Runaway Test Driver Nabbed After Gas-and-Dash

According to Australia’s The Age, a 30-year-old man will be charged with unlawful use of a motor vehicle after taking a new car on a 6200-km test drive. What Mr Luu discovered was that you can’t take a dealership car to test out for five days at a stretch. Pretending to be a legitimate customer, Luu asked for the test spin in a $40,000 Honda Accord at a Melbourne dealership. He filled out all the requisite paperwork, but then drove off before the salesman had a chance to get in the car. Of course, cars get stolen every day, but what’s remarkable about this case is the boldness of the thief’s approach and the distance he managed to cover before getting busted. Driving from Melbourne to Adelaide and then on to Tennant Creek, he covered a total of nearly 3900 miles, the equivalent of London to Istanbul—greater than the distance from Seattle to the very tip of Florida! In the end, Luu was only apprehended because he failed to pay for petrol on his last stop. The good news is that the Accord was undamaged, and the owner of the car lot is intending to use the story as a sales gimmick to sell the car.