Shifting Gears: DriveDown's Innovative Approach and Chrysler Pacifica review

Welcome to another in wheel time podcast, a 30 minute mini version of the in wheel time car show that airs live every Saturday morning eight to 11 am.

Central Mike says we're hot.

Oh yeah, i'm hot.

He's not.

No, he's not.

He's getting that way here pretty tough.

From studio A at the world famous sugar shack in Texas, usa.

It's the in wheel time car talk show coming up, mitch sure, ceo of drive down.

We'll also have the upcoming events calendar.

Mr Mars reviews the Chrysler Pacifica mini van.

It's not many anymore, but I guess they still call it that.

Plus you'll hear the stories making automotive news headlines And then also at the bottom of the hour we talk about high schoolers and solar cars.

I got some sort of competition going on.

We'll find out about that, Yeah we got all sorts of stuff coming up for you in the next three hours on the in wheel time car talk show.

Howdy, and a good Saturday morning to you for our live broadcast and our live broadcast viewers and listeners joining us at the dais this morning.

Is Mike out of this world?

Mars can't get his computer working a brand new computer.

And then we have over here in that, because it's Internet Don't work.

You.

So we're on the outer net.

We have over here King Conrad De Laun.

We always need more Jeff Zekin and I'm George Goble.

There you go, George.

What did George do?

George was an actor.

Wasn't he in Hollywood squares and cast there?

I know, but what got him there That's what I want to know.

He was related to somebody.

We don't really care because this is a car show, but I just came up with the name.

Yeah, you go.

George Betty White was also on all of that stuff at the same time.

That was like before they all retired.

George Goble was an actor of some sort.

I think he was an actor on the radio or had a radio show back in the radio.

I think he had a car talk show, the George Goble car talk show.

But at any rate, thank you for joining us today.

We were going to have Mitch, sure, but he's not joining us at the moment because Mr Mars brand new computer can't hook up to the internet.

Now, when we were not on the air everything worked just fine It was blown and going.

The ghosts of the Mars mess The sugar shack.

Here at the sugar shack I took over and it ain't happened Anyway.

The spirits of the sugar shack.

Spirits of the sugar shack.

I like it.

I had kind of a has some sort of alcohol.

Yeah, sugar spirits Kind of a little lean in it.

You have to be careful Your sugar.

you know content sugar intake.

So this week I finally said goodbye to the key EV six, which I'll review in real But later on.

But the key EV six, wow.

You like it.

Oh my God, it, let me see.

Let me give you the price of that.

And I didn't hear you fuss much about charging.

No, i didn't, And you know I did not have a charger.

The car did not come with a plug in the house 110 volt charger.

It didn't come with one.

I even called email to up North where they take care of the press car, and they said Oh, we don't have one Card, doesn't have one, you have to take it to a charging station Yeah.

And that's what I did, which has a double story.

So I took it up there and charge it for 30 minutes and it got up to 80%.

And for lasagna.

Pardon me And bought a lasagna while you were there.

I did not buy a lasagna, but I'll tell you what.

I'm not used to all of the earthy things that they have at Whole Foods and they have brands that I never even knew existed, But almost all of the stuff that they have there and like twice as potato chips, twice as expensive as HEP.

That's the organic way.

So I looked up Whole Foods and I said How much more is Whole Foods that are regular grocery store?

40% And they said 20%.

On the review on the phone Show me something that's only 20% more than the H E B that I go to.

I couldn't find it.

Maybe it's hidden in the back somewhere, but at any rate.

So I had a wonderful experience.

I went up and down all of the aisles and looked to see what they had And it's.

It's a very different kind of grocery store.

Not a dime I the charging station but I think cost me for 30 minutes.

It was like $8.

But that gave me an 80% charge 80% charge which is good for 200 miles.

Yeah, about, And I plugged it in at work during the day when I was there about 110 volt thing.

Had to plug it in.

If you didn't have a plug in charge, because the charge that's what comes with that work.

It has a cord that you pull out of the machine and you stick it in.

So it's got the international, the USC.

I work not in the car, Yeah, Yeah, not the Tesla not the Tesla, although they have a Tesla plug next to it.

Yeah, but that's all going to go away.

It's all going to be a Tesla plug.

Eventually, i think we talked about that last week.

Correct We did.

Yeah, we did So.

