Has it really been just eleven months since I rejoined the Panther posse by acquiring a 2009 Town Car Signature Limited? In that short span of time, the big Lincoln has rolled its odometer forward from the delivery mileage of 21,850 all the way to 58,933. The mathematically alert reader will note that this represents a daily average of well over a hundred miles. My current commute is a seventy-six mile round trip if I eat lunch at work; if I don’t, it’s at least eighty-nine. Plus I like to go places, you know.
The Town Car and I have had one service issue in our first 38K together: the passenger-side rear door lock mechanism started sticking in the cold, and it was replaced by the dealer under warranty. Other than that, it’s been smooth sailing on a sea of air-suspended bliss… until now.
I asked my friend and part-time employee “Mustang Matt” to make a dual-purpose trip to Michigan for me on Monday. Purpose Zero was to perform some services for a client of mine who runs a Medicare clinic in Southern Michigan. Purpose One, this purpose being far more important, was to pick up a KBP810 RR30. For the approximately one hundred percent of you who have never heard of the KBP810 RR30, it is a hand-built amplifier meant to meant to replicate a “Trainwreck Rocket”. My brother had recently headlined the Dayton Blues Festival and one of his guitarists had been playing a real Trainwreck there. They are impressive amps, even in the hands of a hack like me. A real Rocket would cost $35,000 or thereabouts; KBP810 offers their (meaning “his”; it’s a one man shop) clone for much less.
Normally, Mustang Matt would drive his — you guessed it — Mustang for such a trip, but said Mustang was waiting on a set of brake pads so I tossed him the keys to the Town Car. He made it precisely six of the expected four hundred and fifty-five miles down the road before hitting a deer. Whitetails are plentiful in Ohio nowadays and the state route where the hit happened was a twisty two-lane with tree cover all the way to the shoulders. This kind of thing happens a lot around here, and when I owned my Lotus Seven clone the possibility of such an incident made high-speed night runs very interesting.
For the deer, the hit ended up being fatal, although Matt had been forced to shove it off the hood while it was still kicking through its final throes. The Ohio Highway Patrol arrived a lesiurely seventy-five minutes after the incident to write it up. during which time Matt was stuck on the half-width shoulder of a rather dangerous road. To his credit, Matt is also sensitive about both killing God’s creatures and incurring my wrath, so this was an genuinely unpleasant time for him.
Luckily for all of us, it takes more than a 50-mph hit on a 200-pound animal to stop a Panther. Matt completed his trip without further incident and returned the Town Car to me late that evening. An early assessment of the damage didn’t seem too troubling: shattered headlamp, broken grille, missing trim strip, dented hood. The bumper was actually fine. as was the right front fender.
I haven’t filed an insurance claim for a car of mine since 1987; as a result, it costs me about as much to insure a Town Car, a Boxster S, and a 911 as it costs most people to insure one of the above. I didn’t consider this hit big enough news to break that streak. Surely I could fix it for under a grand, right?
There’s only one problem: the low-tech old Town Car, a vehicle which the Internet will solemnly assure you hasn’t changed at all since 1980, has a rather high-tech aluminum bonnet. In the next two weeks, I’m going to try to defeat conventional wisdom by having it repaired rather than replaced at the aftermarket-part cost of $906 plus freight. I will keep you all posted on this exciting excursion into amateur bodywork. In the meantime, as they used to say at the beginning of “Hill Street Blues”… be careful out there.
So, relative to the earlier piece on replacement parts, what will it be for you, Ford-UAW, or aftermarket Brand-C(hina)?
It would be interesting to hear how you size-up the differences between these parts, both quality and price-wise.
Since Jack appears to be a bit of a road warrior traversing the american waste lands in “the last of the Panthers”, maybe he should just go with something totally home brewed, a hood of chicken wire and angle iron.
Oh, if the misfortune of being rear ended happens to fall upon him, he can turn calamity into opportunity and trade his trunk lid for 2 oil drums hooked up to the fuel tank.
Then all he’ll need to add is a double barrel riding shotgun, and dog food in the glove box!
Has your guardian angel been bribed or something? I bet your friend is glad he wasn’t driving the Mustang…
Good luck with the repairs.
I hit a 40 lb turkey with my 2006 Fusion a couple years ago and it did more damage than that. Long live the Panther. (yes, I’m a former Panther owner).
