03-11-26_WEDNESDAY_6AM

0:00This hour of the Bill Meyer show podcast is proudly sponsored by Clouzer Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon, well drilling for more than 50 years. Fight out more about them at Clouzer Drilling dot com. Now more with Bill Meyer. Great to have you here on wheels up Wednesday. Eric Peter is going to talk to me in a few minutes. He almost has that Trans Am ready to hit the road. We always want to get up on that anytime someone's restoring a muscle car and getting it back to the way it always should have been intended. And we'll also talk about the latest reviews and a bunch more great site, by the way, ep. Otto's dot com along with KMED dot com where you can stream us live 24 seven wherever you happen to be heard on 106 3 1067 and 99, 99 3 rather in in Grand Pass on KBXG and 105 9 for all other talk material to and quite a bit going on here in Southern Oregon. Well, let me just touch up on what's happening though with the Iran War first, just to kind of give you an overall look at this military times is reporting this morning as far as injuries.

1:06We have 140 American service members had been wounded eight severely in the first 10 days of operation. Epic Fury, the Pentagon confirming that yesterday, vast majority fortunately have been minor 108 service members have been returned to duty and since we've had at least seven killed, at least seven military members killed at this point in time. Now Pete Hegseth yesterday talking about Tuesday being the most intensive day of strikes inside Iran. And meanwhile, Iran has moved to lay minds in the state of hormones and the US is responding to this right now, according to sent com. President Trump says that he's pleased to report within the last few hours. We have hidden completely destroyed 10 inactive mind laying boats and or ships with more to follow. Now, this is what the president says. Meanwhile, though, we ended up having let me see if I can find that story. Well, anyway, why this is such an important situation.

2:08And I am curious to see how this is going to go long term because price of oil has popped back up anywhere between 86 90 to 91 dollars of barrel. It's not like it's gone back down to 45 or 50 like it was. So as long as it stays this way, as long as it stays dicey going through the straight of hormones, we're going to probably see these kind of price escalations, like what we're seeing at the gas pump here in southern Oregon, especially with diesel. Diesel is the one that you really want to keep an eye on. I mean, it's bad when our gas prices go up, but diesel affix affix affix affix. Rather, I should say an effects everyone when it comes to trucking and farming and food production. That is the big one. And there aren't really many substitutions for that. Now back to why it's so important to watch what's going on in the street of hormones. Three commercial vissals. This report in the epic times.com this morning. Three commercial ships struck by projectiles in and around the straight of hormones overnight as Iran is ramping

3:14up those regional attacks and several ships on fire about this and this by Dubai. And no report of any environmental impact, but the ships on fire, not a real good sign. And this is why of course, Lloyds of London and the insurance companies withdraw their insurance because it's looked like it's a, it's a bad deal to try to ensure the oil tanker is going through. And a president Trump is in the process of ameliorating that problem too, apparently. All right. Now a little closer to home layoffs at Harry and David. And that was in the road valley times that ended up breaking yesterday afternoon. And former employees and it's not like anything came out official to about it. It's really employees going on social media and talking about, hey, I just got the pink slip. And then they ended up talking to one in 100 flowers.com, which is the parent company of Harry and David. And they, well, what they're calling it is a transformation strategy. Boy, you know, I really dislike it when you have that corporate

4:20that corporate speak like that. Well, this is our transform. You know, I want to use like that Dr. Evil inputted in scary air quotes, the transformation strategy, you know, but anyway, they're citing the fiscal reports, lower revenue. So they had to reduce cost, including workforce reduction. It appears that it's about 110ured and super visory workers. So we have that story going on. The money story is better over at Southern Oregon University and that was after House Bill 5204 got, got passed the final day of last week's legislative session. So a $15 million bailout, but that bailouts really only a temporary, a temporary bandaid. We certainly have the leaders of Southern Oregon University have a lot more work in front of themselves because bottom line is that the expenses are going up and the enrollment's going down. And it's just a, that's a bad formula here. I'm really going to be curious to see how they end up pulling a rabbit out of the hat,

5:24because what they're trying to do is avoid merging with, with, you know, Oregon University. That's, that's really what they're trying to avoid doing. And who knows, who knows what, of course, then you wonder, I think that a lot of their heavier duty classes ended up being shut down. I'll have to check more into this. But can you make it just being a, you know, a kind of a liberal artsy, artsy kind of college these days? I mean, will that really work these days? I don't know, but we'll keep an eye on that. Maybe invite the folks from S O U on. Also happening in Ashland this morning, they're all hot and bothered over Roundup. Yeah, they ended up putting up some signs yesterday. And they were informing the folks that over on Cisco Boulevard, the main drag through Ashland that they're going to be spraying. I ended up getting notices last night about, about people that are spreading or sharing the change.org petitions. They don't like the idea of Roundup or glyphosate being put on the median.

