We often feature feel-good journeys with our classic car restoration stories. That’s because they typically involve the owner’s passion as well as the shop that facilitates the work, but this one begs to differ.
According to the Indiana Star, entrepreneur Bill Oesterle has won a fraud lawsuit against Healey Werks Corp., a specialised car restoration shop in Iowa. According to the lawsuit, the shop and its owner, Craig Hillinger, pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars from Oesterle over a ten-year period of collaboration on various projects. The case was filed in Iowa in 2020, and a decision was recently reached following an investigation.
According to LinkedIn, the relationship between Oesterle – former Angie’s List CEO and current TMap, LLC CEO – and Hillinger began in 2010. Oesterle paid $16,000 for a classic Maserati Ghibli and had it restored by Hillinger at the time. Hillinger told Oesterle that the project would take one to two years and would cost less than $200,000. The work was not completed even after four years, and Oesterle was invoiced for more than $1 million, according to the complaint.
The complaint also mentioned an incident in which Hillinger persuaded Oesterle to buy an Austin-Healey 100M with him, a coveted factory model that required assembly. The entrepreneur paid $50,000 for the classic sports car, but when it arrived, Oesterle “discovered that the 100M was not a factory 100M as Hillinger had promised,” according to the lawsuit.