Navigating Summer Road Trips and Auction Car Bidding

Okay, we're recording. Segment one, coming down in three, two, one. Hi, everybody. Welcome to your favorite auto show, Let's Talk Wheels. I'm Mike Herzing, and every week we're going to give you automotive news, power sports news, interviews, car reviews, and classic car information from my co-host, Jeremy Bierenbaum, who's based right there in Southern California, the center of everything going on. How you doing, Mr. B? Let's bring him on right now. How you doing,

buddy? Hey, I'm doing well. Center of everything. But I think the police don't like the car shows out here. They've been starting to really crack down on these like Sunday morning car shows. They're blocking lots. They're anyone that's on a private lot. They say you need to get a permit. It's gotten really interesting in the last couple of weeks out here. A private lot. You have to have a permit. Really? Yeah. Oh, that's kind of ugly.

Well, what can I say? It may not be all all unicorns and rainbows right there in California, Southern California, right? Maybe not. Of course, the people might see uniforms and rainbows after all the stuff they sell over there. Folks, it's been a great week. It's been really hot here in Texas and steamy. You know, 4th of July weekend, and it's great. A lot of racing going on, a lot of good stuff going on. You all right, Jeremy?

Oh, totally. Everyone says that Memorial Day kicks off the summer, but I really feel like it's 4th of July. Well, it is. It is. I mean, because it's Memorial Day for a lot of the places up north and, you know, the East Coast and stuff. It's still cool. But boy, by July 4th, everything's a little toasty, especially even Colorado and stuff. It gets toasty there. But as a matter of fact, we're going to talk about that.

Today's topic is summer road trips and what to do to prepare your vehicle for a trip. And it's going to be a hot one, too. We've got a lot of storms this year and a lot of a lot of stuff going on. But I think it's going to be a hot and dry, at least as far as the middle of the country. So we're going to talk to you folks about how to prepare your vehicles for that. It's going to be pretty brutal. And I was noticing today, last week I pulled a trailer with a bunch of culverts.

It was about 8,000 pounds with my wife's Ram pickup, 1,500, and with a Hemi, of course. You're like, what's that thing got a Hemi? Like the commercials, right? I love those commercials. Oh, I know. All the old commercials were great. Sure enough, you know, it ran great, got good fuel economy and everything. I was even pulling that trailer, but I did notice that everything was running a little bit warmer than I would like it to run. So we're going to talk about that.

And before we get ahead of ourselves, let's go ahead and get started with our news and notes segment and talk about the continuing saga of the CDK dealer management systems and all that stuff. It's been going on since the end of June and it's taken a couple of weeks, but they've kind of got most of it lined out. Most of the dealers are kind of back to normal. They lost a lot of money. They figured it's going to end up costing about a billion dollars for this ransomware.

What do you think, man? Is that a nightmare or what? Yeah, that's not something people typically keep in their pockets, right? A billion dollars. So that's a lot. And, you know, unfortunately or fortunately for the dealerships, they probably had to pay a bit to get out of the cyber attack as well. Well, CDK had to pay, they said, tens of millions of dollars in this ransomware. And they don't tell anybody whether they paid it or not, but I have a feeling they probably did.

They got some of the dealers out of it, you know, the Group 1 folks up first. And, you know, folks, this thing ran the whole dealerships, whether it's payroll, whether it's ordering parts, ordering cars, you know, bringing your car in for service.

They couldn't even do an oil change. change they ended up having to go back to pen and paper and and and all that kind of stuff and and that was just the exact stuff they're they're trying to get rid of of course you know for the last two weeks they've had to do this almost three weeks and then now they're gonna have to go back and and go back and enter all the stuff they sold and all the stuff they all the work they did on cars i gotta go back and enter it what's going on into

the database what a nightmare. And then the CDK people are going to try to do a lot of two-stepping and dancing and smiling a lot to try to keep their customers that are ticked off, I'm sure. But I mean, ransomware, it's hit up everybody, whether it's hospitals. And remember, UnitedHealthcare got hit really bad, these hospitals in London. We need to find those folks and just kind of erase them, you know what I mean, like they do in the movies.

Yeah. I mean, it also, on the other side, shows us how reliant we are on these computers and systems and how terrible it is when they get hacked, right? It's horrible. And as much as they do help our lives, they ruin our lives too.

