A funny thing happened on the way to writing this column. It wasn’t just that motoring editor Phil King was in the office (the big boss was here, that’s probably why).
No, we got a letter from Andrew J. Ch. de Crespigny from Barwon Heads. Barwon Heads is what passes for a beach town in Victoria. Andy had just bought what he thought was the latest model ES 350 sedan from Melbourne City Lexus.
And guess what? Yup, you know he was a victim of the old last year’s model switcheroo. As Andy wrote: “In fact I was delivered a 12-month-old 2014 model, not the 2015 model I ordered and paid for.” The boss of the dealership offered him a free service. Lexus chief executive Sean Hanley didn’t answer Andy’s letter.
Because Phil was heading off to the south of France to test a Citroen or something like that he asked me to look into it. So we rang the Lexus 1800 call centre operator who, quite frankly, didn’t sound Japanese. They told us to email the inquiries people. We did.
They said to ring the 1800 number, which we did again. The call centre people told us they were outsourced and gave us the external PR Nick Raman’s details. We sent him an email. Then we got an email from young Palvasha who said he was “the team leader for the Lexus customer assistance centre, and I will be assisting on your inquiry”. Poor old Palvasha must have got outsourced himself because we never heard from him again.
Just before deadline Raman sent me an email along the lines of “all fixed, customer happy, move on, nothing to see here”. I told Nick I would still like a comment.
Imelda Cotton’s $71,000 new-to-market Audi S3 sedan, custom ordered and delivered in November last year, has been in the workshop now for about 15 weeks out of the eight months she has had it. Audi Centre Perth tells Imelda it doesn’t know how to fix it, ”they’ve replaced a number of parts but the problems still persist”. “Today,” Imelda writes, “I received an automated email from Audi Perth dealer principal’s email address to say my latest message to him asking for help was “deleted without being read”.
Anyway, to lift us out of new car depression, let’s head to Goodwood in September where our own SA Sporting Car Club heavy, Ken Messenger, will be joining me to don old fashioned clobber like “tweeds and trilbies, frills and frocks” (no different to what he normally wears), to watch a few old cars race and bid on Chris Evans’s car collection. Chris is a London radio person and soon to be host of the new Top Gear. (Phil, Mark Southcott and I put our hands up for the job but they said Phil wasn’t fat enough to be the James May replacement.)
Bonhams will get about $20 million for the 13 cars. There’re six serious Ferraris, including a 1963 Ferrari 250 GT Lusso Berlinetta (pictured), a 1949 Jaguar XK120 roadster with alloy bodywork, a 1959 Jaguar XK150 (also pictured), a 1967 Jaguar XKSS re-creation and a 1936 Chitty Chitty Bang Bang replica (nothing weird here) among the range.
My secret ambition is to buy the achingly beautiful 1970 Porsche 908, which will probably be a snip at $5m.
Want more? Read the rest at The Australian…
