Car Keys with Robin Leech and Jay de Marcken – November 3, 2025

He is Robin Leach, he is Jada Markin, this is CarKeys.

Well hello to our listeners for this week's show of CarKeys with Jada Markin and Robin Leach.

We are in the middle of fall, the weather is getting colder.

In a recent show I discussed the situation with car tires or vehicle tires and general

trucks, cars, whatever, anything that's inflated.

It happened to apply to soccer balls too, which I am imminently familiar with because I'm

besides doing this show I'm also a soccer referee, which may or may not interest anybody

listening, but we have to make sure that the balls are inflated properly if we are

going to a game with temperatures that are below 50, even 60 degrees and we don't

know where the balls were inside when they came out to the game and there are specific

balls that are used for soccer games.

So we have to measure the pressure inside and we have little mini pumps to pump them up

to the required pressure for soccer balls.

So to that end that's what the show with all the tire pressures that your discussion

that went on recently was all about.

And I just wanted to continue and say one more thing to that and then I want to go to

something else which we will do.

Regarding tire pressures, as happy as I am with the Jeep system versus the Audi system

which I suggested was the Audi system was very complex to find out what tire might be

low when you started a car and saw their tire light on versus the Jeep which you

can scroll into a menu which shows all four corners of the tires and their irrespective

pressures and therefore it allows you to find the...

And then when the tire pressure light comes on it tells you which tire is low right off

the bat.

So you know which tire to fill as opposed to going around and checking the pressures

independently with a tire gauge.

To that point the problem the nuisance with the Jeep side is for somebody like myself,

your host here, is that if I leave the setting on the menu that shows the tires and pressures

I tend to as I drive along watch the pressures change independently and that may mean you

wonder whether if you see one corner of your four wheels at twenty five and the

others at twenty six and maybe twenty seven after you've supposedly put let's say twenty

six pounds in do you have to stop and get the ones that aren't staying even with the

others inflated.

The answer is no.

Tire pressures will change if you are parked in the sun on one side and shade in the

other the right the sunny side tires may be one or two pounds higher than the ones

in the shade and so on and the same goes when you're driving along roads once you start

your car up in the morning.

So the moral of this particular part of the story on tires is that you can't get too

in saying about trying to keep the pressures at one evenly set level once you put them

all on it.

Don't look at the tire pressures on the gauges.

What?

You're saying to keep your eyes on the road and quit looking at the tires.

That is part of it.

Yes.

And the other is just don't get compulsive about trying to keep the pressures same all

the time because it's not going to happen because of the various parts of components

of driving in the weather factors.

That's that on tires everybody.

I hope I don't have to mention it again for some time.

The other thing I was going to bring up Jay if you have any comment go ahead

while I'm thinking about something else.

I just had another great weekend at another Cars and Coffee.

Another car show in the southern part of the state of Connecticut.

And this one was a Porsche themed car show.

It wasn't really a cars and coffee, it was more like a Porsche than beer because it

took place at a brewery.

And it was a pretty organic organization with this Porsche shop down in Stratford

had organized this and just pretty much just put a posting on Instagram.

And there must have been, I don't know, over a hundred cars there.

And just some very, very cool cars and also some very cool people.

And for those of you who know Porsches there were actually two Porsche Carrera GTs

which is the hypercar that Porsche made in 2004 and 2005, if I am correct.

Fossil fuels, correct?

Yes, total fossil fuels.

There might have been one or two electrics there.

But I meant the two Carreras you're talking about.

As opposed to maybe a hybrid version.

And I'm not sure what model Porsche has in any kind of hybrid version.

2005, 2004 there were no, this is real hypercars with the V10

engine and a manual six-speed transmission.

Wow.

And they were just, they were, I think, I was told there were like 600 of them

totally imported in the country.

I'm not even sure there are that many.

And there happened to be a half a dozen in just the southern part of the state

which is not really surprising.

But there were more, you know, there were more plebeian Porsche 996s

like mine that were 997, 993s.

The whole, the entire, you know, from the 60s up to today,

mostly 911s but there were a few SUVs too.

And it's just, it's just, you know, it was a beautiful day.

Great show, like I said, great people.