It's like watching a movie. It's like watching Travelers, one of my favorite series on the SyFy channel, all about the future and AI and all that stuff. This is a nightmare, folks. I mean, I mean, it really is, and it's just... Just shows us how dependent we are on machines. And my gosh, it's ugly. But, you know, there are some nice things about it. You know, it's funny. Nissan's got this really neat program, but then they're doing house calls with it called Second Delivery.

Isn't that really neat? We go from one side of tech getting attacked to, oh, how can we teach people to use tech more? But no, this is actually pretty cool. Nissan is really nice. they're making house calls. They're going to people's houses after they've purchased a Nissan car, let them drive it for two weeks. And then they go kind of teach you the things you don't know how to do on the car.

And I think that's actually really clever when you're sitting at the dealership and then they, you've, you've done all the paperwork, you're mentally worn down. They take you out to your brand new car. You're all excited. And they go, let me show you how it works. And most people say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll figure it out. If you do sit there, they've They've all of a sudden pelted you with so much information that you're not taking in.

So this is really cool. Nissan's coming to your house, and they're going to teach you how to use your car. And the nice part is you get to use your car for two weeks first, so you can develop questions to ask them. Well, absolutely. And they're starting it out with the area, which is their most high-tech car. It's their EV, and it is hard to learn how to use.

And, you know, after two weeks, you have all these questions, and you may have written them down, and you've kind of gotten into it and you've answered some of your own questions and then these people are going to come out or they'll meet you at the Starbucks, or they'll, you come to the dealership, they'll come to your house, they'll do whatever, come to your office, they'll do whatever you want.

They'll just meet you with a house call and they'll sit down with a cup of coffee and they'll show you how to take care of work, you know.

Handle your car what a great idea i mean my gosh this is so neat and like you said it's about two weeks after you've had your car you know the the all has worn off of it you know and now you're trying to figure out how to actually use it and set everything up you know all your little phone and everything else i can't tell you how many people i see driving around that don't even have their phones linked to their car make right raising oh my god how could you have such a high high-tech car,

and you don't even sync your phone. I don't know how to do it. A high-tech car with a low-tech owner. Yeah. And so just take advantage of that. I mean, I taught my wife how she can send and receive texts on her phone and from her phone, all on the car. And it's so nice. She doesn't have to actually pick her phone up. That is so nice. So, hey, that is a really neat thing for Nissan to do. And I hope they start doing it more.

All right, real quick, 15 discontinued cars. Some of the cars that aren't going to make it for 2025. There was a list that was on motor one and there are some neat cars that are, that are not going to be, you know, there's some Alfa Romeos that you can't even pronounce the last, the name of them, the Julius and, and the Stelvio's and, and the Bugatti's, but a Camaro, they're going to drop the Camaro, right? That's kind of a bummer. Yeah. We talked about the Chevy Malibu a couple of weeks.

I said, I wasn't too sad to see it go. I don't know the last Malibu I saw that I was like, oh, that's a cool looking car. Ford Escape, which is kind of shocking. I think we'll see this name come back within the brand sometime soon. Jaguar F-Type, Maserati Ghibli, Mitsubishi Mirage. I don't know the last time I've seen that on the road. Mini Clubman. I always thought that was cool when it came out, but it just never caught on. Nissan GTR. We did a whole thing about that a couple weeks ago.

What an amazing car that is. Nissan Titan. Porsche 718 Boxster came in, but that's only in Europe. I can't see them getting rid of that car in the US. Ram 1500 TRX and the Volvo S60. Yeah. I hate to see the X60 go. It's a nice car. And the Ram TRX, they're going to replace it with something else, the RHO, you know, which is the high output. And, and, and so that's okay, but you know, we got a lot of stuff going on. So folks, we're going to see them go, but there'll be more cars to replace them.

So got a great show today. And we're going to talk about, I got a car review coming up next and you're going to enjoy it. So hang on, got a great car review.

Okay. Segment two coming down in three, two, one. All right, folks, this is our car review segment. And this week I was driving the 2024 Lexus LC 500 convertible. And this is an awesome car. It's got, you know, a five liter V8 and it sounds amazing. Got a nice throaty exhaust. It sounds Sounds like you're driving an American car V8, 471 horsepower.

