Man Destroys His $160,000 BMW M6 Over Customer Service Complaints

The owner of a BMW M6 found an innovative but boneheaded way to complain against the car maker and the Italian dealer who sold it to him.

Make a phone call? Too ineffective. Use Twitter to try to start a viral campaign against BMW? So 2012.

No, Italian marble dealer Hadi Pourmohseni had something a bit more grand in mind. He hauled the 2008 BMW M6 all the way to the Frankfurt Motor Show in Germany this week, and, then, in front of a crowd of people and a number of cameras, he took it apart with a sledgehammer.

The spectacle resulted from some squabbles the man had with BMW. Pourmohseni claimed that he had been trying for the past four years to fix numerous structural defects in the car but ended up only encountering red tape and dead ends. After writing a letter to BMW, he decided to bring the car to Europe’s largest auto show to let his frustration out on the car and to generate some bad press for BMW.

Pourmohseni said he could have filed a lawsuit over the troubles with the BMW M6, but that would have taken seven years. Instead he wanted attention for his cause.

The idea worked. The story of his rage-induced demonstration have made international headlines, with coverage stretching to the United States. But Pourmohseni’s idea is not exactly novel- — a group of Chinese men already pioneered the “smash up your own car” form of consumer protest, destroying a Lamborghini and Maserati.

It’s not clear if BMW will get the message Pourmohseni is sending. After all, he’s already paid 120,000 euros for the car ($160,000 USD), and isn’t exactly going to be getting a refund.

But anyone who has watched the video might leave with a strange new respect for the BMW M6. Despite the man’s best attempts to smash it with his sledgehammer, the car seemed incredibly resilient. It took about four or five full swings to even put a good-sized dent in the side of it.

Maybe it’s all a strange viral campaign for the BMW M6. Stranger things have happened.