling cars legitimately, Althador Plus tax and tag only for below MSRP, it would be a great deal. No other Nissan dealer would do that. My guess is, and we will find out because we will mystery shop them, my guess is they're adding dealer-installed accessories and hidden fees.

I don't believe they'll sell you Nissan below. msrp and I was that was my next question did you see this as being maybe a trend and at what at what point would you consider selling your vehicles on the MSRP that was my next question the the only reason a person a dealership was sell your car below MSRP today because they could get at least MSRP and then some would be because they were selling cars that they couldn't sell anybody else. There's a lot of manufacturers out there and a lot of makes and models of cars, believe

it or not, even in this high-demand, low-supply situation, we find ourselves, there's still some cars people don't want to buy. So we used to do this back in the old days. You'd find a car that nobody wanted to buy, and you would advertise it, and you would neglect to tell them the reasons they can't sell that car. and if you didn't buy that car, you didn't get that price. So some dealers are still using that legal, I guess, and not really, in my mind, legal, but they'll advertise a car, a specific car.

Now, let's see, it could be a color issue. You make a mistake when you order the car, and it's got purple seats and a green exterior and no air conditioning. I'm exaggerating to make, you know, but say a dealer made a mistake, ordered a car that, you know, he pushed the wrong button in the computer and he got something that would be very difficult to sell. Well, he could either have to sit there and rot on his lot for five years or he can sell it below the market price to get rid of it.

And every now and then you can get yourself a good deal if you don't mind buying an oddball car. Right. Well, I did have a friend that used to go to the Mannheim auctions. He was in the business. And he told me there's one color that used to come down the line there. And nobody would touch it. And it was brown.

You used to call it no sale brown. Nobody would want a bright brown car that came down the line. That's a good one. I had a color like that when I was a Pontiac dealer. And it was called Verdoro Green. How do I remember this stuff? V-E-R-D-R-O. It was like a vomit.

Like vomit green. And my brother, who was in the business with me and my father back then, my brother loved Vradoro Green. And he kept ordering all these cars in Vradoro Green, but nobody wanted to buy him. So I digress again. I'm sorry. Yeah, well, you should have put one of those in the garage.

You should have put one of those in the GTO with a Badero Green, put it in the garage. You would be worth $150,000,000,000. But anyway, have a happy holiday and a happy year, and have a safe trip back home. from Miami today. Watch out for the traffic. There's a lot of holiday traffic out there.

Sure is. Happy holidays. Happy holidays, everyone. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. That Green Acres, Nissan, it's on Lake Worth Road right near Haverhill. And Jonathan says we did shop them about three years ago. So three years ago, it's time to hit them again. Yeah, I think they changed hands.

I believe that Terry Taylor bought them. Yeah, and they just built a brand new. Their facility there is like maybe a year and a half, two years old at the most, because it's brand new. Is that the, where did you say that was? It's on Lakeworth Road, right near Haverhill Road. Is that right on the corner? Not quite. It's across the street from a elementary school there.

From Hoffman's chocolates. Oh, Hoffman's chocolates. I know where that is. Everybody knows where that is. Oh, yeah. Okay. We are going to go to Judy. She's a first-time caller, and she's calling us from West Palm Beach.

Good morning, Judy. Good morning, Nancy. How are you? Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas to you, Judy. Judy, you probably heard earlier that we were extending $100 to the ladies who were in Broward and Dade, right? Yes, I knew that. Okay, well, this morning we're still going to be honoring a person.

person as yourself who is from West Palm Beach. So you win yourself $50. Well, thank you for that. And you, if you stay on the line and you speak to our producer, Jeremy in the control room, he'll get your contact information, and that is the only way. You will get a check from me. Can you do that? Okay, that's fine.

I can do that, Nancy. But I did want to tell you, I haven't met you, but I have met Earl. And we bought two of your vehicles. I have a 14 Camry and a 15 RAV-4. And we love our vehicles. We love the dealership. Like I said, I haven't met you. I have met Earl.

And Patricia Oliphon. Isn't she wonderful? Yes. I love her dearly. Never go to her to the end to the earth as long as she's there. Yeah. Beautiful person, beautiful personality. and I can't say enough about her and tell her Merry Christmas for me too if she's still there

oh she is definitely been battling a lot of illness with cancer and stuff and I feel terrible about that she's just an amazing person inside nut and she's gone through a whole lot yes she has and we'll have to fix her Merry Christmas for me I definitely will pass that alone to her and we'll have to fix that situation where you have never met me. We've had a lot of changes in the last three years, Judy, and Earl and I have our second office at home, and we work from there, and we do a lot of Zoom meetings and FaceTime, so therefore we haven't had a chance to reach out to our customers. And I totally understand that with the situation with COVID and everything. Yeah, so things are changing, and they're getting a whole lot better.

