Ok, here is the situation.

Last year I went to a high end sports car dealer and purchased my mustang. They are known for their great cars as they mostly deal in GT, Saleen, Roush, Cobra, or specialty mustang makes. They never really sell V6 cars, only if they are s/c'd or turbo'd. They also deal with the GTO, SRT-4, and Vettes and some SS's.

I purchased my Sonic Blue 2005 Mustang GT around October/November of 2007. They were asking 19k for the car which had a clean carfax and a little under 40k miles, seemed like an ok deal. After driving around 2 hours and checking out the car, we decided to try and get it. After our trade in, the financing went through and me and the wife had a nice 2005 Mustang GT. Being young and just married, we were very happy to own such a nice vehicle!

Less than an oil change later, the paint on the car started to flake and bubble off. We took it to a body shop who confirmed the car had been previously wrecked and repainted. He pointed out the spots the car was painted and signs of the accident. Once pointed out it was very clear what had happened. Me knowing buying a used car is a "as is" affair, I let it go and tried to rid of the rage I had inside me.

About 8 more months (and paint) went by and I just couldnt take it anymore. The leather on the interior door panels of the car has fallen off, the front bumper doesnt have a square inch of good paint, and I just noticed that day the mounting bracket for the headlight was also broken in the accident too. I went to their website which had a customer feedback address, and emailed the company I purchased the vehicle from about my purchasing experience. My letter was very polite, mature, and detailed with pictures of the car and information attatched.

The same day I received a reply that they wanted to make the situation better, as they "DO NOT sell vehicles fixed from wrecks". Needless to say I was exstatic that a dealership really cared and worried about the cars they let roll out of their business, especially so many months later. They gave me an option of fixing the car, or seeing If I wanted to possibly get into another vehicle. Being fair to them, I just wanted my car fixed. It sucks I have a wrecked GT, but I'll be happy as long as the car looks factory again.

I drive the vehicle two hours to meet with the owner. He assures me the problems will be fixed and they will look into the the hood/fender/bumper paint problem. I tell them keep it as long as you need, I appreciate it, and look forward to picking it back up. Before I left he told me they would not fix the leather on the door panels, as it is a "factory problem with all 2005+ GT mustangs", but he assured me he could get it fixed by "their leather guy" and he'd call and give me a quote later in the day after he looked at the doors.

One week later to the day I recieve an email telling me to "Come pick your car up, its done". After driving 2 more hours to the dealership I arrive and my smile quickly fades. It's hard to express in words how dissapointed I was to find my headlight still broken, fender painted with paint runs, and bumper still needing to be "wet sanded", which they told me to finish up. I couldnt even speak at the moment. I looked at my wife and motioned lets go as I slowly sat down in the car. As I looked to my right I see huge deep scratches running up my windows in my tint. I asked him who took the panels off to give you the qoute on my leather. His response "A guy that came up in here looking for business". Well I took the car home and wouldnt even look at it that whole day. I never messed with the wet sanding because the next day I already had my first paint bubble. It has been two weeks since and I now have 8 paint bubbles, and what looks like spots with no clear coat. The fenders have off color sonic blue over spray, and the car in sunlight just looks horrible. The car is now in worse shape than it was before the repaint.

I'm in the process of emailing them back for the last time. I know they had no business fixing this car in the first place, but why try to fix something and just make it worse. They sell high end vehicles, they know what looks good. My email will include new pictures of the car. I want to be as polite as possible, but also need to express my anger with this situation. I don't expect anything further from the dealership, but I still feel the need to express myself.

Depending on the outcome, I might be posting up to warn others not to buy from this dealer.
Oh yeah. To close, Its no fun cleaning, polishing, and waxing a car that you know will never be perfect. Here is my baby.

 

Horrible experience and I feel for you. So many good places it's a shame that you bought from a bad one.

 

Oh man, that does suck. Hopefully everything works out for you. Not sure why they would tell you to do the wet sanding. That is just odd.

 

that sucks, see what you can do, if not make some phone calls to find out how to get it properly fixed. and make sure they know that you arent satisfied, and will let people know not to buy there

 

Yes, I was kinda confused on that also. Maybe fix the orange peel?

 

Because they don't want to spend the money to fix the problem.

Do you have words in writing to the effect of:
a) The admission they do not sell "fixed" wrecked cars (which I think you do.)
b) They said they would fix it
c) When they said it, they also said right?

With those, you have legal armament to either continue to persist with them a good recourse to the problem, or to have them pay for it when you take it somewhere.

