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

He is Robin Leach. He is Jada Markin. This is CarKeys.

Good day to our listeners for this week's version of CarKeys with Jada Markin and Robin Leach.

I'd like to start this week off with, it's a late summer and I have, I am looking at

all this stuff going on in the automobile industry and one of the good things that

seems to be happening, at least with some imports, is a reduction in their sticker pricing. I bring

up only one maker at this point because that's what the story is about and not a lot of listeners

probably know what a grenadier is, but there are some local area of people here who already have

them and they are driving around our northwest corner and I don't know that Jay's actually

driven one. I have not, but it is a very rugged looking vehicle to match the Jeep Wranglers and

the Ford Broncos and the Mercedes Galundawagans or whatever you call them and they have been

in the US for a couple of years, not selling very well, probably partly because of production

problems that are, I think, taking care of, but more probably because their prices are up in the

upper end of the spectrum of these off-road vehicles, therefore you have to have a good

purse string to purchase one or lease one. In any event, they've reduced their prices

from what they were and I may or may not bring that up, by 10 percent across the line,

the 10 percent goes from $80,000 to $90,000 vehicles and maybe higher downward by roughly

10 percent at each level. I suspect that we're going to see some of this in other makers, maybe

the foreign imports from Europe. I don't know what's going to happen with the Asian imports

that aren't built in the US, but the tariffs are obviously taking an effect psychologically and

maybe realistically in some of the maker's minds and the import. Let me barge in on this one. I

think Grenadier is a great new vehicle. We've talked about it. I think Grenadier's problem is,

does not reflect the industry as a whole or trends in the market. I think the problem with

Grenadier is Grenadier's marketing and it's a very tough proposition to come out with a new vehicle

and hope to sell it across the board, especially in countries like ours. I'm unable to even

list a dealer. I know there are dealers around and this is because I pay attention to this vehicle.

I know that if I wanted one, I know how to do a search to find them, but you don't see any

advertising for Grenadier. You do not see a lot of marketing efforts and no standing out dealer

network. I think that's where the problem lies. It's very hard for any other manufacturer and new

manufacturers that are out there and there are some. Whether it's Tesla, Lucid, all these new

electric car companies, Rivian have an online buying model which goes well with the whole

concept of going electric, I guess, maybe. I think Grenadier's problem, I know they've had

production issues, but I think the main problem is marketing. They've been fixed. The largest

Grenadier, well the only one I know of is in Danbury and it's part of a Mercedes-Benz product

down there in Danbury Mall. Besides the fact that there are very few other dealerships or

locations, I don't know whether you would buy one and start out on an off-road

road adventure somewhere remotely in our country knowing whether or not you'd be fully reliable

without needing a call to AAA or any other means of getting it to a dealer.

I remember when I had one of my first day eight outies, I was stranded down at the end of a

national park one evening because a car wouldn't start and there wasn't an outie dealer within

400 miles of me. That's just an example of the kind of things some of these manufacturers

are having difficulty with, which is part of what Jay has been talking about, dealer network

locations, numerous numbers, and the invisibility factor is certainly part of it. Although,

as we all know, all you got to do is put the name in Google search or another search and

up should pop something whether or not it's near you is remains to be seen.

Yeah, and the name of the company is INEOS, I-N-E-O-S, that's correct. Supply the credit

dealer would do it or INEOS is required is another thing that you find out when you try to go locate

these smaller new manufacturers that show up and want to make a headway into sales in the

United States. Yeah, that's fine. I think the strategy of cutting prices on that vehicle

doesn't make much sense because I don't think those vehicle purchases of those types are not

really price sensitive. Whether you're looking at $80,000 or $90,000, I think people who are

looking at those vehicles are not cross shopping. Exactly. I agree with that. I do know a person

personally who bought one and in the early days of their marketing and their appearance in our country,

they were coming in fully loaded with a lot, which is what new manufacturers do. They have

introductory models and things like that and they're usually on the pricier end of their

spectrum. This person told me that he basically got a multi-thousand-dollar discount off of the

sticker price of the vehicle he ended up with because the dealer at that point, and this was

really early on, wanted to get them out on the road and basically discounted all the options

and gave them a big discount. I don't know whether that still happens in this marketing world or not,

but we can move on. There's a auto show, I guess, going on in Munich, Jay, or if it's not going

on, it's coming up and Audi, BMW, Kia, Ford, Cooper, and BYD, Chinese companies, Chinese

companies are all going to be represented. When you next go to Europe, I don't know that our listeners

really care about what's going on in Europe, but I do and you do, but you might find out what

Europe's situation is with the Chinese companies. If you know anything about that in terms of

what are these, you have talked about how inexpensive they are in China, all the Chinese

brands, strikingly so, if you really research it. Yeah, I think they're not going to be that

inexpensive in Europe, and I doubt, I don't know when they're going to get into the United States

and what they would be charged. Well, interestingly, I think Chinese cars are like the rest of

Chinese products. The idea that they have to be cheap to sell is just a concept of the past,

and to that effect, there was a statement from the CEO of Rivian just recently, I read about that too,

saying that Chinese cars are just technologically more advanced and better quality than ours.

