People who park their cars right next to building sites should know that is really a bad idea, because ugly things could happen, as the Russian owner of a Bentley found out.
Artur Shachnev, the CEO of a music production company, parked his Bentley Continental GT too close to a building under construction in central Moscow only to find it covered in concrete hours later. The accident was provoked by workers’ negligence, as they hit a huge bucket with concrete against the wall, causing the bucket to open and to send the liquid down on cars parked in the street below, from a height of 15 meters (49 feet).
Workers said the seven-ton container had no more than one ton of concrete inside, but experts who inspected the scene estimated it was more than that. “The liquid mixture coated the entire car and made it a bullet-proof capsule,” the owner of the car told Russia’s RT television. The car’s bodywork has been seriously damaged by small crushed stones in the concrete, which also leaked into the wheels, so the car can’t run now. However, the engine starts, the sound system works and the lights can be turned on, Shachnev added.
The construction company said it will pay for the repairs, but according to the owner it’s impossible to clean the concrete off the entire body of the car, which leaves him with only one solution – to change the bodywork. However, a new body would cost 8 million rubles ($215,500), twice the price of his car.
Shachnev had the power to make fun of the incident, calling it a “cement bucket challenge,” and said he is going to display the car as it is in one of the contemporary arts exhibitions as a monument to “Russia’s idiocy.”