Ford's $2 Billion Blunder & Battery (Money) Saving Tips from CTEK!

Music. It's time to buckle up for this week's let's talk wheels with mike herzing and jeremy bierenbaum.

Auto shop is now in session hey here's we're talking about today what car maker got hit with a two billion dollar judgment uh because their roof collapsed on their trucks if you drive a big-riggered RV, we got just the thing for you. And you want to hear about the new Tundra? I bought that one. Or the best part today, Tony Zeal from SeaTac. We've got a great show today. Those are just a few of our topics. Welcome to your favorite auto show, Let's Talk Wheels.

I'm Mike Erzing, and every week we give you the automotive and power sports news interviews, car reviews, and classic car information from our co-host, Jeremy Bierenbaum, based right there in southern california how you doing buddy hey hey hey what's going on i'm doing well oh yeah i'm excited for tony later on today he's he's such a crack up isn't he oh he's great and you're going to learn a lot i mean talk about a guy that's of course he's

global training training manager for ctech and it's always great to talk to him and and hear about his annex you know what's funny is we can do an interview with him and you're two hours behind me and he's six hours ahead of me, We got an eight-hour swing, you know, so you at 7 o'clock in the morning and him at 3 in the afternoon. Isn't that funny? It's just crazy. But that's all right. Before we get ahead of ourselves, let's get started with the news and notes segment and talk about Ford Ford.

Of course, they're going to appeal this. They have to pay $2.5 billion to a family whose couple of people got killed in a rollover. Tell us about that, Jeremy. Yeah. So this is unfortunately two individuals passed when their F-250 went off the side of the road and inside some grass hit a culvert. At that time, the car was launched 80 feet in the air.

And when it landed, it landed on the roof. and from the accident its two owners passed away and there's this big lawsuit about the integrity of the roofs of these Ford trucks. To me, I'm thinking, you know, for a car to fly 80 feet in the air and land on its roof, I can't think of one kind of car that would be okay, but that's neither here nor there.

So this lawsuit is in total is $2.5 billion, But there are some other lawsuits previously for the same incident, which is, I think, why these people are awarded the win because of this precedent that's already been set. The jury decided that Ford's 1999 through 2016 trucks had a defective and dangerously weak roofs. You know, and I've heard of this before. I've heard people that talk about their car was it didn't it didn't hold up what they wanted to.

And it was, it was like around a 2001 or two, I was reading about truck and it's really been tough. There was another fatal rail roller accident happened in 2014. They had to pay a lot of money. It seems like 1 7 billion. Yeah. It seems like in total for 30 billion in payouts, you know, for these type of accidents in regards to the roof. It's really interesting to me though, because I've seen a lot of these crash tests. They do. The roof isn't really one of those. It's not.

You know, and I don't know. I don't know. It's pretty tough on this one. I mean, you got to talk to the, you got to look at the company, like, you know, can they, you can't test anything. You know, it's, it's kind of like, no matter what kind of product somebody puts out, there's always somebody that's going to find a way to screw it up. And I'm not saying anything bad about these people by any means, but it's just, no matter what happens, there's always something, you know what I mean?

And. Yeah, totally. I, you know, So there's very few, few manufacturers, if any, that really have like a roll cage in a car or a truck that's factory produced, unless it's, you know, some kind of supercar. But it is one thing to think that this might be something that should be implemented in trucks because of the weight they carry, because of the type of work they do, you know, the payloads they have and whatnot. It is dangerous to the occupants, you know, from the roof.

Sure is. I mean, sometimes you'll roll down a cliff or something or roll down a hill or roll over on your roof and you're just going to have to fix it. I'm sure that that the government should look at at some point in HTSA like, hey, maybe we need to have some side of a standard for roofs, you know, for the A and B and C pillars. Right. Normally those are very strong. But once I talk about that, we're going to talk about that now.

Another neat thing, Google Maps, the rival of Google Maps, they have a new app. You know, because I've seen, you know, it's funny, you ever see these big trucks will be driving somewhere and you realize they can't get through a bridge or they can't get here or there. And you're going, why don't these guys are professional truck drivers? Why don't they know this? And Google Maps doesn't always show it for them. You know what I mean?

I always wonder that because sometimes Google Maps, I won't make any mistakes and it'll still have me make a U-turn somewhere. And I think to myself, what if I was driving a trailer or, you know, a big truck where I could make this silly U-turn that they've just. Tried to get me to do. Well, same thing with RV people. As a matter of fact, that's even worse for them because they're not professional drivers. But there's a company called Wego Pro, okay?

W-E-G-O, and then it's Pro, is aimed at professional drivers offering truck-specific navigation, taking into account road restrictions, regulations, all floods, and this kind of stuff. You can create a profile for your vehicle saying it's this high, it's this wide, Make sure I don't get anything stupid where I'm not going to be able to get out. These turns, you know, I've seen some of these big trucks that be running in downtown Houston or something.