I'll keep your name on my list and hopefully we'll run into each other, but I will give Patricia your message. Well, I hope to meet you, Nancy. You sound very sweet, and I would love to meet you, too. I love her all, too. Oh, thank you so much. I did meet him a couple of times in there when we were in for service. Yeah, he's a pretty special person. Yeah, I'm sure he is. I'm sure things like it to me. Thank you. Okay, Judy. Merry Christmas. and happy

Merry Christmas Happy New Year and don't forget to leave your contact information Okay happy healthy to all of you Oh thank you so much

We need all that When you have your health You have everything Yes you do Thank you Thank you 877-960 Or you can text us at

772-4976530 I have $100 for a lady from Broward and Dade $100 today It's a special treat honoring you

for calling the first time from the area that we're now reaching The True Oldies All the True Oldies stations South of us now Most of them Although we know

Dade County If you're listening to a true oldies radio right now And you're hearing us And you're Broward Dade We'd love to hear from you And if you're a first time female caller

100 bucks and that's 95.9 FM 106.9 FM want to hear the rest of them 103 HD3 96.9 FM again so there's a lot of ways to catch our show 1470 a.m. 95.3 again FM. 877 960 9960 and you can text us at 772-4976530. We have an interesting mystery shopping report coming up soon from Toyota of Hollywood. And as you may or may not know, they're big. They're big. They're huge. They're the second largest. Second largest. Can you believe it? Over a thousand cars a month. They sell. Just new cars. Yeah. Amazing. Okay, we are done with the phones, Rick, so I'll turn it over to you. Okay, let's see about getting some text messages here.

We've got Anne-Marie's to start off. I'll see. She says, good morning. With the rest of the country in a deep freeze, hey, we're a little chilly here too, Anne-Rory. South Florida is in a cold snap for a couple of days. This prompts a couple of questions. Are there any cold-related or car-related issues? South Floridians are likely to encounter due to the cold weather, besides the tire light coming on because of the tire pressures drop into cooler temperatures.

I'll take this kind of in parts. Not really. Most of our cars down here, we're not going to see issues except for the possibility if your battery is really old and it's on the brink of failure, a sudden cold snap can actually cause your battery to just the straw that breaks the camel's packet, will cause it to lose that final edge. So be advised with the coldware that we're having, you might wind up needing a battery replacement if your battery's been pretty old. Is there anything to the viscosity of the oil? I mean, we're talking 41 degrees in Palm Beach County, but if you go out west and Florida,

I mean, we have freezing temperatures in the glades and that area. If a car sits overnight and below zero, I'm not below zero, below freezing, does that make it more difficult for the pistons to move? The oil is going to get a little thicker, but not enough to affect your car in this area. If you were up north and you suddenly got down to 15 below, you might see an issue with that oil getting a little harder to move, but not in this area. We're not going to see those issues here. Rick, one more question before you go on. Does it matter whether your car is in the garage or in the driveway? Actually, being in the garage, temperatures can actually get a little cooler as the air gets cold inside and doesn't get moved around by the outside air.

But, yeah, it can have some effect. But again, you're talking only a couple degrees difference and really not enough in our area to make any big difference. Here, that folks. Come to South Florida. And the second part she has here, if one has their tires inflated to the recommended pressure, in her case, it's 35 PSI, how much lower does the tire pressure have to drop before the tire pressure light comes on? That's generally about six pounds. But now that's six pounds from the threshold that was set when they set your tire pressures. So say the threshold was set at 32 pounds, and you put them up to 35, it's got to get down from that original 32, 6 pounds lower, which would be about 26 pounds, then would turn that light on.

But it depends on the threshold where it was set, and basically, if that light comes on, just get some air in your tires or drive a little bit to see if the pressure comes off once they heat up. And the best thing, though, is check your pressures anyways because you might still have a leak that has dropped one of your tires down. I guarantee you there's a line of people at our dealership right now in for that very thing. It was 40 degrees here in our area. And I guarantee you, we had 25 people come in, say, I need air in my tires. That's why at our dealership, and I bet you a lot of others have got this trick too,

we have an air compressor with a tank sitting on a roll cart that we keep plugged in, so it's always full, and we can simply pull a car right, and we have, our porters are trained, they can pull a car over there, set your tire pressures up where they need to be, and have you out of there in minutes. You don't have to wait and put your car in the shop to have everything checked. But if they do find one tire that's super low, that means you might have a leak, they'll alert you to that so it can be taken care of. Okay, let's see here.

Ah, and Amory says, you've covered the air pressure. topic. She sent another text in. Here's another topic. It is illegal under federal law for any company to rent a car that has an active recall. Right now, Hertz rent a car is under investigation by the NHTSA for renting out cars that apparently had open recalls. So if you're renting a car, please go to Safercar.gov S-A-F-E-R-C-A-R-C-A-R-G-G-O-V and check to see if the car you're renting has any recalls. Folks, do that for any car that you're going to drive a ride in.

Just put the VIN, the vehicle identification number, in on that website. Doesn't cost anything. Totally free. It will tell you if there are any open recalls on that vehicle. I find it's interesting that it's illegal for a rental car company to rent a car that has a recall on it, but a car dealer can sell you a car with a recall on it, and it's perfectly legal. A used car.