6:24And they're going to be doing this out in front of Ashland High School and various other things. Do you have an opinion on that? A strong opinion because, boy, I'll tell you the folks in Ashland seem to be just getting really upset. And, um, of course, you know, Ashland parks and recreation they come out with a statement and they say, Hey, this is what we do. This is what we do to try to take care of things. Of course, they talk about protecting their team, you know, it's always the corporate speak. Nobody can just say what it is. Hey, the weeds grow, the grass grows, and we, we use it to keep the weeds down, right? Yeah, just like with Harry and David, there's less money coming in. So we're having to lay off people instead of hiding it behind the corporate speak of transformation strategy. Don't you just want to smack people like that? When I see those kind of news releases come out, I just want to go, uh, it's, sometimes you just want to have people just, just speak clearly and plainly. It's like with illegal immigrant or undocumented migrant rather than illegal alien, right? You know,

7:30that same sort of stuff, but I guess nobody could actually call something what it is these days. But yeah, you know, it's so weird. The city of Ashland, we have the residents that are getting all upset with the city spraying it on the minions at the same time, then they'd be really upset if the median's caught on fire because of excessive weeds and lack of trimming or something in the summertime. They really just like that too. So why do you come down on this? Because everyone's still buying glyphosate. This is what I don't understand. You know, you have the, the city of Ashland folks that are getting all hot and bothered about the city doing this. But glyphosate is still in a lot of weed killer. Now glyphosate is the generic. Everybody knows it popularly is round up and yep, there has been the round up, uh, you know, the round up, lawsuits and people are concerned about environment and the health concerns and all the rest of it. But people are still buying. In fact, I even have some glyphosate up there. There are

8:30some things that you just have to use glyphosate on and I'll give you an example of what I've been struggling with. In fact, I'm thinking about killing my entire lawn and starting again, I know my neighbor across the street had to do it because he's having problems with the weeds and the Bermuda. Well, for me, it's been Bermuda. Bermuda got into my lawn a years ago and it's just been kind of like playing a whack a mole. The way that stuff grows, it is so hardy and kind of ugly too, especially in the winter time. I guess we are in Southern California. You wouldn't mind if it stays warm, that it stays green all the time, but it just grows into everything and I swear nothing kills it except round up. I mean, that is it. Now do I want round up being sprayed on my wheat so that the wheat dries out? No, I don't like that. I don't like that idea of it being in the food supply. But as far as the rest of it, I mean, it's not exactly like it's uncommon here in Southern Oregon. I know if all the important things they're going to get upset about in the

9:31city of Ashland is round up in the medians, in the medians, the thing to worry about. What do you think? Let me know 770563377 okay, MED. Anything else on your mind, too? You bet. Let's talk. This is the Bill Meyer show on KMED. Some of my friends over at Pure Talk. Hi, I'm Steve Potter, Body Shot Manager of Lithium Body and Pain and I'm on KMED. 23 minutes after six Eric Peters will join me here just a few minutes. We wheels up one thing. Always a good talk. And what's happening in the city of Ashland, they are really getting hot and bothered over round up being sprayed on the medians. This is on the medians of the main drag. Sisq Boulevard, they got a change.org petition being circulated and, you know, huffing and and I don't know. Meanwhile, President Trump ends up signing an executive order the other week that production of Roundup glyphosate ends up being a matter of national security. It's like in other words, it ain't going away anytime soon. It isn't a big deal or not. Let me talk

10:33David. David, you have a take on that. Go right ahead. Morning. Hey, Bill. Good morning. So, you know, I think to understand why people are upset about Roundup, you'd have to understand what it does to people. So, are you to have you research at all what it does to people? Not incredibly deep. Other than, you know, the standard cancer claims, etc. Okay. Well, the thing about Roundup is this. Roundup, the glide call, not this. And you can ask a, it's basic biochemistry. The glide call in Roundup, when it touches your skin or your body on any living organism, it mimics, and it might be glycine. I could be wrong about that, but it has the same multiple shape as something in our DNA. And so the body's lizard, humans, birds, whatever. When they come in and touch with glycophosphate, the body takes it and thinks it's a cell and brings it into your DNA. And so the nature of diseases that you get from exposure to Roundup are really nasty. And the way it gets to your body is really, really bad.

