Gaming IndustryThe trials of a billionaire Bond villain: Oculus founder Palmer Luckey sues after getting stuck in a car elevator in the mansion he bought just to store carsWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Gaming IndustryThe trials of a billionaire Bond villain: Oculus founder Palmer Luckey sues after getting stuck in a car elevator in the mansion he bought just to store carsWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images)
This conversion was on a somewhat larger scale than a fresh lick of paint and a few new doors. A $2.5 million rebuild saw all 7,000 square feet of the building renovated, with over 1,000 square feet across multiple floors given over to showcasing cars: with four dedicated car elevators installed to take vehicles across floors and to the roof, alongside a central and circular passenger elevator. The kind of $6.3 million show-off showpiece, in other words, where you can quite easily imagine Luckey stroking a gleaming Ford Mustang while delivering a monologue to some slightly bored guests.
That was the dream, anyway. Things turned sour between Luckey and the contractors when the billionaire got stuck in one of the elevators.
Luckey has filed suit in the Superior Court of California County of Orange against both the elevator contractor and the construction company, in which he alleges that the four car lifts and the passenger elevator are faulty and have trapped multiple occupants. The suit says “the passenger elevator and the scissor lifts installed…at the residence have never functioned properly. Amongst other things, the elevator has repeatedly stopped its vertical motion without warning and trapped its occupants inside.”
As well as alleging that the lifts are unsafe, the suit claims they operate too slowly. Finally, it says the contract specified the lifts be “handcrafted”, but in reality were ordered online from a Chinese manufacturer.
Custom Cabs should have some knowledge of the alleged issues, because Luckey’s lawyer says they once got trapped in there with him. “The passenger elevator stopped mid-lift with Mr. Luckey and the elevator contractor trapped inside for over ten minutes,“David Peck told Forbes, who went on to emphasise that the lifts are the whole point of the conversion. “These lifts were the central feature of the residence to move the vehicles around to the multiple levels where they will be parked….That is the whole purpose of the house.”
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That’s not to mention the 6,500-gallon aquarium, and of course one of the world’s largest collection of videogames which is kept, per Luckey, “in one of my missile bases, 200 feet underground.” I’m really not sure whether that’s a bit, or Luckey does have a decommissioned missile base stuffed with old arcade cabs. “I am a little bit of a caricature,” Luckey has said, neglecting only to add “but then so are you, Mr Bond.”
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