We made a boo boo, what happens next?

I say we. It was really Thomas at the wheel. But at Throttle House, that’s one and the same when it comes to taking responsibility. We are ride or die. Part of the ship, part of the crew.

Unless he squishes Jelly Beans into the carpets of my Toyota Century, in which case death to Thomas. But I’m still considering that an ‘isolated incident.’

Which, depending on who’s asking, is a phrase that describes every incident we’ve ever had.

I’m actually very pleased to say that our incident report is short, but we still give each instance the weight of a thousand suns when it comes to making reparations. And that task is left to myself and the Production Manager. 

We like cars. We don’t like to break cars. We like people. We don’t like to break people’s cars.

But over 6 years and many thousands of miles later, things happen. They just do. The latest was the Land Cruiser, but it wasn’t the first.

There was a Challenger Super Stock that suicided its own paintwork with stones thanks to its sticky tires. An honour that it shares with a Model S Plaid. Both cost nearly $10k to fix (and yes, we footed the bill).

There was a GLS 63 that lodged itself in a ditch hidden by snow on the side of the road, that had to be towed out. An event that may or may not have earned our previous Production Manager Greg the title ‘Ditch’ for a few months,

A SuperSnake Mustang that tore itself apart on acceleration.

We flew a drone across a Toyota Supra hood, shredding the PPF.

There was an S2000 that got hailed on and given a new ribbed-for-your-pleasure bonnet texture.

And that’s about it, off the top of my head. There were a few ‘offs’ on track that peppered some paint/wheels and a few almost catastrophic moments that never came to pass cough Ford GT.

For the most part though, we’ve behaved ourselves. And I genuinely think that track record over a six year period is clean enough to consider ourselves very lucky.

However, each of those has required a certain level of clean up. So how does that work?

First things first, it depends on how we sourced the vehicle, of which there are essentially four methods:

1. An Owner Car
2. A Dealer Car
3. A Press Loan
4. A Press Launch

If the car belongs to an owner, that usually affects the scale of the video that we have in mind. For instance, we are unlikely to borrow a car from an owner and then do a 1,000 mile road trip through the jungle. If it’s an exotic, that mileage limit drastically decreases.

For many reasons, despite the fact that we do have insurance for it, borrowing from an owner is one of our least favourite ways to feature a car. But oftentimes it’s the only way to film the correct trim of a vehicle, or to find an interesting vehicle at all!

The Superstock mentioned above (basically a Dodge Demon) was an owner car. And when we borrow an owner car, our promise is to return it the way we got it. Which means footing the bill of any repairs and organizing said repairs (unless the owner has a preferred shop or way of doing things). It’s an issue we’ve only had to deal with a few times, but we’ve made good on it and have only ever had to deal with paint/tire replenishment for owner cars.

If the car belongs to a dealer, it gets treated very similarly to an owner car. Extreme care and once again, a promise to foot the bill of anything needed. The Model S Plaid, for example. Or that GLS 63 (which suffered no damage at all, just needed some help out the ditch).

Now, press cars and press launches get interesting. These are vehicles that are specifically designated for testing. Spotify, play Push It To The Limit.

But there is a difference between a Press loan and a Press launch. A loan is a local fleet’s car that you can live with, oftentimes for a week. That means you get a nice chunk of time with the vehicle. It also means you can choose the best weather day that week to film. But it also means that there’s another journalist waiting to pick it up the day you return it, after a quick detail. So it causes a big issue if your time with it somehow jeopardizes the next loan. Also we are in Canada most of the time, so budgets and scale of the loan are limited versus say, the Los Angeles fleets.

That normally only becomes an issue for us if we are tracking the car. If so, Throttle House takes the extra step to replace tires during our week with the vehicle. Depending on tire availability and the pedigree of the manufacturer, some won’t let us pay for that. And that makes them gorgeous human beings that get a kiss on both cheeks next time we see them. And their face cheeks, too. 

But like a perfect dinner date, we will always offer to pay, even if it means that video becomes breakeven for us (we don’t often operate at a loss, but we will sacrifice dollar bills to make the right piece of content).

Now, Press Launches are different. And that’s where the Land Cruiser comes into play.

Quick sidebar, we’ve mentioned it before but Throttle House has a poor attendance record for Press Launches. Where some outlets may attend in excess of 40-50 a year, we normally only get to about 4 or 5. Most of that is because we foot the bill for our team, including food, accommodation and travel. So it has to be one we can justify the cost of. Also, we are all quite fond of our spouses/families and that much time on the road without blackjack and ladies of the night makes Karston a dull boy. Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for the greying hairs of the Toyota team, they grouped about 5 cars into one trip on this last one, so we were able to justify it.

