I’ve done a lot of dumb stuff so thanks for triggering my remembrance of the good and bad of my stupid and crazy.
One from a long time ago at work. Guy had a Datsun 280Z that had some impact damage to the front suspension. This was so long ago it was a pretty new car. Dealer fixed it and fixed it right. Owner was dead set he was getting a new car out of this somehow so he kept complaining, whining, calling, writing, showing up at the shop, whatever he could do to get anyone to listen; trying to convince the dealer, insurance company, or anyone other than himself to buy him a car despite everything measuring out within acceptable limits. According to him, it had a “dangerous high speed shimmy” and was unacceptable.
At the time, highest speed limit anywhere near here was 55mph. A couple techs and one service adviser had test driven it but they wouldn’t get much over the speed limit and he refused to drive it himself with a tech in the car. So about month into his continual bitching campaign, he gets tossed to the young, inexperienced guy (me) to deal with. I knew the history of the situation, so after half an hour of mostly just being berated, I talked him into one more test drive to recreate this high speed shimmy.
I wanted him to drive, but couldn’t get him to do that so off we went; he in the passenger seat and me driving. Driving through town we couldn’t get over about 50mph, which didn’t cut it. He was complaining about the time it was taking to get to a higher speed road and was all sorts of mouthy and insulting; I think because he hadn’t yet picked up on the fact that I was 3/4 crazy. We hit Hwy 52 on the north side of Winston-Salem and headed north toward Virginia.
Agreed silky smooth at 55 and 60. Asked him what speed for the shimmy. He wouldn’t say, just had to go faster. Bad answer. So we tried 65. He agreed no shimmy. We tried 70. He agreed no shimmy. We went up in 5mph increments with a brief pause for him to agree no shimmy. About 100 he started getting less snarky. About 110 he was notably nervous. About 120 he opined that I was insane. Advised I was unwilling to speed up or slow down until he acknowledged whether or not he felt a shimmy at 120mph as customer service and satisfaction were my only goal and I couldn’t achieve that without confirming his concerns were fully addressed. He loudly agreed no shimmy. Somewhere around 130mph the engine ran out of torque and we never did find that shimmy.
By that time we’d just passed the Pinnacle exit, I figured I was either going to jail, losing my license, and getting fired if we got stopped; or just getting fired if we didn’t get stopped. He looked like he was about 3 pints low on blood and begging me to slow down but I was having fun and we had about three miles to the next exit. Three miles didn’t give us much time at 130 but it was enough time for him to agree there was nothing wrong with the car, that he had been provided exemplary customer service, and he was fully satisfied with both me and the dealership in general. For a really stupid few minutes, kind of took me back to my street racing days. (Another ill advised activity.)
Having satisfied the customer, we bolted off the Pilot Mountain exit. Then headed over to Old 52 through Pinnacle, took a right on Perch Rd and wound through the country in a convoluted fashion to return to the dealership at a pace which would not justify probable cause for a traffic stop. Shortly into our return he asked me why I didn’t just go back down 52. Told him I was crazy, not stupid.
Service Manager met us in the parking lot when we got back. He asked the customer if we were able to recreate the shimmy. Customer said the car was perfect, he had no complaints, thanked the manager for doing a great job on the car, and left kind of abruptly. Service Manager asked me how the hell I did that and why the guy looked like he saw a ghost. Told him not to ask questions he didn’t want answers to. He left it alone and we never heard from the guy again so I didn’t get fired and didn’t tell anyone what happened until enough years passed that no one cared.
Edit: I’m sure now he’d pull out a cell phone and video everything while calling 911. There were no cell phones then. It was nice…
