IANAL, but "as-is" has nothing to do with negligence. It appears the car was sent out the door with missing lug nuts or the mechanic failed to notice a gross deficiency with the wheel mounting during the course of his repair. Either is a negligent act.

The OP is owed a complete repair, and not necessarily by the guys who broke it. If I were him, my objective would be to persuade the dealer just to refund the car. Not a bunch of money or a new ZR1 or any nonsense like that. They can fix it at their cost and resell it and avoid a legal fight.

Why would they ever do that? Ridiculous.

If he's over the car already, it wouldn't be totally unreasonable to have them take the car back and refund 100% of his money.

Or, the mcgard lug failed, the other wheel lugs broke from the force, and the wheel flew off. Nothing negligent about that for the dealership.

Like I said, hard to prove anything, and it's better off to approach it in a friendly way.

It's clear the studs aren't broken or stripped, they weren't tightened down.

And my wife always questions why I do all maintenance myself. SMH Dealerships are the Worst.

A stripped lug isn't going to cause a cascade failure like that. You could idle around town all day on two torqued lug nuts. A quick inspection of the studs and nuts could rule that out right away.

An unsafe car was released from their shop after work was performed on the part(s) that failed. Had they installed window tint and the tire fell off, they could logically escape responsibility. In this case, there is little or no question that they are liable. The chances of most, or all, of the lugs failing at one time is extremely low. In the absence of clear proof to the contrary, if I'm on the jury the dealership will be required to make him whole.

An upgrade to a newer Vette they have on the lot, or can quickly acquire, might be a better solution for both sides. The dealer can do repairs at their convenience and the owner gets to drive away immediately in something that traditionally hasn't had the same amount of problems that the '05 models are having. A nice '08 might be worth looking at for a quick exchange. :D

Nobody got hurt, and the car isn't wrecked.

The dealership has the responsibility to repair it for free, and I'm guessing they will. The better thing to do, but they don't have to, is offer to buy it back. Anything more than that is dreaming.

It may show up in Carfax as a repair, but I highly doubt it would show as an accident or anything else too derogatory since it's not getting claimed on his insurance and there was no mention of a police report.

Tire came off
 

The dealer is fixing the car with new fender and new rotors and front wheel. I only put one lock nut on each wheel. The others 3 wheels are fine, someone took a break forget to tighten the nuts I believe. I am driving a new Cadillac CTS as a loner. ha Dealer admits fault an their insurance is taking the hit. I will keep everyone up to date when things get finished. I want to see the Vette on a lift before I accept the work and have the service manger drive it with me in the car. Then I will drive it while he is in it too. So far they are being nice, we will see.

I have little to no doubt the dealers insurance will not be involved with something this small.

^^^^this

They couldn't do your fuckin brakes and now they're going to fix it? Nope, hard nope.

What!! Nascar was only using 4 lug nuts for awhile at over 200mph and the engineers said 3 lug nuts would hold the wheel on with the correct torque.He should the fu$% out of that dealer he could of killed himself or others.

It took just 13 posts for the "get a lawyer" mentality to come up....How about 1st seeing if the dealership will step up & repair the car first? Give them a chance to do the right thing

Took my daughters car in for a front end alignment after tire install. Private shop forgot to tighten adjusting nuts. Fortunately a month later I noticed the tire angle when the car came home. Shop refused to admit any wrong doing. Not worth creating a huge fuss. Another two hundred for a tire and alignment . No one was injured. There are shop owners that are just profit minded and quality care less individuals. Its a huge karma wheel.

the so called aftermarket Mcguard lock nut kits are what GM installs on the C6 and have GM part number-12498078.they will not cause your wheels to fall off unless the village idiot forgets to torque them.they are a dealer installed option that have been on my car since new.never an issue with them.if there was an issue with them GM would not be installing them on C6's.my new Ram pick up and previous Ram also came with them when new