Best Time to Buy a Car: Insider Tips from Let's Talk Wheels

Music.

Buckle up for Let's Talk Wheels with Mike Herzing and Jeremy Bierenbaum. Have you ever wondered the best time to buy a car or, you know, go to a dealership and really have some kind of power? Well, we're going to tell you today right here on Let's Talk Wheels. Hi, everybody. I'm Mike Herzing. And today, along with Jeremy Birnbaum, we're going to give you automotive and power sports news, interviews, car reviews, and also some classic car information from said Jeremy Birnbaum.

Let's welcome him right now. He's there in California and Los Angeles, where it's nice and chilly, right, Jeremy? Oh, man, it is cooking today. We're in this, like, heat dome, but supposedly it's supposed to cool off by the end of the week, so Friday couldn't get here fast enough. And but this was a really cool week. You know, Pebble Beach happened this week. And I think we should take some time at some point in the show and kind of mention some of the fun stuff that happened.

Boy, no kidding. It's far away from my checkbook. That's for sure. But you know what? But as just a participant, it's really accessible. You can spend very little money aside from the hardest part is finding accommodations. But I always my claim to fame is I'm the only one that does Pebble Beach and goes back and stays in a tent. but I'll go camp by the beach and it's beautiful and it's a quarter of the price and I do it on my motorcycle and so it makes it really easy to get around.

Wow that is you doing it right so all right folks don't forget I'm sure by now almost every all the schools are back in session so be sure to watch out for kiddos that are not paying attention I know here in in the Houston area and I'm in outside of the Houston in the suburbs they had a lot of budget cuts and things like that so a lot of the kids are having to walk to school that normally they would would take the buses.

So I think if you live within two miles and there's some sidewalks, you have to walk to school kind of like you and I did, Jeremy, you know, uphill both ways in the snow, right? Hey, I was fortunate elementary school, middle school and high school. I could walk to all three of them from my house growing up. So I always walked until I got my driver's license. And it was, you know, cool to drive a car to school. You know, you're right.

There was this one guy in my middle school, he had failed like two grades or something. So he was like 15 or 16 and he was still in elementary school. He's 15, I think. And you could get a license here back then. And he drove a 58 Edsel to school. I'll never forget that. It was kind of this pea green. It was just, oh, ugly. Sounds like a character. But he was also a God because his name was David. And because he had vehicle, you know, had wheels and nobody else ever said bicycles.

But it's all right. All All right, let's go ahead and get to some news real quick and talk about the folks from Ford who are not doing a good thing for us, are they? I mean, I'm mad at Ford. They get that patent and it's scaring me. Yeah, so Ford filed a patent with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that could effectively convert modern police vehicles into mobile surveillance platforms designed to autonomously track and tattle on speeders.

So basically, they can have roaming cars, you know, autonomous cars driving on the freeway with no one in them, but have sensors to see if a car is speeding. And if so, they can alert an officer, you know, further down the freeway and even go to the effect of just mailing you a ticket. it. You know, in some states that's legal. Here in Texas, luckily it's not. Otherwise I'd be in so much trouble. But the problem you have is it's just, you know, here it is.

But they can detect everybody around us, not just one car. It'll detect for anything, anybody speeding, it'll detect it. And that police officer can pull over at one or multiple, or like you said, send it out to phone a friend. And the whole thing is to me a little bit, and some people People are always up in arms about, you know, privacy and Big Brother. And I'm kind of agreeing with them as much as sometimes, you know, the scofflaws are a problem.

But, you know, I mean, it's still a little scary. I get that. And, you know, the article cites, this article that we're sharing about is on Truth About Cars by Matt Poskey. But it also states that maybe Ford is doing this because they're first to the idea and they just want to patent it before anyone else. They might not have the desire to do it now. Still, it's scary that they have this in their back pocket in the future if they want to.

But it's possible that they're just doing this to beat out the competition. Boy, to me, it scares the hell out of me. And, you know, of course, here in Texas, everybody goes 15 over or 10 over the speed limit. The police, they're so nice. As long as you're not doing anything stupid and driving like an idiot, they don't have any problems with it. You know, they got bigger fish to fry than somebody going 10 or 12 miles an hour with a speedway. And that's on the freeways.

