One of the worst feelings in the world has to be having your car stolen. Thankfully I’ve never had to deal with anything like that, but for those that have had it happen, it must suck. Adding insult to injury is having your custom car, one you’ve worked all your life for, stolen the day before your birthday. Sadly that’s what one Southern California classic car owner is going through.
KTLA reports that the owner of a 1962 Chevy Impala lowrider, Seth Wayne, had his car stolen the night before his 34th birthday. The Impala was stolen from Wayne’s home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Woodland Hills, and KTLA says he only had the car for two weeks before it was stolen.
Surveillance footage from Wayne’s home shows how the two idiot criminals struggled with the car and its hydraulic system after breaking into it. According to KTLA:
While messing around under the car’s hood, Wayne said the thieves almost blew themselves up in the process.
“I guess they weren’t familiar with what the hydraulics were and what was going on back there and when they yanked the cables, the charger, the positive and the negative, they hit it and sparks went flying everywhere,” Wayne said.
The thieves also didn’t seem to know how to actually do the one thing you’d think a thief would know how to do: break into a car. “They didn’t know how to open the hood of an Impala so they bent the grill and as you can see in the video, the grill is busted, just to open the hood,” Wayne told KTLA. The thieves also didn’t count on taking a car that wasn’t complete.
Wayne says that the car had over $100,000 worth of hydraulic parts in it, and prior to it being taken he had been working on the car, resulting in the engine missing a few parts. That wasn’t enough to stop the thieves, though. In the surveillance footage, one of the men can be seen shouting at the other — who is driving in a Prius behind the lowrider — to push the Impala with the hybrid after they’re unable to get the car started.
While Wayne says he has insurance on the car, he just hopes the suspects are found and that his car is recovered. “You work hard for this and people just come and snatch it right from you. It’s not the kind of thing you want to deal with on your birthday,” Wayne said.