Gateway Ford is mentioned as one of the dealership locations hosting the teen driving event. Dealership-hosted events often tie into sales and service education, which can influence how buyers and families approach vehicle purchasing and maintenance.
Gateway Nissan is mentioned alongside Gateway Ford as a host dealership for the teen driving event. Being at a Nissan dealership can also mean the materials and examples may include Nissan-specific models and service practices.
Road rage is when someone drives aggressively because they’re angry at other drivers. It can make situations dangerous fast, so the goal is to stay calm and avoid escalating conflicts.
Roadside emergencies are problems that happen while you’re driving—like your car breaking down. The goal is to know what to do right away so you stay safe.
A spare tire is the backup tire you use if one of your tires goes flat. Before you need it, you should check whether your car actually has one and what kind it is.
Jumper cables are used to jump-start a car with a dead battery by connecting it to another vehicle’s battery. Proper connection order and safety precautions help prevent sparks and electrical damage.
That string is a tire size code. It encodes the tire’s width, aspect ratio, and wheel diameter so you can match the correct tire for your vehicle and avoid fitment/safety issues.
The Nissan Ariya is an all-electric SUV, meaning it runs on electricity instead of gasoline. The podcast says it’s all-wheel drive with two electric motors, which helps the car put power to the road more effectively. It’s mentioned as one of the host’s electric vehicles.
A “Tesla adapter” is used to let an EV connect to Tesla charging hardware (commonly Tesla Superchargers) when the car’s charging port or connector type doesn’t match directly. The speaker is using this as a workaround to access more reliable fast charging.
Excess EV inventory means dealers have too many electric cars sitting on the lot. If fewer people want to buy right now, dealers lower prices to sell them.
ChargePoint is a company that runs public electric car charging stations. If your EV can use their network, you can charge in more places without guessing.
Range is how far an EV can drive on a full charge under specified conditions. It’s a key buying metric and has improved significantly as battery technology and efficiency improved.
They’re telling people to negotiate for a big price cut. The idea is that if a dealer has lots of EVs sitting around, you may be able to get a better deal.
The Chrysler PT Cruiser is a retro-styled compact car introduced in the early 2000s. The host compares it to the Kia Soul to illustrate how certain “quirky” designs can still sell well and attract devoted buyers.
The host is talking about Volkswagen dealerships and how aggressively they’re acting. It’s more about the business side of buying than about how the cars work.
Paying “over retail” means the transaction price is above the typical MSRP/retail benchmark, often due to high demand or limited inventory. The segment uses this to explain why buyers ended up with loans that were hard to unwind later.
Negative equity means your car is worth less than what you still owe on the loan. So when you try to trade it in, the numbers don’t work in your favor.
LIVE
Hey folks, Lenny Lawson, the Car Guru, and I am so excited about our big teen driving
experience tonight.
Starts at 6 p.m., goes to 8 p.m. here at my dealership, Gateway Ford and Gateway Nissan
in Greenville, Tennessee, and we've come up with this beautiful guidebook that follows
everything we're going to be talking about.
And as a matter of fact, I'm going to make that guidebook available to everybody that
listens to my Car Guru.
So we have the My Car Guru guidebook, which we've been pushing for all the last year,
I guess, and it's helped a lot of folks.
I get a lot of requests for it.
All you have to do is send me your email address and I'll email you a PDF of it.
It's 32 pages long and it talks about buying and selling and trading and servicing and
choosing a body shop and all the different things about buying used cars and new cars,
as well as negotiation strategies, how to get the best out of a negotiation with a retail
That's for car buyers, adults, at least I thought so.
Now I come up with the guidebook for this teen driving event and I've shown it to several
adults and they say, I need that.
I don't know that stuff.
I don't know how to jumpstart a car or how the brake system works on a car or what the
difference is between a disc brake and a drum brake.
I don't know that stuff, you know, and I assume that a lot of people do and that's a bad assumption.
So I'm going to make the teen driving handout, which is 40.
I'll see the guidebook.
The Kargu Roo guidebook is 32 pages.
This one is about 50 pages, covers a lot of stuff.
Like what to do in the event of an accident, how to avoid road rage incidents, there's
all kinds of good stuff in there.
Like what to do if you get pulled over by a state trooper or a police officer and what
should you not do?
We see plenty of examples of what you should not do on the nightly news.
And so I'm trying to get all these kids off on the right foot to get started safely,
smartly and confidently.
And that's the theme of our program.
Drive safe, drive smart and drive confidently.
Lee, so could you benefit from this, how to jump start your vehicle, how to know if
something's going wrong with your car before you have to take it into a shop?
Most common accident causes, how to avoid, like I say, road rage.
What are the most common roadside emergencies and how to handle those?
It's good stuff, especially for a teenager.