11:36You know, and I've been trying to fix my rural property for five and a half years where the previous owner used the stuff, you know, and I mean, I inherited this pile of dirt, like, little dirt, you know, clay soil. And he goes, yeah, you just gotta, you gotta round up this whole property, you know, and I'm right on the, you're, I'm right on the ditch that flows right into the apricate river. And by the way, there, there is a, an amazing persistence of Roundup in the environment, period, because of years and years and years of use, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, I'm not, I'm more of a libertarian, but I think if you want to understand people's sentiment to why it's so strong about Roundup, I mean, have to people, you gotta figure just jump on board because it sounds like whatever. But if you really want to have a guest on to talk about what that stuff does, and the fact that in the drying, it's a desiccant, and in the drying vats, like you can buy some organic oats, and they've been dried in the same vat with the quaker oats with the glycosate. And I mean, the stuff is, as time goes on, I believe from a friend of mine is a really, a really well-renowned biochemist. I believe that they're going to eventually discover

12:40just how bad that stuff is and how linked in it is to so many things. So, in other words, when Ashland complains about this, you think that they have a good beef, then, is that what you're saying? I think we should try to avoid putting any more of that stuff in the environment where possible. All right. I appreciate the opinion. Thank you for that, David. 770KMED. Hello, Dave. How are you? I'm Kevin Good. I wanted to say you want to get ready to burn the grass. For Muda, yeah. With vegetable oil in August, and put black plastic down, and bake it off. It'll work. So, it's not toxic. So, spray it with vegetable oil, you're saying, right? Right. Because it's got to break down and decompose, and it's not toxic, and it smothers the seed from sprouting, and the black plastic bakes whatever plants underneath it, and obvious, because it'll get less 160 degrees in there. All right. So, kill it that way instead of going ahead. I tell you, it's one of the most persistent grasses. It's just insane. I appreciate the

13:46suggestion. Thank you for that, Dave. We go to the next line. Hi. Good morning, KMED. Who's this? Morning, Bill. Steve, Sunny Valley. Steve, what's on your mind? Glyphosate and Monsanto, the maker of it, is not good stuff, and it's because it binds on to some of the stuff that plants need in the soil and doesn't make it available to plant, so then you have to fertilize more, and it's more expensive. And what I don't like about it is that Monsanto, who developed the seeds for the plants at tolerate glyphosate, won't let anybody study it beyond three months, or they say they're infringing on their pattern. So you get studies out saying, oh, it's the same as non-hype non-hype. Oh, okay. Okay. How can... All right. No, that doesn't make any sense to me. How can anybody tell me that I can't go by a gallon around up at Home Depot or whatever,

14:49and study... I'm talking about the GMO seeds that tolerate round up. Oh, the GMO seeds. Okay. All right. Okay. Okay, I'll concede your point there. I just don't know how anybody could say you couldn't study glyphosate because it's been studied in death, I thought, but... No, it's the seeds that tolerate glyphosate and the foods that come out of those seeds. Yeah, nothing like eating food that can tolerate weed killer, huh? Right. All right. I get your point. Thanks for the call. Thank you. Hi. Good morning, KMD. Who's this? Welcome. Morning, Bella. Tom. So it's interesting. Different communities have different organ meridians show up as being weak, and it seems like each community has a different set. When I was over in Colquille, over and over and over again, I would find people's large intestine

15:52and liver meridians being weak. Now, what is a liver meridian or large intestine? Because people hear you and have no idea what you're talking about, Tom. I'm talking about the Chinese acupuncture system, and I use the supplied kinesiology to find out what's going on the body. But when it's over in Colquille, over and over again, I kept finding people's large intestine and liver meridians were weak. And I knew they were being exposed to something, but I couldn't figure it out. And I mentioned it one day to a person that I'm talking with, and I said, oh, I know what that's about. And I said, oh, yeah, what's that? It says, well, you know, when they do the clear cut afterwards, they're allowed to spray roundup on the brush. But he says, only once are they allowed to do that. But they keep doing it over and over again. And he said, not only that, I'm seeing deer, where I live along the Colquille River, they're missing big patches of hair.