And they're all of a sudden brought into a dead end road and they're trying to back up. And it's because it's a dead end and it's too narrow. And it's a nightmare. But they have maps. These guys here called Here We Go Pro. They have these special setup for truck drivers and stuff and RV owners. So what a, I mean, you're pulling a giant travel trailer. there are certain things, places you can't go. And if you're pulling an RV and you have a car behind you, you cannot put it

in reverse. Not like, oh, you don't have the skill level. You literally can't do it because it will not work. Right. And so that's the other thing. So by the way, folks, Mike Herzing and Jeremy Berenbaum, let's talk wheels. We were just talking about a new app out. So thank you for joining us today. All right. Next quick one. Ford has a recall, Some SUVs over seatbelt problems. Once again, 20 to 21 near models. Remember all this stuff right after COVID or right during COVID.

More bad stuff. What is this got? Seatbelt anchors or not? Yeah, it's the bolts that anchor their seatbelt into the seat. Ford seems to maybe be pointing some fingers at the manufacturer that didn't follow, you know, the standard operating procedures. but at the end of the day, it's got Ford's name on it. It's their problem. So basically these bolts are coming loose and in an accident, you know, your seatbelt restraint could fully fail.

There's been like one or two incidents that have actually happened that have been caused through an accident. One is in Canada, which is what triggered this whole thing. Ford's checking into it and a recall is being created. Yeah, I got 240,000 of the... 2021 Ford Explorer and 2021 Lincoln Aviator, which is the cousin. And they just want to double check that the seatbelt anchor bolts are secure.

And that's going to be exciting. And, you know, another thing real quick, by the way, we mentioned is, you know, we talked a couple of weeks ago about the marriage of Honda and Nissan. They were talking and everything. And, well, they already broke up. Yeah, it looks like it's going to have to get annulled because, you know, there's finger pointing here on both sides saying the other side isn't going to make it work for different reasons.

Yep. You can chalk it up to maybe corporate culture. But I think— That's a lot of it because Honda wanted to be the boss and Nissan said, well, wait a minute, we're almost the same size as you and da-da-da. Yeah, Honda felt— We want to be 50-50 and— Honda felt like they were the heroes coming in to save Nissan, and Nissan said, wait, you know, we're good on our own, but they're really not. Yeah, I know. We've got a great show today, folks. We're going to review the Toyota Tundra TRD Pro.

We're going to have, as we talked earlier, C-Tex, Tony Zeal on with us today to talk about battery charging and how to make your battery last longer and save your electrical system and maybe save you a breakdown and some money.

And we're going to answer some questions that you emailed to Mike at Let's Talk Wheels some of them classic car information pretty interesting stuff and we just kind of got a crazy day today so let's get started so hang on, more Let's Talk Wheels coming up after this quick break be right back. Music. Welcome back to Let's Talk Wheels. I'm Mike Hersey and he's Jeremy Berenbaum. We're your hosts today and we're enjoying life pretty darn well.

This week, I want to talk about a quick car review. And I was driving the Toyota Tundra TRD Pro. Now, this is not some of the other TRDs. I got several different TRD versions, but this is basically a full-size truck.

It is what's a crew cab with big back seat just like all the new all the brands have this one's got a v6 a twin turbo v6 along with a 10 speed transmission and a hybrid powertrain which gives it a total of 30 437 horsepower it scoots fuel economy it's this is this is a hybrid powertrain that kind of just helps it doesn't really run on electricity for miles or any of that other stuff It's a mild hybrid.

It says here that you get, and this is a four-wheel drive, don't forget, 20 miles per gallon on the highway, 18 in the city, 19 combined. And I didn't quite get that, but it's hard because this thing runs so good and it's so much fun to drive that you end up kind of maybe spinning the tire a little bit when you take off. And it's easy to do. You punch it a little bit too hard, it'll spin the tires.

But you know what? Even if you get 17 miles per gallon, And that's still pretty good for a full-size 1500 truck. Yeah, it's better than the Tacoma I had last week. As a matter of fact, I'm getting better. But this, you know, they redesigned this thing a couple years ago. If you haven't, if you've been on another planet and haven't noticed that, it's a great vehicle. And it's the first time Toyota's really had a good, coming close to an alternative to a GM Ford or a Ram.

You know, it's pretty nice feel. So this thing is good off-road. It's got a huge touchscreen and things like that. It runs good. Things like this has got Fox shocks and everything else. This is an off-road beast. It's got the little dial where you could just sit in. You know, it'll have all the different ways of driving. I want to drive, you know, rocks or snow or mud or this kind of stuff, or I just want a performance and this kind of stuff.

