LTD Damage

I am tired and I don't want to be doing anything...Monday afternoon, Kenny went to serve some papers up north of where Mom & Dad live... somewhere on Jackpine Flats or something. Anyway, so he serves the papers (and he had taken Dad with him), and he is heading back out when he comes to this hill on the one-lane road. Two cars are stopped in the middle of the road, so Kenny stops and waits for them, and then the cars leave. Kenny goes to go up this hill, and the road is icy. He can't get up it, so he starts to back down. The car slides sideways in the rear-end, and Kenny gets my LTD stuck. Yes, he is driving MY car.

So, they try to wiggle the car back and forth for a few minutes, and finally decide that it is well and truly stuck, so Dad goes walking to a nearby house to borrow a shovel. As Dad is walking away, Kenny keeps trying to get the car moving by going forward and then backward. While he is looking backward, a car comes over the top of the hill, starts slipping on the ice and hits my car head-on.

Now, nobody is hurt, I should say that now.

No BODY is hurt, except the body of my car.

The lady who hit the car was driving a two-day-old Suburban. You slide a lot faster than you roll, especially downhill, and, rather than take the ditch, she hit my car right on the passenger side front fender's corner. It DEMOLISHED the fender, the headline rim, the bumper, and all the chrome and lights around the fender - except the headlights... those still work. The impact crunched the fender over the hood, so the hood can't be opened, and jammed the fender back into the passenger door, so that can't be opened, either. Here are some pictures of the damage:
(click for larger views)

















So, I am very upset. Kenny did not get the woman's temporary license number. He did not get her VIN number or her driver's license number. At least, with his P.I. business he could look some of that up, but he didn't even walk to a nearby house and ask to use the phone. He did walk to a nearby house and get them to pull the car out.

The only semi-bright side to this is that she REALLY damaged her Suburban by hitting my car. Apparently, it mashed the radiator into her engine and broke oil and fuel lines and it was not driveable.

Kenny talked to my Uncle Rick (who fixes car body damage), and he talked to our insurance company, and the woman's insurance company, and made a police report. We looked up the blue book value on the car - which, I figure, is somewhere between "average" and "excellent" condition - and my LTD is probably worth somewhere between $6,500 and $9,000 with the 429 in it. But I still figure that her insurance company will lowball it and total my car for what I paid for it: $1,400. I am GOING to get SCREWED on this; I know it.

So, that pretty much ruined my week.