16:56Some of them are staggering the deer are staggering around. Well, I think there's actually a syndrome that deer get, though. I forget the name of it that mentions that. I don't know if that's necessarily a roundup caused. Well, but we're talking of pattern. He said, and it said I had three neighbors. They got pregnant about the same time. Two of them had birth defects. Now, correlation doesn't mean causation, but I must say that I was really mystified to see such a prevalence. So there's a whole lot of smoke, there's a whole lot of smoke surrounding this is what you're claiming, right? Yeah. And there's not only that, but a medical doctor, actually an article in the local paper talking about the high prevalence of colon cancer in the area. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to talk with, I'm going to see if I can get Dr. Orient to come on because she's one of those freedom-oriented doctors that will look outside the box now and then I'll see what she has to say about that. Okay? All right? Yeah, it's certainly true. The one last thing is they were mystified at the mouth of the

18:00co-kill river where it meets the ocean. They couldn't figure out why there was no vegetation in that area. So you're thinking, all right, take it from there. All right. Tom, I appreciate that. All right. Well, I have to hold your calls here for the time being. I'm going to break for news for the rest of it. And then we have wheels up Wednesday time here. And you can call and talk with Eric Peters, okay? epiotos.com as we dig in, hit the open road for a little bit of a palette cleanser and then maybe back to some roundy epi, round-upy things and other stuff. Poor precision and performance. The Bill Meyers show. Eric Peters, automotive journalist and genius at epiotos.com. Welcome back my highway star. How you doing this morning? How are things there? I'm good, Bill, but I think that the honorific of genius doesn't apply because I managed to forget to get the correct yoke from our trans am. Okay. You keep sending me pictures and you keep putting it up on the on the site epiotos.com. By the way, if you haven't heard about what Eric's been trying to do, he has a night. You have a 1976 trans am, right? Would you have the right sir? Yes.

19:02And it came stock with an automatic, but you're putting it back to the way it should have come, which was with a four-speed manual. And this has been a several weeks project that you've been working on. And so you have all the parts except for one thing, one thing left. Yeah. In fact, I thought that yesterday was going to be the day that I could actually fire it up. But as I'm underneath the car trying to maneuver the drive shaft into position, I notice that the yoke, which is the portion of the drive shaft that attaches to the section of the drive shaft that goes into the rear of the transmission, isn't the one I need because it was the one for my automatic and it's a smaller diameter. So I had to get out on eBay and order the correct yoke, which is now in transit. Once I get it, then I can put the drive shaft together and then make the car operational. Well, that won't take long then. So I guess a matter of just a few days when things ship in, right? Yeah, absolutely. Hopefully. It should just be a few more days. And that's the last mechanical thing. There's still some cosmetic things to deal with in the interior. But

20:03functionally, it should be up and running soon. All right. That'll be great fun. And it's great to see a machine like that, well, turned into even a more of a muscle car than it came stock from the factory. Good stuff. Okay. And in truth, be told though, 1976, when that thing came stock, it wasn't particularly powerful by today's standards, isn't it? Oh, it gives you perspective, doesn't it? The standard engine in 76 was Pontiac's 400 V8, which made all of 185 horsepower. 185 horsepower. My wife's VW Passat, which is a turbocharged four cylinder, has a two liter turbocharged four cylinder, 195 horsepower out of that. Yep. Now, the difference is that your Volkswagen engine is pretty much tweaked out, you know, to use a meth term. Yeah. It hasn't got a lot more left in it. Whereas back in the back in those days in the 70s, the really nice thing about those low compression smog motors,

21:03that was the term used for them, was that they could very easily be transformed into everything that they had been a few years prior, with a few relatively inexpensive and relatively easy to install parts like, you know, cylinder heads, camshafts and so on. You could just take the weekend, tearing into the engine and transform a factory stock, 185 horsepower engine into one that made 300 or 350 horsepower. Yeah, you're not going to take Linda's four cylinder, though, and turn it into a 400 horsepower monster because you'll just blow it up in all the work. That's it. Okay. But it does appear, though, that a lot of the challenges with the automotive industry right now is that they are trying to well get 400 horsepower out of three or four cylinders and then they blow up, right? It's challenging. They have managed to, you know, the specific output relative to displacement of engines that are currently on the market is nothing shy of astounding. You know, the typical two liter turbo four that we constantly make fun of makes more power than most of the V8s that were available even into the early 2000s. You might

22:06remember, you know, the Mustang GT when it still came with the 4.6 Camer V8, that thing I think it made what was it like 230 or 40 horsepower or something like that, you know, not a lot. So they have managed to produce a lot of power. The problem is that durability and reliability are going in the wrong direction right now. And it has to do with the compounding problem of a boost, you know, boosts pressure, you're applying pressure to the intervals of the engine. And the the parallel phenomenon that the surfaces that have to bear the bronze of that pressure are smaller, you know, bearing in a little four cylinder engine is physically smaller than a bearing in a big V8. Yeah, metallurgy has really improved. It's great. I mean, that's all fine and good, but there still comes a limit to how much you can expect a little tiny engine to put out and stay hanging together for the long term. Yeah, sure. You know, you and I have talked about a really good example is Toyota's old V6 engine, you know, the four liter or the 3.5 either of those. Yeah, we have one in the station's four runner. That thing is bulletproof, man. I'll tell you proof.

