Car showrooms aim to give the customers the best perspective possible on the cars allowing buyers to experience them on the inside as well. One thing they don’t provide for is a test drive inside the showroom. But a customer at a Hyundai showroom in Mandi decided to overlook the small matter of not driving within a dealership. In a classic case of making a mistake and then making it worse by panicking, a woman in a Hyundai i20 managed to put it in gear (or perhaps it was an automatic), set off and most likely stomped on the throttle instead of the brakes out of sheer horror. And all of this happened inside a Hyundai showroom.
In a very it’s-not-funny-but-you’ll-laugh situation, the prospective customer drove a Hyundai Elite i20 into the glass at the front of the showroom, dropped from a height of about 3 feet and then crashed into another car parked outside before coming to a halt.
The incident was recorded by a CCTV camera and the horror of the situation is very visible on how the people of the showroom reacted. Imagine having a normal day at work as a car salesman and then a screech and then glass shattering and then a crash again.
While car dealerships take extra precautions so customers don’t end up, well, driving through the glass window. However, if the car has an engine start/stop button or if it an automatic, it would be difficult to control the situation.
The damage this accident has caused would be about Rs 4 lakh with two properly damaged cars and a glass window of the showroom. We saw the amazement in the car sales personnel’s reaction but we can only imagine the horror on the woman’s face when the car did come to a stop.