And car shows do still attract people.

And we saw this at Lime Rock last weekend.

We see it again in the southern part of the state.

And actually a Porsche Club actually had a car show elsewhere in the state

yesterday as well, I think.

So, you mentioned car, cars and coffee on Sunday mornings

and people will show up, they drive in.

They talk about their cars.

A couple hours, they compare notes, they look at each other's cars

and then everybody goes home.

Is there anything about ownership knowledge that comes out of that

for not only the specific brand of car,

whose coffee clutch you may be attending,

but cars in general, other cars in general

that would be interesting to listers in terms of maintenance

or what to look out for as car wear goes up,

meaning miles go up and all that.

Or do not.

Is it just about how fun they are to drive,

yada, yada, yada without getting into technical stuff?

On this particular, and we know Porsche is a special breed, right?

They are sports cars or were originally sports cars.

Now you have mainstream SUVs.

But there were a couple of, there were two Porsche shops there.

One was specifically, specifically prepares cars for track use

and race cars.

And the other shop is actually more about tuning street cars

and maintaining street cars.

People who actually get away from dealerships

and find specialty shops who work on specific brands or models.

And in the case of Porsche, nothing is really cheap

when it comes to maintenance and repairs.

That's true.

But these shops tend to be more cost effective than others,

than dealerships.

But in our area, you find specialty shops as well.

We both know shops that work on either all brands of vehicles

or specific vehicles and are cost effective

and know the product really well.

Also about, you know, and I'm going on a tangent now

and talking about maintenance and repairs.

I'm always surprised that in this one particular shop I go to

where you would think that because things have become

so sophisticated and full of electronics and cars and all

that, that they can't handle it.

And it turns out that the younger generations

of mechanics are actually pretty well tuned

into all of the electronics side of things.

Right.

And there's plenty of software and website and support

out there for these independent shops

to be able to handle, you know, high-tech cars.

Conversely, may I jump in quickly?

I have discovered to the point of independent car repair

places that they are actually, some of them

are actually better than the new car dealerships

as our cars get older.

And the mechanics there in the dealerships,

the mechanics that you used to know about the older cars

that I'm referring in specifically to a car I own,

which is a Jaguar, which is 2004.

But you go in with my car and if you go to a Jaguar-specific

dealership, I have found, or an Audi dealership for even,

that if the mechanics have not been around long enough

to have that experience for our older cars

that are not as electronically connected, et cetera,

et cetera, they new dealerships, the new mechanics,

really aren't as equipped to handle old, old, you know,

and I'm talking 20 to 30-year-old vehicles,

which I have it on some of, when you take them in.

Either the mechanics aren't equipped,

knowledgeably in their heads to figure things out,

or maybe some of the equipment that the dealerships used

to have, and maybe they're, you know, not a handful of cars

that may still be on the road around for them to service,

that they are not very useful going, taking your Jaguar

or old Audi or old anything, too.

To your point, Jay, the mechanic, the independent mechanics,

in many cases, can be a great advantage

to the dealerships who sold these cars,

not to mention that in many cases,

I find they will be more economically,

more economical to repair in the total cost and run thing,

even though hourly labor rates are now between, you know,

$100 and $200 an hour at many independent shops,

and they are over $200 an hour in one instance.

I know specifically a Jeep dealership in Florida

at $275 an hour.

If they actually book the hourly figure in the time it takes

to repair a vehicle that they may be working on.

So, well-meaning positivity is being addressed by me

and you to independent repair places.

A lot of them whom are, well, some really good ones

that are in our Northwest broadcast area.

Would you agree?

Yes, totally.

Okay.

How's the industry doing?

Oh, by the way, new website I discovered this morning.

Get your pencil out, people.

visor.vin, and I don't know much about it.

What is it called?

visor, v-i-s-o-r dot v-i-n.

Is v-i-n like VIN number?

Yeah.

Okay.

And they, what do they advertise of?

What are they, what are they offering on their website?

Not just pages of listings, see the whole market.

So, you can enter a model, a VIN number,

or even a license plate.

And I did that with my car.

Plugged in one of my license plates

and it will give you, if not a car fax,

it will give you some information about the car itself.