I mean, you know, in the city streets, neighborhood streets, it's a different story. But the state troopers- I tend to agree. I agree with you. You know, on the freeway, you know, everyone's going same flow of traffic. It's a little different than these people that are weaving in and out of streets and doing, you know, 20, 30 miles an hour over. Yeah, here they're really... Matter of fact, folks, this is Mike Herzing, Jeremy Bierenbaum. Let's talk wheels. We're talking about this Ford patent.

As long as you're not street racing, that was a big deal. Some people have gotten hurt. They kind of take over the streets and do donuts and stuff like that. Oh my God, that's the cancer of the automotive culture right now. I truly hate it. It ruins so many really good events. Out here in Malibu, there used to be some really good car shows. And then all these people came, started doing dumb stuff.

Now the car shows are closed. You can't go to them. But they enforce the PCH like you wouldn't believe. It's not even fun to go drive there on the weekends anymore. Oh no, Pacific Coast Highway, really? I mean, that's like the tail of the dragon over in a, you know. Asheville, North Carolina, it's the same thing. I mean, it's just, it's legendary roads. Here we have the twin sisters over in the hill country that are just really wonderful roads. But you're right.

Lease are there. You never know when you go around a corner and there's an officer there ready to take a bunch of your money. Isn't that the worst feeling when you know that you see them and you know you're getting a ticket before you even pass their cruiser? You're already putting your blinker to turn over or pull over because you know it in the bottom of your stomach. You're just like, oh, I can't believe I did that.

Yeah, especially here. The state troopers are so good about using instant on radar, which foils my radar detector. Unless they shoot the guy in front of me, then I'm good. But they use instant on. A lot of the local cops normally just leave the radar on, and they don't do the instant on. And that's okay because it does its job by slowing people down. As soon as the radar detector detects that, you slow down.

I find honesty is a pretty good method, though. Like I had a police come up to me and he said, you know, you're speeding. And I said, I'm sorry, man. It was a beautiful day. I'm listening to the Beach Boys right now. And I didn't realize how fast I was going. And, you know, he kind of gave my car once over and said, can I write you a ticket for tinted windows? And I said, be my guest. That sounds great. He asked you that. Great. That's nice. And your dad was an L.A. cop, too.

So there we go. You know what? I try not to bring that up until I'm in actual trouble, you know, and a speeding ticket is not actual trouble. No, it's not. It's really not. All right. Now, the folks over at GM, you know, there's some rumors that the GM three liter, that straight six Duramax diesel was going to go away because they had, you couldn't order it after like August 8th or something. You couldn't place an order for it.

And somebody and the folks over at pickup truck and SUV talk, we're talking about the fact that just had an article about the fact that it's not. It hadn't halted production. They're just having trouble sourcing some of the parts, and it's not discontinued. They just halted production, and that's all. So they're still going to have it. But, you know, they also have the 2.8 liter V6 they put in it. It's kind of a worry, though, but this is the workhorse in the big trucks.

You know, this is what a lot of... The problem is these big dealers are so expensive, and they just... It's such a big deal. Folks, this is Mike Herzing, Jeremy Bierenbaum. Let's talk wheels. We're talking about diesels. And that three liter Duramax diesel, I mean, I've gotten over 30 miles, 33 miles to gallon in a Ford, I mean, in a GM, was a Chevy truck or a GMC truck. And that's amazing and has tons of power. They're great motors and they're really desirable, that platform.

You see more of them than, you know, the V8s and the 5.3 and the 6.2. So I'm curious what it's going to do for the market on those trucks right now. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it really is going to probably make a little bit of difference, a little bit. But, you know, I think it's a great diesel. I mean, I think that diesel would probably actually work in the heavy-duty truck, too. I mean, it's— I'm glad to hear it's not discontinued and it's just,

you know, kind of pushed back a little bit. Yeah, because you want one. I mean, they're great in a Suburban or a Tahoe. Those things are great. I mean, oh, they're great. All right, folks. Folks, coming up, we're going to have a review of the Ford Super Duty I did at the trimmer version. And it had the 7.3 gas engine, not the diesel. That 7.3 gas engine really works good. And we're going to talk about that coming up next right here on Let's Talk Wheels. Music.

