3 Vehicles I Would Buy (If I Had the Money)

here's a brand new Acura MDX I'm going to go through the whole thing for this size SUV this is the second most popular one in the United States only the Lexus in this range sells more models no they're not giving them away this one was $75,000 and if you saw the video I did the other day of a brand new yandai Palisade the guy got it for 415 so there's a big price differential but of course you're not getting a yandai you're getting Honda technology with this thing now this is a loaded one it is a Type S all-wheel drive but that's kind of a funny story he didn't particularly want the advanced package and all that so at one dealer he ordered just the plain one right and it never showed up so I went to another dealer and they said hey I don't know how they ordered you one they didn't make anything but premium want the sh so he wrote tested this and he liked it and he bought it and he said the price really wasn't that different than what the other ones were it wasn't that much of a difference you know anyway you're looking at these things you're going to spend 70 something Grand if you're going to get a brand new one now if we just look at the Style hey this blackout thing it's it's a mean looking SUV you know it's not just the one of the cookie cutter SUVs that everybody's driving around it's definitely got an attitude to it and he's an a trusting driver because he's worried about people stealing his stuff so he actually has all of these devices this is his old device that he's had for years that he hooks up if he search for any length of time to keep people from stealing the car of course it didn't come with any that's his stuff but truthfully if You' watched any of my videos modern cars since they have those keyless remote fobs they can be stolen relatively Easy by anybody who knows what they're doing now I'm not a thief so I don't steal cars but the equipment that I have to work on car s can be used to steal these things rly you can just get a generic key once you get into the car by getting the information if you're standing around with some kind of a receiver you could get it when somebody opens their door pushing the button once they get into the car the key that they have that's a generic key they can use the machine I have they can program it to start the car and way they go well they going to have a real hard time with that bar on there right those two bars and basically it comes down to this Steve comes by and sees all this crap on the car guess what they're going to do they're going to walk on down to the next car and say that's too much hassle thieves let's face it they're lazy people if they weren't lazy they'd have jobs like the rest of us right they want the easiest money they can get they see all that stuff they're just going to walk on to the next one so he feels secure I don't blame him I feel secure in it too these aren't that popularly stolen vehicles so not something that you got to worry about that much but if you are get a couple of those you know nobody's going to be stealing your car that's for sure now we get down to the nitty-gritty get on the hood got a 3 l V6 engine it puts out 355 horsepower and it's tied into a 10speed Honda automatic transmission yes this is not one of those stinking cvts it's a 10-speed automatic and you'll see how smooth it is when we road test got plenty of zip and for a vehicle this heavy it gets average gas mileage you'll get mid 20s on the highway when you're driving it around it's a big heavy vehicle realize that even the uh Palisade that I checked out the other day hey that thing did the same thing it got mid 20s and it had a lot less it about 100 horsepower less than this thing has now these things were made in the United States I always like the Japanese ones but you got to face the facts they've been building these things in Ohio for a really long time now as we look inside you can see it's conservative luxury a nice solid makes a cool sound when you go and type S really nicely laid out gigantic armor automatic charger for your phone and check it out the radio and stuff can be done from here like a real old radio that people are used to not some crazy thing that takes you 3 hours to figure out even the plugs here for USB and for type c hey they're nice they're hidden they come out when you want them got a brake hold and you can turn off the automatic shot off I would always turn it off I hate those things and now so you can do many things with it you put in drive you can shift it yourself got these nice little paddle shifters here there a gigantic sunroof check it out it's going going there it is big old sunroof it's got a nice setup here you can see your speed easily check out the backup camera check it out you can push your button to even see it talk about wide angle now this is the front there's the top view button you got the side view and the top view choices you can go Comfort snow lift you want to get a little higher normal or sport we'll go for sport and you notice watch this okay listen even the exhaust is louder now we got to the backup camera it's super wide angle too with the top view I mean phenomenal for not running into things if you're driving a car like this and you run into something they should take your driver's license away with this kind of assistance come on now you got no excuse running into things I say you push that button hey you get to see the sides too so you're not going to run anything you see both sides makes your car look squashy and kind of strange but you get to see both sides and when you shut it off check it out ooh space edge now this has super comfortable seats nice black with red trim it's got even nice seats in the middle and of course in the back it's