You can just set it, and it'll automatically do everything for you. It's got the crawl control. It's got all the hill descents. It's got skid plates. It's got everything else along with adaptive cruise control and all of the blind spot management. And it's got every safety feature that their cars have, which is a lot. But it's so comfortable. It's nice and big. You know, it's just really a tough full-size truck market is very cutthroat.

And everybody's very, very loyal to their brands. You're a GM guy, you know, GMC guy. You know, I happened to drive a Ram. Of course, they didn't have this Toyota when I was looking for mine. I probably could possibly have bought one. It's a wonderful vehicle. It's like I said, it's competing in a really tough market. There are people that buy Fords and GMs and Chevys and Rams just because that's what they've always bought.

You know what I mean? Yeah, totally. It has nothing to do whether it's a really good thing. Now, Toyota customers always wanted a full-size truck, and now they've got one. And this is a very nice truck. You know, I always felt like the Tundra was kind of second place. Yes, me too. and the 4Runner and some of Toyota's other products. But recently, this iteration has really gotten the love, especially in the TRD Pro model.

It's taken all the things like you just mentioned with its off-road capability from the two smaller trucks, which have been doing the off-road world for a long time and brought it to the full-size truck in a way that's actually usable, which is really cool. It really is. My one take is it's a great-looking truck, But some of the TRD Pro-specific stuff on the car, like I think it's got the camo interior and whatnot, is a little bit too much for me.

Yeah, I understand that. You know, and this thing, but it's got a nice 14-inch screen multimedia. I don't know, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto compatibility. It's got a JBL 12 speaker audio system with a subwoofer and amplifier. It's got, I would say the 14-inch screen is huge. It's almost, it's almost to be, one thing is, it fits this truck pretty well. But they have the same screen in a Tacoma, a much smaller truck. Which is comically big. It's like having a television in there. Yeah, yeah.

But they're all good vehicles, but it's just got all the comfortable seats. It's got everything else. It's got a nice big center console. It's just a very nice truck, and it drives good. This one's got the big off-road tires and 18-inch wheels and big tires. And so it hurts the ride a little bit, makes it a little bit rife. And it hurts your fuel economy and it makes your turning radius pretty big. But the off-road tires are pretty nice when you're off-roading.

You know, so you're not going to off-road every mean, do not buy this one. You're going to not, if you want something that's really cool, get, you know, get the 1794. They've got several other models that are very, very nice that you would want to buy before you would buy this one. But if you're an off-roader, this has all the stuff you buy. It's got the special sway bars and shocks, big Fox shocks and big wheels and tires. And it's got the big brakes and it's got all the off-road suspension.

And that's, if you're going to do something like that, this is the truck. You know, it's funny. The manufacturers are building these things. Like they go to SEMA and say, give me this, give me this, give me this, give me this.

And TRD has all these, goodies you can put it's kind of like jeep they have a whole line of accessories you can they could build this thing up but right now this this price is a base price is 68 520 and it's got a special color and a couple of their trd pro package but basically after delivering processing and handling it's 71 000 and you don't get much of a discount it's still a nice truck and they're still selling the hell out of these things

but it's not cheap right it's not cheap but if you You go to one of the competitors, one of the American-made competitors, you're paying 15%, 20% more for around the same size truck. Because this is top-of-the-line model here for them. Yeah, it is. The 17, I can't remember that date, 17-whatever, that package is much nicer inside.

And it's a little bit more expensive. But I think that's a much better suited car for a city person that's doing some off-road stuff where the TRD Pro is for someone that's going to be kind of hardcore off-road. Yeah, that's exactly right. TRD is one thing, and then TRD Pro is a little bit more hardcore. But they have the SR, SR5 Limited, Platinum, 1794, TRD Pro, and Capstone. The Capstone is the absolute top of the food chain.

And people, if you're not going to go off-riding and you want a really, really nice truck, get the Capstone. That is a very nice vehicle. And it's just a little bit more expensive. It hunted me in. So check it out. Go to Toyota dealer and say, hey, show me the Tundra. Because I think you're going to be happy when you see it. So let's answer a quick car question. Jeremy, what do you think? Titus is looking for a midsize truck to tow a 22-foot travel trailer that weighs around 4,500 pounds loaded.

He has heard about the Tacoma's transmission problems. So that is out. How about the Honda Ridgeline or the Nissan Frontier? Frontier is a very nice truck. The Ridgeline, if it's a tiny travel trailer, folks, you got to understand that's a unibody. To me, it's really for a truck. The Ridgeline is a truck. It's not a bad one, by any means, but it's a truck for people that don't like trucks. It's a car with a bed.

Yeah, it's a car with a bed. The Tacoma, they've got those problems taken care of, so you don't rule that one out. But if you want a midsize truck, I mean, you've also got the Bison, I mean, the Chevy Colorado, the Ford Ranger, those are all good too. But I think this guy had some dealers that he's worked with before that one of them was a Honda dealer, one of them was a Nissan dealer and they're near his house I didn't put all that stuff in the list but he's like.