This is coming from the CEO of Rivian, and then he went on to discuss the fact that

they're not competing, Chinese manufacturers are not competing on price anymore,

where they're allowed to compete, like in Europe and the rest of the world,

but they're competing on the quality and the merits of the product, and that's what the day,

if there is a day when we see those vehicles landed on our market, they are going to make

inroads, just like the Japanese manufacturers made inroads in the 1970s. Toyota, Datsun at the time,

came into this market with low-priced vehicles, then built a reputation on quality,

and now there's nothing cheaper or lesser about a Japanese car relative to anything else,

and that's just the way the cookie bounces. So, yes, BYD and other Chinese manufacturers

will make inroads. Speaking of BYD, interestingly, their sales are down for 2025, and their sales

are down, I think, almost 20%, including in China, and that to me is a greater problem,

and actually that was a discussion at the Munich Auto Show as well. European manufacturers,

such as Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, are taking a hit because the Chinese market has slowed down

quite a bit, for whatever reasons that is. Well, that may be exportability at all levels,

it may be saturation, it may still be a little bit of the structural network of charging stations

availability in these countries. Mine has got thousands of charging ports around their cities,

and I don't know much about European ones, we are still in a budding sort of

early stages of trying to get ours up in the country. Yeah, I just think it has little to do

or not everything to do with the electric market per se, it's just car sales in general are down

in China, so whether it's ISEs or electric cars, sales are down, and all manufacturers who sell

there are taking a hit. And meanwhile sales seem to have been pretty good in the first half of this

year, although industry experts figured that that's because there was a rush in the spring, people

went out and started buying cars because we were afraid of incoming tariffs. And the ending of

of as we talked in the last show, I think, the ending of the tax incentives that are coming up

quickly in about less than a month from the show's broadcast. Yep, and manufacturers such as GM,

Volkswagen, and others have already started to plan slowing down production of EVs or even

shutting down certain lines of production for pickup trucks as one slowing down. I don't know what

the Ford Mackie is doing. It has been a pretty good seller. I saw some chart where they compared it

the Ford Mackie Mustang version or the Mustang version, the Ford Mackie versus the real Mustang.

And it was neck and neck, I think, in one month or maybe one quarter as to the numbers of regular

Mustang's fossil fuel, that is, the old style and the Mackie. So we'll see where that goes too.

You mean the biggest marketing flop in recent Ford history?

The Mackie. You know, the sales were pretty good.

Yeah, they could be better. They should be better, but anyway.

Yes, but they should be better for lots of electric cars across the line.

I think so.

Interestingly, yesterday I was driving in and around New York and I just saw the two

Cadillac EVs, both the Lyric and the Vistic. And the Lyric is like a mid-sized SUV. It's

got a bit of a coupe look to it and the Vistic is more like a full-size, slightly smaller than that

Escalade, but it looks like a more traditional electric, more traditional SUV. And they are

both very, very good-looking vehicles. And when you look at the performance numbers,

whether it's the range, power, and their specs in general, they're pricing, yes,

they're expensive vehicles, but they're very competitive vehicles and a really compelling

proposition if you're looking for. I agree if you can afford them. I agree the looks of them

are striking. I think the looks of the regular Cadillacs have become more striking in the last

few years. And I'm seeing more and more of these giant Escalades. And they're all big and black,

so they're very noticeable. And they have a very high stance on the road as well. And I think

they are very much of a favorite of the airport group that you see in the cell phone parking lots.

All of New York City is full of Cadillac Escalades with one passenger in them.

I don't know whether that makes the fares appropriate for the vehicle you're riding in

or whether it doesn't, Jake. Well, it's like if you go in the Uber world, it's a license to

steal, I guess. It's just... No, really, okay. Well, if people are willing to pay for it.

