In a weird plate-of-shrimp moment, I saw Death From Above 1979's newest music video yesterday. It’s 3 minutes of an ‘81 Prelude being chucked around abandoned industrial wasteland. Seeing any first-gen Prelude is impressive (although, there’s a clean one tucked in a garage near me), but seeing one being driven at…

You mean doubling down on shit transmissions and Dixie cup rear main seals for decades is not a good idea?

Ha! That’s a great tip. Honestly, channel-locks are incredibly versatile tools. Always have a few around my house. Maybe not foot-long.

As I was car-shopping the last few weeks, some dealers actually ask you to sign a waiver making you responsible for any damage to the test drive vehicle up to $50,000 dollars.  Who could possibly afford to test-drive such a vehicle at such risk?

Makes sense to me. I guess that in Texas there is a different take on common sense. Though I wonder what would happen if a car fell off a lift!

Mmm, chicken fried steak! Now that's a universal language we can all understand! Great writeup.

So would that be a mechanics lien then?

Surly everything is an act of god? How do you know, in case of fire that God didn't cause it? 

Lawrence, this is fascinating. Please keep us up to date on this. Also, Mod Motor Guy: Great insight.

I have to assume the negative publicity from this incident will cause more of a financial hit than whatever their portion of the liability was. 

Exactly! As a former insurance agent, the three C’s apply here; Care Custody and Control. This dealership repair shop met all three without question and all liability here is theirs.

You bring up a pretty valid fear for everyone who buys a performance car from an otherwise ordinary manufacturer. Imagine you’ve just bought a brand-new Corvette, and you take it to your local Chevy dealer for an oil change.

The way you do business makes me think of my local shop. Shortly before my kid was born, I became convinced that there was something wrong with my car’s brakes. It took it in and told them to do whatever they needed to get the car ready to bring my wife and our baby home. About an hour later, they called and said…

A Texan that spells behavior like the Brits. You're a Canadian, Aussie, or Brit in disguise aren't ya? :-p Great explanation!

They have dealers’ open lot coverage for that. The garagekeeper’s policy is just a liability policy. You can’t be held liable for force majeure (acts of god) unless you were somehow negligent. 

Yeah the dealership is being idiotic. They need to file a claim on their BOP or garagekeeper’s or whatever they have and let the insurance companies figure it out. Allstate is playing hardball here because they know that the dealer doesn’t want to do that for some reason. 

What?!? A SHOP OWNER LYING?!

God bless you amigo! Knowing you are a decent person always outweighs a buck in the pocket. If you have to be a weasel to eat, you may not deserve to eat at all. Best to you!

exactly. businesses have insurance for this exact situation. if dealership even hesitated to pay me, stuttered in anyway when handing me the check, lawsuit. sue the dealership. in California you get loss of use money too, so the longer they don’t pay, the more they owe. not sure about Texas.

Yeah...that dealer is full of crap. Mistakes happen. Accidents happen. I don’t get terribly upset about mistakes and accidents. What matters is how the other party handles it. Sounds like the dealer is both owning the mistake and not owning it at the same time.