When you buy a used vehicle, you likely expect a few issues to pop up as you drive it around for a bit. What you don’t expect is a catastrophic incident that ends with your car exploding on the side of the highway. Gabrield Lopes was driving a friend home across the Glenn Jackson Bridge near Portland, Oregon when his fairly new 2015 Mercedes-Benz C300 shut off. According to The Oregonian, he tried to restart the vehicle before smoke started to rise out from under the hood. It only got worse from there:

After calling 911, thinking he would need help moving the car off the bridge, Lopes started filming the scene from his phone. That’s when he started to see flames. The video captures Lopes’ stricken reaction. Several minutes later, the video captures the sound of an explosion. “No warning. The car just turns off, you pull over, the thing’s on fire,” Lopes said Friday. “Seeing your brand-new car blow up in front of you in less than nine minutes is horrific.”

The pre-owned vehicle had been purchased only a week earlier and was originally a loaner vehicle with around 13,000 miles on it. Mercedes-Benz has offered Lopes a loaner vehicle in the meantime, but he is waiting to see if the manufacturer will replace the vehicle:

Mercedes-Benz has told him it’s investigating, and that the company will send an engineer to inspect the vehicle. The company, through a spokeswoman, said it was working with the Portland dealership to learn more but declined to comment further.

So yeah, check your engines. Kick the tires and make sure you’re not driving a car with an engine made out of flint.

(Via The Oregonian)