I mean, it will flat scoot. This is a little bitty two-seater convertible, real wide, got 21-inch wheels, big wide tires in the rear, 10-speed automatic transmission, rear-wheel drive, obviously, active sport exhaust. I mean, this starts up, it sounds real throaty, then it gets quiet. You can leave it. You can set it up. We can push a button and it stays loud all the time. But other than that, it gets loud when you punch it and it stays quiet. It's got an adaptive variable suspension.

So it handles really good. It's a beautiful car. Mine was kind of this pinkish copper colored and which is called copper crest with a white interior.

They're kind of a wild like this is like a rose gold and they have some really cool colors they don't go they don't go too bold or anything like that they don't go too bright but the colors they do have are really elegant i would even say sexy and they they look great on the car performance exhaust with aluminum calipers 21 inch black alloy wheels with metallic accents triple beam headlights.

You know, it's just really, it's got a power soft top and the wind deflectors and, you know, you can roll the windows down even on a hot day and the air conditioning stays in there and you can roll the windows up and it's really a cool car, man. Did the car you have have the air scarf, the little heater in the... Yeah, it has all that stuff in there and it's got all of the... For the people that aren't familiar with it, it's a heater in the headrest.

So when you have the top down, you can still feel quite warm and get hot air blown on you. When it's 100 degrees out here in Texas with 80% humidity, yeah, you can feel warm anyway. But this thing is basically the list price is $100. And after the $1,150 processing and handling fee and delivery fee, it's $117,000. I think when this car came out, the benchmark was the Mercedes SL. And this is a great competitor to that car.

I think it's got all the things that you'd want. V8, convertible, great looks, good handling. And a Mark Levinson sound system to die for. That's probably the coolest feature of any Lexus is the Mark Levinson sound system, which I think is one of the best sound systems in the industry. Gosh, is it good. But it's got all the safety features. This thing will practically drive for you and stop for you and steer for you and does everything else. This is a wonderful vehicle.

And like I said, it's more of a toy. This is the sexiest little two-seater you can ever possibly imagine. But it's also $117,000 that it's just so exotic and luxurious. This is a Grand Touring two-door. It's really, man, talk about have a great road trip car. This is an amazing automobile, world-class. I have several different ways, but go ahead. hit?

I have one knock on it and that is it's got a very long nose and it takes a little bit of time to get used to the actual length of it, especially what is in front of the front wheels. It's still got a pretty good overhang. And so you got to be careful when you're going around parking lots and whatnot, when you don't want to clip a curb or go over one of those parking bump stops because the front end is low.

I have seen some driving around LA with some damage up in that area just because of that fact. Well, they make it as a regular coupe, which base is around 99,000. The LC 500H coupe hybrid, they make the convertible inspiration series coupe, then the inspiration series convertible, which the base price is 121.9, and then you can add your goodies. So this is not the most expensive one they make, but it's a wonderful car.

This is tasteful this was they can tell you this thing is like timeless this is this is uh. Just an unbelievably beautiful vehicle. They have colors like ultrasonic blue mica, copper crest, which is what this one is. And they have all these just amazing vehicles. I mean, it just does things for you without you even asking it, Hartley. I mean, it's just, wow. And it's high-tech and one of the great things, and we're kind of going to get

into this a little bit later with the question of the day. You know, it's, it's, it's a Toyota. It's, it is built very well built to last, and there's not many issues known with them. Right. And it, and it's overbuilt and it's very, very reliable and very, very awesome. And so if you check a technical, you want a nice car, I would take this over any Mercedes or anything else that anything out of Europe, really, because this is just super reliable and it's just an awesome,

beautiful vehicle. I mean, check it out. Check out anything from Lexus. That's CLC 500. Check it out, folks, whether it's the hybrid or any of those models. So it's just a great vehicle. Check it out. All right.

Let's answer a car question or so. So, yeah, I got you. Kim wants to know, what's the most reliable vehicle right now? Car, truck, EV? Is it safer to go with the lowest trim level? Will that keep her from having problems? Simple is good in her book. Simple is always going to be the best. Like if you want a Jeep Wrangler, you want to go with the Sport. The basic model with the smallest trim, the least amount of electronics on it is always going to be the most reliable. I hate to say that.

But it normally is, you know, when you see problems with these cars, when you see all the JD power stuff, it's always going to be the electronics. When you have, it's the infotainment system, it's the, it's, it's all these sensors and everything. That's where the problems go. You know, basic is going to be more reliable. Is it going to give you all of the high-tech stuff that you may want? No, it won't.

