Driving Safely, Dealing with Distractions, and Demystifying Car Sales"

This is the let's talk wheels radio network here's jeremy bierenbaum and mike herzing, welcome buddy to the latest edition of your favorite auto show let's talk wheels i'm mike herzing and jeremy bierenbaum is right here from southern california how you doing big boy hey hey hey i'm doing well i can't complain it's nice and sunny and i've been having a good week and that kind of the way it is sunny california you know the heart of everything, thing so far yeah you know i think

it was snowing up in northern california this past weekend though at the beginning of may can you believe that oh it's crazy we've been out in the middle of nothing but flooding here in outside of houston you know i've missed my neighborhood has missed most of it or actually all of it but boy some of the stuff east east of town has gotten you know you know 26 28 30 inches of rain and you know last few days and it's pretty ugly folks everybody's been calling me and texting me about it.

But no, we've missed it all. But some of the folks actually east of town haven't really missed it. So I feel sorry for them. And there's going to be a lot of flooded cars out there and.

That's something else to watch over. So every folks, every week, we're going to give you, uh, all the information about classic cars, new cars, trucks, motorcycles, anything with wheels. And we're going to help do that with the help of our, our guru there, Jeremy Birenbaum, who does everything right up there out of, out of Los Angeles, California. He knows everything about it. He's he's a, we call him Mr. Hollywood. He knows everything about classic cars and everything else.

So he tells us everything about that stuff. And every week, we're going to give you news and notes and product reviews and car reviews and all kinds of good stuff. Boy, it's got a lot of interesting stuff. We've got one of the folks from GM to come on today.

His name is Dan Glazer. He's going to talk about distracted driving, which everybody does, and it makes me crazy. Oh, my God. California. No, I will challenge you in L.A. traffic that it's worse. Like, when I drive my truck, you can just see in everybody's cars.

Nobody's paying attention anymore everybody's on their phones all it's terrible i thought you guys had have all the had all the laws and california was one of the first states to implement those laws but i think you know recently people just don't care i don't know you know everything's on your phone now especially with android auto and apple carplay you know even when your phone is plugged into your car you still have to use it for certain things sure well

it's probably easier Easier than the native system of your car. So I still see it. I still think there's a ton of distracted drivers. It drives me nuts. Oh, riding my motorcycle is pretty tough. And I'll see some kind of idiot on a Tesla that's not even holding onto the steering wheel and driving down the road 75 or 80 miles an hour. Makes me crazy.

But, you know, what can I say? And then there's always the typical, you know, Prius person that's camped in the left lane going below the speed limit. It makes me nuts. For the most part, the people that are doing that, though, aren't on their phone. You go past them, and they're putting 100% of their attention to their driving, and they're still going slow. It might be tough for them, but they're not on their phones. I will say that.

Well, all right. Let's go ahead and get started. We've got a great show today. We've got a lot of great car reviews and things like that.

Well, let's get started with the news and notes segment and talk about paperwork.

You know that darn paperwork. Here we go. We've got a guy from California. California, he was now suing a Kia dealership because he had one of their loaner cars and the dealership forgot that they loaned it to him and say, they realized that, you know, hey, we're getting a couple of violations here from the tolls and we didn't loan that car out, but it must be stolen. And so the poor guy gets pulled over by the California Highway Patrol,

gets pulled out of the car at gunpoint because it's stolen. Right. Well, he's not real happy about that. Would you? I mean, can you imagine that? Got a loaner car and the dealership calls it in stolen. Doesn't tell you that. And that would be kind of, I would be really ticked. I couldn't imagine it. And you can understand from the police standpoint, that's the procedure. That's what they do. You know, it's stolen. They don't know that you're supposed to have the car.

So that's frightening. I'm sure. And yeah, I, there's no way around that though. No, the paperwork got lost and fell behind the cabinet, and it was report stolen. They misplaced the agreement. They loaned it to the customer. Well, and evidently, the customer didn't have the agreement with him. Well, okay. Well, so it's ugly. The police just think that the car is stolen. Well, they eventually figured it out, but not before the guy got taken to jail at gunpoint.

Well, that's not too good. So he's now suing the Kia dealer, and I don't really blame him. It's not real conducive to your, you know, mental health to be taken, you know, down to jail and gunpoint. So, you know, moral of the story is be sure to keep the paperwork with you. The first thing I would have done is put that in the, you know, told the cops, hey, by the way, here's my paperwork. Here's my get out of jail free card right here that says I'm supposed to have this car.

That's after they already have you handcuffed in the back of their car. That's the first opportunity you're going to get to tell them, hey, by the way, the paperwork for that is in my glove box. Go check it out. Yeah, no kidding. That's the first thing I would have done.

Oh, it's ugly. It's ugly. Well, so that's the moral of the story, folks.

Watch all that stuff. By the way, there's a survey out there that's telling us what we already know, that right now, EVs are the most expensive vehicles to operate over the first 1,000 miles, according to IC Cars, which is actually an EV site. right. Isn't that right, Jeremy? Yeah. You know what though? I read this article. I don't like it. I think it's a really bad article to write, to be honest, because it's comparing it over the short-term period, the first thousand miles of ownership.