By doing *any* work on it... they've taken the legal responsibility to fix the problem, and all of them. They shouldn't have touched it. Period. Because they did, now you have more material to use in a lawsuit.

Basically, you're letting them off the hook. I've done that... sometimes it's not a problem, but in this case... this is odious.

The leather peeling thing... first I've heard of it.

The paint bubbles... that's just shoddy, they painted over the problem, and did not clean the part correctly before properly sanding down, priming, painting, etc, and just splashed some paint on it. Now it needs to be completely stripped and done right.

The wet sanding... no paint shop would want that attached to them. Hack job. They should be ashamed, but we're talking a car dealership... Regardless of the 'high end' of the product, it's still a used car lot... don't be fooled by the high dollar cars... the margin is still thin on most of them, so again, it's a money thing for them... but that's just plain *sad.*

The headlight bracket is ridiculous easy, replace it, but of course... that's more money isn't it?

Point is... you are being screwed, and you need to start threatening lawyers. Whether you have them or not... tell them if you don't get the fender, bumper, headlight, and now the leather part fixed, free, *and* correctly... you are going to sue them for about $5000 off the car, which is what it should have been in the first place. You should have bought that car for $12-13k sounds like, and they need to know that's your intention. And don't back down.

What you *really* need to do is have them just buy the car back from you and let them sell it to someone else... there really are more Mustangs out there, trust me.

Just torques me off... and it's not my car!

/high end, my pinky toe!

 

^ I agree completely. That car was overpriced in the first place, IMO, especially for having no remaining factory warranty.

If you don't want them to have their hacks try and fix it again, maybe you can settle to have them pay the shop of your choice directly for the repairs. That might be a good compromise to cutting you a check.

 

BTW, what do you mean when you say "leather falling off" the door panel? Do you mean the leather inner accent portion is sagging? I can't imagine that being related to an accident of any kind.

You can buy another set of panels pretty easily, if you just want to fix it and at least have the interior of the car in sound condition.

 

Yes the leather portions just fell off. I never told the guy it was the fault of the accident, just what was happening to the car. However, the body shop told me the doors were either replaced, or repainted due to the accident though, which makes me question whether the glue on the leather that failed was applied by ford, or the body shop who fixed the car up.

 

After looking around for one in florida, this mustang was about 5k cheaper than anything else out there on the market. Everyone else wanted about 22k + for theirs. I'm not too upset about what we paid, just what we got.

I just received an email back from them stating.. "I would like you to know that we are changing our business model and we can't contine to sell the mustangs because of how bad business is. We will be closed for the next few weeks while this change takes place. When we reopen we will do our best to try to help you out. You know what kind of guys we are and ask that you give us a chance to make this better."

Well see what happens.

 

Dude, they are fixing to screw you big time based on the "we are changing our business model and we can't contine to sell the mustangs because of how bad business is" line. Basically, it looks like they are getting rid of evidence or possibly even closing up shop. It's happened before. I don't know your financial situation, but it is time to talk to a lawyer. You are probably covered by lemon laws considering the issues you have had and possibly even a false advertising/fraud claim. I would not, repeat NOT, allow them to slide because they are "good guys", they have already proen they are not. Lawsuits are destroying this country, but in this case, it is the only way you will recoup your investment. The stuff you have presented here is quite telling, and if you get through this remember never to buy anythign from a dealer who professes to sell only "high end" cars unless they have a few Ferraris on the lot. these guys don't deserve another chance from you, and if you don't nail them down, they will probably be gone in a few days.

 

I have a feeling they are just screwing me with the line up change. I really don't have a case here
seeing I bought the car used, as is. I don't really have anything I can do in this situation besides besides be pissed and complain to a company who sells 60k twin turbo cars every weekend, but can't afford to sell real cars instead of fixed up wrecks. I know I bought something crappy, I'll just try and make the best of it.

Oh, here is a few pics of the bumper they painted two days after it was painted, and the deep scratches in the window tint that were there when I picked it up.






The bubbles have since grown larger and the paint will be falling off within a few days I'm sure. Notice the amount of orange peel in the paint. Maybe the reason they wanted ME to wet sand it.

 

OMG, that is terrible. That's backyard kiddie quality. Are they serious?????

 

To give you an idea of the cars they sell, here is some they have sold lately.

