We have all had bad experiences at car dealerships and car repair shops. Heck, being a former service manager, I have had to attempt to repair these bad situations at times. Typically, when customer service turns sour, you simply express your anger, go home, call the corporate office, and eventually get a resolution. Well, apparently this is not the way the customer service flowchart goes in some countries.
In a Nissan and Suzuki dealership in what looks to be Russia, if I am seeing the sign correctly, a customer decides to take part in creating his own resolution for a customer service issue.
According to the story that we read, this customer took his Suzuki SUV, which he bought new, back to the dealership to have a faulty shock replaced. The dealership refused to replace the shock under warranty, which really isn’t that uncommon, and from there the customer bypassed calling customer service, and chose to take his frustrations out on the dealership, by way of ramming his Grand Vitara through the dealership’s window.
That’s not where it stops, this driver then smashes up a few brand new floor model vehicles, using his SUV as a battering ram, then eventually disappears from the screen – likely to do more damage on the other side of the dealership.
I used to have pretty nasty road rage, but mine mostly consisted of laying on my horn and flashing the occasional one-fingered salute. This guy really needs to get his anger issues under control. I hope his car insurance company is prepared to pay out to fix his now-smashed SUV, or their office may receive the same “redecorating.”
Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face, sheesh. Check out the above video to see all of the craziness, pay close attention to the brave guy that goes knocking on this lunatic’s window at the 1:57 mark. What’s he gonna do, ask him for some Grey Poupon?
Cloned classic cars are everywhere. Heck even my dad has a cloned 1966 Chevelle SS. There is one difference between my dad, along with most other cloners, and one Bobby Patton, they have no problem admitting that their vehicle is officially a clone.
Mr. Patton apparently purchased a 1965 Chevy Chevelle from a gentleman and figured out that there is one extremely rare model in 1965 that the average person wouldn’t recognize from a regular old Chevelle. This model is the 1965 Chevelle Z16, which features a boxed frame, different engine stampings, special badges, different rear end, and the most obvious one, a unique VIN.
After tricking some car show judges into giving him a nice collection of trophies, Mr. Patton decided he was going to try and make a quick buck off of this clone by auctioning it off. Well, the problem is that he didn’t identify the vehicle as a clone, but as one of the few Z16s in the world, and was trying to get a cool $100K out of it.
The crack detective team at Chevelles.com sniffed out this fraud and began a conversation with the man that was auctioning the car. The conversations were not accusatory, but instead an attempt to help the guy realize that whoever sold him that car had tricked him. One of the folks talking to Mr. Patton pointed out numerous errors with the vehicle, including a homemade cowl VIN tag, incorrect speedometer, wrong engine stamping, wrong frame, and many other things.
Obviously, the guy kept pressing the issue and it took several days for him to come to his senses and pull the car from the auction site. That was a little too long, as someone reported him to the Ohio State Highway Patrol and they paid him a nice visit.
He claimed to have purchased the car that way, but the cops found out from the original owner that the car was badged, titled, and sold as a Chevelle 327SS, not a Z16. A long story short, now his car is impounded and he is serving two years of probation. Who would have known cloning a car could cause such issues?
Okay, I have worked in many repair shops in my day. During my tour as a service manager, I came across a fair share of “Mountain Man Mechanics,” which is the politically correct thing to call them. These guys love taking the strangest vehicles and creating monsters out of them.
There was one mechanic that took a 1980s Honda Civic hatchback and dropped a 1300 cc Hayabusa engine in it, thinking it would increase the Civic’s performance. He didn’t quite grasp the logic of torque-to-weight ratio and ended up with only a really cool sounding Civic.
Another monster that sticks out in my mind is when a mechanic tore apart his unwilling wife’s mid-1990s Mitsubishi Mirage and dropped its body on a self-shortened S-10 frame. He then dropped a 307 cubic-inch Oldsmobile engine in it and connected the Olds engine to the transmission and transfer case on the S-10 frame. It actually looked and sounded mean when he was done, but instead of re-welding the frame together, he used several bolts to secure it. Guess what happened...
What’s my point here? Well, a new monster has recently come to our attention, which is for sale on Craigslist. The owner has dubbed this machine a 2007 Willys Trike. This trike has a stretched Jeep CJ-2 body with a motorcycle wheel on the front. The body sits on a custom frame – hopefully it’s welded – and has the rear independent suspension from a T-bird.
Instead of having the old Jeep CJ-2 engine, this beast has a Chevy 4.3-liter Vortec engine, which is good for around 190 horsepower, if it is stock. Plus it has a four-speed transmission connecting the engine to the rear wheels.
