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Forget teenagers stealing their parents’ cars for a quick spin or the standard run-of-the-mill car theft. A couple’s BMW racked up 1126km this week – parked in a lot.
The car was in the long-term lot at New York’s JFK airport while the Guntharts were on a trip to California for ten days. However when they returned, the odometer reading had apparently jumped 1126km from the figure they had written down before they had left.
At this distance, the car could have travelled just shy of a trip from Cape Town to Durban.
Mimi Gunthart also said that when they turned the car on, it was pumping sound at full volume. “Somebody had a nice vacation other than us,” she told WNBC-TV New York. There was reportedly also a new ink stain on the passenger seat.
David Menter, the Avistar regional manager told WNBC-TV, “We investigated and reviewed our inventory logs and found nothing out of the ordinary."
He also said, "Hopefully it's a weird isolated thing,” and said no other customers had mysterious possible joyrides in their cars. But they would look into customers and attendants writing down a car’s mileage at drop off.
"We're definitely going to be examining the procedures to make sure that there's never any question in a customer's mind in the future," he said.
Whether an attendant took the BMW for a bit of a ride – kind of a long one – or cars are starting to morph into autonomous travellers, the Guntharts said they would use the parking lot again, despite the incident.
The car was in the long-term lot at New York’s JFK airport while the Guntharts were on a trip to California for ten days. However when they returned, the odometer reading had apparently jumped 1126km from the figure they had written down before they had left.
At this distance, the car could have travelled just shy of a trip from Cape Town to Durban.
Mimi Gunthart also said that when they turned the car on, it was pumping sound at full volume. “Somebody had a nice vacation other than us,” she told WNBC-TV New York. There was reportedly also a new ink stain on the passenger seat.
David Menter, the Avistar regional manager told WNBC-TV, “We investigated and reviewed our inventory logs and found nothing out of the ordinary."
He also said, "Hopefully it's a weird isolated thing,” and said no other customers had mysterious possible joyrides in their cars. But they would look into customers and attendants writing down a car’s mileage at drop off.
"We're definitely going to be examining the procedures to make sure that there's never any question in a customer's mind in the future," he said.
Whether an attendant took the BMW for a bit of a ride – kind of a long one – or cars are starting to morph into autonomous travellers, the Guntharts said they would use the parking lot again, despite the incident.
