An Unlucky Week

Ten Ninety · April 12, 2017

It has not been a great week for the GS.

First, I hit a pheasant doing 45mph (the car's speed, not the bird's) and although the plastic bumper wasn't damaged the poor creature did knock a front foglamp out of its mounting. I was actually able to fix this myself by removing the undertray to gain access. I fully expected something costly and fragile to have snapped off, but the lamp unit just clipped straight back in. Impressively resilient design, for once.

Second, I acquired a lovely ding from some **** opening their door into mine with such force that it left a chunk of their white paint behind not once, but twice. There are two distinct marks where they've hit the panel hard enough to dent it. This kind of damage has happened to every car I've ever owned, usually in the first few months of ownership. I guess I was fortunate to have been able to enjoy nearly a year of perfect paintwork this time.

Third, an oncoming Peugeot driver performed one of their signature swerves, taking them onto the verge on their side of the road and kicking up a massive stone. The result for my windscreen wasn't pretty, but then a combination of a small hole and a huge crack rarely is. To make matters worse, Autoglass fitted a new screen only to discover - after they'd glued it in - that it was for a LHD GS, meaning the scuttle tray couldn't then be re-attached because the bottom of the glass (for no perceivable reason) is shaped differently to RHD. I now have some attractive sticky tape in place of the scuttle. Fingers crossed for their second attempt, next week. To be fair to the fitter, it was far from obvious that it was wrong so if you're having a new windscreen fitted for a Mk4 GS, I'd strongly recommend checking yourself that they've got the right glass.

Of course, there are far, far worse things that could have happened (just ask the pheasant) so I can't really complain too much. It's just funny how these things come in threes.