A small, budget-friendly pickup truck made by Ford that drives more like a small SUV than a giant truck. It is famous for getting amazing gas mileage because it comes as a hybrid.
The Ford Ranger is a medium-sized pickup truck made by Ford. It is larger than the compact Maverick but smaller than the giant F-150, making it a versatile choice for people who need to tow or haul things without driving an oversized vehicle.
A special 25% tax that the US government puts on any pickup trucks imported from other countries. It was started in the 1960s during a trade dispute over chicken, and it is why almost all trucks sold in America are built in North America.
The Dodge Ram is a line of large pickup trucks and utility vehicles originally made by Dodge. Today, these trucks are sold simply under the brand name "Ram."
A medium-sized pickup truck that was bigger than a compact truck but smaller than a giant work truck. It was popular because you could get it with a powerful V8 engine.
The B-Series is a line of small pickup trucks made by Mazda. For many years, these trucks were virtually identical to the Ford Ranger, differing mostly in their badging and minor styling details.
A massive global car company formed in 2021 that owns many famous brands you know, like Jeep, Dodge, Ram, and Chrysler, even though its main headquarters is in Europe.
An incredibly powerful, expensive, and fast version of Ford's popular F-150 truck. It has a massive supercharged engine and giant off-road tires, built to drive fast over sand dunes and rough terrain.
A secret refund that car manufacturers give to dealerships after they sell a car. It means a dealer can sell you a car for exactly what they 'paid' for it on paper and still make a couple of thousand dollars.
Special insurance that protects you if your new car is totaled in an accident and you owe more on your loan than the car is actually worth. It pays off the 'gap' so you don't have to keep paying for a wrecked car.
An extra sticker a dealership puts next to the official factory price tag. It usually lists overpriced add-ons like nitrogen in the tires, fabric protection, or just a flat markup to make the car more expensive.
A car buyer who only cares about how much they have to pay each month, rather than the total cost of the car. This is risky because dealers can make you pay way too much overall just by stretching the loan out over many years.
LIVE
Hey folks, Leonard B. Lawson here, the car guru and back from vacation.
It took seven hours to get to Hilton Head from Upper East Tennessee.
It took almost nine hours to get back, same road, I-95 to I-26.
It was just the traffic was unbelievable coming back.
I guarantee that we sat either totally still or just barely moving on the
interstate for at least an hour and 45 minutes. It was frustrating.
I was able to maintain some degree of sanity because we were listening to
dateline murder mysteries. Yes, we could do that coming back because we had no
small children in the back. All the small children were riding in other
vehicles, my other grandkids. So that made it somewhat bearable. But what's
really frustrating is the fact you get in these long delays and then you get to
the end of it where the traffic starts moving again and there is nothing there.
Nothing. Not a wreck. Thank goodness. Well, I take that back on two different
occasions out of the probably ten times we had to stop. On two that there was a
police car had somebody pulled over. But why does everybody slow down for that?
Well, I guess you're supposed to to a degree, but you know, it shouldn't back
things up eight miles, should it? I know the cause of it. It's the cell phone.
Because when people get slowed down, they have time to reach for their phone and
check on everything and then that causes delays. When you have a thousand
people in line and all of them are doing that or most of them, then yeah, it's
going to delay getting started again. Back it up eight miles. But I'm over that
now because I am back. I did do a lot of research while I was on vacation. Why
did you do research? Well, because I get bored on vacation. I can only take so
much of doing nothing like going to the beach, sitting there, doing nothing.
Coming back to the house, sitting there, doing nothing. It gets boring. So I do
something. I take a lot of magazines to read and I do some research online. So
here's what I found out. I found out one thing is that people are loving the Ford
Maverick truck. Nationwide sales are close to 150,000. This is a home run for a
brand new segment. You may have thought that small trucks always existed. They
did. Do you remember the love truck? Who made that? That was a Chevrolet. That was
the first parts truck that we had at Lawson Chevrolet back in the early
70s. It was a Chevy love. That's where I learned to drive a manual transmission.