So I'm going to make this available.
Send me your email address to 423-552-2020.
That's my cell phone.
You could text it to me.
And I'll put one of these guidebooks in the mail, so to speak.
And if you don't have email and you don't handle stuff like that, you want a printed
version, I'll print it out just like I do the my car guru guidebook.
And you can pass it out to your young ins and really to anybody who doesn't know
much about cars, because I cover everything from the different types of fuels that you
can put in vehicles and why you should use one over the other, what fluids you
should be able to check when you raise your hood, you know, the process of going
through and when you get a new car, you get somebody else's car, a used car,
just finding what it has.
For example, does it even have a spare tire?
Most people don't even look.
Does it have a jack?
Does it have a lug wrench to be able to take the lug nuts off?
Do you know where the lift points are for the car?
I mean, these are things that people just they don't think about because everybody's
got a cell phone now, right?
They used to think about it when you didn't have a cell phone and you didn't
feel like walking up to some stranger's house, knocking on the door and say, hey,
I've broken down, you wanted to be able to change your own tire.
We're going to show kids how to do that.
So if you've got some young and then you live not too far away, tonight's show is
full, but Thursday's show, I call it a show Thursday's experience is open.
We've got about 30 more spots available.
I want to fill them up.
I want to educate some young folks.
I want them to be able to go home and say, hey, dad, can I show you something?
This is how you hook up jumper cables.
This is how you check to see if your tires are too old.
This is what P 225 75 or 17 means on the side of the tire.
Yeah, they're even going to learn that.
And that's in the guidebook as well.
So see what you're missing.
No, you're not invited if you're an adult, but I'll probably do something like
this maybe in April for women.
I'm probably going to exclude men because they're supposed to know it all.
Right, ladies, I'll be back in just one minute.
OK, I am back.
You know, I've had a hard time.
I've I've made it known.
I've got one EV left.
It's a Nissan Aria.
It's all wheel drive dual motor.
I've been driving it around.
It's really nice to drive.
I've admitted openly that EVs are wonderful to drive.
There's just some downsides.
And one of the downsides is the fact that you can't find reliable charging
services. And a lot of the chargers in Upper East Tennessee are not level three
chargers and they don't charge very fast.
You have to sit there for eight hours to get 80 percent charge.
Who's going to do that?
Not me.
So I decided to help sell this Aria.
I'd spend about two hundred dollars for a Tesla adapter.
So now if somebody buys this Aria, then I'll give them the adapter
and they can go to a reliable Tesla supercharger like at a Bucke's.
Are you familiar with Bucke's?
Well, if you live in Texas or anywhere in the Southeast and really up north to a
certain degree, they have Bucke's, which is the biggest gas station you have ever
seen in your life.
And they also have Tesla superchargers and extremely clean bathrooms
where they sell artwork.
Now, can you imagine being around the table?
They're brainstorming.
They're thinking about ways to make their bathrooms very nice.
One guy says, well, let's make them clean.
And, you know, and everybody agrees with that.
And this little lady in the corner says, let's sell artwork in it.
And everybody looks at her and says, that's a brilliant idea.
So that's what they decided to do.
But I was talking about EVs, you know, the tax credit went away.
The Trump administration said that, well, we'll do better than that.
We will give people a tax, not a tax credit, a tax deduction for the interest
that they pay on new vehicle purchases, as long as those new vehicle purchases
were manufactured in the United States.
So you can get that on last year's taxes if you haven't filed yet.
So Trump got rid of the EV tax credit and that stuck a lot of dealers
with some excess EV inventory, not me, I just have one.
And it wiped out that $7,500, but dealers are putting up to
$15,000 off in their advertising to move the remaining EVs.
Lenny, will you sell your Nissan Aria for $15,000 off?
Yes, I will.
And I'll take a loss on it just to make it go away.
And you'll be able to charge it not only at Charge Point chargers
and all the other brands of chargers that are out there that most of them work.
You'll be able to go to a Tesla super charging station.
My nephew, Max, went to one with his Ford lightning pickup truck,
which is an electric F-150.
And he, he, matter of fact, he went to Bucky's and he sat there for 20 minutes
and it went from 10 percent to 80 percent and it was like $42.
Well, it's cheaper than a tank of gas, but it's not free.
The cheapest way to fill up your EV is at your house,
because they don't charge as much per kilowatt hour
at a residence as they do at a business and especially
at a business where they're trying to make a profit on the electricity.
So that's just a little tip.
So if you want to Nissan Aria EV, it's a wonderful thing.
I mean, Nissan's been building electric vehicles, pure electric
for longer than anybody else has ever heard of the Nissan Leaf.
L-E-A-F. Yeah, it's been around a long time.
I remember when they first came out, they had like 75 miles of range.