A bit of Audi information for those Audi fans who may be listening. The A4 is being discontinued,

I believe. The A5, a model of it, is changing their makeup. And they're using the A6 to blend

both features of the A5 and the A4 line going forward, I think, in 2026. I'm not sure it's smart,

but sedan sales, Jay, as you know, and you've been saying, are down across the line of all

the manufacturers as people gravitate or have been gravitating toward the SUV styles and alternative

styles to just straight sedans. That's it for Audi. Well, I had an experience with an Audi Q5

recently, which is... It's actually a first generation. I think it's the first gen. It's

like a 2012-ish car that has not too many miles, but it's well over 70,000 miles. And

I had the opportunity to drive this car over the weekend. And it felt like a brand new car. It was

extremely well maintained. It is extremely well maintained. But also, I just liked everything

about it. And I know I'm opening a can of worms here, because you're going to just jump into

this. I'm about to, so keep going. Yes, you're about to, because I was sitting in that car and

I just liked 2010s, 2015 cars. They still have buttons. You can read the dials

and yet they're modern vehicles without having the impression of looking at your computer screen

or your TV. And I know I'm opening a can of worms because you're going to be about to barge

in with buttons and not buttons. I am. I just, and I will right now, you just gave me the opening.

I would like, I know a lot of us older people would like to see the return of buttons and dials

as opposed to the increasingly increasing use of not two screens on a dashboard, but one large,

almost across the dashboard screen in many of these, some of these new cars, with so many

things you've got to look at to try to figure out where you want to go, that if you are not a genius

and can memorize what's on those screens and learn to touch it without looking at it,

you've got to spend a lot of time looking at screens on the newer models. And this has happened

to your Q5. Jay, we, my family recently acquired a 2019 version of what you just talked about,

a Q5. And it has a center screen, but it's got a regular dashboard, I mean, a regular

viewing dashboard viewing of the of the speed limit, along with a digital insert and other features

that are now missing from the latest version of the Q5. So I will screen, which was relatively,

it was also difficult to do, you had to take your eyes off the road to, let's say, change radio stations,

that kind of thing. But the new screen is just a big disappointment, not positive in my view book at

all. But I will, you know, I know what you mentioned in our notes, and you were talking about

voice activated commands. And I will, I think disagree with you there. I think that if

you can have, and we're getting there, voice commands that are effective, that is not a bad thing. And

I've, you know, we've been, but even, even, you know, even apps like CarPlay that you plug into

your car, you know, responding to messages, look searching in maps and things like that.

These are functions that if you can do with verbal commands, do allow you to keep your eyes on the

road. Okay, let me just bring up an interesting sideline to this, Jay. And I'd like you to comment

on it because you travel a lot. You may not rent cars a lot, but being a

member of a family that has children to college, we now fly out to Colorado to see this child.

And we rent cars. And what you don't know out there is what are the station call letters and what

are the stations you want to try to tune in when you're tuning a radio. So I'm not sure how the

verbal command option is going to help us figure that out. If we want to pick music up in Denver

or Boulder or any other place in the country, where we are, you know, a foreign visitor,

so to speak, and don't know our call letters like we do in this northwest Connecticut corner,

so that we can't just use vocal commands to say, please tune to Robin Hood Radio,

which is what we're broadcasting from. Because we don't know what we're doing,

you know, we don't know what the call for out in any other place outside our listing area,

where our call, where we've learned what our call names are for stations and the like.

And that doesn't help me think that vocal commands are the way to go in radio tuning,

for example. Bring back the knobs. Okay, Robin, we'll bring back knobs. I mean, I do agree with you

for the most part. I mean, I think knobs are the way to go. And if you look in aviation,

they still use a lot of knobs and almost only knobs. So yeah, something to be said about

knobs. We can move on. Go ahead. I want to talk a little bit about, you know, how we buy cars and

we've done this, but go ahead. Well, we've done everything. I mean, we've covered a bunch of

subjects. Yes, so return. You know, I, you know, I'm always looking at cars and a lot of us

look at cars and either our tire kickers, like you can blame me for being, but we can't

just go out and buy a car every time we like one. But I like looking at cars. And if I'm looking at,

you know, just fun cars, I know where to go look for them. But if you're looking to buy a car,

whether it's a new car or used car, there are a bunch of sites out there and I have to plead

guilty. I thought that they were, most of them were all the same based on the same database,

but they seem to not be so sites like auto trader and car gurus, for instance,

seem very similar in their offerings and what you can find. But basically they each

work off their own database and gather their own listings and a little bit like in real estate.

And I just, you know, I think there are a lot of good sites out there, whether it's auto trader,

Kelly Blue Book, Edmunds, car gurus, cars.com. And there's also one called Auto Tempest, which

prides itself on aggregating all the data from all the other companies, all the other websites.

