Why I will never buy a green car

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My family has never had great success with green vehicles. I will never buy a green car due to our terrible odds of keeping it intact.

My first car was a green Hyundai Accent. I loved driving it and apart from the spark plugs that needed to be changed every couple of months in the first few years of owning it, it served its purpose well. But it did get knocked hard a few times.

In fact, the first time my car got damaged was when I had just brought it home and parked it outside our home garage. My dad backed his truck into the side door because he wasn’t used to having a car parked on the opposite side of the driveway. The same door got smashed in again after parking my car in a tight street while visiting a work colleague’s place for dinner. Thankfully the neighbor who backed into my car came and found me and gave me their insurance details.

I had the Accent for five years before deciding to trade it in to get our current car, a Honda Civic. On the Thursday before the Saturday that we were trading in the Accent for our new Civic, Jacob (my hubby) drove the Accent to work and got side swiped by a Brisbane City Council Bus where Turbot Street merges onto Ann Street in Fortitude Valley.

I remember I was working with dad in the city at the time and I got the phone call from Jacob to say that the car had a bit of a ding in it because of the bus. I was kind of hysterical on the phone and asked did he get any details from the bus driver and where was the car sitting now?

He’d left it parked in a secure multi level car park and trotted off to work.

I got dad to drop me off to the car park and called Jacob on my mobile to get directions on where he parked the car.

As soon as I saw the car I burst into tears. A ding? The whole freaking front bumper bar was hanging off and the side panel into the car was smashed!  We were using up most of our savings to pay cash for our new car with the trade in and we didn’t have much money left over for any stuff ups.

I rang Jacob and blasted him to which he said ‘I didn’t think it looked that bad…’

I then dissolved into angry tears not knowing what to do or who to call. A lady passing by came up to me and asked me if I was okay and I blubbered that my husband had crashed my car and she kindly smiled and said… there are worse things that could have happened. I didn’t appreciate her nugget of wisdom. She of course didn’t know that we were trading the car in 2 days time to pick up our new car.

So after I calmed down, I rang my dad. Dad rang our insurance company, and I can’t remember if we decided to pay for the damage ourselves or if we went through insurance and they got money out out of the BCC.

I rang call connect and asked them to put me through to a car smash repairer that was in close proximity to the Brisbane CBD. I was given Mangano Smash Repairs at Woolloongabba. I rang and got the manager and he told me to bring the car in and he would see what he could do.

The manager assessed the damage straight away and advised he would order in the parts that day and try and get the car back to us by Saturday morning in time for the trade in.

Would you believe the car got fixed in a day and I picked the car up Friday afternoon in time for trading in and picking up our new car Saturday morning.

I was so thankful and relieved that our car had been fixed in record time and that the manager put our car as a top priority. Not only did the car get fixed up (thankfully it was the outside shell of the car that was damaged, nothing mechanical), the manager also touched up some of the scratches and dents on the car doors. The car was in better shape than when it had been originally assessed for it’s trade in price.

The jinx of the green car didn’t just start with me. It also happened to my parent’s vehicles.

When I was 16, dad decided to change from a white Toyota Hilux ute to a green one. Later that year it was only by the grace of God that he wasn’t killed early one morning while going to deliver gear to one of his job sites. A black four wheel drive sped through a red light and smashed into dad’s ute. The force of the impact forced the ute to vertically spin in the air and the heavy tool boxes that dad had bolted to the back of the tray forced the ute to land backend first rather than head first.

The plumbers that were at the job site heard the almighty crash and ran out to see that it was my dad who was in the accident. The ute was clearly written off, plumbing fittings and tools were strewn for at least 50 meters or more up the main road. Our plumbers were able to yank the passenger door open so that dad could climb out of the vehicle because there was fuel gushing out of the ute.

Dad was shaken and had scratches and bruises but no injuries. He was in shock and thankfully he blacked out the moment of impact and didn’t wake up until the truck had landed. He does remember all his files that he would keep on the passenger seat flying in front of his face, but that is all.

He was so thankful that he didn’t have either myself or my brother working with him that day because the accident happened on school holidays and had either one of us been in the passenger seat, we would have been dead instantly.

The track record with green cars didn’t stop with my dad’s ute. My parent’s also owned a green Honda Accord. In the garage, my dad would use pipe brackets to hang his big model aeroplanes from the ceiling.

This is a picture of Esther when she was 14 months with my dad. You can see how his planes are hung up from the ceiling using pipe brackets.
This is a picture of Esther when she was 14 months with my dad. You can see how his planes are hung up from the ceiling using pipe brackets.

One night there was an almighty bang. Not much was thought about it. The next day when dad opened the garage door to drive to work he saw his Lancaster Bomber Model had fallen onto the Honda creating a huge dent on the dash board.

So it’s safe to say that we will never buy a green car again. But after writing this post, I realised all these accidents were caused by human error.

You can care for your car by making sure it’s safe to drive on the road and has the best oil like Castrol Magnatec in its engine, but it’s other drivers on the road that could be the cause of your accident.

My dad always taught me after his accident to always anticipate for the other driver. Give way when you can all the time, don’t drive too close, don’t take off straight away when the light turns green and stop when you need to stop.

I’ve loved reading all your entries into the Driving Safely giveaway. There is still time to enter the giveaway as it doesn’t close until the 20th January.

I’d love to hear from you… have you ever been involved in a major car accident or have a light hearted car incident to share with me? This is the last of my posts in relation to cars and oil. Huge thanks to Soup and Castrol Magnatec for allowing me to review their product.

This post is not sponsored, however I have been given free product and information on car care and will be given a $150 voucher for my opinions. All opinions are my own.  This post has been written in conjunction with my disclosure policy.