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.
On the annoyance scale, Lane Splitters fall somewhere in between Jehovah’s Witnesses and chip bags that explode when you open them.
Totally legal in CA tho.
He didn’t say anything to the contrary.
Many legal things are annoying.
Hey is there some new directive or something that you have to mention to us that you have a “girlfriend” every article you write now? It’s getting kind of weird at this point.
It seems that David is feeling a bit charmed about being with her. Maybe he’s just enjoying it so much that he has to kick himself to ensure it’s not a dream.
I’m surprised that nobody else has mentioned this before…
There is a very straightforward solution to all of this “driving in LA” malarkey David. You’ll just have to convince ‘Elise’ that living on Mackinac Island is worth it so that your garage-queen i3s never sees a rock chip.
(In case you don’t know: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_car-free_islands)
keep both of them, and add another one to the stable, that way your fleet of I3’s matches MS’s fleet of smarts 🙂
Oh, he’d need five i3s to keep up with my
hoardcollection. 🙂Goal posts have just been moved 🙂
First one always hurts. There will be more and a car is meant to be used.
Why are you procrastinating on the PPF? For all my new cars, I bring them straight to the PPF installer before I drive them. There’s no point in PPF if you’re going to get it scratched up before installing.
Agreed! I’ve gotta get my ass in gear! (Though PPF would not have covered that part of the mirror).
There’s a story in my family about my great-grandfather, who after buying a brand new car, put a small scratch on the fender himself, so he wouldn’t worry about things happening to it. Cars are meant to be used.
I’m not sure you’re going to make it out here…
Ah, I remember my first brand new daily. Still have it actually, 170,000 miles and countless rock chips, door dings, acorn dents, scratches and clear coat swirls later. And I’d consider myself someone who’s reasonably cautious and takes above average care of my cars.
Here’s the thing… a daily driver is a tool. It gets shit done, and has the accompanying battle scars to prove, no matter how careful you are. Outside of spending absurd amounts of money to fix every little blemish, that’s just the way it is. If you want to keep a car nice, you make it a garage queen.
All that said, that’s not why you bought this car. You bought it with the specific intent of using it as a daily driver. Would you purposely spend $30K on a garage queen? My gut tells me no, based on what I’ve read from you. When you already own so many cars, keeping two of the same ones seems quite unnecessary and expensive. Cars cost you a lot of money whether you drive them all the time or just sit. Sell the old one and drive the new one. Eventually you’ll get over the blemishes.
It’s an incurable disease. Once you feel that way about a specific car, it never goes away. Even decades afterwards you still rue each and every blemish. That scuff will piss you off forever I’m sorry to tell you.
Very true. I bought my 2012 Smart new and I know where each and every blemish comes from. You either learn to live with it, fix it, or be upset forever. ♥
Wasn’t the plan to take the “holy grail” Jeep off road at some point? How are you avoiding dings and scratches doing that?
Just drive the car. It isn’t a Ferrari FXX. If you really care about keeping it looking a 10/10, I’m sure Galpin can direct you to a detailer or paint/body guy who can fix dings/scratches. Hell, its a used car, it likely came with scratches and dings already.
In the interest of saving money, I would tell you to sell the old one. Sooner or later, the “honeymoon” wears off.
I replaced a mirror cover on my Prius when it got hit by some ice flying out of a pickup bed not long after I got it, but that was a full on crack, not just a scratch. Cost me all of $65 for a painted replacement cover.
But factually, the interior plastic already has scratches from prior owners and there’s a few exterior marks, so I’d say–succumb to the inevitable and just do your best to preserve the fancy one.
On the other hand, if money isn’t too tight, keeping both could be fine, too. Given what a rare vehicle it is, that does make some sense. But it’s more “as a spare in case of catastrophe” than “preventing the slightest damage to the nicer one.”
Excellent….one step closer to the inevitable article “Help, I have 12 i3s and the city is threatening to tow them!” in 5 years time…..
“The Galpin management team complained to Beau about me!”
I have only ever driven seriously used cars. Only cars I’ve ever had with less than 100K miles all had only 5 digits in the odometer. So while body damage upsets me when it happens, it rapidly fades in to the background again unless it is significant.
So to answer your question, the fear will fade when there is enough general abuse to the vehicle that new scratches get lost in the total abuse.
Famous car hoarder who has owned multiple multiple XJ’s, two FC’s, and two Valiant Utes (I’m stretching on this one) at the same time wonders whether owning two of the same car model makes sense.
Question: Since you had the battery replaced in the OG i3, can you sell it for more than you paid for it?
Yeah I don’t get two of the same thing, that type of collecting never made sense to me. Plus there are so many cool cars to experience.
20+ years ago I owned a ’94 SHO and ’96 V8 Thunderbird. Both very clean, dent free but some paint blemishes. Moved back up to PA and bought a beater ’89 XJ Cherokee 4×4 for winter duty. Soon began driving it everywhere – ahh the liberation of the shitbox.
