Safe driving means being careful and following the rules when you drive so you don't get into accidents. It means paying attention and not doing things that can be dangerous.
Road rage is when drivers get really angry or upset while driving and might act mean or dangerous to other drivers. This can cause accidents or fights.
Air pressure is how much air is inside your car's tires. If the tires don't have enough air, they can wear out faster and make your car less safe to drive.
Michelin makes tires, which are the rubber parts your car rides on. They are good tires, but you still need to keep them properly inflated to make them last longer.
Negative equity means you owe more money on your car loan than the car is worth. This can make it hard to sell or trade in your car without paying extra.
Cancelable products are things you buy with your car that you can change your mind about and get your money back. Some things you buy can't be canceled though.
Used car value is how much money a used car is worth if you want to sell or trade it. It can go up or down depending on how popular the car is and how well it has been taken care of.
A car wash is when you clean your car, usually the outside. Sometimes machines do it, but washing by hand can be gentler and better for the car's paint.
And tell them you want to register for the team driving event.
We're going to do the first one on Tuesday, March 24th.
And we're going to do a second one on Thursday, March 26th,
where you ask at my dealership, of course, Gateway Ford
and Gateway Nissan in Greenville, Tennessee.
We're just what 25 miles from Johnson City, 40 miles from
Kingsport, 30 miles from Morristown.
And if you're a podcast listener, you're out of luck.
We could videotape it, though.
That could be a good thing.
We could post that on YouTube.
You know, I just had that idea.
We could videotape it and put it on YouTube and send it to people.
I think I'll do that.
Good idea.
And speaking of good ideas, we had a meeting yesterday afternoon.
We talked about this event and several of the participants in that
meeting, our mothers.
And, you know, we really need to listen to our mothers.
They have all kinds of good input.
I think dads do too, but it's from a different type of perspective.
When you know, you know, a lot of dads, they are the ones that handle
most of the automotive related issues in the household.
And one of the things that dads could do would be to involve their
teenagers and their young children in just simple things that have to
do with the vehicle in the driveway.
You know, they get them to help in the landscaping and to help painting
and mowing the yard and stuff like that.
But when it comes to automotive maintenance, most dads don't do it anyway.
They don't check the air pressure in their tires.
They wait until the next oil change.
And then they're wondering, well, why did those Michelin's wear out so fast?
I thought Michelin's were great.
Well, they are great, but you got to put the right air pressure in the tires, folks.
So dads, we need to teach our kids.
If you can't make it to the team driving event, then there's certain
things that you just need to do.
You need to show them, you know, well, you need to raise the hood
on your vehicle.
You may have never done that and find where the oil dipstick is
and tell them how to check it and also the transmission fluid.
If you don't have a sealed transmission, the windshield washer solvent,
the coolant overflow tank, the power steering fluid, the brake fluid.
Show them where those things are and get you a penny.
Just a regular monetary, you know, a penny with Lincoln's head on it
and show them how to measure the tread depth on their tires.
Oops, my alarm went off.
Show them how to measure the tread depth on their tires, as we say around here.
You know, if you can stick Lincoln's head down in the tread
and if you can see the top of his head, your tires are worn out.
If you can't see the top of his head, you've got a little tread depth left.
You might be able to go a little bit longer unless it's winter time.
But it's things like this.
Like where are the tire pressures or the recommended tire pressures
for the car? Well, why is it important?
Because your tires wear out and the car won't handle as good
if it doesn't have the right pressure in the tires.
Where is the pressure?
It's on a little placard or a little sticker inside the driver's door jam.
What's a door jam? Well, that's where the door closes up.
OK. And if you open the door, you'll see it.
Sometimes it's in the A pillar. What's that?
Well, that's below the windshield.
And sometimes it's on the B pillar. Is that a B pillar?
Yeah, that's the B pillar. And you see the sticker.
So it says 35 pounds.
That's what's recommended.
And then you show them how to check it.
You get a little gauge. One of those digital gauges is better.
I bought one at, I think it was AutoZone.
It was like $12 cheap, digital, electric.
You've got to put batteries in it.
Or you can just get one of those little sticks.
You know, it looks like a pen and you put it over the valve stem
and it pushes out this measuring stick that has all kinds of little marks on it.
And it says 10 pounds, 15 pounds, so forth.
I like the digital ones better because I think they're more accurate.
So, you know, these are things that you need to do for your kids
since you can't come to the Gateway Teen Driver event.
You know, that just sounds like something a car guru would do,
who's nearing retirement, which I'll never retire,
but nearing some kind of a quasi work retirement relationship with his business.
But yeah, I mean, I'm really concerned about kids.
I really am because what I'm seeing is not good.
And I blame, I know, I do not blame the schools.
They're doing all they can do.
They're just trying to make up for what the parents don't do.
