The first recorded crash of Chevy’s spanking new 2016 Camaro came much sooner than expected, as it happened less than 24 hours after the car’s presentation in Detroit this past Saturday.
On Sunday, May 17, GM organized a first drive for a select group of journalists and one of them, had an unfortunate moment crashing a camouflaged tester.
The unsought-for honor of the first person outside General Motors to crash test a 2016 Chevrolet Camaro goes to – let the drum beats roll – Jalopnik’s Patrick George, who had this to say about his experience:
“The story I’m about to tell you isn’t the story I wanted to tell you. It’s about the 2016 Camaro, but it’s not the story most other journalists got. That’s because during Sunday’s press drive at Belle Isle State Park in Detroit, I crashed a Camaro mule on the track and put it out of commission.”
George then goes into more details on how it went down:
“When the crash happened, I was the second Camaro mule in a train of cars following a lead driver in a Z/28. But as I came up on one corner, I made a mistake, took a line that was all wrong and braked far later than I should have, inducing terminal understeer. I think that’s what happened, at least. It happened very quickly, and adrenaline has a way of mucking with your memory. I probably wasn’t as focused as I could have been, since I was trying to talk and record my driving impressions into a GoPro at the time.”
Whether you like it or not, shit can and will happen when you test drive cars (especially on a track) and anyone in the field who says otherwise is naive, on the payroll or a promo-editorial writer…
But there’s more to this story, as surprisingly, GM kicked him out of the event:
“The wreck felt pretty mild on my body, but after I got the car off the course a paramedic checked me out as a precaution,” said George. “After that, and some profuse apologies on my part, a GM rep told me to leave Belle Isle. A lot of people didn’t want me there anyway, I was told, and that this crash was essentially the straw that broke the camel’s back. The drive continued without me and down one Camaro mule.”
Why did they do that when it’s a common practice during press events to either have the journalist who crashed continue in another car or at least let him or her participate in the event from the sidelines? George and Jalopnik believe it’s because some people over at GM “were pretty angry at Jalopnik for publishing an internal GM memo containing the Camaro’s specs on Friday, a day before its official unveiling, after the photos leaked on CNBC.”
George elaborates: “While it’s normal to not let a driver back on the track after a crash, it is not standard procedure to kick a journalist out and it does seem as though GM has vented all their frustration over not being able to keep a secret in our direction in a way that’s reminiscent of them inviting basically every other journalist in the world to drive the C7 Corvette after our untimely leak of that car.”
If that’s really the reason why they kicked George out -and it does seem so, then I think that GM reps acted hastily, stupidly and ultimately, vengefully. Come to think of it, from an outsider’s point of view, you could even describe their actions as unprofessional, because just ask yourself who acted unprofessional: Jalopnik, a news website that posted a leaked memo or GM that kicked out a journalist after an accident?
If they had an issue with Jalopnik, they shouldn’t have invited them in the first place or they should have just cancelled the trip. From the moment that they did, they should have been proper hosts giving George the same treatment as they would to any other journalist on the track – it’s not like he did something utterly senseless (yes, one should never cross their hands on the wheel, but like we said, shit happens).
And may I remind you that when Aaron Gold from ‘About.com Cars’ crashed a Camaro ZL1 during a 2012 press drive, GM’s people were completely fine with it, and I quote from Gold’s posting: “The Chevy PR folks were exceptionally accommodating — you would never guess that I had just driven their $60,000 press car into a wall of tires. As long as I was all right, they said, that was all that mattered. Thanks, guys — and for the twelfth time, I am so, so sorry about the car.”
Double standards, anyone?