But it's going to be my reliable. my daughter's is that's perfect that's what she likes simple is better she doesn't want all of the bells and whistles that everybody else you you get these first you know the early adopters they want everything high tech i mean i understand wanting you know wanting bluetooth and you wanting those kind of things maybe adaptive cruise control but other than that a lot of people don't want the car to park

for you they don't want it to do this and they don't want it to do that is going to be where your problems are going to happen that's going to be where you're going to have that if you have a hybrid that's going to be you know eight years later that's going to be we're going to need a battery that's going to need you know if you get a plug-in hybrid that's going to be where you're going to have software problems that's where they have the issues

there if you get an ev that's we're going to be problems you know the simple is always going to be i hate to say it right now it's just that and a lot of the problems are not the car company it's it's the repair people you know it's self-inflicted yeah it's really tough for some of those guys to diagnose.

We really is so either way we got more car questions we'll answer them in the next segment but we got a lot of cool stuff in the show but we're going to talk about summer heat and how to prepare your vehicle for a trip it's going to be a big deal so hang on we got a lot You got questions? We got answers. That's how we do it. So hang on.

Segment three coming down in three, two, one. Okay, folks, we've got some car questions we're going to answer right here. This is something that we've been putting off a little bit, and we decided to go ahead and answer it, seeing as how we're right in the middle of the summer, and it's only getting hotter. We're going to have record storms and record heat, and none of this is good news for our vehicles. Heat, or extreme heat anyway, is the enemy of all of us, or most of us that

drive. You can tell that when you look at the highways littered with stalled cars and blown apart wheels and tires. I mean, tires build up so much heat. And so whenever you run it low on tire pressures, the tires get so darn hot. Or you'll see these people pick up a nail and they'll lose a little bit of air. And all of a sudden, next thing you know, it's blowing a tire apart. So that's one of the things we need to check before we take a trip is our tire.

You know, and a lot of people will check the tire. They might check the pressure. They might take the second step to do a visual inspection. But just staring straight on to the side of your tire is not really it. You got to look at the actual tread of your tire and make sure it's wearing properly, right? Because sometimes it looks great from the outside, but on that inside corner, you're getting really bad tire wear. And that's going to be where your issue is going to happen.

Well, the other thing is just to make sure your tires aren't too old. I mean, I had somebody just yesterday. What do you call old? What's your. Any tire that's over eight years old. You shouldn't be driving it. Especially in this heat. And I had somebody the other day going, these tires look great, don't they? I said, yeah, they're eight years old. He said, are they really? And I went, yeah, take a look. And he says,

they only have like 40,000 miles on them. I said, yeah, but they're eight years old. And sure enough, they were dry rotted on all the outside, all the edges. I mean, there are significantly significant cracks and they're getting ready to take a trip to like from Texas all the way to Missouri. And I was like, guys, I mean, it's a lot of heat and you're going to pull a trailer. Okay. Well, maybe go and go and riding with the ATVs and stuff. That's a lot of weight pulling a trailer.

Okay. You might be, you know, so they weren't having the tires changed out. Just go over to discount tire. They'll be glad to look at your tires and give you an idea. Make sure there's no nails in there. Make sure there's not a bubble on the sidewall or something like that. It doesn't cost you anything to do it for free. It's easy. And then always check your tire pressures the day before you go. Check your trailers, especially.

Trailers and RVs are the ones that really, we seem to ignore them. I know, seriously. I mean, I'm just so bad. It's the thing you use the least, so you figure like, oh, it's got no miles on it. But that's really...

Worse for it especially if it's been sitting it goes a little flat you get a little flat spot in there yeah there are so many different things that can go wrong with rv boat trailer tires truck uh trailer tires they that are sitting yeah and then nobody checks the wheel bearings and the grease and the stuff like that and the trailer tires but fluids for example i i was just driving up when i drove up to the the lake last week and i pulled those covers it was like thousand pounds of

culverts and another thousand pounds of trailer. And I was like, okay, this 9,000 pounds. And I was like, you know, luckily the trucks, you know, it only had 13,000 miles on it, but I was like, I better check the coolant. And I went in and double checked and it was great and things like that. But people need to look at your, I looked at the transmission trip pressures. It was a hundred degrees outside.

