Increasingly Amusing Tales of Car Ownership - Chapter 8

The story so far:
Chapter 3: Only one calamity to go
Chapter 4: Only one wing mirror to go
Chapter 5: Linkage
Chapter 6: M.O.T.
Chapter 7: Flu

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Chapter 8: Pimp my Metro

I hoped, when I started calling these posts 'Increasingly Amusing Tales', that I would run out of incidents worthy of the title. I hoped that my driving life would be dull and boring from here on. No such luck.

You may recall that almost five weeks ago, I announced that the head gasket had blown in the Silver (and Red) Machine (see link to chapter 7 above). Today I finally retook possession of my Metro. In the garage's defense, it hasn't taken them five weeks to fix my car. They have taken three weeks (they actually started the work on Wednesday, 5 April 2006).

On the evening of the 5th I phoned the garage to find out if my car was ready, and was told that 'the job was more complicated than we expected'. Since then, every time I have called them, I have been told the work would take a couple more days, with no one actually saying why. Whilst I've been waiting for the return of my vehicle, we've come up with the following possible scenarios to explain the delay:

1 = Someone fucked up.
2 = Someone has taken a shine to the Silver (and Red) Machine and is reluctant to part with it.
3 = Westwood is pimping my ride.

Of the three, I think option 1. is the most likely. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that they are sticking to their original quotation. If it had merely been the case of encountering more things wrong with the car, then they would have telephoned me and quoted the price for additional work. The thinking is that someone's dropped something or broken something, and they've had to order a replacement part.

That would explain a delay, but I'm not sure it explains three weeks worth. Unless of course the replacement part was made of solid gold or something.

Option 2. doesn't sound very likely to me. Even I haven't taken that much of a shine to it (not after all these increasingly amusing tales).

Whilst option 3. would be quite amusing, it would probably be a wasted investment as the car was only worth £500 when I bought it.