Flippin’ heck. Who did that to my Smart car?

Published: 23 July, 2010
by RÓISÍN GADELRAB

SMART car-tipping has come to a quiet Islington backwater.

The craze blighted Amsterdam last year, where pranksters would tip the lightweight cars into canals. Now, it appears to have reached Colebrook Row – yards from the home of Mayor of London Boris Johnson.

The victim, Joanne Quittner, who runs a cat-sitting business from her home, woke up early on Saturday to find her Smart car had been overturned, and its front side window smashed.

She said: “I walked down the road and thought: I’m sure I parked my car in front of that Porsche. My car was now adjacent to the Porsche lying on its side. 

“I thought somebody must have hit it. Literally for the hell of it they most have rolled it over. There were fingerprints on the side where they had grabbed it. It would have been relatively easy. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.” 

Police are now trawling through CCTV footage to see if they can catch the offenders.

Smart car-tipping has been documented through­out the world, with footage of incidents posted on YouTube internet site.

But Ms Quittner is more concerned about the effect the damage will have on her business, which relies on two cars and three employees to visit and feed cats across London.

She said: “We’ve lost a window, mirror, the side is scratched, it’s also lost oil and fluid. I’m not driving it until we know it’s safe. 

“It’s not so bad this week but next week when the schools break up and the children are on holiday we’ll be doing 25 to 30 visits a day.”

She admitted the incident had its funny side, but added: “We’re a small business and we’ve still got to make a living. We work pretty hard, seven days a week and we don’t get long holidays. 

“I’ve worked hard to get this business running. I’ve got 300 clients and I don’t want to let anyone down.”

She now fears the car-tippers may return. “If they can do it once, they can do it again,” she said. “There’s nowhere else for me to put the car. It has to go on the road. We just have to live with that.”