Trackday Diaries: PANTHER DOWN!
Has it really been just eleven months since I rejoined the Panther posse by acquiring a 2009 Town Car Signature Limited? In that short span of time, the big Lincoln has rolled its odometer forward from the delivery mileage of 21,850 all the way to 58,933. The mathematically alert reader will note that this represents a daily average of well over a hundred miles. My current commute is a seventy-six mile round trip if I eat lunch at work; if I don’t, it’s at least eighty-nine. Plus I like to go places, you know.
The Town Car and I have had one service issue in our first 38K together: the passenger-side rear door lock mechanism started sticking in the cold, and it was replaced by the dealer under warranty. Other than that, it’s been smooth sailing on a sea of air-suspended bliss… until now.
I asked my friend and part-time employee “Mustang Matt” to make a dual-purpose trip to Michigan for me on Monday. Purpose Zero was to perform some services for a client of mine who runs a Medicare clinic in Southern Michigan. Purpose One, this purpose being far more important, was to pick up a KBP810 RR30. For the approximately one hundred percent of you who have never heard of the KBP810 RR30, it is a hand-built amplifier meant to meant to replicate a “Trainwreck Rocket”. My brother had recently headlined the Dayton Blues Festival and one of his guitarists had been playing a real Trainwreck there. They are impressive amps, even in the hands of a hack like me. A real Rocket would cost $35,000 or thereabouts; KBP810 offers their (meaning “his”; it’s a one man shop) clone for much less.
Normally, Mustang Matt would drive his — you guessed it — Mustang for such a trip, but said Mustang was waiting on a set of brake pads so I tossed him the keys to the Town Car. He made it precisely six of the expected four hundred and fifty-five miles down the road before hitting a deer. Whitetails are plentiful in Ohio nowadays and the state route where the hit happened was a twisty two-lane with tree cover all the way to the shoulders. This kind of thing happens a lot around here, and when I owned my Lotus Seven clone the possibility of such an incident made high-speed night runs very interesting.
For the deer, the hit ended up being fatal, although Matt had been forced to shove it off the hood while it was still kicking through its final throes. The Ohio Highway Patrol arrived a lesiurely seventy-five minutes after the incident to write it up. during which time Matt was stuck on the half-width shoulder of a rather dangerous road. To his credit, Matt is also sensitive about both killing God’s creatures and incurring my wrath, so this was an genuinely unpleasant time for him.
Luckily for all of us, it takes more than a 50-mph hit on a 200-pound animal to stop a Panther. Matt completed his trip without further incident and returned the Town Car to me late that evening. An early assessment of the damage didn’t seem too troubling: shattered headlamp, broken grille, missing trim strip, dented hood. The bumper was actually fine. as was the right front fender.
I haven’t filed an insurance claim for a car of mine since 1987; as a result, it costs me about as much to insure a Town Car, a Boxster S, and a 911 as it costs most people to insure one of the above. I didn’t consider this hit big enough news to break that streak. Surely I could fix it for under a grand, right?
There’s only one problem: the low-tech old Town Car, a vehicle which the Internet will solemnly assure you hasn’t changed at all since 1980, has a rather high-tech aluminum bonnet. In the next two weeks, I’m going to try to defeat conventional wisdom by having it repaired rather than replaced at the aftermarket-part cost of $906 plus freight. I will keep you all posted on this exciting excursion into amateur bodywork. In the meantime, as they used to say at the beginning of “Hill Street Blues”… be careful out there.
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Deer are a constant threat in South Eastern Minnesota in the fall. There are some roads where you are guaranteed to encounter multiple deer in a few miles travel. Evenings are worst. I had two cars damaged in the past few years, enough to hurt the looks but not enough to justify the $1500+ body shop bill. Since I have older vehicles, I don't carry comprehensive insurance. Last year I decided to do something to prevent the same thing from happening again. I found the statistics for the peak months for deer accidents in Minnesota. The peak months are October - December. Now I upgrade my insurance coverage to comprehensive for those three months at a cost of about $20/month ($10/vehicle). Now at least my damages are limited to the $500 deductible, and I don't have to worry about driving around with a smashed in fender/hood pulled out with a crowbar.
Aluminum???????????????????????????? Maybe Ebay has a carbon fiber version? Surprisingly it would be cheaper