17 and mobile

I had a closer look at it last night, the Leaf. Obviously needs new wing and bumper. The headlight and indicator units are bent a bit to the left, due to cracks in the plastic mounts they sit on. Got me wondering if the bodyshop will be able to get just the mountings, or will need to buy headlamp and indicator untis too. Hopefully the former. The bonnet is slightly bent up wards and to the left, I expect that cen be reset straight.The undertray below the engine bay (I know, there is no engine) is bent but might be good to refit. I can clearly see there is no damage to the structural steel in that area, which is good. The DRL is missing in action so will need to be replaced.  No electrical wires damaged or fluid reservoirs (the washer reservoir is under the headlight behind the bit of damaged bumper, quite low down.  The only electrical damage is obviously the supply to the now absent DRL.  I'm wondering if, because it's an EV, it has to go to a bodyshop specially equipped and trained to deal with high voltage systems.  I expect so.  And I wonder how much that pushes up the repair price.  The car starts and drives without any error messages on the dash.

Eminently repairable, but to what standard? Some bodyshops will straighten up the bonnet, others (manufacturer-approved) will fit a new one...

800 quid parts, 300 paint and 500 labour is my wild guess!

So as long as the damage is less than say £5k (including providing a courtesy car) then it will probably be fixed. But you never know what a glancing blow like that does to a car underneath.

I had a similar accident in a Passat many years ago. Visible damage was a crease to the bonnet, a bent bit on the front of the left wing, misaligned headlight and bumper. But the front crash structure was also out of shape. It was touch and go if they would fix it. It was an engine out job to fix it.

Best of luck with the insurer.

The amount paid to the repairer won’t be the insurer’s only cost, although I’d expect the per-claim overheads to be in the hundreds rather than thousands. Perhaps there’s also a recognition that damage beyond a certain severity can’t be repaired to the point where the car is exactly as good as before and replacement becomes the only viable option even if it’s superficially more expensive.

I don’t think a low-speed crunch like this should come anywhere near that point, though.

A chance conversation this week — actually a conversation carefully planned and much looked forward to, just not with any idea it would go this way — and the answer to our ‘what learner car?’ question just may be...

...an Aygo. 😳

A friend’s mother — a friend in her own right — is retiring from driving after a specific medical diagnosis that precludes it with immediate effect. This leaves her well-cared for 2010/59 Blue Edition Aygo in need of rehoming. And a bit of online research suggests it may work for us.

Tall drivers (and not just those who call themselves ‘tall’ because they’re ‘six foot’) report adequate head and foot room in the manual Aygo.

I rather like it as a piece of design. For no reason but novelty, I’m drawn to the single, pantographic windscreen wiper. But there's a more practical reason, which is that a 3.5m long car could fit beside the i3 on our drive with only minimal modification to the layout, some of which we did last Thursday. We could accommodate it as a third car without having to park a car outside the living room window — which MrsB1 understandably resisted. It wouldn’t even require any driveway shuffling according to which car wanted to go out; any could come or go at any time.

I’m going to do some more work on this.

Until someone comes along and starts banging on about it not being the car you thought you bought. It's not a real Toyota, it's a rebadged blah blah blah. Of course that will never happen here haha

I'm starting to feel that way about 'her' sitty uppy electric car. Still not a fan of SUV styling, can't argue with the running costs of an EV though against my petrol car and, within normal speeds, it can go when I want it to. Petrol is getting stupid expensive compared with pre-Covid times.