GT500

Supercharged Roush

Supercharged Saleen F150

Turbo S197

Custom Saleen


If anyone recognizes this dealership from the pics, please don't let anyone know
what dealership it is, YET. I want to see the outcome before they are bashed
publicly. They are a rather small dealership, but they deal in alot of expensive performance
cars. If you live in florida you should know who these guys are.

 

The scratches are a known issue with 'stangs and the weird inside rubber/felt that Ford used. The fix is to order 08 inside door weatherstrip. That, you can let them slide on.

The other cars are very nice... but... that wording is exactly what it says: They're goin' out of business, and they won't be back. They have *THAT MANY* Mustangs to sell, and they're gonna get out of doing it!? Righty then... Get a lawyer. Now.

re: lawsuits destroying the country? No... maybe *bad* lawsuits. But that's a whole other argument...

/Will say this: The people suing, should they not win, should be made to pay whatever it is they were trying to gain. That'd stop the frivolous ones... like 'coffee in a lap' ones.
//Still dumbfounded that McD's had to pay up on that... It's freakin' **COFFEE**. It's supposed to be hot. Everyone knows this. Don't spill it, stupid.

 

Nope, not in words, it was all spoken. Which for me isnt a big deal, I would never bring it to the level of a lawsuit anyways, thats just too much stress for myself.

For a) They sent me an email reply that only said "Dave....we need to talk. What's your number and when can we talk. Brian ****." The reply I was speaking of was all spoken, not emailed. They called me soon after and one of the first things he said was, sorry, we do not sell wrecked cars, or something of that nature. He proceeded to tell me they must have gotten in on trade and it slipped through the cracks, which they are sorry if that happened.

For b) Oh yeah, they said they would fix the paint, and do whatever he could to warrant the situation without going over a certain stopping dollar figure, which was never qouted.

For c) He said they would make it right, and he would look at all the problems when the car arrived.

What is terrible about this situation is the car looked great upon pickup. It had a few scratches here and there, but nothing major. The paint looked good, and everything was fine. Now this. In my last email to them I just grew tired of this mess. I told them I didn't want them touching my car again, that I was done with this whole mess, and done with this car. That was yesterday morning and I have not recieved an email back yet, which I probably wont get.

By the way, here is a link to the dealerships web site. http://www.blacksautomotive.com

 

All is not as it seems...http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cur78.htm



/hijack

 

Dude.

Look, I'm a lawyer in California. I can't take your case and I'm not trying to offer my services. In fact, I don't even know Florida law so I can't comment on your case or whether or not you have one.

However, I will say this. A lot of people resort to lawsuits when they are greedy and trying to get something for nothing. I know. I defend a public agency against all sorts of frivolous lawsuits. On the other hand, IT IS A RECOURSE WHEN YOU ARE BEING SCREWED.

The fact of the matter is that you don't know whether you have a case. You very well MIGHT, because of the principle that even if YOU buy something "as is", if the seller KNOWS before he sells it to you that the product has some sort of problem, and he doesn't tell you about it, and the problem isn't visible to the customer, then the seller IS liable. In your situation, I can't imagine that the seller had no idea that your car was as screwed up as it was.

That being the case, before you decide to eat this, wouldn't a better solution be to consult an attorney (most Plaintiff lawyers will give you at least 1 free consultation) and find out for sure? If he says you have no case, then you'll have to deal with that. On the other hand, if he says he can help you, then you may get enough money to purchase a brand new Mustang. 'Cause right now, unless you're willing to pay to repair it yourself, you're not going to be able to unload it on anyone (unless you're willing to take a huge loss).

I know what you said about the "stress of a lawsuit". It always irks me when people say this, and my response is, "You're already more stressed out by the injustice of dealing with this and by the nasty feeling that someone has taken you for a ride." Otherwise, why would you have posted on this forum. Sure, a lawsuit is stressful. But it can lead to justice, in which all your stress goes away. Swallowing injustice is more stressful, because everytime you think about it, everytime you look at your new car, you get angry. Weren't you originally trying to "swallow your rage" when you first discovered the damage?

Life is stressful sometimes. People will try to walk on you if they think they can get away with it. If you fight them and lose, at least you have the satisfaction of knowing that you did everything you could, and that maybe the result is simply God's will. On the other hand, if you fight them and win, then you have the satisfaction of knowing that you received justice (and possibly a new Mustang!).

 

Very well said.

 

well i hate to break it to that dealer, but i have an 05 with no problems with the leather on the door; that's actually the first time i had heard about something like that


really sorry to hear about your car problems, too hope things get resolved soon.