I’ve been having almost-nightmares about about hitting a deer when my new 100-mile commute officially commences late next week, as I will be driving the I-275 loop around town from the northern suburbs to the vicinity of the airport, which is in northern Kentucky, and there’s lots of open, dark road space along the way, not to mention many deer live in and around our neighborhood!
Glad the driver is O.K. and the car survived pretty well, but I feel sorry for the deer – I feel sorry about any animal that get hit by a car, as I wish there was a way to prevent this.
In Michigan, they say there is an effective method to reduce, but not eliminate, this risk.
It’s called hunting.
Robert
Buts it’s Bambi, dammit!
I sympathize. I live on a 6500 acre island with 3000 to 5000 other people, depending on time of year. 22 years ago, no deer. Some swam over from an adjacent island and now we have a herd of 600+. Damn four legged locusts will eat anything and we get a couple dozen incidents every year, mostly low speed, but still fatal.
Could be worse. You could be in Maine and center punch a moose. Often, that’s not survivable for either party.
Yes, and many states are suffering from deer overpopulation, partly due to the license/tagging system required to legally hunt deer.
Two weeks ago I had a deer run in front of me while traveling 90 kph on a DRZ400SM. I probably could have reached out and petted it in mid swerve, where I a little less focused on said swerve to begin with. Scariest bit of riding this season for sure.
Ahhh, deer…the cockroach of the Midwest. Wife has hit 3 of them in our cars; in all three cases, it was just minutes after I surrendered the wheel on a trip. Probably just bad luck on her part; I am not sure that I do anything that much different. But we do have a shared joke that her field of view while driving is the size of a quarter held at arms length…
She doesn’t ask to drive anymore.
Careful! You used “cockroach” in a sentence! You almost infringed on geozinger’s copyright!
I was driving around a familiar wooded curve just outside my destination at 45 mph, when in a flash, the entire front of my 1988 Festiva shattered, blinding me and forcing me to suddenly swerve off the road to a shreeching halt. It was a large buck lying dead across the front of the car. It was huge and laid across the busted cowl, pocketed within the sagging windshield onto my dash.
The Festiva looked like it hit a wall. The hood was folded up, the front clip was mangled and it looked like a complete loss. The Festiva LX was only two years old at the time.
Insurance wanted to total it. I didn’t. Fortunately, this particular car had every option available in 1988, escaping it’s fate.
The Festiva is still on the road. It has over 300,000 miles on it and it looks like a discarded boot. I sold it over a decade ago, but it recently showed up on a used car lot for $500.
That buck obviously humped whatever it wanted before it decided to take on that little car. It fatally discovered that you don’t F with a Festiva and live.
Best Roadkill Story.
The Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado sits in an empty flat valley surrounded by the high Rockies. The sand cannot escape over the 14,000 foot Sangre De Cristo range and the high altitude and low humidity freezes everything at night until summer. I was there in the spring and the Park is virtually empty. Consequently, there is no traffic on the 50 miles between the Park and Alamosa, where I found a room.
It was a full moon night and perfectly clear. The jagged snowy peaks appeared lavender piercing a radiant midnight blue sky. I went up to see the Dunes and wander around the emptiness. After staying as long as I could, I headed back towards town down the empty road in the night. With no traffic and a long drive, I set the cruise control at 75mph.
I began hearing thumps as though I had a flat. I stopped and looked around but I could find any problem. Mystified, I started off once again, but continued to hear thumps even at a slower speed. Perhaps I was hitting tar strips, I thought, so I hit my brights and was shocked to discover something incredible.
I was hitting rabbits. Being the only car on a warm road during spring mating season meant my headlights were attracting rabbits warming themselves in the cold night with the radiant heat from the black asphalt. My headlight beams caught dozens of them as they darted in front of, then away from, my car. When I slowed down to a crawl, rabbits quickly gathered in hopping clusters, staring at my high beams. I turned the headlights off, but it did not seem to help my situation.
I was befuddled. I had to return to town, but was reduced to crawling down an empty two lane without headlights, cursing with every thump I heard reverberating from under my car. At the speed I was driving, I wouldn’t return to Alamosa for two hours.
After 30 minutes, my patience ended with a fury. Stupid rabbits! I turned on my headlights and accelerated. I swerved and thumped over the next fifty hormone-addled bunnies until I left the San Luis Valley.
