Businessman Sets His 7-Series Ablaze Outside of BMW’s Headquarters
The craziest part is that he’s destroyed his own cars at least three other times.
Remember the wealthy Italian businessman who took a sledgehammer to his BMW M6 the Geneva at the IAA Auto Show in Frankfurt back in 2013? If not, you may recall the following year when, after completely restoring the car, he brought it to Geneva and did the exact same thing again. It appears the he wasn't quite done destroying his cars, because he did it again, this time destroying an innocent 7-Series.
Hadi Pourmohseni is a 64-year-old businessman who has had his share of tussles with BMW. After the automaker couldn't remedy the vibrations and SMG gearbox issues that Pourmohseni's 2008 BMW M6 was experiencing, he did the only logical thing any sane person would consider: beat it with a sledgehammer and axe to prove a point. BMW then agreed to look at the problem once more, as long as the car was returned to sledgehammer-free condition. Pourmohseni complied and restored the $160,000 luxury sports sedan to its original condition.
Something must have continued to irk him, because he was back at it the following year, and repeated the same process, sledgehammer and all. Eventually, according to German news site Focus, Pourmohseni stopped making payments on his car due to the defects, and he was ordered to return it. The businessman sees that as BMW trying to take his evidence away, and he has reportedly refused to return it.
Instead, Pourmohseni feels that the right way to get the word out about the company's wrongdoings is to protest them by (legally) destroying vehicles. We've seen crazy protests before, but this one is just weird. On Sept. 9, he drove an E65 BMW 7-Series to BMW's HQ Museum in Munich and parked it where he was told there would be no bystanders to harm or sewer drains to pollute.
That's when he lit the car on fire.
Pourmohseni stood next to the vehicle holding a sign saying that BMW was defrauding him, all while the car burned.
Police eventually took control of the situation. Though they've said that they can't charge Pourmohseni for setting fire to his own car, they are looking into charging the man with violating environmental regulations.
This isn't the first time Pourmohseni set fire to a car. In 2015, he destroyed a BMW Z3 (like the one driven by James Bond) outside of the IAA by lighting the interior on fire, but it was quickly remedied by authorities. The unsatisfied businessman told Focus that he will continue to protest BMW's wrongdoings, but he has no detailed plans of what his next target will be.
Fortunately, Pourmohseni has stopped driving BMWs and is now piloting a Mercedes Benz S350.
