Lucky Lopez Reveals Why Banks are Leaving Car Dealerships | Digital Social Hour #121

Dealers were hated so much more than attorneys, more than politicians.

For some reason, every time we try to sell a car, people just yell at us, cuss at us, think we're trying to rip them off.

If you go to Walmart, they're making 50 to 25% off of whatever products they sell you.

But for some reason, if a dealership makes 10% off you, we're monsters.

What cars would you recommend people never get?

Oh, I'm going to get a bunch of hate on this one.

So the first one is going to be Range Rovers, but I've seen brand new ones go to the shop more than any other car.

You know, and his was electrical problems.

He'd just drive it and the car would just shut off.

You know, he's got a family, his kids are in the back, all of a sudden, the steering wheel locks up, the brakes won't work.

It's very scary.

So I called

Range Rover, and I think they had so many people calling, they just gave another one.

Wow.

I wouldn't even take another one at that point.

That's what I told him about.

Welcome back to the Digital Social Hour podcast.

I'm your host, Sean Kelly.

I'm here with my guest today, Lucky Lopez.

How's it going, man?

Not too bad.

Thanks for having me on, brother.

Absolutely, man.

So I've been seeing you on YouTube for a few years now.

Is that sort of where you got started in the social media game?

Actually, I got started on Facebook.

I had a dealership here in Vegas, and I used to run the most ridiculous ads.

I had like the

whoever had the most kids specials.

So I would run ads on Facebook saying, hey, whoever shows me the most kids that they have, I'll give you $1,1500 fifteen hundred bucks off a car.

And we had a guy come in with 11 cars and four baby mamas and we gave him a brand new Tahoe, I think with like $2,500 off.

It was just, I did a lot of really funny, stupid stuff.

We put a tiger in a smart car and drove up and down the strip to get attention.

So I realized the power of social media back then, and I knew that it was a great thing.

Way back in the day, I used to be on MySpace Music, if you even remember that.

That was before my time.

Yeah, and so like that's how we kind of networked through there.

But I really hit my stride when my dealership happened.

When I sold it, I actually was supposed to leave the country and go travel up and down South America, basically just party and get naked on the beach.

And unfortunately, I got stuck here because of the pandemic.

And then that's what kind of led me into YouTube.

Wow.

So why did you decide to leave the dealership space?

I love the car industry.

I love selling cars, but

dealers were hated so much more than attorneys, more than politicians.

You know, like it's such a fun job, like buying cars, fixing them up, and selling them because people make two big purchases in their life: cars and houses.

And for some reason, every time we try to sell a car, people just yell at us, cuss at us, think we're trying to rip them off.

Most of our margins on cars are like 5%, 10%, 15%.

If you go to Walmart, they're making 50 to 25% off of whatever products they sell you.

But for some reason, if a dealership makes 10% off you, we're monsters, we're,

you know, everybody hates us.

And so I just, I got sick sick of it and I wanted to take a break.

I, the stress level was ridiculous.

Also,

a lot of people don't know this, that during that time, banks were getting really tight with lending.

And so they would actually charge us people or basically, how do I say it nicely?

They would charge us extra money if the customer had bad credit.

So every time a customer would say, hey, give me a deal, lower the price of the car, we weren't able to because.

Everybody here in Vegas, I mean, you know,

credit.

They hardly work.

They, you know, they gamble and stuff like that.

So every time I told people, hey, look, I can give you $1,000 discount, but your credit's bad, so we have to keep it up because the bank's going to charge us $1,000.

And it just got worse.

Every month, the fees just kept getting higher.

So I just, I wanted to take a break, kind of reset.

And I've been doing this since I've been 18.

Most people I know, like, I'm sure you've probably, I know you, you had a few different companies

in the last few years.

And so I've seen people pivot and try things.

I've done cars since I was 18 and nothing else.

Wow.

Yeah, and I feel like we just had Nick Dos on.

He said he had 30 million tied in inventory.

I feel like that's another problem problem with dealerships.

I call it the baller on the budget where I had $2 million in lines of credit and we had like 150 cars on my floor at the highest point.

And you would not believe how many people are like, why don't you get nicer cars?

Why don't you get more cars?

I'm like, this is 150 cars.

And the average car is, you know, anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000.

Like, this is...

$2 million in inventory.

Do you have $2 million you can give me to buy cars?

And it's just, it's almost like a thankless job.

Just, I'm lucky enough to have the passion and I loved it.

And I just like, like I said, fixing cars.

I enjoyed really fixing them and flipping them more than actually dealing with the customers.

But yeah, with Nick, with exotic cars,

I feel bad for them.

They're going to be in a world of hurt in the next three to six months.

Yeah, because the car industry right now is going through a major correction, right?

Yeah, I mean, you know, when we, every week, I'd say the book with wholesale values are correcting anywhere from three to like 5%

every month.

