Car Keys with Robin Leech and Jay de Marcken – December 8, 2025

He is Robin Leach. He is Jada Markin. This is Car Keys.

Good day to our audience about for this week's version of Car Keys with Jada Markin and Robin Leach. We are in the

early part of the winter cold season as this show is done and

a couple of things have come across my

Radar from personal experience and the first one was I

needed to use my windshield washer to clean my windshield on a morning in which the

Temperature was in single digits and I was flying along the road at 65 to 70 miles an hour and lo and behold

No fluid came out of the nozzles and I have had this problem before and I have washer fluid that is either

rated at

minus 20 or minus 25 along and all my washer

receptacles in the cars that I have and

As far as I can tell it's fresh enough so that should not have diminished its

Resistance to freezing but I have found that they seem to freeze in the

lines between the water bottles where the fluid rests and doesn't seem to freeze and the nozzles and

Either the nozzles get wind chill or the what I'm not sure quite how it works

But I have found that sometimes I do not get effective windshield washer use

And don't some cars have a hey Robin. Don't some cars have

Heaters heat it heat it

Well, it's possibly that they do but I do not know any domestic vehicles that have actually heated nozzles

I've never been on the options list of of a window sticker

If they do Jay and our listeners we could find out and you could go buy cars with this

This feature if it was important, but enough on that

So

It is a good thing

I believe to advise that you test your windshield washer fluid in temperatures that are below 10 degrees

Consistently if we have them or before you start driving or clean your windshield washers the windshields when the cars are still and

Presumably the fluid will flow and if you're in a storm

With ultra-cold

Conditions you may or may not find that you have reliable windshield washer capability if you need it and that's all that

Um, there's a

Jay, I want you to discuss what you know about AI

Gain as as an article headline that I'm looking at that AI gains ground in the auto industry

you brought it up in one of your lists and

Is it the Gemini or something like that where AI is apparently doing something

No, there were there were a couple articles that refer to AI and one of them

I don't know if I sent you the link, but I actually did not read the article

So I can't tell you much about it and that was the one that I think that involved automation at in in

Factories and the question was whether AI was going to replace humans in

Auto factories and you know to be fair robots. I've already I think robots are doing that quite effectively

Yeah, I don't think it's that's irrelevant for much of discussion on the show

But I thought if it was in the technological field, I know nothing about it. I I'm I'm

I'm

Confronted by lots of AI

requests for AI assistance and my real estate business believe it or not

And I'm online in my cell phone

And I do not know much about AI and I'm sort of resisting getting involved with it

So, let me know what you knew anything about it. Well, the other thing I I had

Mentioned is the I read a through an article quickly on the in you

Mazda CS5, right, you know, they're middle middle-sized SUV and

They have

Um

Google's AI feature, what is it called Germany? Yeah, and I guess

You can control a bunch of the car controls using

Assistant correct and it basically it's voice activation. Okay, I can tell I guess that another another piece of technology

That is encroaching into the newest models of vehicles coming across

A side note is that I have talked to several people recently who are and they're all I would say older

people who are still driving actively and and

Are resisting as their desire to own a new car because of all the technology or else

They're just ignoring it and they just say as far as they can tell they have all this stuff in their car

But they don't know how to operate it so as long as they can drive the car put it in gear and get the radio to work

And then maybe the heating system to work. They're okay

But they wish that they had that they had their older car which they traded in in this case

It was a Honda traded in on a new

Hyundai vehicle and I got an earful about how the owner who is

Up in years is very frustrated because he says his car has all this technology

He doesn't know how to use it and he doesn't even want to learn how to use it

So there may be a return to some

basics in the

dashboard

Facilities of vehicles

I'm going to I'm waiting to try the new Jeep Cherokee

2026 I think just

Okay, go ahead before we get in before we get into the Jeep chapter of this show

Car controls I think voice activated car controls are actually a good thing

if they're reliable and and I'm guessing that with

The advent of AI most likely we will have

Systems that are pretty reliable when you ask certain things

They will they will you know you the car will respond or the features will respond

But I don't know much about it. I do agree with you. We've talked about this at nauseam in the pet in the past

We you and I and a lot of you know older people

And we classify such don't necessarily like a screen

And all right right controls. Yeah, you know recently

I'd be I was in two different cars that have very different approaches and that and I've talked one of them

I've talked about

Maybe a bit too much in the last couple shows is that Porsche Macan electric that has a center screen that is very

Not only eyes and it's not only user friendly. It's not oversized. It's actually integrated totally in the center of the dash

It's not one of those little

Flat screens or tablets that are stuck on top of the dash and and the other car was

you know Tesla why and

The cars operating very very different modes even though the Tesla the one I was in was two or three years old

The way you go about things is very different and you know, I guess not all cars are for all people although I think

In the future

I'm hoping we we stay with you know a few knobs like in the Porsche and and and I know Honda is doing that too and

And not go crazy like in in in Tesla mode

I

Agree with you completely for our audience. I think I actually can narrow my

Discussion on this to this topic of knobs to do two things one

Volume eyes or turn turn the volume up and down on a radio station is playing and to

To do to manually be able to scroll through the FM stations or the satellite stations with a knob

instead of

Even trying to use voice control

But the voice control is actually effective as you have survived and for our audience that's good for them to know

I you but I find sometimes I I get confused by the in the vehicles

I have it have it when I try to say tune to XM radio

Channel blah blah or tune do I do it tune to one over Robin Hood radio?