got the seats that are folded down now he got to folded down for carrying stuff so if you want to carry eight people I mean you can get a loaded linoln navigator for $130,000 that'll hold eight but really this is a much more quality vehicle the accurate than the Ford is ever going to be and for that extra person to pay all that extra money and you're talking about what like $660,000 that's freaking insane as far as I'm concerned me I wouldn't even buy you know a $7,000 car I'm certainly not going to buy $130,000 one enough talking let's get moving here and there we go you can see me going down the driveway from the top and from the back I love these systems the first thing you notice this thing is smooth as can be and these Honda V6 engines have been around forever the only thing bad I have to say about bottom is even though this is 2024 it still has a rubber timing belt everybody else has gone to chains right but for some reason Honda v6s they never went to change they still have rubber timing belts now they run perfectly fine but realiz it you're supposed to change them every 100,000 miles because they're interference engines so it's just I don't understand I guess Honda was thought they were going to go electric and they're only going to make these for a while so but I mean that's kind of crazy normal so we'll change that there now we're sport oh look at that picture doesn't that look sporty looks like meteors are taking the car so here we go to the top of the hill amazing no one's to the left one guy to the right all right here we go plenty of Pickup Man smooth shifting it's got 10 speeds this 10-speed transmission is not like that horrendous 4D gm1 they had all kinds of problems Honda Engineers know what they're doing and they decided to get the best gas bodage and the best power they could out of these things so they threw a 10-speed automatic they could have thrown in one of those dumb cvts to get a little bit better gas mileage but hey you wouldn't have the performance and the reliability that something like this is going to Happ take advantage of the 10p speed is not only you get a little bit better gas modage but it's a pretty fast shifter so you get all the advantages of nice acceleration but still a really smooth drive it doesn't have to overrun the engine so the engine's going to last longer and of course it's got a heads up displ for the speed too I mean and now we're going to play a little game that will go to the Comfort Zone now we're in the comfort zone and it's got a smoother ride too and look I like the little GPS cuz it shows the ocean headed and we are headed right towards my house then the ocean now I do have to say this thing is a lot more fun to drive than that yundai Palisade they both have V6 engines but the quality of this is infinitely Superior now he did pay $34,000 more than a guy did for the Palisade so because the guy who owned the Palisade he looked at these and he liked them but he thought I think I'll save myself $35,000 buy the Y day and pay for 120,000 Mi warranty so there you have it a bring brand new MDX I can see why it's the second bestselling one in this class only the Lexus sells more if you've got that kind of money you know he did pay 75 grand for this thing cuz it's the loaded Model S with everything on it he's happy with the thing I'd be crying over the price though you know he paid 10 times more for this car than I paid for every car I own for myself not including my wife cars in all those years I'm 70 years old so all right people are always asking me should they get a hybrid or not get a hybrid well in this new Toyota Venza you don't have a choice it's only sold as an all-wheel drive hybrid system as you can see this thing is averaging 39 M a gallon a vehicle of this size and weight to get that kind of gas Modge it's relatively phenomenal we'll look under the hood very dependable 2.5 l engine no turbo just 2.5 and the hybrid system here to give it boost now this is a vano but it's the same as the red 4 I've driven the red 4 I like them so I imagine I like this when I Road tested but you'll see these things are still pretty Zippy and they can get phenomenal gas mileage right now everybody knows I'm not a fan of CVT transmissions right but this is Toyota's ecvt it's a bit different they've been making it for quite some time Prius has all had them they've pretty much perfected them over time because if you're can to have a hybrid system like this about the only way you can do it is putting on a CVT transmission cuz it can have different inputs to the same drivetrain where if you had a regular transmission the only way you can do hybrid is a halfast hybrid take Dodge some of their trucks they're mild hybrids and they have this crazy Italian generator motor that's built into the engine so the engine gets the Boost through the same transmission hey this is new and shiny got a timing chain no time and belt you don't even have to worry about that much maintenance on these things and if you want all-wheel drive there it is that's the only way they make them now you have to get an old version for two wheel drive they only make them an all-wheel drive they figure there's enough people that want them that's how they're making them I like the black trim and the black wheels with the white it looks pretty good and here's something interesting called The Nightshade version It's the only version it has the black trim like that see you don't like the sun okay there's the sun well there's a magic button somewhere over here there it is watch this magic button okay now what do you see all you see is that little dot of a sun because this is opaque done electronically on the switch watch here we go it's opaque we'll get rid of opaque boom there Comes the Sun and