And so, you know, on my cheap buckets, like when I had my dealership, it's no big deal.

If you have a swing and you lose 5% on, you know, a $10,000 car, it's not going to hurt you.

But if you have, let's say, a $500,000 car and you lose, you know, 10%, you know, that's $50,000, $60,000.

And so that's why I tell these guys, especially with exotic cars, get rid of them.

Don't keep them.

The problem with most exotic car dealers is they like the prestige of looking rich in front of everybody else.

Where 90% of the exotic car dealers I know are broke as shit.

Wow, really?

Yeah, they don't own any of their inventory.

It's usually they have finance through flooring companies, finance through investors or partners, and then the rest they kind of float with what's called like consignment deals.

And we try to stay away from that because there's a company.

Do you remember, you ever heard of CNC Motors?

No.

Okay, this was like a big YouTube dilemma, which happened.

Like, let's say you have a Ferrari and you want to consign it to me, and you sign the paperwork.

I sell your car.

Customer gets the car, the bank funds me, and instead of me paying you, I just keep the money.

Legally, believe it it or not, you have no right to get your car back because the customer has all the rights, the one that I sold it to, you could sue me and sue my bond, which is like $100,000.

So you may get $100,000 back out of your $300,000 Ferrari.

So every time we have an economic downturn, all these exotic car dealers usually wind up eating sh and basically going bankrupt because it's a house of cards.

They're taking consignments in, they're paying their high floor fees.

And, you know, these type of cars,

they don't sell really well during an economic downturn because most, I guess, exotic car buyers are very educated and kind of discerning customers.

And so when they see the recession coming, they're pulling back.

Even then, like I actually, I had an order in for a brand new Technica.

I pulled it out.

I think that the hype is not going to be there.

I'm just going to wait.

I'd rather just buy a few projects that I'm going to build on YouTube and just put my money back into my channel instead of buying a $280,000 car that I'm just going to drive around.

It's just going to depreciate.

Yeah, don't they go down like 30% as soon as you buy it?

Some do, but exotic cars are the different thing.

This is why a lot of people get into the realm.

If I have an allocation, I've been waiting over a year for mine.

If I get it, the second it touches down, I pay 280 something, 289.

It's worth 389.

It's worth 100 grand more because nobody wants to wait a year or two years to get the new Technica.

But the problem is, is there's so many people right now, like even when I had my car, they told me it'd be two years and then 18 months, then 12 months, then six months.

And it just lets me know how many people are walking away from allocations because this is going to sound bad and I don't want to offend anybody, but like all the crypto bros, they lost all their money.

There's none of that excess money going out blinging.

There was these guys teaching how to get allocations and flip them.

So a lot of these people weren't people that were going to buy the cars.

They were just going to get the allocation.

And then, let's say, you wanted the Lambo, they would sell you the allocation for like 30, 40 grand because that's what they teach.

That's how you come up with a bunch of money with no money down.

And that's all over with.

It's kind of hitting the fan now.

Yeah, I know a lot of crypto bros that got wrecked.

Yeah, I feel so bad.

The most,

I guess,

for a percentage of cars and the highest amount of defaults is the g-wagon because all the crypto bros for some reason everybody had to buy a g-wagon and they were paying a hundred grand over msrp

and so now you can buy those things a little bit above msrp some dealers are selling them at msrp so just imagine if you had like you bought during the pandemic a 2021 g-wagon and you paid let's say the sticker was 150 and you paid 250 for it and you put $50,000 down.

So you still owe, let's say, 200K.

You go to the dealership to trade it in because you want a brand new 2023, and they give you $100,000 for your car.

So now you're $100K upside down.

Wow.

And that's what we're seeing now where it's really starting to scare people.

And people are starting to realize that access of money, that inflation is a real thing.

Everybody kept saying they don't see it.

They see gas prices raise and everything else.

And it's like the one thing I've been screaming, it's the banks, the funding, the finance behind it.

Once that hits the, or I don't want to, can I customize?

Yeah, I guess.

Okay.

Yeah, when the fan, that's when they're going to realize that we're in trouble.

Yeah.

So these banks are, I saw one of your videos, they're pretty much backing out of dealerships now, right?

They're scared to give loans out.

Yeah, so during the pandemic,

there was so much excess money where a lot of times if you put a big enough down payment, banks will loosen the lending requirements.

And one of the things the government was doing to stimulate the economy is they were taking any asset-backed collateral loans and just paying them full rip.

So it enticed banks to lend more money because they were getting more money from the government, from other people.

And so

let's say you traditionally would not qualify for a $200,000 car.

Well, you showed up with $20,000 because you got your stimulus money, you're not working, you're not paying rent, you got 20 grand.

I'm going to go buy a Lambo.

