David Hoffman Auto David Hoffman Auto Mall Ripoff artists at Hoffman Auto knowingly sell lemons Rochester, New York

Hoffman sold a Lincoln LS to a friend of mine for approx. $13K, about 4 years ago (2006). The LS has some inherent issues pertinent to the model, especially tranny and V8 engine issues/common repair problems, but nothing to catastrophic that I'm aware of.

Within two weeks, owner had issues the car. Hoffman said they would look at it, and ended up (allegedly) doing an engine diagnostic, which (allegedly) showed no issues. I seem to remember this was done off-site, but can't remember.

Two months later, friend of mine calls and asks if I'll test drive his car to see if I can figure out what's wrong with the car. Owner claims it's stalled on him, appears to be running on less than 8 cylinders at times, tranny is slipping, etc. I did a little research, and discovered that even minor issues like bad ignition coil packs can cause major driveability issues on some newer vehicles, as the tranny computer is sensitive to engine output. I'm thinking the worst, though, maybe bad torque converter, etc. 

I drive the car, and sure enough it stalls on an off-ramp, after dark. Hoffman was aware this was one of the issues the car had, but refused to do anything about it.

Flipping, flipping, flipping, owner decides to park the car 'til he has the cash to have the car properly checked out by a Ford dealer. Car ends up sitting for a few months. Sure enough, there were multiple coil packs which were bad, albeit a few would quit firing intermittently.

Hoffman refused to reimburse the owner for the several hundreds of dollars in repairs and diagnostic work.