So. Press Launches have budget, with a capital B. It’s not unheard of for manufacturers to be 7 figures deep into a car launch event. The Aston Martin DB12 launch, for example, was about 12 weeks of shepherding every outlet from England to Australia through one of Monaco’s fanciest hotels night after night, dinner after dinner, V8 fuel tank after V8 fuel tank. Oh, and business class flights all around. Can you IMAGINE the bill for that?

As a result of this budget, certain things are accounted for. One of which is damage. And damage to even a $100K vehicle oftentimes doesn’t even make a dent in their budget.

The Bronco Raptor launch, for example, had a specific group of Bronco Raptors for the Ultra-4 insane rock section. I’m pretty sure they didn’t expect those cars to return home. Or maybe they did, that vehicle is shockingly capable.

Also, the cars in these launches are frequently VIN 000’s, AKA pre-production cars, AKA they are going to the crusher. So if you scratch or break something, all you’re doing is helping the crusher out with its homework…sort of. It’s sad, but its an important note.

Sometimes the vehicles on the launch are destined for a lot more beyond the launch, even if they are VIN 0. Maybe they are a marketing car that is about to do a nationwide tour, or maybe you’re on the first wave of journalists with the vehicle, and it needs to survive the rest of the launch so that all the other journalists can experience it, too. Maybe you’re not even the first wave of the launch, but in fact you’ve been given special treatment based on a request that means you actually have the car before the Launch event itself is even set to begin.

The Land Cruiser we borrowed fits into that last category. And we hurt it.

Hurt it to the point that it needed to go back to Toyota HQ in Texas and be fixed properly over multiple days, and therefore not able to return to the launch event in time. The aforementioned overburdened launch event that already had the Toyota PR reps stressed.

The Toyota reps are some of the best. We weren’t that familiar with the US ones before this event, only our Canadian counterparts. But the theme seems to be borderless: they are all great, passionate people that love the company they work for and seem to love working with us. We just weren’t sure if that last part was about to become past tense thanks to the boo boo.

I don’t think it needs to be said but we had no intention of damaging the Land Cruiser. We had no intention of jumping the Land Cruiser, either. We had every intention of getting it home and not having to apologize for anything. I do believe there’s an obvious moment in the video where you can see 6 years of goodwill with Toyota leave my face. 

So, when we learned that it had to go back to Texas and when we learned that our particular LC being removed from the rotation caused logistical issues, we were very sorry to hear it. We offered to foot the bill of course but Toyota wouldn’t have any of it. For them, it wasn’t so much a cost thing as it was a planning issue. And in that sense, the damage was done.

It’s worth noting that this was a special trip that we (and Toyota) had put a lot of time into leading up to the event. We didn’t attend the regular launch, even though we picked up the vehicle from the same hotel as everyone else in San Diego. We didn’t stay there. We didn’t go to the dinners. Sometimes we do though, just not this time.

The scale of our video meant that time became the currency of importance. We are very serious about what we plan to do with a car, and this was an idea that we had run by Toyota and had multiple Zoom meetings about. In fact, we had originally planned it as a Cybertruck vs Land Cruiser adventure but the Cybertruck still hadn’t got its off-road update at the time. Toyota were all for both itineraries, but still nervous for obvious reasons. I even got an email as we hit the dunes that said “Hope the adventure is off to a MILD start!”

Err…yeah.

In the end, the Land Cruiser wasn’t the victim. Well it was, but in reality It was the other journalists that were inconvenienced by our error. That feedback obviously lands hardest on the PR reps, so it’s a headache for all. We don’t feel good about it, but I think I can say with a fair degree of confidence that this is the first time in Throttle House history that our actions have inconvenienced another outlet. We don’t make a thing of it, we don’t plan to repeat it, but things happen. Either way, we are sorry. And not just in a reflexive Canadian way.

The Toyota team have been very good about insulating us from most of the uproar, but have suggested that we will no longer be getting a vehicle before a launch event in the future. Even so, I’d like to think that deep down they absolutely love the adventure video. At the end of the day, we showed a Land Cruiser get uppercutted by the planet, shake it off, and drive 3 hours home. 

Time will heal the rest, and if any journo was truly put out by our mischief, drinks are on me next time we’re at a launch together…as long as I can charge it to someone’s room.

- James Engelsman