You put it down, all of a sudden the bank's like, well, traditionally we wouldn't do that, but you're putting 20 grand down and the banks are buying everything.

We'll just give you the car.

So they just went nuts.

And then now what's happening is fast forward two years, all these banks are reaping the repercussions of their really frivolous lending.

When default rates reach a certain point, the banks actually get in trouble because they borrow their money from the government or they borrow it from hedge funds or private money.

And so every quarter they have to decide, or they have to show the books, like, hey, look, we have this many cars.

This is the loan.

This is the amount of defaults.

And this is where our portfolio is at.

Well, what's happening now is they see that people are on all-time high delinquencies.

Repos are coming up and piling up.

And then on top of that, they were giving...

like 150 to 170% of what's called LTV loans of value.

Well, they were giving, let's say, on a $100,000 car, they would give you $150,000 loan.

Well, now that car is worth maybe $90,000 or $100,000, but they still have the $150,000 loan.

So their overall portfolio is worth nothing.

Let's say it was a $300 million portfolio.

Now it's worth like $225,000.

So when the banks look at that, they're like, your assets are upside down.

We're not going to give you as much money, or we're going to give you money at a much higher rate.

And that's why all these banks put the brakes and it's getting harder and harder to finance.

I recently just tried to buy another exotic car and three banks that I paid auto loans off all over 100K they would not give me a loan.

Whoa.

One told me they're flat out of anything exotic they will not touch anymore.

Another bank told me that they put a cap on the dollar amount.

So $120,000, no more than that.

So we're seeing it really hard in the exotic car and luxury car market.

Subprime, which is like regular people cars and people with bad credit, they're still kind of floating around.

But that's why I tell everybody when they're trying to buy these exotic cars or these luxury cars just be patient wait because once the banks won't fund people and it gets harder and harder those prices are just going to drop because

it's either the dealership has to lower their price which they won't or the customer has to give a down payment that's large enough to offset the risk and that's where right now is a battle of are the customers still stupid enough and saying oh i'm going to buy this car for overbook or are they just going to wait and the dealer has to lower its price because it has no other choice because the bank won't finance yeah the overamount paid that they're going to be it's like a stalemate right now yeah and so everybody keeps asking when's it going to crash and i kept telling everybody it's it's not going to crash it's going to be a slow steady correction so you don't think it'll be like the 08 recession crash with real estate no i i really don't want it to be that way i know a lot of people do but they don't realize is um you know you i was i had my shop during 08 and back that time you can literally get a house like i can like hey this is my friend sean and he just got a job at walmart making eight bucks an hour Here's a $500,000 house.

No dock loans, low interest or interest-only loans.

They were giving everybody these ninja loans and they were just literally giving out free money.

Well, what happened was when everything collapsed, they put so many processes in place where even somebody like myself, I make money through YouTube.

They don't see that as a viable income.

And so they put me in a different category where I have to put maybe 15 to 20% down instead of the normal 5%, 10%, 15%.

So it's making lending harder.

And the government regulates it.

If the government steps in, and we have a really collapse in the auto market, the government will step in and they'll put regulations in place telling you what kind of car you can afford with your budget.

And the way it works now, none of these Americans can afford their cars.

I mean, think about it this way.

A brand new Tahoe is $90,000, a Tahoe, something that like, you know, our moms would drive us around in, you know, it's 90 grand.

So it's so funny to me that,

you know, people think that these $100,000 cars are something expensive and extravagant.

I mean, you can literally go to Ford and buy a Ford F-350 for $100,000.

The new Escalade's $120,000.

It's just absolutely ridiculous.

So if the government were to step in and put all these regulatory things in, people would be crushed because they would go off of really DTI debt to income and none of these people can afford the car payments.

Wow.

So car dealerships are struggling.

What about these luxury car rental companies or people on Turo?

Like, how are they doing right now?

So I can start off with Turo and then we can make fun of the exotic rental car companies.

So Turo was, don't get me wrong, Turo is a great platform to get started in the business.

I talk about it on my channel.

Like if you're getting started in the automotive industry and you don't want to get like an expensive rental car license and pay a bunch of money in insurance, this is a great way to get started.

But the downfall is, is once you're on the platform, that's it.

You're on the platform.

Toro has all these agreements where you can't go on to other platforms to post your cars.

You have to abide by a certain amount of rules.

And at the end of the day, Toro only gets money if they rent out your cars.

So it has a system where it literally endorses and kind of approves people to price their cars below market.

So if you know, I'm a rental car business.

I need to make profit overhead, pay down my depreciation, pay down my

interest and everything else.

And I need to make, let's say, my Toyota camera.

I need to rent it for $60 a day.

This way, I'll profit $20 a day.

Where you have these guys that everybody, their grandma jumped in during the pandemic that bought a same Camry, were renting it out for $100 a day because the market was hot.

