Car’s Scars

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Our Hyundai Sonata, otherwise known as Snot, has a habit of shedding door handles. The following is a list of losses and people who were left holding the hardware:

son John $pencer – driver’s side back door

Anne – front passenger door

grandson David – driver’s door

grandson Nathaniel – front passenger door, second round

The first replacement was covered by the warranty, and you can’t tell that it was repaired. The next three were visible scars, because they were black. We didn’t feel like paying an extra $50 each to have them painted to match the car. We told Snot to wear them proudly.

David used the car most weekdays to get to work, so John couldn’t take Snot to the dealer in Asheville for the repair. The person impacted most was Nathaniel. Whenever he and I went somewhere, he had to scramble to get in. Nathaniel, being resourceful, found the broken handle would work if he jiggled it into place. His routine was to open the back door, retrieve the handle from the seat, rattle/jiggle it in the front door, open the door, pull the handle off, sit down, and toss the broken piece to the back. I had to control my giggling at the scrabbling sound, not wanting to try Nathaniel’s patience. It was also amusing to watch him fold his tall self into the small car, something he did with alacrity. I felt like the driver of the clown car in the circus. I swear he could do that door-opening, scrunching routine in five seconds flat.

081618 N with car door handle.JPG

I would like to be known for my problem-solving ability, which is not going to happen. You see, after enjoying Nathaniel’s prowess for three days, I thought of the solution. All I needed to do was lower the window so that he could flip his long arm in and open the door from the inside. The laugh is on me, and it won’t be the last.

Published by Anne Mehrling

I'm a retiree who loves to write about life in the mountains of North Carolina.

Published

34 thoughts on “Car’s Scars”

  1. Good gracious! Door handles shouldn’t come off that easily. Did the dealership have an answer for that? I thought Hundai’s were warrantied 10 years or at least that’s the pitch they gave me when I was shopping for a car 10 years ago?

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      1. So sorry. Good thing you are an enterprising soul! I do that too. MY mind is always looking at solutions, especially when I see someone else struggling to find one. Not so good on my own. lol

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  4. This made me laugh Anne. We had a car that had the same problem. It wasn’t bad when the outside handle broke off on the back seat door, because we did the window trick. But when the front passenger door handle broke on the inside I was left sitting there and knocking on the window so the driver (my husband) would not forget to let me out…..on the upside everyone thought he was such a gentlemen when he opened the door for me LOL. They had no idea I was trapped in there till he did.

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  6. Sometimes laughter numbs the brain especially if someone else is doing the job for one. When you were on your own, you figured it out. Necessity is the mother of invention as said by people who knew what they were talking about.
    We are Toyota fans – so we do not know much about the Sonata car situation but this story makes me aware enough to watch out.
    Susie

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    1. The car had a good reputation when we bought it. My brother suggested the car’s falling apart was our fault for naming him Snot. It must be the name that makes him want to get rid of things hanging outside his face.

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  11. Now that is funny Anne, almost as funny as calling the car “Snot” … sometimes the most-practical idea. I one time went through a drive-thru at the bank and this was in my Pacer which had roll-down windows. It was Winter and I went to crank down the window and the handle fell off … took it to the AMC dealer and they said I must have jimmied it or monkeyed with it – really? They wouldn’t replace it. However, I had the last laugh because that car was parked in the driveway all the time while my father’s vehicle, his “Sunday car”, a 1972 Impala, was parked in the garage (up until 1985 when we sold it after he left). Years of being in the sun, in a car that looked like a fishbowl, the Indian print tapestry cloth seats just tore apart. I took the car into the dealership and said that it didn’t say in the book not to park it in the sun or put a blanket over it. They agreed and replaced the seats and it looked like new and afterward I was able to park it in the garage so it was rarely left outside. The fact that it stalled incessantly I won’t even dwell on.

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      1. Maybe I ought to compile them … when all three cars would just up and die while driving them, I call that a terrible track record. The VW bug was a lemon to begin with, likely because it was a two-speed, no clutch and they only made them a few years, then discontinued them. The day I brought it home, brand-new, and went inside to eat dinner. While eating dinner, the neighbor across the street called over here and said “Linda’s new car is in the middle of the street and it went backwards down the driveway and left a pool of red liquid in the driveway” … it was a few hours’ old and was towed back to Seaway Motors.

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  12. On the farm when we often dinged up vehicles, machinery and everything nearby. The protocol was to initial the damage ( usually with a bright florescent cattle marker ) and own up to the harassment that was sure to follow. Then the broken parts were mounted on the “wall of shame” reminding operators to be cautious or else! Eventually it humbled even the best drivers.

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    1. Wow! Who knew! Thanks for sharing that. My wall of shame was in people’s memories. Everyone remembered the day I played the wrong hymn, though they probably forgot within a year. They all jumped when my finger hit a broken stop that made everything on the organ turn on. Shame was so immediate. I doubt even choir members can recall the one time I stopped them because they were so awful. We began again and got through the piece. I’m thankful my musical wrecks were not highlighted and hung on a wall.

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