On my way back to work from my lunch break last Thursday, an old man in a Nissan Frontier pulled out across the 4-lane road I was on to make a left turn and head eastbound.  I was heading westbound, and he attempted to make this turn directly in front of me.  When he saw me, he panic-braked instead of continuing on his way, blocking both westbound lanes and leaving me no escape route.  It was all I could do to barely clip his rear bumper and the corner of his truck’s bed.

The resulting damage, though entirely cosmetic, was enough for the insurance company to write the car off as a total loss.  I bought the car for $800 with a clean title in this condition,

sank more money into it than I had originally planned to get it into this condition and registered with a clean title,

and just like that, I’m faced with deciding between paying for yet more repairs out-of-pocket to keep the car with a salvage title, or removing the new and aftermarket parts and receiving a check for $1098 from the insurance company after sending the car to die.  Sadly, my only feasible option was to send the car to die.

I’ll be selling the Enkeis, AMR coilovers, and various brand new oem exterior trim pieces soon to try to recoup most of my losses.  In the meantime, I’ve found another promising car to work on as I drive it daily, and if it’s everything it seems, I hope to be driving it home tonight.  If not, the search continues.

Despite the bad news, I realize I’m pretty lucky as this could all have been much worse.  I could have been riding my motorcycle at the time, and I likely wouldn’t be here to type this.