Earlier this week, The Drive reported the story of when automotive photographer Kevin McCauley rented a Porsche Cayman off Turo back in 2016 only to have it mysteriously disappear overnight. Until now, the reason—as far as McCauley was concerned—remained frustratingly unknown. Well, four years after the fact, the mystery’s been solved. And no, it had nothing to do with aliens. Yeah, we were disappointed too.
To recap, the Cayman disappeared from a residential street in Venice, California after McCauley legally parked it there overnight when he was in town covering Luftgekühlt 2016. Thankfully, his Turo host didn’t make a big deal out of it and McCauley’s trip was refunded (and then some). However, efforts to find out what exactly had happened to the Porsche were met with vague emails from Turo Support saying the car had not been stolen but was “stored for unknown reasons, most likely municipal.”
For McCauley’s full recount of events, watch this video.
Shortly after we published that story, however, Turo’s Vice President of Communications Steve Webb reached out to us and said he knew what happened.
“The car was repossessed,” he explained in an email. “As soon as we determined that the vehicle was repo’d, we immediately assisted the impacted guest and removed the vehicle and host from the platform.”
So, there you have it. It had nothing to do with parking tickets nor did the Cayman’s owner sneakily take back their car because they didn’t like the cut of McCauley’s jib. Moral of the story, though? If you’re gonna offer up your car for rent on Turo—Porsche or otherwise—please make sure you’re caught up on the payments.
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