Go straight, turn to the left sometimes. People are morons.

Wait wait wait.

Your common sense is stupid. The techs in my shop typically test drive cars they’re working on and maximize that time in realistic scenarios by driving to lunch. Every shop I’ve ever worked for has done this. The ass clown in the story just took it too far about his 10 year old one headlight POS 350Z. The dealership…

Exactly. Everything I’ve said I stand behind and would be totally cool with my mechanic picking up Taco Bell in my car because I trust him. If I didn’t trust him enough to get Taco Bell on a test drive then I wouldn’t trust him to work on my car.

Who says they ate lunch? They picked up lunch.

True, but that is a pretty big fact to ignore. I imagine his car always smells like Taco Bell.

Yeah, if they said they had so much as spun the tires or went on a high speed run then I’d say you have a decent reason to be upset but knocking out a test drive while picking up lunch is stupid to get worked up over.

yeah, what if one of them decides to hold up a bank, and uses my car as a getaway? Or what if a meteorite falls out of the sky, bounces off my car into a school bus, and I get sued because of it? Or what if my car was actually a Decepticon in disguise and while the mechanics took in on a test drive, it changed to…

Its funny, my mortgage broker had a totted up Ariel Atom that got taken for a joyride and crashed by the shop he took it to. That never made the news, but two guys driving for a taco did.

If a mechanic smoked in my car I would be far less kind about it. I would raise hell.

What the hell is this? Are you reading Jalopnik on an AS/400? You’re supposed to drive customer’s cars, you know that right?

no, I just don’t act like my common-as-dirt* Mustang is so sacrosanct that if the tech I have working on it decides to grab lunch to bring back while legitimately test driving it, I’m not going to care. I’ve put 35,000 miles on the car already, what the fuck should I care if he puts on 3 more miles?

They were supposed to test drive it anyway, so what if they did one extra mile?

Lol, no. I just trust my mechanic a lot more than this guy does. I’d love it if my mechanic took my car on a 20 mile test drive. Better have worked everything out if he’s being so thorough.

Here’s the problem. Mechanics need to drive your car to either diagnose a problem or determine if the fix they implemented eliminated the problem. If they happened to grab some tacos while doing a test run, it is not something worthy of a firing. This is not nearly the same level of an offense as hooning somebody’s…

Hey Bill, let’s check out the noise reported on the Z and pickup some tacos.

Here’s my problem, the only thing they have evidence of is they deviated from a standard test drive route. If I trust you to fix my car, to make sure my brakes work and my wheels are bolted on and to make sure I leave with oil in the engine then I trust you enough to let you pick up taco bell while doing a test drive.

You’re kind of a dick, huh?

Good god...I’d probably die if my dad sold his car. The thought of him or me ever selling it makes me sick to more than just the stomach...

Story really resonates here. I sold my beautiful ‘72 914 (signal yellow) in 1980 to help make the downpayment on my wife’s and my first house; I still want it back.