This guy has always been one to pull facts out of his arse. As a mutual friend put it, "He seems to have found a way of skipping the evidence-gathering stage of enquiry and leaping straight to the conclusions." It's total BS but the chances of changing his mind are zero.

Incidentally, he's not a complete idiot and I've known him for a long time; we've been friends since school. But he does have a massive blind-spot about this kind of thing because, basically, he's in love with his car.