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| Work car - an accident waiting to happen |
A couple of years on I was poached by a local businessman to help him run and grow his business. The Excel was getting a bit long in the tooth by now, dinged up and dirty again since the restoration, and the boss wasn't keen on me visiting clients in it. He was quite concerned with images and appearances. He was round my place one day and told me in front of my fiance to sell the Excel and he would give me a work car to drive around in. This was perfect as I was working two jobs and saving for a wedding so the cash from the sale would be welcomed. Trying to conceal my joy I agreed, and he said later on when we re-negotiated my package we could re look at it all then. Well well well, I had a near new Mitsubishi Magna to drive around in.
Surely this was the perfect solution. No finance to pay, no money to outlay, OK it guzzled a bit of petrol, but compared to the ladies car I had been driving around in that was a small price to pay for a V6 with mag wheels, sports exhaust, and awesome stereo!
Plus - a few weeks before this, someone had left a chocolate milk bottle with the lid not quite on right in the back seat of the Excel, and it rolled right under the front passenger seat and took a little while to find. I mean, for weeks this bottle was lolling around and it spent some really hot days in the sun where it would have been 50 degrees Celsius inside the car. The bottle was long gone but the milk that had slowly seeped into the carpet under the passenger seat and turned to custard was almost impossible to get to and soak up. The smell was unbearable on a hot day. I remember about a week before that I had my father in the law in the car and he rode the whole way moaning with his head out the window like a dog, trying to escape the foul stench.
This was a cat landing on his feet right here, and my mind felt like it had been set free and a huge burden lift from my shoulders. I advertised to sell the Excel - my first car that I would actually be able to genuinely sell. My model was worth about $3500 on Redbook but I sold it to a gay couple who lived across the road for two grand in cash because I knew them, and because of the smell, and because after being angrily and begrudgingly driven around for six years it wasn't in the best of shape if I am going to be totally honest with you. A cathartic experience all round. About a week later I bumped into one of the boys and he asked me quite nervously, "What the fuck is that smell man? Did you like, kill someone in that thing?".
So now around town you could hear me coming. The Magna purred like a kitten and drove like a dream. I was looking the part. Ever since my experience at Burwood I had wished I didn't own and didn't need a car - this was perfect.
Being a work car I was quite protective of it also, more so than cars I had owned. Washed it regularly, avoided things I would normally drive over, particularly round-abouts and small animals. You know, that type of thing. One day though this protectiveness counted against me.
I was coming home from a dual trip out West on Mothers Day. I spent the morning in Windsor with my mum, the afternoon in the arvo with my wife's mum in Penrith, and was driving back home to the Northern Beaches with my wife and her sister in the car. While we were turning off the M4 at Prospect I had a Holden Commodore right up my arse. Going through the main round-about onto Blacktown Road I tapped my brakes, the Commodore didn't like this at all, and exaggerated his closeness driving very aggressively now behind me. I tapped the brakes again, and this time he gave me a little tap.
Out came the right hand giving him the sign to pull over behind me. We both slowed and pulled over, but when there was enough room he shot off around me and sped off. Taking this is a sign he had done some damage to my rear, I took off after him without thought. He went straight through the next red, I followed him right through.
"How dare this guy try and lose me in my home town!" I thought. For some reason this insulted me more, and although he was driving very quickly and erratically, he got nowhere with me anticipating his every move. Finally he stopped at a red light up the top of the hill and so I go out of my car and approached the drivers side door. He was a fairly big Italian looking man, but had his mum in the car which probably stopped him from getting out and clubbing me. I just wanted his licence, but he took off again! This time I swung up onto his bonnet holding one of his wipers, but I couldn't hang on so jumped off after a couple of metres and went back to my car. Off we went again.
This time the other bloke drove to the Police Station, and although he was in the wrong driving into my rear and then leaving the scene, I wasn't too keen to admit to jumping on his bonnet and drove on. I checked my bumper up the road, and you couldn't even tell I had been hit!
After just over a year conditions at my work deteriorated and my employer wanted me to sign a new employment contract, as you could do back then with work choices, and as was nearly always the case, the new contract equated to less money. Unsurprisingly I turned this offer down and handed in my notice.
The next Saturday morning I was driving the Magna to cricket when I merged into a lane of traffic that was just about stationary. I was not. The Magna nearly pulled up in time but I collided with the car in front of me, which was a fairly new Nissan Skyline. It was lucky it was just a nudge but there was damage to both bumpers. Both cars were OK, I exchanged details with the other driver and off I went to cricket to receive a berating from my captain for being late. That night i got home and rang the boss who came down to have a look, and was understandably unimpressed. Being the at fault drive driver I assured him I would pay the excess out of my pocket which seemed to do nothing to ease the already strained situation.
I was saving for my wedding at the time and working two jobs again, so I was very keen to find out how much the excess was. Boss man had other ideas and told me he wasn't going to put it through his insurance because he had just increased his excess to lower the premium, which from my understanding would be OK anyway as I had offered to pay it. We ended up at loggerheads about this which still hadn't been resolved by the time I had left work, so I told my now ex-boss that I would wait for the bill in the mail.
A couple of weeks passed. I started a new job in town - no car - busing the hour plus ride to Ultimo, and one day I did indeed get a letter in the mail. The letter was from the insurance company of the Skyline driver. It was a demand for $2900. I phoned my old boss to get his insurance details but he refused and told me again he would not be using insurance and what's more he would be sending a bill himself for $3800 to fix the damage on the Magna. Oddly enough this equated to roughly what I was owed in wages and commission. As promised I got a letter a couple of days later from his solicitor for this amount. There was a quote behind it from one of his mates for a new bumper bar.
So all of a sudden there I was with no car, a potential legal liability of nearly 7 large, all in the midst of trying to save for a wedding. Fortunately I played cricket with a QC who had heard about what happened and offered to act for me for free. Turns out he knew the plaintiff and thought him to be a bit of a prick. He made some enquiries and figured out that my boss had not paid the insurance premium and I had been driving around uninsured the whole time. This was the real reason he didn't use his insurance - there wasn't any.
We then found out statutory declarations had been signed to the effect that he was not aware I was in possession of the car outside of work hours. I had no written evidence to the contrary. It may have came as a shock to the other party I had my own QC who lodged a counter claim for the money owed to me, but the plaintiffs were sticking to their story, upping the ante by claiming there was no money owed to me which again was difficult to prove.
The matter ended up settling out of court with a "break even" outcome to the two suits. The other side agreed I had no damages to pay, but in exchange I would receive none of the money owed to me in commissions, which left me out of pocket about $5000 which I had planned on using for the wedding.
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