Chase Weir and the tale about the runaway Ford

Canuck said:
I feel like this would be a much smarter course of action than scraping your car along the divide? He had police escorts so it wasn't like he would crash if traffic bogged up.
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He was at the end of the motorway by the time the car stopped, and if the traffic is particularly heavy, people may not be able to pull over. But I guess it wouldn't take long for an Explorer to run out of petrol.
 
I reckon it's legit.

I, as much as the rest of us, can not comment on that actual car.
The faults of that actual car.
The condition of it.

So, we don't know if it did fuck up, or not.

I wouldn't be surprised, these stories come up around the world every so often.
 
jayhawk said:
I am thinking that he is trying to, after hearing about the Toyota debacle, cash in on fears of sudden acceleration. Let's pretend he is sick of his Ford, needs some money and is a good liar. In America, that is a lawsuit waiting to happen, and many lawyers would line up to represent him.

Then again I do not know how Australia is when it comes to civil trials and tort lawyers. Hopefully in regards to your tort laws you are very UNLIKE us.
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That's actually a pretty interesting theory, and not entirely improbable. Our civil law system is pretty similar to the US and UK systems (obviously all being the adversarial law system), but of course civil cases are much easier to prove than criminal. I personally don't think he would be very successful in judicial action unless he could find people who have undergone similar things in the same car and launch a class action with them- Ford would put a lot of money into making sure that they won the case and that their reputation of here was kept intact. He would have to have a lot of money for lawyers to take these guys on, and so many people think his story is improbable (multiple and complete redundancy failures) that his side would most likely not hold up to the balance of probablilites.
 
it's only a cable that connects the shifter to the box, I've managed to break a few of them. It's all possible on a car that's badly maintained, brakes not up to scratch, weak/badly adjusted ebrake.

But saying that, it's a bad set of cirumstances and he should have still been able to switch the ignition off. I'd go for panic and poorly maintained vehicle with faulty CC
 
So a malfunctioning cruise control, ignition that won't turn off, malfunctioning brakes and a broken shifter cable on the same vehicle?

Not impossible but highly unlikely.
 
Actually, it's not only possible but it's happened before. The Jeep Grand Wagoneer was never made in RHD, but the AMC/Jeep organization in Australia did a local conversion. Unfortunately, some of those conversions were rubbish and very poorly assembled - hence my question as to whether the RHD Explorer was a factory product or a local conversion.
 
Good point, I just assumed that since Ford has a large presence in Australia that it was a factory RHD vehicle.
 
I think it must have been factory RHD, they weren't popular cars but they were probably too popular to import LHD and convert. They didn't do that for any other more interesting/better LHD cars, so I doubt they would bother to do it for the Explorer.
The Explorer was sold in Japan I think, we got RHD Mustangs for a few years that were for the Japanese market.
 
I know that they are LHD-only after the frame switch in 2006 (at least), something the Japanese complained bitterly about.
 
Bumpity bump. Sorry but there has been another development in the story. This was posted in another thread, so I thought it fitting to put it in here.
Article
Police have inspected the car and found nothing wrong with it. Weir still claims it wasn't a hoax.
 
Having seen an interview with him, he doesn't seem the brightest spark if it came to car related stuff.
 
Reckoning said:
Having seen an interview with him, he doesn't seem the brightest spark if it came to car related stuff.
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He did buy an Explorer, so that confirms that theory. But it was a poor attempt at publicity if thats what he was trying, and he hasn't started a lawsuit or anything.
 
hbriz said:
he hasn't started a lawsuit or anything.
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Right after it happened he implied that he was going to blame ford for the problem until the car was checked out by police experts and they found nothing wrong with it. Would be a pretty flimsy lawsuit.
 
jayhawk said:
I am thinking that he is trying to, after hearing about the Toyota debacle, cash in on fears of sudden acceleration. Let's pretend he is sick of his Ford, needs some money and is a good liar. In America, that is a lawsuit waiting to happen, and many lawyers would line up to represent him.

Then again I do not know how Australia is when it comes to civil trials and tort lawyers. Hopefully in regards to your tort laws you are very UNLIKE us.
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thats a decent theory but the ford was a hire car, he was from queensland
 
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