Robbery!
I had a 1998 Eclipse Spyder. Roughly 68k miles on the clock. First I’ll give a bit of its history in its final days. Engine blew once at about 45k miles, didn’t think it was going to be covered under warranty, so I took it to a shop.
The next day the shop got broken into, my car got stripped. Wheels, tires, radio, top was cut, side skirts crushed by cinder blocks, bumper damaged, etc, etc, etc.
Shop’s insurance ended up covering it, all is well. A local dealer said yeah, engine is under warranty we’ll even tow it from the current shop. Fast forward 13k miles. NYE…road trip to visit my GF. Driving along the interstate in January and the car suddenly overheats.
I pull off, and she’s done for. Iron block/aluminum head. Insurance would only pay to have the car towed to the closest dealer. I figured, ok car was just fixed 13k miles ago by another dealer, this dealer should be able to work with me as well.
Wrong…
I get a call a couple of days later saying the head gasket blew because I sucked water into the engine. I scratched my head and asked, “How can I suck water into the engine, at 80 mph, on an interstate highway, in January, in Indiana?” The reply was “well we found liquid in the cylinders and it will be $3,000 to replace the head or $600 for you to come to pick it up.”
I said I’ll just come to pick it up, I can’t afford $3k. On the way to pick it up, the service techs took several items off of the car. Taillights (replaced with cracked ones), speakers, valve cover, and a few other things. And said, “there’s six of us here and one of you, we’ll produce evidence that will show you did it if you try to claim our involvement.”
The dealer went out of business about 5 years later after they finally got caught doing other customers the same way.