I'd go take a look at the Frontier, I think it's a good vehicle and a friend of mine just bought one and he loves it, and you love them I like the Frontier as well Alright, so coming up we've got Tony Zeal we're going to learn more about battery chargers coming up next right here on Let's Talk Wheels be right back. Music. Welcome back to Let's Talk Wheels. Mike Herzing and Jeremy Berenbaum, as we talked about earlier today, folks, one of our favorite people in the whole world, Tony Zeal.

He's from CTEK Battery Chargers, C-T-E-K, if you want to look it up, because once you hear about his battery chargers, you're going to want one. He is here from a prostitutown. Tony, how you doing, buddy? Thank you, Mike. Good to see you and speak to you again after a really, what I consider, successful SEMA show. Yep, that's the last time you were on our show. It was a SEMA event, and I'll tell you what, it was very successful.

It's just funny how many classic car people love your battery chargers, and our buddy Brian Johnson, he bought three or four of them for some of his classic cars after talking to you. And it's funny, as soon as people find out that they can get, you know, maybe save some batteries and save a lot of money and save a lot of really breakdowns and grief, they love your product. So, Tony, tell us about C-TEC and who they are and what you guys do. C-TEC is a Swedish company founded 27 years ago.

We're responsible for inventing intelligent charging. Prior to C-TEC, it'd have to be around your battery if you were charging it because there's no control over the end voltage.

Right. So, you battery would gas and you'd lose electrolyte. it's quite a dangerous thing to do as well so practically overnight we changed the face of battery charging now with ctec you can connect it today not go back to your battery and check it until christmas day we can guarantee it's going to be between 90 95 and 100 charged so perfectly safety, safe, quality. We've got over 50 of the world's OEMs use our chargers either as a line feed or as an accessory.

Brands such as Mercedes, Rolls Royce, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche, BMW, Corvette, name it. And in that industry, the motor industry, quality aligns with quality. And that's what we like to portray as CTEK. Well, you're their global training manager, so you get to talk to shops and dealerships and industrial applications and big trucks and everything. It's funny, your battery chargers are all over the place because you have a very unique connector.

And one of the things I like about your connectors is they have these three little LED lights, you know, green, yellow, red. And I can connect up real quick with a couple of clamps, or even if I have it wired in, I can go on and when I go to the farm and go, okay, this battery is fine. It's flashing green. I go to the next one and it might be under yellow. And then some of them are red. And so I'm like, okay, I need to charge this.

That is, the charge indicator is one of the neatest things. And I know it's a gimmick, but it's a cool gimmick and it works, right? Exactly. We're doing ourselves our business because what we should be doing is selling you a charger for each of your cars.

But we know as a as a customer if we give you added value in the accessories then you're more than happy you can then use your charger on any particular vehicle that needs it and the accessory will tell you when you need to charge like you say the traffic light system right red yellow or green if it's green no need to worry if it's yellow yeah you might want to think about charging sometime soon. If it's red, you need to charge.

So we save you money in maintaining your battery, extending its life, and also you don't have to buy so many CTEK challenges. What are we doing? Yeah, wait a minute. Wait a minute. That's going to mess it up. Folks, Tony Ziels is the Global Training Manager for CTEK Batteries. This is Mike Herzing and Jeremy Berenbaum. Let's talk wheels if you just tuned in. Tony, all this stop-start problem, all these cars now, you buy a car and it's got a stop-start system.

And we and I always talk about the people that take the trips that are, you know, you take a six or eight mile trip, not only does your engine never really get up to operating temperature and that causes problems with the oil system, but it also causes problem with your batteries never getting charged all the way. And the alternator can never really catch up with all these stop-start things.

Unless you're sitting there and go, I'm going to take my car out for a 30-mile trip on the freeway, then okay, that's going to help. But wouldn't it be easier to just plug in one of your chargers like I do every week? This is what'll keep me in a job, is the fact that we need to get this message across. There's something called dry cycle discharge, which is what you've just mentioned. Lots of short trips where you're not given the alternate a chance to.

Recharge the battery. You can, if you want an example, grandparents give a grandchild a piggy bank with 10 bucks in there. And every day, the grandchild takes a dollar out, goes to the store, always 50 cents worth of sweets, puts the 50 cents back in the piggy bank. Right. After 20 days, piggy bank's empty. That's exactly, the piggy bank is the battery. If you take lots and lots and only put a little bit back in, you're going to end up with a completely flat battery.

And don't forget the start-stop system on your vehicle will run your battery at 20% discharge. So you've only got 80% capacity in the battery. Okay.