And we all know that EVs are expensive. They're more expensive than their even exact same internal combustion car. So yeah, for the first thousand miles, it is going to be more expensive. And everyone that is selling you on EVs is saying that over the long run, that's where your savings are, right? Right. I'd like to see what it is in 200,000 miles because, you know, you're not paying for gas. You're not paying for a lot of the maintenance that you have on these internal combustion engines.

So I'm kind of curious what this article is really trying to prove here. But to me, it's just kind of like a yeah, duh type of thing. Oh, absolutely. And somebody paid for this. I mean, to be honest with you, folks, you can make numbers do anything. You can say this or that. I mean, I've had these guys, I've had my friends that don't like EVs tell me, I had EVs and I went and charged it at so-and-so place and I paid $45 to have it charged.

Well, if you charge it at home, it would have cost you about $5 or $6. Okay, well, I didn't do that at home. I had it done at a quick charger. Well, okay. Yeah. And I didn't join their club and I didn't get any discounts and this and that. It's kind of like I went and filled up at the most expensive gas station and I paid $7 a gallon. Well, OK.

And we have that same, you know, debate all the time. Am I going to go wait in line for the for the cheaper place or am I just going to get what's closest to me? And you got to make that choice. I know it's tough. It's just the way it is. It's right now. It's it's it's just not the best deal right now. But in certain cases it is. But at some point, folks, I think it will be. It's just not quite there yet. But I can tell you one thing.

Yeah, go ahead. I was going to say, it's even like this fake fuel that Porsche and some of the other manufacturers are coming out with. You know, five years ago, they were talking at $75 a gallon. Now they're getting it into the $15 range. You know, over time, it just takes time to get these sciences down, I guess I would say. Absolutely. And right now, speaking of getting down, let's get down. Fuel. Fuel. All these truck stops, we were talking about getting fuel and things like that.

Always go to a place that's busy to get your fuel because it had the better fuel. Well, one of the truck stop companies called QT, they've got the really nice, big, clean truck stops, kind of like Buc-ee's, but maybe not quite as big as Buc-ee's. They don't have 120 pumps there. One of the companies called QT, one of the guys went and filled up his diesel, and he had a problem. Problem. Okay. And he had some water in the fuel. Well, that happens. They get some bad fuel.

And this gentleman went and got 35 gallons of fuel for his GMC or his Chevrolet 2500 HD with Duramax, a GMC, excuse me. And about 22 miles later, he was trucked and didn't run right. So it was here in Texas. He went overhead and towed the dealer and they found out the fuel system was damaged. It had fuel, had water in the fuel, contaminated diesel. And that's expensive to fix. Well, how about $22,000? The folks at QT fixed it for him. They gave him his money back. So good for QT, $20,533.52.

The truck only had 22,000 miles on it. So now it had all these repairs on it and these folks honed up the money to fix it.

Good for them. so i think qt needs an attaboy for all their good good things that they have done so thanks the folks at qt the truck stop folks for doing good jobs all right folks coming up next we've got a nice car review on a subaru coming up next and some car questions to be answered so hang on more let's talk wheels coming up right after jeremy and i have this wonderful talk how about that hang on good stuff coming up welcome back to let's

talk wheels mike herzing and jeremy bierenbaum all right this week i was driving the 2024 subaru wrx now you don't forget they they dropped the the sti version of it but this is the standard wrx it's just a this is a sedan sort of the root the rumor mill is that they're saving that sti moniker for some sort of electric something that might be in the future. I hope not, because I really like the FDI.

This used to be the Impreza. Nowadays, they call it the WRX, which stands for World Rally Experimental. How about that? This is a really neat car, very agile car. And the one I had, it did not have the CVT transmission. Thank you, Jesus. It had a six-speed transmission. And it was really fun to drive. I have to admit, I hadn't driven manual for a while. And Subaru has a good one. This is one of the few non-performance. I'm going to put this as a non-performance car.

This is one of the few non-performance cars that you can still get a manual transmission in, which is still cool. 271 horsepower. It did pretty well. I mean, it runs great. Fun to drive. It has great performance, but it is not a performance car. Let's say that. Yeah, I know that. That fuel economy is good. I mean, this is, you know, it's real funny. People go, is that an SUV or a car? Well, it really is a sedan, but the back seats fold down, you know, and it's got this big trunk.

You can put all kinds of stuff in it. It's like, you know, it's like a Swiss Army knife. It really is. It is all-wheel drive. It's got all the Subaru all-wheel drive thing. It's really it's a livable it's a very.

Agreeable sport compact sedan it's not quite as wild as the early one yeah totally it does so much in its little package right it has the all wheel drive and that's why I think you see it in a lot of like snow communities places that get a lot of rain like Seattle or Colorado you know because it'll do everything, Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is, it's, it's not, it's, it's, it's its own little, it's in its own little world. It's got its own, it's in its own little subset.

You know, I mean, it's really neat, you know, and the sad part is the CVT is actually faster than the manual, but the manual is way more fun to drive.

