On a recent episode of The Smoking Tire podcast, esteemed cay guy Doug Demuro chronicles the frustrating experience of getting a door replaced on his Land Rover Defender. Apparently - due to the great supply chain shortage - there aren’t any spare body parts available for people to fix their crashed Defenders. Any and all supply are being used for new Defender production. This, for a car that’s four model years old. This isn’t a case where a particular model is so new, the manufacturer have yet to produce any spare parts.
So what are Defender owners doing when they get into an accident, waiting months for body parts that may never arrive? Doug says the dealerships are actually buying back those cars. That’s right! Because Land Rover cannot (or will not) supply spare parts, they will instead buy your crashed Defender. Perhaps hoping you’d immediately get another fresh one off the showroom floor. That is freaking insane to me. Imagine being a Defender owner, with the specter of potentially losing your car should you get into a fender-bender hanging over you.
That must be the same kind of nervous energy that owner of classic cars have. At least the Defender guys can get another copy pretty easily. That one-of-kind classic car? All the money in the world may not be able to find another exact copy, should you be unlucky to crash yours.
It doesn’t even have to be super expensive, either. I read about some guy with a Toyota Celica with the factory TRD Action Package. He got into an accident that damaged the package. Guess what? You absolutely cannot buy another set from Toyota - the company doesn’t make spares of that anymore. The only resort is to scour the junkyards for another Celica with an undamaged body kit. Easier said that done, however, because so few Celica had the TRD kit to begin with.
Get into a minor accident - lose your car. That’s a heavy burden for any car enthusiast!
Mango a go go.