They walked away from it.

And now they're like, oh, well, I just need to make my $400 car payment.

So I'll rent it for $25 a day.

I don't give a shit.

I just need to make the money just to cover my nut.

And now people like myself that own businesses we're competing against people that are literally just giving their money away or giving their cars away just so they can cover their bills and so turo has created almost a perfect platform to almost like a race to the bottom it's everybody's chasing who's the lowest and that's all they care about before they used to prioritize like if you're a great host your cars were clean you had great reviews yeah you would be number one you're a pro host you're a power host we want to deal with you right because they know they get more but now they have so many people on the platform they don't care wow it's who's who's going to give me the cheapest rate so I can make my vig off of that.

And then, on top of that, when I first got on Turo, um, this was like five years ago, um,

they were very nice with like dealing with things.

They, if somebody crashed your car, no problem, Mr.

Lopez, we're going to send an adjuster out, we're going to get you fixed in like a week.

I'd have a check and the car be fixed.

Yeah, now

you're not getting anything.

No, I mean, you have to fight, argue, and they a lot of times they take the customer's side.

Like, there's a lot of these guys that like they'll rent your car and they'll drive it, and then let's say they got to return it in like two hours they'll call and be like oh you know what this car doesn't feel safe the the brakes are shaking the steering shaking i don't feel safe i'm just gonna park the car on the side of the road and leave it here whoa and so they'll just leave your car somewhere and you're pissed off because this is your you know your investment you have a lot of money tied up into it and turo will flag you force you to take it to a shop and then whatever money they paid for rental they take it out of your account Punish you.

And so I've had this happen several times where I'm like, look, there's nothing wrong with the car.

I have videos, I have evidence, and like I would show a documentation and they would always turn me back on.

But a lot of these kids don't have a process of actually doing it correctly.

So when they get locked out, they get kicked off the platform.

And the worst thing is now is if you do something wrong like that, maybe two, three times, you're off.

You're banned.

Yeah.

I had a guy,

this is embarrassing.

This shows how smart people are.

He had 30 Teslas in California that he's running on Turo during the pandemic.

He was making absolute kids.

I think they're making two to $300 a day.

Wow.

Well, fast forward about six months ago, he was renting it and he got three complaints in like a matter of like a week and a half.

Two of the people were dumb because, you know, like Tesla's like, if you don't charge them, they'll just they'll shut down.

Yeah, yeah.

It's, you know, that's pretty much it.

So two people didn't understand how the battery worked, and so they bricked the cars.

The cars were dead.

They just left him there and complained about it and walked away from the car.

Wow.

So he had to tow them.

So he had to basically tell Turo that they were too stupid to read the battery charger and everything else, even though the car was telling him to go charge it.

And the other person got a nail in the tire.

Well, those three strikes got him kicked off of Turo.

No way.

So overnight, he lost everything.

So

each of his Teslas is about an $800 to $900 car payment with insurance.

So imagine he has $30,000 a month in overhead

every single month with those 30 Teslas.

And just boom.

If you get kicked off, you're done.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I've been preaching since literally like two years ago.

Don't ever rely on just one, you know, form of income.

Diversify, put some cars on Turo, some on share, some on

HireCar.

Like there's a bunch of platforms now where they can do it, but people just drink the Kool-Aid.

They watch these YouTube gurus, rent your car on Turo, it's a business.

All those guys are gone.

When I started my channel, I think I had like 5,000 subs.

These guys had like 10,020,000 subs.

And they were selling their Turo rental car course.

And I was actually teaching people how to get a rental car license.

They're all gone now.

Yeah, I used to see those Turo automation courses and stuff.

Oh, God.

They're even coming back now.

I see people like after they burned and they've been roasted on social media, they're coming back again.

And they're like, well, you have a rental car course.

I'm like, yeah, mine's teaching you how to get a license and get insurance and lines of credit and running or renting directly to consumers, not going through a third-party platform.

Now, it's great to have that as backup because it's a lead generator.

That's all I used it for, to bring me leads.

And if I ever, if Turo was ever pissed off at me, I can leave them and it wouldn't crush and cripple my business.

And so now all these guys are coming back and there's this exotic car automation, which we'll kind of spin into, I guess, our next topic.

Have you seen the ads like, oh, rental car automation, exotic rental car automation?

Yeah, they do like a profit split or something.

Yeah.

And so I won't mention names, but here's the flaw with most of these exotic rental car companies.

So one, if you're leasing your car, let's say from like Luxury Leasing Partners, Midway, a few of these other companies, it's 100% illegal to rent out your car and they can actually repo your car.

A company I know, Luxry Leasing Partners, they do it all the time.

They actually snatch up rental cars from people that are renting them because that's in your lease.

You cannot use it for commercial purposes.

Wow.

So that's the first one.