Let's talk wheels. Folks, this is my car review segment. And this week, I was lucky enough to drive the 2024 Ford Super Duty Lariat XLT Lariat Tremor. Now, the Tremor is the off-road version. It's kind of an add-on little thing you get. And it's, you know, gives it a lift. I think it's a one-inch or two-inch lift. It's got 35-inch off-road tires. It's got a winch, a Warren, 12,000-pound Warren winch.

It's got skid plates. it's got some extra lower gearing so it's 75 miles an hour which is the speed limit here at most of the highway except well actually there's a couple of them that are 85 and people drive 95 but you drive this thing and you're going 75 it runs a little tiny bit over 2000 rpms which is helps you with your fuel economy the same thing with a diesel if you're driving a diesel and you you go over 2,000 RPMs, your fuel economy exponentially goes down the toilet.

If I drive this thing hard, I'll get 11 miles to gallon. But if I drive it easy, I can get 15. Now, if it was a two-wheel drive and not the four-wheel drive, it didn't have the big tires and lift. I've had a couple of the owners tell me they can get 17, 18 miles to gallon if they're driving at 70, 75. That's great. What's the difference in terms of if you get a four-wheel drive car, You can still drive it in two-wheel drive.

Why is it getting such worse gas mileage? Because most of the four-wheel drives are geared a little bit lower for off-roading and things like that. And also, it's heavier. There's more inertia, you know. And this one has big wheels and tires. Everything that gives them crappy fuel economy, it has. Big wheels and tires. It's got the low rating. But that's all the cool stuff that we want.

Yeah, I mean, it's an extra 500 pounds of stuff. I mean, this bumper and this winch, you know, that winch probably weighs 50, 60, 70 pounds. And all this extra weight on there. But boy, you know, of course it rides like a truck. Everybody buys it with a diesel. I mean, it used to be you'd see, if you see 500 trucks on a lot, 480 of them would be the diesel and 20 of them would be work trucks that had the gas engine.

Nobody wanted the gas. That might be a Texas thing because out here you see a ton of the gas ones. Well, the diesel is so expensive out there. And we're talking heavy duty trucks. And everybody wanted the diesel. And of course, it has better resale value. Sure, it does.

But also, the diesel fuel is so much more expensive. sometimes it's right now it's only about 15 cents a gallon but normally it's about 50 60 70 80 80 cents a gallon more and a diesel truck will get 20 if you're if you're a two-wheel drive a diesel truck will get you you know 23 24 miles per gallon and it has tons of power but it's 12 000 more money but my model that i had was the x is a crew cab everybody buys crew cabs i mean you can buy this thing in single cab you could buy it in all the

different cabs but everybody wants the crew cab everybody wants the four-door truck these things start you know in the 50s and go all the way up to you can probably round this up to close to a hundred thousand dollars but they have an XL trim which starts out at $46,900 XLT then the Lariat which is I had then the King Ranch or the the Platinum, and then the Limited, which starts at $99,000. Yeah, a little under $100,000.

You look at the inside of the Limited, and you're going, am I looking at the inside of Navigator? That's how nice it looks. Yeah, no kidding. It is beautiful for a work truck. And you look at the outside, and you're like, whoa. Well, mine had this fancy interior. It's really nice. Heated and cooled seats. You know, it didn't have the massaging seats and all that stuff.

But it has but it had all these switches on the on the ceiling, console up there at the height and it had you know little sunglasses holder that has like six or seven switches for auxiliary stuff that you want. But, you know, it has a big 12-inch screen. Now, the base trims have an 8-inch screen, mine had a 12-inch screen. It had these big outlets, plugs everywhere, cubby holes everywhere. The place to put all your stuff. It has a lockable storage under the back seat.

You know, there's just so much. These trucks are just, people spend days in them. Got the 360-degree camera around it. It's got, you know, you put on your left turn signal when you're pulling a trailer, and the left camera comes on in the screen, and you can see the left side of the vehicle.

