An unsuspecting motorist was left furious after hidden dashcam footage showed garage workers taking his luxury sports car for a joyride.
Iain Inglis had his Mazda RX-8 picked up by a garage worker from his house in Abbey Meads, Swindon, who drove his car to a local garage for a routine airbag recall.
But the 47-year-old was shocked after replaying the footage from his dashcam, which showed his sports car being ‘red-lined’ by a worker, who was overtaking traffic and blasting out loud dance music from the vehicle.
The clip shows a worker bragging about ‘raggin’ it’ in Mr Inglis’ car, and the shocked customer claims the joyride has damaged the car’s highly-responsive rotary engine.
Mr Inglis values his vehicle at £2,500, but claims the damage from the joyride has wiped £1,000 off the market price of his car which he bought second-hand with 4,000 miles on the clock. Mr Inglis says he is now struggling to sell the car.
A number of beeping sounds can be heard during the video, which is the sound the car makes when it is forced by the driver to more than 9,000 revs per minute.
Service engineer Iain is now asking for free work on the car which goes beyond a compensation package he originally agreed to several months earlier.
He said: “Once I had shown the footage to the general manager he apologised and offered a free service.
“In the end we agreed on four wheels refurbished, full fluid change, excluding oil, and a Mazda used car warranty.
“The car also had a compression test to see if the engine had been damaged. The compression was below Mazda’s stated limits, but they are refusing to carry out any engine work.”
The dealership has apologised for the “regrettable” incident which resulted in an internal investigation and subsequent disciplinary action of the member of staff involved.
The dealership said: “During the investigation, we carried out a number of tests on the engine which all failed to highlight any damage to the engine when compared to tests prior to the event.”