And so it was a piece of crap, pretty much. The seats, I mean, if you, well, they
basically tore to shreds just from sitting on them. But it got the job done. It
was made by Isuzu. Okay, so what did Ford have as a small truck? And this is
when small trucks are actually small trucks before they became mid-sized
trucks. The Ford, now they didn't have the Ranger. It was called the Ford
Courier. Do you remember that? Who made it? Not many people know the answer to
this question unless you Google it. Mazda, why did Mazda make it? Well,
because Ford didn't want to, didn't have the plant capacity to make it. And
Mazda and several other companies like Isuzu can make them cheap enough that
they could afford the chicken tax. Yeah, that's what it was called the chicken
tax. You know what's called the chicken tax? Well, it's 25% tariff on all small
trucks or any trucks, any commercial vehicles coming out of Europe. And
Lyndon Baines Johnson, he was the President of the United States after
Kennedy got assassinated and then he got elected for a second term. He was all
upset because the Europeans had finally recovered from World War II to a
certain degree and they wanted to raise their own chickens. But we were really,
our farmers were really addicted to selling a lot of our chickens to the
Europeans. And we could sell our chickens cheaper than they could sell their
chickens. We could actually raise the chickens, put them on a ship, send them
over to Europe and sell them to their people for less than the Europeans can
do it. Well, they got tired of that once they recovered a little bit. So they
wanted a tariff put on imported chickens of 25%. So Lyndon Baines Johnson said,
okay, we'll show you, we're going to put a 25% tariff on your imported vehicles,
not all cars, but just trucks. And they did 25%. And they called it the chicken tax.
So if you're playing Jeopardy or something, some kind of a word game and that comes
up. It's a good trivia question. What is the chicken tax? Now you know the answer.
Okay, I'll be back in just one minute.
As I was saying, the chicken tax was a problem and it really became a problem
when the trucks started getting more and more expensive. So all the domestic
manufacturers said, well, we're not going to buy these trucks from overseas anymore.
They don't meet the safety standards. They don't meet the emission standards.
In order for them to meet those standards, we're going to have to spend a whole lot of money.
And then you add the 25% chicken tax on top of that.
So we're just going to start building them ourselves. Dodge had an imported truck.
It was built by Mitsubishi and I think they called it the Ram Charger. I think it was the first
actual use of the term Ram when it comes to Dodge trucks. But it didn't sell very good.
So anyway, the domestic manufacturers decided to come out with some small trucks they could build.
In the US of A, the Chevrolet came out with the Chevy S10. There's still some of those around.
Green County, Tennessee. I see them occasionally. Ford came out with the Ranger.
Let's see. Dodge, they were late to the game. They started the midsize truck craze.
Yes, they are responsible for that when they came out with the Dodge Dakota and it was a
really good seller. People said, hmm, that truck's got more room. Even has a V8 engine if we want it.
It was a gas hog, but people didn't care back then when gas was cheaper and they sold really well.
Well then Chevrolet and Ford took notice and said, hey, wait a minute, we need to make these trucks
bigger. Chevrolet even changed the name of theirs to the Colorado. I think it's still called the
Colorado and then GMC came out with the Canyon and Ford just kept building Rangers. They even
let Mazda sell a version of the Ranger because Mazda could not import their wonderful B2000 pickup
truck. We loved those trucks. We would sell between 20 and 30 of those a month back in the
mid-80s, but they again didn't meet the standards and the chicken tax was a problem. So
Mazda needed a truck and Ford owned 30% of Mazda at that time. They said, hey,
we'll just build a Ranger, sell it to Mazda and they can call it whatever they want to. And they
called it the Mazda B2300 was the four-cylinder, B3000 was a small V6 and B4000 was a larger
V6, all of them based on the Ford chassis. So when these companies are consolidated,
when you have one big company owns another big company, they can share platforms. That's really
happening right now on a larger scale with a company called Stellantis. You know, when you buy
a Dodge, a Chrysler, I started to say Plymouth, but they've been gone for a while, or a Ram
or a Jeep for that matter, do you realize that you're buying a foreign-owned vehicle?
The headquarters for Stellantis, who owns all of those brands, is in the Netherlands.
And most people don't even know where that is. I'm not sure I do. I know it's northern Europe.
I could point it out on a map. I'm pretty good with geography.
But yeah, the only true domestic makers, well, I start to say Ford in General Motors, but they
import a lot of vehicles, importing less now because of all the Trump tariffs, but Tesla,
you know, that's an American manufacturer. They build those in different places around the world
as well. And that's what globalization has done. Has that been a good thing?
You know, just being a part of the world economy. Trump has done a lot to steer us away from that
because he wants vehicles and everything else to be manufactured in the United States that's sold
in the United States. And I kind of like that idea. But is it practical? No, that's really not.
The reason it's not practical is because people in a lot of these other countries don't make near
what Americans make. And our politics are so screwed up that sometimes it's easier
just to open a factory in Mexico or someplace else because they don't have as many regulations.
Now, to bring those vehicles into the United States, they have to meet all of our crash standards.
I mean, safety standards and emission standards or they can't be sold here.
