You know what’s sad?
When something happens to your car.
I really hate that. A twit Someone on Twitter was teasing me recently for admitting that I get very emotional at the sight wrecked car. I can’t help it. It cuts me. It cuts me deep.
Fittingly, I work at a car dealership where the inventory is full of shiny, blemish-free new cars, so I’m rarely faced with a mangled up looking car.
Sometimes when an Infiniti shows up on a tow-truck, tires deflated, fender ripped off, front grille smashed in, I am horrified. I’ve even been known to walk back to service and say, “What happened?!” as if it were an injured person.
Usually no one back in Service cares as much as I do. They look at me and say, “An accident?”
I know it was in an accident. But I need to know what happened. Why? Why was this car in an accident? What caused it? Who let this happen to a precious Infiniti?
I don’t know. Maybe it’s weird. It’s how I am.
My dad, on the other hand, has a part time gig selling parts on Ebay for a local junkyard. He’s always telling me about all the cars that come in, where he sent I30 seats, who ordered the tail-lights of a J30, the guy that needs a door panel for a QX4.
We’re at each end of the cycle: he’s at the junkyard where the cars come in at the end of their lives before they get recycled and reincarnated, coming through my showroom in their new lives. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
It turns out, I’m not the only one who sees accident damage on a car as an “injury.”
Whoever owned this old Mitsubishi thought so too.
Now it’s important to point out that this doesn’t look like an “injury” caused by an accident.
I’m really not sure what caused the laceration in this car’s front bumper. But it looks painful.
Thank goodness its owner took great care to treat the wound.
That’s called TLC.
That’s also called “art school student.”
At least someone understands me.
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Over the years I have thought that people who build cars, especially the very high end cars like you sell, take a great deal of pride in what they make. In turn they send them to us, and here I am projecting my own thoughts, hoping they will serve us well for many years. I know that is how I would feel if I were building the motor for a new 911 Porsche, or putting the seats in it. In the the old days the men who assembled Porsches would sign them in a location that would only be found years later, just like a work of art. They were proud of what they did. So, like you, when I see one all torn up, I kind of feel sorry for the car and the people who made it. Certainly no different than the saddened guitar maker felt when Peter Townsend would beat the daylights out of the maker’s guitar. They are only objects of course, but somewhere along the way they become our buddies, they took us places we would never see, and most of the time brought us home. Anyway, enjoy the ride, and Happy Motoring!
Scratches… ok. Dents? Unacceptable. I always like to go by my “drive by” rule. If you don’t see any damage as it drives by then its not really damage and good for you for turning heads. lol