Same thing with the right you know such a good feature i mean hyundai and kia do that but you don't see big trucks do that i mean it has navigation it had the special 5g hot spot, but you know it still rides like a truck but it's so comfortable and this one had rock rails and some real heavy duty running boards slash rock rails on the side but this was a tall truck i mean it's like anybody under 5.9 or something has struggles to get in it this thing's way up up there but it's

got ground clearance it's a tow i mean you can get these things set up you can get a super duty that'll tow 40 000 pounds that's insane that's insane you shouldn't be telling 40 000 pounds with with a small car like that well you can't without a without a license you know a cdl license but but you really want a dually when you're telling that much but mine had the 7.3 diesel i mean this this vehicle here was was wonderful it had the sticker price Priced at $81,000. Had a beautiful tan interior.

These seats were just padded so well. They're so nice. It had a 12,000-pound winch. That was $3,900. The Tremor off-road package just had these neat stickers and skid plates and things like that. That was $4,375. It's got a Ford Pro up bit for all these ever work switches and things like that. Pro Power Onboard with 2KW generator, basically a power source inverter. That was another $980. Spray-in bed liners, dual batteries, even though it was only a V8.

And this got max reclined seats. These seats will lay flat if you want to go to sleep in your truck. That's great. That's really nice. Isn't that cool? And, and all these little things that Ford does, you know, it's got the $1,895 that now the Lariat package is another $5,000. So basically this is an $81,000 truck and this has got the gas engine 7.3. You know, my favorite fact, the zero to 60 on this truck. Yeah. 5.5 seconds. That's wild.

Yeah. Yeah. It's big. It's fast. And it's, but it gets it. I mean, it has, I towed, I towed about 11,000 pounds with this on the bumper and bumper pull trailer. And it was like no big deal at all. The fuel economy dropped to like 10. If you didn't look back, you probably didn't even know you were telling. Right. And of course, it had all of the trailer backup system where you go to the steering wheel and you just turn this knob and look in the camera system, and it does all this other stuff.

Folks, this is Let's Talk Wheels. Mike Rosen, Jeremy Birnbaum. We're talking about the Ford Super Duty review, and it has so many nice things. I was just, you know, adaptive cruise control, and a little bit, if you just take it easy, this is a big truck. You can go anywhere, do anything, four-wheel drive. It's got, you know, a nice transfer case, big center console, plenty of room for everything else. It's got dual-zone AC or tri-zone AC, you know, the driver-passenger and then

the rear. Tons of room in the rear.

This is a wonderful vehicle, and they see this last mile forever, forever but if you don't want to spend the extra money for a diesel folks i tell you what go drive the 7.3 or even i think they have a 6a but the 7.3 is the is the the bad mama jama and i tell you what and it really does well i've got people i've talked to a couple of people that own them that have work trucks and things like that and they love and he said it saves me so much money on oil changes and maintenance and and

everything else so just just think about if you want to keep the price down a little bit on these things and i said this engine will still maybe it won't last 500 000 or 400 000 miles like a diesel it may only last 300 000 but it it'll it's not working hard with that 10 speed transmission you know so if you haven't looked at these gas trucks take a look at them you don't have to get a diesel all right guys coming up what's the best time to buy a new car,

what would you think jeremy i'm always telling people end of the year well we can talk about that matter of fact and what kind of car to buy you want one with newer miles with what with less miles or more miles that with highway miles and city miles we're gonna talk about all that so hang on coming up on let's talk wheels we got more exciting stuff. Music.

Welcome back. Mike Herzing, Jeremy Birnbaum with Let's Talk Wheels. Jeremy, let's talk about time, the best time to buy a new car. Because people are asking me like, hey, man, prices are coming down. We've got some incentives out there. I mean, some of these things are $5,000. But I always tell people, look, at the end of the month is always a good time to buy a new car. I just had some friends that came to me and said they're thinking about buying a new car, not even when to buy a new car.

And the first thing I said is if you can hold out, end of the year is always the best time. but like you're saying, end of the month as well. Well, end of the month is one good time. Maybe when a new model's coming out and you can buy some leftovers if you can find them. Financing is, the interest rates have got to come down. They say that they're going to maybe next month cut some rates and stuff, which will help. But if you can just hold off just a little bit, you can save some big money.

And a lot of the time is, if late December is always the best, because they, you know, they have to pay taxes on some of those vehicles that are sitting on their lot. And do they want to pay taxes on that? No, they do not. Property taxes. And also if you have a vehicle that may be not the best color and maybe this or that, and you're willing to, color's not a big deal and that kind of stuff, you can make big money.