My car stunk like rotting garbage for a week and my suspension system was covered in blood and fur. I had to park my car at the far end of parking lots so that no one would be offended by it. Even after bombing the undercarriage with spray car washes, I would find tufts of fur jammed tightly between muffler seams, cables and braces.
I must have killed or maimed hundreds within minutes.
In other words, jacked up overweight SUV = good for environment, aerodynamic lowered car = environmental killing machine?
“…jacked up overweight…”
Are you actually describing an SUV, or yourself behind the wheel?
I hit my brights and was shocked to discover something edible. FIFY
Cassoulet de lapin a la mode de roadkill
Great story VanillaDude. While I can’t claim to have killed and maimed quite so many bunnies in one go, your story reminded me of a rather spectacular road kill from my teenage years.
Myself and my friends would charge around the back lanes of northern Essex several nights a week in our underpowered and crusty little hatchbacks that most teenagers in the UK have as their first car.
Whilst chasing my friend who was driving a MK2 Polo, I noticed a group of bunnies suddenly appeared around a corner in front of him, and with no time to think, let along brake… he plowed straight through. It seemed that all but one got away, and immediately after impact I noticed something fly past the side of my car. We both pulled over to see if anything had fallen off his crusty little Polo but couldn’t find anything wrong. We looked back along the road and noticed a little black figure sat in the middle. Upon closer inspection we found that a rabbit was sat perfectly upright, but had been completely decapitated. The object I saw flying past my car was the dearly departed rabbit’s head. How did this happen? Well if you take a look at some older MK2 polo’s, you’ll see an almost sythe like metal strip running at rabbit neck height just below the front bumper.
Horns? I’d think that would make them scatter.
I use my brakes and horns simultaneously when I encounter wildlife on the road, unless it’s a real close one and I don’t have time for the horn.
Long-legged forest rats, and the source of much damage and death. Mr. Newton’s laws helped out here, of course, our Miata has a dinged left “eye” still from a deer strike at dusk with the headlights raised. Field of vision or no, they’re darned unpredictable anyway, being wired for predator avoidance to take leaps in random directions when threatened. Thus as likely to leap right into you as away, and there are a zillion anecdotes demonstrating same. They kill motorcyclists regularly; I’m a huge fan of deer season around here for that reason.
Until I saw one leap my parents’ five-foot-high garden fence from a standing start I wouldn’t have believed it.
My wife nailed one with our 92 Accord one dark night on Highway 16 just a few miles from the house. It slid off the car in such a way as not to nail the windshield, The hood, of course, had to be replaced and a fender straightened. There are enough of those pests around here that I think we’re lucky that’s the only one either of us has hit.
The esoteric audio world is ruled by hyperbole, based on the religious belief that tubes designed 50 years ago represent the pinnacle of engineering. I’ve always thought glass audio love was based more on preferences for imperfections, although I don’t subscribe to the notion that amps have distinct sounds as a result of construction or nameplates. the 3rd and 4th harmonics can be unique and somewhat seductive.
http://www.trainwreck.com/clones.html
I would wager your clone will work just fine for a lot less, despite warnings from the originators.
I don’t subscribe to the theory of using tubes to reproduce recorded audio; I agree with you in that regard.
The electric guitar, on the other hand, is half an instrument. The amp and stompboxes are the other half. Chet Atkins and Jimi Hendrix each played the same kind of guitar at one point but they obviously didn’t get the same sound.
I’ve read up on Ken Fischer quite a bit. He was quite the opinionated fellow, but he had talent to back it up. No two Rockets would have sounded the same, really, but I think the KBP810 approximates the “average Rocket” about as well as a Komet or Dr.Z at a price wayyy below the $3800 tariff associated with those.
I also agree with Ken that people should try to build their own designs, so I have a Kasha and a few Dave Harris scratch-builts too, plus a Mesa Mark V Private Reserve :)
Jack, what do you think of products like the Egnator Mod 50 with multiple separate tube amplifier modules with adjustable bias like the one Ty Tabor uses live as compared to separate boutique amplifiers?
The local branch of a paintless dent repair company, Pro Dent?, claimed that it was easier to remove hail dents from an F-150 aluminum hood than from a steel hood. Not so sure hail dent removal scales up to deer dent removal.
As both an audiophile and guitarist (and a former electronic technician as well), I’ve heard a lot of different audio amplifiers. Although I don’t subscribe to the “tubes are better” belief, I have to day that it’s shockingly easy to build a poor-sounding solid state amp. I’ve heard plenty of them. In general, tube amps do tend to sound less harsh. The problem with tubes is that it’s hard to get serious power out of the things. This is a function of output transformer limitations rather than the tubes themselves.