it's bothering you you get opaque for a little bit of brightness and of course if you can't stand any of it you can just close all sunroof if you want and here it comes electronically closing itself then you don't anything at all but perhaps this black interior is too dark for you well then what you do is you open the sunroof and is a double sunroof so and then there you go you got a nice orange Sun maybe you can use it to look at Eclipse I don't know but it's all electronic here because that when you push the button like I said not full on if you want it bright but to some people that's too bright so we'll push the button again and then it's not as bright now this is a hybrid but it's not a plug-in hybrid so when you push EV you can drive it and if you drive like a turtle for very short distances say you want to sneak up on somebody you can do that but as soon as you drive it normal step on the gas the gasoline motor took in because this is not a plugin hybrid this is a standard hybrid now you take a Rav 4 Prime plugin I did one of those a you few months ago and the guy told me he's been as far as 55 miles on electricity alone he took it on a highway going 60 and it was still running on electricity until it got low so if you want to try out heart electric car you'd want to get a plugin me I'd rather have one of these because they're a lot simpler the batter's smaller and unlike plugin EVs and full EVS battery in this thing is safe it's inside the car under here if you got a full EV or a plugin hybrid all the batteries on the bottom of the car and if you live up north or anywhere really but especially up north when saw salt under Ro new energy the salt water will get in those batteries and it can destroy the battery the wiring system Canadian government had a big rhubarb with the plug-in R fours that they made them fix them because the salt water ate away the wiring those were plugin hybrids this isn't a plug-in hybrid you don't plug it in it just charges itself while the engine's running or when you're doing regenerative braking so it's a much simpler system and it's got much less downsides than a full EV or even a plug-in hybrid ass it's got puddle Lights under the mirror so when you open the door you won't see it now cuz it's too bright but at night it'll light up so you don't stand in a puddle when you get out you can see it's got a very wide screen good definition look now you're even wider you can change the lines most people would just leave the lines like that but if you really need wide vision you can make them wider close wide now it's pretty good if there's any kids walking around you get a better view of what's going on there of course all the safety ones here traction control you can turn off Lane departure too lazy to open your trunk there it goes I've seen a lot of them don't do it let's see if it closes itself you got to hold it 2 seconds and yes look it closes itself too for the life of me I could never figure out why they made ones that would open themselves but not close themselves it only makes sense that you push the butt and open you push get in the closes we got wireless charging that's standard on these you can change the drive modes you can go sport normal Eco well you know I'm going to go sport heated seats in the front now higher trims have cooled seats too but this isn't the highest trim so you don't get cooled seats so you're going to have a hot Fanny we got it wide you can really see what's going on there and the warning Works look at that it kep me from smashing into them hey I got to say that's impressive my wife would love that she said I'm never looking I hate backing up I only like going forward oh here we go what do you notice it's really smooth and this is the ecvt it's a CVT but it's all electronically controlled and if anybody knows how to make them it's Toyota cuz they've been making in Priuses for decades and I was T something interesting this is a sunroof and you can see the sun cuz I have it on opaque mode but it doesn't open finally a sunroof that I like because I don't want to to leak this never opens it won't leak it's opaque finally I'm not opening it's too hot or too cold outside all the time anyway and we have it on the energy monitor so you can see turn the wheel back you'll be able to see you can see what's happening we hit the brakes woo energy goes to the battery look at that isn't that magical but that 39 M a gallon that's the average of all driving which is kind of phenomenal we're not just talking one is real high and one is real low it always gets good gas mileage you take a car that might get 38 on the road conventional car it's probably going to get 22 in the city stop and go while this is regenerating electricity so it does better see we got a sport mode and there's nobody really coming so take it to our little drag strip you will the engine reving up more cuz it's a CVT transmission and that's what they do oh now I can see someone's kind of sneaking up on us so we'll have to do it fast on your mark get set go not onping but it takes off decently and smooth I just like automatic transmissions myself because they got a little more kick to them with actual gears so we're going 50 46 we going to pass somebody you can see you're going it gets to 60 fast enough it's fine for driving and unlike some hybrids that ride like go-karts going over Stone roads this thing's got a pretty smooth ride to it they got a decent suspension system on these things the biggest gripe that most people have about Toyota Priuses is their ride is quite a bit on the weak side this thing is a regular vehicle that's been hybridized and it really has a nice ride and it doesn't have much wind noise either and I do have to say I like the night shade the black and