The second one is a lot of people's insurance will not cover somebody else in the car.

I don't care what you say or your attorney said that it's good and they wrote a contract and everything else.

It's

your insurance at any time.

If I take your Lambo and I get drunk and I run into a school bus and a bunch of kids and they're like, well, you had insurance, so I'm good to go.

Insurance is not going to cover it.

They're like, well, no, you weren't driving.

We insured you, not this person driving it.

And so these poor people are signing up for these rental car automations where they're either giving their cars to somebody else so you give me your lambo and you're pro you're trusting me to basically rent out your car to a bunch of random strangers and i'm and i'm telling you promise that i'm insured and i'm licensed and i'm bonded and you're safe your car's safe but all they're doing is they're taking your car let's say uh it's a 2021 hurricane and they'll give it to somebody and they'll rack up a shiles when you're making money it's an even split But when, let's say, somebody breaks something, damages something, or your car needs maybe clutch or maintenance, that's your problem.

And that's where all these guys don't read the fine print.

What I'm telling them is like, I go, the profit split is what it is.

You all get money.

But when it starts costing money, they're not going to do anything for you.

I've seen some of these guys where they had like a lot full of cars.

They don't wash them.

They don't maintain them.

They don't keep them inside.

They just beat the hell out of somebody else's cars.

They realize that if you buy these cars yourself and you finance them, you can't make any money.

That's why all these exotic rental car companies die within the first two years is because

depreciation and maintenance catches up to them and they can't afford it and they can't trade in the cars because every time they make money, they pocket it or live some crazy lifestyle instead of actually paying down their loans.

So 90% of the exotic rental car companies you see out here are all full of they don't have insurance.

They're not correctly registered with the state.

They're just a bunch of dudes that got together that are renting out their Lambos so they can afford to make the payments.

That's insane.

Yeah, period.

The margins do seem insane, though, because they'll rent them out for like 500, 1,000 a day.

Yeah.

So like when I had a

few exotic cars back in the day, I won't do them anymore.

One, because Houston, my friend, does it, and then also it's just not worth the liability.

But you know, you go out and you buy like my R8 that I'm driving now, I can rent that out for like $1,000 a day.

Wow.

And it's good, but the downfall is, is like, you know, what do people do when they get in these exotic cars?

They want to rip it.

They want to do burnouts.

They want to do all this crazy stuff.

And I just, to me, it's not worth the risk and liability.

And then on top of that, the the depreciation is steep.

Once every like 5,000 miles you put on an exotic car, I mean, you're talking 10, 20, 30, 40,000 in depreciation.

Wow.

And a lot of these guys don't realize that.

They're like, oh, I'm going to put 20,000, 30,000 miles, and then I'm just going to get rid of it.

So they'll pay 380 for

a fully loaded Hurrican that was a year ago that with no miles.

They put 30,000 miles on it two and a half years.

They're like, okay, I'm ready to get rid of it.

What's it worth?

Oh, we're trading $195,000.

Well, I still owe $310,000 in this car.

Oh, sorry, buddy.

You're going to have to come up with $100,000 out of your pocket.

Oh, my gosh.

And it's the same thing every single time we see these guys just freaking out.

And I used to think the money was worth it.

So here's the difference between an exotic rental car company that's legit and one that's that's basically not legit.

So to do these type of cars, it costs me about $1,000 a month in insurance per car for exotic cars.

Whoa.

Now the catch is, is I can never use that insurance because once I have so many losses on my policy, they'll kick you off.

That's why it's it's so hard to get exotic rental car insurance and so expensive.

Now, $1,000 is because I've been doing this since like 2005.

So I'm already grandfathered in with my company.

They will not accept anybody new.

New places that I've actually set up, I've seen them do anywhere like $50,000 to $60,000 to start the policy and $2,000 to $3,000 a month per car for exotic cars.

So that's why I tell these guys when we rent our cars, or even like my friend Houston, he rents a Hurricane for two grand a day.

And they're like, well, I can get it on Turrell for $1,000 bucks because he's running his business correctly.

That two grand pays for the insurance, pays for depreciation, pays for the miles, pays for the maintenance.

It's done correctly.

Where these guys, like I said,

they rent their car out five times a month.

They're making five grand.

They're thinking they're balling.

And

they're not doing it right.

And every time we try to set somebody up, because these guys call, I've even had some of these YouTubers that were, oh, my client wants to get it.

What does he have to do?

And I tell them, they're like, there's got to be a cheaper way.

I'm like, there's not.

This is the cost of doing business.

And that's why there's so many of these clowns that are getting shut down.

They get raided.

The guy in Atlanta.

Yeah, they get raided.

It's illegal because what happens is once you commit insurance fraud, like that's what these guys were doing in Atlanta.

They were, they would take your car and they would rent it out to people.