Like I plugged in my car plate for my Volkswagen Tour Rig

and it told me that the last information they had on it

was what dated back to 2016

and that it had been sold by a dealership in Georgia,

which is where I bought the car.

So, I don't know how, like I said,

I just stumbled upon it this morning

and I haven't really looked at it,

but part of it looks pretty interesting.

Part of it looks just pretty scary

because it's just like, you know,

you can pretty much find out a lot about everybody's car.

Well, that is true and to another point,

for listeners, if you buy a used vehicle

that has a trip computer in it or a navigation system in it,

you can also find out a lot of interesting,

at least points of places that your vehicle may have

been to before you ended up in your hands.

For instance, and I have mentioned this

in a show a long time ago,

I wanted to put in my home address just for fun

and I was setting up the Vin, the trip computer or the GPS

and I found out that this vehicle that I bought

had originated in Michigan.

I bought it through Carvana and it was a Jeep

and not only told me that that was a,

and I found that because I found a whole inventory

of addresses that this Jeep had gone to,

including the owner's home address.

That's pretty cool, huh?

Which brings up a couple of suggestions to people

if you're gonna let your cars go,

more sort of like if you're gonna replace your cell phone,

your old cell phone with a new cell phone,

is if you wanna not want this information

to get into somebody else's hands,

whether it be a cell phone that might be sold

or reseller reconditioned phone,

which I bought several of over time,

or a vehicle, you wanna clean out all that information

before you let it go out of your ownership or hands.

So, Robin, have you followed what's happening

in the industry like sales

and how car companies are doing, both American cars?

Yes, yeah, I'll chime in on that

because yes, I read a lot about that

in the weekly automotive news that I get,

and I was looking for the latest one for this show

and I didn't find it,

but the industry is doing remarkably well.

Are you sure you're reading a recent copy

of automotive news because I don't see it

as doing really well?

That's what's coming to a change, I think, Jay,

and I will get to that.

As I say, I think when they first started out

and we were all concerned about tariffs

and Mike jumped in and said,

don't worry about it, it's not gonna be a big deal.

He turned out to be sort of right and in part

at the first six months of the tariff industry.

Are we more than six months into the tariff world?

I'm not sure, but in any event,

I believe then dealerships stock up on a lot of inventory,

every piece of inventory, new cars that they could get

and the importers with the cars

are actually not built in either North America,

which may or may not include Canada and Mexico,

but Europe and Asia.

I felt then that the tariffs were gonna be more,

have more effect on the pricing of the cars

that were built in Europe,

actually built and assembled in Europe or Asia,

than being built and assembled in the United States

of U.S. parts.

I think that's changing

and I think we're starting to see the prices,

the sort of a forecast that prices are going to go up

and we're in 2025 right now, soon to be in 2026.

The dealers have had a lot of time to sell vehicles

and there's been a lot of advertising

about pre-purchase vehicles that were tariff free

by Subaru and lots of the manufacturers.

Those ads are disappearing

in terms of availability of vehicles that were tariff free.

So everybody's been very conscious about the cost

of vehicle ownership as well as financing them

and that is not good for the industry going forward.

I'm afraid to believe.

I have to believe.

You want to add to that?

Yeah, well, I think, I'm just reading about car companies

cutting down either cutting jobs

like Rivian just laid off I think 600 people

and it's directly related to the fact that sales

are down.

Right.

GM has paused the factory that produces their

electric platform, I forget what the name of it is.

But, and Ford has also called it

the lightning, the F-150, the lightning.

Yeah, production is way down.

Yeah, and so it, my first reaction is,

electric vehicle sales are way down.

And yes they are.

And BOID in China had a bad quarter too.

But I think it's more than just the electric industry.

I think it's way beyond just the electric industry situation.

I think it's a car industry in general.

I think it's gonna be across the board

and not lots of other items from vehicles.

But yeah, I think the vehicle industry is in for a possible,

if not dangerous, worrisome, slow down coming forward.

I've noticed that the manufacturers in the US

are now back at the 0% financing interest rate mode

of advertising, which I didn't see for quite a long time.

But they offer, instead of dollar discounts,

they offer you 0% financing cost charges.

