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North American Westfield Registry

I want to tell you a little story about the Westfield, a Mitsubishi Expo, and a guy whom I'll refer to as...Bonehead.  Now I could provide Bonehead's real name, but it is neither as descriptive nor as satisfying as publicly referring to him as Bonehead...and besides, he might sue me.  Now Bonehead had lined his Expo in front of me as with both prepared to exit a parking lot onto a relatively busy street.  As is my habit in such situations, I had placed the Westfield to ensure it was visible in the driver's side view mirror, rather than in the blind spot below his rear window, and I had my finger on the horn ready to blast those loud, twin Italian trumpets in case bonehead decided to do something stupid. Unfortunately after approximately 45 seconds, he grew tired of waiting for a break in traffic, and decided to do just that *sigh*: he threw his tall beast into reverse and accelerated quickly in a fruitless attempt to prove that two objects could indeed occupy the same space at the same time.  Newsflash: they can't!

As I saw the Expo judder and the reverse lights come to life, I immediately did three things: hit the horn to alert him that I was behind his vehicle, shattered that commandment about not taking the Lord's name in vane, and did my best to take the car out of first gear and place it into reverse. Unfortunately he heard neither the horn, nor my creative cursing, and proceeded to back right into the Westfield before I could get it out of the way. The resulting impact shattered the nosecone and pushed the bonnet back into the scuttle, chipping it's trailing edge and bending the 4 latches that held it in place.  Not good..

As we exited our respective cars, it was immediately apparent that Bonehead knew I was 1) not a happy camper, and 2) absolutely convinced that he was...well, a bonehead.  The first words out of his mouth after looking down at the shattered nose cone and then up at me were "I didn't do it on purpose."  Not on purpose?  You mean you didn't do it on purpose?  You didn't intentionally crash into me like some crazed rutting bull who had three extra shots of espresso in his morning latte?  Well, that makes everything all right then!  <Okay, now that I have that sarcasm out of the way, I'll return to my story>  To his credit, Bonehead did take full responsibility for the incident and immediately called his insurance company to report his lapse in judgment.

On the surface, the damage appeared relatively minor and limited to the nose cone, bonnet, and bonnet latches, so I assumed this would be a relatively simple fix. However, I soon learned that as with all things Westfield, this was not the case.  It seems the color formula for my car's red finish calls for Cadmium, a substance now deemed hazardous in the UK and hence no longer available for gel coat duty. Westfield's new and more environmentally friendly shade of red is far more orange (almost a dead ringer for Porsche Guards Red)  than the original, which meant that simply replacing the nosecone and bonnet would leave me with a multi-hued car. Not good.

Since there was no way that I was going to settle for a suboptimal repair, I prepared to fight his insurance company and force them to replace the entire body. They originally proposed paint, but I quickly nixed that since they would have to do the entire car to ensure it looked right (paint and gel coat reflect light differently) and painting a Westfield isn't my first choice (it adds a little weight -- hey every kilo counts! -- and the fiberglass isn't rigid enough to hold paint without crazing over time). We went back and forth on this issue for over a month and at one point they actually sent three people to my garage to argue that I was being unreasonable. I guess they figured that such a show of force would intimidate me, but fortunately I was prepared for them and successfully countered each of their arguments. It also helped that I continually repeated the phrase "I don't want my car in a lesser state than it was the moment before your client carelessly and recklessly backed into me." I stopped short of reaching for the back of my neck every time I chanted that mantra, but they knew that I was prepared to tie them up in court to ensure that the Westfield was no worse off than it was before that fateful day.

Fortunately they finally caved and paid for a new body to ship from England. That process took another 4 months, and the actual rebuild is still going on nearly 1 year later. Eventually I will get around to writing up the story of the rebuild, but for now I only have the strength to post a handful of photos.