Russia, the land of all possibilities and the most insane car stunts, intentional or not. Add another to the pile: a vlogger torched his nearly brand-new car and posted video of it on YouTube.
Car trashing is a thing in Russia. Whether they do it for clout or genuinely because they’re upset about the vehicle (or both reasons in equal measure), vloggers here have found a new way of offering escapism to their followers and are constantly trying to top one another in coming up with unique ways of destroying their expensive rides.
Mikhail Litvin is one such vlogger. With 4.8 million subscribers on YouTube alone, he has quite an online following that religiously tunes in for his videos. In some of them, he detailed the issues he’d been having with his Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S 4MATIC+, which he bought in 2019 for the equivalent of €143,000 (roughly $170,000).
When you pay this kind of money for a car, you expect it to be worth it. Litvin said it was never that: since he bought it, he had it in the service four times, even though it had just 15,000 km (9,320 miles) on the odo. Every time, the Mercedes dealership reluctantly offered to cover the repairs, or would return the car without fixing the problem.
Litvin also claimed that, at one point, he was forced to take it to a friend’s shop because the dealer was refusing service, which is when he found out that they used aftermarket parts for a previous job, instead of OEM ones. Drawing a line, he realized he was spending more on fixing the Mercedes than it was worth, so with a heavy heart, he decided to burn the sucker to the ground.
You can see the video of how that played out below. Litvin piles on the drama throughout: he’s huffing and puffing as he’s taking the gas canisters out from the trunk, he’s frowning away from the camera like a movie school undergrad, and he even tries to do an over-the-shoulder throw of the lighter to start the fire. All things considered, you would be excused for thinking he’s doing this for clout.
For his part, he claims his gesture was in earnest: sick with the way Mercedes does business after they sell a car, he realized it was better to burn an expensive ride than advertise for them anymore by driving it. He also says he’s “not happy” about how this turned out but we guess those monetized clicks from the viral video surely help a lot.
Mikhail Litvin is one such vlogger. With 4.8 million subscribers on YouTube alone, he has quite an online following that religiously tunes in for his videos. In some of them, he detailed the issues he’d been having with his Mercedes-AMG GT 63 S 4MATIC+, which he bought in 2019 for the equivalent of €143,000 (roughly $170,000).
When you pay this kind of money for a car, you expect it to be worth it. Litvin said it was never that: since he bought it, he had it in the service four times, even though it had just 15,000 km (9,320 miles) on the odo. Every time, the Mercedes dealership reluctantly offered to cover the repairs, or would return the car without fixing the problem.
Litvin also claimed that, at one point, he was forced to take it to a friend’s shop because the dealer was refusing service, which is when he found out that they used aftermarket parts for a previous job, instead of OEM ones. Drawing a line, he realized he was spending more on fixing the Mercedes than it was worth, so with a heavy heart, he decided to burn the sucker to the ground.
You can see the video of how that played out below. Litvin piles on the drama throughout: he’s huffing and puffing as he’s taking the gas canisters out from the trunk, he’s frowning away from the camera like a movie school undergrad, and he even tries to do an over-the-shoulder throw of the lighter to start the fire. All things considered, you would be excused for thinking he’s doing this for clout.
For his part, he claims his gesture was in earnest: sick with the way Mercedes does business after they sell a car, he realized it was better to burn an expensive ride than advertise for them anymore by driving it. He also says he’s “not happy” about how this turned out but we guess those monetized clicks from the viral video surely help a lot.