:I
No matter what anyone else says, the Cinq is an unbelievably strong little car. In October '97 I was driving down from Durham to Swindon in the small hours of the morning, driving sensibly, and unfortunately had a wee accident. Car hit the bank, dug in, pitched up about 5m, rolled along the top of a hedge, cleared about 10m of it, and came to rest in a tree. Yep. In the tree.
The poor old Cinq was almost standing on his nose, driver's side, and the tree had hit the roof just behind my door, and flattened it. The roof was folded down and everything that was in the car was in the road. The 200mm x 100mm fence posts had tried punching through the doors but the door bars had stopped them, and I was amazingly unhurt. OK I had put my head through the sunroof glass, but then I do sit very tall in a car. (Which is another reason I like the Cinq, it's headroom). When everything settled I found there was a fencepost right through the driver's window, past my shoulder and jammed about 300mm into the back of the car between my seat and door post. Ooops. That wouldn't get my vote. [:0] Most of the fun was had trying to climb out of a firmly wedged Cinq up a wet tree in the dark at 5am, as the sunroof was the only viable exit.
You can see what looks like the kerb in the foreground. Er, no, that's actually the flatbed of the trailer they sent to pick me up.
You can see the dent in the door where a fence post hit. The funny looking thing at the back is the remains of the tailgate. I am particularly impressed that I would appear to be growing a Bonsai tree out of the passenger door.
Suffice to say I was so impressed with the Cinq's structural rigidity and torsional stiffness throughout, that I decided there and then that I would definitely buy another one. So I did, and made it identical. (It was quite good fun telling people that I'd repaired the bent one.) It was certainly a fine accident and one of my more impressive feats of escapism, however I have no current plans to repeat the incident.
Tosh
(PS.I apologise for the titles. The recovery driver had been video taping his daughters birthday party the previous night, but couldn't resist filming the after effects of the accident. He also hadn't learned to set the clock yet.)
**Men don't stop playing because they grow old; they grow old because they stop playing.**