Yeah, Robin Hood radio or not and and sometimes it it doesn't quite take it and get me to the

To it in the first attempt and I have to vary my input to see which one the

Computer's gonna

Recognize and lead me to the station or the app that the or the or you know

The type of radio I want to listen to is it AM FM or XM, you know or satellite or something else

Hey, so moving on and talking about Tesla

You know that we know people have

Different views on the company on the cars. I've read about a consumer

Control report article about

quality control and

Reliability of Tesla's and and that you older Tesla's

seem to come way down in the reliability department and

I'm a little surprised by that and there have been comments and into the methodology used by consumer reports because

It is quite not quite fair to compare a car that doesn't require

Not with a point or the counterpoint

It's not quite fair to compare a car that doesn't require pretty much any maintenance to a nice

E

Car that goes into a shop regularly for maintenance and therefore

The the times you do go in it's to deal with problems. Yes

You know, we know Tesla had has had quality issues in the past and

Allegedly, they're all gone now, but I

People who've had Tesla do not do not

Believe that the cars are unreliable. They and a lot of people have said, you know, that it is the most reliable car

They've owned and I was reading a comment of one particular user who said you got to dissociate the car from the company

The car is great, you know, we sold all of our stock, but one stock in the company

and

And and you know, that's it. Okay, it's still a great product. Let's get yeah, okay

I agree. Let's talk about consumer reports because it's a very important

Periodical that a lot of people use when they are determining

What car they ought to try and buy I used to get the magazine. I do not get it anymore

I do not personally go to it for a recommendation because I have a very

uh

distinct

Knowledge base in my head about what I want to own and I don't I'm not going to go review it through that magazine's reviews

I found though over time that most of the time it when there was a critical report on vehicles that they were using

It mostly seemed to deal with the technology of the touch screens and the ease of use and

In this it may goes back some years so in the early days of this new technology arriving on our dashboards in cars

There were definitely with some

Lack of suitable

Pretesting before it got on the road to confuse users and they were they were actually in my opinion

They were rating cars on the basis of the ease of use of some of this technology more than they were talking about the

Mechanical reliability of the drive trains

The lights in the car and things that don't really

fail

So I just have I left I have left to report off of my

resource

List of things if I'm researching cars and and I don't I just thought that they're not good

They're relevant to the degree of how they do it, but I think they ought they never I thought they should have refined their rating

by distinctly

Saying that the rating is because of the technology and not just

And they might actually do that now

But instead of just rating them without defining exactly why the rating was where it was in a list of baby

You know 20 vehicles or something like that

So in in their defense, I would say their methodology is explained and it's

It's

tedious it's scientific

I guess

and

Or to the best of my understanding of it

And and and so you get a bunch of statistics and they and they and they try to sort that out

I think they leave out the emotional factor that we may have for a car or not and

You know how the car feels

To us particularly do we like the car do we like the way it looks do we like how comfortable it is or not and and

And so that does not I think factor in to their analysis much

I also

Once in a while I have my eyebrows go up because I see like the same like different models within the same product range

Like you take Subaru's for example, which are virtually identical from what mechanically from one model to another and

Therefore, you know very different test results as far as reliability from one model to another

kind of triggers some kind of

Question mark in my mind, but it's a tool. It's not the only tool

But I guess it is a tool and a and a good one

But anyway moving on from consumer reports

Where do we go next?

Well, you have a list of

You sent me about and I suggest that you talk about

Certain numbers on those list one and two and then six seven eight nine

I don't know what that list is up on your screen. I don't know. I have no numbers, but

but it was about auto sales and

One of them was auto sales and

I'll try to pull up

the

Auto industry I think is in not a very good shape and I think it is a worldwide

Phenomenon

You know sales are not good in Europe. They're not good in the US. They're certainly not good in China

Some companies do better than others

You know like well test line on the Chinese market is it's actually increased their sales this year

But I know only selling one in, you know

That's what the idea is going to be. Yeah

So, you know, you all those numbers have to be taken with a grain of salt

but the industry is suffering and

We you know, we know part of that is that push to EVs

That have taken different

Different forms in Europe and and then in the States

But both have been, you know

somewhat

Fiscally driven and and and the tax advantages that they offer in Europe are not the same as they are at home

