Marc's X7, C3 Aircross, Rants, Raves & Everything Else

[GiveMeABreak]

Went out last Wednesday to get the weekly shop and went to a few places where some idiot decided it would be a good idea to try and park front end first into a parking bay next to me and in the process drove into my rear wheel and continued to scrape all along the rear door

We never saw who it was as I only noticed it at the next stop at the farm shop sometime later as I was loading a sack of spuds via the rear door. To say I went ballistic is an understatement and suspect it was done at Aldi. Somebody obviously incompetent at bay parking and who legged it quite quickly once they realised what they had done as we were not in there very long and there was nobody else parked on this side when I returned.

I know this because on the other side of the car there was a not so spritely chap in his 80s or 90s by the looks of him packing his shopping into his boot, with his trolley leaning against my other rear wing! Thankfully those Aldi trolleys have rubber / plastic corner guards on them so there was no marks - but I gave him the evils and firmly moved his trolley away.

So went to Morrisons car wash (which I never do as I hate those roller washers) and paid £8 for a useless wash just to see the damage more clearly. Despite the daylight robbery of the car wash, it left huge areas unwashed and had I not been in a foul mood, would of gone back and created a storm. As it was I just wanted to get back home at this point.

Here are some pics of the damage, clicking on the images will provide a much larger view.

On the way home I called into an auto repair shop and the bloke told me he wouldn't touch the alloy - it would need a new one and a fair bit for the paint repairs.

I left there none too impressed and got home to start the insurance process rolling.

As these are Diamond Cut alloys, they need re-milling on a special lathe, and as there are multiple scratches and a chunk scraped off on one edge, I just hope that it has made a huge score in the other person's vehicle as karma.

So a new Alloy is about £220 so that's on 7-10 day back order with the insurance company, so the car is booked in a week Wednesday, otherwise it would of been this week.

The scratches are quite deep and the rear door goes into a raised shape seen in the second picture, so this has scuffed the raised area badly. They are quite deep scratches, so I guess they hit the wheel, scraped along as they were levelling out and continued all the way down the door.

I'm just so done with these narrow car park bays and can see why people deliberately park down the centre line taking up 2 spaces - they want space and to protect their cars!

Kids running riot, mothers with chieftain-sized pushchairs, people not fit to drive and psychotic trolleys have made me decide to avoid them.

I think I may equip the Chili Hornet with some suitable new upgrades when she's back from the repair shop:

My friends tend to shop in the evenings and so I think we may give this a go where there's less going on and more room.

[Hell Razor5543]

You have my sympathies, Marc. Might it be worth calling back into Aldi to see if they have cameras monitoring the car park, to see if they can get you the registration number of the culprit? If they can, then the git may find their insurance company is not happy with them, and the Police might also have a word with them for leaving the scene of an accident.

I tend to do my shopping very early in the morning; I get to the supermarket at 07:00, and the car park is usually empty.

[mickthemaverick]

That is a real pain Marc, there is nothing worse than the hit and run driver!! Having to claim is even worse as you are likely to suffer premium wise in the end regardless of blame!!

I always go shopping at 11.30pm or 5.30am mainly to avoid crowds for covid and ease of parking, but also to gain access to freshly stocked shelves and easy no queue checkouts.

Of course driving an older car is also a benefit as both of mine do fit the parking spaces better and others tend to park away from them, in the mistaken belief that I must be a careless thoughtless idiot who can't afford a proper car!!

[Hell Razor5543]

I must be a careless thoughtless idiot who can't afford a proper car!!

A friend of Mum's came up with a really clever idea for driving through London. She had a tatty car, and she got a friendly mechanic to 'stove in' the front a bit (making sure there was nothing mechanically wrong with the vehicle). Because of this NO London bus or taxi pulled out in front of her. The downside was that when the car went in for the MoT the examiners doubted it was worth even testing the car.

[GiveMeABreak]

Yes thanks chaps, it's a right pain in the tiddlies.

No CCTV there I'm afraid, so will be a claim. Mind you my NCD is protected, and haven't claimed a bean for donkeys, so it will go down as a fault claim as they can't reclaim costs, so I'll expect my premium to rise slightly.

