I was riding up the 405 freeway yesterday when I heard a loud “BANG!” Someone had hit my brand new (to me), mint condition, Galvanic Gold, hyper-rare 2021 BMW i3S. I turned to see a motorcyclist splitting lanes ahead, wobbling from the impact. He continued riding; it was a hit and run. I drove to work, stepped out of the car, and surveyed the damage. “SON OF A BITCH!”
It was a scratch. Not a huge scratch, but a scratch. A white line on my mirror, and I was livid! Mostly because this biker had hit my car (possibly on purpose, since he was splitting lanes, and possibly punishing those who were maybe a bit off to the left) and just rode off with not a care in the world. That’s just unacceptable! It’s also possible it was an accident; either way, just stop if you hit someone else’s car — not cool.
Anyway, here’s the baby scratch on my mirror:
The impact had been loud, so I was surprised the damage was so minor. Luckily, though, it wasn’t on the mirror housing’s gloss black section, which is painted, but instead on that coarse black plastic section, which appears to be injection molded and black all the way through.
This is actually a great design choice by BMW, because it means you can bang that mirror on a parking garage entry-ticket machine and, while you’ll sustain a scratch, you won’t be able to tell because that scratch’s valley will be the same color as the rest of that part of the mirror. I know this because look at how my mirror looks now:
Looks pretty much all fixed! If you look closely, you can see some roughness from the motorcycle incident on the right half of this image:
But for the most part, it’s repaired, and I’m happy with how the car looks overall. But it got me thinking: First, if a little scratch like this has me all concerned, I need to get XPEL PPF as soon as possible. And second, when is this “phase” going to go away? Like, surely not every scratch is going to bum me out forever, right?
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My brother just bought a yellow Audi S3 recently, and he’s going through the same issue. He got a rock chip the other week, and it bummed him out. I used to have the same worry with my brother’s 1966 Ford Mustang and my 1993 Jeep Grand Cherokee “Holy Grail.” They were all just so nice that adding even a scratch to them could ruin your afternoon. Surely you, dear readers, can relate? When will I be released from this prison?
Anyway, my partner, Elise (that’s not her real name), suggests that I keep my 2014 i3 and use that as my errands car. I won’t care if someone hits its mirror or if a rock chips its hood — it’s older, it has higher mileage, and it’s not in mint condition. But does it make sense to have two i3s? Does it matter if it makes sense?
Maybe it doesn’t matter if it makes sense, and I should just own the cars I like, and when I get tired of one, I get rid of it. Maybe I’ll get tired of having two i3s, or maybe I’ll remain in this drunken-love state in which I see the i3 as an engineering masterpiece the likes of which we may never see again. Who knows? All I know is: I may be holding onto that gray i3 for my daily commuting — at least for a while.
Not driving an i3 in the city because you’re afraid of damage is like not taking a Jeep offroad for the same reasons.
I have a Pontiac G8 GT and for me it’s never. It’s my “fun car” but I know I’m one bad moment from having a hard time repairing/replacing many body parts. PDR is pretty good though, so I stress less about door dings. My poor truck has had 3 or 4 hail claims since I bought it new in 2016 and you’d never know it.
The first one eats tires, but it’s special because it’s your first. The new one is the holy grail and too nice to risk for daily driving on LA streets.
Clearly, you need a third i3 for typical LA driving.
Now, with the first three spoken for, you’re going to need a fourth i3 for parts. Of course, you’ll hit a point where you need the same part in both cars, so you might as well start shopping for number five, too.
It is liberating to let this kind of thing go. The only new car I’ve ever had is my 1993 Sentra SE-R. For a couple of years, sure, I’d wince at door dings and scratches and so on. But when you use a car as a normal car, those things happen. Then once there are a certain number of them, you let them go and you are freed from another source of worry and you can just enjoy your car. My 911 has a 10-foot paint job from the 90s that looks bad when you get close enough, but it’s a great color and has nothing to do with the silly fun I have with the car. Oh, another scratch? Big whoop. Maybe I’ll play with graphics. My Fiat came out of a body-and-paint restoration last year and when I start driving it I’m sure I’ll worry about the paint – but enjoying it comes first. I’ve let it go before and I’ll do it again.
David caring how his car looks is so wildly alien to me
It’s like I don’t even know him anymore….
I get the frustration. But the i3 is such a good city car, it feels so wrong to restrict it to part time duty. But with a fleet as large as David’s, they are all part time duty.
As someone who cares about their vehicle, you’ll never get over it. And SoCal is a heavy-traffic area where shit happens. That said, does the holy grail i3 deserve to be a garage queen that only gets out on the weekends? If so, you’ve gotta keep the grey one as a daily. I lean a little more to driving the vehicle you really enjoy. If something does happen to it, you fix it up.
I had a minor mirror scratch (my fault, parking garage pillar) that also made a huge noise. I assumed they do some kind of design magic to loudly alert anyone scraping their mirror.
Your girlfriend is encouraging your car hording? She is ok with you stacking tires in her garage for years? Dang, David. I think you have found your soul mate.