Yes. Can you Google a list of them? Because I've never heard Auto Tempest until just now.

So how would I know to even find that option if I were to go online to do this?

Call Google or DuckDuckGirl.com. Just put in, you know, auto listing sites.

And Auto Tempest seems pretty, you know, they do what they say they do. I have never really used

them. I've used a few others. You know, there's just a lot of it. I mean, everything you need to

know is out there. You just have to take the time to go and look for it. And then look for the car

and just put in your own criteria. And some sites work better than others, I think.

Well, you know, the industry has been seeking the ability to go to online buying and online

looking. And you introduce this topic by saying you like to look at cars and kick tires, and so do I.

And I do not know what the new generation of buyers is actually doing to make the industry

happy that they're seeking online sales without ever going to a lot and kicking the tires and

opening the doors and looking at the interiors. I do not know whether that's going on on

used car sites, too. But can you see what the tire tread depth is on an online purchase of a used car?

I don't know what you can't see. You'd want to see by and prefer to go and go to the lots,

as opposed to start just looking at cars online. Maybe you can do that to see what the pricing

is and all that before you go to a dealer and actually get on the site. A lot of those listing

sites have, you know, usually when you look at a car, most offerings will have, I don't know,

20 to 30 pictures of a car. And usually, you know, one of each wheel, you can see the scratches on

the rims. A lot of times you can see more stuff than you would see that if you're actually just

going and walking around the car. To that point, you know, and we're getting to my favorite

site, which is, you know, for any car addict, you have to go to bring a trailer and I have to read

bring a trailer every morning. You know, you read your news and you read and you look at

bring a trailer and you see what's selling that day. But the listings on sites like bring

a trailer have usually have a couple hundred pictures for a car. So, I mean, everything

is detailed and they make it a point of pointing out the faults of a car. So, you know,

A couple hundred pictures, Jay, to interrupt you. Is that the way you really want to look at a car

and you want to look at 200 pictures of a car? How much time would that take you to do?

An hour every morning? No, an hour for car or an hour.

No, an hour every morning. I'm just kidding. But no, what it does is they will show,

I mean, just go to it. I'm surprised you don't spend any more. Your car guy, go to bring a trailer.

They will show the underbody of the car. They will show the tires. They will show, you know,

if there's a chip in the hood or a scratch in the bumper. I mean, all that is explicitly

detailed. So, it's better in most ways than seeing the car in person. The only thing you're not

doing is driving the car. But you have a drive, you know, you usually have a driving video.

The only thing you can't do is get the smell of it. Does it smell like an old car? Does it

smell as somebody smoked in the car? And that, by the way, is like my biggest beef.

You know, I bought one car sight unseen and when I got to it and I got in it,

I did sense a trace of cigar smell and it drove me nuts. And yes, I was able to get it out of

the car, but it just haunted me for months. That's very interesting, Jay. You know,

and our listeners, I hope, are taking note of these. Here's a comment I have. One thing you

can't do without actually going and physically driving the car is drive the car when you're

looking online. The problem that I had with two Carvana purchases I was personally aware of

was that the brakes on both the vehicles that I was aware of were defective in terms of

Carvana's warranty took care of it. But if you had not driven the car, you would not have felt

the pulsating brake pedal feel that you get when you've got warped discs or worn pads or

whatever else would make that feeling come through. And this is for used car discussions

and research. And you won't find that on Bring a Trailer and you won't find that on

any of the used car sites as being something that is photographicable, for one thing,

or even probably discloseable for another thing. And if you go buy one of these cars and you

drive it off a lot, and it may or may not surface and you don't know about brake feel

and all that kind of thing, you could get yourself into an inexpensive repair that you

needed later on. And it might be beyond the three months, 3,000 mile used car warranties that are

usually state mandated in many states with used car dealers. But it might be something

you just don't know enough about until you take it into a repair shop and they tell you

you need your brakes. Well, let's be honest, any, any used car you buy, you're gonna, there is

always an element of risk, right? I mean, most cars you test, even when you go test drive a car,

you're usually doing three rights around the block. And then back to the dealer. It's, it's

really crazy. 27 miles an hour. Time to park this car in the garage. Thank you. Okay, wow.

All right, moving on. Moving on. Have a wonderful week. Let's go drive cars.

Car keys with Robin Leach and J. DeMarken is produced at the facilities of WHDD 91.9 FM,

RobinhoodRadio.com, Sharon, Connecticut.

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

Jeep Wrangler

Ford Broncos

Ford Mustang

Mustang Ford Mackie

Cadillac Lyric

Cadillac Escalade

Audi Q5

About this episode