Used car, yeah. They cannot sell you a new car, but a used car they can. Well, rental cars are used cars, right? Okay. So why does the U.S. government allow Hertz-Avis. national budget and all the thousands of rental car companies why do they have a law that requires them

because they're not selling the car to you, they're only renting it to you. They still loan the car. What difference does it make whether you get killed because you rented the car or you get killed because you bought the car? It isn't the government's purvey to decide you should buy or rent a car. They're just

supposed to keep you safe. So the law should apply to all dealers. If a Chevrolet dealer sells you a used car and it's got a dangerous recall, it should be illegal. Oh, I totally agree with that, too. I agree. Yeah. Okay. We'll go on to Bob here.

And Bob says, good morning. Since most EVs, electric vehicles, use their batteries to give you heat when it's cold outside, how much do you estimate one would lose on how far you'll drive in miles that can be driven by using that extra electricity how much of your mile capacity

do you think you're going to lose especially up north in the wintertime so you talk about electric vehicle electric vehicles that's an interesting question but well you can you know I drive a Tesla a lot of you folks don't know that but the Tesla, right now, we could have, you put it on temperature control

and it uses the battery to keep the car warm during the winter or cool during the summer, and it definitely uses a lot of battery power. And in fact, just sitting there, batteries degrade, and Nancy and I will go on vacation, and we can check our Tesla battery by our app and our phone, and it loses about a mile or two every day. Yeah. If you're going for two weeks, you'll lose 20 miles of a range based on just sitting there.

So for those folks up north with an electric car, think about it. Check your mileage. Rick, I'm going to interrupt her. We're going to go back to the phones. And we're going to talk to Bob from Pompano Beach and Roadrunner, Steve. Hang on. Good morning, Bob. Good morning. How are you doing, guys? I enjoy your show.

Oh, thank you. I have. I went to buy a new car a few years ago, two years ago, and the price was way over the sticker. What is that all going to end? It's really insane, and I don't know who the Transportation Secretary is allowing this to go on, because I think it should come under their egos. It's almost the form of an oligopoly what's going on, if it's, I don't know if it's, I have horse sense, I can't believe it's something that just the roads over years and years and years. I'm sorry, one more time on that? Yeah, I can't believe it's something that keeps going on and on without ending the, this

or the sip of sticker price because of a part shortage or, or, uh, that, uh, dealerships and manufacturers, they're going to take advantage of that for as long as they can. I mean, it's kind of like gasoline prices. The experts will say on the TV all of a sudden, gas prices are going to be falling, and it'll take weeks before those gas prices actually start dropping. But they say gas prices are going to rise, and 15 seconds later, all the stations are jacking the prices up. Also, gas gasoline, it's a future, it's a future thing, it's very spongable oil and gas, whatever.

But this is something it seems to be going on for years, and if they can't make a car without these silly parts, whether they, or these computers, they should change their way. It maybe it's not doable. I mean, I can't see this going on for very much longer. It's a causal necessity, almost like a utility. Right, but they've got you over a barrel. You don't have a choice except to buy that car. So if they have the ability to say, yeah, we're going to charge you $5,000 over MSRP for that car. If you can't find that car anywhere else, what are you going to do?

I mean, unfortunately, they hold the cards. We have a lot of things to be monopolized. That's my point. You can hold back on milk, on food, on whatever. it. But this evening, over the top, the government has stepped in and stopped this. No, it's what they're doing is, you see, it's a greedy, kind of a phenomena,

and unfortunately, that's the capitalist system. I mean, the word greed is a bad word. The word capitalist is a bad word, depending on who says it, but it's just a fact of life. I mean, they don't have these problems in China, because if the Chinese car dealers start charging too much for cars, the Chinese government takes them out and shoots them, and it doesn't happen anymore. I don't want any of guys to be shot anyway. I'd rather live in a greedy capitalist company than in China where they can tell you what you have to pay.

They tell the sellers what they have to charge. They tell the buyers what they have to pay. I'd rather make up my own mind. But I also feel that it's not the core dealers. They have a big car lot or whatever, buildings and everything with just a few cars, new cars. They should, all of a sudden, this shouldn't happen for years and years and years. It's monopoly. A monopoly, part of our capitalist system has an anti-monopoly clause in it, or oligopoly.

Well, you've got, you know, the car dealers, actually, I have to disagree with you on that. I mean, a car dealer, you name me a make car, and you talk to the dealer, they say we have too many dealers. If you want to buy a Toyota in Palm Beach County, I'm a Toyota dealer. If you want to buy a Toyota dealer in Palm Beach County, let's say, I'll restate that. Within 20-mile radius of my dealership, there are five Toyota dealerships. So basically, in a short drive, you could go to five different Toyota dealerships and get your best price for five different dealers. So that's choice.

