The customer says two different technicians took his Corvette out for a joy ride – and he has the footage to prove it
2 hours ago
The owner of a Corvette Z06 says that two technicians at a dealer took his car out for joy rides when he left it with them for service. He’s also got the dashcam and audio from those joyrides and both make the drives look highly suspect. This seems to be even more evidence that some service departments aren’t as careful with customer cars as they should be.
This story and the corresponding video come to us from a reader who says he dropped his car off for service at Modern Chevrolet in Burlington, NC only to get a series of horrible experiences. Things began when he dropped the car off on Monday, July 31 for a misfire condition with the intention of picking it up before the weekend. The dealer hadn’t even touched it by Saturday so the owner picked it back up.
He dropped it off once again on Monday, August 7. Again, an entire week goes by and on Saturday, August 11, he confirmed that Modern Chevrolet still hadn’t looked at the car. At this point, the owner got GM Corporate involved which evidently made an impact. He says that even then, it took the dealer two additional weeks to determine that it was a faulty injector causing the misfire.
advertisement scroll to continue
More: C8 Corvette Z06 Owners Might Want To Check Their Underbody Panels
When he finally got the car back he said that his sunglasses were nowhere to be found so he decided to scrub through his dashcam footage to see what he could find. What he turned up with was a pair of damning videos that appear to show two different service techs hot-rodding his car for no diagnostic reason.
In the first, a tech we’ll later hear referred to as Russel picks up a female passenger and then does at least two very hard pulls in the car with her. During the first, he seems to nearly lose control of the car and veers into the oncoming lane. In the second, he zooms past a 45 mph speed limit sign while appearing (and sounding) to be high in the rev range of third gear.
If that’s accurate, the car is likely traveling well north of triple-digit speeds. Somewhat hilariously, moments after that pull, Russell’s lady friend appears to notice the dashcam that’s recording all of the fun. “It’s probably filming everything you’re doing too,” she says. Russel doesn’t appear to do anything sketchy after this revelation.
Read: Our Aging Car Population Is Great News For Repair Shops
Another tech takes over though and does a pull himself. “Oh my god, this thing is fast,” he exclaims. The same tech then says “It’s good” a couple of times before explaining his behavior by saying “Gotta make sure it’s good for the customer.”
In all truth, testing a car after replacing a faulty injector would require some hard driving. It’s plausible that these videos are simply that but why would an employee pick up a third party during such a test?
This, sadly, isn’t the first time we’ve reported on a repair shop that mishandled a customer’s car. In fact, just this year we’ve highlighted a mechanic who crashed a classic Holden worth six figures and another who rolled a MKIV Toyota Supra. We’ve reached out to the parties in question and will update this story with more information as we acquire it.