What do Michael Myers, Pennywise, Hannibal Lecter, and a shady car dealership have in common? More than you'd think! In this special Halloween episode of The Straight Shift, The Car Chick takes 13 classic horror movies and reveals the surprisingly useful lessons they teach us about buying a car. From The Blair Witch Project and the dangers of shopping without a plan to Christine and the perils of falling in love with an unreliable vehicle, these automotive horror stories are frighteningly fam...

Vehicle thefts dropped a whopping 23% in 2025, but nearly 660,000 vehicles were still stolen across the U.S. That works out to one stolen vehicle every 48 seconds. So what can you actually do to keep yours from becoming one of them? In this episode of The Straight Shift, The Car Chick digs into the anti-theft products dealerships love to sell, including VIN etching, microdots, GPS trackers, and theft reimbursement packages. What do they actually do? Do they prevent theft? And are they worth w...

Those little solar-powered Flock cameras are popping up everywhere, and depending on whom you ask, they're either an incredibly powerful crime-fighting tool or a terrifying surveillance network. So which is it? The Car Chick goes down the Flock Safety rabbit hole to find out what these cameras actually know about your car (and you), how law enforcement uses the data, how AI can get it impressively right and hilariously wrong, and what happens when the humans with access to the system abuse it...

Would you pay thousands more for a new car just to avoid the traditional dealership experience? Carvana is now selling brand-new Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram vehicles, and some buyers are paying significantly more for them than they would at competing dealerships. Yet Carvana is moving those cars at a staggering rate. In this episode, The Car Chick looks at why Carvana's new-car experiment is working, why today's consumers aren't necessarily “tech savvy” but tech normal, and why dealerships ...

Distracted driving isn't just texting, eating, or screwing around with your touchscreen. After The Car Chick got a ticket for running a red light she didn't even realize she'd run, she learned firsthand how emotions and cognitive distraction can affect even a highly trained, attentive driver. In this episode, LeeAnn looks at what distracted driving really means, why your eyes can be on the road while your brain is somewhere else, and some simple exercises to improve your situational awareness...

Everyone wants to know which car is the most reliable. But what if that's actually the wrong question? In this episode of The Straight Shift, The Car Chick takes a deep dive into what reliability really means in today's automotive world—and why simply looking at a Consumer Reports score or a J.D. Power award isn't enough. Inspired by a real client trying to choose between a Toyota RAV4 Hybrid, Subaru Forester Hybrid, and Hyundai Tucson Hybrid, LeeAnn explains how she evaluates reliability w...

Episode Summary Could your car become a battlefield in the New Cold War? It sounds like the plot of a spy thriller, but it's actually one of the biggest stories quietly reshaping the automotive industry. This week, The Car Chick® connects the dots between several recent episodes—including vehicle data privacy, EV tax credits, tariffs, and "Made in America"—to reveal the much bigger picture behind the U.S. government's upcoming ban on certain Chinese software and hardware in connected vehicles...

Electric vehicles were supposed to make cars more affordable. So why does the average EV now cost well over $50,000? Enter Slate Auto, a brand-new American startup that's taking a completely different approach. Their first vehicle is a bare-bones, highly customizable electric pickup that starts at just $24,950. No giant touchscreen. No built-in stereo. Even crank windows are back. But is Slate Auto really the future of affordable transportation...or just another EV startup that's destined to ...

Think hidden fees, fake discounts, rebate games, mandatory add-ons, and vehicles advertised at prices you can't actually get are just part of buying a car? The FTC doesn't think so. In this episode, The Car Chick® breaks down the six dealership advertising and pricing practices the FTC says may violate federal consumer protection laws. But before we get into the legal stuff, I share a real-life dealership fiasco that happened while shopping for a military family's Ford Transit van — a deal th...

Summary After a three-month hiatus, The Car Chick® is back — and apparently while she was gone, the global economy decided to completely lose its damn mind. In this comeback episode of The Straight Shift, The Car Chick breaks down how conflict in the Strait of Hormuz, rising oil prices, tariffs, petrochemicals, EVs, and global supply-chain chaos are affecting far more than just what you pay at the gas pump. Because modern cars aren’t just vehicles anymore — they’re giant rolling internation...