And the fact that now is you just have to shop around. A car dealer himself is not a monopoly. The manufacturer, you know, you can say Toyota is a monopoly, but Honda builds pretty darn good cars. and if toilet charges too much, people will buy more hondas. Right. I'm just saying that I think the problem is they don't have enough cars being manufactured, and that's not a dealership.

That's a source issue. Same thing. You mentioned about oil and whatever. It's not being produced. Prices go up. I really think this is something in our society that we should look at. It's not just in cars. A lot of things are overly priced, and they continue.

They're not going to stop until the government steps in. Yeah. Well, you have a great show, guys. Thank you very much. I enjoy it, and I enjoy dialogue. Thanks for the call, I appreciate your comments. I mean, when will you not pay market adjustment? I think you could throw market adjustment on toilet tissue.

I'm not sure. We are going to go to the roadrunner, Steve, and Merry Christmas, Steve, and welcome. It's nice to hear from you. Oh, good morning, everybody. Happy holiday. I like to know who this guy, Otto Thomas is. you keep talking about? Who?

Otto Thomas. Do you know Otto Harry? He's Otto Thomas's brother. Very good. Good morning. That other caller brought up a good question about the batteries in the Tesla. Well, I always lived in New York

and I was always told when it's really, really cold out from the old guys, take the battery out of the car and put it in your house to stay warm. Yeah, your wife might complain about that. I tried it at one time. I'll never do it again. It's just two bolts. Zip, zip, zip, you're unbolting, you bring it in the house. When you're ready to leave, you put it back in.

That's what I did. I put it on the dining room table, and I don't know why she got so mad. And, Steve, I could share so many stories with you. about what we, I'm from Pittsburgh, as you know, used to do during the winter to warm our cars up. It was like as if we were treating like human beings. Yes. But we don't have enough time. I know. My uncle used to put a blanket over the motor.

There you go. It's got to cold out. My grandmother put blankets on our olive trees in our backyard, and some people put those blankets on their engine. Okay. thing I want to see in the future with just Tesla cars is a 100 mile race on an overtrak.

This way, all the computers, oh, we can't pass him. We've got to slow down. We can't make a left turn. There's a guy next to me and all I wonder how long that would take. But nothing but a Tesla car race on an overtrap with all

the warning lights and buzzes. Oh, boy. Tesla's being run in autonomous mode on an oval racetrack. Yeah, there's that guy again. Wow. Well, it's probably the perfect race car. I mean, that raises an interesting question.

NASA, I mean, if they open it up to electric cars, why would you want a human in there? Because first of all, you're endangering his life or her life. And then our autonomous Tesla is, you know, you know, not perfected yet, but one day they will be in. And nobody will be able to beat an autonomous car in a racetrack. I imagine a pit stop. How was it going to take the charge the car in a pit stop? I imagine a wonderful day when you want to get on a highway

and you're going to spend, say, three hours driving on this one particular highway, your car pulls on, the computer takes over, you wind up in a line of cars all traveling inches of part, but the computers are all communicating with each other, blazing along at high speed, traveling at the speed of the slowest car possible, but everybody's at like 120 miles an hour, and then as cars need to get in or out of the pack, the computers can adjust easily to let them leave the group, merge into the group, and no accidents. Yeah, well, it's going to happen.

Do you remember Space Odyssey, 2001, and... I'm going to howl the computer took over the spaceship yeah I can't do that Dave that's what's going to happen with the Tesla's they're going to they could make a horror movie out of that the terror of the Tesla

we have Hal in our house but we call her Alexa and we get yeah we get mad at her I hear a big fight in the kitchen. I think there's a problem, and Nancy's having an argument with Alexa. So, yeah, we have a female hal in all around. Yes, but I tell her, I'm sorry. You don't, you never tell her you're sorry. I tell her what a wonderful person she is. You should bring Alexis flowers. There you go.

Everybody, have a good day. You had a happy holiday. Thanks for making us laugh, Steve. Merry Christmas. Bye. Bye, Steve. God bless. Happy New Year. I think we're going to, while we have time, go back to Rick. Okay. Let's see here. Next we have, oh, almost missed this one. This one is from Negan 1, and he sent in a photo. He says, good morning, Earl.

Found this old picture of a Toyota dealership in Florida, and it's Toyota Motors of Orlando. What year do you think this was taken? Have a Merry Christmas, everyone. 70 degrees in Arizona today. What do you think, Earl? Gosh, I'd say that would be the late 50s, early 60s. It sure looks it to me by the age of that car. Yeah. Wow.

I wish I knew what the salesport service, Toyota, Motors. That would have been when Jim Moran first started the distributorship in Florida. Toyota, when they first came to America, they weren't big enough and didn't have the wherewithal. financially to sell all over the United States so they sold distributorships and one of the earliest distributorships was to a man named Jim Moran who was one of my heroes by the way and he was a Pontiac dealer I knew him because I was a bonnet dealer back in the 60s and he was probably the one that set up that dealership very likely I'm gonna research that I got to find out

what that car is. Yeah, you could Google it probably, yeah. Yep. Okay. Okay, Rick, I'm going to interrupt you then. Let's go for the phone. We're going to go to Frank. And Frank calls us from Jupiter Farms.