But the manufacturers get all that clarified up front. And then they bring them in here and they're
able to sell them cheaper to a certain extent or have bigger margins, profit margins, that is.
And that's capitalism. This is exactly what happened with the Ford Maverick.
It's not built here. It's built in Mexico. Hopefully that doesn't keep you from wanting
to buy one. They're flying off the shelves. We can't keep them in stock, especially the hybrids.
I was walking through the service department just a few minutes ago and a guy said, hey,
Lenny, and I walked over and he said, I am loving my Maverick. And I said, great, when did you get
it? Because I didn't recognize the fella. And he said, I got it about six months ago and he was
here getting it serviced. He said, I'm averaging 40.6 miles per gallon. And I absolutely love it.
It's a perfect vehicle. I said, you know, it really is for a small vehicle. You've got
seating for five if they're, you know, small people in the backseat. And you have a bed.
I don't need a bit. Well, you could put a cover over that bed and it becomes a huge trunk. That is
just a fabulous vehicle for a college student. And plus it gets over 40 miles to the gallon.
It's a hybrid. People got hybrid on the brain right now. And that's okay. So what else have
I learned? Okay, so we had this guy probably eight months ago. He wants to order a vehicle from Ford
called a F 150 Raptor R. The R means it's really rapid. It's fast. It's got a big, big horsepower.
It's really lifted. It's got all kinds of bumps and curves. And it's just a really fancy truck.
So fancy. In fact, are you sitting down this F 150 on the window sticker? This is no add on
addendum or anything like that. It's 120,000. So he came in wanted to order one from us. And we said,
well, you know, we can order it. But I'm not sure we're going to be able to get it. These are very
limited. He says, Well, I have connections with Ford. I am a supplier to the Ford Motor Company
or my company is. And I think I can pull some strings and maybe get it. Well, dog gone and he
did. He special ordered it from Gateway Ford, my dealership. And it came in 12 days ago. As a matter
of fact, we talked right before I went on vacation. He was so excited to get his Raptor. I come back
from vacation and he has rejected it. He said, I don't want it. I was talking to my sales manager.
I said, What happened? And he said, Well, it had a flaw in the paint. It had a little bit of dirt
in the paint. But we took care of that. We just had to wet sand it a little bit. Shouldn't have been
there, but it was there and we fixed it. I said, Okay, but you didn't have to do any paintwork,
right? No, we just had to wet sand it and then buff it took care of it. That sounds awful,
but it's not. It's very common. But then on the right rear door, this is the passenger side,
rear door of this crew cab pickup truck. When you open the door, there was a little dent in the
speaker cover. This thing has Bose speakers. And there was a little dent in the speaker cover.
And then above that, it looked like something jabbed something sharp like a screwdriver or
something jabbed underneath the cup holder. And it didn't. Well, I guess it did puncture it a little
bit really deformed the door panel just on this underside. If you were sitting in that seat,
you wouldn't even see it. But he saw it and he said, I don't want it. This thing's defective.
And so we had no leverage. We didn't ask for a deposit or anything when we ordered it.
We weren't even sure we were going to be able to get it. He got it. Now we've got it and it's
unsold. Well, I did a little research today and those things are trading. Now, I know you're
going to have a hard time believing this, but there's people out there that are paying anywhere
from 20 to $30,000 over Wendisticker for these Raptor Rs. That's how rare they are.
What was he paying for it? Wendisticker? I mean, he was getting a deal. He could have bought it,
turned around and flipped it and made 20 grand.
Why didn't he do that? I really don't know. I don't know. So now we're going to sell it.
We'll probably sell it this afternoon to somebody and we'll be able to sell it for a lot more.
Why would you do that, Lydia? Well, you know, I've always believed that you sell things for what
the market value is. 90% of the vehicles that we sell, new vehicles, you know what the market
value is? The invoice price, what we paid for it. Now, how do we make money selling cars for what
we paid for it? Well, there's something called hold back, which is a discount. It's a rebate
that we get. It runs from anywhere from a percent and a half to 3% of the MSRP.
So if you, let's say somebody buys a vehicle with MSRP of $100,000, then the hold back is 2%,
then we make $2,000, even if we sell it for the invoice price. Now, unless you're buying something
that's really scarce or you've got a really greedy dealer that is holding out for, you know,
really big prices, then there's pretty much anything out there on the market you can buy
for the invoice price. If you walk into a dealership, I would recommend that you say,
okay, listen, folks, don't want to go through a bunch of negotiation. I've got four targets that
I'm aiming at. First is the, what are you going to sell me the car for? What are you going to pay
me for my trade? Then we'll talk about financing. I need to know what the terms are that you have
interest rate terms so forth. And I'll even look in an extended warranty gap insurance if I feel
like I'm upside down. Okay, so that's the way we're going to do this. Do you agree to that?
