High-Speed ‘Test’ Was Ill-Advised

Terry Conley’s Feb. 10 wreck near the Idaho border is an eyebrow-raiser for a couple of reasons:

The black 1995 Volkswagen GTI Conley trashed wasn’t his. The mechanic took the sporty car home from the Appleway Group auto dealership’s shop. The car had been left at the Spokane Valley business to get a new engine.

The scenario is reminiscent of the tale of Randy Buell’s hot Mazda RX-7.

Just last month, the Spangle man won $11,000 in a highly publicized court case against Appleway. In 1996, someone took the turbocharged sports car out of the shop without permission. The mystery driver put 1,638 hard miles on it after Buell dropped the car off for repairs.

Now this.

The last thing a responsible business wants is publicity of this sort.

To its credit, Appleway has done what it can to make things right in this case.

The customer will get a replacement vehicle.

The employee involved got the ax.

“We’ve made the customer whole,” says Dan Barney, Appleway’s general manager, adding that Conley will have to pay the price for his mistake.

“That’s why he was terminated.”

At least Conley can’t be blamed for the Buell caper. Although he worked for the dealer two years, he wasn’t employed there when that car went AWOL.

Conley claims he was test-driving the Volkswagen at 2 a.m. and lost control after hitting a patch of ice. “It happens to people all the time,” he said.

Maybe so.

But in the investigating officer’s mind, the 28-year-old was conducting something closer to a joy ride.

Mark Haas, a 17-year trooper with the Washington State Patrol, says Conley left 250 feet of skid marks. The VW veered off Appleway Road and careened through a fence and into a field.

The car rolled once, landing back on its wheels. From tire tracks left at the scene, Haas believes Conley was trying to navigate the smashed but still-running Volkswagen back onto the asphalt. Then he accidentally ran the car’s nose into a creek bed.

Conley left the disabled car heading east on foot toward Idaho.

“He was well, well over the speed limit,” which is posted at 45 miles an hour, says Haas. The last vehicle he investigated that left similar skid marks was doing 90.

The State Patrol has cited the mechanic for reckless driving and hit-and-run, which call for mandatory court appearances.

“I was pretty banged up and didn’t have a clear head,” explains Conley, who called his supervisor and was fired not long after the crash.

At Appleway, general manager Barney confirms that Conley was permitted to take the VW home for a reasonable test, but certainly not at excessive speeds in the middle of the night.

Conley admits he’d been drinking, but only a couple of beers around 10 p.m. He was not under the influence, he says, and was driving no more than 50.

There is no way to prove or disprove Conley’s blood-alcohol level, of course, since the young man didn’t have the sense to stick around.

Trooper Haas thinks Conley’s road story is pretty shifty. He says the man’s first explanation was that he swerved to avoid an animal. Several days later he told Haas it was ice that sent him flying.

“If they want to take (a car) for a test drive, that’s OK,” says the trooper. “But not at 2 a.m. when you’ve been drinking.”

Wouldn’t you think that having your car ruined by a night-driving mechanic would evoke some fairly venomous outrage?

But the car’s owner, James Lindblad, isn’t talking. “We just don’t have a comment at this time,” says the woman who answered the Lindblads’ telephone Sunday night.

Of course, it’s understandable that the Lindblads don’t have a lot of time for idle chatter these days.

They’re busy picking out colors for the car Appleway is giving them.