Caught On Camera: Dealer Employee Learns How to Drive Stick Using Customer's Focus RS
When you give your car over to the dealership for repairs, you’re trusting them to fix it. You’re also trusting them not to take your pride and joy out for a Sunday drive so they can teach a co-worker how to drive stick. We figured this went without saying but a video was posted to YouTube last week showcasing exactly that.
A customer affected by Ford’s head gasket recall on the Focus RS had the good sense to install a dash cam before taking it into Hawk Ford of Oak Lawn, Illinois, resulting in eleven minutes of two men discussing all the odd noises the car makes as they clumsily pilot it around a residential area.
Despite the poor sound quality of the clip, some of those noises are audible and likely to cause minor physical comfort among highly sympathetic types.
According to Jalopnik, which broke the story, Karol Zwolinski installed the camera inside his Focus RS after reading accounts of other vehicles being joyridden at dealerships. It payed off.
The clip features a few hard launches and some lackluster advice from “the teacher.” Meanwhile, the learner repeatedly comments on unsavory sounds the car makes as he runs through gears and the seatbelt warning chimes.
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Shortly after I graduated from college, I worked for a place that sold car stereos. We were probably the biggest car stereo catalog business in the days before the internet. We had relationships with many car dealers which allowed us to research new models for installation kits and guides. I had my own relationship with the local Porsche-Audi-BMW dealer. New BMWs were all being delivered with sound systems by then, but I used to get my hands on many a 'stereo-prep' Porsche that the customer wanted to have delivered with the latest Pioneer, Kenwood or Sony head unit. And when I say Porsche, I don't mean some lower-quality Highlander alternative. Good times. I've noticed that when I've bought performance variants of new cars in the past dozen years, be they $20K or $70K, the salesman invariably tells me to floor it through the gears to feel the power. I've refused on cars I was going to buy or assumed someone else might buy. Lease cars? Meh. I've run a shop in the past few years. Our test drives were not for the weak of heart, but our finished products were repaired. Our brake jobs were bedded in, and our come-backs were rare. People who had problems with our methods needed to go back to the dealers.
in 1989 i decided to treat myself to a kawasaki EX500 for my birthday. the previous 3 years id been riding a honda elite 80 scooter. someone from the dealership had to drop it off at home for me.
Video has been taken down. Missed it!
And the video is pulled! So much for Internet content living forever!