The Scratch on Our Golf

A few months ago, I spotted what looked like a scratch from scraping against concrete on our Volkswagen Golf. It was on the front left side of the car.

I hadn’t noticed it at all, so I asked people on Twitter what they thought might have caused it. The replies included:

・Maybe a payment machine at a paid parking lot… Ouch!
・Could it have been a bicycle?
・Our Golf 7 has a scratch in exactly the same spot. My wife finally admitted she’d scraped it against a curb.
・Looking closely, the scratch seems deep and not quite straight. It looks more like something hit and gouged the car than the car scraping against something as it drove.
・Maybe a concrete block wall.

A concrete wall does seem plausible… Neither my husband nor I could think of anything we’d done, but I’ve been driving the Golf more often lately, so there’s a good chance I scraped it somewhere.

Lately, I’ve also been thinking that I’m “more absent-minded than ever.” The other day, after picking up our eldest daughter from kindergarten, I stopped at the supermarket—and left her kindergarten bag hanging on the shopping cart when I headed home. I didn’t realize it was missing until much later that night, so I rushed back to the supermarket just before closing to pick it up.

And this wasn’t the first time. I’ve done it several times.

Since I’m often this forgetful, I suspect I was probably responsible for the scratch on the Golf, too.

The scratch was too deep for me to fix myself, so I decided to have a nearby gas station repair it. I went with the same place that had recently hand-washed the car (they did a great job and the service was excellent).

A Toyota Aqua Loaner

I dropped off the Golf in the morning and was told the repair would be finished by the evening. They offered me a loaner car in the meantime. I walked toward it thinking, “That’s a Prius”—but it turned out to be an Aqua!

From the rear, it does look a lot like a Prius.

Apparently, this generation of the Aqua sits 45 mm lower than the Prius, giving it a slightly sportier look. The interior was more upscale than I expected, with a stylish design.

My first drive in an Aqua left me thinking, “It’s really easy to use as a runabout.” When I first started driving, the car felt a little unsettling: the body didn’t feel particularly rigid, the steering was light, and there was a lot of slack in the accelerator and brake pedals. Once I got used to it, though, it was perfectly easy to drive.

Its compact size makes it easy to park just about anywhere, and it zipped through narrow shortcuts I’d usually rather avoid. And since it’s a hybrid, fuel economy is excellent. This may sound a little odd, but I liked that I could drive it without worrying about “What if I bump into something?” or “How much is gas going to cost?”

That said, I didn’t get much sense of the joy of driving. It wasn’t the kind of car that made me want to drive anywhere and everywhere, like the Golf or a Porsche (though it’s hardly fair to compare them…). Even though it was a loaner, I only used it for grocery runs and kindergarten pickup.

How Much Did the Golf Scratch Repair Cost?

That evening, I got a call saying the repair was done. I was eager to pick up the Golf—and as for the scratch…

Amazing… it had disappeared completely. The pros really know how to make a repair look good. They’d also washed the car while they had it, so the Golf came back looking shiny all over.

The scratch repair came to ¥26,000, including tax. My husband said, “I thought it would cost more, but they did it for a pretty reasonable price.” Now that it’s looking like new, I’ll be even more careful behind the wheel.

Maybe next time I’ll ask them to hand-wash the Panamera.