heeeeelllllllll nnnnoooooo , did you watch 20/20 with the hidden videos. These guys going through every nook and cranny stealing $het. Drag racing through the parking lot. And remember one miss shift or grind to tranny would be a big no no. Peace.........

 

Hell no, havn't you guys seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off???????

 

I would have to say it would depend on the event where I was at and what others were driving. If it was a huge up town social event and people were pullin up in vipers and ferarris I probably wouldn't mind lettin the valet park my Evo however if it was "uncle sams wedding" in the backwoods of Idaho or whatever and little bobby from the feed store was parkin the cars then HELL NO

 

I don't even like the car wash driving it the 10 feet while I'm standing there watching them. I can say that in the 35 years that I have been driving, I have only allowed about 20 people drive any of my cars out of my sight, including family members and mechanics.

 

Hell No!!

 

If I did take my car where Valet paking was available I would not use the service. I have had a car scratched once under a valet's care (not the evo).

 

I would neverdo valet I don't trust anyone with my Evo.

 

its only a car scratches happen missed shifts happen

 

 

No, I got a friend who valets, and he's no shady valet parker either. He says after the first couple weeks, the "badass car thing" goes away, and then you're just there to drive the car to and from the parking spot as fast as you damn can, cuz time is money.

 

After doing this for so many years, I completely agree. Since I have driven everything, it takes something extremely rare/exotic to even get my attention.

A car is just a car over time.

That being said, the stories 'bout LA valet's kinda scare me. I understand that some people have heard about bad things with valet, but you do have to realize:

At any reputable location, the valet service is completely insured. Your vehicle is safer with us than in a public lot. Also, kids might be on the crew (most of my guys are college students), but the supervisor/manager most likely has been doing this for years and WILL NOT let anyone screw around with a customers car.

If I saw one of my crew do ANYTHING out of line, (accelerate, steal, bump, rub scratch, etc) they will be terminiated ON THE SPOT. They know the rules. Most companies are probably the same way.

 

It's such a shame that a few a-holes mess things up for all of us. Most of the people in my world do this for a living, not for fun. I can assure you that not all Valet's are like the people you know.

 

Technomotive ( www.tmo.com ) used to reprogram DSM ECU's and one of the features they could add was a valet mode. It would prevent the car from going over a preset RPM of your choice. If this was available for the Evo I'd set it at 950 RPM and then MAYBE think about letting a valet park my car. I've seen first-hand valets acting like asshats with cars. And they weren't necessarily bad *** cars. They were anything that came on the lot. Like the guy said earlier, time is money and they wanted to move the cars as quick as they could. This included going around corners too fast (tires sliding), using the hand brake to help stop in the parking spot (while still moving), taking off too quick (spinning the tires or riding the clutch), and missing shifts (trying to drive a car they were unfamiliar with too fast).

I've put all but the first 8 miles on my car. I drive it like hell myself, but I never launch or miss gears. It has the stock clutch in it, and over 21,000 miles on the odometer. I wonder how many people that use valet still have their stock clutches and what is the mileage.....

 

I only let my experienced Valets drive anything manual. Old or new, expensive or cheap, a car is a car and we are paid to service that vehicle. However, more exotic cars are always under my control and line of sight. Nothing goes unnotived by the boss (me). I am paid to make sure things DONT go wrong and that the customer is always happy.

 

I hope you understand that this is all just my opinions as to why I will not ever have my car valet parked. It is NOT an attack on you, your business, or any other business that does this service. Some people choose to pay for the service, some do not.


Experience is all relative. How experienced are we talking? Off the top of their heads, could they tell how to put a Merkur XR4Ti into reverse? A buddy of mine had one of those and had it valet parked at a resturaunt on prom night (this was back in '97). When the valet went to retrieve it, there "was a problem". All of a sudden, the car wouldn't go into reverse. He had to go get it himself, and he said the car shifted all funny after that. Turns out they had (I guess) tried to force the thing into where 99% of the cars in America have a slot for reverse, however, his is up on the left side of first gear. You have to move it to neutral, then to the left, then push down, then up and you are in reverse. He finished the rest of the night because he didn't want to ruin the whole prom "mood" or whatever. In the days that followed, he went to talk to them about the damage done to his shift linkage. The manager said that there was no way his employees could have done that, because they were all "very experienced manual transmission drivers". Long story short...he fought it for a while, but there was little he could do. They weren't willing to accept responsibility for it and he ended up footing the bill.

To put it in perspective....I might be very experienced at having sex, but that doesn't mean I am any good at it.