The handle bars for the motorcycle wheel span all the way from the front of the vehicle through two slots under the windshield. We bet this thing is a scary animal to maneuver at high speeds. But anyways, this “Mountain Man” monster can be yours for “just” $11,000. We bet this thing sits on the market for a while.
Back when the Impreza WRX made its debut, we began salivating, as it marked the comeback of the turbocharged car. Then once the STi came around bearing its 300-horsepower, 2.5-liter H-4 engine, we were officially in love. That love has somewhat dissipated, as the turbocharged market has become a little flooded lately. The STi still has its own little spot in our hearts though.
One of the many things that made the STi so unique was its combination of extreme power from a four-cylinder engine with Subaru’s legendary AWD system. This made, and still makes, the WRX STi one of the most fun cars in the world to tinker around in the snow and ice.
The above video comes straight from Russia showing a rather good driver maneuvering his STi through the icy and snowy streets with a lead car filming him. Not only is the action pretty darn good, but the editing isn’t half-bad either.
Regardless of how cool this video is, we do have to ask you to please not go buy an STi and start sliding around your city’s streets during the next snowstorm. Yeah, it looks cool and you might get yourself a spot on the internet, but its rather dopey, to say the least.
Now that we have given you our parent-like lecture for the day, sit back and enjoy a WRX STi frolicking in it favorite habitat, snow and ice. If you keep a close eye at the 1:19 mark, you can see their fun is almost over, as plow tractors are coming through to clean up the slippery stuff.
We all love high-performance cars and nearly everyone that loves high-performance cars loves seeing these cars do burnouts. Regardless of the love, there is a time and place for everything. I remember my first ever burn out well, it was in a 1986 Camaro IROC-Z, which I had just finished painting and doing body work on. On my way home from school, some buddies talked me into power-blocking it at a stop light. Well, after about 30 seconds of intense tire smoke, there was a gigantic clunk and the wheels stopped. Yeah, I destroyed the rear end.
$250 later and about two nights of installing the new rear end, I learned never to power-block a car again. I am sure the guy in the above video has learned an important lesson too.
When you are at a car meet and there are cops there, you can oftentimes get away with more than you can on a public street. However, if there is a crowd of people around your Mustang and you decide to power-block it, you are just one slip of your foot away from mowing down a bunch of people.
When the cops see that, regardless of it being private or public property, they will immediately place you under arrest for endangering the lives of others. That’s exactly what happened to the dude in this video. After some enticing by his “friends” he decides to light ‘em up on his Mustang and the cops literally pull him from the car and take him directly to jail, he did not pass “Go” and did not collect $200, just right to jail.
So what did we learn today, guys? Don’t power-block a car in a crowded area with cops around, that’s bad, mmmkay?
So what happens when an Aston Martin Zagato, a 2000s Thunderbird, and an Austin Healy all get tipsy on high octane fuel and have one wild night? You get the newest retro sports car by custom car builder Fornasari, the Gigi.
To say this thing is awkward looking is an understatement, but then again nearly all of Fornasari’s cars are awkward looking. The Gigi has the signature double hump roof of a Aston Martin Zagato, the taillights and rear fenders of a 2000s Ford Thunderbird, and the front clip from an Austin Healey 3000. Well, it doesn’t literally have these parts, but it sure looks like it. All awkwardness aside, this car is supposedly going to be a real screamer.
Fornasari claims this car will come fitted with a 6.2-liter V-8 engine that will produce more than 500 horsepower. This will propel this Frankenstein car to 60 mph in roughly 3.5 seconds, per Fornasari, and will have a top speed of 200 mph. If you feel you can bypass the goofy, err, "retro" looks, you can snag one of these things up for just shy of $290,000.
Besides the aforementioned details, there is not much more on these cars and no delivery dates are set. The only other tidbit of information we managed to dig up is that a convertible option is in the works. We’ve attached a few concept pictures in the gallery below, so you can see exactly what we are talking about.
“Epic fail” is ultimately one of the most overused and incorrectly used phrases in the world. But, we are going to go ahead and chalk this one up as just that, an epic fail.
If you have ever watched drag races, you have likely noticed one thing in common with all of them. They are always on a straight and flat track. This is not without good reason, as drag cars, rail cars especially, are designed to simply go in a straight line really fast. If you’ve ever seen a rail car veer off the track you might notice that they rarely ever recover prior to a spectacular crash. This is because they have the turning capabilities of a fully loaded semi truck on an icy downhill slope.