So even if you fully charge it up to 100%, as soon as you start that vehicle again, the battery management system sees that, thinks I don't have to use the alternator i'll turn that off and i'll let it drop by 20 and then i'll bring the alternator back in saves you a small amount of fuel right but it's not a wasted task in charging that battery because you've brought it back to 100 right doing that you will extend its life

well you know we were talking about that both of my sons have ram trucks one's a big diesel and one's that and my wife has a Ram truck, and we all bought them about the same time in late 2021. Well, my sons have both replaced their batteries a year and a half ago. Ours is still going fine, but every time I let ours sit, every time I walk away from it for more than two days, I will plug in one of your chargers.

And the main reason I use your chargers, besides the fact that you're such a knowledgeable and good-looking guy, that's not the main reason. Believe it or not, the main reason is I don't have to worry about unplugging it. If I decide to go somewhere for a week and not come back, I don't have a battery that's going to be burned up or damaged because the charger didn't cut off. I know these people say they're trickle chargers, but they're really not, are they?

Most of these cheap battery chargers you buy, if I leave them on a battery for six weeks, like I'm going to leave a jet ski over the winter or our classic car over the winter, that's going to damage that battery, isn't it? That's every chance. Depends on the quality of the charger. They're a maintainer. They're a charger, a maintainer. The term trickle charge is, that's early forms of battery charging, where it was a constant current and a very, very low current and about 13.6 volts.

It'll only transform you'd plug into the wall. That's trickle charging. We're talking about something completely different. Our long-term maintenance, we use what we call a float charge. Float. Mm-hmm. Which is the old-fashioned trickle charge, okay? 13.6 volts and whatever amperage the battery and the system require to keep it at 100%. After 10 days, if you don't come back to that vehicle, you know we're going to need to stop trickle charging this.

We need to go into what we call pulse maintenance, where we just stop the charging and watch the battery drop by 5%, which could take days or even weeks.

Got it depending on the top of the vehicle once it's done that the charger kicks back in takes it up to 100 and turns off again so we're never given a charge that the battery can't accept, now those two stages i mentioned are at the end of a another possible six stages of charging repair and diagnostic okay so there's a full eight-step charging program in c-tech chargers. That's a big deal.

I mean, because it's great to charge a battery, but you want to overcharge it because you're going to damage it even worse. And you guys are what don't do that. Tell us about your company and how can we find these battery chargers? Well, you can go to ctech.com nowadays. It used to be smartercharger.com.

But if you do go to the old web address, if you see it anywhere, which was smartercharger.com, you'll automatically be redirected to ctec a new u.s website ctec.com that's it ctec.com tony thanks for joining us today always train you always teach us a little bit we'll have to have you back on soon thanks buddy thank you mike take care that was tony zeal from ctec battery chargers hang on there's more let's talk wheels coming up after this. Music.

It's Mike Herzen and Jeremy Bierenbaum. All right, Jeremy, tell me, special editions. Someone is writing an art question. Are they really worth that much more? And here's what brought it up. They have recently, remember a couple years ago when everybody said, all right, EVs are going to take over the world, and we're going to quit making the Durango Hellcat. This is the last year. You know, it looks like right now, as far as our plans right now, this is going to be the last year.

People bought them up. Fast forward, you know, a year or two. Now, Dodge says, well, emissions have changed and some certainties have changed. So, yeah, we can bring back the Hellcat for another year. Well, these people got mad because they thought theirs were going to be worth a lot more because that was the last year. Now it's not. What do you think about that? I hate to bring up this phrase, but the only two certainties in life are death and taxes.

And unfortunately, you know, these people are kind of getting fooled by marketing, you know, from these manufacturers. I... I can't point a finger at the manufacturer because at that time, it was the last one that they were making. And they kept their word. They didn't make one the next year. So in their plans, they already knew that they were canceling it. Something came up. Something changed in their mind. And they said,

hey, in 23, we're going to make this again. I don't think that you can hold them liable. I guess they got a little upset because they thought it was going to be a single-year model SUV. So I don't know that it's really going to continue very long. But they're going to try. I don't see anything in the article that I read that has specific marketing material that says this is the last year for the Hellcat. This is the last SRT Durango Hellcat that we're making. So I don't know.

You know, people buy cars on speculation all the time. Sometimes they win. Sometimes they lose. Sometimes cars aren't as hot as you think they were. Like people keep buying and selling these Plymouth Prowlers and SSR, Chevy SSRs, waiting for the bubble to pop, waiting for them to be collectible. And I'm just going like, who keeps buying these things? They're so silly to me.

But, you know, there's still hope, right? And so you never know when you're going to buy a car if it's going to become a collectible. And the reality is most of these cars that you personally buy aren't going to gain crazy value in your lifetime unless it's, you know, some blue chip car that you already spent half a million dollars to get anyways.

