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Catastrophic Engine Failure After Service

5.4K views 31 replies 15 participants last post by  jobama1  
#1 ·
So here's my situation...

Owned my mclaren 570GT for 2 years now from circa 2000 miles. Now on nearly 8000. A fairly uneventful ownership, no real issues until the end of July just when I was about to part ways with the car due to my current finance deal coming to an end in October.

I took the car in for it's annual service at the cost of over £1000 at my local mclaren dealer. A mere 150 miles later my engine catastrophically explodes. (And I mean explodes) rods out the bottom the lot. I must add that the car is completely standard and not driven particularly hard (and wasn't at the time). Car was performing faultlessly before this, no errors, no hiccups.

So I get the car recovered to the dealer as its still covered under extended warranty (2019 model). They state they can see no reason for the failure but will contact the warranty inspector to come out and Try to authorise a new unit. A few weeks later they get the green light and an engine is on the way 'luckily for me'. Obviously during this time no courtesy car or any kind of customer service is offered as I've come to expect from mclaren. At this point the wrong engine is sent out causing further delays and then the new engine can't go back in due to it needing new cats and other items it doesnt need as ive been and checked it out myself. Upon finding out the cats are on back order till Feb the original ones are going back in.. during this time my MOT expires , my warranty expires and my finance agreement is coming to an end. Mclaren have had the car two months now.

My other issue is that I have been trying to book the car in to have the rust repaired under warranty for 2 years now since I've owned it (bubling arches and door trims, very bad) to which I always get the response 'we will try and squeeze it in' 2 years later it's still not been taken in.

So here I am, in a position where I need to sell the car urgently as my finance term is up and interest rates for refinance are absurd. I have a car with now no warranty, awful paintwork and a value that's dipped about 10 grand due to the market in the time its been at the dealer. I can't sell it to another private dealership due to the paint work being so bad (they are now saying can't be done until late december) and an expired warranty.

Where do I stand? The failure is obviously down to a mishap with the service, I can't sell the car due to the paint issues and I'm at a huge loss.

Should I be contacting a different mclaren dealership? Should mclaren be putting an extension on the warranty as good will? Is there someone higher up in the company I can contact other than the local sytner mclaren manager? I've basically had a 'shit happens' and your lucky this is being covered approach to the whole thing.

I might add they have offered to buy it off me for 80grand, about 20k under retail value.

Thoughts and advice please
 
#8 ·
So which sentence is it you're complaining about? Maybe it's British English you can't follow??? Perhaps I can provide some translation services.😂 He states that he had a service and 150 miles later it threw a rod. I have to say that in those circumstances, I'd be wondering just what they did during the service, but he carefully avoids drawing any conclusions!
 
#21 ·
So I'm a car dealer of a couple of new car franchises and I can say this is a really difficult situation . Your finance situation i can't see the manufacturer doing anything about it, the depreciation you have no shot. The rust if you have proof of the complaint while it was under warranty should be a simple thing to get approved. Does the work order for the engine mention anything about the rust? Or is it just verbal?
 
#23 ·
Commenting on a thread about a false claim makes me bent out of shape about something? I said what proof do you have that was the case? That was the claim mentioned several times here. Any mechanical component can fail at any time on any car. Getting an oil change and then having your engine throw a rod over 100+ miles later aren't exactly related. This is the same shit I heard for years when I owned a mechanics shop, and it's just uneducated.

Can we just point out here that i havent named the specific dealer and i have left alot of details out of this post, ie the evidence that i do have. I do run my own garage, thats the trade im in so im well versed in dealing with stupid people on a daily basis that believe that 'since you touched my car its your problem now'. This isnt that.

But with the evidence i do have aligned with the fact that the very next time i drive the car post service it catastrophically explodes.

Do i trust the dealers to service any of my cars? No. Have i let them service it, and paid over £1000 more than what it would have cost me to do myself just to preserve the warranty and service history? Yes.

Either way - i wasnt expecting this post to be full of people slating me personally. I was looking for some advice due to the handling of this situation being so poor by the dealer.
 
#24 ·
Can we just point out here that i havent named the specific dealer and i have left alot of details out of this post, ie the evidence that i do have. I do run my own garage, thats the trade im in so im well versed in dealing with stupid people on a daily basis that believe that 'since you touched my car its your problem now'. This isnt that.

But with the evidence i do have aligned with the fact that the very next time i drive the car post service it catastrophically explodes.

Do i trust the dealers to service any of my cars? No. Have i let them service it, and paid over £1000 more than what it would have cost me to do myself just to preserve the warranty and service history? Yes.

Either way - i wasnt expecting this post to be full of people slating me personally. I was looking for some advice due to the handling of this situation being so poor by the dealer.
Have you reached out to McLaren Corporate yet?
 
#28 ·
It's a little difficult to understand the finance and warranty problems too. Both can be arranged easily, both can be cancelled if you still the car, and the cost of doing both is relatively trivial compared with the value of the car. It sounds as if they're going to fix the car, so the only other thing you need to do is put on your big boy pants and insist that they sort out the corrosion.
 
#30 ·
Its just the frustration that i was about to sell and since this happening the market has dropped around 10k.
And the refinance with current rates is more than double what im paying for it now! And i will have trouble selling it without the corrossion warranty being fixed. Which they are now saying cant be done until december..

If they got the paint done i could suck up a few months of higher finance whilst its being sold. But not looking to stay with the car till january..

Hoping that it could be done at another dealership other than my local one.
 
#32 ·
It's sad at times to read threads and see folks and I'm going to call names unmac blindly side with McLaren and some poorly managed dealers. Cool you have more money and cars than most people here, doesn't mean that the ones that are "less fortunate" shouldn't be allowed to own and complain about ownership.
Same way McLaren will say "you tuned the car that's why it blew up 100 miles later", why can't he say "they serviced the car that's why it blew up 100 miles later", both are speculations, because there are many tuned cars that are fine, and many serviced car that are also fine.
My opinion is that OP doesn't really care what the cause was, they moreso care that it's taking as long as it is.
I recently took my car in for the software update, it's been over a week(they only moved it to the shop yesterday), and i only know this based on gps tracking, not because they make any sort of effort to inform of progress or lack of progress.

End of rant