Buying a car is almost always a miserable process; car salesmen are known to be predatory, slimy, and not actually on your side. As a result, very few people in this economy are excited about spending several thousand of their hard-earned dollars upfront — or going through with the alternative of getting a potentially lengthy or high-interest car loan. Yesterday, though, a mother in Rossville, Georgia, had an exceptionally bad car-buying experience when the Volvo V70 she and her daughter were test-driving, burst into flames.
Marie Woods and her daughter Leonna Tutt were shopping for a car when they visited M&R Motors, a ‘buy here and pay here’ lot, where she found a nice white Volvo V70 that she said she was pretty sure she wanted to get. Woods decided to take it out for a test drive with her daughter, but less than half a mile away from the dealership, the car started smoking. She told Local 3 News, “It was fire coming out of the dashboard and smoke coming out of the dashboard.”
Woods saw the smoke coming out of the dashboard and was able to pull the V70 over into an empty parking lot, where the fire quickly escalated. Woods’ daughter, Leonna, was sitting in the passenger seat during the ordeal, where the flames first started to appear. She said, “I could see it from the window, and I knew immediately that I needed to be trying to get out,” but Woods said she could not open the locked passenger door.
Someone who spotted the fire nearby attempted to put it out with a small fire extinguisher, but the fire had already spread too far to save the car. Fortunately, both mother and daughter were able to escape the burning car without injuries, but when the car salesman heard of the fire, Woods said, “he refused to apologize, he actually told me to get out of his face and stop talking to him.” The car dealership that was selling the Volvo said in a statement to Local 3 News, “Our thoughts and prayers are with the customer that experienced this…. We are currently reviewing what happened and working closely with our insurance company to address everything appropriately.”