A man says his car has 'a mind of its own' and has caused sweary confrontations with members of the public. Barry Williams, 62, has mobility issues due to a missing piece of his spine and relies on his SEAT Ateca to get him around.
But driving has become an unpredictable ordeal due to a raft of problems, including a radio that blares out and the car cutting out when he drives over a bump in the road. It's believed the problem is linked to the car's entertainment chip, Liverpool Echo reports.
Barry Williams, from Norris Green, Liverpool, got his car almost three months ago and said his wife is frightened about what the car will do next. He said: "I'll be driving along and hit a bump and everything [in the car] will turn off - it'll just emergency stop like that for no reason whatsoever.
"The computer system is knackered and useless. It controls the radio and everything in the car.
"The radio goes on or off, whenever it wants. It often comes on blaring so I can't hear myself and you can't turn the volume down, you've physically got to stop the car, turn it off, open the door, close the door, open it again and turn it back on - that's the only way to stop it from doing it.
"I nearly gave an old lady a heart attack the other day. I'd come back to my car after going to the shops and there was an old lady walking past me. She wasn't too good on her feet but luckily there was a wall for her to fall on.
"I turned the car on and the radio blasted so loud that it deafened me and she suddenly screamed, fell over and hit the wall. She shouted at me "what the f****** hell are you doing you stupid b******" and I said sorry love but it's not me.
"I had to turn the car off, open and shut the door and turn it back on and she asked what I was doing. I said I'm trying to get the radio to turn off because it won't turn off.
"Eventually it did and she said what the f*** are you doing and I said look love it's the car not me."
Barry said that the problem seems to be with the car's "entertainment chip" and its electrical system. He said that he has been to the garage where he got the car and they said they could do little due to a shortage of the required part.
Barry said: "We have a family member dying of cancer who lives some 88 miles away and as we are very close to him we try very hard to see him as much as possible - as he only has weeks to go - but my wife is afraid of going to see him due to the fact that she is frightened of what the car is going to do next."
Barry also told the ECHO about the dozens of messages he says he receives from the car each day, complaining of a "system error" and informing him that he needs to take it to the garage for repair, which he says he can't do due to lack of parts.
He added: "The satnav just does what it wants when it wants.
"The other week I went to Old Swan, I was in the ALDI car park at Old Swan and the GPS told me that I was parked in a car park of the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg, Germany. It took me 35 minutes to get that off the screen and when it did come back it told me I was facing backwards."
The ECHO approached SEAT for comment.