You know, everybody wants black or I always like white vehicles or light colored vehicles. Yeah. I always suggest, you know, figure out what you do need to have and what you don't need to have. And that way, when you go in and they say, oh, I don't have this, but would you be willing to go right away? You know, yes or no. Yeah, I'll do, you know, no sunroof because that's not a concern for me or me personally. If it doesn't have a sunroof, I don't want it.

Yeah. I always say Monday's the best time of the week to go buy a new car, you know, and the dealership isn't busy at the beginning of the week. The service department is after the weekend, people break stuff, but salespeople are usually a little slow at the end of the week. At the end of the year, it's always great. But they have all these sales quotas at the end of the month. If every month- End of the month. They've got sales quotas.

Everybody knows what numbers they have to hit by the end of the month, right? They know it. And at the beginning of the month, they're a little bit lax. Oh, he might come back. Oh, I might get this deal later. End of the month, they're making those phone calls, they're going, who can I, you know, hook up right now? Right. And so that, that gives you a little bit more power.

The, the frustrating thing is you don't always know their bottom line and they'll tell you one thing and it doesn't mean anything. You know, you really have to do your homework and look around and see what kind of rebates, what the car's going for elsewhere. You know, you're exactly right. Because I have seen, you know, some, sometimes, of course you're in California, you have to have a California emissions package. And some of them are just go ahead and 49 state cars.

Which is very dangerous for people that don't know that. I've heard multiple people get kind of burned on something like this. They don't realize that's something they even need to look for. They figure, you know, it's a modern car. It's the same everywhere. Well, you know, in a lot of cars, they are the same. They just go ahead and build one model for the whole country. But some of them still do 49 states and cars and things like that.

It's not as It's not as prevalent as it used to be, but people understand that when they've got sales goals to make, whether it's quarterly or the end of the year for absolutely, sometimes the dealership can make, you know, an extra $100,000 just by meeting a certain goal. And I know a lot of them like to cheat or they'll like, you know, be like the first of the month, you go up there on January 1, but they've already, you know, and they can maybe backdate the sale for one day, you know.

Yeah, yeah, one day. But, you know, you got to find a cool guy for that. Oh, no, they love to do it because they're trying to make these goals. Now, if they've already made their goals, that's not a big deal. Right. So that's what I'm saying. It's not something you want to bank on. Right. That the companies will, I mean, GM and Ford, all the car companies will say, look, if you meet these certain goals, we're going to go back and give you extra money on every vehicle you sold the whole year.

You don't just make extra money right now. You make a rebate on everything. And all of a sudden your costs go way down. And so the dealership can do that. Would you think to get a deal like that, it's better off going to a bigger dealership or one that does more volume? you know? I don't know. The one that does more volume, maybe, you know, but it just depends on what they have in stock.

If you go and they've got a lot of these things in stock, which they're getting now, you know, the inventory numbers are pretty much what it was before COVID. So we're back to the, I mean, I've seen, I've seen six and $7,000 rebates now on some of the trucks and, or, you know, they call it cash on there. And so that all makes a big difference. Folks, folks, Mike Herzing, Jeremy Bierenbaum, both stock wheels, we're talking about when the best time to buy a car. And it makes a big difference.

I mean, what dealership to go to? I mean, but if you get a quote at one dealership, they'll always, these other guys will beat it and this or that, but it's kind of hard to get a written quote nowadays. But, you know, a lot of people use these Costco or Sam's Club buying clubs or AARP, which I don't really like AARP, but I mean, USAA and all these These other companies will have these little buyers clubs. And that kind of went away at COVID, but it's all back now.

But, you know, usually Monday morning is just a dead time at a car dealership. That's the time I tell people to go look at a car, go get a good salesman. The problem is sometimes you go and you get a salesman that doesn't know anything about the car. So you got to go find a good one. But, yeah, Monday morning is the time where you're not feeling like you're taking up too much of his time.

He's not really stressed about anything. Yeah, but the worst time to buy a car is the beginning of the month, at any month. Because they haven't met their sales goals and things like that. Of course, a lot of people don't have the luxury. Somebody, their car got stolen or wrecked or it blew up or this or that. But dealers are always busiest on Saturdays. If you could go during the week, it's always better. Probably a Monday or Tuesday.

