Watch Everything You’re Not Supposed to Do When Pulling a Stuck Car Backfire Spectacularly
Tow points exist for a reason, bud.
We here at The Drive are big fans of reading the friendly manual whenever you're doing something unfamiliar with your car. Are you stuck? You should probably look up the appropriate spot to hook up for a tow and any other precautions you should take when getting pulled back to safety.
In today's episode of "well, you sort of brought this upon yourself," we have this very beached Maserati Ghibli, stuck on a beach. I don't know who thought that a Maserati on short-sidewall street tires was baaaaaasically a dune buggy, but here we are.
One bad decision leads to the next, as absolutely nothing goes well from here. Instead of finding the correct tow point, they apparently tied the recovery strap around some front end parts and hoped for the best.
A quick look at the front-end parts diagram for the Maserati Ghibli shows a lot parts before you get to anything remotely structural. There's a hole for a tow hook, and it at least looks like they tried tying up near that hole, but clearly, they missed it. The point of a tow hook is that you screw it in so that it can be a connecting point between your tow strap and the actual structure of your car. You know—the parts of the car that would move the rest if you pulled on them.
Worse yet, those flimsy body parts didn't stand a chance the second the truck "helping" them out speeds away. Instead of slowly driving away to get the slack out of the tow rope and watching to see that everything's fine before continuing on, the truck speeds away, yanking off the whole front end of the Maserati.
Maybe the recovery truck also knew this was a lost cause? Anyway, don't do this.
Got a tip? Send us a note: tips@thedrive.com