A salesperson says, I don't know. I got to talk to my manager. And so the manager comes over,
you tell him that same thing. You might run into, well, I know several dealerships if you go in and
you talk like that somebody said, well, you just need to leave. We don't do business that way.
Because they don't, they don't want to give away cars. They want to make huge profit on every single
consumer who doesn't really know any better. There's no reason to be that person.
Not if you get the my car guru guidebook that I offer for free, or you have to send me your email
address to 423-552-2020 and I'll email you a copy of it. And then you'll have the ammunition
that you need to deal with these people. Now the Federal Trade Commission is taking care of a
lot of the advertising side. Now let me explain. The Federal Trade Commission is a government agency
and it's one of the good ones, I believe. They're designed to protect consumers
from unscrupulous people. In this regard, we're talking about dealer advertising. They sent 87
letters out to the 87 top dealer groups in this nation. A dealer group is a single corporation
or individual that owns multiple dealerships and, you know, they could be in the same city,
they could be in multiple different cities and states. Okay, but you have single ownership.
Well, they all got letters saying, okay, guys, no more advertising of new vehicles
or used vehicles online without including all the costs to the consumer.
Meaning, if you charge a processing fee or a documentary fee, it has to be disclosed and has
to be evident. It has to be right there when you're on the page looking at a car online,
or if you're, you know, you're watching a TV commercial and you see, you know, that they'll
sell a new Maverick for $25,495. They have to say plus a $695 dock fee or a $1595 dock fee.
They have to say that. And they also cannot say that this vehicle can be bought for less
with all of these different rebates unless everybody qualifies for all those rebates.
And that's very rare for everybody to have served in the military or to be a farmer
or to have some other profession that allows you to get a particular rebate.
A lot of dealers were doing that. They were listing every rebate that could possibly be applied
to a sale price, not include the dock fee, put it in a, in the fine print at the bottom of the page,
subtract all these numbers and also, man, they're offering a huge discount.
I've got this one dealer that I compete with on a regular basis.
They say screw it. That's exactly what they say. We're, sure, we'll advertise legally on the website,
but when they come to our dealership, they're still going to see an addendum on the
sticker, well, a sticker beside the sticker. They're still going to see that. And that gives us more
room to negotiate. And they still think that's okay. It's not. If you see that, you need to run
as fast as you can. I'll be back in just one minute.
Okay, I'm back. You know why the dealerships behave the way they do in many cases?
It's because, oh, that's one of two things. You have on-site owners who are crooks,
or you have on, well, you have absent owners who are good, honest people,
but they've hired these people who can make the gross, sell the cars, and bend all the rules as,
you know, as long as the dealer doesn't see it happening. You know, if he sees it happening,
then he'll step in and say, no, don't you do that. And then as soon as he leaves the room,
it's the wild, wild west. And folks, it's not hard to see it. It's obvious. You drive onto the lot.
You see about six or eight salespeople all standing there staring at you. You get out of your car,
they flip a coin, see who's going to wait on you. They come over, or one guy comes over and say,
what are you looking for? And then you know. If that comes out like in the first five or six
things that the salesperson says, that's when you know you're at a running and gunning, law-breaking
dealership for the most part. And those sales managers that are working behind the desk,
they're the real bandits, them and the finance managers that work in the back. They are in
coats with one another to pull the wool over innocent payment buyers. You know, they, they're
just looking for a monthly payment they can afford, but they fail at hitting the four targets.
They don't negotiate the deal. They negotiate the payment. And that's, as I've said so many times,
why do I keep bringing this up? Because I still see folks that are getting taken advantage of.
And I guess there's not enough of them listening to this podcast slash radio show.
You know, if you've got some young person that is out there and they've just graduated from school
and they're going to be buying cars, get them on my car guru on the podcast. Tell them to listen
to five episodes. You know, find one with a title that applies to what they're trying to do. Have
them listen to this one because it's like, it's like insurance against a bad car deal. And if
because this one's free, thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.
About this episode
Host Leonard B. Lawson returns from vacation to dive into the massive success of the Ford Maverick and the fascinating history of small trucks in America. He explains the origin of the infamous "chicken tax" tariff and how it shaped the evolution of trucks like the Chevy LUV, Ford Courier, and Dodge Dakota. Lawson also shares a crazy dealership story about a customer who rejected a special-ordered, $120,000 Ford F-150 Raptor R over minor cosmetic defects, highlighting the realities of modern vehicle quality control and buyer expectations.