And then all of a sudden,

they crash your car.

Oh, well, just tell them it was stolen.

And so you call in your insurance company because you don't want to lose a $300,000 loan.

You tell them it's stolen.

Well, people started surfacing with videos of these guys like doing burnouts, crashing the cars, running into people.

And so, and they caught a few of them saying, you know, that I rented it and they showed a contract.

So the feds raided them and shut them all down.

And these were some of these turo gurus that were doing exotic rental cars, rental car automation, which is basically, we call them broker jokers.

They don't own anything.

They don't own a business.

They don't own a license.

They don't own shit.

Just give me your expensive car and I'll rent it out.

Basically, they're a pimp.

I'm going to pimp you out.

I'm going to take my cut.

And you're going to take all the risk.

And that's literally what it is.

When you sit down and think about it, and you guys are thinking about doing this, it's all about risk and liability when it comes to the car business.

If you're willing to risk $200,000 to make $1,000, that's a full move.

Don't even waste your time because it's not worth risking $200K to make $1,000.

There's a lot better ways to do that.

Yeah, that risk to ratio is not good at all.

I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I had random people renting my Lambo and they could crash it or steal it or something.

The scary thing is, I talked to this other guy.

He's dealing with these other group in Miami, New York, and they have four exotic cars, cars two colinins and an aventador and i think an aston martin all together i think it's a little over like two million dollars in cars i'm like so basically you just gave this guy two million dollars to gamble is what i uh adjusted it to i was like i would never do that like get your cars back sell them even if you lose 100k that's more than what you'll ever get renting it but these guys they just they watch the videos they see the hype they see these guys they're all broke and they're all kids yeah and i'm like okay I can understand.

Like, if

there's a guy, his name's Rob Ferretti, he's probably a little bit older than me, he's been doing it for years, he's got a track record.

You want to invest your money?

Give it to somebody like that.

Right.

Like, even people ask me, Hey, like, I'll give you a car.

I don't want your car.

Oh, run it for me.

I don't want to do it.

Why?

Because of liability.

I don't want to be responsible for your car.

So if I'm telling you I don't want to do it and these ass clowns are like, oh, bro, give me your car and I'll rent it out and I'll beat the

it, it blows my mind.

So are you out of the rental game completely now?

Um, I actually just got my license last week.

So I'm opening up a place downtown and I'm going to do classic cars and I'm going to do commercial rentals.

So I want to do something that's a little bit different from a lot of my friends.

Obviously, Houston does exotic cars.

I have another buddy of mine that does like regular cars.

So I'm going to be renting to probably like Uber, Postmate drivers,

construction companies, plumbing companies, and then classic cars.

Nobody likes them.

I love them because you got to tinker with them.

And so that's my goal is to have a bunch of retro rods where we have a bunch of classic cars and you can rent them out for, you know, two, three hundred dollars a day.

What's considered like a classic car?

Is there specific years they got to be in?

It could be a little bit of everything.

We can have, we have

like 70 Novas, 69 Camaro, 67 Mustang Fastback, 65 Mustang Convertible.

Stuff from like the 50s, 60s, 70s, I think is kind of the sweet spot because people have such an earning for those.

And I remember my friend when I first got started in the business, I actually worked on a lot of the exotic rental companies here and they owned dream cars and they were the biggest ones at the time.

And we used to do all their service work for them.

And we used to laugh.

The actual ROI on a classic car is 10 times Lambo.

Because Lambo, you got to buy $280,000, and you're renting it for $1,500,000, $2,000 a day.

And the insurance is high, maintenance is high.

Classic cars, I spend maybe $20,000, $30,000 building them.

So the retro rods, so it looks old on the outside, but it has like a modern Tahoe transmission and motor and brakes on the bottom.

So let's say we put put 30 grand into it.

My insurance is $112 a month per car, and we rent them out for $200 to $300 a day.

Wow, that's way less risk.

Yeah.

And so to me, it's like, you know, it's not as flashy.

Like I don't get to have Lambos and, you know, all these wannabe Instagram models in my DMs.

But at the end of the day, who gives what makes money with the least amount of risk?

That's my philosophy.

And so I think it'll be good to not only have this where I can, you know, have like friends.

Like, if you want to do a photo shoot, you want to drive the cars, but then also, you know, I want to have people physically come here to Vegas and like, if they want to like learn about the rental car business, they can come see it like live, like actually going on because I've seen all these fake gurus kind of disappear, you know, like, I'm a real estate mogul.

Oh, show me your real estate portfolio.

I don't own any real estate.

And it's like, why in the fk are you selling a class?

So we just kind of laugh.

So my goal is if I ever do anything like this, I want to make sure I can physically bring people to a place and show them.

And I think it'll be great for YouTube, to be honest with you.

Because like I said, I don't mind doing the sitting talking head stuff, but after a while I get kind of bored.

