Offbeat

Author: Neil Stylinski

Newsletter #14

Saturday September 27 2008

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Environmentalists are up in arms about the LP640 flown 6,500 miles from Qatar to London and back for an “oil change.” As The Sun newspaper tells it, some rich dude (always described anonymously as a sheikh in such accounts) blew £20,000 on airfare for the £3,552 service at an authorized UK dealer. Never mind the spurious notion that an oil change alone would cost seven grand in greenback terms. The episode suggests either extraordinary customer loyalty or an incredibly flagrant insensitivity to changing social mores, depending on your point of view.

“Flying a car thousands of miles for a service is ludicrous when planes are one of the most polluting ways to transport goods,” said Richard Dyer of Friends of the Earth. “We urge the individual to get their car serviced closer to home.” But as Lamborghini Club UK’s David Price told The Sun, “If an owner wants to service his car in that way, it is his choice. . . . Thankfully, the age of excess in some areas continues.” Lamborghini UK spokeswoman Juliet Jarvis was more prosaic. She said that while most owners sought service in the country in which their cars were purchased, “[t]his sort of thing is not unheard of.”