Well, you know, I was looking at something the other day, I was looking at, there was somebody came in and said, Hey, there's a, there's a 78 Corvette and it's like a Indy 500 pace car or Daytona, you know, it's, it was so-and-so pace car. And I was like, it's a limited edition. And they were like, and it's worth, and they wanted, you know, about an extra 25% over what the value of 30% over what the value was. And I'm like, no, it's just not going to happen.

I guess it's different if it was, I don't know, or those pace cars ever really sell for much more. You know, I always look at... How big the addition is, how or how limited it is. Right. You know, 2000 to me sounds like a low number in what they're producing. But then I want to see how many are getting sent to the U.S., how many are getting delivered here into the States versus other countries.

Right. If you're in the hundreds coming to the States, then I think that you're in a place where that car is always going to be desirable. Doesn't mean you're going to make crazy amount of money on it.

But if you have a one in good condition generally low miles you go to sell it you're going to sell it pretty quickly and you're not going to have to haggle too much because people know the value of those cars right and the ones that sure get get kind of caught up are these people that are buying these cars like you see these corvette 40th anniversary edition the anniversary edition is nothing but special paint and and leather color on the inside there's no performance

anything involved in the car. And so I look at those and I go, I don't, I don't see whether there's a big bump. If you really like the color, it's one thing, but I don't think the value of that car should be more than same year Corvette. It isn't the anniversary edition. Right. This should be maybe worth a tiny bit, but there's also, you think to me, you couldn't paint it because you'd have to find, you have to find, reproduce the decal on the side that says.

You know, Indy 500 pace car or whatever and it makes it you can't i mean it that makes nowadays the nowadays all those decals people may be redone yeah i just got even a little decal for my volkswagen bus that came from the factory i posted on a website and somebody messaged me and they sent it to me in the mail the other day it looks perfect probably better than the original so you know those little things nowadays are easy to replicate but i

i just i don't see the value in some of these cars that people put value in when it's just like you said a pace car it's nothing but a package and it's all design pieces there's no performance aspect to it well it'd be different if if you know like some of these some of these cars would be an older corvette and let's say instead of having the 350 in it it's got a 454 you know or certain that's a different type of special edition right yeah that would warrant a price increase to me.

Like I saw this really ratty looking 69 Mustang fastback for sale and I'm like, this is really ratty. And the guy wanted like 40,000 or $45,000. And I'm like, I was like, what? And they were like, then I looked at it closely and it's a 429 with a four speed, you know, manual. And I was like, very limited edition, you know, and I'm like, oh, that's a difference.

That's a horse of a different color. Yeah. And, you know, I think you even see with some of these other Dodge cars that they were, you know, labeling as Final Edition or Last Call. And, you know, when they first came out. People were fighting the dealers to get an allocation. They were paying over for the car to get one. Then they got one thinking, oh, my God, I got gold. And I don't really want it, but I got it and somebody else wants it. I'm going to sell it.

And the first few that sold, sold for a decent amount of money. And then every one less is getting closer and closer to sticker price, right? Because the cars did, you know, they made like 4,000 of these things last call, you know, and so many different color packages and whatnot. not. I think they oversold them, in my opinion. A nice way is the engine package, the transmission. Like, you know, they'll sell these things and they didn't sell many of them

with a four speed. And most of them were automatics or they didn't have a 429 or they didn't have this. They didn't have that. I mean, you get some of these big block Camaros and you get these things like that. You're like, man, this is this is a pretty rare car. It's got a big engine and it's got the manual transmission and it's got this or got that. That's when it's worth more money, right? Here's an interesting one.

2009 Ferrari F430. You could get it in an F1 automatic transmission, which was lightning fast, or you can get it in a six-speed gated manual. Okay. Six-speed gated manual right now is almost worth double the automatic. Really? Yeah. And it's wild. I would have thought maybe it's a Ferrari, so 50 grand bump over the automatic, but literally double for the transmission. So much that people are taking automatic cars and they're manual swapping Ferraris. Oh, my God. That's how desirable they are.

Sometimes you don't know about a car until 10, 15 years later when all of a sudden the manufacturer does a change in what they've been doing. And now all of a sudden all those cars that they previously made are more desirable.

It's not any different than somebody that that hoards that there's hoarding a baseball card for somebody for years and or the people that have, you know, like Roger Clemens or Pete Rose or somebody that had a little kind of a little thing is tainted, a little bit tainted in their reputation cuts that destroys the value of the card, you know, this kind of stuff. You don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what cars are going to have an electrical problem or this or that and it.

And to try to prognosticate something like that, I'm going to do a crystal ball and look, you know, the magic eight ball and you shake it and say, OK, I'm going to go buy this car. But maybe you're not. You know what I mean? You know, just wrapping up on this on these these Dodge people. Jay Leno, it's a different story. You can buy it anyway. Right. Yeah. But think about these guys that just spent, you know, upwards of eighty thousand dollars on a car, parked it in their garage.