I want to do something different where I have a camera guy follow me and I think it'll just be a little more fun.

Right.

What cars would you recommend people never get?

Like they're terrible quality.

They always break down.

Like you've had terrible experiences.

Oh, I'm going to get a bunch of hate on this one.

So the first one is going to be Range Rovers.

You can buy them brand new.

But I've seen brand new ones go to the shop more than any other car.

I don't know what it is.

I thought that, you know, every car's taken a big leap.

Hyundai's and Kia's have jumped up way up in reliability.

But Range Rovers,

I had a buddy pay, God, was it like a $1.50 or $1.60 for a Range Rover portfolio?

200 miles in the shop.

2,000 miles in the shop.

2,100 miles back in the shop.

And we're talking a month to three months at a time and stuck inside the shop.

Finally, I told him about the lemon law, and they actually came, lemoned it out, and he got another car.

What's the lemon law?

So if you buy a brand new car and it keeps going in for the exact same problem and they can't figure it out and they can't fix it it's your protection from a manufacturer to get rid of the car now this is only on brand new cars so all these people watching saying there's a lemon law for used cars there's not don't even try you're done and so it just helps because sometimes there are cars that are just bad from the factory and so i told him you got to take it in for depending on the manufacturer could be three to six times for the exact same thing you know and his was electrical problems he'd just drive it and the car would just shut off you know and he's got a family his kids are in the back all of a sudden the steering wheel locks up the brakes won't work it's very scary so I told him that that's the easiest way.

But after the third time, it died.

He took it back.

He called

Range Rover, and I think they had so many people calling, they just gave another one.

Wow.

I wouldn't even take another one at that point.

That's what I told him.

I was like, please don't take one.

Go get something else.

I'd say there's a lot of the newer cars now are really good

as far as maintenance and dependability.

I mean, there's always a few outliers.

Like, I know that Fiat

has the most recalls and the most maintenance.

It's called TSBs, tactical service bulletins, out of any manufacturer.

Like for some reason, when they came here to America, I think they just forgot how to build cars because they're just, they're the rapid, the most rapid depreciating cars, more maintenance, and just non-stop problems.

So if you're looking at a fiat, I know they look cute, but the little bubbly and you can buy the Gucci one.

Don't even waste your time.

They're absolute junk.

I'm trying to think.

For exotic cars, I tell people McLaren's, I love them.

Every time I go on exotic car rallies, they're great cars.

But once you get over like 5,000 miles, it's like like a ticking time bomb.

Every time we go, like, um, we go to these rallies from like LA to Vegas, they'll break down in between, yeah, all the time.

Transmission codes, they get locked up, turbo blows a hose, or or they blow a coolant line.

Every I've never been to a rally where I've seen every single McLaren,

never.

Yeah, everyone I ask this question to McLaren's in their top three.

Yeah, I don't know what it is.

I mean, they're beautiful cars, they're amazingly designed, but man, they are just undependable.

Like my R8, R8's Hurricanes, you can't go wrong.

The V10 is bulletproof, they've been making the same one since 05.

Wow.

They just can't,

and it's just, they're dependable.

I've seen, my friend has a Huracon

in Texas, and he has a buck 30,000, 130,000 miles on a 2015 Hurricane.

Whoa.

And he just drives the hell out of it.

He bought it, I think, from a rental car company in New York when it had like 60-something thousand miles.

And he did a video, the highest mileage.

Hurricane.

Never took off.

I think it got like 20 views, but he's been driving it ever since.

And now he doesn't even care.

He beats it, drives it, takes it off curbs and stuff.

But I I mean, that's literally, that's the one car if you had to blow your wad and spend it as far as exotic cars-wise, that'd be it.

Ferraris are getting a lot better.

Ferraris used to be pretty bad with maintenance, but Ferraris are definitely good.

So, what's the best way to actually get a car, not get ripped off or lose 30, 40% off the rip?

So, when you talk about

that's the downfall currently in this market,

They really build this this FOMO, this fear of missing out.

So, if you try to buy a new car it's almost impossible to get a deal now manufacturers and dealerships are starting to sell at MSRP before a Toyota Corolla was like 20 grand over MSRP RAF 4s were like 30 40 grand it was ridiculous buying a $40,000 car and then paying $40,000 a markup so right now you it's very hard but I know Jeep Dodge Ford and some other manufacturers are starting to give incentives

you know but when it comes to exotic cars I hate to say it buy used because you you will never get a good deal buying brand new I mean, if you buy like a Lamborghini and you're able to get an allocation and you can buy it at MSRP and then you could sell it later, that's probably the only thing I think that you can actually make money on.

But right now, people don't have auctions to the auctions, and the auctions, the dealer auctions, are more overpriced than Craigslist, Facebook, and Offer Up.

