He paid a fortune for an ultra-rare 2006 Ford GT Heritage Edition, crashed it weeks after the purchase, and then found out the car had been crashed before. The seller hid this information from him. The model had reportedly been involved in an accident in Brazil seven years before.
It was the former owner, then a 51-year-old man, who reportedly lost control of the rear-mid-engine, rear-wheel drive car and slammed it into an electricity pole on the side of a road in Brazil in March 2015.
The current owner, Robert Guarini, did it himself in Florida just weeks after the purchase because he apparently did not know how to drive a stick. After the crash in Brazil, the former owner sent the car to Detroit to have it fixed.
Once the repair was completed, the Ford GT Heritage Edition was auctioned off with a clean title in the United States via Barrett-Jackson. Due to jurisdictional restrictions on data collection, the damage did not show up on Carfax.
A man from Florida, Robert Guarini, paid $716,800, including taxes, to drive home in it, unaware that his 2006 Ford GT Heritage Edition had been involved in an accident. Apparently, rear-wheel drive and manual transmission were too much for him, too, and he crashed soon after the purchase.
The new owner crashed the Ford GT and realized it had been involved in a crash before
During the fixing procedure, he discovered previous damage, showing that the V8-powered car had been involved in a crash before.
Photo: TV Globo
Now, Robert Guarini and the dealer from Tampa, Florida, Bourak Auto Sales, which brokered the sale, both supposedly unaware of the car's background, are now suing the Canada-based dealership, Silver Arrow, that failed to offer information about the previous crash despite knowing about it.
They are seeking to receive the difference between the price paid for the vehicle and its actual value, punitive damages, and attorney fees. Silver Arrow, however, says it is a "claim without merit" and points out that the car came with a clean title.
Furthermore, according to files submitted in the lawsuit, Silver Arrow is accused of recording the purchase of the car on the exact same day that it was bought by the Tampa dealer, coincidentally also the same day it was purchased in Arizona. The Canadian dealership also consigned an auctioneer to sell the vehicle in 2022.
The car shows up on a listing from March 2022 on the Barrett-Jackson website. The auction house was not informed of the damage even though the pre-consignment form requires anyone selling a car through it to do so.
Guarini knew about restoration, not about the repair
Guarini was indeed informed both verbally and in writing about a restoration procedure that the car had undergone. But he claims that no one has ever told him about actually having to fix the car.
Photo: John Peddie | Facebook
Three weeks after the purchase, Robert Guarini crashed the car, hitting a palm tree in Florida as he was downshifting from the third to the second gear. According to the police, he reportedly did not know how to drive stick. The owner denied while [hotos from the second crash also went viral.
Guarini took the car to a service shop to fix it. That is when he found out about a previous damage that it had sustained. His lawyers now say that he would not have purchased the car, and definitely not for that amount of money, if he knew its exact background. Accidents make the value of vehicle drop, no matter how rare they are.
Ford built 4,038 first-generation GTs, and only 383 of them were Heritage Edition examples. It is the version that the Dearborn carmaker rolled out as a tribute to the victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, achieved between 1966 and 1969. The Ford GT Heritage was a super limited edition that rolled off the production line for a single year, 2006.
Guarini claims that the dealership in Florida sold him the car without informing him about the crash it had previously been involved, even though photos of the incident had gone viral on the internet at the moment of the accident.
There is no precise information on the damages sustained by the car in either of the crashes. However, the photos from the crash that Autoevolution reported nine years ago and those from 2022 show the front end was seriously crumpled both times.
Photo: TV Globo
Carscoops reports that this is not the first time Silver Arrow has faced legal issues in the United States. Five years ago, Ford filed a lawsuit against the Canadian dealership for violating its 24-month release ban on the latest GT.
The dealership was also involved in a dispute in Washington state with reference to a 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder. The plaintiff won a default judgment against Silver Arrow.
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