You know a really cool car a really fun car to drive parked it in their garage and thought oh I'm gonna make money on this thing and then clearly they don't and I think they're just mad that they didn't drive it and now all of a sudden they realize they just it's not as valuable as they thought like my friend Jeremy Bierenbaum says don't buy it to make the money off of it buy it to drive it and enjoy it and if you happen to make money on it you're way ahead isn't that right?

Yeah, that smells like a smart person. Yeah, that smells like somebody that you look at in the mirror, right? Well, Jeremy, that was very good. Thank you for sharing your knowledge on that. All right, folks, if you enjoyed our show, please tune into the same station next week, and then we'll have another episode of Let's Talk Wheels. And if you missed part of this show, you can catch it as a podcast on all major podcast platforms. Just look for Let's Talk Wheels.

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, email Mike at Let'sTalkWheels.com. We'll always respond. We love to hear your car questions. Yeah, we do. On behalf of Jeremy Berenbaum, Matt Peralt, and myself, thank you for joining us today on the Let's Talk Wheels radio network and the Talk Media radio network.

I'm Mike Herzing, and stay tuned for a car review from our reporter, Matt Peralt, coming up right now. And talk to you next week, folks. Have a great one.

Thanks for joining us on another edition of Let's Talk Wheels. We'll see you next week. Music. All right, guys, this week I was driving a 2024 Mazda CX-5 Turbo. Now, this is the premium, the Turbo Premium model trim level. So it comes in with a sticker price of just a little bit north of $40,000. Your MSRP is about $38,000, and you add in all the extras that you get here, and you get to basically a $40,000 vehicle for the CX-5.

I am on the record of being a monster fan of Mazdas and the CX line, the CX-5s, the CX-90s, the CX-50s. I do like a lot what Mazda has done. And this is another vehicle in which they have given it a nice kick up. They've added a bunch of really luxurious features. And I don't like using that word luxurious all that often. But man, I'm really impressed. You sit in this vehicle. It looks awesome. It feels great. You sit there and you're like, huh, this is awesome. How big is this vehicle?

How much is this vehicle? You can imagine yourself driving this thing very easily. Look, I love the way that in the cabin is set up for Mazdas. Everyone has been copying it for years now, but just the way that they set things up with the screen right in the middle of the dash.

And then they've got this wheel that's right in the middle of the console, which makes it super simple to just whip through whatever you're going to go to from your phone to your radio to the Sirius XM, whatever it might be. I just, I am super, I'm always extremely impressed with the interior. Five passenger seating, leather trim seats. You've got driver seat memory in this, heated front seats, ventilated front seats, which in Vegas is almost an absolute must. Your push button engine start.

Let's give it up for the push button engine start. Okay. Now, I live in a hot climate. If you live in a cold climate, you know all about the push button. You live and breathe by the push button. But it's the fall here in Las Vegas where I am. It's still hot. And I mean like hot, hot. It's like 90, 95 every day. I love being able to start the vehicle and cool off the vehicle before my daughter gets inside of it, in particular when the interior is black.

This is a black interior, okay? It can get super hot. The sun can beat down on it, make it very difficult to sit on. This is an awesome thing to have. I wish more vehicles would have it, and I love that the CX-5 has that available. Beautiful rear view camera, very easy to see all around, which I really do like a lot. Now, exterior-wise, you got your 19-inch black alloy wheels. would look awesome. Rain sensing windshield wipers, which are great.

Your heated power mirrors, doesn't really matter much for us here in the desert, but for you guys who are in the winter climates, that's awesome. Power moonroof and your power rear liftgate, both are awesome. I really do appreciate those for sure. You've got your stereo system that is really nice. A Bose 10 speaker stereo combined with that 10.25 color display right in the middle of the dash. Very easy to use. And then the four USB inputs. Like this is just tremendous, okay?

You got to have it. You just got to have it. It's so important in today's with these vehicles. People are looking for how many USB ports, how can I charge my phone? And the wireless phone charger is perfect. This is what every vehicle, every 2024 should have this. There's no reason why it shouldn't. Even the lower trim levels, everything should have it. It should become standard on all vehicles because it's not that hard to put in.

And it's such a big selling point when you can either wirelessly charge your phone or with a wire charge your phone or get it into your Apple CarPlay or Android Auto. Absolutely a complete must to have this. So very, very big fans of what this has. Now, your safety features are all really what you'd expect from a Mazda. Lane departure, lane keep assist. You've got dynamic stability control, which is great. Traction control, which is awesome.

Your traction control system, which you can flip through to see what you want to get into. The sport mode is awesome. Okay. I'm a big fan of the sport mode for all Mazdas, That's why they come up with that zoom, zoom thing. But they've got this off-road mode that I don't, I didn't feel a gigantic difference. Okay, I didn't go like off-roading. I went on a dirt road just to see what it was going to be like.