It really is. and it this thing corners good it it it handles good it drives good it's not the boy racer anymore okay it's not like that it does have you know this little lift turned up tail section it's kind of like a little wing everybody puts the wings on them and this kind of stuff it's got, you can get all kinds of performance goodies for this thing okay it already has recaro seats okay OK, but you can get all kinds of driver assistance goodies.

You know, it comes with the base model starts about thirty three, a little over thirty three thousand dollars premium, then limited, then TR and then GT. OK, and the GT gets all the way up to like forty five thousand, a little over forty five thousand dollars. That they're all really nice trim levels. OK, you can do all kinds of stuff with it, but but it's tried. Drives great. You know, it gets, you know, 25, 26, 27 miles a gallon, depending on what you want to do that.

Maybe even in the little bit higher if you want it, but it, it sounds good. It drives good. It it's fun to drive.

I get 17, 18 inch wheels, depending on what you want on it. It's it just, it just runs good. I mean, zero to 60, you'll probably, you know, little over five seconds and it'll quarter mile. It's going to go, you know, at about a hundred miles an hour and about 14 seconds. So it's not, it's not a rocket ship, but you can do so much with this car. You can tweak it. You can, you can do the tuners. You can do the exhaust.

It's got, it's got a little bit of a, of a, of a crisp exhaust note, but there's so much more you can do to it. Okay. There's so many tuners for this. There's it's like a blank slate.

You know what I i mean people put turbos and and and all that stuff it's just it just like i said it just drives so good it's just so much fun it's got a you know you either get it in the seven inch display on the inside or the 11 inch for the for the upper trim levels it's got mainly touch screen but it does have some controls for the climate system some of the stereos you can get it with a harman kardon sound system but you know it this is the still does still has the horrible

chime for the seat belts and all the other stuff. It does have all the safety features that Subaru puts on these things, which is just heaps of safety features on this car. So it's easy to do, or it's hard to do stupid stuff with this. Although I have managed to do a lot of stupid things with Subarus. It's harder to do stupid things with this. There's so many safety features on this car. It does handle good. It drives good.

It looks good. It holds its value. It's got the boxer engine, you know, the four-cylinder. Like I said, the value on these things is good. You're a Subaru fan, aren't you, Jeremy? I love a Subaru. My sister has a Crosstrek. It's a great driving car. It's perfect for what it is. And a teenage boy, there was no cooler car than the 2004 WRX STI. Oh, yeah. Well, of course.

You know, but these things hold their value like crazy. But some people, some of the people you would find, they'll buy the cheaper model and they just load it up with all kinds of goodies, all kinds of handling goodies. Not only do they hold their value, they last. They last really well. It's almost Toyota type of quality there. Oh, I think it's probably better than Toyota, to be honest with you. But it's just their all-wheel drive system is so well.

Now, if you're looking for the real loud exhaust, if you're looking for the crazy handling and the real rough ride and all that stuff, this one won't have it. This vehicle has matured a whole lot more than their old one. You know what I mean? The old one was a little rough ride. It rode like a buckboard, and it handled really good. But unless you were running it wide open, it wasn't fun to drive in.

It's definitely more sophisticated i think it's better looking it's better design and you know it's going up against hyundai hyundai's n car and and the yep the civic type r the gr you know so it's going up against the performance you know variance in in the other sub models and it holds its value and it holds its own on all of this man check out that if you're looking for a really good car that's super reliable has the all-wheel drive that that you really

can't beat you can send your kid you can send you know your wife your family or whatever and it's got this all-wheel drive you don't have to worry about snow you don't have to worry about slippery roads this kind of stuff ground clearance extra ground clearance all this kind of stuff the subaru is the one you want you know they are great vehicles so check them out if you're looking for like any of the golf gtis or any of those you know

the volkswagens or the gr corolla the civic type r the launcher n any of those things look at the subaru right there at the same time it's they make a whole lineup of really great cars and the and the wrx is right there at the top okay.

Let's talk about tires as a matter of fact you know i've as i was looking at classic cars the last couple weeks we're going to talk about my fiasco and all of the scam deals i've been kind of found online and stuff it's just such a nightmare i've been finding vehicles with old tires matter of fact i was getting ready to take a motorcycle trip on route 66 in the next few weeks and i had realized that my motorcycle tires were eight years old and there's still

some tread on them but i realized they're eight years old so i don't trust going the speeds i go on eight-year-old tires you know nor should you yeah manufacturers realize that when your tires to become eight years old, you need to get rid of them, you know, on trailers and SUVs and, or trailers and RVs and things like that. Trailer tires will, will just blow apart guys when they get to be eight or 10 years old. I don't care if they're, if they look brand new.

They will burst. They will blow apart. Yeah. I've seen tires that look brand new where the entire tread just peels off. And the problem is with these classic cars, you know, you don't drive them too much. And so you go, oh yeah, I've only driven it, you know, a handful of times, 10, 15 times, but you don't realize that 10, 15 times was in eight years. And those tires get flat spots. They get hard. Right. You know, they're just no good after that timeframe.