And if you've also, you're looking for a car, you're looking for a Ford Bronco, or you're looking for a new Corvette ZR1 or something, you know, come on, they're not going to be any deals. We've gone, we've gone through this stuff during the pandemic. And they're just, they're, they're barely cranking those out and they're getting every penny out of them.

The way to do it is if a new model comes out, like you just said, a ZR1, if you want a ZR1, but you don't want to pay that price, go get the Z06 because now all of a sudden there's this new shiny toy and the people that have those Z06s are going, I got to get out of this to get that. You know, that's just a, for instance, on a high-end car.

But if you don't really care that you have the newest car, a lot of times manufacturers will announce when a new model is coming out or they'll showcase a new model. If you can buy that older model and live with the design of it, you can do pretty well. I mean, like I said, there's a lot of vehicles. because I was reading some article on Autoblog. It was that they had a 2024 Audi A6, which is an expensive vehicle. You can get $10,000 off on it, almost 11, $10,985 off on it.

Hyundai Ioniq 5, which is an EV, $7,800. If they're not, if you ever want an EV, this is the time to buy one, at least in Texas and stuff, because they're just sitting on the showroom floor gathering dust. So that's another good thing to think about. But if you're looking for some of the Mustangs, they've got some good prices. Hyundai Santa Cruz is another car that's got some good deals on it. But there's some lease deals out there that are really good.

I mean, I saw a $99 lease on something, and I was like, whoa. Some of these leases are $150, $200. But there's a lot of these things like that. I mean, even Tesla's got some deals now. It's a great company. You know what? You said Mustang, and something came into my head I have to bring up. This isn't even planned. But I saw pictures from a Ford event of a four-door Mustang possibly coming in. Yeah, I saw that. You see that too?

And I was not happy with that. No? It looked pretty good, but I still wasn't happy about it. Yeah, it's kind of like the Mach-E. It's kind of like, you know, like, man, come on. Just call it another. Call it something else. Call it a Cougar. Call it something. You know, but don't use the Mustang. I mean, let the Mustang just be a gas vehicle. That's that. I mean, it's just...

But, you know, we've got Labor Day coming up and there's going to be, you know, there's going to be some deals for Labor Day and then there'll be some deals coming up. An interesting one the article brought up was Black Friday. It's now kind of transferred from just online shopping and there are dealerships doing some Black Friday deals. That's a day I would have never thought about, but, you know, something you can think about.

Yeah, but just go to the dealer. But, you know, don't forget, you can take your vehicle anywhere. And then once you buy a vehicle, you don't have to buy the extended warranty right then if you want an extended warranty. Don't buy aftermarket extended warranties. They're usually pretty horrible, but some of the OEM, you know, the Ford, GM, Toyota, whatever, factory warranties are really pretty good, but you don't have to buy it when you buy the car.

You can buy it within, while it's still under warranty, as long as it has less than whatever the mileage is. That's three years, 36,000 miles. You have less than that. You can purchase the, otherwise you sell the car or you, it's total or this or that. And all of a sudden you've got, you're stuck with a warranty. You can get maybe 20% back or something. It's not worth it. But But there are a lot of things they're trying to sell you on it.

But I can tell you, there'll be a lot more anxious to deal with you at the end of December. Especially toward the end of December. It's really kind of cool. This way, we've got a couple months left. Yeah, we get it. All right. We've got a lot of cool stuff. We're going to talk about some crate motors coming up. And we're going to talk about, yeah, these, I mean, Talantis just announced the new Hurricane engines, crate motors.

So 550 horsepower. How about that one? Just starting out. And they're not really priced all that bad. So we need to think about that. All right folks Mike Herzing Jeremy Baerbaum Let's Talk Wheels be right back with more information. Music.

Let's talk wheels it's uh jeremy barenbaum and mike herzing and uh we are talking crate motors today uh dodger stellanus just came out with um the hurricane inline six it's twin turbo and they're calling it the hurricrate this is the the engine that they're phasing out their v8s with in their production line and this is the first time it's available on their website for purchase and it's pretty cool. There are multiple versions that you can get, a Cat 1 and a Cat 3.