Luckily, speakers have been getting more efficient over the years. Low power is okay for most music. But when you need to produce the transients in Stravinsky’s music at reasonable listening levels 20 watts just isn’t going to cut it the way that a vintage 200 watt Ampzilla will.
I’ve always told people the one variable that is hardest to control is the room the music is played in. Let’s face it, some rooms sound great, most are terrible. Nothing beats a great venue. Spend money on room treatment and construction and you’ll get the most out of the gear.
I’ve worked on tube amps and cut my electronic teeth on them 30 years ago. I prefer solid state for practical reasons, but won’t dismiss a great tube amp’s intrinsic sound; the mid-bass is usually a signature effect.
I also prefer the sound of solid state, many people do, but then again most of the music I listen to is recorded like crap and doesn’t benefit from better audio gear.
On the subject of deer hits, I know several people that hit deer on motorbikes. That can be far more tragic than a car impact.
I no longer ride my bike at night. I’ve hit three deer (driving my car) in the last few years and I have no desire to do so on two wheels. It’s too bad, really. I loved riding at night.
Regarding room acoustics, I agree. Simply controlling near-field reflections will do wonders for how a room sounds. It’s not hard to do.
Regarding Trainwreck Amps, the engineer in me really hates the idea that any given amp you get from this guy could be almost anything. To me, it’s the guitar world equivalent of the madness that makes much of the high-end audio world so insufferable. Now, I haven’t heard a Trainwreck, so I can’t comment on how it sounds so I won’t. from a marketing perspective, it’s brilliant. “Each one is unique”. That alone is worth five figures to some people.
In some respects, it’s just like the car world. An awful lot of people have way too much money to spend on “tuner” cars with absurd prices. I mean, what, exactly, does a Trainwreck have that’s special? He can’t make his own tubes, resistors or capacitors. He could make his own speakers, but I doubt it. He could conceivably wind his own transformers, don’t know if he does. Aside from those things and circuit design, he’s using the same stuff that everyone else is.
I spend a fair amount of time on certain guitar boards where one of my favorite pastimes is debunking common myths about amplifiers. In the end, it all comes down to physics.
Surprisingly light damage given that the animal died (must’ve been quite the impact). Try that in a Camry or Accord. The hood would’ve been folder in half, I bet.
I was visiting my parents’ house and had to borrow one of their cars to run an errand. It was a just-paid-off Toyota Matrix. (I think the 2006 model? Some recent year, anyway) On the way back home a deer jumps out of nowhere; I swerve but still hit it right on the passenger side headlight.
The headlight is screwed up and that whole corner of the car is seriously crumpled. The deer got up, shook himself, and ran back into the woods. “Pedestrian safety”, I guess.
The energy of the collision has to go somewhere. That somewhere is often the exterior structure crumpling. It’s not necessarily “flimsy” construction – its good management of collision forces. A larger and heavier car can simply “repel” the collision – at the cost of lower fuel efficiency aka weight of the vehicle.
Hey, I wasn’t criticizing. After that episode, if I’ve got to get hit by a car at some point, I know the Matrix is a good choice, and certainly a safer bet than a Town Car.
Any morning that starts w/ a Hill Street Blues reference is a good one! After Esterhaus passed away, the new roll call sergeant (Sgt. Jablonski) would say “Let’s do it to them before they do it to us”.
That also seems fitting in this case.
My Uncle Tim did the same thing in Northwestern Ohio while piloting his 1977 Buick Lesabre coupe. He got a new grille/headlight surround and one new front fender out of it, but the car itself was driveable after the hit. Hit it, knew what he hit, but kept driving. He called the sherrifs department when he got home (another 10 miles away). He described the accident and where the carcas should be laying. The dispatcher exclaimed: “So you’re the one we’ve been getting calls about!”
Panther went hunting, ate some venison.
Seriously though, I do love Panthers. Things are damn near indestructable. Same accident in rural NJ (yes it exists, stop snickering) damn near totaled a friend’s Gen 1.5 Altima.
Also love MN12s. Should have never traded in my ’96TBird. Making me think it time to trade in yea olde reliable, efficient gray sedan for a big V8 Challenger coupe. If only Ford still made Gougars or Birds.