Right. It'd be different like on my Jeep, but only go 45 miles an hour. That's not quite the the same. When you get up to be 60, 70 miles an hour, then they just fling themselves apart. And it's just not good. And if you're on a motorcycle, especially, you just got to understand that the loads that are placed on these tires are just not right. And they, they blow up from, from the inside out. So you're not going to be able to look at cracks.

You're not going to be able to say, oh, it's cracked. It's this or that it's been let out in the sun. No, you just look at the date on the tire. The DOT numbers are going to look at the, you're going to see a number that says It says DOT, and it's going to be stamped into the tire, and it's going to say, you know, a two-digit number, and, you know, it'll be four digits. It'll say the week and the month. It'll be like the 32nd week of 17.

It'll say, you know, 32-17. That'll be the 32nd week of 2017, and this kind of stuff. So you've got to look at those numbers. It's so important. Especially bass boats and RVs and campers that have been sitting for a while or your travel trailers. That's a big deal. All right, folks, got a, got a great interview coming up next with, with Dan Glazer. He's from General Motors.

He's going to talk about distracted driving, which is more and more people are doing, and it's making us crazy. And we would, Jeremy and I would really appreciate you not wanting to run over us. When we're on our motorcycles or January's in his dune buggy or his classic car. Or if I'm just getting out of my car on the side of the street, because that happens too, you know?

Right. I had somebody walk into my motorcycle and she was crossing the street and she was looking at her phone and I'm sitting at the crosswalk and waiting at a red light. And this lady just walked into me and I was like, hey, and I yelled at her and she looked up right as she walked into my bike. And I was like, you know, you're an idiot.

It but we didn't go into that but it was terrible but we're going to talk about that so we got dan glazer coming up next so hang on more let's talk wheels coming up next okay folks as we were talking about early in the show we've got dan glazer he's from general motors and he has this cool job he's an engineer he they call him a driver distraction engineer and he gets to figure out all these scenarios of things that distract us and we got him to call you know because

it is driver distraction awareness month or distracted to driving awareness month there we go and that's an interesting hey big guy welcome to let's talk wheels thanks for having me you know and and you and i were talking about you get to figure out all the different scenarios of why people crash and how they get distracted and you know the phone you're on the phone or you're driving down on the road and and you're in traffic and your phone rings and you don't have a because you're an idiot and

not you but the person driving is an idiot and he doesn't hook it up to bluetooth and so they can't just push a button on you know on the steering wheel they have to try to find the phone and it's ringing and they they're hit the brakes and it slides forward and they're trying to grab it and at the same time the guy in front of them hits the brakes so you end up hitting somebody, right? That one, two, or that two-second delay. What does that do for us? Yeah, so...

Eyes off road time, obviously, it's pretty intuitive, is the big problem. And as that's just one single off road glance, it gets longer and longer as you're maybe looking off to your shoulder, which, you know, unfortunately, you kind of have to do sometimes. Or, you know, less innocently looking at that new thing on the Internet that people are doing and you can't look away as you look away longer. It just starts to accelerate that risk.

And so what I like to tell people to do is, you know what, you do have to look off the road every once in a while. But every time you look off the road, you really should be first aware of what's going on around you. That off-road glance should be quick. It should be brief. And then when you look back on the road, you know, taking a deep breath, bring it all in, you know, look for a long time before you ever look off the

road again. And so this is really going to keep your situational awareness at a level that is that is going to keep you much safer than if you're kind of bobbleheading. And so this bobbleheading thing is a problem with the phone, obviously. So you look down here and you look up for a fraction of a second, look back down and you're real happy with yourself because, you know, you're double tasking real well.

You know, that that also applies to rubbernecking. So while texting is like a six X increase based on some of the really cool studies that we've done in terms of risk rubbernecking. If you look off to the side and you keep doing it, that leads to something like a 7x risk and something even more innocent, like trying to grab some chips from a footwell or you don't know exactly where something is and your eyes are really going off the road. Then that can lead to like a 10x increase in risk.

So it's not just the phone. and when you start to do that that other thing keep in mind keep those off-road glances brief and try to avoid them if you can and connecting your phone to the car taking the time to learn how to do that is a great investment well you know someone to help you yeah it's funny i get a different car every week and some of the vehicles are difficult to to link to the phones they take two or three times some of the gms are very easy fords are usually some of the the

domestic three are really easy. Some of them are the imports are very difficult. I have to sit there and, and mess with them. And that makes a difference. But once you've got them linked, as soon as you go to walk to your car, knows you it's automatically linked. The phone automatically answers. There's no excuses folks. I mean, come on, give me a break. As much as I am non, I am not a California guy whatsoever.

I detest most of the 99.99, 9% of things California does Because them doing the controls they have on distracted driving, I mean, you just touch your phone in California. They see you have it in your hand. I don't care if you're just moving it from one pocket to the other and you're driving, you get a ticket. And it's an expensive one. You know what I mean? Yeah. And you really do have the tools not to touch it if you take a little time to learn.

I mean, we also have voice assistants. And if that's something that you have a little bit of experience with, you can say, hey, where's that nearest coffee shop? And it'll show up, at least in GM, on kind of a nice big screen that is visible. And you never had to pull out a map. So that's not good. You didn't have to get your phone. And it's right there.