At any rate, Mr Mars, we have our guests.

We got a guy.

We got a guy We got a guy, we got a guy.

I know what is it going to work this time.

Thank you.

Conrad, could you pull your microphone a little bit?

Everybody adjusted because you know we've only been doing this show for 11, 12, 12 years now And every time everybody, i have to tell them.

could you put the microphone where it's like up to your mouth instead of your neck.

We're not broadcast all the famous like you are Yeah, And so my guest right now is his name.

Is He forgot?

I forgot His name is Mitch Sure, and Mitch is the CEO of a company called drive down.

Good morning, mitch.

How are you?

sir?

I'm great.

How are you Well?

I'm sorry for the introduction.

There It was.

It's a confusing kind of morning.

There was a lot of drinking done by all of us last night, so you just have to put up with it.

I hope you understand how about you sounds?

good.

How was your night last night?

It was good.

Did you get?

did you get out and rebel, rouse and corrals Little bit Good answer.

So Mitch up, i'm gonna let you explain.

The company that you've created called drive down.

You're the CEO of the company, and so what?

what exactly is drive down?

So drive down is a curated automotive marketplace for enthusiasts and collector cars.

That's the short way of saying it.

But yeah, basically it's just a place to buy and sell your enthusiast car where It has built in negotiation.

And the biggest thing is it saves you time.

I'm a dentist by trade and I'm a collect cars and I was trying to buy and sell cars as a hobby while practicing dentistry and I just realized how much time it took trying to sell it privately on auto trader and even auctions and Facebook marketplace.

And the biggest thing is you list a car and then you get a 50 responses saying is it still available?

then you answer all those responses and Half of them just don't answer again and then half of them just low volume And it's just a bunch of tire kickers and time wasters of what I always say.

So I try to think of a way to Make a company that could get rid of that, and I know every other company says like okay, like hassle-free and and all that good stuff.

But How ours works is you submit a car, we review it and see if it's a good fit for the marketing we do In our platform and then, if we accept it, we agree on a reserve price with the seller.

That reserve price is the seventh day price, and how ours works is it's kind of a reverse Dutch auction style, so it starts at a high price and then each day it drops until someone buys it for seven days.

So it'll hit that reserve and then it stops.

So you can buy it today for the high price or you can wait till tomorrow And it's a lower price, but you risk missing out on it.

So Instead of people being able to say hey, would you take, say it's listed at $50,000, like hey, would you take 45,000?

, instead of just saying yes, you can say hey, sure, but you have to wait five days and someone else might buy it before you I am.

So it's kind of just an accelerated, very transparent built-in negotiation.

Okay, let me.

Let me ask you a question.

So what is the difference between What you've got at, drive down and say Hemmings, because Hemmings has a marketplace.

So give me the difference.

So some of those big Marketplaces and auctions.

So auctions are totally different and there's issues we've seen with that.

I mean some of the big auction places like bring a trailer.

It takes 8 to 10 weeks to even get on there And people are trying to sell their car quicker than that.

Um, and also with auctions you have to have at least two people in the room during those last two minutes.

If you don't, then it's not going to get bit up.

And then also they all have anti sniping.

So what happens is if you bit in the last two minutes, it keeps adding two minutes and everyone waits till the end.

So there have been times where I wanted to bit on a car And say it ends at 230 and I'm like perfect, that's right.

Between two of my patients It's all of a sudden 315 and the auction's still going because everyone's just waiting till the last second to bid, because they want other people to Have to go see a patient, have to get on a plane, have to go to a meeting.

Which is kind of the ebay way of doing things.

You know I've bought stuff on ebay And you know I usually I'm one of those that waits till the last minute, makes that last bid.

So so, mitch, when you said that this is discounted, the seven days is the maximum price, is there a percentage per day and those seven days that it drops in price?

or is it just a number?

Yeah, so it's tiered, um, basically, for around a $50,000 cards, a thousand dollars a day.

For $25,000 cards, around 750 a day.

For 75,000 card, around 1250 a day, 100,000, 1500 and so on.

You got.

It's kind of like an algorithm or something that calculates whatever percentages you've built into it.

Correct, um, and it's all transparent.

It shows a price bar right below the main pictures And it shows like and so the cool thing is hey, if something's listed at 50 And say I mean it's going to get down to 45, and if 45 something you can afford, then you're going to watch that car.