He is a regular caller. Merry Christmas, Frank. Well, Merry Christmas to you all. And I got to thank you guys for personally getting this cold weather. Because obviously, if I buying your Tesla, we got rid of the, you know, global warming. problem. There you go. Hey there. Bad humor. Anyway, I happen to drive my car down at McDonald's. I'm selling something off or off or up. You guys just pulled in. But anyway, real quick, with the tires, you're exactly right. They dropped about four pounds from yesterday.

Anyway, I got someone I got a meet, unfortunately, but we'll talk to you. Happy New Year and we'll see you again soon. Thank you, Ryan. Oh, thanks for the call. Yeah, bye-bye. great weekend. Okay, back to Rick. Okay. Let's see. This one is from Anonymous and he says, when shopping

for a car, what's more important miles or the year? And I'm going to assume he means a used car. Myself, I would be I consider those almost like a seesaw thing. If you find an older car with really low miles, you might have a really good vehicle to look at. If you find a car that's only a year or too old but seems to have a lot of miles on it, again, that can still be a really good car. The thing with used cars is to kind of judge what sort of miles were they?

You know, is this maybe somebody's Uber that they were driving around in the city constantly? Yeah, I think the answer is, get the service history. The service history tells the whole story. Because, as Rick said, if you have a car with high mileage that was religiously serviced, that car could have twice as much mileage and still give you a good service. The same thing with the time. You know, if a car sits and you don't drive it, we see cars in our shop because we're in South Florida. A lot of snowbirds come down from up north.

Some people have two homes. They come down six months up north, six months down here. You let a car sit for six months or longer. You're asking for problems. Exactly correct. Check the service history. If there was a car was serviced according to factory recommended maintenance and the factory always specifies a mileage and a time.

If they do that, then you're good to go, time or mileage. And have it inspected by an independent mechanic, somebody you trust, that will go over where to find tooth comb. Okay, this one is from Jonathan in Wellington. He says, question, new Toyotas are hard to come by, but there's a Hyundai dealership in Coconut Creek with a large inventory of cars on the ground. Is this due to Hyundai being an inferior product

and simply not selling? Or are they getting more car deliveries? And he goes on to say, and thank you for another year of fascinating, informative, and fun information regarding car purchases and cars in general. Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, and a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year. My question would be, does he know those cars were inventory? Did he physically go and check and say, are these cars in inventory and are they available for sale?

Because the probable answer is they're advertising that they have all these cars, but they don't. And dealers almost without exception, Mystery Shopping Report, which is coming up shortly, they advertise if they had a whole bunch of cars. And when they confronted the salesman, where were all these cars you said you had? Well, all those cars were pre-sold, and we're getting hundreds of cars every week,

but all of them are pre-sold. So the manufacturers are party to this conspiracy, and when they work with the dealers, website. So when you go to Acme Toyota or Charlie's Honda store, their web page is controlled by Honda. And the manufacturer puts cars on their website and says they're in inventory, but they're not. We've complained to Toyota about that. We say, I don't want you putting cars on my website saying that these cars are in inventory. And they won't take them off. I had a fight with the toilet manufacturer. So we had to put a

pop-up on the screen on our website saying when you tune in to our new car inventory and it shows all these cars here, I have a pop-up on my computer screen that says these cars really aren't here. They're pre-sold. So if you want to buy one of these cars, please call

first to find out if it's really here. So that's, I think, the logical answer to that very logical. Oh, hey, a quick message from Donovan here. Oh, Donovan. Good morning. He says, well, two notes, actually. He says highway versus city miles is very important. And that's true because city driving is a little bit harder on cars than those highway miles.

That easy cruising along on the highway at 60, 70, just staying at that one speed. It seems to wear the car a whole lot less than that stop and go traffic. Is that as true today as it was 30? years ago. I think it still is because you're not using the brakes as much. It makes so much sense. You're not doing that turning and twisting as much. A hybrid is an exception. I mean a hybrid actually does better. Now that's very true and that's that's for your fuel economy where hybrids can make use of their systems much better in the stop and go. And he also goes on to say if if you drive by Wayne Acres Ford right now, the lot has been completely full for weeks

and they have at least 30 Broncos for sale right now at Wayne Acres Ford. That's odd because those were a really hot car. I'm skeptical. Somebody remind me, we need to double check that. I just can't believe that Wayne Acres Ford would have that many Fords on the lot available. I'm not saying they're not there on the lot, but they're a big rental company, by the way. Wayne Acres Ford is a huge rental company, and these may be pre-sold. cars that are actually not for sale.