Well, the transmission's running, you know, anywhere where from 195 to 205, if you get up to like 225 or 230, 240, then you're all of a sudden, okay, that's bad. That's going to damage your transmission fluid. Once you start getting it up to 250 or 260, something like that, all of a sudden the life of the fluid is cut in half. And so all of a sudden you're damaging the fluid. So if you're going through mountains, you're going to Colorado or something like that, you've got to pay

attention to that. All right, Right. That's not good. So then you're like in that. All right. I went ahead like for mine or her. Her Ram truck has tow haul mode. So I used tow haul mode instead of this normal mode that dropped the temperatures right there because it kept it in a lower gear. So transmission wasn't working quite as hard. OK. Made sure the coolant temperatures were down. Make sure your coolant still good.

Make sure you're, you know, things like that. make sure your brake fluid is still good the one thing with coolant that people do all the time it kind of grinds my gears they they'll check and if it's low they'll put water in and then after doing that a couple times it's all water anyways and and you have no actual coolant in there and that's not going to help any well the coolant water will actually cool the thing down. But the water won't prevent the corrosion. Right.

Water works for cooling it. Great. But water will let it corrode like crazy. So, you know, a few months into it, it's starting to rust. So then you end up deteriorating the whole system. So that's really bad. You can add, you know, a lot of hot rods and stuff don't have enough cooling for the vehicle anyway. So I use some stuff.

Royal Purple makes some stuff called Purple Ice. device and it's some additives that you can add to your cooling system just make it work more efficiently and that that helps a lot and you can drop you can gain you know drop drop your your cooling temperature a few degrees doing that and that will help a lot you can also put some additives in there that will that will come back and help your rust present preventative part of the of the coolant rather than if you don't have time to change it you

can put some additive in there changing the brake fluid the same thing is another deal that you should do about every two years you should change your brake fluid out that'll make brakes work so much better and also a couple years into it you're going to find out you're not replacing master cylinders and wheel cylinders and all those things you're not having the maintenance issues so that is really nice and then people don't check their lights besides pulling

a trailer just i mean how many times you're behind a car and all of a sudden you realize that, you know, they only have one brake light or, or whatever. It seems like I'm always behind somebody in the fast lane, and it's usually a Prius that's going below the speed limit or a Honda minivan going below the speed limit. The Honda minivans seem to be taking the place of the Prius in the fast lane, going slow. Out here, I think there's no discrimination between car model as to who drives the worst.

Just it's anyone and anything or the bmw drivers that it could be a bmw mercedes like you know yeah you're poison out here but but no yeah brake lights those are one of those things you're not you never really know until you check it's one of those it's a nice thing to do a visual inspection, yeah you know back up to the garage door once once a week or every couple weeks and and just back up to the garage door and hit the brakes and hit the turn signals and look

in your mirror and say look i got everything flash i got all the lights working cool or have somebody walk behind yeah all your lights are working i was driving the volkswagen this weekend with my dad when i dropped him off at his house i said hey can you go around back just make sure my taillights are good and he did it takes all of two seconds and it's a nice peace of mind i don't want someone rear-ending me is the big thing yeah or the police you know pulling

you over you don't need any reason for anybody to pull you over you really don't i mean and i don't need any reason for anybody to run into me so yeah check your lights every once in a while you know carry a few couple tools with you some zip ties some duct tape you know i always carry first a small first aid kit a little bit of water a few bottles of water with me you know it's like when you're going out on a long trip and you're out in the middle

of west texas or arizona or any of those places like that take a real map. Yeah or print especially you're going on a long road trip those are everything mike has just listed and then some, and it can fit in one box. I usually bring an extra couple of quarts of oil. With me, jumper cables. You know, I just, I'd rather not have to rely on a car passing by because I don't know where I'm going and who's going to be there.

So I try and get, you know, I'm not going to bring the whole garage, but enough to give me a fighting chance. You know, you're exactly right. I had had somebody the other day, jump a car off a DeWalt, a DeWalt battery, you know, I've seen videos of that. I've never seen it done in person. Yep. I mean, it's so, I got one of these little jumper packs right now. It's, it's about, you know, six inches by four inches. It fits anywhere.

It's great. I charge it once a month and I feel really safe with it. Yeah. It's, it's all handy. Even if you don't use it for you, you can always use it to start somebody else up rather than you having to use your vehicle because what you don't want to do is that, but just print out a real map, but just take a few things with you and just leave it a little extra water. Never hurts. I mean, I mean, our RAM has places under the floor boards that you can actually store things.