Now that we’ve let you in on that secret of the dragster, what do you think would happen when a 1,000+ horsepower rail car decides to take a Sunday drive down a back country road? If you still don’t know, we’ll fill you in. It would crash at the first tiny kink in the road, much like the above video.
In what looks to be some sort of dragster road racing event, these guys take a rail car about 50 feet up the road before sitting it down in a small ravine, in a less-than-desirable way. It’s absolutely hilarious to watch the driver attempt to correct the car and you can really see the minimal amount of steering these things actually have. Fortunately, the driver wasn’t hurt, but we are pretty certain the car has a couple of bucks worth of damage… Enjoy!
Mike Sorentino, better known in mainstream America as "The Situation," shot to fame with his role in the hit reality show Jersey Shore, so with a fattened bank account, Sorentino decided to buy himself a Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder. That’s a very nice car, no doubt about that, but what really caught our attention wasn’t so much the supercar itself but the personalized plate the supercar had.
The plate read three letters that pretty much describes Sorentino’s mantra: GTL.
If you’re not familiar with what that means, GTL is an acronym for "Gym, Tan, Laundry", which pretty much tells you where this man’s priorities lie.
We’re not sure what that message will read to today’s youth, but Sorentino has every right to put whatever he wants on his car. Lord knows, he earned it - for better or worse - and if he wants to display his mantra for all the world to see, then he’s entitled to that.
But knowing the kind of reputation he has, the ’GTL’ plate on a Gallardo Spyder just looks, for lack of a better term, out of whack. Kind of like The Situation himself.
Expensive cars accumulate very expensive maintenance bills, but not everything about them has to empty your wallet of its hard earned cash. One Bugatti owner in Hallandale, Fl. has proven this theory by taking a trip to the local car wash on US1 to get his Veyron sparkling clean.
While some may consider this automotive blasphemy, others - like our penny-pinching Veyron owner - no doubt believe this is a great way to cut down on those ridiculous maintenance fees associated with the $2 million ride. A routine service for the Veyron runs up to around £13,000, which is around $21,000 based on current exchange rates. In the event that you need to replace the specialized rubber on the Veyron, a set will cost you £25,000 ($40,500). Oh, and ’as per Bugatti’s recommendation’, you should change your tires after every 2,500 miles. It’s also common procedure for a car like the Veyron to continuously check for cracks on the wheels of the supercar, a practice that will set you back an extra £7,200 ($11,500). All in all, a year’s worth of maintenance could set owners back about $300,000!
Which brings us back to our $30 car wash guy. This guy is definitely not shelling out $30,000 for his Veyron to get cleaned appropriately, but is having your local car wash rub down your supercar with inexperienced hands a smart move? Probably not.
This poor little record-breaking supercar probably never saw it coming.
If you happened to work at a BMW dealership and had to look at the beautiful 1-Series M Coupe hour upon hour every day, chances are you’d be extremely tempted to extract the keys from their little hook and take the new sports coupe out for a little test drive. Two employees from Pacific BMW in Glendale were unable to resist that temptation, not only taking the new M Coupe for a test drive, but pushing it to its twin-turbocharged 340 HP limit.
Now imagine if you were the excited customer that just purchased their brand new BMW and were then called by the dealership manager to hear the news of the employees’ debacle of a test drive. Pissed? Sure would be, especially because proof of the extreme test drive was delivered to YouTube by the employees who were too pumped up by the experience to realize it would not be a good idea to tape it and splatter it all over the internet. Idiots.
The BMW employees were obviously fired, but Pacific BMW has bigger problems; the BMW 1-Series M Coupe comes with a warning letter from the factory advising against excessive revving and speeding prior to 1,200 miles. Now the customer who purchased the famous 1-Series M Coupe is demanding that $10,000 be refunded to him for the high-speed hijinks, which is the same amount paid over the base price of the 1M. According to the disgruntled customer, the dealership claims that no damage was done to the vehicle and that they would only refund him $2,000. This is the part where lawyers were called to solve the issue. No compromise has been achieved as of yet.
We’re not taking any sides because there’s always multiple sides to every story, but we’d be pretty angry if we found out our $50,000 sports car was pushed to its limits 10 days before we even walked into the dealership to purchase it. Let us know what you guys think in the comments section below. Is a $10,000 refund a fair price for the dealership to pay?
By the way, this video of the test drive contains excessive cursing, so make sure you are old enough to watch it.