But still this is what has partly driven the the electric

Car market and it's still not taking off. So now there's all this backtrack and

And and and sales are suffering, but I think there's more to it than that the economy is not doing all that great

There's that has been soaring inflation. We've seen the price of cars go up

I think now that the average transaction price for a car is and we mentioned 46 47,000 now

50 actually in some some holes and and and that's up from 38,000 in

2020 I think I think you're right as we were talking about mid 30s to high 30s and in around that time frame and

It got into the low 40s and makes been creeping upward

But there's no there's no question that the devil that has an effect on the affordability of new vehicles for sure

In other words, our financing cars are not particularly

Attractive

Leasing is still the way to go because I see ads for leases that are in the mid between two and three hundred dollars a month range

And I'm not talking about the exotic cars

To our audience on this I'm talking about the basic a lot of them American iron and good. They're good cars and

But the leases are while

My recommendation personally is try not to lease a car for more than three years and maybe 36,000 or 40,000 miles because you pay

Beyond the limit of the miles if you're a high mileage driver

But it's a lot cheaper than financing a vehicle at five or six percent for three or four or five years

and

That I think you have to be careful of our monthly cost for quite frankly and then and the consumers monthly cost

Besides whatever else they're paying for a month

Well, I think that's a it. That's a

A

Decision that everyone has to make I think that's correct thing with leases leases are you you know

You're the car is not yours at the end of the term and if you just and I know people who just leave them for it

like you say 24 30 months just turn them in and

Get a new one and don't don't think twice about it

Others buy the cars at the end of the at the end of the term and in that case usually that

Milo's doesn't really matter because if you're buying a car

They don't care about those extra miles or they shouldn't care about those extra miles

But the price the buyout price is also determined the determining factor

So you're still you're still paying interest is just on what are you paying interest on the on a fraction of the value of the car?

You're paying

You know interest on the entirety of the car if you're buying it and and financing it

but and and

So I think that the the thing with the car market and and

among other things is that the

The cars and we've discussed this before too, you know, I have anyway

Um is that cars are way better built than they ever were

So having an eight-year-old a ten-year-old car now is is

totally

You know, you're not acceptable looking. It's totally acceptable. It's reliable

It's still reliable transportation

but so

Let me jump in on

I'm the ten-year car ownership situation because I have several of them or two or three

Yeah, so much the best thing with the most important thing that I can discuss in the in owning a car through ten years of use is

To watch out for and be aware of and try to prevent rust from

Starting up in the parts of the car components of the car which is exterior parts mostly and probably under body

like brake lines and and

items like that from rusting and being becoming dangerous

During that ten-year period which which is something you won't see at all until it happens. I once lost my brakes

On the mass chooses term pike in my

2000 Euro van this was probably eight or nine or ten years ago

I didn't totally lose them

But I lost them to the point that the brake pedal mostly went to the floor before anything started to help me slow down and

Uh, they the the the

Parts that were failing were the brake lines and they were rusted when I got it into a

Repair place and they had to replace all the brake lines

You you bring up a very good point because I had a similar situation a couple years ago

In what was then a I think it's something like a 15 year old

Very nice very well maintained Mercedes GL

Wagon and the car was and still is mints, but I was driving down the road and

At 35 miles an hour principle and it went to the floor and the brake lines are gone

And I think this is the risk of

Cars that fit and I know your Euro van gets a lot of use at certain times a year

But then you know for months we don't see it around town, right? And I think

cars that fit

Long periods of time not being used having being used during the winter and maybe not

You deteriorate it's amazing what happened to them. Yes

About where and they're not having having thinking about where and tear occurring when you park a car for for six months

Even if it's in the winter time and you zone in the summer time things the funny things go on in the wear and tear of

Componentry and bodies and whatever else especially if the cars parked outside

So

That is sort of a safety situation and I'd like to bring up something

You interrupt the this conversation part and bring up something about the new cars all of which seem to have these

toggle switches in the between the seats

For their emergency brakes and I wondered what would happen if you pulled one of those toggles up while you were driving

You know we used to have a pedal down many big cars may still have pedals down the left foot down on the side of the

driver's side of the compartment

The some of the older cars used to have handles between the seats and they and they were very

Mechanically effective at least they felt that way now you have a toggle switch and you pull it up

There's a does the emergency brake go on suddenly and and and the rear wheels stop in

Turning because they're they're putting such a force on the wheel. It would be

Probably a smart thing for owners to try out their emergency brakes on older cars

Periodically because sometimes the lines freeze up to a rust and and they're if they're cable connected

I do not know what how they're connected now in the new cars, but they're cable connected. It's very possible those old

those

Mechanical backups

Called the emergency brakes might not function as in the case of my VW van

I don't sure I ended up trying that but the experience was quite something when the pedal went to the floor and the car

Their vehicle would not slow down significantly

It made me drive very carefully to the rest of my destination in that case and and I did it safely and got it fixed

But this is a safety check

There's one good solution for that is electric cars with one pedal driving. They'll bring you to a stop

If you have if they have that adjustability to all electric cars have that adjustability. No, not well

That's why I was there was do I know yeah

Yeah, there's there's philosophies in electric car driving there

But there's a my car and for example do that. Do you think no very little?