And I've got toolkits and things like that. But either way, we're going to talk about this more. But we got a lot of more information. So hang on. Got more information coming up with more Let's Talk Wheels. All right. Segment four coming down in three, two, one.

Okay, now this is our last final segment. Let's go ahead and answer a couple of car questions. Trevor wants to know how to go about bidding on an auction car. This is like an eBay thing. If he arranges for somebody to go and look at it, the bidding also goes ahead while he's doing that. It gets too high while he's trying to find out if it's good or not. Does he feel like he lost his money? That's like threw it away.

It seems like 80 of the cars aren't even making the reserves anyway, at least on eBay, because he sees them listed the same week.

Is that really true jeremy i mean it's kind of like by the time you see if you you you see something over the weekend and let's say it's got another couple days left on it so you find somebody and you pay him 100 bucks or 200 bucks to go out and look at it and you arrange it with the owner and he goes out and looks at it by that time you realize that it's gonna it's out of your price range you know you kind of go that's really tough thing about you know all these

auction websites websites nowadays, you got seven days to do your due diligence on this car. And, you know, sometimes people are kind of sandbagging the bids. Nobody's, it's not really active. You're going, man, this is really cheap. Like this is for sure in my price range right now, but it's all about that last 15 minutes on some of these auctions. And, you know, I watched a car with my dad today go from 30,000 to 88,000 in, in a matter of, you know, 15 minutes.

And it's really tough. You have to assume, at least I assume, that anything online, it's being viewed by a world audience. So everyone knows around what that thing is worth. And even if it's low, before the auction is over, you have to assume that everyone's already sleeping on it and it's going to get up to what it's worth. So you have to kind of build that in. But if it's in your price range, it's not a waste of money to send someone out.

I've, I've done it before. I've passed on cars because of information that I've gotten from these inspections, whether it be a friend or a paid professional inspector, but at least, you know, that you lost a hundred dollars or $200 and you didn't make a $60,000 purchase and get junk. Well, you know, part of the problem I found is like, I was looking at a Mustang and that was actually not too far from me.

I mean, it was up 75 miles away and i was thinking about sending going out there or or actually sending somebody out to take a look at it was a mustang and it was it gotten up to about 18 or 19 or 20 000 and i didn't know how much farther it was going to go and i was thinking it might gone to 25 and and these things were selling for what it was it would probably would have i would have thought it had gone for maybe about 28, maybe they were going for about 28,000.

And I had actually looked at another site and I realized that he was on another site. And it had, he had a reserve of 40 on it, 41 or something. Okay. And I was like, okay. So I, now I realize what he wants for it. He wants like in the forties for it. There's no way I was going to give that much for that car. I understand that. I typically feel, I know that if I know how much the owner kind of has an idea for that, I would like, no, I'm not even going to bother.

Because I'm not going to make that guy happy. No way, Jose. You know what I mean? Yeah. I do know what you mean, but from me working at Classic and I have friends that work at other auction houses, if a car is on one auction site and it doesn't hit its reserve, like I was saying, it's being viewed to a world market. And so that world is saying it's not worth what you think it's worth.

And so when they go to the next auction site to try and sell their car again, that auction site knows, Hey, you didn't get 40 grand last time. Don't come here with a 40 grand reserve because why are we going to take it? You know? So they might say, okay, we'll take it, but now we want the reserve to be 35. And this person is then put in a hard place where, Hey, I want to sell this car.

I should have gone with the offer of 39 on the other website, but it didn't hit my 40 K. I'm going to have to roll the dice and go with this lower reserve. I see that done a lot. Hmm. Okay. But, but I mean, it's just some, some of these people just, or it's just, they're just looking at these cars going. I said, I must be like, I have no idea what they're seeing in these cars, unless they're just going to wait and. To see if somebody happens to want to buy it that bad.

I feel like, yeah. And I feel like that's where eBay really lies. And it's these people that set really high reserves and they feel like, Hey, if it doesn't sell, I'm just going to rerun it again. And it's, it's really safe. It's really easy. Some of the big auction houses bring a trailer, RM Sotheby's, like they, they don't let you do that. You have one shot at selling your car. And so people try to be as realistic as they can. like anybody can sell on eBay.

