Twenty-five years.
I've been saying that a lot lately, and I'm still not sure I've completely wrapped my head around it.
This Saturday marks 25 years since the Car Pro Show first went on the air. Not 25 years on WBAP specifically, but 25 years of sitting behind a microphone on Saturday mornings talking about cars with people I've mostly never met.
When we started, I certainly didn't have a 25-year plan. I was a car dealer who knew a lot about the automobile business and thought I might be able to help people understand an industry that can be confusing, intimidating and, unfortunately, sometimes deserving of the reputation it has.
Kevin McCarthy was sitting beside me in those early days and remained my co-host for the first 23 years. Neither of us could possibly have imagined where this thing would go. We weren't trying to build a national radio network. We certainly weren't thinking about hundreds of radio stations, newsletters, websites or any of the other things that eventually grew around the show.
We were trying to answer the next caller's question.
Twenty-five years later, I think that's still the most important thing me and Todd do.
I've been thinking about what all those Saturdays have taught me, and strangely enough, most of the lessons aren't really about cars.
I've learned that when somebody calls a radio show and asks whether he should replace the transmission in his 12-year-old pickup, there's often another question underneath the question. Maybe money is tight. Maybe that truck has to get him to work every morning. Maybe his daughter starts college next month. Maybe he's afraid of making a $6,000 mistake he can't afford.
He doesn't really need somebody to prove how much they know about transmissions.
He needs somebody he trusts to tell him what he would do.
That distinction has shaped this show more than anything else.
I learned early that people don't necessarily want an expert who knows everything. They want somebody who will tell them the truth, including when the truth is, “I don't know.”
I've said those three words on the radio plenty of times.
There was a time in my life when I probably thought admitting you didn't know something made you look weak. Age and 25 years of live radio cured me of that. There's nothing wrong with not knowing an answer. There's something terribly wrong with pretending you do.
Cars have changed beyond anything I could have imagined when we started. We've gone from talking about cassette players and CD changers to discussing over-the-air software updates. Engines got smaller and more powerful. Screens got enormous. Cars learned to watch blind spots, brake themselves, steer between the lines and tell you when the car ahead has driven away while you're sitting at a traffic light looking at your phone.
Through all of that technological change, however, the questions underneath the questions haven't changed very much.
“Can I afford this?”
“Is it reliable?”
“Am I getting a fair deal?”
“Can I trust this dealer?”
“Is this the right car for my family?”
“What would you do?”
That last one has always carried the most weight with me.
When somebody asks what I would do, they're handing me a little bit of their trust. I have never taken that lightly.
I've also learned how quickly life moves when you measure it in Saturdays.
There are only 52 of them in a year. Twenty-five years sounds enormous until you realize it's only about 1,300 Saturdays.
Somewhere among those Saturdays, I sold my dealerships. The radio show that had begun while I was still in the car business became my career. The Internet changed everything about how people shop for cars. The show grew far beyond North Texas and eventually across the country.
And life happened.
People who were part of the show left us. Listeners became friends. Kids who used to ride in the back seat while their parents listened grew up and started calling the show themselves. I've had people tell me they listened with their dad when they were young and now listen with their own children.
There aren't many things anyone gets to do long enough to hear that.
I've also learned that you never really know who's listening.
There have been Saturdays when I finished a show and thought nothing particularly remarkable had happened, only to get an email later from someone telling me that one answer saved them thousands of dollars or kept them from making a terrible mistake.
I've heard from people sitting in hospital rooms, truck drivers crossing the country, families headed to soccer games, people cleaning their garages and people shopping for a car with the radio playing while they drove from dealership to dealership.
Radio is strange that way. I'm sitting in a studio talking into a microphone, but on the other end there may be one person driving alone who feels as though we're having a conversation.
After 25 years, I still think that's pretty remarkable.
I've learned a few things about the automobile business too.
Most dealers are good people trying to run good businesses. Most salespeople want customers to be happy because happy customers come back. There are bad actors, of course, and I've spent 25 years calling them out when they deserved it. I've also spent those years defending good dealers when they deserved that.
Fair is fair.
That's really what “Straight Talk and Honest Answers” has always meant to me.
Not telling people what they want to hear.
Telling them what I believe to be true.
Sometimes that means telling a caller to buy the car he loves. Sometimes it means telling him to walk away. Sometimes it means telling somebody the dealer is wrong. And sometimes—and this doesn't always make me popular—it means telling the caller the dealer isn't the problem.
Twenty-five years behind a microphone has also taught me something I wish I'd understood better when I was younger: careers aren't nearly as predictable as we pretend they are.
For most of my adult life, I thought I would always be a car dealer. I loved the business. I loved the competition, the people, the Saturday rush and the feeling when the dealership was humming.
Then one chapter ended.
Another one was already beginning, although I didn't recognize it yet.
I could never have imagined that after leaving the dealership business I'd still be talking about cars every week, only now to millions of people instead of the customers walking through one showroom.
Life has a funny way of doing that.
And through almost all of those first 23 years was Kevin McCarthy.
You don't spend that many Saturdays sitting beside somebody without becoming part of each other's lives. Kevin helped establish the personality and rhythm of this show, and any honest reflection on these 25 years has to acknowledge how much he meant to it and to me. I'm grateful for those years and for everything we built together.
Today, Todd Chambless sits beside me, and this weekend also marks two years of Todd and me working together. The voices change. Stations change. Cars certainly change.
The mission doesn't.
Help the person on the other end of the phone.
That's what we were doing 25 years ago, and that's what I hope we're still doing 25 years from now, although somebody else will probably have to handle that shift.
This Saturday we'll celebrate at the Sam Pack Car Museum surrounded by some beautiful automobiles, which seems like an appropriate place to mark a milestone for a show about cars.
But when I look back, the cars aren't what I'm most grateful for.
It's the people.
The callers who trusted me with their questions. The listeners who gave us part of their Saturday for year after year. The dealers who supported the show and understood that my first responsibility had to be to the listener. The affiliates that put us on their airwaves. The people behind the scenes whose names you may never hear. Kevin for those first 23 years, Todd today, and everyone who helped get us from that first microphone to this weekend.
And especially those of you reading this.
You've allowed me to spend a quarter-century doing something I genuinely love.
Twenty-five years ago, I thought I was starting a radio show about cars.
Looking back now, I think I misunderstood what we were starting.
The cars were simply what brought us together.
The trust is what kept us together.
And after 25 years, I can't think of anything I value more.
Straight Talk and Honest Answers — always.
-Jerry