It definitely keeps, you know, it definitely feels like the car is stable and there's nothing, no slipping going on with the tires. But I didn't feel like, okay, this is going to be really something I'm going to do quite often. I think if you have a Mazda CX-5, I don't think you're going off-roading all that much, but it is nice to know that the vehicle can go off pavement, maybe not off road, but it can go off pavement if you need it to.

I'm a really big fan of this vehicle. I really like what Mazda is doing. I think if you're in the market for a midsize SUV, this is one of the vehicles you've got to go and check out just to compare and contrast it to others. Good gas mileage, about 25 miles per gallon, safe car, fun car to drive. Really, really nice. The 2024 Mazda CX-5. Definitely go check it out. All right, guys, this week I was driving a 2023 Lexus GX460 for the black line trim.

And this is sort of a vehicle that I would say that if you're a longtime driver of a Lexus SUV, you will love this right down to the green pearl color of this vehicle. The sticker price for this SUV is a little bit on the, I don't want to say sticker shock side, but $62,000 plus is a lot for this SUV. It is a big vehicle, however. It is a gas guzzler. It's a pretty thirsty vehicle. It can go 15 miles per gallon, 19 kind of on the highway, but man, it's a big, big vehicle. 18-inch alloyed wheels.

This thing, I don't want to call it a tank, but there are some vehicles that you will feel that way, that you feel almost impenetrable, that no one's going to touch you. This had the upgrade, okay? It's nearly a $5,000 upgrade for this vehicle with the Blackline Special Edition. With that comes 18-inch, very unique spoke alloy wheels with a gloss black finish, which is really pretty and nice to look at. It's got your blacked out window trims. It's got black roof rails.

It has a panoramic view monitor, which is really nice to see everything that's going on around you. It's got some other bells and whistles as well to make it stand out. It definitely looks pretty. I mean, this is a nice looking SUV. It's just large and it's expensive. There's only two things. And it's not exactly a vehicle that you sit in and you're like, okay, this vehicle does exactly what other Lexuses can do.

But I think what we're targeting here is a typical old school Lexus driver that wants a typical Lexus vehicle. 10.3 infotainment screen, definitely an upgrade. That's nice. Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, also nice. You have your Bluetooth connectivity and your Sirius satellite radio, which I enjoyed to have a lot. But I mean, it is... Not the most attractive thing to look at from an interior standpoint with all the gauges.

I still have a tough time with the Lexus infotainment with the finger touch track pad. Still find it to be a little bit difficult, but it does have the standard 360 degree camera, which goes all around you when you're trying to back up, which I do like that. This vehicle hasn't really undergone a complete redesign in a while. So you got to feel like this is going to be a vehicle that's going to get one of those redesigns in a very soon type of situation it's going to have.

This is a three-row vehicle, okay? Technically, it's pretty small back there, okay? It's mostly for kids, but you want the third row. It's going to have the third row, which is nice. You do have the Lexus nine-speaker premium sound system. There are four USBs in this vehicle, so USB ports. I want as many as possible in particular, and these are larger vehicles because these are family vehicles, and you've got a million kids.

You got to, kids are going to plug things in. They're going to want to charge. They're going to have power on where they are. So I like four, I would rather a few more, but I mean, they do have the folding, the fold flat third row seats, which when they're up, not great from a leg room perspective. Again, mostly for kids to go into the back, but it does have that third row and it drops down making a gigantic cargo space in the back. You can bring anything you want to go do three trips to Costco.

You'll be okay with how much room you got back there. So that's nice to have that available for you. Driving-wise, 301 horsepower, six-speed automatic transmission, smooth, comfortable, nothing full-time four-wheel drive. Not going to worry about getting stuck anywhere. It's going to get you out of whatever you may need to get into. It rides very smooth. I had nothing negative to say about it. And I mean, if you like Lexuses, if you like this, you're going to like this vehicle.

I mean, this is what you're typically used to driving. It's a vehicle that it can pretty much is a tank. It's going to go where you never need to go. Okay. It's a luxury vehicle. It rides like a luxury vehicle. It's got so much things. People who like this trim level, like this vehicle are going to love this vehicle.

If you're looking for something a bit more modern, a little more on the upscale side of things, you might feel a little bit, you know, like it's lacking just a little bit, may want more performance. You may want a little quicker speed off the line, but it does what it needs to do. It tows 6,500 pounds, which is great. So you can go anywhere you need to go. It's not a hardcore off-roading vehicle, but you're not going to get slowed

down by snow or sleet or ice or anything like that. It's going to get you to where you need to go. Just not that fast off the line, not that powerful of an engine. But overall, if you like the Lexuses, the GXs, if you like the 460 models, the size and what it offers, the black line trim level, you're going to love, and this vehicle is for you.