The owner of a rare 2018 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 Hendrick Edition with the 1LE Extreme Track Pack is making allegations that paint a rather bad dealer service experience. The owner says, per the suit, that they dropped off their prized muscle car with a no-start condition and told the dealer not to drive it off of the lot. According to a lawsuit, the dealer fixed the no-start condition but then did drive it off of the lot and into a guard rail at highway speeds. Apparently the vehicle is now totaled, and the owner wants both compensatory and punitive damages.
First spotted by Automotive News, whose article is titled “$97,000 Camaro brought in for repair but service adviser totaled it on I-95, suit alleges,” the story discusses a dealer named H&L Chevrolet of Darien, Connecticut. Per the Automotive News story, Kenny Habul dropped the car off via flatbed on or about January 23rd, 2024. Per the publication, Mr. Habul says the car had 989 miles on it, and not a single one came from street driving. That’s impressive all by itself. This is, after all, a track-oriented monster with a supercharged 6.2-liter engine, a Hendrick dyno tune, a custom camshaft, and a factory data recorder. That last item ends up being incredibly handy in this particular case, too.
Per the car news site, Habul says he left the vehicle with H&L under the specific instruction that “under no circumstances was any employee to take the Vehicle off of the lot.” Evidently, the no-start condition was the result of a broken clutch switch. Once replaced, you might think it would be reasonable to take a few laps around the lot to ensure that the new one worked as intended. Apparently, a service advisor took the vehicle onto I-95 instead. That employee is also part of the suit and allegedly took another employee on the ride with him. While the passenger was wearing a seat belt, data from the car suggests that the driver wasn’t, Automotive News reports.
The suit also says the data recorder indicates that the driver was traveling at 70 mph five seconds before the crash happened. It even indicates that the throttle position was at 45 percent. It’s the next five seconds that tell the rest of the story though. At three seconds before the crash, the throttle was at 95 percent and the car was going 89 mph, per the suit. Half a second later, 2.5 seconds away from the impact, the throttle wasn’t engaged at all, the suit says. “In other words, in the seconds before the crash Mr. Sebastian gunned the engine and lost control of the high-performance Vehicle that he should not have been driving,” the suit continues.
The suit says that police found the road to be clear; that may make it seem, based on that complaint, that from the moment the car left the lot poor choice after poor choice was made. The complaint states that the car was deemed a total loss, and the Automotive News story says officers ticketed the driver for failing to stay in his lane. Now, Mr. Habul is seeking compensatory damages from the dealer which would in theory make him whole for the value of the car, an estimated $97,000.
In addition, he’s seeking punitive damages that would penalize the dealer, the driver, and perhaps both. Our own Mercedes Streeter found the entire lawsuit filing too. As of July 1, the plaintiffs filed for a default judgment citing failure to appear on the part of the dealer and driver. We’ll keep an eye on this as it develops.