I don't mean to be accusatory here.
And many of you are doing an excellent job.
But a lot of you aren't.
And I truly believe that if you are not involving your children
in the maintenance and care and understanding of their automobile,
you are leaving off a whole lot of important information.
And see, and that also goes along with the financial aspect of the automobile
and how to determine whether you can afford a vehicle or not.
You know, it gets into family budgeting, individual budgeting.
You know, they learn a lot of this stuff, I guess,
when they get out of school, get out of college,
and then they start trying to make it in the world.
And I believe that's why so many young people that I see
have terrible credit ratings because they don't even what's a credit rating?
Who puts this information together?
They're spying on me.
No, it's just your behavior gets recorded.
And the kids don't understand that.
And so they come out of the ether later in life
when they start to have some money, but then they have rotten credit
and they can't get a car financed at zero percent.
No, they got to pay 16 percent because of their past behavior.
Takes a while to fix that.
Some people do. I've seen some people start off poorly
and in strong, you know, they learn the lesson the hard way.
And that's sometimes the best way to learn.
OK, I'll take my first break, be back here in just one minute.
Well, you sure do know how to offend people, lady.
Well, I'm sorry.
But sometimes you got to say the hard things
even to your kids.
Yeah, I really think it's important for kids, even girls.
Now, that sounded misogynistic
to learn about the lawnmower and how it works.
Like electrical things.
Why don't we just teach boys that stuff?
Girls need to know, too. I taught my girls.
Abby just changed a bunch of light switches in her house,
not just the covers, the switches.
And, you know, she knew that she had to turn the power off and how to test it.
And I just think, you know, she's a single mother
and she needed to know how to do that.
And changed the toilet flusher mechanism.
It's not rocket science.
I mean, when I first got married, one of the first things I did
was ordered the Time Life books on home improvement.
It was a whole series. I subscribed to it.
I ended up doing sheet rock work.
I learned how to tape sheet rock and fill it properly.
Boy, that took some practice to where you could paint a wall and not tell.
I wish the guys who had built my niece on dealership
had gotten the Time Life books on hanging sheet rock and filling it.
They had to come back like three times.
You know, once I knew how to do that, I knew what to look for.
And I got pretty particular about something like that.
But that's the way you need to be.
You know, when you're working on people's cars.
At a car dealership, they turn over their
$80,000 investment to you to do some major operation to it.
They want you to be particular.
I know a lot of parents that they see no hope for their kids to be particular.
But I think that it's because they haven't been exposed to enough over time.
And it's all about soccer and dance and volleyball
and all these other things that aren't going to.
Well, I mean, maybe they do some good in their life and developing character.
But I think they need to learn practical things.
As I said, not too long ago, send your kids to shop class.
Girls included make sure they know how to change the oil on a car.
Replace spark plugs, understand electronics,
understand how mechanical things work, how things are built,
how to build a two by four wall.
That's good stuff, you know, too many people go through life
and they have a clue how that stuff happens.
And then when they need to know when it's really important,
they're just lost.
They have to pay somebody else to do it and then somebody else does it.
And they don't know how to check whether they did it right or not.
Speaking of which, I had the oil changed in my F-150 the other day.
It's my dealership, right?
I should be able to assume that they put enough oil in it.
But as I've said many times on this show,
you never trust the people who are changing your oil
that they put enough oil in it or they didn't put too much.
So I got home, I let the vehicle sit for about 30 minutes, went back outside,
opened the hood, pulled the dipstick out, wiped it off,
stuck it back in, pulled it out again and looked to see where the mark was.
You know where it was?
It was just a little bit over full, not enough to be concerned about.
Now, if it had been like half a quart over full,
I would take it back to the dealership, make sure that the people knew it
and drain that extra half quart out because too much oil can cause the oil
to foam up and you lose protection of your metallic parts in your engine
if you have too much oil in it.
You know, that same principle applies to your lawnmower
or to anything with an internal combustion engine.
Too much oil can be as bad as too little.
This is important to know.
For example, if you have too much oil in your engine
and all of a sudden your engine starts making some strange knocking noises,
you take it to the dealership.
Your vehicle is still under warranty, right?
So they pull it in, they evaluate it, way too much oil.
It's not covered and you do need to have an engine rebuild.
You've damaged your engine, but it's under warranty.
Not for this.
Self-inflicted wounds are not covered.
Important to know, I think so.
So another cautionary tale had a customer come in day before yesterday
had purchased a vehicle at another dealership.
They wanted to trade it.
They didn't like it.
It only had it six months.
You think they went on a test drive when they bought it?
You think they maybe just didn't think about the purchase long enough
before they made it?
Because this is a tough one, folks.
When you buy a new vehicle and you decide you don't like it
and you take it in six months later, unless you paid significant money down
or had a paid for trade in, you're going to be upside down
and you're going to be carrying some negative equity over to your new purchase.
