Dealer Offers Customer New Corvette After 148 MPH Joyride

Earlier this month, a Corvette owner named Michael took his C8 ‘Vette to the dealership due to a persistent engine ticking noise (it was just a loose spark plug). After picking up the car from the dealership, the owner watched the video files on the car is integrated Performance Data Logger (PDR), and found a surprise: one of techs took his car on a ride that ended in a stupid street race against a Charger, where he hit 148 mph. The good news is the dealership did the right thing, and now Michael has a new Corvette.

The owner first posted his alarming story on Reddit, and that was soon taken over by other media, including our friends on the ball at GM Authority and The Drive, who were able to speak to the owner.

PDR video shows a nearly 20 minute drive that includes a number of sudden acceleration incidents that bring the car to the red line and around 100 mph, and, at around 10:50 in the video we have the race with the Dodge Charger where the maximum speed (which was 147.6, according to PDR data) was reached.

Here’s a slightly edited version of the video posted to YouTube:

Normally in this kind of story, what we certainly have Already seen, the consequences tend to get quite messy with the dealership usually putting themselves in a defensive denial / disclaimer stance and making everything difficult.

Surprisingly, that doesn’t seem to be the case here. The dealer, Fremont Chevrolet, took full responsibility without flinching and arranged for the customer’s 2021 Corvette to be replaced with a beautiful new, unsharpened 2022 Vette.

Michael spoke to The Drive about dealer’s response:

“The owner of the dealer family reached out to me … and I’m lying in my bed and he’s texting me at nine at night or something, apologizing profusely and saying that” he wants to make things right. Then [he offers] me a 2022 [Corvette], and it was quite shocking. I followed 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 press the submit button to have my order placed with GM. “

After seeing many of these dealer-employee-hoons-a-customer-car videos, this is perhaps the best and most painless outcome I have ever seen. With used car prices and the demand is still quite intense, I’m sure the dealer will have no problem move that 2021 Corvette, so it doesn’t look like they really need to take a full bath, here.

In addition, it should be well-deserved goodwill for the dealer, who learned a valuable lesson, but at least did the right thing.