For those who dont know, CPR have the same ex owners and staff that were RC Developments.
They had very fast/competitive evos in time attack, illuminous yellow, orange and blue cars (3cars of each colour, not muliti coloured lol)
They went bust 3 years ago while owing lots of customers money, builds, parts....
Well its happened again.
Shamelessly stolen off mlr
Makes for horrible reading!
It is with great sadness that I am to report that Car Planet Racing and Car Planet LTD are now closed and going into receivership.
I have just got in half an hour ago, after making sure that our customer's cars where safe and in care where we could.
It is has been one of the hardest days at the office in my life
This is how the day panned out;
Myself and all Car Planet and Car Planet Racing staff arrived at main gates to the premises at 9.00am this morning, without a set of keys to open up. We waited for a long time for any of the directors to arrive (Max Waung or Albert Yeung). We tried calling them on their mobile numbers, aswell as Albert's wife Candy Wu (and Car Planet's Accounts lady). Each phone was off.
We then sent someone to check out if they were home (High Warren Close, Appleton), but it quickly dawned on us that Max, Albert and Candy had vanished.
We waited until we managed to send someone up onto the roof in order to gain access to the property. Upon his return, we found that all of the computers/laptops and paperwork had been removed from the office, and our suspicions that the directors had abandoned ship quickly sunk in.
News travelled very fast, and before long, there were many different groups of individuals arriving at Car Planet to claim stake to the vehicle stock list.
All of the sales cars were lead outside into the carpark, and people began taking cars away on trailers.
It was absolute anarchy, with random people wheeling out Car Planet's stock into the yard.
It is now understood that Max / Albert owed considerable amounts of money to various people from around the North West area, including a local car trader, colleagues, close friends and underground organised crime. The full picture unravelled piece by piece throughout the day.
In addition to this, Max, Candy and Albert had been running the books with cause for concern from the Inland Revenue, where there was recently lengthy stressful meetings between Albert (and CP's accountant), in regards to the tax return. It transpires that there may have been an investigation made into Max's and Albert's personal extravagent lifestyles.
Myself, Clive and Andy Clark of CPR were completely shell shocked over the reality, that 3 years down the line, we were again looking at being completely shafted, done over and unemployed.
We had no option but to get on with grabbing what parts we felt we had a right to (our tools and CPR stocks), and I began to call all of CPR customer's to inform them of this terrible news, and that they would need to come to collect their vehicles right away.
Unfortunately, Max and Albert had trashed the office before they left, they had removed my accounts computer and our workshop diary containing all contact information for all customers, making it very hard to track people down.
With some local help from Warrington Service Centre and JC Motorsport, we borrowed 2 van's and began to get our tool boxes.
The premises became packed with people that I had never seen before, it quickly came apparent that there was certain people with criminal background taking what they felt they were owed, going into the office and routing through the shelves.
Our priority was to get the cars back to the customers;
Johnathon got his MR2 Turbo back with 2.0L Forged Engine running in it (getting the Chargecooler System and new front bumper sent direct to him.)
Miles came for his M3 E92 Track Car to get it out of there quick, we will hopefully get up to York once the dust has settled to set up the car again on new master cylinder and balance bar.
Steve came to collect his M3 E46, after leaving it with us prior to him having his R35 GTR in with us for some works. We owe Steve a Cobb Tuning Access Port and custom tune, and will honour this as soon as we have the opportunity to do so.
Daz's R33 GTR was complete and was collected by him later that afternoon with no charge for the work.
We also had 2 x Honda Civic's with engine conversions that were organised with the owners to be returned to them. Lance's Civic (EP3 with B18 Conversion with ITB's) had been perfected with all niggles ironed out, he was not charged for any of the work. Lance's bro James Civic was a little less complete, as we had removed the engine and sent away to have a 2.2L High Compression Sleeved Build on it. We kept in contact throughout the day with James to let him know how we were getting on, giving permission for him to collect the built engine for our K20 builder in Birmingham (which had luckily been paid for only a few days prior).