[bobins]

My brother-in-law works at one of the supermarkets and he came back to his car once to find the side totally stoved in. This wasn't a parking bump, more of an out of control crash. Needless to say, the culprit was long gone, no one saw anything, and no CCTV. The car was very nearly a write-off. My advice to him was to always park in one of the quieter corners of the car park and not where there's a high turnover of shoppers who aren't concentrating on parking and driving their cars.
Might be worth getting one of the dashcams that have a bit of internal battery reserve and will record for 10 seconds or so if the car is hit whilst they're stationary and the engine is off. My Nextbase dashcam will do this.

[GiveMeABreak]

I didn’t bother (typical) fitting a rear camera on this model as I’m back to a tailgate Robin, and also because I needed a decent small front camera due to the long camera / sensor pack on the inside of the windscreen.

It would mean a second camera separate to the front, and additional wiring trickery, but I may just go for it now for this reason. The issue is whether it would’ve been strong enough of a bump to trigger the camera activation, given that it was just a scrape along the side. But it may have given me some indication if it did go off, of the culprit driving away.

I’ll have to do some research

[Paul-R]

I'm just so done with these narrow car park bays and can see why people deliberately park down the centre line taking up 2 spaces - they want space and to protect their cars!

You would approve of this then.

When we were down in France this summer I discovered that our local Carrefour hypermarket had repainted their car park leaving extra space between cars. For each car there was the "normal" width between two white lines and then another white line about a foot away from these filled in with diagonal hatching giving you just that extra bit of room for opening car doors. Rather than just giving everyone extra wide spaces just by themselves the ordinary width space encourages proper parking centrally. It can't be cheap doing all that painting but it's well worth it.

Sadly, no photos. The satellite view on Google, Bing and Michelin all show the old parking layout (Google's is dated 2021 so the change was fairly recent) and I've just discovered that absolutely nothing later than September 14th has been recorded on the dashcam!

[GiveMeABreak]

I don't agree with it Paul, but I can see why people do it. What I mostly object to is overtly small bays Paul - just to cram more cars in and income no doubt. Our Aldi has a shared car park with another store - it was like that before they moved in and they are just very small bays. Compared with the new Lidl store just built on its own ground with a large car park, the bays are at least a third to a quarter wider.

I knew this before and often parked over the road in the space where the carpet / furniture shops are (the ones that never have any customers in) and preferred wheeling the trolley aver the road, just to have the extra space.

But more than that - idiots that don't know the dimensions of their vehicles and would rather charge into a space not suitable for their vehicles rather than park elsewhere.

Some interesting info from the AA:

https://www.theaa.com/breakdown-cover/a ... space-size

[Paul-R]

Sorry, I meant you would approve of the car parking bays that I found in the Carrefour.

[GiveMeABreak]

Indeed I probably would - I get what you meant now. It's not as if my Aircross is that big - and that's what is annoying Paul.

[myglaren]

It is sometimes a job to get in and out of my Civic in car parks - hardly a large car.

[GiveMeABreak]

I thought I may as well have a look at the dash camera footage for the day - not that I was expecting anything, but amazingly I have got the registration of the vehicle that was parked on my right as I entered the parking bay. So looking again at the damage, it's perfectly plausible that they caused the damage by reversing out of the bay (which is right next to the shop entrance, so busy with people and trolleys), so they may of been concentrating behind and not looking at the car when trying to back out.

It was also a silver Peugeot, which would figure why there is no visible paint on the scratches or alloy. However there is no footage of course of anything actually happening - pure speculation, so I'm wondering if it's even worth mentioning to the insurance company as all I have is the reg. number of a vehicle that was parked on my right whilst I was in Aldi and the car missing when we left. Hardly conclusive, so may just not bother to mention it as I can't see them tracking them down and checking to see if there is any of my red paint on their car!

[mickthemaverick]

As you have the number Marc, might it be worth a reconnaisance to the Aldi car park at the same day and time as the driver may be a creature of habit. You just may spot them and have a look yourself. A photo of their front wing with number plate should be sufficient!!

[GiveMeABreak]

Knowing my luck I shall probably get arrested for stalking!