Earlier this month, a Corvette owner named Michael took his C8 ‘Vette into the dealership because of a persistent engine ticking noise (it was just a loose spark plug). After getting the car back from the dealership, the owner was looking through the video files on the car’s built-in Performance Data Recorder (PDR), and found a surprise: one of the techs took his car on a drive that culminated in a stupid street race against a Charger, where he hit 238 km/h. The good news is the dealer did the right thing, and now Michael has a new Corvette.
The owner first posted his alarming tale on Reddit, and it was soon picked up by other media, including our on-the-ball friends at GM Authority and The Drive, who were able to speak to the owner.
The video from the PDR shows a nearly 20-minute drive that includes a number of hard acceleration incidents that take the car to redline and around 161 km/h, and, at about 10:50 into the video we have the race with the Dodge Charger where the top speed (which was 147.6, according to the PDR data) was reached.
Here’s a slightly edited version of the video that was posted to YouTube:
Normally in these sorts of stories, which we’ve certainly seen before, the aftermath tends to get pretty messy, with the dealership usually going into a full-on denial/no-responsibility defensive posture and making everything difficult.
Shockingly, that does not seem to be the case here. The dealership, Fremont Chevrolet, took full, unflinching responsibility and arranged to have the customer’s 2021 Corvette replaced with a nice, new, un-hooned 2022 ‘Vette.
Michael spoke to The Drive about the dealer’s response:
“The owner of the family of dealerships reached out to me…and I’m laying in bed and he texts me at nine at night or something, just apologizing profusely and saying he wants to make this right. And then [he offers] me a 2022 [Corvette], and that was pretty shocking. I followed up with [the dealership’s general manager] the next morning and said ‘hey, when can we meet?’”
…
We configured my 2022 together, [and] he let me push the submit button so my order is in with GM.”
After having seen many of these dealership-employee-hoons-a-customer-car videos, this may be the best and most painless outcome I’ve ever seen. With used car prices and demand still pretty intense, I’m sure the dealer will have no problem moving that 2021 Corvette, so it doesn’t seem like they’d really need to take a complete bath, here.
Plus, this should be well-earned goodwill for the dealership, who learned a valuable lesson, but at least did the right thing.