I just had to share this with the board. Today our Dallas lawfirm held its annual firm luncheon at the Palm Restaurant in the West End. Right in front of the restaurant there is space for the valet to park maybe 6-8 cars at the most. They typically back them in so they face the street. Also, they only park the nicest cars in front saving the rest for the back lot. As I drove up in my Winning Blue 8 with 2 of my partners as passengers for the luncheon, the valet backed it right onto the front row next to the Lamborghini, the Mercedes 500SL and several different models of Porches and other exotics. Needless to say, my partners were impressed. I was delighted to know that my car looked as good if not better than any of the others and, perhaps more importantly, cost only a fraction of the others. Best driving fun and style for the buck is what I say. Happy Holidays.

good
the 8 deserves it

My wife drives a TransAm and spends a lot of time on the F-Body forums. The guys in there share horror-stories about their experiences as valets, parking cars. Apparently, just about anything in the world can happen (unless you get the 'star-treatment' that mikeb got). Most of these guys refuse to valet park and if it's a place where they insist that you do so, they insist on riding to the parking place with the valet and taking their keys with them once he's parked the car. It doesn't come up that often for me so I've never really thought about it.

Any former-valets in here with similar tales of woe for car-owners?

I used to be a valet for a local car dealership. Not just any dealership though. It's a BMW, porsche, audi, rolls royce/bentley dealership. I worked for the rolls/bentley part of the dealership. The biggest thing I saw was that about 3 of the valets in the entire dealership spoke english. The other half dozen didn't. I also once saw one of the valets completely burn out the clutch on a brand new mini because he couldn't drive stick. It was kinda funny to see him doing about 3 mph through the back lot and at the same time hear the engine screaming near redline. As for me, I used to have to squeeze bentleys through spaces so tight you'd have to see to believe. One time I had to have 2 spotters guide me because I had about an inch of space on either side. Not fun in a 250,000 dollar car.

As far as flogging the crap out of the cars............every chance I had. Hell, the porsche mechanics would do burnouts on the service road behind the dealership. I once almost did a complete 360 in a bentley when turning onto a 4 lane wide road. Thank god for traction control.

The moral of the story here is watch the valet park your car, and it's a good idea to record your mileage, and make sure they see you record it.

I went to a fancy party once where they hired valets, who were frat boys from a local University. I took one look at them and refused to give then my keys. I drove the car down myself and parked it. By the end of the evening, they had skipped out because they had destroyed at least three porsches and two mercedeses, one being my mother's. They had also flattened a stone wall down the hill. I pulled rubble out of the side of my mother's Merc, in between the passenger doors, and the doors were obviously ruined. We tried calling the company, which shockingly was abandoned, and the company principal literally split the state. So, before you give those keys to anyone, make sure that you think they look OK.