You press it. it and that's you know an appropriate amount of kind of eyes off road time especially if you're thoughtful about what you're doing in the moment right so that's that's like that's the kind of thinking ahead and planning and learning to use your vehicle as a tool that can really lead to safety benefits you know they also have on star on star has always worked well for that you know even before we've gotten all this neat phone stuff has always had on star you know they've have

always been so cool you know what i mean that for years okay i the the the distracted driving thing it's just gotten it seems to be worse and worse but has it has it really gotten worse over the last three or four years or is it plateaued well i think that the the numbers have at least in terms of like kind of the the death numbers that are associated with distraction have.

Steadily increasing any kind of from one year to the next maybe it won't necessarily go up It might kind of stay similar, but you know, it's, it's so, even if we were to plateau or we're not in a good place. No. Right. So I, I can't remember if, if maybe the stats were said. So 33, I think it's at 3,300 folks, um, were, were killed based on a crash that had distraction involved. Um, there were 290,000 injuries and can imagine each one of those leading to

a significant loss, you know, in life quality. it's you know and so the problem again can feel. Extremely big, like, well, what, what can I do about it? And I'd like to say, you know, again, we've kind of been talking about it. Well, good news. You can make a huge difference for those you care most about, right. Those that are closest to you, you know, by establishing those, those good habits.

And also when you establish those good habits, those people who are younger than you and learning from you, what driving is and what it involves, you know, you're, you're, you're showing them how to do it.

And if you're double tasking the whole time, then, well that's how you drive right and so if you say you know what i'm specifically not not not doing this you know maybe teen in the back seat or grandchild or something because you know here in this family we focus on the road this is important we care about other people's lives we care about our lives and i think being kind of just open and talking about is a really good strategy for kind of your family and your kids you know

you guys are exactly right and you know it's funny i noticed that car companies that over the last let's say the 20 years i've been doing the the journalism thing i've driven so many different cars i drive a different car every week to test drive them and report on them i get to look at everything and you guys do too it's a fun it's in a way but it is another way but some of them you realize how some of them are a pain in

the butt and some of them are easy yeah and and in the interface between the manufacturer and that at the infotainment system, some of them are so simple. They've gone to, some of them have gone to nothing but touchscreen. But, but to do that, you've got to take your eye off the screen off, you know, eye off the road. And so a lot of things you can't adjust while you're moving. The company will say, okay, sorry, we're not gonna let you do that.

And, but, but there's a lot of things you guys have added buttons back. You know what I mean? I noticed you guys are starting to put buttons because you can reach out to a a button or a knob without, without taking your eye off the screen, you know, and, or put the buttons on the, on the steering wheel as you guys help decide that, don't you?

Yeah, for sure. We, you know, sometimes buttons are expensive because it takes more space, but there's certainly, you know, a lot of discussion about what buttons must be there. What's, what's, what's going to really lead to problems if that, if that button goes away. So, you know, buttons, we, we, we know have a certain level of popularity and, and we know why. And so the idea of kind of removing them all is certainly something that is not, not fully supported.

And And I think that's going to continue for a while. So what else I would say about our screen? So people might think that the screen is a screen. That's not really true. You kind of touched on it. So a phone screen, it's not that big. The phone screen might be held low. So your eyes are actually really far off forward, which makes it such that your peripheral vision can't catch that thing that's getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

Also, the phone is specifically designed to make you look at it and make it hard to look away and also get off the couch. That's what the phone is meant to do, for you to stare at it at hours at a time. Our screens are not designed like that. Our screens are designed to get tests done in a certain amount of time. And if it takes too long, then we try not, you know, then we just don't let you do it. And hopefully it's something you can do with voice.

You know, again, we do have controls that are accessible. The controls are never going to be on the floor or in the back seat.

And, you know, some of the screens are getting bigger and bigger, but that's not necessarily a terrible thing because it can help with with glance ability and maybe it's more visible and maybe it takes a little less time to kind of do that thing that you that you want to do but one thing i would suggest is try not to learn everything while you're driving take a little time when you're stopped to get to know your tool and i think and if you do that

when you're relaxed and get a little familiarity with it then you know try a few things while you're driving that are really important just just kind of get good at that you don't have to know how to do everything, know how to do a few things and practice them when you're stopped, be prudent.

So maybe practice a little bit, kind of work on that, try to maybe plan your route out before you go, use your OnStar or your phone, your voice controls or things like that, and use your steering wheel controls where you can. So basically just practice and know your vehicle. I can't tell you how many people don't.

You know, they just don't. I mean, you get this one little bit of training when you buy your vehicle from the salesman, but you're so totally overwhelmed that after you're out there for an hour or two, you forget everything. You know, that's how it is. And you got to go back and do it again, right? That's what you're recommending. Yeah. I know it feels kind of nerdy or it's not cool, but whenever we're in the vehicle, we have this urge just to crank it out of park and go.