That could be. And this one coming in from Jim, he says, can I change out my Toyota Limited Upper Grill, Tacoma Limited Upper Grill, to a TRD Pro Grill without having a problem with the radar sensor or the front camera? A lot of companies are selling them aftermarket, but Toyota will not sell the original OEM grill unless you own, a pro model and a lot of dealers

will do this. If you don't own a Toyota TRD Pro Package vehicle, you cannot buy the vehicles with those labels on it. You can't buy the parts. Maintain that exclusivity and value

of the car that you paid a lot of money for. Yes, just like the Challenger Hellcats. When Chrysler came out with those, you cannot buy those emblems unless you can prove that you own one. You can surprise the dealers that do the same thing. You know, they'll take a used car and they'll go buy a decal that indicates a model or something

of next step up and charge an extra $1,000 for the car because they bought a $10 decal. Exactly. Now, the problem with aftermarket grills and pieces like that, especially on newer cars that have the radar sensor, radar emitter built into the grill, that has to be designed exactly perfect for that unit to mount in that grill. So if the aftermarket unit doesn't have it designed properly or if the material does not let the radar unit work through it like it should, you may wind up with an issue there.

And also, once you do replace it, even if it will work properly, you're going to want to have it recalibrated by a dealership to make sure that that radar unit is operating properly so that your radar cruise control and your pre-collision system will operate normally. Those are safety features. I would not mess around.

Make sure you get those checked and recalibrated by a Toyota Tech. Great advice. Great advice. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that we're going to go to our mystery shopping report, but let me remind you of a column

that Earl wrote and the name of it, don't be Rip Van Winkle when you buy your next car and you can read that at earlancars.com just like everything else that you can find at that

website that's earlancars.com a special thank you to mystery shopper Agent Lightning. She did a fantastic job and she was down in the south end of Florida down at Hard Rock I believe it was

and she still was able to do the mystery shopping report and she did it well. Yeah, I've got one little bulletin and I've got to get out. Let me finish. We are running late. Let me tell the audience that you can vote on the mystery shopper report by texting us at 772-497-6530. Now back to the recovery card. The front page of the automotive news today this week, I should say, Carvana will be in fight of its life in pivotal 2023. Carvana, we've talked about a lot on the show.

So Carvon is just one of the used car sellers. CarMax is another. So if you're in the market for used car out there, here is the very important warning. A lot of dealers, including my dealership, but a lot of dealers all around the country, got caught with their pants down to use that old saying. They went out and bought a lot of cars, used cars, from you. You got a lot of money for a used car if you sold it six months ago or three months ago. The car dealers were buying used cars for thousands of dollars over what they would normally sell for.

And you benefited from it, like if you had an off-lease car. Now, the problem is the used car markets turned around, and the value, the wholesale value, has gone down. Well, the car dealers have not adjusted their inventories. And CarMax, one of the biggest used car seller in the world, is in bad trouble. losing money now. Their profits are down. Carvana is in the same way. And so you, if you're buying a used car in the next few months, be very careful. If you're trying to buy a used car that the dealer should have adjusted at the price, but didn't, don't. Find a dealer that has adjusted his car prices in spite of the fact that the market took a sudden turn. Not too many

dealers did that. To do it, you have to take a real financial bath. I'm talking hundreds of thousands of dollars adjustment and depreciation you have to lower the price take the financial bath lose the money and then you have a car that's competitively priced so be very careful in the next few months when you're shopping for a used car great advice carbana the prices are on the rise and car max also okay we're going to get to the mystery shopping report Toyota of Hollywood I'll read in the first person as if I were Agent Lightning

doing the shop I arrived just after 9 a.m. entered the showroom and was greeted by three women sitting near the front door. I was told that all the salespeople were currently helping other salespeople. It's a very busy store because I would guess

Toyota of Hollywood probably has 50 to 75 salespeople, maybe 100. As she spoke, the woman I'd speak to, a salesperson walked by sipping a cup of coffee. One of the greeters asked if he was with anyone, and the salesman smiled, asked me how he could help. I told him I was here to buy a car for my son for Christmas. He asked me what I had in mind, maybe a corolla or a Camry. I said yes, and I told him I'd seen them online promotion for a 22 inventory sellout. Now, we talked earlier about cars being in inventory,

why people think there are a lot of cars in inventory. This headline and the advertiser was one of them, 2,022 inventory sellout. But what does that give you an image of? A whole bunch of cars, a bunch of 2022's leftover, slash cut, reduce the prices, get rid of them at any cost. That's the advertisements, folks, and people believe it. If you go to the websites, as I said earlier,

all the dealers are doing that. So you can't tell from advertisements if they have cars in stock or not. You have to go and say, can I buy that car? And the chances are you'll find out you can't. It's property already been sold. Okay, I followed the salesman to his desk, showed him the ads I was talking about. The salesman looked at the ads and explained one was for used cars. So, the Toyota Hollywood is famous for that.

They deliberately put a lot of current model cars in their rather large rental company, second largest car dealer of the world. They got a really big rental company. So they put a bunch of them in there. They title them. They call them Hollywood renter cars. And then they advertise them for sale. What's a title of car?

