Longtime car enthusiast John Hooper of Georgetown, Del., met with tragedy last month when his rare Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 was totaled by a dealership employee.
First State Chevrolet was the dealership at fault, but Hooper said managers denied responsibility for the accident where the 2012 Camaro ZL1 crashed into a telephone pole, the Wilmington, Del. News Journal reported.
"I cried for about 10 minutes, looking at my black car, trashed," Hooper, who had taken the car in for a paint repair under warranty, told the News Journal. "It was a very sentimental car. And I know the collectability of these cars."
Former dealership employee Eric Peterson of Georgetown has been charged with careless driving and failure to have proof of insurance in the incident. He was fired after the accident, but the dealership insisted that Peterson was to blame and wouldn't take responsibility to find a replacement car.
Hooper, a Camaro fan who wrote a reference book about the original 1969 ZL1 models, has since made peace with the dealership, but not without some bumps in the road.
The 550-horsepower, four-passenger sports car in question went viral after the accident as fellow collectors and car fans sounded off online. The longtime Camaro collector posted his story on camaro5.com, and it was picked up by car blogs Jalopnik and Autoblog. The dealership wasn't willing to find a replacement car and was unhelpful about providing insurance information, Hooper said.
After the blogs picked up the story, the dealership was hit by a firestorm of negative publicity that led to hundreds of irate phone calls as well as angry comments on Google reviews and the dealership's Facebook page.
"The media is a monster," First State sales manager Bill Hansen told News Journal on Wednesday. "Google our name and see what damage that's been done. The good thing is, this will all be brought to a close soon."
The dealership managers found a replacement car, a 2013 model that Hooper agreed to buy, planning to make the same monthly payments he was making on the 2012 car. Painted "victory red," the new Camaro is on its way to Delaware from Detroit, Mich., the News Journal reported.
"It was really overwhelming," Hooper told the News Journal, referring to the media storm kicked up by the incident. "I want to try to get everything back to normal. I don't want hard feelings over all this."
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