And then we also have what's called a proxy offer.

So you can kind of put in an offer and set it and forget it.

So say, you're only willing to pay 45, but you don't want to be at your computer at 4 pm In five days when it drops to that.

If it does so, you can put in a proxy offer for 45 now And then, if it gets to that price, it'll automatically trigger And you'll get the car without having to be at your computer.

So again, it's saving you time, you don't have to be at your computer the whole time and it's just, it's all built in.

What if there's multiple proxies?

both say there's three of us say, yeah, we'll all buy that car at 45.

If it gets down to that, is there a way to differentiate between those three?

Yes, so you can do so.

There's tie breaking so you can actually put in a proxy offer for 45,001 dollar.

You can put it for 45,010 dollars, so price is the Trump's everything.

But then if there's two people with exactly 45,000, it's first come, first serve.

So the computer just knows it knows what date it came in.

I got you That makes sense.

So so if I look at it, at that 50,000 dollar car, basically I know it's not going to go any higher.

But you can.

So we've had two cars that people put in proxy offers above the first day price Because it was something that was priced very well.

They wanted it, it was in their location, in their city And they were like these don't come through my city much, i'm going to just put in a proxy offer for above that first day price.

Well, it starts in coming soon.

By the way, there's a couple of days before it actually goes live.

So in coming soon you can put in a proxy offer for any amount above the seventh day price, including a price above the first day price.

So that $50,000 car.

I decide I want that And I'm willing to pay $55,000.

And I put in the offer when the coming soon.

So when the process starts I'm already sitting in $55,000.

Is that going to look at me first?

No, so it won't trigger until it starts and hits that $50,000.

Because again it won't know.

I mean, we want everyone to be able to put in an offer first, so you just have to put in your highest and best.

You shouldn't have to deal with other people.

It's just whatever you're willing to pay and wouldn't be upset losing it for that's what you put in, right?

But if I.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry If you put in a $55,000 offer and someone else put in a $55,000 and $50 offer and wins the car.

I mean, hopefully you won't be upset, because we want you to put in your best offer.

So the process is going to start for a certain amount of time, no matter what.

You mean in coming soon?

Well, no, i'm like, okay, so I put in the $55,000 offer and then, during the coming soon, whenever you accept the proxies, so when the auction I hate to use the term auction because it doesn't sound like an auction- Yeah, no, we don't have.

We don't say auction or bid anywhere on our site.

So what do you call it?

Just a listing.

A listing, okay, So the listing goes live and starts in seven day.

Count on process.

So at what point does the process say okay, I've got a guy out here that's willing to get $55,000 for $50,000 car.

Right when it hits 50.

So that first day, anytime you trigger, anytime a price is triggered below your proxy, your proxy is triggered.

So if you have a 55, then once it hits 50 on that first day it's going to trigger.

And that closes the listing.

At that point.

Done.

Okay, It takes it, it literally.

yeah, takes it away.

It goes to pass listings and says it's purchased.

That one sold, that one's gone, so the listing may only be up there for a day.

If there's something Correct, okay, that's what I was wondering about We're listing.

Yeah, so that's another cool thing we can get your listing on.

If you send us a car and pictures, we can have it in coming soon the next day.

And then we like to have it in coming soon for two to three days so we can market it and make sure we have the full audience for that first day.

So you could potentially have your car sold in four days from the day you send us stop, as opposed to the competitors where it could be months And again you have no control and you need twice the buyer pool because again you need two people at least two people in the room at the same time Ours.

You need one person that either wants the car or is afraid of someone else buying the car and you're the fear of missing out.

And how do you make your money?

How do we make our money?

Yeah, it's the industry standard of these online auction places and marketplaces.

We charge a 5% buyer's fee.

So if the car is 50,000, it's going to.

when you click buy now, it's going to say that it's going to charge you $2,500 on your credit card and then you owe the 50,000 to the directly to the seller.

So the we don't charge the seller anything.

Your profits come from the seller or from the buyer, not from the seller.

Which is the industry standard.

So like bring a trailer, peak car market.

All of them cars and bits, they all just charge the buyer.

They also charge the seller a little bit.

But we want to make it free for sellers and make it a no brainer.

It's like why would you ever try to sell your car yourself when you have to deal with all this, when we think we can get you that incremental value higher than the 5% because of our market channels and sponsorships?