23:09They'd go 300,000 miles. If you change the oil regularly, that's all that you needed to do to have an engine that would just last and last and last. Maybe they're, you know, weren't quite as powerful as the the new turbo force that Toyota is installing. The problem is Toyota has had to recall hundreds of thousands of those turbo force. And that has done immense damage to Toyota's reputation because after all, Toyota and Honda, chiefly, they sell on the basis of, okay, that's the safe choice. That's the car I'm going to get that's not going to give me problems. Yeah, this is the one I don't have to worry about. It's not like you're buying, well, let's say a European sports car, your type of of make, right? Yeah. I mean, people don't want to hassle. They figure, okay, I'm going to buy this car and I won't have to worry about it for like the next 15 years, you know, and that's a strong selling point. And that's what built Toyota and built Honda. And unfortunately, because of all this, this, this, this bum's rushed to comply with everything the federal government has been decreeing for the past 10 years, it's destroying their reputation. I was curious about another car manufacturer. And I'm wondering if we're getting

24:10to the point that a lot of independent makes are going to have to be folded in to make it as far as a dealership. I'm bringing this up because we had Mercedes Benz, the Mercedes Benz dealership here in Southern Oregon, ended up being purchased by, by Lithia, you know, big, big automotive group based here in Southern Oregon. And it wasn't independent up till now. Is that a growing trend that you see in which, you know, you're going to have to either get bigger or forget about it? What? Well, yeah, consolidation. Absolutely. You know, if you look around the landscape, you'll see there are fewer and fewer single marquee dealerships any longer. A really good example. And I've got an article coming out tomorrow about this is Chrysler. You know, Chrysler, Chrysler used to be a full line brand. Now it has one model, a mini van. You can't sustain a dealer network on one brand, on one model. So, you know, Chrysler still exists as a brand, but it's part of typically a Dodge Jeep Ram truck, you know, conglomerate dealership. Right. So you're, yeah, you're going to see this kind of thing happen more and more, I think. And are there usually rules? Are there any rules that

25:12prevent one brand from getting together with another brand? Or I said, I just don't know what the legalities of things like that because sometimes you see some strange bedfellows in the, in the division. Yeah. And I think that's something probably that varies from state to state. I think it's not a federal matter or more so as a state matter. You know, if you have a combine like, you know, a company like Stellantis owns a ton of brands. And probably they can, you know, organize their brand structure however they like and have multi, multi brand dealers under the same umbrella. Now whether you can, as a dealer, have two nominally separate, you know, companies that don't actually have, you know, the same ownership in the same deal with that. I don't know. That's, that's out of my wheelhouse. I don't know. All right. Very good. Well, I'll be interested to see and I wish the best of luck. And like I said, Mercedes though, as you have mentioned, then you said the real problem we've been having with a lot of the European car brands is that just about everything has what used to be special about a European car. Would that be fair? I think so. Yeah. You know, and this gets me back into a sort of preview of what I'm going to be publishing tomorrow having to do with with Chrysler

26:15and the 300, which was a very popular car for almost 20 years from the time it was introduced in 2005 all the way that 2023 when they canceled it. And why? Because it came standard. You had a, you had a V6 engine in a rear-wheel drive body on frame car. The only other vehicle that you could get that was similar to that was something like a Mercedes E-Class or a BMW 5 series, which easily cost $20,000 more. And it was even more stark in the last several years before they canceled the 300 because the Mercedes and the BMW, they got rid of what had been their standard six-cylinder engines. And instead put in a little two-liter four less powerful and just less substantial. And they're charging people $60,000 for a two-liter four. Yeah, that's kind of a hard sell. That's kind of a hard sell out of the marketplace right now. But yet, as you had mentioned, the two-liter four-cylinder engine turbocharged, maybe duly turbocharged, which when turbos that say is a, well, it's a compliance engine, right? It's about complying. Sure, fundamentally, absolutely. You know, if you took away the pressure that the automakers are under to deal with, particularly the carbon dioxide emissions

