Day 10: Ryan woke up super early to call the Fiat dealership for an update but they didn’t answer. When Mitch called back later he got quite a weird response. They said they didn’t know what we were talking about. There was a guy AT the dealership last night that worked for them (we assumed at least) who took our keys from us, gave us a card and said to call back in the morning. Not only did they not start checking the car because they had no information from us (I guess that makes sense) they said they had never given us a card in the first place. WTF? So we all loaded up in a cab and headed over to the dealer. Our car had been moved so someone was aware of it’s existence. A service woman eventually became available and between her little English and a lot of Google translate we explained what was going on. She got a copy of our registration and from there she made a million phone calls, to who we’re not sure. She found the keys and hopped into the drivers seat – which was the passenger seat – not noticing there wasn’t a wheel there when she opened the door? Anyway the car started up which was promising because we thought it might be seized and she pulled it into the service bay. Again, no idea why because 10 minutes later she pulled it back out and parked it. In the mean time firing up the engine created one hell of an oil leak that made one giant streak across the service bay and then a pool under the car while it sat there. It probably lost .5-1 quart just moving it 50 feet. She eventually told us to call back that afternoon or in the morning which means we were losing an entire day with no questions answered.
With nothing to do we went back to the hotel for a nap, after which Ryan had found a little area that had a few bars and more importantly food. From here we just walked around a lot and nothing exciting happened other than me confusing a cup for of olive pits as a cup pull of strangely coated peanuts. I hate olives so that was extremely gross but pretty funny.
We also went to a western themed restaurant and thought we ordered an appetizer sampler but they ended up just bringing us Doritos and sour cream. Nailed it!
Day 11: At about 10 or so Mitch and I went downstairs because we were told the dealership had called. One of the hotel clerks called for us as our translator. After going back and forth with the dealer for a moment she told us it would cost 15,000 Lira. If we had water in our mouths we would have done a spit take. The conversion is about .3:1 so our quick conversion told us that was way too much – to the tune of $4200-4500. We asked her to tell us what was wrong. After another back and forth she typed in Google translate “motor broken.” Fucking great. We’re immediately thinking they didn’t even look at it, but ok please ask how long it would take to fix. More back and forth and then she tells us “10 days to…a month.” That window is so hilariously large even for a dealership I assumed that was them basically telling us to fuck off, they didn’t want to deal with it.
Mitch and I went upstairs to tell Ryan the news and we started brainstorming how we go forward. There are really only 3 choices: Find another mechanic, buy another car, or quit. Quitting wasn’t happening, so after giving Mitch a list of mechanics to go call downstairs Ryan and I explored buying another car. Buying a car in Turkey isn’t going to happen because we need the title to cross any border, and knowing nothing about the registration process – assuming a foreigner can buy a car – buying a car here in Turkey isn’t going to happen. They also happen to be very expensive for some reason. That leaves us one practical choice with a new car: fly back to the UK to buy another car, and then cannonball run our way back here which would mean 48 straight hours of driving if we didn’t stop. There’s a reason why I bought the car there in the UK in the first place, it’s easy for a non-EU citizen as the only requirement is a permanent address to send the title. We could even get a same day rush registration. Another team has already had to do this because of a crash that totaled their car.
It would only be $309 for all 3 to fly back to London, so as long as the car is still reasonable we’re thinking we could get back here to Ankara in 3-4 days for around $2k. As we’re pouring through UK sites Mitch is texting us updates from downstairs, one of which sounds promising. The GM of the hotel has a mechanic friend, so he calls to see if he could help. Long story short we’re told that he’s going to call around to find another engine as it’s cheaper to replace than fix. I’m assuming he located an engine because next thing you know Mitch is upstairs and tells us it’s going to cost 8,000 Lira – $2,267 usd – and that if we agree with the plan he’s going with the GM at 3 to exchange our USD and the mechanic needs 1/3 up front. Of course none of us want to put more money into the car than we paid but we also don’t want to quit. We were told we would have the car back by Saturday (it was Wednesday when this went down) so this seemed like a way better plan than the trouble of going back to London. Plus Mitch still had points to redeem so we could stay at the hotel until Saturday for free. So that became the plan.
We had an hour and a half to kill so we walked to the mall about 1/4 mile away because it looked like they had an indoor go-kart track and a grocery store we could grab some supplies at (read: $3 bottles of wine.) On the way back to the hotel we got an update that we were going to have to pay the entire amount upfront. This is not ideal for obvious reasons but we don’t really have a choice. Thankfully we are also dealing with the GM of a multi-national hotel chain so we assume $2k in cash isn’t worth his job. The question is do we have the petty cash on hand. We did just barely so Mitch went with the GM to a bank and then make the exchange with the mechanic. After very little debate Ryan and I went downstairs to enjoy one of our newly purchased bottles of wine and worry about our teammates fate. He did make it back – HURRAY – and shortly thereafter he was sent a photo of our car already at the mechanic’s garage. He’s even friends with the GM on facebook now!
We have a lot of time to kill before Saturday and there is not much to do in this town other than a water park that is very far away. Wednesday night we headed back to the mall to grab our first American food on the trip – Burger King and Arby’s. Arby’s didn’t have Arby’s sauce, wtf? They have a movie theater so we wandered over to see if there were any movies playing in English and to our surprise most of them are. We decided to kill some time at the arcade before seeing the new Planet of the Apes movie. So basically Wednesday night we were bored teenagers.
SMALLEST ICE SKATING RINK EVER!