But if you can just, you know, take a little time to learn a few things that you use, it's just, that's a really good investment in time. And also when you jump in the car and you're going to go, again, you kind of touched on it. Just take a deep breath, put your, put your belt on and figure out what you need for that drive. You know, get your nav going, make sure you have your one-handed accessible water bottle, get that text out of the way.

And that way, when you're driving, it's going to be a more fun drive. If you don't have to like, Oh, I didn't get my audio and my My audio is only accessible with my phone. And then you're kind of breaking the law.

Right. And it's just going to be a more fun, relaxing experience. So it's just take that little bit of time and kind of try to build that into your habits. And, you know, April's like, what's a better month than April to kind of build that habit in, right? So that's kind of what I see. Absolutely. All right. Dan Glazer, he is from General Motors. He is a distracted driving engineer, consultant type thing. Dan, did you have this written anywhere? Is it anywhere on your sites?

And does General Motors have any kind of paperwork or any kind of anything where they can go and do some research on this stuff? Extracted driving. Oh, so what I would say is you can go to GM.com and. What you should do there is look at all of our kind of driver assistance features. These are features that are not meant to protect you after a crash, but hopefully become the last line of defense before you get in a crash and are meant to be something that assists you and not replace you. Right.

But for actually a good site for a whole bunch of tips and kind of guides for how to interact with your teens or just to kind of learn different kind of things about distraction is the Governor's Highway Safety Association website or GHSA.org.

That's there's there's all kinds of stuff going on and you know what's going on in your state what are laws in your state okay what are again guides for kind of driving safe and we will look at the ghsa.org site and we sure appreciate you coming on and explain us some of this stuff because i tell you what it's it's confusing as hell i'll tell you what but but you're also going so fast with a big chunk of metal uh you can't always

stop you can't always anticipate these things and you can't anticipate what other people are doing or what the weather is doing or what fell out of the back of whatever car and it's tough and you just you just how many people have said i took my off the road for just a second and yeah that can be it not not in the gm car but you know on any car maybe i'm gonna try any car let's right let's see how it goes but you know driving is a whole

bunch of not so much going on going on maybe it could be a little bit boring and punctuated with a terrifying event. And so when you're not really that attentive... That, that moment, you know, you, you can either turn that into a, you know, a, a near crash, right. Yeah. Or a crash, you know, sometimes in your crash might be the best thing you can do. And, and you need to be kind of generally attentive to deal with that,

with that event that can just be crazy. Just, just the other day, someone came in, I was just driving in a lane. Someone came in right in front of me, slowed down for no reason. And I, and I just had to slam on the brake. If I were doing anything else, I would, I would have hit that vehicle. It was a hell of a learning environment, a learning moment for you. And you just remember it. I need to start slowing down. So that way, it was a good learning thing for you. And we all need those every

once in a while. Dan, thanks for joining us today. It was really interesting. Thank you so much. All right. That was Dan Glazer from General Motors. Hey, folks, we'll be right back with more Let's Talk Wheels.

Welcome back. Let's Talk Wheels. Mike Herzing and Jeremy Burenbaum. All right, Jeremy, let's talk a little bit more about my adventure of looking for vehicles, vehicles i'm looking for the 6678 or nine or 5678 or nine mustang okay found a neat site called cars eva.com and i'm looking at them these things and there's some killer prices and i'm looking at you know this car is there's one car for sale and it's at in san antonio and i look at the address great price

so i call this i email these people and i think i emailed me back and. And I go, wow, you're in San Antonio. That's not very far. I'll, you know, maybe I can come by and look at it. So he emails me back and he goes, well, I'm actually in Tacoma, Washington. Oh, okay. Well, that's a different story. You know, it's funny how they change their stories, right? Jeremy, you ever heard that? Well, I get it all the time.

Even looking on, on Craigslist, you know, people want to advertise in, in a better location or in a bigger location. So they start writing their ads, you know, somewhere else, not where they live. And you get kind of bummed out because you're like, oh, man, I'm going to go check this out tomorrow. Realize the guy's four states away. Right, right. And this one is then I started looking at the address where that said they were. And it wasn't a good address. I mean, it wasn't even a real address.

So I checked at the address where it says they are now, and it's not a real address. And I started to check in some more of these addresses and they weren't real addresses. So as soon as I told the guy, I sent an email to him. I said, well, that's great. Oh, I see where you're at. Oh, I, you know, that's funny. I have, I have a friend there.

I can get him to come by and look at it. All of a sudden, I don't hear from him anymore. As soon as I say that I can come by and look at the car, I want to come by and look at the car i don't hear from him anymore i guess these people just expect i'm just going to say well look look let me just send a bag of money i'll send a courier with a bag of cash is that okay i mean give me a break what do these people want jeremy i mean have you run into this i mean.

No because i'm if i can't talk to a person on the phone within you know like a minute or two of emailing back and forth i'm pretty much done and i've written it off as you know a scam or fraud yeah i i guess i mean i've talked to these people but one guy sounded russian it didn't even sound like he was even here and it was just it was very strange it sounded like i'm watching, some jack reacher part deal you know it was something on ncis you know but it

was very weird it's just i just don't know when you start talking about coming by to look at stuff and then they start hemming and hawing, it makes it a little difficult. You know, then you start worrying. We had that problem with these people in Florida that I wanted to come by and see the car. Then they started hemming and hawing. And well, you know, I've got somebody to look at it. Well, okay, then sorry about that. See you later.

