Nova nightmare
This is actually a picture of me in my car, that I stumbled across whilst looking on the net!
very very expensive.
Personally, I had my car stolen three times, and broken into on at least one other occasion. Initially, I did wonder what drew these (horrible, sickening, non-empathetic) yobs to my A-reg, beige, slightly rusty, 25 year old Vauxhall nova. I hear that young men wish to obtain these cars in an attempt to “pimp them up”, intending to make them snazzy, with LED underlights and tinted windows et al.
It probably depends what they can get for 50 quid from Halfords, unlike Xzibit on the popular MTV show with his installation of oxygen bars and sub-woofers (you can actually pimp a virtual ride on the website which is quite snazzy)…I must admit at this point, that I did attempt to “pimp my ride” somewhat: seat covers I got from Walmart on my trip around New England, which someone else appears to have used on an office chair, a lick of paint (black and blue – the blue was a custom made blend from B&Q that matched the flowers on the seat covers exactly!), a super snazzy radio and some speakers- all installed by myself with some assistance from my wonderful step-father. It made a great improvement to the inside of my car, however there was no getting away from the rusty, tea-bag coloured exterior; as attached as I was to “Barbara” I suppose I may as well admit that she wasn’t in the best shape aesthetically speaking – though maybe not as bad as this car!
After all my hard work, it was even more upsetting than it might have been to have Barbara violated by other people’s scummy hands; her locks were broken, her dashboard was smashed and her ignition was “barreled” (I believe was the expression used the police). I was rather traumatised.
After several police investigations, door/ ignition reparations and Barbara’s (and my!) first trip on a ferry, I was driving around my new home of Northern Ireland, and was followed into my carpark by a youngster who approached me offering me money to buy the said vehicle. Needless to say, I was extremely confused; most people point and laugh as I drive past.
I excitedly took him up on his offer, and coincidentally, it was just around the month that I was due to inherit another car. What perfect timing!
As I mentioned, Barbara had some pretty extreme internal renovations including a CD playing/ mp3 compatible/ time travelling radio- unlike my new Golf, which had a radio that solely played cassettes.
So endeavouring to “pimp” my new ride, I decided to extract the Barbara’s radio and replace the ‘naffer’ one in the Golf. It was about 9pm after a hard slog in the Serious PR offices doing various types of digital reputation growth, and then a few hours of cleaning my apartment, before I sat in Barbara’s front seat in the dark, with a torch, my screw driver and other assorted tools. At this point I realised my disappointment in failing to bring the radio manual over to NI from England; it was going to be a long night ahead.
And I hacked, I chiseled, and I mashed poor Barbara’s fascia, wrestling with the radio to remove it. I should note here, that with my hammering and scything, I was making a considerable amount of noise. Several people walked past looking slightly puzzled – a man actually drew up and parked next to me. He sat in his car for a few minutes whilst I continued to batter away, and then casually strolled into the building thinking nothing of the event. It was only in retrospect that I got to thinking: “why did nobody come to investigate what I was doing?”… Surely, if I saw someone struggling to get a radio out of a dashboard in the middle of the night, I would be slightly suspicious… Wouldn’t you?
Whilst writing this blog, I came across a shocking number of websites that assist car thieves. Maybe if the public were more aware of their tactics, they could prevent this horrible scenario occuring, so below, you’ll find some of the best:
Proper methods of stealing a car