This stress is why I’m never painting a vehicle again. Driver quality > show winners
I got my 1972 Super Beetle painted 14 years ago. I was 17 and had tried my hand at bodywork prior to the repaint, which only cost $800. It’s a great 20 foot car, but up close you can see plenty of orange peel, some uneven filler, and some dents I just didn’t get all the way out. And I love it. The paint still shines up nice but I don’t care if it gets chipped or dinged or scratched, I can just get out and drive it and enjoy it.
I had my ’68 Olds on I-264 last week and I got pretty terrified when a dump truck ended up in front of me, so I made a quick move to get around it lest I be pelted with tiny rocks. The scratches do terrify me, but I am yet to install a TV in the garage, so I recognize that my Oldsmobile would get awfully lonely if it had to stay there by itself all day with nothing but a bunch of tools, extra parts, and occasional company from my Miata.
Don’t get me wrong, an Oldsmobile from Virginia is a tough customer. It doesn’t have the fragile psyche of a BMW from Los Angeles. If you’re not going to drive it every day, I hope you have a steady supply of Yoga videos and maybe some meditation exercises to keep it engaged when not driven. I don’t think it’s going to want to hang out with a Jeep. I know my Olds isn’t always thrilled to see a Miata parked next to it. You have to introduce the new car slowly so the old one doesn’t feel threatened by the intrusion on its territory.
So true – cars KNOW. On the drive to trade in my ’99 WJ Grand Cherokee it blew out a transmission seal in protest. Limped in on the last quart or so and parked it. The best problem is somebody elses.
So you’re one of the guys at whom they target Air Jordans.
As a motorcyclist I can assure you he/she didn’t do it on purpose. *Any* contact between your handlebar and anything more substantial than a broomstick can/will toss yer ass off in a heartbeat; a triple no-no if yer lane-splitting.
Now if he/she’d have smashed said mirror with a foot or cudgel or nicked it with a fairing or bag, perhaps. But tagging a car mirror with one’s handlebar – especially the side with the front brake – would be a dumb and dangerous way to teach a cage a lesson about lane control.
Keep ‘em both as long as you can afford and are able to park ‘em both. And, as mentioned, drive the crap out of them.
Came here to say this.
Dr Buford!
Nice to see you!
And good point; I should give them the benefit of the doubt on that. Though they definitely could have stopped.
With that said, he hit my car and didn’t stop, so it’s hard to say for sure they’re not the kind of person to do this kind of thing on purpose.
Idk how fast the guy was going, or how fast you were going, but you can’t just stop in the middle of the highway.
It was basically gridlock. This guy was uncool; hit and runs are uncool.
I love motorcycles…not a big fan of motorcyclists. And you’re right – hit and runs aren’t cool at *all*.
Which is why I run front and rear dash cams on all of my vehicles worth more than 10k even here in Mid(dle of fucking nowhere)land, MI. Some asshat backed into my daughter’s ultra-clean 2002 CRV without leaving a note (the one I brought to your Autopian meetup in Troy right before you moved) and we had him ID’d within 5 hours :).
I had a 96 Impala bought new. I didn’t drive it much to keep it nice. By the time I sold it (25yrs later @ 65k miles), it had rock chips, and had been hit once (in the garage). It still depreciated, still cost me license fees, still cost insurance money, still required new batteries & tires, and I didn’t really enjoy driving it.
I sold it and bought a used BMW convertible. I’ve got 103k miles on it (rate of accumulation has gone down since retirement) and a lot of stone chips. Maintenance has been a bit more expensive than leaving in the garage, but I’ve enjoyed driving it, (top down if possible). Cars want to be used, not parked. Enjoy the newer one and sell the old one.
While it really sucks to have your car get damaged, it’s a reality of using it on the road.
As you have written in an article on this site your old i3 is flat prone, and I’d be more nervous about having a sudden blowout that results in a serious crash than someone running into your i3s.
I got a cherry 94 Toyota Pickup with 49,000 miles on it several years ago, and subsequently it got keyed (probably with a knife not a key), backed into the driver’s side while parked, backed into the front in a drive through, and T-boned in an airport (literally in the airport, not a parking lot or public roads). Every single time the Truck was stationary. Now the cost to fix the body damage is greater than what the insurance company valued it at.
It sucks, but if you want to drive a vehicle on public roads you need to accept that anything can happen at any time that can damage your car.
Keep driving your i3s, sell your i3.
As someone who has mostly driven nicer, newer cars over the years, buying a shitbox Prius was very freeing. It’s almost worth the palpable judgment I get from bystanders when I drive up somewhere. 😉
I was driving on I-94 between Madison and Minneapolis and I saw some large while diesel dully Chevy
2500 pass me at a decent clip, my guess is approx. 85 ish mph.
On the lower right corner of his back window was a large “F%#* your Prius” sticker which made me laugh…
especially since I was driving a white gen III prius
I’m sorry to hear about this, David!
It’s unfortunate…anytime there’s a hit and run, call the police, show them the damage and do a report so they can be held responsible even if it’s difficult/takes a while to track them down
You would get laughed out of the station in Los Angeles if you reported a scratched mirror
Well whatever, ya dummy…it’s still damage and hit and run…guess you like criminals getting away w/ anything and breaking the law
Cars are made for driving. Driving has hazards. Stuff happens.
Drive the car, David.