These cars, I mean, it's just so funny that you see there's so many people with classic cars. They just, they just, I don't know where they come up with their pricing. When you're selling stuff and you're calling a dealer or you're calling somebody that's at a site that's trying to do an auction, then it's a little bit different because they're really kind of talking to the people going, well, really, that's really more than it's worth.

I don't think you're going to be able to sell it for that. Or you get somebody, they'll put an ad in the paper, and there's like four pictures of it, and none of them are underneath. None of them are a very good picture. You know what I mean?

Or are there i mean one of them yeah you ever had that oh totally and and it's crazy because i've been trying to help and look look for you around here and stuff for mustang so i've been seeing you have people that are asking the price of what a fastback 289 manual transmission car should be for even a coupe and and you're looking for a convertible convertibles definitely you know sought after cars, but the prices they're asking for convertibles, you can get a good, you know.

Fast back for that. That's the most desirable body style. So it's kind of crazy how people are getting their comparisons. And you don't want to have an argument as the first topic of questions when you ask them, hey, how'd you come up with your price? I always ask that question. I usually wait till we've kind of made some sort of relationship. I say, hey, how'd you get to this number? And if they say, oh, I compared it off of, you judge that.

Right right but but i'm looking at it and the dash has got rust pieces on it or or this or that or this is totally broken and i'm like i mean and these these website auctions have kind of blown out the the private party sales in one respect is you can't post five pictures of a car anymore and expect for it to sell you know you really have to just to showcase your car because you're not showcasing it to a community

that's always five miles away and that can come check it out tomorrow Now with the internet. People are searching and they'll find your ad 2,000 miles away. And if you only have five pictures, you're not responsive, you don't want to get on the phone, people are going to think you are a scam. But for the most part, I think there are a lot of scams out there. And the hard thing is to really pay attention to the websites you're looking at.

If it's one of those websites that says, enter your information and someone will contact you about this vehicle. If there's no information that actually gets me to the phone number of the seller or the email of the seller, I usually look at that website as it's just grabbing information from somewhere else. It's not really operated by someone that really works on selling cars.

They're trying to build a website so they can sell ads and so many other things. A lot of the listings you call and the people say, oh, I'm sorry, I sold that car two months ago. So you want to go to kind of a reputable site that it's not always going to say, you know, suss out the... Nefarious parties, but it is going to kind of keep an eye on the cars that are actually for sale and what you can buy.

Yeah. Cause I know like even some of the ones like gateway classic cars, some of the dealers and stuff, they'll keep cars for a while. And then when they don't sell, then they send them home with the dealer, with, with, with the person, and then they'll keep the car for sale. And they'll go, by the way, the car's not with us anymore. It's at the man. It's And that it's probably worth a lot less than they're asking.

And I'm one of those people that, you know, you find a car, you like it, you don't like the price, you talk to the guy, you've had some conversations. Hey, next week, is that car still there? Hey, I might call that guy again and say, hey, you know what? I think your number's not correct. That's why it's not selling quickly. And they're going to give you one of two things. Okay, shoot me an offer or I'm waiting for the dummy to come off the street and just pay full retail plus

on this. Right. Full retail plus more. I mean, some of these things are, I mean, they're rusted and they're just in terrible shape and they just want some kind of stupid. No, somebody will pay that price. Well, if you're the kind of person that'll do that to somebody, yeah, you're not the kind of person I want to buy a car from. That's just kind of the way I feel that. And some of these dealers are actually... After the point I've had so many scams, I'm going, maybe I ought to buy from

a dealer. And actually, some of these scams are from dealers. Well, supposed dealers, you know. I honestly think it's a little bit worse to get it from a dealer because they have zero information on the car. They most of the time have zero connection on the car. They bought it somewhere else. And so they don't know the story. It's a consignment thing, yeah. So it may look like one thing and it could be another.

I'm saying this in two respects. Sure. The engine could look like one thing and it could be bored out. It could be totally different than what it stock was, even though it's the same appearance. And second, the car can look great. It can look like it's had a recent restoration. It might even, you could say it has, but that doesn't mean that it was upkept in the proper way. And so, you know, the dealer doesn't have that information to tell you, hey, it's been sitting 20 years.

They're going to say we started it. We drove it around the lot. You know, someone took it on a test drive. It drives fine. But they don't know. They don't. They can't guarantee the reliability for a thousand miles. They're not going to say, hey, you should flush, flush the brake lines.

You should change the oil, change the transmission fluid. And you should do this with any car you purchased new, whether they told you so or not. But they're not giving you the full story. it. Yeah, that's true. Folks, if you have had any type of, you know, experience with one of these dealers or something, let us know. I'd like to find out what you've had, good or bad. If you've had this, I went to, I bought it from these guys and this is great. I've had a wonderful time. Let us know.