So it was a novelty.
I think when it was all said and done, they had about 200 miles of range.
Now they got a new leaf coming out.
They're they're going to quit making the Aria.
That really helps sell them.
And they're going to make the leaf a newly redesigned leaf.
And it looks it's an attractive vehicle.
It looks a lot like a baby Aria, and it's going to have like 350 miles of range.
So they're getting there.
I was reading that the Chinese had a big contest in China,
and they invited all manufacturers, the ones that are made in the United States,
the ones that are made in Europe, Japan and the many EV makers in China.
There's a whole slew of them to get together and see who could
keep the charge the longest in extremely low temperatures.
And of course, the Chinese companies won.
I'm sure they cheated.
But they are saying that they have developed a battery pack
and it's made up of a bunch of new precious metals.
And so this battery pack, they say, will have 650 miles of range
and charge in 10 minutes or less.
Now you're talking, but that electricity, it's not going to be free.
Everybody thought, oh, it's an EV.
It's I can drive for free.
No, you can't.
You have to pay for the electricity.
Who controls electricity rates?
The government does.
Who controls gasoline prices?
I guess Iran does.
That's the only thing I can figure.
But you know, the gasoline industry is a free market thing.
I mean, the gas companies respond when there's turbulence going on.
You know, when the the oil company, I mean, the oil controlling countries
are shooting missiles back and forth at each other,
then that's going to have an impact on gas prices.
So the free market can be interrupted.
And it has been so we're seeing gas.
Well, we're seeing diesel fuel prices up 40 percent.
What they were before they started lobbing missiles.
And it's going to go down just as fast as it went.
Well, I hope it will.
That's just speculation on my part that it will go down as quickly as it went up.
But there could be some profit taking going on there.
That's also part of the free enterprise system.
So EVs are out there.
They're just not selling.
And if you want a really good deal on one, come see me or go to any dealer
that still has some in stock and insist on at least a 15 to $20,000 discount.
But be careful.
Get ready to pay it because they might just, as we say in the car business,
break your arm.
That means get you to sign the paperwork.
OK.
What else?
What else is going on in the oh, yeah, the Kia Soul.
You know what that is?
I'm so tired of looking at those.
They sell pretty well.
They've sold pretty well over the years.
It's a box with a hood and it's finally going away.
Now, I'll celebrate that because every time I see one, I say, why would somebody buy that?
Oh, and the people that buy them, they said, oh, isn't it cute?
I just love this thing.
So as my wife says, PAD, people are different.
But yeah, the Kia Soul, it came out in 2010 with a starting price just over $13,000.
Remember those days?
That was 2010, folks.
That's not that long ago.
Well, you know how long ago it was.
U.S. sales topped 100,000 for eight consecutive years.
But like the original Volkswagen Beetle, the Morris Minor, the modern Mini Cooper,
I should say, the Soul had a passionate following.
And it was a pretty rare achievement for the entry level vehicle.
Kind of reminds me, what was that little, that little Chrysler product?
Oh yeah, the PT Cruiser.
Remember that?
I held a little disdain for that vehicle as well.
Probably just jealousy, you know, because they sold really well and we didn't have
anything to compete with it as a Chevrolet dealer at the time.
And then Chevrolet said, okay, will up the ante with something called the HHR.
Do you remember that?
So it looked like a miniature suburban, like they took a suburban like from the 50s
and put it through a shrinking machine.
It was built on a Chevy Cobalt chassis, which was the original Cavalier, which was a Jewel.
And but I always thought that the HHR looked good.
I just didn't like the name.
I still see them around and we'll be seeing Kia Souls for a long time as well, because
there are actually clubs that have been formed with Kia Soul owners.
Now, to me, that's just desperate for attention.
It's kind of like the people who ride around in Jeeps with ducks all over their dash, little
rubber ducks.
I know you've seen them.
You might own one, a Jeep that is, and you may have your dash absolutely chocked full
of rubber ducks.
I just want you to know that a lot of people look at that and say, are they crazy?
But we know you're not.
You're just trying to stand out, be different, get some acknowledgement.
People love to be acknowledged.
Okay, what else is in the news?
Oh, yeah, I saw this Volkswagen dealers are on the rampage.
What about scout?
You ever heard of scout?
You know, it was made by International back in the late 60s and 70s.
This is really the first personal SUV vehicle that came out.
It was before the Ford Bronco even in 1966, but they're coming back out with the scout.
Volkswagen, somehow they were digging through some files one day and said, what's this file?
And it was the international file.
And they discovered that they owned the rights to the scout name.
So they decided to create a vehicle.
See, they had bought out this company called Navistar, which used to be international.
And they made over the road trucks.
And then like I said, they just made this discovery.