And it's very easy.

I forget what the dollars per thousand borrowed is,

but it's a flat, whatever it is,

it's a flat along the way

based on the price of the vehicle.

And there's also cash back that are back in Vogue

for vehicles in lieu of low-priced financing rates.

So all the magic, Jay, that we have seen in the auto industry

for how to sell vehicles is coming back online

as maybe sales are slowing for one reason or another.

Okay, so let's be a little less doom and gloom

and look at the positive things.

Have you followed what's,

the Tokyo auto show and all the concept coming up?

I have not.

I'm just looking very briefly

and there are a few interesting concepts out there.

One of them is like a six-wheel minivan slash SUV

luxury vehicle from Lexus,

which is interesting and, you know-

Posed for production?

Not a word I should say,

but you're right.

No, but what I found interesting is that,

first of all, the minivan slash SUV,

you know, a format size of a vehicle

is still what luxury vehicles are gonna become, I think.

We've seen luxury vans in Japan for a few years now,

where level of finish and luxuries, unbelievable.

On another note, I just read a quickly test review

of the new Rivian, not a Rivian, Lucid.

The Lucid, what's the name of the SUV?

Yeah.

It's a very large car.

It is fast, comfortable, very expensive,

and I'm sure in its class of cars,

it's gonna sell very well,

even though, you know-

Well, it will sell very well

to the wealthy who get afforded.

Yeah.

That may not numerically mean it,

a lot of vehicles will be on the road.

It's not gonna be enough to keep Lucid

going in the long term.

That's for sure.

Back to concept cars.

I'm trying to see what else there was.

Totally lost the page.

Well, while you're thinking about that,

let me go let our audience know something

that we are still in about maybe bringing

onto this show, which will be possibly periodically

user experiences on one of our shows.

We'll invite the users of specific vehicles,

maybe the people we run into

to come on this show,

taped, telling us their experiences

for specific vehicles.

We might like to know how they responded to it

and during, let's say, long distance

cross country cruises, electric vehicles

are a primary interest to me

because I have been ranting about

the time that you have to take to charge vehicles

when you can't drive 700 miles a day

without, with only coffee stops and brief food stops

as opposed to recharging.

Recharging times, which have been,

can be long in some cases

and relatively short in others,

but also limiting you and the freedom to drive

between the charges.

If you wanna take a side trip

and you're on an interstate going from,

let's say, here to Chicago

and you suddenly wanna go,

you see a sign for something that's 75 miles north

of and out of the boondocks of some state you're in

and you look down at your charging level left

and you worry about whether you can get up there

and whether there'll be a charging port there

and all these collector cars come with

indexes of where charging stations are

and they are increasing numerically all the time.

But I don't know whether or not

you can actually plug a destination in

the computer of the car

before you actually head for that destination

and find out that there are no or one

or X number of charging ports up at where you're going

that may be off a main route

where they are fairly reliably

have charging stations available for you

to stop and charge.

The example that I hope is gonna show up in the show

will be a Rivian usage,

a Rivian owner, a family who has recently taken

a so-called a cross country and back trip in their Rivian

and they had a wonderful experience

but they also had the,

and they offered to come on this show

and give our audience a chance to hear about

first-hand experiences, the pros and the cons.

Jay, that might happen to you

when you have one of these fancy cars you drive

that maybe it's worth having that owner report in

on what he likes about that kind of car,

whether it's a Lucid or a Rivian or a Porsche or whatever.

But for our audience, that may happen.

So you can stay tuned and keep listening

if you want to find out what we're gonna pop up

with on a future show here on Carkeys.

So as we near the end of the show,

talking about driving and safety

and just read an article about the new traffic circle

in West Hartford, Connecticut.

Oh, where is it?

I don't know, I know it's in West Hartford

but I saw a video of it and I saw pictures

and it is just ridiculous.

That is a whole new...

What a ridiculous translate to for our listeners,

for our audience.

It was built with hardly any elevation change

in the middle of the circle

and these stupid arrows painted on the ground

that just give the wrong idea of what to do in the circle

and then they were surprised

that people actually drove through the driving circle.

