MARCH 20, 2010: “HE’S GOING TO LEAN ON YOUR CAR”-NIGHTMARES FROM THE FRONTLINES OF CAR SHOWS

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There’s a TV ad from a prominent collector car insurance company that shows a giant-sized guy at a car show.

 

This humanoid mega-monster comes complete with a menacing large chain dangling from his pants.

He circles the bait–a classic 1957 Chevy.

 

 

 

Then, after a suspense-filled pause … Tiny parks his 300-pound carcass on the hood of this classic car. The owner is close enough to see this madness but powerless to stop it. The ad ends with “Jumbo” leaning back on the hood of the victim and the poor car sagging under the weight.

 

 

Non-car people might see this ad as exaggeration for effect, but most car guys have witnessed antics just like that and worse at virtually every car show on the planet.

 

 

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The complete lack of remorse shown by the large chain-wearing gorilla in the ad is also depressingly accurate.

 

Car show folk are generally the most hospitable people you’ll ever meet. They are the kind of people who welcome visitors with an honest friendliness. Car guys that aren’t that keen on the public rarely, if ever, bring their cars to shows, so the odds are solid that the typical owner at a show is going to be a good guy.

 

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A “people person”for lack of a better term.

 

But a people person has limits and those limits are pushed to the breaking point far too often at car shows by idiots like the fat guy in the TV ad. And this XXXX-sized moron isn’t the only threat to your car at a show. In fact, he might not even be the worst threat-he’s just the most visible.

 

Car show idiots come in many shapes and sizes because callous disregard for somebody else’s property can come from any age or gender. There’s a simple explanation.

 

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Nature likes to paint the “ common sense gene over a big canvas. So anybody between the age of 2 to 92, male or female, can be a serious threat to your $10,000 paint job basically because they lack this thinly spread, basic common sense gene.

 

The simplest way to describe this car show horror is to think of a collector car as a really nice flower garden-and the owner is a really good gardener who likes to show his or her garden to the public. In most cases, people are happy to stay on the sidewalk and simply take in the beauty of the flowers.

 

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But every now and then you get some thoughtless idiot who thinks that it’s okay to wade into the garden- and stomp over the petunias and/or chrysanthemums and grab a fist full of roses for the “missus”. That’s the potential nightmare for every car owner at a car show.

 

The worst thing is that these clueless morons are often offended by the repercussions that arise from this incredibly arrogant disregard for somebody else’s property. Throw kids into the mix and you have the potential for a fatality.

 

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No parent likes to admit they flunked the mandatory “Make sure your kid doesn’t climb on a $100,000 Car” course-because admitting to that failure would be far worse than actually taking the lead on a 7-year-old kid in the common sense department.

 

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Instead of doing the right thing they’ll choose the wrong thing-they’ll start ripping on the poor guy (the victim) who invested a decade of his life and lots more money than he planned on a collector car.

 

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He’s going to lean on your car?  

 

That might be best-case scenario.

 

Jerry Sutherland

 

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