We can literally go on Offer Up and probably find a better deal on a Tahoe than we can at the actual auction.

So I feel really bad when people keep asking me, like, where do I find the deals?

Where do I find the deals?

The best thing that I tell people is go to like like Auto Trader or Car Gurus, and you can actually sort by time of

basically being online how long the car's been there.

And whatever cars you're looking at, let's say you're looking at a Ford F-150, pull up all the ones you like.

Whatever, which ones has the most days on market, that's the one to negotiate with.

Because if it's been there for six months, they're going to let it go for a deal.

The one they just bought last week, they're not going to budge.

So just look for cars that have been online the longest amount of time.

Because even the,

I bought an Acura NSX, they wanted 170, then they dropped it to 160 150 and I wounded up offering them one 140 for it and I winded up getting it and so it took me like three months to get it but I was patient didn't want to wait and they all do that well bro we got like six people that want it okay when they stroke the check let me know yeah and they love to talk trash and even me like a dealer I used to do the same thing but that's just the way they are they're so worried about losing money that they'll what is that like holding on to the rope that's an anchor does more damage than than actually letting it go that's the way dealers are they're so afraid to lose money that they'll literally scare away all the customers that can legitimately buy the car where they can just get out of it.

Yeah, that makes sense.

We got to wrap up, but I want to talk about your YouTube conference coming up real quick.

Could you tell people more about that?

Yeah, so it's called Creator Connection.

We're going to be doing it here in Las Vegas, still working out the destination part.

But what it's going to be, it's going to be a conference where YouTubers with over 100,000 subscribers, I think TikTokers with over a million, Instagram influencers with over 250,000 followers are going to be able to come to this event.

It's completely free for them.

We're going to have speakers, and these speakers are going to be something that's not going to be somebody like tell you how to get better thumbnails and how to do longer retention.

It's all about business.

We're going to have agents, they're going to help you get sponsorships.

We have different financial companies that are going to show you how to get actual financing if you're an influencer.

So if you want to build a podcast, you want to get some camera gear, you want to, you know, whatever you need money for, we can do that.

We have,

obviously, you had Eric on the show, but like Kara, they're going to talk about the importance of, you know, building your credit with this and kind of give people an idea of what it's like to actually run a business with uh on social media and how to build your brand because i've talked to a few of these people like building their brand and all they're talking about is getting more eyeballs where

i when i first started this i knew that there was people out there that had like we talked about like a million subscribers and they were clearing like eight to ten thousand dollars a month you know i was doing that when i had like twelve thousand subscribers i was learning how to do consulting i was trying to monetize my content as much as i possibly could and so i wanted to share this information because like I said, I think that there's so much opportunity out there.

And as people start leaning more to YouTube, like these podcasts and stuff, like that's why they're all blowing up.

People are just sucked into YouTube.

Free content.

Why are they going to pay $20 a month to watch the same, was it Disney Plus, Mandalorian, and watch that over and over and over again?

Now they're all going to stuff like this where they can learn from entrepreneurs, they can learn from other people, and it's a little more entertaining.

And now we're dealing with regular people like ourselves.

So I think that this platform will just get bigger.

So if people don't figure out how to monetize and actually make money off of the platform, because I believe that

I don't know if you're around for Ad Pocalypse, the first one.

I wasn't.

So like I've watched people literally make, you know, $50,000, $60,000 a month off AdSense and literally overnight they get their channels, oh, you're no longer making this much money off of your views.

We consider you comedy, so you're going to drop in like a quarter.

So now they're making like $10,000 a month instead of $100,000 and they're freaking out because they live this crazy lifestyle.

So I believe that Adpocalypse 2.0 is about to come because a lot of these financial YouTubers YouTubers got in trouble and they're blaming them and they're the highest paid.

So I think that they're going to switch that where if you're a financial thing, you have to prove documentation and then they'll put you in there.

But if you're not, I think they're going to give you a lower tier of finance, just like automotive.

I think automotive, actually, we're going to go up.

I don't think we're going to go down.

I think right now we're

four or fifth as far as the ranking goes as what we get per CPM.

But

so that's why I don't want people to do is just to rely 100% just on AdSense.

I want them to build a brand to make money off the platform.

Right.

Lucky.

It's been a great episode, man.

Any closing comments, things you want to promote?

Um, pretty much if you're a creator and you're watching this, make sure you check out uh go to creatorconnection.vegas.

That's where we're gonna have it signed up.

It's probably gonna be sometime in the end of October.

Um, you're actually the first person that I've told, so I just literally got the logo back today.

And waiting for the events, check out my website, uh, automotivelife.com, and check out my channel, Lucky Lopez.

We talk all things automotive, and yeah, that's about it.

Here we go.

Thanks for tuning in, guys, to the digital social hour.

I'll see you next time.