They didn't care.
And so we pulled their credit.
Everything's fine there.
We called to get their pay off.
Not great.
Their pay off was more than the actual cash value of the vehicle,
which is expected.
And we said, well, do you have your contract?
What other products did you buy?
What do you mean?
Did you buy an extended warranties or gap insurance or anything that's
cancelable?
And they said, well, we didn't buy it.
They gave it to us.
Uh-oh.
So you thought that you didn't pay anything for these products.
Well, you did because most car dealers do not give away extended service
contracts or gap insurance.
So let, let us see your contract.
They showed us their contract.
Oh, yeah.
They paid for them and they were upset because they thought they were included.
That's what the finance manager, the crooked finance manager told them.
Good thing was though that it was cancelable.
All the products that they bought were products that could be canceled.
If somebody buys a new vehicle or use vehicle, but you mostly knew though,
and they buy like paint sealant and fabric guard and some other types of protection packages.
Those puppies aren't cancelable.
The dealership makes that profit that it's not an insured product like gap insurance or
an extended service contract.
Those are cancelable.
However, some dealers are very reluctant to provide refunds on those because it's
got to come out of the finance guy's pocket and the dealership's pocket and
especially if you're not trading with them, they will drag their feet and providing
those refunds, but you don't have to put up with it.
You tell them you want to cancel.
You go there and sign the paperwork and you ask them how long would it take to
get my refund and get a commitment from them.
And then if they don't make it on that particular day, you call back.
Don't let a bunch of time go go by because more than likely your cancellation request
hasn't budged from the finance manager's desk.
He doesn't want to send it in.
You know why it affects his pay plan.
Well, that's rude.
It really is.
So the next person you contact is the general manager of the store or the office manager.
You know, I found that when I have a dispute with a dealer or I can't get somebody to call
me back, I'll just ask for the office manager.
Why do you want to speak to her?
Well, I have an issue with the office.
I need to speak to the office manager.
And then I talked to her and she's that they don't put up with any, you know,
what they're all about processing paperwork.
They have deadlines.
They're usually ladies females.
They're efficient.
And if somebody doesn't cancel something, you know, it kind of makes them look bad to
even though they didn't have anything to do with it because it never hit the office.
The office will cut the check.
But if the finance manager doesn't do the cancellation, they're not going to cut a check.
And they don't like to have to go out of their office and solve problems that somebody else
created.
So first choice is the finance guy.
Second choice may be the general manager, but I would go to the office manager or really
would this is an insider tip from a car dealer with a twist.
I'll be back in just one minute.
Okay.
Well, some good news.
The stock market is plunging.
Well, that's not the good news.
Good news is that your used car value is soaring like an eagle.
And the most important thing that you can do right now.
Well, if you're in the market, well, even if you're not in the market to trade, take
care of your car, clean it up.
Don't go through the car wash, wash it by hand, wax it, make it pretty, clean your
leather and then put leather treatment on your leather.
Just do all these things.
Wash your windows occasionally.
And you should do that on a regular basis, but especially if you're getting ready to
trade cars, make it look good.
Get somebody to detail it.
If you spend $150 with somebody detailing your car, you'll get a lot more of that back
when you take it in to trade it.
I can guarantee it because one of the most expensive or the most time delaying
things that a dealership has to do is to get cars detailed before they hit the
lot.
And if somebody pulls up in some pristine vehicle and the windows are clean and
it, the interior is in good shape, then that makes the used car manager feel
more comfortable putting more money in that trade in not, not just because of
cost, but because his perception is, Hey, you know, these people take care of their
vehicle.
I can stretch a little bit on this one, but please make sure that they're paying
you enough for your vehicle.
If you, if you're not sure what your vehicle is worth, send me the VIN number,
the condition, the mileage, the options that it has on it, and I'll give you a
really good solid figure that you can take into the dealership and count on
because unless you live in Wyoming, if they don't give you that for it, I will.
I'll write you a check for my dealership in Greenville, Tennessee.
How's that?
Well, thanks for listening to this edition of my car guru.
I'm always available 423-552-2020.
It's my only cell phone.
And if you text me, I'll get back with you or you can send me an email to
lennielawson2020atgmail.com and I'll see you on the next edition of my car guru.
About this episode
Lenny Lawson shares insights on improving teen driver education through a special event featuring a state trooper, emphasizing the importance of safe driving habits and parental example. He discusses practical car maintenance skills parents should teach their kids, from checking tire pressure to understanding vehicle fluids. Lenny also touches on common car buying pitfalls, such as hidden costs and canceling unwanted products, and offers tips on maintaining vehicle value through proper care. The episode blends automotive advice with life lessons about responsibility and financial awareness.
