Gary Dell’Abate Damages His Friend’s Brand-New Tesla While En Route to Buy Cookies

Nothing gets in the way of Gary Dell’Abate’s sweet tooth, it seems – not even curbs.

On Tuesday’s show the Stern Show’s executive producer copped to crashing his friend’s new Tesla while en route to by some cookies.

“I scraped the rim,” Gary admitted before shifting focus to the fact he hadn’t asked to drive the car in the first place. “He was insistent that I try it out.”

“You know how to drive. How did you drive it up on the curb?” Howard wondered.

“I was making a U-turn and, uh, the rim scraped against the curb. I thought I cleared it and I didn’t,” Gary said.

The friend wasn’t happy about what happened to his new ride, according to fellow staffer Jason Kaplan, whom the friend “turned Gary in” to shortly after the accident.

Teslas are not only expensive, they’re hard to get. The friend had apparently waited five weeks for his, and a new rim will now cost him around $2,000. As of Tuesday, Gary hadn’t given his friend any money, nor had he replaced or repaired the rim.

“I’ve offered to pay for it 50,000 times,” Gary insisted. “I have a guy who can repair the rim. I said I want to send the guy to pick up your car. I’ve done everything I can to fix this for him, and he’s insisted that I don’t.”

“Look, it was a brand-new car,” Stern Show co-host Robin Quivers chimed in. “He wants a new rim.”

So, why was Gary in such a hurry to get cookies? “I was bringing them as a gift to someone’s house,” Gary, a notorious chocolate lover, explained. He also said they weren’t black-and-white cookies, either—they were Italian tri-color cookies.

Adding insult to injury is the fact Gary apparently had no problem cashing a $900 check from the very same friend who wanted to buy a pinball machine from Gary. “Howard, I would do anything,” Gary insisted. “If he said to me write me a check for $2,000, I’d write it in a second. I felt terrible. I did not want to drive his car.”

“You know what I do, Gary?” Howard responded. “When people say to me, ‘Hey, you want to drive my car?’”

“No!” Robin answered for him.

“Exactly,” Howard said.

Gary said his friend insisted he test drive the car because he knew Gary was thinking about buying a Tesla of his own, so he graciously wanted Gary to try one out first. “But you know what? The Tesla is a self-driving car,” Robin said. “You didn’t try that.”

“The guy did make that point,” Jason revealed. “He said, ‘Wow, the auto-drive on this car is way better than Gary.’”