You know how fashionable it is to say we live in a car world where no one repairs stuff? Well, it’s just not true, and today I met a bloke who proves it.
He’s Gerry Pennell, one of a network of quiet neighbourhood geniuses with the skills and wit to tackle jobs others can’t. He was finishing an Audi A3, 15 years old but healthy, whose owner had backed it into the tray of a truck, awkwardly mangling its tailgate and surrounding surfaces.
The insurers wanted to write it off but the owner liked the car so Gerry (who’s equally adept at panels, paint and mechanicals) sourced a tailgate on eBay, cleverly split the outer surfaces to reshape them before uniting them again, repainting the tailgate and squaring everything up.
Within a day or two, the car was fit again for not much more than the owner’s insurance excess. Best sight of all was the quiet smile across Gerry’s chops that made it clear he doesn’t just do this stuff for the money.
Tuesday
As the population of electric cars increases, I’m seeing driving styles radically changing.
On one hand, you have petrol-powered traditionalists, impatient and barely conscious of or concerned by the rate at which they consume energy. On the other, you have the I’ve-got-religion EV brigade, who slipstream furniture trucks on motorways (eyes clamped on their ‘miles to go’ readouts) and who would rather die than be caught accelerating up a hill.
Today’s drivers are at liberty to choose from widely disparate cars and driving styles to suit their temperaments, but at some time in the future the two styles will have to get much closer. Some drivers are going to have to change even more than their cars.
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Yep, me also, there are articles I'd like to reply to, but can't.
Sorry to write this on Steves article as its nothing to do with his fine work. But, what is going on with the Autocar web site? Comments disapeared for days. I thought you were working on getting rid of the spam maybe, but i see that failed.
We need to register to write comments, but it now seems we need to register again to see half the site? Why?
And yet day to day the site is filled with EV news. Many of us are not that interested in them yet, and would welcome more ICE articles, but less E-Bikes, E scooters, E aircraft, etc. Afterall we can still buy ICE for the next 8 years, longer if we want a hybrid. And then drive them for the rest of their lives. I might even want an EV before 2050, but i am all for enjoying ICE, manual boxes etc as long as we can
An article on the site its self telling us what you are doing wouldnt be a bad idea.........