Opel Corsa - It had an epiphany to die in my arms

This was in reply to my email :

Dear Sir,

I would like to place on record my sincere gratitude to you. After watching Catch Me If You Can, I thought it had pretty much covered the gamut of making money by all means possible, but it seems they forgot GM. Let me place on record my (horrible) ownership experience with an Opel Corsa that unfortunately is my first car.

I bought a used Opel Corsa 1.6 Gsi that had about 58,000 km on the speedo. The pride of ownership however was soon lost because my car never made it home the first day. The fuel tank had a leak. I consoled myself, paid a hefty 1k to the towing vehicle and got it to National Garage on Peddar Road, Mumbai. I must say you have trained them well. For a car that cost me 80k to buy, the very first day had me spending 32k on a long list of replacements that promised to make the car better. Only it did not. The amount of labour they charged me could be used to four lane the highways in Russia.

In fact so busy were they in trying to ensure that a prized catch like yours truly (read moron) should not be let go, that they managed to forget to tighten the bolts on the driver’s side. They prob hoped I’d crash and not write this email. But no such luck I’m afraid. They also managed to @*#% up the electrical system by putting in the wrong fuses. So when I drove home that night, up to my building, the car started smoking from under the bonnet. They had forgotten to put the fuse for the engine fan. The ECU light also showed up. Probably it’s way of showing that even if the ECU doesn’t function properly at least the b$oo#y light does.

They replaced the head lamps, bulbs, and charged me an astronomical sum for it. Pity it worked only in outer space. I had to get it done again. You see I reside on earth.

I then spent varying sums of money to replace the clutch plate, the fuel pump, the flywheel, brake pads, master cylinder and not to mention getting the fuel injectors cleaned (which National Garage claimed to have done). I tried my best to salvage the car (and my pride).

But you see the car now sits in my parking spot, refusing to start because the alternator seems to have given up. I then begin to wonder whatever the $*%# did I pay that much money for. But then I give up. You see I’m too small a person to make you pee your pants. You can do anything you want. And get away with it. I hope the 32k pads that bottom line of yours well.

Funny thing is I just realised that I’ve been GMed. In India that’s not a nice thing.

Regards,

Subodh Mallya