To The Asshat Who Keyed This Truck During SXSW

This beautiful brown beast is the 2013 Ford F-250 Super Duty Platinum. It's gigantic. It's loaded down with luxury features like heated and cooled leather seats. Its turbodiesel V8 has more torque than God would have if God were a pickup truck. It costs $63,000. Everyone I met down in Texas was in love with it – except for the asshat who keyed the hell of it.

Let me back up a bit. No, I didn't buy this truck. I wish I owned something this opulent. Ford was kind enough to loan it to me during my trip to Austin with my fiancée so we could do stuff for our wedding next year. This happily coincided with Matt and Travis' journey down here for SXSW in a Viper and an SRT Grand Cherokee. You'll see my review of the F-250 soon.

And the F-250 was awesome, for the most part. This is one of Ford's bigger trucks and it came to me with tons of options, hence the huge price tag. It was roomy and comfortable inside, quite powerful, and good at hauling us and our stuff around so we could mostly go to bars shop for wedding venues, and shoot our engagement photos. We even changed clothes in the backseat when our photo session called for it. I've lived in apartments that felt smaller than Megatruck, as I took to calling it. I was surprised at how well it worked out.

But what surprised me most was the reaction that everyone had to Megatruck. My friends and family, most of whom aren't really car people, all wanted to sit inside and check it out. If I had shown up in Austin with a Shelby GT500, no one would have given two shits about it. Megatruck, however, was a bonafide hit. Strangers on the street would stop and tell me how pretty it was.

Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me that much. After all, this is Texas, a land where a “sports car” is a lifted Tundra and a “luxury sedan” is, well, a fully-loaded F-250 like mine. The pickup truck is king in Texas, and people will buy them even if they have no intention of ever putting them to work in a remotely truck-like way. Everyone down there drives trucks – it’s just what we Texans do.

So that’s why I was supremely horrified to find that some depraved, truck-hating psychopath took their keys to Megatruck. Who messes with a giant American-made truck in Texas? That’s like messing with Texas itself, something that is highly discouraged. (It’s also an act of vandalism and against the law.)

I’d love to see the person who did this be brought to justice. The problem is, not only do I not know who keyed it, I don’t know where or when it happened. I first noticed the damage when I was at the Domain mall parking lot on Monday afternoon. I walked up to the truck and found six or seven deep scratches in the paint right above the driver’s side rear tire.

At first I thought I had hit something without realizing it, but I know I would have felt something like that. Plus, the scratches are clearly jagged and key-sized. Looking back through some photos I took from the review, it looks like the scratches were there by Sunday afternoon, so I don't think it happened at the mall.

Ford was totally cool about the whole thing, and I’m not on the hook for any damages, nor am I in trouble at work. But it’s got me royally pissed off. My blood boils just looking at those photos. That wasn’t my truck, but it was in my care, and someone trashed it and then ran off like a coward.

Maybe they were mad about how I parked it? Like I said, this truck is wide and long. But I was mindful of how big it was, so I never parked it in a way that could halt the flow of traffic or keep people from getting in and out of their cars. And even if I did park like an asshat at some point, that’s no justification for taking your key to another person’s vehicle. There’s no excuse for that, ever.

So maybe it was some truck-hating hipster who was in town for SXSW. Well, if that’s the case, I’ve got news for you, pal -- there are bigger trucks running around than the one I had. And if you think that scratching someone’s F-250 is going to help save the planet or something, you have another thing coming.

It all reminds me of that scene in Pulp Fiction where Vincent Vega is talking about how his Malibu got keyed. “It'd been worth him doing it just so I could've caught him doing it,” he says. That’s how I feel too. Had I caught you doing it, Mr. Busy Keys, I would have made a huge scene and screamed at you.

Or maybe I would have chased you down the street with a video camera, put you on YouTube and Gawker-shamed you in front of the entire world, like the New York man who did that to the guy who called him a “faggot” on the street.

Or I would have slammed your face into the tailgate and called it a day. Any of those outcomes sound satisfying to me.

So here’s what I have to say to you, the asshat who keyed my truck during SXSW: You got away with it. Congratulations. How nice for you! But my guess is you’ve done this before. And someday, you may not get away with it. You may run across a journalist who doesn’t like it when people mess with his press cars. Or you may run across some huge dude with a concealed firearm permit and a short temper. This is Texas, after all. And when that happens, you may find yourself a little out of your depth.

You asshat motherfucker.

via Jalopnik http://jalopnik.com/453452892