Bob Moore came to pick up the Orange Time Attack Car and some spare parts and tyres. Andy Robinson & Kate came down also to collect his Drag Evo 8 also.
We also tried to call Carl, with his Evo 8, which was half way through a gearbox replacement through an Insurance Company. We eventually got through to Carl at 6pm, which did not leave him much time to organise collecting the car on a wagon.
An M5 with suspected poorly motor went back to the owner without the chance of being examined (thanks to Andy Robinson again), which then left just 2 cars in the workshop (Mine's R34 GTR and a R33 GTS-T).
By this time we had become very aware of the increasing desperation for some guys to get their share back of the entire stock list, and we had to beg/plead that they did not take our customer's cars, unfortunately there were too many people (some not very nice characters) arguing over the cars, that we backed off and got our stuff boxed up as best as we could.
The police did arrive at one point after a report of a stolen car being made, but little could be done at that point, as certain people had indeed taken as much as they could, including we fear customers cars. These people, were all owed huge amounts by Max and Albert (up to a reported 380,000 pounds to one guy), and the more we discovered about how much Max and Albert had dug themselves in, the more likely we we would find that we would have to fight for parts/cars that were ours or our customers. It was a horrible environment, with altercations, by the time I had got into the office to begin scavenging anything worth while keeping, it had already been ranshacked by a group of randomers working on behalf of someone else.
We were told that Max and Albert had been pulling in as much cash as they could over the weekend prior. we were told that Max phoned up a friend of his in tears, pretending that Albert had been kidnapped, and that Max needed 6 grand before they killed Albert.
Another extremely upsetting situation is with Steen from SKG Performance, who had been working with Max for a long time buying in brand new Mercedes Benz's and shipping them out to the Far East, some of which we were putting performance packages onto. I was told that Steen had paid Max late last week for 4 x brand new Merc's, valued at over 180,000 pounds. Steen asked me if the Mercedes' were actually in stock as Max had promised him, and I was very upset to inform him that that was only 1 Mercedes E-Class in stock, and no signs of the CLS's that he had paid for. Steen checked with the dealership who told him the car's had not been collected or paid for. Max had asked Steen to send this payment to another new bank account (new company name), but was assured this was due to the numbers of cars being bought by Car Planet. It is now understood that Max and Allbert have taken Steen to the cleaners, where the buyers of the prospective vehicles are not very nice people from places in Thailand.
I felt devastatingly bad for Steen who sounded suicidal, but assured him we would do everything we could do to help.
Another bad phone call was to one of our closest customers, Simon, who had opted for a 1000bhp pump fuel, 1200bhp race fuel spec R35 GTR, that was currently at 770bhp. Simon's deposit for parts purchasing has been lost (spent by Max and Albert). I felt at the bottom of the world letting Simon know the bad news that we would no longer be able to do his GTR, but as soon as we managed to get back on our feet, we would be doing our best to honour the agreement in time to come.
The day did not get any better, as I struggled to get hold of 2 x customers who owned the Skylines, due to the fact that our directors had destroyed our bookings diary. Given that the keys for the premises were taken off us during the rush, and the locks damaged, we had no way of securing the unit, and had to leave 2 customers cars on the main road directly outside the building, both locked and alarmed, I put a note with my phone number in the window, and hoping the customers get in touch asap so that we can get their car back to them.
The final chapter of the evening was arranging for transportation of the 2 x Civics back down to Cwmbran, where the Chorlton brothers' usual car transporting crew were interupted by a sudden swarm of Police, who insisted that unless the original owners could produce a logbook, they would arrest anyone who attempted to move the Civics. With the logbooks being over 2 hours away with the owners, and the time closing 11.30pm, the frustration of the day got to me, and I just felt that I was on a losing battle. After a bit of cry, I was pulled to a side by the reporting Sergent. He asked for the entire story, and I gave it to him straight. He made the decision to allow the Civics to go, given the risk that they may get taken away by somebody else if left in that area. As the surrounding drama was a Civil Matter, and not criminal, the police refused to secure the area, offering a drive-by every now and then to ensure the unit was not broken into. The police refused to cover the costs to take the 2 skylines to the police impound, and said that we would need to leave them, or cover the costs for transporting them.