Plus we've got to work for you.

And how picky are you?

not picky, but how selective are you about what you'll accept for your sale?

So it's more.

It's more what we think that our marketing can help.

So it's it depends.

I mean so like a five year old F 150 great car, but we don't think we have the correct audience to really add value to it.

So something like that wouldn't be great.

But any, any BMW M car, any Porsche any Corvette.

Yeah, yeah, any Corvette, it could be Miata's, anything.

That's like kind of there's a cult following for you.

Not really going to find it on the dealer's lot all the time, Very often, in other words.

I'm on the site and you've got an MGBG or an MGB listed on there, which I think is kind of cool.

So, with this being Mike's talking pricing, So if it's a $55,000 vehicle and you have to pay a percentage of that as the as the buyer, it's advantageous to wait those days because you only got 55, have that price drop.

You pay your percentage on the credit card but you're still within your own budget of that 55.

Makes sense, yeah, and, but the hope is that?

well, not the hope for that person, but the hope for the seller and us is that it sells quickly.

Yeah, so someone else might think it's worth 57.

There you're saying like a 55 was towards the end, right?

Yeah, so you have to worry about other people seeing the value higher than that.

Yeah, and then they're gonna buy it out from underneath.

Well, I was thinking the percentage day.

The, the concept of submitting a car, us accepting and charging the buyer's fee, that's already out there, mm-hmm, like our competitors already have that.

And then, as far as price dropping, it's the same as a dealership, it's the same as a house.

Right, a car dealership listed car for $50,000, but after two weeks they finally lower the price if it didn't sell.

So both things are already very proven concepts Historically and we just are the first ones to actually match them together and just create something that again we think is Disrupting the market.

And I mean we're new, but it's, it's working and different way of packaging it.

So it's drive down cars, calm.

Right drive down cars, calm.

And are you located in Cleveland?

Yes that's Cleveland Ohio, not Cleveland Texas.

So I I've got a toothache And I was thinking maybe I could stop by later on, maybe in the week sometime, and you could take a look at it Do you give discounts, you buy from us, you get a free cleaning or something, or sure.

Think about this while he's doing the root canal, he's thinking about some guys 9-11.

He's selling Yeah, so we had a lot of local press and, like a lot of my patients, came in that next week.

They're like oh we saw you're in the paper.

And then you say, hey, you got a cool car you want to sell.

Yeah, Yeah, yeah, it was like the article's name was like Northeast Ohio.

Dennis like figures out a new way to sell cars.

There you go.

Well, my daughter, my daughter, i'm aren't okay, so what is the favorite car in your collection at home in the garage?

I have a 997 dot one, or should GT3 go?

Car.

Yeah well, dentistry been real good to me.

Mitch, it's great to talk to you, my friend.

Thank you so much and best of luck on this, and what we'd like to do is it would like, and maybe around Christmas time, let's call you again and see how things are going.

Love it.

Okay, yeah, i've posted your site up on our social media.

All right man, You should that much Thank you.

It's been in your Saturday morning with us.

We appreciate you Saturday and we'll talk to you round to round to yeah times of charm, guys, that's exactly right.

Thanks again, man.

All right, mitch, yeah, i.

Got better than eBay.

Plus, you can use your credit card to hold it well, well, yeah, you credit card to to.

I mean, i think, i think, what you bid you're, you're committed.

Yeah, but you know, if you put in the the higher price deal and you got to pay your, your buyers fee, you can do that with a credit card.

Yeah so boom, you're done.

You don't have to worry about it's immediate.

Oh yeah, and I was going to ask and didn't.

Maybe we're gonna ask him next time we have on.

Does he have financing available through his Through?

his.

Well, that would be for the seller.

See it on the site.

Yeah, no, I'm just a mediator.

No, I know I understand that, but is that you know I'm?

sure you could direct you to his local bank At any rate okay let's move on.

Show me, mr Mars has a review this hour of the Chrysler Pacifica Which I didn't even know that they were still making the Chrysler Pacifica.

I haven't had one in the press fleet in years and Mars gets it.

Well, it's been a while since I got one too, and I was surprised to find out how many other manufacturers still have one.

As far as a 2023 model goes, that you just don't hear about him anymore.

Of course, everything's SUVs and EVs, but so so Chrysler still does produce the Pacifica minivan.

