Rest in peace

You can’t save them all. Take this nearly new Fiat 500. The owner ran off the road into a ditch, augured the nose in, and flipped the car end over end, landing on it’s roof. The air bags didn’t deploy and the owner walked away with just a few bruises. I’m very glad the owner wasn’t injured. A car can be replaced but a life cannot.

This car has actually been sitting at the shop for a while. It didn’t take much looking at the car to realize that the car was probably totaled. Before I crawled out onto that limb and declared the car totaled, I wanted  to wait for the official word from the insurance adjuster. It would be embarrassing to write that the car was totaled only to find out later we were going to fix it.

Well, we know now because a roll-back showed up this week and hauled it away. It’s too bad too. It’s a cute little car and I would have liked to have fixed it. The problem was that the only undamaged panels on the car were the rear hatch and rear bumper. Every other body panel would have to be replaced. Compounding the problem was the fact the car landed upside down and all the oil drained out of the engine. If the engine were still running while it were upside down … you could write that off as well.

It’s always a shame to see such a nice car totaled but it is what it is. It’s probably best for the owner that it was totaled … but I relish a good challenge, and this would have been one.

FIAT actually stands for Fabbrica Italiana Automobili do Torino, or in English, Italian Automotive factory of Turin. But in this case I think it stands for, Figured … It Actually Totaled.