That's really what they said in the, in the press that they just all of a sudden said,
wait a minute, we own the scout name.
So we need to take advantage of this and build a vehicle.
The only problem is they decided to make it an EV.
Now, as far as appearances concerned, like I said, it looks good.
They have a truck version.
They have an SUV version.
What I really like is they're bringing back the bench seat option.
So your girlfriend or your wife can snuggle up to you going down the road like you did back in
the sixties and seventies and maybe eighties.
Yeah, I like those bench seats.
They were good for a lot of different things.
I better not get into that.
But anyway, the Volkswagen dealers, they're mad because scout has decided to bypass them
and sell direct to the public like Tesla.
You want to get car dealers in an uproar, bypass them
because they're a state franchise laws.
Why do they exist?
Well, because it costs a lot of money to set up a car dealership.
The manufacturers have a lot of requirements.
You've got to be, you've got to have a service department, a parts department.
Customers like to see big, pretty showrooms and they like to see a lot of inventory out there
that they can peruse.
It's a big investment.
And if you have a manufacturer, all of a sudden says, we're just going to do mail order.
We're going to send F-150 straight to somebody's driveway.
There's going to be some ugly business going on as far as the courts are concerned.
And state franchise laws were designed to protect dealers, to protect their territories
and their investments.
Like for example, what if I built this?
Well, I've got this big dealership in Greenville, Ford and Nissan.
And what if all of a sudden somebody wrote a letter to Ford and say,
hey, I'd like to put another Ford dealership in Greenville?
Well, that wouldn't be good.
Greenville's only got a population of about 17,000 people.
County's about 75,000 people.
There's not enough customers here for two Ford dealerships.
So we have protected Ford territories.
Not in bigger cities, you know, you can have more Ford dealers.
I think there's like four in Knoxville.
There's probably 10 in Nashville.
That's okay because it's a big enough market.
But here it's not.
That's another thing that state franchise laws protect.
Well, Scout is trying to go around state franchise laws.
And Volkswagen dealers are having none of it.
So they're suing Scout left and right, which is Volkswagen, their parent company.
Shame on Volkswagen.
So what else might you be interested in?
How about you bought a car during the pandemic and you financed it for 84 months?
I feel for you because you probably paid what, full retail, maybe over retail for the vehicle,
paid nothing down because the pandemic was going on and you were concerned.
You financed the whole thing for 84 months and now you don't like it and you want to trade.
That's a big problem in the industry right now.
According to who is this automotive news, negative equity reaches new heights.
What is negative equity?
That's when you owe more on your vehicle than its actual cash value.
What is truly worth?
We had a customer come from Virginia.
They had purchased a vehicle in, well, I can't say the town because you'll know who it is.
They came down into Tennessee and bought a vehicle, came down to us to trade it.
They had paid at least $10,000 over a window sticker for this vehicle.
They bought every single aftermarket product, extended warranty, gap insurance, all these
protection packages that are not cancelable.
At least you can cancel an extended warranty and get a prorated refund.
Same thing for gap insurance.
But we couldn't cancel enough to get them to where they could afford it.
They're stuck.
So I guess that's two lessons there.
If you buy something and you finance it for 84 months, plan on keeping it.
Until at least 72 months when you've got it paid down and you have a little bit of equity
because trading when you're upside down like that is a fast way to get in financial trouble.
Okay, I'll be back in just one minute.
Oh my goodness, we are out of time.
So if you are interested in this teen driving experience booklet,
and I'm going to call it a booklet because it's just about 50 pages,
I'll send it to you 423-552-2020, my cell phone, text me your email address.
It will be a few days before I can pull it all together into a consolidated PDF.
Does that make any sense to you?
If you want me to actually print it out and mail it to you, call 423-639-5151.
That's my Ford Nissan dealership in Greenville.
I'll print it out, staple it, and stick it in the mail.
And all of this at no charge.
So the teen experience tonight, no charge.
The teen experience Thursday night, no charge.
Six to eight if you have somebody that needs to be in it.
Like if you have a youth group at church, and they've got teenagers getting ready to
start driving or they're driving already, they need to see this.
They need to come on down, as Bob Barker used to say on The Price is Right.
Well thanks for listening to this edition of My Car Guru, and I'll see you next time.
About this episode
Lenny Lawson and the host pitch a free, 50-page “teen driving experience” guide focused on getting new drivers safe, smart, and confident—covering basics like jump-starting, brake system concepts, tire checks, what to do in accidents, and how to handle being pulled over or avoiding road rage. The conversation also shifts to EV reality (charging reliability, Tesla Supercharger adapters, and pricing incentives), plus dealer-disruption drama with the Scout EV going direct-to-consumer. They wrap with warnings about negative equity from long pandemic auto loans and quick advice on when trading makes sense.