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Today, 04:16 * #131
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Join Date: Mar 2011
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Eventually the transporter got off with the Civics, which was a massive relief to me, I hung around for a while hoping that either of the Skyline owners would get back in touch on my mobile, before I virtually collapsed with exhaustion and got home.
I for one feel completely empty inside, at first I was extremely angry at the people who had done this to us.
But now, there is no feeling there, we have worked so hard in a period of 3 years, to do our best to push into new tuning disciplines, in a time of a sustained credit crunch.
Our flame burnt twice as bright it seems, we built an amazing Evo, capable of winning the Dutch and UK Time Attack Pro-Class. We became a leader in R35 GT-R Tuning, offering performance upgrades from 500bhp to 1200bhp. We began succesfully tuning BMW's (mostly E92 M3's where our Pectel ECU Based Mapping has allowed us to explored regions of the BMW File that most cannot find on the stock ECU).
And we have done all of this despite our name being severly tarnished from day one as a result of the connections of our staff to RC Developments, and the ever damning label we received. In a lot of eyes, we weren't a trio of Chief Engineer, Mapping Engineer, Designer, we were all just crooks, for ever and sunday.
And now we have nothing again.
And neither do the staff from Car Planet, who have families.
Alan, our 4x4 technician was brought here to this country from China by Max and Albert to escape a troubled past. He had a mortgage on his house that was controlled by Max, where his wages would go towards his living. Alan was thus extremely close to Max, they had a very close bond. But the shocking thing is that Alan had no idea Max, Candy and Albert were planning this. Now he is all on his own, with a wife and two little boys, he has little or no chance to staying in this country, and may be forced to move back to Hong Kong with his family.
Clive, our head engineer, and builder of such amazing legendary Time Attack Cars is due to be a dad for the first time, where his girlfriend Tracy is expecting a little girl in 7 weeks time. Now once again we are put into the horrible position we already endured 3 years ago.
From our point of view, we are still in severe shock, things have not sunk in for me yet. this feels like a dream. We just can't believe how they could do this to us. The amount of hurt this has caused across the entire network of "our family" as we used to call it in the good days, has been devastating.
At this point, we each feel that we cannot confidently say that we want to jump back and dive back into the performance tuning industry, where any type of regular job would do. When you go through this once, you learn a lot, when you got through it a second time, you lose a lot of yourself.
My personal feelings towards Max, Albert and Candy, well, I hate them. Pure hate. You made me feel loved and secure, for which in return I worked 100's of hours of unpaid overtime, and took on car sales duties to help out at times too, and felt so positive in everything I did at CPR. The way in which you went, and left us in scary ****, I will never forgive you for, I hope you read this wherever in the world you ran off to hide like ****roaches, and I hope you get what you deserve one day. I hope you will spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder in fear, you are cowards and I hope you rot in hell. No doubt you will all change your names again, but who knows, someone you upset may just one day be stood over you.
A final sincere apology to any of our customers who have lost money, or been inconvenienced, we hope all will read this and understand how it feels from our point of view now, as unemployed heart broken guys, without a pot to **** in.
If any body needs to contact me to discuss any of the surrounding issues at Car Planet, I can be reached on 07876 708999, however, my phone was on business contract through Car Planet, and will probably expire soon, so please pm.
Kind Regards,
Laurence Stewart
On behalf of CPR, I would like to thank all of our customers (new and old) for giving us a chance to work our magic on your pride and joys, and we hope we have given you much enjoyment in your automotive life. Thank you for the organisers of Time Attack, for allowing us to race in your fantastic series. Thank you to all our of parts suppliers, who have stood by us since the beginning. Thank you to Phil Royle and the Turbo Automagazin German Film Crew for featuring Andy Robinson's Drag Evo 8 and the orange Evo on track. Thank you to all of our supporters and customers who stuck up for us with what was true, when a large majority were hating on us so much.
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Originally Posted by wiggy-wsm