It's a used car. As soon as you title a car, it depreciates thousands of dollars, even if it doesn't have any miles on it. And these mostly do have miles on it. So once again, Baiton Switch, Purefurt. simple. One was for used cars, and they had plenty of used cars, but they didn't have new cars. He'd have to check to see what he had in stock, got up to go to check, left me sitting alone for over 20 minutes. That's a long time. Another salesman walked by asked if I'd been helped. I said, yes, but my salesman is MIA. He said, okay, and kept on walking.

So that's kind of a nonchalant. I could get less of a damn attitude. And that's what you get when you're the biggest of the world or number two in the world. Finally, my salesman came back and reported that he wasn't having much luck finding an available new carola. Now, amazing. Here's the second biggest cardinal chip of the world and he can't find one new corolla. Does that tell you something about the availability of new cars? It's like the second most popular Toyota out there. Right. I pointed to the white camera in the showroom and said, I liked it. We walked over.

The MSRP was $37,685, and there was an addendum label, the famous, infamous, I should say, adenum label. I pointed to the $10,000 market adjustment. You heard that right. 37,685 MSRP plus $10,000. And that is the market adjustment.

That was listed on the addendum label. I said, I don't like this. Salesman said not to worry, not to worry about that he'd work on that if I really liked the car. I said he'd have to get rid of it completely if he wanted my business. I said he'd have to get rid of it completely if he wanted my business. Then I told him I never got his name. He apologized. He said his name was Kenny. Okay.

That's like a professionalism when you don't introduce yourself, I would say. Yeah, really. Kenny said he had. handles a lot of online leads, and he's currently juggling several online prospects, even as he's working with me. He went to say that he would be checking his phone a lot. I told him I'd already noticed him doing this. So there you go. You know, you're the second largest dealer in the world. You get their sales business. That makes sense. Can he ask for my driver's license, which I told him I forgot to bring with me. He asked me if I kept a picture of my phone,

I said, I don't. Kenny said, no problem. he just asked me a few questions, entered me manually into the system, then he excused himself. 15 minutes later, now we got 35 minutes of Kenny waiting time. When he came back, he was carrying a worksheet on which he was handwritten,

a sale price of $42,935, out-the-door figure of 47-618. So I asked him if I could get a more detailed breakdown. That's $10,000 of him. SRB. Kenny said, no problem. Open the calculator app on his phone, made up a bunch of calculations and began manually changing figures on his computer screen.

The whole time he was doing this, he kept stopping to deal with internet leads on his phone. I mean, if there's anything that drives me nuts, I hate when I go into a store. I don't care if it's a drug store or a clothing store, any kind of, when you go up there and you want to talk to a salesperson, that's the reason you got in the car. You went all the way to the mall, and he came all the way to the store, and they're on the phone. Or they're talking to you, and the phone rings, and they answer the phone. I mean, give me a break.

So that's just not good salesmanship. He said, you were sorry. He went to get leads from about, yeah. He said he was sorry, and he went to say on. He gets leads from all over the world at all hours of the day and night, and he excused himself to get the printout. Now, that's true, in this case here, it's a huge dealer. I mean, I know I'm being repetitive, but number two in the world, that's the big dealership. He comes back after 15 minutes with nothing but a business card with $39,000, $9.95 written on it.

I mean, not even a worksheet, vehicle buyers or a business card. And what is that? Is that the out-the-door? What is that? I don't think it's anything. Just a random number. Would you, would you, if I could get approved? And I got mad. I mean, speaking as if I were agent lightning, I got mad.

I asked him if you were serious. I said, I'd been there for well over an hour. I hadn't been offered a test drive, nor had he showed me anything on the car, and I still don't have pricing or anything in writing. Can he interrupt me and said, in all fairness, I haven't made him an offer to buy the car. So, to me, the amazing thing is that a dealership this large would still be so old school. I mean, it didn't make me an offer. I mean, I always go back to Publix. I go in there to get a loaf of bread.

They say, how much are you willing to pay me for this loaf? I mean, no other retail does this except car dealers. To me, it seems like when you walk in the door, you're offering to buy a car. Not car dealers, yes. I told Kenny, there was just horrible service, horrible experience, and I was very unhappy. and he said, well, do you want me to take that one that's closer, do you want me to take that one that's closer to the door out so you can drive it? You pointed to another gamery.

And by the way, she didn't have, I didn't have my driver's license. And there's a violation right there because your insurance company, trust me, I'm a car dealer. They want you to have the driver's license recorded of anybody that drives one of your cars because they're insuring your cars. So he's offering to violate. Remember where we are, Toyota of Hollywood. Yeah. I said no and just told him to get me

something in writing with a pricing breakdown. Kenny said, okay, but I'm the internet manager. He just promoted himself. He's now the internet manager. I'll have to switch you to an online lead like I care. I want to buy a car. But he assured.

heard me, I would still get the $39,995 sale price, which he felt was really fair, despite it being more than $2,000 over MSRP. So the price has come down from $10,000 over. I said that that price won't work for me. I told him I had now been there over an hour and a half, and I still don't have anything real to look at. Once again, Kenny went to get another printout playing the back and forth game, old school. Came back, empty-handed, said they have less than 10 Camry.