So then they put barrels all around the driving circle

so now it looks like a construction site

and they've restricted the amount of space

for larger trucks to be able to maneuver around the circle.

Anyway, the problem with driving circles

is the design has to be consistent.

The rules of the road have to be consistent.

One of the few really good driving circles around,

I think, is the one we have in Great Barrington

which is really well-designed.

You can see it, you don't drive straight through

the intersection and it's pretty simple.

You go into these, you do not have the right of way

going into the circle and once you're in,

you do have the right of way.

When you enter the traffic circle,

put your signal to the right and exit.

It's not complicated.

Okay, it's not complicated and it was fairly well-designed.

I agree with you for our audience's information

that they did a fairly good job doing it.

The biggest issue was going to be for tractor trailers.

Anything that's long like a tractor trailer

has to have a wider range of turning radius

to be able to effectively do that

without cutting off the center of a traffic circle

with their trailers.

They also have bigger tires

and that's why the Great Barrington circle

works really well because there is curbing,

but then there's a next level up, if you will.

Okay.

Cars are not supposed to put their wheels on,

but trucks can go over that part.

And that's fine.

Right, the trailers can drag over that point.

There's a circle in Goshen,

which has to a certain degree some of the issues

you said about the one you saw in West Hartford.

And what they've solved is during the summertime,

I find that they've got arrows

and protective stands on that

to keep people from crossing that,

but in this winter time, when it's plowed,

they have taken some of those portable stations,

so to speak, control stations down

or they've moved them in so that there was not,

I don't know whether you could actually cross

through the center, but if you had trouble

getting around it because of weather related stuff,

they were trying to limit that problem

by removing things that might get in the way

of plows trying to plow the roads to keep it clear.

So you're right, they need to learn how to design these

traffic circles in a rate.

Are all the traffic circles in Europe wonderful, Jay?

No, they're not all wonderful,

but they over the years, and it took time.

Let's be a bit beyond.

It takes time, of course it does.

It takes time for, first of all, to figure out

what works and what doesn't work,

and it takes time to come up with a design that works

consistently, and it takes time for people to get

used to driving traffic circles.

When I go back to Europe, it takes me a while

to get really proficient, if you will,

to navigate the circles.

That's true.

So I get it, it takes, you know.

Okay, some trivia before Mike chimes in,

says we have to close listeners, audience.

I have a Hyundai Sonata, and this is gonna interest only

those of you who are like me.

It's got a, just shy of 120,000 miles,

and it has one of the things in its main use

is average speed, which I have never reset

since I've owned the car.

The average speed that I have apparently driven

this car over its almost 120,000 miles,

and this includes lots of highway driving at 70 and 80

and sometimes 90, just for short bursts,

36 miles an hour.

That's 120,000 miles at roughly 36 miles per hour

is what I think all my vehicles are doing.

I can reset some of that on some of my vehicles,

so I can't tell you that they're all,

but they're all, so the moral of this

is probably that your average speed

in any car you're driving is probably gonna be

between 30 and 40 miles an hour

over the life of your vehicle.

I think this is true, but I also think we are privileged

to be living where we live because in most parts of the world,

they don't even come close to that

because they crawl for hours in traffic every day.

Like California.

All right, and on that note, you have run out of miles.

So to our audience this week,

stay tuned for maybe some guest discussions

and on vehicles, mostly vehicles, we hope,

and other trivia and other things suitable for Kark.

This is Jay DeMarquin and Robin Leach saying goodbye.

Karkies with Robin Leach and Jay DeMarquin

is produced at the facilities of WHDD91.9 FM,

RobinhoodRadio.com, Sharon, Connecticut.

Car Keys with Robin Leech and Jay de Marcken – November 3, 2025

About this episode

tire pressure monitoring system

tire gauge

Cars and Coffee

Porsche Carrera Gts

Porsche Carrera

hybrid

V10 engine

manual six-speed transmission

Porsche 911S

car show

Porsche Club

sports cars

specialty shops

Audi

Jaguar

VIN number

Volkswagen Touareg

Rivian

GM

Ford F-150 Lightning

electric vehicle

Tokyo Auto Show

Hyundai Sonata

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