Not anybody can sell on bring a trailer. You have to get approved. And so because of that, bring a trailer, make sure that you're realistic in your numbers. And the best way they do that is by looking at comps of similar cars that have sold. And that's the biggest thing that I tell people all the time, whether you're buying or selling, look for comps and try and get as similar a comp as you can.

If it's, you know, a one of something, you're not going to find them, but you need to get five, six, you'll, you'll find five, five, six, or seven of the same or similar car. And you can start getting a feeling, Hey, mine is better. Or the one I'm looking at is, is better than this is worse than this and start figuring out, Hey, this is going to be a, you know, a $60,000 car, a $50,000 car. Even if the bids are in the twenties right now, you know that because you're looking at the comps.

Yeah. Yeah. And that, and that, and the fact that the people don't ever want to put pictures of them underneath it or any of that other stuff. They're just like, I'm like, well, Well, I don't have any more pictures of it. I mean, why does anybody bother me for pictures? Well, you're bothering us to try to sell something that we can't even see it underneath. I mean, come on, man.

There's four pictures of your car. Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing that these auction houses have really brought to the game is they have these listings with 100, 200, 300 photos. And it really helps to give you a detailed feeling of this car that you're looking at that could be 2,000 miles away. way. I will say this is one of my secrets and I'll let you in on it. If there's something I'm really interested in and I'm not sure where the price

is going to go, I always message the seller and I met, Hey, can you call me? I have some questions. They call me, I ask my questions or whatever, but what's more important about that interaction is I have their phone number and I have their name.

And if that car doesn't hit the reserve, now I know I can call this guy and say, Hey, this is what it got to you. This is where you're at, or this is where are you at? Can we meet somewhere in the middle? Or you call them in six months. Hey, you still got that car that was on X and X website. I really like it. If it's available, I'll offer you, you know, X, Y, or Z.

Well, sure. I mean, some of these places like, you know, gateway classic cars and some of the other ones have, have, you know, had these cars for, I said, do you still have that car? I said, well, you've had it for two months now. The, if the guy ever wants to sell it, give me a call and I'm going to, I will offer him this much, you know, and yeah.

And it's hopefully that I will hear from them on a couple of things because these guys, of course, they want to ask a lot and I don't, I don't blame them. I sold a car through them before and, and I know they came back to me going, well, it didn't sell, but we will hopefully can, can get somebody else on the line. I've got somebody here at this price. And at some point these people may just say, oh, well, I think I might as well get the bird in the hand is better than nothing.

You know what I mean? So whatever happened, all these private party deals, that was where it was at. That's how you could get a car and feel really comfortable about what you're buying. And nowadays, no one, even local, you know, wants to sell their car like that. They put it online. They hope that someone buys it from 2000 miles away. They never have an interaction. They get money wired to their bank account and someone from a towing company

comes and picks up the car like that. That is the mentality of people these days, and that's not how I want to be buying my cars. Well, I mean, unfortunately, that's just what it is right now because people don't want to be harassed by other people. They don't want to give their information out to other people. They don't want to be on somebody's mailing list. Do you guys have in Texas? We used to have these days where, like on a Sunday, there'd be a big open lot.

Everyone would drive their cars for sale to this lot. lot they pay like five bucks to go park in there and then you know anyone that knew about that lot could come in walk around and see what they what was for sale did they have something like that in texas no not really but but they the problem is you know they might have a coffee and cars where you can go and put your classic this is almost like a flea market for cars each person gets a stall for their car or like a

car car corral at a car show but i want more of that do They do that at car shows, but they don't do that here. I mean, with classic cars and even then it wouldn't be, I think Craigslist, Craigslist ruined it for everybody. I really do. Cause Craigslist, everybody would call you and you'd want 10,000 for your car. They go, I will give you a $3,500 for it right now, you know, and it'd be some kind of perfect car. You know what I mean?

And the guy, well, I'll give you, well, you take two grand for it, you know, and we got into that. All right. Either way. Don't forget, folks, it gets a show as a podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, iHeartRadio.com, and Amazon.com.

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 questions you want us to cover or topics you want to ask us, you can always email Mike at Let'sTalkWheels.com. We'll always respond. We love to hear your car questions. As always, on behalf of Jeremy Berenbaum, Matt Peralt, and myself, thank everybody for joining us today on the Let's Talk Wheels Radio Network. Have a great week.