In two months when my daughter starts college, I’m going to start commuting in her 2016 Mini. I bought it a year ago with a few scratches and a small bit of paint missing from the driver door, so I won’t feel bad beating the shit out of that car.
In the meantime, although it’s not the sexiest color, driving an Oxford White Ford makes paint matching a walk in the park.
I came out to my bike the other day in the Costco parking lot , I was buying a few bags of coffee, and the right side mirror was folded. Maybe hit by a human armed with a shopping cart.
I have two motorbikes and a smallish car solely for me to use, all plated and insured ready to go, economics says this is stupid, so what? (-;
DT has the same problem I do with computers…lots of cars/computers, each with a specific use, but may be going SLIGHTLY too far…SLIGHTLY…
All bikers are douchebags; no exceptions. With the exception of Mercedes, probably.
Ouch. While I have definitely seen and met quite a few riders who merit your characterization over my 24 years of motorcycle riding, I’ve also met quite a lot who specifically don’t. Maybe it’s a regional thing?
David, I generally like your writing, and MOST of your topics, especially about engineering, are interesting, but you do a lot of worrying and hand-wringing articles about, basically, bullsh*t. It’s a frigging scratch. Grow a pair, move on, focus outside yourself, and write more articles about suspensions or something.
Do you want a refund?
Nope, just a bit less self-indulgence.
So he’s moved, got a gf, started a company (not sure if you heard about it), is writing about the anxiety a lot of us feel when driving new and/or rare vehicles, shared all of it, and your advice is a crass “grow a pair”? So he should write about a Macpherson strut instead because you’d rather read his writing about it than what’s on Wikipedia? To be fair, his writing is excellent but I’m not certain about the additive value to this website such an article would add.
The Autopian is one of the best consumer-focused automotive websites that I read, with a good variety of topics an voices.
But lately, the number of articles about the authors’ personal “trials and tribulations” about really minor stuff is getting a bit tiresome, IMHO, and detracts from the quality of the site.
And BTW, if anybody feels actual “…anxiety…when driving new and/or rare vehicles…”, go to your local homeless shelter, hospital, or school for the developmentally disabled, where you’ll see people who have real problems to be anxious about.
A car nut and wrench owning a pair of I3s? David is descending into madness. Hopefully should make for some good articles.
I’m going to buy two Corollas.
That way I can park and preserve a Corolla while I put miles on the other Corolla. Than when I wear out the driving Corolla, I’ll still have a like-new worthless old Corolla!
Understood completely, I absolutely Hulk out when I see a scratch or ding on a new ride, even if it’s an older car. The first scratch doesn’t lessen the pain of the second, third etc to me. Get the film on it ASAP. I use a similar film on my car and have had a couple instances of a scratch that just wipes off because it was only in the film- it’s definitely a “serenity now” moment when the film does its job and you can just rub out the scratch.
Someone randomly keyed my dad’s definitely non-mint corolla for no reason. Right on the top half of the driver’s side door. And another time they broke the rear passenger window. It doesn’t matter if it’s mint or not, people are stupid jerks. If I were you I would put on that XPEL stuff and just use it. It wouldn’t matter what car you were driving, the guy probably would have hit your mirror in any of them, it just happened to be your “mint” i3.
You terribly misunderstand the purpose of a ‘city car.’
This thing was born to suffer a lifetime of bumps and scrapes. If you don’t have a new pair of marks on the bumper from someone else’s license plate screws then you’re doing it wrong.
Everyone judges people who don’t drive their favourite cars until they buy their own Holy Grail. It’s just how it is.
Maybe use the old one until it needs new tyres, that’ll give you a few weeks to get the PPF on the new one. Maybe.
1. Drive it and sell the first one. You’re in LA, not BFE with 2 cars driving through in a week.
2. “Elise” is now “my partner.” That’s wild. And nobody so far had picked up on that. Jerks, the lot of them.
We are not talking about Lotus Elise? Actual human being?
Kudos, may their wrenching be plentiful and oily. Pun intended.
Her real name is Europa. She is a hunchback.
he’s been calling her his girlfriend for a month or more?
Yes, and today she became “my partner.” He’s escalating! At this rate he’ll know her first name any day now!
‘Elise’ is clearly a codename, but we can glean from it that she’s probably: small, British, and fun on a twisty B-road.
You’ve made your sacrifice to the gods of imperfection. Be at peace, and pray they don’t look unkindly on your repair.
Next time, leave them an offering.
If you are that nervous get full coverage agreed replacement value with zero deductible on the new one and sell the old one.
Fully loaded but the seats are not electric?
Nary an i3 had electric seats.
That’s pretty sick honestly.
I genuinely do not understand the appeal of powered seats. They add cost and weight and move at a snails pace when you actually make any adjustment.
Alternatively manual adjustments on seats are lighter, less costly and move quite quickly making adjustments.
I can see the benefit of power seat adjustments though only if I were a paraphalegic or otherwise bodily impaired/abled enough that seat adjustments would be too difficult but I wasn’t physically impaired / able enough that I could still drive