27:20requirements, none of this would be happening. Now, you know, it's a wonderful thing that Trump's EPA has, has kibosh the so-called endangerment finding that was the predicate for all of these carbon dioxide emissions requirements. But we essentially have Biden cars right now, right? We have Biden cars. It's a lag time. Like the stuff that's coming out, like I'm, they just dropped off a Hyundai I and E9 EV, which is basically an electric version of the Hyundai Palisade. Palisade costs $20,000 more than than the Palisade to have an electric drivetrain with 300-ish miles of range that makes you wait for however many hours to recharge the thing. That thing was in development a couple of years ago during the Biden era. So, you know, it finally comes out of the pipeline now into an environment that's extraordinarily hostile. Beater are not doing well. Yeah, this could be, this could be a real challenge in the automotive industry this next few years. And in fact, you talked about though, there's an article you had out the other day about the real reason for the EV and you posit that the whole purpose of the EV was to get Americans out of cars,

28:21period, ultimately. I think so. I mean, it's minimally, it's certainly having that effect. You know, what it did was to jack up the price of vehicles generally and it did that in two particular ways. One was that the manufacturers that were forced effectively to produce all of these electric vehicles had to spread out the losses. So, you know, what they did was to raise the price of all their other vehicles in order to compensate somewhat for the money that they were losing on the EVs. There was that factor. And the second factor is, and this is not well, not often discussed, the same mandates that effectively pushed EVs also have pushed hybrid drivetrain into circulation into mass circulation. And that is added thousands of dollars to the price of a car so equipped. And it used to be that you get a hybrid because you wanted to have a very high mileage vehicle. So, it was kind of a niche, but then it became almost the standard now, right? Yeah, I mean, they were relatively small portion of the market. The Prius came out and it was pretty much the only one. And then Honda came out with a civic hybrid to compete with it. And

29:23that was essentially it for many years. And then all of a sudden, like in the last several years, again, because of the effects of the regulatory regime, they started putting hybrid drivetrain in luxury cars, where it's just it's retarded to say, you know, somebody who spends a $60,000 car is like agonizing over all gosh, I might have to spend an extra $20 a month at the pump, you know? Yeah, that doesn't make sense. It didn't. Yeah, for sure, but it's about the compliance aspect of things. So, I don't know. Maybe we can look forward to the vehicles two, three years from now that may be a little bit different. Maybe we'll see. Maybe, but you know, the potential catastrophe there is if the car companies wheel around now and start investing and putting money in combustion engine drivetrains again, thinking, okay, this is what we're going to be able to sell again. And then the political environment changes come 2028, which is very well could. And all the regulatory stuff comes back with the vengeance, they're going to be destroyed by that. You know, the amount of money that they'll have have to throw away in cars they can't sell anymore. And they have to try to play, well, make the safe play is really what they're thinking, right? Yeah. Okay. All right. Eric Peters with me,

30:26EP, auto. So, you got a question or comment on anything we've been talking about or maybe something that you have in the driveway or thinking about 7705633 wheels up will continue shortly. Millet construction has been a door hearing the Bill Myers show on 1063 KMED. Now Bill wants to hear from you. 541 7705633. That's 770 KMED. You know, I think I need more Billy Squire in the bumper. You know, we kind of laughed at him at the end of the of the 80s. Didn't we, Eric? If I recall back then, you know, he had some good songs. Did he get into the rock and roll Hall of Fame, by the way? He should be in the rock and roll Hall of Fame. You know, the problem was though, I was a DJ in in Sacramento for a short time in the summertime. And a bunch of his songs came out and he started dancing in his music videos. And that's what Oh gosh, that's right. I remember that. He was like in pink, pink shirts or something like that. And I remember that. Oh god, I try hard to forgot. And it's like, you would never

31:28want to see me dancing in a music video, you know, and the same thing. And even Billy admitted, he says, yeah, that destroyed my career, you know, the whole time and everything. And yet, he was a monster guitarist, just a great artist, but it just didn't work out. And all of a sudden, all the guys in in high school and AC DC T shirts were looking at him going, no, I don't think so. But anyway, it's hey, if you want to talk with Eric, 7705, 633, we're talking cars, the open road, anything else on your mind. Vicki, you have a question. Actually, you wanted to weigh in quickly on the roundup conversation. Eric, we were talking about roundup. Is there a big roundup deal with with, yeah, with the the orbit side because they're trying to spray it on the meetings in Ashland, a city south of Medford. And folks are getting upset about it due to health and environmental concerns. What did you say about that, Vicki? Go ahead. Well, first of all, I use old school weed killer, me a shovel, a rake, and hard labor. Well, you got to pay people to do that, though. You know, out there in the middle of the city,

