2:54 pm, January 21, 2020
IN these days of extended test-drives, a loan spell with a car for 24 hours or more might see a potential purchaser cover a couple of hundred miles or so.
But one punter across the channel definitely took a bit of a liberty recently – borrowing a Mercedes-Benz from a dealership in the Netherlands and taking it all the way to Spain!
Once he’d arrived on the Iberian peninsula – the north-western city of Pontevedra, to be precise – he allegedly changed the licence plates before being arrested and subsequently bailed.
That all happened last August before he seems to have dropped off the radar.
But he was detained again more recently when police spotted him driving an Aston Martin and tried to re-arrest him, sparking a high-speed chase.
The officers did manage to detain the suspect – of joint Belgian and Spanish nationality – but only after he had apparently crashed into one of their vehicles.
He is due in court today charged with theft and fraud as well as harassing police and endangering others on the road, according to reports.
And the distance travelled on that epic test-drive last summer? We reckon about 1,300 miles…
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