According to a shop owner who posts at TampaRacing.com, a customer asked for $16,000 in custom work on a base model automatic Toyota Celica of unknown vintage, and even fronted the money for the material costs, without actually deciding how he was going to pay for it. Realizing this, after four months of work, the Celica's none-too-bright owner apparently sent his mom to pick it up for him.
When mom was told the car wasn't paid for (he seems to have left that part out), this genius sent his girlfriend. She offered them $60 and asked for some sort of payment plan. When that didn't work, he asked for the car to be washed, polished and parked out front. The shop owner assumed this meant the Celica's owner ran out of women to send and was just going to steal it. The shop behind the work is in the process of getting a lien in hopes of making up some of the costs. The original post:
I have been working on Joe Dono's car for approximately 4 1/2 months.
The car was completely redone. Complete repaint including engine bay and pulling all glass and seals, smoothing out the interior panels and two toning them, building a custom sub enclosure and covering it in carbon fiber, custom amp racks and nitrous bottle brackets, carbon overlays on the roof and hatch, turbo install, e-manage install, custom fiberglass center console to mount gauges in, just a lot of work in general.
He showed up to pick his car up yesterday, Saturday August 9th, and was apparently planning on stealing his car without paying for anything.
His mother, who actually is the one financing his car, was under the impression that he had paid for materials and that he had "sponsors" that were paying us to do the labor. She wanted to know why the car was taking so long because Joe had told her it was just getting painted. He barely covered material cost and was promising to bring the very large balance in cash when the car was picked up.
I'm really not sure what was going through his head thinking he was going to get the car completely modified and knowing he has NO money to pay for it.
His girlfriend offered us $60 and wanted to know if we could set-up a payment plan. SERIOUSLY? His bill is close to $16K and he wants a payment plan.
I'm sure plenty of you have either dealt with him or heard about him. He's a detailer by trade but apparently he has no self-worth and has no problem lying and deceiving anyone and everyone.
Please feel free to chime in. His car will be for sale shortly, just need to wait on that mechanic's lien to go through
On the other hand, that sounds like a truly hideous car, maybe it's just best to destroy it and save everyone the trouble. [TampaRacing.com]