32:29it's Union labor. You got to know that. Yeah, for the city, they want everybody else to do something for them. They can't, they don't want to take the time, you know, the people that use it on their own properties. They don't want to take the time to do it in a way that's. All right, point well, Tegan. Now that you had a car question, too, go ahead. You were there. Yes. Hey, Eric, my dad has a 1952 Ford sedan. And the engine is beautiful. There's a body is straight. The only thing that needs to be replaced in insight is the headliner. And I had a friend come over and kind of give me an estimate about what it might be worth. And he said maybe 2500. Does that sound accurate or? I am not particularly knowledgeable about 62 fours, you know, for questions like this. This was a 52 Ford, wasn't it? 52. Yeah. Did you say 52? Yes. Okay, irrespective, you know, if you're unsure about the the ballpark value of

33:36a vehicle, a classic vehicle, the thing to do is to get in touch with the organizations that are devoted to that particular brand. They all have them. For example, I'm into Pontiac. So there's the Pontiac Oakland club. And you can get in touch with people like that who can be encyclopedic about that particular brand make model of car. You know, I'm encyclopedic when it comes to Pontiacs from the 60s through the 70s. And you'll get somebody who will tell you this is what that car is worth. That's what I would pursue. Yeah, I would concur with Eric on that one, because there are just people that do this that just that just sweat and bleed forward, right? And they can give you a much better idea. And you know, just going to someone who's a generalist, I don't think it would really help you much right now. Yeah. And I just thought because it was it's in really good condition. I mean, the inside is immaculate the engines clean. There's no I think the body is really good. Yeah, I think the challenge that you run into and Eric, maybe this is something that you you've talked about on EP, but you know, Vicki, I think what

34:37what is a challenge is that the certain eras of cars have certain have certain sweet spots, you know, and it's like my father-in-law, my late father-in-law, de-emounts, he had a 1957 Thunderbird and it was just a beautiful car, wonderful car. And and he took care of that baby and it was just a just a beautiful thing. But that's kind of picked out, you know, because someone, you know, Eric, this is something that it was talking about that, you know, that's not really like the sweet spot on on cars these days because of the generations, that generation that loved the Thunderbird, there's fewer and fewer all the time when you say, Eric, that's the challenge, right? There is a general rule two to take into account, which is that generally speaking, coups, you know, two doors versus sedans, coups tend to be worth more and are more popular than sedans. So I don't know what which one you have, but that will make a significant difference. Said a two door or a four door, Vicki. I'm trying to think I think it's a four door. Yeah, yeah, that's considered the family car and not as a not as desirable, right, Eric?

35:42Absolutely, you know, I mean, most people want the coup because it's it's better looking as a rule. Yeah, more for that reason, it's more popular. Yeah. He had a 1936 coup and it was, I think it was orange or it seems I was only four years old, but it seemed like it was orange. And it was, I remember a lot of people commented on it and, you know, really liked it because of the style. Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, I'm just saying though, is that there are certain errors that are the sweet spot and and and thank you for the call. By the way, Eric to her point though, the sweet spot right now is probably what late 60s to the late 70s and probably now starting to go up even into the early 80s with. Yeah, I mean, it shifts, you know, for a long time, give it a good example that comes to mind. The Mustang too that came out in 74 and ran through what 82, I think, 81. And by the way, that was that was considered a dog, right? Yeah, it was a dog. And it was, it was laughed at and mocked. And for a long time, those cars were sort of the, the, the nadeer, the durf of Mustang, it must have the Mustang world,

36:46you know, people wanted 60s Mustangs and early 70s Mustangs and they skipped over the Mustang too, you know, into the 80s and the five liter LX era and they wanted those Mustangs all the way to the present. But now there is resurgence interest in the Mustang too. So the market does evolve. The Mustang too was the Mustang. My younger brother had in high school. And so he has that, you know, that affection for it, even though by today's standards, it's just a, you know, total doggy. It's essentially a, a Ford Pinto with a slightly beefed up engine that was all in head. Yeah, but it does have the virtue that my transam had, which is that it's easily upgradable. And right now, you know, the classic Mustangs from the 60s and the early 70s, just like my transam, you know, those cars now have become unaffordable. You know, they're driven, you go to an old car show and you see guys are aged with those cars. You know, if you're a guy in your 20s and you want a fun car to, you know, to work on, a Mustang too is viable. You know, you could pick up a nice condition Mustang too for under 10,000 bucks. Yeah. And then you could, Ben, you could just