And at first I thought Cat like, you know, Hellcat or something, but then I realized it's like a Category 1. Yeah, like a hurricane. So that was pretty fun. Oh, you know, right. I've never thought about that. You're right. You know, Dodge is really good at that sort of thing. So you can buy the Category 1 or Category 3 in two different versions, a long block or a short block. Long Long blocks are priced at $7,995 for the Category 1 and $11,715 for the Category 1 short block.

But you can get the Category 3 long block or the actual full crate engine for Category 1, the less horsepower, for $10,495. I mean, I know you can pick up, you know, 350 Chevrolet GM crate motor and they're usually around $6,000 or $7,000. but they don't put out near the horsepower of this. And then, and I'm sure this comes with the complete engine that's going to come with turbos and everything.

Yeah. If I explained it confusingly, I should probably say that the difference between a long block and a short block is long block has everything on it. You know, all the injection system, exhaust, valve covers, a short block is just the, the block, the block and the, and the heads usually. And that's That's made for tuners or people that want to build it even bigger than what Stellantis is offering.

Sure. I mean, but think about something. Is it really worth, when people ask me all the time is, is it worth repowering? I can say, let's say you have a pickup truck with a hundred thousand miles and, or let's say 200,000 miles or something happened. You didn't change the oil, this happened, that happened. And you're, you know, the engine craters, what's your vehicle worth? I mean, I have a friend that had a Hyundai Santa Fe and it was,

you know, it's like three or four years old. They didn't do oil changes. They bought the vehicle used. It hadn't had many oil changes. It ended up with a problem and it needs, it basically needs a V6. Okay. It's a few, a couple of years old and it's, I mean, you were talking, it's $5,000 for just the motor. And then after putting it in and everything else, you're talking, you know, about 85 or close to $10,000. Is it worth putting that in that car? That's only worth maybe that.

Yeah, that's tough. The people that are going with a crate engine like this aren't really in that situation. I think it's going more towards builders that are building custom cars or, you know, someone with a later model car already OBD2 where they can just kind of plug and play this in for, you know, their tired 200,000 mile motor. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's just, will they, can you make the brackets for it and you can make the mounts for it?

I mean, there are people that'll go out and buy a classic Mustang and it's got a straight six and you're like, oh, it has no horsepower. Turn on the air conditioning, it's like hitting the brakes, you know? Yeah. But then they plug and play with one of those, you know, five liter from the eighties and, and they make it work and it makes the car a lot more fun.

Right. No kidding. But then they don't realize they're going to have to have stiffer suspension because the motor's weight, you know, the engine's weight, several hundred pounds more, and it's going to be different brackets and different everything. But does it hurt the value? Let's say I've got a 68 Mustang and I find one, it's a six-cylinder. But I said, it's a perfect car. It's exactly what I want. I just wish it had more power. Can I put a 289 in it, for example, or a 302?

Think about it like this. There are more V8 eight Mustangs out there on the road now than Ford ever produced because so many people pulled out these six-cylinder motors. And you know what? It doesn't hurt the car. They weren't crazy desirable. There's very few six-cylinder cars that are going to be worth any money because they are a six-cylinder car that might be production number one and then production number, you know, when they stop.

Yeah, one million. Yeah. But that's about it. You know, I've seen some cool cars where you look at them and you're like, man, that is such an original No one has molested it. I don't think it's that cool. Does it hurt the value? It doesn't hurt the value if you do it right. I think it enhances the value. Yeah. You just want to do it like you're saying. You want to beef up the suspension.

You want to beef up the brakes. If you think you're just going to pull a motor out and put a new motor in in a car that wasn't designed for it, I don't think you're helping. You know what I mean? You've got to get either way. But it's just going to be a lot of changes that people may not think about. You know, the leaf springs were different. Right. You know, so many different things. Bicker radiator, the whole bit,

you know, AC melts. So you really got to put that into account when you're looking at a crate motor to just drop in. Or better yet, just buy a car that has the right motor in it. You know, after anything, both after 1996, any kind of classic, when you start changing engines and things like that, it's really a lot harder because of all the emissions and things like that. Especially if you're in a state like California where it has to have everything working.