It is comes in four trim levels.

You can get the touring, which is the base, but you can only get that in an ice engine.

You know a regular powertrain, the touring L, the limited and the pinnacle.

You can opt up to a hybrid and we happen to have the hybrid pinnacle model now.

You know, one little note here We were talking about didn't know they still.

They sold 15 million Pacifica Pacifica's since 1980, or 16, 15 million minivan since 1983.

Well, that was a heck of a lot of miniband, but anyway.

So this is the minivan.

You can rig it to run six to eight passengers, but you know how you situate the seats on it.

We happen to have the six-pastry.

We had the second row bucket seats and On the outside of this This is the pinnacle.

So it's got the trim or the vents fillers that you find on the grills.

They're all painted a gloss black with nice chrome Trim rings around them looks really nice.

This one came in the optional velvet red pearl paint We were talking about.

Jeff, that's the color by mother's decides She wants to paint her van Front.

You're gonna buy LED lighting all the way around.

It got a dual panoramic entry sliding doors and a lift gate and It rolls on some nice 18 inch polished aluminum wheels.

I think your mom would probably be cheaper for her to buy one of these, and it would be, we're not gonna repaint her 2002.

Please continue on and pay no attention to him the.

On the interior you're gonna find we had that nappa leather interior in the caramel color.

Front bucket seats are heated and ventilated.

Second row had bucket seats in it.

Third row is a folding and it's all part of the stow and go seating where everything folds down into the floor and the Second and third row gives you a nice flat surface.

There, flat flat surface.

We had the 10.1

inch you connect screen in the middle of it and that's where you're gonna find all your nav Controls, your convenience controls, your 360 degree surround view camera, as well as the you connect theater, which has streaming apps in it, such as Amazon free, amazon fire TV and Alexa.

Going down the road You can do all this stuff.

We has the family camera in it, because this is a family type vehicle.

20 Harman Kardon speaker system.

The Bluetooth on it I wanted to note is you can actually hook two phones the Bluetooth at the same time, which I found was very unusual.

Now, to make all this stuff go down the road, you got to have a 3.6

liter v6 hybrid engine or pyro train up underneath the hood and you It's backed by an EVT, which is their version of a CVT electronic transmission.

Now the EPA says you should be looking for about 30 miles to the gallon combined in this vehicle on gas only.

However, we have the hybrid and I got 26.3

miles per gallon over 367.9

miles.

Now that's 624 miles.

I mean 62.4

miles of that was EV only.

So the computer around town and stuff it jumps from gas to battery back and forth, so it did about 62 miles of that.

So overall you should be getting that about 82 miles to the gallon between the EV and the gas, and that's a 500 mile range Packed family up and you can go for 500 miles without stopping if you want to Is this a plug-in hybrid.

This is a plug-in hybrid And it is a great people hauler, you know, loaded up with people moved across the country.

It's got all kinds of technology in it the screens on the back of the front passengers and the back of the driver's seat.

So the second row passengers have got video screens and they've got connectivity.

This is a family vehicle if you're looking for something to go across the country and it's very nice if you're using it for other purposes.

Now the base trim base model price on one of these is a $37,270.

I mean, you can get into a Chrysler Pacifica at that price level.

But if you want to step up into the pinnacle, which is the higher priced trim level base model, on that's $59,995.

Now the AS tested price with all the few little options that we had, including the beautiful paint $62,085 MSRP.

So if you're looking for something to compare that to, you might look at the Kia Carnival, which baselines out at $34,565.

The Toyota Sienna $38,220 in the Honda Odyssey at $38,835.

So there's several more that you can look at.

If you're looking for a minivan and if you're looking for something to take the kids on vacation, take the family out, this is still one of the best, in my opinion, type of vehicles that you can get, and the Chrysler has got one of the most biggest feature packages, i believe in the others.

First one Did you have a lot to drink last night?

Not enough, apparently.

Well, no, he's still all amped up about it.

I know he's a new computer A new computer.

A Mike's a minivan kind of guy.

Well, I think, didn't you just come back?

from the White House this past week.

That was up there a couple of weeks ago.

We had a minivan that we put out Laying a few lines down, so to speak.

Yeah, thank you.

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Shifting Gears: DriveDown's Innovative Approach and Chrysler Pacifica review

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