"Careful sir, this is a very powerful car!"

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I was reading another thread when i saw the comment below.

kambites said:

When we were looking for a car for the wife, we had a salesman try that one. "It's a sports car, it needs hugely powerful servo assistance because it's so fast"... it was a naturally aspirated Audi A3; we'd turned up at the garage in the Elise...

I have had similar, last time i was hunting for a main car i ended up getting a Focus ST170, also on the list of cars i looked at and test drove were:
Focus ST170
Mondeo ST155 (it was so cheap i should have bought it, i missed out badly and couldn't find another low mileage one)
BMW 330/120i/130/Z4 3.0
S2000.

Now for all of these test drives i turned up in my Impreza, no Impreza can really be called subtle but mine was stupidly (and antisocially) loud and obviously not standard. The only cars i was allowed to drive without a health warning were the S2k and 130i.

With everything else the warning would be along the same lines "careful son, this is a sports car, it take man testicles to drive this bad boy!".

When i bought the Scooby i arrived in an MR2, i could understand being told to be careful, when i bought my second MR2 i arrived in my first MR2, i still had someone tell me that i needed to be careful as it was "a bit twitchy and very fast" even though we had just discussed my MR2 he was standing next to.

My issue is not with sellers warning/asking us not to speed or drive like tts, that thread has been done to death. I want to know who has obviously been clocked turning up in something equally or much more rapid than the car in question only to be warned about the "sporty" nature of the car they are looking at.

Arriving in an Elise and getting warned about a boggo A3 is good start, having to explain to a salesman that yes the ST170 is a little sporty but that the car i've just got out of has about double the bhp so i should be ok to keep it on the road is also a good start, but surely someone must have been even more patronised.

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Type R Tom said:

I had the opposite, at 21 went in my 1.0l VW polo to test drive a S13 200sx, granted a cheap car but the salesman through me the keys and said “go have some fun”. I still smile to myself now thinking about the first time I floored it.

I bought it!

I had that getting the the first MR2, turned up in my ZX 1.4i, walked into the dealer and said i'm interested in the MR2, he chucked the keys at me and told me "that it probably only has 20 miles of petrol in so get it back here before it runs out". Deposit taken approximately 18 miles later.

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ORD said:

benm3evo said:

I dropped my old company car 120D (2012) off a BMW for a Service & was given a new 116i as a courtesy car.

I remember the Service guy 'warning' me about the Sport button it had. 'Transforms the car mate, get used to the car before you press that button'. I thought he was being sarcastic, he wasn't.

He MUST have been joking! The 116i is the slowest current generation car that I have driven. It is sad that it exists at all, really.

But did you press the sport button ORD, i hear it transforms the car.

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ecs0set said:

sixspeed said:

My experience was much the same from my (Mole Valley) TVR dealer. Turned up rather freshly faced (at 23 years old) one Saturday morning in an MX-5. Took a Tuscan out for a test drive, and after letting it warm up for the first few miles was positively encouraged to let it rev out and get a feel for it!

Turned up fresh faced at 22yo in a VW Polo 1.4 to test drive a TVR Griffith 500. No problem sir, feed the power in gently in 3rd. Bought the car.

Turned up to test drive a Smart ForTwo at a specialist. Discussed the TVR. Be careful sir, this car is remapped and a bit of a beast. Um, yeah OK.

That is exactly the daftness i was thinking about when i posted.
If you have a Griffith 500 how are they worried about a smart being too much for you?

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SturdyHSV said:

I was thinking whilst reading this thread, if a friend or acquaintance told me any of these 'go on sir, faster' or 'you there, in the Corsa, take this Tuscan and give it hell' stories, I'd be inclined to think they were a load of BS.

Now I know PH is hallowed turf, packed with driving gods unlike my world, but unfortunately, I can't help but hear the same alarm bells.

Fun stories though

I was specifically interested in the 'you there, in the Tuscan, be very careful with this corsa, it's an SRI" type tales as that type of situation has actually happened to me.