37:49to hit that out to a crazy level these days, can you? Yeah. Sure. I mean, it's got the same 5 liter V8. It's got a 302, you know, pretty much all the parts that you could have used a hot rata classic Mustang from prior years can be used to the same effect in a Mustang too. All right. Now, before we take off, we always want to talk about what you've been reviewing. And last week, you said you were going to review the Toyota Grand Highlander. And how is that looking here? Given you were talking about the issues with Toyota having do a lot of recalls recently, it's been hurting their reputation. Is the Highlander going to help them out in this case? Well, I think it's going to help them out in that it will be an alternative to the regular Highlander, you know, for people listening who don't know the distinction, the Grand Highlander is simply a three row version of the regular Highlander. And both those models have been popular for a very long time. Well, Toyota, getting back to what we were talking about earlier in the show, is going to bring out an electric only Highlander for 2027. Because again, they assumed that, you know, 2027 was going to be what they thought it was back in 22 and 23. The good news is that the regular

38:53high, the Grand Highlander, the one that I reviewed this week will apparently still come with an engine rather than a battery. And I think what you're going to see is that people who may have bought the regular Highlander are going to skip it and go for the Grand Highlander to avoid coming down with a bad case of the EV fever. Yeah, exactly. The EV fever, I think that's what we'll call it. We'll grab one call here here before we take off here with Eric. I said here a lot. So here, here, hello, good morning, who is this? Hey, good morning, Eric. And this is Tracy's calling from Mount Vernon, Washington here. I think of EV this past week. I had to borrow from the dealer, a BMW I X, which is the EV SUV. And if recurring issue with any of these, now is this range anxiety, especially when all you've got around are the level two chargers. And I want to, if we can briefly talk about what's going on with the battery technology, I mean, the BMW I drove was no longer the ultimate driving machine. It was just another plane,

39:56an LR EV, but tell me about what's going on with battery technology in the last few years. Thanks, Tracy. Yeah, sure. I mean, they are developing in the lab batteries that are able to store tremendous amount of electricity and hypothetically can be at least partially recharged in a relatively fast, say, 10 minutes or so. The problem is that the infrastructure for that does not exist and is extremely unlikely to exist anytime in the near future, not to say nothing of the generating capacity. This is a problem that's not often talked about. And it's one thing to build a vehicle in a lab that can do something. It's another thing to make it real world viable. And that's the real problem. You know, Tracy, President Trump ends up, and you know, putting out those executive orders saying the AI data centers have to build their own power plants. That's really great, but there's no executive order to build power plants for the EV world. Exactly. Yeah. So it's going to be an interesting time, Eric. That's all I can say. All right.

40:59Now, what do you have for next week? Anything? Well, they just dropped off the vehicle that I mentioned, the Hyundai Ionique 9, which is pardon me. Yeah, it's an electric version of the Hyundai Palisade, which is a very popular SUV. But I think they're going to have problems with it. It's not that it's a quote-unquote bad vehicle, but if you compare the two side by side, which I think is what I'm going to focus on in the review, you can pick up the Palisade with a V6 engine for about 35. We want to pay another $20,000 for one with a battery that only goes about 300 miles before you have to stop and charge. And that's the key problem. It's not the range so much as the time. You know, it wouldn't matter if you actually could recharge your EV even to say 80% capacity in five minutes. Let's say that were possible. Then there wouldn't be a problem, but the problem is you can't and the problem is that even at a fast charger, you're going to have to sit there for 20 to 30 minutes to recover any kind of partial charge. And that's just it's for most people. That's just a non-starter. It's not going to be acceptable. I don't think. And people have been very conditioned. I think up to

42:02this point to think of that a fill up is something you pop in there and it's about a four or five minute deal. That's it. And then you're back on your road. What is the reason for giving that up? I mean, they're expecting people to pay more for less literally to accept being diminished and generally speaking, that's not popular. Yeah, pretty much. Eric, I always appreciate you coming on and we'll talk again next Wednesday on wheels up Wednesday. And log on to ep itals.com, keep up on all the reviews, all the news, all the rest of it. And hey, we'll talk to you then. Thanks. Thank you, Bill.