Rude car sees woman get £80 fine (From This is Hampshire)

Rude car sees Chloe Stoyle get £80 fine in Eastleigh

10:34am Wednesday 10th August 2011 in News By Bethan Phillips, Reporter

IT’S a car that often turns heads, but attracted the wrong kind of attention in a Hampshire high street.

Chloe Stoyle’s Fiat Cinquecento was landed with a £80 fine when it was parked in the centre of Eastleigh – for causing alarm and distress.

The blue and yellow car currently has obscene messages scrawled across the side, including a “price list” for sexual services.

When it was parked in the town’s High Street yesterday afternoon, a crowd of onlookers gathered to get a look at the risqué messages.

It soon caught the attention of two police community support officers and a policeman who were on the beat at the time.

They stuck a “police aware” sticker on the front windscreen and when Miss Stoyle returned she was issued with a £80 fixed penalty.

She was fined under section five of the Public Order Act for displaying writing that could “cause alarm or distress”.

But Miss Stoyle, 23, from Merry Oak, Southampton, says she was simply in town to try and get the obscene messages removed.

She said: “It got graffitied last night and I just came down to get paint thinners so I can get it off.

“The police said I should have covered it up. I’m absolutely fuming to be honest.

I mean, I’m laughing as well but it’s annoying.

“It’s always getting vandalised because it draws a lot of attention.

“It makes me more determined to keep it.

“Why should I give up my car just because someone doesn’t like it?”

But it was a car that raised eyebrows – even before the extra graffiti was added.

Some passers-by said it went too far.

Paul Nash, 47, from Bishopstoke said: “It’s pretty offensive. Fair enough have it at home, but parking it in the street is going a bit too far.”

Miss Stoyle says she is proud of her car, which cost £100 originally but has had nearly £1,000 worth of modifications made to it.

She added: “My car is one of a kind. I did it all just for a bit of fun.”