So that that comment is a good comment, but it's not universal to the electric

It wasn't meant to be it was meant more as a joke than anything else. Oh, okay

But yeah, it's old old e-brakes also you or the other thing would happen as you pull the e-brake and then it wouldn't

Relief and then you're stuck with the e-brake, right?

Sometimes it sometimes the emergency brake the e-brake freeze when they're in the garage

I have found if I've lived to park the car in a garage for let's say two or three months and and I

Had put the emergency brake on inside

It's sometimes they don't release when you first

Try to have them release and you have to almost

Move the car to get the the emergency brake effect to release itself and let the car tires roll

I do have to say I missed those

E-brakes mechanical e-brakes on the rear wheels. I grew up driving front-wheel drive cars

With e-brakes and that was the only car to that was the only way to do a 180 fairly quickly and easily

And now I ride exact was pulling the e-brake and turning it around

Yep

Do not try this at home

Of the exactly do not go home. Oh, okay. Now your list Jay

Well, I'll be fine with my list. I'm I'm following looking at hold on before we go to my list

I'm looking at a bring a trailer which every car enthusiast should be looking at every morning. It is an addiction

Warning, but if you do that and you should start to Robin you'd find you'd see this morning Robin

There is a 1975

Brickland for sale and if you miss yours and you bid above above fifteen thousand two hundred and fifty dollars right now

This one could maybe be yours. What color is it? It is white

Mine was on tan, which is effectively a light tan brown

So it's like I'm repainted that is not my vehicle, but I'm interested in them

Prices at 15,000

15,000 we must be a little like new because mine mine got restored as those people who have ever looked at looked up

What was my the title of my thing on YouTube?

Listeners, I can't you want to see the restoration of a brickland that was in very deteriorated condition

Listers it was mine and it was hauled out of my garage. I think four years ago and

It is on YouTube and I think your viewership is in the millions

And if you look up world world world world world worst brickland restoration or garage restoration of a brickland

Some words to that effect might pull it up for you listeners. Okay?

Okay, Jay move on well the restoration was good. The other one is a is a car that disappeared

In 2010 the whole brand disappeared and it was part of the GM family of

Brands and with the debacle of the crisis in 2008 2009

The sob a brand was killed and sob had just come out if you remember

With a very good-looking

95 9-9-5

Arrow it was a big it was a large

Very I thought pretty good-looking sedan. I don't know if you remember that car right?

I do remember and I'm not sure I agree with you your appeal of the of that particular

Car body style, but go ahead. I thought it was in the it was an appealing large sedan

I don't say that was something that would drive

but in the sob world it was certainly

Probably the most plush

Car that sob had produced and it might have had a great

Life except that sob cease to exist of pretty much today the car came out

They're very I don't know what the total number of cars were

produced was

Or is but I can tell you that this one right now is that no reserve for less than five thousand dollars

With less than three hours to go and if you're a sob fan

This is something you should check out

Here was that to 15 to 2010. Okay, since I have a

An older vehicle that currently is a garage because it's not drivable

It's my 1984

Mazda RX 7

Parts are not available or we're not available through standard auto body shop for

for the damage repair that it required and

If you go by some of these really old cars that

Are very visually appealing from their original days, but you don't get in an accident

That's my only admonition to the tool with listeners on this

Is do not get an accident in any of these vehicles because you might find them very hard to get repaired

So you're saying keep your eyes on the road is what you're saying your eyes on the road and don't get an accident like I did

To our audience. Thank you for listening to this week's version of car keys with J. DeMarken and Robin Leach

car keys with Robin Leach and J. DeMarken is produced at the facilities of

WHDD 91.9 FM Robin hood radio comm Sharon Connecticut

Car Keys with Robin Leech and Jay de Marcken – December 8, 2025

About this episode

washer fluid

freezing

Mazda CX-5

voice activation

technology in cars

Jeep Cherokee

voice activated car controls

Porsche Macan

Honda

Tesla Mode

reliability

Tesla

leasing

high mileage driver

rust

Eurovan

brake pedal

brake lines

Mercedes GL

emergency brake

one pedal driving

electric cars

E-brake

Bring a Trailer

Bricklin SV-1

GM family of brands

Saab 9-5

Mazda Rx 7

Request an Explanation

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