Even Southern California has a winter season, especially when it comes to taking care of your car. Longtime Service Executive, Ruben Serna from Rock Honda, shares winterizing and maintenance tips. Plus as technology in cars reaches new heights so does the technology in service departments at dealers like Rock Honda. What does the future look like? Listen to this episode of iDriveSoCal and find out. ***Transcript*** Recording date – November 18, 2017 Ruben Serna: These vehicles because they've got so many computers that need to be updated, software-wise. Now the 2018 vehicles just by driving into our service drive you're going to be able to push updates automatically to the vehicles without even us getting involved. Tom Smith: Welcome to iDriveSoCal, the podcast all about mobility in the automotive capital of the United States, Southern California. I'm your host, Tom Smith, and today I'm joined by Ruben Serna. Ruben has run the service departments of many car dealerships throughout his career. He's helped thousands, if not tens of thousands, of SoCal drivers stay on the road, and more importantly stay on the road safely. And he's in charge of keeping the massive service department here at Rock Honda running like a well oiled machine. Pun very much intended. Ruben, thanks for joining me, and thanks for being an iDriveSoCal partner, as Rock Honda is. Ruben: All right, you're welcome. Happy to be here and excited about the opportunity. So thanks for taking the time to do it. Tom: I love driving. I don't like sitting in traffic and being stalled, not going anywhere. Which we do often in Southern California, which is what a lot of the podcast is about. But cars these days, and Honda cars especially, are being manufactured so well that it's a wonder how you guys in the service department actually keep busy. For instance, when did you get into the business? Ruben: Gosh, 1996. Tom: Okay. So '96 to now, 2017. I mean... Ruben: Twenty-one years. Goodness gracious it's a long time. Tom: What significant changes, from your perspective, have you noticed and what do you attribute that to? Ruben: Well, I think you know when I first got in the car business we had that whole idea that you know oil changes get done very frequently and typically every 3,000 miles. But now what I've seen, even over the last 20 years especially your technology's improved making it easier for a customer base to drive these cars. They're more efficient, more gas efficient, more miles per gallon always increasing. It's amazing some of these cars can get 100 miles to a tank or excuse me to... 50 miles a gallon and higher. So I think more importantly they're sleeker, they're more powerful, they're faster. You can be driving 100 miles per hour and you don't... it doesn't even feel like it, so they're so smooth on the road. Pretty soon I'm waiting for these hover cars to come out. You know, so we can drive those. That'll be exciting. Tom: You know that's one of the reasons that I started the iDriveSoCal podcast is, again, being a car lover my entire life, but I'll never forget the first Popular Mechanics cover that I ever saw had a picture of a flying car or what a flying... Ruben: Back to the Future kind of thing. Tom: Yeah. Yeah. And that's the premise of why I got into... Really both media and the love of all things automotive and mobile. Ruben: Well, you know that's... I mean that's why I love, my father was a mechanic. My cousin was a mechanic and my father was a mechanic and he had a shop at home so I always watched, I grew up with my father fixing cars and taking care of the neighborhood cars. And people who couldn't pay just bring him food you know kind of a thing. So it was nice, it's nice for me to be in the car business as well.
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