Cube, sorry to hear that someone decided to share their vileness with your car.
Some examples of why I don't own a car:
1. Was in my brothers car and an old geezer next to him literally kicked open his own door against my brothers door. Then proceed to bang it several more times as he struggled to get out. My brother's car was parked exactly center of parking spot.
When my brother yelled at the guy he just said "sorry" and walked into the store. My brother didn't even get the dents taken out of his 6 month car.
2. Owned a beautiful black Chevy Nova Super Sport back in 71 and some cut all 4 of my tires.
3. Last car, someone laid a burning cigarette on a plastic portion of my hood.
A car is not only a big expense but it becomes personal quickly. And even if you catch the culprit, it usually gets really ugly and threatening for a long time.
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When we recover one we seach the area for a stolen car, typically Chrysler products.
What is it about Chrysler products that makes them so easy to steal? I remember one year the Dodge Intrepid made the top (or near top) of the stolen lists. Now it's not a bad car (I have one, and have been happy with it) but it's not a car like, say, an Accord or Camry where there are tons of them on the street, and a massive black market for parts for them.
Now with my base model, all you have to do is break into is, smash the plastic on the steering column, play with the right wires, and you're off. But the uplevel models have a computer chip in the key, so it theoretically can't be hotwired. At least, not the 2000 models. Maybe it got de-contented in later years?
Didn't we have a similar discussion about CFB's new Lexus and a parking lot door ding ?
Sometimes it just may not be worth it to own a nice new car. That 8 year old beauty that runs just fine will cause you much less anguish and save you much money.
I still remember the first scrape that got put on my 2000 Intrepid. It was painful and irritating, but it was also my own fault, which may have helped a bit with dealing with it. I was able to force myself to not take it personally, remind myself that it's just a car, and I didn't bother to get it fixed.
At least, with keeping that first ding, it made it much less painful as the car acquired later ones!
Now one thing that WAS a bit more personal, was a pair of Dodge Darts that I had repainted. That was more painful because I had put a lot of time and effort into fixing those cars up, and my neighbor helped me paint them. The first was a 1969 Dodge Dart GT I had in college. Someone gave its new painjob its first ding in the parking lot at school. The second was a 1968 Dodge Dart 270, that got dinged here at work.
One thing that was really annoying about that '68, is that before I painted, people tended to avoid it like the plague. It was primer-black, and had an evil, hulking look to it. Kinda like "The Car", "Christine", the truck from "Duel", and that '71 Charger from "Wheels of Terror" all rolled into one. After I repainted it its original color, antique white, it's almost like people came out of the woodwork to run into it, scare me with a near-miss, etc.
1.* Was in my brothers car and an old geezer next to him literally kicked open his own door against my brothers door. Then proceed to bang it several more times as he struggled to get out.* My brother's car was parked exactly center of parking spot. When my brother yelled at the guy he just said "sorry" and walked into the store.* My brother didn't even get the dents taken out of his 6 month car.
That's fine. You simply call in a vehicle accident report against the other driver. If the other driver refuses to exchange insurance information and drives away, you add "leaving the scene of an accident" to the report. If the police decline to take a report because the accident occurred in a parking lot while the vehicles were not moving, you can file a criminal complaint against the driver for destruction of private property.
Yes, this sounds a little over-reactive. But dents cost hundreds of dollars to remove from car doors. Why should I pay for them? The only way that another driver will learn not to do what the old geezer in your brother's case did is to make it expensive for them -- not you.
Then again, the easiest way to avoid the foregoing is to park far away from other cars. That way, you protect your car and get a little exercise.
It would be interesting if you could equip a car with a couple of pinhole cameras (fisheye lens) that record external footage and store it to a removable hard drive like a convenience store. I've heard of car alarm systems that come with an internal camera that record when the alarm is disabled/bypassed to catch car thieves. I don't know why a similar system couldn't be used on an expensive car to record casual damage in parking lots.
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He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it . . . It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. -- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
MasterBlaster,
When/if I finally do get a car it will probably be a H3 about 2-3 years old and I will equip it with every device know to man.
OAP, you might want to get something a little more substantial than an H3. I saw one a few months ago that had rear-ended a Plymouth Voyager minivan, and the H3 definitely came out the loser in that battle!
Andre--The only thing I can think of is most of the Chryslers don't have a chip. I don't know just guessing. The last one we had stolen was a brand new 2006 1/2 ton pick-up. The method for all of them is pretty much as you describe smash the steering column and start the car.
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You don't want to work. You want to live like a king, but the big bad world don't owe you a thing. Get over it--The Eagles
It's really sad that, in this day and age that it's still that easy to steal a car. I mean, I first learned that method of smashing the steering column plastic and wiring it up from when Ahh-nold did it to a 1979 or so Caprice station wagon some 20 years ago in "The Terminator"!
One of my friends recently bought a 2006 Nissan Xterra, and even in that car, all you have to do is smash the column. Well, in his case, the key is back on the dashboard, where they used to put it on cars, so it's probably even easier to get up under it to reach the wires. No chip either. Although he did get a security package for it, which I think immobilizes it if you try to hotwire it.
That totally sucks cube_rat.* None of my cars are worth much, but my Chevelle is worth a helluva lot to me.* * To think some gutless wonder has the sack to deface my ride makes me seethe.
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Diggin' my way to financial freedom, one buck-at-a-time
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He had one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it . . . It faced, or seemed to face, the whole external world for an instant and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. -- The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Quote:
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I swear though, neither of mine ever looked that bad as that '67! 
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