You know, it's not like I'm in some other state where they don't really, it's not a big deal. So what, with this Hurricane crate motor coming out, if you were given one, what kind of car would you put it in? I don't know. I think I'd build a kit car. A kit car. Okay. Would you care if it was a Stellantis brand or would you put it in a Ford or, you know, even a Cobra kit car? I don't know. People take Chevy crate motors and put them in everything.

I mean, I saw a Mustang the other day that had a 350 Chevrolet engine in it. And all the hot rods have it, but man, what about a great hot rod motor? But it doesn't look as good as the V8, but, you know, because it's a straight six, but man, it puts out lots of horsepower and it's going to be lighter. You know what I would probably do is one of those Dodge Omni, the Shelby ones. Yeah. GLHS. That was such a small little, you know, packaged car. I think that car

is what deserves a motor like this. Dodge Dakota pickup truck. Oh my God, that would be, I had an RT in high school. cool. And that thing was so fun with the 5.9, but could you imagine 550 horsepower twin turbo in that tiny little truck? Yeah, a motor wouldn't be any heavier, that's for sure. Although you have to look at it, it's a straight six, so it's a little bit longer than some of these engines.

You know, it's just so different with these people. Folks, Mike Herzing, Jeremy Bierenbaum, Let's Talk Wheels. Back in the 70s and stuff, people, these big shops did, or dealers did engine jobs all the time. Every couple of days, you'd see an engine job come in. Now, man, Eh, maybe once a month. Engines hold up so much better than they've ever held up.

Totally. And the other thing is now with how I'll quote unquote say smart cars are and with, you know, so many operating systems talking to each other, it's hard to do a swap where you don't replace same for same. You know, back in the day, you could upgrade, change, go to a different manufacturer's motor, carburetion and everything would link up. The hard part is kind of engineering how it mounts to the car. Nowadays, it's how it talks to the car. Right. It's called the CAN bus system.

And it's a common network and all the sensors work together. It's not just one main computer and all the little ones are just talking to it. And if one doesn't talk, it's no big deal. But now they all connect together. But even on a higher level, it's like they all talk to each other, but they're made by different manufacturers, Bosch and ACDelco. And then that's like they're almost talking different languages. And the CAN bus system and all the processors have to translate all that so

they all speak the same language. which, yeah, no kidding. And you can't just change it. That's why sometimes people will say, you know, I've had my car worked on. It just doesn't run exactly the same. It runs, no lights come on or anything, but it just doesn't run exactly as good as it used to. I'm really kind of bummed. And I was like, well, what did they do? And you find out they replaced some sensors and they didn't go with original equipment sensors.

Put the original equipment sensor in, all of a sudden the car runs exactly like it did when it was new. But these engines nowadays, if you keep the oil change and the transmission flushed and all this up, engine transmission will go 250,000 miles without having any major fails, you know, especially the engine. Transmissions, like I said, you're going to have to flush them about every 50 or 60,000 miles.

And then other than that, these things will last forever. I think next week we're going to talk a little bit about different kind of miles on cars. Think about some guy that says, I only got 60,000 miles on my car and it's 10 years old. Okay, cool. Now one of the guys says, I have, you know, 200,000 miles. Which one do you want to buy? Well, it depends what kind of car it is. Well, it depends on what kind of miles. Were they in-town miles?

You know, and he drove for an hour and only went 15 miles? Or the other guy who drove for an hour and went 70 miles because he went 70 miles an hour. So either way. All right, folks. If you enjoyed the show, tune in to the same station next week. And we'll get a following episode of Let's Talk Wheels. If you missed part of this show, heaven forbid, you can catch the podcast on all the major podcast platforms. forums. Just search for Let's Talk Wheels.

The podcast contains this show in a bonus segment with an extra car review, so be sure to subscribe so you don't miss out. And if you have any topics you want us to cover or questions you need us to answer, don't email me. Email Mike at Let'sTalkWheels.com. We'll always respond. We'd love to hear your car questions. We actually do. And as a matter of fact, as always, folks, on behalf of Jeremy Bierenbaum, Matt Peralta, and myself, I thank you for joining us today on the Talk Media Radio Network.

I'm Mike Herzing. He's He's Jeremy Barenbaum. Have a great week, folks. Thanks for joining us on another edition of Let's Talk Wheels. We'll see you next time. Music.