Jurors Side With Corvette Owner Over Shoddy Mechanic Work

By Detroit Steel - February 24, 2015

A 1970 Stingray featured in Left Coast Classics (not the actual Corvette from the lawsuit.)

I love it when shoddy mechanic work is exposed, especially when it involves damage to a Corvette. I imagine more than a few here at Corvette Forum can relate.

In this case, jurors in Illinois sided with Jack Lingenfelder (not to be confused with Lingenfel”t”er), the owner of a 1970 Corvette who filed a lawsuit claiming that an auto shop installed the wrong parts in his car, which damaged the engine and transmission, according to a report from TheIntelligencer.com.

An engine builder, who Lingenfelder had look at the Corvette later, testified that there were a lot of problems with the car stemming from work done at C.A.M.S., including an improperly installed head gasket and harmonic balancer.

The now defunct shop, C.A.M.S. Automotive, even wound up getting paint inside the Corvette when it wasn’t properly covered while parked near a motorcycle being painted in the shop.

A co-owner of the shop disputed the claims that the Corvette suffered any damage at C.A.M.S., saying that he “got it up to 80 a couple of times,” which to me pretty much says, “hey, I’m not to be trusted” considering I sincerely doubt he was driving the car on a track.