Email me, Mike at Let's Talk Wheels or go to Facebook, go in there and let us know, go to one of our posts and tell me what you think. Cause I would, I'm really interested in this because I am looking. If you guys know of a dealer that's really great, these guys are the best, let me know. I would love to know. Because some of these stuff is just priced. Obscenely. I mean, it's just ridiculous. Well, either way, let me know.

All right, folks, as always, don't forget you can catch this show as a podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, iHeartRadio, and Amazon.com. Actually, we're having trouble with the iTunes and Spotify, so the best place to catch this right now is Podbean. That is the best, so give that one a shot first. The podcast contains this show and 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 like we did today in the show, you can email Mike at letstalkwheels.com. We'll always respond. We'd love to hear about your car questions. As always, on behalf of Jeremy Berenbaum, Matt Peralt, and myself, I'm going to thank you for joining us today on the Talk Media Radio Network. I'm Mike Herzing. We appreciate it. Have a great week. Please subscribe. We would really appreciate it. Happy motoring, folks.

All right, guys. this week, I was driving a 2024 Mazda CX-90 in the premium plus trim level. Now this completes what has been over the last month and a half or so. I've had the privilege of driving a CX-30, a CX-50, and now a CX-90. So I feel like I've got a really good grasp of what Mazda is doing here with this CX line. This is the biggest of all the Mazdas. This is also the most expensive of the trim levels. This one comes in at around $58,000 because it is a pretty large vehicle.

Now, this is one of those vehicles that I'm not going to say anything negative about because it hits every note for me.

It's a vehicle that performs it's a vehicle that feels like it should be more expensive than it actually is this vehicle has an engine that's about 340 horsepower that completely does exactly what i'm looking for it moves this thing feels like it should be in the same category as a luxury suv and it's somewhat priced in that category but it's not nearly as well known it's It's not like someone's going to sit there and say like, okay, you're driving a Mazda.

That's a luxury car telling you, you got to drive this thing. You just got to get into it and go, wait, I'm in a Mazda. I mean, that's just how I feel about this vehicle. Whenever I drive the CX models, I'm incredibly impressed. It looks really nice on the outside. It's a large vehicle. The trims on the interior, it's fantastic. It's soft. It's comfortable. The gear shifter feels like you're in a luxury vehicle. The infotainment system looks like it feels like you're in a luxury vehicle.

I mean, they hit every, check every box for me in terms of like, am I driving a luxury SUV? And my answer would be yes. The captain's chairs on either side are awesome. It's easy to get into the third row. If you want to get back there into the third row, it has some bells and whistles that you would expect in a larger luxury SUV. Upscale, stylish, comfortable, whatever you want to go ahead, striking, whatever word you want to use to describe what this interior looks like, it's awesome.

The 12.3-inch infotainment display is awesome. Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, standard as we expect. You know, there's wireless connectivity, which is awesome. You've got a digital info cluster that's really easy, and the sound system's awesome. I mean, just awesome. 12-speaker Bose premium stereo. Why? It's the highest of all the trim levels, okay? So that's why. The engine is really responsive, and it is fun to drive.

The vehicle is not bulky. It doesn't feel like you're driving this big, huge vehicle that's cumbersome, that's hard to get around corners, or when you want to pass somebody you just punch it and the vehicle goes i am very impressed with what mazda is doing here with the cx line and the cx90 is the you know call it whatever you want okay but it's really really nice high end you know the flagship model if you would like to call it that i think you can,

There's a lot of people who are going to drive this and put it up against a Telluride, up against the Palisades, up against some of the Toyota Highlanders. Definitely 100% I would recommend driving this vehicle to see what you can get. And if you get it fully loaded, and I'm not saying everyone's going to, okay, the base model is about 40,000. And then you kind of build upon it and it gets more and more luxurious as it

goes. and you feel like, okay, this now vehicle is starting to enter into that luxury category based upon the bells and the whistles and the trims and what have, you know, comes up. But I mean, Mazda is known for the way it roll, the way it rides, how comfortable it is, how quick it is off the line, the gas mileage. It's got a lot of things when you drive it, you're just like, okay, what am I driving? It is very comfortable. If you drove this every day, you would not be upset

at all. You wouldn't get tired or bored. This is something that Mazda is doing a really, really good job with. The infotainment set system is the best in the class. I absolutely love what Mazda does, how easily they make it to toggle between different with the round shifter between, you know, whether it be radio or your phone. Very easy to do. I really like it a lot.

I think they are doing a really nice job with just getting to what people are looking for when they're looking for full size FVs for size, speed, convenience, comfort, luxurious features, a lot of standard features, a lot of safety features that you would expect, emergency braking, pedestrian detection, blind stop monitoring, adaptive cruise control, all things you'd expect to come standard do come standard. But for me, who I drive vehicles looking for performance and And for comfort,

you know, there's a lot of faux wood in it. It looks really nice. The central console has got a lot of storage in it, which I absolutely love to have. Just places to put your, you know, just different things. You can hide the cup holders or bring the cup holders out. It's striking. I mean, it really, really is striking. You got to check it out. The Mazda 2024 CX-90, full-size vehicle. Had it in the full trim level. Has to be looked at to check out. Definitely worth the test drive.