The Other Side of the Driveway

A couple of months ago, while on their way to a tour of the campus of OCU, Hubby and Chick were in our Sportage at a stoplight. As they sat there, a man in a truck came thundering along behind her and slammed into them. Hubby said he never even hit his brakes.

Chick was driving so she was a little shaken up. And well she should have been.

He hit them so hard it literally pushed them into the middle of the intersection. The hatchback trunk door got shoved in and upward, crumpling the roof some. On the inside of the trunk area, the floorboard lifted up so that the spare tire could be stored underneath. The steel supports/frame there was zigzagged as a result of the hit.

There were even two perfectly round holes punched in the bumper from something on his truck. A couple of the body shops asked if we had had a reverse alert system or reflectors there because they were that size holes.

I have to say that I have always thought of our Kia Sportage as a 'lightweight' vehicle. It's a mini-SUV type thing but it's made to appeal to older teens and 20-somethings in my opinion so it has the look of an SUV but not necessarily the durability. It always struck me as more of a sporty vehicle.

So I was truly impressed with the way it took this hit. From the back seat forward, on the inside, you couldn't really tell that anything had happened except for the splattering from the Big Gulps they had picked up (and not yet finished).

When he hit them, the tail light brackets broke so the WORKING tail lights dangled from a lone wire. I managed to find some blue duct tape and we taped those up into their sockets until we could get it taken care of.

So, as you can imagine, the best part of all of this was that the man who hit them was uninsured at the time.

However, he turned out to be a stand-up guy. He stayed in contact with us as we got estimates from several body shops. Insurance companies would have totalled the vehicle though. And eventually, Hubby offered him a 'settlement' price.

Which he took. And his check cleared in time for us buy a certain red truck with it. Hubby had done quite a bit of research into vehicles and had come to the conclusion though that what we preferred for the Chick, and eventually Dude, to be driving probably needed to be fuel efficient - unlike the Sportage really - (and it probably wouldn't hurt if all five of us could fit if we needed to) so the truck wasn't quite what we needed for her.  Plus it was a stick and she just wasn't very confident on a stick.

So the day after buying the truck we went to check out another find. And purchased it as well.

It was listed at a little more than Hubby's research said it should be and he accepted nothing more than that. So they figured out a way -- although it didn't take them nearly so long as the other. I liked that dealership quite a bit actually and would probably go back before dealing with the other again.

One of the body shops had offered to buy the Sportage as it was for $1000 so we had a back-up plan for it even with the back end crunched in if the dealership didn't want to deal with it. But they were willing and gave us quite a bit more so we were good.

So in one Labor Day weekend, we traded two old-to-us vehicles (one that was 9 years old with no a/c and one that 6 years old and had it's back end destroyed) for two new-to-us vehicles that now perfectly fit our needs. And it shouldn't even hurt the budget too much.

That's a good holiday, if you ask me.

(But I don't plan on doing that again for at least 8 or 9 years either.)

Another blessing -- the $100 parking decal for UCO peeled right off and stuck to the new car with no fuss at all! Definitely can't complain.