Before they picked-up middle-age spread on the MN12 platform, Cougars used to be fancy Mustangs on the shared Fox-platform… given maybe it is still possible to go home again, or a least to get on the same block … Challenger, however, is in a different neighborhood altogether.
As I understand it …
Some of the MN12 engineering went into the IRS-equipped Lincoln LS platform, which was supposed to be shared with the Mustang … but then Ford realized pony car buyers wouldn’t pay for it and made a cheaper, live-axle-only version for the Mustang.
So you could say that the MN12 begat the current Mustang, in a roundabout way.
I now live in rural NJ – I didn’t believe it existed either, but technically it is “The Garden State”
I choose to get an early start on the day and hit the gym at 4:30am – I see no less than 5 deer on my 3 mile drive every morning. Here’s the thing – THEY DON’T MOVE! My daily driver is a Mustang with a fair amount of work done to it – not exactly quiet. On nice summer days, I drive my 4th gen Trans Am convertible with an SLP LOUDMOUTH (that’s really the name of it)exhaust. NOTHING! I can literally (and have) pull up next to them, swerve at them, honk (they do flinch) and they just stand there and look at me.
I’m city folk by birth and upbringing – but all I can think is, “How hard can HUNTING possibly be!?!” I could hit 3 per morning with a spitball from my BIC pen.
BTW – I did hit one with the Mustang in ’09. And it came from the other side of the road, crossed the lane and ran in front of me before a sent it to the Rainbow Bridge at 50mph. $3700 damage. All it had to do was stand still for 5 seconds – I wouldn’t have even known it was there.
Wouldn’t have mattered. had a buddy with a ’98 Maxima tell me a deer hit him. I said “You mean you hit a deer”. Nope, stopped at a 4 way in South Jersey. Deer came bounding out of the forrest, ran into the back of the maxima and crumpled the trunk. Stupid thing even had the nerve to stumble away and not leave it’s insurance card.
but seriously, deer are like roaches in South Jersey. Definitiely need to thin the herd.
During the 80’s I lived in NW Pennsylvania. The aluminum extruding company I worked for built a huge facility out in the middle of a cornfield due to the cheap land and the huge natural gas deposit underneath.
Being in the foothills of the Alleghenies, you can imagine the terrain. My former coworker drove in to the office from a remote farmstead. Often the area was already covered in snow in mid November. One morning, Cathy didn’t show up on time, but that wasn’t unusual due to her long commute and the snowy roads that day.
As noon approached, she was very late; the department secretary started calling her house thinking she may have gone back home. When no one at the home knew her whereabouts, the secretary called the Pennsylvania State Police.
As it turns out, while driving into work that morning, the deer were on the move. Cathy apparently spooked one, and while trying to leap over her car, it landed on the windshield header, instead of the road. While not injured by the collapsing roof, she lost control of the car and it went off the hill and down into a gully.
She had a late 70’s Olds 98 which was painted white and blended into the surrounding wintry countryside. It took a while for anyone to notice the white car in the white snow down in the ravine.
Fortunately, while uncomfortable, she wasn’t seriously injured but a little cold and hungry from having been trapped in the car for about eight hours.
We were glad to have her back. Her husband drove her into work for about a month after that…
That seems like a pretty solid car. I guess they REALLY don’t make them like they used to. If only this car had an AWD option, I would buy one in a heartbeat.
And THAT is why I always borrow my friend’s P71 or Town Car when I have to drive through the NJ Pine Barrens at night, whether it be to see family or the beach. That and the Jersey drivers actually slow down below 80MPH when they see the P71.
You’re lucky the deer didn’t go over the hood and into the windscreen. They’re small enough that they might not, but it can happen, usually with ill results.
Now, a moose is another, usually quite sad, story. I’ve seen what a moose can do to a semi and it’s pretty impressive.
I was driving my parents in Alberta going to Edmonton from all the parks in the Rockies one night, and I was doing a good 75mph in a 100kph zone (It had not taken long for me to ignore the illegible KPH markings on Mom’s US spec Buick Rendezvous speedo, besides with Texas plates on it, we were a giant target no matter the speed) Mom and Dad are asleep, and I’m flying down the road at dusk when a moose runs out in front of the car, I plant the brakes and try to swerve around it. Good thing as that damn moose was tall enough that the bulk of the torso would have collapsed the A-pillars and windshield, and brought the roof down. the front would have gone under the belly and scooped the poor animal up.
