Lucas Bell 
For many automotive enthusiasts, we dream of a day when we can trade in our boring runaround for something truly special. That is exactly why a story published by our colleagues over at The Drive utterly blew up earlier this week, which detailed the very opposite of this situation. A Texan named Tommy caught the publication’s attention after trading in his beautiful C8 Corvette for a new Mitsubishi Outlander, which might just be the worst SUV on sale today. Readers and Corvette fans alike tried to uncover what would lead someone to make such a terrible decision, but The Drive has finally gotten the whole story. Spoiler alert: Tommy the Texan knew what he was doing the whole time.
According to the update published by The Drive, trading in the C8 Corvette was always Tommy’s intention. The Texan placed the order for the car and always planned to trade it in at Hurst Autoplex, according to pre-owned sales manager Mike Baum. Baum noted that the dealership specializes in enthusiast vehicles like used sports cars and lifted trucks, giving some context for this specific choice of dealership.
Once Tommy had decided to ditch the C8 Corvette at Hurst Autoplex, he was in need of a ride. Without going anywhere, he inevitably settled on picking himself up a Mitsubishi Outlander. Thanks to the difference in value on the trade-in, he even managed to avoid paying any sales tax on the Mitsubishi. The now infamous photo of the deal going down just happened to be too good to pass up, apparently. That said, the company has removed the post from their Facebook account.
Even though this was the buyers plan all along, we still don’t think we can get behind it. Taking one of the single most important American vehicles of the past few decades and trading it for a legitimately terrible SUV is mind melting. Furthermore, we are sure that there are more than a few 2020 C8 Corvette reservation holders who would have loved to take Tommy’s build slot. We hope you like you Mistubishi Tommy, and we’re glad your former Corvette will now go to an enthusiastic owner. Hopefully the purchase price for its next owner is below the $100,000+ the dealer is asking for every C8 on their website.
