As some of you know, I purchased an '05 Z33 Base with some Nismo goodies on it.
Well at some point in its history, a previous owner apparently had a remote start installed. When this was done, all the safeties were bypassed. None of this was known to me or to the dealership.
On Wednesday May 29th the Z was parked outside my apartment when an unknown fault caused the remote start to engage. The car was parked in 1st gear with the parking brake on. The car overpowered the parking brake and started, taking off across the parking lot, striking a parked car, traveling through an empty space, striking another car, and then finally jumping the curb and striking a building. The impact with the first car did significant damage to the passenger side. The impact with the 2nd car caused minor damage to the driver's side. The impact with the house finished off the front.
This is how I found the car, still trying to crank over.
And this is the aftermath.
I was already in talks with City Auto about that car, as they had listed it as a Nismo, while it was not. We were scheduled to meet on the 30th to renegotiate the price. After the investigation, which they paid for, City Auto offered to buy the car back for 100% of my cost. They paid off the loan, refunded 100% of my down payment and the cost of the warranty. It is worth noting that they did not have to do anything for me, as all used car sales in Tennessee are As-Is. They could have said "oh well" and left it at that.
They went out of their way to make things right. I had expected to keep the car, but when they made that offer I decided it was probably for the best. The Mrs and I had planned to replace the Civic anyways, so we decided to purchase another car from City Auto. Rather than finance another sports car and buy a cheap daily, we opted to finance a nice daily and I'll just buy another old sports car. It just makes more sense to have a dependable daily. So with that in mind we came home yesterday with an 09 Versa S Hatch. 67k miles on it, 6 spd. Paid $8,990 for it.
The interior is a little rough for it's age, but nothing bad. There are a couple spots on the seats that a good steam clean will take out, and a burn mark in the rear seat from a cigarette. Other than that it has a good number of scratches in the plastic, but the price was good so I decided to take it. I'll do something about it later.
Despite the interior the body is in great shape. The only flaws being some dents in the fuel door and the front bumper has been tweaked a bit like it bumped something at low speed.
She's a good looking, good running little car. I plan to do a few little tweaks here and there, nothing major. I'm going to save that money for the next car we buy. Hopefully a clean Zenki S14.
TL;DR - The Z was possessed. It went crazy and ran down a Toyota, a Saturn, and a house. Dealer bought it back and I bought a Versa.
It's only been a few weeks right? Kudos though to the dealer, that's a stand up thing to do that you wouldn't expect from a place like that.