chrome and then the white and black with the black rims it's it's got a nice look to it and look I didn't even notice I was going 45 I was supposed to be going 20 and I had no problem whatsoever I didn't even notice anything so it really handles quite well and once you get rolling you can see it picks up pretty good when you come to a stop now we'll turn it off of sport mode and of course now the only thing you hear is the fan cuz the motors turned off and we're running in battery power so it's really quiet when it's just sitting there so there you have it their only hbd the venz is now I got to say had a nice ride decent acceleration all kinds of autr mons to it me of course I'm a cheap skate I'd probably go get a Toyota Corolla cross because it's like $12,000 that was cheaper I'm cheap right but you know if you don't mind going in the 40s and you want a small SUV like this and it fits your KNE go road test one I'm really happy with it you know I'm a cheap skate so I won't buy one till it gets really old or customer gets too tired they'll just sell it cheap and I'll buy it and drive it for another 2 300,000 miles right but if you're looking for a car like this hey it's got a Dependable four-cylinder engine it's not turbocharged and it's a hybrid Toyota's hybrid I've seen the rav 4S Camry hybrids 250 they're still on the original battery they're still getting great gas mileage so and regardless of when you buy it Toyota gives a 10year 150,000 Mi warranty on the battery a lot of people 150,000 miles to them oh I'll get rid of my car you don't have to worry about the battery and even if you did by then if the battery went bad there's reconditioned batteries available for a much cheaper I had a customer in Chicago drove Camry Hybrid for Uber and he bought another battery and installed parts and labor it only cost him 1,300 bucks he had like 250 on his Camry it finally started to go out the Hybrid battery so he had a guy install that and it worked perfectly fine his gas mileage went back up to normal so they're not that bad if you get a Toyota now if you're thinking about getting BMW or Mercedes or Audi Hybrid well you better have a lot of money in the bank to pay for repairs as it breaks down these are known for not breaking down those aren't you really got to pick and choose if you're going to buy hybrid 2025 Toyota cam I just bought this thing for $331,000 here in Clarksville Tennessee yes $31,000 and consider that my son paid 50 Grand last year for his Tacoma that's almost twice as much as we look under the hood realized it is a hybrid this thing average gas mileage is 51 miles a gallon now I'm not particularly a fan of white cars but hey white with the black wheels and a black trim it looks pretty sharp this does have a CVT transmission you know I'm a fan of CVT transmissions generally this is an e CVT it's an electronic CVT it's a completely different ball game the regular cvts have drums and chains or belts it's a new design they have a lot of problems with them as they age they don't feel right you feel more cpage kind of like an old Evan Roode on a John Boat you hit it and it just goes and just moves it's a completely different ball game these electronic CVT they're using electric motors to drive them Toyota's been using this system for decades in the Prius they pretty much perfected and you might say Scotty but this is a Camry okay Camry's have been made with hybrid systems since 2006 this is a 2025 that's 19 years they do have a pretty good shifting system you don't notice it's shifting because it's continually variable but it's a very complex system but Toyota makes them so well it's not something you really got to worry about now granted back in the day the early Priuses a lot of them the electric motor generator would burn out cuz it overheated Toyota fixed that problem ages ago with different kinds of cooling system and the engine itself is no tiny little 1.5 1.8 this is a 2.5 L 4 cylinder engine so very strong engine how the heck Toyota can squeeze 51 m a gallon combined this isn't City or highway it's combined actually just a little bit better in town than it does on highway but 50 m a gallon anyway you look at it is phenomenal right how they can get 51 mes a gallon out of a 2.5 L engine is beyond me CU a lot of these companies are going to little Betty 1.2 L fours or three cylinder engines this is a good siiz engine so you get decent power but it gets phenomenal gas mileage now as we look in the trunk you'll notice one thing there's a little bit of battery inside the trunk here panel i f off now this little bitty battery poers the gauges the headlights stuff like that the main battery of the car that operates is under the back seat it's a 251 volt Hybrid battery the headlights and everything are still working on 12 volts the main battery and Generator charges this battery using the Transformer system steps it down from 251 to 12 volts but you got to check this 12vt whenever once in a while it will go out long before the Hybrid battery generally these hybrid batteries and Camry's I've seen them go anywhere from 175 to 250,000 Mi before they really needed replacing sometimes even further they're going to last a long time but the little ones don't last as long and your car will get squirly if the little one goes bad so a good idea you buy one of these once every year or two have the little battery tested when it's bad just replace it it's easy it's in the trunk so just like a fully electric car you can see there's orange wires those they're high voltage wires those all have to have integrated grounding systems inside the wiring system itself it can't have a positive wire here and then the negative being ground because then the ground would be 250 volts like I said when you touched