in stock and all of them are marked up. He said all dealerships were doing this and that's almost true. I said I came in because their advertisements made it sound like they had tons of cars and that's the whole thing. Federal Trade Commission Ashley Moody Attorney General of Florida you can't advertise things that aren't true. You can't advertise that you got toilets coming out of your ears and when you come in there they're not. That's That's a lie. That's dishonest. That's unfair and deceptive advertising. He said, the ad said you were getting truckloads of cars daily. Kenny said 80% of those

orders are already sold. But they didn't put that in the ad. They said, in the ad, we have truckloads, multiple truckloads coming in daily. Clear implication, we got a lot lots of cars to sell. They don't. He finally came back with a worksheet that looked like a buyer's order. The buyer's order, by the way, is a legal document, and the worksheet is not, and it should be clearly indicated that it's not, but in this case, it was vague. Sale price was $39,995. To that was added an $899 pre-delivery fee, and I call it a hidden fee, pre-delivery service fee. And it was also a $599 electronic processing e-tag

fee, another hidden fee. Aren't they creative with their names? Oh, here's a very small fee. $20. Private tag agency fee. Yeah. It's the Hollywood Toyota private tag agency, and that's $20. And a $400 tag fee, sales tax. Okay, that's probably legitimate. Anyway, my real price was $41,5.13. $3,800 and $28 over MSRP.

Hey, Paul Anderson made a, he made a comment. Is this a Ferrari mystery shopping report? Or is this a camera? Yeah. Yeah, I'll show you. Thanks, Paul. Here's a little picture for you, you folks. Thanks, Sarah.

They were streaming us, see what the online ad looks like. Can you see that, Jonathan? I think you can see that. Anyway, it just says, it basically says Massive 2022 sell-off. Now, if that isn't an indication that there's a whole bunch of cars in there for sale, I don't know what it is.

The fact of the matter is, the second largest car dealership of the world, they had 10 cameras in stock, 10. And that's because he said there were. We didn't see 10 cameras. We saw one. And that's the way it is just about everywhere, folks. The cars are not there for sale, but the advertisements seem to indicate that they're there,

so they get you in the door. And there we are, Hollywood, Toyota, not Hollywood, California, but Hollywood, South Florida, around Broward County, Fort Lauderdale, Miami area, and a huge dealership, owned by a man by the name of Craig Zinn, by the way, who I know I've known for many years. He was a Pine Egg dealer many years ago when I was a Pontiac dealer. and knew his father also. So it's a family dealership. It's not publicly owned, privately owned.

And interesting that it happens to be so large. Most of the very large dealerships are publicly owned. This is the exception. Now it's time to vote. Get your vote in on Hollywood Toyota. Okay, we have Mark Blanchard F, Too Much, and Rude. We've got Negan 1. With big old F, don't need to hear the rest.

Merry Christmas, all, and happy New Year's. Scott Hunter, total F. Joseph Kelleher, F. Ah, let's see here. I get up to, okay. Ken Asher, for your secret shopper in the holiday car purchasing spirit, the market adjustment was reduced $1,9,999, 9,999 F's. Joseph Z. Fradley, F.

Tim Gilliland, $10,000 market adjustment and a seemingly disinterested salesman. Show me the door. D-minus. Brian's at Letko. Seriously, how can Hollywood Toyota be the second best Toyota dealership in the world? F. Rocky Blockadeeal. F. Old school fools.

Mark Smith, fail. F. Shame on Hollywood Toyota. Mark Ryan, F. Wayne Vite. John Strine, big F, we've all seen this before, and this is your competition? Jonathan and Wellington, I'll give Toyota of Hollywood an F, I blame it on bait and switch, ignoring the customer, a lack of dazical attitude to the salesperson, and selling a vehicle way over MSRP, our time is too valuable to waste on a dealership that just doesn't care about the customer. Bob F for Toyota in Hollywood. Too busy, too pricey, too slow, too big, waste of time.

And Anne-Marie? Let's see. Salesman didn't introduce himself. Busy doing online work while in office customer waits. $9,99 markup. No test drive. Rude. Not unusual in South Florida.

It's Christmas, so I'll sugar-coated. I'll rate them a C-minus for a dealership that treats through its number too. And Marie is nice. Oh, she wants that nice list. Myself, I'm going F all the way. I just, this guy, Kenny, just, I don't like him at all. F. Okay. Well, we're about all the time. C minus.

C minus. Okay. F. Ladies and gentlemen, next week's show is going to be really interesting. And this was an idea from no shenanigans, Jonathan, who is right here in our studio. And boy, I'll tell you what a job he does. he thought it'd be great if Earl and I discussed the naughty and the nice list for the auto dealers with so many other ideas. So next Saturdays show, yep, New Year's Eve, we are going to be right here same time, and we want all of you to have a beautiful Christmas and Hanukkah. Stay tuned, as I said, next week at the same time. I don't know.