Collision Course with Destiny

Published November 19th, 2007

As I was nearing the end of my auto lease (April ‘08) and given that there are last-chance deals to be had on ‘07 models, I’ve been looking at cars. I finally settled in on going for fuel efficiency, since my drive to work is pretty brutal on that. My Mazda6 was not the best at city driving, especially LA city driving. I scheduled an appointment about a week in advance at the local Honda dealership, recommended by Costco and offering the Costco price on ‘07 Civic Hybrids. The whole week I was sure, given my typical luck, that something bad would happen to my Mazda6 and totally hose up my plans.

Sure enough, suddenly, my front passenger-side wheel started squeaking. Loudly. And not just during braking. Whatever the problem was, the wheel seemed sturdy and the quality of the drive wasn’t affected, and I really didn’t want to take it in to get fixed before I turned it in. I figured they’re gonna just look over the car and give me value they give me. They’ll figure out the problem later - hell it was still under warranty anyway.

If only that was all that happened.

Heading home from the girlfriend’s Friday night, a mere 12 hours away from turning the car in, I thought, “Yes! Made it! Car is pretty much fine, I was all worried for nothing, as usual….” - and then something happened.

I’m following a cop car in the right lane of a 3 lane street (3 on each side, pretty big street). He starts to slow down, not real hard but significantly, and I figure he’s either stopping in this lane or he’s going to make a right turn. So I signal and start to change lanes to my left. Suddenly, with no warning and without signaling or turning on any lights, the cop makes a U-turn right through my path. I hit the brakes, completely shocked, and just barely can’t stop in time. I tap the rear of the cop car with the front passenger corner of my bumper.

Great.

I pull over and get out to survey the damage, it looks like my bumper has popped out some. The cop walks up and apologizes and says that it was totally his fault. Well, that’s something at least. So I sat around as different cop cars show up to take reports, mark out the scene, etc. What. A. Pain. I was there for like an hour in the middle of the night talking to cops. Fun.

So now what? How bad is the damage? Will they notice when I turn the car in? Hard to tell at night….so I just wait ’til the next morning to see.

Turns out, my bumper is actually fine - it’s that the metal panel above it is dented in - making it look like the bumper is popped out. My dad tried to bend out or pound out the dent some, but not much luck. Finally I just pushed the bumper back where it belonged so that it looked normal - and it actually looked OK. The dent was in a spot where the body panel curves anyway, so really if you didn’t know it was there, you’d probably miss it. So we figured, what the hell, lets give it a shot.

Took it in, they didn’t look too closely over the car, gave me a price and I drove home in a new ‘07 Civic Hybrid.

All in all, coulda been worse. Of course, the Civic Hybrid doesn’t come in any normal colors, and all they had left was silver. So I’ve broken my streak of blue or red cars. Oh well!

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