it you'd be electrocuted they don't have those problems they know how to design them that's why there's a 12vt battery in the trunk the 12vt battery when you turn the car on runs the computer system computer checks if everything's okay then it closes the circuitry to allow the 250 one volt battery to start operating everything else through different Transformers they have different voltages they use but it's got to be activated by the 12vt battery first and of course Toyota's got the cooling system down path they got separate cooling system for the battery system so it won't overheat it's a pretty Tri and trude system and I do have to truthfully say even though I'm not a hybrid fan if somebody smashes into one of our cars when we're driving around here a Road Island or in between we got to get another car I would seriously consider buying this car I already was considering buy it even before I saw this one I did the research and I thought gee 51 m a gallon you can actually buy them for 31 Grand at least here in Clarkville Tennessee I don't know what they're selling for in the rest of the C you can check yourself theoretically the list of the cheaper one is only $29,000 hey I'd rather pay the two and if you wanted an all-wheel drive version all the all-wheel drive versions are only like 1,600 bucks extra now to me what do you need all-wheel drive in a Camry for it's not an off-road vehicle right and as I said I don't even care about a V6 in one of these cuz who to stuff with a Camry you know this can toll a reasonable amount of stuff but you know you don't need a V6 engine in a Camry really the for is put on enough horsepower and with the Boost from the electric motor these things still get enough get up and go as you'll see when we take it for a road test and of course being a hybrid and not a full electric car or a plug-in hybrid you still got a huge Chunk in this baby still got a huge trunk the Camy trunk there you can fit lots of things in so let's check out the interior I think it's beautiful black and white really comfy seats in the back and these babies aren't made in Mexico they're made in USA this one was made in Kentucky my wife had a used Camry station we had years ago about it used for 3,000 bucks it was made in Kentucky had no problems it was an excellent car so let's check the inside of the car I like it cuz I'm into black hey a lot of black in this car but I like the white accents on these extremely comfortable seats and we'll start her up of course we don't hear anything cuz it's in hybrid mode now you can drive it in EV mode if you want it does have an electronic parking brake I'm not a fan of these things right but that's the way that it goes as you can see the screen is now integrated it's smooth it fits in with the car look at it it's a good design I like it let's take it for a little spin backup camera is pretty good you can make it wide if you want we don't want to hit anything here it's a skinny driveway at the end and of course it's making its funky electric car noise by law they have to make a noise when you're in electric mode now I'm going to have some fun so I'm putting it in sport mode as you can see it's now in sport mode and away we go give it a little guess just to see not bad the only thing you can really hear are the tires after a while you start be complaining about tire noise cuz people will get so spoiled they'll hear a little tire noise well tires make noise when they go down the road but of course as soon as I put in sport mode if you look the gas mileage went down to 46.9 cuz I'm driving fast and of course it's got the little thing that tells you there's a stop sign there it is tells you there's a stop sign when we look outside there's a stop sign so we'll take it out to our little drag strip here woo your little squeal there it's in sports mode this this is not the old Tor a Prius turd mobile let me tell you we'll look behind us there's nobody behind us so here we go not bad acceleration yeah it's not a race car but hey it gets going we got going 65 mph pretty quick we'll slow down a little here 45 and then we'll floor it and now we're going 65 so so decent acceleration it does 0 to 60 in like 7.4 seconds nothing outrageously fast but it gets you where you're going and it doesn't really matter whether you get the all-wheel drive version that only adds like four horsepower it doesn't make much difference and it's reasonably fun to drive in the twisties and like I said we're going 307 with FL okay now we're going 65 M an hour 70 I mean let's face the facts Camry's aren't race cars they never were they're good Dependable cars and now they get phenomenal gas mileage it cost a lot less than other things out there now you might wonder how can they sell this car for $31,000 with all this stuff well it's because sedans aren't as popular as they used to be Camas used to be their bigger number one seller for decades right now it's the Rav 4 now let's say you want a plugin Rav 4 hybrid look locally they're about 54,000 at the same dealership that the guy bought this one for 31,000 so maybe think hey it's a nice car got a lot of space do I really need an SUV so there you have it the truthout a brand new 2025 Toyota Camry SC hybrid I'm not that much of a hybrid fan but I'd be leaning more towards 51 m a gallon with the Toyota electronic CVT that's a bulletproof transformation that works perfectly fine they've been perfecting them over the years the engineers have done some wacky stuff I've watched guys strip them down they are very complex with all the the motors moving parts now you know what you get if you're looking at one of these things hey I'm here to give you a wise choice for your money so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that Bell [Music]