What a heart-braker!
The city towed a bright-green memorial “mini monster” truck decorated with flowers that had been parked outside a Brooklyn auto shop for years — then turned the tribute into scrap metal.
The hard-to-miss truck out front of New Millennium Motors in Gowanus had belonged to the body shop’s beloved owner Andreas Stylianou and was lovingly maintained by his family before it was taken away by city workers overnight on April 1, his widow told The Post.
“It was an unusual car, it wasn’t just a car that was abandoned there,” said Maria, who now manages the garage. “I don’t think it was right, because it wasn’t just a car on the street for us.”
The city said the vehicle was taken because it didn’t have a license plate or even a VIN number.
The monster truck became the community’s living memorial to her husband, who was struck and killed by three cars in front of his business in 2019, she said.
It even became the official emblem of the business after she took over.
Maria Stylianou said she had decorated the monster mini for major holidays — with a giant witch hat for Halloween, springtime flowers and festive “gifts” for Christmas complete with a fake New York City rat.
Locals from musicians to models to young families have posed with the car over the years, Maria recalled, noting one family with young kids had even dubbed it the “pickle car” for its green features.
“The community just loved this car,” she said. “They’d come in here and ask us, ‘can we come in and take pictures?’”
“It was the color. It was so bright, so happy.”
“It’s sad to see, it go it was a really nice staple in the neighborhood,” said local Sam Cassidy, who works at the Griffin Editions print shop nearby.
“I know it was to pay tribute to one of the owners who passed, so that makes it even more sad,” Cassidy, 40, added.
“There definitely should’ve been a warning — especially since it’s been there for a couple years.”
The quirky truck was one of many projects for the late mechanic, who had moved from Cyprus and began fixing Brooklyn wheels at his own shop in the 1980s.
“It was Santa’s workshop here,” Maria Stylianou fondly recalled. “He liked projects, he was always doing something … he made a lot of friends in customers that way.”
One of those customers was Mayor Bill de Blasio, who Maria Stylianou said attended her late husband’s wake.
Still, the honorary street sign honoring the shop owner came with a typo, spelling his name as “Andres.” The city has yet to correct the mistake, she said.
The truck had been a work-in-progress for Andreas Stylianou at the time of his death, has sat outside the autobody shop at since at least 2019, Maria recalled.
The truck was only towed after she had moved it around the corner this winter to make room for National Grid repairs in the roadway, she lamented.
But sanitation officials said the truck was never supposed to be parked out front, and had violated the city’s rules.
“This truck was parked on the street with no VIN and no license plate, which is not allowed in any circumstance,” city sanitation spokesperson Vincent Gragnani told The Post.
“We tagged the vehicle and it was removed six hours later, in accordance with the law, and taken to one of our vendors, NYC Auto Recycling,” he said. “Without a plate or a VIN, there was no way for the city to contact the owner.”
Derelict vehicles have been a longstanding epidemic in Brooklyn, with more than 8,500 calls to 311 about perpetually-stagnant cars plaguing the roadway since Jan. 1.
Of those reports, 265 of those vehicles have been removed by sanitation officials.
But Maria argues her memorial was much more than “just a car,” and the city should’ve at least issued a warning before scrapping her vehicle.
“I couldn’t function that morning,” she said, claiming she called the sanitation department and “311, but no one picks up.”
Her daughter Andrea eventually reached out to sanitation officials on Instagram, who confirmed the vehicle had been “removed and recycled.”
“Somebody built it and put it together … I wanted to fix it – paint it, freshen it up,” Maria sighed.
The matriarch shook her head when asked if she would try to find a replacement vehicle for the makeshift memorial.
“It was his car,” she said. “It wouldn’t have that [same] meaning.”
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