I’ve taken out frogs, snakes, birds, rabbits and squirrels with my vehicles. Oh and one armadillo in the Chevelle.
I used to work as a field technician/wildlife management officer with a provincial government in Canada many years ago and I used to help out every now and then clearing up moose road kills (we had a dedicated “moose truck” with a heavy duty winch and such that was outfitted particularly for that task). I’ve seen the results of moose-car accidents up-close, and I can honestly say you don’t ever want to hit one of those.
By the way, dawn and dusk are usually the worst times for this kind of thing because that’s when those animals tend to become more active, so you want to keep a special eye on the sides of the road at those times (and at night as well of course).
That’s Ohio Route 315, from Interstate 270 to the south side of Delaware.
Very scenic, and the most pleasant way to approach Columbus from the north (as opposed the endless Walmarts and sprawl on US 23.) Totally crawling with deer. I saw a dozen on Sunday evening.
The only thing more common and dangerous on that road are all the trophy wives in luxury SUVs heading to Baruth’s hideout in Powell.
+1 I came here to say at least some of your comment.
This section of 315 and Riverside Dr (and beyond, once it turns into 257) are currently my two favorite places to cruise when I’m at school. I may have found a contender for the top spot in the little ravine roads off high street. Those are pretty cool too, but not as fast.
Couldn’t have been 315. Jack described it as twisty. 315 has occasional bad sightlines that masquerade as curves. When I was learning to drive 30+ years ago, it was about the best road in the area, but that’s not saying much. Damn glaciers.
Much better roads southeast toward Hocking Hills. It’s worth the 45 minutes it takes to get beyond Lancaster.
Jack, read David Kirkham’s tutorials on working with aluminum. They’re on YouTube.
I’d leave the dent. It adds character.
Maybe you could airbrush a deer with a big red X over it on your driver’s side door.
Four more Xs and you’re an ace, right?
And this, Jack, is exactly why your tale of late-night high speed driving while browsing the web on a mobile device was so horrifying.
Deer populations need to be managed via hunting since we’ve eliminated the wolves that used to do the job. I would love to see states encourage deer hunting by making the sale of venison legal.
Fair enough, but I ain’t hit one yet, whereas all you careful non-texters out there seem to be collecting them like Beanie Babies in the first flush of said product :)
Town Car 1, Deer 0!
So, when was this aluminum hood introduced? I’m asking because my Town Car is a 2005.
Deer are not as much of a problem on my commute here in Savannah, GA, but you do need to watch out for tourists, who seem to forget that they are in an actual functioning city, not some kind of theme park.
About 2 years ago my Mom and I drove out to the Chinese Buffet place in the little town of Dupont Wa, which is just south of Tacoma and near the freeway and we’d had dinner and had come out and it was dusk or well, essentially dark when we drove through town and were on the main drag taking us back to the main road that would get us back to the town of Stelicome on our way home.
We were in her 2004 Dodge Stratus when a dear came out from the right and glanced off the right corner of the car, got up, shook itself off and bounded into the woods off to our left.
No real damage to her car so that’s good but we did spot a small dimple in her hood though and that may have loosed up her bumper in one spot.
Yes, even near civilization, Deer are plentiful.
We knew some in-laws in Grants Pass OR who had problems with the deer as they’d hop over the fence and eat the veggies they were trying to grow – and this was some 30 years ago.
Deer are a constant threat in South Eastern Minnesota in the fall. There are some roads where you are guaranteed to encounter multiple deer in a few miles travel. Evenings are worst. I had two cars damaged in the past few years, enough to hurt the looks but not enough to justify the $1500+ body shop bill. Since I have older vehicles, I don’t carry comprehensive insurance. Last year I decided to do something to prevent the same thing from happening again. I found the statistics for the peak months for deer accidents in Minnesota. The peak months are October – December. Now I upgrade my insurance coverage to comprehensive for those three months at a cost of about $20/month ($10/vehicle). Now at least my damages are limited to the $500 deductible, and I don’t have to worry about driving around with a smashed in fender/hood pulled out with a crowbar.
Aluminum????????????????????????????
Maybe Ebay has a carbon fiber version? Surprisingly it would be cheaper
And heavier too.
The 92 CVs also had aluminum hoods. The 93 GM was steel though.
Not exactly a high-spec item. My Y2K Ranger has an aluminum hood.