Matt Farah, one of the guys behind the automotive podcast and YouTube channel The Smoking Tire wants to know the craziest email you’ve ever received. He’ll go first.
Farah shared a screenshot of an email he received this week from somebody he’s not naming to “protect the unbelievably stupid.”
“Hey Matt!” you ask. “What is the most batshit email you’ve ever received?” This one. This one right here. Names omitted to protect the unbelievably stupid. pic.twitter.com/LOFL0QLmV1
— Matt “I Park Cars” Farah (@TheSmokingTire) March 3, 2022
For context, Farah was one of the owners whose vehicle, a Porsche Boxster Spyder, was traveling aboard the now-sunken Felicity Ace cargo ship that caught fire last month. You know, the one that was carrying 4,000 vehicles that burned out of control for weeks before dramatically folding into the ocean. Farah told Fortune that he’d ordered the Porsche in August 2021 and that it was finally en route to him in Venice, California from Europe.
But his new car is now somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic and an entrepreneurial diver, who apparently has “30 years of experience” has offered to help Farah retrieve the sunken bounty. The anonymous diver says he has a bunch of friends willing to help, too, but it comes with a price tag. The sender set some budgets in the ridiculous email, including $10,000 US upfront, a $1,000 a day fee for each of the 12 divers on the team as well as “expanses” (the sender’s spelling, not ours) of $8,000 per day for a grand total of $20k per day over five days.
The Internet has a lot of feelings about the now-viral email, and the responses have been spot-on. There are some great suggestions for how to position and cast the blockbuster film that inevitably gets made about the daring adventure, some offers to complete the job for a discount, and even a few predictions of who sent the email.
Heads up: some of the below media contains coarse language some may find offensive.
Preparations are nearly ready, we just need money upfront for sandwiches and flask of tea pic.twitter.com/jiy7hGhjqU
— mark p bridges (@supercarrambler) March 3, 2022
Driving contributor Brendan McAleer and others had some cinematic advice:
Oceans 718
— Rich Tucker (@RichTuckerJr) March 3, 2022
Sounds like a plot to a bad movie. pic.twitter.com/AD55NSN8Ug
— McMike (@ItsMcMikeTime) March 3, 2022
One popular artist noted the absurdity of the message, pointing out that Volkswagen Group is already set to build replacements for those whose vehicles were lost, as is the norm in such situations. In particular, Lamborghini is now looking at how to restart production of the discontinued Aventador model to fulfill the final orders which were lost in the sinking.
They had me at “up to certain extant.” 😭
— Johnny Bravo (@JohnnyLazyBravo) March 3, 2022
Others were quick to smell a scam, evoking a classic from the early days of email:
Nigerian Prince…
— Matt Linzbach (@MattLinzbach) March 3, 2022
Keyword: 'I am a professional diver': The Internet reacts to outrageous proposal to retrieve sunken exotics